DRACULAS (A Novel of Terror)

by J. A. Konrath

  Well, “always and forever” had taken a detour, but Jenny sensed it had come full circle and was true again. And if so, she knew she could count on Randall coming back. Knew it like she knew the sun would rise tomorrow and water was wet.

  Now Randall was in the hospital somewhere, surrounded by monsters, possibly hurt, maybe even dying, and she wanted, needed him to know she felt the same way.

  Eyeing the window, Jenny took another tentative step toward it, squinting into the playroom, looking for signs of movement, listening for any—

  “STOP!”

  “Kids!” Jenny admonished, turning around. “You’re going to give me a heart attack! Shush!”

  Shaking off the adrenalin, she moved even closer to the door. Her imagination took over. Jenny could picture a monster crouching behind it, waiting to grab her once she got close enough.

  Funny how just two hours ago she never could have thought such things existed. Now she was worried about one popping out and biting her head off.

  Creeping ever closer to the door, too scared to even breathe, all Jenny could hear was the thrumming sound of her own pulse. The door loomed nearer.

  Two feet away.

  Eighteen inches.

  Twelve inches.

  Six inches.

  Finally, Jenny could peek through the broken window into the playroom. She saw…

  A massacre.

  Severed limbs strewn everywhere. Entrails festooned on the chairs and tables. Half-chewed organs speckled the floor and unidentifiable lumps of fatty tissue and brain matter splattered across the walls. Some of the pieces were human—the people Jenny had left behind when she fled into the storage closet. But the majority belonged to the creatures. They had slaughtered each other.

  For all the gore, there was surprisingly little blood. Jenny could smell raw meat, and the sickly-sour butcher shop odor of liver and sweetbreads, coupled with a deep, smoked pork scent courtesy of her dairy creamer weapon.

  “Are they gone?” one of the children whispered.

  Repulsive as it was, the playroom seemed to be empty.

  “Yes,” Jenny said. Her hand found the doorknob, sticky with fluid that had been squeezed from the slaughtered dracula stuck in the window.

  “Don’t go!”

  “It’s okay,” Jenny said. “I’m just going to use the intercom. I’ll be right back.”

  Touching the knob gingerly with just her fingertips, she swung open the door and immediately wiped her hand off on an unstained part of her uniform. The intercom was on the wall, right next to the barricaded door. Jenny moved carefully out of the closet, undecided on whether or not to leave the door open. On the one hand, she didn’t want to put the children in danger. But the door locked automatically, and if she needed to get in there quickly, she didn’t want to have to wait for one of the kids to let her in.

  She opted for a compromise—closing it most of the way, but leaving it open a crack.

  Then she focused her attention on the twenty-foot space between her and the intercom.

  Slow and steady? Or run like hell?

  Jenny ran, watching her footing but still feeling fleshy bits squish under the soles of her shoes. She reached the intercom in the space of a few seconds, then had a bad thought.

  The power is out. What if it doesn’t work?

  Jenny hoped it would be powered by the generator. Like life-support and operating room lights, the intercom was essential for patient care. Earlier, amid the chaos, someone had used it to call Shanna. But Jenny couldn’t remember if it was before or after the outage.

  Only one way to find out…

  She pressed the button and spoke into the speaker, “Randall, I’m still in pediatrics with the children. I need you to…oh my God!”

  Jenny froze, immobilized by fear.

  Dr. Lanz appeared in the hallway.

  She spotted him through the spiderweb cracks of the room-length window, the children’s finger painting now frescoed with bits of tissue.

  Lanz hadn’t spotted her yet. But he’d heard her. The intercom worked fine, Jenny’s voice blaring throughout the hospital, announcing her location.

  Lanz reached the hole he’d broken in the glass, and locked eyes with her. His white lab coat was charred, his nametag a melted blob.

  His face was also a melted blob. The doctor’s nose was nothing but a blackened hole, and his hair stuck to his scalp in sticky, burned patches.

  “EEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICHHHHHHHH!”

  Did he just call me a bitch?

  Quick as a cat, he pounced through the window and sprang at Jenny, bounding toward her on all fours, closing the distance between them with astonishing speed.

  Jenny reached for one of the chairs piled up against the exit door and held it in front of her like a lion tamer, keeping Lanz at bay. He swiped at it, hitting hard enough to sting Jenny’s palms and make her arms shake. He repeated the move, batting the chair to the other side, but she refused to let go, not letting him get close enough to touch her.

  Then Lanz paused his attack. He sniffed the air, the ragged skin around his nasal cavity vibrating. He turned his head slowly toward the storage room.

  No! Not the children!

  Lanz leapt toward the closet, but Jenny had anticipated the move. She tossed the chair aside and threw herself at him, tackling the doctor around his ankles, causing him to sprawl face-first onto the floor.

