A Soft Barren Aftershock

“We’ll find out how empty it is, won’t we? But here’s the deal: Let Zev go and I’ll let you be.”

  “You care that much for an old Jew?”

  “He’s something you never knew in life, and never will know: He’s a friend.” And he gave me back my soul.

  Palmeri leaned closer. His foul, nauseous breath wafted against Joe’s face.

  “A friend? How can you be friends with a dead man?” With that he straightened and turned toward the balcony. “Do him! Now!”

  As Joe shouted out frantic pleas and protests, one of the vampires climbed up the rubble toward Zev. Zev did not struggle. Joe saw him close his eyes, waiting. As the vampire reached out with the straight razor, Joe bit back a sob of grief and rage and helplessness. He was about to squeeze his own eyes shut when he saw a flame arc through the air from one of the windows. It struck the floor with a crash of glass and a woomp! of exploding flame.

  Joe had only heard of such things, but he immediately realized that he had just seen his first Molotov cocktail in action. The splattering gasoline caught the clothes of a nearby vampire who began running in circles, screaming as it beat at its flaming clothes. But its cries were drowned by the roar of other voices, a hundred or more. Joe looked around and saw people—men, women, teenagers—climbing in the windows, charging through the front doors. The women held crosses on high while the men wielded long wooden pikes—broom, rake, and shovel handles whittled to sharp points. Joe recognized most of the faces from the Sunday Masses he had held here for years.

  St. Anthony’s parishioners were back to reclaim their church.

  “Yes!” he shouted, not sure of whether to laugh or cry. But when he saw the rage in Palmeri’s face, he laughed. “Too bad, Alberto!”

  Palmeri made a lunge at his throat but cringed away as a woman with an upheld crucifix and a man with a pike charged the altar—Carl and a woman Joe recognized as Mary O’Hare.

  “Told ya I wun’t letcha down, din’t I, Fadda?” Carl said, grinning and pulling out a red Swiss Army knife. He began sawing at the rope around Joe’s right wrist. “Din’t I?”

  “That you did, Carl. I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to see anyone in my entire life. But how—?”

  “I told ‘em. I run t’rough da parish, goin’ house ta house. I told ‘em dat Fadda Joe was in trouble an’ dat we let him down before but we shoun’t let him down again. He come back fa us, now we gotta go back fa him. Simple as dat. And den dey started runnin’ house ta house, an afore ya knowed it, we had ourselfs a little army. We come ta kick ass, Fadda, if you’ll excuse da expression.”

  “Kick all the ass you can, Carl.”

  Joe glanced at Mary O’Hare’s terror-glazed eyes as she swiveled around, looking this way and that; he saw how the crucifix trembled in her hand. She wasn’t going to kick too much ass in her state, but she was here, dear God, she was here for him and for St. Anthony’s despite the terror that so obviously filled her. His heart swelled with love for these people and pride in their courage.

  As soon as his arms were free, Joe sat up and took the knife from Carl. As he sawed at his leg ropes, he looked around the church.

  The oldest and youngest members of the parishioner army were stationed at the windows and doors where they held crosses aloft, cutting off the vampires’ escape, while all across the nave—chaos. Screams, cries, and an occasional shot echoed through St. Anthony’s. The vampires were outnumbered three to one and seemed blinded and confused by all the crosses around them. Despite their superhuman strength, it appeared that some were indeed getting their asses kicked. A number were already writhing on the floor, impaled on pikes. As Joe watched, he saw a pair of the women, crucifixes held before them, backing a vampire into a corner. As it cowered there with its arms across its face, one of the men charged in with a sharpened rake handle held like a lance and ran it through.

  But a number of parishioners lay in inert, bloody heaps on the floor, proof that the vampires and the Vichy were claiming their share of victims too.

  Joe freed his feet and hopped off the altar. He looked around for Palmeri—he wanted Palmeri—but the vampire priest had lost himself in the melee. Joe glanced up at the balcony and saw that Zev was still hanging there, struggling to free himself. He started across the nave to help him.

