The Becoming (30 page)

Cade squinted into the flames and swore. She had no idea what in the world Brandt intended for her to shoot. But then she spotted her target nestled directly in the center of the flames. She clenched her jaw and took aim. She and Brandt were far too close to the RV to do this, but they didn’t have much choice. There were too many infected, and if they could kill a bunch of them in this manner and give the other survivors a chance to escape—even if it took them both out with it—then so be it.

Cade’s shoulders tensed, and she flexed her finger against the trigger. She let out a slow breath as she depressed it.

As the bullet made impact, Brandt’s arm hooked around Cade’s waist. He dragged her to the pavement, slamming them both facedown onto the street. The explosion from the propane tank attached to the back of the RV shook the night, sending shrapnel and flames roaring into the darkness.

“Jesus Christ!” Gray gasped. He sat up straight in his seat and grabbed the doorframe as he stumbled out of the Jeep. The bright flash two blocks away lit up the night sky, and Gray had nearly been blinded as he’d looked right at it. Gray rubbed furiously at his eyes as he scooped up the gun his brother had left him and pointed it into the darkness. He blinked to clear his vision of the bright blue spots dancing madly in front of him and saw two figures stagger toward him. He tensed and swung the gun around in their direction. It was only a warning shout from one of the figures that prevented Gray from squeezing the trigger.

“Gray! It’s me!” Theo’s voice came from the darkness.

Gray let out a relieved breath and lowered the gun. He ran toward Theo with his heart pounding in his chest. “Theo! Thank God. What the hell happened back there? What blew up?” A thin trickle of dark red blood oozed down the side of Theo’s face and stained his hair. “And what the hell happened to you?”

“I got fucking hit by something rather hard,” Theo grumbled, “right in the damned head. That’s the second time tonight. I’m sick of it.” He hoisted the second figure into a better position against his shoulder. Gray focused in on the woman who sagged limply against Theo.

“Shit, what’s wrong with her?” Gray asked. He reached out to take the weight of the slender woman off of Theo’s shoulder. He tried to get a glimpse of her face as he swung her up into his arms, but the woman’s dark hair hung loosely in her face, blocking her features from view.

“Like I said, we got hit,” Theo said bluntly. He took Gray’s gun to guard them as they moved to the Jeep. “She took the brunt of it. I didn’t see it coming, and it hit before I could do anything to get us out of the way.”

“Where are Cade and Brandt?” Gray asked sharply. He squinted at Theo in the light from the fire two blocks away. The man looked truly awful. Whatever news he had probably wasn’t good.

“I don’t know,” Theo admitted. He ducked his head as he spoke and collapsed onto the driver’s seat. “They made us go first. They were …” He waved his hand around vaguely as he tried to come up with the right word, then he rested his forehead in his hand. “Fuck, my head hurts. I can’t think,” he muttered. He blew out a heavy breath and tried again. “They hung back. They were covering us while we made a run for the Jeep. The last time I saw them was at the RV. I don’t know where they are now.”

Gray merely nodded at Theo’s words. He felt concern growing as he thought on Cade and Brandt. He and Theo needed them. They couldn’t go it alone, especially not with an injured girl on their hands. They needed people to strategize for them, to handle the defensive aspects of survival that they didn’t know how to do for themselves. With Ethan gone, that job had fallen to Brandt and Cade. They couldn’t be dead. They just couldn’t be.

“What are we going to do, Theo?” Gray asked. He managed to get the back driver’s-side door open, and he carefully slid the slender girl inside. He climbed in after her and began to check her over for injuries.

“I don’t know,” Theo said. He sounded exhausted and slightly out of it, and Gray looked at him in concern. “Let’s face it, Gray. We need them,” Theo continued. “I mean, hell, we’ve only really known them for about two days, but I already feel like I can’t handle this shit without their support.”

“Yeah, me too,” Gray agreed. He looked toward the fire still burning merrily two blocks away. “Should we wait? Or just leave them here?”

“I don’t think they’d want us to wait,” Theo said. “I think they would want us to get the hell out of here as fast and as far as we can. But honestly, I’m all for doing the opposite. Let’s give them ten minutes.”

