Draculas: A Novel of Terror

“It’s a paperback, you moron. How much wisdom you gonna find in there?”

“Yeah, you’re right. It says, ‘Do Not Try This at Home. Use Only Under Expert Supervision or You’ll Be Really, Really, Really Sorry.’ Better not mess with that.”

“Oh, yeah?” Mick the Mick had had it—really had it. Up. To. Here. He opened to a random page and read. “‘Random Dislocation Spell.’ “

Willie winced. “Not my shoulder!”

“ ‘Use only under expert supervision.’ Yeah, right. Look, it’s got a bunch of gobbledygook to read.”

“You mean like ‘Mekka-lekka hi—?”

“Shaddap and I’ll show you what bullshit this is.”

Mick the Mick started reading, pronouncing the gobbledygook as best he could, going slow and easy so he didn’t screw up the words like he normally did when he read.

When he finished he looked at Willie and grinned. “See? No random dislocation.”

Willie rolled his shoulder. “Yeah. Feels pretty good. I wonder—”

The smell hit Mick the Mick first, hot and overpowering, reminding him of that time he stuck his head in the toilet because his older brother told him that’s where brownies came from. It was followed by the very real sensation of being squeezed. But not squeezed by a person. Squeezed all over by some sort of full-body force like being pushed through a too-small opening. The air suddenly became squishy and solid and pressed into every crack and pore on Mick the Mick’s body, and then it undulated, moving him, pushing him, through the solid marble floor of the Arkham Pennsylvania Museum of Natural History and Baseball Cards.

The very fabric of reality, or something like that, seemed to vibrate with a deep resonance, and the timbre rose to become an overpowering, guttural groan. The floor began to dissolve, or maybe he began to dissolve, and then came a horrible yet compelling farting sound and Mick the Mick was suddenly plopped into the middle of a jungle.

Willie landed next to him.

“I feel like shit,” Willie said.

Mick the Mick squinted in the sunlight and looked around. They were surrounded by strange, tropical trees and weird looking flowers with big fat pink petals that made him feel sort of horny. A dragonfly the size of a bratwurst hovered over their heads, gave them a passing glance, then buzzed over to one of the pink flowers, which snapped open and bit the bug in half.

“Where are we, Mick?”

Mick the Mick scratched his head. “I’m not sure. But I think when I read that book I opened a portal in the space-time continuum and we were squeezed through one of the eleven imploded dimensions into the late Cretaceous Period.”

“Wow. That sucks.”

“No, Willie. It doesn’t suck at all.”

“Yeah it does. The season finale of MacGyver: The Next Generation is on tonight. It’s a really cool episode where he builds a time machine out of some pocket lint and a broken meat thermometer. Wouldn’t it be cool to have a time machine, Mick?”

Mick the Mick slapped Willie on the side of his head.

“Jesus, Mick! You know I got swimmer’s ear!”

“Don’t you get it, Willie? This book is a time machine. We can go back in time!”

Willie got wide-eyed. “I get it! We can get back to the present a few minutes early so I won’t miss MacGyver!”

Mick the Mick considered hitting him again, but his hand was getting sore.

“Think bigger than MacGyver, Willie. We’re going to be rich. Rich and famous and powerful. Once I figure out how this book works we’ll be able to go to any point in history.”

“You mean like we go back to summer camp in nineteen seventy-five? Then we could steal the candy from those counselors so they couldn’t lure us into the woods and touch us in the bad place.”

“Even better, Willie. We can bet on sports and always win. Like that movie.”

“Which one?”

“The one where he went to the past and bet on sports so he could always win.”

“The Godfather?”

“No, Willie. The Godfather was the one with the fat guy who slept with horse heads.”

“Oh yeah. Hey Mick, don’t you think those big pink flowers look like…

“Shut your stupid hole, Willie. I gotta think.”

Mick the Mick racked his brain, but he was never into sports, and he couldn’t think of a single team that won anything. Plus, he didn’t have any money on him. It would take a long time to parlay the eighty-one cents in his pocket into sixty grand. But there had to be other ways to make money with a time machine. Probably.

He glanced at Willie, who was walking toward one of those pink flowers, leaning in to sniff it. Or perhaps do something else with it, because Willie’s tongue was out.

“Willie! Get away from that thing and try to focus! We need to figure out how to make some money.”

“It smells like fish, Mick.”

“Dammit, Willie! Did you take your medicine this morning like you’re supposed to?”

“I can’t remember. Nana says I need a stronger subscription. But every time I go to the doctor to get one I get distracted and forget to ask.”

Mick the Mick scratched himself. Another dragonfly—this one shaped like a banana wearing a turtleneck—flew up to one of those pink flowers and was bitten in half too. Damn, those bugs were stupid. They just didn’t learn.

Mick the Mick scratched himself again, wondering if the crabs were back. If they were, it made him really angry. When you paid fifty bucks for a massage at Madame Yoko’s, the happy ending should be crab-free.

Willie said, “Maybe we can go back to the time when Nate the Nose was a little boy, and then we could be real nice to him so when he grew up he would remember us and wouldn’t make us eat our junk.”

Or we could push his stroller into traffic, Mick the Mick thought.

But Nate the Nose had bosses, and they probably had bosses too, and traveling through time to push a bunch of babies in front of moving cars seemed like a lot of work.

“Money, Willie. We need to make money.”

“We could buy old stuff in the past then sell it on eBay. Hey, wouldn’t it be cool to have four hands? I mean, you could touch twice as much stuff.”

Mick the Mick thought about those old comics in Willie’s basement, and then he grinned wider than a zebra’s ass.

“Like Action Comics #1, which had the first appearance of Superman!” Mick the Mick said. “I could buy it with the change in my pocket, and we can sell it for a fortune!”

Come to think of it, he could buy eight copies. Didn’t they go for a million a piece these days?

“I wish I could fly, Mick. Could we go back into time and learn to fly like Superman? Then we could have flown away from those camp counselors before they stuck their…”

“Shh!” Mick the Mick tilted his head to the side, listening to the jungle. “You hear something, Willie?”

“Yeah, Mick. I hear you talkin’ to me. Now I hear me talkin’. Now I’m singing a sooooong, a haaaaaaaaappy soooooong.”

Mick the Mick gave Willie a smack in the teeth, then locked his eyes on the treeline. In the distance the canopy rustled and parted, like something really big was walking toward them. Something so big the ground shook with every step.

“You hear that, Mick? Sounds like something really big is coming.”

A deafening roar from the thing in the trees, so horrible Mick the Mick could feel his curlies straighten.

“Think it’s friendly?” Willie asked.

Mick the Mick stared down at his hands, which still held the Really, Really, Really Old Ones book. He flipped it open to a random page, forcing himself to concentrate on the words. But, as often happened in stressful situation, or even situations not all that stressful, the words seemed to twist and mash up and go backward and upside-down. Goddamn lesdyxia—shit—dyslexia.

“Maybe we should run, Mick.”

“Yeah, maybe…wait! No! We can’t run!”

“Why can’t we run, Mick?”

“Remember that episode of The Simpsons where Homer went back in time and stepped on a butterfly and then Bart cut off his head with some hedge clippers?”

“That’s two different episodes, Mick. They’re both Treehouse of Horror episodes, but from different years.”

“Look, Willie, the point is, evolution is a really fickle bitch. If we screw up something in the past it can really mess up the future.”

“That sucks. You mean we would get back to our real time but instead of being made of skin and bones we’re made entirely out of fruit? Like some kind of juicy fruit people?”

Another growl, even closer. It sounded like a lion’s roar—if the lion had balls the size of Chryslers.

“I mean really bad stuff, Willie. I gotta read another passage and get us out of here.”

The trees parted, and a shadow began to force itself into view.

“Hey, Mick, if you were made of fruit, would you take a bite of your own arm if you were really super hungry? I think I would. I wonder what I’d taste like?”

Mick the Mick tried to concentrate on reading the page, but his gaze kept flicking up to the trees. The prehistoric landscape lapsed into deadly silence. Then, like some giant monster coming out of the jungle, a giant monster came out of the jungle.

The head appeared first, the size of a sofa—a really big sofa—with teeth the size of daggers crammed into a mouth large enough to tear a refrigerator in half.

“I think I’d take a few bites out of my leg or something, but I’d be afraid because I don’t know if I could stop. Especially if I tasted like strawberries, because I love strawberries, Mick. Why are they called strawberries when they don’t taste like straw? Hey, is that a T-Rex?”

Now Mick the Mick pee-peed more than just a little. The creature before them was a deep green color, blending seamlessly into the undergrowth. Rather than scales, it was adorned with small, prickly hairs that Mick the Mick realized were thin brown feathers. Its huge nostrils flared and it snorted, causing the book’s pages to ripple.

“I really think we should run, Mick.”

Mick the Mick agreed. The Tyrannosaur stepped into the clearing on massive legs and reared up to its full height, over forty feet tall. Mick the Mick knew he couldn’t outrun it. But he didn’t have to. He only had to outrun Willie. He felt bad, but he had no other choice. He had to trick his best friend if he wanted to survive.

“The T-Rex has really bad vision, Willie. If you stay very still, it won’t be able to—-Willie, come back!”

Willie had broken for the trees, moving so fast he was a blur. Mick the Mick tore after him, swatting dragonflies out of the way as he ran. Underfoot he trampled on a large brown roach, a three-toed lizard with big dewy eyes and a disproportionately large brain, and a small furry mammal with a face that looked a lot like Sal from Manny’s Meats on 23rd street, which gave a disturbingly human-like cry when its little neck snapped.

Behind them, the T-Rex moved with the speed of a giant two-legged cat shaped like a dinosaur, snapping teeth so close to Mick the Mick that they nipped the eighteen trailing hairs of his comb-over. He chanced a look over his shoulder and saw the mouth of the animal open so wide that Mick the Mick could set up a table for four on the creature’s tongue and play Texas Hold ’em, not that he would, because that would be fucking stupid.

Then, just as the death jaws of death were ready to close on Mick the Mick and cause terminal death, the T-Rex skidded to a halt and craned its neck skyward, peering up through the trees.

Mick the Mick continued to sprint, stepping on a family of small furry rodents who looked a lot like the Capporellis up in 5B—so much so that he swore one even said “Fronzo!” when he broke its little furry spine—and then he smacked smack into Willie, who was standing still and staring up.

“Willie! What the hell are you doing? We gotta move!”

“Why, Mick? We’re not being chased anymore.”

Mick looked back and noticed that, indeed, the thunder lizard had abandoned its pursuit, focusing instead on the sky.

“I think it’s looking at the asteroid,” Willie said.

Mick the Mick shot a look upward and stared at the very large flaming object that seemed to take up a quarter of the sky.

“I don’t think it was there a minute ago,” Willie said. “I don’t pay good attention but I think I woulda noticed it, don’t you think?”

“This ain’t good. This ain’t no good at all.”

“Look how big it’s getting, Mick! We should hide behind some trees or something.”

“We gotta get out of here, Willie.” Mick the Mick said, his voice high-pitched and uncomfortably girlish.

“Feel that wind, Mick? It’s hot. I bet that thing is going a hundred miles an hour. Do you feel it?”

“I feel it! I feel it!”

“Do you smell fish, Mick? Hey, look! Those pink flowers that look like—”

Willie screamed. Mick the Mick glanced over and saw his lifelong friend was playing tug of war with one of those toothy prehistoric plants, using a long red rope.

No. Not a red rope. Those were Willie’s intestines.

“Help me, Mick!”

Without thinking, Mick the Mick reached out a hand and grabbed Willie’s duodenum. He squeezed, tight as he could, and Willie farted.

“It hurts, Mick! Being disemboweled hurts!”

A bone-shaking roar, from behind them. The T-Rex had lost interest in the asteroid and was sniffing at the newly spilled blood, his sofa-sized head only a few meters away and getting closer. Mick the Mick could smell its breath, reeking of rotten meat and bad oral hygiene and dooky.

No, the dooky was coming from Willie. Pouring out like brown shaving cream.

Mick the Mick released his friend’s innards and wiped his hand on Willie’s shirt. The pink flower made a pbbbthh sound and did the same, without the wiping the hand part.

“I gotta put this stuff back in.” Willie began scooping up guts and twigs and rocks and shoving them into the gaping hole in his belly.

Mick the Mick figured Willie was in shock, or perhaps even stupider than he’d originally surmised. He considered warning Willie about the infection he’d get from filling himself with dirt, but there were other, more pressing, matters at hand.

The asteroid now took up most of the horizon, and the heat from it turned the sweat on Mick the Mick’s body into steam. They needed to get out of here, and fast. If only there was someplace to hide.

Something scurried over Mick the Mick’s foot and he flinched, stomping down. Crushed under his heel was something that looked like a beaver. The animal kind. Another proto-beaver beelined around its dead companion, heading through the underbrush into…

“It’s a hole, Willie! I think it’s a cave!”

Mick the Mick pushed aside a large fern branch and squatted down. The hole led to a diagonalish path, dark and rocky, deep down into the earth.

“It’s a hole, Willie! I think it’s a cave!”

“You said that, Mick!”

“That’s an echo, Willie! Hole must go down deep.”

Mick the Mick watched as two more lizards, a giant mosquito, and more beaver things poured into the cave, escaping the certain extinction the asteroid promised.

“That’s an echo, Willie! Hole must go down deep.”

“You’re repeating yourself, Mick!”

“I’m not repeating myself!” Mick yelled.

“Yes you are!”

“No I’m not!”

“I’m not repeating myself!”

“Yes you are!”

“No I’m not!”

“You just did!”

“I’m not, Willie!”

“I’m hurt bad, Mick!”

“I’m not, Willie!”

“I said I’m hurt, Mick! Not you!”

Mick the Mick decided not to pursue this line of conversation anymore. Instead, he focused on moving the big outcropping of rock partially obscuring the cave’s entrance. If he could budge it just a foot or two, he could fit into the cave and maybe save himself.

Mick the Mick put his shoulder to the boulder, grunting with effort. Slowly, antagonizingly slowly, it began to move.

“You got your cell phone, Mick? You should maybe call 911 for me. Tell them to bring some stitches.”

Just a little more. A little bit more…

“I think my stomach just fell out. What’s a stomach look like, Mick? This looks like a kidney bean.”

Finally, the rock broke away from the base with a satisfying crack. But rather than rolling to the side, it teetered, and then dropped down over the hole, sealing it like a manhole cover.

Mick the Mick began to cry.

“Do kidneys look like kidney beans, Mick?” Willie made a smacking sound. “Doesn’t taste like beans. Or kidneys. Hey, the T-Rex is back. He doesn’t look distracted no more. You think he took is medication?”

The T-Rex opened its mouth and reared up over Mick the Mick’s head, blotting out the sky. All Mick the Mick could see was teeth and tongue and that big dangly thing that hangs in the back of the throat like a punching bag.

“Read to him, Mick. When Nana reads to me, I go to sleep.”

The book. They needed to escape this time period. Maybe go into the future, to before Nana baked the cake so they could stop her.

Mick the Mick lifted the Really, Really, Really Old Ones and squinted at it. His hands shook, and his vision swam, and all the vowels on the page looked exactly the same and the consonants looked like pretzel sticks and the hair still left on his comb-over was starting to singe and the T-Rex’s jaws began to close and another one of those pink flowers leaned in took a big bite out of Little Mick and the Twins but he managed to sputter out:

“OTKIN ADARAB UTAALK!”

Another near-turd experience and then they were excreted into a room with a television and a couch and a picture window. But the television screen was embedded—or growing out of?—a toadstoollike thing that was in turn growing out of the floor. The couch looked funny, like who’d sit on that? And the picture window looked out on some kind of nightmare jungle.

And then again, maybe not so weird.

No, Mick the Mick thought. Weird. Very weird.

He looked at Willie.

And screamed.

Or at least tried to. What came out was more like a croak.

Because it wasn’t Willie. Not unless Willie had grown four extra eyes—two of them on stalks—and sprouted a fringe of tentacles around where he used to have a neck and shoulders. He now looked like a conical turkey croquette that had been rolled in seasoned breadcrumbs before baking and garnished with live worms after.

The thing made noises that sounded like, “Mick, is that you?” but spoken by a turkey croquette with a mouth full of linguini.

Stranger still, it sounded a little like Willie. Mick the Mick raised a tentacle to scratch his—

Whoa! Tentacle?

Well, of course a tentacle. What did he expect?

He looked down and was surprised to see that he was encased in a breadcrumbed, worm-garnished turkey croquette. No, wait, he was a turkey croquette.

Why did everything seem wrong, and yet simultaneously at the same time seem not wrong too?

Just then another six-eyed, tentacle-fringed croquette glided into the room. The Willie-sounding croquette said, “Hi, Nana.” His words were much clearer now.

Nana? Was this Willie’s Nana?

Of course it was. Mick the Mick had known her for years.

“There’s an unpleasant man at the door who wants to talk to you. Or else.”

“Or else what?”

A new voice said, “Or else you two get to eat cloacal casseroles, and guess who donates the cloacas?”

Mick the Mick unconsciously crossed his tentacles over his cloaca. In his twenty-four years since budding, Mick the Mick had grown very attached to his cloaca. He’d miss it something awful.

A fourth croquette had entered, followed by the two biggest croquettes Mick the Mick had ever seen. Only these weren’t turkey croquettes, these were chipped-beef croquettes. This was serious.

The new guy sounded like Nate the Nose, but didn’t have a nose. And what was a nose anyway?

“Oh, no,” Willie moaned. “I don’t want to eat Mick’s cloaca.”

“I meant your own, jerk!” the newcomer barked.

“But I have a hernia—”

“Shaddap!”

Mick the Mick recognized him now: Nate the Noodge, pimp, loan shark, and drug dealer. Not the sort you leant your bike to.

Wait …what was a bike?

“What’s up, Nate?”

“That brick of product I gave you for delivery. I had this sudden, I dunno, bad feeling about it. A frisson of malaise and apprehension, you might say. I just hadda come by and check on it, knome sayn?”

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 dwell 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 scratched 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.”

