by Tony Urban
The farm had been in his family for three generations counting Wim. His grandfather on his mother’s side was the first to break ground. He died when Wim was only four and Wim didn’t remember much about the man, couldn’t even recall his actual first name for certain. The male influence in Wim’s life had always been his Pa and even though they butted heads here and there, his respect long outlasted his life.
The old man was a firm believer that, if you worked hard enough and prayed long enough, anything was possible. When the farm failed after that bad summer when all the crops died, Pa could still work men one third his age into the ground. He seemed capable of living forever, but less than two years later he was the one in the ground. It wasn’t sickness that put him there, at least not the physical kind, but in the end it didn’t matter. Dead was dead regardless of the cause.
Wim was 13 when Pa passed and soon after he informed his mother he was dropping out of school to take care of the farm. She gave him a little slap on the mouth and that was the end of that. So the two of them, a teenage boy and his almost 70-year-old mother did the best they could to keep the family farm afloat. All things considered, they did an admirable job. The bills all got paid and the animals were always well tended too. They made enough money to survive, and that was all they needed.
Four years later, when Wim was a junior in high school, Mama’s sugar got out of control and she ended up in the hospital where they first cut off her toe, then her foot, then the bottom part of her leg. When they said there was a wound that wouldn’t heal on her other leg, she told them to pack their knives away for good. She never made it home.
Wim finished high school because he knew that’s what Mama would have wanted, but he turned down offers from three different colleges. For the last 17 years he hadn’t been away from the farm, or his animals, for more than a few hours at a time. In the absence of his parents, the pigs and chickens and cows had become his family. As much as he told himself they were all he needed, the loneliness wore on him. He’d go weeks at a time without talking to anyone but the livestock and now they were dead too and he was all alone.
The reminiscing wasn’t getting him anywhere though and Wim decided three days was long enough to sulk.
The bland, gray sky mirrored Wim’s mood. He hadn’t bothered to collect his mail in days. So, when he made the long walk up the dirt lane that connected his farm to the county road and found the mailbox empty, he was more than a little perturbed. He slammed the mailbox closed and turned back to face the farm when a scraping sound drew his attention.
The noise came from around the blind, tree-lined curve up the road and Wim could see nothing. Whatever was making all the racket was getting closer, so Wim crossed his arms and decided to wait and see.
It was only a few moments until the source revealed itself. The blue uniform would have been a dead giveaway but Wim didn’t need it to know the person staggering down the road was Hoyt Mabrey, the man who had been delivering mail to the farm for close 30 years.
Hoyt dragged the large mail sack behind him and the canvas scraping against the rough pavement was the object causing so much noise. It was an odd sight and Wim couldn’t quite understand it.
“Hoyt? Where’s your mail truck?”
Hoyt didn’t respond, he just kept walking down the road.
“Are you all right?”
Hoyt turned his head toward Wim and staggered toward him. As he came closer Wim saw that the man’s skin had taken on a sickly gray pallor. His mouth hung open like a door with a broken hinge and thick saliva, opaque with mucous, dribbled out.
When he was only a few yards away, Wim noticed the man’s eyes were as dull and as gray as his skin, but they were still seeing. He looked at Wim and a pained moan worked its way up his throat and fell out his mouth.
“Hoyt?”
The mailman was almost within arm’s length now and he reached out and swiped at Wim who felt the displaced air rush by his face. Wim also caught a whiff of Hoyt’s aroma and it was a scent that was common in the country - the smell of death.
“Oh my God.”
Wim took a step backwards, then another. The zombie kept coming.
Wim turned and ran down the dirt road to the farm. He outpaced Hoyt who progressed slowly, but steadily, still dragging the mail sack behind him like an anchor.
When he reached the barn, Wim grabbed the double-barrel shotgun he’d earlier used to destroy the rats. He’d reloaded it after disposing of them and, at that time, wondered why he even bothered. He flicked off the safety, then stood by the barn doors and watched the mailman trudge down the path.