Gray nodded and climbed into the back of the Jeep, maneuvering carefully around the young woman’s unconscious body. He retrieved a handgun from the large black duffel bag Cade had left in the back, and he loaded the weapon mechanically as he kept his eyes on the scene of the fire before them.

Ten minutes ticked by. Remy stirred with a soft groan, and her return to consciousness gave Theo a distraction from his own hurting head as he tended to her wounds. Gray stood guard outside the driver’s door of the Jeep, silent and tense. The ten minutes they had allotted to wait for Cade and Brandt’s arrival slid by faster than Gray would have liked.

Ten minutes passed, and still they did not come.

Ethan let the motorcycle roll to a slow stop, his hands working the brakes with practiced smoothness. He braced a foot against the cracked pavement and cut the engine; it shuddered and died in the otherwise quiet parking lot. Ethan shifted on his seat and looked over his shoulder at Nikola. The teenager had his waist in a vice-like grip, and her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, even though the motorcycle had stopped. Ethan smiled at the girl’s nervousness.

“Hey, Nikola?” Ethan said. He patted his fingers against the back of her hand, and she hesitantly opened her eyes. “It’s okay if you let go of me now, you know. We’ve stopped.”

Nikola glanced around them and then reluctantly released her grip from Ethan’s waist. She laughed, though her voice still shook. “Where are we?” she asked as she dislodged Ethan’s helmet from her head.

“Methodist University Hospital,” Ethan explained. “Or what’s left of it.” He waited for Nikola to slide off the back of the motorcycle before he dismounted. “My wife works here.
Worked
here. I wanted to check and see…” He trailed off as he reached underneath his leather jacket for his handgun. Even Ethan realized just how stupid the idea was. What in the hell was he doing here? It was not a safe place to be. He began to wonder if Cade was right; maybe he’d have been better off sticking with the others. But as this idea crossed his mind, Nikola’s voice interrupted his thoughts.

“You want to see if she’s still here, don’t you?” Nikola bit her lip and studied the dark parking lot around them.

Ethan watched silently as she pulled her baseball bat from the bag strapped to the side of the motorcycle.
Nikola
was why he was here. If he hadn’t decided to come back to Memphis, even for the few days he’d promised Cade he would take, then there was no telling where Nikola would have been at that moment. Still struggling along on her own at best. Dead at worst. The thought didn’t sit well with him.

Ethan didn’t bother to reply to Nikola’s question. He simply said, “Just stick close to me.”

Nikola blew out a breath and nodded. Ethan could tell that it was a struggle for her not to grab him by the back of his jacket and dig her fingers in. Ethan chose to not mention her obvious nervousness. Instead, he looked at the burned-out husk of the emergency room where Anna had once worked. He couldn’t see much in the falling evening, so he went back to the bike and grabbed a flashlight from his bag.

“Keep your noise down as much as possible,” Ethan instructed Nikola as he returned. “We don’t know what we’ll find. We don’t know what might be here.”

Nikola nodded obediently and mimed zipping her lips shut. Ethan gave her a small, reluctant smile. But as he turned his eyes back onto the remains of the emergency room, the expression disappeared from his face. He couldn’t believe Anna might have been in there. He couldn’t reconcile the memory of her beautiful smile with the prospect of never seeing it again.

Ethan swallowed hard and shoved back his feelings. He couldn’t let his emotions take control of him. They would distract him from any approaching dangers, and a mere moment’s distraction could cost him and Nikola their lives. He strode forward, steadily and with purpose, straight to the emergency doors. The remnants of the entrance loomed over him, and his shoes crunched over blackened tiles and broken glass on the floor. Nikola followed him, sticking close, her bat raised and prepared to hit anything that might come at her. Ethan patted Nikola on the shoulder reassuringly before he continued inside.

The emergency room was the very image of chaos. Stretchers lay overturned and burned, and the nurses’ station was cluttered with leftover emergency supplies. As Ethan gawked at the blackened scene before him, he tripped over an IV stand on the floor. He stumbled and caught himself against the husk of the station counter. Chunks of it crumbled and flaked under his palms.

