99 Coffins: A Historical Vampire Tale

by David Wellington

  His whole body heaved as he threw up one more time. Caxton shoved home the magazine of her pistol with her palm. He turned to look at her, his expression pleading. Or maybe it was just surprise.

  It didn’t matter. She fired once into his gut and half his belly burst open, green smoke pouring out of him, his arms jerking wildly. She stepped closer and held her pistol out directly from her body. It ruined your aim to fire from the shoulder like that, but she couldn’t risk inhaling a lungful of the smoke and losing the initiative. She fired into his chest once, adjusted her aim, twice, thought she saw his dark heart light up in the muzzle flare, and fired a third time.

  He fell down, one leg kicking at a wall, smoke still billowing up from his torn innards. Was he dead? She couldn’t be sure. She didn’t want to waste any more bullets, but until she knew he was dead she couldn’t move on. She bent low—the room was full of smoke to the level of her shoulders, only its lower half still full of breathable air—and bent to study his eyes, her pistol pointed always at his heart. His pink eyes told her nothing. She looked down and into his chest. His heart was in shreds. Good enough.

  She let out a long breath and thought about what to do next. She wanted to sit down. She wanted to lie down, actually, to finally get some sleep. The smoke was too thick, and soon she wouldn’t be able to breathe in the small room. She headed back down the stairs, down to the dark tavern room on the ground floor. Before she got even that far, however, her radio squawked for her attention.

  “This is Caxton, go ahead,” she said, relief washing through her. Finally she was getting a signal.

  “Chalk Two here, what is your position?” The voice was faint and blurred by static, but it sounded very real.

  “I’m at the third fallback. The, uh, the Dobbin House.”

  “Copy that,” the radio said. “There’s movement in your vicinity. We’re tracing multiple suspects. Estimate nine, maybe as many as twelve suspects on foot. Go ahead.”

  Caxton bit her lip. Suspects in this case meant vampires. Maybe as many as twelve. She thought she knew what they were up to, as well. “I copy you. What’s their bearing?”

  “Headed right for you, Caxton. They’re converging on your twenty. They just came out of nowhere about a minute ago and lit out right for you. No information yet as to why.”

  “I have a theory,” she said, but there was no time to go into it. She thought the vampire she’d just killed must have sent out some kind of telepathic distress call. Rallying the troops to assist him or, now, to avenge him.

  As many as twelve vampires, headed her way. She’d finished off their leader. That should have been enough. It looked like her night wasn’t over, though. Not quite yet. “Chalk Two, do you have any other confirmed sightings?” she asked.

  “Negative at the moment, Caxton. Go ahead.”

  Caxton tried to think. Did that mean her army had gotten the rest of them? Were these twelve all that remained of the vampire battalion? She doubted she was that lucky. “What about our people? Have you made contact with anyone else?”

  The helicopter pilot was silent for far too long.

  “Did you copy my last?” Caxton demanded.

  “I copy. No recent contact with friendlies,” Chalk Two said. He made it sound like an apology.

  “Out for now,” Caxton said. Then she started to move.

  96.

  Ninety-nine hearts for ninety-nine coffins. I buried them myself in a natural cave on Seminary Ridge. I placed ninety-nine men at their quietus, and they did not resist. Across the cave from me, the one hundredth and the last, stood Alva Griest. He looked thin, thinner than I remembered him, and his cheeks were sunken, his eyes hooded by fatigue. Yet he spoke with great animation.

  “Make us partisans,” he said, gesturing boldly in the flickering light. “Send us behind the Southron lines. We’ll make such mischief down there they’ll be forced to surrender. By Christmas we’ll have Jeff Davis chained, and dragged down Pennsylvania Avenue. Or just send me and I’ll drain him myself. You have to give us something!”

  “Alva,” I said, softly. “Corporal. It is no use. The Secretary has given me my orders. This isn’t the end, though. We’ll wake you when the need is there again.”

  “And now we sleep. You call it sleep.”

  I shook my head. “I have no better word.” I waved a hand at the men sleeping in their coffins. “What else can be done? We cannot leave you wakeful, with your hunger growing every night. Do you understand? You need not suffer, longing for blood that is forbidden to you. For you it will be a rest. How I envy you!”

  Griest stood over me then. He had moved so quickly it might have just been a wavering of the light. Yet now I could feel him, his cold body, cold as the grave, so close. His hands moved before my face as if he would grab my neck and choke the life out of me.

  “You understand nothing! We need blood!”

  It took all my manly strength to turn my head and look up into his eyes. “Southern blood, you mean.”

  The fire in his red orbs banked visibly. His hands fell to his sides. “Yes,” he said, “of course.”

  “Your time will come,” I promised him. As I had promised him before.

  —THE PAPERS OF WILLIAM PITTENGER

  97.

  What would Arkeley do in her situation? He would run. She moved as quickly as she dared through the dark tavern, the beam of her flashlight bobbing in front of her. From behind, near the front door, she heard glass breaking and wood splintering. She did not slow down.

