Sunset Volume 2: High Noon

The Church had a cot set aside for this type of thing. It was a stained, hospital green cot, missing the mattress, but with three rows of straps attached to it as restraints. Alyosha sat on a threadbare couch pushed up against the wall with Alex beside him, and tried to watch the body lying on top of the cot. The other Church members had cleaned the body up, but it was harder than it ought to be and he settled on staring at the middle space not far from its pale fingertips. Alex was still enough that Alyosha could almost believe he had fallen asleep, except that his posture was stiff as a board.

The door to the room opened, making both of them jump. Warren came in with a long knife in his hand.

“The sun’s setting.” He said it like an apology and handed Alex the knife.

“Still have one more night though, right?” Alex asked.

“Should, yes, but can’t be too safe.” All their sleep schedules were a disaster. It seemed that when there was a potential dog within their walls, the Church didn’t hunt or even leave the Sanctuary to run errands. The lockdown made the small house feel that much smaller. So did the two telepaths.

Alyosha shifted his weight. Always best not to think about telepathy in front of a telepath. “How’s Reeve?” he asked instead.

“He wants to get up and moving,” Warren grunted. “At this point it’ll be easier to resew his pulled stitches than talk him into resting.”

“That sounds like him,” Alyosha chuckled.

Alex didn’t laugh. “So how long do we have to wait?”

Warren cocked his head at him. “Until the third sunrise.”

“No, I mean how long from when it moves until we can kill it?”

Warren sighed. “At a certain point, there are no rules and it’s your call. I wait until its death wound has healed. You won’t be alone.” He turned to leave.

“How much left on our shift?” Alex called.

“Under two hours. Someone will come get you. Yell if you need something.”

He shut the door, slow and quiet, as if he was afraid of waking someone. Alyosha dragged a hand down his face. “Do you think you will be able to sleep after this?”

“No.”

“Yeah.”

Alex deflated and blew the hair out of his eyes in a puff. “Jesus, Al, I don’t know what—” he trailed off, pausing, then burst out. “Holy shit, I cannot call you ‘Al’!” He laughed with his eyebrows high on his face as though laughing had surprised him. “Wow, the full four syllables or nothing. Al does not work.”

Alyosha smiled, but something about the way Alex’s hands didn’t unclench when he laughed made him worry.

“That is okay,” he told Alex, “I could not call you ‘Al’ either.”

“Do not,” he agreed, then his expression went slack as he turned toward the body. “Have you ever seen someone come back?”

“No, not like this.” Alyosha leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I don’t think,” he clicked his tongue, thinking. “I don’t think that they ‘come back’ like you say. I think it's something else. Something I don't know the word for.”

Alex leaned back, unsmiling. “If I want cryptic, vague answers, I can go hang out with Reeve upstairs.”

He craned his neck to look at Alex. A part of him wanted to smile at that response, but it didn’t come. “I knew someone once who did this. Entropy. He wasn’t kind, but he was not purposefully cruel to me and that was almost the same thing. He was likeable, somehow. I don’t know when it happened. One flight, he was suddenly dead and like them.”

“Was he suddenly a sadistic prick like the rest of Entropy too?”

“No,” he admitted. “I do not think that these people are beasts or dogs like they call them. But they are not the same as they went in. They are something else.”

“You’re religious, right?” Alex asked. He nodded. “So,” he continued, not making eye contact, “do you think the bodies are possessed by something? A demon or whatever that needs three days to put the meat-suit on?”

Alyosha made a face. “No, that is what I mean. Some things were the same. A lot of things. I don’t think about it.” He shook his head. “Maybe the difference of the feeding was so extreme that it felt like so much had changed.”

“Was he still likeable?”

“No.”

There was a beat of silence. Alex asked, “What are we doing?”

“If Reeve is the king of vague answers, you are the king of vague questions.”

