Book of the Dead: A Zombie Anthology (48 page)

The dead had risen from their graves to be judged. If that was not a miraculous proof, what was?

The regular viewers of Jerry’s tricounty video ministry had been long satisfied by more pal id miracles—eased sprains, restored control of the lower tract, that sort of thing. Since this ukase had flown down from heaven, it would be foolish to shun its opportunities.

Jerry savored the moment the dead ones had walked. It had vindicated his lagging faith, dispel ing in an instant the doubts that had haunted his soul for a lifetime. There
was
a One True God, and there
was
a Judgment Day, and there
was
an Armageddon, and there was
bound
to be a Second Coming, and as long as the correct events came to pass, who cared if their order had been juggled a bit? The Lord had been known to work in mysterious ways before.

Once his suit had been blazing white, and pure. With faith, it would shine spotlessly again. Right now he did not mind the skunky miasma exuding from the pits of what, had once been a fifteen-hundred-dol ar jacket. It helped blanket the riper and more provocative stench of Deacon Moe’s presence. The congregation was on the move, and there was little time for dapper grooming in midhegira.

Jerry beckoned Deacon Moe forward to receive communion. From the way poor Moe shambled, this might be his last chance to drink of the Blood… since none of the faithful had meshed teeth lately on the Body, or any facsimile thereof.

He had visited an abandoned library, and books had told him what rattlesnake venom could do.

In human beings, it acts as a neurotoxin and nerve-impulse blocker, jamming the signals of the brain by preventing acetylcholine from jumping across nerve endings. The brain’s instructions are never delivered. First comes facial paralysis, then loss of motor control. Heart and lungs shut down, and the victim drowns in his own backed-up fluids. Hemolytic, or blood-destroying, factors cause intense local pain. Jerry had tasted the venom he routinely fed his quartet of deacons. Nothing to worry about, as long as your stomach lining had no tiny holes in it. The bright yel ow liquid was odorless, with a taste at first astringent, then sweetish. It numbed the lips. There was so much books could not know.

In walking dead human beings, Jerry discovered that the venom, administered oral y, easily penetrated the cheesecloth of their internal pipework and headed straight for the motor centers of the brain, unblocking them, al owing Jerry to reach inside with light hypnosis to tinker. He could program his deacons not to eat him. More important, this imperative could then be passed among the faithful in the unspoken and mystical way that seemed reserved to only these special children of God.

A talent for mesmerization came effortlessly to a man who had devoted years to charming the camera’s unblinking and al -seeing eye. Jerry preferred to consider his ability innate, a divine, God-granted sanction approved for the use he made of it.
Don’t eat the Reverend
.

Deacon Moe’s coated tongue moistened cracked and greenish lips, not in anticipation, but as a whol y preconditioned response. The demarcations of the urine specimen cup showed a level two ounces. Little Luke could be ful y milked slightly more often than once per month, if Jerry’s touch was gentle and coaxing. The cup was tilted to Deacon Moe’s lips and the poison was glugged down
in nomine Patris, et Fili
…

“And God waved His hand,” Jerry belted out.

“And when God did wave His hand, He cleansed the hearts of the wicked of evil. He scoured out the souls of the wolves, and set His born-agains to the task of reclaiming the earth in His name.

The Scriptures were right al along—the meek inherited. Now the world grows green and fecund again. Now the faithful must seek strength from their most holy Maker. The damned Sodom and Gomorrah of New York and Los Angeles have fal en to ruin, their false temples pul ed down to form the dust that makes the clay from which God molds the God-fearing Christian. Our God is a loving God, yet a wrathful God, and so he struck down those beyond redemption. He closed the book on secular humanism. His mighty Heel stamped out radical feminism. His good right Fist meted out rough justice to the homosexuals; his good left Fist likewise silenced the pagans of devilspawn rock and rol . And He did spread His arms wide to gather up the sins of this evil world, from sexual perversion to drug addiction to Satan worship. And you might say a
memo
came down from the desk of the Lord, and major infidel butt got kicked doubleplusgood!”

Now he was cranking, impassioned, his pate agleam with righteous perspiration. His hands clasped Deacon Moe’s shoulders. His breath misted the zombie’s dead-ahead eyes. His conviction was utter. Moe salivated.

