32 Fangs: Laura Caxton Vampire Series: Book 5

by David Wellington

  In the clearing the remaining windbreaker cops moved back to back, covering each other with tight firing arcs but staying on their feet in case they needed to run. The foxholes and defensive positions were useless now, when faced with the prospect of more exploding suicidal half-deads.

  The main problem with using half-deads as soldiers was that they couldn’t operate firearms. Their bodies were just too decayed and weak to handle the recoil, so instead they were limited to knives and blunt objects. As a result vampires typically used their slaves to harass the enemy, or to distract them while the vampires moved in for the kill. That didn’t work so well when your enemy knew you were coming and was ready to shoot at the first sign of white skin and red eyes in the dark.

  It didn’t take much structural integrity to blow yourself up with a stick of dynamite, though—in fact, the flimsiness of the half-deads actually made them more dangerous when they exploded. Their bones would turn into deadly shrapnel. And it wouldn’t be hard to convince half-deads to go out with a bang. They despised their twilight existence, longed for death even as they were compelled to do the bidding of their vampiric masters.

  Now the stench of death and blood filled the air, while men rolled on the ground and screamed. Their fellow cops did what they could for the wounded, patching and bandaging where such was appropriate, but there was no time and no facilities to really help. If they didn’t get to a hospital soon they would die right in the clearing.

  “SWAT teams to the rear,” Fetlock called, waving toward the road that led out of the Hollow. “I want our path kept open in case we need to retreat. Check all the vehicles, make sure they weren’t damaged in the explosions.” He was making the best use of the breathing room the attackers had provided, Clara knew, but his orders infuriated her.

  “He’s going to abort, isn’t he?” she asked Glauer. “There were too many of them. More than he expected, and now he’s screwed. His carefully laid plans are all falling apart, and he’s just going to pull out. Save as many of his people as he can—but leave us and the witchbillies here to hold Malvern’s attention.”

  “Uh-huh,” Glauer replied, as if he’d never expected anything more.

  Clara remembered how, when she had been held hostage inside a women’s prison by Malvern and her cohorts, Fetlock had let her sit and stew for hours—most of a day—because he didn’t want to risk any cops in a rescue attempt. He’d sat back and let Caxton do all the fighting then. It was definitely his modus operandi. “That son of a bitch. This is exactly what Caxton tried to teach us about fighting vampires. You don’t get to pick your battles!”

  “She also taught us how to stay alive as long as possible,” Glauer replied. He bent over the body of a dead windbreaker cop and pried the gun out of his cold hands. He grunted with distaste as the corpse’s fingers refused to let go of the weapon’s barrel. Maybe rigor mortis was already setting in—or maybe the man had died in such a state of panic his fingers had locked in a literal death grip. “Arm yourself, Clara. This is going to get ugly pretty fast.”

  Clara nodded but didn’t move from where she stood. She was watching Fetlock intently.

  There was still time to turn this around, if he could admit he was wrong.

  She strode toward him, not sure if she was going to slap him or just call him a coward. He was so busy shouting orders for his imminent escape that he didn’t see her coming—but Darnell did.

  The snake-eyed trooper jumped in front of her, carbine held out in front of his body—not with the barrel actually pointing at her, but so that if she threw herself at him she would collide with the gun and not his softer arm. “That’s far enough,” he said, and she stopped in her tracks. “Get back,” he ordered.

  She ignored him and called out to Fetlock. “There will be more of them. A lot more than you planned for. I told you, she’s been recruiting half-deads for months, she has hundreds of—”

  “Whatever she sends, we can handle,” Fetlock said. “Now, stop distracting me, Ms. Hsu. I have a battle to command here.”

  “But you’re the wrong general,” she insisted.

  He glared at her with enough cold fury to make her take a step back.

  “Caxton should be in charge here. You have to let her out!” she said. “Caxton is our only chance. You have to free her and give her whatever weapons she wants. You know she’s the only one who can stop Malvern!”

