Zombie, Illinois (35 page)

Exhausted, shaken, and increasingly hungry, we continue down the coal tunnel passageway toward Oak Park. It narrows back to its original size, maybe 9 feet across. We are resolute and quiet. At one point, a strange thunder echoes down the tunnels behind us. Maria looks at me and raises an eyebrow. Her expression seems to ask if that could be Ben.

I shake my head solemnly.

No, Maria. Whatever that was, it's not Ben. Not anymore. “My hands hurt,” Maria whispers.

“Mine too,” I tell her. “Climbing up that track was awful.” Maria nods.

“How's your leg?” she asks me. “Fine.”

This is not the entire truth. I suppose that by “fine,” I mean “fine to get to Oak Park.” After that, I'm not too sure. Maria laughs to herself. “What?” I say, confused.

“We're in a tunnel twenty feet below the street, in the middle of a zombie apocalypse—racing against people who would like to kill us—and you still don't tell the truth. We could both die at the next bend in the tunnel. Zombies could jump out and kill us. Why not be honest, Mack? Who are you possibly kidding? I saw the way you hit the floor when you made that jump.”

I consider that she has a point.

“My leg hurts very badly,” I tell her. “It's up high, near my hip.” “Is it, like, dislocated?”

“If it were dislocated, I wouldn't be walking” I say stoically. “But it's at least bruised...maybe a small fracture. Pain like this that doesn't go away after a while usually means something bad. I say I'm fine because I don't need you to carry me.”

“I'm stronger than I look,” Maria says brightly. “I could at least drag you, I bet.”

“I don't doubt it,” I say, smiling for the first time in a while. “You got them guns, girl.”

“It's all the drumming. It's better than going to the gym. More fun, too.”

The tunnel begins a gradual curve, making it difficult to see more than 30 feet ahead of us. We slow our pace and advance carefully. I keep up a back-and-forth search pattern with the flashlight's beam.

“While we're being honest.” Maria says as we ease into the turn. “There's something I wanted to ask you.”

“Okay,” I say cautiously.

“Are you, like...
concerned
for Richelle right now? I mean, do you even care what's happening to your daughter?”

I exhale deeply. We do not speak for a few steps. Our soft footfalls on the oily floor become the only sound. Step. Step. Step.

“I might very well ask
you
the same question” I eventually reply.

“What?” Maria shoots back. “I don't have a daughter!”

“You misunderstand” I insist. “Are
you
worried about

Richelle?”

“No, not at all.”

“Why?”

“Because!”
Maria returns, like the answer is obvious. “She's a grown-up, capable, completely brilliant young woman. She knows how to take care of herself in any situation you can think of.and I've definitely seen her in some hairy situations.”

“Mmm hmm,” I agree.

“She's resourceful,” Maria continues. “She's sensible. She and her boyfriend have that place together in Ravenswood, too. It's like a fucking fortress. If anybody could survive a zombie outbreak, it's Richelle.”

I stay quiet for a moment so Maria will understand that she has answered her own question.

“But...” Maria stammers, unsatisfied by my silence. “Then why do you.?”

“Why do I
what?”

“You know,” Maria says, as if it's obvious. I sigh deeply.

“Why would I wish that she would use her blessings to help her community instead of standing on a stage in a dress that shows off her breasts.”

“Just the tops of her breasts!” Maria objects.

“The
tops
of her breasts” I correct myself. “And singing songs about drugs and sex and atheism?”

“But that's
what she wants to do!
How can you have a problem with that? She's an adult. She's not twelve!”

“My daughter's gifts could be of great use on the south side of Chicago, and that is fact, not opinion”

Maria glares over at me, clearly unconvinced.

