DRACULAS (A Novel of Terror)

by J. A. Konrath

  When he finally caught sight of his Dodge, he picked up the pace even more, but that seemed to pull at his stitches and he slowed his pace again to something that wouldn’t rip his leg back open.

  It never occurred to him to just get in the truck and drive away. It occurred to him that maybe he should think about that, but no way in hell was Randall going to abandon Jenny. He had more flaws than he had stitches in his leg, but fear was not one of them. Jenny could be a complete bitch to him—and probably would be—but he’d make sure she got out of there safely.

  Of course, you could have done that better by staying with her, instead of limping out here to get a chainsaw…

  Fuck you, brain.

  Thirty-eight calls. Wow. He’d thought it was more like ten. He could blame about thirty-five of them on the heavy-duty painkillers, but the last three…well, he’d just really wanted to talk to Jenny. He wouldn’t have minded if she laughed about the squirrel. At least he’d hear her laugh. He missed her laugh. They used to laugh a lot, but he’d killed that.

  Focus. He needed to focus.

  He walked up to his truck. The chainsaw rested there on the seat where he’d left it. (Normally it went in the back, but it hadn’t been a normal day. And would Jack and Frank have brought along their chainsaw if it cut open their leg? Hell no, they wouldn’t have. They could laugh all they wanted, but the proof of his manly nature was right there.)

  There was dried blood all over the seat. It was going to cost a fortune to have that cleaned, assuming it could be cleaned. He might have to just rip the seat out and have it replaced. Shit.

  He focused again.

  Then he cursed as he realized that the truck door was locked. His keys were in his hospital room on the third floor. Son of a bitch.

  He let out an angry sigh. No possible way was he returning to that hospital without a chainsaw. Not a chance. He walked to the back of the truck and picked up his metal toolbox. There were plenty of other tools in the back, including a hatchet, but he’d rather have a broken window and his chainsaw. If he were wearing actual pants, he could’ve wedged the hatchet into the waist, but the gown left little opportunity to…

  No, wait. He had a utility belt. He quickly lifted his gown and put on the thick belt, which had a nice assortment of tools, then slid the hatchet in there. Cool. He looked absolutely ridiculous, but he had lots of toys now.

  He returned to the passenger-side door, turned his head to avoid getting glass chunks in his eyes, and used the toolbox to smash through the window. He unlocked the door, opened it, and grabbed the chainsaw. Yes!

  It still had his blood on the blade. He kind of liked that.

  He limped back toward the building.

  Screams from inside. Lots of them.

  What the hell was going on?

  He’d seen that Dracula movie when he was a kid, but that slick-haired guy didn’t do anything like this.

  Randall walked back inside. The room (it was the Emergency Room, right? Or did they take people to the Emergency Room after they waited in this room?) was absolute chaos. He could barely process it all. People were screaming and panicking and getting ripped apart and eaten. He’d known that things were bad when he left…but he’d only gone to the parking lot for a few minutes!

  “Jenny!” he called out.

  A small, scrawny teenaged kid in a hospital gown noticed Randall. His chest was covered with red as if he’d just enjoyed a messy Italian meal, but it was blood not sauce, and the blood seemed to be his own, the result of the lower, non-pimply half of his goddamn face being mangled. He had huge, sharp teeth, and it looked like they’d ripped right through the skin.

  Okay, maybe Randall was feeling some fear now. That was fine.

  The dracula smiled—as well as you can smile when the lower half of your face is a pulpy, bloody mess—and rushed at him.

  Randall tugged the cord of the chainsaw. It roared to life.

  He raised the tool—now a glorious weapon—in front of him, absolutely loving the feeling.

  The chainsaw sputtered and died.

  Out of gas.

  And then the teenaged dracula was upon him, mouth open wide. Randall screamed with rage and bashed the chainsaw into its face as hard as he could. Randall, who was lumberjack-sized, had a good eighteen inches and a hundred pounds on the little monster, and the impact was severe. Blood sprayed.

  A second hit and the creature dropped to the floor.

  Randall smashed the chainsaw into its head, over and over, as the dracula kept thrashing and trying to grab him. The chainsaw held together fine—Randall didn’t buy cheap chainsaws—and after a good dozen or so blows the dracula stopped moving.

  Randall wiped the gore from his face. He hoped the hospital security cameras had caught that.

  There was still chaos everywhere, and people who needed help, but once again Randall had to focus. He stood back up, wincing, and forced himself to get moving again. Though there were probably much better options for bashing draculas to death than his chainsaw and it would just weigh him down, he couldn’t bear to leave it behind.

  Time to find Jenny.

  Moorecook

  BLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOOD

  SOURCE!

