23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale

12.

Inside the guard post Harelip was trying to pry the door open with a wooden baton. It was an act of desperation—she had completely lost control of the SHU.

In a cell just a few doors down, the half-dead was cutting up more inmates, looking for Caxton. It was up to her to stop him from killing anyone else.

There were other problems to think about—the prison was clearly under attack by vampires, for instance—but they were going to have to wait. Caxton eased open the door of her cell and stepped outside.

It felt weird, being outside of the cell without shackles on. Even as bad and scary as things had gotten, it still felt weird. Caxton tried to ignore the part of her brain that kept telling her she was in serious trouble, that the COs wouldn’t like this. The only CO who wasn’t dead in the SHU was locked inside her own guard post. Caxton considered trying to free Harelip. It would be nice to have some backup, for one thing, and there were weapons in there. But she doubted she could break into the post any better than Harelip could break out of it.

She stooped down to touch the throat of the woman who had opened her cell door. There was a pulse in her neck, but it was faint. The half-dead had really done a number on her, cutting her open from the armpit down to the hip and probably opening arteries and veins all the way down. The woman needed a lot more than first aid, and Caxton wasn’t sure she could be saved even by a team of paramedics. As much as she owed the woman, whose name she didn’t even know, there were other people she could help more. People she could save.

From inside a cell a few doors down Caxton heard a woman screaming and begging for her life. A trickle of blood rolled out through the open door and glistened on the concrete floor of the SHU. Caxton kicked off her slippers—they made a slip-slap noise when she walked—and padded barefoot over to the open door. It would be suicide to barge in and try to save the women inside. Half-deads weren’t very smart, or strong, or fast. But with its hunting knife and Caxton’s limited training in unarmed self-defense, this half-dead wouldn’t have to be any of those things to hurt her, and badly, if she rushed it. So she leaned up against the wall next to the door, flattening herself against it as tightly as possible, and cleared her throat noisily.

The whimpering moans inside the cell didn’t stop, but she heard the scrape of a boot heel against the floor. The half-dead had heard her and was turning around to see what the noise meant.

It could choose to be stupid, or to be smart. If it was stupid it would come running out with its knife held up high. It would trip over her outstretched ankle and fall face forward onto the floor, losing its grip on the knife in the process. Then she could grab the knife and kill it before it could even start getting back up.

If it was smart, it would stay exactly where it was, and wait for her to come to it.

Caxton could hear her heart beating in her ears. She counted thirty heartbeats before she decided it had done the smart thing. Then she cursed to herself.

It heard that as well. “Is that you, Laura? Are you playing a little game with me? Why don’t you come in and say hi? I’m not supposed to kill you, you must know that. Miss Malvern just wants to talk.”

Caxton bit her lower lip. The half-dead might be lying, but she knew that was just wishful thinking. Malvern was behind the attack on the prison, of course. Justinia Malvern, the last living vampire in Pennsylvania. She and Caxton had a long history. Malvern had been making plans to pillage and destroy the good people of the Commonwealth for nearly a century and a half. In that time she’d created a legion of new vampires, whole armies of them, to aid her. For the last few of those years Caxton had been the one who foiled all her plans and slaughtered all her vampiric descendants. She’d never quite managed to track down Malvern herself, and now it sounded like she was going to pay for that failure.

Maybe Malvern wanted to torture her to death. Caxton knew the vampire wouldn’t let her die quickly, not if she could help it. Not if she could watch. There were other possibilities, too. Malvern had always wanted to turn Caxton into a vampire. It would be a great coup, and it would turn her greatest enemy into a valuable ally. More than once Malvern had made the offer, and every time Caxton had turned her down. Maybe the whole prison was suffering just so Caxton could have another chance to say no. Or maybe Malvern had something else in mind entirely, some brilliant but twisted scheme that involved Caxton in some diabolical way she couldn’t imagine.

