Father Cane rested the gun’s tip on the woman’s clammy forehead. She didn’t even stir, lost in her final nightmares. The priest began reciting the old prayer:

“Dust to dust, we are but earth and we return to it.”

Her pulse was weak; he could barely feel the trickle of blood underneath her cold skin. It wouldn’t be long now, not at all.

While his voice recited the prayer as much for the old woman as for the family gathered around her bed, inside his mind the priest prayed for God’s help. He felt old, and the gun was heavy in his hand. An unfamiliar fear was clutching his heart with cold fingers, and the arthritis in his joints was angrier than usual. They were all bad signs that made him uneasy.

“Please don’t let me fail You, Lord,” he muttered before the final Amen.

As if on cue, the woman’s chest lowered, never to rise again. The pulse withered away as her soul departed and the familiar silence of death engulfed the room. Father Cane should have pulled the trigger then. He should have been fast, God’s sword in this wicked world, but instead he hesitated. Just a second, just enough for the woman to open her eyes again and hiss in hunger, revealing yellowish teeth.

The muffled gunshot rang in the small room.

No one noticed the fear in his eyes. No one mentioned his second of uncertainty. They thanked him and after politely refusing to stay for dinner, he was outside stumbling through the snow. But he saw it: his first mistake. Underneath his thick coat he was trembling, his body both cold and feverish. Was he losing his touch? He knew old age was settling in, but fear? He had never been afraid to shoot, his hand was guided by the Holy Spirit; his eye was the eye of the Father. The priest looked at his wrinkled hands, they trembled, slightly purple in the cold. The sight made him shudder.

All it would take was one bite, and he would be worse than dead. He saw those bitten, mostly soldiers for the new army base, south of the town. They were the only ones actually heading into the large cities, seeking the zombies, and they were the ones who were bitten most often. Their cries of pain lingered on for days. Father Cane crossed himself. If only there would’ve been another way, some other path without the burden of bringing eternal sleep to those who needed it. But it had to be done. It was the way the world was.

In the early days of the zombie rising, family members couldn’t believe that their wife or child was gone. They would try to convince them to snap out of it; as if it were that easy. Some locked their recently deceased and tried feeding them, training them. When the government finally stepped in, and police officers were ordered to execute all those bitten or showing sings of imminent death, riots broke out. It was one thing to be ordered around by hastily recruited and barely trained policemen, but quite another if they broke into your house and killed your father. What gave them the right to decide who lived and who died?

But moral issue aside, as long as new zombies were born as soon as someone died, there could be no salvation. Someone had to stop the evil at its roots. In the end, the duty fell upon the guardians of souls, God’s servants on earth. After all, who could be better to judge the moment of death, to decide when life ended and the unholy reanimation began?

The order was given by the pope in New Rome and spread to all denominations within a year. Soon, priests became respected even in places that had crumbled into brutal anarchy or military dictatorship. They were the bringers of death and the promise of afterlife, the moral support so desperately needed in those times of despair. In return for keeping a flicker of hope alive, the local authorities would guard their safety, as long as the priests turned a blind eye to the martial law necessary to maintain order. It wasn’t a perfect arrangement but better than the alternative.

For generations, they passed the bitter cup from master to apprentice, the responsibility over the souls of the mortals. And here he was, at the end of a long line, old Father Cane. Scared of death and even more scared that he was failing his mission.

“Am I too old, God? Should I step aside?” the priest asked the bitter wind piercing his coat.

It was a pointless question. As long as there was no apprentice to replace him, he could not refuse the burden of the gun. But maybe that was his fault as well. After all, over the years he had refused all those who had asked to become his apprentice. Had he judged them too harshly?

Father Cane shook his head. It was a hard task, not to be taken lightly. It was a narrow path with fear on either side, and it was so easy to lose faith and fail His own master died in horrible pain, his face torn off by a horrid creature because he hesitated just a second too long. He had been afraid of killing a human, of being a murderer, and became a victim because of it. The moment had to be judged precisely and without any hesitation if the priest wanted to live and keep his soul and mind free of guilt. It was a very thin line, and the teenagers asking him to become priests were just boys. How could he expect them to bear the burden of the choice? How could he trust the gun in their hands?

“How much longer can you trust a gun in your own hands, old man?” the nagging voice of doubt asked. It was a question Father Cane asked of himself quite often, but never with as much concern as today.

“Please God, give me a sign that I am still your servant,” he asked the white sky above. “Let me know if I have strayed from your will.”

Suddenly, the wind rose banks of snow in front of his eyes and the priest had to stop. The path he had carefully followed was lost. Behind him, the small house he left just minutes ago was gone, in front, the town was still far away. He was lost.

The thought send a brief wave of panic through his old body. His mind filled with images of his frozen corpse, eaten by wolves or maybe returning to life when spring thawed it. No, that was nonsense; he knew the surroundings of Pine Valley like the back of his hand. Not only did he grow up in the small mountain town, he had lived there all his life. Sure, the weather was bad, but he had made house calls in worse conditions.

