Rabid (2 page)

Taylor inspected the backroom.  The fusebox was on the wall to the left of the door.  There was a cramped inset bathroom, flanked on one side by a gas furnace and a water heater on the other.  A telephone terminal was located next to the fuse box.  A dozen or so insulated telephone wires snaked their way up and disappeared into the suspended ceiling.  He grabbed one of them and yanked it from the network terminal, wound the wire around his hand once and then gave it a hard pull.  He kept tugging at the cord until there was a few feet of slack.  Taylor looked it over and said, “Should be plenty long.”

He tied one end to the handle of the metal exit door and then ran it to the knob of the bathroom door.  He pulled it taut and tied it around the knob.  “It’s not much,” he said, “but better than nothing.”

“My brother, MacGyver.”

“Shut the fuck up, smartass.”

“What?  It was a compliment.”

Taylor pushed on the metal door.  It gave a quarter of an inch and then the telephone wire prevented it from opening any farther.  

Carl had already wandered out into the store.  He held a summer dress in front of him and said, “What do ya think?  My color?”

“Get serious.  And stay away from the window.  I don’t want to chance those things walking by and seeing you.”

Carl tossed the dress over the rack.  “Just trying to lighten the mood.  Maybe this is how I deal with tense situations.  Ever think of that?  Tell me you don’t do the same thing?”

Taylor ignored him.  He searched the store for anything useful.  The clothing racks were positioned so that four racks ran from back to front, and five from side-to-side.  A large wire shelf at the front of the store displayed a variety of purses.

I hate to admit it, but he’s right,
Taylor thought. 
This is about the most useless place we could have stumbled into.

But for the moment they were safe; told himself that
that
had to count for something.

He walked behind the sales counter and bent down to rummage through the shelves behind it.  There were two drawers on the right side of the counter.  One contained a pricing gun, a roll of packing tape, and a pad of blank invoices.  The other drawer was locked.

Carl said, “Get down!” 

Taylor glanced up in time to see his brother hiding behind one of the clothing racks at the front of the store, and ducked down as he heard the sound of a hundred thunderous feet passing by on the sidewalk outside.  He peeked his head above the top of the counter and watched the mob pass.

Once they had passed, Carl sneaked around the rack and up to the window, watching as they headed south along the street.  “You think they’re still looking for us?”

“Probably.”

“Persistent bastards.  You think this is an isolated occurrence?  Like maybe we just stumbled into the wrong town?” 

Taylor pulled on the drawer handle.  “Come over here a sec.  And, no, I don’t think it’s an isolated occurrence.  You know better than that.  You heard the same thing as I did on the radio.”

Carl moved around the counter to stand behind his brother.  “All the radio said was there was an outbreak of some kind and that everyone should seek shelter.”

“And the radio
also
said to maintain a safe distance from the infected.  Lucky for us, they’re pretty easy to spot.”  He pointed to the drawer and then tugged on the handle again.  “See?  Locked.  If there’s something worth locking up, it could be useful.  So help me get this open.”     

Carl bent down, wedging his fingers into the small space between the drawer and the counter, pulling on it as Taylor pulled on the handle.

“It’s no good.  We need something to pry it open with.”

“We don’t know if it was a
national
broadcast on the radio.  Could have been local.”

“I don’t think it was local.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Gut instinct,” Taylor said.

Carl rolled his eyes.  “Was it ‘gut instinct’ that told you to slam the brakes on thick gravel when you were driving the Ford, too?”

“You can’t let me live that down can you?”

“A guy has a near death experience, he tends to remember it.”

“I was sixteen.  Twelve years ago.”

Carl helped him search for something to pry the drawer open with.  After several minutes of searching, he said, “Just forget it.  There isn’t anything here to get that open with.”

“Wait a minute.”  Taylor opened the top drawer and took out the packaging tape dispenser.  It was the kind with a metal lip with jagged teeth below where the tape sat.  “This might work,” he said.  “Not from the top, but if I can get the cutter wedged into the side.” 

He motioned for Carl to pull on the handle of the drawer, creating a quarter inch space which was wide enough to slide the tape cutter into.  Taylor held the dispenser by the handle and pushed forward, using the corner of the counter as resistance.  He heard the wood start to splinter.  “Thank God for cheap wood.”  Taylor pushed forward harder, using both hands now, and the metal flap that prevented the drawer from opening gave way.

“See.  You really are like MacGyver.”

Taylor sifted through the contents of the open drawer.  “No gun,” he said. 

“We don’t need a gun.  A fire hose would do the trick.”

Taylor picked up a leather deposit bag, unzipped it, and then placed it on top of the counter.  Carl picked it up and counted the cash that was inside.  “Almost a thousand dollars here,” he said.

“And every bit of it completely useless.”

There were other odds-and-ends in the drawer, but none, Taylor thought, were useful enough to warrant keeping under lock and key.  “Why the fuck did they bother locking this thing?  All of this stuff is crap.”

