The Ground Zero Event

The old wanderer looks at you over the flames of the campfire as he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "So you want to know about the Ground Zero event." he says looking at you with a fixed stare that unnerves you slightly.

"Well, I can't tell you specific details, but I know the story well enough. It were most stories about bad things start, with someone somewhere trying to find a way around nature. The problem with trying to figure a way around the way nature wants things to go is that it is damn complicated, and any attempt messing with her plan is bound to backfire sooner or later, and that is exactly what happened."

The Old Wanderer now turned story teller sipped at his drink absentmindedly as he thought back to those days. "I was but a babe barely born when it happened. A company by the name of Rujuvanext had been working on a way to stop the human aging process and had a promising breakthrough of some kind or another. See they had found the secret to cell regeneration. While it would take someone a lot smarter than me to explain it all to you, the basic concept is that there is a clock in every cell, when this clock hits a certain time, it fires off a message to the cell to die. It doesn't take a genuis to figure out if you could get this clock to stop, then a cell wouldn't die and that in turn means no one would grow old. Like I said its a bit more complicated than all that, but that is the general gist of it all."

"Anyway, this breakthrough was so promising that Rujuvanext actually managed to convince the government to allow them to take criminals on death row and serving life sentences and use em as lab rats. It seemed a fair deal on the surface, you got to test a product that would benefit all of humanity while making a use out of those who were merely a drain on society. The one thing no one counted on was this experiment giving hardened killers super powers."

The Old man chuckles slightly then continues his tale "I suppose super powers might be a bit to much of a word, but there is no doubt that whatever experiments were performed changed the prisoners in a way no one would imagine. I don't know if the experiment ever stopped their aging, but I do know that it did other things. It changed them from normal humans into the first vampires and it wasn't long before these vampires escaped the prison where they were housed and that my friend was the beginning of the end. This was what we now call the Ground Zero Event."

"If people turning into vampires wasn't expected, what really wasn't expected was what happened when those vampires escaped their prison. It has something to do with cells interacting with one another or some such, but what it really boils down to is that if you get bit by a vampire he spreads it on to you. Now not everyone who gets bit by a vamp becomes a vamp, some become zombies and the like, others simply die, and a very small amount become perfectly immortal without having to drink blood to stay alive."

The old man stops his story staring into the flame for a bit "So there you have it, the tale of how it all started. It was that event that led to the near extinction of humanity, but we have been clawing our way back. We have started building cities, discovering old technology, and most importantly, we have found a way to fight the monsters. Sure they still have the advantage in most cases. They are still stronger, faster, and tougher than we are, but we have out own advantages."

The story teller gone and once again replaced by the old man takes a final drink from his cup and stands up "Well, I appreciate the fire and the tea and would love to talk more but these old bones of mine need to get some rest."