Fetlock gestured with one hand. Caxton wasn’t sure what it meant. Had he seen something? Was he telling her to stand down? She started to take a step closer to the body, but just then Captain Suzie turned and moved toward her. Caxton studied the other woman’s face. It was calm. Emotionless. With a steady hand Captain Suzie reached across Caxton’s body—and switched on the room’s lights.
The sudden change in illumination sent shadows flickering across the sheet, and it almost looked as if it had moved. But no. It hadn’t shifted at all—even the pattern of wrinkles in the sheet was the same.
The sun was gone, leaving a greenish twilight blurred across the sky.
It was 4:31 in the afternoon.
The body hadn’t moved.
“There,” Fetlock said. “Are you—”
“Hold on,” Caxton said. She realized she’d never seen a vampire rise before and that meant she had no idea if they were active during the dusk. “There’s still some light left.” She had no idea what mechanism of timing pertained to vampires. Did they need total darkness to rise, or was it enough that the sun was below the horizon? In mountainous places the sun would set earlier than on the plains. Heavy cloud cover could alter the time of true dark—there were so many variables. “We’ve waited this long, another few minutes won’t hurt us.”
One of the ART members—the one who had laughed before, perhaps—sighed. She scowled and ignored him.
“This is important,” she insisted. “This is life or death.”
Fetlock shrugged, but he didn’t say anything more. Caxton moved closer to the corpse, her weapon low but ready. She brought her free hand up and stretched it toward the sheet, looking for the telltale cold feeling that radiated from a vampire’s body. That was enough to make Fetlock react—he came up behind her and pulled her gently away.
“I’ll talk to Simon Arkeley and see if he’ll allow a cremation anyway,” Fetlock said. “But really, Trooper—”
“One more minute, please. Just one more minute, okay?”
“It’s illegal, you know, to desecrate a corpse. I could have you arrested right now,” Fetlock told her. “I’m tired of this. Tell me something, does this building have a meat locker or anything? Someplace to hold the body until we can send for a hearse?”
Captain Suzie stepped forward to answer. “Yes, sir. We have an actual morgue, believe it or not. It’s where we keep highway accident victims if the bodies are felt to be of an evidentiary nature.”
Fetlock rolled his eyes. “I suppose that’ll do very well, then. You—Officer—go down to the infirmary and have them send up a stretcher. We’ll move her to the morgue right away.”
“Hold on!” Caxton demanded. “Jesus Christ, am I the only one who knows that you don’t take chances with vampires? Fetlock, Jameson taught me never to underestimate them. Give it just a few more minutes. I’m begging you.”
“I’m sure Jameson taught you a lot of bad habits, too,” Fetlock told her.
She grunted in frustration. “He taught me how to fight monsters. He wouldn’t have let you have the body. He would have burned it in the parking lot, and if you had come and told him to stop he would have just ignored you and kept going. You could have shot him in the back and it wouldn’t have stopped him. He didn’t care if people thought his behavior was erratic, he just cared about doing things right.”
“And look where that got him,” Fetlock said, smiling. “Your loyalty would be commendable, if you weren’t honoring a vampire. Let’s go, you two—one of you take the shoulders, the other the feet.”
“No!” Caxton shouted. “Not yet!”
“Trooper,” Fetlock said. “Look.” He pointed at the window. Even Caxton had to admit that true dark had fallen. The window was a pane of unbroken blackness. She could see the reflection of her own stark raving face in it. “Night is upon us. If she was going to rise, she would have already.”
Caxton let her head drop. Maybe, she began to think, he was right. Maybe she had crossed some kind of line, into a sort of madness. Had she let Jameson’s tricks and mind games distort her own faculties?
She turned to go, to leave the room. Still, even then, she half-expected Raleigh to sit up behind her and hiss with bloodlust. Before Caxton could take a step she heard Fetlock cough. He had a hand out, palm up. He’d already taken her badge. Now he wanted her gun.
“Don’t even think about it,” she protested.
