Rabid

Carl was shivering.  Tina had gathered up his clothes from the ground.  She handed them to him.  “You better put these back on before you freeze to death.”

Taylor said, “What did you find?”

“Wait a sec.”  He finished dressing (his socks were a considerable hassle to get on due to his feet being wet) and climbed back into the boat.  He returned with the walkie-talkie.  “Better than a note.”

Taylor examined the walkie-talkie.  “It still has power,” he said, pointing to the LED.  He turned the volume knob as high as it would go.  He pressed the button on the side of the walkie-talkie and spoke into it.  He felt self- conscious, like a child playing with a toy.  “Hello?  Can anybody hear me?  Hello?  Hello?  Dad, can you hear me?”

Silence.

“Why would they leave one and take the other?” Tina asked.  “Do you think they forgot?”

“Assuming they have the other,” Taylor said.  “They may have lost that one, too.  Could be at the bottom of the lake for all we know.”  He spoke into the walkie-talkie again.

“Maybe they’re out of range,” Carl said.

“It’s a possibility.  These aren’t the cheapest ones I’ve seen, but they’re not great.  I think the range is something like three to five miles.  And five miles is probably stretching it.  I don’t know how much area this place covers for sure.  If they’re still here and theirs is working, then they should hear us.”

“You think they might have left?”

Taylor scanned the area around him solemnly.  He didn’t answer.  The truth was he didn’t have an answer.

“Taylor?  You listening to me?  I asked if you think they left or not.”

What would Dad do?  He wouldn’t come here and just leave.  He wouldn’t leave his boat in the middle of a lake, either.  Not on purpose.  So where the hell are they?

Taylor made another half-hearted effort to reach them on the walkie-talkie.  “Hello?  Are you guys out there?  Anybody?”

Nothing happened.  Taylor was about to turn the walkie-talkie off when static issued from it.  The three of them huddled together.

“Did you hear that?”

“Yeah.  Static.”

“There it is again.”

Tina said, “Is that somebody talking?  I can’t tell.”

“Hello?  Is somebody there?”

Another short burst of static.  Taylor thought he heard someone’s voice buried underneath the static.

“If you can hear me, you’re coming through really garbled.”

There was silence for a full minute.  Taylor was ready to write the sound off as a figment of his imagination when the walkie-talkie squawked and a distinctly female voice came through.

You’re not imagining that, Taylor thought.

“Hello?  Taylor?  Is that you?”

“It’s Angie!” Carl said.  “I can tell the sound of her voice.”  He snatched the walkie-talkie from Taylor’s hand and spoke into it.  “Angie, baby, it’s me, Carl.  Are you okay?  Where are you?”

“Carl?  I’m so scared.”

“I know, baby.  I know.  I’m here now.  Where are you?”

“I’m not sure.  Lots of trees.  Those things...”

Tina said, “There are trees all over the place.  How are we going to find her based on that?”

“Baby, are you okay?”

Another burst of static.  Angie’s voice was garbled when it came over the walkie-talkie.  “Things.”

“What did she say?”

“I don’t know.  I couldn’t understand it.”

“Ask her where Mom and Dad are?”

“Angie, honey, are my Mom and Dad with you?”

“No…sep…ar…ated.  Those…things…”

“She’s breaking up bad.”

“Angie?”

Carl kept trying, but hisses of static were the only response.

“Dammit, we lost her,” Taylor said.

“Fuck!  We’ve gotta find her.  She’s out there.  Alive.  We have to get to her.”

“I know.  That’s exactly what we’re going to do.  We need to think this through for a minute.”

“That’s your answer to everything!  We don’t have time to think!”

“You hear yourself?  That’s a pretty fucking stupid thing to say.  Don’t have time to think?  Jesus Christ.”

“What if we all split up?  Go in different directions?  One of us would be bound to find her?”

“We’re not doing anything like that.  We’re sticking together.  Splitting up is a very bad idea.”

“She’s out there, bro.  By herself.”

“I know.  She was pretty broken up over the walkie-talkie.  That means there was something interfering with the transmission or she’s almost out of range.  Or both.  Let’s think about this logically.  Going south is out of the question.  That’s the way we came in.  We’d hit the highway before the walkie was out of range.  That narrows it down a little.”

“Why don’t we just follow the tire tracks?” Tina said.

Taylor glanced at Carl and shrugged, both of them a tad embarrassed for having overlooked something so obvious.

“Stands as good a chance as any.”

Carl was still shivering badly.  His lips were a dark purple.

“We’ll follow the tire tracks,” Taylor said.  “For as long as it seems like the right thing to do.  But do we go back for the car first?”

“That’ll waste too much time.”

Taylor handed Tina his rifle.  “Take this.  You two start following the tracks.  I’ll go back for the car.”

Tina looked at him incredulously and said, “You were the one who just got done saying that splitting up was a bad idea.”

“I know what I said, but I don’t see any other way.  All of our supplies are in the car.  The farther we get from it, the slimmer the chance we’ll get back to it.  I’ll run back.  I can do it in ten minutes.  I’ll catch up with the two of you.”

“I thought the whole reason we went on foot was because we couldn’t get here in the car.”

“Well, as far as I knew we couldn’t.  I was aware that a trail started up again to the north of the lake, but I didn’t know of any way to get to the lake other than on foot.”

“I think it’s connected somewhere to the west,” Carl said.

“I always thought that was a dead end.”

“They might have opened it up.  How long has it been since we’ve been up here?  Years?  We need to get started.  Get the car.  Find your way back here.  I’m going to find Angie.”

Taylor couldn’t argue with his brother’s determination.  “You okay to keep carrying that pack?  It’ll just slow me down if I take it.”

“I’ll be all right,” Tina said.  She handed him the car keys.  “You’ll need these.”

“Good thing you remembered.  Stay on the path.  Or at least within shouting distance of it.  I’ll catch up with you as soon as I can.  Be careful.”

He watched as Carl started down the path, following the tire tracks as they curved with the road until it straightened and led north.  Tina followed him.  She looked back once at him and smiled nervously.  He waved at her and she waved back.  His mind hadn’t changed from earlier: splitting up was a terrible idea.  He could think of dozens of movies that illustrated that point.  As he turned and started to sprint in the direction they had left the Escort, all he could do was hope that the outcome would be different in real life.