Year of the Dead

by Jack J. Lee

  About a month before the zombie outbreak, I started dating Becky. She was a great girl and I really liked her. I could see that with time, I could come to love her. It was hard not to flirt when some older girl was paying attention to me and Becky was starting to get pissed. I knew I needed to either commit to Becky or break up with her, and I didn’t know what to do. I was close to my sister Cheryl but I knew what she would say about the idea of my dating some girl who might be older than her. Talking to my dad wouldn’t be any better than talking to Cheryl. It got so I was more stressed about what to do about Becky than taking on zombies.

  It figures that girls would cause more pain than zombies. I finally decided to talk to Sergeant Rockwell. He wasn’t married and he was LDS. He was getting a lot more attention from women than I was. He was one of two men who had ever killed a vampire with a hand held weapon and most of the women had seen him do it. I could tell Dr. Helen Hansen and almost all of the other single women were interested in him. The only person who could compete with him in terms of getting attention from women was the Director.

  One night after going on patrol, I went to his room. Rank has its privileges; he had a small private room in the ward house. “Uh, sergeant, can I talk to you?”

  “What’s up, private?”

  “Uh, mmm, I wanted to see if I could get some advice from you about something personal.”

  “Yeah.”

  I explained to him what was going on with me and Becky and how I was wondering whether I should commit to her or break up with her.

  “Peter, do you believe in our Heavenly Father?”

  “Yeah, Sarn’t, I do.”

  “Our Heavenly Father wants us to try our best to be our best. We can’t be perfect but nothing prevents us from being the best we can be. Now some things are impossible. I know our Father wants me to love my fellow man even if he’s an asshole; I can’t. It’s impossible for me not to curse. Everyone’s different. What may be impossible for me may not be impossible for you. I don’t believe our Heavenly Father gets too upset if you can’t do something that is impossible, but I believe he is disappointed if we don’t do something that we are capable of, even if it’s hard. Do you believe in eternal marriage?”

  “I do, Sarn’t.”

  “Sex between a man and woman who love each other is a sacrament. It’s the power to create, a blessing from our Heavenly Father. Having sex with a woman you don’t love is misusing that blessing. An essential part of being in love is being fair. You’ve got to ask yourself how you would feel about being eternally married to a woman who had sex with another man. If your answer is that you would be ok with it, go and sow your oats. But if it would bother you, you know what you should do.”

  I didn’t know what I expected the sergeant to say, but he surprised me. I was embarrassed to ask but I had to know. “Sarn’t, does this mean you are a virgin?”

  “You ask that like being a virgin is something to be ashamed of. I’m a virgin. It’s simply a fact, just like I’m six-foot-four-inches tall. I’m not ashamed or proud of being a virgin, just like I’m not ashamed or proud of being my height. I know when I find and marry my eternal love; it would be wonderful if I’m the first and only man she has ever been with. It would be one of the greatest gifts that I could receive. What kind of man would I be if I wanted this gift but chose not to give the same gift back? The reason you don’t know what to do is because you are asking the wrong questions. Do anything you want as long as you don’t mind your future wife doing the same things.”

  I went back to my bunk and I spent most of the night thinking. Sergeant Rockwell and Director Jones were completely different men. There was no way that the Director was a virgin, but they were basically living the same way. They chose to live life as heroes without shame or regrets. The sergeant made it clear that if I decided to fool around with women, he wouldn’t judge me one way or the other, but he told me if I did that, not to expect any better from my future wife. He was right. It was only fair.

  The next day after I got back from patrol I apologized to Becky. I told her I had been a jerk. I’m only 17 and Becky is 16. We’re young and it’s possible that in a few weeks or months we’ll break up, but it won’t be because I’ve been flirting with other girls.

