F Paul Wilson - Novel 10

by Midnight Mass (v2. 1)

  Joe picked up the knife Lacey had used to cut her thumb, and idly ran his finger along the edge.

  "All myths have a spark of truth at their core. Look at it this way: doesn't the existence of transcendent Evil indicate that there must be a counterbalancing transcendent Good?"

  "You mean the undead? I'll grant you they're evil, but they hardly strike me as transcendent."

  "No?" He was staring at his finger. "I just cut myself. Take a look."

  He laid his hand, palm up, on the table. His palm hadn't been exposed to the sun so it was unscarred. Lacey saw a deep slice in the pad of his index finger, but no blood.

  "I don't seem to have any blood."

  Lacey gasped as he jabbed the point of the blade into the center of his palm.

  "Father Joe!" Carol cried.

  "Uh-uh," he said, removing the knife and waving it at her. "Just Joe, remember? I'm not a priest anymore."

  "Doesn't it hurt?" Lacey said.

  "Not really. I feel it; it's not comfortable, but I can't call it pain." He held up his hand. "Still no blood. And yet..." He placed the hand over his heart. "My heart is beating. Very slowly, but beating. Why? If there's no blood to pump, why have a beating heart?" He leaned back and shook his head. "Will I ever understand this?"

  "You have a better chance than anyone else," Lacey said. "Obviously something else is powering your cells, something working outside the laws of nature."

  "Which would make it supernatural. And since there's no question that it's evil..."

  "Are we back to that again?"

  Carole cleared her throat. "I hate to drag this conversation back to current reality, but there is something very important we need to discuss."

  Lacey looked at her and noticed that she seemed upset. Her hands were locked together before her on the table.

  "What is it, Carole?"

  She stared at her hands. "Blood."

  Lacey heard Joe groan. She glanced over and saw him lower his ruined face into his hands.

  "What blood?" Lacey said.

  Carole lifted her eyes. "The blood he needs to survive."

  "Oh, that." Lacey shrugged. "He can have some of mine whenever—"

  Joe slammed his hands on the table. "No!"

  "Why the hell not? You had—what?—three or four drops and that was all you needed. Big deal."

  "The amount is not the point! A drop, a gallon, what difference does it make? It's all the same! I'm acting like one of them—becoming a bloodsucking parasite!"

  "They take it by force. I'm giving this to you. You don't see the difference? It's my blood and I have a right to do whatever I want with it. If I were giving a pint at a time to the Red Cross to save lives you'd say what a fine and noble thing to do. But giving a few drops to my own uncle—a blood relative, don't you know—is wrong?"

  "Your giving isn't the issue. My taking—that's the problem."

  "What problem? Since I'm volunteering, there's no ethical problem. So if it's not ethics, what is it? Esthetics?"

  He stared at her. "What are you? A Jesuit?"

  "I'm your niece and I care about you and I want to get the sons of bitches who did this to you. With you as you are—part undead, part human—we might have a chance to do real damage. But if you're going to let a little squea-mishness get in the way—"

  "Lacey!" Carole said, giving her a warning look.

  Joe had closed his eyes and was shaking his head. "You have no idea what it's like... to have loathed these vermin and then be turned into one. To spend every minute of the rest of your existence knowing you are a lesser being than you wish to be, that everything you were has been erased and everything you hoped for or aspired to will be denied you." He opened his eyes and glared at her. "You ... don't... know .. . what... it's ... like."

  Lacey's heart went out to her uncle. Yes, she could imagine maybe only a tiny fraction of what he was suffering, but she couldn't let him surrender. He had to fight back. She had a feeling that what they decided here tonight could be of momentous importance, and it all hinged on him. That was why she had to push him.

