Zombie Apocalypse in Somalia

"The medic thinks that we're all infected with the zombie virus and that when we die, whether we got bit or not, we will turn," Captain Mohamed Yusuf said, shaking his head. The six-foot-tall, dark-skinned Somali soldier looked sullen as if burdened by what he'd just said. Private Malik Osman looked at his commanding officer with concern. The Captain wasn't usually the type to give into or fall for bullshit. The fledgling Somali National Army is no place for jokers. The top brass has big plans for the Somali army. It's up to them to make sure that Somalia doesn't fall to the zombie apocalypse...

"something to think about, sir," Malik Osman replied. The big and tall, dark-skinned and bald-headed young Somali soldier hefted his rifle and scanned the horizon. The unit was made up of thirty five men, and they had been assigned by Colonel Fatima Said to patrol the northern sector near the City of Mogadishu. The zombies had crossed into Somalia through the Gulf of Aden and the flesh-eating monsters needed to be stopped. All because a cruise ship full of infected Americans somehow got past the Yemeni Navy. Why must Africans always pay for the Arabs mistakes?

"Sir, I see something," said Corporal Mariam Ali. She'd taken point a few hours ago and marched ahead of the rest of the regiment. The tall, skinny young Somali female soldier gesticulated excitedly at the Captain. Sighing, Captain Yusuf went to meet with the young woman. The Captain was in no mood for another surprise. Last night, they ran into a pack of zombies near the Village of Masood and had a devil of a time taking them down. The zombies were slain, but several of the villagers were infected. The Captain and his troops did what had to be done.

Corporal Mariam Ali sounded tense, which bothered Captain Yusuf somewhat. There is a growing number of women in the Somali National Army. Many have people have strong feelings about that, one way or another. Captain Yusuf doesn't have a problem with a female soldier as long as she does her job and follows orders, same as the men. Corporal Mariam Ali hadn't risen to her rank because the Somali military brass felt like being nice. She was a capable soldier. Privately, the Captain wondered what had her so spooked...

"Yes, Corporal," Captain Yusuf said as he reached Corporal Mariam Ali. The young Somali Muslim woman pointed to something in the distance. Captain Yusuf looked in the direction the corporal pointed at and what he saw almost froze his blood. Almost. There was a horde of zombies on the march. The things didn't move in the slow, haphazard manner of the dull-witted flesh eaters. The zombies were perhaps three kilometers away from their current position but even at that distance, something wasn't right about the way they moved.

"People, we have zombies three klicks away," Captain Yusuf barked. At once, the rest of the regiment readied themselves. This wasn't their first hayride. For weeks now, the regiment had been marching across the desert, putting down zombies left and right. The sons and daughters of the Somali homeland hadn't bowed down to American invaders or Italian conquistadors and they wouldn't bow down to the damned zombies. Each man and woman in the regiment had a rifle, two pistols and plenty of ammo, food and water to last a long while. Zombie killing is their business and business is good...

"Good call on the shambling hordes," Private Malik Osman said to Corporal Mariam Ali, and the young woman nodded. The two of them hailed from Hargeisa, a beautiful yet rough spot in their corner of Somalia. Folks from wild areas like Somaliland and Hargeisa didn't understand that these places were a different world from quaint, urban Mogadishu. The toughest gangs of Mogadishu couldn't hold a candle to farming folks from Puntland or Hargeisa. The locals in these farming areas spent their lives protecting their land and cattle from brigands, hyenas and jackals, in that order. They weren't scared of much.

"Of course I spotted the shambling hordes, can't have a zombie bite your cute ass," Corporal Mariam Ali replied, laughing. Private Malik Osman grinned and shook his head. Yeah, the corporal might have left the backwoods of Hargeisa but the backwoods of Hargeisa hadn't left her. Mariam adjusted her Hijab under her helmet and then drank from her gourd. Beads of sweat dripped from her forehead. The desert gets to everyone, even seasoned desert dwellers like these fine Somali troopers.

Watching Mariam drink, Malik suddenly remembered he was thirsty. He drank from his gourd as well. The desert heat was constant and was a worse killer than the zombies. In the early days, the regiment lost two rookies to the damned heat. They hadn't lost anyone to the zombies...yet. Malik sincerely hoped that the troops managed to cleanse Somalia of zombies. He was looking forward to his cousin Ahmed's wedding in Puntland next month. Ahmed was marrying a beautiful young woman named Laila, the daughter of fierce tribal farmers. The unification of clans through weddings was always a beautiful thing.

