The Living Dead 2 (The Living Dead, #2)(127)

Many schisms have developed in Amish communities over the years over what rules are to be followed and how severe shunning should be. The Supreme Court case Wisconsin v. Yoder established the precedent that Amish are exempt from many American laws, including those involving compulsory education (Amish children are not educated past eighth grade), child labor, and Social Security. The Amish are also extreme pacifists, and once faced severe penalties and abuse for refusing to fight in America’s wars.





Our next story, which is a bit more wholesome than the last one, takes a look at how this unusual and close-knit community weathers a zombie apocalypse, and what happens when extreme pacifism collides with extreme circumstances.





We’ve blocked off the reference room in the small community library for these interviews. Otto Miller sits across the table from me, his arms folded tightly against his chest. He is an elder in this small Amish community and looks every bit the part. I ask him to state his name and he simply stares at me and then looks down at the digital recorder I’ve placed on the table. He strokes his beard a couple times and then folds his arms again. I can see we’re going to get nowhere with this.

I click the device off. That’s not enough. I put it back down in my satchel and pull out a yellow legal tablet. As I click my pen he begins to speak.

“I have nothing against you, English, nor your devices. But you have to understand us. We don’t cling to your machines, we don’t participate in your ways, we don’t ask anything of you. But you and your…things…your ways…they are constantly thrust upon us. Even your plague.”

He points his finger squarely at me. I’ve heard of “righteous indignation,” but I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen it. “I read your newspapers, listen to your broadcasts. You think this plague was the hand of God? Wouldn’t that be convenient? If all this were simply the divine pouring out judgment and wrath upon the world? No, this was your own doing. You—you English—you played with the natural order of things and this was the result. Like breeding your livestock in one family line, sooner or later the results will haunt you. They haunt all of us.”

I’m eager to get the interview on track. “Why don’t we back up a bit, Mr. Miller. When was it the infection first touched your community?”

Otto Miller looks out the window for a moment and gathers his thoughts. “You are from the city, yes?”

I smile. “Yes. New York. My home is very far removed from what you have around here.”

“You might think that we’re completely isolated from the rest of the world, but it’s not true, that’s not our way. Separate but not isolated. We are not yoked to the world the way you are. So we were aware of the sickness, the “African Rabies,” as they called it. We read the reports in the newspapers, listened to the radio and even watched the news on the television in the store in town. As more and more truth came out about what the disease truly was we were…cautious. But it seemed as far removed from us as…well…as New York City.

“It was in March, after that first winter. It was a hard winter, and I suppose if it hadn’t been we would have seen them sooner and maybe been able to prepare ourselves better. I was up at 4:00 a.m. preparing for my morning chores. I was walking into the milking barn when I heard an odd sound in the pasture. I raised my lantern and that’s when I saw my first…plague victim.

“In life he had been Jonas Yoder, a Mennonite from up the road. Jonas was a good man, I had known him all my life. There he stood in my pasture, mouth open, moaning, and what must have been a pitchfork wound through his chest.”

Elder Miller looks deep into my eyes to the point of discomfort. “I suppose something you need to understand, being from the city, is that the first victims we ever saw were our friends and neighbors. People we had known our whole lives. I’ve read your ‘survival guides’ with faceless pictures of the undead. These were faces we had known and welcomed into our homes for years. You need to understand that to understand us.”

I nod, and he continues. “It was still an hour or so from daylight, so I was very aware of the need to get back inside. I wasn’t sure how Jonas got into my pasture, but I felt sure he couldn’t get back out on the side closest to my home. I went back inside, locked the door and waited for sunup with my wife.

“Sunrise brought a horrifying sight. Jonas wasn’t alone. There was Rebecca his wife. Further out in the pasture I noticed members of the King family, the Beilers and a few people from town—some of them familiar, others not. I also saw the gaping hole in my fence on the side closest to the road. That’s how they had gotten in.

“Even worse they had gotten into the barn through some loose planks I had intended to fix in the spring. They were in the stalls with my work animals. The sounds were awful. I could hear my horses crying out as their flesh was torn. The sound drew the undead into the barn to feed. By the time my son arrived there must have been over thirty of them in the barn.”

“So what did you and your son do?” I ask.

Otto Miller chuckles. “We simply did what needed to be done. We fixed the fence.”

I laugh with him. Here was a man who faced the worst disaster in history with the simple truth he had learned all his life—if there’s a hole in the fence you have to fix it. The world was going to hell but the Amish remained unchanged.