The Becoming (15 page)

“You can’t do this,” the old man tried again weakly. He clutched the keys tightly in his hand, and he didn’t look inclined to hand them over to Brandt.

“Sir, I don’t think you want to be arrested right now,” Cade warned. “Just do what the man says.” She leaned over to look at the array of hunting knives in the locked case that served as the front counter.

“Sir, we need your keys,” Ethan said, using the soothing yet stern voice he usually employed in the line of duty. The old man hesitated and then set the keys slowly into Ethan’s outstretched palm. Ethan tossed the keys to Brandt; the lieutenant caught them and started to unlock cases and pull out rifles, shotguns, and handguns. He lined them up on the counter in front of Cade as if putting them on display. “We’re very sorry about this … what’s your name?”

“Ralph Mackenzie,” the old man said grumpily. He crossed his arms again as Cade and Brandt grabbed duffel bags from the shelves and selected some handguns and rifles, loading them into the bags.

“We’re sorry we have to do this, Mr. Mackenzie,” Ethan told him. He looked at Brandt and Cade and warned them, “Don’t take everything. Only what we need. Leave him the rest to protect himself and any family he has.”

Cade nodded and offered the man several of his handguns. When Ralph didn’t move to take them, Cade set them on the counter, the appropriate ammunition next to them. After she watched Ralph for a moment, expecting a response that didn’t come, she turned on her heel to address Brandt instead. “I want to get some of those knives,” she said. “Never know when you might need a quiet weapon.”

Brandt nodded in agreement and looked at Ralph. The old man still stood by the counter, almost sulking, as the three raided his merchandise. “Hey, you know if that liquor store next door is open?”

Ethan turned sharply. “No drinking,” he ordered Brandt sternly.

“I’m not planning on fucking drinking,” Brandt retorted.

Ralph Mackenzie nodded at Brandt. “It’s open. Opened three hours ago,” he said in the surliest tone Ethan had ever heard from a human being.

“Thanks, man.” Brandt grabbed two of the duffel bags and slung them over his shoulders. He shifted them to rest securely against his back before he walked out the front door. Ethan watched through the plate glass windows as Brandt loaded the bags into the Jeep’s back seat before he headed for the attached building next door. Ethan cut his eyes away and gave Cade a quizzical look.

“Hey, don’t ask me,” Cade said defensively. She studied one of the knives she’d taken from the glass case. “He’s doing his own thing. I’m just following along if it looks like it won’t get the two of us killed.” She held the knife up to scrutinize it in the light and then nodded to herself. “Surviving this is more important to me than anything else.”

Ethan sighed and slid his gun back into its holster. “Do you see anything else in here we’ll need?” he asked. He squinted at a rack of camouflage hunting shirts hanging nearby and wondered if they should take any of them.

“I just got what I know how to use,” Cade said. She fastened a knife sheath to her belt, then slid the knife into the sheath and picked up another one from the counter. “I need to get a boot knife,” she mused. “A nice sturdy one like Brandt’s got.” She dropped the knife into the one bag left on the counter and looked at Ralph. He still hovered behind the counter, watching her with a nervous expression.

“You look like you’re preparing for a war or something,” Ralph commented uneasily.

Ethan studied the man for a moment and considered his options. Then he pushed one of the handguns on the counter toward Ralph. “I think we are,” Ethan admitted. “It will probably do you good to shut up shop and barricade yourself and your family into your home with enough food and water to last as long as possible until everything’s cleared up.”

The front door banged open as Ethan’s final words left his mouth. Ethan drew his gun as he spun to face the danger, instinctively pointing it at the door, ready to defend them against anything that walked in. But it was only Brandt returning from his field trip to the liquor store. Ethan sighed, exasperated, and started to put the weapon away once more.

“No, don’t,” Brandt warned. Ethan was ready to object, but a frown spread across his face instead as he saw Brandt’s tight expression. “The guy who runs the liquor store,” Brandt started to explain.

“Tom,” Ralph interrupted.

“Yeah, Tom,” Brandt said. He waved a dismissive hand at Ralph and didn’t bother to look at him. “He’s down.”

