The Rabid (Book 1)

by J. V. Roberts

  “With the sarcasm, look at you, Mr. Grumpy Pants. How about you, Tim, you manage to squeeze in a few winks?”

  “Let’s just say I’m more than happy to trade places with either one of ya’ll next time.”

  Momma shrugs and takes another sip of water. “Well, they can’t all be winners.”

  The road, normally swept clean by a consistent traffic flow, has collected a thin film of pine needles mixed with soggy leaves. The change in seasons manifests itself in hints of yellow and orange, rising around us like chandeliers in some open-air mansion. Days will soon grow shorter, and the nights longer, doing little to add to our odds of survival. Diving temperatures will threaten us with fits of ice and snow, though in typical southern fashion, we will most likely see nothing more than a puddle of slush dissipating in the midday sun. No gloves or scarves, no down feathered coats, or those silly hats with the hound dog style ear warmers stitched on the bottom of either side. We’ve got the clothes on our back and that’s it. We look like a family heading for the shoreline, rather than a band of survivors balancing on the tip of winters spear. Aside from our minimalist wardrobe, we are lacking the essentials; toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap. Another day or so, and this truck is going to smell like a heated morgue. We have to find shelter and supplies, the go-bags aren’t going to cut it on their own.

  We’ve got to find that light.

  We will find that light.

  The people there will be friendly. Shelter, food, supplies; we can rebuild. Things will fade back into normalcy. Happily ever after, we’ve earned it.

  Positive thinking,

  See it. Believe it.

  “So how about a road trip game?” I suggest, trying to break the silence. “We’ll count red cars or something.”

  “Yeah, you let me know if you spot anything that hasn’t been singed black,” Lee says.

  “We could count bodies.” Bethany pipes with a facetious grin.

  “Bethany! Don’t be so morbid.” Momma twists around and gently swats at her knee.

  “I haven’t been seeing as many, could be good or bad. The folks either got away or they’re out there looking for someone to chomp into.” Shattered windshields and smoldering ashes pass us by, neither works to confirm or deny my suspicions.

  “Let’s go with option one, shall we.”

  “I know, Momma, I'll be optimistic.”

  “Good boy.”

  Lunch resembles breakfast aside from the bag of beef jerky. In the name of conservation, we each still hold a half bottle of water from this morning. We munch down potato chips and hack a candy bar up for desert.

  “I really hope they make a medicine to fix all this, not sure if I can live on chips and beef jerky for the rest of my life.” Bethany says while licking chocolate from her fingers.

  “Well, honey, there might not be a cure you know, that’s a possibility.” Lee responds, nodding at her in the rear-view with all the solemnity of a father that just told his kid there is no Santa Clause.

  “Lee, wrong answer,” I hear Momma grimace under her breath, holding a hand out towards him as if she is feeling up an open flame.

  “Kids have gotta accept other possibilities as well, sweetie.” Lee’s whisper is more like a raspy shout.

  “There’s a cure though, right? There’s gotta be? It’s a sickness and we cure sicknesses all the time. Right?”

  It’s that battered hope in Bethany’s voice that bothers me more than anything, even if I do sympathize with Lee’s position. “I’m sure there is someone working on something.”

  “But, what rule book says that. Everything ends, kid. What if this is the ultimate conclusion to human evolution? A last minute M. Knight Shyamalan style twist where we don’t evolve, but we regress.”

  “Rule book? How about logic and common sense? Cancer, plague, the Spanish Flu—all once a mystery—all conquered by human ingenuity. Don’t talk to me about pinnacles, we are the pinnacle. The Rabid, they are a corrupted gene that we need to erase, so we can get on with it.”

  Lee continues despite Momma’s daggers and my obvious irritation. “Let’s say I grant you that, Two-Step, that we’re conquerors knocking down every genetic wall in our path. What if the great minds responsible for dreaming up such cures have already turned to mush? Then what? Are you and I going to flip through a couple of books and learn how to cook vaccines?”

