Vitamin enriched emergency food rations (“These little bars taste like gopher shit, but they’ll keep ya alive, and they last longer than pre-canned chili beans”)
“The rest is ammo and empty magazines. Things go bad; you boys grab this and beat the bushes. Nothin’ else matters; forget clothes, your family photos, or whatever. This bag and your guns are your sole responsibility, understand?”
It isn’t a question.
“Yeah, sure, got it; things go to shit, we grab the bag and get out of dodge,” I say.
“Loud and clear,” Lee says.
“Alright then, them ladies is dependin’ on ya'll. The new wave says we’re equals and all, but when it goes down, they’re gonna panic, and it’ll be on us men to make sure their heads stay attached to their bodies.”
“You are a renaissance man, Bo, don’t let them tell you any different.” I muse.
“What I am is world weary. And you’re still drippin’ with afterbirth. So rather than regurgitate some politically correct garbage you heard from my brother, just listen to me, and maybe we’ll live long enough to experience a couple more hot meals.”
“Whatever you say,” I am tired. Dog tired. I’ve aged decades in just a few hellacious days.
Outside, Bethany and Momma are laughing. Stacking warped fire seared pancakes on a paper plate. We are out of syrup. I’d seen a quarter full container of honey and a bag of confection sugar the night before. It’ll have to do I suppose. What I wouldn’t trade for an oversized mixing bowl of frosted flakes and an unspoiled quart of 1% milk. The pancakes are most likely going to taste like dirty shoe leather. They’ll be mixed with water, and severely overcooked. A few days, a long weekend, that’s been the duration of our stay in hell’s kitchen. The idea of this being our new normal makes my teeth hurt.
One foot in front of the other, just like Momma had said.
Momma and Bethany are coming through the backdoor, the aroma of charred wood keeping their company, when a slurred pap-pap-pap---pappappap at the front door stops the breath in our lungs.
“What kind of knock was that?” Lee goes rigid on the couch.
“You email anyone else for help?” Bo is already sliding his pistol from its holster.
Lee shakes his head.
Papapapapap—pap—pap—pap—pap.
“Guns, everyone, get in position.” Bo moves towards the front door, his gun barrel leading.
Lee leaps the back of the couch to retrieve his rifle from against the wall, while Momma and Bethany race each other into the kitchen to grab theirs from the table. During the sprint through my bedroom, I am barely able to avoid face planting my bed frame as one of my discarded tee shirts jumbles itself around the tips of my boots. I recover and am back in the living room, cold steel resting across my chest, hat on my head, just as the rest of them are gathering in the mouth of the foyer at Bo’s back, hands clutching their weapons—shaking.
Shaking…
…everyone except for Bo, that is. “Fingers off your triggers, I ain’t up to catchin one in the back.” Bo is reaching for the handle as the door pitches forward, seizing against the embrace of the double deadbolt locks, the screws holding the hinges in place spray plaster as they threaten to come loose from the frame. Bo is a large man, but he is quick. He leaps backwards and in the same motion pulls the trigger on his silver magnum.
BUWHUMP!
The first shot lights the room like the flash from an old Polaroid camera. It sucks the sound from the air as well, and leaves me with nothing more than a dull ringing in my ears.
When he gains his balance, he pulls the trigger again.
BUWHUMP!
The second round bursts through the door just below the first. A shower of splintered wood races past our heads as the pungent scent of gun smoke fills the air. Two geometrically perfect cylinders of light now wrestle at our feet, tracing themselves back towards the freshly punched bullet holes, dust particles floating in their wake.
Bo reaches for the handle once more, elbow crooked, aiming from the hip, smoke still circling the barrel. “Be ready,” he barks. When he throws the door back, it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. It is like raising the curtain on a wall of spotlights.
I recoil at the sensory overload.
...the ringing ears…
…the blurred vision…
…they begin to cease.
Seconds feel like minutes, but they are seconds. Microseconds even.
I can see the figure standing on the front porch. It descends from the blur of light like some ghastly angel. Its jaw hangs from its face, all gristle and ruin, swinging back and forth by the grace of a thin sheet of bloody gray flesh. The other round embedded itself in the neck; black blood now oozes from the gaping wound like tar on sun-baked asphalt.
