Vampire Zero: A Gruesome Vampire Tale

by David Wellington

Past the offices she finally could see the door of the break room straight ahead. It was open and through it she could see Simon. He was curled up on a couch, maybe taking a nap or just lost in his own thoughts. She hurtled through the door at full speed. Once inside she slammed the door shut, then locked it.

  “Jesus, what now?” Simon asked, stirring from his fetal position on the couch.

  Caxton kicked the couch hard and he jumped up to his feet. He stared at her with wild eyes, but she just shook her head, breathing too hard to talk. She grabbed one end of the couch and nodded for him to take the other end, and together they pushed it up against the door.

  It was only after she’d sealed herself inside that Caxton thought to look around for other exits. There were none. A row of windows lined the far side of the room, but they were not made to open, and Caxton knew they, like all of the HQ’s ground-floor windows, were built of bullet-resistant glass half an inch thick. She couldn’t just throw a chair through one of them and escape that way.

  Jameson had taught her never to barricade herself in a room with no other exit. She’d forgotten that lesson in her panic. She cursed herself as she heard knives and sickles thudding against the wooden door, gouging away at it.

  “Your father,” Caxton gasped, watching the door jump and shake, “wants you something fierce.”

  “But you’re not going to let him take me, are you?” Simon demanded.

  Caxton shook her head and just breathed for a second. “Kid, I can’t promise you anything. But I’ll do my best to protect you.”

  Outside, in the hallway, she heard someone screaming. Not the high-pitched squeal of a half-dead, either. The scream cut off abruptly with the sound of gunshots and Caxton flinched. Troopers—good people, all—were fighting out there, maybe some of them were dying, and she couldn’t help them. She didn’t even have a sidearm, just a glorified nightstick.

  The half-deads outside slammed against the door with their weapons, their shoulders, the whole weight of their bodies. She could hear them out there urging each other on. She thought she could hear Vesta shouting orders. The door wasn’t going to last forever. “There are troopers out there, but I think they’re outnumbered. I don’t think we can just assume they’ll come rescue us.”

  “We have to get out,” Simon said. His eyes were wide when he stared at her. “We have to get out of here. He’ll kill me. He’ll kill me!” There were more gunshots, and he yelped as if he’d been hit himself. “Oh my God. Oh my God. I’m going to die, I’m going to die! I’m going to—”

  Caxton slapped him hard across his face. She was a strong woman and she knocked him down, sent him sprawling across a ratty old armchair. He grabbed at his cheek and looked up at her, suddenly much calmer. “Thanks,” he said.

  “You were getting really annoying,” Caxton said.

  The hammering and gouging at the door stopped suddenly and Caxton heard a half-dead outside whisper, “Get back, she’s coming.” Maybe Vesta Polder knew some kind of door-opening spell, she thought, though in her experience Vesta’s talents had never before lent themselves to such mundane uses. Caxton moved away from the door in any case, her ASP baton up and ready.

  She glanced at Simon, who was quick to get behind her. The boy started to say something, but then the door twisted in its frame with a horrible groaning sound as its hinges were strained and finally snapped. The door disappeared, and the couch they’d shoved in front of it went flying into the room and slammed into a vending machine hard enough to make its lighted front crack and go dim.

  A moment later a vampire walked into the room.

  50.

  Caxton swung her baton, but before it could connect it was wrenched painfully from her hand and thrown across the room. She could feel a blow coming—she could feel the cold, unnatural aura of the vampire moving toward her at high speed, and she tried to roll away from it, but her spine twisted in such a way to make her scream and suddenly she was on her back on the linoleum tiles, looking up at the fluorescent light fixtures.

  The vampire had one slender foot on her throat. The pressure on her trachea made it impossible to cry out, but she could still breathe a little, a shallow whistling breath that left her with stars in her vision. She tried to look up at the vampire, tried to see who it could be. Not Urie Polder, she thought, please. Losing Vesta had been bad enough. Caxton didn’t have enough friends that she could afford to lose one more.

