The Becoming: Ground Zero

by Jessica Meigs

  Remy accepted the bottle and took a long swallow. The water was warm, but it went down easily and helped with the dry throat she’d developed while tramping around in the biting cold air outside. “Thanks.” She paused and offered the bottle back to Ethan. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Ethan shrugged again. “I don’t know. It’s just … I don’t know. This whole situation is getting really shitty. I don’t want to deal with any of this anymore.”

  Remy reached over and wrapped her fingers around his forearm, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “I know, honey. It’s always harder to take the bad shit that happens when you’re the one in charge.” She slid her hand down to his wrist, feeling the thin bones there, and then laced her fingers with his.

  “I didn’t want to take any of you into this place to begin with,” Ethan said, his voice heavy with despair. Remy swallowed hard as the sound of it hit her ears. “And now, because I couldn’t stand up to you, because I wasn’t willing to stand up to you, Nikola is dead.”

  “That isn’t your fault,” Remy said. She gripped his hand tighter and lifted it to her lips, pressing a soft kiss to the back of it. “It’s not your fault, Ethan. Shit just happens sometimes.”

  Ethan leaned forward and thumped his head gently against the steering wheel. “It is my fault, Remy. It is. I should have just … I don’t know. Found someplace to take Nikola when we left Maplesville. She shouldn’t have been here with us. This mission is too dangerous for a fifteen year old.”

  Remy tried desperately to think of something to say to comfort him, but her mind came up with nothing. She was miserable at this kind of thing. Comforting people had never been her forte. Instead of trying to come up with the words, Remy slid across the seat and wrapped her arms around Ethan, hugging him tightly. “It’s not your fault,” she tried, pressing a gentle kiss to his temple. “There is no way she’d have let you leave her behind. You know how she was. Stubborn as a fucking mule.”

  Ethan chuckled softly, despite his sadness. “Yeah, that she was.” He paused for a long moment, leaning into Remy and staring vacantly out the windshield. “Did you know her father was a state trooper? I think that’s why she stuck to me like she did. Not long after we first met in Memphis, she said I reminded her of her dad, and that was apparently the best compliment she could have given anyone.”

  “What happened to her father?” Remy asked curiously. She dropped her head against Ethan’s shoulder, breathing in his scent deeply. Nikola had never really talked about her past, just like the rest of them. Reliving those experiences was too painful. The downside was that none of them knew a whole lot about how the others had gotten where they were, except for what was deemed necessary according to their need-to-know basis.

  “He died a couple of days into the outbreak in Memphis,” Ethan said. “He was out responding to calls for help and never showed back up at home. He left Nikki to fend for herself. As best she could guess, he might have been attacked by a group of infected once he got to the call. Whoever had called for help was probably already long gone by the time he arrived.”

  “Poor Nikki,” Remy murmured sadly. “No wonder she was so attached to you. She didn’t have a soul in the world.”

  They both fell silent as their minds settled onto their deceased friend. Remy lay against Ethan, shifting to rest her head against his chest, and listened to his steady breathing as he relaxed. It sounded almost as if he were close to sleep. Remy was beginning to feel drowsy herself when Ethan broke the solemn silence again.

  “So what’s your story, Remy?” Ethan asked. “You’re the only one who never told me. Everybody else has at least given me a summary of their life at the outbreak, but not you. Considering how close we are now, this is kind of … well, weird.”

  Remy sat quietly and tried to decide what to tell Ethan and what to keep in her heart. She knew the question of her past would come up eventually, especially now that she and Ethan were sleeping together and had been for three months. Thus far, she’d managed to keep it to herself. It was hers to hold, hers to keep close, to carry the weight of. The others knew some gist of what had gone down—that she’d managed, singlehandedly, to kill nearly a dozen infected with nothing more than a hunting rifle and the bolo knife that even now lay in the back of the truck. She’d sworn the year before never to tell anyone the details of what she’d done. But Remy wanted to confide in someone. She couldn’t think of a better person to trust with the truth than Ethan.

