1 comments/ 5161 views/ 1 favorites Vampires versus Zombies By: Samuelx Hey, there. My name is Zachary Etienne. I was born in the City of Montreal, Province of Quebec, to Haitian immigrant parents. I lived a fairly normal life in my hometown, enrolling at McGill University to study Criminology and living it up on weekends like everybody in the town of Montreal. I was twenty years old when the Zombie Plague hit. I mean, at first people didn't believe any of that stuff was real. I remember watching clips on YouTube and watching the news on CNN and RDI, as expert after expert dismissed the Zombie rumors as nothing but that. Rumors. Most people didn't want to believe that Zombies were real. Until the plague proved too big to contain by the authorities who previously kept it under wraps. By then, it was too late. When the City of Montreal fell, I was one of the few people who stayed behind to defend it against the Zombies. Well, that proved to be a futile effort. The fortified shack in which I hid with my best friend Shawn and my sister Elisabeth was overrun by Zombies. I watched my own sister get eaten by the nightmarish ghouls. I'm not sure what happened to my parents, Odile and Franklin Etienne. We got separated. I found myself alone against the zombie horde. That should have been the end of me. Well, I was actually rescued by someone. A mysterious man who calls himself Baal the Messenger. The dude came in and he tore the Zombies apart with his bare hands. There must have been like twenty of them and he tore them apart like rag dolls. Man, you should have seen that. I was there and I didn't even believe it, though I saw it with my own eyes. Well, I thought Baal the Messenger had come to save me but the truth is, he came to recruit me. Ladies and gentlemen, I've got a bomb to drop. Um, not literally, of course, since we live in dire times I thought that might be a poor choice of words. The world is overrun by Zombies, and the few humans who are left are on the run. They rule the world now, picking us off the way snakes pick off rats in a hole in the ground. Baal the Messenger gave me the tools to fight the Zombies. For you see, he wasn't human. Baal the Messenger is undead, but he isn't a Zombie. The dude was actually a Vampire, and he claims to have been alive since the time of the Carthaginian Empire, one of ancient Rome's biggest rivals. Not sure if I believe him but after seeing what he could do, my levels of skepticism have dropped. Baal the Messenger possesses superhuman strength and speed, and he also heals rapidly from any injury. He cannot stand the light of day, though. That's like his only weakness as far as I can tell. Vampires are real, and they're not happy about the Zombie Plague. Why did Baal the Messenger recruit me? It wasn't out of the goodness of his heart. He needed a daytime driver and watchman. According to him, there is a Vampire community hidden deep below the earth somewhere in the City of Boston, Massachusetts. Man, traveling hundreds of miles from the City of Montreal, Quebec, to New England seemed like suicide to me, given the state of the world. Zombies are everywhere. I'm not sure how many humans are left but there are lots more of them than there are of us. I mean, Baal is a strong dude but he's not much good during the day. Nevertheless, he technically saved my life so I felt like I owed him. We found this old Ford, loaded it up with gas, blankets, guns and canned goods, and started our journey together. Now, I know what you're thinking. What kind of guy travels with a Vampire? Well, it's either I travel with him and he keeps the Zombies off my ass, or I make a go for it alone and end up Zombie Stew. Easiest choice I ever had to make, ladies and gentlemen. Baal the Messenger is one weird dude, folks. And I don't mean just because he's a Vampire. He constantly talks about his wives, and claims to have been married more than two hundred times throughout his long life. Hmmm. We all have exes somewhere, that's for sure, but does he have to whine about his lost loves all day? Dude spends most of the day asleep in the back of the car, for he can't stand sunlight. I always thought Vampires were bogus, until the world went to hell and I actually met one. We make one weird pair, him and I. Although he claims to be several thousand years old, he appears to be a five-foot-eight, fifty-something chubby guy with Persian features. Black hair, bronze skin, brown eyes. Baal says he was once the bodyguard of Hannibal Barca, the legendary Carthaginian General who made war against the Roman Empire. Well, good for him. We are definitely strange bedfellows. I'm twenty, and stand six foot one, slim and fit, with dark brown skin and long Black hair braided into neat cornrows. Yeah, what a pair we make. The Haitian man and the Arab, the human and the Vampire, side by side against the Zombie hordes. Yay for us. While traveling from the province of Quebec, Canada, to the United States, Baal and I encountered all kinds of hairy situations. And the Zombies weren't even the scariest part. With civilization gone and law and order just a memory, people banded together for survival as they had in the old days. And we soon found out that there were threats other than the Zombies out there. In western Quebec, we encountered a man named Guillaume Tremblay, a white supremacist and Quebec separatist whose name I remembered from the old days. He and about a hundred people formed a camp with fortified walls to defend themselves against the Zombies. Guess who they forced to build the walls of the camp? Men and women from the African immigrant and Aboriginal communities. They had dozens of them toiling away to build the twenty-foot-high cement walls which protected Guillaume and his pals from the Zombies. Civilization fell, no more police or mayors, no government of any kind. And the first thing this bastard Guillaume does is revisit one of history's darkest chapters. The enslavement of non-whites by white supremacists. Baal wanted to skirt the whole place but when we arrived there just before nightfall, we had no idea what we were getting into. I was captured and immediately put in a holding cell, where Guillaume personally tortured me. The bastard wanted to break my will. I refused to give in. Since he wasn't much to look at five-foot-six and one hundred and thirty pounds soaking wet, I berated him for his lack of height and called him an atavistic throwback of the Aryan supremacy thing he loved so much. That struck a nerve, and Guillaume decided he wouldn't turn me into a slave after all. The Aboriginals and African immigrants who'd been living in the town of Ville-Marie, western Quebec, had seen me