We searched everywhere, fighting through people trying to flee. We looked in the dining area, the synagogue and elsewhere.
Sadly, we were not able to locate my family anywhere.
The zombies came at us and more often than not we recognized who they used to be. In some cases, not. I saw Mr. Paxton, my math teacher from Third Grade and his long face looked even more distorted with his blood-soaked mouth hanging open. Then there was our neighbor Mrs. Tittles, who had apparently come with her dog because she was eating it out of her handbag. There was Kim and Jamie Chapman who were in class for several years at my school. The two of them were wrestling over Mrs. Henderson, the superintendent of the Hebrew school. Kim had her by both ankles and Jamie was pulling her by her long hair. I wasn’t sure who would win that battle. I only knew that the loser would ultimately be Mrs. Henderson. Someone else I was not familiar with was clubbing someone over the head with loose arm. I almost lost my lunch when I saw that one.
We fled. There was no hope or salvation to be found here. There was very little of anything. I was disturbed. The apocalypse was upon us. And it was happening not only at my synagogue, but seemed to be the direct result of my having a Bar Mitzvah. I always knew I had horrible luck.
We ran down the hallway and ducked into a Hebrew School classroom closing the door behind us.
“Okay, okay, we’ll climb out the window,” I said, panting. “We’ll escape, and then we’ll call the cops.”
Laura just nodded. From the look on her face, I wondered if she was thinking what good was calling the cops going to do, and I couldn’t say that I blamed her. I was grasping at sanity. Truthfully we didn’t know what to do but escape.
Shortly after closing the door and moving desks in front of it something began banging on it.
Thud thud thud.
The two of us looked at one another.
“I don’t know if we should get that,” I said.
“We have to make sure,” she said. “What if it’s people trying to get out like us?”
She was right.
I searched the teacher’s desk and found a letter opener. Armed with that and Laura clinging to my arm, which made my holding a weapon kind of useless, we slowly advanced to the door.
We both gave a yelp when Mom’s face appeared in the sliver of door window. She had an angry look in her eye. She was definitely okay.
We needed to let her in before she killed me.
We pushed and shoved the desks out of the way. Then we unlocked the door, and to my relief, Mom, Dad, kid sister, Grandpa all poured inside. They looked tired, beleaguered and hysterical. I frantically locked the door behind them, and began to push the desks back into place with Dad’s help.
Mom stood there and pulled at her hair.
“What the hell is going on?” Mom shouted.
The room grew eerily silent given that there was an apocalypse going on around us.
Karen looked at Laura huddling close to me.
“You okay?” she said.
She nodded.
“What’s going on?” Mom asked, more calm this time.
“Zombies, Mom. They’re called zombies. They’re from the movies. Usually. They’re the living dead.”
“Back in my day, Bar Mitzvah’s weren’t like this,” said Grandpa who had been silent up till now. “I wish I were with your grandmother.”
“Pops, it’s okay,” said Mom, rubbing his back.
“I bet she’s rolling over in her grave right now.”
“Could be,” I thought out loud. I got looks from everyone. “Okay, didn’t mean that. It’s just that it’d be possible with this sort of thing going on.” More looks. “Okay, never mind—we have to get out of here. We have to do something.”
“Do you have a suggestion for the suggestion box, son?” said Dad. “This isn’t exactly normal. And… They’re everywhere.”
“Well, um, they’re zombies, and they don’t have brains. Plus, they run slow? So you can, uh, run away from them pretty easily.”
Laura began to sob.
“Who is this?” asked Mom, for the first time noticing her.
“Oh, this is Laura, she’s my girlfriend.”
“I am?” she asked.
“Um, well…”
“But she’s a shiksa?” said Grandpa.
“Pops! Knock it off. The boy turned thirteen today.”
“Oh my God!” said Karen, sounding like Mom. “Can we get off talking about what day today is? We’re going to die.”
“Don’t get any ideas there, son,” said Dad. “Manhood and doing it at such an early age are two different things.”
Laura took my hand, accepting my startling declaration.
“There’s only one thing to do,” said Grandpa.
“What’s that?”
We gathered round, expecting sage advice.
“Burn the synagogue to the ground!” said Grandpa.
Horrified by the suggestion, we spluttered for words.
“Burn it? But…”
“Pops, do you realize what you are saying?”
“How else are we supposed to stop this? Listen to the kid. Zombies don’t feel pain. You can’t call the cops. God isn’t going to blast them with a bolt of lightning out of his ass because He doesn’t like them.”
Silence.
“Wait. I have another idea.”
“Better not be another senile one.”
“What are you talking about?”
Grandpa, truly put off by Mom’s comment, filled our eager ears with another suggestion.
At the end of that Dad clapped like we were in a team huddle.
“Does everyone know their places?”
“Dad, this isn’t football?”
“But we still have a plan.”
We grabbed whatever classroom implements we thought could be used as weapons. Hole punchers, letter openers, books, a stapler, a roll of scotch tape, a desk. Dad was getting ready to move the desks.
