Vampire Faces Zombie Apocalypse

Night fell, bathing the South Dakotan landscape in eerie darkness. Freshly fallen snow littered the land, blanketing nearly everything. It was cold that night, even for that part of used to be the United States of America. The country no longer existed, just like most of the world's nations. To have a country, one needs land, population and government. Two out of those three criterions for nationhood have been rendered moot by the flesh-eating Zombies, who rendered population and government non-existent.

"Those things are getting smarter," Owen Stephenson said to himself, watching through binoculars as the Zombies swarmed over the modest human settlement, all that remained of the City of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. This latest band of soon-to-be former survivors numbered forty or so, ordinary men and women who'd banded together to survive the Zombie Apocalypse. They'd hidden inside a Walmart, the one on the edge of town, and fortified it to prevent human marauders and the Undead from coming inside.

Owen had been observing this particular settlement for some time, and he'd seen some of them come back injured from a hunting party. They were doomed the moment they brought their dying friends into the stronghold. At the onset of the Zombie apocalypse, everyone thought that only those who got bitten by Zombies would be turned, and everyone was wrong. These days, any ordinary man or woman who dies, in whatever manner, will rise as a Zombie unless their brain is destroyed to prevent reanimation.

"Poor shmucks," Owen said quietly, and he quickly surmised what happened. The injured hunters reanimated after their deaths, and infected the whole compound. If Owen's non-beating heart could still feel pity, it would have been saddened over the destruction of what was left of his hometown. If only it still beat, of course. Unfortunately, becoming a Vampire meant ridding himself of a lot of human foibles, such as sentimentality, and that penchant for daytime activities.

Six feet four inches tall, broad-shouldered and strongly built, with caramel-hued skin, piercing brown eyes and somewhat unkempt dreadlocks, clad in a long black overcoat over a black T-shirt featuring Malcolm X and blue jeans, still ripped from his days as an NCAA football player, Owen Stephenson definitely cut an imposing figure. It was his native toughness that allowed him to weather the often-traumatic transformation one undergoes as one turns into a Vampire, and gave him a change to thrive in a hostile world.

The towering Vampire scanned the darkness, and did not like what he saw. Nevertheless, once upon a time, Sioux Falls was the place that a young mortal man named Owen Stephenson called home. He first saw the light of day here, and it was also the last place where the sun's rays touched his skin. He was born here, the result of an unlikely romance between Jaffer Stephenson, a farmhand originally from Jamaica, and Lily Cagney, a young white woman who elicited much scandal by falling in love with, and subsequently marrying the handsome foreigner.

Owen Stephenson and his parents led a tumultuous life in Sioux Falls, which was no bedrock of racial tolerance even in the 1980s. Unlike a lot of towns in the Midwest, or the Prairies regions in general, Sioux Falls took the progressive route on civil rights and racial relations in the 1960s. That didn't mean that people wouldn't have a problem with a tall, dark-skinned Caribbean man with an accent marrying a blonde-haired local young white woman, just two decades after racial segregation became outlawed. The Stephenson couple was seen as pushing social boundaries, and set a lot of local tongues a-wagging.

Owen lived his whole life in Sioux Falls, and grew up in a world where people stared at his Poppa and Momma for being an interracial couple, and for having him, of course. The four percent of the local population which was African American wasn't totally welcoming towards Owen and his parents, but they were fixtures at Mount Harmon Methodist, the local black church. Among its five hundred or so congregants, Owen and his folks found a second family, of sorts.

When Owen turned eighteen, he seriously thought about attending college far from home, someplace like Boston or Los Angeles, but lacked the funds. Thusly, Owen attended Augustana University on a football scholarship, graduating with a business degree in 2009 at the age of twenty three. Yeah, Sioux Falls was his home alright, and he died here. And thanks to the Vampire virus circulating in his veins, keeping him in that sundry place between life and death, he'd been reborn here.

A decade and a half later, the whole world went to hell. The dead began to rise, for reasons unknown, craving the flesh of the living. With so many television shows and movies whose plots involved the flesh-eating dead, such as World War Z, The Walking Dead, iZombie, and others, one would think that ordinary men and women living in Western society would know what to do when Zombies became a real problem. And one would have been dead wrong, pun intended.

