F Paul Wilson - Novel 10 Page 17

  "What's wrong?" Zev asked.

  "Still tastes like sour barbarone . . . with a hint of Pepsi."

  "Doesn't matter what it tastes like," Carl said. "As far as those bloodsuckers are concerned, it's the real thing."

  "No," said the priest with a small smile. "If I remember correctly, that was Coke."

  And then they started laughing. Zev only vaguely remembered the old commercials, but found himself roaring along with the other three. It was more a release of tension than anything else. His sides hurt. He had to lean against the altar to support himself.

  "It wasn't that funny," Joe said.

  Lacey smiled. "No argument there."

  "C'mon," Carl said, heading for the sanctuary. "Let's see if we can get this crucifix back together."

  Zev helped Lacey slip her arm back into her jacket.

  "You rest that arm," he told her.

  She winced again and cradled it with her left. "I don't think I have much choice."

  Zev jumped at the sound of the church doors banging open. He turned and saw the Vichy charging back in, two of them carrying a heavy fire blanket.

  This time Father Joe did not stand by passively as they invaded his church. Zev watched as he stepped around the altar and met them head on.

  He was great and terrible as he confronted them. His giant stature and raised fists cowed them for a few heartbeats. But then they must have remembered that they outnumbered him twelve to one and charged. He swung a massive fist and caught the lead Vichy square on the jaw. The blow lifted him off his feet and he landed against another. Both went down.

  Zev dropped to one knee and reached for the shotgun. He would use it this time, he would shoot these vermin, he swore it!

  But then someone landed on his back and drove him to the floor. As he tried to get up he saw Carl pulling Lacey away toward the side door, and he saw Father Joe, surrounded, swinging his fists, laying the Vichy out every time he connected. But there were too many. As the priest went down under the press of them, a heavy boot thudded against the side of Zev's head. He sank into darkness.

  JOE . . .

  ... a throbbing in his head, stinging pain in his cheek, and a voice, sibilant yet harsh . . .

  "... now, Joseph. Come on. Wake up. I don't want you to miss this!"

  Palmeri's sallow features swam into view, hovering over him, grinning like a skull. Joe tried to move but found his wrists and arms tied. His right hand throbbed, felt twice its normal size; he must have broken it on a Vichy jaw. He lifted his head and saw that he was tied spread-eagle on the altar, and that the altar had been covered with the fire blanket.

  "Melodramatic, I admit," Palmeri said, "but fitting, don't you think? I mean, you and I used to sacrifice our god symbolically here every weekday and multiple times on Sundays, so why shouldn't this serve as your sacrificial altar?"

  Joe shut his eyes against a wave of nausea. This couldn't be happening.

  "Thought you'd won, didn't you?"

  Joe refused to answer him, but that didn't shut him up.

  "And even if you'd chased me out of here for good, what would you have accomplished? Most of the world is already ours, Joseph, and the rest soon will be. Feeders and cattle—that is the hierarchy. We are the feeders. And tonight you'll join us. But he won't. Voila'!"

  Palmeri stepped aside and made a flourish toward the balcony.

  Joe searched the dim, candlelit space of the nave, not sure what he was supposed to see. Then he picked out Zev's form and groaned. The old man's feet were lashed to the balcony rail; he hung upside down, his reddened face and frightened eyes turned his way. Joe fell back and strained at the ropes but they wouldn't budge.

  "Let him go!"

  "What? And let all that good rich Jewish blood go to waste? Why, these people are the Chosen of God! They're a delicacy!"

  "Bastard!"

  If he could just get his hands on Palmeri, just for a minute.

  "Tut-tut, Joseph. Not in the house of the Lord. The Jew should have been smart and run away like Carl and your girlfriend."

  Carl got away? With Lacey? Thank God.

  We're even, Carl.

  "But don't worry about your rabbi. None of us will lay a fang on him. He hasn't earned the right to join us. We'll use the razor to bleed him. And when he's dead, he'll be dead for keeps. But not you, Joseph. Oh no, not you." His smile broadened. "You're mine."

