The Rabid: Rise (10 page)

14

“So, lemme guess, you’re going to see Katia?” Bethany is leaning against the bathroom door, watching me with an amused grin as I fuss with my hat in the mirror.

I feel a little flush of embarrassment. “We’re
gonna chill for a bit, yeah. Maybe walk around the lake.” I give her quick glance. “If that’s okay with you, ma’am?”

She shrugs. “I’m not your keeper. I got my own friends.”

“Oh, do you?” I run my hands across the front of my V-neck tee. I need an ironing board and some starch. My jeans are shameful. At least my belt buckle hasn’t lost its shine.

Bethany nods, twirling from the doorway and back into the bedroom, her voice bouncing off the walls of the empty apartment. “Yep, Lilly and Elise.”

At least they’re girls. Playmates rather than love interests. “Cool, where’d you meet them?”

“At the playground yesterday. We’re probably going to meet up there tonight.”

I stop fidgeting with my appearance, reaching a happy place somewhere between
reluctant acceptance
and
satisfaction.
“Alright.” I give her a quick hug. “Don’t break your neck in the dark,” I call back over my shoulder as I head for the front door.

***

Katia looks beautifu
l standing in the moonlight. She is leaning on the top of the gate, looking out over the surface of the sparkling lake. She’s wrapped loosely in a black shawl. She’s wearing her usual cropped black top that ends just below her ribcage and a pair of dark hip hugger blue jeans that end at the middle of her ankles. The black pumps and the odd absence of her swords are the real surprise.

She turns at my approach, her hair falling across one side of her face and concealing her features as if we’re about to partner for a dance at some midnight masquerade ball.

“You look...beautiful.” My nerves still tingle a bit at the sight of her.

She skips forward a step and drapes her arms around my neck. “You’re pretty
fuckin’ hot yourself. Still prefer your hair over the hat though.”

“Ah, well, you
know, compromises.”

She smiles and wiggles her head as if she’s juggling the idea. “Oh, alright, I suppose.”
She kisses me full on without inhibition, her grip around my neck tightening.

I’ve never known a feeling like this. How strange that I had to come to the
end of the world to find it. What a twisted fate, while everything is ending I feel that, somehow, my life is just beginning.

“Let us walk
,” she says, falling in beside me and intertwining her fingers with mine.

There aren’t many people out. There’s a noticeable chill in the air.
Everyone is inside, wrapped up in their blankets, trying to get used to their new normal. If they’re lucky they’ve got someone beside them to help them smooth the transition. Cast off light from kerosene lanterns and undulating candlelight streams out through curtains and floor to ceiling blinds, framing the movement beyond in long dramatic shadows.

“
Ya’ll ever get any snow here?” I ask as we move up a small incline and around our first bend.

“Yeah, sometimes. It’s always pretty weak though, you know? It’s usually a layer of dust, at best. But the way the city
shuts down, and the schools close their doors, you’d think it was a full blown blizzard.”

“Sounds like Georgia,” I say, my heart suddenly torn; one half aching for the comforts of home
, while the other half dances a jig over all that is Katia. “A little ice on the ground and everything comes to a screaming halt.”

She laughs. “Oh boy, your people would not last in Indiana.”

“My people?”

“You Georgia folk,
” she says, giving the down home Georgia twang I’d come to know so well her best shot.

“Not quite there yet.” I pull her into me and kiss the top her head.

I feel her shrug beneath me. “What can I say, I tried.”

“So what’s in Indiana?”

“Family,” she answers flatly, “I stayed with them one winter break, this was like, two or three years ago, I think.” Something
KERPLUNKS
in the water to our right. Katia freezes for a moment and stands on the tips of her toes, gazing out over the sparkling blackness as if the culprit might reveal itself. It doesn’t. “Probably a turtle,” she mumbles to herself, “anyway, so when I’m there, we get this crazy ass blizzard. I’m talking snow drifts up to your crotch.” She demonstrates crotch level on herself using the blade of one hand as a measuring stick. “So I’m thinking, everything is going to come to a standstill, but, nope, it doesn’t. Everyone still had to go to work. The city was still rocking and rolling. They’d just push that powdery shit aside. It was scenery to them. Fuckin’ miserable for me though.”

“That sucks though, at least when you’re in school. I always got excited whenever
it’d start snowing because that meant school was cancelled.”

“Oh, no, I a
gree. Come December and January, I lived for the annual Texas winter freakouts.”

“But, I guess, if you’re somewhere up
north, you can’t really afford to shut everything down whenever a snowflake falls.”

“Yep,” she says, sighs, and drops her head against me, using me as a sort of crutch as we make our way around the lake.

The world grows silent around us. We don’t speak. I don’t feel the need. It’s a perfect silence. The kind where you already know what the other person is thinking and there’s no reason for you to ruin it by trying to put it into words.

