He didn't understand fear of guns. Guns eased fear. They were equalizers.
"Are you mad at me?" she said, close behind him.
Lucky for them, all the stairwells had battery-powered emergency lights. Still, he didn't want any shooting in here, especially with a shotgun. A miss would send buckshot ricocheting every which way.
"No, honey. I understand."
And he did, sort of. First time she ever pulled a trigger she killed someone she'd known. Even though that person had no longer been the person she'd known, it still had to give one pause.
"I wish I were like you."
"Now that's a surprise."
"I mean with guns. You seem so at ease with them."
"Shanna, I've been preparing all my life for this moment."
"What do you mean?"
"My daddy. He was what people called a survivalist."
"You mean with the bomb shelter and the freeze-dried food and...?"
"The guns? Yep. The whole nine yards. He bought the whole package. And he made all of us buy into it too." He remembered the emergency drills, the nights spent underground in the shelter, the constant target practice. "At least until we were old enough to go out on our own."
"What was he afraid of? Aliens? Minority uprisings? Islamic fanatics? Economic holocaust?"
"None of the above. Daddy was old school. For him it was commies."
"Commies? But--"
"I know, I know. But he believed they tore down the Berlin Wall to fool us. They never let go of their quest for world domination. Especially the Chinese commies--they were the ones who scared the crap out of my daddy. Because there's so many of them. He kept saying, 'They're coming, Clay. A human tsunami. They'll overrun us because we won't be able to shoot fast enough.' Can't tell you how many times I heard that."
Shanna gave a soft laugh. "He wasn't so off about the Chinese, just about how they'd take over."
"What do you mean?"
"They're practically buying the country."
"Yeah, well. Daddy prepared us for invasion. We grew up to think he was crazy, but he wasn't. It's happening right now. Except it ain't commies, it's these monsters."
They reached the ground-floor landing and peeked through the slit window in the steel fire door. Empty--at least as far as he could see. But instead of opening the door, Clay turned to Shanna. He dug in his pocket, pulled his truck keys from where they snuggled up against the ring box, and handed them to her.
"All right. Here's the plan: We're gonna cut our way through the ER to the parking lot. When we reach my Suburban, you're gonna jump in and hightail it out of here. I'm gonna stay."
"But--"
"That's it. No discussion. I've got to hang around until the staties arrive, and that shouldn't be long. When they get here, we'll team up and clean up this mess. But a couple of things first. You called Moorecook 'patient zero,' said he started all this. From what you said, it sounds like he cut himself on purpose to get this going. Any idea why?"
Shanna shrugged. "He was terminal with cancer. Maybe he was trying to prolong his life."
"By turning into a monster?"
"You're assuming he knew what would happen. I can't believe he'd want to become the thing I saw in the lobby."
"Can you tell me anything else? I'm going to have to fill in the staties on what I know, and the more I know, the better. Even if you don't think it's important, tell me."
Shanna pursed her lips, and her nose crinkled in that cute way that indicated she was trying to make a decision.
"It's kind of complicated, Clay."
"I can handle complicated."
"Okay. You ever heard of a secret society called the Order of the Dragon?"
"That'd be a no."
"It was formed in the early Fifteenth Century, ostensibly to fight the Turks and Ottoman Empire."
He winked. "You mean the people responsible for the furniture you rest your feet--"
"Hang with me, Clay. Members of the order were called Draconists. Around this same time, the black death was raging throughout Eurasia. Today, historians and scholars believe it was the bubonic and pneumonic plague that caused the black death, but there has been no absolute evidence to support this hypothesis, only educated guesses. My contention, based on all the research I've done for Mort, is that the black death caused dracula-like symptoms in some of its hosts, especially in people with certain genetic precursors. Certain royal bloodlines."
"You lost me, girl."
"I'm saying the black death, in some cases, caused a mutation, resulting in vampirism."
"Mutation. Got it. Like in Blade II with Wesley Snipes. Remember the scene with Ron Perlman when he--"
"Do you want to talk about movies, or about what I think is going on?"
Clay would have preferred movies, but he needed to hear what she had to say. "Okay, tell me what's going on."
"The son of Oswald von Wolkenstein, a member of the Order of the Dragon, was afflicted with horrific dental deformities. While the Draconists were killing vampires, Oswald hid his son, kept him chained up in a cellar. But the son escaped, went on a killing spree, ending up in Transylvania and causing a dracula epidemic. Ever heard of Vlad the Third of Wallachia?"
Clay knew that from the Coppola flick. "That guy who went around impaling folks?"