Alex rolled his eyes. “The Church. Babysitting dead bodies. Reeve said he’d been preparing for this for years. Is this seriously the best solution he came up with?”

Alyosha rapped his fingers on the edge of the couch and gave him an apologetic smile. “When you are drowning, you grab onto the first solid thing you can find, then you look for land.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You’re angry.”

“Yeah, I’m angry. I don’t know how to stop being angry at him for all this shit.”

“It will fade.”

“But if I’m not feeling pissed, I’m shitting myself. You’re seeing this, right?” He waved his arms a little wildly in front of the body. “This dead guy is lying here and he’s going to wake up or something and be this thing that can snap me in half. And we’re supposed to do something about that, but if I have to get any closer to that cot and Read it, I’m gonna fucking throw up.”

There was a loose thread in the couch and Alyosha picked at it. It was not like a wake, staring at this dead man. He didn’t know him, and anyway, they weren’t even really mourning him. It was like being at the wrong wake. Awkward and intrusive, but waiting for who you came here for. “Do you want to try praying?” he asked Alex.

“What?”

He shrugged. “It is what they do. They stay alive.”

“You know how?”

“Yes?” Alyosha held out his hand and Alex dropped his hand into it. “I haven’t in a long time. Not out loud.”

“Maybe just think it.”

Alyosha gave a nod and took a breath, closing his eyes. He stopped and opened them with a terror that the body would have moved. It hadn’t. It was still there, pale and waxy. “I don’t know how to do it with my eyes open.” It felt silly to say and stranger to feel.

“It’s okay. I’ll watch,” Alex said quietly, his eyes on the cot.

“No, it can wait.” He took Alex’s tense hand in his and gave it a squeeze. Alex leaned into him, heavier than his size made seem possible. Flashes of watching the Neptune SUV drive off with Alex inside swam in his head with a stabbing pain. The other two could take care of themselves, but this one and Reeve, he wanted to stow away someplace safe. He willed it so. That would have to do for prayer for now.

---

Reeve shouldn’t have gotten out of bed. There should have been more people in the room when it happened, but they were distracted. Fist fights will do that.

By then, the stitches on his side were more painful than the actual wound. When he moved, it felt like they were tearing him open instead of holding him together. He wanted them out, but grit his teeth and kept his mouth shut. Instead, he listened to the activity downstairs, staring off at the blank white walls and tapping into long-forged connections to see through their eyes. Alex was in that small room with Noah and Alyosha. The corpse had been strapped down to the cot. Alex focused hard on it and it didn’t move. He was sitting up close next to Noah and bouncing his foot on the floor. They were all heavily armed. One night left.

Hannah was in the shower—not showering, just standing there, and Reeve let her be before she could tell he’d been there. Gareth. It was always this with Gareth. He was pacing in the kitchen. His racing thoughts scratched at Reeve and he closed his eyes to wade through them. He felt Gareth attempt to swat at him like a fly, but he kept sifting. Reeve sighed, got up, and eased himself downstairs, padding down each step as fast as he dared.

Warren and Spits were sitting at the table, arguing and watching with disgust, respectively.

As Reeve rounded the corner, forcing himself to stand straighter, Gareth spotted him and rolled his eyes.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Gareth groaned.

“He wants to leave,” Warren told him with unmasked anger.

“I know,” Reeve replied, walking into the kitchen.

Gareth pulled his coat off in short, violent jerks. “I just need to go for a walk. I’m going fucking crazy, stuck in here.”

“No one leaves when there is a Vigil. For everyone’s safety.” Warren said it slow and clear.

Gareth stopped at a window and pried up an edge of the curtain to peer out. “I’m not trying to go for a drive or stay out the whole night. I just need to walk around the block a few times. The house is full. You don’t need me for an hour.”

“If the dog we killed was part of a pack, they could be out looking for us.”

“How the fuck would they know me?” Gareth was raising his voice now. He pointed down the hall toward the bedrooms. His hand was shaking. “I have seen this happen before. I just need some goddamn air before it happens again.”

