The Becoming (7 page)

Once on the ground floor, Ethan went to the front window and looked out. He couldn’t see much, but he could just make out the sound of gunfire from somewhere down the street, accompanied by screams. Even as he watched, a man ran down the street, chased by two other men, both as befouled with blood as Andrew and Josie were. Ethan swallowed hard and took a hesitant step back from the window.

“What is it?” Cade pressed. “Can you see anything?”

Ethan looked back at Cade. She stood beside him in a protective stance, the Glock she’d lifted from his house pointed up the staircase at her boyfriend.
Her
former
boyfriend,
Ethan mentally corrected. He had his doubts as to whether the man was even still alive anymore, though an explanation as to why a dead man would be attempting to stumble his way down the stairs wasn’t exactly forthcoming.

“I think we need to get into the basement,” Ethan said. He grabbed Cade’s arm and tugged gently, hooking his fingers around her elbow. “As soon as we can.”

Cade took a few steps back in the direction Ethan guided her. Her eyebrows rose at the uncertainty in his voice. “What is it? What did you see?”

“Just go!” Ethan snapped. He pushed her toward the kitchen’s entryway. “Do what I said! Get in the basement! I’ll catch up with you in a minute!”

Cade took a step away from Ethan and looked at him, wide-eyed. In all the time Ethan had known her, he’d never raised his voice at her like that. Ethan couldn’t imagine what Cade was thinking as she nodded and moved toward the kitchen.

Ethan didn’t wait for Cade to disappear into the basement before he lifted his gun. He aimed it up the stairway, directly at Andrew’s head. “Sorry, man,” he said softly before he depressed the trigger.

The man at the top of the stairs staggered backwards at the bullet’s impact. He fell back as the top of his head exploded onto the wall behind him in a shower of blood and gore. The blood oozed slowly over the paint, already partially congealed as it sprayed the wall.

Ethan shifted the aim of his gun as a small figure appeared at the top of the stairs and stumbled over Andrew’s fallen body. He swallowed hard, but he couldn’t bring himself to squeeze the trigger again. He shook his head and turned on his heel, fleeing to the kitchen.

Cade waited for Ethan near the basement door, despite Ethan’s orders for her to get into the basement. Ethan made a face at her and pushed her firmly toward the basement door. “I told you to get downstairs,” he said. He reached around her to the doorknob.

“What did you see?” Cade snapped back. She looked up at him and met his eyes. In that instant, Ethan knew that Cade knew what he’d just done. She caught his hand as it moved past her and gripped it tightly. He hesitated before he squeezed her hand in return.

“I’ll tell you when we get in the basement,” Ethan said. He swallowed hard and cleared his throat; it felt like a vice was slowly closing around it, strangling his words. He turned the doorknob and pushed the basement door open.

As a cool draft wafted up from the dark stairwell and blew strands of hair back from Cade’s face, the sound of glass breaking behind them drew their attention away from the dark rectangle in front of them. Ethan turned on his heel and shielded Cade with his body as the glass patio door slammed open and the glass shattered.

“Oh God,” Ethan gasped as a pale-skinned, shirtless older man lurched into the kitchen through the broken door. His face and torso were covered in blood—whose blood, Ethan couldn’t know—and a large wound in his bicep oozed wetly. Ethan pushed Cade gently backwards to the basement steps as he tried to move away from the man. “Get down there! Now!”

Cade stumbled down a few steps, but she turned to look back as Ethan joined her. He tried to close the door, but the pale man reached for them, his hand in the gap between the door and doorframe. His hand stretched, his mouth open in an angry, hungry snarl. Ethan had never seen such animalistic hatred in a human being’s eyes. Ethan braced his shoulder against the door and pushed with all his strength against the heavy man. Despite his attempts to shove the door shut, he could feel it give a couple of inches.

“Cade! Help!” Ethan yelped.

