Over da edge

Reboot

2012-01-27T06:12:00.000-08:00

Reboot

Howdy. Bet you thought I forgot about you, or that... bah, let's dispense with the clever quips...

Posting on the blog has been on my to do list for three weeks, but so have many other things. The other things have won out, hence the lack of posts. The book is done. On the other hand, the book is never really done until I put it up for sale. I finished EDITE something like three months ago. I then revised the book, then sent it to my most excellent editor. Even after, or perhaps because of, Norm's excellent edit, I had some niggling doubts.

Doubt number one. I didn't think I sufficiently foreshadowed the plot twist at the end of the book. Don't frantically page through the blog. The end isn't posted. In fact, the final fifty or so pages reside on my computer. Doubt number one solved itself in a flash of inspiration three weeks ago. The flash was vivid enough to propel me to mass for two weeks in a row.

Doubt number two concerned Katarina. I used her rape as the vehicle that carried her through the final third of the book, fueled her hatred, and gave meaning to her actions. I was never really comfortable with that. Norm wasn't comfortable either. And then I saw The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Uncomfortable changed to repulsed. I decided to never type the word rape in my novels. Nevertheless, I needed something to really piss her off. That something came to me shortly after the first flash mentioned above. Part of the rewrite the inspiration dictated is provided below.

[Yes, Stephen is written into the book earlier. As the passage notes. He is like family to Ramzke and Katarina.]

By the way. There's language in this. The characters portrayed are adults, in stressful situations. Language happens.

Katarina

“Ah, so the bitch is back.” Vaderlaughed, but Katarina didn’t. Unlike the previous visit, she was not standingdefiantly, but rather strapped to a wheelchair. The straps had not been builtthat could hold her; at least, not when she was fed, but now? Well, Dan hadexplained that the straps were there to prevent her from falling out of thechair. Vader sat behind his desk, unmasked. A black Glock rested on the uncluttered polished surface in front of him.

“I take it you aren’t an Elton Johnfan?”

Katarina ignored the question.There was no point in wasting the energy, something of which she had verylittle left. Vampires might be damn near immortal, but they were not withoutneeds. And the primary need was blood. The lack of it would not kill her, butit would reduce her to a catatonic state her kind called Cel Somn, or The Sleep, a state from which they could only berevived with fresh blood.

“What do you want?” she asked. The dark witch stood nearby,eyes gleaming, a shadow of a smile toying with the corners of her full lips. I wish I thought everything was so damnamusing, thought Katarina.

Vader tapped his chin with afinger, feigning thoughtfulness. “Let me see, what do I want?” His facebrightened into a smile and he held the previously tapping finger aloft. “Ah, Iremember. I want sex, money, and power.” He pursed his lips, seeming to think.“Seems like I ought to add drugs in there, doesn’t it?” He looked inquiringlyat Katarina. She managed a shrug.

“But you know,” Vader continued, “Ireally don’t do drugs, don’t drink much either. In fact, I don’t have anyvices. Nothing that someone could use against me.” He laughed.

“Nothing like this need you havefor blood.”

Katarina kept her silence.

“Doesn’t really matter how bad-assyou are, does it?” Vader continued. “I keep you away from blood, and you’re asweak as Superman in a Kryptonite coffin.”

Vader nodded at Dan, who stoodbehind her, and the heavyset man departed through a door set into the wall toher left.

Vader walked from behind his desk,moving until he stood in front of her. She locked him with enraged eyes. Thatwas what she wanted to do, but her body wasn’t cooperating. Her eyelidsdrooped, and her eyes wouldn’t focus.

“So sleepy,” Vader chuckled and hestroked her chin.

Katarina jerked her face away fromhis hand and he slapped her. Hard.

The blow flashed stars in front ofher eyes. She batted her eyelids, attempting to stem the hot, involuntarytears. “Fuck you, human.”

Vader laughed. “But your kind tellsme they have no desire for humans.”

The hand returned to her chin. Acaress and then he cupped the chin in his hand, tilting her head back, forcingher eyes to his.

She spat, laughing as the spittlerolled down Vader’s cheek. The man’s eye’s flashed and he stood, wiping thespit on the sleeve of his shirt.

Ifonly I had the energy, she thought. I’dgrab this bastard and pull his heart out his ass. But she didn’t. She wastoo far-gone, she needed blood too badly.

Vader sat on the edge of hispolished desk, and picked up the flat black Glock.

That’sokay, thought Katarina, if he wanted to end it she was all in. Four hundredyears is plenty for any woman. But ending her life didn’t appear to be on hisagenda. He spoke.

“I’m thinking your lack of bloodmakes you delusional. You seem to believe that you have some power, some,” hepursed his lips as if lost in thought, “say, in this relationship.”

As if cued by the words, Danreentered the room. It took all of Katarina’s energy to turn her head towardthe jailer. And what she saw caused her heart to both leap in joy and sink insorrow. There, stumbling in front of Dan was Stephen—her one-time lover, herlife-long friend, as close as her brother Ramzke. Stephan shuffled in front ofthe guard, his hands cuffed behind him, lengthy hair stringy and unkempt, his faceashen, eyes dull. In one hand Dan held his scattergun, pressed againstStephen’s back, in the other he carried a plastic milk jug, filled not withmilk, but blood. Dan shoved Stephan to the desk with the barrel of the gun, andStephan stood submissively still, weakly swaying, looking as if he wouldcollapse. Without a word Dan placed the jug of blood on thegleaming wood.

Stephen croaked one word. “Kat…”

Vader whipped him viciously acrossthe face with the pistol, and Stephen fell to his knees, a gash opened on hischeek. No blood oozed from the gash.

Vader turned back to Kat, his faceimpassive. “As I was saying, before Stephen interrupted me. Here I have theonly say. I control everything. I know everything. For example, I know this Stephen isfamily to you.”

He glanced at Stephan, and Katarinafollowed his eyes. The site tore at her. Proud, strong Stephen reduced to abloodless slave. “Looks like he needs some blood, no?

Katarina answered with a glare, butshe knew blood was exactly that was what Stephen needed.

Vader lifted the milk carton ofblood. “Would you like me to help him out?”

Ofcourse she wanted Vader to help him. Shewanted to help him. To give blood to the man who so often had come to the aidof both her brother and herself. What she wantedwas to rip Vader’s throat, spill his blood for Stephen, but her body would notlet her. It was too weak.

“If I help this Stephen, save hismiserable, blood-sucking life, will you help me? Will you kill for me?”

Her eyesburned. She killed for no man. Did no man’s bidding. But if she did not do thisman’s bidding, Stephen would die. She was sure of that. She swallowed herpride, the taste bitter in her mouth, and whispered her answer.

“Yes.”

Vader’sface swam in front of her eyes. “Yes is what you say?”

She nodded, even that small motionrequiring a herculean effort from her bloodless body.

The Glock’s retort was deafening.Stephen, rather the corpse that had been Stephen, slumped to the floor, whatlittle blood he had oozing from the crater in the side of it’s skull.

No!Tears—she didn’t think she hadtears in her—blurred her vision. No!

Vaderplaced the barrel, still warm from the bullet’s passage, under her chin, liftingher face. “Let me be clear. You have no fucking say.”

Everyone Dies in the End--the unumbered edition

2011-12-14T17:22:00.000-08:00

Not one heck of a lot of writing today. I wanted to share a work in progress. It's all about a scene you all haven't read yet. More or less the closing of the book. I'm well into my third novel, seriously considering keeping it paranormal free. My passion for weirdness hasn't waned, but...well, I'm just feeling something straight up.Also feeling some short stories. In those the normal will be most certainly be para. Anyway, let me know what you think of the WIP (artist talk for work in progress).

Everyone Dies in the End #92

2011-12-13T02:45:00.000-08:00

Author Talking

Wow. I refuse to play the busy card, or comment on my lack of an exclamation point at the end of the previous sentence. I'm writing, I'm designing, I'm running a game company. I'm have a great, bang-up time. Everyone Dies in the End is finished and in for edit. I'm on to the next, tentatively titled Risk and Retribution.But enough of this author stuff. Let's join Zak, Dusty, and Kat as they let fly the led.

Zak

He had never seen anything like this woman, and that—after the last fewdays—was saying quite a lot. She was a blur in khakis and T-shirt, innocuouslydressed, lethally efficient. He paused for a moment as the guards’ return firesmacked into the pew in front of him, splintering the back. He slid a few feeton his back, a guard screamed, and Zak popped from behind the pew to fire.

Pop, pop. The shots were not from Zak, Katarina stood in the aisle, a guard deadat her feet, another slumping, smoke oozing from a hole in his forehead.Another pair, sprayed Katarina with bullets, but Katarina was no longer there,she raced down the left side of the church. Zak replied to the assault rifleswith a burst from the submachine gun. The rounds chipped the marble altar, butdid little except draw the men’s attention. Attention that was quickly followedby a hail of bullets. He ducked, but before his eyes dipped below the edge of thepew he saw a woman, a beautiful dark-skinned woman, dash onto the altar fromthe right, a scimitar flashing in her hand. Afreaking scimitar?

Dusty

“Come on!” Eddie shouted, grabbingher wrist and pulling her after him. The church sounded as if someone was settingoff a well-funded fireworks display on the altar.

Eddie sprinted through the roomwhere the black woman had butchered the vampire. The room was vacant now, thecorpse gone. The blood, however, still stained the carpet and the coppery smellhung in the air. He slowed at the entrance to the hall leading to the stage.Turning, he placed his finger to his lips, and then smiled.

God,what am I doing? Dusty screamed to herself. This man is a beast, a murderer, a torturer, she remembered thewoman on the stage, and a sadist. Shewas sickened, but she knew that wasn’t the whole truth. The image of thetortured woman excited her. He was a beast, but he was also strong, powerful,and alive, so very alive. She despised him, yet he excited her like no man before.

He crept to the door, and a longstring of firecrackers exploded in the church. Only they weren’t firecrackers.She knew that, had been around enough killing to know the sound that deathmade.

“Let’s go,” he hissed, gesturingfor her to follow. Crouching he ran onto the altar, and Dusty followed suite.Through the door, three things caught her attention. Two men crouched, wildlyfiring their assault rifles, on the other side of the altar, the black woman dashedfrom a doorway, brandishing her scimitar. But the third thing drew a yell fromEddie.

A woman clad in khaki pants and at-shirt sprinted across the church. Sprinted fast, incredibly fast, and notalong the expansive center aisle, or between the pews. The woman ran across thetop of the pews, her foot lighting for a millisecond on the back of each beforemoving to the next. Dusty knew only one thing with that speed, that agility,and the knowing raised the hair on the back of her neck. As she watched, thevampire swung her shotgun and fired point blank into the chest of one ofEddie’s henchmen, without breakingstride.

Eddie fired, but he might as wellhave shot at a ghost. The rounds from his pistol ripped into a pew metersbehind the speeding vampire.

“Go,” Mbande shouted from acrossthis stage. “The vampire is mine.”

Eddie fired again, again the shotmissed by a wide margin. The men behind the altar added their lead to theparty, one’s rounds striking in front of the speeding woman; the other’schipping holes in the wooden wall at the back of the church. Dusty’s eyesfollowed the rounds. She thought she saw the top of a head behind the rear pew,but couldn’t be sure.

Eddie’s pistol boomed and then wentsilent. “Shit, no ammo.”

“Dusty!” He grabbed her wrist.“Come on, we gotta go. I know what she wants.”

She bristled. She wasn’t the samegirl Eddie bossed about the bedroom, draped on his arm as a trophy, or used asa verbal punching bag. Nuclear missiles, vampires, and gun battles had changedall that. Emotions crashed like waves against the shore of her self-image. Shecould blink, she could leave. Right now. She didn’t want a domineering man,maybe, but his kiss lingered on his lips, and his power, that sexy power, inher heart.

Shewent.

Everyone Dies in the End #91

2011-11-05T03:23:00.000-07:00

Author Talking Stuff

Huzzah! Does anyone really say that? Well, if they did, I would. Two new blog posts in a week, I told you we were going to ramp it up. We left the story with Cindy in Eddie-who-used-to-be-Vader's arms and gunfire erupting in the church. On the opposite side of the altar, in the rectory, Susan, the good witch (again real witches don't think in those terms, nor use near as many commas in their writing, but it makes it easier to visualize), has come face to face and eye to eye with Mbande, the less than good witch. The gunfire they will hear, and indeed the gunfire Cindy and Eddie heard, is/was Kat and Zak fighting their way into the church. This stuff is all obvious when you have the book in your lap. Honest.

Susan

Her world shrunk to a blue universeflecked with gold. Behind her the guard’s former captive/girlfriend scrambledto her feet and bolted through the back door, all thoughts of revengeforgotten. To her front the woman stepped closer. Dusty was neither aware ofthe captive’s bolting nor the black witch’s stepping. All that mattered was theblue universe. Her hands dropped to her side. She stood motionless, unknowing,helpless, but not quite.

Mbande

It had always been about the power.It’s attraction intensely sexual, even more than sexual. She had been a smallgirl when the men came. Hutu men. She was Hutu, but Tutsi lived in her village.The Hutu came for the Tutsi, drunk and violent Hutu. When they finished thebloody business with the Tutsi they didn’t stop. Violence has an appetite ofits own. A fact she learned that day, and cherished now. After the violent Hutumen finished with the Tutsi they came into her home. It wasn’t much of a home.A living area—where her mother, her father, and Mbande slept, ate, crafted grassbaskets, and played Oware—and a cooking area in which her mother made bugaliand boiled potatoes, were the only two rooms. An outhouse sat in a corner ofthe backyard, opposite the small shack where her mother practiced the magic. Hermother had shown her the magic. Taught her its ways. The good ways.

Three of the Hutu had steppedthrough the front door, the mud falling in rich clumps from their combat boots.Her father rose, protesting. The first of the three shot him dead with threebullets from the pistol in his hand. Mbande’s mother ran to the body of the manwith whom she had shared her life, crumpling her body on his. Behind her Mbandescreamed. The three men beat them, killing her mother, leaving Mbande for dead, cursing them for living among the Tutsi

Since that day Mbande had sworn tonever again be helpless. She learned Nzinga, African martial arts, stickfighting, and the curved metal, but those weapons—her hands, feet, poles,glinting sabers—were child’s play compared the dark magic she had studied,practiced, perfected. Her mother’s magic had been for good—to ease a relative’sache, heal a child’s cut, relax a friend’s mind—but Mbande had taken the spellsher Mother had taught her and sharpened, honed, and perverted them. The magic,the black magic, was hers, as much a part of her soul as the memory of that beating, and her pledge to never again be the victim. That power was her shield,her weapon, and this evening it would also prove to be her undoing.

She stepped closer to the woman.Mbande’s will entranced her, prohibited her from moving. She was next to hernow, her will dominating the girl. Mbande wanted her complete subservience. Notthe way a woman wants a man, but in the way that her black soul demanded dominanceover any who threatened. The cutlass hissed from its scabbard. The girl stood,silent as a ghost.

Susan

On the other hand, Susan was allabout good. Or at least once upon a time—a time before nuclear missiles,gangers named Kill Dog, cannibals in calico dresses, and humans penned forfood—she had been all about good. Like Mbande, she had also learned her magicfrom her mother, a good mother, who believed in the Wiccan creed, who believeda person should do no harm.

That same mother tattooed the pentagramon her cheek, triturating ink with her stone pestle and mortar. Susan neverknew exactly what that ink was made from, but knew that it contained a bit ofher mother’s blood, and she knew it was magic. Perhaps the magic was hermother, she didn’t know that, but she knew it tingled when she was in danger,glowed when the power within her was strong. It burned like fire now.Absolutely like fire.

The other witch, the dark witch (what a strange coincidence that is)stood close, her face mere inches from Susan’s. The gold-flecked pools of hereyes were deeply appealing, consuming, entrapping, but not quite. The fire on Susan’scheek burned stronger.

The slender black woman was next toher, the scimitar hissing from its scabbard, when Susan shot her dead.

Or would have if the woman had beena normal lady, with normal reflexes. Susan whipped the pistol into the darkwitches’ face and squeezed the trigger, but before that squeezing could cockthe pistol’s hammer, the scimitar struck Susan’s hand. It was a backhand blow,struck with the dull edge of the scimitar. Dull, in this case, being a lethallydeceitful word. The blow cut Susan’s wrist to the bone, and the pistol flewfrom her hand.

She grunted with pain, staring atthe blood pumping from the gash in her arm. She didn’t have long to stare. Likea tornado her enemy whirred, kicking Susan hard in the stomach, doubling her, sending her stumbling backward. She gasped for air, struggling forbalance. The witch strode confidently toward her, kicking aside Susan’srevolver, ignoring the blood on which she trod, smiling at Susan, her glittereyes spinning.

Again the foot shot out. This time Susan’sknee erupted in agony, and she collapsed. Her wrist pumped blood onto the flooraround her, her stomach spasmed, and white, wild pain shot from her knee. Susanfelt reality receding, her vision dimming; she was seconds from loosingconsciousness. The dark witch stood above her, still smiling, raising the scimitarfor what would surely be her death strike.

Andthen the gunfire began.

Everyone Dies in the End #90

2011-11-03T08:06:00.000-07:00

And yet again with the story that is called back. This time with a little bit of my own life. Busy, busy time in the game publishing industry. My company, Lock 'n Load Publishing, will publish three products before the turn of the new year. That's just the board game stuff. We continue to work hard on our computer game, and announced a strategic partnership with PlayDek.

The novel you are reading below is complete, rewritten, and out for editing. With a wee bit of luck, it will be published in all formats (paperback, ePub, PDF) before Christmas. We'd love to make an MP3 of it also. Any voice actors/actresses who are willing to work for cheap should drop me an email. I have, however, fallen behind with the blog. I'll rectify that over the next month. That rectification starts now.

We left almost all of our protagonists, antagonists, and just plain tagonists, in a cathedral in Philadelphia. Katerina the vampire and her ally of convenience, Zak (a soldier in the National Guard), were blasting through the church. Kat in hopes of killing the city's warlord, a dude named Vader, and Zak in hopes of finding his friend, Cindy.

Susan, the heartbroken white witch (if you are into colors--witches aren't), had come to do good, and instead will soon find herself locked in a death struggle with Mbande, a very black-hearted witch.

Cindy, the teleporter, has been ushered into Vader's office, and she's about to get a very big surprise. Let's listen in as Vader pulls off the mask, helmet thing.

Cindy

A tsunami could not have hit herharder. A moment before she had stood like a basilisk before this man, thisbrutal man. The memories roiled. Eddie’s hands light on her body, summerevenings beneath the stars. Drinking Tony Daniels hard, making love harder. Theboys at the liquor store, his rage, his bloody hands, and how terribly theyexcited her.

“It’s just me,” he said. The Vaderturned Eddie was standing now, and that simple act has closed the distancebetween the two of them greatly.

God,but he was handsome. As handsome as the night at the liquor store. Withoutcommand her eyes flicked to his hands. Those bloody hands that had so excitedher. They were clean now.

He stepped toward her. Noddingtoward the door through which they had entered the room. “That’s all for show.A smile played at the corner of his mouth. “You know that don’t you?”

“Yes.” The word sprang from hermouth before she could stop it. She shook her head. Too violently, too rapidly.“No, I mean hell no.” Her eyes, however, wouldn’t leave his lips. She jerkedher eyes away from the face. Forced herself to turn away from him.

“Cindy?”

She didn’t turn back. “Thosevampires.” Outside a car pulled into the alley, the beams from its headlightsflashing across the ceiling. “You treat them like slaves. Behind her thefloorboard creaked. “And you feed them,” She shivered, from cold or excitementshe didn’t know. “You feed them humans as if they were cattle.” Again a woodenfloor plank, loosened by the years, creaked.

“They are vampires, Cindy.” In thecorner of the room a tall grandfather clock ticked. Each tap pulling a staplefrom her resolve. “Have you forgotten what your mother taught you? They areevil incarnate. They are heartless, and they are doom.”

“And the people in the pen. Arethey evil too?”

She could feel his breath on herhair now. She wanted to scream, and she wanted to melt.

“They are what they are. They arebut the tip of an iceberg of death.” He placed a hand on her shoulder. “Youthink everyone will live? That this country will somehow feed the millions uponmillions of homeless? It cannot, it will not. These people are a requirement tokeep the vampires in check. Their death is merciful.”

The hand on her shoulder slowlyturned her, and he was there. Close, so close she could feel his heat. Hissmoky eyes held hers, and he bent to her, his lips seeking hers, his handcaressing the back of her neck.

Shekissed him hungrily and small arms fire erupted in the church.

Everyone Dies in the End #89

2011-09-29T03:39:00.000-07:00

What's Up?

Happy Thor's Day. Okay, not giving you background. You all (Did you know that "all" means 10,400 page views?) know this story jumps from character to character. In the book it's not an issue. Here it is a little bit more so. Anyway, read Everyone Dies in the End #85 first, and this one will make magnificent sense.

Susan

The popping gunplay pulled the scruffy man’s attention for asecond, maybe not even a second, before he realized he had more immediateconcerns than the shooting in the church. That second, however, was all thetime that Susan needed. Her gun had been drawn when she saw the man; he had yetto draw his. She aimed, and she fired, worried about hitting his captive, butwondering if she really was. Call it luck, or acquired skill from the lastmonths of killing, but her bullet flew true to the man’s eye, killing himinstantly.

He dropped, and the woman screamed.Partly in fear, partly in shock, but mainly it was a scream of rage, and now Susanknew…she was no captive. Then the woman was on her.

Susan wasn’t a fighter, but feargave her strength. The woman was a little bigger, a few pounds heavier. She ranat Susan. Susan, thrust out her leg and leaned away, grabbing the woman’sT-shirt and pulling, using the woman’s momentum to send her off balance. At thelast possible instant Susan released the shirt. It worked just like the jujitsuinstructor in the college self-defense class said it would, the woman flew overSusan’s leg and landed on her back.

Susan strode toward her, the .38gripped in both hands, aimed at the woman’s panting chest. She didn’t want tokill her, but kill her she would if the lady gave her any trouble.

The woman fixed Susan with abaleful stare. “You’re a bitch.”

Susan nodded, holding the gunsteady. “You know, I’m getting tired of that little mix-up. The word you areactually looking for is…”

“Witch.”

The word came from behind her, thevoice sultry and rich.

Susan whirred to face the speaker.

Before her stood a tall, almostandrogynous bodied, brown-skinned woman, her face beautiful, lips full,dread-locked hair wild. She was dressed in flowing robes, and held a scimitarat her side. But none of that really mattered. It was her eyes, her beautiful,swirling, gold on blue eyes that mesmerized Susan. The beautiful, brown womanspoke again.

“I know, because I’m one too.”

Everyone Dies in the End Yet Again

2011-09-23T06:30:00.000-07:00

Once Again with the Back Story

The posts are coming few and farbetween. No lack of writing, just a lack of posting. The book sits within athousand words of completion. I hope to have it done tomorrow, re-written bythe end of October, off to be edited in November, and on sale by Thanksgiving-ish.In November, which is National Novel Writing Month, I plan to write a novella setin the World at War universe. It will probably tell more of Mike Hudson andKatarina’s story, beginning with the destruction of Paris (See Paris is Burning).

