text: I chose to write this story because the author of World War Z states that zombies can survive underwater for a long time, but doesn't say anything about what was done to clear them up. Yes, there are references to other famous books/movies in here too, I hope you will enjoy it :) Deep Sea One part of the Z war, or World War Z, as some like to call it, that rarely gets mentioned in history books is the cleanup of the seas. When the war was long won on land and humanity was mopping up the last remnants of zombified human remains, a silent war was still raging under the seas, a war that few ever heard of and whose soldiers are forgotten, relegated to the annals as "cleanup crews". Giorgio Pellizzari led one of these crews, the Poseidon #8, in charge of "disposal, removal and elimination of human remains". Now retired, the imposing Italian man still sports a fierce white beard that contours his sun-baked face. His blue eyes, specks in the midst of gnarled rough skin have a lively, unbowed look about them. "The first thing you have to understand about our work is that the sea covers 71% of the planet, and with man being a land animal and all, it is naturally difficult to make any sort of impact on such an immense, untamed body. Think of navies in the past, of the Spanish Armada in the 16th century, not all of the king's cannon could do a thing to prevent the sea from taking them all.” “ I think it was the first prerogative of our job, even before the heathen ones, we respected the sea itself. Whenever we submerged we were completely at it's mercy." Sitting in his living room, by a warm fireplace, it's hard to believe that this man has come from the coldest hell on earth. Following his exploits in the Atlantic, Pellizzari became somewhat of a legend in the diving community and is credited with having paved the way for the reclaiming of the seas. With the solid education he received while in the COMSUBIN (Italian Navy's special forces) and his technical know-how of diving equipment, Pellizzari was the ideal choice to lead the "Poseidons", as they came to be known. Something about the naval decor of the room, or maybe the set of crossed iron spears that loom over the fireplace hint that this man was something more than a mere cleanup guy. He speaks with a deep voice, accented by his Tuscan origins. "Of course, a few divers could do little against the millions and millions of heathen ones that found themselves at the bottom of the sea. If even we fought every day for the rest of our lives we would never be able to finish off all of them, that's why we relied on the tugboats, before the divers...The tugboats were regular fishing vessels, at first we used the modern diesel-powered ones, but you see, today diesel is a luxury, and the little we got was used to operate the machinery. I've got to say, the sea offers all the propulsion you need, for free. We took to converting them to sail, or we found what sail ships we could outright.” “Three or four tugboats would lower their nets into the ocean, preferably where the seabed was flat and sandy and start dredging the seabed, back and forth, scooping up all the heathen ones they could. When the nets were well full, they would be hoisted up by a mechanical crane and lowered directly into the firebreather, a barge with a large rectangular incinerator on top. The abominations, with their disgusting bloated bodies would tumble down into to the fire and their ashes would be thrown to the sea. We would scrub the nets and repeat, over and over until the last monster was fished out of the water. When the nets would stop bringing them up, we would send a small detachment of divers to scout the area and pick off any lucky survivors with their spears.” “Now you will say, well, that's pretty easy! And I would say you are right! It was a joy to see those horrible creatures get consumed by the tonnage, my boys even drew a large dragon on the side of the firebreather and when we let them burn they would shout, holler and cheer." The image of a fiery barge incinerating zombies is sure spectacular, yet I feel the urge to enquire as to the actual fighting the divers had to do. Giorgio nods, he knows what I'm about to ask. "The thing is, not all of the seabed is flat, or sand. In fact, most areas are full of rocks, wrecks and all sorts of deathtraps for a net. Those were quite precious commodities so we avoided wasting them and only lowered them when we were sure they wouldn't snag onto anything. When they couldn't lower the nets, that's when we were truly called upon, that's when they asked to deploy us, the Poseidons." Before trying to understand the way in which zombies were fought underwater, it is important to ascertain how they interacted with the ocean's floors. Although zombies are immune to the lack of air, their sense of smell and hearing are mostly rendered useless at the bottom of the ocean. While on earth a Z could hear a man from half a mile away, underwater they were nothing more than bloated mobile masses, walking endlessly in a slow motion, sappy fever dream. Although this made them easier to kill, it is also a testament to their resilience, a Z could walk alone for years under the sea, marine life completely avoided them, even sharks dare not approach them. A standard Poseidon formation as it came to be known after the war quickly became the accepted method of effectively fighting Z under the water. The formation was composed of "Heavy" and "Light" units, acting in unison to bring down the threat. The first ones to submerge would be the "heavies". These were deep sea divers completely clad in a massive bronze and aluminum diving suit with a large copper helmet enveloping their head. On each side of the helmet each heavy had a "Ulixes" torch, a model that could light up even the most deep recess of the abyss.Their weaponry consisted of a large bronze shield and an inox iron spear, resembling that of an Ancient Greek hoplite or a Roman legionnaire. For backup, every heavy was armed with a 10 inch diving knife, one edge serrated to cut through netting and obstacles, or on occasion Z himself. While the heavy was slow, he could stay submerged for up to a day thanks to his carbon-scrubbing rebreather and was almost completely immune to bites, scratches and whatever the Z's could throw at them. After having made contact with the seabed, the heavies would gather into serrated ranks, their shields held in front of them and the spears poking out, forming an impenetrable phalanx. Following the heavies, the "light" units would submerge. Unlike their invulnerable brethren, the light divers only wore a neoprene diving wetsuit, which depending on the climate could be switched out for a hermetic one. Most "lights" sported a handheld torch, which they used to find Z and signal the heavies, together with a short spear or an axe. They had GAV inflatable jackets and lead-weighed belts to enable them to sink or float at will. Under most circumstances they looked exactly like a modern scuba