Disclaimer: If it's familar, it isn't mine.

A/N: Please read and review. I don't have much experience writing fight scenes so constructive criticism is appreciated (emphasis on 'constructive'). As with the second chapter, playing 'spot the crossover/reference is encouraged.

Not all of the strangeness in the world was created by the Halloween event. The world had had it's dark side from the beginning and while the Event resulted in the creation of numerous other creatures and factions which frequently out competed what existed originally, the old world wasn't entirely erased. Demons and vampires that had haunted the shadows long before the Halloween event found themselves faced with a simple choice, the same simple choice that faced humanity; adapt or die. Creatures that had once shunned mankind ended up joining forces with, and even helping to protect them for the simple reason that it was the only way to save themselves from bigger horrors. Many vampires were wiped out, glutting themselves during the chaos only to be killed by one of the new threats or starving when their food supply ran out. Like the demons, a few of the brighter ones joined forces with those they'd once considered to be nothing but food, working out a simple agreement where the vampire's employed their superior muscle in guarding the humans and the humans donated the occasional pint of blood.

Those that once hunted the monsters found themselves with the same choice. Some adapted better then others and for every hunter that found themselves working alongside beings that they would once have slaughtered without hesitation, there was another that clung to old prejudices.

Kieran Brand was having a bad day. There wasn't anything particularly unusual about this, he, like everyone else on the planet, hadn't had what could be considered to be even approaching a good day since Halloween. But all things are relative and even in relation to the general crapsack nature of the world today still managed to win gold medal in the Bad Day Olympics.

Truth be told things had been going downhill for a while. About two months after his Mum's funeral yet another bunch of refugees had arrived at the already overcrowded and undersupplied shelter. Guarding them had been a group of men that even by Kieran's standards qualified as scary, and given that Kieran was more or less related to a guy who was part devil and had got thoroughly accustomed to it, that was saying something. The five guys were all armed, hard faced and cold eyed. They were also apparently normals, completely untouched by the Event, but despite this they proved to be very good at killing things.

At first Kieran and Nero had viewed their arrival with mixed feelings. On one hand they didn't look like the sort you'd want to meet in a dark alley, but on the 

other there was a severe shortage of people who were capable of keeping the post-Halloween wolves from the door and they needed all the help they could get. Warily and rather grudgingly the stepbrothers decided to give them the benefit of the doubt.

This plan was changed to 'keep them where you can see them and be ready for trouble' before the week was out. The newcomers were, to put it simply, a bunch of gits. They ordered people around, had barely disguised callous streaks a mile wide and viewed those who'd been altered by Halloween with contempt bordering on disgust. Taking the adage 'know thy enemy' to heart, Kieran resolved to find out more about them. It wasn't easy, they whole bunch was incredibly tight-lipped, but Kieran had very good hearing and, despite his rather garish hair colour, was rather good at being sneaky. What he'd found out didn't make him feel any better. There wasn't really enough to form a clear picture but there was enough to make him nervous. Mentions of various 'jobs' (and Kieran had a pretty good idea as to what exactly those 'jobs' were) and some sort of shifty sounding council that apparently hadn't survived the Event set off a whole belfry of alarm bells, but even more worrying was what seemed to be their opinion of anything of a supernatural or demonic nature, that they were all monsters that had to be killed. When he told Nero about it, the blond had shared his misgivings with a few more on top, but unfortunately directly confronting the newcomers was out due to the certainty that if things got ugly there would be a lot of people caught in the crossfire. So, as much as it grated against their personalities, they decided to watch, wait and keep a weapon or two handy while they were doing it.

