99 Coffins: A Historical Vampire Tale

by David Wellington

  “Sir,” she said.

  “Do you know why I asked you to come up here?” he inquired.

  She licked her lips and began. “There’s evidence of a vampire pattern in Gettysburg,” she said. “I mean, there’s a vampire there. I’ve seen him.” She cursed herself for not having rehearsed this speech before. She’d had plenty of time in the car. “I’d like to be assigned to special duty. If that’s alright.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She wasn’t sure exactly what that meant. “Sir, I—”

  “You want to be assigned special jurisdiction for this case. To be reassigned from your current duties. I’m agreeing with you. That’s exactly what should happen now. And I’m not the only one.” His eyes twinkled. “The doughnut munchers have spoken. This morning the police chief of Gettysburg called and asked to speak with me personally. I listened to what was going on and then I promised whatever assistance Gettysburg required. Do you know what the chief asked for?”

  “No, sir.”

  “He asked for Laura Caxton, the famous vampire killer. The star of Teeth. They asked for you by name, Trooper.”

  Her hands were shaking. Was it that easy? Could it be that easy? The Commissioner came out from behind his desk and squeezed her bicep, then started walking toward his office door. She stood still until she realized she was being dismissed, then rushed to follow him.

  “Sir,” she said, “I want to thank—”

  “Me? No need,” the Commissioner said, smiling widely. “Like I said, I’ve read the reports on your work on the Godwin investigation. You got yourself shot and two troopers had to risk their lives pulling you out of the action.” He smiled at her, but his eyes were already looking down at his desk. “I’d just as soon have you on special duty and away from the rest of my people.”

  Caxton did then what she’d learned a long time before was the only suitable reaction to such a backhanded compliment. She put her heels together, saluted, then turned and walked out the door.

  24.

  We crowded into the covered wagon and found room for knees and elbows around the dial. For light we had a single candle, but he assured me that was enough. It was a few minutes past midnight and I was anxious to be unburdened of my bad news.

  The telegrapher, though, took his time getting set up, and even with his machine in operation, was much delayed. Cursing and fussing, he turned the indicator back and forth on the face of his dial, which was inscribed with two rounds of letters and numbers, and some few commands such as WAIT and STOP. He could not seem to get a good signal out, for messages kept coming in. He assured me this was normal, and set back to his work, but again with little success. I produced a small bottle from inside my coat and offered it to him, and this did much for his disposition, but did not help his machine.

  “It’s these new electro-magnetos, they’re s’posed to be better than an honest man’s telegraph key, but I don’t see it. No fluids or acids to burn me, no salts to keep straight, that’s fine and well. But this type picks up too many ghosts.”

  I must have raised an eyebrow.

  “Oh, sure,” he said. “After every battle we get ’em. They crowd the wires, you see. Dead men breathing out their last.”

  I watched in amazement as the indicator moved on the dial, of its own accord. The messages were picked out letter by letter so that even I could read them. The missives were never long or overly complex. M-O-T-H-E-R was the most common, and L-O-R-DJ-E-S-U-S, and S-A-V-E-M-Y-S-O-U-L and W-A-T-E-R. All the cries of the battlefield, tapped out in an invisible hand.

  We managed to get my urgent news out, eventually, though two o’clock had come and gone. I was climbing out of the wagon, glad to be shut of that cramped and eerie conveyance, when the telegrapher called me back. “Another message, sir.”

  “What now, more news from the other side?”

  “No, sir, this one’s got your name on it. ‘Received in full,’ it says, and then, ‘New orders. Gum Spring forthwith.’ Where’s that, then?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” I said. It was the first I’d heard of the place.

  —THE PAPERS OF WILLIAM PITTENGER

  25.

