Despite his misery, Leigh smiled when he passed by the little park where he and Penny often walked. His smile broke into relieved laughter when he caught sight of their home. The two-story brick house was just as he’d left it, complete with the red X on the door.
“Penny…”
Leigh broke into a run. He fumbled for his keys, slid them into the lock with trembling fingers, and burst inside.
“Penny? I’m home!”
There was no answer. The couch was empty, the blankets tossed onto the floor.
“Penny?” he called out again, his voice cracking.
“Where are you?”
Leigh sat the rifle and sack down on the floor and began to search the house
Please, please, please let her be okay. Just let her be okay.
“Leigh?”
His spirits soared. She was alive! He ran to the stairs and started up them.
“I came back,” he shouted. “And I brought medicine. Just like I promised.”
“I know,” Penny said. “I knew you’d be back. I knew you’d return.”
Leigh halted halfway up the stairs. Something stank, and he heard flies buzzing.
“Well,” the voice continued, “I didn’t know. But your wife did. I saw it in her mind when I took over this husk. She believed in you. She knew you’d keep your promise.”
Leigh glanced back downstairs at his SKS. It seemed to him that the weapon was ten kilometers away, like everything else from his journey.
“Penny…”
The thing that had been his wife stepped into the light.
“She knew you’d come back,” the zombie slurred.
“So I waited.”
Leigh Haig’s tired legs gave out beneath him, and he could walk no more.
1 CORINTHIANS 15:51
The Rising
Day Twenty-One
Lynchburg, Virginia
“Chapter fifteen, verse twelve, tells us; ‘Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?’”
Chris Shackelford rolled his eyes. “God, I’m getting sick of this shit.”
“I thought you two were Christians?” Klinger looked up at the church basement’s ceiling.
“We are Christians,” Dawn Shackelford said, loading more hollow points into her .357 Ruger.
“But what’s going on upstairs isn’t worship. It’s blasphemy.”
Klinger nodded. “Word. Few days ago, I met two guys traveling north, to Jersey. Jim Thurmond and a preacher named Martin. I was never much for church either, but that Martin was cool. Not like Reichart. That guy’s fucking crazy, man.”
“So we agree?” Chris asked. “We’re really going to do this?”
“I’m in,” Klinger said. “But this is your town. Where we gonna go?”
Chris handed Klinger the side-by-side Browning 12 gauge, and double-checked his Sig Sauer P228
9mm. “Basement of an empty house? Grocery store?
Another church?”
Klinger snickered. “I’ve had enough church.”
Lynchburg was home to Reverend Jerry Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church. The famous minister had his hand in everything, dictating all that happened. As a result, the town had more churches than anywhere in America.
“But if there is no resurrection of the dead,”
Reichart’s voice thundered from upstairs, “then is Christ not risen; and if Christ is not risen, then is our preaching in vain, and your faith in vain?”
“They’ll come looking for us soon,” Dawn warned. “We’ve been gone too long.”
Klinger’s face turned pale. “Probably nail us up on one of those crosses, just like the others who dissented.”
“Let’s do this, then.” Chris took his wife’s hand and squeezed. “You okay?”
Dawn shook her head. “No, I’m not. Look at us, Chris. We’ve changed. You were an accountant for Genworth Financial. I taught fifth grade math and history. I played the violin for twenty-six years. Gardening, target shooting—and now…”
“You can really shoot?” Klinger asked.
“She can put a grouping of six tight enough to cover with the bottom of a soda can.” Chris pulled Dawn close and kissed her forehead. “Things have changed, honey. You know that. It’s not the same world out there. We’ve got to worry about us.”
“What about the others. Are we just going to let Reichart and his followers do this?”
“He’s probably killed them already. Right now, they’re turning into zombies.”
“But what if they’re not,” Dawn whispered.
“What if they’re still alive on those crosses?”
“We don’t have a choice. It’s just us now. Mom, Dad, Bryan, your folks, April, even Scotch and Sandy—they’re all gone. We’ve got to live. Me and you.”
“And me,” Klinger added.
Chris grinned. “Yeah, and our new friend Klinger, the ex-pro surfer.”
Weapons drawn, they left the Sunday school rooms and crept up the stairs. Reichart’s mesmerizing voice swelled louder as they entered the narthex.
“See now, brothers and sisters. See how they rise!
Behold the mystery. There were asleep, and now they are changed.”
“Release me.”
The raspy voice from behind the sanctuary doors wasn’t the preacher’s or anyone in the congregation. It belonged to something dead.
Finger to his lips, Chris led them to the front door. Heavy pews had been stacked atop one another to form a barricade. While Dawn covered them, Klinger and Chris sat their guns aside and lifted the top pew.
Inside the sanctuary, someone screamed. Startled, Chris lost his grip. The pew crashed to the floor, reverberating throughout the building. Reichart stopped in mid-sermon. A second later, the sanctuary doors banged open. Parishioners flooded into the narthex, wide-eyed.
Dawn raised her pistol. “We don’t want any trouble. We just want to leave.”
Inside the sanctuary, Reichart shouted, “Who dares disturb the resurrection?”
“It’s the Shackelford’s,” a man yelled. “And that stranger we let in earlier in the week. Say they’re leaving.”
The preacher squawked. “Oh, no they aren’t. Bring them to me.”
Chris and Klinger sprang for their guns. Several more members of the congregation poured through the sanctuary doors.
“Get back,” Dawn warned, spacing her feet apart. “I will shoot you.”
“You won’t kill us, sister.” The speaker was a fat man, an atheist four weeks before, now one of Reichart’s most fervent followers. His eyes darted from the gun to Dawn’s breasts. He licked his lips. Dawn shot him between the eyes. Her wrists snapped backward from the recoil. She drew a bead on the next.
The fat man collapsed. Some of the believers rushed them while others ducked back inside the sanctuary. Dawn and Chris opened fire, dropping six attackers in as many shots. Klinger fumbled with his weapon, and the crowd fell on him, dragging him inside.
Chris and Dawn pursued them into the sanctuary. At the front, twelve makeshift crosses had been mounted around the communion rail. Former members of the congregation—those who’d spoke out against Reichart—hung crucified, their throats cut. Blood still jetted from the fresh wounds. The corpses twitched, reanimating.
“They were asleep,” Reichart shrieked, “and now they are changed. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed!”
Chris grabbed Dawn’s arm. “Let’s go! We’re too late.”
“Klinger.” She shook him off. “We can’t just—”