[Norway boasted a rather small population of 6 million people at the outbreak of WWZ. It lost a minimum of 35% of its population in the years the infection lasted. However, given the odds, it fared far better than one would expect. This was mainly due to a swift mobilization of extensive armed forces and continuous public information radio broadcasts from its relocated capital Reykjavik on Svalbard. The nation, now part of the federal Scandinavian states, has regained some sort of normalcy and has re-imposed the rule of law, giving criminals harsh prison sentences. Ms. Johnson is one of an exceedingly small group of LaMOE’s who survived in the rural part of Norway’s western coast. She has been given life for murder, theft and avoiding military duty when the country was at war.]

Tell me about the first time after you learned of the zombie threat.

I knew about it earlier than most, found out about the time reports started flooding out of China. I had good contacts you see, my uncle was the director of a university hospital, and I knew a couple guys in the king’s personal guard from way back. That type of people. [Ms. Johansen opens the pack of Marlboro lights she requested for doing the interview and lights a cigarette]   

I was almost done with my military service at the time [red. military service continued being mandatory in most northern European countries much longer than in the US, and has been extended from 1 to 3 years in Scandinavia in the wake of the infection] and immediately started planning my escape. As a fully trained marine I would have been one of the first to come in contact with the Ghouls and as little as I even then cared for life, I preferred the idea of staying dead once it had ended.

Did you inform your officers of what you knew?

No. I’m sure they had been informed much the same way as I, and if they found someone of my ranking knew security would immediately have been tightened to stop any attempts of doing what I did. They couldn’t have taken it seriously though, there was a new threat to civilization every year at that time and we were all pretty jaded by then. Besides, we were vaccinated for every single virus known to man and no one felt particularly threatened by yet another. What I did do though, was call my mother. She ran a decently sized tourist hotel on the innermost banks of a fjord and would be even more at risk than I, with all the tourist passing through every day. Besides, she could accumulate much larger stocks of tinned food than most others were capable of.

Of course, being my mother she didn’t take my warning particularly seriously – but she told the head chef to stock up anyways. I think she told him prices were to rise massively soon, and they were already struggling to balance the budgets. He accepted her explanation. I guess she just figured tinned food would be usable even if I was just being my paranoid self.

[Johansen rests her head in both hands and laughs]

Haven’t had a cigarette in years, it’s making me as woozy as when I was 15. I stayed as long as I dared at the base, didn’t want them to have the resources to go after me.

[Another cigarette is lit]

What finally prompted you to leave?

I kept close watch of the alternative news, blogs and newspapers no one took seriously. Then, in the course of a single week three things happened. Firstly, I found some hint that there had been an outbreak at the tri-national border we share with Finland and Russia. Four days later I stumbled upon a far more credible source reporting that something similar to what was going on in China had happened in the south of Germany. At this point I started making the final preparations. When one of the guys I mentioned, in the guard, managed to send me a coded message saying Svalbard I knew it was time to leave.

Svalbard?

It was where it was decided the important bastards would go. The government, the royal family, some professors and historians with families. They were prioritizing keeping the government and our cultural history safe in a worst case scenario. Besides, there is a seed bank up there. I figure they were planning to bomb, or nuke the entirety of Scandinavia if this got out of hand and then return some decades on and be able to re introduce the local flora. Anyways, that was when I got going.

My fiancé and I, and a couple of our more level headed acquaintances we’d let in on it, all got ourselves posted as guards that night. Beforehand we’d packed up one of the older trucks with some boxes of field rations and parked it outside the western gates. Around 3 am, right in the middle of a round, we buggered off. A guy called Lars and I had emptied a storage bunker we were supposed to be guarding earlier that night, taking all the ammo we could carry for our standard issue AG-3 rifles, in addition to a box of grenades, and packing it into the back of the truck.

Did you go straight to your home town after this?

Yeah, pretty much. We took some detours, in case they were following us, but it appears they didn’t. Two days after the zombie treat was official and every able bodied person under 44 who’d had their training were rounded up to patrol the borders. We have a damn large border to square mile ratio you know. Not to mention the coastline.

Tell me about what happened when you arrived home.

[She looks away at this point, teary eyed] They were everywhere. The Zack’s. A tourist off a cruise ship, Spanish I think – it was our main market at the time – had gotten sick on the boat and been shipped off to see a local doctor. We got that much out of one dying kid, mauled by a Quisling. By the time we got there the place was crawling with them. No one really had guns you see, only a couple of farmers had rifles and they had barricaded themselves on their farms outside town. So we drove as close and high as we dared and then shot them down. First we aimed for their hearts, but when that proved ineffective we started blasting their heads off – for lack of a better expression. A couple of the guys were good shooters, and I’m not half bad myself so we hit most of them within a shot or two. Still, it felt like we were shooting for hours. I’m pretty sure I shot almost every person that ever cared about me that day. [A third cigarette is lit and she stares intently at me, as if challenging me to intervene in her smoking]

Your sister survived though?

