All Together Now: A Zombie Story

by Robert Kent

  I didn't say anything. Nice to meet you didn't seem appropriate.

  "Don't let Sister Rachel upset you, Brother Ricky. She's agitated is all. You have to remember all this is as new to her as it is to us."

  The reverend stood. "We were just praying. Would you like to pray with us?"

  I shook my head.

  The reverend sighed. "Oh, what peace we often forfeit. Oh, what needless pain we bear. All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer."

  The reverend's blue eyes were too wide, reminding me of the way the Tony Sty's manager had looked when he approached the zombie in the police uniform.

  "I prayed for God to guide Sister Rachel, but you know what I think, Brother Ricky? I think Sister Rachel is showing us the way. I think God the Father is working through Sister Rachel to show us how we're supposed to live.

  "It's a time of great tribulation, Brother Ricky, and there are many who will be led astray. And wicked men will rise up and Satan will establish his dominion here on earth."

  I stepped back as the reverend reached for me, but he put his hands on my shoulders anyway and held me there.

  "But do not be afraid, Brother Ricky. Yea, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we shall fear no evil for He is with us!"

  The reverend was shouting and his arms squeezed into my shoulders so tightly it hurt.

  "Please let go of me."

  "God is here with us, right now. This is His house and He will not forsake us!"

  The reverend released my shoulders and stepped away. "The hour grows nigh, but has not yet come. Lord Jesus will return, descending from the heavens and every knee shall bow, every tongue confess. And He shall triumph o'er the grave!"

  "Okay."

  "Excuse me, Brother Ricky." The reverend stared off at nothing, the way Grandma Lacey does during a senior moment.

  "There are preparations to be made." He nodded his head six times, as though agreeing with some unseen figure. "I have much yet to do this night."

  With that, the reverend disappeared into his office with Sister Rachel and closed the door, leaving me in the darkness of the hall.

  "We are getting the hell out of here," I whispered to no one.

  66

  I WENT BACK TO THE sanctuary, returning the flashlight from where I'd taken it. I weaved between the people sleeping to the back of the room.

  "Wake up," I whispered, shaking Michelle's shoulder.

  Michelle flew into a sitting position and reached to her back for the gun that was tucked beneath my shirt.

  She looked at me, then the rest of the sanctuary and heard the combined snoring of the congregants. "What's wrong?"

  "We have to leave," I said.

  "Why?"

  "Because we do. Just trust me."

  "Ricky, it's the middle of the night. You want to go outside in the dark again with Brother Mordecai and all the rest of them roaming around?"

  "I..." I didn't say anything else. I hadn't thought of that.

  "What's wrong?"

  "The reverend's crazy."

  "I know."

  "No," I said. "He was talking crazy."

  Michelle scoffed. "He's been talking crazy all night."

  "No, not just religious crazy, crazy crazy."

  "What's he doing?"

  "Praying."

  Michelle rolled her eyes. "Surprise. Is he dangerous?"

  I considered. Yes, was what I wanted to say. But I didn't.

  The reverend was crazy, but he was in his office with his zombie girlfriend. He wasn't hurting anyone at the moment.

  I thought of our run to Wal-Mart and of how the dead would've eventually cornered us if it hadn't been for Levi and his parents.

  Was staying in this church, even with the reverend and Sister Rachel (who was, after all, tied up) really worse than being outside in the dark?

  "We'll leave in the morning," I said. "As soon as there's enough light to see."

  "Ricky, are we in danger?"

  "No." Of course, I hadn't told her about Sister Rachel. If I had, things might've gone differently. I wish I'd told her.

  "Then I'm going back to sleep," Michelle said. "If you still want to go in the morning, we'll leave when the sun's up."

  "All right."

  Michelle lay beside Chuck and went back to sleep.

  I couldn't sleep. I thought about the reverend's words. Not the crazy ones, but what he'd said about peace being forfeited and needless pain because of things not being carried to God in prayer.

