The Rabid (2 page)

October 16

"Red.

All I saw was red
as I tried hard to move my weakened legs. I could barely push myself forward
and those things were gaining on me. Damn Biters. If I'd had a gun...

Wait...I
did
have a gun. My boss Silas had given me his sawed-off shotgun so I could protect
the house.

I had the gun
somewhere... But I wasn't able to find it in time. A Biter lunged at me with a
bitter howl. I dodged it, slamming into a wall. My shoulder ached. I didn't
even know where I was.

Another Biter was
hot on my trail. It could smell me. As soon as it was aware of my presence, it came
toward me. Of course I was frozen with fear. Fantastic. I was going to die and
I hand't been laid in six years...

A hollow bang bit
into my eardrum. Someone had fired a shot straight through the Biter's head. It
went down in a convulsion of blood and foam. And at the sound of the second
bang, I was startled awake. I'd been asleep on my boss"s couch the entire time.

Thank God. Or
whatever.

I slowly rolled
to sit upright. The pain in my shoulder was almost knocking me out again. I
felt like I'd been hit by a bus, so I rubbed my hands over my face.

Heavy footsteps
echoed down the hallway. Those were the angry Silas footsteps. He was steamed.
I couldn't blame him. I'd fallen asleep on watch again.

As I stood " my
bones creaking the whole way " I yawned and grabbed the shotgun from the side
table.

"Yeah, I know. I
know." The kitchen was still dark. I rolled my shoulders to ease some of the
tension in my neck. "I fell asleep again. I told you I couldn't"

My sentence
stopped dead " no pun intended. My best friend was stomping down the hallway.
Only he wasn't my best friend anymore. He was a Biter. Thick foam dripped from
his mouth. His steps were heavy and uneven. He looked like a ghost.

"Balls."

Silas stretched
out his arms. He was inches from me. I could almost feel the cold grip of his
fingers. And that's when I pulled the trigger.

The blast almost
turned me deaf. It was the loudest thing I'd ever heard. But my aim was on
point, because there was now a decent-sized hole in my best friend"s chest.

"But that wasn't
the shitty part. Nope. The shitty part was when he started to die. Because he
grabbed his chest, stared at his bloody hand for a second, then fell against
the wall. He looked up at me with eyes that were still alive.

"Why...?" His voice
came with a few of those "death gurgles."

"What...?"

"It was...a
prank...bro..."

"The fuck?" I
knelt beside him. For some reason, I thought trying to push the blood back into
his chest with both hands would do something. But before I could even figure
out another course of action, the life drained from his eyes. For a moment, I
just sat there and stared at him, trying to comprehend what had just happened.
Then I got mad.

"What the
fuck
,
Silas? You think this is a motherfucking game? You can't play pranks on me
you...! Jesus fucking Christ, man!" I could feel the burn of tears behind my
eyes, but they wouldn't come.

No ideas of a next step
came to me. My thoughts were racing at a thousand miles an hour. Should I call
the police? Hospital? What was the emergency number again? Jesus Christ. Should
I bury him?

Feeling around in my
pockets, I found my cell phone. Then I punched in the numbers 9-1-1. A beep
rang in my ear.

"we're sorry, the number
you have called cannot be completed as dialed. Please hang up and try your call
again."

I pulled the phone away,
hung up and tried again. But again, I received the same message.

"we're sorry, the number
you have called cannot be completed as dialed. Please hang up and try your call
again."

The phone lines were
down. All of them. Not even the landline worked. Well... At least I wouldn't go
to jail.

I was just about to sit
down and think about putting the shotgun in my mouth when I heard something
outside. Out the window, I could see across the street to the neighbor"s house.
There was an old car in the driveway and a woman was hunched over the open
hood. That ass, man. Damn.

"Well, since I'm a mechanic...I
might as well help some booty. Body! Somebody." Gutter mind could never be
cured.

I took one last look at my
poor friend and headed for the door. But when I passed the giant mirror, I
noticed blood all over me. There were droplets on my shirt and even my face. If
I went out like that, she would have run off scared.

I turned and went to the
bathroom where I hastily wiped all the blood off my face and changed into a
dirty t-shirt. When I was half-way satisfied with the way I looked, I headed
back toward the door."

I held the
sawed-off shotgun close to my chest and stepped off the curb to the house
across the street. But I realized having a huge gun in my hands would probably
scare her, so I tucked it into the seat of my jeans. As I neared the house, the
woman cursed and pounded her hands on the bumper of the old Honda.

"Something
wrong?"

I must have
startled her because she spun around to face me with lightning speed. "Jesus!
I'm sorry. My car won't start," she said. "it's been doing this forever. I just
haven't had a chance to take it in."

Her eyes were
dark blue, almost black. I found myself mesmerized by them and her heart-shaped
face. I shook myself back into reality.

"You may not get
a chance again."

"I know." She sighed.

I peered into the engine,
fiddling with a couple wires. I noticed the problem right away, but my
mechanic"s training kicked in without hesitation.

"what's it
doin...?"

"Unfortunately
I'm a doctor of medicine, not a doctor of cars."