“In my neighborhood, the house is on fire,” I say. “The house is on fire, and Richelle has water that could help put it out. Do you have any idea the positive impact it would have on the young women in my pews to see a girl from the neighborhood who has become successful? These young women who don't see a future for themselves—who have babies at fourteen because they don't see any reason not to—would benefit tremendously from just
seeing
a woman like Richelle in their midst. They'd see that a smart, determined young woman from South Shore can achieve anything she puts her mind to . . . and that's just if Richelle meets me halfway! That's just if she comes to church
occasionally!
What Richelle could achieve if she chose to use her talents to advocate for the community? To work alongside us for change? That thought makes me so mad.I have to force it out of my mind! Richelle could be so many things. She could help in so many ways. Our house is on fire. Our neighborhoods are on fire. Richelle knows this. She grew up there. Richelle has water
—so
much water—and she won't help me put out this fire. Instead, she uses it for...making lewd, angry songs.
That's
my problem.”

Maria opens her mouth, but closes it again without speaking.

“I'm not saying there's no place for lewd, angry songs,” I continue. “You'd be surprised by the things I like to listen to. But to put those songs above helping a community? Above pouring water on a burning house? That, I just don't understand.”

I wonder if Maria will have more to say to me. For the moment, she doesn't. We know we disagree with one another. I know her arguments, and she knows mine. We are like l ong-retired senators from opposing parties, each having heard the other's speeches and invectives countless times.

And I start thinking.I could really tell Maria something now. While we're sharing, I could share something with her that I don't talk to anybody about. I could tell her the reason why I was late to Ms. Washington's house. Why I took that drive down to Merrillville. Here, in the middle of a zombie outbreak, beneath the warring city, we have the privacy of a fortress. We are beyond isolated. The zombies have made so many horrible things possible, why not let them make truth a possibility?

Why not?

We round a bend in the corridor. For the first time, we see a hatch with an opening to the world above. It does not appear soldered shut. There is a ladder. We have a way out, if we want it. It is cheering beyond description to see.

I also realize that we are near Oak Park. What happens when we arrive there and get above ground? I have no idea. But time is short.

Geronimo.

“I missed an important appointment with one of my parishioners tonight because I was at a Huey Lewis and the News concert.”

I await Maria's judgment with bated breath. “They're still touring?”

“You kidding? They did over a hundred gigs last year.”

“If they can still pack ‘em in, I guess it makes sense,” Maria allows. “Bill Gibson, right?” “Huh?”

“Bill Gibson is the drummer, right?” Maria clarifies.

“Yes,” I answer, surprised. “That's correct.”

“I mean, he's no Neil Peart or Stewart Copeland, but talk about a solid four beat,” Maria continues. “You could set your watch by that guy. Never overplays. Never distracts from Huey. Lotta good drumming over the years”

“How do you know about Bill Gibson?”

“Because he's a
drummer”
Maria shoots back, as if this ought to be obvious.

Then she is silent for a moment.

“Wait a minute,” she says. “How is it that you criticize your own daughter for being in a rock and roll band, and then you turn around and.”

She stops.

“Mack?
Mack?.
Omigod...Mack are you
crying?”
She leans in to leer at my tears, making certain they're not just the dance of the flashlight.

“My hip hurts” I lie. (Bad pastor.)

“No way! You're totally crying! But . . . why would Huey Lewis make you cry? I mean, yeah, I suppose it is about the whitest music ever made, and you're a black guy from the south side, but there's got to be something more than that. Right?
Right?”

Another moment of silence.

“I can't tell
anybody
about this,” I rasp, fighting back tears. Maria seems confused.

“What is the ‘this' in that sentence?” she asks. “Do you have a secret Huey Lewis room, filled with posters and album covers or something?”

Silence.

“Omigod, you
do!”

“It's at the back of the church, just off the old rectory.” “But why.”

“I don't know!”
I shoot back. “Maybe it's because his first few records coincide with a good time in my life when I was growing the church, growing my family, getting to know God. They were tough years but good years, and Huey was always there. I used to be a thug and a gangster. You probably didn't know that. When I came back fromVietnam, I was troubled. It took me a while to turn my life around, but I did it. When it really began to sink in—when I was sure I'd changed my ways and left the bad old Mack in the past—well, that was when Huey came around. It just happened.”