“I don’t want you hurting anyone. I’m going to insist you go home and get some rest. In the meantime, I’ll hold on to your sidearm.”
She shook her head—made a good show of it. Eventually she pretended to relent, and handed her gun over. That was fine. That was exactly what she’d meant to happen. Her new gun, the one with the cop-killers in it, was in the car. Fetlock could take her off the case, but she knew she wasn’t finished with Jameson yet.
Outside of the room she headed for the parking lot and her car. Halfway there she heard her phone ring, the old phone with its Pat Benatar ringtone. She thought it might be Clara. Clara! How could she explain to Clara everything that had happened? When she pulled out the phone and checked the screen, though, she saw it was in fact Vesta Polder who was calling her.
“Vesta,” she said. “This is kind of a weird time. What’s up?”
“It’s about Jameson,” the older woman said. Her voice sounded weird, as if it were a bad line or as if she’d been crying. “He came for me.”
48.
Oh shit oh shit oh shit, Caxton thought. She grabbed at her forehead and squeezed it with her free hand. When Jameson hadn’t attacked in Syracuse she’d thought he was lying low. That she’d created too much trouble for him—or that he was waiting for her to make some stupid move, to take Raleigh and Simon someplace undefended, someplace they could be gotten at easily. She hadn’t even considered he might be busy with some other agenda. “I don’t understand—he visited you, he offered you the curse? That doesn’t make sense. You’re not part of his family.”
“Does your last name have to be Arkeley to be part of that brood?” Polder asked. “He’s coming for everyone he loves, Laura. Everyone he ever loved.”
Of course.
Vesta had told Caxton how she and Jameson had once had an affair. She must still mean something to him, no matter how far he’d fallen into darkness. “Listen,” Caxton said. “He’s not still there, at your house?”
“No, he’s gone. I suppose I should have made some attempt to fight him, or at least track him when he left, but I was too scared. I know you understand that.”
Caxton did.
“He gave me the same deadline he gave the others. Twenty-four hours to consider his offer. A refusal is as good as a death sentence. You have to find him before sundown tomorrow!”
“I will,” Caxton promised, though she had no idea how. “Listen, I’ll come to you. Stay where you are and I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“That won’t be necessary. I’m on my way to you right now. In fact, I can already see your headquarters building. Come out to the parking lot to meet me.” Polder ended the call. Caxton bit her lip and wondered what she was going to do next. She no longer had any authority to put Vesta in protective custody. She could send Vesta to Fetlock, to ask for his help, but she wondered if the older woman would even want that. Vesta was a borderline agoraphobic, rarely leaving her own house for more than a few hours and never at night—except of course for when she’d completed her final duty to Astarte. For Vesta to drive to Harrisburg after sunset she must truly be panicked.
I’ll do what I can for her, Caxton thought. I owe her. For advice, over the years, and for the spiral pendant she still wore around her neck, which was her only protection against vampiric powers. She headed out the front door of the headquarters building, out into the parking lot, and saw a pair of headlights coming toward her. The lights of an old truck, the kind of ancient pickup you saw on farms still in central Pennsylvania. A body of pure rust held together by duct tape and sheer desperation.
She didn’t remember the Polders having such a vehicle—maybe Vesta had been forced to go to her neighbors and plead to borrow some transportation, anything. Caxton waved the truck toward a parking space near the door, but Vesta just pulled up short halfway into the lot, partially blocking the exit, and switched off her lights.
Well, Caxton thought, so she’s not a very good driver. In fact, she wondered if Polder even had a license. She waved again, and saw Vesta push open the truck’s creaking door and slide down onto the snowy pavement. She was dressed as she always had been, in her long, austere black dress. For some reason she’d pulled her hair back in a severe bun and wore the black veil she’d worn on the day of Jameson’s funeral.
Vesta called to her from ten yards away in a voice high and near breaking with grief and fear. “I am sorry, Laura, to have to come to you this way. I had no choice.”
