Draculas copyright ©  2010 by Blake Crouch, Joe Konrath, Jeff Strand, and F. Paul Wilson and reprinted here with their permission.


This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the authors’ imaginations or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Blake Crouch, Joe Konrath, Jeff Strand, and F. Paul Wilson.

   I grew up reading books where vampires were scary.
   This novel is an attempt to make them scary again.
   When I thought of the premise that became DRACULAS, I knew it needed to be a group project. Take four well-known horror authors, let them each create their own unique characters, and have them fight for their lives during a vampire outbreak at a secluded, rural hospital.
   This is NOT a collection of short stories. It’s a single, complete novel.
   And it’s going to freak you out.
   If you’re easily disturbed, have a weak stomach, or are prone to nightmares, stop reading right now. There are no sexy teen heartthrobs herein.
   You have been warned.

DRACULA’S SKULL UNEARTHED IN TRANSYLVANIA! A Romanian farmer discovered a skull with unusual properties while plowing his field near the town of Brasov. The relic, which appears to be ancient and human, has thirty-two elongated, razor-sharp teeth.
—NATIONAL TATTLER

VAMPIRE SKULL A HOAX? Discovered in Transylvania, the humanoid skull with sharp fangs is considered by many to be a fake. Fueling this speculation is the owner’s refusal to let scientists analyze the discovery, claiming it embodies an ancient curse.
—THE INQUISITOR STAR

MILLIONAIRE BUYS DRAC’S HEAD! Eccentric recluse Mortimer Moorecook of Durango, Colorado, has apparently purchased the so-called “Dracula skull” for an undisclosed sum, from the Transylvanian farmer who unearthed it a week ago. It isn’t known what Moorecook, who made his fortune on Wall Street during the late 80s, plans to do with the skull, though many are hoping it will be turned over to scientists for study. Moorecook, who was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, couldn’t be reached for comment.
—THE DRUDGE REPORT

   Moorecook
   MORTIMER Moorecook opened the massive oak door of his hilltop mansion just as the FedEx deliveryman was reaching for the doorbell.
   “Hi, Mr. Moorecook, I have—”
   “You have my package.”
   “Yeah. Must be special. Only thing on my truck. Never been called out on a Sunday evening before.”
   Mortimer looked at the cardboard box, covered in FRAGILE HANDLE WITH CARE stickers and some Romanian customs scrawl. His mouth went dry, and his already bowed knees threatened to stop supporting him.
   Finally.
   “Mr. Moorecook?”
   The old man glanced up at the buff FedEx driver, thinking how he’d once been that young and vital. Never could’ve imagined how quickly and completely that sense of immortality deserts you. So much taken for granted.
   “What?”
   “Just need you to sign for it so I can keep my job.”
   Taking the pen in his trembling grasp, Mortimer scribbled in the window of the electronic tracker. Then the box was in his hands. It barely weighed three pounds, but the magnitude of its contents made his arms shake.
   “Shanna! It’s here! It’s here!”
   Mortimer limped through the atrium as quickly as his thin, frail legs could manage, breathless by the time he reached the study. He set the box down on the coffee table in front of the hearth and eased back onto the leather couch just as his legs were about to give out.
   His hospice nurse—a zaftig, forty-something woman named Jenny—rolled his IV bag into the study and plugged the line into his arm.
   “Oh, stop it!” He swatted air in her general direction. “I ought to get a restraining order against you people. Everywhere I go, you’re always stalking me with that thing!”
   But even as he spoke, he could feel the morphine-push flooding his system like a good, wet dream.
   “Mr. Moorecook, you know what happens if we have any lapses between dosages.”
   “Yeah, I might actually feel something.”
   “Is writhing around on the ground in unimaginable pain the kind of feeling you want?”
   Of course not, he thought. That’s the reason I…
   “Mortimer!” Shanna appeared in the doorway of the study. “It’s really here?”
   He nodded, eyes twinkling, then turning cold again as he glanced toward Jenny. “Leave us.”
   Shanna walked past the nurse and came around the sofa. Mortimer could smell whatever body wash she’d used in the shower that morning as she sat down beside him, her brown curls bouncing off her shoulders like an honest-to-god shampoo commercial. She was thirty-five, had been single when she moved out to Durango at Mortimer’s request, but in the eight weeks she’d been here, she’d met a sheriff’s deputy and inexplicably fallen for him. It remained beyond Mortimer’s comprehension how this gorgeous biological anthropologist had seen anything in that redneck, who, as far as Mortimer could tell, was the epitome of what made the world throw-up in its mouth when it thought of Red State America.
   Then again, he was old and dying, and maybe just a little bit jealous.
   “Help me up, Shanna.”
