The Becoming: Ground Zero

by Jessica Meigs

  “We’re not stopping in Douglasville,” Brandt said, joining them. Avi followed Brandt over, sticking close to him and looking around warily. Gray, for his part, simply stopped in the middle of the road and stood there, making no move to approach them. “It’s too dangerous. It’s larger than Villa Rica, and there was a massive outbreak there within days of the one in Atlanta. It was one of the first suburbs outside Atlanta to get wiped out by Michaluk.”

  “So we need to stop before we get to Douglasville, then?” Avi spoke up. They all looked at her. Gray continued his studious examination of the road ahead. “But there’s no place here to stop, no shelter at all! It’s all trees and highways and cars.”

  “We’ll have to make it to the other side of Douglasville before sunset,” Brandt said. “And it won’t guarantee our safety. There are stores and houses and little suburban towns and shit almost all the way from here to Atlanta.”

  Ethan started to take the crumpled map of Georgia out of his pocket. “Is that possible?” he asked. “I mean, Douglasville is bigger than Villa Rica, like you said. I don’t know if we can move across the whole city in an hour.”

  Brandt ran a hand slowly over his face and back through his hair, letting out a heavy sigh. “We have to try, okay?” he said. “We can’t get caught outside in the dark with the infected. It’s too hard to guard your asses when I can’t see everything around us.”

  Remy looked around thoughtfully, taking stock of their surroundings. She spotted a dark blue minivan ahead of them, and an idea sprang to mind. “Why don’t we find a car or two to hide in for the night?”

  Ethan waved his hand toward a couple of the vehicles around them. “Be my guest, babe. I personally am not game on sleeping in a car that probably has or had a dead body in it.”

  Remy cringed at his words and wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Yeah, good point,” she conceded. She edged closer to the others, gripping her bolo knife tighter.

  “Hey, guys?” Gray called out. Their eyes turned onto him, surprised that he’d spoken, but he didn’t return the look. “Any of you know how to drive a motorcycle?”

  “I do,” Brandt said. Cade and Remy both nodded, and even Ethan looked as though his curiosity were piqued.

  “I drove one when I was younger,” Ethan said. “And I taught Cade. I used one last year when I went back to Memphis, remember? Why do you ask, anyway?”

  Gray didn’t answer; he simply pointed off the right side of the road. Remy’s eyes followed Gray’s finger, and a wide grin spread across her face at the sight of the orange-and-black Harley-Davidson sign looming over the highway.

  “Oh fuck, Harleys,” Remy said almost dreamily. “I fucking love me some Harleys. I have one back home … had one. I had one back home, and my mom hated it. She was so insistent I’d get creamed out on the highway and she’d have to identify a box of paste as my remains. I miss it so bad.”

  “I don’t know how to drive one, but I bet those of us who don’t know how can hitch rides on the backs of whoever does,” Gray continued. He still didn’t bother to turn around.

  “It’s called riding pillion,” Cade grumbled. “And you’re assuming the bikes are even still there.”

  Remy snapped out of her motorcycle daydream and raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

  “We can’t be the only survivors roaming around the southeast, you know?” Cade explained. “There’s got to be others, and there might even be others in this neighborhood. Considering the way we’ve broken into shit ourselves, there’s no way other people haven’t been doing it too.”

  “Well, I’m going to think positively and hope there’s at least three bikes in there,” Remy said.

  Cade shrugged and shouldered her rifle. “Just preparing for the worst-case scenario,” she said mildly.

  “We’ll have to worry about gas too,” Brandt pointed out to Remy. “As long as we can get enough together to go the twenty miles from here to Atlanta, we’ll be fine. But most dealerships don’t keep much gas in their vehicles as a rule, in case of theft. It’ll take some time to get the fuel together.”

  Remy let out a slow breath and clapped her hands together gamely. “Okay, so let’s get this show on the road and go get us some motorcycles.”

  Chapter 42

  The six made good time crossing the highway and picking their way through the underbrush and trash and debris littering the side of the road. Twenty minutes later, they stood outside the Harley-Davidson dealership Gray had spotted from the highway. Cade studied the building and the merchandise visible through the showroom windows. She didn’t like what she saw.

