I grabbed the rabbi’s brother and pulled him off. Then he tried to grab at me and missed. Laura grabbed a mop from somewhere and popped him in the face. When he didn’t stop, she did so again and he collapsed to the ground.
“Is he dead?”
“He is dead.”
“Is he not moving then?”
She poked him, and he sprang up waving his arm like someone woken from deep sleep that didn’t want to get up.
Grandpa swooped in and hit him in the back of the head with the tome that was on the rabbi’s desk and knocked him out.
“Now what?”
“Well, we know what happened here.”
“We do?”
“Something with the golem experiment went horribly wrong and now it’s spreading a pestilence.”
“Wow, it’s like the anti-golem.”
“How do we stop it?”
“I have to do some reading,” he said looking across the room at the pile of clay in the corner.
WHEN WE ALL THOUGHT GRANDPA HAD LOST HIS MARBLES
“Goddamnit!” screamed Grandpa, flipping the page to the tome Jewish Mysticism. “What does this mean?”
“Pops!”
“Sorry.”
“You’re taking the Lord’s name in vain in a holy place. That’s not like you.”
“Well, this is very stressful! And my Hebrew is rusty!”
“It’s okay, Pops. It’s okay.”
Using her index finger, Mom drew squiggles by her ear. Grandpa, thankfully, did not see this. His nose remained buried in the book.
We all looked around wondering what to do, catching our breadth, that kind of stuff.
At one point Grandpa stopped reading and made an examination of the area where the golem had been made. Alongside the chair there were still bits of clay. He picked up a piece, sniffed it, tasted, and then gagged. He played around with some clay in his hands and then he threw it at the wall where it splatted and stuck. He cackled. For some reason it was very funny to him. To the rest of us just plain strange.
AND THEN WE HEARD A NOISE FROM INSIDE THE RABBI’S CABINET
Dad made eyes at me with his two fingers as he approached the cabinet. Prepared for the worst, our weapons coiled, Dad reached for the door and flipped the cabinet open. Out fell Sandy Green, my Hebrew schoolteacher, and she had hardly anything on. With the way her make-up had run, she looked as if she had been crying.
We stared at her in disbelief.
“Oh my gawd, you guys haven’t been transformed,” and then she turned beet red when she realized everyone could see through her undergarments. Her arms and hands went places and her knees turned inwards.
“Oy gevalt!” said Grandpa.
“What happened to your clothes?” said Mom.
“I… I… can we talk about this later?”
My parents murmured assent.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. For now.”
Someone handed her a blanket. She wrapped it around herself, where her bruises were.
Grandpa went back to work.
“What’s he doing?”
“Shhh,” was our collective response. She kind of never shut up. She was like that as a teacher too.
UN-RAISING THE INANIMATE
Grandpa murmured aloud in Hebrew. He made motions with his hands, as if he were creating shadow puppets. He shook his head. He murmured again, starting to translate. He nodded.
“The letter Aleph, carved into its forehead,” he said. “This brings it to life.”
He began mumbling again.
“And rubbing it away, takes away the life.”
“In English, Pops?”
“Am I speaking Hebrew? So. To stop it, I think we need to get close to the creature...”
Sandy shrieked.
We all looked at her. She put her head down.
“We need to find the one that was supposed to be a golem.” Grandpa smiled delightedly. “And somebody’s going to have to erase the letter carved in his forehead. This should stop everything. Any volunteers?”
Sandy threw up in the corner.
“Not her. Anyone else?”
THE ESCAPE THAT WOULD NOT BE
PART II
THE END IS NIGH IMPOSSIBLE
Dad’s plan was to get to the car and make a getaway. Somehow. I thought perhaps this was going to be impossible, but it beat hanging out in the basement, hoping we survived, and since no one had a better plan, this was what we were going to do. We agreed to stick together.
We headed out of the rabbi’s office and back up the stairs, trying to be quiet. But before leaving we all stopped to pillage his office for possible weapons. A shofur. Some phylacteries. Anything at all that could or would work.
There was banging and thudding on the door that Dad’s tie was still holding closed. It made us jump. But after a moment it quieted down. These creatures weren’t too bright. We had that on our side.
I looked to Dad and Mom. They nodded. We all had sweat on our faces. He undid the tie and slowly peeked out. It looked clear.
Before we knew Sandy had charged past all of us and was running down the hallway screaming, drawing attention to herself.
A handful of them noticed us. And immediately they began the dead people shuffle towards us, dragging their legs as if they had irons on them.
We hurried out of the basement.
“Get back here, Sandy!” shouted Dad.
Under her breadth Mom said to me, “Remind me if we get out of here to tell the board that she’s a moron.”
One fast shuffler got close to Mom and began to reach for her. Dad whacked it aside. I don’t think he liked that but hey, he was dead, we were not.
We headed down the hallway, in the opposite direction we had come from. Dad was able to wrangle Sandy back in our direction, but he had to beat some zombies off her to convince her first. Lucky her.
I ran up and pushed a creature over, doing my part. We kept moving forward. Another one with hunchback issues tried to grab me. Dad shouldered it aside, then pushing it against a wall, he de-brained it.
