"All of us. Brittany, would you like me to pray with you?"

"No thanks. How old are you?"

He laughed. "Why do you ask?"

"You're the youngest-looking pastor I ever saw."

"I'm thirty-two."

"Do you like being a pastor?"

"Sometimes I love it. Sometimes...it sucks."

Nurse Herrick appeared in the doorway. "Pastor, could you come with me?"

"What's wrong?"

She smiled. "Nothing. Just that your wife is getting ready to have a baby."

"Now?"

"Now."

As he came to his feet, the lights went out.

Randall

TINA screamed when it happened, but the complete darkness lasted only a second. Then a backup generator or something turned on, and dim lights came on in the hallway, though not the office. Of course the hospital would have backup power, and of course it would be funneled to things like breathing machines and not to somebody's number-crunching office.

Squeak...squeak...squeak...

Right outside the door.

The sound of squeaking was not typically something that chilled Randall's bones, particularly in a situation that had involved lots of screaming and wet splattering sounds, but there was something oddly unnerving about this squeak.

Something menacing.

He looked through the tiny window in the door. A clown stood outside, staring in at him. Just staring. He had a fright wig, a big red nose, and, yes, a lower half of his face that was shredded and bloody and laden with fangs.

A clown dracula. Wonderful.

Randall hated clowns.

He was not, he had hastened to point out in the past, scared of clowns. Grease-painted weirdos with shiny red noses did not fill him with terror. He simply hated clowns. He'd never seen a funny one. Never seen one that was anything more than an annoying, obnoxious freak.

"Is somebody out there?" Tina asked, her voice trembling.

Randall shook his head. "Nah. Just a clown."

Even in the mostly dark room, Randall could see Tina's eyes widen. "A clown?"

"Yeah. Don't worry about him. He's like Ronald McDonald." A Ronald McDonald who will devour your face like a Big Mac and large fries...

Tina put her hand over her mouth, as if trying not to throw up. Then she looked as if she were going to hyperventilate.

"I'm not gonna let the clown hurt you," Randall promised. "No way. I didn't let the other monster get you, so there's no way in the world a stupid rotten clown is gonna do anything to you. Okay?"

The little girl didn't seem convinced. She struggled for breath--deep, wheezing gasps that sounded a lot worse than just a kid getting spooked by a clown. Did she have asthma?

"Are you all right?" he asked. "Do you...do you need an inhaler?"

She nodded vigorously.

"Do you have one?"

She shook her head and pointed to the door. He assumed she meant that she left it in pediatrics. Son of a bitch. A sick kid in a hospital--who'd've thunk it?

"What can I do to help?" Randall asked.

He had no idea what you did for people having an asthma attack except giving them a honk off their inhaler. There weren't a lot of asthmatic lumberjacks out there.

She couldn't answer. Tina didn't seem to be suffocating--at least some air was getting in--but this was definitely serious.

Randall glanced back at the door. That goddamn clown was still staring in at them. Why was he doing that? Why wasn't he clawing at the wood and snarling like a wild animal? Weren't these things supposed to be all feral and stuff?

Randall wasn't scared of clowns, he swore he wasn't, but this was becoming creepy.

"Fuck off!" he told the clown.

Shit. He shouldn't have said "fuck" in front of the little girl.

The clown just stood there. Randall couldn't tell for sure if he was grinning--all of the creatures kind of looked like they were grinning--but he had a sadistic glint in his eyes.

"Okay, Tina, I'm gonna get you to your inhaler," Randall said. "I'm gonna take you on a piggyback ride, okay?"

"How do..." Tina gasped for breath, a long, pained gasp that tore at Randall's heart. "...we get out?"

"Through the door. Past the clown."

"No!"

"I can handle Bozo, don't worry. I'll pop his head like a water balloon. Hop on."

"No!"

"Tina, there's no other way out of here!"

Randall inwardly raged about the stupidity of the building designers to not have included another way out of the office, then immediately decided that architects did not typically have "homicidal monster infestation" on their list of situations that required safety precautions.

"He'll eat us!"

"No, he won't. He's too lame and stupid to eat us." Randall was one step away from shouting "Goddamn it, Tina, get on my back!" but kept himself in check. "Cross my heart, the clown isn't gonna hurt you, I promise. But we have to get out of here before more of them come. How do we know there isn't a clown car downstairs? There could be more of them on the way!"

Randall wasn't sure if that was a necessary lie or sheer cruelty, but it got the job done. He crouched as Tina climbed up onto his back. She was nice and light and her weight didn't make his leg hurt any more than the unbearable agony he was already feeling from it.

The clown was still staring at them.

Now Randall had a decision to make: chainsaw or no chainsaw? It didn't have any gas, and was hardly the most effective bludgeoning weapon available to him, but leaving it behind would be like leaving behind his...well, maybe not his penis, but rather...well, he supposed it was just like leaving behind his beloved chainsaw. He couldn't do it. If refusing to do battle with a clown without his chainsaw made him insane, fine, he was insane. Plenty of insane people had done great things for the world.

"Are you ready?" Randall asked.

Tina gasped for breath in reply.

Randall unlocked and opened the door with his free hand. The clown stood motionless for a split second, then sprung to life like an electrified Frankenstein and lunged at him, mouth wide open.

Randall thrust the chainsaw blade at him, as hard as he could. The blade went straight into the clown's mouth, making a cringe-inducing fingernails-on-chalkboard screech as the metal blades scraped against his teeth. The blade did not burst out through the back of the clown's neck, which would've been helpful, but Randall settled for leaving it there for a moment, deep-throating the white-faced son of a bitch.

The clown did not gag as it reached for him, arms wildly flapping.

Randall yanked out the chainsaw blade. A few of the clown's teeth came with it. The clown's suit was completely soaked with blood, and dangling from the waist of his pants was a short rope of twisted intestine that Randall didn't think originally belonged to him. A blood-streaked button identified him as Benny the Clown.

Randall slammed the chainsaw blade back into Benny the Clown's mouth, taking out most of his lower row of fangs.

Benny the Clown was notably less sedate than he'd been while peeking through the window. His claws scraped against Randall's arm, hurting like hell but not cutting very deep.

Randall gave the chainsaw a violent twist, and that took care of most of Benny the Clown's remaining teeth. He turned the blade in a complete circle. Twice.

Tina was, quite understandably, shrieking. Randall wished she wouldn't do that, because it could attract more of the creatures, but he wasn't sure he could convince a five-year-old girl to stop screaming while he was in the process of mutilating a monster clown.