Zombie, Illinois (9 page)

I draw near and see a cluster of figures huddled around the base. Even from a distance, I can tell from their stiff, lumbering movement that they are zombies. They are trying to reach two young women who have climbed up the 10-foot base. The women are trapped.

I approach the monument. The two women—perhaps in their early twenties and wearing different styles of ironic fuzzy coats—appear terrified. They look how I feel.

And before I can help myself—my terrified, running, chickenshit self shouts “Hey!”

The zombies don't look at me, at least not at first. But the young women do. They have a horrible, dire pleading in their eyes. I'm just one lumpy reporter, slow and unarmed. They aren't hoping I've got a shotgun underneath my coat that I'll use to save the day. No. They are hoping that the zombies will decide to come after me instead.

Which is exactly what happens.

After a few tense moments, the zombies notice me. They look back and forth between the reporter and the girls, and choose the reporter. Whatever their mental handicaps, they seem able to deduce that someone on the ground is easier to reach than someone atop a stone base.

The zombies move away from the monument and come after me. They lumber off the traffic circle and into the street. I pray for a giant truck to appear and squash them. But no. Nothing. Somehow, the streets on this nightmare evening are entirely empty.

I turn around and head back in the direction of the park. The zombies keep following.

As Palmer Square comes back into view, I remember that— oh yeah—there are also zombies in it. Then I see them. They have left the park and started heading up toward the Centennial Monument. I am pinned between two groups.

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!”

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 sledgehammer, 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.