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?”
“MAJOR STODDARD, 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?”