ZA 18: Just Deserts...followed by Just Desserts

Watching the Bombies burn whilst they writhed in spastic fits of pop abandon moved Virgil. First, it moved him about fifty yards away behind an outcrop of rocks where he wouldn't be completely covered in exploded Bombie goop. Then it moved him to a realization. The realization was that nothing--nothing in The Time Before or The Unfortunate Since was quite so beautiful as a hundred thousand dancing zombies bursting into flame on a desert wasteland in the first purple moments of sunrise. Virgil understood, in that moment, that he had found a new purpose in his life.

In seminary, in The Time Before, Virgil had been often perplexed by the assumed interchangeability of morality and religion--as though the two were not just of one fabric but of one thread--as though no person could be moral without religion and those with religion were innately moral. This, in Virgil's mind, constituted perhaps the greatest corruption in the thieves den of institutional religion.

Ironically, the truth of the corruption was aptly, if misleadingly, described in Genesis as the source of the Fall. When Eve ate from the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, she did not sin against God by violating His command (for how could a creature ignorant of good and evil be expected to understand that it was evil to violate a command of God's), but rather she sinned against her nature by taking upon herself the damning responsibility of morality. While Virgil disdained any literal interpretations of ancient scriptures and despised how insecure penis-bearers used such narrow understandings to deny the power and validity of the vaginaed, he relished this story of the Fall--for in it lay the very seeds of institutional religion's undoing.

He knew that most saw naught but virtue in judging good from evil, Right from Wrong, but to Virgil the entire enterprise was fraught with soul-killing peril. When is it wrong to steal? to kill? to commit adultery? For every single argument in one direction, there is an equal and opposite justification in another, both framed in absolute terms by starkly oppositional personal moralities. The institution of religion, meanwhile, mindful always of its own importance bends its endlessly limber interpretational weight not toward the noble but toward the nobility, toward those with the means to enrich and endow, thus further muddying the black and brackish waters of moral judgment.

In The Time Before, if someone dragged out the tired trope of the holocaust to argue the case for an objective moral compass, Virgil would always reply that the holocaust was only possible because of moral judgment. Hitler could never have persuaded his thousands to exterminate millions without the unholy power to define evil at his command. Morality does not prevent murder, it justifies it.

In the Time Before, Virgil was convinced that if he could only communicate this message sufficiently, if only he could teach people the danger of ascribing to themselves the poison power of judgment, he could free them. He longed to shout from rooftops, "spit out the fruit! Renounce morality! Judge not!"

Of course, Virgil's quest to unmake the institution of religion, destroying its power while saving its spirit, was a bit derailed when the zombies came along and ate religion along with everything else.

The sun rose fully over the desert plain, washing the land in light.

Resurrection. This must have been what Virgil's intuition was telling him. Watching the zombies burst beautifully into flames had reminded him of his quest and its true importance. It wasn't really that Virgil wanted to wreck religion. There were plenty of religious zombies doing that for him even before the actual zombies came along. Instead, Virgil wanted to suggest a replacement for morality--aesthetics. Ethical, informed aesthetics--by which he meant that instead of determining Right from Wrong, Good from Evil, people should instead seek after beauty and happiness. In a world dependent on human connection, happiness was only sustainable in the presence of kindness and honesty, art and truth and mindful being.

When the zombies came, Virgil forgot all his high-minded striving and instead surrendered to the tooth-and-claw imperative--the day-to-day fight for survival, but now his aesthetic sensibility had been reborn. He would kill all the zombies in the world not because they were evil and he was good, not because he sought life and they sought his edible parts, but because it would be beautiful to do so, and he wanted to share the sight with his friends. Cam, Meg, Lady M, Lucy if only Virgil hadn't let her die, perhaps even a redeemed Selig Retsuc.

Just as Virgil was racing off to tell his friends of his plans, that still small voice that had saved him earlier spoke to him again. He stopped, his pulse thundering in his ears, overwhelming the divine communication. While Virgil despised what the scribes and pretenders had made of holiness when they imprisoned prophets' truths in the marble and gold hem of institutional religion, he trusted the prophets nonetheless. He believed in, sought after, longed for a relationship with the mystery of that which lay beyond. And this still small voice was a force he could not--or rather, would not--ignore. But what was it saying now? He listened harder, straining his inner ear to pick out the exact pitch of truth...

"Kill the monkey."

Virgil shook his head. Surely, he'd misheard. Surely God hadn't just told him to kill one of Lady M's precious, hirsute companions. But there again, the command came, as clear as the Killers song that had saved him a few short hours before. "Kill the monkey."

