Sustainable Earth (Book 2): Death by Revelation

by Jack J. Lee

  Before the zombie outbreak in Africa, construction in Las Vegas had been depressed. Once the zombies came into the picture, construction projects in that city completely disappeared. I was able to hire a crew out of Vegas to help me build up my ranch dirt cheap. Someone or something was trying to wipe out humanity. Money was worthless in the middle of a disaster. I was going to spend my cash while it still had value.

  Throughout history, fortifications versus weaponry has been an ever evolving game of rock-paper-scissors. Before gunpowder, walls were built straight up and as high as possible; solid stone was the preferred building material. Artillery shatters granite walls like peanut brittle. To withstand cannon shot, walls have to be built on a slant and filled with a core made out of rubble and dirt. Instead of building fortifications high on hills so they are difficult to storm on foot, armed forces now build bunkers in valleys to make them harder to target with artillery.

  Before that outbreak, I never would have considered building a castle. A wall couldn’t protect me against my old enemies. The best I could tell from the news, zombies didn’t use weapons. Zombies worked like army ants. Individually they weren’t dangerous. They were dangerous in swarms. There was no reason to reinvent the wheel. Castles were the ultimate time tested defense against swarms of humans on foot. There was no reason to believe that castles wouldn’t work equally well against zombies.

  Hunters have to understand their prey. Successful assassins have to be students of human nature. I was certain that if humans survived zombies, soon afterwards they would go back to fighting each other. Chances were pretty good however if/when humans went back to warring amongst themselves, they would most likely be limited to small arms. Artillery requires an industrial infrastructure. After an apocalypse, even in the US it would likely take decades before an industrial infrastructure could be rebuilt.

  I had the construction crew surround the top two acres of a hill on my property with a twenty foot high, ten feet wide wall. The wall had a center core of rubble and dirt with an outer shell of eighteen inch thick reinforced concrete. Like a medieval castle, the wall had crenations or cutouts so men could have protection while shooting from the wall. The only way into the compound was through a steel gate that was wide enough to fit a semi.

  In the center of the enclosure there was a circular tower surrounded by a moat. The ground floor of the tower was a windowless garage. The second and third floors had window slits that were just 5 inches wide to let some light in and to be able to shoot out of. The top of the tower was flat and surrounded by crenellations. Underneath my tower, I had twenty-thousand feet of underground living and storage space with multiple levels. While preparing for a zombie outbreak, I read a lot of zombie fiction. Why not? No one seemed to have any real knowledge of what was going on. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to see what different authors had imagined.

  In a couple of the books government bureaucrats tried to wipe out zombies by using nukes. I’ve dealt with bureaucrats; I didn’t think the idea was farfetched. My tower needed to be able to handle the complete collapse of civilization. I told my architect and engineers to harden the tower against radiation and an EMP from a nuclear explosion. I knew we couldn’t build anything that could withstand a direct hit; I wanted something that could survive a close miss. My contractor, engineers, and architect thought I was crazy for worrying about a nuclear blast, but I was paying the bills and they needed the work.

  My ranch was next to property owned by the Bureau of Land Management that included the foothills of a mountain and a large stream. I broke the law. I diverted part of that stream into an underground pipe which led to my compound. I spent a considerable amount of money to design and install it so that the water intake couldn’t get clogged. I made it look like the moat was being filled by a stream that I had the legal right to use. It’s always good in the desert to have two sources of water. My construction crew needed jobs. They kept their mouths shut when the inspectors came around. You’d think that with all the weirdness going on in the world that the bureaucrats would slack off. You would have thought wrong. Inspectors came around often. I think that they were curious to see what I was building.

  I had over a hundred men working for me during this period. Since I wanted to keep what I was doing as private as possible, they all lived on my property in a fleet of mobile homes I installed inside my walls. The homes were connected to a leach field septic system, had running water and electricity. The crew was fed on site and on the weekends I had a private chartered bus transport them back and forth from Las Vegas.