  “This place is practically untouched,” Cade said in concern, squinting at the windows. “There’s not even a crack in the damned glass.”

  “Yeah, that is a little … odd,” Ethan agreed. He moved to stand closer to Cade, framing his face with his hands to get a better look inside. “Everything else has been looted to hell and back. Why not this one?”

  “You think it could be dangerous?” Remy asked. She looked warily at the building, and her hand tightened around the hilt of her bolo knife. Cade, for her part, only hefted her rifle higher. Just in case.

  “Anything in this state is dangerous now,” Brandt spoke up.

  “Fuck that. Anything in this world is dangerous,” Cade corrected, frowning at the building again. Its normalcy made it seem more ominous. In the post-Michaluk reality, anything normal should always be looked at as suspect. Especially anything overly normal. “What do you think we should do, Brandt?”

  “We need those bikes,” Brandt said. He tilted his head back to look at the sky, and Cade was momentarily distracted by the way his hair fell back from his face. “And we’re losing the light. We’ll need to hurry.” He turned his eyes back to the rest of them, and Cade shook free from her slight daze and focused in on his face. “Gray, you and Avi don’t know how to drive the motorcycles, so you two guard us. We’re going in to get the bikes.”

  “And how am I supposed to guard you when all I have is this?” Avi asked tiredly. She held up her machete, wiggling it with a quick twist of her wrist to emphasize her point.

  Cade rolled her eyes and dug into her bag. She withdrew the last of her spare handguns and tossed it to Avi. The blond woman put her hands out for the gun and nearly dropped it, barely wrapping her hands around the weapon; she missed the spare magazine of bullets, though, and it fell into the dirt with a crunch. “If any of us gets killed because you decide to be incompetent, or if you freeze again, I will kill you myself,” Cade warned Avi coldly. “That’s a promise, not a threat. And I fucking hope you can shoot a gun at least a little better than you can catch one.”

  “I won’t miss,” Avi promised, her nervousness turning to sincerity as Cade watched her.

  “You better not,” Cade repeated. She shouldered her rifle once more and looked around them again. She studied the building closely before swatting Brandt’s elbow to get his attention. “Come on, Brandt. You’ve got my back on this, right?”

  “Of course,” Brandt said. “I can’t believe you even have to ask.”

  “Hey, you can’t fault me for double-checking,” Cade said. She winked at him before breaking away from the others and heading toward the front doors. She heard footsteps behind her and saw Remy and Ethan following her and Brandt, their own weapons in their hands and their expressions guarded as they scanned their surroundings. “How should we do this? Two in and two at the doors?” she asked, pausing and putting a hand on one of the doors in question.

  “Might be faster if we all go in and get what we came for,” Brandt suggested. He nudged Cade aside and slipped the screwdriver out of the side pocket of her bag before leaning down and starting to work at the locked door. It took longer than Cade would have liked for him to pop the lock. He pushed the door open with a dramatic wave of his hand. “After you, my dear,” he said, giving Cade a cheeky grin, though she couldn’t help noticing that the grin didn’t reach his eyes. Leave it to Brandt to try to kee
p their spirits up with jokes, though she was sure that none of them was truly feeling the humor. Not after Nikola and Theo.

  Cade gave Brandt a single nod and lifted her rifle to her shoulder. She switched the safety off and rested her finger lightly against the trigger, taking a slow step inside and sweeping her rifle across the entire showroom with a slow half-turn. She lifted her hand off the rifle and motioned for Brandt to follow her in. “It looks clear,” she said softly.

  Cade moved farther into the showroom, her boots squeaking on the shiny tiles. She made another sweep of the room as Brandt entered the dealership behind her. Remy and Ethan were just behind him, moving in a manner similar to Cade’s. Everything was still clear to Cade’s satisfaction, so she made straight for the nearest motorcycle that she thought she could handle.

  It was a gorgeous black Sportster, similar to the motorcycle Ethan had taught her to drive several years before, and Cade smoothed her hand over its leather seat. It brought back several fond memories as she looked it over. “I think I can deal with this one,” Cade said, just loud enough for the others to hear.

