The Rabid (5 page)

For the first time since the whole mess had started, I felt a twinge of humor
run through me. What he'd said was utterly true as well as amusing. This man
had yet to have a wake-up call, and it was going to be awfully rude.

"Upper class no longer exists."

Jack tossed me a sideways smile. He was actually not a terrible looking man. I found
myself wondering what he looked like with grease and sweat covering his body
after working on a vehicle. But I stopped myself before the thought was
completed.

I opened the door to let Sylvia and Alex out before getting to Rex. He welcomed
me with a tilt of his head.

When Rupert and Cynthia Meyers were finished collecting their things, they
approached us, staring with blank, skeptical gazes at my best friend and the
two children. Sylvia motioned gave them a smile.

"I'm Sylvia Hargrave. This is my daughter, Alex, and this little youngster is Rex,
Lisa's son."

My son immediately turned red, buried his face in his hands, and whined. The
rich couple gave reluctant hellos, encouraging us to begin our search. Within
moments, we were off on what may have been a wild goose chase.

October 17

There was no reason not to trust the couple. I'd fixed a lot of expensive cars
in my day, and rich idiots like them always made my skin crawl. They always,
always
argued about the amount of money they owed"like they couldn't spare it.

But in dire times, everybody had to help everybody else. Karma. If I helped
them now and got in trouble later, they might be there to help
me
out. I
didn't really have anyone else to count on. Except Lisa James. Her friend, Sylvia
was just too much trouble. "

As we walked past the Mandalay Bay hotel and casino, I instructed everyone to
keep their eyes peeled for any signs of life. Fortunately, it didn't look like
there were any Biters around.

The streets were deserted of all life, much like the highway. It was kind of
weird, too, because I knew there were people still uninfected. They must have
just shut themselves in or gotten the hell out of dodge.

"Where
is
everyone?" Lisa asked amid the silence.

"Dead..."
Sylvia's voice sounded weak.

"No." Lisa continued in a whisper. "No. There aren't any bodies. it's as if everyone
just picked up and left."

"My thoughts, too." I stared at the road ahead.

"Where should go toward the Eiffel Tower," the rich lady said for some reason.

So, we took a left down South Las Vegas Boulevard."

"You sure about that? How do you"

I stopped short, causing everyone to walk right into me. I heard Lisa's son
calling out to her, but I could only focus on what I'd just seen.

It couldn't have been. Absolutely not. Silas was dead. I had not just seen him
smirking at me from an alleyway. He wasn't standing there with a huge hole in
his chest, blood draining onto his white wife beater.

I looked back at the alleyway; it was dark. Silas was dead. I'd made sure. So,
I was either going crazy or death wasn't what it used to be.

"what's the matter?" Lisa coddled her little boy who was trying not to cry.

"I... Sorry, I thought I saw something."

"Jesus!" Sylvia gasped. "Warn a girl before you stop!"

I was breathing too hard to even acknowledge Lisa's friend. When I felt a hand
on my arm, I jumped. Lisa was looking up at me with mother written all over her
face. It was that or shrink.

"What did you see?"

I looked into the depths of the dark alley. Nothing was there. Inhaling a deep
breath, I shook my head. "Apparently nothing."

"We should keep going." Rupert was the one who spoke in a hurried tone. I
wasn't going to argue. We came across the foot bridge that butted up against the
Bellagio"s enormous pool. I stopped at the edge.

"The water looks so gross." Sylvia stopped to watch the gondolas bump together
in the murky water.

"it's safest here " around water." Lisa offered an explanation of how the
rabies virus turned its victims into hydrophobics.

"Yeah, yeah." As I began drumming my fingers against the concrete, I could feel
the sweat begin to squeeze from my pores as my heartbeat quickened.

They were halfway across when Lisa turned back. "Are you all right?"

"I, uh...I hate water."

She tilted her head to the side, broke away from the group and came to me. "You
were all right at the beach."

"That's different." I felt like I was talking too fast. "That's shallow. I can
see the fucking bottom. This..." I took my shaky hand off the concrete to gesture
toward the pool. "This is... No."

"You have thalassophobia."

I didn't have the focus to joke. "What now?"

