23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale

by David Wellington

  Caxton smiled. “It’s a deal.”

  That seemed to satisfy Gert. “Cool, I guess. What next?”

  Caxton looked up and saw stars overhead in half the sky. The other half was blocked out by the great looming expanse of the prison’s wall. Inside the wall groups of prisoners were storming the prison’s outbuildings and looting them of anything that wasn’t bolted down. She saw a dozen of them outside the back door of the infirmary, where she and Gert had reentered the prison after blowing up the powerhouse. She thought of all the drugs in there. There was going to be one hell of a party in SCI-Marcy tonight, she told herself, and—

  She looked up at the wall again. It was twenty-five feet high. Every hundred feet along its length was a watchtower with a searchlight and a machine-gun nest. The towers were all dark at the moment. There was no one up there to man them.

  Except maybe a pair of vampires. It was where Caxton would go to get away from the riot. If you could get up on top of the wall, into one of those towers, you could see everything. And once you were up there you could escape anytime you wanted—assuming you were a vampire—by jumping down the far side of the wall.

  Caxton looked for the nearest camera and found it in the angle made by C Dorm and the wall of the Hub. She waved at it until a loudspeaker mounted on a pole nearby said, “I see you, but I don’t know where Malvern went. She’s not on any of my screens.”

  Caxton shook her head and pointed at the nearest watch-tower. It was a pain in the ass not being able to talk to Clara. She sighed and then pointed at it more emphatically.

  “What, up in the towers?” Clara asked. She was silent for a while, but a crackling buzz from the loudspeaker told Caxton the circuit was still open. “Oh, wait—yeah! There! They’re hiding in some shadows, but it looks like Forbin hasn’t mastered it yet. One of her feet is in the light. Listen, let me find a way to get you up there.”

  There was a muffled crump from the far side of the yard. Caxton raced around the side of C Dorm and saw tendrils of white mist snaking around the outbuildings. Another crump, closer this time, and a group of prisoners came racing out of a roiling cloud, coughing and rubbing at their eyes.

  “Shit!” Caxton said. “Fetlock!”

  Gert grabbed her good arm. “What is it?”

  “The cops,” Caxton explained. “They’re here. They’re using tear gas. If we get caught in that we’re done.”

  “So you just have to explain to them who you are and what you’re doing. Maybe they’ll even give us guns.”

  Caxton shook her head. “They won’t ask questions, they’ll just scoop us up and drag us back inside. Come on, Clara! Find something!”

  The intercom buzzed back into life. “There’s a way up to the wall,” Clara said, as if she’d heard Caxton. “It’s an underground tunnel. The entrance is at the side of the administrative wing. Go—go left, three hundred yards.” Caxton and Gert hurried to follow Clara’s instructions. As they passed each loudspeaker it came on and Clara gave them a new command. “You can’t just go straight there or you’ll run smack into a SWAT team,” Clara explained, as she sent them all the way around a row of baseball diamonds. When they finally reached the door they wanted it was standing open.

  It led to a flight of stairs going down into the earth. At the bottom was a long tunnel with bundles of wiring and dripping pipes overhead. “Go left at the next junction, and you’ll come to a flight of stairs going up. It’ll take you all the way up to one of the towers.” The intercom was buzzing when they reached the tower stairs.

  “Listen,” Clara said, and then couldn’t seem to find any more words.

  Caxton looked at a camera mounted above a door and gave it her most patient look. She was running out of those.

  “You don’t have to do this. Fetlock has the place buttoned up. She can’t get away. I know you think this is your responsibility—”

  Caxton nodded emphatically. There was no way to tell Clara what she was really thinking. That Malvern was a sneaky monster, and that no matter how good Fetlock’s perimeter security might be, she would have some plan of escape. If Caxton waited for Fetlock to mop up the prison, there was no chance of catching Malvern. And then it would just go on. The nightmares. The long sleepless nights worrying who was going to be killed next. The blood. Always there would be more blood.

