1.1

I slept through the zombie apocalypse.

At least the beginning of it. I was on my eighth molt, a sign of maturity for my kind, and had taken a few days off from work at my job.

I clean up crime scenes, the smells don’t bother me.

Moisturizers had kept my old skin in good enough shape to allow me to keep working until I was ready to shed. After that, I took a day off for a three day weekend, stuffed myself silly, then slept for all three days to avoid the itching.

By the time I woke up, the fine layer of scales that came with the new skin had become transparent enough to pass for human, and the world had ended.

The human world anyways.

From what I later learned, people all around the world had dropped dead, then rose to start biting people. Biting them a lot. The infected didn't really eat much of anyone, they just kept biting as long as their victims were struggling.

If you died from the bites, you rose within minutes. If you survived, it took several hours and getting steadily sicker until you passed, and then you turned.

I didn’t know any of that at the time, I had been sound asleep during all the initial media coverage.

When I woke up, I didn’t think to turn on the news, I didn’t check social media, and my phone was still turned off from not wanting to get woken up from my food coma. I wasn’t really a social creature anyways, none of my kind are.

My mother was born before motorcars and raised me the same way she had grown up, in secrecy and isolation. Up until my fifth mold when I was old enough to set off her territorial instincts and was sent to go off and live with my Uncle. The men of my kind have the same instincts as the women, but without the deep rooted fear that others are trying to find their nest to kill their children.

Even then, I was only with my uncle for a few years in this windowless underground apartment until he had gotten old enough that the humans would get suspicious about his lack of aging. My kind can easily live for a few hundred years.

Oddly enough it’s a lack of food that would make us live even longer. Fasting makes us sleep for weeks or longer at a time because meals used to be an irregular thing for us. But with so many humans in the world today, fresh meat is pretty easy to come by.

I guess an all meat diet really is bad for your health.

After a shower with a rigorous application of a loofah to remove the last of my molt, I headed into my kitchen in my old flannel robe to consider breakfast. Not out of a need for warmth, cold never bothered by kind anyway, but it was soft on my sensitive new skin.

Today I felt like something Indian. So I pulled up a playlist of plucky sounding traditional Indian instrumental songs along with some Bollywood soundtracks.

I broke my fast with some meat from the thigh of a Mr. Admir Patel, eighty seven at the time of his death, lightly seared in a pan with olive oil, fresh onions, and parsley. I had been aging the meat in a dry cold cellar like room at the back of the apartment since his harvesting after his death of a heart attack.

Thank you for my meal, Mr Patel.

I had removed the manacles from the walls of the room that had been installed during the original construction for the original owner. My Uncle had never had a use for them, he had just never been bothered enough by them to remove them.

Me, I found them creepy as hell.

After washing up the mess, and taking care of my teeth, I dressed for my upcoming shift and headed out the door.

For a moment the shock of seeing the copious amount of blood in the hall was enough to freeze in place, not from the sheer sight of it, but the very idea that I hadn’t smelled it from inside my apartment.

Looking about, I could see the blood leading off into the building’s shared laundry, as well as driblets of it from someone wounded coming down the steps. I still remembered how to track from the teaching of my mother, even if I had questioned the necessity of it for the modern day, well enough to figure out that someone had been hurt, then tackled and further attacked, before the attacker had wandered into the laundry room.

From looking at the security cameras later on I learned I had only been half right. It was the victim that had headed into the laundry room.

Peaking around the corner I could see Mr Alban, Apartment 302, standing in the middle of the laundry room softly pawing with blood stained hands at the air vents in the upper corner of the room. Making soft moaning sounds.

And utterly dead.

Trust me, I could tell. He smelled delicious.

I could explain why, but this is being written mostly for humans. They wouldn’t appreciate the details.

But the way, to be clear, living humans, or even freshly dead ones, do not appeal to the Eaters of the dead. Or Ghouls if you would. The very idea of killing a human being for food is abhorrent to us.

We can wait.

Then there is the fact that we adore Humanity. Your music, your arts, the building… So many wonderful things that my kind just don’t have the mindset to create.

