Everyone Dies in the End #38

Katarina

Katarina, sister of Ramzke and his coven’s best bet for freedom, strode on the broad avenue that passed the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Philadelphia, her destination the Cathedral, her body pressed by hundreds of humans. The night was balmy, sticky even, and the undulating mass of humanity stunk, repulsing her. Humans were a stupid breed, possessing an unwarranted arrogance, none of them worth more than the blood they contained.

Katarina sighed, at least that is what she told herself, but then there was the Hudson man. She pushed away those feelings, but as always, they returned. There was nothing for her to do. Europe was an ocean away; Mike Hudson was either alive, as she had left him, or killed fighting the Soviets, or perhaps the Lycans, or perhaps any of the evil entities that populated Europe’s remains.

The thought that the humans surrounding her would consider her as evil as the worst horrors unleashed by this third war to end all wars didn’t occur to her, and wouldn’t have mattered if it did. Katarina’s wasn’t evil, she just was. A lion is not evil for killing an antelope, nor a hawk for snaring a rabbit. Humans did not consider themselves evil for butchering cattle in the millions, enslaving those that didn’t share the same tone of skin, or slaughtering each other in the name of their God. She killed humans, she fed on them, it was what she must do to live. It was neither good nor evil, it simply was.

A tall man elbowed her stomach as he moved past and she glared, her keen eyesight seeing his neck hairs raise as he sensed her malevolence. It was no matter, the man was of no import, none of the jostling, murmuring humans were. The Cathedral, three hundred meters distant, was her concern. To her right rose the Sheraton motel. Vader used it as a troop barracks. The previous Wednesday, a lights day, she had studied the tall building well into the night. It appeared that only the first two floors were occupied, and the entrance was only guarded by a single man, more interested in the oily whore keeping him company than any potential enemies. His lack of attention wasn’t surprising. Vader was a dictator, a ruthless dictator, but he represented a law and order, an organization, better still, a semblance of order, to which the people of Philadelphia clung. To Philadelphians that semblance of order made Vader, if not popular, at least no more unpopular than pre-apocalypse politicians. Vader simply had no need to fortify his troops’ barracks, and Katarina liked that.

She wondered if the order that existed here, also existed elsewhere. Katarina knew that the electromagnetic pulse from the nuclear weapons destroyed most electronic gear, such as radios. She also knew from her time in Europe that the military possessed some radios that were, if not invulnerable to the electromagnetic pulse, at least resistant to it. She would like one of those radios. Would like to listen to what it said. America was a big country; it seemed unlikely that all of it had died.

The church loomed, its crenulated sides sending a chill down her spine. It was the church, the Catholic Church, which had hunted her kind through the ages. That church and its symbols, the cross and the crucifix, were dreaded by all vampires. Yet she understood the superstition behind the dread. A crucifix could not hurt her; it was the power behind the church that was her kind’s enemy. She had nothing to fear. These people did not know her, could not harm her. It was they who should fear her.