13 Bullets

Chapter 49

"What do you mean, two vampires?" Caxton demanded. "We killed them all except for Scapegrace. You don't mean-Malvern, you can't mean that."
"No, I don't," Arkeley said. He checked the action on his Glock 23. He gestured at her own Beretta where it lay inert in her hand. She checked to see there was a round in the chamber and then she raised the weapon to shoulder-height, the barrel pointed at the ceiling. "Malvern is still at Arabella Furnace. I had Tucker check on her fifteen minutes ago and there was no change in her condition. So we have to assume that we made at least one mistake."
"We saw three coffins at the hunting camp," she insisted. She didn't want to hear what he said next, even though it was already echoing in the dark cloister of her own skull.
"That doesn't mean there couldn't have been another one somewhere else."
Arkeley moved toward the light switch, careful to stay out of the shed's wide doorway. "Let's go over what I do know. I came here tonight to officially relieve you of duty. I was going to send you back to the Highway Patrol. Then I saw that something was wrong. There were maybe ten cars and trucks parked out on the road. I looked around but none of your neighbors were having a party. I abandoned my own vehicle and came in here on foot, through the woods. By then they were already setting up their ambush. There are six half-deads hiding out by the driveway, there are five of them stationed in the yard next door, and three more of them on the roof of the kennels. There will be more-those are just the ones I found. I saw one vampire giving them orders. His ears were docked so we have to assume that was Scapegrace. Then another vampire climbed out of your bedroom window."
"You're absolutely sure it was a vampire you saw coming out of the window?
How good a look did you get?"
He shook his head. "I can't be certain of anything. But I saw something with pale white skin and long ears. Its hands were stained red."
Caxton moved up to the other side of the doorway, just as she'd been trained. When they left the shed they would go together, facing slightly different directions so they could cover each others' backs.
She texted Clara and told her to summon reinforcements. She called in to headquarters to report an officer under fire. She knew nobody could get there in time-the closest barracks was twenty miles away. They were going to have to fight their way out on their own, just the two of them. She looked up at Arkeley. "Do we have a plan?" she asked.
"Yes," he told her. "Shoot everything that moves."
Together they stepped through the doorway. Arkeley raised his weapon and fired even before her eyes had adjusted to the darkness. She saw a shadow coming toward her, a shadow with a broken face, and she shot it center mass. It crumpled and fell without a sound.
There were more of them. Suddenly they were everywhere.
Shadows detached from the trees, pale shapes darted around them like wolves circling to the attack. There were no warnings given this time, no cryptic messages to draw them out. A half-dead whirled out of the dark, a six-inch knife in his hand, and Caxton smashed him across the face with her weapon. He went down but not before three more sprang out at her. "There are too many," she shouted. "We need to get out of here!"
"Go," the Fed yelled back, though he was only three feet away. "Go now!"
Caxton broke away from Arkeley and dashed to the side of the kennels, intent on getting something behind her at least. Otherwise they might sneak up on her. She expected Arkeley to run for cover as well, to protect himself. He didn't.
The Fed dropped into a firing crouch and moved out into the open space between the kennels and the house. His gun arm stood straight out from his body and it swung back and forth like a weathervane as he tracked some assailant she couldn't see. He squeezed the trigger and bright fire leapt from his barrel. To her side, just inches from her left shoulder, a half-dead slipped downward to writhe in agony on the ground.
He spun and fired again-and a third time. Shadows howled and flopped in the darkness, but more of them appeared as if emerging from out of the night, as if they dropped from the moon-colored clouds. One leapt onto his back and bit at his neck with sharp teeth. He smashed its nose with his free fist and knocked it away. Another rolled into his legs and knocked him halfway down, dropping him to one knee. He shot her in the chest and she jerked backward. A half-dead grabbed his gun arm then and twisted.
He yelped in pain-Arkeley, of all people, cried out in pain. He must have been in agony. The half-dead must have caught him completely off his guard. Caxton wondered if his arm was broken.
