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

Clay

He snatched up the Taurus and began wiping her off. Poor girl 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—”

He heard a boom from above and then a blast of heat like a solar flare fused Alice to his chest and his last thought was how they’d be together forever.

Shanna

Shanna began to run toward the parking lot. She had to find Dr. Driscoll, had to convince her not to—

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 belched 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. Not that Clay would care. No, wait. Those kids would know. They’d remember the guy with the big cool gun. Clay would love to be remembered that way, but—

She felt a hand on her shoulder and spun—Dr. Cook.

“You’d better go,” he said.

She wiped her tears. “Where? How?”

“Walk into the woods and keep going. Don’t look back, and don’t go home.”

“Why not?”

“They’ll be looking for you.”

“Who are ‘they?’“

He frowned as he stared at the trailer. “I don’t know. And I don’t know how they learned about—” He cut himself off with a quick shake of his head and looked at her. “Whoever they are, they don’t want you running around. You weren’t locked in that room because they thought you might be infected. You’ve seen too much. They want to contain you.”

“But where can I go?”

“Anywhere but here. Please. Get away now.”

“Why are you doing this? Why do you care?”

He hesitated. “You seem like a good person. And… I’d like to know you better. But that can’t happen if you’re locked away. Now go—please.”

She turned and hurried into the woods with no idea where she was going. But as the trees swallowed her, a slow-burning anger replaced her grief. They killed Clay Theel, a good man who’d asked to marry her. Squashed him like a bug. Where did they get off thinking they could get away with that?

She thought of Clay’s father. After they’d worn each other out in bed, she used to listen to Clay talk about his “daddy” and what a nut he was. But a survivalist type might be just what she needed right now. He deserved to know that his son was dead, and how he died. And he’d be the type to believe why he died.

Where had he said Daddy lived?

Up near Silverton?

That was where she’d head.

The Man in the Scrubs

“You are hungry, aren’t you,” he cooed to the infant in his arms. “Well, we’ll fix that.”

His canine teeth extended. They were so much better than the previous, unwieldy set he’d shed in the laundry room less than half an hour ago. This new form was superior. His thoughts were clear, focused. And he looked human. Better than human. Better than his best days on Wall Street. He would blend in much better than those monsters.

Better still, he was young and healthy again.

He bit the tip of his index finger and watched the blood well into a good-size bead, then put touched it to the baby’s mouth. She made a face at first, then began to suck.

“Looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us, little one. We seem to have experienced a setback on the way to a brave new world, but it’s only temporary. We’ll get there eventually, and you’ll play a big part. Oh, yes, little one. I have big plans for you.”

Alternate Epilogue

Joe says:While brainstorming on the phone with Blake, we got to talking about what would happen if the dracula contagion could infect animals. That led to his rat scene with Adam, and this scene. The idea was to make the contagion a cause for not only vampires, but werewolves. Dracula bites dog, dog bites man, man becomes wolfman. But it just didn’t fit, and seemed tacked-on. If we do write Draculas 2 , this might be a sub-plot. Or this might become another book called Werewolves …

Epilogue

Jeremiah Fisk took another swig from the bottle of Early Times and switched off his television with a scowl. For the past hour he’d been watching the media speculate on what exactly had happened at the Blessed Crucifixion Hospital. First they’d called it a rabies outbreak. Then it was a fire. Now they were saying it was a natural gas explosion.

“Gas explosion my ass,” he said.

Fisk lived near the hospital, just a few miles away as the crow flies. He saw the cop cars speed past. Saw the military vehicles.

He also heard the BOOM—strong enough to knock his bowling trophies off his shelves—and saw the fireball shoot up into the sky, bigger’n the Republic Plaza in downtown Denver. Ain’t no way that wasn’t some kinda army bomb.

Fisk padded into the kitchen, and stepped barefoot into something warm and wet.

“Goddammit, Zeke!”

He squinted at the floor, saw a smear of blood. His goddamn German Shepherd. Must have killed something else. Last time it was a rabbit that Zeke had half-eaten then hid behind the sofa. Fisk only found it because it had begun to stink.

If that stupid dog dragged any more varmints into this house, Fisk was gonna chain the mutt outside for a month.

“What did you do this time, Zeke?”

Fisk followed the trail from the linoleum to the carpet—goddamn dog!—and then found Zeke crouched next to the front door, snacking on something.

“What have you got there, dog?”

Fisk bent over to reach for it, and Zeke snarled at him. He gave the dog a smack on the nose, making him drop the animal.

But it wasn’t an animal. Not a whole one, anyway.

It looked kind of like a rat, only its teeth were huge—as big as Zeke’s.

It was the damnedest thing Fisk had ever seen.

“Where’d you get this, boy?” Fisk asked his dog.

Then he noticed the blood dripping from Zeke’s muzzle.

“Shit, Zeke. You hurt? This little son of a bitch take a chunk outta you?”

Fisk pried up his dog’s lip, and was shocked to see most of Zeke’s teeth had fallen out.

Rabies? Was the news story on the TV true?

Naw. Rabies didn’t work that fast. Zeke was fine a few hours ago. And it didn’t make animals lose their teeth.

Didn’t make their teeth grow back, neither.

And Fisk watched, dumbfounded, as Zeke’s new set of teeth grew impossibly long, shearing through the dog’s cheeks, its mouth stretching open, as he leapt up for his owner’s throat.

Desert Places

A bonus excerpt from Blake’s novel, DESERT PLACES, also available in the Kindle Store…

On a lovely May evening, I sat on my deck, watching the sun descend upon Lake Norman. So far, it had been a perfect day. I’d risen at 5:00 A.M. as I always do, put on a pot of French roast, and prepared my usual breakfast of scrambled eggs and a bowl of fresh pineapple. By six o’clock, I was writing, and I didn’t stop until noon. I fried two white crappies I’d caught the night before, and the moment I sat down for lunch, my agent called. Cynthia fields my messages when I’m close to finishing a book, and she had several for me, the only one of real importance being that the movie deal for my latest novel, Blue Murder, had closed. It was good news of course, but two other movies had been made from my books, so I was used to it by now.