Rabid Read online

  Rabid

  J. W. Bouchard

  Taylor and Carl Mitchell are brothers who have taken wildly divergent paths in life. But when a mysterious virus transforms most of the Earth’s population into bloodthirsty lunatics, they must learn to trust each other and work together in a dangerous new world where the slightest misstep could lead to the ultimate consequence.

  The brothers must face their innermost fears and confront loss as they try to survive the long journey home. But will anyone be there waiting for them?

  Sometimes there isn’t a happy ending.

  RABID

  By J.W. Bouchard

  For Josh Brown

  Who schooled me on bloodhounds

  “There are more dead people than living. And their numbers are increasing. The living are getting rarer.”

  – Eugene Ionesco, Rhinoceros

  “Death’s gang is bigger and tougher than anyone else’s. Always has been and always will be. Death’s the man.”

  – Michael Marshall, The Upright Man

  “No one can confidently say that he will still be living tomorrow.”

  - Euripides

  Chapter 1

  Crowd Control

  “The water will stop them. Take it!”

  Taylor handed Carl a spray bottle partially filled with water. “If they try to come close, spray them with it.”

  “Because they have rabies, right? They’re scared of water because of rabies. That’s what you said,” Carl said. He wielded the plastic spray bottle in both hands, pointing it at the mob in front of him as though he was getting ready to fire a gun.

  “I said it was like rabies.”

  Taylor also had a spray bottle. He squeezed the long trigger, sending a misty cloud of water at the thriving crowd of people. The mob would move back to avoid the cloud and then surge forward again after it had dissipated. The water in the bottles wouldn’t last forever. In fact, it wouldn’t last much longer at all. He stood with his back against Carl’s, suppressing the urge to scream. Something as simple as water. Something so simple yet, at this moment, in dangerously short supply.

  Carl said, “They’re trying to surround us.”

  “No shit. Keep spraying them.”

  And then what, he wondered. What advice would he have after the water was gone and the bottles were empty? His mind ran frantic, unable to form a single cohesive thought because they all collided together into useless randomness. They needed to find a way out. He needed to save Carl. And he needed to save himself.

  Beyond the mob, Taylor could see more of them coming out from between the buildings. It was like watching pests crawl out of cracks in a wall; like watching insects swarm. The wind picked up, and when he squeezed the trigger, the mist that spread from the nozzle was blown back into his face. Thank God we ran out of gas in a small town, he thought. It could have been so much worse. Carl had informed him on numerous occasions that he was the only remaining optimist left in the world, and although Taylor usually denied this, he supposed that anyone who could point out the bright side of things with a mob of crazies coming towards them had earned that title.

  The crowd was all spittle and gnashing teeth. The sound was like fifty people munching on Captain Crunch with their mouths open.

  Carl said, “I can’t keep this up much longer, bro. Water’s almost gone.” Carl’s voice was the high-pitched whine of a small child in hysterics.

  Taylor pulled his arm back just before one of the things in the mob was able to grab it. He sprayed a cloud of mist and took a step back.

  “Level with me,” Carl said. “We’re not going to make it out of this one are we? We’ve been through some real shit together, you and me, but this takes the cake. Remember when you rolled the Bronco when you were sixteen? I used to think that was some crazy shit. Not anymore.” Carl was almost shouting.

  “I don’t know, but I can tell you we’re not going to die standing here.” He removed one of his hands from the bottle and pointed to their right. “You see that building? The brownstone that’s kind of kitty-corner to us?”

  “Yeah, I see it.”

  “On my say, we’re going to make a run for it. I want you to head for that building. You don’t stop and you don’t look back.” The crowd had moved closer again and Taylor spritzed them with the water and they backed off a few feet. “Around it actually. I don’t see anything useful here, but maybe we’ll find something over there. If we have to, we’ll try to hole up in one of the buildings. You okay to run?”

  “Remember who was on the track team?”

  “You never let me forget it.”

  “The question is, can you keep up?”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Together, they started to shift to the right so that there was a cleaner opening in the mob in the direction they wanted to go. Taylor glanced at the brick building and tried to judge the distance. Had to be nearly a hundred yards; about a football field’s length away. Carl was fast enough. He believed that without a doubt. But he had close to forty pounds and four years on his younger brother, and he had never been on the track team. He had been on the football team one year in junior high and that had satisfied his interest in sports.

  “We gonna do this anytime soon?”

  Carl didn’t see it, but Taylor nodded. “I’ll count to three. On three, squeeze off a few sprays and then make a break for it.”

  The mob was closing in. Taylor felt a greedy hand grab the sleeve of his shirt. He sprayed the thing – Taylor figured it had to be a businessman judging by the suit and tie - and the man let go, clutching his face and screaming. You’d think it was acid in these things instead of water.

  “One other thing,” Taylor said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t wait for me. You got that? I don’t care if you leave me in the dust, but don’t you dare slow down. Or the last thing that’s going to happen before these things get us will be me kicking your ass.”

