Clay

HE came to an intersection and stopped, unsure of whether to keep going straight ahead, or take the hall to the right. A cry of pain to the right--a man's voice--firmed up the decision. He made the turn and increased his pace to a trot. At the end of the hall he came upon half a dozen draculas pounding and clawing at a door, slamming themselves against it. That could mean only one thing: live humans on the other side.

As Clay raised the launcher, he heard a loud CRACK! and saw the doors start to swing inward. No time to lose and he had to make every shot count. The buckshot rounds turned the MM-1 from a grenade launcher into a super-size sawed-off shotgun. He didn't even want to guess at the gauge of something that fired a 40mm shell--two, maybe? No matter. Sawed-offs were great at close range, crap at long range because the cone of shot spread so rapidly.

So he stepped up behind the draculas, squared off around six feet from their clustered backs as they began to push the doors in against whatever was barricaded on the far side, and fired high. The first shot put four of them down, totally ruining the heads of two and carving good chunks out of two more. He angled a little to the right and fired again, splattering the brains of two more, then pulled his Glock from the small of his back. He had three backup magazines of .40 cal hollowpoints for the pistol, so might as well use that for coup-de-grace duty. He double-tapped the skulls of the two draculas that were down but still kicking, then stepped into a new corner of hell.

The first thing he saw was a guy in a clerical collar on his back on the floor holding off a mini-dracula in a party dress.

Aw, no. A kid.

It got worse. Approaching the minister and the mini was another female dracula, this one full grown, but it had a baby dracula chewing through her stomach like the creature in Alien. Looked like some human-kangaroo mutant with her baby in a pouch. Clay stood frozen in horror. He'd seen some awful things today, but this...this...he had no words for this.

He shook himself. What to do? The minister's most immediate problem was the girl-dracula. Couldn't use the MM-1without taking out the minister too, but he still had his Glock in hand, so--

The momma-dracula solved the problem for everyone, grabbing the girl-dracula by both sides of her head and ripping her off the minister. The girl-dracula screeched in rage but only for an instant. The screech was replaced by a sickening crunch of bone as the momma-dracula gave her head a full one-eighty twist. Then another. Girl-dracula's head faced front again but her jaws had gone slack and her eyes were rolled up in her head. Then momma-dracula bit her throat. As blood squirted, she pressed girl-dracula against her ruptured belly where baby-dracula began to suck.

Clay couldn't take any more. He pulled the trigger twice and blew all three to pieces.

He shuddered, feeling sick. He'd just killed a little girl, a new mother, and her--what?--nursing baby.

He shook it off. No, they weren't people anymore. They'd become things. He'd done them a favor.

So how come he felt so rotten?

Clay was stepping forward to help the minister when he caught a flash of movement to his right. Another female dracula, this one in a nurse's uniform, was charging him. As Clay swiveled the MM-1 and fired, he heard the minister yell, "Carla, no!"

Carla stumbled a step but kept coming, her head intact, but her face a pincushion mass of darts.

"Crap!"

He'd mistakenly loaded a Beehive round into the launcher. He'd been taking one along to Denver as a novelty. It fired a swarm of forty-some steel flechettes. Beehives weren't used much because of their low stopping power, which was being demonstrated right now as the dracula lunged at him. Clay ducked to the side and she went right by, talons raking empty air. The flechettes hadn't stopped her, but multiple darts in her eyes had blinded her. He waited till she wheeled around, then blew her away.

He helped the bloodied minister to his feet.

"You okay, padre?"

"I think so." He couldn't seem to take his eyes off what was left of momma-dracula. "Poor Brittany."

Clay was doing a slow turn, looking for more surprises.

"Let's get you out of here."

"No--my wife and baby!"

Clay glanced at the momma-dracula, then away. "Oh, God, I...I..."

"Oh, they're fine." His face fell. "Well, not really. Stacie lost a lot of blood after delivery. She's getting transfused now and--"

"Now?"

"Yes."

"Can she walk?"

"Maybe. I don't know. Why?"

Clay pointed back the way he came in. "Because those doors aren't stopping anything anymore."

As if to prove the point, a dracula came around the corner, saw them, and charged. It looked like it was going for the dead draculas, but Clay let it get within six feet, then blew its head off anyway.

The only good dracula...

The minister looked both repulsed and impressed. "That makes it look so easy. Almost doesn't seem fair."

