"Everyone get back!"

She cranked the nozzle, the compressed air blowing the front off the bottle, showering the dracula with white powder.

A moment later, the powder ignited in a tremendous fireball, the powerful WHUMP! hitting Jenny with a blast of heated air that burned off all the fine little hairs on her arms.

The dracula fared much worse. Every square inch of it was throwing off flames. It twisted around on the floor, slapping at the inferno it had become, oily black smoke swirling up into the air and smelling a lot like bacon cooking.

Bacon, with a hint of artificial vanilla.

Thank you, Mythbusters.

Jenny turned off the oxygen. While non dairy creamer had nothing in it that made it flammable, it was a fine powder, and many powders were ignitable simply because they had such a huge surface area. Flour, sawdust, dust in grain silos--they'd caused countless fires and explosions throughout history. The oxygen worked as an accelerant, and also dispersed the powder so it spread evenly through the air.

"Light the next one, Peter!"

Jenny knocked off the smoking, melted plastic container from the end of the cannula, and jammed on a burning one just as Dr. Lanz flopped into the playroom.

"Now you're fired, Lanz!" Jenny yelled. Then she hit him with her makeshift flamethrower, dusting the doctor in a cloud of powder.

But at the same time, Lanz had emptied his extinguisher, putting out the flame before it had a chance to ignite the cloud of creamer enveloping him.

Son of a--

Snarling, Dr. Lanz rushed at Jenny, far too quick for her to prep another creamer bottle, his hideous mouth unhinging at the jaw and a look of smug satisfaction in his predatory eyes.

Jenny threw herself backward, Lanz's claw swiping the air a few inches in front of her face. A cloud of sweet-smelling vanilla non-dairy creamer floated above his head and shoulders, and a ropey line of drool escaped his cage of teeth, dripping down his neck.

"Die, you monster! Die!"

Peter Bernacky, his teenage face defiant, stuck his arm into the dust plume, his hand on the lighter.

"Peter! Don't--"

The flash blinded Jenny, a wave of superheated air sunburning her face and bare arms, singeing her eyebrows, instantly drying out her mouth.

Both Lanz and Peter instantly burst into flames. Lanz scurried away, still holding the extinguisher, turning it on himself and dousing the fire as he fled back through the hole he'd made in the window.

Peter screamed, but the sound was instantly muffled by the flame entering his lungs. He staggered away from Jenny, arms pin-wheeling, heading straight for the grandmother with the dentures.

She tried to push him back, but Peter wrapped his arms around her, setting her clothes ablaze. They did a burning dance for several steps, then fell over in a tangle of screams and flailing limbs and burning flesh.

The sprinkler finally came on, dousing the pair, and Jenny turned her attention toward the broken window as another dracula climbed through. She charged it with the cannula, pulling it free from the oxygen tank, and spearing the creature through its left eye. The monster hissed, blood and bits of brain matter spraying out of the hollow end, arcing across the playroom, and landing directly in the mouth of the catatonic woman who'd been watching the entire scene unfold with her jaw hanging open.

Children screamed. Flesh sizzled and popped. Jenny cast a frantic look around, seeking a weapon as the dracula flopped through the window, crashing at her feet where he squirmed and undulated like a landed swordfish. Jenny looked up as another dracula snaked into the opening. But rather than attack her, it pounced on the other creature, positioning its mouth over the fountain of blood and tissue pumping through the cannula, and locking its lips around it like a drinking straw.

Jenny spotted the oxygen tank through the steam and hefted it, adrenalin giving her the strength to lift the eighty-plus pounds. She slammed it onto the new intruder's skull, driving it to the floor, squashing it like a stomped pumpkin. Then she hoisted the tank again and pancaked the monster with the cannula eyestalk.

Another dracula slid in through the window. Then another. They descended upon their fallen comrades, chewing and tearing and lapping up the gore.

We need to get the hell out of here. Now.

"Everyone! Come on!"

There weren't many left to follow her order. The grandmother was down on the floor, convulsing. The mother was keeled over, throwing up. Most of Peter's hair had burned off, his eyelids and nose were scorched away, and he was blessedly still. That left five children. Three listened, running to Jenny's side. The son of the vomiting mother stood there, eyes wide, immobile. The grandson had curled up fetal, hugging his knees into his chest.

"Into the storage closet!" Jenny yelled.

Then she grabbed the shirt collar of the boy on the floor and tugged him away from his grandmother, dragging him to the closet. She turned to go back for the other boy, but more draculas had infiltrated the playroom, and they were tearing through the rest of them like a piranha tornado. Forcing herself to back away from the slaughter, cursing herself for not being able to do more, Jenny grabbed the storage room door and slammed it closed, hoping that whatever Randall had done to open it hadn't damaged the lock.

She gave it a cautious push, saw that it held, then watched through the small, square window as the creatures turned the playroom into a blood buffet. Horrified, yet fascinated, she couldn't help but wonder how they could drink so much. She squinted at one of them, gorging until its belly distended to practically bursting, like a pregnancy that had lasted twenty months.

But only seconds after it stopped feeding, its belly began to shrink.

Once again she thought of Randall and his old horror movies. One of his favorites was actually relevant to their current situation. The Killer Shrews, a black and white cheapie infamous for dressing up dogs as the titular rodent monsters. The film's heroes were trapped in a house, the bloodthirsty shrews everywhere, clawing to get inside and devour them. Like their diminutive counterparts, the shrews had to eat ninety percent of their body weight every day, or else they'd starve--a byproduct of their hyper-metabolism.

Apparently, the draculas also functioned at a highly increased metabolic rate, which explained why Jenny and the others had been able to get to the closet without being slaughtered. These creatures had to eat constantly, and they took the path of least resistance to do so. So they'd leapt upon the dead and dying, the small and weak, even if the injured were other draculas.

Jenny tore herself away from the spectacle and tried to focus on what needed to be done. First, barricade the door. Next, look for weapons. Then attend to the wounded.

But even though she was trained for emergencies, Jenny found herself paralyzed by worry.

Strangely, it wasn't fear for herself, or the people she was with.

It was for her husband.

Please, please, please, God, let him be okay.

Lanz

DR. Lanz tore at his face, the burned flesh coming off in strips. The pain was unbearable, but not as overwhelming as the heavenly odor of his fried skin. Hunger pangs doubled him over, the agony even worse than the fire damage, and Lanz momentarily lost his self-control and began shoving his own toasted flesh into his mouth, including a walnut-size chunk that was quite possibly his nose.

Jenny.

That bitch nurse Jenny had done this to him. Jumbled as his thoughts were becoming, Lanz could still recall firing her ass. She'd had the audacity to question one of his treatments--right in front of the patient and the other nurses. Granted, he'd been a little coked up at the time and had inadvertently prescribed penicillin to someone who had an allergy, but he couldn't allow that kind of blatant insubordination. Not in his ER.