The Rabid: Fall Read Free Page B

seats are nothing more than springs and wires. There’s a horse trailer in front of us missing a tire, sitting off balance, the backdoors thrown wide open, the pale skeleton of some deceased beast hanging halfway in the road. The wind blows hard across the silent battlefield, stirring clouds of ash. Flocks of birds soar out of the patch of trees to my right, calling out to one another, taking no notice of our plight as they fly overhead and shit on our windshield.
    Katia pops the balloon. “Listen…I’m just tired and I feel like we’re flying blind. I hate it. I’m used to having some idea to go on, some plan, but there’s nothing. Ruiz could be a thousand miles from here and we wouldn’t know it.”
    Sonny slides between the seats, head turned sideways, looking up at Katia. “You know, maybe we could take some engine grease and leave messages for Ruiz every couple of miles, let him know what direction we’re going in, just in case he happens to come through here.”
    Katia sighs, closes her eyes, and drops her forehead against the steering wheel. “Sonny, do me a favor, just…don’t talk. Sit back there and keep your eyes up. You see a gun pointed at us or a Rabid coming our way, holler. But if you get any more ideas , feel free to keep them to yourself.”
    I feel bad for Sonny as he slinks away. But he’s a big boy, he can handle his feelings. Besides, Katia’s an emotional powder keg at the moment and the fuse is still sparkling. I’ve got to keep it non-confrontational if I’m going to stamp it out. “I know you don’t like it, but we can only do what we can do. Way I see it, we can turn circles out here and bang our heads together trying to figure out which way is up, or we can just keep driving and keep surviving until we come across something we can use; be it an internet uplink, tire tracks, or smoke signals. That’s all we got.”
    “A shot in the dark.”
    “It is what it is.”
    “I suppose so.” She lifts her head, shifts it into drive, and begins trying to navigate the wreckage. “Whether we find Ruiz or not, promise me we see this through to the end? Promise me we find some way to make all this stuff right?”
    “I promise.”
    She lifts her eyes to the rearview.
    Sonny stutters to life. “Yuh—yuh…yeah…yeah, I’m with y’all, to the end.”
    The sun is setting when we finally enter Arkansas. Nothing changes as we cross the state line. The conga line of death and destruction continues. In some twisted way, I guess the apocalypse has united us.

 
    5
     
    We are approaching total darkness and have yet to pin down shelter for the night. The interstate was nothing but rest stops and forest. We need something more secluded, something out of the way, so we take to the farm roads. An hour passes before we find a potential winner.
    We pull the Humvee up to an iron gate. It’s chained and padlocked. Beyond the gate, sitting at the end of a winding gravel driveway, is a small, white house in the middle of a big field, its exterior dimly lit by rogue bands of fading sunlight. The field is encircled by a sturdy fence made up of wooden posts and wrapped in thin wire, woven together in a grid shape; too small for cattle hooves to get tangled up in.
    “Probably raised cattle in here, maybe alpacas.” I am propped against the grill of the Humvee, warming my back.
    “What’s an alpaca?” Katia wiggles the gate. There’s some give. We could each squeeze through individually, but that would mean leaving the Humvee behind and hauling all of our gear up the driveway—not an inviting proposition. Besides, we don’t know what’s up there. If we’ve gotta make a quick getaway, I’d rather it not be on foot.
    “They look like a llama, kind of. They’re really fluffy. People take them as seriously as they take their cows; groom them, take them to shows, there’s even an alpaca owners association.”
    “You sure as hell know a lot about alpacas.”
    “I grew up in Georgia; breed it,