The Becoming: Revelations (6 page)

Ethan didn’t concern himself with the other man any further once he’d ascertained he was still alive and fighting. Instead, he eyed the blond woman he’d seen on the fourth floor. She’d taken up position on the other side of the garage to Ethan’s left, sheltering behind a dusty sedan and joining her rifle fire with Dominic’s. Ethan shook free from his rapid observations and squeezed the trigger of his own weapon, shooting an infected woman drawing too close to the blond woman’s position for his personal comfort.

“We’ve got to get that gate closed,” Alicia suddenly said to his right. Ethan glanced at her and found that she’d joined him, her weapon raised. But she didn’t fire any shots into the mass. Instead, her eyes focused, laser-like, on the opened gate. The chain that had held it shut had been strained to the breaking point; its snapped ends dangled from the bottom of the gate. “If we can keep more from getting in, we can pick off what’s left and then work on the others outside.”

“Cut them off from the source,” Ethan said, seeing the wisdom in Alicia’s suggestion.

An infected girl no older than sixteen, her face littered with piercings, snagged Ethan’s arm. Ethan put the barrel of his gun against her forehead and squeezed the trigger. She fell back, sprawled limply on the concrete, and didn’t move again. He gritted his teeth and forced his focus to the mess in front of him once again.

“So how do you propose we get
to
the gate through these bastards?” Ethan called over the gunfire echoing through the garage.

Alicia hesitated, looking between Ethan and the gate uncertainly. An Asian man in a dirty business suit got uncomfortably close to them, and Ethan put a bullet in the man’s skull. Uncertainty was a look that didn’t suit Alicia’s normally confident features, Ethan reflected as he calmly grabbed an infected man by the arm and dragged him to the floor before shooting him in the face. They were on a battlefield; it wasn’t the time or place for Alicia’s indecisiveness. Anger and irritation at Alicia rose from his gut in a massive wave.

“Oh, fuck it,” Ethan snarled. He spared the woman a dirty look before turning on his heel and bolting in the direction of the gate. He ran right into the thickest part of the mass of infected trying to invade the Westin.

Alicia shouted as the stinking bodies of the infected closed in around him, but Ethan couldn’t make out her words. Nor did he care to. He had a more important task at hand, one entailing saving all their asses, since the ones in charge seemed too helpless to do it themselves.

It was a stupid idea, though, Ethan reflected as he jammed his Glock underneath a waitress’s chin and squeezed the trigger before moving on to the next infected obstacle blocking his path. Alicia had all the ammunition; she hadn’t bothered to give him so much as a spare magazine. It wouldn’t be long before he ran out of what he had. And then he’d be right back where he’d been just over a month before.

Ethan couldn’t spare time to think on that. Not right now. Not when he had a job to do. He plowed on, shoving and kicking and shooting his way through the infected, struggling past them toward the gate. Through its links, he saw the forms of more infected approaching the building. He had to put a stop to this
before
any more gained entry, or the building would never be secured again. And there was no way they could evacuate over one hundred people safely.

Ethan shoved his foot against the stomach of a large man grasping for him. The infected man was a behemoth, massively muscled and standing at least six inches taller than he. His stomach felt like it was made of solid stone. Despite that, the impact of Ethan’s foot managed to force him back several feet into the mass of other infected. This bought Ethan enough time to lift his Glock again and plug a bullet into the large man’s skull. The man tumbled to the floor in a heap.

The slide of Ethan’s gun locked back. Ethan grimaced and jammed the weapon into the waistband of his jeans. Only one more infected man stood directly between him and the gate, though more still surrounded him on each side. Ethan waded through the infected grasping at him and reached the man in three long strides. He grabbed the man’s shoulder and rammed the heel of his right hand against the man’s nose. The cartilage shattered, driving into the man’s brain, and he sagged against the gate and fell to the concrete.