To end the life of someone who can do what we can not… It’s the one time we can stand to gather in large groups. To judge, and to punish, the few of our kind that step over that line.

Sometimes we do the same to humans who kill and eat others of their kind. We don't want people looking for patterns that would lead to us.

Claws made to dig through cemetery dirt can do a number on someone who deserves it.

1.2

I took one look at the dead man up on his feet and quietly crept back to my apartment. Then I checked the news.

Do you know what I saw? Even with most people being familiar with the movies, so much so that many had at least joked about having a zombie plan, people still had denied it was happening right in front of them and panicked.

Oh, the military did well at first. The soldiers at least had plans and knew to shoot for the head. If they had just been sent out to do what they had been trained for, they might have done a lot of good. But it was the orders that they got from their higher ups, who in turn got theirs from politicians who feared how they might get up being blamed, that sent so many soldiers off to die.

In short order, they decided they had their own people to save and headed back to their homes.

The big cities meant a faster spread of the infection, and larger groups getting together.

Things were pretty bad, so I did something I usually try to avoid.

I called my mom.

She answered her phone, but without saying a word.

“Mom, it’s Algernon.”

“Yes?”

I sighted “I just woke up and wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“I am.”

I knew not to wait for her to continue. “Alice?”

“Your mating partner is healthy and safe. I will not tell you where. Do not go looking for her."

I sighed a bit in relief. “I know better.”

She disconnected the call.

"Good talk Mom."

My mother had made arrangements for me to meet and breed with Alice. Despite distrusting other women of my kind even more than the men. It's the women that make the arrangements to continue our species.

When the child is old enough that Alice can not stand being around it, I might get to be a father for a few years until the child reached its sixth molt. Even if it's a girl.

I’m a progressive kind of Eater and theirs no one left on Alice’s side to foster the child when it comes of age.

Or at least that was my plan.

In my apartment, I opened my toolbox and took out a screwdriver with a particularly long metal shaft sticking out of the handle.

Back in the laundry, I moved up behind Mr. Alban and picked up a broom in one hand to poke him in the shoulder with. I had planned on getting closer, but being in the same room with a dead body with half its neck torn open was making me question my decisions. Why was still up on its feet?

Let's just say horror movies are not one of humanity's inventions that I found all that entertaining and a walking corpse was freaking me out.

Imagine a pizza moving around on its own while making creepy grunting noises.

For a moment the freshly broom handle poked corpse stopped moving, then it slowly shuffled around to look at me with dry, motionless eyes.

Then it sniffed at the air between me and it. Made a disappointed sounding moan, and then shuffled around to begin pawing at the spot below the air vent.

One that often carried down the scent of cooking food from all the floors above down to here.

"You're smelling people, aren't you? Something is still working in that head of yours."

My voice didn't seem to get its attention at all, and neither did reaching around its neck to check for a pulse.

Even pulling it backwards just made it grunt and almost absentmindedly swing its arm around clumsily at me. Seeming to be more out of irritation than a real attack.

It even let me grab it by the back of its head and pose the tip of the screwdriver in front of its eye with barely any resistance.

A hard shove plunged the metal inward until the handle rammed into its eye.

It didn’t drop dead right then and there. But its legs went wobbly and it moaned in a questioning sort of way. Spinning the shaft of the screwdriver around inside its head finally put it down.

I sniffed at the now messy screwdriver, not quite ready to taste test what might be contaminated meat. I could smell the faint whiff of decomposition.

About the right amount for a two day old corpse. A bit under ripe.

Whatever ever these things were, they were truly dead, and more importantly, had no interest in biting me.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

I assume because I wasn’t human, but it may have been out of professional courtesy.

Heading upstairs, I found the main door to the lobby area sitting wide open. It appeared to have been broken open by the small mob of dead people shuffling around the lobby and the ground story hallway. Several of them were bunched up in front of the door to apartment 102.

Even standing on the stairs below them, and looking up at them, they paid me no mind. Tapping the screwdriver against the wooden railing produced a few turned heads and sniffing, but that was it.

