of the ordinary. If someone is fuckin’ up he puts all of us in danger.'
Miller nodded and smiled with relief.
'We clear on that?'
'Yes, Sir. Clear as crystal.'
Then, it was Adamson’s turn to nod and he turned and walked back down the walkway and into the gloom.
~ * ~
Father Handel stood with his small briefcase in hand in the shadows behind the Main Pen and carefully looked between the slats into the dimly lit expanse of the enclosure. Dark figures swayed in the half-light, rocking back and forth, moving from side to side. As always, the acrid odor of death was pervasive in this place, but every so often an extraordinary wave of putrescence would waft between the corrugated lengths of metal and assault his senses anew. This was an odor he’d come to know well ever since the dead had risen. God knew, he’d lived with it long enough at St. Joseph’s. It had become inextricably linked to what he considered his mission.
As he gazed into the undulating crowd, the face of a child pressed itself up against the chain link. It was a small boy, no more than nine or ten, who stared out at him with an unnerving mixture of open-mouthed wonder and abject hunger. His face was an utter mess. Long raking slashes tore down his right cheek, the white of his skull visible through the coarse separations of his anatomy. Coagulated blood was splashed and caked across what was left of his ruined features.
'Dear God,' Handel softly whispered, 'so many of Your children. So many… and so lost.'
He pulled himself away from the boy’s unwavering gaze and with renewed vigor got back to the bit of business which brought him here. He set his valise on the ground and carefully opened it.
'O Lord,' he intoned in a hushed voice, 'who has said, ‘My yoke is sweet and my burden light,’ grant that I may so carry it as to merit Thy grace.'
The priest removed from the case what looked like a thick crimson scarf. The material was deeply colored and had a cross embroidered in gold thread at each end. Holding it aloft, he kissed each end where the cross was stitched and held it to his forehead.
'Protect me, O Lord, so I may resist the assaults of the devil and cleanse my heart with the Blood of the Lamb so that I may be deserving of your eternal reward.'
He laid the scarf around his neck so that it draped down his chest. Softly, he whispered, 'Restore to me, O Lord, the state of immortality which I lost through the sin of my first parents and, although unworthy to approach Thy Sacred Mysteries, may I deserve nevertheless eternal joy.'
He then withdrew a small bottle filled with Holy Water and held it gingerly in his hand.
Now, more or less prepared for the ritual to come, he turned his back to the pen and carefully ran his hand along the wall, searching for the small nail he’d placed there on a previous visit. Finding it with his fingertips, he reached into his case once more and pulled from it a silver crucifix. He kissed the figure on the cruciform and gently hung it from the nail.
He returned his attention to the pen and noticed several more of the dead had gathered around the child, all staring out at him from between the slats of the fence. They must have caught wind of him and that was what drew them to the spot. His body’s odor had undoubtedly acted as a lure which enticed them one by one to come to where he now prepared to cleanse them of their sins. He knew he’d have to be both quick and careful if this was going to go as smoothly as it had in the past. His primary concern, of course, was that he not get himself bitten. Thankfully, he had some experience in this regard so he wasn’t too worried. Secondarily, he knew Adamson and his people did not fully understand or approve of his reasons for being here now, doing what he was about to do. Well, maybe Adamson. There had been some discussions regarding The Dead’s salvation before. He might be willing to overlook it, but The League would surely have taken a dim view.
But that was a concern best left to another time.
He carefully poured the Holy Water into his hand and splashed it as best he could onto the faces of the gathered dead. Then, he did it again. Most of the fluid landed on the fence and softly reflected in the dim light, but some of it made it through and hit the open-mouthed faces of his intended targets.
'Is any among you sick?' he said, quoting from the Book of James, in a subdued voice. 'Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.'
In the half-light, the dead continued to stare at him hungrily.
'Oh, Heavenly Father,' he continued, 'we call upon you to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.' The irony of the 'raise the dead' line was not lost on him, but by now the words were flowing freely from his lips and could not be stopped.
'And into whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you, eat such things as are set before you: And heal the sick that are therein, and say unto them, the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.'
One of the dead, an older man of about fifty, pushed his way through the crowd gathered at the fence and pressed his face against the chain link. He mashed his features against the metal and let out a sigh that reeked of the tomb, a smell of decaying anatomy and of blood freely spilled. His grue-stained fingers wound their way between the links and gripped the metal fervently.
Pausing briefly, Handel looked the man in the eye, the pupils cast opaque and milky in the faint luminosity. Slowly, the man opened his mouth and pressed himself even tighter to the fence, as if he was trying to push himself through the grating. His blackened tongue raked across swollen, bloated lips and he painfully pulled air into his lungs.
'A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a,' and he paused and then breathed out, 'me-e-e-e-e-e-ennn.'
Father Handel smiled to himself and continued to give The Dead their Last Rites.
Adamson came around the far end of the pen and heard Handel whispering long before he ever saw him. Through the shadows, he was able to make out his silhouetted form lit by the sparse ambient lighting. Moving forward he walked slowly, hoping to get an idea of what the priest was up to and why he was going about it with such secrecy. From some of their past conversations, he thought he might have a pretty good idea. As he got closer, he heard Handel’s low voice drifting out of the blackness.
'And they cast out many devils,' Handel said, 'and anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed them.'
Adamson then saw Handel pour something into his hand from a bottle and toss it at the fence. He punctuated what it was that he was saying with this motion again and again. From where Adamson was, it appeared as if the priest was splashing the liquid onto the fence as well as whatever lay beyond. It was then that Adamson caught sight of the crowd of UDs that had gathered on the other side of the barrier. There must have been a dozen or so huddled around where the priest stood. The weird thing was that they weren’t acting excited or aggressive in any way. They simply stood and stared as if transfixed. One of them pressed his face against the chain link and Adamson could just make out the thing’s lips moving, almost as if it were trying to speak.
Whatever was going on here was weird and Adamson didn’t like it one bit.
'Handel?'
The priest turned abruptly at the sound of his name. The bottle he was holding slipped from his grasp and hit the floor with an eruption of liquid sloshing out from its open mouth. The expression on the man’s face was like that of a kid who’d been caught stealing money out of his mother’s purse—embarrassment and guilt all wrapped in one wide-mouthed gape.
'A…A… Adamson,' he said and his voice quivered nervously.
'Mind if I ask what you are doing here?' Adamson inquired, having come closer to view the makeshift altar that had been created. A silver crucifix hung from a nail driven into the wall behind where Handel stood. The priest was dressed in an elaborate clerical gown and a small leather bag laid on the ground at his feet. Whatever he was up to, it was obvious he’d put a lot of planning into it.
'I… uh… I…' he stammered and then abruptly regained his composure and stood erect. 'I am giving them…' and he looked around as if unsure of exactly how to explain… 'the Last Rites.'
'You’re… what?'
'We’ve talked about this before, Jeffrey… These are still God’s children and they deserve some level of our sympathy. The League refuses to acknowledge that. I cannot.'
The two of them had indeed had discussions about Handel’s theories on The Dead and, every time they did,
