99 Coffins: A Historical Vampire Tale
Page 27
Again she told herself it didn’t matter. She was still alive, and that did matter. She wanted to stay that way.
“Okay,” she said, to center herself. Then she turned, pressed the thumb latch on the door, and stepped inside into darkness.
Closing the door behind her, she let her lungs heave and strain to get her breath back. She felt like she’d been punched in the gut. It was freezing inside the tavern. She detected no sign of life inside the big stone building.
“Okay,” she said again. She wanted to sit down for a while. She wanted to get a good night’s sleep. She didn’t have time to be exhausted, though. Nothing had changed. No matter how many vampires were after her, no matter what they might have wanted, she still had to follow her own plan. She needed to hook up with any remnants of her army of cops and guardsmen. She needed to find more ammunition for her weapons. If nothing else she needed to get somewhere safe, somewhere she could defend, and hold it as long as she could. Hopefully long enough for the National Guard reinforcements to arrive.
There was a light on inside the tavern. She hadn’t expected that. A single candle stood on a table in the middle of the room, flickering with a yellow light that dazzled her eyes.
She was expected, she realized. Someone was waiting for her in here.
In the light of just the candle the room was full of dancing shadows. It was worse than darkness, she decided, so she blew out the flame and watched its orange spark dull and finally die. She didn’t turn on her flashlight immediately—she wanted her vision to adapt to the darkness first. So she stared into the dark and listened to nothing but her own breath. For a while that was all there was.
Then she heard music.
The sound of a fiddle playing a lively tune. It was so appropriate a sound for the ancient tavern that for a moment she wondered if she’d been sent back in time.
If only, she thought.
She climbed to her feet. The music was coming from above her, from some room higher up in the building. She heard another instrument as well—a flute? A recorder? No, it was a fife. And underneath, pounding out an uncomplicated rhythm, she heard a bass drum.
There was nothing forcing her to investigate the music. If she wanted to—and she really did want to, she knew that it was herself thinking this—she could just stay downstairs until dawn. She would be safe enough there in the tavern. She could defend herself. Shoot anything that tried to come through the door. Keep her back to a stone wall that even vampires couldn’t break their way through.
She could just sit there and listen to the music all night. If she wanted to. And she wanted to.
There was only one problem. Arkeley would have wanted her to go upstairs. She knew exactly what he would do in her situation. She knew he was right. Vampires loved to play tricks with your brain. It was one of their chief joys. It was also one of their few weaknesses. If you walked right into their traps, if you defied the obvious logic of their illusions, more often than not you could catch them on a bad footing.
So she switched on her flashlight, found the stairwell, and headed up.
The room at the top of the stairs was maybe fifteen feet on a side, with a low ceiling and lots of windows. Beyond that she had no idea what it really looked like. What she saw up there, in that room, couldn’t possibly be real.
Men in blue uniforms, well tailored and lined with polished brass buttons, stood against the walls holding steins of beer or cups of punch. Their faces were ruddy with health and good cheer. A few of them were playing the instruments she’d heard, making a raucous, happy sound. Along one wall stood a groaning board loaded with roasts and cakes and an enormous punch bowl. Bunting hung from that wall, golden cloth printed with the message:
WELCOME BACK, ALVA
“our hero return’d”
The floor of the room had been cleared away—a thick rug had been rolled up and shoved in a corner. On the bare floorboards two soldiers danced a spirited turn to the fiddle’s tune. Their faces were bright with sweat and excitement and they laughed as they turned and kicked around each other.
One was dressed in a tattered uniform of dark blue cotton and his face was torn and bloody, the skin hanging in ragged strips. He didn’t seem to mind, judging by how he laughed and clapped to keep time. His partner looked in far better shape. He was a giant of a man, maybe seven feet tall. He was dashing in a green frock coat and tight gray trousers, his shoes shined to a high luster. The chevrons on his sleeve were picked out in gold embroidery. A shaggy mane of hair and a thick beard shot through with traces of gray framed a tanned, slightly lined face. His eyes were deep and soulful and very brown.
