God had billions of children. How could He remember one dark little boy sporadically coloring pictures of Jesus in Sunday school, crafting advent chains, and raising a thin soprano with words of praise? Did He know how Brennan sang to those dark arches dappled with the colored light from the stained glass windows? The dust motes were angels to the little boy Brennan had once been, carrying their prayers up to heaven. Father Benedicto knew Jesus personally, in the younger Brennan’s mind, and when everyone went home, Jesus climbed down from the cross, wiped off the blood, and chatted with him about sermons.
Since Brennan had never inconvenienced himself for God, God had chosen not to inconvenience Himself for Brennan. This was a shape that Brennan did not see until it was too late. But he remembered that God rejoiced in a lost sheep coming home. When he rose from the tub, he stood renewed in his heart. The angels watched him search the Internet for the closest church to home, writing down the address and Mass times; they were with him when he stepped outside bundled from head to toe. The woman who lived across the street always called in her children from the front yard when Brennan walked by. They were stomping in puddles in their bright yellow raincoats, wandering about the grass with magnifying glasses and boots, they threw pebbles into a plastic pool filling with rain water and though Brennan did not speak or even look at the girls, his stamp shielded by a scarf and jacket and a fence between them, the panicked, angry voice rang out regardless, “Anita! Berenice! Ven aqui!”
The angels could relay to God this new face in the pews, this deeper voice singing praises to the arches. Brennan was not allowed to take the faith classes, join the youth group, give money, or touch the holy water, but he could be present at the daily Mass. This was as close as he could get to God. During vacation he attended the mid-morning or evening Masses, and when school began, he’d go to the one at half past six in the morning. It ran until a quarter past seven, giving him just enough time to get to school. In his room, he taped the church bulletins from the Narthex to the wall overlooking his bed. From the clearance bin at Mr. Foods he pulled out a religious poster, and paid two dollars for a beautiful picture of Mary holding an infant Jesus. Angels threw out their arms in joy along the sides. Mary was Brennan’s heavenly mother, and surely she would not turn her back to him.
Upon his fifth exodus to Mass, the sky raging with a storm and the little girls across the street not even outside, his earthly mother said, “Brennan, God is not punishing you with Sombra C.”
But in God, all things were possible. In God, Brennan could be healed of his dirty blood. The specialist said there was no cure, so Brennan had to look to a higher authority. Perhaps this was part of some grander plan, God having to resort to Sombra C to get Brennan’s attention. He had it now!
There were other people in the red pews, mostly older ones, and they all wore scarves or turtlenecks. They never came in jeans so Brennan put on his nice trousers and tucked in his shirt, as was proper when in the house of God. An aged woman in the regular pews hissed at their bowed heads, “Cast out your demons!” A younger woman shushed her and apologized to those in the red pews, but that was how Brennan thought of his illness after that. Sombra C was a demon in his blood, and only God could smite it. He asked his mother if his real father had gone to Mass regularly, and she said no. So Brennan knew why the heart attack had happened. He was mad at his mother for not taking him to church regularly. This was her fault and they argued about it. Brennan! I worked a fifty-hour week through the year and more during harvest! I had a young son! A man who would not lift a finger around the house! One does not need to be in church to live in God! That angered Brennan. Mama! If you only think of God in passing through a day, how is He to think of you? This was why Brennan had imperfect hearing, God giving him the same dullness that Mama paid God as a lesson for her.
It was easy to post a picture about how much you loved Jesus on HomeBase; easy to say thank God, it’s Friday while doing regular errands. Easy to lie in a nice warm bed and do your prayers, or give a short grace before a meal so your food was still hot. To expect God to grant a miracle on such short shrift was silliness. A relationship was exchange, not one sweating to give 95% and the other tossing back a carefree 5%. A Jesus post on HomeBase wasn’t even 5% but nothing at all. It was not easy to give up your free time, to put aside thoughts about laundry and dinner and exhaustion, video games and reality shows to dress in your fine clothes and go to Mass. Doing something that was not easy gave God reason to notice. He gave you the world and you could not even come to His house to say thank you before making demands?
