It seemed like weeks since she’d last been here, stealing medication for herself. That nothing had changed was unsettling. She thought that, with the mess going on outside the house, something inside should be different, should reflect the conditions outside. But then she shook the thought off and focused on her objective.
The medicine cabinet was a large storage unit made of plastic. It had been commandeered from one of the houses when they’d first arrived. Derek had outfitted it with homemade dividers and handwritten labels. The labels were stuck to the outsides of the clear plastic drawers, which helped her find what she was looking for more quickly. She scanned the labels, tracing her finger over each one, until she found the fever reducers. She pulled the entire plastic drawer out of the unit in her haste. She shifted her backpack around, unzipped it, and shook the medicine bottles into the bag. She almost left it at that, but something made her stop and take a closer look at the rest of the drawers. And, as she scanned the room, the tackle boxes stacked beside the storage unit caught her eye. The medicine inside was too valuable to just leave behind. If they had to establish a new community somewhere, they would need this to get started.
She swore and started pulling drawers open, grabbing medicine bottles and blister packs by the handful. She dropped them into the backpack with the fever reducers. Then she attacked the tackle boxes, popping the latches on each one in turn, pulling out suture kits and forceps and tweezers and scalpels and needles and IV catheters, all packaged individually in sterile plastic packs. After she’d cleaned out everything that she could reasonably carry, she headed for the door, intending to go back to the yard and cross to the main house. She had to figure out how to get inside the building next door without letting the infected in with her.
Remy hitched her backpack higher on her shoulders as she started back down the stairs, running through a variety of ideas and possibilities for how to get into the main house. But try as she might, she was having a lot of trouble coming up with something that would get her inside safely. If only the trees around the houses hadn’t been cut down to build the fencing! She could have climbed through a second story window and across the tree that used to be there without ever touching the ground.
Remy had just reached the bottom of the stairs when a strange sound met her ears. She paused, gripping the banister with her left hand, and strained her ears. It was an odd chugging sound, almost a whump, repetitive like a train going down tracks, and it was coming from somewhere above her. She frowned and started to creep back up the stairs, trying to place the sound. She went to the first bedroom she came to and looked out a window that faced the front of the house. She flung it open and leaned out as far as she safely could, hands braced against the windowsill, and twisted around to look up at the sky. What she saw there took her breath away.
It was a helicopter, hovering above the street in front of the house like a great black bug. It was monstrous, unlike any helicopter she’d ever seen—most of which had been compact medical helicopters lifting and landing at the hospital not far from where she’d lived in New Orleans. It seemingly bristled with weaponry; two barrels stuck out from the front of the helicopter, and there were more weapons in several other places, but with her layman’s knowledge of guns, she was unable to identify them. As she gawked at the war machine that hovered above her, the sound of more helicopters filled the air, their rotors stirring up the air and blowing several of the infected right off their feet. Elation swelled up in her as she realized that it must be the military—it had to be. She couldn’t imagine anyone else having the capabilities to get so many helicopters into the air; and now that she looked more closely, she could see even more of them in the distance, enough that she thought they were mounting a rescue mission.
The lead helicopter swooped low as she watched, adjusting itself into an angle that kept the nose toward the ground. The occupants opened fire on the infected below. Remy let out a whoop of excitement and encouragement as the large-caliber ammunition tore into the masses, shredding bodies and sending blood and gore and limbs spraying into the air and splattering onto the pavement. The first helicopter swept the field, firing nonstop as it flew towards the rec center, and then it stopped firing and pulled up. As it did, the second helicopter swooped in behind it, performing the same firing exercise, chewing up even more of the infected.
Even though she was anxious to watch the show, Remy turned away from the window and started for the stairs.
It was a decision that saved her life.
Chapter 36
To say Brandt felt sick was an understatement. His head pounded, the ache inside his skull pulsing like a heartbeat, and he felt like he had bugs crawling underneath his skin. He shuddered as a pang of nausea churned in his gut, and he tried to swallow it down. Even in his haze of illness, the last thing he wanted to do was throw up all over himself.
He rolled his head to the side, squinting in the almost nonexistent light, searching for Remy. He didn’t see her; by all appearances, there wasn’t a soul in the room with him. Just another example of my miserable luck. His lips felt parched and cracked, and if his legs would have supported him, he’d have walked naked and covered in hot sauce through a crowd of infected for a bottle of water.
Brandt forced himself onto his side, then rolled until he was lying on his stomach across the cold tile floor, just off the edge of the passably soft palette someone had laid him on. The easy part was over; now he had to tackle the hard part: getting to his hands and knees and then, once that was accomplished, somehow standing on his own two feet. His palms were slick with sweat against the floor as he tried to lever himself up, and he nearly slipped and fell on his face as his hands slid around underneath.
“Whoa, Brandt, what are you doing?” a voice asked from behind him. Brandt twisted around enough to see Dominic hurrying toward him from the direction of a supply closet. He scowled. Of all the people in Woodside to come to his assistance, it had to be Dominic.