  He crouched, felt the new power coursing through his system, and then he was soaring through the lobby, everything slow and fast all at once, and he came down on the shoulders of a man behind the snack bar—the smell of his blood so pure and rich—and as the man screamed, he took his head between his claws and twisted and ripped until a geyser of glorious red erupted in two ropes and he drank from the larger of the two like a water fountain. Had tasted nothing better in his seventy-six years, not even the Macallan fifty-five, not the models he’d fucked back when he could still get it up. The taste of it he couldn’t begin to explain, only how it made him feel, each drop running down his throat—sweet warm salty rust. Like he’d never breathed before until this moment and had finally taken his first hit of oxygen, knowing the more he drank the better…

  FUCKFUCK FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK

  Already the blood flow was ebbing. He had to lick it off the floor now, where it was cooling and congealing, and that beautiful euphoric push had begun to pull away, leaving something black and terrible in its place.

  A headache descended, like someone driving an ice pick through his frontal lobe.

  Something stung his shoulder. He jumped up onto the snack bar, fire blooming down the corridor, streaking toward the doors to the ER, men screaming at him, the gunshots distant, like he heard them from underwater, and with some of the lights came a brief but violent sting, and he could smell blood, his blood and their blood, still muted under their clothes and skin but it was there, calling to him, and he was moving toward them before he realized what he was doing, the men retreating, yelling, more points of light opening and dying like fireflies.

  He stopped.

  These men would fight him.

  He didn’t want to fight.

  He just wanted to drink, and there must be a hundred or more of these blood containers on the floors above him.

  Sick. Drugged. Helpless.

  He leapt off the snack counter and bounded through the lobby toward the elevators.

  Jenny

  RATHER than dwell on why this was happening—which wouldn’t help things make any more sense—Jenny fell back on her training. After
applying antiseptic, lidocaine cream, and a compress to the claw wound on her hip (which thankfully wasn’t serious), she administered a cryoprecipitate IV to a softball player with a transradial amputation of the forearm, and put a Celox compression on the stump to control bleeding. Jenny repeated the procedure with his friend who was missing half his ass, and also gave him a shot of synthetic morphine because the guy was screaming so loud it made her ears ring. Once both patients were stabilized, she allowed herself a bit of pride at her efforts.

  This was the reason she’d become a nurse. To help save lives.

  Focusing on that, she turned her attention to the hallway, remembering how close the pediatric ward was. Jenny Bolton had no idea what Mortimer had become. But if he got to the children…

  Screams, from behind her. She spun and stared in disbelief. The ER had become a war zone.

  Somehow, Mortimer’s affliction had spread, infecting others. Jenny counted three—no, four—of the fanged creatures, and a fifth in mid-transformation, spitting out teeth as longer ones grew in. Those still human tried to make it to the exit, but the EMT Jenny had ridden here with was blocking the doors, snapping and slashing at anyone who came close.

  That a-hole Lanz was nowhere to be seen, but bending over one of the infected, smashing its head in with a chainsaw, was…

  “Randall!”

  “Jen?”

  Her ex-husband’s neck craned up at the sound of her voice, and he caught Jenny’s eyes and smiled at her, big and stupid.

  That’s what Randall was, at his core. Big and stupid. But despite all he’d put her through, seeing him there, alert and sober amid the horror and the chaos, gave Jenny a burst of hope. More than anything, she wanted him to spirit them both out of here.

  But they couldn’t leave. Especially now. With more of these…things…in the hospital, someone had to protect the children.

  Randall limped over to her, that familiar, lopsided grin on his face, as Dante’s Inferno raged around them. She met him halfway, and when his huge, hairy arms closed around her in a hug, she endured it.

  Hell, against her better instincts, she welcomed it.

  “We’ve got ourselves a dracula outbreak,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Jenny pulled away. “I can’t leave. There are kids in this hospital. Sick kids. They won’t have a chance on their own.”

  Randall’s brow furrowed, and he pursed his lips. “Okay. I’ll take you to the truck, then I’ll come back and—”

  “No time. I have to go now.”

  “It’s too dangerous, Jen. Let me do it.”

  “Do you even know where pediatrics is, Randall? Can you even spell pediatrics?”

  Randall frowned. “That’s low.”

  He was right. And Jenny wanted more than anything for Randall to come with her. But she couldn’t ask that of him. She’d divorced him, kicked him out. Even if he had sobered up, she couldn’t ask him to risk his neck in such a deadly situation.

  During their courtship, their engagement, the early years of their marriage, Randall had been the sweetest man on Earth, a big, loyal puppy dog. Not the brightest bulb in the box—really, she could do the New York Times crossword while Randall couldn’t even spell crossword—but that didn’t matter. Randall was…Randall—insanely devoted, who always had her back. Here was a guy who was there for her.