   With the morphine flowing, it felt like he floated over to his desk.
   He opened the middle drawer, glancing out the big windows into the San Juan Mountains beyond a gaping canyon. The peaks were flushed with alpenglow, the snowfields pink as the sun dropped over southwest Colorado.
   Lost in thought, Mortimer hitched up his tailored black pants—so loose now he had taken to wearing the gold-buckled belt left to him by his father—and ran his fingers over the Ouroboros insignia sewn into the breast of his red, silk robe. Then he reached into his desk drawer and took out the bottle he’d been waiting years to open, fighting a moment with the wrapper and cork. At last, he splashed a little of the rosewood-colored liquid into two tumblers.
   “I’m not really much of a whiskey drinker,” Shanna protested.
   “Humor me.”
   Mortimer raised his glass, already catching whiffs of the fierce dried fruits and peat wafting toward him.
   “To you, Shanna,” he said. “Thanks for spending these last few weeks with me. I haven’t been this happy since my Wall Street days, raiding companies. I ever tell you—”
   “Many times.”
   They clinked glasses and drank.
   “That’s disgusting,” Shanna said, setting her glass down.
   Mortimer shook his head.
   “What?” she said.
   “Nothing, it’s just that this is a fifty-five year Macallan. I paid $17,000 for that bottle many years ago, knowing I wouldn’t crack it until a night like this came along.”
   “You paid too much,” she said.
   “Some things are worth the price. Shall we?”
   They returned to the couch, and Mortimer sat down and dug the Swiss Army knife out of the patch pocket of his linen shirt. It shook in his hands as he opened one of the smaller blades.
   “Let me,” Shanna said, reaching for the knife.
   He recoiled. “No!”
   Mortimer inserted the blade and gently tugged it through the tape. He put the knife away and opened the box, pulling out wads of crumpled, foreign newsprint until he felt the smaller box within the larger. He lifted it out, set it on the glass.
   It was some kind of black composite, sealed with a steel hasp on each side. He’d had the box specially made, then sent it to the farmer to ensure safe delivery of the item. Its key hung around his neck on a gold chain.
   He unlocked the hasps and flipped them open, gingerly lifting off the top half of the box, bringing it onto his lap as Shanna leaned in. They could only see the back of the skull, the bone deep brown, heavily calcified, full of hairline fractures and several larger cracks, one square-inch piece missing entirely. He worked his fingers down into the hard black foam that had protected the skull on its journey across the ocean, and carefully lifted it out.
   Shanna said, “Oh my God.”
   Mortimer stared into the hollowed eye sockets, and then the teeth, which more resembled the dental architecture of a shark than a human being.
   Not at all what he’d been expecting, and it didn’t match the artist conceptions in any of the scandal rags. This wasn’t a skull from an old Christopher Lee Hammer film. This was an affront against nature. Mortimer found it difficult to breathe. But he also registered something else, something he hadn’t felt since his diagnosis.
   Excitement.
   “May I?” Shanna asked.
   Reluctantly, Mortimer handed Shanna the skull. He didn’t like it leaving his grasp, had to remind himself that this was what he’d been paying her so handsomely for.
   Shanna examined one of the yellowed teeth.
   “Coffee-drinker,” she quipped, and then her eyes narrowed and Mortimer watched as her inner-scientist took over. “They’re at least an inch and a half long, every one of them, even the molars. Huh, weird.”
   “What?”
   “These canines are hollowed.”
   “What’s the significance?”
   “I don’t know. It’s not dissimilar to venomous snakes.” She opened the mandible. “Look at the articulation. That range of motion is unbelievable. The jaw structure is…reptilian. There are literally too many teeth to fit in this mouth. See how they overlap? They would’ve shredded the lips off, most of the cheek, exploded the gums, ripped apart the ligaments in the mandible.”
   “What are you saying? It’s fake?”
   “It looks real. No doubt. But it’s just anatomically impossible.”
   Mortimer leaned closer. “Is it human?”
   “Does this look human to you?”
   Shanna’s words hung in the air like a crooked painting.
   “So…what is it?” Mortimer whispered.
   “It’s certainly hominoid. But unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Nothing like this exists in the fossil record. This shouldn’t exist.”
   “But it does exist. It must be real.”
   “Look, we’ll have it tested. It’s possible the skull is authentic, but the teeth have to have been implanted.”
   “Do you know what I paid for this?”
   “No, what?”
   “Just give it back.”
   Shanna handed Mortimer the skull and stood up, smoothing out her slacks.
   “Mort, I’m really excited for you. Really. And I can’t wait to get started studying this.”
   Mortimer’s eyes went wide with surprise. “You’re…going? Now?”
