A Soft Barren Aftershock

by F. Paul Wilson

  Zev turned, and smiled when he saw him.

  “Now you look like the old Father Joe we all used to know.”

  Joe gave him a little bow and proceeded toward the altar.

  All right: He had everything he needed. He had the Missal they’d found in among the pew debris earlier today. He had the wine; Carl had brought back about four ounces of sour red abalone. He’d found a smudged surplice and a dusty cassock on the floor of one of the closets in the sacristy, and he wore them now. No hosts, though. A crust of bread left over from breakfast would have to do. No chalice, either. If he’d known he was going to be saying Mass he’d have come prepared. As a last resort he’d used the can opener in the rectory to remove the top from one of the Pepsi cans from lunch. Quite a stretch from the gold chalice he’d used since his ordination, but probably more in line with what Jesus had used at that first Mass—the Last Supper.

  He was uncomfortable with the idea of weapons in St. Anthony’s but he saw no alternative. He and Zev knew nothing about guns, and Carl knew little more; they’d probably do more damage to themselves than to the Vichy if they tried to use them. But maybe the sight of them would make the Vichy hesitate, slow them down. All he needed was a little time here, enough to get to the consecration.

  This is going to be the most unusual Mass in history, he thought.

  But he was going to get through it if it killed him. And that was a real possibility. This might well be his last Mass. But he wasn’t afraid. He was too excited to be afraid. He’d had a slug of the Scotch—just enough to ward off the DTs—but it had done nothing to quell the buzz of the adrenalin humming along every nerve in his body.

  He spread everything out on the white tablecloth he’d taken from the rectory and used to cover the filthy altar. He looked at Carl.

  “Ready?”

  Carl nodded and stuck the .38 caliber pistol he’d been examining in his belt.

  “Been a while, Fadda. We did it in Latin when I was a kid but I tink I can swing it.”

  “Just do your best and don’t worry about any mistakes.”

  Some Mass. A defiled altar, a crust for a host, a Pepsi can for a chalice, a fifty-year-old, pistol-packing altar boy, and a congregation consisting of a lone, shotgun-carrying Orthodox Jew.

  Joe looked heavenward. You do understand, don’t you, Lord, that this was arranged on short notice?

  Time to begin.

  He read the Gospel but dispensed with the homily. He tried to remember the Mass as it used to be said, to fit in better with Carl’s outdated responses. As he was starting the Offertory the front doors flew open and a group of men entered—ten of them, all with crescent moons dangling from their ears. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Zev move away from the window toward the altar, pointing his shotgun at them.

  As soon as they entered the nave and got past the broken pews, the Vichy fanned out toward the sides. They began pulling down the Stations of the Cross, ripping Carl’s makeshift crosses from the walls and tearing them apart. Carl looked up at Joe from where he knelt, his eyes questioning, his hand reaching for the pistol in his belt.

  Joe shook his head and kept up with the Offertory.

  When all the little crosses were down, the Vichy swarmed behind the altar. Joe chanced a quick glance over his shoulder and saw them begin their attack on the newly repaired crucifix.

  “Zev!” Carl said in a low voice, cocking his head toward the Vichy. “Stop ‘em!”

  Zev worked the pump on the shotgun. The sound echoed through the church. Joe heard the activity behind him come to a sudden halt. He braced himself for the shot . . .

  But it never came.

  He looked at Zev. The old man met his gaze and sadly shook his head. He couldn’t do it. To the accompaniment of the sound of renewed activity and derisive laughter behind him, Joe gave Zev a tiny nod of reassurance and understanding, then hurried the Mass toward the Consecration.

  As he held the crust of bread aloft, he started at the sound of the life-sized crucifix crashing to the floor, cringed as he heard the freshly buttressed arms and crosspiece being torn away again.

  As he held the wine aloft in the Pepsi can, the swaggering, grinning Vichy surrounded the altar and brazenly tore the cross from around his neck. Zev and Carl put up a struggle to keep theirs but were overpowered.

