Year of the Dead

by Jack J. Lee

  Washington, DC, where my daughter lived, was the center of political power in the US. A number of Senators and members of the House of Representatives had belonged to her ward. The terrorists who had caused all these problems had to have concentrated on Washington. Stacy was frantic about our oldest daughter. The only reason I didn’t break down was because I didn’t know what Stacy would do if I did.

  The General Authorities had planned for every foreseeable disaster. They had not foreseen that a terrorist attack would take out power and communications throughout the entire world. We had enough supplies to last six months comfortably, and if we rationed our food and stopped using water for bathing or laundry, we had enough for nine months. But then what would we do? The ward members were looking to me to lead them and I didn’t have an answer. I wondered if it would have been better for all of us to have died on the 11th than to slowly starve to death in this enclosure. We couldn’t expect a rescue from anyone in the other wards. As a physician, I’ve always believed a quick painless death was preferable to a long drawn-out one. By getting into this enclosure, had we doomed ourselves to a long drawn-out death?

  When night fell, we all slept again in the gymnasium. Some of the children had requested that the lights be kept on and to be honest, none of us adults wanted to sleep in the dark. We lost no one during the night. The lights became our good luck charm and we kept them on every night. We didn’t lose anyone on the 14th, 15th, or 16th.

  None of us had anything to do. Our only hope was we would be rescued before our food ran out. Our problems were obvious to everyone. We were all tense, some more so than others. Hiram became like a bomb ready to explode. Fortunately, none of the other men gave him an excuse to do so. I was worried that in a few more days, Hiram would lose his temper without provocation.

  On the 16th, I heard Helen Hansen calling for me. She told me Mark Jones, the Federal Emergency Director for Utah, was on the phone for me. Everyone who heard her followed me to the phone. I asked Helen to put the phone on speaker.

  “This is Art Bingham.”

  “Mr. Bingham, this is Mark Jones. I’ve been tasked by the Deputy Undersecretary of the Office of Homeland Security to take charge of emergency services in Utah. How many of you are in the ward?”

  “There are 401 of us.”

  “Do you have enough food, water, and supplies to last for a few months?”

  “We have enough to comfortably last for six months and uncomfortably for 9.”

  “Great. I wish I could say that all you had to do was to sit back and wait for us to rescue you, but I have to be honest. I was just appointed to my position on September 9th and didn’t have an opportunity to come up to speed by the 11th. The zombie outbreak, I’m sorry to say, took the Federal government completely by surprise, and because of that, I currently have limited resources. I’m going to need all of you in the ward to take the majority role in rescuing yourselves.”

  “What are you suggesting, Mr. Jones?”

  “I have been observing your ward for three days now. I realize that, to you, the number of zombies around your ward may seem endless. I estimate that there are over 100,000 zombies around your fence. This is a large number but it is not endless. You haven’t used your guns since the 13th. Are you out of bullets?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. Bingham, you might be surprised to hear this, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Zombies are attracted to sound. Every time a gun is fired it attracts zombies from miles around. You already have more than your fair share around your fence. At this point you don’t need to get more. Do your rifles have bayonet mounts?”

  “Yes. Hiram, how many bayonets do we have?”

  “15.”

  “Great. Over 100,000 zombies may seem to be a very large number but fortunately we all have the time to devote to killing them off. If every willing man and woman in your enclosure, say a hundred men and woman, killed a hundred zombies each in a day by stabbing them in the head through your fence, you will have killed ten thousand zombies a day. All you have to do is to have groups of 15 people take rotations in killing zombies. In a couple weeks you should be able to wipe out almost all of those zombies outside your fence.”

  “Mr. Jones, wouldn’t more zombies come to take the place of the ones we killed?”

  “Art, may I call you Art?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Art, please call me Mark. I have been walking around Sugar House since the 13th. The zombie population for about a couple square miles is almost entirely clustered around your fence. The density of zombies around you is unusual. Unless zombies are chasing someone, or are drawn by noise, they tend to stay in a limited area. Once we get rid of the zombies currently around your fence, it will be safe to go outside your fence for at least a couple miles.”

  “Mark, this is incredible. We’ll get started right away.”

  “Art, I have to warn you. You can only fight zombies in the daylight. You have to be indoors at dawn, night, and dusk, and when you are indoors, you need to be in well-lit rooms with at least two 100-watt bulbs or stronger.”

  “Why?”

  “In addition to zombies, we now have to deal with vampires.”

  “What?”

  “Fortunately, vampires seem to be rare. They are immensely strong, probably strong enough to lift up a car by themselves. They hunt by jumping on their prey and they can easily jump over your fence. If exposed to sunlight or to two 100-watt bulbs for about 15 minutes, their flesh becomes severely damaged. If you want to kill them, you have to cut out their hearts and cut off their heads.”

  “My God, I think a vampire got four of our ward members.”

