Bitten (16 page)

Stopping on a dime,
Mrs. Mary Campbell ceased her twirling about and suddenly turned to face Rachael. Pointing the dagger at her, Mrs. Campbell wagged the blade in the direction of the door. “Come now, it’s time.”

CHEERS OF RELIGIOUS MANIA SWEPT over the congregation. People in nearly every aisle flailed their arms in the air as Reverend Perry Campbell led them to a state of spiritual ecstasy. Women wept, grown men wrenched themselves to and fro while pulling out their own hair, children laughed hysterically and chased each other around the pews, and stepping into the central aisle, a large black woman began to flop around on the floor, twitching and spasming like an epileptic.

Off to the side, t
wo ushers leapt up and took the quivering woman away as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Apparently this sort of enthusiasm drenched hysteria occurred quite frequently here in the house of insanity.

After the commotion settled down a few degrees,
the reverend raised his hands and, with the charismatic powers of a snake charmer, quickly had everyone’s undivided attention.

“My brethren. My faithful. Tonight we are about to partake in the most sacred ritual of our faith. Tonight we are going to be keepers of the consecrated tradition of the Sacrament of the Altar. The very same tradition the Apostles shared with Christ at the Last Supper. The Eucharist, ladies and gentlemen! Tonight we are going to honor
our Lord and Savior by drinking his everlasting blood and eating his flesh as He himself commanded it!”

Mrs. Campbell shoved Rachael Ramirez out
onto the alter. Raising the knife high into the air, Mrs. Campbell twirled about for all to see, and then handed the blade off to her husband. Perry Campbell made the same gesture and raised the knife up and paused dramatically for effect.

From out of nowhere, Hank grabbed Rachael from behind and got her in an arm lock. He bent her arms behind her back so she couldn’t move and held her roughly by the hair. Perry Campbell took his queue and stepped up to her. With zealot eyes
burning hot, the reverend gazed upon her. There was an awkward pause, then, to her great horror, Perry Campbell slid the knife across her throat.

Blood
spilled out of the gaping slit in Rachael’s jugular. Rachael turned toward the congregation of onlookers and, with one hand on her throat, her other hand reached out for someone, anyone, to come to her aid. But nobody moved a finger to help. In desperation she tried to speak out, but only gurgling noises spurted out of her mouth as it filled up with blood. The duct tape peeled away and an overflow of blood seeped out of her mouth and over her lips.

Rachael
coughed and blood squirted from both her mouth and neck hole. The copper taste of her own blood caused her to fill with panic. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t swallow, she could only suffer through the bloody agony of this hellish nightmare.

Mary Campbell, with her frenzied eyes, quickly fetched a goblet and put it under the gushing crimson waterfall below Rachael’s chin. Collecting as much blood as possible, Mary Campbell held up the goblet high above her head
and ceremoniously presented it to the crowd. Before her husband, Mrs. Campbell knelt down on her knees before her husband and extended the goblet to him as an offering.

Perry Campbell put his right hand on her head and raised h
is left hand high into the air. “Praise the Lord! We are reborn!”

Mary bowed her head
as he took the cup in both hands and raised it heavenward. Bringing it to his lips he pronounced, with a jackal toothed grin, “Remember His words! This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me. In the name of Je’zah’z'Christ, we pray, amen!” Campbell smiled and drank heartily from the cup. Tipping it back he consumed the whole amount of what was contained inside.

Rachael’s eyes fluttered then rolled back in her head, and her head fell limp.
Hank caught her so she didn’t fall to the ground and, as if on cue, the audience grew deathly silent as they watched with bated breath.

Gasping for air, Rachael re-awoke to the frenetic sound of applause.
It seemed the more she regenerated the faster and easier it became.

Reverend
Campbell took the knife and reopened Rachael’s neck. He filled the cup up again, then he handed it to one of the ushers who took it to distribute among the congregation. Campbell and his wife repeated the ritual until practically the entire congregation has partaken of her blood.

