Under Siege
Author: Jessica Meigs
Date: 2014-04-08 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Zombies; Horror; Post Apocalyptic; Apocalyptic; Adult; Survival; Science Fiction
Description: It has been almost two years since the Michaluk Virus outbreak began, and Remy Angellette has helped her friends establish Woodside, a walled-in community of survivors in South Carolina. But underneath the veneer of simplicity of their day-to-day lives, not all is as it seems. Dr. Derek Rivers, a former CDC scientist who was involved in the virus’s testing, has come close to a cure for the virus, and he’s used it to cure Ethan Bennett—who promptly begins to show strange side-effects from the cure. Despite her pleas, Derek delays giving the cure to Remy, who has found herself beginning to dance
Publisher: Smashwords

A PERMUTED PRESS book

Published at Smashwords

ISBN (Trade Paperback): 978-1-61868-2-406

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-2-413

The Becoming: Under Siege copyright © 2014
by Jessica Meigs

All Rights Reserved.

Cover art by Dean Samed, Conzpiracy Digital Arts

This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Table of Contents

From the Journal of Remy Angellette

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

From the Journal of Remy Angellette

September 9, 2010 (I think)

Rules for Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (As Taught to Me by Cade Alton Evans)

1. Keep your gun handy. Keep enough bullets even handier.

2. Don’t be afraid to try to nail a headshot—those assholes deserve everything we can give them.

3. Keep a melee weapon on you at all times in case you run out of bullets. Knives are awesome, machetes are way sweet, crowbars and hammers are stupid as shit. (Do I really have to elaborate on why?)

4. Keep your friends close. Keep your (living) enemies closer.

5. Never ever, ever fall in love. He’ll only die and come back as a zombie and try to kill you. You’ll never be able to think about him the same as you did before—and you’ll have the scars to

Yeah, I’m bitter. What of it?

Who wouldn’t be bitter after all the shit I’ve been through? I lost my family, I lost Gray, and I lost him. My face is fucked up, and I want to get out of here. Like I was supposed to months ago. But Dr. Rivers won’t give me the cure he gave Ethan until he’s absolutely sure it won’t kill me.

Who gives a flying pigmy fuck, as Cade would say. Give me the cure anyway. I can handle it. I’m not fragile. And if it does kill me? Then so much the better.

I hate it here. I hate that there’s absolutely no one who really understands what I’m dealing with, what I’m going through. I hate the anger, the hatred, the hunger, always lurking in the back of my head. I hate this empty, hollow feeling in my chest where all of my good emotions used to be. I hate this whole place.

I just hate. Indescribably.

I’m way off the reason why I’m supposed to be writing this. All the shit I wrote before makes me sound like a stupid, emo little teenager. I’m almost twenty-two! I shouldn’t be all up in this damped mopey bullshit. Cade asked me to write about what’s been going on from my point of view—she’s been collecting all these stories from the survivors here for a “chronicle of events.” She got the idea from some horror novel that told an oral history of a zombie war. It sort of makes sense, considering we’re living it.

At the same time, though, I think Cade just needs something to do since she’s knocked up and supposed to be taking it easy. Maybe she needs to find an activity that’s less intrusive of other people’s lives to stay occupied with. Because for the past several months, she’s been driving me fucking nuts.

What if I don’t want to tell my damned story? Nobody cares about my mom or my stepfather or Madeline or any of the other people I’ve lost. And nobody cares about me getting bitten by one of the infected or Ethan saving my life and then trying to kill me. Nobody cares. And if no one cares, then why should I spend so much damned time talking about my feelings? I could be out with one of the search parties looking for supplies and maybe, I don’t know, actually doing something about the infected. I don’t want any more people going through the hell I’ve been through. And I don’t want to sit on my ass in this stupid house in stupid Woodside, keeping everything I do low impact while I whine in this stupid notebook.

I want the fucking cure. And once I get it? I want to finally get the hell out of here. Because damn it, I’m sick of this place.

Chapter 1

Brandt Evans searched for his wife, Cade, for nearly an hour before he finally found her. She was in the backyard of the house two doors down from the one in which they’d been staying, her blue jeans soaked to the knees with dew from the tall grass and her hair falling messily out of its ponytail. She stood near one end of the yard, her back straight and her shoulders squared, her eyes fixed on a distant point. She grasped a compound bow as she sighted down the length of the arrow resting against the string. She’d secured her ever-present Galil sniper rifle to her back, the strap crossed over her chest. She looked like a pregnant goddess of revenge, like an Amazonian warrior who would take no shit from anybody, and Brandt loved it. He smiled and climbed onto the nearby picnic table, watching as she adjusted her aim. After several heartbeats, she released the arrow. It embedded with a thunk into the narrow sapling at the far end of the yard.

“Damn, that’s good,” Brandt commented with a smile. He slid off the table and dusted dead leaves off the seat of his jeans. Shaking his dark hair out of his eyes, he started toward her through the knee-high grass. “I didn’t know you knew how to use a bow. Hell, I didn’t even know you had one. Where’d you get it?”

“I found it in the house,” Cade answered. She retrieved another arrow from the bag at her feet. “Guy who lived there must have been a bow hunter. He had a ton of equipment stashed in his attic. The searchers must have overlooked it, so I cleaned it all out.”

Brandt tried to picture Cade, pregnant Cade, crawling around in a dusty, dirty attic in which the temperatures likely rivaled the Mojave Desert, as almost all attics in the southeast tended to. It was amazing she hadn’t passed out from the combination of heat inside and outside.

“And how long have you known how to do this?” he asked. “You never mentioned that you could before.” He grabbed one of the arrows from the bag and held it up into the sunlight, studying it as Cade answered.

“Since this morning. Sort of,” she admitted. She fit the arrow to the bow and flexed her fingers as if they pained her. Then she drew the bowstring back. Brandt couldn’t help but admire how the muscles in her biceps shifted as she pulled against the weight of the bowstring. “I figured it’d be worth taking the time to teach myself. We might end up in another situation that requires quiet, and it would make a great stealth weapon.”

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.

Chapter 2

Remy Angellette was irritable. Not that there was anything particularly new about her current state of mind. She’d been feeling that way since the group’s miraculous escape from the Westin in Atlanta, Georgia, five months before, when she and her friends had gone in to take on Alicia Day—otherwise known, in her mind, at least, as the bitch that had ended the world. They’d lost Gray Carter in the city, cut down by Alicia’s bullets and the viral contaminant that Brandt had unknowingly gotten on his hands in the process of killing one of their attackers.

It still broke her heart to think about Gray. So most days, she simply didn’t.

Remy shook her head, as if the physical action would dislodge the depressing thoughts from her mind. Fat chance of that. Her mind was nothing but a cesspool of anger and hatred and sadness these days. She shifted her eyes away from the blank spot on the wall that she’d been staring at and focused them once more on the work in front of her, on the rows of cans and boxes and stacks of cellophane packages—the newest supplies brought in the day before, the supplies she should have finished inventorying and boxing up and moving to the rec center’s kitchen the hour before. Cade had set her on the task, presumably to help keep her mind occupied. She’d much rather have been doing anything but inventory; she’d have preferred to be outside the community with a gun and her bolo knife, part of Joseph Albertson’s group that went out every third day to search for the very supplies she was supposed to be counting. At least out there, she’d have had the chance to maybe hunt down and kill a few of the infected. She’d always found that activity to be particularly cathartic.

Remy sighed and tossed her notepad onto the dining table in frustration. Who cared if there were eighteen more packages of ramen noodles and twelve new cans of chicken noodle soup? It wouldn’t change anything, especially not for her. She threw her pen across the room and slouched into one of the chairs, dropping her head into her hands and groaning. She rested her elbows on the edge of the wooden dining table and dug her fingers into her dark hair.

“This whole place is bullshit,” she muttered to the can of tomato soup directly below her face. Frustrated tears pricked at her brown eyes—tears she allowed to appear, hoping they would help flush out her emotions and cleanse her mind. She squeezed her eyes shut. She was ready to go, ready to get out of Woodside. It felt like there was nothing left for her here. Nothing left at all.

In the months since the events in Atlanta, Remy had fought desperately to retain some semblance of herself and her sanity. She’d spent hours holed up in her bedroom, seeing only Dr. Rivers, spending the rest of her time huddled in her bed. She’d hibernated for three weeks, avoiding mirrors and barely eating, getting up from her bed only when nature demanded it. And when those weeks had passed, when she’d braved getting out of bed to look in the mirror one night, she’d been horrified by what she’d seen in the reflection over the dresser.

The scratches in the skin on her face had been surprisingly deep, and while they had scabbed and scarred with the passage of time, they hadn’t become any less ugly and appalling. There’d been eight of them, four on each side, starting near her ears and tapering off at her nose and lips. Similar marks had adorned her neck, forearms, and even her upper chest. She’d reached up in her horror, her fingers coasting against the glass before touching her cheek, not sure if what she’d looked at was actually herself. Then she turned away, her movements as slow and dazed as they’d been when she had beheld herself in the mirror. She’d bitten back her tears and had shoved them deep down inside. She hadn’t cried since then.

At least, not until now. As she slouched at the dining table with the stacks of supplies in front of her, Remy felt tears pricking at the insides of her closed eyelids. She bit down hard on her bottom lip and pressed the heel of her hand against one of her eyes until she saw stars in the blackness. As she drew in a ragged breath, the sound of combat boots against floorboards met her ears. She darted out of her chair, nearly knocking it over in the process, and wiped hastily at her eyes. Then she snatched up her notepad and looked around wildly for her pen. The memory of her pitching it across the room in a fit of anger flashed before her mind’s eye. She swore again as Dominic Jackson stepped into the dining room.

“Nice to see you too, Remy,” Dominic greeted. Remy didn’t bother to look at him. Instead, she focused on her notepad, even as she tried to discreetly shake her hair down to cover her face. She wasn’t going to lie—she was still self-conscious about the scars that marred her skin. Even if Dominic had seen them before, she still didn’t want to flash them around more than necessary. “You busy?” Dominic asked.

“Actually, yes,” Remy muttered. She patted at her pockets in a vain search for another pen and kept her eyes focused on the food in front of her. On anywhere but the man who’d just entered the room. “I’m supposed to be inventorying the new food supplies for Cade.”

Dominic crossed the floor, his footsteps thumping audibly in time with her heartbeat, and he stopped behind her, leaning over her shoulder to peer down at her notepad. “Doesn’t look like you’re making much progress there,” he commented. His breath was hot against her ear, his mouth mere centimeters from her skin.

Remy grimaced and slammed the notepad face down on top of the soup cans, even as she fought off the shiver of attraction that threatened to run down her spine. She faced Dominic and found herself standing uncomfortably close to him, so close that she could feel the warmth of his body against hers, so close that she was pinned between him and the dining table. She fought back the surge of terror and anxiety—maybe even a little intrigue—that welled up inside her and made her nauseous. She hated how he made her feel. She hated that, even if she dared assess whether he felt the same way, it would never happen between them. Ever. All she could do was push him away.

She fumbled behind her for the edge of the dining table, gripping it both for reassurance and support, and asked pointedly, “Is there a reason you’re in here pestering me?”

“What, I can’t pester you just to pester you?” Dominic asked. There was a lilting tone to his voice, as if he were teasing her. He reached up and lightly twisted a lock of her dark hair in his fingers, tugging on it before letting it go. Remy raised an eyebrow and fought at the quirk that threatened the corner of her mouth. The man had zero reason to like her or to talk to her, especially considering the healed bullet wound in his shoulder—the one that she had put there. The thought of it almost brought a full-on smile to her face. She squelched it before it could make itself known.

“Why in the hell would you want to pester me?” Remy asked. She managed to cross her arms over her chest in the narrow space between them, her forearms pressing against the strong muscles underneath Dominic’s thin t-shirt, and she successfully pulled off the look of annoyance that she’d intended to give him.

Dominic didn’t respond to her question. Instead, his dark eyes flickered over her face, as if every unhappy thought she’d ever had was laser-etched into her cheekbones. He opened his mouth, a gentle look on his face, like he was preparing to ask her something personal. But then he closed it again and shook his head before asking, “Have you seen Cade or Brandt? Or, preferably, both of them?”

Remy couldn’t deny the twinge of disappointment she felt, though she couldn’t decide what she was disappointed over. She sidestepped, wiggling out from between him and the table, and grabbed her notepad again. Avoiding the heat of his gaze against her back, she flipped through the pages to find a blank one and began to surreptitiously search for her pen. “Cade is out. Brandt went to find her.”

“Any ideas when they’ll be back?” Dominic asked.

Remy fought to not roll her eyes. Good God, the man was nothing if not persistent. Instead, she shook her head as she finally spotted her pen, resting between two stacks of single-serving instant mashed potato packets. “No idea,” she replied. She lunged for the pen, snagging it and knocking both stacks over in the process. They fanned out across the table and onto several boxes of instant macaroni and cheese. “Why don’t you go look for them and just…I don’t know, leave me alone or something?”

Dominic didn’t seem to have any intention of leaving her alone, though. He stepped back and leaned against the counter that divided the kitchen and dining areas, folding his arms over his strong chest. She could still feel his eyes on her as she tapped her pen along a row of cans, miming counting in the hopes he’d take the hint and leave.

“Need any help?” he offered after a moment.

No such luck.

“You know,” he continued, “since you’re not making much headway on that and all.”

“I’m fine,” Remy said, more snappishly than she intended to. She didn’t know why she was so rude to him. It wasn’t like most of the people in Woodside were very accepting of her presence, especially once word of her current state of infection had leaked. The Atlanta survivors seemed to believe that she would go crazy like Alicia Day had and kill them all in a frenzy of psychosis. Dominic was one of the few people in Woodside—outside of the friends she’d gained the year before—who treated her like a human being, even with Woodside’s populace ostracizing him for his involvement with Alicia. She knew she shouldn’t act like such an ass toward him. But, as much as she tried, she couldn’t seem to help it. It was like her emotional defense mechanisms had short-circuited and were preventing her from being able to make the necessary connections to accept his offer of friendship. She jotted down a random number on her notepad, since she had no idea how many cans she’d actually counted, and moved on to the next row.

“Are you saying no because you really don’t need my help or because it’s me that’s offering it?” Dominic asked. His words were laced with annoyance. She was getting under his skin. Good.

“Because I don’t need help,” she said. She wrote down the correct number that time. She still didn’t look at Dominic. God only knew what he would see in her eyes if she did.

“So if Ethan Bennett came over and offered to help you, you’d tell him no too?”

“Ethan Bennett isn’t even allowed to leave his fucking room,” Remy retorted.

“Oh, so you’ve been to see him then.”

Remy gritted her teeth, feeling the creak of her jaw as the muscles shifted almost painfully. She slapped the notepad down onto the table again, knocking over several packages. “No, I have not,” she snapped, struggling to ignore the tightness in her chest that mention of the man’s name brought forth. She barely stopped herself from throwing her pen across the room again. Or at Dominic’s head. The latter option was looking more appealing with every passing moment.

“Why not?” Dominic asked in the same placid tone she’d only ever heard from psychiatrists, Dr. Rivers, and him.

“I don’t think that is any of your fucking business.”

Dominic seemed unfazed by her statement. He reclined more comfortably against the counter and watched her. The scrutiny was unnerving and made her want to fidget. “He’s been asking for you, you know,” he said once the silence between them had surpassed uncomfortable and slipped into something less identifiable. A wall of tension had leeched into the room, and Remy tried to assess what was going on in Dominic’s head, why he felt the need to even bring up her former lover. She blew out a breath and looked away from him.

“I know,” Remy finally said. “I’ve been told by everybody a million times.”

“And you still won’t go see him?”

Remy gritted her teeth yet again—she just knew she was going to have a sore jaw that evening—and turned on Dominic. “Would you go out of your way to see someone who tried to kill you?”

Dominic arched an eyebrow. “I’m hanging out with you right now, aren’t I?” he asked.

Remy conceded his point, though she wanted to argue it with him.

Before Remy could dredge up a witty retort—something she was very much out of these days—the sound of the front door opening drew her attention away from Dominic. As Cade and Brandt’s voices met her ears, she scowled at the former intelligence officer and turned on her heel. She abandoned her task and stormed out the side door, slamming it closed before she did anything she might regret later.

Chapter 3

Kimberly Geller climbed the medical house’s main staircase with all the attitude of someone who had done it a thousand times before and wasn’t looking forward to doing it again. Truth be told, she hated stairs. She’d developed a raging hatred for them while spending seven months living in the Westin tower in Atlanta, and her attitude toward them hadn’t gotten any better once she’d settled into Woodside. But she had a job to do, an incredibly important one, and it wasn’t one that she could pass off onto someone else just because she’d developed an intense hatred of stairs. Someone had to monitor Ethan Bennett’s health and progress, and as Dr. Rivers’ assistant and a former veterinarian—and the only other person in the community besides the doctor with medical expertise—that task had fallen to her.

It wasn’t necessarily that she disliked caring for Ethan. Far from it. She enjoyed sitting with him after taking his vitals and talking about everything they could think of. She found herself liking him more and more as the days passed.

And that was the problem. She didn’t want to like him. Judging by what he’d told her—and that hadn’t been much—he’d gotten her younger sister Avi killed. She should hate his guts. Instead, she spent half of her rare moments of downtime fantasizing about him and his intensely green eyes.

Sometimes, Kimberly wanted to slap herself. This was one of those times.

When she reached the top of the stairs, she threw a quick glance at Remy’s room. The door was closed and, presumably, locked, though Kimberly could hear voices on the other side: Remy’s somewhat twangy, girlish voice and the rumble of an indistinct male voice that could belong to Brandt, Dominic, or Derek. The voices were raised just enough that, while Kimberly couldn’t make out what was being said, she could easily make out the tones: Remy’s angry, the man’s placating. She debated knocking on the door but shook her head. Whatever was going on, it wasn’t her business. She was supposed to be doing the first of her twice-daily assessments of Ethan Bennett, not nosing into something that didn’t involve her.

Kimberly focused her attention on the task at hand: Ethan. After tapping on the door with a knuckle to alert him that she was coming inside, she eased the door open and slipped through, shutting it quietly behind her. Ethan was sitting up in bed, studying the contents of a battered hardcover book—a glance of the title revealed it was War and Peace. Who the hell read War and Peace for fun? He grimaced at the page and leaned close to read it, forehead wrinkled in a squint because he was without his reading glasses. As always, Kimberly was taken aback by his appearance. He looked up at her and gave her a smile, and she couldn’t help but compare how he looked now to how he’d looked when she had first met him all those months ago in the Westin.

He was thin now, shockingly thin. He sat shirtless in bed, the blankets bunched at his waist, some of his ribs visible under his skin. His collarbones jutted out in sharp angles, and his blond hair hung limply across his forehead. He looked clean—she and Derek took pains to make sure he was well taken care of—but horribly unhealthy. They’d struggled to put weight on him, and though he ate every bite put in front of him like a starving man, it never seemed to be enough; he never put on any weight.

He gave her another smile, his eyes bright and attentive, and eased back against his pillows. Folding a corner of the book’s page down to mark his place—something that made Kimberly cringe—he set the book on the bedside table and motioned to her. “I was wondering when you were going to show up. You’re late.”

Kimberly raised an eyebrow, glanced at the watch on her wrist, and sighed. “Only by ten minutes,” she said. She moved further into the room, dropping her medical bag onto the chair beside Ethan’s bed and easing down onto the edge of the mattress. “Ten minutes barely even counts as late.”

“When I was a cop, ten minutes could have conceivably cost me my job,” Ethan said.

Kimberly rolled her eyes and unzipped her bag. “Yeah, well, when I was a vet, my patients didn’t bitch so much,” she retorted, grinning.

“Well, fortunately, I’m not a dog.”

“You say that like it’s a brownie point in your favor. A dog would behave better,” she joked. She pulled the thermometer from her bag and waved it in his face. “Open up, would you?” she said. When he obeyed, she stuck the thermometer underneath his tongue and added, “Hold that there.” Then she dug Ethan’s chart from the bag and uncapped her pen with her teeth.

“I don’t see why you have to check all this so much,” Ethan said around the thermometer. “I’ve never actually seen any of it change, and I know you haven’t.”

“Stop talking or I’ll take your temperature the uncomfortable way,” she threatened. She checked her watch again and then flipped through the chart until she reached the end of the list of vitals that had been taken over the past five months. She scribbled down the date and time on a fresh line and then set the folder against her knee. “We don’t know how this whole thing works, so we have to monitor you to make sure you aren’t going to relapse.”

Ethan looked like he was dying to ask her something, but he held the question in until she removed the thermometer from his mouth and jotted down the temperature—98.6 degrees, yet again. “Is there a chance of that happening?” he asked.

Kimberly wrapped her blood pressure cuff around Ethan’s bicep and plugged her stethoscope into her ears, buying herself some time before answering. She wrote the numbers onto his chart before shoving her tools back into her bag. “Eth, look at this,” she said, setting his chart on his lap. “I honestly don’t know if there’s a chance you’ll relapse. Just look at your vitals over the past five months and that should show you why.”

His eyes skimmed down the page, and he flipped back a few pages before looking up at her in confusion.

“I don’t get it,” he admitted.

“Your vitals are baseline perfect,” Kimberly said. “They’re textbook. Temperature, 98.6 degrees; blood pressure, 120 over 80; heart rate, 80; respirations, 14; O2 sats at 99. Your resting vitals never change. They’ve been like this since the day we cured you. And honestly? We don’t understand it. There should at least be some variant there, a point or three here or there in either direction.”

“Is that why you can’t tell me whether you think I’ll relapse or not?”

“Exactly. Because we don’t totally understand Michaluk and the way it behaves,” she said. “There’s every chance this thing could mutate further and turn you into one of the…well, the walking dead. Or it could turn you into something even worse, something we’ve never seen before. Or it could simply do nothing. It’s too hard to tell right now, so we’re just being cautious.”

“So am I infectious?” Ethan prompted. “Is whatever is in me contagious like them or is it more like Brandt?”

Kimberly smiled for the first time during their conversation. “Well, at this point, as far as we can tell, you’re like Brandt,” she answered. “Infected, but not contagious.” She dug into the medical bag for the small black case that she kept her blood sample supplies in. She began to prep to take a sample of Ethan’s blood, as she did every day. He groaned when he saw the thin glass vial in her hand.

“Aw hell, do you have to do that today?” he asked. “I’m beginning to wonder if you guys are turning into vampires.”

“Hey, these are Derek’s rules, not mine,” Kimberly protested. She grabbed his right wrist and tugged it until he extended his arm with a heavy sigh. There was a saline lock near the crook of his elbow, and she began the same procedures she always used when drawing a sample of blood from his arm, almost mindlessly moving through the steps. “Bitch at him if you don’t like it.”

Ethan waited until she was done taking the blood and packing the vial into its padded case before he asked, “How is Remy doing?”

Kimberly hesitated, folding the cover of the chart closed and smoothing a hand over it before tucking it into her bag. She wasn’t sure how much to tell him. She wasn’t sure how much she should tell him. The last thing he needed was stress pushing his blood pressure up or altering his heart rate. Her curiosity was tweaked at the idea, though. Stress could be a good way to test whether Ethan’s vitals would change under pressure. She and Derek had been debating the idea of stress tests, taking Ethan out jogging as soon as he seemed strong enough to handle the exercise and checking his vitals afterward to see how his body responded to the exertion. But she didn’t want to move forward with the idea until she’d cleared it with Derek. The last thing she needed was to mess up whatever the doctor’s plans were—the entirety of which she hadn’t been made privy to. “She’s been doing okay,” she finally replied, trying to hedge around giving him any details.

Ethan rolled his eyes and let out a heavy sigh. “Come on, Kimmy, you’re dodging the question,” he said.

