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Hello Hello,
I'll be 'presenting' this story today. Thought if you were interested in the presentation it might be worth a read.
Cheers,
W.

For Emily A, whose faith inspires even the faithless.
Every Sunday, the doors to St. Michael’s church in Amherst, Massachusetts are open. Inside its doors stands an armed security guard, the mercenary type, the only type of guns money can buy this late in the Z outbreak. The guard checks me as I walk through the wooden doors.
“Name?”
“Dr. William F. Taylor,” I respond.
“Bites?” he asks curtly, sweeping my frail frame with his eyes. It's been a long time since I've had a full meal, and MREs are expensive.
“None.” The mercenary runs a handheld metal device in front of my forehead. His hand does not shake, this moment is usually quite tense. His other is motionless on the grip of his modified AK-47. The device clicks, and a light blinks green.
“Clear,” the guard tells me. He has just checked for normal temperature. The bitten will be feverish, you see. The undead will be cold, the last heat from their bodies bleeds out a long time before they reanimate. Dogs, of course, can sniff an infected from 200 yards away, but churches could never afford a dog. The good dogs were seized and militarized during the first surges of the outbreak. Using men is cheaper as there was a surplus of ex-Iraq, ex-Afghanistan 30-somethings. The men came with the bonus of providing someone to talk to when things got lonely. Although, for most mercenaries, dogs might have been better conversation.
“Thank you,” I tell him as I step to his right-hand side into the empty church.
“Say, what’s a medical type doing in a place like this?”
“Are my kind any less in need of your services?” I respond.
“It’s just... there haven’t been many in here, since the outbreak.”
“I just need to discuss something with the man who is in that box.”
“It’s not really for discussions. It’s a confessional.”
“I am aware of what the box is called, thank you.” I proceed past the mercenary and towards the box. I did not mean to be rude, but sometimes rudeness is unavoidable.
“Suit yourself,” the guard says to my back. “Prick,” I hear him whisper under his breath. Dogs didn't whisper insults at your back. Dogs wouldn't steal your food or your weapons in the night. Mercenaries are all the same. Putrid humor and a lack of wit. No contemplation of the situation at hand. It’s only the gun pointed at the infected and the click of the trigger. No future past the muzzle flash. I once heard a hired gun teaching a man how to fire his AK early in the outbreak, ‘you count out while you shoot: die-mother-fucker-die, and then their fucking brain is on the wall, boom!' He laughed, 'you try-'
I pity these men.
I open the door and sit down in the confessional. The priest slides the screen open. “Yes, my child?” the priest asks. I knew he was going to say it, though I’ve never been to a confessional before. You couldn’t have paid me to be here before the outbreak. I find the whole situation of confession to be unavoidably creepy. Something or other about a healthy dose of Judaism in the younger years mixed with an atheist’s heart.
“Father?” I anxiously say, feeling the sheer religiosity of the pseudonym.
“Yes, my child?” I can see him through the cage. It has not been repaired since at least the start of the outbreak. It seems as though several people have tried to punch their way through it. Hopefully they were still people at that point, but that’s what I’m here to discuss. “I have a question,” I continue.
“Anything, my son,” the priest responds. At least I assume he’s a priest. I suppose it could be another ‘die-mother-fucker-die’ behind this cage. I trust him. I’m not sure why.
“This plague-,” I begin but he cuts me off:
“How can God allow it?”
“Well, yes.” I am stunned at this. There must have been others with this question. Thinking on it now, what a fool I was thinking no idiot would run to the church with this question. It took me months to work up the courage to come into this place. How many thousands and millions died in those months? How many mothers, and sisters, and fathers passed? How many best friends and lovers? Uncountable cherished reanimated corpses had been put down like rabid family dogs, and here I am, in a confessional, thinking I’m the first person to ask a priest what in the fuck is happening. Idiot.
“Have you lost anyone dear?” he asks in his gruff voice.
“I have. Emily,” I knew her while I was in school, the sporty, yet academic type. She went to our campus church nearly every weekend. She was devoted; I think I might be here for her, because she can’t be. She told me once that she believed wholeheartedly in the church, but that the “levels of childhood indoctrination can be a bit creepy.” I miss her dearly, even if it was just to have someone to disagree with.
The priest waits a few extra beats before saying, “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.”
“Is that scripture?”
“I know that it can be hard to see, but you cannot look for the living among the dead. And, yes, that was scripture. Has it been a long time since your last confession?”
“It has,” I respond. I wasn’t going to tell him anything about my background, I’m here to get an answer.
“How long has it been?”
“Well, I was in a church once, ten years ago.” It was true. I had been in a church ten years previously for a funeral. Another old school friend had passed. No one particularly important to me. Just a man that I had come to pay my respects to. Since then, churches had always seemed ominous, like the place where death lived. So many candles, crying family and friends, stained glass with screaming prophets; shocking that anyone comes to these places for guidance.
