VanderkirkJournals1 8

Chapter 1: Hear Me Out
I’m Scott Vanderkirk--yes, that Scott Vanderkirk. Now

hold on just a moment. I know you want to stone me right
now. That’s ok, I get that. I started the Zombie Scare (or
the Zimbabwe Outbreak if you’re one of the conspiracy
believers). Tens of thousands dead, civilization on the brink
(and it still is, no question.) I’m not expecting to make you
like me or anything, just hear me out. I just want to tell my
story from my perspective for once. You’ll still hate me when
it’s over, I promise, but at least you’ll know why you should
hate me and it’s not what you think.
I got the call in March. I had just finished a viral
marketing campaign for a soda company (the one with the
parkour guys--those guys were amazing!) and Universal
wanted to know if I’d come do a similar campaign for a
Zombie film that was coming out in December. Now this was
2012, remember, so there had already been four zombie
films that had been huge so this one, The Zimbabwe Strain,
needed something to help them stand out, set them apart.
They offered me a huge budget (and salary) and the use of
the film production crew as well. I’d always wanted a chance
to do Hollywood so heck yeah I said yes!
I brought a couple of guys with me who’d been my
brain trust on the parkour thing (Don’t worry guys, I’m not
gonna mention any names here). We got to Universal and
were just blown away by the possibilities. There was a 60
hour Red Bull fueled brainstorming session and our ideas
just kept getting bigger and bigger. In the end, though, the
basic idea was simple, film a scarily realistic video showing
Zombies attacking a family out in the country and get the
video to the news in such a way that they buy it--even if only
for a few hours. Launch off that with a distributed web
The Vanderkirk Journals Copyright 2010 James Poteet II. All Rights Reserved.
campaign and watch the page views climb.
Now you’d think getting a news station, any news station, to
buy the idea of a zombie attack would be impossible.
Actually, it’s pretty easy. First, you never, ever mention the
word zombies. You talk about a virus, the Zimbabwe Strain,
which animates deceased tissue and seeks new hosts to
perpetuate itself. Second, you target a slow news day.
Third, you find an ambitious newsman who’s looking for a
bigger market.
So that’s how the day after Thanksgiving Kurt Price of
CBS channel 5 in San Antonio got the break he’d been
looking for his whole life.
Chapter 2: A Disaster in the Making
Kurt Price sat in his office the Friday morning after

Thanksgiving looking through the news stories filed
overnight. He punched the button on his intercom, “Gail.
Gail, is this garbage the best we’ve got? Gail?” Then he
remembered it was the day after Thanksgiving and Gail was
off today. He grinned wryly. Taking time off was not his
style. He believed in the Brett Farve mentality: don’t let
your backup get any more time in the spotlight than you can
prevent no matter what. Besides his wife was off shopping
anyway, might as well be at work.
He’d started in Fort Smith Arkansas. Sure, you could
say it was luck that had landed him covering the story of a
double homicide committed by a respected pastor in the
community. Kurt looked at it as an opportunity he had
worked hard to prepare himself for. He had no intention of
remaining a field reporter for the 175th market in the United
States.
And he didn’t. His brilliant work on the double
homicide had landed him the anchor’s job at the CBS station
he’d been at only eighteen months. Two years later he
accepted a job with an NBC station in Omaha (market 72.)
And eighteen months later he was back with CBS anchoring
the ten o’clock news for CBS channel 5 San Antonio (market
29.) The word his co-workers used most to describe him
was ambitious. He was constantly rubbing elbows with the
movers and shakers around town and was a whiz at office
politics and word was he was talking with CBS brass about
moving to San Francisco, Market 4, or Dallas, Market 5,
soon.
“Mr. Price, did you call for Gail?” A much younger and
prettier woman than Gail appeared at his office door. “She’s
off today, I’m filling in. Is there something you need?”
“Oh, of course,” he said. “I’m sorry; I just forgot for a
moment that Gail was off today.” He stood and came around
his desk. “I don’t believe we’ve met, I’m Kurt Price.”
She gave him a dazzling smile, “Yes, Mr. Price, I
recognize you, of course. I’m Penny Davenport.”
As they shook hands he noticed the ever so slight
fragrance of her perfume. “Please, Mrs. Davenport, just call
me Kurt.”
“Of course, Kurt. And it’s Miss Davenport, actually, but
please call me Penny.”
“Thank you, Penny. Actually, I was just wondering if
this,” gesturing at the stack of news stories, “was the only
news we had from overnight.”
“Well, I just finished summarizing the police stories
from last night if you’d like to see it, but to be honest, you
won’t find anything interesting there either. A few domestic
violence arrests, DWI’s. That’s about it.”
Summarized the police reports already? And look at
that body! See, Gail, this is another example of why you
never give your backup any playing time.
He flopped back down into his desk chair. “I hate this
day!” He blew irritably. “There’s never any real news and the
only news there ever is is always the same every year. Look!
Lines at some stores for the fad gift this year! Sales are up
or Sales are down. And now over to the sports desk to talk
about that Cowboy game.”
Penny giggled. Actually giggled. Ok, strike one, he
thought, no giggling. “Well,” he said aloud, “I guess we’ll--”
He was cut off by the phone ringing.
“Price here….Uh huh….I don’t know…yes I did…Okay,
Okay send it over and I’ll give it a glance….That’s all I can
promise…Okay…Alright, goodbye.” He set the phone down
slowly a slight smile exploring the corners of his face.
“What was that,” Penny asked.
“The story of the year, I’m told. Guy works for the
Falfurrias Facts weekly news. Says he’s got something I’ve
got to see. Maybe this day won’t be such a waste after all.
While I’m waiting on that video, how about we run out for a
cup of coffee?”
When he got back from his coffee break the video was
waiting in his inbox. What he saw was…well, you’ve seen
the video. It scared me and I was there when we filmed it.
Fifteen minutes later he was in his car with a cameraman
making the two-and-a-half hour drive south to Falfurrias in
about an hour and a half. Didn’t even tell his producer.
What he didn’t know is that we were ready for him.
The family in the house out in the country? Not actors.
They were real. All we did was hand them a camcorder, told
them you just got a new camcorder you’re playing with and
just be yourselves. Of course, the footage isn’t from that
camcorder; it was the lead cameraman from the movie
actually shooting the footage. So our “zombies” show up
and god they were good! Pardon me for gloating over this
given what happened, but keep in mind, we were just
making essentially a giant commercial for the movie and it
looked fantastic. Anyway, so a little special effects and it
looks very much like the man and his wife have been killed
by zombies. We literally left the camera laying on the
ground for four hours filming all that footage you always see
in fast forward till the point where the couple return to life.
Now we filmed this back in September. We paid the
couple $5,000 with another $5,000 if they didn’t breathe a
word of it till a week after the video came out. Plus, an all
expense paid cruise starting at Thanksgiving, but again, you
can’t tell anyone about your travel plans or anything. Just
disappear for a week. When you’re barely making your
mortgage payments out in the middle of south Texas,
$10,000 is nothing to sneeze at.
Don (not his real name), our “reporter” met Price in
front of the Falfurrias Facts office. Price roared up in his
BMW and he and his cameraman boiled out.
“Mr. Price?” he shook hands all around, “Don Chavez.
Thanks for coming.”
“Hi Don, I appreciate you calling me. I want to see the
house, of course. Who found the video?”
“Well…I don’t know. It was dropped off here this
morning, I think by someone from the Sheriff’s department.
I tried to talk to the Sheriff, but he’s completely clammed up,
won’t discuss it. The only person involved who will talk to
me is the doctor who examined the bodies.”
“The doctor, what’s his name?”
“Folks. Dr. Folks. Interesting old guy worked for the
CDC briefly back in the 80’s but moved back here to work in
his hometown. He says the--”
“I’ll hear it in his own words, if you don’t mind,” Price
interrupted. So we drove to ‘Dr. Folks’ office.
Now Dr. Sumner’s office was closed, it being the day
after Thanksgiving. We had arranged to film a commercial
in the doctor’s office that day, added Dr. Folks to the list of
doctors on the door and set up Matt Sparger, the man who
played Dr. Folks in the movie, and waited for Price to show
up.
Sparger was alerted to our coming and as we drove up
he was locking up the office preparing to leave. As soon as
we got out he marched straight up to Don.
“What is this? What are you doing? You promised to
keep this to yourself.” ‘Dr. Folks’ was clearly upset seeing the
cameraman. Don started to go into his spiel about it being
important to get the word out about this, we had scripted
this, but Price stepped right in.
“Doctor, let me introduce myself,” Price had turned up
that charm we’re all overly familiar with by now. “I’m Kurt
Price from CBS 5 in San Antonio. I understand you have
some concerns, perhaps we can discuss them and if you still
feel the same way when I leave, then I’ll leave you out of it
completely.” Dr. Folks looked at him skeptically for a moment
then looked around.
“Well, if we’re gonna talk, let’s get inside.”
For the next forty-five minutes Price quizzed the doctor
on the bodies that had been brought in early this morning.
He described the sheriff calling around 6 this morning and
demanding he get to the office right away. Two bodies were
brought in, Jim and Tammy Barnard, apparently dead of
gunshots to the head. Closer inspection, however, revealed
these to be post mortem. Actual cause of death appeared to
be some sort of infection introduced from multiple human
bites likely bringing on a severe fever which was the likely
proximate cause of death.
He had wanted to send the bodies to Corpus Christi for
a full autopsy, but the Sheriff had taken the bodies and
ordered him not to talk about this with anyone. His wife had
mentioned to her sister, Don’s mom, about the sudden call
this morning and that’s how Don had gotten involved.
“So what you’re telling me,” Price asked, “is that
someone bit these people causing them to die of some
disease and that the sheriff’s department on finding their
dead bodies shot them in the head? Why?”
Doctor Folks just looked at him for a moment.
“Understand, I believe that at least three other people are
still walking around with this disease. They represent a
terrible health hazard that needs to be addressed as a public
health problem. The way to do that is to get the information
to the public as swiftly as possible. Otherwise, I would not
be talking to you. The Sheriff believes this is a public
security issue and needs to be handled by restricting
information in the same fashion you do when hunting a
criminal. If I’m right, that method will result in the
continued spread of this deadly contagion.”
“When I worked for the CDC I saw something like this
once. It was called the Zimbabwe Strain. Local officials
handled that just like Sheriff Stone wants to handle this
here. I saw the results of that…” He paused as if gathering
himself for what he must say.
“Mr. Price,” he said at last, “these people were not
simply dead when the sheriff encountered them. They
returned to…well, life and attacked the sheriff and his
deputies. Mr. Price, the Barnards were clinically dead when
the sheriff shot them. Clinically dead, but walking around,
attempting to bite the deputies who fired multiple rounds
into their bodies which did not even slow them down. They
finally brought them down only when they fired a round
point blank into their heads.”
The doctor got up reached into a desk drawer and
pulled out a bottle of Jim Bean and four glasses and poured
a couple of fingers worth. We all drank in silence. Finally,
Kurt Price stood up, reached across to shake the doctor’s
hand.
“Thank you doctor,” Price said. “I really appreciate you
talking to me. Here’s my card if you learn anything else,
please don’t hesitate to call. When I talk to the sheriff I’ll
keep your name out of it.” Then he turned and walked out,
cameraman following. Don looked at the doctor, shrugged
and followed as well.
Don went outside to find them already in the car
waiting. He climbed in and was about to start the car when
Price reached over to stop him.
“Don, we need to talk.” Oh great, this is it, he thought.
We’re busted. It was too much, he’s figured it out. “I don’t
want to alarm you, but we have gotten into something
bigger than we are.” Price intoned this. Literally, there’s no
other way to describe it. He intoned it.
“It’s obvious from talking to Dr. Folks that we’re dealing
with a very serious disease. Now no offense to the local
sheriff, but a man in a town this small doesn’t immediately
jump to covering something like this up…keeping it a secret.”
He sat back and stared off into space for a moment. “I
believe your sheriff has contacted the federal authorities
already. I believe they have already instructed him on how
to make this all go away. I believe that digging into this
further will be…well…hazardous.”
Now he looked directly into Don’s eyes. “Don, why did
you call me this morning?”
Don wasn’t an actor, but he must have being acting his
butt off, because he kept a straight face through all of this.
“Well, I think we need to get the word out about this. As
great as the Facts is, a weekly newspaper just can’t
accomplish this.”
Price nodded. “You’ve done that. If you want to walk
away now, I won’t blame you. Just give me directions to the
Barnard house. You don’t have to stay with this. You have
to live in this town after I’m gone.” Don nodded. He should
have gotten out of the car right then. He wasn’t an actor.
Every moment he was with Price increased the chance that
he would slip up and give it away. But hey, he was having
fun and wanted to stay for the show. So he looked back up
into Price’s eyes again. “No. I can’t do that. I’m following
this through.
Price nodded again, the self important Jackwagon.
“Good man. Let’s go visit the sheriff and then head out to
the Barnards.”
And so they did. The sheriff was incredulous, but
thought someone was pulling some kind of practical joke on
him. Sheriff Stone (my god his name was Sheriff Stone. If
we had written him in we would have tossed out that name
immediately as obviously fake) had no discernable sense of
humor and no time for whatever was going on and so
brusquely dismissed Price telling him he had no idea what he
was talking about and to get out of his office and quit
wasting his time. If we had written his part he couldn’t have
played it better. Price just gave him a knowing look and
departed for the Barnard house.
We had come out this morning and left some
“bloodstains” and other evidence that something bad had
gone down in the backyard. But other than just confirming
what Price expected to see, there wasn’t anything really to
see. So he visited the neighbors. The Barnard’s house is a
mile outside of town, a very small town, so there weren’t
many neighbors to talk to and they weren’t very close by.
They also had no idea what he was talking about (they
weren’t in on the deal, their reactions were totally genuine).
So Price went back to the Barnard’s and did a standup in
front of the house showing the bloodstains in the back and
generally talking in a very scary tone of voice.
Dropping Don off, he burned up the roads back to San
Antonio bringing his producer up to speed on the way. He
was no idiot. He had the station’s technical team examine
the footage and they pronounced it legit, no photoshopping
or any digital hanky-panky (of course not, we knew they’d
check it out. Even our special effects were all old school, no
camera tricks.)
When he got to town, he met with his producer and the
station manager and laid it all out for them. The meeting
was short. It’s the Friday after Thanksgiving and the biggest
story is that sales are down everywhere and the Cowboys
drubbed a terrible Raiders team on Thanksgiving. In other
words, they’re starved for news. Understand, if you want
publicity this is the day of the year to get it. Nothing
happens in politics. Nothing happens in business. No one
makes any major announcements. NOTHING happens
practically the whole week. They’re starved for news and
they’ve just been handed a Pulitzer. They’ve got an
ambitious newsman.
They ran the story.
Chapter 3: Early Success

