The Becoming: Ground Zero (30 page)

“Because I want to help. Because I care.” Brandt slid his hand to Cade’s wrist and tried to pull her hand from her face. “Come on. Don’t hide from me, okay? You promised you’d be honest with me, remember? You can tell me this kind of shit.”

Cade shook her head again, the motion just barely perceptible, but she allowed Brandt to pull her hands away from her face. Brandt wasn’t surprised that her face was flushed and her eyes watery with tears; she blinked rapidly in the light from the lamp by the bed. “I’m sorry,” Cade said. “I just … I’m really … I think it’s all starting to hit me.”

“What is, Cade?” Brandt asked, taking both of her hands in his and holding them. He rubbed his thumbs over her knuckles, trying to reassure and comfort her.

Cade dislodged a hand long enough to wave it vaguely at the ceiling before she pressed it back into Brandt’s grip. “All of this. All of the bad shit that’s happened.”

“You mean with Nikola?”

“Nikola. Josie. Andrew. Anna. The whole fucking
world
. All of it.” She let out a sad, shaky laugh, shifting her eyes from Brandt and staring blankly at the wall. “It’s all just too fucking much to deal with. I’ve spent too much time bottling all this shit up. I haven’t been able to sleep much in the past year, and I’m just … I’m tired of it all.” She let out a soft, choked sob and murmured, “Why do we have to live like this, Brandt?”

Brandt processed Cade’s words with the utmost care and consideration, trying to decide the best thing to say. But he came up empty. There
wasn’t
anything to be said to make Cade feel better. The whole world was shit, and there was no way to explain that away or make her feel better about it. “I don’t know, Cade,” Brandt finally admitted, feeling helpless. “I really don’t. I wish I did. I wish I knew what to say, but I don’t.”

“You’ve lost people too, right?” Cade asked. “You know how much it hurts. How awful it feels knowing what you have to do and that you have no way out of it.”

“But I didn’t lose them the way you did,” Brandt admitted. “I didn’t have to face the prospect of killing them myself. Not people I knew. Fuck, I got off
easy
compared to the rest of you. Theo and Gray haven’t had to deal with it, and I don’t know about Avi, but you and Remy and Ethan? God, I wouldn’t ever want to do what you had to do. I don’t know that I
could
. I don’t know if I’d be able to put one of you guys down, not if it came to that. I care too fucking much. I’ve let myself get too close and personal with all of you. That’ll just make it harder when the time comes.”

Cade and Brandt both fell silent for a long while. Cade spent the time simply lying still, her hands in Brandt’s, clutching his fingers desperately as if she were about to fall off a cliff and he was her only salvation. He held hers just as tightly in return, lifting them to his mouth and pressing soft kisses to her skin, first to the backs of her hands, then to her palms, and finally to the insides of her wrists. It was only after he lowered her hands again that she spoke once more.

“I just miss her. So much,” Cade murmured. “God, she was just a little girl, Brandt. Four fucking years old. She didn’t even really get a chance to
live
before it all went to shit. I don’t even know if her mother knows she’s dead. I don’t even know if her mother, if my
sister
is even still alive.”

“What does your heart tell you?” Brandt asked, sliding down to lie beside her. He rested a palm against her flat stomach, feeling his hand rise and fall with each breath. “What’s it say down here in your gut?” he asked, rubbing his fingers lightly against her stomach.

“It tells me that, considering the virus went worldwide well over seven months ago, the chance of Lindsey still being alive is slim to none,” Cade admitted. “It tells me that I shouldn’t get my hopes up for her survival, because she doesn’t have the skill set I do to live in a world like this. That if she
did
survive, I’ll probably never get the chance to talk to her again, never mind see her, so she might as well be dead.”

Brandt shook his head. “Cade, that’s what your head is telling you. What does your
heart
say?”

Cade hesitated, and she dropped a hand to rest on top of Brandt’s, slipping her fingers between his. “My heart tells me there’s always hope,” she said quietly.

“Exactly,” Brandt said. He slid farther up the bed to put his face on level with Cade’s, brushing his fingers against her cheek. “There is
always
hope, Cade. There’s always hope for all of us to make it out of this shit alive, for your sister to make it out of this shit alive. Maybe even one day for you two to see each other again.” Brandt smiled slightly and twisted his fingers into Cade’s dark hair. “And if not, then hell, you’ve got me, right? I’ll take care of you.”

Cade snorted, suppressing a small laugh. “Oh fuck that. If either of us is going to need taking care of, it’s you, not me. I can take care of myself just fine.”

“And you know what? I totally believe that,” Brandt agreed with a laugh of his own. He pulled Cade close then, wrapping his arm firmly around her slender waist and pressing a light kiss against the corner of her mouth. “You feel any better?”

“A little,” Cade admitted. She shifted against Brandt and gave him a slight smile, clearly a bit uncomfortable at his closeness, but she didn’t seem inclined to push him away either. “You know what would make me feel
so
much better, though?”

“What?”

Cade nodded toward the bathroom door. “A shower? Even a cold one will make me feel that much more human again.”

Brandt grinned. “You know, I bet I can arrange that,” he said, pleased that he’d finally found something he could do to help her. “Hell, give me a few, and I bet I could arrange a
hot
shower for you.”

“A man after my heart,” Cade said with a luxurious sigh.

“Oh, you better believe it.”

The seven members of the group set out an hour after sunrise the next morning. All were reluctant to leave the house right away; it’d been a pleasant night for most of them, especially when electricity and hot water were added into the equation, and many had slept better than they had in a long time. Ethan was in a surprisingly decent mood, though he hadn’t gotten as much sleep as the others likely had. He had Remy to thank for that. They’d both needed their rest, but the young woman had opted to stay with him for the night, blatantly flaunting their relationship to the others after spending three months struggling to keep it a secret. Perhaps it was their proximity to Atlanta and possible death that lifted her insistence on secrecy. Emotionally, the night did Ethan a world of good, and he wasn’t going to complain. Even the fact that they were now headed toward a city that had become synonymous with “danger” did nothing to truly dampen his spirits.

