Month: September 2016

Somebody I know recently found out that I am agnostic.  They asked me, “Why do you go to church every Sunday?”  That’s a good question.  I didn’t have a very good answer.  I just spouted off something about the social contact, of being around people, about friends and such.  It sounded good, but . . .

To be truthful, being an agnostic is probably worse than being either a believer or an atheist.  At least with either of those options, there is some solidity.  You know what you believe, and by God you can stand for it.  But agnostic?  What does an agnostic stand for?  It doesn’t have the same effect to stand on my soap box and proclaim, “I don’t know!”  Is there a God?  I don’t know.  If there is a God, can his/her nature truly be known?  I don’t know.  Can his/her name be known with any certainty?  I don’t know.  It just sounds lame.

Yet, every Sunday morning, I sit in church.  I listen to the message.  I am sometimes encouraged by it.  I mean, I’m not evil.  I appreciate good, moral values when I hear them, and I like to see people helping one another.  Christianity is full of good, moral lessons.  I don’t take issue with any of that.  I visit with the other parishioners.  I am friendly and cordial.  I go home.

In many ways, I envy the Christians their faith.  It makes a lot of things so much simpler.  And it provides answers to the oldest of questions posed by humanity.  “Why are we here?”  Even atheists have an answer, even if it’s that there is no purpose.  We are here just because we are here.  No more reason is needed.  But for an agnostic, it’s all unknown.  We could be here to build a relationship with a deity, the ultimate goal being to return to him in an afterlife.  Or we could be just a bunch of evolved biological organisms running around mucking everything up for no better reason than hormones.  Who’s to say which is true?

So, if I envy Christians their faith, why don’t I believe.  In some ways I want to.  In other ways I just can’t  In fact, people have tried to help me.  I understand their motives.  They’re worried about my soul.  I can appreciate that.  Not too long ago one of my friends tried a pretty good tactic.  He said to me, “You are not a mistake.  You are not an accident.”  Be careful who you use that line of reasoning with.  Because my response was, “I’m not so sure that is an argument in favor of God.”

So I come full circle.  Why do I, an agnostic, go to church every Sunday?  I go because I’ve always gone.  I go because I really do need to get out and socialize with people.  I go because I have friends there, friends that are at least partially decent individuals, who care about me.  I go because I fear being wrong.  What if God is real?  Where better to find God than in his house?

So, anyone that likes zombies may like to read a free zombie book.  It’s available at OakRidgeApocalypse.com.  The author is posting a new piece every week on Sunday.  I have it under good authority that there will be six pieces for Dusk of Man: Part One, and approximately another 12 pieces for Part Two.  And here is a small piece that won’t be posted for some time.

      Wayne drove slowly down the exit ramp into the rest area.  He was watching for movement and didn’t see any.  He carefully wound his way through the cars toward the building that promised vending machines and restrooms.  He took one last look around before killing the engine.  They climbed off the bike and Wayne pulled out the shotgun.  He noticed, with approval, that Misty had also pulled out her pistol.
      “Let’s see what we can find,” Wayne said, leading her towards the building.  He got to the doors and waited for Crystal to catch up.  “You ready?”
      “Yes,” she answered.
      Wayne pulled the door open and they stepped inside. There was a row of vending machines all down the left wall.  On the right were the entrances to the restrooms and a giant map of Tennessee with a big  ‘You Are Here’ star marking the rest area.
      “Let’s eat,” he said, heading for the vending machines.  As soon as the words were out of his mouth they heard the tell-tale moan of a zombie coming from the women’s restroom.  They whipped around in time to see it come shambling out of the lady’s room.  It had been a young woman in her mid-twenties.  It was wearing a dress that looked too big around the middle, and it had a huge dried bloodstain in its midsection.  Something was hanging out the bottom of the dress, and Wayne thought it looked like intestines, but it was dragging something behind the zombie.  He realized why it didn’t look right.  It was not an intestine, but an umbilical cord, and the thing being dragged behind her was the fetus.  It looked like it was about a month premature.  The dress was so loose around the middle because she had been pregnant when she died and turned into a zombie.  He could tell by the way her dress hung that her stomach, which had been inflated to the size of a beach ball, was hanging loose from where the baby had dug or eaten its way out.  She kept coming, and the thing at the end of the umbilical cord squirmed, unable to stand, but wanting to feed just as much.  Wayne registered all of this in a matter of seconds.  He turned and watched realization dawn in Misty’s eyes.
      “Crystal, stay back,” he said and brought the shotgun up.  He shot the woman through the side of her head.  The shotgun blast was deafening in the small building.  His ears were ringing from the blast.  She went down in a heap, but the baby still squirmed behind her.
      “Let me have the handgun,” Wayne said, motioning for the Ruger.  Wayne took it and aimed at the fetus’s head.  He fired a single shot, stilling the baby.  The pistol shot amplified the ringing in his ears.  He looked over at Crystal and she was holding her hands over her ears.  “Okay, about those vending machines,” Wayne said.  Crystal removed her hands from her ears and nodded.  They walked back over towards the vending machines.
      As Wayne’s ears stopped ringing, he heard more moaning, lots of it.  He looked out the back doors towards the woods behind the rest area.  “Crystal, we gotta go!” he yelled.  There were hundreds of zombies coming out of the woods.  They ran back out the front doors toward the motorcycle and saw zombies coming from everywhere.  Wayne got the shotgun back in his pack and jumped on the hike. Crystal climbed on behind him as he started it.  A group zombies were in the way of getting out.
      “You’ll have to shoot while we move,” Wayne yelled.  “Be careful not to drop the gun.” Then he shot forward and rode through a gap between two zombies.  He headed toward the fewest number of them.
      “Remember, the head,” he called back to Crystal.
      “I got it,” she called back.  She was holding on to Wayne with her left arm and had the Ruger in her right.  Wayne picked a group of three zombies and accelerated towards them.  The gun went off in his ear.  She hit one of them in the chest, not a kill shot, but it put the zombie on the ground.  Before she could shoot again, they collided with the other two. One of them got thrown to the side.  The other got a handful of Wayne’s shirt, but before he could get dragged off the bike the gun fired again.  Wayne saw the zombie grow a third eye and its hand fell limp off him.

Oak Ridge Apocalypse: Dusk of Man