“I’m fine. Check on Sasha,” he ordered. “We need to get the hell out of here. No time for this.” He didn’t wait for Cade’s reply. Instead, he scooped Ethan off the floor and returned him to his shoulder, then beckoned to Remy. “Give me Shae.”
“Are you sure? I can—” she started.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” Brandt persisted. “I’m fine. I can handle her. She barely weighs anything.”
Remy nodded and passed the girl over, and Brandt settled her once again against his hip. He nodded to Remy, indicating that she should take the lead, and tugged Sasha closer to him. And then, as one, they started down the stairs again, shaken by the attack but pressing forward regardless.
It didn’t take long for the small group to make it to the ground level, where they were greeted by the blessed sight of only a few infected milling around on the street. By Brandt’s quick calculations, there were maybe ten infected outside—not a small number, but definitely not something they couldn’t handle.
“Doesn’t look too bad, does it?” Remy spoke up. She rested a hand against one of the doors and peered through the glass, squinting past the cracks and the dust and the dirt to study what lay beyond.
“Assuming it stays that way,” Cade muttered. “And with the way our luck goes … well, let’s just say I’m not holding my breath.”
“Me either,” Brandt agreed. Ethan bucked against his shoulder, causing Brandt to nearly drop him. “We might want to make this quick. I’m not sure how much longer I can handle holding Ethan like this.”
“Yeah, and I think the infected have spotted us,” Remy warned. “They’re moving this way, and the crowd is getting bigger.” There was a small, exhausted tremor under her voice as she spoke the words. Brandt looked at her with concern.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “How are you feeling?”
“Really tired,” she admitted. “And my arms and face hurt. But I’ll be okay. Just going to want a very long nap after this. Maybe sleep for a day or two.”
“What about infection-wise?” Cade spoke up. “How’s that feeling for you?”
“Mildly queasy, but nothing I can’t live with.”
Brandt still didn’t like how Remy sounded, but despite that, he nodded to her. He was more intent on getting all of them out in one piece. He’d worry about Remy’s health after they’d reached the relative safety of whatever vehicle Isaac and Dominic had tracked down.
He only hoped the two men hadn’t given up on them in the time between their departure and now.
Remy pressed her hand against the door again, and everyone present seemed to take a deep, steadying breath in unison. Then she finally pushed it open and stepped through the door to the sidewalk beyond.
Almost as soon as her boots met the brick and concrete, the infected turned fully toward them, certain of their next meal. They started in the group’s direction, first at a slow pace and then quickly speeding up. Several of them made that horrible snarling noise the infected made when prey was present, and Ethan tried to echo it in the back of his throat, despite his mouth being taped shut. Brandt gritted his teeth and moved out the door, Cade following him briskly.
“Which way, Brandt?” Remy yelled as she wielded her knife before her, ready to attack.
“Right! Go right!” Brandt ordered, coming up behind her and goading her forward with a short nudge to her back. Remy lifted her knife and, before Brandt or Cade could stop her, charged directly into the mass of bodies coming toward them, blade swinging furiously. Brandt swore under his breath and, not seeing any other options available to him, ran after her, the children and Ethan in tow. He knew Cade was right behind him and would follow without question, even if she didn’t agree with the action.
As he plowed forward, chasing after Remy, Brandt realized that this was the most nervous he’d felt in the entire time the Michaluk virus had wreaked havoc on the world. Sure, he’d been involved in mass attacks before. He was no stranger to risking life and limb in fights with the infected.
But this was something wholly different. This was something more dangerous, more risky: to charge into a horde quickly growing into the dozens without even the courtesy of body armor, bringing along a duct-taped infected man, a pregnant woman, and two totally defenseless children. It was sheer fucking madness.
But it was the only chance they had to get out of this alive, especially with the way the infected blocked the sidewalk—the clearest path available to them.
