The evening was cool, the sky as blue as she had seen since the missiles. She leaned back against the jeep’s windshield, almost relaxed. In fact, if it wasn’t for the shot gun cradled in her lap, the shotgun she had used to shred five Russian soldiers little more than six hours ago, the evening would have been downright peaceful. Well, unless you thought a little too hard about the soft orange glow on the horizon, the glow that was tens, if not hundreds of fires burning in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The men were clustered in groups of two or three, bent over small cookers, which looked more like Sterno cups than anything else to Cindy. Dixon had posted guards, listening posts, he called them, as soon as the M-113 had broken down, and then told the men to grab some chow. Now he moved from group to group, chatting encouragingly, ensuring his men had what they needed, that they would all be fed before he.
He was strong; there was no question about that. He moved easily, confidently, and when he spoke his men listened. She remembered the ambush. Dixon had done his best in what was an impossible situation, refusing to give up. She liked that strength. Maybe liked it a bit too much, she acknowledged.
Her Eddie was strong too. There was no doubt about that either. Violently strong. Not that he had ever hit her, but there was electricity about him, like a human electrostatic generator… or something like that. A sense of just-barely-contained energy. An energy that turned physical at the slightest provocation, provocations which she had witnessed herself. Her mind flicked back to another warm autumn night, a year hence, before this war, before the rumors of this war.
They were on their way to a party, Eddie loved parties. Eddie was driving his candy-apple red 5.0 liter Mustang, Eddie loved that mustang too. Eddie pulled into an ABC store to buy a fifth of Jack Daniels Black Label, and a trio of high-schoolers in a yellow convertible, thought to take the same parking spot that Eddie wanted. They cut him off, zipped into the spot, and piled out of the car laughing.
Eddie didn’t say a thing. He just smiled at her and pulled into a place on the other side of the convertible. Eddie didn’t go into the ABC store for his Jack Daniels. He waited for teenagers beside their car, hands in the pockets of his worn leather jacket, and when they came out there was no talk, no shouting or posturing. He pulled his hands from the pockets of the jacket, on each were brass knuckles, and he beat the teenagers senseless. He didn’t teach them a lesson, he didn’t smack them and let them run, he beat them until it was hard to tell where the blood and ripped tissue of their faces ended and the cold brass of Eddie’s knuckles began. It drew a crowd. Eddie ignored them, and the steel in his eyes kept them back. He left the teenagers lying in their car, blood staining the seats, and swung into the Mustang.
They drove in silence until Eddie pulled into the far corner of an almost-empty Wal-Mart parking lot and made love to her, his bloody hands exciting her like never before.
Captain Anatol Vorishnov was dead. His senior sergeant, and leader of the Sagger team, Nikoli Berliavskii, knew that. He also knew his death didn’t change the mission. The mission, which when all was said and done, boiled down to inflicting casualties, damage, and pain on the United States of America.
Berliavskii wasn’t quite sure what had happened during the ambush. An experienced soldier, Berliavskii could tell the attack was going well. His Sagger team alone had taken out two of the American M-113 armored personnel carriers, and Captain Vorishnov’s men had riddled the survivors with the RPD machinegun. But something had happened, happened quickly, and happened decidedly. Vorishnov’s position, as well as the one across the street, had been silenced, and the ambush thwarted.
Now Berliavskii walked. Only five of the Spetsnaz remained, including himself. Berliavskii knew the forest through which they trod was once choked with vegetation, but much of it had died, the victim of residual radiation. The trees still held leaves, but they were pale, sickly. Vines still snaked up tree trunks, and the thorns were as sharp as ever, but the vines were browning early. And then there was the smell. There was something not quite right about the smell. Not the normal earthiness of a damp woods after rain, although a hint of that richness remained. That fresh, lush smell was almost entirely enveloped by the stench of decay, of things dying and dead. Three months ago he would have never thought of a thick, deep forest as desolate, but that was the appearance, no the feeling, this forest exuded.
The Spetsnaz moved down a narrow animal path twenty meters inside the forest. Far enough in to conceal the men from the road that guided them, but close enough to observe the road. Sasha walked point, his AK-74 short-stocked assault rifle held at the ready. Next came Arkady, the stocky Belarusian Sagger gunner, Mikhail, with the sole remaining RPD, brought up the rear. Berliavskii occupied the center of the small formation and to his front, slumped by the weight of his large backpack, was Viktor. In Berliavskii’s mind, Viktor, the pack he was carrying, and his proficiency with its cargo, was the only reason they trudged on, remained on task, held to their mission, their mission of killing Americans.
