The Rabid (Book 1) (14 page)

24

We hit the road at sunrise. For breakfast, we pass around bags of chips and bottles of eco-friendly water. The crinkling of foil and the crunch of fried potatoes soaked in hydrogenated vegetable oil fills the air.

“
Chips and candy bars for breakfast, I could get used to this.” Bethany wipes crumbs across her pants before diving back into the bag.

“
Beats dry toast and fruit,” I say.

“
Yeah, well, don't get used to it, kiddos, once we get settled in somewhere, it's back to balanced breakfasts and restricted television time.”

“
Killjoy,” Lee winks back at us, one foot kicked up on the dash, chip bag of his own in hand.

Spirits seem to have lifted after a decent night's sleep. I am still lagging a bit because of my watch shift
, but the mixture of salt, sugar, and water, is quickly kicking my bodies gears into motion.

“
I need a bath. I feel like the dead smell has invaded my pores and won't come out.” Bethany rolls her bag into a ball and tosses it to the floor.

“
I think we're all a little ripe, sweetheart.” Momma slows to a crawl and begins nudging a two-door sports car aside with the bumper of the truck to clear a path. “Hopefully, we'll find a place with some power and running water soon, and then you can wash the dead smell right out, sound good?”

“
I suppose.”

“
I just want to find some canvases and get back to my painting. It's probably too much to hope that my Big Moves lineup is still in one piece.”

“
That's what you were calling those chess portraits? Your Big Moves lineup?” I can't contain the chuckle.

“
What? What's wrong with it?”

“
It's, I don't know.”

“
It's a little cheesy,” Bethany says.

“
Cheesy how? They are celebrities and politicians; they make big moves metaphorically speaking. They're on chess pieces that make literal moves around a board. It's a play on words.”

“
Oh no, we get it, Lee, it's just, it's a little cheesy, like she said. You should go with something less obvious.”

“
Whatever, you two don't paint.” He looks to Momma. “What about you, honey?”

She keeps her gaze forward, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

“Oh come on, you too. Whatever, forget ya'll.” He slumps back and stares out the window.

“
Aw, poor baby.” Momma reaches over and brushes her fingers through his hair. “What about you, Tim, what're you looking forward to when all of this passes us by?”

Bethany cuts me at the pass.
“Like that's not obvious.”

“
Well, before Bethany jumped in, I'm
obviously
looking forward to working on my routine again. I'd still like to do the recital.”

“
And what about you, sweetheart?”

Bethany shrugs.
“You know, the usual, not running from zombies, hot meals, a bath more than once every three days.”

We all laugh.

***

Today seems so much shorter than yesterday. We'd just set out. We'd just eaten breakfast and lunch. There had to be daylight left. I want to yell at the orange globe of light as it begins to set itself beyond the trees.

“
I don't see any other places that we can pull off, at least not given the time we have. By then, it'll be too dark to really clear it anyway.”

“
Well, you better figure it out, Lee, because the battery is running out.”

“Elevation is what we need, you know, get these tires off the ground at the very least. Two-Step and I have seen these things go through windows.”

“Concurred,” I say.

“Well
, unless you boys have some sort of levitation spell or have a crane tucked away in your pocket, I don’t really see how that’s going to be a possibility.” Momma has slowed to a crawl and flicks the high beams on as she skirts around a police cruiser and an overturned school bus.

“There!” My voice takes on an unintentional pre-pubescent squeal.

It’s a green jack-knifed double decker car carrier, just like the one dad used to drive. It’s empty and the ramp is down; it’s the next best thing to a levitation spell.

“Whoa, cool,” Bethany leans forward with me to get a better look.

“Very,” I bump her with a grin.

She returns the gesture.

Momma pumps the brakes. “What do you think, babe?”

Lee smiles for the first time since the rest stop. “I agree with Bethany, very cool.”

Lee backs the truck up the ramp with Momma’s guidance, while I stand with my rifle shouldered and Bethany beside me scanning the roadway with a flashlight.

“You think they’re out there?” She asks.

“They’re definitely out there, somewhere.”

“Maybe not here?”

“Yeah, maybe not
.”

“I hope not, I don’t like seeing them die.”

“What do you mean?”

“It hurts inside. I know we have to stop them. But it’s really ugly, I just felt this lump in my chest when I saw you…doing what you did. You saved my life
, Tim, I am so thankful, but it’s a position I wish you didn’t ever have to be in.”

“Yeah, me too
.”

“How’d it
feel?”

“How’d what feel?”

“Killing, him…it…The Rabid…how’d it feel killing one like that.” As if she can feel my questioning gaze through the darkness, she explains herself further. “You just kept going, like you were enjoying it or something. You didn’t even notice Lee was down, you couldn’t hear Momma or me yelling; you were somewhere else.”

“I didn’t enjoy it; you make me sound like some wild eyed sadist.”

Chipped paint and the busted emergency lights of an abandoned police car are revealed beneath the gaze of the yellow eye extending from Bethany’s arm. “What was it then?”

“It was a moment. I lost myself. I just saw it trying to hurt you and I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen.
Like in the school.”

I feel her head against my arm. “I love you
, Tim.”

“I love you too
, sis.”

***

The cab of the pickup smells like potato chips and old socks.

