F Paul Wilson - Novel 10 (3 page)

 
          
Sister
Carole shrugged. "If His Holiness said it, then we must believe it. But we
haven't heard anything from him in so long. I hope ..."

 
          
Bernadette
turned toward her, eyes wide with alarm.

 
          
"Oh,
you wouldn't be thinking anything's happened to His Holiness now, would you,
Carole?" she said, the lilt of her native
Ireland
elbowing its way into her voice. "They
wouldn't dare!"

 
          
Momentarily
at a loss as to what to say, Carole gazed out the side window at the budding
trees sliding past. The sidewalks of this little
Jersey
Shore
town were empty, and hardly any other cars
were on the road. She and Bernadette had had to try three grocery stores before
finding one with anything to sell. Between the hoarders and delayed or canceled
shipments, food was getting scarce.

 
          
Everybody
sensed it. How did that saying go? By the pricking in my thumbs, something
wicked this way comes...

 
          
Or
something like that.

 
          
She
rubbed her cold hands together and thought about Bernadette, younger than she
by five years—only twenty-six—with such a good mind, such a clear thinker in so
many ways. But her faith was almost childlike.

 
          
She'd
come to the convent at St. Anthony's two years ago and the pair of them had
established instant rapport. They shared so much. Not just a common Irish
heritage, but a certain isolation as well. Carole's parents had died years ago,
and Bernadette's were back on the Auld Sod. So they became sisters in a sense
that went beyond their sisterhood in the order. Carole was the big sister,
Bernadette the little one. They prayed together, laughed together, walked
together. They took over the convent kitchen and did all the food shopping
together. Carole could only hope that she had enriched Bernadette's life half
as much as the younger woman had enriched hers.

 
          
Bernadette
was such an innocent. She seemed to assume that since the Pope was infallible
when he spoke on matters of faith or morals he somehow must be invincible too.

 
          
Carole
hadn't told Bernadette, but she'd decided not to believe the Pope on the matter
of the undead. After all, their existence was not a matter of faith or morals.
Either they existed or they didn't. And all the news out of
Europe
last year had left little doubt that
vampires were real.

 
          
And
that they were on the march.

 
          
Somehow
they had got themselves organized. Not only did they exist, but more of them
had been hiding in
Eastern
Europe
than even
the most superstitious peasant could have imagined. And when the communist bloc
crumbled, when all the former client states and
Russia
were in disarray, grabbing for land,
slaughtering in the name of nation and race and religion, the undead took
advantage of the power vacuum and struck.

 
          
They
struck high, they struck low, and before the rest of the world could react,
they controlled all
Eastern
Europe
.

 
          
If
they had merely killed, they might have been containable. But because each kill
was a conversion, their numbers increased in a geometric progression. Sister
Carole understood geometric progressions better than most. Hadn't she spent
years demonstrating them to her chemistry class by dropping a seed crystal into
a beaker of supersaturated solution? That one crystal became two, which became
four, which became eight, which became sixteen, and so on. You could watch the
lattices forming, slowly at first, then bridging through the solution with
increasing speed until the liquid contents of the beaker became a solid
crystalline mass.

 
          
That
was how it had gone in
Eastern Europe
and
Russia
, then spreading into the
Middle East
and
India
, then
China
. And last fall, into
Western Europe
.

 
          
The
undead became unstoppable.

 
          
All
of
Europe
had been silent for months. Officially, at
least. But a couple of the students at St. Anthony's High who had shortwave
radios had told Carole of faint transmissions filtering through the
transatlantic night recounting ghastly horrors all across Europe under undead
rule.

 
          
But
the Pope had declared there were no vampires. He'd said it, but shortly
thereafter he and the
Vatican
had fallen silent along with the rest of
the continent.

 
          
Washington
had played down the immediate threat,
saying the
Atlantic
Ocean
formed a
natural barrier against the undead.
Europe
was
quarantined.
America
was safe.

 
          
Then
had come reports, disputed at first, and still officially denied, of undead in
Washington
,
DC
, running rampant through the Pentagon, the legislators' posh
neighborhoods, the White House itself. Then
New York City
. The New York TV and radio stations had
stopped transmitting. And now...

 
          
"You
can't really believe vampires are coming to the
Jersey
Shore
, can you?" Bernadette said. "I
mean, that is, if there were such things."

 
          
"It
is hard to believe, isn't it?" Carole said, hiding a smile.
"Especially since no one comes to
Jersey
unless they have to."

 
          
"Oh,
don't you be having on with me now. This is serious."

