This could be the foundation of an interesting novel if I knew enough to handle it.
...Jeanine loped through the darkened street just north of the Winchester City Park. Her form was graceful, powerful even with terror crawling around in her guts which was as it should be. The weak, the unlucky, the despairing, the less than physically outstanding were all dead. Before the Awakening, Jeanine had planned on running the three thousand meter in the Olympics. She had hoped to use it as the springboard for the creation of her career as a public advocate of Christian life.
She was in the ninety-ninth percentile in numerous mental and physical traits which merely meant that she had kept running even as others fell. But that did little good when you were faced with the more than human.
A clapping noise echoed through the darkness at the top of the street she had just entered. A dozen shadowy shapes strolled out in front of her. She spun about, and doors of nearby tenements, and the Wudgely Metal Factory to her right opened, and more shadowed figures stepped out.
"We are all quite impressed, Jeanine." A cultured and commanding man's voice rang out from the darkness. "Two hundred fifty miles by foot, and if our records are correct, nine hostiles."
"Eleven." Janine panted. None of the others were even breathing.
"So hard to keep track. But even more so. Eleven." There was a pause. "You do know that you're probably the last human alive on the West Coast."
"You lie." Janine snapped out.
"Tsk, tsk. Perhaps you're right. Perhaps someone is hiding somewhere in the bottom of an abandoned gold mine." The voice turned a mite impatient. "We know your faith. It has sustained you through a very trying week. But its time to give it up. You will be a princess among the Vampyre."
With that, the surrounding hordes of undead seemed much closer.
"I'm already a princess of Heaven. I don't want your cruel counterfeit of immortality."
"Do you trust your God? He left you here, to die, all alone, in the dark."
Jeanine gulped, and then spoke what she felt sure would be her last words.
"Though he slay me, yet will I trust Him."
"Kill her." The Master snapped, his veneer of civility shorn free. "Your God will not save you from one iota of pain."
A sudden rush forward was halted by another voice, a human voice.
"Not so fast, friend." The male, human voice was soft, but it had its own edge of power. And the vampires stayed their clawed hands for a moment.
A man with a flat, broad hat, and a plain coat walked out to her from a nearby building.
"What? How?" The Master knew that building was empty. He had ordered it searched an hour ago.
"The ways of God are mysterious, sir."
"So you come to rescue her?" The Master asked as signals flowed from his mind to the others nearer the duo. "To strike us down?"
Jeanine looked at his calm, and untroubled face with something approaching enthusiasm. But then her hopes were rocked.
"Oh, no friend. Violence is wrong. I'm a Friend. I could not do that. I expect I'm here to hold her hand, to be with her as she dies." The man turned and spoke softly although every vampire heard him. "Its really not so bad. In mere minutes, you'll stand before the Throne."
Jeanine nodded, encouraged by the deep faith of the strange man. She figured he was an angel come to light her way, and gratitude welled up in her heart.
"Kill..." The Master began.
"Luckily not all of us are so peaceful, now isn't it?" A lady's voice, Irish, mocking came from the same building.
"Now what?" The Master snorted. "Another pacifist to toss on the altar?"
"Wouldn't you be listening to my plain and clear spoken words? I hardly think I could have been more simple even for a dull wit like yourself, don't you think?" A whisper of rage surrounded them, and pressed from vile minds onto the trio.
"I'm Sister Mary Katherine, formerly of the St. Vincennes Nunnery, and now, a missionary to the many worlds." The nun gave Jeanine a quick smile, and then got down on her knees. As the vampires rushed in, she began to pray.
"Saint Jude, Patron of Lost Causes, and don't you know, one of my very favorite people, would you mind being of assistance? Oh. Of course. How silly am I being?" With that the sister pulled out her cross with the Crucified One still on it, and raised it above her head. It gleamed faintly in the dark, and suddenly the sussurus of rage was cut off. The onrush of vampires slowed.
"Well, enough, but the stronger ones can brave your..."
The sister reached into her robes, and pulled something out, and flung it. Water spun through the air, and the closest vamp was touched by seven drops. They began eating through him, like a red hot wire through butter. He started screaming, and then he began ripping at his muscle, trying to remove the horrrid drops, but he could not rip himself apart fast enough to stop the drops from fall through him, and turning him into a vampire collander. One touched his heart, and suddenly, he exploded.
"And wouldn't you know, I have more, now don't I? How lucky for me, don't you think?" The other vampires stared at her with true horror in their face from fifty feet away. Some of them were considered strong, creatures that had feasted on mankind shortly after the Flood when Mankind was still weak. But the cheerfulness in the little Irish nun's face made them tremble.
