The Becoming: Ground Zero (36 page)

“Let me go! Let me go!” Remy kicked and bucked against him so violently that he almost dropped her too.

“Remy! Stop!” Brandt shouted. He spun the woman away from the edge, keeping his arms wrapped tightly around her. The sounds of the fight below continued.

“We have to help him!” Remy wrested herself free from Brandt and darted toward the edge again. Brandt caught her wrist as she passed and drove her to the roof. Remy screamed incoherently and tried to claw her way free, tearing her fingers raw and bloody on the rough gravel surface. “Ethan!” she shrieked, her entire body vibrating with the fear and desperation in her voice.

Brandt wrestled Remy onto her back and, with a snap of his wrist, slapped her across the face. Remy fell still, stunned at the stinging pain. Then she gave him the most hateful look Brandt had ever seen on an uninfected person’s face. The expression was marred only by the tears that coursed down Remy’s face, running down her cheeks to soak into her hair.

The gunfire from the ground below ceased.

“Get the fuck off of me,” Remy snarled, her face contorting as she struggled to get control of her emotions. Brandt didn’t dare refuse her order; judging by the expression on her face, she was likely to kill him. He hefted up onto his knees and dusted his hands off before he rose to his feet. After a fast glance at Gray—who’d managed to get the access door open and now knelt beside Cade, gently patting her cheeks—Brandt offered Remy a hand to help her up. She slapped his hand away and rose to her feet unassisted.

Remy pushed her hair back and took two slow, trembling breaths to steady herself. Then she recovered her weapons from where they’d fallen when Brandt tackled her. “What now?” she asked. The young woman’s voice was oddly flat and unemotional, almost a monotone. The lack of life in her voice disturbed Brandt to no end. This wasn’t the Remy he’d come to know over the past year. The Remy he knew was a little unhinged, but she wasn’t like
this,
emotionless and cold, almost distant.

Brandt didn’t have time to dwell on Remy’s mental state, however. He had a mission. The group’s numbers had been halved, and one of their remaining members was badly injured. He had to get them moving, had to get them all to the Tabernacle. It was their only hope left, and he refused to allow any more of them to perish, even if going there meant bringing down trouble on himself. His friends were worth more than he was.
Cade
was worth more than he was.

“First, we get the fuck off this roof,” Brandt decided. He knelt beside Gray, putting a hand on the younger man’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze. “Keep an eye on Remy, okay?” he requested. “I can’t do it all myself.” He looked at Cade and saw that she had begun to come around.

Cade groaned and covered her eyes with a hand to shield them from the fading sunlight. Brandt didn’t wait for Cade to come around more fully. He stood, lifting her onto her feet and slinging the arm on her uninjured side over his shoulders.

“Come on, Cade, we’ve got to go,” Brandt said, leading the woman toward the access door. He paused and looked at Remy and Gray, hesitating as he tried to decide his next orders. Finally, he said, “Remy, you’re on point. Get us out of here. The front door faces the street on the other side of where we are, so down the stairs and out through the front. Nothing fancy.”

Remy gave Brandt a short nod and strode wordlessly to the door, sliding her knife into its sheath and drawing her handgun and flashlight instead. She flicked the light on and aimed it into the dark doorway. Brandt watched her for just one moment more before he nodded to Gray.

“Bring up the rear?” Gray offered. He brandished his own gun as he dug for a flashlight in his bag.

“If you don’t mind. Cade and I are a bit incapacitated,” Brandt said ruefully.

Gray gave Brandt a slight nod, and Brandt led Cade into the stairwell beyond the doorway.

The darkness inside what appeared to be an apartment building would have been oppressive and frightening to anyone else, but to Remy, it was comforting and calming. Remy didn’t care that one of the infected could spring out of that darkness at any moment. Indeed, she welcomed such an event, even hoped for it. Maybe fighting some of the infected would help distract Remy from the sudden hole that had opened up in her chest. She ached for a fight so badly that she didn’t bother keeping her footsteps quiet as she worked her way down the stairs, shining her flashlight into the corners and rooms they passed.

