Neil's Yard Café, London

Interview with: General Andrew Campbell

Just before he is due to go back on another tour of duty with the UN combined army forces, who are currently trying to clear out the mountain ranges through eastern Europe; I catch up with an old friend. During the War, Andrew was Army Liaison to the British Prime Minister during the exile of the government to the Isle of Wight.

Once we've settled down with a good wholesome bowl of soup and some roughly made bread he reminisces about his time during the war.

"We started at the bottom and worked up. Morale was utterly destroyed to begin with and in some ways we were defeated before we even started. The country was in ruins, the government was in exile and we had spent weeks quarantining people and patrolling the coast of the Isle to try and maintain some sort of safe zone. You've spoken to Professor James, so you already know about the people who were allowed onto the Isle of Wight, those "strategically required".

"After a couple of months, we knew we were going to be pretty much on our own. We still had contact with the Americans through channels set up over the previous decades and we knew they had sealed themselves tight under the Rockies. The French, or at least what was left of the poor bastards, had similarly retreated to the Alps. In fact it was a similar story across the world as most of those not eradicated, like Iceland, were holed up in various fortresses and secure locations dotted around the globe. Most of these we only linked back up with towards the midpoint of the war when we started going back on the offensive, but I'll get to that in a moment.

"The Isle of Wight is a funny little place in many ways. It's quite secluded, full of history, and quirks of geology have made parts of it very steep and secure. Other sections, unfortunately, are in almost constant danger of collapse, like Ventnor which is in effect one giant landslide. It even has a small oilfield. But, more importantly perhaps, there is still a good amount of farming land and so we were able to feed the community, what was left of it.

"Everyone was put to work. Those who had useful skills were utilised in their specialist roles, those who didn't, and I suspect I'll offend a few people here, such as estate agents, shop assistants, lawyers and so on were re-educated if they showed aptitude, or just put to work in the fields or as manual labourers. It's amazing how many people insisted their importance from the world previous to the infection. We had people demanding to see a lawyer, protesting their human rights. For those who simply refused to work, we showed them video footage of a group of Zeds tearing through a shopping centre to remind them what sort of world they were now living in. Those who still refused were given the stark choice of work or exile. Few debated that choice.

"The RAF used local airfields to fly recon missions; the navy patrolled the coasts and sank Zed infested ships, or escorted those uninfested for processing. The army patrolled the coast and occasionally carried out essential missions to the mainland to pick up supplies or materials. That was pretty much it for some time. We were narrowly missed by the swarm that hit France, and the bulk of the Infected population of the UK headed out through London and east to hit the French coasts along Normandy. We saw it from the air and sea though and gave them a hand where we could. The PM went pale when he saw how close we'd been to becoming Zed food on that one and redoubled his efforts. He's a good man, but by God those years in exile aged him.

"We were so much better off than other survivors. We had power, food, protection, security and a working government fighting to find a way through the situation. Some of the people on the Isle never even saw a Zombie unless it was on the news. We even had a local TV network for Pete's sake, although we did get heartily sick of the re-runs. Thankfully it only went on air for a couple of hours a day, but I swear I'll never watch another episode of Blackadder in my life. It's good, but after about forty times you find yourself repeating the lines verbatim. It was like being a student again.

"Power was provided by a combination of local wind farms, solar panels, the wave hub located just off the coast and three nuclear subs. The subs were utterly useless for anything other than generating power at the time. Due to the nature of our enemy, we didn't really need that sort of stealth. Various Navy ships joined us and sat at anchor for much of the time unless they were ferrying supplies back and forth from the mainland.

"I think at this point I perhaps need to reiterate why we had to retreat and hold ourselves in one place. Those bloody Zeds aren't like a normal enemy. They don't sleep, they don't need leadership, they don't seem to need water, they can do without food for God only knows how long. They are immune to heat, wind, gas, radiation (unless they are extraordinarily high levels), cold just freezes them in one spot until they thaw out and carry on. The only way to stop one is by damaging the brain; even though it doesn't seem to do anything other than make them move or look for food. If they lose a Zed, they carry on regardless, they don't have morale. If we lose a soldier, morale drops and you're quite likely to find yourself facing a reanimated corpse in soldier's clothing. Someone compared them to a cockroach, but one that breeds by feeding. They're not dissimilar, but thankfully you're less likely to find one in your dinner these days.

"It was the distress call we received that got the PM going and put us back on the offensive again. We'd all started getting a little complacent in some ways, we were fine, and we could just wait things out and hope that the damn things rotted away or just broke themselves by falling off cliffs or being pounded against the rocks. So we thought.

"The call came from Dinorwig, a hydroelectric dam in Wales. It's a unique place. During the day, water from massive reservoirs is allowed to drain down the hill into the turbines to generate electricity. During the night, and during periods of low demand, the turbines are used to pump the water back up to the reservoirs ready for the next day. Somehow, a small group of people had managed to seal themselves in and survive, keeping the place up and running despite the Zombies, using the power generated to electrify the perimeter fences. This kept the Zeds out but sealed them in. We only found out because they'd managed to slip a man out, on a bicycle of all things, who had found a radio at an abandoned airfield nearby. He'd contacted us, and from that call the PM decided we had a chance: a chance to start strategically re-taking areas of the mainland that would provide us with the resources we needed to re-take the rest. We knew there were survivors on some of the oil platforms in the north sea, we knew of survivors on some of the smaller outlying islands, particularly the more rocky and inaccessible ones to the west of Scotland. We knew we had a chance. We took it.

