Jessica Meigs - The Becoming (15 page)

“What?” Something in Ethan’s tone made Brandt pause in his work. He half-turned away from the door to look at the other man. Ethan’s voice was hard and cold, and he crossed his arms as he glared at them both. “Absolutely
not
. You’re not opening that door,” he said with a firm shake of his head.

As Ethan spoke, Brandt ground his teeth together in frustration. He wordlessly turned his back to the man, attacking the boards again as Cade debated with Ethan. It was better to let Cade handle the verbal part of the argument; if Ethan pushed the matter with him, Brandt might not have been able to resist the urge to turn around and hit the man across the jaw with the crowbar.

It was never a good thing for Brandt to get pissed off when he had a potentially deadly weapon in his hands. Things never turned out very well.

“Ethan, we can’t leave them out there!” Cade protested as Brandt ripped a board from the doorframe viciously. He glanced back again and saw Cade sling her rifle’s strap over her shoulder, resting the weapon against her back. He wondered if she too was trying to resist the urge to inflict bodily harm on Ethan. “It’s not right!” she continued. “They need help, and we can give it to them!”

“What kind of help can we offer them, Cade?” Ethan demanded. He started across the living room toward the woman, and Brandt felt a pang of irrational nervousness at the thought of Ethan going at Cade. “
None.
We’re not in control of anything here! Our supplies are limited. We’re barely hanging on as it is. It’s just too fucking dangerous to open that door!”

“Ethan Bennett, I can
not
believe you’re suggesting that we leave people out there when we can offer them shelter and survival!” Cade snapped back. “If we leave them to die, we’re just as bad as those fucking infected
things
out there!”

A silence fell between them as Cade spoke those words. It was a heavy silence, and Brandt could feel the weight of it resting on his shoulders. The final board came free from the doorframe, effectively removing the only major barricade keeping any infected out of their safe house. Brandt dropped the board onto the floor and unlocked the deadbolt. He grabbed the doorknob with one hand and held the crowbar in the other to serve as a weapon before he looked over his shoulder at the two friends. They stood less than a foot away from each other, Ethan’s arms still crossed and Cade’s hands on her hips, their eyes locked like lasers onto each other’s faces and their expressions set in hard determination and anger.

“Debate is over,” Brandt said simply, interrupting their staring match. “Is either one of you going to give me some backup, or am I going to have to handle this alone?”

The question was enough to drag them both away from their tense scowls. Cade pulled her rifle from over her shoulder with a quick shake of her head. “I’ve got it, since Ethan’s being a jerk about this,” she snapped as she strode to the door. She gave Brandt a small smile, despite her obvious annoyance. “I’ll stand guard on the porch while you go get ‘em. You run faster than I do.”

“Oh, is that the only reason for me to be saddled with the harder job?” Brandt joked. He hefted the crowbar and made his way out to the porch, the woman close behind him, and scanned their surroundings. Brandt didn’t see any immediate dangers, but that didn’t mean they were safe, not by a long shot.

&ldquoYes,” Cade answered with a little laugh. “Go get ‘em, tiger.” She gave him a playful punch on his bicep as she spoke, and Brandt couldn’t resist giving her a grin. She looked more relaxed and less angry than she had when she’d faced off with Ethan, and Brandt was grateful. The last thing he wanted to deal with was an angry Cade.

The porch steps creaked under his boots as only old wooden steps could, sending a chill down his spine and making his back tense. The sound made him think of ghosts and haunted houses. As if he needed anything else to creep him out nowadays. He looked around the dead street as he crossed the yard, and the frown he wore deepened considerably. He couldn’t see the two men he and Cade had spotted from the roof. He was going to have to go out into the street itself to find them, and he did not relish the idea.

Brandt glanced back at Cade for reassurance. It was a bit comforting to see the skilled woman standing at attention on the porch, her icy blue eyes on the street, constantly scanning for dangers. Still, her presence didn’t do much to reduce the sense of exposure that settled on Brandt’s skin as he moved out into the center of the street. There was movement far in the distance to his right, and he wondered if it was a massing of infected several blocks away. The idea didn’t help his nerves.

The two men were nowhere to be seen. Perhaps they had found shelter in a nearby house in the span of time it had taken Brandt to get the front door open. Or perhaps they’d been grabbed by an infected person while Brandt had pried at the boards nailed to the doorframe.

