Draculas

by J. A. Konrath

  The door opened behind her. She turned to see four disheveled-looking kids being herded into the room by the same two soldiers who had brought her. They moved away and Dr. Driscoll stepped into the doorway. She held a squalling baby in her arms.

  "Here," she said, holding it out to Shanna. "It's a girl."

  Not knowing what else to do, Shanna took her. One look at her face told her it was a newborn.

  "What--?"

  Dr. Driscoll sniffed. "I don't do babies."

  Shanna had done a ton of babysitting as a teen. She knew that cry.

  "She's starving."

  "We have nothing to feed it."

  "But--"

  "She must be quarantined with the rest of you. Deal with it."

  She shut the door.

  Shanna turned to the kids and, over the baby's screams, pieced together a disjointed story about a guy with a chainsaw--had to be Jenny's Randall--and a "guy with a big cool gun"--no question who that was--who had saved them and put them on the helicopter.

  "Only four of you?"

  They nodded and began to cry. Not a good question.

  The door opened again, revealing neither the soldiers nor Dr. Driscoll. Instead, a good-looking guy in green scrubs and longish brown hair stood there, smiling.

  "Hello, Shanna. I'm Doctor Cook, a pediatrician. I've come to check over the baby."

  He reached for her and Shanna gladly relinquished the screaming child.

  As soon as Dr. Cook cradled her in his arms, she stopped crying. Shanna looked to see if anything was wrong but she had her eyes open and was staring at the doctor.

  "That's amazing."

  He smiled again. "I have a way with children."

  Something familiar about him, but she couldn't put her finger on it.

  He glanced up and down the hall, then looked her directly in the eyes. "You don't belong here. I'm stepping outside. You can come with me if you wish."

  "But the kids--"

  "Will be fine. This is a one-time offer."

  Shanna didn't know about this. "I can just walk out?"

  "The military personnel are distracted at the moment. That is only temporary, I assure you. Come."

  He turned and walked toward the rear of the trailer. Shanna followed, saying, "But I came in--"

  "Two entrances."

  He led her to a door that opened on the side opposite the hospital. Three steps down and fifty feet across the pavement put them on the edge of the trees bordering the parking lot. He turned and stared toward the hospital. She followed his gaze and saw the soldiers withdrawing deeper into the lot, away from the building.

  "Are they leaving?"

  "Hardly."

  He pointed up to a helicopter, much larger than the TV station's, hovering over the hospital roof. Its flashing lights revealed a long, bulky cylinder hanging vertically from a cable as it was lowered to the roof.

  "Is that something to haul away survivors?"

  "Hardly." His tone was grim as he repeated the word.

  She glanced at him--so was his expression. She again had that sense of deja vu--that somehow she'd seen him before, that they'd met before.

  "What is it, then?"

  "They call it an 'autoclave.'"

  She'd heard Dr. Driscoll mention that, but still had no idea what it was.

  "That's no help."

  "In medical facilities, it's a device used to steam sterilize medical instruments."

  She shook her head. "I'm not following."

  "No reason you should. I didn't understand either, so I eavesdropped. It's a giant shaped charge. When detonated it will shoot a plasma jet down through the hospital roof with irresistible force at a speed of eight-thousand feet per second. The jet will penetrate each of the floors like an anti-tank missile melting through steel armor plate. The air in the hospital will heat to ten thousand degrees, sterilizing the entire structure."

  Shanna heard the words as she watched the helicopter ascend from the roof and fly off without its cargo, but they weren't making sense.

  ...plasma jet...ten-thousand degrees... sterilize the entire structure...

  And then--

  "Oh, my God! They can't! Clay's in there!"

  Jenny

  BY the time she realized that the object they had dropped on the roof was a bomb--a huge, army-green charge--Jenny had just enough time for a belly laugh. Randall would have appreciated the irony of surviving a dracula outbreak only to be killed by the good guys.

  Clay

  He snatched up the Taurus and began wiping her off. Poor girl was a mess--blood, plaster dust, and who knew what else.

  He hugged her to his chest. "Hey, baby. Gonna take you home and get you cleaned up and oiled and good as--"

  He heard a boom from above and then a blast of heat like a solar flare fused Alice to his chest and his last thought was how they'd be together forever.

  Shanna

  Shanna began to run toward the parking lot. She had to find Dr. Driscoll, had to convince her not to--

  The roof of the hospital exploded in an incandescent flare. The boom and shockwave stopped her in her tracks and she watched in horror as the windows and walls of the fourth floor belched flame and debris, followed almost immediately by the third and second and first. Every entrance, every exit blew its doors and shot flames like giant blowtorches.

  And then the floors began to collapse--first the roof onto the fourth, then the fourth onto the third, pancaking all the way down to ground level, leaving only a flame-riddled cloud of smoke and dust and debris on the far side of the parking lot.

