The Becoming (25 page)

Before Gray could respond, Brandt burst from the Jeep, nearly spilling out onto the cracked concrete floor. Once he gained his footing, he slapped his hand against the roof of the vehicle. An echoing thud rang out through the garage. “Get over here,” he ordered. “We’ve got a situation.”

“A situation?” Cade repeated. She sat up straight and looked at Brandt with a dark, unreadable expression. She slung her rifle over her shoulder and moved toward him as a wave of nervousness welled up in Gray’s gut. A situation? What sort of situation could have arisen in the Jeep when the only people in there were Theo and Brandt? The thought that something was wrong with Theo evoked a flutter of nausea.

“What sort of situation?” Gray asked.

“There’s a girl on the scanner,” Brandt said. “Says she needs help.”

Intrigued by Brandt’s words and relieved that there wasn’t anything wrong with Theo, Gray slung himself into the driver’s seat. As he adjusted the seat back upright, the radio crackled to life, and a young woman’s voice rang out over the speaker. “Hello? Are you still there?”

Gray and Brandt fumbled for the mic at the same time. They wrestled over it for a moment before Gray successfully pulled it away and pressed the button on the side. “Yeah, we’re here. Who is this?”

“My name is Remy,” the girl’s voice came through. “Who is this? You sound different than before.”

“You were talking to Brandt then. This is Gray,” he answered. “Brandt said you needed help?”

“Yeah, I think I’m trapped,” Remy said. Gray raised an eyebrow at her words. She
thought
she was trapped? How could she only
think
she was trapped? Either she was or she wasn’t. “I might need a bit of help getting out of here,” she continued.

Gray motioned to Brandt to give him the bag at the man’s feet. The older man picked it up and opened it, and Gray snatched it from him to dig out the maps himself, giving Brandt an ugly look. “Where exactly is ‘here’?” Gray asked. He pulled out his atlas and started to search for the map of Mississippi.

“I’m stuck in an RV in Biloxi,” Remy said. Gray frowned as he detected a nervous quaver in her voice. “There are some of those …
things
outside. And I think I broke my ankle, but I’m not sure. It could just be a bad sprain. It’s swollen like hell, and I can’t really walk on it.”

“Damn, that might complicate things,” Brandt muttered, his words barely audible. What in the world was Brandt talking about? Gray caught a glimpse of Brandt’s eyes, and he fought back a groan. Brandt was planning something, probably a rescue mission; Gray could tell by the glint in his eyes. He didn’t know if they had the resources or skills for something like that.

But Gray knew one thing above all else: they were going to have to try it anyway.

Gray let out a steadying breath and keyed the mic again. “Hey, uh, Remy? Where exactly in Biloxi are you? We need the nearest intersection to your location.”

As Remy spoke, Gray grabbed a pen from his bag and scribbled the information she gave him on the back of the map, across the state of Missouri. Cade leaned against the doorframe and watched intently.

“Are we going to go after her?” Cade asked as she leaned in to read what Gray had written.

Gray paused as Remy’s voice fell silent, and he lowered the pen to look at each of his companions. Brandt looked determined, his jaw set in a tight clench as he slid out of the Jeep and darted to the back of it. Cade looked almost excited, and Gray wondered momentarily if she felt a thrill at the idea of shooting something. Considering how attached Cade was to her rifle, Gray wouldn’t have been surprised if that were the case.

The last person Gray turned to was Theo. His older brother sat silently in the back seat; he hadn’t spoken a word since Remy’s voice had woken him and sparked the night’s excitement. Theo’s eyes met Gray’s, and he nodded shortly to signal his agreement.

“Yeah, I guess we
are
going after her,” Gray said. “Why shouldn’t we, really? We’re going in that direction anyway, right?”

“My thoughts exactly,” Brandt said. He reappeared in the opened passenger door and dumped an armload of liquor bottles onto the seat. Gray startled at the loud clink of glass against glass and frowned as he saw the multiple bottles of alcohol.