  Clara was silent for a while. “Just. Just—I was going to say be careful. But that’s not your plan, is it? Okay. Just do it, then. Do what you do best.”

  Caxton wasn’t sure how to reply. Blow a kiss at the camera? Salute? In the end she just patted her heart and then pointed at the lens. Clara would know what she meant.

  Then she headed up the stairs, with Gert close behind her.

  59.

  Caxton grabbed Gert’s forearm and pointed into the darkness.

  Something was moving there, right next to one of the towers. She pulled her celly back into the shelter of the stairwell door.

  “What’s the plan?” Gert asked in a whisper.

  As if it was as simple as that. Caxton was facing two well-fed, desperate vampires. Between her and Gert she had a can of pepper spray, a collapsible riot-control baton, and three working arms.

  She had thought, of course, about what she would do when she found Malvern. She had thought about very little else since she had saved Clara. Most of her plans had involved heavy weaponry.

  “We can’t take them ourselves,” Caxton said, thinking rapidly. “But we can keep them from getting away. If we can get them back down into the yard, the cops can take care of them.”

  It wasn’t a plan she liked. It didn’t allow her to kill Malvern with her own two hands. But it had the advantage of being plausible, whereas taking on Malvern without guns was not.

  “How do we do that?” Gert asked.

  Caxton smiled to herself. “We use bait.”

  The trick she’d used on Hauser—using her own blood to drive that vampire crazy—would work on Forbin, but not on Malvern. Caxton had seen Malvern turn away from readily available blood before when the cost was too high. Over her three centuries she’d learned some kind of self-restraint.

  She had another idea, though. She explained it carefully to Gert, who started breathing heavily and blinking a lot. It scared Gert. It scared Caxton, too, but fear had stopped meaning much to her.

  “Okay. We need to be together on this one. If you don’t think you can handle it—”

  Gert nodded. “I can be useful to you. I can be your road bitch. That’s all I’ve wanted this whole time, right? So let me do it.”

  Caxton grabbed Gert’s biceps and squeezed by way of thanks. Then she stepped out of the doorway and into the starlight. “Malvern!” she called.

  There was no answer. The shadows she’d seen moving before had stopped, still as statues. Maybe she’d been completely wrong and there were no vampires there. Maybe they had already escaped.

  No. That wasn’t an acceptable thought. She banished it from her mind.

  “Malvern, you know how I feel about vampires. You know I would never accept the curse willingly.” She grabbed Gert and pulled her forward, to her side. “But it’s not just about me, is it?”

  She could sort of see a red glow in the darkness of the tower wall. Or maybe it was just her brain wanting it so badly that it was filling in details that weren’t there.

  She had to keep this up. “Gert shouldn’t have to die, just because I’m stubborn. I want to make a deal with you. Clara gets to live. She’s out of your hands now, anyway—the police got to her first. But Gert and I… we’ll… join you.”

  A pale shape detached from the shadows and stepped forward. It was Malvern, her red eye positively burning with excitement. She looked so healthy, so whole. Caxton couldn’t get used to the transformation. Always before Malvern had been a rotting corpse in a coffin. Now she was a sleek and deadly predator.

  Her voice was a rough growl. “You—uh.” She paused.

  Caxton frowned. She’d never heard Malvern mu
mble before. It didn’t matter, she told herself.

  “Ye will forgive me, Miss Caxton, should I doubt ye.”

  Caxton nodded. “Sure. I would, too. But I owe this to Gert. She’s saved my life a bunch of times, and—I can’t repay that debt any other way.”

  “It’s what I want,” Gert said, right on cue. “Please.”

  The red eye flicked from Caxton’s face to Gert. It looked the girl up and down carefully. Then it focused again on Caxton.

  “Ye misunderstood my intentions, though,” Malvern said, in a flat tone. “I never meant to make ye come to my estate.”

  Caxton frowned. “No?”

  “No, dear. I only wanted to watch you beg for your life.”

  Forbin came out of the shadows then as if she’d been launched from a catapult. Caxton didn’t see her feet touch the ground more than once or twice. Her hands were outstretched, her fingers curled like talons. For a killing blow.

