The Rabid (Book 1)

by J. V. Roberts

  As we’re dragging her across the living room carpet, she starts to cry again. “Please, just let me die. Let me go, let me die, please.” She emits a brittle cough sending strings of mucus rocketing forward onto the surface of the coat closet. There is little to no fight left in her. She is broken.

  We drop her face down on the bed. I roll her over and drag her up like a rag doll onto the multi-tiered wall of hand-fluffed pillows. After situating her and brushing the fluid soaked strands of hair from her eyes and cheeks, I cloak her with a sheet and down comforter. “Rest, Momma, you just need rest and then everything will be okay. You’ll see.”

  She grips my arms just above the elbows. “Tim, please listen to me. I need medicine. I can’t go on without my medicine.”

  “What medicine, Momma?” I sit down beside her on the edge of the bed, easing her hands away and crossing them over her stomach. Bethany stays back, tears boiling at the corners of her eyes.

  “When your daddy passed, I was on medicine. It kept me with you; it kept me from falling into the dark. Please get me my medicine.” Her blood shot eyes bulge with desperation.

  “Momma, what medicine is it?”

  “It was Klonopin, Xanax, and Ambien, that’s the ones I took. Please, Tim, please get me my medicine.” She reaches for me once more, but I meet her half way.

  “I’ll see what I can do, I promise. You close your eyes, I’m gonna talk to Bethany for a minute and then one of us will be right back in. We’re gonna try to get you your meds, Momma, don’t worry.”

  “Such a good boy, Tim—such a good boy—good son, yes, you are. Bethany, my daughter, my princess, you make your Momma so proud.”

  I kiss her on the forehead and stand from the bed. “Rest now, Momma.” I scoop Bethany into the hallway with me as she’s wiping away the tears that hang from the tips of her lashes. “I need you to stay here with her while I go and track down her pills.”

  “Are you crazy? You’re going to need someone to back you up.”

  “Not as much as Momma is going to need someone to stay with her. She’s not all here right now. I don’t want her getting up or doing something stupid. I need you to look after her.”

  “What about Dallas? What about Aunt Jolene?”

  “We’re still going. But, we’re not getting there with her, not like this. That’s all the more reason to get out there and get these pills. We’ve got to get her functional before we go anywhere.”

  “Okay,” Bethany wipes her nose across her sleeve. “Where are you gonna go?”

  “I saw a drug store on the way in. I’ll take the van over, do a smash and grab, and be back before you even know I’m gone.”

  Bethany exhales hard through pursed lips. “Alright.”

  “Hey, it’s going to be okay. I promise. We’ll get Momma running again and everything will be good. You believe me?”

  It takes some time, but she answers, her chin trembling with emotion. “Yeah, Tim, of course I believe you.”

  “Alright then, sun will be up in a few hours, I’ll leave then. Grab some sleep while you can.”

  ***

  The chained glass doors collapse backwards off their hinges sending a shower of glass sailing across the linoleum floor of the drug store. I waste no time coming off the driver seat, hopping over the two bench seats, and kicking open the rear double doors of the white panel van with the soles of my boots, a pistol in one hand and a flash light in the other.

  There is a scraping along the side of the van to my right. Before my feet can touch the ground, the door is slammed backwards and nearly crushes my ankles. A face appears in the window, a blood patched beard running the expanse of the jawline, and a set of creamy eyeballs. The madman peels the door back and launches the top half of his body into the van, biting and clawing for my legs. I bash him over the head with the heavy metal flashlight, bouncing his face against the floorboard like a basketball. He keeps after me; his arms flail and his teeth jitter as if they are toys. I bicycle kick him in the face, desperately trying to remain free of his embrace. I clock him across the top of the head again and again. His skull parts beneath the impact of the fourth blow, granting access to the soft matter beneath. The fifth blow embeds itself with a sickly squish, launching a back spray of debris and fluid. I kick the body from the van and wipe my face clean across the front of my shirt.

  I step down and begin walking the far right aisle. It’s a simple mom and pop shop. Half the floor plan is taken up by the pharmacy and the other half by green metal shelves housing food items and a random array of vitamin and mineral supplements.

