I stared wide-eyed at my grandpa for a moment, then burst into tears and ran into his outstretched arms, begging forgiveness.
“Nothing to be sorry about, Short Stuff,” he said, gently kissing my forehead and wiping away my tears. “I just pray you never have to know what war feels like.”
Obviously, his prayers weren’t answered. None of our prayers were. If Grandpa was alive today, I could now tell him stories that would curl his thin, gray hair. I could also tell him a few war stories that would make him laugh.
It isn’t often in life when we know the precise moment that one of our habits has been broken or an attitude has changed, but I know the exact instant when I completely understood Grandpa’s foxhole sense of humor, and I may even have outdone him in the prank department.
When I was on my supply and reconnaissance mission one warm day in March, I found myself near the small town of Ravena. There used to be a quaint old country store there named Erikson’s, and they had an authentic soda fountain where my parents and I used to stop for root beer floats on their antiquing trips. Feeling nostalgic, and missing my parents, I decided to make a detour to see if the place was still standing. It was a bright, cloudless day, so there weren’t any zombies on the streets, although I did see one or two lurking in some shadows.
When I was a about a block away, my heart was warmed by the site of the familiar brick chimney with the faded ice cream cone painted on the side. But as I got closer, I saw that someone was standing on the porch. I stopped the Humvee and reached for my binoculars, and was nothing short of flabbergasted by what I saw.
There, standing motionless with his eyes closed in a twilight state, was a zombie on skis! He was in a parka, ski pants, gloves, and a knit cap, and the ski poles hung at his sides, still strapped around his wrists. It was at least 75 degrees out, but this zombie was ready for some downhill action.
I zoomed in on the tag hanging around his neck, and recognized that it was a lift pass for Whiteface Mountain by Lake Placid. How on earth this zombie managed to come 150 miles on skis I will never know, but the absurdity of the sight made something snap inside of me. It was that awful weight of the fear, anxiety, and mind-numbing terror that had ruled my life since the day the zombie apocalypse began. For the first time I could truly laugh at death.
I sat there in the truck and laughed until tears were streaming down my face and my stomach muscles hurt. And then suddenly I knew why men like my Grandpa played silly jokes on the battlefield. Here was a zombie who could kill me in a heartbeat, yet I had no plans to kill him. No, I had very different plans, indeed.
“This one is for you, Grandpa,” I said as I quietly and slowly pulled my Humvee around the back of Erickson’s.
I tested the rear entrance of the old country store and found the door unlocked. I did my usual careful room-by-room search and found the place clear. The front door was also unlocked, but it started to squeak when I pushed it, and I immediately froze and held my breath. Thankfully, the zombie didn’t flinch and his eyes didn’t flicker.
I pushed the door a bit farther so I could just squeeze through, then crouched low and didn’t move until I was again certain the undead skier wasn’t aware of my presence. Then inch by inch, I crept the ten feet or so to the back end of his skis, and slowly removed a big, bright orange cordless nail gun from my back pack. Then with the speed of a western gunslinger, I rapidly punched three quick nails through each of the skis and into the wooden planks of the porch.
The racket roused the zombie from his twilight state, and he roared at the sight of fresh meat—namely Rebecca Truesdale—as he tried to lunge toward me. The skis held fast to the porch, however, and he went nowhere fast. There was almost a look of puzzlement on the frustrated downhiller’s face as he first struggled to move one leg then the other, all the while his arms flailing and the ski poles whipping around in erratic circles.
I could have sat there for hours watching the hilarious show, but I had already pressed my luck as far as I was willing to go for a laugh. I ran back to the Humvee, and once safely inside, I drove around to the front of the building and snapped a picture of my conquest. Maybe someday I would show that photo to one of my grandchildren, and they will laugh, but later wonder how Grandma could have acted so silly in the face of death.
Onward Christian Soldiers: On our supply runs we came upon a survivor or two. If they were not infected and had something to contribute to the compound, they were allowed to join us. I was all for helping people, but the success of the compound to this point was based upon a tight core of Cam’s men, who all knew and trusted one another. There were just getting to be too many strange faces, which all had mouths to feed.
But that would all be Cam’s problem in a couple of days as I was starting to pack up to head home to Nyack. I had made some excellent progress with my ZIP research and was anxious to start producing some more potential weapons. The day before I planned on leaving, I saw a group of fifteen dirty and bedraggled women and children enter the compound in a couple of the men’s pickup trucks. The buzz around camp was that these people had walked all the way from Georgia where the zombie problem was much worse, and planned to continue heading north into Canada where it was safer. It was obvious that God had protected them. Some said the tales of their journey were inspirational, even miraculous.
I was immediately suspicious. First of all, just eight women with only two pistols couldn’t have gotten very far. And when I took a look at the children to see if they needed medical attention, they all seemed too well fed, and their “tattered” clothing showed signs of clean cuts with a knife. Were these people staging this whole story to gain or sympathy?
I told Cam of my concerns, but he seemed to be drinking the miracle Kool-Aid, too.
“Can’t you just put aside your science for once and just accept that God has led these people to safety?” he said, showing a side of himself that always ruffled my feathers. As practical and capable and shrewd as he was, there was that occasional sound in his chest of a Bible thumping.
