99 Coffins: A Historical Vampire Tale

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 Southern 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 OFWILLIAMPITTENGER

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.

She had changed, Bill, to take on your face.

It was the barest of illusions, & easily pierced, yet I knew if I wished it she could speak with your voice, and hold my hands as you once did. Disgust, first, consumed me, but not for long. In time I came to understand she was giving me some gift, some favor, & I admit, it was good to see you again.

Then it was she spoke to me direct, using thought in place of word.

—LETTER OFALVAGRIEST (UNPOSTED)

71.

The vampires came toward them in a square formation, lined up abreast in at least a dozen ranks. They wore nothing but rags, tatters of old uniforms, loose trousers torn at the cuff. A few had tunics on, colorless in the dark. Their skin was easier to see, pale, pale white even in the gloom. Their faces were hairless and gaunt, their cheeks sunken in.

They were big. They were fast and dangerous. They moved in an eerie lockstep, as if they were one being with many bodies. She could see their teeth glinting in the starlight, she could see their enormous, powerful hands.

One vampire could kill her. That was all it would take. One vampire had nearly strangled her. It would have been just as easy for him to tear her into little pieces. Now she was facing an army of them.

I can’t do this, she thought.

I am going to die here, she thought. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. She felt bewitched.

Still they came on. Their feet moved together. Left. Right. Left. Right. An army—not just a gaggle of them, not just a mob. A literal army.

Well, yes. Because that was what they’d been when they were alive. “They’re soldiers,” Caxton said, and it broke the spell. Breath plumed out of her. She drew oxygen into her lungs. “They’re marching.”

Arkeley would not have hesitated. Arkeley would have been braver. She channeled him, forced herself to think the way he would. Vampires were deadly, they were strong, but they were not invulnerable. She lined up her first shot, held it. One of the front rank, to the left of the center of the formation. She looked for her vampire among the ranks but couldn’t find him. She’d expected him to be at the front, leading the charge, but he must have been hidden in among them.

They were thin, painfully, horrifyingly thin. They looked starved and bedraggled.

Their eyes, however, were bright. Glowing like smoldering embers. Even in the dark they seemed to glow. She held her shot.

“Go for the hearts,” she said, loud, so the others would hear her. “Every time.”

Around her troopers and LEOs and guardsmen and local cops lifted their patrol rifles. Some knelt down, elbows on thighs to steady their aim. Others aimed from the shoulder, ready.

The vampires came on so fast, their feet barely brushing the ground. Their arms swung at their sides and their eyes stayed facing front, never looking to the side, never betraying them. If they saw Caxton and her troops they didn’t show any sign of it. They certainly didn’t show any fear.

She had worried they would split up. Worried they would head in a hundred different directions, that she would never catch them all. That wasn’t going to be a problem. The vampires were soldiers, and they’d been drilled in nineteenth-century battle tactics. Which meant staying together and walking right into fire.

That standard operating procedure hadn’t worked so well during the Civil War, when men had marched right into cannon fire.

Closer—always closer. It was so dreamlike, so wrongly surreal that Caxton couldn’t get a sense of how far away they were. She held her shot. Corrected her aim. They were closer, well within range.

“Fire at will,” she shouted, and the night blew apart. Patrol rifles barked and jumped in the men’s hands.

Caxton took her own shot, felt the weapon kick her shoulder. The recoil wasn’t as bad as she’d expected. She kept her eye on her target, watched a dark hole open in his chest. The vampire’s arm flew up and he turned at the waist, his chin hitting his shoulder.

The formation stopped in place. The vampires stood there, still, perfectly still, as if in surprise. Their eyes burned.

The one she’d shot slumped to the ground. His eyes stopped glowing, stared upward, into the sky. Here and there in the front rank others fell. Two—no, three of them down. The rest stared down at their bodies, at the holes that riddled their chests and bellies and their faces, looked from side to side, to one another.

The three who were down stayed down. The others grimaced as their flesh filled in around the bullet holes, as their bodies healed. It couldn’t have taken more than a second or two.

“Keep firing!” Caxton called. The rifles jumped and spoke. Another vampire fell, and then one on the end of the line spun around and grabbed at the vampire next to him. The rifles roared and vampires jumped, stepped backward, moved aside to let the ones behind pass.

They were moving again. Coming closer. So fast.

“Hold your positions,” Caxton shouted as the men behind her wove back and forth, looking for shots, some of them walking backward, trying to keep their distance. “Hold on,” she shouted, over the noise of the rifles. Vampires collapsed in the front line, but others moved forward, more of them. There were so many and they were so close, moving so fast. “Hold on!” she shouted again. She fired again and corroded brass buttons flew off a dark tunic. There was no blood; they had no blood in them to leak from the wounds. No way to tell if any given shot went true or wild. Some of the vampires who had fallen to the grass, their limbs wild and askew, started to get back up.

They moved fast. They were closer than she wanted them. She grabbed a pair of ear protectors from around her neck and pulled them on over her head, checked to make sure the others had theirs. Then she pulled a grenade out of her pocket and tore open its plastic wrapper.

It felt weird in her hand, like a can of soda more than a miniature bomb. It was painted a matte black, cylindrical and heavy, with circular holes punched down its length. She’d never seen one like it before, but she knew what it could do.

“Eyes,” she shouted, and pulled the pin. She threw it like a softball and it bounced harmlessly off a vampire’s shoulder. The vampire turned to watch it drop to the grass.

Even as she pulled her rifle back around to a firing position, Caxton squeezed her eyes shut. When the grenade went off she still saw stars.

Normal fragmentation grenades would be useless against vampires. The burst of shrapnel might slow them down for a moment or two, but the shards of metal would never reach a vampire’s well-protected heart. When the National Guard had asked her what kind of armament might be more useful she’d had a real inspiration, for once. She remembered the way Harold the night watchman’s flashlight had bothered her vampire and she had asked for flashbangs—stun grenades, in other words. The guard called them XM84s.

The grenade she threw held only about four and a half grams of magnesium and ammonium perchlorate.

That was more than enough. When it detonated it pumped out more light than a million burning candles and a noise nearly one hundred and eighty decibels, loud enough to leave an unprotected human being staggering and dazed. To Caxton, even with her ear guards on, it sounded like a bomb had gone off right next to her face.

When the flash and noise were over she cautiously opened her eyes again, praying the grenade had been effective. What she saw almost made her smile.

Vampires were nocturnal creatures, unable to stand any bright light. They were also predators with exceptionally acute hearing. They were also well over a hundred years old and could not have imagined what she was throwing into their midst. Many of them must have turned to look right at the grenade. All of them had heard the noise. Their advance had halted and the majority of them were down, rolling on the grass, clutching their triangular ears. The glow in their eyes had brightened considerably until the red embers looked like they were sizzling away painfully in their sockets. One, she saw, was reaching up toward the stars as if to fend off some unseen blow. One had dropped to his knees and was clawing his own eyes out with talonlike fingers.

They were no more than ten yards away. If she had hesitated for another second they would have been on her, all over her, devouring her troops. “Get around them,” she shouted, looking back to see her men tearing off their ear protectors. She reached up and took off her own. “Circle them, now, this is the best chance we’ll get!” She had another flashbang in her pocket, but she knew better than to underestimate vampires. They would know what to expect if she tried that trick again.

Her feet slipped as she ran through the long grass, but she didn’t fall. She came around behind the mass of vampires and lifted her weapon. It hardly seemed sporting, but she was beyond caring about that. One shot, then the next she lined up, executing the monsters, blowing out their hearts. They writhed and moaned beneath her, their white bodies luminous in the dark. An absurd deadly chant rang through her head, syncopated with the reports of her weapon. One vampire two vampires three vampires four.

She did not stop or slow down until Glauer grabbed her arm.

“What?” she demanded. “What now?”

He pointed and she saw one of the dazed vampires blinking his eyes rapidly. He was sitting up, slowly regaining his composure.

