Rabid Heart

by Jeremy Wagner

  Nothing to see here.

  Rhonda waited. Couldn’t they clear the gate faster? Time moved slowly; the minutes seemed like hours. This was it. Whatever lucky horseshoe might be crammed in her ass was gone. By some providence, she had lifted a Humvee and food without any problem. But now, she felt she’d pushed things too far.

  Rhonda drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. Finally, silence. She watched Soldier Cap run to an exterior electric box on the left-side guard shack. He pushed a button and the massive reinforced steel gate ahead slid sideways.

  Soldier Fred turned toward her and yelled, “Get ready!”

  The gate opened all the way. It’s now or never. She revved the engine.

  Soldier Fred nodded. “Be safe.”

  Rhonda winked. “Tell ’em I’m sorry for the trouble. ’Kay?”

  “Huh?”

  Rhonda accelerated and almost clipped Soldier Cap on her way out.

  Whoops!

  Adrenalized, she nailed three Cujos who crossed the gateway. They dropped under her wheels, sending nasty vibrations through the floor as their emaciated bodies broke and burst.

  Faster, she raced down the short service road. This road, her link to freedom, connected Fort Rocky to a main highway.

  “Christ!” She spotted muzzle flashes in her rear-view mirror and ducked. On second glance, she felt relief. The soldiers weren’t shooting at her. More flashes and dozens of Cujos fell before the gate shut far behind her.

  At the main highway, Rhonda turned left and hit another rotten Cujo. It exploded on the Humvee grill like a bag of bad tomatoes.

  “Oh my God, that’s fucking nasty.” Rhonda turned the wipers on and drowned the glass with windshield fluid until every putrid bit washed away.

  A billboard-sized wooden sign in the turf to her left declared:

  Fort Rocky Military Base.

  United States Proud. Marine Proud.

  God Bless America.

  “God bless America? There’s no America. And God? Where the hell are you anyway?” Rhonda didn’t expect God or anyone else, aside from Brad, would hear her.

  “Rrrrrrrrr.”

  “Right here, baby.” Rhonda looked in her rear-view and smiled at Brad. He looked safe, all buckled in, the drool-covered gag secure in his mouth.

  She focused on the road ahead. What angry hornet’s nest stirred inside Camp Deadnut right now? No doubt some pissed-off soldiers would want their pound of flesh. She hoped they wouldn’t take it out of Doc’s backside. And Dad? Yeah, he’d blow a gasket and a half when he found out what had happened back there.

  Rhonda couldn’t worry about it. Colonel Jerkwad had given her no choice.

  Not today, Daddy.

  On this apocalyptic planet, love was now as rare as fresh fruit. Whether Brad rolled as a warm-blooded hunk or a life-impaired dreamboat, none of it mattered. She would never quit on him.

  The highway was an almost clutter-free route as she drove south. She encountered occasional Cujos and turned them into roadkill. She maneuvered around infrequent abandoned vehicles, but nothing slowed her progress.

  What was she thinking? Dad and his Black Hawk helicopters and soldiers would cover a lot of ground fast. Shit, they’d find her if they knew what direction she went in. Maybe they’d think she was stupid enough to go back to Levendale. They wouldn’t come for her right away... she hoped. She just needed time to formulate a concrete game plan, to keep Brad and herself safe—and hidden somewhere.

  A scary, nightmarish world awaited her, and she didn’t kid herself about it. No longer would an armed platoon have her back. No more Fort Rocky fortress to keep her safe at night. Damn, if she hadn’t just dived head-first into a land of pure hell. Yeah, time to get serious about her future, real fast.

  She glanced back at Brad in her rear-view. He gazed non-stop at her with an expression of dead innocence.

  “Rrrrnnndaahh.”

  “I love you, baby.” Rhonda felt giddy. “Y’know what? I think we just eloped.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Rhonda passed a few towns and then spotted a sign for Levendale’s city limits. She drove past it. Six months gone AND now she’d been near her old hometown twice in 48 hours. She cruised with slow and deliberate caution. Visions from yesterday’s dangerous visit popped in her head.

  What was Levendale’s population, anyway? 20,000? A city infected with Necro-Rabies. She stayed on the highway and avoided downtown.

