The Becoming (8 page)

There were no further words between Cade and Ethan. There didn’t need to be. Cade glanced at Ethan and nodded before she began to climb the stairs. She eased her way up, one step at a time, placing her borrowed tennis shoes with methodical care. Ethan kept a few feet between them as he followed.

Cade paused at the top of the stairs and studied the bolted wooden door at the top. The deadbolt—an old sliding kind, not very useful for security, but it’d come with the house and she hadn’t ever gotten the time to change it—was bent, bowed inward. She grazed her fingers against the metal. It had been weaker than she’d thought. It was hard to imagine one man being able to bend it in like this. Cade looked back to Ethan again and motioned to the lock. Ethan gave her a terse nod and slid the gun at his hip out of its holster. Cade let out a breath and grasped the lock, pushing it aside with more force than would have normally been necessary. The lock disengaged with a loud scrape of metal against metal. She hesitantly pulled the door open.

Cade was sure her nerves were going to crawl out through her skin. She gripped the handle of her rifle case more tightly in her left hand as her right found the Glock handgun she’d taken from Ethan’s house in the makeshift holster she’d fashioned out of a belt. Cade steeled herself and lifted the gun as she peered around the edge of the door.

There was no one—and
nothing
—in sight. Cade breathed out a slow sigh of relief, though the relief was tinged with a deep sense of dread. She hesitated and then eased a foot out into the kitchen. Her shoes crunched over broken glass, and a cold breeze gusted through the room. The back door still stood wide open—the glass shattered, the wood cracked—letting in the cold evening air, and two of the chairs at the small breakfast table were overturned and broken. Glass littered the floor, mixed with a large streak of clotted, dark red blood. A crimson handprint stained the front of the refrigerator, and another smear darkened the doorframe leading to the living room. All was quiet and motionless.

Cade moved farther into the chilly kitchen and stepped aside to let Ethan exit the basement behind her. He swept the room with his own handgun in an expert maneuver that Cade had seen in police shows and movies. Cade allowed Ethan to take the lead, providing him with backup as he eased through the battered kitchen and into the living room.

Compared with the disarray they’d just left, the living room was the perfect picture of normalcy. The television was still on, muted, playing the news; the lights from the screen flickered over the couch and coffee table. The drinks Andrew had made for himself and Cade still sat on the table, the ice long melted. Cade nearly expected to see Andrew come downstairs with a smile and an offer to make dinner.

The heavy weight of the black rifle case in Cade’s hand was enough to bring her back to reality. Andrew wasn’t going to come down the stairs. There would be no more dinner in this house. There would be no more quiet evenings of drinks and bad movies on television. Everything was gone.

Cade understood this instinctively as she glanced at the flickering television screen. She didn’t need news reporters to tell her anything. She just knew.

A slight movement fluttered in the corner of Cade’s eye. She turned quickly on her heel and lifted her handgun automatically. But the motion had just been a curtain stirred into life by a cold breeze coming in from the opened front door.

“We should get out of here,” Ethan suggested. Cade tore her attention away from the billowing curtain. Ethan moved to stand beside her and touched her arm gently to get her to look at him. “Come on, Cade. We should get some supplies out of my house and take the Jeep, pick up Anna, and head to my mom’s.”

An hour later, Cade followed Ethan to his SUV, her rifle case still in her hand and her duffel bag on her shoulder. She had changed into a pair of jeans, a flannel shirt, a black leather jacket that had once belonged to her father, and a pair of knee-high, sturdy black boots to protect her feet and calves. Cade thanked whatever deity happened to be listening that Ethan had had the forethought to grab her duffel bag from her bed. She and Anna were close to the same size, but Anna’s clothes were a bit snugger than Cade normally liked hers, and they made for some uncomfortable wearing.

Wariness bubbled into Cade’s gut at the idea of being outside, especially in the dark and especially after what she’d experienced in her own home. She glanced at the building as she swung herself into the passenger seat of Ethan’s Jeep. It was still dark inside the house, though Cade could make out the shine of a lamp somewhere upstairs and the flicker of the television in the otherwise darkened living room. Cade thought of Josie again, and tears filled her eyes. She shook them off and turned her attention to Ethan, seeking a distraction from her grief.