With the last of the immediate obstacles out of the way, Ethan threw himself at the gate, grasping it and slamming it to the floor. A hand caught between the gate and the concrete, its owner an elderly woman with two visibly broken legs, who clawed at Ethan’s ankle. Ethan gritted his teeth and grasped the gate more firmly, slamming it against her hand with all the strength in his body. Bones snapped, and with another strike, the appendage ripped free. Then the gate fell fully shut.

“Where the fuck’s my backup?” Ethan shouted over the din of infected echoing through the garage. A thud against the gate pushed it an inch inward, jolting Ethan forward. He braced his heels on the concrete and pushed back, grasping the gate tightly and nearly hanging off it to keep it closed. A snap of gunfire rang out to his left, and then Dominic was beside him, two thick lengths of chain in one hand and his rifle in the other. He slung the rifle’s strap over his shoulder and slid the chains in place, wrapping them around and over and under the gate and then attaching them to anything that would hold them—including the large, thick pipes that ran along either side of the gate’s entryway—before slapping padlocks into place. Then, still without speaking, he handed Ethan a fresh magazine of ammunition and moved away, raising his rifle again and firing into the remaining infected.

The mop-up that followed was quick and brutal. Working methodically, the four of them swept the infected, goading them into corners of the garage or shoving them to the floor and firing bullets into their brains. Ethan felt robotic, almost mechanical, as he shot one after another, trying to shut down the part of his brain that screamed at his actions. It could have easily been him. The horror of the idea was too terrible to comprehend. Ethan buried it and set about his disgusting work.

It was only after Ethan fired the last bullet into the last of the infected before him that he realized he was out of ammunition again. He lowered the weapon, his eyes locked onto the man spread-eagled on the concrete at his feet, and waved a hand at Alicia as the woman approached. “Give me a new magazine,” he demanded.

A last sporadic burst of gunfire punctuated the silence after Ethan’s words. “We’re done, Ethan. There aren’t any more. We got them all,” Alicia said. She stood silent for a moment and then lashed out, punching Ethan’s shoulder. Ethan flinched and sidestepped away from her. “What the fuck were you thinking, running into the fuckers like that? Huh? You could have gotten yourself killed!”

Ethan jammed the gun back into his jeans’ waistband, striding across the garage to the door leading into the hotel proper. He skirted a few people emerging through the door as Alicia said something to Dominic. Then she hurried after him, still berating him as he shoved the door open.

“You’re fucking
insane,
you know that? Absolutely crazy. You’re going to get one of us killed, and—”

“Shut the fuck
up,
Alicia,” Ethan snapped. He pulled the Glock from his jeans and turned on her. Her cheek twitched as she tried to not flinch at his sudden movement. He shoved the sidearm toward her chest. “Here, take the fucking thing.”

Alicia took it and ran her fingers along the slide before ejecting the magazine, reloading it with bullets from her pocket as methodically as she’d shot the infected in the parking garage. Then she slapped the magazine back into the gun, chambered a round, and handed it back to Ethan grip first, much to his surprise.

“I think you’ve earned the right to carry this,” Alicia said solemnly. She pushed past him and stalked down the hall, quickly disappearing into the darkness.

Brandt was torn from sleep by the sound of the fire alarm blaring through his room. Thankfully, his reaction was only to open his eyes and look around in bewilderment; it wasn’t like the movies, where people suddenly sat up, gasping and panting, when they were woken by something unexpected.

That was how the end of Brandt’s world began: with him simply opening his eyes.

Brandt pushed himself to a sitting position. He scrunched his eyes in the bright lights that flickered on, covering his ears as the screeching alarm echoed in his skull, rattling his brain. His head swam with the movement, and his stomach churned with nausea as he tried to figure out what was going on.

The fluorescent lights flickered as the power surged. Their brightness was further aided by the pulsing light from the fire alarm system mounted above the door. Brandt grimaced and slid out of bed to search for pants. He didn’t smell smoke, but he wanted to be prepared in case something had happened that required the evacuation of the CDC. He dragged a pair of sweatpants from the dresser by the bed and pulled them on as he glanced at the door. It was likely a false alarm. If that was the case, he was going to be
pissed
.