  Cade looked to Ethan; he’d already slid onto a similar model. “I’ve got one too,” Ethan announced. “Where are the keys?”

  “I bet they’re in this safe,” Remy said from the other side of the room, her voice echoing off the low ceiling and the tall windows. She stood in front of a small, flat safe bolted to the wall, a numbered keypad set into its face. Remy frowned as she stared at it. “How the fuck do we get into it?” she asked in frustration.

  Brandt moved swiftly to Remy and shoved her gently aside to examine the safe, giving it a short nod. “I know this one,” he said confidently. Cade raised an eyebrow as he reached out and pressed 1-5-9-# on the keypad. It let out a soft beep for each number, and as he pressed the pound symbol, the safe emitted three short beeps. Brandt turned the knob below the keypad, and the safe’s door opened easily.

  Cade’s jaw dropped. “How in the hell did you do that?” she asked incredulously.

  “It’s a Honeywell safe,” Brandt explained. “The initial code is always 1-5-9-pound. A surprisingly large number of people never change the code. I figured it was a safe bet it’d get us inside.” He shrugged modestly and rifled through the contents of the safe. “Also, the print on those three numbers’ buttons was starting to wear off, which kind of backed up my assumption.” The inside of the safe was full of small numbered boxes, and Cade hurried to the motorcycles they’d chosen to check the numbered tags on them. As she called the numbers out to Brandt, the tall man shook the keys from the boxes and palmed them. He tossed a set to Cade once he had all three in hand.

  Cade caught the keys with a grin and straddled the bike smoothly. She slid the key into the ignition and adjusted herself on the seat. Before she could turn the key to start the engine and check the fuel levels, however, Remy let out a shout of surprise that brought the rest of them around. Remy pointed to something behind them, and Cade twisted around even farther. She gasped loudly at the sight of a group of infected lurching toward them. Some moved quicker than others, as was typical of the groups they’d faced over the past year. They had every appearance of being the prior office staff of the building they were in. All were, naturally, intent on the survivors’ positions.

  “Fuck! Brandt! Let’s go!” Cade shouted. She wrenched the key, and the motorcycle roared to life between her thighs. She could hear the others do the same over the sound of her own bike’s engine.

  “How the hell do we get out of here?” Ethan yelled. Cade heard his gun fire, and she looked in time to see one of the infected drop next to Ethan’s bike. The man was too close to Ethan for Cade’s comfort, and she swallowed hard and slid her eyes rapidly across the room, looking for options. It didn’t take her long to settle on one.

  “Leave that shit to me,” Cade said confidently. She lifted her rifle and rested it against her shoulder, aiming at the large glass windows in front of them. She fired three bullets into the glass; it cracked but didn’t shatter like she’d thought it would. “Fuck!” she snarled.

  “It’s okay! Get moving!” Brandt yelled. He leaped onto a motorcycle of his own, even as Remy fired two shots into the approaching infected. He revved the engine, gripping the handlebars tightly and eyeing the window in front of him. Cade’s eyes widened as she realized Brandt’s intention. He didn’t even know how to drive a bike!

  “Brandt! No!” Cade yelled. Her cry was swallowed by the sound of Brandt gunning the motorcycle’s engine. The back tire squealed on the slick floor, seeking purchase as Brandt rammed the bike forward. He sped toward the window, and at the last second, he flung himself from the bike and rolled across the floor. The motorcycle’s front tire came into contact with the window, and the glass exploded outward as the bike slammed through it and crashed to the pavement outside. Glass fell like rain as Brandt rolled up onto one knee, his gun already out and aimed at a well-dressed infected woman scrambling toward him. Ethan and Remy revved their engines, but unimpeded by the glass, they sped out through the newly created exit in the building’s showcase windows.

  Cade fired at the infected, trying to slow their progress as Brandt gained his feet and sprinted to her. Most of her shots missed, but a few struck home, slicing through limbs and shoulders and torsos. Cade revved the engine of her own bike and gritted her teeth. “Get the fuck on,” she ordered Brandt, raising her voice over the engine. Brandt gave Cade a mock salute before climbing onto the bike behind her. Cade suddenly felt the urge to slap him across the back of the head as she raced into the parking lot, skidding on broken glass and gravel.

