“Four of you,” Caxton said. “That’s all that got out?”
“I’ve been trying to raise the others on my radio,” Howell said. “No fucking dice.”
Caxton let out a long uncomfortable breath. Four of them—that was horrible. That was devastating.
Only four left? She shouldn’t be too surprised, she thought. She’d seen the others die, back in the Cyclorama building. She’d seen Lieutenant Peters die. The contingent of soldiers from the National Guard had been expertly trained, heavily armed, and well organized.
Arkeley had told her a million times never to underestimate vampires.
“What about the others?” she asked. Her plan had been to keep the various units of her army together as best as possible. The guardsmen had been responsible for the Cyclorama. The liquor enforcement officers had been assigned to fall back to the visitor center and hold it until all of her troops could regroup there. “Have you made contact with the LEOs?”
Corporal Howell looked right at her then and she knew she wouldn’t like to hear what he was about to say.
“We found them, anyway,” he said. He gestured with his chin at the gift shop.
Caxton took a few steps toward the shop, but she didn’t have to go far to see what he meant. In the cluttered aisles of book racks and souvenir stands a number of human bodies—how many in all she didn’t know—lay strewn about like broken toys. They wore navy blue windbreakers, some of them torn to shreds.
82.
My coffins were disguised as crates of rifles and were stowed away carefully in the appropriate magazine behind the line. I stayed with them all the rest of the day, even as the Confederate guns hammered at the earth all around me, and though I feared for my life at every moment. A tightness grew around my head, as if some circlet of iron had been placed there, and through cunning design been made so it could be tightened slowly, almost imperceptibly. By the time the shelling stopped my ears were ringing and my skull felt it might split. I could smell nothing but spent gunpowder and the stink the dead made and my eyes ran freely with water, for the smoke was much irritating.
At sundown the battle halted for the day. Tents were thrown up, so many of them. I could not see very far, despite my position atop the ridge, for the smoke dulled my eyes to everything. Yet the white canvas stood out in that murk and for the first time I saw just how many men surrounded me. Why, there was a whole city’s population on that field, almost all of them armed. It was something I shall never forget, to look out on that sea of canvas, and feel it must go on forever.
—THE PAPERS OFWILLIAMPITTENGER
83.
“You should have told us,” Howell said. His face was wracked with hatred. “You didn’t tell us it would be this bad.”
Caxton knelt down to touch the arm of one of the dead LEOs. It was cold and the hand at the end was very pale. She rolled him over on his side and got a shock. The man’s head was missing.
Stepping backward, unable to see anything except the raw bloodless stump of his neck, she barely heard Howell complaining.
“We need to pop smoke right now,” he said.
“What?” Glauer asked.
The soldier stared at him wide-eyed. “Pop smoke. Bug out. We need to leave!”
She looked up at him with a sudden measure of anger that surprised her. The LEOs had given their lives to stop the vampires. Now this idiot wanted to just leave, with the job unfinished? It was the kind of reaction Arkeley would have had. Feel free to step outside, the door’s just there, she thought, smoky rage billowing in her chest. See how far you get. She managed not to say it out loud. “We just need to hang on,” she said, instead. “The guard will send more troops.”
“Oh my God, how many times have I heard that?” Howell held up his radio, his thumb on the receive button. Only crackling static came through. “Nobody’s going to come save us! We’re the last of your task force, lady. Haven’t you figured that out yet? They took us to pieces!”
“We heard others outside, others who are still alive.”
“Not for long,” Howell replied.
She ground her teeth together and hit him with her best cop glare. “A lot of my people have died, yes,”
she admitted. “But their sacrifice wasn’t in vain. We killed a lot of vampires. But there are more of them—”
“No fucking shit!” Howell shouted.
She began to reply, but Glauer grabbed her arm. He lifted his free index finger to his lips. “Has it even occurred to either of you that the monsters who did that,” he whispered, pointing at the dead LEOs,
“might still be here?”
Howell shut up instantly. He looked away, down the dark corridors leading into the building, and lifted his weapon to a firing position. Caxton could see the flash hider on the end of his rifle shaking in the air.
She drew her own weapon, pointed it. She half expected a horde of vampires to come running out of the darkness that second. When nothing happened after a long, tense interval, she raised her rifle to point at the ceiling.
Howell spun around, his face white and his eyes wide. He had nothing clever to say this time.
Caxton wanted to mock him—but she caught herself. He was just scared. She understood that perfectly. He knew Glauer might be right, just as she did. She needed to get control of herself. Needed to keep it together, just as much as Howell did.
“Good thinking,” she told Glauer, her voice barely audible to herself.
“What do you want us to do, Trooper?” one of the other guardsmen asked, quietly. His name tag read SADLER . Slowly, careful not to make too much noise, he climbed to his feet and the others followed.
There were two corridors, one for guided tours and the other for the electric map. There was no reason to choose one over the other. Whichever one she chose, though, could be the wrong one. If she took her people to the guided tour office, a vampire could sneak up behind them and kill them before they even knew he was there. Assuming there even was a single vampire still in the visitor center. They might have devoured the LEOs and then left.
She needed to think.
“We need to secure this place. We’ll split up, just for a little while. Howell, you take your people down the hall on the left. Glauer and I will take the one on the right. If you make contact don’t wait for us to catch up, just engage.” She looked at her partner. He was pale and breathing hard, but he was still mobile, and his right arm—his shooting arm—was okay. He saw her sizing him up and gave her a reassuring nod.
“Okay,” Howell said. He looked at his own troops. “Guys, get your asses up.”
With Glauer at her back she headed down the dimly lit corridor toward the electric map. The way turned around a number of corners, almost instantly hiding the guardsmen from view. It led them past glass display cases full of artifacts from the battlefield—cannon, racks of antique rifles, a whole wall of white-corroded bullets and black tarnished uniformed buttons. She turned another corner and brought her weapon around, her breath catching in her throat. Before she fired, though, she saw what had scared her so badly—a posed group of mannequins wearing replica uniforms both blue and gray. The mannequins’ faces were as white as plaster.
“Jesus,” Glauer said from behind her. “Don’t scare me like that.”
“I’ll do my best,” she promised.
A few moments later, the corridor opened into a waiting area. There were turnstiles and a ticket taker’s podium and several broad double doors leading into an auditorium beyond. As they watched one set of doors slowly creaked inward, just an inch or two.