   “I want to stay. But I promised Clay. He wants to take me—wait for it—to the Tanner Gun Show in Denver. We’re supposed to hit the road tonight.”
   “Jesus Christ. He must have elephantine genitalia.”
   “Mortimer!” She gave him a playful bump on the shoulder.
   “What? There’s no other explanation. I mean, really? Another gun show?”
   “Maybe not.”
   Something in her eyes…trouble in paradise? He hoped so.
   He held up the skull, cradling it in both palms. “This is the reason you’re here, Shanna. This is what we’ve been waiting for.”
   The mandible was still open. The old man grazed one of his liver-spotted fingers across the points of the teeth—razor sharp. He was sure he was only imagining it, but they seemed to send an electrical current through his body.
   “Mort? You gonna be all right?”
   He looked up at Shanna. Beautiful, youthful, Shanna.
   To be young enough again to satisfy a woman like that.
   Mortimer smiled. “I hope so.”
   Then he pulled the skull into his neck, clamped shut the ancient jaw, and the last thing he felt before losing consciousness were those razor teeth sinking through the paper-thin flesh of his throat.
   Shanna
   JENNY, the hospice nurse, had acted quickly and professionally. Within two minutes, she had bandaged the wound and controlled the bleeding, but that was the least of Mort’s problems. Seconds after stabbing himself with those horrid fangs, he’d dropped to the floor in a violent seizure. Shanna had been ordered to stick something between his chattering teeth to prevent him from biting off his own tongue. She’d tried to use a ball point pen, but her benefactor had snapped it in half, blue ink mixing with the white foam that churned between his lips.
   “Get something under his head,” Jenny told her, her voice up an octave. Shanna removed her jean jacket—a gift from Clayton—and balled it up for Mort to use as a pillow. Mortimer’s hand shot out, grabbing Shanna’s shirt. She yelped in surprise, pawing at his wrist, trying to free herself, but Mort had a grip like stone.
   The warm, acrid smell of urine wafted up as he wet his pants, and the convulsions intensified, his limbs banging against the hardwood floor with enough force to split his skin.
   When the seizure refused to abate after two minutes, the nurse scurried off to call an ambulance.
   When it passed the five-minute mark, Jenny shot Mort full of sedatives and anticonvulsants. At ten minutes, Jenny was practically crying in despair, Shanna right there with her. They each had their full body weight on Mort, trying to pin his bloody hands and feet, but they could barely keep him down, Mort choking and gagging on his own blood, coughing out bits of his lips and tongue that he’d chewed off.
   Twenty-three minutes later, when the ambulance finally arrived, the nurse and Shanna had to assist two burly paramedics to get Mort strapped to a gurney, where they finally jammed a rubber bit between his snapping jaws.
   The ride to the hospital was a blur, Shanna physically and emotionally drained. She managed to call Clay, but got his voicemail and had to listen to his outgoing message of Clint Eastwood saying, “Go ahead…make my day. BEEEEP!”
   She left a monotone message that Mort had had an accident. She was on her way to Blessed Crucifixion Hospital, and he’d have to pick her up there.
   Then she wept.
   Arriving in Durango two months ago, Shanna had thought she’d landed her dream job. Being paid—and extremely well—for pure research. While many of her contemporaries loved field work, Shanna got off on studying what others had found. She was an expert on the evolution of primates, and when the so-called “Dracula skull” had been discovered four months ago, she’d regarded it with the same blanket skepticism as the rest of her colleagues.
   When Mortimer had hired her to research the Dracula skull, searching for its pedigree, she’d had no idea he’d actually bought the thing. For the past two months, Shanna had been poring over research materials, trying to make a case for a human skull with vampire teeth. Other primates had oversize canines, but within the Homo genus, from australopithecine to modern humans, evolution had reduced tooth size with every subsequent speciation. She’d followed various fossil trails, even the barest and flimsiest of leads, but kept coming back to that same conclusion.
   Mort had taken her failures in stride, encouraging Shanna to follow historical and genealogical lines, even though that wasn’t her expertise. Between bouts of sitting with Mort and enduring his endless stories, she had managed to find a few more leads. The latest and most promising dated back to the Middle Ages—the Wallachian Order of the Dragon and its founder, Oswald von Wolkenstein. Supposedly, Oswald had a son with severe birth defects, which might have included dental deformities. There was scant historical evidence to support that rumor, but when combined with some other facts about the era…
   Mort jerked against his restraints, making the cart rattle. The paramedics had pumped enough drugs into him to kill an elephant, but the convulsions hadn’t abated. Shanna wiped away another tear, wondering if she should have seen this coming.
   How could he have done something so ghastly? Senile dementia? Reduced mental capacity because of the morphine? Or had the old man planned to bite himself all along?
