She glanced back as she ran and saw him six feet away, his rifle barrel trained right on her. His face kept looking up at the booth. She slammed into the door with her hip, hoping to trigger the push bar and propel herself through in one motion. There was only one problem: there was no push bar.
The door was narrower than the fire exits she’d seen, painted the same color as the walls. A sign at eye level readELECTRIC MAP PERSONNEL ONLY. PLEASE! Instead of a push bar it had a brass knob. She grabbed the knob and tried to twist it, but found it locked.
In the next moment, she knew, she would be shot in the back. She drew her Beretta and tried to point it at Glauer, but her arm couldn’t complete the motion.
He took a step closer and squeezed his trigger. The patrol rifle clicked, but there was no round in the chamber. He had emptied his clip. It would take only seconds to reload, seconds during which she could still shoot him. She raised her pistol. If she shot him in the arms it would keep him from shooting. He had already lost a lot of blood, though. There was no guarantee that new wounds wouldn’t send him into shock or even kill him. It was her or him, though—
His hands worked at the rifle, moving the fire control selector back and forth pointlessly. He held the weapon by its heat shield and looked right down the barrel.
What the hell was he doing? But then she understood. Glauer could have ejected the spent magazine and slapped a fresh one in place with a blindfold on. But Glauer wasn’t in control of his own body. The unseen vampire was—a vampire who knew how to load a musket rifle and even a breech-loading Sharps rifle, maybe, but certainly not a Colt AR6520.
“Caxton?” he asked. “Did you—did you leave me here alone?”
Ignoring him, she smashed at the door with her hip and shoulder. If she could get through she could get up to the control booth. She could get to the vampire who had Glauer hypnotized. She could kill said vampire and break the spell.
Behind her the local cop took another step toward her. He threw the patrol rifle away, let it clatter on the ground. Reaching down to his belt, he took out his ASP baton and extended it to its full length.
“Laura?” he called.
The door failed to collapse under her repeated attacks. As Glauer lifted the baton to strike her, he looked like a bear coming at her.
“Oh, fuck this,” she said, and kicked him right in the chest. The air went out of him and he fell backward, hitting the ground like a big sandbag.
She turned back to the door—and that was when the lights went out.
86.
General Hancock, who had nominal charge of me and my wards, came to me just as the dark of the battle was turning to the dark of night. I had a tent of some bigness within which my coffins were propped up on sawhorses. From within them already I could hear my men stirring, getting ready for their baptism in fire.
“By Judas Iscariot,” the general swore. He was a young man, no more than forty years in age, with a long full beard but his cheeks were clean shorn. He waved his hat at Griest and took a step back. Could any man blame him? The first time one sees a vampire is always hard. One does not expect the protruding teeth, nor the red eyes. One feels immediately the suspect coolness, the prickling of the hairs on one’s arms. I rushed forward to assure him.
“Secretary Stanton sends his warmest regards, sir,” I said. “Does the battle go well?”
Hancock’s eyes lit up. “We have not yet lost, and Lee is on the field, so I shall count this day a victory. I’ve come to tell you to stand down for the night.”
Griest’s face fell. I could see he longed to speak but he was still a corporal, even if he was no longer human. Instead I spoke for him.
“The men are ready to fight, sir. They’ve made a great sacrifice, all of them, to be here.”
“I know it well. Yet I cannot loose them on the Rebels tonight. I’m counting on a grand surprise from your fellows, and I dare not spring it too soon. Stand down, man, but be ready.”
He could not seem to get away soon enough.
—THE PAPERS OFWILLIAMPITTENGER
87.
It was dark—so terribly dark. There was no light anywhere, not even a glimmer of starlight. The electric map auditorium had no windows and no light could even sneak in around the edges of the fire exits.
She was trapped in the dark with a vampire and her partner, who was hypnotized and trying to kill her.
Caxton staggered backward, blind and terrified. She fought down a scream and then dug in her coat pocket for her flashlight. She held the Beretta straight upward—without light she had nothing to shoot at.
The door she’d been pressed against a moment before flapped open and something cold and inhuman shot past her, into the dark. The vampire had come down from the booth.
Glauer was still down on the floor, she thought. He was a sitting duck. The vampire would have had to break his hypnotic connection with the local cop to come down, but most likely Glauer was still dazed and unable to defend himself.
Well, there wasn’t much she could do for him if she couldn’t see. Even less if she was dead. She found the flashlight and switched it on before it was even out of her pocket. The beam twitched in her hand and she realized just how scared she was. Fighting to control herself, she pointed the flashlight down toward the electric map. Her light barely gleamed off the broken coffins down there, the beam illuminating nothing of use. She moved the light slowly across the floor at her feet, toward where she’d left Glauer.
She didn’t worry about giving his position away—or her own. She knew the vampire could see their blood glowing in the dark, a fine tracery of red where arteries and veins pulsed faster and faster.
The vampire laughed at her, an animal noise like a hyena would make. A cold and violent growl. She shuddered, her whole body shaking. Then she went back to looking for Glauer.
She found his ASP baton, abandoned on the floor. There was no sign of the cop. She thought about calling out his name but couldn’t seem to get her voice to work.
It was just too much. She’d been shot at, grabbed, even bitten. She was operating on no sleep and little food and there were vampires everywhere, vampires who had already killed most of her army. And now they were coming for her.
A sound leaked out of her throat, then. It sounded a lot like a whimper.
Stop this, she told herself. You’re a trooper of the Pennsylvania State Police and you have killed more vampires than this asshole has killed humans.
She willed her hand to stop shaking. Her chest was shivering as it dragged more and more oxygen into her lungs. She would start hyperventilating soon. She would get that under control too, but first she needed her hands. The flashlight beam steadied, moved slowly across the metal seat backs. She had to find the vampire.
She was covered in weaponry, but she didn’t think that would scare him off. In the dark he was at a distinct advantage. He could have killed her already, several times over. If he hadn’t attacked yet it meant he was toying with her. Playing with his food. Vampires were like that—real assholes. She concentrated on the fact that she was still alive. That was good, and useful. It meant she could still, possibly, save herself. She could worry about Glauer later.
The flashlight lit up another row of seats and then bounced off a white face. She saw squinting red eyes and a very toothy grin, and she yelped in fright.