by Worm Miller
Aftermath
We must tell no soul of these truthes. Not ever.
—Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Clark, November 1809
On September 23, 1806, the Corps arrived back in St. Louis. The expedition had lasted two years, four months, and ten days, and they had suffered only one death. Technically two, but few were ever to learn of Capt. Lewis’s unusual fate. In fact, even President Jefferson remained ignorant until after Lewis’s death. Jefferson had made arrangements for Lewis’s and Clark’s journals to be published. While both men consented, neither man ever hired an editor or provided any pages to the publisher, which Jefferson found most perplexing.
In honor of their achievement, Jefferson appointed Lewis governor of the Louisiana Territory, and Clark brigadier general of the militia in the Louisiana Territory. Both men made their headquarters in St. Louis. Clark tried to maintain the friendship with Lewis, but it was hard going. Lewis would be reclusive for weeks, then suddenly emerge full of cheer, then recede again for several more weeks. Dr. Benjamin Rush sent an excited letter to Lewis, seeking information about any tests Lewis had done with Rush’s Miracle. Lewis responded with a curt letter stating only, “It did not succeed.”
Lewis’s personal diary tells of the grotesque existence he was living. He avoided people as often as he was able, always fighting the impossible urge to feed. These brief jaunts into sociability that Clark would see were always following Lewis’s “collapses,” as Lewis called them. The collapses were when Lewis could no long control his hunger. He would seek out someone he deemed “naught to miss,” and then kill and feast. As his hunger began to increase, Lewis started luring unfortunate souls to his home where he had designed a series of dungeons in the cellar. Here Lewis could keep the victims alive for weeks, carving off pieces of their flesh with butcher’s tools (so as not to zombinate them), until they finally died.
This continued for nearly two years until rumors began to spread around St. Louis regarding the increasing number of missing individuals. Clark couldn’t help but be suspicious of his old friend. On September 3, 1809, Lewis left on a trip for Washington, D.C., regarding some gubernatorial issues. On September 6, Clark broke into Lewis’s home. Not only did he find and read Lewis’s journals, he also found the dungeons containing the remains of countless victims. “I new then what I must do,” Clark recorded.
Clark did not inform the authorities. He did not even tell his Freemason brothers (both he and Lewis were members). Clark, it would seem, still considered Lewis too good a friend to reveal his heinous secret. Instead, Clark set off as fast as he could, determined to overtake Lewis before he reached Washington. On October 10, Lewis had stopped at Grinder’s Stand, an inn 70 miles south of Nashville. In the early hours of October 11, Clark finally caught up with his old colleague. As Clark records:As he opened his door he at first smiled. Then he realised what motifs must have carried me such a distance and his smile disapered. I told him what I new and he did not defend. He did not weep nor ask of forgivness. He sed he was relifed that it was over. I sed I must shot him and he new. All he asked was time to writ a letter to the Presdent and that I delivar the letter. I agred.
Lewis dashed off a letter to Jefferson, written in a code the two had developed (Jefferson was a lover of codes) in case Lewis ever needed to send back important information during the expedition. Jefferson destroyed this letter, so we have no way of knowing precisely what it said, but it was mostly likely a confession and apology.
Upon finishing the letter Lewis handed it to Clark. Clark then “fownd myself unable to carry off the deed.” He could not pull the trigger against his old friend. Likely sensing this, Lewis then attacked Clark, forcing Clark to act. Clark put several shots into Lewis before finally hitting him in the brain. By the time servants were drawn in by the gunshots, Clark had slunk away.
President Jefferson, floored by the news Clark gave him, immediately fabricated Lewis’s suicide myth. As Lewis had been known for depressive swings, Jefferson simply built upon this knowledge. Lewis’s family never bought this explanation, suspecting foul play, yet never suspecting the truth. Lewis’s and Clark’s journals were turned over to Jefferson for editing, and Jefferson advised Clark to resist the urge to continue writing of these secrets even in his private diaries. Clark obliged.