"A group of us were parachuted into Dinorwig to help re-supply, secure and assess the situation. We got there just in time. Although the Zeds in the area hadn't swarmed, there were still several thousand moaning around the perimeter, threatening to batter the fences by sheer press of numbers. The electricity was of such high voltage that it seemed to dissuade them from approaching, something to do with the massively high electromagnetic fields I understand, but the power station's systems were at breaking point after years of continual running and little maintenance.

"Several days of good hard machine gunning sorted the Zeds out, and army engineers quickly established perimeter breastworks that enabled long overdue maintenance to be carried out in and around the station. There were less than twenty people there, but they were very glad to see us.

"That was the start.

"We took back some of the oil rigs next and then the onshore pumping stations that brought the fuel to land. We had the small refinery on the Isle working and found an oil tanker at dock in Portsmouth Harbour. We now had another power source and huge amounts of fuel at our disposal. Various ammunition dumps around the coastal cities such as Portsmouth, Southampton and Plymouth were raided next and then we went fully on the offensive.

"All able-bodied men and women had been trained in warfare while we had been on the island and they were now thrown into full-scale offensive. We used the navy to drop us on the various islands around the mainland, clearing the Isle of Man, the Shetlands and the Orkney Isles, before tackling the smaller isles. Although we knew that the Zeds could re-take them at any time, it gave us good practice in dealing with them, allowed us to develop and hone techniques and it was a huge morale boost as we declared each little island clear. Occasionally we found pockets of survivors; sometimes just one die-hard loner who had managed to carve out an existence, sometimes a family or small group. All were offered a lift if they wanted it. Some even joined up on the spot.

"After that, we worked out a new strategy to take back the main island. We already had strategic and often heavily fortified beachheads set up around the island, and we were in contact with several known bastions of defence such as Balmoral, the tower of London, Dartmoor prison, St Michael's Mount, Dinorwig and various others. These suddenly became home to a multitude of soldiers. We started in Cornwall, expanding out in a hard and fast expeditionary force that swept through the towns, clearing each house one by one, as street by street, town by town, county by county, we cleared the UK of the Zeds.

"We were helped by the fact that very few Zeds seemed to come from the direction of America. The first UK spawned swarm as I mentioned, had headed out through the southeast and down through France. Later, a second swarm came from Ireland in the early years, devastating Wales and the Midlands before sweeping through to the east coast to hit the Netherlands and Germany. After that, the country was largely deserted but several large groups of several hundreds of thousands and many smaller ones still roamed around the UK, seemingly happy to chase down every dog, rabbit and chicken that was left behind.

"Most of what we had to deal with was isolated Zeds who had spent years locked in houses, cars, flats or even shops, only reanimating when they sensed our presence. We used dogs to track them down quite often, but sometimes all you had to do was walk around talking and the telltale moaning would start.

"Once we'd cleared Cornwall and Devon in the far southwest, we established defensive lines along rivers and roads and scouted ahead. The east of Devon is the point where the UK opens out into large areas of rolling hills and gentle countryside with large urban areas like Bristol and Gloucester. This was where things got difficult. We had to spread ourselves very thin for a while until some genius worked out that all we had to do was bring the Zeds to us. We knew that a large group of a hundred thousand or so was ahead of us on Salisbury Plain, so we sent in the tanks, led them moaning and groaning back to us and shot the hell out of them, using old infantry techniques like defensive squares, breastworks, sharpened stakes, and a rolling field of fire that built a wall of Zeds almost two miles long: Roman style warfare but with guns.

"After that, it was all shooting and digging. If I ever have to dig another grave, I think I'll jump in it myself. Once we'd cleared the biggest of the mainland swarms, we cleared Wales, Scotland and then worked down through the mainland clearing all the massive cities like Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester. We tackled London and the southeast last.

"We were worn out by the time we reached the capital. We thought we'd seen everything. We'd found places that had managed to survive for a little while before being wiped out by swarms, found the odd loner surviving in the wilderness, picked up families who'd been cut off from civilisation for years thinking they were the only ones left in the world. There were feral kids, packs of dogs, escaped zoo animals, all sorts.

"Some places welcomed us with open arms having managed to survive, some were very bitter asking us what the hell took so long, sadly though, in many cases we were just too late.

"Birmingham was the worst. We'd been edging carefully through the suburbs and had made good progress, marking each house as we cleared it, securing those we could and notifying the follow-up crews as to those we couldn't. We tried to make sure that all buildings were closed up, just to prevent any Zeds getting in. They were always harder to dig out of a house if they got themselves trapped, it was always much better to face them in the open.

