I need a breather from “and look at this whopper he told.” Here’s a movie review: This weekend we watched Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. This horror-comedy love story works.

A few caveats: First, it was late and I had one eye on my laptop and one eye on the TV — I had some loose ends to tie up, so we turned on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies basically as background noise. This made it easy for me to look away at the really really gross zombie scenes. Second, I have never read Jane Austen, but apparently the screenplay stays close to the original (mine lovely bride interpreted many of the inside nuances for me). Third, in case you missed the first caveat, I had one eye on my laptop, which allowed me to change screens if necessary (not a big fan of disgusting).

Post-Black Death England, pre-Victorian era, zombies infected the English landscape. These all died from the plague. Normal rules apply — if they bite you, you become one of them. The English live among these zombies at their peril. One Mr. Bennett raises five daughters in this environment. However, he wisely sent them to China in their youth to study martial arts, as preparation to live in a countryside populated with zombies. These girls learned to fight. They kick, fling knives, wield swords, and are experts at dismembering zombies. The Bennett sisters are second in their discipline only to Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who has money, a single daughter, and a reputation as the preeminent zombie killer in all England.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies tells the story of these five Bennett sisters and the pressure they feel from mother and society to marry money, even as they live among zombies. In particular, Elizabeth Bennet finds herself strangely attracted to and simultaneously repulsed by Mr. Darcy — a fierce zombie killer. The tension between the two is immediate. In one scene Mr. Darcy deploys carrion flies to detect the dead flesh of zombies and Elizabeth Bennett shows off her lightning-fast speed by snatching each fly from the air to affront their owner. In another Mr. Darcy condescends to Miss Bennett, saying, “A woman must have a thorough knowledge of singing, dancing, and the art of war,” admitting he never read The Art of War in the original Wu dialect. Elizabeth Bennett answers him in fluent Wu that he has then never read The Art of War.

A character named Lieutenant George Wickham comes closest to Doug Wilson in this stylish adaption. He’s a greedy churchgoing serial liar who secretly coordinates the zombies to take over England. Lt. Wickham also fuels Elizabeth Bennett’s contempt for Mr. Darcy by feeding her one falsehood after another, ostensibly to win her sympathy. He fancies himself the humble & noble hero of a tragic narrative wherein Mr. Darcy deprived him of his inheritance. Yet he would rather suffer this terrible wrong at Mr. Darcy’s hands than do anything that could be construed as insulting. In reality he’s a snake.

Mr. Darcy eventually yields to his affection for Elizabeth Bennett by proposing. She brutally (literally) says no, explaining in detail her disdain for him, based largely upon the lies she heard from Lt. Wickham. Mr. Darcy sends her a touching letter that unfolds the complete truth — upon which Elizabeth Bennett realizes she may have driven away the one. He’s handsome, has money, and kills zombies.

I won’t spoil the end, except that a final battle ensues — a zombie apocalypse. Blades cut. Heads lop. Limbs fly. Happily, the final scene shows two Bennett sisters getting married in a joint ceremony. And as they leave the wedding grounds, while the credits scroll, the director sends clear notice that he plans a sequel.

The story in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies instantly rivets viewer. The dialogue is clever. The acting excellent. The costumes perfect. And the score outstanding. To quote another review, “this strange mix of genres not only works, it rocks. . . . If there’s a sequel, I’ll be there.”

Me too.

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Moscow-Pullman Daily News front-page story, April 29, 2013: UFO crashes in Moscow, Idaho. Zombies invade:

Preparing for the worst

Local first responders participate in mass casualty, search and rescue drills

By Meredith Metsker, Daily News staff writer

Local emergency personnel had a busy day Saturday performing several training drills to give first responders the opportunity to practice for a real-life catastrophe.

The day began at 9:30 a.m. with a simulated mass casualty situation at Moscow High School with a zombie/UFO crash theme. About 40 MHS and University of Idaho students volunteered to be “victims.”