  A cheer went up from the watching soldiers and she wanted to kill them. Instead, she began to cry. Huge, wracking sobs shook her to her toes.

  Clay... she felt the ring box in her pocket pressing against her thigh. A good man, a hero, and no one would know. Not that Clay would care. No, wait. Those kids would know. They'd remember the guy with the big cool gun. Clay would love to be remembered that way, but--

  She felt a hand on her shoulder and spun--Dr. Cook.

  "You'd better go," he said.

  She wiped her tears. "Where? How?"

  "Walk into the woods and keep going. Don't look back, and don't go home."

  "Why not?"

  "They'll be looking for you."

  "Who are 'they?'"

  He frowned as he stared at the trailer. "I don't know. And I don't know how they learned about--" He cut himself off with a quick shake of his head and looked at her. "Whoever they are, they don't want you running around. You weren't locked in that room because they thought you might be infected. You've seen too much. They want to contain you."

  "But where can I go?"

  "Anywhere but here. Please. Get away now."

  "Why are you doing this? Why do you care?"

  He hesitated. "You seem like a good person. And... I'd like to know you better. But that can't happen if you're locked away. Now go--please."

  She turned and hurried into the woods with no idea where she was going. But as the trees swallowed her, a slow-burning anger replaced her grief. They killed Clay Theel, a good man who'd asked to marry her. Squashed him like a bug. Where did they get off thinking they could get away with that?

  She thought of Clay's father. After they'd worn each other out in bed, she used to listen to Clay talk about his "daddy" and what a nut he was. But a survivalist type might be just what she needed right now. He deserved to know that his son was dead, and how he died. And he'd be the type to believe why he died.

  Where had he said Daddy lived?

  Up near Silverton?

  That was where she'd head.

  The Man in the Scrubs

  "You are hungry, aren't you," he cooed to the infant in his arms. "Well, we'll fix that."

  His canine teeth extended. They were so much better than the previous, unwieldy set he'd shed in the laundry room less than half an hour ago. This new form was superior. His thoughts were clear, focused. And he looked human. Better than human. Better
than his best days on Wall Street. He would blend in much better than those monsters.

  Better still, he was young and healthy again.

  He bit the tip of his index finger and watched the blood well into a good-size bead, then put touched it to the baby's mouth. She made a face at first, then began to suck.

  "Looks like we've got our work cut out for us, little one. We seem to have experienced a setback on the way to a brave new world, but it's only temporary. We'll get there eventually, and you'll play a big part. Oh, yes, little one. I have big plans for you."

  Alternate Epilogue

  Joe says: While brainstorming on the phone with Blake, we got to talking about what would happen if the dracula contagion could infect animals. That led to his rat scene with Adam, and this scene. The idea was to make the contagion a cause for not only vampires, but werewolves. Dracula bites dog, dog bites man, man becomes wolfman. But it just didn't fit, and seemed tacked-on. If we do write Draculas 2, this might be a sub-plot. Or this might become another book called Werewolves...

  Epilogue

  Jeremiah Fisk took another swig from the bottle of Early Times and switched off his television with a scowl. For the past hour he'd been watching the media speculate on what exactly had happened at the Blessed Crucifixion Hospital. First they'd called it a rabies outbreak. Then it was a fire. Now they were saying it was a natural gas explosion.

  "Gas explosion my ass," he said.

  Fisk lived near the hospital, just a few miles away as the crow flies. He saw the cop cars speed past. Saw the military vehicles.

  He also heard the BOOM--strong enough to knock his bowling trophies off his shelves--and saw the fireball shoot up into the sky, bigger'n the Republic Plaza in downtown Denver. Ain't no way that wasn't some kinda army bomb.

  Fisk padded into the kitchen, and stepped barefoot into something warm and wet.

  "Goddammit, Zeke!"

  He squinted at the floor, saw a smear of blood. His goddamn German Shepherd. Must have killed something else. Last time it was a rabbit that Zeke had half-eaten then hid behind the sofa. Fisk only found it because it had begun to stink.

  If that stupid dog dragged any more varmints into this house, Fisk was gonna chain the mutt outside for a month.

  "What did you do this time, Zeke?"

  Fisk followed the trail from the linoleum to the carpet--goddamn dog!--and then found Zeke crouched next to the front door, snacking on something.

  "What have you got there, dog?"

  Fisk bent over to reach for it, and Zeke snarled at him. He gave the dog a smack on the nose, making him drop the animal.

  But it wasn't an animal. Not a whole one, anyway.

  It looked kind of like a rat, only its teeth were huge--as big as Zeke's.

  It was the damnedest thing Fisk had ever seen.

  "Where'd you get this, boy?" Fisk asked his dog.

  Then he noticed the blood dripping from Zeke's muzzle.

  "Shit, Zeke. You hurt? This little son of a bitch take a chunk outta you?"

  Fisk pried up his dog's lip, and was shocked to see most of Zeke's teeth had fallen out.

