Draculas

by J. A. Konrath

  The little girl suddenly stopped ten feet away and went quiet.

  She looked down at her chest where the scissors were embedded, and then up at Carla, and she made a sound like a mewling cat or a depressed banshee.

  There was an extension cord in the bottom drawer of the delivery cart, and Carla pulled it out, her hands shaking as they unwound the twist tie.

  The little monster-girl sat in the middle of the floor. At first, she'd been trying to pull the blades out of her chest, but her own blood seemed to be distracting her now.

  Carla approached slowly.

  "I'm Carla," she said. "What's your name?"

  The monster screeched something unintelligible.

  "Well, I'm a nurse, and you look like maybe you're not feeling so well."

  She was five feet away now, and getting her first look at this perversion of a child, wondering what kind of a virus could cause this. Something worse than Ebola.

  Carla had grown up on a ranch ten miles from here, and by God she'd hogtied a calf or two in her day. No this wasn't anywhere near the same, but similar principles applied. Flip her on her stomach, hard and fast, knee digging into her spine, and get the cord around her wrists. Tie her ankles last.

  Three feet away now. She squatted.

  God, the closer she got, the more awful this thing looked. This wasn't a little girl. Not anymore.

  Carla slowly uncoiled a four-foot length of cord, the monster eyeing her now with the distrust of a psycho cat, and licking the blood seeping out of her chest with a long, spongy-black tongue.

  The Murray's baby wailed now, grinding down Carla's nerves.

  She had to get back to Stacie.

  Now or never.

  She tightened her grip on the extension cord and lunged at the little monster, but it recoiled with terrible speed.

  Carla felt something puncture the skin of her left arm, and by the time she looked up, the little girl had fled back down the corridor and disappeared around the corner that led to the operating room.

  Carla stood up.

  The bite to her left arm wasn't too bad.

  Bleeding a little, sure, but considering those awful teeth, it could've been so much worse.

  She walked a little ways up the corridor and opened the door to the supply closet, grabbed a dose of Pitocin out of the refrigerator, praying it would stop Stacie's bleeding. She should've already had the Pit ready for an IV-push just like she did for every single birth. What a fuck-up. If it didn't stop Stacie's bleeding, and without a doctor on hand to intervene surgically, the poor woman didn't stand a chance.

  Lanz

  DR. Lanz exited the playroom through the broken window, his head clear and his thoughts surprisingly rational. Perhaps that zap to the head had helped alleviate the urge to feed. Or perhaps he'd sucked enough of his own blood to gain a bit of perspective on things.

  Because Lanz had a plan.

  It had come to him, semi-formed, while he'd been chewing his fingers. Halfway into gnawing off his thumb, his fangs worrying the proximal phalanx, he'd noticed his breathing had become obstructed. Not because of the injury he was doing to himself, or because of the physical pain involved with chomping on his own flesh and bone.

  His breaths were labored because his nose was growing back.

  Obviously, his increased metabolism had resulted in preternatural healing powers. It wasn't unheard of in the animal kingdom to regenerate body parts. Insects, starfish, and newts could all regrow limbs. Humans could regenerate their liver, ribs, and even fingertips.

  Which gave Lanz an idea. An extraordinary idea of how to get to Jenny and those delicious little children. Plus, it would result in a bonus energy snack for him. Win-win.

  But first he needed clamps and a bone saw.

  He loped down the deserted hallway, heading to the Surgery wing, barging into Operating Room A. Unlike the rest of the hospital, which was spackled with gore, this area was so clean it shined.

  Lanz would rectify that.

  He raided the stainless steel equipment cabinet of two ring-handled bulldog clamps with curved tips, a scalpel with a no. 20 blade, and a nine-inch Saterlee bone saw. The hospital had cordless electric models, but Lanz couldn't get his finger in the trigger guard with his talons. He'd have to do it the old-fashioned way.

  Lanz tore off the remnants of his lab coat and shirt and examined his left shoulder. He could have bitten his arm off without much difficulty, but he wouldn't be able to get close enough to the glenohumeral joint with his giant teeth. Instead, he awkwardly picked up the scalpel and decided to make his first incision just above the acromion, on the end of the clavical bone. With a deft, precise stroke, he parted the skin and sliced into the deltoid.

  When the wound filled up with blood, Lanz's tongue extended on its own volition and lapped it up.

  Even better than a suction hose, he mused.

  Cutting deeper, his blade sliced through the coracoacromial ligament, then scraped tender cartilage. Continuing to slurp up his own blood, he wielded the bone saw and nestled it into the wound, between the humerus and the glenohumeral ball joint.

