Xu Zhicai's Interview

Xu Zhicai's Interview is about the Pacific Continent and Chinese Civil War.

## Interview Transcript

**Patriot's Memorial, The Forbidden City, Beijing, China**

 **[I suspect Admiral Xu Zhicai has chosen this particular spot on the off chance that a photographer would be present. Although no one since the war has ever remotely questioned either his or his crew’s patriotism, he is taking no chances for the eyes of “foreign readers.” Initially defensive, he consents to this interview only on the condition that I listen objectively to “his” side of the story, a demand he clings to even after I explain that there is no other.]**

 **[Note: For the sake of clarity, Western naval designations have replaced the authentic Chinese.]**

 We were not traitors - I say this before I’ll say anything else. We love
 our country, we loved our people, and while we may not have loved those who ruled both, we were unwaveringly loyal to our leadership.

 We never would have imagined doing what we did had not the situation become so desperate. By the time Captain Chen first voiced his proposal, we were already on the brink. They were in every city, every village. In the nine and a half million square kilometers that made up our country, you couldn’t find one centimeter of peace.

 The army, arrogant bastards that they were, kept insisting that they
had the problem under control, that every day was the turning point and
before the next snow fell upon the earth they would have the entire
country pacified. Typical army thinking: overaggressive, overconfident.
All you need is a group of men, or women, give them matching clothes, a
few hours training, something that passes for a weapon, and you have an
army, not the best army, but still an army nonetheless.

 That can’t happen with the navy, any navy. Any ship, no matter how
crude, requires considerable energy and materials to create. The army
can replace its cannon fodder in hours; for us, it might take years.
This tends to make us more pragmatic than our compatriots in green. We
tend to look at a situation with a bit more…I don’t want to say caution,
 but perhaps more strategic conservatism. Withdraw, consolidate, husband
 your resources. That was the same philosophy as the Redeker Plan, but
of course, the army wouldn’t listen.

 They rejected Redeker?

 Without the slightest consideration or internal debate. How could the
army ever lose? With their vast stockpiles of conventional armaments,
with their “bottomless well” of manpower…“bottomless well,”
unforgivable. Do you know why we had such a population explosion during
the 1950s? Because Mao believed it was the only way to win a nuclear
war. This is truth, not propaganda. It was common knowledge that when
the atomic dust eventually settled, only a few thousand American or
Soviet survivors would be overwhelmed by tens of millions of Chinese.
Numbers, that was the philosophy of my grandparents’ generation, and it
was the strategy the army was quick to adopt once our experienced,
professional troops were devoured in the outbreak’s early stages. Those
generals, sick, twisted old criminals sitting safely in their bunker and
 ordering wave after wave of conscripted teenagers into battle. Did they
 even think that every dead soldier was now a live zombie? Did they ever
 realize that, instead of drowning them in our bottomless well, we were
the ones drowning, choking to death as the most populous nation on Earth
 found itself, for the first time in history, in danger of becoming
fatally outnumbered?

 That was what pushed Captain Chen over the edge. He knew what would
happen if the war continued along its course, and what our chances for
survival would be. If he thought that there was any hope, he would have
grabbed a rifle and hurled himself at the living dead. He was convinced
that soon there would be no more Chinese people, and perhaps,
eventually, no more people anywhere. That was why he made his intentions
 known to his senior officers, declaring that we might be the only
chance of preserving something of our civilization.

 Did you agree with his proposal?

 I didn’t even believe it at first. Escape in our boat, our nuclear
submarine? This wasn’t just desertion, slinking out in the middle of a
war to save our own pathetic skins. This was stealing one of the
motherland’s most valuable national assets. The Admiral Zheng He was
only one of three ballistic missiles subs and the newest of what the
West referred to as the Type 94. She was the child of four parents:
Russian assistance, black-market technology, the fruits of anti-American
 espionage, and, let us not forget, the culmination of nearly five
thousand years of continuous Chinese history. She was the most
expensive, the most advanced, the most powerful machine our nation had
ever constructed. To simply steal her, like a lifeboat from the sinking
ship of China, was inconceivable. It was only Captain Chen’s force of
personality, his deep, fanatical patriotism that convinced me of our
only alternative.

 How long did it take to prepare?

 Three months. It was hell. Qingdao, our home port, was in a constant
state of siege. More and more army units were called in to maintain
order, and each was just a little less trained, a little less equipped, a
 little younger, or older, than the one that came before it. Some of the
 surface ship captains had to donate “expendable” crew to shore up base
defenses. Our perimeter was under attack almost every day. And through
all of this we had to prepare and provision the boat for sea. It was
supposed to be a routinely scheduled patrol; we had to smuggle on board
both emergency supplies and family members.