“I need water,” Brandt muttered almost incoherently. His tongue felt thick in his mouth. He licked his lips and managed to get to his hands and knees, his elbows shaking as they struggled to support the weight of his upper body.
“You shouldn’t be up like this,” Dominic said, and Brandt felt him loop an arm around his waist and pull him to stand. “You’re sick as a dog. You should be resting.”
“Fuck you,” Brandt said, slurring the words.
“No need for the attitude,” Dominic retorted. “I’m trying to help you.”
“I don’t need your damn help,” Brandt said. Dominic let go of him, and he promptly fell on his face.
“Fine. I’ll leave you there then.”
Brandt glared at him and snapped, “Don’t be an asshole.”
“Hey, I could say the same thing to you,” Dominic said. He grabbed Brandt’s arm then and hauled him to his feet. He steered him to a chair at one of the tables scattered around the room, dumping him unceremoniously into it. Then he went to his backpack and dug a bottle of water out. He placed it on the table at Brandt’s elbow with a thump.
“Where’s Remy?” Brandt asked as he twisted the cap off the bottle. He fumbled with it and nearly dropped it. At the last second, he righted the bottle and set it back on the table.
“She’s out there somewhere,” Dominic said, nodding his head toward the front door. “She was going to go for medicine for you and to try to check and make sure everything was okay at the main house.”
Brandt nodded and took a small sip of water from the bottle, forcing himself to swallow it down. “What’s wrong with me?” he asked as he set the bottle back on the table. “What happened?”
“You don’t remember?”
“I can’t focus on much of anything at the moment, no,” Brandt replied. He propped his elbow against the table and put his forehead in his hand. He was burning up with what felt like a high fever; no wonder he felt like hell.
“Brandt, you got bitten,” Dominic said. “Repeatedly.”
“That’s all you’ve got to say?”
“What, there’s more to say about it?” Brandt asked. He rolled his head from side to side against his hand and took another sip of water to quell the nausea churning in his stomach. “There’s nothing we can do about it at this point. Maybe we’ll just prove Derek’s theory about my immunity right. Or wrong.”
“Yeah, but I’m not sure this is the way I personally would have wanted to do it.” Dominic said.
Brandt glanced at him blearily. He sat a few tables away, his feet kicked up in a chair. Dominic stared back at him, studying him closely in the dim light.
“Brandt, I—”
But Brandt didn’t get the opportunity to hear what Dominic wanted to say. A noise familiar to both of them broke the air, and they immediately looked up toward the ceiling.
“Is that…?” Dominic trailed off, his eyes widening in surprise. “Is that a helicopter?”
“More than one by the sounds of it,” Brandt observed. He couldn’t help the slight smile that flitted across his face. Helicopters were in the air, and Brandt could think of only one entity with the capability to get multiple helicopters off the ground a year and a half after the outbreak. “It’s the military,” he said, resting his head back onto his hand again.
“The military?” Dominic repeated. “How…how would they even find us?”
“What do you think I was doing in the Humvee in the first place?” Brandt mumbled. “I was playing with the radio, trying to see if I could get in touch with someone who could help us. It was my plan B, and it seems to have worked. I told them where we were, but it was a crap shoot if they were even going to show up.”
“And it appears they have,” Dominic said. He started across the dining room, heading back toward the storage closet at a jog. “Stay here. I’m going up on the roof to check things out.”
Brandt scowled again, wishing he could go up on the roof himself, but he doubted he could even walk across the room without assistance at this point. He groaned and started to yell out, “Dominic, let me know what you see!” But large-caliber weapons opening fire drowned out his words.
Brandt’s instincts were too finely honed for him to ignore, and he dove off the chair without a second thought. He could hear bullets striking the ground outside and then hammering the front of the rec center. He crawled underneath the closest table and covered his head with both hands. Several rounds broke through the wood that covered the windows and slammed into tables and chairs and walls.
“Holy shit!” he heard Dominic exclaim in between rounds.
Brandt looked toward the supply closet’s open door just in time to see the former DIA agent fall from his perch halfway up the yellow ladder. Dominic’s fall sent mops and brooms and buckets clattering. He groaned at the impact, then rolled over and kicked the door shut. Brandt imagined he’d done that for extra cover.
There was a break in the shooting, and Brandt cautiously lifted his head, looking toward the pockmarked windows at the front of the building. “Dominic, you okay?” he called.
“Yeah, I’m fine!” Dominic yelled back through the door. “Why are those sons of bitches shooting at us?”
“I think they’re dealing with the inf—”
Brandt’s voice was drowned out as the helicopters opened fire again, and he ducked his head back down, flattening himself against the rec center’s floor. Several stray bullets punched through the building’s defenses, and one of them struck a support holding up the table that Brandt was sheltering under. It nearly collapsed on his head. He scooted backward as one end of the table gave way and crashed to the floor. He narrowly avoided getting struck in the head, and he scrambled to another table for cover.