  Every cell in Jenny’s body screamed at her to let go, to get as far away from the hideous creature as possible. But Jenny Bolton had seen enough death that day. Horrible, pointless, unexpected death. If she had to kill Dr. Lanz with her own two fists, she would, because she would be damned if she let that monster harm another innocent.

  Lanz twisted on the floor, reaching back for Jenny, his claws outstretched and tangling in her hair. She grabbed onto one of his talons—long and bony—and snapped it backward, hard as she could, so quick and violent that his knuckle split the skin and popped out to say hello.

  Lanz immediately released her head—

  —and shoved his bleeding finger into his mouth.

  As the creature cannibalized its own hand, Jenny scurried off to the side, got her feet under her, and sprinted toward the closet door. She reached for the knob, yanking hard.

  The door didn’t move.

  It must have closed shut on its own.

  Jenny glanced back at Dr. Lanz, who was sitting on the floor, rocking back and forth, chewing on his hand and shuddering with either agony or ecstasy. Or maybe both. His misshapen, angler-fish teeth were shredding the appendage to hamburger.

  She stuck her head into the window.

  “Kids! Open the door and let me in!”

  The children didn’t reply.

  “Come on! Open the door!”

  When she got a response, it was tinged with tears. “I’m scared.”

  “I’m scared too. But you need to let me in so I can protect you.”

  Jenny stuck her arm through the window, waving the glow stick and peering inside. The four children were huddled together on the far side of the closet.

  “Come on, kids. Please open up.”

  She glanced over her shoulder toward Lanz. He was still chewing on his hand, but it wasn’t as frenzied. He’d grown calmer, almost contemplative about the task. As if deciding which part of the turkey leg to bite into next.

  Even if Jenny made it past him, where could she go? No doubt the hospital was crawling with draculas. The closet was the safest place. Besides, she couldn’t leave the kids.

  She stuck her head through the broken window. No way she’d fit through. Maybe ten years and twenty pounds ago, but all that would happen now was she’d get stuck like that monster had.

  Another quick glance at Lanz.

  He was no longer eating himself.

  Instead, he was standing, staring at Jenny, a line of bloody drool stretching down his chest.

  Oh no…

  She banged on the door with both fists. “Open this godda
mn door now! Right now!”

  Jenny chanced another look behind her.

  Lanz was holding his hand—now a ragged stump—up to his mouth. His misshapen, hideous tongue gave it a long, slow lick, like he was enjoying a popsicle. His black eyes bore into Jenny.

  Then he took an easy step forward.

  “JESUS CHRIST JUST OPEN THE—!”

  Lanz broke into a run, and just then the knob turned. Jenny slipped into the closet, managing to get the door closed and to brace her back against it just as Lanz hit full force. His claw—the one he still had—shot through the window and latched onto Jenny’s throat. She twisted away, crabwalking backward, watching in helpless terror as Lanz tried to force himself into the square window.

  He got his arm in.

  He got his head in.

  But that was as far as he could go.

  Jenny feverishly looked around for a weapon. Besides the art supplies, there was medical equipment, but none of it formidable. Bandages, sutures, iodine, splints, tape. Where were the scalpels? Where were the syringes? Where was the—

  Crash cart! Why hadn’t she thought of that before?

  The cart was a set of aluminum shelves on wheels, stocked with everything needed to resuscitate and treat life-threatening conditions. She crawled to it, yanking open a drawer, looking for something, anything, to hurt Lanz with. Her mind was thinking syringes and drugs.

  But her eyes locked onto the defibrillator.

  It was a manual model. Perfect. She flipped it on, cranked it to 970 joules, and grabbed the paddles while the battery charged the capacitor.

  “You want something to eat?” Jenny said, pressing the electrodes on either side of Lanz’s head. “Eat this, you son of a bitch.”

  The unit beeped, and Jenny pressed the button to deliver the jolt. Lanz screeched, then immediately pulled out of the window. Jenny charged the unit again, waiting for him to return.

  The bastard did, jamming himself into the tight space, his outstretched claw swiping at her head. Jenny ducked it, brought up the paddles, and juiced him once more.

  He jerked away, but this time he had the presence of mind to take a paddle with him. Jenny pulled on the other end of the wire, struggling not to lose it, but Lanz had weight and strength and he ripped it from her grasp, pulling it out of the defib unit.

  One paddle wasn’t enough to complete the circuit, so the weapon was useless. But it didn’t seem to matter.

  A minute passed.

  Then two.

  Dr. Lanz didn’t reappear.

  “Is the monster dead?” one of the children wailed.

  Jenny didn’t think so. The shock he got was no doubt painful, but probably not fatal.

  “I don’t know.”

  And she had no desire to check. If he was lying outside the door, dying, that was fine with Jenny. But she wasn’t going to risk peeking through the broken window and getting her face bitten off because Lanz was playing hide and seek.

