A Zombie's History of the United States (7 page)

At first the Parisian guests were quite taken with the spectacle, but as Adams later described to his wife, Abigail, things went wrong very quickly:

The Americans, myself quite included, tried to encourage the removal of the beast, but Mademoiselle de Bourbon’s niece was giddy over it and before we could even fully plead our case the girl was bit. When we sent for a gun and said the girl needed to be bound, M de B went into a rage. It was truly ridiculous. These Parisians know so little of our accursed Dead. Guards were called for—to restrain
us
! A physician was sent for as well. We tried to explain that there was nothing that could be done for the pitiable girl.

Lafayette personally de-animated his zombie, and eventually the injured girl was brought up to a room to lie down, despite Adams’s and the rest of the Americans’ protestations. When Adams, Franklin, and Jay tried to enter the girl’s room to at least convince Mlle. de Bourbon and her retinue to lock the girl alone in the room, lest they be present once her zombination was complete, Mlle. de Bourbon had them seized by her attendants. The scene quickly turned into a minor disaster, with Adams, Franklin, Jay, along with Franklin’s grandson, William Temple Franklin, and another American, Matthew Ridley, confined to Franklin’s room (Franklin was a guest of the hotel). None of the Americans were surprised when, several minutes later, screams and the sounds of fighting could be heard from the hallway.

Adams would recount:

We were of disagreement amongst us as to our best course. Franklin wished to stay in the room and let the situation sort itself out. I now acknowledge my folly, but at the time felt we were better served to try and escape or help in the destruction of the undead girl before the whole hotel became crawling with the Things. Using the room’s firepoker I broke off our door’s latch so we might exit. The scene was already grim. One corpse lay in the hall devoured, and another man had himself become undead. This undead we were able to trap in a room. As none of us were with firearm, we decided that escape was the legitimate move and we made directly for the stairs. Never have I been so frightened as moving through that much too quiet hallway. Where everyone else had gotten to so quickly, we could not say. In my worried haste I stepped to the stairwell without looking and came directly to M de B’s niece! She was upon me and knocked me to the ground before my senses alerted me. Had I not already had the firepoker at my chest, I would not be writing this letter to you. Without much effort on my part, for I assure you I had not the wits nor the time to plan such a thing, I was able to hold the poker sidewise before me, caught between her teeth like a horse’s bit. I struggled with her for a moment, when suddenly Franklin was at her back. He took his pen and placed it in the girl’s ear, then using his grandson’s shoe as a hammer, he drove the pen well into the dead girl’s brain until she went limp. I owe the old conjurer my life.

The remaining zombies at the hotel were eventually de-animated by the arrival of French soldiers, and none of the American party suffered any serious injuries. Franklin and Adams had also struck up a better relationship, burying the hatchet (or pen), so to speak. Peace negotiations began again the following day like clockwork. The completed and vetted Treaty of Paris was finally signed on September 3, 1783. Once it was announced, the last vestiges of British occupation, the troops remaining in New York City, left American shores on November 25, 1783. When Congress ratified the treaty on January 14, 1784, the American Revolution was officially over. On the day of the ratification, Samuel Adams (second cousin to John) famously said, “We are at last free of the monsters.”

Of course, there were still plenty of monsters of a different kind left for our fledgling nation to deal with.

THREE

The Corpse of Discovery THE LEWIS & CLARK EXPEDITION

The river Missouri, and the Undead, Indians, and other
dark Creatures inhabiting it, are not as well known
as rendered desirable by their connection with the
Mississippi, and consequently with us.... An intelligent
officer, with ten or twelve chosen men might explore the
whole line, even to the Western Ocean...

—Thomas Jefferson, message to Congress, January 18, 1803

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s expedition through the Pacific Northwest remains one of the single greatest missions of exploration ever undertaken by the United States. More than just a geographical survey, it was also a rich study in vegetation and wildlife, in Indian populations and their cultures, and a brazen announcement of America’s designs for the future.

Our best record of the expedition comes from the words of Meriwether Lewis himself, who wrote diligently in his journal, going into almost exhaustive detail on flora and fauna, weather, the difficulties of the river, and the people he encountered. The best-known collection of these journals,
The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition
, compiled by Gary Moulton, fills a whopping eight volumes. Yet there are sections—weeks, months, an entire year toward the end—for which there are few or no entries.

Curiously there is no explanation for these gaps. Writer’s block? Unlikely, considering Lewis knew the importance of his journal. Were the entries simply lost along the journey? Also unlikely, given that there exists no documentation from Lewis lamenting their loss. Nor are there any letters from President Jefferson discussing the omitted entries, even after Lewis’s untimely death.

The truth is these entries were purposefully excised from the published journals by President Jefferson. The Lewis and Clark mission was in large part a public relations move, and there were certain details Jefferson did not want getting out. Namely, these two details:

1. Lewis was undead for over half of the expedition.

2. Clark killed Lewis.

Destiny

If the United States wish such a demon plagued
Hades, they are most welcome to it. Good riddance.

