Paris is dead. The streets are empty. The air is thick and oppressive, leaving Durant's brow continually beading with sweat from the humidity. His collar and shirt’s back are darkened from sweat, but they remain for their warmth in the coming night’s cold. His feet, in too-large shoes, clop on the road; his bloodshot eyes scanning, his hand squeezing golden livre for comfort.
He checks inside a window and sees a bed with a corpse, stiff with death, lying within. Tightly gripped in its hands is a rosary. Durant looks around, then continues down the road, having to climb over the occasional cart. A rat sniffs a handful of not-quite rotten apples on the street, which provokes Durant into swinging at it so he can get his rightful prize. As the rodent scurries, Durant cradles an armful of the fruit and bites eagerly, spitting out the spoiled portions as he travels the empty streets.
To his left, a glint of metal alerts him to an open door. Turning, he sees a row of weapons, each of fine quality. Swords and daggers and maces reveal themselves as he slowly steps into the shop. As he reaches for a sword detailed in gold filigree, he recoils in horror. Behind the sword, hidden from view by carts, is a fresh corpse. The skin is pulled taut from dryness, or perhaps long-term hunger, and a large black gouge of congealed blood covers the neck and has run down the clothes. In one hand is a morning star, dinged and cracked with only a few splatters of blood. With despair, Durant forsakes any attempt at grasping the sword, or any other weapon in the building, as he leaves.
A church tower is revealed after a turn down the road, making Durant scamper with a vigor fueled by fear of the sun's preparations to invade the western horizon, the remaining apples dully thumping the ground in his wake. He grip the handle of the church’s entryway doors tightly, praising the saints, and pushes. The door doesn't budge. Worried, Durant pushes again: then another time. His breath becomes frantic, and he now pushes for all his worth. Legs straining as his body leans against the door, his hands now serve as stability rather than power, and his shoes begin to slip. With a pant, he takes off his shoes and begins to slam himself against the door. There's a shudder and a creak after the second slam, which gives Durant the motivation to continue. Throwing himself against the door, his stinging shoulder is ignored in his desperation to get off the streets. Finally, the sound of wood cracking is heard, and the door swings open. Panting, he sees the remnants of a single misshapen wooden board that was used as a makeshift bar slowly sliding out of its place and clacking on the stone floor.
The inside of the church is dark, and it takes a minute for Durant to calm himself, at which point he notices the sound of breathing continues to fill the darkness. Closing the door behind him, he anoints himself with holy water, gulps a handful more, gives a short prayer, and reminds himself to include this sin to his now fanciful confession. Adjusting to the low light trickling from the windows, he focuses on the ragged breathing in the shadows. Despite the quenching earlier, he only releases a broken whisper. Coughing, he tries to speak again and succeeds. A feeble, feminine voice responds. Running around the pews, he opens the back door, only to be assaulted by the stench of vomit and vinegar.
Inside the rectory are three nuns. Two are on the younger side, but it takes a moment to see this due to the single candle illuminating their glazing eyes. Their breath is loud and irregular, their skin bruised, and an old nun is washing them with cool water and vinegar as they lay across a stone table. Wooden pails lay on the floor beside the table, holding the used cloth and water to clean up after the sick nuns. One of the younger nuns turns her head towards Durant, her meek voice carrying far through the hallowed hall, telling Durant to stop the matron.The care-taking nun shushes her, admonishing her behavior.
Durant finally reacts, his throat cracking from not speaking in so long, and praises the saints for finding a woman of God clean enough to be spared His wrath. Hurriedly, he circles around the table to keep his distance from the younger nuns, getting closer to the elder. Holding out two livre, he offers it as tithing and in hopes of receiving blessed food. The matron looks up and tells him to keep the money, because they no longer need such in these times, and that if he truly deserved their food, he would help protect their holy grounds after having broken its sanctity. With a wave, she points at the broken wood scattered around the open door.
Thanking her, Durant runs back to the door to close it. With a glance, he notices several pieces of furniture. After a short time, sweat dripping and muscles sore, the door is now barricaded more than it was before.
The younger nuns, not much more than twenty years, come towards him; one is holding a pitcher of wine, while the other carries an old sackcloth with a combined handful of cheese and dried meat inside. Their gait is slow and unsteady, but determined. Handing Durant the food and water, he reluctantly lets himself close enough to accept the gifts. The wine is the most refreshing thing he’s had in days, which makes up for the quality of the meat and cheese. If it were two weeks ago, the food would’ve been thrown to the dogs. Durant thanks them and asks their names as he gives his in turn, and is informed they are Mahault and Jehanne. They escaped from their convent when everyone else had died, and found food in the cathedral.
Durant tries to comfort them, telling them of the miracle of survival. Hunters, soldiers, and nobles alike have fallen, yet they continue. Jehanne, with her amber eyes, smiles slightly. Mahault’s hand is grasped and squeezed. They are both comforted by Durant’s promise to try to protect wives of God. He tells them none of them will be alone.
Looking up, he thinks for a moment that the elder nun is praying to Saint Roch in one of the stained glass windows, but her gaze is too low. The sun glares through and outlines the matron as she turns to face Durant with a familiar look of dread.
