Origins (The Becoming Book 6)

by Jessica Meigs

  “You okay?” Theo asked Gray reflexively, looking his brother over for injuries.

  Gray looked pale, shaken, in shock. He motioned behind him. “Dillon,” he said, and that was when Theo’s brain focused enough to hear the other man’s choking, gurgling gasps for air. He whirled around, dropping to his knees beside his friend. Dillon lay on his back, both hands clasped to his throat, and Theo didn’t have to ask him to move his hands for him to know what was wrong; judging by the rate of the blood pouring around the man’s fingers, Theo had only moments to act. His brain skidded right into paramedic mode without a second’s hesitation. “Gray, get me bandages, fast! Better yet, get me my medic bag from the car. And run!” Gray scooped up his crowbar and took off.

  The entire time that Theo was giving his orders, he’d stared at Dillon, and Dillon had stared back at him, blood splattered on his face, his gaze beseeching, pleading with Theo to help him. Underneath the plea, Theo could see a sense of resignation, like Dillon knew he was going to die and was, in the last moments of his life, beginning to accept it. It was the look of impending doom that Theo had been taught to recognize when he’d been in paramedic school, and seeing it on Dillon’s face was nothing short of horrifying.

  “No, no, no, don’t give up!” Theo said, tears pricking at his eyes. He pressed his own hands on top of Dillon’s. “Please don’t give up, Dillon, please.”

  By the time Gray returned with Theo’s medic bag, staggering under its weight, Dillon had slipped into unconsciousness. Theo began to work feverishly, slapping on bandages, layering on more and more as they became soaked through almost as soon as he put them on. Kneeling on Dillon’s other side, Gray pushed Theo’s hands away from the wounded man’s neck.

  “I’ll work on controlling the bleeding,” he said. “You deal with the other stuff.”

  Theo dug into his bag and started pulling out supplies. He lashed a tourniquet around Dillon’s arm, slapping at his skin, trying to get a vein to rise enough to start an IV. Once he had one, he pulled out an IV catheter, saline bag, and tubing, and rapidly started a line. He’d barely finished taping down the IV catheter when Gray said, “Theo, I don’t think he’s breathing anymore.”

  Theo whipped around, looking at Dillon’s motionless body with wide eyes, watching for any movement in the other man’s chest. When he didn’t see any, he pushed Dillon’s jacket out of the way and braced both hands against Dillon’s chest, starting chest compressions, hard and fast. “AED, now!” he snapped breathlessly to Gray. When Gray didn’t move, Theo snarled, “Go get the fucking AED!”

  “I don’t think it’s going to help,” Gray said quietly, still kneeling on the floor, not making a move to go get the requested equipment. “You’re not going to get him back, Theo.”

  “Shut up!” Theo yelled, pausing the chest compressions long enough to blow two breaths of air into Dillon’s lungs before resuming the compressions again.

  “What will happen if you do manage to get him back?” Gray asked. “He’s just going to bleed out, and then you’ll be right back where you are right now again.” He grabbed for Theo’s wrist, pulling at it and disrupting his rhythm. “Theo, stop.” Theo glared at him, and he added, “You’re torturing him. Stop and think for a second. What would he want?”

  Theo wrestled his arm from Gray’s hand and started doing chest compressions again, but his mind spun with Gray’s words. He knew Gray was right—he knew that. He’d told patients’ families the same thing on multiple occasions when he’d been called out to their homes for unresponsive patients and had to explain to the families that there was nothing that could be done. A lot of families would be in denial, demanding he do something, anything to save their loved ones. He’d always felt a touch of exasperation at their reticence to believe what he was saying, but now that he was faced with the same decision, he found he could no longer blame them for their determination to keep fighting, even in the face of hopelessness.

  He looked down at Dillon’s face then, staring at him as he tried to decide what to do. What would Dillon want? he asked himself, contemplating his face. Dillon’s skin was unnaturally pale, his lips blue from lack of oxygen, his eyes closed, and his jaw lax. The only movement from him was the jostling of Theo’s chest compressions. He slowly stopped the compressions, sitting back on his heels, panting from the exertion as tears flooded his eyes again. A sob burst out from him, and he hung his head, coming to accept that Dillon was dead. There wasn’t anything he could do for him, even if he could somehow get him back from cardiac arrest. His best friend and sometimes lover was dead, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  Gray took his arm and gently hauled him to his feet, pushing him toward the front door. “You should step outside, get some air,” he suggested, leading him to the front of the store. He shoved his crowbar into Theo’s hands and motioned to the car. “Go sit in there. I’ll get the stuff and be there in a minute.”

  Theo hesitated, looking at him with worry in his eyes. “What are you about to do?”

  “I’m going to get your medical bag and axe,” Gray said. “Trust me on this, okay? And get in the car.”

  Theo slowly started toward the car. He felt numb inside, his stomach churning as if he were going to throw up. He slouched against the side of his car, sucking in deep, steadying breaths of cool air. He felt unsteady, like his world was swimming, and his lungs felt like they were full of water. His hands were shaking violently, and he nearly dropped the crowbar. He pulled open the rear car door, set the crowbar onto the floorboard, and he’d just shut the door when he heard a heavy thud inside the pharmacy.

