all god's orphans

“What the fuck?” Brian’s brain had checked out and now he was just repeating himself. The truck idled quietly as he took in the scene.

“Who are those people?” Daniel was more than a little frightened. Standing in the yard like that, doing nothing. They reminded him of zombies, only they didn’t look dead, or rather, undead, as the case may be. He slid instinctively across the bench seat of the truck to get closer to Brian.

“They’re from my dad’s church.” He finally realized.

“What are they doing?”

“How would I know?” He snapped. Daniel could see that he was not dealing with the pressure of having survived a cataclysmic event, so he let that slide. “They came over last night for a prayer meeting.” He added after realizing what a dick he was being.

“I wonder if they’re all right.”

“They don’t look all right.” Brian turned to check behind his seat for his hunting rifle, but as he did so, he accidentally honked the horn. The shock of it made them both jump as the sound exploded in the stillness of the morning like a trumpet from Heaven. They froze as every person in the back yard slowly turned their heads in unison and fixed their blank eyes on the truck. Their faces were passive and devoid of malice, but the sight of it was still unsettling. It was as though they were being controlled by a single thought, like a hive mind.

“Oh, fuck!” Brian’s vocabulary had understandably shrunk. This was the part in the zombie film where they all start slowly stumbling towards the heroes. Daniel didn’t need to see the rest of this particular movie.

“Get us out of here!” He screamed as Brian threw the truck into reverse and stood on the gas. The engine obliged and roared power to the tires that weren’t made for traversing soft dirt and wet grass. They both heard the tell tale ‘zip’ of tires spinning against the smooth ground and the truck refused to move.

“Stop! Stop!” Daniel clutched Brian’s arm. “Go slow!” Brian knew what he was doing. He calmed himself, let his foot off the pedal and tried just giving it a little gas, but it was too late. The tires had dug themselves into crescent shaped graves and would not move without something else to bite on to.

Brian looked up expecting to see the horde of catatonics dressed in their Sunday clothes heading for him, but they weren’t. They just stood stock still, looking at him as though he were a curious attraction at a carnival where freaks wondered around and stared at normal people, instead of the other way around. He and Daniel shared a confused look but then he remembered what he was looking for in the first place. He retrieved his rifle from behind the seat.

“What are you going to do with that?” Daniel was worried.

“I don’t know.” Replied Brian, opening the door.

Brian made sure the rifle was loaded and ready before slowly heading towards the house. Daniel sat in the truck, afraid to move or make any sound at all. As Brian made his way down the slight incline to his backyard, the morning dew on the grass made him lose his footing and he fell on his ass. The nearest of the weird pod people was about twenty feet away and Brian scrambled to his feet, afraid that they might pounce.

“Stay back!” he screamed at the middle-aged woman closest to him as he trained his rifle on her. “Stay back!” but she showed no intention of approaching him. She simply stared at him with a faint smile on her face, as though she had glimpsed something pleasant behind him. The panic that was causing his heart to thump away subsided somewhat as he realized that none of these people were menacing him. Other than the fact that their heads all turned in creepy unison to follow his movements, they seemed wholly uninterested in him.

His father was near the center of the group and he made his way towards him, careful to stay as far as possible from the weirdoes. Some of them he recognized from church, but in this context, they seemed as foreign as alien invaders. Sister Hennington, which is how everyone addressed all the women at his church, had that same beatific smile as all the rest of them, which was odd as he could not remember ever having seen her smile before. Same for Brother Benjamin. He recognized a small sense of disappointment that he wasn’t going to be “forced” to shoot any of them. He wasn’t a psycho, but in a kill or be killed situation with these people, he would not have even considered thinking about the possibility of hesitating.

Eventually he reached his father who regarded him with that same stupid, passive expression that the rest of them had. All eyes were on him now, including his dad’s. He took a moment to scrutinize his father’s face, looking for any trace that this was an impostor, but there was none. This was his dad, all right.

“Dad?” he finally said after a few long moments. “Are you in there?” His dad gave no indication that he had understood, or even heard his son speaking. “Dad?” he repeated, but there was nothing, not even a glimmer of recognition. Brian had never enjoyed talking to his dad and most of the time, whenever his dad wanted to talk to him, it was only to tell him he had done something wrong like forget to put gas in the truck or clean the kitchen, but at this moment, Brian just wanted him to say anything at all.

“I spent the night in the woods with my boyfriend, dad.” He finally said, trying to elicit any response whatsoever, but his father didn’t so much as blink an eye. “He’s in the truck right now.” He continued. “You’d hate him. He can’t fight or bench press. He’s a real honest-to-god faggot, dad.” As he went on, the pressure inside him that had built up over a lifetime of repression began to boil. All those sermons about denying one’s self for the “glory of god”. All those Bible verses he was forced to memorize. All those times some asshole made a gay joke and he had to laugh or get called “fag”. All the times his dad tried to talk to him about girls or made it clear that he considered gays to be subhuman, promiscuous, or just plain dirty. Incapable of real love.

“Do you want to know what we were doing, huh?” Brian pushed his father, but he only took a step back to steady himself. There was no other reaction. “Should I tell you what we did in the back of the truck?” Daniel watched from the front seat and when he saw Brian shove his father, he opened the door and hopped out. Brian pushed his father again and Daniel headed towards them, hoping to stop whatever was going on. “I shouldn’t have to, though, should I? You know why a truck’s gotta bed, dontcha?” he growled, affecting his father’s speech patterns. Another shove.

Daniel was afraid to call out. He didn’t want to wake the mental patients from their stupor and cause them to panic. After another push, his father’s expression changed from bemusement to hurt and surprise, as though he had no idea why someone would want to injure him. It enraged Brian.

“Don’t you fucking look at me like that!” his voice climbed steadily. “You don’t get to act like you’re the one who’s hurt, do you hear me?!” He pushed him even more forcefully. “Do you want me to act like a man? Huh!? Is that what you want?!” Daniel saw Brian cock his arm back but before he could reach him, he punched his father’s face with all of his considerable strength. His dad was no lightweight. Even completely undefended as he was, the punch merely knocked him down, not out. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth and he looked up at his son in confusion and fear, but to Brian it looked like self-pity and he kicked his father while he was still on the ground. “I’ll show you a man!” he grabbed his father’s collar and raised his fist high just as Daniel reached him and grabbed his arm.

“Stop!” he pleaded. “What are you doing?” Brian shook his arm free and intended to beat his father until fatigue stopped him, but the sound of Daniel’s voice was enough to halt him for just a moment. He looked down at his father and back to Daniel. Daniel’s facial expression was in the same shape as his father’s but on him it appeared sincere. He let go of his dad’s shirt and turned to Daniel as the pressure released and tears flooded his face.

“What is going on?” he dropped to his knees and wept. Daniel knelt beside him and put his arm around him.

“I have no idea.” He said, pulling him close. “But we’ll figure it out together.” He helped Brian to his feet and they left the backyard. Brian looked back one last time and it almost seemed like a snapshot from a church barbecue. None of the figures moved as they stared at him. The old swing set swayed slightly in the breeze, but the rest of it was frozen. He turned and left them like that.