I have an excerpt from Everyone Dies in the End for Fiction Friday. Enjoy.
Chapter One
Upstairs, something moved.
Nathan and Ramzke crouched in the
leaky basement. Around them the house lay dark as a gun barrel. Outside there
was no moon, no stars—thick, smoke-laced clouds obscured them — and no lights.
There hadn’t been any lights in months.
Not since the missiles.
Upstairs, something went bump. Bump
in the night. Nathan snickered at the thought. Usually his kind bumped in the night, and the humans were hiding.
Ramzke hissed, drawing Nathan’s
eyes to him. The darkness mattered not. He could see his partner’s face as well
as if it were illuminated, and the face wasn’t happy.
“Nyt, Qyet!” He spoke in the old
tongue. Speech wasn’t necessary, but Ramzke was angry.
Ramzke’s eyes glowed crimson before
flicking to the woman crumpled on the trash-littered floor beside him. [We must get her back to him.]
Again the thump. Heavy boots
striding across the floor above them. In Nathan’s head, Ramzke spoke. [Go!] Nathan stood, eager to obey his
elder’s orders, eager for blood.
The stairs leading from the
basement to the main floor were wooden, and badly in need of repair. The first
step creaked, and Nathan paused. Not that he felt fear; fear was but a dim
memory from his mortal life, his mortal life as the son of a tobacco farmer—a
life that had ended in the arms of a slightly-too-alluring dark-haired stranger.
A stranger he now knew as Marika. He wasn’t afraid, but Nathan was cautious by
nature. All of them were cautious by nature. Living 400 years in the shadow of
a race that would exterminate you on sight, taught caution. Caution despite his
power.
He glanced over his shoulder.
Below, Ramzke’s eyes glared back. Beside him lay the girl, eyes wide, gag tight,
hands and feet trussed. A feeling —sympathy, perhaps — flitted by. It was gone
as quickly as it had arrived. Sympathy wasn’t a useful emotion.
Nathan's pause brought no sounds of
discovery and he continued up the narrow stairs, one hand tracing the damp
concrete of the adjoining wall. The noises above spoke.
“This will do for tonight. Let’s
grab some shut-eye.” Men they were, at least two, unless, of course, the voice
was speaking to himself. Not uncommon in these crazy times.
The door was in front of him now.
Well-painted — perhaps freshly painted— the home’s owners took pride in even
the back of a door that led to a musty basement. A grossly misplaced pride,
Nathan knew. Possessions of the mortal world were transitory at best, deceptive
at worst, but even the mortals knew that now. Without a sound he turned the
shiny metal door knob; without a whisper he swung the door open; without
hesitation he stepped through.
And stared into the gaping muzzle
of a gun.
It was a rifle, Nathan guessed. One
of those combat models the soldiers used. He wasn’t an expert on weapons, but
understood that the man behind the rifle wore a helmet, and hence was a
soldier. The weapon was no more than an arm’s length from his face, certainly
close enough to blow his head — and immortality—right into hell. The barrel was
steady, the finger tensed on the trigger, a simple brain command away from
obliterating Nathan.
And Nathan smiled.
The soldier had done everything
right: everything except one thing. He had looked into Nathan’s eyes—a
vampire’s eyes—and now he could do nothing.
Nathan stepped into the room,
gently pushing the barrel down. He smiled, “I hoped I would find something to
eat up here.”
Cold metal pressed
against Nathan’s temple, and a voice spoke. “You can eat this.” The report of
the second soldier’s shotgun filled the small kitchen.
Nathan lay on the floor, the tiles slickened with his dark
blood, the last glimmer of existence flitting from his body. A final spark
drifted through his shattered brain, creasing his shredded face with a smile. It makes no difference if you’re immortal or
man. In the end, everyone dies.
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