“Shit,” she said.

She had known they would recover from the flash. She had really, really hoped it would take longer than it had.

72.

I thought it would be hard to find volunteers. Yet again I was wrong. It was a shock to me, as it must be to any man who had not seen this war at first hand, to learn just how many dying soldiers there were in Maryland, wounded in battle, victims of dread pestilence, or simply broken in spirit and in mind. How many who had so little left to live for, who would gladly welcome one last chance for glory before they must go on to meet their rest.

I was not stopped by dint of volunteers. In fact, I had to turn many away, men who still possessed some spark of life, and healthy frames, whose only infirmity was despair. Though I could not give particulars to any, though the word “vampire” never passed my lips, still, there were so many.

Far, far too many.

Procuring the supplies I needed was easy enough as well. A few demijohns of prussic acid were requisitioned and readily available, for the troops used it to poison rats in their camps. Coffins were easily obtained, of a necessary quality and stoutness. This government has assured there will never be a shortage of coffins. A railroad car, fitted up for transporting dead soldiers home, was waiting for me in Hagerstown. And the most necessary item, Miss Justinia Malvern, I had accessed already. She was most tractable, and accommodating, as long as each night she received her ration of blood. More than once I provided this from my own veins.

—THE PAPERS OFWILLIAMPITTENGER

73.

“Damn it. Get back, get back,” Caxton called.

Some of the men around her obeyed at once, falling back, some running. Others stood their ground and kept shooting vampires, their weapons pointed down, the muzzle flashes going off in stuttering bursts.

More of the vampires started getting up, getting to their feet. The ones still rolling around on the ground were getting picked off, but there were still so many of them.

“Get back!” The only advantage the humans had was range—if the vampires recovered too quickly they would make short work of the troopers and LEOs and guardsmen. “Get back!” she screamed again.

More of her troops peeled away and ran off into the dark. More than a few, however, didn’t seem to hear her at all. Maybe their ear protectors hadn’t protected them from the bang. Maybe they were deafened—or maybe they were just so scared that they didn’t understand what she was telling them.

On the far side of the formation a vampire leaped up off the grass and tore into a trooper, tore his uniform shirt open and much of the skin beneath. Caxton raised her weapon and tried to cut the vampire down, but she couldn’t get a clear shot. The .50-caliber bullet in her rifle could cut through an engine block; it would pass right through the vampire and the trooper as well. There was nothing she could do for the man.

Right next to her a rifle jumped and danced, spitting bullets. The LEO there had switched to automatic fire and was hosing down the vampires with .50-caliber rounds. He was wasting ammunition—the vampires he hit jerked in place as if pulled by strings, but he was firing blind and had little or no chance of getting a clean heart shot. She screamed at him, but she couldn’t hear herself over the noise, could barely see from the muzzle flashes. She grabbed at his arm, trying to pull his hand off the trigger, but even as she did his weapon went dry.

“I’m out,” he called, and turned around, to go back, maybe to get more ammunition, maybe just to run.

She grabbed a spare magazine out of her pocket and brandished it at him, but then she heard a local cop on her other side scream.

Her heart stopped beating in her chest as she swiveled around to see a wave of white skin and moldering cloth crash over her head.

So fast—they moved so fast, even after a century and a half in the ground—they were—they were everywhere—

The men bellowed and fired wildly, their muzzles pointing in every direction, tracking, trying to find targets. Caxton ducked low as a hot flash hider swung over her head. The noise as it fired deafened her, but she looked up and saw a vampire not ten inches from her face, watched as his red eyes flickered out.

His pale hands beat at her shirt, at her arm, but there was no strength there.

“Come on,” Glauer said, right next to her.

Around her men were dying, left and right. Much faster than the vampires had. She saw a guardsman get torn in half, saw a white face bury itself in his red flesh. She saw necks twisted, saw vampire teeth ripping through navy windbreakers, digging through Kevlar vests. She heard screams all around.

She heard someone praying, a sound that ended abruptly.

Glauer grabbed her hand and she nearly dropped her rifle. “Regroup! Regroup!” she shouted, even as she danced away from a vampire running right at her, his shoulder down, his claws scooping at the air where she’d been. She managed to get her rifle back up, fired three shots, without aiming, into his face, his chest, his groin. The vampire jerked spasmodically and tripped over his own feet. She lined up a shot on his back, fired, watched him jump and fall face forward on the cold grass.

“Fall back,” she shouted, unsure if anyone was listening. The field was a mess, a chaos of bodies struggling in the darkness.

“Spread out,” one of the guardsmen shouted. “Get clear!” A vampire’s fingers were tangled in the combat webbing of his body armor. He swung around, trying to get free, and the vampire’s other hand snatched off his helmet. Blood fountained from his neck and Caxton saw his head dangle forward, attached by nothing more than scraps of flesh. The vampire leaned forward to lap at his blood.

“Help me!” someone barked. She turned and saw an LEO surrounded by three vampires. He was firing his patrol rifle from his hip, his other hand holding a big shiny Desert Eagle. He shot out a vampire’s eye and the vampire smiled wickedly, then grabbed him up in a bear hug so tight that Caxton could hear the man’s vertebrae pop inside his windbreaker.

She tried to go to his aid when a cold hand grabbed her leg and pulled her off her feet. It was the vampire she’d shot in the back, rolled over and facing up now. She had lined up a perfect shot—but now she realized her mistake. From behind she’d gotten her left and right confused. At worst she had shot him through a lung he didn’t need anymore.

His face opened wide, his mouth enormous. He pulled her toward him, hand over hand. His eyes blazed and she felt her spiral pendant warm up in her hand. He was trying to hypnotize her.

A vampire leaped over her head, deeper into the fray. She looked back down to see two bony white hands dragging her ankle up toward that gaping cavern of a mouth. She struggled to spin around, to get her weapon up. Swung the flash hider down between her knees, jabbed it like a bayonet into his flesh even as the teeth sank effortlessly into her calf.

She squeezed the trigger and the vampire screamed, releasing her leg. She rolled away from him and onto her knees, her weapon pointed right at his chest, right at his heart. He was already dead. It didn’t matter.

There were plenty more all around.

Two came at her, one from either side. Their hands came up, ready to tear at her, to pull her apart. She shot one in the chest and he fell away, screaming, but the other collided with her, his fingers grasping at her tie, her shirt. He yanked and her throat closed up, her own tie crushing her windpipe. She tried to pull her weapon around, but he was right on top of her. She could feel his cold flesh against her own, smell his stink of putrefaction. She started to scream but the noise couldn’t get out of her throat. White spots drifted across her vision.

She heard gunshots. They sounded as if they’d come from far away. She could barely connect the sounds to the fact that the vampire’s head had split open in a white, pulpy mess, brain and bone flicking away in pieces. The vampire let go of her and she slid out from underneath him, tore open her tie. But even as she tried to get her feet under her the vampire was healing, his head knitting back together, his eyes glowing with pure rage.

Glauer grabbed her arm and helped her up. He brought his patrol rifle up and ready. He brought his arm up, sighted, and shot the vampire right through the heart.

74.

This is the sworn affadavut of Rudolph Storrow, of the 1st US Sharpshooturs, and all of it tru. On 27 Joon I came to Maryland to visut with my old pal Alva Griest, who was sick and in bed. Cornel Pittenger sent me.

They gave Alva a littul room at the garrisun and it was clean and it was bright with windas and nice enuff, yet full of stink, for his woond had ternd gangreenus, I am told. I sed nothing of the smell, for me and Alva are old frends.

We sat and talkd one quartur of an hour on what we seen and did in Virginy at the vampier’s house like I told Cornel Pittenger. We even laffd, a litul. Then I askd Alva if he was sure, and if he still wantud to go threw with it as he had said he did.

