Prompt; vampire in the apocalypse
I was NOT expecting this, in the least. I thought about it last night though and I came up with something I think you might like. Warning for body horror, objectification of human bodies, and suicidal ideation
He’d been hungry before. Hell, he’d starved before, far past thelimits of what would kill a man if he had been living at all. He hadbeen a ravenous monster, his body deformed, his eyes the color offresh bruises as the skin sloughed from his hands to make them long,narrow claws. He’d been trapped away then, too disgusting, had tobe destroyed, but there was nothing that anyone knew how to do inthose days beside lock him away.
It had taken adecade for his body to recover, a century for his mind.
He was shaking. Hisstomach was an empty pit. His ribs were jutting out and he wheezedwith each step. His hair was thinning and matted. He was stillstrong, but strong like a dog that plans to bite the hand that forgotto feed it for the past week. He didn’t know about his face,couldn’t see it, but he could imagine how gaunt he had become, howterrible.
He scoured thewasteland. He was always scouring the wasteland. He’d gone fromcity to city, or the ruins of them, looking. Looking for something toeat, looking for something that could kill him, looking for someother survivor. He’d made it this long on supermarkets, where themutated rats would gather to eat the remnants of humanity. They werell that was left, other than a few birds that he couldn’t hope tocatch.
He was carrion.
He had decimated thepopulation of three cities. Devouring the cancerous blood of all ofthe citizens, all of the small furry things that used to be calledpests. It had been four cities since he’d last seen another likehimself. He had killed her, done her a kindness, just as he had allof those before.
Back when they wereplenty, at the beginning of all this, when the war was won by thedead, their kind had slowly picked themselves back up, piecedthemselves back together, and made communities. It was the first timethey’d been able to, since the humans didn’t like when there wasmore than one vampire within a hundred miles of another. It had madethem nervous, made them too aware. So this was the first and tensionwas high and the food supply was low, dwindling by the day. They wereeating the remnants, sucking down hospital supplies and what animalsthey could find, until there was nothing left. And then they startedto starve.
Suicide wasn’t anoption. For most types of vampire it took a lot more than slit wristsor hanging to get the job done. They had to ask for help. They had tonail one another down with stakes, burn their own hands as they cutoff heads and filled them with garlic cloves, as they cut the bodiesinto pieces and tossed them into the sludgy, polluted water. Therewas no dignity in it, but it was better than becoming one of thoseRemnants.
He had always pickedthe short straw.
He had killed somany of his own kind that, at the end of it, there was no one left tokill him in return. So he wandered, day and night, wearing the cloaksof his friends, one on top of the other, stacked thick, to protecthis skin from the terrible sun. The ozone layer was practically goneand the sun would destroy him, turn him to ash, faster than it everwould have before, but then the moon would come out and he would beforced to put himself together again.
He’d seen ithappen before. Seen a lot of people try to end themselves that way.They didn’t survive coming back all the way, someone had alwaysbeen kind enough to kill them, to end the misery of their nervesstitching back together over the exposed bone.
There was no moremercy in this place. There was no more anything.
He didn’t have amap. He didn’t have anything to know where he was going. He doubtedthat a map would have helped anyway. So many of the cities had beenwiped out, just the foundations visible, from the missiles, thatheading towards anything specific was a waste of energy. He wentmostly by his sense of smell. It was stronger now, he could smell ifthere was blood miles away. It wasn’t congested by all of the lifearound him and it was honed by his hunger. He had smelled a lot ofit, coming from a direction that he assumed to be east.
By now it was sostrong, so thick, that he was moving at a half jog. He hadn’tsmelled something so strongly in a while, it was like a buffet, likethere was just so much food in the distance that he was salivating,his pupils dilating to take over the bruised whites of his eye. Therewas a hill ahead and he climbed it, gladly, knowing that there wouldbe food on the other side, juicy and wet and waiting for him.
He bellowed in painas the bolt struck him, wood and silver, shredding through hisshoulder. Fire tore through him, first from the silver and then fromthe sun, his skin, exposed from the hole, burning away, turning toash. The bolt fell to the ground at his feet. He covered the holewith one gloved hand, glaring at the sound of a crossbow beingreloaded.
There was a woman,with a crossbow, a bandanna over her face and goggles over her eyes,a scarf keeping her hair close. She was sensitive to the sun as wellbut she wasn’t like him. She was human. She was a buffet wrapped inclothe. He was salivating.
Behind her he couldhear people moving, more weapons coming out. He would have to movefast, dispatch them, bind them and force them healthy so that hecould feed. He could live forever, until the next lifeforms took overthe planet, as long as he kept this little group of survivors,huddled and hiding in the ruins of a city, alive and breeding.
Or, if he was lucky,they would kill him right then.