The Becoming (Book 4): Under Siege (11 page)

“I
used
to know how to handle her,”
Ethan replied. “She’s changed, Derek. Just based off what Brandt
and Cade and Kim have told me, she’s not the same Remy I knew
before March.”

“What about your love for her?” Derek
asked.

Ethan fought to not smack himself in the
forehead or let out a groan. “Doesn’t that count for something?”
Derek continued.

“It would if I loved her,” Ethan
snapped.

The room fell silent, the tension crackling
in the air as everyone exchanged glances. The declaration surprised
even Ethan, though he couldn’t say that he was wholly surprised.
Five months of hell and avoidance would be enough for almost anyone
to fall out of love, especially if it’d been a relationship
predicated on physical attraction. He stared blankly at the carpet.
“I don’t…I don’t feel that way about her anymore. Not like that.
There’s someone else.”

Kimberly shifted uncomfortably on the arm of
Ethan’s chair, and Ethan continued to avoid everyone’s gazes. He
felt painfully embarrassed, like he was a teenage boy confessing
his crush. Thankfully, Brandt chose that moment to draw everyone’s
attention away from Ethan and onto himself, prompting Ethan to
shoot him a grateful look.

“Now that I—that
we
—have a better
understanding of what we’re dealing with right now, meeting’s
adjourned,” he announced. “We’ve all got a lot to think about, and
we’re burning daylight just sitting here.”

Remy wasn’t sure how she felt about the two
teenagers she and Dominic had stumbled across. Her distrust was
innate, she knew; it’d been quite a while since they’d seen any
survivors outside their little commune, and she was worried that
these two would bring trouble to the community.

Assuming, of course, that she and Dominic
weren’t about to do that themselves.

As they followed Sadie and Jude toward the
town of Hollywood, Sadie did most of the talking, filling them in
on what little she knew. Jude, it seemed, was content to follow her
and keep an eye out for encroaching dangers. Remy did likewise,
following closely behind Dominic.

“How did you hear about Woodside?” Dominic
asked. “We haven’t exactly broadcasted our existence
everywhere.”

“A man named Joseph told us to go there,”
Sadie answered. “We ran into him and some other guys while we were
trying to get away from the zombies we told you about.” She
motioned with the barrel of her shotgun toward the town that lay in
the distance.

“Where’s Joseph now?” Remy interjected. “And
the rest of his group, for that matter.”

“I think he’s dead,” Sadie said, her tone
apologetic. “He and his guys got swamped. He told us which way to
run and said that when we came across it to ask for a man named
Brandt.”

Remy heard Dominic swear under his breath,
and she felt a sinking sickness settle into her stomach. Joseph and
his crew were dead. Their supply team was dead. She couldn’t
pretend elation at the thought of a new supply team forming or of
herself being on that team, even if Dr. Rivers listened to her
pleas and cleared her for work. She liked Joseph, had liked his
friendliness and his understanding and the way he’d rallied for her
when she’d tried to get onto his team. And now he was dead.

“So where have you been hiding during all of
this?” Dominic asked as she refocused on the conversation.

“All of what? The outbreak?” Sadie
asked.

Dominic nodded.

“We’ve been living off the land, hiding in
the woods where we’re less likely to run into any zombies.”

“You’ve been roughing it?” Remy asked. “How
long?”

Sadie shrugged. “Six, seven months now? We
tried staying in town and holing up in houses but got tired of the
zombies bothering us. Our parents used to take us out camping a
lot, so we got all the stuff together that we thought we’d need,
hiked into the woods as far away from anything resembling
civilization as we could get, and set up camp.” She spoke as if
shutting herself and her brother away from other survivors and any
support they could offer was no big deal. “We haven’t had much
contact with zombies until now. And we hadn’t seen any other people
for several months until we ran into that Joseph guy and now you
two.”

“But why would you do that?” Remy asked.
“Why would you shut yourselves away from people like that?”

“Because it’s safer that way,” Sadie said,
as if the answer should have been obvious. “We only ever went near
towns or put ourselves into situations where we might run into
people when we needed supplies that we couldn’t scavenge out of the
woods. That’s how we ran into Joseph. We’d run out of a lot of
stuff that we couldn’t do without anymore, so we went into town to
try to find supplies.”

