The Becoming (21 page)

Cade nearly laughed despite her annoyance. “Hey, who said I needed to be kept in line? I can handle myself just fine, thank you.”

Brandt finally turned to look at Cade, concern in his dark eyes. Her smirk faded as she looked back at him. “Are you okay with this? With sticking with me and a couple of other guys you barely know?”

Cade mulled over Brandt’s question. She had several options: she could stay with the three men for the protection they offered, if nothing else; she could follow Ethan once he had departed and perhaps offer him some additional support and backup; or she could strike out on her own, though she knew instinctually that that would most likely lead to her own death. Deep in her heart, though, she knew that it was no contest. She would stick with her personal plan of safety in numbers, even if it meant allowing her best friend to leave for untold dangers alone.

“Yeah, I think I can handle it,” she said with a confidence she didn’t feel.

“Hey,” Brandt said quietly. He moved to kneel in front of her and patted her knee in an awkward attempt to comfort her. “Ethan’s going to be okay. He’s tough, you know? I’m sure he can take care of himself just fine.”

“And if he gets to Memphis and doesn’t find what he’s looking for?” Cade asked. “What if he just … falls apart? No one will be there with him to make sure he makes it through something like that. He’s nowhere near as strong as you seem to think he is, Brandt.”

Brandt studied Cade’s face, and though she was dying to look away, Cade forced herself to keep her gaze on Brandt’s warm brown eyes. Their expression was strong with concern and compassion. It made her feel a bit embarrassed, a bit like the helpless female that she knew she wasn’t.

Brandt cleared his throat as if he were uncomfortable, and he broke their shared gaze to look back toward the bedroom doorway. “So it’s looking like we’re going to have to move again,” he said conversationally, rising to his feet and stretching. “Gray has this theory or something that definitely makes sense, and I think you should hear it.”

Cade sat up straighter and pushed her bangs back from her eyes. “What kind of theory?”

Brandt began to talk in a hushed voice, his eyes locked to the window by which he’d hovered for most of their conversation. And Cade’s heart sank as the implication of his words hit her full force.

Gray was surprised at how much noise such a small group of people could make. It sounded like a herd of monkeys was trampling through the rooms, talking and calling out to each other and throwing supplies around. Gray supposed the noise levels came down to perspective; it had been so long since he and Theo had even dared to raise their voices above a low murmur that the volume of the activity in the house seemed much louder than it actually was.

Gray leaned back against the couch cushions and watched his brother and their three new companions sort and pack food, water, and ammunition into several different bags. Theo had relegated Gray to the couch because of his earlier asthma attack, and Ethan was less than pleased about Theo’s insistence that Gray rest. Gray had done his best to be useful despite his forced perch on the couch. Instead of simply sitting and watching the others work, he’d taken his maps back out and, with the help of Ethan’s road atlas, had begun to plot out ideal routes from the city and had marked potential locations for setting up a new safe house. A few different options presented themselves, one of them particularly good, and Gray made note of it in his notebook.

Gray looked up from his tight, careful handwriting and watched Ethan study a handgun Cade had given him. Gray thought that what the man planned to do was one of the stupidest things he’d ever heard; no one should have been going into
any
of the larger cities, especially not alone. Gray didn’t know Ethan, but something in the man’s mannerisms told him that Ethan would remain undeterred by the danger.

Gray sighed and waited for Brandt to pass by the couch with a case of bottled water before he stood and approached Ethan. He clutched a small bunch of papers in his hand. A nervous twinge shivered through his stomach as he stopped in front of the older man. Ethan didn’t look up right away as he shoved the gun into his bag, and when he spoke, his voice held a noticeable hint of impatience.

“Yeah, what do you need?” Ethan asked, still arranging the items in his bag.

Gray was a bit taken aback by Ethan’s attitude, but he forged ahead. “I, uh … here,” he said awkwardly. He held up the papers and thrust them toward Ethan.

Ethan finally looked up as the papers invaded his line of sight. He took them and glanced at them curiously. “What’s this?”

