F Paul Wilson - Novel 10 Page 8

  They did, albeit reluctantly.

  Gregor shook his head as he watched the ten form a rough circle around Olivia and him. Considering recent events, he should have taken comfort in the number. That didn't make them any less of an inconvenience. One or two get-guards at all times were a nuisance, but four—he felt strangled. And Olivia with six tonight. How did she manage?

  "You've come about Angelica, I suppose," he said in a low voice.

  She nodded. "You knew Franco would send someone."

  Yes, he had. Somehow, some way, someone had killed Angelica last night. Gregor—over the objections of his get—had personally tracked down her remains before dawn and had them removed to a place where they could be burned. Secretly burned. It wouldn't do to let the cattle know that one of the undead elite had been brought down while on the wing.

  But Angelica's death was no secret among the undead. Gregor had been expecting an emissary from New York tonight, but Olivia of all people. Raw ambition from a rival get-line. This would not do.

  "It could have been an accident, you know."

  "I doubt that," Olivia said. "Angelica was too experienced."

  Angelica—Gregor had never liked her, and hated her now. The old bitch had to go out and hunt alone. Not that any of her get-guards could have accompanied her—none of them had wings. No reason for Angelica to hunt. With her status she could have had cattle brought to her every night.

  Gregor pressed his point. "It's not as if Angelica was shot down with a crossbow or the like. She was pierced with a tree branch, one that was snapped off a tree not a dozen feet from where we found her. It was quite evident that she flew into the tree and—"

  Olivia smiled, showing her fangs. "I certainly don't believe that, Gregor. And neither, I dare say, do you. The situation around here has been precarious for some time, what with some sort of vigilante group running around killing your serfs. How many dead now—four?"

  Gregor stiffened. "Where do you get your information?

  "That's not important. Franco is concerned that the situation is getting out of hand."

  "Nothing of the sort." He was sure she was overstating Franco's concern. "Everything is under control. As for these so-called vigilantes—"

  "Four serfs in four weeks, Gregor. Not just killed—their throats are slit and then they're strung up for all to see. Bad enough. But now these vigilantes have taken down Angelica."

  "We don't know if it was the same group."

  "That's the trouble. You don't know a thing about the perpetrators, do you."

  Too true. Whatever group was killing the serfs—an older term; Gregor had become used to calling them cowboys—wasn't announcing itself. No fliers, no graffiti, no name, no identity. Just a corpse twisting in the wind. They did their dirty work and then faded away.

  "Some of the killings could be by copycats," Gregor offered.

  "Even worse! Our hold is fragile, Gregor. We need our serfs. We can't have the night if they don't hold the day for us. The carrot-and-the-stick approach is usually sufficient, but they're as loyal as cockroaches, and if someone else comes along with a bigger stick, our carrot may not be enough."

  "Scum," Gregor growled.

  "Of course they are. Who but scum would sell out their own kind? But they're our scum. And we need them. Without them guarding our daysleep, we're vulnerable. If we can't protect them, they won't protect us."

  "I hardly need a lecture on this, Olivia."

  "Maybe you do." She pointed a long-nailed finger at him. "Because if you don't straighten this out, I'll have to do it for you."

  Gregor glared at her. He knew what that meant: he'd be sent back to New York where Franco would demote him to some sort of low-level functionary.

  He was a veteran of the battle of the Vatican, damn it. No one could humiliate him like that.

  His thoughts drifted back. What a week that had been. Vatican City was immune to the ferals because of the plethora of crosses—crosses everywhere, on the walls, the ceilings, even the floors. The priests and the Swiss Guard had fought valiantly against the serfs. It was not until turned military commanders and soldiers began shelling the buildings with tanks and artillery that they made any progress. Vatican City eventually was reduced to rubble. That was the good news. The bad news was that the Pope had died in the shelling. It would have been such a coup to turn him and make him an icon for the Catholic undead.

