F Wilson - Midnight Mass

Lacey pumped one more shell of double-ought shot into each of them— didn't want them talking to anyone—then took their guns. She tossed the shotgun and the new weapons onto the back seat.

"Men," she said, reaching for her clothing. Loathing welled up in her. "No wonder I gave up on them. They're such assholes."

She pulled on the panties and comfy pants first. As she was shrugging the T-shirt over her head she found Carole glaring at her.

"What?"

"You shouldn't have done that."

"Killed them? What was I sup—?"

Carole shook her head. "You shouldn't have called me a lesbian. That wasn't right."

"It was just something to distract them, set little triple-X fantasies spooling through their heads."

Carole slipped back behind the wheel. "Still, just because I've forsworn marriage doesn't mean I'm a lesbian. A vow of chastity means no sex with men or women."

"I know that, Carole." She dropped back into the passenger seat and slammed the door. "Takes one to know one, and my gaydar doesn't so much as beep with you."

Carole glanced at her. "You're . . . ?"

"Yeah."

"Does your uncle know?"

"Sure does. He doesn't like it but he accepts it. Too bad you aren't, Carole. You're kinda cool."

Carole's face reddened as she put the car in gear.

Lacey laughed and gave the nun's shoulder a gentle punch. "Only kidding."

And she was. With the memory of Janey still so fresh and haunting, she couldn't think of being with anyone else. Not yet.

"This isn't going to be a problem for you, is it?"

Carole shook her head. "The convent had its fair share. It was no secret behind the doors. They kept to themselves, and I kept my mouth shut. God will be the final judge."

"I guess I have nothing to worry about then," Lacey said.

She turned and looked back at the two men sprawled in their pooling blood and felt nothing.

"Why don't I feel anything, Carole? You've killed your share of Vichy. Do you—?

"I always got sick afterward—at least when I had to ... do it myself... by hand. But what you just did doesn't bother me so much. Perhaps because it wasn't close work ... or because it was you doing it instead of me. I know they had to die but..." She sighed. "Nothing in my life prepared me for this, Lacey. I was raised to be merciful—I'm a Sister of Mercy, after all—but I don't believe the undead or their collaborators deserve any mercy from us. I've decided to leave that to God. He can decide."

"Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out. Right." Just how Lacey felt.

"Perhaps. Still... I can't ignore the fact that the Vichy are still human beings. No matter what awful things they've done, they're still God's children, and I can't help thinking that if maybe someone had got to them early enough and showed them the grace of God's love, their lives would have been different."

Lacey shook her head. "Sorry. Can't buy that. Some people are just plain evil. They're born bad and they stay bad all their lives. They're like termites, undermining your house. There's no accommodating them, so if you don't want to wake up with your house reduced to sawdust, you exterminate them."

"That's what they are to you? Bugs?"

"Worse. Bugs don't have a choice in how they act."

Lacey knew she hadn't always been like this, but something started dying within her when Janey had gone missing; her parents' empty, bloodstained house had pushed it closer to the grave; Uncle Joe dead with his throat torn open had administered the coup de grace. She couldn't imagine herself feeling anything but murderous loathing for the creatures, human and inhuman, who'd been a part of all that.

Carole hit a switch and the top began to rise.

"Leave it down," Lacey said.

Carole looked at her. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"It is. Think about it. You heard Joe: All the females of childbearing age have been trucked off to farms to be breeders. That leaves nothing for the cowboys between their stud times at the farms. They're horny as all hell. If they see two women in an open car they'll be more likely to ask questions first and shoot later, don't you think?"

"You also said we'd be less likely to run into trouble on the Turnpike."

"That was just a guess. This is based on the fact that these guys—as the two back there on the ground prove—think with their dicks."

Carole closed her eyes for half a minute—Lacey couldn't tell if she was thinking or praying—then hit the roof switch. The top settled back into the boot.

"I hope you're right."

After that, Carole kept the pedal to the metal, hitting one-twenty on the long straightaways through the flatlands by Newark Airport. The still, silent airport streamed past to the left, the equally still railyards to the right. Like running through an industrial graveyard.

The big road remained eerily empty except for one other car, half a dozen lanes away, headed in the opposite direction. Whether friend or foe, Lacey couldn't tell.

Then the roadway lifted and the Manhattan skyline hove into view to the right, pacing them as they raced along. The gap where the Trade Towers used to stand caused an ache in Lacey's chest. The hijackers and their victims were long gone, and now most of the survivors were probably gone as well. And Islam ... Islam was gone too.

Good riddance. Lacey had no use for any religion, but she'd found Islam's treatment of women particularly offensive. A mongrel religion, cobbled from pieces of others and strung together by adolescent sex and power fantasies. Good fucking riddance.

A lump built in her throat as she thought about what her city had suffered. She'd thought nothing could be worse than the Trade Tower attack, but then the undead had come ...

A few minutes later they were passing through Union City. She saw the weathered old sign, UNION CITY—EMBROIDERY CAPITAL OF THE WORLD, and shook her head. Union City wasn't embroidering a thing these days.

"I can't believe this," Lacey shouted over the wind whistling around and between them as they coasted down the Lincoln Tunnel helix. "We made it without being hassled again."

Carole glanced at her watch and shook her head. "Forty-five minutes. That must be a record."

"And that includes the time we lost with those two motorcycle yo-yos. It's like everybody's on vacation."

"I think we might be able to take credit for some of that," Carole said. "After what we did in the Post Office, I'll bet they've drawn their collaborators closer—doubling the guard and measures like that. The upside of that is an easier trip getting here; the downside will be a much more difficult time accomplishing what we came here to do."

"Every silver lining has a cloud, right?"

Carole nodded as they threaded an E-ZPass lane and aimed for the tunnel's center tube. "Always."

Carole turned on the headlights as they entered the dark, arching maw, and just then a siren howled behind them. Lacey jumped in her seat and looked around at the flashing red lights atop two blue-and-white units that had appeared out of nowhere.

"Police?" Carole said.

Lacey eyed the cars. First off, the NYPD was long gone. Second, the four shaggy-headed silhouettes crammed into that first unit didn't look anything like cops. Probably an equal number in the unit beside it.

Eight Vichy. . . she doubted the tactics she'd used on the two bikers would fly here. As if to emphasize that point, one of the occupants in the lead cop car held an assault pistol out a rear passenger window and fired a burst into the air. The bullets shattered some ceiling tiles and the pieces rained on the cop car, denting the hood and cracking the windshield. Lacey spotted a fist flying in the rear of the car. Someone wouldn't be trying that again.