“Look! It’s on ABC!” Brad called. We were spending
the weekend at a hotel on the Riverwalk watching the local
news and both laughing and drinking our butts off.
“Reports continue to come in from people who have
witnessed victims infected with the Zimbabwe strain. We
take you now live to Premont Texas, a small town just ten
miles north of Falfurrias where word of the outbreak first
reached the public. Marta, what can you tell us?”
“Thanks, Curtis. People here in the small town of
Premont are understandably concerned. We talked with
Rosa Gutierrez earlier today.” A video played of Carol’s
interviewing Rosa who swore she’d seen two of the zombies
in the woods right behind her house. It was the first time
anyone had said “zombies” and we all held our breath.
“This is it,” Nick said, “this is where it starts to dawn on
them all that they’re reporting that zombies are roaming
south Texas. I’ll bet you a hundred bucks that within the
hour we start seeing them pull back from the story.”
“You’re on,” Brad said. “They’re too deep in it now. All
they’ll do is redirect from that ‘zombie’ word.” Sure enough,
when Marta passed it back to Curtis and Elaine back in the
studio, they had a serious moment about the victims of the
illness being called “zombies.” Then it was on to college
football highlights with Tim Johnson.
“Ha! I told you. Now pay up.”
“No way, Brad. I said within the hour and you’re not
seeing a penny till the hour’s up.”
I just sat back surfing the various sites reporting the
Zimbabwe Strain outbreak and sipping my beer.
“Guys, I think we may have outdone ourselves,” I said.
If they don’t geek to it in the next twenty-four hours, this
thing is gonna start getting national coverage. Did I
mention,” I grinned turning to face them, “the bonus I have
written into our contract if we get more than ten million
page views?”
“Only like a million times,” Andrea said coming out of
the bathroom still toweling her hair. “An extra three cents
per page view if the distinct count exceeds ten million page
views. But what, may I ask are you going to spend that
bonus on?” She had a twinkle in her eye. Literally. I know
you’ve heard that phrase before and always wondered what
exactly that looked like. So did I. When Andrea had that
look, she really did get a twinkle in her eye.
“Well,” I drawled, “I’m gonna buy you a new best
friend.” She just looked puzzled for a moment. “You know,”
I said and started humming “Diamonds are a girl’s best
friend.”
She rolled her eyes and laughed. So did Brad and Nick.
“That’ll be the day!” She threw herself on the couch next to
Brad. “What do you think, Brad? Wanna place another
wager on whether Scott here will make an honest woman
out of me, hook up the ol’ ball and chain, get hitched, set
the-” Nick threw a couch cushion in her face to shut her up.
“No, thanks,” Brad laughed. “Come on, Scott, there is
no way you are ever getting married. I just can’t see it.”
“No, really,” I protested, “I’m serious. We hit it big with
this and I’m gonna settle down. Be an executive.” I stared
at them for several moments. Then I broke, laughing out
loud. I couldn’t help it. The words just sounded so
preposterous out of my mouth. Even though I really meant
it, it just sounded ridiculous even in my own ears. “No, no” I
said through laughter, “I really mean it. I know how it
sounds coming from me, but this is for real.” It was no
good. We were all more than a little drunk and with
everyone laughing I couldn’t stop.
I had started Vanderkirk Marketing as a sophomore in
College. I was majoring in marketing and we had a class
project to design a viral marketing campaign. It was just
supposed to be a class exercise, create a product to hype
and then create a layout of how you would design a viral
campaign to push it. So I’m noodling what I’m gonna do for
the project in Pepper’s Pizza, my favorite hang out joint. As
usual, I just about had the place to myself. It was perfect
for college students, but being just a couple of blocks off
campus, hardly anyone knew about it. So I thought, why
not create a campaign for Pepper’s?
I talked to Miyachi, the manager and he said sure, go
ahead, he’d even throw in a hundred bucks if it worked. So
off I went. And boy did it work! From then on the place
was crowded day and night. Miyachi was great and ended
up paying me the hundred dollars, plus I never had to pay
for anything there to this day. Oh, and he kept my table
empty at all times no matter how busy the place was just in
case I came in. He’d been about to go out of business at
the time. Last I heard he’d opened three other places in
nearby towns.
So from there, I went looking around town finding
other places I thought I could push. Viral marketing has
been used mostly by big businesses looking to score with the
younger, more technologically savvy crowd. But it’s actually
perfect for small businesses that typically don’t have a lot of
money to spend on advertising. When done right, viral
marketing is practically free, but can drive huge results. So,
I was hitting small businesses all over town pitching them
the idea of letting me push their store online for pennies
compared to what they’d spend for even a radio spot.
Before long, I had more business than I could handle and
had brought Nick on the next year to help out.
Long story short, by the time I’d graduated I’d attracted
the attention of some larger businesses and Vanderkirk
Marketing was swiftly becoming the agency of choice if you
wanted a “non-traditional online ad campaign.” The soda
campaign we’d just finished when Universal called was really
our big break out campaign. Everybody had seen it.
Hitting it big had been like a drug for me. I was just
out of college, and getting very close to making six figures
already. I was working ninety, a hundred hours a week, if
you could call it work. I’d get a campaign, work it like crazy
and then watch the page views climb.
Of course, by this point I was working five or six
campaigns at a time, but I’d have those page view counts on
screen at all times. I’d wake up in the middle of the night
and check them. It sounds sick, and I guess it was, but I
was having the time of my life. I was totally focused on my
work. Yeah, you can guess what’s coming. It may be cliché,
but meeting Andrea changed my life.
Brad and Andrea had joined us just the year before. At
the time they were living together, but they quickly decided
they weren’t meant to be together even if they were great
friends. Andrea and I had gotten together a few months
later, and it just seemed like we were adjoining pieces of a
jigsaw puzzle. Everything about us just fit.
I’d been on dates. Hey, I was in college and making
more than those girls’ daddies. I still lived in a tiny
apartment near the campus and lived on pizza, leftover
pizza, and take-out Chinese. I was focused on work and
school and nothing else. So I had all this money and wasn’t
spending more than a broke college student. So when I did
go out, I tended to blow a lot of cash. Let’s just say it made
it easy to get dates.
But I regarded those dates like I regarded those rare nights
out on the town; just a night of fun to blow off steam. We
had fun, but I’d never considered getting serious about
anyone. Then Andrea walked in the office with Brad. I liked
her immediately. It’s like we were best friends that hadn’t
seen each other for a while. Our friendship just grew and
grew and I came to appreciate how good she was at
marketing. Eventually, being more than friends just felt
natural.
“Whoa, look!” Brad just about fell off the couch sitting
up, “It’s Sheriff Stone again.”
“--know how many times I have to tell you people.
There has been no deaths from any infection in this town.
None. I don’t know where the Barnards are. We’ve been
unable to locate them at this time, but I suspect they’re
traveling for Thanksgiving and you people are gonna feel like
a bunch of idiots when they do get home. In the meantime,
I have nothing else to say to you people. Now leave me
alone. I‘ve got real work to do!” The sheriff stormed off to
his patrol car followed by a couple of cameras.
“Hey, did that one camera have a ‘3’ on it? Isn’t that
Corpus?” Nick’s fingers were flying on his laptop, but I beat
him to it.
“Bingo! Corpus Christi channel 3. That’s it. We’ve got
two markets covering it now. It’s virtually guaranteed to go
national when it gets exposed. We’ve done it!” I jumped up
pumping my fist in the air. At the time we still expected that
the media was going to figure it out pretty soon. The story
was just too flimsy to hold up. We really only expected it to
hold for one newscast. That was all we wanted.
An hour later Nick’s paying up on the bet. The next day
the story’s being covered in Houston. They’re still running
the story Monday and by now they’ve called in experts telling
them about the seriousness of the Zimbabwe Strain, never
mind that no one‘s ever heard of it prior to Friday. By now
they’re starting to get interest from the National news desks.
This is what we’ve been waiting for. Now we hooked
the local guys. We knew if we did our jobs well enough we
could hook them for a least a little while. Long enough that
when it got exposed for what it was we were hoping the
national networks would play the story of the local networks
getting duped by a viral marketing campaign and so voila!
our little video gets national play, drives interest for the
movie. BAM! Hang the Mission Accomplished banner.
What we had no way of knowing, couldn’t have
imagined, was the seriousness of the flu epidemic just south
of the border.
Epidemic: Part 1
There were actually two different “patient zero’s” in the
US. August 12th Sam Bartlett, a New York businessman
returning from a trip to Europe. He was coming down with
the flu, but he’d already invited his brother Tod and his
family out to dinner to talk about their big trip to Europe so
he fought through it. No big deal, he visited his doctor the
next day and called in sick that week, but was back at work
the week after feeling fine.
The other patient zero was the first fatality of the
zombie flu, as it’s come to be known, Rick Gonzales a worker
at Tod’s pig farm. Tod also came down with the flu, but
when you’re the manager of a pig farm you don’t get to call
in sick so he worked. Despite all the precautions (and you
wouldn’t believe the amount of precautions we take to avoid
just this sort of thing in the US) the pigs caught the flu. It
mutated through the pig population, however, and when it
communicated back to humans, i.e. Rick Gonzales, it was
lethal. Rick died five days later on October 21st. His family
came up for his funeral from Mexico, his father being a
reasonably successful businessman. Seven days later, Rick’s
wife and oldest son joined Rick in heaven leaving behind two
seriously ill younger boys who survived. Three days after
that Rick’s father and mother were dead and the flu was
loose in Mexico City.
Rick’s case was referred to the CDC after his wife and
son died within a week, but the CDC was busy chasing cases
of the European flu and Rick’s case, as alarming as it was,
was assigned to the local office. They were sounding alarm
bells right away, but by the time the National office paid
attention it was far too late.
Which isn’t to say they didn’t jump on it. They were
fighting it with every tool at their disposal. All told, in the US
only 25 percent of those who contracted the zombie flu died
of it. Total death toll in the US from the flu alone was only
around 15 percent. Only. The lowest in any developed
country, but 15 percent of the population in 2012 was about
45 million. Mexico was not so lucky.
On Black Friday, there were the first whispers in the
media about a flu epidemic in Mexico. The government,
however, was well aware of the extent of the problem south
of the border. Border Patrol, highway patrol, and local law
enforcement had been alerted. They had learned during the
swine flu scare a few years before that there would be a
swell of people trying to cross the border in search of
American medical care. All this to say, when word first broke
about the “Zimbabwe Strain” the authorities assumed that
some infected illegals had gotten to Falfurrias. They
immediately stepped up their efforts to detect illegals. They
also all but quarantined the town of Falfurrias. So when
Price and subsequently national networks started trying to
do a follow up story, they found roadblocks and guards
talking to anyone entering or leaving Falfurrias. From there
things got quickly out of hand.
Chapter 4: A Taste for Something Sweet

