Stacie
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."
Deleted Private Rogers Scene
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.
Private Rogers
"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.
He put one round center mass, and the thing stopped, wavering amid the rubble...but kept stumbling toward him.
Got-damn.
He'd never seen a .50 round fail to stop anything.
Seen them bring down bulls with one shot. Fuck up the entire engine blocks of civilian cars.
Rogers aimed again, this time a hair higher, and squeezed off three quick rounds.
The monster's head disappeared.
As it toppled, others emerged out of the rubble behind it, some of them beginning to run toward the parking lot.
He opened up, took a dozen rounds to bring down six of them, and even still some continued to drag their gut-strewn selves across the ground.
Fuck!
He'd missed this one--one of the infecteds climbing through a pile of debris just on the edge of his peripheral vision.
He swung the fifty as far left as it would go, the infected a half second from escaping his range.
One squeeze and in the brilliance of the closest spotlight, a red cloud blew out the side of the thing's head as it crashed to the ground.
Fuckin'a it felt good to be back behind the big fifty, almost made him miss Iraqistan. Crazy thing, but while cruising those insurgent-infested shithole neighborhoods, it had occurred to Rogers that war hadn't felt like war at all. Not that he'd had--
Shit!
Four rounds practically cut the monster running toward him in half at the waist.
--any real inkling of what it would be like, but certainly not what it had turned out to be, all so surreal and horrific, like the best videogame you ever played--ridiculous and fun and profoundly sad, and after awhile, like nothing. Beyond computation.
Here came a pack of them now, all streaking toward him and hissing, and he let them get close this time, inside of thirty feet, before he cut loose, and knowing he still had four 100-round belts, he went a little crazy, barrel blazing until those monsters had practically dissolved into red mist in front of him.
Fuck, that felt good!
He was just getting going now, sweeping the rubble back and forth, jonesing to go again, but the fifty-high was fading fast.
Then it was gone.
Nothing moved in the ruins.
Come on! He was just getting warmed up. One more. Please, God, send one more. One more of those fucked-up creatures for me to kill, and I swear I won't even fucking swear any more.
But still nothing moved. Nothing except that TV helicopter, coming down to land on the grass a few dozen yards from his hummer. Rogers hoped it was filled with monsters--lighting up a chopper would be hella-good--but when it landed some children piled out.
Rogers felt something inside him deflating. That emptiness that had always filled him after a recon--