DRACULAS (A Novel of Terror)

by J. A. Konrath

  Donaldson glanced through the windshield, then checked the rearview mirror. Darkness.

  Lucy laughed through her shattered nose and ran her tongue along her swollen upper lip and gums—two front teeth MIA.

  Donaldson blinked and shook his head again. Pulled off the road onto the shoulder.

  “We’re gonna have some fun, little girl,” he said. “And two hundred and fifty milligrams is like candy to me.”

  He ran a clumsy paw across her breasts, squeezing hard, then turned his attention to the backseat.

  The guitar case had two clasps, one on the body, one on the neck.

  Donaldson slapped the left side of his face three times and then opened the case.

  A waft of foulness seeped out of the velvet-lined guitar lid, although the contents didn’t seem to be the source—a length of chain. Four pairs of handcuffs. Three carabiners. Vials of liquid Oxycontin. Cutlery shears. A spotlight. A small spray bottle. Two coils of climbing rope. And a snowboarding helmet.

  The front passenger door squeaked open and Donaldson spun around as Lucy fell backward out of the car. He lunged into her seat, but she kicked the door. It slammed into his face, his chin crunching his mouth closed, and as the door recoiled, he saw Lucy struggling onto her feet, her wrists still bound behind her back.

  She disappeared into the woods.

  Donaldson took a moment, fumbling for the door handle. He found it, but paused.

  He adjusted the rearview mirror, grinning to see the blood between his teeth.

  “Should we let this one go, sport? Or show the little missus that there are things a lot scarier than a guitar case full of bondage shit?”

  Donaldson winked at his reflection, yanked out the keys, yanked up the brake, and shoved his door open. He weaved over to the trunk, a stupid grin on his face, got the right key in on the third try.

  Among the bottles of bleach solution, the rolls of paper towels, the gas cans, and the baby wipes, Donaldson grabbed the only weapon an upstanding citizen could legally carry without harassment from law enforcement.

  The tire iron clenched in his hand, he bellowed at the woods.

  “I’m coming for you, Lucy! And there won’t be any drugs to dull yourpain!”

  He stumbled into the forest after her, his erection beginning to blossom.

  She crouched behind a juniper tree, the zip tie digging into her wrists. Absolute darkness in the woods, nothing to see, but everything to hear.

  Donaldson yelled, “Don’t hide from me, little girl! It’ll just make me angry!”

  His heavy footsteps crunched in the leaves. Lucy eased down onto her butt and leaned back, legs in the air, then slid her bound wrists up the length of them. Donaldson stumbled past her tree, invisible, less than ten feet away.

  “Lucy? Where are you?” His words slurred. “I just wanna talk.”

  “I’m over here, big boy! Still waiting for that spanking!”

  His footsteps abruptly stopped. Dead quiet for thirty seconds, and then the footsteps started up again, heading in her general direction.

  “Oh, no, please,” she moaned. “Don’t hurt me, Donaldson. I’m so afraid you’ll hurt me.”

  He was close now, and she turned and started back toward the road, her hands out in front of her to prevent collision with a tree.

  A glint of light up ahead—the Honda’s windshield catching a piece of moonlight.

  Lucy emerged from the woods, her hands throbbing from circulation loss. She stumbled into the car and turned around to watch the treeline.

  “Come on, big boy! I’m right here! You can make it!”

  Donaldson staggered out of the woods holding a tire iron, and when the moon struck his eyes, they were already half-closed.

  He froze.

  He opened his mouth to say something, but fell over instead, dropping like an old, fat tree.

  Donaldson opened his eyes and lifted his head. Dawn and freezing cold. He lay in weeds at the edge of the woods, his head resting in a padded helmet. His wrists had been cuffed, hands purple from lack of blood flow, and his ankles were similarly bound. He was naked and glazed with dew, and as the world came into focus, he saw that one of those carabiners from Lucy’s guitar case had been clipped to his ankle cuffs. A climbing rope ran from that carabiner to another carabiner, which was clipped to a chain which was wrapped around the trailer hitch of his Honda.

  The driver-side door opened and Lucy got out, walked down through the weeds. She came over and sat on his chest, giving him a missing-toothed smile.

  “Morning, Donaldson. You of all people will appreciate what’s about to happen.”

  Donaldson yawned, then winked at her. “Aren’t you just the prettiest thing to wake up to?”

  Lucy batted her eyelashes.

  “Thank you. That’s sweet. Now, the helmet is so you don’t die too fast. Head injuries ruin the fun. We’ll go slow in the beginning. Barely walking speed. Then we’ll speed up a bit when we get you onto asphalt. The last ones screamed for five miles. They where skeletons when I finally pulled over. But you’re so heavy, I think you just might break that record.”

  “I have some bleach spray in the trunk,” Donaldson said. “You might want to spritz me with that first, make it hurt even more.”

  “I prefer lemon juice, but it’s no good until after the first half mile.”

  Donaldson laughed.

  “You think this is a joke?”

