DRACULAS (A Novel of Terror)

by J. A. Konrath

  “A two-fer! Awriiight, Alice!”

  He wished someone was around for a high five, or at least a knuckle bump. So he settled for kissing Alice.

  “There’s my good girl. You’re the best.”

  Then he noticed the first one twitching.

  Aw, not again. He wasn’t going to get up, was he?

  No. The twitching stopped and it lay still.

  He spotted the phone at the nursing station and had an idea. But first…

  He grabbed his duffel from the counter, locked himself in the supply room, and began to reload the AA-12’s drum.

  Jenny

  “EVERYONE!” Jenny said. “I need everyone’s attention! I want all of us to move away from the window, to the other side of the playroom. Now.”

  The hallway—just beyond the room-length finger-painted window—was filled with draculas.

  Freakin’ filled.

  They’d run up en masse after sounds of firecrackers came from the lower floors. Jenny guessed it hadn’t been fireworks, but rather gunshots. These monsters seemed to have been retreating, but stopped when they’d caught sight of the children through the window.

  At least eight of them. Maybe ten. Clawing at the glass, pressing against it, knocking on it. Some smeared blood and bits of gore across the surface, while others fell into line to lick the blood up with spongy, misshapen tongues and thick, ropey strands of saliva. Saliva right out of that movie Randall loved to watch over and over again. Aliens, with Sigourney Weaver.

  “You kinda look like Sigourney Weaver,” he’d told her, every time he played that VHS tape. “Cept you got better boobs.”

  As the children gathered around her, Jenny wondered where Randall was. She hoped he was okay. She also hoped that once he found the little girl, he wouldn’t try to bring her back here. Too many of those things out there. Even her husband, whom Jenny thought was damn near indestructible, wouldn’t stand a chance.

  “Will they break the glass?” Peter asked.

  “No,” Jenny answered firmly.

  But that’s what she feared, and why she ordered everyone away. The glass was thick—a necessity in the children’s ward—and would be tough to crack bare-handed. These creatures were strong, but so far the glass had resisted their pushing and pounding.

  If they did get in, Jenny needed a weapon. Preferably one like Sigourney had in that film. Keeping her eyes on the window, she walked over to the old woman, the one who’d thrown up. The stains on her dentures and fingers were telltale signs of a smoker.

  “I need your lighter,” Jenny told her.

  The woman didn’t answer. She just stared, wide-eyed, at the window. The draculas continued to knock and pound at the glass. Some bit at it, their teeth leaving scratches with the sound of nails across a chalkboard.

  The boy holding the old woman’s hand nudged her. “Grandma, the nurse lady needs your lighter.”

  The old woman stared at the child like she had just now realized he was there. Then, without a word, she handed her purse to Jenny. Jenny dug around until she found it; a cheap, plastic disposable brand. She flicked it once, and the flame came on big and bright.

  She heard a CRUNCH, followed by squeals of fright from the children. Jenny stared at the window and saw that one of the monsters had picked up an office chair and was bashing it against the glass. Jenny didn’t even need to read the dracula’s nametag on its lab coat to know who it was. She recognized the hair.

  Dr. Lanz.

  After the second hit, the window spiderwebbed, but stayed intact. It had a plastic safety coating, similar to the one used on car windshields, so children throwing toys wouldn’t get showered with shards.

  Lanz tried twice more, but the glass held. His eyes met Jenny’s, and his toothy mouth yawed open, a hiss escaping the crosshatched fangs. He tossed the chair aside and scurried off, probably to look for something bigger to throw at the window.

  Moving quickly, Jenny went into the supply closet Randall had gotten open. She immediately zeroed in on a portable oxygen tank. It was the large MM size, brushed aluminum with a painted green top, almost the size of a scuba tank. A good start, but she needed more. Contrary to popular belief, pure oxygen wasn’t flammable.

  Luckily, the hospital had something that was very flammable. And it was stored in the same closet as the oxygen.

  Jenny walked past the medical supplies to the extra stock for the coffee machine at the nurse’s station. She bypassed the packages of regular and decaf, the filters, and the sugar, and took down a full box of non-dairy creamer. Twelve bottles, 15 oz. of powder per bottle. Enough to set a whole building on fire.

  Finally, she found some rubber tubing, a large cannula, and a bottle of rubber cement.

  Working quickly, Jenny removed the caps from all twelve creamer bottles. A plastic seal covered the opening, keeping the product fresh. She applied a big dollop of rubber cement to the top of each, and set the box next to the doorway.

  Next, she hooked the cannula—a large, metal tube with a pointed tip—up to one end of the hose. After pulling over the oxygen tank on a hand truck, she attached the other end of the hose to the nozzle, and pulled the toggle lever to give it a try. O2 hissed out of the cannula, strong enough to blow her hair back.

  “Miss! I need your help,” Jenny said.

  But the old woman, like the other adult in the room, appeared to be catatonic.

  CRACK!