  The Dobbin House had seemed sprawling from the outside. From the inside it was a maze. She dodged tables and chairs and ducked through low doorways, slipped past stacked crates of liquor and canned foods, looking for an exit. She was scared to go outside—there was no cover out there; it would just be her and the vampires—but if she got trapped in a back room with no exits she was assured of a quick and unpleasant death.

  Down a short flight of stairs. Around a tight corner. Windows everywhere, but they were all locked and she didn’t want to make any noise by breaking one open. She was grateful enough for the starlight that streamed through them in slanted silver beams.

  How many of them were there behind her? As many as twelve, her air support had said. Unless there were more of them he hadn’t seen, which was possible. She had lost her patrol rifle—it had been empty anyway. How many bullets did she have in the Beretta? There was only one meaningful answer to that question.

  Not enough.

  She passed out of a large dining area and into a kind of gift shop. Tight aisles wound between displays of Civil War books and memorabilia, potpourri, and soup mixes based on original recipes from the tavern’s kitchens. She banged her hip badly on a table full of stuffed animals wearing forage caps and toting miniature plush rifles. The toys slid to the floor in a rustling avalanche. The pain was bad enough to make her stop for a second, to squint and wince and try not to call out.

  Lucky it wasn’t broken, frankly. As fast as she was moving through the dark, she deserved a twisted ankle at least.

  She wasn’t moving as fast as the vampires, though. While she stood there trying not to stamp her foot in pain, she heard movement behind her. The agony was forgotten instantly as she craned her senses in that direction, desperate for any information.

  If the vampires were already there, they didn’t give themselves away. What had she heard? A door creaking open?

  Keep moving, she told herself. Do not wait here, do not wait for someone to kill you. She hurried on, forcing herself not to hobble on her hurt leg. Arkeley would have laughed at an injury like that. He had no time for any physical ailment unless it kept you from walking. Even then, he would have pointed out, you could shoot a gun while sitting in a chair.

  At the far end of the gift shop she found a fire exit. No alarm went off as she pushed through. It spilled her out into a parking lot. What next? What next?

  A piece of rough, weathered wood slid down to crash on the asphalt, having come skittering d
own off the roof.

  She glanced up, saw pale shapes streaming across the shingled roof of the tavern. No—not yet, she thought. They were almost on her. She lifted her weapon, fired into the mass of them. The shapes scattered like frightened birds, though she was sure she hadn’t hit anything. She turned and ran—flat-out ran—toward the street.

  She remembered very clearly how her vampire had nearly outrun a patrol car. There was no way she could outrun her pursuers. Maybe it was better to turn and face them, to try to fight. She slowed down, her hurt leg screaming with relief. She drew herself up to her full height and spun around.

  They stood in a semicircle, nine of them, looking as if they’d been waiting there all along. One of them wore a forage cap. Most of them were naked or wore just mud-stained trousers. Their chests were skeletal, each rib clearly defined even in the faint light. Their faces were emaciated, cheeks and eyes sunken, full of shadows.

  She wanted to scream. Instead she raised her pistol and shot one right through the heart. He fell down, screaming. The rest of them tensed up but didn’t run away. She swung around, found her next target. Shot again. The vampire spun around on his heel, but she must have missed his heart, because he didn’t go down. As if in slow motion he turned back to face her, his bony face split by a wide grin.

  “Had your fun yet, dearie?” one of the others said. He was much taller than the others and not nearly as decrepit. He turned to look at the vampire standing next to him. “Call the rest. Ain’t a reason they should miss this bit.”

  The one he’d spoken to closed his eyes for a moment and tilted his head back. Then he looked at her again and his face was bright with mischief.

  She fired again, but the vampire she’d aimed at feinted to the side even as her finger was squeezing the trigger. The bullet didn’t touch him. The rest of them took a step forward, toward her. None of them wanted to be the next one to get shot, but they knew she had only so many bullets left.

  Nothing she could do would end this well. She fired blind, not even looking where each shot landed before taking the next. The vampires did back up then, if only a few feet. One more of them went down before the gun ran dry, completely empty. She had no more extra magazines. She’d taken down two of them, though. Maybe that was worth the cost of her life.

  Caxton closed her eyes and dropped the gun to the ground.

  Light blasted through her shut eyelids, dazzling her. A moment later she heard the chopping cacophony of helicopter blades directly overhead. She clutched a hand over her eyes and then opened them slowly.

  Before her the vampires were down on their knees or rolling on the ground. They were clawing at their own eyes, tearing them out as if they were on fire. Above her one of the helicopters floated in midair, its thirty-million-candlepower spotlight pointed right down at her head like a sunbeam from heaven.

  She could barely see anything herself. The light hit her dark-adapted eyes like a beam of pain. She could make out a few details—for instance, she could see the tall vampire rising slowly to his feet. His eyes were dark holes in his face, already filling with white mist as they grew back. Could he see her without eyes, could he see her blood?

  As if he’d read her mind he spoke, words she could barely hear over the helicopter’s roar. “I can still smell you, gal.”

  Oh God. She had to get away. She ran up the street behind her, away from the vampires. One direction was as good as another. She heard the helicopter’s whine change pitch and knew it was following her. The spotlight stayed on her, blinding her but offering her some scant protection.

