Chapter 3: The Confessional

A nun, a Government Agent and a street thug walk into a church... you know the rest...

Cami sat at the far end of the front pew, watching the dancing flames from outside through extra tall stained-glassed windows. The silhouettes of the lumbering corpses passed through the flame's luminescence. Their tall shadows crawled inside the huge cathedral's walls on the opposite end. She stared out the windows with an almost hypnotic gaze. Her brain tried to process what was happening.  

 

The dead were coming back to life. They were getting up and eating the living. And those bodies would in-turn rise and continue the cycle. 

 

Cami was ripped from her native Thailand and brought to San Francisco as part of the sex slave industry when she was eleven years old. For the next eight years she was bought and used and kept on the tight leash by her oppressors. In that time, she lost her innocence, her spirit, and her faith in life and love. At nineteen she made her move and escaped from the system, only to find herself on the streets and once again turning to selling herself to pay the bills and eat. 

 

And then she met Father Willard. 

 

He was the man who found her on the streets after being beaten, and brought her to the church. He clothed her and fed her and gave her nothing but kindness. He talked to her about The Word Of God without preaching to her. And when she quietly left his care after a week without letting anyone know, she felt horrible. And when she had no other place to go and wound up at the church's door once again, he took her in without any chastisement or ill will. He just told her she was welcomed to come and go as she pleased and when she needed help or needed to talk, that God would be there to help her through him. It took months and months of gentle care and friendship before she accepted the fact that Father Willard wanted to help her. He was a man who didn't want to take advantage of her. He wasn't a man who wanted to rip her clothes off and use her. He was a simple man of God who wanted to just help her. And it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever felt. 

 

That is why she fell in Love with Father Willard. And that is why she inevitably gave her body and soul to The Lord. 

 

Cami was just finishing up her second year as a novice under the Catholic faith and was coming close to taking her permanent vows and full inclusion into the Sisterhood, when she decided to take a week to come and visit Father Willard. She wanted to show him what she had done with her life. She wanted to get that all encompassing approve from him, like one would crave from her father. And she had got that from him. She'd gotten the whole show. The smile, the teary eyes, the sense of gratification... it was all there. And she reveled in it. She opened her heart and let his love wash over her. And when he hugged her and blessed her and said he loved her like a daughter, she cried. She let all those emotional walls she'd built up crumble and she cried like a baby. And it felt wonderful. 

 

And then the dead rose.

 

And Father Willard was bitten.

 

And now Father Willard was going to die.

 

"How is he doing, Reginald?" she quietly asked, not taking her eyes away from the stained-glass window.

 

Reginald 'Reggie" Pratt's unsavory hulking frame sat on the front sage steps, next to the fallen Father Willard's body. At 6'6" and weighing in at 310 lbs., Reggie was an intimidating figure. And he used that intimitdation to his advantage. For years, he'd been the Mexican Mafia's main extortionist in San Diego and Los Angeles. That is, until he was apprehended by a Federal Agent in Sacramento, trying to evade a murder charge. And now he sat there on the stage next to the podium, with a pair of stainless steel handcuffs on his wrists and watching the dying Father.

 

Reggie leaned over Father Willard and examined his neck wound.

 

"Not so good, Sister." he replied to Cami. "He's breathing real fast now. And the rag on his neck wound is all bloody." he sighed. He was a little frustrated. "I don't know what else to do." 

 

"My jacket's right next to you." Langston's booming voice came from the back entrance. "Use that."

 

Langston Hughes stood in the center aisle in the back of the church staring at the double doors as they swayed back and forth as the masses of undead corpses tried their best to gain entrance into the giant building. Bloody decayed fingertips pushed their way through the space between the door and the floor, trying to get a grip. Stained blood and flesh smeared the area. The sound of fingernails scratching against the wood was almost maddening. No matter what the cost... no matter what happened to their fingers... the corpses didn't care. They had one single minded goal; to get inside the church where the meat was. 

 

The Joplin, Missouri born Federal Agent was named after the Black writer/poet James Mercer Langston Hughes. His parents had dreams of him becoming a lawyer or doctor. But for Langston, law enforcement seemed to call him. He felt like he needed to make a difference. So the title of Special Agent meant the world to him. 

 

He'd spent the past 4 and a half months tracking Reggie Pratt after he skipped bail on a murder charge. After apprehending the fugitive in Sacramento, they were on their way back to Los Angeles. They'd made it to San Francisco when the dead rose. 

 

All hell had broken out in the city. The streets in the downtown area had become so congested with frantic people and walking corpses, they could do nothing else except find refuge in the large Catholic church down the street. 