Brennan would carry this demon until God forgave him. Other people had demons in alcoholism and drugs, and they had a meeting every Thursday at the church to expunge them. If only there were meetings for Sombra C! If only he could attend the faith class to learn more. But he was prohibited, so he read his old picture Bible with more attentiveness than he had ever paid it in his youth. Such stories all along had been on his shelf, how Adam and Eve did not listen to God and were cast from the garden, the flood that drowned the earth save the man who did listen, the flight from Egypt, the near sacrifice of a beloved son. From the library he got a real Bible, but it was not told as well and he returned to the picture version. That was not right to dislike reading God’s book, which was why Brennan wanted to take the faith class. A teacher could guide him to the interesting parts, not the endless begats.
Mama didn’t believe that God was going to heal Brennan. She wanted to go on a vacation, down south to enjoy some warmer weather and visit an amusement park. But Brennan wasn’t allowed in amusement parks and he would not think of missing Mass. What was that but another slap in the face of God? Sorry, I will get back to You when it is convenient. When Mama tried to stop Brennan from going to Mass so much, he knelt by his bed for the forty-five minutes that he would have been in church and prayed. Mama wept in the doorway and said, “Honey! This is not how you should relate to God. Live by the Spirit, not the Word.”
She was scared for him to go back to school. But not so scared, she still found time for long conversations on the phone with Carlo. Time for that! Time to research Sombra C on the Internet and buy Brennan some vitamins! Time to read a trashy book with a half-clothed woman and man on the cover! Brennan turned it facedown, since he should not covet girls. But not time for Mass and he worried that Mama would be struck down with a heart attack before she found time for God. He wished that she would go with him to Mass more often than on Sundays. His demon would not hold strong against these efforts he was taking.
Brennan had to go to the district office to be readmitted to school. He was the only student there that early. An office helper added the percent on his stamp to his file and gave him a huge packet of rules. Her voice was tiny, and frequently drowned out by the clickity-clack of keyboards and squeaking chairs from cubicles, the ringing of phones and voices. Every time the helper said, “Do you understand?” Brennan nodded and initialized the place on the forms she indicated. When it was over, she wiped down the table with a bleach solution. He went home and closed himself into his room, wondering how he could bleed so much and not die. Dirty blood.
“Even as a little boy,” Mama said into the phone that night while Brennan listened, “even as a very little boy, he was so self-contained. He’d fall down and sniffle softly to himself, then get up and run again. I had to pry his feelings from fists clenched shut against me. His papa called him names and I did not see pain on my baby’s face. It skipped his face and went straight to his heart. That was where I found it days or weeks or months later. He has a face of stone but a heart of eggshell, and I’m losing him.” Mama began to weep. “I found my son but I lost him in those woods.”
After that call, she spoke of therapy. Why should Brennan see a therapist to discuss what was so clear in his mind? Their insurance didn’t cover therapy anyway, Mama arguing with a representative that it said six sessions were covered yearly and the representative answering in such a tangle that she could not f
igure it out. The intensive outpatient group program was booked solid for four months. The regular individual counseling was for crises, one visit every three to six weeks to touch base, and not intended for longer-term problems. Was her son suicidal? No. Threatening violence? No. Taking drugs? No. Having trouble at school? No. Frustrated, Mama said she wanted some treatment before it reached those points, not to do a mop-up job afterwards. The representative suggested the Sombra C group, but it was a one-time informational session on the importance of taking Zyllevir.
“Fuck,” Mama said in frustration when the call ended. She should not swear. Brennan had cleaned up his own language, the little that he transgressed, and thrown away the catalogue under his bed. One more wistful look at that joyous girl on page fifty-eight and into the trash it went. What girl would love him, unless she had a stamp herself? He did not want a girl with a demon in her blood but a pious one. One who had remained closer to God despite the worldly temptations that lured Brennan away. No pious girl would want him though, so he should not look at girls. One day God might heal him, and Brennan would be ashamed to confess to his pious girl that he dallied with demons while waiting. He could never tell his son or daughter to be strong when he had not been strong himself.
