Jesika Hendricks' 1st Interview

SAND LAKES PROVINCIAL WILDERNESS PARK, MANITOBA, CANADA

 [Jesika Hendricks gestures to the expanse of subarctic wasteland. The
natural beauty has been replaced by wreckage: abandoned vehicles,
debris, and human corpses remain partially frozen into the gray snow and
 ice. Originally from Waukesha, Wisconsin, the now naturalized Canadian
is part of this region’s Wilderness Restoration Project. Along with
several hundred other volunteers, she has come here every summer since
the end of official hostilities. Although WRP claims to have made
substantial progress, none can claim to see any end in sight.]

 I don’t blame them, the government, the people who were supposed to
protect us. Objectively, I guess I can understand. They couldn’t have
everyone following the army west behind the Rocky Mountains. How were
they going to feed all of us, how were they going to screen us, and how
could they ever hope to stop the armies of undead that almost certainly
would have been following us? I can understand why they would want to
divert as many refugees north as possible. What else could they do, stop
 us at the Rockies with armed troops, gas us like the Ukrainians? At
least if we went north, we might have a chance. Once the temperature
dropped and the undead froze, some us might be able to survive. That was
 happening all around the rest of the world, people fleeing north hoping
 to stay alive until winter came. No, I don’t blame them for wanting to
divert us, I can forgive that. But the irresponsible way they did it,
the lack of vital information that would have helped so many to stay
alive…that I can never forgive.

 It was August, two weeks after Yonkers and just three days after the
government had started withdrawing west. We hadn’t had too many
outbreaks in our neighborhood. I’d only seen one, a collection of six
feeding on a homeless man. The cops had put them down quickly. It
happened three blocks from our house and that was when my father decided
 to leave.

 We were in the living room; my father was learning how to load his new
rifle while Mom finished nailing up the windows. You couldn’t find a
channel with anything but zombie news, either live images, or recorded
footage from Yonkers. Looking back, I still can’t believe how
unprofessional the news media was. So much spin, so few hard facts. All
those digestible sound bites from an army of “experts” all contradicting
 one another, all trying to seem more “shocking” and “in depth” than the
 last one. It was all so confusing, nobody seemed to know what to do.
The only thing any of them could agree on was that all private citizens
should “go north.” Because the living dead freeze solid, extreme cold is
 our only hope. That’s all we heard. No more instructions on where to
head north, what to bring with us, how to survive, just that damn
catchphrase you’d hear from every talking head, or just crawling over
and over across the bottom of the TV. “Go north. Go north. Go north.”

 “That’s it,” Dad said, “we’re getting out of here tonight and heading
north.” He tried to sound determined, slapping his rifle. He’d never
touched a gun in his life. He was a gentleman in the most literal
sense—he was a gentle man. Short, bald, a pudgy face that turned red
when he laughed, he was the king of the bad jokes and cheesy one-liners.
 He always had something for you, a compliment or a smile, or a little
extension to my allowance that Mom wasn’t supposed to know about. He was
 the good cop in the family, he left all the big decisions to Mom.

 Now Mom tried to argue, tried to make him see reason. We lived above
the snowline, we had all we needed. Why trek into the unknown when we
could just stock up on supplies, continue to fortify the house, and just
 wait until the first fall frost? Dad wouldn’t hear it. We could be dead
 by the fall, we could be dead by next week! He was so caught up in the
Great Panic. He told us it would be like an extended camping trip. We’d
live on mooseburgers and wild berry desserts. He promised to teach me
how to fish and asked me what I wanted to name my pet rabbit when I
caught it. He’d lived in Waukesha his whole life. He’d never been
camping.

 [She shows me something in the ice, a collection of cracked DVDs.]

 This is what people brought with them: hair dryers, GameCubes, laptops
by the dozen. I don’t think they were stupid enough to think they could
use them. Maybe some did. I think most people were just afraid of losing
 them, that they’d come home after six months and find their homes
looted. We actually thought we were packing sensibly. Warm clothes,
cooking utensils, things from the medicine cabinet, and all the canned
food we could carry. It looked like enough food for a couple of years.
We finished half of it on the way up. That didn’t bother me. It was like
 an adventure, the trek north.