Cade darted to Ethan’s side in an instant. She lifted her gun and pointed it into the gap. The sound of the gunshot right next to Ethan’s head deafened him. He stumbled forward as the pressure against the door gave way. It closed with a loud slam and blanketed them in darkness. Ethan’s hand fumbled, seemingly of its own free will, for the door’s lock. He slid the bolt home with another gasp and sagged against the door. He struggled to catch the breath adrenaline had snatched away.

Footsteps thudded out above them, staggering and running through the kitchen and living room. Ethan found Cade’s hand, and he wrapped his arm around her as they guided each other down the stairs to the dark room below.

Hours slid by with barely a word between Ethan and Cade. Cade had spent most of the time huddled on a mothball-scented blanket underneath the basement stairs, keeping a wary eye on the door above. Ethan, for his part, had done everything he could think of to keep himself busy, primarily to keep his mind off the night’s horrific events. He had scrounged up a flashlight from a toolbox in the basement, and with the aid of the single light source, Ethan had begun to dig through boxes and crates in search of potential weapons. Something told him they were going to need anything they could find.

“Are we really going to get out of here?” Cade asked, her voice hollow with exhaustion.

“Out of Memphis?” Ethan asked. He pulled a hammer free from its tool kit and studied it before he set it down on the floor beside the box. “Yeah, we are. I just need to decide which way.”

Cade took two slow, deep breaths and looked out between two wooden steps. She stared across the dark basement to watch Ethan as he dug through the detritus of her time living in the house. Ethan shone his light toward her hiding place; her icy blue eyes were vacant as she stared in his direction. She gave a sudden decisive nod. “So what exactly are we going to do?” she asked. Her voice was oddly calm, and Ethan raised an eyebrow at how collected she suddenly sounded. “Are we just going to get out of here, pick up Anna, and take off?”

“That’s the idea,” Ethan confirmed. He took a hatchet out of a box and studied the edge of its blade, testing its sharpness. He set the weapon down on top of the toolbox with a metallic clang and joined Cade under the stairs. He settled down beside her and got as comfortable as the thin blanket on the concrete floor would allow.

“How bad do you think all this is?”

Cade’s eyes had shifted to the darkness in front of her, but she looked back at him as he spoke, raising an eyebrow. “I think you would know better than me, Eth,” she said softly. “You’re the one who was listening to the police scanner.”

“I know. I just … it’s so unbelievable, you know?” Ethan tried to explain. “I mean, how does something like this happen here? In Memphis? In
America?
”

Cade shook her head and looked down at her lap. Ethan followed her gaze and realized that she held her cell phone in her hand, punching buttons on its display with a slow, careful hand. “What makes you think America is immune to horrible things?” she asked once she looked up from the phone. “What makes America so special that she shouldn’t have to deal with tragedy?”

Ethan blew out a breath of frustration and shook his head. “It’s not that. I don’t think we’re special, at least not when it comes to bad things. I just figured there’d have been more warning is all. More talk of something happening here, maybe some lead-up to the riots. We don’t know anything about them! Are they political? Social? Economic? What’s going on? There hasn’t been anything resembling real unrest in Memphis, and now suddenly we’re just … completely immersed in it.”

Cade pressed her lips together, looking uncertain. “I don’t know. I hadn’t heard anything either. But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.” She paused and squinted at the display of the cell phone in her hand before she asked, “So what’s the plan? Where are we going to go?”

“I’m thinking Gadsden.”

“Gadsden?” Cade repeated, her tone uncertain. “Gadsden, Alabama?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.” Ethan wrapped an arm around Cade’s shoulders and gave her a gentle, affectionate squeeze. He rested his cheek against the top of her head as she relaxed against him, and it occurred to him that Cade was shell-shocked. She hadn’t been acting like the woman he’d known for seven years, the woman who had been so confident and assured, never letting anything bother her. He thought perhaps she was traumatized by what she’d seen that day. “My mother lives in Gadsden now, remember? I figure we can stay with her for a day or two. I tried calling her to let her know we’re coming, but I think the phone lines are still down.”

