Everyone Dies in the End #45

The Author

When we last left Katarina, she had blinked in amazement at Vader’s jury/porn show, and formed a plan, or at least a ghost of a plan, if you will pardon the Anatol-like expression. Before we see the result of that planning we need to once again set the chronological stage. Katrina watched Vader’s show as Cindy rode in Ramzke’s truck, but now Cindy has returned to a time before the anklet, before the nuclear detonation in Charlotte, and before the raven-haired lady was stripped and whipped in front of the cheering unwashed masses. Worry not, although Cindy’s actions reset the clock, everyone reset with her, and, strong sense of déjà vu aside, were none the wiser. Cindy’s actions affected some, but not others. In Philadelphia there was no change, life went on, and Kat scouted her enemy, eventually arriving at the exact same place, amazed blink, and time. And an interesting time it would soon become.

Katarina

Katarina leapt. There was no point in waiting. No point in further planning. If she returned next week, nothing would change; there were no weapons she could sneak by the lavicious guard at the door, no more information that she needed. Without reason to wait, Katrina acted. Her frame was light, her muscles were inhumanely strong, and her speed unreal. With one step she stood on the back of the pew to her front, a spring took her to the rail of guard station above, which she barely touched before dropping to the heavy wood of the platform a meter below. Two men stood on the wooden deck, both ogling the flesh bared on the stage below. The first didn’t have time to turn his head, Kat did it for him, grabbing his chin with one hand, his forehead with the other, twisting hard and fast, breaking his neck. He slumped against her, dropping his assault rifle to the platform’s deck, where it bounced once and then slithered to the cathedral below. That was just fine with Kat; she didn’t want an assault rifle, not yet. She slapped her hand on the man’s thigh, flicking open the holster cover, and pulling the 9mm pistol with one easy motion.

The second guard did have time to turn is head. In fact, as she leveled the 9mm pistol in his face, Kat could even see his shotgun beginning to rise. His eyes widened as she pulled the pistol’s trigger.

Nothing happened.

“Safety,” he smiled as the shotgun came up.

Kat drove the pistol’s barrel two inches deep into the guard’s forehead.

“Multi-purpose,” she said, mimicking the now dead guard’s smart-aleck tone, as he feel off the stage, crashing into the spectators below.

The cathedral had become a strange mix of chaos and ignorance. Below Katrina was chaos. The assault rifle had struck a blonde lady, splitting her skull, covering the pew behind her in crimson blood. The second guard fell in front of the dead blonde, snapping the necks of two, fat, heavily tattooed, biker-looking guys. The surrounding throng of people screamed and surged away from the chaos. Yet on the opposite side of the church most everyone continued to fixate on the stage’s naked woman. At least until Vader saw the guard fall and stopped the whipping.

And then the M-60 roared to life.

The M-60 platform hung on the opposite wall. Maybe the gunner was gay, maybe just bored, but he was the first to see Katarina and his machinegun thundered to life, hurling a swarm of 7.62mm death into Kat’s guard stand, shredding the wood, and shattering the wall behind.

But of course Kat was no longer there. Kat was perched on the base of a Saint Joseph statue, which in turn rested on a small outcropping midway to the next guard station, and now she held a Remington 1100, semi-automatic pump, taken from her second kill. She sprung for the next station. These guards had turned, but it was no matter. She shot the nearest while still in the air, the force of the blast knocking him back into the second. She landed on the station, pumped  a fresh shell into the chamber, and blew the second’s head into pulp.

Then she was on the floor, the masses running, screaming, clawing to get away from the death machine with the midnight black hair and beautiful face. She threw a lanky black man to the side, tore by a chubby man in a dingy T-shirt, pumped another round into a pistol toting guard, spun, and dislocated yet another’s jaw with the butt of the shotgun. A tornado of violence, she whirred, spun, jumped, kicked, and shot her way toward the stage at the front of the church. Kill Vader, she thought, and the rest will fall like a beheaded body. Kill Vader, she thought, and my brother’s coven will be free.

The pandemonium fed on itself. Screams, shouts, and singing bullets, filled the air, already thick with dust from shattered plaster statues.  The congregation, if that was what it could be called, fled for the doors, panicked by the guards’ indiscriminate gunfire—gunfire that was rendered indiscriminate by Kat’s speed. An M-16 burst aimed for her head was two seconds late, smacking into a young woman cowering against the cathedral wall, their exit painting the wall red with her blood. The heavier slugs from the M-60 traced Kat as she leapt and spun, always just behind, always ripping asunder the bodies in Kat’s wake.

But Kat cared not for any of the death and destruction. The blood was distracting, exhilarating, tempting, but a humans’ death, be it a knife wielding guard, or an innocent 11-year old clinging to her Mother’s skirt, meant nothing to Kat. Death was just a means to an end, an end that was getting closer by the second.

At last, through the thick crowd, smoke, and chaos, the stage loomed. On it the dark-haired, nude woman lay immobile. Vader stood, shouting orders. Katarina needed only to jump to the stage, and Vader would be hers. But it wouldn’t be that easy. Nothing was ever that easy. In front of the stage knelt a pair of Vader’s toughest toughs, clad in full fatigues, Kevlar vests, and armed to the yellow, ill-kept teeth. Both were coolly sighting down the length of their assault rifle barrels at her, no more than a heartbeat away from sending a fusillade of 5.56mm bullets tearing through her pale flesh. It wasn’t a problem.

Fast is fast and slow is slow and there was no doubt in Kat’s mind on which side of the conjunction the guards resided. She was a dervish, whirling, writhing, a woman who had kicked, slashed, and punched her way through a teeming multitude to reach the stage, snatching weapons of opportunity as her victims dropped them. But as fast as she was, nothing was as fast as a bullet. She raised the 9mm Glock dropped by her latest victim, and popped a round into the forehead of each guard, ending any thoughts they had, fast or slow.

One foot on the stage and then she somersaulted onto the thick wood, landing on her feet. Vader himself pointed a large handgun at her, the tip of the barrel not a meter distant.

“Stop,” his voice commanded.

“Why don’t make me?” Kat snarled, charging into the man that had enslaved her brother. She kicked the hand-cannon flying, spun in, twisting her elbow to smash the black mask, but instead, a hand caught her elbow, holding it tight, holding it motionless, and then a blade, broad and sharp, pressed her throat, drawing blood, and then there were lips on her ear.

            “He doesn’t need to,” whispered the lips. “I will,” and out of the corner of her eye Kat glimpsed an ebony face with swirling irises.