The Becoming (Book 4): Under Siege Read online

  “What’s it matter to you what I was doing outside the wall?” Remy snapped back. She was pale and sweaty and covered in blood. Her eyes had a crazed look when she stepped toward Cade. “I came back, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, and it looks like you brought a fucking party with you!” Cade jabbed her finger toward the wall. “Where the hell did all those things come from, and what the fuck did you do to bring them here?”

  “You act like I planned that or something!” Remy yelled.

  “Well you sure as hell went outside when you’ve been told you can’t!”

  Dominic stepped between the two women, putting his hands up in a placating gesture toward Cade. “Calm down—”

  “Don’t you fucking tell me to calm down!” Cade interrupted. “This is halfway your fault! You two have probably singlehandedly caused the fall of this entire fucking community because you left when I told you not to!”

  “I don’t get what the big fucking deal is!” Remy said. She shoved past Dominic to get to Cade.

  As Remy carried on, the sound of running feet met Cade’s ears. She half turned to see Ethan and Kimberly jogging toward them from the main house, Ethan moving a bit sluggishly and Kimberly adjusting her own pace to match his. Cade’s heart leaped at the sight of Ethan up and about again, and she swallowed hard to keep her emotions from spilling over.

  Bloody pregnancy hormones. She’d cut off her right arm before she let herself get knocked up again.

  Ethan’s presence diffused the tension between Remy and Cade. Ethan stopped beside Cade, but his eyes met Remy’s. They stared at each other for a long moment. Then Remy broke away, shaking her head in disgust as she backed up a few steps. “I’m going to go clean up,” she muttered, heading for the medical house.

  Dominic gave the gathered residents one last look. “I’m going to check her over for injuries,” he said. He jogged to catch up as she hurried away. Ethan watched her go for a moment before turning to Cade and Brandt. His eyes scanned over the two newcomers and then shifted to the wall. Kimberly nodded and climbed Keith’s platform to get a look at the problem. “What the hell’s going on? We heard gunshots.”

  “Infected,” Cade told him. “A literal shit-ton of them. I think Remy and Dominic led them here.”

  “Well fuck.” He looked away from Cade to the two survivors again and asked, “Who are they?”

  “I was just about to find that out,” Cade said. She turned to them and gave them a pointed look.

  The young woman stepped up. “My name is Sadie O’Dell,” she said. “This is my twin brother Jude. A man named Joseph told us to come here after we ran into him.”

  “Where’s Joseph now?” Brandt asked.

  “Dead, I think,” Sadie said. “He and the guys that were with him saved us from the infected that were in Hollywood. There were…well, a lot. As you saw.” She motioned toward the wall and added, “We showed them to Dominic and Remy when we met them on the road. They said they were from Woodside and that they’d bring us here.”

  “So where did all the infected come from?”

  “We’re not sure,” Sadie answered. “They were massed in Hollywood. Something’s gotten them stirred up, but we’re not sure what. Dominic thinks it might have to do with the roads being cleared—”

  “Wait, what?” Brandt interrupted, holding up a hand to stop her. “The roads are being cleared? What are you talking about?”

  “The major highways between Hollywood and Charleston are being cleared out,” Sadie explained. “Your friend Dominic thinks a tank or something like it is doing it. We think the military might be behind it. Anyway, whatever is going on with the highway is, I think, stirring the infected up in a big way. They’ve started traveling in these massive groups, like flocks of birds. I think they caught wind of us and followed us here. And I’m so sorry about that.”

  “Aw hell,” Brandt muttered, and Cade saw his jaw tense as he closed his eyes. She put a hand on his arm and leaned close to murmur in his ear.

  “Maybe we should deal with these two later,” she suggested. “We’ve got bigger, more immediate problems at the moment.”