  The vampire holding her down, however, was female. Thin, smaller than the usual blood-sucker, with refined features that would have been beautiful if not for the jagged teeth deforming her lips. Caxton looked lower and saw she was dressed in some kind of sack or a loose-fitting sheath dress made of white cotton and duct tape, stained down the front with a streak of clotted blood.

  It wasn’t a dress at all, she realized. It was the remains of a shroud.

  “Raleigh?” Simon asked, cowering near where Caxton lay.

  “Hello, Simon,” the vampire growled. “Long time no see.” Then she reached over and punched her brother in the side of the head. His eyes rolled up and he fell over, twitching and drooling a little.

  “I didn’t kill him,” Raleigh said, looking down with red eyes into Caxton’s face. “I’m not evil. I just gave him a little concussion. I’m supposed to bring him to Daddy. He’ll be given the same choice we all were, and hopefully he’ll take the smart option. He’ll be easier to transport this way.”

  Caxton tried to creak out some words, though she wasn’t sure what she meant to say.

  “Sorry,” Raleigh said, and lifted her foot away from Caxton’s neck.

  “You’ve fed,” Caxton gurgled. She nodded at the blood down the front of Raleigh’s makeshift dress.

  “Yes,” Raleigh agreed. “One of your colleagues got in my way. I was hungry. It wasn’t something I planned.”

  “Do you regret it?” Caxton asked.

  “Not much.”

  “That’s what makes you evil,” Caxton told her.

  The vampire’s eyes narrowed.

  “I waited for you to come back to life. I waited until the sun was completely down. Were you faking it?”

  “Uh-huh,” Raleigh said, with a smile. “Daddy and I have been talking about it for days. He could speak into my mind, when I was living, but it was like someone whispering in another room. Now he’s with me all the time.” The smile broadened. “It’s nice.”

  “How long did you have this planned out? Faking your death—I mean, faking your continued death? The attack on this building?”

  “Daddy came to me a couple weeks ago. Even before I met you. Everything since then has been an act. Lying there under that sheet was tough. It was so hard not moving, not even stretching, but I did it. Daddy knew you would never let me out of your sight—this was the only way.”

  “You accepted the curse that long ago? Then you lied to me, when I reached out to you for help. You told me you hadn’t spoken with your father in six months. That’s evil, too.”

  The girl’s face fell. It was a dangerous game, but Caxton had to try to reason with her. “Listen, it’s not too late. After a certain time every vampire is the same, they lose their respect for human life and they become sociopaths. But I know you’re not one of them yet. There’s still plenty of humanity in you. Turn yourself in. Or if not that, at least help me destroy your father.”

  The vampire had been standing up. Instantly she dropped to the floor, propping herself up on her arms until her face was hovering over Caxton’s. Close enough that Caxton’s whole body shivered with the creeping horror of almost being touched.

  “At the convent, they used to ask me why I ever tried heroin in the first place. Why would I try something so addictive and dangerous, when I knew the risks? I told them, the world hurts, but drugs feel good. It’s a no-brainer. The only downside was that every time I shot up I got weaker. Now I’ve got blood. Blood feels good. And it makes me stronger. I think I’ll stick with the plan.”

  She jumped back up to her feet,
then reached down and picked Simon up easily in her arms.

  “When you begged him not to kill me—was that an act?”

  The vampire looked up at the ceiling. “No,” she sighed. “No. You’d been nice to me. Nicer than most people in my life. You wanted to protect me. You thought I was worth saving. Just like Daddy.”

  “I still think so. I can’t give you your life back, but I can preserve what’s left of your soul,” Caxton pleaded.

  “Don’t you remember?” Raleigh asked. “Vesta Polder looked for that once, and she couldn’t find it. It’s already gone.”

  She picked up Caxton effortlessly and threw her down on the couch. “Don’t try to follow me. I have instructions not to kill you. Daddy wants you to live for now. But if you come after me, I can hurt you. A lot.”

  She swept out into the hall then, Simon tucked under her arm like a bag full of dirty laundry.