A tiny droplet of water plop
s against the side of my neck, followed by another, then a few more on my face. It’s not long before the rain is falling heavy on every side of us. Katia screeches and starts pulling me rapidly up the path with her, causing me to fall into a clumsy run, as my boot heels struggle to keep traction against the slick pavement. I’m amazed she’s able to move with such sure-footedness in those pumps. The girl is a natural. She leads us behind the clubhouse and beneath low hanging branches bearing dark red berries in clusters that are now dripping with rainwater.

“Here,” Katia announces, guiding us
up a small set of steps and beneath the shelter of a small gazebo.

She
is laughing as we stumble inside. She throws her head back and wipes the water from her face with both hands.

I take my hat off and begin shaking the excess water loose
against the slatted floor.

Katia grabs my arm when I go to place it back on my head.
“Leave that shit off,” she takes it from my hands and tosses it onto the built-in bench running a half circle against the lattice wall.

We stand there, facing each other in the darkness. The rain pitter-patter
s against the roof and drowns out the distant conversation of the perimeter guards. It’s just us. Here and now. Time has come to a halt. There’s no past. No future. The sun will not rise. The moon will remain. This night is forever ours.

She pulls something from her pocket.

“What’s that?”

“An iPod I found
on one of our outings. They let me charge it off cigarette lighters over in mechanical sometimes.” The screen illuminates her face as she shuffles through the available songs. She quickly finds what she is looking for and sets the device down next to my hat. “It’s not exactly the library of tunes I’d have chosen. A lot of it sucks ass if I’m being honest, but there’s some good stuff.”

An airy ballad with soaring strings fills the space around us as Katia closes in on me, tilting her head, and draping her hands up around my
neck.

She kisses me, once.

Softly.

Slowly.

I lose myself in her e
yes. They glow like the embers in a desert fire, signaling me towards shelter and safety. I wrap my arms around her lower back and hold her to me.

“Dance with me?”
She stares up at me with an uncommon insecurity, her chin on my chest, her voice cracking.

“Of course.” I smile. “I thought you’d never ask.”

She steps up onto my feet and sets her cheek against my chest, her head just beneath my chin, and we dance. We turn slow circles around the center of the gazebo as the sound of the rain and the music pushes us closer together.

“It’s crazy isn’t it?” Her breath is hot against my neck.

“What?”

“Us, this...finding each other. Where the hell have you been?”

“You wouldn’t have given me the time of day.”

She’s quiet for a moment as she adjusts her feet and strengthens her grip. “I don’t know, maybe not with that
ugly ass hat.” She smiles up at me. “Maybe I would have, you never know. Dealing with the bad boys gets old. You get cheated on enough, pushed around enough...”

“So it’s a last resort thing, huh?”

She bops me lightly on the back of the head. “Stop it with that shit, you know that’s not what I meant.”

I kiss her forehead. “I know, I’m just teasing you.”

“Don’t hurt me, Tim.” She holds onto me, tightly, almost desperately, as if she’s drifting and I’m her lifeline. “Please, that’s all I ask.”

“Katia, I’ll never let anything happen to you. I promise.”

I’ve really got to stop making promises I know I can’t keep.

15

The perimeter guards wave us through the gate and quickly slam it home at our bumper. The sun is just breaking the horizon as we set out. Just the four of us: Ruiz, Katia, myself, and Tyrell on the .50.

The scouts had come through. They’d found a checkpoint five miles out.
They even got close enough to do a bit of head counting.

Our opponents?

Five men. Two on foot with high caliber rifles, one man covering the angles on a tripod mounted LMG, and two snipers; one on the roof of a nearby gas station and the other on a hotel balcony, both aiming down into the camp.

A regular kill zone.

I recognize the tactic. They are slicing the pie. Just the way Bo had taught.

The
scouts couldn’t get close enough to see any potential supplies. All they saw were two Humvees and a couple of tents and boxes.

“There’s ammo there
, somewhere. Mark my fucking words. Worse comes to worse, we’ve got ourselves another LMG, right? We can never have too many of those,” Ruiz had said as we were loading up. 

We
packed five overnight bags filled with extra rations and more than our share of ammunition.

If we get stuck
, if the tides turn against us, we’re ready for it.

Katia is driving and Ruiz is riding shotgun. I’m in back sitting within kissing distance of Tyrell’s
ass.

“If w
e get swarmed or something, don’t go wasting your ammunition,” Ruiz says to me while scanning the road ahead, “we’ll just run through em’.”

“You want me to pass that up to Tyrell?”

“No, he’s been out on enough of these. He knows the drill, but if he gets pegged by a bullet, or if some Biter takes a lucky leap and rips him in half that .50 is your responsibility. No bullshit. You knock him aside and you get up there as quick as you can.”