The girls are behind us bedded down in the cabin of the car carrier, locked in tight, with a pistol and Lee’s rifle for added comfort.

It’d been in immaculate condition; the previous owner had been a neat freak of sorts. There was a box of baby wipes, a bottle of window cleaner, a half used roll of paper towel
s in the glove compartment, and an air freshener shaped like a Maltese dangling from the gear shift. There was nary a dust particle in sight. The mattress in the sleeper area looked as if it’d just come off the display room floor, with the sheets and comforter still holding hints of detergent and softener in their pores. There was no sign of a struggle, no blood, nothing broken, whomever the driver had been, they’d simply tucked tail and run. Perhaps they’d desired maneuverability and had let down the ramps, and hit the road with whatever they’d been hauling leaving the rest to be picked clean by the first wave of desperate survivors.  

I was laid across the back seat of the pickup tracing the grooves and contours of the rifle resting against my chest
, while Lee sat up front scanning frequencies on the CB.

“It’s all crackle and pop Two-Step, this thing is useless.”

“Bo said five miles is the radius, it’s not exactly the tie that binds now is it?”

“Nah, I guess you’re right.” He turns the power off and sets it on the dash where it slides down and crams itself against the windshield. “That bed in there sure looked inviting.” He says through a loud yawn, bending his arms towards the ceiling in a feeble stretch.

“Yep, ladies first though, right?”

He laughs. “I guess chivalry is one of the few things that isn’t dead yet.”

I’d never been all that smooth with the girls despite having essentially been raised by them. The words always came out wrong, or my style of dress spooked them as weird, or there was some other deep-seated feminine riddle I’d yet to solve. The closest I’d ever come to having a girlfriend, was when I was 13. Christina Gonzalez, her mom was from Portugal and her dad was from Mexico. I met her in this after school dance class Momma had enrolled me in. The hope was that I would get caught up in the competition circuit, and that I would go national with my
talent
; it never happened. Besides, it wasn’t really my style, it was more jazz and contemporary, and I’m much more unconventional and off the cuff.

For two
months, I was there, and for a month and twelve days, I spent twenty minutes after class sitting in front of the studio with Christina, while we waited for our parents to pick us up. That was the best month and twelve days of my life.

Onyx hair,

caramel skin,

c
herry red lips.

She always smelled like vanilla.

“You smell like a dessert or something.” I managed to stutter the second time we sat together street side on that rickety wooden bench. It was a classic old school bench for a classic old school lover story; black cast iron overlaid with hardwood slats.

I suppose just coming right out with
you smell pretty,
would have been too much for my 13 year old self. So instead, I went with the
dessert
line. She glanced sideways at me, raised her eyebrows, and ignored me for the remaining fifteen minutes, doing her best to lead her eyes in every direction but the one that led towards me. I’m sure I looked ridiculous with my messy hair and my acne ridden cheeks. I felt naked without my hat and my boots. That was part of the reason I eventually quit the class, no hat, no boots, no Timmy.

“
It’s Vanilla lotion, my grandma got it for me last Christmas.” She said to me the next day.

“What is?” After my awkward
icebreaker, I’d completely written off the possibility of further conversation

“You told me I smelled like dessert. It’s vanilla lotion.” She stared at me with an expectant smile, her legs dangling carelessly beside mine.

“That’s cool. I don’t have a grandma. My mom got me a hat for Christmas though.”

That was the beginning of our brief romance. We never kissed. We never held hands. We never so much as said that we liked each other. The last time that I saw
her, I walked with her to her car and beat her to the door handle. As she swung her legs in and I bid her farewell, I could hear her mom behind the steering wheel say, “I suppose chivalry isn’t dead after all.”

I had to research the word when I got home.

I found the first definition I came across to be the best.

noun
.

1.
                 
The sum of the ideal qualifications of a knight, including courtesy, generosity, valor, and dexterity in arms.

A reluctant hero, but a hero nonetheless
.

Lee gasps as if he’s been gut punched. I startle up, my heart kicking into high gear. “What? What is it
, man?”

“You see that?”

I follow his finger toward a distant bubble of orange light outlined against a canopy of trees. “Yeah, I do.”

“Looks like someone has power
.”

“It does indeed.”

“How far do you figure that is, twenty, maybe thirty miles?”

“Yeah, at the most
.”

“Christmas come
s early, Two-Step!”

“Looks like a pretty good sized town.”

“Let me see if anything shows on the maps.” He slides along the outside of the truck and rummages through the go-bags. He is back with the stack of maps in less than a minute. “Alright, should be on this one.” His finger trots along a criss-cross of bold faced and broken lines, around scrunched together type denoting highways and side roads, and across blue blobs of water, and green splotches of forest. “Here we go, Trumbull, it’s got to be Trumbull. Can’t be more than thirty or forty miles, we should head that way tomorrow. Try to keep west and hit an access road. We should have no problem making it so long as the roads stay relatively clear and we don’t run into any major trouble.”

There is a ball of excitement growing in my belly. “A shower, a hot meal, some climate control; it’s got me salivating.”

“Tell me about it. It’d be nice to have some others with us and maybe we can find out what the hell is going on. If their grid is still online, we could hold up there indefinitely and have a much better chance of making a go at this thing.”

“What about Dallas though?”