The Reverend looked at Doc. "Holy ground?"
Doc nodded. "As long as it's holy to us, it will be holy to him. But they're outside now. It's when they come inside, and you're face to face with them. That's when our faith will be tested. And if his faith is stronger...."
"We'll die."
"Worse."
The Reverend looked at his watch. Dawn was just a little more than an hour away. He had just returned the watch to his pocket when the zombies began to make their move.
The door began to bulge, as if it were a great chest trying to take a deep breath.
Boards across the windows cracked, and faces of zombies took their places, peeking in through the bars. One zombie gnawed madly at a bar, his teeth powdering out of his mouth as he did. Others wrenched and pulled madly at the barrier.
And now big hands appeared—the Indian's hands, and though they smoked with contact, he jerked— with a nerve grating screech—the bars from the windows one by one.
"Reverend?" David said. He had moved up close.
"Yes," the Reverend said.
"Been nice knowing you."
"Don't count yourself out till the very last, boy. Trust in God and that shotgun. Just tuck it tight against your shoulder and aim for the head. Don't panic. Keep cool, and when you've got off your two shots, load again, backing if you have to. If you're being pushed too hard, forget the shotgun. Pull the revolver and shoot point blank. Got me?"
"Yes sir."
"David?"
"Yes sir?"
"I love you, boy."
"I love you too, Reverend."
"Jeb. You should at least call me Jeb."
"Jeb."
Zombies began to push their way through the windows all around the church.
The Reverend lifted his shotgun to his shoulder. "Hallowed be thy name, oh Lord—and shotgun do your stuff."
The Reverend blew the head off one of the zombies who was writhing through.
The decapitated creature slid backwards out the window and out of view.
And the siege began.
IV
Zombie heads began flying to pieces. The dead were pushing hard and fast, and at first the defenders kept up with them, dropping them as they came through, holding them back, but there were so many, and they were so constant, that soon the church was full of the things, and they were without fear, for they knew only hunger and the desires of the Indian.
The guns of the defenders roared, and soon the church was constipated with the acrid smell of gunsmoke, and the weapons were hot in the hands of the defenders, but they continued to reload and fire, and it seemed as if they might hold forever.
Bodies were piling in front of them like dog turds, and to their left and right, bodies draped the pews or clogged the narrow aisles between them.
But there was still enough time to reload and keep the zombies weeded faster than they could overwhelm the defenders, and the Reverend felt hope and even thought for a moment that things would be all right—that they would hold until daylight saved them.
Then the door burst open, splinters raining inwards, and zombies tumbled in like little pebbles before a great ocean wave, and the Reverend and Doc tried to hold the front, firing, reloading, but the wave was furious now, and they were surrounded and nerve-wracked, and each time they reached into their coat pockets for ammo there were fewer and fewer shells, and now it was necessary for them to toss their weapons aside (though the Reverend maintained his Navy in his sash) and grab the emergency weapons leaning against the pews.
Sometimes the smoke was so thick a zombie was not visible until his dead face and clicking teeth parted the smoke cloud and pushed near the face of one of the defenders.
Nearly all the killing now was done at point blank. Blood, and brains, and flesh fragments were thick on the floor. The Reverend and the others found their feet slipping in the muck, but still they held.
Now there came a pause in the attack and the gunfire died. Cool, wet wind blew in from the storm, and the smoke clouds roiled and turned clear.
The defenders saw now that the church was full of the dead. They were as thick as seed ticks on a cow's udder.
Outside, at the foot of the church steps, stood the Indian. The fragmented church doors flapped back and forth in the wind like ragged bat wings, giving the defenders a now-you-see-him-now-you-don't view of the man.
The Indian raised his hands to the storm, and little blue tendrils of lightning reached out of the sky and touched them. It was as if he were drawing power from the storm. He opened his mouth, and it grew wider and wider until it unhinged. The horrible, sharp teeth were visible and a sound like a death scream magnified came out of his throat and mixed with the howl of the storm, and the storm became more ferocious. The dead, as if charged by the Indian's storm charging, began to move en masse toward the defenders.
For a moment (too horrible a moment) the Reverend saw them as people: men, women, and children. There was Montclaire, Caleb, Cecil from over at the cafe, others he had seen about town but who he could not put a name to, and they began to cry out to the Reverend in shrill, ugly voices, cry out for him, a man of God to embrace them and save their souls.
"Pay them no mind," Doc shouted. "They are beyond saving unless the Indian dies."
On came the dead, their voices a litany of names and entreaties, spoken time and time again.
Calhoun turned to see two zombies coming down a row of church pews, pulling aside their truly dead companions, coming with a greater determination than ever before.
Calhoun quick-shot the one in back, missed its head, and blew away the right shoulder of the one in front. He cocked back the hammer on the double barrel and fired again, this time hitting the nearest creature in the head, sending the top of its skull flying off in a spray of brains and blood.
Calhoun broke open the shotgun and fumbled for two shells, trying not to look up at the approaching zombie and the others coming behind him.
His pockets were empty.
He looked up.
The zombie was before him, teeth bared.
Calhoun dropped the shotgun, tried to go for the revolver in his belt, but the foul breath of the zombie froze his hand for a flash-instant too long. The zombie's head dipped quickly, took a chunk out of Calhoun's face. Then, as Calhoun screamed, the zombie hooked both of his arms around the screaming preacher, as if they were lovers, and began biting plugs out of his face like a chicken pecking grit. Abby heard Calhoun scream. She wheeled around, saw the zombie holding Calhoun.
"Sorry," she said, and just as Calhoun turned to look at her, she shot him through the head. He flopped in the zombie's grasp.
The zombie turned his head toward her, as if to express his disappointment at the turn of events, but the only sound he managed, before Abby shot him through the right eye, was a grunt. The zombie and Calhoun melted to the floor.
The dead were swarming like bees. The smoke was getting thick again and it burned the defenders' eyes. The roar of the guns had nearly deafened them. They could hardly hold the weapons up, their arms were so tired. And still the dead came on. Pushing. Driving the defenders back toward the store room, causing them to lose ground so fast they no longer had time to reload at all. They were forced to snatch up new weapons from the pews (and there were few left), fire them empty, and exchange them for others.
"We can't hold," Abby said.
"Make for the storage room," Doc said.
David and Abby—as if by instinct—turned back to back with Doc and the Reverend, ready to defend the rear, and they walked forward, as their companions walked backwards, fighting all the while. Doc swung the barrel of his Winchester at a zombie who came leaping through the smoke, and the sound of it striking the dead man's skull was as loud as a shot. It was Nolan. His skull cracked open and a burst of brains, like puked oatmeal, spewed onto Doc.