F Paul Wilson - Novel 10 Page 14

  "Yes, Carl. It's me."

  "Oh, thank God!" He ran forward and dropped to his knees before Joe. He began to sob. "You come back! Thank God, you come back!"

  Joe pulled him to his feet.

  "Come on now, Carl. Get a grip."

  "You come back to save us, ain'tcha? God sent you here to punish him, didn't He?"

  "Punish whom?"

  "Fadda Palmeri! He's one a them! He's the worst of alia them! He—"

  "I know," Joe said. "I know."

  "Oh, it's so good to have ya back, Fadda Joe! We ain't knowed what to do since the suckers took over. We been prayin for someone like you and now ya here. It's a freakin miracle!"

  Joe wanted to ask Carl where he and all these people who seemed to think they needed him now had been when he was being railroaded out of the parish. But that was ancient history.

  "Not a miracle, Carl," Joe said, glancing at Zev. "Rabbi Wolpin brought me back." As Carl and Zev shook hands, Joe said, "And I'm just passing through."

  "Passing through? No. Don't say that! Ya gotta stay!"

  Joe saw the light of hope fading in the little man's eyes and something twisted within, tugging at him.

  "What can I do here, Carl? I'm just one man."

  "I'll help! I'll do whatever ya want! Just tell me!"

  "Will you help me clean up?"

  Carl looked around and seemed to see the cadavers for the first time. He cringed and turned a few shades paler.

  "Yeah ... sure. Anything."

  Joe looked at Zev. "Well? What do you think?"

  Zev shrugged. "I should tell you what to do? My parish it's not."

  "Not mine either."

  Zev jutted his beard at Carl. "I think maybe he'd tell you differendy."

  Joe did a slow turn. The vaulted nave was utterly silent except for the buzzing of the flies around the cadavers. A massive cleanup job. But if they worked all day they could make a decent dent in it. And then—

  And then what?

  Joe didn't know. He was playing this by ear. He'd wait and see what the night brought.

  "Can you get us some food, Carl? I'd sell my soul for a cup of coffee."

  Carl gave him a strange look.

  "Just a figure of speech, Carl. We'll need some food if we're going to keep working."

  The man's eyes lit again.

  "That means ya staying?"

  "For a while."

  "I'll getcha some food," he said excitedly as he ran for the door. "And coffee. I know someone who's still got coffee. She'll part with some of it for Fadda Joe." He stopped at the door and turned. "Ay, and Fadda, I never believed any of them things was said aboutcha. Never."

  Joe tried but he couldn't hold it back.

  "It would have meant a lot to have heard that from you then, Carl."

  The man lowered his eyes. "Yeah. I guess it woulda. But I'll make it up to ya, Fadda. I will. You can take that to the bank."

  Then he was out the door and gone. Joe turned to Zev and saw the old man rolling up his sleeves.

  "Nu?" Zev said. "The bodies. Before we do anything else, I think maybe we should move the bodies."

  ZEV . . .

  By early afternoon, Zev was exhausted. The heat and the heavy work had taken their toll. He had to stop and rest. He sat on the chancel rail and looked around. Nearly eight hours work and they'd barely scratched the surface. But the place did look and smell better.

  Removing the flyblown corpses and scattered body parts had been the worst of it. A foul, gut-roiling task that had taken most of the morning. They'd carried the corpses out to the small graveyard behind the church and left them there. Those people deserved a decent burial but there was no time for it today.

  Once the corpses were gone, Father Joe had torn the defilements from the statue of Mary and then they'd turned their attention to the huge crucifix. It took a while but they finally found Christ's plaster arms in the pile of ruined pews. Both still were nailed to the sawed-off crosspieces of the crucifix. While Zev and Joe worked at jury-rigging a series of braces to reattach the arms,

  Carl found a mop and bucket and began the long, slow process of washing the fouled floor of the nave.

