Night of the Vampires (26 page)

They dozed.

And they awoke.

And when they did, tangled together, it was easy to lay a simple touch on the other, and start the fires rising again.

Finally, when he awoke much, much later, the fire had died, and the sun was up, and it was time that they rose, and the day began.

 

T
HE HORSES AWAITED THEM
just outside the home where they had lodged.

The night had been quiet, and, General Bickford assured Megan, the posts from Washington had been good: no activity there.

Megan couldn't help but feel that such might just be the calm before the storm.

Father Costello had come down from the church on the hill to wish them a safe journey, and to read them a
blessing before they began, which seemed fine with their entire party, though Private Guilder was Jewish, Private Hanson was Lutheran and only Sergeant Newcomb and a few of the others were actually Catholic. For once, no one seemed to notice the differences between their choices of worship.

Megan had a chance to whisper to Father Costello and ask about Daniel. He assured her Daniel was doing extremely well; it almost appeared that he had never been sick. The two of them, had, however, taken to sleeping in the sanctuary of the church itself.

At last they rode out, with Dickens leading the way, Cole following him, she behind Cole, the others behind her and Sergeant Newcomb, almost a veteran of this action, as he told her jokingly, taking up the rear.

They rode for several hours, crossing the river, then following a winding path that led them deep into forests that managed to remain verdant on the mount despite the endless shelling from various battles. It was midday when they arrived at the plateau where the dead of the area had been buried since the first settlers found rich land in the hills and valleys. The cemetery didn't seem big, but it appeared to have been neglected for years. While dead soldiers might have been sent home to be buried, their loved ones were no longer near enough, nor had the time, to tend to their graves. Weeds and flowers mingled wildly through the headstones and the occasional pieces of funerary art.

The chapel sat at the far edge of the cemetery, where the path ended, the grave sites stretching out beyond it to nearly the edge of the mount. The little chapel seemed forlorn beneath the afternoon sun. The paint was peeling,
the windowpanes were cracked and broken, and the front door hung lopsided from one hinge.

The breeze stirred as the riders reined in at the copse of barren land before the chapel and looked at the sad structure and the expanse of graveyard beyond.

Ragged grasses grew in clumps here and there. The entire scene felt eerily lonely and forgotten. As she dismounted, something grabbed Megan's peripheral vision.

She turned quickly to the chapel, and saw nothing.

But cold fingers still crept along her spine.

There had been
something.
A trick of the afternoon light playing with the darkness that hovered in the depths of the surrounding trees?

Or a dark shadow, something that had watched them come?

Something that had been
waiting
for them to come?

C
OLE DECIDED TO
make the deconsecrated chapel their camp, and they spent their first thirty minutes or so unpacking supplies, finding a suitable tethering anchor for their horses and setting up. He spoke to the men then, telling him that they knew their business so he wouldn't be giving much in the way of orders. He just wanted them to be certain that they were ready at every minute to fend off a potential attack.

The men were all solemn. They nodded mutely at Cole's words.

And then they set out to explore the graves in the cemetery.

Beneath the jungle of wild grass, wildflowers and weeds, they found a number of graves with loose dirt. Dirt that seemed to have exploded upward from beneath the ground.

The men split into three divisions, the better to move through the cemetery. Though Megan was ready and willing to assist in the digging—and disposal—they insisted that she was best utilized keeping an eye on the forests that surrounded them.

And so she did.

The day was uneventful. Many corpses, appearing fresh, were dispatched according to Cole's prescription. Dickens let out a cry once, certain he had happened upon
a vampire. Megan followed Cole to the grave and they stared at the body of a young man in a coffin, one who appeared as if he might open his eyes and speak.

“We'll do our usual, but I don't believe that this fellow has turned,” Cole had said.

“Look at him!” Dickens had protested.

Cole had nodded. “I believe that's the work of a talented embalmer.”

Newcomb was standing by them, as well. “Aye, lads! Some boys don't make it home, and in other cases…well, it is the embalmers and morticians who are making out like bandits. Every poor mother wants to look one last time on the countenance of her son, and the embalmers across this great country—or countries, as it may still prove to be—have worked endlessly to preserve those sons for their mother's eyes. Yes, see, on the coffin lid?
Tweesdale and Sons, Morticians, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
”

They were all silent for a moment, then, looking at the soldier.

Then Newcomb had reached into the coffin and pulled out the body, shoving a stake through the heart.

“Never hurts to be certain,” he'd said grimly.

“It never hurts,” Cole had agreed.

The thing was, Megan wasn't so sure if Newcomb had staked the boy more for precaution, or more because he was irritated at the mortician's handiwork.

