Shanna

THINK!

Shanna paced the perimeter of the chapel--the Catholic chapel. Blessed Crucifixion had two. One non-denom and, since the hospital was run by nuns, the other Catholic. Very Catholic. This one ran slightly longer than wide with about a dozen folding chairs set up in three rows. Crucifixes, stained glass windows--fake, illuminated with fluorescents behind them--and even the Stations of the Cross. The whole enchilada.

Shanna wasn't Catholic, wasn't much of anything as far as religion went, but for the first time in her life she was taking comfort in depictions of some poor man suffering horrific torture.

Maybe it was because of seeing Mortimer down in the lobby--or rather, what he'd become. She'd barely escaped with her life. But she couldn't get the image of his face out of her mind.

He looked just like the "Dracula skull" that he'd jabbed into his throat.

And the Dracula part had driven her to seek the company of crucifixes.

Irrational? Absolutely. Comforting? Absolutely.

She slowed her speeding, panicked thoughts and forced her brain into analytical mode. Take it in order:

1) Mortimer had received the "Dracula skull."

2) Mortimer had stabbed himself--deliberately, it seemed--with the skull's fangs.

3) He had been brought to the hospital.

4) Shortly thereafter she'd seen a blood-soaked man in Mortimer's pants and belt but with a head identical to the Dracula skull.

5) Ernie's head had been removed from his body.

The only conclusion she could draw from what she knew was that Mortimer had changed into some sort of murderous creature and that the blood all over him was Ernie's.

Huh?

Come on, Shanna. That's horror-movie stuff.

Obviously it wasn't the only possible scenario--she could be the mark in one of those hidden-camera spoof shows, but somehow she didn't see Blessed Crucifixion going along with that.

No, as bizarre and way out and insane as it seemed, that was the only scenario that fit all the facts.

Something supernatural was going on, something to do with vampires, or something like vampires. Maybe the creature that had started all the vampire stories, the wellspring of the legends, had returned. She didn't know what, or how, or why. And if a vampire was out there, she wanted to be in here, amid crosses and crucifixes and stations of the cross.

Did the police know?

Probably on their way. She'd heard shooting, lots of it, so hospital security must have gotten involved. Probably all over now.

The ER would know. She'd left Jenny there. Maybe she could find a phone and call down. There--one on the wall. She lifted the receiver and pressed the "O" button. After four rings a message came on, telling her that all lines were busy and to please hold. Okay, she'd--

"Shanna? Shanna Davies?"

She dropped the phone and spun. The voice came from the ceiling. She looked at the big crucifix at the far end of the room. Had Jesus just called her name?

"Shanna, if you're in the hospital and can hear this, please call extension two-seven-nine-four." It came from the speaker in the ceiling--the hospital paging system. "Shanna Davies call extension two-seven-nine-four."

Clay's voice! She never thought she'd ever be this glad to hear that voice. The police were here.

She cut the call to the switchboard and punched in 2794.

"Shanna?"

"Oh, Clay, where are you?"

"The ER. Where are you?"

"The chapel on the second floor. I'm coming down--"

"No-no-no-no! Stay right where you are. I'll come to you. Stay put. Whatever you do, stay out of the hallways."

Her gut clenched. Stay put?

"What are you saying? What's going on?"

"All hell's broken loose, babe. Monsters everywhere."

Monsters...more than one?

"What do you--?"

"They've got two chapels, as I recall. Which are you in?"

"The Catholic."

"The doors--do they have loop handles, the kind you could stick something through?"

She looked. One on each.

"Yes."

"Find something--anything--to stick through them till I get there. Don't let anyone in but me, and I do mean anyone. Got that?"

"You're scaring me, Clay."

"Good. Scared's a good thing to be right now, considering what's roaming the halls. You sit tight. I'm on my way."

Shaken, she hung up.

...considering what's roaming the halls...monsters everywhere...

That didn't sound good, not good at all. But it dovetailed with the vampire thing...they created more of themselves. But didn't you have to die and get buried and rise from the grave to become one? Didn't it take--?

She heard the elevator open. Clay?

No. No way he could make it from the ER yet.

Don't let anyone in but me, and I do mean anyone.

She was going to take that to heart--her own picked up its tempo as she looked around. Something to stick through the handles...

Her gaze settled on the crucifix. No, too big. Never get Jesus's knees through those handles. But the slim cross in the side alcove ran about six feet along the upright.

