13 Bullets: A Vampire Tale

by David Wellington

  “Jesus!” she shouted. The thing had just…blown up, its body literally shredded by the tungsten shot.

  “They rot pretty quickly. After a week or ten days they can barely hold body and soul together,” Arkeley explained. A half-dead appeared at his elbow and he pistol-whipped its jaw off, then fired one of his cross points right through its left eye.

  Suddenly there were dozens of them, cackling in the darkness, running between the tree trunks, their weapons shining in the moonlight, glinting in Caxton’s flashlight beam.

  Reinforcements were on the way. The sheriff was sending two cars. She wanted to grab her cell phone and find out how soon they would arrive, but that would mean taking one hand off her shotgun. And there was no chance of that.

  Something sharp dug into the flesh of her calf just above her boot. She screamed and kicked at a skinless hand that was reaching up to grab at her. Finger bones went flying as her boot connected, but the half-dead under her feet kept trying to climb up out of the dirt. She resisted the urge to shoot straight down, which would probably destroy her own foot in the process. Instead she waited for the half-dead’s scalp to crown up out of the dark earth, then kicked it in with her boot. “Watch out,” Caxton shouted, “they’re coming up from the ground!”

  Arkeley scowled at the darkness. “We don’t have enough bullets.”

  Caxton pressed her back up against a tree and pumped the shotgun. Where the hell were the reinforcements?

  20.

  “Do any of them have guns?” she asked, petrified.

  “Not likely,” Arkeley told her. “They don’t have the coordination to shoot straight. They’ll be armed, though. I’ve never seen one those bastards who didn’t have a thing for knives.”

  “I think we should head back to the house,” Caxton said, doing her best to keep control of the obvious fear in her voice. She wanted to start screaming for help, but that wouldn’t do anyone any good. “Let’s at least get out of these trees.” The half-deads were surrounding them. They were taking their time pressing the attack, and Caxton could imagine why. The assailants wanted to mob them: one on one they couldn’t even get close, but if a crowd attacked all at the same time, Caxton and the Fed would be overrun, unable to shoot fast enough to keep all the knife-wielding monsters at bay.

  Arkeley raised his weapon and fired. A half-dead she hadn’t even seen disintegrated in midair. “We can’t afford to lose them by going too far. But I agree, we’re in unnecessary risk here.” He turned to face the stream that ran between them and the house. A half-dead stepped out from behind a tree in front of him, and Arkeley punched it with his free hand hard enough to send it spinning to the leaf-littered ground. Caxton stomped it as she followed close behind.

  “Follow my lead,” he hissed at her. “If we don’t scare them off, we might just learn something tonight.”

  They made it nearly all the way to the water without opposition. At the stream five of the half-deads waited for them, nearly invisible in the darkness. Caxton saw a hatchet come tumbling through the air toward her head, and she turned her body just in time for the weapon to tear through her jacket sleeve. If her reflexes hadn’t taken over at just the right moment the hatchet would have embedded itself in her sternum. She put it out of her mind and lifted the shotgun. Her shot destroyed one of the half-deads completely and took the arm off another. Arkeley fired two shots, one after the other, and a pair of half-deads fell into the water, no more than heaps of old bones.

  That left only one half-dead standing and unharmed. It charged them even as they were recovering from their shots, a shovel held above its head in both hands. It squealed in rage as it closed the distance, then brought the shovel down hard, blade first, right at Caxton’s shoulder.

  The shovel bit into her. She felt the impact, first, pain twanging up and down her arm and well into her chest. The blow didn’t stop there, though—she felt the blade tear through layer after layer of cloth and finally lodge deep in her skin. Trickles of blood rolled down between her breasts and over the knobs of her spinal column. Her flesh stretched and tore, and her muscles screamed in panic as they were wedged open. It felt like she was going to die, like her body was being torn apart.

  Arkeley took his time, lined up the perfect shot, and blew off what remained of the half-dead’s face.

  “Get up,” he told her.