  XIII

  Zev hated that he should be hung up here like a salami in a deli window. He tried again to pull his upper body up far enough to reach his leg ropes but he couldn’t get close. He had never been one for exercise; doing a sit-up flat on the floor would have been difficult, so what made him think he could do the equivalent maneuver hanging upside down by his feet? He dropped back, exhausted, and felt the blood rush to his head again. His vision swam, his ears pounded, he felt like the skin of his face was going to burst open. Much more of this and he’d have a stroke or worse maybe.

  He watched the upside-down battle below and was glad to see the vampires getting the worst of it. These people—seeing Carl among them, Zev assumed they were part of St. Anthony’s parish—were ferocious, almost savage in their attacks on the vampires. Months’ worth of pent-up rage and fear was being released upon their tormentors in a single burst. It was almost frightening.

  Suddenly he felt a hand on his foot. Someone was untying his knots. Thank you, Lord. Soon he would be on his feet again. As the cords came loose he decided he should at least attempt to participate in his own rescue.

  Once more, Zev thought. Once more I’ll try.

  With a grunt he levered himself up, straining, stretching to grasp something, anything. A hand came out of the darkness and he reached for it. But Zev’s relief turned to horror when he felt the cold clamminess of the thing that clutched him, that pulled him up and over the balcony rail with inhuman strength. His bowels threatened to evacuate when Palmeri’s grinning face loomed not six inches from his own.

  “It’s not over yet, Jew,” he said softly, his foul breath clogging Zev’s nose and throat. “Not by a long shot!”

  He felt Palmeri’s free hand ram into his belly and grip his belt at the buckle, then the other hand grab a handful of his shirt at the neck. Before he could struggle or cry out, he was lifted free of the floor and hoisted over the balcony rail.

  And the demon’s voice was in his ear.

  “Joseph called you a friend, Jew. Let’s see if he really meant it.”

  XIV

  Joe was halfway across the floor of the nave when he heard Palmeri’s voice echo above the madness.

  “Stop them, Joseph! Stop them now or I drop your friend!”

  Joe looked up and froze. Palmeri stood at the balcony rail, leaning over it, his eyes averted from the nave and all its newly arrived crosses. At the end of his outstretched arms was Zev, suspended in mid-air over the splintered remains of the pews, over a particularly large and ragged spire of wood that pointed directly at the middle of Zev’s back.

  Zev’s frightened eyes were flashing between Joe and the giant spike below.

  Around him Joe heard the sounds of the melee drop a notch, then drop another as all eyes were drawn to the tableau on the balcony.

  “A human can die impaled on a wooden stake just as well as a vampire!” Palmeri cried. “And just as quickly if it goes through his heart. But it can take hours of agony if it rips through his gut.”

  St. Anthony’s grew silent as the fighting stopped and each faction backed away to a different side of the church, leaving Joe alone in the middle.

  “What do you want, Alberto?”

  “First I want all those crosses put away so that I can see!”

  Joe looked to his right where his parishioners stood.

  “Put them away,” he told them. When a murmur of dissent arose, he added, “Don’t put them down, just out of sight. Please.”

  Slowly, one by one at first, then in groups, the crosses and crucifixes were placed behind backs or tucked out of sight within coats.

  To his left, the vampires hissed their relief and the Vichy cheered. The sound wa
s like hot needles being forced under Joe’s fingernails. Above, Palmeri turned his face to Joe and smiled.

  “That’s better.”

  “What do you want?” Joe asked, knowing with a sick crawling in his gut exactly what the answer would be.

  “A trade,” Palmeri said.

  “Me for him, I suppose?” Joe said.

  Palmeri’s smile broadened. “Of course.”

  “No, Joe!” Zev cried.

  Palmeri shook the old man roughly. Joe heard him say, “Quiet, Jew, or I’ll snap your spine!” Then he looked down at Joe again. “The other thing is to tell your rabble to let my people go.” He laughed and shook Zev again. “Hear that, Jew? A Biblical reference—Old Testament, no less!”

  “All right,” Joe said without hesitation.

  The parishioners on his right gasped as one and cries of “No!” and “You can’t!” filled St. Anthony’s. A particularly loud voice nearby shouted, “He’s only a lousy kike!”

  Joe wheeled on the man and recognized Gene Harrington, a carpenter. He jerked a thumb back over his shoulder at the vampires and their servants.

