LACEY . . .
Startled out of sleep by a hand shaking her shoulder and a strange voice whispering in her ear, Lacey came up swinging.
"Easy, Lacey," said a woman's voice. "Easy. You're safe. No one's going to hurt you."
Lacey blinked. A small room, a single candle, and some stranger bending over her. No . . . not a stranger . . . she recognized her now. The one who'd led her back to the church, who'd said she was a nun. Lacey groaned. Her head throbbed, she hurt all over, especially between her legs.
"Where—?"
"You're in the convent. Listen to me. Something terrible has happened and—" Her voice broke. She blinked, swallowed, then said. "I need your help."
Lacey glanced at the window. Still dark out there. "Can't it wait till morning?"
The nun—what was her name? Carrie? No, Carole with an e—shook her head. "Morning will be too late. We have to act now before anyone finds out."
"About what?"
"Your uncle."
Lacey listened in a daze, struggling to understand Carole's story, but the words seemed to congeal in the air, clumping together into indecipherable masses. Something about her Uncle Joe ... something about him being—
"Dead? No, no! No! You can't be serious! He can't be! He can't!"
"He is," Carol said. A tear ran down her cheek. "Believe me, Lacey, he is."
"No!" She wanted to smash this crazy woman's face for lying to her. Her Uncle Joe couldn't be dead!
"But he won't stay dead. By tomorrow night he'll be one of them."
"Not Unk! He'd never!"
"He'll have no choice."
Lacey tried to stand but crumbled back onto the bed. Her legs didn't want to support her. "But if they can turn him ... make him one of them, then what's the use?"
"That's exactly how they want you to feel. And that's exactly why we must move him away from here and save him from that hell."
"We?" Lacey's stomach twisted and bile rose in her throat. "You mean ... ?"
Carole was nodding. "There's no other way."
"No! I can't!"
"I can't move him alone, Lacey. The parishioners must never know, must never find him. They must think he died fighting for them. If they learn he's become the enemy, that he's preying on them ..."
"But put a stake through his heart? I can't!"
"You can't not, Lacey. Not if you have the slightest bit of regard for who he was and what he stood for and how he'd want to be remembered."
In that instant Lacey knew Carole was right. Her Uncle Joe had lived his life by a certain set of rules, not simply avoiding evil but actively trying to do good. She couldn't let these undead vermin make a lie and a mockery of his entire life. Stopping that would not be something she did to him, it would be for him.
Somehow, somewhere, she found the strength to rise from the bed. Let's go.
"Can you get a car?"
Lacey nodded. "We brought in a bunch of them to block the streets. There's extras. I'm sure I can get one."
"Good. Keep the lights out and drive it around to the side door of the rectory, then come inside. I'll be waiting in the basement."
The next ten or fifteen minutes would forever be a blur in Lacey's memory. Finding the keys to an old Lincoln Town Car and sneaking it around the block remained clear, but after that. . . creeping down into that dank cellar .. . seeing her uncle's lifeless, bloodless face when Carole unwrapped the top of the sheet—it was him, really, really him—and then struggling his dead weight up the stairs . . . placing him in the trunk of the car . . . hearing the clank of the tools Carole had found in the caretaker's shed as she carefully placed them on the back seat. . . slumping in the passenger seat as Carole drove them away toward the brightening horizon . . .
And thinking about her Uncle Joe . ..
The earliest memory was riding on his back, he barely a teenager and she barely in kindergarten. A flash of watching from a front row pew as he took his Holy Orders and officially became a priest. And then later, much clearer memories of long conversations about faith and God and the meaning of life with her doing most of the talking because no one would listen to her, only him, and Uncle Joe not agreeing but giving her his ear, letting her finish without cutting her off and dissing her dissidence.
And now he was gone. Her sounding board, her last anchor... gone, erased. She felt adrift.
The car stopped. Returning to the present, Lacey wiped her eyes and looked around. They were at the beach. A boardwalk lay straight ahead. She'd been here a few days ago.
They'd arrived at the edge of the continent... to do the unthinkable . . . in order to prevent the unspeakable.
"I don't know if I can go through with this," Lacey said.
Carole was already out of the car. "Stop thinking of yourself and help me carry him."
Thinking of yourself. . . That angered Lacey. "I'm thinking about him, and what he's meant to me, what he'll always mean to me."
"Do you hear yourself? Me-me-me. This isn't about you or me. It's about Father Joe's legacy. And if we're going to preserve that, we have to do what has to be done."
She was right. Damn her, this weird nun was right. Lacey got out of the car as Carole popped the trunk.
"Where are we taking him?"
"Up to the beach."
"Why the beach?"
"Because we can dig a deep hole quickly, and because very few people come here anymore."
"How do you know?"
"Because I watch. I watch everything. No one will find him. Now help me lift him."
Lacey glanced around. The area looked deserted but who knew what was hiding in the shadows. Her guns ... after taking the dead Vichy woman's clothes, she'd crept back into the Post Office and lifted the pistols off a couple of the undead corpses. She wished she'd thought to bring them, but her mind had been numbed with loss.
Carole opened the trunk to reveal the sheet-wrapped form. Steeling herself, Lacey took the shoulders, Carole the feet, and they carried Joe's body up a ramp, across the boardwalk, then down the steps to the sand. Carole directed them toward a spot under the boards with about five feet of headroom, maybe a little less.