None of the room’s occupants seemed to notice Caxton as she clomped up the last risers and into the square room. They were too busy watching the wild dance, too absorbed in drinking and eating their fill. Even as she raised her patrol rifle and tried to get a bead on one of the dancers’ hearts, not a single eye tracked her.
Then she fired—and everything changed.
92.
They came at us all at once. That is called Pickett’s charge now, but at the time we did not know who had called the advance. At the time it was only a wall of gray, sweeping toward us, as if some dam had been burst open and floodwaters were rushing uphill right at us. They screamed as they came, even as our mortars blew them to bits, even as General Berdan’s Sharpshooters picked them off one after the other. Still they came, our muskets blazing, and still they came, with banners flying. They pushed up against us, spun and died as they ran athwart our bayonets and still they came!
They broke our ranks. We pushed them back and they pressed us harder. The guns spoke volumes, the smoke so thick I could suddenly see nothing, and wandered mazed through a world that had lost all color and definition. I brushed up against the flank of a horse and muttered a pardon. The rider leaned down to get a look at me. It was General Hancock. “Have your men ready, sir,” he said, his eyes wide. “Make them ready!” He dashed off into the gloom and a moment later I heard him cry out. Had he been struck by enemy fire? I learned later that he had, and most grievously, but that he refused to leave the fighting. By God, even the generals were not safe that day!
I rushed back to where the coffins lay, watched over by a small guard of wounded men. I would have thrown them open at that very minute, and bid Griest and his men come forward and do battle, but time was against me. Despite the black pall over the sky the night was still far off.
—THE PAPERS OF WILLIAM PITTENGER
93.
Instantly she understood the trick.
Her burst of three shots tore through the small room, ripping away the illusion. The bunting, the banquet table, and the well-dressed revelers broke apart like a plate of glass as her bullets ripped through the air, leaving nothing but a cold and empty room. The white plaster on the far wall erupted in puffs of dust, but she failed to hit anything. The soldiers had all been part of the illusion. The dancers had never been there. Caxton was alone in the room.
At least it felt that way, for a moment. Then a vampire, huge and pale and fast, rushed at her and knocked her hard into the door frame, pressing all the air out of her. Her rifle’s barrel came up and nearly smacked her in the face. The vampire grabbed her around her waist and hurled her through the air, sending her smashing against a wall of framed photographs.
She couldn’t get her footing, couldn’t breathe. She sank down to the floor, unable to catch herself, unable to think.
Smart—so smart. Caxton understood that this was how she was supposed to die, that she had wasted her one chance shooting at phantoms, hallucinations the vampire had put into her brain.
“Nice trick,” she managed to hiss out. “With the music and everything.”
The vampire squatted down next to her. Peered into her eyes.
Caxton tried to ignore him and focused on staying alive. Her breath was coming back, but it hurt as it surged into her chest. Had she broken a rib? Had it punctured her lungs? It felt about that bad.
She still had her Beretta in its holster at her side. Had he seen it? It was pretty dark in the room. Then he leaned closer and she got a good look at his face. His cheeks looked almost flushed. He had fed, and recently—which meant he would be all but bulletproof. The pistol wasn’t going to make a lot of difference.
She saw something else, too. She saw eyes she recognized, a certain angle of his cheekbones. This wasn’t just any vampire. It was her vampire, the one she’d chased through Gettysburg and Philadelphia. The mastermind. She hadn’t seen him since he’d fled the Mütter Museum, but she would never forget his face.
“You—you’re the one. Why,” she said, the word making her whole chest twinge. The pain was bearable, and there were things she needed to say. Questions to ask. “Why did you wake the others? You hate what you’ve become. Why not let them sleep forever?”
