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February 07, 2005

The Jesus and Mary Strain, Part I

OK, I took what I wrote below, cleaned it up a tiny bit, and added to it, giving the ongoing saga a title that might have some meaning to anyone who remembers the MTV show "120 Minutes" and a certain movie.

I can do this because, ta-da, I am a creative genius with creative genius license to do creative genius type things.

Or whatever.

Ta-da.

So, without further ado, the new and improved first installment of the story.

The Jesus and Mary Strain

January 21, 2006

They had never met before, but Octavio “Avi” Montalvan was certainly happy, although a bit reluctant, to put a face on the nickname the Messiah, the King of Kings, used while commenting with that nonchalance which had come to characterize him. Of greater concern was that ever since his childhood in one of Miami’s Cuban enclaves, Avi was taught that Jesus was a bearded Caucasian with long brown hair, flowing robes, and flip-flop sandals.

“But isn’t Jesus from the Middle East?” he had asked his grandmother at age twelve, “Shouldn’t he look more – ”

“No, no,” she interrupted with a wagging finger, “you no talk about Jesus like that.” She leaned in close, her eyes alternating between Avi’s face and the irritable heavens that lay beyond the ceiling. “He hears everything.”

At age fifteen, on a road trip through a rural area of the panhandle, Avi wondered if Jesus saw everything too. If he did, he probably was not pleased with the Aryan cartoon representation that the Eastbrook Open Door Baptist Church used on their billboard, the one with bold print declaring, “Coming soon! King Jesus!” No mention of whether Jesus would be driving Bigfoot or Grave Digger, though.

Most recently, as a 23-year old Humvee gunner in Iraq, he spent many an explosion-induced insomniac night pondering the mysteries of life, death, and what would happen to his soul should a lucky shot or mortar shell open the gates to his very own Valhalla. He reflected that the only Caucasians in this part of the world were soldiers, journalists, or aid workers, making him more certain than ever that Jesus didn’t look like a white bread, American Everyman.

He was right.

Sort of.

Now, Jesus, the Son of Man, stood at the back window of the barn, his tattooed forearms resting on the sill, one hand in his unkempt hair. Wearing a Misfits t-shirt, camouflage pants, and a pair of Vans, he didn’t much look the part of a savior. Tony Hawk might have resuscitated the gaming console industry, but Avi wasn’t sure that a skateboarding, punked-out style was the best image for comforting the flock in what looked to be the End Times.

Avi saw Jesus’ face reflected in the window, his eyes slowly panning the snow-glow Montana terrain outside, his mouth a straight line of subdued concern.

“This is all wrong.” Jesus signed and turned. “The rapture, the bodily resurrection,” he continued, “was supposed to be all wings and harps and smiles.”

Avi nodded.

“Not like this.” Jesus rested his head in his hands, blew out a long breath. “What a goddamn clusterfuck.”

Lightning struck, blasting a hole in the barn roof.

“Sorry, sorry,” Jesus said, looking up through the hole, his palms turned skyward. “I meant to say what a fucking clusterfuck.”

Nothing.

“Your father’s a touchy one,” Avi said.

---

December 31, 2005

Deep within the phlegm-coated lungs of Xo Trinh, a Vietnamese prostitute, the Asian bird flu had undergone an unfortunate series of genetic mutations. Despite its diminutive size, it was a biological event that, in its validation of the theory of evolution, would soon enthuse thousands of scientists and dismay Creationists – at least the seven who weren’t asking for evidence of a fish turning into a monkey.

Warren B. Felder, an American businessman spending New Year's Eve in Saigon before returning home to his wife and three children, found himself a portly jockey between the race-worn thighs of Trinh, breathing heavily and making assorted noises that occur when one’s libido demands more than one’s impotent athleticism allows. After a period of time that would make a Nigerian marathoner envious, he collapsed upon his newfound friend, sucking at the air like a suffocating land fish.

Trinh sneezed.

Forty-two hours later, Warren was in the arms of his unsuspecting wife. Four hours more and he was eating dinner with his happy family. Two and a half hours later he tucked his children into bed and sweet dreams. Thirty minutes later he kissed his wife goodnight.

Seventy-two hours after that, all five of them were cold corpses in the city morgue, while the mutated virus had packed its bags and begun a cross-country tour of the United States.

Hello, America, how are you?

As bodies piled up from Sacramento to St. Petersburg, the evolutionary scientists called off their celebratory parties, decreasing the global “fun quotient” by one-half of one percent.

