by Jack J. Lee
I had a lot of balls in the air and I couldn’t afford to drop any of them. Last weekend as I entered Rachel’s bedroom, I wondered if I would be better off escaping into the desert, to a place so remote there were no other people or zombies. Immediately afterwards I had to struggle to keep from laughing.
I’ve lived under assumed identities for most of my adult life and I use Method Acting techniques to make it work. This means that I try to convince myself that I’m someone else. As much as possible, I take on the likely thought patterns and emotions of the person I’m pretending to be. I’m a great actor. I have to be. Failing to convince my audience at any time in the last ten years would have resulted in more than a bad review.
My current identity was born Jewish. The Jews are an amazingly successful people. Fifty percent of all Nobel Prize winners are Jewish. Once you understand that there are only 12 million Jews among 6.8 billion people on Earth, you realize how exceptional the Jewish people are. Besides scientific brilliance, another defining characteristic of the Jewish people is that they whine. Whether it’s a celebrity, a multibillionaire, or the Israeli Prime Minister, whenever you meet a Jew, they have troubles. They are always trying to convince you you’re lucky to have your troubles because theirs are worse.
Part of why I’m so good at being undercover is it is easy for me to assume another person’s thought patterns, but there’s a point when it goes too far and becomes a form of schizophrenia. When I started to think about dumping the prophet gig and heading for the hills, I had to stop myself and reset. In reality, I was having a blast. This is why I had gone into special ops. There were parts of my current mission that were unpleasant, like being intimate with a psychotic who wanted to kill me, but everything else was awesome.
My central tower had been converted into the prophet’s palace. My wives had moved up into the second floor of the tower. My bedroom and offices were underground. October 9th was Janelle’s night. Alice, Miriam, Catrina and Esther had all been married to Rulon first and then Darren. Janelle had only been with Darren. In most relationships, you first get to know your partner and then you have sex. My relationship with my wives was the opposite.
It was easy to tell what Darren had been like by the difference between Janelle and my other wives. After their first night with me, my other wives relaxed. I’m a normal heterosexual guy. My partner’s personality and the way I feel about her matters. It takes me awhile to get used to someone. I was still in the awkward phase with my wives, but it was getting better.
I think every man has had fantasies about being with multiple women. I’ve said Miriam and Catrina looked like twins. Is there a man alive who hasn’t thought about being with twins? If I had more of an ego, I probably would be planning an orgy with all my wives. I wasn’t that ambitious. I was pretty sure I could handle two women at a time, but the thought of trying to please more than that intimidated me.
In the past when I was undercover, I always had an exit strategy. There was an endpoint I could look forward to. My current role didn’t have a completion date. I didn’t need to deal with the shitstorm that would inevitably come my way if I started my marriage by forcing my wives into things they didn’t want. I played it safe. My plan was to follow each wife’s lead. I had time to get to know them before I started pushing boundaries.
None of my wives volunteered much information about their lives before me and I didn’t pry. From what I could tell from my nights with Janelle, Darren had been brutal. She had been a child when she married him. She reacted to sex like a robot. She expected me to command her and her job was to obey. I don’t enjoy forcing women.
At first I tried to deal with Janelle’s problems by just cuddling with her. She didn’t like sex and I needed the rest. She got offended. She was the only one of my wives without children and she wanted some. The idea of having sex to make babies turned me off even more. Until Janelle had made me face the idea, I hadn’t thought much about having my own kids.
All my other wives came with children. If you included Tom Marsden, his sister and brother, I now had 18 stepkids. With all that I had done to Tom, killing his dad and marrying his mother, I owed it to him to get his younger brother and sister away from his nutcase mother. I worried that Rachel would fight to keep her biological children. Fortunately Rachel had the mothering instincts of a black widow spider; she didn’t have any. Bret and Danielle were now living with me. Bret was eight and Danielle was six. Hopefully they were young enough and resilient enough to not be permanently scarred. Stepchildren didn’t bother me. Darren Jeffries had been in jail for years. Most of his kids didn’t remember him. All of them accepted me as their father.