Ten thirty Monday morning and Andrea and I are still
laying in bed, recovering from too much celebrating all
weekend. She rolls over looking at me running a finger
lightly along my chin.
“Why did you say that yesterday? About buying me a
ring?”
“Because, I’m going to buy you a ring.” I said it softly.
Sincerely. “I know how that sounds coming from me, but
I’ve never met anyone like you before. I think about you
constantly. You’re like my right arm. You’re part of me, I
need you. I want you to marry me, Andrea.”
I stopped, suddenly scared. How is it exactly that
women can make us feel so vulnerable? I would walk into a
business I’d never been in before and confidently talk the
manager into hiring a man he’d never met into paying me
tens of thousands of dollars to market his company. No
sweat. He says no? No big deal, there’s other clients. But
ask a woman if she’d like to get a cup of coffee and most
men start getting a sheen on their forehead.
She just looked in my eyes for forever. “You’re really
serious aren’t you,” she said sitting up.
“Yes,” okay, okay my voice may have cracked just
slightly.
“I really had no idea you felt that way. I--I really don’t
know what to think, Scott. I always figured you were just on
the verge of getting tired of me and would move on soon. I
really never dreamed you’d want to…to keep me.” I sat very
still, scared stiff to tell you the truth, then some part of me
remembered I was a man and to act like it. I sat up and
took her into my arms.
“Andrea, it’s you who has to decide if you want to keep
me. I could never get tired of you, and if you’ll have me, I’m
yours for as long as--”
All of a sudden Nick starts screaming in the next room.
Andrea and I both start. I’m grabbing a shirt and a bottle of
Aspirin. “What is going--” I’m saying entering the living
area of the suite when Nick pushes the tv volume to full
blast. Brad’s running out of his room and Andrea comes up
beside me just in time to hear: “…CNN over the weekend.
Exact numbers are unknown but sources say as many as
twelve deaths are attributable to the Zimbabwe Strain at this
time. We’re joined live by Dr. Fran McKellen the author of
the New York Times bestseller, ‘Extinction Event: Why the
Virus will be the Dominate Lifeform Sooner than you Think.’
Dr. Fran, what can you tell us about the Zimbabwe Strain?”
“Well, Carol, this is what is known as an emergent
virus. That is, it’s something we haven’t seen before and so
know little about it. What we do know is from medical
sources on the scene and that is sketchy at best.”
“And Dr. Fran just what have you heard from those
sources? The rumors that have reached us have been,
grotesque to say the least.”
“Well, yes, I’m afraid to say those rumors appear to be
true. The virus brings on flu like symptoms accompanied by
unusually high fever. This generally brings about death. It’s
what happens after that that really alarms us. Apparently,
the virus somehow re-animates deceased tissue and seeks to
spread the infection to a new host, apparently by biting its
victims.”
“Now, Dr. Fran, when you say that the virus re-animates
deceased tissue, what exactly does that mean?
“Literally, the virus appears to animate the body of the
dead host.”
“Dr. Fran! You’re talking about zombies. Are you really
saying this is ‘Night of the Living Dead?’ Is this possible?”
“While rare, this type of behavior is not unknown
among viruses and parasites in the animal kingdom.
Cordyceps is actually a parasitic fungus known to turn ants
into ‘zombies’ to aid the fungus in getting in the bellies of
birds where it can reproduce. Also, Toxoplasma gondii is a
virus that can only reproduce in the feline digestive tract. It
gets there by infecting the brains of mice specifically making
them unafraid of cats who eat the mice. While this is the
first we’ve ever encountered a virus exhibiting this behavior
in humans, perhaps the myths about zombies originated
from people actually infected by something like the
Zimbabwe Strain.”
“Well, Dr. Fran we sure appreciate you joining us this
morning. We’ll keep you on speed dial as more information
comes out about this horrifying outbreak in south Texas.
Listeners, we want your feedback, email your comments to
CarolCastellano@CNN.com. We‘ll be right back.”
We laughed. That’s right, laughed. We had just
watched what would turn out to be the first most people
heard that the end of the world was coming and we
laughed. We were so certain that someone was going to
figure this out soon. Dr. Fran was going to have egg all over
her face. The entire media was. They had just been had.
And they bit into it big time. An hour later I got a call from
the president of Universal himself congratulating me on our
work and looking forward to seeing how this played out.
We were excited. We spent the afternoon re-examining
our strategy for the next phase of the campaign. We had
planned to have a big push on youtube and social media of
the local news reporting the Zimbabwe Strain followed by
directing everything towards the movie trailers. The movie
was scheduled for release on December 12th to tie in with
the whole Mayan Calendar thing.
In case you don’t remember, for a few years before
2012, there had been a lot of talk about how the Mayan
Calendar ended on December 12th, 2012. A lot of people
took that to mean that the Mayans who predicted the
movements of the sun and moon and major stars very
accurately for centuries into the future, were predicting the
end of the world. Naturally, Hollywood had taken advantage
of this with a few movies along those lines and The
Zimbabwe Strain intended to paint the end of civilization via
zombies.
So our whole time table was built on building up to
December 12th. With the incredible amount of coverage this
would get when our part in it was exposed, this essentially
cut a week out of our schedule that we had planned to use
drumming up the viral campaign. With the story going
national, all of that drumming had been done for us.
So rather than being concerned that we were starting a
panic, we were just psyched that things were going better
than we could have imagined. Oh, sure, there were already
a few stories about panic buying in the south Texas area.
The usual bottled water and plywood, but with a slightly
concerning emphasis on firearms and ammo (it was Texas
though, so for all we knew this was normal.) But all in all no
one was getting hurt, they were just falling for the idea of
zombies. We were in full on celebration mode. We ordered
room service so we could continue to monitor the news.
The tone started changing the next day.
The media wasn’t really checking out our story very
carefully, but they tracked down the Rick Gonzales story and
his family connections to Mexico like hound dogs. This is
exactly typical of the media. Some stories they just kind of
eat up whatever the story makers tell them the news is.
Others they run down till you know all kinds of irrelevant
details about the story. They then proceed to jump to the
wrong conclusion and present it as fact.
So as soon as they tracked down the Rick Gonzales
story, they immediately jumped to the conclusion that Rick
had died from the Zimbabwe Strain. They started digging
up sources who told them the state department was
concerned about a flu outbreak in Mexico and immediately
started reporting the story as officials are claiming to be
concerned about a “flu” outbreak in Mexico. The problem
was, the flu story was real, but they’d now linked it with our
phony story and so anytime someone heard news about the
flu outbreak in Mexico or reported cases in Illinois, in their
minds they heard, Zombies crossing the border! Zombies in
Illinois!
We were all sitting around eating pizza (there is

absolutely no good take-out Chinese food in all off San
Antonio) watching things get ever more serious that evening.
It had gotten pretty quiet. Finally, Nick said, “We’ve got to
stop this.”
“NO,” Brad replied immediately. “This is the biggest
marketing coup of the decade--of the century! Nobody’s
getting hurt, the only thing going on here is the media is
about to look like a bunch of jackwagons when this blows up
in their face.”
“But look,” Andrea said, “it’s just gone too far. We blow
it up now and we call the shots from beginning to end. We
made the story, we introduced it on our timetable and we
ended it on schedule. It looks like we played the media like
a fiddle. Right, Scott?”
I was looking at Nick who was looking intently at me.
So on one side, my best friend and my...fiancee? Can I call
her that now? Anyway, they wanted me to pull the plug on
this now. On the other side was Brad and…well, I’m being
honest here with you, right? So might as well just admit the
whole sorry truth. It wasn’t money. Really. I had money,
and no matter how this went down from here, I was going
to have a lot more and enough big time clients beating down
my door that I could write my own ticket from here on.
No, it wasn’t money. It was…how to put it…pride? No,
not just pride. It was power. Right now, I owned the
media. They were doing what I told them to do. They
didn’t know it, but they would. It was as if I controlled all of
them. FoxNews, CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, all the various cable
news outlets. For god’s sake, Leno, Letterman, and Stewart
were all covering my story.
In that moment I tasted something dark inside myself.
Something dark and sweet.
“Come on, man,” Nick implored, “Andrea’s right. We
end this now, we go out on our terms. The aftermath is all
how the media got played. We wait till it’s busted and the
story is, ‘marketing company goes too far!’ Let’s do this right,
man.”
Andrea laid her hand on my arm. “Scott, we’ve
delivered more than Universal ever could have hoped for.
Sure, no one’s getting hurt yet, but we don’t want to wait till
someone does get hurt do we?”
I looked over at Brad who had a wry, beaten look on his
face. He stared at his hands for a moment then finally
looked up at me and nodded. Still I hesitated. I still had that
sweet dark taste in my mouth. I looked into the faces of the
three people around me and finally nodded. They all
breathed out the tension that had been building over the
past couple of hours.
And then all of a sudden, the question was made
irrelevant.
Chapter 5: I Had Help
Look, I know, I know everyone wants someone to
blame. Keep it simple, don’t give me a bunch of
complicating factors and this person over here contributed
this part and that person contributed this part. Just give me
someone I can focus all my anger and frustration on! His
name’s Scott Vanderkirk? Great! Now I know who to hate.
It’s just too easy. You can’t watch your child starving to
death and blame a variety of contributing factors. You need
something, preferably someone to blame. Because if there’s
just one company or, please God, just one person to blame
then they can be stopped. You have some illusion of control.
I can go kill that man that did this and then everything will
be better. No one can stop a variety of contributing factors.
To say that is to say it was fate and the Greeks had it right
hundreds of years ago: you can’t fight fate.
So yes, I understand. I’m that guy. I can’t leave my
house without someone forcibly reminding me of it. I did jail
time, remember? Had a good warden, thank goodness, who
kept me in solitary the whole time or I’d have been dead in
under an hour. But listen, no one person could bring about
sixty million deaths and the near collapse of civilization all by
themselves. I had help. And one of the biggest helpers had
just come on tv.
He was known as Governor Hairdo. More lucky than
good at politics, he’d been elected to more years as governor
than anyone in Texas history. He was good at his job, don’t
get me wrong, but on this occasion, he made the biggest
blunder any politician has made since Nixon and Watergate.
And maybe no one but the people actually in the media
recognized it when it happened.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” he began, “I’m here today to
speak to you about the situation in south Texas. I’ll make
my statement but will not be taking any questions at this
time. The Texas Department of Health, in conjunction with
the CDC have investigated the claims of the so-called
‘Zimbabwe Strain’ and found absolutely no credence
whatsoever to them. There is, in fact, a flu epidemic in
Mexico, but it is strictly that, the flu. There is no strain of
virus that reanimates the dead. There is no evidence
whatsoever to any of the claims to the contrary.
“The continued focus of the media on this matter is not
only hindering the efforts of health officials to deal with the
real public health problems associated with a potential
outbreak of the flu crossing the Mexican border, but also
creating an unnecessary panic. I am requesting that all
news media desist reporting on the ‘Zimbabwe Strain’
immediately and instead aid us in getting the word out on
the precautions necessary to help prevent the spread of the
flu into Texas. Thank you.”
And he walked away.
The world erupted behind him.
There were so many problems with Governor Hairdo’s

