"You're sure?" Joe said.
She grimaced. "Of my arm? Yeah. But I think that's about the only thing I'm sure of anymore." She nodded to the Pepsi can lying on its side atop the altar. "What was in there?"
Joe picked up the empty can and looked into it. "You know, you go through the seminary, through your ordination, through countless Masses believing in the Transubtantiation. But after all these years... to actually know ..."
Zev saw him rub his finger along the inside of the can and taste it. He grimaced.
"What's wrong?" Zev asked.
"Still tastes like sour barbarone . . . with a hint of Pepsi."
"Doesn't matter what it tastes like," Carl said. "As far as those bloodsuckers are concerned, it's the real thing."
"No," said the priest with a small smile. "If I remember correctly, that was Coke."
And then they started laughing. Zev only vaguely remembered the old commercials, but found himself roaring along with the other three. It was more a release of tension than anything else. His sides hurt. He had to lean against the altar to support himself.
"It wasn't that funny," Joe said.
Lacey smiled. "No argument there."
"C'mon," Carl said, heading for the sanctuary. "Let's see if we can get this crucifix back together."
Zev helped Lacey slip her arm back into her jacket.
"You rest that arm," he told her.
She winced again and cradled it with her left. "I don't think I have much choice."
Zev jumped at the sound of the church doors banging open. He turned and saw the Vichy charging back in, two of them carrying a heavy fire blanket.
This time Father Joe did not stand by passively as they invaded his church. Zev watched as he stepped around the altar and met them head on.
He was great and terrible as he confronted them. His giant stature and raised fists cowed them for a few heartbeats. But then they must have remembered that they outnumbered him twelve to one and charged. He swung a massive fist and caught the lead Vichy square on the jaw. The blow lifted him off his feet and he landed against another. Both went down.
Zev dropped to one knee and reached for the shotgun. He would use it this time, he would shoot these vermin, he swore it!
But then someone landed on his back and drove him to the floor. As he tried to get up he saw Carl pulling Lacey away toward the side door, and he saw Father Joe, surrounded, swinging his fists, laying the Vichy out every time he connected. But there were too many. As the priest went down under the press of them, a heavy boot thudded against the side of Zev's head. He sank into darkness.
JOE . . .
... a throbbing in his head, stinging pain in his cheek, and a voice, sibilant yet harsh . . .
"... now, Joseph. Come on. Wake up. I don't want you to miss this!"
Palmeri's sallow features swam into view, hovering over him, grinning like a skull. Joe tried to move but found his wrists and arms tied. His right hand throbbed, felt twice its normal size; he must have broken it on a Vichy jaw. He lifted his head and saw that he was tied spread-eagle on the altar, and that the altar had been covered with the fire blanket.
"Melodramatic, I admit," Palmeri said, "but fitting, don't you think? I mean, you and I used to sacrifice our god symbolically here every weekday and multiple times on Sundays, so why shouldn't this serve as your sacrificial altar?"
Joe shut his eyes against a wave of nausea. This couldn't be happening.
"Thought you'd won, didn't you?"
Joe refused to answer him, but that didn't shut him up.
"And even if you'd chased me out of here for good, what would you have accomplished? Most of the world is already ours, Joseph, and the rest soon will be. Feeders and cattle—that is the hierarchy. We are the feeders. And tonight you'll join us. But he won't. Voila'!"
Palmeri stepped aside and made a flourish toward the balcony.
Joe searched the dim, candlelit space of the nave, not sure what he was supposed to see. Then he picked out Zev's form and groaned. The old man's feet were lashed to the balcony rail; he hung upside down, his reddened face and frightened eyes turned his way. Joe fell back and strained at the ropes but they wouldn't budge.
"Let him go!"
"What? And let all that good rich Jewish blood go to waste? Why, these people are the Chosen of God! They're a delicacy!"
"Bastard!"
If he could just get his hands on Palmeri, just for a minute.
"Tut-tut, Joseph. Not in the house of the Lord. The Jew should have been smart and run away like Carl and your girlfriend."
Carl got away? With Lacey? Thank God.
We're even, Carl.
"But don't worry about your rabbi. None of us will lay a fang on him. He hasn't earned the right to join us. We'll use the razor to bleed him. And when he's dead, he'll be dead for keeps. But not you, Joseph. Oh no, not you." His smile broadened. "You're mine."
Joe wanted to spit in Palmeri's face—not so much as an act of defiance as to hide the waves of terror surging through him—but there was no saliva to be had in his parched mouth. The thought of being undead made him weak. To spend eternity like... he looked at the rapt faces of Palmeri's fellow undead as they clustered under Zev's suspended form . . . like them.
He wouldn't be like them! He wouldn't allow it!
But what if there was no choice? What if becoming undead toppled a lifetime's worth of moral constraints, cut all the tethers on his human hungers, negated all his mortal concepts of how a life should be lived? Honor, justice, integrity, truth, decency, fairness, love—what if they became meaningless words instead of the footings for his life?
A thought struck him.
"A deal, Alberto," he said.
"You're hardly in a bargaining position."
"I'm not? Answer me this: Do the undead ever kill each other? I mean, has one of them ever driven a stake through another's heart?"
"No. Of course not."
"Are you sure? You'd better be sure before you go through with your plans tonight. Because if I'm forced to become one of you, I'll be crossing over with just one thought in mind: to find you. And when I do I won't stake your heart, I'll stake your arms and legs to the pilings of the Point Pleasant boardwalk where you can watch the sun rise and feel it slowly crisp your skin to charcoal."
Palmeri's smile wavered. "Impossible. You'll be different. You'll want to thank me. You'll wonder why you ever resisted."
"Better be sure of that, Alberto ... for your sake. Because I'll have all eternity to track you down. And I'll find you, Alberto. I swear it on my own grave. Think on that."
"Do you think an empty threat is going to cow me?"
"We'll find out how empty it is, won't we? But here's the deaclass="underline" let Zev go and I'll let you be."
"You care that much for an old Jew?"
"He's something you never knew in life, and never will know: he's a friend."
And he gave me back my soul.
Palmeri leaned closer. His foul, nauseating breath wafted against Joe's face.
"A friend? How can you be friends with a dead man?" With that he straightened and turned toward the balcony. "Do him! Now!"
As Joe shouted out frantic pleas and protests, one of the undead climbed up the rubble toward Zev. Zev did not struggle. Joe saw him close his eyes, waiting. As the vampire reached out with the straight razor, Joe bit back a sob of grief and rage and helplessness. He was about to squeeze his own eyes shut when he saw a flame arc through the air from one of the windows. It struck the floor with a crash of glass and a wooomp! of exploding flame.
Joe had only heard of such things, but he immediately realized that he had just seen his first Molotov cocktail in action. The splattering gasoline splashed a nearby vampire who began running in circles, screaming as it beat at its flaming clothes. But its cries were drowned by the roar of other voices, a hundred or more. Joe looked around and saw people—men, women, teenagers— climbing in the windows, charging through the front doors. The women held crosses on high while the men wielded long wooden pikes—broom, rake, and shovel handles whittled to sharp points. Joe recognized most of the faces from the Sunday Masses he had said here for years.