 All those stories you hear about the clogged roads and violence, that
wasn’t us. We were in the first wave. The only people ahead of us were
the Canadians, and most of them were already long gone. There was still a
 lot of traffic on the road, more cars than I’d ever seen, but it all
moved pretty quickly, and only really snarled in places like roadside
towns or parks.

 Parks?

 Parks, designated campgrounds, any place where people thought they’d
gone far enough. Dad used to look down on those people, calling them
shortsighted and irrational. He said that we were still way too close to
 population centers and the only way to really make it was to head as
far north as we could. Mom would always argue that it wasn’t their
fault, that most of them had simply run out of gas. “And whose fault is
that,” Dad would say. We had a lot of spare gas cans on the roof of the
minivan. Dad had been stocking up since the first days of the Panic.
We’d pass a lot of traffic snarls around roadside gas stations, most of
which already had these giant signs outside that said NO MORE GAS. Dad
drove by them really fast. He drove fast by a lot of things, the stalled
 cars that needed a jump, or hitchhikers who needed a ride. There were a
 lot of those, in some cases, walking in lines by the side of the road,
looking like the way you think refugees are supposed to look. Every now
and then a car would stop to pick up a couple, and suddenly everyone
wanted a ride. “See what they got themselves into?” That was Dad.

 We did pick up one woman, walking by herself and pulling one of those
wheeled airline bags. She looked pretty harmless, all alone in the rain.
 That’s probably why Mom made Dad stop to pick her up. Her name was
Patty, she was from Winnipeg. She didn’t tell us how she got out here
and we didn’t ask. She was really grateful and tried to give my parents
all the money she had. Mom wouldn’t let her and promised to take her as
far as we were going. She started crying, thanking us. I was proud of my
 parents for doing the right thing, until she sneezed and brought up a
handkerchief to blow her nose. Her left hand had been in her pocket
since we picked her up. We could see that it was wrapped in a cloth and
had a dark stain that looked like blood. She saw that we saw and
suddenly looked nervous. She told us not to worry and that she’d just
cut it by accident. Dad looked at Mom, and they both got very quiet.
They wouldn’t look at me, they didn’t say anything. That night I woke up
 when I heard the passenger door slam shut. I didn’t think it was
anything unusual. We were always stopping for bathroom breaks. They
always woke me up just in case I had to go, but this time I didn’t know
what had happened until the minivan was already moving. I looked around
for Patty, but she was gone. I asked my parents what had happened and
they told me she’d asked them to drop her off. I looked behind us and
thought I could just make her out, this little spec getting smaller each
 second. I thought she looked like she was running after us, but I was
so tired and confused I couldn’t be sure. I probably just didn’t want to
 know. I shut a lot out during that drive north.

 Like what?

 Like the other “hitchhikers,” the ones who didn’t run. There weren’t a
lot, remember, we’re talking about the first wave. We encountered half a
 dozen at most, wandering down the middle of the road, raising their
arms when we got close. Dad would weave around them and Mom would tell
me to get my head down. I never saw them too close. I had my face
against the seat and my eyes shut. I didn’t want to see them. I just
kept thinking about mooseburgers and wild berries. It was like heading
to the Promised Land. I knew once we headed far enough north, everything
 would be all right.

 For a little while it was. We had this great campsite right on the
shore of a lake, not too many people around, but just enough to make us
feel “safe,” you know, if any of the dead showed up. Everyone was real
friendly, this big, collective vibe of relief. It was kind of like a
party at first. There were these big cookouts every night, people all
throwing in what they’d hunted or fished, mostly fished. Some guys would
 throw dyn\*\*ite in the lake and there’d be this huge bang and all these
fish would come floating to the surface. I’ll never forget those sounds,
 the explosions or the chainsaws as people cut down trees, or the music
of car radios and instruments families had brought. We all sang around
the campfires at night, these giant bonfires of logs stacked up on one
another.