statement, that I can’t help but think that not only had his
speech writers not been involved, but that no one from his
media team had seen it at all. It was as if he had just
gotten up in front of the cameras and said whatever popped
into his mind. It wasn’t the first time he’d said something
that his pr people had wished they could take back (he once
threatened to have Texas secede in the middle of a speech),
but anyone with any media savvy at all could see what
would come from this speech.
Since the public relations industry is pretty much gone
for the foreseeable future, I’m guessing most of you reading
this don’t immediately see the implications of this. First,
you’ve had Texas media reporting on the Zimbabwe strain
for the past five days. These reports had video evidence
and subsequent interviews with ’average joes’ talking about
having seen these zombies for themselves. It had been on
the 24 hour news cycle for nearly 48 hours now. It was
everywhere on the internet. In other words, the Zimbabwe
Strain had already reached the status of accepted memes.
Accepted meme? It’s like this, you probably remember
9/11 so think back to when the US was first invading
Afghanistan. One day you can barely find Afghanistan on a
map, the next, you’re intimately familiar with the
mountainous geography on the border with Pakistan. You
feel like you know more about Kandahar than you do about
your state capital. Now imagine if suddenly a government
official, a governor no less, went on tv and told you
Kandahar didn’t exist. Of course it exists! Everyone knows
about Kandahar. Doesn’t matter that you’ve never seen
Kandahar and no one you know has ever seen Kandahar.
It’s an accepted meme.
Ok, but that wasn’t bad enough. He not only went out
there claiming the Zimbabwe Strain didn’t exist with no
supporting evidence whatsoever, he then directed the media
to stop reporting on it. Oh. My. God. There is one thing
government officials never, ever do. You do not go public
telling the media not to report something. There’ve actually
been plenty of instances where the government twisted arms
to prevent the press from reporting something, but always
behind closed door. In the public mind there is one reason
and one reason only to order the media to stop reporting
something.
It’s a government coverup.
We’re not talking about your average cooky conspiracy
theorist or UFO believer thinks coverup when they hear this.
We’re talking about rational, normal americans.
Furthermore, he brought up the flu in Mexico, so the only
possible conclusion is that the flu story is part of the coverup
story. Therefore, flu equals Zimbabwe Strain. And to top it
off he just walks off the podium, taking no questions. If he
had come up there screaming about how zombies were
going to kill us all he wouldn’t have made half as many
people believe in zombies as he did.
That’s what I mean by I had help.
“Oh noooo,” Andrea finally breathed. We were all just

sitting there stunned.
“Is he nuts,” Brad asked? Nick just buried his face in
his hands.
I punched up the info on my laptop and grabbed my
phone. “Kurt Price, please…it’s urgent that I speak with
him.”
“What are you doing,” Brad asked.
“We’ve got to get the information out ASAP. We’ve got
to show them the originals and debunk this thing right--
Yes, hello? No, you don’t understand. Look, I have
evidence, real evidence that the Zimbabwe Strain is a hoax
and after what the governor just did, we have to get it out
right away…..uh huh…Look, I’m coming up there right now
get him on the phone, or your station manager, someone
who can get this on the air right away. There’s about to be
a major panic and we have to stop it!” While I was talking I
was grabbing my keys and running, literally sprinting out the
door barely even noticing the others running to catch up.
Despite the fact that the CBS studios are only 3 miles
from our hotel it took me 15 minutes to get there
negotiating downtown streets. I jumped out running again
while Nick slid to the driver’s seat to find a place to park.
Just as I walked in the door Price came on the line.
“This is Price, who am I speaking to?” He had none of
that charm he oozed most of the time.
“Mr. Price, my name is Scott Vanderbuilt. I have
evidence--video evidence-- that the Zimbabwe Strain is a
hoax. After what the governor just did, there’ll be a panic if
we don’t get this to the public immediately.”
There was silence on the other end. Finally he said, “I
don’t think you know who you’re speaking to. I’m the man
who first broke this story. I was there in Falfurrias, I spoke
to the doctor who saw the bodies, I spoke to the sheriff, I
spoke to the Barnard’s neighbors. I don’t know what
evidence you think you have, but this is no hoax, I assure
you. Thank you very much for--”
“Listen to me for just one moment. Please,“ I
interrupted. “Since you were the first to report this, if you’re
the first to expose it, people will remember you as the man
who exposed the Zimbabwe Strain as a hoax. If I have to
take this to someone else, you’ll be remembered as the man
who got burned by the Zimbabwe Strain. Will you see me or
not?”
There was another long pause, finally he said, “Well,
I’ll give you a few minutes, how soon can you be here?”
“I’m in your lobby right now.”
“Oh. Okay. I’ll inform the receptionist to give you a
pass. See you in a minute.”
And so we went in to Kurt Price’s office. Nick caught up
just as the receptionist was handing us our visitor passes.
When we got in his office, he had recovered the charm and
came around his desk to shake hands all around. After
introductions were made, he sat down and said, “Now what’s
this about the Zimbabwe Strain being a hoax?”
“I was hired to promote an upcoming movie, ‘The
Zimbabwe Strain’ which is releasing December 12th. We
were hired to create a viral campaign to hype the movie
prior to release. We went down to Falfurrias Texas to film as
realistic as possible an attack by zombies. The Barnards are
on a cruise ship and won’t be back till tomorrow. Then, last
Friday, a man that works for us called you purporting to
work for the Falfurrias Facts. He introduced you to Matt
Starger, the man who plays Dr. Folks in the movie. That’s
why the Sheriff had no idea what you were talking about.
He wasn’t covering something up, he literally had no idea
what you were talking about.”
I handed him a DVD. “This is our original footage that
we made the video from. I realize I’m laying all of this on
you very quickly, and you must be angry with us. The fact
is, however, that what the Governor has just done will create
an almost unbreakable belief that the Zimbabwe Strain is
real. You have to get this on the air as soon as possible to
head that off before a real panic ensues.”
I finally stopped. Price’s reaction was hard to gauge.
He simply absorbed it all. Sitting there staring at the DVD he
finally said, “So, this is all just a marketing deal for a movie?”
We all nodded. “I’ll need to have our technical guys look
this over to make sure it’s legit…though they assured us the
original was legit as well.”
“We made no video edits to it at all. We knew you’d
check it out. This will check out as well, I assure you.”
He nodded slowly. “Very well, assuming this checks
out, we’ll get this on the air as soon as possible.” He looked
up at me finally as he stood, “How can I contact you if we
need more information or…possibly an interview later?”
I gave him my cell number. We looked at each other a
moment and then he said, “Well, okay. Thanks for bringing
me this first, at least.” I nodded and we left.
We got back to the rental car and we all just sat there
and sort of breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, there we go,”
Brad said. “We’d better start getting ready to handle the
next phase.” I nodded. He was right no doubt. But there
was still that dark, sweet part of me that was sorry to be
bringing this to an end. Logically, I knew it was the right
thing to do, but in doing it, I was releasing my control of the
media. A whisper of a thought slipped through my mind.
For now.
So we headed back to the hotel and turned on CBS
waiting for Price to break the news to the world. I was
trying to hide my disappointment, everyone else seemed
excited about what would be happening next. I just couldn’t
shake the feeling that I was losing something. At any rate,
we rehashed the plans we already had worked to a fine
point. Brad pointed out that as big as this was, we might
get to go on Letterman or Stewart’s show. Even that didn’t
really lighten my mood.
So we waited. An hour went by. No big deal, takes
time to verify and you can bet Price is going to want them to
be thorough. Then two hours have gone by. Checking
various sites on the internet, I can already tell that people
are convinced that the ‘Zimbabwe Denial’ as it was being
called was a blatant and clumsy attempt at a coverup.
Talking heads on CNN are even starting to make the same
suggestion. If this video is going to do any good, it needs to
be on the air in the next hour.
“He wouldn’t just sit on it would he,” Andrea asked.
“He has to know we’ll just take it to someone else and what
you told him was right; if he doesn’t break the story then
he’ll always be known as the guy who got burnt by this.”
“I got the sense,” Nick added, “that he believed us too.
That he was gonna have the tech guys check out the video,
but he already knew what the result would be.”
Brad nodded. “Me too. It’d be stupid to sit on
it…unless…you think maybe he thinks if he sits on it long
enough that it won’t matter? Maybe we won’t take it to
someone else because by then it wouldn’t do any good?”
That was an intriguing thought. Was he savvy enough
to realize that all he needed to do was wait a few hours and
it wouldn’t matter?
Nick jumped up, cursing. “We should have taken it to
another station just in case! Why didn’t we think of that
earlier.” Andrea was looking at me questioningly. I
pretended not to notice.
“You’re right,” I said. “But I was like you guys, I really
thought he believed us and it’s a bad move to hold onto this,
not just for his career, but ethically. If this doesn’t come out
now people are going to start doing some stupid things.” I
looked at my watch. Fifteen to ten. “Maybe they’re waiting
for the 10 o’clock news?” I had punched up the phone
numbers for NBC and ABC and FOX and was reaching for my
phone when the commercial break was interrupted by a
news update.
“Whew,” Nick said. “Finally.”
“With a CBS 5 Newsbreak, here’s Tim Ross,” the
voiceover announced.
“We at CBS 5 are saddened today at a great loss in our
family. Our Anchor Kurt Price was found dead in his office
this evening having apparently taken his own life. Many of
you may recall that it was Price who first broke the story of
the Zimbabwe Strain in south Texas and this was just the
latest in a great career of this terrific newsman…terrific man.
He leaves behind no family other than those of us here
who have worked with him and come to know him so well
these past few years. He will be deeply missed. Please stay
tuned for a special tribute to Kurt during our 10 o‘clock
newscast.”
We blinked. We blinked again. “Oh my God,” Andrea
broke.
“Wow…wow.” Nick had actually paled. Brad said
nothing looking at me. I was afraid he could see what I was
really thinking so I started punching numbers in the phone.
First I called the CBS station. They already had the
video, they could get it on the air soonest. No good. He
hadn’t sent it to the technical department and no one knew
where it was unless it was in his office and that was a crime
scene right now.
So I called the other stations. Nick, meanwhile was
uploading the whole thing on the internet. It wouldn’t help
(would you believe it if a video showed up on the internet
proving there was no such place as Kandahar?) but we were
desperate to get the word out somehow. Finally, after an
hour making phone calls, I got a reporter from ABC to agree
to meet with me. While I was doing this, Brad was trying to
get the same thing done with the radio stations and Andrea
was even trying the newspaper.
I raced over to the ABC station and as soon as I
introduced myself to the reporter I flipped open my laptop
and hit play. I explained while he watched the video. I
explained about showing this to Price earlier this afternoon.
He made some calls and fifteen minutes later I made the
same show for their lead anchors and the station manager.
They discussed it. Finally, the station manager agreed they
could go on the air with it immediately as “a video
purporting to show the original Zimbabwe Strain to be a
hoax.” At least until they could do some work to verify it.
And so it was, nearly four hours after the statement
from Governor Hairdo, that the true story finally hit the
airwaves. By then, it was like spitting in the ocean.
Consider how the news gets out. By the time the local
ABC breaks into Nightline with the “making of” version of the
zombie attack a good portion of the viewing audience has
gone to bed. Furthermore, while some news breaks
overnight, the news cycle, including the 24 hour cable news
stations, are geared to broadcast news that happens during
the day. Most news is about politics or business, both of
which happens during regular hours. So the really important
decision makers are in bed.
So, we’re pushing just to get any coverage for the real
story during the down cycle of the news in the middle of a
very busy news time. We’re getting very little play. What
little we’re getting is mostly internet sites picking it up and
they’re take is largely that it’s part of the government effort
to coverup the Zimbabwe Strain.
Governor Hairdo’s press conference, however, is getting
major play. First, it’s a governor talking; he outranks us.
Second, what he said is extremely polarizing and provides
the talking heads just all kinds of fodder. Also, it occurred
right at the end of the day’s news cycle so it’s the freshest
news they have to talk about.
Overnight and into the Wednesday morning the
conversation across the board is whether the government
has the right to censor information if doing so can be said to
be in the public’s best interest. In other words, it’s just
taken as a given that the Governor’s statement is just
disinformation.
We spent that night and all the next morning trying to
get the word out. We were calling individual stations around
Texas trying to get them to play the video and pointing out it
was already playing on one station in San Antonio. We
called the president of Universal to get him to make a
statement, but we couldn’t get through to him till he arrived
in the office around 9 am, pacific time.
We had a little success. Apparently there had been a
local reporter in Galveston who had done some checking of
his own and had been screaming his head off for days that
the Barnards had departed on a cruise from Galveston, but
no one would go on the air with the story when it was so
contrary to what everyone else was reporting. The station
manager for ABC also had a few connections with the
national office and so late Wednesday morning finally got
them to run the video, but they were largely skeptical and
believed it might be government disinformation and so it
wasn’t treated like big news, just an interesting note.
When the president of Universal made a statement
claiming this was all a promotional stunt for a movie they
have coming out in a couple of weeks people largely
dismissed it as him just trying to grab some of the big media
spotlight for free publicity for a movie. After all, everyone
knows there’s a Kandahar. The only question is what to do
about it.
People were right on the edge of full blown, run for the
hills, throw civilization to the winds panic. But we still might
have pulled things back for the brink. The Barnards were
coming home. The President of Universal had spoken and
could show that the Zimbabwe Strain was a movie that was
already in the can. The making of video was oozing into the
public consciousness and a Governor was claiming (however
ineptly) that the Zimbabwe Strain was make believe. In a
few days this new idea would have worked through the news
cycle and would have been the big news story.
Unfortunately, a bigger story was going to eclipse it
before we had a chance.
Epidemic: Part 2
The Illinois CDC was doing a good job of isolating poor
Rick Gonzales’ co-workers and getting them treatment and
vaccines. The vaccine they had, of course, was almost
completely ineffective. Each year a slightly different flu
vaccine is produced tailored, as it must be, to combat the
specific flu virus that is spreading this year. World Health
Officials had done a very good job forecasting this year’s
flu…the one that Sam Bartlett brought back to the US from
Europe. The vaccine was fairly effective against that
particular flu.
The influenza virus is a constantly shifting thing,
however. It’s almost ingenious in how it mutates to produce
a more effective virus to reproduce itself. The host patient’s
system, be it bird or swine or human or whatever does a
good job of adapting to a particular virus and attacking it.
So the virus randomly shifts its structure so that it’s not
recognized by the body’s defenses. This is why there’s a
new vaccine every year.
So when the virus passed from Sam to his brother Tod
and then to Tod’s pigs it changed. This often happens when
a virus crosses species. So the virus that Rick Gonzales
caught from the pigs was virtually nothing like the flu virus in
Europe.
The new flu was a fairly unique virus, that is, it looked
very different from most other flu viruses. This made it far
more contagious because almost no one had any natural
defenses against it. It was also a very lethal virus. The
random changes an influenza virus mean that some strains
are not terribly serious to humans or not terribly contagious.
This virus had the double whammy of being both contagious
and lethal. The sort of virus Dr. Fran McKellen had wet
dreams about in her book. And so the vaccine that was so
effective against the European flu was almost useless against
this new strain.
So despite the best efforts of the Illinois CDC, this thing
was spreading. Not just in Illinois, of course. We’re a big
country with open borders and easy transportation. And this
flu was very contagious. It was, by the Wednesday after
Thanksgiving, already active (though this wouldn’t be
determined till much later) in eighteen states. The most
notable American victim would not contract the virus from
another American however.
This isn’t all completely substantiated, but it’s the most
likely scenario for the chain of events that followed. Rick
Gonzales’ father contracted the virus from Rick’s family when
he came down for his son’s funeral. Rick Sr., was a very
respected businessman in Mexico City. He was visited in the
hospital by his good friend, Alphonse, the head of the largest
media conglomeration in Mexico. The next day Alphonse
was a guest at a charity event attended by the Mexican
President as well as the Ambassador to the United States
who was at home visiting family for a few days. A few days
after returning to Washington, the Ambassador was honored
to be invited to a reception being held for several
Ambassadors in Washington and attended by the President
of the United States himself.
Chapter 6: The Last Fight for Reason

