A woman, for I was sure that was the sex that lingered beneath the waxy white paint of her face, cocked a smile that for some reason I was unable to fathom in my ill-equipped youth, aroused my loins, warmed them and sent little electric jolts down the track to my penis. It didn’t stir, but it had become aware. It was odd for a young man who had already participated in sexual intercourse twice, but I suppose those actions had been mechanical, community-sponsored mating with no seduction. The body had been sufficiently motivated but the mind, filled with anxiety and doubt, never achieved a state of pure erotic excitement. Yet, with a simple half-smile, the right side of her lips rising higher than the left, a smile that said the young man before her was somehow appetizing, this woman turned me on.
So many awakenings in such a short time, I felt my head was made from cotton and as such could blow about with the will of the desert wind with nothing more than the tether of my neck to keep it in place. The people here, for all their colors, for all their dances and foolery, were just human beings like me. The idea that I had never entertained leaving my little town with Reverend Joe upon the pulpit and with Abe, Christopher and Papa at home, and the never-ending horse dung that needed to be shoveled away coalesced into something that felt wedged between my molars. This woman with the cocked smile who made me want to grow hard and slide into her had provided the last piece of this ethereal puzzle. I would not return home with Christopher that night. I would stay with this circus and roam from town to town across the wasteland of what used to be a structured America. I would lay with the woman who so deftly twirled her flaming batons. There of course was no reason for me to believe that the circus or even this woman would have me, and yet I felt the idea as hard as a stone in my chest, as true as punctured flesh bleeds, I would run away with the circus.
When the fire began, and the Scourge began again, I realized that my plans, my dreams were of no more importance to the universe than the multitude that had come before me. The first Scourge killed off five billion souls, along with all their dreams and plans. The second had come for whatever remained. And it had all begun with a righteous fire. I alone saw the birth of what would become known as the Second Scourge.
We, those of us who had paid for the show with the jewelry formed from pre-Scourge times, sat beneath the billowing roof of the Big Top tent and grew ever more enthralled. With each exhibition of the wild or each impossible physical display of prowess, we lost ourselves a little more. The collective ooohs and ahhhs deepened and became so rich they seemed to be made from one living body. Perhaps that is what we had become, with our fannies pressed onto uncomfortable wooden bleachers, each stacked nine layers high. From my perch on the ninth layer, Christopher and I could see the whole of us and all that took place in the center ring. To me, we did look like one creature, one old man of no imagination forced to recognize the wonder of a long ago boyhood, if only a little bit. The truth of this thought was never clearer than when two women, clad only in spangled swimwear and high-heeled shoes, which thudded against the plywood floor that lay hidden beneath the thick coating of sawdust, walked into the center ring with something between them. The thing, even before unveiled, for it was hooded in what looked like a black pillowcase tied tightly off at the throat, was what we all knew we had really come to see. A shudder of excitement so seamlessly blended with fear that it mated and had become a single, breath-hitching emotion, rolled through us, that old man regaining his wonder, so completely that I would wager not a single one of us held our mouths closed.
It was there before us and though locked firmly in place with shackles binding each wrist to each thigh, despite a beast of a man walking behind with a snare about the thing’s throat and even with two armed men, one with a shotgun, the other (Mr. Fancy Man’s driver sans clown make-up) with the same large handgun he’d been carrying the day he rode into our town, we could not help but feel the tremendous fear that emanated from the center ring. It wasn’t fear from the creature as it was brought forward and chained to a post in the center ring and it wasn’t fear from the thing’s handlers (they looked to be careful but at ease with their tasks) but rather our own fear reflected back at us. This was the thing that had caused so much misery, so much visceral death. This was the living collapse of mankind and his dreams, bound and hooded before us, chained to a post. All of a sudden, at least to me, everything seemed so ridiculous. Like some great monster had been tamed and dressed with a saddle, a great legend of the underworld now a beast of burden. This struck me so resolutely that I nearly laughed out loud. As it was, I pressed my palm against my lips to keep any sounds echoing only in my own throat. Is it always a manifestation of humanity to keep Death idling so closely by? I thought it just might be.
All of these ruminations were swept away as the swimwear dressed woman on the left pulled at a knot by the creature’s throat. The moment was upon us. The woman on the right, a little more paunch on her than the other (and it was here that I noticed they were twins, same facial features, same curly, blond hair, identical all over except for the paunch) gripped the black hood at the top and took a long moment to look over at us, before finally pulling it away. A gasp like some noxious wave spilled through the crowd. My hand still pressed to my lips to contain my previous good humor kept what was near to a scream contained.
“It’s fake!” a man in the front row cried, but I saw him press back into the second and third rows, scrambling for a seat that was no longer close to the zombie.