We left Everyone Dies in the Endwith the main characters descending on the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Philadelphia. Cindy, the teleporter, has beendelivered to Vader, the fiefdom’s ruler/chief bad dude, Ramzke has been sent tohis coven of vampires, and Katarina, his sister, with the help of a soldiernamed Zak, is currently tearing through Vader’s thugs in the church. Let’slisten in.
Katarina

She rested the sawed-off shotgun on the neck of the leather-jacketedguard and pulled the trigger. The gun bucked, but not too much. Her kind werestrong; certainly strong enough to control a shotgun with one hand, certainlystrong enough to kick the shattered corpse aside, step to the other guard andthrow him against the wall, but she never got the chance. Before she couldtouch him, the human Zak’s gun burped, and the second guard caught the three9mm slugs with his face.

She nodded. “Nice.”

The man didn’t answer and she didn’t care. All that mattered now wasspeed. She jerked open the nearest of the double doors and stepped inside. Shefelt Zak just behind.

Several guards pounded down the long center aisle toward them. Behind herand to the left, Zak’s submachine gun fired again, and the foremost guardpounded no more. The ones behind began firing, and she saw Zak dive behind thewooden pew to her left. She glanced at him.

“Cover me, human,” and then she was bounding across the pews.

Everyone Dies in the End #88

2011-08-25T07:28:00.000-07:00

Cindy

The room was small with wooden paneling, soft lighting, and plush, sand-colored carpet. A roll up desk sat against a wall, papers littered the surface. A couch lined the opposite wall. Two chairs sat opposite it. All three pieces of furniture faced a dark wooden coffee table. Vader guided her to one of the chairs. “Have a seat.”

“I’ll stand.”

Vader took a seat on the couch, not saying another word until he had pulled off the black gauntlets and tossed them on the coffee table.

“Whew,” the black mask gasped. It’s hot.” Vader pointed at her. “You hot?”

Cindy remained expressionless, emotionless. “I’m fine.” The mask stared for a moment, and then Vader stood. He walked to the roll up desk. He slid a sheaf of papers to one side and pressed the button on a black intercom station. “Vinnie?”

“Yeah, boss,” came the scratchy reply.

“It’s hot in here. Have someone get us a pitcher of water and a couple of glasses.” He glanced at Cindy. “You might change your mind.”

She stared at the mask. “I doubt it.”

Vader laughed and the memory bells once again began chiming. Louder now. More incessantly.

Vader sat on the edge of the desk. “You always have been a bit of a bitch.”

Despite herself, Cindy reacted. “How the hell would you know? Who are you?”

Just then the water entered. A glass pitcher filled to the brim, ice cubes clinking (Ice cubes?) against its sides, and two glasses. Loaded on a silver tray and carried by a mousey woman Cindy hadn’t seen before.

She set them on the coffee table. Vader thanked her, and she slinked out of the room.

Vader bent to the pitcher and poured himself a glass, and then one for Cindy. He made no effort to offer her the glass. Instead he slid it to the edge of the table near one of the facing chairs. He lifted his legs and sat on the couch, swinging his legs up and onto the armrest. The picture of laissez fair relaxation. Almost boyish. The memory bells clanged. She wondered how, exactly, Vader would drink that glass of water through that black helmet. The thought almost made her laugh. Almost.

“I could use your help.”

That did make her laugh. Right out loud. “You can use,” she pointed at herself, “my help?”

The mask nodded, and one of the ungloved hands reached up to fiddle with a buckle under its chin.

“Why the hell would you think I would want to help you?” Somewhere those bells were ringing again, and inside she knew. Maybe she had known since she saw the robbed figure on the stage. Something about his stance, something about the voice, however muffled. She knew, but didn’t want to admit that she knew.

The buckle was lose now and the straps fell away.

Vader pulled off the helmet and spoke.

“Because you helped me before.”

Cindy gasped. Gasped because the voice was no longer Vader’s, because the face was no longer Vader’s. There on the couch, bringing the ice water to his lips, was her long-lost boyfriend. There, sat Eddie.

And then the shooting started.

Everyone Dies in the End #87

2011-07-30T05:20:00.000-07:00

Pulp Fiction

There's a bit of a Pulp Fiction thing going throughout Everyone Dies in the End. The story plays out through the characters' eyes, moving shifting forward and back, left and right. It's all much easier to follow when the entire manuscript is in your hands. Less so as blog entries, but that's why I'm here...to help. The scene below takes place just before Zak and Kat burst into the cathedral.

Cindy

She returned through the hall by which they had come to the altar. They were headed to the same room that Ramzke had taken her when they debarked from the truck. Ahead Vader ducked through the door.

It’s just creepy, thought Cindy. Why would anyone dress like that? And then they were through the door. Vader sat on the desk. He watched Cindy when she entered, the black helmet turning as she walked across the room. Ramzke guided her to a worn spot on the plush, red rug, ten feet in front of the desk on which Vader sat. Vader ignored her now, speaking instead to one of the toughs.

“I want that woman in the peasant dress.”

The tough nodded, “Yeah, boss,” his Philly accent thickly wrapping the words.

It’s like a bad Godfather rerun. The thought almost made Cindy giggle.

“I mean tonight, Sal,” Vader continued. “Bring her by,” he pointed a gloved finger at the tough called Sal, “and wait.”

She had seen that pointing finger before, but where she couldn’t place.

Sal nodded. Cindy noticed his Adam’s apple bob.

“You can drop her at the pens after I’m done.”

Cindy felt her skin crawl, and pictured her sawed-off shotgun in Vader’s mouth. The image made her feel a bit better.

“Not like you fags have any use for her, eh Ramzke?” Sal quipped.

Ramzke took a step toward the wisecracking henchman, and Sal blanched, but Vader raised a hand. “Enough.”

Ramzke hesitated, Cindy could feel his anger. The vampire took a breath, and then another, and then the anger was gone. Slowly Sal’s color returned, but he didn’t take his eyes off the vampire.

“Sal,” Vader hissed, and Sal pulled his eyes from Ramzke. When he had Sal’s attention, Vader spoke again. “Now, Sal. I want the girl now.” Still Sal didn’t move, obviously shaken from his almost-encounter with Ramzke.

“Now!” Vader shouted, and Sal jumped, stammered out a “Yes, sir,” and dashed out of the room. A few seconds later, the truck started, and then the tires crunched as Sal backed it down the alley.

Vader clumped his gloved hands together. “What’s next?” The mask scanned the room, its visage stopped when it faced the pale blonde man, the vampire Cindy had identified on entry.

“Ah, yes. We have a problem, don’t we Sandu?”

The vampire didn’t answer, his icy blue eyes glaring at Vader. The room was deadly quiet, and the black woman did nothing to disturb the peace when she walked to the vampire.

“Do I not feed you?” Vader asked in a low voice.

The vampire nodded.

“I asked you a question, bloodsucker. Do I not feed you?”

“Yes,” the vampire whispered, the word as clear as a gunshot in the night still room.

“Then…why…did” Vader’s voice rose with each word, “…you…kill!”

“Don’t do this,” Ramzke whispered, and Vader whirled to face him, his voice thundering. “I will do what I want!”

There was something about that inflection, that voice, that thunder, that Cindy recognized. But from where?

Vader didn’t turn away from Ramzke. The impassive, plastic gaze fixed on him he spoke two words, “Kill Sandu.”

Suddenly, there was a katana flashing through the air, and Sandu’s head fell from his shoulders. Blood shot from the headless torso for a heartbeat, perhaps two, then with a solid thud it joined its head on the floor.

“No!” screamed Ramzke and he took a step toward the fallen vampire. That step filled the air with the click-clacking of rounds chambering and guns aiming at the raven-haired, leather-jacked vampire. Cindy doubted they stayed his anger. It was the Katana, the tip a hairs-breath from Ramzke’s jugular, its handle held by the black woman, its blade dripping Sandu’s dark blood, that halted Ramzke.

Cindy’s anger was a fiery ball in her stomach; her fists clenched so tightly that felt her own blood pooling on her fingers from where the nails had bit into her palms.

She could see the tension in Ramzke, his veins clearly protruding from the side of his neck. The black woman, stood relaxed, lips smiling, the strange swirling irises focused on Ramzke, the sword touching the skin beneath his chin.

Vader turned his head from them and called to the toughs, “Hey, someone clean that shit up.” He gestured at Sandu’s corpse. “Before it starts stinking up the place. Nothing stinks like recycled blood.” He laughed at his own joke, the sound muffled by the mask, as he shifted on the desk.

“You’re cool with that, right?” He spoke to Ramzke, mocking humor in his voice, hooking a thumb over his shoulder to emphasize the “that” he spoke of was the decapitated Sandu. Fire burned in Ramzke’s eyes. It was apparent to Cindy that he was anything but cool with that.

“Cause if you aren’t,” and there was no trace of humor now, “I can kill your whole fucking coven just as easy.” Ramzke stood rigid, his fists balled, eyes fixed. Vader turned to the katana-wielding woman. “He looks cool to me, Mbande. He look cool to you?”

The smile broadened. She really was beautiful. “Real cool.” Her voice was an alto sax cutting through a smoke-filled bar. The katana didn’t waver. One-quarter inch and it would be in Ramzke’s throat.

“You want to make a thing over this one blood sucker, Ramzke? Is his life worth the life of every last one of your coven?” For a moment the words hung in the air. Cindy thought Vader was done, but he wasn’t. “Or are we cool?”

After what seemed like an eternity, Ramzke unclenched his fists. “We’re cool.”

“Hmmm,” whispered the woman Vader had called Mbande, “That’s too bad.” For a moment the Katana didn’t move, but then with a slight shrug she pulled it away from Ramzke’s neck.

Vader looked at one of the toughs. “Vinnie, give her something.” Vinnie, a non-descript man in a dark three-piece suit pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and tossed it to Mbande.

She rewarded him with smile, wiped Sandu’s blood off the blade and tossed it back. She had sheathed the katana before Vinnie caught the bloody handkerchief, cursing as he did so.

Vader laughed, Ramzke remained rigid. Vinnie tossed the offending piece of cloth in a wastebasket.

The laughter died and Vader spoke,” Okay, guys, clean this place up.” He pointed at Ramzke. “Thanks for bringing the girl, now get back to your coven.” Again Cindy sensed the tension build. She doubted that Ramzke was someone who took orders well. Vader ignored Ramzke and directly addressed Cindy for the first time. ‘You come with me, Lady.”

Lady? It was the first time she had heard Vader use the word. Dimly, deep in her layers of memory bells began ringing, but it was too deep for her understand why or even fully hear them.

He was beside her now; hand on her elbow, guiding her to a door in the back of the room. She didn’t know what he wanted, but didn’t see where she had any good options. They have Zak. She let herself be lead. And Eddie… what about Eddie? Mbande fell in behind the two. Vader looked over his shoulder at her, “No, Mbande, I won’t be needing you.” Cindy didn’t like the way that sounded. Judging from the sag in Mbande’s expression, neither did she, but she obeyed, waiting in the office as Vader opened the door.

Everyone Dies in the End #86

2011-07-26T03:28:00.000-07:00

Summer’s Call Part I

Wow, Wednesday took a long time to get here, no? Blame it on the weather. Summer is the best. No qualifier is needed, it is just the best. Cookouts, swimming, beeches, game conventions, baseball, sentences without verbs, and the new Harry Potter movie. Just kidding about the Harry Potter movie. Always felt that Harry was fantasy for people who couldn’t deal with fantasy. Me? I’m more of a Black Company kind of guy.

Anyway, here’s another installment. As you might remember, we’re in and around the cathedral. Susan the witch wants to do good, and is facing off a couple of Vader’s thugs, Cindy the teleporter has been captured by Ramzke the vampire and awaits an audience with the aforementioned Vader, and Katarina—sister to Ramzke and all around bad ass—with the help of Cindy’s friend (and perhaps future lover?) Zak, is about six seconds from tearing into the cathedral, Vader’s guards, and the big man himself.

Give me lights, give me cameras.

And action.

Katarina

He was good in a fight. Kept his head. This man named Zak. That was enough for her. Katarina stepped onto the pavement, her eyes on the guards across the street. She was glad to have the help, not glad for the memories it stirred. Memories of a man name Mike. The crowd had thinned. For a moment she worried that the guards would see them approach, but no, they had been drinking, and were as inattentive as they would be slow. And it was not her nature to worry. Neither was it her nature to love, but still the man named Mike haunted her thoughts.

Enough!

She would NOT think about the human, Mike. Not the shoddy apartment, littered with books, toys, and games, and warmth…the warmest she had been in four-hundred years. She would not! She would think of how to eviscerate the humans inside the den of hypocrites, how to murder each, without feeling. No, she smiled, there would be feeling when she killed the man who had touched her without permission. Sweet, bloody feelings.

Beside her the human Zak’s footsteps clipped the pavement. The street was crossed, people drifted down it on either side, and the lights illuminated the steps of the cathedral. At the top the two guard-men leaned on a massive marble column and shared a bottle, paying no attention to Katarina and Zak’s clipping footsteps.

They ascended the broad steps and Katarina shifted to her left, placing the column on which the humans leaned between the guards and herself. Her erstwhile partner shifted with her, remaining silent. He knew what he was about, there was no mistaking that. At the top now. A crow passed low overhead, its wings beating the night air.

The world slowed. Across the asphalt a streetlight hummed, the Galilee porch smelled like urine and beer, a breath of air caressed her cheek, light on her scar. She stepped from behind the column.

One guard had his back to her. Dressed in a brown leather jacket, worn and discolored around the collar. He smelled like garlic. Trashy American stuff, not the sweet smelling garlic from

Romania

. The other guard faced Katarina.

Stepping from behind the pillar, she rested the sawed-off shotgun on the neck of the leather-jacketed guard and pulled the trigger. The gun bucked, but not too much. Her kind were strong; certainly strong enough to control a shotgun with one hand, certainly strong enough to kick the shattered corpse aside, step to the other guard and throw him against the wall, but she never got the chance. Before she could touch him, the human Zak’s gun burped, and the second guard caught the three, 9mm slugs with his face.

She nodded. “Nice.”

The man didn’t answer. She didn’t care. All that mattered now was speed. She jerked open the nearest double doors and stepped inside. She felt Zak just behind.

Several guards pounded down the long center aisle toward them. Behind her and to the left, Zak’s submachine gun fired again, and the foremost guard pounded no more. The ones behind began firing, and she saw Zak dive behind the wooden pew to her left. She glanced at him.

“Cover me, human,” and then she was bounding across the pews.

Summer’s Call Part II

Oh yeah, the Mike that troubles Katarina is Mike Hudson. Soldier, Renaissance man, and my all-time favorite male character. See World at War: Revelation to see what he and Kat have going on.

Everyone Dies in the End #85

2011-07-11T03:53:00.000-07:00

Again with the Story

Yeah, yeah. I know. I’ve been slack. But not really. Sentence fragmentation aside, I’ve been busting my ass, I just haven’t been posting the result of my fragmented rear, here. I ought to be a rapper. If they have middle-class, old, white-guy rappers. But I digress.

We left Susan the Witch in the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, a dead, and very bloody, henchman at her feet, the woman she had saved running out the door. It seems life might have given Susan a break at this point, but it was not to be. Dead henchmen’s buddy was soon to return with yet another prisoner sentenced by Vader (Not that Vader…my Vader). The story resumes…by the way…more Kat on Wednesday. It’s time to wrap this puppy up.

Susan

       Susan nodded. “Go.” And the woman did.
       Susan crept to the hinge side of the hallway door. She waited. And waited.
       Much longer than it would take a man and his captive to walk from the altar—or was it a stage—she had seen, to the door behind which she waited. Unless, of course, the man had done a bit more than walk. Unless the man had stopped to have a private party with the captive he had been summoned to retrieve. She nodded. That made sense. Or perhaps he was taking the woman directly to the pens. The thought chilled her. She had come to do good. Every bit of good she could, not to stand waiting while another was taken. She would find them. She reached for the doorknob. But no, what if there was another way into this room? Susan’s eyes swept the room looking for anything she might have missed. There was nothing, only a seriously dead and bloody dude, no other way into the room. No way except the back door. She bit her lip, undecided. At least ten minutes had passed since man number two had left. On impulse she darted to the back door. Pressing her face to the pane of glass that defined the upper half of the door, she looked out into the gloom. And then the door opened.
       Not the one to which her face was pressed, but the heavy door leading to the stage. The one where she had waited in ambush, but she wasn’t ambushing anyone now.
      The second man stood there, as scruffy as the first had been well-groomed. His arm around a woman. A smiling woman, clad in loose peasant dress. There was no time to plan, no time to speak, no time. Susan aimed the .38 as the man pulled his own pistol from his holster.
      And then the shooting started.

Everyone Dies in the End #84

2011-06-12T03:34:00.001-07:00

Once again, to ensure we are all on the same page of our post-apocalyptic hymnal, let me bring you up to date. Our characters, which include Susan the witch, Cindy the teleporter, Ramzke the vampire, his sister Katarina, a soldier named Zak, and several others, have converged on a post-apocalyptic Philadelphia. The common denominator in their convergence is a small time dictator named Vader (Yeah, I know.). Most of these folks want to kill Vader, by the way. Vader has ruthlessly put Philly back on its feet, using a private army, and a coven of imprisoned vampires to enforce his will (No, I'm not making this up...well, uh, actually I am, but you know what I mean.). We rejoin the story shortly after Susan the witch, has snuck into the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul where Vader holds dispenses frontier justice in front of throngs of drunken citizens.

Susan

The desk was huge and Susan thanked the Goddess for that. The men herded the woman into the office trading lavicious comments; the woman sobbed. Susan hid behind the huge desk, her .38 in one hand, the cannibal’s butcher knife in the other. She was certain the men could hear her heart. It pounded so hard in her chest, drummed in her ear. If not her heart, then at least her breathing. She must be panting. But they paid her no mind. Their minds were on other things.

“Vader said to take her to the pens,” said one.

The other laughed. “But he didn’t say we couldn’t have some fun first.”

The woman whimpered. Susan’s hand tightened on the knife. The pentagram glowed brightly on her cheek. She had no doubt what fun the men wanted. They wouldn’t get it while she lived.

Something buzzed, and a light flashed. Susan couldn’t see the bulb, but the pulsing light filled the room.

“Damn,” the first man hissed. “Vader’s got another for us.”

“You go,” the second responded, “I’ll stay with her. She looks like she could use the company.” Both laughed.

Under the desk Susan saw a pair of tennis shoes leave the room. It was now or never.

She stood, swinging the .38 toward the remaining man, taking in the scene. The woman stood, slumped would be a better word, the man behind, groping her through the fabric of her reedy dress. His jaw dropped when Susan appeared, his eyes grew wide, his hands on the woman forgotten. He was armed, at least he had been. His eyes flicked to a small table next to the hallway door. On it laid a stubby submachine gun, dark and lethal.

Recovering from his surprise he spoke, a sneer tugging a corner of his mouth. “You won’t fire that thing,” He nodded toward Susan’s .38. “It’ll bring down the whole building on you.”

Susan guessed she should say something witty, snappy, or vengeful. That’s what a character in a third-rate novel might do, but that wasn’t Susan, and that wasn’t this novel. She didn’t know what to say, but did know what to do. She slid around the desk, keeping the gun pointed at the man. He was clean cut, amazingly so, with jelled hair combed to perfection. His hands, still cupping the woman’s breasts, were clean, the fingernails trimmed.

“Lady you put that thing down, and I’ll let you run out that door right now.” He tilted his head toward the door through which Susan had originally entered.

Susan continued to advance on the man, and he took a step back, shifting his hold to the woman’s neck and arm. He was yelling now, “You hear me? You shoot that gun and you die!”

Susan was next to him now, and the third-rate action character words came after all.

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” She whipped out the butcher’s knife from behind he back. “Maybe this will work better.”

She buried the knife in his neck.

Blood spurted from the wound, hot on Susan’s hand. It ran over the shoulder and down the chest of the woman, bright red against the colorless fabric of her dress. The man gurgled, reached for the knife, and collapsed on the floor. The woman screamed.

“Shut. Up,” Susan hissed. First the man’s yell, now the woman’s scream, she might have well shot the thug. She looked toward the door. Thankfully, man number two had closed it behind him when he left for the other captive. The door was solid wood, perhaps the noise had not carried through it.

Perhaps it had. There was nothing to do about it now. Beside her the woman had stopped screaming, the cries diminishing to muffled moans. The guard was still, lying in a pool—no, a lake would be a better word, thought Susan—of his own blood. Susan didn’t know what would happen next, but she knew it would happen soon. She placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder, turning her gently so that she faced her. “Hey,” Susan spoke softly. The woman continued crying, looking at the floor, biting the finger of a bloodied hand. “Hey!” More urgently this time, and the urgency pulled the woman’s attention back to Susan. The woman’s red-rimmed eyes rose, focusing on Susan’s face. Tears streamed down the cheeks, and her breath came in halting gasps, but at least she was focused on Susan.

“You have to go.” The woman stared at Susan blankly. Susan shook the shoulder. “You have to go. You have to run” Susan pointed to the back door. “Out that door.” The woman looked at the door and back at Susan. “Now!” Susan almost yelled and the woman flinched, but a spark of understanding lit her eyes. Susan lowered her voice. “If you want to live, you have to run, out that door, and keep running.” Haltingly the woman nodded.

“Now,” Susan repeated, and the woman stood. Susan stood too and stepped to the dead guard. She placed her boot on his neck, bent, and pulled the knife. She was surprised at how hard she had to pull to free it, but finally it came loose with a soft gurgle and a whisper of air. The woman opened the back door, and hesitated. “Thanks,” she whispered.

Susan nodded. “Go.” And the woman did.

Everyone Dies in the End #83

2011-06-09T04:03:00.000-07:00

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.”

Everyone Dies in the End #82

2011-05-05T03:07:00.000-07:00

Cindy

Yeah, it was Darth Vader all right. Right there on the apse, where some middle-aged gay guy with a robe fetish would normally be saying mass. There was a woman, an almost naked woman, in front of him. Cindy and Ramzke stood behind a raised dais. She could see the altar, Vader, a strange-looking black woman behind him, a door across the altar and a pair of guards. The congregation was mostly hidden, but loud and raucous.

“But my children were starving,” the naked woman screamed, and Vader replied with a crack of a riding crop on her back. Cindy’s muscles drew taut, part of her sickened by the woman’s humiliation, part of her excited. The excited part shamed her.

“Don’t,” Vader whispered, misreading her tensing as a preparation for action. “It won’t help.”

She forced herself to relax, but Ramzke wasn’t finished.

“Not yet.”

Vader gestured to the pair of guards, and after a brief discussion the pair escorted the woman through the door on the far side of the altar. Vader continued talking while the guards were walking. Cindy quickly tuned him out. It was nothing but a rant that boiled down to, “I’m great. You guys should love me.”

It was obvious that he was king, meting out a strange form of survival justice, but of course it wasn’t all about the justice. The sweaty, mostly drunk, crowd wasn’t here to support fair play. They were here for the scene, for the nudity, the brutality. But what could he want with her? The thought sent a shiver down her spine, and it was not an unpleasant feeling.

Another woman, clad in a loose peasant dress that did little to protect her from Vader’s riding crop, was sentenced. “Where are the guards taking them?” She whispered to Vader.

