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

Peter nodded, and Jenny took his hand and led him to the two boys huddling together, crying hysterically. Peter knelt next to them, his face a mask of tears, and dragged over a toy fire truck. Jenny watched as he tried to engage the younger children, and had to turn away because she felt her own tears coming.

“Please help me find my mommy. One of the monsters took her away.” The little girl was tugging on her uniform.

“I’ll help in a second, sweetie. But first I need to help Randall. I’ll just be a second.”

Her husband had pushed aside the pile of chairs, returning access to the door. Checking to make sure Peter wasn’t watching, she wrapped her hands around his father’s collar and began to drag him toward the exit. He was a man of average size, but the blood loss not only made him lighter, but functioned as a lubricant. She managed to get him three quarters of the way there by herself, and then Randall joined her.

They tugged the dead man into the hall, outside the picture window.

“We can’t leave him here,” Jenny said. “Peter can still see him.”

“We’ll take him around the corner. He won’t be able to—”

“Mommy!”

The little girl sprinted past, beelining down the hall.

Jenny automatically sprang up to run after her, but her husband’s strong arm wrapped around her waist, holding her back.

“I’ve got to get her, Randall.”

“I’ll get her. You’re staying here.”

“Randall…”

Randall shoved her back into the room, then limped off after the child.

Damn him. He probably won’t even be able to catch her with that bad leg.

What a stupid, stubborn, selfless fool.

“Randall!” she called out after he rounded the corner. “Be careful! I…”

She almost said I love you , but stopped herself. Old habits die hard. Though, if she were forced to tell the truth in a court of law, Jenny still did love the hopeless dope.

Staring down the hallway, she wondered if she should have just said it.

Wondered if she’d ever get another chance.

Squeak…

Squeak…

Squeak…

It was such a familiar sound. Jenny could swear she’d heard it before. Just a little while ago.

What could it be?

Then Jenny remembered.

Benny the Clown’s shoes.

She took a fearful look behind her and saw him standing at the other end of the hallway. Just standing there, watching her, his clown outfit drenched in gore. The dracula teeth had broken through his lips and cheeks. But, incredibly, he still wore the red clown nose and the fright wig.

Squeaksqueaksqueaksqueaksqueak!

The clown sprinted at her, its hands outstretched, talons wiggling. Jenny barely had time to scoot back when it pounced—

—on Peter’s dead father. Benny the Clown’s fangs tore into the corpse’s throat, and it shook its head like a dog and pulled away, stretching out the carotid artery as if it were a long string of spaghetti. Jenny managed to get to her feet. Then she danced around Benny the Clown and sprinted toward the playroom. Slamming the door after her, she got behind the nearest table and braced it up against the entrance.

“Help me! Everyone, help!”

Peter and one of the boys began to stack chairs against the door. The others watched through the picture window as Benny the Clown feasted. The woman—the one Jenny guessed was in shock—had locked her eyes on the spectacle. They widened abruptly, and the woman began to scream.

When the door was as secure as Randall had had it, Jenny told Peter and the one boy to sit on the other side of the room and look away. Then she rushed to the screaming woman.

“Miss, you need to be quiet. You’re upsetting the—”

“What is that terrible clown doing?” the Grandmother cried.

Jenny forced herself to look. Benny the Clown had torn open the man’s abdominal cavity, his claws cradling several loops of glistening intestines. But rather than gorging on them, the clown was stretching and pulling the bloody loops, twisting the organ into knots.

Familiar knots.

“Is that…a flamingo?” asked the old woman.

Jenny couldn’t answer. She stared, slack-jawed, as Benny the Clown continued to make balloon animals out of that poor man’s innards.

One of the boys passed out.

The screaming woman passed out.

The old woman threw up, her dentures plopping into the puddle of puke.

Besides the flamingo, Benny the Clown also created a wiener dog, a giraffe, and what could have been either a lion or a poodle—some animal with a poofy mane. Jenny summoned up her last bit of courage and rushed the window, banging her palm on the glass.

“Get away from here! Get away from us, you fucking evil clown!”

Benny stared at Jenny. Stared without moving. Without making a sound. Jenny saw cunning, there. Cunning, and the same kind of cold, watchful malevolence that alligators had.

Then Benny the Clown reached up and squeezed his red nose, the fake flower on his chest squirting blood on the window, blurring Jenny’s view.

A moment later, the clown was gone, his oversized shoes squeak-squeaking down the hallway…

In the same direction Randall went.

Lanz

HE couldn’t get enough of the blood.

It had the same punch as coke. The same rush as an orgasm. The same high as morphine. The same satisfaction as a huge meal when starving. All wrapped up in one overwhelming sensation that made Lanz’s eyes roll up and his body quiver in absolute fucking ecstasy.

But the feeling didn’t last. The moment the blood ran out, so did the jolt. And in its place was a longing, an ache. That ache became painful after just a few minutes, and the pain turned into crippling, mind-searing agony, getting worse and worse until more blood was consumed.

The part of Lanz’s brain that still had some higher functioning recognized the symptoms of addiction, but also knew this was something more. He’d become a higher life form. Sharper vision and hearing, a sense of smell so powerful he could detect a drop of blood from a hundred meters away, faster reflexes, accelerated healing power, abnormal strength.

But unlike the other infected, who seemed to be operating at a reduced mental capacity, Lanz still had some reasoning powers, and some memory of his previous life. He realized this could have been due to the locus of the disease. The others were all infected intravenously, the agent making direct contact with their bloodstream. Lanz had ingested contaminated blood. This could have resulted in a different variation of the infection. Different transmission meant different symptoms.

Medicine certainly had precedents for this. Yersina pestis—known as the black plague—was a bacteria that could infect a host in three entirely different ways, and cause different symptoms as a result. Perhaps this dracula bug was similar.

Or perhaps Lanz’s strong will and extraordinary intelligence were too much for the bug to cope with.

Either way, Lanz felt like the proverbial one-eyed man in the land of the blind. While other creatures ran around, blithely attacking anything that moved—people, each other, and even themselves if the blood urge became strong enough—Lanz could still use his cognitive faculties.

As the disease spread, turning more humans into creatures, Lanz decided competition for blood was getting too fierce. But he knew of a good source. A source that would be like picking low-hanging fruit from a tree.

Pediatrics.

Children would be easy to catch, and not put up much of a fight. Plus, there was an added bonus.