The Becoming (26 page)

“As ready as I can ever be.” The girl’s voice was cheerful, and Ethan was surprised at how easily she’d fallen into a confident mindset. He wondered how she did it, how she could just dismiss the horrors outside. A fleeting thought that maybe she didn’t actually do so whipped through his mind faster than he could catch it, and he wondered what this young girl beside him dealt with on a daily basis, alone in the world with no one to rely on.

“Okay,” Ethan finally said. He drew in a slow breath and let it out. Nikola set the lantern down on the top step as Ethan pushed the door open, using his shoulder to heave it up and to the side. The door fell with a loud bang against the ground. There was no way to prevent the noise, but Ethan still winced at its volume.

Ethan lifted his gun and scrambled up the steps. He swept the immediate area to make sure there weren’t any infected waiting to grab them the moment they emerged from the cellar. With the coast clear, he hauled himself out and reached back to pull Nikola with him. Without another word between them, Ethan ran left as Nikola had instructed. Nikola’s feet struck the dead grass behind him as they sprinted toward the wire fence that loomed ahead.

Ethan grabbed the top of the fence and vaulted over it, narrowly avoiding the Romeo catchers. Thankfully, none of his clothing snagged on the dull v-shaped spikes. He grabbed Nikola, picking her up and physically hauling her over the fence as she dug her feet into it and pushed herself along. She breathed a quick word of thanks as her feet touched the ground on the other side, and then she started to run. She took the lead, getting out ahead of him as they made for the sidewalk and the line of cars blocking the path to Cade’s house.

Ethan dashed madly for the street, his legs pumping and his breath picking up. Movement to the right caught his attention as he ran. One of the infected was making its way straight toward them. Nikola saw it too; her step faltered, and she glanced back at Ethan uncertainly.

“I’ve got it! Keep going!” Ethan called. He pointed his gun at the oncoming enemy. The infected woman didn’t break stride as Ethan aimed, absorbed as she was in the acquisition of her next meal. Ethan gritted his teeth and squeezed the trigger. The shot struck her in the shoulder, but Ethan didn’t stop to try to shoot her again. Instead, he sped up to catch up with Nikola; she’d just barely reached the line of cars ahead of him.

“Go over them!” Ethan yelled as he covered the last few feet between him and Nikola. He nearly slammed into a car as his shoes slipped on the gravel scattered across the sidewalk. He and Nikola scrambled across the hood of the car, their feet finding purchase on the tires and bumper.

Ethan cleared the car first, and he turned to help Nikola over the last half of the hood. The infected woman had reached the other side of the car, and she grabbed for Nikola’s shoe. Ethan wrapped his fingers around Nikola’s wrist and hauled her bodily across the hood. He pushed her behind him and lifted his gun once more.

It only took one shot. The woman’s brains sprayed backwards in a shower of bone and blood and gray matter. She fell back to the sidewalk, disappearing from view.

“Holy shit,” the teenager squeaked. Ethan lowered the gun and grabbed her hand, tugging her in the direction of Cade’s house.

“Run! There’s more coming!” he snapped. His angry tone seemed to break through her frozen shock. Her black-and-white Chucks pounded the pavement alongside Ethan’s sneakers as they both ran for the house. Ethan dodged through a small gap between two cars. He banged his knee against the bumper of one and tried to ignore the pain as he grabbed for Nikola again. They stumbled their way up the steps of Cade’s front porch.

The front door still stood wide open, just the way Ethan and Cade had left it. Ethan didn’t have time to wonder why that was. He grabbed the teenager again and nearly slung her into the house. He darted in behind her and slammed the door shut, throwing the locks as quickly as his shaking fingers would cooperate.

“Barricade that door!” Ethan ordered breathlessly. But even as he barked out the words, the memory of a shattered patio door flashed through his mind, and he knew that the effort would be wasted. One glance into the kitchen confirmed that it was, in fact, broken. The girl was in the process of shoving a heavy table in front of the front door, but Ethan stopped her. “Never mind, not enough time,” he said. “And it’s pointless anyway. Upstairs, now.”