   The whine of the ambulance siren faded as the vehicle shuddered to a stop. An intern opened the rear doors and slid out the gurney with one of the paramedics. Jenny, Shanna, and the remaining paramedic stayed behind.
   Jenny touched Shanna’s hand. “You okay?” she asked.
   Shanna nodded, regarding the older, shapely nurse.
   “I’ve been doing this for a decade,” Jenny said. “Never saw anything like that before. You did good.”
   Shanna took little comfort in her words, but she managed a weak smile. “Did I have a choice?”
   “You could’ve fallen apart.” Jenny looked around. “Deputy Dawg coming to pick you up?”
   “His name is Clay.”
   “No offense. That’s just what my ex used to call him. No love lost between those two, let me tell you.”
   “I had no idea.”
   “Before your time. Randall would drink too much in town, and I’d wind up bailing him out, seemed like every other week. Think Clay’ll give me a lift back to Mort’s? I need my car.”
   “I’m sure he will.”
   And then what? Shanna wondered. She’d been planning to break it off with Clay tonight. He was a good guy and they connected—really connected—on a visceral level. But once the heady rush of novelty waned, reality had set in. The more time they spent outside the bedroom, the more she realized how little they had in common.
    But she felt so drained right now. She didn’t know if she had the energy to tell him. Or was she just making an excuse?
   Maybe. Because Clayton Theel was one of the good guys, and she knew he genuinely cared for her. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt him. But their heads were in such different places. The gun thing, for instance. Guns frightened the hell out of her. But Clay loved them—lived for them. If he wasn’t shooting one, he was modifying one or inventing one. She could not take another gun show, and she might claw her own eyes out if she had to watch Dirty Harry or Unforgiven again.
   “Son of a bitch.”
   Both women turned to the paramedic, who was squinting at his finger.
   “What’s wrong?” Jenny asked.
   “I think the old bastard bit me.”
   Jenny
   JENNY Bolton entered the ER through the automatic doors four steps behind the paramedics pushing Mortimer’s gurney. Though Jenny knew she was tough, she hadn’t yet steeled herself to Mortimer’s eventual demise. Being a hospice nurse meant losing patients—it was how the story ended every time. Much as she tried not to get attached—and then have to deal with the inevitable depression when they passed—Jenny wound up admiring, and even liking, most of the terminal people she cared for.
   Seeing Mort so near death, weeks before his diagnosed time, brought a lump to her throat. This lump was made even bigger by her uncomfortable surroundings.
   Once upon a time, Jenny had worked in this facility, in this emergency room. She’d loved the job, and since Blessed Crucifixion was the only hospital within sixty miles, it had been her sole option for being a fulltime caregiver.
   But last year she’d gotten into a disagreement with one of the holier-than-thou physicians on staff, and his lies and bullshit had led to her dismissal.
   God, she hoped that prick Dr. Lanz wasn’t working tonight.
   “Dr. Lanz! Code blue!” the intercom blared.
   Shit.
   Jenny kept her head down as the six-foot, broad-shouldered Kurt Lanz, M.D. paraded past, looking every bit as self-important as the day he’d gotten her fired. She knew he would have her escorted out of the hospital if he spotted her.
   While Lanz barked orders at his cringing staff, Jenny slunk over to a nearby house phone.
   She reached for the handset, then paused.
   Should I call him?
   Her ex-husband, Randall, had left no fewer than thirty-eight messages on her cell phone since being admitted two days ago for a job-related injury. Her brain-deficient, former significant other—a lumberjack—had somehow managed to cut the back of his own leg with a chainsaw. She wondered if he’d been drinking on the job. He’d fallen into drinking far too much off the job. Drunk on the job seemed the natural next step. He’d sworn time and again that he was off the sauce, but he’d made many such promises during their marriage, only to relapse.
   Aside from the occasional glimpse of his bright red Dodge Ram Hemi driving through town, she hadn’t seen Randall since their divorce was made final two years ago. Jenny hadn’t been responding to his messages, even though they were increasing in frequency and urgency. But now, stuck in the hospital with Randall only two floors above, she might as well bite the bullet.
   Her thoughts were interrupted when the automatic doors opened and a clown entered the ER. At first, Jenny assumed it was a candy striper come to entertain the ill. But then she saw he had a child attached—by the mouth—to his left hand. The girl was screaming through clenched teeth, blood dribbling down her chin.
   A distressed woman followed the clown and the child, patting the girl’s back, and when she locked eyes on Jenny she said, “There’s a nurse!”
   Jenny glanced down at her white uniform. She was about to correct the woman’s assumption with an, “I don’t work here,” but noticed the entire ER staff had surrounded Mortimer, who was coding.
