The Becoming (18 page)

“I have not!” Ethan protested, raising his voice.

Cade held up a hand to stop Ethan before he could say more and then jabbed her finger hard at the closed kitchen door behind her. “Then what the
hell
was that?” she demanded, struggling to keep her voice low. “The Ethan I know would
never
have suggested leaving others to suffer before Michaluk struck! Not when he had the means to do something about it!
What
is your problem?”

“Nothing, Ca—”

“Do
not
make me repeat myself,” Cade barked. “You
know
how much that pisses me off.”

A weighty silence fell between them. It sat on Cade’s shoulders, and she wasn’t sure she could shake it off. Especially not as she watched the way Ethan’s face crumpled. His shoulders sagged, and he looked away from her, almost as if he were ashamed of something. Cade hoped that that something was his behavior. She studied Ethan for a moment more and felt her anger begin to ooze away.

“Ethan?” she questioned.

Ethan didn’t look up at her. “I want … no, I
need
to go back to Memphis.”

Cade stared at him. An eyebrow slowly raised, seemingly of its own accord, as she took an involuntary step back. “You need to go back to Memphis
why,
exactly?”

Ethan hesitated and looked down at the floor between the two of them. Cade was oddly reminded of a school-boy on the brink of facing down a punishment for something he’d done wrong, and the impression left a sour taste in her mouth. She didn’t like how … reduced Ethan seemed to have become. She studied his face as she crossed her arms once more. When she finally spoke, her voice was as soft and gentle as she could make it in the face of her remaining irritation.

“You want to go back to look for Anna, don’t you?”

Ethan blew out a slow, heavy breath. He nodded with a reluctance so obvious that Cade had to resist the urge to slap him as her anger tried to well back up in her. He finally looked up at her, and his eyes were shiny, enough so that for the horrifying moment that passed before he answered her, Cade wondered if he’d actually been fighting tears. “I just have to know, Cade. I can’t deal with not knowing.”

“Well, you’re going to
have
to,” she snapped. It came out more harshly than she intended, but she didn’t regret the tone she had taken with him. Far from it. Cade was past the point of losing patience with Ethan, and she could only hope the hard stance she took with him would knock some sense into his obviously scrambled brain. “You
have
to deal with it, Ethan! You don’t have a choice!”

“Yes I do!” Ethan growled. For the first time in the conversation—and only the second time in their friendship that she could remember—Ethan raised his voice at her in anger. “I can go back and look for her!”

“She’s dead, Ethan!” Cade said as she struggled to maintain her own cool. She wasn’t going to lose her temper in front of him; she refused to give him the satisfaction. “You heard Lisa. She was in the hospital when it burned. She’s dead!”

“What if she’s not?” Ethan shot back. He did nothing to restrain his own anger as he took a step forward to match the one Cade had already taken toward him. “We don’t know for sure, Cade! We didn’t see her at all! We just
left
. How do I know she was even actually
in
that damned place? She could have been … hell, I don’t know, hiding somewhere or something!”

“You’re grasping at straws, Ethan!
She’s dead!
” Cade hadn’t meant to raise her voice, but the last two words came out in a shout. Silence dropped between them like an anvil again as they stared across the small space between them. Cade realized that she was panting in her anger, and she struggled to control her breathing before she ended up hyperventilating. She clenched her fists at her sides and dug her nails hard into her palms as she fought to maintain control of her emotions. She never lost it, not like that. She’d spent years honing the ability to keep tight control over every twinge of fear and anger and hopelessness that she felt. She didn’t know what had come over her, but she wasn’t going to be the one to back down. And she wasn’t going to let Ethan ruin every fragment of self-imposed training she’d ever had.

Ethan, for his part, looked stunned and hurt by Cade’s words. Before he could say anything, Cade spoke up once more. This time, her voice was quieter, more steady and more in control. She sent up a silent word of thanks as she began.

