Our Regularly Scheduled Program
by Ron Davidson
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
The preacher admitted to being not just a man of God, but also an American. And so he begged to ask if the American dead, wandering through the jungle with everyone else, would be able to stand up for American values. For all we knew, they could be walking through the jungle for years, for a lifetime, for multiple lifetimes, before they reached their goal.
Jungle societies were by and large not democracies, the minister pointed out. In fact, they were very far from democracies. Look at the Khmer, look at the Burmese, look at all the warlords and dictators in Africa. There were plenty of peaceful jungle peoples, of course, but few of them had what his listeners and he would call advanced civilizations. They were not known for respecting human rights and liberties. They just weren’t.
Would the values cherished in America — the pinnacle of nations in the history of mankind, the greatest secular accomplishment of mankind — be protected in this realm of the afterworld? He was only asking questions, he reminded his listeners. He didn’t know if it was any living person’s place to ask them. But, he said with another chuckle, he guessed he already had.
The podcast concluded just as Derrick pulled into the Bellent lot. He shut off the engine and sat for a moment, holding his head as if it hurt. Around the world, he was thinking, promoters of every creed and doctrine were probably spouting similar concerns.
* * *
As it turned out, it was in Kampala, Uganda that the first coffin maker began engraving the lids of his products with Biblical verses and placing paper copies of those verses in the pockets of his clients. But the practice and variations of it soon became widespread. People everywhere began wanting to bring their creeds and beliefs with them into the afterlife.
The North Korean leadership ordered that it be done, decreeing that henceforth all citizens would not only have to pass annual oral exams proving they had memorized selected passages of the works of Kim Jong-Il, so as to ensure they could apply and teach them to others in the afterlife, but have passages tattooed on their bodies. In the United States, undertakers were besieged by requests to have bibles or copies of the Constitution, or both, sewn into the clothing of deceased loved ones in waterproof wrapping. Mortuaries quickly made these standard options.
At the same time, growing numbers of the elderly, even those on their death beds, began to feel a rejuvenating sense of mission. They were committed to holding onto and spreading their belief systems in the afterlife — to “civilize the jungle,” as some of them put it — when they got there.
Many people chose not to await their natural deaths to get started. Suicide rates around the world jumped an average of 4% within two months of the Channel’s appearance. Notes left behind revealed the primary motive for the jump in all societies was the hope of being reunited with loved ones, but ideological goals were a close second.
Most governments, religious leaders, and leading voices in the media denounced “suicide missionary” work and what pundits called the “scramble for the afterlife” as absurd and wrongheaded. But the suicides continued.
* * *
It was on a Thursday about five months after the Channel’s appearance that Derrick found himself in the security office looking at Monitor 9 for longer than his usual, infrequent glances. Something about it seemed different. At first, he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. But some hint of a perturbation seemed to have occurred. The people’s aura of serenity had gone away. They no longer gave the impression of being members of a Sunday hiking group. The blurriness and view-blocking, shifting foliage made it hard to be certain, but he thought he saw an occasional sudden, quick movement: an arm shooting out to the side here, a jerky step there. The image itself seemed a bit shakier as well.
* * *
Before he could decide if he was only imagining things, his phone buzzed and he was obliged to escort a visitor from one of the meeting rooms out of the building. When he got back to the security office ten minutes later, things had definitely changed. The spacing between walkers was different. The hadn’t all been walking at the same speed before, but differences in pacing were more noticeable now. Some walkers were going more slowly. Actually, the whole parade was. That was it: they were slowing up unevenly.
Then Derrick noticed a figure at the far left of the frame not walking at all. Just standing there. He peered more closely at the screen. The figure was turning around, towards the camera. Derrick felt ice water flood his veins. The face. Even through the distortion... the huge eyes, the elongated, tapering jaws. One by one, they all began to stop and turn around. They started walking left to right across the screen, back in the direction they’d come from. The whole parade of them.
Derrick backed away from the monitor.
He could see the closest ones more clearly. The redness of their eyes. The sharpness of their fangs.
He grabbed the phone but it slipped from his hands and clattered to the floor when he heard a scream from upstairs. Then came shouts and the sound of running feet, followed by more screams. A smell of decay flooded the air. It was as if someone had put a bag full of rotting meat over his head. Derrick fought down an urge to gag. Someone yelled “Security!”
He stepped into the hallway just as Byron stumbled around the corner. His skin white, his face twitching.
