The Rabid (Book 1) (10 page)

17

There is an old canoe hull thirty paces into the woods just behind the broken down chicken coop. It sits at the back of a small clearing overrun with wild vines and leaves. It's still attached to an old trailer. The rubber is worn away on both tires, leaving warped and rusted rims that have sunk down into the earth over many years. We’ve chosen this site for our target practice. There are beer bottles nestled beneath pine needles, some chipped and splintered, lying in wait like glass land mines crusted with dirt and bugs. The only remnants of their old labels are square patches of white residue, like a room that'd been painted over with a picture still hanging on the wall. Whoever had previously lived here, had spent more time in the woods drinking and littering than they had in the house.

“
Alright, each one of ya'll can only pop off about one or two shots. That's all these contraptions are gonna allow for. I don't care whether you hit your mark or not, that's not what this is about, it's about gettin' a feel for your weapon.”

The contraptions are eight
two-liter coke bottles we'd had in our recycling bag. Momma had allowed him to gut one of her couch pillows so that he could fill the bottles with fiber and create home brewed silencers. He'd wrapped each bottle from head to toe in masking tape, double coating the very bottom, or as he called it, the
backstop.

Bo lines a series of crusty brown and black beer bottles across the top of the old canoe and waddles back over to us.
“Who's up first?”

With no one else jumping forward
, I step up. “I'll try it.”

Bo nods.
“Let's see what ya got.” He tapes a two-liter bottle half filled with stuffing across the muzzle of my rifle using silver masking tape. “On your mark.” He says, stepping away.

I shoulder the M4 and try to match the red dot with the pattern of my breath. Bethany stands next to me, plugging her ears, her face all wound up as if she's just sucked something sour. I exhale and squeeze the trigger. I miss, but just barely. The recoil is
non-existent. The shot sounds like air rapidly escaping a pair of pursed lips.

We all hold perfectly still.
Our senses on high alert. Waiting for that
ROAR!
Waiting for the earth to quake. For the trees to be trampled.

Nothing.

Just the breeze. The birds chirping.

All at
once, we relax and Bo holds up the next bottle. “Alright who's next?”

We cycle through until the bottles are all melted
plastic, and singed stuffing hanging from warped ridges like a series of disemboweled fair prizes.

“
This is actually sort of fun.” Bethany says as she finishes out the final shot, nicking and shattering the bottle on the far left.

“
Hope ya'll got a feel for it. Just know, when rubber meets road, it ain't gonna be all hushy-hush, it's gonna be loud and crazy; least ya got a feel for the trigger, that's important.”

***

Bo sits on the front porch while he has
Lee and I patrol the driveway. We walk down to the main road and back up again while Momma and Bethany fix dinner.

There's something surreal about walking down this stretch of dirt and gravel with Lee
, while we carry large rifles strapped across our chests. Part of me is having trouble taking it seriously. I feel like a kid playing war games. It's only when we get to the end of the driveway and look right, up the two lane farm road at the abandoned red sedan with the blood all around it that things switch over in my head.

“
Should we got have a look...see if...that kid is still, well, you know?”

Lee shakes his head quickly.
“Nah, we don't hear anything, it's a box I don't really feel like opening. Either it's gone, or it's dead, or it's somewhere in between, I don't want to know. Let's just go back.”

I agree and we turn away, a little more hustle in our step.

I'm on a pivot now. Keeping my eyes up and my ears open. The enemy is real.

Lee is the first to break the tension.
“This reminds me of a camping trip I took with Bo when we were teenagers.”

“
Just you two?”

“
No, it was like us and twenty other guys from this church our folks had us going to. They had rented out this cabin up near Dahlonega. This was the middle of winter too, so it was cold. We drove separately; we didn't want to cram into a church van. Our mistake too, because we got lost three or four times trying to find the place, it was truly in the middle of nowhere.” A rabbit breaks across the path in front of us. Lee drops back three steps, clutching his chest as if he's about to have a heart attack. He shakes his head and continues his story. “Anyway, what we didn't know is how small the cabin was. The guys had sleeping bags lined up side by side in the living area. Looked like one of those medium security prison bunkrooms you see on television sometimes. So, we said forget it, and we camped out in the SUV with the heat blasting all night.”

“
And us strolling armed down my driveway reminds you of that?”

“
Yeah, you know, the solitude I guess...the false solitude.” He chuckles a bit.

“
Gotcha.”

“
What about you, you never been camping?”

