Welcome to hell. My name is Ian, and I am what most people would call a werewolf. Despite all the promises to the contrary and false platitudes that it was pure science fiction, or some whacko gun-nut’s fantasy, the ultimate worse has happened—the living dead have arisen, the zombies are hungry and man is the preferred dish.

Rumor has it the first outbreak was supposedly somewhere in north-eastern China near the regions where Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Russia meet. These rumors suggest the zombie plague is an old Cold War bio-weapon that has somehow gotten loose.

Rumors also suggest that someone released the plague intentionally or by accident due to neglected and leaking storage facilities. Same rumors hint at former Soviet underground secret bases hidden in the area, stuffed full of old Cold War weaponry long forgotten and best left buried.

Back when people were attempting to develop a cure, there was some speculation that this plague could be an unintentional blend and mutation of several bio-weapons. According to the last published reports, when there was still news being broadcast, there was no detected cure or way to stop catching the plague other than avoiding being bitten or coming into contact with any bodily fluids from an infected person.

This whole mess of a zombie pandemic started about 30 years ago. However, our story starts about 28 years ago in the remains of McMinnville, Oregon, near a Walmart parking lot.

I learned millennia ago that I need to consume a large amount of calories and a lot of protein quickly after suffering injuries, or my body will do one of two things without my control.

First option: my body will go into a slight coma-like resting phase, which is handy for healing when there is no food. This coma's duration reaches eighteen hours, problematic given the presence of flesh-eating zombies and cannibals.

When I revive from the resting coma, I am nearly delirious with hunger and will hunt and consume the nearest living critter I can catch. If there are no critters about, I will scavenge for anything. After a resting coma, I have eaten all manner of insects, snakes, vermin, rotting garbage, and anything else slightly consumable I could cram in my mouth. I remember a really bad episode in Russia in 1812 during the Napoleonic Wars disastrous invasion of Russia. I had taken part in the Battle of Smolensk and was “killed” when the Russians withdrew from the burning city.

After being left on the battlefield with my dead comrades, I awoke from the healing coma. I consumed maggot-infested rotting horse meat from battle-field slain horses. I can still remember the taste of the rotting flesh and the feel of the maggots bursting in my mouth like foul-tasting little grapes as I feasted on the rotting, gas-swollen carcasses of slain horses.

The second option that I try to prevent is to become wolf and attack the nearest to me source of protein. I try to prevent my body from going into this, what I refer to as “eat everything that moves” mode. I do not want more dead people on my conscious. One of my greatest fears is that I will accidentally kill someone I care about.

I also have a vicious sweet tooth. Those of you who have lived during the time of abundant natural and artificial sweeteners do not realize how precious a little honey or sugar was in a rather bland diet. Snickers and Oreos are my favorite sweet snacks, but I pretty much will eat anything chocolate, especially fresh warm brownies (the baked chocolate treat, not little girls) drowned underneath vanilla ice cream and fudge sauce. Thankfully, I do not have to worry about cavities, as my body replaces teeth instantly as needed.

While we were making our harrowing escape from the burnt-out store, zombies bit me several times, and the cannibalistic motorcycle gang, who were using the zombies to flush out people hiding in the ruins, also shot me several times. One thing the motorcycle gang did not count on was the fact that Ruth is one hell of a shot. Bullets do not stop me despite how much they hurt, and I am much stronger and faster than a normal human male.

Many underestimate me and assume, because of my size, that I am slow and stupid. I stand seven-feet three-inches tall and weigh around 350 pounds with short, slightly curly brown hair and a short brown beard; most would not call me handsome, but rugged-looking.

I am heavily muscled with less than eight percent body fat. My hips are wider than some women would prefer, but I need them to support my broad chest. Thanks to nature, not anything that I have done, I have the at one time highly desirable six-pack abs.

I have a wide, blunt, and thick nose, my worse feature in my opinion and evidence that I was born during a time when temperatures were much colder. I have been told that my nose is designed to preheat and dry the air before entering my lungs, a feature of people born in colder climates. 

A pair of wide-set, dark blue eyes with light silver flecks, often described as fierce or piercing, straddles my nose. I have a thick coat of body hair, which some would call a pelt, but I just prefer to say I am hirsute. My skin does not see much sun, and I was never much of a sun worshipper, so I am rather pale. I have large hands and feet, wearing size 19 wide boots.

I prefer the new style US Army tan desert combat boots special ordered from Danner. I have a few extra pairs since I cannot just walk into a store and buy them, but I fear I might run out someday. At the bunker, I still have a few pairs of the old-style tanker, black leather combat boots. I prefer to dress in flannel shirts, red and blue being my favorite, with a good comfortable pair of blue jeans, usually either Wrangler boot cut or Levi 501s.

