Imaginary Jesus

by Matt Mikalatos

  I took my fingers out of my ears. I heard a dull roar, a sort of rumbling echo in my ears. It appeared that Culbetron’s box had temporarily deafened me. I looked to Culbetron, who was frantically trying to climb back up the electrical wiring and get onto the roof. I could hear him telling Hibbs over and over that they must get on the roof before the zombies came. So my hearing wasn’t gone after all. Then what was that strange rumbling sound?

  I turned on my flashlight for comfort and walked down the street, toward the rapidly increasing sound of riot in the southern part of the neighborhood. I looked back and could see the two crazy people clambering back onto the roof of the Murphy house. Maniacs.

  I had walked half a block when I saw them come around the corner and turn toward me, just one or two at first, lurching out of the shadows and dragging their stiff legs along the sidewalk. But then a few more came, and then more, and then a terrifying conglomeration of people with green-painted faces and torn clothes and makeup that gave the appearance of torn flesh. My finger hovered over the SEND button on my cell phone, but I hesitated. What would I say to the dispatcher? I ran through the conversation in my head. First the operator would ask me the nature of the emergency. I would say zombies. The operator would ask me what the zombies were doing. I would say running around, but that I was afraid they might bite someone. The operator would remind me that this was, after all, America, and zombies are allowed to walk around and that I should call back if the zombies ate someone or a house caught on fire or something. By the time I got to this point in my imaginary conversation, the first zombie had reached me—a fast zombie in running shoes and sweatpants—and he snatched the phone away from me, hit SEND, and shouted into it.

  “Hey!” I said, and I grabbed the phone away from him and shut it. “I’m Chief Officer of the local Neighborhood Watch, sir. You can just tell me the nature of your emergency.” Looking frightened, the zombie pointed at the horde running up behind him. “Zombies?” I asked. He shook his head furiously and pointed again. “Zombies!” I said again. “I know. I see them.” He shook his head and held up three fingers. “Three words.” He nodded. “First word.” The zombie made a terrible face. “Indigestion? No. Bad taste? No. Wait. Is it . . . monster?” The zombie nodded and held up two fingers and started running in place. The rest of the zombie horde was almost on us now. “Run? Chase? Chasing?” The zombie nodded and held up a third finger, then pointed at himself. “Monster chasing me!” The zombie smiled and jumped up and down and pointed at my phone. Then he looked at how close the other undead were to us, gave a little shriek, and ran away. Zombies were nicer than I thought—or that one was, at least. The rest of the zombies were starting to speed past me now.

  “Ruuuuuuhhn,” one of them moaned. A snapping, growling sound came from behind it, and I looked past the zombie-things to see a large, furred creature biting at their legs and herding them toward me with a ferocious speed.

  I stared in wonder at this vicious animal. “Is that . . . a giant badger?” But before I could get a good look I was swept up into the tide of the undead. Against my will, my feet started moving, and the looks of real terror on the zombie faces convinced me I didn’t want to get too close to that angry badger at the back of the crowd. I started pushing zombies out of my way. I could hear the badger-thing right behind me now, the snapping of its long, white teeth right at my heels. One zombie looked over at my scalp and licked his lips. My wife has always said she loves me for my brains, which is great, but attractive brains are a real disadvantage when there are hungry zombies around. I pushed him into a thornbush along the sidewalk, and a panicked laugh bubbled out of my mouth. “Sorry,” I said. I wasn’t sure whether being polite to zombies pays off or not.

  The zombies were starting to scatter now, disappearing by twos and threes down side streets, under hedges, and between parked cars. The badger was getting closer and had a disturbingly wolflike appearance.

  “A werewolf!” Culbetron was yelling at me from the rooftop. I kept running, but looking back at the badger I could see now that it was definitely more wolf than badger. It was, in fact, more man than badger too. It was bent over like a man running on all fours, its back twisted down toward canine legs and clawed, furred hands. A fountain of drool was pouring from the creature’s fang-studded mouth, and I could tell as it got closer that it was bigger than me. Culbetron cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “You should run faster!”

  I considered shouting a sarcastic thanks to the doctor, but I was already short on breath, so instead, I took his advice. I could hear the snapping teeth of the wolf getting closer, and the sound of its claws clicking on the sidewalk. I threw my flashlight back at the wolf, but I heard it clatter to the ground and the wolf growled. Then I felt the sudden, considerable weight of a large, clawed mammal settle into my back, and I fell onto the cement, skidding along for several feet before we stopped.

  The wolf rolled me over and huffed in my face. Despite my expectations, its breath didn’t smell one bit like rotting flesh.

