F Paul Wilson - Novel 10 Page 24

  "No! What's been started is bigger than one man! They know now they can fight you, and they'll keep on fighting you!"

  Franco put his hand on the door handle. "Well, we'll just have to see about that, won't we."

  He pushed the lever down and shoved the door inward. "Bon appetit, Devlin."

  Joe turned and ran, sprinting down the hall, looking for an unlocked door. He heard a howl behind him as he tried the first one he came to—locked. Without looking back he leaped across the hall to the next. The knob turned, the door swung inward—a chance!—and then he was struck from behind with unimaginable force. It drove him through the doorway and into the room where he went down under a growling fury made flesh. He tried to fight back but the savagery of the claws and fangs tearing at his flesh, ripping at his throat overcame him. He felt his skin tear, felt hot fluid gush over his chin and chest, heard an awful guzzling, lapping noise as something fed off him. He tried to rise, to throw it off but he had no strength. He felt his mind growing cold, the world growing distant, life becoming a dream, a receding memory. Joe saw one last flash of light, intolerably bright and then all was darkness and nothingness . . .

  - 7 -

  CAROLE . . .

  Unable to sleep, Carole sat at the window, watching the night, waiting for the dawn that was still hours away. Returning to the convent, to this room, her room, the room where she'd had to kill Bernadette . .. sleep was unthinkable. Even if it weren't, her bed was occupied.

  Lacey, poor thing, had collapsed when she'd heard that Father Joe was missing. A couple of the male parishioners had helped carry her here—Carole had emptied her wagon and carried her duffel and her personal items herself, afraid to let anyone else near them.

  They'd placed her on Carole's bed. What an ordeal Lacey had suffered tonight. Carole had gleaned a few details from her jumbled jabber on the way to the church and had shut her ears to the rest. And then to learn that her uncle had disappeared while searching for her. It was more than anyone should have to bear.

  When was it going to end?

  She waited, expecting to hear Bernadette's voice shout an answer, but the voice was silent. Carole hadn't heard from it since she'd reentered the convent.

  She looked at Lacey, curled into a fetal position under the blanket. Father Joe's niece. She hadn't quite believed her, but the way she'd been greeted by the parishioners had left little doubt. Some of them had even recognized Carole. She'd been uncomfortable with their joy at knowing she was still alive, especially uncomfortable with their earnest questions about how she had managed to survive and how she'd been spending her time. She couldn't tell them, couldn't tell anyone.

  A little while ago Carole had left Lacey and made a quick trip back to the church to see if Father Joe had been found. He hadn't. But one of the parties searching for him had returned with his large silver cross. He'd had it with him when he'd gone out earlier this evening. They'd found it on the roof of a nearby office building.

  Carole had asked if she might take the cross back to Lacey and let her keep it until her uncle returned. Because Father Joe would return. He was too good, too strong, too faithful a man of God to fall victim to the undead. He— only a small part of her believed that. She'd seen too much . . . too much. . . . Yet she forced herself to hope. She placed the cross on the windowsill, as a guardian, as a beacon, calling him home.

  She closed her eyes and listened. Silence. The convent was virtually empty. The rooms were available to the parishioners but most of them felt safer in the church—in its basement, in the choir loft, anywhere so long as they were within those walls. Carole could understand that from their perspective, but for her the convent was home. Though she felt orphaned now, it would always be home.

  She turned back to the window and gripped the upright of his cross, thinking, Come back, Father Joe. We need you. I need you. We—

  What was that? By the rectory. .. something taking to the air from the roof. . . something large . . . man-size . . .

  Terror gripped Carole's heart in an icy, mailed fist. A vampire, one of the winged kind, flying away from the rectory ...

  Somehow she knew in that instant that they'd done something terrible to Father Joe.

  "Oh, no!" she whispered. "No! Not him!"

