Zombie Policy

Driving The Desk

 Edwin Miltenberger had been a claims adjuster at the Lincoln Fire and Casualty Company for 5 years. An average student in college, he had no specific aspirations for glory. He lived with his divorced mother in a small house just outside of town, rarely dated... ok, he NEVER dated. The most action he had gotten in the last few years was when his uncle Larry's dog Rosco humped his leg at Thanksgiving. Social issues aside, he was good at learning rules. Studying insurance became a breeze for him when he started an internship with Lincoln. Within 18 months, they trained him to start out as an outside property adjuster. He handled small hail damage and wind claims for a while and got to know the routine coverage information and claim handling standards used by Lincoln, and after a couple of file audits and performance reviews, he was assigned to the Form Z department.

When the frequency of Animated Corpse Unit claims or ACU's began to increase 8 years ago, there was certainly outrage and fear, but when people realized that the incidents were not going to involve mass infections of populations, they began to get just a bit complacent about zombies. Oh and by the way, "zombies" are what people on the street call them. The media never uses that word. Law enforcement never does either, and insurance companies absolutely, under no circumstances EVER use the word "zombies". They are Animated Corpse Units, or ACU's. I'm not even kidding.

As time went on, you would hear about an ACU event once every couple of months or so somewhere in the United States. Most of them were concentrated in the south, but the truth is they could happen anywhere. They tended to happen in warmer climates like the southeast in particular, where high heat and humidity are common, but they also took place up north during summer months when the thermometer topped 90 degrees.

ACU's do attack people, but its not like the movies. They don't really feed on them. They aren't that bright really and they just tend to do damage. In most cases, the damage is fatal, but not always. They also damage property. They kick walls in and scratch the flooring and they really mess up the carpets. They also break windows, smash artwork and fine china, and they tend to leave a lot of bio-hazard waste behind. That stuff is a bitch to clean up.

It didn't take long for insurance companies to see an opportunity. For them, where there is risk, there is opportunity. A few small insurers started with the first versions of an ACU policy which primarily offered coverage for damage to property like homes and smaller items like furniture, artwork and collectibles. Eventually coverage was also added for autos because they tended to wreck the interiors if they turned inside the car, and they also had a bad habit of scratching the hell out of the paint.

The biggest development was made when companies began to offer an accidental death and dismemberment endorsement. Once a few of them offered it, it didn't take long before state legislatures started to require all companies that offered ACU coverage to have offer this endorsement as well. Yeah, premiums went up, and losses started to add up. Today, ACU coverage is a losing proposition for most insurers. But they have bitten the forbidden fruit and most state regulations won't allow them to back out of their programs.

As for Edwin, this was a new experience for him. He had some of the ACU training, but not all of it. Especially not the training that had to do with ACU encounters, not that he would ever have to worry about that, because now he was just a desk adjuster. He simply reviewed claim documentation and then reviewed the policy with no real work in the field. Today he was prepared for meetings and the boredom of his new desk job. Edwin was an inside claim examiner. The pay was better, but now he was chained to a desk. Not that Edwin was an outdoorsy type. At 5'-10" he carried more than his share of excess baggage, weighing in at an even 245 lbs. He knew he had to get in shape but to Edwin, that really sounded like a whole lot of work.