Kingmakers, The (Vampire Empire Book 3) (27 page)

“How many of the locals? The local humans. How many did we kill?”

“All of them. All of them in Wilmington anyway. Thousands? Who knows? Who counts? They just stood there and died like animals in the gas.”

Stoddard tried to block out the smell of burnt flesh by covering his nose with the crook of his elbow before rolling to retch over the side of the cot.

Major Stoddard left the medical tent the next day. The makeshift hospital was a collection of large tents set amidst a vast forest of tall straight pine trees. The medical camp was surrounded by a barbed wire fence and machine-gun emplacements, and it was patrolled by soldiers with pikes. Troopers saluted the major as he limped toward a gate, or gap in the wire enclosure. A crude wagon waited with a single thin horse. The private on the buckboard gave Stoddard a hand up.

“Where’d this wagon come from?” the major asked.

“Here in town. Found the horse not far away from some herds who lived outside town.” The soldier laughed. “Pretending to be real people. Funny, huh?”

Stoddard didn’t reply as the wagon lurched forward. They rolled between countless crackling cadaver bonfires that sent black greasy plumes into the sky. More wagons lumbered the rutted path. They were loaded with twisted limbs of the dead.

As they rolled out of the pine forest, Wilmington appeared squat and brick. It was dwarfed by the bulk of
Bolivar
floating above it, its shadow like a pall over the city. The smell of burning mixed with the faint sweetness of poison gas. The poison lost its potency after twenty-four hours or so, but enough of the green residue clung to surfaces to give the town a sugary stench. The wagon jostled over cobblestones, aggravating Stoddard’s injuries, but he refused to show it.

Gangs of soldiers moved through town, carrying tools rather than weapons—shovels, axes, and crowbars. They wore gas masks or kerchiefs over their faces. Stoddard saw them lugging bodies out of buildings. Then he noticed a group squatting and lounging on a long porch of what
had once been a fine home surrounded by great oaks now just beginning to show budding leaves. The windows of the house were boarded up, so one trooper was busy hacking at the front door with an axe.

“Hold up,” Stoddard said, and as the wagon slowed, he stumbled to the ground. He approached the house, and all the soldiers stood and straightened themselves. They saluted and greeted him; everyone knew Senator Clark’s right hand. He addressed the private with the axe. “What are you doing, trooper?”

“Checking the house for bodies, sir,” the private said in a monotone. There were dark circles under his eyes.

“How long have you been at it?”

“Our squad? Two days, sir. Pretty much since we came in on the
Juarez
.

“Are you finding people inside these homes?”

“Yes, sir. Pretty much every time.” Several of the other men nodded or gave exhausted moans in agreement.

“Carry on. I want to see inside.”

The private returned to chopping at the door. Fortunately the wood was old and nearly rotten. It splintered easily, opening large gaps. The soldier began to kick it with his boot. Others joined in and pulled wood away with their hands. Finally, when the door was largely gone, the private stood aside. “You want to go first, Major?”

“Yes, I would. Thank you.”

“Just a second, sir.” The trooper pulled a cloth from his pocket and soaked it with liquid from a small flask. He handed it to Stoddard and pulled a kerchief up around his own face. “I’d wear that, if I was you, sir. It stinks something awful sometimes.”

Stoddard tied the cloth around his head and positioned it over his nose. It smelled of citrus. Lemonade. He pulled his sidearm and stepped into the entryway.

The house was orderly, if simple. There was no furniture to be seen, but it was not a wreck. The soldiers entered behind him, rather casually. They didn’t seem to expect any resistance.

“Shouldn’t you boys be armed?” Stoddard asked.

“Haven’t found anyone capable of causing trouble yet, Major.”

The rooms on the ground floor were empty, but for a few simple chairs. In the rear of the house was a kitchen of sorts with a table and chairs. And at one end of the table was a handmade highchair. Along the countertop was a row of crockery. Stoddard opened the tops and saw dried beans and peas, as well as potatoes. In a side cabinet, there were strips of dried meat and fresh sausages. The downstairs yielded nothing more, so they started up the staircase, each step emitting loud creaks that echoed through the house. At the top of the stairs there was a hallway with several doors, all closed.

One of the soldiers muttered, “It’s like a creepy dollhouse. It’s almost as if the vampires wanted us to think the damn herds lived better than I do in Valladolid.”

“Spread out and search these rooms.” Stoddard noticed several soldiers rolling their eyes at his unnecessary command as he went to the door at the far end of the hall.

There had been a doorknob at one time, but it was long gone. The door was cracked, and any paint it may have had was flaked away. Stoddard pushed it open.

It swung back, and flies rose in a swarm from the middle of the room. He saw five corpses. A man and a woman, around his age, huddled together. An older man lay off to one side with a boy around fifteen years old. Stoddard stepped closer, noting their simple homespun clothing. Everything in the room, including the bodies, was coated with a light dusting of green.

On the wooden floor between the man and woman, he saw another shape. The couple was crouched, trying to cover it, to shield it, to protect it. A child that was perhaps two years old. It was a girl. Her hair was tied with a bow of red ribbon. And in her little fingers was clutched a doll made of straw. She was huddled over the doll, like her parents, trying to protect it in turn.

