Free Draculas by F. Paul Wilson, Blake Crouch, Jeff Strand, Jack Kilborn, J. A. Konrath Page B

doors open. Clay pulled his Suburban in beside it, popped the glove compartment, and removed his Glock 23. As he stepped out, he stuck it in the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back. He was out of uniform and didn't want to freak anyone by going in hot.

    He didn't have to rack the slide because he always kept a round chambered. An empty chamber was worse than useless, it was just plain stupid. He'd filled its extended mag to the brim with .40 caliber, 180-grain Hydra-Shok hollow points.

    Enough to stop any "monster."

    As he stepped toward the two-stage entrance, he saw someone in a hospital security uniform standing with his back to the inner doors. The outer motion detector caught his approach and opened one of the doors. The guard turned and Clay froze.

    His face. He was wearing some sort of Halloween mask, except Halloween was a long way off. The blood and most of the mask looked pretty damn realistic, but the teeth didn't work--too big, too many of them. Just plain unreal.

    Then it opened its impossible jaws and wiggled its tongue as it hissed at him.

    That was no mask.

    ...some story about being terrorized by a monster running loose in the hospital...

    This was the monster.

    It charged him, talons extended.

    Clay backpedaled and pulled the Glock.

    "Stop! Stop right there!"

    If the thing heard him, it gave no sign. In fact it seemed to increase its speed.

    Clay raised the Glock in the official two-handed grip as it burst from the entrance.

    "Last warning or--!"

    Those claws...too close. Clay squeezed the trigger three times and put three .40-caliber Hydra-Shoks into its center of mass. The impacts spun it 180 to the left, but it stayed up--staggering, but still on its feet despite the three gaping exit wounds in its back.

    How was it standing? Those Hydra-Shoks with the little center post in the hollow expanded like mad. Its lungs and maybe its heart had to be confetti.

    It staggered in a circle, completing another 180, then started for Clay again.

    What the hell?

    Clay went for the head this time. Three more straight into the face. He saw blood and brains form a crimson halo behind it as the head snapped back. It went down like a felled tree, arms spread like branches, to land flat on its back.

    Clay watched it for a few seconds. When it didn't move, he stepped up for a closer look.

    "Jesus."

    One round had entered through its fangs, snapping off half a dozen of them. One through the nose, and the third through the left eye. He'd never seen anything like this thing. One
ugly
mother.

    With the toe of his boot he flipped it over. The back of its skull was gone, the brain pan pretty much empty.

    Well, Lanz hadn't been exaggerating about a monster terrorizing the hospital, but now it was a dead monster. He hoped to hell Shanna was all right.

    Clay was just about to turn away when he thought he spotted movement. He turned back and saw the creature slipping an arm under itself, trying to rise.

    "You gotta be shittin' me!"

    He pumped two more rounds into the back of its neck, all but severing the head from its body.

    It slumped and lay still. Clay watched a full half minute to make sure it stayed down and still. It did, so he turned and hurried toward the entrance.

    He didn't know what he'd just killed, didn't much care. Worry about that later. His only thought right now was Shanna...if that thing had hurt Shanna he'd--

    What? Nothing much left to do to it except dowse it with gas and set it on fire.

    He increased his pace to a fast trot. The doors slid open...

    And he entered hell.

    Blood everywhere--
everywhere
. An EMT on the floor with his throat ripped out, a patient on the stretcher, likewise, and another EMT with her face ripped off and her throat torn open.

    Had that monster done all this?

    Jesus, where was Shanna?

    And then movement to his right as a bloodsoaked nurse charged him from a side room, and she had the same goddamn teeth as the EMT outside, the same claws, and