  The pain was exquisite, causing him to scream in between bouts of sucking at his own torn flesh. When he finally cut through the ligaments and joint capsule, he finished off with the scalpel, severing the infraspinatus muscle on the underside.

  Blood squirted like a fountain, and his insane hunger tempted him to stretch out his own brachial artery and suck it like a straw. Instead, he used the bulldog clamps to seal off the brachial, as well as the cephalic vein.

  Once the bleeding was under control, he shoved his severed arm into his mouth, chewing and sucking and drinking every last drop of moisture from it. Then he fell onto all fours (actually all threes) and vacuumed up every bit of blood he'd spilled onto the tile.

  Momentarily sated, he examined his handiwork. The wound's edges were ragged, but already beginning to heal. He decided to leave the clamps on for the time being, fearing that taking them off would make him lose his self-control and drink himself to death.

  Lanz had no idea how long it would take his limb to grow back, but he wasn't concerned. He had plenty of time.

  With his arm gone, he'd be able to fit through the tiny window in the storage closet door.

  He figured the blood of one adult and four children would sustain him for quite a while.

  Benny the Clown

  "ISN'T that burning your lips off?" Benny the Clown had asked, in another life.

  Rupert shook his head. His lips were cracked and covered with blisters. Either his fire-spitting trick was indeed burning him, or it was a ghastly case of herpes. "It's not that bad."

  "It looks painful."

  "Sacrifices must be made in the name of show business. Stick with me, Benjamin, and you'll learn a lot."

  Benjamin hesitated. Rupert had gotten him this gig, and though it didn't pay anywhere near what he'd made at Office Depot, he didn't want to risk destroying his career as a children's entertainer before it even started. But still...

  "Y'know, Rupert, most fire eaters don't use rubbing alcohol. They use something like lamp oil. I mean, your lips are...they're...I don't want to tell you how to do your job, but what you're doing could actually...you could get...can I see your tongue?"

  "No, you may not. I know it's unsafe. I'm not stupid. But let me ask you a question, Benjamin: when was the last time you crashed on somebody's couch and found a bottle of highly purified lamp oil in their bathroom?"

  "Never, I guess."

  "Damn right, never. Now how many times have you found a bottle of rubbing alcohol?"

  "I don't think I've ever looked."

  "Well I have, and let me tell you, if that house has a woman, it has a bottle of rubbing alcohol. I spend four or five nights a week crashing on a stranger's couch, and when I leave, they may check their jewelry case, but they aren't saying 'Uh-oh, better check the bathroom cabinet to make sure our rubbing alcohol hasn't been pilfered!' If you want to be successful a
t this business, you have to learn to cut expenses. So you go buy your fancy lamp oil if you want, but I'll stick with a good old fashioned bottle of stolen rubbing alcohol."

  "I'm sorry. Do you really need that much?"

  "Tell me, Benjamin, how many chainsaws do I juggle in my act?"

  "I haven't seen it yet."

  "Three. Three chainsaws. What do you think chainsaws run on?"

  "Gasoline?"

  "Have you seen the price of gas? It's obscene. Flat-out criminal. But do you know what makes a chainsaw run just as well?"

  "Uh, rubbing alcohol?"

  "That's right. You try to siphon gas from your neighbor's car, you're going to jail. You steal rubbing alcohol, nobody ever notices."

  "Is it safe to juggle chainsaws that are fueled by...y'know, something that wasn't really meant to fuel a chainsaw?"

  "Haven't lost a limb yet."

  "Yeah, but that can't be good for the engine, can it?"

  "You need to quit worrying about that kind of stuff," said Rupert. "Trust me. I'll groom you into the funniest clown the world has ever seen."

  Benny the Clown licked the last of the blood from the chainsaw blade.

  He hurt, but he was happy.

  He walked around for a while.

  He couldn't smile any more, but he wanted to smile when he saw what was on the shelf.

  He took down the bottle. Stared at it for a while. Tried to remember.

  He remembered.

  He filled the chainsaw.

  He couldn't wait to use it. It would be funny.

  Adam

  STANDING on the other side of the double doors, he heard Nurse Herrick locking him out.

  Adam started down the corridor, making the sign of the cross as he passed what was left of the nurse in black scrubs who'd been chased down and slaughtered an hour ago.

  Felt like so much longer. Like days had elapsed.

  The only lights in operation were those over the doorways, and this left long, deep shadows in the spaces between.

  Already, he was breathing so fast he had to stop and lean against a wall and close his eyes, slow everything down until the lightheadedness receded.

  He went on, down the long, empty hallway, until he came to the waiting area at the end.

