“Oh, Pastor,” they’d say. “We need you here with us. You’re our spiritual center.”
I’d just point to the cross and say, “You see that man up there? He’s your spiritual center. Him.”
When we finally run in to Maria Ramirez, it has to be coming up on midnight.
I’ve driven to a side street off Cottage Grove Avenue because a member of my flock hasn’t heard from her sister. The sister is morbidly obese and might have some difficulty leaving her home to seek shelter. It is now our mission to bring her to safety.
With me are Ben Bennington—my Good Samaritan—and a retired bank security guard named Mr. James, who is one of my deacons. In the hours since my sermon, our team has already found a missing five-year-old, shot three zombies from out our car window, and verified that a parishioner’s small business is adequately boarded up against looters.
“Miss Martha!” I call, leaping from the Chrysler and cocking my shotgun. Ben and Mr. James follow me into the cold, windy night. There is still a burning, chemical smell in the air. It is distant but distinct, and it mixes in my nostrils with the odor of Lake Michigan.
The address I’ve been given is a dark two-flat with lead stained windows and no lights on. The little alleyways to either side of the place are pitch black and could contain looters . . . or worse. Something tells me right away that nobody’s home—that despite her enormous girth, the woman inside made a break for it after all. (Can the morbidly obese outrun zombies . . . and would it be any fun to watch? Bad pastor. Bad pastor. Bad pastor.)
I’ve got this sneaking suspicion we’re wasting our time, but I approach the first-floor windows anyway and knock hard through the bars with the butt of my gun.
“Miss Martha! Miss Martha, it’s Pastor Mack! Anybody home?”
I fall silent and listen. There is nothing to hear. Then, behind me, Ben says, “Hey, I think I see someone coming.”
I turn and follow his outstretched finger as it indicates a flicker of movement down a side street.
“Someone running,” I pronounce. “Too fast to be one of those things.”
“Looks like a woman,” Mr. James says. “And she don’t look in a good way.”
“No she does not” I say. “She looks hurt”
The young woman is sort of loping along like an injured dog that still has a lot of energy. She doesn’t appear armed, but nothing about her mien comes off as friendly.
The young woman lopes a little closer.
“What the hell?” Ben says. “I . . . I think I know her.”
“Funny,” I say. “I think I do, too.”
Ben opens his mouth, but before he can reply, I wave to the young woman and call out: “Over here!”
She notices us—standing right there by the alley, practically next to her—and starts like we’ve spooked her good. Then her neck cranes back and forth like she can not quite believe what she’s seeing. After a few seconds, she smiles, shakes her head like she’s shaking off a bad dream, and jogs on over.
“Well.. .I’ll be fucked” she says brightly, breathing hard.
She’s got some recent-looking scrapes on her face and some puffiness that may be the beginnings of a full-on black eye, but no serious injuries. The front of her clothes bear traces of spattered blood.
“Maria, wasn’t it?” I ask.
She nods, panting.
“And you’re Pastor Leo Mack,” Maria responds with some contempt in her voice. “How could I forget?”
Then she notices Ben and says, “And you’re . . . the reporter from the show tonight!”
“Yeah.. .hi,” he says, shouldering his AK awkwardly. I can tell he likes her. Even in a zombie apocalypse, kids will make eyes.
“What do you think about those internet videos now?” Maria asks him, still catching her breath.
She smiles at him. Her knees buckle, and I fear she may swoon.
“Are you okay?” Ben asks, rushing in to steady her.
She brushes him away and appears to recover just as quickly.
“Am I okay?” she asks angrily, without opening her eyes.
“It’s all relative, young lady,” I tell her. “None of us are okay in the way we were a few hours ago.”
She opens her eyes and shoots me a look like she wants to punch me in the face. Then she turns back to Ben.
“I got jumped.I think,” she says, rubbing her eyes and then stopping when it obviously hurts. “I was looking for my mother and sister. I live with them, but they went to my father’s place in Farrell Park, just north of here. I got to the house no problem, but they weren’t inside. The door was open and the place was dark and empty. Also, it was all messed up—ransacked and looted, I think. Then somebody came at me out of the darkness, and I got knocked out. I can’t remember anything else. They took my keys and money, and they drove off in my car. I came-to about twenty minutes ago and just started running. You guys are the first people I’ve seen.”
