99 Coffins: A Historical Vampire Tale

more than a stern warning to break them of that conditioning. Maybe, she thought, when they saw what they were up against, when the vampires came howling for their blood, they would just get it.

And maybe a lot of them would die before they learned.

Arkeley would have accepted that possibility without another thought. He would have recognized the importance of what they were doing, would have sacrificed anything, anybody, including himself, to stop the hundred vampires from getting out of Gettysburg. It was time to demand that kind of commitment from these men, she decided. It was time to demand it of herself.

“Okay, listen up,” she said. In quick, sketchy strokes she outlined her plan. “They’ve got a lot of advantages, but we can beat them if we stay together.” She held up a map of the town and the park. “I don’t know where we’re going to engage them, but regardless, the plan’s the same. We make first contact and do as much damage as we can. They’ll try to close with us—they need to be up close and personal to hurt you—but we won’t let them. As soon as they start coming for us we split into groups and fall back to the nearest large buildings. Your group commanders will know where to go. We defend those buildings as long as we can, then fall back again—always moving toward the center of town. Then we regroup, surround them, and take out as many of them that are left. Any questions?”

There were none.

68.

When she had finished writing out her statement I had enough to smash the remainder of Simonon’s mob, and put an end to much Southern brigandry forever. I thanked her profusely and said she’d proved a great friend to my country. This was what I had come for, and now it was done. I could leave at dawn, and be back in Washington before the day was through with my report.

Ye are well come to it, she wrote, but now where be my reward?

I professed ignorance of her meaning. “You’ve been fed well on rich blood. Did you wish for something more?”

Some peace of mind onlie, she answered. What is to come of me, friend of your nation that I now am?

Walk on my own I cannot, and so cannot be released. What will be my fate?

What should happen to her next was none of my concern, though I imagined I could guess at it; a quick and painless execution, which would be a mercy to her and far moreso to us. “That is hardly for me to decide,” I assured her, and prepared to make my adieu.

Yet she had more to say. So much more. In that graceful hand of hers she laid out the broad strokes of my future destiny, one fine letter at a time: Mayhaps I can aid you further, good sir. I know little of war, though I have seen some few in my long years. It seems to me that in most great conflicts that which lacks is not the ability nor the will to fight, but the soldiers to engage. In short, I ask, have you not a need for men?

It was my duty to report Justinia’s offer, whatever I might think of it. I went at once to the telegraph wagon. I composed my message, and encoded it, and sent it on, thinking then I was done. The operator cursed and struggled with his instrument, and had trouble sending. Yet the reply came almost instantly he was through, and was one word only when it was decoded: PROCEED.

—THE PAPERS OFWILLIAMPITTENGER

69.

No more mistakes. She’d thought it so many times, it was written on the inside of her skull. No more mistakes. Slinging her patrol rifle over her shoulder, she pressed the spiral pendant into her palm and tied it there with its broken ribbon.

The last trace of yellow faded from the sky. A few stars peeked through the clouds that wheeled from east to west while she watched. She could hear the helicopters quartering the town, searchers with infrared and night optical cameras looking for any sign of the enemy.

Now, she thought, her nerves thrumming. The call will come now.

It didn’t. Her radio crackled a bit, but nothing came through but the occasional check-in as the helicopter pilots kept track of each other. Caxton tried to breathe.

The vampires, she thought, could split up and—

She shook her head to clear away that thought, but the sudden motion made her neck hurt. She was so tired, hadn’t slept in far too long. Occasionally during the day she had started to nod off but had managed not to lose any precious time. Now she was just waiting, waiting to hear something.

They could split up, go across the open ground. Avoid the roadblocks on the highways and just melt into the darkness.

No. No, that wouldn’t happen, because it couldn’t. If it did, she would have to spend the rest of her life tracking them down. Every night would be a bloodbath, every day a frantic search, and never any time for sleep. It couldn’t happen.

She stared around at the men under her charge, watching them for signs that they were losing their edge.

They were tough guys, most of them. Volunteers all. The LEOs tended to look the roughest. Liquor enforcement officers had to go into bad places all the time, had to deal with sketchy individuals who tended to own a lot of guns. The troopers were much the same, veterans of endless drug raids and meth lab assaults. They looked a little scared. That was how she could tell they were tough, because they looked scared. She remembered how terrified she’d been herself the first time she’d fought a vampire, and now when she looked around she saw fear in every face. Because they knew, they knew they could get hurt every time they clocked in to their jobs. They knew they could get killed.

The guardsmen, the soldiers, were a little harder to read. Some, the newbies, sat silently in groups of four or six, their rifles between their knees. They looked up every time someone laughed or the radio spat white noise. The veterans from Iraq looked a lot more casual. More Pennsylvanian guardsmen had been called up for duty in Iraq than from any other state in the union, and their casualties had been commensurately high. These men knew more than she could tell them about keeping themselves alive.

They stood leaning against the trucks, not moving much. She saw them keeping their eyes on the four roads that lead out of the square, not alert so much as just aware, constantly aware of their surroundings.

Now, she thought, staring at her radio. Nothing.

Glauer came up beside her with a giant thermos of hot coffee and a sleeve of Styrofoam cups still in their plastic wrap. He tore it open and handed her one, poured it for her.

“How are your guys doing?” she asked.

He puffed air into his cheeks, let it out. “We’re good, we’re good,” he said. He looked back over his shoulder. Of the twenty officers of the Gettysburg Police Department, eighteen were scattered around the square, waiting on her orders. All twenty had volunteered. This was their town—they wanted to be here, wanted to defend their home. She had sent two of them home. One was the only means of support for an autistic brother who couldn’t care for himself. The other one was sick.

Chief Vicente had been moved to a safe location.

Glauer scratched at his mustache. “Listen, Trooper,” he said, but then it was as if he’d forgotten what he’d meant to say. He smiled awkwardly, put his hand down.

“They’ll do fine,” she said, because she thought it was what Arkeley would have said. “They’ve had firearms training. They’ll do just fine.”

He nodded briefly but didn’t look convinced. “Yeah. On the firing range. Some of them are hunters, too.

I always preferred fishing. If I’d known what was coming, what was going to happen here, I would have done one of those counterterrorism courses the FBI offered. They would have paid my hotel bill and everything. I always figured, you know, that Gettysburg wouldn’t need that. I mean, none of us went. We thought it was silly.”

“They’ll do just fine.”

“Okay,” he said, and chewed on his lip. “I, um. I’ve never fired a gun at a living thing. Not in my whole life.”