DRACULAS (A Novel of Terror)

by J. A. Konrath

  Three of the kids—two boys and a little girl—were sitting with their backs to the window, holding hands. No blood on them, though the boy on the right was bald from chemo. One pre-teen was with an older woman—probably Grandma. They clutched each other tightly, and Jenny wasn’t sure who was consoling whom. Another little boy clung to his mom, whose slack, pale expression was an obvious indicator of shock. The last boy, the eldest of them, knelt next to a man, prostrate on the floor, who was bleeding from a neck injury.

  Jenny set the bloody hatchet on a table next to some coloring books and hurried to them. The blood pooling around the man was significant. The boy—no more than fifteen—was holding a towel to the man’s neck. Before looking at the injury, Jenny checked his radial pulse. The man’s skin was cool, sweaty. His face lacked color. Tachycardia—his heart was beating wildly—accompanied by rapid breathing.

  Hypovolemia. Stage three or four.

  This man was bleeding to death.

  “Help my Dad. Please help him.”

  “Can you hear me, sir?”

  Glassy eyes. No response.

  The man needed a transfusion, but the hospital’s blood bank was in the basement, and even if she made a run for it, and survived the dracula gauntlet, there was no guarantee the man would still be alive by the time she got back.

  Jenny hurried to a closet in the corner of the room, the door decorated with crayon pictures. Inside were supplies. No blood, but a saline IV that would help restore some blood volume, oxygen, noradrenaline…

  Her finger attacked the keypad over the lock, punching in the four digit code by memory.

  A red light came on, and an unpleasant raspberry buzz indicating she’d gotten it wrong.

  She tried it again, slower this time.

  Another raspberry. They had changed the code. Son of a—

  “Lady, can you help me find my mommy?”

  Jenny stared down at the little girl tugging on her uniform. Then she cast a frantic glance around for Randall, who was barricading the second entrance.

  “Randall! I need to get this door open!”

  His head cocked up at the sound of her voice, and after tossing another chair onto the pile he limped over, pulling a screwdriver off of his tool belt.

  “Dad! DAD!”

  Jenny stared back at the bleeding man, but even at that distance she could see his chest was no longer moving.

  “Got it!” Randall had jammed his screwdriver into the door jamb and popped the lock.

  But it was too late. Even if Jenny tried CPR, the man had lost too much blood, and his wound was still open.

  She walked to the teen, put a hand on his shoulder, and then he hugged her legs, squeezing them hard as he cried.

  “Ah, shit,” Randall said, noticing the dead man.

  Jenny tousled the boy’s hair, then motioned for her husband to come over.

  “You need to clear a path to one of the doors, so we can drag this man out of here, before he turns into…”

  Her voice trailed off, but Randall got the point, limping back to the barricade he’d made. Jenny helped the boy to his feet.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Peter. Peter Bernacky.”

  “Peter, my name is Jenny. I’m very sorry about your dad. We’re going to put him in another part of the hospital.”

  “He’s…dead…”

  “I know he’s dead. But I need you to be strong for me. See those little kids sitting by the window? They’re really scared right now. Can you help me try to calm them down?”

  Peter nodded, and Jenny took his hand and led him to the two boys huddling together, crying hysterically. Peter knelt next to them, his face a mask of tears, and dragged over a toy fire truck. Jenny watched as he tried to engage the younger children, and had to turn away because she felt her own tears coming.

  “Please help me find my mommy. One of the monsters took her away.” The little girl was tugging on her uniform.

  “I’ll help in a second, sweetie. But first I need to help Randall. I’ll just be a second.”

  Her husband had pushed aside the pile of chairs, returning access to the door. Checking to make sure Peter wasn’t watching, she wrapped her hands around his father’s collar and began to drag him toward the exit. He was a man of average size, but the blood loss not only made him lighter, but functioned as a lubricant. She managed to get him three quarters of the way there by herself, and then Randall joined her.

  They tugged the dead man into the hall, outside the picture window.

  “We can’t leave him here,” Jenny said. “Peter can still see him.”

  “We’ll take him around the corner. He won’t be able to—”

  “Mommy!”

  The little girl sprinted past, beelining down the hall.

  Jenny automatically sprang up to run after her, but her husband’s strong arm wrapped around her waist, holding her back.

  “I’ve got to get her, Randall.”

  “I’ll get her. You’re staying here.”

  “Randall…”

  Randall shoved her back into the room, then limped off after the child.

  Damn him. He probably won’t even be able to catch her with that bad leg.

  What a stupid, stubborn, selfless fool.

  “Randall!” she called out after he rounded the corner. “Be careful! I…”

  She almost said I love you, but stopped herself. Old habits die hard. Though, if she were forced to tell the truth in a court of law, Jenny still did love the hopeless dope.

