Year of the Dead

by Jack J. Lee

  They had been the first people Mark had invited to his house. As soon as they had gotten there, he had had them scavenging for car and truck hoods and trunk lids, then flattening them out, welding and attaching them to plywood table tops, and bolting them over his entire house, including the roof . Both Sara and Lisa were comfortable working with metal and they hadn’t had any problems doing this.

  Sara was the sculptor but Lisa had been helping her for years. They hadn’t been attacked by a vampire so far but they were pretty sure a vamp couldn’t break through Mark’s walls. Mark’s house was originally built out of cinderblock and brick. His lair and garage floor were built out of reinforced concrete and his freight elevator floor in the garage was built out of industrial-grade steel and could be locked into position. His only weaknesses had been his doors, windows, and roof. Sara, Lisa, and the rest of the folk Mark had brought into his home had helped make the house vampire-proof.

  It was a party. The entire house had been waiting for us and they had cheese, wine and beer out for everyone. Everyone was talking at once. It was frigging awesome. I noticed that everyone besides me, Frank, and Ryan were calling Mark, “Director” and I was about to ask him what was up with that when all the lights in the room blew up. The lights literally exploded.

  I was stunned for a few seconds. Everybody else must have been as surprised as I was because there was immediate silence. The first person to talk was Mark and he quietly said “God damn.” The shocking thing was he didn’t sound surprised or even angry.

  He lit a match and I could see his face. Lisa and another guy, I think his name was John, had gone to a refrigerator and pulled out some LED flashlights and turned them on.

  Mark started talking. “Well guys, I was hoping I was just being paranoid and we wouldn’t get hit by an EMP, but I guess being paranoid is a good thing when some shit is really out to get you. Let’s use the flashlights for now. In an hour or two, we can get the extra light bulbs and generator out of the Faraday cages and set up the lights again.”

  Mark motioned to Frank, Ryan, and me to come over to him. “Guys, I need to know if you will help me keep over 400 people alive.”

  What do you say to something like that? I said, “What are you talking about?”

  Mark said, “I didn’t tell you before, but a couple days before the zombie outbreak on September 11th, I was appointed the Federal Director of Emergency Services by the Office of Homeland Security. I had no time to get in touch with any Federal forces before the outbreak. I’ve been on my own, trying to coordinate an emergency response. The local ward has over 400 people in it and they are completely out of power. They’ve lost four people already to vampires and they are going to be sitting ducks tonight.”

  Ryan spoke up: “Well, what about the people here?”

  Mark shrugged. “We should be completely vampire-proof even if we didn’t have lights, and in the next hour or so we’ll have lights. Also, I’ve got a theory the vamps target areas that are obviously inhabited by people. They hit areas where artificial light can be seen from above. My house has been blacked out since the 11th. Even though I have lights, none of them has been visible from outside. The ward has been lit up for everyone to see at night.”

  I said, “Didn’t you just say we had an EMP? How are we going to have lights up?”

  Mark smiled. “I hate to sound like a genius but I figured there was a good chance an EMP would happen, and so we’ve all been preparing for one.”

  Ryan sounded confused. “Why would you prepare for an EMP?”

  Mark said, “It just figures. Look, the entire planet gets overrun with zombies and they can’t be quarantined. We get vampires. Within hours of a zombie outbreak, all power and communications go down forever. Every government, social, and or religious leader is killed immediately. There has to be a conspiracy running this.”

  Ryan said “It makes sense there’s a conspiracy but how does that lead to an EMP?”

  “Look at the zombies; they’re designed so they don’t rot and designed so they clean up after themselves. Somebody wants humans dead and the environment clean. If I wanted to make sure people wouldn’t have a chance to fight back against zombies and vampires, and if I wanted to protect property and animals, I’d use an EMP. All you need do to protect against an EMP is use a Faraday cage, and with all the empty houses around here, it isn’t hard to jury-rig a Faraday cage. So we’ve been storing as many light bulbs and electronic gear as possible in Faraday cages.”

  Frank, being the engineer, asked “How are you making these Faraday cages?”

  Mark put his hands up. “Guys, we’re running out of time. Like I said, over 400 lives may be at risk. You guys are the only ones with the rifle-handling skills in this house. I’m asking you to volunteer to go out with me to help the people at the ward.”

  I mean, what do you say to something like this? I wanted to say no I’m a chicken shit and I’m too afraid. My mouth said, “Ok, I’ll go out with you.” Frank and Ryan didn’t say anything; they both just nodded. Frank looked like he always does: calm. The guy is a rock. Ryan looked like he wanted to puke. He was as much a victim of manly peer pressure as me.

  Chapter 21: Mark Jones, September 16th to October 9th, Year 1

  Once I had seen how many zombies there were around the ward, I knew I needed people to help me. I had scouted out five homes where it looked like people were still alive. I needed to contact them.

  I’ve always been a loner and it was weird that I was going to invite a bunch of people to live with me. I worried about the possibility of personality conflicts and what I would do if things got ugly between people in my house. I mean, even if you hate someone, do you kick them out to die? Well, I hoped that wouldn’t happen.

