The first zombie, Patient Zero, was admitted to a hospital in Topeka, Kansas suffering from severe respiratory failure. He died three days later. Thirteen minutes after his death, when he reanimated, there were ninety-seven additional cases throughout North America. Seventeen hours, twenty-one zombies, and seven hundred eighty-nine cases later, the US president declared martial law and restricted travel to and from every major US city. It was already too late. In truth, there was nothing that could have been done to stop the world-wide plague.
By the time it was determined the pathogen was spread by pollen, 1.3 billion people had died. Binding the bodies of the recently deceased and burning them en masse delayed the zombie apocalypse for a short period, however, once the living fell below a critical mass, free roaming zombies were inevitable.
A small percentage of humans, the few remaining survivors, were effectively immune; only the bite of a zombie could infect them. At first, survival was all about foraging. Population collapse was slow enough that looting and hoarding were widespread. It was quick enough that there were vast stockpiles available for the taking; you just had to find them.
Lack of modern medical care was the biggest threat to the living. Zombies were just too slow and fragile to pose much of a danger. A slow-moving SUV with four wheel drive was sufficient to take out a herd of zombies. You just needed to knock one down and crush a few bones to render it harmless. Wild animals, carrion eaters, and slow decay would eventually clean up what was left.
Within a year, outdoor zombie sightings became a rarity. Any remains that had not been burned were washed into the sewers of the cities or absorbed back into the earth. The survivors, however, would soon learn a horrifying truth about the undead.
They weren’t just zombies, they were seedpods.