 That was when we still had trees, before the second and third waves
starting showing up, when people were down to burning leaves and stumps,
 then finally whatever they could get their hands on. The smell of
plastic and rubber got really bad, in your mouth, in your hair. By that
time the fish were all gone, and anything left for people to hunt. No
one seemed to worry. Everyone was counting on winter freezing the dead.

 But once the dead were frozen, how were you going to survive the winter?

 Good question. I don’t think most people thought that far ahead. Maybe
they figured that the “authorities” would come rescue us or that they
could just pack up and head home. I’m sure a lot of people didn’t think
about anything except the day in front of them, just grateful that they
were finally safe and confident that things would work themselves out.
“We’ll all be home before you know it,” people would say. “It’ll all be
over by Christmas.”

 [She draws my attention to another object in the ice, a Sponge-Bob SquarePants sleeping bag. It is small, and stained brown.]

 What do you think this is rated to, a heated bedroom at a sleepover
party? Okay, maybe they couldn’t get a proper bag—camping stores were
always the first bought out or knocked off—but you can’t believe how
ignorant some of these people were. A lot of them were from Sunbelt
states, some as far away as southern Mexico. You’d see people getting
into their sleeping bags with their boots on, not realizing that it was
cutting off their circulation. You’d see them drinking to get warm, not
realizing it was actually lowering their temperature by releasing more
body heat. You’d see them wearing these big heavy coats with nothing but
 a T-shirt underneath. They’d do something physical, overheat, take off
the coat. Their bodies’d be coated in sweat, a lot of cotton cloth
holding in the moisture. The breeze’d come up…a lot of people got sick
that first September. Cold and flu. They gave it to the rest of us.

 In the beginning everyone was friendly. We cooperated. We traded or
even bought what we needed from other families. Money was still worth
something. Everyone thought the banks would be reopening soon. Whenever
Mom and Dad would go looking for food, they’d always leave me with a
neighbor. I had this little survival radio, the kind you cranked for
power, so we could listen to the news every night. It was all stories of
 the pullout, army units leaving people stranded. We’d listen with our
road map of the United States, pointing to the cities and towns where
the reports were coming from. I’d sit on Dad’s lap. “See,” he’d say,
“they didn’t get out in time. They weren’t smart like us.” He’d try to
force a smile. For a little while, I thought he was right.

 But after the first month, when the food started running out, and the
days got colder and darker, people started getting mean. There were no
more communal fires, no more cookouts or singing. The camp became a
mess, nobody picking up their trash anymore. A couple times I stepped in
 human shit. Nobody was even bothering to bury it.

 I wasn’t left alone with neighbors anymore, my parents didn’t trust
anyone. Things got dangerous, you’d see a lot of fights. I saw two women
 wrestling over a fur coat, tore it right down the middle. I saw one guy
 catching another guy trying to steal some stuff out of his car and beat
 his head in with a tire iron. A lot of it took place at night,
scuffling and shouts. Every now and then you’d hear a gunshot, and
somebody crying. One time we heard someone moving outside the makeshift
tent we’d draped over the minivan. Mom told me to put my head down and
cover my ears. Dad went outside. Through my hands I heard shouts. Dad’s
gun went off. Someone screamed. Dad came back in, his face was white. I
never asked him what happened.

 The only time anyone ever came together was when one of the dead showed
 up. These were the ones who’d followed the third wave, coming alone or
in small packs. It happened every couple of days. Someone would sound an
 alarm and everyone would rally to take them out. And then, as soon as
it was over, we’d all turn on each other again.

 When it got cold enough to freeze the lake, when the last of the dead
stopped showing up, a lot of people thought it was safe enough to try to
 walk home.

 Walk? Not drive?