 Family members?

 Oh yes, that was the cornerstone of the plan. Captain Chen knew the
crew wouldn’t leave port unless their families could come with them.

 How was that possible?

 To find them or to smuggle them aboard?

 Both.

 Finding them was difficult. Most of us had family scattered throughout
the country. We did our best to communicate with them, get a phone line
working or send word with an army unit headed in that direction. The
message was always the same: we’d be heading back out on patrol soon and
 their presence was required at the ceremony. Sometimes we’d try to make
 it more urgent, as if someone was dying and needed to see them. That
was the best we could do. No one was allowed to go out and physically
get them: too risky. We didn’t have multiple crews like you do on your
missile boats. Every rating would be missed at sea. I pitied my
shipmates, the agony of their waiting. I was lucky that my wife and
children…

 Children? I thought…

 That we were only allowed one child? That law was modified years before
 the war, a practical solution to the problem of an imbalanced nation of
 only-child sons. I had twin daughters. I was lucky. My wife and
children were already on base when the trouble started.

 What about the captain? Did he have family?

 His wife had left him in the early eighties. It was a devastating
scandal, especially in those days. It still astounds me how he managed
to both salvage his career and raise his son.

 He had a son? Did he come with you?

 [Xu evades the question.]

 The worst part for many others was the waiting, knowing that even if
they managed to make it to Qingdao, there was a very good chance that we
 might have already sailed. Imagine the guilt. You ask your family to
come to you, perhaps leave the relative safety of their preexisting
hideout, and arrive only to be abandoned at the dock.

 Did many of them show up?

 More than one would have guessed. We smuggled them aboard at night,
wearing uniforms. Some—children and the elderly—were carried in supply
crates.

 Did the families know what was happening? What you were intending to do?

 I don’t believe so. Every member of our crew had strict orders to keep
silent. Had the MSS even had a whiff of what we were up to, the living
dead would have been the least of our fears. Our secrecy also forced us
to depart according to our routine patrol schedule. Captain Chen wanted
so badly to wait for stragglers, family members who might be perhaps
only a few days, a few hours, away! He knew it might have jeopardized
everything, however, and reluctantly gave the order to cast off. He
tried to hide his feelings and I think, in front of most, he might have
gotten away with it. I could see it in his eyes though, reflecting the
receding fires of Qingdao.

 Where were you headed?

 First to our assigned patrol sector, just so everything would initially seem normal. After that, no one knew.

 A new home, at least for the time being, was out of the question. By
this point the blight had spread to every corner of the planet. No
neutral country, no matter how remote, could guarantee our safety.

 What about coming over to our side, America, or another Western country?

 [He flashes a cold, hard stare.]

 Would you? The Zheng carried sixteen JL-2 ballistic missiles; all but
one carried four multiple reentry warheads, with a ninety-kiloton yield.
 That made her equivalent to one of the strongest nations in the world,
enough power to murder entire cities with just the turn of a key. Would
you turn that power over to another country, the one country up until
that point that had used nuclear weapons in anger? Again, and for the
last time, we were not traitors. No matter how criminally insane our
leadership might have been, we were still Chinese sailors.

 So you were alone.

 All alone. No home, no friends, no safe harbor no matter how harsh the
storm. The Admiral Zheng He was our entire universe: heaven, earth, sun,
 and moon.

 That must have been very difficult.

 The first few months passed as though it was merely a regular patrol.
Missile subs are designed to hide, and that’s what we did. Deep and
silent. We weren’t sure if our own attack subs were out looking for us.
In all probability our government had other worries. Still, regular
battle drills were conducted and the civilians trained in the art of
noise discipline. The chief of the boat even rigged special
soundproofing for the mess hall so it could be both a schoolroom and
play area for the children. The children, especially the younger ones,
had no idea what was happening. Many of them had even traveled with
their families across infested areas, some barely escaping with their
lives. All they knew was that the monsters were gone, banished to their
occasional nightmares. They were safe now, and that’s all that mattered.
 I guess that is how we all felt those first few months. We were alive,
we were together, we were safe. Given what was happening to the rest of
the planet, what more could we want?

 Did you have some way of monitoring the crisis?

