The Becoming (34 page)

Cade studied Brandt as she stretched her arms above her head and worked the kinks out of her shoulders and back. He looked younger when he slept, almost worry-free, and Cade was jealous of his seemingly easy sleep. She hadn’t slept well in over a month, not since the Michaluk Virus broke out across the southeast. Every night, every time she closed her eyes, it was one horrible nightmare after another. She only ever managed to sleep when she passed out from total exhaustion. It reminded her of the time she’d spent coping with her return from active duty in the battlefield, when she’d woken up screaming night after night for eight miserable months. Then, she’d been able to see a therapist to cope with her nightmares. Something told her a therapist wouldn’t be available in a post-Michaluk world.

Cade considered waking Brandt, but no, it was better to let him sleep while he could. She glanced at the dark window and nudged the chair back before she took a tentative step onto her injured leg. She put her weight on it with caution, increasing it gradually, until she bore a good portion of her weight on her leg. Her knee let out a pained twinge, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been two days ago. She believed she could run on it again. Perhaps now she and Brandt could plan their escape from the office building.

Cade took the several steps to the office window without much issue, though her knee let out another twinge of pain three steps in. She shoved the soreness aside, tamped it down in the back of her mind.

Cade hesitated as her fingers brushed the hanging blinds. She didn’t know what she would see when she looked out. Brandt had barely let her get up from her chair over the past two days; he subscribed to the idea that the less weight Cade put on her knee, the faster it would heal. Cade sighed and pushed the blinds aside, squinting out into the dimming sunlight. Everything on the street five floors below was as still and quiet as the office. Cade shivered as the cold radiated off of the pane of glass in front of her. She leaned closer and rested her forehead against the glass. She looked straight down the side of the building, her eyes trailing along the base of the building and the sidewalk.

Much to Cade’s surprise, the infected that had spent the first day of the survivors’ entrapment pressed against the sides of the building and flooding the first floor had dispersed. There were still infected below; some slumped against the side of the building, and others sat on the sidewalk or against cars or stood among the debris in the street. But there were nowhere near as many as there had been two days before. Cade wondered if the borderline panic she’d felt as she and Brandt ran from the grasping hands and gnashing teeth had inflated their number in her mind. The thought that the RV’s explosion had killed more of them than they’d suspected flitted through her mind too. Either was a possibility.

Cade looked past the infected scattered below and scanned down the street, back the way they’d come two nights before. The RV sat slumped in the street like a dead whale, a burned-out husk of metal. Cade imagined she could still see smoke, though she was sure that any flames had long burned out. A few crumpled bodies lay scattered near it, victims of the blast. Otherwise, the infected seemed to avoid the site.

A thump sounded behind Cade. She pressed both hands against the glass and pushed off the window, whirling around defensively. Relief flooded her veins as she saw it was only Brandt. He had startled awake much in the same manner Cade had, and she smirked as he looked around, a delirious expression on his face.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Cade joked. She walked to him and playfully batted him on the back of the head. He took a halfhearted swat at her as his face stretched into a wide yawn.

“I see you’re up and moving,” Brandt observed. He rubbed his face and scratched a hand through his dark brown hair. “How’s your knee?”

“It feels a
lot
better,” Cade admitted. She leaned to rub the appendage in question, kneading it with her fingers, probing for pain. She didn’t feel any. “I think I’ll be okay to run if you want to get out of here.”

Brandt dragged himself out of his chair and rolled his head from side to side to work the kinks out of his neck. “Are you sure?” he asked. He slipped past her to look out the window.

“I’m sure.”

“Absolutely sure?” Brandt pressed. He looked at her, his eyebrows knitted together in a concerned frown. Cade resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

“
Yes,
Brandt. I’m sure,” she said stubbornly.

They were silent as they studied the street outside. Cade tried to make out a route that would get them out of there, but she couldn’t conceive a path that wouldn’t take them right past a large group of infected. Any plan requiring them to shoot was out of the question; the noise would only draw more infected to their location, and in their exhausted state, they would both be toast. As she pondered the street, a low, deep rumble of thunder sounded over the city. Cade glanced up at the sky with the faintest twinge of nervousness.