 

By the time they made it to the front door, the entire congregation had exited the church and spilled out into the streets. Langston knew that was a mistake. He quickly dragged the handcuffed Reggie with him into the church and locked the doors behind them. 

 

And now, here they were. 

 

Stuck behind enemy lines. 

 

Waiting for an entire city of dead to brake in and devour them all.

 

Reggie got up and walked over to grab the Agent's coat. 

 

"Mr. Pratt?" Langston called out, still not taking his eyes off of the door. "Can I have a moment, Please?" The hulking man bypassed the coat laying on the pew and slowly lumbered to the back of the church toward his capture. 

 

Reverend Willard coughed loudly which brought Cami out of her stoic gaze. She turned to see her Father's frail body writhing on the stage. Her eyes grew teary. She'd spent the last 20 minutes staring away from him trying to get the thought of his imminent death out of her head. She'd focused on the ghastly apparitions dancing in the stained-glass windows intently, hoping he'd pass on without her noticing.

 

But she couldn't do it. In the faith, she'd been taught to embrace the pain of others. To give them comfort in their most dire times. This was a test of her faith. It had to be. In order for her to truly embrace herself as an agent of God, she would have to face her greatest fear; watching the only man she had ever loved die in front of her. 

 

She slowly approached him and knelt beside him. Father Willard had removed the bloody cloth from his neck wound and the large gaping hole was bleeding out. The old man seemed incredibly pale, contrasted against the splatters of blood on his face.

 

Cami started getting choked up. Tears ran down her face but she refused to lose her composure. She couldn't break down in his presence. If he was going to die here, he would do it in the knowledge that she was finally worthy of being a Servant of God. 

 

Father Willard was weak and in terrible pain. His face showed it. He frowned and his visage was distorted. But when his eyes met hers; when he finally gazed on her face for the last time, the frown dissipated. The scrunched eyes softened and grew large. It almost looked like he was smiling.

 

"Beautiful." she thought he heard him whisper.

 

"Shhhhh." she quietly called back with a tearful smile. "It's ok. It's all going to be ok." 

 

"Beautiful..." he whispered again. "...Angel." 

 

That's when she lost it. 

 

She began to cry uncontrollably. She put her hand over his bloody wound. It was all she could do. She knew he only had moments left and there wasn't a damn thing anyone could do.

 

"Don't be sad, my Cami." he whispered his last words. "My God is calling me..." And it was as if his face froze in mid sentence. His weak eyes became dead eyes, glassed over and instead of staring at her, they stared through her.

 

"Go to God." she whisper back as him as she placed her fingers onto his eyelids and pulled them downward to close them. The said a quick, heartfelt prayer over his body and then leaned down and kissed his cold forehead. 

 

In the back of the church, Reggie had reached Langston and, he too had to stare at the commotion going on under the door. The little fingers from four hands where feverishly clawing under the door-space, trying to get some type of leverage on the door. 

 

"Those f****n' things really wanna get in here." Reggie said.

 

"Yep." Agent Hughes replied, still entranced with the fingertips squeezing under the door.

 

"Can they do it? I mean, can they get in here?"

 

"No. I don't think so. No leverage. They'd have a better chance by all pushing on the door, but even that's a stretch." Langston rubbed his eyes. "I'm not concerned with them getting in. I'm trying to figure out how we're gonna get out."

 

"Can we just wait it out? Won't they just get tired and go try and find other people to eat?"

 

"Could happen. But it all comes down to which one of us can hold out longer without food." he turned to Reggie, reaching into his pocket.

 

At the front of the church, Cami walked to the front pew and grabbed Agent Hughes' coat. She looked up and saw the two men in the back having a conversation at the door. She was glad they were there with her. She'd be the last person to admit that she needed others. She'd barely talked to the two of them since they'd locked up the church. She didn't want to feel alone during the end of the world.

 

She walked back to Father Willard's body and gently draped the coat over its head and chest.

 

And that's when his arm twitched.

 

"Show me your hands." Langston said to Reggie. 

 

Reggie sighed, raising his arms forward to show the handcuffs tightly bound around his wrists.

 

Langston grabbed one of his wrists to expose the keyhole and proceeded to unlock Reggie's wrists. The metal cuffs dropped to the floor, leaving the convict's red-bruised wrists free to breathe.

 

Reggie rubbed them. "What? You letting me go?"

 

The Agent looked back down at the fingers scratching under the door. "I think it's a moot point now. Both of our situations are kinda on hold until the dead go back to being dead." he looked up at the big man. "Besides, s**t's about to get real hairy around here, and we need as many bodies fighting with us instead of against us. Even murderers."

 

"Alleged murders, muthafucka." Reggie shot back. 