  “I don’t want to alarm you,” she panted, pushing at a tree trunk, getting back to her feet, “but I think I’m hurt.” She hadn’t even realized she’d fallen down. The wound hurt, bad, and she was shivering as she finally stood up and pawed at the torn sleeve of her jacket. “I think…I think it’s bad.”

  “You’re fine,” he told her, though he hadn’t even looked at her wound. He stared up and back, at the way they had come. In the trees back there the half-deads were rallying. In a moment they would come running, rolling right over them. “Walk it off,” he told her.

  She thought she might die there, in that dark place, because he wouldn’t take her seriously. She thought she might never see Deanna again. She followed him, her feet like frozen chunks of beef, as he bounded across the stream. Her breath came fast but without rhythm, and she could hear her heart pounding in her chest, louder than the sound of her feet splashing in the water.

  “I can’t…I can’t go any farther,” she said. The pain was making her dizzy.

  He turned and stared at her, his eyes very thin slits in his face. They didn’t have time to stop like this, and she knew it. She was holding him back. He looked right into her and said, “In a second I’m going to ask you if you’re okay. Your answer is extremely important. If you can keep fighting, or at least keep running, you have to say ‘yes.’ Otherwise we have to run away and let them win this one. Now. Are you okay?”

  A thickness in her throat kept her from answering one way or another. She managed to shake her head. No, she wasn’t okay. She was hurt, she’d been stabbed with a shovel. She was bleeding to death in the dark with enemies all around. She wasn’t alright at all.

  The look on his face changed to one of utter displeasure. Whether he was worried about her or about losing the fight she couldn’t tell. “Then let’s get the hell out of here,” he said, and pushed her forward.

  She dashed up the far bank and right up to the solid stability of the camp. She pressed her good shoulder against the wall and reached up to explore her wound.

  “You do that later, when you’re safe,” Arkeley said, his voice very loud. He tore at her hands and pulled her away from the wall.

  Arkeley pushed open the front door and shoved her inside. He locked the door and turned around to scan the grim tableau of the main room, with its corpses wired into lifelike postures. The barrel of his Glock 23 traversed from left to right before he even switched on the lights.

  Outside the half-deads screamed for their blood. Where the hell was the sheriff? Where were the cars from Troop J? Caxton began to sit down—she was feeling shaky, as if she might faint—but Arkeley scowled at her and she got back up. They both pivoted around when they heard a noise from the kitchen—something was trying to get in. “There’s an open window in there,” she said. The same window she’d looked through when they’d arrived.

  He dashed into the kitchen wing and fired two shots. Then he slammed the window shut and bolted it. “This won’t hold them for long,” he called.

  Out on the porch the half-deads started beating at the camp’s walls, demanding to be let in. Their voices called out to her to let them in, to surrender. One of them called out her name and she whimpered, but she shoved her hands over her ears and slowly regained control. When Arkeley came back into the main room she pointed at the far wing, the bunk room. There was only one window in there, a square vent high up in the wall that let in a few stray beams of moonlight.

  “If we go in there we stay in there,” he said. “We can barricade the door and it will keep them out for a while. Maybe not long enough.” He looked up and pointed to a skylight in the pitched ceil
ing, maybe ten feet up. A length of white rope dangled from its latch, presumably so that someone could open it to catch the breeze on a warm evening. Arkeley shoved a chair underneath the skylight and climbed up to grab the rope. He yanked downward and the skylight fell open. “Alright, come on,” he said.

  “I can’t.” Caxton held her injured shoulder and shook her head. “I can’t climb up there, not like this.”

  Arkeley studied her face for a second. Then he grabbed the wrist of her hurt arm and pulled it around in a looping spiral that forced her into a pirouette.

  Black spots burst inside her eyes. Her brain trembled with the pain.

  He didn’t seem to think it was so bad. “If anything was broken it would have made you pass out. Now get up there. I’ll help as much as I can.”

  She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to do anything except climb into an ambulance and get pumped full of painkillers. She climbed up on the chair and reached up. She could almost touch the frame of the skylight, but not quite.

  “Use the rope,” he suggested.

