text: **Year: 1929** I was coming inside my home after a long day’s work at the port office, when I heard something from inside my kitchen. I quickly reached into my purse and drew my FN Model 1910 semi automatic pistol. And then, out of nowhere, this creature that looked and smelled like an undead human came stumbling towards me. I fired at its torso, but my shots appeared to be doing nothing. The strange man-like creature kept coming towards me, and it looked hungry. But then, right as I thought I was going to die, someone or something dropped down from my ceiling, and landed on top of the walking corpse. It pulled the corpse’s head off its shoulders, and then threw it against the wall. Then, it started smelling the air. “Who are you?” I asked, but it didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to shoot it or not; it just saved my life, but I had no idea what it was or what it wanted. I turned on a light, and what I saw shocked me. It looked kind of like a man, but its skin was pale as snow, and it had almost dog-like fangs protruding from its mouth. It turned to face me as it continued sniffing the air, and once I got a look at his face, I recognized him. “Charles.” I said. Moments later, Charles transformed into a bat and flew out of my window. I watched it leave, and it flew onto the arm of someone else I knew; Reverend Hayes. The bat landed on Revered Hayes’s arm, and together, the Reverend started walking away. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_ The most surprising part of the whole incident wasn't that a vampire was in my house; it was that I recognized him. My younger brother Charles went blind and deaf as an infant due to a bad fever. Once he was like, two years old, my parents decided that he was too much work, and sent him to be taken care of by nuns at a children's asylum, and we never saw him again. Five years later, we found out he had died in a fire. That was all fifteen years ago, and I had long come to terms with my brother's passing. I never forgave my parents for giving up on him, but I had accepted what happened. Until that night. \_\_\_\_\_ The next day, I went to the church. The door was closed, but I started banging on the doors. "Welcome." Reverend Hayes said as he opened the door. I could tell he was coming even before he spoke; his cologne was as strong as ever. We often joked that we could smell him from all the way around the block. "Susan, it's so good to see you here again, I don't think you've attended service since..." "Where's Charles?" I asked. "I'm sorry?" "My brother, Charles." I said. "I know he was in my house last night, and I know you carried him off." For just a moment, just a very brief moment, there was a look of surprise on his face. But he quickly went back to normal. "I'm sorry Susan, but you must be mistaken. Your brother died in a fire years ago. I officiated his funeral myself." "You're lying!" I said. "You know where he is and what he's become, I know it." "I'm sorry, but I truly don't. If you'd like to discuss your grief, I'm happy to walk you through some Biblical passages on dealing with loss. But otherwise, I'm afraid I have a sermon to prepare." \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ I knew he was lying to me, so that night, I snuck into the church. I broke in my prying open the backdoor. Then, I made my way to the top. “WHO’S THERE?” Reverend Hayes screamed, but I didn’t let him stop me, I kept pressing on. I could hear Revered Hayes coming down the stairs, along with someone else. I looked up to see that he was escorting my brother. My brother sniffed the air, and then came running towards me. He stopped when the Reverend tapped the floor three times. “Charles!” I said as I shed a tear. I went to give him a hug, but Reverend Hayes motioned for me to stop. “He doesn’t recognize you.” He said. Then, he held Charles’s hand and appeared to rub his fingers across his palm. “This is how we communicate.” Reverend Hayes explained. “It’s called tactile sign language. I’m telling him that you’re his sister.” “What’s he doing here?” I asked. “And how’d he end up like this?” “I might as well put on a pot of tea.” Reverend Hayes said. “This is going to take a while.” \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ “There was no fire at the asylum.” He said. “My organization made that up to cover what really happened. The truth is that on that night, a vampire broke in and committed a massacre; killed eight children and drank their blood before we stopped it. Only one of its victims survived; Charles, your younger brother.” “He’s still deafblind, but when the vampire virus took over his system, his other senses sharpened greatly. His sense of smell makes a bloodhound’s look weak by comparison; we know because we’ve tested him against bloodhounds, and he won every time.” “We didn’t make him work for us. We gave him the chance to simply be transferred to one of our safe houses, a place where he’d have fit in nicely. But he chose to become one of us, and aid us in our mission.” “I’m sorry, ‘us?’” I asked. “Who’s ‘us?’” “A secret organization known as the Protectors of Humanity.” He said. “Ever since the Middle Ages, we’ve been working behind the scenes, protecting the world from the paranormal. We’ve stopped everything from vampires like Dracula and Carmilla, to mad scientists like Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll, and The Invisible Man.” “But, those are