'Til The World Ends: A Post Apocalyptic Vampire Tale

Despite billions of dollars having been spent over the past decades to detect space debris that might one day collide with Earth, the killer comet Abramov-Reed was only 68 days from impact when it was first discovered...


Governments and private ventures across the globe scrambled to prepare themselves against the imminent ELE, Extinction Level Event. But how do you save 7 billion people with just more than two months before collision?

Simple answer: you don't.

All over the globe, the rich, powerful, and self-important were ushered into underground shelters while the vast majority of Earth's population was left topside to perish in the imminent apocalypse.

The Average Joe was shit out of luck.

The members of the Marshall Family, though, were anything but Average Joes.

They were vampires.

For almost 200 years, the men and women with an unusual blood relationship to one another had lived in a series of secret underground locations located under large cities, collectively known to the Family members as Haven. The latest was under the streets of the Capital and rivaled many of the Federal Government's own emergency underground bunkers.

For generations, the Marshalls had preyed on societal outcasts: runaways, the homeless, illegal immigrants, addicts, and the plain ol' lonely and abandoned. These blood donors were taken hostage and fed from as they lived out their final days in a secured section of Haven called the Blood Bank.

Snatching Donors off the street had always had its risks, and over the centuries there had been many close calls. Six times, Haven had had to be relocated, forcing the Family to begin anew. Then came the 1960s and a series of cultural revolutions with sex, drugs, and rock & roll at their heart. The Marshall Family's new Mistress, Lady Brianna...


...embraced these revolutions by having the upper floor of the most recent Haven renovated into a dance club called The Underground. The days of hiding in dark tunnels by light and sneaking about the streets by night ended. Street recruiting for Donors came to a virtual end. Donors were coming to the vampires, dressed in their skimpiest, tightest clothes, snorting their powders and downing their favorite poison, and grinding their bodies with erotic delight against any body that caused a heat to rise.

The opening of The Underground did more than just bring the blood closer to the vampires. It made that blood more valuable as well. Vampires couldn't produce their own red and white blood cells, which was the primary reason for feeding on humans. But the adrenaline and endorphins in the consumed blood was what gave vampires their beyond-human physical strength and mental abilities. It was the reason the Marshall's preferred to feed on excited donors. Slamming a human to the ground and showing him or her the three inch long fangs that were about to penetrate his or her neck was an adequate way to cause the chemicals to flow through the body. But nothing excited a human like simple sex, drugs, and rock & roll.

After the Underground's opening, the frequency of the need to feed was reduced by the increased value of blood taken; and at the same time, the strengths and abilities of the Marshall Family members rose significantly. The Family had never been as strong and secure as it was today...

...just in time for a comet to arrive and fuck everything up!

The Family had been improving this latest Haven with the intent of never having to leave it, for any reason. It was entirely capable of supporting the 50 current members of the Family for more than a decade, providing filtered air, clean water, electrical power (from thermal vent generation), and more. There were even two entire levels capable of producing enough food to support a Blood Bank filled with Donors.

But, of course, the Blood Bank had all but been emptied. For over two decades now, the vampires had fed almost exclusively on patrons of the Underground. Donors were fed upon, then administered a healthy dose of a short term amnesia drug that left them remembering nothing more than they fun with which they'd begun the evening. The Donors returned to their lives never knowing what they'd given of themselves. The hassles of maintaining the Blood Bank were avoided.

How were the Marshalls going to survive when the panic on the street led to a shortage of Underground patrons? The regulars would certainly be spending their time dealing with other issues ... right?

Wrong.

Ironically, the opposite happened. The panic on the streets manifested itself in a rush to the Underground of party-hungry patrons who knew the end was near ... so ... why not end it partying, right? The Underground's dance floors and private fun rooms were soon packed with potential meals.


Lady Brianna made all who arrived as welcome as possible, providing them with food, drink, drugs, and housing. And little by little, donors were selected from the general population and taken to the Blood Bank. This time around they were treated more like honored guests than simple meals, so the resistance that had been prevalent in decades past no longer existed.

And because the party never stopped -- for vampires or donors -- the days simply rolled into one another without end. The end of the world was at hand, so what else was there to do but have fun, right? Lady Brianna, who was a master of organization -- in part because of her beyond-human ability to anticipate future events -- estimated that, barring surprises that even she couldn't foretell, the number of Donors available could sustain the Family for a decade or more.

Barring surprises...


I was looking for 1 each male and female writer ... and I think I found them.

If you are interested in the story, though, please subscribe.

If ever we need another writer, I will post a note to such at the top of one of my IC posts.

Less than a mile away from The Underground, in another well fortified bunker, was the new, hopefully temporary home of The Tipton Group. It sounded so important: The Tipton Group. The assemblage of people now cuddled together six levels below the disintegrating city included Harold "Harry" Tipton, his wife Amelia (aka Amy), their three children, their four grandchildren -- one of whom was ready to pop with their first great grandchild -- a handful of sycophant business associates (who were here to fulfill Harry's every whim or get tossed outside), one of Harry's female cousin (who was also the first of his two present mistresses), and that second mistress (who, unknown to Harry, was also bumping uglies with Amy.

Then, of course, there was the Security Detail. The five men were the best of Harry's protection from Executive Security Services Unlimited, which had served him, his family, and his corporation for more than two decades. They were the best at what they did, but more important than that, they were absolutely loyal to Harry. They had taken bullets for him in the past and been richly rewarded for it; and they'd dealt with situations for him -- some of which had resulted in bodies being found in the street or not being found at all -- and, again, been richly rewarded for it.

"We have an issue," Carlton Biggs, the team's leader, told Harry as his employer and the others were still unpacking their things in the portion of the bunker that -- with a touch of Presidential speak -- would here out be called The Residence. When Harry turned his attention to him, Carlton explained, "One of the larger debris pieces ... the shock did some damage to some of the infrastructure."

"What infrastructure?" Harry asked with obvious concern. The bunker had been built to fully support 30 people for 30 years, which was a bit of overkill considering that the most recent reports said the comet had begun breaking up long before reaching Earth. The expected ELE had been averted, and while casualty estimates still remained at 80-90% over the long term, the extinction of the Human species seemed to have been avoided. "What are we going to lose, and what will the affect be?"

"We're still working on it, sir," Carlton said, turning a tablet toward his boss and swiping to show one page after another of damage photos and bar graphs, now filled with the dreaded danger colors of yellow, orange, and red where there should have been nothing but green. "I'll know more after I can get a team out to the perimeter."

"Get it done, soon!" Harry demanded. "If it becomes necessary to go topside for supplies ... parts ... tools, whatever ... we need to do it sooner than later."

"Yes, sir," Carlton said, leaving after being waved off.

As he exited the Residence, he casted a knowing glance at one of his boss's granddaughters, a shapely young vixen who had been batting her eyes at him since the day they met. Carlton had resisted the 19 year old beauty simply by spending time -- and expending sexual energy -- with other women, but now ... those other women were no longer available to him. Carlton had a very powerful sex drive, and a very strong need to impart his knowledge to women who would appreciate his work. How long was he going to be able to stay away from his boss's favorite granddaughter when the pair of them were down here in this hole together, day in day out, with very few other options available to them?

Of course, Carlton didn't know that as he and his Team were investigating the perimeter in the days to come, another team -- this one of hungry, sex-driven vampires -- would be investigating the underground frontier that existed between the two facilities.