   “You have to help my daughter,” the mother demanded.
   Jenny looked at the little girl, whose teeth were embedded in the skin of the clown’s left hand.
   “Oasis’s braces are stuck,” the woman said.
   “Oasis?”
   “Oasis. My precious little girl. This horrible clown ruined her eighth birthday party, and now he’s going to ruin five thousand dollars’ worth of orthodontia.”
   Jenny appraised the clown. A very sad clown, despite his painted-on red smile and matching rubber nose. He stood six feet tall, six-six with the green fright wig. His green and red polka dot clown suit bulged at the middle—a pot belly, not a pillow—and his size twenty-eight shoes squeaked like a chew toy when he walked. A large, metal button, opposite the fake flower on his lapel, read “Benny the Clown Says ‘Let’s Have Fun!’ “
   In a low, shaky voice barely above a whisper, Benny the Clown said, “Please help me.”
   Jenny fought to conceal her smirk. “What happened?”
   “This terrible clown squirted my little girl and she defended herself. Now she’s stuck on his filthy clown hand.”
   The little girl said something that came out like, “Mmmmhhhggggggggg.”
   “I was making the birthday princess a balloon poodle,” Benny the Clown said, “and she reached up and squeezed my nose. That activated the flower.” Benny the Clown pressed his rubber proboscis and turned his head. A stream of water shot out of the center of the flower, sprinkling onto the tiled floor. “When the birthday princess got squirted, she locked her precious little birthday chompers onto my hand.” Benny the Clown leaned closer to Jenny. “You can’t tell because I have a smile on my face, but I can feel the wire digging into my bone.”
   Jenny nodded, trying to appear sympathetic. “I wish I could help, but I don’t work at this hospital. I’m just here with one of my hospice patients.” She pointed toward the gurney where doctors and nurses swarmed around Mortimer. “You’ll have to check in at the front desk.”
   Even with the painted-on grin, Benny the Clown looked suicidal.
   Jenny hated to turn away any patient in need, but she could be sued for administering care in a facility she’d been fired from. She watched them trudge off, then turned her attention back to the phone.
   Just do it. Get it over with.
   Jenny picked up the receiver and dialed Room 318. She knew it was 318, because every one of the thirty-eight messages she’d received from Randall had begun with, “Hi, Jen, it’s Randall, I’m in Room Three-One-Eight.”
   Before the first ring ended, Randall was on the line. “Jen, is that you?”
   The last thing she expected—or wanted—to feel was comfort at the sound of his voice, especially with all the chaos going on around her. But it was so familiar, like they’d just spoken yesterday. The comfort died in a surge of anger at the memory of all the heartache his drinking had put her through.
   “Hello, Randall. How are—?”
   “You coming to visit?” Randall interrupted. “I’m in room Three-One-Eight.”
   Jenny sighed. She watched Dr. Lanz charge the defib paddles. “Yeah, I know. You said it on every message you left for me.”
   “You listened to them? All of them?”
   “All thirty-eight, Randall.”
   “Thirty-eight? It couldn’t have been anywhere near that many. But I wasn’t sure you were getting them. You been having a problem with your phone?”
   Yeah, you keep calling me. “I’ve just been busy. So how are you doing?”
   “Dry ninety-seven days now. I don’t even want to drink anymore, I swear. I’m a changed man, Jenny.”
   So he’d said in all thirty-eight messages. She was impressed if it was true, but he’d done a lot of lying in his drinking days. And even if it were true—too little, too late.
   “I meant your injury, Randall.”
   “Oh.” His voice suddenly lost the excited, almost child-like tone. “I got seventy-seven stitches. Everyone thinks it’s real ironical that I cut the back of my leg.”
   “You mean ironic, Randall,” Jenny corrected. She’d been the one to teach him the meaning of the word, but he had yet to get the pronunciation right.
   Winslow—a wisp of a woman who became head nurse when Jenny was fired—squirted conductive gel onto Mortimer’s bare, hairless chest. Jenny’s patient was convulsing—v-fib or v-tach. Even from across the room, she could see that Mort’s eyes had rolled up into his skull, the whites protruding like two eggs. Flecks of foam and blood still sprayed from her patient’s mouth, dotting Dr. Lanz’s face and his pristine, white lab coat. Lanz’s expression twisted in disgust as he wiped his sleeve across his lips, and the fastidious, meticulous doctor actually spat over his shoulder.
   Should have put on your face mask, Dr. Jack Ass.
   Jenny spotted Shanna, looking a little green, scurrying through the doors into the main hospital. Everyone in the ER looked on as Lanz applied the paddles, even Benny the Clown, Oasis, and her mother.
   “Jenny? You there? Hello?”
