Free The Rabid (Book 1) by J.V. Roberts Page B

it like punch drunk cage fighters. Two kneel on the trunk and work the rear window. One stands on either side of the rear passenger doors working the glass with their fists and elbows. Their fury is relentless, the high of the hunt. They can practically taste their prey, Lions at the heels (hooves) of a wayward gazelle. As the glass begins to give way, the volume button maxes out. It is a gut wrenching last-ditch effort aimed at the heavens—at whatever lay beyond.
    Anybody, somebody! God, Jesus, Mary, Joseph!
    Allah?
    “We’ve got to do something; we can’t sit here and watch this go down.” Lee attempts to push himself to his knees.
    “Whoa, hold on there, and keep your voice down.” I urge him back into the dust and debris with a firm hand at the back of his neck. This is my territory now. I’ve dealt with these things, he hasn’t.  There is no adult/child hierarchy out here. Boys die. Men Survive.
    “We’re not just going to sit here and watch her die , Two-Step!”
    “What’re you going to do? Knife fight a dozen Rabid ? Have you ever been in a fight before in your life? This isn’t exactly a dojo. You go down there, and you will die, you will be one of them.”
    “You did it , kid, and you’re still here, last I checked, you weren’t a black belt.” 
    “I didn’t have a choice. It wasn’t pretty. I was desperate and I got lucky. I didn’t do anything, I didn’t down-a-one of ‘em. Bethany and me, we shouldn’t even be breathing right now. I only survived...we...only survived because we were running away, not charging in. If there were one or two down there, yeah, sure, I’d say let’s go for it. But twelve? That’s suicide.”
    “So the woman and the baby, what, we’re just going to lay here and watch them die? Watch them get torn apart?”
    I consider this for a moment, trying my best to come up with some sort of eloquent response to quell Lee’s indignation. You know, something cheesy, and plastic, and Hollywood (yes, one in the same). Something about the cycle of life, or the greater good.
    Darwinian?
    Existentialist?
    None of it makes sense, especially now. Only the truth of the matter makes sense, an ugly side effect of truth.
    The truth?
    That’s exactly what we are going to do, lay here and watch them die. “Yeah , Lee, we’re going to do just that. And we’re going to live.”
    There is a brief moment where it looks as if he is going ignore my rhyme & reason and go for it, I’ll have to restrain him; a stern hand on the back of the neck, a choke hold, maybe a quick punch in the jaw , or a whack across the back of the head with Broomspear 2.0.
    Whatever it takes.
    I turn this phrase over in my head, steeling myself up for whatever stupid move Lee is going make next. If he runs down there waving his kitchen knife, we’ll both die. Momma and Bethany will probably die. These things, the Rabid, they’d most likely track our path right up to the front porch and rip the girls apart in the middle of the living room with Lee leading the pack.
    Not on my watch.
    Not over Lee’s boy-scout ideology.
    Survive or die, that is my ideology, it’d gotten me this far, and I am not about toss it out over my momma’s neck beard boyfriend. But, he doesn’t move. As quickly as he’d tensed, his body relaxes back into the earth and he just lies there, looking at me with that look. I’ve seen it a few times in my life, mostly from my dad when the report card wasn’t up to par, or when I’d torn up a new pair of jeans gallivanting through a briar patch.
    “It’s no way to live , Two-Step, no way to live at all.” Lee finally says, resigned to my course of action.
    The Rabid are through the windows of the small red car now and the terrified woman’s screams grow mercifully silent , as the monsters carry on their unpleasant business. The child doesn’t make a sound. It is over and done quickly, the deed shrouded by the cramped quarters of the backseat and the cover of night, but it does