Reeve closed his eyes against the electric tangle of minds. “You need to stay,” he said as gently as he could, and regretted it as he felt something in the twisting mess of Gareth’s head snap.

“Don’t you—no, I’ll be right back.”

Spits and Warren stood up with more speed than Reeve expected. “No one leaves,” Warren shouted before taking a breath, and quietly threatened, “You’re endangering us all and we will make sure others know this is the respect you have for the Church. ”

Gareth grabbed his jacket off the back of a chair. “Well, we're both gonna have to fucking deal, then.”

“These are their rules,” Reeve urged, his eyes darting around the room. Spits wouldn't be saying much, but Warren could be a massive problem for them. If they lost their Church protections… His mind was too cloudy to figure it all out, but it would be bad. He looked back at Gareth and pleaded, “Don’t make me do this.”

“I’m going for a walk. Nothing’s going to happen.” He hurried down across the kitchen toward the front door.

I’ll stop him, Reeve thought to Warren automatically.

“You can’t—” Warren started, his words running together.

But Reeve had already stretched his control. It was easy, with Gareth’s thoughts so busy, to slip past that interior border of privacy of self that Reeve had set and take charge of his body, stopping it from walking out the door. He sensed Gareth take in what had happened with mild shock and felt his mind shut down and sink into itself silently as if into quicksand.

Reeve wanted to say something to comfort him, but just then, he was lifted into mid-air. Spits swiped with his outstretched arm and sent him flying into the far wall, hard.

Reeve crumpled to the ground, the air knocked out of him. He clutched at his side. It was wet. He sputtered for air, but even shallow breaths caused searing, white flashes of pain. Warren and Spits were watching him, mouths a hard flat line. He saw, in the shifting of his expression, Warren register that the attack had severed Reeve's control over Gareth. Reeve dropped his head back to the floor and hiccupped in pain ungracefully.

It was from this low angle that he saw Gareth, now free, tackle Spits from behind and land a blow with his fist to the side of his skull. Lying on the ground, Spits summoned a coffee mug, flinging it to break against the back of Gareth's head. Warren looked about to jump in, himself, but a glance in Reeve's direction made him freeze and his face go deathly pale. Startled, Reeve tried to look behind himself but stopped as blood entered his eyeline. There was a great puddle of it, nearly black under the red lights, slowly crawling across the floor and he was puzzled, seeing that it was coming from his own body. Warren was on him in seconds, his hand crushing down over Reeve's own against the wound.

In a clatter of footsteps that jarred Reeve to the bone, he saw Alyosha, Alex, and Noah rush into the room.

“What the fuck is going on?” Noah boomed, unearthly loud—enough to make the glasses in the cabinets shiver and his ears twinge. Alyosha and Alex clamored to their knees beside Reeve, panic in their faces.

“My fault,” Reeve ground out. “It’s not that bad.”

“What the hell did you do?” Alex squawked, his hands running over him, aimless and frantic. Alyosha worked his arm underneath Reeve’s head, supporting him.

“He used his telepathy against someone,” Warren said, prying up Reeve’s hand to take a look at his side. Exposed, the air felt like fire. “I can’t see how bad it is,” he mumbled. Warren’s head shot up, “The dog?”

“Michael and Hannah,” Noah answered.

Across the kitchen, Gareth and the old man were still scuffling as Gareth continued to try to beat on him between being hit with flying furniture. Gareth’s eyes looked far away, and Reeve wondered if he even remembered in that moment who he was pummeling and why. Alex stood up and Reeve could see his hand tighten around the machete he’d brought with him. The thudding of heavy footsteps growing faster and faster made it feel like the whole house was shaking, until Reeve realized it was his heartbeat against the floor.

“Don’t,” Reeve urged through gritted teeth.

Alex’s expression didn’t change and Reeve wasn’t sure if he’d heard him. Alex walked a step behind Noah toward Gareth and Spits.