“The pens,” he hissed back.

“For your people?”

“Yes, but it is not what my people want.”

You would kill them anyway, no?”

“Yes, but you do not understand. It’s complicated.”

He was wrong. Cindy did understand complicated. As she looked at the bloody streaks painting the back of the woman’s dress as the guards led away, she understood complicated only too well. The peasant dress woman was the last.

After a final invocation, which was no doubt meant to inspire the rabble filling the church, he walked from the altar. The black helmet and cape hesitated for a second when he approached. The plastic visage staring at her, and then he spoke to Ramzke. “Bring her.” There was something odd about the voice, something almost familiar. She opened her mouth to speak, but he was past, and then the black woman, swirled by, her eyes aflame, a menacing smile on her full lips.

Ramzke turned Cindy by the elbow, but before they followed he leaned close. “When the time comes,” he hesitated as if struggling for the right words, “will you help?”

Cindy merely gestured toward the hall. “After you.”

Everyone Dies in the End #81

2011-04-22T07:34:00.000-07:00

Susan

It was an office, or perhaps a private library. Bookshelves lined the walls, and a blue rug, filigreed with gold thread, filled most of the floor. Along the thick rug’s edges beautiful hardwood gleamed. In one corner sat a plush, leather-covered reading chair, a tall light glowing softly beside it. A stout wooden desk dominated the opposite end of the room. A pair of chairs faced the desk, another rested behind it. It was an office, then. One that was kept clean, and smelled lightly of furniture polish. Strange stuff in a world decidedly unclean that reeked of decay. On the opposite wall was another door, slightly ajar, and through it she heard muffled voices.

The muffled voiced frightened her, and she froze, barely breathing, slightly crouching, the butcher’s knife snug in her boot, the .38 in her hand. Ready. A moment passed, maybe two. Nothing. The muffled voices continued, but nothing else. She crept to the door, her footfalls silent as fear on the deep carpeting. At the door the voices were clear, but that wasn’t right. It wasn’t voices, but rather one voice, a voice raised in impassioned speech, close but not too close. Holding her breath she peeked around the edge of the door and into a hall, dimly lit by a sliver of light at the far end. Like the office, the hall was carpeted, silencing her footsteps as she approached the sliver of light. It was another door, slightly ajar, and through it she could not only clearly hear the impassioned speech, but also see the man giving it. And she laughed.

Not loudly, and she we would soon be glad of that, but laughed nonetheless. The man was none other than Darth Vader. Of course that wasn’t possible. There was no Darth Vader. An English actor, David Prowse, wore the armor and James Earl Jones did the talking to Luke, but the character was just that—a character in a wildly popular movie. Nevertheless, there he was, or there was someone wearing the mask, standing on the altar of the cathedral.

The man in the Vader suit faced the congregation, or would audience be the better term? Behind him stood a tall, black woman, dressed in a flowing dress or robe, Susan couldn’t tell which, drawn at the waste with a rope. At the black woman’s side hung a sheathed scimitar. Her hand rested on the jeweled hilt.

In front of the costumed character slouched a woman—middle-aged, not bad looking, curvaceous body, shoulder-length brown hair, sweaty and limp. The woman faced the audience, her hands tied behind her, naked from the waist up, her curves laid bare for the congregation. Well, I bet that does pack the pews, thought Susan. Her heart went out to the humiliated woman. Susan’s trigger finger twitched when her eyes returned to the Vader pretender. The creep had paused for a breath. Now he continued.

“So now she stands before you,” he spoke, his voice amplified by a microphone clipped somewhere on his chest. “Stands naked before you.” The declaration drew hoots from the crowd. “Her sins revealed,” he continued, nodding at the catcalls from the audience. He raised his arms, the silly, black Vader gauntlets high above his head. “We live in a new world, a world where we must work together if we are to survive. A world that cannot suffer thieves, cannot suffer a woman stealing from her brothers and sisters.”

“But my children were starving!” the woman cried.

“Silence!” Vader thundered, punctuating the command with a snap from a riding crop held at his side. The crop drew blood from the bare back, and the woman screeched.

Susan almost charged then, broke from the door, pulled her gun, and shot the costumed clown dead, but her pentagram glowed, and she hesitated, always mindful of its warnings.

Then she saw the smoke.

It curled across her vision, thin, swirling, rich, yet at the same time repulsive. A cigarette! A muffled cough followed the thin stream. On the other side of the door, there must be someone, a guard, a crony, someone. And then that someone spoke.

“I’d like a few minutes with those hooters, wouldn’t you?” and then there was an answering chuckle. Not just one; at least two, she thought. So Susan didn’t charge, and Vader continued, unaware of the drama that didn’t play out behind him.

“So, citizens of Philadelphia, what is this thief’s sentence?”

“Kill her,” echoed the thundering replay.

The Vader laughed. “Yes, no doubt she deserves to die. The food she has stolen may cause another to go hungry. Yes, I should make her an example. But we are not barbarians, are we?”

“Yes, Yes,” the crowd thundered back. It wasn’t clear to Susan if they were agreeing with Vader, or reaffirming that they were, indeed, barbarians.

“No we are not, so we will not kill this one, we will put her to work.”

He turned toward Susan’s door, and for a second she could swear that he saw her, but he did nothing yet utter a single word. “Guards.”

The smoker and his buddy approached Vader. The black mask whispered something to them that she couldn’t hear, then each grabbed an arm of the weeping woman, and turned to walk off the altar, toward the door which Susan stood behind. Oh my God! Susan wasn’t sure where the men were taking the woman, but it sure as hell looked like the taking would be right through the door where she stood. She turned and ran.

Everyone Dies in the End #80

2011-04-04T04:14:00.003-07:00

ZAK

It sounded like the beginning of a long story to Zak, but the vampire Katarina said nothing more. The crowd once again thickened and in the distance Zak could see a colossal church. It could only be the cathedral of which the guard had spoken. The guard in the lobby of the police station. The cathedral that was their destination.

Zak was not one to play one hundred questions. He was a man trained to focus on the job at hand and how he could tackle it. He applied that focus to everything he did, but this was no ordinary lady, no ordinary circumstance. So he waited a few more steps and then spoke again.

“So vampires exist?”

An overweight, middle-age woman with hair badly in need of another dose of color passed them, headed in the other direction. Her head snapped at the word vampire and she gave Zak a hard look. He didn’t blame her. Vampire was a hard look kind of word.

Katarina turned her face to him. The blood was gone from her chin and he was once again struck by her beauty. “Evidently.”

The one word answer brought a bevy of other questions to mind. If vampires existed, what else? Werewolves, warlocks, the monster under the bed, Santa Claus?

He asked, and she laughed. “I’ve never met Santa Claus.”

They passed a couple eating ice cream. Where the hell did they get ice cream? “But…” he prodded wanting to know, wanting to understand the boundaries of this new reality that had been thrust on him.

“But,” she replied, mimicking Zak’s question, “we need to worry about that den of hypocrites.” She pointed at the cathedral. “In a minute we are going to walk through the doors and kill everything that holds a gun.”

“Whoa, there Dillinger. Why the hell would we do that?”

She didn’t even look at him. “Because they pissed me off.”

“What if I don’t want to help?”

She did stop then, turning to him. “Then I’ll start the killing with you.”

Zak shrugged. “I was just asking.”

Everyone Dies in the End #79

2011-04-01T15:42:00.000-07:00

Zak

Surreal. The word described, albeit inadequately, the scene. They strode down a brightly lit street. That alone was surrealistic. The world hadn’t ended, Zak knew that. Armageddon had arrived, sure as sure, but humankind bore an uncomfortable resemblance to cockroaches, rats, or any other persistent vermin that came to mind. In short, humans survived. Knock them down, tear their hearts out, raze their cities, it didn’t matter, let them catch their breath and they came back at you. He didn’t need to see this incandescent street to know that. Long before he fell in with the blonde-haired woman with the green eyes and the ability to throw her molecules from one location to another, he knew that his country still lived. Hardened communication units and messengers, had brought the news to Fort Benning. Florida survived and so did many of the Midwestern states. Summer rains washed much of the radiation’s alpha particles from the air and cleansed the land. Problems existed. Significant problems, cataclysmic problems even. Feeding

America

’s pre-war population with reduced farmland and a crippled transportation infrastructure would be impossible; millions more would die. And communication? Outside of the military’s hardened radios and computers, communication barely existed; the electromagnetic pulse from the numerous nuclear explosions had all but ruined any radio wave communications. But the communications could be rebuilt from spares, and troops were headed home from Europe to restore order to the lawless swatches in

America

. Zak knew these things, knew them before he left his base in Fort Benning, Georgia. Knowing, however, is one thing and seeing is another.

He was seeing now. People thronged the streets. He and the girl were jostled and pushed by the flowing crowd. Every store shown light on the humanity-covered sidewalks, and it seemed as if a bar adorned each street corner, its doors open to the night air, its customers spilling onto the sidewalk. Zak peered in the windows of a small grocery. The shelves were by no means full, but there was food on them, and additional offerings he had never seen in a pre-war grocer. Guns lined a metal rack on one wall, five-gallon gas cans—empty or full, Zak didn’t know—sat on the floor in front of the checkout counter.

The lights, the stores, the bars, and the crowd were bizarre, almost pre-war, but not quite. Pre-war pedestrians would have at given a pair of gun-toting toughs a wide berth and police would have quickly tossed them into the back of a black and white, but now no one cared. And it was no wonder; guns were everywhere—in holsters strapped to young women’s shapely hips, slung on the muscular shoulders of the men talking to them, or held at the ready by rough looking guards standing in front of the stores. The world was different, stranger, and that thought brought his eyes back to his current partner. She walked a few paces in front of him, the shotgun held easily at her side, head in constant, yet relaxed, motion, looking for trouble. Trouble that she no doubt could handle.

First he had met Cindy. He didn’t know what Cindy was, didn’t even know what to call someone who was here now, and over there a heartbeat later. Teleporter? Probably. Strange? Surely. And the woman in front of him? What was she? It was a rhetorical question, asked give his mind a moment to logicize the illogical. He knew damn well what the woman was. He just didn’t want to admit it. The blood on her chin wasn’t an accident, and it wasn’t her own. It was the overweight prison guard’s blood, and the name of a being that sucked another being’s blood wasn’t a mystery. That name was strange, yes. Mythical, yes. Non-existent, yes…but, no, it wasn’t non-existent. She walked in front of him. She was a vampire. A vampire without the cape, huge fangs, or heavy Euro-trash accent, but a vampire nonetheless. The thought quickened his step until he strode beside her.

“You’re a vampire.”

She glanced at him, then resumed her crowd scanning, her stride unabated.

“You killed the guard,” Zak persisted. “There was blood on your face, blood on your teeth for Christ’s sake.”

“I do nothing for his sake. He has done nothing for mine.”

A shot cracked from across the street and both whirled, but it was nothing. A drunk with a pistol raised above his head, a shot fired in celebration. They resumed walking, threading their way through the mass of humanity.

Zak didn’t press. That wasn’t his style. He had not been querying, not really. He knew the answer, but it was a big answer, a reality-shattering answer, and he wanted to hear it from her lips.

They walked another half block, people, music, and lights barraging them from all sides. They passed a large bar with a good-sized crowd, many of them drunk. Certainly it was a big draw, because after they passed the watering hole the crowd immediately thinned. She spoke.

“My name is Katarina and yes, I am a vampire.”

Everyone Dies in the End #78

2011-03-19T02:56:00.000-07:00

Cindy

The door opened on a short flight of wooden steps, well-polished and reflecting the gleaming radiance of a chandelier hung from a high ceiling. The steps lead to a large anteroom. Lots of tough guys. Cindy counted six. The toughs greeted the two guards enthusiastically. Turns out the guards names were Vinnie and Tony. Italian no doubt. Not a surprise, given their olive skin and dark hair.

The greetings didn’t extend to Ramzke, who didn’t seem to notice, didn’t seem to care. After a moment, Cindy noticed that one of the toughs, unlike the others, stood in the corner of the room. A slim, tall, blond, pale man who nodded not at the boisterous guards, but at Ramzke. Not a word was exchanged, but she knew none was needed. The blonde man was one of Ramzke’s kind.

“Where is he?” Ramzke spoke to a middle-aged, well-dressed man who seemed to be in charge of the others. The man was seated in a plush chair behind what had probably been a receptionist’s desk in days gone by, cleaning immaculate finger nails with a large knife. He smiled, revealing teeth that had likely made an orthodontist wealthy. He pointed at her with the tip of the knife.

“That the babe?”

Ramzke ignored the question and repeated his own. “Where’s Vader?”

The man gave her a look, a long look from the tips of her toes to the top of her head. She felt as if her clothes were made of Saran Wrap. She stared back, unflinching. He gestured with his knife at a dark wooden door set in the wall of the room. “Stage. It’s Saturday night, where did you think he would be?”

Ramzke grabbed Cindy’s elbow lightly and spoke to the man. “We’ll watch.” He guided her to the door.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Ramzke’s words echoed in her head. The meaning was clear. Ramzke felt they had a mutual enemy, one that they could battle together. What was unclear was the timing. Why now? Why travel hundreds of miles to kidnap her, and then ask for her help? And if she did help him, what would become of her then? She was powerful; she knew that now. Her newfound abilities amazed her, but Ramzke and his kind had preyed on humans for centuries. Despite her bravado, doubt haunted her. Did she want to ally with vampires? Her mother had her told her the stories since she had been old enough to understand; told her that these beings existed, they were real, to believe that and to fear. They were heartless, soulless killers, so her mom said, and so Cindy had believed, and still believed, but she had learned much in the past several days. Evil wasn’t an absolute. Often its definition depended on who was labeling the deed. One being’s evil was another’s survival. This Vader somehow enslaved vampires. On the surface that might be a good thing, but the enslavement was for his gain, not to stop the slaughter of humans by feeding vampires. The pens—humans captured and held, helpless, fed to vampires. From where Cindy stood, from where her finger pointed that was evil.

The door opened on a dusky corridor, and a short set of carpeted steps that led up to a landing of polished wood. Soft light spilled onto the landing from an open door. Ramzke led her to the door and they stepped through onto the altar of Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul.

Everyone Dies in the End #77

2011-03-08T04:14:00.001-08:00

Susan

Down the block, on the right, behind a gutted 7-11, Susan hid the Indian. She parked it next to a heap of wooden pallets, and spread plastic bags, stuffed with trash, on it. If you stood next to it, the motorcycle looked like a beautiful Indian parked next to a bunch of pallets and covered with trash bags, but from ten feet away she doubted anyone would notice it. She struck out for the church, the .38 heavy on her hip.

The crowd had thinned, only a few stragglers still filed into the entrance, but the guards checked each. There was no way she was walking in with the .38, but there was no way she was going in without it. There had to be another entrance.

Crossing to the church side of the street, she kept her eyes on the cathedral steps. Ahead a woman shrieked and a man laughed coarsely. Lights, which dangled from the arches, illuminated the armed men and the denizens they searched. Both guards had a bottle of something in their hand, and frequently drank from said bottle. Judging from the rough way they handled their searches, the extra time they spent with the women, and their general inattentiveness to anything but their immediate surroundings, she guessed the bottles weren’t Diet Coke. She also guessed if these guards drank on duty, some, if not most, of the others did also. That was good news.

A series of houses occupied the lots adjacent to the cathedral—large, unlit structures with fenceless yards. Just what she needed. She ducked behind a hedge of the home adjacent to the cathedral and worked her way into the back yard. Judging by the lack of interior lights, the house was unoccupied, or if it was, the occupants weren’t in.

A tall, evergreen hedge stood between the back yard and the cathedral, blocking her view of the massive church, but that was okay. If she couldn’t see the church, no one in the church could see her. Shadows clung to the corners of the yard. On the other side of the hedge she could hear the muted voices of the church-going stragglers, and the church-protecting guards. A stone path led to an opening in the hedge at the back of the yard. Two stout wooden posts and an equally stout gate guarded the entrance.

Susan pressed an eye to a crack in the gate’s planking. A tiny alley, big enough for garbage collection, ran behind the house. Across the alley was another gated house. She could see nothing else. She could hear nothing else. Carefully she stepped through the gate.

To her left rose the cathedral’s side. Jutting from, and attached to, the side was a large house—the rectory. Light spilled from several windows onto the grass that lead to the structure. Susan crouched beside a pair of dented trashcans and watched the windows. She waited three, perhaps four minutes, and saw nothing. If there were people in there, they weren’t moving. At the back of the rectory a short set of concrete stairs lead to a small landing and the rear entrance. A door light illuminated the landing. On the landing a guard sat, his chair leaned back against the rectory wall, a cigarette in his lips.

Susan crept. Slowly, surely, each step confident and final. She avoided the window’s spilling light, and noiselessly gained the wall. Back to the wall, she slid toward the guard. Still he leaned, relaxed, smoking his cigarette, his last cigarette. Questions snapped through her mind like pictures through a projector. This man, this guard, had done nothing to her. Killing him would make her a murderer. No better than the Mother in Henry, Virginia, no better than the men at the roadblock. But those thoughts would do her no good. Better to think of how to kill this man, not the moral repercussions. She holstered the .38. Firing the gun would only bring more guards. Best to keep quiet till I know where I’m going; till I know what I’m doing.

Susan leaned to her right, careful to keep her back against the wall, and slid her hand down her leg. She pulled the Mother’s butcher knife from the boot. The pale moon gleamed like fresh blood on the blade. One step, two, and she was behind the smoking guard. He remained oblivious. He sat above her, the chair resting on the raised landing.

It was easy.

A quick lunge and the blade slid into his neck. She pulled knife and he toppled off the landing, falling at her feet, staring up, eyes wide with terror. Another slice across the base of his throat and those wide eyes closed.

She waited a moment, listening hard, swallowing the bile in her throat. No one came running. Susan wiped the blade on the guard’s shirt—one side and then the other. No sense putting the blood on her clothes, it would dry to a nauseating stench.

Up the steps, ducking to the side of the door, once again listening.

Nothing.

And then she was inside, and it was nothing like she expected.

Everyone Dies in the End #76

2011-03-04T02:58:00.001-08:00

Zak

The stairs turned left at the next landing. The landing was typically sized, cleanly tiled, and well lit. Ahead and above someone shouted, and then the stairwell fell quiet. He held the M-16 in his left hand, with his right he motioned the woman to stay back as he edged along the wall. Zak had lifted a grenade from one of the bloody guards below. He drew the grenade from his pocket, pulled the pin, released the spoon, and counted to three. Three was pushing it. Zak knew that. The delay was typically no more than five seconds, but he didn’t want to give the shouting voice time to throw the grenade back, or the grenade time to bounce back on his own.

The grenade sailed to the landing above. Zak heard the metallic clacking as it rolled across the tiled floor above. Someone screamed, “Grenade!” and the palm-sized green globe exploded in confirmation.

“Now!” Zak ran, M-16 to his shoulder, boots thudding loudly against the stairs. Smoked swirled, two bodies lay still, another groaned as it writhed on the floor. Zak put a round in the groaner’s head, and then he surged into the foyer of the police station. Chaos reigned. Two partially nude women ran for the door, screaming. A bare-chested, teen jumped from a bench to his front, and grabbed for a pistol on his hip. Another three-round burst from Zak’s rifle stopped his grabbing. A tough rose from behind the duty sergeant’s desk to his left, rifle aimed at Zak. There wasn’t time to spin and shoot, but time wasn’t needed. Behind him the scattergun boomed, and the tough dropped dead. Zak looked back to see the woman, jacking two more rounds into the scattergun.

“Thanks.”

She shrugged. Two more of the guards fired from across the cavernous foyer, and ducked behind a row of seats. Their shots smacked harmlessly through the drywall behind them. Zak ducked and crept to the edge of the massive duty desk post. The desk sat on the deck of a raised, walled, station. He could feel the woman close up behind him.

“Fire a burst,” she whispered. “I’ll take them when they duck. I want one of them alive.” Zak nodded and returned the whisper. “On three.”

“One, two,” he sighted around the edge of the platform. He could just make out a bit of head hair behind the row of institutional chairs. Zak fired, and fired again. The hair dropped from sight, and the woman leapt. Not a normal leap, not a human leap. She flew over his head, landing on the seats of the chairs behind the head of hair. The seats held, the chairs were bolted to the floor. She fired the scattergun at something to the left of the head of hair, and the something exploded in a crimson mist. The head of hair raised its pistol to return fire, but the woman slapped the pistol from his hand, grabbed the man by the collar, and threw him against the wall. He hit with a thud and slid to the floor. In a flash she pulled a pair of shells from her bandolier and loaded the scattergun.

Zak swept the room with the muzzle of his gun, his eyes viewing the carnage through the sights of the M-16. Nothing moved. Dry wall dust, raised by the impact of tens of bullets, drifted through the air, writhing like a translucent snake. The smell of gunpowder and blood hung heavy, and the bare-chested teen moaned softly. Through the front door Zak could see the dark evening sky, stars hidden by the city lights. No one looked in the station. Zak guessed Philadelphians had learned that cats weren’t the only thing killed by curiosity.

The woman dropped to the floor, silent as death. Zak stood. The woman and he were the only things still moving.

She knelt and ran her finger through the blood oozing from the corpse in front of her. She smelled the blood, licked her finger, and spat. “Too much gunpowder,” she grimaced. “It ruins the taste.”

The man against the wall, the man she had thrown like he was no more than a five pound sack of sugar, groaned. “Ah, our future informant,” she grinned, her teeth still pink. She lifted the man to a chair and motioned to a glass of water on the duty sergeant’s desk. “Give me that.”

Zak complied and she threw the water on the man’s face. He came to, sputtering hard. The woman smiled at him, no more than three inches from his face, and the man blanched. Zak shivered. She glanced up.

“The door? Are you watching the door?”

Guiltily he walked toward the door and leaned against the wall, positioning himself so as not to be seen from the outside, rifle at the ready. Watching the door was okay by him. Zak didn’t want to see what would happen to the dude in the chair if he didn’t give the woman the answers she wanted. As it turns out, Zak had nothing to fear. The interrogation was anti-climatic; the woman only had to ask once.

“Where is Vader?”

Zak had no idea who Vader was, not unless she was talking about an evil lord from a science fiction movie, but the man did, and he eagerly told the woman. She thanked the guard, and then murdered him on the spot.

Everyone Dies in the End #75

2011-03-02T02:46:00.000-08:00

Author's Note: Okay, as hard as it is for me to admit, this blog might not be the central focus of every single one of your lives. And, yes, the story does jump a bit. So, for those of you who are wondering which page of the post-apocalyptic hymnal we are on it is the page that says--in an America devastated by a Soviet nuclear strike, Ramzke, the vampire, and Cindy (his teleporting captive, in search of her boyfriend, Eddie) have just arrived at the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Philadelphia, to meet Ramzke's boss--a creepy dude who conceals his identity behind a Darth Vader mask. Susan, the witch (white witch if you believe in the color thing), has stumbled to the same location in hopes of doing something, something good, to avenge the death of her friends, Todd and Arty. Katarina, a bad-ass vampire, in the mold of Underworld's Selene (you met her in World at War: Revelation, didn't you? If not buy a couple of copies of the book today at ...just saying), has pledged to help free Ramzke's (her brother) coven from the bad guy in the Vader mask, and has brought along Zak, an army officer, and close friend/would-be romantic interest of Cindy. All these characters are converging on a geographical and chronological point. A point where Everyone Dies in the End. Maybe.