  Caxton lay where she was for a second. Just a second to catch her breath. And to let Raleigh get enough of a head start. Then she jumped to her feet and raced down the hallway. It was her belief that Raleigh was taking Simon straight to their father—straight back to the lair.

  She pushed through the front doors and hurried toward the Mazda, only stopping when she heard the doors burst open again behind her. She whirled around, ready to kill the first evil bastard she saw. Vesta Polder was there, shrieking wildly, her veil hanging by one pin like a broken wing on the side of her head. She must have been pushed through the doors, because she was rolling on the ground, one arm underneath her, the other up as if fending off a blow. Fetlock came after her, Caxton’s old Beretta 92 in his hand. There was a cut on his face and his hair was in disarray. He was breathing hard and sweating profusely. He looked up at Caxton, his mouth open to try to catch his breath. Then he pointed the Beretta at Vesta’s skinless left temple and blew her brains all over the asphalt.

  For a second Caxton held his gaze. Then she slipped into the driver’s seat of her car and started up the ignition. All the car tracks leading out of the parking lot headed in the same direction—east, toward the highway. That was the way Raleigh and the half-deads had gone.

  Simon had twenty-four hours to live. When the deadline came, if Jameson offered him the curse, knowing what the alternative was—Caxton did not believe the son would say no.

  Caxton threw the car into gear, intending to chase after Raleigh and the half-deads whether they liked it or not. The car surged under her—then died. The engine stalled out and she felt every muscle in her body tense up. She switched the car off, then back on. Put it in drive. The car shuddered and lurched forward, then stopped as the engine sputtered to a halt.

  It took her too long to figure it out. It took her ten long minutes to get the hood open and see that the half-deads had monkeyed with her engine, and even longer to fix what they’d done. By the time she got back on the road heading east they were long gone, and there were no tracks to follow.

  She didn’t waste any more time by getting frustrated. Instead she pulled a U-turn and headed west. There was one more lead she could follow, she knew. One last chance to find out where the lair was. She knew she would take that chance—even if it meant throwing away her entire career.

  51.

  She had to drive through the downtown section of Harrisburg to get where she was going. She passed through streets full of little stores, boutiques selling pricey clothes. In one window she saw a pair of young women laughing together as they dressed a mannequin in a bright red minidress with white fur trimming. At another store the proprietor was stringing up red and green lights. They were getting ready for Christmas.

  Christmas. Caxton hadn’t celebrated the holiday much since her parents died. But the year before, when it had just been her and Clara, they’d exchanged presents, and drank eggnog, and even strung up mistletoe. She’d gotten Clara a special lens for her camera, one she’d been looking at online for months. Clara’s present to her had been a box of bath salts, scented candles, and a wooden massage roller. Things to help her relax. Most of them were still in the box, which sat underneath the bathroom sink in the back of the cabinet, where she saw it every time she reached for a new disposable razor.

  She could use that box now, she thought. She needed to relax, to get frosty, if she was going to pull this off.

  She pulled into the parking lot of the jail in Mechanicsburg and switched off the car. She wanted to just sit there for a while and collect her thoughts, but she knew if she did she would never get up and out of the car, so she reached over and pushed the door open and let the cold winter air belly inside, the icy breeze pressing her coat against her body and stinging her cheek. She popped open her seat belt and then climbed out of the car and shut the door behind her.

  Inside the jail only a few corrections officers were still at work. The cells were quiet, the prisoners inside either sleeping or contemplating their fates. As one corrections officer—one, thankfully, she had not met before—led her down a flight of stairs to the basement, she started to hear someone yelling, not saying anything, just making inarticulate noises. She was not surprised to learn it was Dylan Carboy making that racket.

  “He’s not quite all there, you know that, right?” the CO asked. “He does this all night. It’s weird. It’s like he’s praying, but not to any God I ever heard of. You’ll have to keep an eye on him.”

