Rabid

Poor judgment and motor control skills.  An aversion to water.  If you look at what we know,” Tina said, “there are quite a few similarities to rabies.  But rabies doesn’t cause animals to run in packs.  From what we’ve seen, all of those things seem to travel together.  That’s not a hundred percent accurate, but it seems to be the rule rather than the exception.  I wouldn’t say they’re necessarily working together.  It’s more like grouping.  A natural tendency to be with their own kind.  But that’s just a shot in the dark.”

“This makes twice they‘ve found us, too.  Don’t forget that.  Out of the blue, they found us at your dad’s store.  And now here.”

“The car’s running,” Carl said.  “That makes noise.  They could have heard the noise from the engine running.”

“Right.  That doesn’t explain how they found us in the store, though.”

Carl shrugged and looked back to the window.  The rabid thing that had once been Carrie Martinez slapped her hands against the glass repeatedly, eying him, exposing her teeth as rivers of drool ran from her open mouth and down her chin.  He studied her face and the emptiness in her eyes, and he couldn’t quite fool himself into believing there was anything remotely human left.

“That could be coincidence, or it could be another symptom,” Tina said.  “If it’s a symptom, there’s nothing that I know of to connect it with that particular disease.  We don’t know what sense to associate it with.  Hearing or sense of smell or something else.”

Carl said, “Is science class over yet?  Maybe the two of you can go back to flirting later.”

It was one of those comments that, if uttered in the past, would have led to a brotherly brawl.  Taylor narrowed his eyes and stared at his brother, trying to resist the blossoming rage that welled up inside of him.  Tina looked aghast.  Taylor wasn’t sure if it was a feigned response or not, and couldn’t decide which was worse: his brother’s comment or Tina’s I’d-Never-Flirt-With-Your-Brother-In-a-Million-Years reaction.

Carl met his gaze.  “I’m not going to apologize for that,” he said.  “It got your attention, which is exactly what it was meant to do.”  He was still holding the curtains open, and Taylor could see Carrie Martinez - or the thing that passed for her these days - with her face pressed up hard against the window, nose and lips smooshed up against the glass.  She looked like an alien fish.  There was only madness in her gaze.

“Why don’t they just break the glass?” Tina asked.

Carl said, “I don’t think they know they can.  Not yet anyway.  It’s like back at the hardware store.  Remember how long it took them to come around front when they couldn’t get in through the back.  And even then they didn’t wander to the front of the store on their own.”

And then the glass did shatter.  Carl felt fingers clamp down on his wrist.  The fingers were warm and sweaty and mushy.  He let out a high-pitched scream.  His first response was to pull away, and as he did he tripped over his own feet.   Gravity, as reliable as ever, assured his fall to the ground, and he pulled Carrie Martinez forward through the window.  He felt her hand slip from his wrist as her body was impaled on the long slivers of broken glass still clinging to the bottom of the window.  He scrambled back.

Carl looked back in the direction of the window.  Carrie Martinez hung halfway into the house, blood so dark it was almost black gushed from her stomach.  From behind him, Tina made a retching sound.

Carrie Martinez’s eyes remained blank.  Her mouth opened and closed as if keeping beat to some rhythm only she could hear.  When he was only a boy, Carl had enjoyed going on fishing trips with his father.  The first fish he ever caught was a small catfish out of Granite Lake, and he remembered his father holding it up to his face and how the fish’s mouth had opened and closed the same way Carrie Martinez’s mouth was opening and closing now.  He had felt sorry for the fish; he’d had his father toss it back into the lake.  He had watched it flounder for a moment and then shoot down into the depths.  A part of him felt the same compassion for Carrie Martinez.  After all, whatever was wrong with her wasn’t her fault.

But you can’t help her, he thought.  No throwing this one back.

Carrie Martinez’s mouth stopped moving.  Her head sank forward, and for a moment she looked as though she were bowed in prayer.  Her long black hair reached down to the carpet.  It glistened with moisture in the flashlight’s beam.

Sweat, Carl thought.  Just like her hand was sweaty.  That must be another symptom.  Part of the fever or something.

A man appeared in the window behind Carrie Martinez’s impaled body and placed his hand on her back, using it for support as he got his first leg up, trying to work his way through the window.

The rifle had landed several inches away.  Calmly, Carl leaned over and snatched it up, took his time aiming, the man so close that his head was all that could be seen through the rifle’s scope.

Carl fired.  The top of the man’s head disappeared and he fell back through the window, landing on the ground with a wet thud.

“I’m an army of one,” Carl said, laughing, as he pulled himself up off the floor.

More of the rabid things appeared in the window.

Lining up like ducks in a row, Carl thought, taking aim with the rifle.

He picked them off one by one until there were none left.  Taylor watched, knowing he should put a stop to it, but he was caught up in the thrill of it just as much as his brother.

In the end, he had put down all five of them, not counting the two by the car or Carrie Martinez.  He had experienced that rare surge of adrenaline, but it had worn off as quickly as it had come, leaving him breathing heavily and physically drained.  He lowered the rifled, resting the stock on the floor, leaning on it like a makeshift cane.

Carl approached the window slowly and poked his head through, careful not to touch Carrie Martinez’s slumped over body.

“That’s a massacre,” he said.  His stomach went queasy; something hot and nasty got as far as the back of his throat before he managed to hold it back.  He gagged, dropped the rifle, and held a hand to his mouth.  “I’ve gotta use the bathroom.”  He fled from the room.

“Is he going to be all right?” Tina asked.

Taylor nodded.  “I think so.  It’s not every day you kill someone.  Even if they aren’t human anymore.  But he’ll be all right.  Give him a couple of minutes to himself.  I’ll check on him after that.”

He walked over to where the rifle lay on the floor and picked it up.  He undid the bolt and ejected the spent casing.  The flashlight was on the floor, the beam pointed at the shattered window, illuminating Carrie Martinez.  In the weakening light, her hair was the color of canned spinach.  He stared out the window.  “We can’t stay here.  It’s not safe.  More of those things will have heard the gunshots and they’ll come running.”

On the street, Tina’s Escort was idling quietly.  It wouldn’t last much longer if they didn’t feed it gas, but Taylor wondered if any of the pumps would work.  Nothing else did, so it was hard to believe their luck would turn for the better.

Carl entered the room, wiping his mouth with his forearm.  Taylor held the rifle out to him, but he shook his head.  “Why don’t you hold onto it for now.”

“Nice shootin’.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks.  I guess.”  He felt like baby brother again.  It made him feel ashamed yet comfortable.  It was an easy niche to fall into.  You could take a lot of excuses with you into a role like that.  “On second thought…it’s not like you’d be very handy with this thing.  You never did like to hunt.”

“Wasn’t for me.”

Carl turned to Tina.  “He couldn’t bring himself to hurt an animal no matter how small.”

“I could never see the fun in it,” Tina said.

“So are we getting out of here or what?”

They made their way to the car, vigilant as they hurried down the narrow sidewalk.  Carl glanced back at the house before getting into the car, sadness in his eyes.

“The town seems so empty,” Tina said.

Carl said, “It’s always like this here at night.  That’s why my brother likes to take his long walks.”

Taylor looked at the houses lining either side of the street, wondering if there were survivors in any of