  Joe wanted to spit in Palmeri's face—not so much as an act of defiance as to hide the waves of terror surging through him—but there was no saliva to be had in his parched mouth. The thought of being undead made him weak. To spend eternity like... he looked at the rapt faces of Palmeri's fellow undead as they clustered under Zev's suspended form . . . like them.

  He wouldn't be like them! He wouldn't allow it!

  But what if there was no choice? What if becoming undead toppled a lifetime's worth of moral constraints, cut all the tethers on his human hungers, negated all his mortal concepts of how a life should be lived? Honor, justice, integrity, truth, decency, fairness, love—what if they became meaningless words instead of the footings for his life?

  A thought struck him.

  "A deal, Alberto," he said.

  "You're hardly in a bargaining position."

  "I'm not? Answer me this: Do the undead ever kill each other? I mean, has one of them ever driven a stake through another's heart?"

  "No. Of course not."

  "Are you sure? You'd better be sure before you go through with your plans tonight. Because if I'm forced to become one of you, I'll be crossing over with just one thought in mind: to find you. And when I do I won't stake your heart, I'll stake your arms and legs to the pilings of the Point Pleasant boardwalk where you can watch the sun rise and feel it slowly crisp your skin to charcoal."

  Palmeri's smile wavered. "Impossible. You'll be different. You'll want to thank me. You'll wonder why you ever resisted."

  "Better be sure of that, Alberto ... for your sake. Because I'll have all eternity to track you down. And I'll find you, Alberto. I swear it on my own grave. Think on that."

  "Do you think an empty threat is going to cow me?"

  "We'll find out how empty it is, won't we? But here's the deal: let Zev go and I'll let you be."

  "You care that much for an old Jew?"

  "He's something you never knew in life, and never will know: he's a friend."

  And he gave me back my soul.

  Palmeri leaned closer. His foul, nauseating breath wafted against Joe's face.

  "A friend? How can you be friends with a dead man?" With that he straightened and turned toward the balcony. "Do him! Now!"

  As Joe shouted out frantic pleas and protests, one of the undead climbed up the rubble toward Zev. Zev did not struggle. Joe saw him close his eyes, waiting. As the vampire reached out with the straight razor, Joe bit back a sob of grief and rage and helplessness. He was about to squeeze his own eyes shut when he saw a flame arc through the air from one of the windows. It struck the floor with a crash of glass and a wooomp! of exploding flame.

  Joe had only heard of such things, but he immediately realized that he had just seen his first Molotov cocktail in action. The splattering gasoline splashed a nearby vampire who began running in circles, screaming as it beat at its flaming clothes. But its cries were drowned by the roar of other voices, a hundred or more. Joe looked around and saw people—men, women, teenagers— climbing in the windows, charging through the front doors. The women held crosses on high while the men wielded long wooden pikes—broom, rake, and shovel handles whittled to sharp points. Joe recognized most of the faces from the Sunday Masses he had said here for years.

  St. Anthony's parishioners were back to reclaim their church.

  "Yes!" he shouted, not sure of v/hether to laugh or cry. But when he saw the rage in Palmeri's face, he laughed. "Too bad, Alberto!"

  Palmeri made a lunge at his throat but cringed away as a woman with an upheld crucifix and a man with a pike charged the altar—Lac
ey and Carl.

  "Are you all right, Uncle Joe?" Lacey said, her eyes wide and angry. "Did they—?"

  "You got here just in time."

  She pulled out a butterfly knife, flipped it open with one hand, and began sawing at the rope around Joe's right wrist. She was using her left only; her right arm didn't seem to be of much use.

  "Told ya I wouldn't let ya down, didn't I, Fadda?" Carl said, grinning. "Didn't I?"

  "That you did, Carl. I don't think I've ever been so glad to see anyone in my entire life. But how—?"

  "We told 'em. We run through the parish, Lacey and me, goin house to house. We told 'em Fadda Joe was in trouble at the church and we let him down before but we shouldn't let him down again. He come back for us, now we gotta go back for him. Simple as that. And then they started runnin house to house, and afore ya knowed it, we had ourselfs a little army. We come to kick ass, Fadda, if you'll excuse the expression."

  "Kick all the ass you can, Carl."

