The Becoming (5 page)

“Fuck,” Ethan breathed out slowly. “This shit is … there are no words. I have no idea what is going on.”

“I doubt anyone does,” Cade admitted. She looked toward the stairs and then back behind her once again. Andrew still stood behind the sofa, his eyes locked onto the television. “Ethan, I’ve got to go. I think Drew is still feeling jetlagged, and I want to go up and check on Josie.”

“Call me back when you get the chance,” he said.

A smile quirked at the corner of Cade’s mouth. “Okay, no problem.” She hung up the phone and let out a breath to steady herself. Then she turned toward the stairs. “Hey, I’m going to go up and check on Josie,” she said to Andrew. He didn’t respond, but Cade shrugged it off as fascination with the news reports and began to climb the stairs.

The upstairs level was calm and quiet, dark and soothing compared to the brighter lights and noise downstairs. Cade started toward the guest bedroom where Josie slept, but she paused in the doorway to her own bedroom. She stared into the dark room thoughtfully as she considered gathering her important documents, just in case. She finally went inside and opened the top right dresser drawer. She took out a flat yellow manila envelope and made sure that her IDF identification, social security card, and naturalization papers were inside it before she went to the closet door. She took out the black plastic case she’d stored in the back of the closet and set it on the bed, dropping a medium-sized duffel bag and a pile of clothes and other essentials beside it. She smoothed her hand over the rifle case to reassure herself and left it there for ease of access. Once she’d packed her bag, she turned to the task of checking in on Josie.

Cade knew something was wrong before she even got to the doorway. She had left the door cracked when she put Josie to bed, but now it stood fully opened, the dim glow from the night light near the door spilling out into the dark hallway. She was already on edge from the news reports; anything out of the ordinary, anything other than the way she’d left it, was enough to make her wary. She approached the door, easing up to it cautiously, and peered around the doorframe as she fought against the nervous flutter in her stomach.

There was a dark form leaning over Josie’s bed. The little girl still slept, and the form was nearly motionless as it stood over her. Cade stepped into the room, her fists clenched and ready for a fight as her heart leaped into her throat. But she relaxed and let out a slow breath of relief as she realized it was only Andrew.

“Drew? Everything okay?” she asked. She kept her voice low so she wouldn’t disturb Josie’s sleep and took a slow step toward him. Andrew continued to stand over Josie, his head bowed as he stared down at the sleeping girl’s form. He didn’t move in the slightest to acknowledge Cade’s approach.

“Drew?” Cade repeated as she moved closer. She frowned and reached out to press her hand to his shoulder in a gentle gesture, trying to get his attention. “Are you okay?”

Andrew turned his head so suddenly and so sharply that Cade took an involuntary step back. The look on his face struck her silent before she could even consider speaking another word. His expression was angry, heavy with hatred and violence. To her horror, she realized that the lower half of his face was covered in a thick, dark liquid that slowly dripped off his chin to fall to the cream carpet below.

Cade glanced at the bed and saw that Josie still hadn’t moved. The dark liquid was all over the bedcovers, all over her pajamas. Her small, thin hand hung limply off the edge of the bed, horribly pale and motionless. As the full realization of what Cade was seeing hit her, Andrew lunged forward, both of his bloodied hands grasping for her. His fingers closed into the fabric of Cade’s pajama shirt and dug in, jerking her toward him. Cade let out a shocked cry and backpedaled, ripping free from his grasp and tearing the front of her shirt open.

“Josie!” Cade yelled as she staggered away from Andrew. She collided with the doorframe, the wood digging into the space between her shoulder blades. The little girl on the bed still didn’t move, still didn’t respond to her cry.

Cade turned and fled to her bedroom, slamming the door behind her. She swore out loud as she fumbled at the doorknob and remembered that she’d had the knob changed out for one without a lock three months before. She gave up on the attempt and turned her attention instead to finding something with which to barricade the door. As her blue eyes skimmed over the room, they landed on the rifle case that she’d left lying on the bed.

