I was told to expect a “tall ship,” although the “sails” of IS Imfingo refer to the four vertical wind turbines rising from her sleek, trimaran hull. When coupled with banks of PEM, or proton exchange membrane, fuel cells, a technology that converts seawater into electricity, it is easy to see why the prefix “IS” stands for “Infinity Ship.”

I’m pretty sure none of this is ever relevant. I think it’s there to show that it’s the future and all, but it’s a weird, weird use of resources to be building these things.

I was born about the same time as the new, post apartheid South Africa. In those euphoric days, the new government not only promised the democracy of “one man, one vote,” but employment and housing to the entire country. My father thought that meant immediately. He didn’t understand that these were long-term goals to be achieved after years—generations—of hard work. He thought that if we abandoned our tribal homeland and relocated to a city, there would be a brand-new house and high-paying jobs just sitting there waiting for us.

Okay, so this isn’t as bad as the supposedly Chinese guy in the opening, but it’s still pretty much the white guy’s summary of what’s wrong with Africa. I also don’t like that this is framed entirely as the poor government not realizing their people are stupid and not, say, that the government was deliberately misleading because “you get stuff!” gets you more support than “stuff at some point in the future, for some people, maybe!”

But so anyway. The narrator grew up in a shantytown. One day he hears gunshots, as is normal.

Like a combat veteran, you develop almost genetic survival skills.

The narrator does not show any sign of struggling with English, but here he is claiming you “develop” something genetic. This is a particular error that actually sounds more like something only a native speaker would do – he’s not misusing words in general, he’s just speaking very sloppily in this one instance.

So, he runs for cover. The gunfire doesn’t stop, which is unusual. So it’s zombie time! As the gunfire continues and a fire starts, a crowd of fleeing people runs by, shouting that something’s coming. But the guy’s family lives in that direction, so he tries to keep going only to be knocked down and trampled by the crowd, then get up in time to see some zombies and get grabbed by another from behind.

Black fluid ran down the front of his white shirt. A knife protruded from his chest, jammed between the ribs and buried to the hilt.

He manages to beat its head in with a cooking pot. Remember that for a later chapter.

It’s pretty nightmarish. The housing is made of plastic or wood scraps, so the zombies are barely slowed down by the buildings but there’s no real visibility for humans trying to move around, especially as the smoke worsens. None of that comes across well in the telling, though. I think this would be a pretty terrifying design for a videogame, though, where you’re struggling to navigate while the zombies shove through the flimsy barriers behind you, and pretty stressful even just in movie terms if filmed right.

He runs across a woman and her children, but she won’t listen when he tells her to run and she stabs his hand when he tries to grab her.

I left her there. I didn’t know what else to do. She is still in my memory, when I sleep or maybe close my eyes sometimes. Sometimes she’s my mother, and the crying children are my sisters.

Nice to see non-sociopath characters.

He runs into headlights and gets shot in the shoulder, then brought to a hospital.

I saw the man in the bed next to me frantically wheeled out as soon as his breathing stopped.

So you see it’s not just China that’s figured out they’re zombies. It seems like this wasn’t anything they heard from the government but just people putting 2 and 2 together at the moment. Bear in mind that this outbreak here, an outbreak in probably the most vulnerable area, was contained and now the hospital at least has a good idea what they’re dealing with. This should be the worst the plague manages to get.

Anyway, in his drugged stupor he overhears people arguing about rabies.

“That wasn’t rabies!” one of them yelled. “Rabies doesn’t do that to people!”

Rabies will keep coming up. The author seems to think the main point of confusion for people is the whole cannibalism thing, so they’ll think it’s some sort of rabies since both make you bitey, ignoring that the big deal here is that they’re walking dead. No one would be debating the exact symptoms of rabies when dealing with people who don’t have a pulse.

One of the big failings of this book is that no one acts in an understandable manner. They’re able to understand that anyone who dies might come back as a zombie so they remove corpses immediately, but at the same time they’re not able to understand that the people are coming back as zombies and are arguing over what disease might be making them aggressive as if there’s anything sane in what’s happening here. No one will ever act in a consistent manner throughout this whole book. It makes it hard to care about them when they’re so unbelievable in their stupidity.