“Don’t call me Kimmy.”

“Then answer my damned question,” he said.

“She’s not doing good at all,” Kimberly said, shaking her head. She focused on zipping her medical bag closed, keeping her eyes away from his. “We’re a little worried about her mental health. And there’s the question of whether or not the medications are going to hold out.”

“Is she already starting to be resistant to them?” Ethan asked, with alarm in his voice.

“No, more like we’re starting to run out,” Kimberly admitted. “We’ve been sending out a list with the supply team to look for medicine. They’ve been breaking into every pharmacy, doctor’s office, clinic, and vet office that they can safely get into, and they’re coming back empty-handed.”

“The drugs are all gone?”

“Looks like people have beat us to most of those places,” she admitted. She met his eyes again and said, “It’s not looking good for her, Eth.”

“When are you guys going to give her whatever you gave me?” he asked. “When are you going to cure her?”

“I don’t know,” Kimberly admitted, averting her gaze as a surge of nervous energy welled up in her stomach. “Derek has his plans, and he doesn’t tell me all of them. Mostly, he has me focusing on you. He’s handling Remy and her care personally.”

Ethan stared at her for a moment, as if he were trying to gauge whether or not she was telling him everything. Judging by his expression, he wasn’t satisfied with her answer. He grasped his blankets and flipped them off of himself, revealing that he was wearing only boxers. He levered himself around to swing his legs over the side of the bed. “If she is that bad off, then why the fuck hasn’t he done what he needs to do to help her?” he demanded. The moment he stood from the bed, his weakened legs wobbled, and he nearly tumbled to the floor. Kimberly lunged forward and caught him, her arms looping around his thin waist. The shock of his body pressed against hers gave her a little shiver, and she tried to shake it off.

“Take it easy, Ethan,” she said sternly. She backed him up a step and made him sit on the bed. “You’re going to kill yourself if you push this too quickly.”

“I’m not fucking fragile, Kim,” he said bitterly. Despite that, he had just allowed her to assist him back to the bed. His expression was a cross between grateful and angry—grateful to be sitting again, but angry that he couldn’t charge downstairs and utilize authority, the kind of authority he’d once exercised in his own group of survivors. The authority that would allow him to bend Derek to his will and maybe give him a well-deserved smack to the head. “I’m just pissed off.”

“So pissed that you’re ready to charge after Derek in nothing but your underwear,” Kimberly pointed out. She sat on the bed beside him, grasping his hand and squeezing it gently, trying to will him to serenity. “Being angry like this isn’t good for you. I know you can’t help it, but you need to fight through it as best as you can, okay?”

“I’m sorry. I’m just so wired,” he said. “I’m ready to get out of this room. I spent ages trapped in the Westin, and then when I got out, I ended up trapped here. I understand the reasoning, but I’m just sick of looking at this room.”

Kimberly studied him thoughtfully as he stared blankly across the room. Then she sighed and slapped both hands against her thighs. He startled at the sharp snap and looked at her, wide eyed.

“Fine, fine,” she said. “At the very least, let me help you put some clothes on before you rustle up the cavalry and try to kick some ass. Though I don’t think you could manage to knock a fly over right now in your condition.”

“My condition?” Ethan repeated with a raised eyebrow.

Kimberly smiled, stood, and went to the closet. She retrieved a duffel bag she’d stashed there the week before while he’d been asleep. “Luckily, I come prepared,” she said, carrying the bag to him and setting it on the mattress. She unzipped it and let him look inside as she explained. “Cade was so kind as to help me dig up some clothes in as close to your sizes as we could approximate. Some new boots too. We figured you were going to need them, since you lost pretty much everything you owned in Atlanta.”

A melancholy expression flickered across Ethan’s face, but he smothered it and pulled free a pair of jeans, shaking them out before looking them over. They were a good pair of jeans, reasonably intact with only a few worn spots near the knees and pockets. He nodded in satisfaction and gave her a grateful smile that warmed her insides. “Thanks.”

“You work on getting those on while I find you a razor and some scissors,” Kimberly offered, heading for the dresser where they kept some basic hygiene supplies. “You look like a mountain man or something.”

Ethan rubbed a hand over his thick beard. “More like a lumberjack, I think,” he commented with a chuckle. He scooped up a shirt from the bag and slowly tugged it over his head, working his arms into the sleeves and pulling it down over his torso. Then he went to work on the jeans, sliding them over his legs. When he was forced to stand and tug them over his hips, Kimberly rushed over to give him a supportive arm. He gave her another grateful smile as he leaned against her and pulled the pants up the rest of the way.

“I feel like an old man,” he admitted as he sank to the bed again, looking like he’d been slapped on the back of the head by a two-by-four labeled “exhaustion.”

“Are you sure you can even make it down the stairs?” Kimberly asked, sitting down beside him again. “Downstairs is a pretty long way off, considering. And you haven’t done much in the way of exerting yourself in the past several months.”

“I’m a lot tougher than I look,” he said. “Trust me, a lot tougher. If I wasn’t, I don’t think I’d have survived the attack in Atlanta or being fully infected for four months.”

“I know,” Kimberly agreed. “You’re one of the strongest people I’ve ever met. Honestly. I don’t know anyone who could have handled what you’ve dealt with and come out still sane in the end.”

A slow smirk crossed Ethan’s lips. “Who said anything about me still being sane?”

Kimberly laughed and shook her head. She stood and offered him her arm. “Well, Mr. Possibly Insane, come on. Let’s get you looking a little less hobo and then get you downstairs so you can yell at Derek. Then we can sit on the porch while you get a look at some of what everyone in Woodside has been working on.”

Chapter 4

When Dominic stepped outside the main house, he finally felt his shoulders loosen and his back muscles relax. He fought the urge to slump against the door that had just clicked closed behind him. Instead, he focused on the street ahead. He didn’t look forward to the walk to his own house, located in the most remote corner of the gated community, far from everyone else’s. The walk would take him past too many of the other survivors’ homes and the inevitable dirty looks he knew he’d receive as he passed. He wasn’t an idiot. He held no delusions about his status in Woodside. Save for the two little girls that Ethan and Remy had saved, he was the only survivor of the Westin and of Alicia Day’s regime—a regime that had victimized the very people who now lived in Woodside, even if only through deprivation of supplies.

Dominic had never appreciated the implications of “guilt by association” until he came to live in Woodside. Here, guilt was a permanent state of existence.

He had the idea to head for Philadelphia three months after they’d secured Woodside. He’d wanted to leave on the premise of searching for his family, but in truth, he’d wanted to get away from the lobbied hate. And he hadn’t wanted to go alone, which was why he’d accepted Remy’s offer to go with him.

Except Dr. Rivers hadn’t given her the cure when he said he would, and now they were stuck, waiting in stasis, until something was done about the infection swimming in the young woman’s veins. He knew she was getting just as impatient as he was to leave, even though he still hadn’t figured out exactly why she’d want to go with him, considering she didn’t appear to like him. He supposed he was a means to an end for her; it wasn’t likes she had to deal with what he went through every day.

Dominic made it halfway down the block before someone yelled out behind him.

“Hey, wait!” the voice called.

Dominic’s shoulders stiffened again, tensing as if he expected a blow, and he didn’t turn around. Maybe if he pretended like he hadn’t heard the shout, whoever had done the yelling would go away. “Hey, Dominic, wait!”

Dominic let out a heavy breath and turned on his heel, expecting to see one of the other Atlanta survivors coming at him with something sharp or otherwise deadly—there were weapons everywhere in Woodside, simply as a matter of practicality, and it wouldn’t be the first time it had happened—but he was surprised to see Remy Angellette instead. As hard as he’d been thinking, his mind hadn’t registered whose voice it was. She was on the roof of the medical house’s porch, waving at him as she tried to find her way down. Dominic rolled his eyes and moved back toward the house so he could call up to her.

“What the hell are you doing up there?” he asked. He watched as she moved to the edge and shimmied to the right, climbing down the rose trellis on the side of the porch like one would a chain link fence. “And, for that matter, how’d you even get up there?” he asked as she dropped to the grass. She staggered, and he caught her elbow to right her as she regained her footing.

“Climbed out the window,” she explained, pointing to the open second story window before turning her focus back onto him. “Where are you going?”

“Home,” he said. “To try to get some sleep before I have to get up and take watch on the wall tonight. It’s my shift.”

“Mind if I join you?”

“On what, watch or sleep?”

Remy snorted and shrugged. “I don’t know. Either. Whatever.” She glanced back at the medical house, and a sheepish expression came over her face. “I’m just tired of looking at them,” she admitted. “I need some company other than theirs.”

Dominic frowned and turned on his heel, starting back in the direction of his own house, and she scrambled to catch up with him. “I thought you didn’t like me,” he said as she matched his brisk pace with her own. Reflexively, he slowed down; the fact that she was infected niggled at the back of his brain and reminded him that she wasn’t supposed to over-exert herself. “I mean, you acted pretty pissed off at me earlier.”

“And I’m sorry about that,” she said. “I was in a bad mood. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I just need some company. Somebody different.” She grinned suddenly. “Besides, I haven’t been out to your house yet.”

“Nobody has,” Dominic replied. “I don’t let anybody in there. Don’t think I’m going to change my stance on that just for you.”

“Hiding something?”

“No, I’m just a very private person,” he corrected. He could just see his house in the distance, the windows shuttered, the entire house locked down against the possibility of invasion, both from the infected and the uninfected. It was his fortress, his sanctuary from the ridicule of Woodside, perched as far away as he could get from the rest of their miniature civilization. He wasn’t sure he was willing to violate his space with the presence of another, no matter how much he liked the fire in her brown eyes. “Aren’t you supposed to be on bed rest or something?”

Remy looked suddenly uncomfortable and more than a little annoyed. “Fuck bed rest, and fuck Dr. Rivers and his fucking rules,” she muttered. “If he isn’t going to help me, then I’m not going to make life easy on him.”

Dominic couldn’t help but chuckle. “Have you ever made life easy for anyone?” he asked. He didn’t wait for her answer; he merely beckoned her to continue walking with him. “Come on. Maybe I’ll cave and let you sit on the porch or something.”

Remy grinned. “Well, that’s a start, at least,” she agreed. “Eventually, I’ll negotiate myself into the living room.”

“You think.”

He and Remy arrived at his house nearly ten minutes later, sitting in its overgrown yard at the far end of the block, underneath equally overgrown trees that shadowed the dwelling from most of the sunlight. It was a reasonably plain two-story, the white paint weather-beaten and starting to peel. The windows on both floors had been boarded over. The front façade of the house was unadorned, save for the word “traitor” that had been spray painted across the door and the exterior siding in large and looping red letters. He glanced at Remy as they drew closer, and he felt suddenly self-conscious as she got a look at the vandalism. He cursed himself for not painting over it, though he was sure that he’d left it up in an effort to punish himself for being on the wrong side of everything in Atlanta and for his misguided loyalty to Alicia.

“What happened here?” Remy asked, climbing the front porch’s wooden steps for a closer look. “Who did this?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. He took the steps two at a time to join her on the porch.

“Yes it does.”

“No, it doesn’t,” he insisted. “Trust me. Just drop it. I’m just going to paint over it and leave it be.”

Remy looked like she wanted to argue but didn’t. Instead, she turned and leaned against the siding by the door, blocking his view of the “or” spray-painted there. She folded her arms over her chest and watched him for a minute, much in the same way he’d watched her earlier in the day when she’d been throwing supplies around in the dining room at the main house. “So you’re just going to put up with this?” she asked, rocking her head back as if she were indicating the word on the wall. “You’re just going to let these people walk all over you?”

“I don’t have much of a choice in the matter,” Dominic replied. “I owe these people. Everything I’ve done since Michaluk broke out has antagonized them and put their survival at risk. The least I can do is keep my mouth shut now that the status quo has changed.”

“I wasn’t aware that there even was a status quo,” Remy said.

“There is. And compared to me, you’re part of the larger portion of it.” He sighed and shoved his hands into his pockets, standing there under her scrutiny for a long moment, before flicking his eyes toward the side of the house. The wall that enclosed the community loomed there, mere feet away from the side of the building, casting the entire yard in shadow. He pressed his lips together and then nodded and motioned toward her. “Move over, let me get inside,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

“Is it something good?” Remy asked.

Dominic rolled his eyes and nudged her sideways, opening the front door and leaning inside. He grabbed the rifle he kept propped beside the door, scooped up the extra ammunition magazines from the table alongside it, and tucked them into his pockets. He added a sheathed machete to the belt he already wore, and then pulled the door shut once more. “Follow me,” he instructed.

“Where are we going?” Remy asked, the intrigue in her voice clear.

“Just hush and follow me,” Dominic repeated. He started for the side of the porch, climbing over the railing and dropping down onto the half-dead flowerbed on the other side. He turned to help Remy over the rail and asked, “You’ve got weapons, right?”

“I always have weapons,” Remy said as she grasped his shoulders. He wrapped his hands around her waist, silently marveling at how slim she was, and had to force himself to let go once her boots were planted on the old mulch.

“What kinds?”

“My Sig Sauer, my Ruger, and my bolo knife,” she said, clearly confused.

“Spare ammo?”

“Of course. Why? Where are we going that requires guns and knives?”

Dominic shook his head and motioned for her to follow him. He started to walk along the side of the house, heading for the backyard and the wall beyond it. “You’ll see.” He hesitated and then asked, “You trust me, right?” She gave him a surprised look. “I mean, you know I’m not going to intentionally take you into something that would be certain to get you killed, right?”

If it were possible, that statement made Remy look even more intrigued than before. “Oh, you’re taking me somewhere awesome, aren’t you?”

Dominic chuckled. “Maybe,” he said. Then he fell silent, wading through the grass to the back wall around the community. He looked around, checking to make sure they weren’t being watched, and then knelt and pulled free two metal spikes from the dirt. He set them aside and grasped the boards, swinging them to the side.

When the community’s leaders had decided that the best course of action was to board over the wrought-iron fencing surrounding the community and build a thirty-foot wall, Dominic had immediately planned an escape route, wanting his own unmonitored path into and out of Woodside. It had taken nearly a month to remove three of the iron fence’s bars and fashion a swinging door from a section that could be secured in place when not in use. Dominic didn’t regret the time spent creating it. The escape hatch kept him fed and supplied. He refused to accept any of the stores collected for the survivors’ communal use and went out three times a week to search for whatever he needed and to hunt small animals for fresh meat. He could and did fend for himself.

He glanced at Remy as he held the swinging door open and saw the look of appreciation and admiration in her eyes. “Wow, did you make this, Dom?” she asked, stepping forward and sticking her head through to look out. He felt a flutter of warmth in his chest at her nickname for him, and he watched as she gazed out into the wooded area beyond the fence, a small smile on her face. “I’m impressed. This is awesome.”

“You said you were tired of the same people. I figured you were also probably tired of the same sights,” Dominic said. “So I thought I’d take you out with me while I grab some supplies. There are a few things I need to dig up.”

Remy grinned, stepped toward him, and threw her arms around his neck. “Oh my God, Dom, thank you!” she exclaimed, squeezing him tightly, her body pressed fully against his in unselfconscious joy. He hesitated and then slid one arm around her slender waist and gave her a light squeeze before stepping back from her embrace. The hug had left a warm feeling in his chest, and he felt lighter than he had in a long time.

“This is our secret, okay?” he added, sliding through the gap and holding a hand out for her. She slipped her hand into his and ducked through. “Don’t tell anybody I did this. Brandt would probably run me out on a rail if he found out I took you out without permission.”

“Not a word.”

Chapter 5

By the time Ethan and Kimberly reached the bottom of the medical house’s stairs, Ethan’s legs and hips were aching, and he was beginning to wonder if he was up to dealing with so much exertion. He’d been holed up in the same room, with only the bare necessities of movement, for months, and just getting up and going down the stairs was more than he’d done in a long time. Despite the ache, he was proud of himself for toughing it out and making it this far. There was an easy chair near the center of the living room, maybe ten feet to his left; he longed to sit in it for a few minutes, to rest and catch his breath, maybe massage the deep aches in his legs. But he knew the moment he proposed sitting down, Kimberly would decide that he’d had enough exercise for one day and would get Isaac or Brandt to haul him back upstairs to bed, and they would probably carry him like an invalid all the way. He had a burning desire to avoid that humiliation at all costs. So tough it out, he would.

Downstairs was much darker than the second floor, he noticed as he tried to get his first look at the medical house’s living room. His eyes flickered to the windows; the ones that he could see from the bottom of the staircase were boarded over, secured against invasion. He raised an eyebrow and glanced at Kimberly, who stood beside him with her hand resting lightly against his elbow. “What’s with the windows?” he asked. “I thought you said Woodside was secure.”

“It is secure,” Kimberly said. “We’re just taking precautions. Nothing to worry about. The infected haven’t gotten past the walls yet.”

“Yeah, well, it’s the ‘yet’ that has me always worried, no matter the situation.” He ran his fingers through his blond and newly trimmed hair before using the banister to push himself away from the staircase. His knees wobbled, but he managed to keep his footing and motioned to the front door. “Maybe you can show me around the community, give me the grand tour?” he suggested.

“I think that can be arranged,” Kimberly agreed. She slipped her hand into his. He glanced down, maneuvered his hand, and laced his fingers through hers, grateful for that little bit of additional assurance and support. She led him out the front door.

“You are in for a serious treat,” Kimberly informed him. “I’ll show you the wall and all the different security features we’ve been working on, and if he’s not busy, I’ll introduce you to Keith Fenton. He’s the Captain of the Watch, which is the group of guys who patrol the perimeter to make sure none of the infected get in. He’s doing a great job; I’m really impressed with how he’s stepped up to the plate.”

Ethan felt a pang of jealousy at the way she talked about the man, but he didn’t address those feelings. He put a hand up to shield his watery eyes against the bright sunlight. He blinked as they adjusted and tilted his head back toward the darker interior of the medical house. Kimberly’s breath caught, and she made a concerned noise.

“I’m okay,” he assured her. “It’s just brighter out here than I expected.”

“I probably should have brought you out later in the evening when the sun was setting,” she said, a note of regret in her voice.

“No, no, it’s fine,” Ethan said. “I just needed a minute to get used to it, that’s all.” He blinked and smiled at her. Then he looked out toward the rest of the community, scanning his surroundings with curiosity. Across the street, the front yards of a few houses had been commandeered for agriculture and were tilled up into rows. Several men and women were tending to the small sprouts that were edging up out of the dirt. A few children chased each other down the road toward a courtyard near the center of the community, where more children played around a couple rows of vehicles. Uninfected people were everywhere; the scene was so close to what had existed before that he felt tightness in his chest and a surge of emotion well in his throat. He swallowed it down and squeezed Kimberly’s hand again. “Come on, let’s go,” he said. She smiled at him and led him slowly to the end of the porch and down the stairs.

“The main house is right next door,” she said, pointing to the house in question. It was almost cookie cutter, so similar to the medical house he was leaving that he wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference if he’d just arrived in Woodside. A quick scan of the other houses around them showed reasonably uniform buildings, mostly brick two-story affairs with a few white-painted ones. “Across the street are our experiments with growing fruits and vegetables. We’re still trying to figure out what will grow around here. The people who volunteered to handle the growing live in the houses that the gardens are in front of. Most everyone else is divided into the rest of the houses in small groups, except for Dominic. He’s got his own house way out away from everyone else, somewhere off that way.” She pointed into the distance.

Ethan couldn’t see the house in question from where he stood.

“I haven’t been out there. No idea what he does when he’s there, but I figure that whatever it is, it’s his business.”

“Maybe someday soon, I’ll be strong enough to go out there and see him,” Ethan speculated. They continued across the grass to the house next door, their steps slow but steady. “I still haven’t thanked him for everything he did in Atlanta to help us.”

“I don’t think anybody has,” Kimberly said. “But I also don’t think Isaac’s people realize how much of a hand he had in helping everyone get here. He’s on his own most of the time. He hasn’t made much of an effort to get to know anyone, either, but they haven’t returned that favor. I think it’s a mutual dislike.” She paused and glanced at him with a slight smile and a raised eyebrow. “Are you hungry?”

Ethan hadn’t even realized his stomach was growling until she asked. The thought of food set it off again, and he rubbed at it idly as he admitted, “I’m famished. Tell me there’s food around here.”

“There’s food around here,” Kimberly said, tugging his hand. “Come with me. We’ll go into the main house. Cade almost always has some food around.”

A sparse few moments later, they were in the shady interior of the main house. Ethan closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. Unlike the medical house, which smelled musty and closed-up, the main house smelled like oranges and lemons, like someone was doing their damnedest to keep everything fresh and airy. He heard Cade’s and Brandt’s voices nearby, fussing at each other like an old married couple. He felt a pang of wistfulness and disappointment; thanks to his prolonged illness, he’d missed the small wedding that had been held in the center of Woodside soon after they’d arrived at the community, and Cade’s description of the ceremony hadn’t come close to doing it justice. Cade was like his sister, and the thought of missing her wedding—something he’d always hoped to see, even before the current state of the world, when he’d been convinced that she’d end up married to her boyfriend Andrew sooner rather than later—filled him with regret.

Kimberly steered him toward the kitchen doorway, a grin on her face as she stepped inside and announced, “Lady and gentleman, may I present His Awesomeness, Sir Ethan Bennett!”

Ethan rolled his eyes and laughed as he slipped into the kitchen, slowly making his way to the counter where Cade and Brandt stood.

Cade had a large cutting board in front of her and a knife in her hand. Several more knives were lined up on the counter just left of the board. On the board itself was the half-boned and disjointed carcass of a rabbit. Beside that was a large plate and a clipboard. She looked up as he leaned against the counter and gave him a bright smile. Then she dropped her knife and wiped her hands on a towel before circling around to greet him. “Eth! You’re up!” she exclaimed, hugging him. He returned the embrace with a wide smile.

“I got sick of sitting around in my room,” he admitted. “And Kim said there was food here, so I was more than willing to come over.”

Brandt stepped forward and lightly clapped him on the shoulder, before squeezing it tightly. “Glad to see you up and moving,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“Surprisingly…good,” he said. “I can’t complain. I don’t even feel like I’ve been sick. Well, except for the whole malnourished problem Dr. Rivers said we’ve got to figure out how to deal with.” His eyes flickered down to the raw, bloody meat on the cutting board in front of Cade, seemingly of their own accord; the scent of blood filled his nose, and saliva flooded his mouth at the scent.

“Glad to hear it,” Brandt said. “Maybe you can talk some sense into Cade for me while I’m out, yeah?”

“Some sense?” Ethan repeated, raising an eyebrow. “And where are you going?”

“I need to run to the rec center for a few things,” Brandt explained. “We’re going to have a meeting this evening and are hoping to get something cooked up to feed the committee while we’re there.” He gave Cade a quick kiss, even though she was scowling at him, and then he asked, “Kimberly, do you mind giving me a hand?”

Cade squinted at the clipboard even as she cut the rabbit. “Don’t forget the peas,” she commented.

Brandt let out a huff of exasperation. “Would you stop eyeing that thing before you cut your fingers off?” he said. “You’ve given me the list a dozen times already. I think I’ve got it.”

Ethan forced his eyes away from the meat Cade was cutting up as Brandt and Kimberly left the room. Confused by his attraction to the uncooked meat and struggling to find something else to focus on, he asked, “So how are you feeling?”

“I feel fine,” she said. “Except for his constant hovering.” She jabbed the knife she held in the direction of the living room. “He’s constantly pestering me about how I’m feeling, how the baby’s doing, about what I’m doing and why I shouldn’t be doing it. It’s driving me insane. It wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t so constant, but he acts like I’m incapable of taking care of myself.” She stabbed at the meat in front of her, slicing some from the bone. Ethan clenched his teeth and struggled to look away. Cleary, she’d been holding this in for a while; he figured it was good to let her gripe.

