Zombie, Illinois (19 page)

Moments later, there is a
fwoosh
sound as the giant pile of zombies ignites.

“They're burning them now,” I inform the group. “This is very odd,” Mack says.

“Okay, but listen; I haven't even told you the crazy thing!” I say, shaking my head like I'm trying to get out of a stupor.

“You haven't?” quips Maria. “Then tell us, dumbass.”

“There are holes all around the cemetery in the places
where there are not graves.”

“What's that?” Mack says, inclining his head.

“The landscaping along the interior drive, at the very entrance to the graveyard? It's full of holes.
Man-sized
holes. They're maybe two or three feet apart. Real consistent.”

Mack furrows his brow.

“And the flowerbeds along the west wall?” I say, pointing for Mack's benefit. “For you, they're probably just a dark brown blur, but I can see where the soil has been recently upturned. It's the same thing. A bunch of man-sized holes. There are other places too. That area there, about twenty yards from the east wall? It's totally empty except for new holes in the soil. And then all along the northeast wall there's more of them, a bunch more— like, I dunno, forty or fifty.”

“How many total?” Mack whispers. His face has gone serious, his body completely still. He looks like a man who has just realized he might be sitting atop a leviathan, and wants to be very sure he doesn't wake it up.

“I'd say . . . you mean in total? The
whole
cemetery?”

“The whole cemetery, yes,” Mack repeats with some urgency.

I try to take in the entirety of the strange scene before me, surveying the oversized gopher-holes where the cold earth has been pushed aside.

“More than two hundred.”

“My God Jesus Christ who lives Heaven” Mack says ominously. Somehow, this appeal to a deity carries more rhetorical consequence than any four-letter curse I can think of.

“What?” Maria calls from below. “What's the problem? What's happening?”

“Someone has been burying people in this graveyard secretly,” Mack pronounces quietly. “I imagine for years. Two hundred people don't just disappear. Someone has been using this as a private body dumping ground. And now they're trying to cover it up.”

“What about the people who run the cemetery?” I ask in confusion. “Surely they'd notice if—”

“In on it,” Mack says, his voice managing to be sonorous even in a whisper. “Whatever this is, they cemetery people are involved.”

“Who would hide bodies in a cemetery?” I ask.

“You're the one who can see them,” Mack reminds me. “But my first guess is the police. As you reminded us, this is Burge Wheeler territory. Lots of things happened in this neighborhood that people want to forget. That phony baloney trial just scratched the surface. Then there are street gangs, organized crime families, drug dealers.. .even professional hitmen! This is Chicago, after all. Crenshaw Cemetery might have had a relationship with all of the above. Maybe they hung out a shingle. You want to get rid of a body someplace where nobody will ever find it? For a fee, we'll put it in the last place anyone will ever look . . . a cemetery.”

“They kinda
look
like cops,” I allow, gazing again into the distant group of men (and, I now note, a few women) illuminated by the blazing zombie-fire.

“Kinda look like cops?” Mack echoes.

“They look serious, the way cops do when people are watching, except.”

“Except what?” Mack urges me on.

“Except none of them has a police uniform on. Their guns don't look like cop guns; they just have a mishmash of different guns, like we do. And the cars are official-looking, but not cop cars. Alexia or whomever was right. They're the kind of cars that get issued to city officials.”

“Like the mayor?” Maria quips.

“Yeah, but I don't think he gave the word for this—whatever
this
is—because the moment the mayor realized there were zombies, it was too late for him.”

“Curse these old-man eyes!” Mack says as he squints into the darkness. “Ben, can you tell me
anything
else about these people?”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “They're all different colors, I guess. Is that useful? They're white, black, Hispanic . . . a regular Benetton commercial.”

“Naw,” says Mr. Perry from down below. “You need some Asians and Indians for that.”

Mr. Perry's tone immediately changes to a genial greeting, and he says:

“Howdy, young man.”

He is not addressing any of us.

Mack and I look at one another with a “What the?” expression and swivel around to see who Mr. Perry is talking to.

A fresh-faced black man in his mid-thirties has just rounded the corner. He wears a tan baseball cap with no insignia and a dark blue jacket. In his right hand is an automatic handgun. His left hand holds the right one down, forcing the gun toward the ground as if it is a bucking animal that must be kept at bay.

At first, he looks only at Maria and Mr. Perry, sizing them up. He does not return Mr. Perry's broad smile.

Then he sees the two of us sitting on the wall, and his eyes narrow.

His left hand suddenly loses the battle, and the gun comes up firing.

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

The first shot is directed at Mr. Perry. He is hit in the solar plexus and goes down, stone dead.

With the next shot, the shooter changes his trajectory and comes after Mack and me up on the wall.

We both fight to get out of the way. I end up going backwards and falling to the ground outside the wall. Mack falls forward and disappears into the graveyard.

The next thing I know, I'm on the ground and looking over at Maria. She has dropped to one knee and taken her handgun out of her coat.

She aims and fires. Twice.

BANG! BANG!

The gun's recoil rocks Maria's tiny frame, but she stays balanced. The strange shooter is hit twice in the chest, and falls to the ground, motionless.

There is a moment of stillness and silence as the report of Maria's weapon fades into the distance. “Ben, are you okay?” Maria calls.

I get up and pat myself all over. My elbows and knees hurt from the fall, but I can't find any bullet holes.

“I'm fine. I think Mr. Perry is a goner though.” “Christ” says Maria, seeming genuinely sad. “I shouldn't have made that
Star Trek
joke.”

“It's not like
you
killed him,” I blurt, not knowing what else to say.

We look around, surveying the two dead men. “Where the fuck did Mack go?” Maria says after noticing he is no longer atop the wall.

