THE RED WAKE

Chapters 41&42

THE OLD CHURCH stood in the shadows of a stand of ancient Redwood trees, on the outskirts of an empty northern California county. The residents had, until today, considered themselves lucky in the extreme. The ravages of the Red Wake had passed over their small town, leaving most of the nearly five hundred residents of Persephone relatively unscathed.

They'd managed to escape the destruction of San Francisco, some thirty-five miles to the north, as well as that of the surrounding area, by some miraculous quirk of fate that no one in Persephone dared question. The only local casualty had been the loss of old Tom Maynard, the Presbyterian minister of the aforementioned church, just last week.

Three days earlier, Reverend Tom had gone off to see if he could lend some Christian assistance to the needy in one of the nearby towns. No one had seen or heard from him since.

Then, just this afternoon, Reverend Tom had apparently returned to the little church beneath the Redwoods. He'd called on everyone in town, personally inviting them to come to church, to "praise the Lord for His generosity in sparing our blessed little village."

Feeling obligated in the face of their obvious good fortune, nearly the whole town had promised to show up for the special service, to express their thanks.

No one mentioned the strange, glassy- eyed look on Tom Maynard's face when they'd all gathered inside the main chapel later that same day. No one expressed concern over the stilted, almost robotic tone of speech ol' Tom had adopted earlier that afternoon, when he'd made each and every house call on foot, to invite them all to worship. Everyone chalked it up to the stress of recent events. Heck, everybody was acting weird and skittish these days. Old Reverend Tom was entitled, wasn't he?

"I'm glad you all could make it tonight," Reverend Tom said from behind his podium.

"But tonight... I'd like to welcome a... special guest speaker up here to give... the Word, this evening. He's going to... ahhh...to share his... good news with all of us... and I think it's a wonderful... thing. Amen?"

The good people of Persephone chimed in, repeating the phrase half-heartedly. Some of them had begun to notice that Ol' Tom Maynard didn't look so good, up there behind the podium.

His clothes were filthy for one thing. His dirty brown hair stood on end, as if he'd received a vicious electrical shock, instead of the Holy Word of the Lord.

Some of the ladies remarked quietly that Reverend Tom looked like he'd been drinking cat piss in a darkened fruit cellar for the last six months. Some of the men just thought he looked (and smelled) like shit.

As the good people of Persephone pondered as to what might be wrong with Reverend Tom, the aforementioned guest speaker took to the stage. But instead of greeting the congregation, the handsome visitor pushed Tom Maynard over with a negligent flick of his right hand. Moving stiffly, Reverend Tom fell off the stage, hitting his head on the back of a choir stand with a loud clang! as he went down.

And while the good people of Persephone watched in stunned horror as Reverend Tom got to his feet, it became terribly clear that something was drastically wrong with the minister's neck. It looked as if it had been...chewed through by a very rude animal.

This impression was only strengthened when, with a wet, sloppy sound, Reverend Tom's head fell off, bounced across the floor, and rolled underneath a nearby pew. Reverend Tom's headless body, meanwhile, made the interesting choice to remain standing.

It was then that Reverend Tom's stunned flock took a good look at the "guest speaker," a traveling showman who happened to be very fond of practical jokes, a magic man, recently returned from his dealings with a certain upstart human lowlife who'd needed some judicious squaring away.