defy his white power and authority. He wanted to make an example out of me so the others wouldn't rebel. I was resigned to meeting my fate with dignity. I am the son of immigrants from the island of Haiti. It's the only place on the planet where European colonialism and imperialism were defeated by a non-white population. The island of Haiti is the first independent Black nation in the New World. I sure hope my brethren are faring better against the flesh-eating, mindless Zombies than the rest of the Western Hemisphere. Guillaume and his wife, a chubby blonde-haired white chick named Paula, had their servants string me up in the middle of the Ville-Marie town square. And they were ready to lynch me good and proper. I thought I was done for. The two thousand or so white people living in the town of Ville-Marie were all gathered there to see me hang, and so were the African immigrants and Aboriginals whom they enslaved. Guillaume and his people were triumphant. And they were quite gleeful about it. I wasn't shocked. I always believed that deep down, people were wicked and the folks in Quebec were far more racist than anyone else in Canada, except maybe people from Alberta. They don't like racial/ethnic minorities down there. My mind wondered about Baal. I hadn't seen nor heard of him since I was captured. I figured the old Vampire skipped town and abandoned me to my fate. After all, what could one Vampire do against thousands of well-armed humans? In hindsight, I should have had more faith in Baal. For while I was busy being tortured, he hid in the tunnels underneath the City of Ville-Marie, and somehow found his way into a Zombie nest. He avoided them during the daylight hours, then when night fell, he roused them. As hundreds of zombies chased the solitary vampire in the tunnels underneath the town, he led them to the surface. He came out of the sewer access in the middle of the town square, pursued by hundreds of starving zombies. You should have seen the looks on the faces of Guillaume and his people. They were beyond shocked. In the pandemonium that followed, Baal freed me. Baal wanted to take off, but I decided to stick around. I freed some of the so-called slaves, those nameless African immigrants and Aboriginals whose only crime was to be living in Ville-Marie, western Quebec, as the Zombie plague hit in 2013. I wanted them to have a fighting chance against both the racists who run their hometown and the Zombie hordes. Baal forcibly dragged me away, and we drove off in the car. A few miles from the town of Ville-Marie, Baal and I encountered what we thought was a solitary zombie on the road, but it turns out we were wrong. The person we encountered was Aquene Angeni, a young Aboriginal woman who'd been heading toward Ville-Marie, Quebec, because she heard there was a zombie-free human settlement there. Baal wanted to leave her but I couldn't bear to do it. The short, olive-skinned young Native woman with the spiky hair dyed bright purple and the tattoos looked like she'd been through hell. She seemed tense as I pulled the car to a stop near her. I didn't blame her. Humankind was an endangered species these days and the only humans who seemed to survive the zombie apocalypse were racists, madmen, serial killers and other undesirables. I told Aquene that we came in peace and she laughed. She had a beautiful smile. When she asked me about Ville-Marie, I told her that it was probably overrun with zombies by now. She sighed with despair, for she'd been hoping. That's when Baal chimed in. My Vampire colleague was usually silent unless he was ranting about the old days and how much better things were back then, or how beautiful his wives were. This time, though, he locked eyes with Aquene, and told her the truth. He told her that he was a Vampire, that I was his daytime driver, and we were going to the only safe place in the cosmos. Aquene stared at Baal and I as if we were insane. That's when Baal let his Vamp face show. His eyes turned bright red, his teeth elongated and sharpened, and his dark bronze skin went super pale, almost bone-white. Screaming with a combination of anger and fear, Aquene raised the hatchet she'd been concealing in the back of her pants. Yeah, I almost reacted that way when Baal revealed his Vampire side to me the first time. Moving with super speed, Baal leapt from the car and snatched the hatchet from her. Holding her by the throat, he told her that he could easily kill her. Then he pointed to a group of zombies which were moving toward us, attracted by the sound of the car. There were dozens of them, and they were maybe four hundred feet away. The sight of the zombies took the fight out of Aquene. Vampires are scary, if Baal is any indication of what the rest of the breed are like. However, zombies are TERRIFYING. What makes zombies so fucking terrifying? For starters, they're not complicated at all as far as predators go. In fact, they are simplicity itself. All a zombie does is feed. You cannot argue with them. You cannot reason with them. You cannot scare them. They feel no fear, no anger, no hate, no fatigue. Only hunger. And they will keep going until you are lunch. That's why they're so scary. Vampires, on the other hand, are not that different from humans, aside from the blood drinking and the daytime sleeping. Baal here isn't too bad when you get to know him. He collects books and other literary items from before the Day of the Plague. And he knows how to be scary. Aquene practically jumped in the car. I asked her if she was alright but she swore at me and told me to shut up and drive. I shot Baal a look, but he just smiled at me. Thoroughly annoyed and creeped out, I drove away. And that's how it all began. The second leg of our journey. A Vampire, a Black guy and a Native chick starting off on a journey to find the only place where sensate beings like us might find safety in a world overrun by flesh-eating Zombies. The lair of a group of Vampire scientists, old buddies of Baal from way back when. During the day, Baal sleeps and I'm honestly having a hard time explaining to Aquene why I trust him. The old Vampire saved my life twice, and I always honor my debts. Also, for as long as I've known him, he's been honorable. He only drinks animal blood, and he's eerily good at catching squirrels along with cats and dogs at night. There are millions of stray dogs and cats out there now. You see, the zombies don't feed on animals. They only eat human flesh. Bummer, eh? Good news for the animal kingdom, bad for us. During the long daylight hours, Aquene and I actually got to know each other. I learned that she was nineteen, a student at Algonquin College in the City