Ethan pushed away from the counter, determined to get away from the smell of blood, if only for a moment. The scent was forcing sudden, strange feelings to the surface, and he wasn’t sure how to handle them. There was a cooler on the end of the counter; he flipped it open and found bottles of warm water inside. He grabbed one and unscrewed the cap, trying to give himself something to focus on other than an increasing desire to tear his teeth into the meat Cade was prepping.

“I wish I could say I know how he feels but, you know, I kind of don’t,” he admitted. “Anna and I never had kids. But you already knew that, considering you used to nag us about it all the time.”

“Yeah, and that reminds me.” Cade set the knife on the edge of the cutting board and studied him across the counter. “How come you never told me you were sterile?” she asked.

Ethan looked at her, startled, as she continued.

“I had to find out from Remy. You told her and not me? I thought you told me everything, Eth. If I’d known, hell, I wouldn’t have been nagging you like I was. Knowing what I know now, the nagging made me look like a royal bitch. I thought I was your best friend, and best friends usually tell each other things like this.”

“You were. I mean, you are,” Ethan replied, setting his bottle down. “I just…I don’t know. Anna and I only found out right before Memphis fell. And we were still trying to cope with it ourselves. I hadn’t gotten to the point of talking about it. And then things went to Hell in a hand basket, and it never came up in conversation with you.”

“But…with Remy?”

Ethan shook his head. “Just a matter of circumstance. It wasn’t a slight against you or anything. I told her after we’d had sex the first time. She freaked out because we didn’t use any protection, and I had to tell her to calm her down. She didn’t want kids, said she didn’t see the rightness of bringing children into this world.” He put a hand up before Cade could protest. “No offense, of course. It’s just her opinion and choice, and I don’t think it means she’s critical of yours.”

“Oh, I don’t take it personally,” Cade said. She picked up her knife and resumed cutting the meat. “I mean, I didn’t exactly choose this.” She motioned to her belly with her free hand. “To say it was an accident is probably an understatement of epic proportions.”

Ethan raised an eyebrow, intrigued at the suggestion of an unwanted pregnancy. “So what are you saying? That you regret it?”

“Not necessarily.” Cade scooped up some of the already cut meat and dropped it onto the plate to make room on the cutting board. “It was just…unexpected. And I worry that it prompted Brandt to move things along faster than he really wanted to. I mean, hell, he knocks me up and then feels the need to propose just over a month later. And not long after that, we get married. It just feels insanely fast.”

“Do you regret that?” he asked.

Cade shrugged. “No, not really. I love him, you know? I figure the whole marriage thing was inevitable. It just got here sooner than expected.” She looked down at the clipboard and then swore, slamming the knife down beside the cutting board. “Shit, I’ll be right back, okay? I left something off the list that I gave Brandt, and I need to catch him before he leaves the rec center.” She grabbed her towel and wiped her hands again. “Can you pack this meat up for me while I’m gone? I shouldn’t be long.” Once he nodded, she slipped out of the kitchen, letting the door swing shut behind her.

The meat lay on the cutting board in a small pool of blood, taunting him. Ethan swallowed and circled the counter, stopping in front of the meat to study it carefully. He scooped up the knife that still rested beside the cutting board and gently prodded at the lump of meat. As he examined the meat, his stomach let out another rumble, and he pressed a hand to it as if to quiet it. Ever since he’d awakened, he’d eaten like he hadn’t eaten in a year—four, five, sometimes six meals a day—but none of it had even remotely satisfied him; he had yet to actually be not hungry. He drew in another deep breath, and the scent of blood assaulted him again, setting his stomach off into another loud round of hysterics.

“Fuck,” Ethan breathed out as the temptation became too much. He set the knife gingerly back on the counter, his eyes riveted on the meat. With one last cautious glance around the room, before he even realized he’d done it, Ethan picked up a somewhat large chunk of raw, bloody meat and shoved it into his mouth.

As his teeth sank into the meat and blood flooded his mouth and poured over his tongue, it took everything in him to suppress the groan of pure, unadulterated pleasure that threatened to escape his throat. He closed his eyes as a shudder ran down his spine, and he clapped both hands over his mouth as if to keep anyone from taking the meat from him. He chewed furiously, working it with his teeth, feeling like a man dying of thirst being handed a tall glass of ice water. When he swallowed, all he wanted was more. He grabbed the plate of meat and started to cram the morsels into his mouth, smearing blood on his chin as he gorged himself.

Ethan felt drowsy and heavy when he emerged from the euphoria that eating the meat had brought on, and he looked at the now-empty plate with a measure of forlornness. He was fighting the impulse to lick the remaining blood from the china when footsteps rapidly approached. He looked up to see a thirty-something year old man with black hair. Ethan didn’t know this man who was stepping through the kitchen door, a rifle resting against his shoulder. Their eyes met, and the other man’s stare widened as he took in the sight of Ethan standing there, empty plate in hand, blood smeared on his face, and stray droplets staining his shirt. The man swung the rifle around to point it at Ethan, even as he yelled out, “Hey, I need help in here! Quick!”

“That’s not necessary,” Ethan said. He dropped the plate onto the counter and put a hand up, palm out. “Really. Just…just don’t. Please.”

The man shook his head and adjusted his aim. “What did you do?” he demanded. His eyes scanned the kitchen. “Who did you hurt?”

Ethan looked at him blankly for a moment, and as comprehension broke through the haze shrouding his brain, he reached up and touched his face. His fingertips, already stained with blood, came away with even more red. He must have looked horrible, like a monster, like one of the…

“Oh God,” Ethan whispered as the shock hit him full-force. He leaned against the counter heavily, closing his eyes and gripping the edge like a life preserver, his knuckles turning white. Even with his eyes closed, he could feel the other man’s weapon aimed at his head. It would be his fortune—good or bad, he wasn’t sure which—if the man squeezed the trigger. And as he heard three more sets of footsteps on the living room floor, he couldn’t help but wonder if said outcome would be preferable. He didn’t bother to wipe at the blood on his face as Cade, Brandt, and Kimberly came back into the kitchen. Brandt’s boots squeaked on the tiles as he stopped, and Ethan squeezed his eyes closed even tighter, feeling overwhelmingly ashamed.

“What the hell is going on in here?” Cade demanded. Her words were as sharp as knives, flung out across the room with the irritation and incredulity Ethan had come to expect from her. “Why do you have a rifle pointed at—”

Ethan looked up then, and Cade stopped speaking, her eyes wide as she got a look at his face. Kimberly stood behind her, the expression in her eyes horrified. Ethan looked away, wanting to hide his face. She was the last person he wanted to see him this way.

“I’ll go get Derek,” Kimberly said. She turned and hurried away.

“What happened?” Cade demanded, once the blond woman was gone.

Ethan cast his gaze to the floor. “I just…I don’t know,” he murmured. He reached for a towel and was disgusted to see his hands shaking. He scrubbed at his face, trying to get the blood off. “I don’t know. Cade, what the fuck is wrong with me?”

Everyone left in the room was silent for long heartbeats. Ethan twisted the towel in his hands and slouched against the counter again. His chest felt tight, his breathing erratic as he struggled not to panic. He felt like he was about to hyperventilate. It took everything in him to not hit the floor as the elated mood he’d had previously flowed out of him.

When Cade spoke again, her voice was harder than before. “Keith, put the damn rifle down,” she said. “And, for that matter, get the hell out of this kitchen.”

Keith started to protest, but she interrupted.

“Don’t you even say a word to a single soul out there about what you saw in here, you got it? I don’t want this getting out everywhere.”

“I think everybody has a right to know you have one of the infected stashed in here!” Keith snapped back. “What, are you trying to pull an Alicia or something? This is Dominic Jackson’s doing, isn’t it?”

Brandt opened his mouth to say something and then closed it. He still looked shell-shocked, like he couldn’t comprehend what he was looking at. Ethan really hoped that meant he wasn’t about to put a bullet in his head himself.

“He isn’t infected!” Cade said.

“Like hell he isn’t! Look at him!” Keith took a step toward him, and Ethan reflexively tried to back away. “I don’t know what kind of bullshit you’re trying to pull in here—”

“And I don’t care what you think it might be,” Brandt interrupted. He grabbed Keith’s shoulder and shoved him toward the door. “Shut the fuck up. Don’t say a word, or I will personally make sure you regret it. And if you even think about trying to harm him, I will cast you out of Woodside so fast your head will spin.”

Keith and Brandt glared at each other for long moments, during which Ethan forced himself to take in large, gulping breaths. Finally, Keith seemed to crack, looking away from Brandt. “This isn’t over,” he muttered as he pushed past Brandt and stormed out of the kitchen.

“No, it isn’t,” Brandt mumbled.

When the front door slammed, Ethan flinched, and a sudden, terrible fear of being revealed to the entirety of Woodside burrowed its way into his stomach. He bit back a surge of bile as Brandt moved toward him. Ethan didn’t look up at Brandt, who studied him as if he were a butterfly under a magnifying glass. Cade kept her distance, not that Ethan blamed her.

Brandt’s hands came up then, resting against the sides of Ethan’s face, his fingers hooking under his jaw, and Ethan was forced to look up. The two men stared at each other, Ethan reluctantly and Brandt intently. When Brandt spoke, his voice was hushed. “How long?”

Ethan closed his eyes again. “Since I woke up. Since Dr. Rivers did whatever he did to me.”

“What were you feeling? Before?” Brandt prompted. He searched Ethan’s face before dropping his hands.

“I was hungry,” Ethan said. “It never stopped, no matter how much I ate. It was just there. It wouldn’t leave me.”

“And now? How do you feel now?”

Ethan had been so focused on how everyone else was reacting that he hadn’t taken the time to figure out how he was reacting. So at Brandt’s prompting, he focused inward, studying not only his mental state—shaky at best—but his physical state too. And, much to his surprise, he discovered that the hunger was gone, that he was feeling better than he had since emerging from the months of insanity brought on by the Michaluk Virus. With a startled jolt, he looked at Brandt, nodding. “I feel…like me,” he tried to explain. “Healthier. Stronger. It’s gone. The hunger…it’s just gone.”

“What is going on?” Cade demanded then. Brandt didn’t tear his eyes away from Ethan as he answered her.

“I’m not certain,” Brandt admitted. “I have my suspicions, but…” He trailed off and shook his head. “I think we couldn’t have timed this committee meeting any better than we have. Derek’s got some answers he needs to start handing out, and a lot of them have to do with Remy and Ethan. I want to know what’s going on with them, and I want to know yesterday.”

Chapter 6

Remy felt a sense of freedom and liberty she hadn’t felt in months as she walked underneath the trees surrounding Woodside. The sun shone down through the thick tree canopy above her, and the breeze felt more refreshing than it did when it eked over the wall and into the community. She breathed in deeply, smelling the scents of damp earth, rotting leaves, and foliage: the distinct smell that accompanied every forest and woody area she’d ever been in. Closing her eyes for the barest of moments, she sent up a silent thank you to whoever was listening that Dominic had been nice enough to get her out of the community, if only for a little while.

She looked to the man in question, who walked ahead of her, almost creeping through the foliage, following a deer track toward destinations unknown. Remy didn’t care where they were going; Dominic had mentioned searching out supplies, but they could have been taking a trip to the moon and she’d have been just as pleased. Her eyes lit onto his broad shoulders as he meandered along the path, and she smiled as she watched him pause to check his compass. He beckoned to her, and she hurried to catch up.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“We’re coming close to town,” Dominic said. “Maybe another half mile.” He paused before adding, “There are infected in town.”

A bright smile spread across Remy’s face before she could stop it. “Infected?” she repeated. “I’m game for taking on some of those.”

“I know, and that’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Dominic said. He paused, as if gathering his thoughts and figuring out what to say. “I want—no, I need you to please stick close to me. Don’t rush off to fulfill whatever burning need you have to slaughter any of the infected. I’m bringing you along to watch my back, not to perform wholesale slaughter.” She must have had a disappointed look on her face to match the disappointment she felt, because he hurried to add, “Besides, you do it sloppily, and if you’re still going to go with me to Philadelphia, you need to learn how to do it more effectively and efficiently.”

“And, what, you’re going to teach me?” Remy asked, stopping in the middle of the path and folding her arms over her chest. It was a challenge, and she knew it, but she wanted his promise that he was going to do so before they went any further.

“Actually, yes,” Dominic said, as if realizing that answering in any other way would send her on the warpath. “But you’re going to learn how to kill them my way.” He took her elbow and tugged. She let him lead her down the trail as he continued. “I’ve got actual training in how to take down enemies, remember?”

“What, they actually taught you how to kill zombies in the DIA?”

Dominic snorted. “No, not zombies. Just people,” he said. “But the infected are people. They’re just sick, and some of them are dead.”

“And still walking around trying to eat us,” Remy added. She paused, biting her lip as she ducked below a low-hanging branch. “You don’t think I’m going to go like that, do you?”

“Like what? A batch of infected eating you?” Dominic asked, raising an eyebrow and glancing at her.

“No, just…like them,” she said. She was being vague and knew it, but actually saying the words felt like it would make the possibility too real, too likely to happen.

Dominic stopped and stared at her, examining her face, reading the possibilities there like he was so skilled at doing, like he’d done earlier in the main house’s kitchen when she’d gotten so pissed at him for daring to show he cared. Then he slowly shook his head. “No, Remy, I don’t think you’d ever go that way,” he said. “I think you’d go down in a blaze of glory, taking as many of them with you as you could.” He gave her a slight smile and added, “I’ll make you a promise, though, right here and now. If you ever show signs of turning, I’ll personally make sure you never turn into one of the infected. I’ll take care of it myself.” Remy gave him a smile that quavered at the corners of her lips, and he reached out, taking her hand in his and giving it a comforting squeeze. “You’re going to be okay, Remy. You know that, right?”

“I hope so,” Remy murmured. She laced her fingers with his and squeezed his hand in return, holding onto it as if it were her only salvation. She glanced at their joined hands, focusing on them and feeling calluses and rough spots against her fingers. Then she forced herself to pull her hand out of his, inwardly cursing her momentary weakness. She prided herself on not needing other people as much as they needed her, and after the fiasco of Ethan’s death and resurrection, the last thing she was willing to do was let herself actually feel something—anything—for another person.

Dominic seemed to pick up on her discomfort, and he studied his hand before looking forward into the trees. He pressed his lips together and rocked his head forward at the path ahead. “We should get moving,” he said. “We’ve got a lot to do, and we need to try to get back before the sun sets and you need your medication.”

The rest of the trip to the outskirts of Hollywood, South Carolina, was made in a silence that, while not uncomfortable, was stiff with tension. As the two emerged from the shadow of the trees and into the bright afternoon sunlight, Remy found herself standing beside Dominic at the side of a highway. The grass alongside the road nearly reached her waist, and cars stretched down the pavement as far as the eye could see. It was a familiar sight, one that Remy had seen repeatedly over the past year and a half—

—“I can’t get a shot! I can’t get a fucking shot!”—

—and, in Remy’s opinion, was one of the most dangerous settings in the world, outside of dark buildings with lots of rooms. She drew a breath, fighting it into her lungs. Her hands trembled, and she curled her fingers into fists, digging her nails into her palms. Dominic started forward, stepping through a gap between two cars, his hand resting on a holstered pistol at his hip and the other gripping the strap of the rifle he’d brought with him. Remy’s heart leaped into her throat, and she lurched forward and grabbed Dominic by his right bicep to stop him. He turned to face her, his forehead wrinkled in confusion.

“What?” he questioned. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Remy hesitated and shook her head. She let her hand fall to her side, her fingers curling again. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment, and she looked away, gazing at a blue sedan, all of its doors thrown open and luggage, long-since emptied, spilling out onto the highway.

She opened her mouth, then closed it again. “Are you…are you sure it’s okay? Out there?” She nodded toward the highway and the cars.

Dominic looked at the cars and then turned his eyes back to her. “I’ve been through here a dozen times so far at least,” he said. “While I can’t say it’s totally safe, I can guarantee that I’ve at least reduced the number of infected along the two-mile stretch we’re about to walk.”

When she didn’t respond right away, Dominic stepped back from the highway and turned to face her. He set his rifle against the vehicle beside him—a bad move; even she knew that, and she wasn’t a former DIA agent—and took her face in his hands, making her look up at him. “In all the time I’ve known you, I’ve never seen you look so rattled,” he said. “Talk to me. What’s wrong?”

“Theo,” Remy said.

Dominic gave her a look of confusion, and she remembered that he’d never had the good fortune of knowing Theo, had never had the pleasure of meeting their former medic and self-sacrificing friend. A mental image of the man’s last few minutes of life played in her head like a scattershot film of out-of-sequence snippets—

—“I can’t go with you! I’m fucking infected now! If I go, I’ll put all of you in danger, and I will not do that.”—

—and she struggled to shove it aside and explain.

“He was this man that I…that we knew,” she said. Her voice trembled, and she tried to cover it up. “He was our medic. He…he died. In a highway full of cars like this one—”

—“Get back! Get the fuck back! All of you!”—

“—while trying to…trying to save Cade.” She had to force the last four words out. She was dying to look away from Dominic, but the hold he maintained on her face wouldn’t allow it. So instead, she closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m overreacting.”

He finally let go of her face, picked up his rifle, and rested it against his shoulder. “No, you’re not, Remy,” he replied. He surprised her by taking her hand in his again. He gently tugged it, leading her into the rows of vehicles on the highway. She struggled to overcome the urge to bolt. “It’s not over-reactive at all. You haven’t even mourned for him—or anyone else—have you?”

Remy swallowed and shook her head, her eyes darting around, searching for any oncoming dangers. Almost unconsciously, she drew closer to Dominic. It had been so long since she’d been outside the community, since she’d been put in danger that she didn’t know what to do with herself. She felt horribly exposed—a feeling she didn’t like one bit. Her fingers itched, ready to kill something. She had a misguided belief that killing would bring her self-confidence back.

Dominic tugged at her hand again, as if trying to draw her attention back to the present and out of her thoughts. “Nervous?” he asked.

“Very,” Remy admitted, despite her reluctance to confess it.

“Good.”

Remy raised an eyebrow, and Dominic elaborated. “If you’re nervous, it means you’re not so far gone that I can’t teach you.”

“I know how to kill the infected,” Remy said, glad for the diversion from her mournful thoughts. “If I didn’t know how, I’d have gotten myself killed a year and a half ago.”

“Yeah, but I’ve seen the way you fight the infected,” he said.

“When?”

“When I dug you out of a bunch of them outside the Westin five months ago.” He shook his head. “The way you were fighting them—if you can call it fighting—was a fast way to commit suicide.”

“Maybe that’s what I’m trying to do,” Remy snapped without thinking about it.

Dominic stopped short and turned to look at her, the expression on his face hinting at anger.

“Don’t say that,” he said. His tone was clipped, and she raised an eyebrow as he looked away from her and continued. “You’re not good to anyone dead, and if you’re determined to slaughter as many infected as humanly possible, then you need to get refined about how you do it so you don’t end up dead.”

Remy huffed out an exasperated breath. “Why do you want to teach me anyway?” she asked. “Why do you even care?”

Dominic didn’t look at her as he replied, “Because I like you.” His tone was matter-of-fact, as if it should have been obvious to her. “And because I’m still planning on taking you with me to Philadelphia and will need you to be a competent source of backup.” He angled a glance at her and added, “Unless, of course, you don’t want to go anymore.”

“Of course I do!” she exclaimed. “God, anything to get away from Woodside.”

Dominic raised an eyebrow. “Anything to get away from Woodside, or away from Ethan Bennett?”

“God, I fucking hate him!” Remy exploded before she could stop herself.

Dominic looked at her with surprise, stutter-stepping before regaining his composure. She clenched her fists and kicked the back tire of the nearest car.

“I wish he’d died for real!”

“No, you don’t, Remy,” Dominic started.

“Yes, I do!” Remy argued. “He did nothing but make my life miserable! It’s because of him that I’m fucking sick and that my face is messed up!”

Dominic stopped again and turned to face her, blocking her path.

Still angry, she raised her hands to shove him aside, but he caught her wrists and wrapped his strong fingers around them, halting the attempt. His thumbs rubbed against her wrists, gently, soothingly, clearly trying to calm her down.

“Remy,” he said, and the way he said her name was warm like melted caramel. She swore her backbone melted under the onslaught. “Your face is not fucked up. If you ask me, I don’t think it’s nearly as bad as you seem to think it is.” His thumbs lightly brushed against the scars on either side of her face, tracing upward along them as far as his thumbs could reach.

Remy’s eyes welled up with tears, and she swallowed hard, trying to choke them back. Suddenly, she felt like a shy, ridiculous schoolgirl being told by Mr. Popular Jock Football Player that he wanted to go to the Senior Prom with her. She almost scrunched her nose up at the thought; she’d never been the type who was asked out on dates by the good, straight-laced guys, just the users and the losers. She squeezed her eyes closed for a moment before opening them again and asking softly, “Do you actually like me, or are you just saying all that to make me feel better?”

“I like you enough to want to kiss you right now,” he murmured without hesitation.

“But you can’t.”

“I can’t,” he agreed.

“Because I’m sick.”

“Because, as you say, you’re sick.”

Before Remy could respond, a shout echoed down the highway. She stiffened. Dominic let go of her wrists and spun toward the noise, sliding himself between her and the possibility of danger. Both of them squinted, searching for the source of the noise.

Another shout echoed, followed by several more. It was a feminine voice, indistinct but high-pitched with panic.

“That isn’t an infected person,” Dominic said.

Remy pushed past him and started in the direction of the noise. “Come on, then! We should go help!”

Chapter 7

Ethan relaxed in the reclining chair across from the couch as best as he could, though his knees and hips still ached from the exertion he’d indulged in earlier in the day. He didn’t regret it, though, not for a second. If anything, the movement had made him feel alive. And he was glad he’d been allowed to attend a meeting and see the community in action. He’d missed being in the thick of things, and he was eager to get caught up on what was going on in the world.

Despite the better mood he appeared to be in, though, Ethan’s brain was trying to run laps around what had happened in the kitchen barely an hour before. He’d eaten a rabbit. On the face of it, that didn’t seem like a big deal. He’d been born and raised in the south, and his father had been an avid game hunter from the moment he’d been old enough to aim a rifle, so he’d eaten his fair share of rabbit and deer and squirrel meat in his life. But this was different. He’d eaten the rabbit raw. It had been a compulsion he hadn’t been able to think through, and he was terrified that that meant there was something screwed up in his head.

No, no, I can’t think about that right now, he thought, trying to push it all to the back of his mind. It was too much to handle, and he couldn’t even begin to try to cope with it. He’d save it for later, when he had time to dwell on it and consider all the possible implications of what he’d done. Instead, he started to scan the room, looking over everyone who had turned out for the committee meeting.

Brandt was leaned against the banister at the bottom of the staircase, observing the people who’d gathered for the meeting. They almost had a full house, with most of the committee members present.

Kimberly told Ethan, after she guided him to the recliner, that the majority of time attendance was sparse due to all the work that needed to be done around the community.

There were two people conspicuously absent: Remy Angellette and Dominic Jackson. Ethan didn’t care where Dominic was, but considering the meeting was about Remy and, by extension, himself, it was probably a good thing she wasn’t here.

Now, Kimberly reclined in the bay window, leaning against the boards that covered the glass, her hands folded in her lap as she talked to Isaac Wright. Isaac leaned against the wall beside the window. Every time he glanced at her, Ethan felt a stirring of emotion, things he hadn’t felt in ages: attraction mixed with desire and, inexplicably, a pang of sadness and insecurity. He imagined how he looked: his skin too pale, his face covered with too much facial hair, the circles under his eyes too dark, and his wrist bones sticking out too much. As he contemplated that, he realized Brandt was staring at him, and he looked at him questioningly. He nodded to Ethan in acknowledgment and asked, “How are you feeling?”