This uneasy and unspoken stalemate could only continue for so long though and when it ended it did so in the most abrupt way possible. To put it simply, Nero got outed. There was an attack on the shelter by a pair of god-only-knows-whats that were each about three times of the average Shire horse and which were annoyingly bullet resistant. Nero, in his capacity as Chief Asskicker had had to ditch the sling and take a more hands-on approach. Even if the arm had managed to go unnoticed, the fact that both monsters swiftly ended up embedded in their own brand-spanking new craters would've still managed to give the game away. Long story short, the new guys went spare, with three of the five all for trying to kill him. The fact that Nero had been fighting by their side for a number of weeks and had been protecting just under a thousand humans almost single-handedly long before then counted for nothing. As far as they were concerned, all demons were equally bad, and had to be killed. Threats had been exchanged, weapons were drawn and the only thing that had stopped it from turning into a blood bath had been the leader of the group having sense enough to realise that if they tried anything they'd probably be the losers and it wasn't worth dying for. Instead, he called off him men and told Nero that he had ten minutes to leave. Nero had been unimpressed.



"Make me."

"Easily done. Either you leave or the boy dies."

One of the men shifted his grip on his gun and pointed it at Kieran. Nero looked like he wanted to rip someone's head off.

"You bastard."

"Hardly. I'm willing to let both of you live, which is more then the likes of you deserve. Now, get out of my sight."

By now two more guns were aimed at the scarlet haired teenager. Nero knew he could probably take them all out but he wasn't willing to risk Kieran being killed in the process. Before finding himself in this world, the only person he'd truly cared about had been his girlfriend Kyrie. He'd been willing to do anything to protect her, even embrace his demonic side. He'd only just finished putting this into practice when he found himself standing in the darkened hallway of a house, without Kyrie and with a handful of someone else's memories, not to mention that someone else's family. That he'd protect them was a given from the moment a groggy and fearful woman appeared at the top of the stairs and called him by the other man's name, a pyjama clad and newly aged teenager hovering behind her with a cricket bat in his hands and a determined expression on his face. He'd already failed once. He couldn't do it again.

"Fine. We're leaving."

It hadn't even taken them ten minutes, just the time it took for them to grab their bags and weaponry. The matter of transport was taken care of on their way to the door when a man had tossed them his keys and told them where to find the car. It was nice to know that not everyone was against them. They'd thanked him and left, the newcomers glaring at their backs as they walked out, and getting a good view of three fingers for their trouble.

The car was located without any bother, although being stuck outside at the mercy of the assorted post Halloween weirdness had taken its toll on the vehicle. The engine ran and the tires were intact but the windows were all wrecked and pretty much everything else was equally battered. Never the less, they got into the dilapidated car and headed off out of Guisborough. It wasn't a pleasant journey. Neither of them spoke, they were both too furious for words, not to mention that they couldn't help but feel very exposed. By unspoken agreement, Kieran drove (apparently sharing his head with his own creation had its advantages) while Nero rode shotgun, on the look out for the first sign of trouble. Steering around assorted debris and the occasional abandoned and wrecked car, they passed first empty houses and then ruined fields. Driving 

through deserted villages, they tried not to look too closely at the houses or imagine what became of the inhabitants. They didn't have any real plan as to where to go, mainly because they weren't entirely sure what state the surrounding area was in, so they were just driving until either they found something or the car died.

As it turned out, it didn't take long for both to happen. Just under a mile from the next town a large shape suddenly appeared in front of them, close enough for Kieran to panic and have his attempt to avoid it result in him driving the car into a tree.

"Nice driving dumbass."

"Sod off."

Muttering a steady stream of curses and pointedly ignoring Nero, Kieran tried to coax the car back into life without success. Although the damage didn't look particularly bad, it was appearently enough to make the already battered car throw in the towel. Meanwhile the thing that had caused the accident took off across a field.

"What was that thing anyway?"

"I think it was a cow."

"How could it have been a cow you idiot, they all ended up as demon food months ago."

"Maybe it was a vampire cow."

"How the hell do you get a vampire cow?"

"How do you think?"

Giving up on the car, Kieran punched the dashboard.

"Shit. What are we going to do now?"

"Well we can't just sit around here, sooner or later something's going to come along and think we're a packed lunch. We'll just have to make a run for it."

"Are you nuts? We'll be sitting ducks."

"Well what choice do we have? The car's wrecked and I don't see any others around here."


Glaring and grumbling, Kieran had to agree. The duo extracted themselves from the ruined vehicle and gathered up their stuff. Kieran groaned slightly.

"You okay?"

"More or less. I've just got a few more aches and pains then I used to, nothing that's going to slow me down."

