“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.
Undying.
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.
&nbs
p; 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.
“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.”
The Rabid (Book 1) Page 3