Page 14 of Rabid

A thud and a muffled groan followed. “Ow! Stop that.”

“Da’s pissed worse than I’ve ever seen. He’ll kill us if we mess up. Just do what he says.”

Their voices faded, and the barking and gunfire died with them. Joan sat in silence, her heart pounding. She clenched her jaw. Her neighbors, her so-called community, weren’t coming.

“Joan Morgan,” Jeb’s voice cut through the night, “we’re gonna find you no matter where you hide.”

A scream pierced the air. “That damn dog bit me! Get him off! Get him off!”

Ferocious growls reverberated through the underground shelter, followed by a high-pitched yelp.

“Shut your hole!” Jeb bellowed. “There’s something wrong with him. I’ll take the brindle, but we’re leaving the others. If that old bitch comes back, the dogs’ll tear her apart.”

Joan hadn’t thought it could get worse, but it had.

“Grab everything worth takin’, and we’re getting outta here,” Jeb shouted.

For another thirty minutes, Joan endured the sounds of her life being ripped apart. Shattering glass and things being destroyed filled the night. Then came the relief of an engine starting, the truck rumbling away.

She allowed herself to breathe slowly, but dread crept back quickly. Jeb’s dogs were still out there. The destruction they’d left behind was bad enough, but now she had to deal with animalstrained to kill.

“This won’t be easy,” she whispered to Max.

They couldn’t stay in the shelter. If Jeb and his boys came back and got serious about searching, they’d find her.

“I can’t shoot the dogs,” she murmured, stroking Max’s head. “They’ll hear the shots.”

She was stalling for time, trying to piece together a plan. How many dogs had they left? Five, maybe eight? A truck bed could hold that many, even with two boys riding back there.

Max could protect her, but against more than two dogs? She didn’t want to find out. He’d never been in a real fight, but Jeb’s dogs were bred and trained for one thing: violence.

Her gaze shifted to the shotgun’s stock, then to the shovel propped against the wall. Both would work, but neither felt right. She didn’t want to kill any dog, but if it came down to her or them, she’d do what she had to.

“This is life or death, Max,” she said, steeling herself.

Sliding back the bolt, she prepared to push the planter aside. She paused, listening. Silence. She took a deep breath and moved the planter.

The cold night air hit her face as she took the first step out, but Max darted ahead, his body tense with purpose. Joan gritted her teeth as her knees creaked while climbing out.

A burst of growls erupted from the oppositeside of the house.

Max had found the enemy.

Chapter Twelve

Wrath Cometh

Joan shakily grabbed the flashlight from where it was mounted on the side of the garden door, flipped it on, and walked toward the growls. Max and another dog faced each other, their low snarls filling the night. Their bodies were tightly coiled, and neither backed down.

She used the flashlight to scan the area, looking for the other dogs. None were in sight, but the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. They could come from anywhere. Rage or not, Joan knew she was in over her head. She also knew someone would die tonight, and she didn’t want it to be her.

She tilted the flashlight toward the dog facing Max. He was large, but that’s not what drewher attention as she stepped closer. White foam bubbled from his jaws, and long tendrils of saliva swung from side to side as he growled. He took a strange, shaky step to the side and lowered his nose, then raised it. He followed this by shaking his head in an odd manner. Suddenly, his entire body trembled like he was having some sort of seizure. For some odd reason, it reminded Joan of the last time she saw Carrie. The dog’s crazed eyes jerked around and landed on her for a moment before they returned to Max. His bared fangs and tight, rippling muscles showed the fight was already on.

Joan’s thoughts went into overdrive as her focus snapped back and forth between the two. Adrenaline coursed through her body. Time seemed to stretch; each second felt impossibly long as her mind frantically tried to grasp the pieces of the puzzle. The pulse in her temples kept a pounding rhythm, her heartbeat thundering in her ears as the world blurred and sharpened in alternating waves of panic and focus.

Every sensory detail felt magnified. Sights, sounds, and smells bombarded her brain, distracting it from the crucial task at hand. Joan grasped at fragmented thoughts, scanning through past knowledge, trying to make sense of what she saw. The answer was just out of reach, tangled in fear and confusion.

Then, suddenly, she had a mental snap, like the gears finally locked into place and theinformation came together in a flash of clarity as the fog lifted.

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