  Joe glanced around and spotted a sixtyish black woman he recognized as Lilly Green. He saw her terror-glazed eyes as she swiveled around, looking this way and that; he saw how the crucifix trembled in her hand. She wasn't going to kick too much ass in her state, but she was here, God bless her, she was here for him and for St. Anthony's despite the terror that so obviously filled her. His heart swelled with love for these people and pride in their courage.

  As soon as his arms were free, Joe sat up and took the knife from Lacey. He sawed at his leg ropes, looking around the church.

  The oldest and youngest members of the parishioner army were stationed at the windows and doors where they held crosses aloft, cutting off the vampires' escape, while all across the nave—chaos. Screams, cries, and an occasional shot echoed through St. Anthony's. The undead and their Vichy were outnumbered three to one. The undead seemed blinded and confused by all the crosses around them. Despite their superhuman strength, it appeared that some were indeed getting their asses kicked. A number were already writhing on the floor, impaled on pikes. As Joe watched, he saw the middle-aged Gonzales sisters, Maria and Immaculata, crucifixes held before them, backing a vampire into a corner. As it cowered there with its arms across its face,

  Maria's husband Hector charged in with a sharpened rake handle held like a lance and ran it through.

  But a number of parishioners lay in inert, bloody heaps on the floor, proof that the undead and the Vichy were claiming their share of victims too.

  Joe freed his feet and hopped off the altar. He looked around for Palmeri— he wanted Palmeri—but the undead priest had lost himself in the melee. Joe glanced up at the balcony and saw that Zev was still hanging there, struggling to free himself. He started across the nave to help him.

  ZEV . . .

  Zev hated that he should be hung up here like a chicken in a deli window. He tried again to pull his upper body up far enough to reach his leg ropes but he couldn't get close. He had never been one for exercise; doing a sit-up flat on the floor would have been difficult, so what made him think he could do the equivalent maneuver hanging upside down by his feet? He dropped back, exhausted, and felt the blood rush to his head again. His vision swam, his ears pounded, he felt as if the skin of his face might burst open. Much more of this and he'd have a stroke or worse maybe.

  He watched the upside-down battle below and was glad to see the undead getting the worst of it. These people—seeing Carl among them, Zev assumed they were part of St. Anthony's parish—were ferocious, almost savage in their attacks on the undead. All their pent-up rage and fear was being released upon their tormentors in a single burst. It was almost frightening.

  Suddenly he felt a hand on his foot. Someone was untying his knots. Thank you, Lord. Soon he would be on his feet again. As the cords came loose he decided he should at least attempt to participate in his own rescue.

  Once more, Zev thought. Once more I'll try.

  With a grunt he levered himself up, straining, stretching to grasp something, anything. A hand came out of the darkness and he reached for it. But Zev's relief turned to horror when he felt the cold clamminess of the thing that clutched him, that pulled him up and over the balcony rail with inhuman strength. His bowels threatened to evacuate when Palmeri's grinning face loomed not six inches from his own.

  "It's not over yet, Jew," he said softly, his foul breath clogging Zev's nose and throat. "Not by a long shot!"

  He felt Palmeri's free hand ram into his belly and grip his belt at the buckle, then the other hand grab a handful of his shirt at the neck. Before he could struggle or cry out, he was lifted free of the floor and hoisted over the balcony rail.

  And the dybbuk's voice was in his ear.

  "Joseph called you a friend, Jew. Let's see if he really meant it."

  JOE . . .

  Joe was halfway across the floor of the nave when he heard Palmeri's voice echo above the madness.

  "Stop them, Joseph! Stop them now or I drop your friend!"

  Joe looked up and froze. Palmeri stood at the balcony rail, leaning over it, his eyes averted from the nave and all its newly arrived crosses. At the end of his outstretched arms was Zev, suspended in mid-air over the splintered remains of the pews, over a particularly large and ragged spire of wood that pointed directly at the middle of Zev's back. Zev's frightened eyes were flashing between Joe and the giant spike below.

  Around him Joe heard the sounds of the melee drop a notch, then drop another as all eyes were drawn to the tableau on the balcony.

  "A human can die impaled on a wooden stake just as well as a vampire!" Palmeri cried. "And just as quickly if it goes through his heart. But it can take hours of agony if it rips through his gut."