  Until he started drinking. Then a new Randall emerged. Violent. He never touched her, never even raised a hand to her. But he’d break things and pick fights with other people. She’d finally given him an ultimatum: Jenny or the bottle. He chose her—or rather said he did, but kept sneaking drinks on the side. Finally she’d called it quits.

  Now he seemed more like the man she’d fallen in love with.

  “Get out of here, Randall. Save yourself.”

  “I’m not going anywhere, Jen. You know that. Let’s go save those sick kids.”

  Jenny shook her head. “Don’t do this for me,” she heard herself say. And at the same time, part of her hoped he was doing it for her. She still loved him. After all, she’d never been able to bring herself to go back to her maiden name.

  “Of course it’s for you. But it’s also so those little diseased children don’t become dracula snacks. We need to get them safe so they can be sick and die in peace.”

  A dracula launched itself at the duo, and Randall pushed Jenny away and swung the chainsaw at its head. Though the saw wasn’t running, the blade hit with such force Jenny heard the creature’s neck snap as it fell to the side. When the dracula hit the floor it thrashed and kicked and screamed, its head gyrating at an odd angle.

  “Come on!”

  Randall grabbed Jenny’s arm and marched her through the double doors into the depths of the hospital. After a few steps, Jenny took the lead, pulling him to the stairwell, tugging open the door.

  “Maybe an elevator?” Randall said. He stared down at his leg, which was dripping blood from torn stitches.

  “Aw, Randall…”

  Dropping to her knees, Jenny tore at the hem of his hospital gown and began to wrap it around his leg to stop the bleeding. As she was tying off the cloth, she noticed Randall’s gown beginning to extend in front.

  “Randall!”

  “Sorry,” he said, turning red. “Ain’t been with anyone since you left.”

  “Really?” Randall wasn’t smart, but he was handsome and charming, and he’d had a steady stream of girlfriends before they met. Though Jenny was comfortable with her could-stand-to-lose-a-few-pounds body, she’d known that Randall usually dated much hotter, thinner women. If he truly hadn’t had sex with anyone, he’d definitely turned down some offers.

  “Well, five-finger Mary, if you know what I’m saying.”

  Jenny did. She’d been celibate herself—Randall had left her more than a little bitter about the opposite sex. Still, she had a sudden, completely irrational urge to reach up under his gown and grab him.

  Or maybe it wasn’t so irrational. In times of stress, humans often regressed to base behaviors.

  “Have, uh…you?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Been with anyone since the divorce?”

  “That’s not your business, Randall.”

  “Yeah.” He looked away. “Sorry.”

  Jenny stood up. “We need to get to pediatrics. The elevator is this way.”

  He moped along behind, and when they reached the elevator, Jenny pressed the call button. For all the commotion in the ER, the hall was disproportionately quiet. Perhaps some people had already evacuated, despite Dr. Lanz’s proclamation that there wasn’t anywhere to go. Though this area of Durango was currently under development, with lots of new construction up and down the highway, the only other inhabited building within three miles was a gas station. But at the current rate this disease was spreading through the hospital, even the uninhabited woods at night would be preferable to staying here. Unless they were able to stop the infection, Jenny predicted everyone would be either dead or turned within a few hours.

  The elevator dinged, and when the doors opened a dracula darted out, tackling Jenny.

  She fell backward, the creature atop her, snarling and gnashing its horrible teeth. Jenny caught a quick glimpse of the nurse’s uniform, and the nametag, Fortescue, as she reached up to grab the dracula’s shoulders, keeping its fangs away. The snap snap snap of the jaws, like mousetraps going off, flecked blood and spittle all over Jenny’s face. She turned away, scrunched closed her eyes and mouth, worried more about getting the infection than being devoured.

  Then, as quickly as she’d been pinned down, Jenny was free.

  Randall had jerked Nurse Fortescue off Jenny and pinned the monster to the floor, his bare foot on her chest, his chainsaw tearing at her neck. He moved the saw up and down, a combination of weight and brute strength causing it to tear through the dracula’s throat, blood spraying out three-hundred and sixty degrees like a lawn sprinkler.

  The thing that was once Fortescue thrashe
d and hissed, and Randall dropped his big knee onto the monster’s ribcage, pressing on the edge of the blade with both his palms, shaking it back and forth until Jenny heard the audible pop of the spinal cord severing.

  Still, the teeth gnashed and feet—claws bursting out through the gym shoes—continued to kick and writhe. It wasn’t until Randall had the head completely severed and pushed away from the body, that the monster was finally still.