The Becoming (23 page)

The highway was oddly silent and still. Ethan shifted on the leather seat and twisted around to check the roadway behind him, his hand drifting to rest on the butt of his gun. His green eyes skimmed across the highway, and he debated whether he should draw his weapon. There was no immediate sign of danger, though, so instead he retrieved Gray’s maps from his bag.

This trip had the potential to be a logistical nightmare, Ethan realized as he studied the map in his hand. He had wanted to go to Memphis alone; indeed, he had
insisted
on it, despite Cade’s protests. But now that he had succeeded in departing Tupelo alone, he felt wary and uneasy and unprepared. And exposed. That particular feeling was the worst of all; it gave him a disconcerting tingling sensation between his shoulder blades and made him want to turn and look behind him. He knew it was because he didn’t have anyone to watch his back.

He was still too close to Tupelo for his personal comfort. He planned to get as close to Memphis as daylight and fuel would allow. The motorcycle had over three-quarters of a tank of gas; it would be more than enough for the journey to his city. Barring delays and detours, he estimated that he’d reach Memphis well before sunset and perhaps even have time to begin his search for Anna.

But Ethan would never get to Memphis if he continued to sit in the middle of the highway. He returned the maps to his bag and started the bike’s engine again. As he began the drive north, he figured it would be worth a short detour in the next town to search for a comfortable leather jacket to help block the wind, since the denim one he’d scrounged up wasn’t doing much to keep him warm.

Ethan had estimated that the trip would take two hours, but the journey took closer to six. He arrived at the end of his street just after four in the afternoon. He cut the engine and rolled the bike to a stop as he took in the sight before him. Thankfully, he had traveled unmolested on the trip to the city, but that streak of luck seemed to have come to an end.

The street wasn’t overrun with infected, but it played host to more than just a few. Smoke hung heavily in the air, the stench threatening to make Ethan sneeze. On his approach to Memphis, he had noticed numerous plumes of smoke towering above the city like the world’s tallest skyscrapers, nearly brushing the clouds. The fires were uncomfortably close to the home he’d shared with Anna.

But at the moment, the fires were the last things on Ethan’s mind. He studied the wandering infected on the street and weighed his options as he removed his helmet. He had yet to be spotted, so at least his luck held out in that respect. The next task would be getting to his house unscathed.

Ethan dismounted the bike and let the kickstand down with a quiet click. His ears barely caught the sound, but it was loud enough to draw the attention of one of the infected. And one was all it took.

A dark-haired woman jerked her head around at the sound. Ethan looked at her long enough to take in her bloodstained white blouse and dark skirt, her bare feet and her shredded hose. But what captivated Ethan’s attention wasn’t her disheveled appearance but the expression on her features: a contortion of hatred and hunger, the predatory look Ethan had seen over and over on the infected he’d encountered during the prior month, a look of which he would never have believed a human being capable.

The woman snarled and bared her teeth. The animalistic noise drew the attention of more infected to Ethan. Ethan drew his gun from its holster and aimed it at the infected that were starting to move toward him, feeling panic grow into a knot in his stomach, well up into his throat. He swore and took a step back, glancing quickly from left to right and back again.

The houses within a quick sprint’s distance were boarded and shuttered. They didn’t look safe enough to hide in
or
easy enough to get into with any degree of speed. Ethan barely had time to think; the woman who had first spotted him was nearly within arm’s reach. So he did the only thing he could do.

He ran.

Ethan lunged to the right and dodged the woman’s grasping hands. He sprinted for the gap between two houses, nearly colliding with a mailbox as he sped across the sidewalk. The mob on the street behind him gave chase as he reached the end of the space between the houses and turned right.

Perhaps he could manage to circle back around the block, get behind the frenzy of infected, and retrieve the motorcycle he had so carelessly left on the street. It was a small hope, but it was worth trying. There was no way he could outrun the group of infected forever; he had to get a method of transportation, and his motorcycle was the closest. Not to mention the fact that nearly all of his supplies were still strapped to it, save for the one small bag slung over his shoulder—which didn’t contain enough to survive on for any extended length of time.