  Gregor missed those good old days of head-on assault: Prague, Berlin, Rome, Paris, London. They'd all fallen in days. But that approach had run into unforeseen problems. Franco was trying a new tack. Gregor agreed that it made more sense, but it lacked the heady rush of the blitzkrieg. And it allowed upstarts like Olivia to rise.

  If Olivia had her way and Gregor was called back to New York, she would remove all his get—which now included the mayor, the councilwoman, the priest, and the reverend among others—and install her own in their place. Olivia's domain would expand while his would contract to near zero.

  Gregor would not allow that. These vigilantes would be found and run to ground if he had to do it himself.

  ZEV . . .

  After a few hours their talk died of fatigue. Father Joe gave Zev the flashlight to hold, then stretched out across a couple of crates to sleep. Zev tried to get comfortable enough to doze but found sleep impossible. So he listened to his friend snore in the dusty darkness of the cellar.

  Poor Joe. Such anger in the man. But more than that—hurt. He felt betrayed, wronged. And with good reason. But with everything falling apart as it was, the wrong done to him would never be righted. He should forget about it already and go on with his life, but apparently he couldn't. Such a shame. He needed something to pull him out of his funk. Zev had thought news of what had happened to his old parish might rouse him, but it seemed only to make him want to drink more. Father Joseph Cahill, he feared, was a hopeless case.

  Zev closed his eyes and tried to rest. He found it hard to get comfortable with the cross dangling in front of him so he took it off but laid it within easy reach. He was drifting toward a doze when he heard a noise outside. By the dumpster. Metal on metal.

  My bicycle!

  He slipped to the floor and tiptoed over to where Joe slept. He shook his shoulder and whispered.

  "Someone's found my bike!"

  The priest snorted but remained sleeping. A louder clatter outside made Zev turn, and as he moved his elbow struck a bottle. He grabbed for it in the darkness but missed. The sound of smashing glass echoed through the basement like a cannon shot. As the odor of Scotch whiskey replaced the musty ambiance, Zev listened for further sounds from outside. None came.

  Maybe it had been an animal. He remembered how raccoons used to raid his garbage at home... when he'd had a home ... when he'd had garbage ...

  Zev stepped to the window and looked out. Probably an animal.

  A pale, snarling demonic face, baring its fangs and hissing, suddenly filled the window. Zev fell back as the thing rammed its hand through the glass, reaching for his throat, its curved fingers clawing at him, missing. It pushed up the window, then launched itself the rest of the way through, hurtling toward Zev.

  He tried to dodge but was too slow. The impact knocked the flashlight from his grasp and it rolled across the floor. Zev cried out as he went down under the snarling thing. Its ferocity was overpowering, irresistible. It straddled him and lashed at him, batting his fending arms aside, its clawed fingers tearing at his collar to free his throat, stretching his neck to expose the vulnerable flesh, its foul breath gagging him as it bent its fangs toward him. Zev screamed out his helplessness.

  JOE . . .

  Father Joe Cahill awoke to cries of terror.

  He shook his head to clear it and instantly regretted the move. His head weighed at least two hundred pounds, and his mouth was stuffed with foul-tasting cotton. Why did he keep doing this to himself? What was the point in acting out the drunken Irish priest cliche? Not only did it leave him feeling lousy, it gave him ba
d dreams. Like now.

  Another terrified shout, only a few feet away.

  He looked toward the sound. In the faint light from the flashlight rolling across the floor he saw Zev on his back, fighting for his life against—

  Jesus! This was no dream!

  He leaped over to where the creature was lowering its fangs toward Zev's throat. He grabbed it by the back of the neck and lifted it clear of the floor. It was surprisingly heavy but that didn't slow him. Joe could feel the anger rising in him, surging into his muscles.

  "Rotten piece of filth!"

  He swung the vampire by its neck and let it fly against the cinderblock wall. It impacted with what should have been bone-crushing force, but bounced off, rolled on the floor, and regained its feet in one motion, ready to attack again. Strong as he was, Joe knew he was no match for this thing's power. He turned, grabbed his big silver crucifix, and charged the creature.