  “That’s it, no more!” The sudden crack of her hand against the dash makes me jump. “I don’t want to hear another word about any of this. We take it as it comes, no more speculating.”

  “Ok, geez,” Lee relents, gluing his eyes to the road and his hands to the wheel.

  Bethany is a powder keg of foreboding, her hands fidget, one over the other in her lap.

  I run a hand through her hair, the way I always have, and down across the top of her back. “It’s going to be okay, I promise.”

  After a time, her eyes close and she drifts in and out of sleep, at one point drooping her head against my shoulder and snoring softly in my ear. I draw faces in the dirt stained window to my right. Featureless faces with puffy cheeks and an array of emotionally charged expressions prying at their exaggerated lips. The inside of this truck hasn’t been washed since it came off of the assembly line. Before long, my finger is black and brown, coated with dust and the tar residue of countless cigarettes. When I am finished, I wipe away my masterpiece and settle back in my seat. It isn’t long before I feel my eyelids growing heavy as well.

  25

  There is a flatbed tractor trailer pulled across the interstate, the cab end sagging from

  the cement, the nose pointed down a steep dirt road. Two grease stained bruisers hop down from the bed with automatic rifles perched across their bowling ball bellies.

  “Back up, should we back up?” Momma asks while retrieving her pistol from the glove box.

  “I don’t know, they’ve got guns.” Lee already has it in reverse.

  “So do we,” I lean into the front seat to garner a better view. “Let’s pull forward a little bit more and see what they’re all about.”

  “Tim, I don’t know where you got the idea that you’re running this family, but I am still your mother, and I’m making this call. We’re not going towards the scary men with rifles.”

  “So we do what instead? Spend the night in the truck, exposed to the Rabid? We’ve got to find that town and that light, we need electricity and shelter. Our chances of finding another car carrier with a fresh sleeper cab for you and Bethany before dark are a little less than zero.”

  “Two-Step has a point, dear; there is nothing else back there for us. We should see what these guys want. Could just be militia guarding the roads.”

  “Yeah, and they could be rapists and thieves looking for their next score.”

  “Like I said before, we’ve got guns too.”

  Lee parks it.

  The two men are advancing on us now. One, with a pencil drawn moustache and a spotty head of hair, stays further back, raising his rifle and acting as cover for his amigo. The one out front, with shoulder length hair and a Fu Manchu, keeps a brisk pace in our direction. He dodges in and out of sunlight, trying to get a view through the mid-afternoon glare camouflaging our windows. Another one appears, rolling onto the surface of the flatbed. He takes up position on his belly, springing to life a tripod and the sniper rifle to go with it.

  “Oh no, this was a bad idea, your momma is right, we need to go.” Lee moves a trembling hand towards the instrument of our retreat.

  “Wait, I’ve got this.” I push the back door open with a boot heel and level my M4 across the roof of the truck, I balance out by keeping one foot inside on the seat cushion and the other tucked against the outcropped door handle.

  The two well-armed strangers stop, taking me into their sights.

  “That’s close enough, fellas.” I ignore the protests echoing from inside the cab. It’s mostly Momma mixed with a bit of Lee.

  “Whoa there, cowboy, you know ho
w to use that thing?” Fu Manchu asks calmly.

  “I pull the trigger and things tend to die.”

  “So you’ve done some killin’?”

  “Here and there.”

  “Drop the weapon less’ you wanna get drilled down where you stand.” Pencil moustache yells, pacing foot to foot, his aim drawing tiny circles across my frame.

  “Why don’t both of you drop your weapons.” Lee is down on one knee, using the driver door as partial cover.

  “Lee, you really don’t...”

  “Shut up, Two-Step, and just worry about keeping yourself steady.”

  “I’m not gonna ask you boys again!” Pencil moustache waves his weapon towards us like an old man shooing neighborhood rabble rousers away with a cane.

  “Donny, cool it, let me do the talking.” Fu Manchu calls back to his amigo.

  Fu Manchu is the voice of authority. He’s the man. Donny is the puppy with the big mouth standing in the shadow of the pack leader. He’ll bark all day, but before he bites, the order has to come down.