Remy shouldn’t have been so careless. Cade was hurt and would have some difficulty fighting to defend herself if they were attacked. But Remy couldn’t bring herself to care. Not about anything. Not after Ethan …

She choked back the sudden sob threatening to escape her throat as she trudged deeper into the darkness. She wanted desperately to cram her fist into her mouth, to strangle off the tears threatening to well up at their source. She wanted to run into the street and track Ethan down, to save him if she could and to put a bullet in his head if she couldn’t. No one deserved to live like that. No one deserved to suffer like that. Least of all Ethan Bennett.

He would have done the same for her.

“Remy, are you still with us?” a voice asked behind her. Remy glanced back and saw Brandt close behind, Cade’s body braced against his own. Cade looked like she was ready to fall back into unconsciousness again. Remy hesitated before she nodded slightly. It was her time to play leader now. She had to be strong.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Remy assured Brandt, not meeting his eyes. She turned back to the task at hand. Somewhere behind her, she could hear Gray wheezing. She dug into Theo’s medical bag and searched for one of Gray’s inhalers, finding one buried deeply inside. Within moments, it was in Gray’s hands, and Remy was left to her own thoughts in blessed silence once again.

Their muffled footsteps didn’t mask the rustling, dragging noise that came from the shadows to their right. Remy paused as the sound met her ears, holding up a hand to signal the others to stop moving. The sound ceased, but Remy continued to stand motionless on the stairs, straining her ears, trying to find the noise again. Brandt’s eyes fixed on the back of her neck, watching her intently as he listened for what she’d heard. Remy drew in a slow breath as she sensed the fifth presence on the stairwell, lurking in the shadows, standing just as still as Remy. Waiting for its moment to attack.

Remy would be damned if she let that happen.

“Remy, what is it?” Brandt hissed. Remy knew that he still had his hands on Cade, that he had no plans to let her go. With the way the woman looked, Cade could very well fall to the floor if Brandt released her.

“One of the infected, just to my right,” Remy finally answered calmly. “I’m going to put the mother fucker down. Don’t panic.”

“Would be way fucking awesome if you’d stop pissing around and do it already,” Brandt hissed. “Cade’s about five seconds away from passing out over here, and I will
not
hesitate to slap the shit out of you again if I have to.”

Remy nodded and lifted her gun, taking a careful step forward. The stair below her boot creaked, and that seemed to be the cue for the infected man in the shadows to dart out and go on the attack. Remy didn’t hesitate. She brought her gun up and around, slamming it forcefully against the side of the man’s head. She grabbed him by his dirty, decaying shirt and hauled him fully onto the stairs. She hit the man one more time with the gun and then shoved the barrel underneath his chin. She pressed it hard into the fleshy underside of his jaw and squeezed the trigger.

The top of the man’s head exploded with the force of the bullet’s impact. Remy grimaced at the spray of blood illuminated in the beam of her flashlight, and she tightened her grip on the man long enough to push him against the railing. It wasn’t hard to lift the man up; he’d been infected long enough that he was borderline skin and bones. Using the railing as a lever, she heaved him over. The man’s body plummeted through the air to land with a thud three floors below.

“We’ve got to move,” Remy said without further hesitation. She glanced at Cade to make sure the older woman was still conscious. She was—somewhat—but she looked even closer to passing out than she had earlier. Her face was drawn and pale with pain. “We should go fast,” Remy added.

“You’re telling me,” Brandt said. He checked his grip on Cade’s waist and began descending the stairs again. “I’ll fucking carry Cade if I have to.”

“No the fuck you won’t,” Cade slurred woozily.

Remy snorted and led the way down the stairs, her eyes moving through the darkness, scanning every shadow, shining her light into every corner. Thankfully, Remy needn’t have worried; five minutes later, they reached the ground floor without further problems, save for Cade’s increasing exhaustion, made worse by her still-bleeding injury. Once they were there, though, Remy’s instincts screamed for her to be more cautious—not for her own sake, because she didn’t care about herself anymore, but for the sake of her companions. They at least deserved the chance to live, even if she felt she no longer wanted the chance for herself.

