The Becoming: Ground Zero (33 page)

Cade caught the keys with a grin and straddled the bike smoothly. She slid the key into the ignition and adjusted herself on the seat. Before she could turn the key to start the engine and check the fuel levels, however, Remy let out a shout of surprise that brought the rest of them around. Remy pointed to something behind them, and Cade twisted around even farther. She gasped loudly at the sight of a group of infected lurching toward them. Some moved quicker than others, as was typical of the groups they’d faced over the past year. They had every appearance of being the prior office staff of the building they were in. All were, naturally, intent on the survivors’ positions.

“Fuck! Brandt! Let’s go!” Cade shouted. She wrenched the key, and the motorcycle roared to life between her thighs. She could hear the others do the same over the sound of her own bike’s engine.

“How the hell do we get out of here?” Ethan yelled. Cade heard his gun fire, and she looked in time to see one of the infected drop next to Ethan’s bike. The man was too close to Ethan for Cade’s comfort, and she swallowed hard and slid her eyes rapidly across the room, looking for options. It didn’t take her long to settle on one.

“Leave that shit to me,” Cade said confidently. She lifted her rifle and rested it against her shoulder, aiming at the large glass windows in front of them. She fired three bullets into the glass; it cracked but didn’t shatter like she’d thought it would. “Fuck!” she snarled.

“It’s okay! Get moving!” Brandt yelled. He leaped onto a motorcycle of his own, even as Remy fired two shots into the approaching infected. He revved the engine, gripping the handlebars tightly and eyeing the window in front of him. Cade’s eyes widened as she realized Brandt’s intention. He didn’t even know how to drive a bike!

“Brandt! No!” Cade yelled. Her cry was swallowed by the sound of Brandt gunning the motorcycle’s engine. The back tire squealed on the slick floor, seeking purchase as Brandt rammed the bike forward. He sped toward the window, and at the last second, he flung himself from the bike and rolled across the floor. The motorcycle’s front tire came into contact with the window, and the glass exploded outward as the bike slammed through it and crashed to the pavement outside. Glass fell like rain as Brandt rolled up onto one knee, his gun already out and aimed at a well-dressed infected woman scrambling toward him. Ethan and Remy revved their engines, but unimpeded by the glass, they sped out through the newly created exit in the building’s showcase windows.

Cade fired at the infected, trying to slow their progress as Brandt gained his feet and sprinted to her. Most of her shots missed, but a few struck home, slicing through limbs and shoulders and torsos. Cade revved the engine of her own bike and gritted her teeth. “Get the fuck on,” she ordered Brandt, raising her voice over the engine. Brandt gave Cade a mock salute before climbing onto the bike behind her. Cade suddenly felt the urge to slap him across the back of the head as she raced into the parking lot, skidding on broken glass and gravel.

Gray and Avi climbed aboard Remy and Ethan’s motorcycles as Cade and Brandt caught up to the others in the parking lot. “You guys ready?” Cade asked, slowing down and stopping beside them. They nodded in answer, Remy’s nod a determined one and Ethan’s barely perceptible. Gray didn’t respond at all; he just stared straight ahead and held tightly to Remy’s waist. Cade wondered if he was going into shock over the day’s traumatic events. She wouldn’t have blamed him if he did; anybody with half a heart would have fallen apart at the horrific loss of someone so close to them.

She straightened her shoulders and looked back at Brandt; he stared at the motorcycle dealership, his gun still in hand, one arm looped firmly around Cade’s waist. A couple of the infected remained at the edge of the window, negotiating the broken glass littering the frame. Brandt raised his gun and took aim, firing two shots. Both of the figures in the window dropped to the ground. Cade was impressed. “Now that you’re done acting like some big tough action star, which way are we supposed to go?”

Brandt snorted and pointed in the direction in which he wanted her to drive. Cade nodded and turned the motorcycle. “We’re going to have to move fast,” Brandt called in her ear. “The noise of the bikes is going to attract a lot of unwanted attention. We’ve got to ditch them before we get to Atlanta.”

