Stacie

SHE stood in the corridor, the floor cold against her bare feet, staring at the blood and glass around the double doors leading into the maternity ward.

Screams--awful, tortured screams--had drawn her out of the room, and now she was staring at Adam who had a look on his face like a seven-year-old boy debating whether to jump off the high dive for the first time.

Nurse Herrick looked even worse, her skin a pale gray, and she'd wet her pants.

"What's going on?" she asked.

Adam came over, catching himself, reapplying the strong face, but she wasn't having any of it.

"Darling--"

"No." She stepped back. "You tell me right now what's happening. The truth. Every bit of it."

He stopped in front of her. "Let's just go back into the room, and you can focus on--"

"No! Stop treating me like a child!"

"All right. All right. These...things...they're people, or they were, and they're running through the hospital, killing everyone they see."

"Why?"

"For blood, I think."

Nurse Herrick walked over.

"Look," she said, opening her hand. "One of the teeth broke off when it tried to come through the window."

Stacie lifted it out of the nurse's hand.

A two-inch fang.

Still slimy with blood and a pungent-smelling saliva.

"They have a mouthful of these," Adam said. "And their hands are like a bird of prey's."

Stacie turned the fang over in her hand.

She was a biology teacher at the local high school, and she could feel that inquisitive, scientific current coursing through her, despite the horror.

"This is a fang," she said. "And it's hollow. See the opening at the end?" She tossed the tooth away. "We should wash our hands. The saliva is probably brimming with neurotoxins. I bet it's how they transmit the disease."

She could feel something inside her solidifying, this primal need to be someplace dark, quiet, and warm. It reminded her of her favorite calico she'd had as a little girl. Whenever she was carrying a litter of kittens, Samantha became a different animal altogether. More guarded. More apt to lash out. And when it came time to give birth to the kittens, she always retreated to a corner of the deepest closet in the house.

Three words kept rushing through her brain, on a loop like a stock ticker--This isn't happening This isn't happening This isn't happening This isn't happening This isn't happening This isn't happening

But it was.

And she couldn't curl up into the fetal position and cry and wish things weren't the way they were. She had something more important than herself to protect.

"I'm going back to my room now," she said.

"We're going to barricade the doors," Adam said. "I'll come be with you when we're done."

As Stacie started back toward her room, she felt the first rumblings of a new contraction coming on.