What if the COVID Vaccine was a covert government project to eliminate Vampires by degrading their human-food-sourced blood supply? What if it was bungled by Fauci and the National Health Agency bureaucrats – and now Vampires want payback?
At 5:45PM on Friday the 13th I’m pulling the locked front door of my small Cape Cod house in Tabernacle, NJ shut behind me. I’m early but I figure I’ll wait outside for my ride to arrive. I look like an undertaker – Brooks Brothers pinstripe suit, starched blue shirt and subdued burgundy print tie. New black Johnson & Murphy dress oxfords are pinching my feet like sin as I try to break them in. I’m wrapped in traditional tan English Trenchcoat. It feels good – temperatures in the Pine Barrens have clipped freezing every day for the past week. I’m feeling ambivalent about this whole cloak-and-dagger event and just going through the motions out of curiosity. Frankly, I’d rather be watching an old movie and sipping scotch without these goddamn shoes on.
I no sooner turn away from rattling the front foor knob to make sure it’s locked than I hear a vehicle turn onto my gravel driveway and stop.
My ride to the Jesuit soiree. About seventy-five feet away from me a new, black Chevrolet Suburban awaits, idling by the looks of the vapor coming out of its tailpipe. I can’t quite see the driver behind the fully tinted glass but I start towards it . It’s an imposing “Secret Service” type vehicle – the kind the President and Rap Artists use. Hip-Hop formal.
I take a few steps and I see the driver’s door open. A dark Asian woman gets out – short black hair and sunglasses. Looks like she’s going to open a rear door for me. She’s dressed in a tight-fitting black pantsuit and trashy boots. She’s got high facial bones and a rough complexion. Thin, humorless mouth. Blood red finger nails – on the long side. What we’d call “lunch hooks” back in the day. Not a dame you want to bring home to Mama. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s wearing an ankle monitor.
I’m not impressed. I recall the text message: “……Ms. Katrina Kozub, your driver, will be your escort for the entirety of the event……” Trailer-park Catwoman here don’t look like no Katrina Kozub…..and if there’s been a change in plans nobody told me about I sure as Hell don’t want her company for the evening. Screw this sheit. I’m outta’ here…
I grab my left wrist as if I’m feeling for a watch. I pull up my shirt cuff –
“Damn! Hold on a second there, Pal…..I forgot my watch!” I call out cautiously trying to pivot back towards my front door. A strange twitch in my gut is becoming more insistant. I thinkin’ I need some distance….
I catch out of my side vision the driver remains standing there – she’s apparently OK with me going back for my watch…….
The text I received expressly made wearing of any jewelry verboten.
This “escort-driver” obviously didn’t get the memo. She drives for the Jesuits? Something ain’t right here. Time to go.
My stomach churns a little with each step I make back towards my front door. If I can only open it – in the coat closet next to where I enter I’ve got a Springfield 12 Gauge side by side riot gun with shells belted to it. Slugs. Enough to cut a human torso in half……Cops call it a “Street Howitzer”. Very pursuasive. Even to skanks driving land yachts. Just in case.
Four paces.….I’m picking up my roll a bit. My front door key almost slips out of my right hand to the gravel below…..
I’m starting to hop up my three front porch steps when all Hell breaks loose. Just behind me another vehicle is barreling towards my ass, seemingly outta’ nowhere – fish-tailing and skidding on gravel, engine screaming. I turn to see a black Mercedes Benz sedan – enveloped in clouds of road dust – skidding to stop at a right angle across the front of the Chevrolet Suburban. The Mercedes’ driver’s door bursts open even before the vehicle comes to a full stop……it’s driver – a blonde woman also in black – leaps out and faces off the other driver.
Blondie’s got Glock and is drawing a bead on the other lady’s brain, dead on. Her finger is on the trigger. It’s a cinch shot…..and I’m sure she’s got more rounds locked and loaded.
I freeze where I stand.
No words are spoken by anyone. Minutes pass.. I feel like I gotta’ piss real bad. This is the moment shit’s gonna’ go down….and I got nowhere to hide behind or dive down into……if lead flies, I’m exposed as Hell ….I’m literally holding my breath….
Finally, the Suburban driver holds up both of her palms – and eases herself back into the truck’s drivers seat. She slowly backs the vehicle onto Tuckerton Road across my scrubby, sorry excuse for a lawn. She pulls away screeching the tires and spitting my gravel everywhere.
Mercedes Benz Blondie turns towards me and tucks the Glock back somewhere under her suit jacket. A murk of dust still hovers in the air from her NASCAR-like arrival. She looks annoyed. There’s no delicate femininty about her – she’s handsome, exuding an “all business”, hard-core vibe. Charlize Theron, she ain’t.. Her body is athletic, limber in a feline and predatory kind of way. Everything about her screams “ready”….. This broad ain’t no driver.
