Sustainable Earth (Book 2): Death by Revelation

by Jack J. Lee

  Based on how my parents raised us, I wasn’t surprised that my dad would quit his practice as an Ob/Gyn and move to another state before asking any of his children to quit school or training.

  My parents chose their battles. They didn’t hassle us much about getting drunk or smoking marijuana as long as it didn’t get out of control and we kept our grades up. Everyone in the family knew that Bill and I smoked weed. Right around the time that my folks were looking for a place in Ann Arbor, Bill’s favorite drug dealer was looking to sell his place. His name was Bobert Dobbs. Bobert wasn’t a nickname; that was his real name. Dobbs was a libertarian survivalist drug dealer who had a five acre compound just east of the Ann Arbor Arboretum along the Huron River. He started his career after the first Hash Bash at University of Michigan on April 1st, 1972.

  In 2009 Michigan passed a medical marijuana law and selling pot became legit. Dobbs put up the first legal dispensary in Ann Arbor. Bobert had been making good cash before but since it became legal to sell pot, he was getting filthy rich. Dobbs dealt pot for close to forty years; that’s a long career for anyone. He had already been thinking about retiring when zombies came into the picture. Once zombies started spreading out of Africa into Europe, he bought a compound in the middle of nowhere in the Upper Peninsula in Michigan. He put his Ann Arbor property on the market just when Bill and Jeff began looking for a house.

  Selling pot was legal now but for most of Dobbs career it hadn’t been. Until he opened his medical dispensary, Bobert sold marijuana at his compound which he turned into a modern day castle. He built gates, walls, and hedges all over his property. Bobert’s home was completely off the grid. He had his own water supply, septic system, and a solar panel array that powered his house. Jeff paid Bobert a million cash for his place. By cash I mean bundles of 100 dollar bills. The loans that Bill and Jeff had gotten and the proceeds from the sale of my parent’s house just covered the cost of Dobb’s place. Bobert was a libertarian survivalist drug dealer. He probably hadn’t paid taxes since he got into dealing in 1972; getting cash was the kicker that convinced him to sell.

  When I got off my flight from Salt Lake City, my whole family was waiting for me at the Detroit Airport baggage claim. For the first time I in my life, I got an apology from Jeff.

  “Mike, I can’t remember the last time you were right and I was wrong but I guess even a stopped clock is right twice a day. You made a damn good call when you got your loan and started buying up supplies before the prices got too high. Because of you, Bill and I got government backed loans before they started limiting how much money we could borrow.”

  “Thanks Jeff, it must hurt like a bitch to realize that your younger brother is smarter than you.”

  “I don’t think about it as being smarter or dumber. I think of it as being related to biological destiny.”

  “What?”

  “When you think of it, genetic diversity is a survival trait. All families have genetic spread. Of all of us in the family, besides Mom, you’re the most girl-like. It makes sense since you were born to be a natural worrier that you would pick up on how dangerous the zombies were quicker than everyone else. I, on the other hand, am the most masculine of us all. It makes perfect sense since I have so much testosterone that I would be the slowest to recognize the threat. I’ve been thanking God every day that you were born with a weak bladder.”

  “Jeff, I accept your apology. I understand why you need to rationalize why I was right and you were wrong. Your ego is too fragile to take the fact I’m smarter than you. This must be so painful for you. The thought of how much you’re suffering is causing tears to well up in my eyes. I wish I could buy you an emotional Band-Aid to soothe your boo-boo.”

  My whole family started laughing. It felt great to be back with them.

  The complex that my family had bought was crazy. When I said Bobert Dobbs was a libertarian survivalist, I wasn’t kidding. Dobbs grew up during the height of the cold war and Robert Heinlein’s ‘Farnham’s Freehold’ was his favorite book. His house was a three thousand square foot bomb shelter.

  Bobert had lived on the lot since 1972. He put a chain link fence around the perimeter of his five acre lot and then another fence enclosing the center acre of his lot. He planted Osage Orange saplings along both fences. As the saplings grew, he weaved the branches into the fence and into the neighboring trees. Currently the hedges were fifteen feet high and eight feet wide. Nothing larger than a squirrel could get through them.

