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

“Hurry!” he screamed.

Glanced back again.

The fourth demon had stood up, still torn between Adam and the bloody floor, its head craning back and forth, back and forth, as if—bird in the hand, Adam, bird in the hand, Adam, and…

…It started forward, working up to a sprint, Adam thinking he should get another blood bag out, but it didn’t matter. There wasn’t time.

On the other side of the door, he heard furniture scooting back across the floor, and the locks sliding out of the ceiling, out of the floor.

“Carla, please,” he begged.

“Got it!”

One of the doors swung back.

Adam stepped inside, his backpack catching on the handle.

Gave it a fierce yank, and then he was inside.

“Help!” Carla screamed, and together they rammed their shoulders into the door, but a talon shot through a split second before it closed.

Adam could feel the terrifying strength of the creature driving them back as those razor talons gripped the side of the door.

“Oh, God!” Carla screamed. “More coming.”

Adam reached into his pocket, fingers curling around the scalpel, and he stabbed the blade into the demon’s claw, dark blood running out onto the floor.

The thing shrieked, its claw retracting for a fleeting second, and the door slammed shut.

“Lock it!” Adam yelled, and he crouched and slid a bolt into its housing in the floor, then reached up and drove the ceiling lock home as a tremendous force crashed into the doors, hinges quivering.

“Your side locked?” he asked.

She nodded. “Let’s push the table back.”

They braced it against the doors as the demons on the other side took turns running at full speed into the barricade, Adam watching the hinges for any sign of weakening, but they seemed to be holding.

He looked over at Carla. “How’s my wife?”

“Not good. We need to get her transfusion going right now.”

They turned away from the barricade, Adam glancing over his shoulder as they hurried down the corridor.

“A little infected girl got inside through the window, so keep a look out,” Carla said, the doors rattling behind them, the monsters calling after them in some demented, primal tongue.

“Where is she?”

“Hiding in the OR. But don’t worry, she isn’t as scary as she looks.”

Jenny

“I’M scared.”

“Me too.”

“I wet my pants again.”

“How about we sing a song?” Jenny asked the children.

She was also pretty frazzled. Since Lanz left, there hadn’t been any other monsters trying to attack them, but a few minutes ago a pack of them had run down the hallway. A large pack, maybe thirty or forty. Jenny knew that on an average day there were over a hundred and fifty patients in the hospital. If you figured maybe eighty people on staff, plus a few dozen visitors, there could be almost three hundred of those things roaming around.

While Jenny had no desire to draw their attention, some quiet singing was probably less harmful than four young boys wailing uncontrollably.

“Does everyone know Old MacDonald?” she asked.

The boys nodded.

“Okay, we’ll start with chicks. And let’s use our indoor voices. Are you all ready? Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-Ohhhh. And on his farm he had some chicks… ”

The kids fell in with the E-I-Os. Jenny kept a strained smile on her face and sang through the cluck-clucks, and the moo-moos with the cow, and the oink-oinks with the pig, and just as she began the fourth verse she forgot what the next animal was. A horse? A duck? A dog?

“ …and on that farm he had a dog, E-I-E-I-Ohhhh. With a— ”

“SCCRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

Jenny whipped around and stared, open-mouthed, at the creature at the door.

Lanz had returned.

He was cramming himself into the door’s broken window. But rather than getting stuck this time, his whole body slid through, flopping onto the floor of the closet.

The children screamed in horror. Jenny didn’t think, she reacted. In preparation for an attack, she’d filled every syringe on the crash cart, ten in all.

She was going to stop the fucker’s heart.

She grabbed the first two needles, one in each hand, gripping them in her fists with her thumbs on the plungers. Succinylcholine, a powerful paralytic. Etomidate, an anesthetic. Both went into Lanz’s back, and as Jenny injected him she noticed, with a combination of horror and revulsion, that he was missing his left arm. Two clamps dangled from the fleshy stump, their stainless steel handles clack-clacking against the tile floor.

Lanz screeched again, his remaining hand locking around Jenny’s ankle. She left the needles sticking in his back and reached behind her, managing to snag two more just as he yanked Jenny off her feet.

Fighting the urge to pull away, Jenny sat forward, stabbing him with two more overdoses. Lidocaine and diazapam.

Lanz opened his horrible mouth, his teeth locking onto Jenny’s foot, beginning to chew. She tugged her foot away, pulling free of her shoe, and then scrambled back toward the children.

She’d injected Lanz with enough drugs to put a track team into a coma. But that didn’t seem to matter. Spitting out her gym shoe, Lanz began to slither toward her, eyes wide, mouth wide, his talons outstretched and his massacred face shuddering in what looked like ecstasy.

Lanz

BLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOOD!MUST!HAVE!BLOOD!

The bitch nurse had jabbed him with a few needles, but that didn’t matter. He’d just amputated his own arm without sedation. A few measly shots weren’t going to stop him. Dr. Kurt Lanz M.D. was invincible.

Inching forward on his belly, he undulated in Jenny’s direction. Her terrified face—a rictus mask of pure fear—was delightful. She kept the delicious children behind her, as if she could somehow stop the primal force that was Kurt Lanz using just her sheer will.

He reached forward, stretching out his arm, a talon hooking into the cuff of her pants.

Then things started to get strange.

First, his lungs stopped working. They seized up, unwilling or unable to take a breath.

Then his head began to feel full and heavy, and the floor beneath him seemed to shift.

His vision blurred, going dark along the edges.

The drugs! It’s the drugs! My body can’t metabolize them fast enough!

Lanz snarled, tugging Jenny toward him by her slacks, sliding her across the floor until she straddled his face—an obscene imitation of a sex act.

Blood! Blood will revive me! Blood will get these drugs out of my system!

Lanz stretched open his jaws, ready to bite Jenny’s pelvis in half.

Then something punched into Lanz’s back. Something sharp and cold. He felt it stick up under his scapula, straight into his left ventricle. The pain made him gasp.

“Potassium chloride,” Jenny said.

Potassium chloride?

KCl was used to treat hypokalemia and digitalis poisoning. But in large doses it was the primary drug used in lethal injections for death row inmates.

Potassium chloride stopped the heart!

Lanz moaned, the drug working instantly. He curled up, twitching and spasming, the pain stormtrooping through his entire body in agonizing, dizzying, pounding waves. He vomited, but it wasn’t the contents of his stomach. It was his stomach, hanging inside-out from a slimy loop of esophagus, spilling out the precious blood he’d been digesting.

Even with everything going on, the smell of blood activated his biting reflex, and he chomped down on his own regurgitated organs, screaming as he chewed.

“You always were an asshole, Lanz,” he heard Jenny say.