F Paul Wilson - Novel 10

by Midnight Mass (v2. 1)

  CAROLE . . .

  The setting sun's blood-red eye stared at Carole from the car's rearview mirror. She flipped the dimmer toggle to cut its brightness and steered the Lincoln along Route 88. She was thinking about napalm.

  Lacey fidgeted in the passenger seat and toyed with the revolver in her lap. The cowboys—or Vichy, as Lacey called them—had been conspicuous by their absence today. Maybe the undead were alarmed by the loss of the one Carole had killed last night—dear God, had it been less than twenty-four hours?—and were keeping them close by during the light hours. Even so, she and Lacey might have the bad luck of running into a party of them before reaching the beach.

  Carole glanced at the barrel of the shotgun on the armrest between them. Nothing was going to keep them from Father Joe's graveside tonight.

  Carole and Lacey had caught up on their sleep during the day, awakening this afternoon to find the parishioners nervous and edgy. Father Joe was still missing and they were giving up hope that he'd be found alive. Carole had told them that even if he'd been killed, he'd want them to fight on.

  They'd wanted to know how, and that was when Carole had begun thinking of napalm.

  It was easy to make. She'd need soap flakes. Soap wasn't edible so there'd be no shortage of flakes in the looted grocery stores. If she could get her hands on some kerosene, she'd be in business. Napalm stuck to whatever it splashed against and burned so hot it turned human flesh into fuel to feed its flames. Would the same happen with undead flesh?

  Only one way to find out...

  She heard a sob and looked at Lacey. Tears glistened on her cheeks.

  "What's wrong?"

  "I hope we did the right thing."

  Carole knew exactly how she felt. Apprehension had been clawing at her gut all day.

  "You're having second thoughts?"

  "Oh, yes. Ohhhhhh, yes. I don't want to watch him digging his way out of the ground, I don't want to see his undead eyes or hear his undead voice. I don't want that to be my last memory of him." She stared at Carole. "If I believed in God I'd be praying to him right now."

  Strange, Carole thought. I do believe in Him and I've stopped praying. He doesn't seem to be listening.

  "Are you all right, Lacey? I mean, after what happened yesterday?"

  "Do you mean after finding my dearest and closest living relative dead and helping dig his grave? Or do you mean after getting gang raped?"

  Carole winced at her tone and at the images "gang raped" conjured. "Nevermind. Sorry."

  Lacey reached over and squeezed her arm. "Hey, no. I'm sorry." She sighed. "I guess I'm doing about as well as can be expected. I'm still sore as hell, but I'm healing."

  "I didn't mean physically. I meant the hurt within. Emotionally. It's such an awful, awful thing ..." Carole ran out of words.

  Lacey shrugged. "Same answer, I suppose. I know I'd feel different if it had happened—the rape, I mean—say, a year ago, back in the old civilized world. I would have been thinking, 'How could this happen?' and 'Why me?' I would have felt like some sort of pariah or loser, that the world and society had let me down, that some throwbacks had smashed through all the rules and targeted me. And I would have felt somehow to blame. Yeah, can you believe that? I bet I would've. I know I'd have wanted to dig myself a hole and pull the ground over me."

  Carole tried to imagine how she'd feel if places were reversed, but her imagination wasn't up to it. She nodded to keep Lacey talking. She'd heard it was bad to keep something like this bottled up.

  "Are you saying you don't feel that way now?"

  Lacey shook her head. "Yeah ... I don't know. It's a different world now, a world without any rules, except maybe those of the jungle. There's no law, no order, and because of that, I don't seem to have that pariah-loser-victim feeling. And I don't feel ashamed. I feel disgusted and sickened and violated, but I don't feel ashamed. I feel hate and I want revenge, but I don't feel a need to hide. A year ago I'd have felt scarred for life. Now I feel... as if I've been splattered with mud—rotten, nasty mud—but nothing I can't wash off and then move on. Does that make sense?"

  Carole nodded. She knew as well as anyone how the rules had changed, and she with them.

  "You're strong, though. I don't know if I could bounce back from something like that."