"Fear of open bodies of water."

"Yeah, okay."

She put a gentle hand on my arm. "don't worry. There are none of those things
around, so we won't even need to think about water."

She was right. I could feel my heart slow, but not all the way. I drummed my
fingers against the concrete one more time before sucking in a breath and
taking the first step. But she wasn't right. Oh no. she was dead wrong "
forgive the pun.

Because as soon as my foot made contact on the bridge, an ear-splitting scream
came out of nowhere. Well, not nowhere. It came from behind Paris Paris. And
the other thing that came from behind Paris Paris was a swarm of howling
spitting Biters. The weirdest part about the whole ordeal was that I swore the
front doors of that chained up casino opened a crack.

"Run!" Rupert grabbed his wife's arm and tugged. Sylvia grabbed Alex and Lisa
grabbed Rex. But there was no one to grab me.

"For the love of..." I choked on my own inhalation and just pushed my feet
forward. Ignoring a fear was not easy. With every step, it felt like the water
was flowing over me. I was closed in. My steps felt too slow. I couldn't
breathe. My airway was constricted.

"Jack!"

I don't know who called my name because the swarm of Biters was taking all my
attention. Their howls were getting closer. One of them even leapt at me, just
missing the heel of my shoe. The snarling became almost deafening. But I was
almost across the bridge. I could see beyond. I could see...

I could see the gondolas floating in the water.

"Jesus Chri—"

My sentenced petered out because a Biter had grabbed the back of my shirt and
yanked hard. Getting angry wasn't an option. Logic was no longer a thought process
in my mind. I was terrified of having to get in the water. All I could think
was...

"Shoot now. Ask questions never." My hero"s quote seemed to knock me partially
back into reality. I spun around and aimed the shotgun right at the Biter's
head and pulled the trigger. No thoughts. Just nothing. Pure fight or flight.

A few more Biters ambushed me, pushing me back into the concrete ledge. The
black water loomed below me, taunting me. Each lap of a wave against the wall
sounded like laughter.

I held up my shotgun for protection as one Biter chomped at me. Its teeth
smashed together, inches from my face. Blood dripped from a wound on its head,
flowing down over its eyes. It reminded me of Gene Simmons from KISS.

"Holy shit! Were you born that ugly?" The toe of my shoe made contact with the Biter's
gut, sending it doubling back enough for me to run the rest of the way across
the bridge to the...boats. The Biters were on my heels. Lisa was calling out to
me.

I was in a hurry. I wasn't thinking. All my body was telling me to do was jump
in the boat and paddle as far out as I could. By the time we made it to a safe
distance, I was breathing hard; my pulse had skyrocketed. The howls of those
diseased things reverberated off the water. Then they started jumping in.

One after the other, they jumped over the bridge and into the water. When they
made contact with it, they began to scream and flail until they went under for
good. We were safe. But as Cynthia breathed a sigh of relief, panic was
squeezing into a ball inside my chest.

The bridge seemed to stretch out infinitely in front of me. It zoomed out until
the Biters were tiny little things splashing around. I could see oncoming
ripples in the dark water. When the first one hit the boat, it jarred us. And
there was nothing to grab onto. I made the mistake of peering into the water. I
couldn't see the bottom. The long oar plunged down, but the water was so deep
that I couldn't even see the end of it.

My hands flew to cover my face and I fell backward, rocking the boat even more.
"Jesus Christ. Holy shit. I can't do this."

"what's your problem?" Sylvia spoke up.

"He has thalassophobia. Jack." Lisa put a hand on my back as another Biter
jumped into the water. More waves hit the boat until I curled into a ball.

"Jack."

"No! I can't do it! We have to get out of here. we're going to die!"

"Jack." Her tone never faltered from calm.

Another Biter jumped in. Another waves crashed into us.

I growled deep in my chest. "Make it stop!"

"Jack. Tell me about your family."

Water splashed onto my bare arms, causing me to retract. "What?"

"What was your father like?" Lisa reached for the oar to paddle toward the bridge.
I grabbed her wrist.

"Don't."

She tensed, but remained calm. "All right. Just focus on you. Tell me about
your father."