Jefferson may have lost a protégé, but he gained something else. He now had Lewis’s zombie “cure.” Though it did not work exactly, it most definitely did something. Jefferson knew that either the cure could be perfected, or maybe it could be more appropriately applied in another capacity.
FOUR
Dismember the Alamo THE TRUTH BEHIND ONE OF AMERICA’S GREATEST LEGENDS
Remember the Alamo!
—Rallying cry of the Texas Revolution
That famous rallying cry was used by the Texian Army to embolden its soldiers by reminding them of the cruelty that the Mexican troops under President General Antonio López de Santa Anna had shown to the Texians at the Battle of the Alamo. Santa Anna’s siege on the Alamo Mission lasted thirteen days, from February 23 to March 6, 1836 (1836 was a leap year). We must remember that at its conclusion, all of the Texian defenders had been killed. We must remember that Santa Anna refused to take prisoners.
This imagery of the Mexican Army’s heartless slaughter of brave men inspired a new wave of support for the Texian cause, from both Texas settlers and United States citizens. Bolstered by this collective need for vengeance, the Texians defeated the Mexican Army on April 21 that same year at the Battle of San Jacinto. The revolution was won. Then the famous rallying war cry became something of a community maxim, bonding the people of Texas. We must remember what we had to go through to get here.
All these calls for remembering are extremely ironic, considering that the Mexicans never killed any Texians at the Alamo. When Santa Anna and his men entered the mission on March 6, they discovered the Texians already at the losing end of a bloody struggle against…
Zombies.
Everyone Wants Independence
The Mexicans do not know the undead as we do.
—Stephen F. Austin, Texas colonist, letter to the Texian Convention, April 1833
When the Mexican War for Independence (1810-1821) threw off the shackles of Spanish colonialism, the fledgling nation of Mexico rose from New Spain’s ashes and the former province of Spanish Texas became part of the new larger state of Coahuila y Tejas. The new Mexican government initially encouraged immigration from the United States, but when English speakers soon outnumbered the Mexican-born citizens by almost four to one, the government put a ban on further immigration to Tejas. With this off-balance demographic, conflict was inevitable.
The English-speaking Texians were unhappy about many things: Mexico did not believe in freedom of religion—only in the Roman Catholic Church. The government dictated what crops the settlers should grow. With Mexico bankrupt from the revolution, in most areas settlers were forced to create their own militias to protect against hostile Indians and zombies. Yet Mexico did not allow wanton killing of zombies, nor did they allow slavery (though both laws were readily ignored by the many Texians). The areas that did have garrisons were stocked with convicted criminals (given the choice between prison or the army). And the new capital, Saltillo, was in southern Coahuila, more than 500 miles away.
ZOMBIE CORRALS
The Roman Catholics in Mexico had very different feelings about zombies than Americans did, perhaps because they did not have as large a zombie population to contend with. In 1761, Pope Clement XIII had proclaimed that zombinated individuals were souls caught in purgatory, or something similar to limbo, forced to remain on earth until they had “walked away their sins.” Thus killing a zombie was tampering with the Lord’s work, and a crime.
The Spanish, and then the Mexicans, would capture and place their sparse zombie population into secured locations, or zombie corrals, as the Texians called them. The Mexican government expected the Texians to do the same but without provid
ing the military muscle needed in the more densely zombie-populated northern Tejas area. In May 1834, a Texian farmer named Mitchell Zerda de-animated his zombinated wife, for which he was arrested. Though he was eventually set free with no punishment, his brief imprisonment and the public outcry over it was one of the many inciting incidents that lead to the Texas Revolution.
In April 1833, Texian settlers formed a convention, electing Stephen F. Austin (for whom the current Texas capital is named) to carry a message to Mexico City. The message was a proposed state constitution, affecting political policies and granting Tejas separate statehood from Coahuila. Mexican President Santa Anna flatly refused the separate statehood, and Austin was jailed when he wrote a letter suggesting Texians take action unilaterally. Things escalated further when Santa Anna dissolved Mexico’s constitution in early 1835 and shifted the government from federalism to centralism. By October of that year, the Texas Revolution was officially under way.