  "I wouldn't exactly call it 'bouncing.' But don't shortchange yourself, Carole. You're tougher than you let on. I think you could handle anything. Let's just hope you never have to find out."

  "Amen," Carole said.

  Thinking of men who could do such heinous things drew Carole's thoughts back to napalm, but she pushed them aside as the boardwalk buildings hove into view. She parked and gave herself half a moment to inhale the briny air. Then she double-checked the old book bag—crosses, stakes, garlic, hammer, flashlight. All there.

  Let's just pray we don't have to use them, she thought.

  What they most likely would use were the two peanut butter sandwiches on home-baked bread they'd brought along. Somewhere old Mrs. Delmonico had found whole wheat flour and a propane stove.

  They left the shotgun in the car, but Lacey carried her pistol at the ready as they hurried across the deserted boardwalk and down to the beach. Lacey stayed in the lead when they ducked under the boards where they'd buried Father Joe, but stopped dead in her tracks with a cry of alarm.

  Carole bumped into her from behind. "What—?"

  "Oh, no!" Lacey cried. "It can't be!"

  Carole pushed her aside and saw what she was looking at. The grave had been disturbed.

  "He's already out!" Lacey wailed.

  "No. He can't be. The sun hasn't set yet."

  She pointed to areas of darker sand atop the light. "But some of the sand's still damp. That means it came from deeper down. And not too long ago."

  "Then someone's dug him up. It's the only explanation."

  Lacey's eyes were wild. "But who? We were the only ones who knew. And why?"

  She glanced around and noticed linear tracks leading out to the beach. "Look. We didn't leave those. Someone's dragged him out."

  "They can't have gone too far." Carole heard Lacey cock her pistol as she started back toward the beach. "The sons of bitches..."

  Carole followed her out and they stood together, looking up and down the beach and along the gently rolling dunes that eased toward the water. She blinked ... was that someone ... ? Yes, it looked like a man, standing at the water line with a towel draped over his shoulders, staring out to sea.

  "Look, Lacey," Carole said, pointing. "Do you see him?"

  Lacey nodded and started forward. "You think he did it?"

  "Perhaps." Carole fell into step beside her. "If not, he might have seen who did."

  But as they approached, the white towel began to look more like a sheet, and the back of the man's head, the color of his hair began to look more and more familiar ...

  They were twenty feet away when Carole stopped and grabbed Lacey's arm. "Oh, dear God," she whispered. "It looks like ..."

  Lacey was nodding. "I know." Her voice had shrunken to a high-pitched squeak. "But it can't be."

  He looked wet, as if he'd gone for a swim. Carole stepped forward, closed to within half a dozen feet of him. Trembling inside and out, she wet her lips. Her tongue felt as dry as old leather.

  "Father Joe?"

  The man turned. The dying light of the sun ruddied the pitted, ruined dead-white skin of his face.

  "Carole," he said in Father Joe's voice. "What's happened to me?"

  Shock was a hand against her chest, shoving her back. She dropped the bookbag and stumbled a few steps, then tripped. Lacey caught her before she fell.

  "Oh, shit," Lacey whimpered. "Oh, shit!"

  "Lacey?" The man, the thing that had once been Father Joe, took a faltering step toward them. "What did they do to me?"

  "Wh-who?" Lacey said.

  "The undead. They took me to New York. He was going to make me one of them . . . turn me into a feral, he said. I
remember dying, being killed ... at least I think I do, but—"

  Heart pounding, mind racing. Carole watched him closely, looking for a misstep, listening for a false note.

  She found her voice again. "You did die. We found you and you were dead. We buried you back there, under the boardwalk."

  "But I'm not dead. And I'm not one of them. I can't be because ..." He pointed west. "Because that's the sun and it should be killing me, but it's not." He raised a scarred fist. "Somehow, some way, I've beaten them."

  "But you were dead, Uncle Joe," Lacey told him. Her voice trembled like a wounded thing. "And now you're not."

  "But I'm not undead. Standing here in the sunlight is proof enough of that. And I'm looking at you two and I'm not seeing prey. I'm seeing two people I care about very much."