  I went to the front of the sanctuary and climbed up onto the platform beside the podium. I got down on my knees and bowed my head.

  If you've never done anything dumb, screw you because you're a liar. And I was in a church, for Christ's sake.

  I'm not going to tell you everything I prayed for. That's between me and Gaw-ed. But mostly I prayed for the souls of Dad and Ben and all those lost at Harrington High School.

  I apologized for a lot of bad stuff I'd done (none of your business) and asked Gaw-ed to create a safe path for Chuck, Michelle, and me.

  Considering what happened mere hours later, if there is a Gaw-ed, when I get to heaven, I'm going to punch Him in the face.

  But more likely, my prayers were babbled to no one and the time I spent making a fool of myself would've been better spent dragging Michelle and Chuck into the night to find a different place to stay.

  When my prayers started to repeat themselves, I stopped. With all the death and suffering going on in the world, I couldn't see taking up too much of the Almighty's time.

  I turned to see Levi sitting in a front pew. He didn't say anything, but I knew he'd been watching me pray and the expression he wore was a scowl of disdain.

  My head hurt from being bowed for an hour, so I went to the bathroom and took another hydrocodone.

  On my way back, I noticed the light at the end of the hall was still pouring out from under the reverend's office door. I could hear the faint sounds of him praying and the snarling moans of Sister Rachel.

  67

  I'D SLEPT MAYBE HALF AN hour when Michelle shook me awake. "Is the sun up?"

  "No," Michelle said. "Breakfast."

  "Morning, Ricky!"

  "Good morning, Chuck," I said, sitting up.

  He smiled wide. "We're having bacon and pancakes! With blueberries!"

  Around me, people were gathering up their blankets from the sanctuary floor. All of them were wearing royal purple T-shirts with white crosses on the fronts.

  "I think we're dressed wrong," I said, putting a hand to my head. It hurt worse than it had the night before, despite the painkillers.

  Through the sanctuary windows I saw the sky was still dark and the sun could only barely be glimpsed over the horizon.

  "Good morning, brothers," said a scrawny woman in a purple shirt. "This is the day that the Lord has made. Rejoice and be glad in it."

  I needed to pee so bad I had no doubt I would rejoice and be glad in it. "I'll be right back," I said to Michelle and stumbled into the hall.

  Rumbling through the air, above the chatter of congregants, was the roar of an engine. I went to the restroom and swallowed a hydrocodone at the sink. I peed, then took another.

  That was a mistake. My fuzzy head grew fuzzier and I've never taken another pill. Although it's probably a moot point since I'll likely be dead soon, I'll never take one again.

  When I came back into the hall, I joined Chuck and Michelle at the end of a long line of Christians leading to the kitchen. I could smell genuine cooking, the sweet aroma of bacon and pancakes wafting to my nostrils.

  My stomach growled. We'd leave after breakfast, I decided.

  As we got closer to the kitchen, the engine sound grew louder and through the window I saw it was a gas generator.

  My first thought was that the sound would draw a horde of dead, but then I remembered how far from town New Life Christian Church was.

  We didn't have purple shirts, but the women in the kitch
en gave us paper plates and let us help ourselves to a spread of pancakes, bacon, scrambled eggs, and sausage. They even gave us plastic cups of orange juice.

  Despite everything that followed, my stomach growls as I write this just thinking about the feast they'd set up.

  People were sitting at card tables in the Sunday school classrooms off the hall. The reverend waved us over to a table beside him and Levi's parents.

  I scanned the tables and spotted Levi sitting at a table farther back all by himself.

  I didn't want to sit with the reverend, but the way he was waving, it would've been awkward not to.

  "I hope you like pancakes," he said.

  "I love them!" Chuck shouted, and the reverend laughed.

  "Thank you," I said. "It's really great."

  "The Lord provides for all the birds of the air and the flowers of the field," the reverend said. "Surely He will provide for you. I hope you'll join us in worship this morning after breakfast."

