Shanna

SHE was pacing back and forth by Clay's Suburban, praying for his safe return, when she noticed movement on the ground, not too far from her. She looked closer and saw one of the supposedly dead state troopers moving--one of the pair Clay hadn't shot.

Oh, God. As it lifted its head and looked her way, glow from the army headlights glinted off rows of long sharp teeth.

"Hey!" she called. "Hey, somebody! We've got trouble over here! Hey!"

Nobody seemed to hear her. The noise from truck motors revving, soldiers shouting to each other, giving and taking orders, swallowed her cries.

"Hey!" she called, raising her voice to its limit. "A little help over here."

She backed up a few steps, readying to run, fearing it was coming for her, but it veered away, toward the empty darkness.

Confused? The side of its skull looked bashed in. Too damaged to know what it was doing? Well, that was fine with Shanna...

Except if it got away and bit someone, the plague would be loose and there'd be no stopping it.

She screamed. "Will somebody please--oh, crap!" He was going to get away and no one was paying her a bit of attention.

She glanced in the rear of Clay's Suburban and saw his super shotgun, his beloved AA-something. She didn't want to touch it...she remembered Marge back in the chapel, but somebody had to stop that thing.

She grabbed the gun and went around the other side of the car in time to see the dracula passing. How hard could this be? She raised the shotgun, pointed it toward the thing, and, closing her eyes--she couldn't look--pulled the trigger.

The gun boomed but had nowhere near the kick of that pistol Clay had handed her.

She opened her eyes and saw the dracula on the pavement. She was about to congratulate herself when she realized it was still alive, if that was what you could call whatever it was, and trying to regain its feet. But it couldn't. Shanna had shredded its knees.

"Lower your weapon!" shouted a voice behind her.

She turned and found herself facing the muzzles of half a dozen guns of various shapes and sizes and a chorus telling her to drop it. She laid the shotgun gently on the pavement. After all, Clay loved that thing.

"Now you listen!" she said.

A soldier with three stripes on his arm--that meant sergeant, right?--who looked like he was in charge, got in her face. "What do you think you're doing, firing that here?"

Shanna jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "One of them was getting away."

A couple of the soldiers looked past her. She could tell by their expressions they'd never seen a dracula before.

The sergeant said, "Put it down!"

Half the soldiers turned their weapons toward the leaping monstrosity. In a rain of automatic weapon fire, they cut it to shreds.

"Did you see that thing?"

"What the fuck?"

"Some kind of monster."

Then four of the hospital's third-floor windows facing the parking lot blew out, belching flame and filling the air with bits of glass and charred flesh.