 No more gas. They’d used it all up for cooking fuel or just to keep
their car heaters running. Every day there’d be these groups of
half-starved, ragged wretches, all loaded down with all this useless
stuff they’d brought with them, all with this look of desperate hope on
their faces.

 “Where do they think they’re going?” Dad would say. “Don’t they know
that it hasn’t gotten cold enough farther south? Don’t they know what’s
still waiting for them back there?” He was convinced that if we just
held out long enough, sooner or later things would get better. That was
in October, when I still looked like a human being.

 [We come upon a collection of bones, too many to count. They lie in a pit, half covered in ice.]

 I was a pretty heavy kid. I never played sports, I lived on fast food
and snacks. I was only a little bit thinner when we arrived in August.
By November, I was like a skeleton. Mom and Dad didn’t look much better.
 Dad’s tummy was gone, Mom had these narrow cheekbones. They were
fighting a lot, fighting about everything. That scared me more than
anything. They’d never raised their voices at home. They were
schoolteachers, “progressives.” There might have been a tense, quiet
dinner every now and then, but nothing like this. They went for each
other every chance they had. One time, around Thanksgiving…I couldn’t
get out of my sleeping bag. My belly was swollen and I had these sores
on my mouth and nose. There was this smell coming from the neighbor’s
RV. They were cooking something, meat, it smelled really good. Mom and
Dad were outside arguing. Mom said “it” was the only way. I didn’t know
what “it” was. She said “it” wasn’t “that bad” because the neighbors,
not us, had been the ones to actually “do it.” Dad said that we weren’t
going to stoop to that level and that Mom should be ashamed of herself.
Mom really laid into Dad, screeching that it was all his fault that we
were here, that I was dying. Mom told him that a real man would know
what to do. She called him a wimp and said he wanted us to die so then
he could run away and live like the “faggot” she always knew he was. Dad
 told her to shut the f\*\*k up. Dad never swore. I heard something, a
crack from outside. Mom came back in, holding a clump of snow over her
right eye. Dad followed her. He didn’t say anything. He had this look on
 his face I’d never seen before, like he was a different person. He
grabbed my survival radio, the one people’d try to buy…or steal, for a
long time, and went back out toward the RV. He came back ten minutes
later, without the radio but with a big bucket of this steaming hot
stew. It was so good! Mom told me not to eat too fast. She fed me in
little spoonfuls. She looked relieved. She was crying a little. Dad
still had that look. The look I had myself in a few months, when Mom and
 Dad both got sick and I had to feed them.

 [I kneel to examine the bone pile. They have all been broken, the marrow extracted.]

 Winter really hit us in early December. The snow was over our heads,
literally, mountains of it, thick and gray from the pollution. The camp
got silent. No more fights, no more shooting. By Christmas Day there was
 plenty of food.

 [She holds up what looks like a miniature femur. It has been scraped clean by a knife.]

 They say eleven million people died that winter, and that’s just in
North America. That doesn’t count the other places: Greenland, Iceland,
Scandinavia. I don’t want to think about Siberia, all those refugees
from southern China, the ones from Japan who’d never been outside a
city, and all those poor people from India. That was the first Gray
Winter, when the filth in the sky started changing the weather. They say
 that a part of that filth, I don’t know how much, was ash from human
remains.

 [She plants a marker above the pit.]

 It took a lot of time, but eventually the sun did come out, the weather
 began to warm, the snow finally began to melt. By mid-July, spring was
finally here, and so were the living dead.

 [One of the other team members calls us over. A zombie is half buried,
frozen from the waist down in the ice. The head, arms, and upper torso
are very much alive, thrashing and moaning, and trying to claw toward
us.]

 Why do they come back after freezing? All human cells contain water,
right? And when that water freezes, it expands and bursts the cell
walls. That’s why you can’t just freeze people in suspended animation,
so then why does it work for the living dead?

 [The zombie makes one great lunge in our direction; its frozen lower
torso begins to snap. Jesika raises her weapon, a long iron crowbar, and
 casually smashes the creature’s skull.]