Perfect.

She hurried over to it and yanked on it, expecting resistance. But it was hung on a nail like a plaque. It came loose and toppled toward her. She tried to hold it up but it over balanced her and she fell backward into the folding chairs with a terrible racket.

No way anyone--or anything--in the hall hadn't heard that.

The cross had landed atop her. She pushed it off, jumped to her feet, and lugged it toward the doors. This wasn't some plaster casting, this thing was solid wood, and not light. She'd chosen an academic field to avoid exercise. Now she wished--

She froze for a second. A sound outside...like a hiss? Panic lent her strength, lunging her forward to shove the long end of the upright through the loops of both handles.

"Did it!" she whispered.

Then something hissed and hit the other side of the doors.

Shanna couldn't help it. She screamed.

And instantly wished she hadn't because it seemed to incite the thing outside. It slammed its full weight against the doors, moving them inward an inch or so, but the cross held and kept them closed. This seemed to infuriate the thing. It threw itself against the barrier, and she could hear claws gouging the outer surface.

Mortimer...trying to get in?

She backed away from the ferocity of the attack as the thing repeatedly hurled itself against the doors.

BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

Didn't it feel pain? Didn't it get tired?

And where was Clay?

As the assault continued she noticed a faint diagonal line begin to stretch across the cross's upright between the door handles. A crack? Oh, no!

She stepped closer. Yes! The wood was breaking under the relentless onslaught. She pressed her own weight against the doors to take the stress off the cross but was knocked back as the thing outside rammed them with shocking force.

She had an awful thought. When Clay did arrive, what could he do? He'd be powerless against that raging thing outside. No, wait. What was she thinking? This was Clay she was worried about. He'd have a gun--Clay always had a gun. But would a gun work against these things?

Meanwhile, she had to fend for herself. She needed to slide the upright farther through the handles so the cracked part was no longer between them. She got a grip on the crosspiece just as the thing rammed the doors with a particularly vicious blow.

That did it. The upright split and the doors flew open, knocking her back. Shanna staggered but didn't fall. She still had her grip on the cross. She held it up as she looked at the thing.

It wasn't Mortimer--or rather what Mortimer had become. This one wore a bloody orderly's uniform. A piece seemed to be missing from its neck. Its skin was cocoa colored but the fangs were the same as the "Dracula skull."

The thing saw the cross and cringed.

It's afraid of the cross! Yes!

"Back!" she cried, hoping to drive it out of the chapel.

It looked around and crouched as if the walls and ceiling were closing in on it.

"Out! You chose the wrong place to break into. This is God's territory. Leave!"

The creature looked again at the cross, then straightened. It gazed at Shanna with its black, black eyes and shook its head. If it had any lips left, it might have smiled.

"No." She backed away. It had been toying with her. "No, please!"

It leaped--literally flew through the air toward her. She angled the cross to fend it off. The upright had split diagonally along the grain, leaving a ragged point. The creature landed on it, driving Shanna back. This time she did lose her footing, but kept her grip on the crosspiece as she went down. The head of the upright caught on the carpet, and its other end plunged a good foot deep into the creature's chest.

As the impaled thing hissed and thrashed, Shanna scrambled to her feet and backed away, waiting for it to die. Staked through the heart--that was how you killed vampires, right?

But it didn't die. Shanna watched in horror as it lifted the cross and tried to pull it out.

"No!" She stepped forward and pushed against the crosspiece. "No way!"

It clawed at her, raking the air in front of her face with its talons, but couldn't get closer. If it ever connected, her nose and lips would be ripped off.

Now it pushed against the cross, taking her by surprise. She couldn't hold against its strength. The thing was backing her up. She flashed on what it was up to--trying to pin her against a wall, or better yet, into a corner. Couldn't let that happen.

She angled them around, keeping open space behind her.

Not so open. The back of her legs hit a chair. She went down. The thing was above her, slashing with its talons.

Through her scream she thought she heard someone shout, "Hey!"

As the thing looked up, a number of things happened almost at once: A black steel tube punched through its fangs into its mouth with a sharp crack, followed almost immediately by a blast that slammed her eardrums; the back of the creature's head dissolved in a red spray, taking a good deal of the forehead with it, leaving a pair of black eyes with an oddly surprised look.

