The Becoming: Ground Zero

by Jessica Meigs

  Theo laughed and shook his head. “No, hopefully not anytime soon, you know? I don’t think I could handle losing you too, not after Mom and Dad.”

  Gray’s grinning face went somber at Theo’s words. Theo immediately felt guilty for ruining his brother’s apparent good mood. He looked at the painkillers in his hand silently for a long moment, and then he set the bottle gently in the cart.

  “I’m sorry,” Theo said quietly.

  “For what?” Gray asked nonchalantly, a faked cheerfulness in his voice.

  Theo shook his head and shrugged. “Nothing,” he said simply. “Hey, what do you say we go see if we can find some scissors? I think all eight of us could use a good haircut.”

  Gray looked up at Theo and finally smiled again. Theo released the breath he’d been holding. “Some razors too, yeah? I bet the ladies would appreciate that.”

  Theo nodded and rubbed a hand over his cheek and chin. “Hell, I think I would appreciate it,” he admitted. “Two months of beard is enough for anybody. I’m starting to look like a hobo.”

  Gray snorted and punched Theo lightly in the arm. “Theo, you always look like a hobo, beard or not.”

  Theo punched him back and grabbed the shopping cart. “After the scissors, we’re breaking into the pharmacy. So lead the way, you silly little shit,” he ordered.

  Gray smirked at Theo. “Fine, fine. But if you run over my heels just once with that cart, the infected are going to be the least of your worries.”

  Chapter 18

  Nikola was nervous as she and Avi worked their way to the back of the store, where the electronics department was. She stuck to Avi like glue, even though she didn’t really know Avi and knew even less about her fighting ability or lack thereof. Avi was concerned about her, but she decided not to comment on Nikola’s jitters as they walked through the aisles.

  “Do you think maybe we should get a weapon or something?” Nikola asked. “Like a gun or a knife or whatever? I mean, I don’t think my little baseball bat is going to do much if we run into something in here.”

  “You know where the hardware department is?” Avi asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you want to go track it down while I do what Ethan asked us to do?”

  Nikola bit her lip and shook her head. “No, not really.”

  “Then I think we’ll be okay until we get back outside,” Avi said. She pulled her machete from its sheath on her belt and showed it to Nikola. “And I’ve got this. I think I can deal with one if it comes down to it.”

  “Have you ever had to use it?” Nikola asked. She paused to look at the messy racks of CDs. Even Avi stopped to take a quick look. The discs were spilling out everywhere, and Avi resisted the urge to browse through them for something good. They didn’t have space in the van for anything extra, especially not after they loaded their newly obtained supplies into the vehicle. Music definitely qualified as something extra.

  “Not yet, but that’s a good thing, right?” Avi asked. She moved to another aisle and stopped at the end, squinting into the dimness and trying to make out what items were stocked there. Then she gave up and motioned to Nikola. “Shine your light down here for me, would you?”

  “I don’t know,” Nikola said thoughtfully as she did what Avi asked. “I mean, it’s sort of good that you’ve never had to actually use it. But I know people who would say it’s kind of bad too. Like Remy, for example. She actually gets excited if she gets a chance to kill something. It’s kind of scary, really. Especially since she’s so good at it.”

  “How many has she killed?” Avi asked.

  Nikola shrugged. “Oh, loads. She practically goes out and hunts them down for sport.” She found the two-way radios Ethan requested and pulled several packs of them off the shelf. “She told me that before the others found her, her entire family was killed by the infected.”

  Avi frowned and took a couple of packages from Nikola. “Why didn’t they get her too?”

  Nikola didn’t look at Avi as she tucked a package under her arm. “Because she wasn’t home. And when she got home, she killed them all,” Nikola explained. “Like, on her own. She was so angry and upset that she just … lost it. Practically tore them all to pieces. It was a miracle she didn’t get infected herself.” She sighed and shrugged. “So the story goes, anyway. I’m not sure how much of it I believe. After that, Remy said she took off and made it as far as Biloxi before she got trapped in an RV with a broken ankle and surrounded by a bunch of infected. She got rescued by Cade and Brandt and Theo, obviously. Normally, Ethan wouldn’t have let her stay with us—so he says—but I guess the fact that she managed to kill so many infected on her own with only a bolo knife and a hunting rifle impressed him or something, because he let her stay. Ever since then, she’s been tracking down and killing as many as she can when she’s able to. I think it’s a revenge thing for her family. I keep telling her she needs to be more careful, but she never listens.”