As a Vampire, Owen was just as affected by the Zombie problem as anyone else, if not more so. The Zombies were a big problem. They uprooted the Vampires as the top predators on the planet earth. They were everywhere, munching on the humans, and drastically reducing the Vampires food supply. The Vampires absolutely despised the Zombies for dethroning them.

The Zombie problem continued to expand, and thanks to their foolishness, the humans were unable to curtail the problem. All the humans had to do was stop being sentimental, isolate the infected and exterminate them. Destroying the brain always worked best. Sadly, they couldn't even be bothered to do even that. Owen and his kind went out to slay the Zombies when it became evident that humanity's combination of foolishness, emotionality and lack of preparation spelled doom for everyone. Sadly, they were overwhelmed.

As Owen continued to watch the carnage, cool eyes observed him in the pre-dawn darkness. Booted feet stepped through the snowy foliage, moving without anything even resembling a sound. Nevertheless, Owen turned, for the seventh sense that only Vampires possessed allowed him to sense his own kind across great distances. The new arrival stopped ten feet from him, and waited silently.

"Bodies, shambling ones and mortal ones, and not a frigging drop to drink," came a snarky voice, and Owen sighed, though he no longer breathed, and turned to face the new arrival. Nagla Haddad stood there, clad in the neon-yellow workman's vest that she took off a victim, long ago, plus a black tank top and blue jeans. Tall and willowy, with dark bronze skin, long curly dark hair and lively brown eyes, she looked beautiful...and lethal. She was his Maker, and they were locked together for all eternity.

"Well, first comes first served, the Zombies got them, they got here before we did," Owen replied at last, and he handed her the binoculars. Nagla all but snatched them from his grasp, and then took a look at what was supposed to be their new feeding ground. They were growing desperate these days, driven half-mad by their craving for human blood. Owen knew that Nagla last fed five days ago, upon the leader of a pack of human marauders who attacked them in the middle of the night.

"Whatever, you're our leader, find us some food, and fast," Nagla said tersely, and she licked her lips, flashing Owen a fanged smile. Owen sighed, and tried not to roll his eyes. Nagla whistled, and two more silhouettes stepped forward from the darkness. A tall, bald-headed, bearded and dark-skinned African American man in military fatigues, and a short, slender young Asian woman with spiky hair bleached bone-white. Rex and Sasha, the newest members of their little club for post-apocalyptic blood drinkers.

"I didn't find anything in the east," Rex said, his voice gruff and unyielding, and Owen faced the tall, burly soldier-turned-Vampire, whom he turned himself. They first ran into each other during the rise of the living dead, when Owen went to hide from the daylight near a military base where Rex Jackson, USMC corporal, happened to be stationed. A fight ensued when a horde of Zombies swarmed the base, and during the ensuing confusion, Owen saved a badly injured Rex, by turning him into a Vampire.

"This whole land is barren, virtually no humans or animals left, the Zombies have eaten everything," replied Sasha Nguyen, Rex's fellow Vampire and paramour. The young Asian woman, originally from Vancouver, British Columbia, was visiting her fiancé Todd's family in Rapid City, South Dakota, when the dead began to rise. Sasha ran into Owen and Rex as they fled the Zombie-infested military base, and they ended up turning her, to gain an ally and spare her from becoming Zombie food.

"We need to get the hell out of here before daylight," Nagla said tersely, and Owen nodded. He looked at the sky, which, while still dark, was lightening rapidly. The quartet vanished into the darkness, moving at superhuman speed. They found an old warehouse which was mercifully free of both humans and Zombies, and slept in the rafters, as was their custom. They didn't want to risk being found out by human marauders, or mauled by the Zombies, by sleeping on the floor. They were helpless during the daylight hours.

"Sleep tight everybody, I promise we'll find some food tonight," Owen said to his acolytes as they began preparations for the day. Rex and Sasha nodded, but Nagla shot him a dubious look. Bitch needs a hobby, he thought sourly. As the Vampire clan slept away the daylight hours, Owen hugged the metallic pole bisecting the entire warehouse, and lay there, in that strange place between sleep and wakefulness. As he often did nowadays, he thought of his old life, back in Sioux Falls. He dreamed of before, back when he was still human, the dead stayed dead instead of munching on the living, and the world was a much simpler place...

