The Becoming (35 page)

When Cade fell silent, Brandt cleared his throat and asked, “You have a brother? You’ve never mentioned a brother. Just Lindsey.”

“I
had
a brother,” Cade clarified. Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat before she managed to add, “He died when I was twenty-four. There was a bomber, and he was on the bus …” She broke off and shook her head.

“Oh,” Brandt breathed out as realization dawned on him. He lifted his hand and hesitated before he gently rubbed her back in soothing circles. “I’m so sorry, Cade. That’s … that’s so…” He paused as he tried to find the right words.

“Senseless?” Cade suggested. She snorted softly. “Most of the deaths in this world are. Hell, our world’s become nothing
but
senseless.” She pushed her bangs away from her eyes and breathed in deeply. “I should be used to senseless by now.”

“I don’t think anybody ever gets used to senseless,” Brandt said.

Cade shook her head and dropped her hand back to her lap. “But you weren’t asking me about my family. You were asking me about Ethan and why I deal with him so willingly.” She ran a hand through her thick hair and started to twist a lock around her fingers, desperately needing to keep her hands busy and her mind distracted. “It’s because he acts like a dead replica of Caleb,” she explained. “So much like him it’s almost scary. And when I moved back to America when I was twenty-five, he was the first person to befriend me. He was there for me when my grandparents passed, when my mom and dad both passed, and now when the whole world has pretty much passed. We’re like brother and sister because of all the shit we’ve been through. So that’s why I deal with his asshole attitude.”

Silence hovered as Cade finished her story, as short as it was and as little as she’d been willing to tell. A rumble of thunder in the distance hung between them. Brandt let out a soft breath and gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Shit, Cade,” he murmured. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Cade said, tracing the seam of her jeans with her finger. “It’s just the way it is, you know? Nothing to be sorry about.”

An hour later found them still sitting on the desk, still waiting on the storm to begin. Cade was disappointed; it was one of those typical winter thunderstorms that rolled through the south and dumped a ton of rain on whatever random spot it chose. She was growing concerned that the block of buildings where she and Brandt hid wouldn’t be one of those random spots. She hesitated and glanced at Brandt. “What if it doesn’t storm?”

“Oh, it will,” Brandt said. His eyes were steely with determination.

“But what if it doesn’t?” Cade persisted. She pressed the issue as she slid off the desk to look out the window. “What then?” she continued. “Does that mean we’ll be stuck here until another storm comes around?”

Brandt didn’t answer her question right away. Another rumble of thunder shook the windowpane, and Cade turned to him. Instead of watching her as she’d assumed, he had his eyes glued to the door behind them. One hand was raised in her general direction as if to preempt anything she might say. Cade frowned and watched him curiously as he narrowed his eyes and shook his head. “What is it?” she asked.

“I heard something,” Brandt replied. He glanced back at Cade before he left his perch on the edge of the desk and headed toward the office door.

Cade frowned and shook her head. She was at a loss as to why it mattered. “Brandt, you’ve been saying you’ve heard something for two days now,” Cade said. “Are you sure you’re not just being paranoid?”

But even as Cade voiced her question, the faint sound of banging and thudding coming from outside the office became more audible as she drew closer to the door. She paused in mid-step behind Brandt and sucked in a breath as she squeezed her eyes closed and focused on the sound. And even as she struggled to listen, she knew exactly what she was hearing. Her eyes snapped open.

“Is it coming from our floor?” she asked in a rush of breath. She grabbed the back of Brandt’s jacket in a tight grip to get his attention. “Have they made it up here?”

“Stay here. I’ll go check,” Brandt said. Cade opened her mouth to object, but the look Brandt gave her warned her not to push it. Instead, she simply nodded and stood back to give him room to open the door. Brandt drew his gun and stepped out into the hall. He left the door cracked, and Cade watched his progress from the spot beside the door.

