If you’ve been reading me for a while, you know that while I typically write essays, I occasionally write short stories. I’ve published “Paper,” “Adieu,” and “This Story is Continuing to Develop” here over the past few years. Today, I want to share another story that I wrote back in 2020. I’m not, really, a huge horror fan, but someone asked me to write a zombie story, and I penned “I’ve always done what is right.”

I’d long been planning to leave the US for France. I’d spent close to five years in Boston for school before returning to Vicksburg last year. When the zombie population increased, I knew I had to escape, not just for my own physical survival but so I could find myself and explore my inner being. After packing, I sat on my bed, my great-great uncle Alexander’s bed from 1835, and flipped through the television channels looking for something to lull me to sleep while the sounds of the nightly zombie marches echoed through the air.

I couldn’t find anything to watch. One station was showing Gone with the Wind. One of the news channels showed a bystander video of a recent zombie attack. All I could see was a man jumping out of the bed of a pickup truck chasing after one of the monsters on the left side of the screen. Off screen, the man killed the brute. The ticker at the bottom of the screen read, “New video of Local Patriots Fending Off Invaders.”

The video replayed again, and again as the newscaster spoke. She said, “The video we’re seeing is new. It shows the heroic actions of the men who took down the beast who has been terrorizing a community in Georgia. Rumors of something rummaging through construction sites had been circulating for months, and a recent surveillance video showed the animal walking around the property. Two men were alerted, they jumped in their vehicle and tracked down the creature. A friend of theirs filmed the hunt for evidence. Now, let’s turn to sports . . .”

I went to the window and looked down the street. A group of zombies encircled something on the ground. One of them had a knee on the neck of the captured prey, and the others bent down, clawing to eviscerate the downed beast. Screams erupted in the night, but they didn’t involve me.

I went back to the television and turned to another news channel. They were talking about a recent incident where police, in the midst of serving an arrest warrant, were shot. The newscaster detailed the encounter. “The officers entered the apartment looking for a drug suspect, and they were met with a barrage of bullets from the bedroom. One of the officers received minor wounds, and they apprehended the shooter. One victim died at the scene. We’ll have more as the story develops . . .”

I went to the window and saw that the marches weren’t yet in full swing. I’d seen full scale zombie marches before, and this wasn’t it, not yet. The night was still young. At some point, there’d be more out on the streets, and they’d have their fill of flesh.

I picked up the book I had been reading and tried to get my mind off of the news and the zombie marches. I left off with the characters at a dinner party, and one of them said, “Well these books are all scientific. . . . This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us who are the dominant race to watch out or these other races will have control of things.” I’ve never been one to argue with science. You can’t ever argue against facts.

I’ve seen too many news articles talking about the decline of civilization because too many immigrants and others are taking jobs away from hard working individuals. The book infuriated me because it made me think of everything I was losing due to these people trying to change my way of life. I’ll never let them do that.

I put the book down knowing that I had to get to sleep, but I was too angry. I got up and walked back over to the window. The zombie march was picking up. I saw more of them walking the streets in search of fresh meat, and it looked like they had found one.

They lumbered towards something at the end of a driveway. It walked erect, and it looked like it was wearing clothes, maybe a hoodie. But I knew that couldn’t be right. The zombies approached, cornering the thing before they pounced. A group zombie attack is pure elegance in motion.

They make their prey think that its safe because they move so slow. Yet, before you know it, they surround the prey on all sides. Then, they engage, fiercely attacking from every side, pinning the prey down and ripping it apart as the prey screams out in anguish. It’s truly a site to behold.

I picked up my daily devotional book and began to read. Romans 13: 1–2 was the passage for the day: “1. Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgement on themselves.”

The devotion talked about those who sought to upend the authority that God established. Those who sought to remove the “historical landmarks” of our Christian nation. This made me think about the time I was in Greenwood and I paid my respects at the historical landmark there. Every time I visit that site, I think about my ancestors, specifically the women, and the words engraved on the base: “To the Confederate women! None has told the story of whose heart and life were a sacrifice, offered as valiantly and unselfishly upon the alter of her Southland as any warrior’s life upon the battle field; so to her in part we have placed this monument, that all may know she loved her country, and enfold her memory in eternal glory, cherishing it forever.”

