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The briefing room is an oven in the midsummer heat. It's an old high school, now Fifth Army Corps Intel HQ for the Midwest. Ever since the siege of Columbus was broken in Year Four.

The General speaks. "Colonel Kurtz was brilliant. An outstanding officer, in every way. When he retired, to take a position with the Walderberg Group, the army felt that loss very keenly. He did outstanding work as liason for the Walderberg Group, particularly after we lost the Center for Disease Control in the fall of Atlanta. Walderberg became our last hope in trying to understand and control the Z-virus. When he wasn't helping them liase with the military, he was in charge of security for their main facility, in west virginia. When that center went up, a year ago, he was missing, presumed dead. Very few people came out of there alive. A tragedy, or so we thought. But six months ago, he surfaced again. Fighting Zack, but with methods that were.. unacceptable." He tries to find another word for it and can't. "Unacceptable."

The Colonel speaks. "We picked up these broadcasts, coming out of the mountains of West Virginia, somewhere near Charleston."

He clicked a CD player.

"Radio interecept number 33454 slash alfa, zero-three-thirty hours, Zulu time."

"I saw a zombie today." Even through the RF distortion and static, his voice has power. Then it sinks into mumbles, almost a whine. "It was crawling through razor wire, crawling towards me. The wire was slicing out chunks of it's rotted flesh. It was cutting itself apart as it came closer to me. Slicing away one strip of flesh after another. Until there was nothing but bones and scraps of rotted flesh. It looked up, and I saw my own face. That is my dream. That is my nightmare."

I study his face, memorizing it. I would see it again. Weeks in the future and hundreds of miles away I would meet him face to face. Up a river that snaked through the war like the spinal column of a decaying corpse, plugged straight into Kurtz's skull.

The CD clicks off. The Colonel speaks. "When Kurtz resurfaced, he was leading a private army. Wandererers, renegades, some of his own security force from Walderberg. From a fortress, somewhere in the hills, they were killing everyone. According to Kurtz, anyone who wasn't part of his force would inevitably become a zombie."

The Major speaks, handing me more paper. Transport authorizations, requisitions, orders that have nothing to do with what my real job is. "You are to enter Colonel Kurtz's area posing as a disaffected officer. Join with his force and when you see your chance, terminate him."

"Terminate." The Colonel purses his lips in distate. "With extreme prejudice."

The Major speaks. "Of course, this mission is on a need to know basis, under the same orders as were involved in the Louisville incident. If you recall?"

"Sir, I have no knowledge of any incident in Louisville. If I did have knowledge of any such incident, I would not reveal that knowledge or discuss any of the details of any such operation. If questioned, I would deny any knowledge of such an incident."

"Very good, Captain. Dismissed."

They drive me out to Columbus Airport. Columbus is the place where things went right. When everyone else was panicking and heading west, the Governer of Ohio gathered the State Police, the National Guard, anyone who could carry a gun. A four-lane highway, Route 270, surrounds the town. It became their firebreak, the barrier that no Z ever crossed. The entire remaining population was dragooned into labor battalions. Outside the 270, the suburbs were stripped of supplies and burned to ash, the ground left open so there was nowhere for Zack to hide. Then they sent out monster patrols, hundreds of people at a time. They wiped out zack with civilian weapons and earth moving equipment while the military was still trying to find a way to use heat seeking missiles and laser-guided bombs. Columbus became the largest Blue Zone east of the Rockies.

There were stories they also told, of those who refused to work or fight being sent out as human bait, of alzheimers patients and the critically handicapped being allowed to die during the hungry second winter, when the grain in the elevators ran out. Stories. But when the US Army finally marched back east, they found the center of Ohio being farmed and the open fields clear of Zack.

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