The Rabid: Rise (13 page)

Katia doesn’t say shit. She just acts. She steps to Heath with an impressive side kick, right to the gut, doubling him over. Before she can plant an elbow in his spine, the guy to his left drops her with a blow to the side of the head. She lands beside me, blinking rapidly, and trying to hold onto consciousness. I want to comfort her. To ask her if she’s okay. But I haven’t caught my breath yet. I’m still too busy rolling side to side and hugging myself.

“You want some too?” Heath turns on Tyrell, limping, trying to shake off the pain from Katia’s boot heel.

Tyrell doesn’t say anything, just looks away, and keeps his hands raised. He’s a fucking coward. A really smart fucking coward.

“Listen man,” I flex my jaw back and forth, trying to work some of the feeling back into it, “I think we’re on the same side.”

“Katia!” Ruiz comes up to his knees and starts crawling towards us. “Sis, are you...”

Will hammers him between the shoulders and sends him sprawling to his face once more.

“Ruiz, chill, she’s fine. Okay, I’m with her. She’s fine. Stay down!”

“Listen to your friend, Ruiz,
” Heath snickers. “We’ll shoot you in the gut and let you bleed out slow and painful. Will loves that shit. Gets him hard.”

“Listen to me, okay, just one second,” I say, trying to steer us back on course before the situation veer
s too far off the tracks. “We came here for the guns. Now, I’m guessing, since there isn’t a gun or bullet in sight that you guys came here for the same thing.”

“You’ve got a future as a detective,
lemme tell ya.” A chorus of laughter joins Heath.

“My point is, first come, first served. You guys beat us here. Take the shit, just let us go. We’ve got no love for the guys you killed, we were planning on doing it ourselves. Not with all of the theatrics, mind you, but, nevertheless, they’d be dead.”
There’s a tickle on my face. I sniff and wipe a thin line of blood away with the back of my hand.

Heath nods. “Yeah, we came here for the guns. Also came here for the trucks, but one
of those assholes decided to start chunking grenades.”

“Yeah, they’ll do that.”

“Here’s the problem.” Heath starts pacing back and forth, dictating his words with one hand. “My boys and I, we’re living shelter to shelter and hand-to-mouth. Now, I can’t help but notice you folks have some rather nice hardware. You’re rather clean. Your clothes are fresh. If I didn’t know better, I’d say ya’ll have got the hook-up, am I right?”

Ruiz beats me to the punch. “No hook-up here, brother. We’re survivors, just making our way down the road, just like you.”

Heath shakes his head. “Except, you’re not just like me. No, not at all.” He steps from me and over to Katia, staring down at her, examining her as she rolls to her back and attempts to shake away the cobwebs. “Where is it?”

“Where’s what?” I ask.

“Your home. Your base. Wherever the fuck you’re staying. Where is it located?”

“
Listen, bro, we don’t have a permanent locale. We’re transient, just like you,” Ruiz groans.

Heath presses the barrel of his rifle against the side of
Katia’s knee. “You get one strike. This isn’t a ball game and I’m not a patient man. You won’t get another.”

“Hang the fuck on...”

Will slams a boot down into the center of Ruiz’s back, forcing the air out of him and pinning him in place.

“Dude, point it at me. Okay? Point that shit at me.” I sit up on my butt, keeping my hands in the open. I don’t want to provoke him, but seeing that rifle aimed at Katia...

Heath swings his free hand behind his back and returns with a black pistol. “No worries, I’ve got one for each of you.” He drops the hammer. “Last fucking chance! Where are you staying?”

“Listen...bro...” Ruiz gasps, struggling to catch his breath beneath the boot
of the three-hundred pound baby “...we...don’t...”

“Wrong answer.
” Heath swings the handgun across his right arm and fires twice, blowing Tyrell’s kneecaps off and sending him plunging to the ground.

