Draculas

by J. A. Konrath

  "What?"

  "Babies get born, every day."

  "So what do I do?"

  "You breathe through it. Just breathe. The baby's coming no matter what you do."

  Adam returned. "The barricade's still in place."

  And then it came, a contraction a step above all others, a new revelation of pain, and Stacie felt the ring of fire her girlfriends had joked about--nothing in the history of language had been so aptly named--and the voices in her ear all swirling, yelling, Push! The head's coming! You're almost there! Just a little longer!

  Three minutes of the most intense pain of her life, and all she could think was, There better be a motherfucking baby at the end of this contraction, and when it finally, mercifully passed, it was like coming up for air after three minutes underwater.

  She didn't hear any crying, just her husband's voice in her ear, distant and echoey, telling her how great she was doing.

  Nurse Herrick was right at her ear.

  "The head is halfway out. Baby's in a good position. You push it out next contraction."

  Next?

  She was nodding, and before she could wrap her head around the concept of "next" she was pushing again, her throat raw from screaming, screaming for what seemed like hours through unending pain, and then her head fell back into the pillow. She was done. She had nothing left. She quit, because the contraction was over and still this thing was inside of--

  A small, precious cry brought her head instantly up off the pillow.

  Nurse Herrick stood at the foot of the bed, holding a tiny creature, suctioning its mouth and nose, and then a baby-cry erupted and this living, squirming creature was on Stacie's chest, blue and covered in vernix, all the anger, fear, and pain replaced by a shot of the most all-encompassing joy she'd ever known, and Stacie was sobbing, and Adam right there with her--strong, beautiful, loving, perfect Adam--and he was crying and patting their baby's back.

  "You're amazing, baby," he said, laughing. "Both of you."

  She could feel the umbilical cord pulsing against her stomach.

  "I'll leave you two for a minute," Herrick said, and as she slipped outside, Stacie looked at Adam, touched his blue-lit face.

  "Should we check?" she said.

  "Check what?"

  "If this is Matthew or Daniella."

  Adam laughed. "I hadn't even thought of it."

  "Introduce us," Stacie said.

  "You sure?"

  "Yeah."

  Stacie turned her head away as Adam lifted their cooing baby and then eased it back onto her chest. He had tears in his eyes when she looked back.

  "Stacie," he said, and she looked down into the little face, eyes struggling to open, staring cross-eyed right into hers. "I'd like to introduce you to your daughter, Daniella."

  "Hey, baby girl," Stacie said, touching the back of her finger to Daniella's little cheek. "Meet your mom and dad. We're going to..."

  "Stace? You all right?"

  She was. She was great. The pain was gone, just a little dizziness. Well, maybe a lot of dizziness, and it was coming on stronger with every passing second.

  "Yeah, I just...little light-headed."

  Adam moved around to the end of the bed, said, "Oh, God," and Stacie watched him rush out of the room, heard him calling Nurse Herrick, something in the tone of his voice that unnerved her. She couldn't take her gaze off Daniela, but she was having a hard time keeping her eyes open now, and the last thing she noticed before she descended into unconsciousness were the bloody footprints--Adam's--leading out into the corridor, dark as crude oil in the lowlight.

  Adam

  HE found Herrick at the nurse's station, making entries in a chart by flashlight.

  "She's bleeding," he said. "A lot."

  Herrick dropped her pen and came around the desk into the corridor, practically ran down the hall.

  "Is this normal?" Adam said.

  They passed through the open door into Stacie's room and Herrick stopped, staring at the bloody sheets, the dark drops falling into a puddle on the floor.

  "Stacie!" she yelled, and Adam followed her to his wife's bedside. "Stacie. Can you hear me?"

  Stacie still held the baby in her arms, but her eyes were closed, and even in the lowlight, Adam thought she looked pale.

  Herrick lifted Stacie's wrist, checked her radial pulse.

  She turned on her flashlight and lifted Stacie's hospital gown.

  "Is she gonna be okay?"

  "Shhh."

  A beat of terrible silence, and then Herrick turned and faced him.

  "She's postpartum hemorrhaging."

  "What does that mean?"

  "She passed the placenta immediately following birth. What I'm guessing is there's still a piece of it in there."

  "Why is that bad?"

  "Because it's stopping her uterus from contracting."

  "How much blood has she lost?"

  "I don't know for sure, but at least half a liter, which is past the point of being okay."

  "Oh God."

  "Listen to me."

  "Can you fix her?"

  "Yes, but I need your help."

  "Anything."

  "I think I can stop the bleeding, but she's lost so much already, she's gonna need a transfusion."

  "Okay."

  "You have to go down to the blood bank."

  Adam felt a tremor of fear ride down his legs.