I put my hands back over my eyes and tried to focus my thoughts. "Um...he was
a...an alcoholic. A real fucking douchebag."

"Go on."

More water splashed into the boat. "Jesus... Uh... He beat my mom a lot."

"When's the last time you saw him?"

"Uh...years ago. My sister was on his side. She was young. Went with him. Thought
he was innocent. I went with my mom."

"What was your mother like?"

"She was sweet. Um...nice to everyone. Big heart. Stupidly na"ve, though."

"How long ago did she die?"

I jerked my head up to look at Lisa. Her features seemed pretty sincere. "How
did you...?" The boat bumped into something hard. I almost fell over again.
"Fuck!"

"It's okay." Lisa's hand was on my arm again. "we're back on dry land."

"What?" I took a look around. Sure enough, we were back at the front of the
pool. All the Biters were floating face down in the water. One was still
splashing around but would soon quiet. I couldn't scramble out fast enough.
When I was clear of the water, I pushed my back against a stone wall, then I
looked toward Lisa.

"How did you do that?"

Her eyes widened. "It's my job. I have to keep the patient focused on giving
answers to keep the panic at bay."

I ran a hand over my face. "So I'm just a patient?"

"Nice to see your jokes are back." Sylvia huffed.

Taking a moment to shake the panic off, I feigned a grin. "Oh, they're back,
baby. With a vengeance."

"The people who kidnapped your daughter could be anywhere," Lisa said to Rupert
and Cynthia. "I'm not even sure"

Something hurtled at us, slamming into the concrete with a metallic thud. Lisa
jumped so far I thought her head would hit the tree branch above her. The rich
woman screamed. "What the hell was that?!"

"Momma!" Lisa's kid called.

"It's all right, Rex."

"Was it a bird?" Sylvia wondered aloud.

I started up the stairs toward the sound.

"Wait." Lisa stopped me as I was about to set a foot on the dry road. "Is it
safe?"

I looked around, not seeing any more Biters. Just the same, I tightened my grip
on the shotgun. I wasn't going to take any chances. Lisa seemed to think my
intuition was spot on, because she followed me, along with the rest of them.

When I reached the cause of the sound, I stooped to pick up a metal bar between
my feet. I inspected it against the hard sunlight streaming through a thick set
of fall rainclouds.

"What is it?"

"A wrench." The crow-bar shaped wrench was long and heavy with a black body
that curved at the star-shaped head.

"A wrench?" Sylvia twisted her face up.

"Yup. it's a Torx Wrench. Pretty standard," I said. "You use it to"

"I've seen that before!" Mrs. Meyers cried all of a sudden. "One of those
hoodlums was brandishing it at us when they took Rosalie!"

I opened my mouth to say something, but she tore it out of my hand, waving it
in her husband's face.

"don't you remember this, Rupert?!"

"I...suppose..." Her husband took a step back.

Mrs. Meyers stopped, turning her head to the right and left. She settled on the
direction the wrench had come flying from. In front of us, a replica of the
Eiffel Tower jutted up into the sky. I'd seen it before in a magazine, but I
never understood why they'd recreate something that already existed. It just
gave lazy people an excuse not to travel.

"that's where they took her! that's where they took Rosalie!" Without warning,
she took off toward the entrance.

"Cynthia!" Her husband yelled after her, frustration in his face.

Me? I didn't even hesitate. I shoved my rifle at her husband, ignored his
questioning look, and dove after her. She didn't even make it to the door. I
caught her around the waist, almost tackling her. Then, I picked her up,
dragging her back kicking and screaming. Her foot made contact with my shin. I
winced.

"Let me go, you brute! Rosalie needs me!!"

"Sorry, Mrs. Meyers." I set her down. "I can't let you go off by yourself.
that's how you get killed."

"Momma, what's wrong with lady?" Lisa's son was cowering behind her, hugging
her knees. She reached down and rubbed her fingers through his hair. My mom
used to do that to me when I was little.

"Don't worry, Rex."

"Cynthia, please." Rupert coaxed his wife while grabbing a hold of her upper
arm before she could get away. Even though the coax sounded more like a
scolding, I abandoned her and took my shotgun back from him. I marched over to
Lisa, lowering my voice so only she could hear.