The Zombie Survival Guide: How To Live Like A King After The Outbreak (2 page)

Easter Island is also thought to be the site of an ancient zombie outbreak.

Easter Island was settled by Polynesians, who traveled there by ship from two other islands 3,200 and 2,600 kilometers away, between the years of 300 and 400 AD. These people were masters of the sea, and this was how they defeated their foe – by sailing away from them. Scholars debate when the actual outbreak occurred, but they all concur that it was well before the 16
^th
century.

As legend has it, the ordeal began one night during a ritual sacrifice. A ravenous bonfire was set in the middle of the sacrificial grounds. In accordance with tradition, the dancers were locked in a cage for a week before the celebration, to fast and prepare themselves for their six hour dance around the fire, after which the best dancer would be sacrificed upon a stone altar.

To be sacrificed was a great honor, and was said to bring great luck and wealth to the family of the deceased. However, conditions within the cage were horrific at best. In this particular harvest year, while condensed together among rats and their own feces, this group of dancers all contracted zombism.

When released from what had become their tomb, the recently zombified dancers immediately attacked the unsuspecting crowd. What followed was a brief but intense melee between the tribe’s warriors and the animated dancing dead. Think
Thriller
meets
Beat It
in a Pre-Columbian setting (with better costumes and choreography).

It was discovered during the fight that flame was the only way to keep the monsters at bay. Using this tactic, the warriors successfully corralled them into a circle and stoned the lot of them until they stopped moving. The “dead” undead were then thrown into the fire and the sacrifice was considered a success, as it was assumed that sacrificing multiple souls would make for an exponential blessing as well. But the true curse was only just beginning…

The following night, screams were heard from the homes of the warriors who had combated the creatures. By morning, the plague had spread throughout the populace and the island was overrun with flesh-eating monsters, all of them hell bent on smashing the heads of the living to devour their brains.

During the night and into the early morning, the ruler of the island had opened up his compound to the survivors. This practice was continued until it was discovered that those bitten by the beasts would eventually turn into monsters themselves. He then ordered the gates closed, thus sealing the fate those unfortunate enough to have survived outside of the compound. Those people, along with the zombies, were in for a fiery death.

Fortunately for those within the compound walls, their sanctuary was located near the naval pier. To the king and his advisers, the navy was the most important of all the military, for until that day, all other enemies had come from across the water.

With hordes of zombies at the gates, the king ordered the population evacuated to the neighboring islands, and it was during this exodus that the refugees discovered their enemy’s second weakness – water. As the infected began to turn in the boat, they were thrown overboard. And yet they didn't even try to swim; they simply sank while murmuring “brains” in some weird island language. Apparently, zombification entailed more than simply forgetting one’s table manners – recently zombified humans forgot how to swim as well!

The king and his elite guards defended the compound until it became apparent that the enemy was only growing in numbers, and that the zombie advance would never cease. When their defenses were finally breached, he made a bold decision. Rather than remaining in the compound, they would lay siege to the island from the sea. The king ordered his army into the boats and the island to be razed to the ground. What happened to them afterwards, no one knows. They were lost to the waves of time, leaving only their subjects to settle new shores.

There are no trees on Easter Island today. Many think that this was due to the deforestation which took place during the building of the iconic Moai, which have become synonymous with the island itself, but what they forget is the power of the great fire which removed all vegetation from the island to begin with. Remember that the brunt of the military had surrounded the island in boats, and for three days they pelted it with fiery arrows, never letting the fire die out, not until the flames had exhausted every last bit of organic material. For a time, the inferno became so uncontrollable that not even a tsunami would be able to snuff it out. This was when the king decided to make his move.

Most of the undead were consumed in flames within a few hours. The remaining survivors, whose shelters had been engulfed in the fire as well, were pursued by the rest of the undead into the center of the jungle. Unknowingly, both the zombies and the people had locked themselves into a cremation furnace. The fire was said to burn for an entire lunar month, during which time the stench of rotten, roasting flesh never left the air.

However, a few straggler zombies still roamed the beaches, waiting for the humans in the water to return. Now with a more manageable foe, the king ordered his warriors to storm the beachhead. Upon landing, they attacked the enemy fiercely with their heavy stone clubs. The king ordered them to smash the heads of the enemy until there is no bone left, as this was the only thing that seemed to stop the dancers who started the pandemic.