  “Will it hold my weight?” she asked.

  “I only know one way to find out. Do it already!”

  Sucking on her lower lip, she wrapped the end of the rope around her fist. Then she jumped up and grabbed onto the frame. The thin metal dug into her palm and opened up a fresh wound, but she managed to hold on. The rope dug into her other hand. She could feel it shredding under her weight, but it would hold for the moment. From below Arkeley shoved her, hard, and suddenly she was outside in the cold, dark air. A few stars shone down and illuminated the shingled roof. It looked too steep, as if she would fall if she didn’t hold onto the skylight. She needed to help Arkeley up, though. Turning from the waist, her legs spread out for some minimal purchase, she reached down with her good arm and heaved him upward. He was a lot heavier than she’d expected.

  On the way up he brought the rope with him. He pulled the skylight shut. Unless one of the half-deads was seven feet tall, there would be no way for them to follow Arkeley onto the roof. They were safe—more or less.

  In the yard below, the half-deads gathered around the front of the camp. Their torn faces were white and vicious in the starlight. “Come down from there!” one shouted, its nasty voice unnerving Caxton. “Come down and we’ll talk,” it said. “We just want to get to know you a little better, Laura!”

  She lifted the shotgun, then thought better. From ten yards away the shot would spread too wide to do much damage, even to a barely-intact half-dead. She reached with her bleeding hand into her jacket and drew her pistol.

  “You’re going to be one of us, Laura!” the half-dead crooned. “It’s just a matter of time! Our master got inside of you, inside of your brains!”

  She lined up her shot, but Arkeley stopped her. “Don’t waste the bullet.” He pried up one of the shingles from the roof and held it loosely in his hand. It was nearly a foot square, and when hurled it flew like a Frisbee. It bounced off the half-dead’s chest, but it was enough to make the thing run away, howling in terror.

  “They’re cowards. You need to learn that. Now,” he said, “we can look at your shoulder.”

  Caxton could barely balance on the pitched roof, but she managed to shrug off her jacket. The cold air chilled her instantly, and she started shivering again. “Am I in shock?” she asked, remembering a keyword from the first aid course she’d taken at the academy. You were supposed to repeat it every other year, but nobody ever checked if you did or not and she’d never gotten around to it.

  He tore at the sleeve of her uniform shirt and exposed her skin to the night air. He touched the wound and his fingers came away bloody. She’d expected that, but then she’d expected them to come away caked in gore. His fingers were barely stained.

  “For God’s sake,” he said, his voice scornful. She yanked away from his hands.

  “What? What is it? Tell me!” she shouted. “Am I going to die?”

  He stared at her in pure disgust. “That,” he said, gesturing at the wound on her shoulder, “isn’t deep enough to kill a house cat. Let me put it this way. Next time you get hurt this badly, don’t even bother telling me. I can’t believe we threw away a real opportunity because you got a little scratch.”

  “Jesus,” she said, and turned away from him. “It felt like I was getting cut in half.”

  He only clucked his tongue at her in response. Down in the yard the half-deads laughed at her. She kicked at the shingles until several of them fell away and slid down toward the crowd below. That just made the half-deads laugh harder.

  21.

  Eventually the reinforcements came, their lights strobing through the trees, their sirens drowning out the cackling noises from below. Caxton sat up and nearly rolled off the roof. Arkeley grabbed her but wouldn’t look at her as she scrabbled for handholds.

  There was a lot of shooting, none of which she could see. She remembered being down in the pit when they took down the vampire. “Jesus, I thought I was going to die.”

  “When it’s time for you to die I’ll let you know.” There was a sneer in Arkeley’s voice. “Damn.” He pointed and she saw a crowd of half-deads running into the trees. “They’re going to get away. I wanted to capture at least one so we could torture some information out of it.”

  “I don’t know if I could watch you torture something. Not even one of those freaks,” she said.

  “Then I’ll just have to do it while you’re not looking.”

  When the sheriff and the state troopers below had finished securing the hunting camp, they put a ladder up against the roof so Caxton and Arkeley could climb down. An ambulance waited for her, while the sheriff wanted to talk to the Fed.