  A faint misty rain was falling by the time Caxton got back to Gettysburg. The afternoon was already half over, and it would be dark before she knew it. She wheeled into the parking lot of the town’s sole police station, on High Street just south of Lincoln Square. She finished the takeout food that littered the Mazda’s passenger seat; she needed to keep her strength up, especially as lousy as she felt after the previous night’s exertions. Then she stepped out of the car and through the glass doors at the front of the cop shop. The sergeant at the front desk stood up when he saw her and pointed her through a pair of swinging doors. Beyond she found the bullpen, a dimly lit room full of cubicles, each with a PC and a couple of office chairs. Policemen in gray and black uniforms stood up all around the room as she walked in. She stopped short as every man in the room turned to face her.

  They were patrolmen, not detectives. They were cops who spent every day walking the streets, keeping order. They were tall men, mostly, and most of them were a few pounds over-weight. They wore bristly mustaches and their hair was short and neat. In other words, they looked a lot like her father had in his prime. She knew enough cops to recognize the look they were giving her. Their eyes were empty, the same way they’d look while they were interviewing suspects, willing to give nothing away for free.

  One of them she actually recognized. A huge guy with broad shoulders and a hunched head, as if he was afraid of banging it on the ceiling. He was one of the cops who had responded to the mortuary burglary, the one who had survived. The one who stayed with his dead partner while she raced off in his borrowed cruiser. His name tag read GLAUER, and he stepped forward to stand in front of her, his immense bulk blocking her path. She wasn’t sure what he wanted, but she was ready to defend herself if he wanted to call her out.

  “Officer,” she said, by way of greeting.

  “Trooper,” he said. His lips barely moved as he spoke. “Every man here was a friend of Brad Garrity. He was the one who—”

  “Who died in service last night. I remember,” Caxton said. She tried to keep her eyes as blank as his. Was he going to puff himself up next, and tell her how much he resented her walking into this office like she could just take over? Maybe he would accuse her of being an accomplice in Garrity’s death. The vampire was to blame; everyone knew that, but she was a much more convenient target for his rage and grief. If he wanted to blow some steam at her, she supposed she could take it.

  “You didn’t know him,” Glauer said. “We did. He had a wife and two kids, just little kids. He wasn’t a smart guy, but people liked him. He was honest and hardworking, and he loved the job. He loved this town. He grew up here.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, permitting herself a frown of compassion.

  Glauer shook his head, though. He didn’t want her apologies. “When he died I followed procedure. I stuck with him until the ambulance arrived, even though I knew he was gone. I called it in. Afterward I came back here and filled out the paperwork. You, on the other hand, went tearing off after the perp who killed him.”

  She nodded. There were rules to this game and she would follow them.

  “We heard what happened to you. I saw what happened to my cruiser, when they towed it out of the Musselman Stadium parking lot. We all,” he said, glancing backward at the men standing behind him, “just wanted to say something.”

  Here it comes, Caxton thought. She would take it, whatever it was.

  “We wanted to say thanks. You didn’t know Brad, but you put your life on the line to catch his killer. That kind of courage is something we respect.”

  One of the men at the side of the room started to clap. The others followed suit immediately. The applause was hardly deafening, but it was real.

  “Whatever you need to get this thing, whatever it takes, we’re with you,” Glauer said over the noise.
He held out a hand and grasped hers hard, pumping it repeatedly. “Just next time, try to wreck Finster’s car instead. It’s a real shitbox.”

  Another man—it had to be Finster—said, “Hey,” and everyone laughed, Caxton included. She took her hand back from Glauer and let him point the way to a glassed-in office at the back of the room.

  Inside the local police chief waited for her, dozens of manila folders lined up neatly on his desk. He stood up promptly as she entered and shook her hand, then sat back down. “Trooper Caxton. I cannot tell you how glad I am to see you here. How glad the borough of Gettysburg is that you could help us out.” The nameplate on his desk read CHIEF VICENTE and there was no dust on it. The walls behind him held framed photos of policemen from years gone by, some of the photos looking sixty or eighty years old. They showed cops who looked almost identical to the men out in the bullpen, just with different uniforms.

  Vicente himself stood out, by contrast. He was young, maybe ten years older than Caxton, and though he wore a mustache it was thin and neatly trimmed. He was relatively short and his eyes were bright and clear and full of optimism. He had a faint Puerto Rican accent when he talked. He didn’t look anything like the cops in his bullpen. He looked a little like a politician.

