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

Wrestling Flies

Phinneas, the current world heavyweight fly wrestling champion, pinned Hector “the Nectar Protector” to the mat and went in for the Pinned Wing submission hold, only recently taken off the banned move list and only then due to a clerical error. Hector buzzed in rage and spun hard, trying to shake his opponent free so he could fly to a better vantage and swoop in for the pin. Phinneas clung tight and spun with him, throwing the Nectar Protector off balance. Things weren't looking good for the underdog and people's champ. That's when Hector had his brilliant idea. Dragging Phinneas on his back, he charged for the edge of the mat. The rules said they couldn't be outside the ring for more than ten seconds without being disqualified, but that was plenty of time. He dove off the edge. With Phinneas pinning his wings, he couldn't fly, but if his opponent kept him in that hold, neither could Phinneas. It was a dangerous game of chicken they were playing as they plummeted to the floor. At the last second, Phinneas broke free, and Hector, who always made in aerial precision what he lacked size zipped in like a bullet toward Phinneas, who blinked first and changed course to avoid a head on impact. Hector used the moment to pull an immelmann turn and come in square on Phinneas. Inches above the table, Hector latched on to his opponent's wings and put him into the dreaded Pinned Wing. They both crashed, but at such a low altitude, Phinneas took the brunt of the crash, and Hector, triumphant, held the pin for the full ten seconds. He had done it. Hector the Nectar Protector was the new world heavyweight fly wrestling champion.

- Originally mailed to J. Germany of Biloxi, MS

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

The Dark Defender

Rupert Graves, alias the Dark Defender, felt a calling from the time he was a child to don a mask and serve his community as a vigilante crime fighter. Where as other boys and girls saw comic books as escapist fantasy, he viewed the role of caped crusader as a viable career choice. He spent his teens and early twenties honing his body and mine, trying to stay sharp, to be at his peak when criminals struck. Unfortunately, he lacked the powers of Superman or the Flash, and thus he could not quickly run from one side of town to the other, let alone to the other side of the world. He lacked Batman's resources, so he couldn't invest in a fast car to get him to distant crime scenes, and he had no super computer, no super hearing to let him known where mayhem was afoot. Because crime fighting paid so poorly, he didn't even have a police scanner. Still, a calling was a calling, and so he accepted his limitations and made do. He couldn't defend the whole city, but the five thousand block of Mayfair Avenue from the post office to the tire shop and the grocery store in between were under his protection, and he would fight to the last breath to keep those five hundred feet safe.

- Originally mailed to R. Cox of Biloxi, Mississippi

Pyromancer's Opera

The question of how to best share the beauty of music with the deaf has long been a matter of debate. Some believe that as music is something felt in the soul, music should be conveyed physically through vibrations and the like, much the way Beethoven cut the legs off of his piano so he could feel the music he composed. As such, their clubs tended to emphasize overpowered basslines so the deaf could understand the rhythm, the pulse, and the visceral joy that a good song captures. Others felt that since man's two primary senses are sound and sight, music should be portrayed visually. Size conveys volume and color is pitch (or vice versa) and it can throb with the rhythm to provide a much more layered representation of sound. The latter school of thought typically found more success, for it allowed the deaf and those with hearing to enjoy together without risking the sense of sound of anyone present. Still, LEDs and iTunes visualizers lacked the primal power that many felt music should have. To remedy this, a collection of singers and dancers banded together to form the Pyromancer's Opera. They performed the works of Wagner and Verdi, Rossini and Bellini, and everywhere inbetween. The music itself was traditional, but the staging was far more theatrical. They lined their stage with fire dancers, each of whom would move to the rhythm of one voice or instrument, casting their flame high or low for general pitch, bold or elegant for volume, and with flames of various colors to indicate whether the the singer was an alto, soprano, tenor, or bass. For the most part, the Pyromancer's Opera was a great success, though it was very weather dependent. Few indoor venues trusted all that open flame, and a fire dance in the rain did not go over well. This, however, was a small price to pay for the joy of sharing your favorite song with a friend who couldn't hear.

