"Yes," Zev said, taken aback by her intensity. "At least I think so."
Her grip tightened. "Where?"
He wondered if he'd made a mistake telling her. He tried not to sound evasive. "A retreat house. Have I been there? No. But it's near the beach, I'm told."
True enough, and he knew the address. After Joe had been moved out of St. Anthony's rectory to the retreat house, he and Zev still shared many phone conversations. At least until the creatures came. Then the phones stopped working and Zev's time became devoted more to survival than to keeping up with old friends.
"You've got to find him! You've got to tell him! He'll come back when he finds out and he'll make them pay!"
"A mensch, he is, I agree, but only one man."
"No! Many of his parishioners are still alive, but they're afraid. They're defeated. But if Father Joe came back, they'd have hope. They'd see that it wasn't over. They'd regain the will to fight."
"Like you?"
"I'm different," she said, the fervor slipping from her voice. "I never lost the will to fight. But my circumstances are special."
"How?"
"It's not important. I'm not important. But Father Joe is. Find him, Rabbi Wolpin. Don't put it off. Find him tomorrow and tell him. When he hears what they've done to his church he'll come back and teach them a lesson they'll never forget!"
Zev didn't know about that, but it would be good to see his young friend again. Searching him out would be a mitzvah for St. Anthony's, but might be good for Zev as well. It might offer some shape to his life ... a life that had devolved to mere existence, an endless, mind-numbing round of searching for food and shelter while avoiding the creatures by night and the human slime who did their bidding during the day.
All right," Zev said. "I'll try to find him. I won't promise to bring him back, because such a decision will not be mine to make. But I promise to look for him."
"Tomorrow?"
"First light. And who should I say sent me?"
The woman turned away and shook her head. "No one."
"You won't tell me your name?"
"It's not important."
"But you seem to know him."
"Once, yes." Her voice grew thick. "But he wouldn't recognize me now."
"You can be so sure?"
She nodded. "I've fallen too far away. There's no coming back for me, I'm afraid."
She'd been through something terrible, this one. So had everyone who was still alive, including Zev, but her experience, whatever it was, had made her a little meshugeh. More than a little, maybe.
She started walking away, looking almost silly dragging that little red wagon behind her.
"Wait..."
"Just find him," she said without turning. "And don't mention me."
She stepped into the shadows and was gone from sight, with only the squeaks of the wagon wheels as proof that she hadn't evaporated.
Father Joe Cahill and a prostitute? Zev couldn't believe it. But even if it were true, it was far less serious than what Joe had been accused of.
Maybe she hadn't sold herself in the old days. Maybe it was something she had to do to survive in these new and terrible times. Whatever the truth, he blessed her for being here to help him tonight.
But who is she? he wondered. Or perhaps more important, who was she.
CAROLE . . .
Carole hid the red wagon behind the bushes along the side of the house, then climbed the rickety stairs to the front porch, unlocked the door, and stepped inside. That was when the voice spoke. It had been silent the whole long walk home. Now it started in again.
<Hotne sweet home. Is that what you're after thinking now, Carole? And don't be thinking that the good deed you did tonight will be offsetting the mortal sins you committed earlier this evening. It won't. Not by a long shot!>
"Quiet," Carole muttered. "I need to listen."
She'd been in this house two weeks now, and she'd made it as secure as possible. As secure as anything could be since her world ended last month.
Last month? Yes... six weeks this coming Friday. It seemed a lifetime ago. She never would have believed everything could fall apart so fast. But it had.
Despite her security measures, she held her breath, listening for the sound of someone—or something—else in the house besides her. She heard nothing but the breeze stirring the curtains in the upstairs bedroom. It had been warm when she'd left but the night had grown chilly. May was such an untrustworthy month.
She fished the flashlight out of her shoulder bag and turned it on, then off again—just long enough to orient herself. She wasn't worried about the light being seen from outside—the blankets draped over the windows would prevent that. She wanted to save her batteries, a rare and precious commodity. When she reached the stairs she flicked the light on again so she could step over the broken first tread. She noticed little splatters of blood on the banister and newel post. She'd clean them up in the morning, when she could use natural light.
When she reached the bedroom she closed the window and quickly undressed.
<Sure and you may be able to remove those whore clothes, Carole, but you can't remove the stain of what you did in them>
Carole had no illusions about that. She pulled on a baggy gray sweatsuit and slipped beneath the covers, praying the voice would let her sleep tonight. The night's labors had exhausted her.
She thought of Rabbi Wolpin, and that made her think of Father Cahill, and that led to thoughts of St. Anthony's and the school where she'd taught, and the convent where she'd lived...
She thought of her last nights there, less than six weeks ago, just days before Easter, when everything had been so different...
GOOD FRIDAY ...
The Holy Father says there are no such things as vampires," Sister Bernadette Gileen said.
Sister Carole Hanarty glanced up from the pile of chemistry tests on her lap—tests she might never be able to return to her sophomore students—and watched Bernadette as she drove through town, working the shift on the old Datsun like a long-haul trucker. Her dear friend and fellow Sister of Mercy was thin, almost painfully so, with large blue eyes and short red hair showing around the white band of her wimple. As she peered through the windshield, the glow of the setting sun ruddied the clear, smooth skin of her round face.
Sister Carole shrugged. "If His Holiness said it, then we must believe it. But we haven't heard anything from him in so long. I hope ..."
Bernadette turned toward her, eyes wide with alarm.
"Oh, you wouldn't be thinking anything's happened to His Holiness now, would you, Carole?" she said, the lilt of her native Ireland elbowing its way into her voice. "They wouldn't dare!"
Momentarily at a loss as to what to say, Carole gazed out the side window at the budding trees sliding past. The sidewalks of this little Jersey Shore town were empty, and hardly any other cars were on the road. She and Bernadette had had to try three grocery stores before finding one with anything to sell. Between the hoarders and delayed or canceled shipments, food was getting scarce.
Everybody sensed it. How did that saying go? By the pricking in my thumbs, something wicked this way comes...
Or something like that.
She rubbed her cold hands together and thought about Bernadette, younger than she by five years—only twenty-six—with such a good mind, such a clear thinker in so many ways. But her faith was almost childlike.
She'd come to the convent at St. Anthony's two years ago and the pair of them had established instant rapport. They shared so much. Not just a common Irish heritage, but a certain isolation as well. Carole's parents had died years ago, and Bernadette's were back on the Auld Sod. So they became sisters in a sense that went beyond their sisterhood in the order. Carole was the big sister, Bernadette the little one. They prayed together, laughed together, walked together. They took over the convent kitchen and did all the food shopping together. Carole could only hope that she had enriched Bernadette's life half as much as the younger woman had enriched hers.