Commander Alec Rourke has spent most of his adult life going where other people are told not to go. An active-duty U.S. Navy officer, former SEAL, and veteran of deeply compartmented intelligence and counter-intelligence operations, Rourke’s career disappears into redactions almost as quickly as it begins. He has survived more than ten bullet wounds accumulated across years of operations, but nothing supernatural keeps him alive. He is simply extraordinarily difficult to stop.
The callsign Zombie was earned on a clandestine mission after Rourke was shot repeatedly and presumed dead. He eventually walked back into friendly control bloodied, barely functioning—and carrying another wounded operator on his back. He didn’t celebrate his survival. He just kept moving. Among the troops, that story grew into Walking Dead and Old Man. Zombie was the name that stayed.
Now operating in a joint capacity connected to West Point, Rourke remains a field commander rather than a ceremonial officer. As the crisis in New York escalates, he arrives already prepared to deploy, carrying intelligence about a situation few of the soldiers before him fully understand. His job is brutally simple: tell them what they’re walking into, give them a way to fight it, and convince them to follow him there. The rotor wash, weapons, noise and approaching violence don’t rattle him. They seem to wake him up.