It's sorta complicated.

Ramzke

He was sore. Two nights of travel in a stiffly sprung truck, with nothing but a wooden bench for comfort, did that to a body. Even to a 400-year old body. Especially a 400-year old body, thought Ramzke.

He stood and stretched, listening as his joints softly popped. The girl, Cindy, regarded him without expression. From the cab Ramzke heard the ratcheting as the driver engaged the parking brake, and then the engine shut down with a cough. They were home. If a prison can ever be called a home.

At the end of the alley, the throng of humanity jostled by smelly and eager. Once again it was trial night, and the humans, the very judgmental humans, were swarming to the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, to watch the sex and violence that were the keystones of Vader’s justice.

“This is it?”

The woman’s voice pulled his attention from the crowd. Outside the cab doors slammed shut.

“Yes, this is it.” He gestured toward the rear of the truck bed. “After you.”

She disappeared, reappearing in a flash outside of the truck. He keep his face impassive, and leapt to the ground, joining her and the two guards, both of which kept a wary distance from them. The woman gawked at the crowd thrumming past the end of the alley.

“What is this?” she asked without turning to him. “The lights, the crowd, the craziness. It’s almost pre-war, but different.”

“Yeah, but different.” He grabbed her elbow and guided her toward the door at the rear of the cathedral.

Cindy

She turned, following the vampire’s direction. The crowd had been amazing. So many people and lights…she hadn’t seen a lit city since the missiles came. She wondered if Eddie were somewhere in that crowd. She worried if Zak was dead. She worried about worrying about two men. And she laughed.

“This is funny?” asked the vampire, Ramzke.

She shrugged. “It’s as funny as anything else that’s happened the last three months. It’s as funny as you’ll look with a stake sticking through your chest.” The guards, trailing a couple of paces behind, guffawed. Ramzke silenced them with a chilling stare.

“As if you’ll ever see that,” he answered and reached for the door, a sturdy wooden affair, sunk in the stone wall of the church, palely illuminated by a single light bulb. The door swung out silently, Ramzke gestured the two guards through. They exchanged a glance, shrugged and ducked through the door. Cindy made to follow, but Ramzke held her back and leaned close.

“I’ve lived many years; some of those years in the place your kind calls the Mid-East.” The vampire hesitated. At the end of the alley, a woman shrieked and a man laughed.

Cindy stared at the face. Unremarkable, the dark hair falling over the eyes, dark eyes. The smell of his leather jacket was rich in her nostrils. “And I care about your history because?”

He looked quickly at the alley entrance, then back to her. “Because there, in your Mid-East, the Arabs have a saying.”

“I’m listening,” Cindy answered.

“They say, the enemy of your enemy is your friend.”

Katarina

She wasn’t a fan of wanton violence, but then again she didn’t have a problem with it either. She shredded the whiner in the soldier’s cell to prove a point. Mess with me and you’ll die. She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t killed both the whiner and the soldier. At least that is what she told herself. Deep inside, deeper than the vampire who was willing to blow off a man’s head just to prove a point, she knew why. It was the uniform. It reminded her of another uniform, another country, another man, other feelings, feelings she wasn’t comfortable with.

The shotgun blast brought another pair of guards. Running down the steps they came. Bad news for the guards, not Katarina. Creeping down the steps, gun to their shoulders and sighted, would have been much better for the pair, but Katarina guessed tactics weren’t the men’s strong suit. She fired the just-jacked shotgun shell at the pair. The guy in front blew apart, his black assault rifle clacking to the tile floor. His death saved the other, for a beat of his heart, maybe two. The shell in the second barrel shredded him in a manner satisfyingly similar to the first. Lots of blood. Might have been distracting if she hadn’t just fed.

Soldier boy picked up the assault rifle, wiped the blood on his pants and checked the action. “Jeez, safety’s still on.”

Kat shrugged, “Darwin’s Law in action.” Soldier boy didn’t answer; he was busy pulling spare magazines from the crimson remnants of the guard’s body. He lifted a grenade from a shredded flak jacket on the second guard. “Nice,” he muttered.

This guy might prove useful after all, thought Kat.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

He stood, flicking a piece of something fleshy off a dully-gleaming magazine. “Zak.”

Katarina reloaded the shotgun. “Well, Zak.” She pointed with the barrel up the steps. “Lead on.”

He laughed. “You afraid?”

“As a fat man once said, ‘Sure, I’m afraid of a lot of things, but most of them are dead now.’” Again she pointed up the stairs. “You first.”

Everyone Dies in the End #74

2011-02-16T02:36:00.000-08:00

Susan

The night got lighter, not darker. Strange, and strange that it was strange, because it was the most normal thing in the world, just not a normality that Susan had witnessed in the past few months. The truck drove into Philadelphia and the night got brighter. There were lights, actual streetlights. And traffic. Not heavy traffic mind, you, but wheeled vehicles on streets. Enough traffic to embolden Susan to switch on the Indian’s headlight. There were some cars, mostly smaller, and even more motorcycles. Made sense, motorcycles took less gas, and this was certainly a world of less gas. The truck exited the turnpike, and drove deeper into the city. It was seven or eight o’clock, Susan guessed. No way to tell for sure, she no longer wore a watch. She didn’t see open stores, but many looked as if they were merely closed for the night, and the streetlights shone brightly.

Deeper into the city, and the sidewalks filled. Cantinas and bars were open, the hot neon blinking in the chill autumn night, and the air smelled almost clean, unlike the foul reek of Charlotte. Not surprising. Charlotte’s decaying corpses were absent here. Deeper in the city, even more traffic flowed beside her; cars, lots of motorcycles, horses, and horse-drawn carts. The pattern was chaotic, boisterous, and unsupervised. There no police. No uniformed police. Most street corners had at least a pair of…well, toughs was the word that popped into Susan’s mind. Mean-looking, rough men, armed to the teeth. It was a carnival atmosphere, dangerous, crazy, but carnival. It struck Susan as an incongruous juxtaposition.

Back at the battle of the roadblock, she learned that humans were penned and fed to monsters. Penned right here, or somewhere near here, yet the loud crowd pulsing through the street didn’t strike her as people living in fear. They struck her as alive, if not thriving, at least surviving.

The throng was so thick that she no longer worried about being spotted from the truck. It was possible, but unlikely. Motorcycles, bikes, pedestrians, wagons, and even the occasional car jockeyed for every open patch of road. Ahead an impressive cathedral towered over the crowd. Many surged through the gothic arches curving above its doors. Guards stood in front—slack, slouchy guards, but guards nevertheless, watching the masses filing through the cathedral’s doors, closely inspecting one or two every few minutes.

The truck turned on a small alley to the side of the church; a pair of guards roughly cleared the alley’s cracked pavement of pedestrians. The truck was apparently expected. The driver down shifted, and smoke puffed from the perforated vertical exhaust beside the cab. The truck rumbled through the guards and rolled down the ally.

The cathedral and its rectory formed the narrow alley’s walls, and at the far end Susan spotted a pair of Dempster-Dumpsters. From the entrance the guards glared sternly at the herd of people streaming by. There was no following the truck, but Susan didn’t need to, the cathedral was its final destination. There was no other reason to enter the alley. She drove by the entrance, the Indian moving at little more than a walking pace, restricted by the sweaty horde of people and vehicles. She’d find somewhere to hide the Indian, and she’d be back.

If the truck was headed to the cathedral, then it was her link to finding those captives and releasing them, her link to doing something good.

Everyone Dies in the End #73

2011-02-15T03:45:00.000-08:00

Zak

The someone that Zak had in mind at the closing of his last visit with you, fair reader, wasn’t, of course, Katarina, but it was Katarina who he now saw. Striding down the broad corridor, the guard she killed laying on the floor behind. Her scream, “The keys, give me the keys, or I’ll rip your arm out,” had sounded above his conversation with William. Both of them had dashed to the bars. By pressing his face hard against them, Zak had witnessed the confrontation’s bloody conclusion.

By his estimation William and he were the only observers. The cell across the corridor held no prisoners, nor did he hear anything from the other cells that lined the hall.

“Hey!”

He spoke before she drew abreast of the cell, and her head turned. A pretty girl. Khaki slacks, T-shirt, athletic body, thick blue-black hair, but the blood sort of ruined the idyllic picture. He guessed it was the dead guard’s that sat, if corpses really sat, against the bars of the pretty girl’s former cell. The blood was soaking and dark red on the chest of her t-shirt. That was fine, at least as fine as blood-soaked t-shirts get. He had seen his share in the past week. The lips and chin freaked him. They too were covered, but not really. She licked the lips clean with a delicate tongue as she came toward him, and smeared the blood on the chin with the back of her hand.

William screamed. “She’s one of them!”

‘Them’ didn’t need a clarification, not given the setting. Zak and William paced in a cell, to be fed to vampires, a lady with blood-soaked t-shirt and crimson chin on her way to pay them a visit. But it didn’t work. If the crimson lady was a vampire, why was she also caged?

She stopped in front of the cage, breathing heavily. In one hand she held a sawed-off shotgun. Way sawed off, probably ineffective at more then twenty-five feet, Zak thought, but real damn effective within that range, a range in which he and William currently resided. Zak didn’t care about that hand, but liked what he saw in the other—the cell keys.

He spoke. “Let us out.” She cocked her head. Unpleasantly like a rooster looking at a worm, he thought.

“Why would I do that?”

Williams retreated to the toilet in the corner of the cage, whimpering, “Don’t kill us.” The woman smiled, revealing teeth still red with the guard’s blood, but didn’t answer. Zak pointed to the dead guard.

“I don’t know what’s going on around here, but it doesn’t look like he was your friend. He wasn’t my friend either. Let us out of here. I know a bit about fighting, I can help.”

She looked him over from head to toe. Zak hoped his army fatigues meant something to her. In the corner Williams cried, “God no, no, let her go.”

“Okay soldier boy, you’re on.” She slid the key in the lock, the door rolled silently open and Zak stepped through. William stood. Blurringly fast the woman snapped the scattergun to her shoulder and fired, the blast deafening in the corridor, the flash bright.

William, a headless William, flew back against the wall. Blood spurted from stump that had held his noggin a second previously. His heels tapped on the floor two or three times, and then went still.

“Why the hell did you do that?” Zak screamed. His hands shook at his side.

She shrugged, “I hate whiners.”

Everyone Dies in the End #72

2011-02-12T02:50:00.001-08:00

Katarina

She paced her cell, eyes flicking from one pale green wall to the next, from the next pale green wall to the bars (where the smoke from Dan’s ever-present cigarette drifted by), from the bars to the stainless steel sink jutting from the wall, and finally to the empty, bloodstained milk carton resting on a corner of that jutting steel sink.

Once again she was strong. For all the good it will do me, she thought, backhanding the carton from the sink. Two drops of the precious liquid dotted the wall, the larger leisurely transforming into a thin, red line which crept toward the floor. Bending, she wiped the blood, and then licked her finger clean, savoring the fresh taste, the coppery aroma. For an instant she envisioned that the blood was Vader’s, the coppery smell rising from his corpse. The fantasy birthed a smile.

But the fantasy was quickly replaced by memory. He had bedded her. Tied her to the soft, thick bed in his chambers, and had his way. When he had finished, Dan had dropped her into the cell, given her the milk carton of still-warm blood, and resumed his station on the far side of the barred door. Dan hadn’t spoken, he sat just beyond her sight, against the wall, smoking.

She retrieved the milk carton from the floor and walked to the bars. “Get me more.” The chair scrapped and Dan shuffled into view, cigarette protruding from a corner of his mouth, large, lumberjack shirt covering an ample belly.

He coughed. “Can’t do that, sister.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she sneered. “Pig.”

His gaze fell and he shrugged. “Never said I like doing this.”

She threw the carton at him, the plastic rattling loudly against the bars. He didn’t even flinch. She glared, breathing heavily, her hands trembling at her side. Trembling with rage. She spoke quietly. “But you do it.”

A puff, and then he looked into her eyes. “You damn right I do it.” His voice rose. “It wasn’t me in that bedroom, was it? But you damn right I do it. I do whatever Vader asks, because you don’t matter.” He thumped his chest. “Hell, I don’t matter.” He was breathing hard now. “Only one thing matters. My baby girl, and whatever, whoever, I need to do to keep her safe, keep her clothed, fed, and distant from people like the monster I work for, from monsters like you,” he poked a finger through the bars at her, “I’ll do it.”

It was all she needed, one second the finger was pointing accusingly, the next it was in her hand. She jerked hard, dislocating the shoulder, pulling Dan fast against the bars. He grunted, the cigarette fell to the floor.

“Where are they,” she hissed through the bars.

He panted, “Wha, where are what?” She bent the finger ruthlessly, the bone snapped, Dan cried out.

“The keys, give me the keys, or I’ll rip your arm out.”

“He’ll kill me if I do,”

“Well, I guess that’s one hell of a dilemma, isn’t it? Because I’m going to kill you if you don’t. “She grabbed another finger and started to bend.

“Okay,” he yelped. “Front left. They’re in my front left pocket.”

It was the side away from her, she couldn’t reach the front left.

“Hand them to me.” He hesitated, she snapped the second finger and he screamed. “You want to live, hand me the fucking keys, hand them now.” He did.

It only took a moment. She kept him tight against the bars with one hand while the other found the lock hole, inserted the key and turned, and then she was in the cell corridor, face to face with Dan.

He didn’t grovel, she had to give him that. He looked her in the eye and in his she saw no fear. “Let me live, sister. Not for me, but for my baby girl.”

There was a knife in a scabbard on his hip, and it made it easier. The blood poured from the gash in his neck, she drained him dry before letting the fresh corpse drop to the tile floor, slick with his own blood. “I guess your baby girl will have to take care of herself, no?”

She snatched his scattergun from where it leaned against the wall and walked away, the night strong in her veins.

Everyone Dies in the End #71

2011-02-04T03:30:00.000-08:00

Susan

It was dark, but not completely so. A sliver of moon, maybe as much as a quarter, hung high in the sky, and its light snuck between the fragmented clouds. And then there was also the truck.

She was careful. She wasn't sure, not really sure, why she was following the truck, but she was sure that she didn't want the people in it to know. She had been going to Philadelphia for no reason other than Arty and Todd had been going there. Continuing on the journey somehow connected her to them. Now, however, the vampire and his blonde accomplice had planted the seed of a reason in her head.

All her life she had been about doing good, healing, and loving. The cannibals had taken that away; perhaps she could never get it back. Nevertheless, the vampire had unknowingly placed an opportunity at her feet. Those men at the roadblock were gathering humans, penning humans, for what purpose she wasn’t entirely sure, but it could be for no good. She would unpen them. The thought felt right, and the pentagram on her cheek glowed sympathetically.

Ahead the truck's headlights flashed across an overturned school bus. Afraid she was getting too close, Susan pulled behind a Ford F150 pickup and let the Indian idle. The air stank. The stench of death interlaced with the prickly aroma of burned rubber. She counted to twenty and then rolled out from behind the F150. In the distance the truck’s headlights pierced the darkness, flickering off the vehicles lining the road. Distant enough to continue, she judged.

She accelerated gently, moving at not more than a human’s sprint, using the faint ambient light to guide her. The school bus, drifted by on the right. On the horizon a faint glow puzzled her. It wasn’t a bright, nor specific, light, but rather a general lightening of the horizon. Startled, she slowed, stopped, studied. She laughed as understanding came. It was a sight so common as to be unremarkable a mere three months ago, but now one so unusual as to make her initially wary. They were city lights. The city lights of Philadelphia, brightening the horizon’s sky. Once again she accelerated, headed toward Arty and Todd’s destination, determined to do what she could.

Zak

The pens to which Susan determinedly drove her Indian were not really pens. At least not what Zachary Dixon pictured when the word came to mind. He heard his guards mention them, gathered they were a large holding tank, and gathered wrong. The 8^th Precinct, located on the corner of 4^th and Ivy, in downtown Philadelphia, was the place. Or at least it was this place. Maybe there were more, Zak didn’t know. In fact, Zak didn’t know much, but he was learning quickly.

“We’re food.”

Zak studied the shaggy-haired, scraggly bearded man incredulously. He sat on the cot across from Zak in the small cell. The cell consisted of three walls, and a fourth of nothing but floor-to-ceiling bars that faced the hall. The pale green walls stood bare; a stainless steel sink protruded from the far end of the cell, across from it a toilet, a metal shield affording the user some privacy. Overhead fluorescent lights buzzed brightly. The air smelled of Clorox. Zak guessed the diners like their food clean. Zak had been in the cell for fifteen minutes, his cellmate—a pre-apocalypse lawyer named William—for a month.

“What do you mean? You’re trying to tell me these guys,” Zak gestured in the general direction of the broad, tiled corridor which the cell faced, “are cannibals?”

William pushed his dirty hair away from his face. “No, I’m afraid it’s much worse than that.” And then William explained.

After William finished, Zak said nothing for a long time, contemplating the predicament, working the solutions. There had to be a solution. He didn’t know of any other way to approach life. If you ran into a problem, you solved it. That didn’t mean you bulled your way through it, that wasn’t Zak’s style. Certainly, force was the solution, too often the solution for Zak’s tastes, but there were other ways to approach a dilemma.

“That’s unacceptable.”

William laughed. “No one is asking for our acceptance.”

Zak looked at William, the dirty hair, long beard. “No one, I mean no one, has tried to escape?”

“Do you know a way to melt between iron bars? Can you stop those guards’ bullets?”

Zak pursed his lips. “No, but I know someone who just might.”

Everyone Dies in the End #70

2011-01-24T03:43:00.000-08:00

Cindy

“Why?”

The truck rumbled on, the hard wooden seats as uncomfortable as ever, the engine’s exhaust still belching diesel fumes thick and oily. She was wedged in her corner. Ramzke relaxed on the bench across from her, leaning against the cab, legs stretched on the bench, crossed at the ankles, eyes open. She had never seen him with his eyes closed.

“Would you have rather that I let them rape her and throw her in the pen? You do understand what happened to those in the pen, no?”

Cindy changed her position, stretched her legs to the front and stifled a yawn. The driver up shifted, and the engine’s tenor changed as it accelerated. Behind them, in the distance, a light flashed and then disappeared. Cindy barely noticed.

“Yes, I understand that you murder the people in the pen.” She could see Ramzke purse his lips in the dim light.

“Call it what you will, but yes, we feed on them and Vader’s men ensure they are killed afterwards.”

“Why?” Cindy asked.

“Because they would change, and Vader is frightened of that.”

“Would you kill your victims if Vader’s men didn’t?”

Ramzke gestured out the back of the truck at the post-apocalyptic landscape. “You mean before all this?”

The truck hit a pothole, jolting Cindy. The jolt passed and Cindy nodded, certain the vampire could see her head move in the darkness.

“Of course,” replied Ramzke. “We kill most. To do otherwise would tip the balance. Yes, we are powerful, but we are few. If our numbers grew so would our carelessness, and if we were discovered, truly discovered, no longer the stuff of legends and myths, but rather known by all, your species would hunt us to extinction.”

“And the world would be a better place,” added Cindy.

The vampire picked at a thread on his jeans, behind them Cindy spotted the remnants of a burned out school bus, resting on its side next to the road. The sky had lightened marginally. Ramzke had explained that Philadelphia had power, no doubt causing the change in light.

“So why did you let this girl live, vampire?” Cindy persisted. “Why didn’t you rape, drain, and kill her.”

He laughed softly in the night, a barely discernable sound. “You flatter yourself and your species, girl. I have no desire to rape, but feed? That is a more complex question. You understand what those men were doing, where they were taking that girl?”

Cindy shifted, easing a cramp in her back. “Of course.”

Ramzke sat and faced her. “I killed that man; I would have killed them all, because I abhor what they do. To me you are food.” He spread his hands,” Yes, I must admit that some of you are more than food. You, for instance, “The vampire pointed at her, “I respect you. I respect your spirit, and I respect your word. It is why I gave you the shotgun; it is why I asked for your help with the penners. But those,” he pointed with his chin out the back of the truck,” those would enslave their own kind, feed them to us.” Ramzke spat on the floor, “For those I have no respect.”

“But food is food, no?”

Again the soft chuckle. “Perhaps, but there is something else. The pens represent more than food, they also represent shackles in which this man, Vader, has placed us, so I abhor them also.”

Cindy didn’t answer. Ramzke’s reply had triggered an unpleasant circle of thoughts. Ramzke was a conflicted son of a nutcracker, of that there was no doubt. But who was she to judge? She set out for Philadelphia to find Eddie, but when was the last time she had thought of Eddie? Was Eddie in a pen, waiting to be killed? When was the last time she had thought of Zak Dixon?

Cindy knew the answer to those questions and didn’t like it. Didn’t like what it said about her and about her loyalty. She felt the side of her jeans, the pocket where Eddie’s picture resided. Touching the picture helped, but it no longer dispelled the image of Zak. This was something she must resolve. But I have a teensy little thing to handle before I do, she chided herself. I’m the prisoner of a soulless vampire who is bringing me to a demented warlord named Vader. I just might need to handle that first. The ludicrous convolution of problems made her laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Vader asked, his voice low.

“Vader,” she answered.

“Yeah,” Ramzke chuckled, “just wait till you meet him. He’s a real killer.”

Everyone Dies in the End #70

2011-01-19T03:01:00.000-08:00

Susan

Susan doubted that was true. She stared at the blonde a moment longer, but decided to let it drop. It didn’t make any difference. The pair had saved her; that was all that mattered.

The purple twilight had faded to pitch black. Nights were like that now. In a land where power was a rare commodity, the nights were dark, lightened only by the moon, and tonight there was no moon. Susan bent to her gun, lifting it from the dark asphalt and sliding it into her holster.

“And what now?” Susan asked the girl named Cindy. Briefly, Cindy shook her head, looking to the vampire Ramzke. “That isn’t up to me, girlfriend. Hero boy makes the decisions.”

Ramzke appeared to ignore them both, peering down the road toward Philadelphia. “They were penners.”

Cindy spoke before Susan. “What?”

Ramzke ignored her, or at least appeared to.

“Vader will not allow us to live as we will, will not allow us to feed as we need. Instead he sends out these penners to capture their own kind and throw them in a pen. Vader allows us to choose victims from the pen.” He turned to Susan. “You do not want to be such a victim.”

Susan was not sure what the man meant, but something in his voice made her shudder.

“This lady and I are going to Philadelphia,” he continued. “To the city of pens. I suggest you get on that motorcycle,” Ramzke pointed to the Indian standing not far behind Susan, “and ride as far and fast as you can in the direction you came.” He studied her for a moment longer. Susan felt strangely attracted, as if his will was becoming her own, and then the sensation passed. “Before I change my mind.

He glanced at the blonde. “Come, let’s go.” Without another word he left. Cindy walked by her and whispered. “I’d take his advice.”

Everyone Dies in the End #69

2011-01-13T02:30:00.001-08:00

Susan

The blonde nudged the ropers with the shotgun. “Drop ‘em”

They did, and the kid deflated. “Pack it up,” he shouted, and the men with guns holstered them and headed for their trucks.

