“I thought we were after vampires, not Frankenstein’s monster,” DeForrest joked. Everyone ignored him. “What’s all this stuff for?”
“It steps down the voltage of electricity coming from the power plants,” Caxton explained, “until it’s safe to send to your house.” She pressed her face against the gunport in her window and tried to see what Arkeley must be seeing.
Nothing stirred in the substation except a few fallen yellow leaves that skittered around in the breeze, chasing one another back and forth.
Up ahead at the end of the row stood an old switch house. It was where the original circuit breakers for the substation would have been housed—maybe even fuses, if the place was old enough. It was a one-story building made of dark brown brick with mullioned windows that didn’t let much light in or out.
It had to be the place. Beyond lay the chain-link fence. Yellow cornstalks stood eight feet high outside the fence, fields of the dead vegetation running off in every other direction. If Reyes was hiding inside the substation, he was in the switch house.
Arkeley went to the door and pushed it open. Whatever might have been inside, the sun hadn’t yet touched it. He unholstered his weapon and took a flashlight from the pocket of his overcoat. “I’m going in, if anyone cares to join me,” Arkeley said over the radio.
“That’s not how we planned this,” Captain Suzie said into her own radio. “That’s not what the Commissioner wanted. It could be dangerous.”
“The sun’s up. We’re safe. Right? We’re safe,” Reynolds said. “The sun’s up. Vampires can’t come out in the daytime.”
“That’s right,” Caxton told him.
“I don’t care. We stay in the vehicle,” Captain Suzie said. She stared forward at Arkeley as if she could meet his gaze from the backseat of the armored vehicle.
The Fed stepped into the darkness. None of the ART members moved.
“Deputy,” Captain Suzie called. “Deputy? Come in, Deputy. Give me a status report, give me something. Anything.”
“Special Deputy,” Arkeley’s voice corrected her. He remained out of sight. “I don’t have a lot to report just now. I’ve found a large quantity of cobwebs and rusty equipment. Hold on. I just found a trapdoor. It looks like there’s a lower level. I’m headed down.”
Caxton pushed open her door and jumped down to the ground before she knew she was really going to do it. Captain Suzie grabbed for her, but Caxton slipped through her hands. She moved toward the switch house as the radio on her collar started yelling orders at her.
She was almost at the switch house’s open door when something moved in the corner of her eye. She turned, her rifle in firing position, and saw it again. Outside of the fence something was definitely moving around. She looked left and right and saw that someone had cut a hole through the fence, big enough for a grown man to duck through. She ran over and twined her fingers through the chain link. “Arkeley,” she called, “I’ve found a back exit to the substation. There’s somebody out there.”
“Caxton,” he said. “Get back in that fucking truck. I’ve told you already—”
She stopped listening to him. Something was definitely moving, creeping through the cornfield. It wasn’t an animal, either. It was a person, or maybe even several persons or…or several half-deads. She ducked under the fence and immediately heard rustling, a layered slithering sound as numerous bodies pushed through the dead stalks. She spun around, one eye down near the scope of her rifle, and then she saw them, six or maybe seven half-deads wearing hooded sweatshirts. They were dragging something through the corn, something big made of dark wood with brass hardware.
It was a coffin.
34.
She lifted her rifle to her shoulder and fired a quick burst of three shots, but she didn’t hit anything, nor did she expect to. The half-deads were moving and obscured behind dozens of rows of cornstalks. With the power of the weapon in her hands she could mow down half of the cornfield, but she’d been trained better than that. A rifle bullet could travel half a mile before gravity brought it down. Unless she could guarantee there were no innocent bystanders within a half-mile radius, she couldn’t fire blind like that.
She could only watch, then, as the half-deads dragged their coffin through the corn. “Arkeley,” she said into her radio. “Arkeley, please come in. I have sighted a group of half-deads carrying a coffin. Please advise. Arkeley, what do I do?”
