The Becoming: Ground Zero (9 page)

“That’s a long way,” Remy said. She rested her hands on the edge of the table and squinted at the maps. Her eyes darted over the papers as she tried to decipher all the different routes and options laid out before them. The map was a colorful, tangled mess, and Remy had no idea where to start. “We’ll be traveling to Atlanta on our bikes, right? How long will that take?”

“I’m not sure,” Nikola admitted, looking to Cade, Brandt, and Ethan in turn for guidance. Remy shook her head and snagged Nikola’s paper to figure out the problem, but Brandt spoke up before she could put pencil to paper.

“About twenty hours, maybe,” Brandt said, his tone subdued. He sat on the edge of the table, plucking the knife from Cade’s hands and beginning to tap the flat of the blade rhythmically against his knuckles. He didn’t look at the rest of them. “That assumes we’ll ride nonstop, which we can’t physically do. And it would keep us out on the road longer than I’m comfortable with.”

Remy shook her head again, slowly and thoughtfully. Even as Brandt spoke, she mentally put the pieces together. “We need another way to travel,” she theorized. “There is no way I, for one, can handle riding two hundred miles on a fucking bike.”

“Bikes,” Avi repeated. Remy looked up at the blonde across from her and raised an eyebrow. She’d figured the woman was an airhead, but she never guessed that Avi was deaf too. “You mean, like, motorcycles? Or …?”

“No, I mean bikes. You know, like, the kind you pedal,” Remy corrected. She smirked and looked away from Avi, back to the maps. It was a smart-assed answer, but Remy didn’t care; Avi’s question had been incredibly stupid, in her opinion. She was starting to agree with Ethan’s assessment of Avi’s mental state. Remy traced her finger along one of the interstates running east from Alabama to Georgia and hummed thoughtfully. The map began to look clearer, not quite the page full of scribbles it was before. Remy could see specific roads and highways and all the possibilities open to them.

“So what do you suggest?” Ethan asked. He sank into a chair and pulled a thin notebook and pencil out of the bag hanging on the back of it. He jotted notes into the notebook as he waited on Remy’s response, not looking at her.

“We should take a truck or something,” Remy said slowly. She twisted a lock of her hair around her fingers and snuck a peek at Ethan. She remembered the night before, when she went to him, when she tried to convince him to go with her and Avi, and when things escalated into physicality. Yet again. Her breath caught in her throat; she swallowed the sensation down and beat the thoughts back into their dark little corner. It wasn’t time to dwell on Ethan and the way he’d touched her. She cleared her throat. “We could put two or three of us in the truck and the rest following in another vehicle,” Remy suggested. “The bikes we can load up into the back of the truck for when we have to ditch the vehicles. At the very least, we can cut out a chunk of travel time before we have to resort to the bikes.”

“But what route should we take?” Cade spoke up. She leaned against Remy to look at the map. Remy casually slung an arm around the other woman’s shoulder and gave her a friendly squeeze. Cade rewarded her with a smile and continued. “If we take I-65/85, it’s going to take us right through Montgomery. Last I heard, that city is overrun. But if we go for I-20/59, that goes close to Birmingham. It isn’t any better than Montgomery. Might even be worse, considering it was a secondary outbreak point.”

“We’ll want to stick with roads off the beaten path, if we can manage,” Brandt agreed. He slid off the table and sank into a chair with a heavy sigh. “But that will add to our travel time too, and to the amount of supplies we need to carry with us.”

They stared at the maps for a long moment. No one spoke, the weight of the silence hanging over their heads like a guillotine. Remy traced both paths with her eyes, examining the highways and rural roads between them. “What if we travel on the interstates when we’re not near any large cities?” she suggested. “That way we avoid the smaller towns we don’t really need to go through, and it puts us at less risk of coming into contact with any infected trapped in the traffic jams closer to the cities. And when we’re approaching more congested areas, we can leave the interstate and stick with side roads and highways until we’re safely past.”

“That … that might actually work,” Ethan said with a slow nod. Remy grinned widely at him. She was glad
someone
agreed with her ideas, because Brandt looked ready to come over the table and slap her. He’d obviously hoped they wouldn’t figure out a way to get to Atlanta and would give up the attempt. Remy hated to burst his bubble, but she would do everything necessary to make the mission happen.