“What do you think?” she asked Brandt. She moved as if to pull her hair back into a ponytail, then made a face as she realized that the rubber band she usually kept around her wrist was missing.
So much for that,
she thought irritably as she let go of her hair. It fell loose around her shoulders in a curling, tangled mess.

“I think…” Brandt started. He drew the words out as he too looked up at the sky. A flicker of lightning greeted their upturned eyes, and he grinned. “I think it would be a great idea to wait for that thunderstorm to get here,” he said. “If it’s loud enough, it could mask any sounds we make, and the rain could help cover our movements.”

Cade brightened at Brandt’s words, and she went to the bag she’d left on the desk. She rooted through it, pulled out a battered little notepad and started to flip through it. “Yeah, you said something in here about the infected and rain,” she said as she focused on the miniscule writing in the pad. “Ah! You said right here that they don’t like the rain, that they tend to hide from it when they can,” she said. She tapped her finger against the page as she looked up at Brandt. He gave her an odd, thoughtful look. “What?” she asked. A touch of impatience marred her voice.

“Nothing,” Brandt said. “I just … you kept that?”

“Yeah, I did. It’s got useful information in it,” Cade said. “Why throw it away when we can still use it?” She flipped the cover shut and tucked the notepad back into the bag. “So what’s the plan, Brandt?”

“You’re actually asking me to make the plan?” Brandt asked. He raised his eyebrows incredulously.

“Why not?” Cade asked with a shrug. She dug deeper into her bag and pulled out a fresh tank top. She slung the white shirt over her shoulder as Brandt replied.

“Well, considering the absolute mess I made of getting Remy out of the RV, I figured you wouldn’t want me touching anything remotely resembling a plan,” Brandt admitted.

“I won’t let you touch anything resembling an
emergency exit
plan,” Cade teased. She slipped out of her leather jacket and draped it over the back of the office chair before she started to unbutton her blue flannel shirt. “I figure we’ll be okay if you don’t make that half of the plan.”

Brandt smirked. “Yeah, I don’t have much practice with it anyway,” he said, going along with the joke as Cade wiggled out of her flannel. She grabbed the bottom of her dirty white tank top to pull it off, but she paused as she realized that Brandt was watching her.

“Hey, mister, this isn’t a striptease. Turn around,” Cade ordered. She laughed and twirled her finger in a circle in midair. It wasn’t that Cade felt self-conscious changing in front of Brandt; far from it, really. The military had a way of beating bashfulness and modesty out of a person, and it had done a sufficient job of it with Cade. She wasn’t squeamish about changing in front of him. But she certainly wasn’t going to give him a free show either. Especially not if it ran the risk of making group cooperation awkward.

Brandt laughed and shook his head, but he politely turned his back to Cade. Instead, he looked out the window to study the ground below again. Cade suppressed another laugh and quickly donned the new tank top before he got the idea to turn around again. She pulled on her flannel shirt without buttoning it and shrugged on her leather jacket once more.

“So what’s the plan then?” she finally asked as she joined him at the window again.

Brandt glanced at her and asked, “You always wear flannel shirts?”

“They’re the only long-sleeved shirts I packed last month,” Cade replied. “They’re warm and not bulky, so I don’t have to worry about them slowing me down.” She glanced out the window and hummed thoughtfully before she prompted again, “Plan?”

“Well, I figure we’ll wait until the thunderstorm really gets going,” Brandt said. Another flicker of lightning brightened the street outside. It was much closer than before, and Cade’s nerves felt like they were vibrating under her skin. “We stick close to the building, keeping to the side of it so they can’t completely surround us. As long as we keep them away from us, we should be okay.”

“And after that?” Cade asked. She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

“After that, we get at least a block down the street and find a truck that’s got the keys still in it and enough gas to get us to where Theo, Gray, and Remy should be hiding,” Brandt concluded. Cade raised an eyebrow at him. “It’s the best I can do,” he said defensively. “We don’t have a whole lot of options.”

