Should have probably said a warning about language. Oops. Anyway, on with the story!

Chapter 6: In the City

As he exited the stairwell, Benedict entered the now destroyed lobby. Behind the receptionist's desk, Rebecca had a frustrated look across her face as she was trying to navigate her way through something on the computer.

"So you really could die when you wanted?" asked Benedict as he approached her. She looked up at him.

"No. That was just to shut David up. I do not know much about what I had and truthfully, I don't care about it."

"What if you actually died? What if there was no apocalypse?"

"I would still be dead and we would have never would have met," stated Rebecca as she redirected her attention back to the computer.

Benedict walked around the desk to see the screen better, only to find the receptionist lying on the floor with her viscera and blood all around her.

Rebecca noticed that Benedict stopped and said, "She was like that when I got down her."

Sighing heavily, Benedict turned his attention back to Rebecca.

"So what are you trying to find?"

"The layout plans for the sewers. I already knocked down a few walls, but there are still a few more, so you'll have to be patient."

He left her alone, sitting in the other chair behind the desk. After what seemed like ages, he was starting to get bored, so he took this opportunity and went on the second computer. It started up and Benedict began to randomly roam the internet.

"Hey Rebecca?" he asked a few minutes later.

"Yes?"

"What was it like?"

"What?"

"The disease. I mean, what happened before you died?"

"You mean like symptoms?"

"Yeah."

"Why do you want to know?"

"I have nothing else better to do, so I thought I'd see if it happened before."

She looked away as she tried to remember, "...First, there were headaches, then I started getting sore every day. After that, I began to lose sleep. I stopped eating most of the time. At first, the doctors thought it was Mononucleosis, but slowly they were beginning to doubt their diagnosis," she turned to him, "How are you going to find it?"
"I was going to cross your symptoms with vampyre legends."

"Seriously Benedict?"

"Yes, I want to see if this has happened before, which would explain the many legends just about vampyres. Also, if I don't really find anything that would mean that you are the first real vampyre in existence."

"And you the second," she pointed out before returning to her invasion on the city's records.

Benedict chuckled. As he scrolled through the search results, one in particular stood out:

"Theories on the Origin of the Vampire.

There are many myths around the origin of the blood-sucking fiend. One, for example, is witchcraft where witches would cast a curse upon those who disrespected them. The other theory is that a person contracts a disease that causes a change in the DNA of the host.

One source believed that this disease allowed Vladimir the Impaler, otherwise known as Dracula, to gain his vampyric traits. Historians found the journal of his youngest daughter, Sophamora, describing the strange disease. She stated in one of her entries that, 'a strange curse has been laid upon my father. He tells me that he feels like he can barely move and that the thunder in his head never stops. Father also has begun to eat less and less each day. I try to force him, but he simply will not eat. His screams penetrate the walls of my room at night when his dreams haunt him. I am beginning to fear that my father will not last these next few months.'

In a later entry, Sophamora stated that her father was 'screaming in agony as his heart gave out in his last moments.' Two days later, Sophamora wrote that she thought she saw her father in the courtyard, but he was covered in a scarlet liquid and 'his eyes glowed like that of a demon, red as hell itself.'

Vladimir was the first vampire sighting in history, however it could be argued that Sophamora was just hallucinating due to the mourning of her father's death as there are no more records of Vladimir after the sighting two days following his death."

"Oh," Benedict couldn't believe it.

Rebecca cheered loudly as she found the plans and began to print them out.

"Rebecca," he gestured her.

"One second. Let me just get this all sorted."

She grabbed the papers from the printer, and then made her way to Benedict.

"What?"

"I think I found something. I can't be too sure because the details on how you died are still unknown, but this seems to be the same thing."

Rebecca peered over his shoulder and read the article.

"Huh, go figure."

"What?"

"Vladimir's little illness might resemble mine."

"Might? You don't remember?"

"If I had remembered than I would have told you when you had first asked about it."

