Everyone Dies in the End #52

Ramzke

Like everything else, the highway was a mess. There had been a mass exodus from Raleigh-Durham and the mass had still been in exodus when the nuke struck. That much was obvious. After passing the two, still-very-radioactive cities well to the south, Ramzke and his daykeepers or guards—it really didn’t matter which term he choose to use, because they were the same thing—had turned north to intersect the I-40/85 Interstate, just east of Burlington.

Highway 87, the smaller state road they took north, elevated before crossing the large interstate. It was on that bridge that Ramzke now stood with his two of his human escorts, a small, short-range radio clasped in his hand. The third human waited below in the truck, a similar radio on the seat beside him. The moon was bright, and the night not unclear.

Since the missiles the air was never completely clean, but this night was better than most. On the interstate below everything was a mess, but unlike Charlotte, unlike Charleston, there was no smoke. Everything that was burnable had long since finished burning. The six-lane wide highway was stuffed full of blackened cars, rusting metal, and charred corpses. Corpses which were little more than skeletons, decorated with patches of shredded skin clinging here and there to bleached bones. The putrid stench was nauseating, but Ramzke hardly noticed it. He was concentrating, concentrating hard. He must feel the girl when she approached.

Two cars had passed in the hour that they waited. Despite the massive destruction below, humans, in their genetically dictated imperative for order, had cleared a lane on each side of the median. The clearing wasn’t perfect. The lane wound through the mass of metal corpses, zigging and zagging as the creators saw fit, but it was a lane nonetheless. The two previous vehicles—one a yellow Volkswagen and the other a red pickup—has passed slowly. He felt nothing. The girl was in neither Volkswagen nor pickup. Briefly, Ramzke debated ambushing the vehicles, capturing their occupants and taking them to the throng of humans in Vader’s pens—the pens that were used to feed his brother and sisters. But he thought better of it. They were not here to add to the pens, they were here to find and capture the girl. The girl that had eluded him before. She would not elude him again.

He didn’t know if he heard the squeak of drive sprockets first or felt the girl, but it mattered not. He knew she was coming, and shortly after he knew, he saw. Three vehicles. Unlike the Volkswagen and pickup, none of the three shone their headlights. They moved slowly, no faster than a humans’ jog. The one in the center a hulking, box-like military machine, with a menacing machine gun mounted on top. It wasn’t a problem, none of them were. The plan was simple; Ramzke felt confident it would work. He waited as the tiny convoy weaved its way through the graveyard of vehicles below.

A few feet to either side of him the daykeepers also saw the approaching vehicles. A quick glance told Ramzke that they were ready. The reader, the man who grabbed any chance to flip a few more pages of his precious book, crouched behind a traffic barrier against the bridge’s rail. He held a two-barreled military rifle. The top barrel fired bullets while the lower could fire stubby grenades. On the opposite side of Ramzke stood a man with a small, American disposable rocket launcher. The tube was on his shoulder as he aimed the weapon. At his feet were stacked three more of the tubes. Ramzke knew that both men’s weapons came from the Philadelphia National Guard armory. He also knew that they were little more than a distraction. Ramzke was the key weapon. It was his speed, ferocity, and strength, which would carry the ambush, not the three thugs that accompanied him. Nevertheless, he needed these men’s help, and it was time to call for it. Ramzke brought the small radio to his lips.

“Now.” No sooner had the word left his lips than he heard the big truck’s engine cough to life. A moment later it moved. Not far, but far enough, completely sealing the path through the wrecks below. The engine shut down, and Ramzke’s keen eyes saw the daykeeper slide from the seat and take refuge on the side of the path, behind a rusting compact car.

Beside Ramzke the reader shifted his rifle, and Ramzke could sense his nervousness. He placed his hand on the man’s arm. “Wait. Wait for them to stop.” The reader nodded slightly. To Ramzke’s left, the other aimed the rocket launcher. Below him the three vehicles ground to a halt. Two humans exited the first. One of them was the girl. Twenty feet behind them the military machine waited, and behind it four or five men piled out of a small truck. A gentle breeze ruffled Ramzke’s hair, carrying the scent of rust and decay. Beside him, the reader’s blood thrummed. A distraction, but nothing would truly distract him from the job at hand. He waited still, allowing the man and the girls to approach the blocking truck. He didn’t want the girl injured when the daykeeper fired the rocket into the military vehicle. The two approached the impromptu blockade warily, the soldier cautious, rifle at his side, but not aimed, the girl nearby, head turning as she scanned the wreckage. She turned toward the rusted compact. Ramzke hoped the daykeeper had hid himself well, but had learned not to trust in hope, had learned that 400 hundred years ago.

“Now!” he hissed.

The rocket leapt from the launcher to his left as Ramzke leapt to the wreckage below.