He told me he was not long for this life anyhow, with his woonds and all, and that he wantid to help his cuntry howevur he culd, and that he was reddy. He askt me if I thot it was a sin he did, and I sed no, I did not think so. Lots of othur men have volunteerd for this dutee, I sed, and the Cornel asshured me they wuld go to the good plase, and not to Hel after. So the Armee says its alrite.

He sed that was good enuff for him.

I had my canteen with me which I had filt with Prussic Asid, which I got from the Cornel, and I pored him a cup. The stuff smells over strong of almunds, if you ask me, and does not recumend itself for drinkin.

He sed he was tierd and missd his friend Bill. Then he drank his fill, which was not much. In a cuple minits he died. Then I rote this out as I am sposed to, and now its dun, and I am goin to pore myself a cup, and be dun too. God sav America, and Mistur Lincon, and all our boys.

—AFFIDAVIT OFRUDOLPHSTORROW

75.

Glauer got Caxton on her feet, but she was already moving. There was no time to talk, no time to thank him for saving her life. They moved fast, crouching low, heading for a big round building she could just see in the dark. Behind them the vampires were feasting on the dead and the dying and they didn’t bother pursuing them. She cast the occasional glance over her shoulder and saw bodies strewn across the field.

Some were pale in the starlight, their heads hairless and their eyes dark. Many, many more of those bodies belonged to her troops.

She would feel guilty in the morning, if she lived that long. She kept running.

When they had gotten far enough away that she dared to make a sound she said, “I thought you’d never shot anybody before.”

“On-the-job training works wonders.” Glauer favored her with a short-lived grin that transformed into a rictus of pain. Was he hurt? She couldn’t see. It didn’t slow him down if he was. How many vampires had he killed? She had no idea.

As tight as her plan had been, as disciplined as she’d made herself, she’d seen very little of what had happened on the field. She’d been fighting herself, too focused to keep an eye on anyone else. She had no idea how many of her troops were still alive.

Up ahead the dark curved mass of the Cyclorama building blocked out the stars. She needed to get there, as fast as she could. Holding on to the sleeve of Glauer’s jacket, she pumped her legs to add more speed. A vampire could be right behind her, or directly in her path. They could move fast enough to get around her, to get in her way—

If that were the case, of course, she was already dead. Nothing she could do about it. She poured on more speed. Her feet hit concrete and she gasped in relief as she dashed up the handicapped ramp of the Cyclorama.

The front doors opened and a pair of guardsmen stepped out, weapons up and aimed at her. She lifted her own patrol rifle and they stood down. “You,” she said, pointing at one of the guardsmen. He had his night-vision goggles dangling in front of his face, a pair of shiny lenses staring back at her. “What do you see? Is anyone behind us?”

“Negative,” he told her.

“Okay. Get this door shut once we’re in.”

As badly as the first stage of the battle had gone, regardless of how many people had died, her plan was still operational. She led Glauer inside, into a building with electric lights and warmth.

The Cyclorama Center was one of the big tourist attractions of the military park—or at least it had been.

It had been closed to the public for renovation for over a year. The police had been kind enough to open it up for her so she could use it as her preliminary fallback position. It was a round building with no windows, so no vampires could come crashing in from the sides. Inside was mostly open space so that people could see the cyclorama itself, an oil painting twenty-seven feet high and hundreds of feet around, a 360-degree vision of the battlefield during Pickett’s infamous charge. The painting was badly faded, but restoration work had already begun and the smoke and cannon and hordes of struggling men were depicted with eerie realism. The subject matter was too close to what Caxton had just fled for comfort.

Some of Caxton’s troops—mostly guardsmen in camouflage-pattern uniforms—had gathered inside, keeping close together. They had their rifles in their hands, ready to fight again at a moment’s notice.

None of them spoke, none of them smoked or even gave her a second look. They knew what was still out there in the dark. Falling back had bought them a few moments’ respite, but nobody would call it peace.

In the middle of the floor a table had been set up on sawhorses. A big man-portable radio rig took up half the tabletop, and the rest was covered in small-scale maps of the park and the town. A guardswoman with chevrons on her uniform was holding court down there, craning over the radio and shouting heated questions into her mouthpiece.

“Lieutenant Peters,” Caxton said, rushing up to the woman. “You made it.”

“By the skin of my ass, Trooper,” the guardswoman said. She was one of only three female volunteers in Caxton’s slapdash army, but she was also the highest-ranking of the National Guard contingent. She was a little older than Caxton, maybe thirty, but she already had streaks of iron in her dark hair. She’d been to Iraq and come back from that alive. Caxton wondered briefly if she would live through the night. If any of them stood a chance, she supposed it had to be the lieutenant.

“Any word from the visitor center?”

Peters frowned and looked at her radio. “There are some men there. They don’t sound well organized.

The mass of the opposition went after them.”

“As long as they’re holding their ground,” Caxton said. She drew one of the big maps toward her. The visitor center was just across the Taneytown Road, only a few hundred yards away and slightly farther north than the Cyclorama. Caxton’s forces had split in groups to occupy the closest buildings, just as she’d planned. Every group had orders to abandon their positions as soon as things got too hot and move to tertiary locations farther up the road. The plan was to draw the vampires farther and farther north, into the town, where it would be easier to box them in. If they headed south instead, into the open ground of the park, they might get away. She had a contingency in place if that happened—the helicopters would try to herd them back toward town with powerful searchlights. She didn’t know if that would actually work.

“If I were them I’d cut my losses and run,” Peters said, as if she’d read Caxton’s thoughts. The lieutenant pointed at three places on the map. “The roadblocks we set up couldn’t hold these assholes for more than a minute or two. If they made contact here—”

“They won’t,” Caxton said, suddenly sure of it. “They’ll come for us first.”

“For God’s sake, why? We hurt them. They hurt us worse, but they took some hits.”

Caxton nodded. “I should hope so. No, they’ll come toward us. They want our blood. They’ve been starving for so long in darkness, waiting, dreaming about blood. They’ll go for the nearest supply. And that’s us.” She looked up at the front door of the building. “Are your people ready? They’ll be here in minutes.”

“I saw how fast they moved. My people are ready,” Peters said, fixing Caxton with her eyes. Caxton started to look away—but the lieutenant didn’t. She just stood there studying Caxton, not blinking.

“Something wrong?” Caxton asked.

“We didn’t expect this kind of resistance. Over in the desert,” she said, shifting her weight slightly, leaning against the table, “our SOP when we found ourselves this badly in shit was to withdraw. Live to fight another day. That’s what we know.”

And that’s why I couldn’t just turn this job over to you, Caxton thought. She would have loved to let the soldiers take charge of Gettysburg. She could have gone somewhere and gotten some sleep. She knew better, though—Arkeley had taught her better. Soldiers didn’t just stand around waiting to get butchered. They moved strategically and only held positions they knew they could adequately defend.

They worked that way because they knew their enemies were following the same model.

Vampires didn’t fight that way. They were too arrogant—they never backed down. “Lieutenant, if we just bugged out now, the vampires could do as they pleased. Like you say, the roadblocks couldn’t hold them. You saw what they did to heavily armed soldiers. Do you want that kind of threat getting out into the civilian population?”

Peters scowled but shook her head. Good enough. Arkeley had never asked anyone to approve of his orders. Just to follow them.

76.

The procedure for creating our new troops was simplicity itself, and was accomplished without hindrance or delay. A man was carried, or wheeled, or walked into the room where Miss Malvern reclined on her bed. She did not speak with them, or rather she wrote them no kind words, no gentle assurances. She told me that what she did must be accomplished in total silence. Instead she only looked into the eyes of the volunteer. In some cases their heads had to be held up so she could see them properly. Some short time would pass, whilst who knew what communication might pass between the two. Then the man was removed to another room, where his cup of poison awaited him. Very few of them balked at this time. Only two refused the cup, and both of them returned a short while later and asked for it again. I had some men under my command, hard-hearted fellows, who took the bodies and put them in the waiting coffins. The coffins were loaded into the funeral car. And then it was done; until nightfall.