The street was free of infected. Remy had the sobering thought that it was so clear because all the infected in the area were still busy with Ethan. Tears threatened her eyes again, but she banished them once more. There wasn’t time for crying right now, if ever. She wouldn’t allow herself that weakness.

“Brandt, which way?” Remy asked. She fell back to draw even with the Marine. “I don’t know the way.”

Brandt gently dislodged Cade’s arm from his shoulders and, with Remy’s help, managed to transfer her to Remy’s shoulders. “I’ll lead from here, okay?” he offered. “Just stick closer. All three of you.”

Remy nodded and, as Brandt moved ahead to take the lead, glanced back at Gray. He managed to meet Remy’s eyes, and she swallowed hard as she saw the hurt and sadness in his gaze. She still felt the hurt herself; just thinking of the rapid succession of deaths they’d met with after being together for so long was enough to make her want to break apart. She swallowed down the feeling and faced forward once more, locking her eyes onto Brandt’s shoulders and walking on silently.

Brandt let out a relieved sigh as he saw the green foliage ahead of them. Trees lined the sides of a concrete-and-brick path that led through a large park, and the rapidly failing sunlight filtered through their branches to land in patches along the walkway. It’d taken them nearly an hour to reach the park, an hour longer than Brandt was happy with, but it couldn’t be helped. He ran his fingers through his dark hair and glanced around cautiously. He didn’t see any potential threats nearby; a few squirrels scrounged through the grass, but otherwise, everything was still. Brandt hoped the four of them had reached the end of any trouble that might threaten. At least, for the moment.

Brandt motioned for the others to follow him as he began the trek across the street to Centennial Olympic Park, pausing before he reached the outer edge of trees and dropping back to allow Cade, Remy, and Gray to catch up with him. He took Cade off of Remy’s hands, and the younger woman gave him a grateful smile, even as she managed to look concerned.

“I don’t think she’s doing that great, Brandt,” Remy warned. “She’s dragging her feet, and she can barely keep her head up.”

Brandt took Cade’s face in his hands, lifting her head so he could see her eyes. Her lids were heavy, and her skin was pale and clammy, cool to the touch. She breathed shallowly, and Brandt shook his head as he gently jostled her. “Come on, babe, we don’t have much farther to go,” he murmured. “Just through this park and out the other side, and we’ll be right on top of the Tabernacle, okay? Just stick with me.”

“And when we get there?” Gray spoke up, breaking his contemplation of a large, oddly shaped building less than a block away. It jutted out at an angle over the street, and a massive mural of sea life was emblazoned on its side. Brandt looked up from Cade’s face and frowned at the building, taking a moment to realize he was staring at the side of the aquarium. He blinked and focused back on Cade, scooping her right off her feet and settling her against his chest.

“Then we get inside and see what we can do about rousing some help on the radio,” Brandt said.

“And if help won’t come?” Gray prompted.

“Help will come,” Brandt said, confident.

“But if it won’t?” Gray persisted.

Brandt rolled his eyes and started down the sidewalk again, stepping into the shade of the trees, his grip on Cade secure. Gray and Remy scrambled to keep up with the ground-eating pace Brandt set. “Gray, it will, okay? They’re not going to leave me out here in this cesspool of a city; they’re going to want to track me down.”

“You’re assuming an awful lot, if you ask me,” Gray muttered. He wrinkled his nose doubtfully and gripped his gun in both hands, doing his best to help Remy guard Brandt and Cade, since they were the two most vulnerable members of their little group.

“Well, I’m
not
asking you, so you can shove it up your ass,” Brandt grumbled. “Now shut it. The more noise you make, the more likely you’ll draw attention right onto us, and we’re not in a position to deal with that right now.”

Silence fell among them after Brandt’s order. Remy once more slipped into the lead, her gun in one hand and her bolo knife in the other. Brandt was always impressed with how well the young woman handled the blade; seeing it in her hand made him feel slightly better about being out in the open. If anything got the jump on them, Brandt was sure Remy could hold off the problem long enough for him to set Cade down to assist her.