The ropers turned to the blonde and muttered something Susan couldn’t hear. The blonde shook her head and pointed toward the trucks. The ropers shrugged and walked away, obviously dejected over the loss of their guns. The blonde tracked them with the barrel of the shotgun. After everyone mounted their trucks, the self-proclaimed nightmare pulled the pistol from Spindly’s head and gave him a shove. The kid stumbled, righted himself, and turned to face them. “One day, man. One day you are going to be mine.”

Susan’s rescuer shrugged. “Perhaps, one day, but not this day. Get in your truck and leave while you still can. Take your prizes to Vader, get your pat on the head.”

Susan saw the kid’s eyes widen. “You know Vader?” He laughed. “You know what we do?”

“I know,” the nightmare answered, his voice as cold as the evening chill. “Go”

The kid’s head bobbed. “Yeah, I’ll go man, but one day. One day I’ll put your ass in those pens.”

The nightmare didn’t respond, but watched silently as the kid stepped into a Chevy S-10. A moment later the small convoy was headed away, their headlights stabbing the gathering darkness, engines echoing off the nearby hills.

“You know them?” It was the blonde, shotgun in her hand, the roper’s assault rifles slung over her shoulder.

The man didn’t answer at first, bending to Susan, offering her his hand. She accepted, surprised at the coolness of his skin, and he pulled her to her feet. He seemed oblivious to her shredded shirt, but the blonde didn’t. “Here.” The assault rifles and shotgun lay on the ground, and the blonde held out a blue jean jacket. “Put this on until we find you something better.”

Two more men appeared and her rescuer glanced back at them. “Get the weapons, put them in the truck.”

The men picked up the assault rifles.

“Her’s too.”

One of the men glanced at the blonde, she shrugged, and he picked up the shotgun. The men disappeared into the darkness from where they had come.

“Are you going to have a snack?” He regarded her icily.

Susan spoke, her first words since the attack. “Thanks.”

The man and the woman nodded in response.

“I don’t mean to seem ungrateful or anything, but what did she mean,” Susan pointed at the blonde, “a snack?” The man shrugged. “It is of no matter.”

“Old habits die hard, don’t they, Ramzke?” The blonde chuckled. Continuing, the blonde gestured at the man called Ramzke. “Hero boy is not quite what he seems. He is…how can I say this delicately?” The blonde’s tone was mocking, and her finger tapped her chin in a parody of deep thought. Her face brightened, and she held up the finger, mimicking a moment of profound insight. “How’s this? He’s a blood-sucking, son-of-a-bitch.”

Perhaps the blonde’s cold statement was meant to shock. If so, the effect was lost on Susan. She had lived her life on the fringe; the edge of where the normal met the not so normal. She had never met a vampire, but then again, she had never met the Pope. Didn’t mean he wasn’t in Rome. Susan nodded.

“And you?” She questioned the blonde.

The blonde laughed. “What about me?”

“I saw what happened. You didn’t sneak up on those ropers, you materialized next to them.” The blonde didn’t answer, her eyes not leaving Susan’s face.

Susan swept her hand across the horizon. “This war has brought more than bombs and missiles. This war has brought an evil, given rise to things,” She looked at Ramzke, “vampires, cannibalism, I’ve heard of Lycan in the Appalachians.” She turned back to Cindy. “What are you? Who are you?”

Cindy pointed to herself. “Me? I’m Cindy, just Cindy.”

Everyone Dies in the End #68

2011-01-05T03:53:00.000-08:00

Susan

This didn’t look good. Not that she really gave a damn anymore. A swarm of tires, dotted with a pair of rusting refrigerators, blocked the turnpike. Behind it sat a truck and a pair of non-descript family sedans. Susan could see heads with rifles on the sedans; trouble. She could feel more trouble to her right, on the low hill. She didn’t look, no point in giving away what she knew. Hell, she didn’t see much point in anything anymore. She was going to Philly or she was going to die trying. She didn’t know what these men wanted (she could guess), but they could get out of her way, kill her, or die. She didn’t care which, caring had pretty much died on a blood-soaked dinner table in Henry, Virginia.

A chunky, blonde-haired dude with a military buzz gone shaggy stepped out from the cars. Turning, he handed his assault rifle to a spindly, dark-haired man next to him. Susan would have taken the handing as a good sign if Mr. Chunky Dude wasn’t also sporting a pair of pistols on his hip, and a pair of grenades clipped to the canvas web gear that he wore.

Jack

“Give ‘em the signal when I’m a few feet away from her,” Jack said as Spider took his rifle. “I want his one in good shape,” he added with a lavicious grin.

Susan

She was no action hero. Nothing like Todd, not even like Arty (that thought made her heart briefly seize), but she did have one massive advantage over action heroes. She just didn’t give a damn. Well, she snorted, guess I have two advantages.

I am a witch.

Jack

“What’s so funny, young lady?” Jack smiled. Behind him Spider gave the sign. On the hill two lassoes snaked toward Cindy as the last edge of the red sun dipped below the horizon.

Susan

She was fast, faster than she ever knew she could be. The .38 felt good in her hand, and her heart felt disgusted in her body. Harm none. Her creed mocked her.

Jack

Just like a Polaroid picture, the world stood still. The girl—petite, black spikey shag, pretty, strange tattoo under her eye. The ropes, hanging in the air, the fraying threads clearly visible, the purple-pink sky the palette on which it was all painted—beautiful, but not quite so; that big gun spoiled the picture. She hadn’t talked. Jesus, they all talk, he thought, even the most foolhardy try to talk their way out of a meeting with Jack and his penners, but not this pixie. She pulled on him, and now in this Polaroid of an Eastern Pennsylvania sunset, the dominate feature was the gapping maw at the end of the big gun in girl’s hand.

Susan

The gun boomed, opening a large, red hole in the chunky man’s chest. He was a big man, big enough to stay on his feet, at least for an instant. Then he sank to his knees, opened his mouth as if to speak, and collapsed on his side. Susan didn’t know if he was dead or alive, and didn’t take the time to find out. She leveled the gun at the spindly guy behind the car, supported her aim with her other hand, and fired. Once, twice, three times. Two of the rounds thwacked into the side of the car, the third sparked off the hood. None of the bullets hit her target, and none of the heads with rifles fired back. Strange, she thought, but she thought that for a only second, because in the next instant the two ropes dropped over her shoulders, their owners yanked them tight, and Susan slumped to the pavement. The big .38 fell from her hand and clattered to the asphalt beside her, just out of reach, not that it mattered. The rifle barrel that punched into her cheek seemed to indicate that her reaching days were over.

A boot kicked, knocking the air from her lungs, throwing her on her back. The spindly dude knelt beside her, his dark eyes glittering against his dark skin, several other circled above.

“He’s dead,” someone called from the direction of the chunky guy with the red hole in his chest.

“It happens,” replied the glittering eyes. “Bad for Jack, but” the man traced the outline of her chin with a finger, “real good for me.” The onlookers hooted.

“To hell with you,” Susan whispered. Low, real low, low enough that Spider leaned closer.

He grinned “What did you say, baby?”

“I said you got something on your face,” and she spit into his eye. He slapped her, and she tasted blood. Should have known better, inside she shrugged. Who cares?

“Let’s have some fun, shall we?” He slipped the top lasso off, grabbed the edges of her shirt, and ripped.

Susan twisted hard, flexing her hips, attempting to throw him off, but the man was stronger than he looked. Her shirt was in tatters, her chest exposed to the rapist creep, but in removing the lasso he had also freed her arms. She used the freedom to punch him wherever she could reach, mostly ineffectual blows against his arms and chest, but one connected with his cheek and he gasped in pain.

Again he slapped her, harder, and she felt blood trickle from her nose.

“Rock, Cat Man, get her arms,” the spindly man shouted, and then they were on her. One on each leg, one on each arm, and she couldn’t move.

Spindly stood up, his eyes never leaving hers. His hands dropped to his belt and he began to unbuckle it.

“No one wants to see that.”

It was a new voice.

The hands froze, buckle in one, belt tongue in the other. The eyes left her face, glowering at what could only be the owner of the new voice.

“Who, the fuck, are you?” Susan could see fear in those glowering eyes now. Fear the spindly kid—because for the first time she could see that he was just a kid, maybe eighteen, no more than twenty—fear that this kid tried to dress in a bad man’s clothes.

The voice laughed. “I am your nightmare.”

Whoever this voice was, it had the bad men’s attention. The hands released her, and their owners stood. Guns clicked and clacked as rounds slid into firing chambers, well-oiled death waiting to be unleashed.

Susan sat, pulling the shredded to shirt to cover her as well as she could. The spindly man’s eyes flicked to her. In them she saw a I’ll-deal-with-you-later look that was meant to chill. It was wasted on her.

“Get in your trucks and leave,” the self-proclaimed nightmare spoke the words slowly, softly, calmly. Susan craned her neck to bring him into focus in the dying light. An everyday kind of man. Nothing special. Blue jeans, white-tee, brown leather jacket, black hair pulled into a short ponytail. Sort of looks like Bono. No weapon. Strange stuff.

“Well,” spat spindly kid, “you’re a dead nightmare now mother f…”

The nightmare moved fast. Faster than Susan could have imagined possible, and Susan, being a witch, had imagined quite a bit. In a blur he was by her, then she came a soft ripping sound, a gurgling scream that ended as abruptly as it began, and a body fell over her, pumping blood from the cavity where once it s head had rested. She kicked the body away. Fighting the urge to scream.

The body wasn’t spindly kid, it was the one called Rock. No, spindly kid was still alive, but maybe—Susan guessed by the look on his face—he wished that wasn’t. The nightmare had him, Spindly’s neck tight in the crook of his arm, a black 9mm (Where had that come from, she wondered?) against his temple. The nightmare faced the kid’s body toward Cat Man and the others. Cat Man and the others pointed their weapons at him.

“Last chance,” the Nightmare spoke. “Get in your trucks and leave.”

On the rise the two ropers stood, rifles in their hands. Susan could see they had clear shots. This man, this thing, might be fast, but she doubted that it was faster than a bullet.

“Let him go,” one of the ropers shouted.

“I bet you weren’t expecting that,” the kid chuckled, visibly buoyed by the turn of events.

The words still hung in the air, when out of that air materialized a blond woman, sawed off shotgun in hand, it’s barrel firm against a roper’s neck.

“Matter of fact, I was,” deadpanned the Nightmare.

Everyone Dies in the End #67

2011-01-03T08:14:00.000-08:00

Jack

Sometimes Jack Lang got tired of cruising, because when he cruised he had to listen to Spider’s banal blathering—a noise he put up with because Jack had never met anyone who could drive like Spider. The guy was magic. He could weave between an obstacle course of burning tires, crushed vehicles, and slumped corpses faster than you could say, “Spider, this is insane!” And stretch one arm out the window and fire his 9mm Beretta at the same time, although Jack doubted that those nine-millimeter bullets hit their target. So, Jack kept Spider around. But some days he didn’t want him too close around, and those were days that Jack had the crew build a roadblock.

But Spider avoidance wasn’t the only reason for roadblocks. Roadblocks were just easier. You build the block on the blind side of a sharp curve, and site your weapons. A car negotiates the corner and brakes for the roadblock. The driver mutters “What the…,” hops out of the car, and Jack’s guys go to work. Sometimes the victims resisted, but that was okay, no one resisted for long. A bullet in the leg or shoulder would take the resistance right out of them. And injured blood sacks were just as good as the healthy ones…well, almost. The vampires didn’t want a corpse’s blood so Vader was pissed if Ed’s people actually killed anyone, but wounded was cool. The wounded would be the first given—given while they were still alive, given while the blood was still warm.

Today’s roadblock hadn’t been very productive. Jack wondered if he was just too close to Philly. People were wising up to Vader and his eastern Pennsylvania city-state, and the refuges, were getting fewer and annoyingly further between. Or maybe it was the road on which the block sat. The Pennsylvania Turnpike wasn’t nearly as nice as it had been before America was ravaged by nuclear weapons, but there were far fewer obstacles on it now than there had been two months or even two weeks ago. Both Vader’s clearing crews and surreptitious travelers were slowly pushing the wrecks and refuse off the road. Less road clutter meant greater visibility, and greater visibility meant people spotted the roadblock and got off the road. At least most people.

The rumble of the big bike pulled Jack from his ruminations. Jack wasn’t a bike guy, but the motorcycle sounded like a Harley; it had that bladda-bladda big bore chug thing going. He heard the chugging first, as did the others. He didn’t need to give any orders, they had been penning humans long enough to know what to do. A handful of his men propped their weapons—a wide assortment ranging from shotgun to a M249 squad automatic weapon—on the sides, fenders, and roofs of their vehicles, and aimed at the roadblock. It was simple, a pair of old refrigerators tipped on their sides, and four five stacks of tires. No big deal, just enough to make their target stop. The ropers would handle it from there, if not…well, that was why the handful of men were leveling their weapons at the roadblock. Whether with ropes or bullets, it would be handled. Always is, thought Ed.

In front of the roadblock the road curved left, hugging an undulating rise, hiding the approaching motorcycle. The sun was low, sinking behind the road, a slight breeze—cool with the approaching evening—tickling the hair on his arms. This one would be the last catch of the day, no sense in risking your neck after dark. Bad things happened after dark. The rumble grew louder, and then he saw it. Big bike, small rider, silhouetted against the last sliver of the sun, headlight flashing white against the twilight. The bike rounded the hill and slowed to a stop. Now he saw that the rider wasn’t a small man, but a woman with spiky black hair on her head, and a big-ass gun on her hip. That was okay, Jack liked woman; most didn’t fight as hard. And big-ass guns? Well that was no problem either; he had plenty of big-ass guns too. He stood and handed his assault rifle to Spider. “I don’t think I’ll need this.”

Everyone Dies in the End #66

2010-12-29T11:26:00.000-08:00

Susan

It had been twelve hours since she had cried, almost fourteen since she had left Todd and Arty. Beneath her the black Indian thrummed steadily, beneath it flowed the concrete of the Pennsylvania turnpike. A green sign whipped by, “Philadelphia 35” stenciled in white letters on the faded metal.

None of it was right. Not Arty. Arty who would never have touched a gun in the world they used to know. Not Todd, a courageous and good man in spite of himself, and not this desolate, piece of shit, world. She felt the moisture well in her eyes. NO! No more. Somewhere they knew. Somewhere Todd and Arty still lived, and they knew how she grieved. She didn’t need tears to show them. They knew how she had collapsed. An hour out from Henry she had pulled the bike to the side of the road, cut off the engine, and cried. If the cannibals, the friends of the sick mother and her equally sick daughter, had been hot on her trail they would have found her, and she didn’t care. She wanted them to find her, kill her, eat her, stop her pain.

But the cannibals hadn’t followed, and the grief had subsided. Not entirely, mind you. That grief would be with her the rest of her life, as would the hate, as would the vow to never be hurt again. She had remounted the Indian and rode. At first she rode north, away, just away, the cool night air clearing her thoughts, without destination. Slowly, however, those cleared thoughts had coalesced into purpose. Todd and Arty had wanted to go to Philadelphia. She would go in their stead. What she would do when she arrived, she didn’t know, but go she would.

A couple of hours later the adrenaline wore off and exhaustion arrived. Her eyes fluttered and the bike wobbled, the motion jerking her awake. If she wanted to make Philly, she would need to rest. The good news was that there was no shortage of abandoned trucks, vans, and rest stops. She pulled into a rest stop, found a vending machine with water, candy, and chips, blew out the glass with the .38, ate, and slept. She had slept hard, waking to a low sun, and she had been on the road ever since.

The roads were dangerous. At one moment clear asphalt would stretch to the horizon, and Susan would give the powerful motorcycle its head. The next instant she would round a bend to find shattered automobiles and overturned tractor-trailers—the refuse of civilization. Traffic had been sparse, a red jeep—a mother and daughter it appeared—had passed her on Interstate 81, just south of the Pennsylvania border. East of York, four hoodlums, their garb an unwashed mix of ghetto chic and redneck cowboy, had pulled alongside as she slowed to thread through shattered crates of boom boxes, spilled from a flipped flatbed.

“Hey baby, where you going?” the bearded, filthy driver asked.

Without taking her eyes of the road, she had pulled the .38 from the holster and aimed it square at the dirt-streaked face. “To hell. You want a ride?”

They dropped back. Way back, eventually disappearing in the road clutter. Whether gone for good, or just gone for a while, Susan didn’t care. She would have just as soon as pulled the trigger as spoken another word. She didn’t care if four more rednecks lived or died. Hell, she didn’t care if she lived or died.

Immediately after her mind processed that thought, she hit the roadblock.

Everyone Dies in the End #65

2010-12-14T12:37:00.000-08:00

Katarina

“Ah, so the bitch is back.” Vader laughed, but Katarina didn’t. Unlike the previous visit, she was not standing defiantly, but rather strapped to a wheel chair. The straps had not been built that could hold her, at least not when she was fed, but now? Well Dan had explained that the straps were there to prevent her from falling out of the chair.

“I take it you aren’t an Elton John fan?”

Katarina ignored the question. There was no point in wasting the energy, something of which she had very little left. Vampires might be damn near immortal, but they were not without needs. And the primary need was blood. The lack of it would not kill her, but it would reduce her to a catatonic state her kind called Cel Somn, or The Sleep, a state from which they could only be revived with fresh blood.

“What do you want?” she asked. Again he lounged in the chair behind his desk, the dark witch stood nearby, eyes gleaming, a shadow of a smile toying with the corners of her full lips. I wish I thought everything was so damn amusing, thought Katarina.

Vader tapped his chin with a finger, feigning thoughtfulness. “Let me see, what do I want?” His face brightened into a smile and he held the previously tapping finger aloft. “Ah, I remember. I want sex, money, power.” He pursed his lips, seeming to think. “Seems like I ought to add drugs in there doesn’t it.” He looked inquiringly at Katarina. She managed a shrug.

“But you know,” Vader continued, “I really don’t do drugs, don’t drink either. In fact, I don’t have any vices. Nothing that someone could use against me.” He laughed.

“Nothing like this need you have for blood.”

Katarina kept her silence.

“Doesn’t really matter how bad ass you are, does it?” Vader continued. “I keep you away from blood and you’re as weak as Superman in a Kryptonite coffin.”

Vader nodded at Dan, who stood behind her, and the heavyset man left through a door set in the wall to her left.

Vader walked from behind his desk, moving until he stood in front of her. She locked him with enraged eyes. That was what she wanted to do, but her body wasn’t cooperating. Her eyelids drooped, and her irises wouldn’t focus.

“So sleepy,” Vader chuckled and he stroked her chin.

Katarina jerked her face away from his hand and he slapped her. Hard.

The blow flashed stars in front of her eyes. She batted her eyes, attempting to stem the hot, involuntary tears.

The hand returned to her chin. A caress and then he cupped the chin in his hand, tilting her head back, forcing her eyes to his.

If only I had the energy, she thought. I’d grab this bastard and pull his heart out his ass. But she didn’t. She was too far-gone, she needed blood too badly. As if queued by her thought, Dan reentered the room, in his hand a clear plastic milk carton full of blood. He sat the blood on the desk, to the left of Vader, in full view of Katarina. She moaned, a low throaty sound, more growl than sigh. Vader held her chin.

“You’d like some of that, wouldn’t you?”

She didn’t look at Vader or Mbande. Her eyes remained fixed on the blood. “What do you want me to do?” she whispered.

His hand left her chin and slid down her neck. “Whatever I tell you to,” he answered.

Everyone Dies in the End #64

2010-12-01T03:02:00.001-08:00

Cindy

They rode all night. Durham to Philly was no more than a five or six hour drive, but that was using the interstate. An interstate that Cindy knew might be jammed with immobile cars, or patrolled by the army, gangs, or even police. One thing that Zak had taught her—this might look like the end of the world, but it wasn’t. There were cities that still stood, probably many more than anyone knew, there were—amidst all the violence—still good people, and there was—however fragmented—the remnants of the government, the military, and law and order. So Ramzke’s truck drove on side roads, just off the interstate, away from prying eyes.

They didn’t make Philly that first night. Cindy wasn’t sure where they stopped. She guessed it was west, perhaps even north, of Baltimore. She had wedged herself into the front corner of the truck bed, where the wooden seat butted against the metal cab. A screened viewport looked into the cab and through it she had seen a driver and a sleeping passenger. She recognized neither, but did recognize that neither was Zak. The information did her no good. Ramzke didn’t prevent her moving, nor looking into the cab. He prevented nothing by word or action, nor did he need to. If she escaped he would kill Zak. She knew this with absolute certainty. So, she wedged herself into the corner, leaned her head back, and slept, not caring that Ramzke didn’t, not caring that he never took his eyes off her.

The cessation of movement woke her. She blinked, still groggy. Ramzke stood over her.

“Get up. We’re stopping.”

There was no point in asking why. She stood as hands lowered the tailgate from the outside, and parted the flaps of the canvass.

“Out. Watch your step.”

The concern made her laugh. “Yeah, you wouldn’t want me to skin my knee.”

“Honestly, I wouldn’t care if you lost your leg, but I’ve been sent to bring you back whole, unhurt.”

She shrugged, blinked, and teleported to the ground next to the hands that had lowered the gate. Their owner gasped, the man next to him jumped, just a little bit. Cindy kept her face expressionless, taking pleasure in the men’s fear. Ramzke leapt from the truck’s bed to the ground, the action more akin to a cat’s pounce than a man’s jump. Cindy ignored him, choosing instead to study her surroundings. It was dark, no light from any source whatsoever, but her eyes were adjusted to the dark. The truck sat behind a two-story house on a dark driveway. The asphalt wound from behind the house, along some trees, to the front. Cindy could see no other homes. It was the middle of nowhere.

The two guards guided her down concrete steps at the back of the house, their flashlights projecting bobbing beams of light. The concrete smelled of mildew and led to a solid, wooden door. The door was locked; an interesting detail. The taller guard had a key, even more interesting. He unlocked the door and the pair steeped inside. She could see the reflections of the flashlight beams as they swung about the room. A moment later she heard a generator start and then bright light spilled from the doorway.

One of the men, green eyes, curly brown hair, a nose that looked like it had been broken more than once, reappeared, took her elbow and guided her into the room. Ramzke followed.

The space was unspectacular. A finished basement with cushioned chairs, table, and couch. At the far end another door, interior she judged by its lack of a lock, led elsewhere. Cupboards and counter took up much of one wall. The air was heavy, but not foul. Obviously, this place was cared for, kept, and frequently used.

The man released her elbow. “Have a seat.” Said casually, as if she were a guest. The man walked past and joined his fellow guard at the counter. Both began to pull cans of food from the cupboards. Their weapons rested on the counter, unattended.

“That won’t help.”

It was Ramzke, beside her, smiling. “Perhaps you could blink over there, maybe even kill them both, but you won’t kill me, and even if you did. You’ll lose your friend. So, like the man said, have a seat.”

She did. There wasn’t anything else she could do. What Ramzke said was true. No matter what she did here, she didn’t know where Zak was, and saving herself would only lead to his death. But there was always hope. For now, however, she would bide her time. She sat.