  Before the zombie outbreak, I was just a kid and nothing I did really mattered. Now everything mattered. With every street I helped clear out, every zombie I killed, every important piece of equipment I helped to salvage, I was making a difference. Every day I got stronger and better at my job. It was great knowing I was one of the best. I remember watching a TV special about WWII. The title was “Band of Brothers.” That’s what the SaLTs became: a band of brothers. I grew up as the only boy with three older sisters. It was awesome having guys you could depend on around all the time. It was physically exhausting to be out on patrol, but there was no place else I wanted to be. After we came back I would eat dinner with my dad and Cheryl and afterwards hang out with Becky and my other friends. Every morning before I went out on patrol, Becky saw me off. Life was perfect. Then one evening Becky looked up at me and said, “Peter, I love you.”

  My mind went blank. I said “That’s nice.”

  “That’s nice? Peter Bingham, you did not just say ‘That’s nice!’” Becky turned around and stormed off. I wanted to follow her and apologize but I didn’t know what to say. It just didn’t seem right to say I love you back when I wasn’t sure I loved her.

  When I went on patrol, I made the mistake of telling one of the guys what had happened. During the rest of the patrol, some jerk would say “Peter, I love you” and then a couple other guys would say “That’s nice” in chorus, and then everyone would start laughing. We would kill a bunch of zombies, clear out some houses, and then another idiot would say “Peter Bingham, I love you,” and then the same old chorus, “That’s nice,” followed by laughter. They wouldn’t let it drop. I know how it works so I kept a fake grin on my face and acted like it didn’t faze me, but it wasn’t pleasant.

  At dinner, I let my dad and Cheryl know what happened and Cheryl reacted the same way the guys had. She burst out laughing. I could see my dad was trying to hide a grin, too. I started getting mad but then it hit me. My God, the stupidity of “That’s nice”—it was funny. I started laughing, too. After dinner Cheryl took off. She was going to see her boyfriend. All of us—my Dad, Cheryl and I—slept in different areas. I stayed at the barracks and Cheryl stayed at a single women’s dorm area. My Dad was Mayor and had his own room and that’s where we had dinner. He was dealing with mom’s death by being a workaholic. After dinner I knew he would be back at work making sure everyone in our community had enough supplies and taking care of any medical problems that came up.

  I stayed after dinner and asked my dad what I should do. He told me to just wait and let time pass. He said if I loved Becky, as time passed I would become more and more miserable. He said, “Peter, only a man who loves a woman can truly be miserable,” with a grin on his face. He said if in a few days to weeks Becky and I still weren’t talking and I wasn’t feeling that bad, this would be proof I didn’t love her. But if I was absolutely miserable, well, that meant I loved her. I told him that seemed like a really painful way to deal with what was going on. He looked at me. I could tell he was thinking about mom because he had tears in his eyes.

  “Peter, being with a woman you love is worth all the pain and misery she will ever cause you, and trust me, she will at times make you absolutely miserable. Nothing worth anything is ever easy. Your relationship with your wife will be the most important thing in your life and so it will never be easy.”

  “Dad, what if in a few weeks I decide I love Becky but it’s too late. She might be so mad that she won’t take me back.”

  “Peter, if she loves you, really loves you, she’ll forgive you and take you back. Don’t tell her you love her if you don’t mean it. I know it’s painful but if she doesn’t love you, you’d better find out earlier than later. Now if she takes you back
she’ll never forget about this and she will continue to bludgeon you with this for the rest of your life and into eternity, but she’ll forgive you and take you back.”

  “Dad you’re not making love sound very pleasant.”

  “Son, love is worth all the misery and pain that comes with it. I have to admit, though, it’s funnier seeing it happen to someone else than experiencing it yourself.”

  “Thanks, Dad”.

  The next couple of weeks were miserable. Becky wouldn’t even look at me. Her girlfriends didn’t want to have anything to do with me, either. Once it became obvious I was single, other women started paying attention to me again, but I wasn’t interested. I wasn’t certain if I loved Becky or not, but I knew for sure I didn’t want to date anyone else. I spent a lot more time with the guys. In passing, I mentioned to the sergeant how painful it was dealing with women. He laughed and told me there was a reason why he was still single.