"Exactly. Legend has it that Vlad, because of his brutality, was the original Dracula, but my contention--"
"Just love how you contend everything. It's cute."
"Clay!"
"Sorry."
"So my um, my..."
"Go on, you know you want to say it."
"I hate you...contention is that he didn't impale thirty thousand of his innocent subjects and countrymen. He impaled thirty thousand of these monsters in an epidemic started by Oswald's son! Vlad saved his country! And what better way to stop these monsters than to impale them on twenty-foot stakes, immobilized so they starved to death?"
An explosive round to the brain pan was a lot better, but they didn't have that hundreds of years ago.
"What about Oswald's son?"
"Vlad caught him finally, beheaded him, and buried his head in a field in the Romanian countryside."
Clay smirked, finally getting it.
"You going to tell me that Oswald's son's skull is the same skull your buddy Mort paid several million for so he could bite himself? Didn't he need those genetic precursor thingies?"
Shanna's eyes got wide. "Shit! How'd I miss that? Mortimer's robes! They all have an Ouroboros insignia on them! A dragon eating its own tail! That's the symbol of the Draconists!"
"So old Mort is a Wolkenstein."
"He's got the bloodline, and the genetic precursor. Do you know what that means?"
"That we need to kill the son of a bitch."
"It means Mortimer's not only predisposed to getting this disease, but perhaps he also carries the antibodies within him."
"Huh?"
"He carries the virus that makes the vaccine."
"You mean like a shot?"
"Yes, Clay. Like a shot."
Jenny
THE children had begun to scream when the lights went out.
Their screams lured the draculas to the storage room door. They thumped and scratched and pounded on it, jerking and rattling the knob, pressing up against the square window in the door and blocking out the faint emergency lights from the playroom, which plunged the closet into complete darkness.
Working from memory, Jenny flailed out her hands until she found the shelf on the wall, then followed it until she came to the children's art supplies: boxes of crayons, construction paper, bottles of finger paint, balloons...
Dammit, where are they?
Her probing fingers found their way into a cardboard box, locking onto a cylindrical, pen-shaped object. She shook it vigorously and bent it in half with a faint CRACK. Immediately, it gave off a faint, green light. Glow sticks. Essential for any underage patient afraid of the dark.
Apparently enc
ouraged by the light, the monsters outside the door became even more frantic in their zeal to get in. The glass window shattered, and a taloned arm forced itself through, slashing at the air inches from Jenny's face.
Jenny lurched away, tripping over someone's legs, falling onto her ass. The children continued to scream. The dracula thrashed and swiped its claws. It even managed to push its head through, scraping its face against the jagged, broken glass, its neck kinked at an odd angle.
Jenny tore herself away from the horror, reaching for the box of glow sticks. To quiet the screaming of the children, she began bending, shaking, and passing them out as fast as she could. There were different colors, red and purple and yellow and orange, all giving off a diffuse, pastel light that reminded Jenny of another of Randall's favorite VHS tapes--the movie Tron.
But rather than pacify the kids, the increased illumination allowed everyone to focus on the spastic dracula stuck in the window.
"Shh. Quiet. Everyone quiet down. It's okay. The worst is over."
She was wrong. The creature went from hissing to screeching, its head and arm flopping around as if in the throes of a grand mal seizure. Its eyes rolled up, showing the whites. Froth, then blood, sprayed from the torn vestiges of its lips. It began to shake its head, faster and faster, beating it against the sides of the windows, shredding off its own ears in the process.
Then the monster's eyes bulged, protruding like hardboiled eggs. With an audible POP, they escaped their sockets, dangling by their optic nerves.
No...not the nerves. The eyeballs were pierced on the ends of two talons.
Another dracula had dug into the back of this one's skull.
A millisecond later the dead creature was yanked free of the door. Jenny and the children listened to the frenzied feeding. Growls. Snapping jaws. Gurgling blood. Wet smacking.
It was like listening to a BBQ in hell.
Jenny sat back in the corner of the room, four children desperately clinging to her. Their hysterical screaming eventually subsided to steady sobs. Jenny kept her arms around them, patting arms, tousling hair, trying to figure out what to do next while nervously waiting for something else horrible to happen.
But nothing did. Eventually the feasting sounds died down, then vanished all together.
Jenny began to count her heartbeats. At any moment, she expected another dracula to try and force itself in through the window.
By the time she reached two hundred, all sounds had ceased.
There was only silence.
Dreadful, expectant silence.
"Are they gone?" one of the kids asked.
"I don't know," Jenny answered. "Is anyone hurt? Did anyone get bit?"
"I wet my pants."
