Zombie, Illinois

by Scott Kenemore

  “These are my friends.”

  “I need to talk to you,” Franco says, cautiously. “And they need to stay outside...for now.”

  “Franco, what the fuck?” Maria returns, scowling and frustrated.

  Mack leans in to Maria and whispers, “Maybe you should tell him who and what is on the way to his house.” Maria nods.

  “Franco, we’re here because we’re trying to protect my dad. He’s the fucking mayor now. Did he tell you that? Did he also tell you that most of the city council is trying to kill him? Because they are. And they’re coming here.”

  Franco’s face falls.

  “These people have helped me get here,” she continues, i ndicating our motley crew with a flick of her gun. “I would be dead if it weren’t for them. You can trust them, okay? Now let us inside!”

  Franco sets his handgun on the porch railing and runs his fingers through his hair. He looks—probably as we all do—like he hasn’t slept in twenty-four hours. He glances around his neighborhood at the shuttered and looted homes.

  “Yeah, okay,” Franco allows quietly. “Come on inside.”

  We file up to the porch, Maria first. Above us, the rifle barrel slowly retracts.

  The inside is a mess, like the house of somebody in the middle of moving. Furniture and clothes are piled everywhere. There are two armed men about Franco’s age, drinking coffee in the kitchen just off the entryway. Another man with a rifle descends from the second floor staircase and joins them, making three in all. They regard us and look to Franco for a cue.

  “Franco, where is he?” Maria asks.

  “In the back bedroom,” Franco returns.

  “And my mother and my sister?”

  “Down in the basement rec room, sleeping.” “I want to see them, Franco. now.”

  Franco nods solemnly and conducts Maria away to the back of the house. A few moments later, he returns alone.

  “You got any more of that coffee?” Mack asks the men in the kitchen.

  “I’d take some too,” says Rivers. “And I ‘spect so would my man here.”

  I nod. I would.

  We are poured coffee and sit at the kitchen table with Franco

  and his friends.

  “Tell us everything,” Franco says.

  Restored by Folgers, the three of us oblige.

  After giving Franco the basics, we all agree that—if Mogk’s troops are coming—the next priority is getting everyone to a new location, including the mayor. Using Rivers’s car sounds like a good plan.

  Moments later, Maria returns from the basement. She has obviously been crying, but her expression is now placid. Serene. Maybe it was good-crying.

  She wipes away a tear.

  “Okay,” she says. “Now I need to talk to him.” “Respectfully,” Mack interjects, “I think all of us need to talk to him.”

  We file to the back bedroom. The cream-colored carpeting in the hallways has been trampled to an ugly Chicago-grey by snowy boots. Passing through the home, I see that every piece of furniture in each room has been piled against the windows.

  Franco raps on the door with a thick set of knuckles.

  “Frankie!” he calls. “Uncle!”

  For a moment, there is no response.

  “Mister Mayor!” Mack tries in his deepest voice.

  That does the trick.

  The bedroom door opens abruptly, and Maria’s father stands before us. The new king of Chicago is hardly regal. He wears a tattered bathrobe that hangs open most of the way. Underneath he is naked, except for a pair of cheap white boxer shorts. His belly protrudes like a giant tractor tire. He looks exhausted and smells of sweat and fear.

  Maria pushes her cousin aside and strides into the room. She stands in front of the mayor and looks up into his eyes . . . and then slaps him across the face.

  “What did you do, Papi?” she says coldly. “What in the name of God did you do?”

  The mayor’s face falls. He looks away.

  “Could we please.” the mayor begins, faltering. “Can we talk about this in private, Maria?”

  “Okay,” Maria says, then adds, “But wait. Ben, Mack.you two stay. This concerns you.”

  “How does this concern them?” the mayor objects, looking back and forth.

  “Because they were almost killed by the shit you pulled!” Maria shoots back. “By the shit that you better start explaining right fucking now”

  The mayor ties his robe and sits Indian-style on the edge of the bed. Mack shuts the door. He stands in front of it with his arms crossed, staring down the mayor. His body language seems to say that none of us will be leaving this room until Maria gets some answers.

