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A New Story for a New World - An Excerpt Introduction from Max Brooks
I came up with the idea for an alien invasion book not long after finishing _World War Z._ And that was the problem; I was worried that it would be seen as a retread. I could see the reviews calling it _World War A._ So, I made some initial notes and put the project away.
I’m glad I waited. The times have changed so much in the last twenty years that the setting for my next book, _The First Hundred Hours,_ is practically unrecognizable from the world of my zombie apocalypse. These years have also given me the opportunity to amass an army of experts, on everything from direct energy weapons to urban warfare, that I needed to ground this new book in reality. I don’t have the luxury, this time, of omitting information my characters don’t know about. That’s the advantage of a book of interviews. Now I have a more conventional narration, a godlike perspective that forces me to explain everything. If _World War Z_ was Studs Terkel’s _“The Good War”_ with zombies, then _The First Hundred Hours_ is Tom Clancy’s _Red Storm Rising_ with aliens.
One factor that hasn’t changed between the two books, though, is the central reason of why I write. It always starts with a question. In _World_ _War Z,_ I asked myself, “What would a zombie apocalypse look like on a global scale?” In _The First Hundred Hours,_ I try to answer “Why would aliens invade Earth?”
It’s a question I’ve been asking myself since childhood. What does this crappy little planet have to offer an advanced, space-faring civilization? That is why this book almost reads like a murder mystery, and why seemingly obscure passages are important pieces in the larger puzzle. One of those pieces is the story of Aleksandr. Although he doesn’t appear in the actual book (that’s right, the excerpt you’re about to read exists here and only here), what happens to him will be critical to understanding why they came all this way just to kill us.
“There’s footage and records of objects in the skies that we don’t know exactly what they are.”
—President Barack Obama, on _The Late Late Show_
_with James Corden,_ May 17, 2021
**June 30, 1908**
**Stony Tunguska River, Siberia**
He would travel far, he knew that now. Aleksandr didn’t mind the heat of the ravine, or the suffocating lack of breeze, or the clouds of biting insects that tormented every patch of exposed skin. Nothing could ruin this day.
The nugget in his hand was the biggest yet, the size of his thumbnail, at least! Lifting it from the pan, Aleksandr washed it in the clear, cool water. Oh, how it shone in the morning sun. How it looked in his little leather bag next to all the other shiny crumbs. And he was just getting started!
Something moved in the brush. Aleksandr froze. Instinctively, his eyes scanned the tree line while his fingers gripped the sling of the rifle on his back.
There it was again, right in front of him. A spruce branch waving slightly, just below a darting red squirrel.
“Today is lucky for both of us,” Aleksandr said to the rodent, then sighed. “This time last year, you would be my reason for being here.” He let out another breath, relaxing his grip on the weapon but still turned in a full 360-degree arc. Had something, or someone, spooked the squirrel? No. He was just being paranoid. He hadn’t seen a Russian since leaving Vanavara three days ago.
That meant his ruse had worked!
When they’d crowded around him at the assayer’s office like hungry wolves, all desperate to know where he’d found the little yellow pebble that fetched more rubles than his finest sable pelt, he’d had a plan. It hadn’t worked out perfectly, though. Why couldn’t he speak Russian when it mattered? He’d learned their language, could converse in it fluently—but that was only in calm situations. Once the pressure was on, when the heart thumped and the stomach tightened, all he could manage was his native tongue.
But that had gone in his favor, as the stinking hulks hadn’t expected him to know their words anyway. Since most Russians saw his people as dumb animals, why not ride that river instead of swimming against it? Grinning like a fool, Aleksandr had responded to their queries with confused squints. When they brought out the worn map, he cocked his head like a dog. He knew what maps were, knew how to translate their squiggly lines and arcane symbols. But the Russians couldn’t know that.
Feigning ignorance long enough to provoke growing frustration, he suddenly pretended to grasp their meaning. With childlike enthusiasm, he gestured to the thin, wooden wall, toward something beyond, then pointed to the map while holding up the little magic rock. Over and over again, chattering in his own language, playing the role of obsequious dullard. And it had worked! The pale barbarians had all clapped him on the back, patting his head like a pet before falling over one another to run in the exact opposite direction of his ravine.
This place, this remote patch of wilderness. How many times had he traversed it in his seasonal hunts? How lucky he’d been earlier this month to have accidentally stumbled across those two grizzled, emaciated white men. He’d watched them for several hours, lying still, downwind, wondering why they tore into the stream bed with the frenetic energy of starving rats.
He couldn’t believe the howl that rose from one of them as he lifted some small object from his pan. Or how his companion fell on him with the violent ferocity of a bear. Snarling, punching, biting! He watched the first man roll away to grab his weapon, an old flintlock rifle, like the kind Aleksandr clutched now. The boom echoed in a cloud of gray smoke. The second man staggered back, clutched his stomach, but did not fall. He was close enough to grab the weapon’s muzzle, wrench it from the shooter’s hands, then club him over the head. The first man fell sideways as the second hit him again, then again, beating him until the makeshift cudgel snapped in two.