I recognize this tangled horror. The pieces put themselves together one at a time. Behind the ruined jaw, the decrepit flesh, and those snowball eyes—Peter, it is Peter; one-half of our friendly green thumb endowed neighbors.
Lee beats me to it. “Oh, my God, that’s Peter.” He gasps, lowering his sights.
The top of Peters head explodes, spraying the porch roof with black blood and chunks of brain and skull. He falls backwards down the steps with the rigidity of a longboard that has lost its footing.
Bethany screams and throws her weapon to the couch, burrowing into Momma’s waistline.
The guttural roar from outside quickly drowns her out.
It reverberates through my bones.
It is like…
…some demonic jungle cat…
I’ve only heard it once before. As we were fighting our way out of the school.
Bo walks calmly onto the porch with his pistol working as a natural extension of his arm.BuwhumpBuwhumpBuwhump!
Tony, the other half of our friendly neighborhood gardening team, is standing in the driveway by Bo’s truck; the three magnum rounds take apart his face and head like a jigsaw puzzle, the pieces spread across the gravel as his body ragdolls to the ground.
But, it's too late. The call has gone out. The trees and their branches shiver with reply. A sickly harmonious gurgle and growl blazes towards the heavens. The ground quakes as if a cavalry squadron is bearing down on top of us.
“It’s go time.” Bo is speed loading his wheel gun as he backs through the doorway. He holsters it and pulls his rifle from against the wall. “Just like we ran it. Boys, get on the bags. Ladies, start the engine, we got your six.” He tosses Momma the truck keys.
“…I’m…no…ma…no.” Bethany is coming apart.
Bo was right, the callous prick called it.
“We got no time for this,” Bo yells back at us, checking the magazine on his rifle before slapping it back in place and racking a round in the chamber.
I grab her shoulders, my M4 resting by a cocked knee. “It’s the same as before. We gotta keep moving, okay?”
She nods, blinking the tears and sniffing the snot.
I drop the GSG in her arms and slip her ammo belt around her neck. “You stay right by Momma and you shoot all the ones you see.”
“What about the ones I don’t see?”
“I’ll shoot them.” I wink. I hustle her to Momma’s side.
“Here, kid, take one.” Lee hands me one of the bug out bags, the other is already looped beneath his ammo belt and across his chest.
“We ready? Bags? Keys? Ammo?” Bo surveys us quickly, bobbing his head down the line. “Do or die time; go, go, go!”
Bo is the first one out, followed by Bethany and Momma, while Lee and I cover at the rear. All hell breaks loose straight out of the gate. Bo fires first. A stringy blond mopped ghoul near the tree line falls beneath the sound. Lee and I fan out, back to back, covering the angles. It’s evident straight away that there are more targets than there are bullets.
Three come around from behind the chicken coop. I select a head and fire.
Red mist.
I don’t notice the recoil, or the noise. All
I see and notice are the figures at the other end of my sights.
Select.
Fire.
The second one goes down, the fruit of my labor spread across the side of the old chicken coop.
Select.
Fire.
The last of the decaying trio jolts back as my bullet tears apart his cheek. Before he can recover, my next round enters below his right eye socket putting him down for good.
“Go, go! Start the truck and bring it back!” Bo yells.
Momma and Bethany are wavering at the steps, frozen in place by the chaos. Bethany screams while Momma holds onto her and fires wildly from the hip into the growing crowd of Rabid. Tactics be damned. Rounds be wasted.
"Goddamnit, go!”
Under Bo’s command, Momma grabs Bethany by the arm and yanks her down the steps. Holding the GSG with one hand, she continues to fire into the encroaching mob, delaying, but not stopping them. Bethany trips and falls behind her. Her GSG bouncing and spiralling beyond arms reach.
“Forget it, just go,” I jump down to the first step and squeeze the trigger twice, splattering the brains of a frumpy flesh eater across some petrified tree bark three feet from where Bethany fell.
