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

He didn’t know what he’d just killed, didn’t much care. Worry about that later. His only thought right now was Shanna…if that thing had hurt Shanna he’d—

What? Nothing much left to do to it except dowse it with gas and set it on fire.

He increased his pace to a fast trot. The doors slid open…

And he entered hell.

Blood everywhere— everywhere . An EMT on the floor with his throat ripped out, a patient on the stretcher, likewise, and another EMT with her face ripped off and her throat torn open.

Had that monster done all this?

Jesus, where was Shanna?

And then movement to his right as a bloodsoaked nurse charged him from a side room, and she had the same goddamn teeth as the EMT outside, the same claws, and the same maniacal look in her black eyes.

No warning this time. He put three slugs into her face, knocking her back, brains and blood and skull and scalp splattering the wall behind her. For insurance, he put two more through her already ruined throat into her spine.

He did a quick 360 with his Glock extended. More bodies—a couple in softball uniforms on a floor awash with blood. But all quiet.

What the fuck?

Back to the nurse. Her bloody name tag read Rodriguez . Her throat had already been torn open when he first saw her. She should have been dead—as dead as she was now—but she’d been on her feet, charging.

What was going on here?

A noise. A hiss. He wheeled.

A guy in a Blessed Crucifixion security uniform was getting off the floor. Clay knew most of the guards but no way he could identify him: he had those same fangs, those same eyes, those same talons.

Clay emptied the Glock into his face, putting him down.

Out of ammo. Not good. He had a feeling there were more of these things. As if to confirm his worst fear, a second security guard started hissing and twitching on the floor as giant fangs began to shred his face.

Shit.

He was going to need a bigger gun.

Not a problem.

Stacie Murray

LABOR.

Hour eight.

Still three centimeters.

Was this baby ever going to come?

And where was Adam? He’d gone to find a nurse five minutes ago when no one had responded to the NURSE CALL button. This hospital wasn’t that—

A series of distant explosions broke the silence of the maternity wing—balloons popping several floors below. Probably some clown or candy striper entertaining the sick kids in Pediatrics. She started to pray for the umpteenth time that their child would be healthy, but the pain stopped her.

Stacie turned over onto her side and groaned.

Here it came, that vise in her belly, and she was really having to breathe through this one—more intense than the last, and it had come faster, too, by almost a minute. Maybe she was finally progressing. Her obstetrician, Doctor Galbraith, had already warned her that if she wasn’t at least eight centimeters dilated by midnight he’d have to perform a cesarean section. It got her emotional just thinking about it. She wanted a vaginal birth, not some doctor sawing her stomach open so he could rush home.

Her uterus relaxed. According to Nurse Herrick, these were still mild contractions, and honestly, that scared Stacie more than anything. Her birth-plan hadn’t included having an epidural. She didn’t want to be drugged for this experience, wanted her mind and body present for every moment, wanted to feel her first child coming out of her, hear those first cries with a lucid mind. But she didn’t know if she could take much more pain than this.

She heard footsteps approaching.

Adam appeared in the doorway, still wearing his black dress shirt and clerical collar. It didn’t exactly match his blue jeans and black Justin boots, but then again, Durango was hardly the epicenter of fashion, especially for a young Lutheran minister. They’d rushed straight to the hospital from the Sunday morning service when her water had broken during communion.

“You all right, honey?” he asked.

She nodded. “I just had another contraction.”

“Stronger?”

“Little bit.”

He came around and sat down beside her on the bed.

“Rub my back?” she said.

“Of course.”

His fingers went to work on her lower back, her muscles tighter than steel suspension cables.

“You find the nurse?” Stacie asked.

“Yeah, but just as she was stepping onto the elevator.”

Stacie stared into her husband’s face—smooth-shaven, still carrying a little baby fat that made him look younger than his thirty-two years. Kind, deep eyes that made him seem wiser. Listening eyes, she called them, and in this moment, she had the feeling they were holding something back from her.

“What aren’t you telling me?” Stacie asked.

“Nothing. Everything’s fine, Stace. You just focus on—”

“Adam…what’s wrong?”

“Nothing for you to worry about. I guess there was some disturbance down in the emergency room, and Nurse Herrick was called down to—”

“What kind of disturbance?”

“I don’t know. She said she’d be right back.”

Stacie thought about the balloons she’d heard popping several minutes ago.

What if…?

No. Adam was right. She had one thing and one thing only to focus on—getting this baby out.

“Tell me what you need, darling,” Adam said, touching the back of his hand to her forehead, which had broken out in tiny beads of sweat.

Stacie smiled. “I’m really thirsty.”

“But you can’t have water. In case you have to go into surgery.”

“Yeah, but a bucket of ice chips would really hit the spot.”

Adam Murray

SO he hadn’t exactly told Stacie the truth. Not all of it at least. Nurse Herrick had actually been a little more specific—one of the patients in the ER had apparently injured some people and hospital security was involved. She’d also told Adam to stay in the room and keep the door locked, and as soon as he got back with the ice chips, he planned to do just that.

But Stacie didn’t need to know the details. She had plenty on her mind.

He was so proud of her for wanting a natural childbirth. Not that it mattered to him one way or the other, but he thought it showed real bravery on Stacie’s part.

He’d been teary all day thinking about holding his son (or daughter—they’d chosen not to know the sex beforehand) for the first time.

After blowing Stacie a kiss, he closed the door to their room and started down the corridor.

Quiet up here on the third floor in this nine-bed maternity ward, and aside from the door to their room, only one other was closed.

He passed the first, heard a woman moaning inside.

The nurses’ station stood vacant.

Adam took a wrong turn down a short hallway that dead-ended at the OR. The doors were closed, windows dark.

The hall on the other side of the nurses’ station led to a nursery, and across from it, a waiting room and a kitchen.

Both empty.

Adam walked into the kitchen, searched the cabinets until he came to a stack of plastic buckets.

The ice machine hummed in the corner.

As he filled the bucket, he thought he heard those distant pops again over the racket of the falling ice, several floors below.

Back out in the hall, Adam stopped at the big window and peered into the nursery.

Low lit.

None of the glass isolettes was occupied.

His son or daughter would be in there soon.

The doors to the maternity wing swung open and footsteps padded quickly down the hall.

Nurse Herrick emerged around the corner. She was a cute, petite, thirty-something blonde, bit of a cowgirl twang in her voice. He thought he’d seen her at his church before with a seven or eight-year-old boy, but he couldn’t be sure.