by Jake Bible
***
The trail of feathers and chicken parts led me to the last house between Miss Tuckwiller’s and town. Biscuit Shelton’s place
Now, on a good day I’d stay away from Biscuit. He be one mean, crazy man. Mama always said he had the shellshock. You know, the PTSD from the Iraq? Yep, he had it in spades. He’d be yellin’ and screamin’ at cars on Main Street, usually with his double barrel in one hand and a bottle of rye in the other.
In any other parish the sheriff just locked a crazy person like that up, but not ‘round here. ‘Round here the sheriff be Biscuit’s brother and an even bigger drunk. So you can imagine what I come upon when I found 'im.
Neither was lookin’ too good after meetin’ Zombie Jesus. The Sheriff had a big ol’ hole outta his shoulder and I could see right to his bone. Biscuit looked about the same, ‘cept he was missin’ a finger or two and black-red blood was just drippin’ away onto the winter dead grass.
“Don’t shoot ‘er!” Sheriff “Shelty” Shelton yelled, as the corner of the shed exploded into splinters and paint chips right by my head. “She ain’t gonna be as tasty if she’s dead, you moron!”
“Shut your flesh-hole, Shelty!” Biscuit screeched. “This be my land and I’ll shoot whoever I God damn want ta!”
“It ain’t just your land, Biscuit! Papa left it to both of us and don’t you forget it!”
“He loved me more ‘cause I’s a war hero! So it’s mine!”
“You’re a crazy jackass, is what you are!”
“Take that back! Nobody done call me crazy and gets away with it!”
“Oh, yeah?” the Sheriff yelled, cocking his pistol and shovin’ it against Biscuit’s head. “What you gonna do ‘bout it?”
I watched Biscuit try to swing his shotgun ‘round, but the Sheriff’s trigger finger was faster and Biscuit’s brain done exploded out the other side his head.
“Hoowhee!” the Sheriff shouted, slappin’ the smokin’ pistol ‘gainst his thigh. “That learned ya!”
The journal said the head had to come offa the neck, but I didn’t believe it ‘til I seen it. Biscuit picked hisself up off the ground, grabbing at some extra brain by his feet, and shoved his skull right back together. It sorta stayed put, but there was a flap of skin and hair that kept fallin’ down over his ear and I could see it pissed him off.
“Dammit, Shelty! That ain’t cool!”
“Oh, shut yer trap, ya big baby,” the Sheriff growled, bored with his brother as he turned his attention on me. “We’re bein’ rude to our guest. Hey, sweet thing, how about comin’ a little bit closer?”
“That’s what I’s aimin’ to do, Sheriff,” I answered.
He catched sight of my blade and laughed, holdin’ up his .44 pistol. “You think you can cut me with that, girl? I shave with bigger blades.”
“I shave with bigger blades!” Biscuit parroted.
“I just said that, stupid.”
“Screw you! I ain’t stupid!”
The Sheriff was so busy arguin’ with Biscuit that he didn’t see me come up next to him quick-like. I had his head off and rollin’ at his brother’s feet lickety split.
“You bitch!” Biscuit roared. “You kilt my brother!”
“Yes, I did,” I said to him, my confidence growin’. “And I’ll be killin’ you now too.”
Biscuit took a swipe at me with his shotgun, apparently havin’ emptied both barrels, but I jumped out of the way. He was just too drunk to hit anythin’.
As he spinned about I slashed at his neck, but he was so drunk he fell down at my feet and the knife hit nothin’ but air.
“Ha! You missed, bitch!”
My foot didn’t miss as it crunched down on his face over and over and over. With every stomp Biscuit would screech, then laugh, screech, then laugh. It was quite irritatin’.
“Hold still, Biscuit!” I shouted. “I ain’t got all night!”
Biscuit alive weren’t never cooperative, and Biscuit dead was even worse. He just kept rollin’ about the yard, his skull half caved in, laughin’ and cursin’. I chased after him, pickin’ up a long axe handle leanin’ ‘gainst the porch, thinkin’ if I broke his legs he couldn’t roll away no more, but every time I’d slam that hickory down it’d just hit dirt!
“Damn you, Biscuit Shelton! HOLD STILL!”
‘Fore I knowed it he was up and in my face. “How’s this, sweet thing?”
