Sunday, August 2, 2020
Brother Brooks tapped his foot as the congregation sang, “Nothing but the Blood.” It was one of his favorite songs and was perfect for any sermon. He led the members in a brief prayer and stepped up to the podium to speak:
“Good morning. Please turn in your Bibles to Romans: chapter 8, verses 5-8. Let’s read these together.”
For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.
For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.
“Friends, what does it mean to be ‘carnally minded?’ It means you’re only interested in earthly pleasures. You’re more interested in doing what feels good instead of doing what is right. You’re more interested in your own well-being instead of that of your neighbor. Instead of virtue, you practice vice. You care about the word of men rather than the Word of the Lord.”
The main door of the church swung open and Emma staggered in. Brother Brooks was taken aback at her disheveled appearance but was determined not to let it show. Unlike some people, he was glad when strangers came to the church - even those who looked like death warmed over. The girl slowly crossed the foyer and stood at the back of the worship hall. The pastor continued.
“We have seen it happen in this wicked age, haven’t we?” he asked, slipping back into his cadence. “People following celebrities and politicians instead of the Lord. People trafficking in hate and fear.”
He paused again as Emma stood there quietly. He wished she would take a seat. It was getting awkward.
“We are called to be spiritually minded, my friends. We…”
“The Chinese Communist Party,” Emma said.
Now everyone turned around to stare at the girl and several people gasped at her discolored skin. The congregation whispered, wondering if they should be afraid.
Despite his misgivings, Brother Brooks said, “Miss, would you like to take a seat?”
Emma ignored him, “Looking at it very strongly.”
A couple of deacons stood up and made their way back to her. Up close, they could see her bloodshot eyes. Was she sick? Drunk? Mentally ill? They murmured something to her but she just ignored them.
“He can’t compate,” she continued. “Argentina, great guy.”
Brother Brooks smiled reassuringly at his flock, “Let’s take her to one of the Sunday School rooms and see if we can give her a little help.” He picked up his sermon again, “This is what the ‘spiritually minded’ do. We love our neighbor as ourselves.”
One of the deacons put his hand on Emma’s shoulder but she shook free and yelled, “Venezwearla…bing!”
She threw back her head, mouth opened wide yet again, and sprayed the entire church in the orange dust. Thirty seconds later, Emma and her new congregation of 80 people walked out of the double doors and down the street.
----------------------------------------
Jazmine blinked away tears as she aimed at another tin can. Despite all her practice yesterday afternoon and this morning, she wasn’t very good at shooting. The thought of having to use the gun made her sick but she didn’t have a choice.
Not long after Kayla had returned to her with the firearms yesterday, Facebook had exploded with the news of the massacre at Amy’s Diner. Cody Mitchell had been arrested and charged with multiple counts of murder – one of those killed being Jazmine’s beloved older sister, Tess. She had sobbed all night in Kayla’s arms but the tears kept coming.
Kayla sat a few feet away, listening to a police scanner. She knew it wasn’t safe to go home so she had stayed at Jazmine’s the previous night. Now she was glad of it. Her friend didn’t need to be left alone after such heartbreaking news. If Old Man Miller knew she had spent the night at Jazmine’s house, he would have had a stroke. No, Kayla thought. He would have burned down the Lees’ house. She was glad he’d died before she was born. The scanner buzzed.
“Bert, what’s your 20?” a female voice asked.
Bert replied, “I’m over at the dollar store on the north side of town.”
The woman continued, “Be advised, we got a report of a crowd trying to get into Wickham Grocery.”
“A crowd?” the officer asked. “Isn’t that normal on Sunday after church.”
“Bert,” the dispatcher sighed, giving up on the formalities. “After yesterday we can’t take any chances. Go check it out.”
Now it was Bert’s turn to sigh as he and his partner Jake finished their hamburgers. They were in the dollar store parking lot but they were eating instead of working. Sundays were usually slow and they’d been called in the previous afternoon. Bert had seen a lot of bad things on the job but the diner incident was horrifying. He had never seen a decapitated head. He never wanted to again.
“10-4,” he responded. He turned on his lights and pulled into traffic.
“That’s it!” Kayla shouted at Jazmine. “Dollars to doughnuts, that’s where Emma is.”
Her friend’s eyes widened, “I don’t know if I’m ready for this.”
Kayla tried to reassure her. “We may not even need to use these things,” she nodded at the gun on the patio table. “It’s just a precaution but keep it close.”
Jazmine nodded and put the gun into her coat pocket. She was scared at the thought of shooting someone but her grief for Tess overshadowed that. Cody Mitchell was no killer, the girl knew. Emma was the real culprit. Jazmine focused her anger on her one-time friend. It was the only way she could find the strength to go after Emma.
