by Worm Miller
Now, in a moment of historical comeuppance, the zombies lay in wait for these hopeful new westward travelers.
Eureka!
Conflict with the dead was almost instantaneous.
—Chester Marks, miner, 1854
James W. Marshall was a foreman overseeing the construction of a lumber mill along the American River, near Coloma, California when, on January 24, 1848, he found flecks of a shiny metal in the mill’s water wheel. Those tiny flecks were to cause one of the most famous population booms in American history—the California Gold Rush.
At the time of the discovery, California was still part of the Mexican territory of Alta California, but when the Mexican-American War ended shortly thereafter, the territory was ceded to the United States. Word spread fast around California, and gold-hungry prospectors eagerly came to see if the stories about the Mother Lode were true. Not until August did the rumors start reaching the East Coast, and it was not until December that President James Polk con firmed to the United States that the rumors were true. Soon wave after wave of gold-fever-infected immigrants from around the world descended on the Coloma area.
THE DONNER PARTY
The tragedy that befell the infamous Donner Party, whose wagon train became snowbound in the Sierra Nevada on their way to California during the winter of 1846-47, forcing the party members into cannibalism, is often falsely attributed to zombies. This is a complete fabrication, though. None of the survivors, even those who denied acts of cannibalism, ever mentioned zombies. The zombie story can probably trace its roots to a popular dime novel from the 1860s titled, The Donner Massacre, which reimagined the tragedy as a zombie siege.
In 1849, 90,000 people settled in the California gold country, which later earned them the nickname, “the fortyniners.” By 1850, some 300,000 more had made their journey. The original residents of gold country had always had zombies to deal with, but nothing that could not be contained. With such a sudden and massive increase in population, and no formal civic authority or zombie watches in place, the area became a zombie paradise. Whole families or crews would get wiped out by roving hordes, yet there was always another crew ready to jump the claim before the rain had even washed the blood away. Often this new group would meet the same grisly fate, but as long as the claim was still yielding, the cycle would continue.
By most standards the area became something of a lawless hellhole. Prior to Marshall’s discovery, San Francisco had been a small settlement of 1,000 people, but soon it exploded, becoming a major world port. Now San Francisco was teaming with zombie brothels, gambling establishments, and exhibition rings where down-on-their-luck immigrants could wrestle zombies in hopes of winning cash prizes, food, or land grants.
Then in 1859, silver ore was discovered on Mt. David-son, near what is now Virginia City, Nevada. Known as the Comstock Lode, it saw yet another population boom, as mining camps popped up all over the mountain. The deep mines that were constructed to follow the veins of precious ore were dangerous enough because of cave-ins, flooding, and toxic gas; however, if zombies found their way into a mine, it spelled certain doom for the miners inside. Dogs trained to bark at zombies were often placed at junctions along a mineshaft to alert the miners of a breach, but such measures were not always enough.
A particularly terrible accident occurred in 1864 in Mt. Davidson’s Sandro Tunnel. Sandro spanned a labyrinthine three miles underground, at depths of 1,500 feet, and was by all accounts one of the most safely constructed and operated mines anywhere in the country at the time. Sadly, Sandro’s overseers could not control the messy history of the Nevada silver mining industry. During Comstock’s frenzied infancy, a too common practice for dealing with zombie accidents was to force a cave-in in the infested section, sealing the zombies off from the rest of the mine. Detailed records and maps were not always kept for many of these tunnels. Such was the case with the Lewis-Pullman Tunnel, which had sealed off a portion of its mine when zombies attacked in 1861. On July 10, 1864, workers expanding the Sandro Tunnel hit the quarantined section of the Lewis-Pullman. As a surviving miner later told the Silver City Reader:We new right off we hit another shaft. My brother Henry and some others went into the hole with lanterns. Then they was a screaming. Saw Henry tried to come back out but he got pulled up off his feet. I grabbed his hands, a pulling him, but he just got pulled back into the black. Knew it right off that we hit a dead pocket. Then them things were pouring in.
