The Becoming: Ground Zero

by Jessica Meigs

  The Becoming: Ground Zero

  Title Page

  Prologue:

  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

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  About the Author

  The Becoming: Ground Zero

  Jessica Meigs

  Published by Permuted Press at Smashwords.

  Copyright 2012 Jessica Meigs

  www.PermutedPress.com

  Prologue:

  From the Diary of

  Avi Geller

  February 3, 2010

  It all began in late January, 2009. 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 the day the world began its descent into Hell.

  Idiots. If only the general population had been warned sooner, more people might have stood a chance of surviving.

  A few facts have since been uncovered. The end of the world began at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. The last place anyone 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, and it spread out rapidly. It first ensnared the population of Atlanta, then the southeast, and now the entire world. 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 sneezes. It looked like a bad case of allergies. Nothing to warrant alarm.

  But then, when the virus became communicable exclusively by contact with bodily fluids, when it mutated with a rapidity never before seen, worse symptoms began to manifest. The fevers, the vomiting. Delirium, loss of coordination and speech. Reduced motor skills. Lethargy. Then a sharp drop in blood pressure and apparent death.

  And then the world’s nightmares truly began.

  I think I once heard that it took three weeks before the government publicly acknowledged that there was indeed a problem—at least, in the southeast. By then, it was far too late. People infected with a virus they didn’t even know existed had already been on and off planes, on ships and in cars, over borders, into restaurants and stores and schools. By then, the Michaluk Virus had already done its worst, and its victims had already begun their homicidal rampages. Only, they didn’t even know it yet.

  No one remembers when the media first announced that the madness was caused by a virus. The news took over the airwaves in the span of 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 news crept up on everyone outside the immediate spread zone with a rising sense of impending doom. The short evening news reports were overtaken by stories of growing numbers of infected. There were more and more of them, multiplying by the hour, one after another, always growing, always hungry, always killing indiscriminately.

  By the time someone finally connected the dots, by the time the realization struck that the riots and the murders were all caused by this simple virus, it was far too late.

  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.

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

  My colleagues 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 find the truth about what happened at the end of the world, or die trying.

  Chapter 1

  “You have got to be insane.”

  Avi Geller glared at the man who stood in front of her. She crossed her arms and shifted her weight to her left leg, scowling, irritation and impatience rolling 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 hard-ass. 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 went to hell. The gossip over the limited radio broadcasts she and her colleagues managed to pick up on their ham radios suggested that Ethan was one of the most effective leaders left in the world. Avi’s cohorts agreed with the assessment. 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 had been stupid enough to get trapped among the infected. Ethan Bennett was damned good at what he did.

  And Ethan Bennett was one stubborn son of a bitch. Or so it seemed.

  Avi had spent the past three months tracking this man down. She had traveled through the same infected areas through which Ethan had been, with nothing but her thoughts, worries, and stresses to keep her company, avoiding those things at all costs. She’d risked her life to find the man, and insults were the last things she needed to hear.

  Avi should have expected it, though. Everything she knew about Ethan Bennett told her the man had a chip on his shoulder larger than a city block. Avi still wondered what compelled six seemingly sane individuals not only to accept his leadership, but to stay under it, even when they’d likely had opportunities to get out.

  Avi knew the moment she laid eyes on this man that it would take more than sweet talk to crack his hard-as-nails exterior. To convince Ethan of her point of view might even be impossible. Avi willingly acknowledged that what she asked was incredibly stupid, dangerous, and suicidal. But she had to try. She and her colleagues needed to find someone willing to help, someone good enough to get into the city and stay in one piece, someone as recognizable—even if just in name—as Ethan Bennett. There wasn’t anyone better qualified than this
man and his team outside of the city of Atlanta. 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.

  “I can’t say that I am insane,” Avi finally replied. She kept her voice mild, and her gaze didn’t flicker from Ethan’s face.

  Ethan Bennett 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, assessing her. Avi kept her eyes on him. She wasn’t going to allow Ethan to goad her into backing down. She wasn’t a coward. Another story she repeated over and over. “You actually want us to take you into Atlanta so you can, what, take a look around and write a little story that no one is around to read? Not just no, but hell no. I’m not risking my people on some bullshit so you can play investigative reporter like the good old days. We may be good at what we do, but we’re not crazy—”

  “That’s debatable,” an 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. A smirk graced her pretty features. Avi wasn’t sure if she was amused or horrified that someone could actually crack a joke in the world they lived in.

  “—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 he returned his vivid green eyes to Avi.

  “It’s not a ‘little story,’” Avi argued. She attempted to push past the perceived insult and remember the instructions she’d been given. “It’s a research project,” she tried. “I want to find out what went wrong—”

  “Research projects are what got us into this mess to begin with,” Ethan snapped. He shook his head again and mirrored her stance. “Like I said, not no, but hell no.”