“And now the faithful walk the land, brother,’as a mighty army. God’s legions grow by the day, by the hour, the minute, as we stand here and reaffirm our faith in His name. We are al children of God, and God is a loving Father who provides for His children, yes. Yes, we must make sacrifices. But though our bel ies be empty today, our hearts are ful up with God’s goodness!”

His voice was cracking now; it was always good to make it appear as though some passion was venting accidental y. “From that goodness you and I must draw the strength to persevere until tomorrow, when the Mil enium shal come and no child of the Lord shal want. Peace is coming!

Food is coming! Go forth unto the congregation, Deacon Moe, and spread this good news!

Amen! Amen! Amen!”

Deacon Moe wheezed, his arid throat rasping out an acknowledgment that sounded like an asthmatic trying to say
rruuaah
through a jugful of snot. Jerry spun him aboutface and impel ed him through the curtain to disseminate the Word. He heard Moe’s stomachload of accumulated venom slosh. Corrosion was running amok in there. Any second now, gravity might fil Deacon Moe’s pants with his own zombified tripe.

Tonight they were bil eted in an actual church. Most of the faithful loitered about the sanctuary.

The deacons led them through Jerry’s motions; the response quotient of the total group, twoscore and ten, was about as dependable as a trained but retarded lab rat. Less control, and Jerry would have starred at his own Last Supper months ago. Right now he saw his congregation only as vessels itching to be fil ed with the prose of the Lord. He tried to keep them fed as best he could manage.

He was most proud of the glorious day he had commenced his cross-country revival. He strode boldly into the murk of a Baton Rouge honky-tonk and let God say howdy-do to a nest of musicians cal ing themselves Slim Slick and His Slick Dicks. Marching right behind him were twenty hungry born-agains. That holy purge, that first big feed with which he had blessed his new congregation, would forever burn brightly in a special corner of his heart. Slim Slick, et al., had seen the light. Some of them had joined the marching ministry, those that had not been too chewed up to locomote.

Like Jesus to the temple, the Right Reverend Jerry came not to destroy, but to fulfil . To fil ful .

He poked his snakestick into the hatch of the pet caddy. Nobody buzzed. Nobody could. Rattling tended to upset the faithful, so he had soaked the rattle of each of his four Little wine-makers until it rotted into silence. Little Matthew was disengaged from the tangle of his brothers.

Eastern diamondbacks were rightly feared for their size and high venom delivery; ful -contact bites were almost always fatal. Little Matt was five feet long, with large glands that would effortlessly yield a Love Gift that could convert six hundred sixty-six adults to the cause, and wasn’t
that
a significant coincidence of mathematics? Jerry had to push the figures a smidgen, converting mil igrams to grains to ounces. How a lethal dosage was administered was a big variable. But the final number summoned by his calculator was 666, repeating to infinity. That was how many sinners could swing low on three ounces of Little Matt’s finest kind. To Jerry, that number was a perfect sign… and wasn’t that what real y counted in the Big Book? Perfection just tickled God green.

Deacon Curly had not come forth to receive communion. Perhaps he had wandered astray?

Back in the days before it had become synonymous with smut, the Right Reverend Jerry had enjoyed comedy. Upon his nameless deacons he had bestowed the names of famous funnymen.

As the ramrods wore out or were retired, Jerry’s list of names dwindled. Just now, the deacons in charge were Moe, Curly, W.C., and Fatty. Curly was running late. Tardiness was a sin.

Jerry felt secure that his flock would fol ow him even without the able assistance of his deacons.

He represented the Big Guy, but his course work with Graham and Hummel pealed just as righteously. His tent-revival roots ran deep and wide, he had always trodden the upward path, and his congregation now burgeoned beneath his loving ministrations.

When he sermonized, the born-agains seemed to forget their earthly hungers. He could not pinpoint why, past his own Rock-solid certainty that the Word held the power to stil the restless, and quiet gnawing bel ies. There were other kinds of nourishment; these lost ones were spiritual y starved as wel . Jerry held dear a reverence for awareness and sheer faith, and fancied he saw both in the eyes of his congregation when he vociferated. He Witnessed this miracle in a most hal owed and traditional fashion, during a sermon, when he looked out upon the mil ing throng and just
knew
. The born-agains depended on him for the Word just as much as the deacons counted on him to deliver the holy imbibitions. Venom governed the deacons, but it had to be a new kind of faith that oversaw the members of the marching ministry. Had to be.