The miners panicked. Some ran while other foolishly attacked the zombies with torches and lanterns. As some of the zombies caught on fire, the flames began to spread through the tunnel. Mine explosions were a constant danger, but up to this point the miners were still lucky, as an explosion would have occurred instantly if it were possible. The small fires would likely have burnt themselves out and the remaining zombies eventually de-animated with little problem, but tragically, one of the burning zombies chased a miner into a mule stable (mules were used to pull loaded cars through the tunnels), and the stable’s hay supply was set ablaze. Soon the support beams in the tunnel caught on fire. The heat and smoke became overpowering, far eclipsing the danger posed by the zombies. In the tunnel, 259 men lost their lives, and the Sandro was closed, too damaged to ever reopen.
Though zombies had only been responsible for 4 of those 259 deaths, the Sandro Tunnel Fire is still categorized as the worst zombie-related disaster in mining history.
Connecting the Coasts
The dead have killed four men. When the men go to work, even if they are in full sight of the camp, they go well armed. I counted ten guns, most of them breech-loading. Something like the times of 1776.
—Samuel Reed, Union Pacific surveyor, diary entry, May 22, 1867
The First Transcontinental Railroad, originally known as the Pacific Railroad, was a joint effort between Union Pacific Railroad and Central Pacific Railroad of California, which connected the terminus at Omaha, Nebraska, with that at Alameda, California, on the San Francisco Bay, creating what Lewis and Clark had been searching for a half-century earlier—a shipping route connecting the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. This railroad was the single greatest feat of American engineering until the Panama Canal more literally connected the two oceans.
The Transcontinental Railroad, 1869 (courtesy of the National Parks Service).
The railroad’s construction spanned from 1863 to 1869, but work began on the project much earlier. In May 1853, John Williams Gunnison, an officer in the military’s Corps of Topographical Engineers, was assigned to survey a route through the Utah Territory for the potential railroad. On the morning of October 26, 1853, after Gunnison had split his group into two detachments, Gunnison and the eleven men in his party were attacked by a horde of zombies near Lake Sevier, Utah. Five of his men managed to escape and alert the other detachment, but by the time they returned, six of the remaining eight men had been devoured, the other two, including Gunnison, had been zombinated.
The incident was sadly commonplace and would surely have become a mere footnote in the history of westward expansion were it not for the scandal that erupted following the massacre—for Gunnison and his men had encountered a group of Mormons immediately preceding the attack. Most accounts of the massacre maintain that the Mormons dutifully warned Gunnison that there was a large zombie horde in the area. Gunnison even records that when they first encountered the Mormons, they found them “all gathered into a village for mutual protection against the Utah undead.”
LIFE OF DEATH
The Mormons were not the only ones to relocate to the West seeking freedom from religious and cultural persecution. In 1858, a group of hybrids, led by James Reynolds, relocated in upper New Mexico to form a small, all-hybrid community. Reynolds had been a Methodist pastor when he became a hybrid. Supposedly he then had an epiphany, receiving a message from Jesus Christ himself, who informed the pastor that he, Jesus Christ, was in fact a hybrid. Jesus’s followers had misinterpreted his return from the grave. God had made him the first hybrid,
and it was from his blood that all hybrids now flow. The hybrids’ recent arrival on earth was Jesus’s second coming: this was the Rapture.
Reynolds started the Life of Death church in Tennessee and hybrids from across the country flocked to the church, taking on the somewhat comical name of Deathodists. Not all hybrids bought into Reynolds claims, especially John Blackburn, who said the Life of Death church was “too farcical to even be considered blasphemy.” But the church’s number grew, and even began attracting humans, who would then go through a baptismal ceremony in front of the congregations, bitten by Reynolds or another high priest and infected with the hybrid strain. When the Deathodists began actively recruiting new human members, the rest of the human population inevitably reacted angrily, and often violently. So Reynolds and his congregation headed west where they might “live” in peace.