  Starting in November we got word we were going to start rescuing other wards. The closest ward we knew had people in it before the EMP was six-and-a-half miles south of us. The training and preparation got intense. This was going to be a big deal. For the first time, we were going to spend nights outside in armored vehicles. The night before we were to depart, I found Becky and told her I loved her. I didn’t know how she was going to react. I was more scared than I had been the night the vampires attacked. It went surprisingly well. She laughed and put her hands on my face and said,

  “Peter Bingham, you’re an idiot but I love you.”

  Turns out her girlfriends had been spying on me the last few weeks and the fact I had looked miserable and hadn’t given any other girl the time of day had kept me in her good graces.

  Clearing out the zombies around the Riverside ward was a blast. It was awesome. I shot the best of all the men except for Frank Burns, and nobody human can beat Frank. All the money I won was icing on the cake. On November 18th, we cleared out all the zombies around the Riverside second ward. Almost all the men had been killed. I imagined how horrible it would have been to be helpless, just waiting there night after night for a vampire to get one of you.

  We had to make a decision whether to stay in the ward one more night and deal with the vampire inside or take off back home with all the civilians and possibly deal with vampires on the road. Either way was bad. We didn’t have the thermal camera; we couldn’t see the vampire through a wall or through a roof. We didn’t have a way of taking out the vampire before it got among us. We could have just passively let a vampire take one of us men; if we did, only one of us would have died, but there was no way any of us SaLTs would have let this happen. If the vampire attacked, we would kill it, but we also knew a number of us would be dead or injured in the process. The Director made the decision to head back home right away.

  If had been just us SaLTs, it would have been no problem running back home. Six-and-a-half miles was nothing, but we had to escort hundreds of women and children back. Luckily we were able to fit most of the youngest children in our trucks. It was mid-November and Salt Lake City is in a desert; in deserts it gets cold at night. Most of the civilians had winter coats but some didn’t. I saw a girl—she must have been 14 or 15—she was skinny and shivering. She had a couple of blankets wrapped around her. I took my jacket off and gave it to her. If I hadn’t, I think she would have become hypothermic. The Director had told us that in his experience, vampires did not come out until after midnight, so there was a chance we wouldn’t be attacked. I hoped he was right.

  Every time I had been outside before tonight, we had been in control. Every man had a weapon and knew how to use it. We had been close enough to be able to support each other. None of the civilians were armed. We had to spread out to help protect the perimeter. We didn’t have enough men to adequately support each other. We each had an assigned partner: one of us with a rifle that could take out a vampire and the other an AR-15. My partner today was Max Sutter. He had a .300-Win Mag Winchester 70 bolt-action rifle. I had my suppressed AR-15. We were moving constantly back and forth, trying to keep an eye out for vampires and zombies. Even though it was cold and I didn’t have my jacket on, I was sweating. I saw one zombie in the first hour of walking. Before I could even lift my rifle, it was taken out. That had to be Frank.

  We had covered two, maybe three, miles when the armored trucks came back with a bunch of other vehicles. My dad was there. Once he had found out what was going on, he had gotten all of the reserve militia men and every working vehicle out to us. Many of the vehicles were pulling trailers we could load people on. It looked like there was enough room for everyone. Loading up was completely chaotic. We SaLTs couldn’t help; we needed to keep an eye on the perimeter.

  I heard screaming to the right. About fifty feet away, I saw a group of zombies attacking civilians. In the noise and chaos, no one had seen them approach. Max couldn’t shoot; his rifle was so powerful it would rip right through a zombie and probably hit a civilian. I took four shots in a couple seconds. I didn’t miss. There were three more zombies but they were too close to the civilians. I’m not Frank. I couldn’t risk it. I dropped my gun and pulled out my baton. As I ran, I tugged on a release on my backpack that allowed it to fall off behind me. When I reached the zombie closest to me, it had its back to me. It was holding on to a woman and pulling her toward its jaws. She was screaming and struggling. Her hands were on the zombie’s chest, trying to keep it from biting her. I swung my baton like it was a baseball bat with two hands. I struck its temple just in front of its ear and I could feel its skull collapse.