Ethan wasn’t sure how to answer the question, because he hadn’t figured it out himself. So he settled on, “As well as can be expected, I guess.”

With that, Ethan shifted his eyes to the sofa. Cade relaxed at one end of it, her head propped against her hand as she stared across the room, waiting for the meeting to start. She looked uncomfortable, and Ethan couldn’t decide if she felt sick or if she was upset over what she’d witnessed him doing to the dead rabbit in the kitchen. The memory of what he’d done combined with the memory of the taste of it surged in his brain again, and he wrestled it aside, not ready to deal with it right then, and turned his attention back to Cade. No one else occupied the couch, largely due to the sniper rifle laid out across the other two cushions. After he gave her a small smile, he settled his eyes onto the last man in the room.

Dr. Derek Rivers sat on the edge of the coffee table, scribbling something in a rapid, messy hand into a notebook resting on his knee. He’d met with Ethan just before the meeting, grilling him relentlessly in the dining room as Brandt waited in the doorway, the doctor gathering information so he could piece together possibilities and put together his theory of why Ethan had felt the compulsion to do what he’d done.

As Ethan muddled through that, Brandt cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention. Ethan looked up at him as the others did the same, and once all eyes were on him, he cleared his throat again and spoke.

“Ya’ll probably already have some idea of what we called this meeting for,” he began. “But in case anyone feels particularly ignorant, I’ll enlighten you anyway. We’re not here on official community business. More like friend-related business, because someone in here isn’t telling us things we need to know regarding Ethan,” here, Brandt nodded his head toward Ethan, “and Remy and their current states of health.”

“Since it seems that someone feels it prudent to allow Remy to die when he has the means to cure her,” Cade added.

Kimberly came off her seat on the bay window, fists clenched, her brown eyes wide and practically glowing. “That’s not fair!” she exploded. “You don’t know everything—”

“And neither do you,” Brandt interrupted. “You don’t know what Remy is going through. You can’t possibly begin to even understand it.”

“Oh, and you do?” Kimberly challenged.

Ethan shook his head and leaned forward, figuring it was time he spoke up and got everyone calmed down. Clearly, this was a touchy subject for all involved, and they’d likely already formed opinions based on incomplete facts and assumptions. “No, he doesn’t understand what she’s going through, but I do,” Ethan said. He kept his voice quiet and controlled, but it was enough to command the attention of everyone in the room. Despite the spotlight he’d put himself under, he reached out and rested a hand against Kimberly’s arm, trying to calm her. She backed off, taking a few steps away from Brandt and sitting on the arm of Ethan’s recliner. Once she was there, reassuringly present and less than an arm’s reach away, he continued. “Unlike any of you, I know what Remy’s going through. I know the anger she feels, the fear, and yes, even the hunger. I know what it’s like to be infected. Better than any of you because I’ve been there. I’m the only person here who’s qualified to truly speak on her behalf.” He paused and looked at Derek, trying to figure out what the doctor was thinking. “You have no idea what you’re condemning her to, Dr. Rivers. You have no idea what it’s like to have that virus inside you, eating away at your sanity and at everything that makes you you, eating away for every moment you’re infected with it and being fully aware of what’s happening to you the entire time. You’re condemning Remy to a life that isn’t a life and forcing her to accept that she’s going to turn into one of the infected and that she might hurt one of the people she cares about. To be infected…that’s a fate I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. You have got to do something for her, Derek. Give her the cure.”

“You don’t understand,” Derek said haltingly. He didn’t look up from his notebook but stared at the scribbled-over pages and ran his thumb over the spiral binding. “It’s…it’s not what you think.” He looked up, his eyes darting from one face to the next before settling on Ethan’s. “There’s no cure.”

“What?” Brandt exclaimed. “No cure? What are you talking about? You cured Ethan.”

“It’s not what you think,” Derek said again. He slid his free hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small vial, shaking it before holding it up so they could see that it was full of a thick, red liquid. “This? What I injected you with, Ethan? It’s not a cure. It’s blood. It’s the virus,” he explained.

Ethan’s brain skidded to a halt at Derek’s words, and he could see the incredulity on his friends’ faces as they stared at the doctor who sat on the edge of the coffee table. The silence that followed was complete.

Chapter 8

Dominic’s heart bounded in his chest like a jackrabbit running from a coyote, and his fight or flight instincts were equally stirred up. His first instinct—a purely human one—was to turn tail and run, preferably away from the noise ahead of them. His second instinct was to protect Remy from whatever was ahead. The second instinct won out.

As Remy rushed past him toward the danger, Dominic grabbed her left arm and hauled her backward. He nearly dumped her onto the cracked and crumbling pavement as he spun and shoved her against a nearby car. Her palms hit the hood, and he pressed against her, pinning her in place. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he hissed in her ear.

“There’s someone down there that needs our help!” Remy explained, pushing back against him with all of her strength. It wasn’t enough.

“And you were just going to charge in without a thought to your own safety or mine, weren’t you?” he accused. She froze, and he nodded. “That’s what I thought. For the love of Christ, follow me, stick close, and don’t do anything stupid.” He let her go then, and she scowled and backed away from the car. “Maybe you’ll learn something,” he added before turning away and hurrying forward, keeping low to conceal himself. The sound of Remy’s shoes scuffing the pavement behind him told him that she was following him, like he’d told her to do.

Thank God she was listening to him. If she’d decided not to, like it or not, he’d have to hurt her.

Dominic drew in a slow breath when he heard another shout, something that sounded like a young woman yelling, “Down, down, down!” The shouts were followed by a shotgun blast, and he tensed. Swearing under his breath, he held his fist up beside his head, signaling for Remy to stop, and pointed to the tall grass on the side of the road. The grass rustling behind him and to his right meant that she’d obeyed his directive.

It took several minutes of weaving between cars before Dominic reached a point where he could see what was going on ahead. He signaled for Remy to stop where she was and then climbed into the bed of the pickup truck in front of him. He crouched low and peered over the truck’s roof.

The highway beyond had been cleared of the cars that had blocked it the last time he’d been through. Judging by the roadway’s condition, heavy machinery had done the work; the pavement had been crushed almost to gravel in places. There were tracks, and if he was reading the tracks correctly, a tank might have done some of the damage.

He looked up from the pavement, slowly moving out of his crouch. Just up the road he saw two figures—he couldn’t tell yet whether they were male or female—fighting valiantly against a crowd of infected. The survivors weren’t his concern. He was focused on the infected and the threat they posed to himself and Remy.

Dominic nodded and slung his rifle off his shoulder, resting it against the roof of the truck. Then he hunkered down, took aim, and squeezed the trigger. The head of the infected man in his sights exploded in a shower of blood and gore. The young man and woman in the crowd continued fighting, but their movements were almost indecipherable amongst the grasping and clutching hands of the infected around them.

Dominic adjusted his aim. His rifle cracked, and another infected man went down.

A burst of gunfire joined his own as Dominic shot down a third infected attacker. Under the hail of additional, well-placed shots, the infected began to drop like flies. He spared a glance to his right and saw Remy leaning half over the hood of a car with her pistol pointed toward the infected, firing into them with carefully aimed shots.

He was about to return his attention to the road when seven dark shadows lumbered out of the tree line, stumbling and staggering in Remy’s direction. With her back to them, she couldn’t see them approaching, and he had a sudden, horrible vision of her being torn apart by hands and nails and teeth, her beautiful face splattered with blood, her lithe body ripped to shreds. “Remy! Behind you!” he shouted. He swore, dumped his rifle into the bed of the truck, and climbed onto the edge of the truck bed, leaping from one vehicle to the next in a race to reach Remy before the infected closed in.

Remy turned toward the approaching infected, lifted her pistol, and began firing frantically. Half of her bullets missed or hit the wrong organ. As her pistol ran out of bullets, Dominic set foot on the trunk of the car she’d been hunkered down behind, and with another step, he launched himself off the vehicle and tackled one of the infected, taking it to the ground and snapping its neck in a single movement. He tucked and rolled when he landed, drawing a knife as he came up on his knee. He sprang forward, bent low, and tackled one of the other seven infected, slamming it against the car. He didn’t hesitate to bring the knife up and plunge it into the man’s temple, shredding through the skin and thin bone and into the brain. The body between him and the car went limp, and he ripped the knife free and spun around, kicking the legs out from another one and falling on it. He slammed his knife blade through its forehead, scrambled to his feet, and readied himself to attack the next infected person.

Dominic’s actions bought Remy enough time to reload and get into position. Now, her gunfire joined his bladed attacks. She shot three in the head in quick succession, leaving two still standing. One came at Remy while the other headed for Dominic. Almost in unison, Dominic struck out with his knife and brought the number to one, and Remy adjusted her aim and squeezed the trigger.

The last of that group of infected collapsed into the grass.

“You okay?” he asked her, panting.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said. “Let’s finish this and save those two people.”

Dominic nodded, returned to the truck, and retrieved his rifle from the bed. He worked methodically, choosing each target and killing with the utmost care, not wanting to injure the two survivors who ducked and darted, weaving between the infected, shotgun firing and machete swinging. Once all of the infected in the immediate vicinity were down, thanks to their combined efforts, Dominic rose from his kneeling position in the back of the pickup truck and lifted a hand to the two survivors in greeting.

A shotgun blast took out the truck’s windshield, and Dominic dropped down into the bed for cover, falling into a pile of old trash and dead leaves.

“Drop the shotgun, now!” he heard Remy yell out. “Or so help me God, I’ll blow your head off right here and now!” There was a pause, and then Remy called out, “Dom, you okay? You didn’t get hit, did you?”

Dominic held up a hand to signal his okayness, then sat up cautiously, using his rifle to pull himself out of the pile of garbage he’d landed in. He peered over the edge of the truck. “Is it safe to get up, or am I going to meet with the business end of a shotgun again?”

“You’re okay,” Remy said. “If either of these bozos goes for a weapon again, I’m seriously putting a bullet between their eyes.”

Dominic blew out a breath and hauled himself to his feet. He got his first real look and the two survivors they’d saved.

They were young, by the looks of it, a male and a female, maybe in their late teens or early twenties. Even from a distance, Dominic could see that they were related. Both had the same dark hair and pale skin, and they were skinny, as if they hadn’t had enough to eat in quite a while. Slowly, the girl lowered her rifle, but in the other hand, she carried a machete. The two came toward Dominic, stopping when they reached the other side of his truck. Both had the same blue eyes. The girl, tall and lanky, moved to stand protectively in front of the boy, her eyes hard as she stared at Dominic over the roof of the truck. She lowered the rifle to the pavement at her feet but continued to grip the machete. Two more guns were strapped to her sides in thigh holsters.

“Who are you?” she demanded. Her voice was heavily accented, similar to Brandt’s, obviously Georgian. “Where did you come from?”

“I should probably ask you the same question,” Dominic retorted. He kept his voice as pleasant as possible, not wanting to alarm either of them, despite the fact that one of them had shot at him. He couldn’t blame them for that, though. They’d just been fighting a rather large group of infected when he’d popped up. “My name is Dominic.” He glanced toward Remy, noticing that she was still taking partial cover behind a vehicle near the side of the road. “That over there is Remy. We come from a community of survivors not far from here. We were heading into town to get supplies—”

“You can’t go that way,” the girl said.

“Why not?” Remy snapped, her voice hard and irritable with leftover adrenaline. Dominic shot her another glance. Her stance had tensed, her fingers flexing against the grip of the pistol.

“Remy,” he warned. He left it at that and waited for her to relax her stance and her grip on the pistol. Then he nodded toward the girl. “What’s going on in town that we can’t go that way anymore?”

“There’s a flood of zombies coming this way,” the girl said.

Dominic was only slightly amused by her use of “zombies.”

“Hundreds of them,” she continued. “Too many to count.”

Alarm rose in Dominic’s gut. It felt like a siren was going off in his head. Remy had an equally alarmed look on her face, like she was about to vomit. Dominic abandoned his perch in the bed of the truck and climbed over the side, dropping to the pavement.

“Something’s stirred them up,” the girl explained. “They’re flocking like birds all over the place. We’re looking for a place called Woodside. A man we met said we could get help there.”

“That’s where we’re from,” Remy said. “We can take you there.”

Dominic looked the survivors over, getting only a partial look at the boy, who was still behind his sister. He looked again at the shotgun at the girl’s feet, the machete in her hand, and the pistols on her belt, one at each hip, like an Old West gunslinger. She wore a black Kevlar vest covered with pockets that bulged with supplies. A knife was strapped to her belt behind one of the holsters, and a sheath for the machete was on her back. Dominic moved to get a better look at the boy. He was outfitted with his own pistols strapped to his belt and thigh. Three sheathed knives lined the belt along his back. He held a baseball bat in his left hand and an identical machete in his right. The boy and girl looked almost para-military, like they’d been fighting a war against the infected single-handedly; judging by the fresh blood on them and the lingering stains that marred their jeans, Dominic wouldn’t have been surprised.

“What are your names?” Dominic finally asked.

“I’m Sadie O’Dell,” the girl said. “This is my twin brother, Jude.”

Dominic looked past the two and studied the highway. Save for the bodies that littered it, it was empty for as far as the eye could see. The cars that had once packed the highway had been pushed to either side, cluttering the shoulders, crushing the tall grass. Some had even been stacked on top of each other. “You two been out in this mess long?” he asked.

“All year,” Sadie said. She gave him a critical look and narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

Dominic slung the rifle over his shoulder, settling it against his back, and nodded toward the highway. “Show me,” he said. “Take me to these zombies. I need to see them for myself.”

“You sure that’s a good idea, Dom?” Remy’s voice came from his right. “Could be dangerous.”

He looked at her and saw a mischievous glimmer in her eyes, coupled with excitement. “Yeah, like you’ve ever objected to playing with anything dangerous,” Dominic commented. He nodded toward Sadie. “Come on, show us. And while we head that way, you can tell me what the hell happened to this highway.”

“And afterwards?” Sadie prompted.

“Afterwards, we’ll take you to Woodside,” Remy said. “We just need to gather as much information as we can before we take this back to Brandt.”

Sadie stared at Remy and Dominic for a moment, as if she were trying to read their intentions. Then she nodded shortly and turned away from them, beckoning with the hand that held the machete. “Follow me,” she said. “We’ve got to be quick about this. I want to get to cover before nightfall.”

Chapter 9

Ethan was still staring at Derek, his fingers digging into the arms of his chair, as he tried to wrap his mind around what Derek meant by saying he’d shot him up with the virus. The thought was enough to give him nightmares. He watched, eyes locked on Derek’s hand, as the doctor curled his fingers around the vial, concealing it from view. “You wanna maybe elaborate on that, Doc?” Ethan asked. “Because I’m seriously not understanding what the hell you mean.”

Derek rubbed a hand over his face and sighed. “This will take a recap of the history of Michaluk and what I’ve deduced about it in my little lab since we moved here, so please bear with me.”

Derek pushed up from the coffee table and joined Brandt near the head of the room where he could see them all clearly. Brandt stepped aside and sat on the arm of the couch beside Cade.

“I’ve already gone over the how-it-came-to-be story earlier this year, when I explained that Brandt was infected and how,” Derek began. “Since then, I’ve made some new discoveries and begun to come to a better understanding of how the virus might work. That’s what I’ll share with you today.”

“What sorts of new discoveries?” Ethan asked.

“Lots of new discoveries,” Derek said; a note of excitement edged into his voice. He flipped a few pages in his notebook and held it where they could all see it.

Ethan leaned forward for a better look, silently wishing he had his long-lost reading glasses. It appeared to be a hand-drawn diagram of some sort of cell.

“Let me give you a really basic rundown of what I’ve discovered. You’ll never believe how exciting it is,” Derek said.

Isaac raised an eyebrow and gave his half-brother a strange look. “I’m not sure ‘exciting’ is the word I would personally use.”

Derek ignored him and continued, sounding like a kid in a candy store. “The Michaluk Virus isn’t a virus in the traditional sense. It’s a megavirus. It’s so big I can actually see it under my microscope, and—”

“Wait, slow down, Doc,” Cade interrupted. “We’re not all college-educated epidemiologists. What the hell is a megavirus?”

“It’s almost like a parasite, but not quite,” Derek clarified. “It’s complex. Most regular viruses are dependent upon the host body they occupy. They hijack cells for their own purpose. In the case of megaviruses—or the megavirus, since there’s only one official megavirus—it has its own cellular structure. It was only recently discovered because, until a few years ago, it was mistaken for a bacterium.”

“That’s all fine and great, Derek,” Brandt said. “But what does that have to do with Michaluk?”

“Because I think Michaluk is a new megavirus,” Derek explained. “I think when those bastards created this in the lab, they modeled Michaluk after the megavirus.”

“Basically, the Michaluk megavirus is like a parasite,” Kimberly spoke up. “Once introduced into a person’s body, it attacks the Central Nervous System, gets into the brain, and takes over cells for its own purposes. It shuts down cells it doesn’t need and takes over the areas that control motor skills and the brain stem. A virus’s goal is to spread, which is why, I think, Michaluk victims are so violent. The virus is trying to spread further by forcing those already infected with it to attack other people.”

There was a long silence as everyone processed Kimberly’s explanation. Kimberly, for her part, sat quietly, gripping Ethan’s hand in hers, and he held on in return, almost tightly enough to hurt her.

Brandt cleared his throat and gave Dr. Rivers a pointed look. The doctor fumbled with his notebook before he flipped through pages. Ethan wondered just how good of a professor the man was if he couldn’t explain things to them with confidence, but then he reconsidered: he doubted Derek’s students glared at him in quite the same way Brandt was currently glaring, something that would have unnerved anyone.

“When we were doing testing of what became Michaluk in the CDC’s labs, we were given two variants of the pathogen to work with, designated 228C and 228E. They were the two most promising of the pathogens available to us. There were three test groups, A, B, and C. A was the control group, and B and C were test groups who got the pathogens. You already know this.

“228C was given to group B, which was Alicia’s group, and 228E was given to group C, which was Brandt’s. Even though both pathogens showed good results in lab settings, for most of the subjects…well, it didn’t. Out of the ten subjects in group B, only Alicia coped well with it, and in group C, Brandt. What made them different from everyone else—and this is just my theory—is the pathogen may have modified itself and adapted to their physiologies. Of course, because it was two different—though similar—pathogens, it did that in different ways. As we saw earlier this year, with Alicia, it…well…”

“It fucked up her head,” Ethan supplied, seeing no need to be polite about it.

“Not quite how I’d have put it, but it’s rather accurate,” Derek acknowledged. “The pathogen caused bouts of psychosis and irrationality and at times animalistically aggressive behavior. She was prone to attacking them, and she often tried to bite them like an animal would. And it was through her and her interaction with Kevin Michaluk that we ended up with the first wild strain of the virus, because we didn’t know it, but 228C had mutated and become contagious. I’ll call the mutated form of 228C the Day Strain for simplicity’s sake from here on out. Mr. Michaluk had a cold when Alicia attacked him. During the attack, she spat in his face, and he was exposed to the Day Strain through the mucous membranes of either his eyes or nose. I’m uncertain which, but ultimately, it doesn’t matter.

“Obviously, 228C was highly adaptive, and when it encountered the common cold virus that Kevin carried with him at the time, it attached itself to those viral particles, twisting them to its benefit. And that is how the Michaluk Strain was born.”

“But Michaluk didn’t stay airborne,” Ethan pointed out.

“And thank God for that,” Cade muttered. “If it had, we’d all be dead already.”

“You’re right,” Derek acknowledged. “It only stayed airborne long enough to penetrate a variety of host defenses, to get started on its spread. Then it ditched the cold virus, likely because it had served its purpose, and because the cold virus wasn’t long-lived enough. From then on, it became transmitted by fluid only.”

“Okay, so?” Isaac prompted.

Brandt spoke up. “So when the airborne characteristics were dropped by the Michaluk Strain, it just became the Day Strain again, right, Doc?”

“Not exactly,” Derek replied. “It kept some of the characteristics and, as such, is different enough to be considered a separate strain, one that’s more contagious. And that’s how we get to the Evans Strain.

“The strain that Brandt is infected with isn’t contagious. It also appears to be the strongest and most resilient of the three strains. If you introduce the Day or Michaluk Strains into its territory, it activates and wipes them out. Then it goes dormant again until such time as it’s needed. It’s essentially a helper virus, which was what it was intended for all along. Mind you, he’s still infected, but he’s not contagious. The fact that he can sleep with Cade and Cade not feel ill effects tells me that much.”

“Would you please get to a point, preferably sometime today?” Brandt groaned, rubbing his temples with his thumb and middle finger.

“I’m getting there,” Derek said, the excitement in his voice sliding into a plea. “I promise.” He paused, as if recollecting his thoughts, and then turned to face Ethan. “When you were initially infected, Ethan, you contracted the Michaluk Strain of the virus. The treatment I’d developed at the Westin to combat that strain and that I gave you and Remy and others like you was developed with the Day Strain as the base. It’s why you were still infectious while you were giving yourself daily injections. The Day Strain, while stronger than the Michaluk Strain, couldn’t completely dominate it. It’s like you were a cancer patient on the cusp of remission, and then you stopped taking your chemotherapy.”

“Basically, we were fighting a poison with another poison,” Kimberly interjected.

“The Day Strain is the least permanent of the viral strains,” Derek added. “It’s why there was only one person infected with the Day Strain—Alicia—which is why I think it’s an endangered strain. Anyway, when the medications from the injections wore off you, the Day Strain failed, and the Michaluk Strain came back full force and took over.”

“So what does the Evans Strain do?” Ethan asked.

He nodded to Ethan but addressed Brandt and Cade. “When you two brought Ethan to me and asked me to try to do something for him, I spent two months pumping him full of meds while I tried to figure out how to pull the pathogen in Brandt’s blood out of it so I could deconstruct it, so I could figure out what was so different about it. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t have the proper equipment. That room down in the basement isn’t a true lab. I did my best, but nothing worked, and believe me, I tried every trick I knew and a few I wasn’t aware I knew.” He sighed. “I got desperate. I didn’t want to break the news to you that we would have to kill Ethan. We couldn’t keep up what we were doing. He was already getting more violent. The animal meat we were feeding him wasn’t doing a lick of good and wasn’t eradicating his hunger for human flesh. Which was when I gave up and injected Brandt’s blood directly into Ethan’s bloodstream. And that’s how I discovered that the Evans Strain can wipe out the Michaluk Strain.” He folded his arms over his chest. “And that it can replace the Michaluk Strain with itself.”

“Which means?” Ethan prodded. “Break it down for me, please?”

“As far as I can tell, if you were to be bitten by one of the infected today, you wouldn’t get infected,” Derek said. “You may feel ill for a day or two while the Evans Strain fights it off, but ultimately, it’d win out against the intruder, and you’d come out of it uninfected by the more dangerous strains.”

Ethan seemed to be considering all this. Everyone in the room stared at Brandt as if he were a museum exhibit as he held Cade’s hand.

“It’s a vaccine,” Ethan said. “You’ve found a vaccine against the Michaluk Virus. You could conceivably give it to everyone here and it’d keep them from getting infected.”

“Conceivably,” Derek acknowledged. “But I won’t do it, not yet.”

Ethan gaped at him and tried to rise out of his recliner. “Why the hell not?” he demanded. “It could save so many people—”

“Because I don’t know if it’s safe,” Derek said. “I don’t know what the side effects are—and there are side effects, if what happened in the kitchen earlier is any indication. And because I don’t know if I just got lucky with you or if it’s a sure thing, I’m not subjecting anyone to anything that isn’t a sure thing. I don’t know what I’d do if something went wrong.”

