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

His eyes got wide.

“Take my blood, Randall. It’ll revive you.”

She pressed her wrist to his teeth. It would turn her into a dracula as well, but that was okay. They would be together. Maybe Clay was right, and they could find Moorecook and a cure. Jenny closed her eyes, waiting for the pain.

She felt his breath on her arm, but the bite didn’t come.

Instead there was only the faintest brush of what remained of her husband’s lips.

A kiss.

“Please, Randall. It’s the only way.”

Randall gripped Jenny’s arms—

—and shoved her backward.

Jenny fell onto her ass.

“Damn it, Randall!” she yelled. “Stop being so goddamn stubborn!”

She crawled back to him, figuring if she crammed her hand down his mouth she could force him to bite down. But as she brought her fingers to his mouth, Randall caught her wrist. His eyes were glassy.

“Nuuuhhh,” he said, shaking his head.

And then Jenny fell apart. Great, wracking sobs shook her body. She’d spent her entire professional career being strong in the face of death. Compartmentalizing grief. Priding herself on being practical rather than emotional.

But this was more than she could bear.

“You son of a bitch,” she sobbed. “You can’t die. Please, please, please don’t die.”

Randall reached up, held her hands. A monster’s hands, but they still had the calluses.

Still had the warmth.

They held each other, for the last time.

“Remember the first day we met?” Jenny said, her face a veil of tears. “You came into the ER, your arm all swollen, and you asked me out on a date while you were getting your X-ray. You had a broken arm, but you were still flirting with me. I thought you were so brave.”

She touched a part of his face that wasn’t all ripped up.

“And you are,” she said, smiling through her tears. “You’re the bravest, sweetest man I’ve ever met. I was so wrong to leave you. I wish we could start all over. I wish I could erase all of that time we were apart, and instead fill it up with all the good memories we missed out on. But I never stopped loving you. Never. Being your wife was the best thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

Jenny leaned over and kissed his forehead.

“I love you, Randall Bolton.”

She continued to hold his hands long after he’d stopped holding hers.

Clay

CLAY and Adam hurried through the dimly-lit slaughterhouse that had once been the happiest floor in the hospital.

“To make this work,” Clay said, “we need a good-size room.”

“There’s an education center where they have Lamaze classes and lectures on infant care. It’s right over here.”

He followed Adam to a rectangular room that ran twenty feet by thirty. Multicolored lights flashed against the outside windows. Clay stepped to them and glanced down at the parking lot. He thought he could pick out troop lorries among the vehicles and milling people. Either the army or the National Guard had arrived. Good. They’d keep Shanna safe.

Couldn’t think about her now…

He turned back to the room. It had windows onto the hallway as well. Good thing, because the hall had the emergency lights. None of those in here.

In the lowlight he picked out rows of folding chairs—a bonus.

“Perfect. Now I need the blood—lots of it.”

“You’re in luck,” Adam said. He pulled open the backpack, revealing dozens of units. “All types.”

Clay had been thinking about killing a couple of draculas for their blood, but this was easier, safer. Despite the gravity of the situation, he couldn’t help smiling. “You’re a regular Boy Scout, aren’t you.”

“I made Eagle.”

“Well, you sure are prepared.”

“I’m not prepared to turn into one of those things.” He held up his bloody arm. “You said you could solve that problem and make it count—really count.”

Clay fished one of the two 40mm M433 grenades out of his backpack. A couple of days ago someone had emailed him about carting an old wrecked car out into the wilds during the gun show and shooting the shit out of it. He’d figured on administering the coup de grâce with these babies. But now he had a better use. He handed it to Adam.

“This is a high explosive grenade. It’s got a kill radius of fifteen feet. That means a thirty-foot circle of death. I don’t know if that’ll apply to the draculas since they’re so damn hard to kill, but two will definitely do the job.”

Adam was nodding. “I see where you’re going. If we can fill this room with them, and set off both rounds, we may be able to turn the tide.”

Clay looked at him. “What do you mean, ‘we,’ kemosabe? This is going to be your show, padre, your Alamo.”

“But—”

“You’re gonna die, padre. And real soon. You can die here as a man and meet your maker without a mouth full of fangs, or you can die as a dracula when I blow your head off at the first sign of change. Take your pick.”

Adam’s face had turned a light shade of green. “As a man, of course.”

“Good for you. And what better way to go out than taking a bunch of draculas with you? But that’s only going to happen if I can modify these rounds.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, they’ve got a minimum arming range of forty-five feet.”

“Sorry?”

“They’re designed not to detonate until they’re like forty-five to ninety feet from the launcher. I need to hack the arming mechanism if this is going to work.”

“You can do that?”

“Pretty sure…”

Clay’s gut clenched at the prospect. He’d modified the buckshot rounds, changing the gauge of the shot and such, but the H-E grenades were lots more complicated. He hadn’t ventured into one of them yet. No point in letting Adam in on that. He had enough on his plate.

“Okay,” he said. “While I do my tinkering, I want you to stack all these chairs in a circle in the center of the room, but leave enough space for you in the middle.”

“Why?”

“Coupla reasons. I’ll explain later, because we don’t have a lot of time and it won’t matter if I can’t arm the grenades. So circle those chairs, then get every drop of blood you can find and pour it around them like a moat. But you’ve got to keep the door closed as you do that. When those draculas smell blood they’re like sharks in a feeding frenzy. Let’s get to work.”

Clay left him there and went in search of a quiet cubbyhole to work on his H-E grenades, hoping he could pull this off without turning himself into Bolognese sauce.

Jenny

SHE was sitting there, exhausted, devastated, clutching her husband’s lifeless hand, when she heard the whine of propellers.

Jenny glanced up, thinking the TV helicopter had returned.

But it hadn’t.

This was something different.

Adam

HE battled with his conscience as he unpacked the transfusion bags in the lecture room.

Suicide was a sin. The bible said so. The Lord gave each of us life and only He could take it away. Suicide was self-murder, and “no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.” The meaning was pretty clear: no eternal life meant banishment for all eternity from the presence of God. Adam didn’t believe in the old-school Lake of Fire, but he did believe in hell.

The inner debate continued as he closed the door and began arranging the chairs as Clay had instructed.

But wouldn’t it be worse to allow himself to become a foul, murderous abomination? To kill indiscriminately and, far worse, turn others into similar abominations? Wouldn’t that earn him hell just as quickly?

With the chairs circled in a double stack, he began creating the “moat,” slicing open the transfusion bags with the scalpel, and dumping their contents around the chairs.