  She grabbed the silver cross, pulled a flashlight from her duffel, and ran for the hall. She hurried down the stairs and out into the night. Holding the cross before her as a shield, she ran across the little graveyard, trampling the fresh-turned earth of graves that hadn't been there before, and arrived at the rectory.

  A small building, holding only three bedrooms and two offices, it stood dark and empty. This was priest territory and would be the last place the parishioners would think to occupy.

  Carole turned the knob and the door swung open. She flicked on her flash and directed the beam up and down and around before stepping inside.

  "Father Joe?" she called, knowing that if her worst fears were true he wouldn't be able to answer. "Father Joe, are you here?"

  No response. No sound except for the crickets cheeping in the lawn behind her. She moved through the rectory, checking the two downstairs offices first, then the upstairs bedrooms. Empty, just as she'd expected.

  Only one place left: the basement.

  Knowing what she was almost certain to find, Carole feared to go there. But she had to. Too much depended on this.

  She opened the door. Light in one hand, cross in the other, she started down. No blood on the steps. That was good. Maybe it had just been a flyer looking over the church complex, doing reconnaissance for the undead or hunting for stragglers. Carole prayed that was so, but expected that prayer to go unanswered like all her others.

  She reached the floor and flashed her light around. She allowed her hopes to rise when she saw nothing on her first pass. But then as she moved to the rear of the space, where old suitcases and cracked mirrors and warped bureaus were sent to die, she spotted something protruding from beneath an old mattress. A step closer and she realized what it was: a bare foot, its toes pointing ceilingward. Too big for a woman's... a man's foot.

  "Please, God," she said again, whispering this time. "Please, oh, please. Let it not be him."

  She pressed the cross against the foot. No flash of light, no sizzle of flesh. Whoever it was hadn't turned yet. She leaned the cross against the wall, gripped the edge of the mattress. . . and hesitated. Her mouth felt full of sand, her heart pounded in her chest like a trapped animal. She didn't want to do this. Why her? Why did it always seem to fall to her?

  Taking a breath and clenching her teeth, Carole tilted the mattress back and aimed her light at the shape beneath it. She found herself staring into the glazed dead eyes of Father Joseph Cahill.

  Images leaped at her like a frantic slide show— —his slack, blood-spattered face—

  —the wild ruin of his throat—

  —his blood-matted chest—

  With a cry torn from some deep lost corner of her soul, Carole dropped to her knees beside him. Her arms took on a life of their own and, for some reason her numbed brain couldn't fathom, began pounding her fists on his chest. She heard a voice screaming incoherently. Her own.

  After a while, she didn't know how long, she stilled her hands and slumped forward, letting her forehead rest on his bare shoulder, moaning, "God, dear God, why must this be?"

  And for a fleeting moment, even as she spoke, she wondered how she could still believe in God, or stay true to a god who could allow this to happen to the finest man she'd ever known. This was it, this was the end of everything. Where could she go from here? She'd only hung on this long in the hope that he'd return. He had, but only for a few days before this—this!

  She straightened and looked at Father Joe again, averting her eyes from his genitals. To kill him was bad enough, but to leave him like this: naked, torn, bloodied, with not a shred of dignity . . .

  Well, what did she expect from vermin?

  And yet, look at his face—ignore the se
vered arterial stumps protruding from his throat and focus on the face. It seemed at peace, and still held a quiet dignity no one could steal.

  Carole lost more time sobbing. Then, from somewhere, she found the strength to rise. She wanted to stay by his side, never leave him, never let anyone else near him, but she knew that couldn't be. She couldn't stay here and neither could he. She knew what had to be done. She had work to do. The Lord's work.

  She wandered the basement until she found a dusty old sheet draped over a chair. She pulled it off and, with infinite care, wrapped it around Father Joe . .. her Father Joe. She tried to lift him but he was too heavy. She needed help ...

  OLIVIA . . .

  "Someone is here. From Franco."

  Olivia lifted her mouth from the bloody throat of the spindly old man strapped to the table in the feeding room.