I waited by the car, waited for the sun to go down. I did not drink liquor, or play cards, or do any other thing as a pass-time. I simply sat on a camp stool and waited, perfectly alone. Just me and my conscience. When night had properly fallen I heard them stirring inside, moving around. I heard them talking amongst themselves, in low and emotionless voices. Then there came a rapping on the steel door at the end of the car. I rose and threw back a narrow portal in the door, little more than a spy-hole, and saw red eyes, so many red eyes staring back at me.

—THE PAPERS OFWILLIAMPITTENGER

77.

They had a moment’s downtime, maybe no more than that. Still there were priorities to consider.

Caxton placed her patrol rifle on the floor and plopped down to roll up her pant leg. Dozens of red chevrons dotted her calf, places where vampire teeth had just touched her flesh. The wounds weren’t deep and though the leg felt like it was stiffening up it still held her weight just fine. She’d been lucky—incredibly lucky.

When Glauer took his uniform jacket off she saw he’d gotten it a lot worse. He was a big guy and he could take a lot of punishment, but the wound looked very bad. A chunk of flesh was missing from his bicep and he could move his left arm only with halting pain. There was surprisingly little blood in the wound.

Caxton was afraid she knew what that meant. He was breathing heavily, he complained of excessive thirst, and his face was pale—the symptoms of anemia. The vampire that bit his arm had sucked out some of his blood. Maybe too much. Someone passed him a canteen and he sucked at it greedily.

Caxton took off her tie and made a tourniquet above the wound. It would help keep the rest of his blood in his body and it would also help stave off infection. He needed more help than she could give, though.

He needed a doctor. He needed to be taken to a hospital.

That wasn’t going to happen. Not yet, anyway.

He wasn’t in shock, she could at least be thankful for that. One of the guardsmen had a bandage and some surgical tape. She wrapped it around Glauer’s arm and then helped him shrug back into his jacket.

It hurt him to put the garment back on, but it would keep him warm—crucial in a case of massive blood loss.

When she was finished she stared into his eyes. “The one who did this—”

“I got him,” Glauer insisted.

Caxton bit her lip and nodded. There would be others, though. Other vampires who had drunk hot human blood. It didn’t just feed them. It made them stronger and tougher. She passed the word around, through Lieutenant Peters. The next wave they faced would be harder to kill. A single shot to the heart might not be enough to take down a well-fed vampire.

“Jesus,” one of the guardsmen said when he heard the news. “What’s today, my birthday? I didn’t want this. I wanted a pony.”

A few of the soldiers—far too few—laughed. The tension in the Cyclorama Center was thicker than road tar. Everyone knew the vampires were coming, but they were taking their damned time about it.

Caxton’s radio crackled but before she could answer it Lieutenant Peters stood up straight, without warning, and every eye in the room turned to look at her. The guardswoman touched the earpiece of her radio set. “Report,” she said. Caxton guessed she was talking to the pilot of one of the helicopters. The Cyclorama building had no windows, so that was the only way they had to know what was happening outside without poking their heads out the door and taking a personal look. Nobody was about to volunteer for that duty. “Okay, received,” the lieutenant said a moment later. She turned to look at Caxton. “Definite signs of movement. Under light enhancement these things show up pretty good, and—”

The doors of the Cyclorama Center slammed open before she could finish her thought. A single vampire strode through them, his arms wide, his mouth open in a wicked grin. He was shirtless and Caxton could make out his ribs below his tight white skin, but his cheeks were glowing pink. He must have just fed, moments before.

The guardsmen were ready, had been ready since they’d taken shelter in the building. They opened up with single shots, peppering both sides of his chest. White meat splattered from the impacts and a thin black tendril of blood oozed from a wound in his cheek. He took a step forward and new holes opened all over his body, but the older wounds were already healing over.

Another step forward—and then white shapes burst out from behind him, flashing left and right, other vampires coming in right behind him.

No, Caxton thought, but yes—they were that well organized. They had planned this attack, they had gorged one of their number on blood until he was nearly bulletproof and they had sent him in first. While he drew fire the weaker vampires had crept inside without resistance.

The round room’s weird acoustics made every rifle shot echo and repeat, and the muzzle flashes fractured Caxton’s vision as she jumped to her feet. She grabbed Glauer and shoved him toward the rear exit, a fire door at the northern side of the building. She felt a cold breeze on the back of her neck and spun around. It felt as if her Beretta jumped into her hand. Before she’d even registered the pale shape looming at her shoulder she lifted and fired three quick shots. The vampire there curled around his emaciated limbs and tumbled at her feet. Had she hit the heart? She doubted it—she’d been firing blind.

Hurriedly she brought up her rifle and shoved the stock into the crook of her shoulder. The vampire struggled to get his knees under him, then one foot. She waited, holding as long as she could, until his pale body loomed up and over her again.

Then she pressed the muzzle of her weapon against his chest and fired a .50-caliber round right through his heart. He died before he could even look surprised.

Safe—for the moment—she spun around to see what was happening.

Elsewhere in the room the guardsmen were dying faster than they could acquire targets. She saw one screaming and pounding at the floor as a vampire tore into his back with razor-sharp teeth. His legs had already been torn off by another. She saw Lieutenant Peters wrestling with a vampire that could have bench-pressed her, body armor and all, smacking the monster across the head again and again with the heat shield of her patrol rifle.

“Break contact,” Caxton shouted, and a few of the guardsmen heard her and ran for the fire door.

Those few who weren’t already in the process of dying. She tried to line up a shot on the vampire wrestling with Peters, but there was no way to avoid hitting the lieutenant as well. A moment later it didn’t matter—the vampire got his face into her throat. The guardswoman tried to spit out one last curse, but it came out as a gurgling, plaintive moan. In moments she was dead, and her vampire assailant was that much stronger.

78.

I thought we would have time to train, and devise special tactics for the use of vampires in wartime. We did not.

No one expected Gettysburg to happen. Neither side was prepared. Once it began, however, like a fire in a fallow field, it could not be stopped.

I was near Hagerstown with my rail car at the time the news came. I was on my way toward Pipe Creek, to join up with Meade’s army; a trap had been laid there, to draw Lee south again. Clearly Lee had failed to take the bait. My orders changed in a moment and I linked up with a troop train to take us across the border. I was not ready. My men, such as they were, were not ready.

It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. I moved about the troop train once we were under way and saw men praying, some wailing to the skies. They believed the End of Days had come. The soldiers knew this battle would be a “good ’un,” a last desperate fight to try to stop Lee before he could capture Philadelphia and force a peace. The men sang songs, “John Brown’s Body,” which I hadn’t heard since the great muster when all Washington was an armed camp, or the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” By God, it was stirring.

As we approached the little market town of Gettysburg the singing stopped abruptly. There was another sound, an abominable sound, an unbearable sound that rocked the train car beneath me, shifted the coffins back and forth in their racks. I had never heard real artillery fire before. I had not heard guns ring like bells and the earth roar as it was torn open. From twenty miles away the noise was loud enough to tear the breath out of my mouth. They say those guns were heard as far away as Pittsburgh.

—THE PAPERS OFWILLIAMPITTENGER

79.

“Go, now,” Caxton said, grabbing a guardsman’s arm and shoving him toward the exit. He went. The door flapped open and closed on its spring-loaded hinges as one after another of her troops pressed through. Caxton searched the Cyclorama for any more survivors, but all she saw were torn and bloodied corpses—and vampires.

Twenty or so of them had pushed inside the vast round space. They stood in the middle of the floor, looking up at her. Their tattered uniforms—one even wore the moldering remains of a forage cap—echoed the look of the painted soldiers on the walls. They were old, these vampires. So old—and so hungry. She could only imagine how hungry they must be, after lying asleep in the ground for a hundred and forty years.

Caxton cursed herself. Arkeley would never have given that thought time to form. They weren’t people, these vampires. Not anymore. They were killers, wild animals that needed to be put down.