of Ottawa, Ontario, although she hailed from the town of Trois-Rivieres, Quebec. Aquene was bisexual, and had been in a relationship with a white chick named Madeleine when the zombie plague hit. They were trapped in a dorm inside Algonquin College when their campus was overwhelmed by the zombies. Aquene escaped, Madeleine didn't, and Aquene suffered from a terrible case of survivor's guilt. I tried to find something soothing to say to her but all I could say was I'm sorry. We've all lost people. My sister Elisabeth is dead, along with my best friend Shawn. My parents are missing and presumed dead. As for my former girlfriend Farrah Muhammad, I'm not sure what became of her. I miss her terribly. Farrah Muhammad is this tall, fine-looking young Black woman of Somali descent I met at McGill University during freshman year. I've always had a thing for women from the Horn of Africa but they never gave me the time of day because of cultural and religious differences. Well, Farrah was not like the others. Even though she hailed from a conservative Muslim family, she openly dated men of other races and religions. Lucky me. I was really into her, man. Although I was raised Catholic, I was seriously considering converting just to be with her. I wanted to propose to her, too. If she said yes, I'd make the switch. I guess I'll never find the answer to that unasked question because the zombie plague hit the City of Montreal the day I asked Farrah to meet me at our favorite Haitian restaurant for an 'extraordinary dinner'. Yeah, we all have sad stories from the Day of the Plague. I've shared mine with Aquene and Baal, and for the life of me Baal won't share what he was doing before the Day of the Plague. He claims to have had numerous identities throughout the ages. He'd been so many different things. An explorer, a college professor, a blacksmith, a rancher, a merchant and a philosopher. And now he was a fugitive just like the rest of us. Forever hunted by the relentless zombie horde. Welcome to a brand new world, ladies and gentlemen. During the day, when Baal is fast asleep, Aquene and I talk. We're becoming friends, of a sort. We both have our doubts about Baal. He's been cool with us and everything and he's been a great help against the zombies. However, what if his Vampire buddies aren't as decent as he is? He claims they can turn the tide of the war against the Zombies. Presumably to save mankind. Why do they want to save us? So many questions, so few answers. We're sticking with him for now. As long as he's good to us, we'll be good to him. However, we shall remain ever vigilant. Even around someone whom we consider a friend and ally. Desperate times, you know? Vampires Versus Zombies: Ottawa What were you doing when the zombies rose and the whole world went to hell? That's a question I've heard spoken many times in the days after the Plague. Everyone remembers where they were when 9/11 happened, when Barack Obama got elected President of the USA, and now, we've got a new globe-shaping event which we all share. I was still in Canada at the time, and worked as a security guard at a mall in Ottawa. I was on the can, taking the dump of the century while browsing through online news with my iPhone. If I weren't already taking a dump, I think I would have crapped my pants when CNN reported that zombies were swarming over Istanbul, Turkey. I thought it was a joke, or the plotline for a new horror movie. Well, it turns out that what we'd feared and joked about and speculated on for ages was finally coming true. Zombies were real, and they were rising from the dead and devouring the living. And these weren't the slow-witted, slow-moving undead bozos from George A. Romero's movies. Nope, these things could move fast, and it took a lot to bring them down. Sarah your break is over, came a text from my co-worker Rashid, snapping me out of my reverie. Hastily I wiped myself, flushed, then got up and pulled my panties up, then my pants. I tucked in my uniform shirt, then exited the washroom stall. I washed my hands, and faced my reflection. A tall, plump, black-haired and bronze-skinned woman with a dour face looked back at me. Working security is one of the lousiest jobs in the universe. For a measly thirteen bucks per hour I was expected to patrol the biggest mall in the capital of Canada, and deal with twenty thousand shoppers. The worst events always seem to take place during my shift, I swear. Wannabe thugs smoking weed in the mall parking lot? I'm on it. Fags fucking in the men's washroom? I'm the one who has to go in, because the male security guards definitely do not want to see that. I'm one of three female officers among a crew of fifteen, and I swear, the guys make us do all the lousy stuff. Perks of being a gal in a man's world. I don't mind, usually. I do need the exercise. I'm five-foot-eleven, and have always been somewhat of a hefty gal. long gone are the days when I wrestled for Saint Guillaume Academy in Ottawa South. Working as a security guard while studying at Algonquin College is a sedentary lifestyle. And I've been packing on the pounds. As a Muslim woman, I'm a double minority, and not a day goes by that I don't get flak from some bozo who doesn't like to see women in hijabs in positions of authority. Usually they're old white guys, the type that have been around since the days when only white folks and natives lived in Ontario. Long before Somalis, Arabs, Turks, Asians and others started making this place their home. I've been trained to take down fools and I've also arrested my share of creeps. I take great delight in arresting racists who break the rules on mall property, I can tell you that much. I returned to the security office, and found my co-workers Rashid Osman and Caleb Stanwood with their eyes riveted on the TV screen. Apparently, what I'd seen on my iPhone was true, there were zombies swarming over Istanbul, Turkey. Instantly I thought of my family. My parents, Rahim and Mona Ibrahim were vacationing in Baalbek, Lebanon. It's our family's ancestral home. My older brother Ali was in T.O. studying business at the University of Toronto. We're fucked, Rashid said, and I looked at him. Rashid and I have known each other since high school. He's six-foot-two, broad-shouldered and strongly built, an unlikely mix of Somali and Italian. His mother, Elisabeth Donatello, is an immigrant from Messina, Italy. We were on the same wrestling team and although most of the guys didn't want me around, Rashid made me feel welcome. We were both Muslims and visible minorities to boot, on an otherwise all-white and predominantly Christian wrestling squad. Our coach, Mr. Richard Beal, was nice enough