"So..." The Master said, and then it spoke by mind to one of its commanders. And suddenly several hundred lesser vampires, were screaming, fussing, and pleading, but their will had been sworn to a greater, and when that greater decided to use them as cannon fodder, as a banzai attack, they had no will to control their own body. Their minds cringed from the Unveiled Cross, and their hearts misgave them at the thought of being shredded by holy water, but their minds did not control their bodies. Instead, they ran directly at the nun and her two companions.
The Amish Friend stood in front of them, and offered his body first.
"NO!" A voice roared out from the top of the Wudgely Metal Factory. It was a voice suited to command lightning, to daunt hurricanes, and to boom out over a thousand spectators at a football stadium. "You will not do this."
The brute force of the command stayed things for a minute.
"And why not?" The Master's culture seemed back, but perhaps it trembled just a bit.
"Thus saith the Lord God, the Lord of Hosts, the King of Heaven. You, the so-called Master of the Undead, you have angered me, and I will repay you seven fold for the evils done to my people."
"Bring it." The Vampire snapped, and turned to his commander who turned to his screaming, rebellious horde.
"Very well." The voice of the man on the top of the building was quieter, and for a moment it seemed sorrowful. "So be it. As Elijah destroyed the altar to Ba'al, so I destroy your pitiful pawns. As he destroyed the men who were disrespectful to him as the agent of God, so do I."
And fire plunged down from the sky. It was fifty feet wide in diameter, and several hundred feet tall. Vampires and humans alike except for the prophet and the master lurched back from the inferno. That is, the vampires that were not in the fire. Those perished with hardly time to scream. And the Commander fell to the ground, gibbering of fiery swords and vengeance.
Quiet except for the fire which had gouged a hole in the asphalt reigned for several minutes, and the Master began to make plans, but then he saw a loose-limbed man stroll up the street. Which was odd because the man had to have come through the crowds of vampires to the back.
"And you?" He said warily to the whistling man.
"Oh, just a guy. Name's not really important." He had the same obscene cheerfulness that the Irish nun had, but none of her mockery, or if he did it seemed directed at himself. "If you could keep talking, that would be ever so helpful." He kept walking forward, and past the circle of fire, and outside the protection of the nun's cross, and with mouth agape, the Master realized the man was seeking him out.
One of his Mighty, the post-flood born stepped up, and the man somehow had a sword out even though he didn't seem to move very fast, and somehow it sank into the vampire lord's ribs, and then the man was walking past the lord. The vampire turned about, and he fell in half. Still the man kept whistling.
Orders were given, and a dozen vampires launched themselves at him.
And the Master could hear the whistling stop. And the Bible quoting began.
"Yeah, tho' I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death..." And the part about not fearing evil and suddenly the vampires could feel their oppression, the terror they flung with their minds was gone.
And then he quoted the bit about how the Lord would guide his feet. And he stepped in a kind of complicated martial dance that would have had Bruce Lee nodding approvingly. Vampires fell around him, crashed into each other, but none touched him.
His short blade flicked out, and trollish vampires that could walk in acid, and giantish vamps that could bear sunlight parted ways with large sections of their body.
"The sword of the Spirit is sharp enough to cut through practically anything. I wonder if my theology is correct, but God seems willing to let me do it what I started in possible ignorance."
"You are?" The Master said horrified as he made plans to back up behind more of his horde.
"Just a man who takes the Word of the Lord literally where its meant to be so. If God said I can do something, who am I to disagree?"
"Indeed not." The Master said, and quick drew a pistol and shot the Bible Quoter in the head. He vanished, and the Master breathed a sigh of relief.
Still, he saw that the others had taken lead from the whistling man, and they were advancing on him. The prophet called down fire, taking the examples of Old Testament prophets. The nun was praying the rosary, and asking that the saints guard them on all side, and one look at his Seer to his right let the Master know what he suspected was all too true. There were some very potent spiritual forces standing guard on the humans.
Disgustingly, the Amish man reached out a hand in friendship, and the vampire smiled, and then turned to dust. And others reached out to him, not to strike him, but to accept his cursed gift. They forsook true immortality for the promise of a God who wasn't even there. The Master cursed vilely.
And then he saw another man, a long-haired hippie type, walk out with an arrogant swing to his hips, and join Jeanine and her small troupe. He pointed a finger at one of the giantish vampires, and another at a Lexus car. The vampire grunted, not being terribly bright, but enormously strong. He scooped up the car, and then tossed it seventy feet in a great arc.
"And wouldn't ya' know it? Just when things were getting good, we die? God sure has a sense of humor doesn't he?" Sister Mary Katherine spoke.