  Carole suspected that under different circumstances—any circumstances but these—those words would have made her dizzy. But now ...

  She shook her head, trying to clear it, trying to step back from her roiling emotions and think clearly. He sounded like her Father Joe, he acted like Father Joe, he had Father Joe's mannerisms, but something was different, something wasn't quite right. Something terrible had been done to him, and one way or another, she had to find a way to undo it.

  She bent forward and snatched the book bag from where she'd dropped it on the sand.

  "Carole?" said Lacey from behind her. "Just a minute."

  She opened it and reached inside.

  "Carole, you're not really going to—"

  ''A minute, I said!"

  Carole's fingers wrapped around the upright of Father Joe's big silver cross. "We've been saving this for you." She yanked it from the bag and held it out to him. "Here."

  Father Joe cried out and turned his head, holding up a hand to shield his eyes from the sight of the very cross he used to carry with him wherever he went.

  Carole felt something die within her as she watched him and realized what she had to do.

  She handed the cross to Lacey who stood dumbstruck, staring at her uncle with wide, uncomprehending eyes. Lacey gripped the cross but never took her eyes from her uncle.

  As Carole pulled open the book bag again, she slammed the doors, closed the windows, and drew the curtains on everything she had ever felt for the man this creature had once been. Her hand was reaching into the bag for the hammer and stake when Lacey's voice, a hint of panic in her tone, stopped her.

  "Carole ... Carole, something's happening here. Please tell me what's going on."

  Carole looked up and froze. The Father Joe thing was edging toward Lacey, his face averted, his hand stretched out toward the cross.

  "What's happening, Carole?" Lacey wailed.

  "I'm not sure, but don't move. Stay right where you are."

  Carole watched with a wrenching mixture of horror and fascination as the Father Joe thing's fingers neared the cross. She noticed that his eyes were slit-ted and only partially averted, as if he were looking at the cross from the corner of his eye.

  The undead couldn't stand to be anywhere near a cross, yet the Father Joe thing was reaching for this one.

  Finally his scarred fingers reached it, touched the metal, and jerked back as if they'd been burned. But no flash, no sizzle of seared flesh. The fingers came forward again, and this time, like a striking snake, they snatched the cross from Lacey's hand.

  "It's hot!" he said, looking up into the darkening sky as he switched it back and forth between his hands like a hot potato. "Oh, God, it's hot!"

  But it wasn't searing his flesh, only reddening it.

  Then with the cry of a damned soul he dropped it and fell to his knees on the sand.

  "What have they done to me?" he sobbed as he looked at Carole with frightened, haunted eyes. "What am I?"

  Carole closed the book bag.

  She'd never seen the undead cry. This wasn't a vampire. But he wasn't the Father Joe she had known either. He was something in between. Was this an accident, or some sort of trick, some undead plot to further confuse and confound the living? She'd have to reserve judgment for now.

  But she'd be watching his every move.

  JOE . . .

  Carole took his arm and tugged him toward the boardwalk, saying, "We need to find a place where we're not so exposed."

  Joe went along with her, his mind numb, unable to string two coherent thoughts together.

  The afterimage of the cross—his cross—still stained his vision, bouncing in the air before him. The blast of light had been intolerably bright, an explosion of brilliance, as if Carole had lifted a white hot star from her book bag. The light had caused him pain, but only in his eyes. It hadn't struck him like a physical blow the way it seemed to affect the undead, staggering them back as if they were being pummeled with a baseball bat. He could look at it as one might the sun, squinting from the corner of his eye.

  He could touch the cross but couldn't hold it. He looked down at his palms. The skin was reddened there, but at least it was normal looking. Not like the ruined, thickened flesh on the back of his hands and on his arms and chest. He touched his face and found thickened and pitted skin there as well.

  Joe felt as if his world were crumbling around him, then realized that it already had. The life he'd known was gone, ended. What lay ahead?

  He pulled the damp sheet closer around him as Carole led him up the steps to the boardwalk. Had this been his shroud? As she turned him right, Joe heard Lacey's voice from behind.