  “You sound like you’d be more at home with them, Gene.”

  Harrington backed up a step and looked at his feet.

  “Sorry, Father,” he said in a voice that hovered on the verge of a sob. “But we just got you back!”

  “I’ll be all right,” Joe said softly.

  And he meant it. Deep inside he had a feeling that he would come through this, that if he could trade himself for Zev and face Palmeri one-on-one, he could come out the victor, or at least battle him to a draw. Now that he was no longer tied up like some sacrificial lamb, now that he was free, with full use of his arms and legs again, he could not imagine dying at the hands of the likes of Palmeri.

  Besides, one of the parishioners had given him a tiny crucifix. He had it closed in the palm of his hand.

  But he had to get Zev out of danger first. That above all else. He looked up at Palmeri.

  “All right, Alberto. I’m on my way up.”

  “Wait!” Palmeri said. “Someone search him.”

  Joe gritted his teeth as one of the Vichy, a blubbery, unwashed slob, came forward and searched his pockets. Joe thought he might get away with the crucifix but at the last moment he was made to open his hands. The Vichy grinned in Joe’s face as he snatched the tiny cross from his palm and shoved it into his pocket.

  “He’s clean now!” the slob said and gave Joe a shove toward the vestibule.

  Joe hesitated. He was walking into the snake pit unarmed now. A glance at his parishioners told him he couldn’t very well turn back now.

  He continued on his way, clenching and unclenching his tense, sweaty fists as he walked. He still had a chance of coming out of this alive. He was too angry to die. He prayed that when he got within reach of the ex-priest the smoldering rage at how he had framed him when he’d been pastor, at what he’d done to St. Anthony’s since then would explode and give him the strength to tear Palmeri to pieces.

  “No!” Zev shouted from above. “Forget about me! You’ve started something here and you’ve got to see it through!”

  Joe ignored his friend.

  “Coming, Alberto.”

  Father Joe’s coming, Alberto. And he’s pissed. Royally pissed.

  XV

  Zev craned his neck around, watching Father Joe disappear beneath the balcony.

  “Joe! Comeback!”

  Palmeri shook him again.

  “Give it up, old Jew. Joseph never listened to anyone and he’s not listening to you. He still believes in faith and virtue and honesty, in the power of goodness and truth over what he perceives as evil. He’ll come up here ready to sacrifice himself for you, yet sure in his heart that he’s going to win in the end. But he’s wrong.”

  “No!” Zev said.

  But in his heart he knew that Palmeri was right. How could Joe stand up against a creature with Palmeri’s strength, who could hold Zev in the air like this for so long? Didn’t his arms ever tire?

  “Yes!” Palmeri hissed. “He’s going to lose and we’re going to win. We’ll win for the same reason we’ll always win. We don’t let anything as silly and transient as sentiment stand in our way. If we’d been winning below and situations were reversed—if Joseph were holding one of my nest brothers over that wooden spike below—do you think I’d pause for a moment? For a second? Never! That’s why this whole exercise by Joseph and these people is futile.”

  Futile . . . Zev thought. Like much of his life, it seemed. Like all of his future. Joe would die tonight and Zev would live on, a cross-wearing Jew, with the traditions of his past sacked and in flames, and nothing in his future but a vast, empty, limitless plain to wander alone.

  There was a sound on the balcony stairs and Palmeri turned his head.

  “Ah Joseph,” he said.

  Zev couldn’t see the priest but he shouted anyway.

  “Go back Joe! Don’t let him trick you!”

  “Speaking of tricks,” Palmeri said, leaning further over the balcony rail as an extra warning to Joe, “I hope you’re not going to try anything foolish.”

  “No,” said Joe’s tired voice from somewhere behind Palmeri. “No tricks. Pull him in and let him go.”

  Zev could not let this happen. And suddenly he knew what he had to do. He twisted his body and grabbed the front of Palmeri’s cassock while bringing his legs up and bracing his feet against one of the uprights of the brass balcony rail. As Palmeri turned his startled face toward him, Zev put all his strength into his legs for one convulsive backward push against the railing, pulling Palmeri with him. The vampire priest was overbalanced. Even his enormous strength could not help him once his feet came free of the floor. Zev saw his undead eyes widen with terror as his lower body slipped over the railing. As they fell free, Zev wrapped his arms around Palmeri and clutched his cold and surprisingly thin body tight against him.

