I stop running, terrified. Only the side streets are left. Dark, cold alleyways with parked cars and dumpsters. I’m not sure if these streets contain zombies, but they suddenly look better than the alternative.
Then, out of nowhere, a pair of headlights appears. They are attached to a familiar-looking Chrysler with a flat face and a faux-Bentley grill. The Chrysler speeds past Palmer Square Park and crosses to the wrong side of the road to give the group of stumbling zombies a wide berth. Then the headlights fall on me, and it slows down.
I wave frantically. The car pulls up close and stops. The driver reaches across and pushes open the passenger side door.
“For God’s sake, young man” a baritone voice calls. “Get in!”
Leopold Mack
Christians can disagree—sometimes respectfully, sometimes not so respectfully—about whether certain stories in the Bible are literally true.
Some of us believe that particular passages in the good book are only parables, intended to illustrate how we ought to live our lives and understand the world. And that they may not—some of us contend—have actually happened.
There is Jonah and the whale. Does the Bible contend that a man actually survived inside the stomach of a giant water-dwelling mammal for seventy-two hours? Or could it instead be that the Bible intends Jonah’s tale as a fable illustrating how God protects the blessed man when he is doing the work of the Lord?
Does the Tower of Babel grace the pages of the scriptures as a parable, reminding us the price of succumbing to pride.. .or is it an account of a real place destroyed by God for sinfulness?
And so on and so forth. I assume you understand the point I’m making here.
So what of Biblical tales in which the dead arise? There are, after all, quite a few of them.
We are told in the Book of Kings that God answers the prayers of the prophets Elijah and Elisha by raising a person from the dead. In another Old Testament account, a dead man whose body merely touches the body of a prophet is miraculously restored to life, almost as a matter of incidental contact. In the New Testament, Jesus thrice raises the dead. Also, he speaks at length on the larger resurrection awaiting us all when we come into the kingdom of heaven. When the Judgment comes—on that blessed hour, on that blessed day—we are told the faithful will live again. The resurrection is consistently emphasized throughout the four Gospels. Luke speaks of a “resurrection of the righteous” as though it is quite literal, in a physically-getting-up-and-walking-around sort of way.
So, Pastor Mack, that means our souls will all get up and go to Heaven to be with Jesus, right? Right?
It’s certainly nice to think so.
I have told worried parishioners hundreds or thousands of times that this is the case. That that’s what these passages mean. The souls of the faithful shall rise and be joined together with God in heaven.
But here’s a secret about the Bible. It’s full of different versions of the same story, and different phrasings of the same idea. It’s also full of strange tales that defy explanation. It’s full of stories that are disturbing and make no sense. Only a precious few of the Bible’s accounts are actually comforting to the dying or useful to those seeking information about the next life. The pastors, reverends, priests, and preachers of the world mediate almost exclusively upon these few comforting and coherent passages. Thus, because they have only heard these stories from their priests, most people assume the entire Bible is comforting and coherent (or, at the very least, not frequently insane and troubling).
This is not the case.
Parts of the Bible advocate killing, slavery, incest, and rape. Parts of the Bible repeatedly advocate breaking the Ten Commandments. Most disturbingly, parts of the Bible portray a world of chaos ruled over by a vengeful, insecure God who demands horrible, violent deeds from his followers at regular intervals.
And, gentle Jesus, have you read the Song of Solomon? Have you actually read it? Because that thing is straight-up Two Girls, One Cup. (I have the internet just like you do.)
We preacher-types read our parishioners the other passages . . . the ones about how murder and rape and stealing are bad. And we trust (almost always correctly) that our congregation is indolent enough never to actually read the Bible on their own time, so that they will never discover the passages and stories where God seems to advocate things like incest, rape, murder, revenge, and slavery.
So when it comes to ideas about resurrection, you can bet your bottom dollar that there are comforting versions . . . and not so comforting versions. There are the ones you’ve heard at every single funeral you’ve ever attended.and then there are ones you’ve probably never heard of unless you read the Bible on your own. Versions of the resurrection story that priests and preachers are careful not to use during services. But they are there, these “minority reports” They are real, and they chill my bones.
Consider the Apostle Paul’s version in First Corinthians. This is important, so let me just give you the whole passage:
Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
That’s pretty wide open if you ask me. What exactly is going to happen to us, Paul? We’re going to be “changed” We’re going to be “incorruptible.” Is this the clearest you can put it? What if I don’t like being “changed?”
Elsewhere, Paul says, “The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable.”
It. The body. Not the soul. The body. Imperishable.
Like, if a shotgun blasts through it, but it still keeps going? That kind of imperishable, Paul? Could that be what the fuck you meant???
(And here I have just cursed out the Apostle Paul. Merciful God, forgive me. Bad pastor. Bad pastor. Bad pastor.)
All this time, I’ve looked at the Bible and told myself that really, it is the coherent passages showing a loving, forgiving God that are true. No matter what new example of human depravity confronts me, nothing has ever been able to shake my faith that it is these parts of the good book that limn the true nature of the world. Like every other pastor I know, I never for a moment worry that it could be those other parts of the Bible—the ones we don’t talk about on Sundays—that best describe the universe.