 Not immediately. Our goal was stealth, avoiding both commercial
shipping lanes and submarine patrol sectors…ours, and yours. We
speculated, though. How fast was it spreading? Which countries were the
most affected? Was anyone using the nuclear option? If so, that would be
 the end for all of us. In a radiated planet, the walking dead might be
the only creatures left “alive.” We weren’t sure what high doses of
radiation would do to a zombie’s brain. Would it eventually kill them,
riddling their gray matter with multiple, expanding tumors? That would
be the case for a regular human brain, but since the living dead
contradicted every other law of nature, why should this reaction be any
different? Some nights in the wardroom, speaking in low voices over our
off-duty tea, we conjured images of zombies as fast as cheetahs, as
agile as apes, zombies with mutated brains that grew and throbbed and
burst from the confines of their skulls. Lieutenant Commander Song, our
reactor officer, had brought aboard his watercolors and had painted the
scene of a city in ruins. He tried to say that it wasn’t any city in
particular but we all recognized the twisted remains of the Pudong
skyline. Song had grown up in Shanghai. The broken horizon glowed a dull
 magenta against the pitch-black sky of nuclear winter. A rain of ash
peppered the islands of debris that rose from lakes of melted glass.
Snaking through the center of this apocalyptic backdrop was a river, a
greenish-brown snake that rose up into a head of a thousand
interconnected bodies: cracked skin, exposed brain, flesh dripping from
bony arms that reached out from openmouthed faces with red, glowing
eyes. I don’t know when Commander Song began his project, only that he
secretly unveiled it to a few of us after our third month at sea. He
never intended to show it to Captain Chen. He knew better. But someone
must have talked and the Old Man soon put a stop to it.

 Song was ordered to paint over his work with something cheerful, a
summer sunset over Lake Dian. He then followed up with several more
“positive” murals on any space of exposed bulkhead. Captain Chen also
ordered a halt to all off-duty speculation. “Detrimental to the morale
of the crew.” I think it pushed him, though, to reestablish some
semblance of contact with the outside world.

 Semblance as in active communication, or passive surveillance?

 The latter. He knew Song’s painting and our apocalyptic discussions
were the result of our long-term isolation. The only way to quell any
further “dangerous thought” was to replace speculation with hard facts.
We’d been in total blackout for almost a hundred days and nights. We
needed to know what was happening, even if it was as dark and hopeless
as Song’s painting.

 Up until this point, our sonar officer and his team were the only ones
with any knowledge of the world beyond our hull. These men listened to
the sea: the currents, the “biologics” such as fish and whales, and the
distant thrashing of nearby propellers. I said before that our course
had taken us to the most remote recesses of the world’s oceans. We had
intentionally chosen areas where no ship would normally be detected.
Over the previous months, however, Liu’s team had been collecting an
increasing number of random contacts. Thousands of ships were now
crowding the surface, many of them with signatures that did not match
our computer archive.

 The captain ordered the boat to periscope depth. The ESM mast went up
and was flooded with hundreds of radar signatures; the radio mast
suffered a similar deluge. Finally the scopes, both the search and main
attack periscopes, broke the surface. It’s not like you see in the
movies, a man flipping down the handles and staring through a telescopic
 eyepiece. These scopes don’t penetrate the inner hull. Each one is a
video camera with its signal relayed to monitors throughout the boat. We
 couldn’t believe what we were seeing. It was as if humanity was putting
 everything they had to sea. We spotted tankers, freighters, cruise
ships. We saw tugboats towing barges, we saw hydrofoils, garbage scows,
bottom dredgers, and all of this within the first hour.

 Over the next few weeks, we observed dozens of military vessels, too,
any of which could have probably detected us, but none of which seemed
to care. You know the USS Saratoga? We saw her, being towed across the
South Atlantic, her flight deck now a tent city. We saw a ship that had
to be HMS Victory, plying the waves under a forest of improvised sails.
We saw the Aurora, the actual World War I–era heavy cruiser whose mutiny
 had sparked the Bolshevik Revolution. I don’t know how they got her out
 of Saint Petersburg, or how they found enough coal to keep her boilers
lit.

 There were so many beat-up hulks that should have been retired years
ago: skiffs, ferries, and lighters that had spent their careers on quiet
 lakes or inland rivers, coastal crafts that should have never left the
harbor for which they’d been designed. We saw a floating dry dock the
size of an overturned skyscraper, her deck now stuffed with construction
 scaffolding that served as makeshift apartments. She was drifting
aimlessly, no tug or support vessel in sight. I don’t know how those
people survived, or even if they survived. There were a lot of drifting
ships, their fuel bunkers dry, no way to generate power.

 We saw many small private boats, yachts, and cabin cruisers that had
lashed themselves together to form giant directionless rafts. We saw
many purpose-built rafts as well, made from logs or tires.

