Draculas

by J. A. Konrath

  He shuddered, feeling sick. He'd just killed a little girl, a new mother, and her--what?--nursing baby.

  He shook it off. No, they weren't people anymore. They'd become things. He'd done them a favor.

  So how come he felt so rotten?

  Clay was stepping forward to help the minister when he caught a flash of movement to his right. Another female dracula, this one in a nurse's uniform, was charging him. As Clay swiveled the MM-1 and fired, he heard the minister yell, "Carla, no!"

  Carla stumbled a step but kept coming, her head intact, but her face a pincushion mass of darts.

  "Crap!"

  He'd mistakenly loaded a Beehive round into the launcher. He'd been taking one along to Denver as a novelty. It fired a swarm of forty-some steel flechettes. Beehives weren't used much because of their low stopping power, which was being demonstrated right now as the dracula lunged at him. Clay ducked to the side and she went right by, talons raking empty air. The flechettes hadn't stopped her, but multiple darts in her eyes had blinded her. He waited till she wheeled around, then blew her away.

  He helped the bloodied minister to his feet.

  "You okay, padre?"

  "I think so." He couldn't seem to take his eyes off what was left of momma-dracula. "Poor Brittany."

  Clay was doing a slow turn, looking for more surprises.

  "Let's get you out of here."

  "No--my wife and baby!"

  Clay glanced at the momma-dracula, then away. "Oh, God, I...I..."

  "Oh, they're fine." His face fell. "Well, not really. Stacie lost a lot of blood after delivery. She's getting transfused now and--"

  "Now?"

  "Yes."

  "Can she walk?"

  "Maybe. I don't know. Why?"

  Clay pointed back the way he came in. "Because those doors aren't stopping anything anymore."

  As if to prove the point, a dracula came around the corner, saw them, and charged. It looked like it was going for the dead draculas, but Clay let it get within six feet, then blew its head off anyway.

  The only good dracula...

  The minister looked both repulsed and impressed. "That makes it look so easy. Almost doesn't seem fair."

  "Like my daddy likes to say, 'If you find yourself in a fair fight, you obviously didn't plan right.' Besides, 'fair' is a matter of opinion, depending on what side you're on. These things here probably think it's unfair you've got all this blood running around inside you and won't share it. Anyway, it's not safe here. We need to get your wife to the roof."

  "Roof?" The minister shook his head. "Gosh, I don't know..."

  "Good chance a copter will be doing pick-ups. Women and children first."

  Sudden resolve solidified his expression. "Really? Then we've got to get her up there."

  Clay followed him into a room where a pale young woman--so pale she faded into the sheets--lay in bed with a blood pack dripping into her arm.

  Clay shook his head. No way this gal was walking up to the roof. He glanced at the minister. Kind of scrawny.

  "She'll need to be carried, padre."

  "We can get a gurney and--"

  "The elevators are out and a gurney will never make the turns in the stairwells. I'll carry her. You take the baby and my Glock--"

  "No! I couldn't!"

  "Jesus! Another one!" He sounded like Shanna.

  "Please don't take the Lord's name in--"

  "Jesus could have used a Glock. Wouldn't have wound up with see-through hands and feet if he'd had one."

  "Please, deputy..."

  "All right, all right. Here's what we're gonna do..."

  "All set?"

  The minister nodded. Clay had learned his name was Adam, his wife was Stacie, and their screaming newborn--swathed in a baby blanket and cradled in the crook of Clay's left arm--was Daniella. As per Clay's instructions, Adam had stuffed her ears with cotton. Clay knew his own ears would never be the same after today, might as well give the kid's a break. While Adam had stuffed cotton, Clay had stuffed rounds into the MM-1's cylinder. He was just about out of ammo. Only two buckshot rounds as backup for the dozen in the cylinder. He had the two H-E rounds but they had no practical use.

  Stacie groaned from her place on Adam's back, but didn't open her eyes.

  They'd transferred Stacie to a gurney, hanging her blood bag from an IV pole and leaving her blood-soaked mattress behind. They rolled her to the stairwell door where Adam tried to carry her in his arms, but her dead weight was too much for his left arm. He'd messed it up going for the blood. But still he insisted on carrying her, so Clay helped get her onto his back and wrapped adhesive tape around them to hold her in place.

  So, Adam stood ready with his elbows hooked under the backs of Stacie's knees. Clay, with Daniella in his left arm, the MM-1 in his right, and the tab atop the blood bag clamped between his teeth, led the way up. As long as he stayed higher than Stacie, gravity would keep the blood running into her arm.

  "Stay close, padre," he said through his clenched teeth and over the baby's wails. "We've got four flights to go and then we're home free."

  The baby had to be hungry--no one left on the OB floor to feed it, and she sure wasn't going to get much from her mother. He just hoped its cries didn't attract any draculas. Spraying double-ought shot in a stairwell was a last resort.