Carl said, “Crap to us.”  He held up the leather deposit bag.  “But on a normal day, I’d say a thousand bucks is worth keeping in a safe place.”

“That’s what banks are for.”

“Maybe the owner didn’t believe in banks.”

At the bottom of the drawer, below a pile of documents, Taylor found a zippered black case.  Upon opening it, he discovered it was a toolset.  “Basic,” he said. “About as basic as you can get.  A flathead and a Phillips.  Pliers.  Zip ties?  Somebody must have added those.  Not much.”

Carl held up the bag of money.  “What do you wanna do with this?”

“Put it back.  It’s not ours.”

Carl zipped the bag shut and tossed it into the drawer.  “Doubt anyone’s going to miss it.”

“Maybe, maybe not, but we’re not thieves.  It’s the principle of the thing.  It’d be a different story if you could hurt those things by throwing five dollar bills at them. 
Then
I might take the money.”

“What now?”

Taylor shrugged and slid the drawer shut.  “For now, I guess we stay put.  We know they’re still out there.  I’m not willing to try outrunning them again.  If anything, we wait until it gets dark and try to sneak out of town.”

“On foot?”

“We’ll find a car or a truck or something.”

“Doesn’t seem to be an overabundance of them in town if you didn’t notice,” Carl said. 

“I can’t figure that out.  It’s a small town.  How many people do you figure live here?”

“I remember seeing the population on the sign when we coasted in on fumes.  I know it wasn’t more than fifteen hundred or close to that.”

“About the same as Coldwater.  So think about home.  If this was home, and we were walking around town the way we have been here, would we have seen any cars by now?”

“Well, if we were walking around downtown, I’d have to say yes because of the car dealership.”

“What if you were walking down Main Street around…” Taylor checked his watch.  “A little after five-thirty.  How many cars would you see?”

“I know what you’re driving at.  Not many.  Nothing is open on Sunday’s except the gas station on the highway, and that isn’t downtown.  Still seems odd.”

“It seems odd now because you’re noticing it for the first time.  Now that we’re actively looking for something to drive the hell out of here, it’s painfully noticeable.  A few of the lucky ones probably got out while the going was good.  Only the crazies left.  How many of those have we seen?  A hundred or so.  Tops.  It’s not so out of the ordinary.  I bet if we can get to the residential part of town, we’d find what we’re looking for.  But I’m not willing to risk it until it gets dark.  Those things out there want to tear us apart, but they’re still human.  At least to the extent that I don’t think they can see in the dark.”

“You really thought that through.  The whole missing car problem I mean.”

“When I was younger, you remember how I liked to take walks?”

“I remember that you liked to go for
midnight strolls.
  It freaked me out a little actually.  Who does that?  Takes walks in the middle of the night?”

“Best time to do it.  Nobody else around.  A small town is dead at those hours.  I used to pretend I was the only person left on Earth.”

“How the fuck did you get so weird?”

Taylor ignored the question and started to search around the store.  “Help me see if there’s anything else we can use.  It’s close to six.  Should be dark enough out by nine.”

Carl walked past a rack of winter coats.  One of them had an imitation fur collar and he ran his fingers through it.  “It’s going to be cold out by that time, too.  Middle of October, it could start snowing any minute.”

“So take one of those jackets.”

“It’s made for a chick.  I’d rather freeze.”

The fitting rooms were at the rear of the store.  There was another counter sitting a few feet in front of two doors.  Taylor searched the shelves built into the back of the counter.  He found tape measures, pins, hangers, scissors, a coffee mug that held a mixture of pens and pencils, and a half-full bottle of Arrowhead drinking water.  “What’s that?”  He pushed some of the other items out of his way and closed his hand around a metal object.  “It’s a box cutter.”  He slid the lever up so that the blade protruded.  It looked sharp enough.  He retracted the blade and shoved the box cutter into his pocket.  “Could come in handy.”

“Mine’s better,” Carl said and pulled his knife out.  He flipped open the blade.

“Put that thing away.”

“That’s what all the girls say to you isn’t it?”

“Don’t make me beat the shit out of you.”

Carl waved a hand and laughed, but he folded the blade of the knife back into the handle and put it into his pocket.  “Has anyone told you you’ve got an overactive imagination?”

Taylor walked to the front of the store, staying close to the racks in case he had the sudden need to hide.  When he reached the plate glass windows at the front of the store, he scanned the street outside.  “Sun’s starting to go under.”

Stores lined the opposite side of the street.  One of them was a barber shop with an old-fashioned red, white and blue pole next to the door.  A tanning salon stood next to it.  Farther down the street, Taylor saw a store with Dave’s Hardware written on the marquee. 
Why couldn’t we have ended up in that one?

“I’m hungry.”

“I think I saw a bag of rice cakes in the backroom.”

“Fuck that.  I want
real
food.”