Ethan sank back into his recliner. The doctor’s point was one he could understand, as much as he hated to agree with Derek in the face of humanity’s possible salvation. He tried to focus on the other problem facing the group, the reason the meeting had been called in the first place. “What about Remy?”

“The fact of the matter is that the only combination that remains untested is the Evans and Day Strains,” Derek said. “I don’t know what’ll happen if they come into contact with each other. They’re both essentially lab-pure strains, and they’ve already shown they can be unpredictable, the Day Strain in particular.”

“It’s why we need to roll Remy off the medications we’re giving her before we inject her with the Evans Strain,” Kimberly said. “We’re predicting that if we take her off the medications, the Michaluk Strain that’s being subdued by the Day Strain will make a resurgence, and when we introduce the Evans Strain into her bloodstream, it’ll behave as it has with Ethan.”

“That’s the best case scenario,” Derek said. “I’ve already explained this to her. She got very ugly with me and has refused to talk to me since, even to answer questions about how she feels during exams. Obviously, she isn’t taking this well.” He turned to Ethan with a solemn look on his face. “Which is why I’m going to ask you to please try to talk to her about it. The last thing I need is her to go off and do something stupid because she doesn’t like what she’s hearing.”

“So you told her she’s going to have to turn before you do anything for her?” Ethan asked. “Doc, that was a bad, bad move. You have no idea how she feels toward the infected. It’s like every single one of them has done something personal against her, and she’s not going to take kindly to becoming one, even if only for a short time. I think she’d kill herself before she’d let that happen.”

“That’s why I’m bringing it up now,” Derek said. “You understand her psychology. You’ve known her far longer than I have and, as far as I understand, you’ve had…romantic entanglements with her. She’ll listen to you.”

“Had,” Ethan pointed out, not liking the turn in the conversation, especially with Kimberly sitting beside him. “She’s obviously less than thrilled with the idea of seeing or speaking to me, in case you haven’t noticed. She didn’t once come to see me while I was bedbound. She doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

“And why is that?”

“Because I tried to kill her!” Ethan exploded, coming halfway off his seat again and digging his fingers into the armrests. Brandt started to stand, but Cade pulled him back and shook her head.

“You can work around that, can’t you?” Derek asked.

“Oh my God,” Ethan groaned. He flopped into the recliner and dropped his head back against the headrest. “I can’t just work around that. Remy doesn’t function that way. You’d never believe the way that woman holds onto a grudge.”

“Why do you think I’ve brought it up, and especially to you?” Derek asked. “Because you know how to handle her.”

“I used to know how to handle her,” Ethan replied. “She’s changed, Derek. Just based off what Brandt and Cade and Kim have told me, she’s not the same Remy I knew before March.”

“What about your love for her?” Derek asked.

Ethan fought to not smack himself in the forehead or let out a groan. “Doesn’t that count for something?” Derek continued.

“It would if I loved her,” Ethan snapped.

The room fell silent, the tension crackling in the air as everyone exchanged glances. The declaration surprised even Ethan, though he couldn’t say that he was wholly surprised. Five months of hell and avoidance would be enough for almost anyone to fall out of love, especially if it’d been a relationship predicated on physical attraction. He stared blankly at the carpet. “I don’t…I don’t feel that way about her anymore. Not like that. There’s someone else.”

Kimberly shifted uncomfortably on the arm of Ethan’s chair, and Ethan continued to avoid everyone’s gazes. He felt painfully embarrassed, like he was a teenage boy confessing his crush. Thankfully, Brandt chose that moment to draw everyone’s attention away from Ethan and onto himself, prompting Ethan to shoot him a grateful look.

“Now that I—that we—have a better understanding of what we’re dealing with right now, meeting’s adjourned,” he announced. “We’ve all got a lot to think about, and we’re burning daylight just sitting here.”

Chapter 10

Remy wasn’t sure how she felt about the two teenagers she and Dominic had stumbled across. Her distrust was innate, she knew; it’d been quite a while since they’d seen any survivors outside their little commune, and she was worried that these two would bring trouble to the community.

Assuming, of course, that she and Dominic weren’t about to do that themselves.

As they followed Sadie and Jude toward the town of Hollywood, Sadie did most of the talking, filling them in on what little she knew. Jude, it seemed, was content to follow her and keep an eye out for encroaching dangers. Remy did likewise, following closely behind Dominic.

“How did you hear about Woodside?” Dominic asked. “We haven’t exactly broadcasted our existence everywhere.”

“A man named Joseph told us to go there,” Sadie answered. “We ran into him and some other guys while we were trying to get away from the zombies we told you about.” She motioned with the barrel of her shotgun toward the town that lay in the distance.

“Where’s Joseph now?” Remy interjected. “And the rest of his group, for that matter.”

“I think he’s dead,” Sadie said, her tone apologetic. “He and his guys got swamped. He told us which way to run and said that when we came across it to ask for a man named Brandt.”

Remy heard Dominic swear under his breath, and she felt a sinking sickness settle into her stomach. Joseph and his crew were dead. Their supply team was dead. She couldn’t pretend elation at the thought of a new supply team forming or of herself being on that team, even if Dr. Rivers listened to her pleas and cleared her for work. She liked Joseph, had liked his friendliness and his understanding and the way he’d rallied for her when she’d tried to get onto his team. And now he was dead.

“So where have you been hiding during all of this?” Dominic asked as she refocused on the conversation.

“All of what? The outbreak?” Sadie asked.

Dominic nodded.

“We’ve been living off the land, hiding in the woods where we’re less likely to run into any zombies.”

“You’ve been roughing it?” Remy asked. “How long?”

Sadie shrugged. “Six, seven months now? We tried staying in town and holing up in houses but got tired of the zombies bothering us. Our parents used to take us out camping a lot, so we got all the stuff together that we thought we’d need, hiked into the woods as far away from anything resembling civilization as we could get, and set up camp.” She spoke as if shutting herself and her brother away from other survivors and any support they could offer was no big deal. “We haven’t had much contact with zombies until now. And we hadn’t seen any other people for several months until we ran into that Joseph guy and now you two.”

“But why would you do that?” Remy asked. “Why would you shut yourselves away from people like that?”

“Because it’s safer that way,” Sadie said, as if the answer should have been obvious. “We only ever went near towns or put ourselves into situations where we might run into people when we needed supplies that we couldn’t scavenge out of the woods. That’s how we ran into Joseph. We’d run out of a lot of stuff that we couldn’t do without anymore, so we went into town to try to find supplies.”

Remy stumbled on a crack in the pavement, and Jude’s hand darted out, grasping her elbow. “Thanks,” Remy said.

Jude merely nodded but stayed silent, continuing to walk alongside them, his blue eyes scanning their surroundings.

“So where did all the zombies you told us about come from?” Remy asked, directing the question at Sadie, since Jude didn’t seem up to talking.

“I don’t know,” Sadie admitted. “We hadn’t seen any zombies in weeks and weeks. So damn long I actually lost track. And then it’s like, bam, there they all were.”

“What about the highway?” Remy asked. “What happened to it?”

“Yeah, I don’t remember it being like this last time I came through here.” Dominic motioned toward the ground, referencing the crushed pavement underfoot.

“We noticed this a couple of weeks ago,” Sadie said. She dug into the black pack on her back and pulled a bottle of water free, uncapping it and taking a long swallow before continuing. “We were heading along Highway 162, which we’re on right now, and it was cleared,” she said, passing the bottle to her brother. “Totally cleared. Three weeks before that, it had been jam packed with cars and trucks, as far as the eye could see.” She swept her hand sideways, as if to illustrate her point. “There were so many cars that we could barely cross it. It’s one of the highways that comes west out of Charleston, you know?”

“Not really,” Dominic admitted. “Neither of us is native to South Carolina. It’s just where we ended up.”

“Well, 162 splits off from 17 and heads southwest from Charleston,” Sadie explained. “I always thought maybe people got off 17 and onto 162 thinking they could make it out of Charleston before things got bad, but they bottlenecked themselves outside of town.

“Anyway, five weeks ago, Jude and I slipped into the outer edges of Charleston to gather supplies and had our usual trouble getting across 162. Two weeks ago, we came back the same direction to get additional supplies, and all the cars in the center of 162 were gone. The highway had been cleared, and all the cars were shoved onto the shoulders, like giant metal walls. We started following the road to see how far it was like that, and we got as far as Hollywood before we were attacked. Someone is clearing 162, and I don’t know who it could be. I wouldn’t think there’d be anyone left with the manpower or tools to move so many cars so quickly and so…discreetly.” She pointed at the pavement beneath their feet. “The road is buckled and collapsed like this the whole way. It’s chewed up like something’s rolled over it that was way too heavy for the pavement to handle. Maybe it was something that happened when the cars were cleared out. I don’t know.”

“Are you sure the cars themselves didn’t do this?” Remy asked.

Dominic shook his head. “No, this isn’t damage from the cars,” he said, pausing to kneel and get a closer look at the pavement. He ran a hand over the tracks and added, “This is heavy machinery, like a tank or something like it. You can see where the treads tore up the pavement.” He touched the indentations in the pavement, perfectly spaced, to emphasize his point.

“A tank?” Remy repeated, feeling excitement welling up. “Like, the military? Do you think they’re finally coming to help us? Do you think they’re taking back everything from the—”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Dominic snapped, and Remy gritted her teeth. He straightened and brushed his hand against his pant leg. “Even if they are, they’re not going to have time for people like us.”

“You mean people like me,” Remy retorted. “They’d love people like you, what with your experience in the—”

Dominic gave her a sharp look, and she cut herself off. She gave Sadie and Jude a wary glance. “Sorry.”

“Continue,” Dominic said to Sadie, giving her and her brother a short wave to indicate they should keep walking.

“We’ll need to get quiet now,” Sadie said. “We’re coming close to where the infected should be, if I’m estimating the distance versus speed right.”

Obligingly, Remy and Dominic fell silent and followed the twins up the final hill to Hollywood. Jude stopped them several feet away from the crest of the hill and signaled for them to go into the trees on the side of the road. They obeyed, climbing over the cars lining the highway and scrambling into the shadow of the brush. Dominic held his rifle at the ready, and Remy drew her bolo knife, and they continued parallel to the highway until Sadie motioned for everyone to stop.

“They should be right ahead,” she whispered. “They were just milling around last time we saw them, but they were drifting this way. The uphill coming out of town has them slowed down. It takes a lot of time for them to get going up steep slopes like that.” She wove between the trees expertly, clearly on a path she’d taken before. Remy followed, and as they reached the cusp of the hill, she got her first look at the town of Hollywood and what she and Dominic had almost walked into.

Dominic let out a gasp beside her, and she swallowed down one of her own.

A sea of infected. Hundreds upon hundreds of them.

And they all appeared to be heading in the direction of Woodside.

Chapter 11

When Brandt woke with the sun in his face, it took him all of two seconds to realize he’d overslept from the nap he’d been taking with Cade. He grunted and rolled onto his side, putting his back to the window to block the early evening sun. He relaxed again, forcing the tight, strained muscles in his shoulders to loosen. The bed was comfortable, the sheets were cool, and if he closed his eyes, he could pretend there hadn’t been an apocalyptic viral outbreak that had been raging for over a year and a half.

“It’s about time you woke up,” a voice said from somewhere near the foot of the bed. The smell of tea brushed against his nose. Cade. Of course.

Brandt grunted again, huffed out a breath, and opened his eyes. His wife stood at the foot of the bed, fully dressed in her customary jeans and tank top—how many of those things did she own now, Brandt wondered—with her dark hair pulled back in a tight ponytail and a ceramic mug grasped in her hand. She nudged his foot through the bed sheets. “Come on, time to get moving, lazy,” she chided.

Brandt flipped his arm over to look at the watch on his wrist. “It’s six?” he said in surprise. He’d been asleep for almost four hours. “Why didn’t you wake me up earlier?”

“You looked like you could use the sleep,” Cade admitted. “You’ve been working hard lately, and I figured the others could handle things without you for a little bit. But now it’s business time, so get up.”

Brandt levered himself into a sitting position. The bed sheet fell down to his waist, and he saw Cade eyeing his torso with obvious appreciation. “Business time?” he repeated.

“Yeah, come on,” Cade said, nudging his foot again. He looked her over and noticed for the first time what his sleep-fogged brain had initially missed: the look of worry in her blue eyes and the crease of concern marring her forehead. He wanted to crawl to the end of the bed and rub the crease away.

“What happened?”

Cade hesitated, then went to the dresser and set her mug on top of it. She dug fresh clothes out of the drawers for him as she answered. “Joseph’s supply team didn’t come back when they were supposed to.”

That was enough to get Brandt moving. He flipped the bed sheets off and swung his feet to the floor. “What happened? Does anybody know?”

“All we know right now is that Joseph told Keith that he and his crew would be back by three and they never showed up,” Cade said. She tossed a black t-shirt and a worn pair of camouflage pants onto the bed beside him.

“They filed their search plans though, right?” Brandt said. He scooped the t-shirt from the bed and tugged it on over his head. “We can send somebody after them and make sure they’re okay. Maybe they’re just holing up somewhere for the night. It wouldn’t be the first time.” He pulled his pants on and stuffed his feet into the combat boots by the bed.

“They didn’t file one,” Cade said.

Brandt paused in the act of lacing one of his boots and tilted his head to look at her in surprise.

“Somebody obviously fell down on the job,” Cade said. “So we’re not sure which direction they went. Keith was just letting us know so if they don’t show by sunset, someone can go tell Joseph’s wife.”

Brandt blew out a breath and shook his head, finishing the double-knot in his bootlaces before standing. “No. I’m tired of telling people their husbands and wives and lovers are dead or missing. I wouldn’t like it if someone told me something happened to you, and I sure as hell don’t want to be the one to do it to any more people. I’m fucking tired of losing people.”

“So what do you propose we do?” Cade asked, retrieving her ceramic mug. She downed the rest of her tea in a quick gulp.

“We should get together a search party. I’m sure Keith at least knows the direction they headed in when they left. I don’t see why he wouldn’t have noticed that. God knows he notices everything else.” He scooped his gun belt from the table by the bed and buckled it around his hips.

“Can I speak candidly?” Cade asked. Brandt glanced up and saw that she hadn’t moved from her spot in front of the dresser. Her empty mug dangled loosely in her fingers, precariously close to dropping to the floor.

“I wouldn’t like it if you didn’t,” Brandt said. She’d never asked anything like that before, and he wondered at her question.

Cade pressed her lips together, as if she were thinking over her words, and she said, “I’m not certain going after them is a good idea.”

Brandt’s eyes narrowed.

The expression on Cade’s face hardened in response. “I know you’ve got this whole ‘no man left behind’ Marine mentality,” Cade continued, “but we’ve got fifty people here who need us. We can’t compromise their lives for the sakes of eight men. We just can’t.”

“What are you saying? That we should just leave them out there to die?” Brandt asked.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Cade said. “And I’ll take full responsibility for the decision if necessary.”

Brandt whirled and took a step toward her. “That is not an option!” he snapped before starting for the bedroom door. Cade followed close behind.

“Brandt, we can’t afford to lose any more people, just like you said! And we shouldn’t put any more people at an unnecessary risk!”

Brandt stormed down the stairs, trying to ignore the logic she insisted he listen to. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he nearly ran headlong into Isaac, who was emerging from the kitchen with a bowl in his hand. “Hey, you don’t mind if I borrow this, do you?” he asked as he spotted him and Cade, but the smile on his face died when he saw the expression on Brandt’s face. “What’s going on?”

“Supply team’s missing,” Brandt said. “I’m going out to find them. You in?”

“Oh, no, the hell you’re not!” Cade exploded. She grabbed him by the arm and hauled him back, dragging him bodily away from the door. “No deal! You’re not leaving this community when you don’t need to! What the hell are you trying to do, send me into early labor? Because I will seriously squeeze this kid out to keep you from going anywhere!”

“I don’t think it works that way, Cade!”

“I don’t fucking care!”

Isaac glanced at Brandt and then at Cade. “You stay here, Evans. I’ll go.”

“You can’t go alone,” Brandt protested.

“Fine, I’ll take Dominic with me,” he offered. “Your woman’s right. You need to stay here. There’s no sense in you running off and getting yourself killed and leaving your kid without a father.”

“That doesn’t make me entirely happy, but it will do,” Cade muttered.

Isaac handed her the bowl and turned back to the kitchen. “I’m going to get ready,” he announced. “Brandt, would you do me a favor and let Dominic know I’ll need his assistance?”

“On it,” Brandt said. He glanced at Cade one more time, and she glared back at him, as if daring him to challenge her demands. He loved the way she looked when she was angry; her cheeks flushed and her eyes took on the fire of righteous indignation that sent chills up his spine. He took a quick step forward, kissing her deeply despite her protests. “Thank you for caring enough to argue,” he murmured. Then, conceding that he’d lost this argument, as he had most of them, he added, “Can you go to the gates and talk to Keith, see what you can find out about what direction Joseph took his crew in? I’m going to head to Dominic’s to let him know what’s going on and make sure he’s okay with going out with Isaac.”

Cade nodded and slipped past him, heading out the door and down the porch steps. Brandt watched as she started toward the gate, and then he moved in the opposite direction, heading for Dominic’s.

Brandt noted that Dominic’s yard was heavy with shade trees—the only yard in the community that still had a reasonable number of trees, most of the others having been harvested for the thirty-foot wall they’d built against the wrought-iron fence that had already surrounded Woodside. It seemed as if the rest of the community’s residents had come to the unspoken agreement to not have anything to do with Dominic Jackson, a fact made painfully obvious by their treatment of his chosen home. The thought of the man being ostracized so blatantly bothered Brandt, and he wasn’t sure why, considering he wasn’t a fan of Dominic’s.

When he reached the house, he noticed that someone had spray-painted the word “traitor” across the front. Brandt gritted his teeth and beat his fist against the door.

There was no answer.

Brandt frowned and took a step back, squinting at the door as if it could tell him whether or not Dominic was home. With very few exceptions, if Dominic wasn’t at the main house, then he was home. It’d been that way for months.

Brandt backed up to the edge of the porch and looked up at the second-story windows, since he knew the first-story ones would be boarded over, like all ground floor windows in the community. To his surprise, the second floor’s windows appeared to be boarded up too, and on the outside of these windows, someone had bolted chain link fencing as a second layer of defense. That made him take a look at the first floor’s windows; they’d received the same treatment, but it was less obvious in the shadow of the porch. It was an interesting addition that, given some time, Brandt would consider implementing on the rest of the houses.

Realizing there hadn’t been an answer, he raised his fist to pound on the door again. The sound of a whistle, high and sharp, cut through the air. He turned and dashed from the porch, heading in the direction of the whistle. The warning issued from the front gates. His heart skipped a beat when he remembered that he’d sent his pregnant wife there only minutes prior.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Brandt panted as he came within sight of the gates where a crowd was massing, roused by the sound of the whistle. Keith stood on one of the two watch platforms that flanked the gates, a pair of binoculars pressed to his eyes as he scanned the world beyond; Allen Durst stood on the other platform, his rifle aimed beyond the wall.

Cade intercepted Brandt before he reached the foot of the ladder that led to Keith’s platform, a rifle in her hands and her Galil slung onto her back. She passed him the rifle and a small canvas satchel of magazines.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“No idea, but if they’re blowing the whistle, then that means it’s not anything good,” she said. “When he started blowing it, I went back for our rifles, so I haven’t gotten the chance to ask.” She made a beeline for Allen’s platform’s ladder, and Brandt caught her by the wrist to stop her.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“Providing backup,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re going to turn down the best backup you’ve got when we might have a serious problem on our hands.”

Brandt wanted to protest again, but instead he shook his head and let go of her wrist. “Fine, but be careful. Remember, you’re protecting more than just yourself.”

“Duly noted,” Cade said. She stepped away and climbed the ladder.

Brandt tore his eyes away from her and climbed the ladder to Keith’s platform; the other man met him at the top, offering a hand.

“What’s going on?” Brandt asked.

Keith handed him the binoculars and pointed to the highway beyond the community. “Big problem,” he said. “Really big problem.”

Brandt pressed the binoculars to his eyes as Keith continued.

“Looks like four survivors.”

“And a shitload of infected,” Brandt added as he observed the approaching chaos. There were dozens upon dozens of infected, clogging the street several blocks away from the community, too many to count. Brandt hadn’t seen that many infected in one place since the outbreak in Atlanta more than a year before. “How many do you think there are?”

“Hard to say,” Keith admitted. He squinted into the distance at the approaching mass. “I’d guess somewhere north of four hundred. Maybe even on the cusp of five. I’m not good at judging crowd size, though.”

“One infected is too many infected,” Brandt muttered. He used his finger to focus the binoculars, searching the front of the crowd until he spotted the four survivors Keith had mentioned. The two in the lead looked young, a man and a woman, their torsos wrapped in Kevlar. They carried more weapons than most survivors. Behind them were two more survivors, both hanging back, running interference. And as he studied the man and woman bringing up the rear, his stomach sank.

“Jesus, Remy’s out there!” he exclaimed. “It’s Remy and Dominic! How the fuck did they get out there?”

“Did you say that was Remy and Dominic?” Cade called from the other platform. Brandt saw she was snapping a magazine into her rifle. She pulled the bolt back and propped the rifle over the top of the wall.

“Yes!”

Cade mouthed the words “what the fuck” as she positioned herself to provide cover fire. Brandt turned his attention back to the approaching horde, and Keith spoke up.

“There’s enough space between them and the infected that we could…” Keith trailed off. It wasn’t necessary for him to finish, though, because even if there wasn’t distance between the horde and the survivors, Brandt would give the same order.

“Drop the ladder. Get them up here,” Brandt said. “Cade and I will provide cover fire.”

“And after they’re in?”

“Quarantine,” Brandt said, signaling to Cade. She nodded and took aim.

Keith grabbed the rope ladder and tossed one end of it over the wall, even as Brandt and Cade opened fire.

Chapter 12

With the first bullet fired from her rifle, Cade began to feel like a normal person again. It’d been so long since she’d shot at something that she had begun to feel useless beside everyone else. Perched on the platform across from Brandt’s with her rifle resting over the top of the wall, she squinted through the scope mounted on top of her Galil and aimed for the infected who were closest to the four survivors. The squeeze of the trigger and the jolt of the bullet leaving the rifle settled her nerves. In an instant, she fell back on the years of training she’d received and utilized in Israel.

Deep in her belly, her unborn child stirred, roused by the loud gunfire. She paused in her sharpshooting long enough to massage a hand over her swollen abdomen, trying to soothe the child so she could focus on the action below. The last thing she needed was to be distracted by a kicking fetus. Not when four people’s lives depended on her shooting skills, and she couldn’t—she wouldn’t—rely on Brandt to pick up the slack.

There was a flutter of movement in the corner of her right eye. A quick glance revealed Keith unfurling the rope ladder down the side of the wall. The girl below made a line for it without being prompted, hauling the unknown boy along with her by one arm. As they reached the ladder, the girl swung the boy around behind her, grabbing a roped rung. She yelled something at him, and he made an angry hand gesture. The girl whirled around to face the infected coming toward them, racking the slide of her shotgun and aiming it into the crowd. She fired.

Cade was impressed by the young woman’s bravery. Though she was sure the horde of infected, lumbering down the street and spilling into yards, were out of the shotgun’s range, it was good to know the girl wouldn’t go down without a fight.

