The Becoming: Ground Zero (22 page)

“Not as well as Ethan,” Theo admitted. “And I’m not in charge here. I don’t want to be in charge. I think I’m perfectly content with my small role in this group, and I want to keep it the way it is. If Ethan’s out of commission, if he cracks because of Nikola’s death, I think everyone will look to you or Brandt for guidance
way
before they look at me. I am definitely not a natural leader, and I’d never be able to lead a group like this one. I couldn’t handle that kind of responsibility.”

Cade motioned toward the van. “How are you taking this?” she asked, shifting her eyes to the vehicle. She watched Remy, Gray, and Avi closely; the three of them sat in the wet grass. Gray had his arm around Remy, holding her tightly against his side as the young woman slumped there silently. Avi sat curled in the grass near them, her head bowed as she stared down at her hands. Nikola’s body was nowhere to be seen.

“She’s in the van,” Theo said, noticing Cade’s eyes on the spot where Nikola had lain. “Gray and I moved her inside so she wouldn’t have to lie out in the rain.” He sighed and twisted his fingers together, sitting in silence, his eyes closing momentarily as a wave of guilt washed over his face. “I just wish there were something I could have done, some way I could have helped her. I just … I felt so fucking
helpless
.”

Cade nodded in silent agreement. She stared blankly at the overgrown trees on the other side of the ditch in which the van rested. Her stomach was a knot of suppressed emotion, and it was beginning to make her feel queasy. “I don’t know what to do,” Cade finally confessed to Theo. “I don’t know how to handle all of this, if you want me to be quite honest. I don’t think I’d be any better a leader than you.”

“I think you’d be a great leader, if you want my opinion, however little it may matter,” Theo said. He slowly stood, brushing at his muddy pants uselessly, and looked at their surroundings, his expression pensive. His eyes skimmed the tree line, the van, and the embankment behind them each in turn. Cade watched curiously, pushing her wet bangs out of her eyes and tilting her head back to squint up at him.

“Is something wrong?”

“Not as such, no,” Theo answered evasively. He raked his hands through his wet hair and added, “I just don’t feel comfortable sitting out in the open in the rain with the sun down. There might be infected around here somewhere, you know? And we’d never hear them coming with it raining like it is.” He shook his head and added, “Not to mention we’re bound to get sick sitting in the cold like this.”

A voice spoke up from above and behind them as Theo finished talking. “We should move.” Cade and Theo turned as one to see Ethan sliding down the embankment, his expression the very picture of exhaustion. Brandt followed closely behind, watching Ethan intently, as if he weren’t sure his efforts to calm the man had worked. The older man didn’t look a hair’s breadth away from another outburst anymore, so Cade concluded that whatever miracle Brandt had worked hadn’t been in vain.

“I agree,” Theo said immediately. He went to Ethan and took the man’s arm, leading him toward the others. “Come on. Let’s go talk to Remy and Gray and see what we can all do for shelter.”

Cade and Brandt stood in the rain, watching the two men walk slowly away from them, and then Brandt turned to her. “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice laden with concern. Cade was touched that he even thought to ask, especially after spending so much time and effort calming Ethan down. She nodded slightly.

“As good as can be expected, given the circumstances,” Cade admitted. She let out a drawn-out sigh and folded her arms over her chest, hugging herself tightly, fingertips digging into her ribs. She watched Ethan worriedly, her eyes narrowed and her forehead drawn down into a frown. “He’s going to fall apart, isn’t he?”

“Probably,” Brandt acknowledged. “I think I’ve done all I can to help him hold it together for now. But it’s not going to last. We’ll have to help him as much as we can, because there’s no way we can do this on our own. We need a leader.”

“Theo thinks it should be one of us if Ethan can’t do it.”

Brandt gave a slow, thoughtful hum and shoved his hands into his pockets. Cade could imagine that he was about to start rocking on his heels any moment now. “I figured as much,” he said. Cade realized he was staring at her, his eyes locked like lasers onto her face. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked after another moment of intense study.

