Notes

she's almost human until she feeds. when the scent of blood hits her nose, everything that makes her who she is disappears, and all that's left in her is powerful, starving bloodlust. it was terrifying at first. I remember the first time it happened in front of me. she'd been slowly starving to death without blood, but we didn't know it at the time. on a walk, one day, foraging with our mother, we came across a deer that had fallen and broken its leg. the sight of bone poking through delicate skin made me want to throw up. it made her hungry.

my mother held me back while she fed. we were both afraid for our lives, but my sister didn't so much as turn her head while she was eating. even through my terror, I found it in myself to wonder at how vulnerable she was like this. she finished the deer, but instead of attacking us, she sat there, looking around, lost. my mother started to cry, and the sound drew her attention, but it didn't bring her back to us. she was still just a mindless beast, even as she crouched and screeched at my mother and I, warning us to stay back.

my mother pushed me behind her, and she drew the long hunting knife and crept slowly up to her daughter. I was afraid she was going to kill her, but instead she spoke, begging her daughter to come back to us. when that failed, my mother darted forward, quicker than my sister could react, and sliced a long slice across her upper arm. my sister stared at us for a moment, shocked, and then her fangs receedd, and her eyes lost their dullness, and she opend her mouth wide and wailed.

it killed me every time we had to do that to her, but it kept her fed, and it keeps her strong. now, neither of us flinches, though we've learned the the cuts don't need to be so extreme. they don't even need to be cuts. the worst times, when she's lost in drinking human blood, it's only by drawing her own blood that we can bring her back. usually, though, pain is enough to shock her out of it. with her healing factor, I rarely have to worry about seriously injuring her, which is convenient for when we argue and I'm able to take my frustration out by braining her in the temple with my baseball bat.




imagine a vampire apocalypse movie. it's a parasite, spread through contact with the blood, feces, or urine of an infected person. the parasite burrows into the brain and takes over, turning people into blood thirsty cannibals with little higher brain function. these people are called many things, but our protagonist refers to them as vampires. he was born before the apocalypse went pandemic and grew up in the new world order, in a small enclave of people. when his younger sister is bitten, the family is kicked out. surprisingly, she doesn't seem to have been infected, until they realize she's starving to death. when she attacks a deer and drinks its blood, they realize that she is some new form of vampire.

they grow up with their parents, until one day their haven is destroyed (in a fire maybe?) and their father is killed. their mother is injured and on their trek back to their old compound, their only hope, she continually falls behind until she kills herself so that she doesn't hold her children back. the protagonist and his sister make it to the compound, only to find it almost abandoned. they discover (2? 3?) more people who have also travelled to the compound. one of them is someone who the protagonist remembers from his childhood, an older man who left the compound willingly, claiming that the vampires weren't all bad. everyone thought he was crazy, but with another vampire like the sister in tow, it turns out he was right all along.

the group bands together to survive but have no where to go, so they decide to start their own safe haven in the ruins of their old one. they make a plan: fortify whatever defensive breach happened before, purge the vampires, get food growing again, rebuild. except there wasn't a defensive breach--the virus is just evolving. deep in the compound they discover the "most evolved" form of vampire, who's completely mentally sound except that they drink blood. having been forced to subsist on animal blood, they attack the humans in the group, only to be driven back by the sister and the other "bridge evolution" vampire.

suddenly the protagonist finds himself witnessing the new world order, where vampires are the dominant species and humans live in fear. his life is constantly in danger and it's only by virtue of being related to his sister that the other vampires let him live, because one of the vampires is in love with the sister.