  Dr. Lanz had returned, resuming his assault on the window. But rather than attack it with a chair, he was now wielding a fire extinguisher. It was heavy, compact, and would easily break through the glass in another swing or two.

  Jenny patted her pockets, frantic, afraid she’d misplaced the lighter. She found it in her hip pocket.

  CRACK!

  Jenny studied the lighter, and frowned when she saw it had one of those child-proof locks on it.

  CRACK! Some glass tinkled onto the tile floor, a medium-size hole appearing in the window.

  “Quickly! Can any of you children operate a child-proof lighter?”

  Every child raised their hand.

  “Peter!” she said, calling the oldest of them. “Come here!”

  CRACK!

  The hole was now big enough to crawl through, and one of the draculas got ahead of Lanz and forced itself through the opening, sliding on its belly into the playroom.

  “Light the tops like this!” Jenny ordered, bending down and touching the flame to the rubber cement on the first bottle of creamer. It glowed blue, and Jenny picked up the bottle, jabbed the cannula through the plastic bottom, and then pointed it at the creature scrambling on all fours toward her.

  “Everyone get back!”

  She cranked the nozzle, the compressed air blowing the front off the bottle, showering the dracula with white powder.

  A moment later, the powder ignited in a tremendous fireball, the powerful WHUMP! hitting Jenny with a blast of heated air that burned off all the fine little hairs on her arms.

  The dracula fared much worse. Every square inch of it was throwing off flames. It twisted around on the floor, slapping at the inferno it had become, oily black smoke swirling up into the air and smelling a lot like bacon cooking.

  Bacon, with a hint of artificial vanilla.

  Thank you, Mythbusters.

  Jenny turned off the oxygen. While non dairy creamer had nothing in it that made it flammable, it was a fine powder, and many powders were ignitable simply because they had such a huge surface area. Flour, sawdust, dust in grain silos—they’d caused countless fires and explosions throughout history. The oxygen worked as an accelerant, and also dispersed the powder so it spread evenly through the air.

  “Light the next one, Peter!”

  Jenny knocked off the smoking, melted plastic container from the end of the cannula, and jammed on a burning one just as Dr. Lanz flopped into the playroom.

  “Now you’re fired, Lanz!” Jenny yelled. Then she hit him with her makeshift flamethrower, dusting the doctor in a c
loud of powder.

  But at the same time, Lanz had emptied his extinguisher, putting out the flame before it had a chance to ignite the cloud of creamer enveloping him.

  Son of a—

  Snarling, Dr. Lanz rushed at Jenny, far too quick for her to prep another creamer bottle, his hideous mouth unhinging at the jaw and a look of smug satisfaction in his predatory eyes.

  Jenny threw herself backward, Lanz’s claw swiping the air a few inches in front of her face. A cloud of sweet-smelling vanilla non-dairy creamer floated above his head and shoulders, and a ropey line of drool escaped his cage of teeth, dripping down his neck.

  “Die, you monster! Die!”

  Peter Bernacky, his teenage face defiant, stuck his arm into the dust plume, his hand on the lighter.

  “Peter! Don’t—”

  The flash blinded Jenny, a wave of superheated air sunburning her face and bare arms, singeing her eyebrows, instantly drying out her mouth.

  Both Lanz and Peter instantly burst into flames. Lanz scurried away, still holding the extinguisher, turning it on himself and dousing the fire as he fled back through the hole he’d made in the window.

  Peter screamed, but the sound was instantly muffled by the flame entering his lungs. He staggered away from Jenny, arms pin-wheeling, heading straight for the grandmother with the dentures.

  She tried to push him back, but Peter wrapped his arms around her, setting her clothes ablaze. They did a burning dance for several steps, then fell over in a tangle of screams and flailing limbs and burning flesh.

  The sprinkler finally came on, dousing the pair, and Jenny turned her attention toward the broken window as another dracula climbed through. She charged it with the cannula, pulling it free from the oxygen tank, and spearing the creature through its left eye. The monster hissed, blood and bits of brain matter spraying out of the hollow end, arcing across the playroom, and landing directly in the mouth of the catatonic woman who’d been watching the entire scene unfold with her jaw hanging open.

  Children screamed. Flesh sizzled and popped. Jenny cast a frantic look around, seeking a weapon as the dracula flopped through the window, crashing at her feet where he squirmed and undulated like a landed swordfish. Jenny looked up as another dracula snaked into the opening. But rather than attack her, it pounced on the other creature, positioning its mouth over the fountain of blood and tissue pumping through the cannula, and locking its lips around it like a drinking straw.

  Jenny spotted the oxygen tank through the steam and hefted it, adrenalin giving her the strength to lift the eighty-plus pounds. She slammed it onto the new intruder’s skull, driving it to the floor, squashing it like a stomped pumpkin. Then she hoisted the tank again and pancaked the monster with the cannula eyestalk.

  Another dracula slid in through the window. Then another. They descended upon their fallen comrades, chewing and tearing and lapping up the gore.