She was at one of the local farms, visiting a friend. I only found her days later though, as we were making rounds to look for survivors. They didn’t want to give her up, claiming she would be safer with them. I explained how much better provided for I was than them to try to convince them to let me take her. Then they suddenly changed attitude and tried pressuring me for supplies in exchange for them not killing her. [She laughs, almost manically] Know what I did? Shot them. Said I was going back to fill the truck with food and ammo for them, climbed into the top of a tree while the guys kept watch for any new infected and shot them, long range. Every single adult on the farm. I only spared the dog and their son.

..

That was a week and a half or so after the infection had become official.  Two days after that scores of new ones started appearing, probably running inland from the likely eradicated costal towns. So we decided to get on water. As far as we’d been able to gather, the zombies couldn’t swim, but they didn’t seem to mind walking the ocean floors either so we decided getting out on deep enough water was the safest option. All the four guys: Lars, Christian, Markus and Dan – my fiancé – wanted to get to sea so we could fish for sustenance if going to land for extra supplies was too dangerous. I felt we should get a bit further inland. I knew the area, having grown up there, and about half an hour’s drive into a valley there is a rather large and surprisingly deep lake. It has never been an abundant place for fishing, but the water was fresh – and most importantly clean.  I won them over. We were more likely to die from lack of water than food, and they knew it.


Would you be able to estimate an approximate date for when this happened?

[She stubs her cigarette and asks for coffee] It must have been the first or second week of September. It was getting darker by the day, and the nights were pitch black. It made getting off land even more urgent, you can see the zombies much earlier than you can hear them. They were able to get too close for comfort.

Where did you get the boat?

An old man had a boat for transporting the lazier of the tourists up and down the valley, the road was too narrow to drive a bus up you see.  Made pretty good money off it. We drove up there, truck stacked with supplies to try to buy him out of the boat, or at least share it with him.

You were obviously successful.

No, Markus shot him. Old man had an axe, chopped any stray Zack’s head off I guess, and tried threatening us. By then we were all so numb and weary from lack of sleep and constant anxiousness that not one of us questioned it. Not even the kids cried, they just sat in the back of the truck with hollow faces.

We took the boat out to what was supposed to be the deepest part of the lake and slept there that night. We never relaxed completely though, still unsure whether any infected ones could reach us. It was a good sanctuary though [a rare smile, she refills her cup], the lake was deep and the mountains around it high. The following days we took turns driving the truck down to the hotel to get supplies. Everything we did was in pairs, someone had to have your back or you’d be the next one renamed Zack. We didn’t know much about the infected, it took months before Dan got the radio to work, and even then what we learned was piecemeal and unreliable.

One day we were restocking the boat though, sometime the first spring after, a pair of Zack’s managed to get close enough to Christian. We got them both, but Markus had to shoot Chris as well. The look in his eyes when we were back out on that lake was the most disconcerting thing I saw in all my survivalist years. They were void of any human emotion. He didn’t say a word for weeks, then suddenly one day he was gone. Probably tried drowning himself, Christian was like a brother to him. They took care of each other.  

When I think of the way Chris died it’s almost funny now. The Zack bit him right in the neck, vampire style [another of her manic laughs]. When the shock had subsided I couldn’t quite get over how the zombie seemed to have confused which one of my nightmares we were in.

You stayed on the boat all four years your region was infected?

Almost five actually, my region was one of the first to be retaken, but they didn’t venture into our valley for months after retaking the area.

In your report it says that upon being found by a military group the first thing you did was put a rifle to your fiancé’s back and kill him. Why would you do such a thing upon your apparent salvation?

Dan was a man, and like all men he wanted physical comfort when under pressure, I did not. So when I didn’t comply he took what he wanted. No one ever tried to stop him, after a while even I stopped struggling. I would have shot him after the first time hadn’t we needed him, with both Markus and Chris gone we were already short on people to keep guard and we couldn’t afford to lose another one. Not when the kids were so young, Lisa was only six during the Great Panic.

He raped you so you shot him?

You have a problem with that? [she lights a fourth cigarette]

Not really.

Well I think it’s time for you to say thank you for your time and leave me in peace now. They don’t like me having too much fun in a day. You could always risk me liking it here.

Do you?

Free food, armed guards and bars thick enough to keep even Zack’s out. What do you think? Now about the thank you for your time part.

.. Thank you for your time Ms. Johansen

Why you’re very welcome. [She leans closer, smirking] Remember to bring me another pack in the morning Doc. I’ll tell you more.