"As we made it into the centre of the town, we heard a commotion and ignoring protocol, raced onwards. We got there just in time to see a twenty-thousand strong group of Zeds rip through an old museum. It was a massive, solid brick building, and a bunch of locals had managed to survive all that time, but had been simply overrun by a combination of the sheer numbers of the Zeds and the utter exhaustion of the defenders.

"We only managed to save two people: two, out of over three hundred men, women and children. The two we saved were a couple of teenagers who'd climbed out onto the roof, cold grey hands reaching up through the skylights for them. They were emaciated, sick and half dead with hunger and disease, but they were better off than the rest of the poor bastards who were ripped apart by the moaning horror that stalked the hallowed halls of the museum. Dear God, I'll never forget the smell of all that blood. A lot of us went a bit mad that day, blasting our way through the building in a fury at our timing, in guilt at our lateness, in horror at what we had to do. We had to put down about thirty people who'd become infected. Thankfully none of them were kids, they requested it, we obliged, but I still wake up at night to the sounds of gunfire roaring through my dreams, and the dull wet thuds of the falling dead.

"Did I say Birmingham was the worst? It was until we hit London. Other cities have some underground areas. London is different. Our capital city is mainly built on other bits of itself. The amount of cellars, disused train stations, sewers, closed over rivers and hidey holes. Shite, what a place. I think it took longer to clear out London than it did the whole of Wales.

"We still found little pockets of survivors even then: ones and twos, sometimes small groups, sometimes larger very well organised and self-sufficient groups. Several of these, unfortunately, hadn't survived on their own merits; they'd survived on the misery of others. As in any situation, there're always a few complete bastards who will rise to the top. There were gangs in some areas that controlled everything. Sure, they took care of the odd Zed who decided to strut through their territory, but when you heard stories about people's kids being thrown to captive Zeds one by one unless the rest of the group did what they were told, you sorta lost things a little. It really was Lord of the Flies time. These groups had evolved into a primal barbarity, survival of the fittest and biggest bastard.

"The Prime Minister had given us the authority to deal with criminal activity in the harshest possible way. We were the law, we enforced it. Once or twice, we enforced it hard. We had no prisons anymore and quite frankly we didn't have the inclination or time to mollycoddle felons. They were put down, ruthlessly. They were given one chance to surrender, that was it. Any sympathy we might've had was lost when they went on the offensive, obviously deciding that they had nothing to lose. They killed plenty of us.

"They knew the area intimately. They'd planted traps, built pitfalls, had a hell of a variety of weaponry they'd scavenged and had no fear. Hell, they even used captive Zeds, tying them up in tight areas, so that when you got inside a building, a Zed would be wrapping a loving pair of arms around you before you knew what the hell was going on. They used to rip out the vocal chords so that you didn't know they were there. Bastards. They had cunning and animal brutality, but we had guns, grenades, rocket launchers, and a good few tanks.

"We cleared them all out eventually, Zeds and gangs, then Britain was ours again.

"Sounds simple, doesn't it.

"It wasn't. We didn't have many people left. We had a massive coastline to try and keep secure, an infrastructure to run and maintain, and the detritus of many years of disrepair and damage to sort out. It's amazing what a couple of hundred thousand people can do though. We had power and we had fuel, those were important. Thankfully most of the communications network was intact or needed only minor repairs here and there to get things sorted. The army engineers and various useful civilians were running around like blue-arsed flies for months getting that sorted out.

"All of our "strategically required" people fanned out into the remaining communities and started re-training the masses in the basics. We had to grow food above all else. Disease was rife to start with, our carefully stored medicine cache was virtually gone and we started seeing deathly cases of Flu, Measles, Mumps, all the old eradicated things. That was the thing we couldn't control. Some statistics reckon that in the later years, disease killed almost as many people as the Zeds.

"An early warning perimeter was set up around the coasts to warn of Zeds, and patrols roamed the streets of the country along with volunteers to mop up the last few thousand Zeds. They still came moaning out of the woodwork every now and again.

"Once we felt secure in ourselves, we started helping more with the UN efforts. We cleared Ireland first. Those poor beggars really got crucified. The government had fallen into squabbling as the menace started and without leadership, the Irish had suffered badly. A few thousand hardy souls had survived in the same way as many of the rest of us had, but the bigger population centres with their overseas tourists bringing in the virus had been utterly destroyed.

"I loved Ireland as a lad, the peace and tranquillity of the countryside, the friendliness and joy of the people, and the pubs, oh by God the pubs. Dublin, Belfast, Cork. All of them were ghost towns. Only in the countryside, where people had had some warning and had been able to find high ground or some sort of fastness had they been able to survive. They were still proud, fighting people, but they had been utterly let down by the lack of preparedness of the government.

"The same could be said for most places on Earth I guess. Who the hell is prepared for a bunch of Zombies? Who is prepared for the moaning terror that gripped us so hard for so long? I know I wasn't.

"Once we'd done that, we rebuilt the UN from the few countries who'd stayed in touch and finally through the ultimate adversity, the United Nations does actually manage to use the word United in its true form.

"Together we stand, together we fight, and together we will triumph.

"Now, do you fancy another pint?"