In this original short story in the Mike Bowditch mystery series from bestselling author Paul Doiron, Mike is drawn into the story of a gruesome case from his mentor Charley Steven's past.
Maine Game Warden Mike Bowditch accompanies his old friend and mentor, retired bush pilot Charley Stevens, as he pays a visit to a mysterious woman, the widow of a Vietnam vet, living in isolation in the Maine wilderness. Many years earlier, she had called Charley, then a young game warden himself, for help. She claimed that her badly bleeding husband had been attacked by a rabid bat. But in the succeeding days, despite her husband's increasingly erratic and aggressive behavior, his wife resisted Charley's attempts to help, arousing his suspicions that more was going on than met the eye. Was the husband the victim of rabies, or was he suffering from post traumatic stress disorder? The situation finally erupted into horrific violence, leaving everyone involved deeply scarred.
In the devastating finale to Rabid, Charley reveals to Mike how he uncovered the awful truth about what actually happened in their home so many years before.