The Becoming (Book 4): Under Siege (36 page)

He noticed her looking and signed, “
I’m
okay. It’s not my blood.
”

“Thank God,” Sadie muttered. She raised her
eyebrows and saw the combat rifle on his shoulder. “Where the hell
did you get that?”

“
Off the soldier I hit with a baseball
bat and Dominic shot.
”

“Ah, I see.” She studied him even closer
then and spotted the radio on his belt. “Is that what I think it
is?” she asked, even as she snatched it off his side to examine it.
He tried to snatch it back, but she twisted to keep it out of his
grasp and turned the power switch to “on.” Immediately, the sound
of military chatter flooded out of the speaker, sounding so loud
that she imagined that every creature in the woods in a fifty-mile
radius could hear it. She fumbled for the switch, intending to turn
it off again, but Dominic grabbed the radio out of her hand,
adjusted the volume down, and then put it near his ear. He listened
closely. Everyone watched him, the tension in the air thick enough
to cut, waiting for him to report on what he was hearing. Somewhere
in the background, Cade let out a low, pained groan that was almost
immediately drowned out by the chop-chop-chop of helicopter rotors
above.

“They’re moving all the soldiers out,”
Dominic finally said, raising his voice to be heard over the
helicopter. Then his eyes widened, and in a stricken voice, he
added, “They’re using the word ‘MOAB.’”

“Did you say
MOAB?
” Cade asked, her
own voice rising.

“Yeah, MOAB,” Dominic confirmed. “We’ve got
to get moving
fast
. We don’t have long.” He started toward
Cade and grabbed her arm, draping it over his shoulder and helping
her along as he moved through the trees. “There’s an ambulance
pulled over on the road somewhere up here through the trees,” he
explained. “I’ve been stashing spare medical supplies in it for the
past few months. We can use it to get as far away from here as we
can manage.”

“What’s a MOAB?” Sadie asked, hurrying as
everyone started to follow Dominic.

“A bomb,” he explained, calling over his
shoulder without looking back.

Sadie felt her heart drop.

“We’ve got to get out of the blast radius,”
Dominic said.

“How big is that?” Sadie asked.

“About a mile,” Cade answered.

Sadie could see Cade digging her fingers
into Dominic’s shoulder as she hobbled alongside him.

“So we should aim for two miles,” Cade
panted.

“Tell me where this ambulance is, and I’ll
go ahead of us and make sure it’s still secure,” Keith offered.

Dominic motioned him forward, talking to him
in a low voice that Sadie couldn’t hear. Keith nodded and turned to
wave. To Sadie’s surprise, Jude returned the gesture, and then
Keith started jogging into the trees, disappearing rapidly from
sight.

“You two got something going on there?”
Sadie asked Jude as she continued to follow the rest of the group.
It wasn’t exactly a proper time to be bringing up something like
that, but she needed a distraction from the looming reality that a
bomb might drop on her head at any moment.

“
Is it really a good time for this?
”
Jude signed to her, and even the movement of his hands conveyed his
exasperation.

“Probably not, but I need to think about
something
other
than our impending doom,” Sadie replied.

Jude rolled his eyes. “
How defeatist of
you,
” he signed.

“I aim to please.” She nodded toward the
trees where Keith had disappeared. “So, Keith?”

“
I don’t know what you want me to tell
you.
”

“Jude…” Sadie trailed off, debating how much
to tell him and
what
to tell him. She wasn’t sure Jude knew
that she’d learned his big secret; it wasn’t like it had been hard
for her to figure out—she wasn’t an idiot, and she was closer to
him than anyone else on the planet. “I know,” she finally said.

“
You know what?
” Jude asked.

“I know…” She trailed off again and looked
at the others before switching to sign language. “
I know you’re
attracted to guys, Jude.
”

Jude’s cheeks flushed pink, and he didn’t
look at her for a long moment, just continued walking through the
weedy underbrush. “
How did you figure it out
?” he asked,
looking resigned to having the conversation.

