Chapter 41

1

Val went out of the room to see what was going on. There was no sense or order to the melee in the halls. Some of the patients and staff were screaming; some crouched down against the base of the walls, arms wrapped around their heads like kids used to do during air raid drills in school. There were at least three people lying on the floor, either dead or unconscious, and no one seemed to notice or care.

Then the door to the fire stairs opened and a knot of figures dressed in Halloween costumes came creeping out. Immediately they split up and went in different directions, and as Val watched two of the figures leapt at a pair of elderly patients and tackled them to the floor. A nearby nurse screamed, and in the dim light cast by the emergency floods Val couldn’t exactly see what was happening, but she knew.

The screams changed then, transforming from shouts and shrieks of confusion and fear into true screams of pain and terror. More figures came out of the stairwell, and one of them turned in her direction. He was only a silhouette, framed by the weak lights in the stairway, but an icy fear reached into Val’s chest and closed its cold fingers around her heart. Her lips formed a word, a name, and even though she didn’t speak it aloud it soured her mouth like bile.

Ruger.

She wasn’t sure if he saw her, but just the possibility of it—and the reality of his presence here—made the unborn embryo in her womb scream in psychic terror. Val fled back into Weinstock’s room.

“He’s here!” she gasped.

2

“Crow! Watch!”

Crow already saw the body lying in the street and wrenched the wheel hard over so the wheels missed the prone figure’s outstretched hand by inches. He skidded to a stop and threw it into Park. The rest of the street was choked with running people and burning debris. Every store along the street had lost its glass to the explosions, the windows yawning wide and black like gasping mouths. LaMastra reached for the door handle.

“What are you doing?” demanded Crow.

“I’m going to see if that person is…”

“No you’re not!” Crow reached past him and hammered down the door lock with his fist. “That person is dead. So’s that one over there. I can see more of them down the street—just look!”

LaMastra did look, seeing what he hadn’t taken in before. There were bodies everywhere. A few moved feebly, but most were clearly dead. People ran by in panic, sometimes pausing to pound on the car’s hood and try the door handles before fleeing into the night.

“Vince, I don’t know what’s happening, but I think it’s suicide to get out of the car before we get to the hospital. We have to get to Val.”

LaMastra stared out at the riot. He saw a white-faced creature leap from the top of a parked news van onto a running man. The two of them rolled over and over in the middle of the street, and then the vampire tore out the man’s throat in a geyser of blood.

“Jesus Christ!” LaMastra cried.

Crow punched him in the arm, hard. “We can’t save them. We have to go!”

Crow put the car in Drive and stepped on the gas, but as he did so LaMastra cranked down the window and laid the barrel of the big shotgun across the frame; as the car passed, the cop fired and splashed the vampire against the side of the van.

“Drive!”

Crow drove.

A naked man staggered out into the middle of the street, his body bleeding from a dozen sets of small punctures. Four children ran after him, their laughing mouths bright with fresh blood. LaMastra shot two of them, but the others fled.

Crow had to weave in and out of the oncoming traffic, blaring his horn, flashing his brights. Cars and people buffeted him and one of his headlights went blind; but with LaMastra maintaining a nearly constant barrage even the panicking people started dodging out of the way. LaMastra fired his gun dry and rolled up the window while he reloaded. He fished Crow’s shotgun out of the duffel and as Crow threaded his way toward the hospital, LaMastra emptied both guns again and again.

“Christ!” he gasped, hastily reloading again. His shoulder ached from the kick of the two guns. “How many of these things are there?”

When they entered the parking lot they saw a pair of vampires holding the struggling body of a young woman in their arms. Her body was naked and crisscrossed with freely bleeding gashes. The vampires moved from victim to victim, first cutting their own skin to dribble their own blood into slack, dead mouths, and then dripping the woman’s blood into the same mouths. At once Crow and LaMastra understood not only the reason for the impossible numbers of the living dead but the overwhelming horror of the invasion. The sheer scope of it was impossible to grasp.

“Get those two bastards!” Crow bellowed as he gunned his engine and raced across the lot. Hearing the roar of the engine, the vampires dropped the woman’s corpse and turned snarling faces at the single headlight of the big Impala. LaMastra crammed his beefy head and shoulders out the window and his first shot took one of them off at the shoulders, but the other—seeing his comrade fall—fled into the darkness with incredible speed and agility. LaMastra fired and missed.

“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.