The Becoming (Book 4): Under Siege (12 page)

“We should get together a search party. I’m
sure Keith at least knows the direction they headed in when they
left. I don’t see why he wouldn’t have noticed that. God knows he
notices everything
else
.” He scooped his gun belt from the
table by the bed and buckled it around his hips.

“Can I speak candidly?” Cade asked. Brandt
glanced up and saw that she hadn’t moved from her spot in front of
the dresser. Her empty mug dangled loosely in her fingers,
precariously close to dropping to the floor.

“I wouldn’t like it if you
didn’t
,”
Brandt said. She’d never asked anything like that before, and he
wondered at her question.

Cade pressed her lips together, as if she
were thinking over her words, and she said, “I’m not certain going
after them is a good idea.”

Brandt’s eyes narrowed.

The expression on Cade’s face hardened in
response. “I know you’ve got this whole ‘no man left behind’ Marine
mentality,” Cade continued, “but we’ve got fifty people here who
need us. We can’t compromise their lives for the sakes of eight
men. We just can’t.”

“What are you saying? That we should just
leave them out there to die?” Brandt asked.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Cade said.
“And I’ll take full responsibility for the decision if
necessary.”

Brandt whirled and took a step toward her.
“
That
is
not
an option!” he snapped before starting
for the bedroom door. Cade followed close behind.

“Brandt, we can’t afford to lose any more
people, just like you said! And we shouldn’t put any more people at
an unnecessary risk!”

Brandt stormed down the stairs, trying to
ignore the logic she insisted he listen to. When he reached the
bottom of the stairs, he nearly ran headlong into Isaac, who was
emerging from the kitchen with a bowl in his hand. “Hey, you don’t
mind if I borrow this, do you?” he asked as he spotted him and
Cade, but the smile on his face died when he saw the expression on
Brandt’s face. “What’s going on?”

“Supply team’s missing,” Brandt said. “I’m
going out to find them. You in?”

“Oh, no, the hell you’re not!” Cade
exploded. She grabbed him by the arm and hauled him back, dragging
him bodily away from the door. “No deal! You’re
not
leaving
this community when you don’t need to! What the hell are you trying
to do, send me into early labor? Because I will seriously squeeze
this kid out to keep you from going anywhere!”

“I don’t think it works that way, Cade!”

“I don’t fucking
care!
”

Isaac glanced at Brandt and then at Cade.
“You stay here, Evans. I’ll go.”

“You can’t go alone,” Brandt protested.

“Fine, I’ll take Dominic with me,” he
offered. “Your woman’s right. You need to stay here. There’s no
sense in you running off and getting yourself killed and leaving
your kid without a father.”

“That doesn’t make me
entirely
happy,
but it will do,” Cade muttered.

Isaac handed her the bowl and turned back to
the kitchen. “I’m going to get ready,” he announced. “Brandt, would
you do me a favor and let Dominic know I’ll need his
assistance?”

“On it,” Brandt said. He glanced at Cade one
more time, and she glared back at him, as if daring him to
challenge her demands. He loved the way she looked when she was
angry; her cheeks flushed and her eyes took on the fire of
righteous indignation that sent chills up his spine. He took a
quick step forward, kissing her deeply despite her protests. “Thank
you for caring enough to argue,” he murmured. Then, conceding that
he’d lost this argument, as he had most of them, he added, “Can you
go to the gates and talk to Keith, see what you can find out about
what direction Joseph took his crew in? I’m going to head to
Dominic’s to let him know what’s going on and make sure he’s okay
with going out with Isaac.”

Cade nodded and slipped past him, heading
out the door and down the porch steps. Brandt watched as she
started toward the gate, and then he moved in the opposite
direction, heading for Dominic’s.

Brandt noted that Dominic’s yard was heavy
with shade trees—the only yard in the community that still had a
reasonable number of trees, most of the others having been
harvested for the thirty-foot wall they’d built against the
wrought-iron fence that had already surrounded Woodside. It seemed
as if the rest of the community’s residents had come to the
unspoken agreement to not have anything to do with Dominic Jackson,
a fact made painfully obvious by their treatment of his chosen
home. The thought of the man being ostracized so blatantly bothered
Brandt, and he wasn’t sure why, considering he wasn’t a fan of
Dominic’s.