  "Hungry? Eat this!"

  As the creature bared its fangs and hissed at him, Joe shoved the long lower end of the cross's upright into the gaping maw. Blue-white light flickered along the silver length of the crucifix, reflecting in the creature's startled, agonized eyes as its flesh sizzled and crackled. The vampire let out a strangled cry and tried to turn away but Joe wasn't through with it yet. He was literally seeing red as rage poured out of a hidden well and swirled through him. He rammed the cross farther down the thing's gullet. Light flashed deep in its throat, illuminating the pale tissues from within. It tried to grab the cross and pull it out but the flesh of its fingers burned and smoked wherever it came in contact with it.

  Finally Joe stepped back and let the thing squirm and scrabble up the wall and out the window into the night. Then he turned to Zev. If anything had happened—

  "Hey, Reb!" he said, kneeling beside the older man. "You all right?"

  "Yes," Zev said, struggling to his feet. "Thanks to you."

  Joe slumped onto a crate, momentarily weak as his rage dissipated. This is not what I'm about, he thought. But it had felt so damn good to let loose on that vampire. Almost too good.

  I'm falling apart. . . like everything else in the world.

  "That was too close," Joe said, giving the older man's shoulder a fond squeeze.

  "For that vampire, too close for sure." Zev replaced his yarmulke. "And would you please remind me, Father Joe, that in the future if ever I should maybe get my blood sucked and become undead that I should stay far away from you."

  Joe laughed for the first time in too long. It felt good.

  - 3 -

  JOE . . .

  They climbed out of Morton's basement shortly after dawn. Joe carried an unopened bottle of Scotch—for later. He stretched his cramped muscles and shielded his eyes from the rising sun. The bright light sent stabs of pain through his brain.

  "Oy," Zev said as he pulled his hidden bicycle from behind the dumpster. "Look what he did."

  Joe inspected the bike. The front wheel had been bent so far out of shape that half the spokes were broken.

  "Beyond fixing, Zev."

  "Looks like I'll be walking back to Lakewood."

  Joe looked around, searching the ground. "Where'd our visitor go?"

  He knew it couldn't have got far. He followed drag marks in the sandy dirt around to the far side of the dumpster, and there it was—or rather what was left of it: a rotting, twisted corpse, blackened to a crisp and steaming in the morning sunlight. The silver crucifix still protruded from between its teeth.

  "Three ways we know to kill them," Zev said. "A stake through the heart, decapitation, or exposing them to sunlight. I believe Father Cahill has just found a fourth."

  Joe approached and gingerly yanked his cross free of the foul remains.

  "Looks like you've sucked your last pint of blood," he said and immediately felt foolish.

  Who was he putting on the macho act for? Zev certainly wasn't going to buy it. Too out of character. But then, what was his character these days? He used to be a parish priest. Now he was a nothing. A less than nothing.

  He straightened and turned to Zev.

  "Come on back to the retreat house, Reb. I'll buy you breakfast."

  But as Joe turned and began walking away, Zev stayed and stared down at the corpse.

  "They say most of them don't wander far from where they spent their lives," Zev said. "Which means it's unlikely this fellow was Jewish if he lived around here. Probably Catholic. Irish Catholic, I'd imagine."

  Joe stopped and turned. He stared at his long shadow. The hazy rising sun at his back cast a huge hulking shape before him, with a dark cross in one shadow hand and a smudge of amber light where it poured through the bottle of Scotch in the other.

  "What are you getting at?" he said.

  "The Kaddish would probably not be so appropriate so I'm just wondering if someone should maybe give him the last rites or whatever it is you people do when one of you dies."

  "He wasn't one of us," Joe said, feeling the bitterness rise in him. "He wasn't even human."

  "Ah, but he used to be before he was killed and became one of them. So maybe now he could use a little help."

  Joe didn't like the way this was going. He sensed he was being maneuvered.

  "He doesn't deserve it," he said and knew in that instant he'd been trapped.

  "I thought even the worst sinner deserved it," Zev said.