“That’s alright, I’m just glad you’re safe,” Caxton replied. “Come inside, get out of the cold. I want to hear everything. Tell me what happened with Jameson.”
“He’s changed,” Vesta said, walking slowly toward Caxton. “Evil is consuming him. Once he seemed to think that the death of a loved one was a mercy.”
More cars were coming up the drive into the parking lot—several of them. They were running with no lights at all, coming fast, and she could see they were full of people. As one of them bounced up over the curb and slewed into the parking lot, Caxton just had time to wonder what was going on before Vesta spoke again.
“Now,” the older woman said, “he sees in it an opportunity.” Then she lifted her veil. Beneath it the skin of her face was torn and pink, hanging away from her features in grisly strips. She reached up into one sleeve of her dress and pulled out a long knife, honed and resharpened so many times that the blade was thin and crooked.
“Forgive me!” Vesta screamed, even as behind her the doors of the new cars flew open and more half-deads spilled out on the pavement. There were dozens of them—Caxton didn’t have time to get an accurate count. She was too busy dodging the knife that came whistling for her throat.
Vesta was a tall woman with a long reach. Caxton had to roll away from the swing, going down on one knee and throwing her head back. It was a lousy position from which to counterattack, and she didn’t get the chance. Her brain, running purely on reflex, sent a signal down her arm, a signal it had sent a thousand times before. Always before the signal had instructed her hand to slap a certain place on her hip and close its fingers around the grip of her pistol.
The pistol wasn’t there. Caxton knew that consciously, but her conscious mind was still trying to work out what was happening. Her hand closed pointlessly around the place where the gun should have been, and she wasted another fraction of a second.
“Protect my daughter and my man! Please!” Vesta screamed, and the knife thrust deep into the fabric of Caxton’s winter coat. The edge hissed along Caxton’s skin and she felt hot wet blood roll down her arm.
Behind Vesta the other half-deads were streaming up toward the building. They were all armed, with knives and sickles. What had Jameson done? It looked like he’d slaughtered half the population of the state and drafted them to his service.
Caxton had to get away. She had a few weapons on her belt, but none of them would let her get control of this mob. Maybe, though, they could give her a chance to get back on her feet. Vesta raised her knife high, flipped it in her hand and brought it down blade first, clearly intending to skewer Caxton with it. Caxton twisted away from the blow—then came up fast, her arm swinging around, her canister of pepper spray clutched in her fist.
She pushed down on the button on top of the can and foaming spray splashed across Vesta’s eyes. Vesta threw up her knife arm across her ravaged face, exactly as Caxton had known she would—it was the inevitable reaction to being sprayed. They taught you that at the academy. It seemed even death couldn’t break that primitive instinct.
Caxton didn’t waste time following through on her attack. She dropped the can of spray and shoved both of her hands down onto the cold concrete, shoved herself bodily upward until she was half upright, half bent over. It got her feet underneath her enough that she could run. She did not look back as she dashed through the doors of the HQ building, screaming for help.
Simon, she thought. Vesta had come for Simon—the last remaining member of the Arkeley family, the last one alive. The last one Jameson could hope to recruit. She had to find Simon, she had to get him out of the building, get him to safety.
“Somebody,” she shouted, “anybody—lock those doors!”
But it was too late. The half-deads were already inside.
49.
Caxton raced down the hallway, looking for help. She couldn’t find any. The wardroom was empty—she took one look inside and hurried past. Where had everybody gone? For a bad, breathless moment she thought maybe all the troopers who normally hung around the HQ were dead—or worse, that she had been betrayed somehow, and they had left her to her fate once Fetlock had dismissed her in their presence.
But no. That was just paranoia. When she considered things for a second she realized exactly what had happened. It was just after five o’clock, which meant it was rush hour. The vast majority of the troopers were out on duty, mostly on patrol around the capital. They had all left shortly after the sun set and Raleigh failed to rise. Those troopers who remained in the building were tasked with administrative roles, and they would not be armed. Vesta couldn’t have planned her attack for a better time—Jameson had ordered her to attack just when he knew the HQ would be at its most vulnerable.
