Apocalypse - Keith R. A. DeCandido [31]
Then the woman’s right hand broke free.
Jill unholstered one of her automatics.
“No!”
The priest lunged for her, spoiling her shot. But what he had in passion he lacked in strength, and it was the work of only a moment for Jill to throw him off—
—into the waiting arms of his wife.
Just as she broke free of the remaining bonds.
She caught her husband in her now-free arms, bent down, and bit him full on the neck.
The priest’s screams echoed through the tiny vestry. Jill imagined they could be heard all the way down Dilmore.
Right up until she shot him in the head.
When he fell, she did the same to his wife.
Without a second glance, she went back out into the church.
Based on the looks on the faces of Peyton, Morales, and the man with the .357, they had indeed heard the screams.
“What happened back there?” Peyton asked.
Jill just shook her head.
Fourteen
Angus McKenzie didn’t want these bloody people in his church.
All right, so technically it wasn’t his bloody church, it was that minister’s bloody church, but from the sounds of things, that wasn’t an issue anymore. There’d been two gunshots, so the minister probably had one of those demons back there.
Like the demons back at the office.
He wasn’t going to let them capture him. Angus McKenzie hadn’t come all the way from Scotland to the United States just to be eaten alive by a demon.
All right, so telemarketing wasn’t exactly the world’s most glamorous profession, but it put food on the bloody table, didn’t it? And he was good at it. The boss, he said it was the accent—that always got people interested. Made ’em think it was exotic somehow. People went for exotic, especially Americans.
Most of them by dint of having no bloody history of their own, in Angus’s bloody opinion, but that was neither here nor there.
Then everyone started getting all crazy.
Angus’s wife, Flora, God rest her soul, would’ve said that the devil had come to make them all pay for their sins. Flora was big on sins and making up for them. She’d died in great fear that she would go to hell.
As far as Angus was concerned, she had nothing to worry about. She was going to heaven, of that he had no doubt.
Angus himself was another story.
Still, nothing he’d done in his life—and he’d done plenty, he was the first to admit it—deserved being eaten alive by demons.
Not even leaving Marla to those creatures.
It had been wrong to do it, he knew that, but he couldn’t help himself. When they ran up to the roof to escape the demons that their coworkers had turned into, he had to shut the roof door in her face. It was the only way he’d be safe.
Sure, it probably meant she’d die, but at least he’d live, wouldn’t he?
As he climbed down from the roof, he’d heard the commotion of the demons trying to take Marla.
And he’d seen Marla fall to her death.
But it didn’t matter, did it? He was alive.
He’d found a dead black git with a high-caliber gun in his waistband. Probably some drug dealer. These blacks were always dealing drugs and killing each other. Angus thought it was a disgrace.
Less of a disgrace than condemning a coworker, an innocent girl, to die? He pushed the thought away.
He’d found sanctuary in a house of the Lord. True, it wasn’t a proper Catholic church, but one of those Protestant abominations. A papist through and through, Angus normally would never have set foot in one of the heretical structures, but needs must as the devil drives.
Or, in this case, demons.
And they were bloody everywhere.
Here, he’d be safe.
In the arms of the Lord.
Or close to it, anyhow.
So as far as Angus McKenzie was concerned, this was his church.
Then that cop and the Morales girl from the telly and that girl with the two guns had showed up—then the minister. One of the bloody heathens. He was crazy, that one. From the sounds of it, the two-gun girl—she was probably a cop, too, they were always letting girls into the constabulary in this mad country—had taken care of the minister.
Now Angus had to figure out how he could get the remaining three to