This mess all started in Greenland.

Ships found themselves with missing crew each time they

passed close to it. Then, entire ships began to disappear. Something happened on this barren
island. At the time no one was sure, except that there was no one left to answer the calls. The
Danish government dispatched a ship expedition to check what had happened, but when it
didn’t return…

Didn’t take long for the undeads to appear on the shores of Iceland and Canada. That’s when
people realize what the fuck was going on. Large walking corpses with rotten dark skin. Some
were wearing old armors, others had more recent clothing. Some had swords, axes or other old
weapons, other just tried to grab ya. Didn’t take long for the people to realize what had
happened in Greenland. The Europeans thought this might be linked to this old legend, these
undead vikings who drowned at sea and tried to make others suffer the same fate. Draugr. We
Americans simply called them Drowned. Felt adequate and more pronounceable.

Iceland… Well, Iceland was fucked before anyone could do anything. Kind of hard to escape
when every beach and every coast has undead vikings crawling onto it. Canada was a bit luckier,
if being lucky meant you were able to organise just to see it fail spectacularly. Not wanting these
things to spread out, the good old US of A came to Canada’s rescue with a big ass army to deal
with these Drowneds. Would be a quick fight North to stop a zombie epidemic, they thought.
They knew the movies and how this worked. “Don’t get bitten and shoot the head! You’ll be
fine!” they said. Fuckers. Should have read more Norse mythology, then they might have gotten
a chance at Happy Valley-Goose Bay.

First thing the troops noticed when they arrived was the fog. The Drowneds were followed by
this tick, clod and frozen fog everywhere they went. It’s basically impossible to see through that
fog. How can you shoot what you can’t see? Oh, but the drowned could see the soldiers just
fine. Now, the good news was that you didn’t need to focus on their head to put them down.
The bad news was that the Drowneds were a lot tougher than planned. While the paler ones,
the ones which had clearly died in more recent years, took a while, trying to put down the
darker old ones, the one that were vikings, was like trying to take down a tank with a handgun.
Troops panicked, obviously. With the headshot not automatic kills, some troops though the
Drowneds were invulnerable. And when these idiots accidentally ran into a Drowned, they died
the second the monster got its hands on them. “The Battle of Happy Valley-Goose Bay” was a
massacre.
It’s been three years since this mess. Canada and Alaska are fucked, overruned by Drowned,
enough so that most of their territories is covered in a winter fog. The Drowned have made sea
travel a death sentence, and aquaphobia is the number one phobia in the Americas, now that
we know that a person that drown will turn into a Drowned. The coastlines are basically
abandoned. For obvious reasons, although the Pacific coast is nowhere near as affected as the
Atlantic one.

Still, as apocalypse would go, I’ve seen worst in books and movies. We still have a president,
although it’s the Secretary of Commerce who took over and after that incident in Washington
two years ago. Since then, they relocated to a new capital somewhere and I’ve barely heard of
him since. Don’t care, didn’t vote for the Secretary of Commerce to be my president. The
Military is still around. Well, the Army anyway, stationed at the northern border trying (and
failing) to keep more Drowneds from coming by land. The Navy, Coast Guard and Marine Corp
were abandoned once it was clear that anything related to water was just asking for death. The
Air Force is still around, but what’s the point of flying into a fog just to crash? Most towns are
lucky enough to still have a mayor or a police department to keep some authority, although that
authority is shaky at best. And if you’re really lucky, you live in one of those small towns that
have yet to see a Drowned.

Shit is going bad, though. With the maritime trade done for, resources are limited. Big towns are
mostly abandoned or the zone of turf wars for… well, for everything, really. Neighbours killing
neighbours for food, refugees abandoning their home for a safer place (yeah, good luck with
that), corpses in the streets… And half of the time, we didn’t even need a Drowned to get to that
point. Small self-sufficient towns are the future now, and those are rarely willing to give up what
they have. The Army has been, hum, “recruiting” people to garrison the northern border, and
they don’t take no for an answer, even if they have to cut a limb to make sure you don’t run no
more. And then there are those fucking neo-pagan cults that popped up, people thinking that
the vikings had the right gods and all. Some are just idiots, but others are dangerous madmen,
like those in Washington D.C. that committed mass suicide by drowning themselves in the
Capitol Reflecting Pool. How do you think that ended?

Life sucks, and everyone knows it’s going to get worst. Sooner or later, we’re going to end up
like Canada. But there’s hope, although it’s a flimsy one. A rumor circulate that the cold fog
accompanying the Drowned actually froze some of the sea. Just enough to get to Siberia. Since
the Pacific is doing far better, life in the great Russian cold seems like a pretty good deal. Still, it
sounds like a fantasy to many, and a lot of scientists call bullshit. But then again, they called
bullshit when people started to say there were giant undead vikings, so… At least one guy truly
believes this story. Hank’s his name, and he started a caravan of people willing to follow him to
Alaska, so they can all escape and live happily in the old Soviet gulags. Heard the Russians
turned them into refugee camps.

Yes, it’s a long shot. Yes, it means going through Drowned territories. Yes, the whole ice bridge
sounds a little far off. But I ain’t waiting for the deads to walk south and kill us all, so I’m taking
my chances. And I suggest you do the same.