Once the fire had burned itself out, after nearly every living organism on the island had been destroyed, the king called his people home. It was then that he ordered huge stone heads to be erected as a symbol of victory,
and
as cryptic message to thoroughly stone the heads of all zombies, should they ever return.

The most recent zombie outbreak to occur on United States soil happened on Labor Day, 1935, in the Florida Keys. On that day, what is recorded to be the most devastating hurricane in American history hit the string of islands off the coast of the Sunshine State. This was one of only three category 5 hurricanes to ever hit U.S. soil. According to government records, over 400 people were killed in its wake.

The truth, however, is that while the storm
did
kill a little over 200 people, (you guessed it) the
other
200 were killed by zombies. As with most history taught in the classrooms of this nation, the
real
story behind this tragedy is stomach-turningly horrifying.

The day after the eye of the storm had passed over the keys, scores of dead floated up from the oceanic abyss, pussing and bloated in the salt water. Sharks had already done a decent job of trimming their flesh. As the hot Florida sun beat down upon them, the bodies of the dead began to split open and decay even more. Waste and debris from what were once thriving tourist towns had been scattered all over the islands. A plague of roaches and rodents followed shortly thereafter.

Camped out in the shelter of a large natural cave on one island happened to be several hundred badass World War I veterans, all of them part of a labor force commissioned by the Works Progress Administration. These were soldiers who had been unable to find work during of the Great Depression, but as a result of The New Deal, they’d recently been put to work on whatever infrastructure projects the government could come up with. This particular project happened to be U.S. Highway 1.

Although decommissioned, these were still soldiers, and when tragedy struck they acted the part. Early in the chaos, the workers who were formally high ranking officers took command. They fashioned together shelters and a break wall from the debris and bodies of the island’s rich tourists and residents found floating in the floodwater. Although dreadful and uncomfortable, the night passed. It was far from the worst night these men had seen.

The next day the soldiers found themselves cut off from the mainland, after the railroad car that was used to transport people back and forth from the keys had capsized during the storm. As a result, they had no choice but to wait for the Coast Guard to arrive and complete their evacuation. All of their rations had been lost to the ocean and the other animals, so the only thing left to eat was trash, rats, and decaying bodies. Combined with the lack of fresh water, these men, hard as they were, were now in serious trouble, and about to contract zombism.

When the Coast Guard finally arrived, they were too late. Mistaking the zombified veterans for marooned, disillusioned citizens, they quickly rushed to help them, only to be consumed by the animated corpses in the process. With no idea how to combat zombies, seasoned veteran zombies, or anything else for that matter (remember that this is the
Coast Guard
we’re talking about here), all of their men were quickly annihilated. They did, however, manage to radio a distress call back to headquarters before the last of their greenhorn, candy-assed recruits were turned into zombie kibble.

Because the radio chatter was so violent and disturbing, the mysterious message swiftly made its way to the Commandant of the Eastern Coast Guard. The Commandant, being a four-star admiral, was already privy to the existence of zombies - a result of his many military campaigns around the world. Knowing full well the level of risk involved, he called upon the only people he considered tough enough to handle the job.

When the Marines arrived they were ready. 400 of them disembarked the destroyer in rubber rafts, each one armed with an ounce of cocaine, a high-capacity combat shotgun, 150 deer slugs, a razor sharp machete, and strict orders to “Blow the fucking heads off of every last fucking one of them!” The zombies didn't stand a chance. While the general blared classical music upon the battlefield to boost morale, the Marines stormed the beach and “blew the fucking heads off of every last fucking one of them” in a matter of just a few short hours.

Toward the end of the invasion, there were unconfirmed reports of the marines “fight fucking” the last of the better-preserved zombies. It was after this rather embarrassing moment in U.S. military history that the use of cocaine was strictly banned from all zombie warfare.

After the fighting was over, the bodies of the dead were thrown into a pit and burned. The government informed the masses that the bodies had to be incinerated because they constituted a malaria threat, or that they were so rotten that they could not be transported, or that they had lost the bodies altogether. It simply did not matter, as long as the truth was kept secret.