“I’m not sure your mom will appreciate three visitors showing up at her door without any notice,” Cade said. She disentangled herself from Ethan’s grip and stood. She stretched almost languidly, rolled her shoulders, and moved to the one unblocked window in the basement. She stood up on her toes to look out the window, fingers clinging to the edge of the windowsill for balance as she tried to check the street outside.

Ethan started to get up to follow Cade to the window, but something made him pause beside the stairs to watch her for a moment. He gripped the step beside him as his green eyes scanned the woman’s figure. Her dark hair hung loosely to her shoulders and shaded her olive-skinned face, and her blue eyes still shone with tears she would likely never shed. Cade had never been someone who wore her emotions on her sleeve, and before tonight, Ethan had never seen her show anything but cheerfulness. For the moment he watched her, Ethan thought that Cade was suddenly the perfect picture of sadness and melancholy, like her heart was slowly breaking. He swallowed hard as he considered everything Cade had been through that night, everything they
both
had been through. It was nothing short of traumatic. He’d never dealt with anything like it, and he had no idea what to do for Cade to help her cope with it either.

“I think Mom will be fine with it,” Ethan finally replied. He kept his voice low, his hand still gripping the wooden stair. “You know she likes you, and Anna and I haven’t been down to see her since before Halloween. Considering all the shit going on right now, I seriously doubt she’ll mind.”

Cade nodded and stepped away from the window. She turned to look at Ethan through the dim light of the flashlight he held and brushed her hair back from her face. “The sooner we get going, then, the better,” she said, her voice the steadiest Ethan had heard all night. “I don’t want to stay around this house any longer than absolutely necessary.”

The next morning dawned wetly, and the entire day followed suit. A chilly drizzle fell from the sky to dampen the pavement and grass. Cade stared vacantly into the haze and watched as evening crept closer, listening as Ethan banged around behind her and sorted through the mess in her basement. Cade could smell the faint tinge of smoke on the air from somewhere nearby, but she wasn’t sure where it was coming from. The only place she could be sure it
wasn’t
coming from was Ethan’s house, since she had a clear view of part of it from her window.

Sometime in the early evening, the noise behind Cade fell silent. “You okay over there?” Ethan asked quietly.

Cade didn’t bother to turn around. She folded her arms over her chest and kept her eyes on the window. “I don’t know,” she admitted. She sniffed again and rubbed at her nose, as if she could scrub away the scent of burning. “There’s something on fire,” she added.

Ethan jerked to attention at her words and joined her at the window. He gently nudged her aside so he could look out for himself. Ethan’s bright green eyes studied the slip of yard and street that could be seen from the small vantage point the basement window allowed them. “I don’t see anything,” he said. His voice held an obvious note of frustration.

“Yeah, I just smell it,” Cade admitted. She leaned against the wall and studied Ethan in the dimming room. “Do you think it’s safe?”

“Safe?” Ethan repeated.

Cade motioned to the wooden staircase leading to the basement’s lone exit. “Safe to go out.”

“Honestly? I don’t know,” he said. He stepped away from the window and moved to the foot of the staircase, his eyes locked on the door. “But really, there’s no way
to
know unless we go out, right?”

“We can’t stay down here forever,” Cade acknowledged. She pressed a hand to her stomach as an odd, churning rumble started in her gut, born of nervousness and even a small inkling of fear. She hadn’t felt fear—
real
fear—in years, not since…

Cade shook her head in an attempt to jar her mind away from the thoughts of war and violence and death that threatened to emerge. Those thoughts would only distract her from her immediate goal: to get her and Ethan out of this house in one piece.

Ethan watched Cade, his eyes large and concerned. He took a slow step toward her and made a strange gesture with his hand, as if he were trying to decide what to do with it. It fell to hang loosely at his side. He asked again, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” Cade said. She swallowed hard and squared her shoulders to steel herself, then moved past Ethan to the stairs. It took her only a moment to retrieve her blue duffel bag and the case containing her rifle from under the stairs where she’d left them.