“…bones, human bodies in…no sign of recent…a lot of dust,” he said. She figured he must be talking about the basement of the switch house and what he had found there. He must not have been able to hear her—she could barely make out a fraction of what he was saying. Presumably the signal was being partially blocked by the layer of dirt between them. That was immaterial, though. The half-deads were getting away. She looked back through the fence and saw the armored vehicle just sitting there. One member of the ART leaned out of an open door, staring at her, open-mouthed.
“Captain Suzie,” Caxton said, “I need backup over here. They’re getting away!”
“My orders are to stay with the vehicle, no matter what. Our safety is more important than catching your vampire. Those are your orders, too, Trooper.”
“Reyes will escape if we don’t get him now,” Caxton said. “If we get him now, by daylight, we can destroy his heart.”
“You said there were maybe seven of those creatures. There’s only three of us. You come back here right now, Caxton. If you won’t take an order from the Commissioner, maybe you’ll take one from me. Come back right now.”
Caxton looked from the armored vehicle back to the cornfield. She could still hear the stalks rustling, but the sound was growing faint. She didn’t know what to do. She knew what Arkeley would do, however, in her situation. She knew exactly what he would do.
She pushed through the papery stalks and ran after the half-deads, her boots sliding in dark mud.
The fibrous leaves of the stalks slithered across her helmet and lashed at her exposed wrists. The thick stems of the stalks resisted her, and she was certain that if she didn’t catch the half-deads soon she would trip and twist an ankle, maybe even break it. How stupid would that be, she thought, to cripple herself because she was so intent on revenge? After the third fall, catching herself on her hands in the clinging dirt, she forced herself to slow down. The half-deads couldn’t be moving as fast as she did, could they? Weighted down by the coffin, their frail bodies just couldn’t make that much speed. She pushed through a line of stalks with her rifle and it snagged, just for a moment, but enough to make her sway.
Her radio squawked. “This is the ART, calling headquarters. We need immediate clarification of a standing order,” it warbled. It sounded distant and thin. She knew Captain Suzie wasn’t coming to help, and the knowledge bothered her but couldn’t stop her. She couldn’t let it stop her.
Weariness rose in her, seeping into her bones. She had to accept the fact that she was working on no sleep, that she couldn’t trust her body. Gasping for breath, she tore her rifle off the cornstalk and slung it over her shoulder. It was a liability in that close space.
Standing still, she looked around herself, trying to get her wind back, trying to get her bearings. She was well on her way to getting lost in the tall corn. Already she wondered if she could find her way back—there were no landmarks, no way to tell one patch of plants from another.
That kind of thinking didn’t help her, though. She was so close. Shaking her head, she sucked breath into her body and refused to give up.
She raced down one row of cornstalks and quickly found what she was looking for, a swath of vegetation that had been crushed by the passing coffin. She moved alongside the track, keeping to a crouch, sure she was getting closer. Soon she could hear the coffin dragging on the papery corn trash that littered the ground. A moment later she heard the half-deads whispering, not more than twenty feet from where she stood. She couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. When the sound of the moving cof
fin suddenly stopped, she stopped, too.
“Do you see her, is there sign of her?” one of the half-deads hissed. There was no reply.
Slowly, careful not to make a sound, she brought her rifle around to a firing position. She grasped the shotgun attachment slung under the barrel with one gloved hand and moved forward slowly, steadily, her boots making very little noise in the soft mud. Ahead, through the close-planted stalks, she could make out shadowy figures. She took a step closer and parted the corn with the barrel of her weapon.
Through the narrow gap she could see open space, an aisle cut through the field as a firebreak. The clearing was full of half-deads. They were standing around the coffin, their heads low. One of them stood atop the casket, probably trying to get a better view of where she was.
