“He’s not one of them, either.”
So he’s just your typical sociopath, Kate thought…and was astounded to find that the thought nearly sent her into hysterical laughter. It was all she could do to keep from braying like a donkey.
“There’s…maybe twelve…thirteen…thirteen people just standing out there in the snow,” Chris said, still looking out the window. He sounded completely dazed by the situation. “Maybe they’ve been sent here to help.”
“No,” Kate said. “Everyone in this town is fucked.”
Meg trembled at the word. Kate quickly withdrew her hand from the girl’s shoulder. Careful of her footing, she negotiated around Meg and climbed toward the altar, working mostly by feel and from memory. When she reached it, she ran her hands gingerly over the top of the altar, her fingers trailing over the various implements until she located the flashlight. She slipped the flashlight into the rear waistband of her pants. Then her fingers closed around the plastic bag full of ammo. She winced at the sound the plastic made crinkling between her fingers, certain Chris would spin around and start firing shots at her. But he was too occupied with their new visitors out in the snow to pay her any further mind. Kate slid the bag off the altar and set it down beneath it—someplace she knew she could get to in a hurry, if need be.
Down on the floor, Todd moaned. Much louder this time.
“They’re going to hear him,” Meg cautioned.
Chris hustled back across the narthex, his multiple robes rustling. “I should shut him up for good.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Kate said, sliding back into place beside Meg. “They already know we’re here. What we need to do is wake him up so we can all figure out what to do next.”
“What do you mean?” Chris demanded. “What do you mean, ‘what to do next’? I don’t need him to tell me what to do.”
“That isn’t what I meant. I just think that with the four of us trying to figure this out, we might stand a better—”
“I don’t need him for anything.”
“All right.” She knew better than to keep up the argument.
“They won’t get in here. This is sacred ground.”
“I don’t think that matters to them.”
“You don’t think God matters?” Chris boomed. Behind him, more hands appeared on the stained-glass windows. “You don’t think the Almighty is powerful enough to keep evil at bay? Because that’s what they are—they’re pure evil! Sent to punish us all for our sins! Sent straight from hell to do the devil’s bidding!”
If I rush him in the dark, surprise him and get him off balance, I could probably wrestle that gun away from him, she thought. He’s a chunky son of a bitch but as long as I kept his weight off me, I think I’d actually be able to do it.
She started sweating all over again.
“Kate?” It was Todd’s groggy voice filtering through the shadows. “You there, Kate?”
“I’m right here,” she called to him.
“Stop it,” Chris said. But there was little strength left in his voice now.
“What’s…what’s going on?” Todd continued.
“We’re at Judgment Day,” Chris said. “This is the End of Times.”
“I can’t move,” Todd said. His voice sounded more lucid now. “I’m tied up to something. Kate?”
Like starfish clinging to the underside of a boat, countless hands now papered the windows.
“They’re going to get in, Chris,” Kate said, her voice level. She desperately wanted to sound logical and calm at that moment. She also deliberately spoke Chris’s name in hopes that whatever memory had been temporarily knocked from Todd would return to him the moment he heard the boy’s name. “We need to untie Todd so he can help us keep them away.”
“I told you,” Chris retorted. “They won’t be able to get in here.”
“I’m scared,” Meg said, startling Kate, who had forgotten that the girl had been standing right next to her.
“Don’t listen to these people,” Chris told Meg. “They’re on the side of evil. That’s clear to me now. They want to coax us into battle when there is no need. God will protect us, Meg. Just like Mom and Dad have always taught us—God will see us through this.”
Sensing her opportunity, Kate sprang down off the pulpit and landed on Chris’s chest in a clumsy but effective tackle. They both dropped to the floor, Kate on top of the boy, and she heard the distinct sound of the gun clattering to the tiles. Shit! Nonetheless, she straddled him and sought out his neck with her hands. He sent his big fists swinging, connecting over and over again with the sides of her head. Sparks flew beneath her eyelids. One punch rushed up to meet her nose and tears exploded from her eyes. Beneath her, Chris bucked like a hog being tied. He shouted to his sister in throaty lamentations.
“Stop it!” Meg screamed from the pulpit. “Stop it! You’re hurting him!”
Kate’s fingers closed around the boy’s throat. Chris’s spittle flecked her face as his thick-fingered hands attempted to loosen her grasp on him.
Distantly, Kate was aware of a looming presence…and she was reminded in that instant of being a young girl out on the softball field, and how cool it had been when airliners would pass overhead, their shadows like the shadows of a giant bird bulleting across the outfield…
Kate let go of Chris’s throat and rolled off him just in time to glimpse a dark, wavering shape floating just beyond the panels of stained glass in the ceiling high above the altar. Then, a second later, something came crashing through the windows, sending a shower of jagged spearheads raining down on them all. Kate blocked her eyes with one arm but still managed to see a figure, undeniably human, fall through the shattered windows and plummet like a sack of potatoes to the altar. The figure struck the altar with a bone-crunching din and nearly buckled in half at the force of the landing. A cone of moonlight poured in through the ceiling, spotlighting the altar and the twisted, mangled corpse that lay folded over the top of it.
Meg screamed.
Kate quickly scrambled to her hands and knees and pitched forward, pawing for the handgun. Its blue steel practically glowed in the moonlight. Gripping the gun by the hilt, Kate then swung around and hurried over to Todd, who sat half-cocked against a pew, staring up with stark disbelief at the wound in the ceiling.
“Where are you tied?” she said, nearly knocking her forehead against his ear as she slid into him.
“My hands.” But he wasn’t looking at her; he was staring numbly at the ceiling. His face was a network of small cuts and bleeding lacerations from the shower of glass.
Kate reached behind him and found that Chris had tied Todd’s hands around the front leg of the pew. Quickly she felt out the knot and managed to dig her fingernails between the sections of rope, prying them apart.
“Oh, fuck,” Todd said, his voice sounding like it was sticking to his throat. “That’s Nan.”
Kate paused in her work just long enough to look back up at the altar. Had Todd not said anything she would have never recognized poor Nan Wilkinson, owing to the stage of her mutilation, but once she locked eyes on Nan’s face—the frozen grimace of fear and pain, the bulging, milked-over eyes, the skin pulled taut like the flesh of a balloon—she couldn’t not see her.
“Oh, Christ,” Kate whispered breathlessly into Todd’s ear. “Oh…Christ, Todd…”