  Now the crucifix was intact again—the life-size plaster Jesus had his arms reattached and was once again nailed to his refurbished cross. Joe and Carl had restored him to his former position of dominance. The poor Nazarene was upright again, hanging over the center of the sanctuary in all his tortured splendor.

  A grisly sight. Zev never could understand the Catholic attachment to these gruesome statues. But if the undead loathed them, then Zev was for them all the way.

  His stomach rumbled with hunger. At least they'd had a good breakfast. Carl had returned from his food run this morning with fresh-baked bread, peanut butter, and two thermoses of hot coffee. He wished now they'd saved some. Maybe there was a crust of bread left in the sack.

  He headed back to the vestibule to check and found an aluminum pot and a paper bag sitting by the door. The pot was hot and full of beef stew, the sack contained three cans of Pepsi.

  He poked his head out the doors but saw no one on the street outside. It had been that way all day—he'd spy a figure or two peeking in the front doors; they'd hover there for a moment as if to confirm that what they had heard was true, then they'd scurry away.

  He looked down at the meal that had been left. A group of the locals must have donated from their hoard of canned stew and precious soft drinks to fix this. Zev was touched.

  He was about to call out to Joe and Carl when a shadow fell across the floor. He looked up and saw a young woman in a leather jacket standing in the doorway. The first thing he did was check for her right ear for one of those cursed crescents. Easy enough to see with her close-cropped, almost boyish brown hair. She didn't. Such a relief.

  "Yes?" He straightened and faced her. "Can I help you?"

  "Isn't this St. Anthony's church?" she said, making a face as she looked around at the destruction.

  "It was. We're trying to make it so again."

  Her gaze had come to rest on his yarmulke. "But you're a—"

  "A rabbi, yes. Rabbi Zev Wolpin, at your service." He gestured around him at the church. "Such a long story, you wouldn't believe."

  She smiled. A pretty smile. "I'll bet. I'm looking for my uncle. He was a priest here but he left. I need to find him."

  Zev felt a lightness in his chest. "His name wouldn't happen to be Cahill, would it?"

  Her smile broadened. "Yeah. Father Joe Cahill. You know where he might be?"

  "I believe I do." He turned and called into the nave. "Father Joe! You have company!"

  LACEY . . .

  Lacey totally lost it when she recognized the tall, broad-shouldered man striding toward her through the rubble of the church. He needed a shave, he needed a haircut, and his faded jeans and flannel shirt were anything but priestly, but she knew those blue eyes and the smile that lit his face when he saw her.

  "Uncle Joe!"

  She found herself running forward and flinging herself at him, sobbing unashamedly and uncontrollably as she clung to him like a drowning sailor to a rock.

  "Lacey, Lacey," he cooed, holding her tight against him. "It's all right. It's all right."

  Finally she got hold of herself and eased her deathgrip on him. She wiped her eyes.

  "Sorry about that. It's just..."

  "I know," he said, taking her hands in his.

  Lacey looked up at her uncle. Did he? Did he realize what she'd been through to get here? She'd thought she was tough, but the trip from Manhattan had taken her longer than she could have imagined, and put to shame every nightmare she'd ever had.

  "How are your mom and dad?" he asked.

  She saw the forlorn hope in his eyes—her mother was his older sister—but had to shake her head.

  "I don't know. I tried to contact them when the shit hit the—I mean, when everything went to hell, but the lines were down and everything was chaos. I got to wonder
ing if they'd even bothered trying to get in touch with me."

  "I'm sure they did," Uncle Joe said. "Of course they did."

  "How can you be so sure? They've refused to speak to me for years."

  "But they love you."

  "Funny way of showing it."

  "They're not rejecting you, Lacey, just your lifestyle."

  "One's pretty much wrapped up in the other, don't you think. At least you kept talking to me."

  She'd been moved as a kid from Brooklyn to New Jersey when her father landed a job with a big pharmaceutical company in Florham Park, but New York had remained in her blood. When it came time for college her first and last choice had been NYU, for reasons beyond what it offered academically. Its location in Greenwich Village had been equally important.