“And you like his music, too,” Maria says from the corner of her mouth.

“Of course, and I have no one that I can tell. Not my closest friends. Not Richelle. Certainly nobody in the congregation. That a few times a year—once a month, if I can manage it—I have to head off to wherever the nearest Huey Lewis and the News concert is. I try to stop.and I can't. I think ‘This
has
to be the last time, Mack.' Then it isn't. Another month goes by, and I find myself at some riverboat casino on the Mississippi singing along to ‘Hip to Be Square.'”

Maria starts to laugh. A throaty laugh, almost like a man's. It was this that I most feared. That if people knew that Pastor Leopold Mack—advocate for the people, crusader for justice in South Shore,

shepherd of his flock—liked a super-white 80s rock band, his power would be taken away. Nobody would take him seriously. Nobody would turn to him when in need of assistance. His sermons would be heckled. People would laugh. And laugh. And laugh.

Then Maria says, “I'm not laughing
at
you, Mack. I'm laughing at the fact that you think anybody cares!”

“What?”

“So what if you like the whitest singer ever? How is that even anybody's business?”

“You don't understand” I tell her, shaking my head. “I have a reputation to uphold. A standard of comportment that—”

“No,
you
don't understand” Maria shoots back. “You've made something out of nothing. Why do you think those people in the pews come listen to you week after week?”

“According to you, it's because I tell them to,” I counter.

“Nope,” Maria says. “That was why they called you ‘reverend,' which you said they don't even do.”

“What, then?”

“Because they get something from it,” she tells me. “Because they get you. They get who you are and what you're trying to do for them. They know that you give a damn about them. That you really care what happens in their lives. That that's your ‘thing'—in the same way it's
not
Richelle's ‘thing.' I don't think the fact you know all the cities Huey names in ‘Heart of Rock & Roll' is going to change that.”

I don't have an answer for her.

“We may have to respectfully disagree,” I tell Maria.

“That'd be a first” she says. “The respectful part, I mean”

She has a point.

After he talks about his Huey Lewis thing—or whatever—Mack gets kind of quiet for a while. I don't think he's mad at me, more like he just has to do some thinking. (I still don't get why it's such a big deal.)

We keep on heading northwest. This part of the tunnel is less oppressive and dirty. I don't know if ‘cleaner' is the right word—the floor is still covered in disgusting greasy coal slime—but there seems to be less gunk underfoot. I point out that we haven't seen any more zombies.

“Yes” agrees Mack. “They're all back in the pit. The way the tunnel was boarded up, they had no place else to go.”

No sooner are these words out of Mack's mouth than his flashlight beam lights on makeshift wooden scaffolding blocking the way ahead.

“Uh oh” I say.

“Now, now,” cautions Mack. “No reason to worry.yet.”

I'm reminded that we no longer have Ben's policeman's truncheon. Or Ben. Maybe we can kick it down or use the butt-end of Mack's Maglite.

We reach the bulwark. It is a thin wall of wood like we've seen before. No doubt, the opposite side will carry a skull face of some clever, coded variation.

“Why do you think these things were built?” I ask Mack as we begin looking for the weakest point. “They didn't know zombies were going to be inside them.”

“I think it was the stuff that
became
zombies” Mack answers, prying loose a board with his bare hands. “The dead bodies and whatever else. We don't even know if this tunnel—the Oak Park tunnel—is typical. Maybe the others contain different things. Worse things.”

“Maybe so,” I answer, hoping he is wrong.

It takes only a few minutes of kicking and prying to make a hole in the wooden wall. Like last time, there are silent zombies waiting for us on the other side. But this time we're ready for them.

We work in tandem. I hold the flashlight and Mack takes them out with his Glock. Two are old—practically mummified— and Mack targets them easily. One shot to the forehead each. They puff out dust like when you smack your grandmother's old couch. Down they go, collapsing to the tunnel floor.