99 Coffins: A Historical Vampire Tale

by David Wellington

  We sat and talkd one quartur of an hour on what we seen and did in Virginy at the vampier’s house like I told Cornel Pittenger. We even laffd, a litul. Then I askd Alva if he was sure, and if he still wantud to go threw with it as he had said he did.

  He told me he was not long for this life anyhow, with his woonds and all, and that he wantid to help his cuntry howevur he culd, and that he was reddy. He askt me if I thot it was a sin he did, and I sed no, I did not think so. Lots of othur men have volunteerd for this dutee, I sed, and the Cornel asshured me they wuld go to the good plase, and not to Hel after. So the Armee says its alrite.

  He sed that was good enuff for him.

  I had my canteen with me which I had filt with Prussic Asid, which I got from the Cornel, and I pored him a cup. The stuff smells over strong of almunds, if you ask me, and does not recumend itself for drinkin.

  He sed he was tierd and missd his friend Bill. Then he drank his fill, which was not much. In a cuple minits he died. Then I rote this out as I am sposed to, and now its dun, and I am goin to pore myself a cup, and be dun too. God sav America, and Mistur Lincon, and all our boys.

  —AFFIDAVIT OF RUDOLPH STORROW

  75.

  Glauer got Caxton on her feet, but she was already moving. There was no time to talk, no time to thank him for saving her life. They moved fast, crouching low, heading for a big round building she could just see in the dark. Behind them the vampires were feasting on the dead and the dying and they didn’t bother pursuing them. She cast the occasional glance over her shoulder and saw bodies strewn across the field. Some were pale in the starlight, their heads hairless and their eyes dark. Many, many more of those bodies belonged to her troops.

  She would feel guilty in the morning, if she lived that long. She kept running.

  When they had gotten far enough away that she dared to make a sound she said, “I thought you’d never shot anybody before.”

  “On-the-job training works wonders.” Glauer favored her with a short-lived grin that transformed into a rictus of pain. Was he hurt? She couldn’t see. It didn’t slow him down if he was. How many vampires had he killed? She had no idea.

  As tight as her plan had been, as disciplined as she’d made herself, she’d seen very little of what had happened on the field. She’d been fighting herself, too focused to keep an eye on anyone else. She had no idea how many of her troops were still alive.

  Up ahead the dark curved mass of the Cyclorama building blocked out the stars. She needed to get there, as fast as she could. Holding on to the sleeve of Glauer’s jacket, she pumped her legs to add more speed. A vampire could be right behind her, or directly in her path. They could move fast enough to get around her, to get in her way—

  If that were the case, of course, she was already dead. Nothing she could do about it. She poured on more speed. Her feet hit concrete and she gasped in relief as she dashed up the handicapped ramp of the Cyclorama.

  The front doors opened and a pair of guardsmen stepped out, weapons up and aimed at her. She lifted her own patrol rifle and they stood down. “You,” she said, pointing at one of the guardsmen. He had his night-vision goggles dangling in front of his face, a pair of shiny lenses staring back at her. “What do you see? Is anyone behind us?”

  “Negative,” he told her.

  “Okay. Get this door shut once we’re in.”

  As badly as the first stage of the battle had gone, regardless of how many people had died, her plan was still operational. She led Glauer inside, into a building with electric lights and warmth.

  The Cyclorama Center was one of the big tourist attractions of the military park—or at least it had been. It had been closed to the public for renovation for over a year. The police had been kind enough to open it up for her so she could use it as her preliminary fallback position. It was a round building with no windows, so no vampires could come crashing in from the sides. Inside was mostly open space so that people could see the cyclorama itself, an oil painting twenty-seven feet high and hundreds of feet around, a 360-degree vision of the battlefield during Pickett’s infamous charge. The painting was badly faded, but restoration work had already begun and the smoke and cannon and hordes of struggling men were depicted with eerie realism. The subject matter was too close to what Caxton had just fled for comfort.