Dr. Cook lifted his hands, turning in a slow circle.

I should just fucking put two rounds through his chest right now and call it good. If Halford finds out I let someone through, I’m in for a serious ass-fucking.

Rogers was about to let the gun eat the unlucky doc up, but those damn TV folks from the helicopter, with the damn kids and their damn camera, came running up. Then the damn pilot handed the damn doctor a baby.

Shit. Live on Channel 6, lone soldier massacres seven civvies. After the networks and CNN got tired of it, the clip would be on YouTube forever.

Rogers flicked on the safety.

“Getcher ass behind the perimeter line,” Rogers said, “By the trailer in the lot.”

“Sure thing, and thank you…what was your name?”

“Doesn’t matter. Fact, don’t even tell them you talked to me. I’m supposed to kill anything that moves.”

“What about serve and protect?”

“That’s the police, brother. Marines just break shit.”

The doctor smiled. “I won’t breathe a word.”

Then Dr. Cook led the group through the Humvee’s headlights, heading for the perimeter. Rogers climbed off the mount. He had to piss. Another symptom of combat. Some reason, after a firefight, his bladder felt like it was the size of a grape.

He made sure the TV guys weren’t taping him, then took three steps away from the hummer and unzipped, getting things going with a grunt, then streaming urine onto the grass.

He heard something behind him.

CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK…

Rogers spun, reaching for his sidearm, pulsing urine all over his boots.

He pointed the .45 toward the hummer but didn’t see anything.

“Who’s there?”

No answer. Not that the enemy would answer. Could those monsters even talk? Rogers didn’t know, and didn’t care. It wasn’t his job to ask questions.

His piss had dwindled to a trickle. Rogers still had to go, but instead chose to check-in and await orders. He didn’t like being out here alone, even armed to the teeth. But keeping a perimeter around five acres of property, coupled with their casualties, had stretched their unit thin. He holstered both of his weapons (this is my rifle, this is my gun, this is for fighting, this is for fun) climbed into his Humvee, and picked up the radio. Just as he pressed the button to talk, he heard the sound again.

CLICK CLICK CLICK…

But it was closer this time.

Closer, and coming from the back seat.

His eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror.

Staring back at him was one of those monsters, its face burned, some parts right down to the white bone beneath. One eye missing, pink goo dripping out. Sitting back there, click click clicking its horrible teeth as a rope of drool slid out of its jaws.

Rogers immediately reached for his .45, but the creature was on him before he cleared his holster, biting into his neck, so deep that Rogers felt its fangs dragging across his vertebrae.

The pain was instant, blinding, and, strangely, infuriating. Even as his blood gushed out and his vision faded to black, Rogers was royally pissed off that one of these things had gotten the drop on him. Two fucking tours in the Middle East, only to die in Colorado.

It was fucking embarrassing.

Rogers reached blindly for his utility belt, freeing an M67 frag grenade. He pulled the pin with a flick of his thumb, and it dropped it onto his lap just as his consciousness slipped away.

Semper fi, muthafucker.

Private Rogers never heard the explosion.

Deleted Joke

Joe says: Jeff deleted this joke that I inserted into one of Paul’s scenes, in Dr. Lanz’s POV, during the ER massacre in the beginning. He said that Lanz wasn’t the type to think up a joke like this. He’s right, and I was okay with cutting it. But I did cry for two days straight.

Dr. Lanz

“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 sizable chunk—mostly fat, but a little of the gluteus was exposed.

Talk about a half-assed injury.

Alternate Ending

Joe says: This was as close as we got to any outright disagreements while writing this. And I gotta give big props to FPW, because it was totally unfair to him. We established early on that we’d all have POV characters, and we could end up doing what we wanted with them. I met with Jeff in Florida and we discussed how the Jenny/Randall dynamic would end up—they were star crossed lovers, with Randall’s love strong enough for him to fight for Jenny even after he became a dracula. I’d also discussed Adam and Stacie’s fates with Blake, and since he grooves on nihilism and tragedy, he decided to go the tragic route.

Paul had free reign to do what he wanted with Shanna and Clay, though we’d all discussed letting Shanna live. Clay’s fate, however, changed often during our email discussions. He lived and died and lived and died, back and forth, over and over. The problem was Clay turned out to be one of the most memorable, and likeable, characters in the book.

We all knew going into this that we wanted a Night of the Living Dead type of ending. So Paul did what each of us did—he killed his main character in a spectacular fashion.

But I really didn’t want Clay to die. Paul had created such a fun character, and the rest of the climax was such a downer, that I really believed Clay should live.

Happily, Paul was big enough to allow it, even though it was uncool of me to be such a whining little bitch boy. We compromised with the new, happier ending that appears in the manuscript.

Paul also introduced another mysterious character in these scenes named Dr. Driscoll, who seems to understand what’s going on. This hints at a deep government conspiracy. We all liked this idea, especially if we do a sequel, but it confused some of our beta readers. If we do wind up writing Draculas 2, no doubt Dr. Driscoll will be a key figure.

Shanna

SHE stood by Clay’s suburban, watching the dark, blocky mass of the hospital. A faint, faint glow lit some of the windows, probably backwash from the emergency lights in the hallways, but for the most part it looked dead and deserted. But looks were deceiving. She knew it crawled with—what had Jenny’s ex called them? Draculas. Right. Jenny and her ex were in there—still human, she hoped—and so was Clay.

She prayed for his safe return. Yes, she was going to break his heart when he did return, but she wanted him back. Because somehow the world seemed a better place with Clay than without him.

Ten minutes ago the army had roared in and heavily armed soldiers had piled out of their trucks. A large black trailer had followed the soldiers into the lot but had parked away toward the rear. The people who had emerged were civilians.

And then something scary: The army set up spotlights at the emergency entrance, around the main entrance, and at each stairwell exit. Then they’d positioned soldiers with flame throwers at each point. Looked like they’d been convinced it was contagious. She’d expected officialdom to scoff at the stories of what had gone on in the hospital, but she guessed the recording Clay had insisted on making had convinced them.

Well, she’d never said he was a dummy, just not on her wavelength.

Just then, to her right at the corner of the building, flames lit the night. A scream echoed and then died.

Her heart stumbled over a beat. That was the door she and Clay had used to escape, the door he’d re-entered. They wouldn’t have burned him by mistake, would they? No…that scream had had an unearthly quality. Had to be one of those draculas trying to escape the building. Still…

She took a step in that direction to go check, just to be sure, when she noticed movement on the ground, not too far from her. She looked closer and saw one of the supposedly dead state troopers moving—one of the pair Clay hadn’t shot.

Oh, God. As it lifted its head and looked her way, glow from the army headlights glinted off rows of long sharp teeth.

“Hey!” she called. “Hey, somebody! We’ve got trouble over here! Hey!”

Nobody seemed to hear her. The noise from truck motors revving, soldiers shouting to each other, giving and taking orders, swallowed her cries.

“Hey!” she called, raising her voice to its limit. “A little help over here.”

She backed up a few steps, readying to run, fearing it was coming for her, but it veered away, toward the empty darkness.

Confused? The side of its skull looked bashed in. Too damaged to know what it was doing? Well, that was fine with Shanna…

Except if it got away and bit someone, the plague would be loose and there’d be no stopping it.

She screamed. “Will somebody please—oh, crap!” He was going to get away and no one was paying her a bit off attention.

She glanced in the rear of Clay’s Suburban and saw his super shotgun, his beloved AA-something. She didn’t want to touch it…she remembered Marge back in the chapel, but somebody had to stop that thing.

She grabbed the gun and went around the other side of the car in time to see the dracula passing. How hard could this be? She raised the shotgun, pointed it toward the thing, and, closing her eyes—she couldn’t look—pulled the trigger.

The gun boomed but had nowhere near the kick of that pistol Clay had handed her.

She opened her eyes and saw the dracula on the pavement. She was about to congratulate herself when she realized it was still alive, if that was what you could call whatever it was, and trying to regain its feet. But it couldn’t. Shanna had shredded its knee.

“Lower your weapon!” shouted a voice behind her.

She turned and found herself facing the muzzles of half a dozen guns of various shapes and sizes and a chorus telling her to drop it. She laid the shotgun gently on the pavement. After all, Clay loved that thing.

“Now you listen!” she said.

A soldier who looked like he was in command got in her face. “What do you think you’re doing, firing that here?”

Shanna jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “One of them was getting away.”

A couple of the soldiers looked past her. She could tell by their expressions they’d never seen a dracula before.

“Get Doctor Driscoll,” the officer said.

A few minutes later a woman, one of the civilians from the big trailer, appeared. She stared at the dracula with virtually no reaction, not a hint of surprise.

After a few seconds she said, “Dispose of it.”

The officer motioned behind him and a soldier with a flame thrower appeared.

“Light it up,” he told him.

The soldier hesitated, then sent a stream of liquid fire at the thing, engulfing it in flame. It screamed, spasmed, rolled on the ground, then lay still.

Shanna turned away and retched. That had once been a person…

She turned back to the woman, Dr. Driscoll. “Is that the only way to stop the infection?”

The woman stared at her with an alarmed expression. “Infection? Who said anything about infection?”

“It’s obvious.”

“It’s nothing of the sort.”

And then it hit Shanna. Dr. Driscoll hadn’t been repulsed by the dracula. She’d been expecting it. “You’ve seen this before, haven’t you? You knew about this.”

“Who are you and where do you get your wild ideas?”

“I was in there. I saw—”

“In there? In the hospital?” The doctor signaled to the soldiers. “Lock her in quarantine.”

A pair of them grabbed her, one by each arm, and were dragging her toward the trailer when four of the hospital’s third-floor windows facing the parking lot blew out, belching flame and filling the air with bits of glass and charred flesh.

“Clay? Oh, no! Clay!”

Jenny

There was a frightening moment when the whole building shuddered from some sort of explosion. One of Clay’s toys? Or had the cavalry finally arrived?

Jenny continued to stare up at the military helicopter. Over the din of the rotors she yelled, “Down here!”

It hovered directly overhead, and she watched one of the bay doors open. Then they began to lower a rescue basket down on a cable.

No…not a rescue basket.

What the heck is that?

Shanna

The soldiers who had been escorting her—a euphemism—to the trailer had seemed as shocked by the explosion as she. She’d tried to use their distraction to escape but they had too secure a grip on her. They’d pulled her inside and stuck her in what they’d called “the quarantine room.”

It looked improvised in some ways—a featureless space with no decorations and half a dozen one-piece polymer chairs. But the small, fixed window that had to be at least an inch thick said otherwise. The best thing about that window was it faced the parking lot. Shanna had her nose pressed against it now, hands cupped around her eyes to shut out the room light, straining to see what was going on.

What had happened? An explosion could mean only one person: Clay. But what could he have been carrying to blow out a wall like that? Better not to think about it. Who knew what Clay carried in his bag of tricks?

The door opened behind her. She turned to see four disheveled-looking kids being herded into the room by the same two soldiers who had brought her. They moved away and Dr. Driscoll stepped into the doorway. She held a squalling baby in her arms.

“Here,” she said, holding it out to Shanna. “It’s a girl.”

Not knowing what else to do, Shanna took her. One look at her face told her it was a newborn.

“What—?”

Dr. Driscoll sniffed. “I don’t do babies.”

Shanna had done a ton of babysitting as a teen. She knew that cry.

“She’s starving.”

“We have nothing to feed it.”

“But—”

“She must be quarantined with the rest of you. Deal with it.”

She shut the door.

Shanna turned to the kids and, over the baby’s screams, pieced together a disjointed story about a guy with a chainsaw—had to be Jenny’s Randall—and a “guy with a big cool gun”—no question who that was—who had saved them and put them on the helicopter.

“Only four of you?”

They nodded and began to cry. Not a good question.

The door opened again, revealing neither the soldiers nor Dr. Driscoll. Instead, a good-looking guy in green scrubs and longish brown hair stood there, smiling.

“Hello, Shanna. I’m Doctor Cook, a pediatrician. I’ve come to check over the baby.”

He reached for her and Shanna gladly relinquished the screaming child.

As soon as Dr. Cook cradled her in his arms, she stopped crying. Shanna looked to see if anything was wrong but she had her eyes open and was staring at the doctor.

“That’s amazing.”

He smiled again. “I have a way with children.”

Something familiar about him, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

He glanced up and down the hall, then looked her directly in the eyes. “You don’t belong here. I’m stepping outside. You can come with me if you wish.”

“But the kids—”

“Will be fine. This is a one-time offer.”

Shanna didn’t know about this. “I can just walk out?”

“The military personnel are distracted at the moment. That is only temporary, I assure you. Come.”

He turned and walked toward the rear of the trailer. Shanna followed, saying, “But I came in—”

“Two entrances.”

He led her to a door that opened on the side opposite the hospital. Three steps down and fifty feet across the pavement put them on the edge of the trees bordering the parking lot. He turned and stared toward the hospital. She followed his gaze and saw the soldiers withdrawing deeper into the lot, away from the building.

“Are they leaving?”

“Hardly.”

He pointed up to a helicopter, much larger than the TV station’s, hovering over the hospital roof. Its flashing lights revealed a long, bulky cylinder hanging vertically from a cable as it was lowered to the roof.

“Is that something to haul away survivors?”

“Hardly.” His tone was grim as he repeated the word.

She glanced at him—so was his expression. She again had that sense of déjà vu—that somehow she’d seen him before, that they’d met before.

“What is it, then?”

“They call it an ‘autoclave.’“

She’d heard Dr. Driscoll mention that, but still had no idea what it was.

“That’s no help.”

“In medical facilities, it’s a device used to steam sterilize medical instruments.”

She shook her head. “I’m not following.”

“No reason you should. I didn’t understand either, so I eavesdropped. It’s a giant shaped charge. When detonated it will shoot a plasma jet down through the hospital roof with irresistible force at a speed of eight-thousand feet per second. The jet will penetrate each of the floors like an anti-tank missile melting through steel armor plate. The air in the hospital will heat to ten thousand degrees, sterilizing the entire structure.”

Shanna heard the words as she watched the helicopter ascend from the roof and fly off without its cargo, but they weren’t making sense.

…plasma jet…ten-thousand degrees… sterilize the entire structure…

And then—

“Oh, my God! They can’t! Clay’s in there!”

Jenny

BY the time she realized that the object they had dropped on the roof was a bomb—a huge, army-green charge—Jenny had just enough time for a belly laugh. Randall would have appreciated the irony of surviving a dracula outbreak only to be killed by the good guys.

Clay

He snatched up the Taurus and began wiping her off. Poor girl was a mess—blood, plaster dust, and who knew what else.

He hugged her to his chest. “Hey, baby. Gonna take you home and get you cleaned up and oiled and good as—”

He heard a boom from above and then a blast of heat like a solar flare fused Alice to his chest and his last thought was how they’d be together forever.

Shanna

Shanna began to run toward the parking lot. She had to find Dr. Driscoll, had to convince her not to—

The roof of the hospital exploded in an incandescent flare. The boom and shockwave stopped her in her tracks and she watched in horror as the windows and walls of the fourth floor belched flame and debris, followed almost immediately by the third and second and first. Every entrance, every exit blew its doors and shot flames like giant blowtorches.

And then the floors began to collapse—first the roof onto the fourth, then the fourth onto the third, pancaking all the way down to ground level, leaving only a flame-riddled cloud of smoke and dust and debris on the far side of the parking lot.

A cheer went up from the watching soldiers and she wanted to kill them. Instead, she began to cry. Huge, wracking sobs shook her to her toes.

Clay… she felt the ring box in her pocket pressing against her thigh. A good man, a hero, and no one would know. Not that Clay would care. No, wait. Those kids would know. They’d remember the guy with the big cool gun. Clay would love to be remembered that way, but—

She felt a hand on her shoulder and spun—Dr. Cook.

“You’d better go,” he said.

She wiped her tears. “Where? How?”

“Walk into the woods and keep going. Don’t look back, and don’t go home.”

“Why not?”

“They’ll be looking for you.”

“Who are ‘they?’“

He frowned as he stared at the trailer. “I don’t know. And I don’t know how they learned about—” He cut himself off with a quick shake of his head and looked at her. “Whoever they are, they don’t want you running around. You weren’t locked in that room because they thought you might be infected. You’ve seen too much. They want to contain you.”

“But where can I go?”

“Anywhere but here. Please. Get away now.”

“Why are you doing this? Why do you care?”

He hesitated. “You seem like a good person. And… I’d like to know you better. But that can’t happen if you’re locked away. Now go—please.”

She turned and hurried into the woods with no idea where she was going. But as the trees swallowed her, a slow-burning anger replaced her grief. They killed Clay Theel, a good man who’d asked to marry her. Squashed him like a bug. Where did they get off thinking they could get away with that?

She thought of Clay’s father. After they’d worn each other out in bed, she used to listen to Clay talk about his “daddy” and what a nut he was. But a survivalist type might be just what she needed right now. He deserved to know that his son was dead, and how he died. And he’d be the type to believe why he died.

Where had he said Daddy lived?

Up near Silverton?

That was where she’d head.

The Man in the Scrubs

“You are hungry, aren’t you,” he cooed to the infant in his arms. “Well, we’ll fix that.”

His canine teeth extended. They were so much better than the previous, unwieldy set he’d shed in the laundry room less than half an hour ago. This new form was superior. His thoughts were clear, focused. And he looked human. Better than human. Better than his best days on Wall Street. He would blend in much better than those monsters.

Better still, he was young and healthy again.

He bit the tip of his index finger and watched the blood well into a good-size bead, then put touched it to the baby’s mouth. She made a face at first, then began to suck.

“Looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us, little one. We seem to have experienced a setback on the way to a brave new world, but it’s only temporary. We’ll get there eventually, and you’ll play a big part. Oh, yes, little one. I have big plans for you.”