At dusk, the men built a cooking fire in the clearing before the chapel and brought out their mess. Megan had dined on hardtack and dried beef before, and she expected little other than sustenance. But one of the men, Wilson, had brought along a supply of herbs and seasoning, and he
heated their meals with water, and the dried beef became more like a really edible, if not delicious, meal.

Newcomb carried a harmonica, and he played for a while as the men talked about their homes. They came from all over—New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maryland and Illinois. They were all fascinated by the West, and Cole told them what life was like out on the frontier. Then the conversation died away, and guard duty was divided for the night.

They'd arranged for Megan to have a little section for herself at the corner of the chapel, complete with a bedroll and a real blanket that they'd packed for her. She thanked them all for the courtesy, but when she lay down she realized that Cole wasn't in the chapel, and she rose, anxious to discover where he had gone.

She found him just outside, staring out over the graveyard.

He set an arm around her shoulder when she approached.

“We didn't find him,” he said.

“Who?” she asked, thinking, despite all logic, that he might be referring to her father.

He turned to her and spoke softly. “Billy. We should have found him up here.”

“We haven't finished yet,” she told him.

He shook his head. “I'd hoped that we'd find him quickly and easily today, that he was seeking shelter here. But more and more I get the feeling that there is someone near us who started all this, someone who had an agenda. An agenda, of course, of death. They've been playing this almost like a military campaign. Create a disturbance in Washington, D.C. Gather a force of minions to attack, and if they're lost, so be it—men die in battles. This
creature has loyalty only to itself, and doesn't care how many casualties of its own kind it creates. But it's smart enough to take a number of its victims under its wing, and teach them how to seduce and destroy targeted victims, if not much else. I think that Billy must be under that creature's power, and that he killed the ones who loved him most, first.”

“We'll find him,” she assured him gently. She hesitated then. “Cole, I thought I saw something when we first got here today.”

“What?” he asked, turning to her.

“A shadow,” she said.

He nodded, pulling her close. “Every time we dig up a recent corpse, we are thinning the numbers. But you're right. They're still out there.” He tightened his hold around her. “Come on. Let's go and try to get some rest. Newcomb is on guard with three others now, and Dickens and I will take the hours closer to morning's light.”

“They attack by day, too,” she reminded him.

“But they can attack more freely at night. They can be one with the darkness.”

She knew he was right. They walked back into the chapel together. Half of the men were sleeping, or resting, at least. Cole would have gone to lie beside them, on the bedroll laid out for him, but Megan held tight to his hand. “We can at least rest together,” she said softly. He hesitated.

“I really don't care in the least what anyone thinks,” she told him.

He came with her, and they lay down on the mat on the hard floor together. She tried to rest, glad of his warmth and his presence at her side, and of his arm around her.

But she lay awake, listening. She heard the cries of night birds, and in the far distance, the lonely screech of a bobcat.

Hours passed, and she thought that morning might come without incident.

That was when the vampires struck.

 

C
OLE JUMPED TO HIS FEET
, instantly alert. He'd heard Newcomb's shout, and had been half-awake anyway, so it was only seconds later that he snatched up a bow and a quiver of arrows and rushed out the door of the church.

Newcomb and his men were defending admirably.

The things had come like winged harpies in the night, joining with the darkness of the sky. He watched as the massive shadows swooped down and was reminded of the battle they had fought at Victory. He realized that this wasn't really an attack—they had come on a scouting mission.

And still, they were deadly.

His days on the Texas plains had taught him the use of a bow, and he could string, aim and fire approximately twelve arrows in a minute. But aiming at flying creatures was difficult. Still, with his speed, they began to fall.

His Union soldiers were indeed battle ready and well trained. They formed an arc before the door to the chapel. The rest of the men spilled out of the church as well, each ready to fight. Bows and arrows, holy water, bowie knives and stakes—each was prepared.

Newcomb took it upon himself to finish off the beings as they fell to the earth, staking the wounded with swift accuracy. Dickens and Megan were busy creating smoking, writhing masses out of the fallen that had not yet been struck in the heart.

It was all a cacophony at first—a massive invasion of flapping noises. At times the things indeed appeared giant winged bats. The men shouted to one another words of warning, and in the first assault, it seemed that they worked as one, arrows bringing the creatures down, water pinning them and stakes finishing them off.

Then, suddenly, there was silence.

Newcomb let out a holler of victory. “We beat 'em back, boys! We beat 'em back!”

The others agreed, and Cole was reminded of the Rebel cry that had spilled across many a battlefield.

A shout that had too often ended in the gasp of death.

“
Hold it! Hold it!
That was just the first. Make sure you're rearmed. They'll be coming again.”