  “Well if you stay in strong sunlight and/or next to the light of at least two 100-watt bulbs, you shouldn’t lose any more. I apologize but I won’t be able to spend much more time with you today. I have only limited resources right now and I have other responsibilities. Please feel free to call me on my cell phone. I can’t promise I will answer every call but I should be able to get back to you within 24 hours of a missed call. Please be careful about excessive noise. If you fire a gun, I wouldn’t be surprised if it attracts another 20 to 30 thousand zombies. I’ll check back with you tomorrow. Do you have walkie-talkies with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know how long cell phones will keep working. If we have problems with the cell phones, we can stay in contact using walkie-talkies, Channel 2, sub-channel 2. I recommend that you keep a bunch of walkie-talkies in a refrigerator to keep the batteries alive as long as possible.”

  “We can do that.”

  I hung up the phone. I looked around me. I couldn’t contain myself: I raised my arms in the air and screamed hallelujah. The rest of the ward joined me. We danced. I yelled at Hiram, “I’ll be in the first group of 15. Set up a rotation for everyone who wants to use a bayonet.”

  We had a plan. We had hope.

  Chapter 17: Mark Jones, September 16th, Year 1

  I got off the phone with Art Bingham. I told him that I had been appointed by the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security to be the Federal Director of Emergency Services in Utah on the 9th. If Art had asked, I could have told him the Deputy Secretary’s name: Henry Trevino. I had looked up his name on Google.

  So why did I claim this? Because I didn’t think Henry Trevino was still alive so I doubted anyone would ever find out this wasn’t true. I did this because human beings, especially in times of crisis, are hierarchical. I had spent the last three days exploring a two-square mile area around my house. We were now five days into the zombie outbreak and I had seen no other humans on the streets in three days.

  I live in a major metropolitan area. If there had been any remaining political authorities around, Federal, state, or local, I would have seen someone outside. There were civilians still alive in this area. Besides the ward, there were five houses that had been adequately boarded up and fortified. My drinking buddy Jim Wright and his two roommates were still alive. From what
I could tell, the only thing the other survivors were thinking right now was about day-to-day survival. I was thinking about how to kick the zombies’ and vampires’ asses. If anyone was going to be top dog, it needed to be someone who was thinking about winning, not just surviving. I made myself the top-ranked surviving human in Utah because I was the best man for the job. Somebody had to make sure humans survived, and that somebody was me.

  Chapter 18: Zutar Probe, October 9th, 9:30 p.m., Year 1

  The AI wasn’t designed to experience emotions. If it had been, it would have been frustrated. For the first time in 40.89 million years, it was unable to fulfill all its programmed directives.

  Due to its intervention, the human population had dropped from 6.8 billion to 150 million. The die-off in cities and other urban settings was almost 100%. The death rate in rural areas was lower. All known human leaders were killed by vampires within 24 hours of large-area zombie outbreaks.

  Humans displayed unexpected resourcefulness and resilience; surveillance revealed a rapid rise in new leadership. Humans with effective leaders quickly started rebuilding; when they did, the death rate slowed to unacceptable levels. The probe sent vampires to disrupt the rebuilding process. The probe now understood this was going to be a recurring issue.

  Unfortunately the probe didn’t have much time. Its batteries had finally failed. In three days it would lose all power. Without the ability to send vampires to destroy new centers of technology, there was a 92.36% probability of a resurgence of human technology, and population density within 200 Earth years.

  The probe was forced to breach the tertiary directive to keep the secondary; the preservation of Earth’s biosphere was a higher priority than cultural sensitivity. It determined to use its remaining battery power to propagate an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) to burn out every non-shielded electronic device on Earth. The EMP would suggest nonhuman intervention, but the probe didn’t have another choice. If humans rebuilt their civilization, its entire mission would fail.

  The probe deactivated all remaining air-borne prions. The zombie contagion now could only occur through zombie saliva. The AI initiated the EMP pulse on October 9th, 9:32 p.m. Mountain Time. Its final act was to have vampires attack all remaining clusters of human civilization.

  Chapter 19: Helen Hanson, September 16th to October 9th, Year 1

  As soon as Art got off the phone with Director Jones, he and almost all the men went outside to kill zombies. For the first time since the 11th, people were smiling and laughing. I got my parents on Skype immediately and told them about vampires and then got into contact with as many wards as possible by cell phone and ham radio to let them know what Director Jones had said about gunshots, the actual number of zombies, and about vampires.

  Everyone who had the strength and height to be able to stab a zombie through the head took part. I took a turn at the fence for about an hour each day. It took more effort than I had thought to jab a bayonet through the eye. Many of the ward members had mental difficulties with stabbing a zombie. This was especially true when the zombie had been a person they knew. Hiram didn’t have a problem with it. I grew up on a farm. As I child I slaughtered chickens by twisting their necks. I helped my father and brothers geld cattle. I can promise you, this is not an experience a bull likes and it isn’t a job for the squeamish. In my childhood I had to prove every day I was tougher than my brothers. I don’t have much sympathy for helpless women. I guess my childhood experiences helped me prepare psychologically for killing zombies. My difficulties were purely physical. At the end of the day, zombies weren’t people.