It took Ethan mere moments to reach the halfway point down the block, but to his burning lungs, it felt like hours. The thought of his gun flitted through his mind, and he fumbled at the holster on his hip. He drew the weapon as he ran, his heart hammering against his ribcage.

A shock of blond hair caught Ethan’s eye, and what he saw made him stumble in surprise. A tiny, slender girl stood on the porch of a house. She beckoned to him frantically with both hands, looking between him and the approaching horde.

“Over here! This way! Hurry!” the girl shouted. She didn’t wait for Ethan to respond. Instead, she vaulted over the porch railing with the grace of a gymnast, one hand braced against the wood, and then disappeared along the side of the house.

Ethan clambered over the fence that surrounded the house. He sprinted along the path the girl had taken, his chest heaving as he looked around the dark space alongside the house. Where had the girl gone? Had he just run unwittingly into some sort of trap?

“Here!” the girl’s voice came again from Ethan’s left. Ethan looked over and down and spotted a cellar door jutting up partway from the ground, masked in the dark shadows beside the house. The girl held the door open above her head, and she watched the street in growing alarm as she waved her free hand wildly at Ethan. “Get in! Come on!”

Ethan moved toward the girl, covering the ground in two steps. He glanced back and saw that in the span of time he’d spent looking for the girl, the infected had caught up to him. They were clustered at the chain-link fence separating Ethan and the girl from their jagged teeth. Even as Ethan watched, they grasped the fence and shook it, clawed at it with their bare hands, desperate to get to their next meal. Ethan swore under his breath and slipped past the girl. He stumbled down a short set of steps into the dank-smelling cellar, and the blond girl let go of the door. It fell shut with a heavy thud, swallowing them into darkness.

Cade knelt on the back seat and peered out the window long after Gray had driven the Jeep out of Tupelo. She gripped the back of the seat in both hands as she watched for Ethan. She had convinced herself that he would follow them, that he would change his mind and turn around and catch up with them. But as the city of Tupelo receded into the horizon behind them, Cade’s shoulders slumped. He wasn’t going to show up.

The disappointment was overwhelming.

A hand pressed gently against Cade’s back. She didn’t have to turn to know that it was Theo attempting to offer her some level of comfort. She drew in a heavy rattling breath and gave Theo a grateful smile. His touch was the catalyst that allowed her to loosen her grip on the seat and sink down into it limply.

“Are you okay?” Theo asked, settling down in his seat beside her.

Cade clenched her teeth, squared her shoulders, and sat up straighter in her seat. She refused to be seen as weak. It wasn’t in her personality to allow weakness to crack the façade of hard-as-nails badass that she had spent years cultivating in the IDF to prove her worth. She would never allow that hard work to go to waste over a moment’s grief.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she answered shortly.

How many times had she insisted that she was fine in the past day alone?

Cade shifted her gaze to the dashboard of the car. She watched the flickering lights on the police scanner emptily. No matter how many times she tried to focus on something other than thoughts of Ethan, her mind kept going right back to the way he’d looked at her when he’d told her he was leaving. It had been a look of disbelief, a look that said he couldn’t wrap his mind around why Cade had protested his departure. As she replayed their argument over and over again in her head, Cade only felt one emotion, one that threatened to overpower her completely: guilt.

Before Cade could pursue her analysis of her feelings any further, Brandt’s voice broke in.

“Cade! You still with us?” Brandt asked from the front seat. He snapped the words out, his tone hinting that he’d had to call her name more than once. “Stop moping and clue in. We’ve got shit to plan, and I don’t need you zoned out while we’re doing it.”

Cade gritted her teeth and punched the back of Brandt’s seat. Brandt yelped in protest as he jolted forward, and he turned in his seat to glare at her.

“What the hell?” he demanded.