"It's all right," Jenny told the little boy. "We can take care of that later. You've all been very brave so far. I need you to keep being brave."
Jenny tried to stand, but eight little hands clung to her.
"I have to check to see if they're still there."
"No! Don't go!"
"It's okay. I promise I'll be fine. I need to get to the intercom and call my husband."
"Is he the big man with the chainsaw?"
"Yes."
"Is he going to save us?"
Jenny pictured Randall.
Big, clumsy, stupid Randall.
Loyal, loving, brave Randall.
"Yes," she said, surprising herself with the certainty of her conviction. "He is."
Lanz
KURT Lanz, MD, inhaled through the scorched, gaping hole in his face where his nose used to be. Part of him--the rational, thinking part--knew that when he'd yanked off his burned nose to eat, he'd managed to deviate his septum. But that didn't matter now.
All that mattered was blood.
After killing the lights, he'd scampered to the geriatric ward, giddy with the thought of defenseless old people. But it had been picked clean.
Next, he'd gone to the Birthplace, but found the entrance locked. He couldn't fit through the small window hole in the door, which infuriated him, because he could smell humans in there.
Oncology was next and yielded similar results. The beds were empty, the ward in disarray. Lanz tried to squeeze a few drops of blood from a severed leg he'd found on the floor, but it had been sucked dry. He made do chewing on a blood-soaked bed sheet, swallowing the torn strips.
The many others roaming the halls had sensed their blood supply gone and begun to turn on each other. Lanz even joined in, pouncing on a smaller creature--a teenager--that was being eviscerated by a group of larger adults. Lanz got away with a kidney and half the liver.
Neither soothed the growing ache in his belly.
He craved blood.
He wanted it more than he'd ever wanted anything in his life.
Half-insane with bloodlust, he remembered that bitch up in pediatrics. Jenny. Assuming she'd been resourceful enough to fight off the horde, perhaps she was still alive. Maybe she'd even managed to protect some of the children.
The innocent, defenseless, delicious little children.
Only one way to find out...
Lanz slunk into the stairwell, taking the steps three at a time, his mouth salivating at the thought of the nurse's sweet, warm blood.
Stacie
AT first, she thought she'd lost consciousness, but the pain was still there, like her back was ripping itself apart, and then the lights returned, only in a much diminished state--nothing but a cold, blue glow emitting from the battery-backup above the door to her room.
Two figures emerged out of the shadowy corridor--Adam and Nurse Herrick hurrying back.
"What happened to the lights?" Stacie asked through gritted teeth.
"I don't know," the nurse said.
"Epidural," Stacie moaned. "I didn't want it, wasn't part of the plan, but now--"
"I'm sorry, sweetie." Nurse Herrick patted her hand.
"What do you mean 'sorry'? I can't keep..." Her voice trailed into another groan as Adam came around and put his hand on her shoulder. "Don't touch me," she seethed through the pain.
"Baby, this too shall--"
"Oh my God, if you quote another fucking bible verse, I'm gonna rip your eyes out of your head. Nurse, get me the epidural."
"I'm not qualified to administer it."
Desperate now, she pleaded, "How hard can it be?"
"It's a spinal block. I could accidentally paralyze you for life. You could get an infection and die. It takes a high level of skill that I don't have."
Stacie glared at Adam, felt a rush of anger flooding through her.
"You can do this," he said. "I know you can. You're so beautiful."
She shook her head. "You did this to me. You did, and I will never forgive you as long as I--"
"Stacie--"
"Stop. Talking."
The nurse perused one of the cabinets, finally emerging with a flashlight. She came around to the foot of the bed and lifted Stacie's gown.
"I need to push," Stacie begged. She'd never wanted anything so badly.
"Not yet."
"Why?" She could feel the nurse's hands probing under her gown.
"You're almost fully dilated," Herrick said. "I can't believe how fast you're progressing. Wait until the next contraction, and when it comes, you grab your husband's hand and push like you've never pushed before. But not on this one."
She thought about crushing the bones in Adam's fingers and this made her briefly happy.
"Don't push," Herrick warned.
"I'm not! Adam?"
He was suddenly right there.
"What, baby?"
"I'm never doing this again."
"I know."
And suddenly she could breathe again, her chest heaving, sweat running down into her eyes. A break between the bouts of torture.
She could hear more gunshots blasting in the hospital.
"Are the doors out there holding?" she asked.
"Don't think about it," Adam said.
"Pl
ease check."
Her husband hustled out of the room as Nurse Herrick fed her another ice chip. "This is the threshold, Stacie," she said. "I've seen a lot of women at this point, where you think you can't go on, and you know what?"
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