Remy tore through the infected ahead of him and the children, her blade flashing in the lightning that illuminated the sky above them. As she hacked at heads and shoulders and limbs, working to clear a path through them, she looked like an avenging angel with the expression of righteous anger on her pretty face. She fought with the fury of a woman who was highly pissed off. Brandt had no desire to get anywhere near her while she was so enraged.
The shrieks of the infected were almost deafening. The idea that they were crying out in what sounded like pain was disturbing; the thought that they could even feel pain—something Brandt had never even considered—bothered him. But Brandt forced himself forward, trying to not dwell on that very human aspect of what he considered so inhuman.
Brandt’s heart hammered wildly in his chest as he tried to follow Remy through the crowd. Cade’s rifle fired behind him in a staccato beat, and hands grasped at his jacket. Brandt pulled Shae closer to his chest as Cade shot one of the infected close to him. The bullet struck the man in the shoulder, spinning him away, but then another was there to take his place almost immediately.
“We’ve got to get the hell out of here!” Brandt yelled to Cade over the sounds of the infected and the loud crash of thunder that rent the air. Sasha gripped his coat tighter as she moved closer to him, holding her flashlight as if she were ready to hit anything that came close to her. “There’s no way we can hold out like this! We’ve got to get the kids out of here!”
“We’re trying, Brandt!” Cade yelled back. Brandt glanced at her and couldn’t miss the desperation in her eyes. “There’s only so much we can do! I don’t know about Remy, but I’m getting tired. I’ll be happy so long as this doesn’t get any worse!”
As if on cue, another rumble of thunder shook the air, and the sky split open. The downpour that had built all evening finally dropped onto them, soaking them to the skin within moments and eliciting a stream of swears from Cade.
“You just had to open your mouth, didn’t you?” Brandt shouted, even as he started to run faster. Cade scrambled to keep up, raising her rifle to shoot into the infected again.
Brandt had nearly lost sight of Remy in the time he and Cade had had their discussion, and it took him several heart-stopping moments before he spotted the young woman in the nearly empty street, where the cars had cleared. She was still chasing down any infected in sight rather than sticking with fighting off only the ones blocking their paths. Cade and Brandt raced to join her, but before they reached her location, three infected ganged up on Remy and took her down to the pavement.
“Remy!” Cade shrieked over the thunder and rain that covered the sound of Remy’s impact with the pavement. She started in the younger woman’s direction.
“Cade, no!” Brandt said. “You can’t! I need your help! I can’t manage the kids and keep the infected off me at the same time!”
Cade looked torn, and she glanced between Brandt and Remy before firing a bullet at a woman grasping for Brandt. “Fuck!” she shouted in frustration. She whipped in Remy’s general direction and fired at the remaining infected converging on her position until the magazine ran dry. Then she slung the rifle onto her shoulder and swung the shotgun off her back, racking a round and firing the weapon into the crowd. “Come on!” she said to Brandt, grabbing the sleeve of his jacket. “We’ve at least got to try!”
Though the idea of running straight at the infected certainly didn’t appeal to Brandt, he knew Cade was right. The remaining members of the group had been through entirely too much together for t
hem to just run away and leave Remy to the infected. They had to try to save her.
Cade brought the shotgun up to aim it into the crowd closest to Remy, ready to fire again and take down as many as she could from a distance before she closed in to try to fight them off. Before she managed to fire off a shot, though, the squeal of tires on pavement caught their attention. Brandt tensed, his shoulders squaring and his back stiffening, and looked in the direction of the sound.
A pair of headlights bore down on them. The vehicle to which they were attached squealed to a stop mere feet away from them. A familiar voice shouted from it.
“The cavalry has arrived!”
It took Brandt scant seconds to recognize Isaac Wright’s voice, and relief flooded his entire body. He let out a triumphant shout and darted to the vehicle, hauling Shae and Sasha with him. “Thank Jesus you’re here,” he said. He set Shae down and flung the back passenger door open to shove the two kids inside as Cade covered him. “Remy’s in trouble. She needs a hand.”