“You didn’t want to stay in your father’s house . . . for safety?” Ben asks. “Lock all the doors?”
Maria shakes her head. “No. It didn’t feel like a safe place. There could have been more looters inside . . . or zombies, for that matter. Plus, I still need to find my mother and my sister. Hey, can I have a gun? You guys all have guns.”
Ben looks to me.
“She should probably have a gun,” Ben says. “For safety.” “I’ve got a handgun and this shotgun,” I tell her. “Which do you want?”
Maria wrinkles her nose, as if these are both unsatisfactory choices.
“Ben has an AK,” she says flatly.
“Yeah, do we have any more AKs?” Ben asks.
“Mr. James, what are you packing, all-in-all?” I ask, calling back to the retired security guard behind us.
There is no response.
I look back at Miss Martha’s shuttered house. Mr. James was standing in front of it a moment ago. Now he is nowhere to be seen.
“He was just there,” Ben whispers.
“Dammit” I whisper back, lowering my shotgun.
“Mr. James?” Ben calls tentatively. “Mr. James, where are you?”
There is no response.
I take out my handgun and give it to Maria, grip-first. She accepts it silently, and checks to make sure there is one in the chamber. Then she holds it like a pro.
“Mr. James!” I call, no longer trying to be subtle about it. “Mr. James, are you there?”
My voice feels deadened—by the snow, yes, but also by the strange burning smell in the air.
After a few moments, we detect a low shuffling sound coming from an alley by the side of the house. It is followed by what can only be the sound of gas escaping; an enormous, prolonged fart—unnaturally huge.
“That can’t be good,” Ben whispers.
To my surprise, he takes the lead and stalks into the darkened alleyway.
“Careful now,” I tell him, following after. “I got this,” he says.
I realize that he’s trying to impress Maria. It’s almost cute. (It will be cute...if he doesn’t get himself killed.)
I trail Ben into the darkness. The streetlights don’t cast their glow down this shaft of brick and concrete, and there are no lights in the windows. The shadows could conceal almost anything.
“Mister James?” I try again.
The only answer is another shuffling sound. We stare cautiously into the darkness ahead.
“Hang on,” I say, pulling out my Maglite and turning on the beam. I hold it up and train it down the alley.
We are greeted by a surreal and grisly pastiche, like something out of Bruegel. On the pavement before us—quite close, really— two zombies are having their way with Mr. James. It’s like some exotic three-way sex position, but with cannibalism substituted for the sexual act.
The first zombie is a slim white woman in a t-shirt and shorts. She has short black hair—maybe lightly salted with gray, maybe just with snow—and her right arm is a full sleeve of tattoos. From th
e waist down, she is almost completely skeletonized. Her legs are twists of tendons and visible bone that look like they cannot possibly support her slender frame.yet they do. This zombie is cradling the head of Mr. James—who is obviously dead—and eating into his face through his eye-sockets. Both of Mr. James’s eyeballs are completely gone.
At the other end of him is another female zombie. I shudder to realize that it might be Miss Martha. She is a hulking, obese woman, entirely nude except for an adult diaper. She looks like she hasn’t been dead for long, and could even pass as a living human—albeit an insane, naked one—were she not tearing the skin from Mr. James’s backside and stuffing it into her mouth. She chews chunks of raw, yellow fat from his ass. Her mouth is covered with blood.
“Oh what the fuck?” cries Ben. He tries to shrink back from the sight, and ends up slipping in the snow. He falls ass-backwards to the ground. His AK bounces out of his hands and fires off into the wall.
The obese zombie notices this pratfall. It looks Ben over, and slowly rises to its feet. It belches—seemingly involuntarily—and then extends two chubby arms toward him like an overweight Frankenstein’s monster.