In the shower, he savaged himself with hot water and thought of the flowers he’d never buy for a girl, the doors he would not open, the body he wouldn’t pull close. He pushed the thoughts away and retrained his eyes on God. One day God would send a sign that he was healed, and no longer would Brennan need Zyllevir. Brennan worried about missing the shape of the sign. A burning bush, a parted sea, he must be ever watchful. And quiet, so that God’s whispered words made it through.
On Sunday night he swallowed his pill, and when his alarm rang early on Monday morning, he slid out of bed into the cold. It was still dark outside and the house quiet. Should he wear his nice outfit from Mass to school? No, he must change in the special restroom at church and then dash madly through the streets to beat the bell. Brennan packed clothes into his backpack and skipped breakfast, his stomach at a now familiar roil that food would capsize.
The Monday Mass had no incense and not as much music or Latin, a plainer cousin to the one on Sunday. It was still necessary to go, for this was another test of God’s. Did you only show up when it was more entertaining? The wind and rain buffeted Brennan from the moment he left the house at six sharp. Leaves and trash blew over the streets and sidewalks. Drops stung on his uncovered cheeks. It was better to go out in the darkness, and in such weather no one would think twice about his scarf.
Cloudy Valley High offered only Spanish, German, and French. Maybe he could find Latin lessons online. God would like that, Brennan’s efforts to learn His language. A demon could not withstand holy language fighting back in Brennan’s blood. That thought kept him warm in the walk through the blustery weather. As soon as he got home, he’d start a seventh period just for himself in Latin. And in his tests, the doctors would marvel! The five percent slipping to four, to three, to two, to one, to nothing, the stamp removed and Brennan back to whom he was.
No, not exactly. He would have changed to a boy who listened to God, and knew His wrath as terrible. Brennan would be a perfect son from then on. The Mass passed with him shivering in the pew, but the flight to school warmed him up. He stopped at the office for his plastic bag and new schedule, which had been adjusted to remove P.E. Now it was library time.
Police officers were on campus, standing about under overhangs and watching students. No one paid attention to Brennan, the wind so great and rain so piercing that people were hunched over like turtles to scuttle to first period. There were scarves and turtlenecks and jackets with hoods pulled high on nearly all of them.
His first class was algebra, the teacher crying out that she was glad Brennan had been found, and she pointed him to the handicapped table. That was a good sign for him to catch, since he’d almost gone to a regular desk out of reflex.
“Like, did it . . . eat you?” a boy asked.
“I’m sorry? I didn’t hear you,” Brennan said.
“The zombie! Did it try to eat you out there?”
“Seaver! Stop it!” the teacher demanded, and the bell rang.
There was a pretty girl in the first row. Brennan forced himself to turn away. The announcements began with a minute of silence for the dead and wounded students from the party. Eyes bored into the back of Brennan’s neck. The principal asked for good thoughts to be sent to sophomore Bruno Parker, who had been shot in the head and was still in the hospital in serious condition, and Renee Harbridge, shot twice in the chest and upgraded to fair. A grief counselor was in the library for those who needed to talk. People whispered about the Breckenridge twins, Aiden and Jaiden both bitten and infected, Marcy Kristoph bitten in the face and needing a plastic surgeon, the late Gage Ashman bitten through his jugular and Darius Johnson dead from a bullet to the head. A boy said that he didn’t know any of the dead, but he was going to see the grief counselor to get out of his history class.
Since the teacher did not want to take Brennan’s papers, he was given a whiteboard to write upon for pop quizzes and tests. Then she could just stand over his shoulder and grade his answers without touching anything. The whiteboards were kept in a red bin along the wall by the handicapped table, with giant laminated NO signs on every side of the bin so other students did not mistakenly pick one out.