It took Cade only two steps to cover the distance to the bed. She grabbed the case and yanked on the lid before she swore again; it was still locked. She darted to the dresser and pulled the drawer completely out in her haste. The drawer’s contents spilled onto the carpet and scattered at her feet. Cade dropped to her knees and started to scrabble through the pile of assorted items for the little silver key that would unlock the case.

Cade saw the shine of silver near the front of the pile and closed her fingers around it. She pulled the little key to her chest and clutched it tightly in her fist. She moved on autopilot as she climbed to her feet and raced back to the rifle case. She jammed the key home and twisted it in the lock. Before Cade could manage to get the rifle out, the doorframe splintered and Andrew barreled into the room. He headed straight toward her without hesitation.

Cade took a quick step back from him. “Andrew? Stop, Drew,” she ordered. She put up both of her hands in a defensive posture as she slipped sideways to put the bed between them. Andrew continued to move toward her, slowly, his eyes tracking her every movement. Cade was reminded for a terrible moment of a predator stalking its prey, a wolf circling a rabbit, and it didn’t take a genius to guess which one of them was the rabbit. She shuddered and glanced at the phone. She wondered if she could get to it fast enough to call for help.

Before Cade could consider making her move, Andrew lunged at her. Cade fell to the side, trying to dodge his attack. Her hip banged into the table beside her bed, and the pain drew a gasp from her throat. A flash of memory flipped through her mind, an image of something she had shoved into the table’s drawer just before Lindsey brought Josie for her visit the week before. Cade fumbled blindly for the drawer’s handle and pulled it open. She kept her eyes on Andrew as her hand felt for and found the loaded Jericho 941 handgun she’d stashed inside.

“Drew! Stop!” Cade ordered as she pulled out the handgun. She swung it up to point directly at him. Her thumb flipped the safety off, even as she put one hand up to warn him off. Her mind fell onto thoughts of Josie, lying seemingly dead in the next room, and her eyes fell onto the blood that still stained Andrew’s hands and face. Cade gritted her teeth to brace herself. She suspected what his next move would be.

Andrew snarled at her, baring his bloodied teeth and curving his fingers into claws. The muscles in Cade’s back stiffened in reaction, and she steadied the gun with both hands. As he took another step toward her, she squeezed the trigger.

Ethan paced back and forth in front of the cold fireplace in the living room. He had been checking his watch and stopping to look out the front windows every few minutes for the past hour, ever since Anna had grabbed her go-bag and run out of the house to go to the hospital. Everything about him, emotionally and physically, was on edge. He wanted desperately to go out, track Anna down, and drag her back to the house, regardless of what she wanted or what her supervisors said. He just didn’t feel it was safe enough for her to be out on her own without protection against any of the crazies that were now running the streets.

The sudden sharp, familiar sound of gunshots echoed out in the night. Ethan froze and looked up from his contemplation of the floorboards. He counted the shots silently, deciding that there were four of them, and then he tried to guess where they had come from. Ethan couldn’t be positive, but he had the sneaking suspicion that they’d come from the direction of Cade’s house.

Ethan frowned and grabbed his Glock 17 from the coffee table; he’d taken it out after the reports of the riots broke on the news and his bosses called him with instructions. He was unsure of what he was going to face as he headed for the front door and flung it open, but whatever it was, he’d be armed when he faced it.

Ethan turned off the safety on his gun as he walked out into the dew-dampened grass. He looked around cautiously as he crossed the front yard and headed toward Cade’s house. His dress shoes slipped on the grass, and he made a disgusted face as he glanced down at his getup. He should have changed clothes before he went to investigate the source of the gunshots. Dress shoes, pants, and a nice shirt weren’t exactly ideal clothes to wear for a potential fight.

A loud thud at the front of Cade’s house drew Ethan’s attention, and he reflexively lifted his gun. He gripped it with both hands as he halted in his journey across the yard. His green eyes narrowed, and he squinted through the darkness. The silhouette of a person ran toward him. The sound of sobbing met his ears, and he lowered the gun as he realized who it was.

