“That’s not what it was for him,” Remy said in a singsong voice. That only prompted another ugly look from Cade. “What? I’m just saying. The man is hardcore in love with you, and you’re totally avoiding it. You need to … I don’t know … live a little and maybe acknowledge it. Because I will seriously smack the shit out of you if you blow him off.”
“Since when have you been so protective of Brandt?” Cade asked, snapping the elastic into place on her hair. “You don’t even like him all that much.”
“Since I’ve seen the way he looks at you. He’s head over heels for you,” Remy explained. “Give him some hope and quit being a frigid bitch over the whole thing. You two are going to have a kid. I think you’re past the I-don’t-want-a-relationship stage.”
Cade opened her mouth to reply, but a loud crash from downstairs preempted whatever she was going to say. Both women looked to the cracked bathroom door simultaneously, and Cade reached for her rifle, which sat propped against the wall by the door.
“Do you think Brandt and Gray came back early?” Remy asked. She grabbed the gun she’d left on the sink and silently cursed her luck; she’d left her bolo knife in her bedroom, thinking they wouldn’t be long. Now all she had was the Glock in her hands and the Ruger that Gray had given her in the waistband of her jeans. She hesitated, then grabbed the Ruger and slipped the tiny pistol under her shirt, tucking it into her bra. She wasn’t sure what made her do it, but instinct insisted, so she obeyed.
“I’ll go check it out,” Cade said. She shouldered her rifle and slid her flashlight from her pocket. “You stay here. Be ready to run.”
Remy rolled her eyes and flipped the safety off on her Glock. “Fuck that. Everybody could use the backup. Especially you.”
“Remy—” Cade started to protest. She clamped her mouth shut, her eyes darting to the bathroom door. There was the distinct sound of multiple sets of booted footsteps in the hall, moving slowly and stealthily along the floorboards. The indistinct sound of a woman’s whisper filtered through the door, and Cade’s jaw visibly tightened. She signaled for Remy to stay still and quiet, and then she eased to the crack in the door, hovering next to it. She pressed flat against the wall and pocketed the flashlight, gripping her rifle in both hands. After a long silence, in which Remy’s heart hammered wildly against her ribs, the voices in the hall faded away, the footsteps retreating to the stairs once more.
Cade eased toward the door, and nervousness churned in Remy’s gut. Something was wrong. If this was an attack, something was different about it. The people in the hallway weren’t infected, by the sounds of it. The infected didn’t talk. Remy swallowed hard and moved to stand beside Cade, leaning close and whispering in her ear.
“Maybe we should just stay in here,” she suggested. “Something isn’t right about this. I don’t like it.”
Cade merely waved her hand at Remy to indicate silence before she reached for the doorknob.
It happened almost too fast for Remy to comprehend. As Cade reached for the knob, the door flew open, striking Cade before she could dodge back from it. Cade staggered at the impact, and she raised her rifle instinctively. Remy darted deeper into the bathroom and lifted her Glock. A hand closed around the barrel of Cade’s rifle and drove it up. A bullet discharged into the ceiling with a deafening bang as a large black man pressed forward into the room. Cade gasped as her rifle was wrenched from her grasp.
“Cade, move!” Remy yelled. The woman, thankfully, obeyed, twisting to the side. Once she was clear of the doorway, Remy squeezed the trigger. A bullet slammed into the man’s shoulder and knocked him back into the wall across from the door. Cade’s rifle skittered across the hallway floor, and Remy lowered her gun as Cade grabbed her arm.
“You okay?” Cade asked. Without waiting for Remy’s answer, she pulled Remy with her into the hall, retrieving her rifle from the floor as the man regained his footing with a pained grimace. “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here,” she said urgently.
Remy followed Cade wordlessly, sparing a squinted glance at the dark hallway, hoping there wasn’t anyone else hiding in the darkness. No one came at them, though, and they made it safely down the stairs. “Where are we going?” she finally asked as they reached the bottom.
