Hunger Zombie

Once again, thanks to everyone for the get-well wishes. I’ve fully recovered since the Panda debacle and I’ve undertaken a few other hunts since. Life’s been certainly less monochrome since. I’ve come to appreciate the company of others and had the (dis)pleasure of handling a new kind of monster. A zombie of sorts, a hunger zombie. Now, now, I know what I’ve said before; not everything is a zombie. And despite its name, neither is this one.

Turns out there’s a good reason vampires refuse to drink from shifters. Vampires seldom drink from Shifters while Shifters don't disciminate between humans and vampires.

My good buddy, Benny Fontenot, explained it all to me when we met. It’s a funny story. Benny’s a vampire, and he’s a good buddy of mine, get it? I’m a hunter and he’s a monster. We’re supposed to kill each other, but we get along pretty well, I’d say. He’s been providing me with some exquisite jobs. While shifters have families and clans, they stay away from the general human population. Vampires blend in.

Now, I met Benny a year ago when I decided to get away from everything. I went south to my lakeside cottage. Don’t be shocked. I’m pretty sure I’ve said it before. Hunting things that eat humans pay off rather well. I don’t live large, even so, I can afford a decent living. It’s the thrill and the so-called duty. To be quite honest, I’ve never liked people that much and I know little about anything other than to shoot things. So, I won’t retire as long as my body feels right.

I was sitting by the lake, staring at the water, enjoying the fresh summer air. Without much thought, completely lost in the serenity of it all. When a rough voice called out to me. “Crowe, you must be Samuel Crowe.”

Turning around, I saw a tall man, about my age, well built, dressed like a farmer with a red beard smirking at me.

“Yeah, and who might you be?” I questioned.

“Benjamin Fontenot,” the man smiled at me, a set of fangs flashed at me from behind his curled lips.

A vampire, a fucking vampire, found me in my secret retreat. Nothing good could come out of that encounter. Or so I thought.

“A tooth Fairy huh, came looking for revenge or a reward placed on my head?” I questioned the bloodsucker, maintaining my composure as I slowly got up to my feet.

“Hah, nothing like that, brother. I need your help, actually.” The creature remarked, extending his hand.

“I’m not any parasite’s brother. Why’d I bother helping you? It’s pretty strange that a vampire would come to seek help from a man who hunts his kind. Sounds like you’ve planned a trap for me. Well, pal, it won’t work.” I retorted, aggressively. Knowing all too well I couldn’t really kill the vampire with my bare hands. They’re simply too strong for that. I was confident I could beat it enough to make it back inside and grab a gun to blast its head off.

The creature lowered its arm and offered an explanation. I let him talk, trying to come up with a plan on how to take him to the ground before I bolted past it towards my stash of magic tools.

“Well, you’re a legendary hunter in some circles. That means you’re fantastic at what you do. Now I can’t confirm anything about that. I’ve never come across you or your work in person. But hey, even the elders dread you.” He said.

“Flattery won’t get you far, Tooth Fairy, why’d you seek me out specifically? Talk fast,” I said, still scanning my options with this animal.

“You’re a superb hunter, or so I’ve heard, and you don’t kill for sport and we’ve got a problem.” He said, pointing at himself and then at me.

“We? What do you mean, we got a problem? I ain’t the one running out of food or anything.”

“Oh, there’s a wendigo out there, and it’s going to kill a bunch of my brood, and then probably…” I cut him off.

“And how are a bunch of dead vamps my problem?”

“Well, you see, the wendigo won’t stop with my brood. It’ll probably pick up a taste for humans and end up killing a few of your precious friends too,” he remarked.

“Don’t have many, so not an issue. If it starts eating humans, I’ll bag it. Until then, your problem, whatever that wendigo is.” I said, not knowing at the time that Wendigos are what the vamps call a vampire who has had a drink from a shifter and became an uncontrollable monster driven solely by an insatiable hunger.

“Oh, you don’t know what a wendigo is.” the vampire questioned. “Well, that’s because we’ve been keeping them non-existent for the most part.”

“Yeah, thought so. They’re just a legendary hunger spirit of the natives, aren’t they?”

“Not quite. They’re what happens when one of us drinks from a shapeshifter. They become mindless zombified monstrosities driven solely by a pang of hunger for an end. Incredibly violent, incredibly dangerous, and could probably tear through an entire platoon of vampires or shapeshifters if it wanted to. It’s literally almost unstoppable. That’s why I came asking you for help. You’re good at putting down freaks of nature, as your kind says.” The vampire explained.