  “This is bullshit,” Gert had time to scream. And then her shoulder was in Forbin’s stomach. Ordinarily she had as much chance of moving a Mack truck with her shoulder as she did stopping Forbin’s attack. But Gert didn’t need to stop the vampire. She just needed to throw her a degree or two off course.

  They went over the side of the wall together, arms and legs flailing, teeth flashing in the starlight. There was a brief scream, and a horrible thud.

  Gert—Gert had—

  Gert had just saved her life, again.

  “Gert!” Caxton shouted. “Oh my God, Gert!”

  There would be no more babies for Caxton’s celly. She would never finish her jolt and walk out the main gate of the prison. It was a twenty-five-foot drop. Straight down into coils of barbed wire. If Forbin killed Gert on the way down, it would be a blessing. Otherwise—Gert would be snarled in vicious barbed wire, struggling still with a hurt and angry vampire. There was no way that fall would kill Forbin.

  “Gert!” she screamed again, wanting to close her eyes. Wanting to sink to her knees and start crying.

  Unfortunately, there was no time.

  Malvern was still watching her.

  “You… bitch,” Caxton said.

  Malvern smiled, showing all of her teeth.

  “Why do you kill everyone I care about?” Caxton asked. “Why do you have to destroy my life, over and over? Is it because I’m dangerous to you? Because I’m the only one who can kill you?”

  Malvern shrugged. “It’s because you’re in my way.”

  Something clicked inside Caxton’s head. A puzzle piece attached to another puzzle piece. Connections started being made. She did not, however, have time to finish her thought process.

  Without any further words, Malvern disappeared. She just stepped back into the shadows and vanished.

  Caxton knew perfectly well that she wasn’t gone, though. Malvern didn’t know if Caxton was armed or not. She didn’t know how badly Caxton’s arm was hurt. She wasn’t going to take any chances. This time—she would go for the kill.

  Caxton had chased Malvern long enough to know that what happened next would not be a game. Some vampires liked to play with their food. They would tease and scare and startle their victims until their eyes were bugging out of their heads, until they were gibbering in panic, and only then would the vampire move in to feed.

  Malvern didn’t have a sadistic bone in her body. Not out of any nobility or morality, though. It was because sadism was inefficient. It didn’t help her meet her goals. She would circle around Caxton and strike from behind, and she would do it quickly. Caxton had maybe a second or two to get ready.

  She ran toward the tower. It was the last direction she would be expected to go—straight toward where she’d last seen Malvern. Right into danger. It was, however, the best move defensively. The tower had walls she could hide behind.

  The door to the tower was open. Caxton pushed her way inside and closed it behind her. Locked it, for all the good that would do her. Inside the tower was a small circular room containing a mounted machine gun and a searchlight that could be moved around by hand. There was also a chair, an unfinished thermos of coffee, and a dead CO.

  Caxton nearly stepped on him in her haste. She pulled her foot back just in time and crouched over the body. Judging by the smell, he must have been killed back when Malvern’s half-deads took over the prison, more than a day before. Killed and then just left to rot. She apologized to him, then grabbed his stun gun and his stab-proof vest. As she clicked open its quick-release buckles, something heavy thunked against the floor. She couldn’t see very well in the gloom, so she reached down to see what had made that sound, but—

  Malvern hit the door like an enraged sledgehammer. It shattered in its frame, chunks of wood and broken glass bursting through the tower room like a vicious rain. Caxton sat down hard, the stun gun held up in front of her as if it would do any good at all, and braced herself for an impact. But it didn’t come.

  The doorway was empty.

  “Oh shit oh shit,” Caxton breathed, because she knew what that meant. Malvern had destroyed the door just as a distraction. In point of fact, she would be behind Caxton, sizing up the back of her neck.

  Caxton scrabbled upward as cold fingers brushed her spine. She swung around and threw herself behind the searchlight.

  Malvern howled in joy. She bent at her knees, getting ready to pounce.