Between each suffocating breath Rachael begged and pleaded for
them to stop this insanity. But they merely ignored her. Tears streamed from Rachael’s eyes as she watched the parents force their small children to partake in the so-called “Holy Communion.” But there was nothing holy about drinking another human being’s blood. It was morbidly grotesque. Many of the parents lied outright and informed the small ones that it was just “juice.”

Rachael
struggled to break free of Hank’s meaty arms, but she had lost too much blood. She couldn’t fight him off and suddenly fainted. Moments later Rachael rolled over on the floor. Groggy, she pushed herself to her hands and knees. She heard a loud pop. Then another. And another. Rachael could smell the scent of gun powder thick in the air.

Pop! Pop, pop!

Rachael’s head shot up and opened her eyes and looked around. It was total chaos. People ran in every which direction screaming, others held smoking guns, others sat in the pews bleeding out—caught in the crossfire. Zombies with bullet holes in their foreheads littered the aisles. The parishioners were all turning. Everyone who had consumed Rachael’s blood was transforming into the undead. All hell had broken loose in the chapel. It was Judgment Day.

Whatever the viral strain did to her, its fast-acting properties worked equally as fast in reverse on those not immune to the infection, like she was. By the looks of things, nearly everyone in the church
had turned. They drank her blood and in just a matter of minutes they had turned into white-eyed, flesh-eating, monsters. Those who hadn’t drank yet rushed to grab weapons and defend themselves from their friends and loved ones.

Rachael tore the duct tape
that dangled on her chin the rest of the way off and let out a ferocious scream that cut through the dull roar of pandemonium. Rachael’s lungs rattled with all the pent up rage which had manifested during her dehumanizing, violent treatment at the hands of religious fanatics. She screamed like a banshee, alerting the living and the dead that the Dark Angel had arrived.

Some
had formed a prayer circle and dropped to their knees and were praying furiously to God to save them, but to no avail. The prayer circle’s prayers were suddenly silenced by a multitude of chomping teeth.

“That’s her,” a man cried out. “
That’s the witch!
”

“Kill her!” another voice shouted
out over the screams.

One of Hank’s men, a small wiry g
uy with yellow spiky hair wearing a white and blue pin-striped collar shirt, with a turquoise necktie, ran up to her with a sawed-off shotgun. Bringing it to her chest, Rachael sensed her end was imminent when from nowhere Mrs. Mary Campbell leapt onto the young man like a jumping spider. They toppled over and Mrs. Campbell gnawed at his face and jugular, biting viciously. Her whitewashed eyes gave her a hideous look, but Rachael couldn’t help but think, the monster beneath the mask had finally come out to play.

A nearby
man saw Mrs. Campbell’s feeding frenzy and freaked out. He threw down his gun and tried to escape out of one of the side exists. He even made it into the hall. His retreat was cut short, however. Rachael heard him scream out, “God have mercy!” just as blood splattered across the glass windows of the doors he had just exited.

Rachael turned to run but paused. Something caught her eye. The dagger they had used mercilessly on her lay abandoned on the floor
nearby. Without a second’s hesitation, she bent down to pick it up but the moment she clasped it a hand from behind the podium shot out and grabbed her wrist.

Looking up she saw the fever struck face of Reverend
Perry Campbell. His forehead glistened with wet residue from the sickness and he shook with cold sweats as beads of perspiration dripped down his forlorn face. Through chattering teeth he spoke, “What d-d-did y-you d-dd-do to us?”

Rachael tore her arm free of his
clammy clutches and replied with an unsympathetic voice so cold it could have dripped icicles. “I didn’t do anything.
This
is all on you. You got your wish. Now you’ll live forever—as the King of the damned. Lord of the dead.”

“I d-did
nnn’t want th-this. Puh-please s-save us!”

