Zombies in Afghanistan
By Ross Payton
Copyright 2012 Ross Payton. All Rights Reserved.
Cover Illustration by Ean Moody.
Published by Ross Payton at Smashwords.
REPORT OF INITIAL INVESTIGATION AND FINDINGS
ON UNDEAD OUTBREAK IN AFGHANISTAN, SEPTEMBER 19, 2007
PRELIMINARY DRAFT
Background
On September 19, 2007, Irden, a remote village in the northwest part of Afghanistan, became ground zero for an outbreak of an unknown number of Domesticated Zombies (scientific name Mortifera immortalis servus). The incident occurred shortly after an engagement between the US Army and the Taliban, which complicated attempts at containing the undead. These zombies, which are normally not aggressive, had gone feral. They are now indistinguishable from the Common Gray Shambler (Mortifera immortalis romeroi) and attack all humans on sight.
Multiple hordes of zombies now roam the region, threatening many smaller settlements and tribes. Refugees have fled to Pakistan and other parts of Afghanistan, further disrupting the region. Flare-ups of the undead are not entirely unknown in unstable environments, but some conspiracy theorists have claimed that the US military unleashed the zombies intentionally, even though deploying them in combat is illegal. Due to the remoteness of the region and the containment operation, there has been no media coverage at Irden.
Personal note from the lead investigator:
As per your request, I have sent you an early draft of the investigation into Irden. You should be familiar with most of the material except one interview that was just transcribed. The transcript is the testimony of Jacob Collins, a former aid worker stationed in Afghanistan. He was one of four civilians present at the Battle of Irden. I believe his testimony will answer all of the questions you posed to me earlier.
Mr. Collins’ account of the events of 19 September 2007 contradicts the official version of the battle and aftermath. Certain elements of his story have been corroborated but others cannot be verified. I believe he is a credible witness. If his story were to get out, it would be extremely damaging. We cannot let this become public.
Collins has already signed a non-disclosure agreement and from what I can tell, just wants to put this behind him. The psych report isn’t done yet but I’ve been told he suffers from post-traumatic stress. We don’t have to worry about him going to the press.
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
INTERVIEWER: Why were you in Afghanistan in the first place?
JACOB: I was an aid worker. Wanted to help people. Didn’t want to join the army, though.
INTERVIEWER: What happened when you got to the village?
JACOB: We went with the army to distribute aid and assess the needs for Irden, figure out what they needed help with the most. Some villages got medicine, others got food or infrastructure support – we’d pay for a well to be built, that kind of thing. We were really far from the forward operating base but we had been told that it was okay because the Taliban left this area alone. The tribe there was isolationist. They just wanted to stay to themselves.
INTERVIEWER: Didn’t they have some connection to the outside?
JACOB: Yeah, they grew opium. But that’s how they stayed alive.
INTERVIEWER: So what happened when you arrived?
JACOB: We saw the poppy fields first but the military wanted them as allies so the soldiers left it alone. They just saw workers tending to the crops. The other aid workers didn’t even pay attention to them. But I saw them.
INTERVIEWER: You recognized the workers?
JACOB: [coughs] I recognized what they were.
INTERVIEWER: What were they?
JACOB: Zombies. Domesticated. Tame, you could say.
INTERVIEWER: How did you know this?
JACOB: I grew up around them. My dad was an engineer at the Saint Sebastian Quarry. Hell, I was born right outside it.
INTERVIEWER: For the record, that was the so-called ‘Mine of the Dead’ where the worker zombies outnumbered the living over a hundred to one?
JACOB: Yeah.
INTERVIEWER: You worked in the Mine?
JACOB: [inaudible] I did. Learned how to wrangle the zeds. Dad wouldn’t have let me join unless he was sure it was safe for me. So I was never afraid of them. I trusted him.
INTERVIEWER: Would you consider yourself an expert when it comes to the undead?
JACOB: Tame zombies, sure. I don’t know about the wild species. Never got near any.
INTERVIEWER: That mine shut down in 2002 when the zombies finally revolted and killed most of the humans on site. It had to be firebombed. No known survivors. Did your opinion of the undead change after that?
JACOB: No. [pause] I was a freshman at college but I’d talked to my father on the phone a few weeks before it happened. He said the new management was upping the quotas too high. Faster, faster, more, more. That must’ve led to mistakes. That was our last talk. No one knows what happened to him.
INTERVIEWER: So, the villagers had a domesticated zombie workforce to work the poppy fields and you realized it before anyone else, right?
JACOB: Yeah. The story we heard was that there was one village in the region that had always had a few domesticated zombies – some kind of unique tribal custom, an offshoot of Sufism that never spread beyond Irden. [coughs] They thought they were holy – jinn tamed by angels and gifted to the village for their piety. But we didn’t know it was that particular village. We thought it was a rumor. A myth.
INTERVIEWER: Jinn?
JACOB: Genies. Spirits in Arabic folklore that could be bad or good. Not all of them grant wishes, but they’re magic and can do all kinds of things.
INTERVIEWER: Hard to imagine the Taliban was okay with those kind of beliefs.
JACOB: The villagers kept it secret and lied about their beliefs. But when the Taliban came into power, they press-ganged most of the men. Not enough left to harvest the fields. The elders looted a few battlefields of their corpses and got themselves more zombies. Enough for the fields.
INTERVIEWER: How does grave robbing get them more zombies? I thought you had to be bit to become a zombie.
JACOB: A wild zed, sure. Tame ones work differently. You take a fresh corpse, then inject some flesh or blood from a zombie. They rise up as a zed but without the aggression. They’re still dangerous but they can be trained to do certain work as long as they’re not mistreated.
INTERVIEWER: I see. So the people of Irden were not keeping them secret anymore?
JACOB: Desperate times call for desperate measures. Anyway, it took a while for word to get around. The Taliban didn’t believe it at first and the elders bribed the first Taliban patrol that came around. Killed the second one in an ambush. Then we showed up. At least, that’s how they explained it to us once we found out.
INTERVIEWER: It is a very remote village. Easy to see why they were overlooked.
JACOB: Right. [coughs]
INTERVIEWER: Would you like a glass of water?
JACOB: Yeah.
[Brief pause]
INTERVIEWER: The soldiers must have been alarmed. Were there any incidents?
JACOB: It took them a while to even pick up on it and when they did I talked their CO out of shooting them.
INTERVIEWER: How did you do that?
JACOB: I said that if you started shooting them, they would go berserk – stop obeying orders. They’d go feral.
INTERVIEWER: Still, they were zombies – slow, easy to kill.
JACOB: Yeah – if you knew where they were. Those villagers had those zeds for god knows how long. If the army tried to put them down, they’d miss a few. Guaranteed. And those survivors would be feral. Attack anything they’d see. There wouldn’t be a village left. Hell, it could depopulate the entire region if they weren’t careful. Plus, you would alienate the villagers. They saw the zombies as holy, remember?
INTERVIEWER: Given that you knew that, why do you think things went the way they did?
JACOB: Because…I don’t know. Things got out of hand.
INTERVIEWER: The elders welcomed you didn’t they?
JACOB: Yeah, seems that Taliban propaganda backfired. The Taliban had told them that the Americans were godless infidels. The villagers thought that was great. Infidels wouldn’t mind a few zombie slave workers. And we would keep the Taliban off their back.
INTERVIEWER: Initial reports indicated that the villagers were eager to deal with us. Why wasn’t a deal reached?
JACOB: Well, I don’t know the exact details. I was an aid worker, remember? We were there to help them, not negotiate.
INTERVIEWER: But you must have some kind of idea?