   Jenny only turned her eyes away for a second, trying to gather herself, not ready to see Mortimer die. Rude and self-important as he was, she’d found things about the old man to admire, and even like. She also wondered when she would work again. This was a small town, and hospice nurses weren’t in constant demand.
   Full of shame at the selfish thought, she forced herself to look back, to say a final, silent goodbye.
   She was shocked to see Mortimer—standing—on top of the gurney, restraints broken off and dangling from his ankles and wrists, his mouth wide and—
   Is he hissing?
   The sound came from deep in Mortimer’s throat, less like a threatened cat, more like a tea kettle coming to boil. It kept rising in pitch until it became a shrill whistle, the noise unlike anything Jenny had ever heard.
   It was inhuman.
   “Jenny? What’s wrong?” Randall said.
   “Oh my God.”
   “What? What, Jen?“
   Mortimer’s teeth. Something was happening to them. They were falling out—no—he was spitting them out, spitting them at Lanz and the nurses who were frantically trying to coax him off the gurney.
   “Randall, I have to go. There’s something happening in the ER.”
   “You’re here in the—?”
   She hung up the phone and started toward Mortimer. No doubt Randall would be trying to call her back on her cell, but she had the ringer turned off—the hospital took its no cell phone rule seriously.
   Mortimer abruptly stopped hissing, and Jenny could hear Dr. Lanz ordering him down off the gurney.
   Stiff as a plank, Mortimer fell face-first onto the floor.
   Jenny rushed to him. She didn’t care anymore about hospital protocol, or Lanz having her thrown out. Mortimer needs me. Jenny had never seen anything like this in twenty-five years of health care.
   She pushed her way through the nurses surrounding Mortimer and knelt at his prone body.
   “Jenny Bolton? What the hell are you doing in my hospital?” Dr. Lanz demanded.
   “This is my hospice patient,” she said, touching Mortimer’s neck and seeking out the pulse of his carotid. To her surprise, she didn’t have to press hard. His entire neck was vibrating, his artery jolting beneath her fingers like a heavy metal drum solo. The only thing she could compare this to was a crystal meth OD, the heartbeat raging out of control.
   Jenny patted the old man’s back, checking to see if he was conscious.
   “Mortimer, can you hear me? It’s Jenny. I’m right here. We’re gonna help—”
   “I’m going to help him. Somebody get security.”
   She felt Dr. Lanz’s hands grip her shoulders, dragging her away from Mortimer just as her patient grabbed her hip.
   Jenny felt instant pain, and not only from the pressure of Mortimer’s grip. Something sharp was digging into her skin through her uniform.
   That can’t be Mortimer’s hand.
   It was more like a claw. A bloody, ragged claw. Jenny stared, mouth agape. Mortimer’s finger bones—the phalanges—were extending out through his fingertips, splitting the skin and coming to five sharp points.
   The old man hissed again, a high-pitched keen, and when he turned his head to look at Jenny, calm, stoic Nurse Winslow shouted, “Sweet Jesus Christ!”
   Mortimer’s cheeks exploded like a grenade had gone off inside his mouth, white points bursting through his lips, shearing flesh, digging rents into his face.
   Oh my God. Fangs.
   He’s growing fangs.
   His new teeth began to elongate—an inch, two inches, bursting through his bleeding gums in rows that ended in wicked, dagger-like tips. They shredded Mortimer’s face into jagged strips, and he began to snap his jaws, chewing through the inside of his mouth, grinding off his cheeks all the way back to his earlobes, making room for his monstrous new dentata.
   Then Mortimer’s lower jaw unhinged, thrusting forward and hanging open like some perversion of an angler fish. He stared at Jenny, his eyes wide, pupils dilating beyond anything human, spreading until they eclipsed the whites.
   For the first time in her life, Jenny screamed a scream of abject, primordial terror.
   She jerked back, trying to pull away from Mortimer’s grip, but his sharp, bony fingers had embedded themselves into the meat of her hip. She watched her skin stretch through the holes in her clothing—stretch, but not tear—and realized that the bones protruding from Mortimer’s finger tips were barbed like fish hooks.
   Then he jerked his hand back, taking Jenny with it, knocking her onto her butt, her face inches from his snapping jaws.
   Mortimer rolled on top of her, like a lover, blood and saliva dripping onto Jenny’s face and neck. She reached up to push him away, but as terror-stricken as she was, Jenny couldn’t bring herself to touch him. It was like willingly sticking your hand into a box of angry rattlesnakes. Even as his jaws drew near, Jenny’s revulsion wouldn’t allow her to fight back. She stretched out her hand—her face imploring—to Dr. Lanz, who stood within reach. But he shrank away from her beckoning fingers, retreating into the safety of the nurse’s station.
