The Year's Best Horror Stories: XVIII

Zombies For Jesus by NINA KIRIKI HOFFMAN

I was thinking about women, live ones, dead ones, and in between.

"Ante is one finger joint," said Slim. "Any finger joint."

I put my hands in my lap, ready to sit this one out. I'd already lost a finger this game and didn't feel like playing anymore. There were a few clicks and some mushy thuds as the others anted up.

The flies was loud in the afternoon stillness, drifting here and there, feasting, lazy in the hot amber light coming through the canvas tent. I brushed one off my nose. Most of the boys didn't bother, as their nerves was mostly dead and they had no interest in personal hygiene any longer.

Prettyboy Pritchard stood looking out the tent flap. He was the newest revival, the most whole-looking besides me, and he refused to join us at the poker table; didn't want to lose anything and spoil his pretty wholeness; hadn't settled into the bit-part business of the afterlife yet.

Brownie, down to one finger and one thumb, both of which he needed to hold his cards, said, "Can I use a toe? I got extras. I gotta stay in, Slim. I gotta win some parts back, I really gotta."

"Aw, nobody wants toes," Slim said. "I got thirteen already. You got anything else?"

"Zeke," Brownie said to me, "can you loan me a finger or two?"

"Nope," I said. Last time I loaned him something he lost three of my toes, and it took me six games to get them back, and some pinching in the night, because one of the other guys didn't want to give his up. My body parts were different from most of the others'. I was one of the Reverend Thomas's first Born Agains, before he got the Elixir of Rebirth refined. I figured I got some secret ingredients none of the other zombies had, because most of my body parts had a life of their own, and when the Rev punished us by withholding our zombie pickles, I never got so weak and wobbly as the others did.

I went over to join Prettyboy at the tent flap. Only one thing about him interested me, his still-alive wife. Prettyboy was staring toward the main tent. Faint on the heavy afternoon air, the "Amens!" and "Praise Jesus!" of the meeting sounded like a distant game show.

"It's almost time, isn't it, Zeke?" Prettyboy asked.

"You know one of the angels will be over to fetch you when it's time, Prettyboy."

"But it's almost time, isn't it?"

"Settle down and play some poker, will you?" Slim yelled from over to the table. "We're sick and tired of your whining. All of us what has ears, anyway."

Except me, maybe. Prettyboy's noise didn't bother me. He was the fifth or sixth whiner I'd seen since achieving the Hereafter. Like a constant drip in a sink, he'd drive you nuts if you paid attention to him, didn't bother you none if you just ignored him.

"Will Caroline be there?" Prettyboy asked, pulling on my shirttail. "Will she be there, Zeke?"

I was hoping she would be. She was the most devoted wife I'd ever seen, hung on far longer than most. Most spouses stopped coming to meeting when things went to pieces, figuring death had them parted and they wasn't required to stay by and watch the aftermath.

"She'll be happy to see me, won't she?"

I glanced at him and doubted it. Any live woman with the sense God gave her would run the other direction, with how Prettyboy looked and smelled now — not that I could smell him; my senses had changed after death — but so many flies couldn't be wrong. If the Rev didn't hold a revival meeting right soon and find himself a new Prettyboy, business was going to fall off something wicked.

Edging away from Prettyboy, I settled on the ground and made my silent whistle. The finger I had lost to Artie crept off the table and wriggled back to me. I held out my hand and it hooked right up with its own stump, not needing glue at all. I hauled my way up to my feet again by gripping the canvas, and thought about Final Death. The Rev had threatened to chop me up and burn me a couple times, but I threatened right back — said I'd left some facts about his activities with somebody living and if I died again somebody would see the news got to a reporter. I knew the Rev when he was still a prison doctor doing secret research on his own, and if his Reverend-ness came from God, then I had never been on Death Row for murder.

Lately, though, I'd been brooding more and more about Finals. What good was life, or even half-life, anyway, if you couldn't get near a woman? Might as well see if the Big Nothing was better than what I had now.