“
No, not like that. We've done the tent in the backyard thing and roasting marshmallows over a fire pit, but I've never gone up to the mountains or spent the night in a cabin.”

“
You should give it a go. Maybe I can take you up to Dahlonega when all of this blows over, I think you'd like it. It's good for the mind, clears it up, and opens those artistic pathways.”

I nod.
“Yeah sure, I could use a vacation.”

***

We eat on disposable plates with disposable silverware; the remnants of birthday parties and holidays past.

“Best post-apocalyptic grub I’ve tasted, Deb.” Bo toasts with a forkful of egg.

Momma smiles, humbly, behind a cup of boiled lukewarm water. “Well, thank you.”

“I concur, stellar as always, babe.” Lee says.

“So, what are the food levels
lookin like?” Bo asks, his words garbled by a mouthful of egg and tuna.

I can see Mommas eyes bounce tentatively between
Bethany and me.

Bo coaxes her with an empty fork. “Don’t worry, the kiddos can handle it, besides, they’ll know the truth of it when their bellies start to
rumblin’, best we nip it in the bud.”

“It’s alright, I heard
ya’ll talking about it the other day,” I say.

Bethany has stopped chewing and her chin has started to tremble.

“Hey, perk up. Think about all the stuff we’ve been through so far, finding some food, that’s gonna be easy-peasy.” I lift her chin beneath two fingers and she looks at me, smiling with damp eyes, before returning to her meal.

Momma sighs. “Low, everything is low. We always did our shopping a week at a time, so do the math.”

“Well, alright then. That’s somethin’ we will have to remedy come tomorrow. Also, we need to talk fortification, that a chicken coop I saw outside?”

“Yeah, it was there when we moved in.”

The thing is a regular heap. It’s stained with feces and coiled in brittle chicken wire.

“Well then, you
ain’t gonna miss it. We’ve gotta board these windows, all of em’. It’s gonna be tacky, and it’ll be hell on the paint job, but two-by-fours and plywood are gonna hold up against Rabid a lot better than glass.”

***

Momma finds Bethany and me sitting on the back steps listening to the crickets chirp. Fires still burn intermittently across the horizon, but I’ve yet to hear a disembodied scream or a gunshot. It's a development that is of little comfort. It means one thing. Resistance is futile and fleeting and our bubble is shrinking.

My rifle sits propped nearby locked and loaded.

The door scuffs open at our backs and Momma squeezes between us, pulling us to her chest, and dropping kisses across the tops of our heads. “My babies,” she settles on me, resting her cheek against mine. “What are you two doing out here?”

“It’s this or
listening to Bo snort about guns and ammo.” Bethany says.

“It’s just good to catch some fresh air. Bo can be a bit…stifling.”

“He is a character,” Momma has a way of circumventing out-and-out agreement.

The memories.
Floating there on the surface of the patchy crop cut backyard like oil on a rain puddle. The three foot above ground pool that smelled of chlorine and vinyl, it’d stayed up for a solid year, had iced over in the winter, and eventually became a breeding ground for mosquitoes, before our dad had gotten around to disassembling and disposing of it; the grass never grew back. The lime tree that never quite took root and wavered distressingly between life and death before folding beneath the winds of autumns embrace; it’d been the first and last time Momma had attempted to wield her green thumb. The “stage” Bethany and me had built using scrap wood we’d found lying around the perimeter of the abandoned chicken coop. It was as flimsy as cardboard and as dangerous as a bear trap. We’d performed the world’s worst fifteen minute variety show ever conceived, while our parents watched from lawn chairs fanning themselves with misspelled programs we’d printed off in bold type the night prior, while sipping iced tea and cheering us on.

The memories
.

“Momma,” Bethany’s voice barely registers above the scratchy chirp of the crickets. “It’s never going back to how it was, is it?”

“It’s one day at a time, remember that, and when your mind starts to race into the future, you reel it back in and you chant it out loud if you’ve got to,
one day at a time
.”

“Yeah, it’s just, one foot in front of the other. We survive today. And then we survive tomorrow.” It's bullshit. But it's necessary bullshit.

The reluctant hero, but a hero nonetheless.

“When your father died
, I,” her hand tightens around the ball of my shoulder, “well, I had a hard time doing that, you know, putting one foot in front of the other. Everything seemed like it was coming down in little pieces, all at once, and I didn’t have the hands to catch all of them and stick them back in place.”

“It’d sure be nice to have him around
.”

“Yeah
, it would,” Bethany sniffles in the darkness.