She pointed the shotgun attachment and yanked the trigger. The half-dead on the coffin flew apart in filthy rags and shards of broken bone. The others started howling and running around in terror. One ran right past her, close enough to reach out and grab. She let it get away—she had more important business at hand. She stepped into the firebreak and spun slowly around, looking to see if any of the half-deads had been brave enough to stick around. She didn’t see any. She forced herself to ignore the coffin until she was sure she was alone. Then she bent to take a closer look.
It was a casket, as opposed to a coffin—unlike the hexagonal pine boxes the other vampires used, Reyes had switched up to a deluxe model, rectangular and appointed with turned moldings. It had been, once, a handsome assemblage of polished cherry-wood. The brass handles had probably been bright and metallic before the casket had been dragged through acre after acre of soggy dirt. Now the wood was splattered with dark earth, so thick on one end it looked as if it had been dipped in mud.
She stepped closer and put a hand on top of the wooden lid, half expecting to feel some evil presence beneath, but there was nothing. She remembered the cold feeling she’d gotten near Malvern, the absence of humanity. This could be the same. She licked her lips and tried to open the lid. Something held it shut. Well, she supposed that made sense. The half-deads wouldn’t want it flapping open as they moved it around. She felt around the edges and found three nails holding down the lid.
She tried her radio but got no response. Had she run so far that she was out of range? It seemed impossible. She felt as if she’d run no more than a quarter mile. She looked around. She couldn’t really remember which direction she’d come from. She didn’t think she’d be able to find her way back—and even if she did, that would mean leaving the casket behind. The safe thing, the smart thing to do, was to accept that, to just head back, try to make contact with the ART, and hopefully bring the others to the casket. But it sounded like such an impossible errand. If she left the casket even for a few minutes, surely the half-deads would come back for it. Wouldn’t they?
Her vision blurred for a moment and took its time sharpening up again. She was really going to need to sleep soon. As soon as Reyes was dead, she decided. As soon as she’d killed him. She took the clip out of her rifle and emptied out the bullets. The empty container had a sharp metal edge she could use to break the nails. She would probably ruin the clip in the process, effectively destroying the rifle. She still had her Beretta, which she placed on top of the casket where she could grab it at a moment’s notice.
She slid the edge of the clip between the lid and the body of the casket and tried to saw at the first nail. The clip moved back and forth a few times before it slipped right out of the gap and across the back of her wrist, gouging her skin. Tiny flecks of blood spattered the casket and her breath caught in her chest. She expected to hear Reyes stir inside, that the blood would call him somehow. But the casket remained motionless, as if it were completely empty.
She didn’t relish the prospect of looking inside and seeing the maggots, the bones, the deliquescent remains like those she had seen in Malvern’s coffin. Still. Reyes’s heart would be in there, dried and shrunken until she could crush it in her hands. She took up the clip and wedged it under the coffin lid again. She put her back into it and the nail broke, the wood shrieking as it came loose. The second nail parted almost instantly when she put some pressure on it. Sweat was collecting under her helmet and running down the backs of her ears. Her back ached, and she knew that when she stood up it would scream with pain. Just one nail left. She got the clip under the lid one more time, but before she started to saw at the final nail she closed her eyes and thought of Deanna, bloody and helpless on the kitchen floor. It gave her back some strength, to think of just how badly she wanted to destroy Reyes. The third nail came out in pieces, so that she had to hack at the wood to get it free. The lid was open; she could just throw it back and look inside.
Some basic fear possessed her and she stopped for a moment, goosebumps breaking out all over her arms. She stood up, and the stiffness in her back made her groan. She picked up her Beretta from the top of the casket and looked around for any ruined faces peering out of the corn. She didn’t see anything.
The heart. She had to destroy the heart. With her boot she pried open the lid, kicked it wide. She raised her weapon and pointed it down into the red silk-lined interior of the casket.
Nothing. It was empty. In her fatigued state she could hear the vampire laughing at her, cackling in cold delight.