  “What the fuck was going on at Crenshaw Cemetery?” Maria says like a prosecuting attorney. “Give us the truth and we might just save your life.”

  For a moment, the mayor looks at Maria with an angry, arrogant expression. His face seems to ask who she is to address him in this way. Then, slowly, he appears to remember that he is an exhausted man in a filthy bathrobe who is unarmed and afraid for his life. And that his own daughter now holds the upper hand.

  “First of all, it was never me,” the mayor begins, looking down at the bed. “It was Alderman Mogk and Alderman Szuter. Their system had been in place since before I was elected. That fucking system.. .I just inherited it. One day—not a week after I started my first term as alderman—we were meeting in Marja’s office after the dedication of a new community center. I thought it was just a friendly, get-acquainted sort of meeting, you know? But that was when she told me how they did it.”

  “Did what?” Maria returns icily.

  “There’s a lot of change happening in our three wards.a lot of movement, let’s say,” the mayor begins cautiously.

  “No, let’s not say,” Maria spits back. “There’s no time for euphemisms, Dad. The zombies are at the gates. Just tell us what the fuck you did!”

  “I’m trying to!” the mayor roars back, frustrated.

  “All right then.” Maria says. “So tell us in plain words.”

  “There is a lot of moving around between constituencies in the neighborhoods where our three aldermanic wards meet,” the mayor says slowly, as if he is talking to a child.

  “By ‘constituencies,’ you mean ‘races,’” Mack states from across the room. “Black and white and brown people moving around.”

  “Yes,” says the mayor. “Szuter’s ward is white people, pushing down from the Loop. Mogk’s ward is where the black south side begins, and my ward is the little Hispanic pocket that sort of separates them. But it’s not that easy.”

  “How so?” Maria presses. “And what the fuck does it have to do with bodies where they shouldn’t be in Crenshaw Cemetery?”

  The mayor takes a deep breath.

  “As Marja explained to me, the people in our wards move around more than people in other wards in this city. It’s a volatile area, demographically speaking. The tip of the spear for gentrification. A new strip of condos can make a block that was affordable for renters six months ago suddenly too expensive, forcing them to move. They move somewhere close, and then the neighboring ward changes. Pretty soon, everyone is all mixed up. The city redraws the ward maps every ten years, but our ward-changes happen faster than that.much faster. If you’re not careful, the people in the alderman’s ward might not look like the alderman come election time. And these new voters might not know all the good things that that alderman had done for the community . . . Unless you do something about it. That was where Burge Wheeler came in.”

  The mayor pauses for a moment. The name of Chicago’s most infamous cop hangs heavy in the air.

  “Wheeler helped make sure that things didn’t change too quickly in our wards. He was their hired man. That was where I said ‘no’ to Marja and Igor, by the way. That was where I said I wanted no part of it.”

  “Burge Wheeler worked for Marja Mogk and Igor Szuter?” Mack asks.

  “And my predecessor,” says the mayor. �
��But never for me. I refused to be involved with that.ugliness.”

  “What changed your mind?” Maria asks with a smirk.

  And, for the first time, an expression crosses the mayor’s face that makes me think he is not an entirely evil man. A scumbag? Sure. A corrupt politician who only wanted to use the system to make himself rich? Oh absolutely. But a killer? Well. maybe not.

  “It was murder!” the mayor says, as if this fact should be obvious. “Under the direction of Mogk and Szuter—and, formerly, my predecessor—Burge Wheeler would carry out murders and disappearances in our wards. Gangbangers start to hang out in a neighborhood that needs to stay nice? They end up in Cren-shaw. People from the wrong race move onto the wrong street that’s not ready to gentrify yet? Some of them—not all of them, but some of them—go to Crenshaw. Enough to send a message. Burge Wheeler was killing people for them. Killing people. He had been for years. And the cemetery manager was always happy to take a bribe to make the bodies go away.”

  “And bury them underneath the landscaping,” Mack adds, shaking his head in disapproval.