When he reached the house, he noticed that
someone had spray-painted the word “traitor” across the front.
Brandt gritted his teeth and beat his fist against the door.

There was no answer.

Brandt frowned and took a step back,
squinting at the door as if it could tell him whether or not
Dominic was home. With very few exceptions, if Dominic wasn’t at
the main house, then he was home. It’d been that way for
months.

Brandt backed up to the edge of the porch
and looked up at the second-story windows, since he knew the
first-story ones would be boarded over, like all ground floor
windows in the community. To his surprise, the second floor’s
windows appeared to be boarded up too, and on the outside of these
windows, someone had bolted chain link fencing as a second layer of
defense. That made him take a look at the first floor’s windows;
they’d received the same treatment, but it was less obvious in the
shadow of the porch. It was an interesting addition that, given
some time, Brandt would consider implementing on the rest of the
houses.

Realizing there hadn’t been an answer, he
raised his fist to pound on the door again. The sound of a whistle,
high and sharp, cut through the air. He turned and dashed from the
porch, heading in the direction of the whistle. The warning issued
from the front gates. His heart skipped a beat when he remembered
that he’d sent his pregnant wife there only minutes prior.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Brandt panted as he came
within sight of the gates where a crowd was massing, roused by the
sound of the whistle. Keith stood on one of the two watch platforms
that flanked the gates, a pair of binoculars pressed to his eyes as
he scanned the world beyond; Allen Durst stood on the other
platform, his rifle aimed beyond the wall.

Cade intercepted Brandt before he reached
the foot of the ladder that led to Keith’s platform, a rifle in her
hands and her Galil slung onto her back. She passed him the rifle
and a small canvas satchel of magazines.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“No idea, but if they’re blowing the
whistle, then that means it’s not anything good,” she said. “When
he started blowing it, I went back for our rifles, so I haven’t
gotten the chance to ask.” She made a beeline for Allen’s
platform’s ladder, and Brandt caught her by the wrist to stop
her.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“Providing backup,” she said. “Don’t tell me
you’re going to turn down the best backup you’ve got when we might
have a serious problem on our hands.”

Brandt wanted to protest again, but instead
he shook his head and let go of her wrist. “Fine, but be careful.
Remember, you’re protecting more than just yourself.”

“Duly noted,” Cade said. She stepped away
and climbed the ladder.

Brandt tore his eyes away from her and
climbed the ladder to Keith’s platform; the other man met him at
the top, offering a hand.

“What’s going on?” Brandt asked.

Keith handed him the binoculars and pointed
to the highway beyond the community. “Big problem,” he said.
“
Really
big problem.”

Brandt pressed the binoculars to his eyes as
Keith continued.

“Looks like four survivors.”

“And a shitload of infected,” Brandt added
as he observed the approaching chaos. There were dozens upon dozens
of infected, clogging the street several blocks away from the
community, too many to count. Brandt hadn’t seen that many infected
in one place since the outbreak in Atlanta more than a year before.
“How many do you think there are?”

“Hard to say,” Keith admitted. He squinted
into the distance at the approaching mass. “I’d guess somewhere
north of four hundred. Maybe even on the cusp of five. I’m not good
at judging crowd size, though.”

“One infected is too many infected,” Brandt
muttered. He used his finger to focus the binoculars, searching the
front of the crowd until he spotted the four survivors Keith had
mentioned. The two in the lead looked young, a man and a woman,
their torsos wrapped in Kevlar. They carried more weapons than most
survivors. Behind them were two more survivors, both hanging back,
running interference. And as he studied the man and woman bringing
up the rear, his stomach sank.

“Jesus, Remy’s out there!” he exclaimed.
“It’s Remy and Dominic! How the
fuck
did they get out
there?”

“Did you say that was Remy and Dominic?”
Cade called from the other platform. Brandt saw she was snapping a
magazine into her rifle. She pulled the bolt back and propped the
rifle over the top of the wall.

“Yes!”

Cade mouthed the words “what the fuck” as
she positioned herself to provide cover fire. Brandt turned his
attention back to the approaching horde, and Keith spoke up.