"Like my daddy likes to say, 'If you find yourself in a fair fight, you obviously didn't plan right.' Besides, 'fair' is a matter of opinion, depending on what side you're on. These things here probably think it's unfair you've got all this blood running around inside you and won't share it. Anyway, it's not safe here. We need to get your wife to the roof."

"Roof?" The minister shook his head. "Gosh, I don't know..."

"Good chance a copter will be doing pick-ups. Women and children first."

Sudden resolve solidified his expression. "Really? Then we've got to get her up there."

Clay followed him into a room where a pale young woman--so pale she faded into the sheets--lay in bed with a blood pack dripping into her arm.

Clay shook his head. No way this gal was walking up to the roof. He glanced at the minister. Kind of scrawny.

"She'll need to be carried, padre."

"We can get a gurney and--"

"The elevators are out and a gurney will never make the turns in the stairwells. I'll carry her. You take the baby and my Glock--"

"No! I couldn't!"

"Jesus! Another one!" He sounded like Shanna.

"Please don't take the Lord's name in--"

"Jesus could have used a Glock. Wouldn't have wound up with see-through hands and feet if he'd had one."

"Please, deputy..."

"All right, all right. Here's what we're gonna do..."

"All set?"

The minister nodded. Clay had learned his name was Adam, his wife was Stacie, and their screaming newborn--swathed in a baby blanket and cradled in the crook of Clay's left arm--was Daniella. As per Clay's instructions, Adam had stuffed her ears with cotton. Clay knew his own ears would never be the same after today, might as well give the kid's a break. While Adam had stuffed cotton, Clay had stuffed rounds into the MM-1's cylinder. He was just about out of ammo. Only two buckshot rounds as backup for the dozen in the cylinder. He had the two H-E rounds but they had no practical use.

Stacie groaned from her place on Adam's back, but didn't open her eyes.

They'd transferred Stacie to a gurney, hanging her blood bag from an IV pole and leaving her blood-soaked mattress behind. They rolled her to the stairwell door where Adam tried to carry her in his arms, but her dead weight was too much for his left arm. He'd messed it up going for the blood. But still he insisted on carrying her, so Clay helped get her onto his back and wrapped adhesive tape around them to hold her in place.

So, Adam stood ready with his elbows hooked under the backs of Stacie's knees. Clay, with Daniella in his left arm, the MM-1 in his right, and the tab atop the blood bag clamped between his teeth, led the way up. As long as he stayed higher than Stacie, gravity would keep the blood running into her arm.

"Stay close, padre," he said through his clenched teeth and over the baby's wails. "We've got four flights to go and then we're home free."

The baby had to be hungry--no one left on the OB floor to feed it, and she sure wasn't going to get much from her mother. He just hoped its cries didn't attract any draculas. Spraying double-ought shot in a stairwell was a last resort.

He heard a door squeak open below, turned and looked over Adam's head. A dracula leaped through the doorway onto the landing below, followed by another. They'd heard Daniella.

"Shit!"

Keeping Daniella in his left arm, he gripped the barrel of the launcher with his left hand and used his right to take the blood pouch from between his teeth and shove it between Stacie's chest and Adam's back. Then he pressed against the railing to let Adam pass.

"Keep on going. Move your ass. I'll slow them down."

"But Daniella--!"

"I've got her. You've got all you can handle. Just keep moving!"

The minister lacked the wind to say much else, so he kept on a-trudgin'. As soon as he was past, Clay clutched the MM-1 by its rear pistol grip and dangled it over the railing. A heavy sucker--especially with a full cylinder--designed for two-handed use. It kicked and all of its weight was forward of the trigger--hence the second pistol grip on the front end of the stock. Clay had only one free hand. He had strong wrists, but not strong enough to fire the launcher one-handed--unless he was firing it downward.

"Hey, ugly!" he shouted to the lead dracula as it spotted him and rushed up the flight below.

It looked up, its face not twelve inches from the muzzle of the launcher.

"Say hello to my leetle fren'."

Clay fired, splattering its head all over its torso and the stairs with virtually no shot scatter. The second leaped upon it and began feasting. Clay didn't want to leave it there, because he heard more coming, so he started shouting at the top of his voice, and when the second looked up, it got the same as its buddy.

Daniella had probably increased her screaming, but Clay couldn't hear her over the ringing in his ears. He carried her halfway up the next flight and shouted for more draculas. He'd leave a combination buffet and obstacle course all the way to the roof.