Everyone Dies in the End #10

I appreciate everyone following along.  It's your comments that fuel this strange brew of post-apocalyptic, military-adventure, urban fantasy, and paranormal action. I need to do a bit of housekeeping before we get into the next chapter. I have one announcement and one apology (sort of). 

The announcement... I've decided to switch to a fixed chapter-posting schedule. So, beginning Monday, you'll see a new chapter every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. That will save you all time. No more checking in daily for updates...now you know when to check. The apology... this Ramzke section, in its entirety, is just too long for a single post, so don't look for the typical semi-cliff hanger ending. 

Finally... please talk it up. If you like the writing, tell your friends, if you run websites or have a blog of your own, please post a link. If you have a blogspot account (or whatever) become a follower. It's free, and like I said, it's the comments and followers that fuel the fire. 

Ramzke

The Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Philadelphia was an abomination to Ramzke and his kind. His skin crawled as he walked on the marble tiles of the massive church’s center isle, the hundreds of wooden pews passing by like silent acolytes. Torso-sized hanging lights flanked the isle, interspersed with grooved pillars that rose to the four-story high, vaulted ceiling. Set high in the smoothed stone, narrow stained-glass windows punctuated the crenellated architecture. Vandals had done their work and the walls and lower ceiling were covered with graffiti, some of it quite well done, and some of it quite graphic. Ramzke smiled at the pictures, wondering what the Sunday throng thought of them. The church had changed since the apocalypse, as people were calling it, but some things remained the same, and Sunday service still drew hundreds.

Those faithful worshipped their Lord under not only the watchful eyes of the Mary and the saints, but also a slightly more earthy supervision. Every other stain-glassed window was missing, and underneath the missing windows were platforms, and on the platforms were machine guns. An odd addition to any church, but this wasn’t just any church. This was Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, the largest church in Philadelphia, and the adopted headquarters of Vader, the ruler of The Greater Republic of Southeastern Pennsylvania.

The name was pathetic, both the republic’s and the man’s, but Vader and his lieutenants thought it funny. Pop culture was the most trivial of trivial endeavors to Ramzke, but even he was aware of the reference to the most evil of all rulers. One would be an idiot not to. No one had seen Vader’s face, he kept his identity hidden behind a Halloween mask/helmet of his namesake, and no one was going to take that mask off. 

Vader sat on the church alter in the gilded bishop’s chair, and the woman stood beside him. Tall, easily six feet, thin, small breasts and slight curves hidden by a flowing, floor-length dress, drawn at the waist with a rope belt. On the rope hung a scimitar scabbard, the bejeweled hilt of the scimitar sparkling at her hip. On the hilt a caramel-colored hand, on her head short dreads, thick and wild.  Her androgynous body, however, was completely irrelevant; her full lips had sensuality enough for two women, sensuality enough for two species. Ramzke had never felt a sexual attraction to a human, but he felt it toward this one. At least he thought he did. Because it was difficult to know exactly how he felt in her presence, because as remarkable as those full, pouty lips were, they were not the defining feature of her face. It was her eyes. Eyes unlike any other he had seen, her irises were swirling, gold-flecked blue. Not swirling as in high-school boy fawning over his first lover, but literally, continually swirling, and to look at them was to lose any semblance of constructive thought. So he didn’t, or at least he tried not to. But she was a magnet, a light to the insects surrounding her, a sun about which planets orbited, yet he had never heard her speak a word.  With great effort he pulled his eyes, his thoughts, from her. And he saw her smile.

Vader and the woman were flanked by a pair of guards on either side, all four men carrying assault rifles. Without looking, Ramzke knew there would be one or two others hidden within the church, high-powered sniper rifles zeroed in on his head. Vader was the undisputed ruler of Philadelphia and the surrounding lands, but he was by no means an overconfident man, especially when it came to the alliance he had struck with Ramzke’s clan.

Alliance was Vader’s term, not his clan’s. Ramzke would have called it subjugation, and the thought shamed him. Humans were cattle to him, but here it was the vampires who were penned up. Oh, not literally. They were free to come and go, but not free to hunt. Vader had made that clear.

Vader had found them weeks ago, Ramzke didn’t know how. After hundreds of years of hiding, hundreds of years of feeding at will, hundreds of years of living free, living as Gods among the mortal men, they had awoken one night to Vader’s army, as Vader liked to call it, and the woman with swirling eyes.

Maybe the vampires had become lazy. In the old days they had been loners, hunting without help, living without contact, but time had lulled them into a false sense of security, and that same time had bred a longing for companionship. So they had formed the coven, and the coven had grown, and the coven had needed a home. They found one in an abandoned prison. There were eight of them in the Eastern Sate Penitentiary the night Vader arrived. Each woke to find several guns in their faces.

Vampires are strong, powerful—superhumanly so—and possess amazing recuperative powers, but they were not invulnerable. A bullet to the brain ended their existence as surely as it did a human’s. Vader had offered the vampires a choice—take that bullet to the brain, or take his offer.

            The offer was simple. Become part of Vader’s army, do his bidding, in return Vader supplied an endless supply of blood. And, he had added, his voice amplified behind the Vader mask, no more hunting. He would supply the blood. Obviously, he wanted the vampires on a short leash. Without choice, his clan agreed, needing only a shared glance to convey the thought, [Tonight, we kill them all.]