99 Coffins: A Historical Vampire Tale

by David Wellington

  Arkeley had taught her that sometimes those rules didn’t apply when you were fighting vampires, but at that moment she was willing to trust time-honored police procedure. She kept her back to the wall and started moving slowly to her left, toward the door to the control booth. If she could get a barrier between herself and the vampire, well, that would considerably extend her life expectancy.

  She put her foot out, let it touch the floor. Another foot, another step. She reached across her body with her right arm—her gun arm—and waved the barrel of her pistol into empty space. The door was still open. That—that was good. She turned slightly and started to slide herself into the doorway.

  Instantly cold hands descended on her shoulders and pulled her back. She screamed, a full-throated shriek of terror, as the vampire hurled her through space. She plummeted through the dark, sensing rows of seats passing beneath her, her arms and legs spinning, trying to find something, anything to hold on to.

  She collided belly first with a pile of coffins and stopped screaming at once. All the air in her body was forced out as if she’d been wrung out by a giant hand. Her stomach burned with pain and her legs felt battered.

  Desperate, panicked, she rolled over onto her back and pointed her flashlight back the way she’d come, back toward the top of the amphitheater. The vampire was right there, moving toward her, his hands up as if he intended to jump down right on top of her. She brought her gun hand up, but found it empty—the Beretta had fallen out of her grip on the way down. She threw the arm across her face instead in a purely reflexive gesture—there was no way the arm would protect her against the vampire’s attack. She waited out the split second it would take him to land on her, to kill her, waited it out with nothing but fear inside her, waited—and waited—

  From up above she heard a surprised grunt. Then a noise like leather being torn. The vampire roared, but still he didn’t pounce on her, still she was alive. She decided to risk a quick glance.

  Up top, on the walkway behind the topmost row of seats, the vampire was waving his arms furiously. It looked like it was waving for her to come help it.

  Its chest was torn open. The skin hung away in flaps from exposed ribs that glistened with clotted blood. Her light went right into its chest cavity and she saw—without understanding—that its heart had been torn out.

  It collapsed with a mewling noise she found almost piteous.

  She could find no sign of what—or who—had destroyed it.

  88.

  I have changed so. It feels wrong, somehow, even to hold this pen with my new white hand. The pen is a tool of the living & I have put behind me all such things. Tonight we are at rest, though it is unwelcome, & unsought for. Tomorrow surely we will be loosed. It is quiet here, though they say a battle raged all day. I was asleep, & heard nothing of it. I do smell the smoke now.

  My heart longs to go out into the night, to fight, & serve again. I have gained new powers, both of my body, which walks again (& I thought it never possible!), & of the mind. Such things I see now. I see ghosts, Bill, everywhere now about me, yet am not much frightened. Like me they have passed the vale of tears, & we are as comrades…

  One power I now possess, which is to raise the dead. Just as you were raised. I will not do it. Yes, even if I am ordered to do so…I cannot bear to see the faces torn, the bodies broken, as yours was.

  Beyond this I promise no mercy, to any man I meet.

  Tomorrow there must be BLOOD. I did not know, before, that I would dream of it, & in such quantity, & of its taste.

  —LETTER OF ALVA GRIEST (UNPOSTED)

  89.

  It was over. For the moment. Caxton was alone again, still alive, lying on a pile of broken timber that had once been some vampire’s coffin.

  She had no way of knowing if Glauer was still in the room or not. She flashed her light around the corners of the amphitheater, looking for any trace of him, but found nothing.

  She lay back for a while, uncomfortable but unwilling to move. Her body protested every time she lifted a limb or even moved her eyes too rapidly. She could be dying, she thought. The fall onto the pile of coffins had hurt—a lot—and for all she knew, she had internal injuries. She might have punctured a lung, or she could have a cerebral hemorrhage just waiting to bleed out if she tried to sit up.

