Vampire Nation

In the continent of Africa, there lived a tribe of people called the Ampakra. They were primitive hunters and gatherers who lived in the wilderness around 10 000 B.C.

One day, one of the men of the tribe went hunting and did not return. His people thought he was dead. He was not. He had encountered a strange beast which had bitten him. The bite had changed him. It infected him with a virus. The virus caused him to have uncontrollable rage and lose all reason. He had become like an animal himself. The infected man came back and attacked his kin folk. They had no choice but to kill him but not before he infected a few others. The infected people began to multiply. The tribe feared them.

The infected were monstrously altered versions of the people they used to be. They were characterized by their glowing red eyes and their uncontrollable rage and animalistic fury. Also, they feared sunlight. They could not be reasoned with. They had become little more than animals. The infection spread and all over the continent of Africa, a battle broke out between the ordinary humans and the infected. The infected ones attacked by night. They were the scourge of anything that lived. Thousands of them roamed the wilderness, attacking animals as well as the humans they encountered. One bite from the infected could turn an ordinary human being into a bloodthirsty monster. The virus kept mutating. As time went by, it stabilized itself. It stopped mutating. The Virus had done something that thousands of years of evolution could not do. It created a schism in the human species. The originally infected humans were savage and bloodthirsty monsters that were completely mindless. They craved blood and had lost all semblance of what made humanity. They did not have sentience anymore. They were no different than beasts. These early monsters did not survive for long. After consuming all available human and animal life in their environment, they turned on each other. Still, some of them survived and spread and when the virus stopped mutation, a new species was born.

A species whose members looked like humans but were not at all human. Beings who craved blood, from whichever source was available. Creatures with an insatiable appetite for destruction and violence. Those creatures feared the light of day. They were the offspring of the virus. The twists of genetic fate. They were stronger than humans. Also, they were faster. Their bodies were more resilient. The only thing they feared was sunlight. It took away all power they had and rendered them helpless as it did their ancesters, thousands of years ago. These very real creatures are what popular fiction calls vampires. They are real. There's a lot about them that is the stuff of legend. They do reflect in mirrors. Silver, holy water and crucifixes have no effect on them. Garlic has no effect on them either. They cannot turn into bats or other animals. They cannot turn themselves into smoke, as popular fiction would have you believe. They are a living, breathing species no more supernatural than bats or spiders. They live longer than humans, but they don't live forever. They can live for thousands of years. They are not undead. A vampire male and a vampire female can have offspring. The result is a pure-blood offspring. A creature that will grow at a normal rate until it reaches adulthood by human standards, than stop visible aging altogether. Pure-bloods are not that uncommon. It takes pure-blood parents to have pure-blood progeny. Half-breeds are the most common of all vampires. When a vampire bites a human, the human becomes a vampire within three days. Half-breeds are not as strong as pure-bloods but they are nevertheless superior to humans in strength and speed.

The vampires are here. There are thousands of them on the planet. Most of them like to lead a hidden life. They obtain blood from slaughterhouses and blood banks. Most of them. Some still like to hunt. The vampires have gotten tired of being hunted down by the humans. Humanity has persecuted them for thousands of years. Most have adopted a sedentary lifestyle. They do not want to attract attention from humanity in the twenty first century. Their species had gone largely undected for centuries. If humans were to find out that they were real, the vampire species might become extinct. This was the general consensus among them. Over the millennia, the vampires have evolved into a society of sorts. They have judges and cops and lawyers. Matters of justice between vampires are settled before a court. The courts forbid vampires from killing humans, except in self-defense or to prevent humans from revealing the secret of the vampires to the world. This policy is loosely enforced. The Trackers are the vampiric society's "cops". They have international jurisdiction. They hunt the vampires who breaks their society's laws. The rules of the vampire society supercede those of the human world. Vampires are forbidden from making Half-breeds. They are considered to be somewhat taboo by the established rulers of the vampire society, made of pure-bloods. Half-breeds are made everyday.

The vampire community has its share of troubles. Still, something was happening that the vampires did not know about. A vampire named Paul Farrell contacted a human scientist named Georges Halston. Halston was a geneticist. Farrell wanted power. He did not like the current state of the affairs among the vampires. He feared that the humans were a threat to the vampire community and thought that the vampires had gotten too soft and complacent. He dreamed of a future when the humans would become the slaves of the vampires. Even though the vampires were a lot deadlier than the humans, the humans had the advantage of numbers. There were thousands of vampires on the planet, with hundreds more being made each day but there were billions of humans. Even if the vampires were to rise against the humans, humanity would exploit the vampire's weaknesses, mainly sunlight and effectively destroy them. Farrell thought that the only way that the vampires would have a chance was if they could be made immune to whatever weapons the humans might use against them. Since vampires could regenerate, they had little to fear in the way of injury. Farrell gave Halston billions of dollars in funding so that he could research a way to rid the vampires of their known weaknesses. Sunlight was a vampire's main weakness.

