Imagine this. You are a fifteen-year-old
kid. It’s Monday morning around 9:00. You are home sick from school, on the
backside of recovering from the flu. It is not a serious illness but you are
pretty ticked off that you wasted a weekend in bed when you should have been
going to a friend’s birthday party. Your dad has left to work in Langley and he
told you to stay home to make sure you were fully recovered.
So you are chilling on the couch,
watching television, wrapped under blankets, and you get a call from your dad
on his cell phone. But this is not just a check-in call Ferris Bueller style to see how you are doing. He is barking orders
and from his tone you can tell that there is no room for discussion. He tells
you to look outside and see if anyone is around. You live out in the country
and your nearest neighbor is several hundred yards away. When you tell him no,
he tells you to pack a bag of supplies. He tells you to bring clothes and
essentials only and bring the fire safe. You know what is in the fire safe.
Dad’s pistols. Both of them. But he told you to never touch that safe. Well,
permission has been granted. You toss everything in gym bags and then hoof it
over to your grandparents’ house that is next door.
Dad demands that you stay on the phone
the whole time. You know where your grandparents hide the key. After all, you
have been going over there to put out food for their dog, Bandit, in hopes of
scoring some extra allowance money for a video game that you want. Dad’s demand
is very curious. Go to the rack where Granddad keeps the keys. Get the one to
his blue Dodge pickup – the one with the ram head decal on the leather patch.
It is sitting unused in the garage while they are away on vacation, gambling
down in Tunica, Mississippi.
This is where it gets really strange.
He has you go to Granddad’s gun room. Yep, his collection is so large he has an
entire room dedicated to his guns. Welcome to the home of a right-wing conservative
living in Oklahoma who has been stockpiling under the threat from 2008 to 2012
that the administration was going to take away all the guns. And now that Obama
has been re-elected and he can “unleash his true radical agenda,” ammo has been
purchased by the box load. Dad tells you to load up all the guns and ammunition
that you can. He particularly wants the hunting rifles with scopes. Anything
with a long range sight. And ammo, all the ammo boxes you can load in. Get the
.22 rifles that you have been training with. Put it in the back of the pickup.
Thankfully, the Dodge has a bed cover that you can lock everything in. When you
begin to protest, Dad tells you that you have a five minute clock. And you have
to stay on the phone the whole time.
So you do as you’re told. Ammo is
heavier than you think and your arms are burning by the time the five minutes
is up. He wants you to lock the bed cover. You don’t want anything spilling
out.
Then, he tells you to look outside
through the garage door windows and make sure no one is outside. You confirm
you are alone. Now, get in the pickup, start it and have it in drive when you
open the garage door via the remote control Granddad keeps clipped on the sun
visor. Now, you were scheduled to take a driver’s ed class this summer but
actual time spent behind the wheel is limited. So you say into the phone, “Dad,
I don’t even have my learner’s permit.”
“You’re learning today, son…”
Instructions are simple, drive to
Highway 69 and cut across. Do not go into Adair. Go through the small,
tremendously under-populated town of Strang. Head into Langley from the south
and cut down that side road next to the donut shop where we got donuts that one
day. Make the first turn to the left on that paved road. Come up to Reason’s
through the back service road. Come to the Produce Dock. Stay on the phone the
whole time. Do not stop. Do not talk to anyone. Do not stop for anyone. Plow
through Strang. If people are in your way… run over them.
You begin to protest. Your dad wants
you to run over people? You want to know what is going on. One word. Zombies.
You can scarcely believe it. Your dad makes it real clear. You have two
choices: Believe and live or disbelieve and die.
So you do as you are told. Thankfully,
you don’t see any cars, even when you cross the highway. Strang is all but
abandoned but it was not like it was a populated town to begin with. They
couldn’t even keep a convenience store afloat. All they have is a post office,
a volunteer fire department, and a few churches. Do they even have a cop?
Speed is not an issue. You put your
foot down as fast as you dare to go. That 22 minute trip, you cut down to 16
flat. But once you reach Langley, and specifically the store where your Dad
works, it is a nightmare like out of one of your video games. These things are
wandering around in the parking lot and the engine on Granddad’s pick up is not
quiet. So they come chasing after you. Dad is still on the phone guiding you
in. Still, at fifteen, most of your driving skills come from XBox. And you
crash into the Produce Dock, pinning your driver side door against the dock
itself. So the only way out is through the passenger side door, out the driver
side window, or the sliding windows in the back. And none of these options seem
appealing when zoms are closing in on the truck. Two get close enough to start
banging on the passenger side window. Your heart drops. You are trapped. Why
didn’t you keep a gun up front with you?
Then, from out of nowhere, there is a
savior.
A guy that your dad works with comes
pulling alongside you in a 4X4 pickup outfitted with a gun rack in the back
window and Bone Collector stickers on the back glass. He splatters the zoms
banging on your passenger window with the front brush guard of his pick-up.
Then he backs up, gets out, and starts blasting away with a pistol of his own.
Clearly, he is not in disbelief about the zombie apocalypse and has zero
compunction about putting a bullet in each one of these maggot bags’ heads.
Given the camouflage design on his dashboard and steering wheel and all the
weapons in his truck, it is almost comical that his name is Hunter. Sure
enough, he more than lives up to his name. Clearing a path to the Produce dock,
he kicks on the door, yelling for the door to be opened. Thankfully, you are
still on the phone to your dad. The door opens, there he is, and he yanks you
inside. You tell him that the truck is full of guns but he just wants you
inside.
Somehow, defying all odds, you make it
to a refuge inside a grocery store and you are safe with your dad.
This is the story of Alexander Jason
Mathews and how he made it to Reason’s Foods in Langley, Oklahoma on April 29th,
2013. This is how my son survived to be with us. And I thank God every day for
it.