My thoughts drift from my appearance back to Ruth and our very first combat experience together outside the remains of a sporting goods store in Chehalis, Washington. This was our first stop after leaving the empty armory in Snohomish. We figured a quick look would not hurt; we did not realize at the time how wrong we could be.

While Ruth covered me with her LWRCI AR15 sniping targets as fast as she could (that woman can shoot!), I could suddenly burst from hiding and be among the motorcycle gang, killing several before they realized it.

I think part of what shocked them the most was the sight of me erupting from the store, swinging a six-foot long sword, dressed in a red flannel shirt, tan desert combat boots, and blue jeans.

Few individuals today possess mastery in medieval swordsmanship. While I am great with firearms, I consider myself a far better swordsman. Having used a sword in various forms for about 5,000 years or so, I am a true master swordsman. When I was a Roman legionnaire, later a Crusader, and then a mercenary, there were few who could best me with a blade. 

My preferred double-edged sword is patterned on the 15th century longsword or hand-and-half sword. I forged this sword myself, and have forgotten how many times I have replaced both the blade and the whole damn sword. The blade is just over five-feet long and made of the finest Krupp steel I could buy. The base of the sword blade next to the plain steel crossguard has the three Krupp interlocked rings on one side and 1846, the date of forging (for this blade) on the other side, just underneath the start of the full length fuller. A decent point allows me to thrust if I have to, although I prefer to chop. 

Cleaving the skull of a zombie is a quick, if messy, way to kill it, although I could stab, it is not as sure. The blade is a bit too thick for a jab either through the eye or up the nose, the easiest paths to the brain. The sword’s weight of slightly over six pounds makes it handy and quick. Overall length is just over six feet long from the blade tip to the tip of the steel, faceted, elongated and thickened, scent-stopper pommel.

My sword resembles the Sempach family of swords, similar to the one pulled from the Ouse River at Ely in Cambridgeshire, England, which the Fitzwilliam Museum housed.

I fought in the Battle of Sempach in Zurich in 1386 and have carried this style of sword since. My blade is thicker and longer, and my sword is about three pounds heavier than most Sempach-style swords. I just started carrying my sword again after an almost 200-year hiatus, and it rests on my left hip like a long-lost lover. 

Ruth and the motorcycle gang were surprised when a seven-foot tall man, dressed in tan desert combat boots, blue jeans, and a red-flannel shirt, leaped among them. He wielded a six-foot sword and began killing them, regardless of how many times they shot him. The motorcycle gang quickly broke apart and dispersed; the zombies proved less fortunate. While about half of the motorcycle gang fled, we had to kill all the zombies.

Considering worldwide woes, the resurgence of cannibalism as a prevalent problem surprised me. With food running scarce (or just plain running), some have taken what they consider the easy road and decided to eat their fellow man rather than forage.

Back when I was a young boy and large sheets of miles thick ice still covered most of what is now the northern panhandle of Texas, there were several tribes of people that would occasionally resort to cannibalism to maintain a sufficient caloric intake. Mostly they ate the recently deceased from their tribe, or those killed in a dispute with another tribe. 

However, there were a few tribes that were preferred cannibals and hunted their fellow man solely for food. The Cro-Magnon and Neanderthals would both occasionally resort to cannibalism if times were dire, but only when in great duress. I hate the taste of human flesh. I take hours to get the horrid taste out of my mouth, no matter how much grass I eat as a wolf or breath mints as a man I gobble.

After killing the zombies and evading the motorcycle gang survivors and reaching the safety of the hidden truck, Ruth checked her injuries. She had a few scrapes and bruises, including one nasty gash across her left shoulder. A little ash smudged, with some sweat streaks down her face where the sweat ran through the grime, which some soap and water will fix. After a quick and cold scrub in the washbasin, I inspected the gash on her left shoulder.

Ruth did not even need stitches. A quick spray of disinfectant and a large bandage, she was as patched up as I could make her. Now Ruth’s attention switched to me. Ruth had been giving me the evil eye, knowing that zombies had bitten me several times. I had noticed her hand occasionally straying to the butt of the Glock 19 she carried on her right leg. However, at this point she did not know of my immunity nor why.

Ripping off the remains of my shredded, blood-soaked, red flannel shirt, Ruth gasped in surprised to see several mangled bullets and a few buckshot pellets drop out of the remains of my shirt. Ruth returned the favor by checking on my injuries. As she ran her hand over my uninjured, if dirty and sweaty, hairy chest and shoulders, she marveled that there were no signs of my bite and gunshot wounds.

At this point, I had not told Ruth the truth about my lonely existence. It freaked her out a little to see the rapidly fading teeth marks on my arms. I had a hard decision to make–do I tell Ruth the truth or do I try to make some plausible story up?