I come to a set of double doors that must lead to Vick's inner sanctum. Not sure what's behind it. Vampire, probably a few indoctrinated, gun-toting followers loyal to the death.
I always wondered what it'd feel like to be the ATF.
I push open the doors, revealing a chalk white man at the end of a large room, smiling and yelling in a thick southern accent.
"Welcome, my sister!"
He tilts his head back, several plague victims shuffling around his feet.
"I see you have been enlightened! Are you searching for something? Do you seek the truth? You've come to the right place, sister." He cackles, only somewhat madly. "We've got more truth than we can handle!"
"And you wouldn't happen to be Bishop Vick, would you?"
"I am the Shepard of the Damned, your midnight guide through our last days here on earth. Do you
feel it sister? The curtain being drawn back at last, drawn back by my hand, by the Brotherhood of the Ninth Circle!"
"Gehenna, right? You're one of those judgment day cults."
"Gehenna? Judgment Day? Oh again, sister, you are too indoctrinated into the antiquated beliefs of this material world. There is no rhyme or reason, no all-powerful and terrible gods who wait to rise and devour their children."
"So you're spreading this disease to make your
own apocalypse because you're a fruit loop. I get it."
"
You would talk of disease? What about the disease that you and I both carry, our flesh remade into nothing more than an abomination, feeding on our brothers and sisters like so many cattle? What
god watched over me when that demon tore into my neck and made me into this monster you see before you?"
"Not a very good one."
"There is NO god who would tolerate such a thing. So I have
become God, and the diseases I carry to the masses will bring about an end of my own making, until we have
all journeyed below into the Ninth Circle."
"You're going
somewhere, don't worry about that."
"The time for words has come and gone, dear sister. You and I will take those last steps together, and see what truth lies behind the curtain. Let the night fall forever on this cursed earth, and let the fruits of my labor bring a long and bloody harvest!"
Vick starts to glow a bright purple as the diseased start shambling towards me, still dimly controlled by their master's will.
The air's shattered by a shotgun blast and I can almost feel the buckshot whizzing past my face. Goddamn it. Shotguns are trouble. Vick ducks underneath a low hanging wall of rubble and I take cover behind a mostly-destroyed outcropping. We take turns popping out of cover and exchanging fire. most of his shots missing, most of mine landing but doing little.
Eventually I start to wear him down, and Vick realizes I'm not going to run out of ammo anytime soon. He ducks back under cover and after a moment I see his hand jerk up, flaming bottle launching from it. Shit.
Shit. Fucker's going to burn the whole place down and kill us all. I charge out of cover as the molotov lands and Vick stands, firing a solid slug into my stomach.
I keep charging and unloading into him. Probably the stupidest thing I've done in a while, but
damn it I'm not going near that fire.
I grab Vick's shotgun and walk past the dying fire. Room must be damp as hell. I walk down the stairs past the dead and even more aimless living until I reach the bottom of the building. I tell the girl who'd been waiting to be summoned that Vick was dead and it was time to leave. I escort her outside the building before dumping Vick's shotgun in a dumpster near Tin Can Bill.
Turns out bullet resistant glass isn't that resistant to four rapid blasts of buckshot.
She thanks me as I leave her to wander home. Ninth Circle dead, plague more or less ended...
...time to reap what I've sown.