“Why is it pointless?” Nikola asked. She followed Ethan up the stairs, panting from the exertion of her run.

“Because the back door is busted wide open,” Ethan said. “It happened last month, when the virus hit Memphis. Cade and I were here, and they came in.”

“Cade?” Nikola asked as she tried to keep up with his pace. “Who is he?”

“She,” Ethan corrected absently. He reached the top of the stairs and motioned for her to stop just behind him. The stench of rot and decay hit his nose. It was the distinctive smell of death, one that Ethan had experienced several times in his line of work, and it was enough to draw him up short. He looked around cautiously, squinting into the darkness of the hallway. He fumbled for a small flashlight in his bag, finding it and turning it on to shine around them. It took him precious seconds that they could ill afford to spare to realize that it was the remains of Andrew’s body that he smelled. The man lay in a heap at the top of the stairs, exactly where he had fallen when Ethan shot him the month before.

The sight of the body reminded Ethan of the other body that was in the house somewhere. He breathed in slowly and glanced back at Nikola. He didn’t want to worry her, so he continued speaking casually, picking up where he’d left off.

“Cade is my best friend. She’s a marksman. Served in the Israel Defense Forces,” Ethan explained. He took a step forward and eased his way over Andrew’s remains, one foot at a time. Nikola hesitated as she glanced at the body, and Ethan wondered if her legs were long enough to step over him like she needed to. Ethan handed his gun to Nikola wordlessly before he picked her up and physically passed her over the body. “So basically, she’s perfectly suited to survive this kind of thing,” Ethan continued. “Maybe you’ll meet her sometime soon, if our luck holds out.”

“I hope it does,” Nikola admitted, her voice hushed. She stuck close to Ethan, right by his elbow, and he began to move toward Cade’s room, one slow step at a time. “I haven’t seen many people. You’re the first in a long while.” She slipped her backpack around and slid the aluminum baseball bat out of her bag, gripping it tightly in her hands. “It gets really old being by myself all the time.”

“I can imagine,” Ethan said. He paused in the doorway to Josie’s room and forced himself to look inside. The late afternoon was passing them by and early evening settling in, making everything around him more difficult to see. Ethan clenched his jaw and resigned himself to stepping into the room to make sure there were no dangers inside.

Ethan startled as he felt a sudden touch on his elbow. It was only Nikola, though, pressing closer to him in the dark hallway. Ethan shone the flashlight he held into the guest room. The beam of whitish-blue light illuminated the bloodstained bed in the center of the room. Ethan struggled to not close his eyes as he remembered what had happened to the little girl the month before.

The room was blessedly empty of anything that moved. Ethan breathed out in relief. “Come on, Nikola. We’ve got a few things to grab back here,” he said. He stepped away from the doorway and headed for the master bedroom.

Ethan had managed two steps down the hall when a shriek behind him pulled him back around again. He froze in shock as a small dark-haired girl pounced out of the shadows of the bathroom and slammed into Nikola. She bowled her over to the rough hallway carpet, and her small hands grasped desperately at the teenager’s face.

As Gray slowed the Jeep to a stop, Cade leaned between the front seats to look out at the street ahead. It had taken them the better part of the early night to make the trip to Biloxi, and the ride had been refreshingly uneventful. Theo had spent most of the time in the front seat fiddling with the radio, changing from one station of static to the next as if he’d discover something to listen to by magic or sheer determination, until Brandt had forced Gray to pull over so he could swap places with the paramedic. And now, as Gray put the Jeep into park, the entire interior of the vehicle fell into stunned silence as the occupants took in the sight before them.

The RV rested halfway down the street from the intersection Remy had given them, exactly where the girl had said it would be. It sat like a great white beached whale among the sea of smaller cars that surrounded it, its metal siding illuminated dully by the moonlight overhead. And all around the RV and the cars surrounding it were the infected, masses of them, all simply standing and staring at the large vehicle as if they sensed that an uninfected person waited inside. Cade had no idea how they were supposed to get to the injured girl inside, not to mention get her
out
. Not with just the four of them against the dozens of infected.