“Oh shit,” says Ben, scrambling to either rise to his feet or pick up his gun, but accomplishing neither. His slips and falls twice more on the ice.
“Blearrrrg!” roars the obese zombie. Her heavy calf manages a shambling, wobbly step in Ben’s direction. A dollop of Mr. James meat falls from the corner of her slavering mouth and lands on Ben’s boot.
“Good Christ” says Ben.
In the next moment, there is a bright flash and report from behind us as Maria discharges her weapon. BLAM!!!
The obese zombie’s head rocks back as Maria’s bullet puts a perfect circle through its forehead. The zombie’s eyes cross, and its flabby legs buckle. Unfortunately for Ben, the zombie’s massive body then pitches forward. In a moment, he is covered by the limp corpse of a housebound and incontinent 600 pound woman.
“Bah!” Ben chuffs, struggling to push away the body. “Omi-god . . . this is awful.”
Then, before I can help him up.
BLAM!!!
Maria fires again. It’s another headshot, and it takes out the tattooed zombie on bone-legs. This one goes to its rest more gracefully, simply curling into a motionless wisp like a spent firework.
All that remains is the eyeless—and now largely assless— corpse of Mr. James.
And . . . did I just see its fingers twitch?
“We need to get out of here, and fast,” I announce. The smell of gunpowder from Maria’s weapon is still in the air.
Maria and I work together to extricate Ben. The corpse is too big for either of us to move alone.
“One . . . two . . . three!”
We push at the same time. The giant, motionless zombie rolls away.
Ben is wide-eyed, stunned, and covered in blood. He walks a bit like a zombie himself, struggling to regain his balance. His hat has fallen off and his hair is a wild, sweaty mess. However, he does not appear to be injured.
“Damn” says Maria. “You look like you just got laid.”
Ben sheepishly picks up his AK and does not make eye contact. He takes a few deep breaths and steadies himself against the wall of the alley.
“You probably smell like it too,” Maria adds. “In fact, you totally do. You smell like ass, boy. Was it good for you? Ha ha!”
Something in me flinches.
“Maria, a man has just died!” I pronounce in my most stentorian tone.
Maria visibly bristles. She stuffs her handgun down the front of her pants and stalks over to me as if she wants to fight. She’s a full head shorter than I am, but she stands really, really close and stares up at me like an angry animal. She exhales, and I can smell the brackish smell of a sweaty, worn-out woman on the wind.
“Ooh, I’m soo sorry” Maria spits sarcastically. “Did I hurt your feelings? Well excuse me, ‘reverend.’ I love how you get to call yourself that, by the way. ‘Reverend.’ Like how you just decide you’re something people should ‘revere.’
“It’s pastor, actually,” I remind her. “Not reverend” “Who . . . fucking . . . cares!!!” Maria shoots back. “Even in a zombie apocalypse, you’ve got to act like you know everything, huh? Would you like to tell me why the dead are coming back to life and eating people? No, because you don’t know. “
I cross my arms and look down at her sternly, refusing—for the moment—to be tempted to wrath.
“I mean.” Maria continues—wheeling around on her heel and then coming right back into my face. “What do you even get from it? Is it the fancy suits? The expensive preacher cars? Seriously, tell me, because I can’t figure it out. Maybe you just need to get your ego stroked every Sunday—to hear a bunch of people go ‘Amen’ after you speak.. .right after you fucking tell them to. ‘Revere me! Say Amen after I talk!’ Could you be any more insecure?”
I move quickly, without thinking. It’s an animal reaction.
Bringing the shotgun up with both hands in a single motion, I brace it hard against my shoulder and pull the trigger.
Twenty feet beyond Maria, the head of the thing that was Mr. James explodes into a shower of a thousand fleshy pieces . . . about five seconds before it could take a bite out of Ben’s neck.
The headless body takes two steps forward and falls to the ground, coming to a rest next to the thing that was Miss Martha. His dead arm cradles her torso, like an exhausted, headless lover. They are, the pair of them, spent.
Ben looks at the dead zombie and says, “Damn.”
I lower my weapon.