Not that she didn't have her own concerns. The half-deads were coming for her, too, though with far less force or numbers. Clearly they didn't consider her to be a threat on Arkeley's level. She found herself almost disappointed. She fired at a dark shape that lunged down across the roof of the kennels and it fell to the ground with a hiss of exhausted breath. She kicked it in the legs and felt its flesh yield. Another half-dead reached down to try to grab her shoulders and he lifted her gun and fired without even looking.
"Go," Arkeley shouted again. She looked over in his direction but could barely see him. He was surrounded on every side by Scapegrace's servants. She discharged her weapon over and over, trying to thin out the crowd, even as she dashed out, away from the kennels. He was about to be overrun and she knew it but there was very little she could do. She couldn't save him-she didn't have enough bullets. Her only hope was to get away herself and find some backup. The problem was she wasn't sure where to go next. The driveway lead straight out to the road and the possibility of help. Any police response would come from that direction, assuming she lived long enough for anyone to arrive. Arkeley had said there were half-deads stationed out there, however. They would almost certainly be laying in wait.
Instead she turned to the back of the drive, to where a ten-foot privacy fence cut through the trees. She got a foot in between two of the boards and lunged up and grabbed at the branches that protruded over the top. Adrenaline carried her up and over and she slid down the trees on the other side, branches whipping at her face and digging up long scrapes on her hands and arms. She rolled down a steep embankment and into the parking lot of the elementary school next door. In the moonlight the black asphalt sparkled underneath her.
She heard gunfire from the other side of the fence. One shot-two more. Then nothing. She tried to breathe normally, tried to control her urge to panic. Arkeley was probably dead, she decided. That was bad, in many different ways, but it didn't change her situation.
The trees by the fence shivered and their dry leaves whispered as they rubbed together. Two half-deads were climbing up after her. Chasing her. They would be on her in a second.
She checked her weapon. She only had one round left. She was better off saving it, she decided. She climbed up to her feet and ran.
The school building was low and rectangular, a black edge in the night that she followed. She didn't know if half-deads could see in total darkness or not-vampires could see your blood glowing in the gloom but what about their servants? It was one of the many things she should have asked Arkeley back when she'd had the chance.
Back when he was still alive.
Guilt dripped down her spine as she dashed around a corner and up a short stairway. She could feel guilt and run at the same time. Ahead of her lay a backstop and a chain-link fence, the pale dirt of a baseball diamond. She dashed through a narrow gap in the fence and slid in a patch of dark mud.
There were trees ahead of her. Not such a big surprise. There were trees everywhere in Pennsylvania. They might give her a little cover, she decided. They might shield her from half-dead eyes. She slipped between them and realized her mistake almost instantly. You can't run at night in a forest, or at least, you can't run very far. No matter how dark a night might look it's ten times darker under a forest canopy. Unable to see she could run right into a hardwood trunk or trip over exposed roots. She had a flashlight in her pocket but turning it on would give away her position instantly. Without light she could break her neck, or worse, break a leg. She could end up immobilized but still conscious, end up unable to walk and forced to wait for the half-deads to find her. She needed to get out of the woods-but going back was out of the question.
Ahead of her she saw a patch of wan radiance and headed toward it, her hands outstretched, feeling her way forward. Her boots shuffled forward spasmodically, just waiting to be trapped by thick underbrush or to be sucked down into a puddle of mud.
The light revealed a clearing maybe fifty yards on a side and strangely regular in shape. A few thin saplings grew there but mostly it was covered with overgrown grass, yellow and thin with the season. She stepped out of the woods and into the relatively bright space, relief flooding through her body, and then she tripped over a rock. The hard, half-frozen ground connected with her chin and her teeth smashed together with a horrible clinking sound.
She struggled onto her side, then sat up and looked behind her. The stone she'd tripped over was pale, almost ghostly white in the moonlight. It was rough on top but straight on the sides, worn down by wind and rain over the course of centuries but once, long ago, it must have been straight and smooth. A slab of rock planted upright in the soil. Like a gravestone.
She had stumbled right into an abandoned cemetery.