Randall--now a bloody mess, was on his side, surrounded by the monsters he'd slaughtered. Adam watched the nurse, Jenny, go to his side.
Then he looked at Clayton, something roiling inside of him. Anger. Fear. Confusion. All wrapped up in a single emotion with a clear objective--kill.
"I want your gun," Adam said.
"What?"
"Your gun. Show me how to shoot it. I'm going back into the hospital to kill as many of these things as possible."
Clayton nodded, his eyes twinkling. "You hold that thought, padre, but I may have a better one."
"What?" Adam said.
"If you're gonna go down fighting, let's make it really count."
"How?"
"You still got all that blood in your backpack?"
"Yes."
"Run and get it, and meet me over by the door."
Jenny
SHE knelt next to her husband's torn, bleeding body as the helicopter flew away. There was little left of him that was recognizable. She gripped his hand, feeling his talons gently wrap around her fingers.
"You did it, Randall," she whispered. The tears were running down her face, and her shoulders shook from sobs. "You saved us."
He blinked, tried to say something. All that came out was a low growl. Jenny cast her eyes down his body, looking at all the tears and gouges. He wasn't bleeding as badly as before. Either he was almost out of blood, or...
Healing. These creatures had accelerated healing powers.
"Bite me," she told her husband.
His eyes got wide.
"Take my blood, Randall. It'll revive you."
She pressed her wrist to his teeth. It would turn her into a dracula as well, but that was okay. They would be together. Maybe Clay was right, and they could find Moorecook and a cure. Jenny closed her eyes, waiting for the pain.
She felt his breath on her arm, but the bite didn't come.
Instead there was only the faintest brush of what remained of her husband's lips.
A kiss.
"Please, Randall. It's the only way."
Randall gripped Jenny's arms--
--and shoved her backward.
Jenny fell onto her ass.
"Damn it, Randall!" she yelled. "Stop being so goddamn stubborn!"
She crawled back to him, figuring if she crammed her hand down his mouth she could force him to bite down. But as she brought her fingers to his mouth, Randall caught her wrist. His eyes were glassy.
"Nuuuhhh," he said, shaking his head.
And then Jenny fell apart. Great, wracking sobs shook her body. She'd spent her entire professional career being strong in the face of death. Compartmentalizing grief. Priding herself on being practical rather than emotional.
But this was more than she could bear.
"You son of a bitch," she sobbed. "You can't die. Please, please, please don't die."
Randall reached up, held her hands. A monster's hands, but they still had the calluses.
Still had the warmth.
They held each other, for the last time.
"Remember the first day we met?" Jenny said, her face a veil of tears. "You came into the ER, your arm all swollen, and you asked me out on a date while you were getting your X-ray. You had a broken arm, but you were still flirting with me. I thought you were so brave."
She touched a part of his face that wasn't all ripped up.
"And you are," she said, smiling through her tears. "You're the bravest, sweetest man I've ever met. I was so wrong to leave you. I wish we could start all over. I wish I could erase all of that time we were apart, and instead fill it up with all the good memories we missed out on. But I never stopped loving you. Never. Being your wife was the best thing I've ever done in my life."
Jenny leaned over and kissed his forehead.
"I love you, Randall Bolton."
She continued to hold his hands long after he'd stopped holding hers.
Clay
CLAY and Adam hurried through the dimly-lit slaughterhouse that had once been the happiest floor in the hospital.
"To make this work," Clay said, "we need a good-size room."
"There's an education center where they have Lamaze classes and lectures on infant care. It's right over here."
He followed Adam to a rectangular room that ran twenty feet by thirty. Multicolored lights flashed against the outside windows. Clay stepped to them and glanced down at the parking lot. He thought he could pick out troop lorries among the vehicles and milling people. Either the army or the National Guard had arrived. Good. They'd keep Shanna safe.
Couldn't think about her now...
He turned back to the room. It had windows onto the hallway as well. Good thing, because the hall had the emergency lights. None of those in here.
In the lowlight he picked out rows of folding chairs--a bonus.
"Perfect. Now I need the blood--lots of it."
"You're in luck," Adam said. He pulled open the backpack, revealing dozens of units. "All types."
Clay had been thinking about killing a couple of draculas for their blood, but this was easier, safer. Despite the gravity of the situation, he couldn't help smiling. "You're a regular Boy Scout, aren't you."
"I made Eagle."
"Well, you sure are prepared."