  She sized him up in one professional once-over. He must have worked damned hard to get where he was, to be chief of the men outside his office. He must have put up with a lot of crap along the way.

  Caxton knew that story because it was a lot like her own. This was a man she could work with, she thought. Somebody she could understand. “I want to thank you for inviting me down here,” she said, by way of opening.

  “Are you kidding? I think the luckiest thing that ever happened to the ’Burg was you being here last night.” He opened one of his manila folders and took out a map of the town. Portions of the map had been highlighted in yellow ink and a number of handwritten notes crowded the margins. “This town has a population of about seventy-five hundred, and most days this time of year we have twice that many tourists in town. I have twenty sworn patrolmen to take care of those people, and a couple dozen auxiliary officers I can call in for homecoming or the bigger reenactments. Normally that’s enough. Normally our biggest problem is frat parties getting out of control up at the college, or tourists who don’t know how to drive and make our traffic patterns a real mess.” He looked up from the map and smiled at her. “We had forty-three violent crimes reported last year. None of them resulted in a death.”

  “None?” Caxton repeated, a little stunned. “You had no murders at all last year?” Even in the sleepiest of backwater towns you normally got a couple of abused women killing their husbands or kids playing with guns blowing each other away. Then there were vehicular fatalities to consider. In the era of road rage, more and more people were realizing that a three-ton SUV made a great murder weapon.

  Vicente shook his head, though. “This is one of the safest towns in Pennsylvania. We’re very proud of that, and we’d like to keep it that way. My men aren’t trained to respond to what happened last night. We had to download the correct forms to report a death in service because we didn’t have any on hand. Trooper Caxton, you tell us what to do, okay? You tell us how to keep our people safe and we will listen.”

  Caxton sat back in her chair and inhaled deeply. “I haven’t had time to prepare a formal action plan,” she said.

  Vicente raised his hands an inch or two off the desk and then lowered them again. “I’ll take your best off-the-cuff suggestions, too.”

  She nodded and thought about it. She was trained for this. She had been training in criminal investigations for a year. “Yeah. Well, we start by looking for where he’s sleeping. Vampires don’t just dislike sunlight. They literally cannot get out of their coffins until the sun goes down. This one doesn’t even have a coffin—he tried stealing one last night, but I screwed up his plan. He can sleep in a barrel or even a Dumpster if he has to, but he needs someplace dark and enclosed. If we can find where he is now, we can pull his heart out and be done without any further violence.”

  “Do you think that’s a likely scenario?” Vicente asked, his eyes brightening.

  “Unfortunately, no. There are too many places he could be hiding and we don’t have enough manpower to search the entire town today. It’s going to be dark in a couple of hours. The vampire will need blood tonight—he looked emaciated, and they’re worse than junkies, they need blood the way we need oxygen. If—when—he attacks somebody, we need to know about it so we can respond instantly. So we should put out an APB. I can work up an Identi-Kit profile so your people will know what he looks like, but he’s conspicuous enough that people will probably recognize him right away. I need to get the call when that happens.”

  “I don’t want to just wait for someone to die before we take action,” Vicente said. “People around here won’t like that.”

  “No, of course not.” Caxton licked her lips. Her mouth was getting dry. She’d never done this before, but she was the only one who knew how to fight the monsters. She kept having to remind herself of that. “Every car we can get on the streets should have two cops in it, and enough firepower to take down the vampire. There’s a state police barracks a few miles from here, and another one in Arendtsville. You can request they send every available unit. We’ll search every shadow, every street corner. Maybe we’ll get lucky. Also, I’d like to open an official investigation, see what we can learn about this guy.” That should have come first, she realized. It should have been her first suggestion. Vicente caught her self-doubt; she could see it in his eyes. She was making mistakes already.

  What would Arkeley do? It had been so much easier when he’d been in charge and she’d just followed his orders. She had to remind herself she’d been trained for this.

