Down below them, the worshipers have dragged the bench seats into position in an arc around the entrance and steps leading up to the chapel. Their fellows inside the building have lifted up the heavy wooden tables and tipped them against the windows, barring entry. They think they're safe, as long as the armed men on the roof can pick off any shuffling revenants that enter the circle of light. But death is already among them.

Alexei from Novosibirsk idles in the darkness behind the worshipers, lurking in the vestry where a cultist guard now lies beneath a pile of moth-eaten curtains.

Alexei is seriously annoyed, but professionally detached from the cock-up and chaos going on around him. The operation has not gone in accordance with earlier plans. He has, as expected, succeeded in infiltrating the vestibule area; the seething chaos outside, accompanied by a panicking mob erupting from the depths of the chapel, has made things run much more easily than anticipated—up to a point. But the ward around his neck is hot to the touch, smoking faintly with a stench of burned hair. And his radio has clicked three times—panic signals from soldiers unable to take their assigned places. Once is happenstance but twice is enemy action, and thrice is a fuck-up. Something has gone wrong, and he can no longer count on backup from Yuri and Anton. Finally, as if all of that isn't bad enough, the dead are rising.

This latter item, Alexei thinks, is deeply unfair. He's a sergeant in Spetsgruppa "V"—a professional, in other words—and when he kills someone professionally he expects them to stay dead. These walking abominations are an insult to his competence. If it wasn't for their annoying habit of infecting further victims through touch, they'd be a trivial obstacle at best; as it is, with his ward and his full-body insulated clothing, not to mention his Ostblock ballistic knife, AKM/100 assault gun, and other tools of the trade, he's well-equipped to deal with them. Except that there are too damned many, and they won't stay dead, and the rest of his team are dispersed and in trouble.

Speaking of trouble, here comes more. Most of the cultists are wearing black robes, or stupidly inappropriate army-surplus camo gear for the guards; if it's naked and you can count the ribs, it's probably one of the risen dead. Bonus points for shuffling like a stockbroker on a stag night, and big booby prize if you let it get so close you can see the green luminosity writhing in the depths of its eye sockets . . .