"I'm not prepared to turn into one of those things." He held up his bloody arm. "You said you could solve that problem and make it count--really count."
Clay fished one of the two 40mm M433 grenades out of his backpack. A couple of days ago someone had emailed him about carting an old wrecked car out into the wilds during the gun show and shooting the shit out of it. He'd figured on administering the coup de grace with these babies. But now he had a better use. He handed it to Adam.
"This is a high explosive grenade. It's got a kill radius of fifteen feet. That means a thirty-foot circle of death. I don't know if that'll apply to the draculas since they're so damn hard to kill, but two will definitely do the job."
Adam was nodding. "I see where you're going. If we can fill this room with them, and set off both rounds, we may be able to turn the tide."
Clay looked at him. "What do you mean, 'we,' kemosabe? This is going to be your show, padre, your Alamo."
"But--"
"You're gonna die, padre. And real soon. You can die here as a man and meet your maker without a mouth full of fangs, or you can die as a dracula when I blow your head off at the first sign of change. Take your pick."
Adam's face had turned a light shade of green. "As a man, of course."
"Good for you. And what better way to go out than taking a bunch of draculas with you? But that's only going to happen if I can modify these rounds."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, they've got a minimum arming range of forty-five feet."
"Sorry?"
"They're designed not to detonate until they're like forty-five to ninety feet from the launcher. I need to hack the arming mechanism if this is going to work."
"You can do that?"
"Pretty sure..."
Clay's gut clenched at the prospect. He'd modified the buckshot rounds, changing the gauge of the shot and such, but the H-E grenades were lots more complicated. He hadn't ventured into one of them yet. No point in letting Adam in on that. He had enough on his plate.
"Okay," he said. "While I do my tinkering, I want you to stack all these chairs in a circle in the center of the room, but leave enough space for you in the middle."
"Why?"
"Coupla reasons. I'll explain later, because we don't have a lot of time and it won't matter if I can't arm the grenades. So circle those chairs, then get every drop of blood you can find and pour it around them like a moat. But you've got to keep the door closed as you do that. When those draculas smell blood they're like sharks in a feeding frenzy. Let's get to work."
Clay left him there and went in search of a quiet cubbyhole to work on his H-E grenades, hoping he could pull this off without turning himself into
Bolognese sauce.
Jenny
SHE was sitting there, exhausted, devastated, clutching her husband's lifeless hand, when she heard the whine of propellers.
Jenny glanced up, thinking the TV helicopter had returned.
But it hadn't.
This was something different.
Adam
HE battled with his conscience as he unpacked the transfusion bags in the lecture room.
Suicide was a sin. The bible said so. The Lord gave each of us life and only He could take it away. Suicide was self-murder, and "no murderer has eternal life abiding in him." The meaning was pretty clear: no eternal life meant banishment for all eternity from the presence of God. Adam didn't believe in the old-school Lake of Fire, but he did believe in hell.
The inner debate continued as he closed the door and began arranging the chairs as Clay had instructed.
But wouldn't it be worse to allow himself to become a foul, murderous abomination? To kill indiscriminately and, far worse, turn others into similar abominations? Wouldn't that earn him hell just as quickly?
With the chairs circled in a double stack, he began creating the "moat," slicing open the transfusion bags with the scalpel, and dumping their contents around the chairs.
You weren't allowed to take your own life, but you were certainly allowed to sacrifice it for your fellow man. And woman too, of course. John 15:13 said it all: Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Was any act more noble?
That was what he wished for himself.
He was feeling funny and didn't know if it was the smell of the blood or the first symptoms of something worse. He was just squeezing the contents from the last bag when Deputy Theel slipped quickly through the door. He didn't look so hot himself.
"Something wrong?"
Clayton shook his head. "Had a couple of bad moments there, but I'm still in one piece." He shook his head. "Man, it stinks in here."
Adam had been thinking that same thing for a while, but now it didn't smell so bad.
Dear Lord, was he starting to change?
"Let's not waste any time," he told the deputy. "What do I do?"
"First thing is you put yourself in the middle of those chairs."
As Adam squeezed between two double-stacked pairs, he said, "Care to tell me about the chairs now?"
"They're gonna make excellent shrapnel."
Adam's knees softened but didn't give way.
The deputy stepped over the blood moat and handed one of the high-explosive grenades through the chairs.
"This one goes on the floor. Do not drop it--it's armed. You're right handed, so--"
"How do you know that?"