  “How old is she?” Avi asked. She kept her tone casual as she looked around the aisle to see if she could spot anything else useful. The story of Remy and her one-woman war disturbed Avi. She hoped Remy was at least a little discriminating in her choice of whether or not to deal death; it wasn’t like the victims of the Michaluk Virus could truly help their actions.

  “Twenty-one,” Nikola answered. She picked up a game console controller and studied the package. “Oh man, I miss video games,” she said wistfully, tossing the package back onto the shelf.

  “And you’re … seventeen?” Avi guessed. She motioned for Nikola to leave the aisle, making a move to follow her.

  “Fifteen,” Nikola corrected. “I turn sixteen in three months.”

  “Where are you from?”

  Nikola raised an eyebrow. “Memphis. Are you interviewing me or something? Because I’m seriously not interested.”

  “Not interviewing, no. I just want to get to know you guys better, that’s all,” Avi said. She stopped at a broken laptop display case and wondered what possessed people in a crisis to steal things with zero usefulness. “I mean, I need to know something about the people taking me into Atlanta, right?”

  Nikola shrugged and wandered toward the end of the aisle. “Yeah, maybe so. I’m not exactly happy about going into that city, to be honest. Memphis was hell. I don’t want to imagine how much worse Atlanta is.”

  Avi frowned, glancing back behind her as she thought she heard a noise. She shook it off when it didn’t repeat itself, attributing it to one of the others in the store. “Well, don’t you have somewhere else to go? I mean, like, with family or something?”

  Nikola paused and looked up at Avi as she pushed her blond hair out of her face. “All of my family is dead,” she said softly. “Ethan … he’s the closest thing I’ve got to a father. I’m not letting him go anywhere without me. My luck would be that he’d never come back.”

  Avi looked away from the teenager and nodded in understanding. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean …”

  “It’s okay,” Nikola said quickly. “I mean, it’s fine. You didn’t know. I can understand that.” She gave Avi a reassuring smile and stepped out into the main aisle running down the side of electronics. Avi turned to look down the aisle once more. But she was quickly brought back around at the sound of the young girl’s scream.

  Chapter 19

  Remy plundered through a bin of camouflage jackets as she waited for Cade to return with the crowbar for which she’d gone looking. Remy was honestly a little bored; supply missions really weren’t her thing. She much preferred the missions that involved tracking down a group of infected and killing them all.

  Cade returned after several minutes, holding a crowbar and several screwdrivers, and she had an odd edge to her voice. “Ran into Theo and Gray in the hardware department,” she explained. “Ransacking hardware for crowbars. Wouldn’t tell me what was going on, though.” She circled the counter and continued, “We should go back by hardware before we leave and get some tools in case we e
nd up breaking down or something.”

  “Jumper cables,” Remy said thoughtfully. She leaned against the bin and watched as Cade climbed the stepladder behind the counter again. “Of course, that’s dependent on finding a vehicle that still runs to jump off on, but better to have them than not, right?”

  Before Cade managed to ascend more than three rungs or reply to Remy’s statement, a piercing scream erupted not far from their location. It echoed off the high ceiling and the hard concrete floors and spread out across the store. Cade and Remy both froze. Remy immediately dropped her hand to the long bolo knife she always kept with her.

  “What was that?” Cade asked. She stepped off the ladder onto the countertop and walked along it in the direction from which the scream had come. Her blue eyes narrowed as she squinted into the dim light cast over the back end of the store. Remy followed her gaze, but she couldn’t see anything in their immediate vicinity.

  “It sounded like a scream,” Remy said. Her voice told Cade just how stupid she thought the older woman’s question had been.

