The setting sun was obscured by a constant stream of black clouds drifting into the sky from its place of birth. The train wreckage had become a coffin made of flames and twisted metal for the army that had been trapped inside it when the bombs went off. Bits of the locomotive's metallic body were scattered across the cracked, dried desert floor with slabs of flesh that escaped the licks of fire and the rays of sunlight while polluting the sky above it, the air around the wreckage was heavy with the stench of charred flesh, crude oil, boiled blood and old burning coal.
The battle had been won but the war was still nowhere close to being over. Not while a figure, the only survivor of this massacre, crawled from his own burning coffin, with skin blacked from fire and body weakened and just barely holding onto life. He needed to feed, needed to feel the rush of blood entering his body to aid the delicate tissues and strong bones fusing back together to make him whole once more. But most of the pieces of flesh had been dried out from the sun or cooked through; even splashes of blood that had hit the desert floor were nothing more than colored dirt. The charred man gasped for air and for life to return to his body, reaching out for anything. The smallest drop of blood would do. There was a rule that, for whatever reason, one should not feast upon the dead because it was like poison or empty calories - he wasn't sure which tale was true but if he dearly wished to not become a member of this class of nonliving persons and creatures, he would have to find his next meal fast. As he crawled against the ground, a trail of soot and bits of burnt flesh followed behind him, mapping out his route from where he originated on his current aimless journey. Every breath was a struggle, every drag of his body across the burning earth a death slightly larger than the last. Time was running out and so was the daylight. With his eyes nearly gone, he had never felt more human with his self-defeated dependency for what little sunlight remained in these final moments of dusk. However, his drive to survive greatly outweighed his pride. A faint wind picked up, blowing the smoke trails towards the mountains painted into the background of night and with the change of wind came a change in the scent of the air. The blackened figure paused and lifted his head, his skin crackling and pulling away at his neck as he did so, to take in a deep breath, picking up a faint hint of exactly what he was looking for. Slowly and determined, he crawled towards the scent, more pieces of his being flaking off against the rough ground and painting his path against the white soil.
Now within reaching distance, the corpse of a Familiar was his salvation and he pulled himself on top of the dead halfling and sank his teeth into its neck. Like thick molasses sweetened with rot, the liquid took more effort than he expected to suck through the bite wound, however it was not the taste nor the pressure of his mouth that made him turn violently ill from the feast, but rather the sensation of dead blood coursing through his veins. He could feel what remained of his living tissue collide with the dead blood, two worlds clashing within him to repair the damage that had been done. The only saving grace was that Familiar blood was still considered human blood, but just more infected with the natural toxins that came with a vampire's bite. Dead, half human blood could do the job of regenerating burnt flesh, torn ligaments, and weaving muscle tissue back together but the settling of bones, the sacred house of his life source, was a pained cancer. In the covenant, you are taught to fear the fires of hell, the mouths of a thousand demons licking away at you with heated tongue and sharpened claws. Surely, his bones had been sent there and were being shoved back into his battered form. Convulsing, he held in a sharp breath as he rolled onto his back, facing the pale moon who watched him suffer silently, listening to the ever growing sound of bones shifting as they realigned themselves within the flesh that held them. Splinters fused with the marrow and a heartbeat that he had nearly forgotten as his own pounded in his ears. Bits of blackened and charred skin and meat fell off his body, revealing regenerated flesh that was pink with birth and sensitive to the cold air that nipped away at it. Cast in a blanket of never ending hurt, the figure could not maintain his silence anymore and let out a devilish yell the moment the vertebrae of his spine snapped back together and pulled themselves into a line.
The rebirth had been just as violent and painful as his death, or perhaps even more so coming from the inside-out and so he lay there, under the night sky looking up at it with fresh eyes that made the sky shine with an array of dark colours that swept across space and made each star explode like a supernova. These were the eyes of a vampire. He paused to take his first real breath with his new lungs, feeling the pink organs expand and fit right into the pattern naturally and not constricted with the contamination of smoke. Closing his eyes, he focused on the sounds of his new body, the current of blood rushing through his veins, the steady heartbeat of a thing that once was fully human, the soft brush of air passing into his lungs and out through his mouth. Even his teeth spoke to him, demanding to feel the rush of fresh, warm flesh against them through puncture wounds. At last he lifted himself up from the ground, each muscle aching and refusing the commands coming from his brain; lean forward, balance weight onto one foot, stumble and try to maintain balance once more in the dance of a newborn in a body that was not used to such complicated movements. And this tired him out so quickly that even his eyes lost focus for a moment of two, creating tunnel vision and making him almost fall back against the hard surface of the Earth. But this was not the fault of new muscles and tendons, this was starvation and a need for blood with sustenance to maintain the energy needed to keep him functional. The dead blood had done its job but it would do nothing else to keep him going and any more than what he had already taken would be close to suicide. Taking a moment to let his eyes refocus and adjust, he noticed an unmanned motorcycle in the distance and thanked whatever GOD there was who would allowed him to survive the explosion and pull himself back together, almost quiet literally. Heavy footsteps made their way towards the bike, taking more effort than the last to proceed and growing louder in his ears, accompanied by the growing struggle of breathing. His last footstep was softened by something. There was no crunch of desert soil, sharp scrape of metal against the ground or even an uneasy sensation of flattening flesh. He looked down and saw a familiar shape in the dark scorched along the edges but relatively unscathed. A grunt escaped his lips as he bent down and retrieved his hat, dusting the ash and sand off its surface before placing it on his head.
The electronic roar of the bike greeted him and he ran his hand over the chipped dashboard surface before he gripped the accelerator tightly and drove off into the night. Things were starting to look up already.