13 Bullets (Laura Caxton / Vampires #1)

13 Bullets (Laura Caxton / Vampires #1) Page 42

A pair of half-deads were standing near the trap-door. They were carrying a coffin between them, a plain wooden box that might have held tools once but it was just about human-sized. The coffin was meant for Caxton, for her vampiric rebirth. They'd built it while she slept.

One of them wore a chrome Kaiser helmet. He had been a biker four days earlier, a massively-built tough guy with a penchant for leather and grease. Reyes had taken him while he had stopped at a payphone. Nobody remembered who he was going to call. "It can't be much longer now," the half-dead said, his voice high and shrill. He rubbed his skeletal hands together until bits of dried-up flesh flaked off. "The sun is almost up."

The other half-dead shook her fleshless head. "The sun. I didn't think I'd ever see the sun again. I would have paid cash money to see it and now... Jesus. What am I? What did he make me into?" she asked. She sounded confused and more than a little scared. Reyes had found her jogging just before dawn, out on a lonely rural road still carpeted with the night's haze. She had tried to run, but Reyes had been faster. "This is... this is hell. I'm in hell, I must be."

"Don't be so quick to write this off," the biker told her. "It's got its compensations."

The female half-dead turned to look at her companion. "Compensations?

Spending the rest of time as an undead freak with no face has an upside, is that what you're telling me? I can't eat, I can't sleep. My body is falling to pieces while I watch, literally corroded by contact with the air. Where the hell is the silver lining in this?"

"Well," he told her, "it only lasts about a week."

Caxton stepped out of the shadows then, a five-foot-long bar of solid iron in her hands. She brought it around in a sweeping blow that knocked the faceless head right off of his neck. His stringy body slowly collapsed to the floor. She turned to face the other one, the female. The half-dead backed away from her, arms outstretched, begging. In a moment she was out of range and the heavy bar was an unwieldy weapon at best. Caxton threw it at her and winced as it clanged and rattled and banged on the concrete floor, well short of its target. The half-dead turned and ran on wobbly legs. Caxton ran after her and caught her easily. She grabbed the female's hand and tore it free, threw it into the dark corner of the mill. She grabbed the left arm and it came off with barely any pulling at all. The half-dead screamed and screamed. Finally she collapsed to the floor. Caxton stamped on her head with both feet until the screaming stopped. She took a moment to breathe, just breathe. She stood alone in the darkness of the mill. The vampire was dead. That was something, wasn't it? She'd achieved something real and of tangible value. Maybe that was enough.

"You still need to get out of here alive," Arkeley told her. She'd stopped looking for him. He was nearby, that was what mattered. "All that noise will bring the others."

She nodded, accepting that he was right. She checked her Beretta. She had three bullets. There were at least thirteen half-deads still active in the mill. She couldn't take them all on at once. She couldn't take more than one or two at a time-she'd only prevailed against the biker and the jogger through the element of surprise. If they had been prepared, if she'd given them a chance to fight back, she would have lost. Her arms were shaky with stress and horror. She'd barely been able to lift the iron bar.

Okay, she thought, so if you can't fight, then run. The trouble was she didn't know what direction to head. The fire from the night before had burnt out and the mill was filled with darkness, great clotted heaps of it. There had to be an exit from the mill, a doorway leading out into the day, but she had no idea where to find it.

"If you can't decide, head for the nearest landmark. That'll at least help you get your bearings," Arkeley told her. She turned and headed into the depths of the mill, toward the crucible and the cold blast furnace. The sun had smeared a little white light on the tall windows and she could make out a few details here and there. She could see enough that she didn't trip over the piles of junk or the ankle-high molds that littered the floor.

She saw torn faces floating in the gloom, bodies swimming towards her out of the dark. She felt skeletal hands reaching for her. One touched her side, the wasted muscles of a half-dead hand closing on the fabric of her shirt. She swung her elbow backward, hard, and the hand fell away with a high-pitched squeak. Ahead of her a red ruin of a face floated out of the gloom and she raised the Beretta and fired as the half-dead's arms came up to grab her. The half-dead cracked apart and exploded, but that left her with only two more rounds. She ducked under the attack of another half-dead and ran around the side of the crucible. Ahead she saw a pair of double swinging doors. A thin line of bluish light snuck in beneath them. She ran at the doors and threw her arms out to hit the pressure bars. The doors screamed open and she burst out into a courtyard enclosed by high brick walls on every side. Yellow grass burst from the ground all around her. She saw workbenches and old tool racks but there was no way out.

She was trapped.

At least there was blue sky over her head. At least she was outside. She smelled the baking manure smell of Kennett Square and knew she couldn't be far from help. The south-eastern region of Pennsylvania was pretty heavily developed. If she could just get out of the courtyard she would be free.

There was no exit, however. No way out. She'd run right into a dead end. The walls on every side were solid, unbroken. They were too high to climb. The double doors rattled and a half-dead poked its skeletal head out into the open air. She raised her pistol and it ducked back inside. "Arkeley," she said, "what do I do?"

He didn't answer. Maybe he had no better ideas than she did. She had two bullets and maybe ten or twelve half-deads chasing her. She had no time. Caxton grabbed the rough edge of a wooden table-really just a big sheet of plywood nailed to some sawhorses-and dragged it toward the far wall. She jumped up on top of it but she was still about seven feet too short to grab the top of the wall.

The double doors started moving again. One inched open, scraping on the uneven ground. She stared at it, almost as if she were hypnotized again, unable to move. If all the half-deads came out, if they were armed even with just knives or clubs, she was dead. She couldn't fight them all off.

"They're cowards," Arkeley told her. His voice was very soft. In the light of day she could barely hear him.

"What?" she asked, but she understood. "I only have two bullets," she pleaded with him, but she knew perfectly well by that point that he was just inside her head. That he was her own survival instinct, compartmentalized, made abstract. She waited a moment to let the half-deads get clustered and then she fired both shots right into the crack between the two doors. She heard one high-pitched scream and a lot of excited shouts. Good enough. The gun was empty so she shoved it into her holster. Then she jumped down and grabbed another work table, then a pile of two-by-fours. Soon she had a rickety heap of wood that looked like it might collapse under its own weight, much less hers. She stared up at the tottering pile and thought there was no way she could get up it, no way she could then jump from the top of the assemblage and grab the lip of the wall.

She knew what Arkeley would say. You only have to do it once, and if you fall and break your neck, it won't matter for very long.

With hands that shook badly she hauled herself up the makeshift scaffolding. She got her feet on the top level, an over-turned wheelbarrow. She put one foot on a wheel and it spun away from her. Carefully, her body trembling like grass in the wind, she got to the top and launched herself up the side of the wall. The heap collapsed beneath her, leaving her ten feet up in the air with no support. One of her hands found the top of the wall and clamped on, hard. Her other hand swung free but she fought her momentum and made it grab the wall as well. Then she heaved, pulling her own weight up onto the top of the wall. From up there she could see that the courtyard was surrounded by mill buildings on three sides. The fourth side fronted a country lane. A road-which had to lead somewhere. It had to lead to safety. There was a fifteen-foot drop on that side. She didn't let herself think about it, just lowered herself down as far as she could with her arms and then let go. The ground came up very hard and very fast. It crushed the wind right out of her, making her broken ribs sing a high plaintive howl of agony but the rest of her seemed okay. No broken limbs, anyway. She rolled to her feet and started running down the road, intending to flag down the first car she saw.

She was free.