 We even came across a nautical shantytown constructed atop hundreds of
garbage bags filled with Styrofoam packing peanuts. It reminded us all
of the “Ping-Pong Navy,” the refugees who, during the Cultural
Revolution, had tried to float to Hong Kong on sacks filled with
Ping-Pong balls.

 We pitied these people, pitied what could only be their hopeless fate.
To be adrift in the middle of the ocean, and prey to hunger, thirst,
sunstroke, or the sea herself…Commander Song called it “humanity’s great
 regression.” “We came from the sea,” he would say, “and now we’re
running back.” Running was an accurate term. These people clearly hadn’t
 put any thought into what they would do once they reached the “safety”
of the waves. They just figured it was better than being torn apart back
 on land. In their panic they probably didn’t realize they were just
prolonging the inevitable.

 Did you ever try to help them? Give them food or water, maybe tow them…

 To where? Even if we had some idea where the safe ports might have
been, the captain wouldn’t dare take the risk of detection. We didn’t
know who had a radio, who might be listening to that signal. We still
didn’t know if we were a hunted boat. And there was another danger: the
immediate threat of the undead. We saw a lot of infested ships, some
where the crews were still fighting for their lives, some where the dead
 were the only crew left. One time off Dakar, Senegal, we came across a
forty-five-thousand-ton luxury liner called the Nordic Empress. Our
search scope’s optics were powerful enough to see every bloody handprint
 smeared on the ballroom’s windows, every fly that settled on the deck’s
 bones and flesh. Zombies were falling into the ocean, one every couple
of minutes. They would see something in the distance, a low-flying
aircraft, I think, or even the feather of our scope, and try to reach
for it. It gave me an idea. If we surfaced a few hundred meters away,
and did everything we could to lure them over the side, we might be able
 to clear the ship without firing a shot. Who knows what the refugees
might have brought aboard with them? The Nordic Empress might turn out
to be a floating replenishment depot. I presented my proposal to the
master at arms and together we approached the captain.

 What did he say?

 “Absolutely not.” There was no way of knowing how many zombies were
onboard the dead liner. Even worse, he motioned to the video screen and
pointed to some of the zombies falling overboard. “Look,” he said, “not
all of them are sinking.” He was right. Some had reanimated wearing life
 jackets, while others were beginning to bloat up with decomposition
gases. That was the first time I had ever seen a floating ghoul. I
should have realized then that they would become a common occurrence.
Even if 10 percent of the refugee ships were infested, that was still 10
 percent of several hundred thousand vessels. There were millions of
zombies falling randomly into the sea, or else pouring in by the
hundreds when one of those old hulks capsized in rough weather. After a
storm, they would blanket the surface to the horizon, rising waves of
bobbing heads and flailing arms. Once we raised the search scope and
were confronted with this distorted, greenish-gray haze. At first we
thought it was an optical malfunction, as if we’d hit some floating
debris, but then the attack scope confirmed that we’d speared one of
them right under the rib cage. And it was still struggling, probably
even after we lowered the scope. If ever something brought the threat
home…

 But you were underwater? How could they…

 If we surfaced and one was caught on deck, or on the bridge. The first
time I cracked the hatch, a fetid, waterlogged claw darted in and had me
 by the sleeve. I lost my footing, fell onto the lookout below me, and
landed on the deck with the severed arm still clamped to my uniform.
Above me, silhouetted in the bright disc of the open hatch, I could see
the arm’s owner. I reached for my sidearm, fired straight up without
thinking. We were showered in bone and bits of brain. We were lucky…if
any of us had had any kind of open wound…I deserved the reprimand I got,
 although I deserved worse. From that point on, we always did a thorough
 scope sweep after surfacing. I would say that, at least one in every
three instances, a few of them were crawling about on the hull.

 Those were the observation days, when all we did was look and listen to
 the world around us. Besides the scopes we could monitor both civilian
radio traffic and even some satellite television broadcasts. It wasn’t a
 pretty picture. Cities were dying, whole countries. We listened to the
last report from Buenos Aires, the evacuation of the Japanese home
islands, too. We heard sketchy information about mutinies in the Russian
 military. We heard after reports of the “limited nuclear exchange”
between Iran and Pakistan, and we marveled, morbidly, at how we had been
 so sure that either you, or the Russians, would be the ones to turn the
 key. There were no reports from China, no illegal or even official
government broadcasts. We were still detecting naval transmissions, but
all the codes had been shifted since our departure. While this presented
 something of a personal threat—we didn’t know if our fleet had orders
to hunt down and sink us—at least it proved our whole nation hadn’t
disappeared into the stomachs of the undead. At this point in our exile
any news was welcome.

