"Oh my God!" Lena said.
"You're going to have to cut his head off," said Joshua Barker, who was standing by watching.
"Whose?" Tuck said. "The guy in the Santa suit, right?"
"No, I mean your head," said Josh. "They're going to have to cut off your head or you'll turn into one of them."
Most everyone in the chapel had stopped what they were doing and gathered around Tuck and Lena, seemingly grateful for a point of focus. The pounding on the walls had ceased, and with the exception of the occasional rattling of the door handles, there was only the sound of the wind and rain. The Lonesome Christmas crowd was stunned.
"Go away, kid," said Tuck. "This is no time to be a kid."
"What should we use?" asked Mavis Sand. "This okay, kid?" She held a serrated knife that they'd been using to cut garlic bread.
"That is not acceptable," Tuck said.
"If you don't cut his head off," said Joshua, "he'll turn into one of them and let them in."
"What an imagination this kid has," said Tuck, flashing a grin from face to face, looking for an ally. "It's Christmas! Ah, Christmas, the time when all good people go about not decapitating each other."
Theo Crowe came out of the back room, where he'd been looking for something they could use as a weapon. "Phone lines are down. We'll lose power any minute. Is anyone's cell phone working?"
No one answered. They were all looking at Tuck and Lena.
"We're going to cut off his head, Theo," Mavis said, holding out the bread knife, handle first. "Since you're the law, I think you should do it."
"No, no, no, no, no, no," said Tuck. "And furthermore, no."
"No," said Lena, in support of her man.
"You guys have something you want to tell me?" Theo said. He took the bread knife from Mavis and shoved it down the back of his belt.
"I think you were onto something with that killer-robot thing," Tuck said.
Lena stood up and put herself between Theo and Tuck. "It was an accident, Theo. I was digging Christmas trees like I do every year and Dale came by drunk and angry. I'm not sure how it happened. One minute he was going to shoot me and the next the shovel was sticking out of his neck. Tucker didn't have anything to do with it. He just happened along and was trying to help."
Theo looked at Tuck. "So you buried him with his gun?
Tuck climbed painfully to his feet and stood behind Lena. "I was supposed to see this coming? I was supposed to anticipate that he might come back from the grave all angry and brain hungry, so I should hide his gun from him? This is your town, Constable, you explain it. Usually when you bury a body they don't come back and try to eat your brains the next day."
"Brains! Brains! Brains!" chanted the undead from outside the chapel. The pounding on the walls started again.
"Shut up!" screamed Tucker Case, and to everyone's amazement, they did. Tuck grinned at Theo. "So, I fucked up."
"Ya think?" Theo said. "How many?"
"You should cut his head off over the sink," said Joshua Barker. "That way it won't make as big a mess."
Without a word, Theo reached down and picked Josh up by the biceps, then walked over and handed him to his mother, who looked as if she were going into the first stages of shock. Theo touched his finger to Josh's lips in a shush gesture. Theo looked more serious, more intimidating, more in control than anyone had ever seen him. The boy hid his face in his mother's breasts.
Theo turned to Tuck. "How many?" Theo repeated. "I saw maybe thirty, forty?"
"About that," Tuck said. "They're in different states of decay. Some of them just look like there's little more than bone, others look relatively fresh, and pretty well preserved. None of them seems particularly fast or strong. Dale maybe, some of the fresher ones. It's like they're learning to walk again or something."
There was a loud snap from outside and everyone jumped — one woman literally leaping into a man's arms with a shriek. They all fell into a crouch, listening to a tree falling through branches, expecting the trunk to come crashing through the ceiling beams. The lights went out and the whole church shook with the impact of the big pine hitting the forest floor.
Without missing a beat, Theo snapped on a flashlight he'd had in his back pocket in anticipation of a power outage. Small emergency lamps ignited above the front door, casting everyone in a deep-shadowed directional light.