Origin Z

by Tony Hartzell

Tin and company were patiently waiting as the line started to gather under the window and the men boosted the first few up. One of the soldiers got tired of waiting for one of the civilians and gave him a push that caused the man to overbalance and topple right on top of the waiting arms of the dead below. They immediately started to rip him apart. The soldier who had pushed him watched in disgust from the edge of the box. One of the civilians moved up and pushed him to the waiting dead also.

  Then a struggle started on top of the ambulance. Brawling in such a small space, two more fell off and bounced on the hood of the truck before being dragged into the crowd to be ripped.

  Tin took a step forward, with Raines over his shoulder. No one noticed that the strap that was wrapped around Raines’s mouth had fallen to the ground.

  “Hey! Cut that shit out!”

  They all stopped what they were doing and looked at him.

  Tin pointed at the window. “Get your asses through that window, or I’ll toss every one of you to the dogs for lunch!”

  They all looked at him with stunned looks. All except the reverend. He just stared at Tin without an expression.

  That was when Tin turned to just the right position for Raines to get a good chomp of his lower back.

  The men watched as Tin stopped yelling at them and shouted in pain as he tossed the man he was carrying to the ground.

  When they started climbing again, one lost his balance. He was teetering on the edge, waving his arms to catch his balance, but none of the others attempted to reach out and help him.

  Laudner saw this and took a stride toward the ambulance and an enhanced leap to the top to grab the falling man. The man looked at Laudner with a surprised look for a split second and then pushed past him to climb up to the window.

  Tin was able to glimpse the reverend still standing up in the window, watching as Laudner saved the man. His expression didn’t change at all. He just took it in and then turned and moved away from the window.

  Wrapping the strap back around Raines’s head and mouth, he noticed that the animated dead man was barely moving. He finished and tied it off before throwing him back over his shoulder and climbing to the window.

  THE REVEREND

  Everyone had stopped calling him Isaiah in high school. That was when he realized his life’s work.

  His family had been attending a Pentecostal church since before he was born. His father and brothers went reluctantly, but his mother was a true child of God, fainting and speaking in tongues as the Holy Spirit entered her at almost every one of the weekly revivals. When he entered grade school, his older brother and father decided they wouldn’t be going to the church anymore. There was much yelling and screaming, mostly from his mother accusing them of being tainted by the devil himself.

  He, being the youngest and quietest of the brothers, didn’t resist continuing to go with his mother. He liked how good it made his her feel. She was always happy and full of the spirit when she was around the other parishioners.

  His father and brother were always mean and angry, teasing and abusive to him. So he avoided them and spent most of his time with his mother.

  In high school he earned his nickname, Reverend, from an incident in which one of his classmates was injured and should have died. The boy, Hector, was a complete asshole, always bullying and showing off in front of the good-looking girls. But he went too far one day. Being an athlete, his favorite thing to show off was to use his strength to climb to the roof of the school by pressing his hands and feet against two walls that were just close enough that he could reach them and then inching his way up between them.

  Crowds of students would gather to watch. The day that he fell, there was a large crowd of girls there to witness. Several were hanging off their boyfriend’s arms while they gasped and hid their faces in mock terror at his daredevil feat. Some of the boys would get angry looks on their faces because they knew they would never be able to do anything as impressive as this.

  He was three quarters of the way up the three-story building when one of the girls pushed away from her boyfriend and cheered for him. This didn’t make her boyfriend, whose name was Jerrod, happy at all.

  Isaiah saw the devil take his spirit. Jerrod’s face screwed up into tormented anger.

  The boy picked up a rock, reared back, and threw it at the show-off as hard as he could, striking him in the ribs. Hector grunted and reacted by pulling one of his arms to grab his ribs. His feet stayed planted, but his remaining hand quickly slid down the wall, and he fell the twenty-five feet to land head and neck first on the pavement below. There was a loud crack, and the crowd gasped and cringed.

  All of the girls screamed as the students ran to where Hector had fallen. Isaiah walked up slowly. The sun was behind him, so it appeared that he had a halo of light. All of the students went silent and parted when Isaiah approached. He knelt beside the injured boy and laid his hands on his head. He tipped his head back and faced the heavens as he whispered a prayer that was unintelligible. After pulling his hands off, he stood up and continued speaking louder in tongues. All of the students watched him so intently that they didn’t notice that Hector had sat up and had his head in his hands.

  The girl whose boyfriend threw the rock was the first to notice him. “Hector! Are you OK?”

  “I think so. My head is killing me.”

  They all turned to Isaiah with incredulous looks on their faces. Isaiah slowly brought his head down to face the crowd. After soaking in the crowd’s adoration for several seconds, he turned to look at Jerrod, who was still kneeling on the pavement of the parking lot, tears streaking his face.

  Isaiah slowly approached and spoke to him. “I saw the devil in you.”

  The boy looked at him. “I-I d-didn’t m-mean to hit him.”

  Isaiah got a stern look on his face and slapped the boy so hard it knocked him down flat on the ground.

