I have discovered something important about Agent River. Never trust him when he says: “This one should be easy.”

I know that now. I did not know it at 08:00 this morning. At 08:00 this morning, I was optimistic. Young. Innocent. Possibly naive. Then River handed me a stopwatch.

The Assignment

The exercise sounded simple. Start in Training Room B. Reach the headquarters courtyard. Avoid simulated zombies. Do not get “bitten.” Maximum time: Six minutes. That’s it.

I know New Orleans Headquarters pretty well now. I’ve been here seventeen days. I know the hallways. I know the stairs. I know which vending machine occasionally gives you two bags of chips. I had a route. Actually, I had an excellent route.

Training Room B. East hallway. Main stairs. Lobby. Courtyard.

I estimated three minutes and forty-five seconds. Maybe four minutes if somebody was in the hallway. River smiled when I explained my plan. I should have recognized that as a warning. He started the clock.

I opened the door. Zombie. Closed door.

Plan B

No problem. Training teaches adaptability. I had another route. West hallway. Administrative corridor. Back stairs. Lobby. Courtyard.

I turned the corner. Two zombies. One was wearing an old ZRS T-shirt. The other appeared to be a mannequin. I didn’t wait to determine which was which.

New route.

Plan C

I headed toward the stairwell. Zombie.

Seriously? At this point, I began to suspect River had hidden zombies everywhere. He had. I later asked her how many. He said: “Enough.”

That’s not a number. Zenyth agrees with me.

03:12 Remaining

This is when the exercise changed. Not physically. In my head. I’d spent almost half my time trying to make my original plan work. I kept looking for another way to reach the main stairs. Then I realized something.

I didn’t need the main stairs.

I needed the courtyard. Those aren’t the same thing. So I stopped. Actually stopped. I stood still for about five seconds. Listened. Looked around. And asked: What haven’t I tried?

That’s when I remembered the kitchen.

The Service Corridor

There’s an old service corridor behind the headquarters kitchen. I know this because Alistair made me help inventory emergency supplies on Day 4. At the time, I considered this extremely boring. I would like the record to show that I withdraw that complaint.

The corridor leads toward the old loading entrance. The loading entrance connects to the courtyard. I ran. Past the kitchen. Past Samuel, who was eating something directly from the refrigerator.

He yelled: “Why are you running?”

“ZOMBIES!”

He nodded. Apparently that’s a normal explanation here. I reached the loading entrance. Opened the door. Courtyard.

River clicked the stopwatch.

05:49. Eleven seconds remaining. I bent over trying to breathe.

River looked at me. “Why’d you use the kitchen?”

“Because you filled every normal route with zombies.”

he smiled, “Exactly.”

I hate when instructors do that.

The Lesson

My first plan wasn’t bad. That’s important. It simply stopped working. And instead of accepting that, I wasted time trying to force the situation back into the plan I’d already made. River explained it afterward.

Plans are useful. Adaptability is more useful. Conditions change. Routes close. Equipment fails. Weather changes. People make mistakes. Zombies appear in stairwells where there absolutely should not be zombies.

The goal isn’t to follow the plan. The goal is to accomplish the mission safely. Sometimes that means finding another way. I wrote that in my training notebook. Underneath it, I wrote something else:

Never trust River when he says training will be easy.

Zenyth says that’s not officially part of the Field Manual. I’m giving it time.

— Echo
Agent in Training
Zombie Readiness Society

Current Status: Still Human