“Brandt!” Cade called softly. Brandt turned to look at her, and she pointed to his left. He looked in the direction she indicated, and there were the two men, still limping away as fast as their obvious exhaustion would allow. In the time it had taken them to get outside the safe house, the men had made it half a block down and into the yard of one of the houses across the street.

Without any further thought, Brandt darted after them. He jogged to catch up as he called out just loudly enough to get their attention. “Hey! Hey, stop!”

The two men halted in mid-step, and the older, bulkier of the two let go of the thinner one to turn and point an old revolver right in Brandt’s face. He stood protectively between Brandt and the smaller man. Brandt immediately stopped short and held up both hands defensively. The crowbar dangled, useless, by the hook over the fingers of one hand.

“Who are you? What do you want?” the blond man demanded. His grip on the revolver was so tight his knuckles had paled, but Brandt barely noticed; his attention was focused squarely on the barrel of the gun. Its opening yawned at him.

“I am
so
tired of having guns pointed at me,” Brandt remarked as casually as he could. He forced his gaze away from the barrel and looked back behind him, though the training that had been hammered into his head over the years screamed at him that he shouldn’t take his eyes off of the dangers in front of him. He tried to ignore the little voice. “Look, I have a hideout over there,” Brandt said. He pointed to the house in question. Cade was just visible on the porch, her rifle in her hands, and Brandt knew that she must be tense and worried as she watched the exchange on the street. “Me and two of my friends. We’re trying to offer you some shelter.”

“Why? What’s in it for you?” the man asked. His voice was hard, and he had a steely glint in his blue eyes. Brandt glanced at the gun again. The barrel shook noticeably. This man wasn’t a killer; Brandt doubted that he would squeeze the trigger. Brandt focused his eyes past the gun and took in the full sight of the man for the first time in their encounter. The man’s outfit was, indeed, a type of uniform. He wore a dark button-up uniform shirt and dark pants, and sturdy boots adorned his feet. A gold nameplate on the right side of his chest labeled him as “Carter.” Brandt’s eyes lit onto the patches on his sleeves, finally able to get a good look at them, and a slow smile spread across his face.

“Nothing. Just the idea of additional security and helping other people,” Brandt finally answered. He nodded toward Carter respectfully. “And perhaps your skills as a paramedic would come in handy too, in case we have any injuries or illnesses that we can’t cope with ourselves.”

The man hesitated; he looked as if he were torn between the decision to go with Brandt and the decision for him and his friend to find their own hiding place. As he debated, Cade called out to Brandt from the porch again. This time, her voice held a note of warning.

“Brandt, there’s infected coming this way!”

Brandt swore and lifted the crowbar defensively as he turned away from Carter. His dark eyes scanned the street around them in every direction. He couldn’t see any infected coming at them from anywhere. “Where? Where are they?”

Cade didn’t answer. Instead, she lifted her rifle and pointed it down the yard toward the empty house next to their safe house, in the opposite direction from Brandt’s position. She aimed at something Brandt couldn’t see, but the fact that she aimed her rifle at all was a solid indicator that something was about to go horribly wrong.

“Shit, if she’s actually about to fire that thing, it’s fucking serious,” Brandt said out loud. He grabbed Carter by the arm without a moment of consideration for the fact that the man had a gun pointed at him. He motioned to the brunette man, who had yet to say a word. “Come on, we’ve got to go!”

Thankfully, the two men didn’t question Brandt’s order. As Brandt moved toward the house, his battered combat boots hurrying over the pavement and then the sidewalk, the men followed him to the front porch. Cade waited at the head of the porch steps, her rifle still aimed down the street. Brandt realized that she was lining up a shot, and he sucked in a breath.

“No, don’t!” Brandt gasped as he stormed up the steps. He stopped behind Cade and motioned with the crowbar for the two men to enter the house. They bolted into the dark interior without question. “The sound of the gunshot will only draw them here.”

Cade tensed visibly and removed her finger from the trigger she’d already begun to squeeze. She nodded toward the neighbor’s yard. “They’re moving between the trees,” she said. “Hiding behind them and anything else available. Cars, fences, bushes, trash cans, whatever. They’re working to keep me from seeing them. They might be working together. Strategizing or some shit.”

