Theo shook his head slowly and reached across Nikola’s body, stopping Gray with a gentle touch of his hand against the other’s forearm. He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand and didn’t look at Ethan. “Eth, I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“Don’t fucking tell me you’re sorry!” Ethan shouted, in sharp contrast to Theo’s solemn tone. “Just help her!”
“There isn’t anything I can do,” Theo said. His voice sounded strangely calm, almost empty. “She’s dead, Ethan. She’s gone.”
“She’s not fucking dead! She can’t be dead! Do something!” Ethan begged. The desperation was heavy in his voice, and it made Remy’s heart hurt. She closed her eyes and turned away from the scene, but she couldn’t escape the growing argument as she stood in the rain, her head bowed, the water running down from her hair into her eyes to mask her tears.
“There isn’t anything I can do, Ethan! Nothing!” Theo exclaimed, his voice rising in volume and desperation. “Her neck is broken! There is no way we can do anything without hospitals and surgeons and all kinds of medical shit that we don’t have!” He ran both hands through his hair and rose to his feet, shaking and struggling to maintain control. “She’s fucking gone. She’s not dying; she’s dead, Ethan! There’s nothing left to save!”
Ethan visibly deflated at Theo’s words, slumping sideways against the van as Theo stared at Nikola’s body in silence. Remy sucked in a heavy breath and struggled to stop her tears. She had to be the strong one. She had to help keep the group together; she had to help keep Ethan together. He would need her later.
Nikola was dead. Nikola was dead. How could this have happened? They’d never lost a member of the group before. Remy shuddered and squeezed her eyes tighter. She couldn’t grasp the loss of the young girl; she couldn’t wrap her mind around it. She turned away from the others once more and pressed her fist to her mouth, biting down on her knuckles to suppress the sob threatening to escape.
Remy felt a pair of strong arms loop around her, and she opened her eyes to see Gray standing before her. He gave her a tight, comforting hug, rubbing her back as he gazed over her shoulder. Remy guessed he was keeping an eye on Ethan, even as tears swam in his eyes. Remy blinked rapidly to banish her own. Gray always seemed to know exactly when she needed him, and he was always there with a hug and a smile and reassuring words.
As Remy studied Gray’s drawn, tired face, a commotion erupted behind her. She turned just in time to see Ethan get to his feet, grab Avi by her upper arms, and slam her against the overturned van. “This is all your fucking fault!” he yelled, leaning close to her face and gripping her biceps so tightly that his fingers and knuckles turned white. “It’s your fault Nikki is fucking dead!” The rest of the group stood frozen, watching with varying degrees of horror as Ethan pulled Avi from the van a few inches and slammed her against it once more. “If you hadn’t gotten us on this damned stupid-ass project, we wouldn’t be in this fucking van in this fucking state, and Nikola wouldn’t be fucking dead!”
Remy started forward at the same time Brandt did. Together, they caught Ethan by his forearms as he slammed Avi against the van for a third time. Remy held no love for Avi, but she thought it best to stop Ethan before he caused the woman any irreparable damage.
“This is your fucking fault!” Ethan shouted as Remy and Brandt hauled back on the older man, managing to pull him away from Avi. “Where’s my damned gun? I’m going to shoot that fucking bitch!”
Theo’s head jerked up as he heard Ethan’s words. He straightened and pointed at Ethan emphatically as he snapped orders at Brandt. “Get him the fuck away from here before he does something we’ll all regret.”
Remy tightened her grasp on Ethan’s forearm, tugging gently to encourage him to come away from the van. She expected Ethan to fight against the grip she and Brandt had on him. But instead, Ethan simply went limp, sagging in their arms and letting out a pained, strangled sob. Remy’s tears surged forth at the sound of one of the strongest men she knew so heartbroken, and she couldn’t hold them off.
“Brandt?” Remy asked softly, silently begging the older man with her eyes to take care of Ethan in her stead. She couldn’t promise she wouldn’t break down if she tried.
Brandt nodded in understanding and slid his hands under both of Ethan’s arms, taking the man’s weight off of Remy. “Come on, Ethan. Let’s go check out these trucks and see if we can find some shelter from this rain, okay?”