His hand went back, the fingers curled like talons. Ready to snatch her head off, maybe. Then the arm slackened and his eyes met hers. “Malvern had to be destroyed. You proved to me I couldn’t do it on my own. In a way, this is your fault, isn’t it? If you hadn’t stayed my hand—”
“Bullshit,” Caxton said.
His face flared in outrage. Maybe he wasn’t used to hearing women speak like that.
She shook her head. “Fine, you needed some help. Why wake all of them?”
For a long dangerous while he just stared at her, his hands at his sides. He could kill her in an instant if he so chose. They both knew it. Instead, he sat back on his haunches. She could tell he wanted to talk about this. He wanted to explain himself. “How could I choose which should live again? When they put us in that cave we were promised it would be a few days only. That we would get our chance to fight, and soon enough. Did you think all that time could pass, and we wouldn’t feel it at all? We did, Miss. Oh, we had dreams to measure our captivity by. Dreams of blood. Those men—my men—deserved to walk again. They deserved a chance no one else could give them.”
Caxton’s teeth ground together. A chance to kill, he meant. A chance to slaughter. “A chance you didn’t want to take, yourself.”
“I beg your pardon?” he asked, fluttering his eyelids.
“You weren’t with them when they came to. You woke them up but you didn’t stick around to lead them. Have you been hiding here the whole time?”
“They knew where I was. They were to come to me. I knew they would never rise unopposed.”
“So you kept yourself apart, out of danger.”
The vampire smiled, showing lots of teeth. “Like any good general, who is worth more behind the lines where he can issue orders, than in them, where he is just one among many. You disapprove? You, I know, led your men from the front. For a woman you’ve a certain measure of intestinal fortitude, I’ll allow. Now, if you please, hand me that sidearm and we’ll finish this.”
“I thought you were different,” she said, ignoring his request. “You weren’t like the other vampires I’ve known.” Arkeley had known better, of course. All vampires are the same once the bloodlust takes them. Whatever noble principles they might possess in life, in death they become monsters.
“I can offer only my regrets, Miss, but the time has come. Your sidearm, please.”
“What, this?” Caxton asked, pulling the Beretta out of its holster. It wasn’t exactly a quick draw and she wasted a fraction of a second slipping off the safety. Still she managed to start shooting before he could tear her arm off.
He leaped up and backward, away from her. It was a movement far faster and more graceful than anything a human being could have managed. Her four shots, lined up perfectly with where his heart had been a moment earlier, passed into the soft tissue of his abdomen. The cross-point bullets shattered inside his body, each fragment tearing its own wound track through his muscle tissue, through his stomach. The skin flapped and puckered and tore until she was looking right at his cold intestines, dripping with a few stray drops of somebody else’s blood.
The wound was grisly and frightening and it would have dropped a human being right in his tracks. The pain and the shock of it would have killed many people. The vampire stared down at his own body with a look of surprise and—humor.
He started to laugh even as his body started to knit itself back together, the tatters of skin stretching across the gap like pale fingers weaving together. She hadn’t hit his heart at all, hadn’t even come close. A wound like that wouldn’t even give him pause.
The Beretta was empty. She had fired every bullet in the magazine. With her left hand she reached deep into her jacket pocket to get her spare clip, even though she knew she’d never have time to reload. He was done talking.
In her desperation she put her hand in the wrong pocket. The extra ammunition was in her right pocket and she’d reached into her left, which held a pack of gum, her miniature flashlight, and the grenade she’d taken off Howell’s dead body.
The grenade, her subconscious mind thought. She yanked the pin and tore it out of her pocket. It was a weapon—that was all she was thinking. She reached up and shoved the grenade deep inside the vampire’s exposed guts. The white skin of his stomach closed over the gap so quickly that it nearly caught her fingers.
All this took less than a tenth of a second. Far less time than it took her rational mind to catch up, to remember that the grenade she’d just shoved inside the vampire’s body wasn’t a fragmentation grenade, nor a concussion grenade, nor even a flashbang. It was an M18 smoke grenade. She might as well have thrown her car keys in there.
