Hey! I've finished writing this so I plan to be posting a few chapters a week. It's sitting around 70k words right now, and I'll probably end up writing a few little one-shots to add to the end.

No beta. All the plot holes, spelling and grammar mistakes are mine.

Summary:

It's not the end of the world, but it's the end for humanity.

Sookie is one of the remaining few to have escaped The Great Death and survive in the ghost town that is modern civilization. After traveling across country and seeking safety within a small community in South Carolina, the telepath finds herself in an impossible position and forced to beg for help from the one breed of survivors who are most feared post-apocalypse… Vampires.


A CHANGE OF WORLDS

Chapter 1: Prologue

I didn't have a death wish.

I know it might have seemed like it, driving alone in the middle of the night on a deserted freeway heading south through the now virtually uninhabited state of Florida, but I didn't.

I could justify my current actions against the knowledge that if I'd been secretly harboring a wish to die I would've perished nearly two years ago after the plague outbreak had swept through the world. Since then, fighting for survival had become a conscious and continuous effort from moment to moment. Or from second to second, as the last few days had proven for me.

Plenty of plague survivors had died in the months after the great death. Many killed themselves, through conscious action – or inaction – simply unable to cope with the collapse of modern civilization and the loss of their loved ones. Others succumbed to the challenges that the new world presented.

Locating and growing food, finding shelter, healthcare, and sourcing clean water were often insurmountable challenges for a society that had those essential skills practically bred out of them thanks to modern luxuries and disposable incomes. There was also the scores of ravenous vampires looking for sustenance.

So, while a small part of me could understand how some might willingly choose to die given all the changes, for me, if I cast aside the grief and loss of my old life and family, what I had left over wasn't anguish and woe. It was hope and pride for my fellow humans.

Many folks had beaten the odds. I'd seen it for myself. The few remaining had survived the impossible and gone on to persist in a challenging and grim environment. I'd seen how they had persevered through the worst of conditions, how they had strived to continue on and create a new life for themselves, how they endured despite the world they knew having crumbled around them. I'd basked in the hope that colored and influenced their thoughts and actions.

Persistence. It was the unifying trait of all the humans that remained. Perhaps it was the one trait that simply described humans best in general. And there wasn't many of us. If the virus was as fatal as the CDC claimed by the end, then there was only hundreds of thousands of us scattered across the world.

Sam, on his deathbed some 20 months earlier, had told me of how the earliest humans had survived through the ice age by taking refuge alongside rivers in deep valleys. "This is our ice-age, cher," he'd said, his eyes glowing with conviction. "Find your valley and survive."

I had waited by his bedside until he had passed on, his cool limp hand enveloped in mine. I'd squeezed it gently for a final time once he was gone. I was finally alone then. The lone remaining citizen of Bon Temps. While the two-natured seemed more resilient against the plague compared to many, my guess was most of the were population had been decimated.

I sat there willing Sam's death to affect me. It was the last one that mattered, after all. But there had been so many. I welcomed the clench of grief in my chest while saying goodbye to him, but there were no tears. Watching the world die first certainly had a way of hardening a woman. And I was no shrinking violet, to begin with.

With a prayer on my lips, I'd delivered Sam's body to the abandoned morgue and left it burning in the crematorium. Authorities had said in the early days it was unsafe to bury the dead, fearing the pestilence and decay would seep into the ground water tainting it. It was the one good decision they'd made early on in the fallout. If America's survivors had buried its entire population in the ground, the issues we were facing would be so much worse, even for those immune to the plague. Great pyres in every city had burned. Cities and towns had been thick with smoke.

After leaving Sam, I had then driven his truck out to Hot Shot. I'd been prepared to leave Bon Temps for nine days by that point. The plague had taken Sam painfully slow compared to others. Maybe it was a supe thing. When I arrived in Hot Shot, I held no hope of survivors but knew it was worth the trip simply for sourcing supplies. The folk out there were poor as dirt but were survivalists and preppers long before the fallout had arrived.

I'd found one survivor, though. A mind drifting in and out of consciousness that I tracked down to a rundown shack along the main street. It was a were-panther by the name of Randall. Between crackling breaths, he'd managed to explain to me that he was a cousin of Calvin Norris, the pack leader of the were-panthers.

Randall was half-way dead. His eyes blood red, all the vessels having burst – the hallmark of the great death. His body was barely skin and bones. He had begged me to shoot him. Pleaded with his rasping voice to take him out of his misery. I plucked from his mind that he'd have done it himself if he had the strength to hold the rifle to his head.

I had instead gone out to my first-aid kit in the truck and sacrificed one packet of morphine sulfate pills from my assortment of medicine. Back in his cabin, I had cradled him into a sitting position on his soiled bedsheets. I helped him swallow the entire packet of pills. His relief was palpable, I allowed it to flood my mind as he drifted to sleep for the final time. It was a salve to us both.

I knew I should've done the same for Sam. It was a painful realization. He had never asked me to, though, even if I had caught the idea of it floating from his fuzzy thoughts towards the end. He knew it was too much to ask of me, and I was too selfish to say goodbye to my only remaining friend before God deemed it his time to go. So it remained unsaid. We were both painfully aware I would have nothing left once he was gone.

I had exited the reeking cabin before death found Randall. I then raided Hot Shot of as many usable supplies I could sensibly pack in the back of Sam's truck. With Hadley's letter stuffed in my pocket and one last stop, I finally left Louisiana. I headed north-east. I was going to find my valley. I was going to survive.

So, the answer was no. I was sure I didn't have a death wish. The twenty-two months since leaving Louisiana had proven that. And I didn't think my current actions couldn't be explained as a roundabout way of committing suicide, either. I couldn't fault any outsider for thinking it. In truth, it was the actions of a desperate woman. I was rolling the dice and hoping that taking a huge risk would see to my continued survival.

I chanced a glance from the road to look at the weeping bandage covering my thigh. The bandage was no longer white, rather a motley collection of beiges, browns, and dark reds. It smelled putrid. I turned my eyes back to the road. I needed to stop for a rest again, but I'd only been back on the road for less than an hour. Every time I pulled over to rest I risked not getting back on the road again.

My thoughts were floating, drifting from one daydream to another as if I was falling asleep with my eyes open. My hands were clammy and cold, and my breath was coming shallow and fast. Sepsis had set in days ago, but it was finally hitting me hard now.

I pressed on towards my destination, past the dark ghosts of abandoned towns and cities. I was taking a huge risk, but I knew at this point there was nothing to lose, anyway. I would die if I didn't get the help I needed soon.