The Rev had some Born Again women, but he kept them locked up except for services, when they acted as angels or sang in the choir so long as they weren't too obviously fallen-apart women. The Rev didn't rightly know how the Elixir of Rebirth worked, and he didn't want to find out if those of us who still had the equipment could breed. He tried to keep us quiet by telling us there was no sex in Heaven.

One of the angels, all blonde hair and white robe, came over from the meeting tent. She was pretty recent, looked pale but not too unhealthy except for the big dark circles under her eyes. Just as I was wondering what she died of, she held out a hand to Prettyboy and I saw the slash across her wrist. It was puckered and ugly. Somebody must've loved her, though, to bring her to one of the Rev's revival meetings.

"It's time, brother," she said to Prettyboy. Her voice was nice and gentle. I wondered if they played knuckle poker over to the women's tent, and doubted it, somehow.

"I'm ready," said Prettyboy. He glanced at me. One of his eyes was ready to ooze. I thought, Prettyboy, you should of joined the poker game before this. Show a good enough spirit, and you could be a tent zombie till you fell to pieces or got too weak to cart furniture around; tent zombies got to travel, and see places, even if it was only at night. In the tents, we all knew what to expect of each other; we'd seen it before. Not like the relatives of the Born Agains. Sometimes, if the relations wailed and hallelujah’ed enough, and the Born Agains agitated for it, the Rev left the Born Agains with their folks, and got out of town before corruption set in. Sometimes I speculated on what happened to them all, wondering who screamed first when something dropped off.

The only other thing Prettyboy had to look forward to if he didn't straighten up and join the tenters was Finals, which looked like the road he was traveling. No sense in him, no fellowship, and too much whine, when he wasn't spouting praise about the life Hereafter, as if he couldn't look at us and see what had happened. How'd he ever get a wife like Caroline?

"Are you Zeke?" the angel said to me. She stood there holding Prettyboy's hand. I wished it were mine. My nerves were pretty iffy, but my vision still worked fine, and just knowing she was touching me would have meant a lot.

"Yes ma'am."

"The Reverend told me to tell you there's going to be a revival meeting tonight."

Good-bye Prettyboy. "Yes, ma'am," I said. The Rev would need me to make the beginning preparations with the Elixir none of the other zombies knew about.

The angel nodded to me, her eyes bright blue in their nests of bruises. She led Prettyboy off across the browning grass, under the blanket of sun. In all that light, Prettyboy looked terrible even from behind. The skin on his arms was yellow and patchy, and clumps of his hair were coming out. I ambled after them, figuring to go to the supply tent beyond the meeting tent and get the Elixir mixing.

Caroline waited by the back flap of the meeting tent. Every time I had seen her she was wearing skirts and blouses that covered all of her except hands, face, and feet, no matter how hot it was. This time the blouse was white and the skirt gray, and inside them she was shaped like a woman in a girlie magazine. She wore her red hair twisted in a knot at the back of her neck. Sweat made her forehead shine.

She smiled at Prettyboy. "Walter," she said, holding out a hand.

I looked down at my hands. Right now I had all my ringers and thumbs and most everything else. My skin was yellowish, but it looked all of a piece, and had some vitality to it.

Just before the angel lifted the meeting tent's back flap to usher Prettyboy and Caroline inside, I veered over to them. "Walter," I said to Prettyboy, "you look sickly."

Caroline stared at me. "Are you dead?" she asked.

"Born Again, ma'am," I said. I had watched her before. She clung to her Prettyboy like she really loved him, even when some of him came off in her hand. I thought about my wife. Of course, she died a while before I did, but even when we was alive together, she never liked to touch me unless we was in bed.

Caroline put out her hand to me. I stood still, and thought, there's something wrong with this one. Maybe the right kind of wrong. She touched my arm. I felt my skin twitch. It had been a long time. I gave her my best smile. I still had most of my teeth.

"Zeke, I want to go in. I want to tell them about the glories of being Born Again," said Prettyboy.

"Fret — Walter, you don't look so hot. I think you better go lie down." I buttoned up my shirt, rolled down the sleeves, and tucked in the tails. I hadn't been a Prettyboy since the Rev's early tenting days, though I could have kept the job forever if I had been more worked up about it. Right now I wanted it more than anything I had wanted since I woke to the afterlife.