That meant Vesta would know everything Jameson knew about the building and its layout. She wouldn’t waste time searching for Simon. She would know exactly where he would be, and the quickest route to reach him. Caxton knew it too, if she gave herself a second to think about it.
She hurried around a corner and put her back up against a wall. She could hear the half-deads coming down the corridor toward her, moving fast. Caxton reached down to her belt and undid the clasp that held in her ASP baton. It was the only weapon she had on her, an eight-inch length of steel painted black. She pressed down on a catch at its base and flicked it out with her wrist and three telescoping segments slid out, extending the baton to its full length. The tip, the thinnest of the segments, was solid steel, and wielded correctly it could deal an agonizing blow to anyone it struck. Unlike the riot-control batons most troopers carried, Caxton’s baton was capable of breaking bones—if she hit the right spot, and with enough force.
The half-deads were just down the hall, nearly on top of her. She could hear them giggling to themselves, anticipating the slaughter to come. Caxton made herself wait until the last possible second, then whirled out around the corner, swinging the baton two-handed like a baseball bat.
The half-dead in the lead, a sexless creature with a torn face wearing a black overcoat, just had time to look surprised before the baton crunched through its rotten cheek. It dropped the meat cleaver it was carrying and spun around, its hands jumping up to its face as it gurgled in pain.
Caxton didn’t have time to feel sympathy. She brought the baton around in a circle, her body swerving through the air to give it leverage, and split the back of the half-dead’s skull. It dropped in a heap.
Behind it stood more of them, plenty more. At the back of the group she could see Vesta Polder, watching her carefully.
Caxton ran. She turned on her heel and dashed down the corridor, her knees jumping high as she sprinted for dear life. She thought Simon would be in the off-duty break room, a lounge on the far side of the building with a television set and vending machines. Glauer would have taken him there to wait while Caxton stood vigil over Raleigh’s body. It was a safe place, a place where Simon couldn’t get into any trouble. Behind her she heard running footsteps and a skritching sound like a knife being dragged through the wallpaper, and she knew the half-deads were following her. She was leading them right to Simon, but she didn�
�t have a choice.
Up ahead the hallway widened where it was crossed by a side corridor. There was a receptionist’s desk up there—this was where the bureau chiefs had their offices—and a couch and some chairs. The receptionist was standing behind his desk next to some potted plants. He had a watering can in his hand, but he was staring in horror at the half-deads coming down the hall.
“Get out of here,” Caxton shouted at him. He reached up to straighten his tie and she realized he must be in shock. He could never have expected this, that the HQ would be invaded by a horde of freaks with no faces. But if he didn’t move he was going to get killed. Caxton rushed up and nearly collided with him, grabbed his arm hard and twisted. “Run away!” she screamed in his ear. Finally he got the point and bolted, the watering can still in his hands.
If the receptionist had never considered this possibility, whoever designed the building, thankfully, had. There was a panic button mounted under the edge of the reception desk, connected to an alarm in the duty room, where troopers waiting assignment would be preparing for their night’s work. Caxton stabbed the button, barely breaking her stride. She heard the alarm ringing off to one side, but couldn’t afford to give it any of her attention.
Ahead of her the hall was lined with glass doors. This was where the bulk of the HQ’s staff worked. Some of them were troopers, but most were civilians hired to do clerical work, IT management, and as PCOs—police communications officers, the dispatchers who sent patrol cruisers where they needed to go. Most of them would still be working, and none of them would be armed. If they poked their heads out to see what the commotion was, they would all get killed, end of story.
Caxton considered knocking on all the doors, warning the workers of the danger, but she knew that even a second’s delay now could mean certain death—or worse—for Simon. With what breath she could spare she shouted for the workers to lock themselves in their offices, and she didn’t stop moving.
Vampire Zero: A Gruesome Vampire Tale Page 25