“What did you do to Tom?” Ralph demanded. His voice rose in pitch and volume as he moved forward suddenly, his hands out as if he were ready to come around the counter and throttle Brandt. Cade snatched one of the handguns off the counter and pointed it directly at the old man’s head in one smooth movement. Ralph froze and put his hands up defensively as he faced down the barrel of the gun.

“Back up, you old coot, or I’ll put you down too,” Cade warned. Her eyes were hard and cold again. She flexed her finger over the trigger and clenched her jaw.

“Cade,” Ethan barked a sharp warning. He pushed her arm down and forced her to lower the gun. “Now is not the time for that.” He looked to Brandt once more and asked, “Did you get whatever it was you needed from the liquor store?”

“Yeah, I got enough to last,” Brandt replied vaguely. “We need to get moving.”

“We do,” Ethan agreed. He gently removed the gun from Cade’s hand and set it back down on the glass-topped counter before he nodded to Ralph. “Once again, we do apologize, Mr. Mackenzie. If we all make it out of this shit alive, we’ll see what we can do to fix this.”

Ralph looked even more alarmed at Ethan’s words, but he didn’t speak. He simply nodded absently and backed up another step to press against the empty gun cases that lined the wall behind the counter. Ralph remained there with his eyes wide and his hands clenched into fists.

Brandt walked out the door without another word and made a beeline for the back of the SUV. Ethan waited until Cade left the gun shop before he followed her out. He didn’t look back at the old man standing forlornly against his empty gun cases. Cade slid into the back seat of the Jeep, and Ethan joined Brandt at the back. He tilted his head to the side curiously as he saw four opened cardboard boxes full of assorted types of liquor. “Uh, Brandt?” Ethan said. “You plan on having a party or something?”

Brandt smirked and picked up one of the boxes. The bottles inside jingled together as he hefted the box and nodded at the back door of the Jeep. “Or something,” Brandt answered sarcastically. “Open that up and help me load these in, would you?”

Ethan rolled his eyes and unlocked the back door. He opened it and reluctantly picked up another of the boxes. “What are you going to use all this alcohol for?” he asked Brandt as he shoved the box inside.

“You probably don’t want to know,” Cade spoke up. Ethan looked up and saw Cade perched on the roof of the Jeep, her legs hanging down into the car through the opened sunroof. She had her rifle in her hand once again, and she waved it in Brandt’s direction. “It’s almost definitely illegal. I’ll bet a hundred dollars on it.”

“You bet right,” Brandt confirmed. He gave the woman a mischievous grin that made Ethan’s stomach turn and then pulled out his wallet. He removed his last dollar bill, wadded it up, and threw it in Cade’s direction. “You’ll get the other ninety-nine later, darlin’,” he drawled with a playful wink.

Cade laughed and caught the bill with an easy motion of her hand. She kissed her closed fist before she lifted her hips off the car to shove it in her pocket. “I’m going to hold you to that, Evans,” she warned as she grinned at him. Ethan resisted the urge to glare at Brandt as the other man eyed Cade, and he shoved the last box of liquor into the back of the vehicle with more force than was strictly necessary. It was like watching his little sister get hit on by the worst kind of guy, and it was, quite frankly, nauseating.

The faint sound of a police siren brushed the late evening air. The three of them looked up as the sound reached their ears. Ethan squinted down the highway in the direction of the noise.

“What the hell is that?” Cade asked.

Brandt swore loudly and slammed his hand against the side of the Jeep. “That fucking bastard called the damned cops!” he yelled.

“Wouldn’t you call the cops if three people with guns walked into your business and stole your shit?” Ethan asked pointedly. He shut the back door hard enough to jar the entire vehicle. “Get in the fucking car, Brandt. Cade, get off the roof. I want to get to Tupelo and locked into someplace safe before dawn.”

Brandt’s Journal

March 8, 2009

I’m following Cade’s lead and keeping a journal. I can guarantee that this won’t last. I’ve never been good at these kinds of things, and I’ve never been the type of person to spill out everything I’m feeling, on paper or otherwise. This will probably end up being one of those bald-facts affairs that just tells things the way they are. And the way things are isn’t exactly the way I want them to be.