  I put my hands on its face and tried to push it back. “Your breath is surprisingly minty.” The wolf snarled, a menacing, terrifying sound. A small voice in the back of my head informed me that since the wolf took such good care of his teeth, he should have no problem eating me right up. I let out a low moan and tried to think how to get out of this situation. I felt like I was about to start crying, and the wolf was pushing his gaping maw uncomfortably close to my tasty face. Finally, I gave him the only compliment I could think of: “My, what nice teeth you have.” As soon as I said it I regretted it. But I start to babble when I’m panicked, and before I could control myself I said, “Why do you think the wolf in ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ didn’t just eat her in the forest instead of running ahead to Grandma’s and waiting there to eat her?” Which, if you think about it, really is an excellent question.

  The wolf shook its head, and its yellow eyes narrowed. Its ears perked, and it looked back over its shoulder. It looked quickly back to me just as a straight, silver arrow sprouted from its left shoulder. It let out an animal squeal of pain. I was so startled that I let the wolf fall forward onto my chest, and its muzzle brushed my ear. It snorted, but it almost sounded like it had said a word. Like it had said, “Help.” It pushed itself up from my chest, and the look in its face seemed to change from savage hatred to an almost elemental fear. It looked in my eyes one more time, only this time its eyes seemed almost human, as if they were scanning me to see if I might be a source of help, as one soul crying out to another. It was as if the wolf wanted help, not just to escape the hunter, but to escape something inside itself. It jumped from my chest and loped up the street, then catapulted its body over a fence across the street.

  I stood up and brushed myself off. My back hurt from the wolf’s claws, and my chest hurt from hitting the pavement. The wolf and the zombies had disappeared like sunbaked snow. The neighborhood was quiet again.

  A short man with a broken face came charging up the sidewalk, cradling a crossbow in his arms. I realized the silver arrow must have been a bolt from the crossbow. When I say the man’s face was broken, that is not an exaggeration. His nose had clearly been broken many, many times, so that he had the unmistakable look of a sheep, and there were scars and lacerations covering his arms and face. Weapons and strange sachets hung from his belt and a bandolier was slung across his chest. He grabbed my arm, and with an intensity that made me enormously uncomfortable he said, “Did the volf bite you?”

  “The volf?”

  “The verevolf.”

  “Oh. No. It knocked me down, though.” I looked the way the werewolf had come instead of the way it had run off. Something about the look in its eyes after it was wounded made me want to help it, even if it couldn’t find the words to ask. “It went, uh, over there.”

  The man with the broken face shook me, hard. “There are wampires and verevolfs and zombies about. You had best get inside.”

  Culbetron and Hibbs came running up.
A little late, I thought. Culbetron clapped the hunter on the shoulder. “The device worked admirably, sir, did it not?”

  “Yah, yah, wery good.”

  “Until the malfunction,” Hibbs said.

  Culbetron touched a finger to the broken-faced man’s shoulder. “You appear to be carrying a crossbow and a great deal of weapons, Borut.”

  “Yah. To kill the volf.”

  Hibbs and Culbetron exchanged glances. “That is antithetical to our purposes,” Hibbs said.

  Culbetron’s face flushed bright red. “We are scientists, sir! Our goal is to capture and study these creatures, and perhaps to cure them.”

  Borut laughed. “You cannot cure the volf. Here is the only cure.” He patted the crossbow cradled in his arms.

  Culbetron lifted his nose and said haughtily, “Ours is both a spiritual and a scientific endeavor, Borut. We kill the monsters only as a last resort. This association is finished!”

  “As you vish. Now I must find the volf.” Borut ran the way I had pointed, the moonlight shining off the cement and glinting on the silver bolt in his crossbow. As he turned the corner and left our sight, a chilling howl came from behind us. Culbetron and Hibbs both turned toward me, looks of wonder on their faces.

  “Yeah, it ran the other way. Come on, we have to make sure it doesn’t eat my wife and kids!” We ran in the direction of the howl, and I showed them where the wolf had leapt the fence. A pair of yellow eyes glared at us, and a deep-throated growl came from the creature. On the ground I saw the bolt, swathed in the creature’s blood. The wolf bared its teeth, then turned and jumped into the next yard over. We ran alongside the fence. The creature seemed to be moving toward my house, but at the last moment it turned and headed west. About six houses down from my house it ran into the backyard, and we followed. The werewolf was getting ahead of us, but I skidded into the backyard just in time to see a flash of fur and an oversized doggie door flapping in the back door. Note to self: never get a doggie door.

  “We have to warn your neighbors,” Culbetron said.

  “I say we leave well enough alone.”

  “You’re the Neighborhood Watch person!”

  “Oh, fine.” I walked up to the door and pounded on it. “Werewolf in your house, werewolf in your house!” I ran down the steps without waiting for an answer. “Let’s get out of here.”