Pushing my way past a few at the top of the stairs, I took a look out the front door to see chaos outside. Crashed cars, scattered groceries, and luggage. But no bodies.

It turned out to be easier to walk a stumbling weakly resisting corpse out a front door by force and push them down the few steps to the street, than to move a deadweight corpse across a hallway to my apartment and then into my cellar.

The dead complained vocally but wordlessly as they each tumbled down the front steps, but they took their invitation to leave fairly well, either walking or crawling away. I’m afraid I wasn't all that gentle with the few that made their way back into the building and had to be ejected a second time.

Why not kill them?

Partially because It looked like a job that would take all day, and it was in fact easier to shove them out than deal with a corpse. After all, I can only eat so much. But mainly it was the fact that they still felt too human for me to feel easy about killing them.

Even poor Mr Alban was mainly put down only to figure out what I was dealing with, and if I was in danger.

Since the service that dealt with the maintenance and repairs of the furnace and water heater had never changed the hundred and fifty year old lock on the furnace room. The keys I had inherited from my uncle got me into the room to secure some wood and nails. Which along with my claw hammer from my toolbox was soon allowing me to begin securing the front door.

The noise did attack some attention, both from some of the dead wandering over to investigate the noise, at least until they got a whiff of me and wandered off again, as well as one of the people remaining in the building.

1.3

“Hey… Hey!” The whisper, then the near shout came from up the stairs. “Stop hammering, the sun’s going down and they get more active at night.”

I looked up to see one of the newer residents, a younger woman with curly reddish blonde hair, glaring down at me from where she was hiding behind the railing on the second floor.

For general enlightenment, my own hair, which only grew on my head, and then only to a few inches in length, was normally a sort of yellowish white. Which I typically dyed a deep black. Right now it was still a ghostly white from my recent molt. It would yellow with age if left undyed as it did not grow until it was shed along with my next molt.

“And why the hell aren't they attacking you?”

I turned to give her my full attention. “Good evening miss. My name is Algeron Devor. apartment 0A, I believe a certain rare autoimmune deficiency that runs in my family had made make my scent unappealing to the inflicted. Or perhaps it's some combination of my illness and my medication. May I ask who I have the honor of speaking with?"

She looked a bit befuddled but shook it off. "Tara Walker, 2B. They really won’t attack you?”

I nodded. “Not unless I annoy them sufficiently, and even then they just seemed to try, poorly, to smack at me. Not bite me. Now I really should finish securing the door so I don’t have to throw a bunch of them out again in the morning, and to see how well my amateur blockade building abilities work. Shan’t be a moment or two more.”

Her eyes widened as she looked past me, and she ducked down to scamper away. Turning to look at the door I could see three of the infected trying to reach through the broken window up at the spot Miss Walker had been at.

I whispered to them so I wouldn't be overheard by the still breathing humans inside the building.

“Now you three horrible little abominations are going to need to back up. If it turns out I can eat you, then I’m going to need Miss Walker and the others in here to live long happy lives, and have many children. That way my child gets to have a long healthy life after the last of you rot away. “

‘So, back.” I smacked one in the forehead hard enough to force it to stumble back and fall down the steps. “The hell.” I shoved another one in the chest to push it down the steps. “Up.” The last one was leaning into the broken window frame of the door and so it took the hammer to the top of its head. Then I had to push its limp body out to tumble down the steps.

After that, I spend the evening getting a head count of the people remaining in the building and clearing out a few apartments that I could smell the dead in. Mrs. Ashhill had decided to opt out of the apocalypse by way of a bottle of pills and what looked to be an expensive bottle of wine.

She had no bite marks on her, and she had not risen.

She have a rather good supply of frozen meals I planned to distribute among the surviving people in the building. Mrs. Ashhill would be staying with me in my cellar. Humans who died of normal means might be rather rare in the future.

It took me a few hours to dispose of the corpses. I hadn’t felt like struggling with squirming zombies down multiple flights of steps. I feared that if I strong armed one of them long enough, it could get irritated enough to bite me. The results of which I would rather not experience myself.