Alternate Epilogue

Joe says: While brainstorming on the phone with Blake, we got to talking about what would happen if the dracula contagion could infect animals. That led to his rat scene with Adam, and this scene. The idea was to make the contagion a cause for not only vampires, but werewolves. Dracula bites dog, dog bites man, man becomes wolfman. But it just didn’t fit, and seemed tacked-on. If we do write Draculas 2, this might be a sub-plot. Or this might become another book called Werewolves…

Epilogue

Jeremiah Fisk took another swig from the bottle of Early Times and switched off his television with a scowl. For the past hour he’d been watching the media speculate on what exactly had happened at the Blessed Crucifixion Hospital. First they’d called it a rabies outbreak. Then it was a fire. Now they were saying it was a natural gas explosion.

“Gas explosion my ass,” he said.

Fisk lived near the hospital, just a few miles away as the crow flies. He saw the cop cars speed past. Saw the military vehicles.

He also heard the BOOM—strong enough to knock his bowling trophies off his shelves—and saw the fireball shoot up into the sky, bigger’n the Republic Plaza in downtown Denver. Ain’t no way that wasn’t some kinda army bomb.

Fisk padded into the kitchen, and stepped barefoot into something warm and wet.

“Goddammit, Zeke!”

He squinted at the floor, saw a smear of blood. His goddamn German Shepherd. Must have killed something else. Last time it was a rabbit that Zeke had half-eaten then hid behind the sofa. Fisk only found it because it had begun to stink.

If that stupid dog dragged any more varmints into this house, Fisk was gonna chain the mutt outside for a month.

“What did you do this time, Zeke?”

Fisk followed the trail from the linoleum to the carpet—goddamn dog!—and then found Zeke crouched next to the front door, snacking on something.

“What have you got there, dog?”

Fisk bent over to reach for it, and Zeke snarled at him. He gave the dog a smack on the nose, making him drop the animal.

But it wasn’t an animal. Not a whole one, anyway.

It looked kind of like a rat, only its teeth were huge—as big as Zeke’s.

It was the damnedest thing Fisk had ever seen.

“Where’d you get this, boy?” Fisk asked his dog.

Then he noticed the blood dripping from Zeke’s muzzle.

“Shit, Zeke. You hurt? This little son of a bitch take a chunk outta you?”

Fisk pried up his dog’s lip, and was shocked to see most of Zeke’s teeth had fallen out.

Rabies? Was the news story on the TV true?

Naw. Rabies didn’t work that fast. Zeke was fine a few hours ago. And it didn’t make animals lose their teeth.

Didn’t make their teeth grow back, neither.

And Fisk watched, dumbfounded, as Zeke’s new set of teeth grew impossibly long, shearing through the dog’s cheeks, its mouth stretching open, as he leapt up for his owner’s throat.

Desert Places

A bonus excerpt from Blake’s novel, DESERT PLACES, also available in the Kindle Store…

On a lovely May evening, I sat on my deck, watching the sun descend upon Lake Norman. So far, it had been a perfect day. I’d risen at 5:00 A.M. as I always do, put on a pot of French roast, and prepared my usual breakfast of scrambled eggs and a bowl of fresh pineapple. By six o’clock, I was writing, and I didn’t stop until noon. I fried two white crappies I’d caught the night before, and the moment I sat down for lunch, my agent called. Cynthia fields my messages when I’m close to finishing a book, and she had several for me, the only one of real importance being that the movie deal for my latest novel, Blue Murder, had closed. It was good news of course, but two other movies had been made from my books, so I was used to it by now.

I worked in my study for the remainder of the afternoon and quit at 6:30. My final edits of the new as yet untitled manuscript would be finished tomorrow. I was tired, but my new thriller, The Scorcher, would be on bookshelves within the week. I savored the exhaustion that followed a full day of work. My hands sore from typing, eyes dry and strained, I shut down the computer and rolled back from the desk in my swivel chair.

I went outside and walked up the long gravel drive toward the mailbox. It was the first time I’d been out all day, and the sharp sunlight burned my eyes as it squeezed through the tall rows of loblollies that bordered both sides of the drive. It was so quiet here. Fifteen miles south, Charlotte was still gridlocked in rush-hour traffic, and I was grateful not to be a part of that madness. As the tiny rocks crunched beneath my feet, I pictured my best friend, Walter Lancing, fuming in his Cadillac. He’d be cursingthe drone of horns and the profusion of taillights as he inched away from his suite in uptown Charlotte, leaving the quarterly nature magazine Hiker to return home to his wife and children. Not me, I thought, the solitary one.

For once, my mailbox wasn’t overflowing. Two envelopes lay inside, one a bill, the other blank except for my address typed on the outside. Fan mail.

Back inside, I mixed myself a Jack Daniel’s and Sun-Drop and took my mail and a book on criminal pathology out onto the deck. Settling into a rocking chair, I set everything but my drink on a small glass table and gazed down to the water. My backyard is narrow, and the woods flourish a quarter mile on either side, keeping my home of ten years in isolation from my closest neighbors. Spring had not come this year until mid-April, so the last of the pink and white dogwood blossoms still specked the variably green interior of the surrounding forest. Bright grass ran down to a weathered gray pier at the water’s edge, where an ancient weeping willow sagged over the bank, the tips of its branches dabbling in the surface of the water.

The lake is more than a mile wide where it touches my property, making houses on the opposite shore visible only in winter, when the blanket of leaves has been stripped from the trees. So now, in the thick of spring, branches thriving with baby greens and yellows, the lake was mine alone, and I felt like the only living soul for miles around.

I put my glass down half-empty and opened the first envelope. As expected, I found a bill from the phone company, and I scrutinized the lengthy list of calls. When I’d finished, I set it down and lifted the lighter envelope. There was no stamp, which I thought strange, and upon slicing it open, I extracted a single piece of white paper and unfolded it. In the center of the page, one paragraph had been typed in black ink:

Greetings. There is a body buried on your property, covered in your blood. The unfortunate young lady’s name is Rita Jones. You’ve seen this missing schoolteacher’s face on the news, I’m sure. In her jeans pocket you’ll find a slip of paper with a phone number on it. You have one day to call that number. If I have not heard from you by 8:00 P.M. tomorrow (5/17), the Charlotte Police Department will receive an anonymous phone call. I’ll tell them where Rita Jones is buried on Andrew Thomas’s lakefront property, how he killed her, and where the murder weapon can be found in his house. (I do believe a paring knife is missing from your kitchen.) I hope for your sake I don’t have to make that call. I’ve placed a property marker on the grave site. Just walk along the shoreline toward the southern boundary of your property and you’ll find it. I strongly advise against going to the police, as I am always watching you.

A smile edged across my lips. I even chuckled to myself. Because my novels treat crime and violence, my fans often have a demented sense of humor. I’ve received death threats, graphic artwork, even notes from people claiming to have murdered in the same fashion as the serial killers in my books. But I’ll save this, I thought. I couldn’t remember one so original.

I read it again, but a premonitory twinge struck me the second time, particularly because the author had some knowledge regarding the layout of my property. And a paring knife was, in fact, missing from my cutlery block. Carefully refolding the letter, I slipped it into the pocket of my khakis and walked down the steps toward the lake.

As the sun cascaded through the hazy sky, beams of light drained like spilled paint across the western horizon. Looking at the lacquered lake suffused with deep orange, garnet, and magenta, I stood by the shore for several moments, watching two sunsets collide.

Against my better judgment, I followed the shoreline south and was soon tramping through a noisy bed of leaves. I’d gone an eighth of a mile when I stopped. At my feet, amid a coppice of pink flowering mountain laurel, I saw a miniature red flag attached to a strip of rusted metal thrust into the ground. The flag fluttered in a breeze that curled off the water. This has to be a joke, I thought, and if so, it’s a damn good one.

As I brushed away the dead leaves that surrounded the marker, my heart began to pound. The dirt beneath the flag was packed, not crumbly like undisturbed soil. I even saw half a footprint when I’d swept all the leaves away.

I ran back to the house and returned with a shovel. Because the soil had previously been unearthed, I dug easily through the first foot and a half, directly below where the marker had been placed. At two feet, the head of the shovel stabbed into something soft. My heart stopped. Throwing the shovel aside, I dropped to my hands and knees and clawed through the dirt. A rotten stench enveloped me, and as the hole deepened, the smell grew more pungent.

My fingers touched flesh. I drew my hand back in horror and scrambled away from the hole. Rising to my feet, I stared down at a coffee brown ankle, barely showing through the dirt. The odor of rot overwhelmed me, so I breathed only through my mouth as I took up the shovel again.

When the corpse was completely exposed, and I saw what a month of putrefaction could do to a human face, I vomited into the leaves. I kept thinking that I should have the stomach for this because I write about it. Researching the grisly handiwork of serial killers, I’d studied countless mutilated cadavers. But I had never smelled a human being decomposing in the ground, or seen how insects teem in the moist cavities.

I composed myself, held my hand over my mouth and nose, and peered again into the hole. The face was unrecognizable, but the body was undoubtedly that of a short black female, thick in the legs, plump through the torso. She wore a formerly white shirt, now marred with blood and dirt, the fabric rent over much of the chest, primarily in the vicinity of her heart. Jean shorts covered her legs down to the knees. I got back down on all fours, held my breath, and reached for one of her pockets. Her legs were mushy and turgid, and I had great difficulty forcing my hand into the tight jeans. Finding nothing in the first pocket, I stepped across the hole and tried the other. Sticking my hand inside it, I withdrew a slip of paper from a fortune cookie and fell back into the leaves, gasping for clean lungfuls of air. On one side, I saw the phone number; on the other: “you are the only flower of meditation in the wilderness.”

In five minutes, I’d reburied the body and the marker. I took a small chunk of granite from the shore and placed it on the thicketed grave site. Then I returned to the house. It was quarter to eight, and there was hardly any light left in the sky.

Two hours later, sitting on the sofa in my living room, I dialed the number on the slip of paper. Every door to the house was locked, most of the lights turned on, and in my lap, a cold satin stainless .357 revolver.

I had not called the police for a very good reason. The claim that it was my blood on the woman was probably a lie, but the paring knife had been missing from my kitchen for weeks. Also, with the Charlotte Police Department’s search for Rita Jones dominating local news headlines, her body on my property, murdered with my knife, possibly with my fingerprints on it, would be more than sufficient evidence to indict me. I’d researched enough murder trials to know that.

As the phone rang, I stared up at the vaulted ceiling of my living room, glanced at the black baby grand piano I’d never learned to play, the marble fireplace, the odd artwork that adorned the walls. A woman named Karen, whom I’d dated for nearly two years, had convinced me to buy half a dozen pieces of art from a recently deceased minimalist from New York, a man who signed his work “Loman.” I hadn’t initially taken to Loman, but Karen had promised me I’d eventually “get” him. Now, $27,000 and one fiancee lighter, I stared at the ten-by-twelve-foot abomination that hung above the mantel: shit brown on canvas, with a basketball-size yellow sphere in the upper right-hand corner. Aside from Brown No. 2, four similar marvels of artistic genius pockmarked other walls of my home, but these I could suffer. Mounted on the wall at the foot of the staircase, it was Playtime, the twelve-thousand-dollar glass-encased heap of stuffed animals, sewn together in an orgiastic conglomeration, which reddened my face even now. But I smiled, and the knot that had been absent since late winter shot a needle of pain through my gut. My Karen ulcer. You’re still there. Still hurting me. At least it’s you.

The second ring.

I peered up the staircase that ascended to the exposed second-floor hallway, and closing my eyes, I recalled the party I’d thrown just a week ago-guests laughing, talking politics and books, filling up my silence. I saw a man and a woman upstairs, elbows resting against the oak banister, overlooking the living room, the wet bar, and the kitchen. Holding their wineglasses, they waved down to me, smiling at their host.

The third ring.

My eyes fell on a photograph of my mother-a five-by-seven in a stained-glass frame, sitting atop the obsidian piano. She was the only family member with whom I maintained regular contact. Though I had relatives in the Pacific Northwest, Florida, and a handful in the Carolinas, I saw them rarely-at reunions, weddings, or funerals that my mother shamed me into attending with her. But with my father having passed away and a brother I hadn’t seen in thirteen years, family meant little to me. My friends sustained me, and contrary to popular belief, I didn’t have the true reclusive spirit imputed to me. I did need them.

In the photograph, my mother is squatting down at my father’s grave, pruning a tuft of carmine canna lilies in the shadow of the headstone. But you can only see her strong, kind face among the blossoms, intent on tidying up her husband’s plot of earth under that magnolia he’d taught me to climb, the blur of its waxy green leaves behind her.

The fourth ring.

“Did you see the body?”

It sounded as if the man were speaking through a towel. There was no emotion or hesitation in his staccato voice.

“Yes.”

“I gutted her with your paring knife and hid the knife in your house. It has your fingerprints all over it.” He cleared his throat. “Four months ago, you had blood work done by Dr. Xu. They misplaced a vial. You remember having to go back and give more?”

“Yes.”

“I stole that vial. Some is on Rita Jones’s white T-shirt. The rest is on the others.”

“What others?”

“I make a phone call, and you spend the rest of your life in prison, possibly death row…”

“I just want you-”

“Shut your mouth. You’ll receive a plane ticket in the mail. Take the flight. Pack clothes, toiletries, nothing else. You spent last summer in Aruba. Tell your friends you’re going again.”

“How did you know that?”

“I know many things, Andrew.”

“I have a book coming out,” I pleaded. “I’ve got readings scheduled. My agent-”

“Lie to her.”

“She won’t understand me just leaving like this.”

“Fuck Cynthia Mathis. You lie to her for your safety, because if I even suspect you’ve brought someone along or that someone knows, you’ll go to jail or you’ll die. One or the other, guaranteed. And I hope you aren’t stupid enough to trace this number. I promise you it’s stolen.”

“How do I know I won’t be hurt?”

“You don’t. But if I get off the phone with you and I’m not convinced you’ll be on that flight, I’ll call the police tonight. Or I may visit you while you’re sleeping. You’ve got to put that Smith and Wesson away sometime.”

I stood up and spun around, the gun clenched in my sweaty hands. The house was silent, though chimes on the deck were clanging in a zephyr. I looked through the large living room windows at the black lake, its wind-rippled surface reflecting the pier lights. The blue light at the end of Walter’s pier shone out across the water from a distant inlet. His “Gatsby light,” we called it. My eyes scanned the grass and the edge of the trees, but it was far too dark to see anything in the woods.

“I’m not in the house,” he said. “Sit down.”

I felt something well up inside of me-anger at the fear, rage at this injustice.

“Change of plan,” I said. “I’m going to hang up, dial nine one one, and take my chances. You can go-”

“If you aren’t motivated by self-preservation, there’s an old woman named Jeanette I could-”

“I’ll kill you.”

“Sixty-five, lives alone, I think she’d love the company. What do you think? Do I have to visit your mother to show you I’m serious? What is there to consider? Tell me you’ll be on that plane, Andrew. Tell me so I don’t have to visit your mother tonight.”

“I’ll be on that plane.”

The phone clicked, and he was gone.

Dweller

A bonus excerpt from Jeff’s novel, DWELLER, also available in the Kindle Store…

When Toby next met the monster, his hair still had traces of Nick Wyler’s urine. Nick hadn’t actually peed on Toby, thank God, but he’d seasoned the toilet bowl before Toby’s head plunged into the murky depths.

“C’mon, hurry up!” urged Larry Gaige, moments before the dunking. Larry was far and away the biggest creep at Orange Leaf High. His physical build would’ve made him football team material, if he had any interest in fighting other kids his size. He held Toby against the wall of the bathroom stall, with Toby’s head pressed next to a detailed but inaccurate drawing of a vagina.

“I’m trying!” Nick insisted. He stood next to the toilet, trying to relieve himself but suffering from performance anxiety. Toby personally had always had a real issue with the lack of doors in the bathrooms, so he could understand why it might be difficult for Nick to pee with two other guys in the stall.

Toby struggled some more, mostly for show. He was short, thin, and outnumbered, and knew he wasn’t getting out of this bathroom undunked unless a teacher happened to walk in, searching for smokers. Calling for help was not an option. Larry got his thrills by causing humiliation, not pain, but he would hurt you if he had to.

“Let’s go, let’s go!” said Larry, kicking Nick on the back of the leg. Toby heard a few drops hit the water and a few more hit the seat.

“Why don’t you do it? I haven’t had enough to drink today.”

“Are you kidding me?” Larry gave his friend a look of absolute disbelief. “Just yank the stopper out of your dick and take a piss!”

“Maybe if you left the stall for a minute…?”

For a moment, Toby thought that Larry was actually going to let him go so that he could focus his attention on beating the crap out of Nick. His optimism was quickly extinguished as Larry slammed him against the wall hard enough to make him bite his tongue. He winced and tasted blood.

The sound of a healthy stream of urine hitting the toilet water filled the stall. Nick was cured.

“Okay, that’s enough,” said Larry. “We’ve gotta hurry up.”

“I can’t stop once I’ve started!”

“Jesus Christ!”

“Just let me finish!”

Larry stood there, visibly fuming, as Nick continued the challenging process of relieving himself. Toby kept praying that a teacher or some other adult visitor would walk in and question the presence of three teenage boys sharing a restroom stall, but as the stream slowed to a trickle and then to a spatter, Toby knew his moment of extreme indignity had almost arrived.

Larry shoved Nick out of the way before he was completely done. Nick punched him in the arm. “I bought these pants with my own money!”

Ignoring his friend, Larry pushed Toby to his knees in front of the toilet bowl and then quickly pushed his face toward the aromatic liquid. Toby squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath as his face dipped into the warm water. He gagged and desperately tried not to inhale as the toilet flushed and the water swirled around his head.

Once the water had completely exited the bowl, Larry let go of his neck. He and Nick walked out of the stall, laughing. Another scrawny twerp successfully humiliated.

Could’ve been worse. Had been worse, several times. Still, Toby’s cheeks burned from shame and he felt like he was going to throw up as he coughed and gagged and gasped for breath.

Toby left the stall, turned on one of the faucets, and tried to rinse the piss out of his hair. He could tattle on those jerks and get them suspended, but suspensions were temporary, and there wasn’t much the school board could do if the bullies decided to lie in wait for him next to his front porch with tire irons and broken bottles.