"Habit. Always know a guy's handedness. Put it by your right foot."
Adam complied. "Now what?"
The deputy hesitated, started to hand his grenade launcher through the chair maze, then pulled it back. He cradled it, hugged it, actually kissed it, then handed it through.
"You have no idea what it took to find one of these, and what it cost me when I finally did."
Adam took it but didn't know what to do with it. His confusion must have shown.
"See the pistol grip there?" the deputy said. "Hold it by that but keep your finger outside the trigger guard. Do not touch that trigger till you're ready to squeeze it."
Adam did as instructed.
"Good. Now, lower the launcher until the muzzle's pointing at the floor."
He did.
"Position the muzzle directly over the round on the floor."
Again, Adam complied.
"Okay. Now, you're ready."
"Ready for what?"
"I'm going to open the door and run like hell. The draculas are going to catch this stink and come in like sharks. They're going to start lapping up the blood. They're going to start fighting with each other, which will bring more. Eventually they're going to run out of blood and notice you. That's when you pull the trigger. You've got one H-E round in the chamber and the other on the floor. The former will hit the latter and they'll both explode."
"Oh, God!"
"Yeah, God. If He's paying attention at all, this will express mail you straight to Him. You won't feel a thing, padre, but you'll reduce every dracula you've managed to lure in here to meat confetti. That's what I call a blaze of glory."
"Yes. Glory. 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.'"
"Yeah, there's that," the deputy said, shaking his head as he stared at his weapon. "But how about, 'Greater love hath no man than giving up his MM-1 for his friends?'"
Adam felt his muscles beginning to cramp.
"I think you'd better go."
The deputy looked at him, then nodded. "Gotcha."
He pulled a pistol from the small of his back, stepped to the door, and yanked it open.
"Don't let me down, padre."
"That would mean letting myself down, letting God down."
The deputy smiled and nodded again. "You'll do fine, padre. We've all got it coming. You just happen to know when."
And then he ducked out, leaving the door open behind him.
It didn't take long.
The deputy had been uncannily accurate in his description.
They came like a school of sharks. First the scouts. He spotted them through the windows onto the hall, dark shapes weaving through the shadows, popping into view when they passed through a pool of light.
One darted through the door and dropped to the floor with a screech. Two more followed, then a dozen, then a dozen more, pushing, shoving, fighting for a place at the blood buffet. Their struggles spread them further and further around Adam's chair barricade until they completely encircled him.
The sight of the huddled, struggling shapes, limned by the light from the hall and the flashes from the parking lot, chilled his blood. But the sounds were worse. Adam couldn't see the blood moat, but the frenzied lapping, the hissing and screeching made his gorge rise.
And then two of them got into a fight, tearing at each other. Others joined the fray in a cannibalistic orgy that drew even more of their kind to the room.
But worst of all for Adam...the room no longer smelled bad.
In fact, the aroma was almost...mouth watering.
No, wait...that wasn't water in his mouth. It tasted like blood. It tasted good. And something else there. Three, no, four hard lumps. He knew what they were: teeth. He'd seen Nurse Herrick's teeth fall out before she became...
God help me, it's happening!
He spit them out and moved his finger from alongside the trigger guard and curled it around the trigger.
How long to wait? To maximize his impact, he had to delay until the room couldn't hold any more draculas, but not so long into the change that he couldn't--or wouldn't--pull the trigger.
He had to hold out in memory of Stacie, who had sacrificed everything for Daniella. And especially for Daniella. She had to live. She'd grow up without her mother and father. They'd miss her first steps, her first day at school, her wedding day...but at least she'd grow up. His parents or Stacie's parents, or maybe all four together would raise Daniella, and he prayed they'd tell her that her folks loved her so much that they gave their lives for her.
So hold off...hold off as long as--
The creatures decided for him. When the smell of the fresh blood he'd spit out with his teeth reached them, they froze. Then slowly, almost as one, they turned toward him, noticing him for the first time.
"I forgive you," he told them. "You're not responsible. You didn't want to be what you've become, and I am going to relieve you--us--of this hideous affliction."
Oddly, instead of a passage from the bible, the last lines of A Tale of Two Cities came to mind. He didn't remember them exactly, but he did his best: "Listen to me and believe this," he said to them. "It's a far, far better thing I do, than I have ever done; it's a far, far better rest we go to, than we have ever known."
&nbs
p; With a chorus of shrieks and hisses, they leaped at him as one.
Draculas Page 27