When I was there a few years ago, I saw something hunched over underneath the grand monument. It was eating something, and when I walked up, I started talking about my great-great-grandmother and her heroic deeds during the War for Southern Independence. She left her home, the grand Thousand Oaks, and served as a nurse to the gallant soldiers who fought to protect their homeland. As I talked about my great-grandmother, the thing stared up at me, baring its teeth as if preparing to strike. I backed away, letting it sit there to finish its meal.

The last time I was in Greenwood, the magnificent monument was gone. It had been torn down a few months before I returned. In its place, all I saw was graffiti, scrawled on the empty pedestal. By removing the statue, the vandals had spit in the face of God’s appointed authority. They had spit in the face of God. They had erased my history, a history I was proud to call mine. Now, future generations will no longer know about the women who served valiantly for their homeland during the war. They won’t know the purity and the chastity of these women. They will be led into darkness because they will not know the true story. They will only know the myths that the perpetrators of this crime concoct within their demented brains.

The devotion ended by reprinting the Pledge of Allegiance. Truly, America is “one nation under God” that offers “liberty and justice for all.” I flipped ahead to the next days lesson, and it picked up with Romans 13:3, “For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended.”

The devotion proclaimed that the Founding Fathers turned to God in the creation of America and that God blessed them. It detailed their accomplishments and their wealth. They succeeded because they obeyed God and he placed them in authority. They had faith; I’ve always been faithful. They did what was right; I’ve always done what is right. They worked hard; I’ve worked hard. God blessed them; God blessed me.

I looked outside. The zombies gathered around the monument at a roundabout, one that survived the purge. The massive pillar commemorates the more than 8,000 soldiers who paid for their freedom and rights with their blood. The zombies encircled it, looking up at it as they made guttural sounds. It was as if they revered it, praising its presence.

I turned back to the television in hopes of being lulled to sleep; I caught part of a documentary about the time we let these creatures into our schools. The narrator stated, “Walking over the grounds of Ole Miss, he encountered screaming students and citizens.” The scene from 1962 faded and an image of Charles Scott, standing in his Confederate uniform at Ole Miss in 1906 appeared.

The narrator began, “Charles Scott ran for governor of Mississippi in the early 1900s. On May 10, 1906, he spoke at Ole Miss dedicating the Confederate soldier monument which now resides on campus.” A scratchy recording started, and Scott’s voice floated over the changing images of the Oxford campus and monument.

He told the crowd, “There was a time, I grant you, during the nightmare called the reconstruction, when these men boldly, aggressively and intentionally overrode the letter of the law that they might maintain the spirit of the law and preserve Anglo Saxon civilization as a priceless heritage for their children’s children and for the benefit of our common country, the people of the north as well as the people of the south. Indeed, do you know that I regard this act as the crowing glory of the Confederate soldier.”

The scene shifted to grainy footage of a crowd cheering, waving their hands and signs in the air. Scott’s voice rose over the noise, “It overshadows the brilliant victories on the field of battle. It entitles him to the lasting gratitude of the civilized world, and mark my prediction . . .” Here, the film moved back to 1962 with the thing walking across Ole Miss’s campus, surrounded by guards. He strolled past the monument and glanced up at the gloriously enshrined solider.

Scott’s voice continued as the beast angrily sneered at the monument and those around him, “. . . the time will come as foreshadowed by many things, notably by the recent utterances on the race question of the great American . . . when our brethren of the north will see this grave question as we see it, and thereafter for this one act alone the memory of the Confederate soldier will be reverenced by the north as it is already loved and revered by all the people of the south.”

A commercial appeared on the screen showing a guy standing in front of some shacks. “Come on down to the Moonlight and Magnolia Inn and stay in one of our authentic sharecropper shacks. Experience life as it was in the good old days. Drink lemonade on the porch during the day and moonshine in the old cotton gin at night as you listen to live music. We’re located right across from the old Hopson Plantation. We look forward to seeing you, especially if you’re from Norway, Denmark, or Sweden because you guys are the nicest folks we’ve ever met.”

