Zombies: Shambling Through the Ages by

Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: zombie, horror, anthology
ISBN: 9781607014171
Publisher: Prime Books
Published: 2013-08-12T16:00:00+00:00

Seneca Falls: First Recorded Outbreak of Strain Z

Recovered by Dayna Ingram

The following, believed to be a chapter excised from her 1898 biography Eighty Years And More, was found among Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s estate in a file marked: “Incinerate upon my death.” Authorities have deemed the document too vital to society’s current struggle to destroy.

Though it was perhaps the most significant chapter in my long and—if I may be so immodest, and certainly at my age I may—quite significant life, still I hesitate to include the truth of those two short days as a chapter in these memoirs. As much as I do not care to admit it, I am frightened. But of what do I have to be frightened? I am an old woman now and the only person I might betray has long ago passed on. She swore me to secrecy that night—more for the one sin than for the other—and I, though the record shall prove it quite contrary to my nature, I have bitten my tongue on this. For her.

All my life I feel as though I have been fighting for her in the only arena I felt equipped to fight: the political arena, the constant struggle for the rights of the marginalized. I am nothing if not a powerful orator, for God blessed me with a voice and a will to speak it and I am afraid I have never been able to turn my back on the Lord’s gifts. She, of course, could speak me under the proverbial table, and did on more than one occasion. It was one of the things that made her so beautiful, that stirred up those things in me. She fought for me—for my life if not for my hand. God forgive me, back then I would have traded it all for that kind of fight. A fight of the heart. But she had other, more pressing matters she had to attend to, as you will read.

Despite my fear, I have decided to write it out for you, whoever you are. Whoever would care to read the accounts of an old woman when she was but a young and impassioned fool of a girl, driven by a need for justice and equality, yes, but—but also by something too dark to name. A dark sort of longing, a dark sort of love. Never to be realized, surely, and, I thought, never to be raised up again. But, as I learned during that awful summer night in 1848, the things we thought we’d buried have a way of lurching after us.

That summer had been the stuff of nightmares, of fevered dreams, of unheard cries in the thick night air. It was the heat that broke us, and the mosquitoes, their relentless bites and buzzing. My husband had thought the country would be relaxing for me; he sent me to our new homestead to fix it up, ready it for our family, enjoy it by myself for a few weeks before the chaos of life returned.

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