but the other guys were assholes. Rashid and I are close friends, and he's always had my back. We were all gawking at the tube, wondering what the fuck was going on. At the end of the shift, I drove back to my apartment in Vanier. I was raised Muslim, but don't consider myself religious. Yet that night, I prayed to Allah and begged the Most High to keep my family safe. Since I couldn't sleep, I went on Skype, and tried to reach my parents. No such luck. Please don't let this be the end of us all, I said aloud, then fell asleep. Nine weeks later, the zombie virus spread from Turkey to Greece, followed by Lebanon. The virus showed up in Paris, France, along with Berkshire, England, and Detroit, Michigan. Soon it was in Toronto, Ontario. Swarms of the undead roamed the streets of our major cities, and conquered the world of man. One by one cities fell, along with towns and villages, then entire countries. I found myself hiding out in the basement of the Nortel campus on Carling Avenue in Ottawa, the most secure location I could think of. The facility is very high-tech, and used to house the research headquarters for big companies like Avaya back in their heyday. The old security team abandoned the premises, and I honestly wonder why. The place is stacked with food, water, and all kinds of technological marvels. It's protected by reinforced glass doors that would stop a high-caliber rifle. The zombies can't get in. The facility is secure. And I'm there with Rashid, and some other people. Sylvain Joseph, a Haitian guy who once cleaned up the place, he's the one who let us in. While everyone else rushed out, he went in with his wife, Mireille, and his nineteen-year-old daughter Rachel, and his thirty-year-old son Jean-Pierre, an ex-Canadian Armed Forces bombardier. Jean-Pierre brought his wife, Jennifer Chang. I can't thank Sylvain and his family enough for letting Rashid and I inside. Without them, we would have been zombie bait. Still, I can't help feeling a bit restless underground, you know? We're all a bit antsy, except for Rashid. Honestly, I'm starting to worry about him. In the few months that preceded the Plague, Rashid changed a lot. His parents moved to Montreal, Quebec, and although he hasn't heard from them in a while, he doesn't appear to be worried. Also, what's with the nocturnal lifestyle? He used to work the nine to five just like me, then he suddenly switched to night shifts. He also seems to have lost a lot of weight, lost the taste of Shawarma sandwiches ( something he used to crave ) and doesn't smoke anymore. The dude used to smoke a pack a day. When I asked him why he seems to lose interest in food or smoking, or daytime activities, Rashid just told me he had a lot on his mind. Yeah, my old buddy Rashid changed into someone I barely recognized, and that was before the Plague. Think everyone else is a zombie by now? I asked Rashid one night, as we fashioned weapons out of the plentiful of crowbars in the Nortel basement. Only way to find out is to go look for people, Rashid said, deadpan. I stared at him, stunned. Going outside is madness, I said, shaking my head. Rashid looked at me, a dangerous glow in his dark eyes. There's worse things out there than zombies, he said nonchalantly. Forget it, I said, grabbing Rashid's shoulder. I'm not letting you go out there solo, I said firmly. Rashid grinned, and for a moment, my heart went still. Was it my imagination or were his teeth longer and whiter than I remembered? You were always the brave one, Rashid said, and shrugged. Outside it was getting dark, and I was feeling tired after a long day spent reading, and exploring the Nortel complex. I'd like to say that in times of emergency, strangers are capable of pulling together and putting aside their differences in the name of survival. Doesn't work out that way in real life. Sylvain Joseph let us into the Nortel complex, but his family wasn't exactly thrilled with having extra mouths to feed. Rashid and I worked out an arrangement with them. We'll keep things cordial and stay out of your way, I said, shaking hands with Sylvain. The stocky, middle-aged Haitian man hesitated, then shook my hand. Deal, he said. I rolled my eyes and walked away with Rashid. What is it with men and playing king of the hill? That day, I'd gone from Lab Ten to the Pavilion, and around Lab Five. Labs Eight and Nine were my favorite, with the green walls, the tasteful nature theme and the big robot sculpture in the hallway. Although Nortel is the size of a small city, I had gotten to know it pretty well. Near Lab One was the EMC, the former security headquarters with all the cameras, and from there, we could watch the entire facility, the nearby woods and even part of the nearby street. The situation looked grim, no lie. Zombies, zombies and more zombies...everywhere. I went to sleep that night, and it must have been around five in the morning when I woke up. My Walkie-Talkie was buzzing, and when I turned it on, I heard Rashid's voice. Sarah wake the fuck up, he said, and I stared at the phone in amazement. Rashid where are you? I asked, and when he responded, I heard the unforgettable moan of zombies in the background. I went outside to get us some weapons, Rashid said. I couldn't believe he'd done something so stupid. We were safe inside and didn't need any damn weapons. I'm outside Lab Ten, Rashid shouted, before ending communication. I rushed as fast as I could, and by the time I got there, I figured it would be too late. My old buddy Rashid would get himself eaten by the zombies. Still, I had to try to save him. What I saw when I got to that hallway with the glass windows amazed me. Rashid was in the yard, carrying two backpacks, and wielding a rifle. He was firing at the zombies, and they basically had him surrounded. I stood there with the access card, trying to get his attention. That's when he did something that amazed me. Rashid had run out of bullets, and I honestly thought it was going to see the end of my long-time friend. Imagine my surprise when he began to wade through the zombie horde as if he were knocking down cardboard cut-outs or mannequins. I mean, I saw him grab one, and toss him five feet into the air. As I stood there watching, I kept shouting Rashid's name. Finally, he turned to look at me. His eyes were glowing eerily, and his teeth were long and shiny. Oh shit, I thought. Open the door, Rashid said, banging on the glass. Behind him, the zombie horde was closing in. I just froze. This was Rashid, my old buddy, but his eyes were...glowing? I swiped the card and opened the door. Get in buddy, I said. Rashid rushed in and I slammed the door shut right before a trio of zombies slammed