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

Carla approached slowly.

“I’m Carla,” she said. “What’s your name?”

The monster screeched something unintelligible.

“Well, I’m a nurse, and you look like maybe you’re not feeling so well.”

She was five feet away now, and getting her first look at this perversion of a child, wondering what kind of a virus could cause this. Something worse than Ebola.

Carla had grown up on a ranch ten miles from here, and by God she’d hogtied a calf or two in her day. No this wasn’t anywhere near the same, but similar principles applied. Flip her on her stomach, hard and fast, knee digging into her spine, and get the cord around her wrists. Tie her ankles last.

Three feet away now. She squatted.

God, the closer she got, the more awful this thing looked. This wasn’t a little girl. Not anymore.

Carla slowly uncoiled a four-foot length of cord, the monster eyeing her now with the distrust of a psycho cat, and licking the blood seeping out of her chest with a long, spongy-black tongue.

The Murray’s baby wailed now, grinding down Carla’s nerves.

She had to get back to Stacie.

Now or never.

She tightened her grip on the extension cord and lunged at the little monster, but it recoiled with terrible speed.

Carla felt something puncture the skin of her left arm, and by the time she looked up, the little girl had fled back down the corridor and disappeared around the corner that led to the operating room.

Carla stood up.

The bite to her left arm wasn’t too bad.

Bleeding a little, sure, but considering those awful teeth, it could’ve been so much worse.

She walked a little ways up the corridor and opened the door to the supply closet, grabbed a dose of Pitocin out of the refrigerator, praying it would stop Stacie’s bleeding. She should’ve already had the Pit ready for an IV-push just like she did for every single birth. What a fuck-up. If it didn’t stop Stacie’s bleeding, and without a doctor on hand to intervene surgically, the poor woman didn’t stand a chance.

Lanz

DR. Lanz exited the playroom through the broken window, his head clear and his thoughts surprisingly rational. Perhaps that zap to the head had helped alleviate the urge to feed. Or perhaps he’d sucked enough of his own blood to gain a bit of perspective on things.

Because Lanz had a plan.

It had come to him, semi-formed, while he’d been chewing his fingers. Halfway into gnawing off his thumb, his fangs worrying the proximal phalanx, he’d noticed his breathing had become obstructed. Not because of the injury he was doing to himself, or because of the physical pain involved with chomping on his own flesh and bone.

His breaths were labored because his nose was growing back.

Obviously, his increased metabolism had resulted in preternatural healing powers. It wasn’t unheard of in the animal kingdom to regenerate body parts. Insects, starfish, and newts could all regrow limbs. Humans could regenerate their liver, ribs, and even fingertips.

Which gave Lanz an idea. An extraordinary idea of how to get to Jenny and those delicious little children. Plus, it would result in a bonus energy snack for him. Win-win.

But first he needed clamps and a bone saw.

He loped down the deserted hallway, heading to the Surgery wing, barging into Operating Room A. Unlike the rest of the hospital, which was spackled with gore, this area was so clean it shined.

Lanz would rectify that.

He raided the stainless steel equipment cabinet of two ring-handled bulldog clamps with curved tips, a scalpel with a no. 20 blade, and a nine-inch Saterlee bone saw. The hospital had cordless electric models, but Lanz couldn’t get his finger in the trigger guard with his talons. He’d have to do it the old-fashioned way.

Lanz tore off the remnants of his lab coat and shirt and examined his left shoulder. He could have bitten his arm off without much difficulty, but he wouldn’t be able to get close enough to the glenohumeral joint with his giant teeth. Instead, he awkwardly picked up the scalpel and decided to make his first incision just above the acromion, on the end of the clavical bone. With a deft, precise stroke, he parted the skin and sliced into the deltoid.

When the wound filled up with blood, Lanz’s tongue extended on its own volition and lapped it up.

Even better than a suction hose, he mused.

Cutting deeper, his blade sliced through the coracoacromial ligament, then scraped tender cartilage. Continuing to slurp up his own blood, he wielded the bone saw and nestled it into the wound, between the humerus and the glenohumeral ball joint.

The pain was exquisite, causing him to scream in between bouts of sucking at his own torn flesh. When he finally cut through the ligaments and joint capsule, he finished off with the scalpel, severing the infraspinatus muscle on the underside.

Blood squirted like a fountain, and his insane hunger tempted him to stretch out his own brachial artery and suck it like a straw. Instead, he used the bulldog clamps to seal off the brachial, as well as the cephalic vein.

Once the bleeding was under control, he shoved his severed arm into his mouth, chewing and sucking and drinking every last drop of moisture from it. Then he fell onto all fours (actually all threes) and vacuumed up every bit of blood he’d spilled onto the tile.

Momentarily sated, he examined his handiwork. The wound’s edges were ragged, but already beginning to heal. He decided to leave the clamps on for the time being, fearing that taking them off would make him lose his self-control and drink himself to death.

Lanz had no idea how long it would take his limb to grow back, but he wasn’t concerned. He had plenty of time.

With his arm gone, he’d be able to fit through the tiny window in the storage closet door.

He figured the blood of one adult and four children would sustain him for quite a while.

Benny the Clown

“ISN’T that burning your lips off?” Benny the Clown had asked, in another life.

Rupert shook his head. His lips were cracked and covered with blisters. Either his fire-spitting trick was indeed burning him, or it was a ghastly case of herpes. “It’s not that bad.”

“It looks painful.”

“Sacrifices must be made in the name of show business. Stick with me, Benjamin, and you’ll learn a lot.”

Benjamin hesitated. Rupert had gotten him this gig, and though it didn’t pay anywhere near what he’d made at Office Depot, he didn’t want to risk destroying his career as a children’s entertainer before it even started. But still…

“Y’know, Rupert, most fire eaters don’t use rubbing alcohol. They use something like lamp oil. I mean, your lips are…they’re…I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, but what you’re doing could actually…you could get…can I see your tongue?”

“No, you may not. I know it’s unsafe. I’m not stupid. But let me ask you a question, Benjamin: when was the last time you crashed on somebody’s couch and found a bottle of highly purified lamp oil in their bathroom?”

“Never, I guess.”

“Damn right, never. Now how many times have you found a bottle of rubbing alcohol?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever looked.”

“Well I have, and let me tell you, if that house has a woman, it has a bottle of rubbing alcohol. I spend four or five nights a week crashing on a stranger’s couch, and when I leave, they may check their jewelry case, but they aren’t saying ‘Uh-oh, better check the bathroom cabinet to make sure our rubbing alcohol hasn’t been pilfered!’ If you want to be successful at this business, you have to learn to cut expenses. So you go buy your fancy lamp oil if you want, but I’ll stick with a good old fashioned bottle of stolen rubbing alcohol.”