by Jay Wilburn

I never put a lot of work into my zombie plans over the years. Well, no real work actually, but a lot thought. In theory, a good zombie plan could help in many different disaster situations. Even the CDC used “zombie preparedness” as a gimmick for a post on general disaster preparation a few years back. They were not prepared for all the comments from hardcore preppers and die-hard zombie fans talking about guns and stealing cars. It was fun watching the CDC try to dodge gun discussions. There was delicious irony in a post on preparedness being caught unprepared.

I had enough trouble just dealing with normal pre-apocalyptic life to put any preparation into the apocalypse itself. How would I even get to an oil rig and those things blow up a little too often for my taste. Breaking into a prison? I don’t know. I don’t like my chances in there before or after an apocalypse. Dodging zombies, cities, and gangs to get up into the woods and the mountains? Not a real fan of camping. Staying home and waiting it out? Hmmm …

We had a hurricane last year. We live out in the woods near a river and a massive tree fell on our house. We were lucky and/or blessed that the tree was so large it braced on other trees on the other side of the house to support some of the weight. They were able to cut it off piece by piece and keep from crushing the house. They did great work. Not cheap work, but great. The power was out for several days. My wife was helping with her father and mother near us because her mother was bedridden and on oxygen at the time. I was fighting complications with kidney failure. It would not have been good, if that was a permanent situation in that moment. We had no zombie plan for that. I ended up taking the boys with me at my wife’s request to stay in Atlanta with my mother. I was fighting infections and needed to be near a functioning hospital and it is easier to oversee a tree being cut off a house without kids running around. I was not the strong, rugged apocalyptic survivor in that moment.

I went into end stage renal failure at the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017. I then had a friend step up and be approved as a compatible donor for me. I received a kidney transplant on February 8, 2017. It was lifesaving and lifechanging. It does require constant medical attention. There are regular blood tests, careful adjustments to meds, and treatments for bugs I pick up with my weakened immune system. I have to drink lots of water every day without fail. I have to take meds precisely 9 AM and 9 PM every day without fail. I went into an episode of kidney rejection that they had to catch and reverse before any scar tissue formed in the kidney. Again, I was lucky/blessed.

There might be some conditions where grabbing up your meds from the drug store before hitting the road for part B of your zombie plan might sustain you as long as you have the pills and they don’t expire. My situation, though I am physically healthy compared to how I used to be, would not work that way. Taking the same med doses I take now might work for a while. Without blood tests, which aren’t the kind that can be performed outside of modern facilities, I wouldn’t know when the dose needs to be changed. Taking the same dose while my system is absorbing it differently which is likely to happen on the road in an apocalypse, the meds could actually damage the kidney. If I stop taking them, rejection is guaranteed. If I caught a particular virus while immune-suppressed, I wouldn’t know it, couldn’t treat it if I did, and the kidney would be destroyed. No telling what the zombie virus might do to a person who is on immuno-suppressive drugs for anti-rejection treatment. That may be a zombie story in and of itself.

My zombie plan would involve doing my best to get my family to safety as quick as I could before I got too sick to move. There’s another zombie story for you.

In one of the seasons of The Walking Dead, there is a boy who does not handle the reality of zombies well. He stays upstairs and grows less and less functional. Then, he has to go out in the middle of the horde and slip through with his family which he is utterly unprepared for. This character was not well liked by fans and yet I think he might be one of the most realistic. We tend to be the healthy, able, gritty, rugged, optimistic heroes when we project ourselves into our favorite, apocalyptic stories. We see all the mistakes others make and know we would certainly do better.

When I watched that kid come unraveled, I saw my own sons. They can be quite durable and have been through a lot. With my illness and surgery, they were away from us for a couple months. They saw me slowly dying before that and they knew what was going on. People surprise you once the cards are down. We never know how we or others will truly react until we are tested in a big way. It has been my experience that people usually talk a bigger game than they play under high pressure. I have also seen people put through the works and come out of it strong in ways most of us could not.

That being said, my boys are sensitive, especially the older one. He is deathly afraid of zombies too. My younger son is afraid of being alone. They don’t like the dark. I could see the pressure of a real apocalypse hurting them in a similar way as portrayed by that rather disliked character. Maybe I should be tougher on them and make them stronger in case of a zombie apocalypse or all the other stuff life might throw at them. Being taught to be afraid of the world and aware of its darkness doesn’t necessarily produce the best coping skills either. Look at all the people on Facebook and how they cope. Imagine them in an apocalypse.

Maybe none of us are truly healthy, young, or optimistic enough to handle an apocalypse. My plan would involve getting my family to a group better prepared and more able than me. I figure I have two to five months tops to get that done, if something else doesn’t take me down first. We all probably work more diligently under deadlines, so maybe this is for the best anyway. People can accomplish a lot when there is nothing to lose and no more time to wait. I don’t like my chances given all the facts, but who knows? I might outlive all of you whether or not there ever is an apocalypse.

Jay Wilburn

Jay Wilburn has a Masters Degree in Education that goes mostly unused since he quit teaching to write about zombies. Jay writes horror because he tends to find the light by facing down the darkness. His is doing well following a life saving kidney transplant. Jay is the author of Maidens of Zombie Kingdom a young adult fantasy trilogy, Lake Scatter Wood Tales adventure books for elementary and middle school readers, Vampire Christ a trilogy of political and religious satire, and The Dead Song Legend. He cowrote The Enemy Held Near, Yard Full of Bones, and The Hidden Truth with Armand Rosamilia. You can also find Jay's work in Best Horror of the Year volume 5. He is a staff writer with Dark Moon Digest, LitReactor, and the Still Water Bay series with Crystal Lake Publishing.

Jay's Patreon Page | Purchase Signed Books