AFTERMATH

"I never heard of this," I admit.

"Not surprising," Mr. M grumbles. "You never heard of our cooperation on the Missouri River Dams. You never heard of the formal protest. It doesn't surprise me that your government suppressed the details of our secession. Tell me, was it legal?"

"I don't know," I confess. "I'm no lawyer, but I obviously work with several who specialize in treaty matters. I'll investigate this after..." I realize that I'm about to say something awkward.

"After I've been executed?" Mr. M displays a sympathetic smile. "Believe it or not, I would like you to do so. I won't be around but it might open a few eyes, might make some of those left behind realize that our decisions weren't the decisions of tyrant wannabes or some such. We had valid reasons for doing what we did."

"But why declare independence?" The major interjects. "Why set yourselves up like that? You had to know that there would be consequences!"

"There were already consequences," the prisoner retorts. "And we wanted everything out in the open and honest. Trust me, there were plenty of arguments after the Native Elder made his declaration but at the end of it all, the vast majority of us realized that your government didn't view us as valuable as its own population. Where did that leave us once your great offensive started?"

"I don't understand," I confess. "Did you think things would be less violent because you openly declared hostilities? Even with this legal maneuver, you had to have known it would mean war!"

"War isn't the worst thing," he retorts. "It's terrible, but not the worst!"

"Then what is the worst?" The major asks.

"Subjugation, manipulation," Mr. M informs him. "Being lied to and coerced into doing the tyrant's will. We came to the conclusion that if we fought, at least we'd do someone some good. The government had lied to us and treated us as some sort of 'not quite good enough' for years. What would they have done to us once they re-established their rule?"

"I still don't understand," I repeat. "What did you think would happen to you? You would have been safe, behind the advancing offensive."

"Would we have been?" Mr. M snaps back. "The government lied to us and set us up! Let's say for a moment that we would have simply re-integrated. I can just about imagine how things would have worked out. The military would have probably incorporated our defense force into its offensive. I wonder who would have gotten the suicide missions. We had the largest productive agricultural area east of the Rockies. I wonder how much of that output would have been taxed if food ran low in the safe zone. Put bluntly, the government screwed us over from a distance, so what would have happened to us once you were in full, undiluted charge of us?"

"But you would have been citizens!" I insist. "In an elected government, you don't maintain power by exploiting the voters!"

"But what if you can keep the voters from knowing that they're being exploited?" He responds, in a calm, practiced tone. "We ran through this argument over and over. In the end, we came to the conclusion that if you were willing to exploit and manipulate us when we were off on our own, you'd have a much easier time when you were in charge of our travel and communications. I explained how we figured out that you were diverting the hordes towards us. Now, if the commanders had been your agents...if the refugee administrators had been your agents...if the radio station operators had been your agents...we never would have figured it out. In the end, we realized that our lives weren't worth as much as yours...at least to you...so we'd be better off not giving you authority over us."

"But you still must have known that the military situation was hopeless," the major interrupts. Again, I'm grateful for his different perspective. "You weren't a bunch of fools, you knew that you didn't have the numbers, equipment or logistics to win."

"Of course we knew," Mr. M replies. "What we miscalculated was how much political doctrine overrode humanity, at least from your government's point of view."

Both myself and the major gesture for him to continue.

"The plan was never to defeat you," he says, weariness flowing through his every word. "The plan was to make it too expensive, too time-consuming, for you to crush us. You had a nation to conquer, why would you waste time and resources on a speck of mountains, some fifty by 100 miles in size? The goal was to convince you that we weren't worth the effort to defeat us."

"But what about after the war?" I insist. "Surely you knew that if the great offensive bypassed you, we would be back after liberating the continent."

