Zombie Training

“Be ready, son,” my father would always tell me, growing up. “The zombie apocalypse could happen at any time.”

All fathers have their obsessions. Sports. Model trains. Grilling. His was zombies. At bed time, he would tell me stories of people planning and surviving, or not planning and dying, stories of people keeping a level head and surviving and people panicking and dying. Every night, he would give me the adventures of Goofus and Gallant: Undead Nightmare edition. While other boys' dads taught them to catch a ball, mine taught me to make a headshot from fifty yards with a pull string, compound, composite, and cross bow. He taught me wilderness survival and took me camping the way many fathers in rural areas did, but the advice was different. Sleep in a tree so Zed can't get you. Walk in the stream so Zed can smell you. Don't use guns unless you have to. Guns are loud, and will attract Zed.

At seven, just in case, he gave me an air pistol and would randomly stick targets in unexpected places to keep me on my toes, and at ten, he gave me a real pistol, taught me to shoot just in case (a bow simply will not do you any good within striking distance). I learned to strip and clean my gun blind, learned to make my own ammo. My friends called him weird. So did I when I hit my teens.

But to this day, every time I step outside the cabin and put an arrow through one of their heads before I even consciously realize one was shambling toward me, I say a little prayer of thanks for everything he taught me.

- Originally mailed to P. Walker in Diamondhead, Mississippi

The Angry Vine

The Tomicraw people had a myth about the end of the world. They believed that the gods made the world for all mankind to enjoy save for one plant, a leafy vine that kept to one tiny patch of dirt in the forest.

“Do not touch this vine, for it is a plant of anger,” warned the gods.

But people did not know what anger was, for the world was still peaceful in those days, and they did not understand the danger. Thus, when two young lovers strolled through the forest one day, mindful only of each other, they thought little when they accidentally stepped on the plant, crushing the vine to the dirt.

Though the plant brimmed with anger, it had never had an opportunity to grow until then. When it was brought low to the earth, it reached into the dirt and took hold, and this was its first runner. As the lovers returned to their village, and one tripped on the runner, and was angry at the other for not warning her, and the plant grew. And families quarreled over who was at fault, her for not looking or him for not telling, and the plant grew, and soon it had reached the fields where crops grew and overtook them, and the farmers were angry, and they looked at the fields of other farmers whose land was not blighted, and from their anger grew envy, and in the night, as their babies cried for hunger, desperation grew, and from that grew theft, and the vine grew. In the morning the other farmers rose and saw what had happened, and they too became angry at the first for bringing the vines to the edge of their lands, and from their anger grew hate, and from their hate grew violence, and violence grew to war, and all the while, the vine spread, covering everything in its path.

The world, the Tomicraw said, would end when the vine finally covered the world completely. Scientists laughed until the vine spread and began choking out native plant species, which disrupted entire ecosystems leaving only vines in their wake. And they were angry at the Tomicraw for not warning them sooner. And the vine grew.

- Originally mailed to P. Mathis in Hattiesburg, Mississippi

Starfall

“The night of Starfall is upon us again even as it has been foretold!” cried Many Points from his pulpit at the top of the hill. “Even as our parents told us, as they heard from their parents, and theirs on unto our ancestors before the men of sticks and stone lost their hair and created their own mountains, the new judgment is upon us!”

The other animals looked on in awe as Many Points spoke, the burning sky behind him silhouetting him against the fierce glow, his antlers a burning bush atop his head.

“What can we do?” cried Farleap Long Ears as she clutched her children close, trembling like the earth beneath their feet.

“We must do even as our ancestors did when the stars crashed to the earth to punish the great lizards,” he replied. “We must seek out the dark places. We must hide in the caves and in the deep burrows until the sky is dark again, and then we must stay warm for it is our warm blood and fur that saved us from the first judgment, for it will be a world cold and without mercy. We must change and adapt as we did in the past. Eat not of the sickly, neither plant nor neighbor, for so shall it be your undoing, even as we have been taught since time immemorial.”

“But how can we survive this?” cried Nutfur Tinysqueak. “Some of us are so small, and have such little strength.”

“Know this,” said Many Points. “Each and every one of you, no matter how great or how small, is descended from those who survived the first night of Starfall all those years ago. I ask you, how can you not survive?

The animals agreed that this was wisdom, and so they bid their farewells until they should meet again, after the stars ceased their assault, after the earth no longer shook and the fires in the sky went out and the Long Winter had begun.

