pulled her inside and stuck her in what they’d called “the command center.”
It looked improvised in some ways—a featureless space with no decorations and half a dozen one-piece polymer chairs. But the small, fixed window that had to be at least an inch thick said otherwise. The best thing about that window was it faced the parking lot. Shanna had her nose pressed against it now, hands cupped around her eyes to shut out the room light, straining to see what was going on.
The door opened behind her. She turned to see four disheveled-looking kids being herded into the room by the same two soldiers who had brought her. They moved away and then another soldier—with bars on his shoulders—strolled inside. He had gray hair and a barrel chest, and his expression was grim. He stared hard at Shanna.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“Shanna Wiener. I’m an anthropologist.”
“Colonel Halford. My men just caught some sort of creature, Ms. Wiener. It attacked them, we believe, with intent to eat them.”
“Not eat them,” Shanna corrected. “It wanted to suck their blood.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“It’s…” Shanna’s voice went soft. “It’s a dracula.”
“A dracula.”
She nodded.
“As in a vampire? The kind you fight with crosses and garlic?”
She shook her head. “Crosses don’t work. I don’t know about the garlic.”
Shanna expected disbelief, but Halford simply nodded.
“Do you know how many there are?”
“No. The infection spread quickly. There could be hundreds.”
He nodded again. Two soldiers came in and saluted. Col. Halford saluted back.
“The autoclave is in place, sir.”
“Sound the sirens. Clear everyone to the perimeter. I want detonation in sixty seconds from the moment I stop talking. Dismissed.”
The men hurried off.
“What’s an autoclave?” Shanna asked. She didn’t like the sound of it.
“Same as in a hospital. Used for sterilizing medical equipment. Except this sterilizes a much larger area.”
“It’s a bomb?”
“It’s a giant shaped charge. When detonated it will shoot a plasma jet down through the hospital roof with irresistible force at a speed of eight-thousand feet per second. The jet will penetrate each of the floors like an anti- tank missile melting through a steel armor plate. The air in the hospital will heat to ten thousand degrees, sterilizing the entire structure.”
Shanna shook her head. “My boyfriend…my
“I’m sorry, Ms. Wiener. I have my orders.”
No. This couldn’t be happening. The military was here. They could help him.
“Please. He’s a good man. A cop. He saved a lot of people tonight.”
“I know. I just heard from four children who talked about a
Shanna didn’t think, she acted, running for the door, leaping out into the night, sprinting for the hospital as fast as she could.
She had to get Clay out of there. Had to—
Two men tackled her.
A few seconds later she was in handcuffs, being dragged away, screaming at the top of her lungs, “Clay! CLAAAAAY!”
BY the time she realized that the object they had lowered onto the roof was a bomb—a huge, army-green charge—Jenny had just enough time for a belly laugh. She thought of Randall…dear, sweet, Randall. He would have appreciated the humor of surviving a dracula outbreak only to be killed by the good guys.
It was damn ironical.
HE snatched up the Taurus and began wiping her off. Poor Alice was a mess—blood, plaster dust, and who knew what else.
He hugged her to his chest. “Hey, baby. Gonna take you home and get you cleaned up and oiled and good as—”
Then he heard screaming. He’d heard a lot of screaming that day, but this seemed to be coming from outside. And rather than the incoherent, senseless terror he’d gotten used to, this sounded a lot like his name.
He hurried to the nearby window, broken out by Adam’s farewell blast directly above, and stared out over the parking lot.
One floor down and maybe a hundred yards away…that looked like Shanna, being dragged away by some soldiers. She continued to cry out to him.
Why was she so panicked? She was safe down there.
Then he grinned. Probably worried sick about him. Or missing him something fierce.
“Don’t worry, babe. I’ll be right—”
He heard a boom from above and then a blast of heat like a solar flare seared through the hospital, hurling his burning body through the window.
SHANNA was still screaming when the roof of the hospital exploded in an incandescent flare. The boom and shockwave stopped her in her tracks and she watched in horror as the windows and walls of the fourth floor vomited flame and debris, followed almost immediately by the third and second and first. Every entrance, every exit blew its doors and shot flames like giant blowtorches.
And then the floors began to collapse—first the roof onto the fourth, then the fourth onto the third, pancaking all the way down to ground level, leaving only a flame-riddled cloud of smoke and dust and debris on the far side of the parking lot.
A cheer went up from the watching soldiers and she wanted to kill them. Instead, she began to cry. Huge, wracking sobs shook her to her toes.
Clay… she felt the ring box in her pocket pressing against her thigh. A good man, a hero, and no one would know. No, wait. Those kids would know. They’d remember the guy with the big cool gun. Clay would love to be remembered that way.
Colonel Halford walked over, told his men to release her.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You can take that sorry and shove it up your ass.”
She stormed away, and no one bothered to stop her. The cool night was now hot as the summer in Nevada, and the burning hospital bright enough to see the damage that had been done to it. The autoclave had performed as advertised. The building wasn’t just sterilized. It was annihilated. Nothing could have survived that.
Choking back a sob, Shanna headed toward the TV crew. They were interviewing a man. A doctor. Incredibly, his scrubs were pristine, not a mark on them. He held a sleeping baby close to his chest, while a good-looking brunette asked him how he had managed to save the infant.
“Her name is Daniella. She was handed to me by your cameraman when the helicopter landed. Incredibly, some soldiers almost shot both of us, until I could prove we hadn’t been bitten.”
“Is the baby okay?” the reporter asked.
“I’m happy to report she’s completely healthy. Even in tragedies such as this, miracles happen.”
Something about the man’s voice was familiar. She walked closer, to get a look at his face. He was young,
