A Zombie's History of the United States (19 page)

Despite the White House’s best efforts to suppress the truth about President McKinley’s final moments, this
New York Times
cartoon depicting Roosevelt fighting what looks like a zombinated McKinley, published October 8, 1903, indicates that it may not have been a well-kept secret.

McKinley’s political harem was in a panic. The president dying so soon after reelection was bad enough, but his replacement…Teddy. For all the admirers he had, Roosevelt had just as many detractors, especially within the government. Many feared what the antitrust, anticorruption man-of-the-people cowboy might do once in office. In this panic, Benjamin Pomeroy, one of McKinley’s aids, proposed zombinating the president before he succumbed to his wounds. McKinley’s men wagered that they could claim the president was simply bed-ridden, too sick to ever greet the public, but well enough to govern and sign documents. In the pre-television, pre-radio era it was not entirely unthinkable, and there was a zombie nearby (it had been on display at the exposition). It is doubtful Pomeroy’s charade could have worked for long, but McKinley’s men were foiled before they ever had a chance to test it out. Foiled by…Teddy.

Roosevelt had quickly boarded a train for Buffalo after learning that McKinley had taken a turn for the worse. When he arrived in the city, Pomeroy informed him that McKinley was now fine, but unavailable to take visitors. When Roosevelt was denied entry again the following day, he grew irate. Roosevelt described the ensuing events in a letter to his older sister, Anna:

As my blood was up enough to box the twit on the ears, a loud noise came from the room where the President—I was told—was resting. Sounded to me like a fight, yet Pomeroy acted the cool part telling me to return later. I heard an unmistakable scream at which point I gave the chap a square smack in the teeth and entered the room to find several esteemed men of our government trying to subdue the President with ropes and a net like he were an angry black bear… A zombi! Their fast one failed, it was evident that the President must be put down like a rapid dog. A man went to retrieve a rifle but I stopped him. It came quick upon me, a comprehension that destiny had knocked and nudged me to this crossroads. Does the alpha lion give up his position in the pride because his term ends? Lions elect by combat. So did America on that day!

The other men assuredly thought Roosevelt was crazy when he asked to be left alone with zombie McKinley, so that they “might make a battle of it,” and it is a testament to how little they wanted Roosevelt to succeed McKinley that they granted him the wish, likely praying Roosevelt would need to be put down himself soon.

The President came at me, teeth bared like a jungle cat. The zombi always aims towards the throat and head, so I treated the President not unlike a boxer—though one who aims with his face, not his glove. It was a bully brawl! Old and doughy as the President was as a man, now zombi he was quite formidable. Thankfully he stood an inch or two low my height, allowing me to eventually get him locked by the neck with my arm! …wielding him around the room, avoiding those fingernails again and again I struggled to find something I might remove the President’s head with. As the room was wholly without any weapons I was forced to make due with a paper guillotine in the corner.

Roosevelt emerged from the room with McKinley’s head, which he continued to hold while being sworn in an hour later. Roosevelt wanted to keep McKinley’s body to mount and stuff it, but McKinley’s family denied the request. Roosevelt agreed to keep the zombination matter under wraps, at least from the press. The official story was that McKinley had peacefully slipped from this earth.

Save the Zombies

The zombi is as much a part of America’s natural wild as the buffalo.

—Theodore Roosevelt, from a speech to Congress, 1907

Roosevelt was one of our most productive presidents. Energetic and beaming with personal magnetism, Roosevelt culled a dedicated following of political allies and a broad base of public support. Abroad he showed the world the might of the American Navy with the Great White Fleet and built the Panama Canal, opening a new door for global trade. At home he broke trusts, improved conditions for laborers, and established regulations for the railroad and the food and drug industries—though the issue closest to Roosevelt’s heart was that of American conservation.

THE TEDDY ZOMBIE

In May 1902, President Roosevelt was partaking in an organized zombie hunt in Missouri. Roosevelt’s attendants cornered, hobbled, and restrained a zombie to tree and then called Roosevelt to the site and suggested that he should shoot it. Roosevelt refused to do so, deeming this unsportsmanlike. After reading a
Washington Post
piece reporting on the event, Morris Michtom, a Brooklyn candy shop owner and amateur toy maker, was inspired to create a new toy. He made a little stuffed zombie and put it in his shop window with a sign that read “Teddy’s Zomby,” after sending one of the stuffed zombies to Roosevelt and receiving permission to use the president’s name. The toy was a flop. No children wanted to cuddle a zombie it would seem.

Fortunately for Michtom, later that same year a very similar incident occurred in Mississippi involving the president and a black bear. This time Michtom had much better luck with the “Teddy bear.” The few remaining original Teddy’s Zombys have sold for upward of $750,000 among collectors.

