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And then the doorknob turned. Slowly. The door creaked with the weight of a body leaning against it from the other side, but Carole’s bolt held.

Then a voice. Hoarse. A single whispered word, barely audible, but a shout could not have startled her more.

“Carole?”

Carole didn’t reply—couldn’t reply.

“Carole, it’s me. Bern. Let me in.”

Against her will, a low moan escaped Carole. No, no, no, this couldn’t be Bernadette. Bernadette was dead. Carole had left her cooling body lying in her room across the hall. This was some horrible joke. …

Or was it? Maybe Bernadette had become one of them, one of the very things that had killed her.

But the voice on the other side of the door was not that of some ravenous beast. It was …

“Please let me in, Carole. I’m frightened out here alone.”

Maybe Bern is alive, Carole thought, her mind racing, ranging for an answer. I’m no doctor. I could have been wrong about her being dead. Maybe she survived. …

She stood trembling, torn between the desperate, aching need to see her friend alive and the wary terror of being tricked by whatever creature Bernadette might have become.

“Carole?”

Carole wished for a peephole in the door, or at the very least a chain lock, but she had neither, and she had to do something. She couldn’t stand here like this and listen to that plaintive voice any longer without going mad. She had to know. Without giving herself any more time to think, she snapped back the bolt and pulled the door open, ready to face whatever awaited her in the hall.

She gasped. “Bernadette!”

Her friend stood just beyond the threshold, swaying, stark naked.

Not completely naked. She still wore her wimple, although it was askew on her head, and a strip of cloth had been layered around her neck to dress her throat wound. In the wan, flickering candlelight that leaked from Carole’s room, she saw that the blood that had splattered her was gone. Carole had never seen Bernadette unclothed before. She’d never realized how thin she was. Her ribs rippled beneath the skin of her chest, disappeared only beneath the scant padding of her small breasts with their erect nipples; the bones of her hips and pelvis bulged around her flat belly. Her normally fair skin was almost blue-white. The only other colors were the dark pools of her eyes and the orange splotches of hair on her head and her pubes.

“Carole,” she said weakly. “Why did you leave me?”

The sight of Bernadette standing before her, alive, speaking, had drained most of Carole’s strength; the added weight of guilt from her words nearly drove her to her knees. She sagged against the door frame.

“Bern …” Carole’s voice failed her. She swallowed and tried again. “I—I thought you were dead. And … what happened to your clothes?”

Bernadette raised her hand to her throat. “I tore up my nightgown for a bandage. Can I come in?”

Carole straightened and opened the door farther. “Oh, Lord, yes. Come in. Sit down. I’ll get you a blanket.”

Bernadette shuffled into the room, head down, eyes fixed on the floor. She moved like someone on drugs. But then, after losing so much blood, it was a wonder she could walk at all.

“Don’t want a blanket,” Bern said. “Too hot. Aren’t you hot?”

She backed herself stiffly onto Carole’s bed, then lifted her ankles and sat cross-legged, facing her. Mentally, Carole explained the casual, blatant way she exposed herself by the fact that Bernadette was still recovering from a horrific trauma, but that made it no less discomfiting.

Carole glanced at the crucifix on the wall over her bed, above and behind Bernadette. For a moment, as Bernadette had seated herself beneath it, she thought she had seen it glow. It must have been reflected candlelight. She turned away and retrieved a spare blanket from the closet. She unfolded it and wrapped it around Bernadette’s shoulders and over her spread knees, covering her.

“I’m thirsty, Carole. Could you get me some water?”

Her voice was strange. Lower pitched and hoarse, yes, but that should be expected after the throat wound she’d suffered. No, something