Cade turned her attention back to the infected. She adjusted her aim and opened fire again, rhythmically shooting down one infected after the other before her rifle ran empty. Allen Durst had already pulled a fresh magazine from her bag and had it ready for her. It took her seconds to reload, and by the time she aimed the weapon back at the street, the boy had nearly reached the top of the wall. Brandt stopped shooting long enough to set his rifle aside and help the boy up, hauling him by his arms onto the platform. “Get a move on, would you?” Brandt yelled to the girl.

The girl glanced up at Brandt, fired another blast at the crowd, then slung her shotgun onto her shoulder by its strap. She grasped the rope ladder. Cade fired at the group of infected that Remy and Dominic were fighting against, trying to give them cover as the girl scaled the ladder with all the dexterity and agility her companion had lacked.

Then it was Remy and Dominic’s turn. Both of them were still too far away from the wall for Cade’s comfort; they were at least fifty yards away from safety. Dominic pushed Remy toward the ladder, but Remy resisted—unsurprisingly—and started yelling at him, jabbing her finger in the direction of the infected. Dominic seemed to be swearing as he shook his head and ran to the ladder, starting to climb it energetically, wasting no time as Remy backed toward the wall and fired into the infected.

An infected woman, one of the fast-moving ones, closed in on Remy’s left. Her hands darted out, grabbing at Remy’s sleeve, scrabbling for purchase on her jacket. Remy twisted her arm out of the woman’s grip and put her pistol against the woman’s forehead. At that range, she couldn’t miss. The woman dropped back to the pavement with a hole in her head, the back of her skull splattered against the infected behind her.

The gap the woman’s body left was immediately filled by more infected, clustering up against each other, trying to reach for Remy, almost bottlenecking themselves in their frantic haste. Remy sped up her retreat, and Cade tracked her through her scope, trying to keep up with where the woman was. Despite the harrowing situation she was in, Remy’s gun was steady and her aim was true, and she was methodical as she fired bullets into the infected, never missing aim for a second. No fear showed on her face; her expression was one of grim determination. Cade tried to help, shooting at Remy’s attackers as rapidly as she could.

But then, as Cade had known would inevitably happen, Remy ran out of ammunition and was forced to stop and reload. The infected swarmed her, taking her down underneath so many of them that Cade lost sight of her.

“Remy!” Cade screamed. She scanned the horde, searching for any sign of her friend underneath the heap of infected that had fallen on top of her. As she did so, she had horrible flashbacks from several months before, when a similar crowd had swallowed up Remy outside of the Westin. Then, Dominic had waded in and rescued her, and now he looked like he was ready to do the same again.

He hung from halfway up the ladder, grasping it with one hand, his pistol in his right hand. He aimed it into the crowd, firing occasionally, picking off infected when he could.

Cade joined his efforts, taking aim and shooting the infected on the outer fringes of the pile that was on Remy. Then there was a flash of failing sunlight against something metal, and suddenly, Remy burst out from underneath the crowd, swinging her bolo knife like a wild woman, slashing at bodies and cutting at grasping hands and fingers. Limbs went flying, tumbling down to the pavement in splashes of blood, both old and new.

Once Remy had emerged from the mess, blood covered but alive, Cade swung her rifle around and fired with renewed vigor. Another shot echoed in close proximity to hers, and the infected woman in her sights fell to the ground, two bullets having torn her head apart. Cade smiled, knowing Brandt had her back, and took aim at another.

Below, Remy whirled on her heel and sprinted the last thirty yards to the ladder. Dominic made a desperate lunge for the top of the wall, clearing the ladder so Remy had enough room to begin her climb.

The first wave of infected reached the wall and slammed into it with enough force that Cade felt the impact on the platform. She grabbed the wall as the platform swayed and settled. Beside her, Allen did the same. After the platform steadied, Cade looked over the wall.

Several of the infected had grabbed the rope ladder that swayed tantalizingly above their heads. They pulled on it until one side dislodged from the top of the wall.

Remy began to climb faster.

Cade cursed and let go of the wall, repositioned her rifle, and pulled the trigger. She shot two more infected as Remy scrambled for the top of the wall, but she couldn’t shoot them fast enough. The rope ladder threatened to rip free under the weight of Remy—and under the weight of the infected who still hung from the bottom.

“Remy, move your ass!” Dominic yelled from where he hung. “Come on, faster!”

“I’m going as fast as I can!” Remy yelled back, sounding, if anything, irritated at his words.

“Not fast enough!” Dominic snapped. “If you don’t pick it up, I’m not teaching you shit!”

That statement seemed to spur Remy into action. She climbed up two more rungs, putting her almost in reach of Keith’s hands. With a snap, the other side of the rope ladder broke free. Remy didn’t let out a sound as she started to fall, but Cade gasped and lunged toward her a few inches, as if somehow she could prevent the young woman’s tumble into the hands reaching for her below.

But then Remy jerked to a stop as quickly as she’d fallen. Dominic hung by one arm from the top of the wall, his other hand clasped around Remy’s wrist. His muscles bulged, and his face was strained with the struggle to hold her above the fray. Cade hovered, her rifle trained at the infected just below Remy’s feet, ready to fire if any of them managed to get their hands on her. Brandt stopped firing, and he and Keith were reaching, stretching for the young woman. Cade sent every prayer she knew to whomever was listening. She chanted under her breath, “Come on, come on.”

Dominic hauled her within reach of Brandt’s grasping hands. Brandt gripped the back of her shirt and pulled. Between him, Keith, and Dominic, they dragged Remy onto the platform. She crawled several feet, making room for the next arrival, and slouched down onto her stomach, panting and sweating. Then Brandt and Keith pulled Dominic over the wall. He too collapsed onto the platform, lying on his back, his chest heaving.

By her count, Cade had two bullets left in the magazine attached to her rifle. With Dominic and Remy and the two newcomers pulled to safety, she ceased fire. There was no point in wasting more ammunition. She couldn’t shoot all of the infected who pushed at the community’s gates. Not that she wouldn’t have liked to.

“Allen, stay here and keep an eye on those things,” Cade ordered, slinging her rifle onto her shoulder. She adjusted the strap, to make sure the weapon was secure, and climbed down the ladder. When she felt solid ground beneath her tennis shoes, she breathed a sigh of relief before turning toward the other platform.

Brandt, Dominic, and Remy had already descended the ladder, and the two newcomers waited at the foot of it, the girl—as always—standing protectively close to the boy. Brandt glared at Remy and Dominic, his jaw bulging as he clenched it. The tableau was silent, save for the hammering of hands against wood and the loud moaning and groaning from the other side of the wall. Cade glanced in that direction, but she didn’t have time to worry about that right now, not with the questions stirring in her head. She stormed toward the small group, fists clenched. When she drew close enough for them to hear, she snarled out, “Remy Angellette! What the fuck were you doing outside that wall?”

“What’s it matter to you what I was doing outside the wall?” Remy snapped back. She was pale and sweaty and covered in blood. Her eyes had a crazed look when she stepped toward Cade. “I came back, didn’t I?”

“Yes, and it looks like you brought a fucking party with you!” Cade jabbed her finger toward the wall. “Where the hell did all those things come from, and what the fuck did you do to bring them here?”

“You act like I planned that or something!” Remy yelled.

“Well you sure as hell went outside when you’ve been told you can’t!”

Dominic stepped between the two women, putting his hands up in a placating gesture toward Cade. “Calm down—”

“Don’t you fucking tell me to calm down!” Cade interrupted. “This is halfway your fault! You two have probably singlehandedly caused the fall of this entire fucking community because you left when I told you not to!”

“I don’t get what the big fucking deal is!” Remy said. She shoved past Dominic to get to Cade.

As Remy carried on, the sound of running feet met Cade’s ears. She half turned to see Ethan and Kimberly jogging toward them from the main house, Ethan moving a bit sluggishly and Kimberly adjusting her own pace to match his. Cade’s heart leaped at the sight of Ethan up and about again, and she swallowed hard to keep her emotions from spilling over.

Bloody pregnancy hormones. She’d cut off her right arm before she let herself get knocked up again.

Ethan’s presence diffused the tension between Remy and Cade. Ethan stopped beside Cade, but his eyes met Remy’s. They stared at each other for a long moment. Then Remy broke away, shaking her head in disgust as she backed up a few steps. “I’m going to go clean up,” she muttered, heading for the medical house.

Dominic gave the gathered residents one last look. “I’m going to check her over for injuries,” he said. He jogged to catch up as she hurried away. Ethan watched her go for a moment before turning to Cade and Brandt. His eyes scanned over the two newcomers and then shifted to the wall. Kimberly nodded and climbed Keith’s platform to get a look at the problem. “What the hell’s going on? We heard gunshots.”

“Infected,” Cade told him. “A literal shit-ton of them. I think Remy and Dominic led them here.”

“Well fuck.” He looked away from Cade to the two survivors again and asked, “Who are they?”

“I was just about to find that out,” Cade said. She turned to them and gave them a pointed look.

The young woman stepped up. “My name is Sadie O’Dell,” she said. “This is my twin brother Jude. A man named Joseph told us to come here after we ran into him.”

“Where’s Joseph now?” Brandt asked.

“Dead, I think,” Sadie said. “He and the guys that were with him saved us from the infected that were in Hollywood. There were…well, a lot. As you saw.” She motioned toward the wall and added, “We showed them to Dominic and Remy when we met them on the road. They said they were from Woodside and that they’d bring us here.”

“So where did all the infected come from?”

“We’re not sure,” Sadie answered. “They were massed in Hollywood. Something’s gotten them stirred up, but we’re not sure what. Dominic thinks it might have to do with the roads being cleared—”

“Wait, what?” Brandt interrupted, holding up a hand to stop her. “The roads are being cleared? What are you talking about?”

“The major highways between Hollywood and Charleston are being cleared out,” Sadie explained. “Your friend Dominic thinks a tank or something like it is doing it. We think the military might be behind it. Anyway, whatever is going on with the highway is, I think, stirring the infected up in a big way. They’ve started traveling in these massive groups, like flocks of birds. I think they caught wind of us and followed us here. And I’m so sorry about that.”

“Aw hell,” Brandt muttered, and Cade saw his jaw tense as he closed his eyes. She put a hand on his arm and leaned close to murmur in his ear.

“Maybe we should deal with these two later,” she suggested. “We’ve got bigger, more immediate problems at the moment.”

Brandt looked at her, and she could see the doubt and conflict in his eyes as he tried to decide what to do. She didn’t blame him for his uncertainty; this was the first major event he’d been in charge of since Woodside’s establishment. Even Cade felt the weight of responsibility for the fifty-plus people living under their watch. A wrong step now could cost them dearly. She blew out a breath and finally made her own suggestion.

“We should start emergency lockdown procedures,” she said. “Get everything nailed down, locked up, and secured.”

Brandt nodded and turned on his heel to issue orders. “Keith!” he called to the watch captain still on the platform above them. When the man peered over the edge, he continued. “We’re going into lockdown. I need you to keep an eye on what goes on outside that fence. If anything changes, use the two-way to let me know.” Then he raised his voice to address the group who’d turned out at the sound of the whistle and the gunfire. “The community is in lockdown. This is not a drill. Everyone needs to return to their homes, bar all doors and windows on the first floor, and arm yourselves as necessary. I need all heads of households to do a headcount and make a list of all present in their houses. In an hour, someone will be by to collect those lists. Once they’ve been collected, you’re to keep everything locked up tight. No one in or out. Are we clear?”

The crowd murmured its confirmations and began to spread out, moving to collect their family members and friends and follow through with Brandt’s orders.

Cade turned her attention to Ethan and the newcomers. Sadie still stood guardedly by her brother, but the longer she stood there, the more Cade could see the exhaustion in her eyes. She nodded toward Sadie as she said to Ethan, “Eth, why don’t you and Kimberly take these two to the house, get them something to eat, and let Doc take a look at them?”

Ethan nodded and called out, “Kim! Get down from there and help me out, would you?” Then he said to Cade in a low voice, “I’ll talk to them too and see if I can find out more information about what happened out there.”

“Yeah, you’re good at that kind of thing,” Cade agreed. She turned away from him to join Brandt. “What do you need me to do?”

Brandt barely glanced at her as he strode deeper into the community. “I need you to get in the house and lock the doors,” he said.

Cade gritted her teeth as irritation rolled over her in a wave. “Brandt, seriously,” she insisted. “What do you need me to do?”

Brandt stopped and faced her, his eyes dark with worry. Cade squared her shoulders because she knew she wouldn’t like whatever he had to say. “Look, you’re pregnant, and—”

“And I thought we agreed that we weren’t going to treat me like I’m made of glass,” Cade snapped back as her suspicions were confirmed. “I may be pregnant, but I’m still more than capable of properly aiming a firearm, as I just demonstrated less than ten minutes ago.”

Brandt sighed and ran a hand through his dark hair. “Cade, babe…look, it’s nothing to do with you or your abilities, okay? I know you’re perfectly capable of dealing with just about anything anyone throws at you.”

“So what is the deal, then?” Cade demanded.

“My paranoia is the deal,” Brandt admitted. “You know how I am about you. Ever since what Alicia did…” His voice cracked, and he shook his head. “I couldn’t stand it, okay? I’m not going to let anything happen to you if I can help it. So you’ll have to excuse me if I occasionally ask you to do things you don’t like or don’t agree with out of my never-ending paranoia that you’re going to end up dead because of my carelessness.”

“You can’t protect me from everything, Brandt,” Cade said, softening the irritation in her voice. She couldn’t be angry with him for that; Atlanta was a sore subject with him—with all of them. All he had to say was “Atlanta” and she would have understood.

“No, but I can damn well try.” He sighed and rubbed his hand over his hair again. “Look, just…stick close to me, okay? Give me at least that much in the way of peace of mind. Maybe you can give me a hand with rounding up stragglers and getting them into their homes.”

“Good enough for me,” Cade said, settling onto the new task. “I sent Ethan back to the house with Kimberly.”

“Is that where those two kids went?” Brandt asked, starting down the street in the vague direction of Dominic’s house.

“They were hardly kids,” Cade replied as she followed him.

“They looked younger than Remy, so that qualifies them as kids in my eyes,” Brandt said. “Speaking of Remy, that’s second on my list.”

“What is?”

“I’m going to find out how the hell she and Dominic got out of the community,” he said with determination. “Because while we were on that platform, Keith said he didn’t let them out the front gates. Clearly, they got out somehow, and I want to know how.”

Chapter 13

Ethan sat at the dining table in the main house, his hands folded on top of the table, watching as Sadie and Jude devoured every scrap of food he and Kimberly had put in front of them. The two kids ate the bowls of instant oatmeal with the zealousness of people who hadn’t had enough to eat in quite a while, which was why Kimberly was still digging around the kitchen, searching for more food that she could fix quickly. The twins—or rather, Sadie—had already recapped everything that had happened on their trip to Woodside, and now he watched them closely, stewing over the woman’s revelations as they ate.

Ethan turned his eyes to Derek, who lurked in the doorway between the living room and kitchen, his arms crossed over his chest, his left shoulder resting against the doorframe as he too watched the new arrivals. Once Sadie pushed her bowl away, Derek straightened and stepped fully into the kitchen, his eyes searching the twins’ faces. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to the O’Dells privately,” he said, directing his words to Ethan.

Ethan nodded and rose to his feet, beckoning to Kimberly. “Come on, let’s go wait on the porch,” he said, trying to ignore the wobble in his knees from over-exertion. The wobble wasn’t as bad as it had been when he’d first gotten out of bed; he was getting stronger with every passing hour, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

Kimberly followed him toward the door. When Ethan stepped onto the porch, he realized that she wasn’t behind him; he glanced back to see her in the doorway, fidgeting as she scanned the yard. He gave her a curious look. “You okay?”

“You do know we’re on lockdown, right?” Kimberly said as she stepped onto the porch, but she didn’t move closer to him right away. “We’re not supposed to be out here.”

Ethan waved his hand dismissively and leaned against the porch railing. “I’m not worried about that,” he said. “I’ve got my Glock. That’s all I need. If something happens and it’s not enough, then I deserve whatever I get.”

Kimberly leaned against the railing across from him, mimicking his stance. “I’m not sure I like your attitude,” she said. “It smacks of recklessness.”

“No, recklessness is something Remy likes to indulge in,” Ethan replied. As soon as he said her name, he wished he hadn’t. It made him remember the stricken look she’d given him near the gates, the first time he’d seen her in months. He shoved it aside and continued. “Mine is more like confidence.”

“Sometimes the two aren’t mutually exclusive,” Kimberly pointed out.

Ethan didn’t respond, just patiently waited her out.

“You aren’t worried that something will pop out of the woodwork and kill you?” she asked, tilting her head to look at him.

He tried to imagine what she saw when she looked at him: his blonde hair still too long despite the haircut she’d given him; his eyes tired as he stared across the street to the house beyond; his thinness—too thin—and the beard he’d trimmed into something resembling a goatee but hadn’t completely shaved off. She probably thought he was hideous.

She didn’t like him, not like he liked her. She blamed him, in part, for her sister Avi’s death. But he had to keep struggling to remember that fact. No, she couldn’t want him.

But oh, how he wanted her to.

“I’ve stopped worrying about the things that go bump in the night. When you come as close to death as I have, it tends to not scare you as much anymore. I’m not worried.” He shrugged and glanced at her before looking away and confessing in a low voice, “At least, not for my sake.”

Kimberly raised an eyebrow, and he wanted to slap himself. Did he just admit to being worried about her? She probably thought it was because he felt he owed her a debt due to Avi’s death under his watch. He didn’t want her to think that.

“So what did you drag me out here for, anyway?” she asked. “I know it wasn’t just to give the twins some privacy with Doc, and I know it wasn’t to wax poetical about death.”

“I wanted to talk to you about what you saw out there.” Ethan motioned toward the wall.

“What do you need to know?”

“How many were there?” Ethan asked. “I know Cade said it was a literal shit-ton, but that doesn’t give me much of a picture of what we’re dealing with.”

Kimberly stayed silent for several moments, tapping her fingers against the railing. “Five, maybe six hundred? Could be more, though.”

Ethan’s eyes widened. A surge of horror mixed with surprise rolled through him. “Six hundred?” he repeated. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many in one place before, not even when the outbreak first started.” He paused, stewing over Kimberly’s news. “First or second stage?” he asked, thinking about the different stages of the virus and how some of the infected were reanimated dead and others weren’t. They’d taken to calling them “first stage,” for the infected who were still alive, and “second stage” for the ones that weren’t.

“A mix,” Kimberly answered. “Mostly second, at about a sixty-forty split, at varying stages of decomposition.”

“Shit,” Ethan muttered. “Anything else?”

Kimberly bit her lip and hesitated. “There were more on the way, coming down the highway toward the community.”

He muttered another swear, finally understanding why Cade had seemed so angry about the situation.

“Eth, there’s no way we can take on that many. There aren’t enough of us. I’m not even sure there are that many bullets in the entire community, including the ones that Cade spent all that time making.”

“Believe me, you’re not telling me anything I hadn’t already suspected,” Ethan admitted. He ran a hand through his hair before slamming his hand onto the porch railing. “Fuck, what are we going to do?”

“I’m sure everything is going to be okay,” Kimberly said. “Everyone is doing the lockdown procedures that Brandt and Cade developed and taught them, and at least one person in each house has a firearm, and everyone has melee weapons. So long as the gates hold, I think we’ll be fine.”

“No, we won’t be,” Ethan countered. He turned to face her, leaning his hip against the railing for support and crossing his arms over his chest. “Tell me, Kim. Have you ever heard of siege warfare?”

“Vaguely, but I’m not sure what it is,” she said.

“It’s when an invading force weakens its enemy by trapping them in their city or town or whatever,” Ethan explained. “They surround the place and cut them off from their supply lines. Then they just wait until the folks trapped in the city start running out of basic necessities, and then they go in and take them out while they’re at their weakest.” Ethan pressed the palms of both hands against his eyes, rubbing them before continuing. “The infected are the perfect siege weapon. They never get tired, they never get hungry, and once they’re aware that there are people in a particular location, they never give up. We are in a siege situation now, and I don’t think it’s one that we’re all going to survive.”

Ethan regretted his words again as Kimberly’s eyes widened in horror.

“We’re not going to panic,” he said, moving toward her and catching her wrists in his hands.

Kimberly looked up at him, brown eyes wide, as she tried to gain control of herself. “What’s the plan? What are we going to do?”

“You’ll have to ask Brandt those questions,” Ethan said, shaking his head. “I’m not in charge here. I haven’t been in charge since I stepped foot into Atlanta earlier this year. This show is Brandt’s now. I’m following his lead.”

“I didn’t mean the group,” Kimberly said, pulling her wrists away from Ethan. She resumed her position against the porch railing, and he watched her closely, wondering what was on her mind. “I mean us. Me and you. What are we going to do?”

Ethan was at a loss. What did she mean? He looked away from her, toward the medical house next door. He could feel her eyes on him as she waited for him to respond. One wrong step, he knew, would lead to heartache and disappointment.

“Ethan?” she said again, her voice gentle. She touched his forearm, and he jerked his arm away. He hated himself for his response, and he cringed, digging his fingernails into the soft wood of the porch railing.

“We don’t have to go back to the medical house, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said after a short silence, misreading his reaction. “I’m sure the others won’t mind if you stay here.”

He glanced at Kimberly. “Are there even any free bedrooms in there?” He bobbed his head toward the house.

“A couple,” Kimberly said.

She sounded evasive, just enough to stir up old police interrogation instincts that had long lain dormant. He turned to face her, and a tiny smile quirked at the corner of her mouth. “You think…maybe you could just…use my room?”

“Your room,” Ethan repeated. He took an almost unconscious step forward, as if an invisible string had tugged him toward her. “And where, exactly, do you plan to sleep?”

“In my room,” she answered. “Unless, of course, you’d prefer otherwise…”

Despite his instincts screaming that it was a bad idea, Ethan reached for her. His fingertips followed the curve of her cheek almost of their own volition. He marveled at the contrast of her soft skin against the rough calluses on his own fingers, and he nearly pulled his hand away, not wanting to mar her.

As he’d caressed her face, Kimberly’s brown eyes closed. When he pulled his hand away, her eyes flew open, and she grabbed his wrist. He could read her intent in the way she traced her tongue over her bottom lip.

She pressed her body against his, her lips to his. His knees weakened with desire. Her fingers slid into his hair, and he tangled his own hands into her short blonde bob, pulling her deeper into the kiss. His body moved by instinct, and he pinned her against the porch rail.

His hands dropped from her to her hair to her shoulders; his fingers ran down her upper arms. She pulled away from the kiss, panting slightly. He leaned toward her again, but she pressed her fingers to his lips to block his advance.

“We shouldn’t do this,” Kimberly murmured.

“A little late for that, Kim,” Ethan replied. “You’re the one who invited me to share a room while on lockdown.” He gave her elbow a gentle squeeze but didn’t step back from her. “That has ‘bad idea’ written all over it.”

“So you think I’m a bad idea?

Ethan nuzzled his nose against hers, burning to kiss her again. “I think you’re a dangerous idea,” he whispered. He brushed his fingers against her cheek one last time, turned, and slipped into the house without another word.

Chapter 14

Remy was fuming as she stormed away from the gates and toward the medical house, heedless of anyone or anything that may have been in her path. She could hear someone following her, but she ignored it in favor of snarling at herself and everyone she knew in her head. Her fury was overwhelming, and it wasn’t long before the snarling switched to words.

“How dare she?” Remy asked out loud. The person behind her continued walking in time with her steps. “How dare she blame me for this mess? Those things were going to find us anyway. This isn’t my fault!” When the person who was following her remained silent, she wrinkled her nose and demanded, “Well? Aren’t you going to say something?”

“What’s there to say?” Dominic’s voice was hoarse but quiet. “You’ve made your feelings known. I just wish you’d stayed around to make that clearer to Cade instead of storming off in a huff.”

