World War Z

And you didn’t know if it would work?

We knew it would work against rabies, and that’s what they said it was, right, just some weird strain of jungle rabies.

Who said that?

You know, “they,” like, the UN or the… somebody. That’s what everyone ended up calling it, right, “African rabies.”

Was it ever tested on an actual victim?

Why? People used to take flu shots all the time, never knowing if it was for the right strain. Why was this any different*

But the damage…

Who thought it was going to go that far? You know how many disease scares there used to be. Jesus, you’d think the Black Death was sweeping the globe every three months or so… ebola, SARS, avian flu. You know how many people made money on those scares? Shit, I made my first million on useless antiradiation pills during the dirty bomb scares.

But if someone discovered. . .

Discovered what? We never lied, you understand? They told us it was rabies, so we made a vaccine for rabies. We said it had been tested in Europe, and the drugs it was based on had been tested in Europe. Technically, we never lied. Technically, we never did anything wrong.

But if someone discovered that it wasn’t rabies. . .

Who was going to blow the whistle? The medical profession? We made sure it was a prescription drug so doctors stood just as much to lose as us. Who else? The FDA who let it pass? The congressmen who all voted for its acceptance? The surgeon general? The White House? This was a win-win situation! Everyone got to be heroes, everyone got to make money. Six months after Phalanx hit the market, you started getting all these cheaper, knockoff brands, all solid sellers as well as the other ancillary stuff like home air purifiers.

But the virus wasn’t airborne.

It didn’t matter! It still had the same brand name! “From the Makers of. . .” All I had to say was “May Prevent Some Viral Infections.” That was it! Now I understand why it used to be illegal to shout fire in a crowded theater. People weren’t going to say “Hey, I don’t smell smoke, is there really a fire,” no, they say “Holy shit, there’s a fire! RUN!” [Laughs.] I made money on home purifiers, car purifiers; my biggest seller was this little doodad you wore around your neck when you got on a plane! I don’t know it it even filtered ragweed, but it sold.

Things got so good, I started setting up these dummy companies, you know, with plans to build manufacturing facilities all over the country. The shares from these dumbos sold almost as much as the real stuff. It wasn’t even the idea of safety anymore, it was the idea of the idea of safety! Remember when we started to get our first cases here in the States, that guy in Florida who said he’d been bitten but survived because he was taking Phalanx? OH! [He stands, mimes the act of frantic fornication.] God freakin’ bless that dumbass, whoever he was.

But that wasn’t because of Phalanx. Your drug didn’t protect people at all.

It protected them from their fears. That’s all I was selling. Hell, because of Phalanx, the biomed sector started to recover, which, in turn, jump-started the stock market, which then gave the impression of a recovery, which then restored consumer confidence to stimulate an actual recovery! Phalanx hands down ended the recession! I … I ended the recession!

And then? When the outbreaks became more serious, and the press finally reported that there was no wonder drug?

Pre-fucking-cisely! That’s the alpha cunt who should be shot, what’s her name, who first broke that story! Look what she did! Pulled the tuckin’ rug right out from under us all! She caused the spiral! She caused the Great Panic!

And you take no personal responsibility?

For what? For making a little fuckin’ cash… well, not a little [giggles]. All I did was what any of us are ever supposed to do. I chased my dream, and I got my slice. You wa

Amarillo, Texas, USA

[Grover Carlson works as a fuel collector for the town’s experimental bioconversion plant. The fuel he collects is dung. I follow the former White House chief of staff as he pushes his wheelbarrow across the pie-laden pastures.]

Of course we got our copy of the Knight-Wamjews report, what do you think we are, the CIA? We read it three months before the Israelis went public. Before the Pentagon started making noise, it was my job to personally brief the president, who in turn even devoted an entire meeting to discussing its message.

Which was?

Drop everything, focus all our efforts, typical alarmist crap. We got dozens of these reports a week, every administration did, all of them claiming that their particular boogeyman was “the greatest threat to human existence.” C’mon! Can you imagine what America would have been like if the federal government slammed on the brakes every time some paranoid crackpot cried “wolf” or “global warming” or “living dead”? Please. What we did, what every president since Washington has done, was provide a measured, appropriate response, in direct relation to a realistic threat assessment.

And that was the Alpha teams.

Among others things. Given how low a priority the national security adviser thought this was, I think we actually gave it some pretty healthy table time. We produced an educational video for state and local law enforcement about what to do in case of an outbreak. The Department of Health and Human Services had a page on its website for how citizens should respond to infected family members. And hey, what about pushing Phalanx right through the FDA?

But Phalanx didn’t work.

Yeah, and do you know how long it would have taken to invent one that did? Look how much time and money had been put into cancer research, or AIDS. Do you want to be the man who tells the American people that he’s diverting funds from either one of those for some new disease that most people haven’t even heard of? Look at what we’ve put into research during and after the war, and we still don’t have a cure or a vaccine. We knew Phalanx was a placebo, and we were grateful for it. It calmed people down and let us do our job.

What, you would have rather we told people the truth? That it wasn’t a new strain of rabies but a mysterious uber-plague that reanimated the dead? Can you imagine the panic that would have happened: the protest, the riots, the billions in damage to private property? Can you imagine all those wet’pants senators who would have brought the government to a standstill so they could railroad some high-profile and ultimately useless “Zombie Protection Act” through Congress? Can you imagine the damage it would have done to that administration’s political capital? We’re talking about an election year, and a damn hard, uphill fight. We were the “cleanup crew,” the unlucky bastards who had to mop up all the shit left by the last administration, and believe me, the previous eight years had piled up one tall mountain of shit! The only reason we squeaked back into power was because our new propped-up patsy kept promising a “return to peace and prosperity.” The American people wouldn’t have settled for anything less. They thought they’d been through some pretty tough times already, and it would have been political suicide to tell them that the toughest ones were actually up ahead.