99 Coffins: A Historical Vampire Tale v-2

by David Wellington

  Caxton leaned over the tub and smelled something awful inside. She looked closer, but only found a few maggots crawling blindly across the bottom of the sink.

  “You’ve been sleeping in this tub,” she said to the vampire. Most animals bolted in terror at the first sign of a vampire. Insects, and especially maggots, were the most notorious exception. During the day a vampire’s body didn’t just slumber, it liquefied. Maggots knew a free meal when they saw one.

  “He kept saying he needed something better, that he needed a real coffin. Last night he went out to find one. Unfortunately you happened to be there at just the wrong time.”

  Or the right time, she thought. The right time to discover the weird game the archaeologist was playing.

  That discovery was probably going to get her killed, but it meant the vampire wouldn’t be able to hide much longer. How many people knew where she was? Half the police department knew she’d set up this appointment. When she failed to appear at the police station that night the local cops would start to put the pieces together. This was the first place they would come to look.

  Of course, she’d be dead by then. A wave of horror rippled down her back, hitting every muscle in turn as it went. She wanted to run away. She wanted to start screaming.

  She kept control of herself, somehow.

  He gestured with the gun again. Clearly he’d never held one before. She would have been a lot more nervous if the safety had been off, but even in the gloom she could see otherwise. She might have been prompted to try some heroic gesture like grabbing the gun away from him. If it hadn’t been for the vampire behind her.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  He only smiled at her, a gruesome parody of a human smile. His teeth looked very sharp in the dim light.

  “Were you a soldier?” she asked. When he didn’t answer, she turned to look at Geistdoerfer. “Was he a soldier in the Battle?”

  Geistdoerfer lowered his head for a second but didn’t answer her question. Apparently between the two of them they were smart enough to remember she was a cop, and that when she asked questions, she was digging for clues. They weren’t about to give her anything.

  The gun moved again and this time she moved, heading down the corridor to a stairwell. Orange light came in through the windows, cast by the sodium vapor lamps outside. The light passed through the leaves of a tree being torn at by the wind, and long daggerlike shadows glided across the steps as she went down. At the bottom she pushed open a door and cold night air billowed in. Beyond lay a parking lot. There were no students out there—maybe they’d been smart enough to take her warning and lock themselves away for the night.

  Geistdoerfer’s car was a burgundy-colored Buick Electra, a big old machine with hints of tail fins. He unlocked the driver’s-side door and gestured for her to get in. “I’m driving?” she asked.

  For once she was answered. “It doesn’t have power steering, I’m afraid. It makes it frightfully difficult with one hand. Also, you’re the only one who knows where we’re going.”

  “I am?” she asked, a little stunned. She had thought the two of them merely intended to get out of town, away from the manhunt she had ordered. Then she felt as if a bucket of cold water had been thrown on her. They didn’t want her to take them home with her, did they? Clara was there—

  The vampire answered in his grunting, roaring voice. “You must know, I think, where she’s been taken. I could sense her before at something of a closeness, but now she’s gone. Somewhere to the east.”

  “I don’t know—” Caxton stammered, but Geistdoerfer cut her off.

  “Spare us the declarations of innocence. You must know where she is. I’ve seen your movie, Trooper. I know how closely your fate and hers are wound together. Now where, pray tell, has she gone?”

  Caxton’s body froze convulsively with fear. They would hurt Clara—they would kill her. Would they do worse? She knew they could. “Please. Please don’t.”

  The vampire grabbed her shoulders. Not hard enough to do any real damage. “Where is Miss Malvern?

  I will not be stayed or halted, not after all this time!”

  He didn’t want Clara. Her blood started running again in her veins. He wanted Malvern. It made sense.

  Vampires held only one thing sacred. The young ones, the active ones, cared for their elders. It was how Malvern had stayed alive for three centuries, by preying on that reverence. Clearly this vampire wanted to take care of her in his turn. As old as he was, he was still a youth compared to Malvern. Caxton wondered what she should do. Would she actually let him get to Malvern? If he brought her blood, if he brought her back to some kind of active life, that would only make things doubly worse. She would have two vampires on her hands instead of one.