I could understand his fear. I felt it clearly. The thing had to be fake, the process of hours of make-up and prosthetics. Only, with an ever-deepening sense of horrific reality, I knew that it wasn’t. The thing with its misshapen face and flesh so black it was nearly liquid with rot was as real as Christopher, who sat next to me with tears running freely down his face. The thing, this zombie, had the look of any dead thing, any rabbit, horse, pig or cow with the life run out of it. You can always tell a dead thing, even from a distance. You can tell a dead thing before the look of decomposition and even before that sickly sweet smell associated with the same. A dead thing always looks empty. It’s as though a soul is some sort of balloon stuffed inside of its host and when it takes its leave, when the flesh of home becomes inhospitable, the dead host is deflated and motionless. That’s how this slimy, rotting thing looked, all of course with the bitter exception of its eyes. If the creature were a doll, those eyes would have looked comical, one bulging and one nearly sunk to nothingness inside an otherwise dark and emptied socket. However, this was no doll and there was nothing comical about the look of hatred and hunger. The left side of its face, the side that had emaciated more quickly than its counterpart, showed rough, stringy tendons as the lipless mouth worked. It snapped open and then down, dry, dead bones of teeth clacking together.
I have no idea how long I might have sat there, hand pressed to my lips, eyes wide and my bowels feeling as though they’d been flushed with icy water. As is the way of all life, we aren’t privy to the plans of gods and have no knowledge of nor power over, the future. So what happened next was as much a shock as the unveiling of a living dead human being had been.
It began as a singular rumble of noise, a cacophony outside the entrance of the Big Top. The dissonance approached like the thunder of a coming storm that grows louder with every flash of lightning. Finally, the storm was upon us, led by none other than our own Reverend Joe. A large crowd of my townsfolk, my little no-name Christian townsfolk, were pushing in behind him. Two circus workers, one a round man dressed up as a pauper clown and the other the woman I had met outside while standing in line, approached them. The woman who had promised sex for sex's sake with her eyes. The townspeople took hold of the pauper clown and held him fast, though his struggles were poor at best. When the woman stepped before Reverend Joe, who bared a torch in his right hand and a revolver in his left, our leader swung the gun in an arc that struck her across the face as he screamed, "Get away you whore of Babylon!"
The woman spun and f
or a moment she looked out over the crowd, and this was probably nothing more than a moment of audacious ego, but I'd swear right into my eyes before collapsing onto the sawdust. I stood, many of us stood then, and I could see blood pooling around her head. So quickly her promise of sex evaporated and so quickly with it, the brilliant idea of another life in which I could have lived. I moved toward her but Christopher gripped my shoulders and pulled me to him. The time had come to make my separation from these people, from these thoughts and I was about to use the strength I had always known I possessed on my brother to gain release when Fancy Man, always almost-dapper, took great leaping strides and reached the party before I could move.
"What are you doing here? You've no right—"
"I've every right," Reverend Joe thundered. "I've come for my people and none of you heathens will stand in my way for Christ and his almighty father are with us!" As the last words spat beyond his lips, Reverend Joe leveled the revolver, the long barrel aimed squarely at Fancy Man's chest.
What should have been the end was realized very quickly by all. Fancy Man's rightful umbrageousness was eclipsed by the fiery repulsion he saw in Reverend Joe's face and echoed on twenty or so others. Fancy Man took a knee in what had now become silence throughout the Big Top and brushed the woman's bloody hair from her face.
"Mazzy? Mazzy honey, are you okay?"
The woman said nothing but her body began to move. She pushed herself upward to her hands and knees and Fancy Man reached to help her. Before the crack of thunder had even fully resonated in our ears, the woman slammed back onto the ground. A dark red and ragged hole the size of an apple opened on her back and Mazzy would move no more. The killing blow had come from the end of Reverend Joe's revolver. It wasn't more than a few seconds later that a round from Fancy Man's driver, no longer holding the zombie's snare, tore through Reverend Joe's throat and killed Mr. Bagley, who'd been standing behind him.
I wonder how many people under the canvas of that Big Top knew what had really happened. Even if they had, they couldn't have stopped what was to come. Maybe that was the whole point. Maybe we had perished the moment that horse-drawn truck had rolled into our little town.
Reverend Joe was dead, I'm quite certain, before the bullet had even struck him. He was, in fact, dying as his arm dropped down and his finger, still on the trigger, clenched tight. The man's face was red, near to purple and the hint of what I'd seen earlier manifested itself in a grave and fatal way. Reverend Joe's heart had seized in his chest. Just like the roughened man had lived, he had died—standing on his own two feet. It was retaliation, the bullet fired into a dead man that turned a gunfight into a matter of oblivion. The force of it, as it tore through the reverend, pushed him over and the torch he'd been carrying touched, for only a mere second or two, the bales of hay that lined the entrance of the Big Top. That was enough. If angels guarded over mankind, oh how they must have wept in that moment.