  "Who is it?"

  Jules, the unofficial leader of her get-guards, shrugged. "I've never seen him before. All I know is that he says his name is Artemis and his eye—"

  "I know about his eye."

  Artemis . . . one of Franco's closest get. This must be important if he'd sent Artemis. It had to be about Gregor. Damn that fool.

  She looked down at the quivering old man, still alive but in shock and not too much longer for this world. His blood was as thin as his scrawny body. She remembered India. She had been with the first wave through the Middle East, through Riyadh and Baghdad and Cairo and Jerusalem. Lots of blood there, but then they'd moved on to India, lovely, overcrowded India . . . she had quite literally bathed in blood in Bombay.

  But here, good cattle were hard to come by of late. She wasn't sure whether that was a result of a thinning of the herd or a thinning of the number of serfs at her disposal. Franco was either going to have to send her more serfs or widen her territory.

  Olivia would have much preferred another territory altogether, a peaceful one with no foment. But, thanks to Gregor's demise, she'd inherited this one and was stuck with it, at least until it was tamed.

  She pointed to the old man as she rose. "You can finish him after you bring Artemis to the sleeping room. I wish to meet with him alone."

  Jules frowned. "Do you think that's wise? Everything is so unsettled."

  "We have nothing to fear from Artemis."

  Jules turned and headed back upstairs.

  Olivia paced the feeding room. She was going stir crazy down here. She hadn't left the Post Office once throughout this long, long night. She'd been about to go out earlier but Gregor's death changed that. She'd been sequestered in the basement ever since. Only half a night, but she felt humiliated. She was supposed to be the predator, the fox, the wolf, but here she was, cowering like a frightened hare in its burrow.

  Yes, she was here at the insistence of her get, but she hadn't put up much of a fight. Gregor was foolish but he'd been tough. If the vigilantes had managed to kill him, they could kill her, and she might well be their next target.

  She'd sent serfs and one of her get out to find the source of the explosion, to see if that was what had done in Gregor. They'd returned with a tale of a blasted house with Gregor's head spiked on a piece of splintered wood in the front yard and his body in pieces within.

  These vigilantes had taken to making bombs. That was the real reason she was down here in the basement. The Post Office had thick granite walls. Even if they somehow managed to toss a bomb through the front doors—closed, locked, and guarded now—it would have no effect down here.

  Jules returned and closed the door behind him. "He's next door, waiting."

  Olivia nodded, took a breath, then made her entrance. She found Artemis, his back to her, standing among the beds and cots that her get had moved into what had been a storage space. This was where she spent the daylight hours.

  "Bonsoir, Artemis."

  Artemis turned. He grinned and stared at her with his one good eye.

  "English, Olivia. My French is about as good as your Greek."

  Olivia tried not to stare at his ruined eye. With his curly black hair and olive skin, he'd probably been handsome once. Too handsome, perhaps. But that eye—she had bathed in blood and had cut off heads, she'd ripped still-beating hearts from chests, but she found that dead eye repulsive. Olivia had lost her left little finger once—an accident with a sliding glass door—but it had grown back. She, like other undead, could regenerate most lost body parts, except of course a head or a heart. But certain types of injury did not heal.

  Artemis had been a real up and comer in Franco's get until he allowed a child he'd been about to sup on to jab a crucifix into his eye. He might have lived it down if the eye had regenerated, but wounds from holy objects never healed. His puckered scar and sunken socket were eternal reminders of his blunder, and he'd sunk to the rank of one of Franco's get-guards and errand boys.

  "Very well, Artemis," she said, switching to English. "But I just want you to know that I had no control over Gregor. Whatever he did, he did on his own. I am in no way responsible for what happened to him. You can tell Franco that."

  Artemis laughed. "Franco did not send me here about Gregor. He wanted to let you know that he has personally broken the back of the insurrection."

  "How, pray, did he do that?"

  "By capturing the priest himself, the one who took over your little church here."