The area was strewn with corpses. Some were little but bone and ash, and some appeared nearly as they had in life, as boys, dead boys, already abused by the brutality of war. All of them young, all of them some poor mother's son.

Cole looked over at Megan. She was just a few feet away, silent, still and listening.

“Is it over?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “It's just begun,” she said softly.

They waited again, still and on the alert.

Cole could feel the men around them growing restless. “Steady,” he said quietly.

Another few minutes passed.

Then Megan cried out, “I hear them—they're coming again! Be ready!”

This wave was larger than the last. But there were ten of the party arrayed in a semicircle, and they caught
most of the creatures in the air. One landed and charged Newcomb, but the hardened sergeant was ready, thrusting his razor-honed stake deep into the chest of the vampire-soldier charging into him. The animal stopped, pinned on the stake, writhing. Newcomb shoved harder and it fell.

But more and more of them were reaching the ground. Cole drew out his knife, slashing with all his might against the throat of a Union artilleryman. The head fell to the side at an awkward angle.

“Cole!” Megan cried, and he spun around as the artilleryman fell, only to discover a Confederate cavalryman about to pounce on his back. He reached for a vial of holy water with a split second to spare and threw the contents of the vial into the man's face. It let loose with a horrible scream, writhed and shook and began to steam and smoke, and fell to the ground.

It had become all hand-to-hand battle.

Cole slashed through another several men, approaching one who had pinned a terrified Dickens to the ground. Cole ripped his throat out by grabbing his hair, pulling back his head and slicing viciously. The man fell and Dickens crawled out from beneath him.

He turned to see that Megan was surrounded—and drew another arrow through the bow he whipped off his shoulder, taking down one and then the next. Megan had the last, and, as they fell, she sprinkled more and more of the holy water on them until it seemed that the ground was nothing but a pool of viscous, smoky oil. A cry from Dickens and a sense that someone was behind him gave Cole fair warning; he didn't turn, just used both hands to shove a stake backward in a savage motion. He hadn't
taken the creature in the heart, but he wounded it enough to turn and jab the stake in properly.

He rose, looking around, ready for the next combatant.

But there was none. The clearing was quiet again.

The men were silent, alert, twitching—ready for the next assault.

“Is everyone all right?” Cole asked. His voice seemed loud and harsh in the darkness and the sudden silence that surrounded them.

“Sound off!” Newcomb commanded, and the men did so.

They were all accounted for. They still stood, waiting. But nothing else happened. Nothing else came at them.

There were at least thirty creatures that had come for them, thirty that now were dead in truth. Thirty—and all of them soldiers, from the North and from the South. Cole thought drily that Maryland, Virginia, and now West Virginia, were all border lands, so it was natural that men of both loyalties should lie dead upon the soil.

He removed the last head and looked to the sky. The first light of morning was beginning to appear from the east.

It had been a long night.

He surveyed the dead and fallen again.

Still, there was no drummer boy among them.

 

T
HE MEN WERE COURTEOUS
to a fault. They accepted the fact that Megan was good at what she did; she could defend herself with the best of them. But they were still men, and she was still a lady in their eyes, and they wouldn't accept her help in the final dispatch, or in hauling the remnants of the bodies out to the cemetery.

As morning dawned fully, Newcomb and his fellows
built a great bonfire, throwing full corpses, and what remained of other corpses, into the blaze. And though they might have been destroyed as
something else,
the smell of the burning flesh was sickening—human—and Megan found herself remembering the Battle of the Wilderness, where it all seemed to have begun.

Cole stood with his hands on his hips, watching the blaze, and she stood beside him. Finally, she had to turn away.

They spent the rest of the afternoon walking the graveyard again, searching through the dead. But that afternoon the corpses they dug up had been long gone, and were in such serious stages of decay that there was no possibility they could rise by night.

Later that day, Megan realized that she couldn't stand the stench any longer—it seemed to linger on her. Dickens told her of a creek nearby, a freshwater creek that eventually flowed into the river below them.

“We can't split up,” Cole said, frowning when Dickens noted that he could lead Megan to some privacy at the creek.

“Well, sir, I'd say that we're all beginning to be a bit—disgusting,” Dickens said, looking at his hands. “It's not the dirt, though. It's—it's the bits of body clinging to me and the smell from the fire.”

“Well, then, we'll all go together,” Cole said.

Megan looked at him and arched a brow.

“We can find a bit of privacy for you—where we're all still within an easy holler,” he said.

She smiled. Even in the midst of battlefields, she'd never been in a situation where men had to travel en masse to bathe.

“We could split up,” Newcomb suggested.

“I don't like us being apart,” Cole told him.

Megan touched Cole on the arm and said quietly, “Perhaps Sergeant Newcomb is right. I'm not sure we should leave our supplies untended.”