  Only the thought of Stacie and the blood she needed bolstered him enough to peer around the corner.

  Empty.

  Dark.

  Absolutely quiet.

  The rubber soles of his shoes were deafening on the recently-buffed linoleum, so he took them off, abandoned them, and continued on in sockfeet.

  End of the hallway, take a right, go to the end of that hall, take a left, on your next right, four doors down, you'll see a door leading to a stairwell.

  He was coming up on the end of this corridor, and he stopped two feet from it.

  Listening.

  No sound but the lights humming over a doorway just ahead.

  He peeked around. There was movement at the far end, two hundred feet away...something dragging itself across the floor.

  Adam stepped out into the new corridor, jogging in his socks.

  Four doors down, you'll see a door leading to a stairwell.

  He passed the first two doors, perfectly quiet save for the swish of his socks sliding--

  Wait.

  He slid to a stop.

  Footsteps. That's what he heard. A pack of them pounding the floor, and he'd just started moving again when the first...demon, no other word for it...came tearing around the corner at the far end of the corridor, followed by a dozen others, and they all began to scream and hiss when they saw him, Adam running now, door number three up ahead, then flashing past, door number four still twenty feet in the distance, and it occurred to him that he was actually running toward these things as they momentarily disappeared into a long black shadow.

  He torqued his feet to the side like he was making a full stop on skis and skidded just past the door.

  The demons close now, getting louder.

  He pulled open the door and bolted through, slamming it shut behind him.

  Harsh, blue fluorescent light flickered overhead.

  Spun around and looked at the door, praying for a lock, but there was none.

  He raced down the steps, taking them three and four at a time, hands sliding down the rails, his footfalls clanging on the metal steps.

  Go all the way down...

  He made it down four flights of stairs, to the ground level, before the door to the stairwell burst open above him, the noise of numerous taloned claws filling this cinderblocked-column with scraping metal and the echoing clang of those demons taking entire flights in a single jump.

  The stairs ran out and Adam tore through the door leading into the basement floor...

  ...into pure and total darkness. No emergency lights, no exit lights, nothing.

  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. The refrigerators are in back. Grab at least five units of O-positive.

  He could still hear those things rushing down the stairwell, and he hurried along for several steps in the dark, expecting at any moment for the basement doors to bang open.

  And he kept expecting...

  And kept waiting...

  A minute passed.

  Then two.

  He stopped moving.

  He could still hear them, but the sounds of their snarling and hissing were fading away.

  They'd all run into the hospital lobby.

  Thirty seconds later, the silence was back, humming again inside his head.

  His legs trembled, and he slid down against the wall until he was sitting on the cold floor. Unshouldered his backpack, hands shaking so badly he could barely unzip it.

  He pulled out his Kindle. He'd been reading through the Book of Acts on it, and he couldn't help but smile at the bible verse on the screen as he turned on the small light that was clipped to the top of the device.

  Your word is a lamp unto my feet. A light unto my path.

  Oasis

  NONE of this was fair! Her Mommy always gave her everything she wanted when she wanted it how she wanted it and as many times as she wanted it and now all these stupid big people like that nurse--

  Ooooo. Red candy. She'd missed a drop that was now congealing around the blades of the scissors still sticking out of her chest.

  --who wouldn't let her have any red candy, and you weren't supposed to run with scissors much less throw them at people!

  She crouched under the operating table. Strange how there was no light in the room, and yet she could see everything so perfectly in shades of gray and green.

  There was red candy at the other end of this corridor. She was sure of it. The smell was better than cookies baking in the oven.

  It called to her.

  And in that moment, something occurred to the thing that used to be a little girl, something she'd heard her Mommy tell her Daddy a thousand times before Daddy went to live in Texas.

  If you want something, you have to go out and get it. Stop asking people for things. Start taking them. It's called initiative.

  Maybe that's what she needed.

  More initiative.

  Quit asking for red candy like a goooooood little girl.

  Start taking it.

  She had big sharp teeth and razor claws.

  She just needed to be a little bit smarter, a little bit braver, and a whole lot meaner.

  Clay

  THEY made it down to the ground floor without meeting any draculas. Despite the fact that it was Randall's term, Clay's brain had latched onto it for the monsters--a perfect fit. The door carried the usual emergency-exit/alarm/blah-blah-blah warning. Well, son, if this wasn't an emergency, he didn't know what the fuck was.

  Sure enough, bells started ringing as soon as he pushed it open.

  He and Shanna stepped out onto a walk on the north side of the main building. No dracul
a-filled lobby or ER to blast through. Dumb-ass. He should have remembered that the corner stairwell opened directly to the outside.