F Wilson - Midnight Mass

She'd started writing articles and reviews for the underground press—the radical, the gay, even the entertainment freebies—with the hope of eventually moving above ground. Her role model was Norah Vincent, who'd been writing a regular column for the Village Voice—back when there'd been a Village Voice. Lacey didn't always agree with her views but she envied her pulpit. She'd vowed that someday she'd have a column like that.

But that dream was gone now, along with so many others ...

"Anyway," she said, "I hadn't been able to contact Mom and Dad, so I decided to check up on them."

She'd been all alone then. Janey had gone out one day, scrounging for food, and never come back. After spending a week looking for her, Lacey had to face the unthinkable: Janey was either dead or had been turned into an undead. Crushed, grieving, and with New York becoming more dangerous every day, she'd decided to go home. She fought her way through the Holland Tunnel—the living collaborators hadn't closed it off yet—and made it to her folks' place in Union, New Jersey.

"When I got to their house, I found the front door smashed in and blood on the living-room rug." She felt herself puddling up, her throat tightening like a noose. "I don't think they made it."

She hoped they were alive or dead, anything but in between. They'd rejected her, they'd caused her untold pain—though she'd probably given as good as she got on that score—but they were still her parents and the thought of her mother and father prowling the night, sucking blood . . .

She'd nurtured the hope that with time they'd have come to accept her as she was—she'd never expected approval, but maybe just enough acceptance to invite her back for dinner some night. It didn't look like that was ever going to happen now.

Uncle Joe wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "I..." His voice choked off and the two of them stood still and silent.

"This was your brother, Joe?" the rabbi said.

"My big sister. Cathy."

"I'm so sorry."

"Yeah," Uncle Joe said. "So am I." He cleared his throat. "But we can hope for the best, can't we? And in the meantime, lunch is getting cold. Are you hungry, Lacey?"

She was famished.

ZEV . . .

"Tastes like Dinty Moore," Joe said around a mouthful of the stew.

"It is," Lacey said. "I ate a lot of this before I turned vegan. I recognize the little potatoes."

Zev found the stew palatable but much too salty. He wasn't about to complain, though.

They were feasting in the sacristy, the small room off the sanctuary where the priests had kept their vestments—a clerical Green Room, so to speak. Joe and Lacey sat side by side. Carl and Zev sat apart.

"What's vegan?" he asked.

"Someone who eats only veggies," Lacey said.

"But—"

"I know. Being a vegan was a luxury. Now I eat whatever I can find."

Carl laughed. "Fadda, the ladies of the parish must be real excited about you coming back to break into their canned goods like this."

Zev said, "I don't believe I've ever had anything like this before."

"I'd be surprised if you had," said Joe. "I doubt very much that something that calls itself Dinty Moore is kosher."

Zev smiled but inside he was suddenly filled with a great sadness. Kosher . . . how meaningless now seemed all the observances that he had allowed to rule and circumscribe his life. Such a fierce proponent of strict dietary laws he'd been in the days before the Lakewood holocaust. But those days were gone, just as the Lakewood community was gone.

And Zev was a changed man. If he hadn't changed, if he were still observing, he couldn't sit here and sup with these two men and this young woman.

He'd have to be elsewhere, eating special classes of ritually prepared foods off separate sets of dishes. But really, hadn't division been the main thrust of holding to the dietary laws in modern times? They served a purpose beyond mere observance of tradition. They placed another wall between observant Jews and outsiders, keeping them separate even from fellow Jews who didn't observe.

Zev took another big bite of the stew. Time to break down all the walls between people . . . while there was still enough time and people left alive to make it matter.

"You okay, Zev?" Joe asked.

Zev nodded silently, afraid to speak for fear of sobbing. Despite all its anachronisms, he missed his life in the good old days of a few months ago. Gone. It was all gone. The rich traditions, the culture, the friends, the prayers. He felt adrift—in time and in space. Nowhere was home.

And then there was the matter of the cross ... the power of the cross over the undead . . .

He'd sneaked a copy of Dracula to read when he was a boy, and he'd caught snatches of vampire movies on TV. The undead were always portrayed as afraid of crosses. But that had been fiction. Vampires weren't real—or so he'd thought—and so he'd never examined the broader implications of that fear of the cross. Now...

"You sure?" Joe seemed genuinely concerned.

"Yes, I'm okay. As okay as you could expect me to feel after spending the better part of the day repairing a crucifix and eating non-kosher food. And let me tell you, that's not so okay."

He put his bowl aside and straightened from his chair.

"Come on, already. Let's get back to work. There's much yet to do."

JOE . . .

"Almost sunset," Carl said.

Joe straightened from scrubbing the marble altar and stared west through one of the smashed windows. The sun was out of sight behind the houses there.

"You can go now, Carl," he said to the little man. "Thanks for your help." "Where you gonna go, Fadda?"

"I'll be staying right here."

Carl's prominent Adam's apple bobbed convulsively as he swallowed.

"Yeah? Well then, I'm staying too. I told you I'd make it up to ya, didn't I? An' besides, I don't think the suckers'U like the new, improved St. Ant'ny's too much when they come back tonight. I don't think they'll even get through the doors."

Joe smiled at the man, then looked around. Luckily it was May and the days were growing longer. They'd had time to make a difference here. The floors were clean, the crucifix was restored and back in its proper position, as were most of the Stations of the Cross plaques. Zev had found them under the pews and had taken the ones not shattered beyond recognition and rehung them on the walls. Lots of new crosses littered those walls. Carl had found a hammer and nails and had made dozens of them from the remains of the pews.

"You're right. I don't think they'll like the new decor one bit. But there's something you can get us if you can, Carl. Guns. Pistols, rifles, shotguns, anything that shoots."

Carl nodded slowly. "I know a few guys who can help in that department."

"And some wine. A little red wine if anybody's saved some."

"You got it."

He hurried off.

"You're planning Custer's last stand, maybe?" Zev said from where he was tacking the last of Carl's crude crosses to the east wall.

"More like the Alamo."

"Same result," Zev said with one of his shrugs.

"I've got a gun," Lacey said.

Joe stared at her. She'd been helping him scrub the altar. "You do? Why didn't you say something?"

"It's only got two bullets left."

"Where are the rest?"

She met his gaze evenly. "I had to leave them behind in a couple of people who tried to stop me. It was a tough trip getting here."

"Are you okay with that?"

She nodded. "Better than I thought I'd be. You do what you have to do."

What an amazing young woman, he thought. Who'd have thought Cathy's little girl could turn out so tough and resilient.

He remembered Lacey as a teen. She'd always been a little different from her peers. On the surface she seemed like a typical high-school kid—she dated, though she had no serious crushes, played soccer and field hockey with abandon—but on holidays and family gatherings, she'd stay in the background. Joe would make a point of sitting down with her; he'd draw her out, and then another Lacey would emerge.