  "I don't pretend to. But we can't turn back the clock. You've been dealt a lousy hand, Unk—an unimaginably lousy hand—but right now it's the only one you've got. And it may hold some hidden possibilities that we'll never be able to use if you fold and leave the game. I know it seems easy for me to sit here on this side of the table say it, but it's a simple truth: you have to accept what's happened and move on. Take it and turn it back on them. Use it to make them pay. Make them wish they'd never heard of Father Joe Cahill. Make them curse the day they ever messed with you. If all it takes is a few drops a day of my blood—which I'm more than willing to donate to the cause—then where's the downside? They tried to make you like them but something went wrong. They failed. You're not like them—you know it and Carole knows it and I know it—and a few drops of blood is not going to change that."

  Lacey leaned back, winded. She glanced at Carole who gave a small nod, just one.

  Joe seemed lost in thought. Finally he shook himself and said, "We'll see. That's all I can say now .. . we'll see." He looked out at the growing light filtering through the salt-stained picture window. "Let put this aside and go out and watch the sunrise."

  JOE . . .

  Lacey's words tumbled back and forth through Joe's brain as he followed the two women down to the churning water.

  Accept it and move on . . .

  Easy for her to say. But that didn't mean she was wrong.

  Yet... how do you accept being subhuman?

  Turn it against them and make them pay . . .

  That he could understand. Take this aching emptiness inside and fill the void with rage, pack it in like gunpowder in a cartridge, then take aim at those responsible for what he'd become.

  Carole had called him a weapon. That was what he would become.

  He joined Carole and Lacey at the waterline and stood between them. Gently he placed a hand on each of their shoulders, Carole flinching but not pulling away, Lacey leaning against him. He realized he loved them both, but in very different ways.

  He noticed Carole checking her watch as the sun hauled its red bulk above the rumpled gray hide of the Atlantic. Immediately he sensed its heat, just as he'd felt the fever of the setting rays last night.

  Lacey turned to him. "You're okay?"

  "I can tell I'm more sensitive than I ever was in life, but it's nothing I can't tolerate."

  .. . than I ever was in life. . .

  How indescribably strange to be able to say that.

  Lacey smiled. "Maybe we'll just have find you some SPF 2000 sun screen."

  "I'm just grateful I won't have to live like them—hiding in the day and crawling out only at night. I don't know if I could take that."

  They stood for a while with the waves lapping at their feet and watched the birds and the surf and spoke of how the undead plague hadn't affected the beauty of the world or touched its wildlife. Humanity had borne the full brunt of the assault.

  Lacey said, "Some of my radical ecology friends, if they're still alive, probably think it's all for the good—the fall of civilization, I mean."

  Carole shook her head. "How could they possibly—"

  "The end of industry, of pollution, overcrowding, all that stuff they hate. No more forests being raped, no more fluorocarbons depleting the ozone, all their causes made moot because the undead don't seem to be into technology."

  "Only the technology that helps them keep their 'cattle' alive. Franco went on to me about how once you've turned, your existence becomes entirely focused on blood. All the other drives—for money, knowledge, achievement, even sex—are gone. The undead are immune to cold and see in the dark so they have no interest in keeping the electricity running except as far as their cattle need it to survive. Even so, I'll bet the power will be off more than it's on. Over time I can see the level of technology declining and the world devolving into some sort of pre-industrial-level feudal order. They do
n't seem to need technology. Or perhaps have no mind for it is better way of putting it. They already call their human helpers 'serfs.' That will be the social order: undead lords, serfs, and herds of human catde."

  "If only the Internet were still around," Lacey said. "We could communicate, organize—"

  "The Internet is history, I'm afraid—with no reliable power source, few working phone lines, and a decimated server network, it's a goner."

  Joe felt his skin beginning to tingle, as if the sand were blowing, but there was no breeze. He glanced at the sun and thought it looked considerably brighter than a few moments ago. Hotter too.

  "Is anyone else hot?"

  Carole and Lacey shook their heads.

  "No, not really," Carole said.

  Lacey spread her arms and lifted her face to the glow. "It feels good."

  "Does anyone mind if we go back inside? It's a little too warm for me."

