The Becoming: Revelations (11 page)

The woman dangled the tags in Cade’s face. “See? You
are
lying,” she said, her voice oddly mild but still triumphant. “Now tell me where he is.”

“He isn’t here,” Cade said. Her eyes didn’t even flicker toward the tags, staying locked on the woman in front of her. “He’s dead.”

“Bullshit.” The redhead nodded to the Hispanic man behind Cade. The man nodded and put the gun away, drawing the knife from Cade’s own belt and holding it to her throat, pulling at her hair to tilt her head back. “Tell me where he is, or I’ll have Cortez cut your throat,” the woman ordered.

“Cut my throat and you won’t find out where he is,” Cade replied calmly. She was seemingly not rattled in the slightest by the knife at her throat.

“True,” the woman said contemplatively. “However …” She glanced in Remy’s direction. A hand closed into her hair, and Remy gasped as she was pulled to her knees, her eyes watering with the pain in her scalp. Cade’s eyes slid toward her as Remy felt a gun press firmly against the back of her head.

“He went out for supplies yesterday,” Cade said quickly, her eyes meeting Remy’s. Even from where she knelt, Remy could see the concern and fear in them. “He won’t be back for at least two more days.”

“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” the woman crooned. The hand released Remy’s hair, and she was shoved back to the floor, her scalp aching. “Now, which one of you is Cade Alton?”

Brandt planted his feet firmly on the roof of the Honda Civic, pressing his compact binoculars to his eyes and studying the landscape ahead of him. He could hear Gray scuffing his boots against the pavement behind him. He only saw a few infected in the distance, too far away to be a real threat to them.

“How’s it looking?” Gray asked. He shifted his mostly empty backpack against his back and tilted his head to look up at Brandt.

“Surprisingly clear,” Brandt reported. He slowly turned on the car roof to scan the rest of their immediate surroundings. Once he was satisfied that there were no immediate dangers around them, Brandt lowered the binoculars and stuffed them into the side pocket of his own backpack. “You know, you might’ve been right about your whole close-to-the-beach theory.” He sidestepped onto the trunk and then dropped to the pavement beside Gray.

“What can I say? I’m just smart like that,” Gray said, not bothering to temper his boasting with any modesty.

“Smart-
assed,
maybe,” Brandt retorted. He slid his rifle from his shoulder and returned it to a ready position against his chest, motioning to the street ahead of them. “Now come on. Don’t get cocky. There might not be very many of them on the street, but that doesn’t mean they’re not in the buildings.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Gray said flippantly, following Brandt. “I may occasionally do incredibly stupid things, but that doesn’t mean I’m an idiot.”

Brandt snorted and began to walk down the sidewalk. “So, you and Remy, huh?” he said conversationally as he led Gray toward the shops farther into the downtown area. He glanced at Gray and noted that the man’s cheeks had already flushed red, even as he protested.

“Who said anything about me and Remy?” Gray asked irritably. “Geez, you sound like Theo.”

“Come on, man, I’m not stupid,” Brandt retorted. He motioned to Gray’s hand, letting a smirk cross his face. “Get your damned gun out.”

Gray snarled at him, pulled the weapon from its holster, and waggled it in Brandt’s face. “It’s out, it’s out!”

Brandt laughed and continued walking in silence for a moment. “You know, I’m not deaf either,” he suddenly added, picking up their previous conversation as if he’d never left off.

“Oh God,” Gray groaned. His reaction sent Brandt into a short fit of laughter.

“Chill. You two weren’t
that
loud,” Brandt assured him. “I just happened to walk by and overhear. Mostly, I was wondering why neither of you felt that keeping watch was more important than getting laid.”

“It was … it was nothing,” Gray said, his cheeks flushing even redder. “It was just …” He looked at Brandt again, and under the man’s scrutiny, he seemed to crack. “Okay, I’m sorry! What the hell would
you
have done if she’d propositioned you?”