“Well, should’ve called the corpse shaggers then, if it’s a zombie.” I quipped. He said he’s tried that and the results were horrendous, two dead in his brood, most of the necrophiles butchered. One arrogant necroshagger who smelled like absolute shit and had way too much hair for a human pissed himself and ran away at the sight of the wendigo.

The description sounded familiar and the entire story quite amused me, so I thought about it for a moment and questioned, “What’s in it for me, Tooth Fairy?” I decided to play along, thinking I might just as well bag a whole brood of vampires if he’s lying.

“I’ll pay you if that’s how you handle your business or I might give you tabs on future vampire whereabouts and the like.” He responded, once again smiling that toothy smile of his.

“Willing to sacrifice your own kind. How can I trust you?” I questioned, genuinely concerned with his willingness to just give up info on his own kind. I had no idea he’d be so honest at the time, and I was almost entirely convinced he was going to try to make me into bat food, but I ended up realizing he and I are a lot alike.

“I don’t like it when kids cause troubles, because these kinds of troubles cost us lives… precious lives…” he said, “but you can only trust your gut, hunter. So, are you in or not?” he extended his hand again.

I shook it and told him I’m in. After that, I told him to stay put while I get my gear and car. Obviously, I would not follow him on foot as he bounced around on all fours like a gigantic cat. Vampires, for those of you still unfamiliar, are just another type of human. Wherever there are animals, there are parasites adapted to prey on these animals. Vampires are the perfect parasite to latch onto humans. They look like us, mostly live like us and they can even eat like us, but they need blood to sustain themselves. Some sort of a weird mechanic in their evolution drove them there. The upside? Superhuman senses and cat-like agility and enhanced strength. Granted, nothing too insane just the top conditioning of an olympic athlete kind of ability. Something to do with the lower hemoglobin count. They also heal like super soldiers.

Anyhow, I am getting into the boring details. I packed up my toys and Benny was still where I left him. A true man of his word, I remember calling out to him as I was about to start the car. Placing a shotgun beside me, I watched him pace towards me. Something almost human glistened in his eyes. Almost.

We sat in the car, and I asked him where we were going. He told me about some place in Texas, where his brood was staying. I told him that if he’d make a single wrong step, his head would be turned into paste. He was fine with that.

As we drove, I asked him about this wendigo thing roaming about on his turf. He said a kid named Marc, a younger vamp thrown out by his family. Yeah, they’re not really infectious either, but as I’ve mentioned before, some families are fucked. Anyway, Marc was directionless until Benny’s patriarch found him. Took him and that was that for a bit.

Turns out they had a symbiotic relationship with a shifter, but Marc, one day, decided he didn’t like having sloppy seconds from a shifter and ended up drinking from the fur bag itself.

Fucked him up really badly, and being a rebel outcast, he ran off into the wilderness. Later he came back as a hairy giant-sized version of himself that looked like it hadn’t eaten in a century or so and had horns. Tore through a few of the vamps and disappeared into the wilderness again.

Benny said they couldn’t do much to bag the beast because their patriarch told them to leave it alone. Fuck knows why he did it. The old man is apparently a weird-ass Dracula type of vampire.

Anyway, the ride was quite eventful. I almost forgot I had a vampire in the passenger seat. By the time we arrived, after a couple of detours and a food stop, it was nighttime. As for the food stop, I said, they can eat human food. It just doesn’t sustain or harm them. It goes straight to the shitter. When we arrived, the brood was on high alert, seemingly awaiting the beast to emerge. Imagine the shock on their faces when I came out of the car alongside Benny. Holy shit, that was something. I was really struggling not to laugh at the stream of bitching and moaning that flowed our way.

These tooth fairies weren’t too happy to see me, and to be honest, I didn’t enjoy seeing them either. Not that it mattered. The atmosphere seemed to freeze once we heard the dry shriek travel across the air.

Imagine a black metal musician with sandpaper in their throat attempting to imitate a moose call. That’s the sound it let out. I felt a shiver run down my spine. Nothing made me feel this way in a while, almost a pleasant change.

It proved to be a sick hunt, though.

Getting ahead of myself, Benny put all the other vamps in their place and started instructing them as I made the dumbest choice of my life to hand out these fanged bastards’ weapons.

The hunger zombie was bellowing and screeching, with each calling getting closer than the previous. We decided that the vamps would try to slow it down like a pack of wolves while I wait for it to tire out and blast its brains out.