  It wasn’t like she had much choice, though.

  Geistdoerfer pointed the Beretta at her. “I don’t have much experience with this sort of thing, but I think I grasp the finer points. We’re going to sit in the back. I’ll hold the gun, my colleague will sit there and be quietly menacing. You, my dear, will drive us to…to…?”

  She could lie. She could drive them somewhere random, she could drive them to the state police headquarters in Harrisburg. The vampire would know, though. He could sense Malvern even at this distance. If she didn’t drive him where he wanted to go, he would just kill her. If she didn’t behave herself, he would have no reason to keep her alive. She wasn’t ready to sacrifice herself just to slow him down. “The Mütter Museum,” she finally admitted, sagging back into the leather of the driver’s seat.

  “That’s in Philadelphia, isn’t it? Very good. You’ll take us there now, at a reasonable rate of speed, and you’ll do nothing to make us conspicuous, yes? If you drive off the side of the road or into traffic, I’ll be very upset with you. I’ve spent a lot of time keeping this car in good condition. I’ll also remind you that such dramatics might very well kill me, and your delightful self, but a crash would prove little more than an inconvenience to the boss here. So drive carefully. Okay?”

  He raised the gun in his hand and pointed it directly at her forehead.

  “Okay?” he asked again.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Take the Turnpike,” Geistdoerfer said. “It’ll be the fastest this time of day.” He handed her the keys across the back of her seat and she started up the car.

  When they got to Philadelphia, she wondered, how long would the vampire let her live? But at least for the moment she was still in one piece. For the moment she could still think, and try to form a plan.

  Not a single idea whatsoever presented itself to her.

  What choice did she have? She threw the car into gear and drove out of the lot.

  34.

  “Obediah?” someone called. It was the ranger Simonon! I looked out through the doorway & saw mounted men gathered in the clearing before the house. The Rebs had returned. “Obediah?”

  he hallooed. “Is something amiss in there? I swear I heard gunfire just now.”

  We were as rats, stuck inside a trap, & our time was limited. It seemed hopeless.

  The Reb cavalry made camp outside the door & settled in as if prepared to wait for days if need be, lighting fires, tying up their horses to the trees, & breaking out what rations they had. We inside could do little but curse our luck; albeit quietly. We made no more noise than four church mice, I think.

  The Ranger Simonon did not come in, nor send any man to so much as glance inside the door.

  Neither Storrow nor I was foolish enough to think of trying to fight our way out. We possessed amongst us some small number of firearms, but in our desperate state we would have marched through that door only to be slaughtered instantly. We stayed well back from the doorway & tried not to be seen.

  —THE STATEMENT OFALVAGRIEST

  35.

  Outside, through the windows, she watched rural Pennsylvania go by. Houses lit up yellow and orange from shaded lamps, or a flickering blue where the televisions w
ere on. Cars sat in the driveways, or tucked away in garages. Normal people were sitting down to dinner, or they had already finished and were washing up. Good people, and the bad ones too. Normal people. The people she’d pledged her life to protect. “There are a lot of cops in Philadelphia. A lot more than we have out here. I don’t know what you expect to do when you find Malvern,” she said, though she was afraid she did know, “but you’ll have to deal with them eventually. You’ll want blood. Either for her or for you, so you’ll have to feed. You can hide for a while, but—”

  The muzzle of the Beretta touched the back of her head. Geistdoerfer snarled at her when he spoke.

  “You’re in mortal danger, Trooper. Right now. It’s going to get worse. I can hear the panic in your voice.

  Would you like me to put you out of your misery?”

  “No,” she said, through gritted teeth.

  “You’re not ready to die, then? You’d like to try to live awhile longer?”

