99 Coffins: A Historical Vampire Tale

I hurried into General Hooker’s headquarters as soon as I arrived and was directed to a room upon the second floor. Inside I found the female propped up by pillows in a comfortable bed. A single candle burned behind a silk screen, leaving the room in great dimness. Any more light would cause her physical pain, I was told. She was well provided with writing materials and much ink, and had already covered several pages with a fine and flowing hand. When she turned her singular eye upon me a chill flushed through me, as if the very marrow of my bones had been replaced with ice, yet I barely hesitated as I strode to the bed and kissed her rotten hand. I had been told she was a spy for the Union now, and had provided much useful intelligence, and was an honored guest of the general. I was also told she would drink my blood if she could. Yet she assured me she was sated, and that I should be at my ease. I did not enquire as to from whose veins she had drawn her rations that night.

She told me much of her history; how she had been brought to America in the last century (and by her considerable decay I believed it), and how she had been an ornament in the house of the Chess family that whole time, unable to climb out of her gilded coffin. She told me of how she came to know Obediah Chess when he was a child, forbidden to approach her but unable to heed his parents’ good offices. It was only after the commencement of hostilities, however, that she had convinced the lad to join her in immortal unlife. He had honored her as a second mother (his first lost to a fever when he was a babe). He had fed her first from his own blood, then brought the vital fluid of others to her upon reaching his majority and accepting her curse. He had found it quite easy, she said, to procure the needed substance in time of war, when persons could go missing without question, especially slaves who might be believed to have run off in the chaos.

She spoke fondly of that time, as others now speak of peacetime and the prosperity and abundance we once took for granted.

I asked and learned at once her name, which was Justinia.

—THE PAPERS OFWILLIAMPITTENGER

67.

By six-thirty the town was empty of civilians. The weapons and the troops had arrived and were being offloaded in Lincoln Square. Approximately 65 percent of the town’s buildings had been searched. Not a single coffin, heart, or vampire had been found. The sun was a yellow smear on the clouds, only partly visible through the dark net of tree branches that obscured the view to the west. It was time to stop looking for the coffins, and time to start fighting vampires.

Down in the square her troops had gathered. They stood in small groups, smoking cigarettes, or sat on the sidewalk, leaning up against historical buildings, conserving their energy for the activity to come.

She’d rounded up about seventy-five, almost all men. Not enough, not nearly enough, but it was the best she could do. They were all trained in how to handle firearms. That was something. Liquor enforcement officers in navy windbreakers and baseball hats. Local cops and fellow troopers. SWAT professionals from Harrisburg and National Guardsmen in camo, heavy armor strapped across their chests, night-vision goggles dangling from their helmets. Many had brought their own weapons, mostly pistols and shotguns.

She frowned at the latter—shotguns were almost useless against vampires. Luckily she had better weapons at hand.

The rifles and grenades sat in big crates hastily removed from unmarked trucks, piled high in a crushed flower bed, laid out end on end on the sidewalk between the parking meters. The grenades were individually wrapped in plastic, then buried in packing peanuts. The rifles lay in neat rows inside the box, secured by Styrofoam spacers. She picked one up and checked its action, made sure the modified barrel was firmly secured to the receiver. The plastic stock fit into the crook of her arm and she kept the flash hider pointing straight up.

“Listen up, guys,” Glauer boomed out, loud enough to make her flinch. “Some of you know me, but most probably don’t. I guess you all know who this is.”

“Yeah,” one of the guardsmen said, nodding happily. “That chick from Teeth .”

Caxton stared at him. He couldn’t be more than nineteen years old.

“She’s the boss,” a LEO with a silver beard but no mustache said. “Our designated field commander.”

She’d never heard the term before. It sounded like something he’d read online or in Soldier of Fortune magazine. “I’m Trooper Caxton, that’s good enough for now. You’ve all been filled in on why you’re here, I’m sure, so I’ll be brief.” She looked around, made sure she had their attention. A few were still chatting among themselves, but mostly these men were professionals. They knew when to listen. “In a few minutes it’ll be fully dark. They’ll come out then and hopefully our air support will see where. We need to be ready to move as soon as we get that report. When we engage the enemy it is crucial that you have the right mind-set. This is not a raid. We are not here to take anyone into custody. You must shoot to kill, from your first shot, and you must not hesitate. Not a single vampire can be allowed to escape tonight.”

She hefted her weapon, showed it to them. “Anyone recognize this?”

“It’s a patrol rifle,” one of her fellow troopers shouted, raising an index finger. “You point that end at your target and it goes boom.”

A few of the others chuckled.

Caxton looked around and found a guardsman. “Give me your body armor,” she said. The soldier hesitated, so she grabbed the straps of his vest and started pulling them loose. “These won’t help, by the way,” she said. “The vampires won’t be shooting at us. Armor will just slow you down.” She thought about ordering all the guardsmen to take off their armor, but she decided against it. It might give them some purely psychological comfort. The guardsman she’d grabbed shrugged out of his vest and she took it from him, then looked around again and found a big orange pumpkin that had been set up as part of a hotel’s fall decorations. She wrapped the pumpkin in the vest, and set the armored pumpkin down on the asphalt and had everyone back away from it, made sure they were clear by twenty feet.

“This is a patrol rifle, yes. A Colt AR6520. A little heavier than you’re probably expecting. The barrel has been upgraded to fire fifty-caliber BMG rounds. The magazine has a capacity of twenty rounds—remember that. Also, remember this.” She sighted carefully on the armor vest, switched off her safety, and put a single round right through both the ceramic armor plate and the pumpkin.

Stringy orange glop erupted from inside the armor, splattering a couple of nearby cars.

“You’ll want to avoid any friendly fire incidents,” she said.

A lot of the men laughed then. She hadn’t expected them to. It was good, though. The laughter would help bond them together as a unit. It would help take the edge off their anxiety. She knew she could use some of that herself.

She couldn’t let it get out of hand, though. “I’m giving you this kind of firepower because the only way to kill a vampire is a direct shot through the heart.” She put a hand over the left side of her chest. “Even then you can’t be guaranteed of a clean kill. When we see them at first they’re going to look mostly dead, very skinny and pale. A fifty-caliber round will take them down just fine. Once they drink some blood, though, they become all but bulletproof. These,” she said, flicking the safety back on and then holding her rifle in the air, “may still work. Or maybe they won’t.” She pulled another crate open and gestured for the men to start arming themselves.

“They’re faster than we are. They are much, much stronger. They have no compunction whatsoever about ripping your head off or tearing your guts out. How many of you have been hunting before?”

As she’d expected, most of their hands went up. They were Pennsylvanians, most of them born and bred between two ridges. They probably learned how to shoot looking down the sights of a .22-caliber rifle at a white- tailed buck.

“Clean shots, careful shots. Heart shots every time, just left of center mass. You have twenty rounds. Do not waste any of them on head or leg shots. You’ve probably been trained to try to incapacitate a victim without mortally wounding him. Forget that, right now.” She looked around at the men under her charge.

The National Guardsmen, many of whom had fought in Iraq, didn’t need to be told as much. They numbered less than a third of her troops, however. The rest were one kind of cop or another, and cops were drilled and trained endlessly to not kill people, to not even take a shot if they thought it might lead to a death. It would take