Besides, human mouths are filthy. Who knows what I could catch from even a normal human bite? My kind are very hardy compared to a human, but in these days of international travel, who knows what sort of thing from far off lands could end up infecting me with something horrible.

So used the hammer, once, then the much less messy screwdriver to finish off my undead neighbors.

I wrapped and tied them up in funeral shrouds that had formally been their bed sheets, and then carried them out the back door to the end of the alleyway. All lined up in a row with their credit cards stapled to the shrouds.

It was a bit surprising how few of them had driver’s licenses. But it wasn’t like there was a lot of parking in the area, even I used public transport most of the time.

But by the time I got the third one out, I had learned that rats at least had no problem eating the flesh of the twice dead. One of the Norwegian Blacks that stood its ground and hissed at me went upstairs and into a small dog carrier to see what happened to it long term.

I named it Travis for no particular reason. It just seemed like a rattish name.

The dog who had been in the carrier for three days I allowed to run free in the now empty apartment with food and fresh water. Taking it to my apartment was out of the question, other than reptiles and the like, animals don’t like my kind. And keeping a snake for a pet would just be weird.

2.1

The undead had been fairly scarce in the back alley, even with me coming and going none of them tried to get into the back door.

So I decided to go on a grocery run.

Not for me, I had several weeks of food down in the cellar. Months if Mr. Alban proved to be consumable. No, I was worried about keeping my humans fed. The ones in my apartment building.

More importantly, I needed to keep them watered.

It’s not like they can eat my food. Well, technically they could, but I don’t think they would want to. Besides, that was mine. My kind don’t like to share.

So off I went cutting through a few alleys until I found a shopping cart I had often seen a local homeless person called Ned pushing around the area. There was no sign of Ned, but his cart was still intact.

Once emptied I found my way to a local bodega with its glass door busted open, but still locked. At least the shutters weren't down.

Ten minutes later I had the aged rusting shopping cart filled with as much bottled water as I thought it could support.

I could not see this as a long term solution. Even if most of the people in the city were dead, I would have to spend hours every night to keep even a few dozen people alive. I was going to need something longer term.

That was when someone dropped down out of the sky and clamped a pair of unnaturally strong hands on my shoulders. "You idiot, what are you doing out… Wait, what the hell are you?"

My captor leaped back several feet into the air. Great, a young blood.

"Ugh, Didn't your maker tell you anything? I'm an Eater of the dead, and no, my blood isn’t of any use to you. I’ve never been attacked and sucked upon myself, but I’ve been told we taste of rotting meat.”

I thought that over. “But in a bad way.”

The flying blood drinker, who appeared to be a pale young man dressed like a lumberjack with a hair bun grimaced at me. “There’s a good way to taste like rotting meat? And please don’t call it sucking, it makes feeding sound… unwholesome.”

I crossed my arms and looked up. “It’s a bit impolite to hover like that, especially since you laid hands on me without even an introduction. Or are you at risk of being attacked by the infected?” I waved my hand at the several dead who had wandered up at the sound of our voices. The ones sniffing at him seemed just as disappointed as the ones unhappy with my scent."

The vampire looked offended again at that, but he did lower himself to stand on the ground with me. Even then he wasn't at eye level with me, I had a few inches on the fellow and I wasn't much taller than the average human.

He frown a bit at my water filled cart and pointed. “Is all that to wash down the dead meat.”

I glanced over and shrugged. "My kind can only digest mortal remains, but as living beings, we still need to hydrate.

He jerked a little at the “living beings” part, but then looked thoughtful. “Those can’t be all for you, you’re gathering that up for people, aren't you? Human people.”

I stepped in between him and my water. “My humans, get you’re own.”

He looked a bit stunned, then a bit pleased “That was my plan too, but I need someplace safe to gather people up at. Someplace safe.” He took a step back. “But I need them alive. Why are you trying to save people, isn’t there plenty for you to eat as street meat.”

I stared at him coldly and then sighed. "I don't even know if these," I waved at the dead who had already begun to ignore us. "Are safe for me to it. And even if they are, they're rotting."

