“Leave it!” Crow yelled as he pulled around to the ER entrance. The car rounded the corner and burst into the main section of the parking lot. There were more bodies, and more vampires laboring at their task of increasing Griswold’s army. Crow stamped down on the accelerator and rammed the closest one who almost—but not quite—managed to leap out of the way. The vampire thumped across the hood and landed behind the car, but he was up again in a moment and running after them, spitting with fury. LaMastra leaned out the window and blew his legs off.
Crow squealed to a stop a dozen yards from the hospital entrance and they gaped at the carnage. There were bodies everywhere, lying twisted and dead, littering the opening and strewn about in the lobby.
“Everyone’s dead,” he said, gagging on it.
But as they watched, the bodies began to rise.
“Oh, shit!”
The corpses stirred and rolled over, jerking back into a new and terrible wakefulness. There were at least twenty of them, and as they rose some of them wandered off into the hospital, but many of them turned toward the front door, staring past the single remaining headlight of Crow’s car.
“This is not good,” said LaMastra as he hurried to reload.
There was a thud and the whole car shook as something heavy landed on the roof. Crow could see white fingers hooked around the edge of the door. He drew his Beretta and put two slugs up through the roof. A white body fell past his window.
Crow made a low, feral noise, his lip curling. He said, “Hold on to your ass!”
LaMastra stared in horror as Crow began gunning the engine. “Oh…no, don’t even think about it!”
“This ain’t the blues anymore, partner, this is rock and roll!” Crow slammed the car into drive and kicked down on the accelerator. Missy shot forward, the hot engine ready for the challenge, and with a howling cry of rage, Crow plowed into—and through—the big double doors, tearing metal and glass and slamming into the crowd of newly risen vampires.
(3)
“Are you sure it was him?” Weinstock demanded. The shock of what Val had seen was worse than the agony in his arm. He was dressed in pajamas and the dress shoes he had worn down to the morgue. The others pushed the chairs and the bedside table in front of the door.
Val didn’t answer; instead she yanked open the big clothes closet and started pulling out the duffel bags of weapons that Crow and Ferro had left behind. Sweat was pouring down her face despite the cold air blowing in through the window and her hands shook visibly as she passed the bags to Mike, who laid them on the bed.
“Jonatha, Newt…can either of you use a gun?” Val asked as she ripped the zippers down. She and Mike emptied the contents fast and sloppy.
“Not well,” Jonatha said dubiously, “but I know how to pull a trigger.”
Newt shook his head. “Somebody will have to show me.”
“Learn fast.” Val handed each of them a 9mm pistol and half a dozen magazines.
“I can shoot,” Weinstock said. “One hand still works.”
Val gave him a pistol. “Saul, get dressed fast. Newt, help him. You’ll need pockets for ammo.” She began stuffing her own pockets with shotgun shells and 9mm mags. Her eyes were fever bright as she looked at Mike.
“Let me have a gun,” Mike said. “I used a shotgun once. I went skeet shooting with my friend Brandon.”
“Take it.”
“And…can I have one of Crow’s swords?”
Despite her haste, Val hesitated and gave him a searching look.
“He’s been teaching me how—”
“I know. That doesn’t mean you’re good enough.”
“Doesn’t mean I’m not, either.”
They held that stare for a moment, then Val gave him just a flicker of a smile. She looked down at the weapons and grabbed more shells. “Take whatever you want. Crow took his good sword with him, and he told me that he was going to coat the blade with garlic oil.”
Mike shook his head. “I don’t have to worry about that.”
Her gaze flicked up again. “What do you…oh.”
The dhampyr’s eyes were like torches. “I just hope I have some superpowers after all.”
Right then a heavy fist began pounding on the door.
Val stiffened and turned. The pounding was so hard it shook the heavy institutional door in its metal frame. A wave of sickness twisted in Val’s stomach.
“Come owww-owwt!” someone called in a singsong. There were screams outside, but even through that they could hear the snickering laugh of whoever was beating on the door. “Come owwwwwww-owt!”
Val snatched a pistol off the bed and took a step toward the door.
“No, Val—don’t!” Newton cried. He was holding Weinstock’s pants and the doctor had a leg poised to step into them.
“Shut up,” Val snarled, and it wasn’t clear if she was talking to Newton or the monster outside. Then she racked the slide and put four rounds through the center of the door.
The next scream they heard was inhuman.
And Val Guthrie smiled.
(4)
Even though his guts were turning to gutter water, BK stood his ground as his attacker rushed him. Three times he’d nailed this psycho son of a bitch with crippling blows to the head and throat. Three times the attacker just shrugged them off. BK was not a spiritual guy, and he didn’t much believe in the boogeyman, but he wasn’t an idiot either. Something was way off the sanity radar here and whether he wanted to believe it or not he had to accept the fact that this guy was not acting human. No, he corrected himself in the microsecond between the time the guy sprang and when he leapt, not acting human, this weird-ass motherfucker was not human.
Belief and acceptance are sometimes very different concepts.
The teenager jumped from too far away and yet still covered the distance between them—and the impossible reality of that nearly got BK killed—but BK was a fighter and he’d been in hundreds of scrapes from schoolyard scuffles to extreme martial arts bouts to back-alley knife fights. His conscious rational mind was not always allowed to be in the driver’s seat; reflexes and gross motor skills are better for the battlefield.
As the attacker slammed into him, BK shifted slightly to one side, accepted the grab with one of his own, pivoted, and let the killer’s mass and momentum do all the work. The pounce turned into a pirouette and then the killer was falling with BK’s bulk on top of him. They hit the ground hard and fast, with BK’s muscle and mass driving downward to smash the attacker’s bones with the impact. BK didn’t stop there, didn’t even pause; as soon as his hands were free of the need to steer the attacker’s body, he let go of the teenager’s trunk, grabbed him by the chin and the hair, and then threw himself into a tight roll through the air. BK’s bulk, plus the twisting grip, created a savage torque that more than just snapped the neck—it wrenched the killer’s head around more than two hundred degrees.
The attacker went limp in an instant.
BK rolled all the way to his feet but froze in a crouch, staring at what he had just fought, and what he had just done.
“Oh my God…” He dropped to his knees, gagging at the taste of the bile in his throat. The moment was unreal; he could feel his pulse pounding like a muffled surf in his ears.
He heard screams off to his right and rose and he turned. A woman ran out of the cornfields, her blouse torn and bloody, and two men chased her. Both of them were as pale-faced as the teenager he’d just killed. The woman reached the Haunted House and got inside, slamming the door; immediately her pursuers began hammering their fists on the door. It buckled and splintered and they tore the flimsy wood away and went inside. There were more screams.