The revenants are soon to rise.
With a hushing tone to prevent any dissent, the matron hands a rosary to Durant. She tells him to begin reciting Hail Marys. As his hands grip the rosary with his prayers, he can feel a calm that he has not felt since before the coming of the Restless Death. It was only a week ago when the first souls fell ill and died the next day.
It was raining. Men in wax-coated robes walked the streets, runoff from their wide-brimmed hats fell onto their prodigious noses, like a gargoyle watching death. Those without signs of illness, or signs readily ignored, run by them with a wide berth, as they try to find a safer place to hide from the disease. Others slam their doors, refusing entry to any for fear of the wind most foul cursing them with the same death. Yet, more than many would have expected, other doors were opened by grief-stricken residents let in the beaked men. They hoped for salvation, but not even their administrations worked, and they carried the victim’s corpse out to the passing cart led by the man in an oilcloth robe.
Durant’s reverie is broken by three solemn tolls. Looking around, the matron is nowhere to be seen, while the young nuns are slowly placing their hoods back on their heads. It is the holy sound of the evening Angelus, which can be heard from all across the city on as silent a night as tonight. With a rush, Durant strides towards the stairs and climbs towards the top as the bell tolls three more times. By the time he reaches the apex to stop it, the bell has thrice rung three times, and the matron doesn’t resist his attempts at restraining her. The night has come, and the church is in service.
Looking out the window, Durant sees a mass of corpses ambling in the streets. By the light of the full moon, their eyes waxen and unblinking, their chests still, yet their dead limbs propel them down the road toward the church. Their feet plop on the road, the only sound in the night air. Durant stares in paralyzing terror, unaware of the matron going downstairs to pray with the other nuns.
Upon reaching the church, their first attempts at opening the barred doors are rebuffed. Unfazed, they begin knocking, leading up to banging when neither the nuns nor Durant answer them, which rises to pushing against the barricade while the others on the sides of the entry bang on the walls. Several cry out a need for sanctuary, others laugh loudly while describing the taste of a nun’s blood and flesh. All the while a general babble moves across the crowd that can be heard through the thick doors of the church.
Wood creaks and groans, making the nuns pray all the more fervently. Voices can be heard from the din: “I smell sweat of man!” “Sanctuary!” “I seek open doors, closed hearts, and for you to move!” “Come, move quickly!” By this point, Durant is leaning against the barricade, trying to stem the oncoming horde of living dead. His feet are slipping. With a loud crack, wood splinters scatter and Durant succumbs to their momentum, stepping back in fear.
With the light of the candles in the church their visages are more plainly visible and horrific. Each face is sunken and drained of color, their eyes are milky, yet scan the area like predators. One of them has the same face as the body Durant saw in the weapons shop, the blood remaining where the wound has disappeared, its hands empty of any weapon this time. Two are familiar as twisted reflections, the cheese-maker that Durant called friend and his old cleaning woman, but they do not seem to deign to recognize him.
They pour in, filling the vestibule, while the first ones in the doors move along the walls to examine them. Several breathe in what sounds like a dry cackle as they drag their fingernails into the walls or desecrate the statue of a saint. Three gather around Durant, staring at him as a curiosity and not quite touching him with their fingers, cackling at his recoiled responses.
Just before any reach beyond the vestibule, a revenant in a long priest’s robes, slight tattered and caked with dirt, steps into the church. This causes all of the revenants to pause in their activities, even the ones teasing Durant. This irreverent mockery stood out for more than its apparel, as one of its eyes remained clear and unmarred by the milky film covering the others’.
With a gentle wave of both hands from the sides to the front, the revenants uniformly acknowledge and move more directly into the church. They move around the priest. As before, they periodically make a dry laugh as they scratch the decorations and furniture, but they don’t delay themselves for long. One by one, they move into the pews of the church and seat themselves. Some remain silent, while others babble to each other, making lewd or inappropriate comments about the imagery.
All three nuns, by this point, are huddled against each other within several paces of the altar, using one of the pillars as poor cover from the sight of the revenants. Durant is finally cognizant enough to look for them, trying to move without drawing attention to himself, though the revenants are currently refraining from dallying too long so as to find a seat.
Crouching adjacent to them, Durant whispers to the nuns, telling them to look at the situation as Providence. None of the revenants are attacking, so they might yet survive. This does little to calm them, as Mahault and Jehanne are now shivering greatly from disease, while the matron fans them, trying to keep the smell of death from their noses. When Durant suggests leaving the cathedral immediately while the revenants are in one place, the matron looks up at him. She tells him they can try, if he can carry the heavier and weaker Jehanne while she brings Mahault.
Turning to the younger nuns, the matron tells them to be strong and to pray to Saint Roch to protect them, urging them greatly to summon their strength to make the trip away. By now, every seat is filled with the dead, and a couple handful are standing on the sides due to lack of room. One is near Durant and the nuns, and having overheard their decision, steps up to Durant.