All that came afterward was a blur of terror unlike any I had ever known or was capable of imagining. The fire rose greatly and with such speed that dozens were alight. They touched others and the blaze continued to grow. A great flaming shred of Big Top canvas fell and seemed to form itself around Fancy Man who screamed without fancy, he screamed just like any man would as his watery eyes melted to his face by shrinking canvas. In his blind agony, he collided with first the paunchy twin, whose hair caught and then the other who rolled him away without burns only to have her throat torn out by the zombie. The bleachers on which Christopher and I stood collapsed then and I saw nothing clearly after that. Blood ran down the side of my face as I stumbled from the wreckage. I looked for Christopher but could only make out shapes, screaming, burning, bleeding shapes. Somehow, in my wandering I wound up outside the tent that had become a living hell. With my strength draining quickly, I believed I was going to die. I stumbled to what looked like a stack of barrels and fell to my knees. A great wave of dizziness overwhelmed me and took me the rest of the way down.
When I at last opened my eyes, the night had vanished and the sun was high and far too bright. I squinted my eyes against its ferocity and took a deep breath that led to loud, rasping coughs. I had breathed too much smoke and the ache in my chest was only matched by the throbbing in my head. It took a long while for me to look around from behind the barrels and what I saw made me wish I'd never woken up.
The entire circus had become a smoldering ruin. A charred graveyard lay where the Big Top had once proudly stood, defying the windy desert night. Most of the wreckage was indiscernible, but there were a few that I could tell, just a few, that used to be human. Though my body wasn't fully prepared, I forced myself up and moving. I wanted home badly and I focused on this thought as I made my way beyond the elephant that had been gutted, even its great trunk had been gnawed away. Home—that's all I thought about.
I found Christopher on our secret path. He was crawling. His lower half had been either torn or eaten away. We saw one another at the same time. How can I describe this? How can I say that what should have filled me with terror, what should have made me scream until I was without voice merely filled me with sadness and a sense of duty? It sounds callous and empty but I assure it wasn't. I didn't always understand my brother, but I loved him.
He was heading toward home and turned toward me. He must have smelled me somehow because my footfalls in the sand made such little noise. He grunted and drooled as he dragged himself, which he did swiftly. Still, I had ample time to retrieve a sizable rock, one that made me grunt to lift but not so heavy that I couldn't wield it as I needed. As he approached, I heard him growl and saw there was no humanity left in his bloodshot eyes. That made my task all the much easier. I brought the stone upon his head and he stopped moving. I lost myself a bit after that, a frenzy of sorts I guess you'd say, and repeated the action many more times—until I was certain that the thing my brother had become would no longer be prowling the desert as a dead creature that somehow still lived.
Although my head ached and my heart was broken, I ran the rest of the way back. My lungs, already racked with the inhalation of smoke burned with the effort. Just outside of town, I stopped my legs and spit black and bloody phlegm from my throat. I felt my pulse in every vein and I looked onward to the center of town. Once I had seen Christopher, or the thing that he'd become, and what direction he'd been heading, I knew what I would find here, and yet I raced toward it all the same.
There were dozens of them wandering about and each had a face (if the face still existed) of someone I knew. Someone I'd been to church with. Someone I'd played with. I'm not sure what reason I had to begin walking toward them. Maybe it was a gesture toward family, that if my father and brothers had succumbed, then I should as well. Whatever the cause, my legs began to move. That was when I heard a girl's voice.
"Don't!" It was forceful, but only as loud as it needed to be for me to hear. "They'll see you!"
I looked around and at first, I saw no one. Then, very slowly, a girl's head appeared over a dune and she motioned me toward her. I took one last look at the town and the things which now owned it (and dear God was it a wanting look, I think to my shame it was) and then made my way toward her. As I approached, I began to recognize her. Melinda was her name. A firm-jawed girl, maybe a year or two younger than me who lived with her mother and grandmother behind the library building.
I slid down the hill and came to rest next to her. She looked outward at me from her dirtied face and her eyes were so human, so beautiful that I suddenly began to sob violently. She should have been frightened by my emotions, because I certainly was. Instead, she pulled my head toward her chest and held it there until a long while had passed and with it my wretched pleas and sobs. When it had all ended, she said softly, "We have to go."
We did go. We went slowly, but with purpose. Each step was hard and each step was further away from the horror that we knew might drift along behind us.
We found many towns along the way, some like the one from where
we'd come, suspicious and pious and others quite different. All offered us food and shelter and even provisions for our journey because it had been decided by us both that we would not stop until we met the sea.
That was all near to twenty years ago. I have three children of my own now, all girls and they all look as beautiful as their mother, Melinda. They're all as strong as her as well, which can be a challenge for me at times, but not one I'd trade for anything in the world.
We live in a rapidly growing community on the coast of what had once been California. The sun is warm, the fruit grows with abandon and the crash of the waves is a lullaby to us all.
When I tell my girls about the journey her mother and I took, when I talk about the "old days" I do so truthfully. This does not please their mother but I believe it's important for them to know that sometimes things just happen. That life is precious and needs to be protected. That we cannot live in fear or judgment of a god on high and ignore the path we take as human beings. I've seen what turning a blind eye toward our own deeds can do. I've also seen what singular actions can have upon the rest. We're in a beautiful place for that lesson to be understood. Each night, after dinner we all walk to the beach and stare out over the great Pacific. We watch the sun go down over the sea that seems to never end. It's there we realize in our own way how very small we each are and just how beautiful that can be.