Berliavskii knew that five Soviet soldiers, even five highly-trained Spetsnaz such as themselves, could do little against the Americans, but Viktor’s cargo could do much. Inside the green and black Gor-Tex pack, not five meters from Berliavskii’s face, was a GBAM-1 man-portable atomic device. A device capable of leveling a large city, a city the size of Charlotte, North Carolina, and that’s were the five Spetsnaz were heading.
I guess one of the coolest things about this blog, almost as cool as seeing you all read it, is that I can step outside the story from time to time. Like I’m doing now. Why now? Because I want to tell you guys a bit about Katarina.
I have a long history with Kat. She originally appeared in Lock ‘n Load: ANZAC Attack. The game module took place in Vietnam and Katarina started life as a Viet Cong heroine under the assumed name Kno Hue. I actually designed a scenario for the module in which Americans are attacked by vampires, but dropped it in the end. Stuff like that is just a little too much for some of the traditionalists that buy our games.
Next we see her as a Vampire heroine in our game Aftermath. Unfortunately, that project aborted and I’m not sure when we will pick it back up. Finally, she has a lead role in my novel, Revelation, which is the first of these World War Three with weird stuff books. That novel is yet to be published, but it soon will be…one way or another.
So, I have a long history with Katarina. It only made sense to bring her in as Ramzke’s savoir. They seem nice, don’t they? Almost like a typical brother and sister. They aren’t not by a long shot, and folks that assume that will end up dead (at least in this fictional universe). That was the point of the slaughter of the little boy. I was hoping to prove a point. In the World at War universe vampires don’t play by our rules. Although they might seem civilized, at times even likeable, they regard us as nothing more than food, and give the same amount of thought to killing us, as you would cutting into a steak.
He paused at the bottom of the steps, hand on the rusty iron rail, peering through the persistent rain at the figure. Even in the shadows his eyes perceived the flare of the hips, chin-length hair—thick and cut in a Japanese style he found odd for a Romanian woman. At last he smiled, an expression his face found odd. “Hello, Katarina.”
She led him inside, through a hall well painted and subtly-lit with ceiling accent lights, passed a closed door. He sensed a presence behind the door, but didn’t question Katarina. She was blood. The hall feed into a well-adorned living room. Ample brown leather couches, glass-topped coffee tables, numerous throw pillows, a TV inset in the wall. The screen was dark. Ramzke didn’t know if there were any functioning stations. It didn’t matter to him; television wasn’t a part of his life. Maybe it was a part of Katarina’s, but somehow he doubted it. She caught his glance and shrugged. “My minder likes it.”
Ramzke cocked an eyebrow. “Minder?”
“Yes, you fool. Did you think I furnished this in a week? Or that I sleep unguarded during the day? Your clan would have done well to have the same. If you had, you would not be in the trouble you are in now.”
The force of her answer surprised Ramzke; he balled his hands until nails bit palm’s flesh. He felt the pulse in his neck, the racing of his heart, but forced himself to stay calm. Yes, her words hurt, but only because they were true. He and his clan had grown complacent, and that complacency lead to their, for lack of a better word, enslavement. Katarina, from the eastern clan, was here to help them out of it. He took a deep breath and then nodded.
“You are right. You are right, my sister.”
She sighed and plopped onto the biggest couch, gesturing to the other. “Please have a seat.” He did.
She pulled a white cup of steaming liquid from the glass-topped coffee table beside the couch, and sipped.
He grimaced. “What the hell is that?”
Katarina smiled. That teasing smile she had always used on him. She loved to shock him, trick him, get a reaction, but he loved her just the same. She was blood, more than a comrade, his own blood, his own sister.
“Just tea,” she answered with a shrug.
“Why?” Their kind didn’t need human food. In fact, they couldn’t use it, their systems were incapable of processing it, turning it into any type of usable energy. He had always believed that was the crux of the cravings. Only blood, raw blood, rejuvenated, replenished, gave life.
She raised her shoulders, briefly flexing the strong, yet supple skin under the wide-necked, black t-shirt. “I don’t know, brother. It is just a taste I’ve acquired through the years. It warms me, I guess.”
“Your stomach handles it?”
She winked, a very unvampire-like gesture. How strange, thought Ramzke. Katarina was the one living in Europe, the one with close ties to the old country, to Wallachia, yet she was the rebel. She was the woman who accepted the human ways as if they were her own. As if reading his thoughts she reached for the pack of Citanes on the table. She shook out two, offering one to Ramzke.
“No,’ he laughed. “Why would I?”