Her chair was soft and comfortable. It faced the couch. Ramzke sat there, leaning against the arm, stretching his legs in front, crossing them at the ankle. He spoke.

“Hungry?”

“No,” Cindy replied, “Are you?”

Ramzke laughed. “You are not to be drained. You are to be delivered in good health.”

“Delivered to whom?”

“My,” Ramzke formed quotation marks with is fingers, “boss.”

“Where did you learn that?”

Ramzke shrugged.

“If I didn’t know better I could mistake you for something else, something almost human, but I know better.”

Ramzke nodded. His eyes never left Cindy’s, but her’s left his. Not an act of submission, but one of prudence.

“How would you have me act, like a monster? Change into a bat and tangle your hair. Exactly what do you know?”

“I know you are evil, a species that kills without remorse.

He held up a finger. “I feed without remorse. I never kill except to eat or to avoid being killed. Do you feel remorse when you bite into a piece of meat?”

“So we are cattle?”

“If the hoof fits.” Ramzke laughed. Cindy didn’t join in.

“We are going to Philly?”

Ramzke uncrossed his legs. Behind him the guards sat at a small table in front of the cupboards and ate. Ramzke nodded. “Yes, Philadelphia. We will be there tomorrow.”

Cindy studied her fingers, dirty from the battle under the bridge, with dirt under the nails. “And Zak?”

“Your friend will also be in Philadelphia.”

She picked at the brown arm of the chair. The fabric was clean, but worn. She pulled at a thread. She thought she could smell Ravioli. “Will he be safe?”

Ramzke ignored the question. “You can look at me. I do not wish to control you. Perhaps I could not do so even if I wished. We do not posses a…” He paused, hunting for a word, and then laughed. “A tractor beam, so to speak.”

“Is.He.Safe?” Her words were loud, angry. Loud enough that the guard’s spoons ceased their clinking and they looked up. Ramzke appeared unconcerned with her anger.

“Yes, he will be delivered safely to Philadelphia. From there?” The vampire shrugged. He spread his hands. “It is not up to me.” In the background the clicking resumed.

She looked up from the arm of the chair. The vampire regarded her without expression. “And me? What does he want with me?”

“He does not tell me these things, human.” He leaned forward and Cindy resisted the urge to lean back. “And if I do not do what he says, the man will make me pay.” Dropping his gaze, Ramzke shook his head. “Pay in ways that I cannot accept.”

Suddenly he stood. “But now it is time to rest. The guards will see that you are taken care off, fed, warm, etcetera.” Without another word, Ramzke turned, walked to the end of the room, and exited via the door.

Cindy looked after him a long moment before shifting her gaze to the two guards. “Hey, anything over there worth eating?”

One of them shrugged and held up a can of franks and beans. Cindy blinked, materializing next to the man who yelped and dropped the can. Cindy smiled.

“I know. It’s freaky, right?”

Everyone Dies in the End #63

2010-11-19T05:36:00.001-08:00

Susan

But now wasn’t the time to be sick, was it? She rushed to Arty and pressed her ear to the sticky blood covering his chest. It was as still as a graveyard. No, no! She covered the slit in his neck with her hands, the pressure welling blood between her fingers. She focused, intent on drawing the healing from east, west, north, and south, from fire, wind, earth, and water, to her center, through her hands, and into Arty’s neck. But there was nothing to heal and she knew it, she could feel it. Artemis was gone; there was no life in the heart, no soul in the body. She could heal, but she could not resurrect. What lay beneath her hands was a corpse, nothing more. She sobbed, a plaintive, wounded wail, and the tears wet her cheeks.

Beside her Todd’s eyes fluttered. Through the blur of her tears, the saw his handless arm shift slightly on the table. A moan escaped his lips. He’s still alive, but Arty is not. Beneath her the blood no longer welled between her fingers. He’s dead, she told herself, reminded herself. Her tears splashed onto his face, her sobs wordlessly arguing with cruel reality. Again Todd moaned and Arty remained dead. Slowly, Susan lifted her hands from the lifeless neck, and kissed the still lips.

On a whim she retrieved the butcher’s knife, wiped the blade on her jeans, and slid the knife into her boot. Just so she would never, ever forget.

Susan stepped over the dead mother and placed one hand above the other on Todd’s back. She could feel the poisonous Sux inside him, but that was a good thing, because she could heal any malady that she could feel. If she had the strength. She was so tired; so, so tired. She sent the energy down her arms, through her hands, out of her body, and into Todd. He stirred, his eyes opened. She grew weaker by the moment, but Todd grew stronger. He lifted his head, shifted his arm, pushed against the table with his good hand, and sat up.

Susan stepped back, dizzied with the effort of healing. Cradling his bloody stump against his chest, Todd groaned. “Gun.”

“What?” Susan’s head swam; Todd’s voice seemed to come from the next room.

“Gun…get…me…a gun.”

“You can’t fire a…” Susan began.

“Now,” Todd grunted. “They’ll be back.”

As if to confirm Todd’s declaration, Susan heard voices outside the window.

Yes, it must be Akasia! The mother had told her to get the others. The freaking others! Oh my God. She snatched the assault rifle from the corner and put it in Todd’s good hand.

A head popped through the door leading the house’s front hall. Susan fired the .38 and the doorframe splintered. The head disappeared. Susan doubted she had hit it. Shouts came from the hall. Todd fired a burst from the assault rifle, the rounds peppering the door, the recoil walking the bullets to the ceiling.

“Go!” Todd shouted as he stood, the chair catching on the mother and toppling behind him. He sent another burst toward the door, the noise stunning in the dining room, and he backed toward the kitchen. She backed with him, her gun pointed toward the front hall.

“No,” he whispered through clenched teeth. “The back door, clear the back door.”

“Right,” she nodded. She crouched and shuffled toward the kitchen, not wanting to be seen through the window above the sink. Todd took cover at the end of the table, the M-16 assault rifle snugged to his shoulder, the barrel resting on the edge of the table. His stump bleed on the floor, and his face shown pale in the flickering candlelight. The voices from the entrance hall had gone silent. A stubby gun appeared through splintered doorsill. Blam, blam! One of the bullets punched a hole in the wall wide right of Susan. The other sped like an angry bee close by her ear, shattering a dish beside the kitchen sink.

Todd’s M-16 answered. “Go!” he repeated, and she did. Into the kitchen, just waiting for a bullet to pierce the dark window above the sink and end her life, but none did. And then she was at the back door. She flicked off the bright overhead. Maybe that would alert any one in the back yard, perhaps not, but stepping into the yard, back lit by the kitchen light was simply not an option.

She peered through the glass at the back door, guns boomed from the dining room. Todd grunted.

“Todd, are you okay?”

“Get out,” he grunted, and his M-16 fired. Slowly she opened the back door and stepped into the yard. The night was dark, clouds occluding the moon. She crouched, still. Torn between the urgency to find an escape for the two of them, and the fear of what lay unrevealed. The gate creaked, the same gate that she had opened less than eight hours ago. Had it really only been eight hours? She heard voices and thought she saw a shadow move by the gate. Inside the house Todd’s M-16 sounded off.

The shadows moved closer, creeping toward the back door, resolving into two figures, one smaller than the other. They didn’t see her, or if they did, they didn’t react. Closer still and the smaller one whispered. “They are in the dinning room. We can shoot them in their butts.” Then the voice giggled. Akasia!

They were no more than two arm-lengths distant when Susan fired. Blam, blam. Two shots in the center mass of the larger shadow. It yelped, grunted, and jerked back as if struck by a giant fist.

Susan stood, sighting down the barrel of her revolver. The little shadow quivered. “Please, please don’t hurt me,” pleaded the small girl. Susan could see her clearly now, the pretty hair, the innocence, and also the pistol in Akasia’s right hand. Susan was a kind person, at least she had been until the mother drug the blade across Artemis’s throat. She pulled the trigger once and the small head exploded.

She darted to the gate. More gunfire erupted from the house, but nothing moved in the yard beside the gate or the parking lot of the convenience store. Todd burst through the kitchen door, turned, and fired a burst at his pursuers, the flame extending a good two feet past the barrel of the M-16.

“Over here,” Susan whispered urgently. He shuffled toward her, limping badly. In the dim light, she could see the thigh of his jeans, torn and bloody. He breathed hard, staring at the back door, the assault rifle held in his one good hand. She placed her hands on the torn thigh, feeling the injured flesh beneath, unsure if she had the strength to heal it the wound. And then he pulled the leg away. “No!”

She looked up, and saw him looking down at her, his head shaking. “You don’t have the strength and I’ve lost too much blood.” Susan knew he was right, and hated herself for admitting it.

The back door creaked. They were coming.

Todd’s voice was low. “Get out of here. Get on that bike we found and ride.”

“No, I’m not leaving without you.”

“Just go, girl. I can’t drive a bike with this.” He held his stump in the air. “And I sure as hell can’t hold on. Not the way you’ll need to race that thing to get away. “

A face peeped around the corner next to the kitchen door. Todd fired a burst, the M-16 splitting the night air.

“Go. They’ll be on us in a second.”

Now there were more voices, and a shot from the door, wild in the dark, but soon Susan knew they would come at them. Come at them from the door, come at them along the side of the house, come at them in numbers they couldn’t kill.

“But…” she began.

“No buts…just go!” Todd was shouting now. “I tried to turn you guys in to Kill Dog in Charlotte. Just to save my own hide. Let me do this for you. Go!”

His face was but inches from hers. She could see his eyes, sense the pain in them. Whether from his wounds or his heart, she could not tell.

She nodded. “I know, Todd. I’ve always known.”

“Please, let me do this,” he whispered

She leaned forward and softly kissed his cheek. Without another word, she was up and running. Through the gate, she saw a head peek around the house, but she didn’t shoot. It wasn’t about firepower now, it was about speed. The mother had set eight places on the table. Set them before she had met Susan, Todd, and Arty. That meant there were at least six others in addition to Akasia and the mother. Too many for her, too many for Todd. Someone shouted. A gun boomed, something ripped the air beside her ear. Todd’s M-16 chattered on full auto; a ripping sound that ended in a piercing scream.

The store loomed, its white now subdued in the moonlight, now dark gray as a cloud passed over.

“Stop!” It was a man’s voice, but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but escape. More shots cracked behind her, a bullet snapped a leave from the tree overhead, and she ducked behind the gurgling minnow tank. A round pinged off the tank, the screeching ricochet smelling hot in the cool air, and then she was behind the store.

Please be there, she prayed.

And it was. The motorcycle gleamed like a silent dream in the moonlight. Susan risked a backward glance. The minnow tank guarded the entrance, no one popped up behind it, but she knew that they soon would. Boots crunched across the store’s parking lot.

She hopped on the bike, the leather pliable beneath her thighs. She rocked the Indian to one side, kicked back the stand, and reached for the ignition. The key! The ignition was empty. Of course, who would leave a key in a bike?

“Don’t move.” It was the male voice, strong authoritative, and close. She looked over her shoulder. He was at the corner, tall, and pointing a pistol.

Why doesn’t he shoot? She thought. I’m just a meal. The bike, it’s the freaking bike. Men love their machines. The grip of the .38 was cool in her hand. He’ll hesitate. That’s all I need. But was there a round in the chamber? Had she shot five bullets or six?

Turns out it was five, and the bike did cause the man to hesitate, and the .38mm bullet pierced his chest, his lung, and threw him to the ground. Five seconds later Susan found the key in a small trap box beneath the turn signal, stomped the throttle, and rode away, the wind cool over the tears on her cheeks.

Everyone Dies in the End #62

2010-11-13T03:30:00.000-08:00

Susan

Blood erupted from the gash in Arty’s throat, soaking the tablecloth, splashing, actually splashing, on the hard wood floor, the blood’s coppery smell sickening Susan. Arty’s eyes went wide, as if they would jump out of their sockets, and his hands clawed feebly at the sodden cloth in front of him. But his struggles were brief…seconds, moments…Susan couldn’t tell, his wide eyes dimmed, the eyelids dropped, and he sank onto the crimson fabric.

“Son of a bitch,” the mother spat, “that tablecloth’s ruined.”

Susan collapsed. Not physically, her intransigent muscles wouldn’t give her that luxury, but her soul collapsed, the pain overwhelming her. Arty, Arty! She screamed, but she didn’t scream, she couldn’t scream, and she couldn’t move. Tears welled in her eyes, pooled and ran down her cheeks, splashing into pink circles in Arty’s rapidly spilling blood. He was dead. Her friend, her lover, dead. She felt her heart would burst, the pain would simply explode it and she too would die. But no! She could fix it, she could heal him!

“I bet that was a surprise, wasn’t it?” the mother laughed.

A new emotion welled in her heart, an emotion that Susan had fought her entire life to quell, but now she welcomed it. Now she would use it. Inside Susan the emotion grew, inside Susan’s heart railed with anger.

“Go get the others, Akasia.”

“But Momma!” The girl whined as if her mother had snatched away a favorite doll. “I want the first piece!”

Again the mother’s face contorted in anger, “DO AS I SAY!” but as quickly as the words erupted, the beatific expression returned, “sweetheart.”

To her right, Akasia’s chair legs scraped across the hard wood floor, and out of the corner of her eye Susan saw her dart from the room. “Don’t start without me,” she called cheerfully over her shoulder.

The anger was white hot. Susan focused on that anger. Susan focused as the mother’s knife dropped to Todd’s arm. I can do this. I can save us. I must focus.

The knife bit into Todd’s arm, blood welling at the incision. “Nnnnh,” Todd growled, his eyes wide. The mother caressed his face with her free hand, the gesture painting Todd’s cheek with Arty’s blood. “Shush now, be still.” The mother pulled the knife back along the arm, as if slicing a thin piece off the top of a block of cheese.

“Stpppp,” Todd moaned, and his arm moved. Perhaps only an inch, but it moved.

She lifted the knife from Todd’s arm, a long thin piece of skin, dripping with blood, lifting with it. “Did the Sux make you deaf too, honey?” The mother’s voice was calm, sweet. “I said…” Thwack!

The knife stood tall, impaling Todd’s hand to the wooden table beneath. “Don’t move.”

“Ahhhhh….” Todd was screaming, as much as the Sux would let him. Susan could feel the anger working, amplifying her powers. She could heal, and she would heal. She could reverse the paralysis, just like she could reverse any other affliction, and then she would save Arty, and heal Todd. If only Arty wasn’t dead. Hold on, Arty! She knew the pentagram was burning bright. She only hoped the crazy woman wouldn’t notice. Under the table she moved a foot, and then the other, and then a leg.

“What’s a matter, honey? You want me to set you free?”

Susan froze, but the mother wasn’t talking to her, her eyes were on Todd’s face as she stroked his hair, spreading Arty’s blood through it. After a moment, she lifted the strip of Todd’s flesh and bit into it, closing her eyes as if savoring a delicacy. “Hmmm, now that’s good eating.” Her free hand continued to caress Todd’s hair. Beside Todd, Arty didn’t move.

Susan flexed her thighs. Almost, almost. The effort exhausted her, healing always exhausted her, but there would be time to rest later.

“Sure honey, I’ll set you free.” The mother reached behind her, tugging something from the apron. Her hand reappeared holding a hatchet, the head glinting dully in the candlelight. Casually she brought it down on Todd’s wrist, brought it down hard, severing his hand. “There you go. Now you’re free”

Air gushed from Todd’s mouth—the sound half moan, half sigh—his eyes fluttered, then closed. On the table, his stump pumped blood, adding to the lake created by Arty’s demise. The severed hand, still pinned by the butcher knife made small flexing motions. The mother took another bite from the strip of skin, and stroked Todd’s face with the edge of the hatchet. “That’s right lover, you rest for now.”

Susan was beyond feeling anything but the rage. Under the table her toes flexed, her legs moved. Above the table she felt the control returning, but dared not test that control lest she give herself away. Just a moment or two longer. That was all she needed. She raised her eyelids, praying that the mother was too engrossed in her sick cannibalism to notice. She was wrong.

“Oh, I see your coming around, huh?” She smiled, and gestured at the table with her feeding hand, Todd’s strip of skin swinging as she did so. “All this has you excited too, doesn’t it?”

Susan chanced a flex of her arm muscles. She had to know they would work. They did.

The mother raised the hatchet, Todd’s blood dripping from the edge of the blade, “You ready for some of this?”

“No thanks.”

Susan stood, pushing back her chair in one, smooth motion. She was weak, exhausted from the effort of healing herself, but she was moving.

“You…” The mother never finished, but Susan guessed the next word would rhyme with witch, a thought that struck her as ironic.

The .38 revolver was in her hand, pulled from the holster on her hip, and a second later one of its six bullets exploded the mother’s skull. She bounced off the buffet behind her, knocking Sunday’s best glasses in all directions, and then dropped to the floor with a thud. Susan shuffled around the blood-soaked dinning table with the .38 held in front of herself, hands trembling with fatigue. The mother was dead, way dead. Face and skull an unrecognizable mass of bone, grizzle, and hair, and Susan felt sick.

Everyone Dies in the End #61

2010-11-02T00:48:00.000-07:00

Susan

It was beautiful. Eerily so, Susan thought. The places were set at the long table in the dining room, the table that they had passed on their way to their rooms. Candles gleamed, their flames reflecting on the polished plates and silverware. Eight sets. But there were only five of them. Strange stuff, but typical stuff for the little white house that the apocalypse had passed by. Susan could feel things; she had always been able to feel things. Life flowed around her, flowed through her, like a river. She could feel the eddies, the fluctuating temperature, the soft currents on her skin, the roaring rapids, and at some point had found that she could alter those currents, slow the rapids, heal the pain both physical and emotional caused by life’s passage.

And she knew that the flowing in this house was not good. She had lied to the boys in the upstairs hall. She did feel something and it wasn’t the normalcy. She felt pain, but sought to shelter the men from it. They could use a real meal, and a full nights sleep on a real bed. There was nothing to be worried about she told herself. The pain that this house exuded was probably nothing more than the torn heart of this poor mother who had lost her husband to this crazy world’s insatiable appetite for blood.

“What are you thinking about?” Artemis sat directly across from her and was looking pretty darn good. It had been a while since she had seen him washed and freshly shaved, let alone in clean clothes. The mother had brought the cotton shirt and jeans; they had been her husband’s. She said that he would want someone to get use from them.

Next to Arty sat Todd, similarly scrubbed and clothed. He looked drawn, worried, but then he always looked worried. He needed a good night’s rest.

She smiled and shook her head. “Nothing really. Just thinking.”

In addition to the large table, the room included a china cabinet at the kitchen entrance end, and a buffet along the wall across from Susan. Both were made of old, dark wood. Well maintained, the earthy scent of the wood mixing with a hint of lemon furniture polish, the type of furniture passed from generation to generation. Two windows adorned the wall opposite the china cabinet, their curtains drawn against the night. Todd had stacked his shotgun in that corner, and Arty an assault rifle. Susan’s revolver was holstered on her hip. Guns at dinner, guns in bed, guns wherever and whenever. It still felt wrong to Susan, but she had learned that it didn’t feel wrong to everyone else, and if you didn’t bring your guns to dinner, and Mr. Bandit choose that moment to drop in on the pretty white house in Henry, Virginia, you would regret it for the rest of your life. A life that probably wouldn’t last that much longer.

The smell of food drifted in from the kitchen, Susan could hear plates clink and the mother speaking with Akasia. Across from her Arty cocked a querying eyebrow. Susan smiled. “A real, home cooked meal. When was the last time you had one of those?”

He cocked his head to the side. Something that Susan noticed he did whenever he concentrated. A smile broke over his face. “We’ll I can tell when that would have been. No problem.”

“Oh brother,” Todd broke in,” I can’t think of anything that would be less interesting.”

“Cram it,” Arty quipped, not taking his eyes off Susan or dropping the smile.” “It was the last night before I left for summer session,” recounted Artemis, referring to the summer school at University of North Carolina-Charlotte. “It was a big cookout in our back yard. Kind of a big deal, all my friends were their and Mom made…”

He stopped in mid-sentence, and Susan was immediately sorry that she had asked. Arty was from Atlanta. Atlanta hadn’t made it. Or actually it had made it big, made it into an atomically fueled fireball that had turned the city into molten slag, blackened concrete and burned flesh. She slid her hand across the table and laid it on top of his. “I’m sorry.” Arty didn’t look up, just nodded. Todd shook his head. There was nothing to be said, nothing that could be said.

“Here we are!” The mother swept into the room, Akasia on her heels, both bearing trays filled with steaming bowls of soup. Whether she didn’t sense Arty’s distress or choose to ignore it Susan didn’t know, but within a minute a large bowl of soup appeared in front of each of them. The aroma enticed her, a blend of spices, and meat. Meat? When was the last time they had had honest to God meat? The type of meat Susan couldn’t place. The chunks drifting in the large white bowls might have been chicken, but then again they might not. She wouldn’t know till she tasted them. The mother sat at the head of the table, and Akasia took a seta beside Susan, across from the boys.

Todd picked up the large silver spoon next to his bowl without a word. “Shall we say grace?” the mother asked? Todd frowned; the mother smiled sweetly, and Todd placed the spoon on the table. Akasia giggled and Susan gave her a wink. Akasia’s mother folded her hands and spoke, her head bowed reverently.

“Thank you Lord for placing this food at out table, and for bringing us these guests. Amen.”

The others droned an “Amen,” and dove in.

It was delicious, perhaps the most delicious soup that she had ever tasted. Then again, as Shakespeare wrote, “Hunger makes the best sauce.”

“How is it?” Akasia’s mom regarded Susan expectantly, her own spoon hovering just before her lips. Susan thought for a moment, and then realized she was having trouble thinking. But that didn’t matter. The soup was delicious, but she needed to answer that mother, the mother with the cleavage, the mother with the hots for Todd. She needed to answer her, didn’t she? The mother was still looking at her wasn’t she? Susan tried to look, but her eyelids were drooping, she couldn’t raise them. She wanted to answer, wanted to talk, she tried to say that the soup was fine, but all that came out was “Fshnn.”

The mother laughed. “That’s the succinycholine talking.” Across the table Artemis collapsed into his soup. The bowl flipped, spilling the contents onto the table.

“Shit,” the mother spat, a word that seemed alien to her demure façade. “I just washed that table cloth.”

“Rnnn,” Todd slurred and slipped sideways to the table, the side of his face coming to rest in the spreading wetness of Arty’s soup, unmoving, but his eyes open, focused, staring at Susan.

Susan didn’t slump, she wasn’t sure why. Her chin fell to her chest and she lacked the strength to lift her head. Hell, she lacked the strength to lift her eyes lids any further than half-mast.

“They call it Sux, for short,” the mother continued. “As in ‘Gee, this sucks, I can’t seem to move a muscle.’” She laughed again, a warm, full, genuine, sick sound, and to her right Susan heard Akasia join in.

The mother’s chair scrapped across the hard wood floor. A couple of seconds later she swam into view, standing between Artemis and Todd. “Small doses, such as the dash I put in you and your friends’ soup, paralyze the victim, but leave them conscious.” She was stroking Todd’s hair, softly, lovingly. “Leaves them fresh.”