The next add showed a hooded figure in an orange jacket and khakis with his hands in the air standing in a cotton field. The voice began, “Interlopers have taken our jobs. They are a threat to the decency of our communities. They do not respect our laws. They do not agree with our morals. This November, make sure to vote for Danfield Forrest for Senate. He’ll make sure that these vermin don’t ruin our existence.”

The documentary came back on, but I don’t remember any of it. I was too tired, so I left the television on and let the sounds of that failed experiment whisper me to sleep, until . . .

I jerked up in bed, sweat soaking through the sheets. It felt like someone grabbed my leg and shook me awake, but no one was in the room. I’d heard stories about my great-great uncle Alexander. He never married and died at the age of fourteen, a freak hunting accident according to family lore.

One fall day in 1843, he went out hunting early in the morning with his slave boy William and returned to the big house exhausted. He sat on the front porch, with his rifle by his side, and fell asleep. In his sleep, his hand grabbed the gun and it went off, blowing a hole in his head. Since that day, he walked the halls of the big house, and at night, he would violently shake the occupants of his bed awake, startling them.

After Alexander woke me up, I couldn’t go back to sleep because the nightly sounds of the zombie march had gotten louder and kept me awake. I never feared the nightly marches because whenever I encountered them, they walked right past me, almost as if I was invisible to them for some reason. In another four hours, I’d be at the airport awaiting my flight, but now, unable to go to sleep, I started looking around Alexander’s room one last time.

Outside, an orange glow illuminated the horizon. I saw a group moving towards the light, and one of them held a little girl up in the air, her face illuminated by the brightened sky in the distance. She looked innocent, angelic even. The faces of those gathered around her, as they marched into the distance, distorted into grotesque shapes, and I could see blood and flesh dripping from their mouths.

In a drawer, stuffed behind some linens, I discovered a stack of papers. Dated October 30, 1843, and written and signed by William, aged 38, the papers related the story of what really happened to Alexander that fall afternoon in 1843. This story, though, differed from the one I had always heard told to me by relatives as we sat on the front porch, sun going down casting the shadows of the magnolia trees across the walkway.

William wrote that Alexander called him early that morning to saddle the horse so he could go out hunting. William did as he was told, and as the sun rose behind them, the pair made their way down towards the Mississippi River. They had hunting dogs with them, and it seems that on their way to the river one of the dogs reared up, threw Alexander off of his horse, and bit him at least five times, once on the neck. Alexander struggled with the dog and shot it dead.

William wrote that they immediately started back to the big house with Alexander drooping in the saddle. About halfway back, William noticed that Alexander’s face started to convulse. His eyes sunk into his head, and his skin started to fall off in large chunks. He’d seen this same thing before in other people around Vicksburg, and whenever he encountered someone like this, he went the other way, hoping they wouldn’t do anything to him.

He didn’t run away from Alexander. He stood there paralyzed. Alexander fell off his horse, stood up, and started towards William. He saw Alexander’s Colt revolver on the ground and maneuvered to grab it. He picked it up, aimed, and emptied the cylinder into Alexander’s face, dropping him in his tracks.

William ran, but townsfolk found him down near the river a few hours later. William’s account ended there, but there were two other papers attached to William’s. One was an article from October 31, 1843, Vicksburg Clarion with the headline “Alexander Parnasse’s Murderer Receives Justice.” The article detailed what happened after William’s confession. Men came into the jail demanding that the sheriff turn William over to them. The sheriff complied.

The men, joined by women and children from the surrounding area, took William to the spot where they found Alexander, his blood still on the ground. They strung him up and set him on fire. The article read, “The citizens of Vicksburg enjoyed a family BBQ that night.”

The other paper, fading with age, had writing on both sides. One side contained what appeared to be the tabulation for five items that someone purchased. There were only numbers for each individual item then a total of $1,096. I flipped the paper over. It read, “Bill of Sale for Negroes to Etienne Parnasse, June 19, 1840.”

The sun started to rise, and I knew it was almost time for me to leave. Yet, I couldn’t. I wanted to escape Mississippi, but now I wanted to stay. I didn’t know why. Someone knocked on my door. When I opened it, I stared into the face of a wide-eyed beast who looked scared half out of its mind. It turned and ran away.

I went to the bathroom to wash my face. Skin fell off in my hands as I scrubbed it. More skin fell off into the sink. I looked at my reflection . . .