Year of the Dead

by Jack J. Lee

  Then things started going crazy. In March, a CNN reporter and his entire crew were eaten alive by zombies on camera. The drywall business dried up to nothing. I was able to keep the business going by getting my crews out to help people fortify their homes against zombies. I had barely enough business to make expenses. Bishop Johnson approached me and asked me set up and run a militia to help protect the ward. There’s a world of difference between being a sergeant in charge of a squad of US Rangers and being the militia leader of a bunch of kids in high school and middle-aged guys with pot-bellies. I knew I was doing the right thing by being here to care for my mom, but I was not in a happy place.

  On the morning of September 11th, I woke up to the sound of an emergency broadcast from my radio. I got up and went to wake up mom. She was already up. She was in her bathroom, puking. Her health was poor. Her doctors told me she had congestive heart failure. I didn’t know what that meant, but she had difficulty breathing and needed oxygen. I dialed 911 to see if I could get an ambulance but all I got was a busy signal. Eventually mom had nothing left to vomit up and I got her on her bed. We needed to get to the ward. I was packing up her medications and her clothes when I heard her get out of bed. I turned around and saw that my mom wasn’t alive any longer. She was undead. She came toward me, her arms outstretched, her mouth open, making a high-pitched screaming sound. Her skin had lost all color and her eyes were glazed.

  I knew then that God had a plan. My mother, even as she aged and got sick, had always been a dignified proud woman. She would have hated the idea of wandering around after her death as a zombie. I had been given the opportunity by our Heavenly Father to end my mother’s suffering immediately. It wasn’t going to be a stranger, someone who only saw a zombie that would end her suffering. I would send her to heaven to be with my father eternally. As my mother’s body reached for me, I placed my left hand under her chin, my palm up, my thumb on the left side of her chin and my fingers on the right. I placed my right hand on top of her head, mirroring the position of my left hand. I twisted her head clockwise. I felt and heard a snap. Her body collapsed but her mouth and eyes kept moving. I could barely see through my tears.

  I lowered her body down to the floor of the bedroom she had shared with my father for 46 years. I looked at the face of the woman who bore me, raised me, and loved me. Her face was in a snarl and her mouth was constantly opening and closing, trying to bite me. My mother had been a frail, thin 66-year-old woman. I’m six-foot–four-inches tall and weigh 260 pounds. I took my left hand and turned her head so that her left ear was on the floor. I placed my left hand palm down just behind her right ear to stabilize her head. I then slammed my right elbow as hard as I could, placing the full weight of my body down behind it against her right temple, where the skull is the thinnest. I could feel my mother’s skull collapse beneath me and my mother died a second time.

  I knew then that God was separating the righteous from the unrighteous and he had a plan for me. I walked purposely out of my house that day. The streets were too clogged up to drive. I ran to the ward and I have been here ever since.

  The first five days in the ward were FUBAR, fucked up beyond all recognition. Orville Johnson had been a good guy. He had been the perfect civilian Bishop. There was no one on Earth who felt and knew the love of God more than Orville, but we needed someone who could command and control. Bishop Johnson wasn’t that man. It may sound brutal but it wasn’t a bad thing for the ward that he died. I know from experience that in combat, if you have the wrong person in charge, things can get totally fucked. When he lost his sons, Bishop Johnson lost everything he wanted on Earth; there is no way he wasn’t in a better place. He and his family were better off there.

  Art Bingham, the First Counselor, tried to step up and take charge, but he was struggling. I tried to help but I’m not an officer. If you are going to survive combat, you have to know what you are good at. The military separates out battle plans into tactics and strategy. I’m good at tactics. Tell me to take that village or hold that pass, I’ll do it for you. I don’t do strategy. I don’t know the first thing about choosing which village to take or which pass to hold. It’s probably one of the reasons why I hated having to run my dad’s business; if I had been good at it I probably would have liked it more. I would rather have been a foreman working one job at a time. I hated the strategic parts of business, like marketing, accounting, and payroll crap that you needed to do well to make a consistent profit.