 Food was becoming an issue, not immediately, but soon enough to begin
considering options. Medicine was a bigger problem; both our
Western-style drugs and various traditional herb remedies were beginning
 to run low because of the civilians. Many of them had special medical
needs.

 Mrs. Pei, the mother of one of our torpedo men, was suffering from
chronic bronchial problems, an allergic reaction to something on the
boat, the paint or perhaps machine oil, something you couldn’t simply
remove from the environment. She was consuming our decongestants at an
alarming rate. Lieutenant Chin, the boat’s weapons officer suggested,
matter-of-factly, that the old woman be euthanized. The captain
responded by confining him to quarters, for a week, on half-rations,
with all but the most life-threatening sickness to go untreated by the
boat’s pharmacist. Chin was a coldhearted bastard, but at least his
suggestion brought our options into the light. We had to prolong our
supply of consumables, if not find a way of recycling them altogether.

 Raiding derelicts was still strictly forbidden. Even when we spotted
what looked like a deserted vessel, at least a few zombies could be
heard banging belowdecks. Fishing was a possibility, but we had neither
the material to rig any kind of net, nor were we willing to spend hours
on the surface dropping hooks and lines over the side.

 The solution came from the civilians, not the crew. Some of them had
been farmers or herbalists before the crisis, and a few had brought
little bags of seeds. If we could provide them with the necessary
equipment, they might be able to start raising enough food to stretch
our existing provisions for years. It was an audacious plan, but not
completely without merit. The missile room was certainly large enough
for a garden. Pots and troughs could be hammered out of existing
materials, and the ultraviolet lamps we used for the crew’s vitamin D
treatment could serve as artificial sunlight.

 The only problem was soil. None of us knew anything about hydroponics,
aeroponics, or any other alternate agricultural method. We needed earth,
 and there was only one way to get it. The captain had to consider this
carefully. Trying to deploy a shore party was as dangerous as, if not
more than, attempting to board an infested ship. Before the war, more
than half of all human civilization lived at or near the world’s
coastlines. The infestation only increased this number as refugees
sought to flee by water.

 We began our search off the mid-Atlantic coast of South America, from
Georgetown, Guyana, then down the coasts of Surinam, and French Guyana.
We found several stretches of uninhabited jungle, and at least by
periscope observation, the coast appeared to be clear. We surfaced and
made a second, visual sweep from the bridge. Again, nothing. I requested
 permission to take a landing party ashore. The captain was not yet
convinced. He ordered the foghorn blown…loud and long…and then they
came.

 Just a few at first, tattered, wide-eyed, stumbling out of the jungle.
They didn’t seem to notice the shoreline, the waves knocking them over,
pushing them back up on the beach or pulling them out to sea. One was
dashed against a rock, his chest crushed, broken ribs stabbing through
the flesh. Black foam shot from his mouth as he howled at us, still
trying to walk, to crawl, in our direction. More came, a dozen at a
time; within minutes we had over a hundred plunging into the surf. This
was the case everywhere we surfaced. All those refugees who’d been too
unlucky to make it to the open ocean now formed a lethal barrier along
every stretch of coastline we visited.

 Did you ever try to land a shore party?

 [Shakes his head.] Too dangerous, even worse than the infested ships.
We decided that our only choice was to find soil on an offshore island.

 But you must have known what was happening on the world’s islands.

 You would be surprised. After leaving our Pacific patrol station, we
restricted our movements to either the Atlantic or the Indian Ocean.
We’d heard transmissions or made visual observations of many of those
specks of land. We learned about the overcrowding, the violence…we saw
the gun flashes from the Windward Islands. That night, on the surface,
we could smell the smoke as it drifted east from the Caribbean. We could
 also hear islands that weren’t so lucky. The Cape Verdes, off the coast
 of Senegal, we didn’t even see them before we heard the wails. Too many
 refugees, too little discipline; it only takes one infected soul. How
many islands remained quarantined after the war? How many frozen,
northern rocks are still deeply and dangerously in the white?

 Returning to the Pacific was our most likely option, but that would also bring us right back up to our country’s front door.

 Again, we still did not know if the Chinese navy was hunting us or even
 if there was still a Chinese navy. All we knew was that we needed
stores and that we craved direct contact with other human beings. It
took some time to convince the captain. The last thing he wanted was a
confrontation with our navy.

 He was still loyal to the government?

 Yes. And then there was…a personal matter.

 Personal? Why?

 [He skirts the question.]

 Have you ever been to Manihi?

 [I shake my head.]

 You couldn’t ask for a more ideal image of a prewar tropical paradise.
Flat, palm-covered islands or “motus” form a ring around a shallow,
crystal-clear lagoon. It used to be one of the few places on Earth where
 they cultured authentic black pearls. I had bought a pair for my wife
when we visited Tuamotus for our honeymoon, so my firsthand knowledge
made this atoll the most likely destination.

