World War Zed

6. Interview with: Sylvain Le Blanc

Honfleur, Normandy, France

Interview with: Sylvain Le Blanc

Le Blanc sits in a pretty little café on the harbour front at Honfleur. He rises from his seat to greet me, a glass of red wine on the table in front of him despite the early hour. The ashtray on the table is already full of cigarette butts, and as I sit down with him he lights another one, his nicotine-stained fingers trembling with palsy. As the waitress brings me a coffee and a croissant - Sylvain declines food - I study my interviewee and our surroundings, waiting for him to talk.

Tall, well kept and colourful houses surround this picture-perfect little port, once a favourite of tourists and locals alike; once upon a time famed for its food, particularly the galettes and crepes. Although a shadow of its former self, the sense of history and beauty still carry through the air with the mournful cries of the gulls. Unfortunately, much of this seems lost on my companion.

Sylvain is a tall, thin, pale man, with a mop of unruly dark hair; his features are twisted into a permanent, sardonic sneer by the waxy sheen of a burn scar on one side of his face, which carries glassily onto his left hand. Dark shadows ring his eyes, and his gaze darts nervously around the cobbled street that we look out upon. A perfunctory drag on his stinking, poorly rolled cigarette precludes an abrupt start to a rapid stream of one-way conversation.

"They left me to die.

"At least that's what I thought at the time. I was a recently enlisted soldier in the French Army, serving out my year's mandatory service with the forces. By then, we knew what was happening, and the local army base had cleared a lot of the area around Vierville-Sur-Mer. Back in World War Two, it was more commonly known as Omaha Beach, where thousands of American troops were killed trying to establish a beachhead. We knew that swarms were becoming more common, and we knew that there was one working its way down the coast from the cliff areas. Lookouts could see them moving through the shallows, seemingly looking for a place to come on shore.

"Another English import we didn't want. To be fair, the interim UK government hiding on the Isle of Wight warned us when they saw the swarm. Unfortunately, even though we had the warning, we had little time until they were seen from the cliffs.

"Much of the WW2 infrastructure was still in place, and it took very little work to get the line of old concrete bunkers ready for use again. I was installed, along with another new recruit, in an old WW2 bunker on the coast. I found out later that it was the infamous bunker where a young German soldier had been left on the day of the D-Day landings. Nothing but him and twelve thousand rounds of ammunition, but he reputedly killed over three-thousand American troops. It was ironic given our later situation.

"We took it in turns to look out of the narrow slit in the concrete every now and again, maintaining regular radio contact with the main base to the south. We were bored, had only a few cigarettes, and little food. An hour later, the boredom seemed like a wonderful thing.

"Alain, my fellow conscript in boredom finished a cigarette, and stood to look out of the bunker, it was his turn. Suddenly, he started swearing and fumbling at one of the machine guns that we had mounted in readiness. As I stood to join him, I could see why. Sixty years after the original landings, a beachhead was being established again, but there were no uniforms this time: no soldiers, no grenades, and no landing craft. There was utter silence until Alain let off a short burst of machine gun fire.

"Then the moaning started.

"They reacted to the sound of the gun and came shambling towards us. Somehow, that was more terrifying than anything I had thought possible. They were implacable, almost indestructible. I watched as Alain virtually cut one in half with a stream of bullets; watched as the top half of the zombie pulled itself expressionlessly towards us, leaving a trail of innards and its legs behind it. As the entrails extended to their full length, the legs grudgingly followed on behind the steadily moving upper half, dragging an obscene furrow in the golden sands.