F Paul Wilson - Novel 10 (4 page)

 
          
With
a surprising show of strength, Rosita yanked Carmilla away from the window.

 
          
"Better
go, Sister Carole," Rosita said.

 
          
The
Datsun started to move.

 
          
"What
the fuck's with you, Wicky?" Carole heard Carmilla scream as the car eased
away from the dark cluster. "Getting religion or somethin? Should we start
callin you Sister Rosita now?"

 
          
"She
was one of the few people who was ever straight with me," Rosita said.
"So fuck off, Carmilla."

 
          
By
then the car had traveled too far to hear more.

 
          
*
* *

 
          
"What
awful creatures they were!" Bernadette said, staring out the window in
Carole's convent room. She hadn't been able to stop talking about the incident
on the street. "Almost my age, they were, and such horrible
language!"

 
          
The
room was little more than a ten-by-ten-foot plaster box with cracks in the
walls and the latest coat of paint beginning to flake off the ancient embossed
tin ceiling. She had one window and, for furnishings, a crucifix, a dresser and
mirror, a work table and chair, a bed, and a night stand. Not much, but she
gladly called it home. She took her vow of poverty seriously.

 
          
"Perhaps
we should pray for them."

 
          
"They
need more than prayer, I'd think. Believe me you, they're heading for a bad
end." Bernadette removed the oversized rosary she wore looped around her
neck, gathering the beads and its attached crucifix in her hand. "Maybe we
could offer them some crosses for protection?"

 
          
Carole
couldn't resist a smile. "That's a sweet thought,
Bern
, but I don't think they're looking for
protection."

 
          
"Sure,
and lookit after what I'm saying," Bernadette said, her own smile rueful.
"No, of course they wouldn't."

 
          
"But
we'll pray for them," Carole said.

 
          
Bernadette
dropped into a chair, stayed there for no more than a heartbeat, then was up
again, moving about, pacing the confines of Carole's room. She couldn't seem to
sit still. She wandered out into the hall and came back almost immediately,
rubbing her hands together as if washing them.

 
          
"It's
so quiet," she said. "So empty."

 
          
"I
certainly hope so," Carole said. "We're the only two who are supposed
to be here."

 
          
The
little convent was half empty even when all its residents were present. And
now, with St. Anthony's School closed for the coming week, the rest of the nuns
had gone home to spend Easter Week with brothers and sisters and parents. Even
those who might have stayed around the convent in past years had heard the
rumors that the undead might be moving this way, so they'd scattered. Carole's
only living relative was an aunt, her mother's sister Joyce, who lived in
Harrisburg and usually invited her to spend Easter and the following week with
her; but she hadn't invited her this year, and wasn't answering her phone. She
had a son in
California
; maybe she'd gone to stay with him. Lots of people were leaving the
East Coast.

 
          
Bernadette
hadn't heard from her family in
Ireland
for months. Carole feared she never would.

 
          
So
that left just the two of them to hold the fort, as it were. The convent was
part of a complex consisting of the church itself, the rectory, the grammar
school and high school buildings, the tiny cemetery, and the sturdy old
two-story rooming house that was now the convent. She and Bernadette had taken
second-floor rooms, leaving the first floor to the older nuns.

 
          
Carole
wasn't afraid. She knew they'd be safe here at St. Anthony's, although she
wished there were more people left in the complex than just Bernadette,
herself, and Father Palmeri.

 
          
"I
don't understand Father Palmeri," Bernadette said. "Locking up the
church and keeping his parishioners from making the stations of the cross on
Good Friday. Who's ever heard of such a thing, I ask you? I just don't
understand it."

 
          
Carole
thought she understood. She suspected that Father Alberto Palmeri was afraid.
Sometime this morning he'd locked up the rectory, barred the door to St.
Anthony's, and hidden himself in the church basement.

 
          
God
forgive her for thinking it, but to Sister Carole's mind Father Palmeri was a
coward.

 
          
"Oh,
I do wish he'd open the church, just for a little while," Bernadette said.
"I need to be in there, Carole. I need it."

 
          
Carole
knew how
Bern
felt. Who had said religion was an opiate
of the people? Marx? Whoever it was, he hadn't been completely wrong. For
Carole, sitting in the cool, peaceful quiet beneath St. Anthony's gothic
arches, praying, meditating, and feeling the presence of the Lord were like a
daily dose of an addictive drug. A dose she and
Bern
had been denied today.
Bern
's withdrawal pangs seemed worse than
Carole's.

 
          
The
younger nun paused as she passed the window, then pointed down to the street.

 
          
"And
now who in God's name would they be?"

