99 Coffins: A Historical Vampire Tale

hungry they must be, after lying asleep in the ground for a hundred and forty years.

Caxton cursed herself. Arkeley would never have given that thought time to form. They weren’t people, these vampires. Not anymore. They were killers, wild animals that needed to be put down.

One of them stepped forward, toward her, arms up. Beseeching, begging her for her blood. Behind him others started moving.

She lined up her shot perfectly. The vampire took another step. He had fed—she could see a slight tinge of pink in his cheeks, could see his chest where his ribs weren’t quite as prominent as they were on the others. Her first shot only ripped open his skin and splintered a few bones. Her second shot spun him around until she could see only his arm and his side. She waited for him to turn back, to face her again, before she fired a third shot that sent fragments of his dark heart spinning out through a hole in his back.

The others were still moving, still coming closer. Some of them tried to fix her with their gaze, but she was able to avoid eye contact. She could feel her skin rippling, her body curling in revulsion.

Adrenaline—pure, liquefied fear—coursed through her body. Every fiber of her being just wanted to turn and run, to escape. Somehow she held her ground.

Caxton couldn’t take them all on. That would be suicide. She could buy a few moments for her troops, though. They were out there in the dark, running for the visitor center. The longer she kept the vampires inside the Cyclorama the better chance the guardsmen and Glauer had to make it. She wanted Glauer to make it. She owed him this chance.

“Who’s next?” she asked, raising her rifle to a firing posture.

The vampires seethed forward, all of them at once. Like vaporous white mist they rushed toward her, so fast they seemed a single mass of death hurled at her. Caxton had expected as much. They were too smart to try for her one at a time.

She dropped the rifle, letting it fall back on its sling, and shoved her hand in her pocket to pull out her second and last flashbang. She’d already peeled off the plastic wrapper, so it took only a fraction of a second to rip out the pin and let it tumble out of her pocket. She didn’t have even enough time to throw it—

She hurled herself backward, her eyes screwed shut. Her back hit the push bar of the fire door even as the flashbang went off and the vampires howled in pain. She hadn’t had time to pull on her ear protectors, and the noise of the explosion ripped through her eardrums, deafening her, filling up her head with a high-pitched whine so loud it made her teeth hurt, made her guts vibrate.

She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. Her body was wracked by the noise, her senses completely scrambled. She was just marginally aware that she was falling, falling backward, then she felt a new wave of pain as she hit the grass hard, her arms flying up reflexively to protect her head. She opened her eyes, but all she saw was darkness. She’d passed from the well-lit Cyclorama into the near-total darkness of the overcast night, and her eyes were still adjusting.

Someone grabbed her arm. She lashed out, terrified that a vampire would tear her apart while she was still deaf and blind, but the hand just held on to her and eventually she realized it was a warm hand, a human hand holding her. She blinked her eyes rapidly, trying to force her pupils to dilate. Eventually she saw a gray shape looming out of the darkness above her, a gray shape bisected by a darker bar. A face—a face with a thick mustache. It was Glauer.

“—hear me? The…through…door…bolt…how…”

His voice was a distant rumbling, a bass-heavy noise trying to fight through the ringing in her ears. She could hear only a fraction of what he was saying. Frustration surged up inside of her and she sat up, then climbed to her feet. She could see Glauer a little better then and she noticed that he was jabbing his index finger at something behind her.

She spun around and saw the fire door she’d just crashed through. It had closed on its hinges, but now it was rattling in its frame. As if the vampires inside were trying to get it open but didn’t know how to work the push bar. Well, maybe that was even true—they’d probably never seen one before. It would take only seconds before they figured it out, however, if only by trial and error.

Glauer had been asking her if there was any way to bolt the door. She’d lost precious time while she recovered her senses. Urgently she cast around her, looking for a lock, looking for something to push up against the door. The door had no knob on this side—it was meant to be opened only in emergencies, and to keep out trespassers who might try to break in. There was a small lock plate with a narrow keyhole, presumably to be used to seal the door shut. They didn’t have the key, though. Glauer ran his fingers across the plate, wincing back every time the door jumped in its frame. If a vampire so much as leaned on the door, if his hip caught the push bar, it could fly open at any moment. They had no more time. Caxton grabbed his sleeve, tried to pull him away, but he was intent on the lock plate.

“—in the movies. Open the…but maybe it’ll…the lock,” he said, staring at her.

She could only shake her head. What was he saying?

Looking as if he’d lost all patience with her, Glauer finally drew a bead on the lock plate on the edge of the door with his rifle. Grimacing, he squeezed the trigger before she could stop him. The enormous bullet pranged off the lock plate and Caxton felt its wind as it ricocheted past her cheek. It could have killed her, could have blown her brains out.

“You idiot,” she shouted, and was surprised to find she could hear herself. Then she looked at the lock plate. The bullet had smashed in the keyhole, deforming the lock mechanism altogether. More importantly, the door had stopped jumping.

Maybe Glauer’s stupid move had actually jammed the lock. Or maybe the vampires were afraid of being shot through the door. It didn’t matter.

She shook her head and pushed Glauer toward Taneytown Road, which ran past the side of the Cyclorama building. He’d bought them a few more seconds, but that was all they were going to get.

80.

This was the first battle I’d ever directly witnessed. I suppose I had imagined men in pressed blue uniforms whirling sabers in the air, calling other men on to a glorious attack. It was nothing like that at all. At Gettysburg I saw soldiers pressed forth into withering fire, muskets popping and blasting, the oncoming men knowing not which way they should run. I saw the guns chew the land up and spit out corpses, flinging them high in the air. I saw much blood; and many dead men, far more than I could stomach. They lay in heaps, or strewn about the field as if they’d been lead soldiers, tossed aside by a bored and impatient child. They were hauled back behind the line when it was possible, which was rarely, and there stacked like cordwood. The wounded far outnumbered them, but the sight of these was almost worse. So many men begging for water, for a surgeon, and so few of those to go around. There was always some man screaming his last, and some other begging him to shut his mouth and be quiet.

This was the second day of the battle, which had been running hot all day. Lee held the northwest, and all of Seminary Ridge while we faced him across a sunken roadway from the top of Cemetery Ridge. Rebels came roaring up that incline, their weapons high, their packs swinging, and they were chopped down like wheat at harvest. As they ran they screeched and hollered and bleated out the worst noise I have ever heard. This was the famed “Rebel Yell,” and its design was to strike fear into our hearts. It worked well enough on me.

—THE PAPERS OFWILLIAMPITTENGER

81.

Her hearing came back, but not perfectly. A dull grinding buzz filled her head and it didn’t diminish over time. Repeated exposure to the noise generated by the flashbangs could permanently deafen someone, she knew, and she worried she was already halfway there.

She could hear her own clothing rustle, though, which had to be a good sign. In the distance she could hear gunfire—patrol rifles, some discharging in short, careful bursts, others going wild with pointless automatic fire.

She ran behind a tree and signaled for Glauer to come up next to her. “Some of our guys are still out here,” she said. “They must have been trapped—unable to get to the next fallback point.”