One of them stepped forward, toward her, arms up. Beseeching, begging her for her blood. Behind him others started moving.

She lined up her shot perfectly. The vampire took another step. He had fed—she could see a slight tinge of pink in his cheeks, could see his chest where his ribs weren’t quite as prominent as they were on the others. Her first shot only ripped open his skin and splintered a few bones. Her second shot spun him around until she could see only his arm and his side. She waited for him to turn back, to face her again, before she fired a third shot that sent fragments of his dark heart spinning out through a hole in his back.

The others were still moving, still coming closer. Some of them tried to fix her with their gaze, but she was able to avoid eye contact. She could feel her skin rippling, her body curling in revulsion.

Adrenaline—pure, liquefied fear—coursed through her body. Every fiber of her being just wanted to turn and run, to escape. Somehow she held her ground.

Caxton couldn’t take them all on. That would be suicide. She could buy a few moments for her troops, though. They were out there in the dark, running for the visitor center. The longer she kept the vampires inside the Cyclorama the better chance the guardsmen and Glauer had to make it. She wanted Glauer to make it. She owed him this chance.

“Who’s next?” she asked, raising her rifle to a firing posture.

The vampires seethed forward, all of them at once. Like vaporous white mist they rushed toward her, so fast they seemed a single mass of death hurled at her. Caxton had expected as much. They were too smart to try for her one at a time.

She dropped the rifle, letting it fall back on its sling, and shoved her hand in her pocket to pull out her second and last flashbang. She’d already peeled off the plastic wrapper, so it took only a fraction of a second to rip out the pin and let it tumble out of her pocket. She didn’t have even enough time to throw it—

She hurled herself backward, her eyes screwed shut. Her back hit the push bar of the fire door even as the flashbang went off and the vampires howled in pain. She hadn’t had time to pull on her ear protectors, and the noise of the explosion ripped through her eardrums, deafening her, filling up her head with a high-pitched whine so loud it made her teeth hurt, made her guts vibrate.

She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. Her body was wracked by the noise, her senses completely scrambled. She was just marginally aware that she was falling, falling backward, then she felt a new wave of pain as she hit the grass hard, her arms flying up reflexively to protect her head. She opened her eyes, but all she saw was darkness. She’d passed from the well-lit Cyclorama into the near-total darkness of the overcast night, and her eyes were still adjusting.

Someone grabbed her arm. She lashed out, terrified that a vampire would tear her apart while she was still deaf and blind, but the hand just held on to her and eventually she realized it was a warm hand, a human hand holding her. She blinked her eyes rapidly, trying to force her pupils to dilate. Eventually she saw a gray shape looming out of the darkness above her, a gray shape bisected by a darker bar. A face—a face with a thick mustache. It was Glauer.

“—hear me? The…through…door…bolt…how…”

His voice was a distant rumbling, a bass-heavy noise trying to fight through the ringing in her ears. She could hear only a fraction of what he was saying. Frustration surged up inside of her and she sat up, then climbed to her feet. She could see Glauer a little better then and she noticed that he was jabbing his index finger at something behind her.

She spun around and saw the fire door she’d just crashed through. It had closed on its hinges, but now it was rattling in its frame. As if the vampires inside were trying to get it open but didn’t know how to work the push bar. Well, maybe that was even true—they’d probably never seen one before. It would take only seconds before they figured it out, however, if only by trial and error.

Glauer had been asking her if there was any way to bolt the door. She’d lost precious time while she recovered her senses. Urgently she cast around her, looking for a lock, looking for something to push up against the door. The door had no knob on this side—it was meant to be opened only in emergencies, and to keep out trespassers who might try to break in. There was a small lock plate with a narrow keyhole, presumably to be used to seal the door shut. They didn’t have the key, though. Glauer ran his fingers across the plate, wincing back every time the door jumped in its frame. If a vampire so much as leaned on the door, if his hip caught the push bar, it could fly open at any moment. They had no more time. Caxton grabbed his sleeve, tried to pull him away, but he was intent on the lock plate.

“—in the movies. Open the…but maybe it’ll…the lock,” he said, staring at her.

She could only shake her head. What was he saying?

Looking as if he’d lost all patience with her, Glauer finally drew a bead on the lock plate on the edge of the door with his rifle. Grimacing, he squeezed the trigger before she could stop him. The enormous bullet pranged off the lock plate and Caxton felt its wind as it ricocheted past her cheek. It could have killed her, could have blown her brains out.

“You idiot,” she shouted, and was surprised to find she could hear herself. Then she looked at the lock plate. The bullet had smashed in the keyhole, deforming the lock mechanism altogether. More importantly, the door had stopped jumping.

Maybe Glauer’s stupid move had actually jammed the lock. Or maybe the vampires were afraid of being shot through the door. It didn’t matter.

She shook her head and pushed Glauer toward Taneytown Road, which ran past the side of the Cyclorama building. He’d bought them a few more seconds, but that was all they were going to get.

80.

This was the first battle I’d ever directly witnessed. I suppose I had imagined men in pressed blue uniforms whirling sabers in the air, calling other men on to a glorious attack. It was nothing like that at all. At Gettysburg I saw soldiers pressed forth into withering fire, muskets popping and blasting, the oncoming men knowing not which way they should run. I saw the guns chew the land up and spit out corpses, flinging them high in the air. I saw much blood; and many dead men, far more than I could stomach. They lay in heaps, or strewn about the field as if they’d been lead soldiers, tossed aside by a bored and impatient child. They were hauled back behind the line when it was possible, which was rarely, and there stacked like cordwood. The wounded far outnumbered them, but the sight of these was almost worse. So many men begging for water, for a surgeon, and so few of those to go around. There was always some man screaming his last, and some other begging him to shut his mouth and be quiet.

This was the second day of the battle, which had been running hot all day. Lee held the northwest, and all of Seminary Ridge while we faced him across a sunken roadway from the top of Cemetery Ridge. Rebels came roaring up that incline, their weapons high, their packs swinging, and they were chopped down like wheat at harvest. As they ran they screeched and hollered and bleated out the worst noise I have ever heard. This was the famed “Rebel Yell,” and its design was to strike fear into our hearts. It worked well enough on me.

—THE PAPERS OFWILLIAMPITTENGER

81.

Her hearing came back, but not perfectly. A dull grinding buzz filled her head and it didn’t diminish over time. Repeated exposure to the noise generated by the flashbangs could permanently deafen someone, she knew, and she worried she was already halfway there.

She could hear her own clothing rustle, though, which had to be a good sign. In the distance she could hear gunfire—patrol rifles, some discharging in short, careful bursts, others going wild with pointless automatic fire.

She ran behind a tree and signaled for Glauer to come up next to her. “Some of our guys are still out here,” she said. “They must have been trapped—unable to get to the next fallback point.”

“We could go find them, try to help them,” Glauer suggested. He sounded like he was shouting at her from a far-off hilltop, even though he was only a few feet away. “They’ll get slaughtered out here.”

She shook her head. She had to think like Arkeley, do what Arkeley would have done. The old Fed would have known better than to go racing blindly into the dark in the hopes of rescuing his troops. He would have considered them disposable. For Arkeley the only thing that mattered was that the vampires died.

She couldn’t reconcile that with her own conscience. But her rational mind was willing to accept it for the time being. “We need to stick to the plan,” she said. She looked up at Glauer. “You should have stuck to the plan. You shouldn’t have waited for me out here in the open.”

He shrugged. “We’re partners, right? You don’t abandon your partner in the middle of a firefight.”

She scowled and looked away, toward the road. Partners. Glauer’s old partner, Garrity, had died at the hands of a vampire. Glauer had refused to give chase, instead sticking with Garrity even though he was already dead.

Caxton had been Arkeley’s partner, once. At least she’d thought of herself that way. Arkeley had only ever meant to use her as bait.

“Come on,” she said, and hurried out into the road. The streetlamps lit up the dark asphalt but nothing beyond the edge of the road. They ruined her night vision, but still she squinted into the shadows, ready for any threat that came toward her.