Ethan didn’t seem to want to go, but he walked with Brandt anyway, staggering as he covered his eyes with his hand. Remy watched the two men climb the embankment, away from the wreckage of the van. Once both men were out of sight, Remy turned to the remaining members of the group.
“So, what now?” she asked shakily, looking to each of their shell-shocked faces.
Chapter 28
Cade sank down to sit heavily on the muddy embankment after Brandt and Ethan’s departure. She rested her forehead in her hands and brought her knees to her chest, digging her heels into the mud as she fought back tears and tried to make sense of what had happened. How could everything have gone so bottoms-up in such a short time? In the few days since Avi had shown up on the scene, it seemed like the entire world had gone to shit.
Cade was embarrassed to admit it, even to herself, but she really wanted Brandt right then. She needed a hug, almost desperately. But Brandt was at the top of the embankment somewhere, attempting to calm Ethan down, to bring the older man back from his homicidal rage—something Cade should have been doing—so Cade was forced to comfort herself as best she could.
It was, obviously, not working.
Someone plopped down in the mud beside Cade. She lifted her head from her hands to see who’d joined her in her self-imposed mope-fest. It was Theo, and he looked almost as miserable as she felt. “You okay?” she asked softly. She shifted her eyes to the tree line and let out a slow, calming breath. She had to be strong, if not for Theo’s sake, then for her own.
“I feel like shit,” Theo admitted. His voice was just as quiet and solemn as Cade’s. He stared down at his hands, curling his fingers slowly until his hands were wound into tight fists. Cade stared at his slowly whitening knuckles, and she swallowed hard, loosely dropping her hands to rest against her knees.
“I think we all do.” Cade lifted her head and twisted to study the top of the embankment, as if she could see the two men somewhere above. “Do you think we need to check on them? I haven’t heard anything at all, and it’s starting to worry me.”
Theo shook his head and let out a heavy sigh laced with quiet desperation and sadness and even a bit of fear. “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “I think Ethan just needs some time to cool down and grieve. He’s blaming himself for this, regardless of what he said to Avi. She was just a convenient target. He thinks it was his fault; he was the one who wrecked the van, after all. In all technicality, it is. But at the same time, it’s not. I mean, shit happens. Sometimes that shit is the worst thing you can imagine, and that’s what happened in this case.” He sighed again and hung his head. “I just hate that it had to be Nikola who paid the price.”
Cade sat quietly, processing what Theo said. He was right, and she knew it. But that didn’t make her any more comfortable with the idea of her best friend and her … whatever Brandt was to her now so far out of her sight. Especially now that they’d officially entered the most dangerous state in the world. And it didn’t make her feel much better about how to handle Ethan if even Theo felt it was partially Ethan’s fault that Nikola’s body lay still and silent and cold beside the van.
“You did good, taking control of the situation back there,” Cade finally said. She looked to Theo again, squinting at the blond man through the slackening rain. “The rest of us … I think we were in shock. And you just stepped right up and did what Ethan should have been doing. And you did it well.”
“Not as well as Ethan,” Theo admitted. “And I’m not in charge here. I don’t want to be in charge. I think I’m perfect
ly content with my small role in this group, and I want to keep it the way it is. If Ethan’s out of commission, if he cracks because of Nikola’s death, I think everyone will look to you or Brandt for guidance way before they look at me. I am definitely not a natural leader, and I’d never be able to lead a group like this one. I couldn’t handle that kind of responsibility.”
Cade motioned toward the van. “How are you taking this?” she asked, shifting her eyes to the vehicle. She watched Remy, Gray, and Avi closely; the three of them sat in the wet grass. Gray had his arm around Remy, holding her tightly against his side as the young woman slumped there silently. Avi sat curled in the grass near them, her head bowed as she stared down at her hands. Nikola’s body was nowhere to be seen.
“She’s in the van,” Theo said, noticing Cade’s eyes on the spot where Nikola had lain. “Gray and I moved her inside so she wouldn’t have to lie out in the rain.” He sighed and twisted his fingers together, sitting in silence, his eyes closing momentarily as a wave of guilt washed over his face. “I just wish there were something I could have done, some way I could have helped her. I just … I felt so fucking helpless.”