“Shut up, Brandt,” Cade snarled. Her irritation and lingering guilt overrode her normally collected exterior. She punched the back of his seat again in warning as she spoke, and he put both hands up defensively as the seat back rocked again.

“What the hell did I do to you?” Brandt asked in bewilderment. “You’ve been all punch-Brandt today, and while I like my women forceful, I can’t say I’m particularly enjoying it all that much.”

“You breathed my air,” Cade said, a heavy dose of sarcasm in her voice. She fought the urge to punch his seat—or perhaps his face—again.

“Cut it out, both of you,” Theo interjected sternly. He put a hand between them to block Cade’s view of Brandt—as if she were a dog, easily distracted when her view was diverted. Cade gave Theo an ugly look and swatted at his hand. “We don’t have time for all this! We have plans to make, important ones. You can bitch at each other all you want after we get where we’re going, okay? But not in the Jeep.”

“I second that motion,” Gray said from the driver’s seat.

“You would,” Cade muttered. She glanced at him and saw that he still watched the road intently, both hands gripping the steering wheel.

“We’re officially declaring the Jeep a Bitch-Free Zone,” Gray announced. “No bitching, no whining, no exceptions.”

A silence fell over the interior of the vehicle, broken only by the sound of the Jeep’s tires on the highway. Cade clamped her lips shut and turned her head to look out the side window as she struggled to rein in her emotions. As she’d done the month before, in the aftermath of her escape from Memphis with Ethan, she shoved the emotions to the back of her mind and buried them, fastening them down tight so they wouldn’t escape and wreak havoc again.

“So, ah, what’s the plan?” Cade finally asked. She avoided Brandt’s face as she looked instead at Gray. The man had begun to dig in the green bag resting against the console between the front seats, searching frantically through it with one hand. “You
do
have a plan, right?”

“Well, I figure if we can make it to Meridian, we’ll be okay for the night,” Gray said. He turned the wheel to avoid a stalled car in the middle of the road, and Cade’s stomach lurched as the Jeep swerved. She gripped the armrest between her and Theo, digging her nails into the upholstery. Gray pulled a folded paper out of the bag and shook it wildly as he tried to unfold it. Once he’d successfully rattled the paper loose—and Cade’s nerves along with it—he attempted to look at it and the road at the same time.

“I figure if you’ll keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road, we’ll be more likely to make it to Meridian and be okay for the night,” Cade said with a smirk. She felt her old nonchalant cheerfulness start to seep back in, slowly but surely. Gray glanced at Cade in the rearview mirror in acknowledgement before he passed the paper to Brandt. He put both hands obediently on the wheel again as he relaxed back in his seat. “So what’s the plan then?” Cade prompted again.

“I figure we should do everything we can to avoid getting out of the Jeep,” Brandt spoke up. “Maybe we can find a house that looks secure enough, park the Jeep in the garage, and sleep in here.”

“Sleep
in
the Jeep?” Theo repeated incredulously. “Like … where? This isn’t exactly the world’s roomiest vehicle, you know.”

“We’ll manage,” Cade said flippantly. She shifted her eyes to Brandt, and her breath caught in her throat as she realized he was already looking right back at her. She forced a breath into her lungs and broke her eyes away from his. “We can’t run the engine to keep warm,” she managed to add. “It would use too much fuel. It
does
get pretty cold at night, you know.”

Brandt nodded absently and flipped the page in his hands over, as if he expected to find the secret of life doodled on the back. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “As you say, we’ll manage. There are blankets in the back somewhere, and we can leave the engine on until the temperature gets comfortable enough in here before we turn it off. Will that work?”

Cade shrugged and brushed a hand through her hair. She grimaced at how oily it felt. For just a split second, she wished for a shower, preferably one with warm water. She was sure that if she had a good, thorough bath, she would start to feel a little more human again. But instead of dwelling on the idea, Cade took her dark hair down from its band and pulled it into a new ponytail so she wouldn’t get into the habit of running her hand through it and experiencing the grossness all over again. “If it has to work, it will work,” she said serenely as she snapped the band into place.