  Avi huffed out a breath as the woman at the table chuckled in apparent amusement. Avi 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 were even the right one to be attempting this. She paced away from Ethan a few steps as she examined her surroundings.

  Avi hadn’t expected to find the team in a place like this. It was a two-story family home converted into 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 effort at general housekeeping. Numerous guns and knives lay on tables beyond Avi’s reach. Loose, boxed, and magazined bullets were lined up along the dining table. Several crowbars and even a couple of baseball bats lay next to the neat rows of ammunition. It was, by far, one of the largest caches of weapons that Avi had ever seen. She was sure that outside of the military and her colleagues’ own stashes, it was the largest left in existence.

  There wasn’t much furniture left in the dining or living rooms. Avi suspected that 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. But it must have been secure enough for their tastes, considering all of her intelligence suggested that they hadn’t moved their base in five months.

  On her arrival, Avi had discovered that the group was borderline militaristic when strangers showed up at their safe house. The moment Avi was allowed inside, she was searched and divested of everything that resembled a weapon. They even took her shoelaces and the elastic from her hair. The caution this group displayed bordered on a bad case of paranoia. It wasn’t Avi’s 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. Her colleagues wouldn’t accept less. To lure Ethan in would be to lure the others in, and that was all she had to accomplish. Avi 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 decided, was her angle of negotiation.

  “You’ve never been into Atlanta,” Avi began after her long silence. “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 have none. There are dozens more people in Atlanta like those you’ve already saved. There are people trapped in their houses and apartments who can’t get out of there without your help. Everybody left alive knows that the government abandoned the city’s people to their deaths. 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, it would be you, Mr. Bennett.”

  Avi’s appeal was horribly emotional, and she worried that it would be too melodramatic for someone of Ethan’s caliber to take seriously. But to her surprise, a smirk replaced the incredulous look Ethan had worn for the past several minutes. He nodded his head slowly, even as his smirk grew wider.

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

  “I’m a journalist,” Avi said simply. A small blossom of hope bloomed in her chest. Ethan was actually thinking about it? That was definitely a step in the right direction. Maybe now Avi’s colleagues wouldn’t threaten to throw her out on her ear. Just a consideration of her request gave Avi time to work on Ethan, time to convince him that going into Atlanta was something worth doing. “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 one hand into his pocket. Avi thought the position looked much more inviting than the stiff stance Ethan had held previously.

  “Not on all of you,” Avi admitted. “Most of the people in your group are unknowns. I focused my search mainly on you.” Avi 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. Avi wondered if Ethan’s laugh had startled the woman and why so simple a sound would make that surprised look cross her face. Perhaps Ethan didn’t laugh very often. Avi filed that observation away in a mental box; it might be something that her superiors would find interesting. Avi gave the unnamed woman a tiny smile as she shoved her hands into her pockets almost casually, unconsciously mimicking Ethan’s stance again.

  “And here I was thinking we were being careful about keeping our location from 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 with you. We’ll have a sit-down later and get more information about what exactly you want to do and where you want to do it. 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 serious 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 her own blond hair back from her face. “I understand. Thank you for at least considering it.”

  “I’m not making any promises,” Ethan added quickly. He motioned for Avi to follow him to the dining table. Avi trailed just behind him as he continued. “There’s too much shit that can go wrong on a mission. We don’t normally go into the larger cities like At
lanta; we don’t have that kind of equipment. It’s too risky, and the chances of something going wrong in a city like that are exponentially greater than in a town 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 suppose you could say. She served in the Israel Defense Forces as a sniper before she moved to the United States.”

  Cade gave Avi 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,” Cade continued after Avi acknowledged her greeting. “We’re pretty uptight about security.”

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

  “Yes,” Cade answered. She started to assemble the rifle once again, her hands moving deftly to fit the pieces of the weapon together. As she spoke, Ethan wandered over to the front door to peer out the peephole. “Besides myself and Ethan, there’s Theo Carter and his younger brother Gray. We picked them up in Tupelo. Gray’s a mechanic, mostly body-work, 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 on board is definitely a plus.” Cade paused as she turned the weapon over and slid the trigger assembly into place.

  “Then there’s Remy Angellette,” Cade continued. “We pulled her out of a tight spot in Biloxi about a month after everything got ugly. Brandt and I almost got killed in the process, but it could have been worse.” Cade shrugged nonchalantly and shot Ethan a warning glance as he opened his mouth to speak up. “Remy doesn’t have any military experience or anything, but she’s smart and driven and tough, and she learns quickly. Let’s just say she’s proven her worth.” Cade fell silent as she continued her work on the rifle.