Rabid by J.W. Bouchard Read Free Book Online Page B

sleep?”
    “Not really.  I tried, but it’s a lost cause.  I keep thinking about my dad.  Whether he’s okay or not,” Tina said.
    “What does your gut tell you?”
    She stood next to him.  Taylor thought she was a good five or six inches shorter than he was.  Her eyes shiny in the dim light, and he wondered again if she would start to cry.  He didn’t like to see a woman cry; had what his mother had called rescuer-syndrome, which meant he was attracted to women that were in some kind of trouble and felt the need to save them.  That was, according to his mother, why all of his relationships failed.  What he needed to do, she said, was to find a woman that was strong enough to stand on her own.  A girl that had her shit together (his mother hadn’t used the word shit , but that’s what she had been getting at).
    “He isn’t dumb.  I think he could have seen what was happening and left town, but he was one of those people that always had to lend a helping hand.  If he was all right, he would have found a way to call me.  Make sure I was safe.  He does that all the time.  Checks up on me.  He still calls me his little princess.”
    “Well, I’m sure you are.”
    “Right.  He’s the stereotypical overprotective father.  In high school, I was the girl with the nine o’ clock curfew.”
    “Maybe he couldn’t call you.  Does the store have a phone?”
    She led him to the front checkout.  There was a phone situated next to the cash register.  She picked up the receiver and held it to her ear.  “No dial-tone.”  She held it out so that Taylor could listen for himself.
    “Some of this just doesn’t make sense,” Taylor said.  “Those things aren’t that smart.  They may have been geniuses in life, but whatever has happened to them has turned them into cavemen.”
    “So?”
    He held the phone up as if that explained everything.  “So how come the phones don’t work?  Those things have been pounding on the back door for how long now?  If they had any brains left in them, they would have figured out to come around front and break the glass.  That means they aren’t responsible for the phone lines being down.”
    Tina reached into her back pocket and took out her cell phone.  Taylor snatched it from her.  “How come you didn’t say you had a cell phone?”  He started dialing.
    “Because it doesn’t work.  Not in town.  No reception.  That’s why most people don’t have cell phones here.  They can’t get a signal.”
    Taylor looked at the signal indicator and saw that there were no bars.  He dialed his parent’s number anyway and pushed SEND.  He waited.  Nothing happened.
    “See?  Told you.  You can’t get service here in town.  Take the interstate for ten minutes in either direction and you can get a signal.  But that doesn’t help us very much at the moment.”
    “Okay.  It’s a small town.  Lots of places like this don’t get cell phone coverage.  No mystery there.  I don’t see how the land lines could be down, though.  Something tells me that if we stopped in any of the towns around here and picked up a phone we’d have the same problem.”
    “You can’t know that.”
    That scared her, Taylor thought .  Don’t make it any worse for her than it already is.
    “You’re right.  I was thinking out loud.  It’s just a theory.”  He lifted the handset of the phone again and held it firmly to his ear, holding his breath as he listened, hoping to hear even the faintest of sounds; the familiar buzz of the dial-tone.  Nothing.  “Seems too coincidental to me.”
    “The sky is cloudy.”
    “Clouds don’t affect the phone lines.”
    “But it looks like it could storm some time soon.  A storm could knock out the phone lines.”  She gazed at him hopefully, but she recognized the doubt in her own voice.  Of all the people she had ever lied to, it was always easiest to lie to herself, but in this case even she couldn’t buy her own