DRACULAS (A Novel of Terror) Page 37

  The brick? What brick?

  Mick the Mick had a moment of panic—he had no idea what Nate the Noodge was talking about.

  Oh, yeah. The product. Now he remembered.

  “Sure Nate, it’s right in here.”

  He led Nate to the kitchen where the brick of product lay on the big center table.

  Nate the Noodge pointed a tentacle at it. One of his guards lifted it, sniffed it, then wriggled his tentacle fringe that it was okay. Mick the Mick had expected him to nod but a nod would require a neck, and the guard didn’t have a neck. Then Mick the Mick realized he didn’t know what a neck was. Or a nod, for that matter.

  What was it with these weird thoughts, like memories, going through his head? They were like half-remembered dreams. Nightmares, more likely. Pink flowers, and giant lizards, and big rocks in the sky, and stepping on some mice that looked like a lot like the Capporellis up in 5B. Except the Capporellis lived in 4B, and looked like jellyfish. What were mice anyway? He looked at Willie to see if he was just as confused.

  Willie was playing with his cloaca.

  Nate the Noodge turned to them and said, “A’ight. Looks like my frisson of malaise and apprehension was fer naught. Yer cloacas is safe …fer now. But you don’t deliver that product like you’re apposed to and it’s casserole city, knome sayn?”

  “We’ll deliver it, Nate,” Willie said. “Don’t you worry. We’ll deliver it.”

  “Y’better,” Nate said, then left with his posse

  “Where we supposed to deliver it?” Willie said when they were alone again.

  Mick the Mick kicked him in his cloaca.

  “The same place we always deliver it.”

  “Ow!” Willie was saying, rubbing his cloaca. “That hurt. You know I got a—hey, look!” He was pointing to the TV. “The Toad Whisperer is on! My favorite show!”

  He settled onto the floor and stared.

  Mick the Mick hated to admit it, but he was kind of addicted to the show himself. He settled next to Willie.

  Faintly, from the kitchen, he heard Nana say, “Oh dear, I was going to bake a cake but I’m out of flour. Could one of you boys—oh, wait. Here’s some. Never mind.”

  A warning glimp chugged in Mick the Mick’s brain and puckered his cloaca. Something bad was about to happen …

  What had Nate the Noodge called it? “A frisson of malaise and apprehension.” Sounded like a dessert, but Mick the Mick had gathered it meant a worried feeling like what he was having right now.

  But about what? What could go sour? The product was safe, and they were watching The Toad Whisperer. As soon as that was over, they’d go deliver it, get paid, and head on over to Madam Yoko’s for a happy ending endoplasmic reticulum massage. And maybe a cloac-job.

  The frisson of malaise and apprehension faded. Must have been another nightmare flashback.

  Soon the aroma of baking cake filled the house. Right after the show he’d snag himself a piece.

  Yes, life was good.

  THE END

  DRACULAS Deleted and Alternate Scenes

  During the writing of Draculas we wrote a few scenes that we ended up changing or omitting. We thought it would be fun, for people who liked the book, to see what ended up on the cutting room floor, and hear why.

  Alternate Shanna Shooting Scene

  Joe says: In our very first email volleys, Paul had intended Shanna to embrace Clay’s gun-loving ways, and wrote this to be the scene where she becomes enamored with them. I liked it and thought it was realistic—lots of people, when they shoot for the first time, instantly fall in love with firearms. Paul thought it was too over-the-top and changed it to her having a negative reaction.

  Shanna

  SHE stared down at the dead creature. “That fella” wasn’t a fella. It was wearing a bloodstained maroon pantsuit. She stepped closer and saw the nametag: Marge McGuire.

  Shanna felt sick. “That’s Marge from admitting! I had a long sit-down with her when Mortimer was admitted for that possible overdose. She had pictures of her kids on her desk. She…” A sob broke free. “What have I done?”

  “It was her or you, Shanna.”

  “I killed Marge!”

  Clay knelt beside her and placed a hand on her shoulder. “That wasn’t Marge from admissions anymore. Marge was already gone. You killed something else, something that had taken her over.”

  “But her kids—”

  “Had already lost their mama. You just kept this thing from fouling her memory by killing you and who knows how many others, and turning them into foul things like her. You did Marge a favor.”

  Clay seemed to understand and was making sense, neither of which she’d expected from him. He helped her to her feet.

  “Us or them,” Shanna he added. “Who do you want to walk out of here?”

  “Us, of course.”

  “And who are the attackers here?”

  “Them.”

  “So we’re going to walk out of here, and along the way we’re going to leave them alone. But if they try to kill us, we need to do what we have to do to protect ourselves—and that means kill them first.”

