23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale

by David Wellington

  Both trays were identical. They were wrapped in plastic. When Caxton pulled the plastic back on hers she found it contained three slices of toast, already slathered with butter, and two slices of melon that weren’t quite ripe. A shallow paper cup held apple juice. “No coffee?” Caxton said, a little upset.

  “That’s my fault,” Stimson said, scraping at a moldy spot on one of her melon slices. “Sorry. I have a little teensy problem with, um, speed. I can’t have anything that’s an upper. Not even caffeine.”

  “You’re a meth freak,” Caxton said, because she wasn’t feeling very charitable. “But I’m not.”

  Stimson shrugged. Her mouth was full of toast. “I guess,” she said, showering crumbs everywhere, “they’re worried I might steal yours. So you don’t get none, either.” She washed down her mouthful with the juice. “Sorry.”

  Caxton was hungry enough to eat everything on her tray quickly. That turned out to be a good thing—ten minutes after the trays had arrived, the order to wall up came again and the bean slot slid back so they could pass the trays out, whether they were finished or not.

  The slot closed once more. And that was it. Breakfast. Afterward nothing happened. Nothing was going to happen, Caxton realized, until lunchtime. She imagined that meals were going to become the high points of her day.

  Clearly conversation with Stimson wasn’t going to provide much in the way of entertainment. All Stimson wanted to talk about was what she was going to do when she was released. “Babies,” she said, and her eyes blazed with excitement. “I’m going to have some more babies. Babies are what life’s all about. You know how they smell? Babies smell good. I love playing with babies. I love the noises they make. Even when they cry.”

  Caxton had never wanted children. It had just never occurred to her to think that might be a good use of her life. She tried to steer the conversation into another arena. She considered asking what Stimson had done to get sent to Marcy, but she had an idea that it was impolite to ask. Instead, she tried, “How long are you in for?”

  “A good jolt. Twenty years,” Stimson said.

  Caxton frowned. “Won’t you be too old to have babies then?”

  Stimson wasn’t about to be brought down. “I’ll be forty-two, that’s not too old. And if it is, I can adopt. I know it’s hard to adopt when you’ve got a record, but when they see how much I want a baby, and what a good mother I can be, they’ll have to give me one. They’ll have to give me a baby.”

  Caxton nodded politely and climbed back onto her bunk. Stimson kept talking, even after Caxton stopped listening. It seemed she was happy enough chattering away to herself.

  Lunchtime came, eventually. A cold chicken sandwich and a cup of apple juice. They had ten minutes to eat it. Then nothing happened, again, for a while. Then the command to wall up came again and Caxton realized it was exercise time. The one chance she would have all day to get out of the cell.

  A smile actually crept onto her face. She ran her fingers through her hair and tried to smooth the wrinkles out of her jumpsuit. She knew she was overreacting, but it was something, something different. Something to look forward to.

  She waited for what felt like far too long and then finally, magically, the cell door was opened. A CO stood in the doorway and gestured for the two of them to step forward. Another CO was waiting with two pairs of shackles. Caxton’s feet were bound together. Then the CO did the same for Stimson. The whole time a third CO was always hovering over them with a stun gun.

  They were made to shuffle forward until they were standing on the red line that ran around the circumference of the special housing unit. In his glass watch post, a CO eyed them carefully. He reached for a microphone and his voice was amplified until it squalled off the glaring white walls. “It’s raining outside, so exercise is indoors today.”

  Caxton heard an angry moan go up from somewhere on the far side of the guard post. She glanced around the side of the post and saw four inmates over there, all of them shackled as she was. If every cell was full to capacity, there would be forty-eight women in the SHU, Caxton figured. Apparently only six were allowed to take exercise at any given time, with three COs supervising. Nothing in the SHU was ever allowed to get out of control. Nothing was ever left to chance. As a law enforcement officer, or rather, an ex–law enforcement officer, she had to admire the efficiency of the system. As an inmate she felt like she was being ground down, all her humanity scraped out of her one indignity at a time.