The Deathodists settled in upper New Mexico, and founded the city of Death’s Door. Reynolds eventually determined that it was their duty to enact God’s will and purify the world; in other words, making everyone a hybrid, a chosen one. They started forcefully converting neighboring Indians and unfortunate Americans traveling westward. Enough reports of such incidents made their way to Washington, D.C., that when the Second Cleanse began its grand sweep across the West, Death’s Door was one of the first places they visited. A weeklong raid in May 1884 saw the U.S. Cavalry raze the town and terminate the entire Deathodist population.
Purportedly there are still some 21st-century hybrids who practice Deathodism in secret, though nothing has ever been officially documented.
Regardless, rumors circulated that the zombies had been pushed in the direction of Gunnison’s men by orders of Brigham Young and the Mormon’s alleged secret militia, the Danites. Some of Gunnison’s surviving men later claimed that many of the zombies were either Carries or, possibly, Mormons dressed as zombies. These stories circulated wildly in the press and were believed by a great many.
What the Mormons would have gained by such actions is unclear. Believers of the story claimed that leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) thought that the railway would bring too many non-Mormons to their area. However, LDS officials had repeatedly petitioned Congress for both railroad and telegraph lines to pass through the region, and Brigham Young later sought an exclusive labor contract with Union Pacific to hire Mormon workers. So it seems somewhat counterproductive for the Mormons to have sabotaged Gunnison’s surveying mission.
Despite what befell Gunnison, progress was not to be stopped. Other surveying parties were dispatched, detailed maps were made, and a route for the railway was determined. Much of the construction was done by recent Irish and Chinese immigrants, all of whom were completely unprepared for life among zombies. The rail companies did not do much to help, spending little money on zombie protection. So many immigrants were pouring into the country looking for work that they were easily replaced. Even if Union Pacific had tried to keep zombies away from the workers, they would have found it nearly impossible to do, as long as the Hell On Wheels was in tow.
The now repurposed phrase “hell on wheels” was originally used to refer to the traveling assemblage of saloons, brothels, and casinos that followed the Union Pacific crew as they moved westward across the country, offering a continually available place for the workers to dump their hard-earned wages. This makeshift town would simply pack up and move once Union Pacific did, and then reestablish itself wherever Union Pacific stopped. Every type of criminal activity was to be found at the Hell On Wheels. Fights and murders happened on a nightly basis—it was a zombie mecca. In fact, Hell On Wheels eventually became such a zombie hazard that the proprietors abandoned the profitable itinerant mini-city altogether.
On May 10, 1869, Central Pacific workers from the West and Union Pacific workers from the East at last met at Promontory Summit, Utah, to drive in the final spike and join the rail lines. Union Pacific and Central Pacific kept no formal records on their workers so it is impossible to say how many were lost to the zombies, but several hundred surely met their end in a zombie’s maw. Such was the price of progress, it would seem, and the progress was monumental. On June 4, 1876, the Transcontinental Ex-press train arrived in San Francisco a mere eighty-three hours after it left New York City. Before that spike had been driven into the ground at Promontory Summit, that same overland journey would have taken months.
Front page of the San Francisco Star, March 31, 1880.
While the West had technically opened up following the massive land acquisitions of the previous decades, now with a safe, fast, and easy way across the country, it truly blossomed. The shape and nature of the country changed almost overnight. A journey out to San Francisco had once been a perilous one that would endanger the life of everyone involved. Now the trip could be made purely for pleasure.
Trips to the western frontier were now a leisure activity, and it became a popular pastime to shoot at zombies from a moving train. President Grover Cleveland boasted after a train ride out West that he had “felled twenty-six of the monsters in under one hour.” Despite such wanton killing, zombies got karmic revenge on trains now and again. Zombies would often step onto the tracks, getting sucked under the train’s wheels and derailing it. A single zombie ended up killing fourteen people and injuring over a hundred more when it derailed a train in Nebraska in 1882. “Zombie catchers,” wedge-shaped appendages designed to knock zombies to one side upon impact, soon became a permanent fixture to the front of all train engines. Zombies or no, nothing was going to stop the railroad.