  The house I visited first was the one closest to the fire station. I had gotten the art of traveling among zombies down to a science. Clear out an area. Go out of it a little ways and then bait some zombies into what I started calling a zombie habitrail, kill them, and then go out and bring more in. I got to the fire station. Hip hip hooray, I found a thermal camera.

  On the way back home, I stopped by the house. When I had first seen this house I was impressed. All the other houses that had been boarded-up used plywood or chipboard. This house had metal shutters and reinforced doors. It was as slick a job as I’ve ever seen. All the shutters and doors were custom-made. When I renovated my house, I had done some metal work and welding. I was an amateur, but I knew how to judge good metal work. The people who made these shutters were beyond pros; they were artists. The homeowners must have been staying quiet and out of view because there weren’t any zombies near their house.

  I went up to the front door and rang the doorbell. I waited for about a minute and then rang it again. I could hear noise behind the door. There was some fumbling and a small inch-diameter hole opened up at eye level. This was slick; the window had been so finely made that before it opened I hadn’t been able to see the seam.

  “Yeah what do you want?”

  It was a female voice. I could hear suspicion, excitement, and hope in her voice. “My name is Mark Jones. I am the Federal Director of Emergency services in Utah. I’ve come by to make sure you were doing well and to see if there was anything you needed.”

  There were two people in the house, Sara and Lisa Beiger. The reason the metalwork was so good was that Sara was an artist. She made metal sculptures, and casting and welding was what she did for a living. Lisa was her agent, manager, helper, and wife. They had gotten married in Canada and, even though gay marriage wasn’t legal in Utah, they lived as if they were legally married. They both had big families in Utah and wanted to stay close to family. Both of them grew up LDS and almost all of their family members were still LDS and still lived in Utah. Even though each of them got along with their own individual families, they still didn’t want to hole up in a ward, and that’s why they were on their own.

  Lisa had wanted to get a gun but Sara had been dead-set against it. Lisa had final
ly convinced Sara they needed one, but then the 11th came before they could get it. Since the 11th, they had been holed up in their house, getting more and more worried as the days went by. They were running out of water and they hadn’t made any plans for what to do when their supplies ran out. They had tried to contact their families and friends by phone since the 11th but couldn’t contact any of them. I was the first person they’d talked to since the zombie outbreak.

  It didn’t take much to convince them to come to my place. I just told them I had working showers and toilets. That was a common theme for all the people I rescued. Water was the first thing to run out. Without water they couldn’t take showers and going to the bathroom was a big problem.

  It took a couple of trips to get everything they wanted from their house to mine. Most of it had to do with metal working, metal cutting torches, welding supplies, etc. I knew this would all be useful, so I didn’t have a problem making the trips. With all these trips back and forth, I had to destroy all the wandering zombies between the Beiger’s house and mine.

  Since I had already cleaned out all the zombies in the way, it didn’t take any extra effort to contact the Blacks, a family of five; the Reddings, a husband and wife; and Todd Bloom, a retired structural engineer. I hadn’t met the Blacks and the Reddings before, but I knew Todd from the Wasatch Mountain Club. Since he was retired he spent his time in the mountains. For an older guy he was amazingly fit and could run most of the younger guys in the club into the ground. He had lived in Ohio most his life, but when he retired he moved to Utah to rock climb in the summers and back-country ski in the winters. He was also a long-distance endurance runner.

  I knew Jim Wright and his two roommates were still alive but I couldn’t get to them because they were constantly showing themselves to the zombies. There were thousands of zombies at all times around their house.

  Everyone got along, but I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. We all had the same goal; we wanted to survive and it was clear to us that cooperating was absolutely necessary. A wise man once said “You can’t fix stupid.” Until the zombie outbreaks, this was true. But now I’ll bet there are almost no stupid people left alive. The only people who were left alive in Salt Lake City were lucky or smart or both.

  I had just gotten lucky, but everyone else with me had the foresight and the intelligence to prepare for the zombie outbreak and to survive it. Being lucky is a trait, like being tall; some people have it and others don’t. Insurance companies and Las Vegas casinos plan their businesses around this. If you get into multiple car accidents, even if you were never at fault, you will become uninsurable because insurance companies know you are unlucky. If you win money consistently in a casino, even if the casino knows you aren’t cheating they won’t let you play.

  Lucky people tend to be optimistic and good natured; unlucky people tend to be the opposite. Most of the people dumb enough to not prepare properly for the zombies were dead. If you tended to be unlucky, you were probably dead. Throw together a group of intelligent, optimistic, and lucky people, have them realize that if they don’t cooperate they’ll die, and the odds are good they will get along.

  It was wonderful to get a group of competent people to delegate to. Todd was a structural engineer and Sara knew everything there was to know about how to cut and attach metal together. Lisa was the best project manager I’d ever met. You can build things in a stupid way, start without the proper supplies, or start projects out of order so you end up wasting time, or you can build with exactly the right tools and supplies and in the most efficient order. When I was working on my house, I had to go to the store several times in one day because I hadn’t bought all the supplies and tools I needed. Lisa was a genius at organizing. With her around we didn’t waste any unnecessary time.