As we made our way down the hall Mom cried out with joy when she saw Rabbi Meyerwitz shuffling towards us. He shuffled and shuffled.
“Oh thank god, rabbi, you have to help!”
He hungrily moved towards her. Mom didn’t realize it had gotten him too, whatever it was. Out of nowhere a zombie sprang across the hallway and tackled the rabbi and began munching on him.
That’s when Mom said:
“Oh my God, he ate the rabbi!”
Suffice to say, we weren’t going to stick around to find out what would happen next. More and more zombies heaped themselves onto the rabbi, into the pile. They must have been ravenous. A shame they didn’t see all the fresh meat nearby. What was I thinking? It was the perfect diversion. Why was I feeling bad? So what if it was Jewish guilt? We tried to sneak past. All of us left together as silently as possible, armed with new weapons this time, Grandpa a book, Mom the mop, Laura garden shears, Karen her trusty ruler, and I a tin trashcan. Sandy had taken to whacking them with her heels that she had taken off.
At first they paid us no mind and Dad just kept waving us through. But it didn’t work that way when we tried to scuttle past. After munching on the rabbi, one of them raised her head, I guess not getting enough good morsels in or sensing the fresh meat just strolling past, got up and came at us. Faster moving than the rest of the zombies, he went for Dad first and got a sharp shovel in the face. His groan then alerted the other four that were on the ground fighting for food, that we were, well, food.
Now they all got up and began to chase us, moaning and groaning. I had one jump directly into my path. I poked him in the face with the garbage can a few times and then when that didn’t stop him put it over his head and watched him walk around like Frankenstein with his arms in front of him, not sure where to go. We all fought with zombies trying to get outside.
At last as we pushed on, seeing the clearing
ahead, the door a the back of the school that would lead us out. I grabbed Laura’s hand and dragged her behind me. Mom took hold of Grandpa and Dad helped Karen. Sandy hurried around on her own squealing. We finally came to the door and we were surrounded. The only answer was out.
“We’re all here. Great. Let’s go!”
Dad held open the door and we rushed out one by one. But what we didn’t know was that the Hebrew School was surrounded by police and military. They weren’t in the parking lot though. They had set up a perimeter around the school and there was emergency fencing with barbed wire set up everywhere.
Zombies wandered the parking lot like it was a wasteland. I saw one bump into a car and set the car alarm off. And then it moaned and moaned bumping into the car and hitting the car trying to get the alarm to stop.
We ran through the parking lot. Sandy ran through it screaming.
“Shut up!” said Mom. “Somebody shut her up.”
Once Dad had calmed her, we heard more screaming drawing attention. I looked over the top of the car we were hiding behind. It was Kirk Winters, a.k.a. MurderFace and with a club he was fending off a bunch of zombies whilst screaming like a schoolgirl.
“We can’t just leave him there.”
“But he’s the one that led to this mess.”
“Guys, I’m tired.”
We heard Grandpa snoring.
“How can he sleep at a time like this? Somebody wake him up.”
Jenny shook him awake.
“You’re family is funny.”
“You don’t even want to know.”
“Okay, we rescue him, even though he’s a jerkface.”
“Technically his nickname is Murderface—“ Dad shot me a look—“but we can always start calling him that.”
“Or pisher,” said Grandpa coming to. “He looks to me like a pisher.”
THE DANGEROUS RESCUE THAT WAS NOT DESERVED AND NEVER REALLY HAPPENED ANYWAY
We hurried through the parking lot and began attacking everything in sight that was surrounding Murderface.
“Ahh!!”
“Aghh!”
“Oooh my!”
Incidentally these high-pitched yelps were not from any of us. They were from Kirk. He had little shame.
When the bloodbath ended, Murderface rubbed blood off on his pant leg and turned to face us.
“What are you all looking at?” he said petulantly.
“Thanks would be nice,” said Mom.
“I’m not thanking you.”
“You’re welcome,” said Mom.
Murderface spit on the ground.
“Oh we got a tough guy,” said Grandpa
“Shut up!”
“Say, did anybody see that schoolgirl?”
“What schoolgirl?” said Kirk.
“I heard a girl screaming her head off,” said Dad.
His face grew very red.
“Well, now what?” said Mom.
In that instant she got her answer. We all did. In the form of a crazy-looking man on the other side of the fence wielding a megaphone.
“ATTENTION! YOU IN THE PARKING LOT, THIS IS COLONEL ELKINS SPEAKING! YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO LEAVE THE PREMISES! YOU MUST REMAIN INSIDE!
We looked at one another, confused.
“But we’re okay!” shouted Karen. “We need help!”
“YOU’VE BEEN EXPOSED. WE DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS AND CAN’T RISK CONTAMINATING THE REST OF THE POPULATION.”
“Well, that kind of sucks, don’t you think?” I said.
“UH, I GUESS. YES, I GUESS IT DOES.”
“You must be joking!” shouted Mom, moving towards the fence that we were being instructed to back away from. “We will die if you keep us in here, and if that happens you will have a heckuva lot to answer for with me.”
The zombies were coming at us, more relentlessly now. I do have to say I like the way they moved their arms around when they did this. It was like a whole bunch of people at a concert.