“Yeah you did, when you were younger and certain of your aim,” the voice of doubt poked at him.

Uncertain of his footing, the priest had just started in what he hoped was the right direction when the ground under him gave way. He slipped on a hidden patch of ice, his scream covered by the wind. There was a flash of pain, darkness, and a sickening thud as his body crashed into a tree. When he opened his eyes, Father Cane found himself at the bottom of a ravine. His leg pulsated with pain, and dark spots danced in front of his eyes. It hurt so much, even breathing was difficult. He tried to move and his hand slipped, shooting hot needles through his body. Darkness took him.

The priest woke up to the sound of growling somewhere out of his line of view. He began muttering a protection prayer, and despite the pain flashing from his leg with every move, he turned around. A glance was enough to freeze his heart in fear. Just a few feet away from where he was crashed, the dark eyes of a zombie flickered with hunger. Father Cane cried out and pushed away. Instantly and brutally, pain shot up his leg into his groin, crashing him back to where he was.

The growling became angrier, and the zombie’s arm stretched towards the priest. It came short by just a few inches. Thankfully, save for his head and left arm, it was captured in a thick layer of ice. Deep scratches in the brown earth marked its limited reach. Broken nails and a bent, bleeding finger showed relentless attempts to pry free. But, at least for now, the ice held and the priest was safe.

As the initial shock passed, Father Cane looked more closely at the undead. It was wearing a torn flannel shirt, tight over the rotting, bloated flesh. Its face was also puffed by decay, and large pieces were missing, ripped away either by desperate wolves or shrunk into nothingness by frost bite. Even so, there was something familiar about that face. Suddenly, Father Cane recognized him. The zombie was Margaret’s boy, Charlie, the only one to apply for apprenticeship with the priest last summer.

The memory came back with painful accuracy. Father Cane rejected him, but only after three days of consideration. The boy was strong and smart. In many ways he would have been a perfect apprentice, but he wanted to become a priest for the wrong reasons. He wanted to carry the gun for the respect it brought. He was too proud of himself, and pride was a slippery slope towards damnation. Father Cane feared the boy would become too certain of his aim and either wait too long in order to show off, or kill innocent people out of carelessness. In the end, the priest decided he could still carry the burden alone.

Later that year when the boy disappeared and everyone assumed he had run away, maybe to join the army, the priest thought he had done the right thing. The boy cared too much for guns and honor. Father Cane was justified in refusing him. That was what the priest had told himself, but he had been wrong. The boy did not abandon his family for a rank in the military; he was here all this time. Maybe alive, with a broken leg, waiting for help that never came.

The zombie growled, showing its teeth. It stank of rotten meat and disease, a black lump of flesh that was once its tongue waving towards the priest.

“Father?” it groaned, the sound deep and strangely wet.

“God of the Heavens, protector of all living, please stand by your servant,” Father Cane muttered to himself.

He had never seen a reanimated zombie so close, he never heard one talk. A priest was supposed to bring death to the creatures before they could speak, before they could trick you with their empty eyes. The legend said that if you listened to a zombie, you could easily believe it was alive and that would be the end of you.

Suddenly, a terrible thought crossed Father Cane’s mind. What if this was God’s punishment? What if he had angered the Lord with his refusal to accept an apprentice because of his stubbornness? It would be fitting irony to die ripped apart by the very boy you rejected because of your foolishness.

“Father?” the thing repeated. “Save me.”

“How?” the priest asked, his voice wavering.

“I’m hungry, feed me!”

The ice creaked as the zombie pushed against it, and Father Cane turned away, searching for his gun. Pain flared through his leg, but he ignored it. He was supposed to be the sword of God, the carrier of the gun, but he was too old, too weak and maybe too proud. His weapon was lost in his moment of greatest need, and it was all his fault. He should have foreseen this, made the proper arrangements, but he failed and God was angry.

“The hunger burns, let me feed,” the zombie growled behind him, closer this time.

Father Cane pulled himself away just a few inches, but the pain almost drove him insane. Tears ran down his old cheeks, and he closed his eyes in horror. He was going to die today.

Under his left hand, the ground felt colder and uneven. Surprised, he looked down to discover his gun. The zombie noticed it as well, and some part of its rotting brain remembered its meaning.

“You are as good as dead, priest. You’ve lost your faith. End your life and make it easier on yourself,” it growled.

Father Cane weighed the heavy steel in his hand. The undead was right. He had lost his faith, he had been afraid, and he asked God for a sign. The Lord obliged. There could be no place for a scared man among his servants. Now it was up to him to decide if he could still walk the path of the priest, the bringer of sleep, or die in that ravine.

“I’m sorry,” Father Cane muttered. “You were a good boy, but your pride was a sin. You were not fit to carry the gun.”

The gunshot rang in the cold forest.

Slowly, trying to avoid using his hurt leg, Father Cane began crawling towards the edge of the ravine. He might never make it into town, his body might freeze in the fresh snow, but the Lord had reminded him there was no place for hesitation if he wanted to be His servant. So Father Cane ignored the pain and made his away upwards.