Shanna held back a surge of bile and shoved against the cross, toppling the creature backward as Deputy Clayton Theel pulled her to her feet and wrapped her in his arms.

"Christ!" she heard him say through the whine in her ears. "If I'd been half a minute later..."

Shanna sobbed as she returned the embrace. She'd never been so glad to see anyone in her life.

"C-C-Clay! Thank-you-thank-you-thank-you!"

"Not a problem."

"What's happening?"

"I don't know what they are, Shanna, but they're multiplying."

"How many have you seen?"

"I've put down fourteen of them already." He looked at the thing on the floor. "Make that fifteen."

She pushed back and stared at him. He was carrying that strange-looking, rapid-fire shotgun he'd shown her a couple of weeks ago, and had a huge duffel bag slung from his shoulder.

"Fifteen?"

"Yep. Everything from ER patients to nurses to orderlies to operators."

Shanna's insides twisted. They were spreading like wildfire. It seemed impossible. All starting with...

"Was one of those patients you saw Mortimer Moorecook?"

Clay shrugged. "How could I tell? All their faces look the same."

He had a point.

"He was wearing black slacks with a gold belt buckle."

"No. Nobody like that. Why?"

"I think he started it all. I think he's patient zero."

"What are you talking about?"

She gave Clay a quick rundown of the "Dracula skull" and seeing Mortimer in the lobby.

"You know," he said, staring at her when she finished, "if I hadn't seen what I've seen in the past thirty minutes, I'd think you were on crack."

"It's somehow contagious," she said, her mind racing. "But is it airborne like a flu, or does it need an open wound?"

"Everybody I put down was bloodied in one way or another." He pointed to the dead thing on the floor. "Him too. Look at his neck."

Shanna shot a quick glance, then away. The red-and-gray lumpy spray on the wall behind it made her want to gag.

"Then it's like HIV."

Clay looked disgusted. "You mean those things go around raping--?"

"No-no! Bites. Think vampires and werewolves."

"Oh. Makes sense."

"But it's happening so fast." An awful thought struck. "Do you know what a geometric progression is?"

His mouth twisted. "Would you believe...no?"

"It's a way an infection can spread to astronomical numbers. Mortimer infects one, and so then there are two infected. If they each infect one more, we've got four infected. Then eight, then sixteen. By the fifteenth go-round they've infected almost fifty-thousand people. By the twentieth, we're past the million mark."

Clay paled. "We can't let these things out of here."

She shook her head. "Not even one of them."

"But you're getting out of here."

"How?"

"I'm taking you down to my truck, giving you the key, and you're driving the hell home."

That sounded absolutely wonderful. But...

"What about you?"

"Gotta stay till reinforcements arrive. I'll patrol the outside and contain the perimeter."

"Just you?"

He shrugged. "Wish I had help, but I don't see anyone else around to do it, so I guess that leaves me."

Just like the heroes in those movies he loved to watch--and quote. Was that what he was doing--quoting? If so, she didn't recognize it. No, this was just Clay, who he was.

"You could get hurt."

"Yeah, but--"

A hiss from the doorway. They both turned at once to see one of the creatures charging. Almost upon them. Shanna screamed.

Clay fired his auto-shotgun from the hip. Two quick blasts to the chest knocked it back but not down. He raised it to his shoulder. His third shot blew away half its head and it crumbled.

"Gotta get you out of here."

"I'm all for that."

But somewhere inside a voice said, You'll never make it.

"You're gonna need some heat," he said.

"Heat?"

"A weapon. A gun."

"No, I--"

"Don't argue, Shanna. It can be the difference between life and death."

She wanted to tell him she hated guns, that they terrified her, but she could see he wasn't going to take no for an answer.

He pulled something big and silvery from his belt.

"This here is Alice. A Taurus Raging--"

"Wait-wait-wait. You named it?"

"Well, sure. She's special."

Well, sure...like it was the most natural thing in the world.

"But it's a woman's name."

"Of course."

"No. Not 'of course.' Why a woman's name?"

He got a sheepish look. "You don't want to know."

"Yeah, I do. Humor me."

"Well, when my daddy was teaching me to shoot he always said never pull the trigger, always squeeze it like..."

"Like what?"

He sighed and looked away. "Like your girlfriend's tit."

"Your father said that?"

"Uh-huh."

"How old were you?"

"Oh, I don't know. Seven or eight."