  He turned and started back up the dunes; Carole and Lacey came along, one on either side. As they neared the house, Joe felt his exposed sunward skin—the back of his neck, his arms, his calves—begin to heat up, as much from within as without.

  With the growing discomfort pushing him toward the house, he quickened his pace. Or tried to. He felt unsteady. His legs wobbled like an old man's—a drunken eighty-year-old's. Still he somehow managed to pull ahead of Carole and Lacey.

  "Unk!" Lacey cried from behind him. "Unk, your skin!"

  He looked down and saw that his skin was starting to smoke wherever the direct rays of the sun touched it. He broke into a lurching run.

  The sun! Cooking him! Had to escape it, find shade, shelter, darkness! The very air seemed to catch fire around him, glowing with white-hot intensity. A heartbeat ago the house had been less than a hundred feet ahead, now he couldn't find it through the blaze of light. And even if he could he doubted he'd reach it on these leaden legs. His knees weakened further and he stumbled, but felt a pair of hands grab his left arm before he could fall.

  "We've got to get him inside!" Carole cried close to his ear.

  Other hands grabbed his right arm.

  Lacey. Carole. They had him and were supporting him, tugging him forward on his rubbery legs.

  They burst through the broken door and into the shady interior.

  But even inside the sunlight pursued him through the doorway and sizzled through the big picture window, chased him like a fiery predator, reaching for him with flaming talons of light. He shook off Carole and Lacey and stumbled headlong on into the deeper, shadier areas of the front room.

  Not enough. The reflected sunlight, from the glass table top, even the walls and floors, felt toxic, like scalding acid.

  More—he needed more protection. No basements in these bungalows. He spotted the alcove to his right and veered for it. The bedrooms. He barreled into the one toward the rear. It faced north and west—the darkest place in the house at the moment. His legs finally gave way and he collapsed in a heap next to the bed. Thank God the curtains were closed. He grabbed the flowered yellow bedspread and rolled it around him, cocooning himself with the stench of his own seared flesh.

  The touch of the fabric against his scorched skin sent waves of agony to his bones, but stronger than the pain was the numbing lethargy seeping through his limbs and mind. Only fear kept him from succumbing, fear that his tolerance to sunlight had been only temporary and now was deserting him. Was it a sign that whatever remnants of humanity that had lingered with him last night were ebbing away, leaving him more like the creatures he loathed? He prayed not.

  He prayed especially that he wasn't turning feral. He saw the creature's ravaged face now, the one Franco had called Devlin, remembered its mad eyes, devoid of reason, compassion, or any feeling even remotely human, heard its bestial screams as it clawed at the door, remembered its talons sinking into his shoulders, felt its hot foul breath on his throat just before its fangs tore into his flesh.

  And worse, he remembered Franco's parting words.

  . . . when you look at Devlin you are seeing your future . . . he didn't retain enough intelligence to distinguish between friend and foe . . . sol can't even use him as a guard dog . . . in less than two weeks you'll be just like Devlin, only a little less intelligent, a little more bestial. . .

  Was he losing his mind along with his tolerance for sunlight? Was his descent incomplete, still in progress? Was he still changing, devolving further into an even lower life form? Was this another step down the road toward Devlin's fate?

  He heard Carole's voice from somewhere in the room.

  "Joseph! Joseph, are you all right?"

  He could only nod under the bedspread, and even that was an effort. He dared not speak, even if his numb lips would permit it.

  "The mattress!" Carole's voice again. "Help me with it."

  "Help—help you what?" Lacey said.

  "We've got to tilt it up against the window. That way when the sun comes around behind the house it won't shine into the room."

  Carole . .. wonderful Carole . .. always thinking ...

  The lethargy deepened, tugging Joe toward sleep, or something like it... the deathlike undead daysleep. He tried to fight it. He'd thought, he'd hoped that he'd escaped falling victim to the undead vermin hours, hiding from the sun, slithering around at night. Now that hope was lost. He was more like them than he'd thought or wished or prayed against, and was falling closer and closer to their foul state with every passing hour.

