The Becoming (Book 4): Under Siege (25 page)

Sadie felt her anger rise as the older man
castigated her, and she curled her fingers into fists, stepping up
to meet him toe to toe and word for word. She could sense Jude
lurking somewhere behind her, somewhere near the door. “I wasn’t
aware I had to ask your permission for anything,” she said,
struggling to keep her temper steady.

“I’m in charge here, Ms. O’Dell!” Brandt
raged, his voice barely below a shout. “
Me.
And because of
that, yes, you
do
have to ask for permission before going
out during lockdown. You
can’t
leave the house alone when
we’re on lockdown. I thought maybe you’d have had the sense to
figure that out! There are rules—”

“That nobody has bothered to tell us!” Sadie
snapped back. She felt a hand touch her shoulder and give it a
gentle squeeze, as if wordlessly signaling for her to back down.
She stiffened, resisting the suggestion, and added, “We’re new
here, Mr. Evans! And nobody has told us shit. You expect us to just
figure out and
know
these things without anyone telling us,
and that’s not possible. You’ve lived here for months. We haven’t
even been here a day yet. How the hell were we supposed to find out
these rules?”

“Brandt, are you yelling at them after I
asked you not to?” a woman’s voice asked from the direction of the
stairs.

Sadie cut her eyes to the dark-haired
pregnant woman with the odd accent who was coming down the stairs
carrying a large rifle. Ethan and Kimberly were behind her, the two
of them clearly dressed for the expedition they’d volunteered for
during the meeting. Kimberly carried a bulging backpack, and Sadie
saw another backpack propped beside the front door.

Brandt was still glowering at them, but at
the sound of his wife’s voice, he seemed to relax imperceptibly. He
stepped back from Sadie and Jude, giving them space and breathing
room.

“We were just having a discussion,” Brandt
said.

“A discussion?” Cade repeated as she reached
the bottom of the stairs. “This is my fault. In all the craziness
surrounding their arrival, I didn’t get the chance to sit down and
explain the community rules and procedures to them. So don’t yell
at them for something they didn’t know.” She looked Sadie up and
down and asked, “So, did you spot anything interesting we might
need to know about?”

Sadie shrugged. “We just needed some fresh
air,” she said. “And we wanted to get a look at the condition of
the gates for ourselves, so we could maybe get a better feel for
how much longer they’d hold out.” Jude tapped her elbow and made a
walking motion with his forefinger and middle finger, then held the
fingers up to signal the number two. Sadie hesitated, unsure if she
wanted to spill the beans on seeing Remy and Dominic out and about
during the lockdown—something that was, she now knew, against the
rules. But Cade and Brandt had both seen the gestures Jude had
made, and they were looking at them pointedly, expecting an
explanation. So Sadie sighed and said, “We also saw Remy and
Dominic outside. They looked like they might have been heading in
this general direction, maybe to the house next door, but we didn’t
follow them to be sure.”

Brandt looked like he was ready to explode
with curses again, but Cade merely said, “Huh,” and gave him a
knowing look. Then she turned her attention back to Sadie. “We’ve
got some business to attend to. Do you guys want anything to eat? I
know most of us missed dinner earlier, and you’re probably pretty
hungry by now.”

Sadie wasn’t particularly hungry, but she
looked back to Jude anyway, prompting him for his answer. He shook
his head and made a few gestures.

“No thanks,” Sadie said. “I think both of us
could use more rest before everything goes crazy, though, if you
don’t mind.”

“Of course I don’t mind,” Cade said,
beckoning to both of them. As she moved away from Brandt, she
grasped his forearm and squeezed it gently. She smiled at him
before letting go and starting up the stairs again. Sadie gave the
man one last glance before she followed, sending him a silent
apology. Jude was right on her heels.

Kimberly wasn’t going to lie: she was nervous about
going outside the community. She hadn’t been outside the walls
since the gates had been closed, and she was worried that she might
be rusty when it came to fighting the infected. She hadn’t killed
one in a while, and the last thing she wanted was to freeze up the
moment she faced one down and end up getting killed. And, worse,
putting Ethan in danger of the same.