“Ethan, you can’t go back, okay?” When Ethan opened his mouth to interrupt, Cade held her hand up to stop him. “Wait, let me finish.” She paused to gather her thoughts, piecing them together one by one, and then she continued. “You haven’t been acting like yourself for the past month. Yeah, you were okay when we were initially getting the hell out of Dodge and trying to find your mother, though you acted like an ass to Brandt, and I doubt even
you
would argue that. But ever since we settled down here in Tupelo, you’ve been driving both of us absolutely insane. You’re cold, you’re distant, you’re careless, you have your ass eternally on your shoulders, and whether you want to hear it or not, you’ve become almost
cruel.
” She used the word again, even though it pained her to admit it. “You are
not
the Ethan I know. The Ethan I know would never have even considered suggesting sending two people back out into danger when he had the means to help them. I would ask what the hell has happened to you, but I’m pretty sure I already know the answer to that.”

They stared at each other again after Cade finished her spiel. Ethan didn’t like what she had told him at all. He fought back a scowl as he slid his own arms up to cross over his chest again. His expression was cold as he watched her. When Ethan finally spoke, some of that frigidity filtered into his voice, and it was almost enough to make Cade shiver.

“I don’t trust them,” Ethan admitted. “You can hardly blame me for that. I don’t trust
anyone
out there. Look at the situation we’re living in! I barely tolerate Brandt being here, but at least he has a useful skill set, and he’s not totally incapable of helping out with keeping the three of us alive. Those two? I don’t know a thing about them, and I don’t trust them any further than I could throw them.” He shook his head and ran a hand through his blond hair, not looking directly at her for a moment. “I don’t want them here,” he continued. “With two more people to deal with, the length of time our supplies will last is cut in half.”

Cade stared at him incredulously, her eyes wide in surprise. “You can’t be serious,” she said. “You think like that?”

“Of course I’m serious,” Ethan argued. “I’m looking at this from a
practical
standpoint, Cade. We can’t afford to take in every single survivor that comes in our general direction. I won’t risk any of us dying because of some stranger interjecting himself into our situation and taking up our supplies.” He blew out a breath and added, “They need to go.”

Cade shook her head. “Not just no, but
hell
no,” she said. “We are
not
forcing those men back out onto the street.”

“Then I’m going back to Memphis,” Ethan said decisively. His tone hinted at a finality that Cade sensed she was never going to be able to argue out of him. “And I’m going to look for Anna. You can come with me if you want, or you can stay here and take your chances with Brandt and those other two men.”

“You can’t
possibly
make me choose—”

Ethan cut her off before she could finish her sentence. “Cade. Which is it going to be?”

Cade looked up at him and bit her lip nearly hard enough to break the skin. She shook her head slowly as she tried to wrap her mind around what he had asked her to do.

Theo Carter knelt on the floor beside the coffee table, where he had been since he and Gray were admitted into the safe house, mechanically repacking his medical supplies back into his blue canvas bag. He wasn’t sure what to think of his new companions. The big man who had identified himself as Brandt seemed friendly enough; after all, he had been the one who had gotten them inside, seemingly against the wishes of his friends. The woman named Cade was distant, and Ethan appeared to be an absolute bastard. Theo made a mental note not to engage with Ethan if it could be helped.

Theo shook his shaggy blond hair back from his eyes and looked around the room curiously. Brandt stood several feet away, halfway between the coffee table and the kitchen door, his arms crossed over his chest. Brandt eyed the closed kitchen door, where Theo could just barely make out the sound of raised voices. He should have been attempting to make conversation with the man responsible for his and Gray’s rescue, but Brandt didn’t seem too interested in talking at the moment. So instead, Theo took a few minutes to examine his surroundings.