  Brandt looked at her, and she could see the doubt and conflict in his eyes as he tried to decide what to do. She didn’t blame him for his uncertainty; this was the first major event he’d been in charge of since Woodside’s establishment. Even Cade felt the weight of responsibility for the fifty-plus people living under their watch. A wrong step now could cost them dearly. She blew out a breath and finally made her own suggestion.

  “We should start emergency lockdown procedures,” she said. “Get everything nailed down, locked up, and secured.”

  Brandt nodded and turned on his heel to issue orders. “Keith!” he called to the watch captain still on the platform above them. When the man peered over the edge, he continued. “We’re going into lockdown. I need you to keep an eye on what goes on outside that fence. If anything changes, use the two-way to let me know.” Then he raised his voice to address the group who’d turned out at the sound of the whistle and the gunfire. “The community is in lockdown. This is not a drill. Everyone needs to return to their homes, bar all doors and windows on the first floor, and arm yourselves as necessary. I need all heads of households to do a headcount and make a list of all present in their houses. In an hour, someone will be by to collect those lists. Once they’ve been collected, you’re to keep everything locked up tight. No one in or out. Are we clear?”

  The crowd murmured its confirmations and began to spread out, moving to collect their family members and friends and follow through with Brandt’s orders.

  Cade turned her attention to Ethan and the newcomers. Sadie still stood guardedly by her brother, but the longer she stood there, the more Cade could see the exhaustion in her eyes. She nodded toward Sadie as she said to Ethan, “Eth, why don’t you and Kimberly take these two to the house, get them something to eat, and let Doc take a look at them?”

  Ethan nodded and called out, “Kim! Get down from there and help me out, would you?” Then he said to Cade in a low voice, “I’ll talk to them too and see if I can find out more information about what happened out there.”

  “Yeah, you’re good at that kind of thing,” Cade agreed. She turned away from him to join Brandt. “What do you need me to do?”

  Brandt barely glanced at her as he strode deeper into the community. “I need you to get in the house and lock the doors,” he said.

  Cade gritted her teeth as irritation rolled over her in a wave. “Brandt, seriously,” she insisted. “What do you need me to do?”

  Brandt stopped and faced her, his eyes dark with worry. Cade squared her shoulders because she knew she wouldn’t like whatever he had to say. “Look, you’re pregnant, and—”

  “And I thought we agreed that we weren’t going to treat me like I’m made of glass,” Cade snapped back as her suspicions were confirmed. “I may be pregnant, but I’m still more than capable of properly aiming a firearm, as I just demonstrated less than ten minutes ago.”

  Brandt sighed and ran a hand through his dark hair. “Cade, babe…look, it’s nothing to do with you or your abilities, okay? I know you’re perfectly capable of dealing with just about anything anyone throws at you.”

  “So what is the deal, then?” Cade demanded.

  “My paranoia is the deal,” Brandt admitted. “You know how I am about you. Ever since what Alicia did…” His voice cracked, and he shook his head. “I couldn’t stand it, okay? I’m not going to let anything happen to you if I can help it. So you’ll have to excuse me if I occasionally ask you to do things you don’t like or don’t agree with out of my never-ending paranoia that you’re going to end up dead because of my carelessness.”

  “You can’t protect me from everything, Brandt,” Cade said, softening the irritation in her voice. She couldn’t be angry with him for that; Atlanta was a sore subject with him—with all of them. All he had to say was “Atlanta” and she would have understood.

  �
��No, but I can damn well try.” He sighed and rubbed his hand over his hair again. “Look, just…stick close to me, okay? Give me at least that much in the way of peace of mind. Maybe you can give me a hand with rounding up stragglers and getting them into their homes.”

  “Good enough for me,” Cade said, settling onto the new task. “I sent Ethan back to the house with Kimberly.”

  “Is that where those two kids went?” Brandt asked, starting down the street in the vague direction of Dominic’s house.

  “They were hardly kids,” Cade replied as she followed him.

  “They looked younger than Remy, so that qualifies them as kids in my eyes,” Brandt said. “Speaking of Remy, that’s second on my list.”

