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

“ Now you listen!” she said.

A soldier who looked like he was in command 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.

“Get Doctor Driscoll,” the officer said.

A few minutes later a woman, one of the civilians from the big trailer, appeared. She stared at the dracula with virtually no reaction, not a hint of surprise.

After a few seconds she said, “Dispose of it.”

The officer motioned behind him and a soldier with a flame thrower appeared.

“Light it up,” he told him.

The soldier hesitated, then sent a stream of liquid fire at the thing, engulfing it in flame. It screamed, spasmed, rolled on the ground, then lay still.

Shanna turned away and retched. That had once been a person…

She turned back to the woman, Dr. Driscoll. “Is that the only way to stop the infection?”

The woman stared at her with an alarmed expression. “Infection? Who said anything about infection?”

“It’s obvious.”

“It’s nothing of the sort.”

And then it hit Shanna. Dr. Driscoll hadn’t been repulsed by the dracula. She’d been expecting it. “You’ve seen this before, haven’t you? You knew about this.”

“Who are you and where do you get your wild ideas?”

“I was in there. I saw—”

“In there? In the hospital?” The doctor signaled to the soldiers. “Lock her in quarantine.”

A pair of them grabbed her, one by each arm, and were dragging her toward the trailer when 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.

“Clay? Oh, no! Clay!”

Jenny

There was a frightening moment when the whole building shuddered from some sort of explosion. One of Clay’s toys? Or had the cavalry finally arrived?

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?

Shanna

The soldiers who had been escorting her—a euphemism—to the trailer had seemed as shocked by the explosion as she. She’d tried to use their distraction to escape but they had too secure a grip on her. They’d pulled her inside and stuck her in what they’d called “the quarantine room.”

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.

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?

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 Dr. Driscoll stepped into the doorway. She held a squalling baby in her arms.

“Here,” she said, holding it out to Shanna. “It’s a girl.”

Not knowing what else to do, Shanna took her. One look at her face told her it was a newborn.

“What—?”

Dr. Driscoll sniffed. “I don’t do babies.”

Shanna had done a ton of babysitting as a teen. She knew that cry.

“She’s starving.”

“We have nothing to feed it.”

“But—”

“She must be quarantined with the rest of you. Deal with it.”

She shut the door.

Shanna turned to the kids and, over the baby’s screams, pieced together a disjointed story about a guy with a chainsaw—had to be Jenny’s Randall—and a “guy with a big cool gun”—no question who that was—who had saved them and put them on the helicopter.

“Only four of you?”

They nodded and began to cry. Not a good question.

The door opened again, revealing neither the soldiers nor Dr. Driscoll. Instead, a good-looking guy in green scrubs and longish brown hair stood there, smiling.

“Hello, Shanna. I’m Doctor Cook, a pediatrician. I’ve come to check over the baby.”

He reached for her and Shanna gladly relinquished the screaming child.

As soon as Dr. Cook cradled her in his arms, she stopped crying. Shanna looked to see if anything was wrong but she had her eyes open and was staring at the doctor.

“That’s amazing.”

He smiled again. “I have a way with children.”

Something familiar about him, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

He glanced up and down the hall, then looked her directly in the eyes. “You don’t belong here. I’m stepping outside. You can come with me if you wish.”

“But the kids—”

“Will be fine. This is a one-time offer.”

Shanna didn’t know about this. “I can just walk out?”

“The military personnel are distracted at the moment. That is only temporary, I assure you. Come.”

He turned and walked toward the rear of the trailer. Shanna followed, saying, “But I came in—”

“Two entrances.”

He led her to a door that opened on the side opposite the hospital. Three steps down and fifty feet across the pavement put them on the edge of the trees bordering the parking lot. He turned and stared toward the hospital. She followed his gaze and saw the soldiers withdrawing deeper into the lot, away from the building.

“Are they leaving?”

“Hardly.”

He pointed up to a helicopter, much larger than the TV station’s, hovering over the hospital roof. Its flashing lights revealed a long, bulky cylinder hanging vertically from a cable as it was lowered to the roof.

“Is that something to haul away survivors?”

“Hardly.” His tone was grim as he repeated the word.

She glanced at him—so was his expression. She again had that sense of déjà vu—that somehow she’d seen him before, that they’d met before.

“What is it, then?”

“They call it an ‘autoclave.’“

She’d heard Dr. Driscoll mention that, but still had no idea what it was.

“That’s no help.”

“In medical facilities, it’s a device used to steam sterilize medical instruments.”

She shook her head. “I’m not following.”

“No reason you should. I didn’t understand either, so I eavesdropped. 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 steel armor plate. The air in the hospital will heat to ten thousand degrees, sterilizing the entire structure.”

Shanna heard the words as she watched the helicopter ascend from the roof and fly off without its cargo, but they weren’t making sense.

…plasma jet…ten-thousand degrees… sterilize the entire structure…

And then—

“Oh, my God! They can’t! Clay’s in there!”

Jenny

BY the time she realized that the object they had dropped on the roof was a bomb—a huge, army-green charge—Jenny had just enough time for a belly laugh. Randall would have appreciated the irony of surviving a dracula outbreak only to be killed by the good guys.