Regardless, the last thing she wanted was to see Malvern just then. Not until she had some serious firepower to back her up.

“I don’t have a lot to say to her at the moment,” Caxton told the half-dead. “But if you come out of there right now, I’ll talk to you.”

The half-dead cackled.

“I’ll take it that’s a no,” Caxton said.

It might have planned on replying, but before it could speak again she was inside the cell. She kept low but moved fast, rushing forward to try to knock it down, her eyes darting from side to side, looking for where the knife might be.

Instead she just saw the cell’s two inmates. They weren’t begging for mercy anymore, because both of them were dead, locked in a final embrace and covered in each other’s blood.

The half-dead was crouching up on the top bunk, waiting for her.

This one was proving way too smart. It leapt down on top of her, one arm back, holding the knife high, pointed downward toward her. Its orders might be to bring her in alive, but clearly it was willing to wound her if that’s what it took.

One of its boots clipped Caxton’s ear as she tried to roll out of the way. Her head rang and her ear instantly felt hot. She brought her knees up to protect her body and felt them dig into the half-dead’s groin, a blow that would have left a living man gasping in agony. The half-dead didn’t gasp. It didn’t even need to breathe, and what it had between its legs wasn’t that sensitive anymore.

Still, the impact left the half-dead off its balance and rolling off of her to one side. Caxton grabbed at the toilet/sink unit and started dragging herself upright, fighting the fuzziness that was spreading through her head. The half-dead jumped on her back and its knife came around to swing at her face.

Caxton couldn’t stop the blow—she was moving too slowly. But she was still stronger than the half-dead. She bucked wildly, like a horse, and it flew backward and off of her, the knife sliding through the shoulder of her jumpsuit but not even connecting with her skin. She spun around to find it standing in the doorway, the knife low, holding it out toward her, ready to lunge.

She kicked it in the wrist as hard as she could.

Had she been wearing shoes, or been just a hair faster, that would have disarmed the half-dead and left her with the advantage. Instead the half-dead managed to yank its arm back just as her kick connected. Her toes curled back painfully as they collided with the half-dead’s arm. All she accomplished with the kick was to make her opponent step backward, out of the cell. That left her trapped inside the small cell. The half-dead could simply slam the door shut behind her and engage its latch, locking her inside. Then it could call for reinforcements and just wait until they arrived. That’s what she would have done, and this one had proven to be no fool so far.

She screamed in rage as it smiled at her and reached for the edge of the door.

It didn’t get a chance to push the door closed, however. Harelip appeared behind it and leveled her shotgun at the back of its head. Somehow she must have gotten out of the guard post.

“Freeze, asshole,” the female CO said.

The half-dead started to turn around. It didn’t drop the knife.

Caxton dropped to the floor and covered her head as Harelip pulled the trigger. The shotgun roared and fire burst from its muzzle. It didn’t contain any buckshot, Caxton knew, or any weight of slug—the shotguns the COs used fired beanbag rounds, soft nylon bags full of ceramic balls that expanded in flight to spread the energy of the impact. For a normal human being, getting hit by a beanbag round was incredibly painful, even incapacitating, but it rarely resulted in permanent damage.

Normal human skulls, however, had a lot more structural integrity than a half-dead’s. The head of the thing that had once been named Murphy exploded like an overripe pumpkin hit by a sledgehammer, spattering the interior of the cell—and Caxton—with pulpy brains and shards of bone and plenty of unidentifiable goo. The beanbag itself, which looked like a sweat sock full of marbles, bounced off her back and landed with a squelch on the floor.

“Shit,” Harelip said.

Caxton started breathing again.

“That wasn’t Murphy,” the CO told her. She was crouched next to the body.

“You’re right. It might be Murphy’s body, but—”

“Murphy had a tattoo on the back of his hand. This asshole doesn’t.”

Caxton glanced at the hand and saw this was correct.

“So what the hell is this thing doing, wearing Murphy’s uniform?”