  And then Joe’s skin began to crawl as a new group entered the nave. There had to be at least forty of them, all of them vampires.

  And Palmeri was leading them.

  X

  Palmeri hid his hesitancy as he approached the altar. The crucifix and its intolerable whiteness were gone, yet something was not right. Something repellent here, something that urged him to flee. What?

  Perhaps it was just the residual effect of the crucifix and all the crosses they had used to line the walls. That had to be it. The unsettling aftertaste would fade as the night wore on. Oh, yes. His night-brothers and sisters from the nest would see to that.

  He focused his attention on the man behind the altar and laughed when he realized what he held in his hands.

  “Pepsi, Joseph? You’re trying to consecrate Pepsi?” He turned to his nest siblings. “Do you see this, my brothers and sisters? Is this the man we are to fear? And look who he has with him! An old Jew and a parish hanger-on!”

  He heard their hissing laughter as they fanned out around him, sweeping toward the altar in a wide phalanx. The Jew and Carl—he recognized Carl and wondered how he’d avoided capture for so long—retreated to the other side of the altar where they flanked Joseph. And Joseph . . . Joseph’s handsome Irish face so pale and drawn, his mouth drawn into such a tight, grim line. He looked scared to death. And well he should be.

  Palmeri put down his rage at Joseph’s audacity. He was glad he had returned. He’d always hated the young priest for his easy manner with people, for the way the parishioners had flocked to him with their problems despite the fact that he had nowhere near the experience of their older and wiser pastor. But that was over now. That world was gone, replaced by a nightworld—Palmeri’s world. And no one would be flocking to Father Joe for anything when Palmeri was through with him. “Father Joe”—how he’d hated it when the parishioners had started calling him that. Well, their Father Joe would provide superior entertainment tonight. This was going to be fun.

  “Joseph, Joseph, Joseph,” he said as he stopped and smiled at the young priest across the altar. “This futile gesture is so typical of your arrogance.”

  But Joseph only stared back at him, his expression a mixture of defiance and repugnance. And that only fueled Palmeri’s rage.

  “Do I repel you, Joseph? Does my new form offend your precious shanty-Irish sensibilities? Does my undeath disgust you?”

  “You managed to do all that while you were still alive, Alberto.”

  Palmeri allowed himself to smile. Joseph probably thought he was putting on a brave front, but the tremor in his voice betrayed his fear.

  “Always good with the quick retort, weren’t you, Joseph. Always thinking you were better than me, always putting yourself above me.”

  “Not much of a climb where a child molester is concerned.”

  Palmeri’s anger mounted.

  “So superior. So self-righteous. What about your appetites, Joseph? The secret ones? What are they? Do you always hold them in check? Are you so far above the rest of us that you never give in to an improper impulse? I’ll bet you think that even if we made you one of us you could resist the blood hunger.”

  He saw by the startled look in Joseph’s face that he had struck a nerve. He stepped closer, almost touching the altar.

  “You do, don’t you? You really think you could resist it! Well, we shall see about that, Joseph. By dawn you’ll be drained—we’ll each take a turn at you—and when the sun rises you’ll have to hide from its light. When the night comes you’ll be one of us. And then all the rules will be off. The night will be yours. You’ll be able to do anything and everything you’ve ever wanted. But t
he blood hunger will be on you too. You won’t be sipping your god’s blood, as you’ve done so often, but human blood. You’ll thirst for hot, human blood, Joseph. And you’ll have to sate that thirst. There’ll be no choice. And I want to be there when you do, Joseph. I want to be there to laugh in your face as you suck up the crimson nectar, and keep on laughing every night as the red hunger lures you into infinity.”

  And it would happen. Palmeri knew it as sure as he felt his own thirst. He hungered for the moment when he could rub dear Joseph’s face in the muck of his own despair.

  “I was about to finish saying Mass,” Joseph said coolly. “Do you mind if I finish?”

  Palmeri couldn’t help laughing this time.

