Read Online The Rabid (Book 1) by J.V. Roberts - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: J.V. Roberts
Tags: Zombie Apocalypse
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of positions I hear from the right and the left, lets me know that I am not alone in my plight.
As my body finally begins to relent , my nerve endings are shocked to life by what sounds like a tornado alarm. It is distant, but nonetheless distinct…effective…
…it chills the bones…
Then there is a hail of gunfire, again, distant. Like fire crackers.
:: :pop::: :::pop::: :::pop::: :::pop:::
Another long and sleepless night lay ahead.
12
I manage to scratch out two hours of sleep (maybe), mostly in 15 to 30 minute intervals. I feel no worse than I had the previous morning, so I count it progress. Life has sort of become a perpetual haze, bouncing from one cloud to the next, hoping to stick the landing, and not fall victim to the gap that lay between.
The sun has risen.
We are breathing.
We’d stuck the landing.
A peek through the living room curtains and a blurry-eyed survey of the backyard, reveals Lee working the fire pit, shirt off, multi-colored headband in place. It occurs to me that he is a hairy man. Very hairy. Not just the beard. It is the bushel of curly Q’s across his chest and down his navel, and his arms, how have I not noticed it before? Both arms look to have been rolled in soot. Perhaps it is the glistening. The miniature bubbles of sweat that clings with uncertainty to the end of each midnight black fiber.
Momma must have heard my shuffling from the kitchen. “Spam and eggs, sweetie, how’s that sound?”
“More inviting than an empty belly I suppose.”
“Nothing like a little darkness to make one see the light,” she quips, kissing the top of my head as she bustles past into the backyard, a stack of disposable plates in tow.
I stagger to my bedroom to brush my teeth with dry bristles and saliva (don’t use any water unless it’s been boiled, Momma's orders). While I'm there , I switch my wrinkled sleep wear for some dirty jeans and one of the last clean plaid button downs left hanging in my closet. Worse comes to worse, and I'll have to find a rock and a scrub board cause I’m running out of clothes.
Bethany enters and sits on the edge of my bed. My sophomore yearbook lay open in her lap. “I saw him you know, as we were running out of the school, underneath the lockers…d-d…de—” She collapses into sobs, thick smudges of eyeliner collecting in her lashes, onyx tears begin to fall across the faces staring up from the page . Some were smiling awkwardly, others locked in that too-cool-for-school grimace that seems to evolve naturally with age, but more than anything, the expressions are blank, as if they hadn’t yet finished processing the photographers requests to sit still and smile before the bulb flashed and they were immortalized in cheap glossy infamy.
I sink into the bed beside her. Cheap spring mattress. Needs to be flipped. Desperately. I loop an arm across her shoulders. We’ve always been an affectionate family. Hugs and all that jazz, they've always come naturally. Never that rushed awkward pat-on-the-back stuff. Even dad had been a hugger. “I was hoping you hadn’t seen that.”
“Well, I did.” More tears. Quiet tears. The worst kind.
“I’m sorry,” I am.
“It’s okay.” It isn’t. “Did you…see him...you know?”
“Yeah, I saw it.”
“How was…I mean…” I know what she is trying to get at. I can see the words swimming behind her eyes. Her eyes, searching mine for answers. Restless in their sockets.
I squeeze her shoulder, tighter. “He’s the one that told me where to find you. He was a hero. He went quickly.” Senseless words for a senseless situation.
She cries harder. Little squeaks. Salty eyeliner cuts crop circles on the shoulder of my V-neck sleep shirt. In another time and place, I’d bleach it out and wear it the next night. That place is gone. It is all blood and dust now. No point sweating it. I let her cry as I search the makeup stained faces of my old classmates, spread out across her lap.
Donny
As my body finally begins to relent , my nerve endings are shocked to life by what sounds like a tornado alarm. It is distant, but nonetheless distinct…effective…
…it chills the bones…
Then there is a hail of gunfire, again, distant. Like fire crackers.
:: :pop::: :::pop::: :::pop::: :::pop:::
Another long and sleepless night lay ahead.
12
I manage to scratch out two hours of sleep (maybe), mostly in 15 to 30 minute intervals. I feel no worse than I had the previous morning, so I count it progress. Life has sort of become a perpetual haze, bouncing from one cloud to the next, hoping to stick the landing, and not fall victim to the gap that lay between.
The sun has risen.
We are breathing.
We’d stuck the landing.
A peek through the living room curtains and a blurry-eyed survey of the backyard, reveals Lee working the fire pit, shirt off, multi-colored headband in place. It occurs to me that he is a hairy man. Very hairy. Not just the beard. It is the bushel of curly Q’s across his chest and down his navel, and his arms, how have I not noticed it before? Both arms look to have been rolled in soot. Perhaps it is the glistening. The miniature bubbles of sweat that clings with uncertainty to the end of each midnight black fiber.
Momma must have heard my shuffling from the kitchen. “Spam and eggs, sweetie, how’s that sound?”
“More inviting than an empty belly I suppose.”
“Nothing like a little darkness to make one see the light,” she quips, kissing the top of my head as she bustles past into the backyard, a stack of disposable plates in tow.
I stagger to my bedroom to brush my teeth with dry bristles and saliva (don’t use any water unless it’s been boiled, Momma's orders). While I'm there , I switch my wrinkled sleep wear for some dirty jeans and one of the last clean plaid button downs left hanging in my closet. Worse comes to worse, and I'll have to find a rock and a scrub board cause I’m running out of clothes.
Bethany enters and sits on the edge of my bed. My sophomore yearbook lay open in her lap. “I saw him you know, as we were running out of the school, underneath the lockers…d-d…de—” She collapses into sobs, thick smudges of eyeliner collecting in her lashes, onyx tears begin to fall across the faces staring up from the page . Some were smiling awkwardly, others locked in that too-cool-for-school grimace that seems to evolve naturally with age, but more than anything, the expressions are blank, as if they hadn’t yet finished processing the photographers requests to sit still and smile before the bulb flashed and they were immortalized in cheap glossy infamy.
I sink into the bed beside her. Cheap spring mattress. Needs to be flipped. Desperately. I loop an arm across her shoulders. We’ve always been an affectionate family. Hugs and all that jazz, they've always come naturally. Never that rushed awkward pat-on-the-back stuff. Even dad had been a hugger. “I was hoping you hadn’t seen that.”
“Well, I did.” More tears. Quiet tears. The worst kind.
“I’m sorry,” I am.
“It’s okay.” It isn’t. “Did you…see him...you know?”
“Yeah, I saw it.”
“How was…I mean…” I know what she is trying to get at. I can see the words swimming behind her eyes. Her eyes, searching mine for answers. Restless in their sockets.
I squeeze her shoulder, tighter. “He’s the one that told me where to find you. He was a hero. He went quickly.” Senseless words for a senseless situation.
She cries harder. Little squeaks. Salty eyeliner cuts crop circles on the shoulder of my V-neck sleep shirt. In another time and place, I’d bleach it out and wear it the next night. That place is gone. It is all blood and dust now. No point sweating it. I let her cry as I search the makeup stained faces of my old classmates, spread out across her lap.
Donny
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