Epidemic of the Living Dead

by John Russo

  The reverend started chanting, “The dead must be spiked! The dead must be spiked!”

  Pete sneered at him from behind the crime scene tape and said, “It’s been sixteen years, Reverend. Let it go. Get a life.”

  True, it had been sixteen years since the Chapel Grove outbreak, but many other towns across the United States had been hit since then. The plague was far from being wiped out.

  And Reverend Carnes had recently been indicted for conducting a burial service in which a deceased child had been spiked while she lay in her coffin, with the consent of the mother and father.

  Eyeing the cross-shaped spikes and the wooden mallet in the bitter, gray-haired cleric’s thick fingers, Bill said, “You’re already facing charges for this kind of thing, Reverend Carnes. Please turn around and leave peacefully so we won’t have to arrest you again.”

  Carnes shouted a warning. “You are standing in the way of the Lord’s work, and you will pay with your immortal souls!” He stepped back from the yellow crime scene tape and began muttering prayers as he eyed Bill and Pete with disdain.

  Just then a black van pulled up in the alley that ran past the backyard. The van was spray-painted with silvery satanic symbols and emblazoned with the name of a rock band: DARIUS & THE DEMONS.

  “For Christ’s sake!” Pete growled. “Just what we need!”

  “My sentiments exactly,” Bill adamantly agreed.

  A dismayed look on his face, Reverend Carnes turned and called out to the blond, handsome, insolent-looking teenager behind the wheel. “What are you doing here, Darius?”

  “On my way to school. Got a police-band radio in here. Thought I’d stop by and scope out what’s goin’ on.”

  “There’s death here. Show some respect. Be on your way.”

  Darius snickered, pointedly eyeing the mallet and spikes that Carnes was wielding. “What’s the matter, Reverend? Afraid of another plague?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”

  Darius flashed a flippant grin and said, “They’re coming to get you, Reverend!” Then he peeled out and sped down the alley.

  Pete and Bill shook their heads ruefully. They suspected that Darius Hornsby and his clique of “bad boy” wannabes were behind a rash of break-ins in some of the more upscale neighborhoods of Chapel Grove, and the cops felt it was a matter of time before they would do something worse.

  Bill went up to Carnes and asked, “What was that all about, Reverend? You probably know that Darius Hornsby isn’t one of our favorite people.”

  Carnes didn’t answer right away. He seemed to be mulling something over. Then he said, “I need to have a word with you. I have some crucial information about the Haleys, and it has to do with that devilish young man.”

  Bill said, “Don’t think you can hit me with unfounded suppositions or biblical revelations. If you want to make a statement that has a foundation in reality, come down to the station.”

  “I’ll do that,” Carnes said. “I assure you I’m not your enemy, Detective Curtis. There are ominous things transpiring behind your back.”

  He gestured for Bill to duck under the crime scene tape and follow him out toward the alley. Then, lowering his voice to a confiding level, he said, “I can tell you how Amy got the ugly scar on her shoulder. Ron and Daisy became good God-fearing folks after they extricated themselves from the clutches of that perverse band they were hooked up with. They returned to Jesus and were reborn. I welcomed them into my congregation. Daisy was a volunteer at my day care center. In return for her help, I enrolled Amy free of charge, and now the poor little girl is dead. The whole family is dead, and I think I know why.”

  “How did you know the whole family was dead?” Bill shot back at him.

  “Darius isn’t the only one who listens to police calls. Anytime there’s a death, I have to try to get permission from family members to pray over the body and make sure it doesn’t arise.”

  “With those damned spikes of yours!”

  “You shouldn’t disparage the Lord’s work, Detective. Don’t you believe in God?”

  “My beliefs are my own business.”

  “Well, I can tell you for a fact that when Amy Haley was about four years old, she got into a fight with Darius Hornsby, and he bit her quite hard. Bit her till she bled.”

  “Did you take her to a doctor?”