  Caxton nodded. She handed the CO a clipboard on which she’d filled out the appropriate forms. She had lied many times while checking the various boxes and writing in the numbers and authorizations required. She had put down Fetlock’s name as authorizing the transfer, then put her own phone number below it. If anyone called to confirm her authority her phone would ring and she would at least know they were onto her.

  She doubted they would, however. Transfers like this happened all the time and cops tended to trust each other. She was counting on that.

  “You’re with the Marshals Service,” the CO said, leafing through her paperwork. “This guy commit some kind of federal crime? We have him down for a couple local homicides.”

  “He broke into the USMS archives and stole some files,” she lied. “I’m taking him to the field office up in Harrisburg, where we can ask him what was in those documents that he wanted.”

  “Huh. Do you guys do a lot of interrogations at night?”

  “When the subject sleeps all day, we do. We figure he’ll be more talkative now than tomorrow morning.”

  The CO smiled. “You know about him, then.”

  “I’m the one who originally brought him in. Listen, I’ll make it as quick as I can. I’ll probably have him back to you before breakfast.”

  “You can have him as long as you want,” the CO said.

  The door of the padded cell opened up and she stared inside. The gibbering and wailing stopped instantly. Carboy was up against the far wall, his hands lifted high above his head, the fingers splayed as if he were reaching for something on the ceiling. There was nothing there. Caxton didn’t know what that was about. She told herself she didn’t care.

  “Come on, Carboy,” the CO said. “Don’t make this difficult, alright? This lady’s from the U.S. Marshals and she wants to talk to you.”

  Carboy’s eyes focused on her slowly. “Caxton,” he muttered. “I knew you’d come back.”

  The CO said, “You want me to get a straitjacket? He can be violent.”

  “I know what he’s capable of. Come on, Dylan. We’re going for a ride.”

  Carboy shuffled out of the cell as quickly as he could. The CO bound his hands behind his back. His ankles were shackled together with a length of soft plastic. His feet were bare. The CO had some slippers for him to wear and a blanket to wrap around his shoulders to protect him from the cold. He let Caxton go first up the stairs, then Carboy, and finally he came up from behind with a Taser in his hand, just in case.

  The prisoner didn’t attack Caxton, though, or even say anything as she led him out to the jail’s lobby. She had to sign a co
uple more release forms, and then she was done—except that the CO reached out and tapped her shoulder.

  “Your badge,” he said, nodding at her lapel.

  She’d completely forgotten about the star. State troopers didn’t wear badges, and she’d never really gotten used to the star while she had it. She touched her lapel, then looked up at him with her heart thundering in her ears. She forced a smile. “It fell off in the car. It’s always doing that—you want me to go out and get it?”

  He gave her an appraising stare, then glanced at Carboy.

  “Nah,” he said. “Just get this guy out of here. At least we’ll have one night’s peace, right?”

  Caxton thanked him and led her prisoner out into the cold. Carboy climbed into the Mazda without making a fuss and she climbed into the driver’s seat, then took her handcuffs out of her belt and locked him to the door handle on the passenger’s side. Doing that gave him a chance to bite her on the neck, but he didn’t act on it.

  “You’re being cooperative,” Caxton said, surprised.

  “Because I know my time is about to come. The time when I kill you.”

  “Sure,” Caxton said.

  “Maybe you think I can’t do it. Maybe you think you have me right where you want me. But that’s your mistake—thinking you’re smarter than us. I couldn’t get at you in that cell. I had no weapons, and you were far away. Now, though, you’ve taken away that disadvantage. Now we’re all alone. You may have me handcuffed, but in time I’ll get free. I’ll break out of this bondage and then you’ll see. You’ll see exactly how stupid you’ve been.”

  Caxton shook her head wearily. “Shut up,” she said.

  “You don’t want to hear this? That’s understandable. Who wants to know that they’re about to die? I want you to hear it, though. I want you to be afraid. Because then you’ll make more mistakes. Desperate people don’t think clearly. They rush through things and don’t consider all their options.”

  Caxton switched on the radio, but he just shouted over the music.