Sustainable Earth (Book 2): Death by Revelation

by Jack J. Lee

  “So what’s stopping them from releasing us now?”

  “Two things Sarge, first we need you to get better before we can move you. Second, the FLDS are like good and bad cholesterol. The good ones are here with Prophet Levin in New Zion and the bad ones are in Hildale and Colorado City. We have to get past a town of full of bad ones to get to Cedar City”

  Max looked good. He was clean and well rested. The New Zion folk were treating him well. Our conversation was interrupted by a nurse practitioner, Nancy Wellington, and a couple of Prophet Levin’s wives. They needed to clean my stump and the lacerations the vampire had made over my back. Even though they put some morphine into my IV, it hurt like hell and I passed out.

  When I woke up Max was sitting in a chair next to me. He was holding a Marine VHF radio.

  “Hey Sarge, Prophet Levin has been letting me use this radio to keep in contact with the Director. Director Jones wanted to talk to you”

  I spoke to the Director. I told him that I was fine and that I was getting good medical care.

  The next few days passed quickly. I spent most of the time sleeping. Alice, Esther, Miriam, Catrina, and Janelle cleaned my wounds and helped me use a bedpan. I learned from Max that they were all married to the FLDS Prophet, Ari Levin. They even made me do some physical therapy. Max visited everyday. In the mornings and evenings the nurse practitioner checked on me. Nancy Wellington used to have a primary care practice in Kanab, Utah before the Outbreak. Since then she had moved to New Zion. She wasn’t FLDS. The Prophet hadn’t made her convert.

  By the 8th, I was able to get to the bathroom by myself. I was starving. It seemed like I was eating constantly without ever getting full. Nancy told me that was a good sign.

  I was in the middle of eating my fourth meal of the day when my door opened and three small children walked into my room. Without asking they climbed into the bed with me.

  “I’m Victoria, this is Christopher and Jeremy.”

  “Hello, I’m Hiram.”

  “Yeah, we know. Everyone’s been talking about you.”

  “Well I hope they’ve been saying good things.”

  “I guess so…Don’t you think you could have released the fallen angel without losing an arm?”

  The question made me laugh. “All I can say Victoria, is that the idea made sense to me at the time.”

  “Mommy Miriam says that only single men are that foolish. Are you married?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Well you should get married. You need help. You can’t afford to lose another arm.”

  Alice Levin entered the room. “Victoria, Christopher, Jeremy! Why are you bothering the Sergeant? You know that you’re not supposed to be here.”

  “It’s ok, Mrs. Levin. I’ve been enjoying my conversation with Victoria and her brothers.”

  Alice Levin escorted the children out and took away the dirty tableware from my meal. I assured her that I didn’t mind talking to the children. From then on my room was filled with children aged six through twelve. They asked me if I was related to Porter Rockwell. I told them that I was.

  The children were good distractions. When I was alone, my mind turned to the men I had led. Wayne Lockland, Hank Barstow, Gus Paul, Larry Winter, Tim Hanks, Ben Steed, Will Athey, and Jimmy Tiller had all been good men. I replayed what had happened on April 11th, over and over in my mind.

  I should have recognized the trap. The cleanliness and the beauty of the women should have made me suspicious. If I had made the decision to go into the building by myself, eight good men would likely still be alive. I believe our Heavenly Father has a plan. But I didn’t understand why I was still alive while the men I had been responsible for had died. I asked my Father why I hadn’t been the first to be thrown by the FLDS into the vampire’s cage. I had killed the vampire and saved Max Sutter’s life. Why couldn’t I have had a chance to save the rest of my men? I couldn’t find an answer that made any sense.

  I fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ve seen men die before but in the past it had never been my fault. My decisions had killed my men and I didn’t know how to live with that.

  I heard a knock on door. My voice was harsh as I said, “Come in.”

  A short slight man walked into the room and sat down in the chair next to my bed. At first, he looked like an accountant. When I saw his eyes, I knew he was dangerous.

  “Sergeant Rockwell, I’m sorry it took so long to come and say hello. My only excuse is that I have been unusually busy. I’m Ari Levin. I’m the FLDS Prophet.”

  “I understand, Mr. Levin.”