The Somali military troops marched across the desert, eager to face the zombie horde. When the zombie outbreak began a few months ago, many in the world didn't take the threat seriously. It wasn't until global news outlets showed footage of American soldiers getting devoured by zombies on the streets of an infested NYC that the rest of the world took the threat seriously. America fell, as did Canada. Mexico was supposedly still holding out. The zombie outbreak that began somewhere in upstate New York soon left the continent of North America.

Last month, zombie outbreaks were reported in Paris, France, and also in Marrakesh, Morocco. The Somali National Army went on high alert after zombie outbreaks were reported in the Republic of Yemen. Yemen was right next to Somalia, and what troubled one nation often troubled the other. The zombies were in Somalia now and something had to be done about them. Anyone who got bitten by a zombie needed to be killed. Man or woman, young or old, it made no difference. One bite is all it takes for a beloved friend, a brother or a sister, a lover or a colleague, to become one of the Undead.

The zombie horde marched on, unaffected by the desert heat. The zombies don't feel fear or pain. They cannot get tired. They cannot feel thirst. They do feel hunger, though. The Hunger is what drives them. The zombies hunger for human flesh is unending. It can never be sated. The zombie hunger will never end, not even if they manage to devour every last human being on the Planet Earth. As the zombies walked about in search of prey, one of them wondered about the state of things...

The zombie in question had once been a young woman named Ayaan Hamideh. Once upon a time, Ayaan was tall, brown-skinned, dark-haired and curvy. In those halcyon days, Ayaan had been young and beautiful. Everyone in the environs of Hargeisa most certainly thought so. Ayaan married a wealthy man named Kader Dahir and the two of them had a family. They settled in a big farm on the south end of Hargeisa. All was well until the zombies came. The zombies were put down but not before they devoured Ayaan's family and infected her. The soldiers of the Somali National Army came and put down the zombies. Ayaan fled, out of sheer desperation. She knew she was infected but she didn't want to die...

"Not finished yet," Ayaan said to the disinterested heavens as she walked across the Somali desert. The other zombies pressed on, though a few of them looked at her curiously after hearing her speak. Zombies moan, grunt, and sometimes roar but human speech isn't part of their repertoire. Ayaan did not understand why she was different. She was a zombie, but she could still talk and think. In the absence of anything better to do, Ayaan walked with the other zombies. She felt the same hunger they did, though she retained her human intelligence. That would come in handy later...

Suddenly, the wind blew their way, and what it carried triggered every zombie within the horde. It was the most delicious smell in the universe. The zombies typically ignored the camels, wild goats, wild donkeys, camels, jackals, leopards, ibexes and other beasts of the Somali desert. The smell of animals did not entice them anymore than the smell of trees did. To a zombie, food meant one thing and one thing only. The smell of Man. That scent triggered a signal within the rotting brains of every zombie within the horde. In life, they had been men and women, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters. In the Undead state, they are an army of the dead.

"Food," Ayaan said, and a ghastly smile split the female zombie's formerly beautiful face. With a new bounce in her step, Ayaan followed the other zombies in the direction of the smell. The delicious smell was stronger now, and the zombies followed it like flowers turning toward sunlight on an early morning. The smell of Man was wonderfully intoxicating. The zombies ignored the beasts of desert, plateau, forest and plain because they didn't smell right. To the Undead, the flesh of animals was about as appetizing as cardboard. The flesh of Man, however, was the sun and the moon, and perhaps the whole universe, to a hungry zombie...

Without even realizing it, the zombies formed strict lines as they marched across the desert. These were fresh zombies. Mere weeks ago they had been proud citizens of the Somali Republic. They had names like Ahmed, Omar, Ibrahim, Warsame, Fatima, Aden, Yasmin, Yusuf, Amina, Fariha, and Ayaan, of course. They had all been someone's son or daughter, brother or sister, mother or father, uncle or aunt. They had been members of tribes and clans, villages and towns, cities and nations. Now they were a mindless horde of shambling zombies, their rotting brains awakened by hunger.

"Here they come," Captain Yusuf shouted, and the men and women of the Somali military unit took their positions. The small army gathered on a hill, and readied their weapons. The soldiers knew to make head shots because nothing else worked on a zombie. Mariam and Malik lay side by side on the sandy hill, rifles on their shoulders. They aimed for the zombies and waited for their commanding officer's order. The captain ordered them to fire, and fire they did.

