But what had disturbed him more were the creatures he'd seen before sundown.
The humans. Live ones.
The collaborators. The ones Zev called Vichy.
If there was anything lower, anything that deserved true death more than the undead themselves, it was the still-living humans who worked for them.
A hand touched his shoulder and he jumped. Zev. He was holding something out to him. Joe took it and held it up in the moonlight: a tiny crescent moon dangling from a chain on a ring.
"What's this?"
"An earring. The local Vichy wear them. The earrings identify them to the local nest of undead. They are spared."
"Where'd you get it?"
Zev's face was hidden in the shadows. "The previous owner ... no longer needs it.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Zev sighed. He sounded embarrassed. "Some group has been killing the local Vichy. I don't know how many they've eliminated, but I came across one in my wanderings. Not such a pleasant task, but I forced myself to relieve the body of its earring. Just in case."
Joe found it hard to imagine the old pre-occupation Zev performing such a grisly task, but these were different times.
"Just in case what?"
"In case I needed to pretend to be one of them."
Joe had to laugh. "I can't see that fooling them for a second."
"Maybe a second is all I'd need. But it will look better on you. Put it on."
"My ear's not pierced."
A gnarled hand moved into the moonlight. Joe saw a long needle clasped between the thumb and index finger. "That I can fix," Zev said.
* * *
"On second thought," Zev whispered as they crouched in the deep shadows on St. Anthony's western flank, "maybe you shouldn't see this."
Puzzled, Joe squinted at him in the darkness.
"You lay a guilt trip on me to get me here, you make a hole in my ear, and now you're having second thoughts?"
"It is horrible like I can't tell you."
Joe thought about that. Certainly there was enough horror in the world outside St. Anthony's. What purpose did it serve to see what was going inside?
Because it used to be my church.
Even though he'd been an associate pastor, never fully in charge, and even though he'd been unceremoniously yanked from the post, St. Anthony's had been his first parish. He was back. He might as well know what they were doing inside.
"Show me."
Zev led him to a pile of rubble under a smashed stained glass window. He pointed up to where faint light flickered from inside.
"Look in there."
"You're not coming?"
"Once was enough, thank you."
Joe climbed as carefully, as quietly as he could, all the while becoming increasingly aware of a growing stench like putrid, rotting meat. It was coming from inside, wafting through the broken window. Steeling himself, he straightened and peered over the sill.
For a moment he felt disoriented, like someone peering out the window of a Brooklyn apartment and seeing the rolling hills of a Kansas farm. This could not be the interior of St. Anthony's.
In the flickering light of dozens of sacramental candles he saw that the walls were bare, stripped of all their ornaments, including the plaques for the Stations of the Cross; the dark wood was scarred and gouged wherever there had been anything remotely resembling a cross. The floor too was mostly bare, the pews ripped from their neat rows and hacked to pieces, their splintered remains piled high at the rear under the choir balcony.
And the giant crucifix that had dominated the space behind the altar— only a portion remained. The cross pieces on each side had been sawed off so that an armless, life-size Christ now hung upside down against the rear wall of the sanctuary.
Joe took in all that in a flash; then his attention gravitated to the unholy congregation that peopled St. Anthony's this night. The collaborators—the Vichy humans—made up the periphery of the group. Some looked like bikers and trailer-park white trash, but others looked like normal, everyday people. What bonded them was the crescent-moon earring dangling from every right earlobe.
But the rest, the group gathered in the sanctuary—Joe felt his hackles rise at the sight of them. They surrounded the altar in a tight knot. He recognized some of them: Mayor Davis, Reverend Dalton, and others, their pale, bestial faces, bereft of the slightest trace of human warmth, compassion, or decency, turned upward. His gorge rose when he saw the object of their rapt attention.
A naked teenage boy—his hands tied behind his back, was suspended over the altar by his ankles. He was sobbing and choking, his eyes wide and vacant with shock, his mind all but gone. The skin had been flayed from his forehead—apparently the Vichy had found an expedient solution to the cross tattoo—and blood ran in a slow stream across his abdomen and chest from his freshly truncated genitals. And beside him, standing atop the altar, a bloody-mouthed creature dressed in a long cassock. Joe recognized the thin shoulders, the graying hair trailing from the balding crown, but was shocked at the crimson vulpine grin he flashed to the things clustered below him.
"Now," said the creature in a lightly accented voice Joe had heard a thousand times from St. Anthony's pulpit.
Father Alberto Palmeri.
From the group a hand reached up with a straight razor and drew it across the boy's throat. As the blood sprang from the vessels and flowed down over his face, those below squeezed and struggled forward like hatchling vultures to catch the falling drops and scarlet trickles in their open mouths.
Joe fell away from the window and vomited. He felt Zev grab his arm and lead him away. He was vaguely aware of crossing the street and heading back toward the ruined legal office.
ZEV . . .
"Why in God's name did you want me to see that?"
Zev looked across the office toward the source of the words. He could make out a vague outline where Father Joe sat on the floor, his back against the wall, the open bottle of Scotch in his hand. The priest had taken one drink since their return, no more.
"I thought you should know what they were doing to your church." He felt bad about the immediate effect on Joe, but he was hoping the long-term consequences would benefit him and others.
"So you've said. But what's the reason behind that one?"
Zev shrugged in the darkness. "I'd gathered you weren't doing well, that even before everything else began falling apart, you had already fallen apart. So when this woman who saved me urged me to find you, I took up the quest and came to see you. Just as I expected, I found a man who was angry at everything and letting it eat up his guderim. I thought maybe it would be good to give that man something very specific to be angry at."
"You bastard!" Father Joe whispered. "Who gave you the right?"