Survivors

Isn't She Lovely

I latch onto one of the dead woman's leg wounds and drink until nothing comes out. Then I shovel in a few handfuls of blood-soaked snow. There is nothing else to do.

I walk back to my stuff, which now includes a baby whose name I will never learn.

"Dammit."

She's still screaming. Today's been a rough day for her. Fire, smoke, loud noises, now she's stuck in the cold with a total stranger who doesn't look like her mom.

"Okay. Let's get out of here."

I bundle the baby up in as many of my spare clothes as I can pack into the bassinet. I tie a broken beam of wood to my rebar, with fire licking at the top, heat for the road. I pick up the baby bassinet in my free arm, and make a brisk pace away from the inferno, holding the makeshift torch close enough to keep her warm but not enough to pose a risk.

I keep a wary eye out on the fields as she keeps crying, but nothing harasses us. Sometimes she gives up for a while. Mostly she just cries. It's world-shatteringly loud in the empty countryside.

We make it back to the distant houses.

I already have a plan. I get a fire in the fireplace going with the dryer lint kindling and broken picture frames for firewood. I set the bassinet close but not too close. I make sure all the windows are locked. I go out to the barn with the lone cow with a full udder thanks to her lone calf.

The calf skitters off to the far side of the barn, but the cow accepts me squatting down next to her with the mason jar.

"Sorry about the cold hands."

---

I don't get to keep company long, usually. That's not a zombie apocalypse thing. It's just a Van thing.

My sire, the vampire who made me a vampire, an old guy I called Uncle Chuck, drilled a bunch of rules into my head on how to coexist with humans. He was a secret sociopath, a pleasant gentleman, a businessman, realtor, lawyer. A master of politicking, micro and macro scale.

So he had this big list of rules on how to make nice with people and leverage all their earthly needs and desires against them, make them dependent on you, and keep them on retainer to feed on and never have to go hunting again. Like a pet dog. A dangerous carnivore letting itself be pacified by a relationship of mutual benefit.

It works out for him, because he doesn't really care about people. I'm bad at it, because I do, and because I'm just awkward. And bad at math. Can't even play stocks, so I can't straight-up pay people to let me bite them.

Then the zombies happened. Nobody's sure how. Or where from. Things fell apart fast. Money stopped mattering. My social circles got eaten by worse monsters than me.

My old friends were okay with the vampire thing. I explained how I wasn't contagious. They saw I was still in my right mind, in control of myself, thinking human thoughts. They let me bite them. Nobody was close to me, they still kept me at a distance, but I got to feed. It was cool, then.

Now, zombies.

Being an undead bitey beast is a real bad look when that kind of thing already ended the world.

Also, I have no more leverage. Money's worthless. I can't network people, get backstage passes and VIP tickets, or all-out physically heft people up a fire escape to sneak into a discotheque. The little niche I carved out as a party person who knows all the other party people, it folded up like origami. On fire.

I make it a little while in groups sometimes. But most, like the sisters Lina and Kira, give me the boot once they realize I'm not human. The rest just... die. It's a hard world. I'm equipped to act the guard dog, keep tireless watch, fight the zombies, carry supplies, catch fish and game. Sometimes, in those groups that keep me on, they let me bite them. The pet vampire gets its blood.

Now, Baby.

Adults are hard enough to keep alive in a hard world. So I'm understandably terrified about the safety of Baby. Should I rename her? Should I get attached? Am I a rotten person for thinking those questions?

Chuck's rules had nothing about babies. Babies were human labors. Vampires had no purpose for fraternizing with anything too small to feed on. Your blood stock were expected to pop them out every so often to keep the chain going, and you were supposed to throw money at the family for child-rearing expenses, but you left all the actual rearing up to said family.

You can't ply babies with money. You can't promise them favors. They can't sign contracts. They can't do anything except need you, and Chuck detested people that needed him with nothing to give back.

So here I am. Being desperately needed. Being thrust into the company of a human who can't reject me. And I can't -- morally, emotionally -- reject her either, no matter how one-sided this relationship is. That's just how parenthood is though.

Chuck would probably have eaten her by now, with nobody around to care. I shudder.

I wonder how Chuck's doing in this world without a stock market, realty, or justice system. Maybe he's thrown off his dog chains somewhere and started hunting people in the wilderness like the rest of the undead in this place.

Who cares? Not worth thinking about that old windbag.

Right now my whole world's a pretty small place. A barricaded living room of a farmhouse. A fireplace. A bassinet and lots of blankets. I huddle with Baby to keep her warm. I give her milk, with a straw in the jar, which she doesn't like at first but resigns herself to using eventually. She will still, however, try to bite my tit through my hoodie on occasion, and give me an offended look when I don't produce it for her.

Not a long time has passed. But I'm starting to wonder how long cow milk lasts in the udder.

I'm starting to get pretty hungry, too.