Underneath Paris

Recently, I traveled to an undisclosed location in Quebec, Canada to speak with Andre Renard. Andre Renard is the brother of the legend Emil Renard and fought the Zombie War in the tunnels below Paris, France. We start talking about why Paris has no skyscrapers or monasteries directly in the city. He says it is because the complex system of tunnels below Paris. Because of these tunnels, the ground would never be able to hold something as big as a skyscraper or a monastery. We then star talking about the tunnels. He says that they discovered 250,000 people below the city. He says more and more people began to go underground and didn't even keep out the bitten and did not block the entrances in which they came from. Then the bitten started to reanimate and spread the virus throughout the people underground. He talks about how people never experienced what he had. He described the tunnels as pure darkness and stink. They had little to no sight while under there because it was so dark. He talks of how their equipment was not very useful and old. He says that they had to use hardwire sets for radio because the airwaves were too unreliable underground. They used copper wire, which was helpful because it could help them if they got lost. A squad would get lost at least one time a day while traveling through the tunnels he says. He says you could hear other squads being attacked from every direction, not knowing where it was originally happening. They couldn't fire a firearm underground because of the gas in the air, if they did, the whole tunnel would go into flames and could potentially collapse. Instead of firearms, they used an Italian air carbine, the Beretta-Grechio, and other handheld weapons. He describes they type of heavy armor they used that could "protect" them. It would sometimes cause them to drown if they fell in a hole full of water. When they fell they could be bitten and then the squad would have to retreat. They would call in scuba divers to clear the water out. He says that the survival rate for the divers was 1 in 20, supposedly the lowest of any army branch. He says that these divers automatically received a Legion of Honor. He says that they lost 15,000 people under Paris. Unlike the other countries who took things slow and steady, the people of France fought very fast and their number of casualties showed it. He says that the French did this because they wanted new heroes to restore their pride. He ten talks about a mental hospital built by the Nazis to house mental patients, but during the Zombie War was turned into a place for the recently bitten to live until they reanimated. A squad busted through the hospital, not knowing what was on the other side, and fought the zombies. It was one squad against 300 zombies. The squad was led by Andre Renard's baby brother. He says the last thing he heard from their radio before it went silent was his brother's voice saying "On ne passe pas!", which means "they shall not pass!" The stories of the underground fighting stand out to me and I wish I could have talked more about these underground battles with Andre Renard.

Ernesto Olguin

I traveled to a beach house on the Peninsula de Lacuy on the Isla Grande de Chiloe, Chile recently to speak with Ernesto Olguin. Olguin was on the USS Saratoga during the "Honolulu Conference." He describes it more and an ambush instead of a conference. The purpose of this "conference" was to exchange tactics and techniques regarding the Zombie War. On the first day, arguments erupted after the American ambassador spoke. He wanted to go on the offensive and eliminate all zombies on Earth. Other countries began arguing with one another and Olguin describes the different sides of the argument. One side wanted to wait the zombies out and let them decompose while the others wanted to go on the offensive. After that, the American president began to spoke and called for a recess and said they would vote on his proposal after the recess. Since he was part of the crew, he was not allowed to vote and went outside with a man from France and a man from South Africa. He tried to keep off the topic of war to avoid arguments but it didn't work in the end. He found that they all had some connection to wine vineyards. They talked about wine and how their vineyard was destroyed because of the war. Commander Emile Renard pulls out a bottle of wine fro 1964 and they open it up and drink it. Olguin then describes the vote and how it was 17 No and 31 Yes. The choice was to go on the offensive. I found Olguin's story interesting, but I wish we could have talked more about his experiences during the Zombie War.

The Son of an Andamooka Opal Miner: Terry Knox

Recently, I traveled to Clearwater Memorial Hospital in Sydney, Australia. I traveled to the seventeenth floor to speak with Terry Knox in his luxurious hospital room. His body is very withered and his face lacks color. He is the only Australian that has every commanded the International Space Station or ISS. We begin talking about the ISS and how it is a marvel of human engineering. We talk about how he never expected to be rescued and the things on board that the crew had to live off while they were in space. He and his crew's job was to keep the satellites that were vital to the war effort in orbit and functional. We talked about the equipment he and his crew were given and how sophisticated it was. It was so sophisticated that they had hours of leisure time every day. We then start to talk about the things they could see on Earth while they were up there. He said they could go into great detail and view battles from all the way up there. He talks about some disasters that he witnessed while he was up in the space station. One of those he felt very strongly about, the collapse of the Three Gorges Dam. He thought it was the Chinese government's fault for the collapse and the death of all of the people it killed. He then talks about how he received a message on his ham radio from a Chinese space station, Yang Liwei. He goes to space station and finds one of the people dead and the other missing somewhere. The one dead was in a spacesuit but had a bullet crack the eyepiece making the suit depressurize, which is how the man died. He took the supplies from the vessel and brought them back to the ISS for he and his crew. He says that they remained up there for three more years until they were rescued. He talks about how he is asked about why he strayed on the ISS rather than leaving earlier with the escape shuttle on the Chinese space station. He says he would do it all over again even though it put him in this withered state. I am fortunate that I spoke with him because he died three days after our interview. Terry Knox was very interesting and I am glad that I learned of his account during the Zombie War.