"Of course we knew," he shrugs. "We were hoping you still wouldn't think we were worth the effort. We knew we would never be completely free of your influence. We were only hoping for some degree of self-determination. Our hope was that our agricultural produce wouldn't be confiscated, our timber clear-cut and dragged off, our young people conscripted and sacrificed to save yours. We didn't realize how much an independent area within your borders would gnaw at the mind of your President...your government. The whole thought that an established area wouldn't leap at the opportunity to rejoin your righteous cause, that the area would even resist you, must have driven the political fundamentalists absolutely up the wall. I can just about picture how they must have rationalized the entire scenario; We're the ultimate good guys, selflessly serving the needs of humanity. These other guys aren't enthusiastically joining us...how can this be? The only two possible explanations are that we aren't the legitimate representatives of the human race, or they must be completely evil. Well, it isn't possible that we're anything other than selfless, righteous servants of the greater good, so it must be all their fault. Those nasty folks out there must be short-sighted, selfish, sexist, racist, homophobic...oh, and they're probably illiterate religious fundamentalists as well. "

"Of course, you must have figured that you couldn't just let us be, because our belief system might spread," he continues, now showing grim humor on his face. "And what does that say about your attitude towards your own population? We're the scum of the Earth, but somehow you're concerned that other folks might start thinking the same way we were?"

"I wasn't privy to the decision to attack your settlement," I inform him. "However, I will admit that the justification we presented to our population was somewhat...extreme."

"Extreme?" The prisoner is struggling to keep from laughing. In fact, his suppressed laughter forces his forehead to the table. His shoulders heave for a few seconds before he can sit upright again and continue. "Your soldiers seemed shocked that we weren't naked, unwashed and married to our sisters!"

"I'll admit that a lot of the justification we gave our men was pure bullshit," the major now interrupts. "But it doesn't justify some of the actions you took."

"What are you talking about?" the prisoner asks.

"Using arrows, contaminated with zombie flesh," the major snarls. "Making pots of stew, contaminated with the Solanum virus, then acting like you fled before eating. Do you know how many of my troops I had to euthanize because they were infected?"

"Probably about the same number of mine I saw die from napalm, artillery and other weapons we couldn't counter," the prisoner counters, with his voice even. "You used what you had, we used what we had. The only difference between us is that your side won. The only question I have is this, was it worth it?"

"My presence here should indicate that we don't think so," I point out. "The court hearings detailed our losses in minute detail."

"I'm not talking about just what you lost during the fighting," he corrects me. "How much time did you waste pacifying the Black Hills?"

"You know as well as I do that it took roughly three months."

"Not what I'm talking about," he counters.

"Then what?"

"How much did it delay your advance eastwards? Look, you're not a military planner, so you probably aren't looking at all the details. Let's put it this way, I know that your forces used something like an understrength battalion of tanks when they pacified the Black Hills. Now, how many does that mean running on a typical day, fifty?"

"Close enough," the major says, for my benefit.

"How much fuel does a tank consume during a day of moving and fighting, five hundred gallons?"

"More," the major says. "But it's a good number to use for calculations.

"Okay, fifty tanks, each using using five hundred gallons of diesel a day, that's twenty-five thousand gallons of fuel, each day. Add to this the fuel and manpower it took to transport the fuel and other material to the battle zone. How much did this consumption delay your push east?"

"I don't understand," I confess. "The push east was done on foot."

"Sure," he smirks at me. "You gathered your forces west of the Rockies, loaded everyone up with the food, medicine, ammunition and other gear needed for four years of fighting, and marched them east."

"What the prisoner is trying to say," the major interrupts, in a more respectful tone. "Is that while the soldiers marched on foot, that advance was dependent upon constant supply from the production centers in the safe zone. Food, ammunition, medicine, replacement weapons and uniforms and other equipment had to be constantly shipped to the fighting front. The battle in the Black Hills halted the advance for several months while we diverted resources to the rebel area. The advance remained halted during the fighting, as we could barely maintain the advanced troops in a passive stance while we fought the rebellion. After this, there was another two months delay while we built up the local stockpiles needed to maintain the advance. Even after all of this, our advance was slowed while we recruited and trained manpower to replace those we lost fighting the rebels."

"And how many loyalists, caught in the gray zone, died while waiting for you?" Mr. M's voice doesn't sound triumphant, merely sad. "How many holdout areas succumbed to starvation, disease, despair or simply being overrun? THAT'S what we were hoping you would consider; how many would die away from the fighting, due to the delays. Our hope was that you'd see the moral need to rescue those areas that were counting on you and bypass our little corner of the world. Afterwards, being tired from the fighting, you'd be reluctant to start another war and grant us some autonomy. I guess political dogma carried more weight in your administration than morality...or even simple mathematics."

He squirms in his seat again.

"From a strictly military standpoint, it was a blunder," the major states, directing his comment more towards me than towards the prisoner. "It isn't my place to assign relative value to the political gains."