His screams are unbearable. He rocks back and forth, clutching at the bloody holes where his knees used to be. Tears of agony drip steadily from the corners of his eyes, pinched shut against the searing pain.

“You sonofabitch!” I tense up, my fingernails digging into the concrete.

Ruiz drops his forehead to the ground, shaking from head to toe, overwhelmed by the thirst for blood.

“Now,” Heath bends down and presses the scalding barrel right between my eyes, “hopefully that answers all the questions you have regarding how serious I am. Choose your next words very carefully.”

The blood comes first. At least that’s how it seems to me. I know
that, in reality, before there can be blood the bullet has to be fired. But by the time I register the gunshot, Heath is already stumbling backwards clutching his stomach and the back spray from the impact is sliding down my face like raindrops on a window. After that, it’s anarchy. Bullets flying overhead. Ripping apart the bodies of Heath’s mates and destroying what is left of the bullet riddled store front. I recognize the dull thrum of the .50. Will is cut directly in half. His torso spins one way and his legs go the other, leaving his entrails to slosh against the ground in a wet fleshy pile of pink and gray mess. 

It’s over as quickly as it started.

I roll over to Katia. There’s a line of blood running from her scalp, behind her ear, and down her neck.

“Are you okay, babe?” I prop her up in my lap, brushing her hair back
, checking her for any other wounds.

Her eyes flicker.

“C’mon, talk to me.”

She coughs
, smiles and opens her eyes. “You called me
babe.”

I smile back. The bodies, the blood, and the caustic smell of gunpowder suddenly
fade into the background. “I’ll have to work on pet names.”

She shakes her head lightly, cringing a bit
at the motion. “No, it’s fine. I like it.”

“You do?”

“I love it actually.”

Ruiz scrambles onto his knees and rolls behind the gas pump to retrieve his rifle. “It’s our guys,” he announces. A Humvee rolls up beside the mutilated body of Will. I don’t recognize the gunner.
He smiles down at me and winks, smoke still rolling off the barrel of the enormous killing machine he’s perched behind.

A burst of automatic gunfire cuts through the air and the bullets spark off the roof of the Humvee, causing the gunner to drop back into his rabbit hole while raising the barrel of the
mounted machine gun and firing blindly towards the convenience store roof.

“Shooter o
n the roof! Active shooter still on the roof!” Ruiz slides from behind cover and returns fire. Three quick trigger pulls.

Fuck! I’d forgotten about that guy. Katia is in no position to move. Tyrell is in so much torment I don’t know if he can hear a damn thing. If he can
, he certainly doesn’t give a shit. He’s just clutching at his knees with bloody hands and seesawing back and forth, groaning.

“Cover the roof!” Ruiz yells to the guy behind the .5
0.

The man springs back up
from his hole, takes his place behind the .50, and without missing a beat, starts laying into the roof with the high caliber rounds, shredding the wood and sending explosions of plaster springing up into the air and raining down onto the tops of our heads.

Ruiz runs beneath the hailstorm of debris to the corner of the store, cursing wildly. He checks his sightlines and is about to cross to the back of the store when a very familiar voice ca
lls out from above us.

“Stop shooting! Stop shooting!” the voice screams.

Bethany!

“Stop, stop, cease fire!” I yell, signaling the gunner.

Ruiz backs up, his gun aimed towards the voice overhead.

“Bethany?”

A head of tangled black hair and plaster slowly emerges from behind the lip of the roof. She has her hands raised above her head, one of them clutches her
katana
, and the blade is stained red. There is also a splash of blood dotting her blue bubble jacket.

“Are you hurt?” I’m a little frantic, I admit. There’s blood all over my sister. Part of me wants to sling Katia to the ground and run up there to check on her.

She shakes her head, rattled. Her lips are quivering. “It’s all from him. I killed him...I think.” She wants to cry. To throw up.

With one thrust
, the blade had lost its glamour.

“Get down here girlie,” Ruiz says, lowering his rifle. “Come on over to the ladder, I’ll help
you get down.”