Okay, he didn’t actually believe that Larry and Nick would kill him, or even hospitalize him. The most violence they’d inflict was a hard punch to the stomach, maybe some light bruises elsewhere. But there was a code of honor at Orange Leaf High: you didn’t rat out your peers. Not even awful, reprehensible, deserve-to-die peers. Nobody liked a rat fink. If Toby went to his parents or a teacher, he’d be scorned by every kid in school.

He was already the Weird Kid in a school that was severely lacking in other weird kids. If he became the Weird Kid Who Was Also A Rat Fink, he might as well kiss any glimpse of hope for making friends—real friends, maybe even a girlfriend—goodbye. He didn’t have many friends in elementary school or junior high, but at least the kids there talked to him, sometimes. But most of his half-friends had gone to West End High, and his out-of-the-way address put him in the Orange Leaf High district, so he was starting over.

Anyway, someday he’d get Larry and Nick back. He was doing chin-ups every day. He could do eleven or twelve of them now. By the end of the year, who knew how big his muscles might be?

“Time for a dunking!” Larry might say, pulling Toby into the stall. Toby would drop to his knees, and Nick would laugh and laugh at how easy it was to overpower him. But, oh, how his laughter would stop when Toby suddenly used his brute strength to rip the toilet right out of the floor!

“Holy cow!” Nick would scream. “How many chin-ups has he done?”

Toby would smash the toilet into Larry’s face, shattering the porcelain and splashing its abhorrent contents all over him. As Larry dropped to the tile floor, unconscious, Nick would stand there, paralyzed with fear.

“Please don’t kill me,” Nick would whimper.

Toby would shake his head and chuckle. “I’m no killer,” he would say. But then he would give Nick a stern glare, a glare that chilled Nick’s blood. “Dunk yourself.”

“But I’ll be shamed and ridiculed!”

“Don’t make me tell you twice.”

Nick would thrust his own head into the toilet, sobbing like a baby. Toby would watch him flush and flush and flush, inwardly amused but far too mature to point and laugh. Perhaps he’d allow the other students to file through the restroom to witness the defeat and learn from it, or perhaps he’d keep it to himself and merely raise an eyebrow at Larry and Nick when they started to get out of line. Either way, Toby Floren would be the victor.

But that would be later. For now, he had to go back to class with wet hair and embarrassment scorching his cheeks.

A few of the other kids snickered as Toby returned to history class, but Mr. Hastings didn’t say anything about his appearance or tardiness.

During lunch, kids continued to snicker when they looked at him, even though his hair was dry. Clearly, Larry and Nick had shared the uproarious news of their latest conquest. Toby hoped for a sympathetic glance from somebody, anybody, but didn’t receive one. At least a couple of the kids who smiled in his direction had been dunkees themselves.

He sat in his usual spot at the corner table, doodling in his notebook while he ate a roast beef sandwich. There weren’t enough tables in the lunchroom for him to sit by himself, so he sat with his standard group, but an empty seat separated him from the others.

At least his sandwich was good. Mom had made an outstanding dinner last night, and the leftovers were even better in sandwich form.

“What’re you drawing?” asked J.D. Jerick, through a mouthful of potato chips.

“Nothing.”

“Let me see it.”

Toby shook his head. He’d fallen for this before. J.D. had expressed an interest in his art, and Toby had proudly explained exactly how the robot’s jet pack functioned in zero gravity. Then J.D. had let out a donkey-like laugh, grabbed Toby’s notebook, and showed it to everybody at the table. Robots weren’t cool at Orange Leaf High.

“C’mon, I just want to see what you’re drawing.”

“No way.”

“I’m not gonna do anything.”

Toby closed his notebook. There wasn’t much he could do when he was overpowered by physically imposing bullies like Larry and Nick, but J.D. was a different kind of bully, and Toby wasn’t threatened by him at all.

J.D. made a lunge for the notebook, but Toby slid it out of the way. “Just let me see it, Zit Farm. What is it, naked pictures of the teachers?” He raised his voice. “You really shouldn’t be drawing naked pictures of teachers, Toby Floren!”

Toby gave him the finger.

“By the way, you reek. What have you been doing, swimming in the toilet?”

Toby gave him the finger with both hands.

“Loser,” said J.D.

Toby returned his attention to his notebook and his sandwich while the other kids at the table laughed. Why were they on J.D.’s side? Couldn’t they see that he was a complete cretin?

He sketched for a few more minutes, knowing that J.D. was watching him and wasn’t going to let the matter drop.

“What’re you drawing?” J.D. finally repeated.

Toby held up the picture: a hand giving the finger.

J.D. frowned, obviously not thinking that the drawing was very funny. Toby grinned, but stopped grinning when he saw Mr. Hastings staring right at the drawing from across the lunchroom. The teacher made a beeline toward him, and Toby knew that his day was about to get even worse.

Toby wanted to take a shower when he got home, but he wasn’t up to explaining the need for the shower to Mom. He also didn’t want her to think that he had a different, much more private reason for taking a shower at an unusual time. Though he supposed he could just make something up, he’d probably get caught in the lie—he had an active fantasy life, but his skills at deceit were almost non-existent.

“I’m home!” he shouted out, hurrying up the stairs to his room and hoping that Mom wouldn’t ask him to sit with her in the living room and talk about his day.

“Do you have any homework?” Mom called up to him.

“Lots!” he called back. He dumped his backpack on his bed, then pulled out the unnecessary books. He had to do about twenty math problems, a 250-word essay on chapters six and seven of Robinson Crusoe, and study for a history quiz. No problem. He picked up the backpack, slung it over his shoulder, and headed back downstairs.

“Where are you going?” Mom asked. She was seated on the living room couch, half-watching television while writing a letter. She wrote to Grandma once a week, every week, and had ever since she married Dad, even though she hadn’t mailed the letters for a couple of years.

“Woods.”

“I thought you said you had homework?”

He lifted his shoulder, bouncing the backpack. “It’s in here.”

“Oh, okay. Good.”

Toby grinned. “See how easy your life is, having a son who’s so diligent about his homework?”

“It is. It’s very relaxing.”

“Because, you know, there are a lot of dumb and lazy kids out there.”

“I know.”

“I’ll be back before Dad gets home.”

Toby walked about half a mile into the woods, to his favorite spot. Two trees had grown together at the base, forming a surprisingly comfortable seat where the trunks split apart. He set his backpack on the ground, sat on the trees, and began to work through some math problems. Math was his least favorite subject outside of physical education, but he liked Mr. Hesser’s nerdy sense of humor, and paid enough attention to ace every test. His report card was always straight A’s except for music. He enjoyed playing the trumpet but was very, very bad at it.

He completed the math problems, then started on his essay. He’d already finished the entire book—he didn’t like reading books a chapter at a time, and even if the book wasn’t anything spectacular he usually found himself reading through to the end. This one he loved.

He finished up the essay, then spent a few minutes studying for his history quiz. The forest was a wonderful place to study, free of distractions, and it didn’t take much time for the material to sink in. He put his books aside, ran through a list of mental questions and answers to test his knowledge, then stood up, satisfied. Now he could enjoy the rest of his evening.

Then he remembered the sensation of his face splashing into the contaminated water, and his mood soured.

Jerks.

What was wrong with them? Why was humiliating a fellow student their idea of a good time? What pleasure could they get from doing something like that?

Well, admittedly, Toby would get a lot of pleasure from dunking Larry and Nick’s heads in a toilet, preferably the same toilet at the same time, but that was purely revenge based. He hadn’t done anything to them to deserve this.

Jerks. Creeps. Idiots.

Forget about them, he thought. Why let a pair of bullies ruin his evening? His homework was done, he didn’t have to work at the grocery store tonight, it wasn’t raining, the weather hadn’t turned cold yet, and he had the entire forest at his disposal. Screw ’em. He was going to enjoy himself.

He walked for a while, but it didn’t make him feel any better, so he picked up his pace to a jog. He kept his eyes on the ground so that he wouldn’t trip—the forest wasn’t exactly the safest jogging environment, and Toby had extreme tendencies toward being a klutz.

He was only able to jog for a few minutes before he got a stitch in his side, so he rested for a moment until the pain faded, then resumed his jog. Boy, was he in terrible shape. This was embarrassing. He hoped the woodland creatures weren’t laughing at him.

There had to be a way to get back at the bullies without risking a broken nose. What if he bought them each a “Thank You” card for the toilet incident? That would really mess with their minds. It could be a really colorful card, maybe with a piece of chocolate inside, presented to them with no trace of irony. Something like that might really fuel their sense of paranoia. They’d wonder exactly what he had planned for them. Their stomachs would hurt whenever they saw him. It would be glorious!

“What does this mean?” Larry would ask, reading the card for the 73rd time. “Has he gone deranged? Or does he have a ghastly fate in store for us?”

“I do not know!” Nick would answer. “But the suspense may drive me mad!”

Toby felt a little better as he ran.

His dad always got home at 7:15 sharp, which gave him another two hours to goof around in the woods. Maybe he’d see how far he could get in an hour. He spent a lot of time in the woods and knew the few square miles behind his house well, but it was a vast forest that offered new discoveries all the time. Mostly just different trees, but still…

He moved through the woods for about half an hour, alternating between jogging, walking fast, and a couple of brief bursts of sprinting. He should probably join track at school. Might make him some friends. Or one friend.

He stopped running.

Something was lying on the ground in front of a small clearing. Toby walked over to investigate. It was a wooden sign, lying on its side, mostly covered by bushes. The red lettering had faded to almost the same grey color as the wood, but the words were still legible: Danger. Keep Out.

Wow.

A couple of years ago, Toby had discovered an old rusted car, right there amidst the trees. It had looked like something from the 1930’s. He’d spent long nights wondering how it got there. Rationally, he knew that the answer was straightforward, that there had probably just been a path at one time that had since been abandoned and overgrown. But there were dozens of much more interesting scenarios, and they’d captured his imagination until a few weeks later when he found the deer carcass. He’d searched the vehicle thoroughly, but alas, there was no hidden stash of mobster cash.

Danger. Keep Out promised something even more exciting.

What could it be? An abandoned mine? An old bunker filled with explosives?

Toby slowly stepped through the clearing, which was a circle about fifty feet in diameter, watching his feet to make sure he didn’t walk in a bear trap or something like that. The clearing itself seemed to be devoid of anything interesting. He walked around the perimeter, then walked across it several times, but didn’t see anything that looked even remotely worthy of the sign.

They wouldn’t put out a sign like that for no reason. There had to be something. Maybe it was the former site of a horrible plague.

No, even in ancient times, people probably took stronger precautions against the spread of a plague than simply putting out a wooden sign.

He kept searching the area, but there was nothing. What a rip-off.

What if the sign had been moved? He just needed to keep searching. He continued to walk around the area, not going quite so far as to crawl around on his hands and knees, but making sure he was searching thoroughly. If there was something great out here, he was going to find it.

About five minutes beyond the sign, he found a path. A narrow uphill path that looked recently used.

Well, maybe not. There weren’t any distinct footprints or broken branches or anything specific to indicate that somebody might have recently taken a stroll around here. Still, Toby had a weird feeling, something he couldn’t quite pinpoint, that he wasn’t the only person to have used this path today.

This meant that, as a rational, intelligent human being, his best bet was to get the hell out of there as soon as possible.

Instead, he stepped onto the path and followed it.

The Keep

A bonus excerpt from Paul’s novel, THE KEEP, also available in the Kindle Store…

Privates Friedrich Waltz and Karl Flick, members of the first Death’s Head unit under Major Kaempffer, stood in their black uniforms, their gleaming black helmets, and shivered. They were bored, cold, and tired. They were unaccustomed to this sort of night duty. Back at Auschwitz they had had warm, comfortable guardhouses and watchtowers where they could sit and drink coffee and play cards while the prisoners cowered in their drafty shacks. Only occasionally had they been required to do gate duty and march the perimeter in the open air.

True, here they were inside, but their conditions were as cold and as damp as the prisoners’. That wasn’t right.

Private Flick slung his Schmeisser behind his back and rubbed his hands together. The fingertips were numb despite his gloves. He stood beside Waltz who was leaning against the wall at the angle of the two corridors. From this vantage point they could watch the entire length of the entry corridor to their left, all the way to the black square of night that was the courtyard, and at the same time keep watch on the prison block to their right.

“I’m going crazy, Karl,” Waltz said. “Let’s do something. “

“Like what?”

“How about making them fall out for a little Sachsengruss?”

“They aren’t Jews.”

“They aren’t Germans, either.”

Flick considered this. The Sachsengruss, or Saxon greeting, had been his favorite method of breaking down new arrivals at Auschwitz. For hours on end he would make them perform the exercise: deep knee bends with arms raised and hands behind the head. Even a man in top condition would be in agony within half an hour. Flick had always found it exhilarating to watch the expressions on the prisoners’ faces as they felt their bodies begin to betray them, as their joints and muscles cried out in anguish. And the fear in their faces. For those who fell from exhaustion were either shot on the spot or kicked until they resumed the exercise. Even if he and Waltz couldn’t shoot any of the Romanians tonight, at least they could have some fun with them. But it might be hazardous.

“Better forget it,” Flick said. “There’s only two of us. What if one of them tries to be a hero?”

“We’ll only take a couple out of the room at a time. Come on, Karl! It’ll be fun!”

Flick smiled. “Oh, all right.”

It wouldn’t be as challenging as the game they used to play at Auschwitz, where he and Waltz held contests to see how many of a prisoner’s bones they could break and still keep him working. But at least a little Sachsengruss would be diverting.

Flick began fishing out the key to the padlock that had transformed the last room on the corridor into a prison cell. There were four rooms available and they could have divided up the villagers but they had crowded all ten into a single chamber instead. He was anticipating the look on their faces when he opened the door—the wincing, lip-quivering fear when they saw his smile and realized they would never receive any mercy from him. It gave him a certain feeling inside, something indescribable, wonderful, something so addictive that he craved more and more of it.

He was halfway to the door when Waltz’s voice stopped him.

“Just a minute, Karl.”

He turned. Waltz was squinting down the corridor toward the courtyard, a puzzled expression on his face. “What is it?” Flick asked.

“Something’s wrong with one of the bulbs down there. The first one—it’s going out.”

“So?”

“It’s fading out.” He glanced at Flick and then back down the corridor. “Now the second one’s fading!” His voice rose half an octave as he lifted his Schmeisser and cocked it. “Get over here!”

Flick dropped the key, swung his own weapon to the ready position, and ran to join his companion. By the time he reached the juncture of the two corridors, the third bulb had gone dark. He tried but could make out no details of the corridor behind the dead bulbs. It was as if the area had been swallowed by impenetrable darkness.

“I don’t like this,” Waltz said.

“Neither do I. But I don’t see a soul. Maybe it’s the generator. Or a bad wire.”

Flick knew he didn’t believe this any more than Waltz did. But he had had to say something to hide his growing fear. Einsatzkommandos were supposed to arouse fear, not feel it.

The fourth bulb began to die. The dark was only a dozen feet away.

“Let’s move into here,” Flick said, backing into the well-lit recess of the rear corridor. He could hear the prisoners muttering in the last room behind them. Though they could not see the dying bulbs, they sensed something was wrong.

Crouched behind Waltz, Flick shivered in the growing cold as he watched the illumination in the outer corridor continue to fade. He wanted something to shoot at but could see only blackness.

And then the blackness was upon him, freezing his joints and dimming his vision. For an instant that seemed to stretch to a lifetime, Private Karl Flick became a victim of the soulless terror he so loved to inspire, felt the deep, gut-tearing pain he so loved to inflict. Then he felt nothing.

Slowly the illumination returned to the corridors, first to the rear, then to the access passage. The only sounds came from the villagers trapped in their cell: whimpering from the women, relieved sobs from the men as they all felt themselves released from the panic that had seized them. One man tentatively approached the door to peer through a tiny space between two boards. His field of vision was limited to a section of floor and part of the rear wall of the corridor.

He could see no movement. The floor was bare except for a splattering of blood, still red, still wet, still steaming in the cold. And on the rear wall there was more blood, but this was smeared instead of splattered. The smears seemed to form a pattern, like letters from an alphabet he almost recognized, forming words that hovered just over the far edge of recognition. Words like dogs howling in the night, naggingly present, but ever out of reach.

The man turned away from the door and rejoined his fellow villagers huddled in the far corner of the room.

Someone was at the door.

Kaempffer’s eyes snapped open; he feared that the earlier nightmare was going to repeat itself. But no. This time he could sense no dark, malevolent presence on the other side of the wall. The agent here seemed human. And clumsy. If stealth were the intruder’s aim, he was failing miserably. But to be on the safe side, Kaempffer pulled his Luger from the holster coiled at his elbow.

“Who’s there?”

No reply.

The rattle of a fumbling hand working the latch continued. Kaempffer could see breaks in the strip of light along the bottom of the door, but they gave no clue as to who might be out there. He considered turning on the lamp, but thought better of it. The dark room gave him an advantage—an intruder would be silhouetted against the light from the hall.

“Identify yourself!”

The fumbling at the latch stopped, to be replaced by a faint creaking and cracking, as if some huge weight were leaning against the door, trying to push through it. Kaempffer couldn’t be sure in the dark, but he thought he saw the door bulge inward. That was two-inch oak! It would take massive weight to do that! As the creaking of the wood grew louder, he found himself trembling and sweating. He had nowhere to go. And now came another sound, as if something were clawing at the door to get in. The noises assailed him, growing louder, paralyzing him. The cracking of the wood was so loud that it seemed it must break into a thousand fragments; the hinges cried out as their metal fastenings were tortured from the stone. Something had to give! He knew he should be chambering a shell into his Luger but he could not move.

The latch suddenly screeched and gave way, the door bursting open and slamming against the wall. Two figures stood outlined in the light from the hall. By their helmets, Kaempffer knew them to be German soldiers, and by their jackboots he knew them to be two of the einsatzkommandos he had brought with him. He should have relaxed at the sight of them, but for some reason he did not. What were they doing breaking into his room?

“Who is it?” he demanded.