“C’mon,” Kayla urged, “we’re just two blocks away. We can get there before the police do.”
The girls jumped into Kayla’s car and sped away.
----------------------------------------
Wickham Grocery had two sets of automatic double doors so there was no way the employees could have kept Emma’s people out, even if they had known what was about to happen. The girl ordered all 80 of her minions into the store - half blocking the doors and the other half rounding up the customers in the back and bringing them to the front. Emma walked in and the zombie-like congregation parted for her.
“The swift and swepp, you know,” she announced.
The manager, Doug Williams, bravely stepped forward. He often fell asleep at night imagining that he did one heroic feat or another. This was his chance to live up to those dreams. “Take whatever you want. I won’t press charges.”
The strange, orange girl cocked her head, “Will you sacrifice for the furniture?”
Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.
“I’ll do whatever you want,” Doug said, hands patting the air. “Will you just let these people go?”
Emma scowled at him, “That’s a nasty question.”
The manager frowned in confusion, “I don’t…”
“I call them hostages!” she exclaimed.
The customers and staff gasped with fear. Panicked parents either picked up their little children or tried to hide the kids behind their backs, hoping that nobody would see. Other people started recording on their phones. Everyone knew what had happened at the diner yesterday. Was that what was happening now?
Doug continued bargaining, “If you need a hostage, take me. Let the others go.” Sweat was dripping down his face and into his eyes. He tried to slow his rapid breathing but he couldn’t. This wasn’t going down like it did in his dreams. This was real and far more terrifying.
Emma stepped closer to Doug and said, “Take a look at the oranges…
“The what?” Doug asked, realizing that he couldn’t reason with the girl. She was clearly impaired.
“The oranges,” Emma repeated.
The thick dust filled her lungs, threatening to burst in a gory spray. It was almost time for the grand finale. Just a few more words…
“The kidney has a special place in the heart,” she quoted.
People looked at each other quizzically, unsure what the girl was saying. Doug didn’t understand it either. He hoped someone had called 911. This kid was delusional.
Emma looked at them all, her potential new converts. She wished she had more time to spread the disease but her body wouldn’t last much longer. She calculated that her next batch of zombies would total almost 70. That would bring her little band up to 150. Those 150 would go on a killing spree until she breathed her last. She tilted her head back, opened her mouth, and spoke the final phrase, “Will rip et doo, aaaaaah…”
The cloud of orange particles streamed out of her and flew directly into the noses and mouths of her next victims.
----------------------------------------
Kayla and Jazmine whipped into the parking lot of Wickham’s Grocery and were horrified to see nothing but orange dust through the windows. Emma was inside and she was about to have a full-fledged army of followers. They couldn’t allow that.
“Masks!” Jazmine shouted as Kayla got out of the car.
The girls put on their N95 masks, hoping the fabric would protect them from the dust. As they ran toward the store, they saw the strange granules quickly disappearing as they found new hosts. Kayla took the gun out of her purse and, nodding at Jazmine, walked to the store entrance.
“Emma, come out!” Kayla shouted, her voice a bit muffled by the mask.
The door opened and 10 of the zombies walked out – five to the left and five to the right of the door. Emma came out and stood silently between them.
“How could you do this?” Kayla cried. “What’s wrong with you?”
Their friend took a step forward and replied, “I had a brain transpant.”
The girls looked at each other worriedly. A concussion might explain the weird speech but it didn’t explain the dust and the zombies.
Jazmine frowned, tears still running down her cheeks. “You’ve got to stop it, Emma. You killed people!”
Emma froze as the entity inside her decided to make itself known. Her body spasmed and jerked, her head twisted weirdly. A strange gurgle escaped from her lungs as the thing took over every living cell. It was no longer just lurking in her brain. Now it was in total control of the puppet body.
“Kayla Miller,” it smugly stared at her. “My favorite little human. How’s that great-grandpappy of yours? Oh, that’s right. I killed him.”
Both girls were taken aback at this declaration. Old Man Miller died in 1953, way before any of the friends had even been born.
The entity smiled, “Done him in right and proper with a lightning bolt. Crude, I admit, but effective.”
It nodded toward Jazmine and smirked, “Hanging around with - what do you call them now – African Americans? Your daddy’s not going to be happy about this.”
“I don’t care what he thinks!” Kayla exclaimed. She gripped her gun tightly. “I only care about stopping you.”
“Stopping me?” it laughed. “This body is going to die soon but, before it does, 150 of my loyal soldiers are going to slaughter as many of you humans as possible.”