“Fuck,” Gray breathed, a tremor in his voice. “How are we supposed to do this?” He gripped the steering wheel tighter, his knuckles turning white. Cade swallowed nervously. “It’s … it’s got to be impossible, man.”

Cade’s eyes flitted from Gray to the man in the passenger seat. Brandt sat with his eyes locked onto the street before them. There was an intensity in his gaze that Cade had not seen before. The look didn’t do much to alleviate her nervousness, mainly because she knew what he was thinking: that they were going to have to try at all costs. And “all costs” would probably mean they’d end up dead. That was how missions like that always seemed to turn out.

“We’ve got to do something,” Brandt said, surprising no one in the Jeep. “We can’t just leave her there. You heard her. Her ankle might be broken, and she’s out of food and almost out of water. If we don’t get her out of there, she’s as good as dead.”

“But
how
are we going to get her out?” Cade asked. She kept her voice low in the presence of the infected, and she realized that the others were doing the same. Another silence fell over the Jeep’s interior at her words. Cade closed her eyes and tried to focus, to come up with an idea, any idea. But all she could hear was Brandt’s quiet breathing in her right ear and Gray’s fingers drumming on the steering wheel in her left.

“We need to get me in there,” Theo said suddenly. Cade turned to him in amazement. Theo unzipped his medical bag and started to rifle through it as he continued. “She might have a broken ankle, right? That means it will be difficult, if not impossible, for her to run. And if she can’t run, then we have a problem in itself right there.”

“He’s right,” Brandt said before Cade could reply. He tore his gaze from the street long enough to look at each of them in turn. “I think I have a plan, but I’m not sure how you’re going to like it.”

“I really hate when people start their plans off like that,” Cade muttered. “But that’s way more than what I have to offer right now.” She motioned for Brandt to continue.

“Okay, so here’s what I’m thinking,” Brandt started. “Gray, you’re going to stay with the Jeep and guard it. After we get out, you’ll take it two blocks in the direction we came from and wait for us there. Theo, you’re going to take whatever you need with you. Cade and I will cover you and try to clear a path to the RV.”

“And if one of us gets infected?” Theo asked solemnly. He transferred supplies into a smaller bag as he spoke, picking up and packing or discarding items as he saw fit.

“We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it,” Brandt said a bit flippantly. “My plan isn’t perfect. We’re going to have to make it as close to the RV as possible with as little noise and attention as we can manage. That will be easier said than done.”

“If not impossible,” Cade grumbled.

“The cars,” Gray said. He nodded toward the street, where cars lined the sides of the road, jammed up against the curbs, shoved against each other, a few halfway onto the sidewalk itself, the very definition of bumper-to-bumper traffic. “I’m sure you could get reasonably close to the RV if you hide behind them.”

“‘Reasonably close’ doesn’t equal ‘inside,’” Cade pointed out impatiently. “Besides, the moment we have to abandon cover, they’ll see us. And when they see us, we’ll have to shoot. And when we have to shoot …”

“… it will bring even more down on us,” Brandt finished for her. “But we’ve got to do something. We can’t leave her there.”

“You mean we
won’t,
” Gray corrected. Brandt glanced at him but didn’t acknowledge the truth of Gray’s words.

“It’s the best plan I’ve got,” Brandt confessed. “We’re going to have to go with it. Unless someone else has a better idea?”

Silence fell in the Jeep once more. Cade shifted in her seat uncomfortably and let out a sigh. “I think this is the point where, if Ethan were here, he would kindly inform us that this is a suicide run,” she said. Her eyes met Brandt’s for the briefest of moments. “But I also think you’re right,” she conceded. “We have to try. We can’t call ourselves decent people unless we do.”

Brandt studied her for a moment, perhaps trying to assess just how serious she was. But then the spell was broken. He gave her a short nod and drew his gun from its holster. He topped off the ammunition in its magazine calmly, almost mechanically. “We should get moving then. It’s after midnight. We probably don’t have much time before they notice we’re here.”