The sign didn’t flicker off. No other lights came on. The sign’s glow filled the hallway with pinkish light that did little to dispel the shadows in the corners.
She was being led around by someone, led into what was probably a trap. And she wasn’t going to be allowed to go anywhere else.
The darkness in the corridor slowly gave way to dull light. She squinted into the half-gloom and saw a plain ordinary emergency light box high on a wall down there. It had two big spot lamps mounted on it, throwing light around a corner. Just beneath it was a sign with an arrow, pointing toward the guided tours area.
The place she’d sent Howell and his guardsmen. She sighed, wondering if she was going to be able to meet up with them, regroup and at least not be alone anymore.
She had a very bad feeling that the answer was no.
Moving carefully, her rifle at the ready, she headed around the corner and down a short hallway that ended in a closed fire door. There was no sign on it, just chipped enamel paint. The paint around the push bar had been worn off entirely, leaving bare silver metal beneath, as generations of tourists had pushed it to go through. A narrow rectangular window was set into the door, chicken wire suspended in the glass. She peered through but could see only shadows.
She told herself to buck up, and then she pushed the door open. A breeze poured through the open door, carrying a trace of a foul smell she didn’t waste time trying to identify. She moved into the room beyond, a sort of waiting room with lots of chairs and a reception counter.
On the carpet, lined up next to each other, lay Howell and his guardsmen. They had clearly been dragged there, perhaps arranged just so she would find them. Their empty faces stared at the ceiling. One of them—Sadler, she remembered—was missing his arms. The wounds at his shoulders were bloodless and pale.
Howell had a series of cuts on his face, four thin scratches that Caxton figured had to be claw marks.
The edges of the cuts were translucent, but she could see severed pink muscle tissue underneath. No blood anywhere.
The other two showed no sign of violent injury. All four were still wearing their full battle dress, including their helmets. Their patrol rifles were missing and none of them had any personal firearms.
Howell had a single grenade dangling from his combat webbing. She pulled it carefully off its metal clip and studied it. Green and cylindrical, with holes on its top rather than down its sides. It wasn’t a flashbang, nor a fragmentation grenade—it must have been part of the guardsman’s regulation kit. She studied the codes stenciled on its side—M18 GREEN—and realized that it was, in fact, a smoke grenade. If she pulled the pin it would billow out thousands of cubic feet of smoke that would do exactly nothing to any vampire she threw it at. She shoved it in her pocket anyway, on the principal that you never left weapons lying around an unsecured crime scene. Basic cop procedure.
She stood up but couldn’t stop looking at the four men. They were younger than she was, but they would never get any older. They’d already served their country once, in Iraq. Then they had come home and in less than a year they’d been sent into danger again, and this time they hadn’t made it. She told herself that they were soldiers. Sworn, just as she was, to protect the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
She told herself that two or three times. It still didn’t sound as good as she’d hoped.
She had to keep moving. If she stopped, if she stood still and thought about how the guardsmen had died, or where Glauer was, or how many of her troops were still alive, she knew she would break down.
She would lose her resolve. So after one last look at the dead men she turned away.
Behind the reception desk she found an office, a cramped little space full of filing cabinets. At the far end she found an exit door that let out into darkness. It was past time, she decided, to get out of the visitor center. Exhaustion was starting to catch up with her and she knew she could only go so much farther without getting some rest. Outside the cold air on her face would help keep her awake, keep her sharp.
Beyond the exit door she could see an empty parking lot, and beyond it a line of trees. She had studied various maps of Gettysburg long enough to know that past the trees was a gas station and a street full of the tackier sort of tourist industries—T-shirt shops, novelty photographic studios, cheap theme restaurants. Her next fallback position, by contrast, was a two-hundred-year-old tavern and inn off to her northeast. It was some distance away, a very long distance to cover with vampires on her tail. She had to stick to the plan, though. If there was any chance of meeting up with other units it meant following her own instructions as closely as possible.
Patrol rifle cradled in her arms, ready to shift it to a firing position at the slightest provocation, she rushed for the trees and then out of cover, across the open concrete of the gas station. Nothing jumped out at her, nothing pale and fast came running toward her. She couldn’t help but wonder if she was being watched, though. A high wind had blown most of the clouds away and she felt exposed under all that starlight. She had to reassure herself that it was an advantage for her. The vampires didn’t need the light—they could see her in perfect darkness—so the stars were on her side.
Every second out of cover, though, every moment she spent without a wall at her back, made her more scared. She pushed through the doors of the gas station’s little store and sank down behind the abandoned counter just to catch her breath. It was quiet down there, almost perfectly quiet. She could hear nothing but the humming of the chiller cabinets that flanked the counter, their lights turned off but their contents still kept at a perfect low temperature. In the dark she let that hum run through her, a droning sound that calmed her nerves.
She switched on her radio and whispered a call for anyone still on the main channel. She held down the receive button and waited, hearing nothing but static. Electrons whizzing through empty space, voiceless, pointless. Her soldiers were under strict orders to answer her radio calls whenever possible. Either they were pinned down in places where it would be dangerous to make any noise at all—or they were all dead.
It seemed impossible that she was completely alone. There had been so many soldiers under her command. They couldn’t all be gone. Could they?
“Chalk One, Chalk Two, come in,” she said into the mouthpiece. She waited for the helicopter pilots to reply. They didn’t.
That was all wrong. Vampires couldn’t fly. That was one power they lacked. They couldn’t have taken out the helicopters. That was just impossible. “Chalk Three, come in,” she said again, louder this time, turning up the gain and the volume in case interference was blocking her call.
The radio emitted choppy static, louder but no more meaningful than before.
She came out of the gas station moving fast, keeping low. Her rifle was in her hands, ready to fire at the first shadow that moved. It was a stupid way to cross open ground—she was as likely to fire at nothing, or at another human being, as she was to actually target a vampire. It was all she could do to keep her fear from overwhelming her, however, and she didn’t think about it too much.
The Taneytown Road crossed Steinwehr Avenue ahead of her, a broad, open intersection, an expanse of concrete and grass and terrible sight lines. She hurried across, leaving on the lawns dark wet footprints that anyone could have followed. Ahead of her she saw the old buildings of Gettysburg, including the oldest of all, the Dobbin House Tavern. It was her next stop.