  Levin handed me a small cloth bag. Inside was a .357 Smith & Wesson revolver with a four-inch barrel and a box of ammo. The handgun was loaded.

  “I want everyone to know that you are not a prisoner. Giving you a gun should be proof enough.”

  “Thanks.”

  “One more thing.”

  “Yes?.”

  “I owe you an apology. I had the power to save your mens’ lives and I chose not to.”

  This was not the thing to say to me. Before I knew it the revolver was in my hand. I was standing over the Prophet, my barrel resting on his forehead.

  “Explain yourself.”

  “The FLDS have done your men great harm. There is no payment for a life but another life. We owe you Sergeant.”

  My hand shook as I struggled with my need to pull the trigger. I had to ask, “Why?”

  “Your men had the misfortune of walking into a conflict between the FLDS. You’ve met one of the leaders of the other faction, my wife Rachel. I’ve been trying to convince the FLDS that all men are brothers. The ones who have listened to my message have moved here to New Zion, the ones who didn’t have stayed in Colorado City.

  “I’ve been trying to avoid a civil war among the FLDS. It wasn’t until you killed a fallen angel and proved that you were ordained by our Heavenly Father that I could intervene. I chose to value the lives of my men over those of yours. I am the FLDS leader. If anyone needs to pay for what was done to your men, it should be me.”

  This asshole had no right to take responsibility for my mens’ deaths. He had no right to try to take my guilt. He didn’t deserve punishment…I did.

  I lowered the gun and sat back on my bed.

  “Get out. I don’t blame you.”

  Chapter 32: Mike Kim, April 12th to May 8th, Year 1

  Director Jones had said that going to southern Utah would be tricky. It would have been nice to have him be wrong for once. When he got to Cedar City, I expected him to start negotiations with the FLDS right away. I was surprised when he sent Jim Wright to capture some FLDS.

  I was in the front row when the Director executed the two FLDS prisoners and my heart sank. Don’t get me wrong they deserved to die, but it meant that now we were really at war.

  Then the FLDS Prophet popped up in the Director’s room in the middle of the night and disappeared into thin air. I couldn’t believe that he had gotten the better of the Director in hand-to-hand. It said something about Mark Jones that he told us the prophet made him look incompetent. No one else witnessed their fight. In the same position, I don’t know if I would have admitted that I got my ass kicked. The SaLTs were half-convinced that the prophet had magical powers.

  It wasn’t until we started installing metal plate on top of the clubhouse roof that one of our men found the entry hole that Levin had made on our roof. It was partially reassuring to have a non-magical explanation of how the Prophet had gotten into our building. I used the word ‘partially’ because the non-magical explanation was that Ari Levin was skilled enough to make us look like amateurs.

  Our first priority had been to get the clubhouse vampire proof. Once that was done, Director Jones had four of the APCs station themselves along the potential paths that the FLDS could use to get to Cedar City.

  After that he called a meeting for all the SaLTs.

  “Men, I know you’ve all been wondering how we’re going to take care of the FLDS. We�
�re going to use zombies. Lieutenant Wright is going to lead an expedition with two APCs down to Las Vegas. The task is to round up a couple of hundred thousand zombies and then herd them to Colorado City. Once we get them there we’re going to use our mortars to take down the FLDS fortifications.”

  It took a deranged mind to come up with the idea of using zombies as weapons of mass destruction. It sounded like an idea my brothers would have come up with. My gut said this was wrong, that there had to be another way to deal with the FLDS.

  I got up almost the same time as Alex. The Director laughed and pointed at us. “Ok, the dynamic duo.”

  The SaLTs were on edge; that weak quip got laughs. After the nervous laughter died down, I spoke, “Director, I can see why you’d want the SaLTs to be out of the direct line of fire, but if we use zombies, there’s no way we can spare the noncombatants. What are we going to do about the women and children?”

  Alex began talking as soon as I stopped, “We all know that being a SaLT is dangerous. I don’t think I’m speaking only for myself when I say that most of us would be willing take on more risk if that helped save children.”

