The Becoming: Revelations (3 page)

“What
did
you plan?” Alicia leaned close to study the bandage hooked over his left shoulder. She followed the tape to its end against his chest and tugged at it. It peeled away easily. Ethan felt her breath against his neck and closed his eyes with a shrug.

“I don’t know. Definitely not a relationship,” Ethan said. “We were attracted to each other. She’s way outside my age range, so I don’t know why I became so attached to her. Just … one thing led to another, and it spiraled out of control. The rest of the group had no idea, and she wanted it kept that way.”

“Think it was proximity?” Alicia suggested.

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Did you love her?” Alicia asked. She tugged the last of the gauze from Ethan’s back. A scab peeled away from the wound, and he gritted his teeth and hissed, tensing. Alicia hummed softly and rubbed the back of his neck in apology.

“I don’t know,” Ethan said after the initial sting of pain subsided. “I didn’t get in too deep. Or at least I tried not to. I don’t know how she felt.”

“I’m not asking how
she
felt,” Alicia murmured. Her fingers brushed Ethan’s blond hair aside, and her lips pressed against the nape of his neck. Ethan closed his eyes and suppressed another shiver. He wasn’t used to Alicia’s forwardness; he supposed the conditions in which they lived caused many—including Alicia and even, to some extent, himself—to do things they might not have done if uninfected. Everything moved almost too quickly for him to handle. “I’m asking how
you
felt,” she persisted. She moved on to his arms to unwrap the gauze looped around them.

A trickle of something wet and warm dripped down between his shoulder blades. The sensation was disturbing. “I don’t know how I felt,” he said. He was reluctant to admit anything so personal to Alicia. They’d shared a bed, they shared common ground and a fear of the future, and yet Ethan still couldn’t share his feelings about Remy with her. He usually avoided discussions about his and Remy’s relationship—not to mention his marriage to Anna. Ethan was sure Alicia knew about them anyway; she knew more about him than
he
knew about him.

“I guess I loved her,” Ethan confessed after a silence filled only by the sound of tearing tape. He consciously downplayed his feelings, not willing to give Alicia more than necessary. “Enough to matter, anyway, considering we did what we could to
not
fall in love.”

“Do you still feel that way?” Alicia asked. She turned his right arm over and peeled at the tape on the underside of his forearm. Her eyes were intent on the gauze, her hair falling into her face. Ethan wanted to brush it out of her eyes, but he couldn’t with the grip she still had on his arm. “Do you still feel like you’re not supposed to be with anyone?”

“More so than ever,” Ethan said. The fervency in his voice surprised him. “I’ve got Michaluk. I’m living on borrowed time. There’s no way I’d subject someone I loved to this.”

“Same here,” Alicia agreed. She added the gauze to the growing pile. “It’s not worth falling in love when it won’t be long before we all die.” Ethan took her hand, lacing his fingers with hers and squeezing it. Alicia sighed and continued. “I shouldn’t be so morbid,” she said. She cracked open the first-aid kit, taking out the tapes and gauzes and wound cleansers she’d use. She followed with a small pair of scissors and tweezers. Ethan tensed at the sight. This was going to hurt. “I should think positively. I should tell myself we’re going to find Evans and be able to convince him to help us.”

Alicia started cleaning the wound on his right forearm. Ethan dug his nails into his knees again. “Do you think he’ll cooperate?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Alicia admitted. She dabbed a stray streak of blood from his skin. “That’s something you can answer a hell of a lot better than I can.” She tore strips of medical tape from the roll and stuck one end of each to the edge of the kit’s box in a neat row. “Do you think he’ll help us?”

Ethan hesitated as he thought over the little he knew about the man. Brandt had never been open about his past; he clung to it, kept it close where no one could use it against him. Ethan had always harbored the suspicion that Brandt was hiding something from the rest of them, and Alicia had confirmed that a month prior. As for how Brandt would react to what Alicia needed him for …

“I’m not sure,” Ethan said. “I think so. I
hope
so. But I’m not sure I know much about him. I don’t know if he’ll do it.”

