The common stories of victims helped simmer revenge—merciless vindication—against the ones who took their families. Even then, they would do it all over again. It was, after all, for the sake of preventing the creation of the ones they called and hunted: Vampire.

“Line them up!” the sergeant ordered. In the dead of night, slender men, donning shotguns and shields, carried the sickly by the arms. Their families—bruised and beaten fathers and mothers, and their gagged-to-shut-up crying children—could only struggle feebly, trying to reach for their loved ones, nothing but their arms reaching past the shields and shoulders of masked men.

“Are they all sick with the Disease?” the sergeant asked. He eyed the ones lined up against the wall, shining a small flashlight on them. They could barely even stand, but they must be killed before they do.

“Yes, sir. These are all known to have been scratched or bitten. We put aside the sickly who didn’t have any such wounds, as you ordered.” The militiaman replied with his back straight. A shotgun was slung over his back, and he was cupping his headlamp with his hand so as not to blind his superior.

“Very well. Call them in.”

“Yes, sir.” The militiaman turned and used his hand to blink his headlamp, cupping and uncupping it twice. Another headlamp blinked from across the small field, soon trooping in with other headlamps following close behind.

The sickly—the “infected”, “hopeless”, “doomed”—only saw a row of headlamps in front of them. The lights were too bright to see any faces behind the outstretched arms and weapons pointing at them.

“FIRE!”—They expected that to come out, but instead:

“VAMPIRES!”

Even the sickly—the hopeless, the doomed—were compelled by fear to run, but they couldn’t. They were too weak.

Bullets flew and night turned to day in ear-shattering single frames. Headlamps spun around in confusion, and men cried their death throes while others gurgled blood as their last sound on earth. The previous onlookers to the execution now became their families’ saviors, as they swooped in and claimed the backs of their loved ones from the wall, mustering all they could to run—run and run for their lives.

Miraculously, not one of the civilians died. The Vampire Hunters, on the other hand, were made an example of.

The investigating unit arrived the day after. A man in a suit of stitched plates looked over the leftover meat in the stained grass field. The wounds of those that could still be recognized weren’t ragged as if torn apart, but clean as if cut. He looked up at the school. It was possible that the attacker had jumped down to make their surprise attack from there.

“Is it them?” another man asked. Chainmail sleeves covered his arms until the cuff.

“Of course it’s them.” The other man spat. “There’s only one group of Vampires that use blades.”

—And we’re hunting them.

* * *

Loretz was outside taking the drone to investigate the gunfire from last night, with James leaning over his shoulder to look at the tablet and take note of the lay of the land. Meanwhile, Karlson and Aurelia were out gathering supplies, while Tristan and Amadeus monitored the airspace in the surrounding area.

By all accounts, there should be drones buzzing around by now.

Tristan grumbled something.

“Sorry?” Amadeus asked.

“I said, how the hell does James expect me to find anything with this? I mean—you, don’t you think this is kinda impossible?”

Tristan lowered his binoculars, revealing dead eyes. Amadeus’s helmet visor had a magnification function, so it looked like he was just looking out the window.

Amadeus sighed. “You’re not supposed to stare through binoculars for such a long time, you know?”

“… Huh?”

“You’ve been on that for 30 minutes. Of course you’d take a hit to your mental health. No, it’s actually amazing you can keep up heightened attention for longer than 20 minutes.”

“… 20 minutes is the limit?” Tristan said that with a faraway look. He’d hoped to see a drone just then, but no such consolation for his brainless, hard work ever came.

Amadeus shook his head. “Go take a break. Switch out with me in 10 minutes.”

Tristan nodded. “S-sure.” He walked away muttering something about “James, that bastard, he knew his training menu was inhuman, didn’t he? Attention training? W-well, it worked, but—oh to hell with it!” but Amadeus wrote this off as the ravings of an overworked grunt, a phase which he, himself, had once trudged through. It’ll be over soon. Don’t worry, mister.

Tristan went down the stairs to pester James about his lies and propaganda. He’d said he’d be with Loretz outside—

“What the hell is this.”

As soon as he opened the door, he walked into a skit.

James was desperately and futilely holding a knife-wielding Aurelia back as she was inching her way towards a confused Loretz, who was being taken hostage by another woman bearing a striking resemblance to Aurelia.

—Ah, it’s the bandage.

She had a bandage wrapped around her head as well. She had dry black hair and bright skin, average height. She was also crying. It didn’t even look like she was actively taking Loretz hostage. It was more like she was holding him for Aurelia to punish.

Karlson was off to the side just keeping away from it all.

Just seeing weapons being brandished should’ve set off alarm bells in Tristan’s mind and soul, but it really just felt like everyone was messing around. Aurelia looked plenty sadistic at the moment, though.