In Owen's dreams, he saw his parents, Jaffer Stephenson and Lily Cagney-Stephenson, aged but happy. The last time he saw them, he'd gone out to get groceries when they saw the news on television, the disturbing news about people coming back from the dead and eating other people. That was the last time he saw his folks, at least, while they were still breathing. When he came back, they were simply gone, and he never learned what happened to them.

Owen thought of his younger days, of his college years, and of Kia Dwyer, the beautiful young Afro-Caribbean woman whom he met during his freshman seminar class. Kia Dwyer, the six-foot-tall, chocolate-hued, curvy and dreadlocked cutie from Panama who simply enchanted him with her smile. From the first time Owen laid eyes on Kia Dwyer, he knew that not only was she special, but they had a destiny together.

"She looks like an angel," Owen whispered to himself, as he watched Kia in class. There were twenty seven students in class, and they were the only non-whites there. An exotically beautiful gal like Kia definitely stood out, and she got a lot of stares, but didn't seem to care. Owen approached her after their first class, and amazingly, he got her number. The two of them began hanging out, and then shortly after that, they began dating. Kia was Owen's first love, and he dreamed of becoming her husband. He never got the chance to propose to her, because of the Zombie apocalypse...

"Welcome to my nightmare," Owen whispered to himself as he tried to sleep, yet even the sun's rays, bathing the landscape outside, couldn't shut his eyes. Memories of Kia Dwyer haunted him, and not the least due to the fact that he never learned what became of her either. A smile slowly creased Owen's face and he rolled onto his back, not the least bit uncomfortable in the rafters, as he thought of Kia as he'd last seen her, in all of her glory...

"I'll see you in a few weeks, don't worry," Kia said to Owen as they stood inside the Sioux Falls Regional Airport, awaiting her flight. From there, she'd fly to Miami, Florida, and then to Panama. Owen held Kia in his arms, marveling at the beautiful young black woman who looked and smelled so enticing. Clad in a black vest over a white blouse, black silk pants and high heels, Kia looked more like a model than an international student about to begin a long flight.

"I can't wait," Owen replied, and he took Kia's face into his hands and kissed. The night before, they'd made passionate love in Kia's off-campus apartment, located on Kiwanis Avenue, not far from the Augustana University campus. Owen sat on the couch, watching a rerun of Smallville on television when he heard Kia clear her throat loudly, and turned to look at her.

"Hey handsome," Kia said, and she stood there, looking so hot with water from the shower cascading down her gorgeously dark skin, a coy smile on her lovely face. The bodacious, chocolate-hued Amazon 'accidentally' dropped her bright pink towel, revealing a curvy body that models and female athletes would envy. Owen's eyes roamed all over Kia's sinfully sexy form, taking note of her big round breasts, her thick and sexy legs, and those curves that wouldn't quit. Without realizing it, Owen held his breath...

"Oh my, Nagla, you're so beautiful," Owen replied, and he got up and went to her, and Kia threw her arms around him and kissed him. They embraced passionately, and didn't even make it to the bedroom. Indeed, they had to make do with the ( fortunately ) carpeted floor. Owen kissed Kia from her head to her toes, and then proceeded to pleasure her. Caressing her firm breasts, he rubbed those big round nipples of hers, and Kia grinned, loving what he was doing to her.

"Go on," Kia said, and she smiled as Owen buried his face between her thick dark and sexy legs, working his tongue into her pussy. Kia moaned softly as Owen teased her clitoris with his tongue, and slid two fingers into her pussy. With great dexterity, he twisted them this way and that, causing the young woman to shudder with pleasure. After giving his sweet lady's pussy a thorough tongue-lashing, Owen put Kia on all fours, and focused on her big beautiful black ass.

"Kia, my darling, your ass is a work of art," Owen whispered, and Kia giggled as he playfully smacked her big dark butt, and then went to work on her. Face down and ass up, Kia relaxed and enjoyed as Owen spread her thick ass cheeks wide open, and began munching on her asshole. While tasting Kia's butt, Owen slid two fingers into her pussy, stimulating both of her holes and driving the lusty young woman absolutely nuts. Kia cried out in pleasure as Owen worked her over. Dammit, he was good...

"Fuck me, babes," Kia murmured, a little while later, as she straddled Owen, and looked into his eyes while stroking his long and thick caramel dick. Owen grinned, and Kia licked her lips, then pumped her hand up and down his shaft, before rubbing his dick head against her wet, hairy mound. Owen bucked his hips and thrust into her, and Kia sighed happily, welcoming him inside of her.

