If, at the beginning of last month a vampire had awoken, and later that night he had fed upon some unsuspecting soul, we probably wouldn't have heard about it, it might as well have happened in Copenhagen. Even assuming that the victim died outright, it may have been a few days before it was reported in the local news as an inexplicable death, or a grizzly murder, after a week or so the true facts would begin to make the possibility of a vampire in our midst a remotely feasible possibility, it would be even longer before anyone other than conspiracy theorists would begin to believe that we may be dealing with the unspeakable truth, the cranks are right, a myth has been made real, a vampire exists.
Those of us who find the reality of vampires a little hard to take would then have a lot of catching up to do; learning about the correct use of garlic, flowing water and the advantages of sunlight, not to mention the habits of the charming beasts; having to feed on blood by night, laying in tombs by day, producing newbie vampires from their nightly victims, that sort of thing. We could afford to be blasé about it all though, safe in the knowledge that good always triumphs over evil, or if not we could go out in groups armed with sharpened stakes, probably doubting that we would ever see one, all the while not really noticing how panicky the statisticians were becoming on late night news shows and talk radio.
The statisticians would know that after that first week's cycle of feeding, dying, being reborn undead and thirsty, feeding etc. our single solitary vampire (who I'm going to call Vlad for convenience) will have changed six ordinary townsfolk into budding nosferatus, who in turn will have nibbled away, each at their chosen victims while learning the ropes, and those victims seeking new ones, giving rise to a total of 64 undead. The first of new race that doubles in number each night.
The area around Vlad's first appearance would by then have become a fairly unpleasant place to be, unless of course you are a Buffy fan or enjoy Twilight, even for those the glamour would evaporate fairly quickly. The resulting flow of locals fleeing, and sightseers arriving can only be a good thing for the thirsty sons and daughters of Vlad.
By the time, a full week later that us cynics had come to the full realisation that there was something amiss in the state of Denmark, the situation would be so hard to ignore it will have made prime-time news all over the world. From the original cluster of 64 Danish vampires, an appalling 8,128 drained people would have been temporarily entombed, making a world population of 8,192 vampires just 14 days after Vlad's debut.
The healthy flow of reporters and scientists sent to observe the phenomenon would ensure that a fair few sickly souls would travel abroad, a good thing for the vampires because the supply of 2 million living people in Copenhagen would only last until the end of the third week.
Two nights later, on the evening of day 23, the entire 5 million population of Denmark would be looking for someone to bite that night, finding none left they would be forced to travel.
As the dark hordes moved south into Germany the United Nations would be working out how to get a resolution passed, despite the veto of the Transylvanian minister for Romania on cultural grounds, and the World Health Organisation's absolute denial of the phenomenon.
By the 25th day the reconciliation attempts by Germany to ship as much donated blood that could be bought from China would have failed for lack of spirit, so too had the unilateral effort of the USA to nuke the Baltic into oblivion, the undead had seemingly just shrugged it off and begun to move north south and east. Consequently the night of the 26th day is marked by 33 million vampires descending through Canada and across the Siberian lands in search of dinner.
As that first month drew to a close the former 700 million population of Europe, overwhelmed, would announce the birth of the first undead vampire princedom, Vampiristan, under Vlad of course. His first official act; to open the borders and offer free tourist accommodation to all who want to visit. Ambassadors would be sent to every corner of the globe, by dead of night with a small box of earth in a diplomatic bag. Headlines in right wing newspapers across the world will echo "they come over here, they take our jobs, our women, send them back where they belong."
At some point on night 32 the world population of vampires would overtake the human population, some say this would have happened an hour or two later if so many humans hadn't chosen suicide as an avoidance technique, but the counter argument of “if you can't beat them, join them” is equally strong. While the few communities that had not yet been touched by the thirst believed that they could hold out or that we could find a way to live together, the vast majority knew from personal experience that the next day would probably be the last for humanity.
According to official figures the entire human race, all 7.1 billion of them, was drained and made undead early in the evening of the 34th day, in reality a few small bands of priests survived for a while, cowering under crosses on remote islands amongst large garlic plantations behind sharpened oak stake palisades. But their days would be numbered. The few scientists that opted for a life in the land of the midnight sun would only have until autumn.
By the following Christmas/Vladmas vampire children would be sent to bed terrified, and extremely hungry, with stories of mythical ghouls that traveled by day, feasted on animals and knew more than anyone about death.