Draculas (42 page)

And then again, maybe not so weird.

No, Mick the Mick thought. Weird. Very weird.

He looked at Willie.

And screamed.

Or at least tried to. What came out was more like a croak.

Because it wasn't Willie. Not unless Willie had grown four extra eyes--two of them on stalks--and sprouted a fringe of tentacles around where he used to have a neck and shoulders. He now looked like a conical turkey croquette that had been rolled in seasoned breadcrumbs before baking and garnished with live worms after.

The thing made noises that sounded like, "Mick, is that you?" but spoken by a turkey croquette with a mouth full of linguini.

Stranger still, it sounded a little like Willie. Mick the Mick raised a tentacle to scratch his--

Whoa!
Tentacle
?

Well, of course a tentacle. What did he expect?

He looked down and was surprised to see that he was encased in a breadcrumbed, worm-garnished turkey croquette. No, wait, he
was
a turkey croquette.

Why did everything seem wrong, and yet simultaneously at the same time seem not wrong too?

Just then another six-eyed, tentacle-fringed croquette glided into the room. The Willie-sounding croquette said, "Hi, Nana." His words were much clearer now.

Nana? Was this Willie's Nana?

Of course it was. Mick the Mick had known her for years.

"There's an unpleasant man at the door who wants to talk to you. Or else."

"Or else what?"

A new voice said, "Or else you two get to eat cloacal casseroles, and guess who donates the cloacas?"

Mick the Mick unconsciously crossed his tentacles over his cloaca. In his twenty-four years since budding, Mick the Mick had grown very attached to his cloaca. He'd miss it something awful.

A fourth croquette had entered, followed by the two biggest croquettes Mick the Mick had ever seen. Only these weren't turkey croquettes, these were chipped-beef croquettes. This was serious.

The new guy sounded like Nate the Nose, but didn't have a nose. And what was a nose anyway?

"Oh, no," Willie moaned. "I don't want to eat Mick's cloaca."

"I meant your own, jerk!" the newcomer barked.

"But I have a hernia--"

"Shaddap!"

Mick the Mick recognized him now: Nate the Noodge, pimp, loan shark, and drug dealer. Not the sort you leant your bike to.

Wait ...what was a bike?

"What's up, Nate?"

"That brick of product I gave you for delivery. I had this sudden, I dunno, bad feeling about it. A
frisson
of malaise and apprehension, you might say. I just hadda come by and check on it, knome sayn?"

The brick? What brick?

Mick the Mick had a moment of panic--he had no idea what Nate the Noodge was talking about.

Oh, yeah. The
product
. Now he remembered.

"Sure Nate, it's right in here."

He led Nate to the kitchen where the brick of product lay on the big center table.

Nate the Noodge pointed a tentacle at it. One of his guards lifted it, sniffed it, then wriggled his tentacle fringe that it was okay. Mick the Mick had expected him to nod but a nod would require a neck, and the guard didn't have a neck. Then Mick the Mick realized he didn't know what a neck was. Or a nod, for that matter.

What was it with these weird thoughts, like memories, going through his head? They were like half-remembered dreams. Nightmares, more likely. Pink flowers, and giant lizards, and big rocks in the sky, and stepping on some mice that looked like a lot like the Capporellis up in 5B. Except the Capporellis lived in 4B, and looked like jellyfish. What were mice anyway? He looked at Willie to see if he was just as confused.

Willie was playing with his cloaca.

Nate the Noodge turned to them and said, "A'ight. Looks like my frisson of malaise and apprehension was fer naught. Yer cloacas is safe ...fer now. But you don't deliver that product like you're apposed to and it's casserole city, knome sayn?"

"We'll deliver it, Nate," Willie said. "Don't you worry. We'll deliver it."

"Y'better," Nate said, then left with his posse

"Where we supposed to deliver it?" Willie said when they were alone again.

Mick the Mick kicked him in his cloaca.

"The same place we always deliver it."

"Ow!" Willie was saying, rubbing his cloaca. "That hurt. You know I got a--hey, look!" He was pointing to the TV. "
The Toad Whisperer
is on! My favorite show!"

He settled onto the floor and stared.

Mick the Mick hated to admit it, but he was kind of addicted to the show himself. He settled next to Willie.

Faintly, from the kitchen, he heard Nana say, "Oh dear, I was going to bake a cake but I'm out of flour. Could one of you boys--oh, wait. Here's some. Never mind."

A warning glimp chugged in Mick the Mick's brain and puckered his cloaca. Something bad was about to happen ...

What had Nate the Noodge called it? "A
frisson
of malaise and apprehension." Sounded like a dessert, but Mick the Mick had gathered it meant a worried feeling like what he was having right now.

But about what? What could go sour? The product was safe, and they were watching
The Toad Whisperer
. As soon as that was over, they'd go deliver it, get paid, and head on over to Madam Yoko's for a happy ending endoplasmic reticulum massage. And maybe a cloac-job.

The
frisson
of malaise and apprehension faded. Must have been another nightmare flashback.

Soon the aroma of baking cake filled the house. Right after the show he'd snag himself a piece.

Yes, life was good.

THE END

During the writing of Draculas we wrote a few scenes that we ended up changing or omitting. We thought it would be fun, for people who liked the book, to see what ended up on the cutting room floor, and hear why.

Joe says:
In our very first email volleys, Paul had intended Shanna to embrace Clay's gun-loving ways, and wrote this to be the scene where she becomes enamored with them. I liked it and thought it was realistic--lots of people, when they shoot for the first time, instantly fall in love with firearms. Paul thought it was too over-the-top and changed it to her having a negative reaction.

SHE stared down at the dead creature. "That fella" wasn't a fella. It was wearing a bloodstained maroon pantsuit. She stepped closer and saw the nametag:
Marge McGuire
.