  "Aren't we going to the car?"

  "Let's see if we can get into one of these houses," Carole said.

  She led them past the dead arcades and along the boardwalk leading to the inlet. No one spoke. Lacey looked as dazed as Joe felt. They walked past the beachfront houses, some large with sun decks and huge seaward windows, others tiny, little more than plywood boxes, all nuzzling against the boardwalk. Most of the bigger ones had been vandalized.

  Carole stopped before an old, minuscule bungalow that appeared intact. Despite the low light, Joe had no problem making out the faded blue-gray of its clapboard siding. Someone had painted the word SEAVIEW in black on the door and surrounded it with sun-bleached clamshells.

  Carole tried the door. When it wouldn't open, she slammed her shoulder against it. When that didn't work, she opened her book bag and began to rummage through it.

  Joe turned to the door and slammed his palm against it. The molding cracked like a gunshot and the door swung inward. He stared at his hand. He hadn't put a lot of effort into the blow, but it had broken the molding.

  "How did I do that?" he muttered.

  No one answered.

  In a courteous reflex, he stood aside to let Carole and Lacey enter first. Only after they were inside did he realize that he should have gone ahead of them. No telling what might have been lying in wait there.

  As he stepped across the threshold, he felt a curious resistance, as if the air inside had congealed to try to hold him back. He pressed forward and pushed through. The resistance evaporated once he was inside.

  As he closed the door behind him, he sniffed the musty air and looked around. Typical beach house decor: rattan furniture with beachy-patterned cushions, driftwood and shells on the mantle, fishnets and starfish tacked to the tongue-and-groove knotty pine walls of the wide open living room/dining room/kitchen combo that ran the length of the house; photos of smiling people sitting on the beach or holding fishing rods. Joe wondered if any of them were still alive.

  Carole pulled out her flashlight. "Let's see if we can find any candles."

  "There's three in that little brass candelabra back there," he told her.

  "Where?" She flashed her light around.

  He pointed. "On the dining room table."

  Carole shot him a strange look and moved toward the rear of the house where she retrieved a brass candelabra from the tiny dining room. She lit one of its three candles and set it on the small cocktail table situated before the picture window overlooking the beach and the ocea
n. Lacey pulled the curtains.

  "Let's sit," Carole said.

  "I can't sit," Joe told her. "I need to know what happened to me."

  "We're about to tell you all we know," Carole said.

  So he sat. Carole did most of the talking, with Lacey adding a comment or two. They told him how they'd found him, how his skin had started boiling in the morning sun, and how they'd buried him.

  Joe rose and started pacing. He'd held himself still as he'd listened to them, not wanting to believe their tale, yet unable to deny it, and now he had to move. He felt too big for the room. Or was it getting smaller, the walls closing in on him? He didn't know what to do with himself—stand, sit, move about—or where to put his hands ... his body felt different, not quite his own. He'd sensed this since pulling himself out of the sand. He'd washed himself off in the ocean, hoping it would make a difference, but it hadn't. He still felt like a visitor in his own skin.

  "So what am I then?" he said to no one on particular, perhaps to God Himself. "Some new sort of creature, some freakish hybrid?" He sure as hell felt like a freak.

  "That is what we need to find out," Carole said.

  He stared at her and she stared back, her eyes flat, unreadable. This was not the Carole he'd known, not the woman he'd been drawn to. He'd sensed a terrible change in her when he'd run into her outside the church, but now she seemed even further removed from her old self. Cold .. . and she'd been anything but cold in her other life. Had all the sweetness and warmth in her been burned away, or had she merely walled them off?

  Unable to hold her gaze any longer, he looked down at himself. He was still wrapped in the damp, sandy sheet. He wasn't cold but he didn't like looking like something that had washed up from the sea.

  "I'm going to see if I can find some clothes."

  Anything to escape Carole's imprisoning stare. She made him feel like a specimen in a dissection tray.

  He turned into the short hallway that was little more than an alcove that divided the bungalow's two bedrooms. A pang shot through his abdomen and he realized he was hungry. Clothes first, then food.