“Can we get underway, Mr. Croft?” She asks in a calm, clipped tone.
There’s a hint of an accent. I nod and start towards the Mercedes.
By the time I get there, she’s already holding a rear door open for me. I thank her and settle in. The car smells of leather and newness. It eats up roadway like a combat fighter plane. My driver is silent, focused on her task.
I take the rear right-hand passenger seat – so I can see a bit out the front windshield and study my escort-companion for the night. Although Mozart imperceptibly wafts through the car, an awkward silence permeates it’s interior. That business in the driveway has shaken me pretty good. Some answers would be nice right about now.
“I should introduce myself properly…..” I finally say, trying to act cool and collected. “I’m Jon Croft…you, I presume, are Katrina Kozub?”
“Yes, Mr. Croft.” She looks straight ahead. “You may call me Katrina.”
She knows the route she is driving by heart. She’s not following any GPS on board map. It’s when she makes a rather extreme right hand turn onto Rt. 295 and her left hand moves to the right as the steering wheel spins I see it. The top of her left hand has a small Orthodox Cross tatoo’d on it.
I’ve seen this before.
When she turns her head again I see that she has a jagged scar extending a couple of inches from her right lip up her cheek. Makeup obscures this defect – but it’s too deep an injury to hide. It must have been a hideous wound before it was stitched. Looks like it’s from shrapnel. There’s clearcoat on her short fingernails. Everything about her is manicured and tidy – but unpretentious and tactical. Her movements are precise. She is understatement personified. No doubt about it – she’s military.
I cut to the chase.
“Where did you serve?” I ask as nonchalantly as I can. My tone is conversational…I don’t want to be perceived as interrogating the woman.
We reach the Tocony bridge at that exact moment. Katrina touches a dashboard screen and – after a single ring tone – announces the word “Bridge” into the silence that follows. As we head over the Delaware river leaving New Jersey and entering Philadelphia she glances back at me and responds to my question.
“I fought with the Serbs in the Bosnia-Herzgovina…and in Syria”, She says..
She’s not resisting my conversation, so I push forward.
“And your rank?” I ask, genuinely interested.
“Major – by the time I left….”
“And you are….a Serb?”
“I was born in the eastern regions of the Czech Republic but do not identify as Czech….it’s complicated.” Katrina is being careful not to divulge her ethnic loyalties. She obviously is used to dancing around this issue.
“And you’re Orthodox…..” I continue, hoping to milk this thread for all it’s worth but also lock onto something in common. “My mother was Russian Orthodox – as am I……small world!”
I see a small smile form to the left of her scar.
“Monsieur Hakan Olson-Nyberg sends his regards…” she says with a gentle informality “He said you’d know what that means….tonight your transportation and security – and my company – is courtesy of the NordTurVerein”
I’m shocked. Her comment pins me back in the leather seat for an instant.
“Hack?” I respond. “Yes…Yes….I know what it means…..” My voice fades into a whisper as I try to grasp how in Hell “Hack” and the NTV could be involved in any of this….I’m cooked. Frazzled.
A big, fat realization hits me like a hot knife in my ribs.
“I’m in some kinda’ deep shit here….that other driver wasn’t in my driveway to entertain me….. What in God’s name is goin’ on……..?”
I fairly blurt out my next question, too flummoxed for niceties or propriety –
“So…you’re Varang?”
“Yes, Mr. Croft. I am Varang…..” Her voice is surprisingly tender. She obviously dosen’t want me to perceive her as a threat.
A while ago I wrote a Blog piece called Towards a Tribal Future. It dealt with what I’d learned while helping a friend of mine – Hakan Olson-Nyberg – consummate a sale of a particularly valuable document that he’d had custody of. “Hack” told me of certain extra-national polities (translated: Tribes ) that exist in our world. Tribes with unfathomable wealth, power and influence that have no nationality except their blood ties – and loyalty to no country per se.
My dear friend “Hack” is scion of a Nordic group whose pedigree and affluence date back centuries. Theirs is a world of abundance, prosperity and unlimited resources – but also violence and never-ending struggles against other “entities” that deign to displace them from their worldy preeminence on top of the feeding chain. Nordic authority is under constant attack. The stakes are incalculable. And at the core of it all is blood. A tribal ethos that spans the centuries and cements each Nordic soul – male and female – into one indominable monolith.
When Nordic “tribesmen” (for want of a better term) need extra muscle they call on their ally – a warrior clan dating back to Rurik the Great and the Eighth century Viking settlers of old Rus: Varangians. Loyal, militant, fierce in battle. Modern Trojans, actually – raised to be fighters. They, too, are of one blood. Over time they’ve taken the name Varang.