“I don’t think Remy would proposition me,” Brandt replied, fighting back his smirk. “I get the impression she doesn’t even like me all that much. Why would she want to sleep with me?”

“Well, fuck, you know what I mean,” Gray tried. “Look at her. She’s gorgeous. And she was just, I don’t know, there and asking. Think I was going to tell her no?”

“I know what you
should
have done, but that’s usually far from what most people would do,” Brandt acknowledged. “It’s okay, this time. Don’t let it happen again. The last thing we need to do is slip up and get careless. That’s when people start to die.” He ran a hand through his hair and scanned the street ahead of them again. “So, how was it?”

Gray stopped in the middle of the sidewalk with a shocked expression on his face. “Did you really just ask me what I think you asked me?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t talking in Swahili.”

Gray groaned again and shook his head, hurrying to catch up with Brandt. “I’m not describing my sex life to you, okay?”

“Wasn’t asking you to,” Brandt said smoothly. “I was just wondering if it at least was good enough to knock that chip off your shoulder.”

Gray seemed to ignore Brandt’s veiled insult, because he skimmed right past it to answer the question. “Let’s just say she knows what the hell she’s doing and leave it at that, yeah?” he suggested. His entire face was reddened by then. “It’s not all that big a deal, anyway.”

“It’s not?” Brandt asked. “What was it then?”

“Just a … I don’t know, just a comfort fuck, I guess,” Gray said with a nonchalant shrug that Brandt saw right through. “I don’t care.”

“Is that so?” Brandt raised an eyebrow. “Had me fooled. Did you at least use protection?”

“What am I, an idiot?” Gray shot back. “Hell, didn’t
you?
”

Brandt didn’t answer the question. Instead, he scanned the surprisingly untouched storefronts again, dropping the conversation as he spotted a drugstore across the street. Despite what he’d told Gray during the short drive toward the downtown area, Brandt’s first priority was Cade’s health. Even though her fever had broken and she’d been up and moving for a week, Brandt didn’t want to risk infection of the still-healing wound in her side. He motioned to Gray and began to cross the street, weaving among cars and trucks.

“I thought we were after food,” Gray said, hurrying to catch up.

“We are,” Brandt said. He paused just outside the drugstore’s door and squinted into its darkened interior. He couldn’t see anything moving inside, but he didn’t think it was wise to just charge in there either. He slid his hand into his backpack’s side pocket again and pulled free his flashlight, thumbing the switch. He glanced back at Gray. “We’re going inside,” Brandt said, raising his rifle. “Stick close to me, don’t do anything too stupid, and keep your eyes open.”

“You act like I’ve never been to one of these rodeos before,” Gray grumbled. He raised his own gun and flipped the safety off. Brandt raised an eyebrow at the motion but chose to not say anything. This time. “I’m old hat at this.”

“I think just about everybody still alive is old hat at this,” Brandt replied. He grasped the door’s handle and eased the door open. “Anybody who isn’t is probably dead.” As the door swung open, a bell chimed. Brandt flinched, and he and Gray both froze. Brandt held the door open with his foot and aimed his rifle into the store as the two men waited to see if anything would charge from the darkness of the shop.

“Think it’s safe to go inside?” Gray murmured. His eyes darted between Brandt and the interior of the drugstore, waiting for Brandt’s cue, his fingers on his sidearm in a white-knuckled grip. Brandt pressed his lips together and nodded.

“Yeah, but let’s leave the door open so that damned bell doesn’t ring again, okay?” Brandt suggested. He didn’t particularly
like
the idea of leaving the door open—anything could walk in on them, and they’d be less likely to hear it. But Brandt figured that, at this point, leaving the door open was the lesser of two evils, so rather than pursue the thought any further, he simply dragged a trash can over and used it to prop the door open. Then, with a simple, “Let’s go,” Brandt eased into the drugstore, sweeping the store carefully for any threats, Gray close behind.

“What are we after here?” Gray asked. He slunk inside, turning his head this way and that nervously.