Aleksandr watched, transfixed, as the victor fell to his knees, wheezing and spitting blood, then crawled back into the stream to look for his victim’s treasure. He never found it. After less than a minute of cursing splashes, he suddenly put out his hands for support, tried to rise, then collapsed face down into the shallow water. Bubbles rose briefly around the struggling form as the stream ran red. Only then did Aleksandr emerge from his cover to see what on earth could have driven these men to murder.
_This?_ He found it on the bank, not far from where the first man had died. This little yellow rock held the power of life and death? He knew about gold, had seen these nuggets occasionally throughout his childhood. He’d also heard rumors about the sorcery they wielded over the Russians infesting his world, how they would kill or die for it. But he hadn’t believed those rumors until today.
Now it all made sense. The Russians had power over his people, and these rocks had power over them. “That is why,” his father had always warned, “gold is evil, and why you must never, ever tell the white man that you have found it. They will come in greater numbers, more than snowflakes in a blizzard. They will destroy everything we have, everything we are, just to possess the cursed metal.”
Papa was a good man, a strong man, but not quite as clever as his son.
And that cleverness was proven today, watching the bewitched Russians scramble from the small shack. Stupid, greedy, weak. How had they managed to build an empire that stretched between two oceans he’d never seen to cover so much of a world he could barely imagine? How had they managed to invent firearms, the telegraph, and that knee-bending monstrosity known to outsiders as the Trans-Siberian Railway?
Aleksandr had first seen that wonder traveling with his father to Vanavara. The distant wail was like no animal he’d ever heard. And the smoke! Higher than any campfire, and coming closer every minute.
“Is it a beast?!” he had asked his father, who nodded sadly.
“In a way,” Papa had replied, then continued trudging toward it with a resigned sigh. “A monster you must study so as not to be devoured by it.”
His father knew what it meant to be a subjugated people. That was why he’d insisted his children learn Russian, had given all of them Russian names. And now, on this day, he had decided that little namesake of the tsar, who’d commissioned this marvel of “civilization,” was old enough to help him haul their fur bounty into Vanavara to finally meet the conquerors.
As they broke through the foliage, Aleksandr stared in shock at the . . .what was it? Not a road. He’d seen those before, the thin dirt tracks that led to and from the small Russian settlements. This was covered with two long snakes—bright, shiny, resting on wooden pegs that stretched beyond his sight.
With anxious curiosity, he reached for one of the snakes, then looked up to his father. “You may,” said the older man, and Aleksandr gently pressed his fingers to the surface. It was metal, hot from the sun, and . . . vibrating! “Stand back.” Father gripped his other arm, pulling him back several paces. “Here it comes.”
The boy’s brain had no frame of reference to classify what came around the corner toward them. The size, the shape, the shrieking whistle that made him leap behind a tree.
Laughter brought him peeking out again. Laughter from the carriages passing them. Men had watched him dive for cover. Russians. So many of them, in their clean, white, matching uniforms, with long rifles slung over their shoulders. They looked so strong, proud.
“These are soldiers,” Father explained, “warriors like Yermak’s Cossacks.”
Aleksandr suddenly felt a stab of fear. That name. The stories. Yermak! “Are they coming to kill us?” he whispered, but Father placed a comforting hand on his shoulder and shook his head without taking his eyes off the train.
“Not this time. Not us, but a people who look like us, if what I am told is true.”
At that moment, Aleksandr thought he saw what had to be one of their leaders. It wasn’t just the many pretty ribbons and badges he wore but the way he walked among his men. Tall and confident, as if he was master of the world—which was the truth. The man’s lake blue eyes locked on Aleksandr. The Master waved.
“I’ve heard,” his father continued, “that they’re going to fight a tribe that live on islands in a great sea.” He pointed east, toward the rising sun. “A tribe called the Japanese.”
People who live on land surrounded by water? That sounded terrible to Aleksandr. No freedom. No open meadows to run through. No endless forests to explore. Maybe they were trying to escape their little rocks to find more land, this land. They must have been desperate to fight these invincible white warriors. Poor people, he thought, pitying the Japanese.
One year later, they’d been trudging down the same track, to deliver another year’s fur harvest to town, when father and son came upon another train. Only this time, it wasn’t racing by in triumph. It was stuck, broken down, just like the men inside.
Their uniforms were ragged, filthy, and most of their rifles were gone. Many of them wore bandages, some caked with brown dried blood. Many of their faces were slack, eyes staring into space. Others were narrowed, angry. He didn’t have to ask why. A year had taught him enough of their language to hear what the colonists were whispering about in Vanavara. Japan had done the impossible. They had beaten Russia!
What did it mean? Was Russia’s one God not superior to all deities? Or had he withdrawn his favor from the tsar, who supposedly ruled through him on earth? Is that why the officer he now saw walking cautiously among the seething men wore an expression he’d never seen on a Russian before?
Fear.
What was happening outside Aleksandr’s little patch of world?
He would have all the answers soon.
