Or not. Just spitballing. But hospitals are filled with drugs, and Jenny is the obvious one to use drugs against them.
Joe
• • •
The Benny/Zoloft thing is clever. Use it. But…
SSRIs take weeks to work, while benzodiazepines (Valium, ativan, xanax) can kick in in 20-30 minutes — quicker if injected. Could have some mellow draculas.
Jenny vs Lanz — how about Jenny gets a long intracardiac needle, attaches it to a syringe filled with potassium chloride (KCl) and rams it into Lanz’s heart as he grapples with her? It will cause cardiac arrest in a human. Maybe it just slows him down enough for her to run the upper part of an IV pole through each of his eyes into his brain.
Paul
• • •
JEFF 4.0 is done. I wasn’t specific about Benny’s medication, but my section acknowledges that drugged-up draculas could be more docile.
On other note, only Randall should call them “draculas,” unless Jenny or somebody thinks “That’s what Randall called them” first.
Jeff
• • •
Jenny calls them that because she heard Randall say it. I’ll have her use the intercom to talk to Randall, then she’ll use the word so everyone else in the hospital hears it.
Joe
• • •
Whatever Jenny says to Randall I’ll incorporate into JEFF 5.0.
Jeff
• • •
When does the power go out in the timeline?
I have it going out at the end of my Shanna/Chapel scene but I can move it later.
Lanz realizes there’s a heavily armed Rambo type coming through the hospital and needs to turn things to his advantage. Ah-ha! Power failure.
I can have Lanz disable the On/Off switch of the backup generator, then destroy the main power breakers. This will leave only battery-powered emergency hall lights until Randall hotwires the backup generator to start up.
Should we do this before Lanz finds Jenny?
Paul
• • •
Lanz already confronted Jenny in the last scene I wrote, and Jenny set him on fire, which he extinguished before he ran off.
Paul, you can then have him run downstairs, past gun-toting Clay, and figure out the best way to get both Clay and Jenny is in darkness, because draculas have a tapetum lucidum and can see well in low light.
Joe
• • •
I read that scene.
Okay. I’ll tackle that next.
Paul
* * *
September 4, 2010
I was just finally catching up with everyone’s sections, and it looks great. I think we’re at about 38,000 words right now. Jeff and Paul, I noticed that some of the files in your folders were already in the Draculas 1.6 manuscript, so Paul I moved “Paul 1.3” them into your “Old” folder, and Jeff, I moved “Benny 1.0, Jeff 1.0, and Jeff 1.1” into your old folder. It’ll make it easier to add things to the manuscript if only new sections are there.
Have a great weekend, all!
Blake
* * *
September 5, 2010
Paul and I got a lot of work done in New Orleans.
Just kidding. All we did was drink.
Joe
• • •
Shocker
Blake
* * *
September 6, 2010
Anyone adverse to me putting together what we’ve got so far and doing a light edit (fixing errors, seeding consistencies, etc.)?
Joe
• • •
Okay, I put together just about everything we’ve done so far. I also added a scene with Lanz turning off the circuit breaker, and changed Shanna’s cell phone message to Clay into a payphone message, and kept Randall with Jenny in pediatrics instead of running after Mortimer.
It’s in DRACULAS_2.0. It reads really well. Feel free to check it out. But let’s avoid going back and editing this for the moment—if we all go in and start changing things we might begin to overlap each other. There will be time to tweak our sections, and the overall manuscript, when we’re finished. We’ll all have a shot at fixing stuff.
Also, don’t tweak your old scenes, as those have already been incorporated in the manuscript and you’d have to make the same changes twice.
What’s happening next:
Jenny’s stuck in pediatrics. Lanz is coming for her.
Blake and I want Benny to take Randall’s chainsaw, but we’ll leave that up to Jeff.
Randall needs to keep the girl safe, and get down to the basement and flip on the circuit breaker so he can use the intercom like Clay did, to get a message to Jenny.
Stacie and Adam have to deal with birth, and Oasis. Blake, I dunno where your Grammie Ann scene fits in (nice scene!) Stick it into 2.0 where it goes.
Clay and Shanna are heading to the parking lot, but they’ll find Mortimer there, tearing cars and tires and radios to shreds. Should have a Mort POV scene here, doing it. He’s also stronger than the other draculas, so Clay may take it as a personal challenge to try to bring him down.
Also, Shanna is going to either tell Clay, or use internal monologue, to recap how this outbreak might have happened, going back in history to recall Baron Von Wolkenstein. This will give the reader a bit more of where the vampires came from, how they spread and helped to form the vampire legend that we all know. Blake and I have a lot of this figured out, so if you can set it up, Paul, we can just plug it in.