The shriek of the fire alarm’s siren shut off. The silence was oddly loud to his ears, and he shook his head as if he could shake the lack of sound loose. The alarm’s strobe lights continued to flash against the white walls of the “guest” room he’d called home for the past month; the effect was dampened only by the lights that accompanied their awakening. Brandt glanced at the door once more before stumbling to the bathroom and fumbling for the watch he’d left on the sink the night before. His fingers closed around it, and he squinted at the digital numbers. 5:58 a.m.

“
Well, ain’t that some shit?” Brandt said out loud. “Two more minutes was too much to ask for, huh?”

Brandt looked at the shower stall thoughtfully before he shook his head and picked up his toothbrush. He figured he’d forego the shower he normally took in the mornings; he hadn’t done anything to work up a sweat in the past twelve hours anyway. Maybe he could go back to sleep until his doctor dropped in for his morning visit.

Brandt spat the toothpaste out and rinsed before he looked at his arm. He smoothed a wrinkle out of the medical tape holding the heparin lock in place on the inside of his elbow. Not for the first time, Brandt wondered if he was doing the right thing. It
felt
like the right thing. The idea of helping others, even at the potential sacrifice of his health, was a noble one. At least he hoped it was. It was something he’d done every day during active duty, so he didn’t see what was so different about this. It wasn’t like he had anything
else
going for him anymore.

He liked to think his sister would be proud of his efforts to do something with his life, to help other people—even though he wasn’t even able to tell her what he was doing.

Brandt was shaving his face when the sound of a loud bang echoed down the hall outside his quarters. He startled, the disposable razor blade nicking his jaw. The bang was followed by a scream and the distinctive chatter of gunfire. Brandt slowly straightened, drying his face. His instincts shrieked at him, but he forced them to be quiet as another burst of gunfire broke out in the hall. The noise was accompanied by booted footsteps running past the door.

“
What the hell?” Brandt muttered. He wiped at the blood on his jaw and dabbed at the water that dripped onto his bare chest. He pushed away from the sink, tucking his watch into the pocket of his sweatpants. He slowly approached the door that led to the hallway, his eyes flicking to the narrow window set into the door. Several dark figures darted by, their footsteps sounding in time with the shadows. Brandt instinctively ducked to stand beside the door, pressed against the wall so he wouldn’t be seen from the hallway. His mind spun as he tried to figure out what was going on.

Brandt contemplated going into the hall to find out, but he didn’t want to do it without a weapon in his hand. He scanned the room, but he knew the search would be useless; the CDC’s doctors had already combed through all the rooms and his belongings, removing anything that could have been used to injure himself or others, just in case his medical regimen caused suicidal or homicidal tendencies. Brandt spotted a ballpoint pen on the desk, possibly left by his doctor the evening before. He snatched it up, gripping his shitty weapon tightly in his fist and resuming his study of the door. Sporadic gunfire from the other side was the only sound to punctuate the flashing light in the room.

Brandt was hardly prepared when the door flew open, but he still managed a step forward. He raised the pen defensively, ready to strike out at the danger coming through the door.

“
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Michael! Stop!” a voice shouted. A hand closed around Brandt’s wrist, stopping his arm’s forward momentum. Brandt stumbled and yanked his arm away from the figure entering the room.

“
Fuck, Doc, you trying to get yourself killed?” Brandt asked. He lowered his arm and glared, even as Derek Rivers slammed the door closed and locked it behind him. But before Brandt could voice the question on the tip of his tongue—“What the hell is going on out there?”—Derek shoved him away from the door and across the room before dumping an armload of clothing into his hands.

“
No time for questions,” Derek said urgently. He pushed the clothes more firmly into Brandt’s arms and added a pair of combat boots to the pile. “Get dressed. Fast. We’ve got to get you out of here.”