"But put a stake through his heart? I can't!"

"You can't not, Lacey. Not if you have the slightest bit of regard for who he was and what he stood for and how he'd want to be remembered."

In that instant Lacey knew Carole was right. Her Uncle Joe had lived his life by a certain set of rules, not simply avoiding evil but actively trying to do good. She couldn't let these undead vermin make a lie and a mockery of his entire life. Stopping that would not be something she did to him, it would be for him.

Somehow, somewhere, she found the strength to rise from the bed. Let's go.

"Can you get a car?"

Lacey nodded. "We brought in a bunch of them to block the streets. There's extras. I'm sure I can get one."

"Good. Keep the lights out and drive it around to the side door of the rectory, then come inside. I'll be waiting in the basement."

The next ten or fifteen minutes would forever be a blur in Lacey's memory. Finding the keys to an old Lincoln Town Car and sneaking it around the block remained clear, but after that. . . creeping down into that dank cellar .. . seeing her uncle's lifeless, bloodless face when Carole unwrapped the top of the sheet—it was him, really, really him—and then struggling his dead weight up the stairs . . . placing him in the trunk of the car . . . hearing the clank of the tools Carole had found in the caretaker's shed as she carefully placed them on the back seat. . . slumping in the passenger seat as Carole drove them away toward the brightening horizon . . .

And thinking about her Uncle Joe . ..

The earliest memory was riding on his back, he barely a teenager and she barely in kindergarten. A flash of watching from a front row pew as he took his Holy Orders and officially became a priest. And then later, much clearer memories of long conversations about faith and God and the meaning of life with her doing most of the talking because no one would listen to her, only him, and Uncle Joe not agreeing but giving her his ear, letting her finish without cutting her off and dissing her dissidence.

And now he was gone. Her sounding board, her last anchor... gone, erased. She felt adrift.

The car stopped. Returning to the present, Lacey wiped her eyes and looked around. They were at the beach. A boardwalk lay straight ahead. She'd been here a few days ago.

They'd arrived at the edge of the continent... to do the unthinkable . . . in order to prevent the unspeakable.

"I don't know if I can go through with this," Lacey said.

Carole was already out of the car. "Stop thinking of yourself and help me carry him."

Thinking of yourself. . . That angered Lacey. "I'm thinking about him, and what he's meant to me, what he'll always mean to me."

"Do you hear yourself? Me-me-me. This isn't about you or me. It's about Father Joe's legacy. And if we're going to preserve that, we have to do what has to be done."

She was right. Damn her, this weird nun was right. Lacey got out of the car as Carole popped the trunk.

"Where are we taking him?"

"Up to the beach."

"Why the beach?"

"Because we can dig a deep hole quickly, and because very few people come here anymore."

"How do you know?"

"Because I watch. I watch everything. No one will find him. Now help me lift him."

Lacey glanced around. The area looked deserted but who knew what was hiding in the shadows. Her guns ... after taking the dead Vichy woman's clothes, she'd crept back into the Post Office and lifted the pistols off a couple of the undead corpses. She wished she'd thought to bring them, but her mind had been numbed with loss.

Carole opened the trunk to reveal the sheet-wrapped form. Steeling herself, Lacey took the shoulders, Carole the feet, and they carried Joe's body up a ramp, across the boardwalk, then down the steps to the sand. Carole directed them toward a spot under the boards with about five feet of headroom, maybe a little less.

Lacey stayed with the body while Carole ran back to the car. She returned moments later with a pair of shovels and a beat-up purple vinyl book bag. The sky had grown light enough for Lacey to see ST. ANTHONY'S SCHOOL emblazoned along the side in yellow.

"What's in there?" Lacey asked, although she had a good idea what the answer would be.

Carole said nothing. She responded by pulling out a heavy, iron-headed maul and a wickedly sharpened length of one-inch doweling. She drew the sheet back from Uncle Joe's head and upper torso.

Lacey's stomach heaved as she caught sight of his torn-open throat. She'd seen only his face back in the rectory. Good thing she hadn't eaten since yesterday, otherwise she'd be spewing across the sand.

"Look what they did to him!" she screeched. "Look what they did!"

Carole didn't respond. Her face seemed set in stone as she raised the stake and placed the point over the left side of his chest.

"Can't it wait?" Lacey cried.

"Till when?" Carole's expression had became fierce, her voice tight, thin, stretched to the breaking point. "Tell me a good time for this and I'll gladly wait. When, Lacey? When will be a good time?"

Lacey had no answer. When she saw Carole place the point of the stake over her uncle's heart, she turned away.

"I can't watch this."

"Then I guess I'm on my own."

Sobbing openly, Lacey resisted the urge to run screaming down the beach. She kept her back to Carole and jammed her fingers into her ears while she began a tuneless hum to block out the sounds—of iron striking wood, of wood crunching through bone and cartilage. She knew she should be helping, but after what she'd already been through in the last dozen hours, pounding a stake into her uncle's chest was more than she could handle right now. She couldn't. She. Just. Couldn't.

So she stared through her tears at the ocean, at the pink glow growing on the horizon.

Finally she pulled her fingers from her ears and tried to turn, but her brain refused to send the necessary signals to make her body move. The mere thought of seeing her uncle lying there with a shaft of wood protruding from his chest. . .

She heard a noise ... sobbing .. . Carole.

"Is... is it over?"

Carole moaned. "Nooooo! I couldn't do it!"

Lacey whirled, took one look at the nun's tear-stained face, and she knew.

"You loved him, didn't you."

Another bubbling sob from Carole as she nodded. "In my fashion, yes. We all did. A good, goo d man ..."

"I don't mean loving him like that, like a brother. I mean as a man."

Carole said nothing, just stared down at the sheet-wrapped body before her.

"It's okay, Carole. It's not just idle interest. He was my uncle. I'd like to know how you felt about him, especially now that he's . . . gone. Did you love him as a man?"

"Yes." It sounded like a gasp of relief, as if a long pent-up pressure had been released. "Not that we ever did anything," she added quickly. "Not that he ever even knew."

"But you" ... she needed the right word here . . . "longed for him?"

"God forgive me, yes. Not lust, nothing carnal. I just wanted to be near him. Can you understand that?"

Lacey shrugged, unsure of what she could understand. This was so unreal.

"I'm not sure how to say this," Carole said, "because I've never expressed it, even to myself."

"Why not?"

"Because it wasn't right. I took vows. He took vows. I shouldn't have been thinking of a man like that, especially a priest. God was supposed to be enough. But sometimes..."

"Sometimes God just isn't enough."

"It must be a sin to say so, but no, sometimes He isn't. Father Joe had something about him that made me ... made me want, long to be near him. His very presence just seemed to make the world seem right. I'd see him touch some of the other sisters, the older ones—nothing but a hand on the arm or, rarely, an arm across the shoulders as they'd laugh about something. But never me. And I never knew why. Not that I wanted more, not that I'd ever lead him astray, but a simple touch, just to let me know he knew I existed, that would have made me so happy."