Rachael smiled a Mona Lisa smile,
diminutive and sly, but it spoke volumes. “You already have a savior. Ask him for help.”

Campbell began
crying tears. “He has forsaken us!”

Racha
el’s smile grew big and bright, as if to say, good, you deserve it.

Jerking her arm free, Rachael stepped back, then taking a running start she kicked the reverend right in his face. He went down instantly. But Rachael didn’t hang around to savor her victory.
Spinning around she lunged forward, leapt up, and brought the golden dagger straight down through the back of Mary Campbell’s skull, interrupting her feeding frenzy. Tearing the knife back out made a hollow noise which sounded like corn being shucked. Mrs. Campbell’s body tipped over and fell dead next to her deceased husband.

Rachael bent over and picked up the saw
ed off shotgun the young man was clutching in his dead hands and took it off him. She took his ammunition belt as well. Rachael then spied a .44 Magnum he had tucked into his belt buckle. With nothing but her skimpy dress, she looked around for something she could use to strap her weapons to her body. Luckily, Mary Campbell’s corpse has a lovely raspberry colored sash. Taking the flowery sash, Rachael wrapped it around her waist and tucked the knife in.

Holding up the
.44 in one hand and the stub-nosed shotgun in the other, she cocked the shot gun single handed. Those gun training courses down at the range really helped. Being around criminals all of the time, her entire law firm was requested to learn gun safety. It was just something she felt was important to know. Just in case.

Just then the young man, whose face had been completely chewed off by Mary Campbell, reached out and grabbed Rachael’s leg. Without hesitating she put the barrel of the
shotgun against his head and pulled the trigger. His head popped like a watermelon being hit by a sledgehammer and his body flew back and tumbled down the platform.

Rachael stepped down and started her perilous trek down the center aisle of the zombie infested chapel. A teenage zom
bie wearing a “God Saves!” t-shirt lunged at her. Rachael pulled the trigger of the shotgun.

BLAM!

Half of the girl’s face was instantly blown clean off and the half that remained was still smoking when her body hit the floor. Gray matter spackled with blood painted the floor where she fell. Rachael forged on. But before she could get to the doors she faced her worst obstacle yet.

“Hilda!” she gasped.

Directly in her path stood Mad Hilda. Hilda’s massive undead husk of a corpse lurched up the aisle. Her eyes were completely glazed over with the hazy white vacancy typical of the living dead. Red slime oozed out of the corner of her growling mouth. Mad Hilda was locked on like a homing missile. As she made her way toward Rachael, the hag’s chapped, purple lips peeled back to reveal blood soaked teeth. “Grrrah!”

Rachael raised the .44 Magnum and aimed it straight at the center of Mad Hilda’s chest.

BLAM!
BLAM!

Mad Hilda staggered back, but then bared her teeth and growled
even louder. She was tough, Rachael would give her that much. Just then Hilda started hacking, as if she had a hairball caught in her throat, and spat out a mucus infested blood clot the size of a mandarin orange. It plopped down on the floor by her pointy toed granny shoes with a wet sounding splat.

That was by far the grossest thing Rachael had seen since t
he infection had decimated the city. Mad Hilda’s head snapped up and she growled at Rachael again. By this time Rachael was fed up with Mad Hilda and her rude manners. Aiming the shotgun at Mad Hilda’s head, Rachael fired.

BOOM!

Mad Hilda plowed face first into the floor with a ground shaking thud. Poor Mad Hilda, she never even had a chance to get her waltz on.

Darting toward the door, and wielding her guns, Rachael fired off one round after another. Six bodies later, she made it to the chapel d
oors and slipped out. Once on the other side, she pushed up against the big twin doors, found a shattered wooden chair nearby, and wedged its broken leg through the handles of the doors. It wouldn’t hold them for very long, but it would buy her some time. Rachael turned and ran through the lobby toward the main entrance. Her bare feet left wet sets of red footprints behind her as she went.