I nod.

No pressure
.

Katia navigates a familiar path. Turning inside, outside, and around cars that have been pushed aside during previous treks beyond the gate. The sun is masked by cloud. Everything seems pale and
gray. Blackbirds crowd the street before us, pecking at the pavement. They scatter at our approach, throwing a thick black curtain across the windshield that disappears as quickly as it appears, leaving behind only dust and feathers.

“Okay, you’re
gonna hang a right up here at Park.” Ruiz taps a finger against the glass. “They said it’s all the way down, just before the Tollway. Stop a mile or so out and we’re gonna hike in.” Ruiz shakes his head. “Man, these bastards really are getting closer.”

“The grid is getting smaller,
” Katia says.

“Looks that way.”

Park Road is all lampposts and big houses, big names and big money. We’d gone through a neighborhood like this once before; me, Momma, Bethany, and Lee. Lee had had the big idea of looting the houses for supplies. I’d shot it down at the time, afraid of catching a bullet. Twisted up at the idea of invading someone else’s world. But, after desperately climbing through so many windows and back doors with Bethany these last few weeks, I can say with confidence that Lee had it right. You want to survive, you’ve got to kick down some doors. You’ve got to invade some worlds and create some victims. It’s that or become the victim. It’s messed up. But, these are messed up times.

“We’ve gone through most of these
places, house by house, room by room.” Ruiz is staring out the window too, watching the neighborhood blink by like a slide show and apparently reading my thoughts. “It’s amazing, really, how much shit those people accumulated. What’s even more amazing is how little of it is actually useful.”

“I had that exact same thought back at the storage lockers.”

“I mean, yeah, I’m sure it served them well when the corner Barista was still serving soy lattes and the lawn guys were still showing up to do their chores for them, but useful for long-term survival? Forget about it. You could shove a candle up their ass and hand them a book of matches and they’d still be lost in the dark.”

I can
’t help but chuckle. “Funny how the deck reshuffled. Now we’re the one-percent.”

“
For real though, I think it’s the rough and tumble, you know, folks like us that came up from shit that were really able to grab this thing by the horns and wrangle it. I mean, don’t take this the wrong way, Tim, it’s actually a compliment, but, you seem like a guy that wasn’t born on the top rung of the ladder. Your manners are intact. You have zero expectations. You take shit as it comes at you. Am I right?” Ruiz’s eyes remain glued to the road as he speaks.

“My roots are definitely humble. We lived in the same three bedroom house most of my life. It was a very
one-horse kind of town. Sure, we had some folks with their money, running around, flashing it, all fancy. But for the most part, everyone got up and put their jeans on one leg at a time, just happy to have another day on earth.”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about. Me and Katia, well, we weren’t quite as blessed early on.” He pats Katia on the knee. “Parents were immigrants, you know? Took
a while before poppa started bringing home the bacon. Didn’t see our first house till I was thirteen. But still, we came up. Not like these motherfuckers here. They never learned how to survive. We did. Look who’s still here.”

“Damn straight,
” I agree.

Ruiz turns in his seat. “Here, before I forget.” Ruiz hands me a small
white bottle with a half torn green label. “Wire pulling gel.”

“What for?”

“That suppressor.”

I’ve got a s
uppressed M4A1 Carbine sitting across my lap and an HK USP Tactical .45 holstered to my side with its own suppressor tucked away in my hip pocket.

“Don’t use it
on the rifle suppressor. Won’t do shit for the volume anyway. Dab some on the bottom of that HK suppressor. Just a dab. Shake that shit down in there before you screw it on. She’ll whisper like a lover. It’ll only last you a mag or so, keep that in mind.”

“You need it back?”

“Nah, hold onto it. I’ve got plenty.”

“
Hey, eyes up, we got Rabid at our two o’ clock,” Tyrell alerts us.

Ruiz
swings around, tightens his grip on the rifle strapped against his chest, and turns slightly in his seat. I do the same. I curl my knee against the door, crack the window slightly, and place the muzzle of my suppressed M4A1 carbine across the top of the glass.

There’s a small group of them wandering the parking lot of the neighborhood country club.
They wear tattered blazers and cut off ties that dangle precariously around their necks.

“It’s a little chilly for a round of
golf,” I say.

We pass them by slowly
, navigating cramped quarters, bumping across torn off car doors, fallen lampposts, and decaying bodies.

“No one shoot unless you have to. Let’s conserve the ammo and
keep ourselves under the radar,” Ruiz says as he tracks the group through the red dot sight of his rifle.

We relax once they’re in the rearview, dropping our sights and scooting back in our seats.