I leaned onto the end of my cart. “Once they all rot, and after my kind have cleared out the cemeteries, we are going to need this generation of humans to give birth to the next one before they all die off and go on the menu.”

The rude vampire who still hadn't given me a name seemed to get excited. "It's the same for both our kind, we need humans to survive. Why don't we work together?"

He held out his hand. “Abe, just Abe. How about us two save humanity.”

2.2

That night, we found a truck from a water delivery service. My mom had taught me how to pick locks on tomes and mausoleums when I was a child, but when it took me a bit too long to get the door open, my bloodsucking new ally simply punched the window of the truck open.

“Snap, snap, Al. Only one of us has all night.”

Hrmph. “I’m afraid my good sir, that won’t work as well on the ignition.”

He looked a bit hurt and wandered off for a bit, only to return with a triumphant grin and a set of keys.

“Found the guy wearing a company uniform.”

Thankfully the internet was still working. Google had a tutorial on how to drive a semi truck.

Over the course of the night, we also got called by several survivors. Two of which were able to accept the fact that vampires exist, the whole able to fly thing helped and agreed to donate a quarter pint of blood each week in return for shelter, protection, and supplies.

They didn’t have to deal with the fact that Ghouls were real as well as I wasn’t flying up to their window. I also didn't mention what else they would be donating. My payment would come hopefully much later on.

As for the others. "Fill up as many containers with water as you can, the water can't stay on for that much longer. I try to swing by and drop off some food if and when I can. If I meet someone who you can accept help from, I'll send them your way."

I wasn’t sure what else I could do for them.

If the early morning I set bottles of water outside of all the apartments I thought might still have people in them, and printed out some notices after Abe flew off to his place for the day.

He didn’t offer to say where, and I didn’t ask.

The notices told people to fill up anything they had with water. They also explained that the infected didn’t attack me because of my autoimmune disease and that they might not want to risk themselves just to find out if the dead wouldn’t attack them either.

I also explained that I would be bringing other survivors when I could and asked if anyone could find room for a few roommates.

Derric and Belice, the two people Abe had flown in, I set up in apartment 3-C. They seemed like they would be a nice couple and someone had to take care of the dog.

After dozing for a few hours, all I needed after my three day snoozathon, I headed out and found a UPS truck, and its still breathing driver. The man, Altis by his name tag, was pretty weak from being holed up in the back of the vehicle for three days. Since he was unable to object, I just went ahead and backed the truck up against the railing on the front stairs after clearing out the morning crowd from the porch.

The railing went off to the sides enough that even with the back door pulled up, none of the infected could get into the back of the truck, or up the stairs to the front door.

Hefting Altis up on one shoulder, I got him up the two flights of steps to apartment 3-C. Maybe Altis would make a better mate for Belice, they were nearly the same color and I believe that still mattered to most humans.

The rest of the morning was spent up on a ladder painting over the downstairs windows, moving vehicles to block off one end of the alleyway behind my building, then escorting the dead out so I could block off the other end with a bus.

I had some notion of pulling the bus back and forth to let vehicles in the alley to unload them, but it turned out the dead could crawl under vehicles and so I eventually just slashed the tires.

By nightfall, I had pushed another notice under all the possibly inhabited apartments inviting everyone to meet their benefactors and make special requests for supplies.

There turned out to be far fewer people in the building than I had expected. Tara Walker explained to me, "It happened at dawn, like a wave running over the earth with the sunrise. Most people didn't know anything was happening until they had already headed out for work."

Then she looked over to Abe who was being berated by people asking him to go look for their friends and relatives, some of whom lived several states away. She caught his eye and twirled her hair a bit, getting a grin from the hipster vampire in return.

Well, at least one person might not mind giving blood, even if Abe didn’t sparkle.

The next two nights followed a pattern. Fill a truck with supplies while Abe ferried people back to the apartments, then hauled up supplies to the second floor. Then spend most of the day, after a quick nap, emptying out all the buildings on the block of the dead, and securing them for when my building was full.

Walker it seemed liked to read. Which had given her a lot of ideas. Her enthusiasm, and realism, made her entertaining to speak with.

