by A. J. Brown
I lifted the gun, the safety off, and placed a finger on the trigger. “If you are one of the Chosen, then you might want to go ahead and back away. I’m trying to end this peacefully, but if you come at me, I will put a bullet right between your eyes. And believe me, over the last few months, I’ve had a lot of target practice.”
The preacher didn’t take another step forward. Instead, he took a few backward. A couple of moments later, the young man collapsed to the ground near the pulpit. His body shook, and his feet and head crashed against the thick carpet. His glasses shot off his face and landed in the center aisle. One older woman with bluing hair screamed while two of the men tried to hold him down.
White ran to them, put his hand on the young man’s head, and then pulled it away. He lifted both hands in the air and began to pray for the boy’s deliverance from evil, that the devil had him and that Satan had no hold there.
Then the young man stilled as if by some miracle.
It was no miracle.
I’ve been through this before. I’ve seen the dead rise up, and it doesn’t take long. I started toward the front of the church where the kid lay dead. That close to him, I saw he really was a kid, maybe twenty if that.
“Get away from him,” I yelled.
One of the men stood and placed himself between me and the corpse. “You don’t be tellin’ us what to do, stranger.”
“He’s going to turn into one of those corpses that eat people. You need to kill him.”
“He’s already dead,” Blue-haired Woman said.
“Get out the way,” I said and aimed my pistol toward the kid.
“No,” the woman yelled and lowered herself over his body, her arms on either side of his head, her face an expression of grief, tears spilling from her eyes.
“Ma’am, you need to move.” Always ma’am, even in these times where manners and respect have been thrown to the wind. Pop might have been proud of me if he were still alive. That’s the thing. He was gone, and these people were too stupid to realize that the dead were among them and one of them would be directly in their mist.
I saw the kid’s foot jerk. It was just a twitch, barely noticeable. Someone was yelling something about “put the gun away.” Someone else babbled on about letting them be for crying out loud. And Reverend William White prayed his prayers. Somewhere in all of the noise, I heard him say I was the devil, that I was the reason for the calamity brought upon the world.
I was in danger but not because of the dead. The Reverend had stood. The scene playing out before me held my interest long enough for him to get in close enough to drive his knife into my skull if he wanted to.
Blue-haired Woman began to scream, drawing everyone’s attention away from me. The boy had awakened, and both of his hands held her throat firm to his mouth, silencing her. Blood splashed over his face and clothes and the plush, red carpet of the church as the color drained from Blue-haired Woman’s face. She tried to push up but couldn’t. Her arms gave way, and she collapsed onto the boy, but he didn’t seem to notice. No, she was nothing more than a meal at that point, something to bite down on until he was able to stand and go after someone else.
“Get her off of him,” I heard someone yell, and two of the men, probably well into their sixties, bent down and grabbed the woman by the arms. One of them, a man with more hair in his ears than on his head, slipped in the woman’s blood, dropping to his knees. The boy released the woman and grabbed the man’s leg. He shifted enough to bite down into the thin khakis the man wore. The man gave a loud shriek and dropped the woman’s arm, knocking himself off balance.
Rotters aren’t all that fast after they’ve been dead a few days, but fresh ones still had the limberness of a living body, having only passed minutes earlier. Rigor mortis hadn’t set in yet. The boy moved quickly, grabbing the man’s wrist and biting off one of his fingers. The man howled as he dropped to his butt and held the mangled hand up with the other one.
There was little time to waste. I took aim at the kid, pulled the trigger. His body went limp. The old man scuttled away until he bumped into the altar behind him. He whimpered in shock as he stared at the bloody stump where his finger used to be.
“You should have listened to me,” I growled.
No one said anything. With the exception of the old man’s crying, there was no noise in the church at all. Two of their nine were dead. I suspected a third would be joining him soon enough, but I had no plans to stick around and find out.
White finally turned to me, his face dabbed in sweat, his eyes wide. He still held the knife, but I don’t think he realized it. “Look what you’ve done.”
“What I’ve done? What I did was save your lives; that boy could have killed you all.”
“You brought Hell with you. We were fine until you showed up.”
“That kid was dying before I got here. It was only a matter of time before he was one of them.”
“One of them?” White snarled. “Do you even know what you’re talking about? One of them? Ezekiel was commanded to tell the dry bones to rise. He was told to command the breath from the four corners to enter into those bones. He did as he was told, and the dead rose up from the grave, and a vast army stood around him, their once dead bodies alive again. The dead of this land are that army, and there is no escaping them for someone like you. The devil resides in your heart, and you will perish by the sword, and the dead will devour your flesh.”
“I came here hoping to find refuge, a place to rest, but this is just a madhouse—and an unsecured one at that. You go right on and pray, Mr. Chosen One. I’m leaving.”
I headed back up the aisle to the doors leading to the foyer. I pushed through them, took the several steps to the door, and opened it.
“Oh crap,” I said.