“
I’m not an idiot. And nobody knows you
better than me.
”

Sadie saw Jude mouth the words, “Damn it,”
and then he shrugged and stared into the trees. “
There’s not
anything going on with Keith,
” he responded. “
He’s a nice
guy. That’s all. I’m just making friends.
”

“If you say so,” Sadie murmured, and she
refocused on the path ahead.

The group emerged from the trees five
minutes later after two stops for Cade to catch her breath and
fight off pain from another contraction. Sadie couldn’t help but
notice that the waves of pain seemed to be coming closer and closer
together. She didn’t think it would be very long before Cade had
her baby, and having a baby while on the run wasn’t Sadie’s idea of
a good time.

The ambulance was parked at the side of the
road, just enough junk around it to make it look like it had been
thoroughly abandoned, and Keith stood near the front of it with his
rifle on his shoulder, his eyes moving over the landscape and the
partially cleared road. Isaac slipped to the back of the vehicle
and opened the rear doors, pulled out a flashlight, and scanned the
interior of the truck before letting out a low whistle.

“Wow, Dominic, you really went all out,” he
commented. “There’s even a stretcher in here, and it’s clean like
it’s brand new. Why did you do all this?”

“Just in case we ever had to bail with
Cade,” he replied, and then he easily scooped Cade into his arms
and set her into the back of the truck. “Get comfortable. I’m
pretty sure the ride won’t be.” Then he raised his voice and added,
“Everybody get in, wherever you can fit. If Cade starts to have the
baby, do whatever you can to help Doc, but don’t get in his
way.”

“Funny,” Sadie muttered. She pulled open the
side door and hauled herself in, then reached to help Jude into the
truck. It was only when everyone was inside, with Dominic behind
the wheel and Keith riding shotgun, that Sadie let out the breath
she didn’t know she’d been holding. The engine ran with a loud,
somewhat coughing rumble.

It was cramped in the back, with not enough
places for everyone to sit, but it was manageable. Cade lay on the
stretcher that was locked into place and taking up most of the
room. Isaac and Derek sat on the bench seat alongside her. There
was another seat to her right, and Remy was perched in it, holding
onto Cade’s hand and murmuring soft, coaching words into her ear.
Jude sat on a bolted chair near the head of the stretcher, and
since there was no other place to sit, Sadie merely stood near the
hatch that allowed her to communicate with the two in the cab of
the truck. She held onto one of the metal bars that were bolted to
the ceiling to keep her balance.

The truck spun gravel and lurched forward on
the road.

It was slow to accelerate, the engine
groaning after so long of not being used. Sadie could hear Dominic
chanting, “Come on, you stupid truck, come on.”

“Got to go faster, Dominic,” Keith said, and
when Sadie glanced into the cab, she saw Keith with a hand braced
against the dashboard as he looked between the windshield and the
side mirrors almost frantically.

“Tell me something I don’t know!” Dominic
snarled, and then something in the truck’s engine seemed to catch.
It roared and began to pull the truck forward, easing up into the
thirties, the forties, the fifties. Sadie silently cheered the
large box truck on, rooting for it to go even faster, and it
answered her summons, leaping forward. They were approaching
seventy miles per hour now, and Sadie couldn’t tear her eyes away
from the windshield, not even as she heard Cade let out another
gasp of pain and the ripping of plastic somewhere behind her.

“Put those rails down, now!” she heard Derek
order behind her.

Then there was something like a high-pitched
whistle somewhere behind them, and before Sadie could turn around
to look, the interior of the ambulance was flooded with light.
There was a
whomp,
and seconds later, the back end of the
ambulance lifted completely off the road. Screams filled the back
of the truck. Sadie lost her grip on the metal bar and was flung
forward, right off her feet. Her head struck the cabinets beside
the side door, and then she knew no more.

Ethan and Kimberly had been alternating between
walking and running for several hours, and they had long since
burned off most of the adrenaline they’d been running on since
fleeing the community. Ethan’s legs were killing him. The muscles
felt like burning tongues of pain, and his chest hurt like someone
had used his lungs for punching bags. They had traveled nearly four
miles, spending most of it on the actual road so they could see
ahead of them.

Suddenly, Ethan reached out and grabbed
Kimberly’s arm, signaling for her to stop.