Shouldering his backpack, he picked up his shotgun and checked that it was loaded. Nero gave him a concerned look for a moment then shrugged.

"We better get moving. Keep your gun ready."

"Yeah, I know. I'm not that much of a newbie."

They set off along the still mostly intact road, the dull red light of the moon painting everything in ugly shades of pink and brown. Despite his bravado, Kieran was terrified, his imagination doing a very good and possibly accurate job of filling the darkness with nameless horrors, and he kept as close to Nero has his dignity would let him. If Nero noticed, he didn't say anything.

Miraculously they managed to reach the town's outskirts without incident but that was where their luck ended. Passing by a housing development, the misshapen forms of never-to-be-completed houses looming in the dark, they became aware of a faint moaning sound.

"Hey, you hear that?"

"Yep. Get ready for trouble."

The two continued to move forwards but it wasn't long before the first shambling forms emerged from between the houses. Zombies.

"You know what I always hated about these towns?"

"They're dead at night?"

"Exactly."

A couple of blasts from Nero's revolver took out the nearest two, while Kieran's shotgun blew holes in a couple more. Breaking open the breech loader, he shoved in two new shells before the spent casing hit the ground. Two more zombies were peppered with holes, but the shot wasn't doing a particularly good job of keeping them down. Cursing, Kieran ejected the spent cartridges and 

replaced them with a couple of modified shells that'd been produced by the nearest thing the shelter had had to an armourer. Snapping the gun closed, he took aim at an approaching mass of zombies and fired.

If an observer of the battle had possessed the ability to see in slow motion, they would've noticed that instead of the usual burst of pellets, what emerged from the end of the barrel were two lumps of lead which separated, revealing a length of wire stretched between them as the resulting flying blade was blasted toward the zombies. All that Kieran saw was that at least four zombies suddenly had parts missing. Sparing a brief, thankful thought for the slightly unhinged young man who'd made them, he reloaded and dismembered a few more walking corpses.

Nero meanwhile was making a rather more impressive dent in the zombies' numbers. Two of them had their brains blown out while one that would've been well out of the reach of a normal man was snatched up, slammed into the ground and then thrown at an approaching group of zombie, a technique that Kieran had dubbed 'bowling for uglies'. A few unusually quick moving specimens charged towards him and were promptly chopped to bits by his sword.

Kieran was starting to get into the swing of it. Shoot, watch the zombies get diced by the bolo rounds, reload, repeat. There was a frantic quality to his movements that was missing from Nero's though for the simple reason that unlike him, Kieran wasn't much good at melee and was therefore dependant on the shotgun for keeping back the crowd of corpses. Depressingly, it seemed like their efforts weren't having much effect, since no matter how many zombies they reduced to piles of rotting meat, at least twice as many emerged to replace them. The duo did the only thing they could. They kept fighting.

Kieran was in the middle of reloading when he saw something moving towards him out if the corner of his eye. He didn't have chance to react before Nero shouted, "Get down", and he obediently dropped into a crouch as a revving sound behind and above him was swiftly followed by about half a dozen zombies getting chopped in half. Taking advantage of the brief beak in combat, he tucked the shotgun under his arm and pulled what looked like a coke can with a strip of cloth emerging from the top from one pocket and a Zippo from the other. Lighting the fuse, he counted to three then stood up and lobbed the make-shift grenade towards the nearest mass of zombies. The explosion had the desired effect, blowing the zombies nearest the blast to bits.

"You got any more of those?"

"A couple. Don't worry, I'll make them count."

Nero nodded and shot another zombie's head clean off.


Several minutes later, the situation was getting desperate. Kieran had used up all of his grenades and both of them were running out of ammo, but there was still no sign of the zombies running out. They may have been easy to take out but even the most pathetic enemy can become a serious threat if there are enough of them. Realising that they were in trouble, the duo began to make their way towards the nearest building so that they'd have one less direction to worry about. They'd only just reached it when Nero heard Kieran curse.

"Shit, I'm out of ammo."

"You sure?"

"Yep. I don't even have any regulars left."

