99 Coffins: A Historical Vampire Tale

was so close—

Without warning a high-velocity bullet smashed into her sternum, knocking her backward.

Her vision went red, then black, but only for a moment. Her feet couldn’t seem to grip the loose gravel, and her head collided jarringly with the ground. She could hear nothing at all. Her entire body felt like a bell that had been struck.

Gloved hands grabbed her ankles and pulled her backward, away from the barn, her legs bouncing wildly. She couldn’t feel her left arm. Faces stared down into hers, faces in helmets and gas masks. She could hear a buzzing noise that slowly resolved into a human voice demanding to know if she was still alive.

“Vest,” she said. “The vest took it.” Hands grabbed at her chest and pulled and tugged. Someone got the bullet free, a shiny lump of distorted metal. Someone else pulled at her helmet, but she batted the hands away. “I’m okay,” she shouted, again and again.

She could hear a little better by that point. She could hear the unrhythmic barking of hunting rifles and the more stately reply of automatic weapons fire.

“Get her out of here,” the captain shouted.

“No, I’m good!” she shouted back. Her body begged to differ. You’re not as fragile as you think, she told it, repeating words an old colleague had once said to her. They wouldn’t let her get up—they were still dragging her, even as she fought them.

“What the fuck happened?” a trooper asked, pressing his shoulder against the side of a car. He leaned out a little, into the open, then jumped back as rifle fire chewed up the gravel ahead of him. “They were supposed to all be asleep!”

Captain Horace tore off his gas mask and scowled at the barn. “I guess they use their own shit. Meth freaks get up earlier than normal people.”

Hands reached down and helped her sit up against the side of a car. She couldn’t see anything through her mask. She couldn’t breathe. “Let me up,” she shouted. “I can still shoot!”

“Stay down, ” Horace shouted, pushing down hard on her shoulder. “I don’t have time for this. I’m giving you an order. You disobeyed the last one. You don’t get to do that twice. You stay here, stay down, and stay out of the goddamned way.”

Caxton wanted to protest, but she knew he wasn’t interested in her opinion. “Yes, sir,” she said. He nodded and jumped up to run to the back of another car. She struggled to take off her gas mask and drop it on the gravel beside her, then settled in to get comfortable.

It was hours before the shooting was done and they’d carted off the last suspect. After that she could only watch as the other troopers came parading out of the house carrying pieces of the meth lab wrapped in plastic and plastered with biohazard stickers. Ambulances carried away the wounded and almost as an afterthought a paramedic was sent to take a look at her bruised chest. He took off her vest, opened up her shirt, and took one look at her before handing her an ice pack and telling her she was fine. While she was being discharged Corporal Painter came by to check up on her. “You missed all the fun,” he said, grinning. He leaned down and gave her a hand to help get her back on her feet. Her rib cage creaked a little as she rose, but she knew she was fine. “Not quite what you signed on for, was it?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I’m going home,” she told him. She dug her notepad out of her pants pocket and threw it to him. “Here, you can write up the report.”

4.

They asked I tell my tale. I should like it not, save the War Department demands it of me, & no man, no living man can call me SHIRKER, so I will write down on these pages what happened to me & to the men of my charge, & what horrors I have seen & what tragedies did occur. Also, of those trespasses we committed. So be it.

Let me begin after the battle of Chancellorsville, for what happened there is of no matter to my present narrative. Suffice to say the Third Maine Volunteer Infantry was the last to flee that hell of cannon fire and muddy death. When at last the order came to retreat, we made all due speed away. On June 21st, 1863, after some marching, we made camp in a place called Gum Spring, Virginia. Before we were allowed to rest, however, the sergeant came down the line with a candle in his hand and beating on a small drum with new orders. We were to stand Picket Duty, which is no soldier’s desire. The six of us, which were one quarter of the remains of Company H, marched out about one mile from the lines, there to look for & make contact with the enemy, should he present himself. Hiram Morse, who I have called a malingerer & worse, liked it least. “This is dog’s duty,” he muttered, & often. “To send us into the heart of the Confederacy in the middle of the night! Do they want us dead, truly?”

I should, as my duty as corporal requires, have struck him & made him silent but it was good old Bill who saved me from such an unwelcome task. “Maybe you’d like to ride back to camp & ask our Colonel that question,” he whispered. “I’m sure he’d love to hear your thoughts.”

—THE STATEMENT OFALVAGRIEST

5.

The next morning Caxton was finally getting some sleep when sunlight flooded into the room and burned her cheek. She tried to roll away from it but the heat and light followed her. She clenched her eyes tight and grabbed hard at her pillow.

Something soft and feathery brushed across her mouth. Caxton nearly screamed as she bolted upright, her eyelids flashing open.

“Time to get up, beautiful,” Clara said. She had a white rose in her small hand and she’d been running its delicate petals across Laura’s lips.

Caxton took a deep breath and forced a smile. After a tense moment Clara’s face turned up with a wry grin. Clara had already showered, and her wet hair hung in spiky bangs across her forehead. She was wearing her uniform shirt and not much else.

“Too much, so early?” Clara asked. Her eyes were bright. She held out the rose and Laura took it. Then she picked up a glass of orange juice from the bedside table and held that out, too.

Caxton forced herself to calm down, to push away the darkness of the night. There had been bad dreams, as always. She was, over time, learning ways to forget them when she woke up. Clara had learned ways to help.

“Just perfect,” Caxton said. She drained half the glass of juice. “What time is it?”

“Almost eight. I have to go.” Clara was a police photographer for the sheriff ’s department in Lancaster County. It was nearly an hour’s commute from the house they shared near Harrisburg. Caxton had been trying to convince Clara for months to join the state police so they could work out of the same building, but so far she had resisted.

Caxton drank her juice while Clara finished getting dressed. “I have to get moving, too,” she said.

Clara kissed her on the cheek. “Call me if you want to meet for lunch, okay?”

And with that she left. Caxton padded into the kitchen, the floor freezing cold against her bare feet, and watched through the window as Clara drove away in her unmarked Crown Victoria. She craned her neck, leaning hard on the sink, to catch an extra little moment. Then Clara was really gone, and Caxton was all alone.

She didn’t waste much time getting ready. She had come to not like her own house when there was no one else in it. Some very bad things had happened there, and she was a little surprised it wasn’t actually haunted.

Deanna, Caxton’s lover before Clara, had died there. Not right away. It had been ugly, and Caxton herself had been involved in a very bad way. She had inherited the house and her car from Deanna, but the dead woman’s legacy went a lot deeper than that. It threatened to destroy her mind every night. After moving in, Clara had redecorated the place completely, but the velvet curtains and the hanging strands of lights shaped to look like chili peppers only went so far.

She took a long shower, which felt very good. She ran a comb through her short hair and brushed her teeth. She ran a wet washcloth over her face and smeared on deodorant. Back in the bedroom she pulled on black dress slacks, a white button-down man’s shirt, and her best knit tie. Standard dress for criminal investigations and not too aggressively butch. It looked cold outside, appropriately cold for the season, so she grabbed a knee-length black coat and rushed outside to feed the dogs.