Only The Monk, Josh the plumber, and Ed the ex-con, seemed to agree with me that something was fishy.
“God does work in mysterious ways,” The Monk said, “but people work in devious ways.”
While the rest of the compound was throwing a huge party in honor of the “Miracle 15” in the dining hall, the four of us were hiding as many weapons, medicines, and supplies as we could get our hands on. I even pulled my Humvee way back into the woods and camouflaged it. Perhaps we were all being paranoid, and perhaps my fanatical Aunt Dorothy had soured me to religion, but we were willing to risk being ridiculed if our fears proved to be unfounded.
When I finally went back to our cabin, I found a very drunk Cam rambling on about how these women and children had been delivered from evil, and how it was all a sign that God had not abandoned us. In fact, as we were to discover a few hours later, it was actually a sign that P.T. Barnum was right—that there is a sucker born every minute.
“Arise! Arise my children and come into the light!” a booming male voice shouted over the PA system shortly after sunrise.
I grabbed my pistols and shook awake a very hungover Cam. I peered out the window toward the central courtyard and was absolutely stunned to see at least two hundred people. We didn’t even have a hundred permanent residents in the compound.
“What’s going on? Who’s shouting?” Cam said, a moment before he ran into the bathroom to throw up. It was clear he wasn’t going to be much help.
I was dressing quickly, and planning on sneaking back into the woods, when several heavily armed men kicked in the door of the cabin. I could have tried to shoot my way out, but Cam came stumbling out of the bathroom right into the line of fire. I had no choice but to surrender.
Within ten or fifteen minutes, all of us who lived at the compound were rounded up and brought to the courtyard under guard. I scanned our group and didn’t see The Monk or Ed, so I hoped they had escaped. I didn’t see Smokin, either, but
I imagined that since he was in a wheelchair they left him in his cabin. I also noticed that several of the survivors that had recently joined us were now standing with the enemy. Obviously, they had been spies set up for us to “rescue” so they could gather intelligence on the compound.
“I am not your enemy!” a man said standing on the back of a pickup truck in the center of the courtyard. “We are here to save your souls!”
The man was tall, gaunt, and had long, dark hair, a mustache, and a goatee, and he was wearing long, flowing garments—think of an extra for Lord of the Rings. He called himself The Most High Reverend Charles P. Pulsifer, Brother of Christ the Redeemer, and he explained that his adoring followers were the Army of the Lord Christ the Redeemer and of the Sacred Blood of the Innocent Lambs. He said that God had led them out of Georgia and by His Grace had delivered them through many trials of the flesh and tests of faith. And God had blessed him with immunity to the infection that was punishing the wicked around the world, and he was also granted special powers over these “unholy undead.”
As proof of that, he pulled on a chain I hadn’t previously noticed in his hand. From the bed of a truck arose a female zombie—a suspiciously attractive and buxom blond zombie. The zombie bared her teeth and lunged at him, but simply by raising his hand—on which a crucifix was tattooed on the palm—the zombie meekly knelt before him. It was a pathetic acting job on the part of the female “zombie,” but his followers ate it up and all yelled, “Praise the Lord!” I was half expecting him to further demonstrate his almighty powers by having the bogus zombie give him a blow job, but fortunately we were spared that sight.
And in His infinite mercy, God had now led them to this fortress in the wilderness which he would sanctify and make pure, so that he and his Army of the Lord Christ the Redeemer and of the Sacred Blood of the Innocent Lambs could take refuge and spread the word of light and love throughout the Hudson Valley.
We were welcome to join them. If not, we would be free to leave. Of course, if we turned our back on the Lord, we would have to go out naked into the world and seek redemption as best we could. In other words, they would take everything we had and let us die if we didn’t agree to kiss his holy ass.
A few of our toughest men shouted that the Reverend could go fuck himself, but they received the Most Holy Rifle Butts to the backs of their heads for their blasphemy. I could see that Cam was at his boiling point and was about to erupt, but I grabbed his hand and whispered, “Not here, and not now.”
The Reverend was obviously smart enough to coordinate this perfectly executed plan to take the compound without firing a shot. We had been infiltrated by spies who learned all about our security systems. The Miracle 15 were delivered to us to distract everyone. After the celebration of the miracle of their deliverance, when all of the suckers were drunk or asleep, these members of his army simply shut down all of our security measures and opened the front gates. What good were moats, minefields, and motion sensors, when you could be duped into dropping your guard and letting the enemy just waltz into your compound?
We would have to play his game for now and bide our time.
Chapter 16
Phase 16: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God: In Connecticut in1741, Jonathan Edward delivered a fire and brimstone sermon entitled “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” We read it in college in freshman English, and I recalled the persistent references to damnation, hell, and the devil. But for all his fearful eloquence, Edward had nothing on Reverend Pulsifer, who could preach sin and damnation with the best of them.