  “But Burge Wheeler can’t have come cheap,” I interject. “I mean, corrupt cops are corrupt for money, not just because they like corruption. These aldermen must have had to pay some hefty bribes. Was it worth all that, just for an alderman’s salary?”

  Chicago aldermen are probably the highest-paid city council in the nation, if not the world. Six figures and a pension for life. But still, I reason, paying for murders has to add up fast.

  I look over at Mack for backup. He nods to say my point is indeed legitimate.

  “You have to understand, it was about much more than getting reelected,” says the mayor. “That’s small-time thinking. What aldermen make? That’s peanuts. Mogk and Szuter were onto something greater. Something grander! They had realized that with just a few strokes of. selective law enforcement, you could do more than just keep white neighborhoods white, black neighborhoods black, and Latin neighborhoods Latin. You could control gentrification itself!”

  The mayor pauses dramatically, as if we need time to let this idea sink in. When we appear less than completely bowled over, he continues.

  “The thing about real estate.it’s essentially gambling, right? You’re betting on the market. Betting that neighborhoods will change. You buy up a nasty old block in a crime-ridden area and hope that it changes from bad to good quickly so you can build some overpriced condos that rich people will pay out the ass for. Sometimes it works, and you get a windfall. Sometimes it doesn’t, and you’re stuck with a worthless, nasty block that nobody wants to live on. But what if somebody could guarantee that a neighborhood could change for the better—and change quickly—for a fee?”

  “Or guarantee that it wouldn’t change, unless there was a fee,” Mack adds, seeing the implications.

  “Exactly,” says the mayor. “Burge Wheeler did more than maintain the demographics for election day. When a block needed to improve and crime needed to go away, he could make that happen—step up enforcement, make drug dealers and thugs ‘disappear’ or torture them into a confession. But he could also send stuff the other way. When Marja told him a block needed more crime—because a developer hadn’t paid their ‘gentrifica-tion fee’—Burge Wheeler could provide that too.”

  “He and his men just didn’t enforce the laws?” I ask. “Like on that ‘Amsterdam’ episode of The Wire?”

  “That was part of it, but not all of it. You want me to say it again? I’ll say it again. He did murders! He created the crime. New people move to a neighborhood that Mogk and Szuter don’t want to change? Maybe they get shot in a drive-by. Maybe they just go for a walk one night and never come back. Either way, they can’t pay the mortgage anymore. The neighborhood goes back to the way it was.”

  There is an uncomfortable moment of silence, that kind you get when the worst is confirmed. Mack and I look at one another, then down at the floor. Maria just shakes her head.

  For whatever reason, I’m still thinking like a reporter.

  “Why didn’t Burge Wheeler flip on you when the feds came for him?” I ask the mayor.

  “Flip on Marja Mogk and Igor Szuter, you mean,” says the mayor. “Yes, I think he might have done that...if he’d thought he’d get a real sentence. If they’d had any evidence about the murders. But they didn’t. They had nothing, remember? What did they get Burge Wheeler for? Failing to follow interrogation procedures, some bullshit like that. Burge Wheeler isn’t going to die in jail, and he knows it. I’ll bet there’s a bathtub full of unmarked bills waiting for him when he gets out, too. And he takes it down to Florida, and we never hear from him again.”

  “I hate to say it, but that actually sounds believable,” I tell him.

  “But I told them to leave me out of it!” insists the mayor. “I want to make that clear. You have to believe me! I told Marja and Igor that I wanted no part of it. They could do their thing—run their little gentrification-for-hire business—but I didn’t want in. I would not be involved.”

  “You didn’t turn them in, either!” Maria shoots back. “You didn’t tell them to stop! You actually sound proud of yourself, but you didn’t do anything.”

  “You’d be surprised by what I’ve turned down in back rooms and basements around this city. Besides.they would have killed me.”

  “That can still happen,” I advise the mayor.

  “Yes,” the mayor agrees soberly. “Marja Mogk has two reasons to want me dead. I know about the killings.and I’m the only thing standing between her and the mayor’s office.”