  In three months my compound was finished. I set up a hydroelectric generator that ran off the power of the water that I piped from the BLM stream. I bought and stored food, weapons, ammunition, fuel, and vehicles. I installed a fully equipped metal working and woodworking shop. I got satellite TV and internet access. When the construction was done and my compound fully equipped, I was down to my last million.

  On the periphery of my compound both inside and outside my outer walls, I placed land mines that would go off if anything heavier than a goat walked on them. Different parts of the mine field could be activated or deactivated remotely.

  Chapter 13: Ari Levin, July 14th to September 11th, Year 0

  As soon as the construction crews were done, I focused on getting intelligence on the FLDS. If I hadn’t had to deal with the zombies, I wouldn’t have needed a fortress. My fortress was finished. It was time to get to know the community around me. When I had terrorists to deal with, having paranoid neighbors had been a good thing. Now that I had to worry about zombies, my unusual neighbors were a potential threat. Threats needed to be studied.

  I had done some superficial research on the FLDS before I bought my ranch. The FLDS or Fundamental Latter Day Saints had split off from the rest of the Mormons or LDS in 1890 when the mainstream Mormons discontinued their practice of plural marriages. At first, there were minimal differences between the FLDS and the LDS other than the practice of polygamy. With the passage of time, major differences formed.

  The LDS became a mainstream faith and the FLDS became a cult. There were about six million LDS throughout the world. There were less than 10 thousand FLDS members spread over a couple small towns in the US and Canada. The highest concentration of them, around six thousand, lived 16 miles east of me.

  Rulon Jeffries became the FLDS prophet in 1986. While prophet, he had a vision that the second coming of Jesus would occur in his lifetime. Jesus was on his way to bring the FLDS directly into heaven. Rulon also predicted that he would live for 350 years. Rulon had the entire FLDS congregation gather twice in the 1990’s to greet Christ. Rulon must have been a charismatic man because even though those two prophesized days came and went without Jesus showing up, he didn’t lose followers. Rulon died in 2002; he was 92 years old. Rulon and the rest of the FLDS had been absolutely certain that he would be their last prophet. There was no succession plan.

  Rulon had 19 wives and over sixty children when he died. One of his sons, Darren Jeffries was Rulon’s first counselor. Shortly after Rulon’s death, Darren had a vision that his father’s spirit entered his body. He was no longer Darren; he was Rulon. This vision solved the succession crisis. Rulon lived. There was still time over the next 258 years for the second coming of Jesus Christ. Darren announced that he was now married to all of his dad’s wives. All but two of Rulon’s wives bought Darren’s vision and accepted him as their husband. I don’t know if one of the two women was his biological mother. Knowing the FLDS, I wouldn’t be surprised either way.

  A man willing to marry his fathers’ wives is not normal. Rulon Jeffries was a prophet who kept making predictions that didn’t come true, but by all accounts, he was an effective and well- loved leader. Darren wasn’t. Two years after Rulon’s spirit entered Darren, he excommunicated 20 prominent FLDS men, including the Mayor of Colorado City. He took away their property and their wives and gave them to other men. That same year, three of Darren’s nephews claimed that he had
sexually abused them when they were small children. A video tape was taken of Darren admitting to having sex with one of his biological sisters and a biological daughter.

  Rulon married underage girls to grown men, but it appears that all of those girls were willing brides. The girls he married off didn’t complain and the law didn’t get involved.

  Darren forced unwilling underage girls to marry older men. Some of the girls ran away. In 2004, a warrant was issued for his arrest; he went into hiding. In 2005, he got on the FBI’s most wanted list. A sixty-thousand dollar reward was posted for information leading to his capture.

  In 2006 Darren Jeffries was arrested but kept control of the FLDS. After he was in prison, one of his brothers, Nephi, claimed that Darren had confessed to him that he never really had a vision and Rulon’s spirit hadn’t really entered his body. But Nephi’s attempt to displace Darren as prophet failed.

  In late July, I put up an advertisement on a Colorado City message board that I was looking for teenage boys to work as ranch hands. I offered room and board along with minimum wage for a 40 hour work week.