“There’s enough space between them and the
infected that we could…” Keith trailed off. It wasn’t necessary for
him to finish, though, because even if there wasn’t distance
between the horde and the survivors, Brandt would give the same
order.

“Drop the ladder. Get them up here,” Brandt
said. “Cade and I will provide cover fire.”

“And after they’re in?”

“Quarantine,” Brandt said, signaling to
Cade. She nodded and took aim.

Keith grabbed the rope ladder and tossed one
end of it over the wall, even as Brandt and Cade opened fire.

With the first bullet fired from her rifle, Cade
began to feel like a normal person again. It’d been so long since
she’d shot at something that she had begun to feel useless beside
everyone else. Perched on the platform across from Brandt’s with
her rifle resting over the top of the wall, she squinted through
the scope mounted on top of her Galil and aimed for the infected
who were closest to the four survivors. The squeeze of the trigger
and the jolt of the bullet leaving the rifle settled her nerves. In
an instant, she fell back on the years of training she’d received
and utilized in Israel.

Deep in her belly, her unborn child stirred,
roused by the loud gunfire. She paused in her sharpshooting long
enough to massage a hand over her swollen abdomen, trying to soothe
the child so she could focus on the action below. The last thing
she needed was to be distracted by a kicking fetus. Not when four
people’s lives depended on her shooting skills, and she
couldn’t—she
wouldn’t
—rely on Brandt to pick up the
slack.

There was a flutter of movement in the
corner of her right eye. A quick glance revealed Keith unfurling
the rope ladder down the side of the wall. The girl below made a
line for it without being prompted, hauling the unknown boy along
with her by one arm. As they reached the ladder, the girl swung the
boy around behind her, grabbing a roped rung. She yelled something
at him, and he made an angry hand gesture. The girl whirled around
to face the infected coming toward them, racking the slide of her
shotgun and aiming it into the crowd. She fired.

Cade was impressed by the young woman’s
bravery. Though she was sure the horde of infected, lumbering down
the street and spilling into yards, were out of the shotgun’s
range, it was good to know the girl wouldn’t go down without a
fight.

Cade turned her attention back to the
infected. She adjusted her aim and opened fire again, rhythmically
shooting down one infected after the other before her rifle ran
empty. Allen Durst had already pulled a fresh magazine from her bag
and had it ready for her. It took her seconds to reload, and by the
time she aimed the weapon back at the street, the boy had nearly
reached the top of the wall. Brandt stopped shooting long enough to
set his rifle aside and help the boy up, hauling him by his arms
onto the platform. “Get a move on, would you?” Brandt yelled to the
girl.

The girl glanced up at Brandt, fired another
blast at the crowd, then slung her shotgun onto her shoulder by its
strap. She grasped the rope ladder. Cade fired at the group of
infected that Remy and Dominic were fighting against, trying to
give them cover as the girl scaled the ladder with all the
dexterity and agility her companion had lacked.

Then it was Remy and Dominic’s turn. Both of
them were still too far away from the wall for Cade’s comfort; they
were at least fifty yards away from safety. Dominic pushed Remy
toward the ladder, but Remy resisted—unsurprisingly—and started
yelling at him, jabbing her finger in the direction of the
infected. Dominic seemed to be swearing as he shook his head and
ran to the ladder, starting to climb it energetically, wasting no
time as Remy backed toward the wall and fired into the
infected.

An infected woman, one of the fast-moving
ones, closed in on Remy’s left. Her hands darted out, grabbing at
Remy’s sleeve, scrabbling for purchase on her jacket. Remy twisted
her arm out of the woman’s grip and put her pistol against the
woman’s forehead. At that range, she couldn’t miss. The woman
dropped back to the pavement with a hole in her head, the back of
her skull splattered against the infected behind her.

The gap the woman’s body left was
immediately filled by more infected, clustering up against each
other, trying to reach for Remy, almost bottlenecking themselves in
their frantic haste. Remy sped up her retreat, and Cade tracked her
through her scope, trying to keep up with where the woman was.
Despite the harrowing situation she was in, Remy’s gun was steady
and her aim was true, and she was methodical as she fired bullets
into the infected, never missing aim for a second. No fear showed
on her face; her expression was one of grim determination. Cade
tried to help, shooting at Remy’s attackers as rapidly as she
could.