  “You boys have got some impressive hardware for civilians.” His southern drawl is inked with traces of French.

  “Inheritance,” I shrug. If I squeeze fast enough, I can probably take both of them down, not guaranteed kill shots, but it’d buy us some time. The problem is the sniper. He’s got me dead to rights; I can feel the cross hairs dialed in on my heart.

  “Inheritance, huh, your loved one was military I presume.”

  “Da Nang,” I reply, echoing Bo’s spirit of bravado to the best of my ability.

  Fu Manchu raises his eyebrows. “Well then, my respect and condolences. I had a brother that did a few years in Nam’. One twisted old barker when he got back, indeed he was, indeed he was.”

  “It was his brother actually,” I nod towards Lee.

  Fu Manchu turns his eyes to Lee and bows his head. “Well, with no less respect than before, my condolences.”

  Lee, caught off guard, nods back and stutters a thank you.

  “So, you have supplies?” Fu Manchu asks.

  “We get by.” My legs are beginning to shake and I can feel my boot slipping against the slick plastic door handle.

  “Good, that’s good. Not an easy thing to do in this world.”

  “Nope, it is not.”

  “You are aware that we’ve got you outgunned, and out skilled. That gentleman with the sniper rifle back there was a McMillan sniper instructor for over a decade.”

  “You’re right; you probably do have us, on both accounts.”

  “So…”

  “So, I think we’d rather die standing than sitting. What do you think, Lee?”

  “Um, I’d rather not die at all.”

  A dismissive chuckle parts his lips. “You’ve got a set on you, kid, I’ll give ya’ that.”

  “What can I say, I was born with em’.”

  Inside the car, Momma is telling Bethany to get down and stay down. From the corner of my eye, I can see Momma squeezing down behind the dashboard, both hands clutching her pistol.

  “Where are your people headed?”

  “West.”

  “Oh no, nothing out there, nothing out West. It’s just more of the same, some of it worse.”

  “There is nothing behind us either, so it sounds like it’ll be suiting us just fine.”

  “Hm, you got family out there?”

  I ignore his question with one of my own. “You know, if there is nothing out there, what’s with the charade; the guns, the blocking the road, Mr. McMillan all set up with his tripod and scope?”

  He lowers his rifle, swinging it in one hand while scratching the back of his neck with the other and squinting against the sunlight, a half-moon shaped armpit stain revealing itself against his grungy wife beater. “Bandits, looters, whatever you wanna call em’. They been runnin’ all up and down this highway. My brothers and I, we got us a little camp just northwest of here, we’ve got families to protect. Two nights back, a couple of em' tore ass through there, killed Craig’s wife, the fella behind the tripod. So, we set up this checkpoint, to try to catch em’ before they catch us.”

  “Smart thinking, but, we aren’t bandits.”

  “I know you’re not, kid, if you were, you’d be dead by now.”

  I slowly let my M4 pull away from my shoulder. “So, we may continue?”

  “Grant me one service before you do.”

  “And that would be?”

  “I have related to you something regarding myself, and my men. About our camp and our struggle to survive, yet you and your people remain a mystery.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Despite my appearance and my less than sophisticated accent, I’ve supposedly got warrior blood pumping through my veins, Massai Warrior to be precise, wild right, considering my pigmentation? But, according to my grandfather, and he always was a stickler for the truth, I’m like 1/20th black Rambo.” He’s twirling the right side of his damp moustache between a thumb and forefinger. “Lord knows, 1/20th, that’s like a drop of pure in a bucket of sludge, or visa-versa, I’ve got no illusions. Still, the idea has always fascinated me, so much so that I decided to do a little reading on the Massai and their warriors. It turns out that after one has become a Massai Warrior, every village that they enter must grant them an offering, usually in the form of a slaughtered sheep; a show of respect and what-have-you. Now, this is no village, you’re no villager, and I’ve never really had a taste for lamb, though I suppose if I did, I’d be out of luck considering our circumstances. I’ve given you an offering, a piece of my story. So, seeing as how I’m 1/20th Massai—maybe—am I asking too much by expecting such a token in return?”

