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

“Like what?”

He sighed and looked away. “Like your girlfriend’s tit.”

“Your father said that?”

“Uh-huh.”

“How old were you?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Seven or eight.”

“Did you even have a girlfriend?”

“No, but I gathered he meant slow and easy.”

Note to self: Never meet Clay’s daddy.

“But anyway,” he went on, “Alice is a Taurus Raging Bull, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow a head clean off.”

That sounded familiar, almost like—

“You’re not quoting Dirty Harry, are you?”

He looked sheepish. “Well, not exactly. His was a forty-four Magnum.”

“This isn’t the time for Clint Eastwood fanboy stuff, Clay. Dirty Harry is a made-up character in a movie. This is real .”

He gave her a funny look. “I know that, Shanna. But it…helps, okay? Because I gotta tell you, Harry Callahan seems more real to me right now than what I’ve seen here today.”

She couldn’t argue with that.

He hefted the huge silver pistol. “Alice here fires a heavy-duty, four-fifty-four Casull, even more powerful than Harry’s forty-four Mag.” He held it toward her.

She raised her hands, palms out, shoulder high. “No, I can’t.”

“Just till we get to the truck, okay? Please, Shanna? Just to the truck.”

Well…

“Okay. Just to the truck.”

She took it and it immediately dragged down her arms.

“God, it’s heavy.”

“Make sure you hold her with both hands and get ready for a helluva kick. Wait till you can’t miss and aim for the head. The muzzle velocity of the round is so high it cuts through a skull like paper and the shockwave of the impact purees the brain.”

She couldn’t help making a face. “Lovely.”

“One hit from Alice is enough. Don’t waste them. I didn’t bring many Casulls.”

She raised the pistol with both hands to eye level. So heavy. She wished she’d been working out.

Suddenly a hissing face out of a nightmare, all bloody fangs and tongue and black eyes appeared at the other end of the barrel. Shanna screamed and pulled the trigger. The gun lurched toward the ceiling with such force it toppled her over backward. She almost lost her grip on it but managed to keep hold.

Still screaming she rolled and rose to her knees, ready to fire again, but the thing lay flat on its back in the hall. It had a hole where its nose once resided and a widening halo of red spreading out beneath its skull.

“Great shot!” Clay said, grinning like a proud father.

She stared at the dead creature. “I did that?”

“You sure did! You killed the hell out of that fella!”

That too sounded familiar. “ Unforgiven ?”

He shrugged. “Sorry.” He helped her to her feet. “You okay?”

“Not sure.”

She stared down at the dead creature. “That fella” wasn’t a fella. It wore a bloodstained maroon pantsuit. She stepped closer and saw the nametag: Marge McGuire .

Shanna felt sick. “That’s Marge from admitting! I had a long sit-down with her when Mortimer was admitted for that possible overdose. She had pictures of her kids on her desk. She…” A sob broke free. “What have I done?”

“It was her or you, Shanna.”

“I killed Marge!”

Clay knelt beside her and placed a hand on her shoulder. “That wasn’t Marge from admissions anymore. Marge was already gone. You killed something else, something that had taken her over.”

“But her kids—”

“Had already lost their mama. You just kept this thing from fouling her memory by killing you and who knows how many others, and turning them into things like her. You did Marge a favor.”

Clay seemed to understand and was making sense, neither of which she’d expected from him. But she couldn’t take her eyes off the thing Marge had become.

“No need to watch her,” Clay said. “She’s down for good.”

“I’m…I’m just wondering if she’ll change back, now that she’s dead.”

He shook his head. “Wouldn’t hold my breath. Once you become a pickle, you can’t go back to being a cucumber.”

“I feel so bad for her.”

“Us or them, Shanna,” he said. “Who do you want to walk out of here?”

“Us, of course.”

“And who are the attackers here?”

“Them.”

“So we’re going to walk out of here, and along the way we’re going to leave them alone. But if they try to kill us, we need to do what we have to do to protect ourselves—and that means kill them first.”

Yeah…she could see that, but doing it was something else.

He pointed to the Taurus. “I’m sorry she knocked you down.”

She? Oh, the gun.

“It’s okay, Clay.”

“No, it’s not. Alice is too powerful for you.” He took it from her. “I’ll give you my Glock and—”

“And what’s its name? Janet? Sophia? Rhianna?”

He gave her a strange look. “No. It’s just a Glock.”

“But I thought—never mind. I don’t want it.”

“You’ve got to. We’ll—”

She backed away a step. “I said no, Clay, and that’s what I mean: No .”

A mixture of anger and dismay flashed across his features. “You’re making a big mistake.”

“No.”

He sighed. “All right, but—”

The lights went out.

Stacie

SHE stood in the corridor, the floor cold against her bare feet, staring at the blood and glass around the double doors leading into the maternity ward.

Screams—awful, tortured screams—had drawn her out of the room, and now she was staring at Adam who had a look on his face like a seven-year-old boy debating whether to jump off the high dive for the first time.

Nurse Herrick looked even worse, her skin a pale gray, and she’d wet her pants.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

Adam came over, catching himself, reapplying the strong face, but she wasn’t having any of it.

“Darling—”

“No.” She stepped back. “You tell me right now what’s happening. The truth. Every bit of it.”

He stopped in front of her. “Let’s just go back into the room, and you can focus on—”

“No! Stop treating me like a child!”

“All right. All right. These…things…they’re people, or they were, and they’re running through the hospital, killing everyone they see.”

“Why?”

“For blood, I think.”

Nurse Herrick walked over.

“Look,” she said, opening her hand. “One of the teeth broke off when it tried to come through the window.”

Stacie lifted it out of the nurse’s hand.

A two-inch fang.

Still slimy with blood and a pungent-smelling saliva.

“They have a mouthful of these,” Adam said. “And their hands are like a bird of prey’s.”

Stacie turned the fang over in her hand.

She was a biology teacher at the local high school, and she could feel that inquisitive, scientific current coursing through her, despite the horror.

“This is a fang,” she said. “And it’s hollow. See the opening at the end?” She tossed the tooth away. “We should wash our hands. The saliva is probably brimming with neurotoxins. I bet it’s how they transmit the disease.”

She could feel something inside her solidifying, this primal need to be someplace dark, quiet, and warm. It reminded her of her favorite calico she’d had as a little girl. Whenever she was carrying a litter of kittens, Samantha became a different animal altogether. More guarded. More apt to lash out. And when it came time to give birth to the kittens, she always retreated to a corner of the deepest closet in the house.

Three words kept rushing through her brain, on a loop like a stock ticker— This isn’t happening This isn’t happening This isn’t happening This isn’t happening This isn’t happening This isn’t happening