I’ve always wondered if a zombie were to ever crossbreed with a vampire, what exactly would you have? It wouldn’t be a zombie, that I know. That would mean the resulting monster, for lack of a better term, would have not only an appetite for human, but also the appetite to drain it of its blood. By the same argument, it wouldn’t be a vampire as that would mean it wouldn’t hunt in packs, much like zombies do in popular movies today.
I thought for my Monday Mayhem series of articles dedicated to zombies, today I would explore this awful but lethal combination of crossing a zombie with a vampire. If birds can do it, why not the undead?
Looking at it logically, I wouldn’t discount the possibility that such a breed could exist. After all, zombies and vampires have a lot in common. They both are undead. They enjoy human as their choice of nourishment. And if they had their way, they’d have a run at taking over the whole world with their species. What’s to say they wouldn’t succeed?
How about the differences? These are easy. Although they don’t plan coordinated attacks, zombies hunt in groups. Even more so, when a zombie attacks, it lets loose grunts, shrieks or shrills that alert other zombies of a potential feeding frenzy. This is not on purpose, yet they have that capability to unleash devastating damage to an unsuspecting populace simply by their overt cries of hunger. Additionally, zombies do not give up easily. That’s not to say vampires do, but it is to say zombies will keep coming after a victim until its dead. Vampires can’t do that since as soon as the sun makes an appearance vampires have to flee. I’m not talking about the sparkling ones either.
What about vampires? Vampires have an innate sense of communication zombies lack. In fact, vampires talk. Zombies do not. Other than R in the movie Warm Bodies, who I would classify as an exception to the rule, zombies typically have a one-syllable vocabulary bordering on animal. A series of groans could mean they’re hungry. In a vampire’s case, however, there’s no denying they possess articulate speech, enunciated words and eloquent vocal patterns. Vampires can talk their way out of anything.
Which brings me to the what if scenario. What if zombies were to crossbreed with vampires? Would Horror fans call them vampbies or zombires? Would they melt in the sun or would they survive in any lighting condition? What about their hunger? Would they crave human meat or human blood?
The list goes on. How about their hunting patterns? Would they form packs and hunt in coordinated attack patterns or go off alone hoping what they come across would keep them alive for another day?
My opinion? I would like to see a crossbreed of pack-hunter able to change forms and go after humans not just for their blood. I would like to see a creature eloquent in speech but deadly in battle that neither a wooden stake or a bullet to the head could stop. I would like to see the ultimate Horror creature give humans a run for their lives in a city setting where strength and cunning would rule the genre.
But then I would have a problem. What would I call such a creature?
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What do you think about crossing a zombie and a vampire?
Looking to God 
What you’re describing is essentially a Ghoul.
Ghouls are undead, they sustain themselves by eating human corpses (like zombies), they are not allergic to sunlight and retain their intelligence when turned (like vampires), but their appearence is changed as they look dried-out/decayed (like zombies).
You could use horse breeding as an analogy. A horse can be 3/8 Arab, for example, so you might have 1/4 zombi-vampire mix (one part zombie to four parts vampire; now we’re starting to sound like concrete!) You get the point…
Throw in a mad eugenicist with an army of them: 50/50 would be a mix of cunning and brute force and used for the special forces. 20/80 zombie-vampire for the generals, 80/20 zombie-vampire for the cannon fodder. And if the eugenicist gets the mix too much in favour of the vampire he has a revolution on his hands.
If the story’s a comedy it would be a Vampie army; serious story it could be a race of Zampires.
Yes, but a horse is a horse. I’m talking about a horse and a cow mating to produce a whole different species. But that’s another story!
Scary thought Jack, and one that would be good to explore fuĺly. Seems sort of along the lines of I am Legend, those creatures were not reaĺly vampires and not quite zombies.
Personally I prefer my monsters to be one or the other. I like to know what I am dealing with. As for the vamps, are we dealing with the True Blood type or the less believable Vampire Diaries type? Definitely not the Twilight sparkle in the sunshine type that’s for sure. Real vamps do not sparkle!!
more like the movie wyrmwood
I thought it would be a ghoul or revenant. Ghouls sometimes hunt in packs and eat the dead. Revenants are like zombies that retain their mental faculties in some stories.
At any rate I immediately thought of The Strain. (You should check it out. It’s got that Armageddon in the city vibe you’re looking for, only by vampires rather than zombies). They’re vampires but technically most of them aren’t dead. They’re transformed humans.
For those who can’t watch The Strain, the vampires from it are a lot like the ones from Blade 2, where the vampires mutated into inarticulate, nearly impossible to kill creatures, that hunted other vampires. Also the victim vampires in Blade 2 , were living vampires who were born that way, so they didn’t die, they just transformed, too.
