The Rabid (Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

between.
    Bethany shrieks, curling herself up with an arm across her face and a knee touching her elbow, she braces for the impact.
    I react. I don’t think. I just do.
    With Bethany just a step away, I wrap my arms around her waist and pull her into the street and across the hood of a white compact sedan, just as the ladder truck charges past, taking the side mirror with it, and kicking up a shower of sparks. It jumps the curb and runs straight through the already wounded restaurant and out the other side, twisting the body of the impaled diner up in the wheel well. The cement base of a light pole two parking lots over finally brings it to a loud and mangled rest.
    I set Bethany back on her feet, sliding off the hood at her heels.
    Before we can compose ourselves, a green van maneuvers onto the sidewalk in front of us, destroys a wooden bench, and blocks our main route of escape.
    “Mom! It’s Mom!”
    We race for the van. Bethany is the first one in, throwing open the sliding door, and pitching herself across the backseat. She wraps her arms around Momma's neck and buries her face in her hair. The tears are rolling steady by the time I charge in behind her and get the door shut.
    I waste no time with a sentimental greeting, the image of the kamikaze fire truck and its unsavory passengers still lingers fresh in my mind. “Let’s get out of here; these things are all over the place.”
    “The Rabid, Timmy, they’re everywhere, all over the country.”
    “The what?”
    “The Rabid, it’s what the news is calling them.”
    The Rabid. There is a ring to it. A ring only the media can create.
    Momma cuts a half circle over the shattered carcass of the restaurant window. The driver of the fire truck is still hunched over the steering column, seemingly lifeless, for now at least. Any moment now , and he’ll awaken with those white eyes, searching for an arm of his own to gnaw on.
    “Did either of you get bit?” She asks, scanning us in the rear-view. When she sees my condition, she gasps and turns, slack jawed.
    “Mom, the road, pay attention.” She snatches the wheel back, barely keeping us from flying off into the brush. “The blood isn’t mine, we’re fine.”
    “It was horrible. I can’t get it out of my head.” Bethany curls her arms over her face, rocking back and forth next to me.
    I rub her back, staring out the window at the pockets of survivors hiking the shoulder. Some carry backpacks or plastic bags, some are bloodied and hobbled, others wave for us to stop and help as we pass them by, slapping at the windows, and falling over themselves as they grasp for the door handles.
    Soon we're beyond their reach, bumping down the two lane farm road towards home.
     

 
    3
     
    I’m puking before my feet reach the gravel driveway. I dive out of the van like a baby pigeon attempting to take flight. My stomach contents cut a rainbow arch through the air and splash down on the grass in a liquefied mushroom cloud of stale toast and over easy eggs. I stand there coughing, bent over at the knees.
    I think of Jeff Fuller.
    I’m turning, I must be!
    The images, they come back, again and again. I check my hands for any sort of pigmentation change. As I shake uncontrollably, I gaze up at our three bedroom yellow house. At the white shutters and the small brick porch with the knobby wooden pillars supporting the overhang. Over to the right at the old broken down chicken coop with the rusted wire fencing. At the woods beyond with the trees drifting in the breeze, and the cast off pine needles falling carelessly through the air.
    It's blurry, all of it. Hazy.
    The tears. It's the tears right?  The body and its biological reaction to regurgitation. Simple explanation.
    No, no, no!
    I'm changing, I'm changing!
    Oh God, I’m turning into Jeff Fuller!
    I wipe my eyes frantically.
    I wipe at the images of Ms. Geoffery and her throat being torn open.
    At the blood and the bodies .
    Momma and Bethany, they aren’t safe