  Another scream echoed out as soon as Remy stopped talking. Her breath caught in her throat as her ears and brain finally comprehended what she’d heard. “That was Nikki,” she said breathlessly. Cade leaped down from the counter with a gasp of alarm. Remy took the opportunity to snatch the crowbar from Cade’s grasp. Then she took off at a dead run toward the electronics department.

  “Remy! Fuck, slow down!” Cade yelled out. Remy didn’t bother to look back. She couldn’t slow down and wait for Cade. Nikola was in trouble. The teenager would never be able to fend off an attack for long, if at all.

  Remy could just see Nikola’s head over the short walls surrounding the electronics complex. She spotted Avi as the older woman pushed Nikola behind her. At least the journalist was good for something besides putting them all in danger, even if it was merely as a human shield. And there was the infected man, closing in on the two women, moving at a slow, threatening pace as if he were menacing them, raising their fright levels as high as possible before he struck.

  Remy gritted her teeth, her dark eyes skimming the short walls for the quickest route around them. She quickly identified the best path. Without breaking stride, Remy planted a foot on the lowest shelf affixed to the outer side of the wall and climbed the three shelves like a ladder. With one, two, three steps, she reached the top and vaulted over the short wall.

  Remy performed the leap a little too enthusiastically. She threw herself right into the video game display cases on the other side of the aisle. She landed behind the infected man, staggering and colliding with the glass, which cracked under the onslaught. Remy righted herself and raised the crowbar. She brought the sharp hooked end down into the back of the infected man’s neck as hard as she could.

  The crowbar’s tip struck bone underneath the skin and was nearly jarred right out of Remy’s hands. She managed to keep her grip and hauled back, pulling the infected man away from her two companions. She could hear Cade’s footsteps running up behind her as she dragged the man to the floor. Remy freed her crowbar and raised it once more. Before she could strike, the man’s hand closed around her ankle and jerked. Remy fell backward to the hard floor, and the wind rushed out of her lungs.

  Cade was still approaching. Nikola was still screaming. Remy coughed, trying to get her lungs working, and kicked to dislodge her ankle from the man’s grasp. She rose to her knees and tightened her grip on the crowbar. The man reached for her again, but she wouldn’t allow him to get his hands on her. With a last swing, Remy slammed the crowbar into the center of his forehead, crushing bone and sending the hook directly into his brain.

  The man’s thrashing stopped as the metal met brain tissue. Panting, Remy scrambled to her feet and took a quick step away from the body. She looked up at Nikola and Avi; both watched her with wide eyes. Remy wrenched the crowbar free with a vicious twist of her wrist. Blood and gray matter splattered onto her boots, dripping from the hook to the floor.

  “You guys okay?” Cade yelled as she reached them. She jumped over the dead man on the floor and went straight to Nikola and Avi.

  “Y-yeah,” Avi stammered. She still gripped her machete, holding it before her defensively.

  Remy rolled her eyes and tossed the bloodied crowbar to the floor with a loud clatter. Then she drew her knife from its sheath on her belt. She looked past Avi to Nikola. “Honey, you okay?” she asked calmly.

  “I’m okay. Wow, Remy, that was pretty badass,” Nikola said, impressed with the woman’s heroics.

  “Thanks,” Remy said appreciatively. Running footsteps came at them from two different directions. Remy tightened her grip on her knife and whirled around, raising the weapon, ready to fight. She lowered it as she saw Gray and Theo coming from the left, Brandt and Ethan from the right. “Took you guys long enough to get here,” Remy said.

  “Oh stuff it, Remy,” Brandt said. He went straight to Cade, as Remy predicted he would. Ethan too brushed past Remy, much to her surprise. He went to Nikola and took the young girl’s face in his hands, studying her intently.

  “Are you okay?” Ethan asked Nikola softly, leaning back to look the teenager over for injuries.

  “Yeah, I think so,” Nikola answered. Ethan frowned, and Remy squinted at the girl. The teenager was starting to shake and look a bit sick. Despite her concern over Nikola, though, Remy’s pissed-off levels were quickly rising, and she gritted her teeth.