The living room was much dimmer than the brightening day outside, and it took Theo a moment to realize that it was because the windows were covered up and, in some cases, boarded over. There wasn’t much furniture left in the room; most of it had been used as makeshift boards for the windows. There was a plaid couch pushed against the wall behind Theo, and the coffee table on which Gray sat was shoved against it, leaving no space between the two pieces of furniture and hinting that the couch was little used. The room was sparsely lit by a single battery-operated camping lantern that sat on the opposite end of the coffee table from Gray and Theo. The light it threw out cast strange shadows into the corners, making the entire room look dingy and creepy, but it was certainly nowhere near as scary as being outside with the infected.

Theo glanced at Brandt after he had finished his examination of the room. Brandt still stared intently at the closed kitchen door, but the voices on the other side had fallen silent. Theo wondered what exactly was going on; this obviously wasn’t a cohesive group, as it had appeared to be on first glance. He cleared his throat to get Brandt’s attention; Brandt looked at him, and Theo couldn’t read the tall man’s eyes in the dim lighting. “Ah, is there a problem?” Theo asked delicately as he nodded toward the kitchen door.

“Maybe,” Brandt said evasively, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. “Ethan has been acting like an idiot for the past couple of weeks. I think Cade’s in there trying to straighten him out.” Brandt sighed heavily, suddenly sounding weary. “He’s not normally like … well, he doesn’t normally threaten to kick people out like he did with you guys. As far as I know, anyway. Cade’s always said that he’s really into helping people, so I’m not going to claim I get why he’s acting that way.” He glanced at the door one more time and then took a step toward Theo and Gray. “You two are the first uninfected people we’ve seen in nearly a month.”

Theo nodded understandingly as Gray offered him the inhaler back. Theo clipped the red plastic cap back onto the mouthpiece before returning it to its pocket in the trauma bag beside him. He finished packing the bag as Gray spoke up.

“You’re the first people we’ve seen too, besides each other.” Gray’s voice was hoarse and strained as he spoke. Theo put a hand on Gray’s shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze as the younger man continued. “We’ve been hiding out in a house about two blocks from here, but we were starting to run low on water. Then the infected found us and we had to get moving again.”

“Where are you two originally from?” Brandt asked, starting to get drawn into a conversation despite his obvious interest in the argument that had started in the kitchen once more.

“Plantersville,” Theo answered. “It’s a bit southeast of here. Maybe five miles? Something like that, anyway. It was a suburb of Tupelo, but the fires …” He choked as he remembered the events following the city’s fall, and he stopped talking as he tried to swallow the awful feeling creeping up from his gut.

“The downtown area burned,” Gray clarified softly. He looked down at his lap as he clenched his fists, and Theo saw his knuckles turn white. “It was some sort of accident. There wasn’t a fire department left to put any of the fires out, and it wasn’t safe enough to be outdoors trying to do it ourselves. A lot of the buildings were too close together, and so much of them burned that even those of us who weren’t infected had problems getting out of there. We … well, me and Theo got lucky.”

Brandt picked up a dining chair that was pushed against one of the walls. He carried it over and set it on the hardwood floor near Gray and Theo with a soft thump. He eased himself down into it as if he were tired and sore. He rested his elbows on his thighs and let his hands hang loosely between his knees, his back hunched over as he studied them one at a time. When Brandt finally spoke, it was to ask a question that Theo had been anticipating but didn’t look forward to answering. “So what were you two doing when the Michaluk Virus got to you?”

Theo blew out his breath to steady his nerves and looked up at Gray. Gray’s eyes met Theo’s, and Gray gave him a tight smile. “I was at work when I realized something was messed up,” Theo said. “We had gotten a call for an MVA out on Highway 6, and the patient we picked up was acting out of his mind. He kept trying to attack me, and some of the officers on the scene helped me tie him to the stretcher with some restraints. I thought at first that maybe it was a head injury that he’d sustained during the wreck, maybe an altered mental status or something. We were running lights to the hospital when he actually broke the restraints and grabbed me. If it weren’t for my driver getting me the hell out of there … well, I probably wouldn’t be sitting here today.”