The Becoming: Ground Zero (32 page)

Cade raised an eyebrow and glanced at Remy before returning her gaze to the trees. “Really?”

“Yeah. This shit stresses me out, makes me do shit I normally wouldn’t do,” Remy admitted, twirling her knife again.

Cade didn’t look at her. “Like sleep with Ethan?”

Remy gaped at her. Cade knew about that? How in the world …? “How the hell did you find out about that?” she demanded.

Cade shook her head, smiling. “I know all, Remy. You can’t hide anything from me.” Remy’s eyes widened, and Cade’s smile turned into a smirk. “I’m kidding, Remy. Ethan told me about it earlier. And I would’ve figured it out with the way he looked at you around lunchtime anyway.” She paused before adding, “And he told me how long it’s been going on too.”

“Oh God,” Remy groaned, feeling her cheeks heat up at Cade’s scrutiny. “I wouldn’t normally … I mean, I didn’t really mean to—”

Cade turned on Remy. The look in her ice-blue eyes stopped Remy in mid-step. “If you
ever
think about hurting him, you’ll have to answer to me. And you
know
I won’t hesitate to kick your ass,” she threatened. “If you regret what you did, you better pretend you don’t. The
last
thing Ethan needs is to get his heart broken on top of his grief over Nikola and Theo.”

Cade’s mention of Theo was enough to sober Remy, and she looked away. She surprised even herself as her eyes filled with tears. “Jesus, Cade, what kind of person do you think I am?” she asked shakily, keeping her eyes on their surroundings, refusing to look at the older woman beside her. “I’m not a cold-hearted bitch. Just because I want to kill all of the fucking infected in this world doesn’t mean I don’t have a heart. I care for him. You have no fucking idea how much. I just don’t see the point in beginning a relationship, considering the world we live in.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t still love someone, even if you’re not planning on having an actual relationship with them,” Cade pointed out. Remy sensed that Cade was no longer talking about her and Ethan. She followed Cade’s eyes and saw that they were locked onto Brandt’s muscular back. He led the group down the highway, keeping their pace brisk, his shoulders straight and tense.

“So … you and Brandt?” Remy couldn’t help but ask. The temptation to fall back on her old teasing was too great to pass up. Cade gave Remy a sharp look and punched her bicep. Remy bit back a yelp and rubbed her arm. “What was that for?”

“Oh, you know what it was for,” Cade said darkly. She took Remy by the shoulder and gently shoved her ahead. “Get back where you’re supposed to be. We should be in Douglasville soon, and we need to be on alert.”

“We need to find shelter for the night,” Ethan said, dropping back to talk with Cade and Remy. Remy gave Ethan a small smile, and he returned it. His green eyes were bloodshot, and Remy realized that he’d been crying. The thought was nearly enough to choke her up. “We can’t travel after sunset, and we need time to track someplace down.”

“We’re not stopping in Douglasville,” Brandt said, joining them. Avi followed Brandt over, sticking close to him and looking around warily. Gray, for his part, simply stopped in the middle of the road and stood there, making no move to approach them. “It’s too dangerous. It’s larger than Villa Rica, and there was a massive outbreak there within days of the one in Atlanta. It was one of the first suburbs outside Atlanta to get wiped out by Michaluk.”

“So we need to stop before we get to Douglasville, then?” Avi spoke up. They all looked at her. Gray continued his studious examination of the road ahead. “But there’s no place here to stop, no shelter at all! It’s all trees and highways and cars.”

“We’ll have to make it to the other side of Douglasville before sunset,” Brandt said. “And it won’t guarantee our safety. There are stores and houses and little suburban towns and shit almost all the way from here to Atlanta.”

Ethan started to take the crumpled map of Georgia out of his pocket. “Is that possible?” he asked. “I mean, Douglasville is bigger than Villa Rica, like you said. I don’t know if we can move across the whole city in an hour.”

Brandt ran a hand slowly over his face and back through his hair, letting out a heavy sigh. “We have to try, okay?” he said. “We can’t get caught outside in the dark with the infected. It’s too hard to guard your asses when I can’t see everything around us.”