Playing a role, even one of a father with 18 children wasn’t a problem. The thought of having my own children was terrifying. In my line of business, being a sociopath is a good thing. You don’t want to ever care about anyone else besides yourself. Love is fatal. I had no idea how I would react to one of my own children.
I knew intellectually that Janelle wanted to be with me. Janelle was 18-years-old, 5’2” tall, and weighed about 110 pounds. She looked 16. She reminded me of the cheerleaders I had lusted after in high school, yet sex was miserable. I felt like I was using a blow-up doll.
I decided to seduce Janelle, to make her fall in love with me. For the last couple of days, I made small little gestures to make it seem like I cared. I caught her gaze often. When I kissed her in the mornings, I made sure to linger. This morning I asked her to go on a picnic with me for lunch. The shock in her eyes was pitiful. She had never been on a date.
We took a long walk up to a small natural spring on BLM land next to the ranch. Waiting for us when we got there was a three-course meal. Janelle was delighted. Like many women who had been abused, she was shy and didn’t talk much. But when I asked her how many children she wanted, it was like a dam broke. She went on and on about kids. It was a good thing I knew how to act. I took her hand and she blushed. It took all my skill to pretend I was interested.
Janelle talked and I listened. She told me how many children she wanted, how many boys and girls. She described her relationship with my other wives; they were all close and had made the decision together to move in with me.
Finally when it was time to go to bed, Janelle was actually laughing. I challenged her to a contest. I told her that whoever orgasmed first lost. Janelle was game. Since she had never come before, she figured she had the win locked. Janelle was young. She never had much in the way of life experiences. She had been home schooled like all the rest of the FLDS. The furthest she been away from Colorado City was St. George. She was still a kid. Despite her previous abuse, she still had the childlike ability to live in the moment. She started attacking me. Every time she tried to touch me, I moved away.
Married FLDS women wear hideous clothing. They don’t wear makeup. Their hair is always up in a bun. They wear shapeless long sleeve dresses with high necklines and hems that cover their entire legs down to their ankles. Even pretty girls look ugly in these clothes. In the privacy of the bedroom, it’s different. Janelle was wearing a little bit of transparent nothing that went to her mid thigh. Her long hair was loose.
When she was married to Darren, Janelle had been the youngest of 71 wives. She’d never had the opportunity to be the aggressor before. After an hour of wrestling mixed with tickling and laughter, she locked hungrily to my lips. I let her make all the decisions. From time to time, I moved away from her lips and nibbled down her neck and to her earlobes. When I did, she grabbed my face and started kissing me again.
She pushed me back on the bed and got on top. She moved back and forth grinding. Finally she engulfed me. As she did, I could feel her tightening around me and her body start to shake. An entire day of foreplay was what it took. I hoped it wouldn’t be like this all the time; it was a lot of work.
It took her a few minutes to recover. I was still hard. She started riding me again. I came. She was still on top, kissing me when I fell asleep from pure exhaustion.
I woke up at 3 am. Janelle had me in her mouth. I had created a monster. She was going to kill me. I was considering pretending to be asleep when I heard an explosion. I could feel my bed shake. There was another explosion. The landmines were going off.
“Janelle, I need you to gather up all the women and children and bring them underground. Lock the vault doors behind you and don’t open them unless you hear my voice. We’re being attacked. I need to get dressed.”
Janelle nodded and got off the bed to put on her robe. I went into my closet and put on my clothes. This included all my hideaway weapons. Within 60 seconds of the first explosion I was out my bedroom door. By the time I reached the ground floor, I had picked up an AR-10A4 rifle. There were a couple more explosions by the time I got outside.
It was dark. None of the outside lights were on. People were screaming and running everywhere. Then I saw a creature scuttling like an insect, jumping 20 to 30 feet at a time. One of its legs was missing. It must have landed on one of the mines.