  Her zebra print watch read 2:00. Only a few hours of daylight remained before she’d need to hit the headlights and find a place to sleep later. Day or night, she must always stay on guard, 24/7. Rhonda felt a cold tickle of fear. This new world creeped her out. Her thick skin chilled as she thought of driving into a midnight sea filled with the living dead.

  Levendale looked like a haunted ghost town. Rhonda passed abandoned schools and playgrounds, all of which she’d grew up in and on, along with numerous and forsaken houses and cars along her route.

  The world is dead.

  As she drew closer to Levendale, the walking corpses grew more plentiful on the main road and moved through the streets she’d spied from her seat. Ghastly faces stared at her from sidewalks, yards and streets. In her rear-view mirror, Cujos chased her Humvee.

  She bypassed Levendale and eased on to another country highway that would take her around the town and eventually to the Interstate. She didn’t stop.

  What about her short-and-long-term plans? She didn’t want anyone from Fort Rocky to get her. Boy, was she sick of North Carolina. Of course, her plans all depended on fuel and electricity, and she hoped to find all the working pumps and gas she could fill along her way.

  Florida. Florida sounded damn good.

  Rhonda loved Florida. Naples and the Gulf of Mexico were in her heart since childhood. Her parents took her and her sister to Naples whenever her father was on leave, or during holidays and occasional spring breaks. Heat and a beach sounded super great right now—though she didn’t rule out Cujos roaming in sun and surf.

  Thoughts of her family tugged at her heart. She began to weep and shudder from memories. All the loss and the constant death surrounding her sometimes felt too much to bear. Doc told her one day that he was sure she suffered from PTSD thanks to the day her family, friends and Brad had all been decimated by Cujos. That, and being forced to fight in the front-lines against zombies every week for half a year rattled something in her brain. She didn’t need Doc to tell her that. Sometimes she cried or screamed for no reason. Sometimes she felt indifferent to the world and consequences to herself or anyone else.

  She loved her father. He was now her only living kin, and she hated what they’d become. Her deep resentment, their dysfunction, all created from spats about her fiancé—when he had been alive and now undead. Why did it have to be like this?

  “Gotta get out of here.” Rhonda wiped wetness from her eyes. “We’re on a road trip. This honeymoon’s just starting, love.”

  Rhonda wanted to reach over and touch Brad on his pale cheek. Instead, Rhonda turned on the CB radio. It came to life with crackles and her father’s voice.

  “... read?” Colonel Driscoll’s disembodied voice said. “Repeat. Do you read me, Rhonda? Do you read? Rhonda, just say something. Over.”

  Rhonda’s heart slam-danced. Dad was on the line? Oh, shit. She stared at the CB like it was a snake.

  No doubt her lack of response worried her father even more. She imagined he’d put men on the two-way day and night in an effort to find her. She wanted to love him for that, yet still wanted to punch him.

  She listened for a few minutes to her dad’s non-stop requests for a reply before she finally relented and clicked over.

  “Yeah?” She released a heavy sigh. “What d’ya want?”

  “Where did you go? I’ve been worried to death about you. Over.”

  Yeah right. “You’re not worried about me, Dad. I heard about your plans for Brad and I wasn’t gonna just wait around for you to turn my fiancé in
to a casualty.”

  He cleared his throat through the static. “Fiancé? This joke needs to stop. I get your love for Brad, okay? Hell, I loved your mother more than anything and woulda done almost anything to get her back. But let me be perfectly clear, I wouldn’t think twice about neutralizing Mom if she came back as some thing from a horror flick.”

  “You don’t get it.”

  “Oh, I get it plenty. You don’t seem to get it, baby-girl. Brad’s no different than a vegetable who got damaged in a car wreck... long gone with just a shell remaining. You gotta pull the plug. It’s the humane thing to do. It ain’t fair to Brad.”

  “He’s not a vegetable, Dad. He smiles at me. He even tries saying my name. He’s never attacked me. We’re just running away to live happily ever after.”

  “You what? Hang on! You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me. You got a death-wish?”

  “No, I’ve got a love-wish, Dad.” Rhonda paused and thought how corny she sounded. “I was engaged and happy once. I was looking forward to growing old with Brad before your military brainiacs turned the world into a giant cemetery. That life was ruined. But now Brad’s been given back to me, and I’m never lettin’ him go.”

