It's My Fault the Dead Walk (prologue)

zom•bie [noun]: the body of a dead person given the semblance of life, but mute and will-less, by a supernatural force, usually for some evil purpose.


To whomever finds this, if anyone finds it, this is my confession to the world. My name is Dr. Christopher Reid, a virologist that worked for the CDC, and this is all my fault. All significant data that could have been used to battle this biological travesty was maliciously destroyed by my colleague. It would seem that our little dabble in "mad" science had actually been his lifelong passion. If only my best friend Nathan and I hadn't been obsessed with the idea of zombies ever since we saw Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" as kids. Four years ago Dr. Nathan Stephenson and myself made waves in the scientific and medical communities for our exceptional field work in virology and mycology. He had a breakthrough in manipulating ophiocordyceps unilateralis, the infamous "zombie ant" fungus. I, on the other hand, had created a permanent vaccination against rabies. This quickly got us hired by the CDC in their R&D department. That is where we met Dr. Elric von Petersburg, that bastard, who had made waves himself with his studies on prions, the proteins responsible for Mad Cow Disease. Speaking with him, we found out that he too had an obsession with zombies. For three months or so we debated all things zombie, the best movies, books, games, you name it. Being men of science, we hypothesized one common question; what would be the most efficient way to create a zombie virus? All of us believed that the answer laid within our specific fields...little did we know, we were all right. Hopefully the recovered excerpts from our journals that accompany this letter will help you survive this harsh new world. May we be damned for our blight...I'm so sorry Jen.

Dr. Christopher Reid