  When men marry multiple wives, there never are enough women. According to Darren, a man couldn’t get into heaven unless he had at least three wives. Most of the FLDS hierarchy had a dozen. The FLDS had a habit of excommunicating boys starting at age 14 for sinful things like watching a movie, talking to a girl, or having a bad attitude. The excommunicated teenagers were called ‘lost boys’.

  Once a boy was excommunicated, his family had to treat him like he had died. None of the FLDS would speak, touch, or have any other contact with him. Lost boys usually had no marketable skills. The FLDS raised their children to believe that the excommunicated were damned for eternity. Boys that had jobs and could bring money back to their families were less likely to be excommunicated.

  The next day I had 60 applications. When I interviewed the applicants, I looked for smart, strong, aggressive, young men, the kind that would make older FLDS men uneasy. None of the boys I chose looked like they had ever gotten positive attention from an older man. A couple of the kids I interviewed seemed like favored sons; I didn’t want them. I wanted boys that were headed toward excommunication. I hired eight boys aged 16 through 19 and brought them to my ranch. All of them got to stay in their own mobile home. Having come from huge families, they never had this much privacy before.

  All of my hands knew I wasn’t FLDS. I didn’t do anything in their presence that was frowned upon by members of their faith. They called me Mr. Levin. I dressed like I was FLDS. Even when performing manual labor, I stayed in character. I didn’t drink alcohol or curse in their presence. Trust is instinctive. It’s easier to trust someone who looks and acts like you.

  One of the easiest ways to make a teenage boy like you is to give him a gun. I gave each of the boys two. They were ranch hands. Ranch hands were cowboys, and cowboys had guns. I gave each of them a Marlin lever action Guide Gun Model 1895. It looked like exactly like a rifle a cowboy would carry. It shot a 45-70 big game rifle round and could carry 6 bullets in a tubular magazine. I also gave them .44 Magnum Ruger Redhawk double action revolvers with a 6 inch barrel. Recoil is an issue with .44 Magnum rounds especially for beginners. I had them use .44 Special rounds.

  Our first project was to put up a nine-foot- high chain link fence around the perimeter of my ranch. My property had a square layout. To surround all 200 acres, I needed 1.2 miles of fencing. I explained to them that I was going to turn the ranch into a private hunting preserve for deer, wild boar, and prong horn antelope. A private reserve needed to be fenced. We used gas powered two-man post drillers. All the fence posts were secured with cement. I explained to the boys that if all things went well, we would use the fence to keep our animals in. If things didn’t go well, the fence would help keep zombies out. It was hard, dirty, sweaty work. The boys expected me to ‘watch and supervise’; that’s how it worked among the FLDS, the top guys laid back and the peons worked. I sweated and got dirty with my ranch hands.

  We started every morning with a simple breakfast of bacon, eggs, and pancakes. Everyone took part in the meal preparation. Before every meal I said grace. Subtlety is wasted on teenage boys. I called all of them “son” as often as I used their given names and whenever I said grace, I used the phrase, “Our Heavenly Father, bless the family that we have created here.”

  Lunch was always sandwiches and canned soup. After work we ate dinner together. There was a lot of wildlife on and around the ranch. The boys carried their guns everywhere. A few probably slept with them. It wasn’t unusual for one of the boys to be able to take down a rabbit while we were working. If a rabbit was shot with a 45-70 slug, most of the edible meat was destroyed. The boys were taught to shoot at the ground in front of the rabbit so the spray of dirt and rocks from the bullet stunned or killed it. A few times we got a feral pig.

  The work was strenuous and the temperature was burning hot. Through most of July and August it was in the high 90’s to low 100’s at noon, but all of us put our backs into it. Every day we could see the progress that we had made.

  After a day’s work, we all jumped into the moat. After we swam, I let them fire up to a hundred rounds each with their rifles and their revolvers. Every couple days, I gave the boys a martial arts lesson with a particular emphasis on Jujitsu and Aikido techniques. I treated these boys like I wanted them and needed them; their families didn’t.