- Originally mailed to K. Valencia-Bravo in Olathe, Kansas

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

Petra Fan

Sue McDaniels loved the Ender's Game series, particularly any parts dealing with Petra Arkanian, the only girl in Ender's jeesh. The character represented all that women could accomplish, being the commander of an army who can stand on her own, who could stay strong when others crumbled around her. She possessed the keen sort of intellect that could help mastermind an escape from a virtual prison. She was everything Sue wanted to be. Every year for Halloween, she would dress as Petra in one form or another. Salamander Army Petra. Dragon Army Petra. Launchie to Command School and beyond into Bean's Shadow books. Sue served in the air force and married a short guy named Julian. She named her seven children appropriately. She lived her life as Petra. Many told her she was obsessed on the verge of insanity. They teased and mocked, but she didn't care, for on reflection at the end of her days, she looked back and saw that like her hero, she had not lived a life of fear. When times of crisis came, she rose to the challenge, she faced adversity head on, and fought to protect the people and the nation she loved. She lived a life she could be proud of. There were worse role models to have.

- Originally mailed to C. Townsend from Hattiesburg, Mississippi

Alzheimer's Trucker

 

Wendy Phillips had been with United Shipping for thirty seven years by the time she developed Alzheimer's disease. The diagnosis devastated the small company. They couldn't let her go. She was one of the first five employees. She had an amazing driving record. She'd run the same route for fifteen years. Her customers knew her, loved her, trusted her. She was practically family. Even so, these days she would often forget where she was going and all the perishable goods in the trailer ran a very real risk of spoiling. What could they do?

But where there is adversity coupled with people who love and support one another, there is hope. Her friends, co-workers, and clients set tracked her route down to her parking space. Then, over the course of a week, they vandalized road signs across the tri-state area. Words, phrases, sentences, all spray painted along her route so that should she have an episode, she could still make her way to where she needed to be.

“Exit here, Wendy.”

“This is the path we take.”

“Park here and honk four times.”

When she arrived at her stops, she didn't always know what was going on, but those around her did, and they always made sure she had warm food, good company, and a place to stay until she became lucid again.

- Originally mailed to C. Procenko from Toronto, Ontario in Canada.

Recursive Shrine

Wanda Oslomeier visted a Tibetan monastery once as a child and it inspired her beyond words. When she was finally old enough to buy her own home, she built a small reminder of that shrine and placed it on her coffee table. To her, however, the shrine seemed empty. One replica bell and one clay monk hardly captured the life-changing majesty of the secluded temple. So she expanded. She got rid of her coffee table and began to build a diorama of the room in which they housed the bell, but a room on its lonesome was a sad thing to behold, so she cleared out her living room and recreated the monastery's entire meditation building. Of course, this suggested the monks lived one-dimensional lives, so she had to tear the house down around her display to make room for the homes, and then her yard became their farms from whence they drew nourishment. But where were the views? Those breathtaking vistas she had known? Those must be recreated as well, so she bought out the neighborhood and created the mountains and forests surrounding.

Then she remembered that, as the monks taught, nothing exists in isolation. We are all connected. So she expanded her diorama and it engulfed her town as she recreated all of Tibet. It spread as she created artificial continents and oceans. She recreated the Great Wall of China, the bustling cities of Hong Kong and Tokyo. She carved out a scale version of the Pacific Ocean, Hawaii, and the West Coast. Then she reached her home and realized to do her diorama justice, she must create a miniature version of her miniature world, and from there a smaller once she reached her home again, ever recursing downward and downward into infinity.

- Originally mailed to H. Witten in Oxford, Mississippi

The Long Road

There is a road with no outlets, no cross streets, no place to turn around that stretches from Calhoun, West Virginia to Red Hills, North Dakota. There are no gas stations or towns or even cellphone reception. Just mile after grueling mile of worn pavement and trees. About a hundred and fifty miles in, the road begins to line itself with old cars long abandoned, having run out of gas years ago with no pickup to come and get them. When the cars die, when there's no where else to go, families start walking, taking with them only what they can carry. The fashion clothes from the blue vinyl interiors and weapons from windshield wipers, hubcaps, and shards of broken window to hunt for food as they walk. Children are born. Old ones die. The road gives and the road takes. They say those who reach the end arrive with new eyes, eyes of the warrior and the hunter, eyes of the way, the path long forgotten by man. Many who survive the trip turn around and return down the beaten asphalt path, back to the wilderness and the trees and the savage life they have come to accept as real where they walk by the sun and feed from the plants and never ate meat they did not know, dried and turned to jerky on the old blacktop, for such is the way of the road.