Perhaps this was like God speaking to Abraham, urging him to prove his faith by placing on the sacrificial block that which was too dear, too essential to part with. After all, Virgil loved those monkeys. And by "loved," he meant he really, REALLY liked the monkeys and wanted them to ALWAYS be with Lady M in every scene...umm...moment. To kill one would be an offense of the greatest magnitude against that ineffable presence some might call The Divine, others of a more poetic bent--The Story. But no, the call was undeniable. Virgil had to kill the monkey. It was as clear as if it had been written.

So, Virgil went to find Lady M, which turned out to be much easier than it typically was since--at that very moment--Lady M was watching a resurrected Lucy Tisdale wading through mounds of smoking zombie flesh on the very plain Virgil had just been observing.

"Lucy!" Virgil cried, but Lady M hushed him, casting a spell of both invisibility and silence over his head. That and containment. Virgil could have sooner walked on his lips as gone to hug Lucy.

"Lucy's got work to do," Lady M said, her voice echoing in Virgil's head even though her mouth did not appear to move. "She has to clean up your mess."

"My mess?"

"Aren't you the one who half-killed all these zombies?"

"Well, technically, they half-killed themselves."

"Pish posh, Virgil. Stop gerrymandering reality and embrace the truth of your half-assedness."

"Yes, Mistress," Virgil said, bowing his head, because Virgil had learned that was the only way to deal with Lady M when she started saying things like "pish posh."

"I can tell that you want something, Virgil. Out with it."

"I want one of your monkeys."

"Why?"

"God told me to kill it. I'm hoping He'll change his mind, though, once He sees how faithful I am."

Lady M sighed--not visibly, but in his mind.

"First--Virgil--I'm sure you understand how you've just completely exposed your faithlessness and thus ruined all hope of heavenly pardon, thereby making you a fool as well as a half-ass. Second--though this makes you no less a fool or half-ass, just a lucky half-ass fool--that command was not from God."

"It wasn't?"

"Nope."

"But...it was still...and small...and a voice."

"Not God," Lady M said and he could almost see her shake her head with disdain.

"What was it then?"

"Cookie."

"Cookie?"

"Yes, Virgil, a goddamned macaroon."

"I'm not following."

"You've been minionized by that nasty, albeit clever, cookie witch, Meg Tisdale."

"What are you talking about? I'm nobody's minion!"

"You wouldn't be if you weren't such a sugar whore, but apparently that lovely brain of yours is no match for your sweet tooth."

"Can you fix it?"

"If you'd only eaten one cookie, maybe, but you had to go back for seconds. Cookie magic is pretty strong stuff."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying what I've already said, you've been minionized. Pretty soon, you're going to be massaging callouses and kissing asses."

"Don't forget, killing monkeys," Virgil said, trying to instill some urgency and indicate precisely why Lady M might want to step off the high horse for a moment and join Virgil down in the miniony mud.

"You touch one hair on even one of my monkeys and I'll reach up and pull your tongue out through your pee-hole."

"You don't understand, Lady M. It is written. I can't help but kill your monkey. You'd have to kill me to stop me."

Lady M's lower lip twitched--which, when you're as unflappable as the Lady, is like screeching at the top of your lungs and pulling all of your hair out.

"As tempting as that option is, Virgil," Lady M said, her voice cold as Kelvin's basement. "I can't kill you. While I prefer the monkey in just about every way to your sorry ass, there are three problems. #1: You're right--destiny's pull is damn near undeniable at this point. #2: You're also right that I can't stay mad at your perfect ass, and #3: I understand your vision even if you--despite your best efforts--do not. At least, you don't understand it yet. Apparently, Virgil, your continued place in the divine order--The Story if you will--seems assured, whereas my dear beloved Cyrus seems to be on his way out."

"But wait, maybe Cyrus doesn't have to die. Can't you just conjure up a substitute? Let's beat Meg at her own game."

"Cookie magic is too powerful, particularly when you go back for seconds. No. Meg has won this round, but my Cyrus won't die in vain. As the ancients knew, the one kind of magic that can, while not defeating cookie magic, at least subvert it, is sacrificial magic. When you return to Meg, you will indeed kill my beloved monkey, but you'll do so with a special knife I give you and you will chant the special words I tell you. This will free you from Meg's spell and--as a bonus--send a psychic signal through the ether like a distress beacon to your closest ally alerting him to your need."

"My closest ally?"

"A man whose depth has yet to be fully revealed, whose value goes far beyond the weapons he so artfully handles and the thoughts he so artlessly thinks. While no one can hope to kill Meg yet, he can at least cause her some pain."

Virgil took a moment to relish the thought of Meg looking down the cold steel pipe of the Cleaning Lady. Indeed, as soon as Virgil got to Meg, he would do everything in his power to make sure that when Cam bashed in the doors of the cookie bunker, Meg would be if not wholly vulnerable, at least highly flammable. And not because it was the right thing to do, but because it would be lovely to watch her burn.