Barati Palshigar

The next place that I visited what Ulithi Atoll in the Federated States of Micronesia, where I met with Barati Palshigar. Palshigar was a broadcaster for Radio Free Earth. Radio Free Earth was designed to help people survive throughout the Zombie War and told them what they should know about the virus. Radio Free Earth broadcasted from a vessel known as the Ural. It was originally a Russian Naval vessel, but was then converted to a broadcasting station. We then talk about some information that wasn't true. We talked about that for a little bit and then we talked about the people who got the information and then gave it to him to broadcast. These were the operators who gave him this information. We discuss the cries that these people had to hear from people who were struggling from the war. He tells me that all of the operators that worked at Radio Free Earth have killed themselves because of all the cries that they heard while operating the radio transmissions. This was a very disturbing interview, but it showed what was necessary to win the war.

The Englishman: David Allen Forbes

I traveled to the Province of Bohemia in the European Union recently. While I was there, I met with a man named David Allen Forbes. Forbes is an English author in the process of writing his second book: Castles of the Zombie War: The Continent. Our conversation starts off with him discussing different fortresses and castles throughout Europe. He explains the difference between castles and palaces and how some castles are palaces, which defeats the purpose of a castle. He then talks about which fortresses survived the Zombie War and the situation they were in. I find out that he stayed in the Windsor Castle, which was probably one of the best places to stay. This is because of the oil that the castle was built on, as well as the location of the castle. He then gets uncomfortable and I ask if he wants to stop the interview. He declines. He then starts talking about a woman who refused to the leave the Windsor Castle and go with her family until the war was over.

Colonel Christina Eliopolis

Recently, I traveled to Parnell Air National Guard Base in Tennessee to meet with Colonel Christina Eliopolis. Her story is something that is rather unique when it comes to the Zombie War. She was a pilot in the air force and typically flew large, technologically sophisticated planes but when the war started up, the government decided to use planes and helicopter that did not require so much energy. She was told to fly more prop planes and older planes that did not require a lot of fuel. The job that she and her crew were assigned was to drop vital supplies and equipment to people on the ground who needed it. She tells me that it was a routine drop route; she was flying from Phoenix to Florida. She had been up for a few days straight because of some pills she and the whole crew were taking. These pills caused her to have to go to the bathroom frequently. She had been holding it for a while and couldn't hold it any longer. She went to use the bathroom and all of the sudden, the plane begins to nosedive. She gets sucked out of the plane the pulls her chute. Only one other person from the crew actually made it out of the plane. She later finds him getting eaten by zombies. She lands with the help of her parachute. Meanwhile, she follows the rules and steps that she learned while in training to escape the zombies and eventually get rescued. She says that she couldn't have done it without a sky watcher by the name of Metsfan or Mets for short. Mets helped the Colonel survive and evade by guiding her and giving her the will power to keep going. When she returns to safety, Eliopolis learns that there were no sky watchers in that area at that time that were stuck in a cabin. She is told that her radio was broken on contact from the drop (it was the way she kept in contact with Mets). The Colonel was given a mental evaluation at the base and they thought she was crazy. No matter what the evidence is that Mets doesn't exist, Eliopolis will go to the grave believing that she does and without Mets, she wouldn't have made it out of that situation alive.

Sardar Khan

The next place that I visited was Udaipur Lake Palace on Lake Pichola in Rajasthan, India. This was the home to my next interviewee, Sardar Khan. Khan was in what I like to call a sticky situation. He described to me a very narrow passage way along the side of a mountain where many civilians were attempting to escape the zombies. Some of them were successful and some of them were not. The main problem with this situation was that many people would fall off the edge of the mountain and die. They had set charges in the narrow passage way so that when the zombie came, they could seal them off. He told me that there were so many civilians trying to get across and could not detonate the charges without killing them. A very high-ranking general came to them, General Raj-Singh. He said that they needed to detonate the charges otherwise they will all be dead. When General Raj-Singh tried to detonate the charges, they would not blow. Something had gone wrong with the charges. Meanwhile, they go into the giant crowd of people and he loses General Raj-Singh in the crowd. Khan tells me he finds his way into a microbus. He said he could hear the zombies coming and they were around 200 meters away. At this point, he began to bang his head on the side of the bus hoping to kill himself. He eventually passed out and did not succeed in killing himself. He woke up a while later to the sound of a dripping noise, the crackle of his radio, and the howling of the zombies. It ended up that the dripping noise he was hearing were the zombies falling over the edge of the mountain to their death. It looked like General Raj-Singh detonated the charges after all and sealed the people off from the zombies. Khan then tells me about how they said the secured zones on the radio and then tells me of a monkey that pissed on him. Sardar Khan is a fascinating man and I wish we could have talked about more of his experiences during the Zombie War.