If my friend Hack arranged for this woman to accompany me tonight, he must have had a whopper of a reason. To assign me – not a member of his Tribe – to the protection of a Varang soldato was (I’m certain) unprecedented.
But it was a touching gesture, too. Just thinking of him in years past tooling around South Jersey in his mint condition 1967 Porsche 911S, gray hair blowing in the wind, made me smile. He’d attended the best schools, always dressed like a gentleman to the mannor born and always wore a smile on his face. Hack was a real character and hero of mine. A genteel soul you didn’t find anymore in this graceless age.
But what kind of shit did I step in here? Why would Hack go out on a limb to cover my ass tonight? Bend his own tribal rules? What was he shielding me from? Evil Jesuit Priests? How did he know I was even in a predicament? Did Katrina have answers? My obvious – and ponderous – silence prompted her to speak up.
“All will be made clear” she said emphatically, reading my mind. She didn’t take her eyes off the road.
I didn’t respond. We were finally slowing down, getting into a queue of other impressive vehicles – all new and black – and all creeping towards an open courtyard near Old St. Joseph’s Church in Philadelphia. Overhead lights flooded the impressively walled expanse and I could see all kinds of well-dressed people exiting their cars, making their way towards an alley at the back of the old site.
Even though the Church architecture was archaic it was festooned with security cameras and modern illumination. The wrought-iron gates that were folded open to admit the vehicles and guests were massive and looked old-world hand-crafted. Even the wrought-iron spikes atop the brick exterior walls were imposing. The place was a fortress. Renovations alone to this historical site must have cost millions of dollars.
A tower – probably dating back to 1733 when the Church was Consecrated – had incorporated into it an imposing assortment of microwave antennae panels and superstructure. These NASA-grade communication arrays sprouted from the Colonial-era tower bricks on high like some kind of sci-fi mechanical vegetation out of a Phillip K. Dick story. Blade Runner or Man in the High Tower stuff.
We finally pulled inside the Courtyard and got out. Dark-suited trim valets were scurrying about, jockying cars to some off-site location. Katrina surrendered her keys and was handed what looked like a beeper – when we wanted to leave she’d presumably press a “call” function to have our vehicle returned and waiting. All very posh and civilized. Of course, the “beeper” would keep track of us, too. Since nobody was supposed to have cell phones, this was a clever little artifice.
Guests were being funneled towards an attendant with a radar paddle device doing a once-over for weapons. I momentarily wonder – what about Katrina’s Glock? But she seems unperturbed…..
Just in time, an athletic looking, dark-suited priest – his collar gave him away – approached us looking like he was on a mission and intervened. He’d obviously been given advance notice of our arrival. His manner was jovial and welcoming but businesslike.
“Ah…Mr. Croft – and Ms. Kozub – so nice to meet you. ” He said, hand extended. His smile spoke volumes in favor of the Vatican Dental Plan. “My name is Nathan. Would you both follow me, please….”
Easing into her role, Katrina took my arm and walked beside me. She move with practiced grace and poise. Our respective heights didn’t conflict and we looked properly matched for a couple on a “date”. Her specially tailored and buttoned suit jacket obscured her Glock automatic……and I was glad she still had it. She wore tasteful slacks complemented by black ankle boots with stacked-heels – just high enough to make her legs look sexy but not too high to crimp her “tactical” persona. Christian Louboutin six inch pumps would’ve crimped her martial arts readiness. And those red soles? Too provocative to waste on Jesuits.
Nathan escorted us through a brightly lit, well-worn alley between two red-brick buildings and we emerged about one hundred feet later into yet another Courtyard. Bright lights flooded the scene. Sounds of live Jazz and laughter drifted from open patio windows in a Colonial mansion that we were being led to. Sprinkled throughout were men in dark suits with earpieces who stood unobtrusively or wandered with eyes peeled…for what I didn’t know.
A door attendant checked our names off his list and Nathan, dutifully standing by, ushered us finally into the festivities. He parted our company with a jaunty “enjoy your evening” and melted into group of other preist-collared, good-looking young men. The palatial ballroom was fillled with guests of all stripes, all dressed to the nines. What was really wonderful was that nobody was staring at – or blabbing into – their cell phones. Conversation and interaction was driving this event. Like a dinner party in old Film Noir detective flick.
I looked into Katrina’s eyes.
“Let’s find a quiet corner and catch a drink, OK?”
She smiled with her face slightly cocked to her right – probably an unconscious reflex motion to hide her facial scar.
“Sounds lovely…” She said.
As far a dates go, this was workin’ out just fine. And it felt good to be in the company of somebody who obviously had a unique skill set…just in case.
Copyright, 2023 – Jon Croft
Graphic courtesy of Wikipedia