  Staring down the hallway, she wondered if she should have just said it.

  Wondered if she’d ever get another chance.

  Squeak…

  Squeak…

  Squeak…

  It was such a familiar sound. Jenny could swear she’d heard it before. Just a little while ago.

  What could it be?

  Then Jenny remembered.

  Benny the Clown’s shoes.

  She took a fearful look behind her and saw him standing at the other end of the hallway. Just standing there, watching her, his clown outfit drenched in gore. The dracula teeth had broken through his lips and cheeks. But, incredibly, he still wore the red clown nose and the fright wig.

  Squeaksqueaksqueaksqueaksqueak!

  The clown sprinted at her, its hands outstretched, talons wiggling. Jenny barely had time to scoot back when it pounced—

  —on Peter’s dead father. Benny the Clown’s fangs tore into the corpse’s throat, and it shook its head like a dog and pulled away, stretching out the carotid artery as if it were a long string of spaghetti. Jenny managed to get to her feet. Then she danced around Benny the Clown and sprinted toward the playroom. Slamming the door after her, she got behind the nearest table and braced it up against the entrance.

  “Help me! Everyone, help!”

  Peter and one of the boys began to stack chairs against the door. The others watched through the picture window as Benny the Clown feasted. The woman—the one Jenny guessed was in shock—had locked her eyes on the spectacle. They widened abruptly, and the woman began to scream.

  When the door was as secure as Randall had had it, Jenny told Peter and the one boy to sit on the other side of the room and look away. Then she rushed to the screaming woman.

  “Miss, you need to be quiet. You’re upsetting the—”

  “What is that terrible clown doing?” the Grandmother cried.

  Jenny forced herself to look. Benny the Clown had torn open the man’s abdominal cavity, his claws cradling several loops of glistening intestines. But rather than gorging on them, the clown was stretching and pulling the bloody loops, twisting the organ into knots.

  Familiar knots.

  “Is that…a flamingo?” asked the old woman.

  Jenny couldn’t answer. She stared, slack-jawed, as Benny the Clown continued to make balloon animals out of that poor man’s innards.

  One of the boys passed out.

  The screaming woman passed o
ut.

  The old woman threw up, her dentures plopping into the puddle of puke.

  Besides the flamingo, Benny the Clown also created a wiener dog, a giraffe, and what could have been either a lion or a poodle—some animal with a poofy mane. Jenny summoned up her last bit of courage and rushed the window, banging her palm on the glass.

  “Get away from here! Get away from us, you fucking evil clown!”

  Benny stared at Jenny. Stared without moving. Without making a sound. Jenny saw cunning, there. Cunning, and the same kind of cold, watchful malevolence that alligators had.

  Then Benny the Clown reached up and squeezed his red nose, the fake flower on his chest squirting blood on the window, blurring Jenny’s view.

  A moment later, the clown was gone, his oversized shoes squeak-squeaking down the hallway…

  In the same direction Randall went.

  Lanz

  HE couldn’t get enough of the blood.

  It had the same punch as coke. The same rush as an orgasm. The same high as morphine. The same satisfaction as a huge meal when starving. All wrapped up in one overwhelming sensation that made Lanz’s eyes roll up and his body quiver in absolute fucking ecstasy.

  But the feeling didn’t last. The moment the blood ran out, so did the jolt. And in its place was a longing, an ache. That ache became painful after just a few minutes, and the pain turned into crippling, mind-searing agony, getting worse and worse until more blood was consumed.

  The part of Lanz’s brain that still had some higher functioning recognized the symptoms of addiction, but also knew this was something more. He’d become a higher life form. Sharper vision and hearing, a sense of smell so powerful he could detect a drop of blood from a hundred meters away, faster reflexes, accelerated healing power, abnormal strength.

  But unlike the other infected, who seemed to be operating at a reduced mental capacity, Lanz still had some reasoning powers, and some memory of his previous life. He realized this could have been due to the locus of the disease. The others were all infected intravenously, the agent making direct contact with their bloodstream. Lanz had ingested contaminated blood. This could have resulted in a different variation of the infection. Different transmission meant different symptoms.

  Medicine certainly had precedents for this. Yersina pestis—known as the black plague—was a bacteria that could infect a host in three entirely different ways, and cause different symptoms as a result. Perhaps this dracula bug was similar.

  Or perhaps Lanz’s strong will and extraordinary intelligence were too much for the bug to cope with.

  Either way, Lanz felt like the proverbial one-eyed man in the land of the blind. While other creatures ran around, blithely attacking anything that moved—people, each other, and even themselves if the blood urge became strong enough—Lanz could still use his cognitive faculties.