  You’re fine, she thought. It was what Arkeley would have said. He wouldn’t have even bothered with looking her over. In Arkeley’s world if you were capable of standing up, then you were capable of continuing the fight. And if you weren’t spurting blood from a major artery or looking down at a compound fracture of your own femur, then you were capable of standing up.

  She sat up slowly, determined to have at least a few more seconds when she wasn’t under the immediate specter of death. She brushed splinters and dust off her arms, then she used her hands and knees to roll up to a standing posture. She hurt all over, but nothing was broken or even sprained. She was exhausted beyond all human capacity, but adrenaline would keep her going for at least a little longer.

  She was alone, it was dark, there were enemies all around—such things were too abstract compared to her aches and pains to be even worth thinking about.

  She waved her flashlight across the floor until she’d found her Beretta. It looked alright. She checked the magazine and found four rounds inside. She had an extra clip in her coat pocket. Her patrol rifle lay next to her on the floor. There were six rounds in the clip, big .50 BMG bullets capable of passing through an engine block. Those six rounds were all she had left for that weapon.

  She’d started out with two flashbangs, but those were gone. She had a can of pepper spray, a big four-ounce police model, but she had never actually tried pepper spray out on a vampire and she had no idea if it would incapacitate one. She didn’t know if it would even annoy a vampire.

  She had no idea where to go next.

  An answer came, then, though she knew better than to trust it. The red sign over one of the fire doors came on, flickering red. It said EXIT, and it dazzled her eyes when she looked at it.

  She’d played their games before. She knew the only sane course of action was to lock herself in the control booth and wait for morning. She also knew that was not an option, not when she still had work to do.

  She headed for the door marked EXIT and took one last look back at the auditorium. The red buzzing light lit up the whole room, once her eyes had adjusted to its demonic glow. She couldn’t see Glauer anywhere, not in the seats, not down by the map, not cowering in one of the long shadows. She called his name a couple of times but got no answer. So she turned to the exit and put her hand on the push bar.

  The corridor beyond was dark, but a light shone at its far end. She moved forward slowly, trying not to make too much noise. There could be anything down there, she knew, anything at all. As she approached the light she saw it was another exit sign. She moved toward it, trying not to hurry, and lifted her patrol rifle just in case.

  The sign didn’t flicker off. No other lights came on. The sign’s glow filled the hallway with pinkish light that did little to dispel the shadows in the corners.

  She was being led around by someone, led into what was probably a trap. And she wasn’t going to be allowed to go anywhere else.

  The darkness in the corridor slowly gave way to dull light. She squinted into the half-gloom and saw a plain ordinary emergency light box high on a wall down there. It had two big spot lamps mounted on it, throwing light around a corner. Just beneath it was a sign with an arrow, pointing toward the guided tours area.

  The place she’d sent Howell and his guardsmen. She sighed, wondering if she was going to be able to meet up with them, regroup and at least not be alone anymore.

  She had a very bad feeling that the answer was no.

  Moving carefully, her rifle at the ready, she headed around the corner and down a short hallway that ended in a closed fire door. There was no sign on it, just chipped enamel paint. The paint around the push bar had been
worn off entirely, leaving bare silver metal beneath, as generations of tourists had pushed it to go through. A narrow rectangular window was set into the door, chicken wire suspended in the glass. She peered through but could see only shadows.

  She told herself to buck up, and then she pushed the door open. A breeze poured through the open door, carrying a trace of a foul smell she didn’t waste time trying to identify. She moved into the room beyond, a sort of waiting room with lots of chairs and a reception counter.

  On the carpet, lined up next to each other, lay Howell and his guardsmen. They had clearly been dragged there, perhaps arranged just so she would find them. Their empty faces stared at the ceiling. One of them—Sadler, she remembered—was missing his arms. The wounds at his shoulders were bloodless and pale.

  Howell had a series of cuts on his face, four thin scratches that Caxton figured had to be claw marks. The edges of the cuts were translucent, but she could see severed pink muscle tissue underneath. No blood anywhere.

