The Rabid: Fall (7 page)

“Should be here in the next few hours.”

“Good, I want to hear it.”

***

Citizens of this great nation, if you are out there and listening to my voice, there is hope. We have always been a resilient people…a resourceful people, and that resilience and resourcefulness has led us to this moment, the moment where we, the sons and daughters of America, rise up from the ashes, to rebuild this great nation once more. Come to Washington, D.C., to the Hothfield Village Complex. We’ve got food, water, shelter, and security. Come as you are, bring what you can, and join your fellow Americans in taking back what is ours. Travel safe, God be with you.

All three of us are gathered around the desk as the radio goes silent.

“Is it the same message every night?” I ask.

Martha thinks for a minute. “You know, it’s not, actually. He switches words up here and there.”

“Alright, so it’s a live broadcast, which means he can’t be in D.C.”

“Why not?” Katia asks.

Martha fields the question. “I wouldn’t get the reception. D.C. is too far. This thing, at its best, has only done a hundred miles.”

“So what are you saying, Tim, you think it’s bullshit?”

I walk to one of the observation windows, the heels of my boots licking hard at the wooden floor. “Nah, not saying that at all. I think he’s being downright honest. He’s probably a scout. They may have guys like him scattered all over, putting the calls out for survivors; that’d be my best guess.” There’s a fire twinkling on the horizon. It’s small. Controlled. Perhaps they are survivors on the road to DC.

“What if it’s a trap?” Katia asks.

“I don’t think it’s a trap, my dear.” Martha falls back into her chair, slapping her hands down on her knees. “Word travels down the line. Someone would have put a warning out over the air. There’s something up there, something legitimate, and folks are flocking to it.”

“So why haven’t you flocked?” Katia asks.

“Me?” Martha seems surprised by the question. “I’m too old to be tearing up my roots. This is my home. I was born here and I reckon I’ll die here. If they manage to get all this straightened out before I take my last breath, they’ll be needing someone that knows this town, someone to help build it back up; I reckon I’d like that someone to be me.But y’all should go.” Martha’s finger slides back-and-forth between us. “Hopefully, you’ll find who you’re looking for, settle whatever score needs settling, and you’ll be able to start over.”

“Sounds like a good plan to me.” Katia takes my hand.

“That it does.”

Martha watches us fondly for a few moments. “I suppose y’all will be passing the night here?”

“If that’s alright with you, we’d definitely appreciate it,” I say.

“Sure, got plenty of space. But before we do anything else, we need to get that bandage on your shoulder changed out.”

I look down and notice I’ve bled through.

***

Martha offers to make dinner for all of us. She’s got a fold-out table on the second floor, surrounded by plastic chairs. She sets up a portable one-burner stove in the middle of the table, breaks out a small pot, fills it with a couple cans of ravioli, and gets to cooking.

“It runs off butane. Seeing as how I ain’t got more of the stuff, I only break this baby out on special occasions.”

“This is a special occasion?” Katia scoots her chair close to mine and sets her hand in my lap.

“A group of friendly survivors, folks that ain’t trying to slit my neck and take what’s mine, yeah, that calls for a little celebration.”

Sonny is at one end of the table. “I must say, it smells downright delicious.”

Martha scoops the final can of ravioli into the pot; there’s a wet plop and a little explosion of meat sauce. “There’s nothing like the little aftertaste of metal that sits at the back of your throat after each bite.” Martha collects the cans and deposits them into a white grocery bag. She ties it off and throws it in the corner. “I went through all the good stuff pretty quick. I had a bag of frozen chicken that had to be polished off before it went bad—spent a full evening grilling it over a fire in the parking lot. I also had myself a few tins of chocolate-covered cashews, a key lime pie, and a pineapple upside-down cake. It was some good eating in the early days.”

“Sounds like you had a lot of special occasions.” My mouth is watering now.

“Yeah, there were some. I’ve always been a dessert first kinda girl.” She smacks her lips as if she can still taste the sugar. “I celebrated after I cleared this place out; took down half a pie that night. Gobbled down some more after I got done creating that Passion Play in the parking lot. I polished off most of the turnover cake after the first conversation over the CB. And when I killed my first one, when my friends were still alive, I took down a bag of jerky. I believe in that. I believe in celebrating the good moments. I think it makes them stick longer and stronger, gives you a weapon to wield when the dark times come knocking.”

“You know how I celebrated taking down my first one?” Sonny sits forward, palms flat on the table. “I shit myself. Guy I worked with came at me in the garage and it was just a reflex. I stabbed him right through the forehead with a screwdriver and then I fell down and shit myself. I drove home like that…or at least I tried to. Roads were all clogged. People were turning Rabid. Getting shot up. I sat in my own shit for a good four hours.” Sonny releases a long sigh, as if a great weight has just been lifted from his shoulders.

It’s too much.

All three of us break into hysterical laughter.

Martha is louder than me and Katia combined. “Sonny, you are something; my word. Can I keep him, please?”

Katia wipes her eyes with her knuckles. “Be my guest, we’re not using him.”

“That’s cold, y’all. Real cold.” Sonny is sitting there now, looking all po-faced.

“Hey, bubba, if you can’t laugh at yourself, who can ya laugh at?” I toast him with a water bottle and give his foot a little kick under the table.

“Yeah, I suppose.” Our merriment gets the best of him and soon he’s chuckling too, regaling us with further stories of his survival misadventures.

Before long, the ravioli is boiling and Martha is serving it to us in Styrofoam bowls. “Not exactly biodegradable, but the planet is already screwed, way I see it.”

“Ma’am, right now, food is food; serve it to me in a Styrofoam bowl or in the hollowed-out horn of a Black Rhino, I don’t care, I’m eating it.” I grab a plastic fork and start digging in, scalding my tongue on the first bite.