—Napoleon Bonaparte, stated upon the finalization of the Louisiana Purchase, 1803

In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson cemented America’s—and his own—legacy when he acquired 828,800 square miles (2.147 million km) of France’s claim to the vast Louisiana Territory (which Napoleon had recently won from Spain). This purchase would prove to be one of the most important real-estate transactions in recorded history. The United States paid $11.25 million, plus cancellation of debts worth $3.75 million for a total cost of $15 million. That is $217 billion when adjusted for today’s inflation, and considering that, for example, $551 billion was spent on the most recent invasion of Iraq, any way you look at it, Jefferson got a pretty fantastic deal for doubling the size of the country.

When Jefferson assumed office as the third president of the United States on March 4, 1801, the growing nation was home to 5,308,483 persons, living or otherwise animated. Two-thirds of these people lived within fifty miles of tidewater, and less than one out of ten lived west of the Appalachian Mountains, where only four roads lead and zombies and Indians were prevalent. Waterways were how heavy loads were transported, and thus the rivers, lakes, and seas dictated American commerce. A waterway connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific would prove invaluable, and many, including Jefferson, thought the still unexplored Missouri River might be the key. The task of determining this possibility would not be a small one. Even aside from the unknown elements of the terrain, those undertaking such an expedition would face potentially hostile Indians—and definitely hostile zombies.

Jefferson knew just the man for the job.

Meriwether Lewis was born in 1774 in Virginia and from the outset it would seem that zombies were to shape his destiny. In 1779, his father, William, died of pneumonia after zombies attacked his horse and he was forced to flee into a river to survive. His mother then moved the family to Georgia where young Lewis would form a bond with and love for nature that would ultimately catch the eye of Thomas Jefferson years later.

According to Lewis family legend, when Lewis was eight or nine, he and some friends were returning home after a hunt when they were charged by an enormously fat zombie, hungry for brains. The other children climbed trees and hid, but young Lewis calmly raised his rifle and shot the zombie square between the eyes. Another such story concerns a zombie attack on the family’s cabin, which, lasting several days, forced the family to camp in the woods for safety. One night a foolish member of the camp started a fire, giving their position away. The zombies fell upon them. As grown men panicked and scurried around, only young Lewis had the wisdom to use the fire against the zombies and repel the attack.

BURR, EMPEROR OF THE DEAD?

Jefferson’s vice president, Aaron Burr, was no stranger to zombie-related controversy. On the hot seat after killing Alexander Hamilton in their infamous 1804 duel, Burr attempted the “dead defense” (a favorite excuse for those accused of murder at the time). Burr maintained that he was merely defending himself against a vicious, undead Hamilton. This excuse held little water considering that he shot Hamilton in the hip and that Hamilton died a slow, painful death over the course of twenty-four hours.

The previous year, Burr met with the British minister to the United States, Anthony Merry, to try and persuade England to seize the territory just acquired in the Louisiana Purchase. According to Merry, Burr thought the area to be populated almost entirely by zombies. Like many others before and after him, Burr believed that zombies could be easily trained and controlled. Burr fancied an entire zombie empire “over which he would grandly lord, with those creeping things as his loyal subjects,” Merry recorded.

The British government passed on the offer, though Burr continued with his secret machinations until 1806, when one of his co-conspirators betrayed him to Jefferson. Burr was brought up on federal charges of treason, though ultimately acquitted. In disgrace, Burr moved to Europe, where he tried to raise funds and support to establish a new zombie empire in Mexico, with no success. Burr died in 1836, never realizing his dreams of becoming Emperor of the Dead.

In 1795, Lewis joined the U.S. Army to fight in the Whiskey Rebellion and the Ashe County Undead Purge, where he developed a curiosity for the possible scientific explanations for zombism. Since common belief still favored the Christian view that zombies were the work of the devil, Lewis incurred the mockery of many of his peers for his more secular theories. After drunkenly challenging his lieutenant to a duel during one such mocking, Lewis luckily evaded a court martial and was merely transferred to another detachment, where—as providence would have it—he served under one William Clark.

Born in 1770, also in Virginia, Clark had a much different childhood. Unlike Lewis, who was raised a proper gentleman, Clark was of the lesser gentry. Self-educated, though well read, Clark joined the army in 1789 and was to serve largely in Indian affairs. Despite only being twenty-six years old, Clark retired from military life on July 4, 1796, due to poor health. He returned to his family plantation in Kentucky where he would peacefully remain, until the fateful day an old colleague suggested him for the adventure of a lifetime.

Planning for Adventure

If faced by superior forces of Undead so hearty as to stop the expedition, you must decline its further pursuit, and return. In the loss of yourselves, we should lose also the information you will have acquired. The Undead are to be cautioned wisely.

—Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Meriwether Lewis, 1803

The Lewis and Clark Expedition was not Jefferson’s first attempt to stage such an exploration of the West. In 1793, Jefferson proposed to the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia that they sponsor a “daring adventurer to explore and map the geography and collect specimens of both natural and Unnatural history.” André Bache, a French botanist, was selected for the mission, though he only got as far as Kentucky before zombies ate him and half his expedition party. Jefferson knew next time he would need a better man.