“HOLD ON A SEC, MA’AM! YOU MAY NOT HAVE TURNED YET, BUT YOU’VE SURELY BEEN INFECTED. I CAN’T LET YOU OUT BECAUSE I CAN’T RISK THE REST OF THE POPULATION OF THIS TOWN GETTING INFECTED.”
“This isn’t a virus.”
“HOW THE HECK WOULD YOU KNOW?”
“We saw the books in the rabbi’s office. It’s the result of mysticism. Magic.”
“I DON’T BELIEVE IN THAT.”
“What if I told you we could prove it?”
“HOLD ON A SEC.” The man with the megaphone walked off. He shortly returned and came closer to the fence that they had put up. “OKAY I’M WILLING TO LISTEN. I HOPE AND PRAY THAT YOU ARE RIGHT.”
The military guards cut a hole in the fence, rolling it open. With guns trained on the zombies, Col. Elkins shouted for us to hurry through. We filed through one by one. Kirk tried to stuff my sister out of the way, but Dad barred his path with an arm and shook his head. He let her pass.
Once we were all through they sealed the fence back up. We were escorted to some sort of makeshift emergency center inside of a tent.
It was a successful escape.
WE NEED A DEBRIEFING FROM COLONEL ELKINS DEBRIEFING ROOM RUNDOWN
Colonel Elkins was a relatively short, stocky balding man with a bristly mustache that reminded me of Marvin the Martian’s helmet. His command post had men in uniform with headsets running this way and that. Laptop computers and cameras lay scattered about and in use. There was a grid of the area with pegs on it indicating where all the forces had been deployed.
Grandpa kept trying to pick up some of the models. One of the soldiers kept taking it from him and putting it back.
“What’re you doing?” said Grandpa.
“That doesn’t belong to you,” said the solider.
“I’m bored. I want to play with it.”
“Pops, that’s enough. Give the soldier back his toy.”
The colonel sat us down at a table with folding chairs. Col. Elkins set his megaphone down on the table. He asked us to explain what was going on inside. We all started to talk at once. He shushed us. I started to speak. After all, it was my bar mitzvah. I summed things up as we knew them so far.
Elkins sat and listened to it all, in some cases taking notes. His eyebrows flickered with every twist or turn my story took.
“That’s all well and good, thank you,” he said when I finished. “But I’ve got a military out there that wants to ante up. I’ve got a government that wants to make the whole problem disappear. I’ve got pretty big responsibilities. And if I get knocked out of my socks—don’t even know if that’s possible—whose going to take my place. You?”
“But you can do this without all your force. You can stop him.”
“Listen to my, son. He uses the suggestion box whenever we have misunderstandings. He knows what he’s talking about.”
The colonel gave Dad a rather curious glance.
“Okay, genius. How do you stop him?”
“You have to erase the unholy name on his forehead. The original zombie was supposed to be a golem. Only by erasing his forehead can you quell his mystical spirit.”
Grandpa clapped with excitement at my explanation.
“He gets it!”
Col. Elkins was beginning to wonder about my family.
“How do we find it?”
“Um, I don’t know. It’s bigger than the rest. He shouldn’t be hard to miss.”
“The military was set up to protect the people from real life threats. This sounds like some kind of heebie-jeebies thing to me. I can’t believe I’m taking advice from a twelve year old.”
“Thirteen today sir actually.”
“Well happy freaking birthday.”
In the background all I could hear was yelling and machine gunfire. Hard to believe that this was all the result of my becoming a man. I’d hate to see what happens at my future wedding or the birth of my first child.
COLONEL ELKINS DISCOVERS A NEW PROBLEM
After we were done talking, Col.
Elkins got on his walkie-talkie and began barking out orders to his troops.
We waited with anticipation.
“Bloodhound this is Foxtrot, do you copy? Over. I repeat, Bloodhound this is Foxtrot, do you copy?”
He looked up at us.
His walkie-talked squawked. No voices came back over though.
“This isn’t good. No one is answering.”
Then suddenly we heard shouting and machine gunfire. People sounded like they were dying. When we looked around, we realized that Murderface was missing.
The colonel ran out of the tent.
“What in blazes is going on?” he yelled at the nearest soldier.
He was stark white with terror.
“That guy with the motorcycle jacket ran back in. He opened the gates. Let all the zombies out.”
“What? Why?”
“He said he needed to get his motorcycle back. That he wasn’t leaving his baby behind.”
Col. Elkins put a hand to his face and sighed.
“Oh my god,” he said. “He’s set them loose.”
BREAK ON THROUGH TO THE OTHER SIDE
The colonel tried to escort us through the military safety zone, but the zombies had gotten through and now no one was safe. Guns were popping. Men were shouting. Vehicles were pealing out. And zombies were everywhere: moaning whilst searching for fresh meat.
“Oh this is not good, this is not good,” said Sandy.
“Quit your whining,” said Col. Elkins. “We’ve got lives on the line. And we’ve got to figure out what to do. I’ve got to think.”
“All this noise hurts my ears,” said Grandpa.
Zombies at the Bar Mitzvah: a novella Page 5