“You said you want to go back to Memphis to look for your wife, right?” Gray asked. When Ethan nodded, he continued. “Well, I figured out the fastest, safest route you can take.”

Ethan looked up from the papers to study Gray’s face. Gray tried to read Ethan’s blank expression, struggling to pin down the emotion the older man was feeling. The only word he could settle on was surprise. “You did this?”

“Well, yeah,” Gray answered with a little shrug. “I mean, you said you were planning on coming back, so I figured it could be helpful for your trip.”

Ethan gave Gray the barest of smiles and folded the papers, carefully tucking them into the front pocket of his bag. “Well, thanks. Really. Thank you,” he said awkwardly. He glanced around the room before he dropped his voice and added, “I’m sure they’ll help. Cade will track me down and kick my ass if I don’t come back in one piece.”

Gray put his hand over his mouth to muffle a laugh, and Ethan grinned at him. Once he’d recovered, Gray nodded toward Ethan’s bag. “So, uh, you got everything you need?” he asked. “Like, supplies and stuff?”

“I believe so,” Ethan said. He gave the interior of his bag another probing look. “I could maybe use a little more ammunition, but I’m going to try to collect more on the road. You guys will need it more than me. There are four of you to cover.”

Gray nodded again and turned to watch Theo and Cade as they set a box of canned food and a heavy black bag on the floor beside the front door. Gray noted with silent approval that Cade had her rifle slung over her shoulder to rest on her back; the woman never seemed to allow the weapon to stray very far from her. “She really knows how to use that thing?” Gray asked Ethan.

“Oh yeah, total crack shot,” Ethan acknowledged with a heavy dose of pride in his voice. “Fucking amazing. She can shoot almost anything exactly where she wants to hit it. It’s almost scary how good she is at it. I’ve never seen someone shoot that well.”

Gray smiled and tucked a lock of dark hair behind his ear. His hair had gotten too long; it had begun to hit that point before the world went to hell, and Gray had had to listen to his brother continuously tell him to get it cut. In the past month, however, a haircut had been the last thing on Gray’s priority list, faced as he was with the continued challenges of breathing and not getting his face eaten off.

“So what’s the plan for you four?” Ethan interrupted Gray’s thoughts. Gray gave Ethan a quizzical look. “I mean, you had the time to come up with this plan,” Ethan clarified. He waved his hand at his bag, indicating the papers he had folded and stuffed into it. “So did you come up with one for you guys?”

“Oh! Uh yeah, I did,” Gray said. He retreated to the couch to get the appropriate papers, dodging around Theo, who gave him a soft clap on the back before he headed into the kitchen. Gray shuffled through the papers scattered across the couch cushions and found what he was looking for. When he took them back to Ethan, the older man studied them curiously.

“Biloxi?” Ethan finally queried. “I thought we were trying to
avoid
the larger cities.”

“Well, yeah. But I heard on the radio that the areas closer to the coast aren’t as heavily infected as those more inland,” Gray explained. “Well, at least not anymore.” He sat down on the edge of the coffee table and retrieved his notebook. It didn’t take him long to find the pages he was searching for, and he offered the book to Ethan and grabbed a state map. “See, the guys on the radio said that once the infected cleared out most of the larger cities in the coastal areas, like Biloxi, New Orleans, and Mobile,” Gray tapped his finger on the dot marking Biloxi, “most of them began migrating further inland in search of, well, food, I guess you could call us. The best chances of survival are closer to the coast, because the infected are moving
up
the state, not down.” Gray smoothed his hand in a northerly direction up the map of Mississippi. “Once they hit the water, there was nowhere else for them to go, so they turned around and came back up.”

“How reliable is this information?” Ethan asked. He shook the book at Gray, letting the cover flop like the damaged wing of an injured bird. “These guys on the radio, where do they get all this information?”

Gray shrugged and folded back the cover of the map book so the state of Mississippi stayed on the top. He hadn’t really considered that; he didn’t know where any of the information relayed over the ham radios had come from. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “I think most of it came from other radio operators. People who are actually living down there.”