  Fetlock studiously ignored her. He called out some more orders, shouting for the windbreaker cops to get the vehicles started and running so they could move out at a second’s notice.

  “Damn you, Fetlock—you know I’m right! She’s the one who kills vampires. You just fill out the fucking paperwork afterward! Let her out of that paddy wagon!”

  “Not a chance,” Fetlock said, finally. He looked up at the ridges, where the helicopter was still circling, still looking for an invisible enemy. “Darnell, if she approaches me again, incapacitate her. Don’t actually kill her—she won’t be good bait then. But I don’t want to hear her screeching little voice again.”

  Darnell grinned and raised his carbine as if he would knock her down then and there. Clara growled in frustration and moved back. She found Glauer waiting for her by the side of a trailer, crouching low and heavily armed. He threw a pistol to her as she approached, and she nearly dropped it because it was slick with blood.

  Snarling, she worked the action and put a round in the chamber.

  “You ready for this?” Glauer asked.

  “No. Do I get to wait until I am ready?”

  “No.”

  She nodded and pressed her back up against the side of the trailer. And waited for the next attack.

  She didn’t have to wait very long.

  The SWAT troopers moved into the road, keeping perfect fire discipline as they advanced, covering each other in a bounding overwatch as they secured each yard of ground. They were headed back toward the vehicles, perhaps under orders to secure them before Fetlock’s forces were bottled in. It was full dark now and the road was merely a slightly paler strip of ground in the darkness. They had red-lens flashlights that preserved their night vision, but the lights could only illuminate small patches of the woods that crowded close on either side of the road.

  Still, they were ready for the first assault. A particularly agile half-dead had climbed up into one of those dark trees, and when the SWAT team passed beneath, it fell on them in a flurry of knives and punches. It landed on the back of one trooper, who panicked and dropped his gun. The half-dead’s knife couldn’t stab through his thick Kevlar armor, but the creature wrenched at the trooper’s head as if it would pull it off his neck. The trooper tried desperately to reach behind his neck for the half-dead, all the while shouting for help.

  The other SWAT troopers were smart enough to fall back away from him, their guns up but their fire held until they could get a proper shot. They remembered their training and followed protocol to the letter. But it turned out that was a mistake.

  As they drew back, some of them stepped off the road and into the trees—where a dozen more half-deads were waiting for them.

  How many of those bastards does she have? We were expecting a small army—but there’s no end to these things, Clara thought, shocked as she watched a half-dead slit a trooper’s throat, even as another trooper opened fire and cut it in two twitching halves. Another trooper went down as a half-dead reached up under his visor and clawed at his eyes.

  The windbreaker cops facing the road raised their own weapons and started firing, too scared to realize the danger of hitting one of their own SWAT troopers. The troopers were covered in bullet-resistant armor, but it did little to absorb the kinetic energy of so many rounds hitting them all at once. The half-deads went down, ripped to pieces by the gunshots, but the troopers were knocked around and thrown backward by the impacts as well, which just made them easy prey for the next wave of half-deads waiting in the trees.

  Someone shouted—half scream, half warning—and suddenly every w
eapon in the clearing barked to life. Clara spun around and saw that a small army of half-deads had emerged from the woods on the far side of the clearing, the side away from the road. They had used the attack on the SWAT troopers as a diversion to mask their approach, and now they ran straight for the ring of windbreakers that surrounded Fetlock and his mobile command center.

  Right toward Clara and Glauer.

  “Take them down!” Fetlock shrieked. “Keep this area clear! Goddamn it, don’t let them overrun us!”

  His words were wasted. The windbreakers were already fighting for their lives, firing blindly as the half-deads came screaming on. There were dozens of them—scores. Clara couldn’t get an accurate count, and anyway, it didn’t matter. She lifted her weapon and started firing like all the rest, even as Glauer opened up with his carbine next to her.

  Even though she was certain she was about to die.

  44.

