The Rabid (Book 1) (3 page)

This is it.

The end.

Not without a fight.

I lash out first with my fist, catching her on the jaw. She stumbles sideways, which puts her out of reach of Bethany. I want to die first. Selfish? Perhaps. The idea of watching them hurt her; helpless to interfere, to stop her pain…I can’t…

I follow up with my ever faithful
Broomspear, right through her arm, finding my way in between her ribs, and piercing her heart. I scream till my lungs crackle. I drive the weapon deeper, as deep as it will go, carrying her back and letting her rest against the wall on the other side of the exit doors. She is still alive, grasping for me with the one hand not tacked to her chest.

What does it take to kill these things?

I pull Bethany from the ground as the crowd circles around us. They grow in number with each passing second. I place her ahead of me, walking backwards to shield her as we retreat through the exit doors. Outside, we find ourselves on the canopied walkway that connects the main building to the gymnasium. There are sirens calling from the street, and a helicopter buzzing overhead.

Perhaps all is not lost.

We cut left onto the grass as the exit doors behind us rip from their hinges, the mob of horrors crawling over one another to take a bite out of us. One of the second floor gymnasium windows shatters to our right. The body of the women’s soccer coach, Alma Martin, thumps against the chemically enhanced landscape.

A.
M.

Ms.
Marty.

Marty ‘the Party’.

(ya know, cause she threw that punch and pie social for the girls soccer team last year)

She rolls to her side. 
Gasping. Her eyes widen as she spots us, she can’t speak, but her expression is enough.

Help—me…

The harbinger of her doom appears in the window frame overhead, surveying his fallen prey. He drops from his perch, landing atop her, smashing her spine upon impact before baring his teeth and nuzzling viciously into her neck.

We stop, we die.

The monsters have locked arms and now lay at our back, shoulder to shoulder, frothing and clawing, gaining two steps for every one we take. It's like trying to outrun a tidal wave on a scooter. We will run until they catch us, or our legs refuse to carry us, we will not die curled up and cowering.

“Straight through, and onto the street, do not slow down!” I yell.

The faculty parking lot is covered up by squad cars. They are posted in and outside the fence line, with officers crouched behind the hoods, staring down the sights of pistols and long rifles.

“They’re going to shoot us!” Bethany cries.

“No they’re not.”

Yes,
they are…

We fan our hands above our heads as our feet touch down on the pavement.

“WE’RE NOT ONE OF THEM! DON’T SHOOT US!”
We don’t have the breath or the wits for a more elaborate explanation. 

Bushy
gray beard.

Tweed suit jacket.

Fat belly hanging over his blue jeans.

The badge and the wheel gun give him away for a cop.

Our Cop. Our Savior.

He is bringing us in like we are a couple of single engine planes, flagging us with both hands.
“C’mon, c’mon.”

As we push ourselves towards
him, a shot rings out from the helicopter circling overhead. Something falls to the ground behind us, without looking back, I’m guessing that it has ashy skin, pale eyes, and is hungry for the taste of our flesh.

We cross through the line of squad cars and the officers open up with their weapons. The sound of gunfire is deafening. It is glorious. It is terrifying.

The portly man with the woodcutters beard and the wheel gun pushes us through the gate and out onto the street. “You kids get on now, find your family, and get as far away from here as you can.”

We nod back frantically.

“You get bit kid?” He asks, as if noticing my condition for the first time.

I shake my head, still gulping for air.

Seemingly satisfied with my answer, he slams home the gate and jumps back into the fray.

I watch
him go. My relief is fleeting. The mob of flesh eaters acts as a bullet sponge.

Twitching.

Falling.

Undyin
g.

Steadily gaining ground.

“Head, head, you’ve
gotta go for the head!” Too little too late.

They soar across the vehicle barricade, ripping through what I’d deemed to be our last line of
defense. If a platoon of well-armed lawmen can’t stop these things...

Dead.

We are living on borrowed time.

Of course, I can’t voice such a sentiment. My job is to protect Bethany, even from myself. I will play the hero. The Reluctant Hero.

“Oh my
God, oh my God,” Bethany sobs.

Shots rain down from the helicopter
, but it is nothing more than a noble waste of ammunition. The damage has been done. They have claimed their victims, or are in the process of doing so, and they have bolstered their numbers in the process.

Behind
us, Hog Mountain Road is a graveyard of automobiles, smashed together, and rolled over, all of them hollow shells, their drivers fleeing or dead. A few of our classmates huddle against hubcaps, and dented quarter panels. Some clutch their knees beneath their chins, some clutch each other, and some tearfully solicit for our help.

“
Ya’ll are gonna die if you stay here.” I shout. My words fail to break through their hysterics, and we aren’t about to stick around to make the effort required.

Survive or die.

Ahead of us
, a sizeable crowd is running North down the center of the two lane road towards the Experiment Station intersection.

“Come on, we’re
gonna follow them, we’re just gonna head towards home. I’m sure Momma is coming this way looking for us, we’ll meet her.” I grab her hand and we are off, around the smoldering body of a white pick-up, and past a van tipped over on its side with the engine still running.

A part of the group in front
of us decides to split off into the adjacent fields spread out to our left and right, land that stretches for miles, marked by nothing more than intermittent bales of hay and high tension towers.

“
Should we follow?” Bethany asks breathlessly.

“
No, we stay on the road.”

“Try your cell phone.” She suggests with a whimper.