“…markets in a steep dive on word coming down this
morning that Vice President Biden was made Acting
President as President Obama is temporarily incapacitated
due to illness. The White House continues to insist that he is
simply having emergency appendectomy surgery and there’s
nothing to get excited about. Sources close to the first
family, however, tell us that both the President and First Lady
have contracted the flu and are in serious condition.”
For the first time since this began a week ago, I turned
the television off, cutting off the flow of news. We all
glanced at each other somberly.
“Well,” Nick finally said. “That’s that, then.” A long
silence followed. You can have your psychologists, your
behavioral scientists, your forecasters of any kind. No one,
and I mean no one, is better at predicting human behavior
than a good marketing agent. I really believed I had three
of the best working with me and we could all see the
handwriting on the wall.
“To tell you the truth,” I said, “I’ve been buying up
wheat for the past couple of days. Gold, too, though it’s
already starting to soar.”
“Futures?” Brad asked.
We just stared at him for a moment and he finally
grinned. Futures were about to become meaningless.
“I now own a couple of silos in Nebraska,” Andrea
added as we all nodded agreement.
“What about oil?” Nick asked.
Andrea and I both shook our heads. “Too obvious,” she
told him. “I went for the pharmaceuticals instead. You
know, the vaccine makers. The government’s about to turn
the money spout in their direction and everybody’ll be
wanting whatever they’ve got whether it works or not.”
“And the VICES, of course,” Brad chimed in.
“The VICES,” we all chorused. When things are going
well the VICE stocks (alcohol, cigarettes, gambling and guns)
do well. When things go bad they shoot up like nobody’s
business.
“Heavy in the VICES, but I’m actually staying away from
the gambling,” I told them.
“Why?” Nick asked. “You don’t think people will be
running inside those casinos as fast as they can to forget
about the end of the world? Even if they’re losing it’ll be
better than dealing with reality! The fire marshal will have to
lock the doors to prevent overcrowding.” Brad added his
agreement.
“But that’s the thing,” I explained, “those casinos are
monuments to opulent waste. How’re they gonna keep
them open when fuel becomes scarce? And,” I continued,
“those places will be a haven for spreading infection. It
won’t be the fire marshal locking the doors, it’ll be the
Health Department.” They all looked at me surprised for a
moment and grabbed their laptops.
“I only wish,” Andrea said as she dumped her gambling
stocks, “that we had been able to foresee all this a week
ago.”
I turned away. That taste in my mouth was darker and
sweeter than ever. It’s the end of the world…and I brought
it about. Don’t get me wrong. I had poured everything that
I had into getting the real story out there, but there was this
part of me that couldn’t help thinking I did all this!
Brad finished and then shut his laptop down.
“Guys…well, I have family back in California and if I’m going
to get back to them it has to be now.”
“Planes will be shut down soon,” I agreed. He nodded.
He shook hands with Nick, “Nick…you’re a whiz with
networking. I learned a lot just watching you. Look me up
sometime…afterwards.”
“Yeah, I will. Thanks.”
He stepped over to Andrea and gave her a hug.
“Andrea…I’ll miss you. I’m glad we managed to stay
friends.”
“Me too,” she said wiping her eyes. “You take good
care of those nieces of yours.”
“I will, you can bet on it. I’ll tell them Aunt Andrea said
Hello, Dolly.” She laughed a little. I looked on puzzled but
recognizing it for an inside joke.
“Scott…this was the best job we ever did--shame we’re
not gonna get paid for it.”
I smiled, “I don’t see us hitting that 10 million page
view bonus now.”
“No bonus, no. But hey, if we’re lucky, most people will
either forget or won’t find out we’re the ones that did it.”
I smiled ruefully, “The way our luck’s going?” We shook
hands. “Take care of yourself Brad. If you ever need
anything at all and you can get ahold of me don’t hesitate to
ask, man.”
“I know. I know.” He pulled me close in a bro-hug and
whispered in my ear, “take care of her. Don’t let anything
happen to her.” I nodded. It was enough, we both
understood.
A few minutes later he was out the door headed for the
airport.
“You know,” I said the next morning around a mouthful