He smacked me ‘cross my cheek and my head rocked back, stars spinnin’ before my eyes. His fist was in my belly and I doubled over, tryin’ so hard to get my breath, but he grabbed me by my hair and slapped me again across the other cheek.
“Is that still enough?” Another slap. “How’s ‘bout that?” And another.
I bit my tongue something fierce and I focused on that pain, turnin’ it into anger.
“I’m done with your horseshit, Biscuit!” I yelled, drawing the blade across the back of his knee. He collapsed nearly on top of me and I shoved hard, pushin’ him away.
“Bitch! How’s I gonna dance on yer grave with a bum leg?!?”
Them’s the last words Biscuit Shelton ever said.
I struggled to my feet, my belly achin’, and kicked Biscuit’s head over to his brother’s. I didn’t give two craps whether their souls went to Heaven or not. I doubted they would, anyway.
My stomach hurt bad, but I had to push on. There was a Zombie Jesus to find.
***
Trackin’ Zombie Jesus was easy when there’s a trail of chicken feathers and guts and legs and parts to follow. Without all that stuff, though, the trail went dead right quick.
I pulled the whistle out of the satchel and gripped it tight in my hand as I walked my way along Main Street. I didn’t want to blow that whistle. Sure, I’d live forever, but from the way Rev Jones acted, that livin’ forever stuff wasn’t gonna be no picnic. I kept thinkin’ maybe I could find Zombie Jesus without the whistle, cut his head off and then go back to livin’ with Mama just as normal as could be.
I was kiddin’ myself.
Rev Jones could see me for somethin’ different and so did that Zombie Jesus. Once that ghoul hopped down off his cross, my life changed. Ain’t no goin’ back when you put your foot on the trail. Ain’t no goin’ back at all.
Main Street was quiet. Which was to be expected on Christmas night, but the quiet wasn’t right. It had a thickness to it, like there might be sound, but it was way, way down under twenty bales of cotton, fightin’ to get heard.
You ever feel electricity in the air? You know, like before a big lightnin’ storm? That’s what it all felt like. A tension and energy coursin’ through the whole town.
“Them legs of yours must be gettin’ cold under that skirt, Bethany?” a voice said from behind me.
“Yeah, Joey, yeah, they’s gettin’ cold!” another voice laughed. “Cold, cold, cold!”
“Shut up, Mickey,” Joey growled.
Joey Biggs and Mickey Porter. Two rotten peas in a rotten pod.
I spun about, my knife ready to take their heads off. They both jump back, they’re hands raised.
“Whoa there, Bethany!” Joey yelled. “We’s just playin’! No need to get all violent!”
I watched them closely and realized quickly they weren’t dead. Drunk, stupid and immature, but not dead.
“Go away, boys,” I snarled at them. “Get back home.”
“You ain’t my mama!” Mickey shouted.
Mickey Porter only had two ways of talkin’: shoutin’ and yellin’. His mama was known for bein’ a clumsy ox of a woman, so everyone guessed Mickey had been dropped more than once on his ugly noggin.
“Go home, boys,” I said again. “I ain’t got time for your bullcrap tonight. Get off the street. It ain’t safe.”
“You got that right!” Joey laughed. “We saw this crazy guy all dressed up like Jesus. He was singin’ and dancin’ and…”
“And what?” I insisted. “Tell me, Joey!”
“Why shoulds I? Not like you bein
’ very nice right now.”
I was on him in a flash and the knife was right next to his privates. “I already told you I ain’t got time for your bullcrap!”
Joey’s eyes got all wide and he tried to step back, but I grabbed him by his dirty collar and pulled him close. “I’ll take your junk, Joey. Tell me where the Zombie Jesus is!”
“Zombie Jesus? Zombie Jesus!” Mickey cackled. “She’s crazy, Joey! Gone nuts in her brainpan, Joey! Cookoo!”
“Shut up, Mickey,” Joey whispered, all his attention focused on me. “I don’t know where the nut went, Bethany. Honest. We were laughin’ too hard at him to notice and when we looked back he was gone. Honest.”
My hand got all warm and I realized Joey had wet himself and it was leakin’ through his jeans. I jumped back and wiped my hand on my coat.
“You’re disgustin’,” I growled at him. “Get your stupid ass home! NOW!”
Joey turned and took off, embarrassment makin’ his legs pump faster and faster. Mickey took off after him.