“So long as we can get supplies together, I think we’ll be okay,” Ethan continued. “We’ll hammer out the finer points later. The question I’m asking now is if everyone’s on board.” He looked at them all, and Remy met his eyes unerringly. She gave him a slight encouraging nod. “If you don’t wish to go, no one here will fault you for it. Those who are going can go, and the others can remain here with enough supplies to last at least through the rest of the month. Or you can decide to simply move on elsewhere.”

“I’m going,” Remy said the moment Ethan’s words died on the air. “I said I would last night. Nothing we’ve talked about since has changed my mind.”

“I’m going too,” Gray spoke up behind her. Remy gave him a grateful smile. She really did like Gray. He was stubborn and entirely too much like Ethan for her comfort—which served only to muddle her already confused mind when it came to the two men—but he was also loyal and trustworthy to a fault. Despite her mixed-up feelings over Ethan and Gray, feelings compounded by the physical elements of her relationship with Ethan, Remy willingly acknowledged that she couldn’t have asked for a better friend than Gray.

Avi nodded and crossed her arms, resting her hip against the edge of the table. “I’m going, of course. I started this, so I have to,” she said, a tinge of sheepishness in her voice. Remy gave Avi a reassuring smile and nodded her head once in solidarity. At least the woman took responsibility for what she started and planned to help them finish it. Remy had to respect that.

“Cade? Brandt?” Ethan looked to the man and woman on Remy’s other side. Brandt and Cade exchanged an indecipherable look. Cade took the knife from Brandt and studied the blade absently. It was obvious, to Remy at least, that the two had had a discussion about that very issue the night before, much as Ethan and Remy had. Well, not
exactly,
Remy thought with no small degree of amusement.

“We’re going,” Cade said. Her accent was heavier than usual as she spoke for both of them. Brandt closed his eyes and let out a slow breath. Cade’s hand closed gently over the man’s muscular forearm.

“Nikola?” Ethan prompted, ignoring the exchange between Brandt and Cade.

The teenage girl looked at the rest of them nervously, her eyes wide. She took a deep breath. “You’ll need somebody to help with navigation and supplies and stuff, right?” she said.

Remy leaned forward to watch Nikola closely and saw Ethan do likewise. Nikola sounded uncertain, unsure if she wanted to help or not; her tone worried Remy. “Are you sure?” Ethan asked.

Before Nikola could reply, Theo interrupted. “I’m going,” he said in a rush, as if trying to get the words out before he chickened out. “If Gray is going, then I’m going.”

“Well, that settles it,” Nikola said, her voice stronger than before. “I am
so
not staying here by myself. Count me in too.”

Brandt shoved his chair away from the table, standing and knocking the chair to the floor. “This is so fucked up,” he muttered. He shook his head again and pushed the door open hard enough to slam into the wall, storming out of the dining room. He left the seven of them looking after him uncertainly.

Cade slid from her perch on the table. “Great. You’ve upset him,” she grumbled, her stilted accent so thick that Remy almost couldn’t make out what she said. “Just fucking great.”

“Something tells me he really doesn’t want to go,” Remy said. Her eyes focused vaguely on the door as she tried to decide why Brandt was so angry. He’d never displayed such anger over any other mission in which the group had participated over the past year. Perhaps Gray’s theory about Brandt was correct. Maybe it
was
true that the man was from somewhere around Atlanta.

Before Remy could pursue her thoughts any further, Cade growled and slammed her knife into the table. The tip of the blade bit deeply into the scarred wood. The rest of them jumped at the sound.

“No, you
think?
” Cade snapped. She glared at them all, but the majority of her ire was directed at Remy. “You’re asking entirely
too much
of him on this. It isn’t right. What you’re asking him isn’t
right
. But he’s going anyway, because he’s too fucking loyal to abandon his friends. And he’s not going to let me go while he stays behind.”

Remy gritted her teeth and faced down Cade as her own anger flared up. “He doesn’t
have
to go, and neither do you,” she pointed out heatedly. “Nobody is forcing
either
of you to go.”