  “Alex, Mike, I understand and share your concerns. We have reasonably good intel of which homes and buildings are mostly filled with noncombatants. We’ll take care not to bomb those buildings; we’ll try everything possible to avoid harming innocents. Our problem is that we will be attacking a people driven by religious faith. They believe that God is on their side. It’s always dangerous to attack people who believe that they are chosen. You all know that I’m a student of history. I’ve racked my mind looking for examples from history of how such people react when they’re invaded and I’ve come up with Masada in ancient Israel in AD 73 and Waco, Texas in 1993. In both cases women and children fought with the men.

  “When we storm Colorado City, we’ll find women and children shooting at us. SaLTs will have no other choice but to shoot back. I’ve decided to use zombies to do our dirty work because I can’t see any benefit in doing it ourselves.”

  I don’t have much of an interest in history. I remember hearing about Masada and Waco but didn’t know much. I know I trusted the Director and if he thought the FLDS women and children would fight, I believed him. I did not want to use zombies against other human beings. But I also didn’t want to be in a situation where I had to kill a kid because he was shooting at me.

  I worried about Wayne. It had been bad enough when Steve Felder had died. The thought of Wayne being killed felt like a punch to the gut. I didn’t know if taking out the FLDS would save his life but it sure as hell couldn’t hurt. The faster we got the zombies from Las Vegas up here, the quicker we could neutralize the FLDS and hopefully rescue Wayne.

  The next morning we took off in the two APC’s. We made good time through St. George. Much of I-15 had already been cleared by the FLDS. It was slow going through Mesquite, Nevada; there were some exits where the highway was almost completely blocked by abandoned and wrecked vehicles. Luckily, the highway between Mesquite and Las Vegas was mostly clear.

  We stopped for the night about 20 miles outside the outer limits of Las Vegas. The next morning we checked our portable weather station. The barometric pressure had been stable overnight. The visibility and winds were good. Half the PPCs (flight crew A) took to the air. In two hours flight crew B would come out to relieve us. A reasonably coordinated guy can learn how to operate a PPC in 10 to 12 hours. All our zomboys pilots had over 1,000 hours of flight time. It was “Yippie-ki-ay” and we were off.

  Powered Parachutes have just one speed. Ours went 30 mph. You can go up, down, or circle in either direction. If you turned off the motor, you had a large paraglider. It was safer and easier to fly and land under power, but there were also times when turning off the motor to fly completely silent were useful.

  The PPCs split Las Vegas into quadrants and then circled in the air at 600 feet until most of zombies within hearing distance came into view. When we got to Vegas, I thought that herding zombies here would be the same as it was up north; it wasn’t. At most in the past, I’ve herded a couple thousand zombies. This may sound like a lot but from over 500 feet it doesn’t look like much. If you pack the zombies tight, at most they cover a few hundred square feet.

  Flying is dangerous. You spend enough time in the air and you will crash. As far as it goes, crashing a PPC is less dangerous than wrecking a plane or messing up in a paraglider. It helps to have power rather than being completely dependent on the wind and if you’re going to crash having a parachute above you is nice. But as my girlfriend, Cecilia will tell you at great length, PPCs aren’t that safe.

  Random gusts of winds occur and if one catches you just right, you’ll drop hundreds of feet before you can regain control. So far Alex and I have had three forced landings. Twice it wasn’t bad; we landed on our wheels in enough open space to get back airborne. Except for some liquid bodily waste in my underwear, there wasn’t any damage to us or our machine. The last time sucked. The wind blew us into the side of a building. We hit ten feet off the ground and there wasn’t enough room to get back in the air. I sprained my ankle and Alex hit his head hard enough to lose consciousness for a few seconds.

  Luckily, we had been herding just eleven zombies. It wasn’t a big deal to take care of all of them from a distance with our rifles. I had to use crutches for two weeks. Cecilia and I got into a huge argument. She told me that she loved me too much to let me be this stupid. She demanded that I quit the SaLTs and start working at the Fortress clinic.

  I tried to tell her that I knew I could make a difference as a doctor but that I was saving a lot more lives as a zomboy. I had invented herding zombies from the air; it was too important to give up. I promised that after a few years, once life wasn’t so crazy and the zombie herders weren’t needed that I’d give it up. This wasn’t good enough for Cecilia and she moved out.