against the glass. You okay? I asked, noticing that Rashid seemed in bad shape. Never better Sarah, he said, clapping me on the shoulder and flashing that fearless smile I knew so well. Where the fuck did you go? I said, smiling nervously. Rashid winked at me. I got us some guns, he said, grinning. As Rashid and I made our way back to the cafeteria which served as our headquarters, I noticed he was livelier than I'd ever seen him in recent times. What happened out there? I asked him. Rashid shrugged. I got what I needed and brought us something useful, he said casually. Indeed, he brought back two rifles, and several packs of ammo. I nodded at that, then pointed at all the blood on his shirt, some of which was dripping from his chin. What's with the blood? I frowned. Rashid flashed me a disturbing smile. His canines glistened in the quick-fading darkness. It's rough out there Sarah, he said, with another shrug. For some reason, Rashid's cavalier attitude really pissed me off. I grabbed him by the collar with a fury that stunned us both. Whoa, Rashid said, surprise in those eyes of his. Rashid you do anything this stupid and I'll kick your ass, I snapped. Then I kissed him. Rashid hesitated, then kissed me back. What was that for? he asked slyly, licking his lips. Figure it out, I said, laughing. We returned to the cafeteria, talking and joking just like before. In hindsight, although I'm not the most observant person in the world, I overlooked a lot of things when it comes to Rashid Osman. Like, why did he sleep all day long? How come he never eats? What's with his eyes and teeth? And how in hell did he toss around those zombies like beach balls? I should have known something was up, but I guess, in some ways, I didn't want to see what was right in front of me. Sylvain Joseph and his family lived on the other side of the lab, and I was completely alone, save for Rashid. In a world full of zombies, trapped inside a fortified bunker, shunned by who might be the only other human beings left alive, I didn't want to acknowledge that my only friend Rashid was no longer fully human. I mean, how is one supposed to react to the fact one's best friend is a vampire? Vampires Versus Zombies: War A lot of people don't approve of interspecies relations and I honestly think these bigots need to get over themselves, seriously! My name is Karen Elroy and I'm a young Black woman living in what's left of the City of Ottawa, Ontario. Three years ago, before the zombie outbreak, my life changed. I met this charming older Black gentleman who introduced himself as Laban, and I thought he was a distinguished and totally cool guy. He was a professor at Carleton University, which I attended at the time. We had a secret romance, and I thought I was the luckiest chick in the world. As it turns out, Laban wasn't what he appeared to be. He was a vampire, hailing originally from central Ethiopia, and he'd been around since 400 B.C. Laban, the master vampire, was my maker. I became one of the undead, but I was far from an ordinary vampire. As one of the Ancients, Laban had powers the likes of which ordinary vampires could only dream of. Your standard issue vampire is three times stronger than the average human being of a similar size, and about as fast as an Olympic athlete. We're quite resilient physically, and heal ten times faster than normal. Vampires are tough but we're not invincible. Don't believe the crap you read about in the poorly written supernatural romance novels. Ancient vampires like Master Laban can do some truly amazing things. Laban can shape-shift at will, not into something way out there like a wolf or a bat, thank God, but he can make himself look like anyone. All he has to do is touch them once. When Laban made me a vampire, he broke many rules. For starters, the ruling vampire council decided a long time ago that the only new vampires to be made would have to be approved by them. Master Laban, whose existence predates that of the vampire council, isn't exactly a stickler for the rules. He made me stronger than any vampire my age ought to be. I can do amazing things. I can leap incredible heights, for starters. One time, I was fighting this blood sucker and he threw me off the top of the Parliament building in Ottawa. Now, a fall from such a height would cripple or kill any fledgling vampire. Me? I walked away without a scratch. I can lift ten times my body weight. The things which would kill any ordinary vampire, such as prolonged exposure to direct sunlight, a stake through the heart, or beheading, they can slow me down but they can't stop me. I got shot in the head by a gunman wielding a bazooka. Took my head clean off my shoulders. Can you guess what happened next? Moments later, my head grew back, and I walked away as if nothing had happened. I found the gunman and ripped his heart out, and drained him of his precious blood. Ah, yes, the blood. The average vampire needs to drink about two full cups of blood a day to stay alive. It's the only thing which animates our undead bodies. We need it the way a doll requires batteries. If a vampire stops drinking blood for a week, he or she will experience a second death. They'll wither to dust. Simple as that. I don't have that vulnerability. I drink blood, yes, for I am a vampire, but I can last a long time without it. To prove it to me, master Laban locked me up inside an unbreakable silver cage for nine days, and at the end of it, I was crazed but alive. Master Laban and I are as beyond ordinary vampires as they are beyond normal human beings. We're not predators, we're apex predators. As far as Master Laban knows, we're the only ones of our kind still around. Super vampires are a rare breed. It takes one to make one. Life wouldn't be worth living without risk, even if you're an undead monster, you know? My master has gone missing. The one who made me, strengthened me and made me the heir of his knowledge and power has mysteriously vanished. And I don't think he went quietly. Whether he's alive or dead, I'm not sure. We're linked, but that link has been severed. We usually can sense each other but he knows how to hide himself from even my super senses so, yeah, if he wants to hide from me, he most definitely can. I wish the master was around because I need him quite badly. In fact, the world is in need of him. You see, in 2013, the humans finally did it. They created the perfect weapons for their own destruction. Scientists from the United States government found the remains of an ancient creature, a progenitor to the race of the vampires. They experimented with its DNA, and created a virus out of it. Said virus reanimates the dead, but not as vampires. The