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"Alice!"
Sha
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?
She just hoped he hadn't gone up with it.
The sergeant had told two soldiers to escort her--a euphemism--to the trailer at the rear of the lot. They pulled her inside and stuck her in what they'd called "the command center."
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. Sha
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 then another soldier--with bars on his shoulders--strolled inside. He had gray hair and a barrel chest, and his expression was grim. He stared hard at Sha
"Who are you?" he demanded.
"Sha
"Colonel Halford. My men just caught some sort of creature, Ms. Wiener. It attacked them, we believe, with intent to eat them."
"Not eat them," Sha
"Do you know what it is?"
"It's..." Sha
"A dracula."
She nodded.
"As in a vampire? The kind you fight with crosses and garlic?"
She shook her head. "Crosses don't work. I don't know about the garlic."
Sha
"Do you know how many there are?"
"No. The infection spread quickly. There could be hundreds."
He nodded again. Two soldiers came in and saluted. Col. Halford saluted back.
"The autoclave is in place, sir."
"Sound the sirens. Clear everyone to the perimeter. I want detonation in sixty seconds from the moment I stop talking. Dismissed."
The men hurried off.
"What's an autoclave?" Sha
"Same as in a hospital. Used for sterilizing medical equipment. Except this sterilizes a much larger area."
"It's a bomb?"
"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 a steel armor plate. The air in the hospital will heat to ten thousand degrees, sterilizing the entire structure."
Sha
"I'm sorry, Ms. Wiener. I have my orders."
No. This couldn't be happening. The military was here. They could help him.
"Please. He's a good man. A cop. He saved a lot of people tonight."
"I know. I just heard from four children who talked about a policeman with a big cool gun. But I also heard from Dr. Driscoll, my medical officer. She confirmed these creatures are contagious. We simply can't risk any of them getting away. They've managed to kill six of my men in less than ten minutes, Ms. Wiener. Good men, well trained. Durango has a population of fourteen thousand, and it's only ten miles away. If one of those things manages to get there, it will be a slaughter."
Sha
She had to get Clay out of there. Had to--
Two men tackled her.
A few seconds later she was in handcuffs, being dragged away, screaming at the top of her lungs, "Clay! CLAAAAAY!"
Je
BY the time she realized that the object they had lowered onto the roof was a bomb--a huge, army-green charge--Je
It was damn ironical.
Clay
HE snatched up the Taurus and began wiping her off. Poor Alice was a mess--blood, plaster dust, and who knew what else.
He hugged her to his chest. "Hey, baby. Go
Then he heard screaming. He'd heard a lot of screaming that day, but this seemed to be coming from outside. And rather than the incoherent, senseless terror he'd gotten used to, this sounded a lot like his name.
He hurried to the nearby window, broken out by Adam's farewell blast directly above, and stared out over the parking lot.
One floor down and maybe a hundred yards away...that looked like Sha
Why was she so panicked? She was safe down there.
Then he gri
"Don't worry, babe. I'll be right--"
He heard a boom from above and then a blast of heat like a solar flare seared through the hospital, hurling his burning body through the window.
Sha
SHANNA was still screaming when 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 vomited 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. No, wait. Those kids would know. They'd remember the guy with the big cool gun. Clay would love to be remembered that way.
Colonel Halford walked over, told his men to release her.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"You can take that sorry and shove it up your ass."
She stormed away, and no one bothered to stop her. The cool night was now hot as the summer in Nevada, and the burning hospital bright enough to see the damage that had been done to it. The autoclave had performed as advertised. The building wasn't just sterilized. It was a
Choking back a sob, Sha
"Her name is Daniella. She was handed to me by your cameraman when the helicopter landed. Incredibly, some soldiers almost shot both of us, until I could prove we hadn't been bitten."
"Is the baby okay?" the reporter asked.
"I'm happy to report she's completely healthy. Even in tragedies such as this, miracles happen."