  “There’s somebody I need to talk to, a professor at the college.” She pulled out her notepad and flicked back to the first page. “Professor Geistdoerfer, in the, uh, Civil War Era Studies department.”

  “The Running Wolf?” Vicente exclaimed.

  “You know him?”

  The police chief laughed and then covered his mouth. “I’m an alum of the college. Class of ninety-one. Everybody there knows him. How is he possibly mixed up in all this?”

  “He was the first person to enter the tomb,” Caxton said. When Vicente’s face clouded in confusion, she felt like her heart had stopped for a second. The chief didn’t even know how this had all begun. Briefly she filled him in on Arkeley’s discovery and the investigation she’d made of the cavern and the hundred coffins.

  “We’re—we’re not going to see more of these things, are we?” he asked, when she’d finished. His eyes were very wide and his mouth was open. He was scared shitless.

  Well, maybe he should be, she decided. Maybe it would keep him on his toes. As long as he didn’t get so scared he stopped functioning. She needed him.

  “The hearts were all missing. That means they’re dead. So hopefully we won’t see more than just the one. But that’s more than enough. Can you have someone make an appointment for me with the professor?”

  “Yes,” he said, “of course.” He took a pack of gum out of his desk and peeled off a stick. He offered her one, as well, and she took it gladly. “I’ll make sure he sees you right after the press conference.”

  Caxton stopped with her stick of gum halfway to her mouth. “Press conference?” she asked.

  26.

  The Rebs left then, & I began to breathe once more.

  Leg by leg, arm by arm, the marksman unwound himself from his perch. He dropped to the ground with the softest of thuds & squatted down next to my hiding place. He was a tall & lanky man like our Commander in Chief, even more so in fact. I guessed him seven feet tall & as thin as a reed. He held out one lined hand & I shook it gratefully.

  “Alva Griest,” I whispered.

  “Rudolph Storrow of Indiana.” He slung the rifle over his shoulder like a rower shipping an oar. I saw he wore a sa
wed-off shotgun as well in a holster at his belt, where an officer will keep a pistol; on the other side, where a sword should go, he had an Indian-style hatchet with a long handle, what is sometimes called a Tomahawk. I was terribly glad he was on my side. “Listen, Griest, there are two men comin’ our way on foot, runnin’ the same course you did. They’re tryin’ to be subtle, yet ain’t very good at it. They your’n?”

  I nodded. Eben Nudd & German Pete, he meant. “They’re good men,” I swore.

  “If they’re dressed in blue, they need no other recommends with me. Just get ’em in here quiet like, will ya, so’s we don’t bring down half of the Army of Northern Virginia with ’em.”

  I blushed from pate to soles, but did not waste further time with idle talk. I found my men in the weeds of a nearby field, & brought them to order, & introduced them to our new ally.

  —THE STATEMENT OF ALVA GRIEST

  27.

  Glauer drove Caxton back to the hospital—she had some important business there before she could get started organizing the night’s patrols, and she wanted him with her to act as her liaison with the local authorities. They took a patrol cruiser, one of five the department had left, since Caxton had put one of them in the shop. It felt very strange to climb into the passenger seat—a literal shotgun seat, with a Mossberg 500 locked between her knees. A laptop computer mounted between the seats kept jabbing her in the thigh as they took the sharp corners.

  There had been a time when she drove Arkeley around, listening to whatever pearls of wisdom he cared to drop. She had tried to learn everything she could from him, thinking that he had planned to make her his successor. Instead he’d just wanted her as bait for the vampires. The tables had turned, it seemed, and she wondered if Arkeley had ever been so uncomfortable in the passenger seat. Not just because of the various bits of hardware poking her, but because for the first time in her life Caxton was in charge. Vicente and Glauer looked to her to make all the decisions. Caxton had been far more comfortable the night before, chasing a vampire with her life at stake, than she was ordering cops around. What if she screwed up? She had already screwed up, many times. It would probably happen again—and eventually she would screw up enough that people would die. Unless she could take down the vampire first.