The police will be coming soon. We all have our villains to deal with (Clay and Shanna vs. Mort and a lot of draculas, Randall vs. Benny, Jenny vs. Lanz, Stacie and Adam vs. Oasis.)
I think we can take this up to the army surrounding the hospital. Then we can begin the final act.
Joe
* * *
September 8, 2010
I put up some new Clay and cut off at a spot where Joe and Blake can put in the myth/lore they’ve worked up. After that, I’ll have Clay give Shanna the ring (he thinks it’s possible he won’t see her again). They’ll make it to the parking lot to find the dead staties and the slashed tires.
Paul
• • •
I added Draculas 2.2, which includes a very short moment on page 113 where Randall loses his chainsaw.
Also Benny 2.0, in which the clown picks up the aforementioned chainsaw.
Jeff
* * *
September 9, 2010
BLOOD BLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOOD…STOP! He released the girl he’d been slurping, even though she still had some blood left. Moorecook wanted them to turn. He wanted as many of his kind as possible.
This implies if victims die they don’t turn. But what about the morgue scene?
Paul
• • •
If they die, they come back, but they can die through exsanguination. A dracula needs a certain amount of blood left to transform. Which is why draining their blood kills draculas.
I’ll try to make that clearer in the text.
Joe
• • •
Okay, I’m going to have Clay and Shanna in the parking lot with the ruined tires and the dead state cops. They can’t escape but they’d be crazy to go back in…
…unless they see Jenny waving from an upper floor window. Clay will go back in to get her, Shanna will come along (because what if these dead staties turn into monsters?) and that’s when Clay and Randall meet.
As I said before, Clay will be wounded and will find a dramatic way to take himself out of the picture and take a whole buncha draculas with him.
Think it would be possible to have a conference call and do a little spitballing? I’m not comfortable with the complete isolation of the hospital. Every patient room has a land-line phone. Calls would be going out left and right. When the sheriff calls in the staties, the police beat reporters hear about it. Local TV stations would be sending camera crews. National cable TV news would be picking it up and sending helicopters for aerial views. Y
ou’ve seen it: I guy waving a gun and the whole world’s on it. People can suspend their disbelief only so far. If we’re going to keep them onboard, we need cell towers down, we need land-line junctions exploding, WE NEED A CONSPIRACY!
The series potential here is obvious and I think we need yet another layer.
Paul
• • •
Here’s what Blake and I have been thinking:
Jenny is trapped in a storage closet. Randall is going to fight his way back to her. I’d like him to confront Clay, and for them to have a physical tussle. (I think they should stop fighting when Randall quotes a line from the movie ALIENS, as I mentioned in a previous email.) Clay could agree to help Randall get Jenny, but first he needs to get Shanna safe.
Randall deals with Benny and his chainsaw. Jenny deals with Lanz. Adam and Stacie deal with Oasis.
Clay and Shanna get to the parking lot. Clay leaves Shanna with the media—they do arrive because they were called—but Clay is honor bound to go back in to help Randall. But first, he proposes to her.
Clay, on his way to Jenny and Randall, encounters Adam and Stacie. He helps to kill Oasis, and they join Randall to save Jenny.
They do save Jenny, but Randall gets bitten. Jenny refuses to let Clay kill him, and Clay agrees, but will be ready when Randall turns. They decide the way to survive is to get onto the roof and flag down the TV helicopter circling the hospital.
They’re chased to the roof. Clay is down to his last few rounds. Randall becomes a dracula. But his love for Jenny is so strong he doesn’t attack her—he attacks all the draculas coming after them. He wipes out a bunch in a killing frenzy, but is mortally wounded.
Clay can either die heroically, or else get off the roof and wind up with Shanna for a happy ending.
Adam dies heroically, but gets his wife and child into the TV helicopter, which lands on the helipad on the roof.
The army arrives. Jenny stays with a dying Randall on the roof. Just as they’re surrounded by draculas, the army blows up the hospital.
A young, bloody man survives. He’s Mortimer, who changed back into something resembling a human—the real Count Dracula who is now going to turn the world. This is a reverse Night of the Living Dead ending. Rather than the rescuers killing the hero, the rescuers save the villain.
I want the media and the army to come. There’s no need to keep them at bay. The secluded area, and the local cops dead, mean it will take some time for the army to show up.
We’ve only got about 3000 words each to write with our characters, then the slam bang ending where we can divvy up the final scenes.
How does that sound?
Joe
• • •
I’m okay with this, and I do like the finale happening on the hospital roof…Paul does this address your concerns with the isolation, which I also had from the beginning? I’m up for a conference call if we need to flesh this out some more.