It was Glauer who saw the danger when it came.

“Something moved,” he said, raising one hand to point at a cannon sitting by the side of the road. The streetlight dripped from the rim of one of its wheels. “There,” he said again, much louder.

A vampire launched itself from behind the cannon, streaking across the asphalt. For a second Caxton thought she saw his red eyes. She swung her rifle up and fired three shots, but she knew she wouldn’t hit the vampire. It was just suppressing fire.

“Run,” she shouted, and then booked across the road, her knees pumping madly.

The visitors center, their next fallback point, sat low and massive directly in front of her. It was a sprawling pile of yellow brick with plenty of doors, much less defensible than the Cyclorama building.

She rushed up to the front entrance, a row of glass doors, and shoved her way inside, Glauer pressing up tight behind her. Behind the row of doors lay a narrow entrance foyer and beyond that the main access point to the building. She crouched down and stared through the glass, trying to see the vampire she’d shot at. For a few panicked seconds she waited, trying not to move too much, trying not to breathe.

Apparently the vampire was too smart to try a frontal attack. Or maybe he’d just been after somebody else all along.

“Okay,” she said, finally. “Let’s move in.”

Glauer went first, his rifle cradled in his good arm. He kicked open an inner door and ran through, then jumped back hurriedly as bullets tore out of the darkness. The noise in the enclosed foyer was like the ringing of giant iron bells, and the muzzle flashes dazzled Caxton’s eyes. She understood what was happening instantly, though.

“Stand down!” Caxton shouted, grabbing Glauer’s belt and pulling him back, away from the door.

“We’re on your side!”

A scared-looking face popped out of the inner door. It was one of the guardsmen, one of the troops she’d seen at the Cyclorama Center. The one who had wanted a pony.

“Shit,” he said, looking at Caxton and then Glauer. He chewed on his lower lip. “We thought you were—”

“Vampires. Yeah,” Caxton said. She cursed herself for nearly getting Glauer killed. “Well, we’re not.

Can we come in?”

The guardsman stepped back from the door and she pushed past him into the main lobby of the visitor center, a cluttered space of display cases and signage. A ticket counter lined the wall on her right, while a darkened gift shop stood on her left. At the far end of the room exits led into gloomy hallways, posted with signs for guided tours and the “famous” electric map.

Three guardsmen sat on the floor, their weapons across their knees. They stared up at her with terrified eyes. The guardsman who had shot at them leaned against the ticket counter, looking into the shadows, specifically not meeting her gaze. He had corporal’s bars on his uniform and a name tag that read HOWELL .

“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.

Caxton’s blood froze. She dropped to a firing crouch and held out an arm to keep Glauer back. She waited for the doors to crash open, for dozens of vampires to come bursting out, but nothing of the sort happened.

The doors just stood there, slightly open. It could have been nothing. The building’s furnace might have switched on and a sudden puff of hot air could have pushed the doors open.

Not likely, she thought.

“Cover me,” Glauer said, moving in. She stayed in her crouch, her weapon ready. He pushed his back up against the wall just to one side of the slightly open doors and peered through the crack. “I don’t see anything,” he told her. He held out his rifle and used it like a stick to push one door open all the way.

Caxton could see something of the room beyond—a big open space lined with rows of seats. The doors opened on the top level of a square amphitheater. Anything at all could be waiting below, hidden from view.

Duck-walking forward, she moved closer to the doors. Glauer stepped through them, his rifle moving from left to right as he covered the room. “Clear,” he said, and she got up to her full height again and moved in, her own rifle still at the ready in case he’d missed something.

She scanned the blue seats and the flights of steps that ran between them, made a note of all the fire exits from the room, then looked down. The electric map lay at the bottom of the amphitheater, an enormous topographically correct rendering of the town of Gettysburg and the battlefield to the south. An operator could switch on and off a series of lights to indicate where various regiments and battalions had stood on each day of the battle. It was hard for Caxton to see much of the map, however, because it was obscured by coffins.

Lots of coffins. Some were broken open but most remained intact. They lay without any real organization on top of the map or on the floor around it. A lot of them had been laid across rows of seats or stood propped up against the steps. She didn’t need to count them to know there must be ninety-nine in total.

She had finally found the coffins. Too late to do any good.

84.

While I was off to war, much transpired behind me, at my previous lodgings. I was only to learn much later of how sorely I’d underestimated my new friend. I was able to reconstruct most of what happened. The following I took from the official record of the special court martial of Private Jack Beecham, transcribed from his own words:

“It was right after midnight, right after her night’s feeding, that it happened.

“I really have no explanation for it, sir, other than it seemed right. The man who came had a bad wound on his face and he looked sickly, but we just thought he was some poor casualty bastard put to use by the quartermaster ’cause he wasn’t fit to fight anymore. Some of the men working as cooks here have worse injuries and ailments, as I’m sure you know. This fellow said his name was Bill something. He was a yank soldier and he used Colonel Pittenger’s name, said he had orders to pick up a coffin and take it away for burial, that’s all I know. No, sir, he hadn’t any papers, but that’s not so rare in wartime, when things aren’t often done to a nicety. He had a wagon with black bunting, you know, a funeral hearse, and a team. Oh, how those horses got themselves up when we brought out the coffin, as if they’d been at by a whole nest of hornets. We was all glad to see him go, as you might imagine, for it meant getting rid of those maddened beasts.

“It seemed alright, honest. I didn’t know Miss Malvern was inside that coffin, or I’d have put up a real fight. He said he was going to take her home and bury her proper, but where he actually got to, I have no notion.

“I’ll take my punishment now, if that’s alright.”

Private Beecham was made to ride a donkey backward around the whole of the camp at morning rolls, with a dunce cap over his eyes. Then he was flogged, given six stripes, and had his week’s pay taken away. It was lucky for him I was so far away; my punishment would have been far graver. Perhaps I’d have introduced him to my new acquaintances.

—THE PAPERS OFWILLIAMPITTENGER

85.

Glauer headed down the steps toward the map. She circled around the top of the amphitheater, scanning the exit doors. She tried one, found it locked. Moved to the next one. That was a dangerous game, she knew. To try the doors she had to lower her weapon, leaving her vulnerable. She needed to do this the way she’d been trained—which meant she needed help. She needed Glauer to cover her while she opened each door.

“Glauer, let’s keep together, okay?” she called out. The big cop had made his way down to the level of the map to stand in the middle of a group of coffins. Though she was sure they were empty, she didn’t want him down there. “Glauer?”

He didn’t even seem to hear her. His rifle was pointed down at the floor, but his face was turned upward, his eyes focused on a glassed-in booth above her head, where the map’s operator would have sat.

His jaw slid open as if it had come unhinged. His massive arms fell lifeless at his sides.

“Glauer!” she shouted, but he didn’t even flinch.

Oh shit, she thought, even as his rifle lifted, even as he brought up the hand of his bad arm to grip the heat shield. She recognized the look on his face just fine—she’d worn the same expression often enough herself. There had to be a vampire up there in the booth. Glauer had made eye contact and now the vampire had him hypnotized. She rushed down toward him, thinking she could snap him out of it.

Then she noticed that his rifle was pointing right at her. Still he looked upward as if transfixed by some religious vision. He wasn’t aiming at her. He probably didn’t even know what his hands were doing. She saw his finger slip through the trigger guard and just had time to drop to the floor as his rifle spat bullets across the wall behind her.

“Trooper?” she heard him call, his voice watery and indistinct. “Where are you? I can’t…I can’t see you.”

Caxton crawled forward on her elbows and knees, protected only by the row of seats between Glauer and herself. He fired another burst that tore at the upholstery of the seats, sending yellow fluff into the air.

