Zombie Jesus (2 page)

Since the compound was on the edge of town, in an older area of the city well removed from the shopping malls and skyscrapers of progress, the walkers would only attack in small groups. However, as the outbreak reached its full momentum, the compound was soon surrounded by hundreds of the hungry dead. The bikers quickly saw that they needed to wedge spare cinder blocks into the gaps beneath the gate to keep the scrabbling hands of the undead from gaining purchase on the underside of the gate and pulling it loose. Sadly this prevented them from leaving the compound easily, though some measures were in place to allow for single riders to come and go on scavenging runs into the depths of the city.

Very quickly the skills and equipment possessed by the club became the daily needs of survival. At least once every few days the zombies that ceaselessly battered their hands and bodies against the metal gate would successfully cause fractures in the welded joints and supports of the gate. These had to be replaced by welding scrap metal and rebar to the gate, and within a month the main gate had become a collage of makeshift spikes and sheet metal. The small crane that was used to lift junk cars into the crusher was the primary way in which cars and bikes were lifted out over the wall and set on the road, though this was indeed a dangerous task.

Drivers, mechanics, welders, and handy men were all present within the ranks of the Calaveras, and for this everyone in the club was grateful. The wives and girlfriends kept the men in high spirits as best they could, and the few children who had been brought to the compound seemed to thrive in an environment where they had several mothers and fathers. Yet all were worn down, and quickly, by the unrelenting assault of the horde. Quickly it was realized that for every walker gunned down several more would take its place, being drawn in by the gunfire and clamoring voices of those already hammering on the walls. Their ferocity never waned, and day after day the gate reverberated with the pounding of hands on metal.

So it was that Romeo walked his patrol on the roof of the main common building, his sunglasses glinting in the midday sun as he scanned the area. He had tried counting the number of zombies that surrounded the compound, and had given up at five hundred and sixty-seven. Most of them were massing on the main gate, pushing and shoving each other in an attempt to move ever forward. The rest were choking the alleys and side street, all shuffling in the press of bodies that moved towards the main gate. It reminded him of youtube videos he had seen of Muslim pilgrims surrounding the sacred stone in Mecca.

The welders were busy repairing a fresh fracture in the gate, and the women and children were sorting through a truck-bed loaded with canned food. Harrison and Turk had made a run into town to get supplies, and had only returned about twenty minutes ago. They had outfitted one of the trucks with metal grating around all of the windows to prevent walkers from getting their hands on the drivers, and had added a wicked metal grille to the front of the vehicle. The standard procedure that had been developed over the last few months was that the truck would honk its horn and approach at top speed, using the grille to smash through the horde. The grille was shaped like a plow, its point pushing through the crowd and its curved prow lifting bodies out and away from the tires.

The bikers had spray painted a giant orange X in the road next to the street side of the building that was guarded by a cinder block wall, and that was where the giant magnet on the end of the crane would drop. The incoming vehicle would screech to a halt on top of the X and the crane would lift them up and drop the truck safely inside the compound. This tactic had served the Calaveras well, and had only failed once. This was before the metal grating had been installed, and the riders were mauled through the broken windows. The truck had been recovered with the crane, and the two bikers inside who had been killed by walkers were decapitated so that they would not rise again like so many others.

This time it looked like Harrison and Turk, who had made several runs this month already, had found the mother-load. There had to be enough canned goods in the haul to feed the club for several weeks. He was brought out of his reverie by the sound of another car revving its engines. He turned and looked out across the low buildings, his eyes scanning the area for the source of the engine noise. Then he saw them; four wickedly armored and garishly painted SUVs, each one bristling with spikes and blades. Psychopaths.

Jesus said, "I have cast fire upon the world, and look, I'm guarding it until it blazes, for I too am of the walking dead."

Jesus said, "This heaven will pass away, and the one above it will pass away, and this world shall belong to the dead man and the mad man.

The dead are not alive, and the living will not die. During the days when you ate what is dead, you made it come alive. When there is no room left in Hell, the dead will walk the earth. When you are in the light, what will you do? On the day when you were one, you became two. But when you become two, what will you do? You paint your face in many colors and you clothe yourself in strange garb, you thirst for mayhem, and you speak in tongues only the mad comprehend."

              Romeo lifted his field glasses to his eyes, and looked more closely at the vehicles. Each one had armor plating crudely lashed to the frame, and were bedecked in a variety of spikes and blades. Several men stood outside of the vehicles, one of them looking back at him with his own pair of field glasses. They had to be psychopaths, as the handful of zombies nearby simply ignored the men and kept shuffling towards the compound. No two men were dressed the same, as each of them wore a bizarre array of mismatched clothing and armor. One wore football pads festooned with severed fingers and carried a pump-action shotgun, while another carried a large revolver and wore only combat boots, swimming trunks, and a gas mask. The leader, Romeo assumed, was a man with a large burn scar on his face and a dyed green mohawk who leaned out of the foremost car and gave a hand signal. The others leapt into their vehicles as the four SUVs began to roll forward.

              Romeo shouted down a warning to the people in the compound, and un-slung his lever-action rifle. He brought his rifle to his shoulder and sighted in on the lead vehicle. As he slowly breathed out in preparation of pulling the trigger, his vision swam, and a pain in his head brought him to his knees. Not now, the thought, fighting through the pain as the visions came upon him. He was seeing through the eyes of Zombie Jesus, on some lonely desert road, as four motorcycles approach out of the horizon, silhouetted against the glare of the sun. Zombie Jesus opened his mouth and screamed. As he did the Riders held guns and blades aloft in salute, and the roar of their engines were in his ears as they sped past. Romeo put his hands on the floor and vomited, the pressure in his head finally being replaced by nausea as his sight returned.