“What the hell is going on?” Cade asked. She pushed her hair away from her face again. “What happened in there … it’s something more than just a riot, isn’t it?”

Ethan started the engine and reached to turn on the police scanner he’d installed on the dash. It sprang to life, filled with static and voices yelling urgently into radios. “If I had to guess, I’d say yeah,” he replied. He paused to listen to the voices on the crackling line before he added, “Something isn’t right about this.”

Cade remained silent and listened to the voices on the scanner. If she remembered her ten-codes correctly, several fires burned across the city, and the numbers of fights and shootings and lootings had exploded. She shuddered and looked at her house again as Ethan pushed the Jeep into gear and pressed the gas pedal. She closed her eyes for a moment as the tears threatened to spill again, and then turned her gaze once more to Ethan. His expression was the definition of determined; he gripped the steering wheel with both hands as he stared out the windshield.

“They mentioned road blocks,” Cade said. She motioned to the scanner as she studied Ethan’s profile. “How are we going to get past them if we come across one?”

Without a word, Ethan leaned forward and set his badge and gun on the dashboard. Cade swallowed hard.

Cade stayed silent for the rest of the drive to the hospital, her nails scratching the black plastic case that held her rifle. As the Jeep approached the city block occupied by the hospital, though, Cade sat forward in her seat and squinted toward the building. The sky had an unusual glow that she couldn’t place. She grasped the case in her lap tighter.

“No. No, no,
no,
” Ethan gasped. The Jeep lurched forward, and Cade sucked in her breath as she pitched forward against the seatbelt. The belt dug into her collarbone, and she grabbed at it to pull it away from her shoulder. It took her a moment to realize the source of Ethan’s distress.

The hospital’s emergency room was on fire.

Cade jumped out of the vehicle before it stopped moving. She left her rifle behind on the passenger floorboard and strode toward the burning building with the authoritarian air of someone who belonged there, the Jericho handgun Ethan had recovered for her grasped firmly in her hand. Ethan’s car door slammed as he too got out. Cade glanced over her shoulder to see him running toward the flaming emergency department. Cade sprinted after Ethan as she kept an eye on their surroundings. She knew Ethan would need the backup; he was so out of his mind with fear and worry that he wasn’t paying any attention to anything around them.

The parking lot was utter chaos. Dozens of people stumbled around the lot in the light of the fire, the wounded being tended to by the few doctors and nurses available to do so. Others tried to haul patients out of other areas of the burning building. Everyone appeared to avoid the emergency room.

“Anna!” Ethan shouted as he drew closer to the building. Beads of sweat formed on Cade’s forehead and back; the air felt almost too hot to breathe. She nearly ran into a patient pushing his own IV rack along beside him and stumbled around first him and then a couple of nurses pushing a hospital bed with two people on it toward the opposite end of the parking lot. Cade caught Ethan by the shoulder to stop him as she realized he was taking them too close to the heat of the fire. He paused to shade his eyes against the glare from the fire and shouted again. “Anna Bennett!”

“Ethan!” a voice yelled from their right. Cade turned in that direction, gravel crunching under the heel of her boot, and barely stopped herself from raising her gun to point it at the woman who had shouted. An unfamiliar blond woman limped in their direction, and Cade’s shoulders stiffened as she lurched toward them.

“Jesus, Lisa!” Ethan exclaimed. He hurried toward the woman and put his arm around her for support. The woman almost lost her balance at the impact of Ethan’s body against hers, and he caught her by the arm to keep her from falling. “Fuck, are you okay?”

Cade let the gun hang at her side as she realized that Ethan knew the woman. Cade skimmed her eyes over the woman’s tired face and dirty scrubs; the woman had a hand clasped tightly to her shoulder. Blood oozed from between her fingers and stained the front of her light blue scrubs. Cade wondered what had happened, but she didn’t get the chance to ask as the woman spoke up.

