The Becoming (Book 4): Under Siege (2 page)

Brandt raised his eyebrows and looked her
over again from head to toe, watching her sight for her target as
he reassessed his opinion of her. Yet again. He couldn’t count the
number of times he’d done so since meeting her a week after the
outbreak in Atlanta. She continuously did things that revealed
whole new facets of her personality. “You mean to tell me you
just
learned how to do this?” he asked. She released the
arrow. It missed the sapling and embedded into the wooden privacy
fence beyond, prompting a scowl of frustration to cross Cade’s
face. “You’ve never actually used a compound bow before?”

“Well, I figure how hard could it be?” Cade
replied. She gave him a nonchalant shrug and ran her fingers along
the curve of the bow. “I mean, you just pull the bowstring back and
aim and let go. That’s not all that hard.”

Brandt realized his jaw was hanging slack,
and he snapped it shut.
How hard can it be indeed?
he mused
as he shook his head incredulously. His grandfather had spent years
working his way to the level of an expert archer, and along came
Cade, picking up the basics like it was the easiest thing in the
world. It was insane how easily things like that came to her.

As Brandt mulled over the woman and her
skill-set, Cade began to wade through the thick grass, heading for
the other side of the yard to collect the arrows she’d shot. He
followed her, unwilling to let her wander off—again—out of his
sight, even if they
were
in a fortified, gated community
that had already been thoroughly cleared of the infected. He kept
his eyes on the back of her thin tank-top, which stuck to her skin
in a sheen of sweat, brought on by the heat of the southern sun of
early September. As he walked, each step was almost a struggle
through the tall, lush grass. He glanced at Cade a few times as she
focused on the path ahead of them, her bright blue eyes squinting
in the sunlight, and he decided it was time to broach the reason
he’d searched her out in the first place. “Have you talked to Remy
today?”

“Yep,” Cade said. She stopped before she
reached the thin sapling and scooped up a couple of arrows that had
fallen short of the target. She passed them to him and started to
pull the three arrows that were embedded in the tree. As she gave
them to him, he tucked them into the bag. “I’m sure she hates me
right now, if you want me to be honest,” she admitted. “I asked her
to go to the rec center and inventory the food before she did
anything else today, so when the supply team comes back, we’ll know
exactly where we stand. She didn’t seem too happy with being asked
to do it though.”

“Oh, she definitely wasn’t,” Brandt assured
her. He shoved the final arrow into the bag before slinging it onto
his left shoulder carefully, mindful of the residual soreness that
still lingered after being stabbed with his own knife almost six
months before. “She was swearing at an invisible you while kicking
chairs and generally showing her ass. I tried to tell her that if
she’d get busy, she could get it over with and move on to whatever
she actually wanted to do. She just gave me the finger and told me
to get the hell away from her.” He shook his head. “What the hell’s
gotten into her, anyway?”

“She’s pissed off at me because I wouldn’t
let her go out with Joseph’s supply team this morning,” Cade
explained. She started through the grass again, the blades swishing
against her jeans as she headed in the direction of the house.

“Why not?”

“Because she can’t fucking control herself
is why not,” Cade said. She paused halfway across the yard and
turned to face him. He stopped and looked at her questioningly as
she folded her arms underneath her breasts, her wrists and elbows
resting against the swell of her belly. “Have you not noticed how
she’s acting lately?”

“Oh, I have,” Brandt said. “I’ve just been
choosing to not think about it too much, because frankly, her
erratic behavior scares the shit out of me.”

Cade raised an eyebrow. “I think it’s about
time we
all
did some serious thinking about it,” she said as
they started to move again. “I don’t like how she’s acting
like…well, like Alicia. Remy was already a bit unhinged
before
she got infected. You remember how she used to pick
fights and chase down infected instead of trying to avoid them like
the rest of us did. She was fucking
reckless
. I’m beginning
to wonder now if she’s starting to totally crack.”