They needed saving. Jerry needed to save. Symbiosis, plain, ungarnished, and God-sanctioned as al get-out.

In a most everlasting way, they fed each other. Maybe it was not such a big whodunit, after al .

Stil no sign of Deacon Curly in the sanctuary. Jerry motioned Deacon Fatty inside. Fatty’s eye had popped out to hang from the stalk again. Jerry tucked it in and brushed the bugs from this deacon’s shoulders, then reknotted the arm band which had drooped to the zombie’s elbow.

Each member of the new congregation wore a Red Cross—it seemed an appropriate symbol for the New Dawn, and Jerry needed a handy way to take quick head counts while on the march.

The sudden, flat
boom
of an explosion not far away made Jerry’s heart slam on brakes. Deacon Fatty stood unimpressed, awaiting his communion, insects swimming in his free-flowing drool.

Orthodoxies had spent too long fucking up the world, so Wormboy had obliterated al of them with a snap of his knockwurst fingers. Enough was enough. Idiots fumbled about, living their lives by accident, begging nonexistent gods for unavailable mercies, trusting in supernatural beings and nebulous powers of good and evil that predetermined what breakfast cereal they ate. If there was any evil now, its name was either Starvation or Stupidity—two big items that could make you instant history. True Believers spent their lives preparing to die. Wormboy preferred fighting to live.

His survival ethics might become the first writ of a new doctrine. Another system would rise in time. Nobody ever real y learned a goddamned thing.

He preferred heavy-caliber projectile peace of mind. Cordite calm. He had named his M60

Zombo and it was swel . One round made raspberry slush. Vaporize the head and the leftovers could not eat you or infect you with the geek germ.

And spraying on Pam kept them from sticking to the cookery.

Wormboy dumped his dishes in the steel tub sink and relaxed on his Val ey View sofa. A basso toilet belch eased him into sleep, and he dreamed about the first person he had ever eaten.

Duke Mal ett had dubbed him Wormboy because of his obesity and spotty complexion. Which,
quoth Duke, indicated that 15th Street Junior High’s resident wimp, blimp, pussywhip, and pariah
sucked up three squares chock ful ’o night crawlers each day, with squiggly snacks between. “Yo,
Wormy—wotcha got in your locker? More WORMS, huh?” That was always good for a chorus of
guffaws from Duke and 15th Street’s other future convicts.

Duke smoked Camels. His squeeze, Stacy, had awesome boobs and a lot of pimples around her
mouth. She used bubble-gum-flavored lipstick. Two weeks prior to becoming a high school
freshman, Dukey wrapped a boosted Gran Torino around a utility pole at ninety. He, Stacy, and a
pair of their joyriding accomplices were barbecued by sputtering wires and burning Hi-Test.

Paramedics piled what parts they could salvage onto a single stretcher, holding their noses.

Tompkins Mortuary also provided local ambulance service, and when Wormboy caught wind he
raced there, to grieve. Old Man Tompkins admired the fat kid’s backbone in requesting to view
the remains of his classmates. “I have to be sure!” Wormy blurted melodramatical y, having
rehearsed. Tompkins was of the mind that youngsters could never be exposed to death too soon,
and so consented to give Wormboy a peek at the carbonized component mess fil ing Drawer
Eight.

Wormboy thought Tompkins smel ed like the biology lab at shark-dissecting time. While the old
man averted his gaze with a sharp draw of untainted air, Wormboy sucked wind, fascinated. The
flash-fried garbage staining the tray and blocking the drains was Duke. Harmless now. The sheer
joy of this moment could not hold, so Wormboy quickly swiped a smal sample. When Tompkins
turned to look, he sheepishly claimed to have seen enough. He lied.

Later, alone, he wal owed.

The piece he had purloined turned out to be one of Duke’s fricasseed eyebal s. It had heat-shrunken, wrinkled in a raisin pattern, deflated on one side, and petrified on the other… but
without a doubt it was one of Dukey’s baby blues. The eye that had directed so much hatred at
Wormboy was now in his very hand, subtracted of blaze and swagger and no more threatening
than a squashed seed grape.