  Because somewhere along her years in high school Lacey Flannery had realized she wasn't like the other girls. She needed an accepting atmosphere, a place where anything goes, to stretch her boundaries and find out about herself, learn who she really was.

  In her second year at NYU she moved into an off-campus apartment with a senior named Janey Birnbaum. At the time her folks thought they were just roommates. Three years ago, right after her graduation with a BA in English, she came out.

  And that was when her folks stopped speaking to her. She'd tried to visit them, tried to explain, but they hadn't wanted to see or speak to her.

  The one person in the family she'd found she could talk to was, of all people, her uncle the Catholic priest. Uncle Joe hadn't approved but he didn't turn her away. He'd tried to act as go-between but her folks stood firm: either get counseling and get cured—like she was mentally ill or something!—or stay away.

  She had a feeling her father was behind the hard line, but she couldn't be sure. Now she might never know.

  The rabbi said, "So may I ask, what is it, this lifestyle, that your parents reject but a priest doesn't?"

  "I'm a dyke."

  The rabbi blinked. Probably the first time anyone had ever put it to him that bluntly. She also noticed her uncle's grimace. Obviously he didn't like the word. Lacey hadn't liked it either at first, but Janey and her more radical friends encouraged her to use to it because they were taking it back.

  That was all fine back then, but now . . . take it back from whom?

  "Doesn't that mean a lesbian?" the rabbi said.

  "Through and through."

  "Oh. I see."

  "Not just a garden-variety lesbian," Uncle Joe said. His wry smile looked forced. "A radical lesbian feminist, and an outspoken one at that."

  "You forgot to mention atheist."

  His smile faded a little. "I try to forget that part."

  It had taken Lacey awhile to come out, but when she did she decided not to be out partway. She wasn't ashamed of who she was or how she felt and was ready to get in the face of anyone who tried to give her grief about it.

  She'd started writing articles and reviews for the underground press—the radical, the gay, even the entertainment freebies—with the hope of eventually moving above ground. Her role model was Norah Vincent, who'd been writing a regular column for the Village Voice—back when there'd been a Village Voice. Lacey didn't always agree with her views but she envied her pulpit. She'd vowed that someday she'd have a column like that.

  But that dream was gone now, along with so many others ...

  "Anyway," she said, "I hadn't been able to contact Mom and Dad, so I decided to check up on them."

  She'd been all alone then. Janey had gone out one day, scrounging for food, and never come back. After spending a week looking for her, Lacey had to face the unthinkable: Janey was either dead or had been turned into an undead. Crushed, grieving, and with New York becoming more dangerous every day, she'd decided to go home. She fought her way through the Holland Tunnel—the living collaborators hadn't closed it off yet—and made it to her folks' place in Union, New Jersey.

  "When I got to their house, I found the front door smashed in and blood on the living-room rug." She felt herself puddling up, her throat tightening like a noose. "I don't think they made it."

  She hoped they were alive or dead, anything but in between. They'd rejected her, they'd caused her untold pain—though she'd probably given as good as she got on that score—but they were still her parents and the thought of her mother and father prowling the night, sucking blood . . .

  She'd nurtured the hope that with time they'd have come to accept her as she was—she'd never expected approval, but maybe just enough acceptance to invite her back for dinner some night. It didn't look like that was ever going to happen now.

  Uncle Joe wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "I..." His voice choked off and the two of them stood still and silent.

  "This was your brother, Joe?" the rabbi said.

  "My big sister. Cathy."

  "I'm so sorry."

  "Yeah," Uncle Joe said. "So am I." He cleared his throat. "But we can hope for the best, can't we? And in the meantime, lunch is getting cold. Are you hungry, Lacey?"

  She was famished.

  ZEV . . .

  "Tastes like Dinty Moore," Joe said around a mouthful of the stew.

  "It is," Lacey said. "I ate a lot of this before I turned vegan. I recognize the little potatoes."

  Zev found the stew palatable but much too salty. He wasn't about to complain, though.