I started firing. My rifle fired 7.62 mm NATO rounds. I knew I was hitting my target because I could see it jerk a little every time I pulled the trigger but that’s all that happened. Since center of mass shots weren’t affecting it, I started aiming for its head. There were people firing all around me but if they were hitting it, they were not having any more effect than me.
The creature headed toward me fast. Some nut tackled it while it was in the air, knocking it to the ground. The thing disemboweled the guy with one swipe of its claws. I could see his intestines trail behind him. It was Tom. He must have gone berserk because having his guts torn out didn’t faze him. He kept wrestling with the thing, preventing it from getting up. Tom slowed the thing down enough for me to nail it on the head three times. I could see its skull deform a little with each hit. All I was doing was pissing it off. It jumped toward me.
I used my rifle like a baseball bat while it was in the air to knock it away from me. I had two tetrodotoxin darts left. I used both of them. If the tetrodotoxin worked, the thing wouldn’t be able to move in 45 seconds.
It was the fastest thing I’ve ever fought. I used every trick I knew to stay out of its reach. I stayed focused. Nothing else mattered. I mirrored its every movement. I didn’t make the mistake of looking into its eyes. Eyes can fool you. The position of a torso or pelvis can’t. Every motion starts from the torso.
Since one of its legs was missing, it kept one hand on the ground at all times. I kept just out of reach. The thing was enormously strong and fast but it wasn’t that big. It was at most a few pounds heavier than me. It jumped at me. This was a mistake. By leaving the ground, it had lost all leverage. I dropped my rifle and grabbed its left arm and changed its trajectory. As it slammed into the ground, I twisted its arm so its shoulder dislocated.
The fight paused. It only had two functional limbs. Then I saw its shoulder pop back into position and the dents I had put into its skull with my bullets disappear. The open wound from its jaw was now covered with skin.
‘Aw shit!’
It came at me again. It was noticeably slower than it had been just a few seconds before. It may have been the poison or maybe it was getting tired. I looked into its eyes. It was frustrated. I smiled.
‘You’re mine, bitch.’
The feel of the fight changed. Whatever it had done to heal itself had taken energy. It was tired. It was slower; I wasn’t. I saw it stagger. It recovered and tried to jump at me again. I got underneath its center of mass and stood up. I had its body balanced on my shoulder as I drove it face first into the ground. As its face hit, I pulled down on its back so its neck hyperextended. I heard its neck crack and then its head flopped over. Although its head was still attached to its neck, its spinal cord had been severed. The bones in its neck were no longer connected.
I knelt down. I raised my hand high in the air and a blade appeared. I slammed it into the dead things eye socket. I felt resistance almost like a thin sheet of metal. My blade penetrated deep into the skull. I could feel gelatinous resistance as I twirled my blade and turned its brain to mash. I left my knife in the skull and stood up.
New Zion looked like Hell on Earth. There were two more creatures ripping through my men. One was missing both legs but it was a nightmare that couldn’t be stopped. I could see its flesh ripple as bullets struck it but it didn’t seem to notice. The freak balanced on its arms like a deranged acrobat. It was the kind of thing I’d expect to see in a Cirque de Soleil show, not in reality.
I needed a big game rifle like a Marlin Guide Gun. A body on the ground looked like Trey Stevens, one of my disciples. His Guide Gun was lying next to him. I checked his pockets; he had a handful of extra rounds. I had to force myself to move methodically. It’s too easy in situations like this to fumble and waste time.
I finally got the rifle loaded. The freak running on his hands rushed by just ten feet away, I took a snap shot at his head. ‘Yes!’ He/it/whatever dropped. I debated putting another round in its head for good luck. I decided I needed to save all my rounds for the last creature.
As I ran toward it, I saw it fall. Graydon and the two Daniels stood over it shooting round after round into its head. They had the situation under control. I walked back to the acrobat. These things had the ability to heal themselves. I had the time now to make sure it was dead. I fired another round. I knelt to examine its body.
