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

“I want to give you something.”

She shook her head. “I told you: I can’t do it. I can’t shoot anyone.”

“Not a gun.” He held out the ring box. “This.”

Looking confused, she took it and opened it—and gasped when she saw the sparkler.

He didn’t want to die with the ring in his pocket. If it came to that, better she had it, to remember him by.

Shanna

“OH, Clay. Ohmygod!”

It was beautiful, but it was so wrong!

His words filtered through the cotton that had suddenly filled her brainpan.

“I was going to ask you to marry me this weekend—you know, when we were in Denver.”

What? What?

“Get married? This weekend?”

Has he lost it?

He laughed. “No-no. Ask you this weekend—do the whole down-on-one-knee thing. We’ll get married later.”

Tears filled her eyes. “Oh, Clay, I—”

“But it doesn’t look like we’re going to Denver, and I won’t get to take a knee here and ask you to marry me, because I know this is a moment every girl dreams about all her life and I want it to be special for you. But I want you to have the ring now. We can talk about getting married later.”

…because I know this is a moment every girl dreams about all her life…

What planet was he from?

God, she was going to break it off with him and there wasn’t going to be any Denver this weekend. How was she going to tell him that she could not accept this ring?

“Clay, I can’t—”

“You can take it. I really, really want you to have it.”

She shook her head and sobbed as she stared at the ring. “Clay…really…”

“If anything happens, I just wanted you to know, beyond any doubt, how I feel about you.”

If anything happens…

What was he talking about? They were out, safe, free from those…draculas.

…I just wanted you to know, beyond any doubt, how I feel about you.

The ring said a whole lot about how he felt, and about how long he expected to go on feeling that way. But she simply could not reciprocate.

“I…I don’t know what to say.”

No lie.

“Not a problem. I understand. Women get overwhelmed with emotion at a time like this.”

She looked into those loving brown eyes…oh, you clueless, clueless man. But then, weren’t most men clueless? She had to tell him now, this instant. She couldn’t let this go one more second.

“Clay…”

But then he wrapped his arms around her and pressed his lips against hers, and the memory of those lips elsewhere on her body, all over her body, awakened a heat. But before she could respond, he released her.

“Gotta go.”

“What? Where? What are you talking about?”

He cocked his head toward the hospital. “Back inside.”

“Are you crazy ? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

“Believe me, that’s the last thing I want—not when I’m going to spend the rest of my life with you. But I promised Randall.”

“You don’t even like him.”

“Don’t matter. Told him I’d be back to help him find Jenny. And Jenny’s good people. You know that.”

Yeah, she did, but…

“You said you’re almost out of ammo.”

“For the shotgun, yeah.” He opened the back of his Suburban and reached inside. “But I’ve still got my biggest and baddest.”

He pulled out some contraption that looked like a sawed-off shotgun from outer space.

Shanna blinked. “What is that ?”

“An MM-One—a semi-automatic grenade launcher.”

It looked familiar.

“Wasn’t that in one of your movies?”

“Good memory. Christopher Walken carried one in Dogs of War .” He leaned closer. “That’s just another reason we belong together—we love the same movies.”

She felt her eyes roll of their own accord. “Did it ever occur to you that—hey, wait. Did you say grenades ?”

“Sure did.”

“Isn’t that kind of extreme? I mean, aren’t you afraid you’ll blow yourself up?”

Clay laughed. “Not a problem.” He patted the gun. “It’s designed to hold a dozen grenades, but I’ve got ‘er loaded with 40-millimeter M576 buckshot rounds. They don’t explode. They’re like giant shotgun shells. Each one unloads twenty-seven balls of double-ought. I don’t expect to have to shoot any of those draculas twice with this baby.”

He transferred his backup ammo for the MM-1 from the duffel to a small backpack and slipped his arms through its straps.

She felt the ring box in her hand and realized this was why he’d given it to her now—he didn’t know if he’d survive. No way she could give it back. At least not now. Send him back inside feeling he had nothing to lose? Uh-uh. She wanted Clay Theel to have every reason to survive.

A brave, decent man stood before her—one of the good guys. And she loved him for that. And, well, for the good sex too. She might not want to marry him, but he’d make someone else an amazing husband.

She’d tell him when he came out.

She hugged him. “Come back to me, Clay.”

He smiled. “Do my damnedest.”

For some reason, as she watched him trot toward the hospital, she began to cry.

Adam

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 must have mixed up one of his rights or lefts, because Adam was lost, wandering through a pitch black corridor guided only by the faint glow from the light, which was fading quickly, its battery drained by some recent sleepless nights spent reading.

Figured he could see, at most, ten feet ahead of him. Same claustrophobic creepiness as driving in dense fog with no idea what might emerge at any moment from the mist.

He passed radiology, coming up on another blind corner.

Adam stopped, because something was coming—a faint scratching noise just around the bend.

He extended his Kindle and in the glow of the light, watched a skinny, gray rat waddle around the corner.

It stopped, sniffed the air, then turned to face Adam.

He tripped over his feet backing away from the rat, which was scurrying toward him now, its head nothing but massive brown fangs that were snapping shut with increasing ferocity the closer it got.

Adam climbed to his feet, thinking, Don’t miss , on the verge of stomping the rat when he realized he only wore socks.

So he kept backing away as the thing came toward him, squeaking and hissing, and after twenty feet of this, he was starting to feel ridiculous. He had the scalpel in his pocket, but that didn’t seem feasible.

“Oh you stupid, ugly rat!” he said.

There were a few chairs along the wall outside of radiology and he picked one of them up and lifted it over his head and brought a wooden leg down on the rat’s rear haunches with a juicy crunch, blood and entrails exploding across the floor.

He lifted the chair again, the rat still scrambling toward him with its forepaws, albeit slower, and crushed its head and teeth and brains, over and over, until it was nothing but a soup of furry, gray-pink globs.

Adam charged on ahead, rounded the next corner, the realization coming that if he didn’t find the lab in the very near future, his wife was going to die.

He was running now, suddenly found himself at the end of the corridor, staring at the word LABORATORY in block letters over a door inset with glass.

He rushed in, past a waiting area and reception desk, through an exam room, until he reached the lab.