Vampire Zero (Laura Caxton, #3)(97)
She smashed in their heads with the bar until they stopped moving.
Her baton was badly crimped in the middle where the bar had struck it. It wouldn’t collapse and she knew if she tried to use it again it might just bend at exactly the wrong moment. She threw it away. She liked the breaker bar for its weight and its pointed end, but it was too heavy and her left arm was barely obeying her commands. She couldn’t really close that hand. Her shoulder might be dislocated, she decided, or even broken. The numbness meant possible nerve damage.
Nothing fatal. She picked up the short-?handled pickaxe in her right hand and tested its weight. It would do, she decided. She could carry the pistol—and its all-?important flashlight—in her left hand and hope she didn’t drop it. She had to get moving again, had to press on. Maybe she could find another exit from the mine, though she doubted it. Maybe if she moved fast enough she could shake off any pursuit until dawn, still hours away. Maybe she could get lost in the lightless tunnels and eventually die of asphyxiation or thirst.
She pressed on. The corridor started to descend ahead, following the coal seam. The temperature rose as she went down until she felt as if she were walking into a very large oven. She was afraid she knew what that meant. Taking a few precious seconds, she opened the backpack again and pulled out the Nomex suit. She could just get it on and close the Velcro storm flaps with her one and a half working hands. She could not—and didn’t have time for it anyway—get the face mask or the booties on, and when she tried to pull on the gloves she found that they just made her left hand useless, so she left them behind. She moved on, and started to sweat inside the suit instantly. She didn’t regret putting it on, though, because after another hundred yards the light of her flashlight seemed to change color, growing redder with each step. She experimented by flicking it off. A very faint, very dull orange glow filled the mine ahead of her. It lit up the swirling dust that filled the passage and made it sparkle. Another few steps and she started to hear the roaring.
Ahead a wooden sawhorse stood in the middle of the passage. A signal light had been mounted atop it, but the batteries had died years ago. Beyond the sawhorse the corridor was neatly cut across by a fissure in the rock, a nine-?foot-?wide gap in the floor she couldn’t cross. Black smoke shot through with brilliant orange flecks billowed up from the crack to disappear again through a matching crack in the ceiling. Her eyebrows curled and singed as she peered over the side, exposing as little of herself as possible. In the momentary glimpse she allowed herself, she looked straight down into the fire that possessed the Centralia mine. Through the smoke she could make out nothing but an orange glow that pulsed and shimmered, popped and spat as the coal down there succumbed to hellish flame. There was no way she could jump across that gap. Even if she could, she would have been fried in midair as she leapt. The hallway she’d chosen was a dead end.
Vampire Zero
Chapter 59.
Caxton had no choice. She backed away from the fissure, the sweat on her face drying instantly to a crusty mask of salt. The Nomex suit protected the rest of her body from the heat, but still she felt sluggish and tired, and her shoulder had started to really hurt.
She wasn’t sure what more she could do. The possibilities that offered themselves up to her were limited in appeal. She could head back toward the main corridor, and if she was lucky enough to get there unmolested she could try to slip down another of the dark galleries. She could find some place in the rib where the rock had parted from the coal seam and maybe made a crack big enough to hide in. She could—
She heard light footfalls coming up the gallery, and instantly she flicked off her light and crouched low along the rib. She could almost see by the orange light that splashed along the ceiling, she could make out the lines of shadows that crept and slouched along the walls—yes. There. Four of the half-?deads were destroyed, she’d made sure of that. The fifth had to be the one she’d hit with her pepper spray. A human being with that much pepper spray in his eyes would still be rolling around on the floor in agony. Maybe, she thought, half-?deads were more resistant than humans were. Maybe it was just afraid enough of its master to press on even in the midst of unrelenting, incapacitating pain. Caxton bent low, and changed her grip on the pickaxe. She was already hurt—her left arm was twitching with pain—and she couldn’t afford another wound, not if she was eventually going to have to face Jameson. She watched the shadows, and listened to the echoes, and timed her attack perfectly. She would swing up and through, and catch the half-?dead in its stomach, a blow that would knock it down so she could finish it off safely.
The footfalls came closer. There. She leapt up with a shout and swung. The pickaxe connected with flesh, and sank deep through muscles and dead, motionless internal organs. The blade of the axe grated on bone deep inside the half-?dead’s body and she thought maybe she could kill it with one stroke.
There was only one problem.
It wasn’t a half-?dead she’d hit. It was Jameson.
The vampire roared in pain and stared down at his abdomen. The point of the pickaxe had gone right through the waistband of his pants and continued through his flesh, but his sinews and muscles were already knitting themselves back together, his skin growing back over the blade. It was all Caxton could do to tear it free again before the healing wound grabbed the axe right out of her hands. Jameson stared down at her with glowing eyes. He started to reach for her and she swung again: this time the point went through his vest, right below his trauma plate. Twaron provided very little protection against knives or, say, wooden stakes, the armorer had told her. The axe parted the bullet-?resistant fibers easily, and split right through Jameson’s rib cage. It missed his heart by a few inches. She yanked the weapon back and staggered backward as fast as she could. Jameson closed the gap effortlessly. She swung a third time—and his mangled, fingerless hand came out of the air and the pickaxe cut right into his palm and passed through. Jameson made a little grunt of annoyance. She yanked at the axe to free it again, to make another swing, but she couldn’t get it loose. Jameson brought up his good hand and grabbed the shaft away from her. Then he tore the pickaxe out of his own hand. Instead of pulling it out the way it had gone in, he dragged it forward, through bones and muscles and the round stumps of his missing fingers. His hand flopped nervelessly, bisected nearly as far as his wrist. He shook the hand vigorously and when he stopped the wound had healed up completely. Then he turned and threw the pickaxe at the far wall. It clanged deep into a soft coal seam, burying its head so far in that she knew she would never be able to pull it out again.