“So, how is it?” Martha asks, blowing the steam off a forkful of sagging, slimy looking pasta.

“Friggin’ exquisite.” Katia’s cheeks are stuffed like a chipmunk.

“Well, I’m glad you approve.” Martha licks up some sauce, nods with approval, takes a forkful of ravioli into her mouth, and swallows it in a single bite.

I set my fork down. “This is nice, gotta say. I didn’t think I’d ever be sitting around a table again with good folks, sharing a good meal.”

“This was a rarity for me before the world died.” Katia takes a pull of water. “We ate in front of the television or standing up at the counter. The sit down at the table, share your day stuff, didn’t happen in my house.”

Martha smacks her lips with disapproval. “You kids…you know, that was really the beginning of the end.” She scolds the three of us with a wagging fork. “That slow erosion of the family unit sent the whole damn ship sailing off course. You take away dinner as a family and then, slowly but surely, you lose sight of what the family is all about, the true value of it; it becomes easy to redefine.This country was dead long before the first monster popped its head up.”

“You know, Martha,” Katia sets her fork down and folds her hands, “you’re really showing your age right now.”

Martha laughs. “I suppose I’m the last of a dying breed.”

“I suppose we all are, in one way or another,” I say.

It isn’t long before the bowls are barren and yawns are traveling around the table.

“You gonna take first watch?” Sonny asks.

“Yeah, rest up, man.”

Sonny nods with relief and heads upstairs.

“You gonna join me, beautiful, or do you wanna catch some shut-eye?”

Katia drops her head against my shoulder. “I’ll keep you company for a bit, not quite ready to sleep.”

Martha is stacking the last of the dirty bowls and utensils.

“You want us to stick around and give you a hand?”

“Oh, no, definitely not. Don’t you worry about me.”

I stand and pop my back, rotating left and right. Pain shoots through my arm and I bring a hand up to my bandaged shoulder.

“I still feel downright awful about that.” Martha frowns.

“Don’t.” Katia steals my hat and sets it on her head. She’s been doing that a lot lately. “Tim needed a swift kick in the pants. He’s got a thing for playing the cowboy. No matter how much I tell him he needs to pull back on the reins, he insists on charging forward. Hopefully that buckshot puts a little stutter in his step.”

“Listen to your girl, Tim. She’s shooting you straight. There’s no more room for heroes in this world, only survivors.”

“I don’t know.” I try to steal the hat back from Katia, but she twirls up to her feet and shuffles backwards. I lack the energy to get up and chase her. “If everyone thought like that, we’d be plum out of luck. The heroes are the ones that pulled people out of the fire, the ones that got folks up on their feet and moving. I’m here because of a hero. His name was Bo, biggest asshole I’ve ever met, but he was a cowboy through and through, a genuine hero.”

“And where’s he at now?” Martha asks.

“He died saving me and my family.”

“Exactly, they die. And you know what happens to the folks they save? They usually end up dying too. Folks that need rescuing don’t know how to survive to begin with and that’s why they need a hero. So when the hero is no more, they’re no more.”

“You’re wrong, I’m still here.”

“Something tells me you were surviving long before Bo ever showed up.”

I think of Momma and Bethany, both of them now dead. Had they ever really learned to survive? Was I their hero? The only thing keeping them afloat? If I had been there beside them during the attack, would they still be alive?

Martha is standing behind me now. She gives me a pat on the back. “Looks like your girl is making off with your hat.”

Katia is standing at the top of the stairs, tipping the hat in my direction, fingers pinching the brim.

“You better catch her. I’m gonna retire for the evening.”

I jump up from my seat and Katia squeals, disappearing down the steps.

“Y’all light any fires, make sure to keep the glow low!” Martha calls after me.

***

Katia and I sit in the parking lot, surrounded by crucified Rabid. We tend a small fire of embers, following Martha’s instructions to
keep the glow low
.

“I’m conflicted.”

“About what?” Katia stirs the embers and sends a shower of sparks darting towards the sky.

“About this whole thing with the refugee camp…or settlement, or whatever it is.”

“You don’t wanna go?”

I shake my head. “It’s not that at all. I want to go. It’s the best shot we’ve got at finding your brother and getting at the sonsofbitches behind all this, the sonsofbitches responsible for the death of my mom and sister. It’s more about what do we do when we get there?”

“But you already said, we—”

“I know what I said; strike the roots. That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Then what?”

“Do we really want to tear it down? If Martha is right and people are flowing in there, if this place is offering food, shelter, and security to so many survivors, who are we to take that away? Like I said, they’re not going to want to have their boat rocked. What gives us the right to rock it? Because we’ve got a personal problem with the captain?”

She pulls the stick out of the fire. The end is now a deep, brilliant orange. She holds it in front of her face, turning it slowly. “It’s the Star Trek dilemma.”

“What is?”

She drops the stick back in the fire and brushes her hands off on her pants.“What you just said, who are we to put so many at risk for the sake of our vendetta…for the sake of one person. It’s the Star Trek dilemma, you know, the whole thing about the needs of the few versus the needs of the many?”

“Never watched it.”

“Neither did I, but I’ve heard the saying enough times. It hurts to say this, because I want at these bastards so bad, but you’re right, what gives us the right to go in and do something like that?” She’s rocking back and forth, hands pinched between her knees, sniffling.

“Not a damn thing. It kills me too, believe me. All I can see is my sister, dead under that tree. But if we go in there like that and we put all those people at risk, we’re no better than them. They started all this out of a selfish desire to test some weapon. Who it was going to hurt was of little concern to them. If we go in there and burn it down, we become them, putting innocent people at risk for our own ends. Maybe the way we make all of this right isn’t by burning it down, but by starting over again.”