  He heard a door squeak open below, turned and looked over Adam's head. A dracula leaped through the doorway onto the landing below, followed by another. They'd heard Daniella.

  "Shit!"

  Keeping Daniella in his left arm, he gripped the barrel of the launcher with his left hand and used his right to take the blood pouch from between his teeth and shove it between Stacie's chest and Adam's back. Then he pressed against the railing to let Adam pass.

  "Keep on going. Move your ass. I'll slow them down."

  "But Daniella--!"

  "I've got her. You've got all you can handle. Just keep moving!"

  The minister lacked the wind to say much else, so he kept on a-trudgin'. As soon as he was past, Clay clutched the MM-1 by its rear pistol grip and dangled it over the railing. A heavy sucker--especially with a full cylinder--designed for two-handed use. It kicked and all of its weight was forward of the trigger--hence the second pistol grip on the front end of the stock. Clay had only one free hand. He had strong wrists, but not strong enough to fire the launcher one-handed--unless he was firing it downward.

  "Hey, ugly!" he shouted to the lead dracula as it spotted him and rushed up the flight below.

  It looked up, its face not twelve inches from the muzzle of the launcher.

  "Say hello to my leetle fren'."

  Clay fired, splattering its head all over its torso and the stairs with virtually no shot scatter. The second leaped upon it and began feasting. Clay didn't want to leave it there, because he heard more coming, so he started shouting at the top of his voice, and when the second looked up, it got the same as its buddy.

  Daniella had probably increased her screaming, but Clay couldn't hear her over the ringing in his ears. He carried her halfway up the next flight and shouted for more draculas. He'd leave a combination buffet and obstacle course all the way to the roof.

  Adam

  "MOVE, Padre!" the man named Clayton screamed, and Adam was moving--moving as fast as he possibly could, one step at a time, his wife strapped to his back with several rolls of adhesive tape. He sweated buckets, his legs cramping, and two flights of stairs still to go, warm blood--Stacie-blood--sluicing down the back of his legs.

  The deputy fired that freakishly huge gun again, the noise so loud it jogged his fillings, and when his hearing faded back in he heard the deputy screaming, "Come on! Come on! Come and get it, fucker! Come on! I don't got all day! Come on!"

  Boom!

  "Come on, you bastard! Yeah, you! You want some of this? You got it!"

  Boom!

  They rounded another landing and at the top of the next flight, he saw a door with a sign above it glowing un
der the emergency light--HELIPAD.

  It gave him a burst of energy, small to be sure, but enough to push him those last fifteen steps, the deputy firing behind him and screaming to go, and then Adam buried his shoulder into the door and burst out into a cool, dark night.

  Made it fifteen feet before crumbling to the concrete.

  He'd lost Stacie's blood bag on the ascent.

  A man with a chainsaw stood with a woman and four kids on the far side of the helipad, and they were waving their arms toward a sea of headlights, spotlights, flashlights, ambulance light bars on a steady burn, highway patrol cruisers sending out a manic frenzy of blues and reds. Every law enforcement and first response agency in the Four Corners had to be out there.

  He reached back and began ripping the tape from his shoulders as Clayton broke through the door and then spun around and kicked it shut.

  "Bolton!" he screamed. "Get your ass over here!"

  Adam watched the man with the chainsaw limp quickly back across the helipad, the woman in tow.

  When they reached Clayton, the woman took Adam's swaddled little girl out of his arms.

  "Incoming," Clayton said.

  "How many?"

  "More than we can handle."

  Adam ripped off the last bit of tape and eased Stacie onto the concrete. She shivered under her hospital gown and the insides of her legs were streaked with blood.

  So, so much of it.

  Adam had brought his backpack along, carrying it on the front of his chest. He unzipped it and grabbed another unit of O-positive, plugged Stacie's IV line into the bottom, then held it up so the blood ran down into her veins.

  "Baby?" he said. "Can you hear me?"

  Stacie's eyes opened.

  Barely.

  Slits.

  "Where's Daniella?" she asked.

  Adam glanced back toward the door, saw the woman who held his child hurrying over. She knelt beside them.

  "That's our baby girl," Adam said.

  "She's beautiful. I'm Jenny."

  "I'm Adam. This is Stacie, my wife."

  Even in the lowlight, he saw the concern darken Jenny's face.

  "Here, would you take her?" She handed the sleeping infant--its neurological system shut down from all the mayhem--to Adam.

  "Hi, Stacie, I'm a nurse. My name's Jenny."

  Adam heard the sound of metal clanging nearby, saw Clayton and the man he'd called Bolton kicking one of the huge air conditioning units mounted to the roof.

  Jenny took Stacie's wrist and held it for a moment.