 Manihi had changed utterly since I was a newly married ensign. The
pearls were gone, the oysters were eaten, and the lagoon was crowded
with hundreds of small, private boats. The motus themselves were paved
with either tents or ramshackle huts. Dozens of improvised canoes either
 sailed or rowed back and forth between the outer reef and the dozen or
so large ships that were anchored in deeper water. The whole scene was
typical of what, I guess, postwar historians are now calling “the
Pacific Continent,” the refugee island culture that stretched from Palau
 to French Polynesia. It was a new society, a new nation, refugees from
all over the world uniting under the common flag of survival.

 How did you integrate yourself into that society?

 Through trade. Trade was the central pillar of the Pacific Continent.
If your boat had a large distillery, you sold fresh water. If it had a
machine shop, you became a mechanic. The Madrid Spirit, a liquefied
natural gas carrier, sold its cargo off for cooking fuel. That was what
gave Mister Song his idea for our “market niche.” He was Commander
Song’s father, a hedge-fund broker from Shenzhen. He came up with the
idea of running floating power lines into the lagoon and leasing the
electricity from our reactor.

 [He smiles.]

 We became millionaires, or…at least the barter equivalent: food,
medicine, any spare part we needed or the raw materials to manufacture
them. We got our greenhouse, along with a miniature waste recovery plant
 to turn our own night soil into valuable fertilizer. We “bought”
equipment for a gymnasium, a full wet bar, and home entertainment
systems for both the enlisted mess and wardroom. The children were
lavished with toys and candy, whatever was left, and most importantly,
continuing education from several of the barges that had been converted
into international schools. We were welcomed into any home, onto any
boat. Our enlisted men, and even some of the officers, were given free
credit on any one of the five “comfort” boats anchored in the lagoon.
And why not? We lit up their nights, we powered their machinery. We
brought back long forgotten luxuries like air conditioners and
refrigerators. We brought computers back online and gave most of them
the first hot shower they’d had in months. We were so successful that
the island council even allowed us a reprieve, although we politely
refused, from taking part in the island’s perimeter security.

 Against seaborne zombies?

 They were always a danger. Every night they would wander up onto the
motus or try to drag themselves up the anchor line of a low-lying boat.
Part of the “citizenship dues” for staying at Manihi was to help patrol
the beaches and boats for zombies.

 You mentioned anchor lines. Aren’t zombies poor climbers?

 Not when water counteracts gravity. Most of them only have to follow an
 anchor chain up to the surface. If that chain leads to a boat whose
deck is only centimeters above the water line…there were at least as
many lagoon as beach attacks. Nights were always worse. That was another
 reason we were so welcome. We could take back the darkness, both above
and below the surface. It is a chilling sight to point a flashlight at
the water and see the bluish-green outline of a zombie crawling up an
anchor line.

 Wouldn’t the light tend to attract even more of them?

 Yes, definitely. Night attacks almost doubled once mariners began
leaving their lights on. The civilians never complained though, and
neither did the island’s council. I think that most people would rather
face the light of a real enemy than the darkness of their imagined
fears.

 How long did you stay in Manihi?

 Several months. I don’t know if you would call them the best months of
our lives, but at the time it certainly felt that way. We began to let
our guard down, to stop thinking of ourselves as fugitives. There were
even some Chinese families, not Diaspora or Taiwanese, but real citizens
 of the People’s Republic. They told us that the situation had gotten so
 bad that the government was barely keeping the country together. They
couldn’t see how, when over half the population was infected and the
army’s reserves were continuing to evaporate, they had the time or
assets to devote any energy to find one lost sub. For a little while, it
 looked as if we could make this small island community our home, reside
 here until the end of the crisis or, perhaps, the end of the world.

 [He looks up at the monument above us, built on the very spot where,
supposedly, the last zombie in Beijing had been destroyed.]

 Song and I had shore patrol duty, the night it happened. We’d stopped
by a campfire to listen to the islanders’ radio. There was some
broadcast about a mysterious natural disaster in China. No one knew what
 it was yet, and there were more than enough rumors to keep us guessing.
 I was looking at the radio, my back to the lagoon, when the sea in
front of me suddenly began to glow. I turned just in time to see the
Madrid Spirit explode. I don’t know how much natural gas she still
carried, but the fireball skyrocketed high into the night, expanding and
 incinerating all life on the two closest motus. My first thought was
“accident,” a corroded valve, a careless deckhand. Commander Song had
been looking right at it though, and he’d seen the streak of the
missile. A half second later, the Admiral Zheng’s foghorn sounded.