Then something cut her across the back of her legs, slicing right through her uniform pants and making her body sing with pain. She collapsed, falling forward, right into the casket. It all happened in the time it took her to switch off the safety on her pistol. The lid of the casket came down across her back and knocked her onto the upholstery. It had all been a trick.
35.
Light dripped into the casket from a crack where she’d damaged the lid. Otherwise she would have been trapped in total darkness. She tried to heave, to buck open the casket, but the half-deads were sitting on it, laughing at her. She heard them drive nails through the lid, sealing it shut again. She couldn’t get any leverage to push against them—she could barely roll over. Her legs burned with a narrow edge of pain where she’d been cut. They would bury her alive.
She screamed to think of it, to imagine being buried under six feet of dirt. Already she could smell nothing but her own sweat and her own fear, the air in the coffin growing stale as it circulated in and out of her lungs. Every time it went out of her it had a little less oxygen in it. How long would it take to use up all the oxygen?
She screamed again, but it was no use. The only ones who could hear her would take delight in her distress. It didn’t matter—she screamed a third time, and slapped at the padded lid of the casket, desperate to get free.
Her body slid around inside the casket and she realized the half-deads were dragging her away from the firebreak. She bounced painfully as the casket grated over ridges and furrows, broken cornstalks, stones half-buried in the ground. Caxton’s heart raced and her breath came faster and faster. She couldn’t stop it.
She could feel her Beretta flopping around at the bottom of the coffin. She must have dropped it inside when they’d cut her legs. She tried to reach for it but couldn’t bend down far enough. The constriction drove home just how small her prison was, and she screamed again at the knowledge that she couldn’t sit up, couldn’t bring her knees up. Every muscle in her body twitched as it felt the constraint.
The casket jumped as it was dragged over some particularly large obstruction, and the pistol smacked her ankle with a smarting pain that turned the darkness around her green for a moment, an optical illusion born of exhaustion, panic, and physical pain. She tried to remember if the weapon’s safety was still on, if she had chambered a round. If she had—if the gun was ready to fire—it could go off with the next bump. A cross point round could come out of its barrel faster than the speed of sound. It could shoot off in any direction, but a lot of those directions intersected her body.
Just one more thing to scream about.
She worked her hand down as far as
she could. Her fingertips glanced off the hard edge of the gun’s barrel, and she could feel the slickness of the metal. Her shoulder dug through the casket’s upholstery, came up hard against the wood beneath. She lunged, and shoved, and tried to brace herself with her legs.
Another bump, a jostling bump that smashed the bones of her shoulder together and made her grunt in shock, but the Beretta slid half an inch closer. She grabbed it with her fingertips and drew it, millimeter by millimeter, closer to her palm. It kept trying to bounce away again, but she refused to let it go. Finally she had it in her hand. The weight and power of the weapon helped to calm her, made her breathe just a little easier.
“Yes!” she shouted, as she worked her finger through the trigger guard.
The casket stopped moving with a sudden lurch that wrenched her back. One of the half-deads knocked on the lid. Its voice, though muffled, was as irritating as ever as it asked, “Everything okay in there?”
She tried to figure out where the voice was coming from using just her ears. It was difficult—the acoustics in the casket were terrible, echoes rolling back and forth in the narrow space. She pressed the barrel of the pistol against the casket lid.
The half-dead giggled at her. “I’d get comfortable if I were you. It’s a long—”
She squeezed the trigger, and light and heat and noise filled the casket in a wave of overpressure that made blood drip from her ears. She was blind and deaf, her hands were burning, and she realized what a terrible mistake she’d made. What if the shock wave from the explosion had ruptured her eardrums?
Her vision came back slowly. A slanting ray of weak sunlight poured through a nearly perfect circular hole in the lid of the coffin. She could see sky through the hole, the yellow of the dead cornstalks. Whether or not she’d hit the half-dead who had been taunting her, she didn’t know.
13 Bullets: A Vampire Tale Page 18