They stared at each other. The fire alarm started wailing, and the corridor fire doors automatically swung shut. Just before the doors closed completely, Jack Williams staggered through, the front of his shirt maroon with blood. He leaned back against the door and slid to the floor. “Run,” he mumbled as his head sank to his chest.
Byron pushed past Derrick into the security office and looked at Monitor 9. “Wronnng!” he said.
The whole parade was coming.
“We got it wronnng!”
Derrick stared into space. “We had to baptize ’em, didn’t we?” he said, with a laugh as joyless as a death rattle. “We had to swear ’em allegiance. We—”
Byron yanked on the handle of the gun safe. “Gimme the key!”
Derrick blinked, then looked at him. “You think that’s going to work?”
“For me.”
“You think that’s going to work?”
Screams from the corridor upstairs filled the air. Derrick exhaled, then reached into his pocket and gave Byron the key he wanted.
Then, before panic could root him to the spot, Derrick ran. He took the stairs two at a time and pushed open the door to the ground-floor corridor. He stopped, hit by an even heavier stench of rot, and an oven-like blast of heat.
A trail of vomit ran down the wall in front of him to a body lying on the floor. Derrick stared in horror. It was Dr. Iverson, he realized, recognizing the woman’s long gray hair. But her face was sunken in and covered with big, bubbly patches of red glistening skin, as if it had been partially melted.
Around the corner, someone was screaming for help. From behind him downstairs came the pop of a gunshot. He ran down the corridor to the left and out the door to the parking lot. A dozen people were dancing around in confusion, asking what the hell was going on. One man was vomiting. A stream of cars were hurriedly leaving the lot.
“Hey! Security!” yelled someone.
Derrick shook his head and got into his car. “Call Marianne,” he croaked to his phone. The door of the building opened and one of them came out, its form distorted by the heat waves boiling off it, and lunged at a woman in a white lab coat.
She shrieked as it buried its fangs sizzling into her throat and then ripped, sending a crimson spray into the air. Her body fell to the ground. Then another emerged. And another. And another. The outrigger flag above them seethed and snapped in the boiling wind that came off them.
How many, Derrick wondered, how far would this go? Black smoke began roiling off the building’s roof. All the way, he thought. It made sense. Until the earth was theirs.
Derrick punched the starter button and fishtailed backwards out of the parking space, striking the car parked next to him. Its alarm began to bleat.
“Honey?” Marianne answered. “What’s all that noise?”
“Stay home!”
He gunned the engine but someone backed out of a parking space in front of him and he skidded back to a halt.
“What? Why? What’s going on?”
“I’ll be with you.” He hit the horn in frustration. “Whatever happens, I’ll be with you.”
“My god, are you all right?”
As the car in front of him screeched forward, Derrick glanced once more at the building. A dozen of them had come out and more were following behind. A second-story window exploded. Shards of glass sparkled in the sunlight as flames billowed towards the sky.
“Just wait for me.”
It was time to floor it, but Derrick froze. Byron was standing in front of his car, blocking the way. Droplets of blood and steam spat from a hole in his temple as if from a teapot. Heat waves churned the air. He looked at Derrick and grinned.
“Derrick?” Marianne said. “You’re scaring me.”
Derrick hit reverse and punched the gas. He skidded to a halt at the end of the row and knocked over a garbage can. Then he roared forward over a parking block and out of the lot.
* * *
They’d watched from Desert View, their hillside citadel, as the sky turned redder each day. At night. the moon shone a dull purple, and shooting stars streaked constantly across the sky. The last news report they’d heard before the Internet went dark had been relayed from the commander of a British navy vessel in the Indian Ocean, one of the last people alive on board, who said that the waters surrounding the ship were boiling. The corpses of sea animals were rising to the surface and churning about in a vast, frothing stew that reeked of decay.
Derrick and Marianne sat in the dark on their living room sofa. Six days had passed since he’d squealed to a halt out front in his Camry and come running in, babbling incoherently. She’d held him tight and stroked his hair as he sobbed his insane story to her.
Now he held her hand and stroked her cheek, which nestled somewhat awkwardly against his neck. Her body was cold and growing stiff. She had died of a stroke the morning before. She’d been so brave when she found out the Channel was real, but how much could anyone take? He kissed her hair. It was for the best, of course. She hadn’t had to suffer long.
Their surviving neighbors who hadn’t fled or who had fled and then returned when they realized there was nowhere to flee to, had put up all their flags in a last, symbolic gesture that was echoed the world over in pockets of those still living. It was, Derrick thought, almost beautiful.
Copyright © 2026 by Ron Davidson
