Everyone Dies in the End #83

Zak

   They were late, although Zak didn’t know if that mattered. The guards had stepped aside, and the humanity filed out from the four sets of massive wooden doors. Perhaps stumbled would be a better word. Many were intoxicated, awkward on the steps, laughing, drinking from whatever bottle they held in their hand. The night felt heavy, the air humid, and the breeze was sour with the stench of rotting garbage.

Katarina had stopped across the street from the cathedral and Zak stood beside her.

“So the Catholics allow drinking at mass, now?” Zak commented.

“They aren’t Catholics. It isn’t mass. More fun than mass and the drunks are less hypocritical than Catholics,” the vampire answered.

Zak scratched his jaw. “Not mass, huh?” The crowd split at the bottom of the steps, and pulsed along the sidewalk in both directions. They were a raucous lot. Raucous, dirty, and rough, Zak thought as he noticed the weapons that many reclaimed from the guards on either side of the door.

“No, not mass,” Katarina replied. “It’s like a combination court and porn show.”

Zak didn’t comment. “When do we go?”

Katarina nodded at the thinning throng. “When it empties. I don’t care about those people,” she gestured with her chin. “I want Vader. Vader and anyone who stands with him.”

Again Zak asked, “Why?” There were only a handful of stragglers coming out of the church now. The horizon blinked and thunder rumbled.

“I told you,” Katarina answered. “He pissed me off.”

Zak waited for more. It didn’t come. They sat in a bus shelter across the street from the cathedral, the city lights reflected on the curved Plexiglas over their heads. Zak swatted at a cloud of gnats and watched the people—the loud, boisterous, seemingly happy people. Weird stuff. Apocalypse might be a relative term after all.

Katarina spoke. “They have guards.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed.”

“No,” she continued, “they have guards inside.” She traced a rectangle on the grime covering bus stop bench. “Vader has erected platforms along the interior walls.” She drew a line at regular intervals along the long sides of the rectangle. “Each is manned.” She hesitated and shrugged. “Most of them are idiots, but they have a machinegun on the right side. It is very dangerous. It is why we wait.”

The vampire wiped her hand on her jeans. If Zak didn’t know better he would have sworn the woman was nervous.

“If we are lucky, the guards will come down from their platforms after the people leave, but if we wait too long, Vader may no longer be in the church.”

Zak kept his thoughts to himself and nodded. A last churchgoer, if that’s what they are called, ambled down the steps. Katarina stood and stepped into the street.

           “Let’s go.”