  "Where's the blood bank?"

  "The basement."

  "Oh fuck, fuck, fuck, are you fucking kidding me?"

  Herrick actually took a step back from the minister, her eyes going wide.

  "Sorry about that," he said.

  "It's quite all right, pastor, we're all under a great deal of stress. You'll need this." Herrick lifted his overnight backpack off a rocking chair. Adam overcame the tremor in his hands, finally managing to unzip it and dump the contents--a change of clothes and some toiletries.

  "How do I get there?"

  Herrick walked out of the room into the corridor, pulling him along.

  "Through those doors, then you go to the end of the hallway and take a right. Go to the end of that hallway and take a left. On your next right, four doors down, you'll see a door leading to the stairwell. Go all the way down, and when you come out, go left, right, left, and then right again, all the way to the end of the last corridor. You'll see the sign for the lab. Refrigerators are in back. Grab at least five units of O-positive."

  His head was swimming.

  "O-positive. Okay."

  "Help me with this."

  They slid the furniture back from the door, and then Adam stared through the window. The paper that Herrick had stapled over the opening had blown away.

  "Coast clear?" she asked.

  "For now."

  He heard the locks sliding up, his heart beginning to pound at the thought of going out there.

  "Adam?"

  He looked at Herrick.

  "I know you don't want to go out there, but your wife will die if she doesn't start receiving new blood in less than thirty minutes."

  Adam's daughter began to cry at the other end of the wing.

  He wondered if he'd seen the last he would ever see of her.

  "I'll take care of your girls, Adam," Herrick said. "Now get going."

  Jenny

  "I'M just going to see if the playroom is empty," Jenny told the clinging, whimpering kids. "I'll be right back."

  Amid cries of protest, the nurse extracted herself from the tangle of children and stood up, holding the glowing green light stick in front of her like a talisman. She crept to the closet door, making sure her footing was solid. Jenny prayed Randall was on his way back for them. The desire to hear his voice again was overwhelming. For his many faults--the gullibility, the temper, the drinking, the inability to think ahead--the old Randall had been a rock. He'd also been one of the most reassuring, nurturing people she'd ever known, and all of her friends were nurses, so that was really saying somethi
ng.

  If the old Randall was back--and she sensed he was--he'd find a way to reach her, even if he had to walk barefoot through hell.

  The intercom was near the front door, which was still barricaded shut. Jenny wanted to tell him to find an intercom, to let her know he was okay, to come for her and the kids, and...

  And?

  To tell him I love him.

  Funny how that worked. During the dark days of their marriage, she had felt less his wife, and more his mother--always scolding him, trying to make him straighten up and fly right. But now that the shit had hit the fan, he was the one person in the world Jenny needed. She closed her eyes, for just a moment, imagining his embrace--like being hugged by a big, friendly bear.

  Jenny hoped she'd be able to feel that embrace at least one more time.

  He's alive. He's got to be alive. Randall has survived countless accidents and mishaps. Countless drunken bar fights. He's indestructible.

  She opened her eyes, focused on the door. Holding her breath, she stopped just an arm's length away from the square window, listening for sounds.

  The silence was so loud it made her wince.

  Jenny let out a slow sigh, then took a cautious step forward and--

  "STOP! A monster is going to pop out and grab you! I know it!"

  Jenny's bladder clenched at the child's outburst. The courage she'd stored up seeped right out of her.

  "It's okay," she said.

  But it really wasn't okay, was it? Monsters--real monsters--were running around the hospital, killing people. Her husband was gone. Jenny had no weapons. And now she was about to peer through a broken window when there was a pretty good chance something would pop out and grab her.

  Maybe staying put was a smart idea.

  She was about to give in to cowardice when she remembered something her husband had said to her on their honeymoon. They'd spent the week at the ridiculous sounding "Camp Kookyfoot Waterpark" because Randall was nuts about waterslides. Jenny had initially resented him for it--it had been his "surprise" wedding gift to her--but it ultimately didn't matter because they spent most of the trip in bed. During one of their rare ventures out of the bedroom to eat at the suitably hokey "Kookypants Famous Bar and Grill," Randall had cut his sirloin into pieces too big to swallow and wound up getting one stuck in his throat. Jenny had calmly gotten behind him and applied the Heimlich, saving his life.

  "Thanks, babe," he'd told her once he could breathe again. "It's nice to have someone I can count on. You know you can count on me too. Always and forever."

  Well, "always and forever" had taken a detour, but Jenny sensed it had come full circle and was true again. And if so, she knew she could count on Randall coming back. Knew it like she knew the sun would rise tomorrow and water was wet.

  Now Randall was in the hospital somewhere, surrounded by monsters, possibly hurt, maybe even dying, and she wanted, needed him to know she felt the same way.