They made no reply. Instead, they stepped forward in unison toward where he lay frozen in his bedroll. Something was wrong with their gait—not a gross disorder, but a subtle grotesquery. For one disconcerting moment, Major Kaempffer thought the two soldiers would march right over him. But they stopped at the edge of his bed, simultaneously, as if on command. Neither said a word. Nor did they salute.

“What do you want?” He should have been furious, but the anger would not come. Only fear. Against his wishes, his body was shrinking into the bedroll, trying to hide.

“Speak to me!” The command sounded like a bleat.

No reply. He reached down with his left hand and found the battery lamp beside his bed, all the while keeping the Luger in his right trained on the silent pair looming over him. When his questing fingers found the toggle switch, he hesitated, listening to his own rasping respirations. He had to see who they were and what they wanted, but a deep part of him warned against turning on the light.

Finally, he could stand it no longer. With a groan, he flicked the toggle and held up the lamp.

Privates Flick and Waltz stood over him, faces white and contorted, eyes glazed. A gaping crescent of torn and bloodied flesh grinned down at him from the place where each man’s throat had been. No one moved … the two dead soldiers wouldn’t, Kaempffer couldn’t. For a long, heart-stopping moment, Kaempffer lay paralyzed, the lamp held aloft in his hand, his mouth working spasmodically around a scream of fear that could not pass his locked throat.

Then the tableau was broken. Silently, a1most gracefully, the two soldiers leaned forward and fell onto their commanding officer, pinning him in his bedroll under hundreds of pounds of limp dead flesh.

As Kaempffer struggled frantically to pull himself out from under the two corpses, he heard a far-off voice begin to wail in mortal panic. An isolated part of his brain focused on the sound until he identified it.

The voice was his own.

Shaken

A bonus excerpt is from Joe’s novel, SHAKEN, also available in the Kindle Store…

Twenty-one years ago

1989, June 23

This guy isn’t a killer, Dalton thinks. He’s a butcher.

Dalton isn’t repulsed by the spectacle, or even slightly disturbed. He stays detached and professional, even as he snaps a picture of Brotsky tearing at the prostitute’s body with some kind of three-pronged garden tool.

There’s a lot of blood.

Dalton wonders if he should have brought color film. But there’s something classic, something pure, about shooting in black and white. It makes real life even more realistic.

Dalton opens the f-stop on the lens, adjusting for the setting sun. He’s standing in the backyard of Brotsky’s house, and his subject has been gracious enough to leave the blinds open. From his spot on the lawn, Dalton has a clear view into Brotsky’s living room, where the carnage is taking place. Though Brotsky has a high fence and plenty of foliage on his property, he’s still taking a big risk. There are neighbors on either side, and the back gate leading to the alley is unlocked. Anyone could walk by.

It’s not a smart way to conduct a murder.

Dalton has watched Brotsky kill two hookers in this fashion, and surely there have been others. Yet the Chicago Police Department hasn’t come knocking on Brotsky’s door yet. Brotsky has been incredibly lucky so far.

But luck runs out.

At least Brotsky has the sense to put a tarp down, Dalton thinks.

He snaps another photo. Brotsky’s naked barrel chest is slick with gore, and the look on his unshaven face is somewhere between frenzy and ecstasy as he works the garden tool. He’s not a tall man, but he’s thick, with big muscles under a layer of hard fat. Brotsky sweats a lot, and his balding head gives off a glare which Dalton offsets by using a filter on his lens.

Brotsky sets down the garden tool and picks up a cleaver.

Yeah, this guy is nuts.

Truth told, Dalton has done worse to people, at least as far as suffering goes. If the price is right, Dalton will drag someone’s death out for hours, even days. But Dalton gets no pleasure from the task. Killing is simply his business.

Brotsky is killing to meet baser needs. Sex. Power. Blood lust. Hunger, Dalton muses, taking a shot of Brotsky with his mouth full of something moist.

If Brotsky sticks to his MO, he’ll dismember the girl, wrap up her parts in plastic bags, and then take her severed head into the shower with him. When Brotsky returns, he’ll be squeaky clean, and the head will be gone. Then he’ll load the bags into his car and haul them to the dump site.

Dalton guesses it will be another eleven minutes. He waits patiently, taking occasional snapshots, wondering what Brotsky does with the heads. Dalton isn’t bothered by the heat or the humidity, even though it’s close to ninety degrees and he’s wearing a suit and tie. Unlike Brotsky, Dalton doesn’t sweat. Dalton has pores. He just never feels the need to use them.

Exactly eleven minutes and nine seconds later, Brotsky walks out his back door, dressed in shorts, sandals, and a wrinkled blue Hawaiian shirt. He’s lugging several black plastic garbage bags. The man is painfully unaware, and doesn’t even bother looking around. He walks right past Dalton, who’s hiding behind the girth of an ancient oak tree, gun in hand.

The hitman falls into step behind the butcher, his soft-soled shoes silent on the walkway. He trails Brotsky, close as a shadow, for several steps before jamming the Ruger against the fat man’s back. Brotsky stops cold.

“This is a gun, Victor Brotsky. Try to run and I’ll fire. The bullet will blow your heart out the front of your chest. Neither of us want that to happen. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Brotsky says. “Can I put down these bags? They’re heavy.”

Brotsky doesn’t seem frightened, or even surprised. Dalton is impressed. Perhaps the man is more of a pro than Dalton had guessed.

“No. We’re going to walk, slowly, out to the alley. My car is parked there. You’re going to put the pieces of the hooker in the trunk.”

Brotsky does as he’s told. Dalton’s black 1989 El Dorado Roadster is parked alongside Brotsky’s garage. The car isn’t as anonymous as Dalton would prefer, but he needs to keep up appearances. The wiseguys he works for like Caddys, and driving the latest model somewhat compensates for the fact that Dalton isn’t Italian.

“Trunk’s open. Put the bags inside and take out the red folder.”

Brotsky hefts the bags into the trunk, and they land with a solid thump. The alley smells like garbage, and the summer heat makes the odor cling. Dalton moves the gun from the man’s back to his neck.

“Take the folder,” Dalton says.

The light from the trunk is sufficient. Brotsky opens the folder, begins to page through several 8x10 photos of his two previous victims. He lingers on one that shows him grinning, holding up a severed leg. It’s Dalton’s personal favorite. Black and white really is the only way to go.

“I’m a school teacher,” Brotsky says with the barest trace of a Russian accent. “I don’t have much money.”

Dalton allows himself a small grin. He likes how Brotsky thinks. Maybe this will work out after all.

“I don’t want to blackmail you,” Dalton says. “My employer is a very important Chicago businessman.”

Brotsky sighs. “Let me guess. I slaughtered one of his whores, and now you’re going to teach me a lesson.”

“Wrong again, Victor Brotsky. See the lunch box in the corner of the trunk? Open it up.”

Brotsky follows the instructions. The box is filled with several stacks of twenty dollar bills. Three thousand in cash, total.

“What is this?” Brotsky asks.

“Consider it a retainer,” Dalton says. “My employer wants to hire you.”

“Hire me for what?”

“To do what you’re doing for free.” Dalton leans forward, whispers in Brotsky’s plump, hairy ear. “He wants you to kill some prostitutes.”

Brotsky turns around slowly, and his lips part in a smile. His breath is meaty, and he has a tiny bit

“This employer of yours,” Brotsky says. “I think I’m going to like working for him.”

Present day

2010, August 10

The rope secured my wrists behind my back and snaked a figure eight pattern through my arms, up to my elbows. Houdini with a hacksaw wouldn’t have been able to get free. I could flex and wiggle my fingers to keep my circulation going, but didn’t have a range of movement much beyond that.

My legs were similarly secured, the braided nylon line crisscrossing from my ankles to my knees, pinching my skin so tight I wished I’d worn pantyhose. And I hate pantyhose.

I was lying on my side, the concrete floor cool against my cheek and ear, the only light a sliver that came through a crack at the bottom of the far wall. All I had on was an oversized t-shirt, and my panties. A hard rubber ball had been crammed into my mouth. I was unable to dislodge it—a strap around my head held it in place. I probed the curved surface and winced when my tongue met with little indentations. Teeth marks. This ball gag had been used many times before.

My sense of time was sketchy, but I estimated I’d been awake for about fifteen minutes. The first few had been spent struggling against the ropes, trying to scream for help through the gag. The bindings were escape-proof, and my ankle rope secured me to a large concrete block, which I felt with my bare feet. It was impossible for me to roll away. The ball gag didn’t allow for more than a low moan, and after a minute or two I began to choke on my own saliva, my jaw wedged open too wide for me to swallow. I had to adjust my head so the spit ran out the corner of my mouth.

Based on the hollow echoes from my sounds, I sensed I was in a small, empty garage. Some machine—perhaps an air conditioner or dehumidifier—hummed tunelessly in the background. I smelled bleach, a bad sign, and under the bleach, traces of copper, human waste, and rotten meat. A worse sign.

Fighting panic and losing, I made myself focus on how I got here, how this happened. My memory was fuzzy. A hit on the head? A drug? I wasn’t sure. I had no recollection of anything leading up to this.

But between the smells and my past, I knew whoever abducted me was planning on killing me. I used to be a cop. Now I was in the private sector.

And this was definitely not the way I wanted to end my new career.

Twenty-one years ago

1989, August 15

I didn’t become a cop to do things like this.

The red vehicle pulled up and honked at me. It was one of those strange combinations of a car and a truck; I think they were called SUVs. This one said Isuzu Trooper on the fender. I found them to be too big and blocky, especially for an urban setting like Chicago. And with gas prices up to almost $1.20 a gallon, I doubted the trend would catch on.

The night was hot, humid as hell, and I was sweating even though I was nearly naked. My candy apple red lipstick kept smearing in the heat, forcing me to reapply it. I had the whole block to myself, having chased the other girls away earlier. I’d done them a favor; action was molasses slow. Plus, the city was eight days into a garbage strike, and the stink coming from the alley was a force of nature.

“Your call, Jackie,” my earpiece said. My partner, Officer Harry McGlade, waited in a vintage Mustang parked up the street.

“Aren’t you bored with this game yet?” I said into the microphone, which was hidden in my Madonna push-up bustier; an item that should have been worn under a top, not as a top. Jacqueline Streng, working girl. I reached inside the cup and readjusted my boob. The transmitter was the size of a pack of cigarettes, but harder and heavier, the sharp corners not meant to be wedged tight against delicate female anatomy. It hurt. The wires trailed up my bra strap, and to the earpiece, hidden by my Fredrick’s of Hollywood blonde Medusa wig.

“I’ll be bored when I’m actually ahead a few bucks,” Harry said. “Go on. Guess.”

I squinted at the guy behind the wheel. The street was dark, but he had his interior light on while he looked around for something. Possibly his wallet. Hopefully not a straight razor or an Uzi. He was Caucasian, late forties, balding, thick glasses. White collar, probably married with kids.

“BJ,” I said to Harry.

“Naw. I’m guessing something pervy.”

“He looks like a member of the PTA.”

“The clean-cut guys are always the perverts.”

“You said the weird-looking guys are always the perverts.”

“They’re pretty much all perverts. I’ll say foot fetishist.”

I actually didn’t know what a foot fetishist did. Something to do with feet, I assumed, but what? The Vice training manual didn’t explain that particular kink. I wasn’t about to ask Harry, because he’d make fun of me. It was hard enough being a female in the Chicago Police Department. Being a young female who did prostitution stings made me an easy target for potshots.

Not that I would be young for much longer. Today officially began the last year of my twenties. I was going to celebrate the happy occasion by watching TV and getting drunk. My boyfriend, Alan, was out of town on a business trip, and so far he’d neglected to get me anything. Big mistake. True, I didn’t want any reminders of my rapidly retreating youth. But we cops were big on intent. And forgetting your girlfriend’s birthday said a lot about your future intent.

Not that I had any intentions myself. His last name was Daniels, for chrissakes. I had a hard enough time getting respect on the Job. If my name was Jack Daniels, I’d be the laughing stock of the city.

“You in or out, Jackie?”

“Fine,” I said. “Ten-spot?”

“Make it twenty. I got a feeling.”

Bald Guy honked again. I pulled up the elastic top of one of my black fishnet stockings, pulled down the hem of my hot pink spandex micro-mini skirt, and walked over to the car on painfully high, strappy heels, trying to look sexy when I felt completely ridiculous. His window opened, and I stuck my head inside. The air conditioning bathed my face, cooling the sweat on my brow and upper lip.

“How are you tonight, sugar?” I asked, smacking my gum.

Bald Guy appeared nervous, jittery. Most of them did. Maybe because soliciting sex was embarrassing. Or maybe because they were worried that the hooker they propositioned was actually an undercover cop.

Imagine that.

“How much?” he asked without looking at me.

“How much what?” I asked.

“How much money?”

In order to make a clean arrest, and avoid the dreaded entrapment defense, the suspect had to be the one to bring up the subject of money. This guy cut right to the heart of the matter. Now he needed to mention what he wanted in exchange.

“Depends,” I said, playing coy. “What is it you’re looking for?”

“Something special. Can you quote me your, um, rates?”

“Sure. Head is ten. Straight is fifteen. Half-and-half is twenty. Round the world is thirty. Anything to do with feet is fifty.”

“No fair!” McGlade yelled in my ear. “You’re price-jacking!”

I hoped Bald Guy didn’t hear that, even though it was so loud my eyes bugged out.

“I’ve got kind of a strange request,” Bald Guy said.

I leaned in further. The air conditioning was wonderfully frigid, and the interior smelled like lemon air freshener. After four hours on the street, this was a little slice of heaven.

“Kinky is extra. Tell me what you need, big boy.”

“Actually, I’ll pay you fifty dollars if you just hold me for ten minutes.”

I blinked. “Hold you?”

He nodded, his face puppy dog sad.

“We can’t arrest him for that,” Harry said. “Ask him if he wants to suck your toes.”

I ignored Harry, which wasn’t the easiest thing to do. Especially with him in my ear. “That’s all?” I asked Bald Guy. “Just hold you?”

“That’s all.” His shoulders slumped. I felt kind of sorry for him.

“Tell him you’ve been on your feet all day,” Harry said, “and your toes are really sweaty and stinky.”

I wished I could turn the earpiece off.

“That’s kind of weird,” I told the guy. “Don’t you have a mother or an aunt or someone else who can give you a hug?”

“No one. I just got divorced, and I’m all alone.”

“How about friends? Neighbors? A church group?”

Bald Guy shook his head.

Harry said, “Try taking off your shoe and sticking your foot under his nose.”

“I just need a little tenderness,” Bald Guy said. “Will you do it?”

He looked so devastated, so desperate. Plus his vehicle was air-conditioned and smelled nice. What more prompting did I need? I walked around the front of his car/truck and climbed into the passenger seat.

“Dammit, Jackie! Find another john!” Harry, screaming in my ear. “There aren’t any laws against cuddling! Don’t waste our time!”

The earpiece really needed an off switch. In fact, so did Harry. The sad thing was, Harry wasn’t as bad as some of the other jerks I had to work with. What did a female cop have to do to earn the respect of her peers in this city?

I guessed it wasn’t dressing up as a hooker, hawking BJs.

“Okay,” I said. “One quick hug. On the house.”

I opened up my arms, ready to embrace this poor clod, and he handed me a latex glove. I backed off a notch.

“Are you sick?” I asked. “Contagious?”

“No, no, nothing like that. While you’re hugging me, I’d like you to stick your fingers up my bottom.”

No wonder he was divorced.

“And wiggle them,” he added.

“Mirandize that pervert,” McGlade said. “I’ll call the wagon and be right there.”

I opened my silver-sequined purse, reaching for my badge and handcuffs.

“I’m a police officer,” I said, making my voice hard, “and you’re under arrest for soliciting a sexual act. Put your hands on the steering wheel.”

Bald Guy turned bright red, then burst into tears. “I only wanted a little tenderness!”

“Place your hands on the steering wheel, sir. And for future reference, fingers up the wazoo really don’t qualify as tenderness.”

“I’m so lonely!” he sobbed.

“Buy a dog.” An unwelcome image popped into my head, of this pervert with some poor Schnauzer. “On second thought, that’s a bad idea.”

Bald Guy moaned, wiped his nose with his wrist, and then flung open his door and ran like hell. Which didn’t make much sense, considering that in jail he could probably find someone to fulfill his request for free.

“He bolted!” I yelled to Harry. “Coming your way!”

I pushed open my door and scrambled after him. Three steps into my pursuit I broke a heel and almost fell onto my face. I recovered in time, but my speed was drastically reduced. A penguin on stilts would have been faster and looked less clumsy. I wasn’t about to kick my broken pump off—this wasn’t the nicest part of town, and I didn’t want to step on a dirty needle.

“He ducked down the alley, Jackie!” Harry said. “It lets out on Halsted. Run around and block his exit!”

Easy for him to say. He was wearing gym shoes.

I rounded the corner, hobbling as fast as I could, my spandex skirt riding up and encircling my waist like a neon pink belt. My purse orbited my neck on its spaghetti strap, and each time it passed in front of my face I reached for it and missed. Inside was my Beretta 86, and I didn’t want to be charging into any alleys without it firmly in hand.

Honking, from the street. I wondered if it was the squadrol—a police wagon that picked up and booked the suspects we caught on this sting. No such luck. It was a carload of cute preppy guys. They hooted at me, pumping their fists in the air.

“What’s that sound?” Harry said. “You watching Arsenio?”

I skidded to a halt at the mouth of the alley, tugged down my skirt, and pulled out my Beretta.

The hooting stopped. I heard one of the preppies yell, “The whore is packing heat!” and their tires squealed, their car rocketing away.

“Where is he?” I said into the mic.

“If he didn’t come out on your side, he’s hiding in the alley somewhere.”

“I’ll meet you in the middle.”

“It’s dark. Don’t shoot me by mistake.”

Harry didn’t mean it to be condescending, but he wouldn’t have said it if I were a man. I set my jaw, gripped my weapon in both hands with my elbows bent and the barrel pointing skyward, and crept into the alley.