  “She stopped crying after I put medicinal salve and a gauze bandage on her little shoulder, and Daisy was there and didn’t want to make a big fuss over it. She was anxious to be liked by the other parents, including the Hornsbys. I phoned Darius’s mother and told her what he had done, and she sighed and dismissed it by saying he was a just a willful child. Spoiled brat was more like it, in my mind. From that time on, I’ve always felt that there’s something wrong with Darius, something congenital. And he’s become quite the juvenile delinquent, hasn’t he?”

  Pete Danko ducked under the crime scene tape and said, “Sure has. Petty theft. Bullying. Vandalism. If I had my way, he’d be in juvenile court, but his old man bails him out every time.”

  “He’s spoiled rotten,” said Carnes. “Too much money for his own good. His parents spent a fortune buying him and his snotty friends guitars and drums and weird costumes.”

  “They let ’em play in bars, too,” said Pete. “I heard them once and had to walk out. They made my ears hurt.”

  “It’s the devil’s music!” Carnes spat. “They dress up like a bunch of satanists! Darius still comes to my church with his parents, and to my great surprise he has joined my youth group—but I don’t welcome him. He’s a bad influence. Kids gravitate to him as if he has a mystical hold over them. The Bible tells us about evil spirits, and I’m afraid he’s got one inside him. Not just him, but his friends, too.”

  “Listen, Reverend,” Bill told him, “we don’t need evil spirits to make us do evil. We come up with plenty of it on our own.”

  “Too deep for me,” Pete said. “I’ll see you at the station, Bill. Don’t go anywhere without talking with me first.”

  Bill wondered if he should say, Yes, master. But he kept his mouth shut.

  Carnes said, “Your boss is a good man. This town is lucky to have him.”

  Grudgingly, Bill supposed that was true. But he didn’t say so.

  “Come to my church at seven tonight,” Carnes pleaded. “You really need to hear what I have to say. I sense that you, too, are a very good person, Detective Curtis, even though you act like an unbeliever.”

  “It’s not an act,” Bill said bluntly.

  He really didn’t want to give Carnes the time of day, mainly because he didn’t believe that religious fanatics had a habit of living in the real world. But his curiosity and sense of duty got the better of him, and he showed up at the so-called Church of Lazarus Risen that evening, hoping that Carnes actually might have something pertinent to tell him. He sat in one of the pews and listened while the clergyman stripped his soul bare, speaking fervently and breaking into tears. He revealed that after he left the Haleys’ home that afternoon, he prostrated himself before the altar and prayed till he felt like he was sweating blood. “I’m under a terrible load of guilt,” he told Bill. “I hold myself greatly responsible for what happened to the Haley family.”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself, Reverend. Nobody made Ron Haley do what he did. He must’ve been mentally ill.”

  “No! It was I! I planted the seeds and stood back and let them grow!”

  “What exactly do you mean by that?” Bill said, more interested than before.

  “It was just three weeks ago,” Reverend Carnes said, “that I asked Ron to come to the church, and I conveyed my suspicion that Amy’s soul might be unclean. I told him that, as the family’s pastor, I had been keeping a close watch over her ever since, as a little girl, she was bitten on her shoulder by Darius Hornsby. Then I asked him to look out for any signs that Amy was in thrall to the Evil One. He denied that any such thing could be happening. But I insisted that in cas
e she might give herself over to Satan, or even if he should have some fear of that inclination taking root, then he and Daisy must let me perform a preemptive exorcism, and in the meantime we must all pray for her immortal soul!”

  “Look, Reverend,” Bill said, “you’ve let the fear of the plague make you paranoid. You’re an intelligent man. If there’s a God, and if he’s as merciful as you claim, he wouldn’t let Satan take over the soul of an innocent child.”

  “But Satan preys on the vulnerable among us,” Carnes said. “There is an eternal battle between God and the devil, and sometimes the devil wins.”

  “I don’t believe in any of that,” Bill said.