"Don't worry ya' head, there none, little lady." The hippie said with an arrogant smile which brought a withering stare to the sister's face. He turned to the hurtling Lexus, and reached up his hands. The Amish man and the Prophet prayed for him, and he barely grunted as he caught it with his hands.
"You shouldn't throw things like that. Someone might get hurt." He bellowed out. His voice did not sound fit to challenge a hurricane. It was a hurricane. "If you throw it like this, someone will get hurt."
He snapped his arms, and shot the Lexus in a flat shot that sent it scything five feet above the ground through dozens of vampires before it obliterated the giantish creatue who had thrown it in the first place.
"My God gave me a Gift. He said to go out and smash the wicked. You look like the wicked. Now I'm not Solomon, and so my Gift is not Wisdom. My Gift is the Strength of Samson." He roared, and if there had been any T-Rex's in the vicinity, they would have protected their ears for he had vast superhuman strength to power his lungs. And with that, he leapt for the edge of the road where a lamppole minus its light waited forlorn. He considered snapping it off, but it seemed more damaging another way. So he ripped it concrete sidewalk and all out of the ground. In the distant way that some mechanical objects have, the fifty foot tall metal lamp post was glad to have a purpose. It was now a club.
The Prophet spoke.
"Oh, Lord of All, as you slew the firstborn, so slay the eldest abomination of each vampire if they do not turn." And all over the battlefield, there were those who had been the first vampire created by another vampire. With horror, the Master turned to the brilliant and witty friend of his for these last several millenia. Both of them gritted their teeth in denial of the Power. And all over the battlefield, one at a time, some of the brightest and strongest of the vampires turned to dust.
"Turn you, turn you this day. Your wickedness need not hold you any longer." The Prophet declaimed, and he saw many vampires kneel, and die, but these died and were reborn in the Light.
Enraged a half-dozen of the Master's Knights of the Black Sword lunged at the humans on the street. They were faster than the Man with the Club, and besides, he wasn't aiming for anyone in particular. He merely swatted whoever was convenient. And if his pole was not enough, he jumped at them and kicked them in the chest with a crude kick that would have dented a main battle tank. But the Knights fared no better for suddenly around the humans were luminous figures with staffs and crosiers of light, and a being with eyes that had seen more than humans ever could, and they drove the Knights back with terrible losses and scourgings of light and fire. And then the figures were gone, but the Master knew they merely hid from the eyes which thought bothered him obscurely.
He sent some of his chosen assasins, deadly quick, clawed and vicious to deal with the Man with the Club who had changed his weapon. He now used the body of one of the Knights as his weapon of choice and he spun it about his head shattering bones and ripping off faces. Worse, the Knight was still alive, in an undead kind of way. This seemed to amuse the Man with the Club who unlike the Prophet who warned of judgement or the Friend who pled for people to choose well, he never gave thought to mercy.
And then if that was not enough, the Master heard singing come from behind him. It was the Battle Hymn of the Republic which he really, really hated. He had thought to get his claws into America during the Civil War, but instead, he had lost several hundred vampires to Yankee and Confederate vampire hunters. It was the one area where they fully cooperated. And then lightning began to fall from the sky, as the singer from over the hill sang of lightning. And each bolt struck a vampire. Most bolts blew the unfortunate into pieces, but a few were strong enough to withstand the damage. The Master spoke to two with his mind, or tried too.
He reached out his mind, and heard an old woman's voice in his mind. His attention was drawn to an ancient looking grandmother kneeling in the street next to the nun.
"Oh Jesus, I don't know why you put me here. I'm not a warrior like the hippie, or a preacher like Pastor George up there on the building. But I guess I can pray. Oh, Jesus, you can bind up the powers of the evil ones. Turn them back on theirselves. Or is that themselves? Anyways, Jesus. Help us now, we really need it."
And suddenly there was silence in the Master's head. He had not felt the like since he woke temporarily after the Flood. It scared him in a way nothing had for over three thousand years since he had fled from Solomon.
Dry-mouthed, he pointed to two of his tougher ones who had survived lighting bolts and sent them after the singer. With some return to normal, he saw one of his assasins suddenly leap on the hippie's back, and rip out his throat. Which should have killed the man, but he had enough strength, and enough presence of mind to grab the vampire off his back and throw him like a cannonball through a building. The building collapsed, taking several dozen vampires in its fall.
So did the hippie, who fell, dust floating in the air where he had been. Something was wrong, the Master knew it. But his mind could not seem to think clearly with only his barely more than human senses. He could still see in the dark, but he could not reach into the future and snag an answer, nor hear a fly beat its wings at two hundred feet. Curse that prayer warrior, that old woman on her knees. She had wounded him more than realized.