  Dobbs had installed his solar panels during the Carter Presidency. They were on their last legs. The problem was that it was impossible to get a hold of new ones. Every dealer I contacted was out and didn’t know when they would get new panels. I had gone to Cal Tech before med school and got a degree in biomechanical engineering. I didn’t know much about solar panels but I knew more than the rest of my family. I was able to call some of my friends from college and get enough advice to jury rig some fixes. It was clear that the panels wouldn’t last much longer. For an astronomical price, I helped my parents buy and install a natural gas/liquid propane generator similar to mine but larger.

  I hadn’t spent more than two weeks at a time with my parents since I left for college. My brothers were the same. Because of the situation, I was happy that I could spend more time with my brothers and family. Bill has a mellow laid back personality and he’s pretty much good with anything. Jeff was going a little crazy. He has the classic Type A, first son personality and he was constantly clashing with my mother. He was used to calling his own shots and my mom was used to the concept of her house, her rules. She was freaked out by the zombie threat. The problem was that Jeff’s idea of risk management was completely different from hers. My brother didn’t have a problem following my mom’s rules for a couple weeks. He had a problem with following her rules without an endpoint. He knew Mom meant well; she was trying to look out for him. You can’t be her son and not know she loves you. He was dealing with the stress at home by spending as much time after work, mountain biking or sparring with his buddies at the U of M Taekwondo Club. Once he was physically exhausted, he didn’t care as much about what was going on at home.

  I have the classic middle child personality, peacemaker. I tried to make peace as much as I could. As long as Jeff got to exercise like a maniac for a couple of hours, things were fairly calm. I don’t usually spend a lot of time thinking about family and the meaning of life. It was getting pretty scary. In the beginning of August all of Europe was overrun by zombies. A week later Congress closed all of our borders. Anyone that tried to come into the United States could be shot. It felt like every decision I made could affect my life forever. I found myself really thinking about what was important to me and what wasn’t. I wondered if it made any sense at all to go back to Utah.

  The summer went fast. It seemed like an instant before it was time to fly back to Salt Lake City. Men in my family are allowed to cry only if a close relative dies or during sad movies. It was tough keeping up a manly front at the airport. I wanted to say, ‘The hell with school, I want to stay here with you guys.’ I didn’t. Education is everything to my parents. Even my mom, who was crying, didn’t bring up the possibility of me quitting school. I told my parents that I was going to apply for a transfer from the University of Utah to Michigan as soon as I could.

  Chapter 6: Mike Kim, September 11th, Year 0

  It was 8 in the morning when my doorbell started ringing. The sound was impossible to ignore. I kept hoping that my roommate Alex would get the door; he didn’t. The bastard, I knew he was waiting for me to get it. The doorbell was connected to an intercom system. A speaker was four feet from my bed. Most of the time, I find this system useful. Eight o’clock in the morning, when I had a hangover, was not one of those times. I sat up in my bed and placed my hands on my pounding head. I’d had my first major exam of the year yesterday. To mark the occasion, my friends and I had spent most of the night drinking. It had been fun but I was paying for it now. I had to get ou
t of bed to reach the intercom. “What is it?”

  “We have an appointment to meet with Mike Kim.”

  “Yeah, that’s me.”

  “Last week when you stopped by the Temple, you wrote that you were interested in converting and asked us to come at this time.”

  What the hell? I hadn’t been to any temple. I staggered downstairs to my front door. I opened my door and, as I expected by the sound of the voices on my intercom, I saw two clean cut Mormon missionaries in their uniforms of standard issue blue suits and ugly ties, one was about my size around 5’9” the other was taller around 6’2”.

  “Good morning Mr. Kim. My name is Steve Felder and my companion here is Wayne Lockland.”

  “Look guys, this is a mistake. I haven’t visited a temple for years and I’m not interested in converting.”