“Hey Joey! Hey! Wait up, man!”
The two idiots nearly made it to the corner of Chestnut Street when they both stopped suddenly. I couldn’t quite see what they were doin’, but it was close to the alley that ran between Hollister’s Grocery and Mrs. Prim’s Bibles & Books.
“What are you two morons doin’? I said go home!”
“Hey, Bethany!” Joey called back to me. “I think I found your-!”
Dead hands reached out and pulled the boys into the alley, and I took off down the street so fast I nearly sprinted out of my shoes. But when I reached the alley they was gone. Not a trace. Nothin’.
“Where you at, Zombie Jesus?!?” I yelled, spinnin’ about. “Show yourself!”
The silence was finally broken as I heard that ghoul laugh his undead, thorny-crowned head right off. The noise filled the air alls about.
“HAHAHAHAHA! Poor Bethany! Little girl can’t do a man’s job! All you’re good for is taking a stiff one between the legs and pumping out some bastard brats! Like your mama did!”
“I ain’t listenin’ to you, ghoul!” I shouted. “You’re nothin’ but a liar!”
“Oh, dear! Mama didn’t tell you, did she? That wasn’t your real daddy, Bethany! He was just the man that took pity on your whore of a mother and married her when you were still a wiggling worm in her slutty womb!”
“Shut up, liar! SHUT YOUR EVIL MOUTH!”
The laughter stopped, but silence didn’t fill the void. No, it didn’t.
The sound of every door on Main Street openin’ was what I heard next.
***
“Bethany! Be-than-y! BETHANY!” they all chanted as they stepped, crawled, lurched and stumbled into the road. “BETHANY, WE ARE HERE!”
The whole town! The whole town was dead and comin’ for me!
What could I do?
I spun about and saw that I was surrounded. No where to run to. Not from the hunert zombies comin’ to eat me!
“Not so easy now, huh?” Zombie Jesus laughed behind me. “What’s the little girl going to do?”
I didn’t even think, just turned and slashed. Joey cried out and clutched at his throat.
“Why, Bethany?” he gurgled as blood spilled from between his fingers and out his mouth. “I didn’t do nothin’ to ya…”
He collapsed onto the ground, blood poolin’ about him.
“I’m so sorry, Joey! Oh, God, I thought you was him!”
“Who’s damned now?” the ghoul’s voice said next to my ear, but he was gone before my head whipped about.
“Show yourself, you big coward! SHOW YOURSELF!”
“With pleasure, Bethany,” he said from the middle of the street.
The ghoul-devil took a long, low bow, his arms spread wide.
“I’m right here, Bethany. Just going for a stroll.” He grinned as he weaved hisself through the crowd of zombies and away from me. “Just going for a stroll. I wonder if your mama’s awake?”
Then I lost sight of him as the undead closed around me, chantin’, “Be-than-y! Be-than-y!”
The satchel around my shoulders felt heavy, way heavier than when I put it on, nearly pullin’ me down to the ground. I reached inside and felt around, my hand closing on the handle of the hammer. I pulled the satchel’s strap over my head and let the bag fall as I kept a hold of the hammer.
Now, when I put that hammer in there it was small, like a mallet. But somehow that hammer growed. It weren’t no small mallet no more, no sir, it was like a sledgehammer! And the head of that sledgehammer glowed with a brilliant light. And I knowed that light. It was the light of Righteousness.
The zombies stopped in their tracks, their undead arms comin’ up to shield their empty eyes.
“Turn that light down, bitch!”
“Knock that off, Bethany!”
“Whore-child!”
“It burrrrrns!”
They all started backin’ away and yellin’ at me. To my greatest surprise, I could lift that sledgehammer with one hand, it feelin’ light as air, leavin’ my other hand free to keep that knife at the ready.
“I’m so sorry to y’all!” I shouted. “But I have to put ya to rest now!”
I stepped into the road swingin’!
Folks I knowed all my life fell against the hammer blows, their skin crispin’ up like bacon at the slightest touch of the head. Their undead mouths started to scream and they tried to run, but I hunted them down, crushin’ and cuttin’, slammin’ and slicin’.
Junior Morgan tried to grab me from behind, but I rammed that handle in his gut, turned about and sent his head a-flyin’.
The right upstandin’ Mrs. Edgar Winchell tried to take a chunk outta my arm, but I crushed her kneecaps, then her face, squishin’ her brain’s right out her ears.