Ethan stood beside her in silence as Cade
led the twins up the stairs. He and Brandt watched each other
closely—why, Kimberly didn’t know. Ethan looked alert but pensive,
and Brandt just looked exhausted. She was sure, before the night
was through, that they’d all be dancing on that line. Finally,
Ethan tucked his hands into the pockets of his jeans and asked,
“What was that all about?”

Brandt sighed. “I don’t know, man. I blew
up, I guess. Too much stress, what with all this shit going on, and
I’ve got no outlet for it all. I found out they broke a rule, and I
snapped.”

“Happens to all of us,” Kimberly spoke up.
“You can apologize to them for using them as a metaphorical
punching bag later. For now, Ethan and I need your assistance.”

“With what?” Brandt asked. He came to
attention like any good soldier would, his spine straightening and
his shoulders squaring, seemingly out of pure reflex. Kimberly
almost smiled at the gesture, but the monumental task that lay
ahead of her was enough to squash the impulse before it could fully
form.

“We need to get into the rec center for
supplies,” she told him. The rec center was padlocked, a decision
made shortly after one of the survivors, Rico Gutierrez, broke into
the storage area where the food was kept and stole every drop of
booze in the place. After that, only two people had access to the
storage rooms: Cade and Brandt. But there was no way Kimberly would
ask Cade to put herself at risk just to unlock a door for them.
Brandt’s help would suit her just fine.

Brandt pulled a chain out of his pocket and
passed it to her; the key dangled from it. She twined the chain
around her fingers and clutched the key tightly.

“Don’t worry about bringing the key back,”
Brandt said. “Cade has one, and we won’t be here much longer
anyway, once we start evacuating.”

“I’ll leave the key in the storage room’s
padlock,” Kimberly offered. “We won’t take much, if you want to
pack supplies for the evac.”

Brandt shook his head. “No, we’re leaving
it. We don’t have a way to move it out of here right now, and
besides, everyone in Woodside is supposed to have their own bug-out
bags. Anyone who hasn’t prepared theirs is shit out of luck.”

“Kim, we’re wasting time,” Ethan said,
scooping up the second bug-out bag and shifting it onto his
shoulder. “We really, really need to get moving before conditions
deteriorate.”

Brandt wrenched the door open, and a hint of
cool evening air flowed in. He turned back to face them and swept
Ethan up in a hug. Ethan returned it with a vigorous pat on the
back. Kimberly was surprised when Brandt hugged her too.

“You two be extra careful, okay?” he said.
“I’ll leave a note hidden in the grandfather clock with information
on where we end up going, in case you make it back and it’s safe to
come inside.”

Suddenly, there was a loud crack, like the
sound of wood being forcibly split in two. The groan of metal
against metal followed it.

Ethan grabbed Kimberly’s hand. “Time to go,”
he said urgently, pulling her out of the house and onto the
porch.

Kimberly didn’t have time to think about how
scared she was as they moved. They paused for a second at the end
of the sidewalk, and Ethan looked around as if he were trying to
get his bearings. Kimberly took her cue from him, sweeping her eyes
over their surroundings, searching for any nasty surprises in their
path to the rec center. Nothing moved. Not even a breeze stirred
the few stunted, half-stripped trees that were left. The
thirty-foot wall surrounding Woodside blocked most of the wind.

Then Kimberly shifted her eyes in the other
direction, turning her attention to the gates, and she could have
sworn her heart skipped a beat. The gates had begun to lean inward,
the structural integrity undermined by the hands that beat on it
and the bodies that pressed against it. She swallowed compulsively,
her nerves almost getting the better of her, and grasped the hilt
of her machete, grinding her fingers into it. Even as she watched,
the sound of wood cracking and metal squealing met her ears again,
and the gates sagged further. She moved closer to Ethan, and nudged
his arm to get his attention. “Eth, look at that!” She pointed, and
Ethan followed the direction of her hand.

“Damn, they must have shifted the metal gate
off its track,” Ethan guessed. “I’ll be surprised if it lasts the
night.”

He sounded shaken, and Kimberly figured his
mind was on the friends he was leaving behind. She took his hand in
her free one and squeezed, trying to reassure him that everything
would be okay. He gave her a small, grateful smile in return and
nodded in the direction of the rec center. “Come on,” he said.
“Let’s get moving while we still can.”