“The usual shit,” Brandt replied, keeping his voice soft in the emptiness pressing close around them. “Any meds and first-aid supplies we can find, and anything else that looks useful.” He shrugged and stopped at the first shelf he reached. There were several boxes of rolled gauze left, so he tore the boxes open and stuffed the loose rolls into the very bottom of his pack. He tossed the last roll of medical tape on top for good measure.

Gray wandered to the end of the aisle while Brandt stuffed the gauze in his bag, pausing to scoop a few stray packages into his own. “Got some painkillers here,” he announced before stepping to the next aisle and browsing through the section under a sign that proclaimed
Family Planning
. “Not much left,” he added. “Looks like most of the stuff is already gone.”

“Yeah, I noticed.” Brandt sighed and shook his head in frustration. After a year of Michaluk’s reign, the supplies he considered absolutely vital to their survival were becoming difficult to come by in anything resembling adequate quantities. He could see it already: six months from now, they’d be forced to hunt for animals, forage for vegetables and other edible plants, and figure out how to keep up their health and general well-being outside their realms of comfort. While Brandt was sure he and Cade could manage, he wasn’t so sure about Remy and Gray. He also wasn’t sure it was safe to grow food outside where they presently hid, and he’d never been much of a hunter. Perhaps it was time to begin the search for a more permanent place for the four of them.

“What do you propose we do, then?” Gray asked. He rejoined Brandt and shone his own flashlight around the store.

Brandt sighed again and shrugged at Gray helplessly. “Move on, I suppose. We need food more than anything else at this point. Maybe we can check some of the restaurants along this street, see if there’s any canned goods left in them.”

They were back into the street and halfway down the block when something shiny caught Brandt’s eye. He slowed to a stop and stared across the street, raising an eyebrow at the genuinely surprising sight before him. Gray prodded him in the back.

“What is it? What are you looking at?”

Brandt nodded to a jewelry store, locked up tight and completely untouched despite the jewelry displays in the plate-glass window. “That. It’s fucking pristine.”

“How … weird,” Gray murmured as he too took in the sight before them.

“Exactly.” Brandt shifted his backpack onto his shoulders and squinted at the building thoughtfully. “Think it’s safe?”

It was Gray’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I want to get in there.”

Gray snorted and shook his head. “Seriously? Why? There’s nothing in there that we’d absolutely need.”

“No, but there’s something in there I want,” Brandt replied. He started to cross the street.

Gray swore and followed him. “You’re insane, you know that?”

Brandt smirked. “What, you just noticed?”

Cade’s heart raced as the question left the redheaded woman’s lips.
Cade Alton?
What did this woman want with her? The man behind her prodded her in the back of the head with the barrel of his gun, and she clenched her jaw. An intense ache had settled into her upper back and shoulders from having her arms extended for so long. But she refused to let the pain show. She’d been through worse, had prepared and trained for
the
worst, in her time in the IDF. What this redheaded bitch could do to her didn’t compare.

“I
said,
which of you is Cade Alton?” the bitch in question asked again, her words clipped and measured. She was clearly not bothered by holding two unarmed women at gunpoint. That told Cade it was something she’d done before. She fleetingly wondered if the woman had any compunction about torture, but her brain advised her that it was a line of thought not worth pursuing.

The redhead turned to Remy and took a step toward the young woman’s prone form. As the word “torture” wandered through her mind again, Cade spoke up.

“Right here,” she snapped. The woman turned on her heel to face Cade again, her eyebrow raised.

“How do I know you’re not lying?” the woman demanded. “You’re so obviously willing to do so.”

“Back right pocket,” Cade bit out. She folded her hands into fists, digging her nails into her palms to keep herself calm. “Photo military ID.”

The woman took a quick step forward, and Cade felt her ID slide from her pocket. She debated taking the opportunity to attack the woman, but her instincts warned that it’d likely end very badly for her and Remy. So she remained motionless, her eyes glancing fleetingly at Remy and the short, ugly man practically standing on her back.