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away everything you’ve worked for.”
It had been a troubling conversation. Their son, Matthew, did not believe in anything. Or said that he didn’t. He’d sat at the breakfast table, head bowed over his Cheerios, and took no sides. Matthew thought it was all silly. Religion, spirituality, the whole works. On the other hand, he was too smart to risk siding with his father on this one. Not against Mom’s iron will.
That was this morning.
Now Pastor John Kellogg sat in his office behind the church and watched the falling rain through the open window. Behind the noise of the storm, threaded through the steady hum of the downpour and the detonations of thunder, he could hear the gunfire.
And the screams.
Kellogg looked out at the rain, silver droplets flickering downward against the purple-black sky, and as the heavens wept he continued to slowly, methodically, and carefully sharpen his knives. They were kitchen knives, but they were all he had. Kellogg did not own a gun and had never even handled one. He loved to cook, though, so knives were more comfortable in his hands. Or . . . had been more comfortable. Comfort of every kind, he judged, was over. He took his time, even as time melted away in the storm.
He tried not to listen to the sounds coming from inside the church. There were no more screams. Those had faded a long time ago. Now it was just moans. Low and constant and hungry. And the slow shuffle of clumsy feet.
He ran the edges of the knives along the whetstone. Kellogg was not really sure if the knives would work. He’d had to use a golf club earlier. That was terrible. Loud and messy and awful. Maybe the knives would be quicker and cleaner—for everyone.
Kellogg was careful with the whetstone, needing to get it right.
Because it was almost time to start the killing.
The moans were constant. And there was a dull, slack pounding on the door. Limp hands beating on the wood.
Whose hands?
Mrs. Kulp, the choir director?
Molly?
Matthew?
“God help me,” whispered Pastor Kellogg.
The only answer he heard, though, were the moans.
2
Fluffy McTeague
(Six months after First Night)
He wasn’t who he’d been.
He was certain of that.
The person he’d been, he was absolutely certain, had died back there in San Francisco.
That person had been too weak to survive.
That person would never have made the kinds of choices or done the kinds of things he’d done.
No.
When the dead rose, Ferdinand McTeague was still a good man. He was a good husband to Alex; a good father to their adopted sons, Quinn and Taye; a good manager at the hotel; a good employee of the corporation that owned the hotel; a good member of the community, the PTA, the condominium homeowners’ association; a good supporter of human rights, animal rights, and sustainable energy; a good son to his parents; a good brother to his sister, Claire.
That’s what he had been.
Good.
As he stood in the road and watched San Francisco burn, he wondered what “good” meant.