  I was shown quickly how much I suck at command when I tried to disarm the gentiles, the non-Mormons in the ward. I was flashing back to the Sand Box where the enemy hides among civilians. I was going on instinct. I forgot that everyone in the ward was American and there was no way that any American could be helping these stinking zombies. I was lucky Helen Hansen was there to cool the situation down. I never thought I’d say this about a woman, but that chick had a head on her shoulders; she was actually better at making good command decisions than all the rest of us. With her advising Art, things weren’t as bad as they could have been.

  On the 16th, the ward got a call from the Federal Director of Emergency Services. At first my heart sank. In Iraq and Afghanistan, I’d had plenty of experience with the Feds. Over there they come in two flavors: State Department pukes and CIA spooks, and they both suck. The State Department idiots were always fucking with our rules of engagement. No, you can’t call an airstrike on fuckers who are sniping at us. What? Why would you be so upset that a bunch of good men got killed just so a bunch of politicians could look good on CNN? The spooks were just as bad, constantly giving us crap intel. You could always bet that if they said some village headman was Taliban, it was the exact opposite.

  To my surprise, Director Jones knew what he was doing. It was all part of God’s plan. He destroyed the world so I could meet an intelligent woman and a competent Fed. As time passed, my opinion of the Director changed. He wasn’t competent; he was a genius. The final proof was when we got hit by the EMP. I could tell Helen and Art were ticked he hadn’t warned them about this possibility. I’m ex-military; I live on need-to-know. Hey, the Director had made sure all the precautions that could possibly have been taken against an EMP had been taken. Who gave a shit whether he had given us the exact details? Ever since the zombies had first shown up in Africa, all our leaders had been behind the ball; mistake after mistake had been made. For the first time, someone in charge had figured out what was going to happen before it happened.

  At first when all the lights went out, everyone was panicked. After hearing from Director Jones, things calmed down a lot. When people found out he was actually going to come into the ward, it almost seemed like a party. We had all been stuck in the ward for a month. There hadn’t been much in the way of anything new in all that time. People reacted to the news they would finally get to meet Mark Jones like they would if they’d been told they were getting to meet the President.

  Part of the cluster-fuck that had happened in the first couple days after the 11th, we had gone through almost all of our bullets. We had 34 rounds left for our AR-15s. These are civilian versions of the standard US military rifle. There were only two men other than myself I trusted with these rounds. I split up the rounds between the three of us. I made sure all the rest of the militia men had bayonets on their empty rifles.

  When Director Jones got into radio contact with us again, I was surprised to hear he planned to draw off the zombies himself instead of sending out one of his men. This was a bad sign. It meant he didn’t trust any of his men to do it right. You have to understand that in any group of men in combat, there are always more guys like me who are good at tactics than there are who are good at strategy. High-ranking officers are not supposed to engage in hand-to-hand, not because they are cowards or bad at it, but because there are never enough men who are good at strategy and they shouldn’t be risked. If the Director had to do something as dangerous as drawing out thousands of zombies in the middle of the night by himself, it meant he ha
d no guys like me around to do the grunt work. I hadn’t been too stressed before I had figured this out, but once I did, I was freaking. We couldn’t afford to lose the Director. I trust our Lord but he likes to worry me.

  When people found out the Director was just outside our fence, everyone wanted to go outside and see him. I stopped this cold. If the zombies saw any of us through the fence, it would mess up Director Jones’ plan to draw the zombies away. I had one guy I trusted looking outside for the flashing truck lights. When we got the signal to go outside to help the Director’s men in, I made sure everybody knew that if anyone broke operational security, I would rip off their heads and piss down their throats.

  I took a squad out to help Jim Wright and two other guys I didn’t know unload their truck and brought them all into the ward house. Jim’s about five years older than me. I knew him growing up. Last I heard, he’d gotten married and moved into his parents’ home after they died. I hadn’t seen him since I enlisted. Jim’s not much of a talker. All he said when he got inside was we were supposed to wait on Mark Jones’ signal to let him in. I’ve never had time go so slow before. Everyone was anxious. Even the kids could tell that something serious was happening and kept quiet.