  My hands are shaking. Being alone among the demons and the darkness makes all the difference. I move low and slow. I can feel my heart beating, low, right in the center of my rib cage, like an alien trying to break free from my chest. I keep the flashlight pointed down, rattles against the handgun like a maraca; if I had to shoot right now, I'd be in some shit, I couldn't hit the broad side of barn like this.

  I don’t want to raise the flashlight beam from the black and white tile floor. There is a logic rooted in complete terror holding me in place. It tells me that what I can’t see can’t hurt me. The problem with this, is that it can see me from where it stands behind the pharmacy counter. Its licking its lips at the prospect of my taste. Its flesh and blood stained teeth are bared and ready to plunge into the arteries of my neck.

  I’m quick, but not quick enough. He’s coming over the counter as I light him up. I fire three quick rounds in his direction, not sure if I hit shit. I’m only able to catch glimpses of him, like fragments from a broken memory, as he dives headlong into the aisles to my right. I turn, sending bullets blasting through bags of tortillas chips and beef jerky. The shelf rocks towards me, the chips and candy falling like icicles at the beginning of a spring thaw. I drop down to my hands and knees, as the heavy metal domino begins to pick up speed, sliding towards the pharmacy counter on my stomach, my boots just clearing the impact zone.

  Bo had taught us only to blind fire as a last resort, “It eats up that ammo like a goddamned piranha, right now ain’t the time to be feedin’ the fish.”

  I’m down to my last resort.

  The feet fall heavy and fast at my back. He’ll be on me in fractions of second. I don’t have time to roll over and situate myself. I hold my arm rigid, firing as I roll to my side, leaving the flashlight buried beneath me. When I reach my back, it’s evident the fruits of my labor have blossomed. The lone Rabid, still wearing his pharmacy apron, has been repulsed by the flurry of hollow point rounds. He’s clumsily trying to gain his footing amid the disarray of the overturned shelving, chewing away at his own tongue in his frantic attempt to reach me. I level off my shot and fire once, putting him down for good.

  The sound of banging and scrabbling at the back door brings me to my feet in a hurry.

  More of them.

  A lot more of them by the sounds of it, attracted by the gunfire no doubt. How long before they get tired of the struggle and come around front? Not long with my luck.

  I jump the counter and grab a grocery bag. It’s not hard finding what Momma asked for, and there’s plenty of it. I scoop in what I can, am back over the counter, and in the van pulling out over the broken glass and bent metal just as the Rabid begin to pour around the corners of the building.

  ***

  Bethany greets me at the front door, her pistol removed dutifully from her waistband. She checks me over for wounds and then wraps her arms around my neck. “I was so worried. Was it bad?”

  “I got in a little scrap, but I’ll survive.”

  “What do you mean little scrap? What happened?”

  “Nothing worth talking about,” I kiss her on the forehead and walk into the living room dangling the grocery bag. “How’re things here?”

  “Been quiet, Momma is finally sleeping.”

  “Is that Tim, is he back?”

  “Was sleeping,” Bethany sighs.

  I shake the bag. “Well, I’ve got her pills,
so we’ll have some help.”

  A bottle of water and a couple of multicolored tablets later and Momma is out like a light. She snores loudly as Bethany and I sit in the darkened living room with tiny slats of moonbeam falling in through the drawn curtains and blinds.

  “We’ll move out tomorrow. If everything goes like it should, and Momma stays stable, we should be able to make Texas before nightfall, two days at the most I’m thinkin’.” I’ve unloaded the magazine on my M4 and am brushing off each bullet individually before reloading it, an exercise produced out of boredom more than an instinct for survival.

  Bethany is doing the same with her pistol and her M16, holding each round at eye level, and giving it a quick shot of breath and a sleeve dusting before replacing it. “You really think we’re going find anything there?”

  I shake my head. “No, I don’t. Aunt Jolene, if she is alive, is long gone. We’ll find dead people. We’ll find Rabid. I’m not holding out for the family reunion.”