Momma is in the truck now, scrambling across the front seat and pulling Bethany along with her. Bethany slams the passenger door just as four sets of gray palms get within reach. They immediately start gnashing, spitting, and pounding at the glass.
I take aim and blast the attackers, spinning them across the hood.
“Don’t shoot the truck. Count rounds and call out reloads.”
Click.
“Out!” Lee takes a knee as he fumbles a fresh magazine from his ammo belt.
They are a relentless tide. Sprinting across the fallen bodies of their brethren, their eyes appearing as an ocean of floating white orbs spread before us, their arms outstretched, the gap between them and us growing ever smaller.
They are overtaking the truck as Momma cranks at the engine.
I can hear Bethany’s muted screams through the glass. “Hurry up, Lee, we could really use you here.” I shout, cracking off two more rounds.
“It’s…I can’t get the…fucking magazine is…it’s stuck.”
“Hammer the goddamn thing, stop playing footsy with it and slam it home.”
I hear the mag click into place and the metal caress of a round being chambered.
Lee is up and at my back once more.
The engine turns over and Momma tosses it into reverse, just as I send another 5.56 slug through the temple of a flesh eater with its mouth suctioned to the passenger window like some grotesque cleaner fish.
She backs over three of them. The truck hops and bops as the tires make hammered shit out of the brain dead monsters. The bumper rams through the bottom step before the truck jolts to a stop beneath us.
“Reloadin’,” Bo calls.
The ground between them and us is nil.
I turn to cover his reload. As I center my red dot above his crouched form, I see a shadow march over his grave. She'd been an elderly woman in her past life, probably a grandma with a legion of offspring. The kindly type of old lady you'd want as a next door neighbour. The type that would most likely have regaled you with tales of glory and youth from beyond the confines of her well-travelled walker or faded rocking chair. She looks like the type that would have graced your Christmas stocking with collections of state quarters and various flavors of taffy. But all of that is gone, and what is left, is death itself.
She flies over the side of the porch, with the agility of a much younger woman, and before I can take aim, the few teeth she has left are buried in Bo’s forearm.
“Fucking bitch, goddamnit!”
I want to take the shot, but I can’t, it's too close. She is on top of him, shaking his arm in her mouth like a rabid dog.
Bo falls onto his back, discarding his primary weapon and the partially inserted magazine across the cement and pulling his pistol. He buries the barrel in the soft meat of her right eyeball with a sickly squish and pulls the trigger. A shower of gore pours over him as her brains exit the back of her skull like a jack-in-the box, as her body falls limp. He rolls her over, and stands clutching his arm.
“What’re you two still doin’, get in the truck and go, now!”
I toss my bag over the tailgate and hop in behind it.
“Bo, your arm…” Lee trails off.
“Yeah, moron, it’s why I’m not goin’. I’m makin' my stand here, but not you, now get your ass in that truck.”
The Rabid are pushing and shoving at the base of the porch like a bunch of concert goers crammed into an undersized venue, dying for a taste of the main attraction.
“I’m not leaving you like…”
Bo shoves him backwards off the stairs and over the tailgate. Lee tumbles past me, tangling up in the strap of his M4. “I’m not givin’ you a choice you liberal jack ass. It ain’t your time.” Bo bids me farewell with a solemn nod. “You keep eyes on em’, Two-Step.”
“Thanks, Bo, for everything.”
“No, for God sake, there is another way, don’t…” Lee is trying to upright himself as Bo slaps the tailgate and Momma drops it into drive.
The Rabid topple in our wake, trying to get a solid grip on the truck as we fishtail down the bed of loose dirt and rock and spring right towards the farm road. The last image of Bo I see, is him standing amid the mob, his pistol in one hand, his rifle in the other, giving em' hell.
The Rabid spring from the woods surrounding either side of the narrow outlet as we make for the pavement, clamouring for us, falling beneath the tires, only to rise once more.
“Don’t let off the gas whatever you do!” I scream through the rear window.
The Rabid fill the space behind us like water flooding an aqueduct.