The dead had been so far away when I walked in. How long had it been? Five minutes? Ten? Had the events lasted longer than I thought? Had I stood inside the foyer longer than I could recall? It was only a minute or two. Not more. It couldn’t have been. But there they were, the dead, weaving in and out of the cars and trucks, bumping into them and keeping on. A dozen—no, two or three dozen—and they were close enough that going out the front door wasn’t possible.
I turned around. The Chosen Ones were still stunned by the recent deaths of two of their own. They were probably questioning themselves, their preacher, their own religion for that matter. I could almost hear their thoughts.
How could this have happened to us? We’re the Chosen. This was not supposed to happen. Have we been forsaken? Are we the sinners?
That last thought probably hung in their minds like a heavy mist on a cool October morning in the mountains. If they were the sinners, then they were as good as dead—at least in the good Reverend William White’s eyes.
Back up the aisle I went. “Is there a back door?” I asked. “We need to get out of here.”
One of the men weakly raised a hand, his thumb extended. He jabbed it toward a door just beyond the pulpit. It was smaller than a normal door, maybe something that belonged on a bathroom closet and not as a church exit. What if there had been a fire or some other catastrophe? What if Hell was released right outside their door and they all had to flee out one way or get caught in the wrath they believed so dearly in?
The only woman left in the place, a gray-haired lady with wide-rimmed glasses, looked at me with confusion in her eyes. “Why do we need to leave?”
“The valley of dry bones is knocking at the front door,” I said and bent down to help her stand. She pulled her arms away from me and shook her head.
“My sister and nephew are dead.”
“And you will be too if you don’t get up from there.”
“What are you talking about?” White interjected, his face flushed red.
“The dead are coming, preacher-man. They’re right outside the door.”
White motioned to one of the men. “Johnny, go take a look.”
Johnny was probably a bigger guy in his youn
ger days, but age and life, and probably hunger, had withered him down to half the size I thought he had been. Skin drooped from his neck and jaws and arms. He shook his head.
“I…I don’t want to go look,” he said, a quiver in his voice.
“You do what I told you to do, or so help me…”
Johnny’s eyes grew wide, his bushy white brows lifted. He stood from the pew he sat on and made his way slowly toward the front of the church.
“There’s no need for that,” I said.
Johnny stopped.
“Do as I said, Johnny.”
Authority. White held authority over them all. I could see it in their faces. They didn’t believe they were chosen for anything but to eventually die in the mess that the world had become, but White wouldn’t let them speak otherwise. He thought himself a god, and the few people left in that little town were his worshipers.
“Johnny, stay away from the door. There’s no need to look. Trust me on that.”
White came forward, his lips like a line across his face. “Johnny, you will listen to me. You will do as I say. Remember who saved your behind when you needed it most. That was me. I saved your soul, Johnny. You owe me.”
I was right. He did think himself a god. Johnny went to the door, faster than before. He reached the foyer doors and went to open them. I was yelling no, but it was too late. I saw the foyer doors swing inward, the one on the right clipping Johnny in the nose. He fell backward and landed hard on the carpet. His head struck the back of a pew, and the dead were on him.
I lifted my pistol. One shot, two shots. The first of the rotters were down, but there were so many more. They tore into Johnny, one ripping his shirt at his belly and sinking its teeth in the exposed, white flesh. Others collapsed on him. I heard bones crack and break, but they weren’t Johnny’s. Those noises belonged to the dead. Some of them tipped over as their knees ruptured, but they didn’t cease trying to get a piece of the old man.
There were more—so many more, where did they all come from?—and they just pushed by the dead on the floor. Some fell and burst open. But not enough of them to slow the horde down. I shot several more of them as I backpedaled, leaving a litter of bodies strewn across the floor.
I shoved past William White, and he grabbed my shirt.
“You’re not going anywhere. The devil is here for you, and I’m going to make sure he gets you.” His southern drawl was looser, making his preaching seem like more of a show. He tried to hold me with both hands, but he was older than me and heavier, making him slower. I shoved him then put my knee into his stomach. He doubled over, reached for me again.
I’d like to say I’m innocent of murder even if the dead had souls still trapped inside rotting bodies, many of which I had put down over the previous few months. But was that the same? I don’t think so. My hands were no longer clean after he tried to grab me that second time. I brought the butt of my gun down on his forehead. The Reverend William White fell to the floor.
As I said, I’d like to say I’m innocent of murder, but things have a way of not working out the way you think they should. Two of White’s congregation ran past me and tried to help him. Loyal to the end, they gave up their lives in a futile attempt to save his. The rotters clamored over them. One of the men tried to get away, but they reached him easy enough, pulled him to the floor, and swarmed him.
In the chaos, several of the candles were knocked from the walls, their flames catching the carpet on fire. The church wasn’t a house of kindling, but the blaze spread quickly along the floor, igniting the pews with their lush cushions.
I tried to get the woman to her feet. She sat there, cradling herself and rocking back and forth.
”Come on,” I yelled.
Again, she pulled free. She wasn’t leaving. She was ready to die, and I guess I understood that. There were only two members of White’s congregation left to save at that point, and one of them walked with such a severe limp that he could have been one of the dead. The woman who had died minutes earlier (at the hands of her now dead son) snagged the cuff of his pants and bit into his ankle. The man went sprawling, his hands out in front of him.
