It was a small town with a meager population. They were farmers, craftsmen, and bakers. A collection of personalities you could easily forget, but faces you would always remember. There was no need to gossip about the activities or inactivity of someone. The rest already knew. It should be said that there were no secrets because in a town such as this, there was no need for them. Each man was the other’s keeper. They lived and aged as one. Mr. and Mrs. Porter saw to the education of the strictly local children in the old schoolhouse. The “school board,” if one saw fit to call it that, consisted of the parents. Nothing taught was too specific or enlightening, but the Porters ensured each student an age-relative lesson. Needless to say, most of the townsfolk were either children or adults. When you could work with your hands, you were an adult.

Mr. Gainsboro saw to the outfitting of the town’s deli, while across the room at a nearby counter, Mr. Philips saw to its cheese. They were replenished by town farmers, Mr. and Mrs. Harb often selling to the former, the estranged Mr. Carrier to the latter. There were others, of course, who would bring their raw products into the town square, however, many preferred the formal appearance of Mr. Gainsboro’s packaging and undoubtable cleanliness. This was how the town breathed, a self-sustaining machine of simple thoughts and solemn behaviors. Mrs. Westing wouldn’t be able to support her bakery without the wheat of the Estridge and Dretch families, and Mrs. Borwell certainly wouldn’t be able to offer her well-developed knitting services without the wool from Mr. Paultry’s sheep. Every now and then a weary-eyed truck would come into town, dumping off a shipment of gasoline to the “Corner Store & Gas,” or a series of packages to the town occupants. They used the services of the outside world, but when the time came for it to collapse, they were in most respects off neither for the better nor for the worse.

It would only be fitting for the town’s final hour to take place in the church. Its humble presentation and emboldened steeple somehow demanded the eye’s focus when passing through the town’s center. Like a classical Greek drama, its character summarized the purpose of the community, its location reflecting that of its position in their lives. Every Sunday began at nine in this town and continued until all that needed to be said and done in the church was complete. To the townspeople, the church was God and Father Priam was Jesus Christ. A man who spoke little of the absolved and often of the condemned, the priest brought fire to his Sunday homily. The gospel readings done by church members were the only respite from his vigorous denouncing of those who did not adhere to the faith. Indeed, the children were more fearful of his reproach than the eternity that awaited their sins.

The pews consisted of stern oak left over from the original settlement. The windows held a simple glass that allowed an anxious child to gaze out and escape the stale atmosphere for a few brief moments, though they never got farther than the Dopner house to the right or Mrs. Westing’s bakery a short ways to the left of the church before a mother would correct their attention. This temple of wood and discipline governed their actions, their thoughts, their lives. It would also be the structure that took them.

When strangers came to the town bemoaning of horror and impossibility, the townsfolk received them in passing. They took to their farming, woodworking, and glass-blowing undeterred. When truth came to town after the passing of the elderly Mr. Tandum and his subsequent revival of spirits post-mortem, the townsfolk received it in subtlety. They laid him to rest with the head of an axe and continued their efforts to attend to the fall harvest and prepare for a new school year. When panic came to town in form of wild-eyed refugees from the outside, pleading for sanctuary and understanding, the community responded in scripture, asserting that God’s will be done. When plague came through the town limits and ravaged the streets looking to satisfy a carnal hunger, it was nine on a Sunday.

The beating against the church doors spread an uncertainty and fear among the children. They were, however, not permitted to stray their eyes from the altar in the slightest on this Sunday. Father Priam read aloud St. Matthews’ Sermon on the Mount as the dead scraped their fingernails along the outside walls. The boarded off windows thundered in unison as the door began to give way. The door frame collapsed, splintering as fist after fist was thrown against it. Both arms raised in the air, the priest thundered his proclamation. “Blessed are those persecuted for seeking righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven!” The doors dismantled from their frame and blew outward in a crash that turned the heads of the sobered disciples. Standing in its place was a body visibly ravaged and seemingly disproportionate, clothing tousled in dirt and blood. He stood before the audience with his face worn and exhausted. In the grip of his right hand rested the disheveled hair of the estranged Mr. Carrier and the hanging remnants of his head. Dropping Mr. Carrier to the floor in a resounding thud, the man raised his neck and screamed for the end to begin.

The panic that ensued by no means related to the presupposed deaths that the townspeople had envisioned for themselves. A blur of flesh and bone rushed into the church as the disciples tripped over the oak pews trying to escape its path. Mr. Gainsboro was pulled from his feet and absorbed into a crowd of faceless beings that used any remaining construction of teeth to tear into his abdomen and limbs. His visage was soon covered with the claws of worn fingernails. His cries for a brief moment became louder than those of his attackers, just before his jaw was broken and throat pulled out. Bodies poured into the wooden sanctuary, quickly outnumbering those of the legitimately alive. Mrs. Westing and her husband stood embracing each other by the window, her last sight being that of her quiet bakery to the left of the church before she was forced to the ground and her eyes pushed into the back of her skull. Screams of terror and spilt blood encompassed the halls of the church.

The portly Mr. Paultry had managed to escape the grasp of one of the enraged assailants, clamoring up to the base of the alter and spilling the chalice of red wine onto the eucharist. A woman with a broken, exposed forearm drove herself into him. She threw her mangled fist into his mouth, breaking teeth and driving fingernails into his tongue. It was only after another body came upon him and bit into Mr. Paultry’s neck that he fell into a dark sleep. The only remaining embodied souls retreated into Father Priam’s back room; his entrails were being pulled out and consumed just a few feet away. Mr. and Mrs. Estridge, along with a handful of spouses and now fatherless children, quietly shuddered behind the door that hid them from the sight of what used to be their town. Blood-curdling screams and cries of agony ran under the door into their senses. It was only after a brief pause from the ambient noise of terror that the light under the door was replaced by darkness. A hand shot underneath and tried to pull at its wooden base. The children screamed as it furiously swung left and right before retreating away. The door knob shook and its lock gave way. The door swung open to reveal a close-quartered room of uncertain townspeople facing an expressionless crowd of sinners. They covered the momentary survivors and silenced the final prayer of mass. It was a Sunday.