"Did you even have a girlfriend?"

"No, but I gathered he meant slow and easy."

Note to self: Never meet Clay's daddy.

"But anyway," he went on, "Alice is a Taurus Raging Bull, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow a head clean off."

That sounded familiar, almost like--

"You're not quoting Dirty Harry, are you?"

He looked sheepish. "Well, not exactly. His was a forty-four Magnum."

"This isn't the time for Clint Eastwood fanboy stuff, Clay. Dirty Harry is a made-up character in a movie. This is real."

He gave her a funny look. "I know that, Shanna. But it...helps, okay? Because I gotta tell you, Harry Callahan seems more real to me right now than what I've seen here today."

She couldn't argue with that.

He hefted the huge silver pistol. "Alice here fires a heavy-duty, four-fifty-four Casull, even more powerful than Harry's forty-four Mag." He held it toward her.

She raised her hands, palms out, shoulder high. "No, I can't."

"Just till we get to the truck, okay? Please, Shanna? Just to the truck."

Well...

"Okay. Just to the truck."

She took it and it immediately dragged down her arms.

"God, it's heavy."

"Make sure you hold her with both hands and get ready for a helluva kick. Wait till you can't miss and aim for the head. The muzzle velocity of the round is so high it cuts through a skull like paper and the shockwave of the impact purees the brain."

She couldn't help making a face. "Lovely."

"One hit from Alice is enough. Don't waste them. I didn't bring many Casulls."

She raised the pistol with both hands to eye level. So heavy. She wished she'd been working out.

Suddenly a hissing face out of a nightmare, all bloody fangs and tongue and black eyes appeared at the other end of the barrel. Shanna screamed and pulled the trigger. The gun lurched toward the ceiling with such force it toppled her over backward. She almost lost her grip on it but managed to keep hold.

Still screaming she rolled and rose to her knees, ready to fire again, but the thing lay flat on its back in the hall. It had a hole where its nose once resided and a widening halo of red spreading out beneath its skull.

"Great shot!" Clay said, grinning like a proud father.

She stared at the dead creature. "I did that?"

"You sure did! You killed the hell out of that fella!"

That too sounded familiar. "Unforgiven?"

He shrugged. "Sorry." He helped her to her feet. "You okay?"

"Not sure."

She stared down at the dead creature. "That fella" wasn't a fella. It wore a bloodstained maroon pantsuit. She stepped closer and saw the nametag: Marge McGuire.

Shanna felt sick. "That's Marge from admitting! I had a long sit-down with her when Mortimer was admitted for that possible overdose. She had pictures of her kids on her desk. She..." A sob broke free. "What have I done?"

"It was her or you, Shanna."

"I killed Marge!"

Clay knelt beside her and placed a hand on her shoulder. "That wasn't Marge from admissions anymore. Marge was already gone. You killed something else, something that had taken her over."

"But her kids--"

"Had already lost their mama. You just kept this thing from fouling her memory by killing you and who knows how many others, and turning them into things like her. You did Marge a favor."

Clay seemed to understand and was making sense, neither of which she'd expected from him. But she couldn't take her eyes off the thing Marge had become.

"No need to watch her," Clay said. "She's down for good."

"I'm...I'm just wondering if she'll change back, now that she's dead."

He shook his head. "Wouldn't hold my breath. Once you become a pickle, you can't go back to being a cucumber."

"I feel so bad for her."

"Us or them, Shanna," he said. "Who do you want to walk out of here?"

"Us, of course."

"And who are the attackers here?"

"Them."

"So we're going to walk out of here, and along the way we're going to leave them alone. But if they try to kill us, we need to do what we have to do to protect ourselves--and that means kill them first."

Yeah...she could see that, but doing it was something else.

He pointed to the Taurus. "I'm sorry she knocked you down."

She? Oh, the gun.

"It's okay, Clay."

"No, it's not. Alice is too powerful for you." He took it from her. "I'll give you my Glock and--"

"And what's its name? Janet? Sophia? Rhianna?"

He gave her a strange look. "No. It's just a Glock."

"But I thought--never mind. I don't want it."

"You've got to. We'll--"

She backed away a step. "I said no, Clay, and that's what I mean: No."

A mixture of anger and dismay flashed across his features. "You're making a big mistake."

"No."

He sighed. "All right, but--"

The lights went out.