Apocalypse - Keith R. A. DeCandido [30]
She turned to see a priest or minister or whatever he was walking toward them. His dog collar was dirty, his robes had seen better decades, and his hair looked like it hadn’t been combed since the Clinton administration.
“ ‘Behold I will bring evil upon this people, even the fruit of their thoughts, for they have not harkened unto my words, nor to my law, but rejected it.’ ‘Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust, for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.’ The dead shall walk amongst the living and bring damnation unto them!”
By the time he was done, he had joined them at the front of the church.
“That’s quite a speech,” Jill deadpanned.
“Jeremiah,” the man with the .357 muttered. “The first part, anyhow. After that was from Isaiah. Not sure about the last bit.”
Morales smiled, her camera pointed right at the priest. “Yeah, that’s making the final cut.”
A sudden noise from behind the altar startled all of them—except the priest.
“What is that?” Peyton asked.
“It’s nothing.”
Jill snorted. There was no such thing as nothing in Raccoon City anymore. She made a beeline for the altar, walking around behind it to the vestry. Her eyes were starting to adjust to the dim light, but she still walked gingerly, afraid of tripping over a spare rosary or something.
No, wait, it was Catholics who used rosaries, and she didn’t think this was a Catholic church. Jill had never paid attention to that stuff. Her father was a lapsed Episcopalian, her mother an unobservant Jew. If pressed, Jill would probably describe herself as an indifferent agnostic.
Today, though, she didn’t know what to believe.
The vestry was lit by a single table lamp, which still, thanks to the smaller space, made it better lit than the main part of the church. Several tables and chairs were overturned—that seemed to be par for the course for any room in Raccoon City today.
Most notable was the streak of blood on one wall. It was consistent, her police academy-trained mind knew, with arterial spray.
Not the sort of thing you wanted to see in a priest’s sanctum.
In front of her sat a woman in a chair, rocking back and forth, her head down.
“Are you all right?” Jill asked.
A voice suddenly said from behind her, “What are you doing?”
Jill nearly jumped out of her skin. Where the hell had a priest learned to sneak up on a trained S.T.A.R.S. officer like that?
Probably better to ask where a trained S.T.A.R.S. officer had learned to let her instincts dull. Answer: Raccoon City on the day the zombies took over.
“What’s wrong with her?” Jill asked, suspecting the answer.
“It’s my wife. She’s—she’s not well.”
As Jill tried to move closer to the woman, the priest blocked her way.
“No!”
“Out of my way.”
“She’s not well, I tell you.”
“Maybe I can help.” Jill didn’t feel too guilty about the lie. Besides, it wasn’t entirely a lie. If the wife was another one of these—these creatures, shooting her in the head would be a help.
Pushing past the priest, she noticed that the woman was tied to the chair with electrical wire. That both verified her suspicions and explained the lack of lighting.
Then the woman looked up, and Jill saw the blood around her mouth.
“Oh, my God.”
The woman started shaking back and forth in the chair, straining against her bonds.
“You’re sick,” Jill said to the priest.
“Just get out,” he said, sounding both angry and sad.
Jill didn’t know whether to feel sorry for him or shoot him.
Or both.
“Get out of my church,” the priest cried. “I can help her. Exorcise this thing from her.”
Jill might have believed that he was sincere—right up until she tripped and almost fell over something on the floor. Looking down, she saw a half-eaten corpse.
That explained the blood on the wall and around the woman’s mouth.
She looked at the man in horror. “What have you been doing?”
“Just leave us alone!” the priest screamed.
As she watched the woman rock back and forth, back and forth, pulling with all her strength against the electrical wire, Jill realized that there was more than