She hurried down the alley to the parking lot, where Geistdoerfer’s car with its suggestion of tail fins waited for her. Its windshield was covered in a thin layer of white frost, which she wiped away with her sleeves. Then she climbed in and started up the powerful engine, listened to it purr. The sky was brightening by the minute. When she felt the car had warmed up enough she put it in gear and headed out, laying her cell phone on the passenger seat beside her. There were a lot of calls to be made.
Her stomach growled noisily. She hadn’t eaten in a very long time. Her brain was fighting her, squirming painfully in her skull. Her body was breaking down. It needed sleep, and food, and peace.
Not a lot she could do about that. But maybe, something.
She couldn’t sleep, not yet. Peace was an abstract. Food, though, was a possibility. There were few diners in that stretch of Pennsylvania—mostly there were family restaurants, the kind that didn’t open until the farmers started their day. Not for a while yet. She found a fast-food place that was open all night, decided to waste a few minutes if it meant her body would calm down a little. If it meant getting some energy back.
She pulled up to the drive-through bay. Cranked down the old car’s manual window and let cold air blast inside, across her face. It woke her up some. She shouted her order at the microphone, but nobody answered. After a while she tapped the horn. The big pneumatic noise it made drew tiny birds out of the trees across the road. Finally a sleepy voice croaked out of the speakers. “How can we help you?” it asked.
“Give me an egg sandwich and a cup of coffee,” she said.
“Do you want milk and sugar?” the voice blurted. There was a bad feedback whine that nearly drowned out the words.
“No,” she shouted back.
“Hash browns for only thirty-nine cents more?”
Caxton grabbed the bridge of her nose and squeezed. “People are going to fucking die if you don’t just put a fucking sandwich in a fucking bag for me,” she said.
The speaker cut off with an electronic belch. Then the feedback returned. “I’m sorry, I missed that.”
Probably a good thing, too. Caxton exhaled noisily. “Yeah, give me some hash browns,” she said.
“Thank you, pull through.”
She drove up to the next window, took her food and paid for it. She tore into the greasy sandwich before she’d even gotten back on the Turnpike.
The road disappeared beneath her wheels. When she got to the toll plaza she pulled into the purple E-ZPass lane. The toll went on Geistdoerfer’s tab and she was through.
56.
Storrow regained his footing & grabbed at the degraded side of the cupola. “No reason we can’t go back the way we came, now,” he said, a smile on his face. “It’ll be a hard slog back through partisan country, but lackin’ Simonon, them horsemen we saw’ll be disorganized. Maybe we’ll actually make it back to the lines.”
I wiped my face with my hands. What would I do now? For what purpose should I go on? Bill was dead. I had my duty, I supposed, to my country. I could draw on that for strength, I told myself. I reached out a hand for Storrow to take. He did not accept my grasp, but instead loosed an anguished cry. I turned to look at him.
In that same instant all hope died. Chess rose up again with a fury I could scarce credit though I saw it myself. The vampire’s head was fully re-formed, though he was hatless now.
“Sweet Jesu,” Storrow barked. “We’re done for!”
“Get,” I told him, because suddenly I wanted him to live. We had argued, Storrow & I, & been at loggerheads, yet I wanted him to live so badly I would sacrifice myself to make it happen. Which is exactly what I thought I was doing.
I ran at the vampire with my head down, as fast as my hurt leg would allow. Under normal conditions this would have had all the effect of blowing on him with my breath. He was stronger by far than I, massively so, & invincible as far as I knew. Yet on the pitched roof I gained momentum as I ran heedless of my footing, & when I collided with the vampire we both were launched into lightless space.
For one moment only I felt suspended between Heaven and Earth, a spirit of the air. A moment after that I struck the dry Virginia soil below, which felt much harder than I recalled.
Pain was my portion, but for one moment more only. Then all feeling left my legs & aught below my chest. My back was broken. I needed no physician to tell me as much.
—THE STATEMENT OFALVAGRIEST
57.
Leaves stirred up into the air, splatted across her windshield as she pulled off Route 15 and into the Gettysburg borough limits. The streets were empty, the day’s traffic not yet begun. It was well after eight and the sun was already above the treetops, a white glare in a sky full of dark clouds.
The Gettysburg College campus was just up ahead. She had not heard back from headquarters, did not yet know whether they’d beaten the vampire to his prize. She held her phone against the steering wheel, ready to answer it the second it started to ring.
She crested a low hill and eased off the gas as the car surged down into a dark hollow. The trees were buffeted by a stiff breeze and their half-naked branches lashed against each other, against the surging air.
It wasn’t much farther to the edge of the college. She pulled into the parking lot below Geistdoerfer’s old offices and jumped out, looking around for any sign of the patrol cruiser she’d had dispatched there.
It stood a bit away, at the end of the lot, its lights off. She approached it carefully, not knowing what she expected to see. Occasionally she glanced at the tree-lined sidewalks of the campus, at the darker shadows. There would be nothing there, of course. Her vampire would be asleep now, hidden tight away in some stolen coffin, waiting for the newly risen sun to go away.
She got up to the car, bent down with a hand over her eyes to look inside. A trooper in a wide-brimmed hat sat in the driver’s seat, hunched over. His hat obscured his eyes, but she could see his mouth was open.
No, she thought. Not another dead cop. Guilt skewered her kidneys like a thin knife. She put a hand on the door of the car, leaned down to get a closer look.
The trooper inside sat bolt upright, his mouth closing with a click she heard through the glass. He turned bleary eyes to look up at her, then frowned.
She fished out her state police ID and pressed it against his window. He nodded, then gestured for her to step back. Slowly he pushed open his door and clambered out.
“You Caxton?” he asked.
“Trooper Caxton, yeah,” she said, frowning.
He gave her a weary smile that spoke volumes. She didn’t impress him. He’d probably heard stories about her, maybe even seen the stupid movie. All he really knew about her, though, was that she had dragged him away from a nice warm bed and made him run a fool’s errand before the sun had even come up.
Hoping for the best anyway, she glanced at the backseat of his cruiser. No barrels there. “I’m ready to receive your report,” she sighed. “What’s your name, Trooper?”
“Paul Junco,” he said, leaning against the side of his car and stretching out long arms and legs. “I got here about six-fifteen,” he said, pulling a notebook out of his pocket, “yeah, six-oh-nineA.M., to be exact, on report of a barrel stored at this location that you requested we take into police custody. I obtained entry at six-thirteen with the aid of a maintenance lady, name of Floria Alvade, and proceeded to room 424, in the Civil War Era Studies department—”