  He shook his head. “No. But when you have the opportunity to kill, you should kill. Not talk.”

  Donaldson sat up, quick for a man his size, and rammed his helmet into Lucy’s face. As she reeled back, he caught her shirt with his swollen hands and rolled on top of her, his bulk making her gasp.

  “The keys,” he ordered. “Undo my hands, right now.”

  Lucy tried to talk, but her lungs were crushed. Donaldson shifted and she gulped in some air.

  “In…the…guitar case…”

  “That’s a shame. That means you die right here. Personally, I think suffocation is the way to go. All that panic and struggle. Dragging some poor sap behind you? Where’s the fun in that? Hell, you can’t even see it without taking your eyes off the road, and that’s a dangerous way to drive, girl.”

  Lucy’s eyes bulged, her face turning scarlet.

  “Poc…ket.”

  “Take your time. I’ll wait.”

  Lucy managed to fish out the handcuff keys. Donaldson shifted again, giving her a fraction more room, and she unlocked a cuff from one of his wrists.

  He winced, his face getting mean.

  “Now let me tell you about the survival of the fittest, little lady. There’s a…”

  The chain suddenly jerked, tugging Donaldson across the ground. He clutched Lucy.

  “Where are the car keys, you stupid bitch?”

  “In the ignition…”

  “You didn’t set the parking brake! Give me the handcuff key!”

  The car crept forward, beginning to pick up speed as it rolled quietly down the road.

  The skin of Donaldson’s right leg tore against the ground, peeling off, and the girl pounded on him, fighting to get away.

  “The key!” he howled, losing his grip on her. He clawed at her waist, her hips, and snagged her foot.

  Lucy screamed when the cuff snicked tightly around her ankle.

  “No! No no no!” She tried to sit up, to work the key into the lock, but they hit a hole and it bounced from her grasp.

  They were dragged off the dirt and onto the road.

  Lucy felt the pavement eating through her trench coat, Donaldson in hysterics as it chewed through the fat of his ass, and the car still accelerating down the five-percent grade.

  At thirty miles per hour, the fibers of Lucy’s trench coat were sanded away, along with her camouflage panties, and just as she tugged a folding knife out of her pocket and began to hack at her ankle, the rough county road began to grind through her coccyx.

  She dropped the knife and they screamed to
gether for two of the longest miles of their wretched lives, until the road curved and the Honda didn’t, and the car and Lucy and Donaldson all punched together through a guardrail and took the fastest route down the mountain.

  THE END

  A SOUND OF BLUNDER

  A Bonus Short Story by J.A. Konrath & F. Paul Wilson

  “We’re dead! We’re freakin’ dead!”

  Mick Brady, known by the criminal underground of Arkham, Pennsylvania as “Mick the Mick,” held a shaking fist in front of Willie Corrigan’s face. Willie recoiled like a dog accustomed to being kicked.

  “I’m sorry, Mick!”

  Mick the Mick raised his arm and realized that smacking Willie wasn’t going to help their situation. He smacked him anyway, a punch to the gut that made the larger man double over and grunt like a pig.

  “Jesus, Mick! You hit me in my hernia! You know I got a bulge there!”

  Mick the Mick grabbed a shock of Willie’s greasy brown hair and jerked back his head so they were staring eye-to-eye.

  “What do you think Nate the Nose is going to do to us when he finds out we lost his shit? We’re both going to be eating San Francisco Hot Dogs, Willie.”

  Willie’s eyes got wide. Apparently the idea of having his dick cut off, boiled, and fed to him on a bun with a side of fries was several times worse than a whack to the hernia.

  “We’ll…we’ll tell him the truth. Maybe he’ll understand.”

  “You want to tell the biggest mobster in the state that your Nana used a key of uncut Columbian to make a pound cake?”

  “It was an accident,” Willie whined. “She thought it was flour. Hey, is that a spider on the wall? Spiders give me the creeps, Mick. Why do they need eight legs? Other bugs only got six.”

  Mick the Mick realized that hitting Willie again wouldn’t help anything. He hit him anyway, a slap across his face that echoed off the concrete floor and walls of Willie’s basement.

  “Jesus, Mick! You hit me in my bad tooth! You know I got a cavity there!”

  Mick the Mick was considering where he would belt his friend next, even though it wasn’t doing either of them any good, when he heard the basement door open.

  “You boys playing nice down there?”

  “Yes, Nana,” Willie called up the stairs. He nudged Mick the Mick and whispered, “Tell Nana yes.”

  Mick the Mick rolled his eyes, but managed to say, “Yes, Nana.”

  “Would you like some pound cake? It didn’t turn out very well for some reason, but Bruno seems to like it.”

  Bruno was Willie’s dog, an elderly beagle. He tore down the basement stairs, ran eighteen quick laps around Mick the Mick and Willie, and then barreled, full-speed, face-first into the wall, knocking himself out. Mick the Mick watched as the dog’s tiny chest rose and fell with the speed of a weed wacker.

  “No thanks, Nana,” Mick the Mick said.