“Not a religious upbringing?” He asks pensively.
“You could say that.”
“I take it that you lost Emily during the outbreak then?”
He knows. Of course he knows. He knows that I would have been to a church for Emily’s funeral, had she passed before the outbreak. There aren’t funerals the same way anymore. It was a clear, cold night in April. When you put someone down, it’s just not the same. They were already dead when you put them down. You were just finishing the job God couldn’t. I don't think Emily would have seen it this way. “I’m not here to talk about her.”
“No, you came here for an answer. I’m afraid to say that I only have to give you what the Lord has seen fit to give me.” He sounds firm, even in telling me he doesn’t know what to tell me.
“And what is that, exactly?”
“Scripture, my son-” I can hear his smile through the cage. I suppose it’s more of a veil, but I’m glad it’s obstructing my vision. I don’t want to see the smug smile I know must be on his face. A doctor, in the end of days, coming to a priest. I’ve spent all of my time, all of my working life trying to prolong life in defiance of everything that he believes. I remember the day the deer left the town, Amherst was the hub of the intellectual community in Massachusetts, but it never was overcrowded enough to push the natural life away. The deer left first. They must have seen the bright apocalypse headlights cresting the hill, more dangerous than our cars. They hightailed it out of town, two by two, on the same roads they used to die crossing. Smug god-fearing fuck Noah was right. “It has to do with the earliest conception of man.” I had tuned him out momentarily, his words break up my brief daydream. “There was a race of men that populated the earth before what we would call, ‘ours,’ These people were washed away in the flood, which the Lord helped Noah to prepare for.”
“Oh yeah, the plagues?” I ask.
“I believe you’re referring to Moses.”
“Sure,” I respond, “so the flood?”
“Yes, of course, the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.”
“He had a heart? Isn’t he incorporeal, ethereal, something?”
“You have a heart, don’t you?” He asks me, I can smell the trap.
“His image, yeah, I get it,” I went to college at a prestigious university. I am a doctor, I don’t know much about scripture, but that was a softball. I used to work in politics, but a colleague, in one of his brief moments of sobriety, had told me that my heart had not been hard enough for the political world. “Try non-profits, they'll treat you better,” he had said. I had, I had transitioned from the political sphere into the non-profit universe for a time. The books on my one lonely shelf had collected dust for a time, and my mind had numbed, so I went to medical school instead.
“Good, my son,” he responds.
“So the lord just blots out people that piss him off?” I ask. I realize this wasn’t the nicest way I could have raised this question. “Like the plagues?”
“But it is more than a plague, William, it is a rebirth.” I’m not sure what to make of this, so I take a breath and wait. I wonder how he knew my name, maybe he can hear everything that happens in the church through these thin walls. “Are you able to reach the Bible on your right hand side?” He asks the question, knowing that I can.
“Yes.” I hold the Bible in my hands. It’s old and worn. It looks as if it’s been handled by a thousand different people in this box since the outbreak. This was a thing of beauty once.
“Could you open it to Genesis 1:26?” I open the Bible too quickly, and find myself in Deuteronomy. I back track, and find the passage the man has told me to look for.
“Alright, here it is.”
“Could you read verse 26, please?” He’s treating me like a child. He’s treating me like one of the sheep he led before the outbreak. I’m no sheep, but I do what he says, I came here for his advice, I’ll play along.
“‘Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”’” I pause, “Shall I continue?”
“No, that’s far enough. What does dominion mean to you, William?”
“Rulership,” I respond.
“Indeed, rulership, but more than that, does dominion not also imply stewardship? Can a king rule over a population that he lets starve?”
“No, I guess he can’t,” I say to the screen.
“Our kind had a task in this world. We were to be the stewards over this earth and all the things within it-”
“We’re doing alright,” I cut him off by saying.
“We did fine?” He asks rhetorically, “let me ask you this, do you remember children on reality television, William?”
“Of course I do.” Reality television had been a huge part of entertainment before the outbreak. Even though I couldn’t bring myself to watch the smut, you couldn’t entirely escape it.
“I want you to imagine the earth as a child, on a reality television show.”
“Alright,” I respond, although I couldn’t divine the slightest indication of where this was headed.
“Do you think the parents, the stewards, of these reality children were protecting them? Were they teaching any lessons?”
“How to make money on television,” I say, and chuckle. I imagine that I’ve evened the repartee score with this quip. The man through the veil doesn’t seem to have registered my verbal jab.
“Some of them did, yes,” he continues. “But with that lesson came avarice. These children were taught vanity. These children were taught to hate, to cheat, to do whatever they need to do in order to win these faux contests. The children, having received these lessons were irrevocably changed. Would you call this responsible parenting? Would you say that these children were inspired to become responsible parents themselves? Is this model sustainable?”
“Well, no, of course it’s not. But that’s reality television; one in a million children gets on a show like that.” I can’t say that the effect of the metaphor is lost on me, the shows were shameless, but it does seem like a strange connection to be drawing.