  “Um, no, I suppose it’s not too much.” I respond with a fair bit of hesitation.

  “Splendid.”

  “What are we doin’ man?” Yells Donny.

  “Lower your gun, you’re making our fellow travelers uneasy, and have Craig pack up the eagle and the tripod, we won’t be needin’ em’.” He is smiling at me, his automatic now propped behind his neck. He looks like something out of a movie, a platoon sergeant trying to keep his weapon dry while leading his men through the muckety muck. “Might I ask your man to do the same?”

  I wrap the truck roof with my fist. “Lee, it’s cool.”

  “Kid, I don’t know...”

  “I do know, this is my parlay, you want us to walk away from this? Then please, ease up, and get back in the truck.”

  “I see something I don’t like and I’m sending rounds out through the windshield.” He mutters as he climbs back inside and slams the door.

  “Parlay, that’s a good word, kid, great word, just a great word. I’m Dorian, but you can just call me Dorian.” He hangs on my silent confusion, slapping his knees as he bursts into hysterics. “It gets them every time, man, every single time. No, but seriously, just call me Dorian; the nicknames and abbreviations are ones that I am not keen on; no ring, no panache.”

  “Fair enough, I’m Timmy Two-Step. Timmy, or just Two-Step, either, or, works for me.”

  “Ah, like the dance?”

  “One in the same.”

  “So, do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Dance, do you dance; the Two-Step, the Mamba, the Maaaaaaacarena.” He rotates his hips dramatically; hands still perched behind his head.

  “None of the above, interpretive mostly.”

  “Funny, you don’t look like an interpretive dancer. Funny, funny…funny as a one legged duck really, the cowboy hat, creased jeans; placed you more as a shit kicking barn boy. You know, those late night soirées, neath’ the moonlight, some bearded dandy on the fiddle, ladies in their finest finery, lockin’ arms and lettin’ go and lockin’ arms again.”

  “Seen it in a movie once, I think they just call it a barn dance.”

  “I think they do too, I think they do.”

  There is a flicker in his eyes. Something I hadn’t seen before.

  A glint like co
ld steel.

  He stares up into the open sun, cracking his neck with two swift movements; left to right. His eyes come back to me once more. He curls his lip to reveal one-half of what is no doubt a full set of rotten teeth. “Why don’t you show me a little something; kick up your heels a bit.”

  “I’d rather not,” I duck my head into the truck and whisper to Lee, “Be ready.”

  “Kid, I told you. Just hop in and let’s run through this freak.”

  “Yeah, and have him empty his magazine through the window at us. No, just be ready on the trigger, okay?”

  “Let’s go, just go, please, I want to go.” Bethany is ducked down in the back, the bottom half of her face hidden behind her hands.

  “In a second, I promise.” I’ve got to stop using that word, promise, one day it’s going to bite me.

  “Hey, what’s all the whispering about, secrets don’t make friends, Timmy my boy.” He takes a step in our direction; his finger appears to be getting itchy.

  Everything is telling me to open up on this guy. Everything is telling me that this back and forth is a prelude to something much darker, something without words, all noise and death. “Listen, Dorian, I think that, per your custom, I’ve offered up enough of myself for one afternoon. What do you say we just get on our way and leave you and your people to it?”

  “Are you saying no to a Massai?”

  “No, what do you mean, what am I saying no to?”

  “The dance, Timmy, are you saying no to showing me your dance?”

  Another step forward.

  “Shoot this guy; just shoot this guy in the face and charge through, off road it.” Lee prods.

  “Yes, I’m saying no, we’ve really got to be on our way.”

  He drops his chin to his chest, his shoulders reverberate as he begins chortling to himself. “Oh, Tim, Tim, Tim…I. want my DANCE!”

  His face transforms; the reflection of some disfigured beast. I almost plunge backwards from my perch at the ferocity.

  I bring my rifle to bear.