Liberal, Libertario, Libertino

Não gosto de filmes de zumbi. Sempre achei todos iguais. Um bando de gente correndo, zumbis fazendo "bleergh" e pronto.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War é diferente. Pra começar, me foi muito recomendado. Agora que vai virar filme, comecei a folhear e não larguei mais. Ouvi primeiro em audiobook (narrado por elenco estelar, ganhou prêmio de melhor audiobook do ano) e depois li no kindle os trechos não-incluídos.

Alguns anos depois da World War Z, um escritor decide organizar uma história oral da guerra, conversando com outros sobreviventes por todo o mundo. A Coréia do Norte sumiu. Rússia virou uma teocracia. As baleias, fáceis de caçar, foram as primeiras baixas da guerra. O fundo do mar está repleto de zumbis que surgem nas praias. Nas latitudes mais frias, eles congelam no inferno e reaparecem na primavera. A última transmissão de Buenos Aires foi um tango cantado ao vivo na rádio principal. O primeiro plano a dar certo na contenção dos zumbis foi criado por um dos líderes do apartheid da África do Sul e seu objetivo inicial era proteger os afrikaners das hordas negras. Cuba agora é a democracia capitalista mais rica do ocidente - e grande parte dos norte-americanos têm suas contas bancárias em Havana! No mundo pós-zumbi, onde as pessoas valem por suas habilidades de sobrevivência, é comum advogados antes milionários hoje trabalhando de assistentes de seus antigos jardineiros, cujas habilidades agora estão muito mais em demanda.

Em suma, uma excelente livro de ficção científica, em escala planetária, muito bem bolado, fechadinho em cada detalhe, apavorante, divertido.

Recomendo.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

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Cuba e a Guerra Mundial Zumbi:

Cuba won the Zombie War; maybe that’s not the most humble of statements, given what happened to so many other countries, but just look at where we were twenty years ago as opposed to where we are now. ... The repressive nature of our fortress society allowed the government to take steps to ensure that the infection was never allowed to spread. All internal travel was suspended, and both the regular army and territorial militias were mobilized. Because Cuba had such a high percentage of doctors per capita, our leader knew the true nature of the infection weeks after the first outbreak was reported. ...

I’m not surprised that Fidel knew the tides of freedom were coming to sweep him out of power. I am surprised at how well he rode the wave. [He laughs, gesturing to a photo on the wall of an aged Castro speaking in the Parque Central.] Can you believe the cojones of that son of a bitch, to not only embrace the country’s new democracy, but to actually take credit for it? Genius. To personally preside over the first free elections of Cuba where his last official act was to vote himself out of power. That is why his legacy is a statue and not a bloodstain against a wall.

Of course our new Latin superpower is anything but idyllic. We have hundreds of political parties and more special-interest groups than sands on our beaches. We have strikes, we have riots, we have protests, it seems, almost every day. You can see why Che ducked out right after the revolution. It’s a lot easier to blow up trains than to make them run on time. What is it that Mister Churchill used to say? “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”[He laughs.]

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Os Cães contra os Zumbis

Um dia, me perguntaram qual era a coisa que eu fazia melhor, minha maior habilidade, algo que se fosse uma carreira eu poderia ganhar a vida fazendo. Pensei muito e respondi: lidar com cachorro. Não tem nada que eu faça melhor do que lidar com cachorro. Todos os cachorros me amam e eu amo todos os cachorros. Nunca conheci um cachorro que não fosse tão agressivo ou arisco que eu não pudesse conquistá-lo: é realmente um dom. Talvez a única coisa que eu realmente sei fazer direito.

A gente lê World War Z e é impossível não bater uma certa tristeza, do tipo: porra, nesse mundo, eu não iria servir pra nada. O que um consultor de usabilidade, escritor de ficção e professor de literatura pode contribuir? Nada.

Até que cheguei nessa parte e fiquei aliviado. No mundo pós-apocalíptico, eu já teria emprego garantido:

The toughest part for me was making sure Maze stuck to the mission. She always wanted to fight.[Smiles down at the sleeping dachshund.] They were good escorts, always made sure she got to her target objective, waited for her, and always got her home safely. You know they even took down a few Gs in transit.

But isn’t Z flesh toxic?

Oh yeah…no, no, no, they never bit. That would have been fatal. You’d see a lot of dead Ks in the beginning of the war, just lying there, no wounds, and you knew they’d bitten infected flesh. That’s one of the reasons training was so important. They had to know how to defend themselves. Zack’s got a lot of physical advantages, but balance isn’t one of them. The bigger Ks could always hit between the shoulder blades or the small of the back, just knock them on their faces. The minis had the option of tripping, getting underfoot, or launching themselves at the knee-pit. Maze always preferred that, dropped ’em right on their backs!