   This is it, Jenny thought. I’m going to die.
   “Get the fuck away from my wife!”
   Jenny turned, watching her bear of an ex-husband limping toward her, his hospital gown flapping from the speed of his approach.
   He raised something large and red over his head.
   “Smile, motherfucker!”
   Mortimer’s misshapen head jerked up as Randall swung the fire extinguisher, connecting with the jagged nest of teeth. A clang resonated over the screams of the onlookers, and Mortimer flew back, his terrible claw disengaging from Jenny’s hip, several of his fangs breaking free and tinkling like icicles on the tile.
   Jenny found herself being dragged across the floor, Randall’s hard, calloused hands under her armpits, pulling her to the water cooler.
   “You okay, babe?”
   She started to respond, but then saw Mortimer, or whatever he had become, rising to his feet. His head swiveled on his shoulders one hundred eighty degrees, taking a quick, predatory scan of the emergency room.
   His eyes locked onto Oasis and Benny the Clown as they retreated through the opening automatic doors.
   Mortimer crouched, then leapt after them, soaring three meters into the breezeway.
   As the doors slid closed, Jenny heard the most God-awful screaming and Benny the Clown shouting, “No! I’m getting bitten! Again!”
   His shoes were frantically squeaking and blood sprayed the automatic glass doors, which opened and closed over and over.
   As Mortimer feasted on Benny the Clown’s neck, little Oasis desperately pulled on Benny the Clown’s arm, trying to disengage her braces, shaking her head like a rabid dog while her mother tugged on her waist. Suddenly the child broke free, falling backward onto her screaming parent.
   Mortimer’s eyes zeroed in on the movement, and his head jerked up, blood draining out of his mouth and down the front of his shirt like a sieve.
   He dropped Benny the Clown and hissed.
   Oasis’s mother was trembling. “Please,” she begged. “It’s her birthday.”
   Mortimer attacked Oasis, savagely biting her arm, and tossing her back into the ER.
   Then he burrowed his ravenous jaws into her mother’s stomach, tearing into intestines, pulling out her glistening liver and snacking on it like a slice of watermelon.
   Randall stood in front of Jenny. “What is that goddamn thing? A fucking dracula?”
   Mortimer abandoned Oasis’s mother and moved back into the ER, lured by two large men in softball uniforms, one with a black eye—probably a casualty of playing the game while drinking beer. They’d been screaming at Mortimer to leave the woman alone, and now the monster had obliged them. Apparently realizing their mistake, they turned and ran through the ER, pushing through a pair of double doors and disappearing into the bowels of the hospital.
   Mortimer pursued, bounding after them on all fours, his body stretching out like a cheetah.
   Then the ER stood silent except for the groans of the dying and the injured.
   Jenny turned to ask Randall something, but he was already moving away from her, limping toward the automatic doors.
   She grabbed his arm. “No, Randall,” she pleaded. “Please. Stay with me.”
   “I’m just going out to my truck,” he said.
   “Why?”
   “I need my chainsaw.”
   He pulled his arm free, starting toward the doors again.
   “For what?” Jenny called after him.
   “I’m gonna cut that son of a bitch in half.”
   Lanz
   KURT Lanz, MD, rose from where he’d crouched behind the nurse’s station.
   What…what had just happened?
   He surveyed the carnage of the ER—his ER—trying to comprehend what he’d witnessed, but his mind kept balking. All he saw was the blood. God, you so quickly got used to blood in an ER, but this…the sheer quantity. It had sprayed everywhere, Pollacking the walls and soaking the privacy curtains and sluicing down to join the pools—pools—on the floor.
   And that thing…it had come in as Mortimer Moorecook in cardiac arrest, as good as dead until he’d applied the paddles. No, not as good as dead—way dead. But he couldn’t bill for a resuscitation without at least one defib jolt, so he’d hit him with 300 joules and the guy had come off the table like some wild—
   The screams reached him then, and a woman’s voice, close by, shouting, “Kurt! Kurt!”
   He looked and saw skinny little Janine Winslow at his shoulder, nurse’s uniform splattered with red, eyes bulging, skin chalky, chattering away at ninety miles an hour.
   “That’s Doctor Lanz, Winslow.”
   Hell, he didn’t even think of himself as “Kurt.” He wasn’t about to let this mosquito of a woman do it, even if she had given him head a couple of times when he first arrived. Proper respect was integral to proper functioning.
   Not that you could expect proper anything at Blessed fucking Crucifixion Hospital. How the hell had he wound up here?
   Oh, right.
   Money.