And preach he did, for four straight hours after we had been herded into the dining hall. We were a captive audience—literally—as at least 30 armed men stood guard. As Pulsifer rambled on, he even quoted Edward’s sermon once or twice, but he didn’t mention my favorite line; the line that Aunt Dorothy delighted in repeating whenever she felt someone was on the path to damnation—which according to her, everyone was except her.
Anyway, the line was this: “…one that stands or walks in slippery places is always exposed to fall.” In my estimation, the Most High Reverend Pulsifer was treading on the slipperiest of slopes, and if I had anything to with it, he was headed for a big fall—hopefully a fatal one.
Once the sermon mercifully ended, we were all interviewed, which was a polite way of saying we were interrogated. They knew a lot of weapons and supplies were missing, and that some of the men were not accounted for, and they wanted to know if any of us had any clue as to where the men, guns, food, and medicine had disappeared to. They also wanted to judge our level of usefulness to their army, and whether or not we posed any kind of threat.
As I had said on many occasions, I wasn’t the best liar. However, I was a woman, and that was usually sufficient to fool any man—even one chosen by God. Since I was “the doctor of this godless bunch” I had the honor of being interrogated, I mean interviewed, by the reverend, himself.
“Do you believe in God, Dr. Truesdale?” he began.
“Yes.”
“Do you believe in mysteries beyond our ability to comprehend?”
“As a doctor, I have seen things that cannot be explained by medicine and science,” I replied in all honesty. Of course, I was primarily thinking of the time the 350-pound gay guy showed up in the emergency room with a hamster up his ass, but I didn’t elaborate on my answer.
“Are you angry that we are here?” he asked, staring at me with a penetrating gaze.
“I’m never pleased when someone is pointing a gun at me,” I replied with more agitation than anger, hoping he would think I was afraid.
“Will you let your feelings keep you from treating my people who are in need medical attention?” he asked, with his unflinching stare. Didn’t this guy ever blink?
“I have sworn an oath to help all people in need. I have dedicated my life to alleviating the suffering of others,” I stated with pride and honesty. What I didn’t say was that I would break that oath in a heartbeat, and I was hoping to get my hands on as many of his people as I could to fuck them up royally in any way medically possible.
He then launched into a more aggressive line of questions regarding the missing men and supplies. He even knew I drove a Humvee with a machine gun and wanted to know where that was, as well. I had to phrase my response carefully.
“Look, you probably know by now that most of the men here are ex-cons and former gang members—not typically the most trustworthy kind of people. I know some of the men were suspicious about the 15 women and children you sent. If they took off last night with my vehicle and all those supplies, they certainly didn’t take me with them!”
Nothing I said was a lie, and the reverend relaxed his stance and finally blinked. I hoped that meant he believed me. After a few more questions, I was ordered to go to my infirmary and start treating patients. If I earned their trust, I just might be allowed to stay.
I worked for 10 straight hours cleaning infected wounds, evaluating respiratory and cardiac cases, handing out painkillers and antibiotics, and examining seven pregnant women who all happily told me they were “carrying the blessed seed of the Most High Reverend.” When I was finally allowed to stop, I was given a glass of water and two crackers and escorted back to my cabin.
Unfortunately, Cam was not there. I asked the guard if he was all right, and was told that “anyone who was considered a threat was being held in detention.” Apparently, they would be given a few days to “repent, embrace the Most High Reverend, and join the Army of the Lord,” and if they refused they would be “cast out.” I wished I could get a message to Cam and the other men to tell them to pretend to play along, but I didn’t even know where they were being held.
I spent the next two days seeing patients and prescribing the wrong medications whenever I thought I could get away with it. I set two broken bones incorrectly. I even removed a “massive malignant tumor” from the shoulder of one the guards. I knew by feeling it that it was just a small sebaceous cyst, but I wanted
to put him out of action by making sure I made a long, deep incision. I even dared to put another man, who had been complaining of severe headaches and seizures, into a coma with an overdose of drugs.
And I wasn’t the only one thinning the ranks of the army. I overheard a couple of guards saying that at least three of their men were missing. They had gone into the woods on patrol and hadn’t returned. Sounded like the work of The Monk and Ed, or even possibly Smokin, who had not been found. Also, some of our people had eluded the guards at their work details and run off. We were still greatly outnumbered, but I was just waiting to tip the scales in our favor.
During those first three days, I made small talk with some of the patients, telling them how I had spent months working on a something I called Paroxin, and that I thought it would provide permanent immunity against the zombie infection parasites. I didn’t tell any one person much, just tantalizing bits and pieces to different people, praying that every word I said would be reported back to the reverend. On the fourth day, my prayers were answered, and the Most High Reverend stepped onto that slippery slope with both feet.
Around noon, a group of guards told all of my patients to leave the infirmary. I was ushered into my lab and told to wait there. A few minutes later, Reverend Pulsifer entered, without any of his personal bodyguards.
“You haven’t been completely honest with me, Dr. Truesdale,” he said with a scowl.
“I answered all your questions,” I replied with puzzled innocence.
“Yes, but you neglected to tell me about Paroxin!” he said, verbally pouncing. I looked suitably surprised. “Did you really think you could keep secrets from me?”
HVZA (Book 1): Hudson Valley Zombie Apocalypse Page 27