  Gray and Avi climbed aboard Remy and Ethan’s motorcycles as Cade and Brandt caught up to the others in the parking lot. “You guys ready?” Cade asked, slowing down and stopping beside them. They nodded in answer, Remy’s nod a determined one and Ethan’s barely perceptible. Gray didn’t respond at all; he just stared straight ahead and held tightly to Remy’s waist. Cade wondered if he was going into shock over the day’s traumatic events. She wouldn’t have blamed him if he did; anybody with half a heart would have fallen apart at the horrific loss of someone so close to them.

  She straightened her shoulders and looked back at Brandt; he stared at the motorcycle dealership, his gun still in hand, one arm looped firmly around Cade’s waist. A couple of the infected remained at the edge of the window, negotiating the broken glass littering the frame. Brandt raised his gun and took aim, firing two shots. Both of the figures in the window dropped to the ground. Cade was impressed. “Now that you’re done acting like some big tough action star, which way are we supposed to go?”

  Brandt snorted and pointed in the direction in which he wanted her to drive. Cade nodded and turned the motorcycle. “We’re going to have to move fast,” Brandt called in her ear. “The noise of the bikes is going to attract a lot of unwanted attention. We’ve got to ditch them before we get to Atlanta.”

  Cade nodded and checked Brandt’s grip on her waist. Then she signaled to the others, and the tiny convoy of three motorcycles headed down the highway toward the most dangerous city in America.

  Chapter 43

  The group’s arrival in Atlanta wasn’t met with fanfare or celebration or even the instantaneous death Brandt had come to expect. Instead, they walked into the city unimpeded for nearly half an hour before they stopped in the middle of an intersection. Brandt took a careful look around them, attempting to negotiate his view of the street around the cars and trucks and vans parked all around him, even as he tried his best to guard the others’ backs. Brandt frowned deeply and squinted at the restaurants and shops surrounding them, trying to get his bearings.

  Brandt and the others had driven the motorcycles as far into Atlanta as they dared. Now they stood at the Y created by Highway 8 and Hollywood Road. Brandt held his hand out to Ethan. “Let me see the map,” he said, wiggling his fingers impatiently.

  Ethan quickly handed the crumpled paper over, and Brandt scanned the surface. “We’re rig
ht here,” he announced, pointing to the map. The wind ruffled the paper, bending it over itself, and Brandt let out a sigh and flattened it out again. The others leaned over his shoulders to look for themselves. “We’re not too far from where we need to go. Maybe five miles. If we hurry, we can make it in an hour and a half, maybe two, assuming we don’t run into any trouble. Which I can almost guarantee you we will.” Brandt looked to them each in turn and added, “It’s just a matter of what kind of trouble we run into.”

  “Any trouble is bad trouble,” Ethan added solemnly. Brandt looked at him. The older man stared down the road, squinting into the distance over the tops of the vehicles. Brandt could almost guess Ethan’s thoughts. Their destination might have been only five miles away, but that five miles could easily mean the difference between blessed salvation and bloody death. Brandt suddenly wished they’d kept the motorcycles, if only to get to the Tabernacle that much faster, but the noise would have brought the entire city down on them quicker than anything else.

  Remy tapped Brandt’s arm and pointed off the side of the road wordlessly. Brandt followed her hand to a marketplace and noticed a significant amount of movement to the side of the building. It looked suspiciously like the infected, or at least enough so that it made Brandt’s stomach turn over. He shoved the map back at Ethan for safekeeping and motioned for the others to follow him. “Come on. We’ve got to move. We’re killing time here, and the longer we stay in one spot, the higher the chances someone or something will see us.”

  Brandt took Cade’s elbow as they started down the street, leaning in close to speak so that only she could hear. “Keep your eyes open, you hear me?” he ordered. She gave him an incredulous look, but he pressed on regardless. “I don’t want to dig you out of a hole, literally or figuratively. I want us to get to Luckie as fast as we can move, and I want us all to get there together and in one piece.”