“I don’t know. We’ll figure something—”
Cade was cut short when she rounded the corner into the living room and the butt of a rifle slammed into her face. She landed flat on her back with a grunt of pain. Remy moved to help, lifting her Glock defensively, but someone dove from the living room’s shadows and grabbed her arm. Her gun was wrested from her grasp, and then she was swung around and slammed face down onto the floor. Her arms were pinned underneath her, and her breath rushed out of her lungs in a harsh gasp. She tried to push herself up, but a heavy booted foot pressed down between her shoulder blades, holding her in place.
The click of a gun cocking behind her was accompanied by the words, uttered in a harsh male voice, “Don’t fucking move, or I’ll blow your damned brains out.”
Remy obediently froze, panting as she tried to get enough air back into her lungs. The gun in her bra dug painfully into her skin, and a hand at her hip smoothed around the waistband of her jeans, presumably searching for weapons. When the hand pulled away, she closed her eyes. A scuffle broke out nearby, followed by a woman’s voice.
“Where is he?” the unknown woman asked, her voice hard and strong.
“Where is who?” Remy heard Cade snap back. Her voice was just as strong as the unnamed woman’s, laced with a vein of cold, hard anger. Despite the anger, Remy heard a faint tremor of pain under the words.
“Michael Evans. Where is he?”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
There was a scrape of boots, and then the woman spoke again. “Get her up. On her knees.”
Remy managed to turn her head, and the scene beside her came into view. Cade knelt on the floor, her head bowed, her arms extended to her sides, palms out. A redheaded woman stood over her, a gun in her hand, her arms crossed as she glared at Cade. A Hispanic man stood behind Cade with a gun pressed to the back of her head. The black man Remy had shot sat on the stairs, a bath towel pressed to his shoulder as he grimaced in pain. Remy swallowed hard.
The woman leaned to look into Cade’s face again. “Where is Michael Evans?” she repeated, speaking slowly and sternly.
“I don’t know anyone named Michael,” Cade shot back, visibly gritting her teeth. A trickle of blood inched down her chin, and a large swollen area decorated the side of her face where the rifle had struck her.
“You’re lying,” the redhead shot back. “Where’s he hiding?”
“He’s not here,” a man announced as he came down the stairs. He was just out of sight, and Remy didn’t dare turn her head any farther to look at him. “There were bags and other things upstairs that indicated it’s more than just these two. And there were these.” A small object flew into Remy’s line of sight, and the redhead caught it. She held it up, and Remy recognized it at once as the dog tags Brandt had given Cade before he left. As the woman studied them, the man who’d come down the stairs knelt beside the black man and started tending to his shoulder.
The woman dangled the tags in Cade’s face. “See? You are lying,” she said, her voice oddly mild but still triumphant. “Now tell me where he is.”
“He isn’t here,” Cade said. Her eyes didn’t even flicker toward the tags, staying locked on the woman in front of her. “He’s dead.”
“Bullshit.” The redhead nodded to the Hispanic man behind Cade. The man nodded and put the gun away, drawing the knife from Cade’s own belt and holding it to her throat, pulling at her hair to tilt her head back. “Tell me where he is, or I’ll have Cortez cut your throat,” the woman ordered.
“Cut my throat and you won’t find out where he is,” Cade replied calmly. She was seemingly not rattled in the slightest by the knife at her throat.
“True,” the woman said contemp
latively. “However …” She glanced in Remy’s direction. A hand closed into her hair, and Remy gasped as she was pulled to her knees, her eyes watering with the pain in her scalp. Cade’s eyes slid toward her as Remy felt a gun press firmly against the back of her head.
“He went out for supplies yesterday,” Cade said quickly, her eyes meeting Remy’s. Even from where she knelt, Remy could see the concern and fear in them. “He won’t be back for at least two more days.”
“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” the woman crooned. The hand released Remy’s hair, and she was shoved back to the floor, her scalp aching. “Now, which one of you is Cade Alton?”
Chapter 15
Brandt planted his feet firmly on the roof of the Honda Civic, pressing his compact binoculars to his eyes and studying the landscape ahead of him. He could hear Gray scuffing his boots against the pavement behind him. He only saw a few infected in the distance, too far away to be a real threat to them.
