99 Coffins: A Historical Vampire Tale

“Thank you, pull through.”

She drove up to the next window, took her food and paid for it. She tore into the greasy sandwich before she’d even gotten back on the Turnpike.

The road disappeared beneath her wheels. When she got to the toll plaza she pulled into the purple E-ZPass lane. The toll went on Geistdoerfer’s tab and she was through.

56.

Storrow regained his footing & grabbed at the degraded side of the cupola. “No reason we can’t go back the way we came, now,” he said, a smile on his face. “It’ll be a hard slog back through partisan country, but lackin’ Simonon, them horsemen we saw’ll be disorganized. Maybe we’ll actually make it back to the lines.”

I wiped my face with my hands. What would I do now? For what purpose should I go on? Bill was dead. I had my duty, I supposed, to my country. I could draw on that for strength, I told myself. I reached out a hand for Storrow to take. He did not accept my grasp, but instead loosed an anguished cry. I turned to look at him.

In that same instant all hope died. Chess rose up again with a fury I could scarce credit though I saw it myself. The vampire’s head was fully re-formed, though he was hatless now.

“Sweet Jesu,” Storrow barked. “We’re done for!”

“Get,” I told him, because suddenly I wanted him to live. We had argued, Storrow & I, & been at loggerheads, yet I wanted him to live so badly I would sacrifice myself to make it happen. Which is exactly what I thought I was doing.

I ran at the vampire with my head down, as fast as my hurt leg would allow. Under normal conditions this would have had all the effect of blowing on him with my breath. He was stronger by far than I, massively so, & invincible as far as I knew. Yet on the pitched roof I gained momentum as I ran heedless of my footing, & when I collided with the vampire we both were launched into lightless space.

For one moment only I felt suspended between Heaven and Earth, a spirit of the air. A moment after that I struck the dry Virginia soil below, which felt much harder than I recalled.

Pain was my portion, but for one moment more only. Then all feeling left my legs & aught below my chest. My back was broken. I needed no physician to tell me as much.

—THE STATEMENT OFALVAGRIEST

57.

Leaves stirred up into the air, splatted across her windshield as she pulled off Route 15 and into the Gettysburg borough limits. The streets were empty, the day’s traffic not yet begun. It was well after eight and the sun was already above the treetops, a white glare in a sky full of dark clouds.

The Gettysburg College campus was just up ahead. She had not heard back from headquarters, did not yet know whether they’d beaten the vampire to his prize. She held her phone against the steering wheel, ready to answer it the second it started to ring.

She crested a low hill and eased off the gas as the car surged down into a dark hollow. The trees were buffeted by a stiff breeze and their half-naked branches lashed against each other, against the surging air.

It wasn’t much farther to the edge of the college. She pulled into the parking lot below Geistdoerfer’s old offices and jumped out, looking around for any sign of the patrol cruiser she’d had dispatched there.

It stood a bit away, at the end of the lot, its lights off. She approached it carefully, not knowing what she expected to see. Occasionally she glanced at the tree-lined sidewalks of the campus, at the darker shadows. There would be nothing there, of course. Her vampire would be asleep now, hidden tight away in some stolen coffin, waiting for the newly risen sun to go away.

She got up to the car, bent down with a hand over her eyes to look inside. A trooper in a wide-brimmed hat sat in the driver’s seat, hunched over. His hat obscured his eyes, but she could see his mouth was open.

No, she thought. Not another dead cop. Guilt skewered her kidneys like a thin knife. She put a hand on the door of the car, leaned down to get a closer look.

The trooper inside sat bolt upright, his mouth closing with a click she heard through the glass. He turned bleary eyes to look up at her, then frowned.

She fished out her state police ID and pressed it against his window. He nodded, then gestured for her to step back. Slowly he pushed open his door and clambered out.

“You Caxton?” he asked.

“Trooper Caxton, yeah,” she said, frowning.

He gave her a weary smile that spoke volumes. She didn’t impress him. He’d probably heard stories about her, maybe even seen the stupid movie. All he really knew about her, though, was that she had dragged him away from a nice warm bed and made him run a fool’s errand before the sun had even come up.

Hoping for the best anyway, she glanced at the backseat of his cruiser. No barrels there. “I’m ready to receive your report,” she sighed. “What’s your name, Trooper?”

“Paul Junco,” he said, leaning against the side of his car and stretching out long arms and legs. “I got here about six-fifteen,” he said, pulling a notebook out of his pocket, “yeah, six-oh-nineA.M., to be exact, on report of a barrel stored at this location that you requested we take into police custody. I obtained entry at six-thirteen with the aid of a maintenance lady, name of Floria Alvade, and proceeded to room 424, in the Civil War Era Studies department—”

“Where you failed to find any sign of a barrel. Come on, I need to see for myself.” She led the way.

Junco shrugged and kept up with her as she hurried inside. A woman in blue coveralls, presumably the same Floria Alvade, was buffing the lobby floor with a big metal waxer. Its furry wheel spat dust across Caxton’s shoes. When she saw them coming she switched the machine off.

“Miss Alvade?” Caxton asked. The woman nodded, her face a cautious mask. Lots of people looked like that when cops approached them. It didn’t mean anything. “I need to know, did anyone enter this building last night?”

The woman nodded at Trooper Junco.

“Anyone else? Anyone at all? Maybe a tall man, very pale skin, bald?”

“Like that vampire I seen on the TV?” Alvade crossed herself. “Oh, Mary preserve me, no! Just him, I swear. I been here all night, too.”

Caxton nodded and turned to go up the stairs. “How about you, Trooper? Did you see anybody leave as you were coming in?”

“I think I would have mentioned if I saw an undead bloodsucker,” he told her.

She whirled on him, fixed him with her hardest glare. Arkeley wouldn’t have put up with that kind of insubordination. She had to get tougher, had to rise above her bad reputation. Had to make people understand just how serious things had become.

“If you have any more glib comments to make, Trooper,” she told him, “I suggest you save them for your official report. Clear?”

His mouth hardened. “Yes, Ma’am,” he said.

She turned without waiting for anything further and raced up the stairs two at a time. She was winded when she got to the top, but she pressed on, past the classroom where she’d met Geistdoerfer, back to the specimen room where she’d seen the barrel. It was gone. She’d already known that. Seeing it for herself made a difference, though. It made her blood run colder, made her skin prickle.

The hearts were gone.

When she could think again, when her own heart wasn’t bursting inside her chest, she headed back down to the parking lot. Three local police cars were just pulling in, lights on but no sirens. Officer Glauer stepped out of one. Dots of toilet paper flecked his throat where he must have just finished shaving.

“You got my message,” Caxton said, by way of greeting.

“Yeah. All four of them,” Glauer replied. He fingered his mustache, an obvious tell. He was worried.

Good. She needed him worried. She needed him scared.

“I just called exigent circumstances so I could search a room up there,” she said, gesturing over her shoulder