  The stuttering light of the guns shredded Clara’s night vision and made it impossible to see half the targets she shot at. She fell back toward Fetlock’s position, but they just kept coming. Some of the half-deads came on with glittering eyes or flashing knives, but most of them were just dark smudges, silhouettes against the broken shadows of the trees. One came at her with a pipe wrench held high over its head, and she barely saw it in time to bring up her gun and blow its head off. Another leapt past her with a howl and stabbed wildly at a windbreaker cop with his kitchen knife. The cop fired point-blank into his attacker’s chest, again and again, but the half-dead just kept swinging its knife, over and over again, until the cop gasped and fell. Glauer spun around and carved the half-dead in half with a burst of fire, then turned back to face the woods just in time as three more half-deads came at them.

  He caught one across its torn face with a three-shot burst, then blew the next one’s arm off, sending it spinning and tripping over tree roots. The third one howled and jumped into the air, intending to smash Glauer’s skull with a two-by-four. Clara dropped to one knee and shot it through the eye, sending it flipping over backwards before it could bring its weapon home.

  “Thanks,” Glauer said.

  She didn’t have time to respond. More of the bastards were coming. She shot one in the mouth, then spun around to face another that was only a dozen yards away. “So many of them,” she gasped. “Malvern went for broke here, didn’t she? To have killed this many people, without drawing police attention—”

  She stopped talking as a meat cleaver came whistling past her ear. Careful not to let go of her pistol, she dodged to one side, then brought up her foot and smashed it down hard on the half-dead’s kneecap. The thing screamed as it toppled over, no longer able to stand. Still it crawled toward her, its cleaver swinging for her ankles, until she put a shot through the back of its neck.

  “I think she’s past the point of caring about police attention. Fetlock handed her the perfect opportunity to wipe out all of us in one night. After this,” Glauer said, “there won’t be anybody left who knows her tricks.”

  On every side of them desperate melees played out. Cops struck at half-deads with empty firearms, using them like high-tech bludgeons, or simply beat at them with naked fists. The half-deads were so structurally weak that a good right hook could knock one of their heads off, and if it had all been one-on-one, the cops could easily have defeated Malvern’s soldiers. But there were so many of them, and with every passing minute there were fewer cops. Clara emptied her pistol into a half-dead’s back, then bent low to scoop up a new gun from a fallen windbreaker’s belt. She kicked and swung and shot her way through a knot of the creatures, headed for the side of a trailer so she could at least get her back up against something, so she could see her death when it came for her. Glauer followed her lead, covering her the best he could.

  “Everyone, this way!” she shouted, hoping to rally some of the windbreakers. If they could get inside one of the trailers, maybe they could barricade it against attack, maybe they could hold out just a little longer. “It’s your only chance! This way!”

  A windbreaker cop looked up at her, as if he desperately wanted to believe she knew what she was doing. He reached toward her with one hand, but blood was already spilling from his mouth. He slumped forward and she saw a boning knife sticking out of the back of his skull.

  She shivered in horror, but knew she couldn’t afford to lose her cool. She shrugged off her fear, at least for a moment. “This way!” she called again.

  There was no answer. Either the windbreakers were too busy holding their own, or there was nobody alive left to heed her call. She threw her back against the side of the trailer and looked around for Glauer, terrified she’d lost him in the massacre. Then he appeared in front of her, a huge shadow struggling wildly with a half-dead that had clamped on to his back. With a wave of revulsion Clara saw that it was missing both legs—they ended in ragged stumps—but that its arms were clasped tight around Glauer’s waist and it had its teeth in his neck.

  She lurched forward and grabbed its head, feeling strips of skin part under her fingers where she touched its face. It laughed maniacally as she pulled its jaws apart, releasing Glauer’s flesh. It kept laughing even when she pulled its head off of its neck and threw it deep into the darkness. She had to pry its arms off of Glauer as well.