Halston busied himself doing research on vampire subjects provided by Farrell himself. Halston discovered slight differences between the pure-blood vampires and the hybridized Half-breeds. The pure-bloods were stronger and faster than the Half-breeds. The Half-breeds were weaker, mainly due to the fact that they were once human. Sunlight was lethal to both varities of vampires, though. Halston was given the keys to the kingdom by Farrell and the wealthy and powerful vampires who served him. He had the best scientists and the best labs to work with. Farrell spared no expense. Farrell did a lot of research on vampires and discovered that at some point, they were all human. They shared the same genetic ancestry as humans, with a difference that only appeared in their genetic makeup recently. He discovered that the vampires must be a mutated strand of humanity which later became a new species altogether. He was provided with access to the hidden archives of the vampire society. He learned all their secrets. Farrell funded expeditions around the world so that Halston could figure out the true origins of the vampire species.

It was in Africa that Halston discovered the skeletons of hundreds of humans that had ceased to be human before their death. These humans had been affected by some kind of virus and mutated into something other than human. Halston discovered that one of these mutated creatures might have been the progenitor of the vampire race. He conducted extensive research on them and was able to harvest enough genetic material to create a new strand of the virus which infected the humans so long ago. He experiments with it. When he injects a pure-blood vampire with it, it causes the vampire to die in a matter of hours. When used against a Half-breed, the virus kills him in a matter of days. This is not what Farrell had in mind. He finds out that the virus has strange effect on humans. It turns them into mindless and bloodthirsty monsters who die within a few weeks. Something Halston called a Phase-beast. These freaks are mindless and would pause a threat to human and vampire alike if they were to be released in the general population. Farrell had those freaks eliminated. Halston continued to experiment on humans and vampires.

He finally came across a rather strange case. A woman named Diana had been bitten by a vampire. She was on the verge of becoming a vampire herself. Halston injected her with the virus and she was transformed into something he could not have imagined. Something neither human nor vampire. Diana had mutated into one of the Phase-freaks. Unlike the rest of the short-lived Phase freaks, she had retained her intelligence instead of becoming a mindless beast. Diana had become stronger than any vampire that ever lived. She was extremely dangerous....and pregnant. The transformation seemed to accelerate the pregnancy. Diana gave birth to a child hours before she died. Like the Phase-beasts that came before her, she had not lived very long. She was dead. Her child remained.

The offspring of Diana was born with the DNA of three separate breeds. Human. Vampire. Phase-beast. Halston named him Red. Red was different from any creature that had ever lived on the planet Earth. He inherited the vampire's thirst for blood, as well as super strength, speed and the ability to regenerate. He inherited the Phase-beast's animalistic rage and appetite for destruction. He was also part human and immune to the one thing that all vampires that ever lived fear : sunlight. Red was special. He could do things that vampires could not do. He had a strength greater than that of any human being. Unlike the short-lived Phase-beasts, he would lead a full life. Halston had unwittingly created the answer to all of Farrell's prayers. A vampiric being that could withstand sunlight. He had taken the first step to creating a foot soldier in what Farrell believed to be the upcoming and unavoidable war between the human world and the vampire community. Farrell hoped to use Red as his ultimate weapon of destruction.

Fate had other plans.....

There was a secret society dedicated to hunting vampires. This cult was known as the Blood Hunt. The Blood Hunt had been around since the late 1700s and did what it did best. Hunting vampires. A member of the Blood Hunt had infiltrated the team of scientists who worked for Halston. That's how the Blood Hunt found out about the vampires's newest project. Red. The ultimate weapon of the vampire community. Red, who looked like a human yet had instincts so feral and primeval that vampires feared him on sight. Red, who had a strength greater than that of any vampire. Red who could walk in sunlight unscathed, a feat no vampire could duplicate. Red, a genetic wonder who was the result of three separate species joining. Human. Vampire. And something far worse than human or vampire, the short-lived Phase-beasts. The Blood Hunt found the four-year old Red in the hands of the vampire Ryker, Farrell's second-in command. They took him, originally thinking that he was a human child. They changed their minds when they caught Red feeding off a Saint Bernard which he had killed with his bare hands. Red had drained the dog of its blood. He did all this in bright sunlight. They wanted to kill him but Leonard Moinpoint, leader of the Blood Hunt realized what Red represented. A new kind of creature. Neither human nor vampire. A little bit of both, and something else as well.

For centuries, the Blood Hunt had hunted vampires. They sought the Ancients. The Ancients were the elders of the vampire community. They were the strongest and the hardest to kill. They provided leadership to the otherwise disorganized vampire community. The Ancients were hard to find and even harder to kill. The Blood Hunt discovered that the older a vampire got, the more resistant he or she became to the things that usually weakened vampires. The Blood Hunt found a mere child who had more power than the Ancients. Gerald Smith and Amanda Johnson became the "parents" of Red. Red was trained by them. He was taught how to use his emerging powers. He was stronger than any vampire. He was also much faster. His body healed quicker than theirs. He could also do something that no vampire could do. He could walk in sunlight. He was to become the Blood Hunt's finest hunter and humanity's best hope in the war against the vampires.

To be continued.