Joe sighed. "When are you going to face facts and admit—?"
"Hush." She put a finger to her lips. "I'm still not on board, but we'll argue about this some other time. Right now, there's too much work to do."
Joe watched her stride off, thinking that whoever said there are no atheists in foxholes obviously hadn't met Lacey.
LACEY . . .
Lacey gazed out the window at the lengthening shadows and rubbed her burning eyes.
Tired. She hadn't found time for another nap yet. All she needed was twenty minutes and she'd be good for hours more of activity.
Her uncle and the rest were in the process of working out a sleep schedule, assigning shifts. Some of them were going to have to live undead style, sleeping in the day, up all night, while others would keep a more normal schedule.
Lacey figured she'd volunteer for the undead shift since she tended to be a night person anyway.
She turned away from the window and checked out the room behind her. The desks had been pushed into a corner and a mattress and box spring placed in the center of the floor. Not fancy but functional, and a helluva lot more comfortable than trying to sleep on the church's stone floor.
She stretched her aching muscles. A good workout today, driving pickup trucks to the furniture stores, hauling bedding back, and lugging it up the steps to the upper floors. Toward the end of the afternoon she would have given anything for a generator to power up the elevator.
Back to the window for another look at the grand old Victorian next door. Janey had been so into Victorians, dragging Lacey around the city, pointing out this Second Empire and that Italianate until she'd caught the bug too. They'd planned someday to come down to Asbury Park, buy a place like the three-story affair next door and renovate it, dress it up like those fabulous painted ladies they'd salivated over on their trip to San Francisco last year.
Lacey felt a lump grow in her throat. Janey . . . they'd had such good times together ... the best years of her life. She missed her. Losing her had left an cavity where she'd once had a heart.
Where are you, Janey? What did they do to you?
Lacey knew in that instant which building she wanted added next to Uncle Joe's "compound."
Why not suggest it to him now?
She ducked into the hall and started down the stairwell, only to have to back up to allow a couple of the parish men to pass with a queen-size mattress.
"I'm heading over to the church to see Father Joe," she told them.
"Give us a minute and I'll escort you back," said a red-faced, heavyset man in a plaid shirt.
Lacey waved him off. "Don't be silly. It's a hundred feet away. And the street's blocked."
Probably just wants a break from all the lifting and hauling, she thought as she stepped outside.
She checked up and down the street. Nothing moving. No one in sight.
As she started across the street she glanced again at the old house and figured, why not check it out first? If it wasn't habitable—say, a big hole in the roof or something like that—why waste her time?
But she wasn't going in there alone. No way. She'd seen enough horror movies to know you don't go into empty houses alone when there are bad guys about.
She looked around, saw a short, muscular guy in a sleeveless T-shirt crossing the street, heading from the church toward the office building. What was his name? Enrico. Yeah, that was it.
"Hey, Enrico. Want to help me check out this place next door? See if we can move people in there?"
"Sure," he said, grinning. "Let's go."
She waited for him to catch up, then together they headed for the front steps and climbed onto the porch. She tried the door, hoping it was unlocked—she hated the thought of breaking one of those old windows to get in—and smiled as the latch yielded to the pressure of her thumb. All right!
Enrico hung in the living room while Lacey hurried through the cool, dark, silent interior. The decor was not authentically Victorian—nowhere near cramped and cluttered enough—but the place hadn't been vandalized. The two upper floors held five small bedrooms and one larger master bedroom, all furnished with beds and dressers. The couch in the first-floor sun room could sleep another, once all the dead house plants were removed.
Perfect, she thought, feeling the best she had all day. This is a definite keeper. And I've got first dibs on the master bedroom.
She came down the main staircase—the house had a rear servants' stairway as well, running to and from the kitchen—and found the living room empty.
"Enrico?"
Maybe he'd done a little exploring on his own. She headed for the kitchen and stopped cold when she saw a pair of feet jutting toes-up from behind a counter. She wanted to run but knew she had to check. She hurried forward, took a look at the kitchen carving knife jutting from Enrico's bloody chest, at his dead, glazed eyes staring at the ceiling, then spun and ran.
She didn't head for the front door. Instead she sprang for the French doors and leaped onto the verandah. There she ran into three waiting Vichy and had no time to react before something cracked against her skull, sending lightning bolts through her suddenly darkening vision. She lashed out with her booted foot but struck only air, and then another blow to her head sent her down.
She had flashes of faces, one clean-shaven, one bearded, one with braided hair, snatches of voices . . .
"Got one!" . . . "Hey, she's fine! She's really fine!"
A feeling of being carried, then an impact as she was tossed into the rear of a van, the van starting to move, then more voices...
"We get major points for this—major!" . . . "Man, she's so fine! Shame to hafta give her to the bloodsuckers." . . . "Ay, yo, they only said they wanted a live one. Didn't say nothin 'bout havin to be a virgin, know'm sayin?"
Laughter.
"Right! Fuckin-ay right!"
And then the feeling of her clothes being torn from her body . . .
CAROLE . . .
Sister Carole watched a beat-up old van race along the street. She couldn't see who was driving but it was coming from the direction of St. Anthony's.
St. Anthony's . . . how she'd wanted to step inside when she'd passed by this morning. She'd heard the voices drifting through the open front doors, responding to Father Joe during Mass, and they'd tugged her up the steps to participate and ... to see Father Joe's face once more. But she couldn't allow it. She was unworthy . . . too unworthy.
She'd seen the stains on the steps—blood and fouler substances—and had asked one of the armed men guarding the front about them. He'd told her about what had happened during the night, how Father Palmeri and other undead had been routed and killed along with their living helpers, how the church was now a holy place again.
Carole had walked on with her heart singing. Maybe what she'd been doing was not all for naught. Maybe there was a Divine Plan and she was part of it.
Then again, maybe not.
Most likely not.
The song in her heart had gasped and died.
And so she'd spent most of the rest of the day working around the house. She figured it was only a matter of time before she was caught and wanted to be ready when the undead or their cowboys came for her.