Maybe I was unclear. The process of going from being alive to dead after being bitten by a zombie is what triggers the transformation in every movie I’ve seen. The already dead can’t be transformed, whether they’re a vampire or an already dead human. A vampire won’t “die” again and be reborn as a zombie.
This is cool. I’m actually having an intelligent conversation about zombies and vampires. My wife just rolls her eyes. The last (and only, I think) time I was able to converse about zombies within the confines of the myth is when a friend and I argued whether zombies could survive under water, as in the Resident Evil movie.
That’s incorrect. If you remember, all of the zombies in the beginning of Night of the Living Dead were dead bodies from morgues, graveyards, and god knows wherelse that were ressurrected. That’s why the cause of zombification was so confusing, because if I shot you and killed you during the Dead movies, you would become a zombie, having been bitten or no. In fact, in the remake, the main character ends up a zombie after being shot in the side, and dying alone in the cellar. He was never bitten. That’s why the whole cause of zombification is such a mystery. One doesn’t have to be bitten in order to be infected it seems.
Which leaves me to believe that it’s possible for living people to be infected with the virus, or whatever, but it’s not until something happens and that virus becomes mutated in itself that it turns the host into a zombie. What triggers that exactly, I have no idea…but it’s a thought.
Assuming a Romereoesque zombie and a Whedonesque vampire, I would postulate the followig:
Vampires feed on the blood of the livng, or at least so freshly killed that the body/blood cells would still have life in them. Zombies are not living. Therefore, the issue of what would happen if a vampire were to bite a zombie is a moot point. It just ain’t gonna happen.
A vampire bitten by a zombie would have a nasty bite wound, which would heal in a few days’ time. If the wound were to become infected, the infection could probably be easily treated with some herbs nicked from the basement at the Magic Box.
3)Convention has it that vampires are susceptible to the effects o alcohol or drugs (I fed on a flower person and spent the next six hours watching my hands move…) as well as certain poisons. I think it would be a safe assumption that someone infected by a zombie bite would have some form of toxin in their bloodstream. Thus,if a vampire were to bite someone who had been bitten/infected by a zombie but had not yet succumbed, the vampire would become ill. If it did not immediately projectile vomit, thus ridding its system of the toxins, then it would become extremely ill, again requiring treatment with herbs which would most likely be available at a magick store near you. If untreated, the vampire might start to decay, depending on how strong whatever passes for a vampric immune system is. A really tough vampire might be able to fight off the infection and recover without treatment.
It really is not known if zombification has a natural or supernatural cause. In NotLD, the zombie plague arose after the explosion of a satellite which released some form of radiation into the environment. It was speculated, but never proven, that this was the cause of the plague. It could have been coincidence, or explosion could have been caused by the same supernatural forces that precipitated the plague. So, in the unlikely event that a vampire were to sire someone bitten/infected by a zombie, there are two possibilities.
a) If zombification has a natural cause (radiation from an exploding satellite), then you would end up with a healthy vampire, at least by vampiric standards. Illnesses a person in life seem to be “cured” by death.
b) If the “disease” that causes zombification is supernatural in origin, then you would probably end up with a vampire zombie hybrid. Thus you would have an undead creature with diminished mental function subject to eventual decay, (zombie) but with a craving for blood. Being that the creature is also part vampire, and vampies don’t rot, it would be safe to assume that a constant diet of fresh blood would stave off the decay, but would start to rot if starved for a period of time. It is unlikely that any decompositonally caused physical damage could be repaired by a good feed of blood, the blood only serving to stave off further decay.
I can’t believe I’ve gotten into this debate…
Since you specify Whedonesque vamps, I must observe that they are perfectly capable of feeding on the blood of dead creatures. Angelus fed on Lilah after she was killed; Angel fed on a deli owner who was murdered in front of him. Whedon’s vamps generally prefer the living, true, but that’s because they’re sadists.