  They were feasting in the sacristy, the small room off the sanctuary where the priests had kept their vestments—a clerical Green Room, so to speak. Joe and Lacey sat side by side. Carl and Zev sat apart.

  "What's vegan?" he asked.

  "Someone who eats only veggies," Lacey said.

  "But—"

  "I know. Being a vegan was a luxury. Now I eat whatever I can find."

  Carl laughed. "Fadda, the ladies of the parish must be real excited about you coming back to break into their canned goods like this."

  Zev said, "I don't believe I've ever had anything like this before."

  "I'd be surprised if you had," said Joe. "I doubt very much that something that calls itself Dinty Moore is kosher."

  Zev smiled but inside he was suddenly filled with a great sadness. Kosher . . . how meaningless now seemed all the observances that he had allowed to rule and circumscribe his life. Such a fierce proponent of strict dietary laws he'd been in the days before the Lakewood holocaust. But those days were gone, just as the Lakewood community was gone.

  And Zev was a changed man. If he hadn't changed, if he were still observing, he couldn't sit here and sup with these two men and this young woman.

  He'd have to be elsewhere, eating special classes of ritually prepared foods off separate sets of dishes. But really, hadn't division been the main thrust of holding to the dietary laws in modern times? They served a purpose beyond mere observance of tradition. They placed another wall between observant Jews and outsiders, keeping them separate even from fellow Jews who didn't observe.

  Zev took another big bite of the stew. Time to break down all the walls between people . . . while there was still enough time and people left alive to make it matter.

  "You okay, Zev?" Joe asked.

  Zev nodded silently, afraid to speak for fear of sobbing. Despite all its anachronisms, he missed his life in the good old days of a few months ago. Gone. It was all gone. The rich traditions, the culture, the friends, the prayers. He felt adrift—in time and in space. Nowhere was home.

  And then there was the matter of the cross ... the power of the cross over the undead . . .

  He'd sneaked a copy of Dracula to read when he was a boy, and he'd caught snatches of vampire movies on TV. The undead were always portrayed as afraid of crosses. But that had been fiction. Vampires weren't real—or so he'd thought—and so he'd never examined the broader implications of that fear of the cross. Now...

  "You sure?" Joe seemed genuinely concerned.

  "Yes, I'm okay. As okay as you could expect me to feel after spending the better part of the day repairing a crucifix
and eating non-kosher food. And let me tell you, that's not so okay."

  He put his bowl aside and straightened from his chair.

  "Come on, already. Let's get back to work. There's much yet to do."

  JOE . . .

  "Almost sunset," Carl said.

  Joe straightened from scrubbing the marble altar and stared west through one of the smashed windows. The sun was out of sight behind the houses there.

  "You can go now, Carl," he said to the little man. "Thanks for your help." "Where you gonna go, Fadda?"

  "I'll be staying right here."

  Carl's prominent Adam's apple bobbed convulsively as he swallowed.

  "Yeah? Well then, I'm staying too. I told you I'd make it up to ya, didn't I? An' besides, I don't think the suckers'U like the new, improved St. Ant'ny's too much when they come back tonight. I don't think they'll even get through the doors."

  Joe smiled at the man, then looked around. Luckily it was May and the days were growing longer. They'd had time to make a difference here. The floors were clean, the crucifix was restored and back in its proper position, as were most of the Stations of the Cross plaques. Zev had found them under the pews and had taken the ones not shattered beyond recognition and rehung them on the walls. Lots of new crosses littered those walls. Carl had found a hammer and nails and had made dozens of them from the remains of the pews.

  "You're right. I don't think they'll like the new decor one bit. But there's something you can get us if you can, Carl. Guns. Pistols, rifles, shotguns, anything that shoots."

  Carl nodded slowly. "I know a few guys who can help in that department."

  "And some wine. A little red wine if anybody's saved some."

  "You got it."

  He hurried off.

  "You're planning Custer's last stand, maybe?" Zev said from where he was tacking the last of Carl's crude crosses to the east wall.

  "More like the Alamo."