The novel has main characters from each region, two of which are half-zombies, and all the stories are intertwined with one another.
Part I: War of the Dead
A zombified Marine lieutenant injected with the antiviral is brought back to half-life but finds himself caught between human and zombie, and reconsiders which side he should fight on.
Part III: Call to Arms
A Canadian helicopter team arrives at a US military outpost for an exchange to acquire a batch of antiviral but finds themselves betrayed and stranded. Having learned of High Command’s treacheries, a rogue team of Marines led by a sympathetic master sergeant comes to the Canadians rescue. The master sergeant hopes to enlist the Canadians, along with a brigade of half-zombies, as part of a strike force to overthrow a forced labor camp in Gettysburg run by the military.
Part IV: War of the Dead
A former Army sergeant, who finds her half-zombie condition has left her infertile, leads a discontented group of half-zombies on a war against humanity and zombies alike. Will the remaining military, the work camp survivors, and the lieutenant’s half-mute brigade unite in time to stop the dissident half-mutes from executing their elaborate plan of genocide, or will humankind finally meet extinction?
Part IV, Chapter III
It was to be a long trip back to where she had started, and the arduous journey only made her hate for the living and the reanimated dead fester and grow more deeply. When first rejected by the ungrateful humans, who she had helped to save, she blamed the reanimates for the humans’ fear of her kind. She had once been a zombie, so it was understandable the trepidation a half-dead could invoke in fearful humans. As time passed at Fort Detrick the rejection began to embitter her. When 1st Lt. Saunders decided it was time for the zombie menace to be eliminated, Brooke had been assigned to lead one of the combat teams. At first destroying reanimates was cathartic for her, and put purpose back into her life. After all, she was a soldier and though she could no longer comprehend all the intricacies of being a Systems Supervisor for the 114th Signal Battalion, she still knew how to kill. However, after a month of zombie eradication it had grown tiresome, and it had only temporarily distracted her from her growing hate for humans. She decided that soldiering and cleansing the countryside of the reanimated dead gave her no meaning in life. Brooke discovered she was not the only one that felt this way. There was dissension amongst her group and she wasn’t the only one that felt that the humans had wronged her kind. Brooke was the first that wanted to leave, and Saunders knew that keeping someone confined to Fort Detrick was almost like what Mound had done to the survivors at Camp Hope. Saunders gave Brooke her freedom and thanked her for her service. However, freedom had not given her the emotional connection to her human past that she desired.
As the days passed and her abhorrence and resentment grew for humans, she began to punish the living, first by leading the reanimates to where they could be found and watching the death struggle while reveling in the pain and suffering the living experienced being ripped apart and devoured. It was entertaining and broke the boredom in her travels. However, it was soon not enough and she began to take her hate directly out on the living, butchering and devouring their flesh, feeling pleased from the sensation of its texture and nourishment. Even eating the living did not alleviate her ache for an unfulfilled life as a half-dead. If she could never become fully human again, then perhaps she could at least find a way to be more human.
No comments:
Post a Comment