Moscow police officers entered the high school first, performing a security sweep and taking down the “bad guys,” who were armed with Nerf guns. After the building was secured, volunteer firefighters and paramedics attended to the victims. EMTs labeled victims, using a triage assessment system, based on the extent of their injuries.

Rick Andersen, a paramedic with the Moscow Volunteer Fire Department, said the triage system is necessary to keep hospitals and paramedics from being overloaded in a mass casualty situation.

“Triage is all about getting the critical patients the care they need first, dealing with other patients later,” Andersen said.

About 30 patients were transported to a simulated emergency room at Gritman Medical Center during the 1½ hour drill.

Moscow Volunteer Fire Department EMS Division Chief Dave Reynolds said he thought the drill was successful and provided good training for emergency personnel. Participating agencies included the Moscow Volunteer Fire Department, Moscow Police Department, Latah County Search and Rescue and the Troy, Potlatch, Deary, Genesee and Kendrick-Juliaetta ambulance companies.

The mass casualty drill’s theme, zombie/UFO crash, received harsh criticism when it was first announced months ago, but Reynolds said he chose the theme for a specific reason.

“We wanted to have fun with it. Some of the stuff we see in these events in the real world is very sad. You’ve seen the events in the news in the past couple months and the past couple years,” he said. “There’s some very tragic events out there. We just didn’t want to drag everybody through that tragedy again, so we lightened it up.”

UI students Cody Earl and Courtney Rupert volunteered as victims for the drill and said it made them feel safer, knowing how first responders will react in a mass casualty situation.

“It was pretty fun,” Earl said. “It was kind of cool to see what they do in serious situations like that and be on the inside of something like that.”

“It’s good to see that they know what they’re doing and they’ll be there,” Rupert said.

Andersen said he felt better prepared for mass casualty situation after participating in Saturday’s drill.

“We’ve been training for this for years and to actually come out to a simulated event makes it a lot more real,” he said. “And we got a lot of good feedback from everybody working here. We worked well with other agencies. I feel that we’re much better prepared for a real event, God forbid it should ever happen.”

Later Saturday afternoon, volunteer firefighters teamed up with Latah County Search and Rescue, the American Red Cross, the Latah County Sheriff’s Mounted Posse, MedStar and Life Flight to perform a first-ever rough terrain evacuation drill at Robinson Park.

After practicing the rescue scenario with a mannequin first, volunteer firefighter Andrew Crossler volunteered to act as the stranded and wounded victim. Crossler was strapped into a rescue basket, also known as a litter, at the bottom of a hill while two other firefighters clipped their harnesses to the basket.

At the top of the hill, firefighters set up a two-rope haul system anchored to two trees. The ropes were then wrapped around the saddle horns of mounted posse horses, Deets and Dakota. The horses, ridden by Orrin Riebold and Dan Budvarson, pulled the weight of the basket and its carriers up the hill in just under seven minutes.

Crossler was then lifted into a rescue trailer hooked to the back of an ATV and transported to a helicopter.

Geoff Ewan, Moscow EMT and firefighter, said the rough-terrain evacuation exercise provided the first responders with a real-world application of their training.

“It keeps everybody on their toes and it’s good to do this instead of doing it inside the flat engine bay all the time,” Ewan said. “We haven’t really done this before, so if we ever have to do this in the future, we’ll have a better idea what we’re going to encounter.”

Reynolds called the inaugural evacuation drill an “unbelievable success.”

“It worked incredibly good,” he said. “It was fast. It was easy. The horses took a lot of work out of the process. They worked really well together. The whole thing went great.”

Latah County Search and Rescue also performed a man-tracking exercise Saturday morning at Robinson Park as a precursor to the rough-terrain evacuation drill.

Both drills involved about 200 total volunteers, some of whom began at 6 a.m. Saturday and worked until after 4 p.m., before finishing the day with dinner and a debriefing at Fire Station 2. The drills took about six months to plan.

Reynolds said because everyone participating was a volunteer, the drills didn’t cost any extra money to taxpayers.

Meredith Metsker can be reached at (208) 883-4628 or mmetskeratdnews.com. Follow her on Twitter at: @MeredithMetsker