99 Coffins: A Historical Vampire Tale

by David Wellington

  I asked and learned at once her name, which was Justinia.

  —THE PAPERS OF WILLIAM PITTENGER

  67.

  By six-thirty the town was empty of civilians. The weapons and the troops had arrived and were being offloaded in Lincoln Square. Approximately 65 percent of the town’s buildings had been searched. Not a single coffin, heart, or vampire had been found. The sun was a yellow smear on the clouds, only partly visible through the dark net of tree branches that obscured the view to the west. It was time to stop looking for the coffins, and time to start fighting vampires.

  Down in the square her troops had gathered. They stood in small groups, smoking cigarettes, or sat on the sidewalk, leaning up against historical buildings, conserving their energy for the activity to come. She’d rounded up about seventy-five, almost all men. Not enough, not nearly enough, but it was the best she could do. They were all trained in how to handle firearms. That was something. Liquor enforcement officers in navy windbreakers and baseball hats. Local cops and fellow troopers. SWAT professionals from Harrisburg and National Guardsmen in camo, heavy armor strapped across their chests, night-vision goggles dangling from their helmets. Many had brought their own weapons, mostly pistols and shotguns. She frowned at the latter—shotguns were almost useless against vampires. Luckily she had better weapons at hand.

  The rifles and grenades sat in big crates hastily removed from unmarked trucks, piled high in a crushed flower bed, laid out end on end on the sidewalk between the parking meters. The grenades were individually wrapped in plastic, then buried in packing peanuts. The rifles lay in neat rows inside the box, secured by Styrofoam spacers. She picked one up and checked its action, made sure the modified barrel was firmly secured to the receiver. The plastic stock fit into the crook of her arm and she kept the flash hider pointing straight up.

  “Listen up, guys,” Glauer boomed out, loud enough to make her flinch. “Some of you know me, but most probably don’t. I guess you all know who this is.”

  “Yeah,” one of the guardsmen said, nodding happily. “That chick from Teeth.”

  Caxton stared at him. He couldn’t be more than nineteen years old.

  “She’s the boss,” a LEO with a silver beard but no mustache said. “Our designated field commander.”

  She’d never heard the term before. It sounded like something he’d read online or in Soldier of Fortune magazine. “I’m Trooper Caxton, that’s good enough for now. You’ve all been filled in on why you’re here, I’m sure, so I’ll be brief.” She looked around, made sure she had their attention. A few were still chatting among themselves, but mostly these men were professionals. They knew when to listen. “In a few minutes it’ll be fully dark. They’ll come out then and hopefully our air support will see where. We need to be ready to move as soon as we get that report. When we engage the enemy it is crucial that you have the right mind-set. This is not a raid. We are not here to take anyone into custody. You must shoot to kill, from your first shot, and you must not hesitate. Not a single vampire can be allowed to escape tonight.”

  She hefted her weapon, showed it to them. “Anyone recognize this?”

  “It’s a patrol rifle,” one of her fellow troopers shouted, raising an index finger. “You point that end at your target and it goes boom.”

  A few of the others chuckled.

  Caxton looked around and found a guardsman. “Give me your body armor,” she said. The soldier hesitated, so she grabbed the straps of his vest and started pulling them loose. “These won’t help, by the way,” she said. “The vampires won’t be shooting at us. Armor will just slow you down.” She thought about ordering all the guardsmen to take off their armor, but she decided against it. It might give them some purely psychological comfort. The guardsman she’d grabbed shrugged out of his vest and she took it from him, then looked around again and found a big orange pumpkin that had been set up as part of a hotel’s fall decorations. She wrapped the pumpkin in the vest, and set the armored pumpkin down on the asphalt and had everyone back away from it, made sure they were clear by twenty feet.

  “This is a patrol rifle, yes. A Colt AR6520. A little heavier than you’re probably expecting. The barrel has been upgraded to fire fifty-caliber BMG rounds. The magazine has a capacity of twenty rounds—remember that. Also, remember this.” She sighted carefully on the armor vest, switched off her safety, and put a single round right through both the ceramic armor plate and the pumpkin.

