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The good news: you've narrowed down the source of the New Orleans zombie outbreak to an area west of the city. The bad news: that area is a maze of swamps and waterways and bayou towns so remote they have their own language. Time to get to work. Who knows? Maybe you'll catch a break in the investigation.

Date: January 26, 1965
Place: The Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency, New Orleans Office

A few sips of bourbon help ease you into your second night in New Orleans. You sleep like a stone and arrive for work the next morning energized and ready to hunt down the source of the zombie outbreak. But first, you have to take care of one piece of business: New Orleans PD has cornered a zombie on a street near the French Quarter. You take a team down to the scene and find an agent's worst nightmare: a bullet-ridden zombie writhing on the ground, surrounded by a crowd of horrified tourists. It's an article of faith in the FVZA that public displays of zombieism are very bad. As long as you keep the undead in the shadows, it's OK; as soon they come out into the light, the politicians get involved. And sure enough, once you finish off the zombie, the bloodshot-eyed mayor of New Orleans takes you aside and hisses, "either you put an end to this or it's your job."

Zombie photographed by woman in tour group

While the day may have gotten off to a bad start, your fortunes brighten considerably back at the office when a call comes in from river patrol. Turns out a swamp boat tour group came across a zombie wading through the water just outside the town of Bayou Gauche. A half hour later, you're zipping west on the Mississippi River in a police motorboat for a rendezvous with Earl Perkins, owner and sole proprietor of Bayou Boat Tours and witness to the zombie encounter.

If the stereotypical swamp boat operator is a sunburnt, tobacco-chewing Cajun, then Earl Perkins breaks no new ground. He is thrilled to meet a real zombie expert and starts drooling tobacco juice as he details his many encounters over the years. You ask him to take you to the scene of the attack and, a shortly thereafter, the boat leaves the big river for the bayou, and the roar of barge horns is replaced by the trilling notes of songbirds. A few hundred yards from the spot where Earl encountered the zombie, you spot something floating in the water. Earl guides the boat closer and you see the gnawed carcass of an armadillo. You're about to take a closer look at the bite marks when a zombie comes crashing out of the shadows, driven mad by your scent. Earl pulls out his .22 rifle but you push it aside, aim your own rifle and shoot a poison dart into the zombie's neck. He expires just feet from the boat.

You tie the zombie to the back of the boat and continue on to Bayou Gauche. The small town that opens up to you around a bend in the river looks like any bayou town at first glance, with its creaky wooden houses arranged on stilts and blocks. And then you see the zombies. You've encountered large packs before. You once wasted 14 in the basement of an abandoned building in Cleveland. But this is something different: an entire community of zombies. You see men, women and children, all in various states of decomposition, emerging from the houses and surrounding woods. It's a classic surreal zombie scene. With their toothy grins, you'd swear they weren't zombies but part of a welcoming committee.

You count 30 zombies before a panicked Earl starts popping off shots with his .22. This only serves to further agitate the zombies, so you order Earl to spin the boat around and take you back to New Orleans.

No time to waste. Call together your assault team and launch an immediate strike against the town.

Haste makes waste. Spend the rest of the day planning the assault and launch at first light tomorrow.

Forget an assault. It's too dangerous. Hand this one over to the Air Force. A few bombing runs over the town will take care of the problem.