 
          
Carole
rose and stepped to Bernadette's side. Passing on the street below was a
cavalcade of shiny new cars—Mercedes Benzes, BMW's, Jaguars, Lin-colns,
Cadillacs—all with
New York
plates, all cruising from the direction of the Parkway.

 
          
The
sight of them in the dusk tightened a knot in Carole's stomach. The lupine
faces she spied through the windows looked brutish, and the way they drove
their gleaming luxury cars down the center line ... as if they owned the road.

 
          
A
Cadillac convertible with its top down passed below; four scruffy occupants
lounged on the seats. The driver wore a cowboy hat, a woman in leather sat next
to him. Both were drinking beer. When Carol saw the driver glance up and look
their way, she tugged on
Bern
's sleeve.

 
          
"Stand
back! Don't let them see you!"

 
          
"Why
not? Who are they?"

 
          
"I'm
not sure, but I've heard of bands of men who do the vampires' dirty work during
the daytime, who've traded their souls for the promise of immortality later on,
and for ... other things now."

 
          
"Sure
and you're joking, Carole!"

 
          
Carole
shook her head. "I wish I were."

 
          
"Oh,
dear God, and now the sun's down." She turned frightened blue eyes toward
Carole. "Do you think maybe we should . . . ?"

 
          
"Lock
up? Most certainly. I know what His Holiness said about there not being any
such things as vampires, but maybe he's changed his mind since then and just
can't get word to us."

 
          
"Sure
and you're probably right. You close these and I'll check down the hall."
She hurried out, her voice trailing behind her. "Oh, I do wish Father
Palmeri hadn't locked the church. I'd dearly love to say a few prayers there.

 
          
Sister
Carole glanced out the window again. The fancy new cars were gone, but rumbling
in their wake was a convoy of trucks—big, eighteen-wheel semis, lumbering down
the center line. What were they for? What did they carry? What were they
delivering to town?

 
          
Suddenly
a dog began to bark, and then another, and more and more until it seemed as if
every dog in town was giving voice.

 
          
To
fight the unease rising like a flood tide within her, Sister Carole
concentrated on the simple manual tasks of closing and locking her window and
drawing the curtains.

 
          
But
the dread remained, a sick, cold certainty that the world was falling into
darkness, that the creeping hem of shadow had reached her corner of the globe,
and that without some miracle, without some direct intervention by a wrathful
God, the coming night hours would wreak an irrevocable change on her life.

 
          
She
began to pray for that miracle.

 
          
*
* *

 
          
Carole
and Bernadette had decided to leave the convent of St. Anthony's dark tonight.

 
          
And
they decided to spend the night together in Carole's room. They dragged in
Bernadette's mattress, locked the door, and doubled-draped the window with the
bedspread. They lit the room with a single candle and prayed together.

 
          
Yet
the music of the night filtered through the walls and the doors and the drapes,
the muted moan of sirens singing antiphon to their hymns, the muffled pops of
gunfire punctuating their psalms, reaching a crescendo shortly after
midnight
, then tapering off to ... silence.

 
          
Carole
could see that Bernadette was having an especially rough time of it. he cringed
with every siren wail, jumped at every shot. Carole shared
Bern
's terror, but she buried it, hid it deep
within for her friend's sake. After all, Carole was older, and she knew she was
made of sterner stuff. Bernadette was an innocent, too sensitive even for
yesterday's world, the world before the undead. How would she survive in the
world as it would be after tonight? She'd need help. Carole would provide as
much as she could.

 
          
But
for all the imagined horrors conjured by the night noises, the silence was
worse. No human wails of pain and horror had penetrated their sanctum, but
imagined cries of human suffering echoed through their minds in the ensuing stillness.

 
          
"Dear
God, what's happening out there?" Bernadette said after they'd finished
reading aloud the Twenty-third Psalm.

 
          
She
huddled on her mattress, a blanket thrown over her shoulders. The candle's
flame reflected in her frightened eyes and cast her shadow, high, hunched, and
wavering, on the wall behind her.

 
          
Carole
sat cross-legged on her bed. She leaned back against the wall and fought to
keep her eyes open. Exhaustion was a weight on her shoulders, a cloud over her
brain, but she knew sleep was out of the question. Not now, not tonight, not
until the sun was up. And maybe not even then.

 
          
"Easy,
Bern
—" Carole began, then stopped.

 
          
From
below, on the first floor of the convent, a faint thumping noise.

 
          
"What's
that?" Bernadette said, voice hushed, eyes wide.

 
          
"I
don't know."

 
          
Carole
grabbed her robe and stepped out into the hall for a better listen.