“No, it’s not that,” Cade said. “It’s a good plan. Best we can do under the circumstances. I just … what if they’re not there?” she asked. “What if the others had to move? There’s no way we can know where they went if they didn’t leave a note or whatever, so…”

“So what then?” Brandt finished. “Just means you’d be stuck with me for months and months on end.” The smirk on his face was devious, and Cade gave him a dirty look before she let out a melodramatic groan.

“Oh God, Heaven help me if that’s the case,” she said. She pressed the back of her hand to her forehead as she closed her eyes and mock-fainted. She opened her eyes a crack to peek out at Brandt, and she laughed at the hurt look on his face. “Oh, come on. I’m kidding!” she protested. “It wouldn’t be so bad. I mean, your cooking skills are shit and mine aren’t much better, so we’d probably starve to death eventually, but you’re a damn good shot, and I couldn’t ask for anything more.”

Brandt smiled and tugged at Cade’s hair. She laughed and swatted at him as she ducked away from his hand, and she looked back out the window again. “So we’re stuck here until the storm starts,” she said. She leaned against the black metal frame surrounding the large windowpane. “What should we do until then?”

“I don’t know. Maybe…” Brandt tapped his finger against his chin as he looked around the room thoughtfully. Then he shook his head in frustration. “There is absolutely nothing to do in here.”

“
That
explains why I’m going nuts with boredom,” Cade said cheerfully. “I’ve been so tempted to roll my chair over to the window and play target practice just to keep from going insane. If it wasn’t for the fact it’d waste ammo, I’d be doing it right now.”

Brandt snorted and shook his head. “You know, sometimes you scare me,” he said. He retreated to the desk and sat on the edge of it, propping his foot into the seat of the desk chair.

“Oh good. Mission accomplished,” Cade said with a grin as she turned away from the window.

Brandt laughed and patted the desk beside him. “Come on, have a seat. I want you to rest your knee as much as possible before we get moving.”

Cade smiled and sidled over to the desk. She climbed onto it and made herself comfortable before she relaxed back against her hands. She and Brandt sat in silence and watched the flicker of lightning and listened to the deep rumble of thunder as the storm approached, pushing them closer to their impending escape.

“So why exactly do you put up with him?” Brandt asked suddenly, breaking the silence that had fallen between them as they’d both stared out the window.

Cade startled and blinked, glancing at Brandt. “Put up with who?” she asked. “What are you talking about?”

Brandt shook his head and waved a dismissive hand. “No, never mind. Don’t worry about it.”

Cade directed a light punch at his bicep. “Come on, tell me what you’re talking about,” she urged. “You can’t ask something like that and then be all, ‘No, never mind.’” She dropped her voice and mimicked him, and he laughed softly.

“I just mean Ethan,” Brandt clarified. “How do you put up with him? And
why?
I wouldn’t willingly put up with someone like that outside of the world we’re living in now, and you’ve been friends with him for, what, seven years? How do you deal with his bad attitude?”

“Ethan doesn’t have a bad attitude,” Cade protested. “He’s just … abrupt.”

“Which is a polite way of saying someone is an asshole,” Brandt pointed out.

“Yeah, well,” Cade said feebly. She shrugged and bit her lip, looking down at the carpet for a moment before shifting her eyes to the large window before them. “He’s
my
asshole, so don’t go insulting him, okay?” She chuckled at her own words, and then she lifted her hand to examine the slice in her palm. “My family was from the United States. My mom and dad were born here, and so was my older brother, Caleb,” Cade started to explain. She didn’t dare look at Brandt as she quietly told the story. “My grandparents—my mom’s parents—were from Israel. Before my sister and I were born, my parents decided to move back to Israel, where my grandparents were living again, so they could be closer to their parents. Lindsey and I were born in Israel. We were all in the IDF, like we’re supposed to be, Lindsey and Caleb for two years each. I’m the only one who liked it so much that I stayed in it.”