She took her time in answering, lighting the cigarette with a flick of a red butane lighter. She drew deeply, and tilted her head to exhale into the room, away from Ramzke. The angle of her neck flashed her white scar, the thin line delicate, the distant memory raising the hair on the back of Ramzke’s neck.
The slender shoulders rose again, and she smiled. “What will they do? Kill me?” The smile broke into a laugh, then a shared laugh. “Anyway, they help me blend with the humans.”
Another drag of the cigarette, her lips flaring as they drew the smoke into her lungs. “But you didn’t call me to discuss my personal habits, did you?”
“No.”
And then he told her about Vader, about the alliance. Her eyes flashed when she learned of Thedorus and Vinnie’s death, but otherwise she listened in silence, smoking her cigarette, and then another, her dark eyes glittering in the smoke. He finished and silence reigned.
After a moment Katarina spoke. “So,” she dead-panned, “you, in essence, are Vader’s bitch.” Ramzke’s fists clenched, but he could tell by slight curve of her mouth that she was only picking at him, hoping for a reaction. Ramzke smiled, refusing to give any indication of the passing anger.
“And,” she blew a slow stream of smoke, “you want your little sister to save you from the bad man.”
He held his smile, knowing the teasing would soon stop. Katarina was indeed his little sister, at least when measured in human years. It was, however, she who had first been turned. Turned by the Count himself. She cleared her throat. “All kidding aside, brother, I don’t understand why you don’t leave the city. He is sending you south on this mission,” Katarina used her fingers to couch “mission” in quotation marks. “Why do you return?”
“Because of the others, Katarina. Vader never lets more than one or two away from the penitentiary.” It was Ramzke’s turn to shrug. “If we don’t return, if I don’t return, he will slaughter the others.” She nodded.
“I had no idea you were such a sentimentalist.”
Ramzke shook his head. “Do not make fun. It is not sentimentalism, they are our kind. We cannot let them be slaughtered.” He knew the statement was a lie, but he wasn’t sure which part was untrue.”
Her eyes locked his. “Whatever… I assume you have a plan?” Ramzke did.
It took less than five minutes to explain it to her. When he finished, they stood shoulder to shoulder by the room’s small window, looking into the darkened alley.
“So, you will help?”
Katarina laughed. “Ramzke, you knew I would help before you came here. You are my brother, my blood, and your coven are my kind. Of course I will help.” She lit another cigarette. Her third or fourth, Ramzke had lost count. “Anyway,” she smiled. That smile that had led many humans to their death, “it sounds like fun.”
“Then it is set.” Ramzke turned, “I must go, my time is limited.” Katarina placed a hand on his arm. “Wait. I have a present.” Without another word she walked into the connecting kitchen. He heard the rattling of metal, and then her voice. “Follow me.”
He trailed her to the hall door they had passed earlier, the one where he had sensed the presence. The swung the door in. The room was dark, and the smell of dried blood assaulted Ramzke’s nostrils, making him giddy with need. The room contained one piece of furniture, a straight-backed wooden chair. In the chair, easily visible to Ramzke despite the dark, was a young boy, no more than seven, securely bound with Zip Ties on ankles and feet. His mouth was tightly gagged, his eyes wide with terror, tears coating his cheeks.
Katarina nudged Ramzke. “Here, it’s easier.” In her hand she held a 10” butcher’s knife. He accepted the gift, and without sound whirled, slitting the boys throat wide. The power of the stroke toppled the chair, and Ramzke fell beside it, eagerly drinking the warm blood.
It was raining. A cold rain or at least that was what the humans would call it. To Ramzke the cooler temperature mattered not. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel it. His skin felt the same sensations as a human’s, but 300 years had taught him to ignore what was irrelevant. After all, vampires did not die of hypothermia.
It was dark, but not completely so. The clouds covered any hint of moon, but not the lights streaming from a handful of open clubs on Philadelphia’s 2nd Street, and it was those lights that kept Vader in power. There was a semblance of normality here, a normalcy that kept the dissenters in the minority and the supporters in the majority. Normality was a rare commodity in post-apocalyptic America, but how rare was hard to say. There wasn’t a way, except by personal experience, to know what existed anywhere else.
Ramzke had been south in his abortive attempt to capture the girl, and the country was a wreck. Not a complete wreck, but a wreck nonetheless. Washington and Baltimore were little more than radioactive slag, and North Carolina had received more than its share of nuclear attention. CampLejeune and FortBragg, both important military bases, were smoldering ruins. Greensboro-Winston-Salem-High Point, which formed an important hub of the mid-Atlantic road network, and the budding ResearchTrianglePark in Raleigh Durham, had also been nuked. Somehow Charlotte had escaped the fire from heaven, but it appeared little better off, the flu pandemic claiming most of its population.