Wim waited until Hoyt was about 10 yards away and within range, then fired a round of buckshot into the zombie’s chest.
The mailman staggered back a step as his blue uniform shirt disintegrated and a gaping wound appeared beside the “Hoyt” name tag.
With little hesitation, Hoyt lurched forward again. It was like something out of a movie or a nightmare. Wim could see bits of shattered ribs through the tattered ribbons of flesh on the zombie’s chest.
Wim had one more round left, and he allowed the mailman to get good and close. Hoyt was only a few feet away as Wim leveled off the barrel and aimed it at his head. Wim looked away as he squeezed the trigger but still caught the right side of the zombie’s head shearing off in his peripheral vision.
A splash of dark, coagulated blood and light gray brains shot out of the gap where Hoyt’s skull had gone missing. He toppled backward and landed on top of his mailsack.
Wim set the shotgun against the barn door and looked down at the dead mailman and wondered what to do next.
10
Grady O’Baker chewed his thin, bottom lip as he stood outside his boss’s closed office door. Ollie’s voice had summoned him over the showroom intercom a few minutes earlier. As always when he heard his name boom over the loudspeakers, his stomach turned sour. He raised his hand to knock, lowered it, then made a second attempt.
Please, Father in Heaven, don’t let this be anything bad. I’m trying so hard.
He gave a tepid rap just beside the nameplate declaring the space behind the door belonged to Oliver Benedict, CEO.
“It’s open!” Ollie barked.
Grady eased the steel door open and leaned inside. “You wanted to see me, Mr. Benedict?”
Ollie glanced up from a mountain of manila folders and waved him in. He was barely into his 30s but his ruddy red face carried the stress and blood pressure of someone 20 years older.
“Don’t stand there like you got your thumb stuck up your goddamn ass.”
Grady cringed at the blaspheme but tried not to show it as he stepped into the office. He started toward Ollie’s desk but Ollie pointed to the doorway. “Close the goddamn door!”
Grady did as told, then tiptoed across the room. He hesitated when he reached the chair. Ollie scowled and Grady took a seat. They sat there in silence for a moment while Ollie sorted through the stack of folders. Grady, all 5 feet 2 inches of him, felt like a boy waiting to be scolded by the principal.
Please give me strength, Father. I can withstand all adversity with your guidance.
Eventually, Ollie extracted a folder from the pile and waved it in Grady’s pale, worried face.
“You know what this is?” Ollie asked and didn’t wait for an answer. “Your personnel folder.”
Grady thought it was quite thick considering he’d only been working at Benedict Electronics for four months.
Ollie pulled out a fistful of yellow slips. “And these are customer complaints against you.”
Grady sucked in a mouthful of stale office air and the sour sickness in his belly turned into a molten lake of pain as one or more of his ulcers, sent up a geyser of acid. “I’m sorry, Mr. Benedict. I always try to do my best and treat the customers in a Godly manner.”
Ollie flipped through the complaints. “That’s the problem. ‘Salesman kept talking about God.’ ‘Asked where we went to church.’ ‘Asked us if we w
anted to pray with him.’ ‘Invited us to his church.’” He looked at Grady with visible disgust.
To Grady, these seemed the exact opposite of complaints. “I don’t understand, Sir.”
“With you, it’s always this holy roller Jesus Christ Almighty bullshit. People don’t want to be preached to. They just want to buy a goddamn TV and your job is to sell it to them. Nothing more.”
Why is he saying this? It’s like the world’s gone upside down. “But I… That’s my nature.”
“You’re fired, Grady.”
He thought he must have heard wrong. Fired? For being kind? For trying to share God’s love? “Sir? There must be a mistake.”
“Turn in your uniform shirts by the end of the week or they’ll be deducted from your final pay.” Ollie closed Grady’s folder and added it to a new, smaller pile. “It’s a goddamn shame you couldn’t fit in here. All you had to do was keep your mouth shut.”
