Rabid (13 page)

“Sixteen hours,” Taylor said.  He glanced in the rearview mirror again, this time seeing past Tina and out the back window.  He could see the sun low in the sky, a hazy orb whose brightness was muted by the fog. 

Carl said, “Does it sound like rabies?”

“Going only off the symptoms, they mimic a lot of those found with rabies,” Tina said.  “But nothing else really fits.  Being airborne, the rapidity of the infection, traveling in packs.  I guess it doesn’t have to add up.  This is something different.  Normally, a disease or virus doesn’t mutate that fast.  It almost makes me think…”

“What?” Carl asked.  “Finish what you were gonna say.”

“Well, it just makes me think that maybe it was manmade.”

“Terrorists?”

“Could be.  People have been worried about something like that for years.  But it could just as easily have been an accident.  That’s not as rare as you might think.  It doesn’t matter how many precautions you take to prevent them, people still make mistakes.  I’m just glad they’re afraid of water.”

“The place we’re headed has lakes.  Two small ones and a bigger one.”

“Do your parents have a boat?”     

“Yeah.  It’s just a small fishing boat.  Can seat five or six tops.  I didn’t think to check to see if they took it with them or not,” Carl said.

“Pray they did.  I wish I knew where
my
dad went.  We could find him and bring him with us.”

Taylor felt a stab of guilt again.  It was another opportunity to lay the truth on her, but he remained silent again.  He couldn’t bring himself to do it.  The more he thought about it, the more telling her seemed like the right thing to do.  From what he had gathered in a short amount of time, Tina was about as level-headed as you could get, but telling her that her father was one of
them
was heavy news for anybody to have to hear.  If she went off the deep end they could be in trouble.  She could do something stupid and endanger herself or, worse yet, all of them.  And when weighing it out based solely on what was best for their survival as a whole, his instincts told him to keep that knowledge to himself.  Sometimes morals had to take a backseat.

He said, “Maybe he’ll find a way to contact you,” and, despite his good intentions, he still felt like a total slimeball.

You’re going to hell for lying to her like that,
he thought, which was immediately followed by another:
Oh wait, we’re already there.

“Look!”

Carl shouted this so loud and so suddenly that Taylor nearly lost control of the car, instantly wide awake.  “What?”

I-80 was visible from the highway.  Carl pointed to it and said, “Right there.  Don’t you see them?”

Taylor squinted in the direction of the Interstate.  “How can you see anything through the…” 

But then he did
see.
  He took his foot off the accelerator and the car slowed to a crawl. 

“You see them now, huh?”

He answered with the briefest of nods.  His foot touched the brake and gently brought the Escort to a halt, and he shifted into park.  Opening the door, he exited the car and stepped onto the road.

Tina said, “What are you doing?  Are you insane?”

Carl opened his door.  “They’re a ways away.  Far enough that we could take off before they ever got close to us.”

After some hesitation, she got out of the car and joined them. 

The highway was on higher ground than the Interstate.  They watched from a small hill, looking downward at the mass.  It was impossible to know how many of them there were.  Carl thought it was as many people gathered in one place as he had ever seen before.  Taylor had taken him to a Def Leppard concert years ago when Carl was still in high school, and he had been awestruck by all the people packed into the stadium.  This was worse.    

“Do you think they’re normal?”  Tina asked.  “The way they’re walking, I can’t tell.”

“No.  They’re not normal.”

“How can you tell?”

“Trust me.  They’re not.”

“Where do you think they came from?”

“I don’t know.  But I’d like to know where they’re going,” Taylor said.  “They have to be heading somewhere.”

“So many of them.”

“Hundreds?”

“
Thousands.
”

“None of them with homes anymore,” Taylor said.  He almost sympathized with them, but it merely a transient emotion.  “All of them homeless.” 

After that, there wasn’t much else to say.

“Do you think they know where they’re going?  Like they have a destination in mind,” Carl said.  He had taken over driving duty when they had gotten back into the car.

“If I hadn’t just seen that with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have given them credit for it.  They could be walking without knowing where they’re going.  That’s possible.”

“Why would they head east?  There’s nothing in that direction for forever,” Tina said.  “Nothing but small towns until you get to North Platte.  And that‘s not that big.”

“Omaha?” Carl said.

“I doubt it.”

“Just a thought.”

Forty-five miles later, the fog had dispersed.  The sky was overcast with thick gray clouds.

“We’re coming up on Cheyenne,” Carl said.  “Do you want to stay on the highway?  It takes us straight downtown.”

Taylor looked at the I-80.  Abandoned vehicles formed a labyrinth of metal and glass across four lanes and the median.  In some places it looked as though it would be impossible to squeeze the Escort through some of the more congested spaces.  “The interstate isn’t any good.  I don’t see any other choice but to stick to the highway.  Just be on the lookout.”

“After what we saw a little while ago, I doubt there’s anyone left in the city.  That many people came from somewhere.”

“It’s like a traveling caravan.  A group starts off and more join along the way.  Almost like they’re collecting together for something.”

“Now I remember!”  Tina scooted forward on the backseat.  “I thought of this earlier when we were having our discussion about what could have caused this to happen, but I forgot about it.  Why weren’t we infected?  What did we do different?”

Carl said, “Maybe we have a natural immunity.  Isn’t that how they work it in the movies?  Certain people are magically unaffected.”

“Yeah, but in reality it’s not as plausible.  Not to say that it isn’t possible,” Tina said, “but that would be a big coincidence.  You said you heard about it on the radio.  So when it happened, you were driving?”

“I guess so.”

“I was driving, too.  I didn’t hear about it on the radio.  I saw it happening when I got into town.  Then I hid in my dad’s store.”