  "Not my church. It was Gregor's responsibility."

  "But it happened while you were here on your inspection tour. Don't worry. That is of no import to Franco."

  Olivia seated herself on the bed where she spent her hours of daysleep.

  "Broken their backs, has he? What did Franco think of Gregor's idea that the insurgents in the church and the vigilantes were two separate groups?"

  "He gave it the amount of consideration it deserved, which is none at all. The priest didn't even bother to deny that he was part of the vigilantes."

  Olivia took some small satisfaction in being right, but she wondered . . .

  "How is merely capturing the priest going to break the back of this situation?"

  Artemis smiled. "Franco has turned the priest—not by himself, but by one of his pet ferals. He was delivered back to his own rectory less than an hour ago. He's been hidden in the basement. Come sundown he'll be one of us and will start to prey on his own followers. And as days go by he'll become increasingly depraved looking, increasingly vicious and feral. Isn't it simply delicious?"

  "Perhaps. But it's complicated. I prefer simpler, direct solutions. Why doesn't he just burn them out and capture them?"

  "You know Franco. He'd deem a frontal assault unworthy of his intellect. He saw too many Dr. Mabuse films while he was living in Germany, I think. Sees himself as the Grand Manipulator, the Demonic Maestro, the Great Orchestrator of life and death and undeath. He must work his coups with style, with elan."

  "Elan is all fine and good, but I'd much prefer to see this over and done with."

  "But you're not in charge, are you?"

  Olivia didn't dignify that remark with an answer. "So what are we to do then? Sit around and hope this undead priest follows Franco's script?"

  "We'll be providing direction. We'll watch after sundown and give him a little help if he needs it. Sometime during the next night or two—before he starts losing his mind—we'll question him about the vigilantes. Just in case there are cells outside the church. After that, he's on his own."

  "I'm not so sure I like the idea of a feral running loose."

  "Good point. He may become uncontrollable. If his followers don't get him first, we may have to put him down ourselves."

  Olivia had to smile. "Not much of a future for this priest. What's his name, by the way?"

  Artemis shrugged. "You know, I never thought to ask."

  "Well, whoever he is, he deserves everything that's coming to him."

  LACEY . . .

  Startled out of sleep by a hand shaking her shoulder and a strange voice whispering in her ear, Lacey came up swinging.

  "
Easy, Lacey," said a woman's voice. "Easy. You're safe. No one's going to hurt you."

  Lacey blinked. A small room, a single candle, and some stranger bending over her. No . . . not a stranger . . . she recognized her now. The one who'd led her back to the church, who'd said she was a nun. Lacey groaned. Her head throbbed, she hurt all over, especially between her legs.

  "Where—?"

  "You're in the convent. Listen to me. Something terrible has happened and—" Her voice broke. She blinked, swallowed, then said. "I need your help."

  Lacey glanced at the window. Still dark out there. "Can't it wait till morning?"

  The nun—what was her name? Carrie? No, Carole with an e—shook her head. "Morning will be too late. We have to act now before anyone finds out."

  "About what?"

  "Your uncle."

  Lacey listened in a daze, struggling to understand Carole's story, but the words seemed to congeal in the air, clumping together into indecipherable masses. Something about her Uncle Joe ... something about him being—

  "Dead? No, no! No! You can't be serious! He can't be! He can't!"

  "He is," Carol said. A tear ran down her cheek. "Believe me, Lacey, he is."

  "No!" She wanted to smash this crazy woman's face for lying to her. Her Uncle Joe couldn't be dead!

  "But he won't stay dead. By tomorrow night he'll be one of them."

  "Not Unk! He'd never!"

  "He'll have no choice."

  Lacey tried to stand but crumbled back onto the bed. Her legs didn't want to support her. "But if they can turn him ... make him one of them, then what's the use?"

  "That's exactly how they want you to feel. And that's exactly why we must move him away from here and save him from that hell."