It was as he straightened that Ethan caught sight of her. She lay slumped against a wall, directly below the main oxygen shut-off valves outside one of the major trauma rooms. Her head was bowed low, her shoulders rolled forward as if she’d hunched over to protect herself from the flames. Her clothes and skin were blackened and cracked, and her dark hair was gone, but Ethan knew—he wasn’t sure how, but he was absolutely certain—that it was her. It had to be her.

“Anna?” Ethan whispered.

He pushed away from the counter and slowly moved toward the damaged body. His feet felt as if they were dragging along the tiles, scraping forward with all the reluctance he felt in his body. He completely forgot about Nikola’s presence as he reached the woman. He dropped heavily to his knees, eyes wide, and his gun clattered to the tiles as he tilted his head to look into the woman’s face.

Ethan wasn’t one hundred percent positive that it was her. Not at first. Not from this angle and not with her skin so blackened and burned. He leaned farther down and braced his hand against the charred tile. Then he saw it. From this vantage point, there was no doubt in his mind that it was her.

“Oh fuck, Anna,” Ethan whispered, heartbroken. He closed his eyes as the pain of certainty washed over him. He reached out as if to touch her face, but his hand stopped inches away from her and dropped to the tile floor. “Jesus, why couldn’t you have just stayed home?” he asked, though he knew he wouldn’t get an answer.

“Is this … this is Anna?” Nikola asked softly. Ethan opened his eyes but didn’t look at the girl as she knelt on the other side of Anna. Her blue eyes were on him, and he could feel the worry and concern in them. He drew in a breath, coughing as soot tried to choke him. Then he nodded and rubbed his face.

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s her,” he confirmed.

“How can you tell?”

Ethan gave a helpless shrug. “It’s hard to explain,” he said. “I just know. I’m absolutely positive. It’s her.”

Nikola fell blessedly silent after that, and Ethan shot her a quick grateful look before he turned his attention back to Anna. He wasn’t sure what to do. He and Anna had discussed their final wishes with each other a year after they had married. Anna had told him at the time that she wanted to be cremated. Ethan had been against it; his upbringing had always dictated a gravesite and monument, and the thought of his beautiful wife burned to ashes had always disturbed him. It had been a small source of contention between them for the better part of a week. How odd, Ethan reflected, that in death, Anna had gotten almost exactly what she’d wanted.

“Maybe we should find something to cover her with,” Nikola suggested. Ethan didn’t answer her right away. Instead, he forced himself to shift, to put one foot against the ground in preparation to stand.

As Ethan rose, a faint glimpse of gold around Anna’s neck shone in the light from his flashlight. Ethan leaned in to get a closer look and realized that it was the locket that he’d given her for Christmas. It was partially melted and covered in soot and other things that Ethan didn’t want to consider. But as his eyes landed on it, he decided right then that he had to take it with him. He glanced at Nikola as she started into the major trauma room next to them.

“Be careful,” Ethan warned her. She nodded and waved a hand at him, and he leaned farther over Anna’s body.

The locket’s chain was partially melted, and Ethan was forced to break it to get the jewelry off of Anna’s body. Once the locket was in his palm, he turned it over and studied it. He remembered the expression on his wife’s face when she’d opened the box on Christmas morning. He blinked rapidly to clear his eyes of tears and used his thumb to wipe the dirt and ashes from the damaged gold before he gripped it tightly in his fist.

“Here.” Nikola reappeared at Ethan’s elbow and offered him the edge of a torn white sheet that wasn’t too badly burned. He accepted it with a grateful smile. Together, they shook the sheet out and laid it over Anna’s remains.

Nikola stood beside Ethan in silence as they stared at the white-shrouded figure lying against the wall. Ethan gripped the flashlight tighter and rubbed his fingers over the locket in his hand. Everything was quiet and still. Thankfully, there were no signs of any of the infected nearby. Perhaps they had moved on to other areas with more potential for prey.