Cade kicked the chair Brandt inhabited moments before, sending it skidding across the floor. The sound of it scraping over the floorboards echoed in the mostly empty room. “
Fuck
, Remy! What kind of people do you think we are? You think we’re going to let the six of you walk into the damned cesspool that is Atlanta while we continue to live our merry fucking lives in this fucking house? You couldn’t survive a damned
day
in a place as bad as that without our help! You wouldn’t know how to handle yourself on a
real
battlefield! You’ll probably get your stupid asses killed—”

Ethan slammed his fist on the table. Remy and Cade jumped. “We don’t have time for this!” Ethan barked. “Both of you shut the fuck up and stop bitching, because it’s not doing
anything
to help.” Remy opened her mouth to protest, but Ethan put his hand up to stop her. “Not another word,” he warned, standing and starting to gather maps from the table. “Nikki and I are going upstairs to work out the rest of the plan. Remy, you and Gray and Theo start getting supplies together. Avi, give them a hand, would you? Cade, just … go deal with Brandt. You’re probably the only person who can calm his grouchy ass down right now without bloodshed.”

Cade stormed out of the dining room and slammed the door behind her. She fumed over Remy’s careless attitude about the whole mess. And “mess” it was. Cade had never seen such wanton disregard for safety and common sense in her life. She was so angry that she was nearly irrational; it didn’t take much to set her off anymore, and Remy had successfully managed it. Cade clenched her fists hard, her nails digging into her palms, and stomped toward the stairs. She swore nearly every horrible death she could imagine on Remy—though even in her anger, Cade fell short of actually wishing death by infected on the younger woman.

Cade spotted Brandt halfway up the stairs and slowed to a stop. He sat on the landing where Cade used to enjoy reading before she grew bored of the literature available in the house. Brandt’s elbows rested on his knees, his forehead pressed into his palms. He looked like he was in pain, isolated, alone in the world. Cade swallowed hard and approached him. Brandt didn’t move as she climbed the stairs and stopped a few steps below him.

“Hey, are you okay?” Cade asked. She sat on the step beside him and leaned to get a look at his face.

Brandt didn’t look up right away. He simply continued to sit with his head bowed, his hands braced against his head, staring at the steps below him in silence. Cade felt an impulse to reach up and run her fingers over his thick, curling dark hair in a gesture of comfort. She pressed both palms flat against her thighs to help fight the urge.

Brandt’s voice was hoarse when he spoke. “I’m sorry about that.”

“About what?” Cade asked. She slid to a knee on the step below her to get a better look at his face.

Brandt shrugged. “I don’t know. For getting so pissed off. I acted like an ass in there.”

Cade shook her head and let go of her knee, resting her hand against Brandt’s forearm. She gave it a reassuring squeeze and felt his muscles give under her fingers. “It’s not your fault,” Cade said quietly. “I would have gotten pissed off too. Hell, I kind of did. Sort of threatened Remy with my big-ass knife in there. You should have seen it. I bet you would have loved every moment of it.” She smirked slightly. “Let’s just say there’s a new hole in the dining table.”

Brandt bit back a soft chuckle. “I’m sorry I missed it,” he murmured. His fingers worked into his hair, pulling gently at the strands. “I don’t want to go back,” he admitted. His voice was muffled by his arms, and Cade leaned in closer to hear him. “I really don’t know if I can.”

“Brandt, you’ve already told them yes,” Cade pointed out. “And I know you. You’re not one to back out on something once you agree to do it. And you’re not one to abandon your friends when the going gets tough.”

“The going is about to get a hell of a lot tougher.” Brandt lifted his head and rubbed both hands over his face. His eyes were red-rimmed, as if he’d been crying. Which was a ridiculous thought; Brandt didn’t cry. He was too tough for that. “Those people down there? They think they know what it’s like in Atlanta. They think they have some idea, but really? They have
no
idea what it’s like. It’s … God, it’s awful, Cade. There are infected
everywhere
. And they sniff you out. They can track you like fucking bloodhounds, and they always seem to know
exactly
where you’re hiding.”