Somali Vampire Hunter

With a smile on my face, I lit the match and let it fall on the Kerosene-soaked floor. The flames roared, and rushed toward the trio of Vampires bound to the wooden pole, their howls of pain and fear sweet music to my ears as they burned to ash within seconds. Three fewer blood suckers in the world, all in a day's work. I slowly walked out of the warehouse and back to my car. My name is Amina Ibrahim, and I hunt Vampires for kicks.

I wish I could say that I hunt Vampires because they've done some bad things to me and my family, or because I feel grave concern for the welfare of mankind in a world overrun by the undead. If I said that, then I'd be lying. I like to kill things, and since it's considered okay to slaughter Vampires, I might as well get into it while the going is good. I was born and raised in the City of Minneapolis, Minnesota, shortly before The Darkness. My family is originally from Somalia, but I don't remember much about them.

In 2017, the world discovered the existence of Vampires. They've been around for thousands of years, hiding among ordinary humanity. Humanity has been at war with the Vampires for a long time. During the Crusades, both Christians and Muslims banded together against the undead in Western Europe and the Arab world, and thus prevented a Vampire takeover of the ancient world. Modern Vampires are far deadlier than their ancient predecessors.

For starters, they can walk in daylight when they absolutely have to ( sunlight weakens Vampires but it doesn't kill them outright ), possess superhuman strength and speed, and it takes a lot to kill them. Sunlight, crosses and garlic don't do shit to them. Only decapitation, immolation or a stake through the heart stop them for good. When the Vampires got exposed, they went on the offensive and started the mass-infection of humans, creating veritable armies of the undead. All of a sudden, instead of a few thousand Vampires, millions of them roamed the planet Earth.

The Vampires started to spread like wildfire, and soon, mankind faced a real threat. The police forces and militaries of various nations found themselves embattled, facing a foe they were ill-prepared to deal with. How do you stop an enemy that doesn't breathe, can run as fast as a racehorse, is stronger than an Olympic athlete and simply doesn't die? The average street cop or military Joe and Jane types found themselves overwhelmed. Could you blame them? I mean, one day, you believe that the undead are the stuff of myth or poorly written novels and the next, they're in your city streets, attacking you. A lot of people had trouble adjusting to that.

Mankind seemed on the verge of being conquered by the undead, and that's where the Tactical Assessment Sanitation and Killing teams came in. The T.A.S.K. forces were elite units recruited from the men and women of various law enforcement and military units, only they were uniquely equipped to take out the undead. Technology had to be adapted and retrofitted to take out an enemy unlike anything mankind had ever seen before. Vampires heal ten times faster than normal humans, and they have five times the physical strength of the average man. This makes them exceptionally hard to kill, but not impossible.

The T.A.S.K. force's men and women wear head-to-toe Kevlar body armor, and their rifles fire not lead slugs but silver bullets. You see, Vampires are severely allergic to silver. It does to them what Kryptonite does to Superman in those old comic books and television shows. Yeah, they went after the Vampires and gave it their all. For the first time in human history, people started cooperating regardless of race, culture and religion, against a common threat. The Vampires were that threat and they scared mankind shitless enough that we got over our common issues and united against them.

For a while it worked. By the summer of 2022, the America-based T.A.S.K. force and its affiliates in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Australasia had contained the undead threat. Millions of Vampires had been slain, although millions more people had been forcibly added to the ranks of the undead. In the movies, if a Vampire bites you, you become one of them. That's not the way it works in real life. If a Vampire bites or scratches you, if their saliva or blood gets into a cut somewhere in your body, you become one within seventy two hours. That's how fast they spread. Over the years, we've come up with ways of screening people for the Vampire plague. It's not easy. The T.A.S.K. force has a high mortality rate, and many people who survive battles with Vampires fall to PTSD or injuries, or just quit.

We thought we had the problem solved, and then the Vampires took over New York City. They infiltrated the world's largest city en masse through its underground tunnels, and mass-infection began. The fall of NYC to the Vampires signaled the end of the world. The U.S. government detonated a nuclear bomb to destroy New York City but by then it was already too late. From New York the plague spread across the continental United States, and the rest of the world. Planes from New York City fly to all corners of the globe, remember?

As Vampires began mass-infecting every major city, the governments of the world followed the United States of America's example and began blasting their own metropolises. These geniuses actually make things easier for the Vampires because they poisoned the atmosphere, rendered much of the planet uninhabitable and caused worldwide nuclear winter. Remember when I told you that while sunlight doesn't kill Vampires it does weaken them? Well, with sixty percent of the sunlight blocked by ash in the atmosphere, the Vampires had free reign. They could move about freely. Mankind was in trouble.

What followed was pure chaos. With civilization fallen, people turned on each other and chaos reigned. The Vampires became the new Lords of the Earth. Humans were captured and herded into vast pens, and farmed out for their blood. The nuclear war began in 2023. In a little over 70 years, humans forgot everything they'd accomplished. Many people simply accept the way things are, that humans are cattle for Vampires. How quickly people forgot. Me? I'm one of the Wild Ones. A human who has escaped from the Pens, and now lives freely.

I want to do more than survive, I want to pay back the bastards for what they've done to humanity. I kill Vampires, and I am good at it. Actually, I enjoy killing them. That's why I torched those three blood suckers earlier. And I'll kill a thousand more if I have to. Someday, mankind will be free from Vampire oppression. Yeah, at least that's what I tell myself to sleep at night, or during the day, since nighttime is hunting time for me. Yeah, I go out and fight the bad guys ( with fangs ) to save the day. Or maybe I do it because I'm a psycho-bitch with issues, who knows? I honestly don't question it anymore. I am what I am and I do what I do. That's it.