"They're coming," Samira Neville said, and the six-foot-tall, dark-skinned and curvy, short-haired young female vampire repressed a shudder. The Hunters were coming, armed with rifles, machetes and swords, and they had the advantage of numbers. For a long time, the City of Detroit, Michigan, had been a sort of haven for the vampire community. After the nuclear war, they thrived, growing in number until the human population was practically overwhelmed. Of course, that was before the various human groups united against the vampires, and the tide of the war between the two species began to turn. Samira was a newcomer to Detroit by way of Cap-Haitien, northern Haiti, at the time of the nuclear war.
Samira was twenty five years old, recently divorced, and trying to eke out a meager living by working as a waitress at a tiny restaurant located near the University of Detroit Mercy campus. One night, a strange man accosted Samira and bit her, and she passed out. When Samira woke up at the hospital the following evening, she was...changed. At the time, the doctors didn't know what to make of the situation but they would soon learn. Humanity learned that it had a new enemy, one that had been around for eons, hiding in plain sight. Mankind declared total war against the vampires, and if there's anything humans do well, it's extermination...
"I'm moving as fast as I can," replied Raphael Gomez, Samira's companion and fellow vampire. Short, slim, bronze-skinned and dark-haired, Raphael was born in the City of Lima, Peru, and came to Detroit, Michigan, for a better life. The young immigrant got caught up in the nuclear conflict, and was swept along during the rise of the vampires. Like a lot of the newbie vampires, Raphael and Samira faced a sharp learning curve.
The Makers, those mysterious, older vampires who came to Detroit with the purpose of turning as many humans as possible didn't stick around to teach vampire basics to their new progeny. The Hunters came, and in spite of the fact that the average vampire is five times stronger than the average human, they were winning the war. The Hunters developed outstanding weapons and technologies specifically to detect and eradicate the blood suckers. Samira and Raphael knew better than to be on the streets with squads of Hunters around, but they were hungry. Drawn to the sounds and smells of a camp of homeless humans, the two vampires were lured into a trap by the clever, lethal Hunters. One of them clipped Raphael with a silver bullet...
"I'm sorry about this," Samira told Raphael, and the young Peruvian vampire looked at his lady friend, puzzled. Samira pulled out a blade, and struck Raphael in the leg, causing the young vampire to roar in pain. Samira took off, knowing that the nearby Hunters definitely heard Raphael's screams. They would capture and most likely execute him. Better him than me, Samira thought as she took off into the night, moving with the preternatural speed of a vampire. There was roughly forty five minutes of darkness left, and the sky was already getting lighter.
Samira needed to be off the streets and in utter darkness before the sun rose. In the beginning of the nuclear apocalypse, the skies were dark, and there was darkness for most of the day. For the vampires, this was skin to paradise, and they emerged from their hiding holes by the thousands, by the tens of thousands. In their frenzy, those tens of thousands of vampires attacked the humans of Detroit, Michigan, and turned half a million of them into blood suckers. The vampires thought they had it made, and figured the humans days were numbered. Humanity fought back with a vengeance, and the vampires found themselves routed in the very metropolis which had become their stronghold...
Samira was almost a mile away when she heard Raphael beg for his life as the Hunters surrounded him. She knew it was for naught, since the Hunters policy was to eradicate any and all vampires on sight. The Hunters killed Raphael and he turned to ash, end of story. Samira felt no qualms about her old buddy's death. In this world, and probably other worlds as well, the strong survives and the weak dies. Samira learned harsh lessons about the game of survival long before she became a vampire.