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CHAPTER 1.

Columbus.

Shit.

I'm still in Columbus.

Waiting for my orders. Waiting for my mission. Getting soft. Getting weak.

Zack isn't getting soft. Zack exists on nothing. Zack waits forever, or makes more of his kind. Every moment I'm here, I get weaker and Zack gets stronger. We come out here and we dream of the end of our tour, of the bars, of sex, of going home. There's no going home for Zack. He's always out there, waiting, watching. Hungry.

This is the end, beautiful friend.

This is the end. My only friend, the End.

Of our elaborate plans, the End.

Of everything that stands, the End.

No safety or surprise, the End.

I'll never look into your eyes, again.....

I lie on my bed, waiting for the phone to ring. Waiting for The Mission. I've been in the army since I was 19 and I've never learned to wait for the mission.

My missions are special. Not putting down zombies. Not for me. My last mission had been killing an old man, up close, seeing the life leave his eyes. So close I could feel his last breath on my face.

I chain-light another cigarette, blow smoke at the overhead fan. Listen to the song on the radio.

Can you picture what will be,

So limitless and free,

desperately in need of some strangers hand,

in a desperate land....

In a world where most soldiers are putting down the dead, I put down the living. Wet Work. Sanctions. Quietly, out of sight. Can't let people know that the living are fighting each other. One death to stop a war. One life for thousands. That's the formula. Like the old man I killed. He was loveable, charming, sweet. With his vision of a thousand tiny Americas. His followers who hung on to his every word, armed with every kind of abandoned weapon in the world. No good against zombies, but deadly to the living. Anti-tank missiles, Stingers, tanks, laser-guided bombs, jets, a thousand people with enough firepower to blast out the heart of a city. Ready to fight, following the man who led them through the zombie apocalypse when everyone else abandoned them.

Mourning when he was found dead, his trusted second-in-command hiding the murder weapons.

It took me two months of living with them to set that up. Two months of being among them, winning their trust, becoming their friend. Winning the friendship of the old man and his nephew, his trusted second in command. Looking into their living eyes.....

Lost in a roaming wilderness of pain......

and all the children are insane.

Waiting for the summer rain.

They gave me a month's leave, to wind down. I went home for two weeks to a wife I didn't recognize. I didn't say two words to her, until I said "yes" to the divorce. I came back early and sent three requests up the line for another mission. They were denied. They finally caved when I threatened to resign.

I wanted a mission. For my sins, they gave me one. It was a hell of a mission. When it was over, I'd never want another.

Father, I've come to kill you......

"Colonel Walter Kurtz, West Point, Class of '82. Graduated top of his class. Branch specialty: Infantry. Won his CIB in Grenada the following year. Graduate of Airborne School, Air Assault School and Ranger training. Joined Delta Force in 1989. Led a special forces group in Kurdistan before and during Desert Storm. He made full Colonel just before Iraqi Freedom kicked off. He retired, two years later." The Major looks young, clean cut, very earnest. The General and the Colonel are silent, one movie-star handsome, the other square and blocky. I look at the file pictures in front of me. Kurtz has chiselled features, a big roman nose. Handsome. His list of decorations and citations covers two pages.

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