  The other two showed no sign of violent injury. All four were still wearing their full battle dress, including their helmets. Their patrol rifles were missing and none of them had any personal firearms.

  Howell had a single grenade dangling from his combat webbing. She pulled it carefully off its metal clip and studied it. Green and cylindrical, with holes on its top rather than down its sides. It wasn’t a flashbang, nor a fragmentation grenade—it must have been part of the guardsman’s regulation kit. She studied the codes stenciled on its side—M18 GREEN—and realized that it was, in fact, a smoke grenade. If she pulled the pin it would billow out thousands of cubic feet of smoke that would do exactly nothing to any vampire she threw it at. She shoved it in her pocket anyway, on the principal that you never left weapons lying around an unsecured crime scene. Basic cop procedure.

  She stood up but couldn’t stop looking at the four men. They were younger than she was, but they would never get any older. They’d already served their country once, in Iraq. Then they had come home and in less than a year they’d been sent into danger again, and this time they hadn’t made it. She told herself that they were soldiers. Sworn, just as she was, to protect the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. She told herself that two or three times. It still didn’t sound as good as she’d hoped.

  She had to keep moving. If she stopped, if she stood still and thought about how the guardsmen had died, or where Glauer was, or how many of her troops were still alive, she knew she would break down. She would lose her resolve. So after one last look at the dead men she turned away.

  Behind the reception desk she found an office, a cramped little space full of filing cabinets. At the far end she found an exit door that let out into darkness. It was past time, she decided, to get out of the visitor center. Exhaustion was starting to catch up with her and she knew she could only go so much farther without getting some rest. Outside the cold air on her face would help keep her awake, keep her sharp.

  Beyond the exit door she could see an empty parking lot, and beyond it a line of trees. She had studied various maps of Gettysburg long enough to know that past the trees was a gas station and a street full of the tackier sort of tourist industries—T-shirt shops, novelty photographic studios, cheap theme restaurants. Her next fallback position, by contrast, was a two-hundred-year-old tavern and inn off to her northeast. It was some distance away, a very long distance to cover with vampires on her tail. She had to stick to the plan, though. If there was any chance of meeting up with other units it meant following her own instructions as closely as possible.

  Patrol rifle cradled in her arms, ready to shift it to a firing position at the slightest provocation, she rushed for the trees and then out of cover, across the open concrete of the gas station. Nothing jumped out at her, nothing pale and fast came running toward her. She couldn’t help but wonder if she was being watched, though. A high wind had blown most of the clouds away and she felt exposed under all that starlight. She had to reassure herself that it was an advantage for her. The vampires didn’t need the light—they could see her in perfect darkness—so the stars were on her side.

  Every second out of cover, though, every moment she spent without a wall at her back, made her more scared. She pushed through the doors of the gas station’s little store and sank down behind the abandoned counter just to catch her breath. It was quiet down there, almost perfectly quiet. She could hear nothing but the humming of the chiller cabinets that flanked the counter, their lights turned off but their contents still kept at a perfect low temperature. In the dark she let that hum run through her, a droning sound that calmed her nerves.

  She switched on her radio and whispered a call for anyone still on the main channel. She held down the receive button and waited, hearing nothing but static. Electrons whizzing through empty space, voiceless, pointless. Her soldiers were under strict orders to answer her radio calls whenever possible. Either they were pinned down in places where it would be dangerous to make any noise at all—or they were all dead.

  It seemed impossible that she was completely alone. There had been so many soldiers under her command. They couldn’t all be gone. Could they?

  “Chalk One, Chalk Two, come in,” she said into the mouthpiece. She waited for the helicopter pilots to reply. They didn’t.

  That was all wrong. Vampires couldn’t fly. That was one power they lacked. They couldn’t have taken out the helicopters. That was just impossible. “Chalk Three, come in,” she said again, louder this time, turning up the gain and the volume in case interference was blocking her call.