  “Jesus, thanks,” Glauer said, panting heavily. He had cuts all over one cheek and his neck, and one sleeve of his shirt had been torn off. There was a bad bloody wound on his elbow, but he was still standing.

  “Save the gratitude,” she told him. “Look.”

  He flung himself against the side of the trailer to protect his back, then took in what she’d already seen.

  They were surrounded. In every direction, half-deads were approaching them warily, knives clutched in their bony hands. There were at least a dozen of them coming straight at Clara and Glauer. She could still hear the occasional burst of gunfire, but it sounded far away—too far away to offer any hope of reinforcements.

  “How you doing for ammo?” Glauer asked.

  “No idea, and no time to check. Gotta be getting low, though. You?”

  He held up his empty hands. “Bastard took my gun.”

  “Shit,” Clara said.

  “We go down fighting, right? No surrender.”

  “Better than letting Malvern get us.”

  “Yeah,” Glauer agreed. “That one first.”

  She looked where he was pointing, at a half-dead carrying a machete. It gripped the weapon in both hands and lifted it over its head. She raised her pistol and shot it through the biceps. Its arm came loose at the shoulder, but it didn’t drop the blade. She shot it again, this time in the chest. It spun to one side—but then it recovered and took a step toward her. She lined up another shot, aiming for its forehead this time, and—

  Her gun clicked impotently in her hand. She was out of bullets.

  The half-deads laughed wildly and came running toward them, knowing they no longer had anything to fear. Clara threw the pistol at the closest of them, then dropped into a fighting crouch, her hands balled into fists.

  She had been in near-death situations before. Plenty of them. Sometimes an eerie calm came over her. Sometimes she felt like she was standing outside of her own body, observing what was happening with a clinical detachment.

  This time she was just scared witless.

  “Nice knowing you,” Glauer shouted, and then he ran forward to intercept the half-deads as they came rushing in.

  “No!” Clara shouted.

  Behind her head she heard something wooden snap and break with a noise like a muffled gunshot. She had no idea what made that sound, nor did she care. She did manage to scream as the door of the trailer slammed open.

  Urie Polder staggered out. His wooden arm was broken off near the shoulder. His remaining hand lifted toward his face, and in the light that streamed out through the trailer door, Clara saw his palm was full of some kind of glittering powder.

  He took a deep breath,
then blew hard on the powder, sending it flying outward in a cloud of sparkling light. There couldn’t have been more than half an ounce of powder in his hand, but the cloud it made grew and grew, billowing out toward the half-deads.

  When the glittering stuff touched them, they started to scream. They dropped their weapons and scratched maniacally at their exposed flesh, tearing off whatever skin remained, scratching until their finger bones tore through ropy pink muscle tissue, scratched until they tore themselves apart. They kept screaming long after they fell down. It seemed they would never stop screaming.

  Glauer had been locked in a grapple with one of the half-deads. The powder didn’t seem to affect him at all, but his eyes went wide as the creature he held fell to pieces in his grasp. He thrust it away from him, then ran back to the trailer to nod at Urie Polder.

  “That should do it, ahum,” Polder said.

  [ 1983 ]

  The man was soaking wet and chilled so badly his blood moved like sluggish pack ice in his veins. He was wounded, his bones bruised and jarred, his face a mask of agony. Yet there was something about this one—something that frightened Justinia to her core, some quality of desperate resolution that she knew would make him a dire enemy.

  For one thing, he was holding Lares’ heart in his left hand like a black apple, as if he might take a bite out of it at any moment. Lares fell backward and struck the floor of the boat like a hammer coming down, his heels drumming on the floor.

  The others, the old ones, dragged themselves from their coffins, thinking of nothing but depredation, of slaying this human and taking his blood. And oh, what a prize that would be—this creature who had slain their defender.

  Justinia felt no grief for Lares. Like all her knight protectors, he’d failed to protect himself. He deserved none of her grief. She only watched with a calculating eye as the others pulled themselves toward the human, and knew this wasn’t right—that it couldn’t possibly end well.