Slinging the now useless shotgun over his shoulder, he grabbed the edging knife that was the preferable of his two weapons of last resort. The handle had been sawn off to make it more manageable and easier to carry but that still left a two foot length of ash with a large and extremely sharp stainless steel blade at the end. As a weapon, it bore a more then passing resemblance to a Monk's Spade, albeit a shorter, single bladed version thereof. Kieran was getting ready to swing it at the first zombie to come within range when Nero grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him between himself and the wall.

"What the..."

"Take a break."

"Why? I'm fine."

"You can't see what I can."

The younger man was sweating, panting and starting to favour one leg and tremble from exhaustion. The injuries from the crash were probably making things worse, despite what he'd said. Nero judged that he had maybe two or three good swings in him and knew enough to realise that attempting to fight in his condition was likely to get him killed. Nero on the other hand had the advantage of being not entirely human and wasn't even breathing hard. Between taking swings at the encroaching mass of zombies, he tried to talk some sense into his de facto stepbrother.

"I don't have time to argue about this. Just stay there and give yourself chance to get your breath back. I've dealt with worse; I can handle these things on my own for a bit."



Kieran was about to argue but the look on Nero's face stopped him. He kept his weapon at the ready, but leant against the wall and contented himself with watching Nero beat the crap out of the zombies. Where they were all coming from he didn't know. He had a vague memory of there being a cemetery somewhere nearby but he doubted that even if every corpse had got up it would've equalled the sheer number of the things that were even now emerging from the shadows. Briefly he wondered how many of them had been alive on Halloween before stamping down on that train of thought with a vengeance.

Nero was starting to worry. He hadn't been lying when he said that he'd fought worse but the things' steady stream of reinforcements showed no sign of letting up and even he couldn't keep fighting indefinitely.

Thankfully, there must've been some deity that liked them since a new noise started to make itself heard over the zombies' moaning and the duo's swearing, specifically the sound of engines. And they were getting louder.

A moment later the sources of the noise revealed themselves when a pair of transit vans kitted out with improvised armour barrelled around the corner and screeched to a stop, flattening over a dozen zombies in the process. The side door of the nearest one slide open and a shaggy head was stuck out.

"Need a lift?"

"What do you think?"

There were still a few zombies between them and the van but they made short work of them, a couple of the van's occupants doing their best to keep their side clear. Nero shoved, almost threw, Kieran in before him then jumped in himself. The van's door was slammed shut and the driver hit the accelerator hard enough to throw everyone in the back off balance and trigger a round of yelling and unfair speculation about the driver's competence, intelligence and parentage which went completely ignored.

"You guys okay?"

"More or less. Thanks for coming to the rescue."

"Don't mention it. We happened to be passing by and saw you two getting swamped. Only a total git would've left you like that."

They grinned, exposing pointed canines which didn't go unnoticed.

"If don't mind me asking, what are you?"



The grin widened.

"Guess."

"Vampire?"

"Close. Dhampir actually. My dad was wearing a vampire costume and me and the sibs sort of got dragged along for the ride. I'm Sam by the way."

"Kieran. He's Nero. Sorry but I'm going to die now."

He promptly collapsed into an undignified denim blue heap. Sam looked concerned.

"Is he alright?"

"I'm not sure. He says he's okay but I'd be happier if someone gave him the once over."

The heap let out a rather melodramatic groan.

"We've got a doctor back at the fort."

"The fort?"

Sam shrugged.

"Yeah, the name's more of a joke then anything else. It used to be a school but after everything went to hell some guy calling himself an alchemist made a whacking great dirt wall around the place and people just moved in. It's just on the other side of town so it won't take long to get there".

Nero nodded and tried to make himself comfortable on the van's floor, his sword propped up against his right shoulder. Kieran remained in his heap.

--
A/N: Well that's it for now. I've got plans for those two, the main one of which involves them going through a rather lengthy period of wandering from one stronghold to another, either chasing a lead regarding pre-Halloween family members or Nero's girlfriend, or because staying where they were is for one reason or another a very bad idea. If anyone has any suggestions for characters that they could run into (preferably ones that haven't already been used by Spaceman), then suggest away.