“Tonight, I’m just a guy trying to kill some zombies,” I say, turning back to Maria. “And when everybody else is losing their damn minds and running around like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off, I’m out in the streets trying to save my community. I’ll let you decide if that’s worth revering.”
We pile back into my Chrysler and prepare to rendezvous back at the church.
Mr. James, to my knowledge, had no kin in the pews at The Church of Heaven’s God in Christ Lord Jesus. He was a loner. An orphan. There is no family to notify.
Still, this is no consolation. Mr. James was a good man, and I liked him. Moreover, I’m his pastor, and he was a member of my congregation. And I let him get ambushed by zombies. And then he became a zombie. And then I blew his damn head off.
There is nothing good about this. It is still horrible.
Just . . . less horrible than it could have been.
I resolve to remain thankful for small things.
Maria Ramirez
Mack drives us back to The Church of Heaven’s God in Christ Lord Jesus. Unlike everything around it, the church is crowded and well lit. In fact, it’s the only crowded place I’ve seen since I got down to the south side. It’s like everybody in the neighborhood came here. The church is filled to bursting, and there are people spilling out on the landscaping around it. When we pull into the parking lot, there is a visible reaction from some people when they see Mack’s car. Their faces brighten. This is what they’ve been waiting for.
“Stay here,” says Mack, pulling to an abrupt halt near the entrance. He springs out of the car with the step of a much younger man. Five paces toward the church, and he is mobbed by crowds of parishioners, each one eager for his attention.
I take a deep breath. Ben has mostly been sitting quietly in the back seat—I’m assuming humiliated and cowed by the ordeal of being pinned under the fat zombie. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s fallen asleep, actually. He looked beat.
Then, out of nowhere, he speaks.
“So . . . why don’t you two just fuck and get it over with?” Silence.
Then I explode laughing. Ben laughs too.
And it’s like, okay. Right on. I like this guy.
“I don’t mean to be nosy or anything,” Ben continues as my giggles die away. “It’s clear that you two already know each other, and that something’s...!^. I just met M
ack—by the way—right after I met you, so I’m not picking sides, here. I’m just curious. What’s this about?”
I turn around in the seat to face him.
“He has a daughter named Richelle,” I explain. “You might say that I seduced her away from Mack, and he’s pissed about it.” “Oh,” Ben says evenly.
He’s still smiling, but suddenly there are wrinkles his brow. I can tell that he’s disappointed. (It’s so cute how much this guy is into me.)
“It’s not like that” I clarify. “I might have kissed a few girls, but I’m not into Richelle that way. She’s not my girlfriend. She’s in my band.You saw her earlier tonight. The black girl with amazing tits who was playing bass?”
“Oh, okay,” Ben says. “I remember.”
“First, Richelle joined my band. Then she moved north out of this neighborhood. And then she started thinking for herself. Which, I think, she had always done. But she kind of started not pretending anymore. Not letting her father think she was someone she wasn’t.”
“Aha,” Ben answers cautiously.
“Don’t let Mack fool you into believing he’s a perfect person. He’s come to our shows before to confront Richelle publicly— to shame her, in my opinion. And I’ve let him know he’s not welcome. I’ve gotten in his face and told him exactly what he needed to be told. Told him Richelle was a fucking adult who could do whatever she wanted. I sort of think Mack respects me for that, but he’s also still pissed about it. And I still think he’s a total jagoff. He spends all his time down here on the south side—with people kowtowing to him and telling him he’s a big, wise man in the community—that he forgets he doesn’t know everything. And, let me tell you, Leopold Mack most certainly does not know everything”
Ben takes another look over at the church. I follow his gaze. We see Mack entirely surrounded by a needy throng. They look at him like he’s the only one with an answer to the world’s problems.
“What’s the issue for Mack?” Ben asks. “It’s not the 1950s. Nobody’s calling rock and roll the devil’s music anymore. There are Christian rock bands, for fuck’s sake.”
“Mack would say there are issues, plural. But it really comes down to one thing. Richelle wants to be her own person, and it’s not who Mack wants her to be.”
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