  Some of Caxton’s troops—mostly guardsmen in camouflage-pattern uniforms—had gathered inside, keeping close together. They had their rifles in their hands, ready to fight again at a moment’s notice. None of them spoke, none of them smoked or even gave her a second look. They knew what was still out there in the dark. Falling back had bought them a few moments’ respite, but nobody would call it peace.

  In the middle of the floor a table had been set up on sawhorses. A big man-portable radio rig took up half the tabletop, and the rest was covered in small-scale maps of the park and the town. A guardswoman with chevrons on her uniform was holding court down there, craning over the radio and shouting heated questions into her mouthpiece.

  “Lieutenant Peters,” Caxton said, rushing up to the woman. “You made it.”

  “By the skin of my ass, Trooper,” the guardswoman said. She was one of only three female volunteers in Caxton’s slapdash army, but she was also the highest-ranking of the National Guard contingent. She was a little older than Caxton, maybe thirty, but she already had streaks of iron in her dark hair. She’d been to Iraq and come back from that alive. Caxton wondered briefly if she would live through the night. If any of them stood a chance, she supposed it had to be the lieutenant.

  “Any word from the visitor center?”

  Peters frowned and looked at her radio. “There are some men there. They don’t sound well organized. The mass of the opposition went after them.”

  “As long as they’re holding their ground,” Caxton said. She drew one of the big maps toward her. The visitor center was just across the Taneytown Road, only a few hundred yards away and slightly farther north than the Cyclorama. Caxton’s forces had split in groups to occupy the closest buildings, just as she’d planned. Every group had orders to abandon their positions as soon as things got too hot and move to tertiary locations farther up the road. The plan was to draw the vampires farther and farther north, into the town, where it would be easier to box them in. If they headed south instead, into the open ground of the park, they might get away. She had a contingency in place if that happened—the helicopters would try to herd them back toward town with powerful searchlights. She didn’t know if that would actually work.

  “If I were them I’d cut my losses and run,” Peters said, as if she’d read Caxton’s thoughts. The lieutenant pointed at three places on the map. “The roadblocks we set up couldn’t hold these assholes for more than a minute or two. If they made contact here—”

  “They won’t,” Caxton said, suddenly sure of it. “They’ll come for us first.”

  “For God’s sake, why? We hurt them. They hurt us worse, but they took some hits.”

  Caxton nodded. “I should hope so. No, they’ll come toward us. They want our blood. They’ve been starving for so long in darkness, waiting, dreaming about blood. They’ll go for the nearest supply. And that’s us.” She looked up at the front door of the building. “Are your people ready? They’ll be here in minutes.”

  “I saw how fast they moved. My people are ready,” Peters said, fixing Caxton with her eyes. Caxton started to look away—but the lieutenant didn’t. She just stood there studying Caxton, not blinking.

  “Something wrong?” Caxton asked.

  “We didn’t expect this kind of resistance. Over in the desert,” she said, shifting her weight slightly, leaning against the table, “our SOP when we found ourselves this badly in shit was to withdraw. Live to fight another day. That’s what we know.”

  And that’s why I couldn’t just turn this job over to you, Caxton thought. She would have loved to let the soldiers take charge of Gettysburg. She could have gone somewhere and gotten some sleep. She knew be
tter, though—Arkeley had taught her better. Soldiers didn’t just stand around waiting to get butchered. They moved strategically and only held positions they knew they could adequately defend. They worked that way because they knew their enemies were following the same model.

  Vampires didn’t fight that way. They were too arrogant—they never backed down. “Lieutenant, if we just bugged out now, the vampires could do as they pleased. Like you say, the roadblocks couldn’t hold them. You saw what they did to heavily armed soldiers. Do you want that kind of threat getting out into the civilian population?”

  Peters scowled but shook her head. Good enough. Arkeley had never asked anyone to approve of his orders. Just to follow them.

  76.