reanimated dead created by that highly transmissible virus are mindless monsters incapable of speech or thought, and they crave human flesh. Oh, and unlike vampires, they can move about by day as well as night. They're called zombies. The U.S. scientists thought they could control these nightmares, they quickly found out they couldn't. The zombies are out there, and thanks to them, the human species is endangered. There have been zombie outbreaks all over the world. They're popping up all over the place, in New York, Melbourne, Havana, Tokyo, Johannesburg, Port-Au-Prince, Vienna, Kingston, Mogadishu and elsewhere. They're everywhere and they've started to really cause chaos. The thing about zombies is that in their mindlessness, they're a threat to anything that moves. They eat animals and humans, and yes, they feed on us vampires as well. Who's going to survive the zombie holocaust? Day by day, there are fewer humans and far more zombies as the infected humans join the ranks of the flesh-eating, mindless undead. I'm fighting for the leadership of the various vampire factions. Once I've gotten rid of these would-be pretenders to the throne of the vampire world, I can unite our people against the zombies, before these mindless ghouls destroy mankind and rob us vampires of our favorite food source. It's not going to be easy but I don't have a choice, do I? Vampires Versus Zombies : War! I'm going to make sure you stay dead this time, Ceylin Uygur said grimly as she swung the sword, swiftly decapitating the towering zombie whom she once called dad. The thing that had been Erol Hurrem fell and lay still, but his severed head still moved, his slavering jaws still twitched. Three days ago, fed up with her stepdad's constant physical and verbal abuse, Ceylin Uygur shot him twice in the chest. She thought he was gone for good, then the zombie plague happened and he came back. So Ceylin bashed his brains for good measure, since the virus which reanimated the corpse could only be stopped by destroying the brain. Satisfied that this bit of business had been taking care of, the young Turkish-Canadian woman grabbed her bag and walked out of the house, never to return. Grabbing her bicycle from the basement, she drove out of Mississauga, Ontario. Seventy two hours ago, on July 3, 2017, a deadly virus was unleashed around the world by a radical terrorist group. In places like Los Angeles, Kinshasa, Istanbul, Marseille, Riyadh, Havana, Tokyo, Damascus, Toronto, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Beirut, Johannesburg and a few other cities, the plague was unleashed. Around the world, millions died. Three days later, they rose from the dead, as mindless corpses hell-bent on devouring the flesh of the living. Any person bitten by a reanimated corpse died and rose three days later as a flesh-eating corpse. That's the incubation period of the necrotic virus. No one knows where the virus came from, but it was created and unleashed by a terrorist group. This virus caused the end of the world. As civilization fell, hordes of undead roamed the globe, feasting on the living. Chaos reigned everywhere, and humanity seemed on the brink of extinction. In the minds of many, the world ended the day a team of international terrorists unleashed a zombie virus around the world, thus ending civilization and placing humanity on the endangered species list. To eighteen-year-old Turkish immigrant Ceylin Uygur, the world ended a long time ago. Born and raised in the Malatya region of Turkey, she lost her father, Cemal Uygur, to an assassin's bullet when she was very young. Her mother, Sevgi Uygur married a wealthy Turkish-Canadian businessman named Erol Hurrem and the family moved to Ontario, Canada. It wasn't long before Ceylin discovered that the man her mother practically worshipped was a creep. On the surface, he was the perfect guy. A secular-minded Muslim whose family once supported the Young Turks Movement, Erol Hurrem was very liberal in his views and doted on his wife and stepdaughter. Unknown to the world is the fact that he was a sexual predator. Erol Hurrem paid some nightly visits to Ceylin's bedroom while she was in high school, and he did far more than read her bedtime stories. He promised to kill her if she told her mother or anyone else what he was doing to her. The terrified young woman felt she had no choice but to obey. The abuse she suffered at Erol's hands intensified after her mother died of breast cancer. Ceylin's existence was a living hell. Until the day the world fell into chaos, with the dead coming back to life and eating the living. That's when Ceylin Uygur killed her abuser. Twice. In what was once known as Toronto, Ontario, something dead prowled the darkness. Marcus Laroche looked at the decapitated corpses of the thirty or so zombies he'd had to kill in order to get the meager sustenance he needed to survive. The zombies had been fantastically easy to kill for one such as him. He found the lone human hiding inside, a forty-something, light-skinned and plump Black woman with short hair and greenish eyes. By her attire and the badge hanging around her neck in a lanyard, he figured she'd once been a businesswoman of some kind. She'd been so happy to see him, the man who single-handedly chopped up a horde of zombies to get to her. Appearances can be deceiving, you'd think she would have learned that at her age. Oh, well. Mother nature didn't produce too many geniuses because just like the light needs the dark, the gifted need the dullards in order to shine. When Marcus Laroche pulled her into his arms as if to reassure her, she hadn't put up a fight. When he sank his fangs into her neck, she struggled but weakened by hunger and thirst, she didn't put up much of a fight. The vampire drained his victim, then hid her corpse in a shed. Seventy two hours later she rose up as one of his own. Marcus waited patiently for the woman to awaken as a vampire. Not everyone he bit came back to life. This time, he'd been successful. The fledgling vampire stared at her maker with the wonderment of new life. Marcus smiled at her, and introduced himself. Haltingly she told him her name, Maggie Walcott. Born in Alberta to a Jamaican immigrant father and Irish-Canadian mother, she'd been an accountant with Scotia Bank in downtown Toronto, Ontario, when the zombie plague started. Marcus patiently listened to Maggie Walcott as she basically told him the story of her life. She went to Seneca College then the University of Toronto, and got married to her college sweetheart Roy Dickinson and they were planning to start a family until the day she caught him in bed with her best friend Michelle Dixon and