  “Take off your shirt and sit down here,” an EMT in plastic gloves said. She did as she was told, sitting on the edge of the open back of the ambulance. It was freezing out and she didn’t like sitting there in just her bra, but another EMT wrapped a silver antishock blanket around her and that helped. The first medic cleaned out her wound with antiseptic that turned her skin orange and made her cut look like spicy taco meat. “This isn’t so bad,” she said. “I’ve seen a lot worse.”

  So had Caxton, of course. She’d just never been injured herself before, not even so unseriously. “Do I need to go to the hospital?” she asked.

  “You’ll need a tetanus shot, and a doctor will need to change your bandage every three days. But you can go home tonight and sleep—that’s the most important thing.”

  Sleep. It would be nice. Over the last few nights she’d gotten maybe six hours of sleep, total. She closed her eyes right there, but the ambulance’s spinning lights pulsed blue on her eyelids and she came to again. The medic wrapped her shoulder with an Ace bandage and sent her on her way. Her shoulder ached, but she could move her arm just fine. She went looking for Arkeley and found him on the porch of the camp, studying a big state map. The sheriff stood rigidly next to him, holding a flashlight at just the right angle so the Fed could run his finger along the various routes and back roads. “Here, right?” Arkeley asked.

  “Yeah, it’s called Bitumen Hollow. Tiny little place.”

  Caxton bent down next to Arkeley. The Fed turned to stare at her as if she was in his light. She wasn’t. “What?” she demanded.

  He replied as if she’d asked what was happening. Which would have been her second question. “The vampires struck tonight. This,” he said, waving his arm at the woods where they’d been ambushed by the half-deads, “wasn’t a trap. It was a diversion from what was happening here.” He poked at the map with his finger.

  “You said the vampires struck tonight. Vampires, as in plural,” she said.

  Arkeley bared his teeth at her and stared down at the map as if he wanted to burn a hole right through it. “They worked together. The reports we have are pretty much useless in terms of piecing together a flow of events. We have a couple of panicked nine-one-one calls, a few cell phone recordings the sheriff was kind enough to share with me. No r
eal details, but they all agreed on one fact: there were two of them, two males, and they were hungry. They took down an entire village. We’re going there right now to see what kind of evidence they might have left behind.”

  She nodded and reached for her car keys. They were in her jacket, which happened to still be up on the camp’s roof. Arkeley stalked away in disgust when she told him as much. The sheriff turned off his light and folded up his map. “Not the most friendly sumbitch, is he?” the man asked. He had a handlebar mustache and a scar across his forehead that cut his eyebrow in half.

  “I’ve been thinking I might have more fun working for the vampires,” she said, and he chuckled. She glanced at the map to memorize where they were headed. A sergeant from Troop J climbed up and fetched her jacket. He tossed it down to her and she snatched it as it fluttered through the air.

  Back in the car Arkeley wouldn’t even talk to her. She started up the cruiser and got it back on the highway. They were only half an hour from the village. About halfway there she realized she couldn’t handle his silence for the duration of the trip. “Listen, I don’t know what I did to piss you off, but I’m sorry.”

  For once he was in a mood to talk. “If I had known you weren’t really hurt, I wouldn’t have retreated so hastily,” he said, as if he were writing out a report. “I was counting on capturing at least one of them. Why else did you think I walked right into that trap? Maybe this night wouldn’t have been such a fiasco. Maybe we would have been in time to reach Bitumen Hollow while there was still a chance to help.”

  “Now you’re blaming me before we even know what’s happened.” But of course she knew what they would find, just as he did. She didn’t want to see the village, or what was left of it. She didn’t want to do any of this. “If I’m not tough enough for you—”

  “You will be. You’re going to toughen up in a hurry,” he told her.

  “Or what?”

  “There is no ‘or what.’ You’re going to toughen up and that’s it. I don’t have time to find a new partner. I don’t have time to teach anyone else just how dangerous this game can be. Don’t let me down again.”