  “Then what the hell, why go?”

  “Because, maybe we’ll find Aunt Jolene.”

  Bethany laughs. “Doesn’t hurt to try, right?”

  “I guess we’ll find out.”

  33

  It took us two days to make it across the state line into Texas. We moved slowly, scrounging as we went. One night, we spent held up in a liquor store with the burglar bars drawn across the glass. Momma slept curled in a ball behind the counter, high off of her med supply, while Bethany and me took turns on watch duty. We didn’t drink the alcohol, but the overabundance of barroom snack foods along with a healthy supply of seltzer water and fruit mixers, made for a worthwhile layover.

  Shortly after we cross the invisible line into Texas, the interstate splits and splits again. There is a traffic jam as wide and as deep as I’ve ever seen; cars upon cars upon trucks. There are bloated bodies and evidence of gunfire all around us, expended shells and magazines, scarred metal. One of the great battles in this war had been fought here, The Battle for Interstate 20!

  “You’ve gotta exit onto the service road. No way are we getting through that.” Bethany says.

  My eyes roam from the road to the map and back to the road, doing my damndest to keep us on the right path. “Looks like I can circle us down and go around and then connect back with interstate 20; see here.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  I exit the service road, curve left under the interstate and begin southwest down highway 271. My biggest concerns are over the risk of a flat tire or a broken axle. Each time we bump across a sea of scattered debris, I flinch like a ship captain steering his fishing vessel through a field of ice, knowing that the next bump or scrape could leave me floundering and at the mercy of the elements.

  It’s another hour before we happen upon a few of the survivors from The Battle for Interstate 20! They’re haggard and worn. Few have shoes. The ones that do are avidly working to wear them to threads as they drag their feet against the rugged blacktop. They seem to move in small disconnected packs. They are docile and glazed over, shuffling off of instinct, and instinct alone. The only visible ferocity comes from the dinner parties feasting on the entrails of recently downed prey; nothing excites them like their food.

  It’s usually the same crime scene.

  The dislodged water bottle. The backpack with the broken straps, ripped away from the body during some futile escape attempt. They are twisted broken bags of flesh. Their abdomens exist now only as hollowed out serving trays. They will rise once more, once they’ve served their purpose, and they will help to carry on the gospel of death. No one escapes from the insatiable horde. When the Rabid lock you in their sights, it’s fight or die time.

  The Rabid don’t see us coming. We run through them rather than waste the ammunition. It’s a morbid amusement. They always turn at the last second, their eyes meeting mine, somehow emitting a look of surprise despite their inherently blank expressions. We drag them beneath the van, they are crushed by the tires, and left mangled in the road, alive but worse for wear. Sometimes we get lucky, and they burst like a poorly sewn incision, spraying the windshield with black goop, their arms and legs taking to the wind, their head bumping around on the hood before rolling off into a ditch.

  “You’re enjoying this a little too much.”

  I shrug. “Gotta pass the time somehow, besides, they’re already dead.”

  The sky is hazy and foreboding. Winter will be here soon. She will be floundering about, barely able to breathe, strangled by the southern climate, but she will be here nonetheless; dropping temperatures into the 30’s and 40’s and threatening those forced to live out-of-door with a hard freeze or two. If the mood tickles her right, she may grant us a snow flurry, an aesthetic reprieve from otherwise miserable living conditions.

  Rarely is she so kind.

  She’s usually kind of a bitch.

  We’re fooling ourselves.

  We duck, we dodge, and we fight to survive, while the Rabid screech and claw and gnash their teeth. But when all is said and done, the only one left standing will be old mother earth herself. She was there from beginning. Through the dinosaurs and the asteroids, the floods, and the dustbowls, she’s always been there, passing her judgment with merciless finality. All of us do our best to leave our mark upon this planet in some conscious or subconscious manner, but it’s all going to be washed away, or eventually blown out into the farthest reaches of space. We are tiny candles of insignificant matter resting on a vast cosmic alter, just waiting for our turn to be blown out.

  So why fight it? What’s the point?