There were two entry wounds in the creature’s head. There weren’t any exit wounds. The .45-70 slugs had clearly ricochetted multiple times inside the brain case. I could feel the dents all over its skull. ‘Where the hell had these things come from?’ Zombies made sense; they were just infected humans. ‘What planet had these things come from?’
I walked over to Graydon Miner. As I had expected, he was on top of things; he brought me up to speed on the night’s events. He said that all the lights in the compound were down except in the tower. He didn’t know when this happened as no one had been awake when the lights went out. We were surrounded by walls and landmines. I hadn’t seen the need for sentries. The FLDS were exhausted from performing heavy labor all day. Everyone had been asleep.
Around 3 am, Graydon’s dog had started barking. This was unusual so he got dressed and grabbed his Marlin before he stepped outside his tent. He saw vampires jump over our walls and land on our mines. The sound of him shooting at the vampires woke the others. I was taken aback by his use of the word vampires but on second thought I decided that vampire was as good of a label as anything else. We already had zombies. Why not vampires?
Four vampires had made it over our walls. Most of our men had been armed with the civilian version of the M-16. They found that 5.56 mm rounds were useless against the vamps. Graydon and the rest of my disciples still had their Marlins. Graydon rounded up as many of the disciples as he could. He had them fire in unison and had taken out two of the creatures.
Not surprisingly, my disciples took the brunt of the vampires’ attacks. The two Daniels were ok. The rest of my disciples, including Tom, hadn’t made it. Morale was surprisingly good. I didn’t remember until it was pointed out to me, but Darren Jeff had predicted ‘fallen angels’. According to his prophecy only those ordained by God could destroy a fallen angel. Graydon, Landon, Nephi, and I had just shown our people that we were chosen.
It took hours to get the situation outside under control. I had the vampire’s bodies locked in a metal storage bin; I planned on examining their bodies more closely in the morning. I checked the wounded.
After Fredonia, my men and I had moved on to Kanab. We found a couple hundred survivors there. One of them was a nurse practitioner. She had already started treating our wounded by the time I got to her. I had my men set up a hospital tent for her and made sure she had enough help and supplies before I took a look at our dead. I made sure that we had men armed with Marlin’s watching the wounded. It sometimes took days for an infected person to turn into a zombie. I couldn’t believe the things we had killed had eve
r been human but there was no point in taking chances.
I sent Lavel Sondermann off to get my wives. They needed to be here. Eventually all of my people gathered in front of me. The zombie infection was spread by saliva. Many of our dead had been bitten by these ‘vampires’. There was no way I was going to let their bodies sit unguarded. We had a funeral for our forty-two dead and then immediately afterwards placed them into the kilns we had been using to fire our mud brick. We had enough space to fit a dozen bodies in at one time. Even so the sun was just starting to rise before we were done.
Afterwards, Alice pulled me aside and told me that tomorrow I was going to show her and the other wives how to use a rifle. She never wanted to feel that helpless again.
My wives decided we would all sleep in my room. I looked into their eyes and decided it was better not to argue; I didn’t have any fight left in me. Sleeping bags and comforters were all over my floor. I went to sleep with six little kids on top of me. The only upside of the situation was I was almost certain I was safe from Janelle for the rest of the night.
Chapter 23: Ari Levin, October 10th, Year 0
I woke up around noon. The wives and kids were gone. I had been so exhausted I hadn’t heard any of them leave. I took a shower and changed.
When I got outside, I saw that Lavel and Graydon had matters well in hand. Lavel was a smart man. He only had three wives and they were close to his age. He had hated what Darren had done to the FLDS but had also been smart enough to keep quiet about it. None of his wives wanted a divorce.
Graydon Miner was only 19 years old, but he had the soul and personality of a much older man. He and Lavel worked well together. In the last few weeks they had become my deputies. It was tradition among the FLDS for a prophet to have twelve apostles. Lavel became one of them. There was space for eight more apostles. This was a good thing; it gave other FLDS a chance to move up in the world. Graydon and Lavel were overseeing work on the apartments when I walked up to them.