Aside from possibly the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, no transportation network has ever shaped the American way of life more than the Transcontinental Railway.
Old West
Wyatt Earp, who was on our city police force last summer, is in town again. We hope he will accept a position on the force once more. He had a quiet way of taking the most desperate characters into custody and never were there undead seen in the streets, both which invariably gave one the impression that the city was able to enforce her mandates and preserve her dignitys.
— Dodge City Times, July 7, 1877
With rail lines snaking their way across the western country, ranchers and farmers could spread further inland and still keep trade with the East. Boomtowns shot up everywhere, and with them America’s fabled Old West, full of cowboys, land barons, bandits, and gunslingers. Over a hundred years later, children are still playing cowboys and Indians, yet none play cowboys and zombies. In reality, cowboys spent far more time fighting off and de-animating zombies than they did quarreling with the largely peaceful Indians.
While it was not unheard of for desperate, hungry Indians to make off with a couple head of cattle during the night, this was a significantly lesser danger than hungry zombies trying to make off with a couple of cowhands. Cattle drives were usually followed by zombies, which were dubbed “trailers” by the cowboys. Trailers were generally not killed, as some cowboys thought they brought good luck; a drive without at least one trailer was a bad omen. A few trailers were also good for warding off bandits that might be following the herd on its journey from the Texan ranches to the Kansas railheads, by way of the famous Chisholm Trail.
Newton, Kansas, was just an ordinary cowtown until the Santa Fe Railroad extended its line to Newton in 1871. Newton now supplanted Abilene as the terminus of the Chisholm Trail, and got all the lawlessness that came with it. Newton’s rail station had not even been functioning for a year when the deadliest gunfight in Old West history occurred on August 20, 1871.
The events that led up to the Newton Massacre began nine days earlier when two men, Mike McCluskie and Billy Bailey, were seen arguing and fighting outside the Red Front Saloon. McCluskie had arrived in Newton working on the Santa Fe Railroad as a night policeman; Bailey was a Texas cowboy who had arrived with a cattle drive. Both men had been hired by Newton as temporary Dead Headers to help de-animate the zombie trailers that would be coming in with the cattle drives all summ
er. The two men were constantly bickering about everything, yet people were nonetheless shocked when McCluskie suddenly shot Bailey dead on August 11 during a fistfight.
McCluskie fled town immediately to avoid arrest, but returned a few days later to “set things right.” In a testimony to Newton’s sheriff, McCluskie claimed:I seen the bastard get bit while we was wrangling Dead but he was denying. But I seen; I seen where he got bit. Then he all covered it up with his sleeve. He called me liar. We had words. I asked to see his arm where I knew he was bit, but he wouldn’t show, calling me liar still. I said was my job to keep the Dead out and he was just gonna go bite him some folks next. Then we started swinging at each other. I knew I’d need to shoot the bastard eventually and he was landing good swings on me, so I figured I might well get it done with. So I shot him.
Newton’s sheriff believed McCluskie after an examination of Bailey’s body showed a deep bite mark where McCluskie said it would be. Meanwhile, several of Bailey’s cowboy friends, who had ridden with Bailey up from Texas, heard that McCluskie was back in town and swore vengeance, unaware of McCluskie’s zombie alibi. Later that evening the men jumped McCluskie in Tuttle’s Dance Hall, and the attack rapidly spun into an all-out gunfight when one of McCluskie’s friends jumped to his defense. In the end, five men were left dead, including McCluskie, and three more wounded. Bloodier than the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, which had only three casualties, the Newton Massacre’s legacy has suffered due to its lack of famous participants.
Also forgotten by history are the many hybrid gunslingers, outlaws, and adventurers of the American West. Gunslinging was a logical occupation for a hybrid to go into, given their ability to withstand injuries that would kill a human. What better way to win a duel than not to bother worrying if the other man shot you? The only risk was people finding out you were a Carrie, which generally resulted in a posse being formed and a pyre being built. Plenty of hybrids took the risk, though.