99 Coffins: A Historical Vampire Tale

“We could go find them, try to help them,” Glauer suggested. He sounded like he was shouting at her from a far-off hilltop, even though he was only a few feet away. “They’ll get slaughtered out here.”

She shook her head. She had to think like Arkeley, do what Arkeley would have done. The old Fed would have known better than to go racing blindly into the dark in the hopes of rescuing his troops. He would have considered them disposable. For Arkeley the only thing that mattered was that the vampires died.

She couldn’t reconcile that with her own conscience. But her rational mind was willing to accept it for the time being. “We need to stick to the plan,” she said. She looked up at Glauer. “You should have stuck to the plan. You shouldn’t have waited for me out here in the open.”

He shrugged. “We’re partners, right? You don’t abandon your partner in the middle of a firefight.”

She scowled and looked away, toward the road. Partners. Glauer’s old partner, Garrity, had died at the hands of a vampire. Glauer had refused to give chase, instead sticking with Garrity even though he was already dead.

Caxton had been Arkeley’s partner, once. At least she’d thought of herself that way. Arkeley had only ever meant to use her as bait.

“Come on,” she said, and hurried out into the road. The streetlamps lit up the dark asphalt but nothing beyond the edge of the road. They ruined her night vision, but still she squinted into the shadows, ready for any threat that came toward her.

It was Glauer who saw the danger when it came.

“Something moved,” he said, raising one hand to point at a cannon sitting by the side of the road. The streetlight dripped from the rim of one of its wheels. “There,” he said again, much louder.

A vampire launched itself from behind the cannon, streaking across the asphalt. For a second Caxton thought she saw his red eyes. She swung her rifle up and fired three shots, but she knew she wouldn’t hit the vampire. It was just suppressing fire.

“Run,” she shouted, and then booked across the road, her knees pumping madly.

The visitors center, their next fallback point, sat low and massive directly in front of her. It was a sprawling pile of yellow brick with plenty of doors, much less defensible than the Cyclorama building.

She rushed up to the front entrance, a row of glass doors, and shoved her way inside, Glauer pressing up tight behind her. Behind the row of doors lay a narrow entrance foyer and beyond that the main access point to the building. She crouched down and stared through the glass, trying to see the vampire she’d shot at. For a few panicked seconds she waited, trying not to move too much, trying not to breathe.

Apparently the vampire was too smart to try a frontal attack. Or maybe he’d just been after somebody else all along.

“Okay,” she said, finally. “Let’s move in.”

Glauer went first, his rifle cradled in his good arm. He kicked open an inner door and ran through, then jumped back hurriedly as bullets tore out of the darkness. The noise in the enclosed foyer was like the ringing of giant iron bells, and the muzzle flashes dazzled Caxton’s eyes. She understood what was happening instantly, though.

“Stand down!” Caxton shouted, grabbing Glauer’s belt and pulling him back, away from the door.

“We’re on your side!”

A scared-looking face popped out of the inner door. It was one of the guardsmen, one of the troops she’d seen at the Cyclorama Center. The one who had wanted a pony.

“Shit,” he said, looking at Caxton and then Glauer. He chewed on his lower lip. “We thought you were—”

“Vampires. Yeah,” Caxton said. She cursed herself for nearly getting Glauer killed. “Well, we’re not.

Can we come in?”

The guardsman stepped back from the door and she pushed past him into the main lobby of the visitor center, a cluttered space of display cases and signage. A ticket counter lined the wall on her right, while a darkened gift shop stood on her left. At the far end of the room exits led into gloomy hallways, posted with signs for guided tours and the “famous” electric map.

Three guardsmen sat on the floor, their weapons across their knees. They stared up at her with terrified eyes. The guardsman who had shot at them leaned against the ticket counter, looking into the shadows, specifically not meeting her gaze. He had corporal’s bars on his uniform and a name tag that read HOWELL .

“Four of you,” Caxton said. “That’s all that got out?”

“I’ve been trying to raise the others on my radio,” Howell said. “No fucking dice.”

Caxton let out a long uncomfortable breath. Four of them—that was horrible. That was devastating.

Only four left? She shouldn’t be too surprised, she thought. She’d seen the others die, back in the Cyclorama building. She’d seen Lieutenant Peters die. The contingent of soldiers from the National Guard had been expertly trained, heavily armed, and well organized.

Arkeley had told her a million times never to underestimate vampires.

“What about the others?” she asked. Her plan had been to keep the various units of her army together as best as possible. The guardsmen had been responsible for the Cyclorama. The liquor enforcement officers had been assigned to fall back to the visitor center and hold it until all of her troops could regroup there. “Have you made contact with the LEOs?”

Corporal Howell looked right at her then and she knew she wouldn’t like to hear what he was about to say.

“We found them, anyway,” he said. He gestured with his chin at the gift shop.

Caxton took a few steps toward the shop, but she didn’t have to go far to see what he meant. In the cluttered aisles of book racks and souvenir stands a number of human bodies—how many in all she didn’t know—lay strewn about like broken toys. They wore navy blue windbreakers, some of them torn to shreds.

82.

My coffins were disguised as crates of rifles and were stowed away carefully in the appropriate magazine behind the line. I stayed with them all the rest of the day, even as the Confederate guns hammered at the earth all around me, and though I feared for my life at every moment. A tightness grew around my head, as if some circlet of iron had been placed there, and through cunning design been made so it could be tightened slowly, almost imperceptibly. By the time the shelling stopped my ears were ringing and my skull felt it might split. I could smell nothing but spent gunpowder and the stink the dead made and my eyes ran freely with water, for the smoke was much irritating.

At sundown the battle halted for the day. Tents were thrown up, so many of them. I could not see very far, despite my position atop the ridge, for the smoke dulled my eyes to everything. Yet the white canvas stood out in that murk and for the first time I saw just how many men surrounded me. Why, there was a whole city’s population on that field, almost all of them armed. It was something I shall never forget, to look out on that sea of canvas, and feel it must go on forever.

—THE PAPERS OFWILLIAMPITTENGER

83.

“You should have told us,” Howell said. His face was wracked with hatred. “You didn’t tell us it would be this bad.”

Caxton knelt down to touch the arm of one of the dead LEOs. It was cold and the hand at the end was very pale. She rolled him over on his side and got a shock. The man’s head was missing.

Stepping backward, unable to see anything except the raw bloodless stump of his neck, she barely heard Howell complaining.

“We need to pop smoke right now,” he said.

“What?” Glauer asked.

The soldier stared at him wide-eyed. “Pop smoke. Bug out. We need to leave!”

She looked up at him with a sudden measure of anger that surprised her. The LEOs had given their lives to stop the vampires. Now this idiot wanted to just leave, with the job unfinished? It was the kind of reaction Arkeley would have had. Feel free to step outside, the door’s just there, she thought, smoky rage billowing in her chest. See how far you get. She managed not to say it out loud. “We just need to hang on,” she said, instead. “The guard will send more troops.”