could had retreated to the parking lot of St. Pat's, which, since the hill hadn't yet been fortified, looked to be the most defensible position. I reckon it was, at that. There wasn't time for much in the way of barriers or booby-traps, but those men and women—there were forty-six of them—did what they could.
(From the right and left of the theater comes a cacophony of gunfire; of voices shouting defiance, instructions, obscenity, encouragement; of screams. It is underscored by a frenzied, atonal sawing of the violins. It subsides as the Stage Manager continues to speak, but remains faintly audible.)
Stage Manager: In the end, though, no matter how much ammunition you have, if the zombies have sufficient numbers, there's little you can hope for aside from escaping to fight another day. These folks couldn't expect that much: they'd backed themselves against the church's north wall, and the zombies were crowding the remaining three sides.
Exactly how Billy Joe succeeded in evading the zombies, finding his way inside St. Pat's, climbing up the bell- tower, and shimming out onto the roof—all the while carrying a large cloth laundry-bag of three-liter soda bottles full of an extremely volatile mixture—I'd like to take credit for it, but I was down below, all my attention focused on the by-now forty-two defenders staging what I was sure was their updated Alamo. They were aiming to die bravely, and I was not about to look away from that. When the first of Billy Joe's soda-bottle-bombs landed, no one, myself included, knew what had just taken place. About twenty feet back into the zombies' ranks, there was a flash and a clap and an eruption of heavy black smoke. Something had exploded, but none of the men and women could say what or why. When the second, third, fourth, and fifth bombs struck in an arc to either side of the first, and smoke was churning up into the air, and the smell of dead skin and muscle barbecuing was suddenly in everyone's nostrils, it was clear the cavalry had arrived. A couple of guys looked around, expecting a Humvee with a grenade-launcher on top, or an attack helicopter whose approach had been masked by the noise of the fighting. The rest were busy taking advantage of the wall of fire the bombs had created, which separated the zombies on this side of it from those on the other, reducing their numbers from who-could-count-how-many to a more manageable thirty or forty. While they worked on clearing the zombies closest to them, Billy Joe continued to lob bottle after bottle of his fiery concoction, dropping some of them into the thick of the zombies, holding onto others almost too long, so that they detonated over the zombies, literally raining fire down on their heads. He'd stuffed twenty-three bottles into that laundry bag, and he threw all but one of them.
(The din of the battle rises again, accompanied by the pops of a drumstick tapping on a drum, and the lower thrum of viols being plucked. The pops increase, the thrums increase, then the violins scream an interruption and all noise stops.)
Stage Manager: That last bomb was what killed him, a single-serve Coke bottle that remained in his hand past the point of safety. It blew off his right arm to the elbow and hurled him flaming from the roof. He didn't survive the fall, which was just as well, since his burning corpse was shot by roughly half the people he'd saved. Stupid, but understandable, I guess.
He took longer to show up than I'd anticipated, the better part of a day, during which his identity and his actions had been discovered, along with the two hundred additional bottles of napalm standing row after row in his parents' basement. Unfortunately, he hadn't seen fit to leave the formula, but those bombs were a big downpayment on buying those among the living sufficient time to move to the hill and begin the process of securing it. There've been a couple of tries at duplicating his secret mix, neither of which ended well.
(From the rear of the theater, the faint
Stage Manager: As for Billy Joe . . .
(Stage left, a stage light pops on, throwing a dim yellow glow over one of the tombstones and BILLY JOE ROYALE, who is a very young sixteen, his face struggling with its acne, a few longish hairs trying to play a goatee on his chin. He is dressed in an oversized blue New York Giants shirt, baggy jeans, and white sneakers. A backwards baseball cap lifts the blond hair from his forehead, which emphasizes the surprise smoothing his features. He hooks his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans in what must be an effort at appearing calm, cool. He sees the Stage Manager and nods at him. The bill of the Stage Manager's hat tilts in reply.)
Billy Joe: So are you, like, him?
Stage Manager: Who is that?
Billy Joe: You know—God.
Stage Manager: I'm afraid not.
Billy Joe: Oh.
Stage Manager: I'm more of a minor functionary.
Billy Joe: What, is that some kinda angel or something?
Stage Manager: No. I'm—I meet people when they show up here, help them find their bearings. Then I send them on their way.
Billy Joe: Like a tour guide, one of those hospitality guys.
Stage Manager: Close enough.
Billy Joe: Where am I headed?
(The Stage Manager points stage right.)
Stage Manager: You see that hall over there?
Billy Joe: That looks pretty dark. I thought it was supposed to be all bright and shit.
Stage Manager: No, that's just an effect produced by the cells in your eyes dying.
Billy Joe: Oh. Where does it go?
Stage Manager: Where everyone else has gone.
(Billy Joe notices the figures in the aisles. He nods at them.)
Billy Joe: What about them? Are they—
Stage Manager: Yes.
Billy Joe: Shouldn't they be moving down that hall, too?
Stage Manager: They should.
Billy Joe: So why aren't they?
Stage Manager: I'm not sure. It's got something to do with what's going on—where you came from.
Billy Joe: These guys were like, the living dead?
Stage Manager: That's right.
Billy Joe: Wild. Any of them try to eat you?
Stage Manager: A couple.
Billy Joe: What'd you do?
Stage Manager: I shot them in the head.
Billy Joe: Huh. That work, here?
Stage Manager: It seemed to do the trick.
Billy Joe: It's just, I thought, you know, being where we are and all—
Stage Manager: Some things aren't all that much different. You'd be surprised.
Billy Joe: I guess so. Do you know, like, what caused all this shit—I mean, what brought all those guys back from the dead? Because Rob—he's this friend of mine—he was—anyway, Rob was like, It's all a big government conspiracy, and I was like, That's ridiculous: if it's a government conspiracy, why did it start in like, fucking India? And Rob—
Stage Manager: I don't know. I don't know what started it; I don't know what it is.
Billy Joe: Really?
Stage Manager: Really.
Billy Joe: Shit.
Stage Manager: Sorry.
Billy Joe: Does anyone?
Stage Manager: What do you mean?
Billy Joe: Does anyone know what's going on?
Stage Manager: Not that I've heard.
Billy Joe: Oh.
Stage Manager: Look—maybe there's someplace you'd like to see, someplace you'd like to go . . .
Billy Joe: Nah, I'm good.
Stage Manager: Are you sure there's nowhere? Your house, school—