  As the boy lay at his feet sobbing so hard his entire body was jerking, Isaiah reached his arms and face to the sky again, just as he had seen the preacher at his church do so many times. “Lord Jesus, give this boy retribution for his sins.”

  He slowly turned to Jerrod and held his right hand out palm up. “You must atone. Give me the hand that you threw the rock with, sinner.”

  The boy looked up at him and reluctantly reached his hand out to Isaiah, who grabbed it and twisted with God-given strength. The fingers cracked, and the boy screamed.

  All of the students were now looking at him as he raised his arms back to the sky and closed his eyes while he started speaking in tongues.

  The faculty started streaming out of the school and went straight to the boy who was still sitting holding his head near the wall. The gym teacher began moving the students away from the scene and toward the doors leading into the school. He hesitated when he got to Isaiah, assessing the situation before he spoke. “OK, Reverend, time to end the sermon and get into the school.” Isaiah locked eyes with the boy on the ground. Jerrod hid the hand from the teacher and rolled to his feet using his left hand and ran toward the building.

  The teacher spoke louder then. “All of you report to the principal’s office right now.”

  From then on, everyone in the school called him Reverend. That pleased him because it made him feel powerful. Eight of the fifteen students started attending his church. Hector and Jerrod became inseparable from the young prophet. All of the students who witnessed his miracle worshipped him as though he were the Messiah.

  Before he graduated high school, he started his own church in a structure on his family’s property that had been used as slave quarters in the days when the tobacco farmers used them to harvest crops.

  Ten years later, when the preacher he had grown up with passed away, the entire congregation of his mother’s church unanimously chose him to lead them rather than request a replacement. His mother was so proud of him. She sat in a pl
ace of honor right up front at each of his sermons.

  Everything was right in the world. He spent two years as the leader of his church before the axola flu came, and he praised God for the miracle that cured his mother’s breast cancer.

  When people started walking around even after their body’s death, he realized that it wasn’t just any miracle.

  It was the Rapture!

  _______

  Reverend Isaiah Trudeau entered the huge door in the middle of the front of a huge Southern-plantation-style mansion flanked by his closest friends, Hector and Jerrod. His family owned five hundred acres of prime tobacco fields. These days only one hundred acres were in use, since the use of tobacco had become a weakness people felt ashamed of. The demand for tobacco had dropped significantly after the turn of the millennium.

  He walked through an arch between two massive sets of stairs into a dining room meant to entertain a few dozen people at once. Passing a huge dining table, he pushed open a swinging door that led to the large kitchen. They had a maid, but she wasn’t there. Since the Rapture had started, nothing was normal. His congregation had dwindled to just a few, including his mother.

  He walked over to the refrigerator, grabbed the ingredients to make a roast-beef sandwich, and returned to the island counter in the middle of the kitchen. After making his sandwich, he said a prayer to bless his meal and climbed the servant’s stairs at the back of the kitchen to the second floor.

  He approached his mother’s room. The door, which was always open during the day, was closed. When he reached for the door, he heard his father say, “Your mother is not feeling well. Let her get some rest.”

  “Well, maybe I can give her a blessing. That will help her feel better.”

  “No, son. You should let her rest.”

  His father’s unusual concern for his mother’s comfort made him curious, but he moved on down the hallway to his own room. When he turned to enter his room, he saw that his father was still watching, as if he wanted to make sure that Isaiah didn’t return to check on his mother.

  After entering his room, he ate his sandwich and knelt to pray for guidance.

  _______

  He woke up to a light thumping. Listening closely, he realized that it was coming from down the hall toward his mother’s room. He entered the hallway and saw his father standing in front of his mother’s door with his hands on his hips.

  “Now, Christy, you have to rest. We’ve sent for the doctor, but he won’t be able to come for some time.”

  Isaiah moved up to his side and reached for the door handle. His father quickly grabbed his arm and held it back. “Don’t go in there, son.”

  “What do you mean, don’t go in there, old man? She needs help if she’s sick.”

  Isaiah slapped his hand away and grasped the door handle. When he opened the door, his mother rushed straight at him with her hands in the shape of claws, her jaw chomping as she made croaking sounds. Isaiah fended her off with outstretched hands and barely kept her from biting him right on the face. He backed away and pulled her arm to get her off balance long enough to wrap his arms around her body and lift her slight body off the floor.

  She growled and squirmed, turning from side to side, trying to bite him. He held her with tears streaming down his face.

  His father stood with a solemn look on his face, slowly shaking his head. “She’s gone, son. We need to give her mercy.”

  Isaiah’s jaw tightened. “You let her die!”

  “She’s old, son. She died. I didn’t let her do anything.”

  With that, he turned and walked away. Isaiah walked his mother back into her room and pushed her down on the bed. Holding her down, he said several prayers before turning and leaving. He heard a thump as she rolled off the bed, and then she was rising to try to devour her beloved son once again.

  _______

  Isaiah opened the gun safe and pushed boxes of ammo around, looking for a particular box. He found several boxes of the ammo he wanted. Looking up then, he saw the guns that he wanted for the job at hand.

