Ground Zero

by Jessica Meigs

  Ground Zero

  Book Two of The Becoming Series

  Jessica Meigs

  Copyright © 2012, 2021 by Jessica Meigs

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For all my readers.

  Thanks for sticking with me all these years.

  Contents

  From the Diary of Avi Geller

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Afterword

  An Excerpt from Revelations

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Jessica Meigs

  From the Diary of Avi Geller

  From the Diary of Avi Geller

  February 3rd

  It all started in late January of last year. No one has ever been sure of the exact date. The media and the government did too good a job keeping everything covered up. The initial deaths were kept quiet until the chaos in Atlanta spiraled out of control, until the southeast was no longer salvageable. Now no one knows for sure the day the world began its descent into Hell.

  Idiots. If only the general population had been warned, then more people would have stood a chance of surviving the chaos that followed.

  A few facts have since been uncovered in the year since then. We found out that the end of the world began at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. The last place any of us really expected. The one organization whose job should have been focused on studying the virus, finding a cure for it, before it could do the damage it has since caused, completely failed at that task.

  It began there, as far as we can tell, and it spread out rapidly. No, not rapidly. That doesn’t cover quite how fast it spread. I’m not sure there’s a word for how fast it embedded itself into the population. Either way, it hit the population of Atlanta first—no big surprise, if it came out of the CDC facilities there—and then it spread out from there. The sick, the elderly, the young, and everyone in between: it chose indiscriminately, like only a virus can.

  The initial virus—the airborne version—started with a tickle in the back of a throat, a persistent cough, itchy, watery eyes. Maybe some sneezing. It looked like a bad case of allergies. Hay fever. Nothing to warrant alarm.

  But then, when the virus became communicable exclusively by contact with bodily fluids, when it mutated with a rapidity doctors had never seen before, worse symptoms started manifesting themselves in the sick. The fevers, the vomiting. The delirium, the loss of coordination and speech. The reduced motor skills. The lethargy. Then the sharp drop in blood pressure and apparent death.

  And then all our nightmares truly began.

  None of us are really sure when the media first announced that the madness was being caused by a virus. The news took over the airways in the span of a few days, maybe a week, gradually at first, trickling out from Atlanta’s suburbs and washing over Memphis and Birmingham and New Orleans, being picked up by one news affiliate after another, as if following the virus on its journey. The short evening news reports were overtaken by stories of growing numbers of infected within hours. There were more and more of them, multiplying by the hour, growing exponentially, always hungry, always killing indiscriminately.

  By the time someone finally connected the dots and the government began to take steps, it was too late for those of us in the “blast radius” of the virus.

  This is the world we live in now. It’s a world of terror, a world of our own making. One year ago, the first confirmed victim of the Michaluk Virus attacked his girlfriend on a crowded MARTA bus in Atlanta. A lot has changed since then. Things will never be the same again.

  As for me, I’m somewhere north of Montgomery, Alabama. I’m approximately two hundred miles away from the new Ground Zero: Atlanta, Georgia. And two hundred miles away from everyone I know and love.

  My name is Avi Geller. I’m a former journalist for a newspaper that doesn’t exist anymore.

  My compatriots have given me a task. My mission: to track down Ethan Bennett and his crew and convince them to come with me to Atlanta, to help me liberate a group of survivors who desperately need help from something worse than the infected, or die trying.

  Chapter One

  “You have got to be insane.”

  Avi Geller glared at the man who stood in front of her, crossing her arms and shifting her weight to her left leg, scowling. Irritation and impatience rolled off of her in waves. She sized up the man’s reaction, cataloguing everything she knew about him and matching it to his words and body language.

  Ethan Christopher Bennett. Forty years old, five foot eleven, one hundred seventy pounds. Green eyes, blond hair, former Memphis PD, and total hardass. The statistics rolled through Avi’s brain easily; she’d spent weeks drilling them into her skull. Ethan Bennett had essentially become infamous in the year since everything had gone to hell. The word over the ham radio transmissions she and her colleagues managed to pick up suggested that he was one of the most effective leaders left in their area. Avi’s cohorts agreed with the assessment. Based on everything they had heard, under his leadership, Ethan’s group had become the very best at going into the more heavily overrun areas of the southeast and rescuing people who’d been stupid enough to get trapped among the infected. Ethan Bennett was damned good at what he did.

  And it was obvious that Ethan Bennett was one stubborn son of a bitch.