  The COs got all six women in a line, then made them stand six feet apart from each other. Then the exercise began in earnest. They were told to walk around the SHU in a circle, keeping one foot on either side of the red line at all times. They were required to maintain the distance between them, to keep their hands in plain sight, and there was to be no talking. “Okay, walk,” one CO ordered.

  Caxton walked. She watched the inmate ahead of her, a woman with frizzy brown hair, and did exactly as she was told. And liked it, despite herself. It felt good to use the muscles in her legs. It felt good to breathe air that she and Stimson hadn’t already breathed and exhaled a thousand times. It even felt good to be silent for a while, and not have to listen to Stimson talk or chew her nails.

  She passed the time watching the cell doors go past on her left. She counted them and knew how many laps she’d made around the SHU, which kept some tiny part of her brain occupied. She wanted to see how many laps she made in an hour. Then she noticed that the woman ahead of her had a dark spot on the back of her jumpsuit. It grew steadily as she walked, never slowing down for a moment, and ran down the inside of her pantleg. Caxton watched in fascinated horror as a drop of yellow liquid fell from the orange cuff and splattered on the floor. Then another. Soon a narrow trickle was dribbling out behind the woman, and Caxton had to step carefully to avoid getting her slippers wet.

  One of the COs came rushing in and pushed Caxton back. He grabbed the woman from behind and pulled her into a painful-looking armlock, then frog-marched her over to the guard post.

  “Keep walking,” another CO ordered, and Caxton realized she’d stopped and that Stimson was right behind her, less than six feet away. Caxton got back to the line and started walking in circles again.

  Eventually exercise time was over, and she was taken back to her cell and had her shackles removed. She went in and walled up next to Stimson and waited for the door to be officially closed again before she spoke.

  “She peed herself!” Caxton exclaimed. “Did you see that? She peed—on herself. I think she did it on purpose. Why on earth would anyone do that? Was she sick, or just crazy?”

  Stimson’s face broke into a wry and knowing smile. “When you been in here awhile, you’ll understand. She pissed herself,” Stimson said, as if it were perfectly rational, “so that one of the COs would have to clean her up.”

  7.

  The guards had been busy while Caxton and Stimson were out. They had put a picture of her on the door, right next to Stimson’s. Underneath, where the guards were advised not to give Stimson any stimulants of any kind, they had written in, “Caxton prone to violence. Use anti-stab and anti-bite precautions.”

  It was official, then. She was a resident of the SHU for the duration.

  She quickly learned what that was going to mean. How it was going to change her whole philosophy of life.

  For instance: when you had nothing, you learned to appreciate the little things. When you had no freedom and no civil rights you learned to treasure any shred of dignity or hope you were permitted.

  Caxton finally got her first shower a week after she arrived in the SHU. She even got a shower stall all to herself. Of course, two female COs watched her the whole time and she had to wash around the shackles on her legs, but the hot water made her feel almost human for the first time since she’d been moved to her new cell. It was over all too soon. As she was dressing she was told she was in for another treat: a one-hour therapy session. She was allowed one every six weeks and her number had
come up. “You’re allowed to refuse therapy,” a CO told her, but Caxton couldn’t imagine why she would. Any human contact that wasn’t with Stimson sounded like heaven.

  She quickly discovered that the therapy she was being offered wasn’t what she had expected, though. She was led to a small room near the SHU. It had padded walls and it smelled of antiseptic. There was no one in the room except for Caxton and two COs, but there was a telephone mounted on the wall. She was told she could pick it up and speak directly with one of the prison’s staff psychotherapists. When Caxton picked up the handset she saw there were no buttons on the phone. It was strictly for this purpose and there was no way to get it to call outside the prison.

  “Um, hello?” she said, placing the handset to her ear.

  “Yeah, hi. How are you feeling?” a bored male voice asked from the other end of the connection.

  Caxton licked her lips. “I, um, I’ve been better.”

  The psychotherapist said nothing.