“We shouldn’t be too far out. That was Silverlake...so it should be...” Ruiz trails off, checking the green street placards perched above the stop signs. “Right there, River Chase. He said River Chase is about a mile out from where they’re at. Pull it up on the sidewalk.”

Katia does as instructed.
We can barely feel anything as we take the curb thanks to the 37-inch military grade tires and the 17-inch ground clearance provided by the suspension system.

At
least, I learned a thing or two about military transport from my brief time in mechanical.

She brings us to a stop on a stretch of withering grass; pale green with deep ruts cut by tires and the shoes of fleeing survivors
.

Tyrell drops down from his post. He takes up his rifle, a Colt 9mm Submachine Gun, and checks the magazine before reloading
it and strapping it across his chest, just like Ruiz.

Ruiz had offered me a rifle a sling
back at the complex.

They’re good for transitions
, he’d said.

I
’d tried one on. I just didn’t like the feel. If my mag goes empty, I’m either going to reload, if I’ve got the window, or I’m going to throw down and go for my secondary.

Fuck the suppressor.

“Alright, let’s review the game plan.” Ruiz turns around in his seat, propping one foot beneath his thigh. “
We should be about a mile out. We’re going to cut back behind these mini-mansions. The scout said once we hit the other side of the neighborhood it’ll be a brick wall about six feet high, on the other side is a row of bushes we can use for some concealment and then we’ve got our checkpoint a few feet up the main road.”

“Sniper sees us coming
over that wall and we’re fucked,” Tyrell says.

Ruiz nods in agreement. “You’re right, but according to the
info we got, they should be facing away from us. The two guys on foot are facing our way, but, their line of sight should be blocked by the gas station.”

“Man, I hope they’re right.”

“Well, they haven’t missed a beat yet.”

“Ther
e’s a first time for everything,” I comment offhandedly.

Ruiz looks at me like I just shit the bed. “Really? You trying to fuckin’ jinx us?”

“I...I wasn’t trying...”

“Fuck that, y
ou’re going over the wall first,” Tyrell says.

“Yep, I’ll even hoist you up myself
,” Ruiz agrees without hesitation.

“Sorry babe, you’re cute and all, but you just nominated yourself to run point.”
Her look is almost sympathetic.

Over the wall!

“It’s whatever, I’ll take the wall first,” I say, trying to play it off as if it’s no big thing. Like that time when I was a kid playing out by the tracks that ran near our house, it was Bethany, me, and a couple of her friends. There was this broken down old shack. The tin door looked like it had been slain in the spirit and had gotten stuck halfway between heaven and hell, just hanging there in the shadows. The two front windows were boarded up and spider webs and black mold filled in the gaps. The walls were rickety and termite ridden, bowing in the middle, threatening to send the roof plummeting down into the darkened interior.

“Who’s going in?” Bethany had whispered,
like there was something sinister watching us through the cracks, waiting for our next move.

I’d pulled the short straw.

It’s whatever!

It was the middle of summer, but
I shivered all the way up to that tin door. I kicked it, hard; knocking it out of the hands of whatever invisible force had been keeping it from falling. After all the buildup there had been nothing more than cobwebs and broken beer bottles inside.

We cleaned it out and made it a fort.

This time though...this time is different.

I know
what is on the other side of that wall.

Trained killers
with steady hands and loaded magazines.

“Alright, well, we got our point man. We got our gear. Let’s roll out.”

We walk, spread out, each of us covering a different sector as we step lightly across patchy front yards and work our way through, around, and over privacy fences.

“It’s all
house and no yard,” I say as we move around a boxy modern mini-mansion with a seashell paint job and blacked out windows and trim.

“What do you
expect; these people were all work and no play.” Ruiz takes the corner into the backyard, slow, leading the way with the muzzle of his rifle.

“They had some big ass houses though. I know I wouldn’t complain.” Tyrell
takes up the rear, carrying our rations and other supplies on his back.

“Nah, you’d still complain.” Katia
nudges him lightly as she moves into the backyard, swinging her swords in circles as she keeps her eyes up for potential threats. “Pretty quiet today, no biters, no bodies.”

“Ah, come on
, sis, now you’re fucking jinxing it.”

“Uh-oh, over the wall for you,
” I say.

I’m only half-
serious.

“Ha, fuck that.” She runs up to me and kisses me on the mouth and nose. “You’ve got the
gun,
not me.”

“Okay, I don’t need to see all that. Let’s keep moving.” Ruiz slides a hand between us.

Katia kisses him on the cheek playfully before slinking away.

Ruiz doesn’t say anything
, just huffs and goes back to scanning the yard.

Tyrell appears beside me. “So, you and big man’s sister, eh?”

“Yep.”

“Alright then
bruh, alright then!” He brushes me with his shoulder before moving on. “My nigga,” he chuckles.