Jessica Meigs - The Becoming (12 page)

Since they’d lost all their connections to the outside world, they’d been flying blind, save for the occasional broadcast made by amateurs over an old ham radio system Theo had dug out of the attic. Gray spent a lot of his time in his room with the radio, the door locked so Theo couldn’t check in on him and see how he was doing.

Theo rubbed a hand through his hair and sighed as he tore himself out of his thoughts and focused back on the task in front of him. In his room-by-room search of the house, he’d stumbled across a Smith & Wesson revolver in his parents’ old bedroom, along with half a box of ammunition, and now he was kneeling on the floor at the coffee table, trying to figure out how to disassemble the weapon and clean it, an Internet printout as his only guide. Considering he knew next to nothing about guns, it was proving more challenging than he’d expected it to be.

Theo sighed and set the gun down on the table with a shake of his head. The entire diagram and list of instructions read like Greek to him, and as he squinted at it again, trying to figure out what in the hell he was looking at, a heavy sense of helplessness settled over him. The idea of being able to protect Gray from all the shit going on outside suddenly seemed absurd in the face of his inability to even clean a gun. He blew out a breath and dropped his head to rest against the edge of the table, rolling it slowly from side to side as he tried to fight off the helplessness. It wasn’t time to let himself fall apart. He had too much to do, too much on his shoulders, to let the stress take over and derail everything he was trying to keep together.

Footsteps on the stairs drew his attention away from his own pity party, and he quickly sat up straight, wiping at his eyes in an effort to erase the tiredness and stress from them. Then he snatched the gun up and grabbed for the first page of the cleaning instructions, narrowing his eyes and trying to look like he’d been focused on it for the past several minutes and not silently bemoaning his lack of ability. There was almost a skip to Gray’s step as he took the last few steps before thumping down to the first floor. Theo heard him go to the kitchen, the rattle of plastic as he pulled a bottle of water from the dwindling package on the counter and the crack as he opened it, and then the footsteps started to move again before stopping somewhere behind him. He didn’t bother to turn around, keeping his eyes on the task at hand, though he didn’t have the foggiest idea what he was doing.

“You look confused,” Gray said to his left. Theo cut his eyes over and saw him loitering in the living room doorway, rolling the bottle of water between his hands as he leaned against the doorframe. “No, strike that. You look totally lost.”

“I think I am,” Theo admitted sheepishly. He set the gun down on the table carefully, as if he were handling glass, and then twisted to look at Gray. He took a few moments to look him over, getting his first good study of the other man in nearly three weeks. Gray looked tired and pale, a bit thin, the dark circles under his eyes hinting that he hadn’t been sleeping very well. Theo could sympathize. He ruffled his fingers over the edges of the instruction manual before clearing his throat and shifting uncomfortably. “Are you…okay?”

Gray shrugged and took a swallow from his bottle. “Why wouldn’t I be?” he asked nonchalantly. Theo bit his tongue to keep from making a smartass comment in reply. Gray’s eyes scanned the coffee table, and then he moved forward and flopped heavily onto the couch. He picked up the Smith & Wesson and the tools Theo had dug out nearly an hour before. Not bothering to look at the instructions, he began to disassemble the revolver with practiced ease.

“How’d you learn to do that?” Theo asked. He leaned his elbows against the table to watch attentively.

“Dad showed me ages ago,” he answered. “Back when he bought it for Mom. ‘Cause he was gone all the time on business and didn’t want her here without a gun she could use.”

“Wonder why he never showed me how to do all that,” Theo mused.

“Because you never acted like you were interested in this kind of thing.” He did something with the gun that Theo couldn’t see, and it seemed to magically come apart in his hands. “Besides, you never were very good with the mechanical stuff like this. No offense.”

“None taken.” Theo sat back on his heels as Gray carefully lined the gun’s parts up on the table. He waited a moment, letting his brother work in silence, before he spoke again. “Are you mad at me?”

“Why would I be mad at you?” Gray’s question was casual, but Theo could hear an undercurrent of tension beneath the words. He pressed his lips tightly together.

“Well, that’s my point,” he said. “You’ve been hiding in your room for almost three weeks now.”