  “Gray?” he said, calling out loud enough to be heard inside the store, but there was no response other than another thud. Theo was about to go inside when Gray appeared from the darkness, carrying his medical bag, a bloodied axe, and a towel, his jeans stained with fresh blood. Theo looked him over from head to toe, taking in the sight of the blood, and then asked, “What did you do?”

  “What?” Gray asked with clearly feigned innocence.

  “What. Did. You. Do?” Theo asked again, more emphatically. “What’s with the blood on your clothes? What did you do, Gray?”

  “I did what needed to be done,” Gray said, using the towel to clean the blood off of the axe’s blade.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that he was going to turn into a zombie, like April did, and I did what I needed to do to keep that from happening.”

  Then the pieces fell into place for Theo: the axe, the blood on Gray’s clothes, the two thuds he’d heard, and a hard fury flooded into him. He stepped forward, grabbed Gray by the front of his shirt, and slammed him against the side of the car. “What did you do?” he snarled. “What did you do to Dillon?”

  “He got bitten by one of them, Theo!” Gray replied, unfazed by Theo’s anger. “Just like April! He was going to turn into one of them! I doubt you wanted him to be like that, and while I didn’t know him, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t want to be one of those zombie things either! I was trying to spare him from a fate that I personally consider worse than death!” He squirmed a little and tried to pull out of his grasp. “Let go of me, Theo. We’ve got to get out of here. Now isn’t the time for this.”

  Theo stared at him for a moment more, then pulled him off the car just enough to slam him back against the vehicle again. “Don’t think this is over,” he snarled, letting go of his brother and stepping back from him. He got into the passenger seat and slammed the door.

  Chapter 17

  Gray stepped into the house behind Theo, inhaling the musky scent that could only be defined as “home.” The foyer’s floorboards let out a familiar creak when he walked over them, and as Theo closed the door behind them and snapped the locks into place, he couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face. It felt good to be home again, even if the circumstances weren’t exactly ideal.

  “I think we should cover the windows,” Theo said from behind him without any
preamble. It was the first thing he’d said to Gray since their departure from CVS, after he’d found out what Gray had done to Dillon’s body. Gray himself still felt unsettled at what he’d done, but he hadn’t seen any other option. Gray didn’t respond to Theo’s statement, though; he was too busy looking over the slightly shabby foyer and slowly walking toward the living room beyond. It didn’t look like Theo had replaced a single thing since he’d involuntarily moved out three months before. Gray would have been pissed if Theo had. Every bit of furniture and every speck of paint in the house had been carefully chosen by their mother, and Gray had often stated his desire that they leave it all as she’d wanted. Despite the fact that she’d passed away nearly five years prior, Gray still thought of the house as their parents’ house, not his and Theo’s.

  “What do you want me to do?” Gray asked after studying the living room. He set his bag on the couch and his crowbar on the coffee table and looked to Theo, who was attentively studying the large picture window that graced the wall across from the couch.

  “There’s black plastic sheeting in the garage,” Theo said, heading for the kitchen. Gray scrambled to follow him. “I need you to cover all the windows on the bottom floor. Make sure they’re totally covered and sealed at the edges with duct tape. I don’t want any light to leak through whatsoever.”

  “What are you going to be doing?”

  “I’m going to work on searching every room in this house and gathering up everything even remotely useful,” Theo replied. “So get whatever you’re thinking about me being lazy out of your system now, because I know that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Gray flushed at that; it was like Theo had read his mind. Definitely not a good place for his brother to be.

  He pushed past Theo and stepped through the garage’s side door. The garage was chilly, and he reflexively wrapped his jacket tighter around himself and ventured deeper into the building. He flipped the light switch and scanned the large room under the dim light from the single strip above where the car would have been parked if there’d been a car inside.

  When he was a child, Gray had always been scared of the garage. He wasn’t sure why; it wasn’t like it was particularly terrifying as compared to any other place in the house. He remembered how, when he was a child, his mom would constantly try to send him into the garage for a tool or for one of her canning jars, and he’d throw a temper tantrum to avoid it. Even as an adult, he was still unnerved by the badly lit room, though he was far too old for such nonsense. He practically ran to his father’s workbench across the room, snatching the two solitary packages of black plastic and a couple of rolls of duct tape. He tucked the plastic under his arm, looped the rolls of tape around his wrist, and raced back to the garage door, hopping up the three steps to the kitchen entryway. With one last glance over his shoulder at the garage, he hit the switch to turn the lights off and shut and locked the door behind him.

  Theo was still in the kitchen when Gray entered, digging in what they’d always called the “junk drawer.” He barely looked up as he shoved things around in the drawer. “Did you find the plastic?”

  “Yeah, I got it,” Gray assured him. He dumped the supplies on the kitchen counter. It was then that his brother looked at him, a deep frown creasing his face. “What?”

  “You okay?” he asked. “You look…I don’t know. Rattled?”

  “I’m fine,” Gray said. “Nothing wrong.” He looked over the kitchen, decided to start on the windows in there, and began to climb onto the counter to measure the window above the sink.