of cold pizza, “we could all head back to California too.
There’s no good reason to stay here. We could just go
home.”
Nick swallowed his bite first. “You know better than
that, man. If there’s any chance of stopping this it’s either
here where it all started or New York and trying to work the
national networks. We have too few contacts in New York
and we’d be starting from scratch. The only hope is getting
the local stations turned on the story and pushing the feed
back up the channel.”
“But we don’t have to do that,” I said. “Let someone
else fight the mania. Just retreat back to our homes and
prepare as best we can for a nasty flu epidemic. Yeah, we
started this, but that doesn’t mean we have to risk our lives
here to finish it, does it?”
Andrea pulled her hair up into a pony tail, a sure sign
she was tense and unhappy. “Cut it out, Scott. We don’t
have time for this crap. We’re with you, okay. You don’t
need to test our loyalty or commitment. We’re in. What do
we do?”
It was Friday morning. There were widespread reports
of absenteeism across America. Sure, many were just using
the panic as an excuse for a three day weekend, but a lot
were genuinely scared to come to work, and a growing
number were either sick with the flu or taking care of
someone else who was.
“Well, America is taking the next three days off. If we
can turn the story by Monday, there might be a chance of
staving off full scale panic. But…”
“Yeah,” Nick said, “if it was just groundless panic we
might could pull that off. But don’t forget, there’s a very
real, and very nasty flu going around. This may have started
as a zombie story, but it’s a flu epidemic.”
“But they’ve been linked in everyone’s minds,” Andrea
reminded us, “that’s our biggest weakness, the fact that the
two are linked. So if it’s our biggest weakness…”
“…It’s also our biggest strength,” I finished. I mulled
this over a moment. How do we use the flu to turn the
story…. We sat and thought, one or another of us tossing
out a suggestion from time to time, but always, there were
major problems with them for one reason or another.
“We could run the Barnards out again?” Nick
suggested.
“Nobody believes they’re really the Barnards!” I
snorted. “They’re either government plants or celebrity
hounds or just plain liars. The story’s outgrown them. They
have no credibility.”
“Well who does!” Andrea shouted. “You can’t believe
the Barnards, the doctors, the governor, the people who
made the video in the first place. Who does have
credibility?”
“Most people are reasonable,” Nick said patiently, “it’s
just that the ones who aren’t have reached a critical mass
here and the media is having too much fun covering hysteria
to give much play to rational people.”
“Isn’t that always the case,” I asked. “There’ve been
rational people pointing out that the sun has more impact on
the temperature of the earth than anything mankind can do,
but the media gets more play from catering to global
warming hysteria. When there’s a hint of bad weather does
the weatherman come on and say, yeah there’s a small
chance some bad weather could come through today, but
most likely everything will be ok? No, they break into
programming to give you an update that the weather system
is still headed you way so be prepared. It’s always that
way.”
I sighed slumping down into the couch. “We’re fighting
a losing battle. Reason versus hysteria.” And then it hit me.
“What?” Andrea asked, “What have you got?” My smile
just kept growing as the idea coalesced in my mind.
“Yeah, come on man. You got something share with
the group.”
When I felt it all click into place I said, “Who has the
credibility?”
They looked at me puzzled. “The panicking people,”
Andrea said.
“Yeah, you just said that, man.” Nick said.
“Ok, so lets steal it back.” I said getting more and more
excited. “The media likes hysteria? Let’s give them
unbelievably hysterical people. Let’s find the craziest people
we can and get them in front of cameras. Let’s make it so
whenever someone mentions the word zombie, people will
be prepared for a good laugh. Let’s rob them of their
credibility.”
They looked at me stunned. “Wait,” Nick said, “you
want to make people even more hysterical?”
“YES!” I yelled, “Exactly! Let’s make the hysterical
people so crazy looking that no one will want to be anything
like them. People will laugh if you talk about zombies
walking the earth. You know, like normal.”
I could see Andrea got it and it was growing on Nick.
“If we can’t fight hysteria with reason,” he said slowly, “we’ll
fight it with more hysteria. I like it.”
And so we spent the weekend finding people just nuts
about zombies and steered them in front of live spot news
cameras. We networked with people we knew living in big
cities around the country and got them to do the same. We
pushed massive amounts of traffic to youtube videos
showing some lunatic ranting about zombies taking over the
world. All I can say is that there were people who saw our
efforts and took zombie talk less seriously. I have no doubt
that we helped some people.
But we were too small. The nation was in a panic and
trying to push back against a mob almost never works.
Especially when the acting President of the United States is
leading the mob.
Late Sunday morning, Biden announced that he’d
signed an executive order making Monday a national holiday.
All government offices would be closed. He strongly urged
all businesses to close as well and for employees not go to
work but instead to seek out places to get the flu vaccine
and other than that to stay home with their families.
“Is he clueless,” Andrea wondered, “or is this flu much
worse than we know?”
“It’s Biden, so it’s hard to tell,” I said. “At least he
didn’t give instructions on how to deal with loved ones
turning into zombies.”
“No,” Nick said, “but he did just tell everyone that it’s
not safe to go to work. Who’s gonna go back Tuesday?”
“Well, I’m not waiting till then, we’ve still got work to
do.” I wasn’t going to give up yet…but it was clear we
weren’t going to stop the panic.
“Should we expand to include people hysterical about
the flu?” Nick asked.
Andrea shook her head. “No. The flu is real, people
being scared of the flu is normal, we don’t want to get
people worried about their families’ catching the flu lumped
in with some guy worried a zombie stalking him.”
I nodded. “Yeah, we want the two stories as unlinked
as possible.”
So we worked. Reporters couldn’t show up anywhere
without some lunatic ranting about how zombies were the
first sign of the apocalypse. But the stories still ran.
Zombies attack homeless man in Indiana, zombies attack
teens parked on Lover’s Lane in New Hampshire, zombies kill
mother of three in Florida. Everywhere you looked there
was a story about zombies. I was pretty sure some clever
criminals were covering their crimes by biting their victims,
but I had no way to prove it and only the internet to even
spread the idea.
And the flu spread. Whether or not people wanted to
come back to work on Tuesday, by that point there was a
significant percentage of the workforce out sick. And
then…then…
I can’t tell this part. You know the story. Stan Jensen
was the first, but not the last certainly. It was just
supposed to be a commercial for a movie! Yes it looked real,
yes we got it on the news we made people think it was real.
But I couldn’t have foreseen Stan Jensen could I? It doesn’t
excuse me, no. But I couldn’t have imagined the flu
outbreak, the panic that followed. If I had known….
Epidemic: Part 3
Stan Jensen was a widower living in Albuquerque, New
Mexico. When his wife died at the age of twenty-six from
breast cancer, she left behind two daughters, Abigail, seven
now, and Serena, now 5. Stan worked in insurance sales so
he had some flexibility in his schedule to make time for his
daughters.
Widowed for almost three years now, he had never
dated again. He lived for his two girls, spending every free
moment he could coaching their soccer teams, taking them
to gymnastics, volunteering for their school’s bakes sales
even.
They had just returned from a trip to Santa Fe to visit
his wife’s family for Thanksgiving. His own parents had died
when Stan was young, but he made every effort to keep the
girls maternal grandparents involved in their lives.
He’d been watching the news late Friday night and was
catching up on some of the work that he‘d missed being off
the past week when Serena came walking up to him, looking
oh so cute in her footie pajamas, blond curls all mussed and
still clutching her teddy bear.
“I don’t feel so well, Daddy,” He was instantly
concerned, but even in that moment he couldn’t help but
notice how precious the scene was. He picked her up and
set her next to him as he felt her forehead.
“You feel hot sweetie, I think you have a fever.” In the
back of his mind he was hearing the words on the newscast,
“It begins with flu-like symptoms accompanied by higher
than normal fever…” He laid her down and got her some
children’s aspirin as Abigail came in complaining her head
hurt.
He felt her forehead. Cold tendrils of fear crept down
his back. “You’ve got a fever, too Abigirl. I think my little
girls are pretending to be sick so Daddy won’t go to work.”
No giggles, not even a smile. “Let’s get you guys in bed.
The aspirin will make you feel better so you can sleep.”
“Ok Daddy,” Abigail turned around heading back to the
bedroom. He carried Serena. After getting the aspirin for
Abigail, he got them both some orange juice and got them
to drink a little. He got a thermometer and they both had a
temperature of about 99.8 degrees. Definitely a fever, but
not as bad as he had feared.
After tucking them in, he started googling info about
the flu, he was trying hard not to think about the Zimbabwe
Strain. He kept checking in on the girls from time to time.
Despite the aspirin, their fevers weren’t coming down.
Around three in the morning, the thermometer registered
100.9 for both girls.
He immediately went online to get the wait time for the
local Care First facility. He was stunned to see it was nearly
four hours. He tried two others, but they too had hours long
wait times, as did the hospitals. He called and after waiting
on hold for almost an hour he finally got someone on the
line who explained that the ER’s were full of people who
either had or thought they had the flu. She told him the
best thing he could do would be to care for the girls himself,
keep them in plenty of fluids and try not to let their heads
get too hot. They also gave him a website to go to that
explained the best way to treat the flu.
So he went online and checked out the website. He
double checked the medicine cabinet and was happy he had
a nearly full bottle of children’s aspirin. For the next three
days, he tried everything he could find online to make the
girls comfortable, to get their fever down, to keep their
brains from boiling in their skulls.
When he’d pass the tv when going through the living
room, he noticed that the news was getting much worse
throughout the country. The Care First clinics in
Albuquerque weren’t accepting any new patients at all now
and the local station was showing clips from one of the
hospitals and it looked like it was about to turn into a riot
scene. The Acting President had closed down most
businesses on Sunday and rather than helping, it seemed to
just feed the growing panic. He’d been going to call in to
work, but they called him to tell him they were going to
close up shop anyway.
He didn’t get much sleep, just nodded off now and then
for a few minutes. And still the words he’d heard on the
news kept haunting him, “accompanied by unusually high
fever.” He’d looked online and knew that the flu could bring
on temperatures as high as 103. Despite giving the girls
four adult aspirin the last hour and wrapping their heads and
feet in towels soaked in cold water, their temperatures had
risen to 104.4.
It was the wee hours of Tuesday morning. He’d had
less than four hours sleep since Thursday night. He couldn’t
remember the last time he’d eaten. He’d been fighting so
hard to save his girls. They were all he had left.
“Oh Sara…I’ve failed…I can’t save them” He broke
down and wept, sobbing his heart out for the wife he had
lost, for his precious little girls. And when the sobbing
passed, a cold certainty filled him. He knew what he had to
do.
He went into the bathroom and retrieved the sleeping
pills. He got them each a glass of water. He then walked to
his closet and reached far back on the shelf pulling out the
gun he’d bought a few years ago when a rash of home
invasions in the neighborhood had him thinking of self
defense. He hadn’t seen it since putting it in the closet right
after he bought it.
He went into the girl’s bedroom and just stood in the
door for a moment soaking in the sight of his girls “Abigail,
Serena? Wake up…wake up for just a moment.” It took a
few minutes, but soon he had them both awake, though
neither was very alert. He held them both close. “I have
good news,” he told them. “I have some new medicine for
you. It’ll put you to sleep, but when you wake up, you’ll be
all better, isn’t that great?”
They both nodded and he hugged them each close.
“Abigail, Serena, I love you both very, very much. You are
my whole life. I couldn’t have made it after mommy…after
mommy went to Heaven without you two here to light up my
life. I’m the luckiest daddy in the world to have two such
perfect little girls.”
They smiled up at him, those sleepy, sickly little smiles.
“I love you too, Daddy.”
“Yes, Daddy, me too. I love you soooooo much.”
He held them each a moment longer and then gave
them the water and helped them swallow the pills.
Afterwards, he tucked them back into their beds.
“Goodnight, Daddy.”
He stood watching the lights of his life sink into a deep
sleep. He had seen the news, he knew what would come
next. The virus killing them now would reanimate their
bodies, turning them into some grotesque host for the virus,
seeking to spread itself to a new host by eating its victim.
He couldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t see his precious
girls turn into zombies.
The police arrived almost half an hour after neighbors
reported hearing gunshots. They found him sitting on the
floor in the girls’ bedroom, a gun laying a few feet away.
The girls were dead, a gunshot wound to the temple of
each.
“Sir, what happened here?” The first officer asked
quietly while his partner rushed from the room. The first
officer carefully kicked the gun out of reach of the man
sitting in the floor.
Stan looked into his eyes and very distinctly said, “I
know I did the right thing.”
Chapter 7: Away from Home
I'm a businessman. I love my job, but I do it for
money. So, in addition to the other work I was doing, I kept
an eye on the pageviews for the movie's website. I could
tell on Monday there wasn't a chance of us hitting 10 million
views. So, I paid Google to move the movie website to the
top of the search results for the Zimbabwe Strain. By
Tuesday morning, we hit 35 million pageviews. I knew it
didn't matter, but I'd told them I'd deliver at least 10 million
pageviews and even if the world was ending I intended to
deliver. I even sent them the invoice. I figured no one was
at work to see it, but hey, why not?
Of course, Tuesday afternoon, Stan Jensen's story hit
the news. They had pictures of the family from happier
times. It was terrible. I should have felt...something, but I
didn't. Maybe it was shock, maybe it was denial. Maybe I
was just completely amoral. Andrea spent the rest of the
day in her room crying. Nick, as he did sometimes, went on
a drinking binge. I don’t think I saw him for three or four
days. I went out to McDonalds.
Few places were open. There were rumors McDonalds
was paying employees $15 an hour to come to work and
double pay for overtime. Only the drive through was open,
but there was a line around the building. Turns out the
movie never opened. Theaters and other places where
people would gather in crowds were largely closed by the
local or state health departments. Even in places where they
weren't shut down, they mostly stayed closed. No one
wanted to shut themselves up in a room with a bunch of
people who, if they didn't have the flu, were probably at
least carriers.
I ate my food and drove around town. I drove pretty
much at random just being amazed at the change in just a
couple of weeks. I-35 was virtually empty. And what traffic
there was, was mostly headed northbound. Families with
their possessions piled in and moving their families
away….just away. Everyone had the feeling it was better
somewhere else. No one wanted to head south closer to
Mexico, but other than that anywhere had to be better than
here.
I knew they were wrong. The flu was everywhere.
Critical services, electricity, water, emergency services, were
still operating, but virtually everything else was so drastically
short handed that interruptions were inevitable. The
McDonalds would close soon when they stopped getting new
shipments of food.
Trading on the Stock Market had been suspended. It
didn’t matter, everyone knew their stock certificates for most
companies were basically useless. Sure there were some
businesses would do well, but when trading resumed most
people would lose everything. I had wandered downtown.
Here there were some signs of life, but it was a lot easier to
park than before. I passed in front of the Alamo. There was
a sign up that it was closed for tourism till further notice.
North of downtown I pulled into a middle class
neighborhood. More people packing up their mini-vans. I
pulled up at a gas station in time to see two men suddenly
get into a violent fistfight. One man in a pimped out old
Chevy was blaring his hip hop music. The other guy, kind of
scrawny asked him to turn it down. Apparently Mr. Hip Hop
said something, probably an epithet.
I just sat in the car watching. No one intervened. I
didn’t even see anyone calling the police. People continued
waiting their turn to buy gas. The fight went on till Scrawny
finally got the upper hand. He straddled Mr. Hip Hop and
started punching him in the face over and over again till he
finally tired. Then he stood up, got in his car and left.
Were we scared to intervene? No, I don’t think so.
There were definitely some former military men there that
could have handled themselves. Someone could have easily
called the cops without risking being seen, but I don’t think
anyone did. I think it was a simple realization that the
situation had changed. There was no longer a specified
group of people to act as the police. We were all the police.
If we didn’t want your hip hop music blaring at us, well, we
couldn’t very well write you a ticket could we?
It was like that all over. Not just the bad scenes like at
the gas station, but the good ones as well. A house caught
on fire and all the neighbors who hadn’t left town grabbed
water hoses and buckets and started putting out the fire. It
wasn’t a big fire, fortunately, and by the time the fire
department arrived they mostly had it put out. It was the
same thing. There was effectively no fire department, so
your neighbors were your fire department. They then
proceeded to share some of their food with the family whose
kitchen had burnt. No other nation on earth acts like this.
When there’s a disaster, other countries pull in and take care
of their families and extended families. Only in America will
total strangers gather to help put out your fire.
This was the essential essence of American culture that
we had lost in our hyphenated Americanism. The dream of
America was not that you could come here and bring your
culture and traditions to this land of opportunity, but that you
could join the land of opportunity. Become part of the
American culture. Not African-American, not Native-
American, not Hispanic-American, just American.
And it was this country that the panic I had helped start
was endangering.
I slumped over the steering wheel and wept.
I got back to the hotel just before dark. Andrea looked