diver, complete with fins, air tanks and diving torches. The light divers traded armor for mobility and were therefore the skirmishes of the formation, fanning out and attacking Z at will, harassing him and retreating, luring him toward the grinder of the waiting heavies. Giorgio was one of them. "Once the lights would gather enough Z's they would start luring them towards us". He explains; “In an ideal scenario we would have a good visibility and we could see them approaching and prepare our phalanx to face them. Still, as I've already told you, the sea makes her own rules to the games that people play. One moment we would have visibility as clear as day, the other a current of plankton would envelop us, making them impossible to see even if they were an inch from our nose. What guided us was mostly the torches of the light ones. They would signal to us where the heathen ones were and from where they would be approaching. It was important to have our phalanx always facing them because if the demons found our unshielded side it could often spell disaster. Many men I lost to an unseen bastard who crawled into our side. If the lights did their job good though, that often wouldn't be the case and we could face all of the fiends upfront... That's when the fighting began. The lights would scatter, either floating up and beginning their ascent or retreating behind our ranks, most of the time they would float above us, illuminating the zombies from above with their torches. Then the wall of dead would be upon us. It felt like a train smashing head on against our shields, we would hold fast, our lead-laced boots digging into the ground, our shield protecting us from their rotten teeth. The funny thing is, this was nothing like the combat you see on land, it was all in slow motion, slow but continuous, fluid movements both ours and Z's. It was a deadly struggle and yet there were no screams, no gunfire it was silent as night down there. Once Z had been stopped in his tracks we would raise our shields and start stabbing at their head with our long spears, killing them rank after rank putting them down into the seabed where they're supposed to be. What our spears couldn't finish we did with our knives, our boots or even our bare hands. Once I saw Morotz, one of my biggest lads, crush the head of a Z in his ironclad fist." Although the Poseidons were unrivaled fighting machines, losing only 15 of their 300-strong unit in the whole war, operating at depths of up to 2000 meters under the sea demanded quite a complicated logistics system to keep them alive at that depth and to make their fighting force effective. That's something I ask Giorgio, who indeed seems to be well-versed on the subject. "Due to the slow nature of the fighting that took place down there, it often took days to clear an area of heathens, which is why we set up "camp" a few hundred meters under the surface. Now "camp", is nothing as you imagine it. It's intended as a pressurized hyperbaric chamber, suspended by cable to one of our tugboats. When the fighting was over for the day, we would all ascend to "camp" where we could decompress, lose the nitrogen in our system and make preparations for the following day." Decompression is necessary to every diver, from the deep sea heavies to a recreational scuba. When a person is submerged for a certain amount of time little bubbles of nitrogen start forming in the bloodstream and if one was to emerge suddenly, these would expand owing to the reduced pressure and obstruct vessels and veins, risking to kill the person. An experienced diver knows this sickness very well. "We took decompression religiously. I would have rather left one of my guys behind and have one less heavy than risk a decompression sickness on my hands. It's a horrible way to go and it would spell the end of whatever operation we were conducting, not to mention kill the morale of my guys. Sometimes, when an operation was over we had to decompress for days, these were pretty boring and most of us stashed all manners of books and magazines in the hold. It was a down time to our work, we trained to kill but all we had to kill in there was time. It did give me time to think however, as it's in here that I thought up the phalanx, the light and heavies and all that was our fighting doctrine, every time I emerged in the chamber I had ample time to learn from the mistakes we made and perfect our tactics. In the end, a ship is only as good as it's crew and I could use this time to deal with my men on a personal level. I could see who was in a good mood, who wasn't and why, I tried my best to keep their morale high, that's when they fought best." I now move on to another topic. I feel like I've explored the past enough and I'm sure it must have been quite taxing for Pellizzari. I ask him about the future and what he sees of it. Considering the Poseidons have now been disbanded, replaced by professional Navy units. "I was assigned mostly ex Navy guys myself, or whatever deep sea divers had survived the Z war, cable repairmen, ship technicians, even the occasional recreational diver, they were all welcome in my crew...Now that our job is mostly done they all moved on to other pursuits, there are many damaged oil rigs out there, still broken and leaking, cables tore to pieces by the undead.They're wherever mankind needs them to be honestly, and I think it's all for the best. Today I look at my son Giorgio and I hope he grows up in a world that is more than thrusting spears at things. I hope he will develop a culture and master the arts, I hope he will find a job that has nothing to do with the heathen ones at all. Should they rise again, I warn them, while many shall kill them on land, I shall hunt them to the deepest abyss down to the pit of hell itself if necessary. I’m about to leave, Pellizzari has given me all that I needed and a very significant piece of history, not to mention a lesson learned shall the Z’s decide to infect humanity again. Before I go I have one last question, something unrelated that has always fascinated me. I ask Pellizzari if he’s ever seen things down there, things that no one has ever seen before. I was half expecting a sardonic remark, something sarcastic or funny, but the man gave me a look that was all the opposite. He seemed to pause on this one and then, almost by surprise gives me an answer I was not expecting. “Once, and only once. We were at 5,000 meters down and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a hallucination caused by the nitrogen in our blood, but I’m pretty sure we all saw it. It’s eye was as big as one of our shields, tentacles, numerous and thick as a tree, they must have been longer than one of our tugboats. It came close, I think it was just curious. We poked at it with our spears and one of my guys pierced it’s eye. It left in a flurry, an abomination never to be seen again. Never forget, that to this day we know more about the surface of the moon than we do what lies at the bottom of the sea.