Brandt eased into the center of the carpeted hallway. His steps were slow and measured as he worked his way down to the end of the hall. The noise was loudest near the stairwell door. Cade swallowed hard as a nervous flutter worked its way into her stomach. She recognized the same feeling on Brandt’s face as he rested his hand flat against the steel exit door. He hesitated and looked back at Cade for a moment. Then he pushed it open slowly and disappeared into the dark stairwell.

Cade watched anxiously for Brandt to reappear. She bit her lip and grabbed for her gun in case she needed to back him up. But it wasn’t necessary. Brandt stumbled back into the hallway and pulled the door shut behind him. He fumbled at it for a moment as if he were seeking a lock before he gave up and ran back down the hall to Cade.

“They’re in the stairwell, one floor down,” Brandt said breathlessly as he burst back into the office. He slammed the door shut and locked it before he shoved one of the visitors’ armchairs against it for good measure. “And on every floor below it. They’re working their way up the stairs. They’re slow, but they’re going to be up here within twenty minutes, if we’re lucky.”

“Lucky?” Cade repeated. “Define lucky. Twenty minutes doesn’t equal lucky in my world!”

“We’ll be lucky if we get the full twenty minutes,” Brandt said. His eyes darted around the office frantically. “It’ll probably be less. I’m giving us the max. Makes me feel better.”

“Fuck,” Cade breathed out. She rested her hand against the gun on her hip again as she glanced at the door. “What are we going to do?”

“Well, I have an idea, but I’m pretty sure you’re not going to like it,” Brandt said. He’d begun to dig into his shoulder bag. He knocked several packages of vending machine crackers out of it as he pulled out a long, thin coil of rope that Cade hadn’t been aware he’d had.

“What’s the rope for, Brandt?” Cade asked. She made a face at the faint tremor in her voice.

“You ever go rappelling?” he asked.

“Rappelling,” Cade repeated blankly.

“Yeah. The IDF covered that with you in training, right?” Brandt prompted. He dumped the rope on the desk and started to unwind it, straightening it and shaking the kinks out.

“Of course, but…” Cade trailed off as the impact of Brandt’s question suddenly hit her. “Brandt, you aren’t
seriously
suggesting we rappel down the side of a building, are you?”

“What other choice do we have?” Brandt began to wrap the rope in a loose loop from his wrist to his elbow, staring at Cade as he did so.

“We don’t even have any equipment!” Cade protested. “I mean, yeah, we got a rope. But there’s no harness or anchor, and we definitely don’t have a carabiner or anything! And you expect us to just … go down the side of the building?”

“Anchor,” Brandt said simply. He patted his hand firmly on the top of the mahogany desk. “And you’re wearing a belt. We can make it work as a sort of harness if you’re not brave enough to go down the side of the building without one.”

“You can’t really expect a belt to—”

“Cade. Shut up,” Brandt ordered. He dropped the rope on the desk and braced both hands against it. His gaze was steady as he looked at her. “We don’t have a choice, okay? Unless you
really
want to go out down the stairwell and end up dying when you run out of bullets.”

“You’re assuming we won’t die rappelling down the side of the fucking building,” Cade shot back. She crossed her arms firmly over her chest. Despite her protestations, though, she knew Brandt was right. It wasn’t that she was scared of dying—far from it; she had become accustomed to the idea of death during her first tour of duty. What
did
frighten her was the idea of throwing herself off the side of a building with nothing but a thin rope and five stories of air between her and the street.

It wouldn’t be a pleasant way to die.

“Fuck,” Cade grumbled in exasperation. “How are we going to do this then?”

“First, we’ve got to make a door,” Brandt said. He pulled the blinds aside and let in the darkening evening light. Then he moved to stand directly across from the window and drew his gun again. Cade followed his lead and pulled out her own weapon as he turned to point his directly at the plate glass before them. “On the count of three. Spread your fire out as best you can. We need to weaken it enough to break it,” he instructed.

Cade rolled her eyes. “I know, I know.”

Brandt didn’t bother to reply as he flipped the safety off on his gun. “One,” he began to count. “Two,
three
.”