  The radio emitted choppy static, louder but no more meaningful than before.

  She came out of the gas station moving fast, keeping low. Her rifle was in her hands, ready to fire at the first shadow that moved. It was a stupid way to cross open ground—she was as likely to fire at nothing, or at another human being, as she was to actually target a vampire. It was all she could do to keep her fear from overwhelming her, however, and she didn’t think about it too much.

  The Taneytown Road crossed Steinwehr Avenue ahead of her, a broad, open intersection, an expanse of concrete and grass and terrible sight lines. She hurried across, leaving on the lawns dark wet footprints that anyone could have followed. Ahead of her she saw the old buildings of Gettysburg, including the oldest of all, the Dobbin House Tavern. It was her next stop.

  A sign out front claimed the tavern had been standing since 1776, long before the Battle. It was a long, sprawling complex rather than a single building, added on to over the years and surrounded by tree-lined parking lots. The main building had thick, defensible-looking flowstone walls pierced by dozens of windows with broad white shutters. Redbrick chimneys stood up from the shingled roof and a white picket fence ran around the structure, leading up to a broad red door like a target that she hurried toward, certain she wanted to get inside as quickly as possible, sure as she could be that the intersection was better off behind her.

  90.

  July 3rd dawned and at once the guns were on again, hurling death against us as we hurled destruction at them. My troops slept through it all in their coffins, through the fighting at the Devil’s Den where men stumbled on the bodies of their compatriots, and could gain no result. I saw it all, and came to envy them. The feeling, as if my head were stuck in some invisible vise, continued throughout that day, and vexed me sorely. I complained of it to a surgeon, who had so little time for my aches and pains that he did not even spit out a reply. When I asked about it I was told every man felt the same. They knew this sensation well. Some felt it was from the noise, that the very sound of mortar shells bursting all around us was enough to physically harm a man. Others claimed it was from our inability to sleep.

  One man, a volunteer from Kentucky, offered to pray with me. “That feelin’ ya got, that’s God speakin’, tellin’ ya to git right now, for ya ain’t got so much time left to make up for bad behavior!”

  I will leave it to others to describe the content of that third day of b
attle, to list the regiments who fought with such valor and to sing the plaudits of those generals who finally outwitted Master Lee. I could only watch in terror as the Southron horde came on in waves, again and yet again, as we fought them back, with muskets and in some places with bare bayonets. My mind was not capable of making sense of the general horror, the appalling loss of life, the noise, the smoke. The smoke, the smoke! In my memory that place is all made of ash, and flecks my cheeks and nose with its feathery powder, and all I breathe is smoke. I smell it now!

  —THE PAPERS OF WILLIAM PITTENGER

  91.

  Just before she reached the door, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up and she stopped, motionless, like a rabbit paralyzed by fear.

  Someone—some thing, some unnatural thing—was nearby. She’d been fighting vampires long enough to know the feeling. It had to be close. It could be hiding in any of the broad shadows around her. It would be within striking range, she thought. It would be waiting for her to turn her back, and then it would attack.

  She lifted her rifle and turned on one foot, pointing the weapon at nothing and everything. Ready to shoot the second something moved.

  Then as quickly as the unnatural feeling had come, it disappeared.

  There had been a vampire nearby. She was certain of it. It could have attacked her. It must have wanted to. But for some reason it had changed its mind and left her alone. That made no sense.

  It didn’t need to. It was a good thing, she told herself, and she could use some more of those. She thought about the dead vampire above the electric map. Something had torn out its heart. Something was—protecting her? That wasn’t something a vampire would ever do. They didn’t see human life as possessing any significant value. They certainly wouldn’t go out of their way to save a human being. Yet something had done just that. Then again, perhaps it wasn’t protecting her at all. Maybe it was just laying claim to her. Maybe one of the vampires had decided she was its personal prey. Maybe it had killed the vampire at the electric map so it could save her for itself.