  I didn't say yes, but I didn't say no, either. I didn't think it was a good idea to tell the reverend we planned to dine and dash.

  We sat, and Michelle started to eat.

  The reverend cleared his throat and I saw neither he nor Levi's parents had touched the plates they had in front of them. The reverend offered his hand and I took it.

  I grabbed Chuck's hand, he grabbed Michelle's hand, and we all bowed our heads so the reverend could say a blessing.

  And if ever a meal was worthy of a blessing, it was that pancake breakfast. It was the best I've ever eaten.

  Chuck said it was the best meal he ever ate as well. And that's good, I guess, seeing as how it was his last.

  68

  AFTER THE BREAKFAST, WE FOLLOWED the congregants back into the sanctuary, which had been emptied of pillows and blankets. Folks filed into pews, most of them not giving a second glance to the stage.

  Michelle and Chuck stopped to stare, and I did a double-take.

  In front of the podium was a solid-oak communion stand with the words "This Do in Remembrance of Me" carved across its front. Strapped to the top of the table was Sister Rachel.

  She snarled at the congregants, all dressed in royal purple shirts identical to the one hanging from her dead torso.

  "Keep moving, brothers," someone said from behind me, "we must make room."

  You might ask why I didn't grab Chuck and Michelle and run out of the sanctuary right then, and you'd be right to ask it.

  The answer is I don't know.

  No one else was running. No one ever runs out of church unless they're a bride uncertain of the groom.

  I led Michelle and Chuck to a pew at the back of the sanctuary, closest to the exit. My plan was to wait until the congregation closed their eyes in prayer and slip out. Somehow that seemed more polite, considering the meal we'd just had.

  But they never did pray. Several congregates were staring at Sister Rachel with worried looks on their faces.

  Then a plump woman with white hair began playing the piano, and like Pavlov's dogs salivating at a bell, the Christians were all singing "There's power in the blood, power in the blood. There is power, power, wonder-working power..."

  The reverend took the stage with a hymnal, singing loudest. And we sang them all: "What a Friend We Have in Jesus," "Onward Christian Soldiers," “The Old Rugged Cross,” “Our God is an Awesome God,” and on and on and on.

  I didn't know there were so many hymns. The congregation sang for an hour or more. We let Chuck hold the hymnal and Michelle and I read the lyrics over his shoulders, singing along as best we could.

  Some of the songs I knew from my mother's time as a born-again or from church camp. But they didn’t sing my mother's favorite hymn, the one she used to play in the car and at home all her year as a Christian, the one I knew all the words to.

  We didn't sing "All Together Now" until after the reverend gave his message, and that song will haunt me to my grave or my time as a zombie, whichever comes first.

  We sang "Room at the Cross," and then the reverend put his hymnal aside and stood at his podium, which was behind Sister Rachel, and began to preach.

  He read from his Bible and advised his followers to read along in their Bibles and preached on the story of Lazarus. He read from Revelations about how the dead will rise when Jesus returns.

  I've never made it through a whole sermon awake and the reverend Brian Hopstead's sermon was no exception.

  Maybe it was the pain in my head. Maybe it was the painkillers. Maybe it was that I hadn't slept the night before, or maybe it was all three. What I know is while the reverend yammered on about the prophet Elijah raising a boy from the dead, I drifted off.

  I don't remember doing it, but my head bowed low and my eyes shut. I don't know how long the reverend spoke or what he said, or how long I slept.

  I know that when I opened my eyes, bright sunlight was streaming in through the sanctuary windows and everyone was singing again:

  "Once I was all alone, mired in sin. My wicked self had usurped His word. When I felt most afraid, the Shepherd called, 'lost lamb, come join the herd.'"

  The reverend walked between the aisles, singing.

  I sang along, hoping I hadn't snored or otherwise drawn attention to the fact I'd been sleeping during the service.

  I was so busy trying to look natural I didn't notice Chuck shifting nervously in his seat.

  "All together now, we're all together now. Yea though we perish, yea though we die, we'll all be together in the sweet by and by."