  She didn’t want to give him even that much. “Yes,” she said anyway.

  “Then please don’t talk about what’s inevitable. It’s going to ruin my digestion.”

  Was he trying to shut her up? Or was he trying to explain his own actions? The vampire depended on him. The monster couldn’t have gotten this far without Geistdoerfer. Maybe he wanted her to understand him. To forgive him.

  Unlikely, she thought, but she kept that to herself.

  “Can I turn on the radio?” she asked. Music might drive the darkest thoughts out of her head.

  “I don’t see why not,” Geistdoerfer said. “Just keep it low.”

  She nodded, then glanced down at the Buick’s dashboard. The radio was original to the car and not very sophisticated. She switched it on and a little rock music came out, mostly swamped in static. She tried fiddling with the tuning knob. The first station to come in clearly was a Christian talk channel, and she switched away again almost immediately. She didn’t want to hear about how she was going to burn in hell for eternity, not when death was so close. She eventually found a station playing classical music.

  Something light and happy. Caxton didn’t know enough about classical to say who the composer might have been.

  “Mozart,” the vampire announced, as if he’d heard her thoughts. “By God. I know this piece. I heard it played in Augusta once, at a Christmas festival. How…is there a music box in this vehicle? Yet it sounds so rich, like a full orchestra playing.”

  She didn’t understand what he was asking. She didn’t want to speak unless her fear sounded in her voice.

  “Just a bit after your time, I think,” Geistdoerfer said, “a man named Thomas Edison invented a way to capture sound out of the air and record it on a wax cylinder. Later they developed a way to then transmit those sounds across great distances.”

  “Like the telegraph?” the vampire asked.

  “A similar principle. Though it requires no wires.”

  The vampire was silent awhile. Then he said, “There’s so much changed. The lights burning on this road, you see them? This would have been impenetrable darkness, in my time. All the world outside our little fires was darkness. You’ve pushed that back so far I don’t think you two can even imagine it, now.”

  “You have so much to teach us,” Geistdoerfer announced.

  The vampire didn’t seem up to giving a lesson just then, however. He didn’t speak again until they left the Turnpike.

  It wasn’t much farther to the museum. They passed through the sweeping green lanes of Fairmount Park, where streetlights studded the gloom, then rolled into town beneath the high wall of the old state penitentiary. Philadelphia was a city of discreet zones, districts that had their own specific characters. It felt more like a collection of small towns than a metropolis. The neighborhood that housed the Mütter Museum was one of the more unusual sections.

  The streets were not busy that night, though crowds gathered outside of pubs and small restaurants. The vampire kept his head down, invisible to anyone casually glancing through the car’s windows. Outside of a brewpub a couple of college-age boys hooted at them, but they were just admiring the Buick, not questioning its occupants.

  Caxton wheeled down Twenty-second Street, passed the College of Physicians building, then ducked down an alley toward a small parking lot enclosed by buildings on three sides. There was no attendant; if you wanted to park there you were expected to fold up a five-dollar bill and tuck it through a slot near the exit. Only a couple of other cars stood in the lot.

  Caxton pulled into an empty space and then shifted into park. The Buick’s engine thundered in complaint for a second and then died down to an idle. Her arm muscles twitched as she switched off the car and laid back in her seat. Her body wanted to cramp up into a single knot. She felt a horrible urge to just lie down on the seat and close her eyes. To accept whatever was coming.

  It seemed the vampire wasn’t going to let her do that. “Miss, if you please, get out first.”

  “Don’t try to run away,” Geistdoerfer added.

  She let her head fall forward for a moment, slumped on her neck. She rubbed at her eyes. She couldn’t seem to master the bodily coordination to open the door. But then she did. She got her legs out, stretched them, lunged up with her torso until she was standing in the parking lot. Her body twanged with tension and fear, but she was standing up. That was what you did, when faced with an impossible situation. You kept going.

