"Hmm, this is delicious, I love Type-A blood," Adriel Brown said to himself, as he savored the last drops of blood in the survivor's body, before discarding the cooling corpse. Normally, like most conscientious Vampires, Adriel would snap the corpse's neck to make sure that it did not reanimate. In a world full of Zombies, however, he had to amend this habit, and brought a heavy rock down on the corpse's skull instead.
The person whose blood Adriel had just drunk, a red-haired, plump Caucasian woman in her early forties, was finally dead for good. Destroy the brain and you destroy the man, woman, or creature, for good. In a world gone mad, there were very few absolutes left, but this was definitely one of them. No force on the planet Earth, Vampire or Zombie, could bring her back. Adriel had lured her and her companions out of their Zombie-proof hideout by pretending to be a lost survivor in need of shelter. The nameless woman's single moment of altruism had been her undoing...
Six feet two inches tall, broad-shouldered and beefy, with long, thick and dark dreads, and clad in a long Black leather overcoat, faded green sweatshirt and Black jeans, his feet encased in well-worn Black cowboy boots, Adriel cut an imposing figure. Dark-skinned, handsome, and with a roguish air, he'd always been a strong man, and becoming a Vampire had made him immensely powerful. A power that hadn't waned, not even in the dark days since the whole world went to Hell...
Since the Zombies began to rise, craving the flesh of the living, life had been nothing but Hell for the race of the Vampires. The bloodthirsty Undead had long understood that a predator who exhausts his or her food supply will face extinction. The Zombies don't seem to understand any of that. Nor were they capable of anything resembling sentient thought, though some of the fresher Zombies did have their moments.
Adriel Brown had roamed the world for quite some time, ever since he encountered an ancient Arawak Vampire named Talok while fleeing from British slavers on the island of Jamaica in 1817. Adriel was thirty years old when he crossed the threshold separating mundane humanity from the dark realm of the Vampires. Talok's blood transformed Adriel into a powerful Vampire, one gifted with strength, speed and resilience far beyond his years...
Inspired by the successful African revolution against the French colonial powers on the nearby island of Haiti, the Maroons of Jamaica fought against the British colonial powers, and Adriel was at the forefront of the battle. To the Maroons, Adriel became something of a legend, the Blood Prince. The one who did not fear the British soldiers guns, or the hangman's noose. For, like the night, he always come back...
After Adriel became a Vampire, he used his newfound supernatural powers to aid his fellow Maroons in the ongoing conflict against the British colonial forces, and their struggle didn't end until 1838, when slavery was officially abolished in Jamaica. In 1907, Adriel journey to Freetown, Sierra Leone, where he stayed until 1977. Adriel returned to Jamaica that year, and was visiting friends in London, England, in 2017, when everything went wrong. Zombies rose, causing chaos and threatening human and Vampire alike...
"We're going to need a lot more than these stragglers if we hope to make it to next spring," came a voice, and Adriel turned around and smiled at his companion, Zineb Jaber. The tall, slender, bronze-skinned and raven-haired female Vampire, originally from Morocco, shot Adriel a wuthering look. They'd been together since before the Zombie Apocalypse, and while they were more than allies but less than friends, Zineb's presence continued to annoy Adriel at times.
"Says the woman who killed three and glutted on their blood, leaving a brother with bare scraps to feed on," Adriel shot back, and Zineb smiled and shrugged. They'd been roaming the remnants of a nuclear-ravaged London, England, wandering under the darkened, ash-filled skies for ages without finding anything to feed on beside stray cats and packs of marauding dogs that now roamed the vast, and mostly dead, metropolis.
"Oh come on, Adriel, these are the first humans we've seen in weeks, I couldn't help myself," Zineb replied, and she shot Adriel a wink, which caused him to roll his eyes. Feeding on animals was something he did out of necessity. The animals had become plentiful lately, since many of them learned to steer clear of the hordes of mindless, flesh-eating monsters which their former owners had become. Animal blood was fine, but human blood was...something else.
"Zineb, you're young, so perhaps you haven't figured out that we must eat to live, not live to eat," Adriel said, shaking his head. Not for the first time, Adriel wondered why he bothered with the nascent Vampire. Zineb had been created mere years before the Zombie Apocalypse, and still lamented the loss of the old world. Oh, and she hadn't figured out the new, ahem, blood economics of the new world. In a world where humans were scarce, and Zombies were plentiful, Vampires could ill afford to be gluttons...
"Dude, you sound like my grandpa used to," Zineb laughed, and Adriel watched as she tentatively poked the smashed skull of the human on which he'd fed with the tip of her boot. So much for respect for the dead, Adriel thought grimly. He was so wrapped up in his dark musings that the stench of the Zombies almost caught him by surprise. Sniffing the air, he whirled around, and Zineb shot him a puzzled look. Before they knew it, they were surrounded by...them.
Zombies, long considered the stuff of science fiction and horror novels, cult television series and films, have now become a grim reality for all denizens of the planet Earth. They're a threat to every type of fauna, from humans to animals, and even Vampires. Adriel and Zineb stood back to back, fangs bared and claws extended, surrounded by two dozen 'fresh' Zombies who had the wherewithal to sneak up on the Vampires, rather than loudly announcing their presence by moaning.
"We're going to be deader than your Grandpa if we don't get out of this," Adriel said, and Zineb nodded. The Zombies came, and the Vampires waded into them. Lashing out at the slow-moving, mindless flesh-eaters with his claws, Adriel roared out a challenge. The Zombies answered his challenge with their odd half-scream, half-roar, something they did while agitated, and surrounded him.
"I'm sorry," Zineb said, and Adriel, who'd just decapitated a burly male Zombie in overalls, briefly glanced at his companion. Zineb had a pistol drawn, and oddly enough, she was not aiming it at the Zombies. Rather, she was aiming it at Adriel. Smiling, Zineb blew Adriel a kiss, and then squeezed the trigger. He had time to register surprise when Zineb fired, and he cried out as the bullet thudded into his chest. Adriel went down, and the Zombies surged upon him...
