Rabid (17 page)

The tire tracks ended.  Gone.  He parked the car along the side of the road and stepped out, inspecting the tracks as they veered to the right, disappearing when they reached the rocky soil where the road ended. 

Taylor stood next to a tree, running his palm down the rough bark, gazing ahead in the direction of the rocks. 
No way to go off-roading with this.

He spotted them far ahead in the distance.  If the distance between them hadn’t been uncharacteristically flat, he would have missed them.  They were little more than blurry specks, but Carl and Tina stood out among the more subdued tones of the landscape.

His first thought was: I brought the car for nothing.  All that time wasted to go back for the car and I can’t even get to them.

And then he saw something else in the distance as well, hidden amongst the trees like the secret figures in an illusionist’s paintings.

Then he started to scream.

Carl heard a twig snap.

“Did you hear something?” he asked, pulling the walkie-talkie from his pocket and holding it up to his ear.

“No.  Why?”
“I thought I did.”  He spoke Angie’s name into the walkie-talkie to no avail.

Another sound.  The squishy, crackling sound of feet trampling over brittle leaves.

“Oh my God!”  Tina screamed.

He glanced at her, following the direction of her gaze, and immediately saw what all the fuss was about: a group of rabid things seemed to have materialized out of nowhere.

Carl registered them like a man in the kind of dream where you’re cognizant of the face that you’re dreaming; with the stunted sense of urgency that comes with realizing you are not in any real danger. 

But the danger in front of him was real. 

He thought he heard another sound in the distance.  Something far away.  A voice perhaps?

His first thought was that it was that the group of the rabid things was surprisingly small.  After witnessing the strange migration on the interstate, he expected to see them in larger numbers.  His mind calculated quickly.  On first sweep, he counted a dozen.  They stood in a haphazard line.  Some of them were wearing mountain climbing gear.  Forty yards away. 

Then he heard the voice clearly.  He turned and saw Taylor standing beside the car, hands cupped around his mouth, shouting at them. 

Carl heard the rustle of leaves and didn’t need to look to know the rabid things were running towards them.  He grabbed Tina by the arm and said, “
Run!
”

She was slow.  It took Carl a moment to realize that the pack on her back was weighing her down. 

“Drop the pack.”

“What?”

“Leave the fucking backpack!”

She shrugged the pack from her shoulders in one fluid motion.  The pack hit the ground, sending up a spray of leaves.

Over the walkie-talkie, Angie’s voice said, “Carl?  Where are you?”

Carl heard his name called over the walkie-talkie and tried pulling it from his back pocket.  He was running full speed, one hand around Tina’s wrist.  He fumbled with the radio and it fell to the ground.  He let go of Tina’s wrist and stopped.

“What are you doing?”

“I dropped the radio.”

“Leave it.”

“I heard Angie.”  He stooped down, rummaging through the leaves, pushing piles of them aside with his arms, frantically searching for the fallen radio.  He heard it squawk again, and Angie’s voice calling for him. 

“Carl!”

It was the type of mistake that didn’t allow for second chances. 

They descended on him, ripping and tearing at him before he could scream, and even then his arms were stretched out toward the spot where the walkie-talkie had suddenly appeared on top of the leaves.  The pain was swift and unbearable. 

Angie’s voice over the radio:
Carl, where are you?  I love you.  Please say something.

Carl felt his flesh being torn and shredded; felt an oozy warmth slide down his body.  He closed his eyes. 

He was almost grateful that the last sound he heard was Angie’s voice coming over the walkie-talkie.

Taylor saw his brother stop and stoop to the ground.

What the fuck is he doing?

He watched Tina hesitate, but only for a moment, and then she started running toward him again.

Taylor ran. 
He’s out of his mind,
he thought. 
Damn fucking moron!
 

He and Tina passed each other.  She was screaming.  She seemed to not even notice him as they passed one another.  Taylor’s heart was beating so fast he thought it would thump right out of his chest. 

He arrived too late.  The rabid things had Carl and had destroyed him within seconds.

Taylor felt rage take over.  A shouting voice that spoke only the language of fury, drowning out the quiet and rational voice that whispered for him to run. 

He pulled the Glock from his waistband and fired, hitting several of them, but missing most out of carelessness. 

After the Glock was empty, he picked up a sturdy branch from the ground and swung at one of the rabid things that had hold of his brother.  He caught the rabid man in the neck and its head tilted severely to one side.  Another one of them hissed and lunged at him.  Taylor struck him across the face with the branch, caving in the side of the thing’s face. 

They dropped what remained of Carl.  Taylor stood next to the body, swinging the branch back-and-forth wildly, trying desperately to protect his brother. 

Carl was dead.  There was no question of that.

Taylor struck a woman this time, raking the end of the branch across her mouth and tearing open her lips so that her teeth were exposed. 

One of them grabbed him from behind.  Taylor flailed around like a captured animal, throwing his head back so the back of his skull collided with the rabid thing’s face.

He felt pain erupt at the back of his neck; thick wetness.  He collapsed to his knees, still managing to cling to the branch, his brother clearly visible on the ground two feet in front of him.

This is it,
he thought.  All the things he had ever hoped to do in his life occurred to him within the span of a single second.  His hands grew too weak to maintain his hold on the branch.  Dark blotches crowded his vision, seeping in from the corners and working their way to the center until his vision was clouded completely. 
This is it.
  It was a hard fact to accept. 

They were on him, dragging him to the ground face first.  He tasted dirt and smelled the mustiness of brittle dead leaves. 