  “I’m sorry sir. I apologize for bothering you but we had a specific request for missionaries to come to this address from a Mike Kim as soon as possible and that 8 in the morning today was the best time to visit. We even confirmed our visit time with you yesterday by phone.”

  Both Steve and Wayne looked like typical Mormon missionaries. They were clean cut, maybe 19 years old. He sounded honestly apologetic. Wayne didn’t say anything; he looked as annoyed as I felt.

  My head was pounding. I was thinking slower than normal.

  “Did you just say that you confirmed this appointment yesterday by phone?”

  Steve nodded and told me the phone number. It dawned on me that it was my brother’s cell phone number. Jeff had visited last week. He hadn’t said anything about going to the Temple. It would be just like him to set some missionaries on me on a morning when I would likely be hung over. I started chuckling. If this was payback for what I had done to him, this was peanuts.

  Jeff likes to take unplanned road trips whenever he’s in the mood. Before the zombies came on the scene this wasn’t an issue, but now that he was living with my parents, it was. Every time that he talked about taking off for a weekend, my mom and he would fight about how safe/unsafe it was. As soon as Jeff got ready to leave, my mom would pull out her weapon of last resort; she would cry. Jeff had no defense against that. Jeff got the idea of flying out to see me; my mom didn’t have a problem with that.

  Park City Utah, which is a forty-five minute drive from my place, has a mountain bike race called Point to Point in early September every year. It is 75 miles long and zigzags up and down the Mountains surrounding Park City. The race is almost entirely on single track and there’s thirteen thousand feet of elevation gain. It’s a particularly brutal race because of the up and down nature of the course. Most endurance mountain bike races end on a long downhill. There was close to two thousand feet of elevation gain in the last five miles of the race.

  Jeff has been a mountain bike fanatic for years. Over the summer he had been biking like crazy. He thought he was fit enough to finish the race. He signed up for the Point to Point at the last minute. Most years that would have been impossible; this was an unusual year.

  My intentions were honest when I bought a couple packs of Gatorade for my brother. I was trying to be a supportive brother. His favorite flavor is Cool Blue. The day after I bought the Gatorade, I learned in my pharmacology class that the dye, methylene blue, was used at one time by the US military as an antimalarial drug. The troops had hated this medication because it caused their pee to turn green. Nowadays it’s commonly used as a stain to make bacteria and other microorganisms easier to see on microscope.

  I was in my cell biology lab when I noticed a small bottle of methylene blue next to my microscope. I couldn’t resist; I palmed the bottle and put it in my pocket. When I got home, I used a syringe to inject dye through the bottom of the plastic bottles. The plastic wrap and seal on the bottle cap was left untouched. I only put a small amount of the dye in each bottle because I didn’t want the Gatorade color to change noticeably. Once I put a drop of superglue on the needle hole, the bottle was water tight. The needle hole could barely be seen.

  Like any other supportive brother, I waited for Jeff at the finish line. When he saw me, he screamed my name and tried to tackle me. My legs were fresh; his were trashed. He wasn’t able to catch me. His pee turned green when he was past the half way point in the middle of nowhere. He thought that he had broken down so much muscle tissue that his kidneys had failed. He attempted to use his cell phone to call for help but couldn’t get a signal. He was trying to decide whether he should ride on to the next support station or wait for another rider when he remembered that methylene blue has this side effect. He grabbed his Gatorade bottle and examined it closely. He saw the needle hole at the bottom of the bottle.

  As I ran I told him that I was only trying to help. I knew when he became angry, he became a faster rider; adrenalin was good for him. I would have been more convincing if I hadn’t been laughing so hard. It was a good thing that his legs were shot; it’s hard to run fast when you are laughing.

  Of our two jokes, I figured that I had the best of it. My prank was genius; he had been freaking out in the middle of nowhere. I honestly believe that his desire to kill me helped him ignore his fatigue and speed up his race time. His response to my prank in comparison was lame.