Grady stared into Ollie’s tired, hazel eyes so long and intense the big man looked away. “The Devil has hold of you, Sir,” Grady said. “Avarice has turned your soul black and rotten but no one is beyond salvation. And I forgive you.”
“Fuck off.” Ollie took another folder, and that was Grady’s cue to go. As he fled the office, his former boss sneezed twice in rapid succession.
Grady turned around and said, without the slightest hint of sarcasm, “God bless you.”
The day-care smelled like poop and Grady said a silent prayer that the source was not his son. When Tara Charles, the iron-haired owner of Tender Tots, stepped into the room and met him with a scowl on her face, he suspected the worst. When he then saw that Josiah, his 10-year-old boy, was wearing lime green sweatpants two sizes too big rather than the khaki trousers he’d begun the day in, those suspicions were confirmed.
Ten children, most under the age of five, played with a variety of toys, games and each other. Only Josiah sat alone. He faced into the corner of the playroom and stacked wooden blocks with big, primary colored letters. His wood tower spelled out SVAEKC.
“I wasn’t expecting you until six,” Tara said.
Grady had rehearsed what to say about that during his half-hour bus ride. “I was laid off today,” was the most diplomatic and least emasculating response he’d been able to summon.
Tara’s icy stare thawed, slightly. “I’m sorry to hear that. The job market is… challenging, right now.”
Grady knew this all too well. Before being hired to sell appliances and electronics, he’d been unemployed for 14 months. “Yes, it is. But God will provide. He always does.”
Tara snorted and the look on her face said a sarcastic comment was about to come, but Grady looked past her, to his son. A long, yellow string of snot hung from the boy’s right nostril. Tara followed Grady’s gaze.
“Joe had an accident no more than an hour ago. His pants are still in the laundry. You can wait if you like.”
It annoyed Grady that she called him Joe. He’d asked her several times not to, and he sometimes wondered if she did it to irritate him. “No, I’ll get them another time.”
She nodded. “I’d appreciate it if you could bring more diapers. Good ones from here on. Those generic ones aren’t adequate at all.”
“I will. I’m sorry.” He chewed his lip before continuing, “But I must take Josiah out of day-care. Until I find a new job.”
Tara’s frost returned. “He’ll have to go back on the waiting list.”
“I understand. God willing the wait won’t be long.”
“And you’ll be billed for this entire week per your contract.”
“Yes, ma’am. Charge it to my card.”
Tara turned away and moved to a group of toddlers, never even casting a glance toward Josiah. Grady crossed to his son and drummed his fingers on the top of Josiah’s thin, blond hair which was a perfect match for Grady’s own. The boy’s attention didn’t leave the blocks, not even when Grady wiped the snot streamer from his face.
“Hey now, Josiah. It’s time to go home.”
Josiah ignored or didn’t hear him - Grady was never sure which - and stacked another block. Q.
Grady had to reach under his armpits and lift him off the floor. The sweatpants threatened to fall but the bulky diaper the boy wore, which Grady noticed was adorned with pink cartoon unicorns, gave enough resistance to hold them up.
Grady led his son toward the exit and opened the door. Tara didn’t respond as they left and Grady said a silent prayer that God would teach her compassion. She certainly lacked it at the present.
Home was a three-room apartment of approximately 200 square feet. Josiah’s toys - puzzles mostly, the boy had a real talent for them, cluttered the living room slash kitchenette . Grady and Josiah shared the lone bedroom. All together, it was about the size of a cheap motel room and it cost Grady almost $800 a month. He didn’t know how they’d be able to afford even that much if he didn’t get another job in short order, but God always provided.
They’d had a real home once, in a time Grady wistfully thought of as “before”. In that home, there’d been a wife and a mother. Her name was Ruth which she always said was a plain name for a plain Jane but to Grady she was anything but plain. She’d been the girl of his dreams when he met her at church camp when he was 17 and she was 15. It took until the next summer before he could convince her to give him a chance, but once she agreed, Grady never looked back.