- Originally mailed to M. Haley of Lake Orion, Michigan

Plans for Doomsday

Another world war was inevitable, and it going nuclear only slightly less so. Experts across the globe forecast virtually identical doomsday scenarios. What would set off the war and when. Who would go nuclear first. Who would retaliate and where. When it would finally end. Fallout levels and how long the resulting nuclear winter would last. So precise were these myriad independent predictions that many, including the generals themselves, admitted defeat before even starting, and proceeded with the war anyway for they felt they no longer had a choice in the matter. People were so caught up in the “this is what will happen” part of the message that they completely overlooked the “unless we do something about it” bit at the end. Nations readied themselves for war just as predicted, even though they knew they would lose. Everyone, philosophers and laymen alike, bemoaned the death of free will if indeed it had ever existed at all. It had a strange effect on the psyche of the world, for though everyone knew the end was nigh, nowhere in the predictions-turned-prophecies was there mention of panic or rioting. No mention was given to the civilian masses at all except in terms of casualties and collateral damage. People assumed this meant that they would carry on life as normal until the end, and so they did. Only a few people deviated from their day-to-day existences, and even then only in small ways. Women didn't wait for men to propose as often, for instance, and some restaurants in the rural areas outside of major cities began to include in their advertising that their patios would have the best views for the end of the world.

- Originally mailed to J. and L. Stillman of New York City, New York

The Bunker

Paranoid by nature, Jeb Woosley of Rock Springs, Montana built his fallout shelter in September 1945 at the age of twenty-five. He knew early on that if we could develop the bomb so would other nations. So he prepared. He built a large bunker five yards below ground with three foot thick concrete walls. He had a fully stocked pantry. He had a pump that pulled water from a subterranean spring and filtered it for him. He had a pedal powered dynamo for electricity and exercise and more fuel than one could imagine needing just in case. The entertainment room had a reel-to-reel player, a projector, a small library of music and film, a shelf of how-to books and novels. In time, he made the bunker more comfortable than his own home, and for added safety, hid the entrance beneath a large plastic boulder.

Every time a crisis arose, he would warn the town that the end was night, mock them for not preparing, and then retreat until his secret safehouse. The Berlin Blockade, the Korean War, McCarthy, Sputnik, the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Apollo moon landing, Vietnam, the death of Mao Zedong, Afghanistan, the Berlin Wall, the Gulf War, 9/11, the Gulf War again, Afghanistan again, the Arab Spring, and every election since Carter. By the time the big one came, he had long since become the boy who cried wolf. The blast leveled the near by cities and the fallout slowly killed whoever was left standing in the small town of Rock Springs.

But not Jeb. He had enough food to feed a man for ten years, clean running water, and seeds to start a farm when everything settled. What he didn't have, however, was time. He died of old age two weeks after the war went hot. In the irradiated aftermath, people scoured the country side, bandits and families alike, looking for safety, for food, for a way to rebuild, but none ever found Jeb's hidden treasure trove beneath its large fake rock.

- Originally mailed to J. Knight from Pascagoula, Mississippi

Inflation

When the bottom of the economy finally fell out, inflation kicked in with a vengeance. Being an intelligent guy, Hans Mauer immediately took all the cash he could find and went to a store, knowing that goods would always be worth something, whereas his money might not. By the time he arrived, the price of candy had already almost doubled, so he bought the whole box. Candy was a luxury good, after all, so those lucky few who had wealth would pay a hefty sum for it later. When he arrived home, the same candy was selling for five dollars. A pack of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups came to more than fifteen by lunch, and by the end of the week, inflation has spiraled so wildly out of control he could have bought a brand new car with the money he made, presuming of course that the price of automobiles had not also skyrocketed. But nothing lasts forever, and Hans knew this. When it looked like the economy could take no more, when the neighboring nations would have no choice but to intervene, he sold every scrap of candy he had. He made hundreds of thousands of dollars, and exactly as predicted, the government stepped in with a new gold standard currency. The old money was virtually worthless. As a sort of kindness, the treasury allowed for the old currency to be traded in for pennies of the new stuff, but Hans didn't take the deal. Instead, he waited for all the old cash to die away, to be collected and burned. Then, two years later when he had one of the only supplies of the old dollar bills, he sold his hoard off to museums and collectors one bill it at time, on average getting twice the printed dollar value. In the end, his box of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups netted him a cool million goldbacks. He retired early, all over a little candy and a lot of patience.

- Originally mailed to J. Ransom Raper in Batesville, Arkansas.