Brandt sat down on the steps leading to the
deck and rubbed his hand over his mouth, brushing his fingers over
the three days’ worth of stubble. Cade watched him closely, leaning
against the railing beside him, her elbows propped on the rail. Her
pregnant belly jutted out in his direction, and he resisted the
urge to reach out and touch it. Instead, he focused on their
conversation, blowing out a breath and trying to choose his words
carefully. “I…honestly, I don’t know,” he said. “I understand her
behavior from before, when we were in Alabama and Georgia. She’s
got a vendetta against the things, and after what little she told
us about what happened to her family, I can hardly blame her for
that. I can’t say that, if not saddled with the responsibilities
I’ve got now, that I wouldn’t go out and slaughter as many as I
could before they took me down. But in the past few months, she’s
definitely begun to act oddly. And it’s making me uncomfortable.
You were right to keep her from going out with the supply team. I’m
not sure she’s stable enough for trips out of Woodside right now.
She’d probably take off after the first infected guy she saw and
end up getting herself or someone else killed—and it’s the
someone else
that I’m more worried about, to be honest.”

“Me too,” Cade confessed. She sighed and
took her rifle off her shoulder, then sat gingerly on the step
beside him. She dropped her arms to rest against her thighs and
stared emptily across the overgrown yard. “If she wants to get
herself killed, that’s her prerogative, though I wouldn’t like it
if she did and would prefer that she not. But I’m definitely
not
okay with it if she takes other people down with her.
That’s why I told her no.”

Brandt took her hand and held it loosely,
running his thumb along her knuckles. Her skin felt soft, almost
fragile, and he couldn’t stop touching it. He studied her uniquely
olive-pale complexion as he traced his fingers along hers. “Has she
been to see Ethan yet?”

“Not since we got him here,” Cade answered.
“And not since Dr. Rivers cured him, either. I’ve been trying to
get her to at least go visit him ever since he woke up. He asked
for her for a while, but she won’t go see him. I don’t understand
it.”

Brandt bit back a low groan of frustration
and shook his head. “What’s with her? I thought she was in love
with him, you know? I mean, she spent that entire month he was
separated from us mourning him because she thought he was dead.
Hell, we
all
thought he was dead, but she took it harder
than any of us. And now that he’s back and better, it’s like she
doesn’t want jack shit to do with him.”

“I think…I think maybe she might be afraid,”
Cade said thoughtfully. She twisted on the step to look at him, her
expression serious. Without hesitation, he wrapped his arms around
her and lifted her off the step, settling her onto his lap. Despite
her general abhorrence of even semi-public displays of affection,
she let him do it, which meant she was probably not feeling great.
“I know that might be hard to believe,” she continued once she’d
settled on his lap, “considering it’s Remy and she’s always seemed
so fearless. But I think she’s actually
afraid
of
Ethan.”

“He
did
attack her, didn’t he?”
Brandt pointed out. He maneuvered Cade around on his lap, caught a
lock of her dark hair in his fingers, and divided it into three
pieces, starting to braid it absently. “Back at the Westin, he went
straight after her, and I’m not sure it was only because she was
closest to him. Hell, you saw what he did to her face. She’s
probably still messed up over that alone.”

“Yeah, I have,” Cade acknowledged. “Everyone
has. No matter how much she tries to hide it. It’s just
there.
” She paused, rubbing her hand idly along his forearm,
drawing up chill bumps with her touch. She lightly kneaded the
muscles as she added, “I think she’s afraid of what he’ll do.”

“Or what he’ll see,” Brandt theorized. He
pressed his hand gently to the curve of her stomach and closed his
eyes, hoping to feel something, some movement to indicate that the
baby inside her was alive and well. When he didn’t feel so much as
a kick, he sighed in disappointment and stood, setting Cade
carefully onto her feet before tugging at her hand. “Come on. It’s
getting hot out here, and I’m not sure I like you being out in the
heat like this. You might get heatstroke or something.”

A soft laugh escaped Cade’s throat, and she
shook her head. The thin braid he’d put in her hair brushed against
the curve of her cheek. His fingers tingled, itching to rearrange
it. “Brandt, are you being overprotective again?”

“Probably,” he muttered. Despite his tone, a
grin crossed his face.