Kimberly followed him to the rec center’s
back entrance, letting him push the door open and lead the way into
the dark building beyond. The door swung shut with a click,
enveloping them in total darkness, where all Kimberly could hear
was the sounds of her and Ethan’s breathing, his slow and steady,
hers harsh and erratic. Then a flashlight clicked on, the beam
aimed away from them, and Kimberly squinted against the sudden
light as she got a look at their surroundings.

The back door deposited them into the
center’s kitchen, and Ethan’s flashlight reflected off the room’s
stainless steel appliances. Kimberly’s shoulders relaxed as she
eyed the gas-powered industrial stove, the large stainless steel
countertops, and the pots and pans that hung from the racks above
the counters. She was intimately familiar with this room, having
spent as many hours here as she had in the medical house, helping
to cook and prepare foods for storage. The massive walk-in
freezer—that hadn’t been anywhere in the realm of cool in over a
year—was set into the wall. She pulled the key free from her
pocket.

The sound of a shoe scuffing against the
tiled floor met her ears, and she glanced back at Ethan, thinking
he’d made the sound. But Ethan hadn’t moved. He’d heard the sound
too, because he was more alert, his eyes wide as he scanned every
inch of the room visible from his position. When she raised her
eyebrows in silent question, he shook his head and motioned for her
to continue on. She nodded and lifted the padlock. Then she let it
go. It struck the stainless steel door with a clang. “Holy shit,”
she said, her voice low but loud enough to carry to Ethan.

“What?” Ethan asked.

Kimberly traced her finger along the
U-shaped hasp of the padlock, her fingertip catching on the sharp,
uneven edge that cleaved the U in two. “Somebody’s been in here,”
she reported to Ethan. “I think they cut the padlock with bolt
cutters.”

A shoe squeaked against the floor, and Ethan
raced to her side. He angled his body to block her from
whatever—
whoever
was with them. Kimberly was alarmed to see
he had his Glock in his right hand. “Ethan,” she started, but he
gave her a quick shake of his head to cut her off.

“There’s someone in here with us,” he
whispered.

Her shoulders stiffened. She felt a target
paint itself between her shoulder blades.

“Is it one of the infected?” Kimberly asked,
thinking of the way the front gates were collapsing under the
weight of their bodies and the way the infected were climbing over
the wall in batches. Suppose one of them had gotten into the
center? The thought gave her chills.

Ethan suddenly lifted his pistol and aimed
it at the back door. “Stop right there,” he barked.

Kimberly heard the hardness in his voice,
and she followed his gaze but couldn’t see who—or
what
—he
was addressing.

“Don’t move a muscle, or I’ll introduce your
brains to the wall behind you,” he added.

“I don’t think that will be necessary,
Ethan,” a familiar voice said. The shadows shifted, and Kimberly’s
eyes adjusted enough to make out the shape of a person—Dominic
Jackson. Her shoulders relaxed, but only a fraction, as her
annoyance reared its ugly head.

“Dominic,
what
are you doing in
here?” she demanded. She noticed Ethan hadn’t lowered his pistol;
it was still pointed in the other man’s general direction. Good.
That meant Ethan trusted Dominic about as much as she did, which
meant not at all.

“Probably the same thing you’re doing,
unless I’ve missed the mark.”

Ethan adjusted the flashlight’s beam, and
Dominic came into view. He stood near the door with a bulging
backpack on his back and loaded down with weapons like he was
getting ready to wage a one-man war. The sight of the oversized
backpack made Kimberly grit her teeth. “No, you’re
not
doing
the same thing we are,” she snapped. “Because
we
have a key,
while you’re breaking in and stealing things like a thief.”

Dominic was unperturbed by her
pronouncement. He glanced at her before turning his dark eyes back
to Ethan. “You aren’t planning to do something stupid with that
gun, are you?” he asked, his voice steady and his tone measured.
“Thinking about arresting me for stealing a few supplies? There’s
no law here anymore, Ethan, and you’re not a cop. Hell, you won’t
even be a citizen of Woodside for much longer, judging by your own
bags. Where are you going?”