With a swift swing of my bayonet, I cut the head off a large zombie. In mortal life, the creature had been a tall and chubby, forty-something white male, and it was still wearing the faded blue mechanic's overalls it had on when it died and reanimated after been bitten. The severed head fell on the ground, and I tossed it aside after bisecting the brain. Now it's dead for good.
Walking among the ruins of Saint Paul, Minnesota, eking out a living in a world gone mad, I can't help but wish for simpler days. Days when I could face the sun without turning into a crispy critter. Before the fucking zombies turned the whole world into hell. It's been six agonizing days since I fed.
After searching for ages, I found an old woman hiding inside what once was a neighborhood grocery store. She barricaded herself, with weapons and supplies, like they all do. I guess she was expecting zombies, but was found by something far worse. The other kind of undead. Me.
"Please let me in ma'am I'm not one of them," I said to her, pleading in my best scared voice. I could feel her eyes on me. Anyone looking at me would see a six-foot-tall, lean and dark-skinned guy in his mid twenties. I held my hands up and turned around to show her that I was unarmed. After a long pause, the old lady, whose name was Doris Winston, let me in.
"Thank you kindly ma'am," I said, and did a grand show of hugging her fiercely once she let me in. Doris was cautious, but I could see the hope in her eyes. The old lady hadn't seen a single human soul in months. Loneliness isn't something that most human beings agree with. For a vampire, solitude is something we're used to. We're not exactly the sort to seek out others of our kind for social calls. We're predators, first and foremost.
"I lost my family when the zombies broke through the warehouse where we were hiding," I said, sipping warm coffee prepared for me by Doris, and the kindly old lady listened attentively as I shared my tale of woe. To tell you the truth, I wasn't lying. My family did get mauled by the zombies, but only after they turned down my offer of immortality and eternal togetherness. I've never been the sort to take rejection well. When night fell, Doris and I went to sleep, and I did the deed. Her blood tasted sweet.
My name is Omar Suleiman, and I'm a guy with a story to share with you. The story of a vampire stuck in a world full of zombies and paranoid, paramilitary humans. I was born in the City of Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1984, the only son of Somali immigrants Kader and Aisha Suleiman. I dropped out of the University of Minnesota in 2004, after three semesters, and spent the bulk of the next decade bouncing around.