  "Postpartem hemorrhage?"

  "That's what Nurse Herrick called it."

  Jenny looked down at the blood still pooling on the cement between Stacie's legs.

  "She's bleeding again," Jenny said. "Had they stopped it before?"

  "I think so."

  "Can I hold my baby?" Stacie whispered.

  "Sure, sweetie." Adam laid their daughter in the crook of Stacie's arm.

  Jenny said, "Could I speak with you for a moment, Adam?"

  "What about this bag?"

  "It's okay. You can put it down."

  He laid the blood bag on the concrete and followed Jenny for a few feet toward the edge of the roof. Clayton and Bolton were struggling to push an air conditioning unit that was bigger than a refrigerator in front of the door to the hospital.

  Jenny stopped and took both of Adam's hands and said, "I am so sorry, but I'm afraid your wife isn't going to make it."

  Like someone had shovel-punched him in the gut.

  Jenny continued, "It probably jarred the clots loose when you carried her up from the birth unit."

  Adam felt a rush of emotion coming on.

  Fought against it.

  "How long does she have?"

  Jenny just shook her head. "Go be with her."

  Adam turned away from her, stared down at his wife lying on the helipad, stroking Daniella's head with her fingers. He had never been more scared, including the previous hour.

  He walked back over to his family, sat down beside his wife.

  "She's beautiful," Stacie said.

  "She looks like you. Your eyes for sure."

  Clayton and Bolton were muscling another unit toward the door, metal scraping against concrete. Thought he could hear inhuman screaming echoing from inside the hospital.

  He laid his hand against his wife's forehead--cool and sweaty.

  Closed his eyes. Prayed harder than he'd ever prayed in his life.

  "I'm so cold, Adam."

  He started unbuttoning his black shirt.

  "I hope you won't lose your faith over this."

  He wondered if she meant her death, if she knew it was imminent, or everything else.

  "Of course not," he said, wondering if he was lying to her.

  Stacie looked down into the face of her daughter, and as Adam pulled his arms out of his shirtsleeves and laid it across Stacie's chest, she said, "You'll tell her about me?"

  "Stacie, stop, you're gonna be--"

  "I know what's happening," she said.

  He could barely get the words out. "Every day, darling. Every day. I love you, Stacie. I love you so much." Tears streamed down his face.

  Her eyes were going glassy, filling slowly with a kind of stunned emptiness.

  "Stacie! Do you hear me?"

  She turned her head, and stared up into his eyes, one last and fading beat of lucidity.

  "I know you love me, Adam," she whispered. "You know I love you?"

  He nodded.

  "I'm scared, Adam."

  He laid down beside his wife as the demons started beating against the door, their faces turned toward each other, staring into Stacie's eyes as the life inside them drained away.

  Jenny

  JENNY turned away from the dying woman and her newborn. Yet another tragedy in a night filled with them.

  She pushed her emotions back, maintaining the guise of a professional, and looked for Randall. He and Clay had finished barricading the door and now Randall stood alone, staring off into the sea of blinking, flashing emergency lights. Jenny walked over and stood next to him, slipping her hand into his, welcoming the familiarity of his calluses.

  "Do you think we'll be rescued?" she asked.

  A silly question, because there was no way he could know, any more than she did. But Jenny wasn't seeking an answer. She just wanted to hear his voice.

  "I'll make sure you and the kids get safe, Jenny."

  His voice was cracking, and he looked away from her.

  "Randall? What's wrong?"

  He coughed and covered his mouth, but not before something fell from his lips and bounced onto the tar-papered roof.

  A tooth.

  "Oh, Randall..."

  He stared at her, his eyes hooded, his pupils already starting to enlarge.

  "I won't hurt you," he said. "I won't hurt you or the kids. I'll...I'll throw myself off the building before I let that happen."

  He tried a pathetic smile, and more of his teeth dropped out. Jenny watched, revolted, as new ones breached the gums and began to grow in.

  Clay was walking over.

  "Randall, I need your help guarding the barricade...holy fuck!"

  Clay raised his weapon, pointing it at her husband's head.

  Without thinking, Jenny stepped between the men.

  "No!"

  "Get out of the way, Jenny! He's--"

  "He's my husband! You're not going to kill him, Clayton Theel!"

  Randall made a grunting sound, then doubled over and dropped to his knees. Jenny shoved Clay's gun away, and crouched next to Randall, keeping her arm around his shoulders.

  "Jenny, you need to step away from the dracula."

  "I know Randall. He won't hurt me. Will you, Randall?"

  Randall violently shook his head. "Won't...hurt...no one. I...can...fight it."

  Clay reached for Jenny, grabbing her arm, tugging her away. A millisecond later, Randall was on his feet, getting inside Clay's aim
and grabbing the deputy by the throat.