Free Pandora: A Novel of the Zombie Apocalypse by Richard McCrohan Page B

gaping, as his former friend and housemate opened his mouth widely. Gore and blood ran from it, down his chin and onto the hood of the car. The new passengers were yelling at Mike to drive and pounding the back of his seat.
    Regaining his wits, Mike shifted the transmission into drive and, as Brian was rounding the fender on his way to the driver’s-side door, floored the gas. Wheeling expertly around and down the exit ramp, Mike looked in his rearview mirror to see Brian and the rest of the walking dead head toward the kicking feet of the male nurse, who now lay under a growing pile of zombies.

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    T hroughout the world, the slow deterioration of official authority often left important and usually crucial decisions to local commanders. The rich and powerful were no more immune to the Pandora virus than the poor and vulnerable. The very rapidly increasing infection rate included national leaders and government and military personnel. This in turn led to either political impasse regarding what to do or critical choices being made by the less capable.
    Russia’s criminal underworld was having a field day, as different
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vied for control of Moscow. The Russian military was too busy dealing with the undead to pay much attention to the mob war ensuing. Mass desertions also put a stranglehold on the armies, as individual soldiers, worried sick about their families, left to try to save their own.
    India and China already were being written off. In the ensuing days, new Chinese Communist leader Xi Jinping, former chairman of the military, took it upon himself to use small tactical nuclear bombs on two large interior cities where the dead had taken control. This wasn’t a national decision but a personal one, and its vast unpopularity was evident from his immediate assassination. Meanwhile the country’s fragile infrastructure was falling apart. Communication and media came to a complete halt; transportation, both public and commercial, stopped; and the power grid in that part of the world winked out, one block at a time.
    The rest of civilization also was having a hard time staying afloat. All essential services were being maintained by less-than-skeleton crews. As impossible as this situation seemed, it grew even direr as existing workforces were reduced by attrition from zombie attacks or workers just giving up and going home. Amazingly the Internet still worked. And although television did too, the number of active stations shrank to only the four major networks; cable was all but nonfunctioning. Brownouts were commonplace in all of the large industrial countries. Not only were there not enough people to operate the energy superstructure, but also there was the fact that heating and air-conditioning and electrical appliances still operated nonstop in homes now occupied only by the dead. This led to a number of gas and electrical fires in towns and cities around the globe. As local fire departments were severely depleted of capable members—and in some cases were unable to respond because their firehouses were besieged by zombies—a great number of these small fires soon raged into giant infernos. Sometimes whole neighborhoods were consumed.
    The Middle East was in turmoil as extreme fundamentalists placed all the blame on Israel and the “infidel West,” and soon rocket attacks and suicide bombings escalated to carpet bombing and then nuclear solutions.
    As the weeks rolled by, Europe was turning back into a continent of besieged, walled, feudal cities. The mortality rate of the Pandora 2 Mutation now had surpassed that of the Black Death of the Dark Ages.
    In the United States, the borders were completely closed off, except for the one it shared with Canada. Along its southern border, army tanks and vehicles constantly fired on the masses fleeing north to perceived safety. People both undead and alive were strafed and slaughtered on sight. With the United States being a nation of constitutionally armed