  “What is?”

  “I’m going to find out how the hell she and Dominic got out of the community,” he said with determination. “Because while we were on that platform, Keith said he didn’t let them out the front gates. Clearly, they got out somehow, and I want to know how.”

  Chapter 13

  Ethan sat at the dining table in the main house, his hands folded on top of the table, watching as Sadie and Jude devoured every scrap of food he and Kimberly had put in front of them. The two kids ate the bowls of instant oatmeal with the zealousness of people who hadn’t had enough to eat in quite a while, which was why Kimberly was still digging around the kitchen, searching for more food that she could fix quickly. The twins—or rather, Sadie—had already recapped everything that had happened on their trip to Woodside, and now he watched them closely, stewing over the woman’s revelations as they ate.

  Ethan turned his eyes to Derek, who lurked in the doorway between the living room and kitchen, his arms crossed over his chest, his left shoulder resting against the doorframe as he too watched the new arrivals. Once Sadie pushed her bowl away, Derek straightened and stepped fully into the kitchen, his eyes searching the twins’ faces. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to the O’Dells privately,” he said, directing his words to Ethan.

  Ethan nodded and rose to his feet, beckoning to Kimberly. “Come on, let’s go wait on the porch,” he said, trying to ignore the wobble in his knees from over-exertion. The wobble wasn’t as bad as it had been when he’d first gotten out of bed; he was getting stronger with every passing hour, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

  Kimberly followed him toward the door. When Ethan stepped onto the porch, he realized that she wasn’t behind him; he glanced back to see her in the doorway, fidgeting as she scanned the yard. He gave her a curious look. “You okay?”

  “You do know we’re on lockdown, right?” Kimberly said as she stepped onto the porch, but she didn’t move closer to him right away. “We’re not supposed to be out here.”

  Ethan waved his hand dismissively and leaned against the porch railing. “I’m not worried about that,” he said. “I’ve got my Glock. That’s all I need. If something happens and it’s not enough, then I deserve whatever I get.”

  Kimberly leaned against the railing across from him, mimicking his stance. “I’m not sure I like your attitude,” she said. “It smacks of recklessness.”

  “No, recklessness is something Remy likes to indulge in,” Ethan replied. As soon as he said her name, he wished he hadn’t. It made him remember the stricken look she’d given him near the gates, the first time he’d seen her in months. He shoved it aside and continued. “Mine is more like confidence.”

  “Sometimes the two aren’t mutually exclusive,” Kimberly pointed out.

  Ethan didn’t respond, just patiently waited her out.

  “You aren’t worried that something will pop out of the woodwork and kill you?” she asked, tilting her head to look at him.

  He tried to imagine what she saw when she looked at him: his blonde hair still too long despite the haircut she’d given him; his eyes tired as he stared across the street to the house beyond; his thinness—too thin—and the beard he’d trimmed into something resembling a goatee but hadn’t completely shaved off. She probably thought he was hideous.

  She didn’t like him, not like he liked her. She blamed him, in part, for her sister Avi’s death. But he had to keep struggling to remember that fact. No, she couldn’t want him.

  But oh, how he wanted her to.

  “I’ve stopped worrying about the things that go bump in the night. When you come as close to death as I have, it tends to not scare you as much anymore. I’m not worried.” He shrugged and glanced at her before looking away and confessing in a low voice, “At least, not for my sake.”

  Kimberly raised an eyebrow, and he wanted to slap himself. Did he just admit to being worried about her? She probably thought it was because he felt he owed her a debt due to Avi’s death under his watch. He didn’t want her to think that.

  “So what did you drag me out here for, anyway?” she asked. “I know it wasn’t just to give the twins some privacy with Doc, and I know it wasn’t to wax poetical about death.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about what you saw out there.” Ethan motioned toward the wall.

  “What do you need to know?”

  “How many were there?” Ethan asked. “I know Cade said it was a literal shit-ton, but that doesn’t give me much of a picture of what we’re dealing with.”