“I learned that when the pieces are falling down around you
, it’s okay if you can’t catch them all. Maybe you aren’t meant to. Maybe they’re meant to fall and form a new picture. Either way, you’ll always have people there beside you to help you catch the ones that matter. That’s what you two munchkins did for me. That’s what we’re going to do for each other. Remember that when you start to fret, okay?” She kisses us both on the head again and the silence curls around us like a blanket.

***

Bo, Lee, and I, stand on the front porch holding our rifles across our shoulders.

“Two hour shifts, you plant your butts in the chair and keep your ears and your eyes open. No
noddin off. Ya nod off, it’s the same as stickin the barrel of your gun in their mouths and pullin the trigger yer'self.” Bo jams a thumb towards the front door. On the other side, Bethany and Momma are getting ready to bed down for the night. “Now, I’ll take first watch. Lee you take second. Kid, you pull third string, and we'll cycle back through. Keep your count on this.” He holds up a black wristwatch with a green glowing face. “Any questions?”

“Yeah, what do we do if we see one of those things, is there a code word we yell?” Lee asks.

“Pull the goddamn trigger. I think the sound will get our attention.”

I don’t sleep. Is it classic apocalypse related insomnia?
The anticipation of my first watch? The fact that Bo snores like a logger ripping at the cord of a stubborn chainsaw? All I know, is that when Lee shakes me for the start of my shift my eyes aren’t any heavier than they were when my head had initially hit the pillow.

Outside my posture
, is perhaps the best it’s ever been. I sit rigid in the hollow of the cold plastic lawn chair with my finger never far from the curve of the trigger. For two hours, I sit there positive that the next second will reap a harvest of Rabid, racing from the woods like migrating antelope, their sights set on me. A paranoia comes with carrying a gun. Something to do with innate expectation I think. It’s some psychological shift that someone somewhere can probably explain a lot better than me, but it’s potent, I’ll say that much.

Bo relieves me with a grunt and a gesture just as the sun is preparing to break the horizon. Once inside
, I find my bed. I set my weapons to safe and place them on the dresser before drifting off to sleep.

18

“Anyone on this channel read me, over?”
Silence. Static. Repeat. “Does anyone out there read me, over?” Bo is lowering the handheld radio from his lips as I step into the living room, still rubbing my eyes, and feeling just as whipped as I had when I’d closed them. “Christ, kid, surprised you ain’t got rust forming on your nuts. Enjoy your hibernation?”

“Yeah, best sleep I’ve had all year. I was thinking of going for a massage and a wax later.”

“You sure are startin’ to become an ornery little shit ain’t ya? Nuts are droppin’ quite nice. Good, you’ll be needin’ em’.”

“You sure do have this fascination with my balls this morning, it’s off putting.”

“There’s such a thing as takin’ it too far. Shut the hell up and sit down.” He jabs the antenna towards the couch. “I was just takin’ Lee through the inventory of our bug out pack.”

“Oh yay,” I wave my hands in mock enthusiasm as I fall in beside Lee.

“Know it. Love it. And pray to God you never need it.” Bo stands gallantly behind one of the green duffel bags we’d unloaded from his pickup the day prior.

Momma and Bethany are once more in the backyard preparing the little food we have left. The thought of starving to death, of withering to skin and bones, or drinking my own piss to remove the sandpaper from my tongue, lurches in my belly. I am eager for
tonight; eager for whatever little raid Bo has been hatching to replenish our supplies.

Bo starts rattling off the bug out list, lifting each item from the bag, giving it a name, like Adam in the
Garden of Eden.


      
Compass


      
Duct tape


      
One large blue tarp


      
Emergency blanket


      
Iodine tablets (“In case this situation gets nuclear”)


      
Surgical masks


      
Folding shovel (“It doubles as a weapon if you get yourself in a tight spot”)


      
Self-powered flashlight (“Just turn the crank”)


      
Three rolls of paper towel (“Use your imagination”)


      
Multitool


      
Four gallons of water (“These won’t go far, you’ll need to find your own water sources, but they’ll get ya started”)


      
Water purification tablets


      
Waterproof matches


      
Two sleeping bags


      
Every local map of the southern United States, from East Coast to West, rubber banded together (“Water sources, back roads, better than any GPS”)


      
40 channel portable long range CB with backup batteries (“It’s only got about a five mile radius thanks to the government regulation, but scan the channels, it’s thin, but it’s a lifeline”)


      
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.

B
U
W
H
UMP!

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 ar
ound 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.