Meanwhile, millions of evangelicals weren’t the least bit concerned, safe in the knowledge that it was an isolated event, because, after all, no fish had ever turned into a monkey. Their concern increased once their lymph nodes swelled, exploding like pus-filled firecrackers, while some of their more treasured internal organs turned to orange goo, seeping from their back-ends like Doritos-dyed Olestra.

Of some consolation was the fact that plagues, while not great fun for the people involved, are somewhat predictable. They do their dirty work and then burn out – my, my, hey, hey – the living left wondering why they survived and the dead not doing much more than laying there like so much marbled meat.

Things get complicated when the dead don’t stay that way.
.

---

January 21, 2006

“So, what do we do?” Avi asked, standing and limping over to the window.

“What do you mean?” Jesus said.

“Can’t you do some water into wine heal the sick voodoo?”

“Oh, the all-powerful shit,” he said. “A typo.”

“A what?”

“A mistake. Screw-up,” Jesus said, shrugging his shoulders, “Do you know how much time it took those Bible guys to copy all that down by hand?”

“A long time I would guess.”

“And do you know what a pain in the ass it was to go back and make corrections?”

“No….”

“And do you know how much a pack of papyrus cost back then?

Avi pursed his lips, looked at his feet.

“Didn’t think so,” Jesus said.

“How much?

“What?”

“How much did it cost?” Avi asked.

“Fuck all if I know, dude.”

“So, the all-knowing thing – a typo too?”

“Now you’re getting it.” Jesus walked over to the cooler, reached in, and came up empty. “Shit, we’re out of beer. You’ll have to go for more.”

“Aw, Jesus H. Christ,” Avi said.

“Hey, watch it with the name in vain,” Jesus said, his eyebrows furrowed. “If you think my dad is touchy, I’ve cursed fucking fig trees for less.”

“Where do you suggest I get more beer?”

“The farm house,” Jesus said, pointing toward the window. “If nothing else, maybe you’ll find some moonshine. Hicks and moonshine go together like me and pogo sticks.”

Avi rolled his eyes and turned to the window. The solitary porch light of the farmhouse shone a hundred yards away, a hundred yards that might as well have been a hundred miles when the undead are involved. Somewhere beyond the house’s front door lay a kitchen, and in the kitchen sat a refrigerator, and in the refrigerator sat… something. Maybe beer. Maybe moonshine. Maybe three-week old peach cobbler with whipped cream, all moldy and fetid. There was only one way to find out.

Had those Bible guys with their lack of Whiteout not been so wrong about the various attributes of the Godhead, there would have been an infinite number of ways to find out. But, no, thanks to two millennia of copying errors, Avi was the Savior’s best hope for a continuous buzz.

For God and country, boys. For God and country.

“Fine,” Avi said, “let’s do this.”

Jesus smiled and gave Avi a wink that lay somewhere between condescension and atta-boy, centered in the land of better-you-than-me. “You can take the boy out of the Army, but you can’t take the Army out of the boy.”

“Or the shrapnel out of my Cuban ass.” Avi zipped his jacket to the neck and walked over to the late model Ford truck sitting by the barn doors. He opened the driver’s door, the hinges caterwauling into the echoing expanse framed by the rafters above. He climbed in to the truck with some difficulty, pushed aside a rusty toolbox, and closed the door.

Survival on a battlefield is as much a matter of wits as technology, although the guy with both is going to be the crowd favorite. Avi didn’t have access to a U.S. Army Humvee, his body armor, or his weapons, but he did have four years of training that seemed burned into every neuron, cell, and muscle fiber of his body.

All of that might have proved useful once he was outside of the relative safety of the barn, but right now he relied on the knowledge of his misguided barrio youth. Avi took a wrench from the toolbox, decapitated the ignition with one solid swing, and had the truck sputtering to reluctant life inside of a minute.

He leaned his head out of the open window. Jesus was choking in the clouds of exhaust that belched from the truck’s tail end. “Get the doors,” said Avi.

Jesus walked over to the barn doors, barred by a piece of wood they had torn from a makeshift workbench. He lifted the wooden beam, slung it over the back of his shoulders, one arm out to each side bracing it. Blood began to drip from his wrists.

He turned to face the truck. “Peter! Peter!” he said between laughs, “I think I can see your house from up here!”

Avi rolled his eyes. Again.

“Everyone’s a frigging critic today,” Jesus said, “even Peter thought that was funny. ‘Good one, boss’ he used to say to me.” Still muttering his general disgust with modern humor appreciation, he dropped the beam. Turning back to the doors, he grasped each iron handle and leaned back.

The doors eased open.

Standing between Avi and the farmhouse were three and a half feet of heavy snow.

And zombies. Lots and lots of zombies.