  Ahead lay the center of town. The houses on either side got taller and closer together. It was exactly the wrong place to go—she could easily get boxed in up there, if the vampires were smart enough to flank her. They had been soldiers. Would that kind of maneuver be second nature to them?

  She wheeled around a corner, intending at least to get to a stone building, somewhere defensible. How she would defend it was a question she would answer when she found it. The old town hall rose up before her and she crashed against its doors, intending to rush inside and lock them behind her.

  Then she realized, far too late, that they were already locked.

  “Oh, no,” she said, out loud. She pushed again and again on the door’s latch. Nothing happened. She turned around, looked from her left to her right. Back to her left.

  In that moment of time, that blink of an eye, he was on her.

  “A pleasure to meetcha, Miss,” the tall vampire said. He was not five feet away from her. He bowed deeply from the waist. “I owe Alva plenty,” he told her. The words meant nothing to her. “But I have never had such pleasure in fulfilling an obligation.”

  He reached for her and his fingers sank through her flesh as if it were water. She could feel the tendons and sinews in her shoulder coming apart, could feel her own blood hot and wet on her chest. She felt her bones wrenching apart and she knew he was going to tear off her arm at the shoulder and then drink from the wound.

  She wanted to close her eyes. To give up, to just drift away. The pain wouldn’t let her, though. It was screaming in her head, a wild animal trapped and desperate inside the hollow of her skull. She could see nothing but the vampire’s white face as it loomed up before her, as it came to suck her life away.

  Time seemed to slow down—then to stop. Then to reverse. She watched the vampire float backward, away from her. She was confused. Was this what death meant? But it wasn’t as simple as time moving in reverse. The vampire was being pulled away, off of her. Someone bent his arm behind his back and twisted him, grabbed his chin and pulled it savagely sideways. She heard vertebrae exploding like gunshots going off. Then a white hand reached down and tore open the vampire’s chest. Skin, muscle tissue, ribs all split and fell away. The white hand reached inside and pulled out a black heart still rubbery with tar and shreds of oilcloth. The heart flopped forward, fell at her feet.

  She didn’t have time to understand what had happened. Someone had saved her, but there were more important issues. She reached up and felt the wound on her arm. It was slick with blood.

  Her savior walked toward her, his face twitching. He was staring exactly where her fingers were. At the wound.

  “Please, Trooper. Cover that up.”

  She frowned. Shrugged her jacket over the injury. “You’re one of them,” she said. And yet he wasn’t anything like the others. He was muscular, his body full and healthy and strong. His cheeks were almost burning red with heat and life. He wore dress pants and a white shirt buttoned almost all the way up. No shoes. No tie. “Who—”

  “Malvern,” he said. “It was Malvern’s idea.” He held up his left hand. There were no fingers on it.

  “Never,” she swore. That could never be right. It could never happen. The face was all wrong, and the way he stood, his posture was just—just—

  “I told you there was something I could do, but that it was drastic.”

  “You didn’t say it was unnatural!” She stepped forward and slapped him hard across the face. It was like striking one of the town hall’s marble columns—it hurt her hand a lot more than it hurt his cold skin. “This is perverted. It’s obscene.”

  “Yes.” He looked up as if he were sniffing the wind.

  “You—you saved me. At the electric map. Then again at the door of the Dobbin House. You were…there.”

  “Yes.”

  Rage exploded in her chest. “I didn’t ask you to!”

  He turned his face away. “There are more of them, close by. We can stand here arguing, and I can get drunk on the smell of your blood, or I can go kill them. Every last one.”

  “And then what?” she demanded.

  “Then I come back here. Right here. And you shoot me through the heart.” His face changed. She wouldn’t have said it softened—but then she wouldn’t have recognized tenderness on that face, before or after death changed it. “I was worthless to you before. My body was worthless. What the hell good is a vampire
hunter who can’t even dress himself? This way I could actually be of use, if only for one night. This was the only way.”

  She would have argued with him. She would have said a million things, if he had stuck around to hear them.

  98.

  I had the cave blasted shut the following day. Sealed. Even then, even as the powder went up and the earth heaved, I believed what I had told Griest. That I would be back for him before long.

  Then the strangest thing occurred, one that seemed impossible at the time: the war ended. There was no need at all for the dreadful trove, no reason to dig up old secrets. I did not return. I will not say I forgot what I had buried, for that would be a lie.

  Over the years I thought of the cave, though, less and less. Even secrets fade.

  I have before me all the papers I collected. Griest’s statement, laid out as a narrative, and the papers of my own account. Even Rudolph Storrow’s half-legible “affadavut” is here. I have every scrap of proof, every shred of evidence that could implicate me in what was done. It has taken me twenty years to gather them all and now I am unsure why I bothered. Should I follow General Hancock’s advice, and burn them all? Or place them in some dusty Washington archive, with strict orders they are not to be examined for fifty years? Or mail them to the editor of Harper’s Weekly? Let all America know what was done in its name?

  I think not. The secret is mine. The duty of silence mine to keep.

  In a moment I shall put down this pen. Then I shall feed this sheet, and all the others, to the flame, as the general recommended.