The ones that portray a blind, idiot God who lashes out like a spoiled child. The ones where the Israelite tribes murder, rape, and pillage as God looks on approvingly. The ones where God says that a woman must marry her rapist, or else be killed. That anyone who is gay, a “fortune teller,” or a nonbeliever must be executed.
You see, there is a possibility darker and more unthinkable than atheism. More troubling than our lives being Shakespeare’s “tale told by an idiot,” signifying nothing.
There is the possibility that it is these other passages in the Bible—the ones showing a world of horror and terror and bigoted, useless nonsense—which correctly reflect the nature of God.
And so . . . what if they are? What do we do in that case?
It is a possibility, I must admit, to which I have never devoted much thought. But when the ravenous dead walk the earth, it begins to feel like something you should probably start considering.
I race my car away from Ms. Washington’s house as fast as I can. Zombies are already appearing plain as day on the city streets. Next to me, the young man who helped me change my tire is breathing more normally. He has also stopped screaming.
“What the fuck is happening?!” the young man manages when he has his breath back.
“We’re getting out of here,” I say, “That’s what’s happening”
I see no need to trouble him with the theological misgivings digging at my brain, but he presses the issue.
“No . . . what is happening happening? What are these things?”
Before I can give an answer, he adds, “Are they the zombies from the internet? I hit one with my sl
edgehammer, but it didn’t die. It just kept right on walking.”
“Zombies from the internet?” I repeat slowly. Somehow, this calms me, making me feel like there’s an explanation. The internet knows everything. Wisdom is always waiting on that one webpage that you didn’t think to check. That blog you’re not hip enough to know about yet.
“Yeah,” says the young man, still breathing hard. He tells me that gossip and rumor websites have been posting grainy cell phone videos of moving corpses for the past few days.
“Nobody thought they were real.”
“Did they show people walking around with no hearts?” I ask. “People that couldn’t possibly be alive? Did it show them eating the living?”
“No,” he gasps. “But I think that might be the next step. I think that maybe this is what they do next.”
“Can they be killed?” I ask. “Put back down? Does the internet say anything about that?”
The young man shakes his head.
“People seem to think you can kill a zombie by destroying its brain” he tells me. “The one I saw...I didn’t stick around to find out.”
“God bless and protect us,” I say instinctively.
The young man looks me over.
“Are you, like, religious?” he asks. We drive in silence.
“Sorry,” he says. “I wasn’t being critical.”
“My name is Leopold Mack” I tell him. “Pastor Leopold Mack. Of The Church of Heaven’s God in Christ Lord Jesus”
“Oh” he says. “My name’s Ben Bennington. I’m a reporter for Brain’s Chicago Business.”
“Nice to meet you,” I say.
“Your church has a long name,” Ben says.
I exhale deeply and keep my eyes on the road. Another moment of silence.
“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m just nervous and talking without thinking.”
“Apology accepted,” I tell him, and pull the car over to the side of the road.
“Whoa!!!” Ben says in alarm. “Are you kicking me out because I said that about your church name? Look, I’m really sorry. I wouldn’t normally speak that way. It’s just these zombies have got me feeling crazy.”
“I’m not kicking you out of the car,” I tell him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I need a moment to think.”
“Think?” he asks, still alarmed.
We have paused at the entrance to Humboldt Park, a large city park with ponds, ornate boathouses, and statues of long-dead Germans. Ben looks around anxiously through the windshield, I assume for zombies. None seem to be around. There are also no people. A few cars are on the roads, but they’re all speeding by. Behind it all, there is now the wail of distant sirens. Everything is still here, but the world feels . . . different.
“What are you thinking about?” Ben asks, still alarmed. “We need to figure out where to go.”
He pulls out his phone and begins to go online.
“That’s exactly what I’m thinking about” I tell him.
And, mostly, it is.
The story of how Leopold Mack became Pastor Mack?
Well, you’re in luck. It’s a tale I have practiced telling. It is also a tale strengthened by a few notable omissions.
I know by heart the version that makes my life sound ordered and even laudable. How I grew up on the rough south side, got excellent grades in school, served my country without hesitation when it called, and then returned because I wanted to change things for the better. I went to seminary, became a pastor, took over one of the community’s most historied congregations, got married, had a beautiful daughter who is now full grown, and held myself together when the Lord called my dear wife away only two short years ago.
It may not be especially notable as pastor’s biographies go, but it gets the job done. When people want my story, they get that. And they like it. Why did I become a pastor? I wanted to help my community by fighting the drugs and crime that beset our neighborhood.
What I don’t tell them is that before I was part of the solution, I was part of the problem. In no small way.
The root cause was a simple one. You have likely heard it from others who were in my place. Who were called to be knee-deep in Southeast Asian jungles at the ripe old age of nineteen.