  The procedure for creating our new troops was simplicity itself, and was accomplished without hindrance or delay. A man was carried, or wheeled, or walked into the room where Miss Malvern reclined on her bed. She did not speak with them, or rather she wrote them no kind words, no gentle assurances. She told me that what she did must be accomplished in total silence. Instead she only looked into the eyes of the volunteer. In some cases their heads had to be held up so she could see them properly. Some short time would pass, whilst who knew what communication might pass between the two. Then the man was removed to another room, where his cup of poison awaited him. Very few of them balked at this time. Only two refused the cup, and both of them returned a short while later and asked for it again. I had some men under my command, hard-hearted fellows, who took the bodies and put them in the waiting coffins. The coffins were loaded into the funeral car. And then it was done; until nightfall.

  I waited by the car, waited for the sun to go down. I did not drink liquor, or play cards, or do any other thing as a pass-time. I simply sat on a camp stool and waited, perfectly alone. Just me and my conscience. When night had properly fallen I heard them stirring inside, moving around. I heard them talking amongst themselves, in low and emotionless voices. Then there came a rapping on the steel door at the end of the car. I rose and threw back a narrow portal in the door, little more than a spy-hole, and saw red eyes, so many red eyes staring back at me.

  —THE PAPERS OF WILLIAM PITTENGER

  77.

  They had a moment’s downtime, maybe no more than that. Still there were priorities to consider. Caxton placed her patrol rifle on the floor and plopped down to roll up her pant leg. Dozens of red chevrons dotted her calf, places where vampire teeth had just touched her flesh. The wounds weren’t deep and though the leg felt like it was stiffening up it still held her weight just fine. She’d been lucky—incredibly lucky.

  When Glauer took his uniform jacket off she saw he’d gotten it a lot worse. He was a big guy and he could take a lot of punishment, but the wound looked very bad. A chunk of flesh was missing from his bicep and he could move his left arm only with halting pain. There was surprisingly little blood in the wound.

  Caxton was afraid she knew what that meant. He was breathing heavily, he complained of excessive thirst, and his face was pale—the symptoms of anemia. The vampire that bit his arm had sucked out some of his blood. Maybe too much. Someone passed him a canteen and he sucked at it greedily. Caxton took off her tie and made a tourniquet above the wound. It would help keep the rest of his blood in his body and it would also help stave off infection. He needed more help than she could give, though. He needed a doctor. He needed to be taken to a hospital.

  That wasn’t going to happen. Not yet, anyway.

  He wasn’t in shock, she could at least be thankful for that. One of the guardsmen had a bandage and some surgical tape. She wrapped it around Glauer’s arm and then helped him shrug back into his jacket. It hurt him to put the garment back on, but it would keep him warm—crucial in a case of massive blood loss.

  When she was finished she stared into his eyes. “The one who did this—”

  “I got him,” Glauer insisted.

  Caxton bit her lip and nodded. There would be others, though. Other vampires who had drunk hot human blood. It didn’t just feed them. It made them stronger and tougher. She passed the word around, through Lieutenant Peters. The next wave they faced would be harder to kill. A single shot to the heart might not be enough to take down a well-fed vampire.

  “Jesus,” one of the guardsmen said when he heard the news. “What’s today, my birthday? I didn’t want this. I wanted a pony.”

  A few of the soldiers—far too few—laughed. The tension in the Cyclorama Center was thicker than road tar. Everyone knew the vampires were coming, but they were taking their damned time about it.

  Caxton’s radio crackled but before she could answer it Lieutenant Peters stood up straight, without warning, and every eye in the room turned to look at her. The guardswoman touched the earpiece of her radio set. “Report,” she said. Caxton guessed she was talking to the pilot of one of the helicopters. The Cyclorama building had no windows, so that was the only way they had to know what was happening outside without poking their heads out the door and taking a personal look. Nobody was about to volunteer for that duty. “Okay, received,” the lieutenant said a moment later. She turned to look at Caxton. “Definite signs of movement. Under light enhancement these things show up pretty good, and—”

  The doors of the Cyclorama Center slammed open before she could finish her thought. A single vampire strode through them, his arms wide, his mouth open in a wicked grin. He was shirtless and Caxton could make out his ribs below his tight white skin, but his cheeks were glowing pink. He must have just fed, moments before.