all fictional?” I asked. Reverend Hayes laughed. “Not as fictional as you might believe. Those authors borrowed a lot more from our adventures than you’d like to believe.” “Anyway, this church has been a front for the Savannah branch of the Protectors of Humanity for over a hundred years. Most people don’t realize it, but under the surface, this city is crawling with supernatural threats, including a recent series of zombie attacks. You know, like the one you almost died in last night.” “We don’t know who is responsible for these attacks, or what their motive is. Our only advantage is his sense of smell; if there’s a single zombie in all of Savannah, he can track it down.” And then, we heard the whistle of his tea kettle. "Tea's ready." He said. "You take anything with it? Sugar? Honey? Milk?" \_\_\_\_\_\_\_ We continued talking until Charles started sniffing the air and pounding his feet on the ground. "Something's wrong!" Reverend Hayes exclaimed. "There must be a zombie." “What are we going to do?” I asked. “I’m sorry, we?” Reverend Hayes asked. “Charles and I are going to resolve this.” He explained as he reached into a cabinet to grab a sawed off shotgun and two knives. “You are going home.” He continued. I stood up and said “No. I haven’t seen my brother in fifteen years, and I’m not leaving him now.” Charles was getting more agitated, so the minister quickly realized that he didn’t have time to argue with me. “Fine, you can tag along.” He said. “But you will not engage with any zombies we find. You will stay back and allow Charles & me to handle them. Understood?” “Yes, understood.” “Good, now get your shoes on.” Charles transformed into a bat and held onto the Reverend’s arm. Together, the three of us walked in the direction he was pointing with his wings. Ultimately, we knew we were close when we heard a woman scream. The Reverend tapped Charles's wing, which made Charles take flight and fly in the direction of the scream. “STAY HERE! Reverend Hayes ordered me, and I remained on the sidewalk while he followed Charles towards the house that contained a zombie. While I was waiting for them, I felt something on my leg. I looked down to see a python crawling onto me. Before I could even start fighting it, it had wrapped itself around me and had started to squeeze. Moments later, a carriage pulled up beside me. “Good evening, ma’am.” A man said from inside. “No worries, Emmauel will not kill you. Only make you, how you say, fall asleep.” He then picked me up and loaded me into the back of his carriage. “HEY, STOP!” Revered Hayes shouted as he started firing at the carriage, but it was too little too late. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ I woke up with my legs chained tightly to a chair. To my surprise my arms were free, and I was in front of a table with a full set of silverware, and even a glass of wine. It was a small room; just a dining room table, two chairs, and a window; a window whose blinds were all the way down, preventing me from seeing anything outside. My kidnapper was sitting on the opposite end of the table. “I hope you’re hungry.” He said. “My chef should be ready with the fried catfish in just a few minutes.” “Who are you?” I asked. “Heavens, where are my manners?” The sharply dressed stranger said. “I’ve gone by many names over the past century. I currently go by Papa Brown.” “Papa?” I asked. “Bit of an unusual suffix.” “Not for a voodoo priest.” He said. Moments later, a zombie emerged from another room, carrying a tray with two plates of food. “Excellent.” He said as he started eating. “Go on, eat.” I had no intention of eating my catfish. The smell of his chef alone spoiled any appetite I may have had; but even if he smelled right, I was certainly not going to eat anything prepared by a corpse. “You might as well have some.” Papa Brown said after taking a sip of wine. “It might be your last meal.” Hearing him say that made my heart sink. “What do you mean?” “I mean, after I have no use for you, I’ll probably just feed you to my horde.” The stranger said. “Only reason I kidnapped you is because I want information on the vampire who keeps foiling my plots, and the man who always accompanies him.” “I don’t know anything.” I said. “I just happened to run into them in the street, thought I’d watch them.” “Really?” He asked. “So it’s just a coincidence that a day after one of my zombies almost kills you, you’re at the scene of my next random attack.” “Yes.” I said. “I know it’s unbelievable, but strange things happen.” “I think that’s nonsense.” He said. He then stepped aside to take the blinds out of a window. Even in the dim light, I could see a whole horde of zombies, at least twenty of them or so. “Beautiful, aren’t they?” Papa Bown asked. “And these are just my personal guard. I have more stashed in other places outside of the city.” “That must be why Charles hasn’t found him.” I said to myself. Reverend Hayes said he can only smell zombies within the city; he said nothing about the surrounding areas. “I’ve spent years planning to takeover Savannah.” He continued. “The attacks, like the one that almost killed you, are simply my trial runs. Soon, I will have this whole city under my control.” “And right now, the only thing standing in the way of that is a vampire and an old man.” Just then, I felt a snake slither up my leg and wrap itself around my torso. “Emmanuel doesn’t have to make this quick.” Papa Brown said. “He can