Alicia began to wrap fresh gauze around Ethan’s arm. “I hope he will. Not for my sake or your sake, but for the sake of the children here. We fucked up this world. We messed around with things we had no business messing with. The children shouldn’t have to suffer because of our mistakes.”

By the time Remy took his place on watch shortly before sunrise, Brandt was exhausted. His head felt like it was packed with cotton, and his eyes were dry and scratchy. To say he was ready to crawl into bed and not move until after lunch was an understatement. It was with that thought in mind that Brandt climbed through the second-story window. He rubbed his eyes and shuffled to the master bedroom, where he’d stayed since their arrival at the safe house.

The room brightened with the first hints of sunrise, but Brandt still couldn’t see well as he collapsed into the armchair by the bed. He slouched weakly for a long moment before leaning down to take his boots off. He managed to unlace his left boot, and he’d begun the process of untying the right one when a shift of movement from the king-sized bed caught his attention.

Brandt tensed and straightened. His eyes locked onto the dark form in the bed. Brandt was well aware that it was Cade. After all, he’d spent the past three weeks sleeping in the very chair in which he now sat, constantly on alert for changes in her condition, for better or worse. It was with a fair amount of anxiety that he abandoned his boots and knelt on the floor beside the bed. He brushed his fingertips over Cade’s blessedly cool forehead. The woman stared at him in the hazy gloom filtering through the curtains. The sight of her eyes, open and clear with recognition and relative alertness, made Brandt draw in a slow breath of relief.

“Hey, welcome back,” he said in a hushed tone.

“Hi,” Cade whispered back. Her voice was faint and cracked, but she sounded as coherent as her eyes suggested. Brandt moved his fingers to her cheeks, feeling her damp skin for fever.

“You’ve been out for a while,” Brandt said. “How do you feel?”

“Like shit,” Cade mumbled. She attempted to clear her throat and failed miserably. “Where are we?”

“Dinky little town near the Atlantic coast,” Brandt answered. He stood and grabbed a shopping bag, digging through it for an unopened bottle of water. “We’re somewhere outside Charleston. It’s in the same little town Ethan and I planned to bring all of you to if we didn’t get the help we needed in Atlanta. He had the maps when … well, when he stayed behind. So I had to work off my memory on which blocks we’d planned to check for a safe house. Did the best I could with the little I remembered.”

As Brandt turned back to her with a freshly opened bottle of water, he caught a glimpse of apprehension in Cade’s eyes. He eased onto the edge of the bed and helped her sit up, waiting until he’d helped her drink from the bottle before he prompted, “What’s on your mind?”

Cade hesitated and ran her fingers lightly over the outside of the bottle. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

Brandt pressed his lips together and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, he is,” he confirmed. “I’m so sorry, babe.”

Cade looked away from Brandt and closed her eyes. “I just had this weird feeling, like maybe it was part of a bad dream. I wanted to be sure.” When her eyes opened and met his again, they were surprisingly calm. The thought of her suppressing her grief over Ethan like she’d done for her niece and boyfriend disturbed Brandt. He’d always believed the dead should be mourned, and Cade was refusing to do so. That could lead to nothing but trouble. Cade cleared her throat and took another slow sip of water. “How bad is it?”

Brandt removed his boots before he replied. He spent the time evaluating Cade’s question, debating different answers, trying to settle on the best way to report the group’s situation. There
was
no good way to do it, he acknowledged. All the news Brandt had to offer was bad. But in the end, all he could do was give it; attempting to sanitize his report would earn him an epic ass-kicking from Cade at the soonest available opportunity.

“We thought you weren’t going to make it,” Brandt started. He kept his voice almost monotonous in an effort to keep his emotions in check. “You were so fucking sick, and we just … we weren’t sure if we even dealt with it correctly. We muddled our way through it, and Gray did everything he remembered Theo telling him about wound care. But you kept getting sicker and sicker. Gray and I went out on a couple of supply runs, but we stopped when I got nervous about your condition. I didn’t want to
not
be here if you weren’t going to pull through.” Brandt didn’t look at Cade as he said this, feeling vulnerable at the admission.

