This is my little story, of how I, William Redd became a vampire, and came up with a plan for how I could survive the end of the world.

It starts with the woman who took the sun away from me.

She was a very old vampire who called herself Constance Lemort. She showed up in New York back in the 1800's, and somehow wormed her way into a position of power in the local vampire society.

Then she screwed up badly enough and often enough to get kicked out of the city. A pattern that she would go on to repeat for the next hundred years. It's probably the same reason she ended up having to come to America in the first place.

You see, Constance was old enough to have completely lost all touch with her humanity. For her, normal humans were just resources to be used, and played with. Usually until they broke, in a very hard to hide or ignore kind of way.

Vampires don't like attention, and a surprisingly large number of them don't like hurting people or seeing them hurt.

One by one, all the big cities either had enough of her, or they heard enough about her to turn her away from the start.

Like so many others, she was found herself exiled. Cast out of the cities to where the beasts live and hunt down our kind.

Really, most werewolves just kind of turn up their noses at us, and then try to get the hell away what one fellow described as the smell of something that died, got ate up, threw up, ate again, shit out, and then farted out their insides.

So, she needed somewhere safe to hole up until people forgot about her, and someone to leech off in every sense of the word.

Me, I had sort of withdrawn from the world after my parents died. In addition to getting an absurd amount of money from their life insurance, I had become the sole inheritor of the family fortune. Staying in collage to get a degree, just to get a job, seemed like a pointless waste of time.

So, I left school, holed up in my family home, and started drinking

The more I drank the more pointless it seemed. Why try to do anything, when it can all be taken away in a heartbeat.

I started stocking up on food, so I didn't need to go out. Then I bought a gun.

Then another gun, then even more guns. And more food, stuff that could last for years. Pretty soon I was reading up on the prepper movement after researching ways to live without needing to deal with other people

I started not only reading on prepper sites but posting on them. I started going to meet ups and even started looking into taking special classes and training.

Strangely, getting into preparing for the end of the world is what almost got me involved in being a part of it again.

I had a large underground shelter built, and a rather nice house set up on top of it. I think that's what got Constance's attention. A fortified place underground, owned by a wealthy recluse. It was a perfect set up for her.

I admit, she was a looker, vampires tend to make themselves look good over the years, even adjusting their looks to what was popular at the time. It was a lot easier to convince someone to go off somewhere private with them that way.

It sure worked on me.

She claimed that her car had broken down on the side of the road, and I was stupid enough to pull over to help her. She claimed not be able to get any bars on her phone, and since I lived out in the middle of nowhere my cell didn't get anything normally either.

Not that I bothered to check, she asked if I could give her a ride to my home to let her use her land line, so I did.

Vampire put out a pheromone that makes people all happy to agree to anything they say, and only remember what they were told. I'm pretty sure that's what the werewolves smelled from us. it sure as hell didn't work on them.

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Really, I think their whole purpose for existing is to deal with us. They certainly keep our numbers down to what a city can support without anyone wondering why everyone is anemic and have gaps in their memories.

Most of the time vampires are made over a period of several years or longer. It starts with getting a few drops of blood once a week to keep you healthy. Then it becomes spoonfulls at a time to let you live longer and heal faster. Then it's by the cup and the sun begins to irritate your eyes, then your skin.

Then one night you wake up with no heartbeat.

It tends to make sure your next recruit has plenty of opportunities to prove their loyalty time and again, so you have plenty of chances to cut them off if their loyal, or incompetent.

That isn't what happened to me. See with the normal method, you slowly become immune to the pheromones. Constance drained me of enough blood to put me near death, and then poured hers down my throat until I turned overday.

Still vulnerable to her mind control.

After that, she moved in, and started spending my money.

Art, jewelry, dresses, and a custom-made personal jet. One with no windows outside of the cockpit, and an airtight hidden compartment. Just in case.

Most of the time she left me behind, but sometimes she took me along to show off her "pet". The sort of places with people like her. Those were the trips where I got to meet others like me. The enslaved.

I couldn't even think of arguing with her, let alone disobeying her. But she never told me not to talk to the others.

I found hope. I found out I would be able to question her in time, then to argue with her, then defy her.

Only, what would she do to me once I started to get free of her?

So, when she told me to get rid of my guns collection. I kept quiet instead of questioning her orders.

When she found my mother's jewelry collection and started wearing it. I said nothing instead of arguing with her.

And when she walked pass me after returning from one of her trips, tossing out new orders. I didn't defy her, I just used my grandfather's .45 that hadn't been part of the collection she had told me to get rid of to put two bullets into the back of her head.

It didn't kill her, but the rest of the clip I put in her skull did enough damage to give me time to finish her off with a machete from the groundkeepers shed.

Now I had a problem. I believed the world was heading for a civilization ending disaster. One that could easily kill off ninety percent of the humanity.

And blood was not a long- term shelf-life food I could stock up on and keep in my bunker.

So, I had to do more than just keep myself alive through the end of the world. I needed to keep whole crowds of people alive.

It took me a while to come up with a solution.

I needed a place that was secure, resistance to damage, stocked up with supplies, and out of the sun.

Big box stores.

The only windows were at the entrances. They could have a large stocked up grocery in the store, as well as hunting, fishing, and camping supplies. Even more. Bedding, mattresses, clothing, first aid supplies, and everything else you need to house, fed and shelter a few hundred people for years on end.

Build them out in rural areas where Walmart and Meijer didn't go. Having them out in the boonies and backwater would also give me a reason to have a large stock of outdoor activity supplies. I could built them with big basements with the loading docks in the back and a huge warehouse area to keep the stores overstocked.

Then there are those little stores they put up front. I could put a blood bank in everyone. I could have a few weeks worth of stock to use up before I had to start making the survivors start earning their keep. Plenty of time for them to see how bad it is outside and starting thinking giving blood once a month wasn't going to sound so bad.

Of course, I would only need one Redd'smart to keep me alive. But what if something happened to it? Starting a chain of them just made sense. Hell, they even made a profit some years, mostly from being the one stop prepper stop.

But when the day came, they would need to be defended, even from other vampires. So why not defend them with vampires?

Our kind got exiled from the cities for plenty of reasons, some of them pretty stupid. Somebody got promoted above you with a grudge, or even just didn't like your face, off you go. I had made enough contact over my years with Constance to get the low down on who came looking for a job. Troublemakers need not apply.

Of course, most of my nighttime staff had just gotten tired of the society's status and mind games. All in all, my 27 stores have ended up with as many vampires as most cities.

And even a lot more exiles who either didn't want to work retail or weren't suited for it shopped there. A staff of their own kind for those who just wanted to talk with a friendly face, and substance for when they just didn't want to go on and get it the hard way.

I even offered emergency shelter with secret bunkers build under the stores, hell, most of my staff stayed in them rather than try to find a safe place of their own.

All in all, as long as I stay in the mid-west, I can get to a safe place by dawn to stay with my own people their watching over it, and people to help rebuild the world.

Let the princes and baronesses have their society's and their cities. When the end comes, I'll be sitting pretty, and being the one in charge of the new world.

Meanwhile, we're having a sale on Type AB. Feel free to stop by. You won't find better deals anywhere else.