- Originally mailed to J. Womack in Brooklyn, New York

Going Underwater

After taking hurricane related flooding for the fifth straight season, the residents of Makepeace, MS decided they would no longer fight the inevitable. If the universe wanted their beloved town beneath the waves, so be it. They hired mechanics to make their vehicles amphibious. They installed airlocks on their homes, and those top scientists not already modifying their genetic code for improved lung capacity and/or gills worked diligently day in and day out to waterproof the cable TV infrastructure. When the first major storm made landfall the following year, all the residents of Makepeace waited in rapt anticipation. After months of planning and waiting, Submersion Day had come. The storm was only a category one, however, and the town only partially flooded. They were disheartened, sure, but the American spirit is an indomitable beast, and they tuned their waterproof televisions to the Weather Channel and waited. There would always be another storm.

- Originally mailed to J. St. John of Picayune, Mississippi

Motivational Doors

The Life Cafe decided early in its planning stages that all of its instructions would be presented in the form of motivational phrases and life advice. Their doors told people to “Push Hard.” At the order counter signs advised customers to “think before you act!” and “plan ahead!” Urinals advised customers to “be a straight shooter” and the signs above the bathroom sinks told customers to “do as you would have others do.” To cut down on food waste, which attracted raccoons and homeless people, plates and bowls had messages like “Don't give up!” and “Always finish what you start.” Their no refunds policy was followed with “You can't please everyone.”

The trickiest part of their grand vision was finding a way to convey food allergy information. Though they couldn't find any appropriate phrases about peanuts or shellfish, they did make a habit of listing ingredients and following the words of Titus Lucretius Carus particularly useful. “The food of one may be poison to another.”

- Originally mailed to J. Dunn from D'Iberville, Mississippi

No Roof

He swore he would have a nice brick house by the time he was thirty. Also, he swore he would live his life debt free. When he turned twenty-nine, he realized he didn't have enough for a full house, but did not want to break either promise to himself. Instead, he built a lovely brick home with no roof. After all, a home missing a wall would easily allow in thieves, vagrants, and wild animals. No roof just let in a few birds and the elements. After planting a few trees and setting up some tarps, the rain was mostly settled, many home improvement stores stocked outdoor furniture, and he had convinced himself the birds added a touch of whimsy to his world.

- Originally mailed to K. Ballard of Owensborough, Kentucky

Water Tower

The summer had been a hot and dry one, and the local water tower felt pride in finally being able to aid his fair city, to water its lawns and cool its children, to make the grass grow ever green. On the day they were to open his floodgates to the parched world and let him give drink, a meddlesome rainstorm stole his thunder. “A conspiracy!” he cried, but who could argue with the cumulonimbus's alibi? He was from out of town, and the city had all dried up. He assumed if there had been a water tower, it would have been put to use already. The water tower sighed and put on his most patient face. The storm cloud would take the spotlight today, but the tower was no fly by night operation. No, he would always be there for his city, and one day, when the hurricanes came and people cursed the storm, they would turn to him for water pressure and on that day, he would hold his head higher than ever.

- Originally mailed to D. Garner of Biloxi, Mississippi

End of the World

There was a tree at the edge of the world that never seemed to grow and never seemed to die. It just stretched out into the emptiness beyond, bridging the gap between here and there, earth and sky. It became something of a rite of passage, a ritual for anyone who succeeded where all sense said they shouldn't to visit the tree. With published at long last manuscripts, with game-winning balls, with lovers well out of their league they would come and reflect and sometimes have their pictures taken, and they would shout beyond the cliffs, “You said the world would end before it happened, but here I stand at the end of the world, a success.”

- Originally mailed to C. Merritt of Juneau, Alaska