Konrath, J.A. - DRACULAS (A Novel of Terror)

“Well, five-finger Mary, if you know what I’m saying.”

Jenny did. She’d been celibate herself—Randall had left her more than a little bitter about the opposite sex. Still, she had a sudden, completely irrational urge to reach up under his gown and grab him.

Or maybe it wasn’t so irrational. In times of stress, humans often regressed to base behaviors.

“Have, uh…you?” he asked.

“What?”

“Been with anyone since the divorce?”

“That’s not your business, Randall.”

“Yeah.” He looked away. “Sorry.”

Jenny stood up. “We need to get to pediatrics. The elevator is this way.”

He moped along behind, and when they reached the elevator, Jenny pressed the call button. For all the commotion in the ER, the hall was disproportionately quiet. Perhaps some people had already evacuated, despite Dr. Lanz’s proclamation that there wasn’t anywhere to go. Though this area of Durango was currently under development, with lots of new construction up and down the highway, the only other inhabited building within three miles was a gas station. But at the current rate this disease was spreading through the hospital, even the uninhabited woods at night would be preferable to staying here. Unless they were able to stop the infection, Jenny predicted everyone would be either dead or turned within a few hours.

The elevator dinged, and when the doors opened a dracula darted out, tackling Jenny.

She fell backward, the creature atop her, snarling and gnashing its horrible teeth. Jenny caught a quick glimpse of the nurse’s uniform, and the nametag, Fortescue, as she reached up to grab the dracula’s shoulders, keeping its fangs away. The snap snap snap of the jaws, like mousetraps going off, flecked blood and spittle all over Jenny’s face. She turned away, scrunched closed her eyes and mouth, worried more about getting the infection than being devoured.

Then, as quickly as she’d been pinned down, Jenny was free.

Randall had jerked Nurse Fortescue off Jenny and pinned the monster to the floor, his bare foot on her chest, his chainsaw tearing at her neck. He moved the saw up and down, a combination of weight and brute strength causing it to tear through the dracula’s throat, blood spraying out three-hundred and sixty degrees like a lawn sprinkler.

The thing that was once Fortescue thrashed and hissed, and Randall dropped his big knee onto the monster’s ribcage, pressing on the edge of the blade with both his palms, shaking it back and forth until Jenny heard the audible pop of the spinal cord severing.

Still, the teeth gnashed and feet—claws bursting out through the gym shoes—continued to kick and writhe. It wasn’t until Randall had the head completely severed and pushed away from the body, that the monster was finally still.

“You okay?” he asked, staring up at his ex-wife.

“Wouldn’t it be easier if you turned the saw on?”

“Outta gas. Still works pretty good, though.”

Jenny carefully wiped some blood from her face, avoiding getting any in her eyes, nose, or mouth, and then walked over to Randall.

“Nurse Fortescue is from pediatrics,” she said. “We need to move. Now.”

Lanz

SINGLY and in pairs, all but two teeth had fallen out of Dr. Kurt Lanz’s gums. He cupped them in his hands. He’d counted them.

He knew.

How? Why? He’d been racking his brain for a reason. He hadn’t been bitten or cut. He—

Oh no! Moorecook had been seizuring when Lanz arrived, spraying bloody saliva everywhere. Some had landed on his face. A fleck must have reached his lips. He’d been contaminated through his mucous membranes instead of directly into his blood. A tiny inoculum. A delayed reaction. A slower transformation.

Screams erupted on the far side of the door, followed by gunfire. He rose and pressed his ear against the steel. Sounded like chaos out there. Good thing—

Something slammed against the door. He jerked back as fists began pounding the other side and someone screamed to be let in.

No fucking way, Jose.

The pounding and screaming stopped abruptly. Shaken, Lanz sat again. If he could just hold out here till the cavalry rode in, he’d be—

The faint sound of a siren filtered through the door. Had the sheriff sent someone?

Okay…he could control this. Maybe not the physical aspects, but he refused to become a bloodthirsty beast like the others. He was a doctor , for fuck’s sake. He was educated . And he was certainly more intelligent than any dozen of these yokels combined.

His last two teeth dropped from his gums.

Didn’t matter. He was better than the rest. He’d beat this.

Sudden blasts of agony shrieked from his fingers and drove him to his knees as hooked claws burst from the tips.

And then indescribable pain from his jaws as the fangs erupted and tore through his cheeks and lips, like he’d forced his face into a wood chipper.

His vision blurred, then cleared. He saw everything in such detail now, like switching from a blurry black-and-white TV to hi-def. Same for his sense of smell. A delicious, mouth-watering odor was wafting through the door. He recognized it: blood. Beautiful, warm, red, delicious blood. He had to—

No! He was better than this. The cops were here. He’d heard the sirens. He’d stay in here and explain through the door what had happ—

Hungry! So hungry! That smell was driving him crazy.

His hand seemed to move of its own volition. Hard to turn the knob with those claws, but he managed. And when the door swung open the blood smell enveloped him, banishing every desire but to feed, every feeling but hunger.

He saw a pair of wary EMTs—fat woman pulling in front, middle-age guy pushing from behind—hesitantly wheeling a stretcher through the door. The siren hadn’t been police, it had been an ambulance.

Blood! Fresh blood!

Lanz leaped up on the nurse’s station and launched himself at them. The claws of his left hand pierced the side of the fat, lead EMT’s face as Lanz sailed by. The hooks caught and set. Lanz felt a tug and then a give as the face ripped free.

By then he was upon the second, sinking his fangs into his exposed throat, tearing the flesh, chugging the hot gush of blood as it rushed into his mouth. The guy went down, kicking and trying to scream but he had no throat so how could he scream? And then he stopped struggling and the blood stopped flowing.

So soon?

More!

Lanz turned and saw the fat EMT on her knees, screaming as she held her ripped face in place. He lunged at her and tore into her throat.

Again, the rush of the gush. For the first time in his life Lanz truly felt alive. He couldn’t stop. He wouldn’t stop!

Nurse Winslow

THE two big orderlies emerged from cold storage into the autopsy suite where Janine stood by one of the tables, gripping the stainless steel so her hands wouldn’t shake. She’d been head nurse at Blessed Crucifixion since Jenny Bolton had been fired, and nothing had rattled her up until now, not even the ten burn victims who’d come through her ER six months ago when the Doublespruce Hotel had gone up in flames.

But she’d just watched Ralph and Benjamin roll a man past her on a gurney whose head had been ripped off, and she didn’t have a filter for that. They’d set the victim’s head in his lap with his hands positioned so it appeared as though he was holding his own noggin, one of them cracking a joke about Ichabod Crane as they wheeled past, and she would’ve dressed them down right then and there, but it was all she could do to keep standing, her legs threatening to give out at any moment.

Nothing about this was right. They’d brought that rich old man in several weeks ago on a morphine OD scare, and he’d barely had the strength to get himself around without a walker.