Brandt caught Cade by the arm and propelled her toward the front door. “We’ll discuss this inside,” he said softly as she moved past him. He let go of her arm and followed her inside.

The younger of the two men had sat down on the edge of the coffee table, and Carter dumped the heavy bag onto the floor and knelt in front of him. Brandt’s ears registered the sound of the younger man’s breathing. It was hard and fast, his inhalations deep and wheezy; it was obvious the man was in some form of respiratory distress. Brandt wondered if he should offer to help, but the opened front door suggested otherwise. He shut and bolted the door, grabbed the nail gun, and set to work reapplying the boards he’d pried from the door. Brandt would leave the medical problems to those who knew better than he how to handle them.

“Who are you?” Ethan demanded over the loud thump of the nail gun slamming the last nail home. Brandt set the tool down on the floor and moved into the living room. Brandt was sure that if Ethan maintained the same attitude he’d had before the front door opened, there was going to be trouble.

Ethan stood in the center of the living room, his arms crossed over his chest in the familiar pose he’d taken on every time he got irritated. There was a hard look on his face as he stared down at Carter, who still knelt on the floor by the coffee table. Cade hovered by the darkened fireplace, her rifle in her hands, her shoulders straight as her wary gaze shifted back and forth between Ethan and the two men. It was obvious to Brandt that Cade didn’t know how to handle the tension in the air between the men. Truth be told, neither did Brandt.

“My name is Theo Carter,” the older of the strangers said as he rubbed his companion’s back soothingly. “This is my brother, Gray.” He didn’t add anything further as he started to unzip the bulging blue bag at his feet.

Ethan pulled his gun from its holster and pointed it at Theo. The man halted his motion, freezing and looking up at Ethan with narrowed eyes. “Is he infected?” Ethan asked sternly as he motioned toward Gray with the gun. Theo’s eyes went cold and angry, hard as diamonds, and he clenched his hands into fists.

“What the hell?” Theo said in exasperation. “
No,
he’s not infected! He’s got fucking asthma, and he needs his damned inhaler before he suffocates!”

Brandt had to take control of this situation before things spiraled out of hand. “Ethan, cut it out,” he ordered as he moved into the living room. Ethan’s bad mood had gone on long enough, and it was time either he or Cade reined it in. Brandt grabbed Theo’s bag from the floor before the paramedic could get into it, and dumped its contents onto the coffee table beside Gray. “You’ll excuse me if I search this thing, won’t you?” he asked. “Just as a precaution.”

Brandt didn’t bother to wait for a reply as he started to push around the pile of objects on the table. The bag had been packed with an assortment of first aid supplies, both the basic bandages and medical tape and the more advanced syringes and medications as well as a strange metal contraption in a blue canvas roll. Brandt thought it resembled some sort of medieval torture device; it was definitely not something he would want used on him. “What’s this?” he asked as he held it up.

“It’s a laryngoscope,” Theo said shortly. He snatched the inhaler to which he’d referred out of the pile and passed it to Gray without further elaboration.

“Ah.” Brandt set the roll back inside the bag. He was still completely lost as to what exactly a laryngoscope was. Rather than continue to contemplate the object, he looked up at Ethan. The older man still glared at Theo; it was obvious that Ethan was far from happy about having additional people in their safe house. Brandt wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea either; however, he was far from willing to abandon others to the dangerous streets when he could offer them help. He stood, leaving Theo’s supplies, and moved closer to Ethan in case he did something stupid. Considering how unstable the man had acted over the past few weeks, Brandt wouldn’t have put it past him. And since Ethan seemed less inclined to take charge of the situation than usual, Brandt decided to do it himself, even though the last thing he wanted to do was be in charge of anything.

“My name is Brandt Evans,” he began. He paused as he debated telling the two men his rank and where he was from. But then he shook his head slightly and added, “I’m military. Marines. The cranky bastard to my right is Ethan Bennett from the Memphis PD.” He smirked as he dodged the swipe Ethan made at him and took a quick step to the side, out of Ethan’s reach. “And the lovely but deadly lady over by the fireplace is Cade Alton, formerly of the Israel Defense Forces.”