“I feel fine,” Cade insisted. “But if it
makes you happy, I’ll go with you to the damned house, though it’s
not going to be
that
much cooler inside than it is out
here.”

Brandt caught her hand and pulled her close
to him, wrapping an arm around her waist. Unable to resist any
longer, he pressed a soft, slow kiss to her mouth. He pulled back
from the kiss once he’d gotten his fill—for the moment, anyway—and
nuzzled his nose against hers. “Yes, it
does
make me happy,”
he murmured, feeling her soft breath against his mouth as she
sighed slowly. Then she laughed, gently pushing her hands against
his chest, and he released her. They made their way across the
backyard together, close but not touching. “You heard what Derek
said,” he continued. “We’ve got to be careful. There aren’t exactly
any hospitals to take you to if there are complications during your
pregnancy or during the birth. I want you to stay healthy. And
safe.”

Cade smiled at Brandt, and its appearance
hit him in the chest like a punch. It felt like it had been forever
since he’d seen her smile—
really
smile, not any of the
faked, patient smiles she gave other people in Woodside—and he
couldn’t help but give her one in return.

“So what do you say we head to the rec
center and get dinner started?” she suggested. “We can stop by the
house and drop the bag off while we’re at it. Joseph and his guys
should be back soon, and I want to see what they haul in with them.
Hopefully, they found more shells for me to work with.”

“Maybe they’ll have found some condoms,”
Brandt added. He draped his arm around her shoulders and tugged her
closer as they walked. The barrel of her sniper rifle, strapped to
her back again, dug into his arm, but he ignored it. “I’ve had
four people
this week alone ask me if I have any. Like I
would. My wife is pregnant. We have no use for them.”

“We will eventually,” Cade pointed out,
dropping her head to rest against his shoulder. Her hip bumped
against his, and he stepped into the movement reflexively.

“Yeah, well, ‘eventually’ isn’t ‘today.’ And
thank God for that.”

Cade snorted out a laugh and, as they came
into view of the rest of the community, emerging from the shadier
backyard to the front of the house and the street beyond it, she
stepped away from him, letting go as if she were holding onto
something that was burning her. Brandt frowned but, having grown
used to her idiosyncrasies, didn’t say anything, merely shoved his
hands into his pockets with as much casualness as he could muster.
As they emerged into the bright sunlight, he paused on the sidewalk
and scanned the community laid out before them.

The Woodside community was sixteen blocks
square of a formerly upper middle class enclave, completely closed
and gated in by brick and wrought-iron fencing. They’d spent long,
arduous hours boarding up and building up to conceal the
community’s interior, creating a thirty-foot wall that loomed over
everything, even blocking out the sun in the outlying homes. Near
the center of the community was a square courtyard with trees and
park benches, and running alongside the far end of the courtyard
was the rec center, where they fed everyone decent meals three
times a day.

It wasn’t a totally comfortable set up, but
it was better than any of them had had in a long time. At least in
Woodside, people had the opportunity to go out and enjoy the
sunshine without having to worry about getting eaten by a crowd of
infected crawling out of the woodwork.

Brandt watched as a group of children played
tag in the center of the courtyard, dodging among the benches and
trees and shrubbery as they chased after each other. The vehicles
were parked around three sides of the courtyard’s perimeter,
offering additional protection to the few children in the community
against the infected. A smile quirked at the corner of his lips as
he watched two of the boys tackle each other and wrestle in the
dirt and grass. Nearby, two little girls—Shae and Sasha, the same
girls he and his friends had rescued from the Westin months
before—were playing with dolls that Justin’s crew had salvaged from
somewhere.

Tearing his eyes away from the children,
Brandt turned to look at Cade. She had left him behind, heading for
the two-story house they stayed in with Kimberly and Isaac, which
had become known throughout the community as the “main” house.
Beside it was the house that held Woodside’s medical facilities. At
that moment, only Ethan, Remy, and Dr. Derek Rivers were in
residence.

Cade was disappearing into the main house.
Brandt huffed out a sigh and sped up, determined to catch up to her
and help her prep for the community’s dinner service before she did
too much and made herself sick.