Jazmine willed herself to be calm. “Why do you keep calling us ‘human’ as if you aren’t one of us?”
“You should know,” the entity said. “You’re the smart one. The smartest one now that Emma’s gone.”
“Where do you come from?” Jazmine asked, afraid of the answer but more afraid of not knowing. “What are you?”
Emma’s body drew itself up as proudly as it could given her terrible state. “It would take more time than I have to explain everything to you. Suffice it to say that I am visiting your pathetic little version of the universe and I’m here to perform an experiment on your town.”
Jazmine shuddered with dawning understanding. “You’re an alien.”
“You aren’t human?” Kayla snapped. “Then I have no problem killing you where you stand.” She drew the gun and pointed it at Emma’s head. At this range, she couldn’t miss.
If the presence was afraid, it didn’t show it. “You’re going to kill your friend, Kayla? One of the few people who has ever given a damn about you? I don’t think so.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Kayla replied. “I’d be doing Emma a favor. She would never want this. Besides, you said she was going to die anyway.”
The thing shrugged, “Then do it.”
Despite her bold words, Kayla struggled with the notion of killing her former friend. The gun shook in her hands as she thought back to all the good times she and Emma had together. She knew that, if not for Emma’s acceptance of her, she would likely have been a drunk like her father. Maybe even something worse. She owed Emma the kindness of a quick death but found that she couldn’t pull the trigger.
“That’s what I thought,” the entity laughed. “You are just like the rest of your kind. You can’t accept what’s going on and you don’t have enough courage to do anything about it.”
“But I do.”
A shot rang out as Jazmine, pointing her gun at Emma’s chest, pulled the trigger.
The girls’ ears rang painfully as the bullet lodged itself in Emma’s lungs, orange dust escaping from the hole and reaching desperately for Kayla and Jazmine. The powder could not get through their masks, however, so it dissipated quickly. Emma staggered back and fell to the ground.
“That’s for Tess,” Jazmine whispered, still pointing her gun at Emma’s limp form.
Kayla put the gun back inside her pocket and ran to the dying girl, who was struggling to breathe. She put her arms around Emma’s shoulders and hugged her tightly. Kayla didn’t know much about medicine but she knew enough to realize that this wound was fatal.
“Hands in the air!” a voice behind them commanded. Bert and Jake had arrived.
Jazmine, surprised by the officers’ presence, partially turned. All Bert saw was a black girl pointing a gun at him. After yesterday’s gruesome incident at the diner, he was on edge. His finger moved of its own volition.
Another shot rang out and Jazmine’s head exploded as Bert’s bullet ripped through it. Kayla watched in horror as her last friend collapsed, motionless on the pavement.
She screamed, “Why?!”
Emma reached for Kayla’s arm, choking as she tried to form words. It was so hard to do anything other than wheeze. Bright red blood was running from the wound and out of her mouth. Emma had spent her whole life trying to help others. There was one more thing she could do for her friend. She had to warn Kayla about this creature, this thing that would never stop until it grew bored of tormenting them.
“c- c- cr…”
Kayla bent her head down near Emma’s lips as the dying girl whispered two last words. Emma warmly smiled at Kayla then died.
----------------------------------------
Time seemed to stand still as Emma’s army regained their senses. They looked around in confusion. Hadn’t they been at church? When and how did they get to the supermarket? They didn’t remember a thing. Even Doug, who had tried to be so brave, couldn’t remember what had happened.
More cops arrived and took charge of the scene. One of them guided Kayla away from Emma’s corpse and put her in his car. The police chief took Bert’s gun and badge – standard procedure when an officer shot someone. There would be a lot of questions but, after the bizarre murders yesterday, he knew there would be no serious repercussions.
The other officers went inside the store to assess the situation and take what statements they could. They were relieved to find that no one else had been killed. An ambulance rolled up and a pair of EMTs, the same ones from the lake, rushed to Emma and Jazmine. Finding both girls dead, they went inside to see if anyone needed assistance.
In all the commotion, no one noticed a small millipede crawl out of Emma’s nose and scurry across the sidewalk. The entity was disappointed that it didn’t get to complete the experiment. It hadn’t counted on Jazmine’s anger. What it did find fascinating, however, was how the two girls responded so differently to their fear. The “brave” girl was paralyzed by it. The “angry” girl was emboldened. Humans were just as irrational now as they had been in ’52. The thing suspected that they always would be. It would find out for sure during the next visit. It would not make the same mistakes again.
It was time to go back home to the real universe – the one composed of what humans called “dark matter.” As it had done 67 years ago, it waited for cloudy skies.