Taylor was stubborn.  Like his father.  He continued to struggle, fighting death with the bullheadedness he was known for.  However, in the end, it was a losing battle.

Tina refused to look back. 

She reached the car, sat down in the driver’s seat and closed the door, listening to the whine of the engine.  She had stopped screaming.  Her hands gripped the steering wheel, shaking with the vibration of the engine.

She put the car in drive, mashed down on the accelerator, and pulled the car around so that she was headed back in the direction of the lake.  By the time she could see the lake up ahead, the needle of the speedometer rested at the sixty miles-per-hour mark. 

She didn’t see the pothole.  The Escort’s right front tire caught it with enough force to allow it to go airborne, coming down and issuing a brief scream as the tire went flat.  Tina slammed the brakes and the back end fishtailed.  One of the rear tires skidded onto the embankment that marked the place where one side of the road ended.  She pressed down on the accelerator as hard as she could, but the car refused to move. 

“No!”  She pounded her fists against the steering wheel.  “Noooooo!”  Tina drew the word out, screaming it until her breath was gone.  She threw open the car door, running toward the lake.  Behind her, the rabid things followed the road.  They were far back, but they were tireless and relentless and Tina was familiar with the futility of trying to outrun them; knew that they would keep coming long after she was unable to run any longer.

The boat was where they had left it. 

Water,
she thought. 
They can’t stand the water.

Her mind raced frantically.  She was all alone now and the knowledge of that ate away any sanity she had left. 

Tina reached the boat.  Her shoes sunk into the mud, and she felt water squishing between her toes.  She pushed on the front of the boat hoping to set it free from the shore.  At first, nothing happened; it was an immovable object.  The boat had worn a deep groove into the dirt where it rested on the shore.

She planted her feet roughly shoulder-width apart and squatted down, already feeling the burn in her thighs as she placed her hands on the boat.  She lifted up and pushed at the same time, grunting with the effort, aware that the boat was moving ahead an inch at a time.

They have got to be close. 
She didn’t dare glance behind her.

Gathering herself, finding her footing, pushing off the slick mud as best she could, she heaved a final time, letting a burst of breath out as she did.  The boat came free of the shore.  It slid into the lake and she hurried to climb into it before it floated out of reach.  Her shoes were heavy with mud.  She kicked them off and managed to climb into the boat, hauling the anchor hand-over-hand, wondering how something so small could be so heavy.  The rope went taut, and at first the weight was too great for her to manage.  She heaved again, and the anchor moved a foot, digging a shallow trench in the muddy shore.  Tina pulled five more times before the anchor was close enough to be hauled into the boat.  With this accomplished, she leaned back trying to catch her breath.

The boat drifted slowly. 

The rabid things reached the lake, giving it a cautious birth as they stood along the shore watching her. 

Hours passed that way.  They seemed never to tire of standing or watching or waiting.  She removed her cell phone from her pocket.  It was nothing more than an overpriced clock now, but she used it to keep track of the time. 

She thought:
How long can they wait there?  Until they starve to death? 
Can
they starve to death?

It was hard not to think of the two brothers that she had known ever so briefly, but she had fallen in love with each of them in separate yet distinct ways.  Maybe the circumstances had contributed to that.  In fact, she
knew
they had.  Her mind replayed the memory of her running away in a continuous loop.  Taylor running towards her and past her as he ran for his brother and she, like a coward, ran for the car.  The shame of that cut deep. 
There was nothing you could have done,
she thought, but it did little to alleviate her guilt.

The sky darkened, and with it came a biting wind that rocked the boat gently, sending hypnotic ripples through the water.  She admonished herself for not having had the foresight to at least grab one of the sleeping bags.

Being able to see the car was a kind of torture.  Her little Ford Escort that had seen better days represented so many things at once; warmth, food, travel…a way out.  And now it sat at a strange angle, utterly useless.

By seven-thirty, night had descended.  The sky was clear and full of stars. 
Funny,
she thought,
how you start to appreciate things after it’s too late.

The starlight provided enough ambient light for her to see the rabid things hovering at the water’s edge.  She knew they would wait.  She had once had a cat that would keep a vigil for hours outside a small space between the kitchen cabinets and the stove because it had seen a mouse scurry into it. 

She hugged herself.  The wind had died down, but it was still cold and her breath hung on the air. 

The car might as well have been a million miles away.  It was a fossil now; the corpse of a prehistoric insect.  But there was food and warmth still tucked away inside of it.  She could envision the sleeping bags stacked on one side of the backseat and the box of food sitting on the floorboard.

If this is happening all over the planet, that car might sit there forever.

Tina didn’t notice the subtle change; oblivious to the moment her resignation set in.  The Escort was far away, and any plans of escape left her as she stared into the lake, hypnotized by the reflection of the stars and the way they moved in the gently rippling water.  She stared at them and thought they was beautiful.  She pushed her survival instincts far back in her mind until the feeling was something she could only glimpse now and then.  Doing that gave her a remarkable sense of peace.  Giving up made it all easier somehow.

Escape.  It felt like she had departed her own body; that suddenly, she had gained an aerial view of the situation, soaring high above as she looked down on the group of rabid things which stood silently and motionlessly along the shore.  As time passed, more of them trickled in, joining the others.

And she saw the lone girl in a boat drifting out to the center of the lake.

How long could she last out here in the cold and without food?  The thought was a fleeting one. 

Tina stared into the rippling water.  She thought she could go on staring at it forever.