“Why?” Susan screamed. At least that was the command she sent her vocal chords, but they weren’t taking orders right now. “Wuhf,” was the sound that her lips made. Inside she felt her muscles relax, like a rubber band loosing tension. No, no! She wouldn’t let herself go. Outside she felt nothing. Her hand rested in the bowl of soup, the spoon loosely clutched, steam from the hot brew condensing on her pale skin. That’s got to hurt. That’s got to burn, she thought, but she felt nothing.

“We love them fresh, I love them fresh.” The mother reached behind her, and when her hand returned, it held a knife, but not any knife. It was a gleaming, 12-inch broad butcher’s knife. The held it up to the light from the chandelier, smiling at the sparkling reflection in the spotless blade. Neither Todd nor Arty moved, but see could see Todd’s flare at the sight of the knife.

The mother at smiled at Susan. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Should I get the others? Momma” Susan heard Akasia’s voice beside her, and her mother’s gaze shifted to her.

“No, honey. Not just yet. Don’t you want the first piece?”

“Yes, yes.” Akasia squealed.

Oh my God! And then Susan knew. Knew why this mother and this child were so healthy, so robust, in the middle the post-apocalyptic paucity of food. And she knew that she had to do something was the only one who could do something.

“Leg or wing, honey?” the mother asked, and both mother and daughter giggled.

She lowered the knife to Todd’s arm. “Don’t anyone move a muscle.” They giggled again.

Susan focused on the knife, but folded her thoughts into herself, focusing on her Yi, her place of peace, her place of strength. I must do something, I’m the only one who can do something. But she was wrong.

The blade bit into Todd’s arm, blood welled around the edge, Todd’s eyes widened, Akasia clapped, and Arty—poor, chubby, geeky, but impossibly brave Arty—moved. Somehow he overcame the Sux enough to move his hand, to grab the mother’s wrist, but there it ended.

“I SAID DON”T MOVE A MUSCLE!” the mother screamed. In one, fluid motion, she grabbed a handful of Arty’s hair, yanked his head back, and ran the blade across his exposed throat.

Everyone Dies in the End #61

2010-10-26T17:52:00.001-07:00

When we last saw Todd, Susan, and Arty they had stumbled on a strange house in the little town of Henry. The somewhat strange and somewhat sexy mother invited the trio to dinner. They accepted. We join them upstairs. Worry not, we'll get back to Kat, and fear not... Cindy is still with Ramzke, rolling toward Philly.

Todd

“You feel it?” Arty said from across the room. They were at the end of the hall, Todd reclining on the bed, his shotgun beside him. Art lounged in a weathered Captain’s chair on the far side of the room. The walls were light blue plaster, the furnishings sparse. There was the bed, a dresser, old enough to qualify as an antique, and the Captain’s chair. The room felt sort of odd, sort of like the furniture had been placed just for them. It smelled clean too, antiseptic clean. But Todd knew that wasn’t the feel Artemis was referring to. It was the strange feel, the feel of everything from the mowed grass to the clean bike to the little girl, to the slightly sexy mom with the squeaky-clean coating.

“Yeah, Art, I feel it.”

And then Susan screamed.

Todd was off the bed before Art’s feet hit the floor. Shotgun in hand he tore through the door and thundered down the hall, dust puffing from his worn boots. He grabbed the doorsill on the bathroom-endowed bedroom and swung himself in. Arty was right behind, his 9mm in at the ready.

A white sheet covered the bed, the late afternoon sun spilling through the back window, the bright beams illuminating the crumpled clothes on the bed. There was no sign of Susan and the bathroom door stood shut. Steam seeped past the lower edge, and behind the vapor someone sobbed. Arty swept past Todd, flicked the knob, and burst into the bathroom. Susan was on the floor, kneeling, a towel wrapped around her torso, and in her arms was the little girl, head on Susan’s chest, sobbing. The pentagram on Susan’s cheek glowed brightly as she stroked the girl’s hair.

“It’s okay, honey, it’s okay.”

The mother stepped into the room. “Akasia! What are you doing?”

The little girl pulled away from Susan and attached herself to her mother’s leg. She whimpered, the words halting, punctuated with sobs. “I…just wanted to…see. To see…if she was a good un.”

“Akasia, stop it!”

The mother bent to the girl. “Not another word.” The girl peeled herself from her mother and looked up, “but Moma…”

“Not one,” the mother interjected sternly.

Above her Todd looked at Artemis and cocked a questioning eyebrow. Arty shrugged in return. Susan stood, tightening the damp towel, regarding mother and daughter. “Is she okay?”

The mother nodded. “She’s fine. I’m so sorry.” She stood. Her eyes lingered on Susan for a long moment. As if she wanted to say something, or was it as if she wanted something else, thought Todd. The moment passed, the mother took Akasia’s hand and left without another word.

Todd stepped to Susan and she folded herself into his arms, closing her eyes. Todd said nothing, and a moment passed.

“The door is clear glass, no frosting,” Susan began. Todd didn’t need a diagram to understand she was referring to the shower door. It stood open behind her, clear, clean, the water still rushing from the shower head. “The water was hot. It felt so nice. So nice to be clean. I heard a squeaking, I opened my eyes, and there she was.”

She pulled away from Arty and pointed at the shower door. “She had rubbed the condensation off, rubbed it in a circle.” Susan mimed a rubbing motion with her small hand, and looked at the two men. “You know what I mean?” They did.

Todd could still see the cleared ring on the door, about eye high for the little girl. “She was watching, just watching.” Susan shuddered. “Freaked the hell out of me.” She looked at the shower door a second or two longer and then shook her head. “I guess I overreacted, huh?”

“No, baby, no.” Artemis pulled Susan close. “You didn’t overreact.” He kissed the top of her head. “That is some seriously weird shit.”

Todd nodded. “Seriously.” Artemis and Susan stood together on the white bathroom tiles. Their arms encircling each other. Todd didn’t need a personal telegram. He could tell when it was time to leave, and he turned to do so.

“Todd?” Susan called. He turned back. She was facing him, Artemis holding her hand. “What do you think she meant?”

The condensation had evaporated from the shower door, leaving but a hint of the girl’s peephole. Through the bathroom window Todd could see the sky purpling as night approached. He understood the question well, but feigned ignorance. He wanted to hear the words from Susan’s mouth, make sure that he had heard it correctly on the first pass. “What do you mean?”

Her head bobbed, her fast-drying black shag bobbing with it. “Akasia said that she wanted to see if I ‘was a good un.’ What does that mean?”

Todd rubbed his face with his free hand, the hand that didn’t hold the sawed off shotgun. For the first time since the world had changed, he wished it hadn’t, wished he didn’t live in a life that required him to carry a shotgun everywhere he went, wished he did know what the little girl, and her suggestive mother, were up to, but he didn’t. He didn’t share those thoughts with Susan.

“Beats me,” was all he said.

Everyone Dies in the End #60

2010-10-16T09:30:00.003-07:00

Katarina

Turns out that Dan was a multi-talented guy, or at least a multi-weaponed guy. Bastardized English aside, Dan had shot her. Not with the riot gun, but with a pistol. In the thigh; the right one. The bloody bandage on her bare leg made that much clear. She had woken in the same cell, on the same cot, the same freaking cot, lying there in t-shirt, panties, and bloody bandage.

Smoke curled through the bars of her cell door. She couldn’t see anyone, but didn’t need to; coughing came hot on the heels of the wispy trails—rough, raspy, loose, almost gurgling, coughing. Definitely not healthy, Katarina thought. She swung her legs over the side of the cot and sat up. The blood on the bandage was stiff and dry, but she felt no pain. She wasn’t surprised. Standing, she ran her fingers along the outside of the bandage until she found the adhering tape. With a sharp tug the bandage parted. She let it fall to the floor and examined the leg. Healed, of course. A body incapable of generating its own blood learned to seal its wounds quickly. Otherwise the smallest injury would lead to death. All that remained of the wound was a star-like scar, the skin lighter than the surrounding tissue. Come tomorrow even the scar would be gone. Bullets didn’t scar her kind, most injuries didn’t. But some did. She raised a hand to her face and lightly traced the thin scar that ran the length of her jaw. Nevertheless, she could feel the lightheadedness, the desire, the signals that it was time to feed, accelerated by the loss of blood from the bullet’s ripping journey through her skin.

“He doesn’t kid around.” She looked to the bars. Fat, cancer-ridden, phlegmy Dan regarded her with a slight smile on his lips and a cigarette between his teeth. She didn’t answer.

“Here.” He pushed a pair of khaki pants through the bars. “I think they are about your size.” Katarina didn’t move. “I threw your jeans away. Big hole, lots of blood.” He made a face. “Nasty.” To his credit, Dan’s eyes never left her face. “These are clean,” he added.

Not moving didn’t seem to solve much, so Katarina took the pants and slipped them on. “How do you know my size?”

Dan shrugged. “I got a daughter.”

She regarded the ruddy, red face for a long moment. Dan puffed and regarded back. “Why do you do this?” she asked.

“Like I said, sister, I got a daughter.”

She stepped to the bars. Dan stepped back. Katarina laughed. “Are you afraid of me?”

Dan puffed, Dan coughed, and Dan smiled. “Sure lady, I’m afraid of a lot of things, but most of them are dead now, and I’m still living. So, I figure being afraid isn’t a bad thing.”

She smiled. Dan looked like a lout, but he was anything but. “No,” she replied, “being afraid is never a bad thing. Especially when it comes to us” There was no need to clarify “us,” they both knew who the “us” were. “Your boss would do well to learn that emotion.”

Dan laughed. “I don’t know about that. I’ve been with him since before those pigs nuked us. He don’t fear much. It usually flows the other way around him.” The cigarette was down to the filter now. He dropped it the bucket. The same one in which he spit. Wouldn’t want that clean up job, she thought. He fished another smoke out the pocket in his plaid shirt and lit it. The fumes drifted up, the smell hitting her strongly. All smells hit her strongly. She took a step back. Dan laughed again. “You afraid of me?”

She laughed, genuinely laughed. “I’m afraid of that.” She pointed at the cigarette. “It’s repulsive. How do you suck that into your lungs?”

He looked at the floor. “It’s not that hard. Easier than I lot of things I do.”

She came back to the bars. “Most people. I can…” She paused, thinking of how to best say it. “I can suggest things to them. What’s up with you?

He puffed and looked up. “Dunno, maybe I have a certain lack of imagination.”

She thought it might be more than that, but let it drop. There were other, more important things, which she needed to know. “What does he want with me, Dan?”

“How the hell should I know?” Behind him Katarina noticed a spider making its lazy way up the sheetrock wall. “Look sister, I ain’t his friend. You know what I’m saying? I’m what they call muscle.” The spider disappeared into a small crack where the suspended ceiling met the light green sheetrock.

The acrid smell of Dan’s just dropped cigarette mixed with the smoke of his current, making her eyes water. “You must know, Dan. You work here. What does he do with the others?”

He sucked in more smoke and shrugged. “Depends. Mostly they are muscle.” He laughed, which led to a fit of wet coughing. “Muscle like me.”

Katarina lowered her voice. “But not like you, huh?”

He smiled at her. There was something sad in that smile. “No sister, not like me.”

“So, what about me? He’s got the coven. What does he want with me?”

He regarded her silently for a long moment. “Sister I’m afraid that there is no telling what he wants from you, but I know two things.”

“What’s that?” Katarina asked.

“Thing one, you ain’t gonna like it, and thing two, you’ll do whatever he wants. He always gets what he wants.”

She had opened her mouth to reply when the dizziness hit. Like a wave, a strong wave. She felt her knees go weak and she grabbed the bars of the door, willing the weakness to pass. Dan didn’t step back. Instead he watched, the same sad smile on his face.

The hall began to spin. She had been too long without fresh blood, too long by a good measure. She had fed with Ramzke on the young boy. What? Three, maybe four, nights ago? Too long, and then she had lost more blood in the wounding. She slipped, slid down the bars. She needed blood, needed to feed, her eyes fluttered, and then she collapsed.

Dan didn’t move. At last he spoke, a whisper to himself. “Like I said, he always gets what he wants.”

Everyone Dies in the End #59

2010-10-05T04:06:00.000-07:00

Folks. One of the problems with writing a novel via posts is the time lag. When the book is published, and you sit in your easy chair, snow gently falling in the early evening, glass of red wine at your side, all of these episodes will (hopefully) pull together to form a cohesive tale. Here in the cold glare of the blog, they don't pull so well. So, just to refresh your memory, when we last left Katarina, she was Vader's prisoner in Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in the City of Brotherly love. We'll get back to Todd, Arty's, and Susan's strange sub-adventure in the blog after next.

Katarina

Vader liked his creature comforts, she would give him that. Judging by the way his eyes roamed over her body, he would like her to give him much more.

“Have a seat.”

She did. There were two, overstuffed, leather chairs facing the desk. Worn leather chairs, the softest and bestest kind. The worn leather faced a large, as in massive, oak desk. She sat in the chair on the left, ignoring Vader for a moment, studying the books filling the wall-wide, inset bookcase behind him. Her thoughts flicked to other bookcases, stuffed with silly comics, crazy novels, and toy figures. The possession of another man, a man she left fighting for his life on another continent, in a less personal war than this. That man, Mike Hudson, was a voracious reader, she doubted this man was, or even if she was wrong, she doubted he read the books lining these shelves. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Jesus in the Modern Church, Of Good and Evil. The titles made her skin crawl. These were the books of the men who had stalked, persecuted, and murdered her kind since the beginning; the men who would like nothing more than to hunt them to extinction. Many of Master Vlad’s clan felt the Lycans were their sworn enemy, the eminent threat to their existence. They were not. It was this church; this Catholicism. She smiled, pulling herself from the thought. But this man wasn’t of this church, was he? She chuckled.

Vader spoke. “Someone tell a joke?”

Katarina didn’t respond. She did, however, change her study of the books to a study of the man. The Vader mask rested on the oak desk. It was more than a mask, a full helmet, gleaming black in the low light of the room. Vader sat behind the desk. He was, less than she had expected. The man ruled Philadelphia, hell, he ruled most of eastern Pennsylvania. He had enslaved a coven of her people, but he was just a man. He wasn’t small and beady-eyed, or large and intimidating, but rather something between. He had been standing when she was ushered in, mask removed. She guessed he stood a bit less than two meters, thick, dark hair, worn over the ears, parted off-center. Athletic body, nothing special, but that was the paradox, because he was something special, a fact made obvious by the steel in his eyes, the confident, wry grin. Special or not, she could have gutted him in less time than it would take to tell. The woman that stood behind him, however, might be another matter.

It was the black. The witch, Katarina was sure, that had overcome her on the stage of the church. She stood silent, a smile on her lips, swirling fire in her eyes.

A trigger cocked behind her ear. It could only be the man, the fat, phlegmy guard from her cell, and it could only be his riot gun. The touch of its barrel at the back of her neck confirmed the thought.

“Right now the only thing that is keeping me from allowing Dan to blow your head off, is the thought of the mess,” monotoned Vader.

“Whatever,” Katarina shrugged, and the gun barrel dug deeper.

“Let me give you some unsolicited advice.”

“Please do,” Katarina interrupted, “I’m on the edge of my seat.”

Vader laughed, but his eyes remained rock hard, cold. “When I speak, for example, when I say ‘Someone tell a joke?’ you answer.”

“Fuck you,” Katarina hissed. “I’ve had 400 good years; we might as well end it now.”

“Your call,” Vader replied, and the gun boomed.

Everyone Dies in the End #59

2010-09-29T03:57:00.001-07:00

Todd

The arch led to a large, open dining room with a long dining table. Eight chairs surrounded the table; eight place settings adorned its dark wood. Eight? Todd asked about that and the mother turned to him, smiling. “Hope, Mister Todd, we always hope.” A curious answer he thought, but before he could speak further she continued to dark, wooden stairs rising from the edge of the room.

They followed her up the stairs and into a narrow, white hall that smelled a bit like fresh paint. Three doors led from the hall. The mother faced them and smiled. “Three rooms, just like those little bears.” She laughed and Susan joined her. Todd didn’t. The way he remembered, things didn’t go real well for Goldilocks.

“Seriously,” the mother added. “The rooms are pretty much the same. One for each of you. There’s a bathroom through there.” She indicated the door to her left. “You all freshen up, rest a bit, I’ll call you when dinner is ready. Is there anything that I can get you?” Her eyes rested on Todd.

Arty shook his head, Todd shrugged. “No thanks,” Susan replied. The mother nodded and smiled. “Well then I’ll go see to dinner.” She slipped by them and her chest brushed Todd’s as she passed, as unsettling as it was exciting. The three stood in the hall a moment longer, looking at each other, saying nothing. Then stairs creaked as the mother descended.

Susan spoke. “Bath sounds good to me. A bed sounds good to me.”

Todd smiled. It had been days since any of them had anything close to a bath and that had been a chilly hillside stream in North Carolina. The experience had been a trade off between his desire to wash the grime from his skin, and fear of freezing to death in the stream’s arctic water. They had taken turns, two watching the white Bronco, one bathing. Arty’s turn had been after Susan’s, and Todd thought it took a long time for the two to return to the Bronco. That was okay by him, it was obvious that they had it bad for each other. That thought lead to another. A guilty thought, a thought filled with bargains made with the enemy, betrayal, and how he had planned to leave the two for dead in Charlotte.

“Well?” Susan’s voice brought him back to the here and now. She was standing in front of him.

“Well what?” he replied.

“Well, you are standing in front of the door to the room with the bathroom.” She laughed. “Do you mind?”

He stepped aside, and Susan moved toward the door. Todd laid a hand on her shoulder. “I don’t think we should all punch out at once.” He looked at Arty who was leaning against the wall. Arty nodded. “Yeah, I hear you.”

Susan nodded “I know. I feel it too. This whole place is,” she hesitated, “strange.” Slumping against the plaster of the wall, she leaned her head back, closing her eyes. Todd let her be. She could sense things, feel things, that neither he nor Arty could. A heartbeat or two later she sighed and shook her head. Opening her eyes, she spoke. “It’s probably just the normalcy.” She gave the two of them a tentative grin. “That’s something we haven’t had much of lately.”

Arty nodded. “Maybe.”

“Maybe not,” Todd added. “Either way, I want one of us awake at all times, door open, listening, alert.”

“Sure,” Susan answered.

“You’ve got it,” Arty chimed in.

“But now,” her grin broadened, “a real honest-to-goodness bath.”

“I’m for that,” Artemis added as he pushed away from the wall.

She placed a restraining hand on his chest, her eyes playfully gleaming behind her spiky strands of dark hair. “My own bath, stud, I want to relax; I’ve had enough excitement for one day.”

Artemis rolled his eyes, but his lips curled into a smile. The grin softened the haggard, bearded countenance. God, thought Todd, he’s only a kid. He didn’t know how old Artemis was, Susan either for that matter. College kids, he knew that, but that could mean anything from seventeen to twenty-two. Youngsters to be sure. The thought spawned a laugh. Like I’m some old timer.

“Have your bath,” he answered. “We’ll keep an eye peeled.” He grinned. The first in several days. “Just for the sake of peeling it.”

Everyone Dies in the End #58

2010-09-25T04:31:00.000-07:00

Todd

They saw nothing, nothing except a young maple tree, the edge of its leaves fluttering golden with the early turning. Susan stepped through the gate, her dark, spiky hair rippling in the breeze. Stepped without a drawn weapon, stepped, and spoke.

“Hi.”

Arty and Todd exchanged glances, then shrugs, and then lowered their guns before following Susan through.

The yard was well trimmed and green. Short, thick bushes lined the back of the house, and in front of the bushes sprawled a colorful quilt. On the blanket sat a little girl, short brown hair, freckled face, and clean, long dress, surrounded by dolls. She examined Susan without concern.

“Hello,” she replied to Susan’s earlier salutation.

Todd tore his eyes from the girl, and scanned the remainder of the yard. It felt strange, not bad, but maybe not good, and certainly not right. Three strangers, two of them toting guns, stroll into your back yard, and all the girl offers is “hello”? She should have run screaming, or at least calling for her mom and dad, but instead she spoke as if Susan was expected company. So Todd scanned the yard. And he saw nothing, but he heard the screen door that led into the house screech open, and Arty raised his pistol.

A woman appeared. Somewhat pretty, thought Todd. With long, brown hair, a plain yet pleasing face, simply cut, lengthy dress, worn tight across her bosom, top button undone, a crease dark between her breasts. She wiped her hands on a towel she carried. Todd could have sworn he saw streaks of red on those hands, but the towel was dark, and the darkness left no clue. The woman smiled. “Hello.”

Arty lowered his gun.

“This is my mom,” the little girl announced.

The tea was warm, sweet, and as surreal as everything else since they had stumbled onto the white house in Henry, Virginia. Todd lifted the cup to his lips, studying the ripples that jiggled across the caramel liquid.

“Is it okay?”

The kitchen table was stout, made from thick wood, polished to a gleam, and thickly coated with polyurethane. The mother sat at the head, anxiously peering at him, eager to please. Too eager by Todd’s reckoning.

He smiled over the tea, savoring the strong smell; maybe he was just too suspicious.

“Yeah, it’s more than okay, it’s…” Before he could utter the description that fit not only the tea, but the entire white house, and the daughter, and the mother, Susan spoke.

“Wonderful, that’s what it is. It’s wonderful. I haven’t had a cup of tea since I don’t know when.” She paused, tilting her head, lost in thought. Nodding, she spoke again. “Charlotte. In the dorm. That’s the last time I had tea.” Todd watched the steam from Susan’s cup drift over the pentagram on her cheek.

“I know,” their host replied. “This world is ending. I often wonder if it is worth holding on, grasping at the straws of the past.” She shook her head. “The things I must do to keep us keep us alive.” The woman stared into her tea, her guest’s presence seemingly forgotten.

Todd caught Artemis’s eye from across the table. He arched his eyebrows, Todd gave a little shrug, Susan frowned at them both and slid her hand across the table and patted their host’s. Through the open screen, Todd could see the daughter playing.

“Is it just the two of you?” asked Susan.

The woman’s eye’s shot up. “Oh yes, no one else, just the two of us.” She shook her head. Shook it a little too decidedly, Todd thought. Over the sink, it was an older, white porcelain sink, a small wind chime caught the afternoon breeze and tinkled. The screen door squealed, and the young girl came in, doll in hand, smile on face. She went to her mother’s side, who drew her affectionately close.

“Will you stay for dinner?” the mother asked.

“Oh yes, please stay,” the girl echoed excitedly.

“Well…” Todd began. There was no reason they shouldn’t. They all could use, hell, they all needed, a good meal, but something plucked the back of his mind, something that wasn’t quite right. “Well…”

“Well, sure we will,” Susan answered for him.

“Yes,” the girl cried with delight, and then turned to her mother. “Will the others be coming?”

The mother avoided the question. “Run along now, Akasia.”

“But…” the girl began to protest, a look passed from mother to daughter, and Akasia closed her mouth. She left and the table was silent save for the tiny clicking of the mother’s spoon in her tea as she stirred it, her eyes focused on the steaming brew. She shook he head. Slowly.

“She,” the word hung in the air until she looked up, meeting Todd’s eyes, “She’s better.”

