The Rabid (Book 1) (4 page)

“Did either of you get bit?” She asks, scanning us in the
rear-view. When she sees my condition, she gasps and turns, slack jawed.

“Mom, the road,
pay attention.” She snatches the wheel back, barely keeping us from flying off into the brush. “The blood isn’t mine, we’re fine.”

“It was horrible. I can’t get it out of my head.” Bethany curls her arms over her face, rocking back and forth next to me.

I rub her back, staring out the window at the pockets of survivors hiking the shoulder. Some carry backpacks or plastic bags, some are bloodied and hobbled, others wave for us to stop and help as we pass them by, slapping at the windows, and falling over themselves as they grasp for the door handles.

Soon we're beyond their reach, bumping down the two lane farm road towards home.

3

I’m puking before my feet reach the gravel driveway. I dive out of the van like a baby pigeon attempting to take flight. My stomach contents cut a rainbow arch through the air and splash down on the grass in a liquefied mushroom cloud of stale toast and over easy eggs. I stand there coughing, bent over at the knees.

I think of Jeff Fuller.

I’m turning, I must be!

The images, they come back, again and again. I check my hands for any sort of pigmentation change. As I shake
uncontrollably, I gaze up at our three bedroom yellow house. At the white shutters and the small brick porch with the knobby wooden pillars supporting the overhang. Over to the right at the old broken down chicken coop with the rusted wire fencing. At the woods beyond with the trees drifting in the breeze, and the cast off pine needles falling carelessly through the air.

It's blurry, all of it.
Hazy.

The tears.
It's the tears right?  The body and its biological reaction to regurgitation. Simple explanation.

No, no, no!

I'm changing, I'm changing!

Oh
God, I’m turning into Jeff Fuller!

I wipe my eyes frantically.

I wipe at the images of Ms. Geoffery and her throat being torn open.

At the blood and the bodies
.

Momma and Bethany, they aren’t safe around me.

I feel hands on my shoulders. I turn out of the embrace, backing away, stumbling, and catching myself with all the grace of a blind man looking for a wall to balance on, my arms spinning wildly. “Get away from me, I’m turning, I think I’m turning.” It’s Momma, standing there, Bethany concealed behind her, eyes still sweating sorrow, her hands crossed over her mouth. For a moment, I consider turning and running into the woods like some werewolf trying to escape the full moon.

Momma approaches with open arms, her voice low and soothing. “Honey
, you’re not turning into one of them. Your eyes look fine. You’re just in shock from everything. It’s a delayed onset, you just need to breathe.”

Delayed onset,
a therapy phrase Momma had no doubt picked up from one of her groups.

“He puked and he just started ripping the place apart. He killed her…he killed all of them. And his eyes—all of their eyes—I’ve never seen eyes like that. He puked first, that’s what he did though, and I puked; you’ve got to get away from me.” My teeth chatter as I relay what I'd seen.

Its seventy degrees out. Why are my teeth chattering?

“You’re not turning into one of them. Listen to
me; you’re going to be okay. They said on the radio that it’s a fast acting virus, you’d know by now if you had it. We just need to get inside, and get you both cleaned up, and then we’ll wait it out.” She takes another step forward, beckoning me into her embrace.

“Wait what out? They’re all dead. Pretty much the entire police force is dead, they ripped straight through them.” I go dizzy at the thought. Knives and bullets can’t stop them. Nothing can stop them.

“It was the worst thing, Momma, the worst thing.” Bethany blubbers.

“Listen to me, both of you. There are police in other towns and cities; there is the military, and the government, so it’s going to be okay. We’ve just got to stick together and wait this thing out.”

It’s going to be okay.

Momma, the post-therapy optimist.

It’s going to be okay.

“Alright, okay, I’m calm. I’m good.” I inhale as deep as my stress-constricted lungs will allow and let it out through my nose. There are sirens in the distance and the firecracker pop of automatic gunfire ringing in the air.

I accept Momma's guiding touch and we head towards the house.

It's going to be okay...

***

Bethany and I both take showers and discard our clothes in garbage bags, which we promptly throw out on the front porch, everything except for my Stetson and my boots.

The news keeps replaying the same images: Flaming cars, police and military lining the streets, bonfires constructed by the twice-dead corpses of The Rabid, highways clogged with
panic-stricken urbanites making for the hills.

“We’re lucky you know, living all the way out here, in the middle of nowhere.” Momma has reiterated this bit of information multiple times now as we sit gathered around a bowl of popcorn in a tangle of pillows and blankets.

We're not exactly in the middle of nowhere
.
It's a sort of, but not really, situation. We're nestled between a moderately populated small town, Watkinsville, and an ever expanding college Mecca, Athens. Watkinsville is five miles to our east. Athens is five miles to our west. We're nestled back off of a narrow country road that winds through ten miles of unmolested fields and forest; big industry will get to it eventually. The little driveway our house rests on, is an unpaved path made up of three houses lining a half mile stretch of dirt and river rock (a city dump truck comes every three months to resurface it). Our closest neighbors are a couple of fellas named Peter and Tony. They are
roommates
. “They seem awfully close,” I’d commented one day as I watched them tending their garden together through the strand of trees dividing our properties. “They’re nice people, sweetie, that’s all that matters.” Momma had replied. There are definitely worse places we could be right now. We'd probably be dead or infected if we were in the middle of the city. Our position is advantageous. A small something to be thankful for in the midst of everything else.

“Why are they burning them like that?” Bethany asks with a handful of popcorn and a disgusted look on her face.

Momma nuzzles at her cheek, garnering a smile. “It’s to stop the virus from spreading sweetie. I’m sure they’ll bury them later.”

“
You heard from Lee?” I ask Momma, as I fish through the dwindling bowl of popcorn.

