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

That was no mask.

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

This was the monster.

It charged him, talons extended.

Clay backpedaled and pulled the Glock.

"Stop! Stop right there!"

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

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

"Last warning or--!"

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

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

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

What the hell?

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

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

"Jesus."

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

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

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

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

"You gotta be shittin' me!"

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

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

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

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

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

And he entered hell.

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

Had that monster done all this?

Jesus, where was Shanna?

And then movement to his right as a bloodsoaked nurse charged him from a side room, and she had the same goddamn teeth as the EMT outside, the same claws, and the same maniacal look in her black eyes.

No warning this time. He put three slugs into her face, knocking her back, brains and blood and skull and scalp splattering the wall behind her. For insurance, he put two more through her already ruined throat into her spine.

He did a quick 360 with his Glock extended. More bodies--a couple in softball uniforms on a floor awash with blood. But all quiet.

What the fuck?

Back to the nurse. Her bloody name tag read Rodriguez. Her throat had already been torn open when he first saw her. She should have been dead--as dead as she was now--but she'd been on her feet, charging.

What was going on here?

A noise. A hiss. He wheeled.

A guy in a Blessed Crucifixion security uniform was getting off the floor. Clay knew most of the guards but no way he could identify him: he had those same fangs, those same eyes, those same talons.

Clay emptied the Glock into his face, putting him down.

Out of ammo. Not good. He had a feeling there were more of these things. As if to confirm his worst fear, a second security guard started hissing and twitching on the floor as giant fangs began to shred his face.

Shit.

He was going to need a bigger gun.

Not a problem.

Stacie Murray

LABOR.

Hour eight.

Still three centimeters.

Was this baby ever going to come?

And where was Adam? He'd gone to find a nurse five minutes ago when no one had responded to the NURSE CALL button. This hospital wasn't that--

A series of distant explosions broke the silence of the maternity wing--balloons popping several floors below. Probably some clown or candy striper entertaining the sick kids in Pediatrics. She started to pray for the umpteenth time that their child would be healthy, but the pain stopped her.

Stacie turned over onto her side and groaned.

Here it came, that vise in her belly, and she was really having to breathe through this one--more intense than the last, and it had come faster, too, by almost a minute. Maybe she was finally progressing. Her obstetrician, Doctor Galbraith, had already warned her that if she wasn't at least eight centimeters dilated by midnight he'd have to perform a cesarean section. It got her emotional just thinking about it. She wanted a vaginal birth, not some doctor sawing her stomach open so he could rush home.

Her uterus relaxed. According to Nurse Herrick, these were still mild contractions, and honestly, that scared Stacie more than anything. Her birth-plan hadn't included having an epidural. She didn't want to be drugged for this experience, wanted her mind and body present for every moment, wanted to feel her first child coming out of her, hear those first cries with a lucid mind. But she didn't know if she could take much more pain than this.

She heard footsteps approaching.

Adam appeared in the doorway, still wearing his black dress shirt and clerical collar. It didn't exactly match his blue jeans and black Justin boots, but then again, Durango was hardly the epicenter of fashion, especially for a young Lutheran minister. They'd rushed straight to the hospital from the Sunday morning service when her water had broken during communion.

"You all right, honey?" he asked.

She nodded. "I just had another contraction."

"Stronger?"

"Little bit."

He came around and sat down beside her on the bed.

"Rub my back?" she said.

"Of course."

His fingers went to work on her lower back, her muscles tighter than steel suspension cables.

"You find the nurse?" Stacie asked.

"Yeah, but just as she was stepping onto the elevator."

Stacie stared into her husband's face--smooth-shaven, still carrying a little baby fat that made him look younger than his thirty-two years. Kind, deep eyes that made him seem wiser. Listening eyes, she called them, and in this moment, she had the feeling they were holding something back from her.

"What aren't you telling me?" Stacie asked.

"Nothing. Everything's fine, Stace. You just focus on--"

"Adam...what's wrong?"

"Nothing for you to worry about. I guess there was some disturbance down in the emergency room, and Nurse Herrick was called down to--"

"What kind of disturbance?"

"I don't know. She said she'd be right back."

Stacie thought about the balloons she'd heard popping several minutes ago.

What if...?

No. Adam was right. She had one thing and one thing only to focus on--getting this baby out.

"Tell me what you need, darling," Adam said, touching the back of his hand to her forehead, which had broken out in tiny beads of sweat.