  Stringy orange glop erupted from inside the armor, splattering a couple of nearby cars.

  “You’ll want to avoid any friendly fire incidents,” she said.

  A lot of the men laughed then. She hadn’t expected them to. It was good, though. The laughter would help bond them together as a unit. It would help take the edge off their anxiety. She knew she could use some of that herself.

  She couldn’t let it get out of hand, though. “I’m giving you this kind of firepower because the only way to kill a vampire is a direct shot through the heart.” She put a hand over the left side of her chest. “Even then you can’t be guaranteed of a clean kill. When we see them at first they’re going to look mostly dead, very skinny and pale. A fifty-caliber round will take them down just fine. Once they drink some blood, though, they become all but bulletproof. These,” she said, flicking the safety back on and then holding her rifle in the air, “may still work. Or maybe they won’t.” She pulled another crate open and gestured for the men to start arming themselves.

  “They’re faster than we are. They are much, much stronger. They have no compunction whatsoever about ripping your head off or tearing your guts out. How many of you have been hunting before?”

  As she’d expected, most of their hands went up. They were Pennsylvanians, most of them born and bred between two ridges. They probably learned how to shoot looking down the sights of a .22-caliber rifle at a white-tailed buck.

  “Clean shots, careful shots. Heart shots every time, just left of center mass. You have twenty rounds. Do not waste any of them on head or leg shots. You’ve probably been trained to try to incapacitate a victim without mortally wounding him. Forget that, right now.” She looked around at the men under her charge. The National Guardsmen, many of whom had fought in Iraq, didn’t need to be told as much. They numbered less than a third of her troops, however. The rest were one kind of cop or another, and cops were drilled and trained endlessly to not kill people, to not even take a shot if they thought it might lead to a death. It would take more than a stern warning to break them of that conditioning. Maybe, she thought, when they saw what they were up against, when the vampires came howling for their blood, they would just get it.

  And maybe a lot of them would die before they learned.

  Arkeley would have accepted that possibility without another thought. He would have recognized the importance of what they were doing, would have sacrificed anything, anybody, including himself, to stop the hundred vampires from getting out of Gettysburg. It was time to demand that kind of commitment from these men, she decided. It was time to demand it of herself.

  “Okay, listen up,” she said. In quick, sketchy strokes she outlined her plan. “They’ve got a lot of advantages, but we can beat them if we stay together.” She held up a map of the town and the park. “I don’t know where we’re going to engage them, but regardless, the plan’s the same. We make first contact and do as much damage as we can. They’ll try to close with us—they need to be up close and personal to hurt you—but we won’t let them. As soon as they start coming for us we split into groups and fall back to the nearest large buildings. Your group commanders will know where to go. We defend those buildings as long as we can, then fall back again—always moving toward the center of town. Then we regroup, surround them, and take out as many of them that are left. Any questions?”

  There were none.

  68.

  When she had finished writing out her statement I had enough to smash the remainder of Simonon’s mob, and put an end to much South
ern brigandry forever. I thanked her profusely and said she’d proved a great friend to my country. This was what I had come for, and now it was done. I could leave at dawn, and be back in Washington before the day was through with my report.

  Ye are well come to it, she wrote, but now where be my reward?

  I professed ignorance of her meaning. “You’ve been fed well on rich blood. Did you wish for something more?”

  Some peace of mind onlie, she answered. What is to come of me, friend of your nation that I now am? Walk on my own I cannot, and so cannot be released. What will be my fate?

  What should happen to her next was none of my concern, though I imagined I could guess at it; a quick and painless execution, which would be a mercy to her and far moreso to us. “That is hardly for me to decide,” I assured her, and prepared to make my adieu.

  Yet she had more to say. So much more. In that graceful hand of hers she laid out the broad strokes of my future destiny, one fine letter at a time:

  Mayhaps I can aid you further, good sir. I know little of war, though I have seen some few in my long years. It seems to me that in most great conflicts that which lacks is not the ability nor the will to fight, but the soldiers to engage. In short, I ask, have you not a need for men?