   Nobody with decent chops wanted to practice out here in the middle of nowhere. So hick hospitals like Blessed Crucifixion put a lot on the table—nearly twice what big metro hospitals offered. Lanz had owed six figures worth of education loans coming out of training. This was an offer he couldn’t refuse.
   He knew what the hospital was thinking: Get the sucker out here, seduce him with our country charm, let him put down a few roots, and he’s ours for life.
   No fucking way. He’d suffer in silence and sock away for a few years, then get the hell out of debt and the fuck out of town. To tell the God’s honest truth, Blessed Crucifixion was lucky to have him. He was way over-trained for a hick community ER. Like hiring Picasso to teach a ladies’ auxiliary art class.
   Winslow kept going. “Oh my god! Oh, my god! What do we do? This is awful! I’ve never seen—”
   He grabbed her bony shoulder and shook her. “You shut up and get a grip, that’s what you do!”
   That seemed to break through and she quieted. Good. Now…time for him to get a grip. He looked around again, focusing.
   The good news was that the thing that had been Moorecook was gone; the bad news was that it had escaped into the hospital instead of the parking lot. But at least it was out of here.
   An inpatient—a big guy in a hospital gown—was limping out the exit. Smart fellow. If Moorecook came back, Lanz would be right on his heels.
   The little girl was kneeling on the floor by her mother and screaming. With good reason: Not only had her left arm sustained a deep gash, but her mom lay flat on her back with her intestines spread over her torn abdomen like a wormy apron. She stared blindly at the ceiling as one leg gave a weak kick or two.
   The clown lay unmoving in a huge pool of red.
   The EMT who’d brought in Moorecook stood behind Winslow. A new LPN and two orderlies—Ralph and Benjamin—stood behind him. All awaiting instructions. That insubordinate bitch-nurse Jenny Bolton stood back, looking horrified. He’d deal with her later.
   Okay. This was his ship and he was captain. He pointed to the orderlies, then to the mom and the clown.
   “Get gurneys ready to move those two to the morgue.”
   “But they ain’t been pronounced,” one said. Ralph? Benjamin? He never could tell them apart.
   “They will be in a minute.” To the LPN: “Get the little girl’s wound cleaned up and ready for suturing.” To the EMT: “Help her.”
   “Hey, I don’t work here.”
   “Then get lost.”
   The EMT held up a finger, showing a puncture that had already stopped bleeding. “But the old guy bit me. I need a tetanus. And penicillin. And hepatitis. And rabies. Did you see that goddamn guy? Fucking give me every shot you got!”
   “You’ve got a forty-eight-hour window to get boosters. Make yourself useful or get lost.” He turned to Winslow. “Call security and get everyone down here, then call the sheriff. I need to speak to him.”
   He wanted armed guards here in case Moorecook returned. He’d have them kick Jenny Bolton out too.
   He stalked over to the clown. Glazing eyes stared out of his white-face makeup. His throat was a gaping, red ruin. His costume was soaked but Lanz could still read Benny the Clown Says “Let’s Have Fun!” on the big button.
   Not a lot of fun going on here.
   He closed Benny’s eyes and motioned to the orderly. “To the cooler.”
   He heard the little girl start to scream and saw the EMT and the LPN dragging her to the treatment room. Her kicks and screams grew more frantic the farther she was moved away from her mother.
   Sorry, kid, but that wound needs closing.
   He looked down at the mother: as dead as Benny.
   He still wore the latex gloves he’d donned at the start of Moorecook’s code blue. Ignoring the fecal smell from the torn intestines, he parted the loops. The abdominal cavity was filled with blood.
   “Good lord,” said a woman’s voice. “Did he get the aorta? How could he bite that deep?”
   He looked up at Jenny Bolton. “What the hell are you still doing here?”
   “My patient is still here.”
   “Your patient is a goddamn monster.”
   “What happened to him?”
   “You tell me.”
   “I have no idea.”
   “Then you’re of no use to me. You’re a GOOMER.”
   Even though the acronym referred to annoying, unwanted patients—Get Out Of My Emergency Room—he figured she’d catch his meaning.
   “I’m waiting for my husband—ex-husband.”
   “Then wait outside. I—”
   The doors flew back and Lanz almost screamed, fearing Moorecook’s return. But he managed to bite it back when he saw the two fat softball players stagger into the ER. Both were blood soaked. The bearded one was limping as he half-carried the younger blond guy.
   “Oh, God!” Jenny said.
   Then Lanz saw why: The blond guy’s left arm was missing at the elbow. He was squeezing the stump, trying to stanch the hemorrhage.
   “He bit his arm off, doc!” the bearded one said. “That animal bit his fucking arm off! And he bit me in the ass!”
   As the pair struggled past, Lanz saw that the man’s ample right buttock was missing a