  I remember talking to Alex afterwards, “Dude, it would be so much easier if you were a girl. I’d marry you in a second.”

  “Man, I wish you’d stop talking about wanting to marry me. I’m pretty sure you’re not gay, but bro, sometimes you worry me.”

  “Alright, alright, I don’t want to do you, but you have to admit that life would be easier if we were gay, then we wouldn’t have to deal with crazy women.”

  “I don’t know about that, Mike. Have you hung around gay guys? The ones I know aren’t any better than women.”

  “Ok, the solution is to become bisexual. That way we double our chances of hooking up with someone sane.”

  “Dude! Do not look at me like that. You’re creeping me out. Mike, I love you but if you touch me, I swear to God, I’ll put a bullet through your head.”

  Thank God for Alex, if I didn’t have him around, I don’t know what I would have done.

  Flying above Vegas in our quadrants, we slowly moved our circles in the direction we wanted the zombies to go. Zombies have a top speed of about two miles an hour. It took us all day to get the zombies headed north on I-15. Our best guess was that we had four hundred thousand zombies following us. The zombies in Las Vegas hadn’t eaten for a very long time. They looked like skeletons. It was an army from hell.

  There wasn’t any place below us that was safe to land. If we got blown to the ground, we’d be eaten alive. It sucked that this was spring. In the summer, the weather wasn’t as funky. The spring storms and the quick weather changes that were typical of this season made things hairy.

  Our PPCs could stay in the air for 4 hours. We refueled and went back for a maintenance check every two. I piloted while Alex stayed in radio communication with Lieutenant Wright and the other PPCs. When it started to get dark, all the PPCs dropped dozens of perforated steel cylindrical tubes attached to little parachutes. Inside the steel tubes were canisters of compressed air connected to whistles. There was enough air to have the whistles blow for twelve hours. The noise kept the zombies clustered during the night.

  The days went by quickly. Sometimes the
weather skunked us. If we couldn’t fly, we used air cannons to shoot noisemakers into the crowds of zombies so they wouldn’t wander. Whenever we had downtime, we trained. All the zomboys were SaLTs. All the SaLTs had to be able to run up to twenty miles at a time; this required a lot of training runs. We all knew that things were going to get freaky soon. Training whenever possible sounded like a good idea.

  On May 1st a gust of wind collapsed Eric Sanders’ wing. Sergeant Bloom was co-piloting. Their PPC dove into a mass of zombies. They didn’t suffer for long. Later that day, we reached St. George. Morale was grim. Eric and the Sergeant were both great guys. We all knew that the same random roll of bad luck that had killed them could just as easily get us.

  The only good thing about the day was that we were close enough to Cedar City to bunk at the clubhouse for the night. The clubhouse had been getting weekly supply caravans from Salt Lake. They had hot water available. We were limited to five minute showers each but it was still awesome.

  The next day it started to rain. We were just 43 miles away from Colorado City. It was getting harder to forget that we were pulling these zombies toward people. There weren’t a lot smiles among the SaLTs.

  In the middle of the night we were woken up for an announcement. We had gotten a radio message from the FLDS prophet. Hiram Rockwell and Max Sutter were ok. Prophet Levin promised that they would be kept safe and that they would be handed over to us as soon as possible. I started screaming and cheering like everyone else. This was the first bit of good news that we had heard in a month. Director Jones told us to pull out the booze and soda.

  The poor bastards on sentry duty had to stay at their posts. The rest of us were given permission to party. Seventy percent of the troops were Mormon and didn’t drink so there was plenty for the rest of us.

  I don’t know when it happened but the party that started out as a celebration of Hiram’s and Max’s rescue turned into a wake for all the men that had died in the past few weeks. Alex and I stood up and told the story of how we met Wayne. How he had been sent to us by my brother as a joke just as the Outbreak occurred. Alex described how cool and collected Wayne had been when we first started shooting zombies. Mark Jones got up and told stories about Todd Bloom, how much of a hardass he had been for an old fart and how his harem of younger women had grown over the past few months. We drank toasts to our fallen brothers. Sure most of us were swigging diet Coke, but it was the thought that counted.