  Kimberly stayed silent for several moments, tapping her fingers against the railing. “Five, maybe six hundred? Could be more, though.”

  Ethan’s eyes widened. A surge of horror mixed with surprise rolled through him. “Six hundred?” he repeated. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many in one place before, not even when the outbreak first started.” He paused, stewing over Kimberly’s news. “First or second stage?” he asked, thinking about the different stages of the virus and how some of the infected were reanimated dead and others weren’t. They’d taken to calling them “first stage,” for the infected who were still alive, and “second stage” for the ones that weren’t.

  “A mix,” Kimberly answered. “Mostly second, at about a sixty-forty split, at varying stages of decomposition.”

  “Shit,” Ethan muttered. “Anything else?”

  Kimberly bit her lip and hesitated. “There were more on the way, coming down the highway toward the community.”

  He muttered another swear, finally understanding why Cade had seemed so angry about the situation.

  “Eth, there’s no way we can take on that many. There aren’t enough of us. I’m not even sure there are that many bullets in the entire community, including the ones that Cade spent all that time making.”

  “Believe me, you’re not telling me anything I hadn’t already suspected,” Ethan admitted. He ran a hand through his hair before slamming his hand onto the porch railing. “Fuck, what are we going to do?”

  “I’m sure everything is going to be okay,” Kimberly said. “Everyone is doing the lockdown procedures that Brandt and Cade developed and taught them, and at least one person in each house has a firearm, and everyone has melee weapons. So long as the gates hold, I think we’ll be fine.”

  “No, we won’t be,” Ethan countered. He turned to face her, leaning his hip against the railing for support and crossing his arms over his chest. “Tell me, Kim. Have you ever heard of siege warfare?”

  “Vaguely, but I’m not sure what it is,” she said.

  “It’s when an invading force weakens its enemy by trapping them in their city or town or whatever,” Ethan explained. “They surround the place and cut them off from their supply lines. Then they just wait until the folks trapped in the city start running out of basic necessities, and then they go in and take them out while they’re at their weakest.” Ethan pressed the palms of both hands against his eyes, rubbing them before continuing. “The infected are the perfect siege weapon. They never get tired, they never get hungry, and once they’re aware that there are people in a particular location, they never give up. We are in a siege situation now, and I don’t think it’s one that we’re all going to survive.”

  Ethan regre
tted his words again as Kimberly’s eyes widened in horror.

  “We’re not going to panic,” he said, moving toward her and catching her wrists in his hands.

  Kimberly looked up at him, brown eyes wide, as she tried to gain control of herself. “What’s the plan? What are we going to do?”

  “You’ll have to ask Brandt those questions,” Ethan said, shaking his head. “I’m not in charge here. I haven’t been in charge since I stepped foot into Atlanta earlier this year. This show is Brandt’s now. I’m following his lead.”

  “I didn’t mean the group,” Kimberly said, pulling her wrists away from Ethan. She resumed her position against the porch railing, and he watched her closely, wondering what was on her mind. “I mean us. Me and you. What are we going to do?”

  Ethan was at a loss. What did she mean? He looked away from her, toward the medical house next door. He could feel her eyes on him as she waited for him to respond. One wrong step, he knew, would lead to heartache and disappointment.

  “Ethan?” she said again, her voice gentle. She touched his forearm, and he jerked his arm away. He hated himself for his response, and he cringed, digging his fingernails into the soft wood of the porch railing.

  “We don’t have to go back to the medical house, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said after a short silence, misreading his reaction. “I’m sure the others won’t mind if you stay here.”

  He glanced at Kimberly. “Are there even any free bedrooms in there?” He bobbed his head toward the house.

  “A couple,” Kimberly said.

  She sounded evasive, just enough to stir up old police interrogation instincts that had long lain dormant. He turned to face her, and a tiny smile quirked at the corner of her mouth. “You think…maybe you could just…use my room?”