Christopher Tamkin is the chief of police for Rockton. In the days before the Great Exhumation, it was clear to see the toll his job took on him. His eyes were sad, and his voice carried a sense of despair, as if every day he was about to give in.

Those days are over. His eyes have a fire in them, born of a new purpose in a new world. He speaks with barely contained pride over what he has been able to accomplish on his own, without the help of either the government or the military. We sit on a bench over looking Elle Pond, named after one of the founders of the town. The living dead are nonexistent here, unlike other communities, now abandoned to the ghouls. This is due to the patrols and town militia Tamkin has helped to organize, making Rockton one of only ten towns on the eastern seaboard dubbed “Live Zones.”

Did we know the dead were coming? Fuck yeah. The government did its best to keep a lid on things; media blackouts, cover stories, but we had our sources. God bless truckers. Best source of news you’ll ever find, no offense.

None taken, but if you knew the dead were coming, why not leave?

Good question. Some people did, but the news was coming in bits and pieces, and most didn’t believe it. The police knew, of course, but we figured the Army or the National Guard would give us a heads-up when they got too close. That and some bureaucratic dickweed threatened us with being executed for treason by if we told anyone or left town. Little pissant. He comes into my office, swaggering around like he’s in charge, and tells me how to run my department. Says it won’t just be us that got it if we blew the whistle, it would be our families too. Can you believe that? He actually threatened our wives, husbands and children with death. Hell of a motivation.

It was tough, let me tell you, having to stand up in front of my officers and tell them what was happening. I had to tell them that though it was true, the living dead were advancing toward us, we couldn’t do a thing about it. We couldn’t leave, we couldn’t tell our families to leave. I couldn’t even call my sister in Pittsburgh and warn her. They were tapping everyone’s phone lines to ensure the truth remain hidden. We couldn’t even do anything to prepare. I wanted to order in some bomb-squad armor, you know, the kind that covers you head to toe? I figured it would work great against zombies. But no, the pissant said people might learn of the orders, might have heard trickles of info, might put two and two together.

It must have been hard keeping the department together after hearing this.

Hard. Heh, that’s a good one. It was damn near impossible. Half the guys wanted to take their chances and run, tell everyone what was happening. The others wanted to tell everyone, but stay behind and fight the zombies as long as they could, give people a chance to escape. I gotta tell ya, I was one of those that wanted to bolt, but what if those threats were real? What’s the point in saving people now if they’re just going to die later?

Did anyone try to leave?

Yeah, a few. When we went to their homes, everything was gone. Clothes, food, weapons, all of it. It looked like it had been looted. I’m not sure if the government ever caught up to them, what with communications being what they are. I hope they made it out all right. I really do. We were caught between a rock and a hard place, let me tell you. There was just no winning.

Were you the only ones with knowledge of the zombies?

Hell no. There were rumors all over the Internet. Blogs, Web sites, message boards. Everyone was talking about the attacks that were reported on in Maine and the troops massing there, before the media blackout and cover stories kicked in. People heard about it, but with no hard facts or reports to back it up, few believed it. I mean, seriously, someone tells you the dead are walking around and eating the flesh of the living, are you going to grab a shotgun, or kindly direct them to the nearest asylum?

No, people knew, and a few believed it was happening, but not enough for anything to be done. That was the other part of our new job. If anyone came to us with claims the attacks were anything more than wild animals, we were supposed to tell them that everything was fine, not to worry. It was tough, let me tell you. I remember this one time, I was at a town meeting, trying to get people to approve funding for a school resourse officer. I’m going on about the need to have a police presence in the schools, but all I want to do is scream to the heavens that it’s all pointless, that people need to get out of town now, before the undead arrive. Looking around at all those people, I could only think about how sorry I was for not standing up and doing my job. Serve and protect (spits on the ground). I was serving and protecting all right, protecting my own ass. What a fucking coward I was.

When did the zombies arrive?

It’s about a week after the government pissant came to us. No more stories about weird attacks had been printed since, but people could tell something was up. Communications up north were sketchy, and more unconfirmed accounts of undead and soldiers fighting filled the Net. People were edgy. Some were packing things, just in case, they said. By then the government people had stopped calling, and I assumed the worst; whatever measures they had taken to stop those things, they hadn’t worked. I decided then and there to stop running, and tell people what was going on.

That was when I heard the screams.

(He shivers for a moment, though the day is warm. He stops talking, and I ask him if he wants to continue. He nods, though it is clear he would rather stop.)

No, no, I have to say this. You want to tell the story of this town, right?

Yes.

Then you need to hear it. All of it. How we were abandoned to fight these things, abandoned by the only people who could really protect us. So many lives lost, and all for good PR and national security.

Like I said, I was planning the evacuation when I heard the screams. High-pitched, like when you step on a cat’s tail. I turned, and saw a sight that still wakes me in the middle of the night. There isn’t a word for it, for how horrible it was. These kids, seven or eight of them, they were walking along the street. The oldest couldn’t have been more than twelve years old. Normal kids, good kids, from good families. I didn’t see how it started, but I saw how it ended. Must have been twenty zombies. Just came from out of nowhere, tore the kids apart. Ripped the flesh from their bones like wrapping off Christmas presents. One kid, the things had torn out her intestines and were fighting over it, all the while this child, a young girl, she’s screaming for mercy, then begging for death. I just stood there, numb. My hand was on my gun, but I couldn’t move. The screams were what froze me. Ironically, it was the screams that snapped me out of it.