Cade nodded and checked Brandt’s grip on her waist. Then she signaled to the others, and the tiny convoy of three motorcycles headed down the highway toward the most dangerous city in America.

The group’s arrival in Atlanta wasn’t met with fanfare or celebration or even the instantaneous death Brandt had come to expect. Instead, they walked into the city unimpeded for nearly half an hour before they stopped in the middle of an intersection. Brandt took a careful look around them, attempting to negotiate his view of the street around the cars and trucks and vans parked all around him, even as he tried his best to guard the others’ backs. Brandt frowned deeply and squinted at the restaurants and shops surrounding them, trying to get his bearings.

Brandt and the others had driven the motorcycles as far into Atlanta as they dared. Now they stood at the Y created by Highway 8 and Hollywood Road. Brandt held his hand out to Ethan. “Let me see the map,” he said, wiggling his fingers impatiently.

Ethan quickly handed the crumpled paper over, and Brandt scanned the surface. “We’re right here,” he announced, pointing to the map. The wind ruffled the paper, bending it over itself, and Brandt let out a sigh and flattened it out again. The others leaned over his shoulders to look for themselves. “We’re not too far from where we need to go. Maybe five miles. If we hurry, we can make it in an hour and a half, maybe two, assuming we don’t run into any trouble. Which I can almost guarantee you we will.” Brandt looked to them each in turn and added, “It’s just a matter of what
kind
of trouble we run into.”

“Any trouble is bad trouble,” Ethan added solemnly. Brandt looked at him. The older man stared down the road, squinting into the distance over the tops of the vehicles. Brandt could almost guess Ethan’s thoughts. Their destination might have been only five miles away, but that five miles could easily mean the difference between blessed salvation and bloody death. Brandt suddenly wished they’d kept the motorcycles, if only to get to the Tabernacle that much faster, but the noise would have brought the entire city down on them quicker than anything else.

Remy tapped Brandt’s arm and pointed off the side of the road wordlessly. Brandt followed her hand to a marketplace and noticed a significant amount of movement to the side of the building. It looked suspiciously like the infected, or at least enough so that it made Brandt’s stomach turn over. He shoved the map back at Ethan for safekeeping and motioned for the others to follow him. “Come on. We’ve got to move. We’re killing time here, and the longer we stay in one spot, the higher the chances someone or some
thing
will see us.”

Brandt took Cade’s elbow as they started down the street, leaning in close to speak so that only she could hear. “Keep your eyes open, you hear me?” he ordered. She gave him an incredulous look, but he pressed on regardless. “I don’t want to dig you out of a hole, literally
or
figuratively. I want us to get to Luckie as fast as we can move, and I want us all to get there together and in one piece.”

Cade let out a slow breath and nodded, hefting her rifle to get a better grip on it. “I’m not new to this type of picnic, Brandt,” she replied. “I learned urban street fighting a long time ago in the IDF. I think I can handle this.” She pushed her bangs out of her eyes and asked, “Should we leapfrog?” She leaned away from him to keep her eyes on the area around them.

“That might be a good idea,” Brandt said with a nod of his own. “You and I will be on point. I’ll go first. Let Ethan and the others know what we’re doing.”

Brandt moved ahead of the group to the center of the street, between two rows of cars, and lifted his rifle in a firing position. He heard Remy ask what was going on, but he continued on his way. He stopped about twenty yards out in front of the rest of the group and scanned the street ahead. There were no signs of anything coming toward them. Brandt glanced back at the others and saw Cade positioning herself ten yards behind him. He smiled slightly. She seemed so in sync with him now that it was almost ridiculous. They worked well together, and it was all he could hope that they’d be in tune enough to be alert to any dangers coming after them. Then again, the whole damn city was one massive danger as far as Brandt was concerned. The sooner they got to the Tabernacle and pleaded their case for help, the better.