  It was my duty to report Justinia’s offer, whatever I might think of it. I went at once to the telegraph wagon. I composed my message, and encoded it, and sent it on, thinking then I was done. The operator cursed and struggled with his instrument, and had trouble sending. Yet the reply came almost instantly he was through, and was one word only when it was decoded:

  PROCEED.

  —THE PAPERS OF WILLIAM PITTENGER

  69.

  No more mistakes. She’d thought it so many times, it was written on the inside of her skull. No more mistakes. Slinging her patrol rifle over her shoulder, she pressed the spiral pendant into her palm and tied it there with its broken ribbon.

  The last trace of yellow faded from the sky. A few stars peeked through the clouds that wheeled from east to west while she watched. She could hear the helicopters quartering the town, searchers with infrared and night optical cameras looking for any sign of the enemy.

  Now, she thought, her nerves thrumming. The call will come now.

  It didn’t. Her radio crackled a bit, but nothing came through but the occasional check-in as the helicopter pilots kept track of each other. Caxton tried to breathe.

  The vampires, she thought, could split up and—

  She shook her head to clear away that thought, but the sudden motion made her neck hurt. She was so tired, hadn’t slept in far too long. Occasionally during the day she had started to nod off but had managed not to lose any precious time. Now she was just waiting, waiting to hear something.

  They could split up, go across the open ground. Avoid the roadblocks on the highways and just melt into the darkness.

  No. No, that wouldn’t happen, because it couldn’t. If it did, she would have to spend the rest of her life tracking them down. Every night would be a bloodbath, every day a frantic search, and never any time for sleep. It couldn’t happen.

  She stared around at the men under her charge, watching them for signs that they were losing their edge. They were tough guys, most of them. Volunteers all. The LEOs tended to look the roughest. Liquor enforcement officers had to go into bad places all the time, had to deal with sketchy individuals who tended to own a lot of guns. The troopers were much the same, veterans of endless drug raids and meth lab assaults. They looked a little scared. That was how she could tell they were tough, because they looked scared. She remembered how terrified she’d been herself the first time she’d fought a vampire, and now when she looked around she saw fear in every face. Because they knew, they knew they could get hurt every time they clocked in to their jobs. They knew they could get killed.

  The guardsmen, the soldiers, were a little harder to read. Some, the newbies, sat silently in groups of four or six, their rifles between their knees. They looked up every time someone laughed or the radio spat white noise. The veterans from Iraq looked a lot more casual. More Pennsylvanian guardsmen had been called up for duty in Iraq than from any other state in the union, and their casualties had been commensurately high. These men knew more than she could tell them about keeping themselves alive. They stood leaning against the trucks, not moving much. She saw them keeping their eyes on the four roads that lead out of the square, not alert so much as just aware, constantly aware of their surroundings.

  Now, she thought, staring at her radio. Nothing.

  Glauer came up beside her with a giant thermos of hot coffee and a sleeve of Styrofoam cups still in their plastic wrap. He tore it open and handed her one, poured it for her.

  “How are your guys doing?” she asked.

  He puffed air into his cheeks, let it out. “We’re good, we’re good,” he said. He looked back over his shoulder. Of the twenty officers of the Gettysburg Police Department, eighteen were scattered around the square, waiting on her orders. All twenty had volunteered. This was their town—they wanted to be here, wanted to defend their home. She had sent two of them home. One was the only means of support for an autistic brother who couldn’t care for himself. The other one was sick.

  Chief Vicente had been moved to a safe location.

  Glauer scratched at his mustache. “Listen, Trooper,” he said, but then it was as if he’d forgotten what he’d meant to say. He smiled awkwardly, put his hand down.

  “They’ll do fine,” she said, because she thought it was what Arkeley would have said. “They’ve had firearms training. They’ll do just fine.”