The decaying garbage odor got worse with every step, so bad I could taste it in the back of my throat. I moved slowly, letting my eyes sweep left and right, looking for any place Bald Guy could hide. I came up to a parked car, checked under it, behind it.

“Jesus, the stink is making my eyes water.” Harry said. “It smells like some fat guys with BO ate bad cheese and took a group shit on a rotting corpse.”

Harry wore so much Brut aftershave I was surprised he could smell anything.

“You’re a poet, McGlade.”

“Why? Did I rhyme something?”

I stuck my head into a shadowy doorway, didn’t find Bald Guy, and went deeper into the alley.

Then I heard the scream.

It came from ahead of me. A man’s voice, with a hollow quality to it.

Something horrible was happening to Bald Guy.

My whole body became gooseflesh. I just joined Vice two weeks ago. Even though I was still a patrol officer, and made the same pay, I jumped at the chance to wear plainclothes and ditch the standard uniform. But plainclothes turned out to be hooker-wear, and I felt especially vulnerable without my dress blues on. It wasn’t easy being tough when you were wearing a micro-mini.

Another scream ripped through the alley. The little girl in me, the one who still woke up scared during thunderstorms, wanted to turn around and run.

But if I gave in to my fear, Harry would mention it in the arrest report. Then it would be back to riding patrol and answering radio calls, where I got even less respect.

I forced myself to move forward. Now my gun was pointing in front of me, toward the direction of the sound. The Beretta was double action and protocol dictated it stayed uncocked. The harder pull meant fewer accidental shootings. Theoretically, at least. My finger was so tight on the trigger that a strong breeze would have caused me to fire.

“You see him?” Harry asked. I heard him in my earpiece, but I also heard him in the alley, somewhere ahead.

“Not yet.”

“Maybe he’s screaming because he can’t stand the smell.”

I didn’t think that was the case. I’d heard my share of screams on the Job. Screams of joy. Screams of sorrow. Screams of pain.

This was a scream of terror.

A clanging sound, only a few yards away from me. A Dumpster. I held my breath, heard whimpering coming from inside.

“He’s in a Dumptser,” I told Harry.

“Probably sitting in a big pile of rats.”

I approached quickly. It was dark, but I could see the Dumpster lid was open.

“This is the police!” I shouted, hoping my voice didn’t quaver. “Raise your hands up where I can see them!”

Bald Guy complied. But there was something wrong. Rather than two hands, I counted three.

I moved closer, and realized the third hand wasn’t his. It belonged to a woman.

And it wasn’t attached to the rest of her. Bald Guy was holding it, the look on his face pure horror.

I felt someone touch my shoulder and jumped back. It was Harry.

“Looks like he got you a birthday present, Jackie. Quite a handy guy.”

My stomach seized up, then I bent over and vomited, soaking my broken shoes and getting it caught in the fake curls hanging in front of my face. When I heaved for the final time, the transmitter popped free of my bustier and plonked into the puddle of puke.

“Happy twenty-ninth,” Harry said.

BIOGRAPHIES

BLAKE CROUCH is the author of DESERT PLACES, LOCKED DOORS, and ABANDON, which was an IndieBound Notable Selection last summer, all published by St. Martin’s Press. His newest thriller, SNOWBOUND, also from St. Martin’s, was released in June 2010. His short fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Thriller 2, and other anthologies, and is forthcoming in the new Shivers anthology and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Last year, he co-wrote “Serial” with J.A. Konrath, which has been downloaded over 250,000 times and topped the Kindle bestseller list for 4 weeks. That story and DESERT PLACES have also been optioned for film. Blake lives in Durango, Colorado. His website is www.blakecrouch.com.

JACK KILBORN is the pen name for J.A. Konrath, author of seven books in the Lt. Jack Daniels thriller series, the latest of which is SHAKEN. Under the Kilborn moniker, he wrote ENDURANCE, TRAPPED, and AFRAID, all structured in the same way as DRACULAS, but decidedly darker. Konrath currently has twenty-seven ebooks available on Kindle, most of them inexpensively priced. In 2011, Ace Books is releasing TIMECASTER and TIMECASTER SUPERSYMMETRY, two sci-fi ecopunk novels written under the nom de plume Joe Kimball. You can visit all of his personalities at www.jakonrath.com.

JEFF STRAND used to be best known as the creator of Andrew Mayhem, whose insane adventures appear in such horror/comedy novels as GRAVEROBBERS WANTED (NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY), SINGLE WHITE PSYCHOPATH SEEKS SAME, and CASKET FOR SALE (ONLY USED ONCE). But now he’s probably best known for his first “serious” book, PRESSURE, which was a Bram Stoker Award finalist for Best Novel. He’s written other comedic books (BENJAMIN’S PARASITE, THE SINISTER MR. CORPSE) and other serious books (DWELLER), and a couple that kinda blur the lines (WOLF HUNT, KUTTER). You can visit his Gleefully Macabre website at www.jeffstrand.com.

F. PAUL WILSON is a NY Times bestselling author of forty-plus novels who has won the Stoker, Inkpot, Porgie, and Prometheus Awards. His work spans science fiction, horror, adventure, medical thrillers, and virtually everything between. He has written for the stage, screen, and interactive media as well, and has been translated into 24 languages. His most famous novel, THE KEEP was adapted into a perfectly awful film by Michael Mann. His latest thrillers, GROUND ZERO and FATAL ERROR, star his urban mercenary, Repairman Jack. JACK: SECRET CIRCLES is the latest in a young-adult series starring a fourteen-year-old Jack. Paul resides at the Jersey Shore and can be found on the Web at www.repairmanjack.com.

BIBLIOGRAPHIES

F. Paul Wilson’s Works Available on Kindle

Repairman Jack novels

The Last Rakosh (free)

Legacies

Gateways

The Haunted Air

Hosts

Crisscross

Infernal

Harbingers

By the Sword

Ground Zero

Fatal Error

Jack: Secret Histories (young adult)

Jack: Secret Circles (young adult)

The Adversary Cycle

The Keep

The Touch

Reborn

The LaNague Federation series

An Enemy of the State

Dydeetown World

Wheels Within Wheels

The Tery

Healer

Other works

The Select

Implant

Deep as the Marrow

Sibs

Black Wind

Virgin

Midnight Mass (vampires)

DNA WARS with Matthew J. Costello

Mirage with Matthew J. Costello

Sims

The Fifth Harmonic

Aftershock & Others (collected stories)

Jeff Strand’s Works Available on Kindle

Andrew Mayhem novels

Graverobbers Wanted (No Experience Necessary)

Single White Psychopath Seeks Same

Casket For Sale (Only Used Once)

Suckers with J.A. Konrath

Other works

Benjamin’s Parasite

Pressure

Dweller

Gleefully Macabre Tales (collected stories)

How to Rescue a Dead Princess

Elrod McBugle on the Loose

Out of Whack

J.A. Konrath’s Works Available on Kindle

Jack Daniels thrillers

Whiskey Sour

Bloody Mary

Rusty Nail

Dirty Martini

Fuzzy Navel

Cherry Bomb

Shaken

Shot of Tequila

Banana Hammock

Jack Daniels Stories (collected stories)

SERIAL UNCUT with Blake Crouch

Suckers with Jeff Strand

Planter’s Punch with Tom Schreck

Floaters with Henry Perez

Truck Stop

Other works

Afraid

Endurance

Trapped

Origin

The List

Disturb

55 Proof (short story omnibus)

Crime Stories (collected stories)

Horror Stories (collected stories)

Dumb Jokes & Vulgar Poems

A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing

Blake Crouch’s Works Available on Kindle

Andrew Z. Thomas thrillers

Desert Places

Locked Doors

Other works

Abandon

Snowbound

Luminous Blue

Perfect Little Town (horror novella)

Serial Uncut with J.A. Konrath and Jack Kilborn

Bad Girl (short story)

Four Live Rounds (collected stories)

Shining Rock (short story)

*69 (short story)

On the Good, Red Road (short story)

Remaking (short story)

Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Making of DRACULAS

This is an exclusive, spoiler-laden, behind-the-scenes look at the writing of DRACULAS. What follows is the chain of emails between Joe, Blake, Jeff, and Paul, from March 27, 2010 through October 2, 2010. This is our back-and-forth to one another as we worked on DRACULAS, detailing the entire writing process, who wrote what, things that were added, cut, switched, and editorial suggestions to each other. These emails were recreated exactly as they were written, so there are typos. This is essentially a window into our co-writing process. It will probably be boring for readers, but for writers interested in collaboration, it offers a peek behind the curtains of how we did it.

It begins with Joe emailing Jeff after confirming the project with Blake over the phone…

March 27, 2010

Jeff—

Our novella SUCKERS has made $$$ this month, and the month isn’t over yet.

In June, Amazon is doubling the royalty rate. Which means we’ll be making about $$$ per month, EACH, on Suckers.

We should do some other collaboration. Maybe a McGlade/Mayhem piece. Or perhaps an original Kindle novel.

I’ve got an idea that could be used for either.

Some scientists find Dracula’s bones in Transylvania (they know it’s Dracula because he’s got a stake in the heart and fangs.) Pulling out the stake does nothing. So they take the bones back home, and accidentally clone him.

Title: DRACULAS.

The word “vampire” has been used to death. But “Dracula” has not. And with PREDATORS coming this summer, adding an “S” to a known monster name makes perfect sense.

We could go the serious route, as an action horror book. Could go comedy. Could go McGlade and Mayhem.

Interested?

Joe

• • •

Holy crap. That’s a lot of frickin’ money for a book with spaghetti sauce as the primary plot driver.

Let me get back to you on the collaboration. You’re right—an original, “major” novel for the Kindle would make us a fortune, and if you had e-mailed me yesterday around noon I would’ve said “Absolutely!” And then I would have e-mailed you back rather sheepishly and said that I might not be able to commit, because my agent got an e-mail about a work-for-hire project that will be potentially huge and will very likely leave me with no free time until 2011.

Jeff

• • •

What if DRACULAS were split three ways? Blake Crouch is involved (he and I just sold movie rights to SERIAL, believe it or not.)

If each of us write 20k, we could do it fast, get it up in a month. That way there’s no big time commitment, and you can still meet your deadlines.

I’m thinking this can be somewhat tongue and cheek, but not satire. Sort of like the first Evil Dead movie. Think 28 Days Later with vampires. And none of that supernatural BS. Crosses, garlic, daylight; none of that stops them. Only way to kill them is to cut off the head. And these aren’t debonair, hypnotizing movie idols. No turning into bats or sleeping in coffins. These draculas are running, screeching, blood sucking dynamos.

We’re talking a balls-to-the-wall screaming vampire invasion novel. Rabid, feral, crazy bloodsuckers, draining everything that moves; people, dogs, cattle, each other. Once gets cut, spills its own blood, the others pounce on him.

Maybe we confine the action to a hospital out in a rural area. One of the doctors there somehow gets Dracula’s bones, does some experiments, suddenly there’s a dracula outbreak. Heroes are a soon-to-be mom and dad in labor in the maternity ward, a lumberjack recovering from a work injury, a nurse at her first week on the job, and a paranoid redneck cop.

Think about it…

Joe

• • •

Ah…so it would have been something like BLOOD DEVIL by Eli Roth & JA Konrath .

I’ve got an April 30 deadline for WOLF HUNT, so I won’t be able to work on anything else until that one’s finished. I know that they’d want me to get started on another project fairly soon after that, and right now I don’t know if it’s going to be a brutal deadline or a generous, leisurely one. So I’ll keep you posted. If you and Blake want to rush forward with DRACULAS, we’ll come up with another idea when my schedule is clear!

Jeff

• • •

Blake and I just spoke. He’s gung ho for going forward. We talked about some of the plotting and divvying up the workload. Basically, we’d each take a character in the hospital and follow them through the vampire outbreak. Maybe 20k words each separately, then bring the characters together for the finale. Structure it like AFRAID: character scene ending in a cliffhanger, go to the next character ending in a cliffhanger, go to the next…

This needs to be three people. I’m crazy busy as well, but I’m lucky to not have a day job.

I’d really prefer working with you before looking for another third partner…

Joe

• • •

I don’t know the timeframe on the new gig. It could very well be a case of “Can you deliver the manuscript in the next 12 months?” Or it could be “We need this by August and here’s a 350-page bible of rules that you need to follow to the letter, while still delivering a creative story with emotional depth and engaging characters, which must not contradict anything in the upcoming unfinished game.” But I can say for certain that until May 1st, there’ll be no DRACULAS work for me.

Jeff

• • •

Oh, poop.

Okay, now I gotta ask others. I’ll start with F. Paul Wilson. But when this gets made into a Wes Craven movie, remember I asked you first.

Joe

• • •

Heh heh. This is the only time in my life that somebody will come to me before F. Paul Wilson. Rest assured that this is a genuine recognition of the impossibility of cramming another 20,000 words into April and not a “Sorry, too busy!” style brush-off of the type I saw (Big Name Horror Author) give an editor at WHC, leading to the editor being red-faced, quiet, and mildly ashamed for the rest of the party.

Jeff

• • •

Has (Big Name Horror Author) published anything since (Well Known Book)?

Joe

• • •

Lots, you illiterate!

Jeff

• • •

I thought he was dead.

Joe

• • •

Well, that’s what happens when you turn 40—the memory and awareness of the world around you starts to fade, big-time.

(This will be only be funny for the next 7 1/2 months.)

Jeff

• • •

Who are you, again?

Joe

• • •

That guy you owe $50,000 for ghost-writing WHISKEY SOUR.

Jeff

• • •

I didn’t like that book. Mixing humor and horror is stupid.

Joe

• • •

Hi Paul—

Taking a complete shot in the dark here, but how’s your writing schedule? Got any free time?

Blake Crouch and I have this insane idea for a vampire novel that would be a cinch to write, and we’re looking for a third collaborator. Everyone does 20k words, split the rights 3 ways.

I know you’ve done vamps before, but this is really a different take on it, and the workload would be light for all involved, and also a lot of fun. Sort of like what you did with ARTIFACT, except more linear, and more commercial. And more violent.

The title: DRACULAS.

It’s a lot like 28 Days Later with fangs. Capitalizes on both the vampire and the zombie popularity currently fueling genre fiction, but with some big twists. Think Night of the Living Dead in a hospital setting.

As I said, this is a shot in the dark. I know you’re busy and in demand. I’ve got four book contracts right now (!), and I’m buried in work, but this idea won’t let me be. Problem is, I just don’t have time to write it alone.

Joe

March 29, 2010

Getting my head sorted out after WHC.

This sounds like fun as long as you don’t have too tight a deadline.

Paul

• • •

Jeff said he really can’t do it, so I asked F. Paul Wilson if he wants to join with us.

Here’s some preliminary thoughts:

Prologue, three newspaper clippings from a cheesy tabloid. Headlines:

“DRACULA’S SKULL UNEARTHED IN TRANSYLVANIA! A Romanian farmer uncovered a skull with unique properties while plowing his field near the town of Brasov. The relic, which appears to be ancient and human, has thirty two razor-sharp teeth where normal flat teeth would be.”

“VAMPIRE SKULL A HOAX?” Discovered by a farmer while sowing soybeans, the humanoid skull with sharp teeth is considered by many to be fake. Fueling this speculation is the farmer’s refusals to let scientists analyze the discovery, claiming it is embodies an ancient curse.”

“MILLIONAIRE BUY’S DRACULAS HEAD!” Eccentric recluse Mortimer Moorecook of Durango, Colorado, has apparently purchased the so-called Dracula skull from the Transylvanian farmer who unearthed it a week ago, for an undisclosed sum. 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 was recently diagnosed with lung cancer, and couldn’t be reached for comment.”

Chapter 1

Moorecook gets the skull shipped to him. He’s a collector of vampire memorabilia, and on hand is an historian who had studied vampire legends. When the box arrives, Moorecock cradles the head in his sickly hands—then bites himself in the neck with the fangs. He immediately goes into convulsions. The historian calls the paramedics, who take him to the secluded Miskatonic Hospital a few miles away.

Chapter 2

New nurse first week. Cancer ward. Hates seeing all the dying, but likes the job and needs the money for her sick mother, who’s a patient there.

Chapter 3

Husband and expectant mother hurry to hospital while she’s in labor. Twins. Could be a long labor and complications.

Chapter 4

Lumberjack hurt in accident, recovering from chainsaw injury. Twenty five stitches. He’s so tough he drove himself to the hospital, so his truck—filled with axes and chainsaws—is parked in the lot.

Chapter 5

A gung-ho good ole boy gun-crazy cop (think Kevin Kostner from Silverado) is the boyfriend of the historian. Meets her at the hospital (To propose? Has ring on him?)

Alternate POVs (including draculas), chapters end in cliffhangers. No way to get out of the hospital because they spread too fast and knew enough to shred the tires on all the vehicles outside. Vamps also destroyed phone system. Hospital has a “no cell phone” rule and blocks the use of cells with a jammer.

Dracula rules:

All of their teeth (not just canines) grow long and sharp, so big they shred through their lips and cheeks.

Claws grow. Able to see in dark. Can smell blood like sharks.

Must drink blood every hour, or they die. Any blood: animal, human, blood banks. If one of them is cut and bleeds, the others turn on him and devour him. Lick up every drop off the floor and walls. Fight over bones to get the marrow.

Without blood, they autocannibalize themselves, sucking their own blood.

An hour to mutate. No cure.

No vampire gimmicks. Crosses, sunlight, garlic, stakes—nothing kills them but fire and beheading. No turning into bats or mesmerizing victims.

These are rabid dogs with bigger teeth. They exist only to drink blood. Rudimentary, childlike thoughts, and some problem solving abilities, but no speech (can’t with teeth so big) and no humanity or sense of their former selves.

Joe

• • •

More possible scenes:

Millionaire being rescued at the end because they think he’s normal: reverse NOTLD.

Lumberjack ripping a stitch. All the draculas nearby start sniffing the air and screaming.

Lumberjack and cop in a fist fight. Deadly, because if either of them spills blood, they’ll be stampeded.