  “Promises,” Carl said and smiled. For a moment, he felt that familiar burst of adrenaline. The same feeling as when they had rolled the Bronco all those years ago; the same feeling he had had countless times when they were on one of their escapades. They were older, and those times were few and far between now, but this was one of them. For the first time in ten minutes, Carl thought they might just stand a chance. Not a great one, maybe not even a good one, but any chance was better than no chance. His father had once said, You never know until you try. This had been in response to Carl asking if he should try out for the wrestling team. Armed with his father’s simplistic wisdom, he had tried out and went all the way to State. In his mind, he could see his father’s face, and he judged the distance between where they now stood and the five story brownstone that appeared so very far away, and he imagined his father saying, “You never know until you try, Carl.”

  Chance was chance, hope was hope.

  “Just do what I say this one time,” Taylor said. “Okay?”

  “All right. I’ll wave at you when they’re eating your ass.”

  They were shoulder-to-shoulder, forming a right angle with their bodies, each of them misting the crowd that seemed to grow larger and larger by the second.

  Taylor shouted, “One!”

  Carl glanced at the remaining water in his bottle. Enough for five or six more squirts. Maybe more, maybe less.

  “Two!”

  Let this fucking work, Taylor thought.

  “Three!”

  Taylor squeezed the trigger on his bottle a final time and then turned and ran. Carl was slower off the mark, pausing to chuck his bottle at one of the things in the crowd and watching it glance off its head before hightailing it out of there. But after he started to run, he had passed his brother within several seconds.<
br />
  “Move your fat ass,” he said as he shot past Taylor.

  By the halfway point, Taylor was chugging air. That had always been one of his problems with running: he had never learned how to breathe right. He was okay for a few minutes, and then everything went to shit when he started gulping air. Despite the lack of oxygen, he kept going, pumping his legs, setting his sights on his brother’s back and making that his goal. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the crowd following them. Easily over a hundred of them. They were fast and untiring and he could feel their eyes boring into him as they came.

  Taylor picked up his pace, closing the gap. Carl looked back at him. Don’t slow down, he thought. Especially not for me.

  Carl reached the brownstone and kept going until he had rounded the corner. He slowed to a rapid walk, searching for something – anything - they could use. Where were all the cars? Had someone went to the trouble of hiding them all? He couldn’t recall seeing a single vehicle since they had walked into town.

  Taylor came around the corner and almost plowed into him. “Why are you walking?”

  “You said run to the brownstone and turn the corner. That’s what I did. You didn’t say what to do after that,” Carl said. “Not a fucking car in sight.”

  Taylor scanned the streets in disbelief. Carl was right. Not a car or truck or motorcycle in sight. Right about then he would have been happy to have found a bicycle. A pink bicycle with tassels coming out of the handgrips and a white basket that sat in front of the handlebars. It wouldn’t have mattered; even that would have been faster than running on foot.

  “Don’t waste your time,” Carl said. “You’re not going to find anything. I already told you, there’s nothing.”

  Taylor jogged along the back of the brownstone. There were two doors on the ass end of the building. Both of them locked.

  The first of the mob reached the brownstone, and Taylor said, “Follow me,” and began to run again. This time, they ran side-by-side, Carl asking him where exactly they were going.

  “I’m not sure. We’re going to keep checking buildings until we find one that’s unlocked. Short of finding a car with keys in it and gas in the tank, I’d say that’s our only option.”

  They took turns checking doors. At first, they followed the same street, but then started veering down alleys and zigzagging as they went in hopes of losing the mob that continued to follow them. Taylor guessed they had put around seventy-five yards between themselves and their pursuers.

  Taylor gasped for air. His lungs burned and he couldn’t catch a full breath. His legs were numb. The pain was in his calves and the large muscles above his knees. The sun had been eaten by a string of thick clouds, but the air was humid and sweat trickled down into his eyes. He slowed to tug on the handle of a door without success.

  “Locked,” he said, shouting to Carl, who was across the street trying the door of another building.

  “This one too!”

  How many movies had he watched where someone was being chased by a pack of zombies or an axe-wielding maniac? And, invariably, when he would watch them he would wonder how they could possibly get tired of running. He had always believed that if he was running for his life that he could run as long and fast as was necessary to keep his ass out of the fryer. But he was running for his life now, for what was probably less than ten full minutes, and the prospect of slowing down had crossed his mind a dozen times. Maybe it was a combination of the heat and being out of shape, and that as a kid he’d had asthma.

  “Found one!”

  Taylor crossed the street to his brother. Carl was holding open a metal door. Written on the inside of the door were the words: THIS DOOR TO REMAIN UNLOCKED DURING BUSINESS HOURS.

  When they were inside, Carl pulled the door closed behind them. “I can’t lock it without a key.”

  “Let’s hope they didn’t see us slip in here,” Taylor said.

  “Let’s hope they can’t smell us.”

  “Why would they be able to smell us?”

  “Just something that crossed my mind.”