Cade nodded in silent agreement. She stared blankly at the overgrown trees on the other side of the ditch in which the van rested. Her stomach was a knot of suppressed emotion, and it was beginning to make her feel queasy. “I don’t know what to do,” Cade finally confessed to Theo. “I don’t know how to handle all of this, if you want me to be quite honest. I don’t think I’d be any better a leader than you.”
“I think you’d be a great leader, if you want my opinion, however little it may matter,” Theo said. He slowly stood, brushing at his muddy pants uselessly, and looked at their surroundings, his expression pensive. His eyes skimmed the tree line, the van, and the embankment behind them each in turn. Cade watched curiously, pushing her wet bangs out of her eyes and tilting her head back to squint up at him.
“Is something wrong?”
“Not as such, no,” Theo answered evasively. He raked his hands through his wet hair and added, “I just don’t feel comfortable sitting out in the open in the rain with the sun down. There might be infected around here somewhere, you know? And we’d never hear them coming with it raining like it is.” He shook his head and added, “Not to mention we’re bound to get sick sitting in the cold like this.”
A voice spoke up from above and behind them as Theo finished talking. “We should move.” Cade and Theo turned as one to see Ethan sliding down the embankment, his expression the very picture of exhaustion. Brandt followed closely behind, watching Ethan intently, as if he weren’t sure his efforts to calm the man had worked. The older man didn’t look a hair’s breadth away from another outburst anymore, so Cade concluded that whatever miracle Brandt had worked hadn’t been in vain.
“I agree,” Theo said immediately. He went to Ethan and took the man’s arm, leading him toward the others. “Come on. Let’s go talk to Remy and Gray and see what we can all do for shelter.”
Cade and Brandt stood in the rain, watching the two men walk slowly away from them, and then Brandt turned to her. “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice laden with concern. Cade was touched that he even thought to ask, especially after spending so much time and effort calming Ethan down. She nodded slightly.
“As good as can be expected, given the circumstances,” Cade admitted. She let out a drawn-out sigh and folded her arms over her chest, hugging herself tightly, fingertips digging into her ribs. She watched Ethan worriedly, her eyes narrowed and her forehead drawn down into a frown. “He’s going to fall apart, isn’t he?”
“Probably,” Brandt acknowledged. “I think I’ve done all I can to help him hold it together for now. But it’s not going to last. We’ll have to help him as much as we can, because there’s no way we can do this on our own. We need a leader.”
“Theo thinks it should be one of us if Ethan can’t do it.”
Brandt gave a slow, thoughtful hum and shoved his hands into his pockets. Cade could imagine that he was about to start rocking on his heels any moment now. “I figured as much,” he said. Cade realized he was staring at her, his eyes locked like lasers onto her face. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked after another moment of intense study.
Cade shrugged. “I have to be,” she said, her voice hushed as she averted her eyes. “If Ethan isn’t going to keep himself together, if he’s going to allow himself to fall apart, then I can’t afford to do what I want to do right now.”
“Which is?”
Cade hesitated, her vision blurring with tears. She turned her head back the way they’d come, staring emptily at the deep gouges the van’s tires left in the muddy embankment. “Cry,” she muttered. She swiped the back of her hand across her eyes angrily. The last thing she wanted was to have an emotional breakdown in front of Brandt. That would just make her night oh so perfect.
Brandt, thankfully, didn’t mention her teary-eyed state as he gave her shoulder a comforting squeeze. His fingertips traced a small line over the hollow between her collarbone and shoulder.
“What are we going to do, Brandt?” Cade asked. She looked down at her muddied clothes in an effort to find something neutral on which to focus her eyes, something other than the man standing beside her or the van holding the body of a dear friend, of a young girl who’d been like a little sister to them all.
“I have an idea, but I’m not sure the rest of you are going to like it,” Brandt said.
Cade sighed. “I really hate when you start something off like that.”
Brandt gave her a reassuring smile and squeezed her shoulder once more before he let go and took a step forward. “Come on. We should have a meeting with the others. And get out of this fucking rain before we get sick. All of us coming down with the flu would make this mess suck even more mightily than it already does.”
