Legendary Vampire in the Apocalypse

Dion pulled the door of the car open and hopped inside.

Now, he was by no means licensed. He was not at all a legal driver, but at this point, what did conventional laws matter?

The only thing that did matter was that he knew how to drive very well, if he said so himself.

With his hands over the steering wheel, Dion’s head glanced over to his side.

"I hope you don’t mind." He spoke to the female zombie corpse with the bullet hole in it head to his side.

He reached across from himself to open the door, and he tossed the body outside, and only then did he begin looking for the latch that would release the gas cap’s mechanism.

’Found you...’

With a tug, the sound of its latches releasing resounded.

He hadn’t spunked all the money on the jerrycans earlier, so it was easy enough for him to go around and put a decent amount into the cash receiver and thus begin filling up the car enough.

Dion watched as it filled and ensured that he got all of the money’s worth out of it. Then he went back to the front briefly.

Partitions of the car rapidly opened in his search for the key, and he only sighed faintly to find that the person, and likely the former owner of the car that had killed the woman when she turned, had taken the car key with them.

Not wanting to have to force this boot open, he searched for its mechanism.

His feet carried him to the back right after the sound had played, and as the boot opened, he smiled to himself in satisfaction.

Another jerrycan was sitting there at the edge of the boot.

Immediately taking it he went back to the pumps that he had yet to use all the money for, and he filled it to max before making it disappear and then bringing it into his treasury.

As soon as he slipped himself back into the front of the vehicle, he ducked his head beneath the steering column and felt along the underside for the panel cover.

He found the seam, dug his fingers in, and pulled it off.

The wiring was exposed now, allowing him to see the three important bundles. He ignored the one for the accessories and found the two that mattered: the battery wires and the ignition wire.

He stripped the ends of the battery pair with his nails and twisted them together. The dashboard lit up, and the fuel gauge needle climbed to where he expected it to sit after the fill.

Then he took the ignition wire, stripped it the same way, and touched it to the joined pair.

The engine turned over once, stuttering, and as he muttered it for it to come on, it finally fully sparked to life on the third try.

He let go of the wire, and the car held its idle, rattling faintly beneath him.

Dion sat himself upright and felt bitterly wistful.

As unsavoury as that past version of himself and the relationships that came with them had been, he had to admit that the things he had picked up from them were useful in a world like this.

Then he took out a flash drive from his treasury.

Adam had given it to him before he left, and on it was the recording he had made of Eve Taylor’s broadcast.

He looked around the dashboard until he found the USB port, slotted it in, and after a moment the car’s speakers crackled to life.

"We are beneath our headquarters in the East District, and have received reports from our branches across the country, and our partners in the major cities of the continents, Carleone, Aspain, Tulira, Vachasane, and Heicrin."

The engine hummed as Dion went on to listen to the broadcast, and he remained in the gas station throughout that time.

Then, it had only been by chance that, in his somewhat more relaxed state, he had looked out of the window, down the path that he had come from.

"—and may hell soon take back its horrors, or those special people who awakened powers save us, because I don’t know if guns and bombs can."

Dion’s eyes snapped wide, and his eyes immediately sharpened to slits.

"Damn fucking right it should!" He roared, and his hands moved with inhumane speed, as did his legs, "What kinds of zombies fucking sprint!?"

Through his windows, rushing straight for him, there had been nearly over a dozen zombies sprinting faster than a normal human could.

The car skirted straight out, and an exasperated, nervous laugh burst out of him as he quickly turned out of the gas station.

✧✧ ~ ⚜ ~ ✧ φ ✧ ~ ⚜ ~ ✧✧

Meanwhile, in a building that should have been a law office before the apocalypse had hit.

A group of survivors had brought themselves into the fourth floor of the building, temporarily holed up.

From there they could see the Blackout Armoury shop’s front entrance, the side alley, and a good stretch of the road in both directions.

"Here you go." A woman, looking to be in her mid-twenties, crossed the room and held out a bottle of water to the man—looking to be somewhere within her age range—sitting by the window, his legs propped up against the window ledge.

He took the water without looking at her, uncapped it, and drank.

There was an older man across the room watching silently at the back of the rest of them, seated on the ground. He had his knees drawn up, his hands hanging between them.

He hadn’t said much at all since they got here, since he had guided them here.

"We can’t keep sitting here." The man with his legs propped up spoke from where he stood by the far wall, arms crossed. He was looking at the younger man when he said it. "We’ve got to go in as quick as possible. We still need to go get more food, remember?"

"We’re not sitting here doing nothing. Timing is everything when everything is this bad; we’re waiting to make sure there isn’t a gnoll or any of the runners lurking around here."

"It’s been over an hour already. If there were any, they’d have popped up by now." The tallest of them, standing by a second window peeking out from behind the cover of the wall, responded.

"And if we rush it, the noise we make fighting will bring even more of them right to us. Do you want to get stuck fighting three dozen of them while we all try to escape again?"

The leader held his gaze for a moment, then the younger man sighed and looked away. He didn’t argue further.

The older man lifted his head, and his brow creased.

"That is an engine, right?"