Birth scene, woman in labor, fighting off draculas who smell it happening.

Joe

• • •

Did Paul write back and say “Dude, the occasional short stories are okay, but please don’t forget that I created…REPAIRMAN JACK!!!”

Jeff

• • •

Paul’s in.

Joe

• • •

Wow. Congrats!

If the project gets stalled and you find yourselves on May 1st still ready to get going, let me know!

Jeff

• • •

May 1 might be doable for a start date if you can commit. Me, you, Blake, and Paul. Blake and I are working on an outline.

Joe

• • •

Okay, I can commit to a May 1st start date! I’m in!

Jeff

April 1, 2010

Jeff Strand says he’s in, as long as we don’t get started until May 1.

So we have our team. :)

Joe

May 7, 2010

Hey guys—

Here are the preliminary rules for DRACULAS. We have four authors: JA Konrath, F. Paul Wilson, Blake Crouch, Jeff Strand.

Everyone will be responsible for 15k words. Blake and Joe will be responsible for the set-up and the finale (though the finale will be based on everyone’s input.)

The main idea for the story is a simple one: Night of the Living Dead in a rural hospital in Durango, Colorado, with vampires.

The idea for collaboration is equally simple. There will be four sets of protagonists. Each of the writers will take them through the vampire outbreak in the hospital. The chapters will be short, and end in cliffhangers. Then, when we’re putting the book together, we’ll alternate chapters. This is an ensemble piece with multiple heroes all battling the same evil in different wings of the hospital.

Here’s what we have as far as a set-up, rules, and characters. Jeff and Paul can each decide first which character arc they’d like to write for.

Whether you want your characters to survive or not is up to you. The very finale will be a reverse Night of the Living Dead ending. Instead of killing the hero thinking he’s infected, one of the infected will be mistaken for human and removed from the hospital by rescuers, presumably to go on and infect the world.

This is a fast-paced, visceral book done in real time with a lot of action set-pieces based on deconstructing vampire myths. More on that in a moment. Here’s the set up:

Prologue, three newspaper clippings from a cheesy tabloid. Headlines:

“DRACULA’S SKULL UNEARTHED IN TRANSYLVANIA! A farmer in Romania uncovered a skull with unique properties while plowing his field near the town of BRasov. The relic, which appears to be ancient and human, has thirty two razor-sharp teeth where normal flat teeth would be.”

“VAMPIRE SKULL A HOAX?” Discovered by a Romanian farmer, the humanoid skull with sharp teeth is considered by many to be fake. Fueling this speculation is the farmer’s refusals to let scientists analyze the discovery, claiming it is embodies an ancient curse.”

“MILLIONAIRE BUY’S DRACULAS HEAD!” Eccentric recluse Mortimer Moorecook of Durango, Colorado, has apparently purchased the so called Dracula skull from the Transylvanian farmer who unearthed it a week ago, for an undisclosed sum. 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 was recently diagnosed with lung cancer, and couldn’t be reached for comment.”

Chapter 1

Moorecook gets the skull shipped to him. He’s a collector of vampire memorabilia, and on hand is an historian who had studied vampire legends. When the box arrives, Moorecock cradles the head in his sickly hands—then bites himself in the neck with the fangs. He immediately goes into convulsions. The historian calls the paramedics, who take him to the secluded Miskatonic Hospital a few miles away.

Shortly after being admitted, Moorecock begins to transform into a vampire. He attacks the staff, and begins the spread the infection.

Chapter 2

New nurse, her first week on the job. She’s stationed in the cancer ward, which she prefers; that way she can spend time with her mother, who is in the ward dying of cancer.

Chapter 3

A husband and wife in the maternity ward. She’s in labor, expecting twins.

Chapter 4

A lumberjack, recovering from a chainsaw accident. His truck is parked outside, filled with axes, saws, and other useful tools.

Chapter 5

A good ole boy cop, who is the boyfriend of the historian. He’d been planning on asking her to marry him that day, and meets her at the hospital to do so. He’s a gun nut.

Chapter 6-Chapter 30

We alternate POVs, following each group of characters as the outbreak goes from some isolated incidents to a full-blown hospital takeover.

Vampire Rules

These aren’t brooding, charismatic charmers. These are feral pyschopaths who exists only to gorge themselves on blood.

After mutating, their teeth grow long and sharp. All of their teeth (not just their canines), and they extend so big they shred through their own lips and cheeks.

Claws grow. Able to see in dark. Can smell blood like sharks. Strong and fast, but no other supernatural abilities, and no trace of humanity left.

The draculas must drink blood every hour, or they die. Any blood. If one of them is cut and bleeds, the others turn on him and devour him. Lick up every drop off the floor and walls. Fight over bones to get the marrow.

Without blood, they autocannibalize themselves, sucking their own blood until they die.

It takes less than an hour to mutate.

No vampire gimmicks. Crosses, sunlight, garlic, stakes—nothing kills them but fire and beheading and blood draining. No turning into bats or mesmerizing victims.

No humanity, no higher thinking. These are rabid dogs with bigger teeth. They exist only to drink blood. Rudimentary, childlike thoughts. Problem solving skills and cooperation, but this dissipates the hungrier they become.

Blake and I have also got some set-pieces we’d like included in the story: big scenes that will be a lot of fun to write. I’ll let him describe those…

Joe

May 8, 2010

I kinda like the gun-nut cop…like many gun nuts, he’s something of a gunsmith and he customizes weapons…he’s off-duty and was on his way to a gun show with a trunkful of all his super-cool heat. He was going to take the historian along so he could propose to the woman he loves most among the things he loves most. His guns have been keeping them apart - she hates them. But she’s going to learn to LOVE them.

Paul

• • •

I’ll take the lumberjack, unless Joe or Blake desperately want him.

This sounds like a hell of a lot of fun. Good work, you two. Pat each other on the back…violently.

Jeff

• • •

Mornin’ Fellas - I talked with Joe, and I’ll take the pregnant couple (my daughter was born just a year ago, so I’m still pretty close to the birthing experience)…Joe will have the nurse/mother dying of cancer.

I wanted to list out some big set pieces Joe and I have talked about:

(1) We imagined this scene where, initially, Moorecook goes into the ER convulsing, and then goes ape-shit and bites everything in sight, essentially killing 3 people and a seeing-eye dog. Hospital staff is freaking out, they put the dead in the refrigerated morgue drawers to isolate them while they wait for the CDC to show up…There’s a beat of “whooo, disaster averted, let’s call the CDC, and someone on staff at the morgue late at night, suddenly hears four metal doors begin to rattle, and then this awful screaming coming from the drawers, which begin to be kicked out.

(2) A woman undergoing a blood transfusion wakes to see a dracula slurping down the contents of her blood bag

(3) A nurse running in terror, tries to get to the hospital chapel, thinking she’ll be saved. 30 draculas flood in, shattering the safe in a church/with a cross myth.

(4) As Joe mentioned, end of book, a 28-year-old we’ve never seen before is saved…this is Moorecook, who has glutted himself on enough blood to return to this eternally-youthful undead state which was his goal from the beginning…

(5) a blind man who’s seeing eye dog has been bitten by Moorecook is trying to find his dog, who is now a dracula dog and turns on him.

(6) a character hears what sounds like gunshots out in the parking lot, looks out the window, sees a pack of draculas going through the parking lot, shredding tires.

(7) I think it’d be funny if either Paul’s or Jeff’s semi-redneck character always calls these things draculas instead of vampires.

A little about the mentality of the draculas: Of course, they’re voracious for blood, b/c on some primal level, they know the more blood they drink, they might return to their previous state. No blood in an hour = death. Imagine they need it like we need oxygen.

In addition to the character ARCS we’ve all chosen, we each take one of the initial people bitten by Moorecook, so we each have a dracula POV. I’ll take Moorecook, Joe wants to take a child, the dog doesn’t count…Jeff & Paul let me know what person you want to take and I’ll make sure Moorecock bites your guy/gal in the ER…in terms of the dracula POV, I really don’t want to say too much about it. It shouldn’t be too extensive, but I think we should all at least play around with writing a scene or two from a dracula POV and seeing what we come up with.

I’m going to write the opening, up to the point where everyone can begin their character’s arcs…I think when you see what I’ve done, where I’ve left it off, it will make sense.

Peace!

Blake

• • •

Paul, you’ll do great with the cop/gun nut.

Jeff, the lumberjack is all you. One thing I was thinking about his character is his chainsaw injury is on the back of his leg. And everyone who meets him is like, “How did you cut the back of your leg, dumb ass?” This actually happened to a buddy of mine.

Blake is going to take the pregnant couple. He’s also writing the set-up scene. Here’s the basic idea:

Once Moorecook is taken to the ER, he goes nuts and bites three people in the waiting room, ripping out their throats. These three are taken to the morgue, put in the meatlocker drawers. CDC is called to come look at a potential outbreak, but they’re several hours away.

Then, a morgue attendant hears scratching from one of the drawers. Then two of the drawers. Then three. The scratching turns to pounding. The draculas, oblivious to pain, break and smash their own bodies bursting out of the drawers.

Blake is going to follow Moorecook as a dracula. But Joe, Paul, and Jeff will each follow one of these newly created draculas. So we all get to start our own mini-epidemic in the hospital, however we want.

In other words, we each write for a main POV character, and various secondary characters we create, including one of the draculas who wreaks havoc on our characters. Dracula POV is fine, as long as we agree on the ground rules for the creature’s thought processes.

Let Blake and I know the type of dracula you want as your main villain. My dracula will be a twelve year old kid. You need to each pick a bad guy character.

Another note—Moorecook is the alpha male, and retains the most of his intelligence. He’s going to destroy the phone junction boxes, and eventually also the electricity in the hopsital.

This is a newer hospital, so it is set up with cell phone jammers, like modern airplanes. No one will be able to use their cell phone.

Paul’s cop will be able to use his radio in his car (which is loaded with weapons) but he’ll have to get outside in order to do it, and I predict the hospital will fill up with draculas pretty quickly, and these things are HARD to kill.

The hospital is isolated. Ten miles from anything. Once the epidemic starts, it hits fast and hard—no one has time to get away. The only remaining survivors after the initial onslaught are the ones hiding in their rooms. Moorecook also directs some of the other draculas to cruise the hospital parking lot and pop tires on all the vehicles.

A note on how this will work: we all need to turn in pages as we write them. That was, we can cross into each other’s stories. One thing we envisioned was the cop had arrested the lumberjack in the past, and when they meet up, they are hostile to one another. They would even begin to fight. This would freak out the cop’s girlfriend (the historian) because if either of them spill even a tiny drop of blood—a cut lip, a busted knuckle—the draculas will be able to smell it from another floor and they’ll swarm on them.

I’ve got two books to write by July 6. But I will have time in June to start cranking on this. Worst case scenario, I’ll bat clean-up, and weave my story into the three that you guys do.

Blake is taking the lead on this one. When we’ve got a rough draft, we’ll all have a chance to streamline and edit and expand.

Joe

• • •

(Virtual rubbing of hands) This is going to be FUUUUUUUUN!

Paul

• • •

Paul - what’s your gun toter’s name?

Blake

• • •

Joe - give a call when you gave a moment. I have a question about our mythology (and also an idea).

Blake

• • •

I didn’t have the historian/forensic anthropologist get into the mythology of dracula in the opening chapter because I think it slow things down too much…there will time for her to wax eloquent about the myth and what exactly she’s doing for Mortimer in a breather between terrifying scenes in the hospital.

Blake

• • •

Nicely done! Great start. I’m going to make it a tad bit more serious (An edge of black humor is good, but I don’t want anyone to think this is parody or comedy), then do Shanna’s section.

Can you sign in to Dropbox.com, make a DRACULAS folder, then send invites to me, Paul, and Jeff and explain to them how it works? Then I’ll drop the file in.

Make four Word Doc templates titled BLAKE, JOE, JEFF, PAUL and put those in the folder. That way we can all work on our sections at the same time.

Joe

• • •

LOL, I just created a Draculas folder. Did you create one as well?

Did the second chapter. Third chapter is mine, in the hospice nurse’s POV. She’ll be the ex wife of the lumberjack.

This is gonna rock.

Joe

• • •

Great edits to my opening, btw.

Blake

• • •

Thanks. Jenny is going to go into the ER, and call Randall, her lumberjack ex-husband who is recovering from a chainsaw injury. During the call, Moorecook will escape the gurney and bite several people to death before being restrained.

Then everyone will do their character intro chapters. Then we do the morgue scene where the draculas come to life. Then we’re off…

Joe

May 9, 2010

How does Clayton Theel sound?

Paul

• • •

So you’ll write the Moorecook losing his shit scene from Jenny’s POV in the ER? Cool. I’ll write the morgue scene.

Blake

• • •

All - so Paul’s cop character is Clayton Theel (great name)…I think we called the lumberjack Randall for now, unless Jeff wants to change him to something else. Clayton’s girlfriend is Shanna, the historian/anthropologist. Jenny, hospice nurse, is the lumberjack’s ex.

Jeff and Paul, all we need to complete the setup is a brief description of your character who comes into the ER and gets themselves bitten by Mortimer Moorecook. Maybe mention what ailment brought them to the ER. This will be your Dracula you get to reek havoc with, so go nuts.

Blake

• • •

Howzabout I use the ER doc Kurt Lanz, MD (“No, not ‘Kurt’ — Doctor Lanz.”) on duty who thinks he’s hot shit and too good for this lame community hospital and all these hicks he’s got to deal with? When he first changes he’s sure he can control the blood thirst because he’s a superior being, but he’s so wrong. And then he gets into it.

I’d also like to add to Shanna’s POV in 2 that she’s going to break it off with Clay before the gun show - she can’t take another gun show.

Paul

• • •

I love it, Paul. I don’t know if I can do this in my Moorecook dracula POV (because he’s higher-functioning than the people he infects) but I dig the idea of showing, through a dracula POV, the mental crumbling as these intelligent adults begin to lose their high cognitive functioning abilities.

Blake

• • •

That works for me, Paul.

We need to figure out if draculas die like zombies, then mutate into monsters, or if they only mutate when they get bitten and survive.

Joe

• • •

I have an answer to my own question.

If someone is bitten and lives, they become a dracula. Not as drastically as Moorecook did (he was bitten by the source, which is more virulent), but they mutate over the course of half an hour, losing their mental facilities as they change.

Those who are killed by draculas also come back to life if there is enough of them still intact and they still have enough blood left. Maybe an hour time frame to reanimate the dead tissue.

This way, we can follow certain characters becoming draculas, and also have a surprise morgue scene where the dead also become draculas, adding to the outbreak.

Joe

• • •

Just read your additions, Paul. Expertly done, you tying together four main characters, and amusing as well.

This is gonna kick ass.

Joe

• • •

Randall sounds good for my lumberjack (and I’ll make him responsible for calling them “draculas” instead of “vampires.”)

My dracula is Benny, a children’s performer clown whose magic show was poorly received by the birthday boy. Randall and Benny bond over the embarrassing nature of their injuries.

Since Joe is mean and impatient, I’ll say upfront that I won’t be able to start writing until the 17th, but I’ll launch right into it like a maniac after that!

Jeff

• • •

Dracula clown. Awesome. I’ll put Benny and Dr. Kurt in the massacre scene. I should be able to knock that out in a day or two.

I won’t be able to go full-force on this until June. So if Blake and Paul want to get going, go for it. Just keep me and Jeff in the loop.

Joe

• • •

Ditto…super-cool, Paul. Can’t wait to see what toys Clay brings to the party.

Blake

• • •

Joe’s also a selfish lover, let’s not forget that.

A dracula clown? I’m scared of normal clowns. That’s awesome!

Blake

• • •

Joe - when you get the ER massacre done, I’ll work on the morgue and maybe we can have the setup done in a few days…I’m working on a couple other projects, but I should be able to get a little of this in every day. Helps that it’s a blast to write.

Blake

• • •

Jeff, please use my favorite line about clowns. The birthday boy said, “That’s not a clown! That’s just some guy dressed up like a clown!”

Paul

• • •

That may very well be the best line of all time…

Jeff

May 10, 2010

I think my characters will be Adam and Stacie Murray. Stacie’s in the hospital to be induced for her first pregnancy - twins. They’re sort of a young, gentle, bright-eyed couple. Around 30. Stacie is a high-school English teacher on maternity leave and Adam is a Lutheran minister. He’s been in Durango about 5 years, and recently took over a church. Sometimes he serves as the hospital chaplain. He knows Randall and Clayton. Maybe he’s even tried to help Randall in the past when he’s gone on a drunken tear. I do like the idea a lot that this is a small town, and all these characters not only know each other, but have history.

Blake

• • •

He’ll be very disappointed when crosses don’t work.

Paul

• • •

Yeah, I’m sensing a crisis of faith coming…

Blake

May 12, 2010

…Deputy Theel will be bringing to the party: http://world.guns.ru/grenade/gl15-e.htm

It’s going to be loaded with his custom 40mm Beehive rounds filled with 00buck. So we’re going to need LOTS of draculas. Be great to have a situation where one of your characters is facing absolutely hopeless odd and then there’s this horrendous racket and the draculas’ heads are being shredded…and Clay rounds a corner with this baby.

Of course he’s eventually going to run out of ammo.

Paul

• • •

Nice.

He should have one of these too.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/78284/automatic_shotgun/

Joe

• • •

The famous “streetsweeper.”

Paul

• • •

Well, my priest has a can of really intense mace from his wife’s purse. Take that, vampire!

Blake

May 31, 2010

I’m thinking we need a throughline. You know, a progression of story beats for the big picture — how it’s gonna go. Or maybe just a timeline so that we know what’s going on with the big picture and we can plug into that.

What’s the time span of the novel? 4 hours? 5? 6?

For instance…(this is just placeholder stuff):

Hour 1: carnage in the ER

Hour 2: the first victims change and begin to attack; no one aware of he threat except new victims

Hour 3: 20 Draculas now and rising - panic spreads; tires slashed; phones dead (how do we kill cells?)