  Dad cleared his throat again and spoke with slow emphasis, as if speaking to a feeble-minded child. “He’s a Cujo, Rhonda. Zombified as all get out. He’s not even really alive. Might I add, he’s lethal and full of Necro-Rabies. Whatever passive behavior he’s exhibiting is temporary. You’ve seen it yourself. When his trigger’s pulled, he won’t hesitate to rip your pretty blue eyes out with his teeth.”

  “Let me worry about that. I’ve been with Brad for days now and I’m pretty confident he’s more teddy bear than terror.”

  “You need help, baby-girl. A lotta folks have experienced traumatic stress with this apocalyptic clusterfuck. Plus, being holed up at Fort Rocky most of the time couldn’t have done you any mental favors.”

  She thought of the PTSD diagnosis Doc had given her. She didn’t want to think of herself as damaged as she probably had become. “I’m a lot saner than the entire group of bumbling civilians and soldiers you’ve got under your watch.”

  “You’re sure not acting sane. For Christ’s sakes, the next thing I know, you’ll tell me you slept with a dead man.”

  “You think I’m so cuckoo that I’d get into necrophilia, Dad?” She looked over at Brad, and though she still adored him to the moon and back, the thought of fucking him had never occurred to her, and the idea suddenly made her sick. “I don’t need you to get this.”

  Colonel Driscoll’s voice took on an impatient timbre. “I want you to get back here and I want you to get some help.”

  “Help? I don’t remember a shrink being in residence at Camp Deadnut.” Rhonda now remembered Doc Brightmore. “You gonna have Doc counsel me?”

  “Not so soon. He’s locked up right now. You know I can’t tolerate that kind of subordination.”

  Guilt smothered her. “I made him help me. He’s innocent.”

  “That’s not the report I got.” Colonel Driscoll cleared his throat. “When you get back here, and after I get you some help, you’re gonna have to answer for the theft of a US military vehicle. I’ve taught you better than this. Rhonda, you’re deficient on pure common sense.”

  “And you’re lacking in the Dad Department.” Again she thought of how corny her argument sounded.

  He paused for a long moment. Rhonda heard only static from the radio and the soft drone of the Humvee’s engine. When he returned, his voice was firm. “Marines don’t give up and Driscolls never give up. If your mother was here she’d put a boot up your ass.”

  “She’s not here, though, is she?” Rhonda felt the urge to start bawling again. She mourned her mother and also wanted to sob from the urge to hurl hurtful words at her father. It felt as if her heart existed only to be ripped out and kicked again and again. She composed herself. “Sorry, Dad. Call me crazy, but I’m holding on to the one last thing in this hell that makes me happy. Brad and I are goin’ away.”

  “You stay put. I’m comin’ to fetch you.” Colonel Driscoll’s voice grew louder through the CB. “You need some major straightening out and you need to get away from that goddamn Cujo.”

  Rhonda flushed with anger. She put her lips to the microphone. “Fetch this, Dad: FUCK OFF!”

  If Colonel Driscoll responded, she didn’t hear him. She turned the two-way off and glanced back at Brad. “Sorry about that, baby. I’m sick of his bullshit, y’know?”

  Brad didn’t respond, though he twisted his lips and presented a crooked grin.

  Rhonda turned in her seat. She looked through the windshield and gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white. Why’d he have to be such a fucking asshole? Why couldn’t he see how much Brad meant to her?

  The AC/DC CD began to replay as a Cujo-fied mailman stepped in front of her, a soiled mailbag hanging from its emaciated neck. Peeling skin and hair hung off its scalp in nasty strips. Its skull-like face contained a pair of yellow eyes. Its nose and bottom jaw were gone, and a long, leathery tongue drooped to its chest like an obscene tie.

  She stomped on the gas pedal. At point-of-contact, she braked hard and sent the undead mailman airborne. It flew and smashed into the road in front of her. Its mailbag exploded on impact, sending numerous pieces of junk mail and grubby letters into the street. The Cujo pushed up and rose on its arms, pulling its broken body across blacktop toward her Humvee. It came on, its tongue dragging across the pavement, its ghoulish eyes set on Rhonda.