  “Did you really think this charade would work? Did you really think you could celebrate Mass on this?”

  He reached out and snatched the tablecloth from the altar, sending the Missal and the piece of bread to the floor and exposing the fouled surface of the marble.

  “Did you really think you could affect the Tran-substantiation here? Do you really believe any of that garbage? That the bread and wine actually take on the substance of”—he tried to say the name but it wouldn’t form—“the Son’s body and blood?”

  One of the nest brothers, Frederick, stepped forward and leaned over the altar, smiling.

  “Transubstantiation?” he said in his most unctuous voice, pulling the Pepsi can from Joseph’s hands. “Does that mean that this is the blood of the Son?”

  A whisper of warning slithered through Palmeri’s mind. Something about the can, something about the way he found it difficult to bring its outline into focus . . .

  “Brother Frederick, maybe you should—”

  Frederick’s grin broadened. “I’ve always wanted to sup on the blood of a deity.”

  The nest members hissed their laughter as Frederick raised the can and drank.

  Palmeri was jolted by the explosion of intolerable brightness that burst from Frederick’s mouth. The inside of his skull glowed beneath his scalp and shafts of pure white light shot from his ears, nose, eyes—every orifice in his head. The glow spread as it flowed down through his throat and chest and into his abdominal cavity, silhouetting his ribs before melting through his skin. Frederick was liquefying where he stood, his flesh steaming, softening, running like glowing molten lava.

  No! This couldn’t be happening! Not now when he had Joseph in his grasp!

  Then the can fell from Frederick’s dissolving fingers and landed on the altar top. Its contents splashed across the fouled surface, releasing another detonation of brilliance, this one more devastating than the first. The glare spread rapidly, extending over the upper surface and running down the sides, moving like a living thing, engulfing the entire altar, making it glow like a corpuscle of fire torn from the heart of the sun itself.

  And with the light came blast-furnace heat that drove Palmeri back, back, back until he had to turn and follow the rest of his nest in a mad, headlong rush from St. Anthony’s into the cool, welcoming safety of the outer darkness.

  XI

  As the vampires fled into the night, their Vichy toadies behind them, Zev stared in horrid fascination at the puddle of putrescence that was all that remained of the vampire Palmeri had called Frederick. He glanced at Carl and caught the look of dazed wonderment on his face. Zev touched the top of the altar—clean, shiny, every whorl of the marble surface clearly visible.

  There was fearsome power here. Incalculable power. But instead of elating him, the realization only depressed him. How long had this been going on? Did it happen at every Mass? Why had he spent his entire life ignorant of this?

  He turned to Father Joe.

  “What happened?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “A miracle!” Carl said, running his palm over the altar top.

  “A miracle and a meltdown,” Father Joe said. He picked up the empty Pepsi can and looked into it. “You know, you go through the seminary, through your ordination, through countless Masses believing in the Transubstantiation. 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 abalone . . . with a hint of Pepsi.”

  “Doesn’t matter what it tastes like. As far as Palmeri and his friends are concerned, it’s the real thing.”

  “No,” said the priest with a small smile. “That’s Coke.”

  And then they started laughing. It wasn’t that funny, but Zev found himself roaring along with other two. It was more a release of tension than anything else. His sides hurt. He had to lean against the altar to support himself.

  It took the return of the Vichy to cure the laughter. They charged in carrying a heavy fire blanket. This time Father Joe did not stand by passively as they invaded his church. 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 him. 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 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.

  XII

  . . . 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?” When Joe wouldn’t answer him, Palmeri went on. “And even if you’d chased me out of here for good, what would you have accomplished? The world is ours now, Joseph. Feeders and cattle—that is the hierarchy. We are the feeders. And tonight you’ll join us. But he won’t.

  He 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 he 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.”

  Carl got away? Good. The poor guy would probably hate himself, call himself a coward the rest of his life, but he’d done what he could. Better to live on than get strung up like Zev.

  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 vampires 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, Joseph.”

  “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.”

  “You’d 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?”