That was funny. I
chuckled. "Try me."

"All right. Every time I
try to start it, it clicks. It takes a couple of times to start." She leaned
against the hood. I caught a quick glimpse of her cleavage.

"Kay, well, your
battery"s corroded, here. See the buildup around the wires?"

"Okay."

"You need a new
one."

"Well, there
isn't a way for me to get a new battery now."

I shrugged,
wiping my hands on my jeans. "Five finger discount?"

She looked at me
like I was crazy. "I've never stolen anything in my life, and I'm not about to
start now."

I put my hands up
in defense mode. "Got it. Sorry. Where you headed? I can let you borrow my buddy's
car... He won't be using it."

She hesitated,
avoiding my gaze for a moment. "we're going to Colorado."

We? "Land of
legal dope, huh?" I kicked a loose pebble into the road. It skittered halfway
across and stopped. She watched it with brows knitted together. I had that
effect on a lot of women.

"There may be a sanctuary
there."

"Sanctu-wha?"

"A safe place to
stay. What about you?"

I looked up. "Huh?"

"don't you have
someone you need to protect? it's not a good idea to stay here." There was a
mother"s care in her voice.

"I don't have
anyone," I said. "My boss was the only one and he... I trailed off, but she
seemed to understand right away.

"he's infected." Her
monotone statement caught me off guard. She must have had a killer intuition. I
stayed silent.

"You should use
your friend"s car to get to Colorado," she said.

"Nah... You need it
more than I do. Besides, I can fix yours and use it if need be. I'll just go
grab the keys and be back in a sec."

"Okay."

I ran back into Silas's
house, thinking about how much of an idiot I looked in front of a pretty girl.
Of course, she'd never go for a guy like me, anyway. Aside from that, she
seemed way serious. "

I stepped over Silas's
corpse. A line of sticky red stood out behind him on the wall where he'd
fallen. I felt a hiccup in my chest, but I had to keep going. Silas was gone
now, and it wasn't my fault! I grabbed the keys to his SUV off the counter. And
when I turned to go back out the door, I heard a woman scream.

I rushed out into
the street just in time to see one of those things trying to bite the girl
across the way. It was backing her up against the door to the house. She kept
crying out someone's name and slamming her first against the jamb, but no one
was coming to her rescue.

I sprinted across
the street, trying not to listen to the thing howl and snarl. It was a terrible
sound. The girl spotted me and her eyes widened.

"Help!"

It lunged for
her.

But I was faster. "Bad
touch!" I hit it with the butt of my rifle right in the temple. There was a
loud crack, and it went down, writhing on the concrete porch. We watched the
thing squirm and cry for a while. Finally, it went still.

The front door of
the house flew open and a tall, dark woman looked at us in surprise.

"Lisa?!" she
cried.

"Sylvia!" She
went to her friend. "Where were you? didn't you hear me?"

Sylvia looked
down at the dead thing and yelped. She pulled her friend into the house, but
didn't shut the door. "I was upstairs with the kids. I...I'm sorry..." She looked
at me. "Did you save her?"

"Yes." Lisa
answered before I could. "He saved my life."

"I was just in the
right place at the right time." I ran a hand through my hair.

"No." She shook
her head. "You saved me." Carefully avoiding the bleeding thing on the porch,
she took a step toward me. Then, she looked into my eyes and asked the
question. "what's your name?"

"Jack. Jack Reynolds."

"I'm Lisa James
and this is Sylvia Hargrave. Why don't you come inside?"

I hesitated,
clearing my throat. "I don't think"

"Listen, Mr.
Reynolds"

"Whoa, there. Mr.
Reynolds is an actor. You can call me Jack. I haven't done anything in my life
to get the mister title."

There was a brief
pause where they both looked at me blankly. "Okay. Jack." It was as if she
tasted my name. I kind of liked the way it sounded coming from her. "Neither of
us would be able to fight something like that off." She gestured toward the
thing on the porch. "And neither of us know anything about cars. But you seem
to. If you'd be willing to accompany us to Colorado, we'd be grateful to have
your skills."

Sylvia snorted
behind her. "Way to lay it on thick, Lisa."

Lisa put her
hands out. "it's better to be up front and honest than dancing around the
issue."

"No." I stopped
them. "I appreciate it, Lisa. Can I call you Lisa?"

"May" you call
me Lisa. And yes."

"I'll go with
you."

From the Desk of Dr. Lisa James

"Should we get going,
then?" I followed Jack and Sylvia into the kitchen. I could already tell she
was trying to make him more than her friend.

Sylvia waved a
hand at me. "That was the only one of those things for miles. Quit worrying."
Turning back to Jack, she put on one of her seductive smiles while batting her
eyelashes. "I'm sure our new friend would like some coffee before the world
runs out of it. How do you like it?"

"Like prisoners."

"What?"

He shook his
head. "Never mind. Bad joke. However you're taking it."