By the time Bethany makes her way around the
building, Katia is up on her feet, wobbly, but moving under her own power. Two more men with long-range sniper rifles have approached the scene and are over by the Humvee chatting it up with the gunner, looking rather pleased with themselves. I run up to Bethany, grab the sword from her, and toss it to the ground. I open her coat and start checking her for wounds.

“Tim, I’m fine. Back off a bit. I’m just shaken up.”

“Yeah, well, that makes two of us.” I step back, but not before brushing some of the plaster from her hair.

“Hey, can you guys bring the med kit over,” Ruiz calls to the men by the Humvee. He’s
kneeling down next to Tyrell, trying to appraise the extent of his wounds.

“What are you doing here? How the hell did you find us?” I ask. I’m trying to keep the edge out of my voice. After all, she just helped save our ass
es.

“Me,” Katia says, moving up beside us, still rubbing at her head. “I told Bethany and some others where we’d be. I told them to give us
a head start and then to move out after us. I told you, I didn’t like the idea of going at this with such a small group.”

Katia. Of course. Should I be pissed? She just put my sister in the middle of a shootout. In the middle of this freak-show of decapitated heads and eviscerated bodies. Who am I though, right? Didn’t I once say there’s no room for boys in this fight?

No children. No adults.

Just survivors.

Survive or die,
right?

There are no lines anymore
. Innocence no longer exists. Trying to hold the blindfold to her eyes in the middle of all this shit, well, it’s a foolish errand. I should just be thankful that she came out on top. Thankful that Katia trained her right and thought two steps ahead. Thankful that the fat baby, Will, isn’t jerking off on my decapitated head.

There’s a
throaty growl over near the Humvee.

Two Rabid are approaching from the other side of the store
, probably attracted by the gunshots.

The man on the .50 adjusts his sights as one of the snipers posts up on the hood.

“No,” Katia says, as she calmly approaches, “don’t make the racket and waste the ammo.” She doesn’t get fancy about it this time. She windmills her swords around twice to loosen her arms up and walks directly into their path. They charge her. She buries a blade in the head of the one on the left and then gives him a quick kick in the side, dislodging her blade and sending him sprawling onto the grass, dead for good. The second kill goes just as smoothly as the first. She takes off half an arm as it grasps for her with long dirty claws and brings the other sword around to cleave the head in two.

She walks back to me as calmly as she’d walked away
, scraping the filth from her blades with the bottom of her boots before sheathing them.

“Good call
on the backup, sis,” Ruiz says, walking up behind Katia and wrapping his arms around her, while the two snipers continue tending to Tyrell’s knees.

“Thanks.” She smiles weakly.
“We probably need to get the hell out of here before more Rabid show.”

There’s a cough and a gurgle
near the storefront.

We all turn at the same time.

It’s Heath, clutching his stomach as a circle of blood spreads out beneath him, thick and dark, like a bucket of spilled paint. It builds in his mouth and exits violently with each cough and spasm, popping up into the air like a geyser before coming back down and speckling his face.

“Jesus,
sonofabitch is still alive,” Ruiz says, moving towards him ever so slowly. “Must have taken a round from one of the snipers. The .50 would have split his demented ass in half.”

“Yeah,” I respond, as if I have a clue.

Ruiz levels his sidearm at Heaths head. A grim look on his face. Intent on killing. On a little payback.

Bethany turns into me, burying her face against my stomach.

“Hey,” Katia grabs Ruiz by the arm and pushes the gun off target, “it’s not worth the bullet. Let him bleed out.”

Ruiz reluctantly holsters his weapon and steps past Heath and over the broken glass and splintered wood of the demolished storefront.
He peers into the darkened space and removes a tactical flashlight from his vest, clenching it with one fist beside his head and sliding the beam from side to side, illuminating the fallen shelves, scattered canned goods, and collapsed roof tiles.