 As we raced back to the boat, my wall of calm, my sense of security,
came crashing down around me. I knew that missile had come from one of
our subs. The only reason it had hit the Madrid was because she sat much
 higher in water, presenting a larger radar outline. How many had been
aboard? How many were on those motus? I suddenly realized that every
second we stayed put the civilian islanders in danger of another attack.
 Captain Chen must have been thinking the same thing. As we reached the
deck, the orders to cast off were sounded from the bridge. Power lines
were cut, heads counted, hatches dogged. We set course for open water
and dived at battle stations.

 At ninety meters we deployed our towed array sonar and immediately
detected hull popping noises of another sub changing depth. Not the
flexible “pop-groooaaan-pop” of steel but the quick “pop-pop-pop” of
brittle titanium. Only two countries in the world used titanium hulls in
 their attack boats: the Russian Federation and us. The blade count
confirmed it was ours, a new Type 95 hunter-killers. Two were in service
 by the time we left port. We couldn’t tell which one.

 Was that important?

 [Again, he does not answer.]

 At first, the captain wouldn’t fight. He chose to bottom the boat, set
her down on a sandy plateau at the bare limit of our crush depth. The
Type 95 began banging away with its active sonar array. The sound pulses
 echoed through the water, but couldn’t get a fix on us because of the
ocean floor. The 95 switched to a passive search, listening with its
powerful hydrophone array for any noise we made. We reduced the reactor
to a marginal output, shut down all unnecessary machinery, and ceased
all crew movement within the boat. Because passive sonar doesn’t send
out any signals, there was no way of knowing where the 95 was, or even
if it was still around. We tried to listen for her propeller, but she’d
gone as silent as us. We waited for half an hour, not moving, barely
breathing.

 I was standing by the sonar shack, my eyes on the overhead, when
Lieutenant Liu tapped me on the shoulder. He had something on our
hull-mounted array, not the other sub, something closer, all around us. I
 plugged in a pair of headphones and heard a scraping noise, like
scratching rats. I silently motioned for the captain to listen. We
couldn’t make it out. It wasn’t bottom flow, the current was too mild
for that. If it was sea life, crabs or some other biologic contact,
there would have to be thousands of them. I began to suspect something…I
 requested a scope observation, knowing the transient noise might alert
our hunter. The captain agreed. We gritted our teeth as the tube slid
upward. Then, the image.

 Zombies, hundreds of them, were swarming over the hull. More were
arriving each second, stumbling across the barren sand, climbing over
each other to claw, scrape, actually bite the Zheng’s steel.

 Could they have gotten in? Opened a hatch or…

 No, all hatches are sealed from the inside and torpedo tubes are
protected by external bow caps. What concerned us, however, was the
reactor. It was cooled by circulating seawater. The intakes, although
not large enough for a man to fit through, can easily be blocked by one.
 Sure enough, one of our warning lights began to silently flash over the
 number four intake. One of them had ripped the guard off and was now
thoroughly lodged in the conduit. The reactor’s core temperature began
to rise. To shut it down would leave us powerless. Captain Chen decided
that we had to move.

 We lifted off the bottom, trying to be as slow and quiet as possible.
It wasn’t enough. We began to detect the sound of the 95’s propeller.
She’d heard us and was moving in to attack. We heard her torpedo tubes
being flooded, and the click of her outer doors opening. Captain Chen
ordered our own sonar to “go active,” pinging our exact location but
giving us a perfect firing solution on the 95.

 We fired at the same time. Our torpedoes passed each other, as both
subs tried to get away. The 95 was a little bit faster, a little more
maneuverable, but the one thing they didn’t have was our captain. He
knew exactly how to avoid the oncoming “fish,” and we ducked them easily
 right about the time our own found their targets.

 We heard the 95’s hull screech like a dying whale, bulkheads collapsing
 as compartments imploded one after the other. They tell you it happens
too fast for the crew to know; either the shock of the pressure change
renders them unconscious or the explosion can actually cause the air to
ignite. The crew dies quickly, painlessly, at least, that’s what we
hoped. One thing that wasn’t painless was to watch the light behind my
captain’s eyes die with the sounds of the doomed sub.

 [He anticipates my next question, clenching his fist and exhaling hard through his nose.]

 Captain Chen raised his son alone, raised him to be a good sailor, to
love and serve the state, to never question orders, and to be the finest
 officer the Chinese navy had ever seen. The happiest day of his life
was when Commander Chen Zhi Xiao received his first command, a brand-new
 Type 95 hunter-killer.