  Avi and her colleagues had spent the past three months trying to track this man’s location down. They’d collected intelligence from the broadcasts through the ham radios, and when they’d discovered just how difficult it was to get in touch with Ethan and his group directly—and because of their general fear of being overheard doing so—they’d secretly sent out scouts into suspected areas where his group might have resided. Avi herself had volunteered to check the areas immediately around Montgomery, Alabama. She had traveled through the same infected areas through which Ethan was rumored to have been, with nothing but her thoughts, worries, and stresses to keep her company, unable to contact her compatriots for updates and further intel, doing everything she could to avoid those things at all costs. She’d risked her life to find the man, not knowing if she’d ever see her friends and family again, and his insults were the last things she needed to hear.

  She really should have expected it, though. Everything she’d been able to gather about Ethan Bennett told her the man had a chip on his shoulder larger than a city block. She still wondered what compelled six seemingly sane individuals to not only accept his leadership but to stay under it, even when they’d likely had other opportunities present themselves in the past year.

  Avi had known the moment she’d finally laid eyes on this man that it would take more than sweet talk to crack his hard-as-nails exterior. Convincing Ethan of her need for his help might even be impossible. She willingly acknowledged that what she was asking him to do was incredibly stupid, dangerous, and suicidal. But she had to try. She and her friends needed to find someone willing to help, someone good enough to get into the city and stay in one piece, someone capable of keeping othe
r survivors alive during transport, someone as recognizable to the survivors—even if just in name—as Ethan Bennett. As far as she could tell, there wasn’t anyone better qualified than this man and his team outside of the city of Atlanta, not for the job she needed him to do. She repeated this like a mantra, hoping that would help keep her story straight. She didn’t need to screw up and reveal too much, not now.

  “No, I can’t say I am insane,” Avi finally replied. She kept her voice mild, and she didn’t allow her gaze to flicker from Ethan’s face. Now wasn’t the time to show weakness.

  Ethan stared at her, the expression on his face the very definition of incredulous. “You’re actually serious,” he said. He looked her up and down, blatantly assessing her. She kept her eyes on him. She wasn’t going to allow him to goad her into backing down. She wasn’t a coward—another story she repeated to herself over and over. “You actually want us to take you into Atlanta, of all places? Not just no, but hell no. I’m not risking my people like that. We may be good at what we do, but we’re not crazy—”

  “That’s debatable,” a lightly accented voice interjected. Avi glanced behind Ethan and saw a woman with long dark hair sitting at the dining table, busily cleaning a disassembled rifle. An expression that could only be described as a smirk graced her pretty features, and the way she was carefully cleaning the part in her hand was nothing short of intimidating. Avi wasn’t sure if she was amused or horrified that someone could actually crack a joke in this world they lived in now. It didn’t really seem like a good time for joking.

  “—but we’re not crazy enough to go into Atlanta, of all places,” Ethan finished. He glanced at the dark-haired woman with an unreadable expression before returning his eyes to Avi.

  “Please,” Avi argued. “I need your help! There are people—”

  “No,” Ethan snapped, cutting her off and shaking his head again. “Like I said, not no, but hell no.”

  Avi huffed out a breath as the woman at the table chuckled in apparent amusement. She bit back a scowl and nearly sat on the closest flat surface without thinking. Her knees quaked inside her jeans, and she wondered if she was even the right person to be attempting this. She paced away from Ethan a few steps as she examined her surroundings.

  She hadn’t expected to find the team in a place like this. It was a two-story family home that had been converted in what amounted to a base of operations. The windows were boarded over, casting the interior into darkness lit only by flashlights, candles, and lanterns. The detritus of seven people living together—bottles of water and packages and cans of food—lay scattered about, though there was evidence of some efforts at general housekeeping. Numerous guns and knives lay on tables beyond Avi’s reach. Loose and boxed bullets were lined up on towels on the dining table, empty and full magazines beside them. Several crowbars and even a couple of baseball bats lay next to the neat rows of ammunition. It was definitely one of the larger caches of weapons that she’d seen since the apocalypse started.

  There wasn’t much furniture left in the dining or living rooms. She suspected the group had demolished the non-essential furniture for the fire that even now burned in the fireplace. They’d obviously stayed in this place for quite some time, judging by the room’s worn-out appearance. It must have been secure enough for their tastes, considering what intel she had suggested they hadn’t moved their base in about six months.

  That didn’t mean they’d gotten lax, though. When she’d arrived, she had discovered that the group was borderline militaristic when strangers showed up at their safe house, if their treatment of her was any indication. The moment Avi had been allowed inside, she’d been searched and divested of everything that resembled a weapon. They’d even taken the elastic from her hair. The caution they displayed bordered on a bad case of paranoia. It wasn’t her place to comment, though. To do so would risk alienating the very people of whom she begged assistance.

  Avi studied the scratched, worn floorboards and contemplated her next line of attack. She had to get Ethan to Atlanta. She knew her colleagues wouldn’t accept anything less. To convince Ethan to go with her would be to convince the others, and that was all she had to accomplish. She considered what she knew of Ethan, what his normal tasks entailed in this changed world, the types of things he did on a regular basis. That, she knew, was the potentially successful angle of negotiation she needed to take.