Remy looked around thoughtfully, taking stock of their surroundings. She spotted a dark blue minivan ahead of them, and an idea sprang to mind. “Why don’t we find a car or two to hide in for the night?”

Ethan waved his hand toward a couple of the vehicles around them. “Be my guest, babe. I personally am not game on sleeping in a car that probably has or had a dead body in it.”

Remy cringed at his words and wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Yeah, good point,” she conceded. She edged closer to the others, gripping her bolo knife tighter.

“Hey, guys?” Gray called out. Their eyes turned onto him, surprised that he’d spoken, but he didn’t return the look. “Any of you know how to drive a motorcycle?”

“I do,” Brandt said. Cade and Remy both nodded, and even Ethan looked as though his curiosity were piqued.

“I drove one when I was younger,” Ethan said. “And I taught Cade. I used one last year when I went back to Memphis, remember? Why do you ask, anyway?”

Gray didn’t answer; he simply pointed off the right side of the road. Remy’s eyes followed Gray’s finger, and a wide grin spread across her face at the sight of the orange-and-black Harley-Davidson sign looming over the highway.

“Oh fuck, Harleys,” Remy said almost dreamily. “I fucking love me some Harleys. I have one back home … had one. I had one back home, and my mom hated it. She was so insistent I’d get creamed out on the highway and she’d have to identify a box of paste as my remains. I miss it so bad.”

“I don’t know how to drive one, but I bet those of us who don’t know how can hitch rides on the backs of whoever does,” Gray continued. He still didn’t bother to turn around.

“It’s called riding pillion,” Cade grumbled. “And you’re assuming the bikes are even still there.”

Remy snapped out of her motorcycle daydream and raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“We can’t be the only survivors roaming around the southeast, you know?” Cade explained. “There’s
got
to be others, and there might even be others in this neighborhood. Considering the way we’ve broken into shit ourselves, there’s no way other people haven’t been doing it too.”

“Well, I’m going to think positively and hope there’s at least three bikes in there,” Remy said.

Cade shrugged and shouldered her rifle. “Just preparing for the worst-case scenario,” she said mildly.

“We’ll have to worry about gas too,” Brandt pointed out to Remy. “As long as we can get enough together to go the twenty miles from here to Atlanta, we’ll be fine. But most dealerships don’t keep much gas in their vehicles as a rule, in case of theft. It’ll take some time to get the fuel together.”

Remy let out a slow breath and clapped her hands together gamely. “Okay, so let’s get this show on the road and go get us some motorcycles.”

The six made good time crossing the highway and picking their way through the underbrush and trash and debris littering the side of the road. Twenty minutes later, they stood outside the Harley-Davidson dealership Gray had spotted from the highway. Cade studied the building and the merchandise visible through the showroom windows. She didn’t like what she saw.

“This place is practically untouched,” Cade said in concern, squinting at the windows. “There’s not even a crack in the damned glass.”

“Yeah, that
is
a little … odd,” Ethan agreed. He moved to stand closer to Cade, framing his face with his hands to get a better look inside. “Everything else has been looted to hell and back. Why not this one?”

“You think it could be dangerous?” Remy asked. She looked warily at the building, and her hand tightened around the hilt of her bolo knife. Cade, for her part, only hefted her rifle higher. Just in case.

“Anything
in this state is dangerous now,” Brandt spoke up.

“Fuck that. Anything in this
world
is dangerous,” Cade corrected, frowning at the building again. Its normalcy made it seem more ominous. In the post-Michaluk reality, anything normal should always be looked at as suspect. Especially anything
overly
normal. “What do you think we should do, Brandt?”

“We need those bikes,” Brandt said. He tilted his head back to look at the sky, and Cade was momentarily distracted by the way his hair fell back from his face. “And we’re losing the light. We’ll need to hurry.” He turned his eyes back to the rest of them, and Cade shook free from her slight daze and focused in on his face. “Gray, you and Avi don’t know how to drive the motorcycles, so you two guard us. We’re going in to get the bikes.”

“And how am I supposed to guard you when all I have is this?” Avi asked tiredly. She held up her machete, wiggling it with a quick twist of her wrist to emphasize her point.