 

"Alleged..." Langston started to smile, when he noticed that Sister Cami had reach them.

 

Both Langston and Reggie stared at her as she slowly walked backwards, her gaze fixed on the front of the church where she had just come from. They both turned to see what she was staring at.

 

At the front of the church, right next to the podium, Father Willards legs were twitching. His hands were moving around like he was making snow angels. Cami's widened intense eyes were fixated on the flailing body. 

 

She had just laid the Father to rest. She knew it was stupid to think it, but she was praying he wouldn't come back. How could God allow the body of someone so good and pure to come back and feed on his people? 

 

The corpse finally got it's footing and its arms braced the floor. A horrified Cami watched as the dead thing started to push itself upright. As the body sat up, Agent Langston's coat began to slowly slide off its face.

 

"Dear God..." Cami screamed inside her head. "I don't want to see this. Please, God. Don't let this happen. Don't let this happen to him." 

 

The body was now sitting completely upright. They could see its head under the coat looking left and right. As the head moved more and more, the coat slid more and more downward.

 

Cami's hands began to tremble. She bit her bottom lip. Her Father Willard was coming back to her. 

 

Her heart jumped out of her chest and her breathing became extremely erratic. 

 

"I don't want to see... I don't want to see... I don't want to see... I don't want to see... I don't want to see... "

 

Finally, the coat slid off of Father Willard's head and rolled into his lap.

 

The air in the trio's lungs escaped them simultaneously. The gruesome sight of what use to be Father Willard sucked all the air out of the room. 

 

Reggie and Langston heard a soft whimper escape Sister Cami's lips.

 

Even though he had been dead for only a few minutes, Father Willard's face was almost porcelain-white. It was as if all the blood from his body had been drained and his skin was a sickly opaque, revealing his bloodless flesh underneath. The expression on his face was a cross between anger and hunger; his gaze transfixed completely on Cami's little frame.

 

Reggie was so nervous, he had to say something. "O.k. I didn't see this coming." came out. When Langston looked up a him with a puzzled look on his face, he could only look back at him and shrug his shoulders. "That was sarcasm." he followed.

 

Agent Hughes shook his head and began to draw his revolver from his shoulder holster, when Cami's little hand outreached in front of his chest.

 

"May I have your side-arm. Agent Hughes?" she spoke without breaking her connected gaze with the corpse.

 

Langston shook his head. "Don't worry, Sister. I got this."

 

"No!" she said with trembling lips. "This is me. It has to be me."

 

Langston hesitated giving up his gun. But Cami kept her hand out in front of him. In a nonverbal way, she wasn't taking 'no' for an answer.

 

She finally broke her gaze and looked up at Agent Hughes. "I promised him God wouldn't let him come back like this."

 

After a brief moment, Langston agreed and slowly placed the gun correctly in Cami's palm.

 

"When you're ready to shoot, release the safety.... here..."

 

She interrupted. "I know how to use a gun, Agent Hughes."

 

With that, she locked eyes once again with the dead corpse that use to be her Father Willard. During all this time, it didn't move. Your typical corpse would have stood and came after them. But dead Father Willard was different. He sat there with that hideous look in his face; his mouth moving like he was talking, or chewing...

 

Sister Cami slowly approached the corpse, locking the deadly round into the gun's chamber. Her gun hand fell to her side as she reached the front pew, a couple meters away from the podium.

 

Dead father Willard still sat there looking up at Cami; his mouth constantly moving. Cami took a deep breath and raised the gun and put the zombie's head in her sights. "I'm sorry." she whispered to him. "God didn't do this. I'm so so sorry..." With that , she exhaled and slowly squeezed the trigger.

 

And then it happened....

 

Right before she heard the blast from the gun... right before the kick from the shot and that feeling of her shoulder being ripped out of it's socket.

 

Something came from Father Willard. Something planned especially for her.

 

A message. 

 

A terrifying message.

 

Dead Father Willard's head popped open with a thunder blast. The body twisted to its left side and blew back onto the stage.

 

Startled, Cami dropped the gun and covered her mouth with her hands. She began to back up from the body, when she bumped right into Reggie Pratt, who had come to her after she fired the shot. She quickly turned and grabbed him and held him.

 

He could feel her shocked whimper, so he wrapped his enormous arms around her in a tight embrace. She needed to find someplace safe, and it was Reggie's arms at that moment.

 

Langston walked up and grabbed his gun off of the floor. 

 

The commotion at the front door grew louder. More fingers clambered under the doorframe. Louder muffled moans creeped in from outside.

 

Special Agent Langston Hughes knew this situation wasn't going to end well.