Draculas

by J. A. Konrath

  No.

  A lot more blood.

  He transferred the units of O-positive into a smaller pocket, started loading the main pouch with as many blood bags as it would hold, and when he finally zipped the backpack and hoisted it onto his shoulder, it sagged with the weight of thirty units.

  Adam started running, made it out of the laboratory and halfway through reception, when his Kindle light finally faded to black.

  He froze, waited a moment, thinking his eyes would adjust, that he would be able to see something, but it never happened.

  His first instinct was primal, animal panic, a sense of the walls both closing in and spinning until he'd completely lost his bearing.

  No. You haven't lost your bearing. You can't see, but the doorway is straight ahead. Take it in ten step increments. You can do this. You have to do this.

  He left his Kindle on the floor and moved forward with his arms outstretched until they touched the glass inset of the door. Fumbled for the handle, found it, pulled the door open.

  When you come out, go left, right, left, and then right again, all the way to the end of the last corridor.

  So reverse that.

  He stepped out into the corridor, turned left, wandering down the hall with one hand outstretched, the other trailing along the wall. Seemed to take forever to reach the end of it, but his hand finally touched the intersecting wall.

  One down, three to go.

  He prayed as he walked in the darkness, prayed Stacie would hold on just a little longer, prayed for the safety of his new daughter, prayed for his own--

  He stopped.

  A noise echoed through one of the corridors behind him--a snarling-hissing, soft at first but getting louder, and then the click of footsteps--no, not footsteps, talonsteps--became prevalent.

  These weren't rats, and there were more than one.

  A legion of them.

  The fear paralyzed him, his first instinct to run, that sightless disorientation setting back in, his heart racing as they drew closer.

  Think, think, think.

  He slid out of the backpack.

  Clickclickclickclickclickclick...

  Felt around for the main pouch's zipper in the dark, ripped it open, pulled out one of the cold blood bags.

  Clickclickclickclickclickclick...

  Still couldn't see a thing, but he heard the sound of talons sliding across the linoleum, those demons skidding as they rounded the corner, wondered how they could still see.

  The things that had murdered the nurse up on the third floor had obsessively licked up every drop of blood. This was either going to work, or he was going to die horribly in about ten seconds.

  His fingers struggled to tear the pack, but the plastic was too thick, and then he remembered.

  Dug the scalpel out of his pocket, and the moment he drew the blade across the top of the plastic bag, those demons started screaming.

  Adam shouldered the backpack and came to his feet, backpedaling, holding the blood bag by the top.

  Please God let this work. So my wife can live, so I can be a father.

  He slung the bag into the darkness, heard it hit thirty feet down with a splatter, and as he turned and sprinted through pure darkness, the shrieking of the demons filled the basement of the hospital, their screams resonating inside his head, and he knew that even if he survived this night, never in his life would he forget that sound.

  He crashed so hard into the next wall, he felt his shoulder pop, but he didn't stop to think about the pain, just righted himself and kept running, gasping so hard for breath he could no longer hear what, if anything, pursued him, and then he crashed into another wall, felt certain he'd bruised or fractured his arm, but all he could think was, This is it. The door to the stairwell, to Stacie, is on this corridor, and he jogged now, running his hand along the wall, trying every door he came to.

  Dark.

  Dark.

  Locked.

  Dark.

  Locked.

  Breathing normally again, finally, but he could hear something coming now, the horrific clicking of the talons just around the corner, one corridor back.

  Clickclickclickclickclickclick...

  He picked up speed, and ten feet later, came to the next door, which he pulled.

  It swung open.

  His eyes burned in the flood of light and he rushed into the stairwell and up the steps as the door closed after him.

  He got up two flights, then fell to his knees and ripped open the pack again, pulled out four blood bags, zipped up, went on.

  By the time he'd reached the second floor landing, he heard the door to the basement bust open beneath him, glanced down, saw one of those demons leap up to the first landing in one bound--a three hundred pound man in a janitor's uniform who had no business moving at that speed.

  Adam reached the penultimate landing as a door leading to the ground floor opened and a stream of demons rushed in and up the steps.

  He pounded up the last ten steps and grabbed the first blood bag, cut a rip in the top, and threw it down to the second floor landing.

  It struck the metal flooring and blood exploded everywhere, streaking the walls, the steps, demons screaming, a half dozen diving instantly to the floor and trying to lick up what hadn't seeped through the metal grate, but another half-dozen still coming.

  Adam pulled open the door and ran out into the third floor corridor, slicing into another blood bag as he skidded to a stop at the next junction.

  He spun around just in time to see the stairwell door fly open, watched at least thirty of those demons fighting their way into the corridor.