  The first time you gut a chicken or slaughter a cow, it is difficult. Cows are cute with huge eyes that look at you as you are prepared to kill them. People can get used to anything especially if their lives depend on it. Zombies weren’t cute. It’s easier killing something that isn’t cute. Most of the ward members got over their mental reservations and learned how to take out a zombie.

  Art Bingham, maybe because he was a doctor, never had any psychological hang ups about destroying a zombie. Doctors need to have strong stomachs. He suggested another, more ergonomic way to kill zombies. It was possible to jab a zombie in its open mouth or under its chin from below, causing the bayonet to pierce the roof of its mouth into the brain. It was easier to swing up with your hands below shoulder height than to raise the rifle to eye level and stab directly across.

  Even with the easier more ergonomic method, my arms tired quickly. It was easy to hit the bayonet on a fence link while trying to thrust through it, and if you did, you lost so much momentum that you couldn’t get through the skull into the brain. If you got past the fence without hitting the metal links, the effort it took to cause the bayonet to penetrate through the back of the eye socket or through the roof of the zombie’s mouth was tiring. You could feel the resistance and shock through your hands and arms as the bayonet blade penetrated bone.

  Hiram Rockwell and some of the other men really pulled their weight. If my friend Cecilia had been here, she would have described Hiram as “strong as bull and just as smart,” which wouldn’t have been a totally fair description. He was an extremely strong man who preferred to bull through life using his enormous strength and physical skills rather than thinking about anything. He probably had at least an average intelligence, but he spent so little time using his brain or thinking about anything that he seemed stupid. There were no grays in his life; everything was black and white. I grew up with men like Hiram so I knew how to deal with him.

  He and Cecilia would have hated each other. I hoped Cecilia was doing well in the co-op. Every time I thought of her it was hard not to feel sad. Our last conversation had been so bitter. It would be wonderful if we had a chance to talk again. I tried multiple times to contact her by cell phone or Skype but was never able to reach her.

  Hiram was in his element. He got so busy killing zombies he didn’t set up a schedule for rotating people on the fence. Art was a typical sedentary professional man so he didn’t have unusual upper body strength. He got tired quickly, too. He set up a rotation schedule of men to take their place on the fence.

  Art is a great guy but he has an unthinking male chauvinism. I guess you could have called him chivalrous if you wanted, but in some aspects, chivalry is chauvinism. He didn’t even think any of the women wanted to take part in killing zombies. I set him straight quickly enough and I made sure that out of our fifteen bayonets, at least two at all times were being used by women. We women, LDS or not, wanted to kill the zombies as much as any man. Almost every adult woman took her turn at the fence. Both Stacy and Cheryl, Art’s wife and daughter, took part. Cheryl is coordinated and did well. She must get her coordination from her dad, because Stacy had no coordination whatsoever. She was so funny. She screamed at all times. This was not a scream of aggression but the scream of “Ewwh, I’m doing something gross and it’s disgusting” while swinging her bayonet wildly. I don’t think she was able to ever get her bayonet cleanly through the fence. I couldn’t be sure but she looked like she had her eyes closed. Everyone took special care to stay as far away as possible from her. She was so loud, so obviously disgusted, and so uncoordinated that everyone who watched her had to laugh. She was brave. She didn’t wimp out. She was so incompetent at killing zombies; she was good for morale.

  The second time she took her turn with the bayonet, Art went up to her and, in front of everyone, gently tapped her on her shoulder and took the bayoneted rifle from her hands. He said, “Honey, for your safety and the safety of others, I think its best that you not do this.” I laughed so hard I cried.

  Instead of the ten thousand that Director Jones had estimated we would kill per day, we probably killed twice that number. By the morning of the 18th, all of us, including Hiram, were tired. When I woke up, my arms felt like they were going to fall off. Going outside restored everyone’s spirits, including mine. We all had something to do. The adults formed rotations to kill zombies. The children ran around helping to give re
freshments to the adults.

  The teams killing zombies started counting how many they had killed. Men being men, they started competing to see which team killed the most zombies. Even Art, someone I would have expected to be an adult, got into it. He and Hiram set up a roster to make the teams as fair as possible. The children were referees. Their job was to keep a fair count. Of course, the women were excluded from the zombie count and weren’t made parts of the teams. The team with the lowest zombie count got silly punishments like noogies from the winning team. It’s amazing how most men never really grow up. I kept hoping to see Hiram get a noogie, but his team never lost.

  It wasn’t hard to figure out how many zombies were around our enclosure. I measured how deep the zombies were around our fence and the total area they took up. I counted the density of the zombies over a ten-foot by ten-foot region and then extrapolated the number in 10 square feet over the total area of zombies around us. According to my calculations, there were approximately 180,000 zombies around our fence.

  Every day, right before dusk, the Director called us. Before the 11th, I would have called him Mark. Most Americans avoid using titles. For example I never asked my students to call me Dr. Hansen and most of them didn’t. But since the 11th, I’ve been in the enclosure with Mormons. Outside the ward, most Mormons don’t use titles, but inside they are prone to call each other brother or sister and use titles like Bishop. I soon began calling Mark Jones “Director.”