  Finally, Director Jones called in. “Director Jones calling ward.”

  Art picked up. “Glad to hear from you, Director.”

  “Art, I’m about two minutes away from your front gate. Can you please get me the three men I sent in?”

  I sent a man to get one of the guys that had accompanied Jim in. He had gone with two of our ward members who were mechanically inclined to help set up the generator we’d just brought in. When the guy came up into the gym, Art let the Director know.

  “Jim, Frank, Ryan, I have about a dozen zombies that are following me. I need you guys to come out to the front gate with your air guns and take them out for me. Art, are you there?”

  “Yes, Director.”

  “Art, in a few minutes you’re going to hear a bunch of bullets going off. Don’t be worried. These bullets are being set off to pull zombies away from here. At this point only a dozen or so zombies are following me. We don’t have to worry so much about you all being seen. Please send some men out to help open the gate. Try to keep the noise down and please, whatever you do, do not fire a gun.”

  Everyone went outside. We wanted to see what was going on. It was dark outside and it was difficult to see, but finally I was able to see a small splotch of white headed toward our front gates. It was the Director. He was walking slowly toward us. I guess he wanted to keep attracting the zombies that were following him. Jim and his two guys pulled up to the fence and pushed the barrels of their rifles through the fence. These rifles looked like BB-guns. As soon as the zombies behind became visible in our flashlights, they started firing their air guns. My respect for them went up a notch. Army snipers couldn’t have done better. It was one shot, one kill, all the way. In a few seconds, all the zombies were down. Throughout this, the Director never broke his pace or even looked backwards; he had total confidence his guys could take out all the zombies easily.

  As the Director got closer to the fence we could all see him. He looked like a character in a movie. He was wearing a suit, for God’s sake, and he was carrying a samurai sword. He looked like he was coming here for a dinner party. He sure as hell didn’t look like a guy that had pulled thousands of zombies away from our fence. It took four of us to open our gate and, as he walked through the gates, waving and smiling, the bullets he had warned us about lit up. It sounded like automatic fire. Noise was no longer an issue. I raised a cheer. Everybody behind me started clapping and yelling.

  Chapter 26: Helen Hansen, October 9th, Year 1

  When we found out Mark Jones was coming here, the women went crazy, even the non-Mormons. They acted like George Clooney was coming. All of them started checking their make-up and making sure their children and husbands looked presentable. First Stacy, then Cheryl, and then a couple other women asked me if I wanted to borrow one of their dresses to wear. I said no to all of them. Part of the craziness was that this was all happening by candle-light and flashlights. There was no way I was going to get dressed up for that patronizing chauvinistic jerk, Mark Jones.

  Well, I have to say that whatever Mark Jones was, he had a sense of timing and theater. His grand entrance into the ward couldn’t have been more scripted. He was wearing a tailored Italian black wool suit and a white raw-silk dress shirt. He sauntered in right as the sound of bullets went off, and just seconds after all the dozen or so zombies following him were shot down. I’m pretty sure that right then, every unmarried girl between the ages of 14 and 40 wanted to have his babies. The married women and the men weren’t much better. If Hiram had any speck of homosexuality in him, I believe he would have kissed Mark. Art looked completely relieved. Art had never been comfortable in the leadership position and now that Mark was here, Art looked like a hundred-pound weight had been taken off his shoulders.

  I had predicted that Mark would be bald and 50 pounds overweight. I was wrong. He had a full head of black hair with a hint of graying at his temples. He had an athletic build and looked and moved like he was extremely fit. He was short. He was barely an inch or two taller than me. If I had been wearing heels, I’m sure I would have been taller. For a second, I wished I had agreed to put on dress and heels so I could look down on him.

