Chapter 1 - new york, november, 2027

Since George Romero, zombies have taken a big spot in pop culture, they were in movies, tv shows, songs, books, comics, video games, t-shirts… they were everywhere. All over the internet you could find people discussing a possible zombie apocalypse, where people should go, how they should prepare themselves, I stumbled across “zombie survival guides” more than once, however they were all wrong. Very wrong.

Well, not the part of a zombie apocalypse, that happened and it was very real, but there are a lot of differences from what happened in real life and all that bulshit we saw on The Walking Dead and all those crappy zombie movies (Sorry, Mr. Romero, I’m a huge fan, but you got it wrong).

First off, the real zombie isn’t dead and can die like any human being. That's right, no corpses rising from their graves and starting chasing people or dancing along with Michael Jackson. Apart from the suspicious behavior it's hard to tell a normal person from a zombie in the early stages.

Another major difference was that society didn’t collapse the way they predicted, don’t get me wrong, it still collapsed, no more governments, no schools, no basic services, most people don’t work and it’s not safe outside the survivor communities. however the infected still live their lives very much like they used to, at least until they reach the final stage.

You might be wondering what caused it, aliens? Some Russian scientist? Maybe the Americans were trying to create a new weapon? Or was it a Chinese guy that ate a bat? All good guesses but again, all wrong.

In the year of 2022 a group of billionaires decided to take action against climate change and save the planet, they called themselves the Olympians, yes just like the Greek gods. I know, it sounds awesome, rich people saving the world, cause we all know how rich people care about anyone but themselves. Most governments gladly accepted their help, why wouldn’t they? Someone wanted to do their job for free.

Obviously there was a catch, by 2024 four corporations controlled every country, basically they provided anything the population needed, for the right price, of course. However that was just phase one of their plan, the next phase was population control and alternative energy sources. That's when the shit hit the fan.

As you might have imagined, they released a virus upon the population. Nothing we have ever seen before, in a month 50% of the world’s population was infected and in a year 80%, three years later it’s spread slowed down, but still 87% of the world population is infected.

The Olympians created a new society within the boundaries of what someday was France and gave the creative name of “Olympus”, they built giant walls surrounding it and their guards will shoot anyone who tries to cross their borders without authorization. Another Wealthy survivors isolated in autonomous communities in their respective countries, it wasn’t as luxurious or safe as the Olympus, but they sure gave uninvited guests the same treatment.

For the rest of us, the poor, we didn’t have much choice, we either abandoned the cities and built new communities in the countryside or we were incorporated into the madness that the cities became, the lucky ones found safe places to hide, the others had to work for the corporations risking getting infected at any time.

I just realized I never told you what this virus does. It attacks your brain, basically it controls your brain's frontal lobes and ventromedial hypothalamus, so an infected person isn’t capable of making complex decisions, it also triggers your hunger (not for brains or human flesh, even though I never kept an infected unfed, so who knows…) and eliminates your capacity to feel full, so yes the infected end up getting super fat.

which leads to the question: How does the virus infect its victims? There are no records of the virus spreading between people, the only known form of spreading is through contaminated food and water, how does it contamines food and water? All the scientists were infected before they could find the answer, you can still try to ask them, a few of them still waddle through the city, but I don’t think they’ll be able to answer you.

Another question is how do the Olympians benefit from this? When the infecteds get too big to move, the collaborationists (the people that work for the corporations) collect them and move them to the factories. Whatever happens inside no one knows, the only thing we know is that the factories provide energy to the cities, so the infected are probably being used as fuel.

Pretty bad, huh? what? Who am I? Oh, sorry, the past few months were kinda lonely, I didn’t have much company so I kinda lost my social skills. I’m Anneliese, or Anna. I'm a 25 year old girl from Long Island, I spent almost 3 years hiding with my boyfriend in a bunker until we ran out of food. Now I am part of the 87% of the infected people on the planet eating myself to my fate at the factories.