It started when I was exposed to drugs in Vietnam. And by “exposed,” I mean “addicted.”
Good old Leo Mack—the nice young man who went to Sunday school and had respectable friends, who never got in trouble with the police, and who didn’t hesitate to serve his country when called—had never tried drugs. It was more than just that I hadn’t; I was never going to try drugs. It was completely off my radar. You kind of block drugs off in your mind as a real possibility, you know, when you make that decision.You think, as long as I never go down to such-and-such street corner where the prostitutes and dealers hang out, then I’ll be okay. Drugs are something I’ll never have to worry about. Never have to deal with. I’ll have problems, sure, but drugs won’t ever be one of them.
But things have a way of getting in through the back door. They find a chink in your armor and slither through in the dark when you’re not even looking. That’s life.
See, there are things you won’t ever try...and then there are things you won’t try when you’re pretty sure you’re going to die in the next few days. And let me tell you, the first list is longer than the second.
Awake for seventy-two hours, half-starved, and ankle-deep in the freezing tributaries along the Mekong Delta; unthinkable things have a way of becoming thinkable. When the second l ieutenant in charge has been making bad decisions all month— and, to boot, is a white guy from Mississippi who sends the black guys in the platoon to do all the most dangerous shit—it begins to feel more and more likely that you won’t be seeing home again. And you start to cross a few items off on that list of things you’ll never do.
Then that fateful night happens when the guy awake with you on guard duty says he has some pills that can help you stay awake. Stronger than coffee. Better. So much better, they’re t echnically illegal. And apparently, in addition to waking you up, they have the side effect of making you feel amazing.. And you just sort of say okay, whatever man, gimme one.
And that’s it. Boom. You like them. They work. You feel better. You feel up and optimistic. Getting through the night isn’t so jackshit horrible.
You then ask about getting some more. Pretty soon you want your own personal supply. Then you learn that there are other pills, and others still. Things that make you go up, down, and sideways. Sure, there are some side effects—most of which you don’t notice right away because you’re young and strong—but overwhelmingly, they just contain different ways of making you feel amazing. And you sure aren’t thinking about the side effects that’ll hit years later, or how this could turn into an expensive habit that you sure-as-shit don’t have the money to pay for. You’re only thinking about how there are a million North Vietnamese coming down the river to kill you, and you don’t expect to live out the month.
So . . . yes.
By the time I got back to Chicago, I was hooked on uppers and downers and smoking reefer to boot. Some guys had it worse, but that was bad enough for me.
The first thing I realized was that if I wanted to keep taking these drugs—which I did—I needed entirely new friends.
People back home said, “The war has changed him.” They didn’t seem too surprised by how I was different, because hey, it’s war. It’ll do that. Everybody had an uncle from WWII or a grandpappy from the first one who’d come back a different dude.
So when I started running with a new crowd, became unable to hold a job, and got shifty when asked about my future, people just assumed it was the war.
And it wasn’t. It was the drugs.
A year after Vietnam, I was an amphetamine and opiate addict.
Two years after Vietnam, I had added cocaine.
Four years after that, I was a stone cold criminal, doing jobs right and
left to support my habit.
In the 1970s, Chicago’s south side was changing. Or.. .wait... maybe the most accurate thing to say was that it had stopped changing.. .and that that was the change.
Once upon a time, Chicago’s south side had been the destination for blacks leaving the Deep South hoping for a better life. Beginning in 1910, people started calling the Illinois Central Train Depot “Black Ellis Island,” because so many African Americans made it their entryway to the North. The Pullman Porters circulated Chicago’s black newspapers like the Defender and the Crusader all throughout the South. A whole lot of people read those papers and thought they were reporting on a place that was better than where they were. Eventually, Cook County had more black people in it than any other county in the United States, which it still does. Most of those black people lived on Chicago’s south side. It became its own city within a city. You never had to leave the south side if you didn’t want to. Your job, church, doctor, dentist, insurance agent, grocery—they were all black and all on the south side.
And no one will say it was a perfect time—or even a good time—from, oh, about 1910 to 1970. There was racism, housing discrimination, and race riots. And when Martin Luther King came to town, they hit him in the face with a damn brick. But it had this feeling of impetus. Of momentum. Ours was a community that was growing, you know? New people were arriving every day to come be part of it. It was a thing.
But then, around 1970, it started to change. The immigration stopped. All of the blacks who had wanted to move north had pretty much done so. Maybe there was less racism and more opportunity in the South, or maybe the dew was just off the lily for Chicago. Whatever it was, people started to leave the south side. Couple that with a massive national recession and huge spikes in crime, and you began to see a new south side. The one—you could argue—that we still have today.
There started to be these things called “shopping centers” and then “malls” that were fun to shop at and cheap, and you could get to them on the El trains. So boom, suddenly there’s no reason for all of these local businesses on every block. Most of the trusted family-owned stores die out. The businesses that replace them are usually terrible. Lousy restaurants. Second-hand wig shops. Fly-by-night places that do your taxes.
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