Legendary Vampire in the Apocalypse
Chapter 17: For Survival

Chapter 17: For Survival

His eyes drew wide, and flashes of blood pulsed in his memory.

Then the sight of himself being impaled sent a phantom pain through his chest.

"Gnoll!"

He had hollered out of kindness, to tell them to run.

And at the same time, it had been to force himself to move so he might tear himself free of the sudden fear that had frozen him.

However, it had been too late.

A gnoll had jumped from whatever distance that it had come from beneath them, its form blocking out the light that had been coming it.

It swiftly enlarged as it drew closer, hurtling through the air, and they heard an extreme roar leave its chest.

Windows shattered, and the floor of the building groaned as the concrete of the walls was broken through.

’Fuck! Damnit! These things have abilities as well!’

Dion, as well as all of the others, had been utterly frozen where they stood.

Rocks shattered and crumbled, and the grumbling roar of its voice continued to ache through their chests even with it having stopped.

It had landed closer towards the middle of them, where the normal people were.

Its mouth slobbered the blood and faint chunks of whatever it had eaten before hunting them, and it did not waste the slightest moment of time not attacking.

Its large club had swung hard, and it ruptured in a blast of blood and flesh through the body of one of the males.

Then, it stomped forwards as its other arm took the leg that had remained, throwing it into its mouth, bone crunching as it ate his limb in a single gulp.

The hand, after it had swallowed, had reached for Hannah, and for whatever reason, as the gnoll’s grin grew, she had been freed just enough to barely move.

She stumbled, staggering till she had fallen.

"No, no no no, please! Glen! Save me!"

The gnoll lurked forward, a guttural snicker coming from its throat as it clutched her by the torso.

Hannah screamed and cried as her fists pounded against its hand, her expression mangled with terror, and it ate her head.

At the same time, Dion had been inundated in panic.

’Move, Dion, move! I can’t die here! Not like this again!’

The killing intent that oozed off of the gnoll churned Dion’s gut wildly; his heart, which should have beat so slow and calmly, barely agitated by his relentless fighting thus far, had begun to hammer.

His senses blared, making him suffer the sound of bones breaking within the gnoll’s mouth, the squelch and slurp of flesh, and that swallow, that gut-churning swallow.

Vampires were an instinctual race, one of primal nature. And Dion had come to understand this by the serious, shivering threat that he felt fester within his being.

His eyes had snapped tight into slits, quivering, with his brain pulsing between the memory of him being impaled by the sword of one of its kin and the present.

Dion could only properly see what was going on through the corner of his unfortunately remarkable vision, as the gnoll took the third, discarding the corpse of the woman as if it had grown tired already of the taste of her flesh and marrow.

This third one had fallen over as well, although with him, perhaps the impact is what jolted him out of the effect of the gnoll’s ability.

He whimpered, shaking his head wildly as tears broke free down his face, and Dion watched as the thing smiled, wide, and a gurgling, bloody-throated and bestial chuckle slobbered out of it.

And facing down that direction, Dion’s gaze landed on Glen, the one oozing the foul stench of zombies.

His face had gone utterly pale, and almost greenish.

Veins had bulged across his skin, throbbing so hard that he could see them, and blood wept from his orifices, as dark splotches formed on his pale skin.

Then he heard the groans that he had grown so familiar with, ridding himself of the sound of rumble from Glen’s throat, and the creak and pop of bones as he began moving.

Dion’s heart lodged itself and protested within his throat.

Everything that he had been trying to fight for would be over, not even to the threat that was seriously capable of killing him, but to this idiot!

This motherfucker transforming into a zombie and, through whatever means, freeing himself from the gnoll’s ability!

If only he had left sooner!

He shouldn’t have tried to join up with these people!

He shouldn’t have left his apartment!

Who had he thought that he was, trying to fight through an apocalypse to reach his family?

’No, I should have just killed you!’

Dion watched Glen break free from the gnoll’s ability, releasing a dreadful, ugly roar from his mouth.

His body was nothing like anything human should have been; it had degenerated rapidly into that of a zombie, and that figure hurled itself through the air, entirely eliminating the idea of running, its arms reaching for him with its maw wide, spilling blood and drool.

Dion’s eyes ran bloodshot, his veins, in all of his tension, growing thicker across his body, and the blood within him burning so hot that even without it being winter, wisps of steam began to heat off him.

Deep within himself, he felt something immaterial stir; it bubbled, and it swelled rapidly.

Then, with only inches left between the zombified Glen and himself, Dion roared as he wrenched his body towards him.

His arms raised swiftly, catching those of Glen.

The pair of them thudded and skidded across the ground; Dion’s back scraped over rubble.

Drool and blood dribbled over his face; Glen’s maw tried to snap shut harshly as it threw its neck down and he snapped his head one direction.

"Get the fuck off of me!"

Dion roared as he kicked Glen hard over the torso.

The zombie flew low through the air and smashed against the wall.

At the same time, Dion had hurriedly shuffled himself somewhat back up, standing over his knee.

At that moment, right as soon as Glen had hit the ground, without the slightest care for the harsh impact that had slightly cratered him against the wall, he skittered over the ground, throwing himself back in Dion’s direction.