  The nightmarish thought chased him into oblivion.

  CAROLE . . .

  "We almost lost him."

  The two of them slumped on the front room's rattan furniture, Carole in a chair, Lacey half stretched out on the sofa.

  "I know," Carole replied.

  Oh, how she knew. That had been too close. Her insides were still shaking. The sight of his skin starting to smoke and cook as he was walking . .. caused by this same sunlight bathing her now in its warmth .. . she'd never forget it. Worse, the reek of his burnt flesh still hung in the air.

  Lacey kicked at the cocktail table, almost knocking its glass top onto the floor. "I don't know what to say, I don't know what to think, I don't know what to do! This is just so awful. It's a nightmare!"

  Carole looked down at her trembling hands. How things had changed. Early last evening she'd been ready to drive a stake through his heart. And now she wanted him to survive.

  For as the three of them had talked during the dark hours, Carole had begun to sense a plan. Not her plan . . . the Lord's. She thought about all the twists and turns of the past thirty-six hours.

  After leaving her partially demolished house, why had she turned left instead of right? If she'd turned the other way she never would have run into Lacey. It was because of Lacey that she'd returned to the church and the convent. And it was there that she'd been staring out her convent room window just at the instant a winged vampire had flown away from the rectory. There were so many other things she could have been doing at that moment, yet she'd been standing at the window, watching the night. She'd been holding Father—no, he doesn't want to be called "Father" anymore ... a hard habit to break—Joseph's cross at that moment. Had that inspired her?

  Imagine if she hadn't seen the departing vampire. She wouldn't have searched the rectory basement and found Joseph's body. But what had inspired her to bring him to the beach? At the time she'd thought it a good place because it was deserted and they could dig more quickly in the sand.

  But had Divine Inspiration been at work? For if they'd tried to bury Joseph somewhere besides the beach, he wouldn't have been exposed to the first rays of the morning sun. That brief exposure seemed to have partially undone the vampires' work. The purifying rays had healed his wound and burned away some of the undead taint. Not all—a few more minutes in the light surely would have burned away too much, leaving him truly dead—but enough so that he remained Joseph instead of something foul and evil. What had inspired Carole to pull him into the shadows of his grave just i
n time to save him?

  Yes... save him. For what?

  The only answer that made any sense was that Joseph had been chosen to become the mailed fist of God, a divine weapon against the undead.

  But the poor man was going through the tortures of the damned to become that weapon. Pain, disfigurement, self-loathing, the debasement of blood hunger—why did it have to be this way? Why did he have to suffer so? Were these trials a fire through which he had to pass to be tempered as a weapon?

  The thought of fire brought her back to the sun . . .

  "How long was Joseph in the sunlight this morning?"

  Lacey shrugged. "I don't know. An hour maybe? It's hard to say. Certainly no more than that."

  "An hour," Carole mused. "Not much. That's an hour longer than any true vampire can stand, but maybe it's enough."

  "Enough for what?"

  "For the war the three of us are going to wage."

  She placed her hand over the spot where Joseph had touched her shoulder at sunrise. More than an hour ago but her skin still tingled, as if his hand were still resting there. That single touch, that gentle weight of his hand on her shoulder, meant more to her than his embrace outside the church when they'd been reunited a few nights ago.

  Despite what had been done to him and how the sun had disfigured him, despite what he had become, she sensed the desperate struggle within him against the undead taint in his flesh, in his mind, in his being, and she admired him more than ever for that refusal to be dominated. He'd win, she knew he would win.

  God help her, she still loved him. More than ever.

  - 9 -

  JOE . . .

  He awoke in a snap. No lingering drowsiness, no stretching or yawning. Asleep, then awake, with tentacles of a dream still clinging to him.

  The dream . . . more like a nightmare—or in this case, a daymare. He remembered clinging to the lip of a rocky precipice, his feet dangling and kicking over an infinity of swirling darkness. But not empty darkness. This seemed alive, and it had been beckoning him, calling to him all day . . .