 The kind that attacked you?

 [Nods.] That was why Captain Chen would have done anything to avoid our
 fleet. That was why it was so important to know which sub had attacked
us. To know is always better, no matter what the answer might be. He had
 already betrayed his oath, betrayed his homeland, and now to believe
that that betrayal might have led him to murder his own son…

 The next morning when Captain Chen did not appear for first watch, I
went to his cabin to check on him. The lights were dim, I called his
name. To my relief, he answered, but when he stepped into the light…his
hair had lost its color, as white as prewar snow. His skin was sallow,
his eyes sunken. He was truly an old man now, broken, withered. The
monsters that rose from the dead, they are nothing compared to the ones
we carry in our hearts.

 From that day on, we ceased all contact with the outside world. We
headed for the arctic ice, the farthest, darkest, most desolate void we
could find. We tried to continue with our day-to-day life: maintaining
the boat; growing food; schooling, raising, and comforting our children
as best we could. With the captain’s spirit gone, so went the spirit of
the Admiral Zheng’s crew. I was the only one who ever saw him during
those days. I delivered his meals, collected his laundry, briefed him
daily on the condition of the boat, then relayed his orders to the rest
of the crew. It was routine, day in, day out.

 Our monotony was only broken one day when sonar detected the
approaching signature of another 95-class attack sub. We went to battle
stations, and for the first time we saw Captain Chen leave his cabin. He
 took his place in the attack center, ordered a firing solution plotted,
 and tubes one and two loaded. Sonar reported that the enemy sub had not
 responded in kind. Captain Chen saw this as our advantage. There was no
 questioning in his mind this time. This enemy would die before it
fired. Just before he gave the order, we detected a signal on the
“gertrude,” the American term for an underwater telephone. It was
Commander Chen, the captain’s son, proclaiming peaceful intentions and
requesting that we stand down from GQ. He told us about the Three Gorges
 Dam, the source of all the “natural disaster” rumors we’d heard about
in Manihi. He explained that our battle with the other 95 had been part
of a civil war that the dam’s destruction had sparked. The sub that
attacked us had been part of the loyalist forces. Commander Chen had
sided with the rebels. His mission was to find us and escort us home. I
thought the cheer was going to carry us right to the surface. As we
broke through the ice and the two crews ran to each other under the
arctic twilight, I thought, finally, we can go home, we can reclaim our
country and drive out the living dead. Finally, it’s over.

 But it wasn’t.

 There was still one last duty to perform. The Politburo, those hated
old men who had caused so much misery already, were still holed up in
their leadership bunker in Xilinhot, still controlling at least half of
our country’s dwindling ground forces. They would never surrender,
everyone knew this; they would keep their mad hold on power, squandering
 what was left of our military. If the civil war dragged on any longer,
the only beings left in China would be the living dead.

 And you decided to end the fighting.

 We were the only ones who could. Our land-based silos were overrun, our
 air force was grounded, our two other missile boats had been caught
still tied to the piers, waiting for orders like good sailors as the
dead swarmed through their hatches. Commander Chen informed us that we
were the only nuclear asset left in the rebellion’s arsenal. Every
second we delayed wasted a hundred more lives, a hundred more bullets
that could be thrown against the undead.

 So you fired on your homeland, in order to save it.

 One last burden to shoulder. The captain must have noticed me shaking
the moment before we launched. “My order,” he declared, “my
responsibility.” The missile carried a single, massive, multi-megaton
warhead. It was a prototype warhead, designed to penetrate the hardened
surface of your NORAD facility in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado.
Ironically, the Politburo’s bunker had been designed to emulate Cheyenne
 Mountain in almost every detail. As we prepared to get under way,
Commander Chen informed us that Xilinhot had taken a direct hit. As we
slid beneath the surface, we heard that the loyalist forces had
surrendered and reunified with the rebels to fight the real enemy.

 Did you know they had begun instituting their own version of the South African Plan?

 We heard the day we emerged from under the ice pack. That morning I
came on watch and found Captain Chen already in the attack center. He
was in his command chair, a cup of tea next to his hand. He looked so
tired, silently watching the crew around him, smiling as a father smiles
 at the happiness of his children. I noticed his tea had grown cold and
asked if he would like another cup. He looked up at me, still smiling,
and shook his head slowly. “Very good, sir,” I said, and prepared to
resume my station. He reached out and took my hand, looked up into, but
did not recognize, my face. His whisper was so soft I could barely hear
it.

 What?

 “Nice boy, Zhi Xiao, such a good boy.” He was still holding my hand when he closed his eyes forever.