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

So he locked the door, found a chair, and waited.

Soon he heard movement outside—feet scraping the floor as they passed. Someone rattled the doorknob. A dracula had probably smelled him—no surprise since he was pretty much covered in dried blood. He raised the Glock, ready to fire if the creature somehow managed to break in, but it moved off. The smell of the fresh blood in the education room had to be more enticing.

Okay, Part A of the plan was working—the draculas were taking the bait. Part B depended on two factors: the hacks and the padre. Clay was pretty sure about the hacks. He’d rotated the firing pin in each round to line up with the detonator. Any impact would—should—set them off.

Adam was a bigger unknown. Pulling that trigger would take a certain level of intestinal fortitude. He didn’t know if a noncombatant and officer in the God Squad like the padre had it in him. Just have to wait and—

The explosion shook the walls and floor, practically knocking Clay off his seat. Even through the locked door, the compression wave from the blast popped his ears.

Sorry for doubting you, padre.

Via con Dios .

He waited half a minute, then unlocked the door and stepped out. He’d expected smoke but instead felt a cool, clean breeze. Outside air?

He looked left and saw that windows on the far side of the building, opposite the explosion, had been blown out. He made his way through the rubble to the education room—or rather where it had been. The hallway wall and windows had been blown out. Everything in sight was coated with gore. The outer windows and wall were gone as well. He could look out at the night and see the flashing lights in the parking lot.

The parking lot…that was where he wanted to be. With Shanna.

He saw the TV copter idling in a clear corner of the lot. Great. The kids were safe.

But he heard another copter—a much heavier engine noise than the KREZ bird—though he couldn’t see it. Sounded like it was directly over the hospital. Another pickup? Jenny was the only one left up there.

But would she go? Maybe, maybe not. Women were crazy sometimes.

He headed for the stairs. He’d get up there and force her onto the bird—even if he had to sling her over his shoulder and carry her aboard. She felt she owed it to Randall to stay with him, but that was the last thing her ex would have wanted. Last thing Clay wanted too. She was a good nurse and good people. Not enough of those around.

Randall…man, he’d misjudged him big time. But then, he’d known only the drunk Randall. The sober one was one helluva stand-up guy. Come to think of it, he’d underestimated the padre as well. Hazard of the job, he supposed. As a cop he saw too much of the worst side of people. After a while he couldn’t help but start expecting it.

In the stairwell, he made it up one flight before stumbling to an abrupt halt. He wasn’t going any farther. The flights above were packed with draculas.

Earlier, when he and Adam had made their way down, they’d had to climb over the pile of dead draculas Randall had sliced up. It had been a tight squeeze. Now the surviving draculas were feasting on their brothers, fighting each other for a place at the table. Probably what it had looked like on the way to the roof that last day at the US embassy in Saigon.

He started back down, hoping Jenny got some sense into her head and boarded the chopper. She could return to Randall later, after the army or National Guard or whatever mopped up the surviving draculas.

Jenny

SHE stared up into the night sky at the helicopter. But it wasn’t the one from the TV station. This one was dark, with guns mounted on the front and sides.

Military.

Jenny waved her hands over her head, but the aircraft gave no indication that it noticed her. It continued to hover, not making any attempt to land.

Then the building shook and Jenny heard an explosion from the lower floors. One of Clay’s toys? Or had the cavalry finally arrived?

Shanna

SHE was pacing back and forth by Clay’s Suburban, praying for his safe return, when she noticed movement on the ground, not too far from her. She looked closer and saw one of the supposedly dead state troopers moving—one of the pair Clay hadn’t shot.

Oh, God. As it lifted its head and looked her way, glow from the army headlights glinted off rows of long sharp teeth.

“Hey!” she called. “Hey, somebody! We’ve got trouble over here! Hey!”

Nobody seemed to hear her. The noise from truck motors revving, soldiers shouting to each other, giving and taking orders, swallowed her cries.

“Hey!” she called, raising her voice to its limit. “A little help over here.”

She backed up a few steps, readying to run, fearing it was coming for her, but it veered away, toward the empty darkness.

Confused? The side of its skull looked bashed in. Too damaged to know what it was doing? Well, that was fine with Shanna…

Except if it got away and bit someone, the plague would be loose and there’d be no stopping it.

She screamed. “Will somebody please—oh, crap!” He was going to get away and no one was paying her a bit of attention.

She glanced in the rear of Clay’s Suburban and saw his super shotgun, his beloved AA-something. She didn’t want to touch it…she remembered Marge back in the chapel, but somebody had to stop that thing.

She grabbed the gun and went around the other side of the car in time to see the dracula passing. How hard could this be? She raised the shotgun, pointed it toward the thing, and, closing her eyes—she couldn’t look—pulled the trigger.

The gun boom ed but had nowhere near the kick of that pistol Clay had handed her.

She opened her eyes and saw the dracula on the pavement. She was about to congratulate herself when she realized it was still alive, if that was what you could call whatever it was, and trying to regain its feet. But it couldn’t. Shanna had shredded its knees.

“Lower your weapon!” shouted a voice behind her.

She turned and found herself facing the muzzles of half a dozen guns of various shapes and sizes and a chorus telling her to drop it. She laid the shotgun gently on the pavement. After all, Clay loved that thing.

“ Now you listen!” she said.

A soldier with three stripes on his arm—that meant sergeant, right?—who looked like he was in charge, got in her face. “What do you think you’re doing, firing that here?”

Shanna jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “One of them was getting away.”

A couple of the soldiers looked past her. She could tell by their expressions they’d never seen a dracula before.

The sergeant said, “Put it down!”

Half the soldiers turned their weapons toward the leaping monstrosity. In a rain of automatic weapon fire, they cut it to shreds.

“Did you see that thing?”

“What the fuck?”

“Some kind of monster.”

Then four of the hospital’s third-floor windows facing the parking lot blew out, belching flame and filling the air with bits of glass and charred flesh.

Jenny

JENNY continued to stare up at the military helicopter. Over the din of the rotors she yelled, “Down here!”

It hovered directly overhead, and she watched one of the bay doors open. Then they began to lower a rescue basket down on a cable.

No…not a rescue basket.

What the heck is that?

Clay

CLAY descended cautiously through the stairwell, Glock out and ready, but nothing leaped out of the shadows. The dracula population appeared to have been reduced to endangered-species level. No loss. This was one species that cried out for extinction.