shot him and buried the bodies in the woods of Savannah. That's how my marriage ended, Maggie Walcott said with a smile. Marcus laughed, surprised that a boring-looking gal like Maggie Walcott was actually a killer. Oh, well. It's true what they say. It's the quiet ones you got to worry about, the ones you never see coming. After all, Marcus Laroche had once been a quiet lad, a long time ago in a distant land. In 1804, the island of Haiti became the first independent Black republic in the New World after a group of African ex-slaves overran the French colonial forces, abolished slavery and took control of the Caribbean nation. Marcus Laroche was born a slave on a plantation in the environs of what would later be called Cap-Haitien, northern Haiti. He ran away as soon as his legs could carry him, hiding in the woods with a group of escaped slaves. Marcus was a good friend of Boukman, one of the early leaders of the Haitian slave revolt. Marcus Laroche participated in the Ceremony of Bois Caiman where the slaves pledged to fight against the French colonial forces to abolish slavery and win freedom for all black men and black women living in the island of Saint Domingue. When Boukman was captured and executed by the French colonists, Marcus continued to fight under other Haitian leaders like Jeannot, Jean Francois and Biassou and eventually joined forces with legendary Haitian military leader Toussaint Louverture to overthrow the colonial system and establish Black rule on the island. Yes, the history books recorded all that. What they didn't record was that while living in the woods in northern Haiti, Marcus Laroche encountered a living legend, a creature once worshipped by the Arawak people who lived on the Caribbean island of Haiti before the arrival of whites and their African slaves. The creature was a thousand-year-old vampire who called himself Amonhana. The ancient vampire sensed a kindred spirit in the runaway slave and transformed him into one of his own. The master vampire's sole charge to his fledgling minion was to use his newfound powers to help his fellow Africans win their fight for independence against the whites who oppressed them. For the Arawak vampire had fought against the Spanish and French colonists to save the Natives of the island and lost. Amonhana had seen much darkness and wonder in his ten centuries of life. He'd watched helplessly as the Arawak culture he loved and cherished was destroyed. Use your immortality well, Amonhana had said to Marcus as he welcomed him into the ranks of the vampire race. Marcus smiled, remembering the ancient one's words with fondness. He kept his promise, alright. The Haitian slaves fighting for freedom and independence in the Caribbean in the late 1790s and early 1800s had an unexpected ally in their fight against the French legions, a bloodthirsty demon that simply would not die. all those centuries. He was still keeping it even now. Yeah, one thing about being a vampire is that living forever was both a curse and a blessing. Marcus Laroche was twenty five years old when Amonhana turned him into a vampire. And he remembered every detail of his entire existence from birth until the day he became a vampire. That's one of the perks of being a vampire. You can never forget. In Marcus case, he couldn't forgive either. He still remembered the racist French plantation owner who beat him and taunted him all the days of his life until he ran away. He remembered the slave catchers and their dogs pursuing him and the other runaway slaves into the dark forest. Everything a human being was or has ever been affects the vampire they become. Being a vampire changed Marcus, but in many ways it didn't change him at all. Marcus the vampire needed blood to survive. Animal blood could sustain him but to him it was like bread and water to a human. Human blood on the other hand strengthened a vampire and fuels them like nothing else can. The superhuman strength and speed that Marcus gained when he became a vampire could only be sustained through drinking human blood. His hunger drove him to do unspeakable things throughout the ages. After the Haitian War of Independence, he lived on the island of Haiti until 1969, then he left for the United States. Filled with wanderlust, he traveled all over the world. That's how he ended up in Saudi Arabia, where he was captured by a radical Islamist sect that experimented on him. The Islamist terrorist cell did unspeakable things to Marcus, and by exploring the intricacies of his vampire blood, they discovered something. The virus which reanimated him three days after he was bitten by the vampire master Amonhana could be altered. They used Marcus blood to create a weapon. The viral weapon they created would reanimate the dead, but instead of awakening as intelligent and blood-addicted super predators, they would arise as walking diseases, forever decaying, and craving the flesh of humans. The radicals used Marcus to bring about the end of the world. Too late he escaped from their clutches, and returned to North America. As far as he knew, he was the only vampire left alive. The radicals had dutifully exterminated all the vampires they could find to ensure that none of them threatened their plans for world domination. They saw the vampires as a threat since they were intelligent super predators who would never allow mankind to be exterminated since they would lack their favorite food source if that were to happen. The terrorists had everything all planned out. They intended to use the virus to destroy countries they considered Godless. They never imagined that the virus would destroy the world, for zombies cannot be harnessed or controlled. They feel no fear, no hatred, only hunger. We must preserve humanity from the zombies, Marcus told Maggie, shaking his head as he pulled back against centuries-old memories. Without its food source even the strongest and most adaptable predator dies, he explained to Maggie, who nodded dutifully. Together, master and fledgling got on the road. What an odd pair these two made, that's what most people would have thought when seeing them coming, if Toronto was still populated by people instead of zombies. A six-foot-six, massively muscular, dark-skinned Haitian male and a short, plump mixed-race businesswoman. Both of them vampires, prowling the urban landscape by night and hiding from the sun's lethal rays during the day. Elsewhere...Ceylin Uygur biked down the normally busy but strangely deserted Ontario highway, ducking zombies as she rode between abandoned cars. Once she got out of Mississauga, things had been pretty good. The further she got away from the populated areas, the fewer zombies