See where I’m going? It will save a lot of editing and rewriting later if we’re all on the same page re the timing.

Paul

• • •

Agreed.

I’m still cranking on deadlines, but hope to get started on this soon—perhaps July?

Joe

June 11, 2010

Blake is visiting me for a few days in July. We’re going to hammer out the timeline and first attack scene, then everyone can get rolling on their story arcs.

Joe

• • •

Poor, poor Blake.

Jeff

• • •

I’m also forcing Blake to wear a dress and dance the Lambada—the dance of love.

But “forcing” may be too strong a term…

Joe

August 11, 2010

Hey Dude - you want me to take a shot at finishing the ER scene in Draculas? I’m in between projects and have the time at the moment. Let me know.

Blake

• • •

Sure, give it a shot.

Joe

August 15, 2010

Paul & Jeff & Joe: Howdy, boys. Hope summer’s been good to you. I’ve finished a project I was working on, and have finally had a chance to devote some time to Draculas and try to get us all set up to do this. I visited Joe in July and we worked on the ER scene together. I’ve just now wrapped it up, and I think Draculas is at a point where we can all begin working on it together. I’ve dropped an updated manuscript in the dropbox.

To recap, here are the characters/draculas we’re following:

Blake: Mort dracula/my pregnant couple in the maternity ward Adam and Stacie Murray

Joe: Oasis dracula/Nurse Jenny (Randall’s ex-wife)

Jeff: Benny the Clown dracula/Randall the Lumberjack

Paul: Dr. Lanz dracula/Clayton “Deputy Dawg”, Shanna’s boyfriend

As we get close to launching into this, I’m finding it a challenge to coordinate everyone’s movement and the timing of the outbreak. As Paul pointed out, this is going to take a little more forethought if we don’t want to do major rewrites at the end (I don’t - :).

I think it’s a smart thing to divide this book out by hour increments. It’ll make it easier on us keeping things straight and also be a cool thing for readers since this is essentially written in real time.

Here’s a basic outline through the start of Hour 3, totally up for debate and changing and input, but just to get us going. Please let me know what you think…if everyone is good on this outline through 9 chapters, let’s start writing…

HOUR 1

Ch.1 — (WRITTEN) Mortimer’s POV receives skull, bites himself, convulses.

Ch.2 — (WRITTEN)Shanna’s POV riding with Mort to the hospital.

HOUR 2

Ch.3 — (WRITTEN) Jenny’s POV: ER massacre, ending with Benny the Clown, Oasis’ mother, and other ER patients killed by Mort (5 dead), and Oasis, Lanz, and the ambulance paramedic bitten/infected. Mort has run off into the hospital.

Ch.4 (LANZ-PAUL) — Massacre aftermath (brief downtime). I think this should be written in Lanz’ infected POV. At first, he’s okay, he’s barking orders. For all he knows, this is some kind of outbreak. Get the dead into the morgue. Get CDC on the horn. Quarantine those who were bitten (paramedic/Oasis). He’ll talk with them. Call the sheriff’s department. He ingested some blood foam, but wasn’t bitten. By end of this chapter, perhaps while he’s examining Oasis, he’s becoming a dracula, and that should be a blast to write.

Ch.5(RANDALL-JEFF) what I’m thinking is, he limps outside to his truck and gets one of his huge chainsaws or axes or whatever (go nuts on this), and then returns while the ER is dealing with the aftermath/cleanup and goes off to find Mortimer dracula who fled the ER into the rest of the hospital chasing the softball players — Randall gets himself into another wing. This is a short chapter…Jeff think about where you want Randall when outbreak reaches critical mass. This is our first intro to him in his POV, too, so we should probably get a sense of how he feels about Jenny.

Ch.6(JENNY-JOE) she’s assisting with helping the ER wounded, and maybe by the end of this she sees the changes that are happening in the infected and runs off into some distant part of the hospital to hide. Short chapter

Ch.7(MORGUE/OUTBREAK-BLAKE) Just before all hell breaks loose, nurse Winslow in the morgue, and the doors start rattling. Oh shit. The dead are back as draculas, the injureds’ metamorphoses is complete, and it’s a free for all. I could see us combining POV’s in this chapter, showing Lanz, Oasis, Mort and others going berserk, taking out entire wings, drinking from blood bags, etc., maybe cutting the power). I can write most of this, but would love to have short bits from Oasis, Lanz, and Benny the Clown to incorporate.

Note — the trick is realizing there are several stages building up to full scale draculas running amok: 1st, just Mort, and his ER rampage; then the rampage of about 10 draculas who Mort infected; then, when their victims come alive, it’s like 40 or 50 and we’re off.

HOUR 3

Ch.8(PREGNANT COUPLE — BLAKE) This just introduces them. They hear chaos all around them. She’s in early stages of labor.

Ch.9 Arrival of Clayton fuck’n Theel. He’s come to pick up Shanna (who’s somewhere hiding in the hospital by this point and hasn’t been answering her cell), but something’s wrong…the hospital’s dark, he hears screaming going on inside. Earlier he heard a call about an ER disturbance but this is clearly serious. In he goes. Probably with some ridiculous gun.

Honestly, I think after chapter 9 we’re truly set up to play around with our characters. And keep in mind that the 40+ dracula outbreak hasn’t arrived yet.

So, to take it to the next stage, Joe writes chapter 6

I’ll write 7 and 8

Jeff writes 5

Paul writes 4 and 9

Everyone also write a scene with your draculas becoming draculas. Joe, I can’t remember, are you writing Oasis or another child? I remember something about a blind girl and her seeing eye dog becoming a dracula and turning on her, but that just sounded mean, even for you ;), which means I hope you write it.

Two more things…re: outside help coming to the hospital. We establish it’s in the middle of nowhere (as it truly is in Durango where I live) and I think it’d be cool if the sherrifs deputies (like 6 or 7) showed up during hour 3 or 4, and got themselves wiped out in the parking lot while the draculas were slashing tires, so then no one comes for awhile, and when they do, a respectable perimeter is set up. I just don’t think there is any way we can make it that no word gets out that something terrible is going down. BUT…cell phones stay jammed, even after power is lost.

When this round of chapters is in, Joe and I can go through and smooth everything out, and we’ll see where we are. In the meantime, I’ll also try to put together a good hospital map, and float around a timeline for the rest of the book with major beats…sound good?

As I worked on this today, I realized we aren’t going to reach a point where we all just go off and write in isolation for 15K words. I think we’re all going to have to sort of address the same period of time concurrently and stay in constant contact, making sure everything jives before moving on. Should be challenging and fun.

Could I get a best guess of when you guys could get Joe and I these 1st round of chapters? Sorry for the delay in getting this going, but I think we’re ready to roll now. Should be a blast.

Peace!

Blake

• • •

Okay, I just did a fer-real LOL. Mortimer crouched, then leapt after them, soaring five 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!”

Paul

• • •

I just turned the gist of this into a Word file (“Timeline”) for the drop box so it will be easier to access.

Haven’t read it yet.

This comes at a pretty good time for me. Looking forward to digging in.

Paul

August 16, 2010

Thanks, Blake! Looks like you’ve been working your ass off on this!

I’m having dinner with Mr. Konrath on Wednesday, and we’re going to work out the relationship between our dating characters. So I’ll probably have my chapter done shortly after that, probably on Friday.

Jeff

August 17, 2010

This is a really great opening.

By my count, here’s who’s contaminated by the end of what’s written:

Mortimer

EMT (bitten)

Oasis (bitten)

Oasis’s mom (dead)

Benny (dead)

Dr. Lanz (tasted bloody foam)

Softball #1 (assumed wounded?)

Softball #2 (assumed wounded?)

(I added a line to the bottom of pg 16 to cover Lanz tasting some of Mort’s bloody foam.)

I’ll have Winslow do triage and Lanz start treating who he can. The softballers will die which will mean 4 in the morgue. I can bring a few more victims in from the floors to raise the total contaminated to 10. Since Lanz’s inoculum will be the smallest, I’ll make him the last to turn at the end of the chapter.

Any additions, suggestions, corrections?

Paul

• • •

Paul this sounds great…

Re: dead v. wounded…what about having the softballers massively wounded. For some reason, overweight vampires in softball uniforms strike me as pretty terrifying. But if Mortimer could have killed four others elsewhere and they’re brought to the ER, that would raise the dead count to 6 and make for an appropriately loud number of dead in the morgue lockers.

Additionally, I would hit these points in your chapter for setup purposes…Mortimer is missing now in the hospital. You might mention Lanz seeing Randall limping off into the hospital carrying a chainsaw (love this image). Joe’s Jenny chapter and Jeff’s Randall chapter, which directly follow this one, can deal with Jenny trying to stop Randall but by God he’s gonna take care of this. An important moment b/c they’ll be separated and trying to get back together I would think. I would end this chapter with Lanz turning and maybe noticing others turning. One character we should keep track of is Shanna. Perhaps Lanz, still fighting the change in himself, scares her and she takes off. And if you could have Lanz send Winslow off to the morgue to make sure the dead were properly stowed away, that will set up my next chapter. Can’t wait to read this!

I’ll start outlining the outbreak chapter to send around.

Blake

August 18, 2010

Spitballing here:

Is Mort going to be the alpha dracula, with some influence over the others? If so, Lanz, with his ego, might want to challenge that after things get rolling. (After all, it’s my hospital.) Might be a good plot complication - everything’s going the draculas’ way when there’s an attempted coup.

Paul

• • •

I like Lanz trying to become alpha dracula, but let’s remember these things are feral with only rudimentary thought processes—think Matheson’s Born of Man and Woman, but not as smart.

I just did a minor polish on what we have so far, tweaking and fixing some repetitive words. I’m meeting with Jeff tonight to talk about our characters’ interactions.

I don’t think this will take as much coordination as Blake does. As long as the major beats are down (when the cops come, when the electricity goes out, etc.) we should be able to write four relatively self-contained stories.

Mine will be Jenny the nurse searching for her ex-husband, Randy, and trying to save as many survivors as possible. She’ll start with the pediatric wing. Her nemesis is Oasis, the girl.

Paul is writing for Clayton, Shanna, and Lanz. Clayton’s goals will be to find Shanna, and kill as many draculas as possible. This is the end-of-the-world scenario he’s been preparing for since his dad built a bomb shelter and taught him about survival.

Blake is doing the pregnant couple, in the maternity ward. It would make sense that Moorecook wants to make a dracula army, but babies wouldn’t really play a part in that. So he and his brood would use infants for food. I’d guess that Blake’s heroes would try to prevent that.

Jeff’s lumberjack, Randall, will be searching for Jenny. Perhaps a side quest will have him trying to turn the electricity back on—he’s a handyman-type. He’ll eventually have a confrontation with Clayton, which should be an important scene because if either of them spill any blood during their tussle, the draculas will sniff them out.

I’m thinking 15k words each. We could conceivably finish our sections by the end of the month, then string it together. Remember to write in your own named files, not in the DRACULAS 1.3 file.

This is going to be fun. And let’s pile on the Gran Guignol. This is the anti-Twilight, and a chance to really let loose our inner gorehounds.

Joe

• • •

Paul — I was going to say pretty much what Joe said—let’s try it but make sure we keep these draculas on a single-minded, low-functioning level. Mort is the head dracula, since he was bitten by the original skull and as a result will undergo some interesting changes the more yummy blood he gulps down. But let’s see where the power struggle takes us. I’ll keep an eye on Lanz’ progression through the hospital as you write him and we’ll have our draculas collide.

Blake

• • •

As I said, just spitballing - if it don’t stick to the wall, we leave in on the floor.

Paul

• • •

All - I just dropped the morgue scene in chapter 7 into the box. I was thinking that chapter could handle Winslow’s pov, along with all our draculas on the loose, so feel free to add Oasis, Lanz, and Benny the Clown pov’s into that word doc.

Blake

August 19, 2010

As I’m writing I find I need basic info — like where we are and last names. (unless I missed something.)

Where IS Blessed Crucifixion?

I gave Jenny “Bolton” as a placeholder surname. I’d guess Randall’s is the same.

Kurt Lanz

Clay Theel

Mortimer Moorecook

Nurse Winslow

what about Shanna?

Paul

• • •

Sorry…that went out prematurely. I spotted Durango in chapter 1 (long time since I read it). But people often refer to each other by last names, so…

Paul

• • •

Paul, effin’ loved your scene. Black humor, great characters, A few quick suggestions.

1. Can the paramedic also say, “I need a tetnus shot. And rabies. And antiserum. You see that goddamn guy? Fucking give me every shot you’ve got.”

2. Jenny tells him “I’m waiting for my ex-husband.” Randall is coming back with a chainsaw, to escort Jenny to the pediatrics ward to protect the kids. That is going to be Randy and Jen’s story arc—barricading themselves in the children’s wing—and I think Jen should think of it almost immediately. Maybe she should insist to Lanz to evacuate the hospital, and he says something like, “Evacuate where? We’re in the middle of Bumblefuck, Hickville. I’m supposed to march 234 patients out into the woods?”

That gives us a patient number, reinforces that they can’t get away, and tells Lanz where Jenny will be when he becomes a dracula and decided to eject her himself.

Joe

• • •

And just to clarify:

No one writes or edits or corrects anyone else’s section without specific permission from the writer. We’ll all do a final edit when we put this together. But for the first few drafts, let’s all make suggestions, but no rewriting.

And when you do a second draft, save it numerically. Paul 1.0, Paul 1.1, Paul 1.2, etc. Get used to doing a new draft every time you make a change or an addition. We’ll all be reading each other, and may need to go back to earlier drafts and lift stuff from them. Keeping the drafts separate will make it easier.

Joe

• • •

I should be able to fling my first chapter into the dropbox sometime tomorrow, with another one by Sunday. Thus far, I’ve had a lot of fun justifying the preposterous idea that Randall is actually going to limp out of the hospital to get a chainsaw from his truck. He acts impulsively, realizes quickly that he’s acting impulsively, but refuses to back down from a task once he’s started, even as he thinks “Y’know, the hospital security probably isn’t going to want to let me back inside with a chainsaw in my hands.” This is a large part of why he and Jenny are no longer married.

Jeff

• • •

Nice! Looking forward.

Blake

• • •

Chap 4 is pretty much done. It ends with Oasis and the EMT becoming draculas and killing the LPN while Lanz runs and hides in the supply room. Where those two go from there I don’t know.

I don’t have a sense for what Shanna is doing in all this.

As requested, I added some Lanz to Blake’s Chap. 7. He’s still in the supply room. Here is where he thinks he can beat it but fails miserably — he breaks out and starts chomping. I think Randall has to come through the ER while Lanz has locked himself away.

Paul

• • •

Paul - can’t wait to read your new stuff. Love that Lanz runs and hides again.

Re: Shanna, I would say it’s totally up to you since Clayton Theel is going to come into the hospital looking for her, which I suppose is his first motivation - find Shanna. Perhaps she needs a short chapter where she has lingered in the ambulance, trying to pull herself together, then walks into the ER when all hell has broken loose. Maybe Moorecook chases her out into another part of the hospital? I guess it really depends on what you’re going to do with Shanna and Clayton for the core of your story. Do they have a phone conversation in the ambulance while he’s on his way where she pretty much breaks up with him? Pushing him to search for her even harder?

Joe and Jeff have figured out how their characters are going to interact, mine are probably going to be in a vacuum until the very end, a pregnant couple fighting for their life in the maternity ward. What are you thinking of for Clayton’s journey through hell? Maybe we can find a way to have him intersect with my characters?

Blake

• • •

I think we need a scene where the draculas tell everybody in the hospital that they’ve won the lottery, and as the people walk one-by-one into a private room to collect their winnings, the draculas kill them!

Jeff

• • •

BRILLIANT!

Paul

• • •

I think Shanna outside the hospital doors (cell reception is better there) calling Clay is a good start. She can call off the trip to the gun show. Their relationship is not working…etc. Besides she’s too upset about Mortimer’s collapse.

I think we should have all sorts of character meet-ups. Randall and Lanz have certainly got issues.

I see Clay as like the Terminator when it comes to killing draculas…until his ammo runs out.

Paul

August 20, 2010

Agreed, with the caveat that we can fix typos without consultation. I read Paul’s chapter 4 last night and added a period to one sentence and closed out a quote that needed to be.

Blake

• • •

Joe thinks I’m just crazy and anal (which I’m not refuting) but I don’t think it’s a terrible idea to have a working hospital map that we can refer to to track character movement.

http://www.iredellmemorial.org/guide.aspx?id=922

This is the hospital from the town where I grew up in North Carolina . Services the same community size as Durango (45 thousand in the surrounding counties) but I like the floor plan much better (more stories). I’m not saying we have to stick to this religiously, but I think it may be good to consult. I have to have an idea of the space my characters inhabit, it also prods my creativity, and when I’m not familiar with an environment like this (thank God) I need a little help. Obviously, my characters will be based in the maternity ward. Joe’s will be in pediatrics. Jeff’s is trying to get the power going or something so he can communicate with Jenny. Not sure what Clayton and Shanna are doing yet but my sense is Clayton’s like a kid in a candy shop, a real-life video game where he gets to play with all his toys and he’s going to be fucking blasting through the place until the ammo runs out.

If everyone likes this, I’ll throw it in the dropbox.

Blake

• • •

That hospital is too big, methinks. I was thinking two hundred patients, tops.

Almost done with the morgue scene, then I’ll work on Jenny’s scene.

Joe

• • •

It’s only a 247-bed hospital, so if there are 100-150 patients during the outbreak, doesn’t that seem about right?

Blake

• • •

We can always lop off the 5th floor, too. I think four stories is about right.

Blake

• • •

Also, to make putting this together easier, we need to break up our own individual sections and chapters.

So when I write the first Jenny scene, it will be JOE 1.0, JOE 1.1, etc.

When I write a new scene, it will be JOE 2.0, JOE 2.1. JOE 2.2.

Blake, I’m still working on the morgue scene. But I’ll split up the Lanz section at the end and make that BLAKE 2.0.

That way, we can work on different sections, and it will be easier to piece this into a linear narrative.