Night of the Living Ryan: October 2007

NaNoWriMo doesn't start until tomorrow, but I figured this would be a nice Halloween treat. So, here's a rough, rough draft of the Intro.

Karen Newman met Jim Kowalski three days after the fall of Omaha. Three weeks later, as their refugee group made its way toward Denver, Colorado, they were spending all of their time in each others company. About a week after they left Denver, heading toward California because of reports of military defeats and zombie swarms headed their way, Jim and Karen were married in an abandoned church by a drunken judge, with only complete strangers - their fellow refugees - as witnesses. Their honeymoon was spent taking care of a sick, abandoned child, the first of four of their adopted children, they found on their way to California.
Karen remembers it like this: “We had left Denver and were finally getting further into the mountains. Our group was setting up camp for the night, and Jim and I decided to take a quick look around the area. We were in a relatively safe spot, and he had his beat-up baseball bat and I had my crowbar in case we were attacked. After about half an hour of walking the perimeter of the camp, we found ourselves on a rock outcropping that faced back toward Denver. The city was dark, and we could make out the refugee camps in the city and lining the roads by their fires. The moon was still low, and it looked like it was hanging just over the city.
“I was getting ready to turn around and head back toward camp, when, very quietly, Jim started singing. ‘When the night has come, and the land is dark, and the moon is the only light we’ll see. No, I won’t be afraid. No, I won’t be afraid, just as long as you stand, stand by me.’ I started to laugh - you see, Jim is a terrible singer - but then I looked up and saw how serious he was. We held each other tightly as he continued singing and we looked down upon the ruined city. When he finished, he said that even though it didn’t look like there would be much of a future, he wanted to spend it with me. That being with me gave him a reason to believe that tomorrow could be better. Then he asked me to marry him. Talking about it now, it sounds a little silly or corny, but at the time, it was . . . well, I don’t know. Before that, there had been nothing by tragedy and uncertainty for so long. But here, in the form of this goofy guy with a terrible singing voice, was the first sign of hope, of life, in a long time. So with a bloodstained crowbar in one hand, and the other in his, I said yes.
“When we got back to the camp, we made the announcement to the rest of the group. That went over well. [She laughs] It was met with stares of disinterest and disbelief and bitter, bitter laughter. But, so it goes. As sort of a symbol of permanence in those uncertain times we decided we wanted the marriage to be official, and, as luck would have it, a few days later our group met up with a group from Kansas City with this big, fat judge who spent most of his time out of his mind drunk, rambling about the constitutionality of the ‘death tax’ now that dead were up and walking. We managed to convince him to draw up the papers and marry us in exchange for a bottle of whiskey we found in an abandoned home along the way. So then, inside the first unlocked church we found, we were officially married.
“Most of the other people in the group were upset, and said we were wasting time. Others didn’t say anything, but had looks on their faces that seemed to say ‘how dare you find happiness now.’ Only a few actually helped us with the ceremony. One woman had her kids collect wild flowers for a bouquet, and an elderly couple lent us a suit and a dress, they were terrible fits, but the idea was nice. We had no rings, our photographer was a thirteen-year-old kid with a Polaroid and our wedding cake was a stale pack of Fig Newtons. Even with that, and what was going out outside of the church, it was one the happiest days of my life.”
According to the official records, Jim and Karen Kowalski were the first couple married after the Great Panic, and one of about three hundred couples to get married in the first two years of the Zombie War. When I interview Karen, we were at their home just outside of Lincoln, Nebraska. As far as I can tell, I am the first to record their story.

There have been other histories of the Zombie War, that focus on the big decisions: the stories of those making policy, planning battles, and managing resources. The goal of this book is to document the untold tragedies and triumphs that came out of the war: the small victories and the hidden defeats that have been unexplored since things have settled down. My purpose is not to pick away at old wounds or glorify a few, but rather examine the ways in which average people struggled against the overwhelming armies of the undead and came through to the other side recognizing that no matter what happens, life goes on.
Sadly, not every story in this book has a happy ending. For every one where hope succeeded, there is a tale of those who should have survived, but gave into fear and dread, mistrust and avarice, ignorance and superstition. This book would be worth much less if it did not examine these tragedies. And so, like the oracles of old, we will examine the entrails critically, looking for lessons that should have been learned.

When I talked to Karen, she and Jim had just celebrated their 8th anniversary, and Karen is pregnant for the first time. While we were talking, their four adopted kids played soccer outside. All four kids are war orphans, and all four, ranging from ages sixteen to ten, call Karen and Jim mom and dad. Karen admits to me that it hasn’t all be roses: getting married so quickly and raising four kids who have all been through severely traumatic experiences, all while going through the closest thing to hell on earth was never easy. But, she says, “we’re a family, we love each other, and we’re happy.” Looking at their home, their refrigerator covered in report cards and art projects, the photos lining the halls of a family brought together by the undead, it is hard to deny that something so wonderful can come from something so terrible.