“I did not storm off in a huff,” Remy snapped. She spun around to glare at Dominic. He only stood there with his eyebrow raised. He remained silent for so long that Remy couldn’t help but explode. “What?” she demanded.

Dominic rubbed at one of his eyes and shook his head. “You need to calm down, Miss Angellette,” he said, much to Remy’s irritation. “You’re too emotional, and when you get that way, you can’t think clearly.”

“I’m not too emotional!” But even as Remy spoke, she realized Dominic was right. She was getting too emotional, letting her feelings control her. She had repeatedly told herself to not get crazy with her emotions, but no matter what she did and no matter how hard she fought, she couldn’t seem to rein them in.

Seeing Ethan hadn’t helped, either. The whole scene back at the wall made her want to pull her bolo knife from its sheath and go on the attack. It was instinctual, she knew, but partly in reaction to the man who had wormed his way into her mind: she recalled his grasping hands and the feel of his fingers curling into her shirt. She remembered him taking her down to the floor. She just didn’t trust his return to normalcy.

“You’ve got to keep a level head, Remy.” Dominic looked her over appraisingly. “You still want me to train you, right?”

“Yeah, of course,” Remy said without hesitation.

“Then you’re going to have to trust me,” Dominic said. He approached her, and their eyes met. “And trusting me entails you actually trusting me, and not just with teaching you and having your back.”

Remy blew out a breath and ran a hand through her dark hair, scraping the long strands back from her face before replying. “It was…him,” she said. Her voice trembled, and she wiped the back of her hand over her eyes, even though she wasn’t crying. “It’s just…I don’t know. Seeing him…rattled me.”

“Understandably,” Dominic acknowledged. He grasped her arms in his hands, trying to make her look at him, but she wrenched free. “What?”

“Don’t touch me,” she said, her words coming out more bitterly than she’d intended for them to.

Dominic brushed off her rejection, seemingly unaffected. She imagined that not much bothered him; he’d probably had every scrap of real emotion trained right out of him when he’d been accepted into the DIA, if not before.

She desperately wished she could be like him: cold and distant. The idea suited her.

“Don’t let him have that power over you, Remy,” Dominic said.

“That’s easy for you to say,” Remy muttered. “You aren’t the one he tried to kill.”

“No, I wasn’t,” Dominic said. “But you can either come with me and do something proactive, or you can stay at the medical house and wallow in self-pity. Your choice, but I won’t extend the invitation again if you decide to go with the second option.”

Remy could feel a nerve in her cheek twitching, and she gritted her teeth to keep herself calm. “I’ll go with the first choice. Of course.”

“Of course,” Dominic repeated. He offered her a hand, and when she glanced at it but didn’t take it, he dropped it and started in the opposite direction of the medical house. “Come on. You can stay at my house for lockdown.”

“I need my medicine,” Remy pointed out. “And I need to clean myself up. Why don’t you go ahead and I’ll meet you there?”

Dominic nodded. “Yeah, okay. I can do that.”

Remy bolted into the medical house, taking the stairs two at a time to her bedroom. She dropped her backpack and weapons on the bed and took a few minutes to clean herself up before gathering the spare weapons she’d hidden around her bedroom: the pistol in the slats under the bed, the magazines taped to the bottom of the dresser, the knives on the back of the bed’s headboard, and more. She gathered the last of her personal belongings before heading to the door. She had no intention of ever returning to the medical house. She didn’t care what Dr. Rivers said.

After picking the lock on Derek’s room, she found the prefilled auto-injectors he gave her each day. The medicine inside the twelve injectors sloshed as she stuffed them into the increasingly heavy bag on her back. She hurried out of the room, pulling the door shut behind her so Dr. Rivers wouldn’t immediately realize she’d been there, and headed for the stairs.

Remy made it halfway down when she heard footsteps and voices below. The words were indecipherable, but it was obvious who was downstairs: Dr. Rivers, Kimberly, and Ethan. She eased her way back upstairs and ducked into her bedroom. With a click, the door closed behind her, and she swore under her breath.

Unable to go out the front door, Remy resorted to her second-favorite exit: the window by the bed. She threw it open and slipped onto the porch’s roof. A rose-covered trellis was attached to the side, and she half-crawled, half-slid to it, scrambling down silently. Once her boots hit the grass, she paused to make sure no one had seen her swift exit.

Suddenly, the front door banged open. Remy pressed back into the shadows against the house, her fingers grasping the hilt of her bolo knife instinctively. But it was only Dr. Rivers and Kimberly, supporting Ethan between them.

The three stood on the porch, bickering. She watched as Kimberly and the doctor helped Ethan onto the edge of a deck chair. “I’m not sure you really realize what you’re asking her to do,” Ethan was saying. Remy peered between the rose vines and through the diamond-shaped gaps in the trellis to get a better look at Ethan. She’d seen him at the gate but had been too angry to really look at him.

His hair was lanky and dirty, and he was in need of a bath; his arms were skinnier than she remembered and still covered in scars from the attack he’d endured months before—not that she’d expected the scars to magically disappear. But otherwise, he looked healthy for someone who’d suffered for months under the throes of Michaluk. His appearance didn’t ease her mind about being infected herself.

She focused on what the three were saying.

“Look, Ethan, I understand you have some reservations over the idea,” Derek said.

“Some reservations?” Ethan repeated. “That’s like saying there’s only a few infected outside the gates. I wouldn’t wish what you’re proposing on my worst enemy.”

“And why is that?” Kimberly asked. Her voice was gentle, and she laid a hand against his forearm.

Remy wrinkled her nose and fought not to throw something at the woman.

“Because you don’t understand it any more than I do,” Ethan said. “I don’t know what’s happening to me. I don’t know why I—” He broke off and shook his head, resting his face in his hands, his elbows propped on his thighs.

“Is this about the rabbit?” Derek asked.

What about a rabbit? Remy wondered.

The doctor took his ever-present white lab coat off and draped it over the porch railing. Remy still wondered why he wore it; she supposed it was a prestige thing.

“Let’s not bring the rabbit up, please,” Ethan said, his voice muffled. “It’s fucking disturbing.”

“Why do you find it disturbing?” Derek asked. He leaned against the porch railing beside his coat and folded his arms over his chest.

“What, you don’t?”

“I don’t understand it yet.”

“Precisely,” Ethan bit out.

“But we’re aiming to,” Kimberly spoke up. “We’re going to study this thing and figure out what it’s done to you so we can have a full understanding of the side effects.”

“You don’t even understand it and yet you’re wanting to let Remy turn into one of them and shoot her up with it?” Ethan said. “That is so fucked up.”

“Well, what do you expect me to do?” Derek asked, and for the first time, Remy heard a note of anger in his voice. “The medicine is running out. I have enough for a week and a half, maybe a little more, but it’s not enough to last until the end of the month for sure. She’s going to turn, one way or the other, Ethan. And I’d personally rather it be sooner than later so we can control it and deal with it accordingly.”

Remy scowled. She’d heard all this before.

When she focused again, Kimberly was kneeling beside Ethan’s chair and speaking to him in a low voice that Remy couldn’t hear. She frowned and leaned closer to the trellis.

Then Ethan spoke up.

“Look, I don’t want to discuss this right now,” he said. “It’s just…I’m tired. Maybe I got out of bed too soon.”

“Yeah, we need to keep you from pushing yourself too hard,” Derek agreed. He took one of Ethan’s arms and helped him from the chair. Kimberly took the other. “Let’s get you back in and back to bed, okay?”

“Not here,” Ethan said. “In the main house. I’m staying in Kim—”

He broke off, and Remy gritted her teeth. She watched as Woodside’s two medical personnel led Ethan down the porch steps and across the side yard to the main house. She waited for the door to shut and then made her move.

Derek had left his white coat draped over the porch railing. Remy kept her head low and slunk to the coat, slipping her hand into one pocket and then the next, searching for anything useful. When her fingers encountered a cool glass vial, she pulled it free and pocketed it before heading to Dominic’s.

Chapter 15

Kimberly could feel a headache coming on. She scrunched her eyes shut, trying to shut out the sound of the infected hammering on the wall. Sometimes they were quiet, like before when she’d been on the porch with Ethan and Derek, perhaps lulled into silence by the lack of anything human in view. But sometimes, maybe after catching sight of the guards on the platforms, they fairly hummed in unison. It rattled in her head, sending her brain scrambling for solace. Cade sat at the other end of the dining table that Kimberly was slouched at, her head in her hands. She appeared to be trying to do the same thing Kimberly was—drown them out somehow. Brandt paced back and forth across the kitchen, checking his watch and glancing toward the boarded-up window over the sink, as if he could see through the wood. Kimberly didn’t know where Ethan was, but she wished he was with them. The thought felt traitorous; for the millionth time, she had to remind herself that she wasn’t supposed to like him, not after Avi’s death. Despite her silent reminder, the heated kiss they’d shared on the porch that afternoon came back to her mind. It was a kiss that she would have given an arm to experience again. She scowled and shook her head, as if the motion could erase the memory.

“Is there anything we can do about that fucking noise?” Kimberly snapped, her voice breaking the semi-silence of the room. “It’s driving me insane.”

“Sure,” Brandt said, turning in front of the fridge to make another pass to the stove. “We can go out there and shoot them all. Of course, that would be a waste of bullets, and that’s beside the fact we don’t have enough to do the job.”

“Your problem is all psychological anyway,” Cade said. Her voice sounded hollow, toneless, and she didn’t look up from the tabletop. “It’s like war drums. Armies beat on them to unnerve their enemies, because the repetitiveness drives them crazy.”

“Well, it’s certainly driving me crazy,” Kimberly admitted. “Though I doubt they’re doing it as some sort of orchestrated strategy.”

“I don’t know,” Brandt said.

Kimberly frowned and wondered if he was being facetious.

“They’ve shown some limited ability to strategize before,” Brandt continued. “Well, the ones that aren’t already dead, anyway.”

Definitely not being facetious, Kimberly thought with a grimace.

“We can’t discount anything when it comes to the infected,” Brandt added. “For all we know, they’ve evolved in the time we’ve been avoiding them.”

Kimberly agreed with Brandt wholeheartedly—now was definitely not the time to lie down on the job or get lax about security, not with the infected literally at their doorstep. “Is there anything I can do?” Kimberly asked. “I hate just sitting here. It makes me feel useless.”

Brandt didn’t look at her, and he resumed his pacing. She figured if he kept it up, he’d wear a hole in the floor. “You could go check on Derek, see if he needs any help,” he said. “I’m sure he could use help organizing and packing away the important things in case we need to get out of here fast.”

Kimberly sighed and nodded, pushing herself up from the chair. It hadn’t been the answer she was looking for, but she had to acknowledge that Brandt had a point: out of everyone, she was probably the one most knowledgeable of Derek’s working habits and filing systems. She made her way out of the kitchen, surreptitiously scanning her path for signs of Ethan’s whereabouts, but she gave up when she reached the basement door. She could hear Derek slamming something beyond the door, so she opened it and peered inside.

The brightness of artificial lighting, so rare in the post-infected age, made her eyes water, and she rubbed at them as she slipped inside. The main house’s basement was the only place in Woodside that had been allowed to use the lone generator the missing supply crew had scraped up shortly after their arrival, since it was generally accepted that Derek was doing important work. She used to come downstairs a lot, especially while Ethan had still been sick, trying to give Derek whatever assistance he needed while he searched for a solution to Ethan’s illness.

Ever since Ethan had been cured, though, she hadn’t been down much, mainly because every time she’d stopped by, Derek acted as if she was only in the way.

She wasn’t going to lie: that hurt.

Kimberly pulled the basement door shut behind her and started down the stairs to the makeshift lab below. With every step she took, she could make out a little more of the woodworking benches that had been commandeered from someone’s garage, littered with papers and light microscopes and other bits of equipment that had been liberated from a medical lab and a vet’s office. When she’d descended the stairs enough to catch sight of the entire room, a frown crossed her face. She spotted Derek slumped on a rickety metal stool at one of the two workbenches. His head was in his hands, his shoulders hunched, the perfect picture of despondency. Kimberly hurried down the last few steps and went to him, circling the workbench so she could try to see his face. She couldn’t, so instead, she reached across the workbench and grasped his shoulder, squeezing it gently.

“Are you okay?” Kimberly asked, keeping her voice low. “You don’t look so good.”

“I’ve lost one,” the doctor said. His words were barely audible, and Kimberly had to lean closer to hear him better. “I’ve lost one, and I have no idea where to look to find it.”

“You’ve lost one what?” Kimberly asked. She frowned and snagged another stool, sinking down onto it and resting her elbows against the workbench’s surface. Being downstairs, she could barely hear the infected outside the gates; the absence of noise was enough to make her want to stay down here permanently.

“A sample,” Derek answered. “I’ve lost one of the samples of Brandt’s blood, and I don’t know where I put it. I’ve torn this place apart, and I can’t find it.”

Kimberly raised an eyebrow and reached for the black case near his elbow. It was snapped closed, and as her fingers brushed against its hard plastic surface, Derek snatched the case back, pulling it closer to him where she couldn’t get to it.

“Are you sure it’s missing?” she asked. “Maybe you used it and don’t remember—”

“What sort of idiot do you think I am, Kim?” Derek asked, sounding harsh and almost bitter. Kimberly had seen him like that only once before, and he’d been angry with himself then. She figured it was probably the same situation again. “I track everything. I record everything. If I dispose of a vial, I write it down in here.” He grabbed a blue notebook and slapped it onto the workbench between them. “If I get a new sample from Brandt, I write it in here.” He slammed another notebook, this one red, on top of the first one. “And if I use one in testing, I note it in this one.” He added a yellow notebook to the pile. “I never not record anything. There is a vial missing.”

Kimberly frowned and shoved her hair back as she thought the problem over. “Do you think you might have misplaced the one you took with you to the meeting?” she suggested. “You had it in your coat pocket, remember? Maybe it’s still there.”

The doctor buried his head into his hands again. “I’ve already looked. It’s not there.”

“Shit,” Kimberly murmured. She could see why he was concerned now. The last thing they needed was for a sample to go missing and for the wrong person to get their hands on it. She rocked back on her stool and thought the situation over again, trying to decide on the best course of action.

“How do things look outside?” Derek asked after a long silence, during which Kimberly considered and tossed three different ideas.

“I haven’t been out since me, you, and Ethan went to the medical house to gather some supplies,” she said. “But I know it wasn’t good then, and I don’t expect it to have gotten any better.”

Derek nodded and shoved a few stray papers to the side. He rested his forehead against his hand again. “Where are we going to go when they get in?” he asked. “We can’t expect to be able to pick up and set up shop in a new place, can we? The chances of finding everything we need to get the lab going again are nonexistent.” He shook his head, rolling it back and forth across his palm. “It’s over, Kim. I don’t see us being able to continue our research after this. Not if we get uprooted.”

Kimberly was trying to keep a positive outlook on what would likely be a terrible future for them all, but with Derek talking like that, it was almost impossible. She sighed and dragged her hand through her short blonde hair, shaking her head and trying to focus past the sickening, ominous feeling settling into her stomach. She straightened on her stool and scanned the room and equipment they’d collected. “I guess we’re just going to have to make the best of whatever comes our way,” she said. “That’s about all we can do, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I suppose so,” Derek said. He didn’t sound like he believed his own words, and he didn’t look at her as he slouched lower on his stool. He rubbed at his eyes and sighed. “We have a vaccine now, Kim, or as close to a viable one as I can get under these circumstances. We need to get my research and the samples into the hands of someone who can take it further. I refuse to believe we’re the only ones left. There has got to be someone out there who can take this and run with it further than I can.”

“What are you proposing we do?” Kimberly asked.

Derek shook his head. “I don’t know. Before, I’d planned to talk to Brandt, to see if he’d be willing to let a volunteer with some basic medical know-how take the samples and go in search of someone who can possibly help us with them.” When she gave him a wide-eyed look, he rushed to add, “No, not me. Just someone we could trust.” He sighed. “Now, though, with the community being attacked, I don’t know how we’ll be able to get the possible vaccine out of here and to a safe location. All of our work might be for nothing.”

Kimberly stood up and shook her head. “I refuse to think it’s over, that this is the end of the road,” she declared. “We have worked entirely too hard to just give up now, and I’m not going to let you even think about doing so.”

“Well then, what do you suggest we do?” Derek demanded. “Because I hear you saying all this shit, but I sure as hell don’t hear you giving me any solutions.”

Kimberly pushed away from the workbench and started for the basement stairs. “I’ll take a few samples and go myself,” she said. “I’ll hunt down someone who can take them and do what needs to be done, do what we can’t do ourselves.”

“You can’t possibly think I’d let you go on a mission like that!” Derek exclaimed. He rose from the stool he’d been mired on since she had come downstairs, and she smiled inwardly at the expression of determination and anger on his face. “I need you here! I can’t do this by myself!”

“Do all of what by yourself, Derek?” Kimberly retorted. “We have a grand total of two patients, and one of them won’t be a patient for much longer. Ethan’s almost at the point where he won’t need me for anything medical anymore, and you’re the one dealing with Remy’s medical care. As soon as she’s cured, you won’t have any patients, and neither will I. It’s time, Derek. We’ve got to take action before it’s too late. And the minute the infected manage to surround the entire community, it will definitely be too late.”

“So you want to, what, take some supplies and charge through the mess that’s right in front of the community gates?” Derek asked. “That’s just asking for you to get eaten!”

“Don’t be so silly,” Kimberly said. “I’ll climb over the wall at the back of the community. All it’ll take is a ladder and some rope. It’s not that hard.”

“What about backup?” Derek countered. “You’re an okay shot with a pistol, but you’re not that great. You’re going to need someone who can help you, and I don’t know if there’s anyone here who will be able to do that.”

“You act like I have zero ability to take care of myself. I’d have thought that Atlanta would have proven that I’m capable of doing what needs to be done to keep myself alive,” Kimberly said. She jabbed her finger at the stairs. “And there are over fifty people up there, at least half of whom would probably try to volunteer to take me to wherever we need to go so I can get the samples into the right hands.”

Derek stood there silently, staring at her, his jaw bulging as he clenched his teeth. He looked like he was thinking over what she was proposing and disliking every second of it. Finally, he let out a low growl and shook his head. “Fine, do what you think you need to do,” he said. “But I get to help pick who goes with you.”

Kimberly barely suppressed the whoop of pleasure at his concession. She turned and started up the stairs. “I’m going to go find Brandt and tell him what’s going on,” she said. “Maybe he’ll help me find someone to go with me, and then we can figure out what to do after that.”

Chapter 16

Remy managed to move from the medical house to Dominic’s without being accosted by anyone. As she stood on the porch waiting for Dominic to answer the door, she focused on being calm and controlled and on forming a plan of action to avoid the doctor’s intended fate for her—because if the doctor was discussing it again, then that meant he was probably planning to do something soon. She had plenty of ideas, but almost all of them were long and complicated or just plain stupid and almost always ended in certain death. One idea stuck out from the rest, though, and as she mulled it over, she wrapped her fingers around the object she’d stolen from Derek, as if it were a talisman that would guarantee her success. The coolness of the glass against her palm offered her some degree of reassurance but did nothing to settle the nerves twisting in her gut.

The door swung open, and Dominic stood in the doorframe, looking decidedly uncomfortable at the idea of letting her into his home—never mind that he’d invited her himself. He looked her up and down and glanced past her as if checking to make sure she’d come alone, and she held her breath, hoping he wasn’t about to change his mind. She let it out as he sighed and motioned for her to enter.

“Come in. Make yourself at home,” he said. And as she stepped over the threshold, he added, “But not too much at home.”

Remy smiled and stepped into the house, pausing in the foyer as he pushed the door shut and locked it again. As Dominic bolted the door, she took a few moments to examine the interior of the house that no one else in the community had seen. It was dark, all of the windows having been boarded over, so she couldn’t make out much beyond the halo of light cast by the small camp lantern that Dominic held. She could see the outline of a table to her right, shoved against the wall with several tools laid on it, and hooks had been driven into the wall above it; jackets and coats and some sort of backpack—emergency supplies, if she knew Dominic—hung from them. She shoved her hands into her pockets, the fingers of her right hand caressing the vial tucked inside, and rocked on her boot heels as she said, “Nice place you got here.”

“Stop blowing smoke up my ass,” Dominic muttered, though even in the dim light, Remy could see the grin on his face. He slipped past her, tapping her on the arm. “Come on, follow me. Dinner should be ready.”

“Oh really?” Remy asked. Enthusiasm slipped back into her voice for the first time since Cade had yelled at her near the gates. “When did you start cooking this? There’s hardly been enough time between me stepping into the medical house and me getting here to get anything done.”

“It’s soup,” Dominic said. “I cooked it earlier today and just warmed it up.”

At her dubious look—soup didn’t seem like the most enticing meal to serve a woman after inviting her into his home—he added, “It’s the good kind, not that canned crap. Well, not totally. The vegetables came out of cans.” He shrugged. “And I think it might actually be thick enough to qualify as stew.”

“Does it have meat in it?” Remy asked.

“Well, yeah, some squirrel. Why?”

“Then it’s a stew, because stews have meat in them,” she said, smiling as she followed him into the kitchen. She leaned against the counter as he pulled the lid off of a small pot on the propane-fueled camp stove set up on the counter.

“And what, soups don’t? How do you explain chicken noodle soup?”

“I’ve never been totally convinced that that chicken is real chicken,” Remy quipped, and Dominic laughed. As he ladled the stew into two bowls, Remy felt the tension in her muscles and back melting away like butter in a warm pan. She fingered the vial in her pocket again and bit her lip, trying to decide if she wanted to let him in on her plan. She didn’t know what would happen, and if it backfired, she might need assistance that she couldn’t give herself. Assistance that might require bullets.

She shook the thought away and focused on Dominic. That was something to be broached after they ate, she decided. The last thing she wanted was to spoil dinner with talk of death, especially since he seemed to be reaching out to someone—finally—after all his time in Woodside.

Remy remained quiet for as long as she could while she and Dominic ate their meals by the light of his LED lantern. The stew ended up being very good by Remy’s estimation; she’d had no idea Dominic knew how to cook. When her spoon scraped against the bottom of the bowl, she rested it against the side and pushed it away from her. “That was pretty damned good. Where did you learn to cook like that?”

“I had five siblings and an absent dad,” Dominic said. He scooped another spoonful into his mouth before adding, “It was a necessity, because my mom had to work all the time. I was the oldest, so I had to take care of everyone else. The usual sad story.”

“These the same siblings you wanted to find in Philadelphia a few months ago?” she asked.

“Yeah, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon,” he admitted. “And it was halfway an excuse to get out of Woodside. People here, they don’t like me, and I don’t like them. I’d be better off out of here.” He dropped his spoon into his bowl and muttered, “They’re probably all dead, anyway, and it doesn’t matter with the infected out there. We’re not getting out of here now.”

Remy wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she looked at the table, sliding her fingers into her pocket again and hooking them around the vial. She slipped it out and held it under the edge of the table. “If I ask you to do something for me, can I trust you to do it?”

Dominic must have heard the seriousness in her voice, because he set his spoon down again and studied her closely in the lantern’s light. “Depends on what it is, I think.”

Remy ran her left hand through her hair before she set the vial onto the table between their bowls. The red fluid inside it shined dully in the light from the lantern. Dominic leaned forward to get a better look, and his eyes widened.

“Is that what I think it is?” he asked and then, without waiting for an answer, “Where did you get it?”

“I stole it,” she admitted. “Right out of Derek’s coat pocket.”

Dominic picked up the vial and shook his head, half rising out of his chair. “You need to return this,” he said. “This is important. Doc needs this.”

