Everyone Dies in the End #54

Cindy

2

There weren’t many. Surviving soldiers, that is. The M-113 burned viciously; a charred figured that might have been a man, might have been the man she gave her stewed apples at supper, still clutched the blackenedd barrel of the APC’s top-mounted machine gun. She and Zak ran by quickly, giving the inferno as much room as the hulks of the surrounding cars would allow, the odor of hot metal and cooking meat assaulting her nose. She glanced back at the flaming APC’s exit ramp. It was raised, no one had escaped.

A handful of Zak’s men scattered among the cars littering the highway, firing weapons in a cacophony of bravado. Their tracers reached for the overpass down the road. In response, lights on the overpass winked innocently, birthing streaks of fire that stretched lazily toward the Americans. As Cindy watched, one of the innocently-birthed, lazy streaks found a soldier, ripping his arm from its socket. The man fell to the pavement, screaming, his legs churning in a vain effort to escape the pain. Another soldier ran to him, stuffing a shirt on the bleeding man’s stump and dragging him to the shelter of a rusted Volvo. But it wasn’t a shelter for long. A finger of light shot from the bridge, larger and more deadly than the thin lines of rifle tracers. Cindy guessed it could only be a rocket. She guessed right. The LAW round struck the sheltering Volvo. Incinerating both the car and the two soldiers it sheltered.

“Get that launcher,” screamed Zak, and his men’s fire converged on the spot from which the rocket had launched. The rounds sparked and ricocheted on the overpass concrete, and then Cindy saw a shadow fall. “Got him,” cried one of the soldiers. She took his word for it. No more rockets streaked from the bridge. Zak’s men began to fire on the sole remaining winking light, and Cindy began to believe that the battle was almost over, and she began to hope they would live, and that was when Ramzke struck.

Of course Cindy didn’t know it was Ramzke, at least not at first. She didn’t know anything, none of them did. A shadow, actually it was no more than a hint of a shadow, flickered in her peripheral vision. If she had been hyper perceptive, perhaps just very perceptive, she would have realized that there was one less soldier firing at the winking light on the bridge. The shadow flitted again. To her front it bounded over a Toyota truck that lay flat on the ground, its wheels and tires long since removed, the shadow backlit by a burst of fire beyond the truck. A lull in the firing framed another soldier’s scream, and Cindy knew. Knew there was something more than bullets killing Zak’s men, and she knew that something must be Ramzke or one like him.

And then she saw the vampire, again leaping across the Toyota, landing on the back of back of a nearby soldier. The soldier screamed and Cindy blinked.

She materialized next to Ramzke and had the muzzle of the shotgun on the back of his neck before he could move. But then shotgun was gone, spinning into the night, and Ramzke’s hand was on her throat and she could smell his breath. She blinked and materialized behind Ramzke, throwing her body against his. The vampire sprawled, his form briefly skidding on the darkness of the asphalt, Cindy falling to her knees behind him. To her right, no more than a quick grab away, lay the shotgun, its barrel glinting quietly in the moonlight. She grabbed it quickly, but Ramzke was up and charging, a blur of motion. She pointed the silent shotgun and pulled the trigger. The muzzle flashed, the gunpowder banged flatly, and Ramzke spun to the pavement, a blur no more, his blood rendering the black road blacker.

For a second she stared and then the second was gone and more tracers flew from the bridge. Zak and one more of his soldiers continued to fire on the last assailant, but to little effect. She knew how to change that.

A thought later and she stood on the bridge, staring at the back of the rifleman. It was the reader, his shock of red hair an exclamation mark of color on a grey night. Protruding from the his jeans back pocket was the book. The Gunslinger it was titled. The cover had a small tear in it. He wore a black t-shirt. At least it appeared black in the lingering darkness. A smiley face emblazoned the t-shirt in broad white lines. She placed the barrel of the shotgun against the curved smile and pulled the trigger. The smiley face and the back it covered disintegrated.

Each killing got easier. Too easy, a voice whispered from the back of her soul.

Below, on the asphalt, someone screamed.

A breath later and she was there, and there didn’t look too good. Another, in fact the last, of Zak’s soldiers lay on the highway. Lay in two pieces. One piece, the big one, appeared to be most of the soldier’s body, although it was difficult to tell. The soldier was just a crumpled lump of flesh, but she could tell one thing—there was no head on the end of the neck, just shredded skin, shredded, bloody skin. The head sat few feet away, lodged against the tire of a decrepit Suburban, eyes wide open, as if surprised to see its body heaped on the asphalt.

And then there was Zak, standing a car length from the soldier’s decapitated body. Standing like he couldn’t move, which was probably true, because just behind him stood Ramzke.

She should have known better. The shotgun blast that knocked the vampire to the ground would have killed a human, any human. Unfortunately for Zak and Cindy, Ramzke had long since passed being any human. Ramzke’s arm throttled Zak’s neck, and his other hand pressed a pistol against the side of the Army officer’s head.

“Blink,” Ramzke laughed at the word. “Blink and he dies.” The vampire smiled, and she could see the hint of his canines. Why aren’t they longer? “In fact, it’s probably the best thing for your health, as well as his, to do exactly, and only, what I say.”

“A gun, vampire? Really?” she mocked. “The big, bad vampire needs a gun?” 

A slight suggestion of a shrug, the light from the burning M-113 glistening in his eyes. “I don’t need any of your weapons, human, but I do know how to use them, and I also know the deliciously bloody affect of pulling this trigger. Now you can put down your weapon and save your friend’s life, or debate the point, and end it.”

“Cindy.” It was Zak, his voice scarcely a whisper, his vocal chords struggling against the pressure on his throat. “I…”

“Don’t,” she interrupted. There was nothing for him to say, no words that would entice her to fire the shotgun in her hands, kill Zak, and…and what? Wound the vampire? Do nothing to the vampire? It wasn’t worth it. She wasn’t done with Ramzke, but for now the battle was over, slowly she bent to the dark hardness of the road, and placed the shotgun on the asphalt.

            “Cindy!” screamed Zak, and then her world went black.