The Living Dead walk the planet Earth, hungry for human flesh, and that's not even the worst part. In this post-apocalyptic world, there were few certainties. Even death isn't final anymore. Chaos reigns everywhere, and after the Governments of America and the United Kingdom thought they could destroy the Zombies by bombing some of the world's most heavily infested cities, the survivors discovered they had a new enemy.
The radioactive wastelands that North America and the U.K. turned into only made things easier for the ravenous dead, as hapless survivors battled a polluted environment, plus Zombies, all at once. Too weak to fight off the Zombies, Mankind found itself on the verge of extinction. With the human species in peril, paranoia has become the order of the day. Mankind has never been good at living with its own, and the rise of the Zombies hasn't helped matters any...
Bands of marauders stalk the landscape, ruthlessly preying on their fellow survivors. Instead of uniting against the Undead, different groups battle it out, which caused already limited resources to dwindle, lives to be lost, and the Zombies to spread. Mass murder, rape, wanton destruction and wholesale slaughter have become all too common. Trust is a rarity in these dark times, and it's about to be put to the best between two unique individuals...
"Oh no, Yohannes, you were bitten," Clara Tremblay said, voice filled with alarm, and she looked at the big and tall, dark-skinned and dreadlocked young Ethiopian man who stood before her and shook her head sadly. Since the world went to hell, Clara had seen dozens of men and women bitten by the damn Zombies, and knew that this was the point of no return. What she couldn't figure out was the utter lack of fear or pain on the young man's face.
Mere moments ago, while scavenging through the ruins of Laval, Quebec, Clara came across a pack of freshly reanimated corpses, and the ravenous ghouls came at her. Upon hearing the slavering corpses trademark moans, Yohannes Yilma stalwartly came to his partner's aid, and while he managed to dispatch six Zombies in rapid succession with nothing but his sword, the seventh managed to bite a chunk out of his arm before he decapitated it.
"Oh, no worries, Clara, I'll be just fine," Yohannes replied with a shrug, and Clara watched, astonished, as the bite mark on the young man's arm began to recede, and then vanished in seconds. Grabbing Yohannes arm, Clara examined it for several seconds, and couldn't believe her eyes. The Zombie bite was completely gone, and Yohannes arm looked good as new.
"Yohannes, what are you?" Clara asked, and her green eyes narrowed in suspicion. Yohannes bit his lip and sighed, knowing that the moment of truth was upon them. For months now he and Clara had been wandering the nuclear wasteland that used to be the City of Montreal, Quebec. The fact that the young man she initially thought was just another survivor was harboring secrets didn't bother Clara much, but this was too big to ignore...
"I'm a Vampire," Yohannes replied, after a long silence, and Clara's eyes went wife, and she scoffed dismissively while shaking her head. This is not happening, Clara thought, and she looked at Yohannes, searching for cues that he was just joking. He'd always been funny, with a bitter, sarcastic sense of humor. Yohannes looked as serious as a heart attack, and he calmly awaited her reply, stoic as ever.
"No, I don't know what you are but I don't believe in Vampires, and I definitely can't accept what I just saw," Clara all but shrieked at Yohannes, and when he took a step toward her, she flinched and took a step backwards. Yohannes winced as though in pain, and shook his head. The look of fear he saw in Clara's eyes cut him to his core, down deep in his non-beating heart. Mankind fears what it doesn't understand, Yohannes reminded himself, and he resigned himself to the fact that he'd just lost a friend...and so much more.
"Clara, let's not get hasty, what I am is your friend, and the man who just saved your life," Yohannes said, and with that, he turned around and walked away. His uncanny hearing detected Clara's shift in posture, and the change in her heartrate, all telltale signs that she was about to do something. When Yohannes heard the click of her gun being cocked, he smiled sadly, and turned around, facing her.
"I should shoot you, but I can't, just keep away from me," Clara said, her voice trembling with fear and rising anger. Yohannes looked at her, this tall and curvy, green-eyed woman with alabaster skin partially covered in soot, clad in the tattered remnants of her office gear which consisted of a long black overcoat, dirty white blouse, hole-ridden Capri pants, and recently acquired black boots.
"My down and dirty office drone in post-apocalyptic chic," Yohannes thought, smiling wistfully. In spite of all that, or perhaps because of it, the battle-hardened Clara looked beautiful to him. Of course, he couldn't ignore the rifle which she held pointed at him. And he knew that she was an extremely accurate shot, especially at this range. Shame about her newly hostile disposition.
"As you wish, Clara, just remember that I was a Vampire when we met, and I protected you and befriended you instead of harming you, and risked my life for you, in this savage time, you may regret letting go of a friend like me," Yohannes retorted, and Clara's lip curled. He thought of the tender, passionate moments they shared, and shook his head. Even in the post-apocalyptic nightmare that engulfed the entirety of the planet Earth, Mankind couldn't let go of its fear of the unknown.
With a fatalistic shrug, Yohannes got on his way, and as a stunned Clara looked on, the Vampire took off at an astonishing speed that a cheetah couldn't have matched on its best day. With his pseudo-relationship with Clara having ended, Yohannes dropped all pretense of humanity, and embraced all that he was. This wasn't the first time that one of his relationships with a mortal hadn't worked out, but Yohannes still felt pain and loss, like all living beings, even if he was Undead.
The look that Yohannes saw in Clara's emerald eyes was hostility bordering on hatred, and it made him shudder. Was this the same woman that he'd made love to the night before? Yohannes recalled the ecstasy that he felt as Clara lay in his arms, stark naked, her curvy body pressed against his, as they took refuge from the acid rain falling from the eternally dark skies inside the remnants of Centre Communautaire Le Sorbier.