The angel looked from Prettyboy to me, her eyes troubled. She patted Prettyboy's hand. "Brother, you do look weary," she said.

"But — but — " His shoulders sagged.

"Go back to the tent and lie down, Walter," I said, as if rest would do him any good.

He turned and shuffled away.

I looked at Caroline. She slid her arm through the crook in mine. It was like the first jolt in the chair. I knew I liked it, and wanted more; didn't mind dying to get it. "You're really dead?" she asked.

"Ma'am."

We went through the tent flap together, walking up the back of the dais between two wings of the choir, which, decked out in white and blue satin, looked like a low cloud. They was mostly alive, and not allowed to talk to us. Caroline and I came up beside the pulpit. "Praise the Lord," cried the Rev, not missing a beat, "see what the power of the Lord Jesus can do, and not just in Heaven, but right here on earth. He who raised Lazarus, He who raised Jairus's daughter, He can raise your dead too. Praise the Lord!" He gripped my shoulder as Amens swept the tent. "Look on a wonder! This man stands before you, a testimony to God's greatness, born again into eternal Life, reunited with his beloved. Praise the Lord!"

"Praise the Lord!" The noise was like a wind against us.

"I was lost, but now am found," I yelled. "I was blind but now I see. I was dead to life, a sinner in Satan, but now I am alive again through the power of Jesus." The words came back easy. Caroline's hand stroked my side as I spoke, and I felt her touch through my shirt. I felt it. Her fingernails slid along my ribs. "Born again to be with my beloved, Praise God!" Rib of my rib. Dust of my dust.

When all the singing and sobbing and carrying on was over for the afternoon, and Caroline had gone out to talk to some of the women and tell them about the miracle rebirth of me or Prettyboy, the Rev sidled up to me. "Zeke?" he said.

"What?"

"That was the best performance you ever gave. How come you came back into the fold, boy?"

"I want that woman, Rev. She wants me. Give me the night off and I'll Prettyboy for you again tomorrow."

He tapped his fingers on his white vest and stared off, considering. "You wouldn't run out on me, now would you?"

"You're the man with the special pickles," I said. Most food wouldn't stay down, and without food, we weakened and fell apart even faster. At least, most of us did. The Rev. thought those pickles were the only thing that satisfied our appetites, and he kept them locked up.

"Have a nice night," he said.

She had a car, a beat-up blue Chevette. It felt strange sitting in a passenger seat watching a woman drive only a foot away. Oncoming headlights flickered across her face. Who was she, and why did she cling to her husband so long? If she was a true believer in Jesus, how come she was taking a stranger home with her?

She parked the car at a cheap motel on the fringe of town. She led me inside, flicking on the light.

The door had hardly closed behind me when she reached for the buttons at the throat of her blouse, staring at me. After opening a couple buttons, she pulled the pins out of her hair and shook it out. It was long and heavy. Her eyes watched me as all her clothes and things came off. I felt the life rising in me then. Whether it was the life God gave or the Rev's blasphemous version, I neither knew nor cared. Caroline had skin so white the veins showed through, little rivers of life.

When she finished undressing, she came for me. I blessed the providence that made me wash that morning, as if I hadn't been doing it every morning since I first saw Caroline hanging on Prettyboy's arm. She leaned so close her hair swung to touch my face as she unbuttoned my shirt, and then her hand was flat on my chest, warmer than the sun. Her eyes met mine and slid away.

"Lie back," she said, pressing me down on the bed. She unlaced my work boots, let them drop, and pulled my pants off. She climbed onto the bed beside me and reached across me to turn off the light.

In the darkness, she said, "I killed him." She let about an acre of silence go by while I thought about that. "He don't even know it. I killed him, and when I heard about the Reverend — I thought if only I had Walter brought back, it would make everything all right, but it didn't. How can he forgive me for something he don't even know I done?"

I thought about my wife, the last time I saw her. White clothes staining to red, eyes lost in bruises. I had watched the color seep out of her face, and listened to her last breath.

I slid my arm around Caroline's shoulders.

She leaned over me in the darkness. Her tongue touched my chest. I thought, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there is a Heaven.