  Remy swallowed and closed her eyes. She weighed her options for a moment, trying to decide exactly what to say, before she began to talk quietly. “I lived in Louisiana, just outside of New Orleans, before the Michaluk Virus outbreak there,” she started. She began to trace her fingers lightly over the hem of her t-shirt both to distract herself and to keep her hands busy as painful memories surfaced in her brain. “It was me, my stepfather and my mother, and my little sister Maddie. We were okay for the first few days or so, but then my mom started to get sick. We thought it was the flu at first, so I volunteered to go out on my own and try to find a doctor. I took my grandmother’s old bolo knife and my stepfather’s hunting rifle and went out to see if I could find anybody who would help.”

  Ethan wrapped his arms more tightly around Remy, and she relaxed against him, going nearly limp in his embrace. “I came back two days later without a doctor,” she continued. “I couldn’t find one at all, and no one seemed willing to even try to help me. When I got home, everything was still and silent. Even the chickens were quiet. Something about the silence made me nervous, so I set my bag down and took my rifle and moved to the house. I passed the henhouse on the way to the back door and looked inside, and they were all dead. Every single one of them. It looked like a slaughterhouse in there.”

  “Fuck,” Ethan breathed. Remy took his hand and squeezed it hard, letting out a shaky breath.

  “I realized that something had been there, so I ran up the porch and into the house without thinking. I should have been more careful, because I had no way of knowing what was inside.” Remy fell silent, remembering the sharp smell of the blood, the tang of bitterness as bile rose in her throat, and the sound of staggering bare feet running across the floorboards toward her. “It was my mother,” she finally said. “We thought she had the flu, but it was Michaluk, and while I was gone, she’d turned on them. She killed my stepfather, and she—” Her voice cracked, and she fell silent again as she struggled to keep her emotions in check. “She killed them both. And she was coming after me. So I did the only thing I could do. I shot her.”

  “Jesus,” Ethan said softly, tightening his grip on her. Remy collapsed against him under the weight of her memories and closed her eyes tighter.

  “There were more in the woods behind the house, and the sound only brought them all down on me. I fought for almost half an hour to break free of them, and then I started to run. I spent an entire month working my way to Biloxi before I got hurt and Brandt and Cade got me out of there.” Remy squeezed her hands into fists, digging her nails into her palms. “I promised myself I would kill as many of those bastards as I could before one took me down,” she said, her voice bitter and heavy with barely suppressed anger. “That’s why I wanted to go to Atlanta. What better place to kill them than in the place where all this shit started?”

  Ethan nodded at her words, rubbing a soothing hand down her back and over her side. Remy hissed in pain and jerked away from him, and he withdrew his hand in alarm. “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice urgent.

  “Yeah, it’s just a cut,” Remy said. “I scraped my side when I was climbing out of the van earlier.”

  “Let me see,” Ethan demanded. Remy had no good excuse to say no, so she allowed him to push her onto her uninjured side. He shoved her jacket aside and eased her shirt up her torso. She could just make out the expression on his face in the dim light as he saw the bloodied cut on her side and the red stain on her shirt. “Why didn’t you tell Theo about this?”

  Remy shrugged,
looking sheepish as she let out a soft huff. “I don’t know. It’s not a big deal. Theo had more important things to deal with at the time.”

  “You’re important too, Remy,” Ethan argued. He sat up again and pushed his hair out of his face. “You’re just as important as every other person in the back of this truck. No more and no less. This cut could get infected. We need to get it cleaned and bandaged.” Ethan reached for the passenger door, and Remy sat up with another wince.

  “Where are you going?” Remy asked.

  “I’m going to get Theo,” Ethan replied, sliding out of the cab.

  “Don’t. Don’t get Theo,” Remy said quickly. She didn’t care how pitiful she sounded or how blatantly she begged. “I really don’t want or need another lecture tonight.”

  Ethan stood on the pavement, watching her over the edge of the high seat for a long moment, squinting at her face. Finally, he nodded slowly. “Okay. I’ll just steal his first aid bag and do it myself,” he offered. “Is that okay with you?”

