“Why are all the doors open?” I asked Cipher. It looked odd, as if the drivers had abandoned their vehicles in the middle of a traffic jam.
“So that Rabids don’t nest in them during daylight,” he said.
My parents had owned cars, but when gas ran out, there wasn’t much we could do with them, so my brother and I used them as forts or pirate ships, each of us trying to conquer the other. Lucas joined us too sometimes, though they tended to gang up against me–Lucas always wanted to impress Santiago at my expense.
Here the vehicles had been shoved to the side to make one narrow lane between them, and that was how we traveled the last few miles of our journey into the beating heart of the city, all of us piled in the back of a military Jeep.
United Forces was what they called themselves now, on account of there not being enough people left to operate all the former divisions of the military. Their uniforms were olive green with a red embroidered UF with a white star in between the letters. The Jeep was decorated in a similar way. Two patrols had picked us up on the outskirts of the city and insisted on escorting us to the populated area of downtown. I was grateful for the ride, but Cipher had been twitchy ever since, surveying the scenery while strapped with all but his gun, which he buried somewhere in the woods, only he knew where.
Little Miss Purrfect was of a similar mind, and her nails dug in through the layers of fabric to latch onto my abdomen in terror because she’d never ridden in a moving vehicle before. I kept a tight grip on her so she wouldn’t try to escape.
“Look at it all,” I marveled aloud to Teresa, who was sitting beside me and holding onto her hat so the wind wouldn’t take it. Like me, she was staring all around us in wide-eyed wonder. “There used to be this many people?” I asked Artemis, and she nodded, a pinched expression on her face.
“How many people are left?” I asked because I really didn’t know.
“Ten percent of the world’s population remains,” Gizmo said, “either having recovered from the virus or never having contracted it at all. There’s a small segment of the population who have some natural immunity, but it’s hard to determine due to the lack of reporting systems. An unknown number of people have turned Rabid, also difficult to track due to the recommended method for body disposal.”
That was why Macon and Cipher had burned my mother’s body instead of burying it, to prevent the virus from spreading. At the time, I’d been bitter about it, but now I understood.
“It sounds like there are more Rabids than people,” I said to them. Artemis nodded gravely.
That was a depressing thought, all the more reason why we needed a vaccineanda cure. “What happened over there?” I asked and pointed to a couple city blocks of buildings that were half falling down and blackened by fire. An overpass was a pile of rubble, the edge of it sticking out like a broken bone, and several cars were smashed to bits as well.
“Must have been bombed,” Cipher said.
“By who?”
“The U.S. government most likely. In the early days of the plague, the cities were at war with the federal government, who tried to come in and take over in a very not cool way.”
“We bombed our own cities?” I asked.
“Yeah, until they realized they were killing off the few taxpayers they had left. Now the metro police control the city centers and the military have authority over everything outside of it, including Rabid Country. That’s where we’re headed.” Cipher pointed with his machete to a concrete building with no windows, situated outside the barbed wire fence that extended on both sides for as far as I could see. It appeared as though the entire city center was surrounded by fencing.
“Is that to keep out the Rabids?” I asked.
“And the riff-raff,” Macon said.
“Riff-raff?”
“Shitty raiders, like those guys at the river,” Macon said.
My throat dried at the memory of it.
“Let’s not mention those guys to the authorities,” Cipher said as we gathered up our belongings. “Stick together. If they try to separate us, we leave. If they try to hold us, we run. Everyone got it?”
We all nodded in response. One of the soldiers lowered the tailgate and helped Teresa then Artemis out of the Jeep. “You’re lucky you got here in the daytime,” the soldier said to us. “The Rabids like to gather at the fence after dark. We think it’s the smell of the sewers that attracts them. It’s easy pickins then. Just point and shoot like target practice. Makes it real easy to meet our quota.”
Quota? For killing Rabids? I saw several dark splotches and smears on the pavement, which must have been the bloodstains of the Rabids they’d gunned down. I smelled something burning and saw a large fire in the distance with plumes of smoke reaching like ghost hands toward the sky. It reminded me of one of my dad’s burn piles, but I didn’t think it was brush that they were burning.
“Is that…” I pointed to the fire.
“Yep,” the soldier said with a nod. “Last night’s haul. Takes forever to burn the bodies. Doesn’t smell too pleasant either.”
It sure looked like a lot of bodies, and from just one night?
“Are there any quarantine protocols?” Cipher asked, tearing his eyes away from the fiery funeral to scan the building we were about to enter.
“They’ll test you for the virus on arrival. If you’re negative, they’ll let you join gen pop with daily screenings. If not, you’ll be quarantined, and between you and me, those quarantine shelters are a fucking nightmare. I’d rather take my chances in Rabid Country.” The soldier then turned to Macon and said with a smile, “Last chance to join one of the proud and ever faithful.”