Naturally some of this gold would be used to buy what his family needed. Newer, better tools: pots, sewing needles, knives and hatchets, all of the finest steel. He’d also buy a better _pykteraun,_ a modern rifle, for himself. And maybe some for his brothers, too. Much easier to hunt with than those old, flintlock muzzleloaders. Accurate, waterproof. His father might even be persuaded to part with his traditional bow and arrows.
If not, the old man would at least enjoy the extra helping of tobacco, and tea, and sugar. Everyone loved sugar, no matter what it did to their teeth.
All these gifts might be enough to buy his family’s forgiveness, not just for abandoning this year’s hunt but for how he planned to spend the coming years.
Aleksandr had no intention of wasting his newfound wealth on vodka, white women, or even property. The last one always made him laugh. Owning land? If anything, the land owned you. He’d seen enough misery on the Russian colonists chained to their stuffy houses and patches of potatoes. Such fools, trading the greatest gift any human could ever ask for . . . freedom!
His people were travelers, which was what he would continue to be. Aleksandr would travel the world. He would start by buying a piece of paper permission, what the Russians called a “ticket,” to ride the Trans-Siberian into the setting sun. He’d see all the villages he’d heard about for years: Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk, Omsk, until he reached a giant town, Moscow, which held more people than all of Siberia combined. From there he would continue on to Saint Petersburg, the capital of the Empire, where he might get a chance to glimpse the Great Tsar himself. Would the “Emperor of All the Russias” look like the portraits adorning every shack in Vanavara? Would he be the wise, strong voice of the great God above, or an ordinary man who’d just lost a war?
And Aleksandr would continue on, to the other lands of the Empire. Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, a place called Poland that appeared on the map he’d purchased with money from his first nugget. He’d bought several maps of the world, showing lands that seemed as far away as the stars above.
He’d see them all, from trains, motorcars, and smoke-belching boats bigger than even the rail ferry on Lake Baikal. He might even be able to fly—yes, fly—on machines that he’d heard could soar among the clouds like birds. It seemed crazy, but no crazier than the idea that this world was so round that, eventually, he’d end up right back where he started. Wouldn’t that be something? Coming home to his family with tales and memories to last a lifetime.
He might even return with something more valuable than a headful of wondrous adventures. If his travels eventually landed him on the islands of
the Japanese, could he not learn of how they’d beaten the hated Russians? Could their secret be the key to his people’s freedom?
Yes, Aleksandr thought with a smile, he would travel far. And all thanks to the soft yellow lump in his hands.
He was still admiring its luster when the nugget seemed to shine brighter, along with his fingers, and the ground below them. Something was wrong . . . with his eyes? The sun? It couldn’t be. It was early morning. But . . .
He looked up just in time to see it. In the ribbon of blue between the pines, a ball of fire! So bright he had to cover his eyes, and the sound like whistling wind, growing angrier every second. Aleksandr tried to run, but the world exploded all around him. The blinding glare, the deafening roar. A wall of scorching air threw him off his feet, slamming his head into a nearby birch. He saw white, then black.
He was awakened by the sound of his own coughing. How long was he out? Eyes burning, ears ringing, he groped on the ground, crawling for his memory of the stream. The water, cool against his singed skin. He splashed some on his face, tried a sip, which sent him into a hacking fit.
He splashed more water on his face before rolling onto his back and trying to open his eyes again. This time they obeyed, cracking to find . . .the sky? Gone, replaced by a curtain of dark smoke. Ash was falling like snow. _Get clear, get away._ But where? Which direction? He had to calm himself. Think. If this was a forest fire, he had to see where it was. High ground. He started up the ravine’s steep slope. Choking on ashes, he made it to the summit of the ridge and stopped in horror at what lay before him.
The land was black, all the trees flattened. They weren’t burning, just charred. As far as his tearing, cinder-filled eyes could see, there was nothing but broken, smoking trunks. The fireball must have done this. But how? And what was it? Not lightning, he was sure of that. Punishment from heaven? An angry bolt from Uchir, the wind spirit? That’s what some of his family would surely think. Aleksandr knew better, though. It had to be the doings of man. A crashed Russian flying machine or maybe a weapon. The Japanese! This could have been how they defeated the Russians last time, and if the war had restarted . . .
His thoughts were cut short by a rising light. It was round, blue, and seemed to end at the carpet of broken trees. Aleksandr could hear a low, faint hum as it lifted slowly above the charred ground. Then, suddenly, as if by the snap of a finger, it was above him! So close he could see its true shape. Not round, but more oblong, like a spent bullet. The Siberian native didn’t think to run, or hide, or do anything other than what that first Russian officer had done that day on the train. Aleksandr waved.
There was no way for him to understand what happened next. A bright dot shone in the center of the disk, then he felt a cone of cold air shimmering around him. He tried to move, but his limbs were paralyzed. He tried to speak, but his voice melted into the surrounding thrum. Aleksandr’s body began to vibrate, through his bones, his teeth. He could feel his feet lifting from the ground as the glowing bullet grew larger. The pinpoint expanded to a circle, drawing him in. There was no way for Aleksandr Petrov Sichegir to know, at that moment, how prophetic his grand plan had been.
He would, indeed, travel far.