“How’s it looking?” Gray asked. He shifted his mostly empty backpack against his back and tilted his head to look up at Brandt.
“Surprisingly clear,” Brandt reported. He slowly turned on the car roof to scan the rest of their immediate surroundings. Once he was satisfied that there were no immediate dangers around them, Brandt lowered the binoculars and stuffed them into the side pocket of his own backpack. “You know, you might’ve been right about your whole close-to-the-beach theory.” He sidestepped onto the trunk and then dropped to the pavement beside Gray.
“What can I say? I’m just smart like that,” Gray said, not bothering to temper his boasting with any modesty.
“Smart-assed, maybe,” Brandt retorted. He slid his rifle from his shoulder and returned it to a ready position against his chest, motioning to the street ahead of them. “Now come on. Don’t get cocky. There might not be very many of them on the street, but that doesn’t mean they’re not in the buildings.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Gray said flippantly, following Brandt. “I may occasionally do incredibly stupid things, but that doesn’t mean I’m an idiot.”
Brandt snorted and began to walk down the sidewalk. “So, you and Remy, huh?” he said conversationally as he led Gray toward the shops farther into the downtown area. He glanced at Gray and noted that the man’s cheeks had already flushed red, even as he protested.
“Who said anything about me and Remy?” Gray asked irritably. “Geez, you sound like Theo.”
“Come on, man, I’m not stupid,” Brandt retorted. He motioned to Gray’s hand, letting a smirk cross his face. “Get your damned gun out.”
Gray snarled at him, pulled the weapon from its holster, and waggled it in Brandt’s face. “It’s out, it’s out!”
Brandt laughed and continued walking in silence for a moment. “You know, I’m not deaf either,” he suddenly added, picking up their previous conversation as if he’d never left off.
“Oh God,” Gray groaned. His reaction sent Brandt into a short fit of laughter.
“Chill. You two weren’t that loud,” Brandt assured him. “I just happened to walk by and overhear. Mostly, I was wondering why neither of you felt that keeping watch was more important than getting laid.”
“It was … it was nothing,” Gray said, his cheeks flushing even redder. “It was just …” He looked at Brandt again, and under the man’s scrutiny, he seemed to crack. “Okay, I’m sorry! What the hell would you have done if she’d propositioned you?”
“I don’t think Remy would proposition me,” Brandt replied, fighting back his smirk. “I get the impression she doesn’t even like me all that much. Why would she want to sleep with me?”
“Well, fuck, you know what I mean,” Gray tried. “Look at her. She’s gorgeous. And she was just, I don’t know, there and asking. Think I was going to tell her no?”
“I know what you should have done, but that’s usually far from what most people would do,” Brandt acknowledged. “It’s okay, this time. Don’t let it happen again. The last thing we need to do is slip up and get careless. That’s when people start to die.” He ran a hand through his hair and scanned the street ahead of them again. “So, how was it?”
Gray stopped in the middle of the sidewalk with a shocked expression on his face. “Did you really just ask me what I think you asked me?”
“Well, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t talking in Swahili.”
Gray groaned again and shook his head, hurrying to catch up with Brandt. “I’m not describing my sex life to you, okay?”
“Wasn’t asking you to,” Brandt said smoothly. “I was just wondering if it at least was good enough to knock that chip off your shoulder.”
Gray seemed to ignore Brandt’s veiled insult, because he skimmed right past it to answer the question. “Let’s just say she knows what the hell she’s doing and leave it at that, yeah?” he suggested. His entire face was reddened by then. “It’s not all that big a deal, anyway.”
“It’s not?” Brandt asked. “What was it then?”
“Just a … I don’t know, just a comfort fuck, I guess,” Gray said with a nonchalant shrug that Brandt saw right through. “I don’t care.”
“Is that so?” Brandt raised an eyebrow. “Had me fooled. Did you at least use protection?”