Shanna felt sick. "That's Marge from admitting! I had a long sit-down with her when Mortimer was admitted for that possible overdose. She had pictures of her kids on her desk. She..." A sob broke free. "What have I done?"

"It was her or you, Shanna."

"I killed Marge!"

Clay knelt beside her and placed a hand on her shoulder. "That wasn't Marge from admissions anymore. Marge was already gone. You killed something else, something that had taken her over."

"But her kids--"

"Had already lost their mama. You just kept this thing from fouling her memory by killing you and who knows how many others, and turning them into foul things like her. You did Marge a favor."

Clay seemed to understand and was making sense, neither of which she'd expected from him. He helped her to her feet.

"Us or them," Shanna he added. "Who do you want to walk out of here?"

"Us, of course."

"And who are the attackers here?"

"Them."

"So we're going to walk out of here, and along the way we're going to leave them alone. But if they try to kill us, we need to do what we have to do to protect ourselves--and that means kill them first."

Yeah...they did.

She looked at the thing that had been Marge. If she hadn't fired this big heavy thing in her hands,
she
'd be dead on the floor. And worse--soon she'd be one of them.

He pointed to the Taurus. "I'm sorry it knocked you down."

"It's okay, Clay."

"No, it's not. That gun's too powerful for you." He reached for it. "I'll find you--"

She snatched her Taurus away and clutched it between her breasts. Yes, suddenly it was
her
Taurus Raging Bull. She
loved
it. She thought of that bumper sticker she'd always laughed at:
You can have my gun when you take it from my cold dead hands
. Or something like that.

"You touch my gun and I'll kick you in the fucking balls."

Clay looked flummoxed. "Shanna, you said 'fucking.' And 'balls.'"

"Damn right, I did. For the first time since that first monster broke in here, I feel we've got a chance to get out alive, and I'm not giving that up."

And then the lights went out.

Joe says:
This deletion is my fault. Blake wrote this lovely scene, but unbeknownst to him, I'd written practically the exact same Psalm 23 scene in another one of my books, with an author I collaborated with. I explained it to Blake, and when he read the scene I'd mentioned, he was shocked at how similar they were. This isn't the first time Blake and I have written similar scenes independently of each other. It's eerie, really. Blake was kind enough to switch it with the other scene, which I believe was also lovely.

IT was like someone dimming the lights from inside her head.

No pain, but so dizzy.

She could still sense her daughter lying asleep in the crook of her arm, though she couldn't feel a thing.

There was noise all around her, but Adam--sweet, wonderful Adam--his voice cut through, lips pressed against her ear.

"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul."

Thinking, I cannot be dying. This is not happening. I'm a mother now.

"He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake."

Please God, undo this.

"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me."

There's so much I want to experience.

"You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows."

Nothing to do but latch onto his voice as the darkness flooded in and unconsciousness loomed like both the heartbreaking end and the answer to so many questions.

"Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. I love you Stacie."

His voice fading.

"I love you Stacie."

She could feel herself slipping, and she didn't fight it anymore.

"Always, Stacie."

Joe says:
Blake and I intended to put this scene at the end, right between Clay getting blown out the window by the autoclave and Shanna meeting Dr. Cook. The point was to drive home the "reverse Night of the Living Dead" ending, when the military saves the bad guy (in the classic zombie movie, the military kills the hero). Blake and I really wanted this in, and we all liked the scene, but we voted to exclude it because it really wasn't necessary, and it ruined the pacing. As with all of these alternate and deleted scenes, our motivation for cutting them is exhaustively discussed in the Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Making of
Draculas.

"After that building comes down," the radio crackled, "you shoot anything that tries to crawl out, I don't give a good goddamn if it's your mother, mow that bitch down."

Private Rogers stared at the hospital from behind the wheel of the Humvee. He couldn't believe this shit was happening on US soil.

"Do I need to fucking repeat myself, private?" Col. Halford barked.

Rogers hit the mike on the walkie-talking. "No sir, I--"

A whitehot flash lit the surrounding trees and cars as bright as day, the heat like an open oven, and when Rogers could see again, the hospital was simply not there anymore.

Holy shit. Those autoclaves were badass mothafuckers. What the hell was Halford thinking? Nothing could have survived that--

Wait. What in the hell is
that
thing?

Rogers moved out of the driver's seat, climbed up the back of the vehicle, and stood up in the hummer behind an M2 Browning .50 cal., studying the smoking rubble as he fingered the 100-round belt and checked the swivel-range once more. He knew some of his unit had been killed, had heard the firefight going on all around him, but Halford had insisted that nothing be described on the radio. The TV folks were nearby, and the order from on high was don't let them see or hear shit.

Rogers understood that. Ain't good for nobody, killing people on camera. Didn't want Ma or Aunt Sally to hear about their son's death on the ten o'clock news, neither. But it infuriated Rogers that he didn't know which of his buddies had been wasted. Made his so damn angry he wanted to pump lead into anything that moved.

Rogers had no idea what they were up against. Terrorists, probably. Wouldn't send all of this
hoo-rah
out here unless it was a serious threat. He studied the landscape, looking for the thing he'd just spotted. Giant spotlights burned down on the smoldering ruins.

There.

He swung the fifty twenty degrees left.

Something crawled out of a pile of twisted support beams and staggered to its feet, smoke rising off its shoulders under the glare of the spotlights.

Holy shit.

A fucking monster.

No other way to describe it. Burned all to shit, sure, but those teeth...

Rogers had pulled two tours in Iraq, and he felt that surge of familiar adrenaline as he sited up the enemy combatant--nothing like opening up on someone with Ma Deuce.

Easier than shootin' barrels, and pure fun.