Dirty blood. The Mexican boy with the white boy’s name and white boy’s toys, the boy who cannot figure out the shape to sweep or give his friend the right directions to a party. And now he has dirty blood, this boy, so dirty that people are afraid to touch his papers. Even God trembles before this boy, that he might bring his contamination to heaven!
When the bell rang, Brennan did not go to another class, to sit at another special table and be introduced to another whiteboard kept in a red bin for illness. He couldn’t bear more eyes on the back of his head, to be asked about the zombie who attacked him, to bring the most frightening moment of his life from the dark place he kept it into the light and chatter of a classroom. His stomach churned from the memory, from the pill, from the hunger he could not sate until this seasickness of Zyllevir gave off tonight. Going down the slope of the school to auto shop, he took refuge in a stall of the restroom.
Latin was a weapon in his arsenal, there next to Mass. He typed learning Latin into his cell phone and studied a list of verbs that came up. Some were very similar to Spanish, others like English, and he consecrated them to heart. Clamare. Habere. Amare. Ambulare. Dare. What would God think of a boy ditching class? But Brennan couldn’t leave the restroom when his stomach and his mind were this temperamental. He’d wait for it to quell to a bearable level and finish the school day. Then he might change back into his nice outfit and return to church to pray.
No one came to use the boys’ restroom during second or third. He stretched in the stall when his legs ached, working on his Latin and closing his eyes when the sickness swelled. By the time the bell rang to end third, he decided he was well enough for class. The police were still on campus, although fewer in number. The rain had stopped and the wind died down. He chose the long way around to get to his fourth period science class, walking through the grass and trees rather than the hallways.
Here he had to share the handicapped table with a boy named Carsen, who stared at the cover of the text. Students talked about the attack on the party while waiting for class to start. A girl asked Brennan what it had been like. How would he know? He hadn’t even been there. Carsen shrugged sullenly. When the girl pressed, he snapped, “What do you think it was like?”
“Did you get all bitten up?”
Even the teacher looked on with interest. Carsen almost shouted, “No, some fucking culler shot some fucking zombie and I got splashed in the face with his fucking blood along with everyone around me, are you satisfied?”
God, give me strength, Brennan prayed when his stomach overturned. He missed the first part of the
lesson from sickness, the page in his notebook still empty when Carsen’s was half-full. The nausea passed toward the end of class and he scribbled down what was on the board. Down the hallway was Welcome Mat, and he shot there to beat the crowds of students at lockers. Stephen had called him at the hospital right after he was brought in and then hadn’t called again. In the lumpy bed, Brennan laid there feeling cheated of that overnight to play Horizon II with the guys.
Looking forward to losing himself in their latest robotics project, he went inside and sat at the round table behind the curtain. The battle bots were going to fun to make, and they would box once finished. But first the boys had to finish the bug. Students entered the other half of the room, their voices subdued when usually it was noisy. The door swung open and the room filled with the smell of pizza.
No one came to the homework help table. Brennan ate so quietly that the people on the other half of the room didn’t know he was back there. It was ten minutes into the period when Stephen showed up, calling a nervous hello on the other side. He rounded the curtain and Brennan brightened to see him. “Your head, is it better?”
“Just a concussion,” Stephen said, not meeting Brennan’s eyes. Walking to the side table, he packed the bug into its box.
“Not today?” Brennan asked in confusion.
“No. I’m . . . I’m taking this home. We can’t work together.”
A chill passed through Brennan’s heart, and he refused to believe what he was hearing. “What do you mean?”
“You know, all it takes is one cut. One cut on your finger,” Stephen said, an angry edge to his voice that he had to explain. He dumped the box into his backpack and zipped it up with a furious rip. “One cut and I can’t work on this anymore without risking your infection. Someone at the homework table turns to sneeze and it’s ruined. This cost almost five hundred dollars. My dad will be real mad if I can’t finish it.”
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 36