“We can do this on three,” he said.
“Before we do anything I just want to let everyone I love them.”
“Disgusting,” said Grandpa, examining some erasers.
Mom frowned at him.
RUNNING ON ADRENALINE
The amusing thing was I saw a kind of bitter irony to what we were about to do. We couldn’t depart through the window into the parking lot because it was full of people scattering for cover and zombies stumbling around. At the same time, the classic trope of the zombie movie was not lost on me. We were a ragtag band that would have to team together to stop this mess if we were to survive. But usually it’s people that don’t know each other, not a whole family. It would be interesting to see if all of us made it out alive.
As my Dad began the count we moved desks and chairs out of the way.
One.
Zombies appeared at the windows behind us bashing on them, banging their heads, chomping.
Two.
I saw a few of my cousins out there Nick and Jen and my Aunt Ellen. They really were not well. Eleanor from down the street, a few of my uncles…
On three Dad pulled the door open, and all I saw were a mass of bodies and arms, so many of them, I couldn’t place who they belonged to until my science teacher wobbled in moaning, her glasses tilted at an odd angle.
Dad, never one to yell for violence, raised a desk, legs out, and charged at her pushing her back into the throng and yelling the strangest battle cry I had ever heard. “Leave my family alone!”
He pushed her and a number of others back against the wall.
“I can’t hold them back for long!” he shouted. “Run!”
He didn’t really have to tell us that. We kind of knew we had to run. We didn’t have a choice, especially now that the zombies from outside had broken through the windows and were poking theirs hands and heads through and trying to get into the classroom.
Was there never a break? Just a tiny one?
We headed down the hallway one at a time. Mom wa
ved around a ruler, slapping at zombies, Laura held a stapler in front of her as if it were a gun, and my sister swung a desklamp around like a huge axe; topping it all, was Grandpa slow-walking down the hallway clapping together dry erasers to cover our escape in chalk-dust clouds.
I hurried along with him choking on the fumes.
Dad soon lowered the chair and raced after us, using the chair to fend any zombies off that chose to follow us, which was basically—all of them.
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE BOILERROOM
We hacked, pounded, kicked, stomped, punched, slapped, socked, shoved, and garroted our way forward. It was a tiresome journey, and we barely had time to be scared it was so scary.
And then just when we thought we had it made a final body stumbled before us. It was one of the motorcycle guys from the parking lot in jeans and an Eli Manning Giants Jersey. He had blood oozing out of his arms and his pizza-textured face looked as if it had been put through a cheese shredder. Manning moaned towards us.
“Eli Manning?” said Grandpa. “He’s famous, isn’t he? We should get his autograph.”
“Pops no!” said Mom, pushing him back.
“If you like him so much why don’t you marry him?” said Grandpa, pouting.
Mom and Dad looked at one another.
“Does anyone have any marbles he can play with?” I said.
“I was thinking about asking you that,” said Karen.
Manning kept coming at us. It’s amazing how family never changes even in the midst of the apocalypse. The arguing never stops!
Manning grabbed Dad by the throat and the two of them began to wrestle. Grandpa started to clap in excitement.
Mom grabbed her lamp and quickly broke it over Manning’s head. He let go of Dad. Jenny pulled him away. Laura pounded on the zombie with her stapler, punching staples into him. He cried out with each staple.
I grabbed a box of pens and one by one jammed them through the zombie’s body so that he looked like a porcupine. (Hey there are some things you always dream of being able to do in school that you just can’t do unless you are in a situation like this.) Admiring my handiwork, I watched blood spray out of various parts of his body. The one in his eye was a real geyser. He stumbled backwards.
Laura and Jenny screamed at the sight of spraying blood.
Finally Grandpa threw an eraser and watched it bounce off its chest. When the zombie toppled, Grandpa danced the super bowl shuffle.
The zombie intermittently twitched on the ground.
Dad, feeling around his neck where his hand had been, was thankful that he was alive. Mom made sure that he wasn’t bitten. He wasn’t.
“Did we just kill Eli Manning?”
Mom rolled her eyes. Grandpa let it go.
Dad asked me to take the lead, since I knew this Hebrew School probably better than anybody. I marched us down the hallway, armed with a hole puncher.
The hallway was long. It was a big school.
“How much longer?” said Mom.
“A little longer,” I said.
“How long is that?” asked Grandpa.
“Getting tired?” said Dad.
“Eighty years old is tiring.”
We were nearing the stairs that went to the basement.
“How long have you been going out?” asked Jenny.
“Uh…” I stammered.
“We started dating a few hours ago,” said Laura.
I looked at her. She kind of smiled.
Good enough.
Another two zombies came at us. The one that reached for me wished that he hadn’t when I trapped his hand in my hole puncher and clipped off all of his fingers as if they were toe nails.