  He nodded briefly but didn’t look convinced. “Yeah. On the firing range. Some of them are hunters, too. I always preferred fishing. If I’d known what was coming, what was going to happen here, I would have done one of those counterterrorism courses the FBI offered. They would have paid my hotel bill and everything. I always figured, you know, that Gettysburg wouldn’t need that. I mean, none of us went. We thought it was silly.”

  “They’ll do just fine.”

  “Okay,” he said, and chewed on his lip. “I, um. I’ve never fired a gun at a living thing. Not in my whole life.”

  “You won’t tonight, either,” she said. “The vampires are already dead.”

  He laughed, not the friendly chuckle she’d expected but a loud, embarrassing snort that made even a few guardsmen look up in surprise. He nodded again and moved on, handing out coffee to anyone who wanted it.

  These men would succeed, she insisted to herself. She would lead them to the vampires and then it was all about the shooting. The vampires would stick together, they wouldn’t split up. She wouldn’t have to go chasing them. She would finish this, tonight, and whether she lived or died it would be over and then—

  “Contact,” the radio coughed. It sounded almost apologetic. “Can you confirm?” the helicopter pilot asked. Not speaking to her. “Affirmative. Contact.” The pilot rattled off a string of map coordinates. Caxton went to her own map, laid out on the hood of a truck, and suddenly seventy-five men were crowding around her, pushing close, perhaps trying to see. The contact had been made just south of town, at the top of the battlefield. That fit her plan just fine.

  “Okay,” she said. Her heart was jumping in her chest, but she didn’t let it show. “Let’s not make any mistakes,” she said. “I’m going to move fast so they don’t have a chance to split up. Everybody keep up.”

  She ducked through the throng of men, headed south. The old buildings of Gettysburg, red brick with white trim, yellow brick with black trim, streamed past her. The noise of all the men moving together was a vast rustling like sails caught by the wind. Vampires had excellent hearing. They would hear her coming. They would see the men’s blood, sparkling in the night.

  She checked her rifle as she moved, checked the magazine, checked the action. Behind her she heard seventy-five safeties being flicked off.

  The town’s cemetery opened up on her left,
darkness flooding in where the streetlights stopped. On her right the buildings grew farther apart. Their windows were dark. Up ahead the street rose to crest a low hill. She saw old painted cannon, memorials to the various battalions and regiments that had fought at Gettysburg. Open stretches of grass, stands of trees, and then she was atop the hill looking down into the valley, the open ground between the two tree-crowded ridges that flanked the battlefield. Seminary Ridge, to the west, and Cemetery Ridge to the east. In between was open grassland, studded with memorials and crisscrossed by roads and footpaths.

  They called it the Valley of Death in all the tourist literature. In the brochures and pamphlets and the guidebooks. A hundred thousand men had fought down there for three days, and many of them had died. She craned her head forward, strained her eyes trying to see anything. A flicker of motion, anything. There was no moon to light the field and only a few stars shone down through gaps in the clouds. Nothing, she couldn’t see anything—

  —and then she did. Something white, paler than the dark field. Moving, almost writhing. Like a mass of maggots squirming on the grass. Coming her way, very slowly. Slowly getting bigger, resolving into separate forms.

  She lifted her rifle to her shoulder, squinted down the sights.

  Okay, she thought. Now.

  70.

  Bill, thou art aveng’d, for Chess, they tell me, is reduced & destroyed. Yet I miss you so. Though justice be done memory is not assuaged.

  How many times have I dreamed of us returned to dear old Maine, & feted well by family and friend alike. How many dreams of that homecoming did we share? & now neither of us shall see that blessed day.

  I went to sit with HER today, thinking only hatred would fill my heart. You served her like a slave at the end, did you not? I said you had escaped her, but she told me (by writing on a paper) that your body was already dead, & that within seven days your soul would be loosed. Hardness in my chest afflicted me, & I began to signal that I should like to leave. My attendants stepped forward, to take up my litter. Yet before they could remove me I asked them to stop.