That was the plan until I finally saw the god damned abomination. Holy fuck a creature. It was probably eight feet long as it charged at us, a parody of an emaciated human, covered in awkwardly colored fur. Elongated face, almost too small to contain its massive humanoid jaws and horns. Fucking horns.

Seeing that fuck put me on edge for sure. Heck, I was ready to get my ass kicked before I could put that thing down. And that’s pretty much what happened.

The vamps whose names I never bothered remembering charged the thing, attempting to bite and claw into it, but the fucker just shrugged them off, dragging them on top of its skeletal frame. That thing was way stronger than it had the right to be. A few more tried piling up on top of the fucker before it reached me, but it tossed them off like they were nothing. The beast then charged at me. I just stood there for a few moments, while the demon simply captivated me with its vile purity.

Admittedly, seeing a wendigo for the first time, I was both excited and a bit afraid. Twenty-something years of hunting creatures, I’ve never seen something so dead and yet alive. I’ve no shame in admitting my fear of the creature. I shot, but it moved too quickly. The bullet only grazed its face. The beast gored me.

If it wasn’t for its horns, the stench of that ugly fuck was probably going to send me flying, anyway. Holy hell, it smelled like Satan’s wet ball sack. I landed hard on the ground, and everything went a bit blurry for a few moments. When my vision cleared, I was trying to get back up, but the visual of the creature tearing the head of one vamp with its jaws momentarily paralyzed me with sheer amazement. As blood flew all over the beast’s gaze turned to me, discarding the vampire remains, it pounced on me.

Fear and adrenaline froze time for just a second, and that’s all I needed. I was lucky enough to land right by my shotgun. Without even aiming, I blasted a hole through the fucker. It slumped immobile on the ground right by me. I knew it wasn’t dead just yet, so I yelled at the vamps to unload their ammunition into the beast.

Nearly fucked up my hearing with all that gunfire. Blood and bits of fur flew all around me as the creature’s body convulsed and shook under the barrage of bullets piercing its form.

I took a few steps back, yelling at them to hold their fire. Took me a few seconds to get them to stop. Fucking idiots. Walking closer to the fallen creature, I reloaded my shotgun, but as I was aiming at the top of its skull, the fucker grabbed me and pulled me down with such force I actually nearly dropped my gun.

The next thing I know, I see a gremlin’s mouth closing in on my leg.

It had hurt badly, like having a bunch of little cleavers pierce your flesh. Jesus, it hurt so fucking bad. I was fucking livid as I unloaded everything I had into that fucker. Bits of skull and brain matter coated me, and the beast fell dead. The pain wasn’t going anywhere, but at least I could get my leg out from that maw. Attempting to stand up, I felt something tackling me down. One vamp pounced on me, my gun fell away from me, my chest was hurting, my leg fucked up and my head screaming. All I saw was a rabid bitch on top of me, jaws almost unhinged, ready to tear my throat out.

At that moment, I was hurting too badly and too tired to think about anything negative, so I was about to resign from my fate. The next thing I know she’s thrown off of me, landing on the ground with a sickening thump.

I look up and I see Benny standing beside me. My vision was spinning, my hearing fucked, and I felt nauseous and drained I watched helplessly as Benny cut his way through the vampire bitch.

I guess his buddies didn’t like that, so they tried to kill him, well, whatever three or four of them that remained. Somehow, the fucker put them all down, some of the most beautiful knife-swing dancing I’ve seen in my life. I laid there, giving in to the urge to throw up, soiling the soil right by one of the severed vampire heads.

When I was done throwing up, I rolled onto my back and Benny stood right above me, his machete pointed at me. That toothy grin stretched all over his bloodied face. I thought I’m going to be next, and the clarity of mind made it somewhat harder to accept, but he dropped the knife and outstretched his hand.

Fucker saved my life.

“Thanks, brother,” I said as he pulled me up to my feet.

“I thought you ain’t no tooth fairy’s brother, Sam.” He quipped.

“You’re no ordinary tooth fairy, Benny…” I retorted. That was the first time I called him Benny. He said nobody had called him that in years and we had a laugh about that. He patched me up and sent me on my merry way.

Paid off course too, now he calls me up every now and again either to share some info or to go hunting together. He doesn’t care if it’s a vamp, a shifter, or any other type of monster out there.

That’s why I said that we’re both alike, we don’t really like our kinds, and we both like bagging things, no matter how hard we’ll deny that.

I guess that’s what makes us monsters, not the fangs, the claws or even eating people… the joy we derive from putting things down marks us as fucked up individuals.

Well, this is getting depressing.

Crowe out.