  As the disease spread, turning more humans into creatures, Lanz decided competition for blood was getting too fierce. But he knew of a good source. A source that would be like picking low-hanging fruit from a tree.

  Pediatrics.

  Children would be easy to catch, and not put up much of a fight. Plus, there was an added bonus.

  That bitch nurse, Jenny, had said she was headed to the pediatric ward.

  Lanz would enjoy tearing her sanctimonious throat out.

  He’d enjoy it quite a bit.

  Grammy Ann

  SHE’D fought a long and valiant battle against the diabetes, but it had finally claimed her right foot, the infection spreading into her blood, sepsis hours from killing her before the amputation.

  Now she rested peacefully in a morphine slumber.

  Fresh, clean blood flowing into her body and dreaming of a picnic she’d had just last summer up at Vallecito Lake, her two sons with her, and their children, the apples of her eye—six-year-old Benjamin, and eight-year-old Vicki playing by the shore. Grandchildren. Was there anything better? They were like your kids, but without the hassles. A perfect relationship, a dynamic where everybody won.

  A crack ran through her dream like a fracture through glass, and she could feel herself tumbling out of it, the phantom pain in her right foot spoiling the memory.

  She opened her eyes, but she must have still been sleeping because what she saw made about as much sense as a nightmare.

  A little girl who looked to be the same age as her precious Vicki was standing at her bedside with her back turned, sucking down the chilled contents of the blood bag through the needle that had been attached to her left forearm.

  It was an image that simply didn’t compute, and because of this, she was certain she was dreaming, but God, it felt so real, especially the pain in her right foot, or rather, where her right foot had been. Maybe if she tried to speak, to engage the little girl, it would shatter the illusion of the dream and she would wake.

  “Excuse me. Little girl?”

  The little girl didn’t answer or even move. Grammy Ann eyed the blood bag, watching the level of the dark liquid quickly lowering.

  “Little girl?”

  Then there was only a sucking noise, like slurping down the dregs of a cup of soda.

  “Little girl?”

  The girl let go of the clear, plastic tube and turned around.

  Grammy Ann recoiled, the beeping of the heart monitor accelerating.

  Oh God, that face!

  This was a nightmare. It had to be. Those black eyes, the shredded cheeks, the long, terrible teeth, shellacked with blood.

  She reached for the NURSE CALL, her thumb punching the button over and over.

  It happened so fast, the movement was catlike—the little girl leapt off the floor and came down on Grammy Ann’s chest, blood running down her chin.

  Her head tilted, and her lips moved, an awful noise coming out of them that sounded like a question in some demonic language.

  Grammy Ann screamed, “Nurse!”

  Oasis

  “CAN I have your red candy?” Oasis asked, and she asked nicely, like the nicest she’d ever asked for anything, but the old woman only screamed.

  She would have been gentle, or tried at least, but the screaming hurt her ears, and so she lunged into the woman’s neck, and the screaming got louder, the woman pulling her hair now, and she was strong.

  It wasn’t fair!

  The old woman jerked Oasis’s head back before she could dig in, and hit her in the cheek.

  Oasis roared and swiped one of her talons at the woman’s face, but it missed and sliced across her neck instead, and suddenly—

  Red candy everywhere!

  —and the old woman still flailing and thrashing but the smell and taste of the red candy drew Oasis in and she was at the woman’s neck again, biting, tearing, sucking, the blows still coming, but slower and softer, and the screams dissipating, and then the old woman lay still, and Oasis didn’t have to struggle anymore.

  Instead, she just curled up beside the old woman, whose arm was around Oasis, and, come to think of it, it reminded her of her Grandma Betsy, and it was just like those times when she stayed at Grandma’s house and Grandma would read a book to her before bedtime, except instead of cozying up with a book, it was cozying up with that delicious red candy running out of Grandma’s neck, right down into Oasis’s throat in a steady stream, and she lay with the old woman in her bed for five minutes, until the last of her candy was gone.

  Stacie

  ADAM walked into the room and locked the door after him.

  He sat down on the bed, offered her a shard of ice.

  “How you feeling?” he asked.

  “Gigantic,” she said.

  “Stop it, you’ve never been more beautiful.”

  The water felt so good sliding down her throat, despite the micron-size portion.

  “You just locked the door,” she said. “What’s that about?”

  “Just hospital procedure when there’s a disturbance. Nurse Herrick came back. Do you need anything else?”

  “I’m
all right for now.”

  Stacie thought he seemed distracted, and she was about to ask him what was wrong, but he was already up again, heading toward the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m thirsty now.” He smiled, but there was anxiety in his eyes. She’d seen this before—his strong face. Hiding pain with a smile. God forbid anyone ever think a minister could have a hard day, a sleepless night.