The Rabid: Fall Read Free Page A

abilities.” She stomps the brakes hard to avoid careening into the back of a Prius; I’m saved from the dashboard by my seatbelt.
    “You alright back there, Sonny?” I check the slack on my seatbelt and give Katia an irritated sideways glance.
    “No harm, no foul.”
    We pass yet another sign letting us know we’re headed towards Arkansas. It’s crooked and bullet-riddled, but the bold, white letters still read clear.
    “Y’all ever been to Arkansas?”
    Katia doesn’t answer.
    Sonny leans forward between the seats. “I went to Arizona once.”
    “Yeah, not quite the same thing.”
    “You been there?” Sonny goes on, unabated.
    “To Arizona?”
    “No, Arkansas.”
    I nod. “Yeah, once, for family vacation. Went to Hot Springs. We were going to see my dad’s family in Little Rock, so we just made a thing out of it.”
    “How was it?”
    “Kind of awful, really. Hot Springs had some cool stuff. There was this tower on top of a mountain that was pretty neat. But I wouldn’t really call it a mountain. It was more like a big-ass hill with a tourist trap on top. Lots of bathhouses and spas. I remember they had this really bad Italian restaurant with the worst crab cakes. But the bed and breakfast we stayed at was great, little old lady that ran it had this black cat that Bethany and me would play with every morning while my folks slept in. That’s probably my fondest memory of the whole trip; my sis and I and the cat.”
    “Huh.” Sonny rubs his teeth together as he stares straight ahead through the windshield.
    I shrug. “Who knows, maybe the apocalypse gave it a facelift.” Hot Springs wasn’t much, but I’m convinced that every journey is bearable if you’ve got someone you love to share it with. With that thought in mind, I look to Katia. “Okay, so maybe Ruiz got out of there with the USB drive. Maybe he’s gonna try to get online. That’s what Bytes was trying to do.”
    She remains stone-faced, both hands clenching the wheel. “Yeah, that’s what he was trying to do.” She wets her lips and keeps talking. “That’s not much to go on, Tim. That’s so thin…it’s anorexic. What if he didn’t get out of there with the drive? Or…”
    What if he didn’t get out of there , she doesn’t have to say it.
    “Yeah, it’s thin, but it gives us a needle to go with our haystack. It can’t hurt to follow the thread. We just need to find somewhere to get online.”
    “Not following you,” Katia says before sending an overturned car spinning off the side of the road with the nose of the Humvee.
    “Ruiz said that when they put the USB drive online, it will pipe out across the globe. Remember, I was against the idea?”
    “Oh, I remember, trust me.”
    “Then shouldn’t we be able to trace that signal back, see where it’s coming from?”
    “That’s some hacker stuff, Tim. You a hacker now?”
    “I mean…it doesn’t hurt to try, right? What else do we got?”
    She snorts and gives a wicked little laugh before hammering the gas pedal again.
    “Until you come up with something better, you probably shouldn’t throw stones.”
    “I had something better, but you insisted we sit on our hands because you’re scared of the dark.”
    “Bullshit, Katia!” I point a finger in her face. “Don’t take your frustration out on me, that ain’t fair! Your judgment is clouded and you’re saying stuff you don’t mean!”
    She smashes the brake and throws the gearshift into park. “You’ve got three seconds to get your finger out of my face.” Her jaw is clenched. The words hiss through her teeth. “One…two…”
    I drop my finger slowly, not wanting to give her the impression that she’s instilled any sort of fear in me.
    A thick and uncomfortable silence fills the cabin of the Humvee. Sonny clears his throat and begins whistling; one look from Katia in the rearview quiets him. We’re enclosed, on all sides, by destruction. The two-door sedan to my right is burned black; the two front