They married the summer after Ruth graduated high school and for a few years everything was as close to perfect as he could have imagined. Yes, the baby they both longed for wasn’t quick to come, but all in due time. God had a plan.
Six years and no babies later, Ruth had fallen into a deep abyss. They tried fertility treatments and medicines but nothing seemed to matter. When Grady insisted they keep praying, Ruth admitted that she had lost faith. Her words shook Grady, but he rebounded. After that, he prayed not only for a child, but for God to come back into Ruth’s life.
On one of the darkest nights, when Ruth was away with friends leaving Grady all alone and everything was silent, he begged God to hear him. For God to answer his prayers. And God did answer. Grady never told anyone this - he knew what they’d say - but he was certain the voice inside his head was that of God our Father as sure as he knew his own name and date of birth. God promised Grady that His plan was going as needed, that all would be well and that, in time, Grady would understand. The comfort Grady received from that voice was all he needed to get him through, even when Ruth grew cold and distant.
Three years after that, God graced them with Josiah. He was a perfect eight pounds, two-ounce baby boy and Grady swore he came out of the womb smiling. His cherubic grin lifted Ruth out of her depression and their family was whole.
When Josiah was 2 years old and still hadn’t spoken, not even mama or dada, or taken to potty training, Ruth insisted they take him to a specialist. Grady thought it an overreaction but after countless appointments with experts, tests, and scans, Josiah was diagnosed as autistic. The following three years were hard, even Grady would have admitted that. As time passed, he accepted that Josiah wasn’t going to get better. Ruth took it worse.
One day Grady came home to find Josiah locked in his room and Ruth nowhere to be found. He filed a missing person’s report and for almost four months he devoted every moment of his life to finding his missing wife. He gave interviews to reporters, appeared on local television, and even paid for five huge billboards and a 1-800 number people could call with tips. No calls came, but a letter did. It was short but got the point across.
“I’m not missing. Stop looking for me. I’m not coming back. Everything is yours.”
Even though she hadn’t bothered to sign it, Grady knew his wife’s handwriting. He told the police, and the search was called off and that was the end of it. His sole income as a church bookkeeper was far from enough to pay the mortgage and they lost their nice home in the suburbs. That’s how they ended up in a rundown row house apartment in Bal
timore.
Ruth wasn’t all that had left him. God too had gone silent. It had been almost five years since Grady had heard that warm, loving voice telling him it was all going to be okay and he longed for its return.
Grady fried a pan of hamburger helper while Josiah stared blankly at Mister Rogers on the TV. He stirred in the fake cheese sauce and thought he heard a gunshot outside as Fred sang about it being a beautiful day in the neighborhood. No, it’s not, Grady thought. We haven’t had a beautiful day for a long, long time.
At the other side of the apartment, Josiah broke out in a fit of wet, thick coughs which lasted a full half a minute. Grady looked above his son where a painting of Jesus in the garden at Gethsemane hung on the wall.
I beg of you, God, please embrace us and watch over us. We need you now maybe more than ever. Please make our lives better.
His faith was so strong that he actually believed God would.
11
The hard vinyl made a gross farting noise as Mina Costell shifted side to side in her chair and tried to get comfortable. Hospitals were already such horrible places, with the beeping machines, the overwhelming smell of antiseptic, the barely controlled chaos, and of course, the sickness. You’d think the least they could do is provide comfortable and quiet seating.
She folded and unfolded her hands, smoothed the wrinkles in her skirt and, with nothing else to distract herself, looked at the bed beside her where her father tossed and turned. His labored breaths were thick and full of phlegm. Every once in a while his breathing would stop all together and each time Mina held hers.
As she stared at his leathery face, its left side pulled down into an obscene grimace, Mina wished, no, she prayed, that the old bastard would just die already.
