Zone One
Colson Whitehead
Language: English
Pages: 336
ISBN: 0307455173
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A pandemic has devastated the planet, sorting humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead. After the worst of the plague is over, armed forces stationed in Chinatown’s Fort Wonton have successfully reclaimed the island south of Canal Street—aka Zone One. Mark Spitz is a member of one of the three-person civilian sweeper units tasked with clearing lower Manhattan of the remaining feral zombies. Zone One unfolds over three surreal days in which Spitz is occupied with the mundane mission of straggler removal, the rigors of Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder (PASD), and the impossible task of coming to terms with a fallen world. And then things start to go terribly wrong…
At once a chilling horror story and a literary novel by a contemporary master, Zone One is a dazzling portrait of modern civilization in all its wretched, shambling glory.
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quarters from his dad without fail. The sound of chinking metal was music enough. The place was the stage for cherished theater. Each visit his parents scrutinized the menu as if for the first time and Mark Spitz inquired if they had crayons, even though he knew they kept a whole army hospital ward of them, a whole drawer filled with bacteria-smeared, half-chewed nubs in mutilated cardboard holders. His mother always wondered aloud if they had any specials, when whatever misbegotten entrée
toasters, mass transportation and gratis transfers, rubbing cheese-puff dust on his trousers and calculating which checkout line was shortest, he missed the things unconjurable in reconstruction. That which will escape. His people. His family and friends and twinkly-eyed lunchtime counterfolk. The dead. He missed the extinct. The unfit had been wiped out, how else to put it, and now all that remained were ruined like him. He missed the women he’d never get to sleep with. On the other side of the
and furtively checked the transit-authority app on his phone so that no one would know he didn’t have a clue of where he was going. He was a rube, but he was no tourist. One day he’d live here and be one of their tribe. Mark Spitz got out at his stop, at some part of the city he’d never been before, to complete the assignment given by a website—in search of imported sneakers or limited-edition hoodies—eager to school himself in this new cranny of the city. Back then, if the worst happened, his
said. Gary closed his eyes and nodded, communing with the world’s most hardscrabble triplet. They set up the motion detectors and bunked, nestling gamey rims of sleeping bags under their noses. Kaitlyn propped herself on her elbows, flossing. She said, “Bright and early, back to work.” The matter of who owned the disputed grid, with its walk-ups and cherished parking lot, had been settled in Omega’s favor. One final gift from the Lieutenant. Mark Spitz closed his eyes to the jungle shadows on
beneath her right ear was absent. The exposed meat resembled torn-up pavement tinted crimson, a scabbed hollow of gaping gristle, tubes, and pipes: the city’s skin ripped back. She haunted her old workstation, hands flat on the ruby-red cloth adorning the small round table. There were two chairs, her messages intended for one soul at a time. Kaitlyn said, “I got the back” and retreated into the recesses of the shop, parting the curtain of red beads with her assault rifle. Gary snickered
