Part 33 (1/2)
”Five,” he mumbled.
”Shh,” she said. It wasn't going to happen. He wasn't going to fight the half-deads. He wasn't going to walk out of Arabella Furnace. It was up to her to get out, to run and get help. Maybe-maybe-she could save his life but it was all up to her.
”Five.” ”Okay already,” she said. ”Five what? Five half-deads? I think there were more than that when I came in. If you tell me there are five active vampires here I'm going to soil my uniform.” She smiled and patted his good hand.
He sucked in a painful breath and then spoke all in a rush. ”There's only one more active vampire,” he said. He waited a moment, then finished. ”There are five bullets remaining in your clip.”
Slowly she removed the Glock from her belt. She ejected the clip and counted the remaining rounds. There were only five left, just as he had said. That was impossible-she couldn't possibly have already fired eight bullets, could she? She went over the recent combat in her head and realized she had.
She slipped the clip back into the handgun and holstered it again. ”Be more careful,” he said, his head rolling back and forth. ”From now on.” She nodded in agreement. He probably didn't see it, though, because just then the lights went out.
It happened so quickly Caxton thought it had to be in her head. She blinked her eyes but the blue light didn't come back. Featureless darkness filled all the available s.p.a.ce around her, so thick she felt as if it were rubbing on her dry eyeb.a.l.l.s.
”Oh G.o.d,” she said. ”They know. They know something's up-what do we do now?”
Arkeley didn't answer. She reached over and grabbed his b.l.o.o.d.y wrist. He had a pulse, still, but he must have fallen unconscious.
Caxton searched her pockets, hoping she had some kind of light source on her. Something-anything. Scapegrace had taken most of her gadgets away from her, cellphone, PDA, handcuffs. ”Oh, thank you,” Caxton whispered, not knowing who she was talking to. The vampire had ignored her mini-Maglite. He'd probably figured she couldn't hurt anyone with it. She took it out and pointed it at Arkeley. The miniature flashlight spat out a foggy cone of pale blue illumination that dazzled her eyes for a second. It gave off just enough light for her to see that he was still breathing.
There was a telephone mounted on one wall. She grabbed the handset and pressed it to her ear. No dial tone rewarded her. She flicked the hook a couple of dozen times, trying to make it work, but no dice. Whoever cut the power must have cut the sanatorium's phone lines, too.
Which meant they had to know everything. They knew where she was and what her first move would be.
If the half-deads-and the remaining vampire-knew she was in Malvern's ward then her first goal had to be to get away. She couldn't move Arkeley-he outweighed her considerably and she couldn't drag him-so she decided she would have to leave him there on the floor. If the bad guys killed him out of spite she would hate herself forever but she imagined they would be too preoccupied trying to kill her.
Waving her light around she found the exit from the ward and slipped along the wall of the corridor beyond. The Glock stayed in her holster so she wouldn't waste a bullet if she jumped at the first sight of her own shadow. That was an Arkeley kind of thing to do and she was proud of thinking of it. Of course, Arkelely would already have a plan by this point. He would already be putting it into effect.
”Think,” she said, trying to break the layer of fear that covered her brain like frost. ”Think.” What could she hope to realistically achieve? She didn't consider herself tough enough to take on another vampire and an unknown number of half-deads on her own. She'd only beaten Reyes because of Vesta Polder's amulet, and Scapegrace had died of surprise, not any special quality she possessed. So if she couldn't fight, what could she do?
She could run. She could get out of the hospital, get to some place where she could call for backup. It was the only realistic plan. The half-deads would try to stop her, she knew. She tried to think like a faceless freak. They hadn't attacked her directly yet-no, they wouldn't. They were cowards. Arkeley had told her as much. They would fall back, take away her ability to see and her ability to communicate. They would try to flush her out, to make her walk right into their traps. The half-deads would have secured the main entrance. Going out the way she came in would be suicide. She ducked down the first side corridor she saw.
She remembered her first visit to the sanatorium. She'd thought it was a big spooky maze then. With the lights out it was a lot more unnerving and a whole lot harder to find her way around. She knew generally what direction she was headed: southeast, toward the greenhouse wing. Yes, that would be good. If she could just get outside she would feel much safer. The moonlight might actually let her see something useful.
Her flashlight speared out before, illuminating a lot less than she would have liked. The corridor it lit up was a gallery of dim reflections and long shadows. Anything could be ahead of her, waiting for her. Anything at all. She kept her back to the wall and edged forward, a step at a time. There was nothing else for it.
She was halfway down the corridor, her eyes watching every doorway, when she began to hear a noise like something moving around inside the wall at her back. She s.h.i.+ed away from it and heard it dash away from her, as if they'd scared each other off. It was a rhythmic skittering sound, or rather a whole group of sounds, the patter of tiny claws on wood, the thumping of a soft body dragging across broken plaster. Ahead of her, down the hallway, something oozed out of the wall and dropped to the floor.
She swung her light around and speared a rat with her flashlight beam. Its tiny eyes blazed as it looked back at her. Its nose twitched and then it bolted away.
”Nothing,” she said, trying to rea.s.sure herself. It came out a little louder than she'd meant it to. Ahead of her, at the end of the corridor, a half-dead hissed, ”What was that?” She stopped in her tracks. She stopped breathing. She switched off her flashlight. There was a tiny bit of light coming in through square inset windows in the double doors at the end of the hallway. A shadow moved across that light, a shadow like a human head.
”Did you see that?” someone else asked, with the same kind of squeaky, rat-like voice. Another half-dead. ”Somebody had a light on and they switched it off.”
”Get the others,” the first voice said.
The double doors slammed open then and what looked like a never-ending stream of human silhouettes flooded into the hall.
Caxton reached for her weapon but then stopped. She could hear dozens of feet pounding down the corridor towards her. She only had five bullets left. There was no way she could take on all the half-deads using the gun.
She switched on her light and pointed it at them. Their torn faces and their gla.s.sy eyes reflected the light perfectly. They were dressed in filthy clothes. One wore eyegla.s.ses. A couple were missing hands or arms. There had to be at least twelve of them and they were all armed with kitchen knives, with sharpened screwdrivers, with hatchets or cleavers. One had a pitchfork. When the light hit them their mouths went wide and they ran at her even faster.
If she stayed where she was they would simply cut her down. She flicked off the light and dashed sideways, toward an empty doorway. The door itself lay flat on the floor of the room beyond as if its hinges had rotted away.
There was a window at the far end of the room but she could see instantly that it was barred. The room looked like a jail cell-what had it been, the psychiatric ward?
She could hear them coming. She'd run into the room on pure instinct, just trying to get away. Had they seen her? She didn't know if half-deads saw any better in the dark than human beings. Had they seen her? She threw herself against the wall to one side of the door and breathed through her mouth. She heard them outside in the hall, their feet pounding on the linoleum tiles, their hands thumping against the plaster walls. Had they seen where she went? They had to be close. They had to be getting closer.