  Remy sighed again and nodded, flopping back flat on the seat as Ethan disappeared, leaving the door open for his return. Remy hated being babied. It made her feel like a weak, pathetic woman whenever someone treated her like she was made of glass just because she’d gotten injured. She’d spent the past year struggling to make herself seem anything but weak and pathetic—especially since the first time she’d met the others was in a particularly vulnerable moment—and she didn’t want to alter their perception of her in a single moment of weakness.

  Remy heard footsteps, and she looked up from her quiet contemplation of the steering wheel. Ethan reappeared in the doorway and climbed into the truck, pulling the door shut and setting a small white first aid box on the dashboard. “Let’s see about getting this fixed up,” he said, pushing her onto her back and sliding her shirt up with one hand, opening the box with the other. He shone a small penlight over the cut, examining it closely, and then stuck the penlight between his teeth to free both of his hands.

  “Is it bad?” Remy asked. She silently cursed as she heard the slight tremor in her voice. She wrinkled her nose at the roof of the cab.

  “It isn’t deep, but it’s pretty nasty,” Ethan admitted, his words muffled by the penlight. He looked up to give Remy a reassuring smile and shone the light into her eyes in the process. He ducked his head with a little laugh and added, “Sorry. There’s a bit of glass in it that I’ll need to get out before I bandage it up.”

  Remy nodded and relaxed as much as the pain in her side would allow. She closed her eyes tightly and let out a slow breath as Ethan gently tended to her wounds.

  Chapter 31

  The next morning dawned overcast but free of rain. Brandt was exhausted, his head heavy and clogged with sleep, his neck stiff from sleeping while sitting up all night. He massaged the sore muscles in his neck and arched his back slightly in an attempt to stretch. The movement brought Brandt’s attention to an odd pressure against his thigh, and he looked down, smiling when he saw Cade using his leg as a pillow, curled on her side with her eyes closed, still sleeping.

  Brandt smiled and ran his fingers slowly through Cade’s thick hair. The dark locks were disheveled, mostly pulled free from the ponytail she’d put them in the day before; the way the strands fell around her sleeping face made her appear incredibly young. Brandt brushed his knuckles over the side of Cade’s face before he sensed eyes on him. He looked up to see Gray staring at him.

  “Morning,” Brandt greeted, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb Cade.

  “Yeah, morning,” Gray replied. His voice was still hoarse with sleep. He rubbed his face tiredly, grimacing as he scrubbed his hand over his stubbled cheek. “Where are Remy and Ethan?”

  Brandt looked around the truck curiously. He’d only given the interior a cursory scan and hadn’t noticed their absence. “I don’t know,” he said, sitting up straighter. “Maybe they needed some fresh air? Or maybe they got out to keep watch since we all passed out.”

  “Maybe,” Gray said doubtfully, obviously not thrilled at the idea of the two off together, presumably alone. Brandt wasn’t comfortable with the idea either; while Ethan and Remy were damn good at handling a small group of infected, their survival instincts seemed to be mostly absent. But Brandt also suspected Gray’s reasons ran deeper than a simple worry for their safety.

  “I’ll go find them,” Brandt offered. He gently nudged Cade awake and, after she sat up and pushed her hair out of her face, grabbed his gun and climbed down from the truck.

  The early-morning air had a chilly bite to it, and Brandt shivered, rubbing his hand over his bare arm vigorously. He wondered what possessed him to leave his jacket in the back of the truck. Cars lined the highway, bumper to bumper as far as the eye could see. Many more were jammed at odd angles along the sides of the road, shoved there by desperate drivers looking to escape the state by any means possible. It was a veritable sea of vehicles. Brandt wondered how many infected were trapped in their cars when the virus took hold of their bodies. The makeshift car lot was a potential minefield of infection.

  Brandt contemplated the different directions his two companions could have gone and discarded each of them just as quickly. Ethan and Remy were too smart to venture into the traffic jam with just each other for protection, and Brandt doubted Ethan would go anywhere near the van. He glanced around again, checking out the cars and trucks in their immediate vicinity, and decided to start at the front of the truck. He figured the cab was the best place to begin.