Digging In
You may all go to Hell with the undead and damned, and I will go to Texas.
—Davy Crockett, to members of his Tennessee congressional district, 1835
After the Texian Army had forced Mexican troops to vacate San Antonio de Béxar (now just San Antonio), Texian soldiers established a garrison at the Alamo Mission, originally a Spanish religious outpost that had been converted into a zombie corral by the Béxar community. The zombies inside were de-animated one by one with bullets to the skull and removed from the compound. The mission sprawled over three acres, with 1,320 feet of perimeter in need of defense. An interior plaza was bordered on the east by a chapel, from which the two-story Long Barracks extended north. The walls surrounding the complex were at least 2.75 feet thick and 12 feet high at various sections. Originally designed by the Spanish to keep zombies out, the Béxar people had ironically retrofitted the Alamo to keep the zombies in, but neither group had designed it to stand against an artillery-equipped army.
Texian engineer Green Jameson installed nineteen cannons along the walls. Though Jameson bragged that they could now “whip 10 to 1 with our artillery,” the Texian position at the Alamo was still very poor. With fewer than one hundred soldiers remaining at the fort by January 6, 1836, Col. James C. Neill, the acting commander of the Alamo, wrote to Sam Houston (one of four men laying claim to command of the Texian Army) asking for assistance. However, Houston felt the Alamo was not worth the manpower needed to defend it. So he sent Col. James Bowie with thirty men to remove the artillery and then destroy the Alamo—while not worth defending, there was also no reason to let the Mexicans have it.
James “Jim” Bowie was a frontiersman and soldier. He had risen to a level of international notoriety in 1827 following his famous Sandbar Fight. The Sandbar incident started as a typical duel, until several zombies attacked the participants. When his gun jammed, Bowie single-handedly killed all the zombies with his hunting knife, jamming it into their skulls and decapitating one. How much of this story is true we do not know, but Bowie soon became legendary, as did his knife, which he superstitiously carried with him everywhere. Bowie called his knife “Skuller.” So identified did Bowie become with the knife that replicas became incredibly popular. To this day the model is known as a Bowie knife.
Col. Neill appealed to Bowie not only to leave the artillery he had been sent there to retrieve, but to stay and fight as well. Perhaps drawn by the call of adventure, Bowie accepted. In a letter to Governor Henry Smith, Bowie said: Colonel Neill and myself have come to the solemn resolution that we will rather die in these ditches than give it up to the enemy. Let them come and try us. They shall receive a most warm welcome from Skuller.
Bowie was not the only legendary figure at the Alamo who had answered the call of adventure. On February 8, a small group of volunteers arrived to give support, including David “Davy” Crockett. Crockett was a politician and living American folk hero, famous for his self-hyping tales of frontier exploits, such as his classic boast:I’m Davy Crockett, fresh from the backwoods, half-horse, half-alligator, a little touched with the snapping turtle, can wade the Mississippi, leap the Ohio, ride upon a streak of lightning, and slip in and out an Undead’s mouth without nicking its teeth!
Advertisement for a public appearance by Davy Crockett, 1829.
On February 11, Neill received orders to report to another command. Before leaving, he transferred leadership to cavalry officer William B. Travis, who ended up sharing command with Bowie, who had been elected by the men. The two men did not get along, but they were forced to put aside their differences on February 23 when Mexican troops were seen approaching Béxar. Residents fled the city, and members of the garrison who had been living in town were forced to scurry their wives and children into the Alamo with them. Within hours Béxar was occupied by 1,500 Mexican troops.
The Siege
Lets us let those believe what they are want to about the Alamo.