I felt bad when I had to gut Scootch Mitchell. I knowed Scootch since we was in diapers. We fooled a bit every now and then. He was my first boyfriend until one day durin’ recess he made me eat sand. I made him eat iron.
Friends and folk I knowed forever came at me and I put ‘em down. I didn’t hesitate at all. I knew what needed to be done and I done it.
Like a machine of righteous death, I moved from zombie to zombie, makin’ sure not an undead head was attached to its neck and there weren’t nobody left movin’ on Main St.
By the time I was done dispatchin’ them all to the Afterlife, my body was covered in gore and zombie blood. Not a part of me was left dry.
“I’m comin’ for ya, Zombie Jesus! Don’t you touch a hair on my Mama’s head, you evil ghoul bastard!”
***
There was light on the horizon and I still had a couple miles to walk before home. I weren’t gonna make it before dawn. The journal book didn’t say what would happen if the sun rose before Zombie Jesus was back on his cross, but it weren’t gonna be good.
The crunch of tires on the gravel road made me turn, my knife ready and hammer still in hand. The long, black Cadillac pulled up next to me, the passenger window rollin’ down.
“Get inside, Bethany,” Deacon Lawrence ordered. “I warned you about hurryin’ up.”
He didn’t have to ask me twice and we was speedin’ to my house before my car door slammed shut.
“You been busy, girl,” the Deacon said. “I found your leavin’s in town.”
“They all come for me,” I whispered. “Ain’t nothin’ I could do, but set their souls free.”
“That’s true,” he nodded. “Don’t mean you can leave those corpses to rot in the road. You still got work to do when you done with Jesus.”
“Zombie Jesus,” I corrected him. “That ain’t the true Savior.”
“No, it ain’t,” he agreed as we swung into my drive. He sat there, his old eyes fixed on me. “What ya waitin’ for? Get yer butt in there!”
“You ain’t comin’?”
“No, ma’am, ain’t my fight. I can help with the heavy liftin’, but you gots to do the fightin’.”
“Bu
t I ain’t blowed the whistle yet. I ain’t committed!”
“There’s a town of dead folk back there that shows just how committed you are. Don’t fool yourself, girl. You may not be livin’ forever, but this is your job now. Until you die.”
I nodded, knowin’ I didn't got no time to argue, whether I be wantin’ to or not.
“I’ll be out shortly,” I said to the Deacon, more to boost my own confidence than anythin’ else.
He just nodded.
When I opened my back door all I could hear was Mama yellin’ at the top of her lungs.
“Get your rotted ass off me, you demon!”
“I just want to give you a hug, Althea,” Zombie Jesus laughed. “Hold still now.”
“You ain’t huggin’ me if you got the last prick on Earth! Take your stinky-ass self somewhere’s else! I ain’t buyin’ what you be sellin’!”
“Mama! I’m comin’! Hold on!” I shouted, rushin’ through the kitchen and into the front parlor.
But there weren’t no Mama there. Not alive no more, at least.
“Oh, Bethany, there you are!” Zombie Jesus said from the couch, his rotten arms wrapped around Mama’s naked body. “Your mother and I were just having ourselves some cuddle time! Care to join? She has coffee!”
“Come on, child! Get those nasty clothes off and come rub against your new daddy!” Mama said, grabbin’ at Zombie Jesus’s privates with one hand while holdin’ up her coffee mug with the other. From the color of the drippin’s on the side, I knew that weren’t coffee in that mug. “Don’t be shy!”
“But.. But… But I thought you was fightin’ him off? I heard you…”
“Oh, that? We’s just playin’, girl! Adults play-pretend right before gettin’ it on sometimes!” Mama grinned, lickin’ her already swollen lips. Her teeth came out and raked against her bottom lip over and over until blood started to trickle down and drip from her chin. “Don’t make me ask you again, Bethany. Get those clothes off and come show your new daddy your stuff!”
“Mama…no…please not you, Mama,” I whimpered, my heart breakin’, my mind and soul hurtin’, makin’ my belly do somersaults.
The hammer in my hand shrunk itself right back to its normal size, weighin’ more than I thought possible. I let the thing fall from my fingers and it thumped to the ground. I still held the knife, but the fight wasn’t in me no more. Mama was gone.