Ethan hummed thoughtfully and tapped his fingers on the page as he thought the information over. “I have to admit, I’m impressed,” Ethan said with a nonchalant shrug. He offered the black book back to Gray with a small smile. “To be honest, I had doubted how useful you would be. I mean, Theo’s usefulness is pretty obvious. He’s a paramedic, and that could come in handy in any number of situations. But you? I had no idea what to think of you. I was worried you’d be nothing but a drain on our supplies. You have definitely proven those concerns unfounded.”

“Hey, I’m not good at
just
this information thing,” Gray protested. “I’m a mechanic, and I can handle a hunting rifle pretty damned good. My dad used to take me out deer hunting with him all the time. I’ve been shooting a rifle since I was eight.”

“Where exactly is your father?” Ethan asked. Gray glanced up at him and then back down at the floor, unable to meet Ethan’s eyes as the question brought back painful memories with which he hadn’t quite finished coping.

“They’re … my parents, they died in a car accident about two years ago,” Gray explained. “Theo and I have been taking care of each other since then.” Gray blew out a slow breath. “Thank God neither of them is alive today to see all this shit.”

Ethan dropped the subject, and Gray saw a fleeting look of sorrow cross the man’s face. Theo approached Ethan and paused in mid-step as he too got a look at Ethan’s expression. He frowned in concern before he spoke.

“So we’ve got everything together and ready to go,” Theo said. “Now it’s just a matter of deciding
when
would be the best time to hit the road.” Ethan ran a hand through his dark blond hair and didn’t respond, and Theo’s frown deepened. “Everything okay over here?”

“Yeah, fine,” Gray answered. He wiped both hands down the thighs of his jeans nervously. “What do you need me to do?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Theo said flatly. “Except maybe sit and rest, because I think Brandt and Cade have decided that you’re going to be the driver for the first leg of the trip, wherever that may take us.”

“Biloxi,” Gray said. He finally took the notebook from Ethan. He passed the roadmaps to Theo for safekeeping and began to pack up the other papers. “I figure the closer we get to the coast, the better.”

“Good thinking,” Theo said. “Now we just need to decide when to leave.”

“I vote now,” Ethan spoke up. Theo and Gray looked at him in disbelief. The low tones of Brandt and Cade’s conversation ground to a halt as they too looked over.

“Now?” Cade repeated. “Are we even ready to leave right this minute?”

“Hey, you guys are the ones who said that everything is packed and ready to go,” Ethan pointed out.

“Just because the
shit
is ready to go doesn’t mean that
we
are ready to go,” Cade shot back.

“You just don’t want to leave yet because you know I’m going a different direction than you,” Ethan snapped.

“Of
course
it’s
always
all about
you,
isn’t it?” Cade snarled, her voice loaded with bitterness.

“You’re only delaying the fucking inevitable, Cade!” Ethan said. He was almost yelling by that point, and Theo took a careful step away from him.

“Okay, lady, cool it,” Brandt said. He reached out and put a gentle hand on Cade’s arm, tugging as if to pull her back from a fight. Theo and Gray exchanged an uncomfortable look. Gray hadn’t expected these seemingly capable people to end up coming apart at the seams. Not for the first time, he wondered just how capable these people were and how they were going to manage to keep their hides alive.

The next morning found three of the five survivors outside the safe house, gathered around Ethan’s SUV as they loaded water and food and weapons into the back. The early hour was a good time to leave, Brandt realized as he muscled a case of bottled water into the back of the vehicle. He had noticed the month before that the infected were always slower and sparser in the mornings, perhaps because of the early-morning chill, so it was the perfect time to slip out mostly unnoticed.

Cade stood guard on the roof of the Jeep, her ever-present rifle in her hands as she knelt on one knee and studied their surroundings. Brandt glanced at her and gave her a small smile as the sound of bottles rattling together in one of the boxes caught her attention for a moment. Cade returned the smile before she focused her eyes right back onto the horizon. She was all business when it came to keeping watch; Brandt had to admire her focus.