The smell of death is thick in the air, suffocating all who dare venture close to the border of the compound and causing all those within a miles radius to crinkle their nose. The source is obvious: stacks of maggot-coated limbs and torsos arranged like great walls around the perimeter of our land.

That wasn't the initial plan. At first, we'd tried to burn the bodies. Yet, since "The Pact", there were simply too many to burn. Instead, we'd had to make use of them - After all, even before the outbreak recycling was a key part of life. The vampires agreed, of course - They agreed with everything we said, so long as we gave them our blood. In fact, they even built the walls. It's not like they can catch any diseases from the corpses anyway. Atlhough I can't imagine it was a pleasant job.

Suddenly, my arm tenses. I stop looking from the window and watch as the blood surrounding the two little punctures in my arm miraculously congeals. Dracs stands up, stretching before wiping a spot of blood from his pale lips. "I can feel the strength coming back to me already," he sighs before offering me his hand and pulling me up. "Shall we get to it then?" I nod, still a little weak from the loss of blood.

We leave the blood donating room, exiting from the clinically clean box of a room (furnished with only a chair), into the musty corridors of Bassett Hall. While we try to clean the house, it is old, and the cobwebs always persist, decorating the fading blue walls. Additionally, dust continues to sit deep in the rich red carpets, with no vacuum cleaners left to draw it out. A spider falls onto my arm; I swat it away. Sometimes, it feels like the spider population is increasing at the rate the human population is collapsing. From further down the corridor comes the sound of the kitchen staff shouting and the clattering of kitchenware. Upstairs, there's laughter from the designated dorm and recreation rooms. From the far end of the house, someone wails in our makeshift infirmary.

Entering the entrance hall, the carpet changes to glimmering white tiles, and the roof is much taller. A golden chandelier hangs over us, and opposite the front door is a double staircase leading to the upper floors. Before the outbreak, anyone would say we were living it large. Yet, I would trade every gram of gold and wealth in the house for a proper meal and a full stomach. Although, the size of the building allows for at least some personal space, especially before the vampires came. That's something to be grateful for - I'm sure the sods still alive in the cities would kill for such a luxury.

Dracs and I exit the house. Immediately, the stench of death strengthens. Yet, out here, it is silent save for the murmuring of the farmers as they painstakingly work the land.

We walk a little through the rolling grass fields towards the wall that stands several hundred meters from the hall. Suddenly, there is a tearing sound and a female figure bursts into existence before us. Her hair is styled in a similar fashion to a 90s punk star, and she wears a ragged-looking trench coat to accompany her ragged-looking attire. "Good afternoon, Mary," I say. "Pulled the short straw again?" She laughs, looking at my arm. "I swear no one else has to donate blood on the same day as baiting." "Tell me about it," I grumble. "Well, let's get it over with." Dracs, Mary, and I then walk together, nearing the wall which stands five foot high. We stop at a small storage shack, from which Dracs takes a rectangular metal cage about six feet in height. Effortlessly, he straps it to his back (the cage looking almost small compared to his broad 8-foot frame). Mary lifts me up, putting me snugly in the cage and locking it. "Here we go," Mary cries. My ears pop, my heart skips a beat, and my stomach drops as if I'm falling. Then, in the blink of an eye, we're standing on the other side of the wall. Quickly, the two vampires leave, hiding in a small block of trees. "It's show time," I mutter to myself.

Zombies are drawn to sound and human flesh. At the start of the pandemic, that was why the worst hoards were in the cities. Yet, once the urban areas were ravaged, the monsters had to start going to quieter regions to find their much-desired flesh. Soon, hoards travelled cross-country, straining their rotting ears for sounds only humans can make. By the third year of the apocalypse, most of the population was dead, and zombies wandered every corner of the world. Suddenly, being the only place where humans dwelled for hundreds of miles, our base at Bassett Hall became a core attraction for many hoards of zombies. The vampires saved us. Yet, even so, a big enough army of Z's would strain our defences or even end us, so we started baiting. That's what I'm doing now: Luring the zombies to be slaughtered before they can form too big a hoard.

I begin, wacking the bars of the cage so they clang and shouting so loudly my throat goes raw. A minute later, the hunched figures of the undead appear on the horizon, hobbling towards me with intense desire. An hour later, the cage is swarmed as they try and fit their grubby hand through the bars like children reaching for free sweets. Now, I stand tense and straight, waiting for the vampire duo to do their job. CRACK.

Like lighting, the two strike the mini hoard, tearing through the bodies as a car breaks through the snow. Black blood splatters me, painting me like modern art, and, despite experience, I still find myself shaking and scrunching my face up as if I was a human pug. Soon, the Z's all lie dead, their heads struck from their bodies, their torsos and limbs ready for the wall. This is why we signed "The Pact." After all, the vampires may be creepy, pale, and drink our blood, but nothing quite matches their awe-inspiring power. We need them as they need us, and until the day all the Z's are wiped from the Earth, and maybe a little longer, our truce with them will stand.