at me then pulled me in and kissed me hard. We stumbled
into the bedroom and made passionate love till we fell into
an exhausted sleep.
I woke up suddenly from a bad dream I couldn’t

remember. I thought about all that was going on and
wondered what kind of dream could be worse than what I
had woke up to. I looked over at the clock. It was almost
noon. When I finally stumbled into the living area I found a
note from Andrea: Picking up food. Be back by noon. My
phone rang.
“Hey, you awake yet,” Andrea sounded frazzled.
“Yeah, you okay? What’s up?” I was putting my shoes
on as fast as possible.
“Nothing’s wrong, I just don’t recommend going to Wal-
Mart if you can help it. I’ve got a bunch of stuff, can you
come down and help me bring it up?”
“Sure, I’ll be right down.”
I hurried down to find Andrea at the elevator and loads
of bags full of groceries. “Wow, you weren’t kidding about
having a bunch of stuff. What is all this?”
“Necessities. We’ll talk about it later go grab the rest.”
“What? There’s more?” I asked but headed on down. I
couldn’t believe what I saw when I got to the car. It was
packed to the ceiling everywhere except the driver’s seat. I
took one look then ran back in the hotel to grab a luggage
cart. I was piling on cases of bottled water when Andrea
came back down.
“Good thinking with the cart. Hurry,” she said glancing
around nervously. “And be sure to take the back elevator,
don’t use the one up front.”
“Getting a little paranoid, aren’t you?”
“Tell me I’m wrong.” She just kept loading. I couldn’t
so I loaded faster. She grabbed another cart and we got
everything in just the two carts. We ran into one maid who
gave us a bit of a funny look, but she was the first maid I’d
seen in a couple of days and she was far too busy to pay
much attention to us.
Up in the room I started going through all the stuff
she’d bought. “This is…interesting,” I said pulling out the
fourth box of Immodium AD. “Are you expecting a critical
shortage in diarrhea medicine?”
“That’s for when we run out of water. Sometimes
boiling water may not be possible at which point we’ll need
the medicine.” I kept sorting through the seemingly random
collection pulling out a huge package of diapers and holding
them up.
“Trade goods. Trust me, when we’re out of diapers
those things will be worth their weight in gold.”
I nodded conceding the point. “How,” I began not
knowing how to finish my question, “how did you decide to
buy all this?”
“I googled what items you should buy to prepare for
the apocalypse. Most of it is just kooks, but I found a blog
by a former Navy Seal. He wasn’t actually telling you what
to buy for the apocalypse, just what to have on hand if there
were some kind of natural disaster like a hurricane.
Apparently he was living on the Mississippi coast when
Katrina hit so he wanted to list the stuff he had and the stuff
he’d wished he’d had.”
“You must have five hundred batteries here. And are
those propane tanks?”
“Yeah, four five-gallon propane tanks. We can use it for
cooking or heat if need be.” She looked up from her
unpacking, “you don’t like it? I just thought we should have
some stuff on hand. All of this is getting really scarce
already.”
“No, I…I don’t know, it’s just, you know, the people
who stock up on this stuff are all…”
“That was before,” she said firmly, “the Y2K kooks and
the people who thought the world was ending after 9/11 and
all that. But this is real. In a few days we aren’t going to be
able to go to the store and buy food. McDonalds won’t be
open more than another week without supplies. This is it.
This is the real thing.” She looked at me with those wide
green eyes looking scared and determined.
“You’re right, it’s just…you know, it takes some getting
used to. All those kooks were right all along.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. They wasted all that money
getting ready for Y2K and nothing happened. I don’t think
yelling the sky is falling every time something happens
makes you ‘right’ when the sky does fall. It makes you the
boy who cried wolf.”
I pulled out a heavy box at the bottom of an old box
that didn’t look like it came from Wal-Mart. I opened it up
and was shocked to see a pistol of some kind. I looked up
at Andrea who just looked back at me with that determined
look on her face like she dared me to give her a hard time
over it.
“There was one left?” I finally managed.
“Well, for the right price.” She finally looked a little
chagrined. “That gun cost me ten thousand dollars.”
My jaw dropped. “Ten. Thousand. Dollars? I thought
they were like passing those out for free at the border?”
“Yeah, well he told me up front that this would have
sold for under a thousand just a few days ago, but…well,
supply and demand, you know.”
Underneath it were boxes of bullets. “How much for
the bullets,” I was almost afraid to ask.
“Oh, I got five hundred ‘rounds’ for a hundred dollars.
Still plenty of bullets to go around.”
“Naturally.” We both paused a moment looking at each
other. “So we’re down to this.”
She nodded.
We spent the next several hours sorting through it all

and finding places to put it all. I almost wished we had
joined Brad going back to California. Back home. But flying
was out now and it didn’t seem like a good time for cross-
country road trips. Besides, San Antonio was a great place
to be. They have three--three!--military bases so it seemed
like most of the town was either military or military family.
The military often gets a bad rap (thanks largely to
Vietnam and a liberal media) but when you actually spend
time around these people…well…it’s almost like walking into
Mayberry. Everything is yes sir, no ma’am, thank you
ma’am. If your car breaks down on the side of the road it
won’t take ten minutes before someone stops to help.
And it goes beyond just southern hospitality. There’s an
indefinable air about these people. If I were to try and
capture it in a word it would be Honor. These are people
just like you and me, but they are serious, and focused and
they live by a Code of Honor. I come from a world where
the rule is do whatever you can get away with. These
people lived by different rules altogether. Getting to know
any of them made you stand up a little straighter and lift
your head a little higher at the thought that you, too, are an
American.
So, if you’re going to be stranded away from home by
the end of the world, San Antonio, Texas may be one of the
best places for it to happen. Of course, those bases would
be largely empty soon.
We spent the next several days just trying to gather as

much necessities as we could. We filled whole rooms in that
suite. Fortunately, we had checked into one with a little
kitchenette. Neither of us was cooking yet, though. We ate
out all the time. We figured it wouldn’t be long before that
wasn’t an option and we wanted to save our supplies.
Nick finally emerged late one morning. We knew he’d
been in and out a couple of times, but when he’s doing the
binge thing there’s no good getting in his way. He sat down
with a bottle of aspirin and water and ate some cold pizza.
Andrea and I just watched saying nothing. Nick’s ritual after
a binge is to drink water, take aspirin, eat, drink coffee, catch
up on his email and then, and only then, engage in
conversation. He finished his coffee, spent an hour going
through email and then set his laptop down and turned to
look at us.
“Figured it was my last chance and as good a time as
any.” We both nodded. Nick isn’t an alcoholic, he rarely
drank even a beer. But about once a year he’d go on a
really serious binge. When it was over, it was over. He
looked around, then, finally. “Good grief, what have you
people been doing.
So we told him about our hoarding like a squirrel before
winter. He listened closely and asked if we had kept the
receipts. Puzzled, Andrea nodded and dug them out for him.
He took them and immediately started developing an
inventory of our supplies. By the end of the day he could
not only tell you how many pounds of pinto beans we had,
but where they were stored and roughly how many days
worth they would supply. That was Nick.
Chapter 8: What can We Do