  Caxton let her head fall forward a little. “It’s tough, you know? It’s just tough adjusting to this routine. It’s kind of. Um. It’s nice talking to a friendly voice. Everybody else I talk to around here is either yelling at me or they’re crazy.”

  Caxton blushed. She couldn’t believe she was opening up like this with a complete stranger, one she couldn’t even see. But the chance to unload her problems, even in such a clinical way, was affecting her in a way she couldn’t have foreseen.

  “I miss my girlfriend,” she said. God. It felt good to say that out loud. She’d been afraid to say it even to Stimson. “I get pretty scared in here. I can’t sleep, and the food doesn’t taste like anything, it tastes like cardboard. I think—I think maybe I’m having a harder time of it than I even let myself believe. I think I might be going—”

  “Are you depressed?” the therapist asked.

  Caxton thought about it. “Um, I—”

  “Depression doesn’t just mean you’re sad. Everybody’s sad in here. What about voices? Are you hearing voices? Voices that tell you to do things you don’t want to do?”

  Caxton’s body tensed up again. “No,” she said.

  “Let me know if you start hearing voices or having hallucinations. I can give you Thorazine for that. If you think you’re depressed I can send over some Prozac. You just have to be careful with this stuff. If you start feeling suicidal you need to alert a guard right away. Do you want the Prozac? We’ll start with a low dose and adjust as necessary.”

  “No. Thank you,” Caxton said, and hung up the phone. Her therapy session was over.

  On days when it didn’t rain, the SHU inmates were allowed outside for their exercise period. Sort of. They were let out of their cells in groups of six, and as before their feet were shackled and they were never allowed to be less than six feet away from each other. They were then taken out of the SHU through a short corridor to a door that led to sunlight, and open air, and a patch of blue sky.

  It was the most beautiful thing Caxton had ever seen. It was also carved up into sections by a mesh of wires so close together that Caxton couldn’t have put her hand between them, even if she’d had the chance. The SHU exercise yard was a cage twenty feet wide by fifty feet long. Wire mesh formed a ceiling and four walls. The concrete floor of the cage had a red rectangle painted on it, and the inmates were never allowed outside of that rectangle, which kept them always six feet from the mesh.

  They were allowed to do as they pleased inside the rectangle, as long as they didn’t approach one another or talk. A row of yoga mats had even been set up along one side of the cage, and a couple inmates made use of them to do sit-ups or stretching exercises. The rest just milled around, careful not to get too close to each other. One of them, a big woman with no left ear, only a lump of twisted scar tissue, made a nasty game of it. She would start walking toward one of her fellow inmates until they would be forced to step backward. The COs weren’t timid about shouting for them to keep their space, and anyone who broke through the invisible limit was dragged off, forfeiting their exercise period for the next day. They made no attempt to stop the big woman from herding the others back and forth across the yard, however.

  Back in the cell Caxton asked Stimson why the big woman would do such a thing. She was only causing trouble for the others. “She’s a convict,” Stimson said, as if that explained everything.

  “So am I. So are you. We don’t pull that kind of bullshit.”

  Stimson shook her head excitedly. This was another chance to initiate her celly into the ways of life inside. “No, see, I’m an inmate. There’s a difference. Inmates try to get along. We want to be model prisoners so we can get days on our good-behavior jackets. Convicts are different. They know they’re going to be in and out of prison all their lives, so they got no reason to try to be good. If they can be bad, though, like, real tough, they can get a rep for it, and that’s a good thing, how they see it.”

  Caxton thought of Guilty Jen, who had been obsessed with respect and reputation to the point she was willing to kill to get it. “I think I’d rather be an inmate.”

  “Yeah?” Stimson asked. “I had you pegged different. A hard case.”

  Caxton climbed up onto her bunk and lay back on her mattress. She had to think about what that meant.

  As usual, Stimson wouldn’t just let her be. “I’m pretty useful to you, huh?” she asked, pulling herself up onto the side of Caxton’s bunk and leaning her chin on the mattress. “I mean, I can tell you stuff you didn’t know. I can help you out.”

  “I guess,” Caxton said.

