23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale(47)

Caxton sighed and looked around herself, trying to anticipate the next threat. When she saw Gert’s crazy eyes glowing in the dark, she remembered herself and managed to say, “Thank you.”





24.

Caxton had bought a little time. She needed more. She jumped on the forklift and started moving crates up against the door, a painfully slow process but the best way to make a strong barricade. The half-deads in the kitchen kept pushing and beating at the door, but they were making little headway. With half a ton of canned goods behind the door, there wasn’t much they could do. After a little while they stopped trying.

Caxton frowned. “They gave up,” she said.

Gert laughed. “That’s a good thing! What’s with you, huh? Every good thing that happens to us, you look like someone put cayenne pepper in your tampon.”

“That’s because I’m a realist,” Caxton said. “Half-deads don’t just stop trying to kill you. It’s possible they’re just going around another way. Check these doors,” she said, pointing at a pair of large rolling doors leading into the kitchen. They were big enough to drive the forklift through. Gert checked them both, bending low to look at their locks, then shook her head.

“Both locked up tight.”

Caxton rubbed her cheek absentmindedly It was possible the half-deads were going the long way around, and were going to come at them through the wide-open loading bay doors. Maybe there was something she could do about that.

The loading dock had its own guard post. The door was locked, but Caxton was still riding out the adrenaline rush she’d gotten from fighting the half-deads in the kitchen. She slammed into the door with her shoulder, careful to hit it just above the lock. It held, but she heard something small and metallic fly out of the door and bounce away. She got a running start and kicked the door just below the lock, careful to keep her foot flat against the wood. The lock disintegrated and the door swung open, vibrating wildly on its hinges.

Inside was a rolling chair sitting in front of a control panel. A pair of monitor televisions hung from the ceiling, angled downward so whoever was sitting in the chair could easily keep an eye on them. She studied the control panel, expecting to find a big red button, and was not disappointed. When designing the prison’s control systems the architects had at least known that there might come a time when someone needed to secure the loading dock without wasting time looking for the right controls. She slapped the red button with her hand and an alarm sounded as a chain-link gate rolled sideways across the open mouth of the loading bay. Weird shadows flickered across Gert’s face as the gate carved up the light. Caxton bent under the control board and found the cable that would let central command override the door controls. She pulled it, half expecting the door to roll open again because she’d pulled the wrong wire.

It didn’t.

“Now we’re safe, right?” Gert asked.

“There’s not a lot of difference between being safe and being trapped, at the moment. But we have time to think. That’s the main thing I was after.”

She found a few useful things. There was a stab-proof vest hanging on a hook, the standard vest every guard in the prison was supposed to wear whenever in the presence of an inmate. It was made of ultra–tightly woven para-aramid fabric that would stop an ice pick, but not a bullet, and definitely not a vampire’s teeth. She slid it over her jumpsuit and strapped it on tight. There were no boots in the guard post, but there was another box of plastic bullets, sitting under a row of metal clips. “There should be a couple of shotguns right here,” Caxton said, touching the clips.

“Maybe when the half-deads took over the prison, the guards in here took the shotguns and tried to defend themselves.”

“Possibly—except there were two shotguns. There’s only one chair in here.” She shrugged. “Maybe the guard took both of them, who knows? And then he locked the door behind him when he went off to fight off the half-deads. Leaving a perfectly defensible position to go alone, on foot, into the middle of a dangerous situation.” Caxton shook her head. “No, I think one of Malvern’s people took those shotguns. I think this place was prepared for us.”

“What? Like, they knew we were coming?”

Caxton tilted her head from side to side. “The doors we need are always open, or easily kicked in. We keep running across groups of half-deads, but they aren’t armed properly. Malvern must know exactly where we are,” Caxton said, pointing upward at a camera mounted in the ceiling, “but she hasn’t sent a whole pack of them with good knives after us. It’s like she’s letting us move around the prison—part of the prison, anyway. The part she wants us in.” She narrowed her eyes. “I’m starting to think we’re being led through a maze like a couple of rats. That Malvern wanted us to end up right here.”