  Caxton switched on the searchlight and hauled it around by its handle. A light as intense as a million candles hit Malvern right in the face.

  Vampires are creatures of the night. They do not do well in bright light.

  Malvern’s single eye burst and ran down her cheek as white goo. She screamed in pain and rage and her arms lashed out, smashing again and again at the lens of the searchlight, shattering the bulb inside and warping the metal reflector out of shape. It didn’t matter—the light’s work was done. Malvern was blind.

  “Do ye think this matters? Ye’ve bought ye—yourself a second’s grace, that’s all,” Malvern growled.

  “All I need,” Caxton said.

  Malvern’s eyeball was already growing back, white smoke filling in the cavern of her eye socket. She didn’t even need the eye to track her prey, Caxton knew. She could smell Caxton, could hear her as she stepped backward.

  Caxton raised her pistol and fired three times into Malvern’s rib cage. Right into her heart.

  She had expected the pistol to fail. That its firing pin had been filed down or that there would be no bullets in the magazine. When she’d found it on the belt of the dead CO, she had been unable to believe her luck. A gun. Right where she needed it. Right when she needed it. It was too much to ask for. It had to be a trick.

  The bullets tore through Malvern’s undead lungs, her sternum, and her heart. She screamed and thrashed and howled, crawled across the floor toward Caxton, her fingers reaching for Caxton’s ankles, her monstrous jaws snapping at thin air. But the red light in her fully healed eye was already going out.

  The vampire dropped to the floor, suddenly very small. Very compact. Caxton thought she could pick Malvern up with her one good hand. Strange to think a creature that could do so much damage would ever come to look like that. She was dead. Caxton fired the rest of her bullets at point-blank range into the monster’s chest, into her heart, just to be sure. “Finally,” she breathed. It wasn’t the most profound thing she could say, she knew, but it was all she had strength for.

  Then she closed her eyes and wept.

  But not for long.

  Another puzzle piece clicked into place. A gun, loaded with real bullets, exactly when it was needed the most. The half-dead who killed the CO hadn’t bothered to take it away. Even though every other gun in the prison had been carefully, methodically ruined.

  There had been a package of sticky foam in the SHU, when Caxton needed it. Even though sticky foam was experimental and was banned from use in prisons until the kinks could be worked out.

  Doors had been left open in the prison, doors that should have
been locked. Oh, not the doors she had hoped would be open. But enough that she’d been able to move around relatively freely.

  It hadn’t been easy, not at all. But then—if it had been easy, she would have seen through the game right away, wouldn’t she?

  She bent down over Malvern’s corpse and studied its face, ran the fabric of the mauve nightdress through her fingers. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for. But something felt wrong. Something was wrong.

  Then she got it. All at once, the puzzle put itself together in her head.

  “Smart,” she said, through gritted teeth. “Always so smart.”

  She saw the whole game now, from beginning to end.

  And she knew Malvern had won.

  60.

  By five o’clock in the morning the fires had all been put out.

  The vast majority of the prisoners were back in their cells, grumbling but more or less happy once the Feds started handing out food and coffee. A few were unaccounted for. The white supremacists barricaded in the cafeteria were still making demands, but it sounded like they were arguing among themselves in there and there was no place for them to go. A SWAT team of hostage negotiators had assured Fetlock that they could resolve the situation peacefully.

  Up on the wall, Clara looked down at a prison that was as close to being back to normal as she could hope for. A lot of people had died, and a lot of people had suffered. But it was over.

  Kind of.

  Five o’clock. Clara checked her watch again. This was it, the end of the twenty-three-hour deadline. An hour still to go before dawn. By now she was supposed to be dead. She shuddered at the thought.

  Fetlock and Glauer came up the stairs huffing and puffing.

  She had called them and said there was something they needed to see. She wasn’t sure how she should present it, though. As the team’s forensic analyst, it had been her job to look at all the bodies, including Malvern’s. Fetlock didn’t seem to know what he expected her to find, but it was part of any investigation that you checked the bodies afterward, and he was a man who did everything by the book.