  She climbed out of the car, but before she could even think of running the vampire was behind her, clutching her wrist in his hand. The grip was light, though she knew it could tighten without warning, and if it did it could crush her bones.

  “We should really get inside, away from the madding crowd,” Geistdoerfer insisted. He took a step away from the car and they all heard the sound of fabric tearing. The professor looked down and Caxton did too. She saw that his bad arm had gotten snagged by the tail fin of the Buick and that his sling had torn.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Geistdoerfer said. “I’ll fix it later.” His face was a mask of pain. Had he injured himself on the tail fin? He started to walk toward the museum, rubbing at his ruined wrist with his good hand. “Come on,” he said.

  The vampire didn’t move. Caxton had no choice but to stand still.

  There wasn’t much light in the parking area. Just a few overhead lamps that left plenty of shadows. Still she could see a trail of small drops of blood, round and flat, following Geistdoerfer wherever he went.

  Blood had stained the torn end of his sling and as she watched it gathered there wetly, formed a hanging dome of shiny red. Then it detached and slid off to spatter on the oil-stained ground.

  The vampire held her arm tight. “I’ve had to smell his life for hours now,” he told her. His voice was a low dusky growl. The purr of a big cat just before it pounced on a zebra. “I’ve sat next to him and smelt it, and held back as best I might.”

  Caxton didn’t move. She knew what the sight of blood could do to a vampire. “He’s your only friend in the world,” she said. “Please, don’t—”

  “I’ll need strength for what I’m to do here.”

  Then he was off like a shot, closing the distance between himself and Geistdoerfer in one quick leap.

  Caxton was dragged behind, held fast by his soft grip on her wrist. She fought and kicked and tried to pry his fingers loose with her free hand, but it was no use. It was like fighting against an industrial vise.

  The vampire didn’t waste time tearing sling and sleeve away from the professor’s arm. He just bit right through the layers of cloth and deep into the flesh beneath, his teeth grating on the bones. Geistdoerfer screamed, but the sound didn’t get very far. The professor’s eyes glazed over as pain and shock took him, as the vampire tore and rent at his skin and muscle and sucked out his blood. For a moment it looked as if Geistdoerfer would die quietly, almost peacefully. Then his body started to shake, his limbs seizing in a convulsion of pain and horror. His eyes were blind
by then, but his mouth kept working, his lips trying to form words. Caxton couldn’t decide what he was trying to say.

  When it was done, when the last drop of blood had been sucked from his body, Geistdoerfer looked paler than the vampire. He hung limp and quite dead and the vampire stood holding them both, live woman and dead man, like a child playing with two mismatched dolls.

  The beast’s eyes burned in the darkness then. His body rippled as if it were made of pale fog and a breeze was coursing through him. His emaciated frame seemed to swell as if the stolen blood had filled him up, distended him. When it was done he looked almost human. Or at least as close as he was ever likely to get.

  He dragged the two of them over to a Dumpster in the alley and threw Geistdoerfer’s body inside without further ceremony. Caxton wasn’t surprised. Vampires and their minions held no reverence for human death. When the body was disposed of he dragged her to her feet and finally let go of her. She didn’t even think to run. With the blood in him the vampire would be even faster than before. Stronger.

  Much harder to kill.

  “She’s here,” he said. “Miss Malvern.” He wasn’t looking at her for confirmation. He had his head up as if he could smell the other vampire on the air. “She’s quite close. You did well, my friend, to bring me here.”

  It was then, of all times, that Caxton’s cell phone chose to ring.

  36.

  In back of the pantry, we found the servants’ stairs, & thought we might be better hid on an upper floor. Every one of those steps creaked, and might have given us away. With time, however, we found ourselves at the top, and in front of a row of wide windows. The marksman & I peeked out through said apertures & watched Simonon playing cards with a sergeant who wore no shoes at all. We could speak up there, if we were soft about it. “I could get off a shot from here,”

  Storrow said, running one hand along the massive barrel of his target rifle, “that would do the Union much good.”