—Sam Houston, letter to the commanders of the Texian Army, March 1836
The first several days of the siege were without much incident. Mexican soldiers established artillery batteries about 1,000 feet from the Alamo and launched cannonballs into the mission’s plaza. There were no Texian casualties. Travis ordered that the cannonballs be reused and shot back at the Mexicans. When Mexican soldiers crossed the San Antonio River and took cover in some abandoned structures near the Alamo, several Texians ventured out and burned the structures down. A brief skirmish followed in which two Mexicans were killed and several more wounded. There still were no Texian casualties.
In fact, the only ill tidings within the Alamo walls had been when Bowie collapsed during dinner from illness. The two doctors on hand were unable to determine what malady Bowie was suffering from, but it was serious enough that Travis had to assume sole command of the garrison. Bowie thought that Travis must’ve poisoned him, jotting in his journal “that great horse apple wanted me out the way.” Though outside of Bowie’s fevered paranoia, most scholars have never given the idea much credit. Whatever the case, Bowie was to remain bedridden for the remainder of the siege.
By March 3, almost 2,000 extra Mexican soldiers had arrived at Béxar. Travis was frantically sending out messages to nearby Texian garrisons, but help was simply not coming. There had still been little in the way of actual battle or Texian death. One soldier went missing in the night, which Travis recorded as a deserter, but Bowie recorded this ominous version:My fever were so high sleep would not come last night. Rolled on my cot in my sweat listening to the Mexicans cannons. Fnally, I was near drifting when I heard the groans. I sat up. Groans, still. Faint but there. I grabbed Skuller from my pillow and climbed from the cot. Walking was hard and I could scarsly hear over my own weezing but I continued after the groans. It sounded almost below me and I found a door with stairs led down. I swear the groan was down there. Then the dammed medic spotted me and forced me back to bed, ignoring my telling of the groan. A soldier was sent to look after the stairs. Now this morn they say this same soldier run off. I called on damm Travis to tell him but he gave me a look as though I got mad with fever. I know what I heard.
On March 4, reinforcements finally arrived but a far smaller force than Travis had been hoping for, and they arrived with no heavy artillery. A twelve-pound cannon was expected to arrive on March 7, which would be one day too late, as Santa Anna announced to his men that they were going to attack on the morning of March 6. Though as it would turn out, Santa Anna would be too late as well.
On the night of March 5, Santa Anna ordered a halt to his artillery bombardment. His plan was to let the Texians get lulled by the calm, then strike while they were all asleep. In the early hours of March 6, gunfire was heard from the Alamo, but as Santa Anna’s men readied to return fire, they realized none of the firing was being directed toward them. Screams were echoing up from within the mission’s walls. The chaos ended at 6:30 a.m., the Alamo going silent.
When Santa Anna and his men finally managed to break through the Alamo’s main ga
te, all they found were dead bodies—dead soldiers everywhere. Most of the women and children had gathered in the safety of the church, though some also lay strewn amongst the carnage. Santa Anna was shocked when the women and children broke down in relief upon the sight of the Mexican soldiers, so scared had they been that they praised the Lord upon seeing their enemy. None of them could quite explain what had happened, but zombies were involved. Yet the zombies were all on the ground too, de-animated.
The only reason we know what occurred within the Alamo is because of Travis’s slave Joe, who miraculously survived the ordeal. Joe told his story to Houston, who then recounted what he’d heard in a letter, sent to the rest of the Texian Army command and to U.S. President Andrew Jackson:According to the slave Joe, there was commotion that arose in one of the barracks round 2 in the am. One of the soldiers came running into the barracks, waking everyone and taking his firearm. The soldier was followed into the barracks by a woman, who was bloodied and beaten looking. The men recognized her as the Wife of nother soldier. The first soldier made to shoot her but the Men ahanded him. But then this Wife began attacking the Men who had made to protect her. Seems she was afflict of undying. She was put down quick enough. And then it would seem this first soldier was a denier, eventually turning on the Men himself. Soon Hell had sprung.