On three, they squeezed their triggers and fired directly into the window. The kick of the gun in Cade’s hands as she shot bullet after bullet through the window was oddly comforting. The glass spidered out from the holes they put into it. The gun gave her a feeling of confidence, made her feel better and more powerful, more in control of her fate.

When Brandt and Cade finally ceased fire, the window was riddled with bullet holes, and it looked like one good kick would shatter the glass completely. Brandt nodded in satisfaction and turned his back to the window. He grabbed the rope and knelt down, winding the rope around one of the legs of the desk and fastening it to the wood in a complicated knot.

Cade glanced at the door as she heard a noise out in the hall. “Brandt, I think maybe they’ve made it to the fifth floor,” she said uneasily. Brandt yanked hard on the rope, his muscles bulging as he hauled back to tighten it.

“Yeah, I know,” Brandt grunted. He released the rope and sat back on his haunches to survey his work. He rubbed his hands together and flexed his fingers. “We need gloves,” he said. “You don’t happen to have any, do you?”

“No, but…” Cade trailed off and pulled the dirty tank top she’d stripped off earlier back out of her bag. She held it up for Brandt’s inspection. “It won’t be perfect, but we can shred it and wrap our hands up.”

“It’ll have to do,” Brandt said. He pulled a small black-handled knife from his boot and offered it to Cade. Cade smirked and pulled out a much larger knife from the sheath she’d kept fastened to her belt for the past month.

“I’ll use mine, thanks,” Cade said. She set the shirt on the desk and stabbed it almost viciously. She dragged the blade down the front of it, tearing it in half, and started ripping and cutting it into strips. She tossed Brandt several before she slid her knife back into its sheath. Cade wound the cloth tightly around her hands, making sure she still had mobility around her fingers. The gauze on her hand shifted, and she winced as the cloth rubbed directly against the wound on her palm.

“Okay, what kind of rappel are we using?” Cade asked as she finished and held her hands up for Brandt. Brandt took her hands in his own and looked them over; his calloused thumbs smoothed against the insides of her wrists. Cade suppressed a slight shiver at the feeling and watched as he adjusted the cloth.

“The Dulfersitz,” he said. “The best we can do with no harnesses. You okay with me rigging you up?”

“Do I have a choice?” Cade asked. Brandt smirked, and Cade arched an eyebrow. “Don’t you
dare
even try to cop a feel on me, Evans, or I’ll put you out of your misery right now.”

Brandt chuckled and shook his head before he knelt down in front of her with the rope in his hands. He looped the rope between Cade’s legs and around one of her thighs to the front of her chest. Cade stood still as he crossed it over her left shoulder and along her back, and he ran his hand gently over the center of her back before he continued rigging the rope around her waist. Cade’s eyes widened as his hand brushed against her hair, but her nervousness over what she was about to do overrode any urge she might have felt to punch him. Instead, she drew in several slow, deep breaths. Brandt straightened and moved back around to her front. He looked down at her and gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze.

“You okay?” Brandt asked softly. “Can you do this? We can figure out something else if you can’t.”

“What, you think I’m chicken?” Cade half joked. She scrunched up her nose as she heard the tremor in her own voice.

“No, I don’t think you’re chicken, but you’re scared out of your wits,” Brandt replied knowingly. Cade tried to shake her head, tried to deny the accusation. He gave her a soft look, and for a split second, as he stared down at her, Cade wondered if he were going to kiss her. But instead, he wrapped his muscular arms around her and gave her a tight squeeze that nearly took her breath away. “It’s okay. I am too,” Brandt admitted softly in her ear. Her eyebrows shot up in surprise, but before she could respond, Brandt let go of her and looked at the door. The sounds in the hall were getting louder and closer. “Time to go, Cade,” he announced. He grabbed the desk chair, positioned it, and gave it a hard kick. It rolled across the room and struck the cracked window before it continued on straight through the glass.

Glass showered down through the sky, flickering lightning glinting off the shards as the chair sailed through the air and tumbled down to the street below. It landed with a crash that Cade was sure would draw the infected right to them, but it was too late to worry about that. Brandt was right. They didn’t have much time.