  But the door had already opened, and I could see the silhouette of a thin man in the doorway—the same man from last week, I thought. “Can I help you?” His voice made it clear he had no desire to help us, that he saw us as an annoyance. I couldn’t see his face in the shadows.

  I was suddenly struck with the ludicrous nature of what I needed to tell him. “I think a wild animal might have come in through your dog door.”

  “Our dog just came in. Is that what you saw?”

  “Well, I didn’t actually see it go in.”

  “It was our dog. If that’s all you have to say, then good night.”

  “Sorry to disturb you. Good night.”

  He closed the door without further comment, which seemed a little rude. I rubbed my arms and looked around nervously. “So there’s still a werewolf out here somewhere.”

  “Don’t worry,” Culbetron said. “We’ll help you catch it.”

  “You’ll help me do what now?”

  Hibbs interrupted, “Doctor, it appears that the zombies have recovered their equilibrium and once more roam the night seeking to assimilate the living.”

  I turned to Hibbs. I could see several zombies lumbering up behind him. “When you say ‘assimilate the living,’ do you mean turn us into zombies?”

  “Affirmative.”

  Culbetron rubbed his chin. “Or eat us. Those are the options when dealing with zombies, to be assimilated or digested.”

  The zombies were clumping up now, flowing in from around the neighborhood, down streets, under rosebushes, and behind cars, and they seemed to sense the three of us on the sidewalk, because they were headed our direction. “Follow me.” I ran down the street on the sidewalk farthest from the zombies, Culbetron and Hibbs close behind me. “My house is just ahead.” But when we got to my house, there were three zombies milling around on the porch. They appeared to be stuffing flyers into the handle of my front door. These were very strange zombies. I punched my fist into my palm. “I knew I should have put up a ‘No Soliciting’ sign.” I looked at the other zombies. Now that I noticed it, most of them had bright green flyers in their hands. I picked one up off the ground and read it out loud: “REVIVAL IS COMING. Join us this Sunday for our weekly REVIVAL. The Lord is coming to Dr. Bokor’s church. Are you?” The church name and address had been torn off. Weird. I folded it and put it in my pocket.

  Maybe the Lord was going to Dr. Bokor’s church, but I wasn’t planning on being there. I have my own church, after all, and I was pretty sure that God would be there, also. Minus the brain-eating, flyer-leaving parishioners.

  Culbetron asked, “What now?”

  My neighbor Lara’s house was behind us, but there were zombies in our path. I knew she would let us in, but the slow approach of the undead threatened to cut us off. Some of them looked hungry. The choice appeared to be move forward to be eaten or remain where we were. “We could go to my Secret Lair,” I said reluctantly. “I usually only go there alone to hatch secret plans where my wife or daughters won’t get in the way.”

  “I suggest we move swiftly.”

  I pulled my keys out. “Quickly then!” I unlocked the door to my Toyota Corolla and leapt into the driver’s seat, slammed the door, and unlocked the back door just in time for Culbetron and Hibbs to crowd in. Their knees were in their faces, but they were safe from the groping hands of the zombies hitting the glass. The zombies looked through the windows at us in uncomprehending confusion.

  “Drive!” Culbetron shouted. “Lead us on, sir, to your Secret Lair!”

  I cleared my throat. “This is my Secret Lair.”

  Culbetron looked out the window, where a zombie was absently smashing his palm into the glass, over and over. Hibbs shifted his long legs, which caused both Culbetron and me to rearrange. Culbetron scratched his chin, as if thinking carefully what he should say in response to this revelation. When he finally spoke, he said, “This is the worst Secret Lair ever.”

  “If it weren’t for your earsplitting invention, we wouldn’t be in this mess. I guess we just wait here until the zombies move along.” But the zombies didn’t move along. They gathered around the car and started to push and shove at it.

  “We’re going to be fine,” Culbetron said.

  “There is a high likelihood that this will end poorly,” the Hibbs 3000 said dispassionately.

  “You’re such a pessimist.”

  “It is in my programming.” One of the zombies started to smash the rear window with a brick.

  Culbetron suggested we drive away, but the Secret Lair was out of gas. A zombie tried the door handle. I started getting nervous. Hibbs counted the zombies outside the car (twenty-seven) and said, “A zombie population of this density in a suburban neighborhood is statistically unlikely.”

  “A good point, Hibbs 3000. Matt, perhaps you should tell us if you have noticed anything strange in the neighborhood during your patrols.”

  A zombie crawled up onto the hood. I turned on the windshield wipers to try to get him off, but he grabbed the blades and started chewing on them. “Well. There was this one weird thing a week ago.”

  More zombies were gathering, and as they pushed on the back passenger door I heard the crunching sound of metal denting inward. “You had best tell the story quickly,” Culbetron said.

  “Yes, of course. It all started when we heard the screaming . . .”

  Continue the conversation with Matt and George from chapter 28!

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