  Rabies? Was the news story on the TV true?

  Naw. Rabies didn't work that fast. Zeke was fine a few hours ago. And it didn't make animals lose their teeth.

  Didn't make their teeth grow back, neither.

  And Fisk watched, dumbfounded, as Zeke's new set of teeth grew impossibly long, shearing through the dog's cheeks, its mouth stretching open, as he leapt up for his owner's throat.

  Desert Places

  A bonus excerpt from Blake's novel, DESERT PLACES, also available in the Kindle Store...

  On a lovely May evening, I sat on my deck, watching the sun descend upon Lake Norman. So far, it had been a perfect day. I'd risen at 5:00 A.M. as I always do, put on a pot of French roast, and prepared my usual breakfast of scrambled eggs and a bowl of fresh pineapple. By six o'clock, I was writing, and I didn't stop until noon. I fried two white crappies I'd caught the night before, and the moment I sat down for lunch, my agent called. Cynthia fields my messages when I'm close to finishing a book, and she had several for me, the only one of real importance being that the movie deal for my latest novel, Blue Murder, had closed. It was good news of course, but two other movies had been made from my books, so I was used to it by now.

  I worked in my study for the remainder of the afternoon and quit at 6:30. My final edits of the new as yet untitled manuscript would be finished tomorrow. I was tired, but my new thriller, The Scorcher, would be on bookshelves within the week. I savored the exhaustion that followed a full day of work. My hands sore from typing, eyes dry and strained, I shut down the computer and rolled back from the desk in my swivel chair.

  I went outside and walked up the long gravel drive toward the mailbox. It was the first time I'd been out all day, and the sharp sunlight burned my eyes as it squeezed through the tall rows of loblollies that bordered both sides of the drive. It was so quiet here. Fifteen miles south, Charlotte was still gridlocked in rush-hour traffic, and I was grateful not to be a part of that madness. As the tiny rocks crunched beneath my feet, I pictured my best friend, Walter Lancing, fuming in his Cadillac. He'd be cursingthe drone of horns and the profusion of taillights as he inched away from his suite in uptown Charlotte, leaving the quarterly nature magazine Hiker to return home to his wife and children. Not me, I thought, the solitary one.

  For once, my mailbox wasn't overflowing. Two envelopes lay inside, one a bill, the other blank except for my address typed on the outside. Fan mail.

  Back inside, I mixed myself a Jack Daniel's and Sun-Drop and took my mail and a book on criminal pathology out onto the deck. Settling into a rocking chair, I set everything but my drink on a small glass table and gazed down to the water. My backyard is narrow, and the woods flourish a quarter mile on either side, keeping my home of ten years in isolation from my closest neighbors. Spring had not come this year until mid-April, so the last of the pink and white dogwood blossoms still specked the variably green interior of the surrounding forest. Bright grass ran down to a weathered gray pier at the water's edge, where an ancient weeping willow sagged over the bank, the tips of its branches dabbling in the surface of the water.

  The lake is more than a mile wide where it touches my property, making houses on the opposite shore visible only in winter, when the blanket of leaves has been stripped from the trees. So now, in the thick of spring, branches thriving with baby greens and yellows, the lake was mine alone, and I felt like the only living soul for miles around.

  I put my glass down half-empty and opened the first envelope. As expected, I found a bill from the phone company, and I scrutinized the lengthy list of calls. When I'd finished, I set it down and lifted the lighter envelope. There was no stamp, which I thought strange, and upon slicing it open, I extracted a single piece of white paper and unfolded it. In the center of the page, one paragraph had been typed in black ink:

  Greetings. There is a body buried on your property, covered in your blood. The unfortunate young lady's name is Rita Jones. You've seen this missing schoolteacher's face on the news, I'm sure. In her jeans pocket you'll find a slip of paper with a phone number on it. You have one day to call that number. If I have not heard from you by 8:00 P.M. tomorrow (5/17), the Charlotte Police Department will receive an anonymous phone call. I'll tell them where Rita Jones is buried on Andrew Thomas's lakefront property, how he killed her, and where the murder weapon can be found in his house. (I do believe a paring knife is missing from your kitchen.) I hope for your sake I don't have to make that call. I've placed a property marker on the grave site. Just walk along the shoreline toward the southern boundary of your property and you'll find it. I strongly advise against going to the police, as I am always watching you.

  A smile edged across my lips. I even chuckled to myself. Because my novels treat crime and violence, my fans often have a demented sense of humor. I've received death threats, graphic artwork, even notes from people claiming
to have murdered in the same fashion as the serial killers in my books. But I'll save this, I thought. I couldn't remember one so original.

  I read it again, but a premonitory twinge struck me the second time, particularly because the author had some knowledge regarding the layout of my property. And a paring knife was, in fact, missing from my cutlery block. Carefully refolding the letter, I slipped it into the pocket of my khakis and walked down the steps toward the lake.