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 severed 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.