“What am I, an idiot?” Gray shot back. “Hell, didn’t you?”
Brandt didn’t answer the question. Instead, he scanned the surprisingly untouched storefronts again, dropping the conversation as he spotted a drugstore across the street. Despite what he’d told Gray during the short drive toward the downtown area, Brandt’s first priority was Cade’s health. Even though her fever had broken and she’d been up and moving for a week, Brandt didn’t want to risk infection of the still-healing wound in her side. He motioned to Gray and began to cross the street, weaving among cars and trucks.
“I thought we were after food,” Gray said, hurrying to catch up.
“We are,” Brandt said. He paused just outside the drugstore’s door and squinted into its darkened interior. He couldn’t see anything moving inside, but he didn’t think it was wise to just charge in there either. He slid his hand into his backpack’s side pocket again and pulled free his flashlight, thumbing the switch. He glanced back at Gray. “We’re going inside,” Brandt said, raising his rifle. “Stick close to me, don’t do anything too stupid, and keep your eyes open.”
“You act like I’ve never been to one of these rodeos before,” Gray grumbled. He raised his own gun and flipped the safety off. Brandt raised an eyebrow at the motion but chose to not say anything. This time. “I’m old hat at this.”
“I think just about everybody still alive is old hat at this,” Brandt replied. He grasped the door’s handle and eased the door open. “Anybody who isn’t is probably dead.” As the door swung open, a bell chimed. Brandt flinched, and he and Gray both froze. Brandt held the door open with his foot and aimed his rifle into the store as the two men waited to see if anything would charge from the darkness of the shop.
“Think it’s safe to go inside?” Gray murmured. His eyes darted between Brandt and the interior of the drugstore, waiting for Brandt’s cue, his fingers on his sidearm in a white-knuckled grip. Brandt pressed his lips together and nodded.
“Yeah, but let’s leave the door open so that damned bell doesn’t ring again, okay?” Brandt suggested. He didn’t particularly like the idea of leaving the door open—anything could walk in on them, and they’d be less likely to hear it. But Brandt figured that, at this point, leaving the door open was the lesser of two evils, so rather than pursue the thought any further, he simply dragged a trash can over and used it to prop the door open. Then, with a simple, “Let’s go,” Brandt eased into the drugstore, sweeping the store carefully for any threats, Gray close behind.
“What are we after here?” Gray asked. He slunk inside, turning his head this way and that nervously.
“The usual shit,” Brandt replied, keeping his voice soft in the emptiness pressing close around them. “Any
meds and first-aid supplies we can find, and anything else that looks useful.” He shrugged and stopped at the first shelf he reached. There were several boxes of rolled gauze left, so he tore the boxes open and stuffed the loose rolls into the very bottom of his pack. He tossed the last roll of medical tape on top for good measure.
Gray wandered to the end of the aisle while Brandt stuffed the gauze in his bag, pausing to scoop a few stray packages into his own. “Got some painkillers here,” he announced before stepping to the next aisle and browsing through the section under a sign that proclaimed Family Planning. “Not much left,” he added. “Looks like most of the stuff is already gone.”
“Yeah, I noticed.” Brandt sighed and shook his head in frustration. After a year of Michaluk’s reign, the supplies he considered absolutely vital to their survival were becoming difficult to come by in anything resembling adequate quantities. He could see it already: six months from now, they’d be forced to hunt for animals, forage for vegetables and other edible plants, and figure out how to keep up their health and general well-being outside their realms of comfort. While Brandt was sure he and Cade could manage, he wasn’t so sure about Remy and Gray. He also wasn’t sure it was safe to grow food outside where they presently hid, and he’d never been much of a hunter. Perhaps it was time to begin the search for a more permanent place for the four of them.
“What do you propose we do, then?” Gray asked. He rejoined Brandt and shone his own flashlight around the store.
Brandt sighed again and shrugged at Gray helplessly. “Move on, I suppose. We need food more than anything else at this point. Maybe we can check some of the restaurants along this street, see if there’s any canned goods left in them.”
The Becoming: Revelations Page 8