That may have been something of Guillermo Del Toro’s thinking when he created such creatures.
Thanks, I’ll have to check out the definition of a ghoul. I’m so out of touch with the horror genre lately!
I have to agree that the I Am Legend creatures are pretty close to what you’re looking for. In fact, when it came out, I thought it was a zombie movie (Unfortunately, I had not read the story). I was quickly corrected by many fans that they were in fact supposed to be vampires. Go figure.
Who wrote the story ? I’m curious. It seems very close ” The Omega Man “, as I posted earlier.
It was written by Richard Matheson. In actuality, both The Omega Man and I Am Legend are based off this one book (As was The Last Man On Earth with Vincent Price – though some say this movie wasn’t the same, but it’s debatable). The bacteria that made the “zombies” was dubbed (by the protagonist) as the cause for the vampire myth.
I thought it might’ve been, & thanks for the clarification !
I may have mentioned – I’ve read where, in some parts of Eat & Central Europe, vampires supposedly came out during the day, & they looked more like zombies – & very likely smelled like decomposing flesh. & the Chinese chang shih was supposedly like a cross between the 2.
I think the closest I’ve seen is from the first ‘Blade’ movie. A failed vampire that was rotting and ate human flesh while retaining its self-awareness. Many times I think the unintentional combination is called a ghoul or ghast in fiction.
Or the creatures in ” I Am Legend ” which I saw on AMC, or the ” Underworld ” movies with Milla Jovovitch.
I thought it was Beckinsale in Underworld. Mills was Resident Evil. Good example with the Legend monsters.
Oh, I get those 2 mixed up so often. Sci – fi / fantasy / horror overload & confusion !
” I Am Legend ” had basically the same plot as ” Omega Man ” with Charlton Heston, even though they may have been derived from different stories. The creatures in ” Omega Man ” were more mutant / vampire than zombie.
I actually read that “Omega Man” and “I Am Legend” were based on the same story. So was ‘The Last Man On Earth” with Vincent Price. Though it does seem to be a common theme.
I agree. I used to have a recurring dream about being the last human, sans vampires, zombies or killer robots, anything like that. It was during the Cold War, which could’ve influenced it.
I don’t know about that specific scenario, but I remember having dreams of being the only living thing in an area. Just wandering aimlessly. Maybe it deals with a natural fear of being alone.
It could be worse if you were a really voracious reader & you broke your single pair of glasses, like Burgess Meredith’s character in that famous Twilight Zone episode where he was supposedly the last man alive after a nuclear war.
I came off of a TZ marathon during the 4th, & it was in there. Couldn’t resist mentioning it.
I always forget who played that guy. That one really stuck with me.
Burgess Meredith as ” Mr. Beamish “. He then played in another TZ episode set in a future police state where he was sentenced to death for being a librarian.
Both very literate roles. Coincidence ? Possibly, possibly not.
He definitely had a ‘librarian’ look to him. Except when he was trying to kill Batman or yelling at Rocky. 🙂
Versatility. 🙂 A good actor / actress wears many faces & wears them well.
Not many of those left.
I have yet to see a Blade movie, Charles. I guess I need to make more time to catch the series, considering my liking for Wesley Snipes’ acting.
First one was great. Second was iffy, but had Ron Perlman. Third . . . guess you have to finish the set.
How about a zampire or a vombie (although I can imagine there would be different names for the degree of crossing; maybe zombires and vampbies being reserved for those who are–I don’t know the proper terminology–closer relatives, less distant, to actual vampires and zombies, so that by the fifth, sixth, or later crossed generations, they become only zampires of vombies)? It would be an interesting cross; on one hand you have the intellectuality [not to mention the sexuality] of the vampire and the sheer animalism, as you suggest above, of the zombie. Interesting dialogue for those of us interested in the fantastical or science fictional elements. I won’t use the term horror, because, wow, horror as a respected publishing genre seems to have died out in the bookstores, being reclassified into other genres, while I wasn’t looking, in the 1990s and 2000s. (I can give you the link to a recent Neil Gaiman-Kazuo Ishiguro interview that says as much.)
Vampire & zombie cross – fertilization. There is a LOTTA potential for strangeness ensuing. But I ** do ** like thinking outside the box. 🙂
You are so right about the horror genre, Leigh! I went to the bookstore the other day and asked what was the latest horror bestseller. The clerk rattled off a few titles but qualified every one by introducing every genre in horror with a bestseller of its own. I walked away confused, but you’ve reaffirmed my assumption that horror is now broken into various other genres!
Yeah, apparently so, Jack, though horror as a genre seems as paradoxically “alive” as ever in the popularity of zombie TV shows, movies of the “Blair Witch” ilk that they’re re-creating these days, Stephen King novels (not to mention your Ranger Martin!), and the like.