Cade shrugged. “I have to be,” she said, her voice hushed as she averted her eyes. “If Ethan isn’t going to keep himself together, if he’s going to allow himself to fall apart, then I can’t afford to do what I want to do right now.”

“Which is?”

Cade hesitated, her vision blurring with tears. She turned her head back the way they’d come, staring emptily at the deep gouges the van’s tires left in the muddy embankment. “Cry,” she muttered. She swiped the back of her hand across her eyes angrily. The
last
thing she wanted was to have an emotional breakdown in front of Brandt. That would just make her night oh so perfect.

Brandt, thankfully, didn’t mention her teary-eyed state as he gave her shoulder a comforting squeeze. His fingertips traced a small line over the hollow between her collarbone and shoulder.

“What are we going to do, Brandt?” Cade asked. She looked down at her muddied clothes in an effort to find something neutral on which to focus her eyes, something other than the man standing beside her or the van holding the body of a dear friend, of a young girl who’d been like a little sister to them all.

“I have an idea, but I’m not sure the rest of you are going to like it,” Brandt said.

Cade sighed. “I really hate when you start something off like that.”

Brandt gave her a reassuring smile and squeezed her shoulder once more before he let go and took a step forward. “Come on. We should have a meeting with the others.
And
get out of this fucking rain before we get sick. All of us coming down with the flu would make this mess suck even more mightily than it already does.”

An hour later, Gray carried the last of the group’s immediately necessary supplies up the embankment to the military supply truck Brandt had commandeered for shelter. A frame covered in a heavy, thick canopy arched over the back of the truck. Though it was neither warm nor comfortable, it was dry. It gave them a semblance of safety and security, even if only psychologically.

“I found Cade’s rifle in the van,” Gray said as he approached. Brandt sat on the lowered tailgate, his legs hanging off as he examined a handgun, presumably keeping watch.

“I’m sure she’ll be happy to see it.” Brandt took the rifle from Gray and gave it a cursory once-over before he patted the tailgate beside him. “Have a seat.”

Gray obliged, making himself comfortable before looking back at the other five huddled in the interior of the truck’s cargo area. Ethan had taken up residence at the front of the truck, his arms resting on his knees and his head tilted back, eyes closed. Ethan looked a mess—even more so than the others. He looked on the verge of cracking at any moment. With anyone else, Gray would have been at least a little worried, but in this case, he couldn’t have cared less about how Ethan felt. It was
his
fault they were in their current mess to begin with, his and Avi’s.

Gray’s eyes drifted to Ethan’s right, and he recognized the shadowy figure of Remy sitting beside Ethan in the dark truck. She talked to him inaudibly, rubbing her hand slowly and soothingly up and down his forearm. The scene looked incredibly intimate, and Gray felt a punch of jealousy in his gut. He averted his eyes before he did something stupid, like make a big deal out of it.

Theo sat on Ethan’s left, his fingers pressed to the man’s wrist, studying a watch on his own arm. It took Gray a moment to realize that Theo was checking Ethan’s heart rate. Gray wondered if Ethan was having stress-induced chest pains again. That had happened the October before, and it scared them all shitless—even Gray, though he’d have died before he ever admitted it. Gray might have disliked Ethan immensely, and he might not have cared how the other man felt, but he didn’t wish him ill. Even Gray wasn’t stupid enough to deny that Ethan had a way with the members of the group that kept them all in line. Ethan was irreplaceable, and Gray readily acknowledged that fact.

Avi sat on Theo’s other side, her feet drawn up underneath her. Gray smiled slightly as he saw the way the woman stuck so close to Theo. She’d barely moved from the man’s side since the group set out from the safe house in Maplesville. Gray wondered if Avi had taken a liking to Theo. Though he didn’t particularly like Avi either—not that he disliked her as much as he disliked Ethan—Gray had to admit that it was good to see his older brother seem almost happy again. Gray didn’t recall seeing Theo have a single moment of happiness in the time since the Michaluk Virus broke out, and it was so unlike the ebullient brother with whom he’d grown up that Gray still found Theo’s behavior disconcerting.