she saw. So far she hadn't seen any survivors, until about eight o'clock that evening. She went into a seemingly abandoned Loblaw's to get some food, carefully walking through the aisles with a baseball bat in hand and a shopping basket in the other. She went by the canned good section, figuring that the less perishables she picked, the better. All the meat and fruits were starting to stink anyways. In minutes Ceylin gathered about everything she could carry and still be able to move freely, and resolutely walked toward the entrance. That's when she ran into a trio of zombies still wearing the green Loblaw's T-shirts they died in. Grumbling, she cursed herself for being so careless. She should have been more careful. Hefting her bat, she put down the grocery bag and got ready to defend her life. Moaning softly, the zombie trio advanced on her. Through the undead were slow and stupid, she knew they were exceptionally resilient. And their moans would attract more of their kind, they always did. She had to get past these three one way or another before their moans attracted every zombie in the vicinity to the store... Marcus and Maggie pulled the bright red minivan to a stop by the Loblaw's, attracted to the faint human scent. Both of them could smell it a mile away. Man's flesh had the most delicious flagrance in the universe. Marcus sniffed the air and his lip curled with distaste as he sensed the telltale stench of rotting corpses. There were zombies nearby, and they were converging near the human. The vampire master and his pupil went into the store, hastily searching from aisle to aisle. They hurried, drawn by the sounds of battle. At the center of the store, they found their quarry. A tall, blonde-haired, fair-skinned and green-eyed human female swung a bat at a large zombie, striking its skull. The zombie went down and lay still. Two other zombies surged forward, cornering the young woman. Marcus rushed forward, grabbing a vampire and slamming the short, plump Asian chick it had once been against the wall. The creature moaned, and reached for him. Stupid zombies, Marcus growled, they never know when to quit. The average vampire has the strength of ten men, and can outrun a cheetah. A single vampire could slaughter a hundred zombies all by himself provided he had room to room. Only through sheer numbers and in a confined space could zombies ever overwhelm a vampire. Zombies were slow and stupid, with numbers their only advantage. Vampires were supreme predators with spectacular battle skills. Marcus easily dispatched the zombie. Maggie made short work of the other one, decapitating it with the meat cleaver she'd been carrying since before she ever met Marcus. The two vampires looked at the human female, pausing to evaluate her. Ceylin Uygur blinked, and exhaled the breath she hadn't even realized she'd been holding. The two people standing before her seemed human enough. The tall young Black guy waved at her and introduced himself as Marcus. The plump woman who was with him did the same. Hesitantly she shook hands with Marcus and Maggie. Thank God you showed up when you did, she said. Marcus smiled and nodded, then asked her if she was alone. Ceylin nodded, though something about him seemed a bit off to her. She'd have to be careful with him, a little voice at the back of her head warned. The woman, Maggie, seemed friendlier. You must have been so scared out there all alone, she said in a soft, motherly tone. Gently she touched Ceylin's shoulder. Though the woman's hand felt strangely cold in the hot Ontario summer night, Ceylin didn't mind. When Maggie invited her to come along with them, Ceylin hesitated, but only briefly. The three of them left the store, after stocking up on supplies. Ceylin found it puzzling that Maggie and Marcus seemed more focused on finding blankets and tools than food but whatever. They were peculiar, for sure, but it was good to have some human company. For the first time in ages, she was in the company of her fellow human beings. Incredibly, and perhaps it was understandable after all the things that she'd been through, Ceylin Uygur fell asleep in the back of Marcus and Maggie's minivan. The vampires sensitive hearing let them know that she was truly asleep and not faking. Finally, they could speak freely. Since they met Ceylin, the question on Maggie's mind was whether she would be food, or a convert. Looking Marcus in the eye, she awaited his answer. Conversion to perversion, Marcus said with a wry grin. Ceylin Uygur slept peacefully, for the first time in ages. In her sleep she wasn't visited by her abusive stepfather, but rather, a beautiful female angel came to her, promising to make her stronger than ever before, and to end her suffering. Smiling, Ceylin held out her arms and embraced the angel. Safe at last, she had the best sleep of her young years. When she woke up, she was...changed. She looked at Marcus and Maggie, who stood over her. Smiling, Maggie told her that she'd been out of it for three days. Welcome to a whole new world, Marcus said, offering her a hand. The three of them stood atop a building they secured on the outskirts of Toronto, and Ceylin looked at the night sky with her new vampiric eyes for the first time. She could see things she never could before. To her eyes, darkness was as clear as daylight. Even total darkness. The ancestors of vampires dwelled in near-total darkness deep below the earth at a time when giant reptiles still roamed the world...long before humans. Marcus looked at Ceylin, and knew at once what Maggie first saw in her. This young Turkish-Canadian woman would make a magnificent vampire. He winked at Maggie, who nodded. Gazing at the darkened landscape of Toronto, the three super predators scanned the vast metropolis. Everywhere they looked they could sense the rotting ones, the slow-moving, mindless dead. Here and there, they could sense something promising. Living humans. Leaping off the building, they gracefully landed on the ground, four hundred feet below. After making sure all entries and exits to their new dwelling was secure, they began hunting. Moving faster than cheetahs, they made short work of the hundreds of zombies in the vicinity, slaughtering them within moments. Their true prey was out there, well-armed, well-hidden and paranoid. Only human beings with such attributes and traits could survive the zombie-infested world. Some they would convert to the glorious state of vampirism, the others were food, simple as that. When the world ended, two new predators became the bane of human existence. The zombie dullards, and mankind's hidden, ancient enemy...the vampires. Tonight, they're coming out to play.