She had no idea what she was going to do next. He had her pinned down—if she stood up he would blow her away. If she moved forward or backward too far she would come to one of the sets of steps that ran down to the map. To the side there were two doors, the locked fire exit she’d just tried and the door she’d intended to investigate next, a total unknown. It might be open. There might be fifty vampires waiting behind it. It didn’t matter much, since to get to it she would have to dodge bullets.

“Trooper…did you say…something?” Glauer asked. His voice sounded different, and she realized he was moving. Coming toward her, climbing the steps.

She couldn’t move—but if she didn’t move he would just come to her and kill her where she lay. Her only choice was to try the mystery door. He would have plenty of time to shoot her while she reached for its handle, but she was out of options.

No—she had one option. She could shoot him first. Arkeley would probably have done just that, but she didn’t know if she had the nerve.

So instead she waited for his next burst—just two bullets this time, one of which knocked chips of plaster out of the wall right over her head—and then jumped up and ran as fast as she could for the door.

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.

The vampire leaped out of her light even as she brought her pistol around to shoot him. He moved with an awful grace, his limbs contracting and then extending like finely machined springs. She heard him land with a gentle thud, somewhere to her left. She spun on her heel, tried to follow him with her light, but she had lost him.

From very close by she heard him laugh again.

She tried desperately to remember her training. She needed to try to control the scene. That was something they’d taught her in the state police academy, in almost every class she took. You didn’t run into a dark alley until you knew who was waiting in the shadows. If someone was shooting at you, your first instinct should not be to return fire but to find cover.

Arkeley had taught her that sometimes those rules didn’t apply when you were fighting vampires, but at that moment she was willing to trust time-honored police procedure. She kept her back to the wall and started moving slowly to her left, toward the door to the control booth. If she could get a barrier between herself and the vampire, well, that would considerably extend her life expectancy.

She put her foot out, let it touch the floor. Another foot, another step. She reached across her body with her right arm—her gun arm—and waved the barrel of her pistol into empty space. The door was still open. That—that was good. She turned slightly and started to slide herself into the doorway.

Instantly cold hands descended on her shoulders and pulled her back. She screamed, a full-throated shriek of terror, as the vampire hurled her through space. She plummeted through the dark, sensing rows of seats passing beneath her, her arms and legs spinning, trying to find something, anything to hold on to.

She collided belly first with a pile of coffins and stopped screaming at once. All the air in her body was forced out as if she’d been wrung out by a giant hand. Her stomach burned with pain and her legs felt battered.

Desperate, panicked, she rolled over onto her back and pointed her flashlight back the way she’d come, back toward the top of the amphitheater. The vampire was right there, moving toward her, his hands up as if he intended to jump down right on top of her. She brought her gun hand up, but found it empty—the Beretta had fallen out of her grip on the way down. She threw the arm across her face instead in a purely reflexive gesture—there was no way the arm would protect her against the vampire’s attack. She waited out the split second it would take him to land on her, to kill her, waited it out with nothing but fear inside her, waited—and waited—

From up above she heard a surprised grunt. Then a noise like leather being torn. The vampire roared, but still he didn’t pounce on her, still she was alive. She decided to risk a quick glance.

Up top, on the walkway behind the topmost row of seats, the vampire was waving his arms furiously. It looked like it was waving for her to come help it.

Its chest was torn open. The skin hung away in flaps from exposed ribs that glistened with clotted blood.

Her light went right into its chest cavity and she saw—without understanding—that its heart had been torn out.

It collapsed with a mewling noise she found almost piteous.

She could find no sign of what—or who—had destroyed it.

88.

I have changed so. It feels wrong, somehow, even to hold this pen with my new white hand. The pen is a tool of the living & I have put behind me all such things. Tonight we are at rest, though it is unwelcome, & unsought for. Tomorrow surely we will be loosed. It is quiet here, though they say a battle raged all day. I was asleep, & heard nothing of it. I do smell the smoke now.

My heart longs to go out into the night, to fight, & serve again. I have gained new powers, both of my body, which walks again (& I thought it never possible!), & of the mind. Such things I see now. I see ghosts, Bill, everywhere now about me, yet am not much frightened. Like me they have passed the vale of tears, & we are as comrades…

One power I now possess, which is to raise the dead. Just as you were raised. I will not do it. Yes, even if I am ordered to do so…I cannot bear to see the faces torn, the bodies broken, as yours was.

Beyond this I promise no mercy, to any man I meet.

Tomorrow there must be BLOOD. I did not know, before, that I would dream of it, & in such quantity, & of its taste.

—LETTER OFALVAGRIEST (UNPOSTED)

89.

It was over. For the moment. Caxton was alone again, still alive, lying on a pile of broken timber that had once been some vampire’s coffin.

She had no way of knowing if Glauer was still in the room or not. She flashed her light around the corners of the amphitheater, looking for any trace of him, but found nothing.

She lay back for a while, uncomfortable but unwilling to move. Her body protested every time she lifted a limb or even moved her eyes too rapidly. She could be dying, she thought. The fall onto the pile of coffins had hurt—a lot—and for all she knew, she had internal injuries. She might have punctured a lung, or she could have a cerebral hemorrhage just waiting to bleed out if she tried to sit up.

You’re fine, she thought. It was what Arkeley would have said. He wouldn’t have even bothered with looking her over. In Arkeley’s world if you were capable of standing up, then you were capable of continuing the fight. And if you weren’t spurting blood from a major artery or looking down at a compound fracture of your own femur, then you were capable of standing up.

She sat up slowly, determined to have at least a few more seconds when she wasn’t under the immediate specter of death. She brushed splinters and dust off her arms, then she used her hands and knees to roll up to a standing posture. She hurt all over, but nothing was broken or even sprained. She was exhausted beyond all human capacity, but adrenaline would keep her going for at least a little longer.

She was alone, it was dark, there were enemies all around—such things were too abstract compared to her aches and pains to be even worth thinking about.

She waved her flashlight across the floor until she’d found her Beretta. It looked alright. She checked the magazine and found four rounds inside. She had an extra clip in her coat pocket. Her patrol rifle lay next to her on the floor. There were six rounds in the clip, big .50 BMG bullets capable of passing through an engine block. Those six rounds were all she had left for that weapon.

She’d started out with two flashbangs, but those were gone. She had a can of pepper spray, a big four-ounce police model, but she had never actually tried pepper spray out on a vampire and she had no idea if it would incapacitate one. She didn’t know if it would even annoy a vampire.

She had no idea where to go next.

An answer came, then, though she knew better than to trust it. The red sign over one of the fire doors came on, flickering red. It saidEXIT, and it dazzled her eyes when she looked at it.

She’d played their games before. She knew the only sane course of action was to lock herself in the control booth and wait for morning. She also knew that was not an option, not when she still had work to do.

She headed for the door markedEXIT and took one last look back at the auditorium. The red buzzing light lit up the whole room, once her eyes had adjusted to its demonic glow. She couldn’t see Glauer anywhere, not in the seats, not down by the map, not cowering in one of the long shadows. She called his name a couple of times but got no answer. So she turned to the exit and put her hand on the push bar.

The corridor beyond was dark, but a light shone at its far end. She moved forward slowly, trying not to make too much noise. There could be anything down there, she knew, anything at all. As she approached the light she saw it was another exit sign. She moved toward it, trying not to hurry, and lifted her patrol rifle just in case.

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.

A sign out front claimed the tavern had been standing since 1776, long before the Battle. It was a long, sprawling complex rather than a single building, added on to over the years and surrounded by tree-lined parking lots. The main building had thick, defensible-looking flowstone walls pierced by dozens of windows with broad white shutters. Redbrick chimneys stood up from the shingled roof and a white picket fence ran around the structure, leading up to a broad red door like a target that she hurried toward, certain she wanted to get inside as quickly as possible, sure as she could be that the intersection was better off behind her.

90.