  As Brandt approached the cab, he paused in mid-step as he noticed the doors and windows were firmly shut. That in itself wasn’t necessarily odd. The strange way the windows were fogged was, though. Brandt frowned, looking toward one of the cars parked nearby. Its windows were crystal clear. His eyebrows darted up as his mind leaped to the most obvious possibility. No, that couldn’t have been it. Could it?

  As Brandt stared at the fogged windows, trying to decide on the best course of action, footsteps approached behind him. Brandt turned in time to see Gray walking toward the cab of the truck. A frown graced the younger man’s face, his forehead wrinkled in consternation.

  “Have you found them yet?” Gray asked. His eyes flitted to the windows at which Brandt had been staring.

  “I … uh, maybe?” Brandt hazarded. He had a feeling that Gray suspected the same thing he did, and he knew Gray wouldn’t like that possibility one bit. Gray’s face screwed up into an ugly grimace, and he stormed forward, pushing Brandt aside hard enough to make the taller man stumble. “Gray, I’m not sure you should do that,” Brandt hurried to say as Gray’s hand landed on the door handle.

  “Shut the fuck up, Brandt,” Gray snarled. Brandt rolled his eyes and took a step back, holding up his hands as if to say, Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Gray wrenched the truck’s door open, exposing the inside of the cab to the cool morning air and their prying eyes.

  The scene inside the cab was, thankfully, a lot more innocent than Brandt had imagined. Ethan and Remy lay on the bench seat, and they’d apparently been asleep, if their tousled hair and bleary eyes were any indication. Ethan’s arms were still around Remy as she sat up straight. She snatched a gun off the dashboard and pointed it at both of them. The embrace in which Ethan held Remy likely meant nothing—the bench seat was only so wide, after all—but Brandt had a feeling Gray wouldn’t see it that way.

  And, as usual, Brandt was right.

  “What the fuck?” Gray snapped. He glared at the scene in the truck, disregarding the weapon in Remy’s hand. Brandt fought not to back away and let the situation handle itself. Knowing all parties involved, he knew it would be better to stick close in case blood was spilled.

  Remy shifted her gun to point it right at Gray’s head, her arm straight and extended; it didn’t waver a fraction as she glared at Gray with cold brown eyes. “Give me one good fucking reason I shouldn’t pull the damned trigger,” she snarled. Brandt blinked and raised an eyebrow. Gray, for his part, was co
mpletely unfazed by Remy’s threat. He stepped forward and shoved her arm to the side, pressing it firmly into the back of the cab’s bench seat.

  “What the fuck is going on in here?”

  “Why the fuck is it any of your business what’s going on in here?” Ethan bit out, speaking up for the first time.

  Brandt drew in a slow breath and took an involuntary step back without realizing he’d done it. His instincts screamed that this fight would be uglier than usual, and therefore more likely to draw the attention of any infected in the vicinity. Brandt could almost see the fabled green-eyed monster on Gray’s shoulders, gearing up to pounce on Ethan with all the force in his skinny asthmatic body.

  “Who the fuck asked you?” Gray shot back. He grabbed Remy’s arm and pulled on it, nearly dragging the young woman bodily from the cab to the cracked pavement. Remy barely managed to keep her feet, stumbling awkwardly as she landed hard on her weak ankle.

  “Guys, I don’t think now is the time or the place to start a fight,” Brandt tried. He glanced toward the back of the truck and wondered if he should get Cade. He was sure she could shut the fight down with a wave of her rifle.

  “It’s not any of your damned business what’s going on in here, Gray,” Ethan said. He scrambled out of the truck and dropped down to stand defensively beside Remy. He put a supportive hand on her forearm to steady her as he glared at the younger man.

  Brandt debated easing around the three and getting any firearms out of the immediate vicinity before one of the men tried to kill the other. But as Brandt pondered his options, Ethan and Gray began to shout at each other, their words running together until Brandt couldn’t tell who said what or what was even being said. Then Gray’s fist swung out toward Ethan’s head, and Ethan retaliated, gripping the other man’s jacket and swinging him against the side of the truck. Gray struck the truck with a loud thud and rebounded, and they lunged at each other simultaneously. In the process, Remy was shoved to the ground, and she let out an indignant shriek as her body met the pavement.