  “We’re connecting, right? We’re bonding. That’s good. ’Cause if I’m useful to you, maybe you can be useful to me. You can protect me. If I get in trouble, you can vouch for me. That’s how it works, right? We’re getting together?”

  “Whatever,” Caxton told her.

  “I am going to be so useful to you,” Stimson said. “You wait and see. I’m gonna be your road bitch. That’s what you call your best friend inside. See? Useful. I’m gonna be your best friend in the world. And then, and then, and then you can be my mama. If—if—if, you know. If you wanted to.”

  Caxton couldn’t look into those trusting eyes anymore. They reminded her too much of the eyes of the dogs she used to rescue. She turned her head away. It was impossible to spend twenty-three hours a day in the cell with Stimson and not talk to the woman. To not interact with her. But the last thing she wanted to do was lead Stimson on. They weren’t friends.

  Caxton couldn’t imagine ever being friends with someone like this baby-obsessed speed freak. The second she got out of SCI-Marcy she would never think about Stimson again. It wasn’t fair to pretend otherwise. “I won’t be in here that long,” she said, trying not to put too much edge in her voice. “Maybe your next celly can be your mama.”

  “I didn’t mean nothing by it,” Stimson said, dropping back down to the floor. “Shit. I didn’t mean I was going to suck your pussy or nothing.”

  “Okay,” Caxton said. “Good to know.”

  8.

  Malvern struck again and the body count was even higher this time. She’d hit a roadhouse outside of Allentown, just after midnight. One patron had managed to escape to call the local police, but by the time they arrived Malvern had slaughtered two cocktail waitresses, a bartender, a bouncer, and six good old boys who’d just wanted to have a few beers after work. By dawn Clara and Glauer were there, checking for clues. Fetlock was busy in Harrisburg, catching up with his paperwork, so for once the two of them had the scene to themselves.

  “She must have had help,” Glauer said, pacing back and forth from the rear exit and the front door. “Look at the arrangement of the bodies. She got the bouncer here, and one of the waitresses—but the rest of them tried to flee out the back. They got—this far,” he said, stopping next to a bad stain on the carpet by the restrooms. The bodies had already been removed by the local coroner—which Clara appreciated, because it meant she didn’t have to see them, even if
it also meant some evidence might have been destroyed. “The exit was blocked, so they couldn’t get out.”

  “We know she has to have some kind of accomplice,” Clara agreed. “Someone has to drive her from victim to victim. She’s too weak to walk from scene to scene.” A vampire at full strength could outrun a speeding car, but Malvern hadn’t been that strong in centuries. “It could be a human sympathizer. Or a half-dead.” Vampires had the ability to raise their victims from the dead—for a short while. The resulting servants were called half-deads. They rotted away almost fast enough to watch, but as long as they could still stand under their own power they were forced to do the vampire’s bidding.

  “There’s another possibility,” Glauer said, meeting Clara’s gaze. He held her eye for a second and then said, “The accomplice could be another vampire.”

  Vampires could make more of their kind. In fact, Malvern was an expert at it. Every vampire Laura Caxton had ever destroyed had been one of Malvern’s creations.

  Clara shook her head. “That’s not in our profile for her. It saps her strength to create new vampires, and she’s running on fumes as it is. It would put her back in her coffin for good if she tried that now.” Deputy Marshal Fetlock had built his whole strategy around the idea that Malvern was indulging herself in one long orgy of blood and that she had no grand scheme in mind, no master plan. That she would start making mistakes any night now.

  “You know what Caxton would have said about that profile,” Glauer muttered.

  “She would have said that he was underestimating Malvern. And that underestimating a vampire is the surest way to get killed by one.” She stepped behind the bar and ran a hand behind the bins of lime and lemon wedges. Her fingers touched something metallic and she drew it out. A sawed-off shotgun. She knew she’d find something there—every bar had a gun, in case things got so far out of hand that the bouncer couldn’t handle it. She cracked open the shotgun and found a pair of shells inside. She sniffed the barrel and decided it hadn’t been fired in a long while.