Zombie, Illinois (25 page)

The neighborhood may look empty, but eyes are everywhere.

I head vaguely northwest—away from the Lake and the people who tried to kill me but toward what.I'm not sure. I pass a small city graveyard called Valenwood. A smiling man carrying a folding chair and a Thermos is walking the other way. He has a rifle slung over his shoulder and gives me a friendly salute when we pass. I salute back.

When I get even with the graveyard, there is a horrible sight. A man in a suit is being pulled apart by several zombies. One zombie has worked a giant strip of skin off his forehead with its teeth. Two others are chewing on one hand each. At first I think the victim is completely dead, but then I see his leg t witching spastically like a scratching dog. Something's still alive in there, if only nerve fibers. Dear God, it looks awful.

A couple of the zombies look up from their carnival to size me up. I cross the street and quicken my pace. For the moment, they leave me alone and stick with the sure thing.

I merge back onto Martin Luther King Drive and soon reach 35th Street where an ancient monument to African-American soldiers hunkers in the center of the intersection. A black soldier in a doughboy helmet stands resolutely atop a pillar. He holds a rifle and faces south, on the lookout. But the Kaiser is long dead. Tonight, he's looking out for zombies.

At the base of the monument stand three men in winter jackets.all armed with rifles. Two are drinking coffees from Styrofoam Dunkin' Donuts cups. They look approachable and friendly but keep their eyes on my gun.

I point my AK at the ground and give them a wave. They cautiously return it, searching my face to see if they recognize me. (This neighborhood, called Bronzeville, is about ninety-nine percent African American. There are a few white folks who live down here, but if you live here you probably recognize most of them on sight.)

As I get closer, I see two bodies—possibly human, possibly zombie—piled at the foot of the monument. The bodies are not dressed for the chill. Zombies.

“You keepin' it safe out here?” one of the men asks when I draw within earshot.

“Trying to,” I say wearily.

“Where you comin' from?” another asks.

“The Cultural Center,” I say, hooking my thumb to point back down MLK.

“How did it look?”

“No zombies,” I answer. “A lot of people.” “A lot of assholes,” says one of the men from atop his coffee. “Yeah,” I answer, and laugh. “That's right! How did you know?” The other men laugh too.

“Let's just say we backed the wrong candidate in the last aldermanic election” says one of them. “The one who didn't meet with gang leaders and didn't have a criminal record. Don't know if we'd be welcome down there right now.”

There is an awkward pause as the men consider this grim reality.

“Where you headed, son?” another asks me.

“North...I think”

The men smile.

“Keep it safe,” says one of them. “Believe me,” I tell them, “I'm trying.”

A few blocks to the north, there's an on-ramp that leads up to the network of roads leading away from the city. The giant raised highway lurches across the top of MLK. The roads go north to Milwaukee, south to Indiana, and west out to the suburbs. These are the central arteries that pump the commuters into and out of Chicago every day. Food, materials, tourists—all of the things a city needs to live come through here.

But not today.

To say that these asphalt arteries are now “clogged” would be a ridiculous understatement. Neither can I accurately describe the scene before me as “a parking lot,” for parking lots—even during the height of a midnight madness Christmas sale— generally maintain some semblance of order and organization. What I see here is closer to a pile-on. The result of a lawless scramble to be the first to get out of Dodge. The highways are utterly blocked.

The almost archeological layering of the rows of trapped cars makes it possible for me to envision exactly how it happened. First, the two or three lanes of traffic crawled to a halt and then stopped completely. Then other folks said ‘heck with it,' and drove on the shoulder, creating another lane of traffic.which then also became completely clogged to a halt. Then, the small space that was still left between the cars on the shoulder and the concrete divider got filled by brave or terrified souls whose small cars or motorcycles were just narrow enough to squeeze in. Then people started driving on the landscaping. Commuters in the central lane found themselves pinned in on both sides by two or three cars. That's when, from the look of things, they went crazy and began ramming the cars around them in a frantic attempt to get out. Going forward and backward was not possible. They were trapped. The only question became how long to wait before abandoning your vehicle . . . or attacking your neighbor.

What remains is a madness of immobile metal, smashed windows, and utter hopelessness. Though almost all of the cars are now empty, many of them have been left running (or at least left the lights on). What's scary is not the cars. What's scary is imagining the people who did this to the cars.

Just as I prepare to turn around and head the other way, something catches my eye.There is movement atop the expressway amongst the cars. Moments later, a zombie staggers into view. A zombie or a very injured person. (Please be a zombie. Please be a zombie.) Either way, the most merciful act may be to shoot it. Then it—she—stumbles into the beam of a headlight from a pinned-in pickup truck, and the horror becomes real.

It is not a zombie—just a woman in a brown coat with mussed hair and some kind of head injury. Her lipstick is smeared like a Hollywood portrayal of an insane woman. She's clearly not insane though, or wasn't until a few hours ago. She's cold. She's scared. She doesn't know what to do.

I lower my gun. I certainly can't kill her. Not even a mercy killing. Not even if she asked. Not even in a zombie apocalypse. Somehow I know this instantly.

She, however, apparently has no such compunction.

