World War Z(115)

[I am surprised at how quickly we reach the bottom. It looks like a desert wasteland, glowing white against the permanent darkness. I see the stumps of wire coral, broken and trampled by the living dead.]



There they are.



[I look up to see the swarm, roughly sixty of them, walking out of the desert night.]



And here we go.



[Choi maneuvers us above them. They reach up for our searchlights, eyes wide and jaws slack. I can see the dim red beam of the laser as it settles on the first target. A second later, a small dart is fired into its chest.]



And one…



[He centers his beam on a second subject.]



And two…



[He moves down the swarm, tagging each one with a nonlethal shot.]



Kills me not to kill them. I mean, I know the whole point is to study their movements, set up an early warning network. I know that if we had the resources to clear them all we would. Still…



[He darts a sixth target. Like all the others, this one is oblivious to the small hole in its sternum.]



How do they do it? How are they still around? Nothing in the world corrodes like saltwater. These Gs should have gone way before the ones on land. Their clothes sure did, anything organic like cloth or leather.



[The figures below us are practically naked.]



So why not the rest of them? Is it the temperature at these depths, is it the pressure? And why do they have such a resistance to pressure anyway? At this depth the human nervous system should be completely Jell-O-ized. They shouldn’t even be able to stand, let alone walk and “think” or whatever their version of thinking is. How do they do it? I’m sure someone real high up has all the answers and I’m sure the only reason they don’t tell me is…



[He is suddenly distracted by a flashing light on his instrument panel.]



Hey, hey, hey. Check this out.



[I look down at my own panel. The readouts are incomprehensible.]



We got a hot one, pretty healthy rad count. Must be from the Indian Ocean, Iranian or Paki, or maybe that ChiCom attack boat that went down off Manihi. How about that?



[He fires another dart.]



You’re lucky. This is one of the last manned recon dives. Next month it’s all ROV, 100 percent Remotely Operated Vehicles.

There’s been a lot of controversy over the use of ROVs for combat.

Never happen. The Sturge’s 2 got way too much star power. She’d never let Congress go ’droid on us.

Is there any validity to their argument?

What, you mean if robots are more efficient fighters than ADS divers? Hell no. All that talk about “limiting human casualties” is bullshit. We never lost a man in combat, not one! That guy they keep talking about, Chernov, he was killed after the war, on land, when he got wasted and passed out on a tram line. Fuckin’ politicians.

Maybe ROVs are more cost-effective, but one thing they’re not is better. I’m not just talking about artificial intelligence; I’m talking heart, instinct, initiative, everything that makes us us. That’s why I’m still here, same with the Sturge, and almost all the other vets who took the plunge during the war. Most of us are still involved because we have to be, because they still haven’t yet come up with a collection of chips and bits to replace us. Believe me, once they do, I’ll not only never look at an exosuit again, I’ll quit the navy and pull a full-on Alpha November Alpha.

What’s that?

Action in the North Atlantic, this old, black-and-white war flick. There’s a guy in it, you know the “Skipper” from Gilligan’s Island, his old man. 3 He had a line…“I’m putting an oar on my shoulder and I’m starting inland. And the first time a guy says to me ‘What’s that on your shoulder?’ that’s where I’m settling for the rest of my life.”

QUEBEC, CANADA

[The small farmhouse has no wall, no bars on the windows, and no lock on the door. When I ask the owner about his vulnerability he simply chuckles and resumes his lunch. Andre Renard, brother of the legendary war hero Emil Renard, has requested that I keep his exact location secret. “I don’t care if the dead find me,” he says without feeling, “but I care very little for the living.” The former French national immigrated to this place after the official end of hostilities in western Europe. Despite numerous invitations from the French government, he has not returned.]



Everyone else is a liar, everyone who claims that their campaign was “the hardest of the entire war.” All those ignorant peacocks who beat their chests and brag about “mountain warfare” or “jungle warfare” or “urban warfare.” Cities, oh how they love to brag about cities! “Nothing more terrifying than fighting in a city!” Oh really? Try underneath one.