“I’ve got it!” Dominic said confidently. Despite his injured shoulder, he climbed from the vehicle and accepted the sidearm Cade offered him, then ran in the direction she pointed. As he disappeared into the rain, Brandt called to Isaac.
“Open the back door. I’ve got to put him in,” he said, shifting Ethan on his shoulder to indicate the “him” to whom he referred.
Isaac frowned and pulled the door-release lever. “What the fuck is wrong with him?”
“Trust me, you don’t want to know,” Cade answered. She moved to help Brandt, pushing the back door fully open and helping him shift the man off his shoulder and into the empty cargo area. As Cade covered the vehicle, Brandt clambered in after Ethan to shelter from the rain. Remy and Dominic appeared within moments, running to the SUV, Remy’s hand clenched on Dominic’s uninjured arm. Her clothes were torn, her hair was disheveled and pulled free from its hairband, and she was covered with blood—both her own and others’—and other things Brandt didn’t want to think about. But she was in one piece, which was far more than he’d hoped for. He let out a relieved breath as she and Dominic climbed into the vehicle, Remy in the back seat with the kids, and Dominic in the passenger seat in the front. Cade swung herself into the cargo area with Brandt, despite the cramped quarters, and pulled the door shut with a heavy whump.
“Come on, get moving!” Brandt called to Isaac. The other man pushed the gearshift into drive. “We’ve got to get out of here. Take whatever cleared roads you can to the east. We have to rendezvous with the others in Hollywood as fast as possible.”
As the SUV started down the street, rapidly accelerating, Cade looked at Brandt, her eyes meeting his in the dim light inside the vehicle. She looked exhausted, a little scared, but also somehow relieved. Brandt broke his gaze from hers and closed his eyes, letting out another slow breath before opening them again. She reached out and took his hand, and he clutched it tightly, determined not to let go. No matter what happened.
Epilogue
Three Months Later
Cade stood on the front porch of the newest safe house the remains of their group had staked out, leaning against the railing with a mug of warm tea in her hands and squinting across the yard. The early summer sun bore down on the men and women who labored in a yard across the street, digging up and turning over the soil, working to get everything prepared for the first plants they were going to attempt to grow. It wasn’t hard to pick Brandt out in the group, laughing and joking with a couple of other men as he jammed a shovel into the ground. Even from where she stood, Cade could see the bulge of his muscles as he lifted the shovel and turned the dirt over, dumping the shovelful back onto the ground. She scanned the yard. It wouldn’t be long before they had an entire yard turned up for planting. She relished the thought of fresh vegetables; after nearly a year and a half of running and hiding, she was tired of eating out of cans.
Brandt seemed to sense Cade’s staring, because he stuck his shovel into the dirt and turned toward her. He smiled and lifted a hand in greeting. She returned it, taking a careful sip of her tea, and rubbed a hand lightly over her growing stomach. She was over four months along now. Barring complications, she’d have her child in November. There could have been worse times to have a baby, she mused as she set her tea mug on the porch railing and started for the steps. Like in the middle of July, having to fight against discomfort and heat without the benefits of air conditioning. The thought wasn’t pleasant.
Before she made it down the three steps leading to the cracked path attached to the sidewalk, a voice spoke up from the front entryway behind her.
“Mrs. Evans?”
It took Cade a few scant moments to realize she was being addressed. It’d only been a week since the small ceremony performed in the living room of one of the houses the group of forty-four had claimed in a gated community outside of Charleston, South Carolina. Cade still wasn’t used to her new name; she figured it would come to her more easily with time, but that time definitely hadn’t arrived yet.
Dr. Derek Rivers stood in the doorway of the house Cade and her closest friends—including the doctor, Kimberly Geller, and Dominic Jackson—had claimed as their own, his fingertips tapping nervously on the doorframe as he watched her. She glanced one more time in Brandt’s direction before retreating back to the shade of the porch, stopping in front of the doctor and giving him a tentative smile.
“Dr. Rivers,” she greeted him warmly, retrieving her mug from the porch railing. “Is everything okay? You usually don’t come down here like this.”