  “I know you don’t, but Ron Haley did. What do you think of this? Just three days before his death, he came to me sobbing that his daughter seemed to be more and more distant from him and his wife. He said that Amy and Daisy used to have fun together, doing things like going shopping or cleaning the house, or going to the movies. But now Amy had changed for the worst. He caught her ripping the pages out of her hymn book and trying to flush them down the toilet, but the toilet got clogged up and he had to call the plumber.”

  Appalled by these fantastic speculations, Bill Curtis wasn’t sure what to say. He knew it wouldn’t do him any good to point out to the reverend that the Bible contained much that was worthwhile, but was also riddled with Iron Age superstitions.

  Carnes said, “Ron was in extreme anguish, and we both agreed that I would perform an exorcism this coming Sunday. But now, just days before the exorcism would’ve taken place, the entire family has been wiped out. Ron must have felt it necessary to kill Amy and the demon inside her.” He rolled his eyes toward the heavens and pursed his lips tightly, as if questioning his own words. Then tears rolled down his cheeks as he said, “But what if I was wrong? What if the poor little girl wasn’t possessed at all, but was suffering from some sort of mental illness?”

  Bill wanted to say that it was rather too late in the game for Carnes to have that insight, but it would be cruel to grind it in. The damage had already been done. It was quite plausible that the worm of doubt that the Bible-thumping pastor had planted in Ron Haley’s mind indeed had caused Ron to destroy himself, his loving wife, and his cherished little girl. Bill wished that he could console Carnes in some way, but the truth, as he saw it, was that the guilt that Carnes felt on his conscience was well placed. Fanatical religion was to blame for much of the evil in the world, on and on and down through the centuries, forever and ever, amen.

  Meanwhile, Satan got blamed for the evil in the hearts and minds of men.

  Most people did not want to face the fact that we’re down here on our own, and it’s up to us to make the best of it and stop slaughtering one another.

  Now our own dead had turned against us. And if the undead were to be cured, or at least defeated, it would be done by rational methods, not by superstition.

  CHAPTER 21

  The day after the Haleys’ murder-suicide, when Bill came home for dinner, Lauren told him that the scar on Jodie’s arm was suddenly acting up again. It hadn’t bothered her ever since that wonderful day when her allergies had cleared up, but now it was itching and stinging.

  Hearing this was like a slap in the face to Bill. Over the years since Jodie was pronounced allergy free and had recovered so much from PTSD, he had dared to cautiously hope that the anguish of the past would stay buried.

  He asked Lauren, “Do we still have any of the salve Dr. Miller gave us?”

  “It got old, and I threw it out,” she said, biting her lip nervously. “The scar is inflamed. Oh, God! Things were going so well! I should’ve known it wouldn’t last.”

  He hugged her and caressed her face and hair, her tears wetting his own face as he did so. When he stepped back to take off his jacket and put his gun and holster in a locked cabinet, she continued to weep softly, looking utterly dismayed. It made him feel helpless. He said, “Try not to overreact. Maybe the inflammation will go away overnight.”

  “We’re never going to be a normal family!” she wailed. “We’re snakebitten, no matter how hard we try!”

  “Don’t freak out. I’ll go up and see her.”

  “She’s so upset she wouldn’t even talk to me,” Lauren said. “I made roast beef and mashed potatoes with gravy, her favorite, but she won’t even come down and eat.”

  With considerable trepidation, he went upstairs to see Jodie. He knew that any hint of an allergic reaction to anything might cause her to be hit with a flashback. Might even plunge her back into full-fledged PTSD. Why did this have to happen, he asked himself. He was aware that Jodie still carried her EpiPen at all times, just to be safe, but her latest blood and skin tests had continued to astonish her allergist. For the past several years now, she had stopped reacting to substances that used to make her blister. But now Bill was afraid that the sudden burning and itching of that old bite mark was a very bad sign.

  Jodie was in bed in her darkened bedroom, and when he quietly opened the door and she saw him silhouetted by the light in the hallway, she cried out, “I hate Darius Hornsby! I wish he’d get crushed to death in that silver van of his!”