  That is the point I suppose, to struggle, to fight, to matter.

  We need to feel connected to something. We need to feel like there is something higher taking place. We need to feel like there is something beyond the trees. To lie down and to die is not embedded in our DNA. For that, we need drugs. Mind numbing chemicals to pull the chords and close our lids. For me it was dance. For Bethany it was her quirkiness. For daddy it was us and driving his truck, it was Sunday morning breakfast, and laughing with Momma on the couch. Momma was the same, us, daddy, late night laughter. But, the chords get tangled. We get tangled. Things get fuzzy.

  Momma is asleep on the back seat, oblivious to each bump and rock, her medicine in full effect. From here, she seems pretty well put together. The cloudy eyes, the lines in her face that seem to appear daily, they all melt away under the umbrella of sleep.

  We’ll have to find shelter and hunker down soon. The sun is lowering itself across the sky. Soon darkness will be upon us and travel will become an endeavor for the foolish and the suicidal.

  34

  “So how far away are we from interstate 20? The sign said we’re in Tyler.”

  Bethany fumbles with the map. Turning it every which way but up. “We’re not that far off, just south of 20.”

  “Lemme see.” I flatten the map across the wheel and trace my finger in a semi-circle, down and up. “Yeah, not too bad, looks like 69 will take us back up where we need to be. I’m thinking maybe 10 miles max to connect back with 20.”

  “It’s gonna be getting dark soon.”

  “Yeah, so let’s hold up here in town, and then we’ll set out again tomorrow morning.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “This is new to me too; let’s just see where we end up.” I steer us across a set of railroad tracks and turn left down a two-lane road paved with a wall of red bricks. We run parallel to the tracks, passing signs for bail bond services tacked to the back of graffiti laden office complexes. The image of the thug with a bottle of spray paint and a mask marking their territory, sneaking around under the cover of darkness, seeking that which they may deface, is laughable now. Those that once owned the night, those that prowled alleys and poorly lit lots in search of handbags and dignity, had been run out of town by a new gang. A more vicious gang. One that doesn't need to mark its territory. One that doesn't demand or negotiate. One whose sole pursuit is suffering and death. Spray all the w
alls you want, the Rabid will write over it with your blood.

  “I think the outbreak may have improved this section of town.” Bethany tilts her head trying to read the swirling black spray paint.

  “Wouldn’t be hard would it?”

  Up ahead there is movement. I slow the van to a crawl.

  “What is it?” Bethany already has her M16 poised.

  “I can’t tell, too far out, and those dumpsters are in the way. Be ready.” I pop the gears into neutral and kill the engine, letting it quietly roll forward. The dumpsters clear our sightline and the rabid banging at the back door of the city police station come into view.

  “Whoa.”

  I stomp the brakes and put it in park. “I count six.”

  “Me too.”

  They are shoving one another aside, hammer fisting the one way metal door and the brick frame around it as they struggle to keep their footing on the two narrow stairs leading down; every few seconds, one of them slips and another takes its place. “Something in there has them riled up.”

  “Food, probably.” Bethany says with a small hint of anxiety.

  I crack the window and immediately pick up on another sound rising above the gurgling and snarling, a voice, a human voice, sounding a cry for help. “You hearing that?”

  “Yeah, I hear it.” Bethany grips the smoke grey barrel of her M16 as if it’s the last life raft leaving a sinking ship.

  I open the door and remove my rifle from between the seats. I step delicately, checking the ground for bottles, bricks, or any other potential slip-ups that would give me away.

  “What are you doing?” Bethany's tone is hushed as she moves into the empty driver seat.

  “I’ll take up behind the dumpsters. You stay here. I’ll signal and we’ll tear them down; fan of fire, just like Bo showed us, we’ll make that stairway a kill zone.”

  Momma sits up rubbing her eyes. “What are you doing? Why are we stopped?”

  “Lay down, Momma, there is about to be some shooting.” Bethany puts her forehead against the steering wheel and groans. “Alright, Tim, your show. But if they get me, you’re the first one I’m biting.”