  Joe knew when he was beaten. Zev was right. He shoved the cross and bot-de into Zev's hands—a bit roughly, perhaps—then went and knelt by the twisted cadaver. He administered a form of the final sacrament. When he was through he returned to Zev and snatched back his belongings.

  "You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din," he said as he passed.

  "You act as if they're responsible for what they do after they become undead," Zev said hurrying along beside him, panting as he matched Joe's pace.

  "Aren't they?"

  "No."

  "You're sure of that?"

  "Well, not exactly. But they certainly aren't human anymore, so maybe we shouldn't hold them accountable on human terms."

  Zev's reasoning tone flashed Joe back to the conversations they used to have in Horovitz's deli.

  "But Zev, we know there's some of the old personality left. I mean, they stay in their home towns, usually in the basements of their old houses. They go after people they knew when they were alive. They're not just dumb predators, Zev. They've got the old consciousness they had when they were alive. Why can't they rise above it? Why can't they ... resist?"

  "I don't know. I've never had the opportunity to sit down with one and discuss it. Maybe they can't resist. To tell the truth, the question has never occurred to me. A fascinating concept: an undead refusing to feed. Leave it to Father Joe to come up with something like that. We should discuss this on the trip back to Lakewood."

  Joe had to smile. So that was what this was all about.

  "I'm not going back to Lakewood."

  "Fine. Then we'll discuss this now. Maybe the urge to feed is too strong to overcome."

  "Maybe. And maybe they just don't try hard enough."

  "This is a hard line you're taking, my friend."

  "Maybe I'm a hard-line kind of guy."

  "You didn't used to be, but it seems you've become one."

  Joe felt a flash of unreasoning anger and gave him a sharp look. "You don't know what I've become."

  Zev shrugged. "Maybe true, maybe not. But did you see the face of the one that attacked me? I'm sure he didn't look like that before he was turned. They seem to change, at least some of them, on the outside. Maybe on the inside they change too."

  "If they acted like mindless beasts, I'd agree. But they're intelligent, they can reason. That means they can choose."

  "Do you truly think you'd be able to resist?"

  "Damn straight."

  Joe wasn't sure why he said it, didn't even know if he meant it. Maybe he was mentally preparing himself for the day when he might find himself in that situation.<
br />
  After walking a block or so in silence, Joe said, "What I don't get is how these undead get away with breaking all the rules."

  "Meaning what? Laws?"

  "Not civil laws—the laws of physics and chemistry and God knows what else. I've never had a problem reconciling science and belief. God designed creation to run by certain rules; science is merely man's attempt to use his God-given intelligence to understand those rules."

  "So you don't take Genesis literally."

  "Of course not. It's not natural science. It was never meant to be. The Bible is the story of a people and their relationship with their God."

  "A God who seems very far away lately."

  Joe sighed at the truth of that. He'd felt abandoned for some time now. The air cooled as they neared the ocean, the briny on-shore breeze carrying the eternal rumble of the breakers and the calls of the seagulls as they wheeled over the jetties. Some things, at least, hadn't changed.

  "It seems the undead are exempt from the rules God laid down for creation. The flying ones, for instance. You said you were attacked by one the other night. I've seen one or two gliding around on a moonlit night. How do you explain them? I'm no expert on aerodynamics, but those wings shouldn't be able to support them, yet they do. And where do the wings go when they're not using them?"

  Zev shrugged. "These are questions I can't answer."

  "Here's another. I was around when a gang of locals chased one down. He'd ripped up a woman's throat but he didn't get away fast enough. They blinded him with holy water, held him down with crosses, and drove a stake through his heart. Then they cut off his head."

  "The traditional method, as opposed to the new Cahill method. And of course he was dead then. Truly dead."

  "Right. But he didn't bleed."

  "So?"

  "If he doesn't have blood to feed his muscles, how do they move?"

  "A mystery."

  "It's as if the laws of our world have been suspended where the undead are concerned."

  "Suspended by whom? Or what?"