He shrugged and turned off the computer, "Let's go."

Rebecca and Benedict walked through the first floor kitchen, quickly finding a manhole entrance right outside the back door in the shade. Lifting the metal cap with ease, Rebecca climbed down into the dark underworld of the city. After Benedict joined her, the two walked along the ledge of the sewer walls, avoiding the wretched water with debris floating by. They walked along in silence in the darkness. As they walked, they looked at each other, finding that their eyes were shining.

"Huh, guess we have tapeta lucida in our eyes," she said.

"What?"

"It's what animals have in their eyes to allow them to see in the dark."

"Ah."

A moment of silence passed between them. Not wanting it to go on, Benedict asked, "So, do you think your family is okay?"

Rebecca chuckled, "No doubt. In fact, my dad is probably shooting the heads off every zombie he sees, having a blast in the process. Christine is probably at his side too."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Remember I told you that my family were hunters."

"Oh right," the silence threatened to return, "So, what did you family hunt before the apocalypse?"

"Just deer, ducks, the usual animals."

He shrugged, "Ok"

"Why do you ask?"

"It's just you know a lot about guns and how to handle them. Also, you have quite a bit of knowledge in hand-to-hand combat."

"Well, my father taught me how to use firearms for when we would go hunting, and I took archery lessons on my own time from a friend. As for the hand-to-hand combat knowledge, my sister insisted that father enlist the two of us in a self defense class."

"That makes sense."

"Yeah," she checked the map, "We gotta turn left up here-anyway, where did you learn how to fight?"

"Back when I did Hell's Mouth, I had to learn how to fight for some scenes. Afterwards, I enjoyed it so much, I started taking a class."

"David obviously did not."

He laughed, "No, he did not. Anyway, that was before I took a bit of archery."

A few minutes later, they came across another manhole entrance.

"Here," Rebecca said, pointing on the map, "We should be near the grocery store."

She started to climb the ladder when Benedict pointed out, "Shouldn't we get the shopping after everything else?"

"Good point, but I'm just going to scout out above," she said as she slowly lifted the manhole cover. The sun was mostly down below the horizon, casting a deep orange glow over the city. The streets were deserted of people, and more importantly: Zombies.

"All clear," she whispered down to Benedict as she climbed out, setting the cover aside. Benedict soon joined her and the two made their way to the weapons depositary that Rebecca had visited before.

As they entered, they concluded that everyone, once they had regained their conscious, had come here to get supplies, although many failed due to the many corpses throughout the building. As they went through the ammunition and other accessories for their weapons, Rebecca asked, "Do you know David and Rosanna's sizes?" She had forgotten to ask them back at the hotel.

"Not really. Why?"

"Just thought that they would like some sensible survival clothes," she shrugged, "Why don't you go find something? I can handle this."

Benedict left her for the men's section, finding a pair of cargo pants, a plain black t-shirt, some combat boots, and a bomber jacket. As he grabbed and couple extra sets of clothes, he also found some holsters for some of the guns they had, so he grabbed those after strapping one to his left leg.

"Here, I found these," he said as he approached Rebecca who was grabbing another duffel bag from the racks. She smiled at him as she took in his new look.

"Those will work," she placed them in the bag with the ammunition and extra survival knives; "You look good."

He grabbed her waist and brought her into a sweet kiss, "So do you."

She kissed him again, "Let's go."

They grabbed the bags and made their way to the grocery store a few blocks down.

Like the depot, the grocery store had corpses lying around the store with blood splatter over the lot. Benedict and Rebecca quickly set to work collecting anything consumable that was clean of blood and filled the second duffel bag.

"What's the third bag for?" Benedict asked her as they left the store.

"For the last thing we need to pick up before we return to the hotel," she winked.

Duffel bags thrown over their shoulder and hand in hand, Benedict and Rebecca made their way through the streets. Suddenly, a whistling sound whizzed by Rebecca, ripping Benedict from her hand.