I could have helped him. I could have shot Blue-haired Woman before she grabbed him, but I didn’t. I only watched as she bit into his ankle, and he screamed and fell, and then she crawled up his body, trying to get at something a little tenderer. I could have helped that lady refusing to get up. I could have picked her up and slung her over my shoulder, but what good would that have done? She would have been like dead weight, and that was something I didn’t need or want.
Instead, I ran through the narrow doorway that led down an even thinner hall. At the end of it was a door that stood open. I didn’t think much about why it was open. I hurried through, my gun raised and ready. The dead hadn’t reached the back of the church yet. I rounded the corner. I could see the van easily enough. It was a straight line forward. It would take less than thirty seconds to reach it. The keys were in the ignition, and the door was unlocked. Safety was half a minute away.
“Help me.”
It was the old man with the hairy ears. He was huddled along the wall, not far from the door. He still held his hand tight and in the air, the blood seeping from the wounded finger and down his arm. His face was pained, lips pulled back and exposing his teeth.
“Please, help me.”
I went to him, knelt down. His eyes were fading, he had lost so much blood. I shook my head. “I can’t help you. I’m sorry.”
“Help me. Don’t leave me here like this.”
I stood, took a few steps away from him, and then stopped. I looked back. I could smell smoke, and I could hear the dead inside the church, moaning and groaning, maybe in pain from the flames that engulfed them. I felt no pity for them or for White, who, if his body and head didn’t burn completely, would become one of them. It dawned on me then that maybe he was right. Maybe he was one of the Chosen but not in the way he thought. Maybe he was one of the skeletons in that desert valley that Ezekiel spoke to. Maybe he was sent to devour.
“Please,” the old man said again.
“You know how this is going to end, don’t you?” I asked.
He nodded.
I pulled the trigger.
Then I ran.
The gunshot attracted attention, but I had more than enough space to reach the van before they could get to me. I didn’t waste any of it. I was in the van with the doors locked, the windows up, and the engine rolled over. I put the van in gear and then shoved it back into park.
Shuffling along was that first rotter I had seen on my way up to the church. I remembered the light blue shirt, the missing arm. He hobbled toward the van. I floored it. The front tires spun at first then found traction. I yelled as I ran into him. He bounced off the van, his head striking the windshield and cracking the glass near the hood. A smear of blood was left behind where he had struck. He landed several feet away. I mashed the gas, circled around and back toward him, this time making sure to steer the van over his body. There was a slight bump then a second one as the front wheels then the back ones went over the corpse. I looked in the rearview mirror to see the crumpled remains of the armless corpse.
I drove back down the hill and along Main Street. If the dead had come from there, they were gone for the time being. I could see the black, billowing smoke from the church in my rearview mirror. We were almost through the town and hopefully heading back toward the highway when Humphrey spoke. I wasn’t sure I heard correctly, and I asked her to repeat herself.
What were they like?
“You mean the people back there?”
Yes.
I wasn’t sure how to answer the question. They were loons, and that was putting it nicely. Instead, I said, “They were searching souls misled by a deceptive voice.”
We reached the highway sooner than I expected. Turns out we weren’t so lost after all.
I thought about it as we drove along. What if they were right? I didn’t bel
ieve they were. I think they didn’t believe either. More than that, I thought of the four people that I had a hand in killing and knew that Hell awaited just as it had since I put the first rotter down.
Eleven Weeks, Four Days, and Nineteen Hours After It All Started…
Life is all about choices. Every choice you make, every decision, alters the direction of life. It changes which road you follow. If a person makes one decision, it takes him this way. If he makes a different decision, it takes him a different way. Growing up, that was one of the things Pop drilled into our heads.
If you make the wrong decisions in life, it will lead you down a dark and difficult path.
There were times when we boys thought Pop was blowing smoke, just talking to hear himself talk. We never said as much—we just thought it. The thing is, he was right.
I sat at the edge of the highway at the top of the hill overlooking the small town we had left behind. Humphrey was safely strapped into her car seat, the windows cracked enough to let the cool air in, and the doors were locked. I could see the smoke coming from the old church. I thought about the Chosen ones that died there minutes earlier, the old man with the hair in his ears and missing two fingers thanks to one of their own rising up from the dead and biting them off. His eyes held that haunted look in them that so many people have when close to death. There was fear there—real fear. Not that contrived fear that our minds conjure up when we think things are worse than they really are.
I had a boss, a cool guy named Kyle, who said “they’re killing me” a lot. He was taking over for my old boss, who had a run-in with colon cancer and called it quits before his surgery. I was apprehensive about things. He was making changes—too many of them as far as all the workers were concerned.
”Hank, what are you afraid of?” he asked me one day, just out of the blue.
At first, I said nothing. Then I responded as honestly as I knew how. “Losing my job.”
“You’re not going to lose your job. None of you are. I’m not here to kick you out. I’m here to make you better.”