They led her to the Marks and Spencer makeshift quarantine facility and all the way there no one said a word. Bobby seemed to be having a grand time, taking in the capitalist richness of the sights, but Moore was firm in denying her the pleasure of checking out skirts and blouses.

Hayma joined them; she came bearing a fist full of silver-tipped arrows and a necklace of garlic. Bobby smirked at the sight of it. "Silver and garlic? How did you guys survive for so long?" Laughing she snatched off a bulb of garlic and she swallowed the whole thing. "See? You can't trust myths."

Moore scowled at the vampire girl. "I have encountered your kind before. I know your ways. If you felt like it you could tear all our heads off without breaking a sweat. What are your true intentions? Why are you here?"

Bobby cleared her throat. "First and foremost I'm here to pick up a new outfit. But I'm also here as an envoy."

Hayma scoffed and tightened her bow. "An envoy?"

"Oh yes," said Bobby. "We can't drink zombie blood. It kills us. We need the real deal." Licking her lips she stared at Ralph's neck. He gulped. "We're all starving. Not too many humans left out there, we're running out of snacks."

"What's your point?" said Moore.

"It's simple! We need your blood and you need our protection. What I am proposing is an alliance. Like ravens and wolves. Did you know that they work together? Interspecies cooperation! What do you say?"

Moore spat at the ground. "There are no more ravens," he said. The rest of his flock of bird-watcher guards nodded their heads.

"True," said Bobby, "but there are still humans. I have been traveling all over making deals on behalf of my kind. There are thousands of us, working together to survive under the red sun!"

There was little use in trying to keep Bobby quarantined. She had the strength of at least a dozen men and hellbent on finding herself a new outfit she spent her days browsing through the floors of the mall. Eventually Moore warmed up to her. They were running out of non-perishables and there was no way they could sustain themselves long-term on diet soda alone. They had hundreds of shelves of the stuff. "We're going on an expedition," said the old King of the Birds one day.

He and Bobby had been talking, making deals in the dark. Apparently there was a shelter nearby filled with goods that were of little use to vampires but a godsend for humans.

Ralph, Moore, Bobby, Hayma, and four senior sentries braved the daylight together, which apparently was of no concern to their vampire friend, and for the first several hours everything seemed to be going fine. Then came the horde.

The smell was like a cemetery dragged through a garbage dump, groaning towards them like a school of ghostly piranhas. It was an ambush.

Bobby calmly sat down at the pavement while the rest of them gave what they had to destroy the zombie brains, to halt the unrelenting march of the horde. The zombies avoided her. Slouched around her.

"Help us for god's sake!" cried Moore and Bobby grinned like mad.

"Can't you see?" she said. "These ravens of mine led me to your little hideout."

Just then a feathered corpse flung itself at Moore's neck, dug its talons deep into his flesh. He stared at it with wide-eyed wonder. "The Stresemann's Bristlefront ..."

Hayma fired an allow clean through its avian pallium but it was already too late: the undead bird had torn out Moore's jugular. She was the next to fall as the necrotic wave rushed over them like a graveyard tsunami.

Bobby grabbed Ralph by the arm. "Let's get out of here," she said. Her fangs glittered in the red sun. Ralph put his handgun between her emerald eyes, felt his finger tremble at the trigger. Tortured screams and deathly growls surrounded them. "I could really use a hand ..." she said. Ralph closed his eyes. He thought of the madness, the red skies of doom, the feelings of dread and horror that refused to let go of his heart.

He pulled the trigger.