  St. Anthony's grew silent as the fighting stopped and each faction backed away to a different side of the church, leaving Joe alone in the middle.

  "What do you want, Alberto?"

  "First I want all those crosses put away so that I can see!"

  Joe looked to his right where his parishioners stood.

  "Put them away," he told them. When a murmur of dissent arose, he added, "Don't put them down, just out of sight. Please."

  Slowly, one by one at first, then in groups, the crosses and crucifixes were placed behind backs or tucked out of sight within coats.

  To his left, the undead hissed their relief and the Vichy cheered. The sound was like hot needles being forced under Joe's fingernails. Above, Palmeri turned his face to Joe and smiled.

  "That's better."

  "What do you want?" Joe asked, knowing with a sick crawling in his gut exactly what the answer would be.

  "A trade," Palmeri said.

  "Me for him, I suppose?" Joe said.

  Palmeri's smile broadened. "Of course."

  "No, Joe! "Zev cried.

  Palmeri shook the old man roughly. Joe heard him say, "Quiet, Jew, or I'll snap your spine!" Then he looked down at Joe again. "The other thing is to tell your rabble to let my people go." He laughed and shook Zev again. "Hear that, Jew? A Biblical reference—Old Testament, no less!"

  "All right," Joe said without hesitation.

  The parishioners on his right gasped as one and cries of "No!" and "You can't!" filled St. Anthony's. A particularly loud voice nearby shouted, "He's only a lousy kike!"

  Joe wheeled on the man and recognized Gene Harrington, a carpenter. He jerked a thumb back over his shoulder at the undead and their servants.

  "You sound like you'd be more at home with them, Gene."

  Harrington backed up a step and looked at his feet.

  "Sorry, Father," he said in a voice that hovered on the verge of a sob. "But we just got you back!"

  I'll be all right," Joe said softly.

  And he meant it. Deep inside he had a feeling that he would come through this, that if he could trade himself for Zev and face Palmeri one-on-one, he could come out the victor, or at least battle him to a draw. Now that he was no longer tied up like some sacrificial lamb, now that he was free, with full use of his a
rms and legs again, he could not imagine dying at the hands of the likes of Palmeri.

  Besides, one of the parishioners had given him a tiny crucifix. He had it closed in the palm of his hand.

  But he had to get Zev out of danger first. That above all else. He looked up at Palmeri.

  "All right, Alberto. I'm on my way up."

  "Wait!" Palmeri said. "Someone search him."

  Joe gritted his teeth as one of the Vichy, a blubbery, unwashed slob, came forward and searched his pockets. Joe thought he might get away with the crucifix but at the last moment he was made to open his hands. The Vichy grinned in Joe's face as he snatched the tiny cross from his palm and shoved it into his pocket.

  "He's clean now!" the slob said and gave Joe a shove toward the vestibule.

  Joe hesitated. He was walking into the snake pit unarmed. A glance at his parishioners told him he couldn't very well turn back now.

  He continued on his way, clenching and unclenching his tense, sweaty fists as he walked. He still had a chance of coming out of this alive. He was too angry to die. He prayed that when he got within reach of the ex-priest the smoldering rage at how he had framed him when he'd been pastor, at what he'd done to St. Anthony's since then, would explode and give him the strength to tear Palmeri to pieces.

  "No!" Zev shouted from above. "Forget about me! You've started something here and you've got to see it through!"

  Joe ignored his friend.

  "Coming, Alberto."

  Father Joe's coming, Alberto. And he's pissed. Royally pissed.

  ZEV . . .

  Zev craned his neck, watching Joe disappear beneath the balcony.

  "Joe! Comeback!"

  Palmeri shook him again.

  "Give it up, old Jew. Joseph never listened to anyone and he's not listening to you. He still believes in faith and virtue and honesty, in the power of goodness and truth over what he perceives as evil. He'll come up here ready to sacrifice himself for you, yet sure in his heart that he's going to win in the end. But he's wrong."

  "No!" Zev said.

  But in his heart he knew that Palmeri was right. How could Joe stand up against a creature with Palmeri's strength, who could hold Zev in the air like this for so long? Didn't his arms ever tire?