  Alan Redding was a RN. He knew what drugs and medical supplies to gather. It was comfortable to know that if any of us got sick or hurt, he’d be around. Mary Black and Hannah Redding were both foodies. Mary had graduated from a culinary school and Hannah’s dream was to go to one. They took charge of the food. The stuff they cooked up was amazing. John Black was an accountant, one of the calmest, most centered guys I’ve ever met. He ended up my right-hand man. I tend to be high-energy, quirky, and sometimes abrasive. It helped to have John around to keep things calm.

  I don’t have much experience with kids. They weren’t as annoying as I thought they would be. Every time a house was cleared of zombies, Hannah Redding, Mary Black, and her three kids Joey, Michael, and Amy went through it. It was their job to collect all the canned and dried foods they could find and anything else they thought could be useful. After they had scavenged the entire house, they gathered every light bulb, computer, Mp3 player, and battery and put them into the refrigerator.

  I got Sara, Lisa and Todd working to protect my house better. We salvaged all the metal doors and window shutters that they had installed on their house. Sara and Lisa’s house had a lot more windows than mine, so we had plenty of pre-made metal shutters. The Beigers had no idea how strong zombies would be, so they had overbuilt all their metal doors. Todd figured that if we sandwiched multiple layers of the sheet metal from car hoods with the wooden plywood table tops to about two inches of thickness, these would actually be stronger than the brick and cinderblock the rest of the house was made of.

  Todd explained that plywood was always stronger, weight per weight, than a solid piece of wood. In the old days, when warriors used shields, the shields were made out of plywood. Even thousands of years ago, they knew that a sheet of wood glued together was stronger than a solid piece. To make a shield they took a piece of plywood and covered it with either leather or a thin piece of metal. We were going to make our own versions of shields and surround my house with them.

  We salvaged metal hood and trunk lids from cars all around my house and they welded and bolted these lids to the wooden plywood table tops that I had already collected. We then tore off the asphalt shingling from the top of my roof and installed the metal plywood sheets. It helped that my house was fairly small. My main floor covered barely 1,000 feet. By the time we were done, I had a completely water-tight stainless steel roof. The only maintenance needed would be to paint it or seal it every few years. It’s amazing how fast competent people work when their lives depend on it. We finished boarding up and fortifying my house in four days.

  Remember Bob Junior, the vamp I had killed? It had hands like ‘Edward Scissorhands’. Its claws made perfect spear heads. I figured that if I fought another vampire I would try to stab it through the heart with a vampire claw spear. We made ten spears with Bob’s claws and then we tried stabbing through our windows, doors, and roof, and the worst we did was scratch the metal.

  John Black, Alan Redding, Todd Bloom, and I spent the 17th clearing zombies out of the neighborhood. One of the homes we cleared out belonged to Dave Watanabe. He was one of the first zombies that I had taken down after the Wasatch 100. I had met Dave a couple times at neighborhood parties and his favorite topic of conversation was his collection of samurai swords. He told me samurai swords, or as he always described them, katanas, were rated by how many bodies a sword could cut through with one stroke. His pride and joy was his three-body katana he had spent over a hundred thousand on. This sword had been made by the most famous living swordsmith in Japan.

  While at college, I had taken some kendo classes. I only trained with the katana for a few months but I was able to learn how to cut completely through bamboo targets with one blow. There’s a knack to it and I had it. These targets were supposed to represent the resistance of a human body.

  Normally, when salvaging something, I don’t usually worry about the ethics of taking what I need, but taking Dave’s sword at first felt wrong. He had loved this sword so much; if he could have married it and had babies with it he would have. Taking something that was just an object was fine, but taking something that someone loved, something that defined them and their lives felt wrong. I guess it says somethin
g about me that I had no problems killing Dave once he got infected but I was reluctant to take his sword. I finally decided to take it because if I didn’t, it would eventually fall apart.

  Traditional katanas are made of low- and high-carbon steel welded together. Almost all modern steel blades have some chromium and/or nickel to help provide rust resistance; that’s why you don’t have to oil kitchen knives. Traditionally-made katanas have no chromium or nickel. The mark of a finger touch, if not cleaned off, will start a rust spot, and if the sword is not inspected and oiled frequently it will rust away to nothing. Dave loved this sword so much I figured he would want it to outlive him. Don’t know why but it was important for me to believe Dave would want it to be taken care of and used by someone who respected it. It was a work of art. There were, at most, a couple hundred swords of similar quality in existence and most of those were in museums. Letting it rust to nothing would have been like letting a pristinely restored Shelby Mustang fall apart. Watanabe’s sword never felt like a possession you owned; it was a piece of art that you preserved for later generations.

  Now that I had back-up when taking out zombies, I changed weapons; I started using Watanabe’s sword. I made maces for John, Alan, and Todd. None of the guys other than me knew how to use a bow, and it was too dangerous to use a gun because of the noise. Learning how to shoot a bow isn’t something you do in a few days. The wonderful thing about zombies was they were predictable. When we first worked together, we made mistakes, and a few times it got touchy. A zombie bit John’s thigh. John was wearing thick jeans and thank God the bite didn’t break the skin.