Then Dad came up behind him and leveled him with a folding a chair. The other zombie was quickly wrapped in a firehose by the wall. Mom tied him up good and tight. While Laura whipped him with a ruler, Jenny grabbed the fire extinguisher off the wall dented his head in like a peanut candy.
Grandpa stood there and smacked his lips.
“Anybody got any trail mix?”
We looked at him.
“What? All this killing makes me hungry.”
We shortly came upon the basement stairway.
Zombies were still down the hallway heading our way. We opened the door to the basement and began our descent. Dad was at the back of our group, and he did his best, using his tie, to seal the door closed behind us. It wouldn’t hold for long, but hopefully it’d buy us some extra time.
IN RABBI MEYORWITZ’S OFFICE WE STRIKE UPON A PROBLEM
Hoary dust and darkness lay everywhere. Every few steps or so we’d bump into a discarded desk, bruising our ankles. Mold wafted towards us. There were pillars spaced about ten feet apart. It was scarier down here than up there. If anything had gotten down here, it was going to be hard to spot it, and the idea of something coming out of that darkness to the left or right, even in front of us, was scary. My heartbeat, which had been hammering before, managed to take it up a notch. And I didn’t think that was possible.
We crept into the rabbi’s office, watching each other’s backs. His office, a cave, had books and papers everywhere. Mom looked like she was about to grab a duster. We saw a book open on the desk, and there were flecks of clay on the floor. Curious. Grandpa went over to the book on the desk and picked it up. It seemed to stir some forgotten part of him. He paged through it. It was in Hebrew. He was the only one among us that could understand our own ancient language.
“Oh. How interesting.”
“What is it, Pops?
“They tried to make a golem.”
The diagrams inside helped explain to us what he understood.
“That thing didn’t look like a golem.”
“So they messed up. But they tried, that’s what counts.”
“What’s a golem?” said Laura.
“It’s a creature a man steeped in Jewish mysticism can bring to life by carving a letter in its forehead,” said Grandpa. “And it’s built with a lot of clay. It’s like a sentry to watch over the Jews. Stuff of legend. It’s not supposed to be real.”
“Where did they get all the clay?” I asked.
“What are you trying to be a wise-ass?”
“Oh come on. It’s a fair question. A golem is a pretty huge creature. They had to get a lot of clay to make it. Where does it all come from? I’ve just never understood that part of the story. It’s not like they could truck it in back then.”
“You think because you’ve turned thirteen you’ve all of a sudden gained all this insight into every things of Jewish lore?”
“Yes.”
“Meshugenah boy!”
Mom smacked me upside the head.
“What was that for?”
“Behave yourself.”
“Sheesh.”
Laura and Karen hid snickers beneath their hands. At least somebody had kept some lightness in the situation.
Unfortunately this semi-levity came to an end when Grandpa dug a handcrank flashlight out of the drawer that also functioned as a radio. He wound it up and tuned it into a news station.
We interrupt this special report to bring you another special report … run! Run for your lives! I am not Orson Welles and this is not War of the Worlds! Run! That’s exactly what folks are doing in the sleepy town of Melvin, New Jersey. As hard this shock may be, it seems that a Hebrew school is being cordoned off by police and the National Guard and we also here the US military. There is an outbreak of some sort in progress that they are trying to contain, involving the undead…
I’m not making this stuff up. I’m just reading what gets handed to me. The town is being evacuated and the residents that remain are being detained for fear of the infection spreading. No one knows what caused this mystery. It is a mystery.
Now if you live in the area… run before the military makes it worse!
Grandpa lowered the volume as they went to commercial.
We were all silent.
“Well, that’s encour
aging,” I said. “For everyone else at least.”
Silence again.
MINUTES OF SILENCE TICK BY AND FINALLY END
We had all been patiently trying to digest the news. Usually in these instances there’d be threat of a firebombing to contain the outbreak, but with this being a religious institution I figured that wouldn’t go over well with the public, so that wasn’t an option. Karen and Laura were holding hands telling one another it’d be okay. Mom and Dad were eerily silent. Then suddenly Dad turned to face me, breaking the quiet.
“Son, whatever happens I want you to know that your mother and I love you and your sister. We’re proud of you today. Oh and we can love your girlfriend too if that helps.”
This brought a smile to my face, however faint, and to the faces of everyone else present. Our moment of joy, if you could call that, was cut short when we heard a noise. It was unfortunately a moan.
Moan.
Moan.
Another.
Finally a hand shot out from beneath the desk and grabbed Mom’s ankle, pulling her over. She wailed. Something started to pull her under the table. Dad and Karen grabbed her by her arms and pulled her back.
“Help!”
Grandpa stood there and scratched his head.
“Help!”
I grabbed onto Mom too and also pulled and when we all pulled together out she came from under the desk and along with her a hideous version of David Meyerwitz. Half his head was missing and his eyes were uneven, one sagging below the other. It also looked as if years of decay had set in.
“What do we do?”
“What do you mean? Do something… he’s going to eat me!”
Zombies at the Bar Mitzvah: a novella Page 4