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

“I’m sorry. Do you really need that much?”

“Tell me, Benjamin, how many chainsaws do I juggle in my act?”

“I haven’t seen it yet.”

“Three. Three chainsaws. What do you think chainsaws run on?”

“Gasoline?”

“Have you seen the price of gas? It’s obscene. Flat-out criminal. But do you know what makes a chainsaw run just as well?”

“Uh, rubbing alcohol?”

“That’s right. You try to siphon gas from your neighbor’s car, you’re going to jail. You steal rubbing alcohol, nobody ever notices.”

“Is it safe to juggle chainsaws that are fueled by…y’know, something that wasn’t really meant to fuel a chainsaw?”

“Haven’t lost a limb yet.”

“Yeah, but that can’t be good for the engine, can it?”

“You need to quit worrying about that kind of stuff,” said Rupert. “Trust me. I’ll groom you into the funniest clown the world has ever seen.”

Benny the Clown licked the last of the blood from the chainsaw blade.

He hurt, but he was happy.

He walked around for a while.

He couldn’t smile any more, but he wanted to smile when he saw what was on the shelf.

He took down the bottle. Stared at it for a while. Tried to remember.

He remembered.

He filled the chainsaw.

He couldn’t wait to use it. It would be funny.

Adam

STANDING on the other side of the double doors, he heard Nurse Herrick locking him out.

Adam started down the corridor, making the sign of the cross as he passed what was left of the nurse in black scrubs who’d been chased down and slaughtered an hour ago.

Felt like so much longer. Like days had elapsed.

The only lights in operation were those over the doorways, and this left long, deep shadows in the spaces between.

Already, he was breathing so fast he had to stop and lean against a wall and close his eyes, slow everything down until the lightheadedness receded.

He went on, down the long, empty hallway, until he came to the waiting area at the end.

Only the thought of Stacie and the blood she needed bolstered him enough to peer around the corner.

Empty.

Dark.

Absolutely quiet.

The rubber soles of his shoes were deafening on the recently-buffed linoleum, so he took them off, abandoned them, and continued on in sockfeet.

End of the hallway, take a right, go to the end of that hall, take a left, on your next right, four doors down, you’ll see a door leading to a stairwell.

He was coming up on the end of this corridor, and he stopped two feet from it.

Listening.

No sound but the lights humming over a doorway just ahead.

He peeked around. There was movement at the far end, two hundred feet away…something dragging itself across the floor.

Adam stepped out into the new corridor, jogging in his socks.

Four doors down, you’ll see a door leading to a stairwell.

He passed the first two doors, perfectly quiet save for the swish of his socks sliding—

Wait.

He slid to a stop.

Footsteps. That’s what he heard. A pack of them pounding the floor, and he’d just started moving again when the first…demon, no other word for it…came tearing around the corner at the far end of the corridor, followed by a dozen others, and they all began to scream and hiss when they saw him, Adam running now, door number three up ahead, then flashing past, door number four still twenty feet in the distance, and it occurred to him that he was actually running toward these things as they momentarily disappeared into a long black shadow.

He torqued his feet to the side like he was making a full stop on skis and skidded just past the door.

The demons close now, getting louder.

He pulled open the door and bolted through, slamming it shut behind him.

Harsh, blue fluorescent light flickered overhead.

Spun around and looked at the door, praying for a lock, but there was none.

He raced down the steps, taking them three and four at a time, hands sliding down the rails, his footfalls clanging on the metal steps.

Go all the way down…

He made it down four flights of stairs, to the ground level, before the door to the stairwell burst open above him, the noise of numerous taloned claws filling this cinderblocked-column with scraping metal and the echoing clang of those demons taking entire flights in a single jump.

The stairs ran out and Adam tore through the door leading into the basement floor…

…into pure and total darkness. No emergency lights, no exit lights, nothing.

When you come out, go left, right, left, and then right again, all the way to the end of the last corridor. You’ll see the sign for the lab. The refrigerators are in back. Grab at least five units of O-positive.

He could still hear those things rushing down the stairwell, and he hurried along for several steps in the dark, expecting at any moment for the basement doors to bang open.

And he kept expecting…

And kept waiting…

A minute passed.

Then two.

He stopped moving.

He could still hear them, but the sounds of their snarling and hissing were fading away.

They’d all run into the hospital lobby.

Thirty seconds later, the silence was back, humming again inside his head.

His legs trembled, and he slid down against the wall until he was sitting on the cold floor. Unshouldered his backpack, hands shaking so badly he could barely unzip it.

He pulled out his Kindle. He’d been reading through the Book of Acts on it, and he couldn’t help but smile at the bible verse on the screen as he turned on the small light that was clipped to the top of the device.

Your word is a lamp unto my feet. A light unto my path.

Oasis

NONE of this was fair! Her Mommy always gave her everything she wanted when she wanted it how she wanted it and as many times as she wanted it and now all these stupid big people like that nurse—

Ooooo. Red candy. She’d missed a drop that was now congealing around the blades of the scissors still sticking out of her chest.

—who wouldn’t let her have any red candy, and you weren’t supposed to run with scissors much less throw them at people!

She crouched under the operating table. Strange how there was no light in the room, and yet she could see everything so perfectly in shades of gray and green.

There was red candy at the other end of this corridor. She was sure of it. The smell was better than cookies baking in the oven.

It called to her.

And in that moment, something occurred to the thing that used to be a little girl, something she’d heard her Mommy tell her Daddy a thousand times before Daddy went to live in Texas.

If you want something, you have to go out and get it. Stop asking people for things. Start taking them. It’s called initiative.

Maybe that’s what she needed.

More initiative.

Quit asking for red candy like a goooooood little girl.

Start taking it.

She had big sharp teeth and razor claws.

She just needed to be a little bit smarter, a little bit braver, and a whole lot meaner.

Clay

THEY made it down to the ground floor without meeting any draculas. Despite the fact that it was Randall’s term, Clay’s brain had latched onto it for the monsters—a perfect fit. The door carried the usual emergency-exit/alarm/blah-blah-blah warning. Well, son, if this wasn’t an emergency, he didn’t know what the fuck was.

Sure enough, bells started ringing as soon as he pushed it open.

He and Shanna stepped out onto a walk on the north side of the main building. No dracula-filled lobby or ER to blast through. Dumb-ass. He should have remembered that the corner stairwell opened directly to the outside.