DRACULAS (A Novel of Terror)

they turned and ran through the ER, pushing through a pair of double doors and disappearing into the bowels of the hospital.

Mortimer pursued, bounding after them on all fours, his body stretching out like a cheetah.

Then the ER stood silent except for the groans of the dying and the injured.

Jenny turned to ask Randall something, but he was already moving away from her, limping toward the automatic doors.

She grabbed his arm. “No, Randall,” she pleaded. “Please. Stay with me.”

“I’m just going out to my truck,” he said.

“Why?”

“I need my chainsaw.”

He pulled his arm free, starting toward the doors again.

“For what?” Jenny called after him.

“I’m gonna cut that son of a bitch in half.”

Lanz

KURT Lanz, MD, rose from where he’d crouched behind the nurse’s station.

What…what had just happened?

He surveyed the carnage of the ER—his ER—trying to comprehend what he’d witnessed, but his mind kept balking. All he saw was the blood. God, you so quickly got used to blood in an ER, but this…the sheer quantity. It had sprayed everywhere, Pollacking the walls and soaking the privacy curtains and sluicing down to join the pools—pools—on the floor.

And that thing…it had come in as Mortimer Moorecook in cardiac arrest, as good as dead until he’d applied the paddles. No, not as good as dead—way dead. But he couldn’t bill for a resuscitation without at least one defib jolt, so he’d hit him with 300 joules and the guy had come off the table like some wild—

The screams reached him then, and a woman’s voice, close by, shouting, “Kurt! Kurt!”

He looked and saw skinny little Janine Winslow at his shoulder, nurse’s uniform splattered with red, eyes bulging, skin chalky, chattering away at ninety miles an hour.

“That’s Doctor Lanz, Winslow.”

Hell, he didn’t even think of himself as “Kurt.” He wasn’t about to let this mosquito of a woman do it, even if she had given him head a couple of times when he first arrived. Proper respect was integral to proper functioning.

Not that you could expect proper anything at Blessed fucking Crucifixion Hospital. How the hell had he wound up here?

Oh, right.

Money.

Nobody with decent chops wanted to practice out here in the middle of nowhere. So hick hospitals like Blessed Crucifixion put a lot on the table—nearly twice what big metro hospitals offered. Lanz had owed six figures worth of education loans coming out of training. This was an offer he couldn’t refuse.

He knew what the hospital was thinking: Get the sucker out here, seduce him with our country charm, let him put down a few roots, and he’s ours for life.

No fucking way. He’d suffer in silence and sock away for a few years, then get the hell out of debt and the fuck out of town. To tell the God’s honest truth, Blessed Crucifixion was lucky to have him. He was way over-trained for a hick community ER. Like hiring Picasso to teach a ladies’ auxiliary art class.

Winslow kept going. “Oh my god! Oh, my god! What do we do? This is awful! I’ve never seen—”

He grabbed her bony shoulder and shook her. “You shut up and get a grip, that’s what you do!”

That seemed to break through and she quieted. Good. Now…time for him to get a grip. He looked around again, focusing.

The good news was that the thing that had been Moorecook was gone; the bad news was that it had escaped into the hospital instead of the parking lot. But at least it was out of here.

An inpatient—a big guy in a hospital gown—was limping out the exit. Smart fellow. If Moorecook came back, Lanz would be right on his heels.

The little girl was kneeling on the floor by her mother and screaming. With good reason: Not only had her left arm sustained a deep gash, but her mom lay flat on her back with her intestines spread over her torn abdomen like a wormy apron. She stared blindly at the ceiling as one leg gave a weak kick or two.

The clown lay unmoving in a huge pool of red.

The EMT who’d brought in Moorecook stood behind Winslow. A new LPN and two orderlies—Ralph and Benjamin—stood behind him. All awaiting instructions. That insubordinate bitch-nurse Jenny Bolton stood back, looking horrified. He’d deal with her later.

Okay. This was his ship and he was captain. He pointed to the orderlies, then to the mom and the clown.

“Get gurneys ready to move those two to the morgue.”

“But they ain’t been pronounced,” one said. Ralph? Benjamin? He never could tell them apart.

“They will be in a minute.” To the LPN: “Get the little girl’s wound cleaned up and ready for suturing.” To the EMT: “Help her.”

“Hey, I don’t work here.”

“Then get lost.”

The EMT held up a finger, showing a puncture that had already stopped bleeding. “But the old guy bit me. I need a tetanus. And penicillin. And hepatitis. And rabies. Did you see that goddamn guy? Fucking give me every shot you got!”

“You’ve got a forty-eight-hour window to get boosters. Make yourself useful or get lost.” He turned to Winslow. “Call security and get everyone down here, then call the sheriff. I need to speak to him.”

He wanted armed guards here in case Moorecook returned. He’d have them kick Jenny Bolton out too.

He stalked over to the clown. Glazing eyes stared out of his white-face makeup. His throat was a gaping, red ruin. His costume was soaked but Lanz could still read Benny the Clown Says “Let’s Have Fun!” on the big button.

Not a lot of fun going on here.

He closed Benny’s eyes and motioned to the orderly. “To the cooler.”

He heard the little girl start to scream and saw the EMT and the LPN dragging her to the treatment room. Her kicks and screams grew more frantic the farther she was moved away from her mother.

Sorry, kid, but that wound needs closing.

He looked down at the mother: as dead as Benny.

He still wore the latex gloves he’d donned at the start of Moorecook’s code blue. Ignoring the fecal smell from the torn intestines, he parted the loops. The abdominal cavity was filled with blood.

“Good lord,” said a woman’s voice. “Did he get the aorta? How could he bite that deep?”

He looked up at Jenny Bolton. “What the hell are you still doing here?”

“My patient is still here.”

“Your patient is a goddamn monster.”

“What happened to him?”

“You tell me.”

“I have no idea.”

“Then you’re of no use to me. You’re a GOOMER.”

Even though the acronym referred to annoying, unwanted patients—Get Out Of My Emergency Room—he figured she’d catch his meaning.

“I’m waiting for my husband—ex-husband.”

“Then wait outside. I—”

The doors flew back and Lanz almost screamed, fearing Moorecook’s return. But he managed to bite it back when he saw the two fat softball players stagger into the ER. Both were blood soaked. The bearded one was limping as he half-carried the younger blond guy.

“Oh, God!” Jenny said.

Then Lanz saw why: The blond guy’s left arm was missing at the elbow. He was squeezing the stump, trying