“Help me get him up onto the table so I can sew this up. Someone fix the damn table.” Warren’s voice was neutral, and he was careful to avoid gripping too close to the bite wound as he lifted Reeve up. Alyosha righted the kitchen table from where it had been thrown and pulled it close to them by the wall, where Warren gently set him down on it. As Noah crossed the room, Reeve braced himself for another one of his screeches, but it didn’t come. Noah went to the far wall and ripped off a patch of duct tape that Reeve had assumed was covering a hole. Underneath was a light switch. He flipped it. One single, bare bulb of white light flashed on above them, blinding everyone. The room was full of the sounds of hissing and groaning as they recoiled, wincing and covering their eyes. Through squinted eyes, Reeve could see that Gareth and the old man had frozen where they were grappling on the floor.

Noah waited a moment then yelled, “Knock it off!” It wasn’t enough to hurt their ears, but it was loud. As the shuddering of reverberating dinnerware came to an end, Reeve heard a distant crashing sound. Disoriented and squinting up on the table on his back, he turned his head toward the sound and waited for his eyes to adjust. Washed out by the glare of the sudden lighting, he could see the dead body scrabbling along the floor, mouth pushed flush against the pool of blood by the far wall. Chaos erupted.

Reeve watched it from the table. He tried to get up but fell back down, dizzy and sick. Bodies rushed past him, weapons in hand. The resulting composite of shouting was almost too jumbled to make any sense of. The dog moved, bent slightly at the waist with its head swinging back and forth in a bucking motion. It was not a thing that could pass for human out on the street. Too-bright flashes glinted off blades as they ripped through the air, making Reeve blink. The thing lashed out, fingers crooked into claws, and curled a bloody lip with a wet, guttural sound that was almost more vibration than it was a voice. It was not a thing that knew language.

People were thrown. People cried out. He heard the pop of breaking bone. It felt distant, watching it. Maybe it was the fuzzy vignetting of blackness framing his vision that made the whole scene not seem real. Maybe it was denial. After several knives had gotten stuck in the dog’s skin, someone started shooting. Reeve dragged one shoulder up so he could see the hallway to the bedrooms. He was half expecting to see Hannah there holding the gun, but she wasn’t. He struggled to remember where she was last. For a short moment, the impact of the bullets backed the dog against the wall, but like it was learning, it thrashed its head and began moving inexorably toward them.

Spits pushed to the front of the pack, a pentacle held high up in his hand. The beast flinched and snapped its head to one side, as far as a neck could go. Its one visible eye was wide and round, iris fully surrounded by white. It clawed at its own hair, bringing it down to shield its face. Someone began chanting in that clear monotone the Children reserved for quoting their bible.

“When the wicked come upon me to devour my flesh, mine adversaries and mine enemies, they stumble and fall.”

The group slowly moved forward, some with weapons and others with whatever they could grab, having lost their knives in the beast.

“When the wicked come upon me to devour my flesh, mine adversaries and mine enemies, they stumble and fall.”

They swarmed it. Reeve watched the Phage grab Spits’ arm holding the pentacle and bend it. The pentacle, pressed against the beast’s shoulder, left a mark like it had burned it and the dog let go, quailing. Its neck was spined with knife handles, making it hard for anyone to land a clear cut. Reeve was blinking slower, missing full seconds of the struggle at a time. Someone was tossed, rolling past him, banging into a table leg, making his body jerk. He braced himself for a stab of pain, but it didn’t hurt anymore.

Someone else was thrown sharply upward into the ceiling and, with a crack, the light went out, throwing them into darkness. All Reeve could see was a faint red tinge to the pitch blackness. People were yelling. Voices he knew, but they sounded underwater, distorted and quiet. There was crashing and the meaty thuds of impacts. Something wet splattered across Reeve’s face. The red light faded and he blacked out.

***