  “You picked the wrong time to cross my path, dude.” Rhonda glared from behind her wheel, her anger fresh and hot. The Cujo crawled and disappeared somewhere below her bumper. Her steering wheel felt breakable in her rigid grip. Everywhere she looked, something ruined this godforsaken world for her. No, she couldn’t leave fast enough. The Cujo remained out of sight, but she heard it bustling somewhere under the Humvee. “This is what you get for delivering mail on Sundays.”

  Rhonda hit the gas and felt the Cujo crunch under one of her wheels. She reversed then drove forward and reversed again, and again, until nothing but a bloody smear and a gore-stained postal uniform painted the pavement.

  Relaxation set in. She felt calm and satisfied.

  Rhonda drove on and a new peace filled her. She welcomed it like a special guest. Highways and states unfolded ahead in her mind’s eye. The road was telling her what she already knew... it was time to get on with her life.

  Chapter Twelve

  An hour later, with many miles behind her, Rhonda found herself cruising on the same empty country road. She would’ve preferred to be on a large highway, but it couldn’t be avoided—this was the best route to the Interstate. No other cars or people appeared. Dead brush and tall weeds grew beside and in the cracked blacktop.

  Rhonda had driven this old road to the coast before. She and Brad had often taken long weekends in Kitty Hawk and Nags Head, and the Outer Banks that one time. Myrtle Beach, too. These memories in her head and heart filled her with tender nostalgia and melancholy, knowing she’d never have those moments again.

  But I have Brad again, don’t I?

  Her Humvee didn’t have navigation or even a lousy state map in the glovebox, but Rhonda knew she didn’t need either. She knew she’d run into Interstate 95, and once she hit it, she’d take it straight to Florida. I-95, she recalled, passed through more states than any other Interstate highway. Hell, she could travel the whole Eastern Seaboard on one unbroken stretch of road.

  Rhonda glanced at Brad in her rear-view mirror. He had remained quiet and sat stock-still since they’d left Levendale. He hadn’t said her name even once. From his seat, he’d maintained a perpetual gaze out his window and watched the countryside pass by without a blink.

  What mental transmissions occurred in his head? What thoughts could a Cujo have? Something must be happening inside their squalid circuit boards. Cujo motion, like normal human activity, called for some dynamic, operational
brain processes in order to function, right? Nothing in this world made sense to her anymore.

  Hot blood, she knew, didn’t flow through their veins. The precious fluid just sat there, like noxious oil inside their veins. Cujos didn’t breathe and their stomachs and intestines remained inactive organs, like their dead heart and lungs.

  If Cujos somehow digested the flesh they ate, she didn’t want to know about it. And she didn’t want to think about Brad being one of those things. A frown formed on her face and she held her breath in reflex.

  “Gross.”

  The interruption of her own voice did nothing to pause the all-new high-resolution cerebral proofs on display behind her eyes. What would Brad excrete if he took a zombie dump? The thought made bile rise in Rhonda’s throat and she swallowed hot sandpaper. Why the hell couldn’t she hypnotize herself and avoid these types of make-believe scenarios?

  Rhonda’s eyes and thoughts lingered on Brad. With her focus off the road, and with her thoughts consumed with Cujos, her mind and reflexes didn’t process the big thing in front of her. She didn’t have time to brake or identify the dark shape that flashed in her peripheral vision for only a millisecond before impact.

  She hit the Hereford bull at 80 miles per hour. She screamed and squeezed her eyes shut as her ungoverned and armored Humvee T-boned a 2000-plus-pound wall of beef.

  Rhonda’s eyes opened just in time to see the body break and burst under force. The bull sailed upward, and flipped into and over the Humvee. Its horned head hit her bullet-resistant windshield with considerable force and webbed the high-tech polycarbonate with dozens of spider web-like cracks.

  Rhonda bounced hard off the steering wheel and was slammed into her seat. The Humvee careened out-of-control. Her high-tech vehicle didn’t have anti-lock brakes. She couldn’t slow down at this speed, and she screamed as her Humvee flew off the road and nose-dived into a steep ditch. Her seatbelt damn near ripped her to pieces and cut into her waist and upper torso but the restraints kept her from eating the steering column when the Humvee came to a brutal halt.