  Better to wait and see.

  “Who let me in?” Jenny asked the children.

  “I did.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Tommy.”

  “Tommy, you’re a brave boy. When we get out of here, I’m taking you to the Camp Kookyfoot Waterpark.”

  “Can I come too?”

  The other two also chimed in the chorus.

  “Okay,” Jenny said, “I’m taking you all to Camp Kookyfoot.”

  “Is your husband coming too?”

  Jenny’s thoughts flashed to Randall. She pictured him trying to balance on an inner tube far too small for his massive frame, that goofy, perpetually confused look on his face.

  “Yes. Him too.”

  She closed her eyes and prayed the big lug was okay.

  Randall

  RANDALL was all in favor of the crippled. Not in favor of them being crippled, of course—that would be deranged—but of their rights and stuff. They definitely deserved their own parking spaces and ramps and everything that would let them live normal lives. So when the legless dracula wheeled itself toward him, he felt bad that his first reaction was to laugh.

  Not a belly laugh or a “laughing and pointing” type of thing, but it was still a very definite laugh. He couldn’t help himself. The creature just looked so…ridiculous.

  As the dracula reached him, Randall stuck out his good foot, stopping the chair from bashing into him, and then gave it a nice big shove. The dracula wheeled backward, jaws snapping.

  Randall laughed again.

  Now he was relatively certain that his was not the cruel laughter of ridiculing the handicapped, but a more insane sort of laughter—the kind of laughter that would come out of a man whose mind just couldn’t handle all of the shit it had seen tonight.

  Yeah, he was losing it.

  That was okay. No shame in a little dracula-induced brain-snapping. It was kind of relaxing, actually. Like alcohol without the hangover.

  The dracula wheeled forward again.

  Randall shoved it backward.

  Hell, he could do this all day. Or at least for an hour or two. It’d make a great YouTube video. People would protest the shit out of it, but it would get millions of hits.

  Tina shifted her weight on his back. Randall snapped back to reality.

  Focus.

  When Randall was in fourth grade, his teacher, Mrs. Quimbal, had told him that when he felt his concentration fade from the task at hand, he should imagine red laser beams coming out of his eyes. It had worked. He’d sit there at his desk, imagining red laser beams zapping into his math book, and he’d keep his focus. His grades were still crap, but at least he wasn’t getting into trouble.

  Randall imagined red laser beams zapping into the dracula as it wheeled back toward him.

  Gotta keep yourself sane. Gotta protect the little girl. If you screw that up, then you’ve lost the one positive thing that could possibly come from this nightmare. Focus. Focus. Focus.

  He lifted his good foot to shove the dracula back one last time. Suddenly the dracula pushed itself up with its arms, practically leaping out of the wheelchair and onto Randall. The creature was significantly more threatening when it was latched onto his chest.

  “Get off! Get off!” Randall shouted, stumbling backward.

  Tina shrieked. For one terrifying moment Randall thought he was going to lose his balance, falling onto his back and crushing the little girl beneath him, but he managed to keep himself upright.

  He punched the dracula in the head as hard as he could, getting it right between the eyes. Though a bolt of pain shot through his knuckles and he let out a loud grunt, this did keep the dracula from biting out a sizable chunk of his torso. He couldn’t get at his utility belt with the damn monster wrapped around him like this.

  He jerked his body around, trying to shake off the creature, but the thing had an iron grip around him (apparently its lack of legs meant extra strength in its arms) and he couldn’t get it off. Tina, meanwhile, started to slip off his back and wrapped a panicked arm around his neck, immediately cutting off his air supply.

  Then, Jenny’s voice: “Randall…”

  It took Randall a split second to realize that Jenny had not suddenly appeared in the room with him, but was speaking to him through an intercom. He’d heard that asshole Clay use it earlier. Jenny’s voice was much nicer.

  “…I’m still in pediatrics with the children. I need you to…oh my God!”

  The message ended.

  Randall punched at the dracula again. It tilted its head back and his fist almost plunged into its open mouth, but he struck it in the chin and its teeth clacked together, pinching off a small piece of its tongue.

  What did Jenny want him to do?

  Come back?

  Go for help?

  Find some dynamite and blow this whole fucking place to smithereens?

  Was something attacking her? Had she died in these last couple of seconds?

  He had a mental flash of one of those things—no, thr
ee of them—dragging her to the ground, their jaws digging into her flesh, eating her alive as she screamed for Randall to help her and cursed him for abandoning her and the children.

  Randall had felt plenty of anger in his life, much of it aimed at Jenny—oh, he’d broken more than one piece of furniture in those days after she left him—but none of it compared to the rage he felt right now, knowing that these creatures might be feasting upon the one love of his life.