  Yeah…they did.

  She looked at the thing that had been Marge. If she hadn’t fired this big heavy thing in her hands, she’d be dead on the floor. And worse—soon she’d be one of them.

  He pointed to the Taurus. “I’m sorry it knocked you down.”

  “It’s okay, Clay.”

  “No, it’s not. That gun’s too powerful for you.” He reached for it. “I’ll find you—”

  She snatched her Taurus away and clutched it between her breasts. Yes, suddenly it was her Taurus Raging Bull. She loved it. She thought of that bumper sticker she’d always laughed at: You can have my gun when you take it from my cold dead hands. Or something like that.

  “You touch my gun and I’ll kick you in the fucking balls.”

  Clay looked flummoxed. “Shanna, you said ‘fucking.’ And ‘balls.’“

  “Damn right, I did. For the first time since that first monster broke in here, I feel we’ve got a chance to get out alive, and I’m not giving that up.”

  And then the lights went out.

  Alternate Stacie Death Scene

  Joe says: This deletion is my fault. Blake wrote this lovely scene, but unbeknownst to him, I’d written practically the exact same Psalm 23 scene in another one of my books, with an author I collaborated with. I explained it to Blake, and when he read the scene I’d mentioned, he was shocked at how similar they were. This isn’t the first time Blake and I have written similar scenes independently of each other. It’s eerie, really. Blake was kind enough to switch it with the other scene, which I believe was also lovely.

  Stacie

  IT was like someone dimming the lights from inside her head.

  No pain, but so dizzy.

  She could still sense her daughter lying asleep in the crook of her arm, though she couldn’t feel a thing.

  There was noise all around her, but Adam—sweet, wonderful Adam—his voice cut through, lips pressed against her ear.

  “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul.”

  Thinking, I cannot be dying. This is not happening. I’m a mother now.

  “He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”

  Please God, undo this.

  “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”

  There’s so much I want to experience.

  “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.”

  Nothing to do but latch onto his voice as the darkness flooded in and unconsciousness loomed like both the heartbreaking end and the answer to so many questions.

  “Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dw
ell in the house of the Lord forever. I love you Stacie.”

  His voice fading.

  “I love you Stacie.”

  She could feel herself slipping, and she didn’t fight it anymore.

  “Always, Stacie.”

  Deleted Private Rogers Scene

  Joe says: Blake and I intended to put this scene at the end, right between Clay getting blown out the window by the autoclave and Shanna meeting Dr. Cook. The point was to drive home the “reverse Night of the Living Dead” ending, when the military saves the bad guy (in the classic zombie movie, the military kills the hero). Blake and I really wanted this in, and we all liked the scene, but we voted to exclude it because it really wasn’t necessary, and it ruined the pacing. As with all of these alternate and deleted scenes, our motivation for cutting them is exhaustively discussed in the Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Making of Draculas.

  Private Rogers

  “After that building comes down,” the radio crackled, “you shoot anything that tries to crawl out, I don’t give a good goddamn if it’s your mother, mow that bitch down.”

  Private Rogers stared at the hospital from behind the wheel of the Humvee. He couldn’t believe this shit was happening on US soil.

  “Do I need to fucking repeat myself, private?” Col. Halford barked.

  Rogers hit the mike on the walkie-talking. “No sir, I—”

  A whitehot flash lit the surrounding trees and cars as bright as day, the heat like an open oven, and when Rogers could see again, the hospital was simply not there anymore.

  Holy shit. Those autoclaves were badass mothafuckers. What the hell was Halford thinking? Nothing could have survived that—

  Wait. What in the hell is that thing?

  Rogers moved out of the driver’s seat, climbed up the back of the vehicle, and stood up in the hummer behind an M2 Browning .50 cal., studying the smoking rubble as he fingered the 100-round belt and checked the swivel-range once more. He knew some of his unit had been killed, had heard the firefight going on all around him, but Halford had insisted that nothing be described on the radio. The TV folks were nearby, and the order from on high was don’t let them see or hear shit.

  Rogers understood that. Ain’t good for nobody, killing people on camera. Didn’t want Ma or Aunt Sally to hear about their son’s death on the ten o’clock news, neither. But it infuriated Rogers that he didn’t know which of his buddies had been wasted. Made his so damn angry he wanted to pump lead into anything that moved.

  Rogers had no idea what they were up against. Terrorists, probably. Wouldn’t send all of this hoo-rah out here unless it was a serious threat. He studied the landscape, looking for the thing he’d just spotted. Giant spotlights burned down on the smoldering ruins.

  There.

  He swung the fifty twenty degrees left.

