naked.
Then he felt the eyes on him again. Saints and angels from the doorway.
He stood. “Wait here for a few seconds.”
“Where are you going?” she asked with a fuzzy voice.
“Just around the corner. I’ll be right back, and in the meantime the angels will watch over you.”
“Angels?”
“Many of them.”
Her eyes drifted closed. “Angels. That’s nice.”
Saint John hurried to the corner and around it to a side street filled with looted shops. He did not linger to shop carefully; instead he took the first clothes he could find. A black tracksuit made from some shiny synthetic material, with double red racing stripes and a logo from a company that no longer existed. There were no sneakers left, but he found rubber aqua shoes of the kind snorkelers and surfers used. No underwear, no medicine. The last item he selected was a golf club. A seven iron. He smiled, pleased. Seven was God’s number.
With the clothes folded under one arm and the seven iron over his shoulder, Saint John left the store, stepping over the rotting bodies of two looters who had been shot in the head. It was impossible to say whether they had been killed by the police or other looters, and even if that information had been known, Saint John doubted that there was anyone still alive who cared. Certainly he did not.
He rounded the corner and stopped.
The woman — Rose, he reminded himself, her name was Rose — was gone.
Saint John set the clothes and the golf club down and ran the rest of the way, the streamers of his bedsheet clothes flapping behind him. The three dead men were there. His wheelbarrow of weapons was there. She was not.
Saint John looked for her for almost half an hour, but he could not find her.
As he walked back to the cathedral he found that he was sad. Saint John was rarely sad, and almost never sad in relation to a person. Yet, dusty and crumpled as she was, Rose had touched him. She had been honest with him, of that he was certain.
Now she was gone. He wished her well, and when he realized that he did, he paused and smiled bemusedly at the falling embers. It was such an odd thought for him. Alien, but not unwelcome.
“Rose,” he said aloud.
SAINT JOHN GATHERED up the weapons — knives, a club made from a length of black pipe, a wrench caked with blood — and carried them up the stairs to the church. There were guns in the wheelbarrow, and even a samurai sword that the former owner had not known how to properly use. Saint John had obliged him with a demonstration. The wheelbarrow was heavy with them; it had been a fruitful week. He carried them, an armload at a time, into the church, counting out his ritual prayers with each slow step. He wanted to get everything right; there was no need for haste, though. This was the end of the world, after all. To whom would haste matter? Inattention to details, however, could have a profound effect. Saints and angels were watching.
With his first armload hugged to his chest, he stood on the top step. The faces of the saints regarded him, and shadows cast by flickering flames played across their mouths so that it seemed as if they spoke, whispering secrets. Some of them Saint John understood; some were still mysteries to him.
He did not see the faces of the angels. The open doorway was a dark mouth, but it was filled with empty shadows, and so he entered with his armload of weapons. He paused in the narthex and looked down the long aisle that ran from the west doorway behind him all the way to the altar at the eastern wall.
The cathedral was vast, with vaulted ceilings that rose high into the darkness. The arches were revealed only by stray slices of firelight through the broken stained glass windows, and in this light the lines of stone looked like bones. Saint John walked to the center aisle and stopped by the last row of pews, bowed reverently, and then walked without haste through the vast nave toward the altar table.
“I bring gifts,” he said. His voice was soft, but the acoustics of the cathedral peeled that cover away to reveal the power within, sending the three words booming to the ceiling.
As he walked to the altar the weapons clanked musically, like the tinkle of Christmas bells. He stopped at the edge of the broad carved silver altar table and laid his offering in the center. Then, taking great care, he arranged the blades and hammers and brass knuckles in a wide arc, the blades pointed toward the rear wall, pointing to the base of the giant crucifix that hung on the eastern wall. Jesus, bleeding and triumphant, hung from nails. Saint John knew the secret story of this man. Jesus had not died to wash away the sins of monsters like Saint John’s father. No, he had allowed his body to be scourged and pierced as part of the ritual of purification, then he had ascended through the pain into godhood. Saint John marveled that so many people over so many years had missed the whole point of that story.
Once the knives were arranged — seventeen in this armload — and the rest of the weapons, Saint John bowed and headed outside for more.
It was on his second trip into the church that he noticed the footprints on the sidewalk. Small feet. A woman. Rose? Surely hers, but there were other prints; much smaller and many of them. They were pressed into the thin film of fine ash that had begun to settle over everything. Delicate steps.
Angel feet?
Saint John stood for a moment, his arms filled with bloodstained weapons, contemplating the footprints. Then he went inside.
However, he paused once more as he approached the altar table.
On his previous trip he had placed seventeen knives on this very table, arranged by size and type, from a machete to hunting knives and steak knives to a lovely little skinning knife with which he had whiled away an evening last week. There were not seventeen knives now.
Now there were two. Only the long machete and an unwieldy Gurkha knife remained. The brass knuckles and clubs and guns were still there. Fifteen knives, though, were gone.
Saint John considered this as he laid his second armload down on the altar. He did not for a moment believe that he had only imagined bringing in those knives. Many material things in his perception were of dubious reality, but never blades. They were anchors in his world, not fantasies. The flying saucers he sometimes saw … those, he knew, were fantasies. Knives? Impossible.
Nor did he believe that someone — perhaps the little junkie — had snuck in here and stolen the knives.
He was considering possibilities and probabilities when he heard a soft sound. Barely a sound at all. More of a suggestion, like the sound shadows make when they fall to the ground as the moon dances across the sky. Soft like that.
He cocked his head to listen. The cathedral was empty and still.
Were demons moving silently between the pews? Had demons come to take his knives?
Saint John was suddenly very afraid.
Had the demons made the footprints in the ash? Were the demons here in the church, maybe preparing to hunt him with his own knives? Had the Fall of man made the demons bolder? Had it given them more power? Had it, in fact, kicked open the door between Hell and Earth?
These were terrifying thoughts, and Saint John whirled, drawing two knives from sheaths concealed beneath the white rags that covered his thighs.
“This is the house of God!” he yelled into the dusty shadows. “You may not be here!”
He heard the soft sounds again. Louder this time, and more of them. A scuffle of invisible feet moving in the shadows behind the screen that separated the altar from the choir’s chancel. The sounds were stealthy, of that Saint John was certain.
The fact of their stealthy nature injected a dose of calm into his veins. Stealth was a quality of caution, of fear. Predators are stealthy for fear of chasing off the prey they need to sustain their lives. Prey is stealthy to avoid being attacked. For both, fear was the key.
Fear, even in a terrible predator, revealed the presence of weakness. Of vulnerability. An invulnerable demon would not fear anything.