“Has it really been that long?”

Theo rolled his eyes. “Look, Gray, tell me what I did wrong so I can fix it, okay?” he begged. “I can’t deal with this whole silent-treatment bullshit you’re doing. Especially not now that the world’s like it is. It ever occur to you that I can’t do it all on my own? That maybe, just
maybe
I could use a hand down here getting all our shit together while you’re busy holing up in your bedroom doing God knows what?”

Gray sat up straight then, looking right at him, and delicately set the revolver’s cylinder down on the table between them. Then he stood and, without another word, headed up the stairs, taking them two at a time. After he was out of sight, somewhere above him, Theo heard a door slam open and the sound of Gray banging around upstairs. He sighed and shook his head, his shoulders slumping as he focused on the printouts in front of him. He felt like slapping himself. He’d approached the whole thing in the wrong way; he’d never been good with confrontation, and he
knew
that.

Theo pushed himself off the floor and headed for the stairs, intending to go up and apologize to Gray for whatever he’d done to slight him. Before he made it halfway across the room, the sound of Gray walking down the upstairs hallway brought him to a stop. He looked up at the staircase as Gray descended it, two books in his arms. One Theo immediately recognized as the family Bible, the one with all the generations of the family tree filled in in an assortment of handwritings from various family members. The other he’d never seen before: a thick black notebook, almost like a journal. When he reached the living room, Gray set the Bible reverently on the coffee table beside the disassembled revolver and then dropped the black book on the table beside it with a loud smack.

“Never once asked you to do it on your own, Theo,” Gray said as Theo stared down at the book. “I’m not just sitting in there being useless. I’m actually
doing
stuff with my time. Useful stuff.”

Theo leaned down, picked up the book, and flipped the cover open. The first page was filled with Gray’s cramped, miniscule handwriting, from one edge of the page to the other, disregarding the red lines demarcating the margins. He turned several pages, finding the notes going almost halfway into the book, every page absolutely covered in Gray’s handwriting, back and front. He shook his head in bewilderment and looked up at him. “What the hell’s all of this?”

“You know that radio you dug out?” Gray said, sitting back down on the couch. He resumed where he’d left off cleaning the revolver. “I’ve been listening. And taking notes. Lot of information’s being passed around on that thing.” He brushed a hand through his hair, tucking it behind his ears, and then nodded toward the Bible. “And those maps I printed out from the Internet before it went down? I’ve been taking notes on those too.”

It was then that Theo focused on the papers sticking out of the thick Bible. He pulled some of them free and discovered that, just as Gray had said, handwriting covered the maps. Some of the streets were colored in with a red marker, and notations next to them labeled traffic jams, vehicular pile-ups, and cryptic notations that said “infected.”

“What’s this mean?” Theo asked, holding up one of the papers and pointing to the label.

“Infected?” Gray asked. When Theo nodded, he continued. “That’s what they’re calling them on the radio. ‘The infected.’ They’re people who have gotten sick from whatever it is going around.” He motioned toward the dead television on the other side of the room. “That bullshit they were spewing on the television about riots and shit was just that. Bullshit. Turns out I was a hell of a lot closer to guessing right than I thought.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a virus,” Gray explained. “Near about as anybody can tell, anyway.”

“What’s the vector?” Theo asked promptly. When Gray raised a questioning eyebrow, he clarified, “How’s it transmitted?”

“They said it can get passed on through blood or spit, mostly. Nobody knows much of anything past that. Just that they like to pass on the virus by biting.” He closed an eye and squinted down the barrel of the gun.

“And if you get the virus?”

“Then you get really sick,” Gray answered. “And you die. Or sort of die. I’m not totally clear on that. But then after that, you go…well, crazy. They say that people with the virus are eating people.”

“Like zombies,” Theo conceded.

“Yeah, exactly.” Gray looked up at him. “And once you get the virus, you’re gone. There’s no cure.”

“Figures,” Theo muttered.

“So what are our options?” Gray asked. He refocused on the weapon in his hands, and Theo set the black journal down beside the Bible with a low, thoughtful hum.