Remy stumbled on a crack in the pavement,
and Jude’s hand darted out, grasping her elbow. “Thanks,” Remy
said.

Jude merely nodded but stayed silent,
continuing to walk alongside them, his blue eyes scanning their
surroundings.

“So where did all the zombies you told us
about come from?” Remy asked, directing the question at Sadie,
since Jude didn’t seem up to talking.

“I don’t know,” Sadie admitted. “We hadn’t
seen any zombies in weeks and weeks. So damn long I actually lost
track. And then it’s like,
bam,
there they all were.”

“What about the highway?” Remy asked. “What
happened to it?”

“Yeah, I don’t remember it being like this
last time I came through here.” Dominic motioned toward the ground,
referencing the crushed pavement underfoot.

“We noticed this a couple of weeks ago,”
Sadie said. She dug into the black pack on her back and pulled a
bottle of water free, uncapping it and taking a long swallow before
continuing. “We were heading along Highway 162, which we’re on
right now, and it was cleared,” she said, passing the bottle to her
brother. “Totally cleared. Three weeks before that, it had been jam
packed with cars and trucks, as far as the eye could see.” She
swept her hand sideways, as if to illustrate her point. “There were
so many cars that we could barely cross it. It’s one of the
highways that comes west out of Charleston, you know?”

“Not really,” Dominic admitted. “Neither of
us is native to South Carolina. It’s just where we ended up.”

“Well, 162 splits off from 17 and heads
southwest from Charleston,” Sadie explained. “I always thought
maybe people got off 17 and onto 162 thinking they could make it
out of Charleston before things got bad, but they bottlenecked
themselves outside of town.

“Anyway, five weeks ago, Jude and I slipped
into the outer edges of Charleston to gather supplies and had our
usual trouble getting across 162. Two weeks ago, we came back the
same direction to get additional supplies, and all the cars in the
center of 162 were gone. The highway had been cleared, and all the
cars were shoved onto the shoulders, like giant metal walls. We
started following the road to see how far it was like that, and we
got as far as Hollywood before we were attacked. Someone is
clearing 162, and I don’t know who it could be. I wouldn’t think
there’d be anyone left with the manpower or tools to move so many
cars so quickly and so…discreetly.” She pointed at the pavement
beneath their feet. “The road is buckled and collapsed like this
the whole way. It’s chewed up like something’s rolled over it that
was way too heavy for the pavement to handle. Maybe it was
something that happened when the cars were cleared out. I don’t
know.”

“Are you sure the cars themselves didn’t do
this?” Remy asked.

Dominic shook his head. “No, this isn’t
damage from the cars,” he said, pausing to kneel and get a closer
look at the pavement. He ran a hand over the tracks and added,
“This is heavy machinery, like a tank or something like it. You can
see where the treads tore up the pavement.” He touched the
indentations in the pavement, perfectly spaced, to emphasize his
point.

“A tank?” Remy repeated, feeling excitement
welling up. “Like, the military? Do you think they’re finally
coming to help us? Do you think they’re taking back everything from
the—”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Dominic snapped,
and Remy gritted her teeth. He straightened and brushed his hand
against his pant leg. “Even if they are, they’re not going to have
time for people like us.”

“You mean people like
me,
” Remy
retorted. “They’d love people like
you,
what with your
experience in the—”

Dominic gave her a sharp look, and she cut
herself off. She gave Sadie and Jude a wary glance. “Sorry.”

“Continue,” Dominic said to Sadie, giving
her and her brother a short wave to indicate they should keep
walking.

“We’ll need to get quiet now,” Sadie said.
“We’re coming close to where the infected should be, if I’m
estimating the distance versus speed right.”

Obligingly, Remy and Dominic fell silent and
followed the twins up the final hill to Hollywood. Jude stopped
them several feet away from the crest of the hill and signaled for
them to go into the trees on the side of the road. They obeyed,
climbing over the cars lining the highway and scrambling into the
shadow of the brush. Dominic held his rifle at the ready, and Remy
drew her bolo knife, and they continued parallel to the highway
until Sadie motioned for everyone to stop.