Except for Charleston, the destruction of which blocked passage through the Appalachian Mountains, West Virginia was untouched, a strange twist of irony. Now the most backward of eastern states boasted the closest thing to normalcy, but not as close as Philadelphia.
Ramzke didn’t know why Philadelphia had survived, but it had. Maybe Vader was responsible for the civilization, or maybe he had just taken advantage of it. Yes the flu pandemic had stricken the city, but Vader had kept the power running, the hospitals open, and the people fed. There was no doubt in Ramzke’s mind about the brutality Vader had used to keep the city running. The tractor trailers of food stuffs and medical supplies had not been donated, but neither had Vader needed to rely on other’s kind intentions. Ramzke knew now that Vader’s gang had existed long before the missiles came. Vader had used the organization and muscle he had in place to quickly gain control of the city, and then expanded his influence.
So now, pale light reflected off the puddles of rain on 2nd Street, the tangible proof of Vader’s influence. Vader provided electricity to Philadelphians on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. Tonight was Saturday, and such a little thing as the apocalypse wouldn’t keep people from drinking their fill.
Three young women spilled onto the sidewalk from the door of the Khyber Pass bar and stumbled toward him, laughing. One, a chesty brunette, caught his eye and smiled as they approached. He ignored her and the suggestion implied when she rubbed her chestyness against him as the girls passed, offering a throaty, “Excuse me.”
Normally it would have been an invitation that he would have been as eager to accept as the girl would have been quick to regret, but not tonight, not on the street, not after what had happened to Vinnie. Vader’s men were everywhere. Not everywhere, Ramzke reminded himself. They aren’t where I’m going. He walked by the bar the young woman had just exited. The doors were open to the cool air and he glanced inside, catching a glimpse of smoky air and sweating bodies gyrating on a small dance floor. Armageddon was upon mankind, but still they danced.
Across the street a small crowd gathered. One man rose above them, elevated by the wooden box on which he stood. Ramzke ignored his words. He didn’t need to hear them to understand the intent. The man offered salvation, promising his god above all others, or his manner of worshiping above all others, would provide salvation. Ramzke doubted the salvation existed, whether through the alcohol and sex on his side of the street, or the god on the other, and if it did, it certainly didn’t exist for him. And that was just fine.
He turned off the street onto a narrow alley; a man-made canyon of brick. The thin strip of cracked asphalt alley stretched into the night, bordered on either side by the masonry of aging tenements. Weakly lit windows dotted the walls, the rain plunging through their light like falling stars, clotheslines crisscrossed the air above him. Greatly overflowing trash cans crowded narrow steps, their rancid order thick in the wet air. Wooden doors, most in need of paint, waited at the top of the steps.
Ramzke walked on. One sprint, a brief use of his blinding speed, would bring him to his destination in a matter of seconds, but it would also bring attention to him and that was something he didn’t want. Tomorrow he would be gone. Vader had ordered him to once again travel south to get that girl. Vader had given him her location. Somehow, Vader seemed to know everything. But not quite, Ramzke smiled. He didn’t know about this.
Ahead, a solitary bulb, blood red, burned at the top of a set of steps. Red. Ramzke grinned at the irony. He resisted the urge to look over his shoulder before climbing the steps. He knew he was alone, he would have felt another’s presence. The route he had taken was as circuitous as it was careful. The door opened before he mounted the first step.
“Hello, Ramzke,” the shadow spoke, the accent barely noticeable.
Busy, busy times, but at the top of my list is Everyone Dies in The End. Okay, maybe it's not right at the top. I mean if it was at the top, you'd be reading the latest chapter. But it is right up there, along with my new-found obsession with Metallica. Cindy will have a delay in her trek to Charlotte, Dixon won't end up where he thought his orders would take him, and Ramzke returns for the girl that got away. All within the next two weeks. Stay tuned.
Mark
And please take a moment, spare a thought or a prayer for the men and women who died at Pearl Harbor 68 years ago.
Forget me. Let's talk about some real interesting folks...the characters of my novel, Everyone Dies in the End. Based in Lock 'n Load Publishing's World at War universe, Everyone Dies in the End, is free, online (obviously), with new chapters posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The first book of the series, Revelation, is currently being edited with an eye toward publication in the near future.
Now, if you really want to know about me... I've written numerous books and hundreds of articles/columns on gaming. From the Video Game Almanac, to columns in PC Gamer, if it concerns games, it concerns me. I'm also the designer of the award-winning Lock ‘n Load board game.
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