When Brandt did look at Cade again, he was surprised to see a smile on her face. She sipped again from her water bottle and twisted the cap back on. “Well, as you can see, I did pull through. You’re stuck with me, Brandt. Get used to it.”

Brandt chuckled and examined Cade again. She looked weak and skinny, pale and exhausted, despite the long rest she’d had over the past three weeks. Regardless, Brandt gave her a smile and said, though he didn’t believe a word of it, “Well, I can see you’ll pop right back to your old self pretty quick.” He glanced at the open bedroom door, debating going to find Gray, in case the other man needed to do anything health-related to her. Then he shook his head and slid closer to Cade. He didn’t think Gray’s presence was necessary right now. “Do you need anything?” he offered. “I can get whatever you want.”

“Yeah, I need to know how everybody is,” Cade said. She twisted her fingers into the sheets draped over her. “How is Remy? Is she okay? What about Gray? How are they handling all this shit?”

A flash of Remy’s tearful near-collapse on the roof flitted through Brandt’s mind. “Honestly, they’re not,” he admitted. He chose not to mention specifics. It felt too personal, something to keep between him and Remy. But Brandt couldn’t deny that she wasn’t doing well. He slowly shook his head, a motion that earned him a curious look from Cade. “Remy … she pretty much lives on the roof. She says she’s keeping watch, but I think it’s more that she doesn’t want to be around the rest of us. And then there’s Gray. He’s … well, he’s Gray. Keeps to himself, only leaves his room for watch or to change your bandages. We don’t see him very often otherwise.”

Cade glanced at the sheets as if she could see the wound in her side through the layers of fabric. “Gray’s been handling this?” she asked in surprise.

“Well, I helped,” Brandt said lamely. Cade laughed, though she grimaced halfway through. Brandt touched her shoulder, concerned. “Hey, are you okay?”

Cade sucked in a slow, steadying breath. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just sore is all. Wasn’t really expecting that to hurt.”

Brandt rested his hand loosely on top of Cade’s, tracing his thumb over the soft skin covering her knuckles as he let out a wide yawn. He rubbed his eyes, squinting myopically at her, and she grinned at him. “I hate to ask, but I’ve been sleeping in a chair for about three weeks, and—”

“A
chair?
” Cade repeated. “Your poor back.”

“Exactly.” Brandt hesitated and glanced to the open door again, more out of an abundance of nervousness than anything else, and wondered if he should get up to close it. “Do you mind if I sleep up here tonight? I don’t want to accidentally smack you in the side or whatever, but I
really
can’t take another night in that chair.”

Cade’s grin widened, and she shuffled sideways to make room for him. “You know, you didn’t have to ask,” she pointed out after she’d settled against the pillows once more.

“I know, but with my luck, you’d wake up in the middle of the night and freak out and punch me,” Brandt said with a chuckle. He eased back onto the bed with a low groan, feeling his tired muscles relaxing painfully.

“With your luck? I still might.”

Alicia stepped into the dim hallway and let the door fall closed behind her with a soft click. She smoothed both hands over her wrinkled clothes and tried to finger-comb her tangled hair before giving up and moving to the stairwell door. Dominic Jackson would be waiting for her just inside the stairwell. She always met him there after her lengthy interrogation sessions with Ethan Bennett.

And once again, Dominic didn’t disappoint. As Alicia pushed the door open and stepped onto the landing, the tall black man stood from his spot on the stairs leading to the seventeenth floor, switching on a flashlight and shining it in her direction, careful not to shine it directly in her face. She eased the door shut behind her, and he gave her a questioning look. “So, how’d it go?”

“Like normal,” Alicia reported. A wry smile crossed her face. “He still doesn’t remember where the group was headed.” She shoved both hands into her pockets. “I just don’t get it. Out of all the infected people we’ve dealt with, why is he the
only
one we’ve seen with memory loss?”

“Do you think he’s lying?” Dominic suggested. They began to descend the stairs together, walking in stride with each other out of unconscious habit.