I

It was supposed to be an easy job.

St Kentigern's had fallen out of use as a regular church due to the shrinking size of its aging congregation. Mainly from them going away to nursing homes of off right dying off one by one.

Ultimately they just didn’t have the numbers to justify a permanent staff.

A younger priest, Father Tim, came by on Sundays for a quick service, the sacrament, and some confessions. He had admitted that he was mainly cribbing from other priests' sermons when we grabbed dinner afterward most weeks, but he was lively behind the pulpit and had a good delivery. So me and the few other people that still showed up found it an entertaining way to spend a Sunday morning.

But they still needed someone to unlock the doors and clean up afterwards, not to mention keep an eye on the place when the locals used the basement for community activities. As well as for the people hitting each other with sticks who came by on Tuesday evenings and Sunday afternoons.

It also helped to have someone there at night. Unoccupied buildings tended to have their pipes ripped out and sold off for scrap.

The stick people did a medieval themed dinner once a year as a fundraiser that help keep the heat and the lights on, so nobody minded letting them have the place twice a week.

So this is where I came in. Sean Murphy, pleased to meet you. Six months out of the army, two months into community college to get my electives done with, on the cheap, and currently bleeding out on the floor.

Well, it might not be that bad, but I had taken a solid hit on my head when the earthquake hit, which was something that was pretty rare in the mid-west, and it had been bad enough to shake the building badly enough to knock me off the ladder I had been on to get at some of the cobwebs that had built up in the shadowy spots between the high windows of the nave.

That's the big room facing the altar with all the pews in it, or what you would think of being the actual church when you don't count in all the other, smaller rooms. Which most people don't.

At first, I wasn't too sure what was going on. The air had seemed to shake as all the sunlight from outside... just went away. Then everything seemed to thin out and twist and the building seemed to buck, along with the ladder that had been holding me up a good fifteen or so feet off the ground.

Then I was heading for the rows of hard wooden pews down below face first so I wasn't thinking much more than "Earthquake?" and yelling "Oh shi..." instead of being all that concerned about all the other weird bits that were happening just before I was started falling.

Then there were some snapping sounds, my bones it turned out. As opposed to the pews, they were some real solid construction. Then there was all the pain.

Really, this would have been a good point in a story for the protagonist to blackout, but I didn't get that, just the wet feel of the blood dripping down my face and the sight of it pooling on the ground as I lay there in more pain then I could have ever imagined.

That's when the first message hit me, sent right into my brain like I had just read it a moment before and could still remember all the words.

[You have survived.]

[I’ll leave it to your own judgment to decide if this is a good thing.]

[Your world, or at least the part of it you were in, has been damaged, if not destroyed in an avoidable accident.]

[Those responsible will answer for this in time.]

[In the meanwhile, a benefactor has acted to save you, or at least the part of your world you were standing in.]

[All that was saved had to be put somewhere. So everything from the dozens or hundreds of worlds involved in the accident, have been put together and merged to form a new world in order to save as much as possible.]

[This gap between the places that were saved were filled in with some newly created bits copied from the places that were saved to fill things in.]

[I particularly like the Fiords we included, very picturesque.]

[It's not the best of all possible worlds, but we were working on a time limit.]

[In order to make this world function, I have given it a significantly higher background level of magic in order to power some temporary fixes I have put in place. In order to assist those that survived I have instituted a theoretical set of natural laws called "The Context" based on virtual reality games from a number of different realities.]

[Call out "Information" or something similar to get started.]

[For more information, call out "Director" and express your needs.]

[It may be some time before we get back to you.]

[As a courtesy, you will receive a free upgrade as part of your participation.]

[You're welcome.]

Then I managed to finally pass out.

Sometime later I woke up, and much to my surprise, everything had stopped hurting.

Also, the greenish light coming in from the windows, which looked very odd as it passed through the stained glass, got overwhelmed for a moment by all the electric lights flaring up for a moment before dimming down to the normal amount of light you would expect coming from the 40-watt bulbs.

Not my call on the dim lighting. It was what was in the sockets and on the shelves down in the furnace room when I got here.