“No, not really,” Lisa said. She panted, short of breath as if she’d been running a long distance. “Everything has gone to hell. I’m trying to find somebody to take a look at this so I can get back to work, but they labeled me a low priority on the triage list.” She pulled her hand away from her shoulder just enough to show Ethan and Cade the wound. Cade frowned. It looked as if something or someone had bitten Lisa on the shoulder hard enough to break skin and draw a significant quantity of blood.

“That looks bad,” Cade agreed. She tore her gaze away from the wound to scan their surroundings again. She shifted her index finger to rest lightly against the trigger of her handgun as she squinted into the flickering darkness. She felt oddly exposed; a creeping sensation of danger worked its way up between her shoulder blades and latched into her brain at the base of her skull. It was partly instinctual, she knew, but at the same time, she couldn’t help but compare it to the similar feelings she’d had on the dusty sand-choked streets and avenues of Israel during her service: as if something were going to race from the darkness and attack her. She tried to shake it off and finally looked to Lisa again. “What happened?”

Lisa pressed her hand to her wound again, fingers digging into the fabric of her scrubs hard enough that her fingertips turned white. She opened her mouth to answer Cade’s question, but Ethan spoke up before she could say anything.

“Have you seen Anna?” The urgency in Ethan’s voice drew Cade’s attention to her friend once more.

Lisa shook her head, and tears filled her brown eyes. “We were in the ER with a patient,” she explained. Her voice trembled with emotion. “I think he was from one of the riots. He was going absolutely ballistic. Anna was trying to sedate him, and the man attacked her. Shit hit the fan, and one of the doctors got me out of there when the fire broke out. Anna and I got separated. The last time I saw her, she was running for the main oxygen shut-off panel. When I got outside, someone grabbed me, but I fought him off and ran.”

The anguish in Ethan’s green eyes seemed intensified in the light of the fire. Cade could see it easily from her spot nearby, and the look nearly broke her heart. Ethan drew in a slow breath and let it out before he asked, “She’s…?”

“Anna never came out, as far as I could see. I’m sorry,” Lisa said softly.

Cade saw the exact moment Ethan fell apart, and it was one of the worst things she’d ever witnessed. Ethan’s face crumpled and his shoulders sagged; he lifted a hand to press it to his eyes. Cade put a supportive arm around him. She motioned to Lisa as she squeezed Ethan, taking charge of their planned escape as she turned her friend and nudged him toward the SUV. “Come on, come with us,” she said to Lisa as she tried to force Ethan to move with her. “We’ll get you out of here.”

“Where are we going?” Lisa asked. She limped along beside Cade and Ethan, struggling valiantly to keep up with the brisk pace Cade set.

“We’re getting out of town. This city is starting to fall apart,” Cade explained. “I don’t know what you know or what you’ve seen in that hospital this evening, and I’m not going to pretend I do. But I think Memphis is turning into another Atlanta.”

“You mean the rioting?” Lisa asked. Cade opened the back passenger door and ushered Lisa in with a gentle push. Then she shoved Ethan roughly toward the front passenger door. She grimaced as he attempted to resist.

“Yeah,” Cade replied once she’d managed to get the passenger door open. She glanced at Lisa. The other woman had leaned back against her seat; her face was pale and strained with the pain from the wound on her shoulder. “We’ll look at your shoulder as soon as we get out of here,” Cade added as her face slid into a sympathetic expression. “I learned basic medical care when I was in the IDF. Between the two of us, I think we can handle it.” Cade turned back to Ethan, who still stood beside the opened passenger door, refusing to get in. Cade gritted her teeth and held out a hand to him with a demanding wiggle of her fingers. “Keys. Now.”

“We’re not leaving yet!” Ethan protested. He didn’t give Cade the keys; he didn’t even look at her. Instead, his green eyes focused over her shoulder in the direction of the emergency room. Cade sighed in exasperation and gave Ethan’s shoulder a shove to steal back his attention.

“Ethan,
keys
,” Cade persisted. Ethan took the set of keys out of his pocket and clenched his fist around them as if daring Cade to try to take them. Cade gave him an annoyed look and reached for his hand. “And yes, we
are
leaving. We need to get out of here.”