“You okay?” Kimberly asked, gasping for air
as she struggled to breathe. “You’re not hurting or feeling sick,
are you?”

“I’m hurting, yeah,” Ethan admitted. He
didn’t hesitate when confessing that to her, because there was no
sense in it. She’d catch on soon enough that he was in pain. “I’m
not used to moving like this. I just need a break, time to catch my
breath.”

Kimberly nodded in understanding and took
his hand, pulling him out of the road and into the cover of the
trees alongside it. Once they both made sure the area was clear of
infected, Ethan took the opportunity to sink into the soft grass
underneath a tree. He leaned his back against its trunk and dropped
his head back against the rough bark. He closed his eyes for a few
moments, listening as Kimberly dropped, what sounded like, her
backpack beside him. He listened as she unzipped it and dug around
inside. Then a bottle of water was pressed into his hand.

“Drink this,” Kimberly ordered. “Slowly. Too
fast and you’ll puke all over yourself.”

“You make it sound so appealing,” he
commented, opening his eyes only long enough to twist the cap off
and take a slow, careful sip of the water.

“If you think
that’s
appealing, just
wait until I really get going,” Kimberly joked with a small laugh.
There was a rustle, and he reopened his eyes to see her dropping
into the grass beside him, stretching her legs out and leaning over
them to massage her calf muscles. “You let me know any time you
need to stop, okay? I don’t mind taking breaks. Lord knows my legs
don’t mind either.”

“Same to you,” Ethan replied, watching her
profile as she grimaced and worked her hands over the muscles. “If
you need a break too, that is. I don’t mind stopping either.”

She broke her grimace to give him a small
smile. “Good.” Once she’d given up on massaging the ache out of her
legs, she swung her bag back into her lap and dug into it. She
pulled free their map and starting to unfold it. “Now we need to
figure out exactly which way to go from here. Sadie marked a route
on our map, but I’m not sure if it’s one you’d be willing to take,
and I’d like to see what you think.”

“I’m thinking that I know next to nothing
about the area around Woodside, and it would probably be best if we
went with what Sadie suggests,” Ethan replied. “I’d come up with a
really great analogy about what asking for my opinion of the area
is like, but my brain is too tired to dig up something suitable
right now.”

Kimberly started to laugh but cut the sound
off abruptly, as if she were afraid to make too much noise. “Well
at least check out what she drew on the map and see what you think
of it,” she suggested, and then there was the rustling of paper as
she unfolded the map and spread it out on the grass.

Ethan let out a slow sigh, careful to keep
his annoyance out of the sound, and opened his eyes. He leaned
forward to look at the paper in the darkness, fumbling for the
small flashlight in his pocket and turning it to the map. A bold
red line had been drawn along one of the highways, tracing it north
and a little east until it stopped just short of a town marked
North Charleston. Ethan traced the line to its terminus with his
forefinger and shrugged. “I’m assuming it’s a good route to take,”
he said. “I mean, would Sadie send us this way if it wasn’t at
least partially safe?”

“I don’t know,” Kimberly admitted. “I don’t
know the girl well enough to say if she’d lead us astray
intentionally or not.”

“Well, I guess we’re just going to have to
go with what she recommends for now,” Ethan said. “We can play it
by ear as we go.” He paused, tilting his head as he listened
carefully. He thought he had heard something somewhere above them,
but he wasn’t sure. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Kimberly asked, raising an
eyebrow. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“Listen.” Ethan pushed himself to his feet,
as if inching closer to the sky would help him hear better. He
frowned as he tried to identify the faint sound he was hearing. It
was far away, muffled by distance, and if it had been in the
pre-outbreak days, he’d have never heard it. He rested his hand
against his holstered pistol and strained his ears to the point
that he nearly gave himself a headache. “I think…I think that might
be a helicopter.”

Judging by the look on Kimberly’s face,
she’d finally noticed the noise too. “More than one, by the sounds
of it,” she concluded. She started for the side of the road, and he
followed her, hoping to get a glimpse of the machines, even though
he knew they were probably too far away from their position to
see.