  “What goes through this old Jew goes through you!” he shouted into the vampire’s ear.

  For an instant he saw Joe’s horrified face appear over the balcony’s receding edge, heard Joe’s faraway shout of “No!” mingle with Palmeri’s nearer scream of the same word, then there was a spine-cracking jar and a tearing, wrenching pain beyond all comprehension in his chest. In an eyeblink he felt the sharp spire of wood rip through him and into Palmeri.

  And then he felt no more.

  As roaring blackness closed in he wondered if he’d done it, if this last desperate, foolish act had succeeded. He didn’t want to die without finding out. He wanted to know—

  But then he knew no more.

  XVI

  Joe shouted incoherently as he hung over the rail and watched Zev’s fall, gagged as he saw the bloody point of the pew remnant burst through the back of Palmeri’s cassock directly below him. He saw Palmeri squirm and flop around like a speared fish, then go limp atop Zev’s already inert form.

  As cheers mixed with cries of horror and the sounds of renewed battle rose from the nave, Joe turned away from the balcony rail and dropped to his knees.

  “Zev!” he cried aloud! “Good God, Zev!”

  Forcing himself to his feet, he stumbled down the back stairs, through the vestibule, and into the nave. The vampires and the Vichy were on the run, as cowed and demoralized by their leader’s death as the parishioners were buoyed by it. Slowly, steadily, they were falling before the relentless onslaught. But Joe paid them scant attention. He fought his way to where Zev lay impaled beneath Palmeri’s already rotting corpse. He looked for a sign of life in his old friend’s glazing eyes, a hint of a pulse in his throat under his beard, but there was nothing.

  “Oh, Zev, you shouldn’t have. You shouldn’t have.”

  Suddenly he was surrounded by a cheering throng of St. Anthony’s parishioners.

  “We did it, Faddajoe!” Carl cried, his face and hands splattered with blood. “We killed ‘em all! We got our church back!”

  “Thanks to
this man here,” Joe said, pointing to Zev.

  “No!” someone shouted. “Thanks toyoul”

  Amid the cheers, Joe shook his head and said nothing. Let them celebrate. They deserved it. They’d reclaimed a small piece of the planet as their own, a toe-hold and nothing more. A small victory of minimal significance in the war, but a victory nonetheless. They had their church back, at least for tonight. And they intended to keep it.

  Good. But there would be one change. If they wanted their Father Joe to stick around they were going to have to agree to rename the church.

  St. Zev’s.

  Joe liked the sound of that.

  PELTS

  I

  “I’m scared, Pa.”

  “Shush!” Pa said, tossing the word over his shoulder as he walked ahead.

  Gary shivered in the frozen predawn dimness and scanned the surrounding pines and brush for the thousandth time. He was heading for his twentieth year and knew he shouldn’t be getting the willies like this but he couldn’t help it. He didn’t like this place.

  “What if we get caught?”

  “Only way we’ll get caught is if you keep yappin’, boy,” Pa said. “We’re almost there. Wouldna brought you along ‘cept I can’t do all the carryin’ myself! Now hesh up!”

  Their feet crunched through the half-inch shroud of frozen snow that layered the sandy ground. Gary pressed his lips tightly together, kept an extra-tight grip on the Louisville Slugger, and followed Pa through the brush. But he didn’t like this one bit. Not that he didn’t favor hunting and trapping. He liked them fine. Loved them, in fact. But he and Pa were on Zeb Foster’s land today. And everybody knew that was bad news.

  Old Foster owned thousands of acres in the Jersey Pine Barrens and didn’t allow nobody to hunt them. Had “Posted” signs all around the perimeter.

  Always been that way with the Fosters. Pa said old Foster’s grandpa had started the no-trespassing foolishness and that the family was likely to hold to the damn stupid tradition till Judgment Day. Pa didn’t think he should be fenced out of any part of the Barrens. Gary could go along with that most anywheres except old Foster’s property.