[ IP ] White Castle

Baikonur, Kazakhstan, 2116 
 
 *Querido Señor: * 
 
 It has been 90 years since the events chronicled in *Juan de los Muertos* ( Juan of the Dead ) transpired. We Cubans, as a resourceful and enterprising people who've learned to adapt to hardship, did better than anyone else, and we saw a great opportunity to advance when we heard reports that the zombie apocalypse had devastated the US mainland far more than our precious island. Praise be to God, Pope Francis, and Fidel and Raul Castro for preparing us. 
 
 When we retook Cape Canaveral from the savages, we learned from the surviving astronauts that much of the US' top science and space infrastructure had moved to Baikonur, in Kazakhstan, and that the last astronauts and cosmonauts on the ISS had completed an emergency landing after hearing of the apocalypse but before losing contact because zombies destroyed the grid. So in 2036 we mounted an expedition to Kazakhstan, landing in what was once Iran and preparing to march northward. We were hamstrung by a shortage of cafe con leche and maduros, but in time we marched through the ruins of Tehran and planted a Cuban flag in the ruins of Azadi Square. When we reached Baikonur in 2039, after multiple attacks from zombies and Turkic hordes, we found that all of the remaining American and Chinese astronauts had been killed; the cosmonauts, being more fluent in Russian, had successfully blended into the surrounding villages. We found three or four surviving cosmonauts, disguised as farmers for their own protection, in the Kazakh steppes who led us to the space shuttle. The shuttle had been surrounded by mud, possibly in a last minute attempt by Baikonur staff to prevent the hordes from sacking it, but inside we found that a small number of staff had successfully preserved most of the technologies that we Cubans had lost. Today, Baikonur is the capital of the Eurasian Confederation, which at least nominally controls two entire continents, and we are pleased to announce the appointment of the first Kazakh-born governor of the confederation after decades of Cuban rule. 
 

