The Stupidest Angel (25 page)

HE KNOWS IF YOU'VE BEEN 

BAD OR GOOD . . .

While she was horrified by what was going on in the doorway of the chapel, with the gunfire and brain-sucking and the threats, Lena Marquez couldn't help but think:
Oh, this is so awkward—both my exes are here.
Dale was standing there in a Santa suit, mud and gore dripping onto the floor while he roared with anger, and Tucker Case had immediately headed to the back of the room and dived under one of the folding buffet tables.

There was screaming and a lot of running, but mostly people stood there, paralyzed by the shock. And Tucker Case, of course, was acting the consummate coward. She was so ashamed.

"You, bitch!" dead Dale Pearson shouted, pointing at her with the snub-nose .38. "You're lunch!" He started across the open pine floor.

"Look out, Lena," came a shout from behind her. She turned just in time to sidestep as the buffet table behind her rose, spilling chafing dishes full of lasagna onto the floor. The alcohol burners beneath the pans spilled blue flame across the tabletops and onto the floor as Tucker Case stood up with the table in front of him and let out a war cry.

Theo Crowe saw what was happening and pulled an armload of people aside as Tuck barreled through the room, the tabletop in front of him, toward the throng of undead. Dale Pearson fired at the tabletop as it approached, getting off three shots before Tuck impacted with him.

"Crowe, get the door, get the door," Tuck shouted, driving Dale and his undead followers back out into the rain. The blue alcohol flame climbed up Dale's white beard, as well as spilling down Tuck's legs as he pushed out into the darkness. Theo loped across the room and reached outside to catch the edge of the door. A one-armed corpse in a leather jacket ducked around the edge of Tuck's buffet-table barrier and grabbed at Theo, who put a foot on the corpse's chest and drove him back down the steps. Theo pulled the door shut, then reached around and grabbed the other one. He hesitated.

"Close the damned door!" Tuck screamed, his legs pumping, losing momentum against the undead as he reached the bottom of the steps. Theo could see decayed hands clawing at Tuck over the edge of the table; a man whose lower jaw flapped on a slip of skin was screeching at the pilot and trying to drive his upper teeth into Tuck's hand.

The last thing Theo saw as he pulled the door shut was Tucker Case's legs burning blue and steaming in the rain.

"Bring one of those tables over here," Theo shouted. "Brace this door. Jam the table under the handles."

There was a second of peace, just the sound of the wind and rain and Emily Barker, who had just seen her ex-boyfriend shot and brain-sucked, sobbing.

"What was that?" shouted Ignacio Nunez, a rotund Hispanic who owned the village nursery. "What in the hell was that?"

Lena Marquez had instinctively gone to Emily Barker, and knelt with her arm around the bereft woman. She looked to Theo. "Tucker is out there. He's out there."

Theo Crowe realized that everyone was looking at him. He was having trouble catching his breath and he could feel his pulse pounding in his ears. He really wanted to look to someone else for the answers, but as he scanned the room—some forty terrified faces—he saw all the responsibility reflected back to him.

"Oh fuck," he said, his hand falling to his hip where his holster was usually clipped.

"It's on the table at my house," Gabe Fenton said. Gabe was holding the buffet table that was braced sideways under the double latches of the church doors.

"Pull the table," Theo said, thinking,
I don't even like the guy.
He helped Gabe pull the table aside and crouched in a sprinter's stance, ready to go, as Gabe manned the latches.

"Close it behind me. When you hear me scream, 'Let me in,' well—"

Just then there was a crash behind them and something came flying through one of the high, stained-glass windows—throwing glass out into the middle of the room. Tucker Case, wet, charred, and covered with blood, pushed himself up from the floor where he had landed and said, "I don't know who parked under that window, but you'd better move your car, because if those things climb on it, they'll be coming through that window behind me."

Theo looked at the line of stained-glass windows running down the sides of the chapel, eight on each side, each about eight feet off the ground and about two feet across. When the chapel had been built, stained glass was at a premium and the community poor, thus the small, high windows, which were going to be an asset in defending this place. There was only one large window in the whole building—behind where the altar used to stand, but where now stood Molly's thirty-foot Christmas tree—a six-by-ten-foot large cathedral-shaped stained-glass depiction of Saint Rose, patron saint of interior decorators, presenting a throw pillow to the Blessed Virgin.