With a jolt and a bit of burnt rubber, we touch down on the main road. Lee and I slide across the metal surface along with our two bags, as Momma turns hard left. Burned out cars, sprawled bodies, and a flaming horizon now lay before us. I can’t help but feel we’ve just traded one hell for another.
19
We are driving west. Momma says we’ve got relatives in Texas, namely an aunt and an uncle I’ve never met. Her hope is to find them and maybe join forces. At the very least, we'll find some shelter and food. At least that's what she says. I don't share her carefree confidence. Anything is possible at this point. There are no guarantees; our aunt and uncle are just as likely to be alive as dead. Just as likely to be out hunting for flesh, as they are to be stowed away waiting for help to arrive. Tread lightly. Always be ready to shift gears depending on how the situation presents itself. But, for now, I suppose driving west is as good of a plan as any.
The interstate is redundant in its state of disrepair. Like a never-ending driver’s education program, we weave our way in and out of crashed, abandoned, and overturned cars. There are jack-knifed semis with rummaged through payloads cast across the roadway, there are body parts, and downed power lines. It is smoldering ashes. It is ruins. It's as if we’re coming through on the heels of some conquering army.
It seems, as a collective, that we're beginning to grow immune to the carnage around us. Bethany has stopped shivering at every hollowed out skull and detached limb, most of them picked clean by the crows and God knows what else. Bethany and me are crammed in the backseat of the pickup, my rifle tucked between my knees, her pistol tucked in the back pocket of the driver seat.
“Why didn’t we use the van, I’m like a pretzel back here, I can barely breathe?” Bethany whines a little, wriggling around next to me.
“The van isn’t manoeuvrable, sweetie, and that’s what we need right now, maneuverability, versatility.” Momma grips the wheel with both hands like a ship captain, hunched forward, scanning for the next patch of ice.
“May not be manoeuvrable, but it’s comfortable at least.”
“You see how Momma keeps turning us, sharp? Van would go over, it’s top heavy
; it can’t handle quick movements like that.” I try to explain. It doesn’t do much good.
“I can’t feel my leeeeegs.” She yowls, coughing the syllables like an engine that refuses to turn.
I give up trying to reason and stare out the window instead, doing my best to ignore her restless shifting beside me. I've journeyed this way once before, when Dad took me on the road with him. This route is by all weight and measure an utter bore in terms of scenery, flat highways and large swaths of piney woods broken up by the occasional one horse town. But, despite appearances, with Dad, it’d been an adventure. I remember feeling center stage, hiked up in the cab of that semi, bare toothed and waving at each car we passed by. Most ignored me, some waved back, others prodded me to pull the horn; a request Dad was always happy to oblige. The weigh stations, the radio chatter, the late night diners; we were two cowboys racing the moonlight. Those were three of the best days of my life. One night as we bedded down in the cab, tucked in the back corner of a highway rest stop as the crickets chirped around us, and cars whispered past in streaks of white and red, I said to my father, “I want to live on the road. I could do this forever.”
He laughed, and responded with a full-fisted yawn, “Careful what ya wish for, son.”
My father, the oracle.
Lee has spoken six words since we lost his brother to the Rabid. For the first hour or so, he stared out the window swiping tears as they fell quietly from his eyes. Momma had held his hand and whispered textbook words of comfort.
I’d offered my condolences, “We owe him our lives.” Yeah, it was cheesy and meager, as are most things when covered by the shadow of death.
“I’m sorry about your brother.” Bethany had spoken softly, following my lead.
“Thanks guys, I’ll be okay, really.”
That’s it, that’s all he’s said.
“We still need to find food and water.” Momma’s voice doesn’t betray alarm, just the facts.
“We’ve got emergency food supplies in those bags in the back,” I offer.
“Those are only to be used if we’re up a creek and can’t find a paddle.” Lee says matter-of-factly, surprising us all with his input. “We’ve got to find some non-perishable items to keep us on the road; chips, jerky, canned beans, whatever. I saw a length of hose and a container in the back we can use to syphon off gas. We need to make it a one stop shop, so let’s keep our eyes open for a convenience store, or something with easy access points.”
The Rabid (Book 1) Page 10