  There, in a western-style holster on a mounting board, were two engraved, silver-plated .45-caliber pistols that had belonged to his great grandfather. He pulled them down and loaded them with the ammo he had just dug out of the gun safe, turning them over in his hands while he thought about what he would do next.

  He climbed the stairs to the second floor and moved down the hallway to his mother’s room. Standing outside with the guns in his hands, he prayed loudly as if to soothe his mother behind the door.

  “Lord Jesus, protect my mother’s soul, for the devil has entered and is fighting for this righteous and holy woman. Hold her to your bosom and soothe her fears, absolve her of her earthly sins. Make right what her weak human shell has allowed her to endure.”

  With that, he pushed the door open and raised the guns. She was at the back of the room rocking and twisting in a corner. When she saw him, she walked toward him and didn’t seem to be the monster that he had seen earlier. Could it be that she was OK now?

  He lowered the guns, and she raised her arms and croaked. He couldn’t do it. He slammed the door before she made it to him.

  He fell to his knees in the hallway and sobbed as he prayed again for his mother’s soul.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his father standing at the end of the hallway. Turning to him he asked, “How did she die, old man?”

  “Why does it matter? She was old.”

  Isaiah raised one of the guns and pointed it at his father. “How-did-she-die.”

  His father rolled his head back and laughed.

  Isaiah didn’t even realize he was pulling the trigger. The .45 bucked in his hand, and he almost lost his grip. Down at the other end of the hallway, his father spun and slammed against the wall. Blood splattered on the wall behind him as he slid down it and sat on the floor. His right hand reached up and grabbed the hole in his left shoulder as he looked at his son still sitting in front of his mother’s door.

  “You Bible-thumping idiot. What do you think you’re doing?”

  Isaiah rose and walked slowly down the hall. His father cringed from the pain and tried to stand to meet him. But the pain was too much. He just sat back down and waited for the looming black-clad figure to blow his brains out. When Isaiah stopped, he just stared at him.

  “What are you waiting for, you chickenshit mama’s boy?”

  Isaiah stared for several more minutes before he reached down and grabbed his father’s ankle and dragged him down the hallway and stairs. There was more screaming and the sound of bones cracking, but Isaiah just kept dragging him out the front door and across the lawn toward the makeshift church that he had used when he ran his first congregation.

  Right down the middle of the room to the altar. He left his father there while he grabbed cords from the curtains on one side and tied his father’s arms spread and supine. Like a sacrifice.

  When he stepped back to inspect his work, his father had lost consciousness. He smiled an evil smile as he turned to walk back out and return to the house. He knew his brother would be home soon, and he needed to prepare to deal with him.

  _______

  Isaiah held his mother in a bear hug with her arms trapped and her face away from him. She groaned and growled like an angry cat until he came within one hundred feet of his high-school church. Then it became like trying to hold onto a frenzied wildcat. He knew it was because she could smell the blood inside.

  When he kicked open the doors, the light of the sun shone in on his father on the front of the altar and his brother tied beside him. The altar was heavy, so they couldn’t move it, even with both of them trying at once. His brother started begging him again. He had tried earlier to convince him that he was making the biggest mistake of his life and that he would make both him and their mother pay for this mistake.

 
Now he had given up reason and just screamed obscenities at him. His father knew it was his end, so he just stared at Isaiah.

  He let go of the bear hug and held his mother’s arms so she couldn’t get to them just yet. She was completely unaware of him, as she could smell the blood streaming down their chests. He had intentionally slit them in the sign of the cross, just deep enough for the blood to stream but not flow. The slits across their bellies were just deep enough to weaken them, but not deep enough for the guts to spill out—yet.

  “It is time for your judgment, sinners. The Lord God has sent forth his angels to deliver upon us the Rapture. Let he who repents be taken unto his bosom for resting while the sinners wither and roam the earth as undead animals.

  “And now you shall pay for the sins you perpetrated upon my mother.”

  He let his mother go, and she went straight for his father, who was directly in front of them. She grabbed his chest and stuck her hand into his belly and spilled the guts onto his lap. He screamed as his body quivered from his frenzied wife’s scratching and digging into his abdominal cavity.

  When she had done enough damage to him, Isaiah grabbed her dress and pulled her back, guiding her over to his older brother.

  “Why are you doing this, Isaiah?”

  “You are evil. You abandoned the Lord so many years ago that surely there is no saving your soul.”

  “But I repent, brother. Surely the Lord has room in his heart to forgive me.”

  Isaiah held his mother back for ten more seconds, as though he were considering his brother’s argument. “He may have forgiveness, but I do not.”

  With that, he let his mother go.

  BUGGED In

  Tin was the last one to the ledge. He pushed Raines up and jumped up himself. The hurricane had started in earnest. Wind and rain buffeted him as he stood and looked down at the score of dead that were waggling their fingers in his direction and groaning.

  He looked down at Raines lying at his feet. He stared back, but it was a dead stare. His mouth was rimmed with Tin’s blood and hanging open as though screaming.