  Adam slid the blood bag toward them across the floor like an air-hockey disc, blood jetting out across the linoleum, and he was running again, full on sprint, tearing through light and shadow, and as he reached the next junction, he glanced back, still saw a dozen of those monsters chasing him.

  He didn't stop in time to take his next turn under control and slammed into the wall again.

  Saw the double doors to the maternity ward a hundred and fifty feet straight ahead, and this made him run faster than he'd ever run in his life.

  They were closing on him.

  He could hear the talons clicking, and when he dared another glance back, four of those demons had rounded the corner and were moving toward him at a dead run.

  Adam made an incision in the final blood bag and hurled it over his shoulder like a grenade, heard the screams and the screeches when it splattered on the floor.

  The doors were straight ahead, and he collided with them.

  Locked!

  Adam pounded on them.

  "I've got the blood!" he screamed. "Let me in!"

  He grabbed the handles and tugged violently on the doors, but the locks held.

  Fifty feet down, two of the monsters fought over the empty bag, one slurped the blood off the linoleum, and another had taken notice, again, of Adam.

  Adam beat harder against the doors and through the tiny window, saw someone moving toward him past the nurses' station.

  "Hurry!" he screamed.

  Glanced back again.

  The fourth demon had stood up, still torn between Adam and the bloody floor, its head craning back and forth, back and forth, as if--bird in the hand, Adam, bird in the hand, Adam, and...

  ...It started forward, working up to a sprint, Adam thinking he should get another blood bag out, but it didn't matter. There wasn't time.

  On the other side of the door, he heard furniture scooting back across the floor, and the locks sliding out of the ceiling, out of the floor.

  "Carla, please," he begged.

  "Got it!"

  One of the doors swung back.

  Adam stepped inside, his backpack catching on the handle.

  Gave it a fierce yank, and then he was inside.

  "Help!" Carla screamed, and together they rammed their shoulders into the door, but a talon shot through a split second before it closed.

  Adam
could feel the terrifying strength of the creature driving them back as those razor talons gripped the side of the door.

  "Oh, God!" Carla screamed. "More coming."

  Adam reached into his pocket, fingers curling around the scalpel, and he stabbed the blade into the demon's claw, dark blood running out onto the floor.

  The thing shrieked, its claw retracting for a fleeting second, and the door slammed shut.

  "Lock it!" Adam yelled, and he crouched and slid a bolt into its housing in the floor, then reached up and drove the ceiling lock home as a tremendous force crashed into the doors, hinges quivering.

  "Your side locked?" he asked.

  She nodded. "Let's push the table back."

  They braced it against the doors as the demons on the other side took turns running at full speed into the barricade, Adam watching the hinges for any sign of weakening, but they seemed to be holding.

  He looked over at Carla. "How's my wife?"

  "Not good. We need to get her transfusion going right now."

  They turned away from the barricade, Adam glancing over his shoulder as they hurried down the corridor.

  "A little infected girl got inside through the window, so keep a look out," Carla said, the doors rattling behind them, the monsters calling after them in some demented, primal tongue.

  "Where is she?"

  "Hiding in the OR. But don't worry, she isn't as scary as she looks."

  Jenny

  "I'M scared."

  "Me too."

  "I wet my pants again."

  "How about we sing a song?" Jenny asked the children.

  She was also pretty frazzled. Since Lanz left, there hadn't been any other monsters trying to attack them, but a few minutes ago a pack of them had run down the hallway. A large pack, maybe thirty or forty. Jenny knew that on an average day there were over a hundred and fifty patients in the hospital. If you figured maybe eighty people on staff, plus a few dozen visitors, there could be almost three hundred of those things roaming around.

  While Jenny had no desire to draw their attention, some quiet singing was probably less harmful than four young boys wailing uncontrollably.

  "Does everyone know Old MacDonald?" she asked.

  The boys nodded.

  "Okay, we'll start with chicks. And let's use our indoor voices. Are you all ready? Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-Ohhhh. And on his farm he had some chicks..."

  The kids fell in with the E-I-Os. Jenny kept a strained smile on her face and sang through the cluck-clucks, and the moo-moos with the cow, and the oink-oinks with the pig, and just as she began the fourth verse she forgot what the next animal was. A horse? A duck? A dog?

  "...and on that farm he had a dog, E-I-E-I-Ohhhh. With a--"

  "SCCRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

  Jenny whipped around and stared, open-mouthed, at the creature at the door.

  Lanz had returned.

  He was cramming himself into the door's broken window. But rather than getting stuck this time, his whole body slid through, flopping onto the floor of the closet.