  I was in the middle of explaining what had happened to Steve and Wayne when I noticed something strange out of the corner of my eye. I live in a quiet residential area. It looked like Mrs. Wilson, one of my neighbors, was out for a walk. This was weird because every other time I’d seen her she had been in a powered handicap scooter. She wasn’t walking very well, lurching from side to side. As she came closer, I felt a chill go down my spine.

  I stopped talking in the middle of a sentence. I asked myself, “Should I pull out my gun?” I decided not to, I was probably overreacting. Pulling a gun out in public for no reason could get me arrested. Why would a zombie show up in Salt Lake? Even while I was trying to convince myself that I was getting worried for no reason, I opened the closet that was next to my front door and pulled out a homemade spear. A spear wouldn’t get me arrested. The missionaries backed away from me like I was crazy. I walked out into the front yard. Mrs. Wilson was stumbling toward us. Her face was grey. Her eyes were dull, cloudy, and flat; the kind of eyes you see on dead deer lying on side of the road. She opened her mouth and let loose a high pitched scream. Her mouth and teeth looked like they were stained with fresh blood. She looked exactly like a movie zombie.

  She could be ill. She was old. Maybe she had the beginnings of Alzheimer’s; she could have had a mental breakdown. It made sense that a lady who used a wheelchair would have difficulty walking. As she got closer it became harder and harder to believe that this was just a sick old lady.

  “Mrs. Wilson, you’re starting to freak me out. I’m asking you to back away.” She wouldn’t stop. “Stop! Do not come closer. Mrs. Wilson, if you don’t back off, I will hurt you!”

  She shuffled faster almost as if she was trying to run toward me. Her hands were reached out like claws. They were just a few inches from me when I yelled “Fuck!” as a battle cry. I slammed my spear point into her right eye with such force that the tip of my blade got stuck in the back of her skull. She dropped instantaneously. Lying on the ground, she didn’t look like a zombie. She looked like a frail 72 year old lady with a spear sticking out of her right eye. I turned to the side away from her body and barfed. I must have been contagious. I could hear one of the missionaries upchuck too.

  After I was done, I spoke to Wayne, the missionary with the stronger stomach, “You need to call 911 and let the cops know that I either took out the first known zombie in Utah or by mistake, I killed a sick old lady.”

  I turned away and stared at the woman I had just killed. I’m not religious. I can’t remember the last time I prayed. ‘God, please make this a zombie that I killed.’

  “I can’t get through. My phone says all circuits are busy.”

  I said, “Ok, let’s use the landline from my house.” I looked at Mrs. Wilson ag
ain. I wondered if I should pull my spear out. I decided not to; the cops probably wouldn’t want me to disturb the scene. We were walking to my front door when I heard gunshots and screams. In the distance I saw a group of about fifteen to twenty headed toward us. They weren’t walking. They were lurching. Oh shit, there were more of them. I turned to Mrs. Wilson and yanked up on my spear. My spear didn’t come out. Her head and neck lifted up off the ground as I pulled. I panicked; I didn’t have time to waste. I put my foot on her face. I made sure not to touch her mouth; I could feel her features, nose, eye, and cheek on the bottom of my bare foot. It was disgusting. I dry heaved. When I yanked up hard on the spear, it came out. I ran in through my door and slammed it shut.

  As I locked my front door, I screamed for my roommate Alex.

  “What the hell, Mike? I’m standing right next to you.” I hadn’t noticed that he was in the front entryway.

  “Alex you’ve got to get all the steel shutters down and locked on the main floor. There are fricking zombies outside!”

  “No shit?”

  I waved at the missionaries. “Tell him, guys. They saw me kill a zombie out in the front yard and there are more headed our way.” The missionaries nodded their heads.

  “Really, no shit?”

  “Ahhh! What’s up with the endless ‘no shit’ questions? Yes, there really is shit! It’s not a matter of faith; shit exists! Alex, you got to move. Me and the other guys have to put up the fencing in the backyard!”

  Alex stopped asking stupid questions and started toward the windows. I handed my spear to Steve. I opened up the closet again and pulled out my pistol and extra clips. A suppressor was already on the Ruger. I shoved it in my belt behind me. I motioned to Steve and Wayne.