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

He was passing the pediatrics floor when he remembered Randall saying he’d had to leave Alice behind. Well, pediatrics was where he’d have left her.

Clay stopped and considered the risk-benefit ratio. What if he allowed himself five minutes to search for Alice? Taurus Raging Bulls didn’t come cheap, but even if someone simply gave him another, it wouldn’t be Alice. He’d grown attached to Alice.

He checked his watch and marked the time. Really. Five minutes—not a second more. What could it hurt?

He eased through the door and made his way down the hall, thinking how anybody watching him would think he was out of his mind. Well, some people thought that anyway, especially when they learned he’d named his Taurus. But every so often you came across a weapon special enough for a name. Look at Davy Crockett. Hadn’t he named his trusty flintlock Betsy? There you go. Nuff said.

Near the nursing station Clay found a door that looked like someone had taken a chainsaw to it. Randall? Through another doorway he saw that clown dracula flat on its back, very dead. And there on the floor, amid fallen plaster and a string of guts that looked like they’d been tied into shapes…

“Alice!”

Shanna

WHAT had happened? An explosion could mean only one person: Clay. But what could he have been carrying to blow out a wall like that? Better not to think about it. Who knew what Clay carried in his bag of tricks?

She just hoped he hadn’t gone up with it.

The sergeant had told two soldiers to escort her—a euphemism—to the trailer at the rear of the lot. They pulled her inside and stuck her in what they’d called “the command center.”

It looked improvised in some ways—a featureless space with no decorations and half a dozen one-piece polymer chairs. But the small, fixed window that had to be at least an inch thick said otherwise. The best thing about that window was it faced the parking lot. Shanna had her nose pressed against it now, hands cupped around her eyes to shut out the room light, straining to see what was going on.

The door opened behind her. She turned to see four disheveled-looking kids being herded into the room by the same two soldiers who had brought her. They moved away and then another soldier—with bars on his shoulders—strolled inside. He had gray hair and a barrel chest, and his expression was grim. He stared hard at Shanna.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“Shanna Wiener. I’m an anthropologist.”

“Colonel Halford. My men just caught some sort of creature, Ms. Wiener. It attacked them, we believe, with intent to eat them.”

“Not eat them,” Shanna corrected. “It wanted to suck their blood.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“It’s…” Shanna’s voice went soft. “It’s a dracula.”

“A dracula.”

She nodded.

“As in a vampire? The kind you fight with crosses and garlic?”

She shook her head. “Crosses don’t work. I don’t know about the garlic.”

Shanna expected disbelief, but Halford simply nodded.

“Do you know how many there are?”

“No. The infection spread quickly. There could be hundreds.”

He nodded again. Two soldiers came in and saluted. Col. Halford saluted back.

“The autoclave is in place, sir.”

“Sound the sirens. Clear everyone to the perimeter. I want detonation in sixty seconds from the moment I stop talking. Dismissed.”

The men hurried off.

“What’s an autoclave?” Shanna asked. She didn’t like the sound of it.

“Same as in a hospital. Used for sterilizing medical equipment. Except this sterilizes a much larger area.”

“It’s a bomb?”

“It’s a giant shaped charge. When detonated it will shoot a plasma jet down through the hospital roof with irresistible force at a speed of eight-thousand feet per second. The jet will penetrate each of the floors like an anti-tank missile melting through a steel armor plate. The air in the hospital will heat to ten thousand degrees, sterilizing the entire structure.”

Shanna shook her head. “My boyfriend…my fiancé, is still in there.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Wiener. I have my orders.”

No. This couldn’t be happening. The military was here. They could help him.

“Please. He’s a good man. A cop. He saved a lot of people tonight.”

“I know. I just heard from four children who talked about a policeman with a big cool gun. But I also heard from Dr. Driscoll, my medical officer. She confirmed these creatures are contagious. We simply can’t risk any of them getting away. They’ve managed to kill six of my men in less than ten minutes, Ms. Wiener. Good men, well trained. Durango has a population of fourteen thousand, and it’s only ten miles away. If one of those things manages to get there, it will be a slaughter.”

Shanna didn’t think, she acted, running for the door, leaping out into the night, sprinting for the hospital as fast as she could.

She had to get Clay out of there. Had to—

Two men tackled her.

A few seconds later she was in handcuffs, being dragged away, screaming at the top of her lungs, “Clay! CLAAAAAY!”

Jenny

BY the time she realized that the object they had lowered onto the roof was a bomb—a huge, army-green charge—Jenny had just enough time for a belly laugh. She thought of Randall…dear, sweet, Randall. He would have appreciated the humor of surviving a dracula outbreak only to be killed by the good guys.

It was damn ironical.

Clay

HE snatched up the Taurus and began wiping her off. Poor Alice was a mess—blood, plaster dust, and who knew what else.

He hugged her to his chest. “Hey, baby. Gonna take you home and get you cleaned up and oiled and good as—”

Then he heard screaming. He’d heard a lot of screaming that day, but this seemed to be coming from outside. And rather than the incoherent, senseless terror he’d gotten used to, this sounded a lot like his name.

He hurried to the nearby window, broken out by Adam’s farewell blast directly above, and stared out over the parking lot.

One floor down and maybe a hundred yards away…that looked like Shanna, being dragged away by some soldiers. She continued to cry out to him.

Why was she so panicked? She was safe down there.

Then he grinned. Probably worried sick about him. Or missing him something fierce.

“Don’t worry, babe. I’ll be right—”

He heard a boom from above and then a blast of heat like a solar flare seared through the hospital, hurling his burning body through the window.

Shanna

SHANNA was still screaming when the roof of the hospital exploded in an incandescent flare. The boom and shockwave stopped her in her tracks and she watched in horror as the windows and walls of the fourth floor vomited flame and debris, followed almost immediately by the third and second and first. Every entrance, every exit blew its doors and shot flames like giant blowtorches.

And then the floors began to collapse—first the roof onto the fourth, then the fourth onto the third, pancaking all the way down to ground level, leaving only a flame-riddled cloud of smoke and dust and debris on the far side of the parking lot.

A cheer went up from the watching soldiers and she wanted to kill them. Instead, she began to cry. Huge, wracking sobs shook her to her toes.

Clay… she felt the ring box in her pocket pressing against her thigh. A good man, a hero, and no one would know. No, wait. Those kids would know. They’d remember the guy with the big cool gun. Clay would love to be remembered that way.

Colonel Halford walked over, told his men to release her.