She talked about rooftop gardens, dew and rain collectors, and other strategies for long term survival. Also, some practical things for us to gather. Solar panels, antibiotics, and birth control.

I wasn’t all that keen on the last one. I wanted a next generation. But I could understand putting that off for a bit.

The dead had to finish dying first. By the state of them, it might even be as little as a few weeks before their muscles rotted enough to prevent them from moving.

Although the fact that insects and other vermin stayed strictly away from them was a bit concerning.

With everything I could think to do, that was time sensitive, done, I decided to spend the last few hours of the day on a food run for the survivors that had not agreed to the blood donor program. I would have still taken them to the apartments, but their ride by air was insistent on his due payment.

Going in reverse order I dropped off some food to the people willing to let me come to their door or lift it to their window by whatever they had to use as a rope.

Then I got to one of the first people who had refused Abe’s offer.

There were no answers to my call, and when I got into their building I could smell the corpse inside their apartment.

A tire iron and a bit of inhuman strength got me inside.

The bite mark on the dead but animate body was almost dainty compared to the ones made by the infected. The body was also holding up better to the first stages of rigor mortis.

That happens when someone drains all the blood.

I should have headed back then when I found the first one, but being concerned about human lives was new to me. I took the time to check the next building someone had turned us away from.

Another infected, alone and inside a locked apartment. The person who drained them had even left the window open this time.

By the time I returned to my apartment building, it was already after dark.

I could smell the corpses in Tara Walker’s apartment. 2B. I had a master key inherited from my Uncle, from when he had put in the then new deadbolts. I hadn’t used them to check the apartments I had thought still had people on that first night because I didn’t want to scare anyone.

Abe stood watching what remained of Tara Walker as she pawed at the heating vent on her knees. Then he turned and grinned at me. "She offered, she wanted it. And it tastes so much better right from the source. Not like out the syringes that the Council wants us to use."

He didn't even twitch as I closed the door behind me and walked over to examine the dead woman more closely.

“Somebody did something that changed the rules. Our bites don’t do anything to humans normally. They have to drink our blood to become like us.”

I turned around to look at him, and now he twitched. "Hey, don't worry. There are still plenty of humans around. We can spare one." He shrugged. "I'll even keep my feeding away from our little breeding colony from now on. I promise."

He frowned as I began to circle him, putting myself between him and the windows

“What? Are you going to throw down on me? I seen you picking things up, you’re strong, but not strong like me. You don’t even have any powers, all you do is eat dead people.”

The Eaters of the Dead can pass for human, our teeth even look like theirs. From the front. When our gums pull back our teeth, they flare out to reveal the sharp inner ridges that end with an almost hook like inner curve.

They also make it hard to speak. So I couldn't remind Abe that he was also a dead person.

And that he was on the menu.

Whatever my kind's equivalent of adrenaline was made us fast and activated a sort of transformation.

My teeth stretched out to rip and tear. My scales, with their sharpened edges, rose for their edges to rip the skin of those trying to tear me away from them. My feet and lower legs went taunt in a way to make rushing forward on my toes more natural for me.

I took off most of his face off with the first bite. Short blunt and thick fingernails made to dig through densely packed dirt dug their way deep inside his chest.

Oh my, but he tasted so good. It was all I could do to stop myself from eating the heart I tore out of him.

Tara Walker didn't show any interest in Abe's limp corpse, but when I held the still slowly beating heart in front of her, she lunged forward to bury her teeth into it. Not to eat, but to drink deep.

I wasn’t sure what the blood would do for her, especially after she had already died. But I locked her up in the furnace room. Who knows, I may have another flying partner tomorrow.

By the morning I guess we would find out if and what she would become.

What was left of Abe went into my cellar. With his heart gone, he had shriveled up but had not turned to dust. He must have been fairly young for his kind.

As much as I would have liked to feed myself into another food coma, I had a long night ahead of me standing vigil in the laundry room.

I will say though. For a man who dressed up like a lumberjack in the middle of a major city, Abe had great taste.

Post Mortem Libris-

Well, she can't fly. But she can talk, and the dead obey her commands.

Much more convenient.