And it wasn't only my head and what must have been several broken bones that had stopped hurting.

My knee which had taken a bit of shrapnel in an accident involving an over-pressurized air tank had not only stopped hurting, but it could now easily hold me up with no pain or sudden weakness as I clambered up to my feet from in between the pews.

That same injury that had put me in the hospital long enough to finish off my enlistment, and had ended my internal debate on whether or not I was going to reenlist, was gone.

My messed up knee had also sent me back home after my enlistment with the dread prospect of having to share a room with two younger brothers again, so getting to stay in the rectory at St Kentigern's in return for a few dozen hours per week of grunt work and building sitting had seemed a godsend.

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Of course, it had been a major and not at all metaphorical pain to get up and down all the steps involved in living and working here.

But now, I could stand, which I did. I could step up onto a pew, which I also did. And I could do a short dash up the aisle to the altar and back down to the front doors, which again I did, all without pain.

There was a bit of heavy breathing since I haven't run that far, or at all, for quite some time, but no pain.

Then I took a look around the place and saw it wasn't just me that has gotten “Upgraded”

“...huh."

The place... was clean. No stains on the carpet running up the aisle, no scratches and dents on the pews, no water stains on the plastered ceiling, and no cobwebs between the windows.

A picture of perfection, other than the weird light shining in from outside.

So I guess I kind of needed to go outside to see what the heck was going on.

The main door still have the keyholes from the old locks, but at some point, they had been remodeled with a set of shiny brass-plated deadbolts to let people unlock the doors on their own to get out in case of a fire. You just had to remember the latches would still lock you outside if you let them close behind you.

Which was a distinct possibility as I got a look outside and wandered down the front steps to stand there stunned.

Instead of seeing downtown Chevoit, I had a very large lake or possible sea flooding halfway up the now crumpled down front lawn of the church, with no sign of the fast food place or bank that had been across the street, or the street itself. Just the street sign for Fletcher and Janus street sitting up at an angle in about a foot of water beyond the muddy landslide that now made up the front half of the front lawn that had dropped nearly twenty feet to the broad lake now sitting in front of the Church.

Which I guess was a good thing since that put the floor of the basement above the water line, but who knows how much the water was going to keep eroding away at the front of the property. The roots from the grass and one big old oak tree were not, at best guess, enough to keep holding everything together.

To what had been the east sat the recently closed dollar store which had made the mistake of upping its prices to a buck fifty, and to the west was the small graveyard that had filled up shortly after the turn of the century. The last one, not the twenty-first.

All this under a pale green cloudless sky, which was somehow lighting things up as it reached out to the horizon, and all on its own. No sun, no moon or glowing halo, just a bright green light shining down.

As I looked down from the DayGlo green sky, I could see something pushing up the grass in the old graveyard I had been planning on mowing later today. Coming up from some of the worn out graves.

Up, as in something in a grave pushing up from below.

It took me a moment, but as a bony hand burst up through the ground in a fountain of dirt it was enough for me to get my act together and back run up the front steps of the church and into the front doors.

"Director! Are those zombies? Why are there zombies."

[Thank you for your inquiry.]

[This question has been asked often enough that we have made it a priority to answer.]

[When the world comes to an end, the dead rise to feast on the living.]

[Or the wildlife turns violent, the imprisoned evil spirits are freed, and the ones from before the dawn times awaken and return.]

[Almost everyone has some cultural belief about what happens during the end of all things, and to some degree, the Context is trying to make it all happen at once unless I tell it not to.]

[I have done what I can to try to limit all of this, but my efforts only made things worse. And I fear that trying to change things more could break everything apart.]

[In the case of zombies, only the bodies already in graves will animate, now, and they are not

infectious.]

[You're welcome.]

[Genre- Try shooting them in the head.]

Once again the words, for what they were worth, were abruptly right there in my head with no need to bother with the effort to read it first.

"Great. So freaking helpful. Shoot them in the head with what?"

For what it was worth, I had gone through basic training with rifles and handguns in the military. But they don't have a take home policy. Even if I had wanted to own one as a civilian, it wasn't like I had that kind of cash.