“E-excuse me!” Tristan called out. Everyone paused and looked at him. The woman was slightly alarmed, but she’d correctly guessed that he was a non-enemy by the way he was familiar with the others.

“W-well?” James said, straining his voice. He had a look in his face like, Spit it out already or I’ll let you experience what trying to wrestle with a superhuman feels like!

“Yeah, I’d like to know the fuck is going on here? Thanks.”

* * *

This all started when Karlson and Aurelia were out looting the surrounding houses. Karlson found himself surrounded by zombies in a tight alley. It was then that he calculatingly evaded death by 1.2mm—the thickness of the steel sheet guard around his arm—and managed to fight off the encroaching zombies, who were pouring in from both ends of the alley and above, for a long 30 seconds by invoking some sort of shotgun-kata that even Aurelia found incomprehensible.

She could see things in slow motion, and even then, there were just too many elements going on in Karlson’s shotgun-kata for her remaining brain cells to understand. There were simply just some angles that humans shouldn’t be firing shotguns in, but this guy was somehow pulling it off.

Aurelia herself was already on her way to rescuing Karlson. She was planning to snatch him and bring him onto a nearby roof. Before she could, however, a Robin Hood-like character, with a hood, bow-and-arrow and all, swooped in with a back-bladed machete and massacred all the zombies before making her escape to the rooftops.

Both Karlson and Aurelia fully understood the implications of the strange figure’s existence, so Aurelia carried Karlson under her arm and gave chase. The hooded figure looked back and almost stumbled in surprise as she was being chased by someone who was like her.

“Stop!” Aurelia shouted. “C’mon! We just wanna talk!”

In hindsight, it was terrifying to be suddenly chased by a fierce woman, sprinting over rooftops at 30 kph, with a man slung under her arm, one who was fully demonstrating his core strength and clutching his shotgun by the pump and hand grip, ready to shoot at any moment’s notice.

The guy was riding shotgun in such a strange way, and such a pairing was chasing their would-be savior.

Robin Hood sped up even faster.

“Damn it! Karl, we’re doing the thing!” Aurelia announced. Even if Karlson didn’t actually know what she was talking about, he responded by racking the fake pump on his shotgun. It only existed to make the sound effect—it just added about 100 grams to the overall weight, so it wasn’t too bad.

There was a wide street nearby, enclosed by barricades on both sides. It wasn’t a gap that could be jumped, even by a superhuman like Aurelia. Maybe that’s what she was talking about? He decided that Aurelia meant “Corral this shy person to that place!” so he did just that.

As for what Aurelia actually meant, she thought that Karlson would come up with something on the spot, and she’d just go with that.

As soon as Karlson had a clear shot, he fired at the foot of the Robin Hood, causing her to panic and change direction. Aurelia figured out what Karlson was trying to do, so she gave her best to give him clear shots.

They succeeded in herding her to the wide street, with Karlson shooting off her foothold, forcing her to land in the street below. The change of scenery must have disoriented her, as she could’ve kept running away, but she didn’t. The Aurelia-Karlson Chase Vehicle jumped down as well, all parties’ feet planting on solid ground.

At that moment, the Robin Hood seemed poised to fight back, as if left with no choice.

… But then she started crying. It was at this point that it became clear to them that she was a woman.

“Nooo, I don’t wanna fight peopleee!”

Even as she said that, her fighting stance didn’t break—sure, she was shaking a little, but Aurelia still wouldn’t have been able to get a hit in like this. Not that she needed to.

“Damn it, girl, just talk to me!” Aurelia shouted. She almost balled her hands into Italian flowers in exasperation.

“But you’ll think I’m weeeird!”

“I’m the same as you, damn it!”

Aurelia took off her bandana to reveal the bandage around her head. The Robin Hood slowly brought up her hand to touch her own head in mirror, confirming what everyone already knew.

They eventually calmed down and Aurelia talked her into meeting with the others at least once. She introduced herself as Rose, and she was “like this” for about a month now. Karlson didn’t disagree with bringing her along, since she might make a valuable ally and source of information in the area.

Unfortunately, certain people had a tendency to instinctively react to threats by muscle memory. This was typically a good thing in a harsh world as this, until Loretz pulled his sidearm faster than Aurelia could say “We’re back!” which made Rose instinctively jump—and she jumped really high.

Shots were almost fired, but Karlson smacked the pistol out of Loretz’s hands. The latter was utterly confused, only realizing about 0.7s later what he had done. Aurelia started barking orders like “Rose, hold him!” which was when James came in. With a single exchange of glances with an exasperated Karlson, he understood the gist of the situation and saw that Aurelia was in stress relief mode. As the only person who could (relatively) safely approach her, he tried his bestest to hold her back. That’s when Tristan came in.

It was all a happy headache in the end, but the information they got from Rose didn’t bring happiness at all.