Gray turned his eyes to the last object of examination. Cade sat near the end of the truck bed, reasonably close to Brandt, her hand loosely gripping a handgun that rested on her thigh. She’d leaned her head back against the side of the truck in a manner similar to Ethan’s. But unlike Ethan, Cade was actually asleep. The fact that she
could
sleep in a situation like this quite frankly impressed Gray.

“So did you have a plan?” Gray asked Brandt.

Brandt stared down the highway at a road packed tight with cars, bumper to bumper as far as the eye could see. The worst traffic jam Gray had ever seen sat on the Georgia side of the barricade, laid out before them like a long, winding metal snake. He silently thanked whatever deity looked down on them and still bothered to listen to humanity that he hadn’t been there for it. “Yeah, I have a plan,” Brandt admitted. “But like I told Cade, I’m not sure how any of you are going to feel about it.”

“Care to share?”

“No, not right now. After Cade wakes up from her nap,” Brandt said idly. He lifted the rifle with both hands and set it against his shoulder, aiming it down the highway. Gray jumped, scrambling for his own gun, but Brandt only laughed softly and set the rifle back down beside him, putting his hand up in a placating gesture. “Calm down, Gray. Chill. It was nothing. Just checking to make sure the scope wasn’t busted.”

Gray let out a breath that was a perfect mixture of relief and annoyance. “Oh God, Brandt, a little warning next time?” he requested, dropping his own gun to the metal tailgate beside him. “You know how jumpy being out like this is making me. Waving that damn thing around doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“Feeling exposed, huh?” Cade’s voice said from behind the two men.

Gray turned his head at the sound of her words, and he nodded in agreement. “Yeah, fairly.”

Cade moved to join him and Brandt at the end of the truck, sitting on her knees just behind Brandt and taking her rifle from him. Her dark hair was tangled and still wet, plastered to her forehead and cheeks. If Gray had had a hairbrush, he’d have given it to her.

“You don’t know exposed until you get into Atlanta,” Brandt said, his voice mild and tinged with exhaustion. “Downtown, there’s nothing but buildings all around you. There’s no clear line of sight. And there’s a shit-ton of places for those bastards to hide. Plenty of places for you to hide too, fortunately, but that’s assuming
they
haven’t chosen the same spot you have.” Brandt waved his hand, indicating the congested highway before them. “Out here is nothing. This doesn’t bother me. There’s hardly anything to even worry about, and we’ve dealt with, what, one infected guy since we left the safe house? This is a fucking
vacation
. You won’t see me get nervous until we actually get into Atlanta.”

“So we’re still going in then?” Gray asked. He looked first at Brandt and then shifted his eyes in the direction of the embankment, across the highway, over the makeshift concrete barricade that separated the two sides of the highway. He thought of the battered van at the bottom of the hill, a makeshift tomb for the youngest member of their group.

“Yes,” Brandt said simply. “We have to, if we go with my plan.”

“No,” a voice spoke up. Gray, Brandt, and Cade turned to see Ethan sitting straighter at the back of the truck, watching them steadily through the dark interior. He still looked pale and wan, but the expression in his green eyes was all hardness and coldness. He shook his head, and his eyes met each of theirs in turn. “We can’t go. We
shouldn’t
.”

“Why not?” Brandt asked. Gray could see gears begin to turn in Brandt’s head as the older man’s back stiffened and he too sat up straighter. The Marine was obviously grinding up for an argument. Gray hoped he wouldn’t be dragged into it.

“Because it’s too fucking dangerous. You said so yourself, Brandt,” Ethan pointed out. “Or have you conveniently forgotten your own argument against us going in the first place?”

Brandt let out a slow breath, as if he were trying to steady his nerves and not start a fight with Ethan, and then shook his head. “I have not. And I’m not going back on that either. I’m not saying I
want
to go into Atlanta. I’m saying we
have
to.” His voice was surprisingly calm and steady, though he appeared to Gray as one warring with something inside himself. Brandt turned to face the inside of the truck so he could see them all, and he said suddenly, “Avi is right.”