Randall yanked the chainsaw out again. A spurt of blood soaked Benny the Clown's already-blood-soaked oversized squeaky shoes. Using his good foot, Randall kicked the clown in the nuts.

Benny the Clown clutched at his groin and fell to the floor.

Now that was a clown pratfall Randall could enjoy.

Three separate bottles of pills had fallen out of Benny the Clown's pockets as he struck the tile. Fuckin' clown was probably thoroughly drugged up. Maybe that was why he wasn't in total "wild animal" mode like the others.

Benny the Clown was far from dead, but he was disabled enough to suit Randall's purposes. The extra ten seconds he spent beating the fucker to death might be ten seconds he needed for running away, especially if...

A pair of draculas came around the corner.

Shit!

Randall didn't want to lock himself in the office again--he needed to make some progress. But this was going to take him farther away from Jenny and pediatrics.

Nothing he could do about that. It was a hospital, so there had to be more than one place he could find an inhaler.

With Tina still on his back, he limped down the hallway as quickly as he could.

Then his blood-soaked chainsaw popped out of his hands and dropped onto the floor.

Damn! Shit! Piss! Crap! Ass! Fuck!

He couldn't stop to pick up his chainsaw without gas with a little girl on his back and two draculas on his tail. It wasn't worth dying for.

Fuck! Fucker fuck frick fuck! Fuckleberry!

His leg twisted just a bit, because, apparently, it hadn't hurt quite enough before.

Ignore the pain...ignore the pain...imagine that your leg is a mighty redwood, standing straight and tall...

Goddamn my leg hurts...

He pushed through a swinging door. A sign overhead read Rehabilitation Therapy. Ah, yes. He'd get to know this place well...in another hospital, of course.

He heard the draculas rush right past the door. Then a scream. They must've found a more helpless victim.

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

Not the squeak of Benny the Clown's shoes. A different squeak.

Though Randall didn't have time for stopping and gaping, he couldn't help but stop and gape as the dracula in a wheelchair rolled across the room toward him.

Moorecook

BEING wealthy, Mortimer Moorecook had thought he'd understood power.

But he hadn't truly known it until now.

He was fast, with the speed and reflexes of a jungle leopard. Pouncing and tearing. Drinking and devouring. Going from hospital room to hospital room, attacking patients, staff, visitors.

He could see in the dark. The talons on his feet and hands were so strong he could climb walls, even hang upside-down from the ceiling. He bolted into a woman's room, her screams like hot fudge on a sundae, her supple, weak flesh unable to push him away as he sank his fangs into her warm, wet neck.

Seeing her fear, feeling her revulsion, was a rush better even than the sex he'd so desperately missed. But even more wonderful than that was all the precious blood blood BLOOD BLOOD BLOODBLOODBLOODBLOODBLOOD...

STOP!

He released the girl he'd been slurping, even though she still had some blood left. She'd been dead for a few minutes, but if he drank all of her blood, she wouldn't turn.

Moorecook wanted them to turn. He wanted as many of his kind as possible.

When not overwhelmed by bloodlust, he was capable of higher brain functioning. He knew he was different from the others he had created. Smarter. Better. Still evolving, in a different kind of way.

The others sensed the difference. They attacked one another, but gave him a wide berth. He'd even been able to screech at them, get them to follow some rudimentary orders. Direct them where to go.

He found three of them on the third floor, fighting over a pathetic pool of blood on the tile floor. Mortimer hissed, clacking his teeth together, commanding them to follow. They avoided the gunfire, going down an empty stairwell, slinking outside into the parking lot.

There were many cars. Cars meant chances for humans to escape.

Moorecook couldn't allow that. He showed them how to attack the tires. Directing them to each car, biting and tearing through the rubber treads with the sound of thunderclaps as they popped.

As they were finishing up, Mortimer heard the distant bray of police sirens, closing in. He directed his brood to hide near the entrance. Two went into the bushes flanking the ER doors. One crouched behind the BLESSED CRUCIFIXION HOSPITAL sign. Moorecook easily scaled the wall and pressed into a corner like a gecko, letting the darkness hide him.

Three police cars pulled up, two men in each. They exited their vehicles with practiced skill. Alert. Armed. Cautious.

They didn't even get a single shot off.

His brood attacked from all sides, slashing their talons, snapping their jaws. Moorecook hung down, his feet gripping a security camera, snatching a cop trying to run into the building. He pulled him up to his perch and bit into his face, tasting his blood and his bubbling screams. Moorecook chewed into his skull until his prickly tongue pierced down through bone and cartilage and sinew all the way to the carotid artery.

He drank until the man was empty--he was too damaged to turn--then leapt down on his brood, hissing and chasing them off, ensuring that three of the cops would join his brethren.

More. They needed more.

The bigger their numbers, the harder they would be to stop.

Mortimer stared up at the moon, painfully bright in the dark sky. He listened to the squawk of a police band radio, then leapt into an open car and ripped the radio from the dashboard. As he did, three of his talons broke off, revealing nubby white bone beneath the skin.

How curious.

There was no pain. In fact, something deep and primeval in him had expected this to happen.

Moorecook was the first. He'd been infected by the original source. That made him special.

He knew he was going to change into something else.

Something even more powerful than what he already was.

Something that would allow him to infect the whole world.

Oasis

HUNGRY again.

So hungry.

Oasis moved through a corridor. The hospital lights had gone out and come back on, though much dimmer. Just these soft blue lights above the doorways, which left lots of shadows.

She didn't like shadows. The dark scared her even though she could still see so much better than before.

She came around a corner and stopped.

A big sign on the wall read, THE BIRTHPLACE.

Oasis moved carefully down the corridor.

She'd learned her lesson. You couldn't just go running into things when you were a little girl. Adults were strong and mean, and none of them wanted to share their red candy.

She passed a woman lying on the floor, but the others had gotten to her and been thorough.

Finally came to a set of double doors. She hooked a talon through the handles and pulled.

They didn't budge.

She looked up at the window in one of the doors--the glass had been broken out, and someone had stapled a piece of paper across the opening from the other side.

She reached up, punched a talon through the paper, thinking there must be something really good on the other side of these doors if someone had gone to the trouble to lock them.

She crouched and jumped.

Got her arms halfway through the window frame.