Chapter 29
An hour later, Gray carried the last of the group’s immediately necessary supplies up the embankment to the military supply truck Brandt had commandeered for shelter. A frame covered in a heavy, thick canopy arched over the back of the truck. Though it was neither warm nor comfortable, it was dry. It gave them a semblance of safety and security, even if only psychologically.
“I found Cade’s rifle in the van,” Gray said as he approached. Brandt sat on the lowered tailgate, his legs hanging off as he examined a handgun, presumably keeping watch.
“I’m sure she’ll be happy to see it.” Brandt took the rifle from Gray and gave it a cursory once-over before he patted the tailgate beside him. “Have a seat.”
Gray obliged, making himself comfortable before looking back at the other five huddled in the interior of the truck’s cargo area. Ethan had taken up residence at the front of the truck, his arms resting on his knees and his head tilted back, eyes closed. Ethan looked a mess—even more so than the others. He looked on the verge of cracking at any moment. With anyone else, Gray would have been at least a little worried, but in this case, he couldn’t have cared less about how Ethan felt. It was his fault they were in their current mess to begin with, his and Avi’s.
Gray’s eyes drifted to Ethan’s right, and he recognized the shadowy figure of Remy sitting beside Ethan in the dark truck. She talked to him inaudibly, rubbing her hand slowly and soothingly up and down his forearm. The scene looked incredibly intimate, and Gray felt a punch of jealousy in his gut. He averted his eyes before he did something stupid, like make a big deal out of it.
Theo sat on Ethan’s left, his fingers pressed to the man’s wrist, studying a watch on his own arm. It took Gray a moment to realize that Theo was checking Ethan’s heart rate. Gray wondered if Ethan was having stress-induced chest pains again. That had happened the October before, and it scared them all shitless—even Gray, though he’d have died before he ever admitted it. Gray might have disliked Ethan immensely, and he might not have cared how the other man felt, but he didn’t wish him ill. Even Gray wasn’t stupid enough to deny that Ethan had a wa
y with the members of the group that kept them all in line. Ethan was irreplaceable, and Gray readily acknowledged that fact.
Avi sat on Theo’s other side, her feet drawn up underneath her. Gray smiled slightly as he saw the way the woman stuck so close to Theo. She’d barely moved from the man’s side since the group set out from the safe house in Maplesville. Gray wondered if Avi had taken a liking to Theo. Though he didn’t particularly like Avi either—not that he disliked her as much as he disliked Ethan—Gray had to admit that it was good to see his older brother seem almost happy again. Gray didn’t recall seeing Theo have a single moment of happiness in the time since the Michaluk Virus broke out, and it was so unlike the ebullient brother with whom he’d grown up that Gray still found Theo’s behavior disconcerting.
Gray turned his eyes to the last object of examination. Cade sat near the end of the truck bed, reasonably close to Brandt, her hand loosely gripping a handgun that rested on her thigh. She’d leaned her head back against the side of the truck in a manner similar to Ethan’s. But unlike Ethan, Cade was actually asleep. The fact that she could sleep in a situation like this quite frankly impressed Gray.
“So did you have a plan?” Gray asked Brandt.
Brandt stared down the highway at a road packed tight with cars, bumper to bumper as far as the eye could see. The worst traffic jam Gray had ever seen sat on the Georgia side of the barricade, laid out before them like a long, winding metal snake. He silently thanked whatever deity looked down on them and still bothered to listen to humanity that he hadn’t been there for it. “Yeah, I have a plan,” Brandt admitted. “But like I told Cade, I’m not sure how any of you are going to feel about it.”
“Care to share?”
“No, not right now. After Cade wakes up from her nap,” Brandt said idly. He lifted the rifle with both hands and set it against his shoulder, aiming it down the highway. Gray jumped, scrambling for his own gun, but Brandt only laughed softly and set the rifle back down beside him, putting his hand up in a placating gesture. “Calm down, Gray. Chill. It was nothing. Just checking to make sure the scope wasn’t busted.”
The Becoming: Ground Zero Page 16