              The young man struggled to his feet and brought his rifle up, looking for the vehicles, only to find them hurdling through the horde of zombies near the compound. The psychopaths had similar grilles on their vehicles, so were able to smash through the press of bodies to draw near to the walls of the compound. Each of the vehicles had taken a different approach, and were assaulting the compound on all four sides. From his vantage point Romeo could only see three of the vehicles, the lead having disappeared into the alley. Shots rang out as the unmistakable buzz of a bullet passed by his head, and Romeo took cover. He sighted down the barrel and saw one of the psychopaths, a wiry looking man wearing a cheap Halloween monster mask had leapt upon the gate, seemingly uncaring of the razor wire digging into his flesh. The man slammed a large grappling hook into the gate then stepped back down onto the hood of the vehicle.

              Romeo knew that if they successfully pulled the gate open the hundreds of walkers outside would enter the compound and devour everyone inside. He was the sentry, and there was no way he was going to let that happen. The young man drew a bead on the vehicle and began shooting, the 30/30 rounds from his rifle cleanly puncturing the unarmored hood of the car. The vehicle sped forwards and pulled taut the wire affixed between the grappling hook and their tow bar. The gate groaned against the force, but was holding firm for now. Romeo emptied his rifle’s magazine, putting 8 rounds through the hood of the car, then firing his final two into the chest of the mask-wearing psychopath as he exited the vehicle.

              It looked like the driver must have been hit, because the car no longer accelerated, though it was an automatic and still had enough forward movement to hold the tow wire taut. Another psychopath exited the vehicle and returned fire with what appeared to be a sub-machine gun. Though the gun was terribly inaccurate at this range, bullets impacted all around him and drove Romeo into cover. He reloaded as quickly as he could and listened as screaming and gunfire erupted from several places in the compound. He wanted to help, wanted to engage the multiple enemies that he knew were rioting in the camp, but he had to focus on the gate.

              Just as he was about to rise and return fire the psychopath in the gas mask rose from the fire escape ladder on the alley side of the building. He had scaled the cinder block wall by leaping from the hood of the car and gripping the top of the wall to climb over. His arms were bleeding from several razor wire cuts, though the stiff floor matt he’d thrown over the wire had prevented most of the damage. Romeo rolled to the side just as several large rounds struck the shallow wall he’d been crouching behind. The young man took cover behind an air conditioning unit as the psychopath kept shooting. Romeo returned fire, catching the psychopath in the guts with one round, though the man kept running and shooting to force the biker into cover once more.

              Romeo moved around to the other side of the air conditioning unit and began laying down suppressing fire at the psychopath. The man managed to fire one shot that grazed Romeo’s thigh before several rounds from the lever-action punched through his chest and sent him over the edge of the building. Romeo quickly reloaded and returned to his firing position, and by the ninth shot the vehicle towing the grappling hook stopped its forward motion. The driver stumbled from the cab and managed to walk several yards away from the battle before collapsing.

              Romeo was limping down the stairs of the fire escape when he saw one psychopath vehicle burning rubber out of the alley and away from the compound. The other three vehicles sat silent, one relatively unscathed and another just as full of bullet holes as the one at the gate. The psychopaths had been defeated, though the battle had not been without losses. Several of the Calaveras had been gunned down, and a psychopath with a hatchet had chopped one biker to pieces before the others could put him down.

              Turk was convinced that they had been followed, since this was the first real encounter with the psychopaths beyond the occasional sighting when the bikers were on scavenging runs. Harrison was convinced of the same, though he had been grievously wounded, and was passing in and out of consciousness as they treated his wounds. While the welders repaired the gates a club meeting was called, and the inner circle retired to their sanctuary to discuss the future.

              Cisco had come to Romeo once the younger man’s wound had been stitched and wrapped. The older man had shared his most recent writings, and Romeo told him of his visions of the four riders. Something big was coming. Something beyond the struggle for survival, and they needed to be out there, in the world. They both knew that they could not remain behind the walls of the fortress any longer. They had to break with the club. It was time to go nomad and hit the road.

Jesus said, "I am not your teacher. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring that I have tended. You hear the voice and you write the words. He sees the sights of my sights and is shown the path."

And he took him, and withdrew, and spoke three sayings to him. When Thomas came back to his friends they asked him, "What did Jesus say to you?"

Thomas said to them, "If I tell you one of the sayings he spoke to me, you will pick up rocks and stone me, and fire will come from the rocks and devour you. They are to be nomads, and to raise your hands against them is death.”

THE QUEST

Cisco shuddered as he wrote the final words of his most recent passage. The implications were terrifying, and yet he felt oddly comforted by them, as if some renewed sense of purpose had crept into his life. He had been so lost without his family, their deaths weighting upon him unlike any burden he had ever carried. And yet, this voice, and the words it pushed him to write, such things filled him. Where once he was an empty soul there was a light, a warm spark that insisted he carry it onwards. He knew that Romeo felt is also, and despite the horrific images he witnessed in his visions, there was fire to be carried.

Jesus said to them, "If you fast, you will bring sin upon yourselves, and if you pray, you will be condemned, and if you give to charity, you will harm your spirits.

When you go into any region and walk about in the countryside, when people take you in, eat what they serve you and heal the sick among them. This is the way the world changes, and this alone.