From the children?

From everyone else.

One minute, everything’s fine, then the next, the undead are everywhere, tearing into people, chasing them down the street. I saw one guy run for his car, keys in his hands. He got tackled as he unlocked the door. Another was fighting them off with a shovel. He managed to get a few before getting swarmed. I figure they must have come through the woods. It was weird. I expected them to come down the streets, that we would see them coming long before they arrived. I don’t know why I expected them to play by the rules, I just did. They hit like a swarm of locusts, reducing people to gnawed bones in seconds. Anyway, I made for the station, where most of the other officers were, getting ready.

Getting ready? You mean you had a plan?

We had made it in secret. It wasn’t much, and we couldn’t do any test runs for fear of a higher power watching us, but yeah, we had a plan. We split up into teams, search and rescue. The plan was to find as many uninfected people as possible, get them into the snow plows the park department kept, and form a convoy out of town. It looked so good on paper, but outside, it was chaos. A few of our boys went down before they got to their cruisers. All I could hear on my radio were gunshots and screams, grown men begging for God’s mercy. I think half the force was dead within the first ten minutes. I made my way down the street, screaming at my officers to hold it together, stick to the plan, which is why I didn’t see the zombie until it’s head was through my windshield.

I had never seen one up close like that, snapping at me like a beast. It had shards of glass in it’s face, one of it’s eyes was hanging out, and all it wanted was a piece of me, literally. I slammed on the brakes and it went flying off, rolled on then ground for twenty feet or so. I doubt there was a single bone not broken, but even that didn’t stop it. It crawled towards me like a broken doll. One side of the thing’s jaw had popped loose from the socket, and still it came. I just stood there, staring at it, fascinated. I’ve seen dogs walk with a broken leg, I’ve seen crackheads keep coming after taking a bullet in the gut, but nothing like this. Zombies are pure desire, you know that? They keep going and going, no matter what. Nothing stops them.

I almost missed when I finally snapped out of it and put a bullet in that thing’s head. I can make a head shot from one hundred feet on the gun range, every time, but here, at a range of five feet, it was more luck than skill.

My momma always said God looks out for fools. I guess I happened to catch his eye that day.

How many people were you able to save?

Not as many as I would have liked, let me tell you. The first house I got to, the family was in th bathroom. There son had turned, and he was banging on the door, snarling. I cold hear them begging, pleading with the boy to remember who he was. Remember those reports made by those idiot psychiatrists, that zombies retained some of their memories, that all they needed was to spend some time with their loved ones? What a load of horse shit. I bet if they saw what I saw, they would have eaten those reports. The kid couldn’t have been more than ten, and he was covered in blood, bits of flesh. I think I saw a couple of teeth dangling from his mouth, and they weren’t his. This time, my aim wasn’t off, but I’ll be damned how I made the shot.

You should have seen their reaction, the family. The dad takes one look at his dead son and tackled me to the ground, pounding my face, calling me a murderer. I had to damn near split his head open with my nightstick to stop him. I told them that I was here to get them out of town, and you know what they did? They said they’d take their chances, got in their car, and took off like they were heading to Grandma’s for Sunday brunch. Fucking morons.

(He takes a long drag off a cigarette, stubs it out, then lights another. His movements are quick, practiced, although he says he hasn’t smoked for long.)

In the end, we got about two hundred. Out of a population of forty thousand, we get two fucking hundred. I suppose we were lucky to get that many. We loaded them into the plows, in the cabs, the back, on top. It was like a covered wagon scene straight outta those old Westerns. You should have seen those people. Scared outta their wits, covered in blood and gore, but happy as a pig in shit as they crushed any zombies stupid enough to get in their way.

I’m glad they had that moment of peace. It didn’t last long.

What happened?

Me and the other officers were riding escort duty, taking out any undead that got too close to the convoy. We had made it to the main road out of town. At that point the zombies in front thinned out, but the back was pretty thick with them. Most of us took to doing rear guard duty. The trucks were about fifty feet in front of us, which is the only reason why I’m still around. One minute, everything’s going great, it looks like some of us are going to make it after all. The next, the air is filled with fire and shrapnel, zombies are falling like ninepins, and the only thing I see is a blood-soaked teddy bear, smoldering in the flames.

We still don’t know who rigged those trucks to blow. Maybe it was the government, doing it’s best to foil any escape attempts, but I doubt it. Most likely it was some nut job, heard what was going on and felt like screwing with the human race. In any event, we didn’t have time for a forensic investigation. Kinda bigger priorities at the moment. Because with the main road outta town blocked by flaming debris and the undead everywhere, one thing was clear.

We weren’t going anywhere.

In the next part of the interview, Chief Tamkin details how he and the few survivors formed the town militias and tuned Rockton into one of the few safe zones.