F Paul Wilson - Novel 10 Read Online Free PDF Page A

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