"My God why have you forsaken me?"
Psalm 22:1
It’s a horrible smell: The aftermath of the living dead. As
I peer out of the dirty window shades I shudder at the scene before me. Of
course the question that is on everyone’s lips is how did it come to this?
The truth is the seed for this human carnage has been around
for ages. It just took a disaster like the one we have lived through to scatter
the spores. In no time we started to see the effects of the disease. I saw it
in the eyes of people on the street as they went about their day. Worse still
was sitting down to coffee with an acquaintance that until not to long ago was
a close friend. It was something in the way they carried themselves, a crackled
dryness to their words, that signaled things were changing.
However, the spear that pierced my heart was during
Thanksgiving dinner last year. The
infection wasn’t from the generous spread but in the laconic attitude of a few close family members. The normal
jabbing and ribbing took a turn that made my jaw drop. There were words thrown
like daggers and if they could of consumed each other with fire they would
have. No one left with many leftovers
from that feast. We had lost our appetite. Someone was hungering for things
unnatural.
There was never any news broadcast announcing the epidemic.
I mean you would have thought someone had enough brains left to cry havoc.
Nope, I guess those of us not infected had to wizen up and decide how we had to
handle this catastrophe. It’s funny how the more you see the subtle signs in
people, the easier it was to classify them. (Hm, maybe funny wasn’t the best
choice of words). The newscaster’s plastic smile wasn’t covering the meaner
undertones. The clerk at the store robotically and catatonically ringing up my
milk, cereal, and huge purchase of batteries, lots of batteries stares a moment
too long. I sit on the porch checking my
survival gear and observe a sweet granny walking her four yappy
snitzerdoodles. Let me tell you the words I heard coming from those wrinkled
lips made me almost evacuate myself like the little doggies did.
That’s when we left everything behind and took to the road.
The three of us, oh, five including our pets, left in tears. First our town,
then our state shrunk away in the rear view mirror. What were we doing? I couldn’t tell you
exactly. I did know we were afraid of everything. Where were we going? Anywhere but here…or
here…or there.
The mindless wanders popped up in every town we stopped then
fled from. We had no rest outside or inside ourselves. Yes, we found others who
still had their wits about them but they had clue what they were doing either.
Those who had their minds and hearts intact feared being attacked. Those who
were hungry for both never seemed to be satisfied with the lack in their condition.
That’s how we ended up barricaded in this house cut off from
everything. I prayed for some answer
some direction. It was the most helpless situation I had every faced. How are
we to survive this? What kind of future would we have if the whole world
lived…ah I guess live… as the living dead?
In those moments of
quiet contemplation I finally got
the answer. More than that God showed me what the cure was. I slapped myself
like the big dummy I had become. Maybe it was the effects of the disease but I
know that I had been cured of my own deadness years before. I had the cure, I just forgot that was why I
was here. That was why everyone who
was still in their right mind, the few of us left, were still here.
I said a prayer with my family. I unlocked the seven
different forms of locks and security devices . With a slow gaping yawn the
front door opened. In the light of
beautiful morning, with my Bible in my hand and the love of Jesus in my heart, I walked right up to a
group of lost souls. What fear I had melted the moment we stared faced to
faced.
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