[The dog stirs.]

[To Maze.] Oh, sorry, little miss.[Strokes the back of her neck.]

[To me.] By the time Zack got back up, you’d bought yourself five, maybe ten, fifteen seconds. We had our share of casualties. Some Ks would have a fall, break a bone… If they were close to friendly forces, their handler could pick them up pretty easily, get them to safety. Most of the time they even returned to active duty. ...

You know we had the highest rate of suicide among any branch of the service. More than Special Forces, more than Graves Registration, even more than those sick fucks at China Lake. At Hound Town I met handlers from thirteen other countries. They all said the same thing. It didn’t matter where you were from, what your culture or background, the feelings were still the same. Who could suffer that kind of loss and come out in one piece? Anyone who could wouldn’t have made a handler in the first place. That’s what made us our own breed, that ability to bond so strongly with something that’s not even our own species. The very thing that made so many of my friends take the bullet’s way out was what made us one of the most successful outfits in the whole fucking U.S. military.

The army saw it in me that day on a stretch of deserted road somewhere in the Colorado Rockies. I’d been on foot since escaping my apartment in Atlanta, three months of running, hiding, scavenging. I had rickets, fever, I was down to ninety-six pounds. I found these two guys under a tree. They were making a fire. Behind them was this little mutt. His paws and snout were bound with shoelaces. Dried blood was caked on his face. He was just lying there, glassy-eyed, whimpering softly.

What happened?

You know, I honestly don’t remember. I must have hit one of them with my bat. They found it cracked over his shoulder. They found me on the other guy, just pounding his face in. Ninety-six pounds, half dead myself, and I beat this guy to within an inch of his life. The Guardsmen had to pull me off, cuff me to a car hulk, smack me a couple times to get me to refocus. That, I remember. One of the guys I attacked was holding his arm, the other one was just lying there bleeding. “Calm the fuck down,” the LT said, trying to question me, “What’s wrong with you? Why’d you do that to your friends?” “He’s not our friend!” the one with the broken arm yelled, “he’s fuckin’ crazy!” And all I kept saying was “Don’t hurt the dog! Don’t hurt the dog!” I remember the Guardsmen just laughed. “Jesus Christ,” one of them said looking down at the two guys. The LT nodded, then looked at me. “Buddy,” he said, “I think we got a job for you.” And that’s how I got recruited. Sometimes you find your path, sometimes it finds you. ...

I lived a block away from a pet store. I used to drive by it every day on my way to work, confounded by how these sentimental, socially incompetent losers could shell out so much money on oversized, barking hamsters. During the Panic, the dead started to collect around that pet shop. I don’t know where the owner was. He’d pulled down the gates but left the animals inside. I could hear them from my bedroom window. All day, all night. Just puppies, you know, a couple of weeks old. Scared little babies screaming for their mommies, for anyone, to please come and save them.

I heard them die, one by one as their water bottles ran out. The dead never got in. They were still massed outside the gate when I escaped, ran right past without stopping to look. What could I have done? I was unarmed, untrained. I couldn’t have taken care of them. I could barely take care of myself. What could I have done?…Something.

[Maze sighs in her sleep. Darnell pats her gently.]

I could have done something.

* * *

I knew this one guy, massive ’roidasaurus, he’d been a professional wrestler before the war. We were walking up the freeway near Pulaski, New York, when the wind picked up the scent of a jackknifed big rig. It’d been loaded with bottles of perfume, nothing fancy, just cheap, strip mall scent. He froze and started bawlin’ like a kid. Couldn’t stop. He was a monster with a two grand body count, an ogre who’d once picked up a G and used it as a club for hand-to-hand combat. Four of us had to carry him out on a stretcher. We figured the perfume must have reminded him of someone. We never found out who.

Another guy, nothing special about him, late forties, balding, bit of a paunch, as much as anyone could have back then, the kinda face you’d see in a prewar heartburn commercial. We were in Hammond, Indiana, scouting defenses for the siege of Chicago. He spied a house at the end of a deserted street, completely intact except for boarded-up windows and a crashed-in front door. He got a look on his face, a grin. We should have known way before he dropped out of formation, before we heard the shot. He was sitting in the living room, in this worn, old easy chair, SIR between his knees, that smile still on his face. I looked up at the pictures on the mantelpiece. It was his home.

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Na Amazon: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War