In the depths of all this chaos, I hadn't even considered my cell phone. Hope it's still in one piece. I’ve taken a few good hits today. I flip it open from my pocket and find it's still in operating condition. The thing is a tank. There is nothing
smart
about it, Momma barely believed in them as it was, and so she didn't spring for the fancy stuff. It's just your basic cell phone, unspectacular, perhaps a bit ugly, but it’ll do in a pinch.

I have to slow my pace to steady my finger on the
2;
I hold it in place for a full second before the speed dial kicks in.

“Is it ringing?” Bethany asks, staring back at me expectantly. Her voice is a breathy mix of anxiety and fatigue; her cheeks are red from tears and the wind in her face.

I don’t respond, I am already having a hard enough time hearing as it is. I press the receiver harder against my ear.

“We’re sorry, all circuits are busy now; please try your call again later.”

No, no, come on!

“What is it, what happened?”

“Nothing, just keep running, I pressed something wrong.” I dig my thumb into the
2
again.
Ring for me, ring!

“We’re sorry, all circuits are-”

I currently do not possess the lungs required to vocalize my frustration. I simply hang up and clumsily stuff the phone back in my pocket instead.

“What happened?”

“You just run for now, we’ll find mom, but right now
, you just gotta run.”

We live ten miles from the school, but at this
rate, it may as well be a hundred. It's a small Southern town, but it doesn’t seem so small when you’re hoofing it against your will, the sun beating the back of your neck red like some cancerous taskmaster. Those rides to school every morning that seemed to fly by like the final evening of spring break, well, I would welcome them with open arms at this point.

Behind
us, the schoolhouse has become a black dot on the horizon. As I crane my neck to get a better view, I swear I can see those
things
convening in the street, preparing to give chase. They’ve probably finished off our panic stricken classmates and are now picking our scent from the air. In front of us, beyond the stretch of highway and the pockets of forest in between, black pillars of smoke are rising across the skyline of Athens, our neighboring city.

The world really is falling apart.

We make it a mile down to where Hog Mountain veers right and turns into Experiment Station amidst a pocket of fast food restaurants and strip malls. The traffic signal at the intersection blinks dutifully from red to green, but the vehicles don’t respond, they sit idle, bumper to bumper. They are lined up in all four directions, stretching back for at least a mile.

Tin soldiers, standing at attention.

I squint east and can just make out where the jam ends and folks are trying to back up and turn around. The others that had come before weren’t given that luxury.

Seats are torn and glass is shattered, paint jobs are mixed with blood and fresh dings and dents, but there isn’t a body in sight.

What had happened here?

Had it been as bad as what I’d seen?

Worse?

We pass a restaurant to our right with its plate glass window spread across the sparkling blacktop. Where value menu advertisements had once been displayed
, there now hangs the body of some faceless stranger impaled on a stubborn shard of glass. Another unfortunate soul is twisted up in the parking lot with tire marks dotting the front of his tee shirt, his tongue distending from purple lips.

A siren approaches from our rear.

Fast!

The husky bark of the large engine is tapping at our shoulders.

I turn and see a ladder truck, its course set right for us. It bursts through the intersection of abandoned autos; twisting, turning, and tossing the fiberglass (and metal) contraptions as if they are nothing more than tinker toys. Two of those pale-eyed monsters hang off either side of the cherry red fire engine, clinging to the extra-large mirrors as chaos erupts around them. There is another one in the cab with its mouth around the drivers arm, shaking its head back and forth like a pit bull with a butcher's bone. The driver jerks the wheel wildly as he tries to fight them off.

Our reflections appear dazed and confused in the massive grill.

I can smell the diesel.

There is nowhere to go.

Stuck!

A wall of vehicles to our left, and death by fire truck to our right, with no middle ground in between.

Bethany shrieks, curling herself up with an arm across her face and a knee touching her elbow, she braces for the impact.

I react. I don’t think. I just do.

With Bethany just a step away, I wrap my arms around her waist and pull her into the street and across the hood of a white compact sedan, just as the ladder truck charges past, taking the side mirror with it, and kicking up a shower of sparks. It jumps the curb and runs straight through the already wounded restaurant and out the other side, twisting the body of the impaled diner up in the wheel well. The cement base of a light pole two parking lots over finally brings it to a loud and mangled rest.

I set Bethany back on her feet, sliding off the hood at her heels.

Before we can compose ourselves, a green van maneuvers onto the sidewalk in front of us, destroys a wooden bench, and blocks our main route of escape.

“Mom!
It’s Mom!”

We race for the van. Bethany is the first one in, throwing open the sliding door, and pitching herself across the backseat. She wraps her arms around Momma's neck and buries her face in her hair. The tears are rolling steady by the time I charge in behind her and get the door shut.

I waste no time with a sentimental greeting, the image of the kamikaze fire truck and its unsavory passengers still lingers fresh in my mind. “Let’s get out of here; these things are all over the place.”

“The Rabid, Timmy, they’re everywhere, all over the country.”

“The what?”

“The Rabid, it’s what the news is calling them.”

The Rabid.
There is a ring to it. A ring only the media can create.

Momma cuts a half circle over the shattered carcass of the restaurant window. The driver of the fire truck is still hunched over the steering column, seemingly lifeless, for now at least. Any moment now
, and he’ll awaken with those white eyes, searching for an arm of his own to gnaw on.