We are, figuratively, in the shit.

We made it to Tupelo, Mississippi, as safely as I expected us to make it. We’ve been in this little house for about a month and a half now, unmolested for the most part. There’s been a few incidents involving an infected or two getting uncomfortably close to where we’re hiding, but they were taken care of quickly and quietly. It’s scary how efficient we’ve gotten at this.

Cade spends most of her days either keeping watch on the roof or sitting in the living room with me and Ethan while we try to find reports on the radio. Ethan spends most of his time being the dickish guy he was when I first met him. I suspect that’s his normal personality, despite Cade’s assurances to the contrary. But I’m getting off topic. Ethan’s attitude isn’t the reason why I’m writing in this thing. I said I’d write down what happened, and that’s what I’m going to do.

So here is where we stand now:

By the fourteenth day after Atlanta’s fall (one week after I met Cade and Ethan) the entirety of the southeast was ravaged by the Michaluk Virus. There were some holdouts, mostly in small towns and cities that weren’t close to the larger metropolitan areas, but even those have since fallen. Now it’s just isolated pockets of survivors scattered across the southeastern states, struggling to live.

By the sixteenth day, the last television news station went off the air, presumably permanently. We’re not sure what happened, but my theories tend to involve the infected, so it doesn’t do to ask me about it. Cade thinks the news reporter gave up and decided to find his own place to hide out. Two days after he stopped reporting, the power in our safe house went out for good.

By the twenty-fifth day, we lost the last of the radio stations that we could pick up from our location. The final DJ went off the air with screams of terror and pain. I don’t think I will
ever
forget the sound.

On top of all this, none of us have seen another breathing, uninfected soul since we stopped at a gun shop in Alabama. This fact on its own is disturbing enough; the additional fact that we’ve been forced to move further away from Tupelo’s main center twice in order to get away from the ever-growing hordes of infected is downright frighte

Cade gasped. The sound broke through Brandt’s train of thought, and he dropped his pen. It rolled halfway down the sloped roof before it slowed to a stop. Brandt narrowed his dark eyes and turned his head to look at Cade accusingly, wondering what in the world she was freaking out about. But Brandt was more irritated at the fact that he would now have to get up to retrieve his pen before a gust of wind took it the rest of the way off the roof.

It was early in the morning of their third day at their third hide-out, or
safe house
as Brandt had mentally coined it. Cade had been out on the roof since sunrise, and Brandt had joined her soon after—partially to keep her company, but mostly to get away from Ethan. The older man had become surly and withdrawn throughout their time in Mississippi. Well,
more
surly and withdrawn, Brandt amended silently. Ethan had struck him as a grouchy bastard when they’d met the month before, and nothing the man had done had dislodged Brandt’s initial impression. Besides, it was much more pleasant on the roof with Cade, despite the way the air still clung tenaciously to its early spring chill. As Brandt breathed out, the air fogged before his face in the same way that it had in a dark alley over a month ago …

Brandt shook free from the dark thoughts threatening to surface and looked at the woman beside him instead. Cade was much more pleasant to think about. “What? What is it?” Brandt asked her, feeling impatient despite his determination to keep his cool.

“I thought I saw some people down there,” Cade said. She pointed down the street with a slim hand, her head nodding in the same direction. Brandt sat up straighter, suddenly attentive, and moved to one knee. He followed her finger to try to see what Cade thought she’d seen. Brandt couldn’t deny the way his heart pounded in his chest at the thought of other uninfected people there; he longed for company outside of Cade’s and Ethan’s. He liked both of them just fine, especially Cade. Who couldn’t appreciate the subtle beauty and courage and innate toughness the woman had demonstrated over the past month? Even if Cade
was
a total smartass, but Brandt had convinced himself that that was just part of her charm. Regardless of his growing affection for Cade, though, Brandt preferred an ever-changing environment, and the last month had offered nothing like that.