“Mack?” I shout. “Pastor Mack, are you over there?” Mack does not answer, but a chorus of raised voices suddenly swells from the distant side of the graveyard. “Pastor Mack!” I call again. He does not respond.

A tinny electronic voice blurts out of nowhere and makes us jump:
“Petey, what's happening? Petey, come back”

The dead shooter has a walkie talkie somewhere on his person. Something tells me I need to find it—though I can't say if I intend to talk into it or shut it off. I walk over and begin rifling through the shooter's bloody jacket.

“This is bad” Maria says. “Ben, we need to get out of here.”

I find the walkie talkie. I depress the biggest, most brightly lit button, and the device falls silent. Then I see something else that has fallen out of the shooter's pocket. I do a double take.

“Maria?” I say.

The voices across the graveyard grow louder, like they are not all the way across the graveyard anymore. “Ben, we need to go,” Maria insists.

“Look at this envelope,” I say, pointing to the dead man's splayed jacket.

Maria rolls her eyes and wearily stalks over to the shooter's corpse.

On the ground is a plain envelope. The word “Maria” has been hastily written across it in ballpoint pen. “What?” she snaps.

“That envelope from his jacket says ‘Maria,'” I say.

“So?” she responds. “Lots of people are named...”

Maria trails off as her eyes light on the envelope.

“I thought maybe he was coming to give it to you,” I say. “Did you know this guy?”

“No,” Maria says, kneeling down to pick up the envelope. “But that's my father's handwriting.”

“Oh,” I say, confused.

Maria opens the envelope. Inside is a single sheet of paper from the same stationery set. There are perhaps five lines written on it, obviously penned in great haste. I try—without compunction or shame—to read over her shoulder. Alas, the note is in Spanish, which I do not speak.

After a moment, Maria rises to her feet and puts the note into her pocket.

“Come on,” she says soberly. “We need to go.”

I am perhaps 10 feet off the ground, fully halfway up the giant chestnut. I am as silent as a church mouse. I am also terrified. People with guns are searching the cemetery grounds beneath me. With their trench coats and rifles, they look like old-timey federal agents—the kind who busted bootleggers in this town almost 100 years ago. A Kevin Costner in
The Untouchables
kind of look.

If you'd told me yesterday that I'd be climbing trees in a cemetery at midnight...well, let's just say I'd have had a hard time believing you. Now it's happening. The supple, slick bark under my gloved hands is as real as real gets—as is the terror that courses through my veins.

The strange people below are now close enough for me to see their faces, even with my aging eyes. Nothing about their appearance helps me solve the mystery of who they are or what they're doing. Ben's descriptions were about right. They look like cops or civil servants out of uniform, but the guns don't match. There are no badges or CPD-emblazoned turtle-necks. They lack the conviviality and good humor of cops who think they're unobserved. (Even at the direst of murder scenes, I've seen how Chicago cops crack wise and smile when the reporters are gone. There's not a shred of that here. These men and women have still, mannequin faces. These folks are still on the job.)

Miraculously, they shine their flashlights everywhere but up. My clothes are dark enough that I remain concealed against the tree. My only concern is my bright pink tie, which I have not removed. Perhaps an inch of it is exposed to the winter night, right at my neck. If a flashlight beam were to find it, it would dazzle back, and there is no question that I would be found. Very slowly, I slip my chin down, attempting to cover the bright swath of iridescent color with the wrinkles in my neck. I cannot be sure that this tactic is effective, but the flashlights never find my shoes, much less my neckwear.

All they do find is my shotgun. It sits on the ground where I landed. One of the flashlight people immediately takes it away.

From my perch, I cannot quite see over the graveyard wall. Ben and Maria are gone. They yelled for me and then ran off. I didn't hear Mr. Perry's voice anywhere. Something tells me that he's no longer with us.

Who are these people, so murderous and organized? What in the world is happening?

I cling to the cold, slippery tree and pray. It's not for deliverance. It's not for my own life. It's just for understanding.

Lord, when you take me—because someday you're
going
to take me—just please . . . please Lord . . . please let me know what the fuck is going on in the city of Chicago.

After ten minutes or so, the flashlight people get tired of looking for me and leave. There is the sound of car doors closing and engines starting.

After fifteen minutes, I get brave enough to turn around and risk a look toward the entrance of the cemetery. The people and their cars appear to be gone.

After twenty minutes I get brave enough to climb down from the tree, my slick dress shoes slippery against the bark. I almost lose my balance a couple of times and count myself lucky to get to the ground without breaking anything. How long has it been since I climbed a tree? Probably decades.

For a while, I creep around the back of the cemetery, wondering what to do next. I have a vague notion that I must— somehow, someway—return to my flock at the church. It all feels distant and theoretical. I don't even know if I can get out of this cemetery. The flashlight people may have locked the gates.

Confident now that I am at least unobserved, I creep to the nearest hole in the ground—one of the ones Ben was talking about (with no headstone or marker to signify that it's a proper grave). I see that many such holes ring the cemetery wall. I bend down and take a good gander. There can be little doubt that a zombie has pushed up from under the dirt. I notice that the grave looks shallow. They all do. Very shallow. Maybe a foot deep. Maybe less.

Following the trail of empty graves—in places where there should not
be
graves—I eventually make my way up to the giant pile of zombies. They are still smoldering. It is horrible to see so many charred corpses, zombies or no. Some have moldered to little more than flesh and bone, while others appear fairly recent. The burning, however, has been thorough. Now and then—in the horrible, tangled pile of flesh and limbs—I'm able to make out a face that has escaped the fire. In most cases, I can't. The flames have rendered them anonymous. Whoever burned these bodies really wanted to make some evidence disappear, and they nearly did. I wonder if we interrupted them before they could finish. Whatever the case, they did a pretty thorough job. I try to garner what I can.