  Past the back room there was another open door; this one of a flimsy wooden material, and beyond that they could see light pouring in through the plate glass windows at the front of the store. Rows and rows of clothing filled the store.

  Taylor scanned the racks and said, “This is all women’s clothing.”

  “Great,” Carl said. “Of all the stores in town we run into the most useless one possible. “Should have known. Just like a woman to forget to lock the back door.” They shared a smile over that one. Carl rapped on the door lightly with his knuckles. “It’s not going to be safe with this unlocked.”

  “You’re right. I don’t think they saw us come in here, but they might figure it out given enough time. We don’t know how intelligent they are.”

  Taylor inspected the backroom. The fusebox was on the wall to the left of the door. There was a cramped inset bathroom, flanked on one side by a gas furnace and a water heater on the other. A telephone terminal was located next to the fuse box. A dozen or so insulated telephone wires snaked their way up and disappeared into the suspended ceiling. He grabbed one of them and yanked it from the network terminal, wound the wire around his hand once and then gave it a hard pull. He kept tugging at the cord until there was a few feet of slack. Taylor looked it over and said, “Should be plenty long.”

  He tied one end to the handle of the metal exit door and then ran it to the knob of the bathroom door. He pulled it taut and tied it around the knob. “It’s not much,” he said, “but better than nothing.”

  “My brother, MacGyver.”

  “Shut the fuck up, smartass.”

  “What? It was a compliment.”

  Taylor pushed on the metal door. It gave a quarter of an inch and then the telephone wire prevented it from opening any farther.

  Carl had already wandered out into the store. He held a summer dress in front of him and said, “What do ya think? My color?”

  “Get serious. And stay away from the window. I don’t want to chance those things walking by and seeing you.”

  Carl tossed the dress over the rack. “Just trying to lighten the mood. Maybe this is how I deal with tense situations. Ever think of that? Tell me you don’t do the same thing?”

  Taylor ignored him. He searched the store for anything useful. The clothing racks were positioned so that four racks ran from back to front, and five from side-to-side. A large wire shelf at the front of the store displayed a variety of purses.

  I hate to admit it, but he’s right, Taylor thought. This is about the most useless place we could have stumbled into.

  But for the moment they were safe; told himself that that had to count for something.

  He walked behind the sales counter and bent down to rummage through the shelves behind it. There were two drawers on the right side of the counter. One contained a pricing gun, a roll of packing tape, and a pad of blank invoices. The other drawer was locked.

  Carl said, “Get down!”

  Taylor glanced up in time to see his brother hiding behind one of the clothing racks at the front of the store, and ducked down as he heard the sound of a hundred thunderous feet passing by on the sidewalk outside. He peeked his head above the top of the counter and watched the mob pass.

  Once they had passed, Carl sneaked around the rack and up to the window, watching as they headed south along the street. “You think they’re still looking for us?”

  “Probably.”

  “Persistent bastards. You think this is an isolated occurrence? Like maybe we just stumbled into the wrong town?”

  Taylor pulled on the drawer handle. “Come over here a sec. And, no, I don’t think it’s an isolated occurrence. You know better than that. You heard the same thing as I did on the radio.”

  Carl moved around the counter to stand behind his brother. “All the radio said was there was an outbreak of some kind and that everyone should seek shelter.”

  “And the radio al
so said to maintain a safe distance from the infected. Lucky for us, they’re pretty easy to spot.” He pointed to the drawer and then tugged on the handle again. “See? Locked. If there’s something worth locking up, it could be useful. So help me get this open.”

  Carl bent down, wedging his fingers into the small space between the drawer and the counter, pulling on it as Taylor pulled on the handle.

  “It’s no good. We need something to pry it open with.”

  “We don’t know if it was a national broadcast on the radio. Could have been local.”

  “I don’t think it was local.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Gut instinct,” Taylor said.

  Carl rolled his eyes. “Was it ‘gut instinct’ that told you to slam the brakes on thick gravel when you were driving the Ford, too?”

  “You can’t let me live that down can you?”

  “A guy has a near death experience, he tends to remember it.”

  “I was sixteen. Twelve years ago.”

  Carl helped him search for something to pry the drawer open with. After several minutes of searching, he said, “Just forget it. There isn’t anything here to get that open with.”

  “Wait a minute.” Taylor opened the top drawer and took out the packaging tape dispenser. It was the kind with a metal lip with jagged teeth below where the tape sat. “This might work,” he said. “Not from the top, but if I can get the cutter wedged into the side.”

  He motioned for Carl to pull on the handle of the drawer, creating a quarter inch space which was wide enough to slide the tape cutter into. Taylor held the dispenser by the handle and pushed forward, using the corner of the counter as resistance. He heard the wood start to splinter. “Thank God for cheap wood.” Taylor pushed forward harder, using both hands now, and the metal flap that prevented the drawer from opening gave way.

  “See. You really are like MacGyver.”

  Taylor sifted through the contents of the open drawer. “No gun,” he said.