94.
I could do nothing but cower among my wooden crates, and listen as the guns came closer, and shake in my boots whenever I heard the Rebel Yell come from close by. I could think of nothing but defeat. If Lee overran my position, if the boxes were taken before sundown, I would be hanged, I knew it; when the South learned of what we’d done, there would be a noose for me, if I was not destroyed by cannonade or musket fire first! My head felt as if it were crumbling, as if the pressure on it was too great to bear. I was sure I would die of the noise, of the damned smoke!
And then the ringing in my ears grew louder. Or rather, all other sounds slipped away. Had I gone deaf? I leapt up and ran through the smoke to find some man, to ask him what had happened to me. I stumbled on a Major with a face stained black by powder burns. “What is it? What has become of us?” I demanded.
“Why, we’ve turned them back,” he said. He sounded as if he could scarce believe it. I matched his emotion.
Yet as I ran forward, to the very top of the ridge, I saw that it was true. The wave of gray was sweeping back, away from us. The guns chased them, and many men on the line were still firing their muskets, taking targets of opportunity. Yet the blaring of the bugles, and the great exodus of gray, showed it plain.
There was much confusion still, and many movements of troops and skirmishing. But it was over. By four of the clock it was over, the battle was done. And won.
My vampires had not been loosed. There was some discussion with General Hancock about sending them after Lee’s retreat, to harry him from behind. But General Meade, who had approved of my operation, sent personal word down: there would be no counterattack.
The Battle of Gettysburg was over. My men, my monsters, who would have been heroes, remained unused, and unfed.
—THE PAPERS OF WILLIAM PITTENGER
95.
The vampire stood up straight, an easy movement, as if he were an origami sculpture unfolding limb by limb. Caxton pushed against the wall behind her, shoved herself upward in a far less gracefu
l manner. Her Beretta hung useless in her hand. She had the urge to pistol-whip him, to fight her way free, but she knew better. She could not escape him, not now.
He placed a hand on either of her shoulders and pressed her against the wall. It felt like she was being crushed between stones. He leaned in close, as if he wanted to kiss her, and she turned her head to the side, but she couldn’t stop looking at his teeth, at the rows of them, sharp, triangular, glistening. His jaws spread wide and his head tilted to one side. He was going to tear her throat out.
Then, instead, he coughed. A small, dry noise in the dark room. His eyes widened a little and his grip on her let up, just a bit. He coughed again, from deeper in his chest, and a trickle of green smoke worked its way out of his nose.
She turned to look at him head-on and saw he looked as confused as she felt. Then he vomited a huge gout of smoke and spit and blood right across her eyes and she reeled to the side, blinded momentarily. The hands on her shoulders were gone and she slipped sideways, ducked under his arm. He didn’t bother trying to catch her, though it was well within his power.
She got clear, spun around, her hand going for the extra magazine in her pocket. She watched him from a place of pure fear, with no idea why he had released her. The smoke—that she could explain logically, sure, the smoke grenade had gone off inside his abdomen. The smoke was expanding inside of him, hundreds upon hundreds of cubic feet of it boiling inside his body. It would burst out through the handiest orifice, which in this case was his mouth. But surely that wasn’t enough to hurt him. He had just laughed off four nine-millimeter bullets to the stomach.
In his face she read what was actually going on. His eyes were so wide that she could see white all around the pink pupils. He wasn’t in pain—it was confusion that wracked him. He couldn’t understand at all what he was feeling, but he knew it was bad. His hands clawed at his stomach, tearing at his own skin. As she watched, her own hands still working at the clip release of her pistol, he doubled over and vomited up a vast plume of dark green smoke that filled the ceiling of the small room. He tried to close his mouth, to swallow down what was so intent on coming out, but the smoke shoved his jaws open again and he coughed out another vast cloud of the stuff. His hands gripped a stomach that had grown distended and convex.