Omega Days (Volume 1) - By John L. Campbell Page 0,4
into them. Only a few went down to the gunfire, and the crowd pressed forward. The cops and troops began backing up as they neared, and on the left side of the screen a single officer was suddenly jumped by people who bore him to the ground and began tearing at him with hands and teeth.
Xavier stared at the images, disbelieving, and was slow to notice Father Frye going out the back door. “Sister Emily?” the man called. “Come inside, dear.”
The younger priest tore his eyes from the screen and followed him out. Father Frye was walking across the grass towards the nun. Sister Emily turned at the sound of his voice, and Xavier saw at once that the front of her habit was soaked with blood, one of her cheeks torn nearly away and dangling by a flap of skin. “Dear God,” he whispered.
“Sister!” Frye saw the wound and ran to her, and she reached for him as he arrived. She growled, gripped him by the arms and sank her teeth into his face. The old man screamed as the smaller nun took him to the ground and bit him again, this time in the throat, her hands clawing at his arms as he tried to fend her off.
Xavier sprinted towards them and grabbed Sister Emily by the waist, pulling her off. A piece of Father Frye’s throat came away in her teeth and she snarled, trying to twist around. The old woman was nearly weightless in his powerful arms, and he flung her high and far. She landed with a crunch of brittle bones and rolled, as on the grass the old man lay on his back, pawing at his throat and gurgling as jets of blood sprayed into the morning air. Xavier went to him, dropping to his knees, but already the blood was losing strength, and the old man stiffened, staring at the sky with empty eyes.
A growl came from behind, and Xavier turned to see Sister Emily on her feet once more, stalking towards him, a rib jutting out of her side and her head hanging to one side on a fractured neck. Her eyes were milky and her hands were raised, fingers clutching as she chewed a piece of skin which still had whisker stubble on it.
The bang of a wooden gate made him turn, and he saw more nuns entering the yard through a stone archway from Sisters of Mercy, half a dozen of them, each covered in blood and horrific wounds, one missing an arm, another most of her face. A hand clutched at his shoulder and he jumped away a second before Sister Emily’s teeth snapped at the air. The arriving nuns gave out a collective moan and moved towards him.
With a last glance at the man on the ground, Xavier ran back to the kitchen door, slamming it behind him, fingers fumbling to turn the lock in the knob. Moments later the nuns were at the door, thumping against it with fists and bloody palms, streaking the glass, moaning and glaring at him.
Xavier Church had seen dead before, in hospitals and tenement fires, drug overdoses, the destruction left by drive-by shootings, and in the small apartment of a poor Hispanic woman and her son. He knew it when he saw it, and though it was impossible, he was seeing it on the other side of the kitchen door. That moment of disconnection from reality pushed over into the realm of madness when Father Frye appeared behind the cluster of nuns, his throat open to reveal a torn larynx, eyes cloudy. Frye moaned with the rest of them and crowded against the door.
He backed into the kitchen, unable to take his eyes off the people – if that’s what they were, he thought – on the other side of the glass. On the TV behind him, a news image showed Red Square in Moscow, as rows of troops fired into a mass of people which moved relentlessly forward. The Kremlin was burning in the background.
Father Church turned and ran through the rectory, to the corner of the front room where the secretary’s desk sat. Behind him came the sound of breaking glass, followed by enraged snarls. He looked at the row of hooks where the keys for the rectory’s vehicles were kept. The hooks were empty. The sound of cracking wood came from the back of the house, and Xavier bolted out the front door, into the street, and into a