“Now, imagine the Lord, looking down upon the species that he gave one task to. These people with whom he entrusted his world glorifying this sort of behavior in one another. The vainest were the most coveted, the greedy were exalted, the heaviest exploiters became the role models. It was an unsustainable model, and God stepped in. If you were a parent, could you say that you’d have acted any differently?” His earlier questions now make sense, the father meant to get me to say that I’d not be able to find a flaw in the logic of God.
“I would never kill a child,” I say.
“Do you have children of your own, William?”
“No,” I respond. “Never really had time for a wife, I guess.” I say hoping that the lie will not register with the father.
The father takes a deep breath behind the screen and continues, “Then how could you possibly understand? This is not one child’s disobedience, but a whole race of your own begotten fundamentally corrupting all that you set out to build.”
“So, this is the new flood?” I ask, although I think I know that this is how this conversation will end.
“No, it’s not.”
“What?” I say breathlessly, I am perplexed. Everything to this point had aligned to the flood being the conclusion of the father’s line of logic.
“You came in here to ask why the Lord wouldn’t step in to stop this plague. I am unaware of, forgive me for an old man’s attempt at humor, the genesis of this scourge. I can however, recognize the reasoning behind our Father for not stopping it.” He finishes, and silence fills the box for a full five seconds before I respond.
“Is there a hope for life in this world?”
“You’re in this box, are you not?” I can hear the grin again, even through the veil. But this isn’t funny, and at this point I’m tired of being batted around.
“You know what I’m trying to say,” I spit towards the obscured man.
“Of course I do,” he responds. “But, I’ve given you all that I can on the subject.” There is silence again between us. I stand up, furious, knocking my head against the top of the confessional. “Stay healthy, and remember Matthew 6:34, ““do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today.”” God bless you, William Taylor,” with these words he exhales heavily. I stride quickly from the confessional. I say in a hushed whisper under my breath,
“Prick,” this word wasn’t as quiet as I had intended. I’m sure he could hear me curse him, but I’m also certain that I couldn’t care any less at this moment. 'Don't worry about the trouble of tomorrow until tomorrow?' How in the fuck am I supposed to sleep soundly knowing that there are packs of the dead wandering around, waiting for me to let my guard down? 'Reality TV?' That was hackneyed, that was childish. As I’m walking towards the doors of the church, I see the mercenary again. He holds out a packet of American Spirit Yellow cigarettes.
“Fancy one for the road?” He asks, grinning idiotically at me. He’s taunting me. He knows that I’m a doctor, that I’ll refuse, that I’ll tell him off for wasting what little life is left in this place, and that he’ll get to deliver some two-cent quip about enjoying what little we have.
“Love one. Will you join me?” I respond, and his eyes light up. We walk together outside of the church, and he slings his modified AK over his shoulder to accept his pack of smokes. He hands me a lighter. It’s a zippo that has faux gold plating. Engraved on the outside of the lighter are the words ‘O for a Muse of Fire.’ Having a zippo with engravings isn’t an odd occurrence, everyone and their mothers had one from the beginning of the outbreak. I remember during the first weeks of the outbreak, the companies which produced lighters would engrave your loved one’s names into your device. Some things seem so meaningless, and yet, having a piece of a loved one close to you in times of struggle means the world.
“O for a Muse of Fire?” I ask him, not knowing what to expect.
Henry V, never got to it?” He asks in a matter-of-fact manner.
“I’m sure I must have in undergrad, but no, I can’t say that I remember it.” I can’t believe I’m being intellectually out-shined by a mercenary, I suppose it’s a day for firsts. “Where did you serve, sir?”
“I didn’t,” he responds.
“You didn’t serve anywhere?” I ask.
“I taught, I was an English teacher,” he says, puffing away heavily.
“A teacher... how did you wind up in this line of work?”
“Everyone has to do their part, right? I taught Shakespeare, mostly, but some Sunday school classes here and there as well. That life’s over, though. We all do what we have to do. There’s got to be somebody to put these Z’s down, and folks seem to still like coming to this place.” He takes a puff on his American Spirit.
“This church is still well visited?” I ask.
“You get to the Book of Daniel, with the man in the box?”
“No,” I tell him.
“““There shall be a time of anguish... but at that time your people shall be delivered... Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake.”” Paraphrasing a bit there, but this used to be my thing. I think that's the gist of it,” He says.
“And that's about the infected, not a judgement?” I ask him.
“Of course it's about judgement, but people come here to be comforted, not to hear the truth. But it's never been about the truth, you see. This is all they have, and if it keeps them alive, I don't begrudge them for it. That's why I'm here,” he takes one last puff on his American Spirit, and stomps it out on the pavement.

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One Response so far.

  1. Very quality Mike. Deserves to be published in my opinion! I think I know where you got the Emily character. And I'm assuming you are the AK wielding English professor to some extent. Is the doctor you too? Or just pieces of him?

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