  “You sure?” he asked, his tone suggesting that he expected Gray to be messed up over what had happened with Dillon as much as he himself was.

  Gray was a bit disturbed about it, but he wasn’t letting himself think about it. “Yes, Theo, I’m sure,” he muttered. “Jesus.” He rolled his eyes and grabbed one of the packages of plastic.

  After fitting the windows in the kitchen and living room with thick plastic coverings, Gray found himself standing outside the closed French doors to his mother’s office. He ran a hand through his hair, tucking it back behind his ears before taking a fortifying breath and stepping forward to open the door. The door creaked softly, and he peered around the edge to look into the office.

  The large desk and its computer sat undisturbed in the room lined with windows and bookshelves that were heaped with piles upon piles of books and notebooks. Everything was covered with a thin film of dust. His heart racing, he stepped into the room, tightening his grip on the roll of plastic in his hand. The room was essentially a shrine, an altar to their mother, homage to all the work and creativity she had expended throughout their childhoods. From where he stood, he could see the seven books on the bookshelf closest to the desk, their spines facing out, each adorned with the name “Melissa Carter.” Gray smiled at the sight and took another step deeper into the room and closed his eyes, sucking in a deep breath. He immediately began choking on the dust floating in the air.

  Coughing harshly, Gray put a hand up against his nose, glanced around one more time, and retreated from the room, pulling the doors shut behind him. He sagged against one, suppressing the coughing and trying to calm his lungs and ward off an asthma attack before it really hit. A couple of short breaths later, the coughing began to subside, and moments after that, he began to feel like he could breathe again. He shook his head to free himself of the horrendous creeping sensation of suffocation, and moved away from the office doors. He couldn’t go in there, couldn’t deal with being in that room where it felt like his mother’s presence was everywhere around him. He would have to see if Theo could handle the windows in that room.

  Gray heard voices. He abandoned his spot at the office door and followed the sound, moving from room to room in search of the source. He tracked it to the living room, and he stepped inside to find Theo sitting on the coffee table in the near-dark, his elbows resting against his knees and his hands over his mouth, his eyes wide. The lights from the television flickered over his face, his entire body shaking as he stared at the screen. Gray dropped the plastic and duct tape onto a table by the door and walked toward him with a frown.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, then he glanced at the television, and his breath caught in his throat when he saw what Theo was watching. “Oh, Jesus. Is that…? That’s not a movie, is it?”

  “No,” Theo answered, his hands muffling his voice. “That’s not a movie. That’s Birmingham.”

  Gray sank down to sit on the table beside Theo, staring intently at the television. “What’s going on?” he asked, taking in the sight of the smoking city, the glowing skyline hinting at raging fires, and the screaming that nearly drowned out the reporter yelling into her microphone.

  “The same thing that happened here,” Theo said. His voice sounded dull, wooden. “Only worse. Bigger.”

  “My God,” Gray breathed out. He dug his fingers into his knees, staring in shock at the scene on display before them.

  “Emergency management agencies are requesting that everyone stay indoors at this time,” the reporter was saying. “Lock all doors and windows, do what you can to barricade any entry points into your home, and wait it out. Martial law has been declared for the entire state of Alabama, and a curfew of sundown will be strictly enforced. The state of martial law will likely be expanded soon to include Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida, in addition to the states of Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia that are already under martial law. There’s a possibility that South Carolina will soon be added to that list.”

  “This is insane,” Theo said. Gray glanced at him and saw that he’d taken his hands away from his mouth and was picking at the edge of the coffee table.

  “Now we’re going to take you back to our station, where Edward will be speaking with David Keene from the Department of Homeland Security. Edward?”

  “Thanks, Chelsea,” Edward said. The camera panned back from the frazzled-looking Edward to show another man sitting beside him, this one much more
composed and professional, his tie straight and his shirt and coat smooth and unwrinkled. “This is David Keene from the Department of Homeland Security, who is here today to outline the threat we are facing and the precautions viewers should take in order to protect themselves from it. Mr. Keene?”

  “Zombies,” Gray said promptly. “Doesn’t take an idiot to know that’s what it is.”

  “Shut up and get me some paper,” Theo said. “A notebook or something. I want to take notes.”

  “What’s to write down?” Gray asked. “It’s zombies.”

  “I said shut up and get me some fucking paper!”

  Gray stared at Theo, wide-eyed, as the government official on the television began to drone. Theo had never yelled at him with such genuine anger in his voice. Gray stood and grabbed the notebook and pen from the table by the phone, handing both to Theo before sitting on the couch behind him. Theo bowed his head and, without another word, began to scribble in the notebook furiously, taking down everything the man on the television said, words Gray only half-heard as he stared at his brother’s tense back and wondered what in the world had suddenly made him so angry.

  Chapter 18

  Gray and Theo had been hiding out in their parents’ house for nearly three weeks when they began to run out of drinking water and gasoline for the generators.

  Theo didn’t tell Gray about their worsening situation right away. Frankly, he didn’t see the point in worrying him over it. Everything was bad enough without him having to deal with Gray having a spastic fit over whether or not they were going to die of dehydration.