“
I tried calling him a few times, phones are still down. He's got a good head though, I'm sure he's fine.” She isn't sure. She'd never come out and say it. But the uncertainty is there. The fear for the safety of her beloved quivers in her voice.

“
Yeah, nothing to worry about.” I drop my head against her arm as I pick my teeth with the tip of my tongue.

A crusty looking older man that the television identifies as General Philip
Krauthammer, stands before the camera and microphone wiping streaks of dirt from his face with the sleeve of his fatigues.

“We have not yet identified the origin of this virus. We do know that it is transferred through saliva directly contacting the blood stream, usually via biting. Those affected by the virus may show symptoms such as loss of basic motor functions, they may turn violent without warning and attack indiscriminately. We urge the public to stay in their homes and to lock their windows and doors, do not venture out unless you absolutely must, by doing so, you put your life in danger and make our jobs that much harder. We’ve got military and law enforcement professionals in every state battling this thing, and we are fully confident that everything will return to normal shortly. That’s all for now, if you’ll excuse me.”

The camera pans back to the reporter; blonde, pretty, like all the rest.

“You hear that
, guys, nothing to worry about.” Momma pushes the popcorn away and takes us under her arms.

“They didn’t mention having to destroy the brain. You have to shoot them in the head. That’s the only thing that puts the virus down.”

“Yeah, Momma,” Bethany says. “Timmy tried it all. He stabbed two of them. You remember Ms. Griswald? The assistant principal? Timmy stabbed her and she just kept coming after us.”

“They were just probably trying to keep from traumatizing the public any more than they already have been. The good news is that it’s being handled; we just have to wait it out. So, no more talk of killing and dying. Let’s watch a movie or something, what do you say?”

4

The music is up; Bethany is at the dial, switching tracks for me, offering her feedback as I sail around my bedroom.

For a
moment, it is normal.

We are normal.

Bethany is unmarred.

The world is at peace.

No one has died.

Blood doesn’t stain the face of my
favorite boots.

“You can take the boots and the hat off
, Timmy, it’s not a recital.” She leans back in the beanbag chair, crossing her arms over the face of the radio.

“Can’t dance without boots, wouldn’t want to ruin my reputation.” We laugh together as I twirl and dip low.

Timmy Two-Step, that’s what my parents had called me when I was born. Just like the dance. They’d met in a country Western bar. The Two-Step had been their first dance.

Done and done.

“You think you’re still going to do the recital next week?” She lowers the volume slightly.

I shrug, balancing on one heel. “
Dunno, guess it all depends on how quick everything gets cleaned up. I hope so.”

My dad passed when I was
nine. He was an over the road truck driver. He was tying down a haul and a faulty chain slipped and landed a station wagon on top of his head. I don’t remember much from that time. I remember feeling sad and seeing a lot of councilors (we all saw councilors), but the rest is foggy. Repressed memories, is what they’d said.

Delayed shock,
perhaps?

Still, the fashion sense he’d raised me with stuck. He’d had me in a pair of ropers and creased blue jeans when my knees were still wobbly. Folks always said I had the shell of a cowboy without the filling to go with it. It was probably because I never cared much for the usual
cowboy things
.

Country music

Hunting

Muddin
’

Never did much for me.

“I think you should pause right there, during that crescendo…yeah, just like that. Makes it much more dramatic,” Bethany rewinds and claps her hands, as I execute her suggestion with flawless form. “Ah, Tim, I hope you do the recital next week, this is killer.”

“Hopefully
, it goes better than the talent show.”

“No worry, it
will, all the douche bags from school won’t be there; automatic improvement right off the bat. We'll be rich and famous in no time.” Bethany has always joked about being my manager whenever I make it big.

My love of dance, particularly interpretive dance, came from Momma. My dad and Momma were polar opposites. The only reason they’d met was because her friends dragged her to some little country bar. My momma is a free spirit.
An eccentric.

She’s all about Pink Floyd and French Impressionism.

She’s all about exotic foods and old Woody Allen films.

All of those things rubbed off on me to some degree or another.

I prefer
Animals
over
Dark Side of the Moon.

Claude Monet
over
Degas, Renoir,
or
Cezanne.

Afghan food is still my
favorite,
Kaddo Bourani
.

And
Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask)
is still Woody Allen’s best film to date; ask any true fan.

But it’s her love for interpretive dance that has infected me more than anything else. “It’s feeling, emotion, condition.
It's things you can’t put into words dispersed out into the atmosphere through movement.” She explained all of this to me one day as she sailed around the living room, sweeping her arms through the air, dramatically falling to the floor while some of the most beautiful music I’d ever heard filled the space around us.

From that moment
on, I was hooked.

Loie
Fuller became my idol.

Loie
Fuller is pretty much the pioneer of the interpretive dance movement. She was all about using fabric to express emotion. Momma had this picture of her on the nightstand. Coming out of the blackness, white cloth billowing around her, she was ghost-like. Not scary.

Luminescent.

The moon bathing a forest floor.
Beautiful.

“A butterfly emerging from the clutches of a cocoon,” Momma would say, lying beside me, both of us
enamored by the image.

The piece ends and Bethany sets the radio at her feet, clapping. I take my
bow; the heat generated by such vigorous movement begins to cloud my body. I remove my hat and fan my face.

“I do hope you get to perform it
, Tim, it’s your best one yet; I’m sure you’d win.”

“It’d be nice, it sure would be nice.” I’ve performed numerous recitals and talent shows at this point
, and have yet to win so much as a participation ribbon. Some positive reinforcement beyond my family of origin would be a welcome occasion. “Thanks for the help and the feedback, sis, as always.”

She smiles big and blows me a kiss. “You can always count on me.”