Aliens Versus Zombies (39 page)

In September 2035, Suzi gave birth to a healthy baby girl that the group collectively decided to call Eve. Two months later, Chrissy, now Mrs. Daniels, delivered a son, whom they, naturally, named Adam. Both were born with their parents’ built-in immunity to both strains of the Tibetan Hemorrhagic Fever virus.

They were at the forefront of the rebirth—literally—of humanity.

Over the course of time, people would manage to find one another and do what comes naturally.

With the aliens no longer a threat, the world still had a lot of healing to do. During the first seventeen months of the apocalypse, the two billion Zoms had been reduced to fewer than 100 million, due in large part to a shortage of food. Some starved, but many were killed and eaten by other hungry Zoms. The hyperallergy virus killed two-thirds of those remaining, until barely thirty-one million survived. At the same time, the human population was whittled down to three million.

Although most of the Zoms had either died or been “upgraded” to reasoning—and reasonable—D-Zoms, there still were several million feral Zoms roaming the planet, largely in isolated pockets that hadn’t been darted by the aliens. However, the D-Zoms were better equipped to both defend themselves and to overpower the feral ones.

After many unfortunate incidents around the world, the normal humans came to realize that the D-Zoms were different, and not necessarily a threat. In the end, an unlikely collaboration formed between the D-Zoms and humans, to eradicate the feral ones. It would take several years before the ferals either starved to death or were killed by the others.

In the end, nearly three million normal humans and sixteen million smart Zoms were left to repopulate and rebuild the world.

Over the coming years, the humans living near the three completed and fully automated Drahtch cities explored the bounty of Drahtch technology, both on the ground and, later, in space. The tech offered the potential to revolutionize human existence: from the automated construction equipment to the AI-controlled hydroponic farms, from the incredible building materials that would last for millennia to the spacecraft capable of interstellar flight. However, it would take mankind centuries of research to understand the inner workings of much of the technology, let alone be able to duplicate it.

That gave the surviving scientists and engineers something to work toward and others a reason to train in the fields of science and technology. It kept humanity from reverting entirely to an agrarian society.

With any luck, by the time the Drahtch returned—or another race came calling—humanity would be ready.

- End -

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Thanks for reading!

MTC

Mark Terence Chapman is the author of five published novels so far:
The Mars Imperative
(4.3 stars on Amazon);
The Tesserene Imperative
(4.6 stars)
;
the award-nominated
Sunrise Destiny
;
the former #1 bestselling Military Sci-Fi novel on Amazon,
My Other Car is a Spaceship
—
also
available
as an
audiobook
); and the latest,
Aliens Versus Zombies
; as well as a self-help book for writers,
Frequently Misused / Misspelled Words and Phrases (and How to Use Them Correctly)
.

His publishing credits (as Mark T. Chapman) also include a nonfiction book about the OS/2 operating system (
OS/2 Power User’s Reference
; 1995
), a coauthored book about IBM servers (
Exploring IBM Server & Storage Technology,
6
th
Edition
, 2005
), a coauthored IBM manual (
IBM eServer x440 Technical Information Guide; 2001
), articles about writing and investing in nanotechnology for The Motley Fool investing website (
www.fool.com
), plus various white papers on the subjects of Microsoft Windows, Linux, and server technology.

To learn more about the author and his books, visit:

• Website
  
• Blog
  
• Facebook
  
• Twitter