They walked for four hours before stopping at noon to eat and rest. As the others ate from cans of food scavenged from their bags and the home they’d left that morning, Brandt and Ethan leaned against a beat-up car, poring over the map of Georgia spread out on its hood. They were trying, without absolute success, to pinpoint the group’s exact location.

“I think we’re somewhere in here,” Brandt said. He ran his finger along a stretch of highway. The wind tried to blow the paper off the hood, and he let out an impatient sigh and flattened the map again. “I’m not positive exactly where, though.”

“That doesn’t do me much good,” Ethan said. He drank a swallow of soup from the can in his hand and leaned against the car, studying the landscape around them and trying to match it to the map. “I need to know how much farther we’ve got until we get there. As close an estimate as you can give me.”

“About all I can guarantee you is we haven’t passed through Villa Rica yet,” Brandt said, pushing his dark hair from his eyes. “I
do
know we’re closer to the interstate than I’m comfortable with. When we hit the intersection of 8 and 101, we’ll be maybe a mile, maximum two, away from it. It might get rough there. The congestion of vehicles alone will make travel difficult.”

“And then we have to worry about what’s
in
the vehicles,” Ethan added. He looked at the others where they sat several yards away, watching as Theo moved among them and passed out some sort of pill. Vitamins, Ethan realized. Leave it to Theo to think of all the little things that never crossed his mind. Ethan turned his eyes to Remy and watched as she ate a peach slice out of the can with her fingers. She tilted her head back and dropped the peach into her mouth, laughing at something Cade said.

Ethan averted his eyes from the woman as a flash of longing slipped into his brain and jabbed at him sharply. “Okay, lay it on me, Brandt. What are our chances?” Ethan finally asked quietly. It was a question he’d avoided since they left Maplesville, and it was one he finally decided he was ready to have answered.

Brandt stood silently and stared at the map beneath his hands as if trying to decide what to say and how to say it. He ran a hand through his hair and let out a slow breath before he spoke. “Honestly? I’m not sure,” he admitted. “It was pretty hard moving around in Atlanta on my own, when the virus initially began to spread. I don’t know how a group of seven could manage. I don’t know what the conditions in the city are like anymore. They could be bad, or they could be somewhat improved. By now, a lot of the infected could have died off or simply spread farther out, looking for more food sources. There are too many variables that I just don’t know.”

Ethan stared down at the map. “The only thing I can think of is just for us to travel quickly. Leave everything we don’t need behind, and once we get inside the city, move fast.”

It wasn’t long before they got the others to their feet and moving once more. The idea they’d come up with was to get everyone through Villa Rica as fast as they could, to move everyone for at least three more hours before stopping for the rest of the day. By tomorrow, they’d reach Atlanta.

Their arrival in Atlanta wasn’t something Ethan was particularly looking forward to.

The group passed through Villa Rica unmolested, despite Brandt’s initial fears of attack so close to the interstate. But it was as they neared Douglasville that everything began to fall apart.

The road had become more congested as they neared the city of Douglasville. The obstructions had become so plentiful that the group was forced to slow to a near crawl as they tried to pass among the cars. Cade had given up trying to wade through the cars and had moved to the road’s shoulder, where vehicles were fewer in number and spread farther apart. Brandt had followed Cade’s lead and moved to the shoulder on the opposite side, and the rest of them were spread out among and alongside the cars as they made their way toward the city.

It happened so fast Ethan didn’t have time to register the events, never mind react to them.

One moment, Cade walked along the side of the road, her rifle in her hands. The next moment, she let out a shriek as something darted from the trees lining the side of the highway and grabbed her arm. Cade jerked back instinctively, trying to free herself, and stumbled into a car that blocked her progress. Ethan realized Cade’s assailant was an infected woman, and he started to run through the cars, weaving among them as quickly as he could. The infected woman had Cade tightly in her grip, and she was attempting to drag her down to the ground.

“Cade!” a desperate shout rang out from Ethan’s left. He turned to see Brandt sliding across the hoods of cars and climbing over vehicles and other debris, moving quickly in Cade’s direction. The man raised his rifle and tried to aim, even as he moved.

Ethan knew Brandt wouldn’t be able to get a clear shot from that range, not without hitting Cade too. It was too dangerous, and Cade and the infected woman were moving too much in their desperate struggle.

Theo was closest to Cade, and he reached her first. He grabbed Cade around the waist and attempted to pull her back from the infected woman that had her fingers wrapped around Cade’s arm in a bruising grip. Theo ripped the knife from the sheath on Cade’s belt and plunged it into the infected woman’s chest.

The impact of the blade was enough to jar loose the infected woman’s grip on Cade’s arm. Cade stumbled back a few steps at the sudden absence of resistance and fell to her knees in the gravel beside the car. She scrambled to grab her rifle from the ground where she’d dropped it, then brought it up and aimed, trying to get a clear shot at the woman. But the infected woman now grappled with Theo, and Cade let out a cry of frustration. “I can’t get a shot!” she yelled in a panic. “I can’t get a fucking shot!”

Before anyone else could reach Theo and Cade to assist them, the infected woman hauled Theo closer with a mighty pull of her arm and, in the blink of an eye, sank her teeth into Theo’s exposed forearm.

Theo let out an agonized scream and thrashed away from the woman, kicking wildly at her. He braced his foot against her stomach and shoved her away from him, tearing his arm from her teeth. He scrambled backwards as quickly as he could, taking shelter between two cars and cradling his arm to his chest.