Cade rolled her eyes and dug into her bag. She withdrew the last of her spare handguns and tossed it to Avi. The blond woman put her hands out for the gun and nearly dropped it, barely wrapping her hands around the weapon; she missed the spare magazine of bullets, though, and it fell into the dirt with a crunch. “If any of us gets killed because you decide to be incompetent, or if you freeze again, I
will
kill you myself,” Cade warned Avi coldly. “That’s a promise, not a threat. And I fucking
hope
you can shoot a gun at least a little better than you can catch one.”

“I won’t miss,” Avi promised, her nervousness turning to sincerity as Cade watched her.

“You better not,” Cade repeated. She shouldered her rifle once more and looked around them again. She studied the building closely before swatting Brandt’s elbow to get his attention. “Come on, Brandt. You’ve got my back on this, right?”

“Of course,” Brandt said. “I can’t believe you even have to ask.”

“Hey, you can’t fault me for double-checking,” Cade said. She winked at him before breaking away from the others and heading toward the front doors. She heard footsteps behind her and saw Remy and Ethan following her and Brandt, their own weapons in their hands and their expressions guarded as they scanned their surroundings. “How should we do this? Two in and two at the doors?” she asked, pausing and putting a hand on one of the doors in question.

“Might be faster if we all go in and get what we came for,” Brandt suggested. He nudged Cade aside and slipped the screwdriver out of the side pocket of her bag before leaning down and starting to work at the locked door. It took longer than Cade would have liked for him to pop the lock. He pushed the door open with a dramatic wave of his hand. “After you, my dear,” he said, giving Cade a cheeky grin, though she couldn’t help noticing that the grin didn’t reach his eyes. Leave it to Brandt to try to keep their spirits up with jokes, though she was sure that none of them was truly feeling the humor. Not after Nikola and Theo.

Cade gave Brandt a single nod and lifted her rifle to her shoulder. She switched the safety off and rested her finger lightly against the trigger, taking a slow step inside and sweeping her rifle across the entire showroom with a slow half-turn. She lifted her hand off the rifle and motioned for Brandt to follow her in. “It looks clear,” she said softly.

Cade moved farther into the showroom, her boots squeaking on the shiny tiles. She made another sweep of the room as Brandt entered the dealership behind her. Remy and Ethan were just behind him, moving in a manner similar to Cade’s. Everything was still clear to Cade’s satisfaction, so she made straight for the nearest motorcycle that she thought she could handle.

It was a gorgeous black Sportster, similar to the motorcycle Ethan had taught her to drive several years before, and Cade smoothed her hand over its leather seat. It brought back several fond memories as she looked it over. “I think I can deal with this one,” Cade said, just loud enough for the others to hear.

Cade looked to Ethan; he’d already slid onto a similar model. “I’ve got one too,” Ethan announced. “Where are the keys?”

“I bet they’re in this safe,” Remy said from the other side of the room, her voice echoing off the low ceiling and the tall windows. She stood in front of a small, flat safe bolted to the wall, a numbered keypad set into its face. Remy frowned as she stared at it. “How the fuck do we get into it?” she asked in frustration.

Brandt moved swiftly to Remy and shoved her gently aside to examine the safe, giving it a short nod. “I know this one,” he said confidently. Cade raised an eyebrow as he reached out and pressed 1-5-9-# on the keypad. It let out a soft beep for each number, and as he pressed the pound symbol, the safe emitted three short beeps. Brandt turned the knob below the keypad, and the safe’s door opened easily.

Cade’s jaw dropped. “How in the hell did you do that?” she asked incredulously.

“It’s a Honeywell safe,” Brandt explained. “The initial code is always 1-5-9-pound. A surprisingly large number of people never change the code. I figured it was a safe bet it’d get us inside.” He shrugged modestly and rifled through the contents of the safe. “Also, the print on those three numbers’ buttons was starting to wear off, which kind of backed up my assumption.” The inside of the safe was full of small numbered boxes, and Cade hurried to the motorcycles they’d chosen to check the numbered tags on them. As she called the numbers out to Brandt, the tall man shook the keys from the boxes and palmed them. He tossed a set to Cade once he had all three in hand.