 
          
Bernadette
was right. It was serious. "Well, it fits the pattern my students have
heard from
Europe
."

 
          
"But
dear God, 'tis Holy Week! 'Tis Good Friday, it is! How could they dare?"

 
          
"It's
the perfect time, if you think about it. There will be no Mass said until the
first Easter Mass on Sunday morning. What other time of the year is daily mass
suspended?"

 
          
Bernadette
shook her head. "None."

 
          
"Exactly."
Carole looked down at her cold hands and felt the chill crawl all the way up
her arms.

 
          
The
car suddenly lurched to a halt and she heard Bernadette cry out. "Dear
Jesus! They're already here!"

 
          
Half
a dozen black-clad forms clustered on the corner ahead, staring at them.

 
          
"Got
to get out of here!" Bernadette said and hit the gas.

 
          
The
old car coughed and died.

 
          
"Oh,
no!" Bernadette wailed, frantically pumping the gas pedal and turning the
key as the dark forms glided toward them. "No!"

 
          
"Easy,
dear," Carole said, laying a gentle hand on her arm. "It's all right.
They're just kids."

 
          
Perhaps
"kids" was not entirely correct. Two males and four females who
looked to be in their late teens and early twenties, but carried any number of
adult lifetimes behind their heavily made-up eyes. Grinning, leering, they
gathered around the car, four on Bernadette's side and two on Carole's. Sallow
faces made paler by a layer of white powder, kohl-crusted eyelids, and black
lipstick. Black fingernails, rings in their ears and eyebrows and nostrils,
chrome studs piercing cheeks and lips. Their hair ranged the color spectrum,
from dead white through burgundy to crankcase black. Bare hairless chests on
the boys under their leather jackets, almost-bare chests on the girls in their
black push-up bras and bustiers. Boots of shiny leather or vinyl, fishnet
stockings, layer upon layer of lace, and everything black, black, black.

 
          
"Hey,
look!" one of the boys said. A spiked leather collar girded his throat;
acne lumps bulged under his whiteface. "Nuns!" "Penguins!"
someone else said. Apparently this was deemed hilarious. The six of them
screamed with laughter.

 
          
We're
not penguins, Carole thought. She hadn't worn a full habit in years. Only the
headpiece.

 
          
"Shit,
are they gonna be in for a surprise tomorrow morning!" said a buxom girl
wearing a silk top hat.

 
          
Another
roar of laughter by all except one. A tall slim girl with three large black
tears tattooed down one cheek, and blond roots peeking from under her
black-dyed hair, hung back, looking uncomfortable. Carole stared at her.
Something familiar there...

 
          
She
rolled down her window. "Rosita? Rosita Hernandez, is that you?'

 
          
More
laughter. " 'Rosita'?" someone cried. "That's Wicky!"

 
          
The
girl stepped forward and looked Carole in the eye. "Yes, Sister. That used
to be my name. But I'm not Rosita anymore."

 
          
"l
can see that."

 
          
She
remembered Rosita. A sweet girl, extremely bright, but so quiet. A voracious
reader who never seemed to fit in with the rest of the kids. Her grades
plummeted as a junior. She never returned for her senior year. When Carole had
called her parents, she was told that Rosita had left home. She'd been unable
to learn anything more.

 
          
"You've
changed a bit since I last saw you. What is it—three years now?"

 
          
"You
talk about change?" said the top-hatted girl, sticking her face in the
window. "Wait'll tonight. Then you'll really see her change!" She
brayed a laugh that revealed a chrome stud in her tongue.

 
          
"Butt
out, Carmilla!" Rosita said.

 
          
Carmilla
ignored her. "They're coming tonight, you know. The Lords of the Night
will be arriving after sunset, and that'll spell the death of your world and
the birth of ours. We will present ourselves to them, we will bare our throats
and let them drain us, and we'll join them. Then we'll rule the night with
them!"

 
          
It
sounded like a canned speech, one she must have delivered time and again to her
black-clad troupe.

 
          
Carole
looked past Carmilla to Rosita. "Is that what you believe? Is that what
you really want?"

 
          
The
girl shrugged her high thin shoulders. "Beats anything else I got
going."

 
          
Finally
the old Datsun shuddered to life. Carole heard Bernadette working the shift.
She touched her arm and said, "Wait. Just one more moment, please."

 
          
She
was about to speak to Rosita when Carmilla jabbed her finger at Carole's face,
shouting.

 
          
"Then
you bitches and the candy-ass god you whore for will be fucking extinct!"