  Something crawled out of a pile of twisted support beams and staggered to its feet, smoke rising off its shoulders under the glare of the spotlights.

  Holy shit.

  A fucking monster.

  No other way to describe it. Burned all to shit, sure, but those teeth…

  Rogers had pulled two tours in Iraq, and he felt that surge of familiar adrenaline as he sited up the enemy combatant—nothing like opening up on someone with Ma Deuce.

  Easier than shootin’ barrels, and pure fun.

  He put one round center mass, and the thing stopped, wavering amid the rubble…but kept stumbling toward him.

  Got-damn.

  He’d never seen a .50 round fail to stop anything.

  Seen them bring down bulls with one shot. Fuck up the entire engine blocks of civilian cars.

  Rogers aimed again, this time a hair higher, and squeezed off three quick rounds.

  The monster’s head disappeared.

  As it toppled, others emerged out of the rubble behind it, some of them beginning to run toward the parking lot.

  He opened up, took a dozen rounds to bring down six of them, and even still some continued to drag their gut-strewn selves across the ground.

  Fuck!

  He’d missed this one—one of the infecteds climbing through a pile of debris just on the edge of his peripheral vision.

  He swung the fifty as far left as it would go, the infected a half second from escaping his range.

  One squeeze and in the brilliance of the closest spotlight, a red cloud blew out the side of the thing’s head as it crashed to the ground.

  Fuckin’a it felt good to be back behind the big fifty, almost made him miss Iraqistan. Crazy thing, but while cruising those insurgent-infested shithole neighborhoods, it had occurred to Rogers that war hadn’t felt like war at all. Not that he’d had—

  Shit!

  Four rounds practically cut the monster running toward him in half at the waist.

  —any real inkling of what it would be like, but certainly not what it had turned out to be, all so surreal and horrific, like the best videogame you ever played—ridiculous and fun and profoundly sad, and after awhile, like nothing. Beyond computation.

  Here came a pack of them now, all streaking toward him and hissing, and he let them get close this time, inside of thirty feet, before he cut loose, and knowing he still had four 100-round belts, he went a little crazy, barrel blazing until those monsters had practically dissolved into red mist in front of him.

  Fuck, that felt good!

  He was just getting going now, sweeping the rubble back and forth, jonesing to go again, but the fifty-high was fading fast.

  Then it was gone.

  Nothing moved in the ruins.

  Come on! He was just getting warmed up. One more. Please, God, send one more. One more of those fucked-up creatures for me to kill, and I swear I won’t even fucking swear any more.

  But still nothing moved. Nothing except that TV helicopter, coming down to land on the grass a few dozen yards from his hummer. Rogers hoped it was filled with monsters—lighting up a chopper would be hella-good—but when it landed some children piled out.

  Rogers felt something inside him deflating. That emptiness that had always filled him after a recon—

  Wait.

  There.

  Forty feet ahead, a piece of blackened cinderblock shifted.

  Thank you, God.

  He sited up the movement, felt his heart starting to beat a little faster now. No headshot this time. Not even center mass. He was going to savor this one. Take it slow, start low, work his way up the legs, do the knees one at a time.

  Now several pieces of cinderblock were thrown aside and a creature slowly came to its feet.

  Rogers smiled.

  Can’t believe they pay me to do this shit.

  He aimed at one of the feet as the monster started toward him across the rubble, and his finger has just begun to ease back on the trigger when he stopped.

  This thing didn’t move like those monsters.

  It wore blue scrubs, partly singed, but it moved…like a man. An uninfected man.

  “Don’t shoot!” the man said as he approached, his hands lifted.

  “Stop right fucking there!” Rogers screamed.

  The man stopped. “I’m not one of them. I swear to—”

  “Don’t matter.”

  “I’m one of the few survivors of this massacre, soldier. I would imagine you have some people who need treatment. I am a doctor here.” He glanced back at what was left of Blessed Crucifixion. “Or I used to be.”

  Rogers finger twitched. All he could think about were Halford’s orders.

  Shoot anything that tries to crawl out, I don’t give a good goddamn if it’s your mother, mow that bitch down.

  He signed up to do some killing, for fucking sure, even killed some civvies in Iraqistan, but those had all been accidents. Dumbasses reaching for a cell phone at the wrong time, buenas noches, muthafucker.

  “Come closer,” Rogers said.

  The doctor stepped into the illumination of the spotlight mounted to the roof beside the 50 cal.

  He was sc
ratched up all to hell. Young doctor, too. Thirty-one, thirty-two tops.

  “What’s your name?” Rogers asked.

  “Dr. Cook. Look, it’s an infection spread by biting. I’m not bitten anywhere.”