"Give me that sweet ass," Owen said, as he put Kia on all fours, and she began grinding her big ass against his groin as he slammed his dick into her. Kia squealed, and kept her grind game up, as they say, squeezing the hell out of Owen's dick with her vaginal muscles. As the night rolled on, Kia and Owen made passionate love, in many different positions. She craved him just as much as he craved her, and they went at it until all strength left their youthful bodies...

The next day, Owen Stephenson accompanied his girlfriend and fellow Augustana University student Kia Dwyer to the Sioux Falls Regional Airport, and they shared a tearful goodbye. It was the last time they would ever see each other in the flesh. A few weeks after Kia's departure for the Caribbean, the whole world went to hell. When news of the recently dead rising and devouring the flesh of the living popped all over CNN, YouTube and Fox News, Owen didn't believe it. Most people thought it was a hoax, then everyone learnt better...

The Zombie virus spread faster than anyone could have anticipated, and although the U.S. government deployed special tactical units to eliminate the Undead threat, they could not contain it. One by one, the major cities fell. New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, and more. While fleeing from the Zombies, Owen met a remarkable woman, Nagla Haddad and thusly was introduced to the other kind of living dead, the type that walks by night and drinks blood...

Owen took refuge at the so-called sanctuary near Rapid City, along with hundreds of other people. The presence of a full regiment of the South Dakota national guardsmen and women made him feel safe, in spite of the fact that hordes of Zombies roamed the state. Little did he know that he and his fellow wayfarers definitely wouldn't be safe for long. The weakness of all human strongholds is the fact that one Zombie is all it takes to start the plague anew, even in the most secure of enclaves. The enclave fell, and Owen was moments from being torn apart by Zombies, until fate intervened...

"How did you do that?" Owen asked, amazed, as he watched the tall, alluring Middle-Eastern woman wade into a pack of at least seven Zombies, and she tore into them like a knife through butter. When the woman turned, her features were twisted, feral, her eyes were bright red, and she licked her lips, revealing a mouth filled with curving fangs. And then he blinked, and the lady suddenly looked totally normal, making Owen wonder if he'd imagined the whole thing.

"You shouldn't have seen me, little thing," Nagla said, and then she came for Owen, all red eyes, twisted face and sharp teeth. Owen tried to flee, but Nagla grabbed him and lifted him in the air like a person lifting a rag doll. Owen gasped, struggling for breath in the woman's inhumanly strong grasp. Nagla looked into his eyes, and amazingly, Owen held her gaze.

"Such power," Owen croaked, even as his vision began to blur, due to lack of oxygen. Nagla looked at him, and appeared to be considering his words. A wicked smile crept into her feral, yet beautiful face, and then she put him down. Owen fell on the ground, and looked up at her. The feral woman then pounced on him and then sank her fangs into his neck. In that moment, Owen left the world behind. When he awoke, twenty four hours later, Owen was...changed. Nagla turned him into a Vampire, and from that moment on, he was Immortal...

"Welcome to a whole new world," Nagla said to Owen, the night when he rose, as a newbie Vampire. Owen looked at her, and smiled. As they roamed the night together, he saw the world as he'd never seen it before. To him, darkness was as clear as daylight. A Vampire's eyes worked better than night vision goggles. Owen soon discovered that he craved the blood of living things to fuel his super-powered body, for it was from blood that he derived his superhuman strength, uncanny speed and accelerated ability to self-heal. Everything comes with a price...

"Thank you for this dark and wonderful gift," Owen said to a smiling Nagla, after he'd fed on his first human, a hapless young blonde woman who had come to their camp on the night of his rising. The young woman came in from the forest, fleeing the Zombies that had slaughtered her family. Little did the poor gal know that she'd stumbled upon a whole different species of Undead monster, one which craved her blood, not her flesh...

"You're a magnificent killer, come to me," Nagla said to Owen, flashing him a fanged smile. The lady oozed sexuality and danger, plus the feral power that was hers to do with as she wished. Nagla clucked her tongue at Owen, and the nascent Vampire did as he was told. Nagla took his face into her hands and kissed him, and then, just like that, they began making love. Doing away with the prudishness that often held back their mortal counterparts, the two monsters stripped naked, and fucked on the snowy forest floor...