I noticed he
seemed a bit preoccupied, but I put it off as we were all preoccupied.
Specifically Sylvia, but her preoccupation was with something else. When we got
to the kitchen, Alex and Rex were packing a few snacks into a bag. Except Rex
had gotten a hold of one of his toy cars and was driving it around the floor.
Its wheels scraped the tiles.

"Who are you?" Alex
was the first to speak.

"Lexi!" Sylvia
scolded her daughter.

Jack bent down.
"I'm Jack. I hear your name is...Lexi? Is that right?"

"Alex." She still
seemed a bit guarded.

"Ah. You know
what that name means?"

"No..."

"Means you're the
defender of all mankind."

Alex tilted her
head to one side. "that's a lot of pressure."

A smile spread
across Jack's face. "You know what Lexi means?"

Sylvia's daughter
perked a bit more. "What?"

"It means you
have to protect all of Greece."

Alex's nose
crinkled. "that's not a very good job."

"Ooh." Jack took
a quick look around. "don't tell a Greek person that."

She giggled.

"And who's this?"
He turned toward Rex, but all my son did was chomp at the air as if he were
vicious. "Let me guess... Jaws?"

Alex giggled
again. "that's Rex. Aunt Lisa's son."

"Rex." Jack mused
for a moment. "Good name. Nice to meet you, Rex."

"Rex." My son
repeated his name. Sylvia turned to make coffee.

"Rex suffers from
autism." I moved closer to my son as Jack stood.

"I noticed." He
shrugged. "I just wasn't sure how sensitive of an issue it was."

"You noticed?"

"Yeah." He looked
at me. "I had a cousin who had Asperger"s. Where is he on the spectrum?"

The question put
me back for a moment. No one had ever asked except doctors. "Well, he sees
patterns in everything, but has trouble learning. We think he's somewhere in
the middle with a mild learning disorder."

Jack nodded. "Has
it been difficult?"

"Oh, hell yeah."
Sylvia handed Jack a cup of coffee, but offered none to me. "That kid gives
Lisa a run for her money all the time. Sometimes she can handle it, but most of
the time it's a struggle."

Jack glanced at
me. Presumably because he thought I'd want to start a fight, but I was
accustomed to Sylvia's odd need to compete with me. I paid no mind to it any
longer.

A thump on the
sliding glass door caused Sylvia to yelp. She let go of her coffee mug where it
shattered to pieces on the floor. Startled, Rex began to sniffle. I bent
forward to pick him up. He struggled with me at first.

"Get the bags."
We all looked at Jack whose focus was on the door. When we all switched our
gazes, understanding flooded through everyone.

A woman with a
large bite out of her shoulder was shuffling along outside. We knew she'd seen
us as she'd turned and banged on the glass again. Rex whimpered. After the
second attempt to break the glass, the woman began clawing at it, chomping at
the air as Rex had done a few moments earlier. Foam collected at the sides of
her mouth.

"Get the bags."
Jack's voice once again destroyed the haze of stunned silence and booted us
into action. I lurched forward with my son still in my arms and grabbed his
bag. The woman pounded on the glass, causing me to jump. When Alex went to
snatch her duffle, the woman threw her entire body into the door, causing it to
shudder in its frame. Alex squealed.

"let's go, guys."
Jack's voice was low and calm. We turned to follow him out the front door. But
as soon as we got there, an infected male popped up in the side window, howling
at us. Sylvia screamed as a few more victims began rapping on the door.

"You got a fire
extinguisher?" Jack asked Sylvia. When she didn't answer, he shook her shoulder
gently. "Hey! You got a fire extinguisher?"

Sylvia shook her
head. "Y-yeah. In the garage."

He squinted at
her. "Why in the...? Forget it. let's go."

We followed him
down the hall and through the doorway to the garage. Jack began to sorting
through piles of junk my friend had collected because she was too petrified to
remember where the thing was. I set Rex down and joined in.

"Thanks." Jack
tossed some old clothes away. They still had tags.

"We need to get
out of here."

"Yeah, no shit."

We tossed boxes
of crap aside until those things started running into the garage door, causing
the metal bangs to reverberate off the dry wall. That only made us search
faster. I was the one who found the fire extinguisher beneath a pile of
discarded perfume bottles. I tossed it to Jack then ran to grab Rex.

Jack positioned
himself by the door opener. "Okay, on my signal, you run across the street to
my buddy"s car."

I nodded. After a
deep breath, Jack hit the button and the door to the garage began to slowly
open. Before the damn thing was even halfway open, infected people began clawing
their way underneath. Jack sprayed each one right in the face with CO2 until
they howled, clawing at their faces while running backward.

"Go!" He shouted
when the door was open. We all took off running. Occasionally, he'd turn around
and fire the extinguisher at them, laying them out as if he had a flamethrower.
And when the thing was spent, we were only halfway there. Jack looked at it for
a second, then flung the empty container into the mob of infected victims.
Then, he turned and ran after us, keys in hand.

We piled into the
car and immediately buckled our seatbelts. A few diseased pounded their flat
palms against the windows, but Jack had already started the car and was backing
out. Rex squealed as we ran over one of them. I think I heard the crack of a
skull, but it happened too fast to even give it a thought.