"Well, now you know the truth," the prisoner concludes. "It's up to you to analyze the data and decide what to do. If I can provide any input, it wasn't that you directed the hordes against us that caused us to revolt. It wasn't even the fact that you didn't let us know ahead of time. What caused us to revolt was your actions after we found out. You acted like we were supposed to support your decision, despite the fact that we had no input in the decision. In a way, you could call that a case of taxation without representation...you folks decided how to utilize the resources...our lives, labor and material...without any input from us, then expected us to accept it."

"It was the popular government's decision," I point out. "So didn't that make it your duty to comply?"

"That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends," he quotes. "It is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government. I won't bother saying the rest, but you should get the idea."

"I grasp the idea," I admit. "But I don't know the source."

"The Declaration of Independence." The major informs me.

"A major reason this nation came into being was taxation without representation," the prisoner says. "I guess you could say we experienced something similar. The tax you levied was the effort it took to eliminate the hordes. We expended effort, resources and lives and we had no say in the decision to do so. We knew that we couldn't beat you in a fight; but we felt that pretending nothing had happened was worse than the fight. I guess there's no way of knowing if it really was."

"Do you have anything else to say, before we conclude this interview?" I ask.

"Only this," he states. "You could have rescued the situation if you had only acted with a little contrition when we discovered the truth. National level politicians seem to think that loyalty is a commodity they own, not something they must earn or maintain. You had our loyalty when the crisis began, but you threw it away when you betrayed us and made no effort to regain it. If you encounter similar situations in the future, remember that those in the isolated zones are really humans...not property to be ordered and used."

"I'll convey this to my superiors," I offer.

"Very well," the prisoner squirms one last time and stands, offering me his hand. "We won't see each other again in this world," he says. "Believe it or not, I wish you well."

"It would be a poor joke for me to offer you the same," I reply, shaking his hand. "But I hope your remaining time is as peaceful as it can be."

"Fair enough," he offers me a tight nod and smile, before the guards escort him away for the final time.

Mr. President, it may interest you to know that when the prisoner was squirming in his seat, he was removing a small lever on his chair, one that is used to control the chair's height. He secreted this small lever in his clothing when he left and used it that night to open an artery in his neck; meeting his fate on his own terms. The prisoner's body was cremated and the ashes disposed of at a secret location.

-FINIS-

Authors Notes:

Dear reader, I thank you for taking the time to reach the end of this little tale of mine. I would like to take this opportunity to explain my stance.

In the book, World War Z, the author brought up the concept of the Redeker Plan...in which a nation's vital personnel would be evacuated to a relatively safe zone while certain "holdout" regions were supported and encouraged to hold on, thereby sheltering the safe zone as it reorganized and prepared. I'll admit to wondering how a resident of such a holdout area would react when liberated...finding out that he/she was somehow not valuable enough to be evacuated to the "safe" area, but useful enough to serve as a shield to those who were. I also wondered how the "vital" personnel would react when confronted with the fact that their "not quite so vital" counterparts had figured it all out. Would the vital elites act with contrition, arrogance...or something in between? Throw in the fact that I've been a resident of the Black Hills for over two decades, as well as a lifetime resident of flyover country, and the inspiration to write this little tale should be understandable.

I also admit to being more than a little annoyed at certain passages in the companion book, "The Zombie Survival Guide". In particular, those paragraphs in the "Reported Outbreaks" chapter that showed rural residents being unable to cope with the zombie menace. During my childhood in a small town in flyover country, most residents were able to consistently shoot flying pheasants and running jackrabbits; most would walk several miles, for fun, to hunt; most had at least a rudimentary ability to maintain property, structures and vehicles. What I'm trying to say is that the urban resident tends to not give the rural resident, with his seemingly antiquated, rural institutions, enough credit.

In the end, World War Z isn't so much about zombies as it is about people. How would the individual react when faced with the impossible? Would you refuse to believe it was happening? Would you stubbornly try to maintain the life you had always known? Would you just give up? Would you take advantage of the situation for your own gain? Would you try to adapt to your new reality? And, more importantly, would you be able to tell the difference between the six choices I just listed?

That said, I hope you enjoyed my tale and if you wish to discuss my points of view, or anything else about this little jaunt through my imagination, please feel free to drop me a PM.

Best wishes to all

daccu65.