The huge building was eerily quiet. Several big earthmovers were parked outside, looming out of the dark like prehistoric monsters, waiting patiently for the morning when the workers would arrive and bring them to life. When they reached the building itself their footsteps echoed on the bare concrete. The shell of the building was finished, but none of the interior walls or furnishings had been added yet, so it was full of empty, cavernous spaces, dimly lit by the moonlight that poured in through glassless windows and littered with discarded junk that the workers hadn’t yet cleaned up. David quickly crossed the first few rooms they came to, heading deeper into the darkness. He was looking for something small and out of the way where the other two would be safe. He planned to lead the fake vampire off by himself again. If he could just get the madman away from his vulnerable co-workers he was sure he could deal with him. By this point he was prepared to do anything it took to ensure the safety of the others.

Down a set of concrete steps he found what he was looking for. It would probably be some sort of storage closet when the hospital was finished, but now it was just a tiny concrete-walled cell. The doorway gaped blackly, no door as yet filling the empty space.

David entered the room, hearing Derrick stumble down the stairs behind him. It was very dark this deep inside the building. Bare bulbs marched across the ceiling, but no light switch was immediately visible, and even if there had been one, David wouldn’t have wanted to give away their position with a telltale light. He lowered Robert to the hard floor.

“What are we going to do, just wait here?” said Derrick, still gasping and out of breath.

“Shh,” whispered David, “don’t let him hear you. You two are going to wait here while I lead our nutty friend out there off the track. When’s he’s gone I’ll come back for you.”

“You can’t just go off on your own,” protested Robert in a whisper.

“You’re in no shape to go,” said David, “and neither is Derrick. I keep telling you, I can take care of myself. I’ll just lead him on a merry chase for a bit, then lose him and come back for you two.”

“All right,” said Robert. “But I still don’t like this. Be careful.”

“Oh don’t worry, I plan on being very careful.”

He slipped out the door, leaving his co-workers alone in the dark. Quietly he retraced his path, keeping his ears open for any hint of sound. The building was almost perfectly still and quiet, as dark and peaceful as the set of a horror movie when the actors had all gone home for the night. In the silence he could easily imagine himself the only man on the face of the planet. In the weird, barren spaces it was easy to picture that he was part of some post-apocalyptic hunt, the last two people left alive after the holocaust pursuing each other in the dark.

It wasn’t long before he saw a faint glimmer of light and heard footsteps. He carefully crept closer, coming to a doorway that led into another dim room. Inside the phony vampire, still damp from his dip in the pond and looking like he was mad enough to bite nails, or maybe even some of the thick rebar scraps that lay on the floor here and there, was searching the room with a little flashlight. His gun was still clutched in his other hand. David smiled. He had learned a bit about human nature, and he wasn’t too worried about being shot. The “vampire” wanted to prove he truly was inhuman, and shooting somebody was a human thing to do. A real vampire would, of course, kill his victims by draining them of their life‘s blood. So he stepped into the room confidently, figuring his chances of being shot were fairly low.

“Afraid of the dark, vampire?” He made his tone sneering, sarcastic, disbelieving. “Would you like me to turn on a light for you?” The other man swung the flashlight around at the sound of David’s voice until he pinpointed David in the beam. David squinted his eyes and avoided looking directly at it, not wanting to totally ruin his night vision.

“I’m going to drink your blood and leave your drained corpse to rot, you stinking human,” snarled the madman. David just laughed and stepped back into the other room.