  “We went to Crenshaw last night” Mack says. “Marja’s troops were putting down the zombies. All the people Burge Wheeler had buried over the years were coming back up.”

  “I’m sure they were,” says the mayor, nodding. “Like a lot of murderers in Chicago, she’s very busy right now tying up loose ends.”

  The mayor’s face falls.

  “She doesn’t know about this place!” he says. The thought has only now struck him.

  “She does” Maria confirms. “Her people are on the way.”

  The mayor’s jaw drops a little. His shoulders go slack, and his belly pooches out even more.

  Maria gives her father a quick version of our story. During the more fantastic moments, the mayor looks around the room doubtfully. Mack and I nod sternly, insisting that no part of our Odyssey is being exaggerated by his daughter.

  “You did all that just to get to me?” he says after she finishes.

  “Were you even listening?” Maria says. “I came here because my mother and sister are with you, which means they’re in danger. Ben and Mack might be curious about what happens to you, but I’m not.”

  Maria gestures across the room at us.

  “You’ve got a lot of nerve thinking I did this for you. I fucking hate you. You were a virus I had to keep from infecting our family. You were a giant horrible octopus who wanted to pull us down into the depths. I had to spend months and years untangling us from your suckers and tentacles. The balance of my life has been spent thinking of ways I could keep you from hurting the people I actually love. Do you understand that, Dad? Do you?”

  Maria crosses her arms and glares.

  And for a moment there is no mayor, at least not in here in the room with us. There is no title and no weight of office. There is just a sad, paunchy man in his underwear and a robe. There is only a father who has neglected the things that actually matter, and is beginning to realize it.

  The mayor stares up at his daughter—he’s taller than her by a foot or so, but she towers over him as he sits on the bed—and waits for this to be over. He has the expression of a powerless man taking a beating. He waits for her to be done. It is what it is.

  “Now.” continues Maria. “I’m going to take my mother and my sister, and the three of us are getting out of here. I suppose you should leave too.unless you want to die. Which would probably be what you deserve.”

  For whatever reason, I agai
n remember that I’m a reporter and that this pitiful man in front of me may one day be the mayor of a major American city in a proper sense. If Chicago is ever going to be saved—from the zombies—from the violence— from itself—he will probably be necessary. I don’t know if laws still exist, but if we want them to, then it has to start with the person who is legally in charge.

  “Mister Mayor,” I say loudly, formally, almost as if I’m hoping to be called on at a press conference. “We need to get

  you to safety, sir. We need to keep you protected and find a way to connect you with your constituents when the phone and internet come back on. People are going to be scared, and they’re going to need to hear from you. We have to make sure that happens.”

  Fuck the Pulitzer, I’m gonna make the news.

  Leopold Mack

  Clearly, there is a profound hurt within Maria. I may have been too preoccupied to notice it before. But, my God, what this young lady has been through....

  And the way her words take down her father—reduce the mayor to a big fat nothing—well, I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

  It’s hard to think about what comes next for the mayor. He didn’t expect to start his administration hiding in the basement of a church in Austin, but that’s the plan. Right now I don’t have a better idea. Maybe there have been more inauspicious starts and we just don’t know about them. (I can actually think of a few mayors who would have benefitted from a forced immersion into their more underserved communities. As I look into the mayor’s wan, sad eyes, I consider that this may be just what a man needs to start over. Change and correct himself. Mend his ways. If anything is a ground-clearing, life-altering experience, it’s a zombie outbreak. I hope that the mayor is seeing the error of his past actions, and that—if God has so ordained it—he will one day find the strength to rebuild this city.)

  As the mayor is pulling on a pair of blue jeans and looking for a shirt, shouts of alarm erupt from the front of the house. There is the sound of scuttling feet across the kitchen floor, which is followed by more raised voices. Then a moment of silence. Then, abruptly, the loud Ka-chang! Ka-chang! of powerful guns being discharged. The mayor ducks his head but finishes putting on his pants.