make this last as long as he has to. Believe me ma’am, we are literally squeezin’ everything we need out of you, and no matter how long it takes.” I was so scared that for a brief moment, I was almost tempted to tell him what he wanted to know. But then, moments before I might have caved and given him the information he wanted, there was a loud crashing sound coming from the ceiling. “Emmanuel, come.” he said as his skeletal serpent slithered back to him. He turned on a lightswitch, and I saw my brother fall to the floor. “The vampire appears to have found us.” Papa Brown said. “No matter, he should be no match for my horde.” He was wrong. Two zombies stumbled towards Charles; Charles started sniffing the air, and once he had a clear sense of where the zombies were, he struck. He raised his hand and slapped a zombie’s head right off its shoulders. The other zombie tried to grab onto him, but Charles kicked it away. Moments later, Reverend Hayse barged in with a Thompson submachine gun. The moment he ran in, he started opening fire on the zombies, hitting their heads with surprising accuracy. He ran up to Charles, and used their tactical sign language to say something to him. I obviously couldn’t tell what it was, but it appeared to be something along the lines of “I’ll finish off the zombies, save Susan,” because after sniffing the air one more time, Charles started running in my direction. He burst through the window, landing on the ground in front of me. Meanwhile, I took advantage of the commotion to take the steak knife off my table and start breaking at my ties. “Leave, or you will die!” Papa Brown shouted. I was tempted to tell him that Charles was deaf, but I figured that he’d catch on soon enough. “Emmanuel, attack!” He ordered. His snake launched itself at Charles, latching onto his arm and trying to get to his torso. But Charles simply grabbed it, pulled it off of him, and then pulled it in half. “Ma’am, hold my coat.” He said as he took off his jacket and threw it towards me. I simply tossed it on the ground and continued sawing at my ropes, but I don’t think he even noticed. Only then, once his jacket was off, did I see that he was also a zombie. He had rotting flesh, some even to the point where bones were sticking out of him. Nonetheless, he looked ready to fight. “He seems to rely on his sense of smell.” Papa Brown said. “Let’s take that out of the equation.” He then waved his arms, and all of a sudden, the room started filling with thick fog that smelled like rotting corpses. “There, that should keep him distracted.” He then approached Charles, who had no way of knowing where he was coming from. Papa Brown then pulled a vial of water out of his pocket, uncorked it, and threw it towards Charles, who immediately started to burn. “Holy water.” He said. “I’m never without it. If only I had more, so I could finish you off. Guess I’m gonna have to do this the old fashioned way.” He then grabbed Charles and threw him against a wall. Charles tried to fight back, but there wasn’t much he could do about an enemy he could barely even sense. Once he had him against a wall, he started to beat him. Charles continued to throw out strikes of his own, but Papa Brown was blocking all of his strikes. He didn’t stop until Charles was virtually immobilized from his injuries. When he was reasonably sure that Charles couldn’t do much to fight back anymore, he went over to his cabinet, and pulled out a wooden stake. “Goodnight, vampire.” I then finally burst free from my ropes and charged into action. I ran at him with my knife, and before he could even react, I had already stabbed him in the back and pushed him down. What happened next was nothing short of incredible. Charles appeared to feel the vibration of his fall on the ground, and finally had a sense of where he was. Once he had a lock on him, he jumped forward, landing right in front of Papa Brown. Papa Brown tried to repel him with magic, but Charles fought back, and was able to grab ahold of him. One his hand was wrapped tightly around Papa Brown’s neck, he simply pulled it off, and threw it against the wall. Moments later, Reverend Hayes burst into the room. He was covered in blood and brain bits, but he didn’t care. The first thing he said was “Are you two alright?” “I am.” I said. “Charles looks hurt though.” Reverend Hayes took a look at his injuries and said “Nothing a few nights of rest can’t heal. Surprisingly, this isn’t even close to the worst he’s been through.” \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ Reverend Hayes drove me home. I told him I was fine, but he insisted. As we approached my house, he had a conversation with me that changed my life. “Susan, I want to offer you a place within our organization.” Reverend Hayes said. “Are you serious?” I asked. “Yes, I am.” He explained. “You showed real strength back there, when you saved Charles. We need people like you working with us.” “I’m not going to lie to you, it will be difficult.” He continued. “I will personally facilitate your training, and I can guarantee you right now that I will go out of my way to push you to your limits. I’ll understand if you don’t want to do it, but if you’d like, I’ll gladly make you a Protector.” I said “Sir, there’s nothing I’d like more than to join you and Charles in protecting this city.” “That’s what I was hoping to hear.” He replied. “Now, unless you have any plans today, I suggest we begin your training.