One of the soldiers dropped into a crouch and covered his face with a groan.

“She has a toy,” Stoddard breathed to himself. “My God. What have we done?”

“M
AJOR
S
TODDARD, GLAD
to see you up and about.”

Senator Clark was bent over a table studying maps, so he couldn’t see the major as he entered the room. The vast upper bedroom of a spacious waterfront house was now the senator’s command center. The window faced the wharves, and the sounds of men and machines and animals wafted in. None of the carnage was visible from Clark’s high window, but the blue sky over the Cape Fear River was crowded with airships, helping to fortify this northernmost outpost of the American Republic. The walls of the room were papered with poor maps of the east coast of the old United States.

“Thank you, sir.” Stoddard stepped to the table and glanced down at the map that now had Clark’s handwritten notes for the coming assault on Richmond.

“Wilmington was no trouble, eh?” Clark puffed a gigantic black cigar. “Hardly any resistance at all.”

Stoddard felt his wounds burning. In his hand, he clutched a small ragged doll.

Oh!” The senator reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “Good news. This ought to interest you some.”

Stoddard could see from the broken wax seals on the paper it had been issued from both the Office of the Senate War Committee as well as the Office of President Somoza. The highest possible level of communiqué. He opened the paper and read: “Ambassador Hull, Alexandria, reports the death of His Imperial Highness, Simon, prince of Bengal, brother of Her Imperial Majesty Adele I. Killed by vampires. Details to follow.”

Stoddard read the line again. His face flushed with shock. “Oh my God.” He looked at Senator Clark for confirmation of both the news and his dismay.

The senator was tapping his fingers on the map, consumed by strategy. “That’s something, eh? Vampires finally got the kid. Too bad, I suppose. The boy was annoying as hell, but he had grit.”

“How is this in any way good news?”

“Think about it, Major.” Clark turned a conspiratorial eye on his adjutant. Cigar smoke rose in front of his face. “With the boy dead, Adele has no backup. She can’t breed a proper heir with that commoner. There are no clear successors. If something were to happen to her, Equatoria would be looking at civil war.”

“And so?”

“So, this is my opportunity. I’ve already received thousands of cables from Equatoria begging me to come back.”

“Thousands of cables?”

“Give or take.”

“Did any of them come from the empress?”

Clark snarled, removed his cigar, and spit on the wood floor. “She’s got nothing to do with it. See, times have changed, for everybody. People with power want me back. And I don’t give a damn anymore what that girl does with her private life. But she’s got to have someone who can assume control if she dies. And she’s got to have an heir. And damn soon. I think the marriage could be back in play.” He chuckled. “I think I’ll move the capital a little bit south, though. Alexandria seems pretty friendly to vampires these days. Maybe Cairo. I’d like to have a pyramid.”

Stoddard ignored his commander’s dreams of glory as he thought about the brave boy he had met in Equatoria. Simon had escaped death
at the hands of vampires twice; once in France and again in Alexandria. Stoddard had fought with Senator Clark, as well as Adele’s teacher Mamoru and his mysterious African companion, to repel the creatures from Simon’s door after the monsters had killed Emperor Constantine.

He studied the senator who showed no remorse for the loss of the child, or the loss of the children of Wilmington. The death of Simon was nothing to the senator but an opportunity for tactical advantage. Stoddard’s grip on the toy trembled.

Clark said, “Got a little more news too. Seems the Equatorians finally advanced on the vampires. They took Grenoble.”

“Really?” Stoddard nodded approval. “Excellent.”

The senator eyed him. “Excellent? Incredible is more like it. With your friend Colonel Anhalt in command, I am surprised they managed to find their way out of Marseilles.”

“I have great confidence in General Anhalt,” the major retorted curtly.

“Do you now? Well, apparently it had nothing to do with the general. Reports from the front say that the Equatorians have some unknown weapon.”

“They do? What is it?”

“I have no idea, but I intend to find out.” Clark offered a lush Cuban cigar to the major, who declined with a sharp shake of his head. “I want you to cable your friend Anhalt and see what you can find out.”

“He won’t tell me anything confidential.”

“Do it anyway. I want to know what they have that we don’t.”

Stoddard said, “Very well. Maybe it will allow us to suspend our bombardments.”

“What do you mean? The attack on Wilmington was a total success. Our casualties were minimal, and the vampires withdrew. And haven’t returned. These damn vampires are worthless. There’s no fight in them once we show them we mean business.” Clark ran his hand over the map of the Atlantic coast. “What I see here is a successful strategy. We have Savannah, Charleston, and now Wilmington. We can start bringing in materiel for the strike west to link up with the Gulf Army. We’ll bombard Richmond next. Hell, by April we’ll be in Washington, DC.”

Stoddard said hesitantly, “We took Savannah and Charleston without using gas. We could have tried that in Wilmington too, sir. As I suggested.”

The senator waved his hand at Stoddard’s comment. “If you have something to say, Major, spit it out.”