“They should be right ahead,” she whispered.
“They were just milling around last time we saw them, but they were
drifting this way. The uphill coming out of town has them slowed
down. It takes a lot of time for them to get going up steep slopes
like that.” She wove between the trees expertly, clearly on a path
she’d taken before. Remy followed, and as they reached the cusp of
the hill, she got her first look at the town of Hollywood and what
she and Dominic had almost walked into.

Dominic let out a gasp beside her, and she
swallowed down one of her own.

A sea of infected. Hundreds upon hundreds of
them.

And they all appeared to be heading in the
direction of Woodside.

When Brandt woke with the sun in his face, it took
him all of two seconds to realize he’d overslept from the nap he’d
been taking with Cade. He grunted and rolled onto his side, putting
his back to the window to block the early evening sun. He relaxed
again, forcing the tight, strained muscles in his shoulders to
loosen. The bed was comfortable, the sheets were cool, and if he
closed his eyes, he could pretend there hadn’t been an apocalyptic
viral outbreak that had been raging for over a year and a half.

“It’s about time you woke up,” a voice said
from somewhere near the foot of the bed. The smell of tea brushed
against his nose. Cade. Of course.

Brandt grunted again, huffed out a breath,
and opened his eyes. His wife stood at the foot of the bed, fully
dressed in her customary jeans and tank top—how many of those
things did she own now, Brandt wondered—with her dark hair pulled
back in a tight ponytail and a ceramic mug grasped in her hand. She
nudged his foot through the bed sheets. “Come on, time to get
moving, lazy,” she chided.

Brandt flipped his arm over to look at the
watch on his wrist. “It’s six?” he said in surprise. He’d been
asleep for almost four hours. “Why didn’t you wake me up
earlier?”

“You looked like you could use the sleep,”
Cade admitted. “You’ve been working hard lately, and I figured the
others could handle things without you for a little bit. But now
it’s business time, so get up.”

Brandt levered himself into a sitting
position. The bed sheet fell down to his waist, and he saw Cade
eyeing his torso with obvious appreciation. “Business time?” he
repeated.

“Yeah, come on,” Cade said, nudging his foot
again. He looked her over and noticed for the first time what his
sleep-fogged brain had initially missed: the look of worry in her
blue eyes and the crease of concern marring her forehead. He wanted
to crawl to the end of the bed and rub the crease away.

“What happened?”

Cade hesitated, then went to the dresser and
set her mug on top of it. She dug fresh clothes out of the drawers
for him as she answered. “Joseph’s supply team didn’t come back
when they were supposed to.”

That was enough to get Brandt moving. He
flipped the bed sheets off and swung his feet to the floor. “What
happened? Does anybody know?”

“All we know right now is that Joseph told
Keith that he and his crew would be back by three and they never
showed up,” Cade said. She tossed a black t-shirt and a worn pair
of camouflage pants onto the bed beside him.

“They filed their search plans though,
right?” Brandt said. He scooped the t-shirt from the bed and tugged
it on over his head. “We can send somebody after them and make sure
they’re okay. Maybe they’re just holing up somewhere for the night.
It wouldn’t be the first time.” He pulled his pants on and stuffed
his feet into the combat boots by the bed.

“They didn’t file one,” Cade said.

Brandt paused in the act of lacing one of
his boots and tilted his head to look at her in surprise.

“Somebody obviously fell down on the job,”
Cade said. “So we’re not sure which direction they went. Keith was
just letting us know so if they don’t show by sunset, someone can
go tell Joseph’s wife.”

Brandt blew out a breath and shook his head,
finishing the double-knot in his bootlaces before standing. “No.
I’m tired of telling people their husbands and wives and lovers are
dead or missing. I wouldn’t like it if someone told me something
happened to you, and I sure as hell don’t want to be the one to do
it to any more people. I’m fucking
tired
of losing
people.”

“So what do you propose we do?” Cade asked,
retrieving her ceramic mug. She downed the rest of her tea in a
quick gulp.