Brandt turned in either direction and then signaled to Cade. He stayed in place as she moved forward ten yards past him and checked out the surroundings there. The others followed in their wake, well versed in the method they used to travel through larger cities: Brandt and Cade taking turns in the lead and Ethan and Remy guarding the rest of the group. It was a method they’d developed when they went into areas congested with the infected to help out people stuck in bad situations, and it was the best method they’d developed yet. Even in Atlanta, which seemed like an entirely different world to Brandt, he felt it was the method they should stick with.

“I’ve hardly seen anything at all,” Cade said to Brandt as she passed him on her way to the lead almost half an hour later. They were, by his calculations, nearing Marietta Street, one of the busier thoroughfares in the downtown area. He figured they’d undoubtedly begin to run into serious trouble in that area. This close to the epicenter of the Michaluk Virus, though, they should’ve been seeing at least
some
infected. Instead, so far, Brandt had seen nothing. He caught Cade’s elbow to stop her as she moved to pass him.

“I haven’t seen anything either,” Brandt replied. “It’s weird. There should be fucking infected all over the damn place. They should be practically pouring out of the fucking woodwork, especially with fresh blood nearby.”

“What’s going on up there?” Ethan called. Brandt turned to glare at Ethan and motioned with his hand for Ethan to keep his voice down.

“Shut the fuck up,” Brandt hissed for good measure before looking back to Cade. Her eyes were wide and visibly worried. “Something doesn’t feel right about this,” Brandt admitted to her, his voice hushed and tight with stress. “Something just isn’t right about it, but I can’t put my fucking finger on it.” He let out a frustrated breath, running a hand through his hair. “There should at least be … I don’t know,
bodies
.”

Cade tightened her fingers on her rifle. “Yeah, with what you told me, this place should be crawling with infected.”

“Shouldn’t be able to move ten damned yards without running into one,” Brandt agreed.

Remy jogged to them as Brandt spoke. She was breathless, and a faint sheen of sweat decorated her forehead and the sides of her face. She looked concerned as she asked Brandt, “What is going on?”

“We were just—” Cade started.

“Have you seen anything?” Brandt interrupted, putting a hand up to stop Cade and turning his attention to Remy. He frowned as he waited on Remy’s answer, relying on Cade to keep an eye on their surroundings as he tried to gather information.

Remy blinked and jerked her head back as if she’d been struck. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“Anything? Anything at all?” Brandt persisted, his voice taking on a note of urgency. “Movement? Any infected? Any survivors? Animals? Birds? Fucking dogs or
anything?
Anything at all?”

Remy shook her head slowly in response to Brandt’s rapid-fire questions, sucking her bottom lip between her teeth. “No. No, none of us have.” She snorted slightly. “Fuck, you’d think you
wanted
us to run into something, Brandt,” she tried to joke. “Didn’t you know I’m the only one allowed to hope for that kind of shit?”

“No, I don’t exactly want us to,” Brandt said firmly. He ran a hand through his hair and blew out a heavy breath. “We were just talking about how there doesn’t seem to be any—”

A loud pop snapped out from somewhere nearby. The sound echoed off the buildings and street and magnified as it bounced off brick façades and back at them. Brandt blinked and turned his eyes to Cade. Her own eyes were wider than ever as she stared up at him.

“Was that … was that what I
think
it was?” Brandt asked.

Before Cade could reply, another pop rang out. Ethan and Gray let out a shout. Brandt whirled around, lifting his rifle instinctively to his shoulder, and aimed it behind him, prepared to take out any infected that approached. He stopped just in time to see Avi stagger forward a step, a shocked expression on her face, before she tumbled face down to the pavement. She lay on the black asphalt, unmoving. Blood began to pool beneath her body.

“Jesus Christ,” Brandt gasped. His brain raced to catch up with his eyes, struggling to process the presence of blood, the lack of life in Avi’s body, the sound of gunshots that had reached their ears.

Remy too seemed to finally comprehend what had happened. “Avi!” she shouted, starting to run toward the blond woman’s body. Two more shots rang out. Brandt lunged forward and caught Remy by her bicep, propelling her in the opposite direction.