DRACULAS (A Novel of Terror)

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