“This,” she gestured with her hand toward the window, “has been hard.” She laughed, a mirthless noise. “Hell, paying mortgage was hard. This,” now she pointed at the window, “this is insane. Everything she knew is gone.” The mother bit her lip, and Todd studied her face, her pretty face, made up as if it was just another day in middle-class country town. His eyes fell to the dress, the top button undone, revealing that hint of cleavage. To Todd, it appeared to be a calculated hint, a hint of cleavage belonging to a body that was too healthy, too well fed to be living in a post-apocalyptic country where food was as scarce as friendly strangers. “Her father was in the Guard.”

Susan reached for the mother’s hand, and the mother smiled, tears glistening on her cheeks. “He never came back.”

Todd didn’t believe her, not for a minute. Not about the Guard. Not about the Father, not about not coming back.

Abruptly she pushed back her chair and stood. “Really, it doesn’t matter,” She began picking up the dishes. Susan stood to help, grabbing the pitcher of cream—the woman had claimed they still had a cow giving milk, and fuel for the generator to run the refrigerator. Susan reached for the white appliance’s handle, but the mother hurriedly laid a hand on Susan’s arm. “No, that’s okay. Let’s leave it out. Someone might want another cup of tea.”

Susan shrugged and set the pitcher on the wooden table. The mother set the dishes carefully in the sink. “You’ll stay for dinner?” she queried as the washed the dishes. Todd noticed that water still ran from the faucet and guessed that was okay, both the water and the dinner. The home probably used well water, and the mother had already explained that the generator still ran. That was all that you needed. Electricity to run the well pump and well water would run. Not like living in the city. And the dinner? There was something Todd didn’t like about the mother, daughter, and the house, but he didn’t really see what harm a dinner would do. On top of that, he didn’t really see where he had a choice. Susan was already accepting, and Artemis seemed no less eager. Hell, the idea of a solid meal sounded pretty, damn good to him also.

The mother turned, beaming a smile at them. “That is lovely. We never have company. And you’ll want to stay the night, I’m sure. Wouldn’t it feel nice to sleep in a nice soft bed?” Her eyes held Todd’s and his dropped, of their own volition, to the cleavage. He pulled them away, back to her face. A smile spread slowly across her lips. “Let me show your rooms.”

She turned and walked to a thick, wooden arch, which obviously led to the rest of the house, paused and looked back. “Well?”

Susan laughed. “A bed sounds great.”

Everyone Dies in the End #57

2010-09-07T04:11:00.000-07:00

Todd

The reached the far edge of the store and the silence was broken. Broken by a sound so alien, so strange, that at first none of the three recognized it. Susan was the first to identify the lilting echo; of course Susan was the first.

“It’s laughing. It’s a little girl laughing.”

In front of them stood a thickly picketed white fence, surrounding the back yard of an equally white house. In better times, Todd guessed, the storeowner lived in the house. Now… well now it looked as if the storeowner still lived in the house. The exterior was clean, the porch was swept, the lawn mowed. Mowed? Who the hell cut their grass? And the house had windows. Not the shattered kind that dominated the apocalyptic landscape, but real, honest to goodness, whole, glass pain windows. Again the laughter, like chimes in the still air. Todd glanced at Susan and Arty. They had heard it too.

Susan nodded toward the gate set in the picket fence. “She’s in there.”

Todd motioned toward the gate and snugged the shotgun against his shoulder. “Open it.”

“Really, Todd?” hissed Arty. “A shotgun? It’s just a little girl.”

Todd glared back. “It sounds like a little girl. You don’t know what the hell it is.”

Arty held his gaze for a long moment, but then without another word he pulled his 9mm from the back of his pants and took a shooter’s stance. A gentle breeze rustled the leaves overhead.

Susan looked at the two, frowning, the breeze tousling her black shaggy hair, shadows shifting over the black pentagram on her cheek. “You two are pathetic.”

Todd smiled. “But pathetically alive.” He gestured toward the fence with the barrel of the shotgun. “The gate?”

Susan stepped forward. “Whatever.”

The dull black latch was the lift type, and when Susan did, it squeaked. Todd felt his buttocks tighten.

Everyone Dies in the End #56

2010-08-24T02:17:00.001-07:00

Todd

The white Bronco crossed the railroad tracks and rolled to a stop next to the convenience store pumps. Artemis scanned the area, Susan sat silently in the back seat, and Todd chuckled bitterly. The gas tank was empty, dry, not a drop left. A real problem, and yet they were parked beside gas pumps, yet it was still a problem. For the first time, Todd longed for the good ole days, for the days when—mid-seventies gas crunch excepted—gas flowed freely. The days when he didn’t feel obligated, didn’t feel responsible, for anyone but himself and he longed for the days when he didn’t feel guilty.

“Looks different, no?” Artemis’s comment refocused Todd’s mind on the present.

“It does,” Susan answered quietly. And it did.

In front of the Bronco sat a small, country convenience store. They had passed many like it as they cut across the mountains, all of them abandoned, all of them derelict, but this was different. The store was cinderblock construction, whitewashed, with a large wooden sign on the roof, running the length of the store, also white with large, neatly-painted black letters that read Henry Store. The parking lot was deserted, but clean. Todd knew that was strange. The apocalypse was many things, but clean wasn’t one of them. The store was abandoned, that was obvious. Perhaps a bit too obvious, he thought. The windows had been boarded over, precisely, carefully, with precision-cut plywood, well-braced, and secured with straight lines of screws.

Next door sat a white house, green trim, windows—real, not-yet-smashed windows, and cut grass. That was stranger than strange. As if hearing Todd’s thoughts, Arty whispered. “The lawn is mowed, who the hell mows their lawn?”

Todd’s hand moved to the shotgun waiting on the seat expectantly.

“This isn’t good,” Susan added.

“Yeah,” Arty responded, we left good sometime last summer. “This is downright creepy.”

“Good, bad, creepy, it doesn’t matter, boys and girls,” Todd intoned. “Unless one of you has a few gallons of gas in their pocket, this is as far as we are going with these wheels. Let’s get out and take a look around.”

Without preamble Todd opened his door and stepped away from the white Bronco. He should have told Arty to cover him; told Susan to sit tight, but he was tired. Tired of it all. If some redneck was waiting to put a bullet through his head, let him have the hell at it. Todd knew he should have died back in Charlotte; way back when he ratted out his friends. But no guilt-releasing bullet smacked his brain. The others stepped out behind him. Todd shrugged and walked past the pumps to the Henry Store.

The boarded double doors at the front of the building were locked. He had expected nothing less. A foot-long piece of angle iron, held them shut, and the iron itself was padlocked. Todd hadn’t seen a padlock in a month. Padlocks didn’t mean much in today’s world, not unless you had somebody watching those padlocks with a gun. Todd didn’t see anyone with a gun. Todd didn’t see anyone at all.

Around the side, the story remained the same. Deserted, but strangely well kept. I minnow tank sat next to the store, and in its metal confines water still gurgled, minnows, still swam, just like they could be bought for bait. Just like money was still good for anything. Not fifty feet from the tank a large creek, almost a small river, although Todd wasn’t sure of the difference in a large creek and small river, flowed briskly. They had crossed the wooden bridge that spanned it just before they rolled to stop at the Henry Store. Maybe it supplied the minnows; maybe the minnows were used to catch fish from the creek. Either way, the minnows’ existence meant someone still cared for the tank, but where was that someone?

The three turned the corner at the back of the building. A small breeze teased the treetop leaves. The back of the building was also neatly deserted, with one exception, and it was a big one. The exception was a black Indian motorcycle. Todd had ridden some bikes in his life and this was a classic. Sleek, low, built for speed, enough room for two, no more.

“She’s beautiful,” Susan whispered. She walked by, entranced by the sleek machine. The fenders and forks were chrome, but the gas tank and wheels were black.

Arty came up beside him. “I’m no biker, but that is one sweet piece of machinery.”

They both watched as Susan ran her hand across the gas tank. “It’s so clean.”

It was clean and that bothered Todd. How could a place, any place, stay so clean, so well-tended, in Armageddon’s wake? The store, with it’s well-boarded windows, clean parking lot, and beautiful Indian bike, felt more like an out of season tourist stop than another casualty of civilization’s decay. Even the air smelled different, cleaner, and the quiet? Why was it so quiet? Todd knew the quiet shouldn’t bother him anymore than quiet ever bothered him. The world was quieter now. Less people, less animals, less machines. This quiet, however, was complete, intentional. It made Todd’s skin crawl. They were being watched, and the watchers were keeping very quiet.

Everyone Dies in the End #55

2010-08-13T03:20:00.000-07:00

Cindy

Her mind swam to the surface of consciousness. She sensed movement, rhythmic, yet inconsistent, rough. She was sitting, the seat beneath her hard, the smell of canvas, chemically treated canvas, strong in her nostrils. An engine throbbed, deep, diesel, and she knew. It was the troop transport, if not the same truck, similar to the one Ramzke and his henchman transported her away from the farm in South Carolina, but of course that had never happened, at least not in anyone’s world but her own. She had changed that world. Although changed it was, she was once again in a truck, on the move. She blinked, clearing the sleep from her eyes. It was dark, but not completely so. She could see the truck’s canvas cover, rippling slightly from the passage of air on the exterior, supported by the metal ribs on the inside. She sat on the wooden bench lining one side of the interior. On the other bench, directly across from her, sat Ramzke.

“This is getting old, vampire.”

He smiled. “We do seem to be caught in a circle, no?”

She looked at her feet. No anklet? “How come no ring on my ankle?” Ramzke looked genuinely puzzled.

Cindy smiled, “Oh that never happened, did it? Not in your mind.”

Ramzke pursed his lips, nodded. “Perhaps I know what you are talking about. Perhaps I do not. Either way I know you can be quite elusive, so I’ve taken,” he paused, “precautions.”

The image rushed into her mind. Zak!

Zak standing helpless, or not helpless, she could never envision Zak as helpless, but at least captive, held by the vampire, the pistol deadly black against his temple. Her heart screamed; her voice flattened. If Zak was dead, she would kill this vampire. Kill him or die trying.

“Where is he?”

“Safe. Ahead.”

He didn’t screw around. She would give Ramzke that. Give him the respect he gave her with a straight answer. Before she could ask what “ahead” meant, he told her.

“I am tired of chasing you. You escaped once. Something in here,” the vampire touched his chest, “tells me that maybe you have escaped from me more than once. You won’t escape again, at least not if you wish your human friend to live. As I said, he is ahead, in another vehicle, also headed for Philadelphia.” He paused, studying her face. “I can see that our destination is not news to you. How is it that you know these things, Cindy?”

He had never used her name. The sound of it on his lips chilled her. There was a certainty in its utterance, a finality. It was merely a word, but in that word she heard so much more. The vampire Ramzke spoke, Cindy, but she heard I know your name, I know who you are, you will never escape me. All these things went through her mind, the chill, the fright, the understanding.

Cindy shrugged. “I’m a fast learner.”

Ramzke said nothing more He stared, perhaps glared, at her. She didn’t know, she didn’t look. You don’t meet a vampire’s stare. She knew that. Her mother had taught her that. The road bumped along, time passed, she grew drowsy.

“I’m a fast leaner too, human.’ It was as if he had materialized out of thin air, but vampires couldn’t do that, could they? Only she could do that. But he was next you her on the hard bench of the troop transport, his lips next to her ear. “I think you want to go to Philadelphia, I think there is someone there for you.” His voice was soft, his lips brushing her ear. “I think that when I find that someone I will use him to make you do what I want, because I think you love this someone. Is that want you think, human?

Slowly she turned her face until their lips were only a breath apart. “I think,” she breathed softly, "that one day, one fine day. I’ll cut off your head and shit down your windpipe.” She blinked herself to the other bench and shrugged.

“But who knows, maybe I’ll just ram a stake through your heart.”

Everyone Dies in the End #54

2010-08-03T04:26:00.000-07:00

Jack

Jack Lang shifted the M-16 on his large stomach, settled into the Vinyl passenger seat of the Toyota truck, and smiled. He figured he was doing all right. This apocalypse thing had really screwed some people, but the end times, if that was what these were, had been very, very good to him. He had roof over his head—the remnants of a condo down on 2^nd street, food in his belly, and a place in Vader’s army to keep him safe. A good place, a place in charge of a penning crew.

Beside Jack a guy called Spider steered the truck. The driver was spindly, dark, with bright eyes that shown from a frame of black, shaggy hair. Maybe he did look like a spider. Maybe he streamed silk from his butt, Jack didn’t know where these kids came up with these names, and he couldn’t have cared less. As long as they did their job they stayed on his good side. And if they didn’t? Well, no one wanted to be on Jack’s bad side. Folks on Jack’s bad side usually got thrown in with the days catch, and the days catch got thrown in the pens.

Outside the cab of the small Toyota truck, eastern Pennsylvania rolled by. The nearest nukes had fallen in Washington and New York. Jack didn’t know why Pennsylvania had been spared, but it had. Nevertheless, spared was a relative term. The vegetation didn’t look…well, it just didn’t look right. It wasn’t dead exactly, but the green was paler, and the trees were not only losing their leaves earlier than usual, but the beautiful fall colors that Jack was so fond of were muted, browned. Of course everywhere he looked he saw destruction—burnt out cars, derelict buildings, and worse. But that stuff didn’t bother him too much now. You got used to it. You stopped thinking about it. The roads weren’t bad in this part of the state; Vader had cleared them. Not that they were in pre-missile condition. Nothing was in pre-missile condition, but the Toyota was rolling along at a reasonable thirty-five miles an hour.

Fast enough to cover some ground. Fast enough to corral some blood sacks.

Refugees, stragglers, blood sacks—whatever you wanted to call them— were getting a bit harder to find now, there was no doubt about that, but Jack figured the faster his team moved the better chance they had of surprising some. Enslaving humans was another thing Jack had gotten used to. There really wasn’t any choice. If you didn’t like the work, Vader would find someone who did. It was something else he didn’t really like thinking about. The thought about not thinking caused him to glance in the side mirror at the pen truck, following a couple of hundred feet behind, the large steel cages prominent of the flat bed. It was empty now, but it wouldn’t be empty long.

Everyone Dies in the End #54

2010-07-23T03:52:00.000-07:00

Cindy

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.

Everyone Dies in the End #53

2010-07-15T04:13:00.000-07:00

Cindy

The force from the explosion threw Cindy to the ground, the asphalt pulling skin from her knees, and the burning armored personnel carrier singing the hair on her arms. Above, on the bridge crossing the interstate, Christmas lights winked and firecrackers popped. But Cindy knew that there was no celebration. The winking lights were the harbingers of war, and the popping firecrackers the clatter of rifles and submachine guns. The bullets they fired zipped by her angrily, sparking off the pavement, punching holes in the vehicles surrounding her with sedate, can-opening punches. The air smelled of hot metal, burning diesel, and scorched flesh.

Behind her Zak was yelling, forming his men to meet this new threat in a world of threats. In front of her, the shotgun lay where it had fallen. Every fiber, every molecule screamed from her to lay flat, cringe from the hissing bullets that sought her out, but every fiber was wrong. It was time to move. She scuttled to the shotgun, a distance of no more than five feet, and laid her hand on the stock. The hissing bullets came no closer; none sought her out, but the man behind the truck did. She didn’t see him until she grabbed the shotgun, the dancing light from the burning M-113 playing tricks with her eyes, but he rose when she moved, placed his rifle to his shoulder, and charged toward her, screaming.

“Put it down, put it down, don’t move,” he cried.

It was the blind man. The one blinded by the nuke that destroyed Charlotte, but he was not blind now. His blindness had been in a different time, a different world, a world where Charlotte, Zak, and a lot of innocent people had gone bye-bye. Once she had consoled this man (sort of), spoke with him, now, she raised the shotgun and fired.

The blast stopped him cold. Actually that wasn’t really the whole of it. The blast picked him up and threw him on his back, and there was nothing cold about it, she guessed, looking at his chest. The red, pulpy material that had been his skin steamed in the cool night air. Maybe he lived still, she didn’t care, there wasn’t time to care.

“Let’s go,” shouted Zak and then they were running toward Zak’s surviving soldiers. Neither saw the dark shape slip between the vehicles behind them.

Everyone Dies in the End #52

2010-07-03T05:27:00.000-07:00

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.

Origins 2010

2010-06-27T04:01:00.000-07:00

Hi Folks,

Just wanted to drop you a quick note. I haven't forgotten you or the blog, but my company is at the Origins Convention and very busy. I'll get back to the story next week. Oh...almost forgot... we've almost sold out of all the copies of Revelation we brought. It's nice.

Everyone Dies in the End #51

2010-06-21T03:33:00.001-07:00

Todd

Getting the hell off that road didn’t turn out to be as easy as it sounded. Certainly any fool could drive off a road, but that really wasn’t the point, was it? They were going to Philadelphia; at least that was the plan. So getting off the road not only entailed getting away from Interstate 85, but also finding an alternate route that would lead them north with a minimum of difficulty, and a minimum of exposure. The visage of the UPS truck’s interior hung heavy in Todd’s mind. He didn’t want to run into whoever was callous enough, whoever was cruel enough, to stuff a crowd of humans in the back of a package delivery truck and leave them to die. I’m no saint either. His mind flashed back to the dorm in Charlotte, but he squashed that train of thought as soon as it rolled into the station. There wasn’t room for saints in this world. There was only room survivors and those who died trying.

They discovered a rack of maps at a rest stop three miles further north, laying where they had been tipped on the floor. Susan searched through them until she found several that would suite their needs. Five minutes later the three of them sat in the Bronco, pouring over their find. After tracing multiple routes with dirty fingernails, and discussing, and occasionally shouting over, the various options, they decided to parallel Interstate 85 via a series of smaller roads that lay to the west. Eventually, they would cut back across on Highway 58, then north through a tiny town-dot on the map labeled Henry, and pick up Route 220, a semi-major four-lane road.

Now, as the sun dipped lower on the horizon, the tires hummed over the asphalt their fingers had traced. Todd figured they had an hour before sunset, and they were tired, weary from the travel. The small roads wound through the flat country of North Carolina and into the ever-increasing hilliness of Virginia. This was farm and ranching country, and Todd remembered that he had heard somewhere that it was also horse country. There was, however, little evidence of crops, cattle, or horses. The crops lay fallow in the fields, yellow and dead. He didn’t see any cattle, although they occasionally passed emancipated, half-eaten, furry lumps that might have been cattle once upon a time. A time before the missiles came. And horses? Todd saw nary a one. Todd thought he knew what had happened to them. He had heard that horsemeat didn’t taste that bad, as long as you cooked it long enough.

They were stopped once. Well into Virginia, hugging the hillside of a narrow road, they rounded a corner and nearly crashed into a thick maple lying across the road. Its leaves were a sickly ashen green, dead or dying, but of course most of the foliage was dead or dying. It didn’t mean the maple had been there long. Arty pointed at the base. “It’s been cut.”

Todd nodded, his eyes casually passing over the smoothly cut trunk, and pile of sawdust beneath it. “I don’t like this.”

“Yeah,” Arty nodded. “I don’t like this either.”

In the mirror Todd noticed Susan slide her revolver from her purse, her worried eyes searching the hill outside. He looked at Arty.

“Can’t go back.” Arty shook his head. “Shit.” Todd nodded, “Yeah, Shit.”

“Let’s do it.” Todd opened his door and stepped to the road, small pebbles crunching beneath his feet. Arty exited the opposite side of the truck, and then Susan’s door opened. Todd pushed it shut. “No, you stay.”

“But,” she began to protest.

Todd held up a warning finger. “But nothing. Cover us from the Bronco.” Susan opened her mouth as if to speak, but nodded instead. Todd nodded back, not saying anything more.

In retrospect, Todd guessed he spoke a lot less now. The missiles had done two things. Well, if you ignored the fact that they had irrevocably, completely, and obliteratingly changed civilization. Hell, perhaps even ended civilization. Yeah, if you ignored all that, the atomic Armageddon had affected Todd in two ways. Way one, he was a lot thinner. His slim physic wasn’t by choice. Food just wasn’t as plentiful, and for an instant his mind flicked back to his pallet of cake mix in Charlotte. There was no cake mix now. For some meals there nothing. Way two, he was hell of a lot quieter than when he had been a financial consultant, back then talking was his stock and trade. His main weapon so to speak. Now, his shotgun was his stock and trade, which he guessed brought out one last, ultimately defining way the modern world changed him—his conscience. There was very little of it left.

As soon as they left the truck, two men stepped from behind the tree. Both looked like they had seen better days, in fact they both looked like they had seen better days months before Armageddon arrived in this part of the world. They were skinny, yet their dirty coveralls stretched tightly over pot-bellied stomachs. Their hair was long and stringy, and when the taller of the two opened his mouth to speak, Todd could tell that teeth were is short supply in these parts.

“You fellers just drop those guns and we won’t have no trouble with you.” The voice was thin and reedy, as were the arms that held the sawed off shotgun. A nice compliment to the deer rifle his pot-bellied partner clutched in his hands. They might have been telling the truth. Perhaps they didn’t want any trouble. On the other hand, maybe they wanted to steel everything in the bronco, strip the three on them naked and re-enact the more gruesome scenes from Deliverance. Todd never asked. He was a much quieter man than he had been before the missiles.

Todd carried his shotgun nonchalantly, the barrel angled toward the road. He didn’t need to raise the weapon to fire. He didn’t need to raise the weapon to kill.

He pulled the trigger.

The firing was loud in the still evening air. The shotgun pellets sparked off the asphalt like a angry fireflies, rebounding up and away from the road, and tearing into the groin of the coverall-clad speaker. The blue coveralls turned urgently red, and their owner screamed. His friend turned to gawk at him, but the gawking didn’t last long. There was a flat crack and the man fell, quietly, without ceremony, with the fragments of his skull, brains, and hair flecking the dead branches behind him.

Todd noted that Artemis held the shooter’s stance a moment longer, his pistol thrust toward the fallen corpse, a delicate tendril of smoke gracefully curling from the muzzle.

“Hold it right there, you fuckers.” There was one more. Todd had always known there would be one more. The one more stood a little ways up the hill the road bordered. No more than fifteen feet away. He held a rifle, and the rifle was pointed at Artemis and Todd. Todd thought he looked plenty pissed. Looked like he was pissed enough to kill them both, right here and now. Todd didn’t really care. He would either kill them, or…

The glass window shattered as the big bullet smashed through. The retort of the gun was somewhat muffled by the Bronco, its effect wasn’t. The would be avenger with the rifle was thrown to the ground, the weapon falling out of his reach. He no sooner smacked into the dark earth than the screaming began. The bullet hadn’t killed the avenger. It had torn into his right shoulder, ripping the arm from the socket. Blood filled the surrounding leaves; his screams soaked the surrounding air.

Susan was out of the car in an instant, the big revolver still smoking, held in front of her, her eyes scanning the hill, running toward the screaming man.

Todd’s shotgun stopped her in her tracks. The first blast ripped into the man’s chest, shredding it. Still the man lived, his mouth soundlessly flexing like a fish out of water. The second blast took off the mouth, and the face surrounding it.

Susan stopped, the gun lowering as if she could no longer bear the weight, her face pale. “You…you…didn’t need to do that. I…I could have helped him, could have saved him.”

Todd spoke as he jacked more shells into the shotgun, the click-thunk rhythmic, reassuring. “There is no saving, girl. Just surviving.”

He knew she didn’t believe it, but he almost did.