“Ethan!” Cade cried out as she ran. “Ethan, help!”

Ethan ran forward, struggling to keep from slipping on the damp grass in his ridiculous shoes, and met her in the space between their houses. Cade dropped a handgun onto the grass between them and flung herself into his arms. Ethan realized only after he’d wrapped both arms around her that her arms and torso were stained with blood. The front of her shirt was ripped open, and her feet were bare and wet.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Ethan asked as he took in the sight of her. Cade choked back desperate sobs as she buried her face against his chest. Ethan could feel her entire body trembling, and he rubbed her back soothingly as he held her. “What the fuck happened?”

“Andrew killed Josie,” Cade said. She continued to cry, her voice muffled by his shirt. Ethan felt his heart drop into his gut as her words sank in. “He killed her and he attacked me and I shot him.”

Ethan focused on the handgun at his feet and the way Cade kept looking over her shoulder, as if she expected something to spring from the shadows by her house and attack. “Wait, slow down,” Ethan urged. He put his hands up in a calming gesture before he rested them both on her shoulders. “One thing at a time. What’s going on?”

“We need to get inside,” Cade said breathlessly. She grabbed Ethan’s wrist and pulled at it so hard that for a fleeting moment, Ethan thought she was about to dislocate it. “We need to lock the doors. It’s not safe out here.”

Ethan allowed Cade to lead him back inside his own house. She slammed the door shut and turned the deadbolt to lock it securely. She pulled the curtains covering the windows on either side of the front door tightly shut and checked that no light shone through them. Once done, Cade let out a slow breath and wiped at her face with the back of her hand. “He killed her,” Cade repeated. “He’s acting like … like one of those
things
on TV.” She rubbed at her face again, and the action left a smear of blood across her cheek. Ethan grabbed a tissue from the box on the coffee table and began to help her clean the blood from her face. “He fucking attacked Josie while she was asleep. He tore her open, Ethan!”

“Jesus,” Ethan breathed as Cade started to sob again. He wrapped his arms around her once again and closed his eyes. He wasn’t sure what to do. All of his professional training told him that he needed to arrest her and take her into the station, but his friendship with her and the constant chatter over the police scanner on the mantelpiece suggested otherwise. “I should go check it out,” he said.

“No!” Cade exploded. She took a step back from him and shook her head frantically. “No, no, don’t go over there. It’s not safe.”

“Babe, you said you shot him,” Ethan pointed out. Cade looked panicked. That fact, more than any other, scared him. Cade didn’t panic over
anything
. The woman was the most levelheaded person he’d ever met, and nothing seemed to faze her. Until now.

Cade breathed in a slow, shaky breath. “Yeah, I did. Four times.” She scrubbed at her left cheek with the tissue as she closed her eyes. “In the chest.”

“So let’s go take a look,” Ethan persisted. He stepped toward the door.

Cade shook her head and grabbed his wrist again, this time to stop him. She raised her head slowly to look at him, and Ethan was reminded of the creeping feeling he got when one of the characters in a scary movie was about to say something particularly ominous. “Ethan … he didn’t stay down.”

Ethan studied Cade’s face for even the slightest hint that she was joking. But he knew that the situation was too serious for jokes. “Didn’t stay down?” he repeated. “But … you shot him in the chest.”

“Yeah, and I don’t miss,” she said. Her voice trembled as much as she did. She leaned to grab a fresh tissue from the box and dabbed gently at her reddened eyes. “I don’t miss, Ethan. I hit him in the chest, right here, four times.” She touched her chest just above her heart.

Ethan shook his head slowly. “There’s no way someone should have been able to survive something like that. It’s not possible.”

“He did, Ethan. He’s still in the house right now,” she said. “God, I don’t know what’s going on anymore.”

Ethan looked toward the police scanner as it erupted in another burst of static and almost indecipherable coded chatter. He waited until it fell silent once more, and then he said, “I was just planning on going out after Anna. She’s had enough time to get to the hospital. I want to pack shit up and get the hell out of town before it falls down around our ears.” He paused and then added, “You should come with us.”