“Hey! Hey. Don’t leave. Stay, all of you.” the revenant slides close, bending over and craning its neck out. The breath from its speech throws specks of fluid onto Durant, making him shiver with a mix of fear and revulsion. With a leering expression at all four, “Fresh! Stay, watch, pray. Pray for nice hair, for new shoes. Pray for Holy Father in an ugly dress!” Its throat forces out a mocking, heaving laugh.
This incites the matron into standing and taking the step up to the revenant, picking up a wooden cross from her pocket. Holding it strongly before the revenant, she begins to recite verses and prayers like a weapon, her voice projecting strongly.
With disdain, the revenant raises its hand and pushes the matron’s arm aside so as to step closer, its face nearly touching hers. “Barley. Stolen barley. Barley of the Earl’s. Pottage for good girls. No mutton for you. Your hat’s askew.” With that, he pushes her habit to the side, making the matron drop her cross in surprise.
Durant, trying to protect the matron, reaches over for the cross. As he stands, the cross connects with the revenant’s jaw. There is the sound of cracking leather as the revenant reels back from the force. Durant doesn’t let that be the only one, and swings hard across into the revenant’s face. It’s stopped by the hand of the revenant, whose chin shows a crack with what looks like dust falling out, its face grimacing with anger. The cross shatters into splinters from the strength of its grip. With the other hand, it grabs Durant by the neck and holds him into the pillar with unstoppable strength. “Come. Move quickly! Live one here. It sweats so!”
A dozen near the scene rise from their pews with excitement. They bound over and look at Durant and the nuns as if for the first time, blackened mouths agape. Durant struggles for freedom, releasing the cross and trying to pull off the hand against his neck. He kicks at the revenant while Jehanne pushes meekly against it, neither doing more than budging it. Mahault is curling up into a ball, but a revenant lifts her while stroking her head, “Stand! Watch. Watch them squirm.” More revenants swarm over to the fray, trying to get their hands on one of the living. Durant tries to scream, but is silenced by a hand. The murmur and patter of the dead spreads through the church, rising to a cacophony.
“Enough!” The shout carries across the cathedral, a voice dark and strong. All of the revenants freeze to the still of a statue. Even crying Mahault stops. “Sit. Behave and prepare. They will be of no bother.” It’s the voice of the revenant priest, his one good eye judging. He strolls down the center of the cathedral towards the altar. Releasing the living, they quietly file back into their seats and positions facing the altar, leaving Durant dumbfounded and terrified. There is a revenant standing before each door out, leaving him trapped and unable to do anything.
The priest reaches the altar, then turns to face the unholy congregation. His arms wave upward for emphasis, “Hear! All of your souls have lain to sleep. Each have prayed the Lord for you to keep. Then you die and then you wake. All can see there’s no soul to take.” Continuing, the priest has the entire congregation enraptured with the blasphemous sermon; even the living can not help but watch.
After fifteen minutes of the affront, Mahault has gathered enough strength to push past her weakness to start walking towards the preaching revenant. There is no sweat upon her brow, and she walks with a more unsteady stride than any revenant in the church, but she continues. She crumples like a rag when the priest backhands her. He then bends down to pick up her senseless body. “Here! Another vessel, fresh and ready. All it takes is breath to make her bright and heady.”
With that, the priest leans close and exhales slowly into Mahault’s face. Within a moment her milky white eyes open and a smile forms. “Yes! Asleep before. Awake now! Jehanne come! Get up and we can laugh at God together!” The strength and vehemence in Mahault’s voice startles the new revenant, as well as Durant and the matron. With a more level tone she continues, “How? Truth is plain. Deny yourself. Life moves. Death moves. Move!” As she speaks, she steps closer to Jehanne, stooping in the same manner as the other revenants.
Jehanne pulls out a cloth and wraps it around her mouth, tying a knot behind her head. Picking up the broken cross, a mere stick with a cracked and pointed tip by now, she lunges. She’s stopped by her target’s unnatural speed and strength, much revitalized from the disease ridden movements of mere minutes ago. Jehanne struggles against its grasp, turning her head from its deep exhales into her face, and is freed when Durant tackles the much smaller revenant, both falling from the momentum.
Jehanne’s aim is true. The revenant immediately stops moving when the stake strikes the heart, leaving Durant the chance to get out of its grip and roll to his side, panting with adrenaline. All of the others are quiet, watching. Jehanne remains on her knees, staring at what used to be Mahault, panting heavily while the sweat pours down the sides of her face. Durant slowly stands, amazed at what just happened, the matron by his side to help him stand and watch Jehanne.
Jehanne reaches over to slowly recite a prayer and closes the corpse’s eyes. The moment her hand leaves the eyes, they slam open to reveal milky fury. Blood flows quickly as the nun’s arm is ripped off. Every other revenant in the church blinks for the first time, then they laugh in unison, the priest the loudest of all. It is a terrible cackle, forced and mocking.
Taking advantage of the momentary distraction, Durant and the matron are completely unhindered as they race to the door and escape, leaving the cackle of the revenants a distant echo in the night. He can’t stop hearing the laughing words of the priest from just before he got out the door of the church, “Durant! A good laugh you gave us. Forever safe you will be. You will not die. In the end, you will be alone.”
