I done a hundred different jobs over the years. Tending the farm with Pap, early mornings and long days, muscles aching from dragging farm equipment bigger n’ I was. Was a paperboy a little while. Became a fry cook in my teens and hated it more n’ anything. Was always more of a cow rearer than a burger flipper. Odd jobs after that, running round town like a headless chicken. I repaired shoes, was a tailor, forged a couple no-good sets of nails, sold power tools at some big box store, performed as a trickshooter, plus many more and many much less glamorous. Then, of course, there was the band.

If you’ve heard of me from anywhere, it’s there. Greg Saunders of the Prairie Troubadours, the best little rock band in Texas. Played in packed bars and talent shows and high school football games, anywhere that’d take us, and we loved it. I was the dark horse of that band. Lead gee-tar, backup vocalist, wearing a cowboy hat darker n’ the night sky. We were gettin’ bigger by the day, livin’ in high cotton. Had fans following us in the rain, screaming our names. It was plain to us that a record deal’d be coming down soon. I took a little vacation. Just a week or two away from the boys to get back to my Pap’s old farm and jaw with him about how things were going for his kid. We were worried about selling out, see, wanted to keep the music pure. I thought my Pap would know more about that than anyone. He sure did, but… That conversation seems so far away now, so fanciful. We were talking about our harvest when the field lay fallow and dead before us.

I came back to a bloodbath. I don’t remember what the cops told me. They dressed it all up in fancy language and condolences that fell on my ears like static from an unplugged amp. I begged and they let me see the pictures. Saw the whole band. Billy Gunn, Danny Leong, Bat Lash, Raph Sandoval… They were bled to death, slaughtered like farm animals. The news crushed me beneath it like a bale of agony. The officers couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. They couldn’t decide if it was some serial killer or a one off incident, some spurned fan or a random attack. Not too long before they quit looking. Don’t know if they got paid off, or if they found something too terrible, too dangerous for them to continue. Don’t matter much now. What does is that I took it into my hands.

I took up the name Vigilante. In white hat and red bandana I ran down ne’er-do-wells of every stripe, grasping for leads about anyone who coulda done this. Wasn’t no investigator. Just a kid with a pair of handguns, a lariat, and a righteous fury. Roughed up city slickers and country crooks, gangsters and mafiosos. Inching closer to the truth. Got good at it, running down leads, helping folk wherever I went. I rationalized what happened for myself as I worked. Surely it was a brutal hit or a depraved killer that took my friends from me. It took time to peel back the veil and peer at the hideous truth before me.

Dead things walk among us. Zombies, ghouls, vampires. You can deny it if you like, but I ain’t got much time for doubters. I know what I’ve seen, men falling apart as they’re walking, creatures that fly on great leathery wings. I been on this trail five years now, searching for answers for that night. Finding the suckhead sons-of-bitches that done it. It's brought me to darker places than I could dream of… Places where things aren’t just bumping in the night. Places like that are where I met him.

Near as I can tell, he’s done just one job over these years, and that’s killing vampires. He tells me that he’s had a lot of names over the years, but that Blade is the simplest. If he’s got a real name, he ain’t sharing it. He don’t share much, in fact, don’t talk too much at all. Least not to me. He’s a tall black feller who can be known by his habits of wearing heavy leather and shades absolutely everywhere he goes. Not to mention the sword hanging off his back. He’s the first professional vampire hunter I’ve ever met. He might be the best there ever was.

But he avoids me like I’m slicker than pig snot on a radiator. Some country bumpkin, ruining his hunt. But I need him. Spent five years spinning my wheels with not much to show for it besides a pile of random mobsters and toughs in chains or dead. Comes a man like him, what actually knows what he’s doing? I can’t let him pass me by.

As per the title Dead South, Vigilante and Blade will mostly be operating around the southern US and into Mexico. That said, I chose this pairing to be open to collaboration. They’re on the move, and are more than likely to visit New York or Hub or wherever their quest brings them.

I’ll be real, there’s not much of a plan here. I’m more a planner than a panster, but at this point I’ve fallen off the writing horse a bit, and like Roman, I’m trying to force myself back into it, but I’m taking something of a different approach to him. Where he has lovingly crafted his masterplan, I’m throwing the concept of a plan out the window. When I wrote Vig back in UOU, I piloted him more or less on vibes and vague ideas, and at least in terms of word count, it was possibly my most successful outing. I don’t have time like I did back then… But maybe if I can replicate the methods, I can replicate the success.

Vigilante and Blade will go on a vampire hunting romp and encounter some major characters from Marvel vampire lore, pending negotiations with the magnanimous Half Pint, and characters from DC’s Western comics. I’ve always thought Vigilante played best when dealing with problems beyond the scope of an ordinary cowboy hero, and vampires fit that bill. As for Blade, at one point I was writing him as the primary POV of a different version of this tale, but found I wanted someone newer to the supernatural, so I thought I’d pull out an old favorite. Will there still be a Blade POV? Hey, maybe!