“Honestly, we might have to make a run for it,” Theo admitted. “We’re almost out of water and getting there with the gasoline for the generators. The stove’s electric, so we can’t boil it, and I saw some of those…infected out near the end of the driveway a couple of days ago when I went out to check the house. I’m not sure it’ll be safe to stay here for very much longer. We should start to get our stuff together to move out of here. Do you know if Mom and Dad had any other guns?”

Gray shook his head. “Nope. Just the hunting rifles Dad used to use, and I already checked on those. There’s no ammo for them. You know he pretty much stopped hunting about a year before…before he died.”

“Yeah, I know.” Theo blew out a breath and sat down heavily on the couch beside him, reclining back against the cushions. “I don’t think it’d hurt to take one with us, though. We might come across some ammunition for it at some point, right?”

“Exactly. I’ll take a look at them later on,” Gray promised.

Theo sighed again and studied Gray’s profile for a moment as he continued his work on the revolver. Gray seemed to be very carefully, very pointedly not looking at him. It took everything in Theo to not reach over and slap him on the back of the head. Theo
hated
it when Gray got in those moods, where he acted like Theo had done something to affront him but wouldn’t talk to him or even tell him what it was he’d done. He didn’t do it often, but when he
did
do it, it made Theo want to inflict a little bodily harm on him.

“Gray, seriously, what did I
do
?” Theo demanded, giving up on anything resembling subtlety. “You’re being a moody little shit, and while the world’s turned into a steaming pile of it, I don’t really appreciate you taking it out on me. We should be working
together
, not hiding from each other for weeks on end.”

Gray was silent for a long moment, the only sound between them the soft click of metal against metal as he began to reassemble the revolver. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet, almost sheepish. “You yelled at me. Talked to me like I was an idiot.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes and shook his head. “It’s stupid, I know. But damn it, The, you’re always talking to me like that. I don’t think you’ve even noticed you do it. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself under normal circumstances, you know.”

“These aren’t exactly normal circumstances,” Theo started to protest, but Gray put up a hand to stop him.

“Don’t even start with that,” he said. He didn’t raise his voice, but Theo still couldn’t help feeling chastised. “The situation is bad. I’m well aware of that. But that doesn’t mean you’re suddenly in charge just because you’re older, okay? Something like this, it requires teamwork. I can’t do a lot of stuff. I’m well aware of that too. Heavy lifting, extensive running, I can’t do it. I got that. But there’s a lot of stuff I
can
do. One of those things happens to be that.” He motioned toward the Bible and the journal. “I’m just asking you to treat me like an equal, not like your annoying little brother.”

“Okay,” Theo said immediately. “Okay, fine. Why couldn’t you have told me all of this three weeks ago?”

“Because I wasn’t sure you’d listen to me three weeks ago,” Gray replied. “God knows you barely paid me any attention the minute we got out of downtown Plantersville. It was like I’d exceeded my usefulness the minute I hotwired the fucking Camry.”

“I just didn’t want you to get sick again,” Theo said. “I don’t have much in the way of medications. Especially considering I can’t exactly load you up and take you to the hospital if you stop breathing. I didn’t want you to do too much. You can hardly fault me for that.” He shook his head and dropped it back against the cushions again. “Look, enough of this. The last thing we need to be doing is bickering with each other when there’s more important shit going on outside. I apologize for unintentionally treating you like crap and not asking for your help like I should have. I was still trying to get a handle on everything going on, and I didn’t realize you were feeling touchy about it.”

Gray looked like he wanted to snap back at him about the touchy comment, but instead, he just sighed. “Fine. Apology accepted. And I offer my own for being a hermit for three weeks.” When Theo nodded in acceptance, he continued. “So what do you propose we do, since we’re running out of water and gas?”

Theo started to answer, but he closed his mouth before he said anything. He contemplated his brother’s face again as he continued to reassemble the revolver, considering everything he’d said in his lengthy-for-him speech a few minutes prior. He wanted to be more involved with their survival; Theo could deal with some of the weight and stress being taken off of his shoulders. Certainly, no one would hear him complain about it. So rather than answer Gray’s question, he put forward one of his own. “What do
you
think we should do?”