Just as I'm wondering if I should wave to her—or maybe shout hello—she stumbles to the edge of the overpass, legs it over the concrete railing, and jumps. The fall is an undignified one. Though the lady isn't fat, she falls like an overweight diver who has slipped at the last moment. She is all flopping coat and flailing arms. And finally.splat.

The fall is at least forty feet. Will it be enough to do her in?

Oh please. Oh please.

I stand and look at the mound of woman and coat for a while. And it moves.

It twitches its fingers. A leg flexes and retracts.

I walk over to the lump. It's a zombie, I tell myself. She's already reanimated, and I need to put her down before she rises to her feet and comes to eat my brain.

I lower the AK and.. .click.

It
is
empty.

The leg twitches again.

Handgun. I have a handgun also. I took it off of the dead Secret Service officer and Islamic security guys.

I drop the AK and fumble into my pocket until I find the automatic. I'm not sure how to use it, but I'm guessing point and shoot. Those guys had been killing each other, so probably the safety is off.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand.

BLAM!

It is.

The thing at my feet—zombie, woman, whatever—ceases to twitch. Did I hit the head or just the torso? The woman is such a mass of rags and hair that I can't even tell. I take a few deep breaths and replace the gun into my coat pocket.

Have I just put a fellow human out of her misery, or have I only killed another zombie?

I will never know.

Unless...

I dissolve into the shadows next to a pylon underneath the highway and watch the corpse from a distance. If it reanimates, that woman was still alive. If it doesn't, it was a zombie, and I killed it for a second time.

I give it a full five minutes before deciding I can walk away. Then, when I do, I hear a noise behind me like someone slopping a wet mop onto a floor.

I don't look back.

My God. What a sight.

When it comes into view, I'm rendered almost breathless.

The Harold Washington Cultural Center is lit up like a beacon. A beautiful, glowing beacon. Here are people! Here is humanity! Heaven be praised!

I've never seen the Cultural Center so crowded. It didn't even look like this at the grand opening—the sight of which is the only thing I can compare it to. But the grand opening wasn't quite this crowded. Neither did it have a perimeter of armed guards, huddled masses of cold people waiting to get inside, nor frowning men with crossed arms preventing this influx from happening.

And.unless my eyes deceive me.

Neither did it have Shawn Michael Recinto walking inside, arm-in-arm with Maria Ramirez.

“How's is it with you, my son?” I say to the giant man at the door.

He doesn't look like a regular church attendee, but neither does he look like a murderer. Somewhere in between. Let's say... bouncer at a strip club.

I look up into the man's face. (I'm pretty tall, but this guy is taller. Also fat. Very fat. That kind of fat where you start to look Asian because your cheeks are pushing up and your brows are pushing down.) He's like a Buddha statue that somehow has real, human eyes. They roll in their sockets of fat and eventually train on me. The heavy brow furrows as he sizes me up.

Who is this man—well dressed, in a pink tie and expensive suit—who acts like he's somebody?

“The councilmen are meeting inside,” he says—a statement that wonders if I can legitimately claim to have anything to do with the proceedings. This is practiced rhetoric. I am dealing with a pro.

I play my first card.

“I'm Pastor Leopold Mack of The Church of Heaven's God in Christ Lord Jesus.” I extend my hand so that he will shake it. He looks down at my beckoning glove. No other response.

I play my second card.

“I'm the personal spiritual advisor to Alderman Marja Mogk.” This is a half-truth . . . maybe a quarter-truth. She has been to my church a couple of times, and I've seen her at events in the community. It's a safe bet that she's inside. (Where Shawn Michael Recinto is, Alderman Mogk is likely to also be.)

Nothing.

The man at the door may as well have turned to stone. A Buddha statue indeed.

“And I have a message for Alderman Mogk,” I whisper confidentially.
“About Crenshaw Cemetery.”

This is also a half-truth.

True or not, it is—apparently—the magic word. The large man remains expressionless but steps backward and pushes open the door for me. A frustrated and confused crowd looks on enviously as I am admitted to the inner sanctum.

What I see inside the lobby of the Harold Washington Cultural Center is . . . not what I am expecting. The mix of armed men and women is equal parts police officers, clergy, city officials, and gang members. And their families. It kind of looks like that footage you see on the news when commuters get trapped at O'Hare Airport overnight in a snowstorm. People are sleeping on improvised cots. Benches have been turned into beds. Clothing and luggage are everywhere.

Everybody looks at me when I walk inside. I try to appear as if I know where I am going. I unzip my coat and flash my suit and tie. The gaudy pink neckwear—that I had fumbled to conceal in the graveyard—is now the thing that will allow me to glide past unfettered.

And glide I do.

At the top of the grand staircase, I see Shawn Michael and Maria going through a doorway. Maria appears to be struggling. Shawn Michael shuts the door behind them.

I begin to climb the winding stairs when a voice as deep as my own booms.

“Pastor Mack!”

I turn and see the guard from the front door. “Alderman Mogk is on the lower level,” he says, regarding me with suspicion.

“Oh, thank you, my son.”

The guard's face remains immovable. I slink back down the staircase and open the side door that leads to the reception and meeting rooms underneath the lobby. As I do, I take one last look at the door to the room that now holds Maria Ramirez.