  The reverend bowed his head, closed his eyes, and spread his legs for dramatic flair.

  "All together now, we're all together now. All together, all together now."

  The reverend opened his eyes and walked straight to the end of the aisle, reaching out for Chuck. "Take my hand, son."

  My little brother looked to me. I shook my head.

  The reverend took Chuck gently by the wrist and raised his arm as though proclaiming him the winner.

  "And behold," the reverend called, "a child shall lead them!"

  The reverend started back up the aisle, leading Chuck behind him.

  Michelle and I stood.

  Everyone sang: "For there's no greater pain in heaven or hell hurts worse than being on my own."

  Chuck and the reverend stopped just in front of the stage and the communion table with the zombie strapped to it.

  "But after we've died, left our mortal coil behind, we'll rise up and not be alone."

  The reverend stooped to Chuck's height and asked, "Are you ready to pledge your soul to the church, to be transformed by Almighty God so that you may not perish but be given everlasting life?"

  Chuck bit his lip.

  I worked my way to the edge of the pew and started up the aisle, slowly, so as not to attract attention.

  The reverend put his arms on Chuck's shoulders and sang with his congregation:

  "All together now, we're all together now. Yea though we perish, yea though we die, we'll all be together in the sweet by and by."

  The reverend seized Chuck's hand.

  "All together now, we're all together now."

  I stopped walking and started running.

  The reverend forced Chuck's hand down until it was positioned in front of the communion table.

  Sister Rachel snarled and bit into his wrist.

  Chuck screamed and bright red blood flowed over the dead woman's lips.

  "All together, all together now."

  69

  KEEP HIM SAFE, RICKY

  I ran up the aisle toward the front of the sanctuary.

  It was as though the world had gone into slow motion.

  I could see congregants in their identical purple T-shirts standing in the pews on either side of me. Every one of them was smiling.

  Keep him safe, Ricky.

  The reverend pushed Chuck aside and stretched his own arm in front of Sister Rachel. He wrapped his other hand around the dead woman's head, holding her close, a
nd as she bit into his wrist he shuddered and moaned.

  Chuck stumbled and sat down on the side of the stage. When I reached him and threw my arms around him and held him close, he was weeping.

  Keep him safe, Ricky.

  Beside us, the reverend withdrew from Sister Rachel with a gasp, then turned back to his congregation. He held up his wrist for them to see, dripping blood down the sleeve of his purple suit jacket.

  "Behold!" he shouted. "I am washed in the blood of the Lamb and the Word is made flesh!"

  I picked Chuck up and carried him toward the exit. No one tried to stop us.

  "Come forward, brothers and sisters!" the reverend called. Even as he spoke, his congregants were forming two lines toward the front of the sanctuary.

  "Come and receive Sister Rachel's testimony, and be baptized anew. There is room at the old rugged cross, room at the cross for you!"

  Ruth Davis stood before Sister Rachel and allowed the zombie to bite into her considerable gut. Peter Davis was waiting just behind her.

  "No!" Levi screamed, working his way between pews toward the aisle.

  I found Michelle at the back of the congregation. Her eyes were wide and her breathing came in hitched gasps.

  The reverend sang, "Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me."

  "Stop this!" Levi screamed. "Stop it! Stop!"

  Levi's father hit him so hard he fell back against a pew. "Spare the rod and spoil the child! Be not tempted from the path of the righteous, boy!"

  Levi wept as his father took his turn with the zombie.

  After Peter Davis had received Sister Rachel's testimony, he moved so the next congregant in a purple shirt could allow herself to be bitten. Behind her, the other members of the flock waited their turn, singing with the reverend:

  "Come home, come home. You who are weary, come ho-o-o-me. Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling, 'O sinner, come home!"

  Michelle and I ran from the sanctuary into the foyer. Levi met us there. "I'm coming with you," he said.

  I didn't say anything. I clutched Chuck to me and felt my shirt dampen with his tears.