July 3rd dawned and at once the guns were on again, hurling death against us as we hurled destruction at them. My troops slept through it all in their coffins, through the fighting at the Devil’s Den where men stumbled on the bodies of their compatriots, and could gain no result. I saw it all, and came to envy them. The feeling, as if my head were stuck in some invisible vise, continued throughout that day, and vexed me sorely. I complained of it to a surgeon, who had so little time for my aches and pains that he did not even spit out a reply. When I asked about it I was told every man felt the same. They knew this sensation well. Some felt it was from the noise, that the very sound of mortar shells bursting all around us was enough to physically harm a man.

Others claimed it was from our inability to sleep.

One man, a volunteer from Kentucky, offered to pray with me. “That feelin’ ya got, that’s God speakin’, tellin’ ya to git right now, for ya ain’t got so much time left to make up for bad behavior!”

I will leave it to others to describe the content of that third day of battle, to list the regiments who fought with such valor and to sing the plaudits of those generals who finally outwitted Master Lee. I could only watch in terror as the Southron horde came on in waves, again and yet again, as we fought them back, with muskets and in some places with bare bayonets. My mind was not capable of making sense of the general horror, the appalling loss of life, the noise, the smoke. The smoke, the smoke! In my memory that place is all made of ash, and flecks my cheeks and nose with its feathery powder, and all I breathe is smoke. I smell it now!

—THE PAPERS OFWILLIAMPITTENGER

91.

Just before she reached the door, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up and she stopped, motionless, like a rabbit paralyzed by fear.

Someone—some thing, some unnatural thing—was nearby. She’d been fighting vampires long enough to know the feeling. It had to be close. It could be hiding in any of the broad shadows around her. It would be within striking range, she thought. It would be waiting for her to turn her back, and then it would attack.

She lifted her rifle and turned on one foot, pointing the weapon at nothing and everything. Ready to shoot the second something moved.

Then as quickly as the unnatural feeling had come, it disappeared.

There had been a vampire nearby. She was certain of it. It could have attacked her. It must have wanted to. But for some reason it had changed its mind and left her alone. That made no sense.

It didn’t need to. It was a good thing, she told herself, and she could use some more of those. She thought about the dead vampire above the electric map. Something had torn out its heart. Something was—protecting her? That wasn’t something a vampire would ever do. They didn’t see human life as possessing any significant value. They certainly wouldn’t go out of their way to save a human being. Yet something had done just that. Then again, perhaps it wasn’t protecting her at all. Maybe it was just laying claim to her. Maybe one of the vampires had decided she was its personal prey. Maybe it had killed the vampire at the electric map so it could save her for itself.

Again she told herself it didn’t matter. She was still alive, and that did matter. She wanted to stay that way.

“Okay,” she said, to center herself. Then she turned, pressed the thumb latch on the door, and stepped inside into darkness.

Closing the door behind her, she let her lungs heave and strain to get her breath back. She felt like she’d been punched in the gut. It was freezing inside the tavern. She detected no sign of life inside the big stone building.

“Okay,” she said again. She wanted to sit down for a while. She wanted to get a good night’s sleep. She didn’t have time to be exhausted, though. Nothing had changed. No matter how many vampires were after her, no matter what they might have wanted, she still had to follow her own plan. She needed to hook up with any remnants of her army of cops and guardsmen. She needed to find more ammunition for her weapons. If nothing else she needed to get somewhere safe, somewhere she could defend, and hold it as long as she could. Hopefully long enough for the National Guard reinforcements to arrive.

There was a light on inside the tavern. She hadn’t expected that. A single candle stood on a table in the middle of the room, flickering with a yellow light that dazzled her eyes.

She was expected, she realized. Someone was waiting for her in here.

In the light of just the candle the room was full of dancing shadows. It was worse than darkness, she decided, so she blew out the flame and watched its orange spark dull and finally die. She didn’t turn on her flashlight immediately—she wanted her vision to adapt to the darkness first. So she stared into the dark and listened to nothing but her own breath. For a while that was all there was.

Then she heard music.

The sound of a fiddle playing a lively tune. It was so appropriate a sound for the ancient tavern that for a moment she wondered if she’d been sent back in time.

If only, she thought.

She climbed to her feet. The music was coming from above her, from some room higher up in the building. She heard another instrument as well—a flute? A recorder? No, it was a fife. And underneath, pounding out an uncomplicated rhythm, she heard a bass drum.

There was nothing forcing her to investigate the music. If she wanted to—and she really did want to, she knew that it was herself thinking this—she could just stay downstairs until dawn. She would be safe enough there in the tavern. She could defend herself. Shoot anything that tried to come through the door.

Keep her back to a stone wall that even vampires couldn’t break their way through.

She could just sit there and listen to the music all night. If she wanted to. And she wanted to.

There was only one problem. Arkeley would have wanted her to go upstairs. She knew exactly what he would do in her situation. She knew he was right. Vampires loved to play tricks with your brain. It was one of their chief joys. It was also one of their few weaknesses. If you walked right into their traps, if you defied the obvious logic of their illusions, more often than not you could catch them on a bad footing.

So she switched on her flashlight, found the stairwell, and headed up.

The room at the top of the stairs was maybe fifteen feet on a side, with a low ceiling and lots of windows. Beyond that she had no idea what it really looked like. What she saw up there, in that room, couldn’t possibly be real.

Men in blue uniforms, well tailored and lined with polished brass buttons, stood against the walls holding steins of beer or cups of punch. Their faces were ruddy with health and good cheer. A few of them were playing the instruments she’d heard, making a raucous, happy sound. Along one wall stood a groaning board loaded with roasts and cakes and an enormous punch bowl. Bunting hung from that wall, golden cloth printed with the message:

WELCOME BACK, ALVA

“our hero return’d”

The floor of the room had been cleared away—a thick rug had been rolled up and shoved in a corner.

On the bare floorboards two soldiers danced a spirited turn to the fiddle’s tune. Their faces were bright with sweat and excitement and they laughed as they turned and kicked around each other.

One was dressed in a tattered uniform of dark blue cotton and his face was torn and bloody, the skin hanging in ragged strips. He didn’t seem to mind, judging by how he laughed and clapped to keep time.

His partner looked in far better shape. He was a giant of a man, maybe seven feet tall. He was dashing in a green frock coat and tight gray trousers, his shoes shined to a high luster. The chevrons on his sleeve were picked out in gold embroidery. A shaggy mane of hair and a thick beard shot through with traces of gray framed a tanned, slightly lined face. His eyes were deep and soulful and very brown.

None of the room’s occupants seemed to notice Caxton as she clomped up the last risers and into the square room. They were too busy watching the wild dance, too absorbed in drinking and eating their fill.

Even as she raised her patrol rifle and tried to get a bead on one of the dancers’ hearts, not a single eye tracked her.

Then she fired—and everything changed.

92.

They came at us all at once. That is called Pickett’s charge now, but at the time we did not know who had called the advance. At the time it was only a wall of gray, sweeping toward us, as if some dam had been burst open and floodwaters were rushing uphill right at us. They screamed as they came, even as our mortars blew them to bits, even as General Berdan’s Sharpshooters picked them off one after the other. Still they came, our muskets blazing, and still they came, with banners flying. They pushed up against us, spun and died as they ran athwart our bayonets and still they came!

They broke our ranks. We pushed them back and they pressed us harder. The guns spoke volumes, the smoke so thick I could suddenly see nothing, and wandered mazed through a world that had lost all color and definition. I brushed up against the flank of a horse and muttered a pardon. The rider leaned down to get a look at me. It was General Hancock. “Have your men ready, sir,” he said, his eyes wide. “Make them ready!” He dashed off into the gloom and a moment later I heard him cry out. Had he been struck by enemy fire? I learned later that he had, and most grievously, but that he refused to leave the fighting. By God, even the generals were not safe that day!

I rushed back to where the coffins lay, watched over by a small guard of wounded men. I would have thrown them open at that very minute, and bid Griest and his men come forward and do battle, but time was against me. Despite the black pall over the sky the night was still far off.

—THE PAPERS OFWILLIAMPITTENGER