  Mark took all the cheering, yelling, and clapping with a totally fake ‘aw shucks, it’s only me, a heroic Federal Administrator in a 5000-dollar Italian suit, I don’t deserve this kind of attention’ sort of way. He pulled us into the gymnasium again and gave one of the best political speeches I’ve ever heard. First he started off apologizing for what had happened and what was going to continue to happen with people’s homes. We were in the middle of an emergency and while we had been in the ward, he and his people outside had been salvaging whatever they thought was necessary from our homes. He asked us when we went back to our homes to inventory everything we had that might have been taken or damaged by his team. He said “eventually”, when things calmed down, we would all be compensated, either in cash or in kind. He made of point of stating the word eventually so clearly and so often, and with so much solemn emphasis, that he had us all laughing. The way he said it made us understand “eventually” was going to be a really long time. He told us all our possessions had been nationalized and made us laugh.

  He went on to explain his first priority was to get things stabilized and safe for us to go outside our enclosure. The next step was to find out who or what was responsible for the zombies and vampires, and to punish them. He referenced the US Constitution, the rule of law, and how as Americans we had never lost a war that we thought was important. He assured us we would not only survive, we would get revenge on whoever had done this to us. I’ve always considered myself a patriotic American. I never thought it was necessary to wave the American flag or pledge my American allegiance in public to prove this. Mark pushed every jingoistic love-my-country-right-or-wrong button ever made. I have to admit, though, he was a great speaker and it was good to hear someone thought it wasn’t enough just to survive; we had to restore our culture and our nation. None of us had thought that far ahead.

  Mark’s men brought eight halogen work lamps—the kind construction crews use. In about half an hour, our mechanics had gotten the replacement generator running. Again, Mark’s timing was perfect. He started his speech surrounded by candles and flashlights. As he finished, the halogen lights came on. It was the perfect allegory: he gave his talk in darkness and then as he finished, there was light.

  While he was talking, Mark had men take turns using a thermal camera. He explained vampires had a core body temperature of 120 degrees. The camera allowed us to see a vampire through our walls and roof. You could tell he thought this camera was extremely important. He had wrapped Styrofoam and duct-tape around the camera so if it was accidently dropped, it wouldn’t be so likely to be damaged.

  Aft
er Mark finished his speech and the gym was lit up again, he had us prepare for a possible attack by multiple vampires. He told us if anything that looked like a vampire showed up on the cameras, we all needed to get to the walls and put our backs up against them so we could face the vampires. He didn’t want us lighting candles because they were a fire hazard. Instead, every electric light we had was turned on to make it as uncomfortable as possible for vampires.

  He marked six positions in the center of the gym where he wanted the men with rifles to stay. If we were attacked by vampires, concerns about gunshots attracting more zombies were the least of our problems. We needed to be able to take down the vampires as quickly as possible which meant we had to use rifles. Mark had a laser pointer. He was going to look through his thermal camera and use the laser pointer to mark where every vampire was. It would take time for a vampire to tear an opening through our roof or wall. We would use that time to try to take out the vampire before it got all the way through. Even the largest, most high-powered bullet will be deflected off in a random direction if it hits a small branch or twig. Since we were trying to shoot the vampires though walls, there would be no way to send accurate fire. He wanted every shooter to fire at the same time in the hope at least one of the bullets would strike in the right place. It wasn’t about accuracy; it was about sending enough volume of fire to do some good.

  He pulled out ten spears that were made from vampire claws and shovel handles. He showed us how sharp the claws were. He told us that if you were fighting a vampire hand-to-hand, you would need to stab a vampire through an eye or mouth to get to its brain, or to stab the vampire through its stomach region or abdomen, up into its chest, to get to its heart. He warned us vampire bones were as strong as steel and none of us would be able to stab a vampire through its rib cage with these spears. If we wanted to get its heart, we had to come from below. We were to stab with the sharp side of the claw up and the dull side down, so we could more easily cut up from below into the chest. The curved angle of the claws in this position would actually help guide the spears into the chest. He showed us where the heart was—slightly to the left but mostly in the center, just behind a bone called the sternum.