“I needed a little fresh air,” he admitted. He eased onto the porch and sat on one of the lawn chairs that had been placed there. “Kimberly’s upstairs with Ethan. I figured it’d be okay if I stepped out for a few minutes.” He leaned forward in his chair and studied the activity across the street. “Wow, they’ve really made some headway on that, haven’t they?”
Cade tossed the remains of her tea out across the yard and leaned against the railing, folding her arms. The ceramic mug dangled loosely from one hand. “I know you didn’t come all the way down here to talk about the community’s agricultural attempts,” she said pointedly.
Derek let out a soft chuckle and sat back in his seat again. “I make myself that obvious, huh?”
“Glaringly.”
Derek chuckled again and scrubbed a hand slowly over his graying beard. He suddenly looked aged, every single one of his fifty-seven years showing in his face. Cade almost took a step toward him, but then he spoke. “Ethan is awake,” he told her. “Has been for about three hours now.”
Cade’s mouth went dry. She wished she hadn’t tossed out the tea. “Is he …?”
“I think it took,” Derek said with no small amount of pride in his voice. He deserved to be proud of himself; he’d worked hard to find the cure for the Michaluk virus. Whether or not it worked with Ethan Bennett would be the definitive answer to the question of whether he’d succeeded. “He’s very weak and incredibly malnourished. I think the next few days are going to be really touch-and-go. I should warn you that he’s so weak, there’s a chance his body might just give out on him before he gets well.”
Cade felt her heart freeze up, but she managed to ask shakily, “So what’s the bad news, Doc?”
Derek gave a wan smile at her lame excuse for a joke and slouched in his chair. “I think if he makes it through the next couple of days, he’ll be fine.”
Cade nodded, and both of them fell silent for several thoughtful minutes. When she finally spoke again, her voice was tight, and she had to clear her throat before she could get her question out. “So what’s next, Derek?”
“I think Miss Angellette,” Derek said. “Though I’m not sure how this cure will work for someone who hasn’t … fallen completely under, so to speak. I don’t know how the medications she’s already on will interact with the cure. Hopefully, it won’t prove to be a fatal case of trial and error.”
“She’d do it regardless of the risks,
” Cade said. “She doesn’t care about risks. She wouldn’t let that stop her.”
“I know, and that’s a little worrisome,” Derek admitted. “I’m concerned about the effect Michaluk has had on her mind.”
Cade looked at him sharply. “You don’t think she’s turning out like Alicia, do you?”
“Oh no, no,” Derek tried to reassure her quickly. “Just that she’s a little … melancholy, I think. She spends a lot of time on the roof alone.”
“She did that before you met us, when I was sick with an infection,” Cade said. “At least, that’s what Brandt tells me, anyway. That she’d hide on the roof to get away from everybody and think.”
“Do you know what her plans are if the cure works for her?” Derek asked. There was a note of curiosity in his voice as he reclined further and looked up at her. Cade averted her eyes from his and shrugged slightly.
“I don’t know. That’s not something we’ve discussed,” she said evasively. Really, she didn’t think it was Derek’s business what any of their future plans were; she didn’t know him well enough to trust him enough to divulge things to him yet. She believed she’d become at least as distrusting as Ethan had once been.
Cade brushed her bangs out of her eyes and looked across the yard at Brandt for another moment before she cleared her throat and spoke again. “Look, I think I need to get inside,” she said. “It’s hot out here, and it’s making me feel a little queasy.”
Derek seemed to go further on the alert with Cade’s words. He sat up straighter and gave her a concerned look. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Do you need anything?”
Cade waved him off. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” she said. “I just need more shade, maybe more tea.” She didn’t wait for Derek to reply. Instead, she turned on her heel and strode into the house, letting the shadowed air inside cover her like a cool blanket. She dropped her mug off in the kitchen sink and headed for the stairs, determined to hunt Remy down and give her the latest news on Ethan’s condition.
The Becoming: Revelations Page 36