As suddenly as the second round of shooting started, it stopped. Everything was silent except for the helicopter’s rotors. Brandt lifted his head slowly; it felt as heavy as a cement block. He looked toward the ceiling. It sounded like the helicopters were starting to move away; the noise from the rotors was gradually quieting. The supply closet’s door swung open silently, and Dominic slipped out, moving toward Brandt in a bent-over, brisk walk. He dropped down to the floor beside the table Brandt was under, reached out, and lightly touch his arm.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “You’re not hit, are you?”
“No, not hit,” Brandt answered. “Though that doesn’t stop me from feeling like road kill.” He groaned and rolled over onto his back. He scrubbed his overheated face with both hands before wiggling from underneath the table.
“Think they wiped out the infected outside?” Dominic asked, glancing toward the front of the dining area. The sheets of wood that covered the windows were shredded in places, and large chunks were missing in others.
“With the rate of fire and the amount of fire? Maybe,” Brandt replied. “Though I don’t know about you, but I’m really not game to go look. Hell, I’m barely even game to get off this floor.” He’d managed to roll out from under the table in a burst of energy that dissipated just as quickly as it had appeared. He levered himself back onto his hands and knees with some difficulty, and Dominic looped his arm around Brandt’s waist and helped him off the floor.
“Maybe I should go up on the roof again and check things out,” Dominic suggested.
“Probably a good idea,” Brandt agreed. He half turned, intending to sit down in the nearest chair, but the sound of more approaching helicopter rotors drew him up short. He looked warily toward the ceiling, his body tensing in anticipation of more bullets ripping through the building, but the sound only got louder and louder on approach. Then something landed on the roof with a loud thud, and the rotors drowned out anything Brandt and Dominic could have said to each other. The roar slowly receded to a high-pitched whine and soon fell silent.
“What the hell is going on out there?” Brandt asked.
“Sounds like someone might have landed on the roof,” Dominic replied, and then, as the sound of boots on the roof reached their ears, he amended, “Okay, definitely landed on the roof.” They listened for a moment, and then he asked, “Military?”
“By the sounds of it,” Brandt agreed. Something banged, and there was the distinctive sound of a combat boot thumping against the top rung of the metal ladder. “Also sounds like they found the trap door.” Brandt hesitated, then added, “Something doesn’t feel right about this.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Call it instincts,” Brandt said.
Dominic gave him an incredulous look.
“How did they know to stop here at the rec center?” Brandt explained.
“The infected outside?”
“I don’t know,” Brandt said with a shake of his head. “Might be more to it than that.” He paused, scanning the room, and then pointed to the kitchen doors. “Do me a favor and go in there. Just in case. If it turns out to be nothing, then you can call me an idiot later.”
Dominic gave Brandt a short nod and retreated to the kitchen, easing the door shut behind him. The first of those descending the ladder reached the supply closet. As Brandt got his first look at the men entering the rec center, he nearly took a step back in surprise.
The men entering the room were dressed head to toe in full MOPP 4 gear. Each wore a camouflage-printed over-garment, thick gloves, and a hood with a protective gas mask. Each bore an M240 and had a bag buckled to their belt that, presumably, had more ammunition and supplies in it. None of them had any visible markings to denote rank or name, save for the very last person to enter the building. This man had his name on his chest and the unit’s crest on his shoulder. And unlike the others, his rank denoting him a major was on his helmet. He strode toward Brandt as if he belonged there, stopping in front of him and studying him closely. Then he beckoned to one of the soldiers, who stepped forward with a scanner-like device in his hand.
“Extend your right arm,” the soldier said. When Brandt hesitated, the man grabbed his
wrist with a gloved hand and yanked his arm out. Brandt, already feverish and a bit unsteady on his feet, stumbled forward, and every soldier in the room suddenly lifted their rifle and aimed at him. The soldier tightened his grip on Brandt’s wrist and passed the device over the inside of his arm. The device beeped, and the man let go of Brandt.
“It’s him,” the soldier said, taking a step back and tucking the scanner into the bag on his hip.
“Good,” the man who was presumably the leader said. He took a step closer to Brandt, studying him through the clear lenses of his gas mask. Brandt stared back at him, waiting for him to speak, waiting for someone to tell him what was going on. It seemed that his instincts that something wasn’t right had been right on the nose. Finally, after several heartbeats of silence, the man queried, “Michael Evans?”
“Yes?”
“Lieutenant Michael Evans?”
“Yeah, that’s me,” Brandt confirmed with only minimal impatience. His curiosity was rapidly winning out over any irritation he might have felt. He narrowed his eyes and studied the man in front of him more closely. “Major…Bradford?” he asked, surprise running through him. The last time he’d spoken to Major Bradford had been when he was in Atlanta, sheltering in the Tabernacle as he tried to summon help for himself, Cade, Gray, and Remy. At the time, Bradford had refused to send help, saying that the risks versus benefits didn’t make it worth it. But now here he was—the very same man who’d deemed their lives not worth saving—standing in front of him, backed up by a full squad of well-armed soldiers. He couldn’t help but wonder what had changed.
The Becoming (Book 4): Under Siege Page 24