Blake
• • •
Here’s what Blake and I have been thinking:
Jenny is trapped in a storage closet. Randall is going to fight his way back to her. I’d like him to confront Clay, and for them to have a physical tussle. (I think they should stop fighting when Randall quotes a line from the movie ALIENS, as I mentioned in a previous email.) Clay could agree to help Randall get Jenny, but first he needs to get Shanna safe.
Okay, I’ll have to rewrite the stairwell scene. I can have C & S forced upstairs by the draculas and bump into Randall and the kid. (Speaking of the kid, it would be cool to have her transform into a dracula while she’s on Randall’s back. He notices these little teeth dropping on his shoulder…)
Randall deals with Benny and his chainsaw. Jenny deals with Lanz. Adam and Stacie deal with Oasis.
Clay and Shanna get to the parking lot. Clay leaves Shanna with the media—they do arrive because they were called—but Clay is honor bound to go back in to help Randall. But first, he proposes to her.
Okay. I’ll have him pull out his MM-1 semi-auto grenade launcher (a la Dogs of War) loaded with 40mm buckshot rounds instead of grenades, and go back in.
Clay, on his way to Jenny and Randall, encounters Adam and Stacie. He helps to kill Oasis, and they join Randall to save Jenny.
Okay.
They do save Jenny, but Randall gets bitten. Jenny refuses to let Clay kill him, and Clay agrees, but will be ready when Randall turns. They decide the way to survive is to get onto the roof and flag down the TV helicopter circling the hospital.
They’re chased to the roof. (Can we put this off?)
Clay is down to his last few rounds. Randall becomes a dracula. But his love for Jenny is so strong he doesn’t attack her—he attacks all the draculas coming after them. He wipes out a bunch in a killing frenzy, but is mortally wounded. (Have this happen in the hospital?)
Clay can either die heroically, or else get off the roof and wind up with Shanna
for a happy ending.
We don’t need no stinking happy ending. A wounded Clay will die creating an explosive diversion for Jenny’s escape to the roof.
Adam dies heroically, but gets his wife and child into the TV helicopter, which lands on the helipad on the roof.
The army arrives. Jenny stays with a dying Randall on the roof. Just as they’re surrounded by draculas, the army blows up the hospital.
A young, bloody man survives. He’s Mortimer, who changed back into something resembling a human—the real Count Dracula who is now going to turn the world. This is a reverse Night of the Living Dead ending. Rather than the rescuers killing the hero, the rescuers save the villain.
I want the media and the army to come. There’s no need to keep them at bay. The secluded area, and the local cops dead, mean it will take some time for the army to show up.
Paul
• • •
The media, etc. showing up is what I’d expect, so that alleviates my believability concerns.
Looks like Shanna is the only survivor. She can lead the charge into the next book. I’m already visualizing her visiting Clay’s father, him teaching her to shoot…
Paul
• • •
Nice! I love it…just a thought, What if both Stacie and Adam die, but a young man offers to save their baby at the end, and they let him. We of course, are interested and instantly sympathetic with this guy, and only in the last sentence/paragraph of the book, do we realize the young man is Mort, walking out of the hospital with a baby in his arms, a protégé who will help him conquer the world.
Blake
• • •
If you need to kill Clay, I understand. But he’s probably the most fun character in the book. I wouldn’t be adverse to having him live. Or maybe doing the classic: He’s probably dead, Shanna cries, then she sees him tangled up in the fire escape when he jumped off the roof.
Jeff and I have already discussed Jenny and Randall dying. Stacie should survive, with her baby, but Blake and I discussed killing Adam.
I love the idea of the kid becoming a dracula on Randall’s back.
Joe
• • •
I’m not adverse to Clay living, but I had such a neat death idea: He’s got 2 high explosive 40mm grenades. They’re designed not to explode within 90 feet of the launcher. He can modify that. I see him wounded, bleeding, luring a whole bunch of draculas into some sort of enclosed area and detonating both, turning himself and them into meat confetti.
Paul
• • •
First of all, “Meat Confetti” needs to be the name of a thrash metal band.
If Adam is mortally wounded, Clay could teach Adam how to set them off. Being a man of God, Adam would rather die than become an unholy abomination like Randall had become. And let’s say his wife also died. So Clay could give him a lesson, then do a dramatic escape with the baby.
Then when Clay makes it to safety, he (inadvertently) hands the baby off to Mortimer, who is now a young man (and flirting with Shanna, as he�
�d wanted to in the beginning.)
DRACULAS (A Novel of Terror) Page 49