"Hungry," Ayaan said aloud, and she suddenly saw...them. The humans. They stood on a hill, a short distance away. They were armed to the teeth, a group of men and women in uniform. Ayaan's zombified body yearned to throw itself at the humans but her still-more-human-than-not brain warned her against that. All around Ayaan, the zombies moaned and reached for the humans who were still hundreds of meters away. The shambling horde walked toward what they saw as food, and what Ayaan knew to be their doom.

"Like shooting fish in a barrel," Malik said, laughing as he fired shot after shot. The young Somali Private dropped a zombified Somali housewife, and an elderly male zombie, and a few others. Next to Malik, Mariam also lined up shot after shot. The young Somali female soldier was quite the markswoman. In her younger days, Mariam dreamed of protecting Somalia from threats both foreign and domestic. She never imagined she'd be killing zombies while out in the desert. Smiling, Mariam happily put down the shambling nightmares. The only good zombie is a dead zombie. Well, one that is dead for good, anyway. Soon, all the zombies lay motionless on the burning sands of the Somali desert...

"Sweet, they're all down," Mariam said, and she whooped and hollered in triumph. The other members of the regiment did the same. Captain Yusuf smiled at Corporal Mariam Ali and Private Malik Osman. The commanding officer praised the men and women of his unit for a job well done. They shot all the damned zombies from a distance and didn't even have to inspect themselves for bites or scratches. The victorious men and women of the Somali regiment headed back towards Mogadishu. They had to rendezvous with another unit who was mopping up zombies in their corner of the desert...

When the Somali military unit began firing at the zombie horde, Ayaan did what no zombie had done before. She dropped on the desert floor and lay perfectly still. The other zombies inexorably marched to their doom. The Somali soldiers shot them in the head, and killed them all. The zombie horde fell and did not rise. A bullet to the head stops a dead man or a dead woman. The living and the dead have that in common. Head shots usually mean the end. Lying flat on the desert floor, Ayaan prayed to a deity whose name she didn't dare utter. The soldiers did not come to finish the job. Ayaan waited and waited, and still they did not come.

"Soon, we will reunite with the other units," Captain Yusuf said as he walked at the front of the regiment with Private Malik Osman and Corporal Mariam Ali in tow. The younger soldiers walked with their commander. The day was coming to an end, and they had once more killed a bunch of zombies without losing any of their own. If this continues, then this particular regiment might be the luckiest unit of the new Somali National Army. The unit's men and women were in fine spirits. Mariam was a bit out of sorts so Malik asked her what was up. What are friends for?

"Corporal, and dear friend of mine, what's got you bugging?" Malik asked with a smile. Mariam looked at her friend and sighed. The soldiers gathered around the campfire, eating and drinking. There were three soldiers on guard at all times while the others relaxed. The men and women of the Somali regiment were in fine spirits. Mariam hesitated, but Malik was not dropping the subject. Taking a deep breath, Mariam decided to fess up...

"The zombies we saw today marched like a well-oiled army instead of a shambling horde and yet we killed them so easily, doesn't make sense," Mariam said softly. Malik looked at Mariam and considered the young Somali woman's words. The firefight with the zombie horde had gone well. Somalia's men and women have always been at war in one way or another. If the enemy wasn't Ethiopians or Americans than it was Italians or someone else. Sometimes, Somalis fought Somalis over tribal stuff. A people that is continually at war knows how to fight...

"I hope the zombies continue to be slow and stupid because if they get smarter and faster, we are dead," Malik said after a long moment. Mariam considered Malik's words and nodded. The thought of smart zombies was horrifying. Mariam made a fist and Malik bumped his fist against it. They were just friends. Good friends who happened to be soldiers. No romantic bullshit or bullshit sexual tension. Mariam has a husband waiting for her at home, and Malik has a girlfriend waiting for him at home. The two friends bantered and laughed as their first tour of duty in the Somali/Zombie War came to an end.

As the soldiers slept, with dutiful and well-armed sentinels on guard duty, they were being watched. Ayaan the zombie lurked in the darkness. The humans were so close, and smelled so delicious, but she dared not attack them. There were too many humans and they had guns, knives, machetes, and maybe even grenades. Ayaan is new to being a zombie but her still-human brain remembered the tools of the military trade. Ayaan had no chance against an army of well-armed human soldiers. She needed to bide her time and follow them until she could get one or two of them alone. One way or another, Ayaan the zombie would avenge her fallen comrades of the horde...