“What’s all that for?” Gray demanded. “Planning on opening up the first operating bar post-Michaluk?” Brandt ignored the question and started to sort through the bottles carefully, counting under his breath. When he finally spoke again, it was to bark out orders.

“Theo, get up here in the front seat,” Brandt said. He gathered the bottles back into his arms, cradling them against his chest. “You’re going to help Gray navigate for a bit while Cade and I take care of this.”

Gray raised an eyebrow as Brandt shifted the bottles enough to open the back passenger door. “What exactly is the ‘this’ you and Cade are going to be taking care of?” Gray asked. A heavy sense of dread settled in his stomach.

Theo slid out of the back seat and gave Gray a smirk as he scrambled into the front. “I’m not sure we want to know,” he confided. “Especially if it involves all of that alcohol.”

Gray bit back a snort of amusement as he realized that Theo had practically read his mind. He twisted around in his seat to look back at Brandt. The older man cracked open a bottle of Jameson and waved to Cade to get into the Jeep. “Wait, are we leaving
now?
” Gray asked incredulously.

“I don’t see why not,” Brandt said. He gave the bottle in his hand a thoughtful look. Then he leaned out the door and began to pour the liquor onto the concrete floor of the garage.

“What the hell are you doing?” Gray exclaimed as the amber liquid spilled out of the bottle. “You’re wasting that!”

“I’m making Molotovs,” Brandt said mildly. The sound of the garage door sliding up nearly drowned out his words. Gray startled at the sound, and he turned to see what had caused it. Cade stood by the opened garage door, her rifle up on her shoulder as she scanned the street outside before she joined her companions at the Jeep once more.

“It’s all clear,” she announced. She jumped into the back seat and pulled her door shut. “I’m ready whenever you guys are.”

“Wait, wait,
wait,
” Gray insisted. “Why are we leaving
now?
It’s dark. It’s dangerous. The last thing we should be doing is heading out after sunset.”

Brandt rolled his eyes, which only served to make Gray clench his jaw in annoyance. Brandt capped the bottle in his hand and set it on the seat before he leaned up between the front seats and grabbed the scanner’s mic again. “Remy, you still around?” he asked into it, glaring pointedly at Gray.

“Yeah, I’m still here.”

“What’s your situation with food and water?” Brandt asked. He glanced back at Cade as she took over the opening of alcohol bottles in the back seat.

“I’ve got two bottles of water left, but I’ve been out of food for five days now, I think,” Remy said. The sheer exhaustion in her voice made a knot of concern form in Gray’s stomach. “It might be four days. Somewhere around that, anyway.”

“Shit,” Theo breathed out. “She could go longer without the food, but with the way things are, I wouldn’t recommend it. And she’s dangerously close to running out of water. Two bottles won’t last her nearly as long as she’ll need to stay adequately hydrated. I bet she’s about to hit the point where she’ll be too tired to run. If she hasn’t already hit that point, that is.”

“We shouldn’t make her wait until morning before we go help her,” Cade said solemnly. The crack of a seal breaking on a bottle cap punctuated her sentence. “We need to get moving and give her whatever help we can lend.”

As much as Gray wanted to help Remy, he wasn’t comfortable with traveling in the dark. There were too many unknown dangers, visibility was too low, and it was much easier to get jumped by the things that crept about in the night. But he also realized that, despite his discomfort at the idea, he was outvoted by the other three in the Jeep, and if he didn’t drive, someone else would. Regardless of his choice, Gray would be dragged along involuntarily, and so he resolved himself to going along with the plan, turning the key in the ignition with a heavy sigh.

Ethan followed Nikola through the dark tunnel, his fingers digging into the dirt beneath him as he shuffled along. He kept his eyes locked onto the teenager’s thick, tangled blond hair, visible in the flickering blue halogen light of the lantern that she pushed along ahead of her. His stomach churned, and he clenched his teeth against a sudden surge of queasiness. He didn’t like the sinking feeling of the unknown.

Nikola chose that moment to disappear from Ethan’s view, and he reflexively jerked his head up to look for her. His head hit the ceiling of the dirt tunnel, and he winced. He ducked lower and scrambled for the end, where Nikola’s light still flickered weakly to illuminate his way. He gained his feet and squinted into the cellar in which they now stood; it was just as dark as the one they’d left, and the only light came from the lantern Nikola had lifted to shine across the cellar.