"Nacho," Theo barked to Ignacio Nunez, "see if you can find something in the basement to board up that window."

As if on cue, two muddy, decaying faces appeared at the opening through which Tuck had just dived, moaning and trying to get purchase on the windowsill with their skeletal hands to climb in.

"Shoot them!" Tuck screamed from the floor. "Shoot those fucking things, Theo!"

Theo shrugged, shook his head. No gun.

Something flashed by Theo and he spun to see Gabe Fenton running hell-bent-for-leather at the window, holding before him a long stainless-steel pan full of lasagna, evidently intent upon diving through the window in a pastafarian act of self-sacrifice. Theo caught the biologist by the collar, stopping him like a running dog at the end of his leash. His arms and legs flew out before him and he managed to hang on to the pan, but nearly eight pounds of steaming cheesy goodness sailed on through the window, scorching the attackers and Pollocking the wall around the window with red sauce.

"That's it, throw snacks at them, that'll slow them up," shouted Tuck. "Fire a salvo of garlic bread next!"

Gabe regained his feet and jumped right up in Theo's face, or he would have if he had been a foot or so taller. "I was trying to save us," he said sternly to Theo's sternum.

Before Theo could answer, Ignacio Nunez and Ben Miller, a tall, ex-track star in his early thirties, called for them to clear the way. The two men were coming to the broken window with another of the buffet tables. Gabe and Theo helped Ben hold the table against the wall while Nacho nailed the table to the wall. "I found some tools in the basement," Nacho said between hammer blows. Animated dead fingernails clawed at the tabletop as they worked.

"I hate cheese!" screamed the corpse, who had enough equipment to still scream. "It binds me up."

The rest of the undead mob began pounding on the walls around them.

"I need to think," Theo said. "I just need a second to think."

Lena was dressing Tucker Case's wounds with gauze and antibiotic ointment from the chapel's first-aid kit. The burns on his legs and torso were superficial, most of the alcohol fire having been put out by the rain before it could penetrate his clothing, and while his leather bomber jacket had protected him somewhat from his dive through the window, there was a deep cut on his forehead and another on his thigh. One of the bullets that Dale had fired through the table had grazed Tuck's ribs, leaving a gash four inches long and a half inch wide.

"That was the bravest thing I've ever seen," Lena said.

"You know, I'm a pilot," said Tuck, like he did this sort of thing every day. "I couldn't let them hurt you."

"Really?" Lena said, pausing for a moment to look into his eyes. "I'm sorry I was—you were—"

"Actually, you probably couldn't tell, but that thing with the table? Just a really badly executed escape attempt."

Tuck winced as she fastened the bandage over his ribs with some tape.

"You're going to need stitches," Lena said. "Any place I missed?"

Tuck held up his right hand—there were tooth marks on the back of it welling up with blood.

"Oh my God!" Lena said.

"You're going to have to cut his head off," said Joshua Barker, who was standing by watching.

"Whose?" Tuck said. "The guy in the Santa suit, right?"

"No, I mean
your
head," said Josh. "They're going to have to cut off your head or you'll turn into one of them."

Most everyone in the chapel had stopped what they were doing and gathered around Tuck and Lena, seemingly grateful for a point of focus. The pounding on the walls had ceased, and with the exception of the occasional rattling of the door handles, there was only the sound of the wind and rain. The Lonesome Christmas crowd was stunned.

"Go away, kid," said Tuck. "This is no time to be a kid."

"What should we use?" asked Mavis Sand. "This okay, kid?" She held a serrated knife that they'd been using to cut garlic bread.

"That is not acceptable," Tuck said.

"If you don't cut his head off," said Joshua, "he'll turn into one of them and let them in."

"What an imagination this kid has," said Tuck, flashing a grin from face to face, looking for an ally. "It's Christmas! Ah, Christmas, the time when all good people go about not decapitating each other."

Theo Crowe came out of the back room, where he'd been looking for something they could use as a weapon. "Phone lines are down. We'll lose power any minute. Is anyone's cell phone working?"