The first conservation president, Roosevelt set aside more federal land for national parks than all of his predecessors combined (a whopping 230 million acres). He established the United States Forest Service, championed the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902, created five national parks, signed the 1906 Antiquities Act, under which he proclaimed eighteen new U.S. National Monuments, and established the Shoshone National Forest, the nation’s first. But all of Roosevelt’s formidable powers and enthusiasm were no match for the American people’s fear and disgust of zombies.

By the time Roosevelt had taken office, zombies were all but extinct. Newer generations growing up in big cities never knew what it was like to find a zombie shambling in their apartment hallway. Outside of Indian reservations, one was lucky to ever spot a zombie roaming in the wild, let alone actually be attacked by one.

In 1907, Roosevelt tried to rally support for the creation of a national zombie preserve. At the time, the entire eastern portion of Oklahoma was an unorganized territory, which Roosevelt thought would be perfect. Roosevelt got absolutely no support on Capital Hill, and representatives from the areas bordering the proposed reserve were up in arms. Roosevelt made a second bid that same year to turn the unorganized territory of Alaska into a preserve, but it would have been incredibly costly to round up and transport undead to the area, when compared with simply de-animating them. Not to mention the Canadians, who had invested a lot in keeping the zombie menace below their southern border, were not thrilled with the idea of hordes of zombies suddenly being dumped near their harder-to-defend northern woods.

United States and Territories, 1907

In a final attempt to rally support, Roosevelt said before Congress:

Defenders of the short-sighted men who in their paranoia and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all zombis, sometimes seek to champion them by saying “the people want no zombis.” And that may be so, but what of the unborn people. The “greatest good for the greatest number” applies to the number within the womb of time, compared to which those now alive form but an insignificant fraction. Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of the zombis and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method.

His dreams were not to be realized, and the zombie population would continue to decline. It was partly due to frustration over this failure that Roosevelt decided not to run for reelection.

Demise

The old lion is dead.

—Archie Roosevelt, telegram to his siblings, 1919

Roosevelt came out of political retirement to found the Progressive Party (fondly called the Bull Moose Party) to oppose his previous protégé, Howard Taft, and Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson, in the 1912 election. It was during this campaign that Roosevelt famously delivered a speech
after
being shot by an assassin. Though resoundingly defeating Taft, Roosevelt ultimately lost to Wilson. To shake off the dust of the political world, Roosevelt embarked on a South American adventure with his son Kermit and Brazilian explorer Cândido Rondon. Roosevelt was convinced that there must be zombies native to South America, hidden away within the rain forest, despite reports to the contrary.

Roosevelt brought Kermit “in order to make a man of him,” Roosevelt recorded in his journal for the expedition:

It is in the base nature of every man to desire and need to take the life of another man. Our being has not evolved beyond this, but our culture has, which has given our modern man the lassitude and dissatisfaction that characterizes our times. It is this reason above all else that the zombi is essential in our world. In the kill of a zombi, our savage lower self finds repose and fulfillment without resorting to war. No man has truly lived until he has battled and triumphed over a zombi.

Roosevelt had six children—Alice, from his first marriage, and Ted, Kermit, Ethel, Archie, and Quentin from the second. Roosevelt famously had zombies captured out West and delivered to the White House and kept in a special chamber on the lowest floor. Here the president would wrestle the creatures, often while entertaining guests, foreign ambassadors, fellow politicians, and even Booker T. Washington, the first African American to enter the White House as a guest.

For Roosevelt, it was important that his male children learn to fight zombies. Ted Jr. had nearly been bitten when the muzzle was ripped off his sparring zombie. Kermit had always been too scared, which was a disappointment to Roosevelt. This South American trip was likely Kermit’s way of appeasing his father.

Kermit was off the hook though, as Roosevelt did not find any zombies (many explorers have searched for indigenous zombies in the Amazon, to no avail). The party did manage to chart the route of the Rio da Dúvida (River of Doubt), which was later renamed Rio Roosevelt in the former president’s honor. During the journey Roosevelt contracted malaria from a leg wound and, running a 103-degree fever and losing fifty pounds, nearly died. Though he pulled through and made a recovery, his remaining years were plagued by reoccurrences of malaria and leg inflammations so severe that they required surgery.

Roosevelt was a vocal supporter of the Allies when World War I began in 1914, encouraging America to enter the fray, and encouraging his youngest son Quentin to join the military’s newly developed air force. When Quentin was shot down behind German lines in 1918, Roosevelt was devastated. He seemed to slip into a prolonged delirium, detaching from reality, randomly quoting long passages of poetry and running about the house at night naked. Then on January 6, 1919, Kermit received a telegram from his mother, Edith, to come to the house immediately.