“You think we didn’t become like those things because we were driving?  That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

“It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense that the power went out in so many places around the same time either,” Taylor said.  “Some of the things I’ve noticed make me think whatever is going on isn’t exactly random.  Didn’t happen out of the blue like nature’s wrath or something.”

“You were heading east to get back home.  I was heading west.  None of us got whatever’s going around.”

“Like it’s a cold,” Carl said and smiled.

“One fucked up cold.”

“But look at all the cars on the road.  Plenty of people would have been driving.  How did it miss us but get them?”

“Maybe it did miss them.  Maybe they were stranded out there with no place to go.”

Taylor gave Tina a look that said he wasn’t convinced.

“Okay,” Tina said.  “My theory has a few flaws.”

“You’re a tease,” Carl said.

Carl slowed to thirty, which happened to be the posted speed limit.  Abandoned cars littered the street.  A silver Nissan was parked neatly on the sidewalk, its front grill dented in by the streetlamp it had collided with.

The street became more congested the farther they got into downtown Cheyenne. 

“We aren’t going to be able to get around that,” Carl said.

“Go around.”

“How?  There isn’t room.”

“Hang a right at one of these side streets and go around.  We can get back on here a few blocks down.”

Carl turned right and drove a street up.  They came upon more discarded vehicles, but he was able to weave his way around them, taking the nearest left and heading west again.

“It’s like a ghost town,” Tina said. “A really big one.  You can almost feel that there isn’t anybody here anymore.”

Taylor said, “We can’t be the only ones.  I refuse to believe that.  My parents survived it.”

“And Angie,” Carl said.

“Yeah, and Angie.  I’m sure there are others.  They’re just being smart and taking refuge in the safest places they can find.  Probably what we should be doing.”  What we
will
do once we get to the mountains.”

“It’s blocked up ahead.”

“Do what you did a minute ago.  Find another street.”

Like rats in a maze,
Carl thought.

At times it seemed that the number of dead ends was infinite.  Carl navigated the streets and thought it wouldn’t be entirely absurd to leave a trail of bread crumbs behind them.  They had been forced to take over a half a dozen detours. 

“I don’t like this,” Carl said.  “They could box us in and we’d be stuck.”

“We’re almost through downtown.”

“You’re always full of wisdom.”

“Wise beyond my years.”

Tina was filled with nervous anticipation, like she was waiting for something big to happen.  The air was filled with it: a tension thicker than the fog they had passed through earlier. 

She worried for her father.  Taylor knew something about that.  She was sure of it. 
Keeping something from me,
she thought whenever she would look at the expression on his face after mentioning her father.  She had purposely brought it up at regular intervals to revisit that reaction.  Each time he appeared on the verge of telling her something but had thought better of it.  It wasn’t good, she knew that.  She let it go.  For now.

“You think they would have found us by now?”

“Most likely.  I get the feeling that the city is empty.  Don’t quote me on this, but I think the big danger is gone.”

“Which is good news for us.”

“It still doesn’t explain where all of them were going,” Taylor said. 

“Good fortune in our favor.  Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, bro.  Just be thankful.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t.”

“So don’t question it either.  At least not out loud.  Not until we get out of the city.  Once we get to the mountains and find Mom, Dad, and Angie you can speculate all you want.  What we saw…it was just plain
spooky
.  And I can’t figure it out.  I’m not even going to try.  I’m going to thank the Man Upstairs for throwing a little bit of luck our way and go about my business.  You go trying to analyze it and you’re bound to jinx us.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“I’m superstitious.”

“All of a sudden?”

“Pretty much.  Yeah.”  Carl glanced over and saw him roll his eyes.  “Remember, I know all kinds of embarrassing things about you.”

Twenty minutes had lapsed by the time they reached the highway again. 

Carl whistled, loosening his grip on the steering wheel.  His palms were sweaty and he wiped them on his jeans.  “I’m glad that’s behind us.”

“Anti-climatic,” Taylor said.

“Dude, I warned you already.  Don’t say shit like that out loud.”

“I’m just saying.  That must have been most of the city walking along the road.  What’s the population of Cheyenne?”

Tina said, “Right around fifty thousand, I think.”

“You think there were fifty thousand of them on the road,” Carl asked.

“I don’t know about that many, but there were a lot.”

“What’s important is that they’re going the opposite direction from us.”

“If they’re
all
doing that, we’re bound to see a lot more than that,” Tina said.  “Like if it’s the whole United States that this is happening in, and if there’s some force drawing them east, then there will be lots more.”

“No need to worry about that now,” Taylor said.

Cheyenne fell away abruptly as though an invisible fence marked its termination point.  A restaurant, hotel, and home supply stores were some of the last indications that a civilized world existed.  After that, a long, winding highway snaked ahead for as far as the eye could see.  A few miles later, they passed a chemical plant that looked like the ruins of a futuristic kingdom that had been forgotten after an apocalypse.  Metal stacks telescoped into the sky like spires. 

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Carl said, sweeping his hand around in an arc, “the end of the world.”

And Tina thought that was exactly what it looked like: the end of the world.  She touched the pocket of her jeans, the outline of her cell phone visible there. 
Ring,
she thought. 
Call me and let me know you’re all right
.
     

Taylor said, “Don’t forget about Buford. 
That’s
the real end of the world.”

“You could be right,” Carl said. 

“This reminds me of when we were kids.  Dad taking us up here.  Those were some good times.”

“Hell yeah, they were.”

In the backseat, Tina began to cry, but silently and to herself so Taylor and Carl wouldn’t see.  They still had hope, and she didn’t want to ruin it for them because her own hope, what little she had left, was running out.