  I kept running, and with two steps I was right on top of the second zombie. It had grabbed a kid, maybe ten years old. It was facing away from me. I tackled it. I knocked the zombie to the ground and as it and I fell, I was able to pull the kid out of its grasp and push him away. I ended up on top of the zombie. I grabbed the zombie’s hair with two hands and started slamming its head down on the asphalt surface of the road. The third time I pulled its head up and smashed it back down, I could feel its skull give and the zombie stopped struggling. I stood up. Max had just taken out the last zombie. The woman I saved was holding her kid. They both looked ok.

  Max said, “Peter, your arm.”

  I looked. I had a bite on my left forearm. It was bleeding. If I had been wearing my SaLT jacket with the armored sleeves, this wouldn’t have happened. Now I was a dead man walking. We had bandages in our backpacks. Max got a bandage out and wrapped it around my arm.

  We all had seen what would happen once you got bit by a zombie. Depending on how healthy you were, you turned into a zombie within a few hours to four days. I was healthy. I probably had four days. Before you turned, you always started vomiting, so there was always a warning period. By the time Max had finished wrapping my arm, all the SaLTs, the Director, and my dad were there. The Director immediately assessed the situation and ordered the rest of the SaLTs to back up around the perimeter. My dad was crying. I went up and hugged him. My dad and I got up into the front seat of a truck that could seat three men. I sat furthest away from the driver. If I started vomiting, I needed to be able to get my head out a window.

  My dad and I sat in silence for a while. He hugged me. I could tell that if he could, he would have held me in his arms like a child. I wouldn’t have minded. He wouldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t help it; I started crying, too. We didn’t say much. What was there to say?

  By the time we got back to the ward, both of us had stopped crying. I got out of the truck and I could see Becky running toward me. She started to kiss me. “You can’t kiss me, Becky. I got bit.” I could feel Becky’s legs get weak. She almost fell to the ground. I held her up in my arms. She buried her head into my neck. I could feel her body shake as she sobbed.

  Every few days we would get a couple of new people into the ward. These were people who had been holed up in their homes. By now most of them had run out of supplies. Some were rescued by the SaLTs and some made it to us on their own. The people who go
t here on their own tended to find us by heading away from the highest concentration of zombies. It wasn’t unusual for some of the people who had gotten here on their own to have been bitten. Everyone who was a new arrival was first allowed to shower and get cleaned up and then had to undergo a physical examination by my dad or one of his assistants. If they had been bitten, they were placed in a quarantine room until they turned.

  Everyone in the quarantine room was given an opportunity to inject themselves with a combination of morphine and diazepam that would kill them before they turned. After an overdose it usually took an hour before the corpse turned into a zombie. This gave the guards time to damage the brain. Since the Outbreak, no one got buried. Everyone was cremated.

  I’d never had been to a quarantine room before, but my dad had told Cheryl and me about it while we were having one of our family dinners. Dad said some of the people requested that they be killed before they turned. These people couldn’t kill themselves but at the same time they didn’t want to turn into a zombie. This had created a dilemma for the council. No one wanted to be responsible for euthanasia. The council had voted and it was unanimous: We didn’t do euthanasia. People had to inject themselves or they were taken down after they had turned. In the end, most people couldn’t inject themselves.

  I was led to the quarantine house. It was a house near the ward that was converted to a series of cells. All the rooms had a toilet and sink and a chain-link door that could be locked. I could see the reason behind it. Once you turned into a zombie, you would charge the door and one of the guards could then take you out through the chain-link.