  “Great job, Remy. Absolutely fantastic. I’m so glad to see you’re still alive and breathing,” Remy muttered. She lowered her knife and fought to keep herself from glaring at Ethan’s back. She had no idea why she even cared about trying to impress him, but every time she did something crazy and he didn’t acknowledge it, she felt like smacking him really hard across the back of the head. Violent, she knew, but it would make her feel better.

  Instead, Remy wrestled down the urge, as she always did, and decided to take the irritation out on the infected thing lying at her feet.

  Remy looked down at the man thoughtfully, ignoring his crushed skull as she took in the rest of him. He wore khaki pants and a dark blue shirt; his nametag, still hanging precariously from his collar, pronounced him as having once been Daniel. Remy frowned as he lay there twitching. She’d obviously damaged his nervous system. Remy marched over to Avi and took the machete from her. She looked the blade over, trying to see if anything was functionally wrong with it, but she didn’t see anything.

  “You know, next time, you should try using the damn thing,” Remy said smartly, pointing the tip of the blade in Avi’s face. Then Remy marched back to the infected man with the machete in hand, raising it and swinging it down directly onto his neck as hard as she could. It took several strokes, but Remy finally managed to decapitate the man as the others looked on, the expressions on their faces ranging from impressed to horrified.

  “I think it’s about time we got out of here,” Ethan said uneasily. He stood in front of Nikola, seemingly shielding her from the sight of Remy hacking the man’s head off. His right hand gripped Brandt’s forearm, holding him back; Brandt looked ready to step forward and stop Remy. “Everybody, go back where you were, grab your supplies, and bring them to the front doors as quickly as you can,” Ethan instructed. “We’ve got to get everything into the van and get the hell out of here.”

  Remy made a face at Ethan and kicked the dead man as she walked past him toward the electronic complex’s exit. “It was just one,” Remy said in disgust. “You act like we just got attacked by an entire horde.”

  “Remy,” Ethan said simply. She immediately felt cowed by his tone of voice, and her shoulders slumped.

  “Sorry,” Remy said meekly. She shook her head and moved toward sporting goods. “Cade, come help me get this ammo, yeah?” she suggested, feeling the burning need to get away from the others quickly. The older woman pulled away from Brandt’s interrogation about her health and headed to Remy.

  Cade took Remy’s elbow and practicall
y dragged her to their previous location. “What the hell were you thinking?” Cade snapped as soon as they were out of earshot of the rest of the group.

  “I was thinking I could go help Nikki,” Remy said defensively. She jerked her arm out of Cade’s grasp.

  “You could have gotten yourself killed!” Cade hissed. She circled back around the sales counter and grabbed a screwdriver, jabbed it viciously into the lock on the ammunition case, and started to work at it furiously. “You’re not stupid, Remy! Stop acting like it!”

  “Well, somebody had to get back there and help them!” Remy snapped back at her. She glared as she shoved the shopping cart behind the counter and fought the urge to ram the cart into the ladder on which Cade stood. “That Avi bitch was just fucking standing there! And Nikola isn’t going to be able to kill anything with that damned baseball bat! Why haven’t you taught her how to shoot a gun by now?”

  “Because she’s too young!”

  “She’s not too fucking young to get killed by one of those damned things!” Remy pointed out. She slammed the palm of her hand against the cart in frustration. “You have got to do something for her before we get to Atlanta and not a minute later! She’s going to get slaughtered in there if you don’t!”

  Cade’s ice-blue eyes turned on Remy, and the younger woman froze as she saw the angry, cold look on Cade’s face. “Remy Angellette, you may think I don’t know what I’m doing, but I have a much better ability than you do to judge who should and shouldn’t have a gun in their hands. And neither Nikola nor Avi should have one. Neither of them is capable of handling anything a gun can do. They’d end up shooting themselves or one of us if we turned them loose with one. What I am more concerned with is how the infected knew to go after them instead of any of the rest of us. We were just as close as they were, and he could have easily come after us instead. So why did he go after them?”