And then he felt a razor sharp blade at his neck. And he heard the Bible Quoter reciting the description of the events in Sodom where the angels had blinded the mob to the door.
"God wills it that you do not see what He does not wish you to see." The Bible Quoter smiled softly in his voice. "Now call off your people." Behind them, they heard the song change to "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" and the Master knew that the duo he had sent, some of his stronger, had failed.
The battle halted. Everyone turned to stare at him, and he giggled.
"You fools. You poor deluded fools. You think what you did mattered here. While we fought I sent messages to my subordinates in other lands. Kill the last of them. Then come here." He smiled despite the razor sharp, no more than razor sharp, blade at his throat. "Jeanine, you are the last human alive on the Planet Earth." He waved a hand, and suddenly the blade was away from his throat. A quiet stepping vampire had the Bible Quoter in a full nelson, and another had a hand over his mouth so that he could quote no Scripture.
Jeanine fell to the ground. She knew the Truth when she heard it. Some said it was a special thing. She prayed out loud, in Tongues, and while praises fell from her tongue, so did an acknowledgement of prophecy fulfilled. The Prophet nodded for he too had a Gift of the Spirit. He had the interpretation of Tongues.
He tore his jacket and wept bitterly. The Master laughed.
"Soon, you and whoever, whatever these are will be dead."
"True enough." Said a tall, thin man who stepped from the same building back up the street that so many others had.
"Now what?" The Master cried exasperated.
"I have no great number of abilities. I am not fearless and full of love like our Friend. Nor do I have the authority to use holy water like Sister Mary Katherine. I have no particular Gifts of the Spirit that I'm aware of, and as for special Gifts like Solomon's Wisdom or Strength like Samson's, well, I have a hard time deciding between hamburgers and hot dogs, and toting a golf bag is tough on me. I have a disease that saps my strength. Luckily, I'm an immortal verser,a nd so I didn't have to trade the sun and my soul for immortality."
He paused, and coughed. For some reason, everyone held still in deadly silence. Fear of the unknown gripped them. This man seemed afraid and yet unafraid.
"I'm not a prophet who can call down fire, but like him, I'd ask you to repent." His voice lacked force, but the offer seemed sincere if dry as dust. "The last time I sang, by cat clawed me in the face. I know little of the Bible, often not quoting it accurately."
The Bible Quoter laughed to himself. He sometimes had found himself doing that too in his battles. His laughter discomfited the vampires holding him.
"I pray, but unlike Granny Leggings, God doesn't seem that close. Oh, I know He's there, but I only hear from Him from very far away, and quite infrequently."
"I don't hear Him that well. I knew someone who did. He took every step in the full assurance that he knew exactly what God wanted him to do." Granny Leggins called from her kneeling position. The tall, thin man nodded courteously back.
"So..."
"What?" The Master snapped.
"Do you give up?"
"Let me think about it. A few humans, and fifty million vampires. Hmmm, no." A great gust of laughing rose from the vampires. It swirled up to the stars and touched the edge of Heaven. The man waited for a long moment, and one vampire raced forward and touched the Friend's hand, and vanished. Another long minute, and then the man sighed, and pulled a golden trumpet out of his backpack.
"What is that?" The Master asked disturbed.
"Just something I picked up in the ruins of another Earth. Its called the Trump of the End."
The Master flung himself forward faster than thought, but even though he was but two hundred feet from the Man with the Trumpet, he would never have been close enough, never fast enough. The Decision had been made, the Curtain was already falling.
The Man blared out a loud cry, and the Singer over the hill paused. And then the Man began to play soft and slow,a nd faltering with little skill, but with tears in his eyes, he began to play Taps for Earth. And out in the asteroid belt, hundreds of rocks began to move. The vampires surged, and all the versers died, and so did Jeanine. She did not become a verser. She stood before her Maker a mere twenty seconds later. Two weeks later, the rocks smashed into the planet at a quarter of lightspeed. It took nearly an hour for the last vampire to die.
Two years later, an alien starship came through the system, and noticed the heavily cratered planet which was lacking a biosphere as the asteroid strike had torn off the atmosphere.
"A good spot for a base, I'd think." The Science Officer said to his Captain who nodded and then turned to his Guidance Officer.
"O Maker of All, what should we do?" The Guidance Officer prayed. He looked up startled. "He said we should put out a 'Do Not Approach' buoy, and use the red planet instead."
"Okay." The Captain said. "Make it so, Helm."