“So what’s the plan?” Ethan asked. He rubbed at the sore spot on top of his head. “I’m assuming you have one?”

Nikola let out a snort and looked at him in disbelief. “Wait, you’re asking a
fourteen-year-old girl
for a plan? My plan involved getting us over here. That’s as far as I got.”

“Oh Lord,” Ethan groaned. He covered his face with a hand. “Grant me serenity, etcetera, etcetera,” he said, his voice muffled by his hand. He blew out a heavy breath and looked around, trying to decide what their first action should be. The sound of the other cellar’s door cracking and groaning echoed through the small tunnel and decided it for him. “Shit,” he muttered. He glanced at Nikola; she watched the entrance to the tunnel with wide eyes. “We need to barricade this thing first, just to buy us some extra time,” he decided.

“With
what?
” Nikola asked. She waved her hands around the empty cellar. “This place isn’t exactly loaded down with furniture or whatever to shove in front of it.”

Ethan squinted in the meager light as he searched for anything with which to block the cellar’s entryway. Nikola was right; there just wasn’t anything. Ethan swore under his breath and grabbed her by the arm, tugging her toward the exit that led outside. “We need to get out of here fast then. We’re not going to have much time.” He laid a hand against the door, but he hesitated and looked back at her. “You know where my bike is?” he asked.

“The motorcycle you rolled up on?” Nikola asked. “Should still be in the middle of the street where you left it.”

Ethan’s mind raced. “Okay, I think I might have a plan,” he said. He tried to put the pieces together as the sound of cracking wood and beating hands echoed more frantically through the tunnel behind them. “We’re going to make a run for my bike. First, though, we need to go by this address.” Ethan rattled off Cade’s address, even as he pressed his ear to the slanted wooden door that opened to the outside world.

“I know where that is,” Nikola acknowledged. “But why do we need to go there?”

“I’ve got a few things to pick up that we could use,” Ethan answered vaguely. He rested his hand against the scratched wooden surface; splinters threatened to poke through his skin. “If we get separated, go for that house. Hide in the basement if I’m not there. And if I don’t show up within five minutes, I want you to make for the motorcycle and get out of here,” he instructed. He paused and turned to look at her. “Do you know how to drive a motorcycle?”

“I don’t even know how to drive,” Nikola admitted. Her cheeks flushed in the light of her lantern. “I’m only fourteen, remember?”

“Shit,” Ethan muttered. “I guess that means we’ll just have to not get separated, right?” He pressed his hand more firmly on the door’s flat surface as his other hand found the holster at his hip. He pulled the gun from it and flipped the safety off, then drew in a deep breath. “When we get out of here, which way do we run? Left or right?”

“Left,” Nikola confirmed. She set the lantern on the dirt beside her and tightened the straps of her pack, adjusting it to rest closely against her back.

“Any obstructions between here and there?”

“There’s a fence around the yard of this house,” Nikola said as she picked the lantern back up. “The gate is blocked, so we’re going to have to find a way over it.”

“That’s not a problem,” Ethan said dismissively. “I can get us over that. What else?”

“The cars on the street,” Nikola continued. “They’re pretty much bumper to bumper, sort of shoved up against each other. We’re going to have to go over those.”

“No way around?”

Nikola shook her head. “It would take too long.”

“Good to know. Anything else?”

“Nothing that I can think of. But I haven’t studied the streets outside very carefully since I started hiding in people’s basements,” Nikola admitted sheepishly.

“Hey, that’s okay,” Ethan said. He motioned for her to join him. She carried the lantern forward, lighting her way. “You might have to ditch the lantern. You’ll need both hands out there.”

“Yeah, I know,” Nikola said with a sigh. “I just kind of don’t want to. It’s been useful.”

Ethan gave her a reassuring pat on the back. “Don’t worry. We’ll try to find you another one.” He put his hand against the door again and gently pushed. “Ready?”