13 Bullets (Laura Caxton / Vampires #1)

Light dripped into the casket from a crack where she'd damaged the lid. Otherwise she was trapped in total darkness. She tried to heave, to buck open the casket but they were sitting on it, the half-deads were sitting on it and laughing at her. She heard them drive nails through the lid, sealing it shut again. She couldn't get any leverage to push against them, she could barely roll over. Her legs burned with a narrow edge of pain where she'd been cut. She was trapped-they would bury her alive. She screamed to think of it, to imagine being buried under six feet of dirt. Already she could smell nothing but her own sweat and her own fear, the air in the coffin growing stale as it circulated in and out of her lungs. Every time it went out of her it had a little less oxygen in it. How long would it take to use all the oxygen up?

She screamed again but it was no use. The only ones who could hear her would take delight in her distress. It didn't matter-she screamed a third time, and slapped at the padded lid of the casket, desperate to get free.

Her body slid around inside the casket and she realized the half-deads were dragging her away from the firebreak. Her body bounced painfully as the casket grated over ridges and furrows, broken cornstalks, stones half-buried in the ground. Caxton's heart raced and her breath came faster and faster. She couldn't stop it. She could feel her Beretta flopping around at the bottom of the coffin. She must have dropped it inside when they cut her legs. She tried to reach for it but her shoulders hit the side of the coffin and she couldn't bend down far enough. The constriction drove home just how small her prison was-only a little bigger than her own body-and she screamed again at the thought that she couldn't sit up, she couldn't bring her knees up-every muscle in her body twitched as it felt the constraint.

The casket jumped as it was dragged over some particularly large obstruction and the pistol smacked her ankle with a smarting pain that turned the darkness around her green for a moment, an optical illusion born of exhaustion, panic and physical pain. She tried to remember if the weapon's safety was still on, if she had chambered a round. If she had-if the gun was ready to fire-it could go off with the next bump. A cross point round could come out of its barrel faster than the speed of sound. It could shoot off in any direction, but a lot of those directions intersected her body. Just one more thing to scream about.

She worked her hand down as far as she could. Her fingertips glanced off the hard edge of the gun's barrel, she could feel the slickness of the metal. Her shoulder dug through the casket's upholstery, came up hard against the wood beneath. She lunged, and shoved, and tried to brace herself with her legs.

Another bump, a jostling bump that smashed the bones of her shoulder together and made her grunt in shock, but the Beretta slid half an inch closer. She grabbed it with her fingertips and drew it, millimeter by millimeter, closer to her palm. It kept trying to bounce away again but she refused to let it go. Finally she had it in her hand and the weight and the power of the weapon helped her calm herself down, made her breathe just a little easier.

"Yes," she shouted, as she worked her finger through the trigger guard. The casket stopped moving with a sudden lurch that wrenched her back. One of the half-deads knocked on the lid. Its voice, though muffled, was as irritating as ever as it asked, "Everything okay in there?"

She tried to figure out where the voice was coming from using just her ears. It was difficult-the acoustics in the casket were terrible, echoes rolling back and forth in the narrow space. She pressed the barrel of the pistol against the casket lid. The half-dead giggled at her. "I'd get comfortable if I were you. It's a long-"

She squeezed the trigger and light and heat and noise filled up the casket in a wave of overpressure that made blood drip from her ears. She was blind and deaf and her hands were burning and she realized what a terrible mistake she'd made-what if she'd deafened herself permanently? What if the shock wave from the explosion had ruptured her ear drums?

Her vision came back slowly, showing her a slanting ray of weak sunlight that poured through a nearly perfectly circular hole in the lid of the coffin. She could see a little sky through the hole, the yellow of the dead corn stalks. Whether she'd hit the half-dead who had been taunting her or not she couldn't say.

The stench of cordite filled her nostrils and she wanted to retch, to stop breathing the fumes altogether, but her body knew better than her brain. It sucked deeply from the fresh oxygen coming in through the bullet hole.

For a long time nothing happened. The casket didn't move. She could hear her heart beating but it sounded strange, deeper and slower than she'd expected. Then she heard a sound at last, a faint, twittering sound, a bird calling somewhere out in the corn. Her eardrums were intact. It was the best thing that had happened since she fell into the casket and she wanted to cry sweet tears of relief. Then the casket started moving again, bouncing and jumping over the rough ground, if anything faster than before. She held on as best she could, shoving her weapon in its holster and grabbing at handfuls of upholstery to keep from being thrown around so much. The slick silk kept slipping through her hands and soon they ached from the constant exertion of just holding on.

Minutes passed, long minutes she could only measure by counting slowly to herself, onnnnne, twooooo, threeee... she was almost certainly counting too quickly or too slowly but she had no other way to mark time. After a while her legs began to twitch, either from the wounds on the backs of her calves or from being compressed in such a tiny space.

The half-deads picked her up and carried her after a while. They moved slower than they had while dragging the casket through the corn field but Caxton didn't mind. The ride got a lot less bumpy.

Darkness closed over the bullet hole in the lid. She thought they might have covered the opening with a cloth or something. She stuck her pinky finger through the hole, careful not to extend it too far, to not give the half-deads an excuse to grab it and do something horrible with it. She felt nothing out there but cool air. She tried again and again felt nothing.

The casket suddenly tilted forward at a very steep angle and she slid up into the top half, her head jammed painfully to one side. She struggled to push her arms up past her shoulders, to push against the top of the casket with her hands to take the pressure off of her neck.

The coffin lifted and fell. Again, it lifted and fell. Again, a moment's respite and then it lifted-to fall again. She realized what was happening. The bullet hole had gone dark because they were inside of a building. The lift and fall came from the motion of the casket as the half-deads carried it down a flight of stairs. She tried to count the risers but she lost track every time the casket lurched and she was thrown back and forth. It was a long way down and she had lost track of how much time had passed. She felt as if she were floating unbound in space and then grasped tightly by enormous fingers, her body shaken violently by a giant spectral hand with each step down.

She didn't notice at first when the downward motion stopped. The half-deads set her down without any fanfare, the casket creaking a little on a stone or concrete floor. Then she heard their footfalls, and the echoes of their footfalls, getting softer as they walked away from her.

Then there was no sound at all.

She slapped the lid of the coffin again and again, but got no reply.

"Hello?" she said, willing to hear their squeaking voices if that was the reply she got. "Hello?" she shouted, wanting someone, anyone, to speak to her. Sure, she had shot at them, but wouldn't that make them want to taunt her even more? "Hey you fuckers!" she screamed. "Hey, calling all faceless geeks out there, somebody say something!"

She heard her own echoes but nothing more.

"You can't just leave me here!" she screamed, getting a little hysterical. She knew they could do, and had done, just that.