  Eyeing the window, Jenny took another tentative step toward it, squinting into the playroom, looking for signs of movement, listening for any--

  "STOP!"

  "Kids!" Jenny admonished, turning around. "You're going to give me a heart attack! Shush!"

  Shaking off the adrenalin, she moved even closer to the door. Her imagination took over. Jenny could picture a monster crouching behind it, waiting to grab her once she got close enough.

  Funny how just two hours ago she never could have thought such things existed. Now she was worried about one popping out and biting her head off.

  Creeping ever closer to the door, too scared to even breathe, all Jenny could hear was the thrumming sound of her own pulse. The door loomed nearer.

  Two feet away.

  Eighteen inches.

  Twelve inches.

  Six inches.

  Finally, Jenny could peek through the broken window into the playroom. She saw...

  A massacre.

  Severed limbs strewn everywhere. Entrails festooned on the chairs and tables. Half-chewed organs speckled the floor and unidentifiable lumps of fatty tissue and brain matter splattered across the walls. Some of the pieces were human--the people Jenny had left behind when she fled into the storage closet. But the majority belonged to the creatures. They had slaughtered each other.

  For all the gore, there was surprisingly little blood. Jenny could smell raw meat, and the sickly-sour butcher shop odor of liver and sweetbreads, coupled with a deep, smoked pork scent courtesy of her dairy creamer weapon.

  "Are they gone?" one of the children whispered.

  Repulsive as it was, the playroom seemed to be empty.

  "Yes," Jenny said. Her hand found the doorknob, sticky with fluid that had been squeezed from the slaughtered dracula stuck in the window.

  "Don't go!"

  "It's okay," Jenny said. "I'm just going to use the intercom. I'll be right back."

  Touching the knob gingerly with just her fingertips, she swung open the door and immediately wiped her hand off on an unstained part of her uniform. The intercom was on the wall, right next to the barricaded door. Jenny moved carefully out of the closet, undecided on whether or not to leave the door open. On the one hand, she didn't want to put the children in danger. But the door locked automatically, and if she needed to get in there quickly, she didn't want to have to wait for one of the kids to let her in.

  She opted for a compromise--closing it most of the way, but leaving it open a crack.

  Then she focused her attention on the twenty-foot space between her and the intercom.

  Slow and steady? Or run like hell?

  Jenny ran, watching her footing but still feeling fleshy bits squish under the soles of her shoes. She reached the intercom in the space of a few seconds, then had a bad thought.

  The power is out. What if it doesn't work?

  Jenny hoped it would be powered by the generator. Like life-support and operating room lights, the intercom was essential for patient care. Earlier, amid the chaos, someone had used it to call Shanna. But Jenny couldn't remember if it was before or after the outage.

  Only one way to find out...

  She pressed the button and spoke into the speaker, "Randall, I'm still in pediatrics with the children. I need you to...oh my God!"

  Jenny froze, immobilized by fear.

  Dr. Lanz appeared in the hallway.

  She spotted him through the spiderweb cracks of the room-length window, the children's finger painting now frescoed with bits of tissue.

  Lanz hadn't spotted her yet. But he'd heard her. The intercom worked fine, Jenny's voice blaring throughout the hospital, announcing her location.

  Lanz reached the hole he'd broken in the glass, and locked eyes with her. His white lab coat was charred, his nametag a melted blob.

  His face was also a melted blob. The doctor's nose was nothing but a blackened hole, and his hair stuck to his scalp in sticky, burned patches.

  "EEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICHHHHHHHH!"

  Did he just call me a bitch?

  Quick as a cat, he pounced through the window and sprang at Jenny, bounding toward her on all fours, closing the distance between them with astonishing speed.

  Jenny reached for one of the chairs piled up against the exit door and held it in front of her like a lion tamer, keeping Lanz at bay. He swiped at it, hitting hard enough to sting Jenny's palms and make her arms shake. He repeated the move, batting the chair to the other side, but she refused to let go, not letting him get close enough to touch her.

  Then Lanz paused his attack. He sniffed the air, the ragged skin around his nasal cavity vibrating. He turned his head slowly toward the storage room.

  No! Not the children!

  Lanz leapt toward the closet, but Jenny had anticipated the move. She tossed the chair aside and threw herself at him, tackling the doctor around his ankles, causing him to sprawl face-first onto the floor.

  Every cell in Jenny's body screamed at her to let go, to get as far away from the hideous creature as possible. But
Jenny Bolton had seen enough death that day. Horrible, pointless, unexpected death. If she had to kill Dr. Lanz with her own two fists, she would, because she would be damned if she let that monster harm another innocent.