  FLDS men usually don’t cook. It was women’s work. There were no women around and I made it clear that I thought it was a man’s job to cook what he killed. If I had been trying to change how these kids practiced their religion or had tried to convince them that their faith was wrong, they would have rejected me. Hunting, cooking, and eating with me wasn’t something that they had any real reason to resist.

  Food and the memories of food are the basis of some of our strongest memories and emotions. The smell of food that you haven’t had for years will bring back a memory and the emotions you had at the time of that memory. Men, who want women, take them to dinner. Women, who want men, cook for them. Tight knit families eat together. All cultures use food to bond without consciously thinking about it.

  We ate rabbit or feral pig in the evenings. On days we didn’t have any wild game, we cooked store-bought chicken, steaks and hotdogs. As hot as it gets during the days, the nights become cool in a desert. I taught the boys how to cook over open fires. After a day of strenuous labor, it was wonderful to relax and talk around a fire while we waited for our meals to cook. I knew the boys would remember these meals and conversations for the rest of their lives.

  Around 9 at night, I went back into my tower. The boys usually fell asleep an hour or two later. I had every mobile home bugged and listened to their conversations.

  Graydon Miner, the second oldest boy at 18 years, was their leader. He understood instinctively that good leaders are responsible; he took care of the other boys. He was the first to decide that I was the answer to Darren Jeffries’ prophesies about the next prophet. The morning after he told this to the other boys, I made him my foreman.

  None of the boys said much about the FLDS in my presence. They had been taught since birth to keep their mouths shut around non-FLDS. The boys talked about their homes and families when I wasn’t around.

  An apocalypse is a cult’s wet dream. God was using zombies to punish sinners. The FLDS weren’t sinners; God wouldn’t let zombies hurt them. The FLDS expected prophets to make prophecies. Jeffries was in jail. The FLDS wanted to know who was going to take Darren’s place. They didn’t want to have another succession crisis. Darren obliged with the necessary visions. He gave the FLDS prophecies that described the third incarnation of his father. This was the prophet who would witness the second coming of Jesus Christ. He would be born in the Holy Land and would be able to kill by word and by touch. He would have eyes filled with flame. Darren’s prophecies made it impossible for any of the FLDS elders to take his position as prophet.

  The boys we
re all believers. They had been trained to be gullible since they were born. They were headed toward excommunication because there weren’t enough women and because they had personalities that made the older FLDS men nervous, not because they didn’t believe. None of the boys had ever been more than 50 miles away from Colorado City. They had never met a man who had been born in the Holy Land or a man whose eyes flashed red from time to time. It didn’t hurt that in a few weeks, I’d become a father figure to all the boys.

  My cover identity was born in Israel. I have unusual eyes. They are light brown almost golden and if the light strikes my eyes just right, they flash red, much like ‘red eye’ you see in photographs. I learned how to make my eyes flash red at will when I was a stage magician. In the Middle East, when I was trying to be inconspicuous, my unusual eyes had been a problem but not now. I had “eyes of flame.” Graydon was sure that the prophecy of being able to kill by touch meant the next prophet would be an expert in unarmed combat which I was. Learning that I was a close match for Darren’s prophecy was intriguing.

  I’ve spent the last 12 years of my life in the Middle East mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan. The main difference between Middle East and the US is the absence and presence of the rule of law and abject poverty. US laws are mostly fair and evenly enforced. In the US, the powerful getting away with murder is the exception not the rule. The laws on the books in the Middle East are fair on paper but the powerful are above the law; the weak can’t get justice. The most common medical diagnosis among the poor in the US is obesity; in the Middle East it’s starvation. Everyone steals when they are starving.

  It’s possible to be a loner in a country where laws are enforced and starvation is rare. At present, here in rural Arizona the probability of a stranger trying to kill me for my house or my supplies was almost nonexistent; in the middle of an apocalypse the likelihood was high. Currently all I had to do to buy food and supplies was to go to a store. In a disaster I would have to gather or grow all my own food.