The images of burning civilians, of a small doll clutched in little dead hands, filled Stoddard’s head. Families huddled together in terror, not of vampires, but of human weapons.

He said, “Sir, have you seen any of the civilians here?”

“Civilians? There aren’t any civilians.”

The major replied forcefully, “The herds, sir. It’s not that simple. I was in one of their houses. There was a family. They had preserved food. The child had a toy.” He set the doll onto the map.

Senator Clark drew on his cigar with a cold stare. “Major, I know you took some hard shots during the assault. Do you need more time to recover? I can send you back to St. Augustine to rest for a week or two. We aren’t moving on Richmond for a month or more.”

“I’m fine. I’m just saying…” Stoddard paused, knowing he was preparing to enter dangerous ground. This was the subject that smashed the senator’s marriage to Empress Adele. Well, this and a complete discontinuity of personalities.

Clark added with quiet prescience, “You need to think hard about your next words, Major.”

“Sir, with all due respect, I know common wisdom has always been that the Cape Fear signaled the end of the frontier, and the beginning of vampire territory. But these people here are not animals. They may have been poor and oppressed, peasants really, but they are humans.”

“I never expected this.” The senator’s hands tightened into fists, and Stoddard actually thought his commander would strike him. “I raised you up from nothing. Put you one step from the center of power in the American Republic. And this is how you repay me?”

“Senator, I’m not trying to defy you, but it is my job to advise you. I would be doing you a disservice if I didn’t speak my mind.”

“When has it ever been your job to advise me? Your entire job consists of doing what I say. And I say there are no humans here!”

The major tightened his mouth in an angry slash. “I disagree, sir. I feel I must tell you that, in my opinion, we have caused the deaths of many thousands of human beings here in Wilmington.”

Clark breathed out harshly. “And if we did, what of it? This is a war, Major. You expect me to take this continent away from those monsters without killing a few people? Please, advise me about that.” Before Stoddard could respond, the senator swept the doll off the table. “Maybe you need to join up with the Equatorians and take orders from that girl. She intends to win a war without killing anybody. Perhaps you would enjoy a life of tea parties in Alexandria and endless chitchat. I’m not sure there’s a place for you in my army.”

“It isn’t
your
army, Senator. It is the American army, and I’m an American. My constitutional oath requires that I speak.”

“Don’t you dare cite the Constitution to me! My father helped rewrite the Constitution!”

Stoddard felt himself separating from his rank. He was losing any sense of concern for the future; he no longer saw himself as the adjutant to Senator Clark. He was just a soldier who had played a role in killing a little girl who died clutching a doll.

“Senator,” he announced in a clear voice, “I intend to write a memorandum to the War Committee detailing my observations here and expressing my opinion about the human population in the old United States. I will state in unequivocal language that I feel our current tactic of deploying poison gas to destroy the vampires’ food supply is tantamount to genocide, and beneath the morality of a civilized nation.”

Clark studied the glowing tip of his cigar with apparent disregard for Stoddard’s warning. “Are you really going to destroy your career over what you saw in one house? Major, I’m ordering you to take a few days in St. Augustine, or even Havana if you wish.” He laid an awkwardly kind hand on the major’s shoulder. “I can’t let you make a mistake like this. Take some time. Get your head right. Then we’ll fly to Equatoria to get everything back on track. I need you there, Major. Your connection with their commanding officer will be invaluable. And don’t worry, this conversation stays in this room.”

“It isn’t just one house, sir. We have to rethink our opinions about
the north. We believe there are free humans in Charleston, but not here? It doesn’t make sense. I read Empress Adele’s reports of her time in the north—”

“Dammit!” Clark slammed his hand on the table. “Listen to me! This is a direct order. You will not write any memo to the War Committee. I’ve been getting notes from Panama City talking about politicians trying to outlaw the use of gas on the herds. There are even protests against the way I’m fighting the war. Against me! So I’m telling you that you will keep your damned mouth shut! You will take a week in Havana. And then we will discuss your future on my staff.”

“I resign from your staff, sir.”

Clark’s mouth opened in the first look of surprise that Stoddard had ever seen from him. The senator seemed torn by whether he was unsure he had heard the major’s words correctly, or if such words even existed. It was disconcerting to Stoddard to see the great man in a state of confusion. It even angered him that the senator could show such feeble emotions. Fortunately, the faltering of the bearded Achilles didn’t last long.

“I’ll break you,” the senator growled. “You’ll be lucky to muck stalls for the Seventh Cavalry in Tampico when I’m done with you.”

“I would welcome that, sir.”

“I should kill you here, you insufferable traitor. I knew those Equatorians had ruined you. Now you’re no better an officer than your friend, Colonel Anhalt.”

“High praise.”

“Get out.” Clark turned away from him. “If I ever see you again, I’ll kill you.”

Stoddard spun on his heel and strode away. He felt sad, not frightened or wary of the future. He was content with his choices; his steps were lightened and his wounds no longer burned so hot. No matter what happened, he had taken the right path.

The major stopped at the door and turned to face Clark’s back. He saluted, unseen, to the promise the man had shown and now, he feared, wasted.