  “It’s on the counter, if you want any. Good night, boys.”

  “Night, Nana,” they answered in unison.

  Mick the Mick wondered how the hell they could get out of this mess. Maybe there was some way to separate the coke from the cake, using chemicals and stuff. But they wouldn’t be able to do it themselves. That meant telling Nate the Nose, which meant San Francisco Hot Dogs. In his twenty-four years since birth, Mick the Mick had grown very attached to his penis. He’d miss it something awful.

  “We could sell the cake,” Willie said.

  “You think someone is going to pay sixty thousand bucks for a pound cake?”

  “It’s just an idea.”

  “It’s a stupid idea, Willie. No junkie is going to snort baked goods. Ain’t gonna happen.”

  “So what should we do? I—hey, did you hear if the Phillies won? Phillies got more legs than a spider. And you know what? They catch flies too! That’s a joke, Mick.”

  “Shaddup. I need to think.”

  Mick the Mick couldn’t think of anything, so he punched Willie again, even though it didn’t solve anything.

  “Jesus, Mick! You hit my kidney! You know I got a stone there!”

  Mick the Mick walked away, rubbing his temples, willing an idea to come.

  “That one really hurt, Mick.”

  Mick the Mick shushed him.

  “I mean it. I’m gonna be pissing red for a week.”

  “Quiet, Willie. Lemme think.”

  “It looks like cherry Kool-Aid. And it burns, Mick. Burns like fire.”

  Mick the Mick snapped his fingers. Fire.

  “That’s it, Willie. Fire. Your house is insured, right?”

  “I guess so. Hey, do you think there’s any pizza left? I like pepperoni. That’s a fun word to say. Pepperoni. It rhymes with lonely. You think pepperoni gets lonely, Mick?”

  To help Willie focus, Mick the Mick kicked him in his bum leg, even though it really didn’t help him focus much.

  “Jesus, Mick! You know I got gout!”

  “Pay attention, Willie. We burn down the house, collect the insurance, and pay off Nate the Nose.”

  Willie rubbed his shin, wincing.

  “But where’s Nana supposed to live, Mick?”

  “I hear the Miskatonic Nursing Home is a lot nicer, now that they arrested the guy who was making all the old people wear dog collars.”

  “I can’t put Nana in a nursing home, Mick!”

  “Would you rather be munching on your vein sausage? Nate the Nose makes you eat the whole thing, or else you also get served a side of meatballs.”

  Willie folded his arms. “I won’t do it. And I won’t let you do it.”

  Mick the Mick took aim and punched Willie in his bad knee, where he had the metal pins, even though it did nothing to fix their problem.

  “Jesus, Mick! You hit me in the…”

  “Woof!”

  Bruno the beagle sprang to his feet, ran sixteen laps around the men, then tore up the stairs.

  “Bruno!” they heard Nana chide. “Get off the counter! You’ve had enough pound cake!”

  Mick the Mick put his face in his hands, very close to tears. The last time he cried was ten years ago, when Nate the Nose ordered him to break his mother’s thumbs because she was late with a loan payment. When he tried, Mom had stabbed Mick the Mick with a meat thermometer. That hurt, but not as much as a wiener-ectomy would.

  “Maybe we can leave town,” Willie said, putting a hand on Mick the Mick’s shoulder.

  That left Willie’s kidney exposed. Mick the Mick took advantage, even though it didn’t help their situation.

  Willie fell to his knees. Bruno the beagle tore down the stairs, straddled Willie’s calf, and began to hump so fast his little doggie hips were a blur.

  Mick the Mick began searching the basement for something flammable. As it often happened in life, arson was really the only way out. He found a can of paint thinner on a dusty metal shelf and worked the top with his thumbnail.

  “Mick, no!”

  Mick couldn’t get it open. He tried his teeth.

  “You can’t burn my house down, Mick! All my stuff is here! Like my comics! We used to collect comics when we were kids, Mick! Don’t you remember?”

  Willie reached for a box, dug out a torn copy of Amazing Spiderman #146, and traced his finger up and down Scorpion’s tail in a way that made Mick the Mick uncomfortable. So he reached out and slapped Willie’s bad tooth. Willie dropped the comic and curled up fetal, and Bruno the beagle abandoned the calf for the loftier possibilities of Willie’s head.

  Mick managed to pop the top on the can, and he began to sprinkle mineral spirits on some bags labeled Precious Photos & Memories.

  Willie moaned something unintelligible through closed lips—he was probably afraid to open his mouth until he disengaged Bruno the beagle.

  “Mmphp-muummph-mooeoemmum!”

  “We don’t have a choice, Willie. The only way out of this is fire. Beautiful, cleansing fire. If there’s money left over, we’ll bribe the orderlies so Nana doesn’t get abused. At least not
as much as the others.”

  “Mick!” Willie cried. It came out “Mibb!” because Bruno the beagle had taken advantage. Willie gagged, shoving the dog away. Bruno the beagle ran around Willie seven times then flew up the stairs.