We also were networking with people. There were a
few other people who had been stranded here at our hotel.
We got to know them, but it was clear they, like us, weren’t
exactly the sort of people you wanted to rely on for survival
in a post-civilization world. But, like I said, San Antonio was
full of military. We quickly developed some contacts with
people who might know what to do when things really broke
down.
My favorite was Air Force Staff Sergeant Jack Roberts.
He’d flown in the Gulf War, then in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
He’d still be in the Air Force, but he’d damaged his back in
advanced survival training a couple of years ago and been
discharged on partial disability.
Every pilot gets S.E.R.E training, Survive, Evade, Resist,
Escape. If you’re shot down behind enemy lines you need to
know how to survive and get back home. Roberts, had
loved that part of training almost as much as flying and had
repeatedly volunteered for advanced survival training. It
may have been what got him kicked out of the Air Force, but
he still knew more about surviving than all of us put
together.
We met up with him in person for the first time Sunday
night at Taco Taco. While we ate Mexican food that was
nothing like Californian Mexican food, he told us his story.
“Yeah, so they discharged me. I get around fine, some
back pain occasionally, but it was enough to keep me out of
an F-16 so rather than fly the BUFFs or a desk I took the
discharge.”
“BUFFs?” Andrea asked.
He reddened slightly (see I told you they play by
completely different rules.) “Big Ugly Fat…uh..Fliers,” he
said reddening even more. “C-130’s and the like. The big
slow planes. It would have been like trading in a motorcycle
for driving a truck. No thanks. I could’ve had a desk job,
maybe even in Washington, but I’d no interest in that.”
“So, what’d you do when you got out?” Nick wanted to
know.
“Started my business. Jack’s Survival Adventures.”
Roberts said taking another bite of his taco. “About twice a
month I’d take a group of eight to twelve people out to a
wilderness somewhere and show ‘em how to survive. People
who enjoy that kind of thing like I did thought it was great
and I’d occasionally even get some SEALS or Army Rangers
or Marines and we’d really go all out. I didn’t get rich off of
it, but it was a good living doing what I loved to do anyway.”
Andrea had finally just given up on the greasy taco
mess and was focusing on the rice and beans. “So you’ve
been doing this for a few years now?”
“Since I got out in ‘09. Long and short of it is, I’ve got
an abundance of experience at this and an ample supply of
things most people will be running short on soon.”
“Do you think you could take a look at our supply
inventory and tell us anything you think we’re missing.” Nick
was certain we had too much of everything so this was an
inside dig at Andrea who was convinced there were holes in
our supplies that we were unaware of.
“Yeah, sure. I could come by sometime and…”
“No need,” Nick grabbed his iPad pulling up his
inventory. He was so dang proud of that inventory.
“Oh,” was all Jack said wiping the grease mostly off on
a napkin. “Let’s see…hmmm…dang you even got
diapers…not many though…” For the next few minutes he
went through the inventory. “Well,” he said finally, “I don’t
see too many major holes. You’ve only got one gun,” he
looked around at each of us, “and I’m guessing none of you
really knows how to use it or maintain it.” We nodded
sheepishly.
“Other than that, you’ve only got one omission and it’s
so glaring I can’t understand how you’ve missed it.” We
waited racking our brains trying to think what we’d left off.
“You don’t have any grain…wheat or rye or something like
that. How’d you leave that off? What are you going to do
for bread?”
“Oh,” I said relieved. “That’s on it’s way. We’ve got six
carloads coming by train over the next few days. We’re
going to have plenty of wheat.” It was fun watching his eye
boggle a little bit.
“Six. Carloads?” He was still boggling. “Where you
going to put it all?”
Andrea spoke up since this had been her idea. “We’ve
rented a few climate controlled mini-storage buildings. We
hired some people to seal it up where it will at least be
extremely difficult, if not impossible, for mice to get into.”
He nodded a look of respect beginning to show on his
face. “One other thing, and I bet I already know the answer
now, you don’t have a generator listed. You think the
power’s going to stay on?”
I took this one. “Yes, I do…we do,” I corrected at stern
looks from both Andrea and Nick. “At least locally. San
Antonio provides its own power and a good chunk of that
comes from the Nuclear reactor near Bay City. Things are
going to get really bad, but not like, you know, return to the
dark ages. And as long as it’s humanly possible I think the
nuclear plant will be kept up and running.
Jack nodded. “I concur. There will be disruptions,
however, on the lines. I imagine you’ll be wishing you had at
least a small one. Too late now, though. I doubt you could
find one anywhere now for any amount of money.”
“Actually,” Nick commandeered the iPad again for a
moment, “you see this?”
Jack took it back looking at the item pointed out.
“Stationary bike?” He looked up in confusion.
“It’s designed to function as a generator. Nothing big,
of course, but small things. A few lights, charge a phone or
laptop, power a coffee maker. Things like that.”
Jack just looked at us, then laughed. “A stationary bike
generator?” He laughed some more. “Californians!” He had
a contagious laugh and soon we were all laughing with him.
“Well, ya’ll just let me know how that works out when the
power goes out for a few hours,” he said when he’d gotten
himself under control again.
“Anyway, I’ll be glad to help you all I can, like I said.”
“And we really appreciate it,” I said. “I’m sure that
there are hundreds of people who’d be thrilled to have your
help.”
“Better, than hundreds.” No boast, just a simple
statement of fact on his part.
I nodded accepting his statement. “So what I have to
wonder is…why us, Jack?”
He smiled. I was really starting to like this Jack
Roberts. We thought alike. You might think a man in
marketing would be more comfortable with indirect
conversation, but in fact that opposite was true. We often
have to use indirect methods to get the message across, but
it was a great relief for me to find someone like Jack with
whom I could simply have a direct conversation. Another
thing to like about those military people.
“Well, when I got your friend request on Facebook, it
was actually not the first time I’d heard of you,” he admitted.
“I know who you and your company are and just what your
part is in all of this.”
Andrea and Nick shifted uncomfortably. I just looked
him straight in the eye. “I see.”
He nodded. “Yes. I have to admit, when I first saw the
video of the Barnards being attacked, I was nearly certain
something was going on, but I never believed it was
zombies. Then when you guys were trying so hard to get
the real story out I could see what had happened.”
So I explained the whole thing to him. How we had the
contract to promote the movie, how it’d gone over better
than we ever dreamed and how events had conspired to pull
the story out of our control.
“Well, when you put it that way,” he said when I
finished, “you’re just as much a victim as the rest of us, I
guess.”
“No sir,” I said emphatically. “I don’t see it that way at
all. “The flu would have come whether or not we ever made
that video, but the panic might not have. Or if it had, then
we would have been a victim like anyone else if you want to
put it that way. But we did make the video and so we’re
responsible. If not for us Stan Jensen never would have
killed his daughters, or the others who’ve followed his
example since.”
Jack nodded and I knew I’d passed his test. The one
thing about those that are so direct, like Jack, is that they
see the world in such well defined terms of black and white,
that someone gray can often slip by them. It was
immediately obvious to me he was testing me. I didn’t even
know myself if I was actually sincere in what I told him or if
it was just to pass his test.
Jack looked around. We’d finished eating and Taco
Taco was crowded and we were holding down a table. “Why
don’t we go for a walk while we talk,” he grabbed the check
and headed to the register.
“You get the sense he doesn’t want to discuss this in
front of a crowd?” Andrea asked.
Nick nodded, “Maybe he’s not as cool with our part as
he lets on and he’s taking us somewhere private for some
personal survival training?”
I chuckled laying down a generous tip. “No, nothing
like that. But he does have something more in mind.”
We headed outside and Jack followed a minute later.
We walked about a block before Jack spoke. “I contacted
you, because there’s something the American public needs
to start doing. You could have just cut and run after things
went bad, but you stuck around trying to fix the damage. I
think you could get the job done.”
“I mentioned that I occasionally get members of special
forces teams come to my adventure camps. One of my first
clients in fact was a Marine Force Recon group led by a
Colonel Barnes. He came up through Force Recon, but
missed the dirty work after becoming an officer so he and
some friends of his who feel the same way come out a
couple of times a year. We stay in touch.”
He looked around again, but we were a ways from the
restaurant and the only other people around were driving by.
“Have you considered how the rest of the world will view our
situation?”
We all looked at him and each other. “The rest of the
world?” Nick asked. “They’re mostly in worse shape than we
are.”
“That’s true,” Andrea added. “By and large the US
medical system has handled the flu better than other
developed countries. Even with the panic, our fatality rate is
much lower than most of the rest of the world.”
Jack nodded, “That’s true. Most of the rest of the
world. Have you noticed that the news is increasingly
focused on local news and there’s less national and
international news?”
I reeled a little bit from the sudden change in subject.
“Not really,” I admitted. “There is a lot of local news, but I
think it’s to be expect that people will be far more interested
in what’s happening locally.”
“It’s more than that,” Jack insisted. “For one thing,
while local channels receive national broadcasts via satellite,
mostly they upload their stories to the national network via
internet. In some areas, the internet is getting sketchy. The
way the internet is designed, this is unlikely to be an
accident. The internet was designed to be a diffuse network
of information so that it’s impossible to simply eliminate one
or two nodes and bring the network down.”
“Sooo…you’re saying someone is intentionally bringing
down the internet?” Andrea asked.
Jack nodded. “The Colonel tipped me off to holes in
information popping up. He doesn’t believe it’s accidental.
Next time you’re online, check out the news from Alaska.
Starting about six days ago, you’ll see almost nothing out of
Alaska. Now you can imagine, there could be internet
providers down in Alaska, and there aren’t that many, but
nothing is coming out of Alaska.”
“Now Andrea you mentioned that most of the rest of
the world has had more trouble dealing with the flu epidemic
than we have. But there is one major exception.”
“China,” Nick said. Jack nodded and Andrea and I
looked at Nick for an explanation.
“Yeah,” Nick went on, “First report of the flu and they
shut down everything. Not just international traffic, but
everything in country as well. Then they went into overdrive
isolating and eradicating the flu. You talk about information
holes, nothing’s coming out of China. But you can imagine
the sort of methods they’re using to clean things up.”
Jack nodded, “Exactly. The Colonel estimates no more
than five to seven percent affected in China. That’s affected
by the flu, not fatalities. That’s nearly a hundred million
people, but…”
“But that’s a drop in the bucket for China,” Andrea
completed.
“So, you’re saying that China is choosing now to launch
an information attack on the US?” I asked Jack.
He shook his head. “The information attack would just
be the preliminary to an actual assault. That makes the
information blackout in Alaska really alarming.”
“Alaska,” Nick asked, “why Alaska?”
“Oil,” I answered. “Alaska has one of the largest oil
reserves in the world. I can imagine if China did take it they
wouldn’t be quite as concerned about caribou as our EPA.”
“That’s an understatement,” Andrea turned to Jack. “So
you believe that China is getting ready to attack Alaska?”
Jack nodded, “Understand, I was tipped to this by my
friend in Force Recon. They believe it’s imminent. The
Pentagon is ‘keeping an eye on the situation’ but no assets
have been moved that direction. In other words, if China
were to move quickly and with enough force, they could
potentially take Alaska before the US could move in any
significant resistance.”
“We have bases up there, though,” Nick wanted to
know.
“Yes,” Jack agreed, “three each Air Force, Army and
Coast Guard. But they aren’t prepared to repel a serious
attack.
I absorbed all of this. “This all has something to do
with why you got in touch with us.”
He nodded, “Yes. Look, if the government was to
decide to do something and started moving troops, it would
likely cause the Chinese to just immediately implement their
plans. Likewise, if word of this got out on CNN. But if word
got out the way you can get the word out…”
“It might slip by undetected,” I finished. “You want us
to warn the Alaskans of what is coming.”
Jack nodded, “Not just warn them, prepare them. Just
knowing what’s coming isn’t going to help. They need to
know what steps to take to prepare themselves and their
families for an occupying army. If they were adequately
prepared, they could even offer resistance.”
“You really think this is going to happen, don’t you?”
Andrea was incredulous. “The Chinese are going to invade
the United States.”
“Can you think of a better time?” Jack asked. “The
government is trying to pull troops back from Iraq and
Afghanistan to help out here at home, but that takes time.
The National Guard here at home is almost completely
involved in aiding with health care and emergency services.
The country as a whole is focused on trying to help family
members with the flu or trying to avoid getting it
themselves. Alaska has always been like a foreign country to
most Americans. The Chinese are likely counting on
American apathy, especially if they can present the invasion
as a fait accompli.”
“You say no information is getting out,” Nick pointed
out. “You believe information can get in, though.”
“I do,” Jack said. “And it’s part of what makes Colonel
Barnes and I believe that an attack may be imminent. If
there was simply a problem with the local service providers
then traffic would be cut off both ways. Understand, we’re
not just talking about an internet blackout, but full jamming
across the EM spectrum. No cell signal, no satellite, and only
a few landline signals get through. A few people have come
out of Alaska, though, and we know from them that they’re
still able to receive.
“The only rationale for this is that an attack is imminent
and when it happens the aggressors do not want word of
the attack getting out. It’s right in line with plans the US has
in place if we ever had to attack certain areas. If the
blackout lasted too long it would become obvious in Alaska.
Someone, and Colonel Barnes has reason to believe it the
Chinese, is about to invade Alaska.”
We all mulled this over for a few minutes walking back
towards our cars at this point. When we got back to our
cars I looked at Jack and said, “What can we do?”

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Chapter 1: Hear Me Out

I’m Scott Vanderkirk--yes, that Scott Vanderkirk. Now

Chapter 2: A Disaster in the Making

Kurt Price sat in his office the Friday morning after

Chapter 3: Early Success

Chapter 4: A Taste for Something Sweet

We were all sitting around eating pizza (there is

There were so many problems with Governor Hairdo’s

“Oh noooo,” Andrea finally breathed. We were all just

Chapter 6: The Last Fight for Reason

“You know,” I said the next morning around a mouthful

I got back to the hotel just before dark. Andrea looked

I woke up suddenly from a bad dream I couldn’t

We spent the next several hours sorting through it all

We spent the next several days just trying to gather as

Chapter 8: What can We Do

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