  The children screamed in horror. Jenny didn't think, she reacted. In preparation for an attack, she'd filled every syringe on the crash cart, ten in all.

  She was going to stop the fucker's heart.

  She grabbed the first two needles, one in each hand, gripping them in her fists with her thumbs on the plungers. Succinylcholine, a powerful paralytic. Etomidate, an anesthetic. Both went into Lanz's back, and as Jenny injected him she noticed, with a combination of horror and revulsion, that he was missing his left arm. Two clamps dangled from the fleshy stump, their stainless steel handles clack-clacking against the tile floor.

  Lanz screeched again, his remaining hand locking around Jenny's ankle. She left the needles sticking in his back and reached behind her, managing to snag two more just as he yanked Jenny off her feet.

  Fighting the urge to pull away, Jenny sat forward, stabbing him with two more overdoses. Lidocaine and diazapam.

  Lanz opened his horrible mouth, his teeth locking onto Jenny's foot, beginning to chew. She tugged her foot away, pulling free of her shoe, and then scrambled back toward the children.

  She'd injected Lanz with enough drugs to put a track team into a coma. But that didn't seem to matter. Spitting out her gym shoe, Lanz began to slither toward her, eyes wide, mouth wide, his talons outstretched and his massacred face shuddering in what looked like ecstasy.

  Lanz

  BLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOOD!MUST!HAVE!BLOOD!

  The bitch nurse had jabbed him with a few needles, but that didn't matter. He'd just amputated his own arm without sedation. A few measly shots weren't going to stop him. Dr. Kurt Lanz M.D. was invincible.

  Inching forward on his belly, he undulated in Jenny's direction. Her terrified face--a rictus mask of pure fear--was delightful. She kept the delicious children behind her, as if she could somehow stop the primal force that was Kurt Lanz using just her sheer will.

  He reached forward, stretching out his arm, a talon hooking into the cuff of her pants.

  Then things started to get strange.

  First, his lungs stopped working. They seized up, unwilling or unable to take a breath.

  Then his head began to feel full and heavy, and the floor beneath him seemed to shift.

  His vision blurred, going dark along the edges.

  The drugs! It's the drugs! My body can't metabolize them fast enough!

  Lanz snarled, tugging Jenny toward him by her slacks, sliding her across the floor until she straddled his face--an obscene imitation of a sex act.

  Blood! Blood will revive me! Blood will get these drugs out of my system!

  Lanz stretched open his jaws, ready to bite Jenny's pelvis in half.

  Then something punched into Lanz's back. Something sharp and cold. He felt it stick up under his scapula, straight into his left ventricle. The pain made him gasp.

  "Potassium chloride," Jenny said.

  Potassium chloride?

  KCl was used to treat hypokalemia and digitalis poisoning. But in large doses it was the primary drug used in lethal injections for death row inmates.

  Potassium chloride stopped the heart!

  Lanz moaned, the drug working instantly. He curled up, twitching and spasming, the pain stormtrooping through his entire body in agonizing, dizzying, pounding waves. He vomited, but it wasn't the contents of his stomach. It was his stomach, hanging inside-out from a slimy loop of esophagus, spilling out the precious blood he'd been digesting.

  Even with everything going on, the smell of blood activated his biting reflex, and he chomped down on his own regurgitated organs, screaming as he chewed.

  "You always were an asshole, Lanz," he heard Jenny say.

  As his eyes rolled up into his head and his brain kicked out its last few beta waves, Dr. Kurt Lanz MD thought, Smart, smart girl. I probably shouldn't...have fired her...

  Adam

  "DID you stop the bleeding?" he asked.

  "The Pitocin stopped it, but she's lost about fifteen hundred milliliters and her vitals are way down."

  They entered Stacie's room, and something inside of Adam broke apart seeing her still lying unconscious and bloodless in the bed.

  "Where's my daughter?"

  "Resting peacefully in the nursery. The blood?"

  He took his pack off and unzipped the pouch, handed Herrick the first unit of O-positive.

  She already had the intravenous line lodged into Dee's arm, and she hung the bag on the metal stand's hook and plugged the IV line into the plastic, Adam watching the line of darkness push down the tube toward his wife's veins.

  He touched the back of his hand to her cheek--clammy and cool.

  "Is she going to make it?"

  Herrick didn't answer.

  "Nurse?"

  Adam glanced over his shoulder.

  Herrick stood with her hand cupped to her mouth, spitting blood and...were those teeth?...into the palm of her hand.

  "Wha
t's wrong?" he asked.

  She looked up at him, confusion brimming in her eyes. Tried to speak, but more teeth were loosening, and she plucked one of her back molars out--root and all.