  We need to get the hell out of here. Now.

  “Everyone! Come on!”

  There weren’t many left to follow her order. The grandmother was down on the floor, convulsing. The mother was keeled over, throwing up. Most of Peter’s hair had burned off, his eyelids and nose were scorched away, and he was blessedly still. That left five children. Three listened, running to Jenny’s side. The son of the vomiting mother stood there, eyes wide, immobile. The grandson had curled up fetal, hugging his knees into his chest.

  “Into the storage closet!” Jenny yelled.

  Then she grabbed the shirt collar of the boy on the floor and tugged him away from his grandmother, dragging him to the closet. She turned to go back for the other boy, but more draculas had infiltrated the playroom, and they were tearing through the rest of them like a piranha tornado. Forcing herself to back away from the slaughter, cursing herself for not being able to do more, Jenny grabbed the storage room door and slammed it closed, hoping that whatever Randall had done to open it hadn’t damaged the lock.

  She gave it a cautious push, saw that it held, then watched through the small, square window as the creatures turned the playroom into a blood buffet. Horrified, yet fascinated, she couldn’t help but wonder how they could drink so much. She squinted at one of them, gorging until its belly distended to practically bursting, like a pregnancy that had lasted twenty months.

  But only seconds after it stopped feeding, its belly began to shrink.

  Once again she thought of Randall and his old horror movies. One of his favorites was actually relevant to their current situation. The Killer Shrews, a black and white cheapie infamous for dressing up dogs as the titular rodent monsters. The film’s heroes were trapped in a house, the bloodthirsty shrews everywhere, clawing to get inside and devour them. Like their diminutive counterparts, the shrews had to eat ninety percent of their body weight every day, or else they’d starve—a byproduct of their hyper-metabolism.

  Apparently, the draculas also functioned at a highly increased metabolic rate, which explained why Jenny and the others had been able to get to the closet without being slaughtered. These creatures had to eat constantly, and they took the path of least resistance to do so. So they’d leapt upon the dead and dying, the small and weak, even if the injured were other draculas.

  Jenny tore herself away from the spectacle and tried to focus on what needed to be done. First, barricade the door. Next, look for weapons. Then attend to the wounded.

  But even though she was trained for emergencies, Jenny found herself paralyzed by worry.

  Strangely, it wasn’t fear for herself, or the people she was with.

  It was for her husband.

  Please, please, please, God, let him be okay.

  Lanz

  DR. Lanz tore at his face, the burned flesh coming off in strips. The pain was unbearable, but not as overwhelming as the heavenly odor of his fried skin. Hunger pangs doubled him over, the agony even worse than the fire damage, and Lanz momentarily lost his self-control and began shoving his own toasted flesh into his mouth, including a walnut-size chunk that was quite possibly his nose.

  Jenny.

  That bitch nurse Jenny had done this to him. Jumbled as his thoughts were becoming, Lanz could still recall firing her ass. She’d had the audacity to question one of his treatments—right in front of the patient and the other nurses. Granted, he’d been a little coked up at the time and had inadvertently prescribed penicillin to someone who had an allergy, but he couldn’t allow that kind of blatant insubordination. Not in his ER.

  The bloody nurses’ union tried to fight him on it, but Lanz had ultimately prevailed by threatening to walk. A bluff, but he knew the hospital needed him more than it needed some know-it-all nurse.

  But she’d gotten back at Lanz. She’d burned him good.

  No matter. Even as he peeled off his face and neck and shoved them into his toothy maw, he could feel the skin regenerating, regrowing.

  I’m invincible. You think you can stop me, Nurse Bolton? I know how to deal with your insubordinate ass.

  Gliding down the stairs, Lanz reached the basement. He’d brought Winslow down here a few times, let her blow him near the furnace. Even with the lights off, Lanz’s vision was perfect. Yet another enhancement, courtesy of the virus. He hurried past the boilers, chewing on the charred flesh of his right hand, until he found what he sought.

  The circuit breaker.

  I can see in the dark, Nurse Bolton. Can you?

  Randall

  “HEY, kid!” Randall shouted. “Little girl!”

  Crap! He limped down the hallway after her, cursing silently with each step. He couldn’t blame a five-year-old kid for freaking out, and yet…okay, maybe he could. She was going to get both of them killed. If his leg wasn’t so messed up he could’ve scooped her up in about three seconds, but she was already halfway down the hall, sobbing and screaming as she ran.

  “Little girl!” he repeated, trying to use his friendliest tone of voice. “It’s going to be okay! I can keep you safe!” Also, little girl, there’s a Santa Cla
us and an Easter Bunny and a Tooth Fairy.

  He wasn’t going to let her get eaten. No way in hell. He was going to return to Jenny with a safe little girl on his shoulders, no matter how many draculas he had to splatter to do it.

  Though she was a fast little fucker, his legs were a lot longer, and he’d almost caught up to her by the time she rounded the corner. She darted into an open doorway, then screamed. Randall limped in after her.