Kingdom of Z (Volume 2) – Zombie Nation Rise Up!
Masaru, Miki, and Karin find a survivor from a nearby group. He ran away to find help as the leaders are tyrants. Masaru wants to help, but Miki needs to work out what’s in it for them!
Kingdom of Z (Volume 2) – Zombie Nation Rise Up!
What happened?
Miki took Karin and Masaru to a nearby department store. Since it has no food, they’re not expecting it to have been touched, and they were right. Miki is after a drone with a camera that she saw in a flyer. It’ll come in handy when they plan their routes as they can avoid the large groups of zombies better. They also did find some food in the form of boxes and boxes of candy. On the way back to the school, Masaru and Karin rode in the back of the truck which gave Masaru a chance to ask Karin about Miki.
However, their discussion was cut short when they got back to the school to discover that someone had been there. It wasn’t exactly what they were expecting, but it was a survivor, stranded in a tree to get away from some zombies. Karin couldn’t help but laugh. After rescuing Iwasa from the tree, they learn about his group and how the leaders are killing those that oppose them, keeping the women as playthings, and how they have plans to cut and run in a pinch.
Masaru is determined to help Iwasa, but Miki and Karin are surprisingly less gung-ho. Miki wants to know what’s in it for them and why they should risk going up against a much larger group. Of course, Miki was just laying the groundwork to use her new army, and not experience resistance from Masaru. He had no choice but to agree to it. So, Miki came up with a plan and sent Iwasa back.
Iwasa arrived back after five days and was questioned by the bosses. He told them that he got lost and then was captured by another group – fifty people strong. Then, he told them he escaped and came back. Mori, the leader was unsure of Iwasa’s story and asked his number two, Saguwatari. He believed that Iwasa had betrayed them and that he was lying. They were expecting a group to come, but Iwasa was a spy or a traitor.
Of course, this was all part of Miki’s plan. She told Iwasa what to say, knowing that he would be questioned and believed to be a traitor. That set the enemy’s defence up exactly as she had hoped. Masaru would lead the attack by driving the truck into their base and unloading a wave of zombies. The enemy didn’t know what hit them and with zombies overrunning part of their base, no one would open the doors for them to escape. It was a massacre.
However, Mori and Saguwatari slipped out through an underground passageway, abandoning the others. Of course, Miki planned on this happening and intercepted them with Karin. She set Karin on Mori while she faced off with Saguwatari. Karin easily defeated Mori, but he slipped away again using Saguwatari as a shield. Unfortunately, he didn’t see the zombie that had slipped into the tunnel.
Miki showed the group what happened to Mori and told them that she had a number of bases all with similar numbers to here. She also had an army of zombies. In short, she was terrifying. Miki put Iwasa and Saguwatari in charge and headed back to the school.
What did you think?
This series is great, and that is largely thanks to Miki. Sure, Karin is crazy cool too, but Miki is on another level. It feels like she’s seen all the zombie movies and has just jumped all the way to the part when the humans are more dangerous than the zombie. Sure, she’s using zombies as a weapon, but they’re only dangerous because of how Miki uses them.
It was amazing how she anticipated everything and was able to pretty much walk through this group and take over without any opposition. It was also incredibly shrewd to leave Iwasa and Saguwatari in charge with Sudou still there. That group will constantly be watching one another waiting for them to turn on each other and that makes it less likely for them to have time to conspire against her.
What have you learnt?
It’s time for an interesting fact, which is why I enjoyed the way Miki left the other group. When the Berlin Wall was up and East Germans were trying to flee to the West, it was not uncommon for guards to abandon their stations and make a run for it too. To combat this, the people in charge arranged it so that the guards were stationed in pairs and never with the same person twice. That way, you wouldn’t know if you were stationed with a spy and as such you couldn’t plan anything.
It’s a fairly classic tactic, using the people to regulate themselves and take the focus away from what the people in power are doing. Unfortunately, we still see a lot of this in modern politics and not just dystopian stories. Put ten people in a room and tell them that someone might be a spy and they will be too focused on working out who’s the spy and not trying to get out of the room. More often than not, there is no spy, but that doesn’t matter.
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