In Extremis
by
Jerry W. McKinney
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Published by:
In Extremis
Copyright © 2011 by Jerry W. McKinney
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Mass would be cancelled tonight again for the public.
Sister Claire lifted her head from a silent prayer, carefully crossing her chest for the Trinity. The priest lay tied to his bed straining against his bonds. The frame groaned as he gnashed his teeth grunting in the endeavor. She had performed his last rites the night before and in good judgment restrained his body. The abbess had seen the dead rise before. She would watch over him and pray for the Father’s soul. He was a man of God and she would not defile his body.
With tearful eyes she reached out to his ceremonial robes. They were hanging neatly on a large brass hook protruding from the wall. The wool garment was a deep red with an ornate cloth necklace that lay down the front of the robe. She gripped tightly the cross he had carried so often down the aisle of the sanctuary. The gold glistened in her hands. Claire suddenly felt ashamed as she noticed the greasy smears her fingers had made across its smooth surface. Wiping the cross within the folds of her habit, she felt relief as it cast her reflection back to her in golden miniature. Father Job gasped out a wheeze as he fought against the fabric sashes that Claire had used from his own wardrobe. She eyed her amateurish knots and prayed they would hold. The dead priest hissed.
The sanctuary teemed with the ambling dead. Some actually sat in pews and kneeled in prayer. They were in different states of dress from a lady in a power suit to a man in his heavily stained boxer shorts. His leg was caked with a trail of dried feces. The air was putrid with the sickening sweet smell of rotten flesh. Flies laid their maggots on all, without bias. The buzzing became a constant hum in the air. On occasion one of the dead would find its way down the steps to the church rectory, only to be thwarted by a wrought-iron gate that was closed across the narrow hallway. If Claire stayed silent they would lose interest in the empty corridor and lope back up into the main hall. But the flies remained, and buzzed.
Eight weeks ago, Father Job had taken her hand and looked into her eyes. Claire knew what he was going to ask and answered him without a word. The pair closed their eyes and prayed. This house of God would not turn its back on the people of the city when they needed religion; when they needed faith. She had moved a few of her things from her apartment across the street into one of the spare rooms of the rectory.
The spiritual needs of the congregation were attended to daily and the people found refuge in the great hall. The Father’s own private kitchen fed many as volunteers passed up and down the narrow corridors of the lower levels with pots of any type of food they could scavenge when the streets were lighter with the deceased. The volunteers had brought cases of canned meats and vegetables and stocked the small pantry.
Job would preach his sermons with a powerful voice that echoed throughout the church. All would stop and make their way to the sanctuary to hear and hope. Hope ... was all they had left.
The undead horde outside would pound upon the barred church doors when Father Job addressed the congregation. It was like they needed to be there. It had made Claire wonder if it was too late for salvation for the dead. As the sermons wound down, all would go back to their conversations and the dead left the church door and wandered elsewhere. She often believed it was a miracle how Job had such power over people. Claire had always had such admiration for that fact. Donations were not asked for any longer, but the people were eager to give their time to help in any way possible. Parties were formed to collect food and other necessities. The streets were full of the dead but they were slow and easily avoided in the daylight. Believing in strength in numbers, not weapons.
There were few families left, for the multitude of the survivors had been single folks. No longer could the laughter of children or murmurs of gossip be heard; there was just prayer. The rectory had a shower stall which each person used on rotation. Most scavenged clothes on their raids to change into, yet some tried to wash their clothes in the sinks of the restrooms. The scents of cologne and perfumes hung heavy in the air.
Claire had counted sixty-eight survivors. With her and Job it had been an even seventy at the peak of occupancy. A group of eight went out on a food raid in the third week and never returned. Greener pastures Claire hoped … and prayed.
The Father spent his days in his office writing his nightly sermons. For an hour of each day he sat in his confessional listening to a multitude of sins as each tried to cleanse their soul. The charismatic priest always made them feel more at ease. It was his gift. Claire had noticed a few of them actually smiling as they finished receiving absolution.
One young man would sit at the organ everyday and play beautiful music, some of which Claire herself had recognized. Most people would sit in the pews and watch and sometimes sing. But no one protested. He had played classical pieces with the emotions of a grandmaster and Top 40 with the same exuberance. Even Father Job had sat leaning up against a pew with his chin on his thumbs and watched in awe. There was never any thumps or bumps outside the doors while he played. For a short while, everything seemed normal. A young man named Theodore Grimes had brought that back to them for a short time with his music. He had almost become a celebrity in his own way; known to all and embraced as a friend. They missed him. Theodore was one of those that hadn’t returned from scavenging.
Once in the night amid the snoring of some and weeping of others, Claire sat in the front pew looking up above the altar. The full moon shone brightly through the stained-glass image of Mary. The light cast a colorful mosaic glow upon her uplifted face. She prayed for her waning strength. She felt someone sit next to her and opened her eyes to a young girl. They hugged each other tightly. Claire had never seen her before and she knew them all. Feeling the child’s embrace dissolving under her grip, Claire smiled and cried as all she was left with was a small, empty robe … and strength. She was smiling when Job woke her.
By the fourth week, all but the freshly dead were pretty easy to locate. The odor of their rotten flesh preceded their arrival. Closed up with many people, the church had a smell of its own. It was decided to open the main doors for a short time to freshen the air. A long driveway extended near the entrance, outlined with tall looming oak trees. It was quite picturesque and had been the location of many photo shoots. The sun filtered through the trees, leaving a mottling of light upon a path of small gravel. They had pulled a SUV across the gates to give themselves the false sense of security, but found out that act was useless the first time Father Job began his sermons.
The dead weren’t noticed until beginning a feast on an older man in the back pew. There had been four of them that time. A man dressed in a red flannel shirt looked up at the first scream. His lips were gone and a string of sinew of the victim dangled from exposed teeth. Claire realized she had known the man in life. The reanimated had killed three before Job ran outside and called to them. Dragging the remains of their victims, the dead followed Job’s voice, leaving a large smear of blood across the threshold. Job ran past them, slipping in the gore, and fell skidding on his chest into the vestibule. The doors were closed and barred quickly as the hall filled with weeping. Sister Claire ran to the priest. He was sitting cross-legged staring at the door. The front of his beautiful, white robes were now stained in a deep crimson. He was cradling the cross in his lap. Eyes fixed on the portal; lips moving in a silent prayer. Kneeling beside him, with a hand on his shoulder, Claire bowed her head and hoped.
The dead pounded on the doors. It didn’t matter how low Job tried to keep his voice while reading from the Lectionar
y. Daily, the numbers of the undead grew outside the closed entrance. The smell from outside was much more pungent than the stale air indoors. Leaving them open wouldn’t help anymore and was basically suicide. The scavenger groups had no problem passing through the few dead that stayed milling around the grounds, using walkie-talkies one group had returned with on a raid through al department store to keep in touch.
The walkie offered only static as the survivors gathered in a circle. They whispered among each other as time passed. There had been no communication from the most recent scavenger crew for the last 45 minutes. After two hours, the radio was turned off. Job gave a somber mass, looking into everyone’s eyes
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