  The guardsmen were ready, had been ready since they’d taken shelter in the building. They opened up with single shots, peppering both sides of his chest. White meat splattered from the impacts and a thin black tendril of blood oozed from a wound in his cheek. He took a step forward and new holes opened all over his body, but the older wounds were already healing over.

  Another step forward—and then white shapes burst out from behind him, flashing left and right, other vampires coming in right behind him.

  No, Caxton thought, but yes—they were that well organized. They had planned this attack, they had gorged one of their number on blood until he was nearly bulletproof and they had sent him in first. While he drew fire the weaker vampires had crept inside without resistance.

  The round room’s weird acoustics made every rifle shot echo and repeat, and the muzzle flashes fractured Caxton’s vision as she jumped to her feet. She grabbed Glauer and shoved him toward the rear exit, a fire door at the northern side of the building. She felt a cold breeze on the back of her neck and spun around. It felt as if her Beretta jumped into her hand. Before she’d even registered the pale shape looming at her shoulder she lifted and fired three quick shots. The vampire there curled around his emaciated limbs and tumbled at her feet. Had she hit the heart? She doubted it—she’d been firing blind. Hurriedly she brought up her rifle and shoved the stock into the crook of her shoulder. The vampire struggled to get his knees under him, then one foot. She waited, holding as long as she could, until his pale body loomed up and over her again.

  Then she pressed the muzzle of her weapon against his chest and fired a .50-caliber round right through his heart. He died before he could even look surprised.

  Safe—for the moment—she spun around to see what was happening.

  Elsewhere in the room the guardsmen were dying faster than they could acquire targets. She saw one screaming and pounding at the floor as a vampire tore into his back with razor-sharp teeth. His legs had already been torn off by another. She saw Lieutenant Peters wrestling with a vampire that could have bench-pressed her, body armor and all, smacking the monster across the head again and again with the heat shield of her patrol rifle.

  “Break contact,” Caxton shouted, and a few of the guardsmen heard her and ran for the fire door. Those few who weren’t already in the process of dying. She tried to line up a shot on the vampire wrestling with Peters, but there was no way to avoid hitting the lieutenant as well. A moment
later it didn’t matter—the vampire got his face into her throat. The guardswoman tried to spit out one last curse, but it came out as a gurgling, plaintive moan. In moments she was dead, and her vampire assailant was that much stronger.

  78.

  I thought we would have time to train, and devise special tactics for the use of vampires in wartime. We did not.

  No one expected Gettysburg to happen. Neither side was prepared. Once it began, however, like a fire in a fallow field, it could not be stopped.

  I was near Hagerstown with my rail car at the time the news came. I was on my way toward Pipe Creek, to join up with Meade’s army; a trap had been laid there, to draw Lee south again. Clearly Lee had failed to take the bait. My orders changed in a moment and I linked up with a troop train to take us across the border. I was not ready. My men, such as they were, were not ready.

  It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. I moved about the troop train once we were under way and saw men praying, some wailing to the skies. They believed the End of Days had come. The soldiers knew this battle would be a “good ’un,” a last desperate fight to try to stop Lee before he could capture Philadelphia and force a peace. The men sang songs, “John Brown’s Body,” which I hadn’t heard since the great muster when all Washington was an armed camp, or the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” By God, it was stirring.

  As we approached the little market town of Gettysburg the singing stopped abruptly. There was another sound, an abominable sound, an unbearable sound that rocked the train car beneath me, shifted the coffins back and forth in their racks. I had never heard real artillery fire before. I had not heard guns ring like bells and the earth roar as it was torn open. From twenty miles away the noise was loud enough to tear the breath out of my mouth. They say those guns were heard as far away as Pittsburgh.

  —THE PAPERS OF WILLIAM PITTENGER