  Bill went to her bedside, saying, “Come on, honey, you don’t mean that. He was just a child. He didn’t know what he was doing.”

  Looking down upon her, he felt his love for her aching in his chest. She was so innocently beautiful and feminine, it seemed a travesty that she should be anything less than flawless, in a physical sense. She had her sore arm lying outside of the covers, and in the ambient light Bill could see pus oozing from the remnants of her scar.

  “It’s all over school what happened to the Haleys,” she snapped. “And all the kids know Amy had a scar on her shoulder—and do you know who gave it to her? Darius Hornsby, that’s who! I hate him!”

  “It was a long time ago,” Bill said. “You were just a little kid.”

  They both fell silent for a long moment. Then she blurted, “Darius is insufferable! Half the girls in school are hot for him! He acts like he can have any one of us with a snap of his fingers!”

  “Well, you don’t need to pay attention to him. In fact, I’d prefer if you didn’t. He’s off to a bad start in life, and who knows where he’ll end up.”

  “Well, I hate him!” Jodie said.

  “Your mother said she’ll call Dr. Miller,” Bill consoled. “I’m sure he’ll have something that’ll soothe your blister.”

  “I hope so,” said Jodie. “But I doubt it.”

  He kissed her cheek, then went back downstairs, sat in the kitchen with Lauren, and told her the gist of the conversation between him and Jodie. He tried to sound comforting and not reveal how upset he really was. He somehow had a gut feeling that worse things were about to happen to him and his family, and he was trying to ward it off by reminding himself that he didn’t believe in ESP or paranormal glimpses into the future.

  Still looking terribly distraught, Lauren said, “I’m glad she still dislikes the Hornsby boy. I still hear lots of bad things about him. I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I can’t. I don’t trust him.”

  “Neither do I,” Bill agreed. “He’s still a bad boy, but he’s older now and can do even more damage. Good thing I’m a cop. I have ways of getting in his face.”

  The next day, while he was at his desk at the police station, he got a phone call from his wife, and he was surprised that she didn’t sound so badly shaken anymore. “Jodie just got back from an appointment with Dr. Miller,” she said brightly, “and we both a feel a lot better now. He examined her scar, swabbed it and applied an antibiotic ointment and a gauze bandage, and said there was nothing to worry about.”

  “Is he sure she’s going to be okay?”

  “He sounded very confident. He said the scar was just irritated by something. Maybe even just sunlight, or possibly the soap we’re using. He said the irritation will go away.”

  “I’m glad you sound calmer and more at ease, honey.”
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br />   “Well, Dr. Miller was reassuring. I always feel better when Jodie is under his care.”

  “I do too.”

  “It would be so nice if Jodie could get herself on track and you and I could both relax a little. We deserve it. Don’t you think so, Bill?”

  “I sure do. I love you. I love you both.”

  That afternoon, he was scheduled to testify in a robbery case, and had to shoulder his way through a throng gathered in front of the courthouse. Reporters and camera crews were covering a large crowd cheering for Reverend Carnes and his lawyer, Bennett Stein, who had appeared on the courthouse steps. It turned out that Carnes had been acquitted of a past charge against him of Mutilating a Corpse.

  Appalled by these kinds of goings-on in a supposedly civilized society, Bill looked on as Attorney Stein made a short, lawyerly speech, aimed at convincing the crowd and the reporters, in his words, that “justice was done today and freedom of religion was protected.” Then Stein stood back as Carnes ranted, “If we fail to heed the Word of God, the dead will rise again! All sinners must repent! The dead must be spiked to prevent them from arising before Judgment Day!”

  Although Carnes and Stein obviously shared the same religious beliefs, in appearance they were a study in contrasts. The reverend was tall and gaunt, with a shock of startlingly thick black hair dotted with gray and pulled into a long ponytail. The lawyer was short, jowly and rotund, with a bad comb-over blowing in the wind, revealing a pink pate. They were both fervent speakers, and Bill could easily see how convincing they could be in the pulpit or in front of the bench, by the sheer force of their impassioned certitude.