  “You’ve never been into Atlanta,” she began after her quiet contemplation. “Am I correct?”

  “Yes, you’re right. Because we’re not suicidal.”

  “You help people,” Avi cut in quickly. “You rescue people from tough situations so they actually have a chance of survival. You give them hope when they don’t have any. There are dozens more people in Atlanta like those you’ve already saved. There are people trapped in their houses and apartments and…and hotels, and they can’t get out of there without help. Everybody left alive knows that the government abandoned the city’s people to their deaths, even back on day one of this. Everybody abandoned them. They weren’t given even half a hope of survival, and they won’t have a hope at all if someone doesn’t help them get out. And if anybody can get them out of there, if anybody can give them that hope, it would be you, Mr. Bennett.”

  Avi’s appeal was horribly emotional, the kind of playing on emotions that she had always despised, and she worried that it was too melodramatic for someone of Ethan’s caliber and level of skepticism to take seriously. But to her surprise, a smile replaced the incredulous look Ethan had worn for the past few minutes. He nodded his head slowly, even as the smile grew wider.

  “You’re a sneaky bitch, aren’t you?” he said. His tone was impressed rather than insulting. “You know exactly what buttons to push to get me to even think about it, don’t you?”

  “I used to be a journalist,” Avi said. A small blossom of hope bloomed in her chest. Ethan was actually thinking about it? That was definitely a step in the right direction. “I’m supposed to know what buttons to push. I do my research.”

  “And you did that research on us, huh?” Ethan said. He relaxed a fraction, uncrossing his arms and sliding a hand into his pocket. Avi thought the casual stance looked much more inviting than the stiff one he’d had previously.

  “Not on all of you,” she admitted. “Most of the people in your group are unknowns. I focused mainly on you.” She had the good grace to blush as she shifted her weight again. “I mean, how do you think I managed to track your entire group down in the first place? I followed your trail, and it led me to all of you.”

  Ethan let out a short, gruff laugh and shook his head, running a hand through his dark blond hair. The woman cleaning the rifle looked up suddenly from her task, an eyebrow raised. Avi wondered why such a simple sound would make the woman look so surprised; maybe Ethan didn’t laugh often. She gave the unnamed woman a small, tentative smile and shoved her hands into her pockets almost casually, mimicking Ethan’s stance again.

  “And here I was thinking we were being careful about not being tracked,” Ethan said. His smile lit up his whole face, making him appear several years younger. “Look, I’ll think about it, okay?” he conceded. “I’ll have to discuss it with my team, see what they think and if they’re willing to go in. We’ll have a sit-down later and get more information from you then. But I’ll warn you, there are at least two members of the group who are going to be against this. It will take some work on your part to convince them to go. No one will be forced, though. If they say no, that’s it.”

  Avi let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. She nodded and pushed a strand of her own blond hair out of her face. “I understand. Thank you for at least considering helping me.”

  “I’m not making any promises,” Ethan added. He motioned for her to follow him to the dining table, and she trailed behind him as he continued. “There’s too much that can go wrong on a mission. We don’t normally go into larger cities like Atlanta. We don’t have that kind of equipment.�
�� Avi assumed that, by “equipment,” he meant weaponry, which was a surprising revelation considering the amount of it on the dining table alone. “Big cities are too risky, and the chances of something going wrong are exponentially greater than in smaller towns like this one.” Ethan gave the woman at the table an affectionate smile and squeezed her shoulder. “Ms. Geller, this is Cade Alton. She’s our weapons expert, I guess you could say. Or at least one of them. She was born here in the US, served in the Israel Defense Forces as a sniper before she moved back here.”

  Cade gave her a warm smile. “Hi, nice to meet you.” She returned her startlingly blue eyes to the part in her hand. “Sorry about the reception you got when you arrived,” she continued. “We’re pretty uptight about our security. We’ve had a few instances of people trying to rob us of our supplies.”

  Avi waved off the apology. “It’s fine,” she assured Cade. “I’ve been through plenty of bad stuff. So there are seven of you in all?”

  “Yes,” Cade answered. She started assembling the rifle, her hands moving deftly to fit the pieces of the weapon together. As she spoke, Ethan wandered to the front door to peer out the peephole. “Besides me and Ethan, there’s Theo Carter and his younger brother Gray. We picked them up in Tupelo. Gray’s a mechanic, mostly bodywork, but he’s not too shabby with engines and electronics when the situation calls for it. He’s also fantastic at information gathering and a decent shot with a hunting rifle. Theo is a paramedic. Having our own medic is definitely a plus.” She paused as she turned the weapon over and slid the trigger assembly into place.