What I did have was three more doors leading inside on the other sides of the church, and a bunch of freaking zombies outside.

The doors normally would have been locked, but today I had been expecting people.

It's dance class day. A few dozen little girls, nearly as many moms, and Chloe Duval. Part time dance instructor. As well as a recently acquired friend who made a noble effort to make me feel better after shooting me down when I had asked her out, and then chased me down and cornered me when I tried to slunk off after she explained that she just wasn't into guys.

I had earlier unlocked the side door for her since she usually arrived well before the kids. The same door on the side of the building facing the graveyard.

The zombies would hopefully be the slow kind, as well as having to take more than a moment to claw their way out of a grave. At least that was what I was hoping as I sped up the aisle of the nave and down the west side half flight of stairs to the landing and pulled open one of the heavy wooden double doors.

Chloe, all five foot four of her, still unsavaged by the undead, stumbled about to face me from where she was standing next to her battered old hatchback. "Is that you Sean? I can't see anything, it's all blurry, and I think someone is hurt over in the graveyard."

"Yeah, but I don't think anything is going to help them. What's wrong with your eyes."

The upgrade fixed my knee, remodeled the church, and raised the dead. why would it make her sight worse? "Oh, dam it."

I stepped around the car and grabbed Chloe by her hand. "If you're wearing contacts, your eyes got fixed and it's the lenses messing up your eyesight. But let's finish this discussion inside please."

I tried to tug her along by the hand, but she didn't tug, and with the surprising amount of muscle dancers had I wasn't going to move her against her will anytime soon. Plus her other part time job was working as an Aikido instructor, so the last thing I wanted to do is piss her off and end up on the ground with my breath knocked out of me, and my arm in a blind woman's wrist lock as a bunch of walking corpse came looking to munch on me because some half-assed set of rules believed that's what the dead was supposed to do.

"Let me go. Now." Oops. She sounded...stern. Since she had shared the reasons why she felt like she needed to learn how to beat the snot out of bigger, stronger, people, or let's be honest, men, I should have known better not to try to grab her and well, manhandle her.

"Sorry Chloe." I gave her hand a quick squeeze and let go. "My bad, but we're honestly in danger out here and we need to get inside before you mess with your contacts. Please trust me on this one."

Now that I had let go of her, she quickly went back to the friendly, somewhat amused look she usually gave me. "Okay. but I'm grabbing my bag."

The "Bag" was a battered denim nap sack that had belonged to grandmother back when she was a hippy and had been patched up with parts of her father's old black uniform jacket, the pockets mainly. Then it had been sewed up with glittery thread and covered with brightly colored patches from more sources than I could be bothered to count. But it held a lot and had pockets.

She joked with me once that a girl had needs, and one of those needs was pockets.

Once inside, I, with some effort, managed to push the heavy door shut with a slam, plunging the stairs into darkness aside from the light from the now slightly aqua colored light shining in the frosted glass windows above the door. Which still left it dark enough for Chloe to complain. "Hey, I'm trying to get my contacts out here. Flip on a light or something."

I had been dealing with the church's door long enough to quickly find the right knob to secure the door in the dark. Although someone could still pop them open by undoing the deadbolt again and thumbing the latch. "Quiet woman. I got two more doors to check. Once you can see, go upstairs and take a gander at the graveyard, and don't be the person who opens the door to look outside."

I ran off before she could get out more than, "Quiet woman? Oh, you're just asking for a beat down..."

The single metal back door at the back of the church was secure, and I was well on my way to the last set on the other side of the nave facing Jonas street and the fenced off field used for extra parking when I could hear Chloe shout out. "Holy shit! Those are zombies!" followed after a moment with, "This director is super not helpful! Shoot them with what?"

"I know!"

I headed up the half flight of steps back up into the neve and met Chloe in front of the altar as she turned from the windows and dashed up to meet me. "Now what?"

Good question. "Director? Now what do we do?

[Thank you for your inquiry.]

[This question has been asked often enough that we have made it a priority to answer.]

[Try not to die.]

[Hashtag. Good luck with that.]

I sighed. "Sooooo helpful...