“No, I need it,” Remy said, rising with him and reaching for the vial. Dominic held it out of her reach. “Derek talked to me, okay? And I wasn’t happy with what I heard.”

“No big surprise. I knew you wouldn’t be,” Dominic said. “It’s a hard thing to swallow. But Doc knows what he’s doing. And he’ll do what he’s got to do.”

“Yeah, I know the whole bullshit story he’s got about running out of medicine and me building up immunity to the little we have left,” she said. “And I know that he thinks he’s got to get me off the medicine and let me turn before he gives me whatever that stuff in that vial is. But you know what? I don’t have to stand for it. I still have a fucking say in my own damned body, don’t I?”

“Not when it potentially puts people in danger, you don’t.”

“Oh, bullshit,” Remy snapped. She circled the table and snatched the vial out of his hands, holding it tightly so he couldn’t take it back. “I am not going to allow myself to become one of those things,” she continued. She pulled her gun from its holster, holding it by the barrel as she thrust the weapon toward him. “And if you insist on not helping me, then you can fucking go ahead and shoot me now.”

The two glared at each other. Remy’s heart hammered in her chest and fear raced in her veins as she tried to gauge what he was going to do. He reached out and took the pistol from her, and her hammering heart leaped, but instead of pointing it at her, he merely turned it over in his hands before setting it on the table. Then he took a step toward her. “What exactly are you proposing we do?”

Despite herself, Remy felt a slow smile spread across her lips, and she held the vial up so he could see it again. “I want you to shoot me up with this shit so I can get better. And I want you to do it before I turn, not after.” Dominic studied her for a minute more, as if trying to guess how serious she was, and as the silence between them ticked on, Remy’s nerves grew more frayed, until she exploded with, “Dominic, please. I wouldn’t ask anybody else to do this.”

Dominic blew out a breath and looked away from her. “And why exactly did you ask me? As I recall, you don’t particularly like me.”

“Maybe that’s why I asked you,” Remy said, looking toward the gun he’d set on the dining table. “Because I know you’re the only person here who will do what’s necessary if this doesn’t work.”

“And to you, what qualifies as necessary?” Dominic asked.

Remy looked him in the eyes. “A bullet in the skull. It’s the only thing I’d ask for. I wouldn’t want to stay like that.”

“I know you wouldn’t,” Dominic said. His voice was as hushed as hers, and he didn’t look at her. Instead, he stared across the room, not at anything in particular, as if recollecting things that had happened in the past, perhaps his involvement with Alicia Day. She couldn’t imagine what her request was doing to him. Maybe she didn’t particularly care. It wasn’t like Dominic truly cared about her, not like he obviously had for the deceased Alicia.

Dominic blew out a breath and shook his head. For a moment, Remy feared that he wouldn’t be willing to help her. But she couldn’t do this alone, and she couldn’t wait, not with the infected beating against the figurative door. She opened her mouth to plead with him again, but he interrupted.

“I’ll try to help you. But Remy, I don’t…what do you want me to do? How do you want me to do this?” He huffed out another breath and added, “I’m not sure I even have a syringe in my first aid kit yet.”

Remy’s heart sank; she hadn’t thought of that. But then she remembered the small medical bag she’d shoved into her backpack. She retrieved the pack from where she’d left it by the kitchen door and set it on the table, unzipping it and digging inside. She found the small black bag and ripped it open, sliding a small syringe from one of the pockets inside. She pawed inside another zippered pocket for the twenty-gauge needle. She remembered when Derek had instructed her on how to put the syringe together, telling her it was just in case she ever tried to use an auto-injector that didn’t work. “Do you think you can work with this?” she asked, handing him the two sealed tools.

Dominic took the two packages and studied them closely, then tore them open. He attached the needle to the end of the syringe, twisting it into place. Then he hesitated and glanced toward the front entryway. “Does anyone else know you’re here? That you’re going to do this?”

“No,” Remy admitted. “I didn’t tell anybody any of this.”

Dominic took the vial from her and then, with a shaking hand, slid the needle in through the valve on top. He drew the fluid into the syringe, emptying the vial. He tapped the side of the syringe with a fingernail and more expertise than Remy expected. “Hold this,” he ordered, passing her the syringe. He dug into her medical kit, found the latex tourniquet, and lashed it around her bicep, just above her elbow. She watched as the veins in her arm popped out, like thick blue lines drawn on her skin, bulging outward. Then Dominic took the syringe from her, chose a vein, and rested the tip of the needle against it.

“Are you sure you want me to do this?” he asked, looking up at her.

She took a deep breath, steeled her nerves, and nodded.

Dominic gently pressed on the syringe, embracing it with three fingers around the plastic cylinder. The needle slid into the skin and settled in the vein. Then, without tearing his eyes away from hers, he found the plunger with his thumb and pushed.

Chapter 17

Brandt waited until the basement door swung closed behind Kimberly and he heard her footsteps descending the stairs before he left off his pacing and retreated to the dining table where Cade sat. She still had her head in her hands, but she lifted it a fraction to look up at him as he slumped into the chair closest to hers. The moment his butt hit the chair, he felt tension pour off him in a wave. He hung his head and let out a low groan. A headache was starting to pound at his temples, an incessant throb that wouldn’t leave him alone, brought on by the unceasing noise from the infected outside coupled with the stress that sat on his shoulders. He rubbed his eyes with the thumb and middle finger of his right hand and looked at Cade. She stared at him, her face a mixture of worry and stress.

“What are we going to do, Cade?” Brandt asked, dropping both hands to the table with a thunk. “I refuse to just sit here and wait for those things to get in, but I think I’m at a total loss.”

“I’m not going to say that I didn’t predict this was going to happen,” Cade agreed. “But I didn’t expect it to happen so soon.”

“We’ll have to break out the contingency plans, see if we can modify one to fit the problem at hand,” he said. “But none of the plans allowed for short-term planning. They’ll all take time to execute, and it’s time I don’t think we really have.” He sighed. “I expected us to have some warning and time to really plan, if we ended up with a mob coming this way.”

Brandt fell silent, listening to the moans of the infected outside the gates, which were barely a stone’s throw from the main house. For the first time since they’d taken over Woodside, he realized just how close he’d placed Cade to danger by choosing the house nearest to the front gates. The thought of those things getting in and attacking—and killing—Cade was too much for him.

“We need to evacuate,” Cade said, breaking the silence that had settled over the dining area.

“But how?” Brandt asked. “The infected are at the community’s only exit. We never finished planning out the back exit. And we can’t stroll out the front gates without getting everybody eaten.”

“No, but we can figure out how to stroll out the back,” Cade said.

Brandt raised an eyebrow. “How do you propose we manage that? Just climb over the wall? We have elderly in this place. I hardly think they’re capable of doing that. Besides, moving fifty people is going to be really risky and noticeable.”

“Of course we can’t ask the old folks to climb over the wall,” Cade said, rolling her eyes. “Not to mention the pregnant women. I’m not the only one here who’s pregnant. And even I’m not stupid or gutsy enough to attempt to climb over the wall as pregnant as I am. No, I think we need to go through the wall, not over it.”

“And how are we going to do that?” Brandt asked. “The wall’s not just made of wood. There’s wrought iron on the other side of it. We’re not going to be squeezing out between those bars anytime soon.”

“Look, I just know Dominic has a way he’s getting in and out of the community, and it’s not through the front gates,” Cade said. “I say we talk to him about how he’s been leaving. Then we make plans to move the survivors out that same route.”

Brandt rubbed his eyes again, tiredly. “Does this mean we’re calling another committee meeting?”

“Probably, yes,” Cade said. “The more input we get from others, the better. Maybe they’ll have ideas on the finer details that will help us get all these people to safety.”

“I hate meetings,” Brandt muttered, pushing himself out of his chair. “See if you can round up the others. I’ll go get Dominic. If he knows a way out of here, then he’ll need to be at the meeting with the rest of us.”

Cade stood with him, stepping around the edge of the table and stretching to press a light kiss to his cheek. “Be careful out there, okay?” she said.

Brandt raised an eyebrow. “You’ve never been worried about me being careful out there before,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, but this time is different,” she said. “This time, we’ve got the infected actively trying to get in. The way our luck goes, you’ll still be out in the open when they break through the gates and get yourself eaten. I’d like for that to not happen.”

He smiled. “Believe me, Cade, you’re not the only one.” He gave her a quick kiss on the lips and dropped a hand to his hip in a habitual check for the presence of his Beretta and spare magazines before heading to the front door.

As he headed for Dominic’s, Brandt was struck by how calm, how normal, everything seemed. If it weren’t for the fists pounding against the wall and gates, it would have been easy to think that everything was as it should have been.

Everything was still and quiet—too quiet. There was neither a bird in the air nor a breeze rustling through the trees. There was no one in sight; everyone was locked away in their homes like he’d instructed. Brandt glanced toward the community’s front gates and saw Keith standing on his platform, his eyes locked onto the hordes beyond the wall, his rifle in his hands.

Brandt stepped onto Dominic’s porch and knocked, scowling once again at the graffiti marring the house’s front façade.

There was a long pause. No one answered the door.

Brandt pounded harder, trying to rouse the man he knew was inside—assuming he hadn’t slipped out of the community again. When he didn’t get an answer, he decided to look elsewhere. Anger and irritation surged through him. This was no time for Dominic to pull a disappearing act.

He was halfway across the overgrown lawn when the whistle split the air for the second time that day.

A burst of gunfire cracked the air. Brandt swore and ran in that direction. He drew his Beretta even as he moved. Another blast of the whistle guided him to the front gates.

It’s too soon. It’s too fucking soon, Brandt thought. They hadn’t even had time to make plans to evacuate the community. The gates loomed in view, and Brandt skidded to a stop, eyes wide, as he observed the scene.

Keith stood on the platform, firing his rifle into the crowd beyond the wall. And lying on the ground just inside the gates were three infected men, their bodies still twitching from the bullet holes Keith had put in their heads. Brandt raced to the platform’s ladder and climbed it rapidly. His head barely cleared the edge before Keith was shouting at him.

“They’re coming over the gate!” Keith called over the gunfire. “They started climbing over each other until some of them reached the top and just spilled over. Those three down there made it over before I could even move. I put them down before they could do any damage.”

“Good job,” Brandt said, hauling himself to his feet on the platform. He went to the edge and looked over, watching as Keith shot down another of the infected that were climbing each other toward the top of the wall. The infected woman he’d shot tumbled straight down. She slammed into several others and knocked them to the ground as she fell, landing on a pile of corpses that Keith had already shot. Brandt couldn’t tell how deep the pile was, but he didn’t like that they were stacking up. “Shit, we’re going to have a problem,” he said. “And it’s probably going to show up really soon.”

“What do you mean?” Keith asked, taking aim at another climber. Brandt grabbed his arm, pushing his rifle down, and pointed at the pile of bodies at the foot of the wall.

“Look at them,” Brandt said. “They’re doing this on purpose. They’re building their ladder.”

Keith looked at him uncomprehendingly.

“Cannon fodder,” Brandt explained. “The smarter ones want you to shoot a bunch of the dumber ones and let them pile up. Then, once the pile gets high enough, the others can climb them and come right over.”

Keith frowned and stared down at the mess below before shaking his head. “Shit, sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize…”

“It’s okay,” Brandt said. “Most wouldn’t.” He scratched his head and stared out at the infected, trying to figure out a solution to the problem, but his mind came up empty. They were in a catch-22 scenario: if they didn’t kill the infected that were climbing each other to get into the community, then they’d get in quickly; but if they did kill them, they’d just pile up until the pile got high enough that they could get in. He didn’t like either option, but ultimately he needed to go with the one that allowed for the longest period of time between now and them getting in. “We don’t have much of a choice. Shoot them for now, but try to do what you can to minimize the speed they’re building their body ladder with. I’ll be back up here soon to check in with you, and hopefully I’ll have a better plan for you then.”

“Gotcha,” Keith acknowledged. He turned his attention back to the mess below, and Brandt turned to descend the ladder. He’d stepped onto the top rung when he saw movement off to the side of the community, behind the houses directly across from the main house. He squinted as he tried to make out what it was in the late evening shadows cast by the wall.

He drew in a sudden breath when he realized what he was looking at.

“It’s a diversion,” he breathed, and then he was moving, grabbing Keith’s arm, and jabbing his finger in the direction he’d been looking. “This is a diversion!” he exclaimed. “We’ve got a bigger problem! Blow that whistle again, and let’s get some people out here!”

“Oh hell,” Keith uttered.

Brandt grabbed the ladder bolted to the platform and descended rapidly, his boots skipping a few rungs in his haste to get to the bottom. He’d barely gained his feet on the grass before he was off and running, charging across the grass and sidewalk and pavement and the yards across the street, pulling his Beretta out of its holster. He shunted aside the fleeting thought that he might not have enough ammunition. He didn’t even have a melee weapon on him!
Brandt stumbled to a stop against the front of the house, skirting around the corner of the building without hesitation, his pistol up in a two-handed grip as he readied himself for battle.

The first infected man stepped from the shadows at about the same time Brandt reached the halfway point to the backyard. Brandt ducked into the shadows alongside the house. He didn’t think the infected man had seen him, and he wasn’t eager to draw attention to himself until he had backup.

Boots striking pavement somewhere behind him heralded his arriving backup. Brandt lifted his pistol again and stepped into the infected man’s view. They stared at each other for several seconds, the man glaring at Brandt and Brandt staring at him over the sight of his pistol, sizing each other up. Before Brandt had time to wonder why the man wasn’t throwing himself at him yet, the infected lurched forward, lifted his hands in a classic Romero-style fast stagger, and Brandt squeezed the trigger. The infected man fell backwards, a neat, round bullet hole in his forehead, the back of his head a shattered mess.

The shot echoed against the house’s wall and bounced off, amplifying in the late evening air. Even though he’d been prepared for the sound and the inevitable attention it would draw, Brandt still swore. “I really hope that backup is good backup,” he said out loud as he started toward the back of the house.

“I always bring good backup,” a voice said from behind him, and Brandt glanced over his shoulder to see Isaac hurrying after him. Isaac’s presence didn’t surprise Brandt; the man had always been enthusiastic about jumping feet-first into danger. But what did surprise him were the O’Dell twins, who were bringing up the rear.

“What are they doing here?” Brandt hissed, jabbing his finger at the two teenagers.

Isaac shrugged with one shoulder. “They’re tough and they can fight, and options are limited. Why shouldn’t they be out here?”

Brandt opened his mouth to argue—they were just kids, and they had no business being out in the middle of an ugly fight, regardless of their skills.

At least a dozen infected circled the corner of the building, drawn toward them by the sound of Brandt’s bullet. There was no time for further debate. The twins would either fight or die, and it wouldn’t be Brandt’s responsibility either way.

He glimpsed Sadie before her raised his pistol and advanced on the crowd. She had drawn the two machetes she wore on her back, twirling the blades in her hands in a manner that suggested long hours of practice. Jude was just behind her, racking the slide of his shotgun. Isaac had his own pistol out, and he raised it at the same time Brandt raised his, taking aim at the group that had made it over the wall.

And then the infected were on them.

Brandt shot two more infected in the head—an older woman in her late-sixties wearing the tattered remains of a track suit and a twenty-something woman in what appeared to be a leotard.

The gap between them and the infected closed, and Brandt pulled his black-bladed knife from its sheath for backup. He pressed the barrel of his pistol against an Asian woman’s head and squeezed the trigger. She dropped back with a convulsion, and Brandt whipped around, blade leading. He slashed at a young black man who’d slid in around his defenses. The rotting man’s teeth grazed Brandt’s forearm. Then he staggered backward from the force of Brandt’s fist against the side of his head.

“Brandt, down!” Sadie shouted, and Brandt didn’t hesitate to obey; every battlefield instinct he had forced his compliance. He slid to the grass like a baseball player sliding into home plate, bowling over two more infected in the process. A blade flashed over his head.

Sadie leaped into view, swinging one of her machetes and decapitating one of the infected with a single, impressive blow; blood arced across the grass and several of the other infected as the body and head tumbled to the ground. Brandt didn’t take time to ogle the young woman’s fighting skills or strength. Instead, he whipped his knife up with one hand and his pistol with the other. He shot one in the head just before he drove the knife’s blade into the temple of a second attacker. Warm blood from the knifed victim’s head splattered on his face and chest. He wiped at it haphazardly with his sleeve and scrambled to his feet, gave Sadie a short nod of thanks, and scanned the rest of the fight.

The number of infected had been reduced to just three. Brandt had to hand it to the twins: they could fight, far better than any eighteen-year-olds he’d ever seen. Even as he thought that, Jude jacked the slide of his shotgun again and blasted one of the stragglers at close range, blowing it off its feet even as he blew its head into something unrecognizable.

But there was no time for back patting or congratulations. Brandt glanced at the wall in the rough direction he guessed the infected had come from, and even as Isaac and Sadie finished off the last two infected, he could see two more heads popping up over the top of the wall. Gunshots, presumably from the front gates, were still echoing out, sporadically for the most part. The community was still far from secure, and he cursed mentally, wishing there were more hours in the day, more time to complete all of the safety features they’d wanted to add to Woodside, like, for example, the barbed wire at the top of the wall.

“Isaac, we’ve got more coming over,” Brandt pointed out. “We need to do something about that. Otherwise, us being out here is pointless.”

Isaac glanced back and forth between Brandt and the wall, then took aim at the head of an infected that was slowly dragging itself over. “I’ll stay here for the moment—”

“No,” Brandt interrupted.

“—and keep an eye on the wall and shoot anything that starts to come over it,” Isaac continued, speaking louder to drown out Brandt’s objections.

“I don’t think so, Isaac,” Brandt said. “I already have plans for you. I want you with Cade.”

“That’s fine,” Isaac said. “But someone has to do something about this wall. We can’t just allow those things to come over it.”

“So what do you propose we do then?” Brandt asked as he knelt to wipe his knife on the grass. He sheathed it before he stood and looked at Isaac, waiting on the man’s proposal.

“We should get a sniper out here, or at least someone with shooting skills that are good enough, and get them up on that house.” Isaac pointed to the house they were beside. “Up on the roof. They could stage there and take out anything that tries to get over that wall while we try to get everyone out.”

Brandt considered for a moment, and as he thought, one of the infected climbing over the wall tumbled to the ground with a meaty thud. He looked up at the top of the wall, checking to make sure another one wasn’t about to come down on top of him. Then he strode over to his newest victim and put a bullet in his head. There was no real solution to the problem at hand; it was clear that, even if he put a sniper on the roof to monitor that area of the wall, they’d be in the same situation. He cast one last glance at the top of the wall and then returned to Isaac, speaking in a lower voice.

“It’s not perfect, but it’s going to have to do,” he said. “Either way, we’re going to end up with a problem on at least two sides of the community.” When Isaac gave him a questioning look, Brandt gave him a brief rundown of what was going on at the gates and the mess that Keith was dealing with on his own. Isaac swore under his breath as Brandt continued, “We have to do something, right? So let’s go with your plan. It’ll only be temporary until we can get these folks out of here, since we don’t have the ammo to do this for a long period of time. Any suggestions on who we can approach that’s a good enough shot for this? We’re low on options since Joseph’s team never came back.”

“Peter?” Isaac suggested.

Brandt thought it over. Peter Davies was the very definition of a grizzled war veteran. He’d been in his mid-thirties when he’d seen action in the First Gulf War, and he’d gotten injured while he was overseas and honorably discharged soon after. Now, he was in his fifties. There was grace to aging for most people, but in Peter it had left nothing but scars, wrinkles, and bitterness. Peter had an attitude problem, and he disliked Brandt almost as much as Brandt disliked him. Brandt wasn’t sure exactly where or when the animosity had started or what had caused it to start. He’d always assumed it had to do with Peter not liking to take orders from someone younger and—to his perception—more inexperienced. But now was the time to set aside their mutual animosity and work together.

“I’ll go tell Peter the plan and see if he agrees to monitor the wall,” Brandt said. He looked to Sadie and Jude, who stood nearby, eyeing the wall with a mixture of discomfort and steely resolve. Both wore signs of the fight; their dark hair was in disarray, and blood and grass stains marred their clothes. “You two need to head back to the main house,” he said to them. “We’re going to have a meeting. I need to know everything you know about the land outside of Woodside.”

Chapter 18

Dominic slumped against the wall beside his front door. His heart hammered in his chest, slamming frantically against his ribcage; he pressed a hand over his left pectoral, breathed deeply, and tried to calm himself.

Jesus, that had been close.

He hadn’t expected Brandt to come out to his house, and he had the suspicion that he’d been searching for Remy. At times, he’d feared that Brandt was going to walk right into his house until the whistle drew him away.

Dominic couldn’t let anyone—not Brandt, not Derek, not anyone—see Remy and realize what they’d done. They couldn’t know that they’d used whatever had been in that vial, that they’d injected it into her veins without even knowing what it was.

After calming himself down, Dominic went upstairs with trepidation. Remy was locked away in the master bedroom on the second floor—her idea, in case she went homicidal; she’d insisted she needed to protect him from that possibility, even though he was more than capable of taking care of himself and handling her if she did turn deadly. Everything had been silent upstairs since he’d locked her away. He wasn’t sure if the silence was good or not, and he was reluctant to check.

Dominic stopped at the top of the stairs for a moment, listening for sound. It reminded him too much of the initial Michaluk outbreak, when he’d found himself trapped in his apartment building with a few dozen infected. He’d had to fight his way free of them; there had been multiple instances of this, of wending his way through the building on only semi-familiar staircases and fire escapes, his nerves on edge as he waited for something to attack him. He shook himself free from his contemplation and forced himself onward.

When he reached the bedroom door, Dominic tapped on it with a knuckle, waited an appropriate ten seconds, and then opened the door a crack. “Remy?” he called, keeping his voice low and soothing. “Are you okay in there?”

There was a rustle of movement and a cough. “Yeah, I’m still breathing.”

Dominic stepped into the room.

Light from a single lantern cast a pool on one side of the room. The fading sunlight crept in between the boards over the windows on the opposite end. The bed had been stripped of its comforter, which was lying in a heap on the floor by the footboard. And Remy was sprawled across the bed, lying on top of the sheets in her bra and panties. Her skin glistened with sweat, even as she shivered. Dominic approached the bed and pressed a gentle hand against her cheek. She was burning up.

“How do you feel?” Dominic asked, grasping her wrist to feel her pulse. It fluttered under his fingertips, rapid and bounding.

“Like I have the flu,” Remy muttered. “I ache all over. My head hurts. And I’m freezing.”

“Probably because you’re laying in your underwear,” Dominic pointed out. He did his best to keep his eyes on her face, but it was hard. The woman was just as attractive and well proportioned as he’d imagined she’d be. He grabbed the flat sheet bunched at the foot of the bed, shook it out, and gently covered her with it. “Do you need anything?” he asked, taking a polite step back from the bed.

“Maybe some water,” she said. She gave him a smile that sent a surge of pleasure right through him.

He went downstairs to retrieve a bottle of water for her, his mind still stirred by her and by Brandt’s visit. He had a feeling that trouble would be coming soon, especially once Brandt and the others put two and two together and realized what he and Remy were up to. He contemplated going to Brandt and telling him himself, heading off trouble at the pass. But no. If he did that, Remy would kill him. It wasn’t his place to take the decision out of her hands.

Dominic sighed again and headed back upstairs to rejoin her. He found her sitting up this time, her long legs hanging over the edge, the sheet he’d covered her with draped over her shoulders like an oversized cape. He passed the bottle to her, and she fumbled with the cap before twisting it off and taking a deep swallow.

“So what’s going on outside anyway? What was Brandt doing here?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Dominic admitted. “It’s possible he was looking for you, which means it’s only a matter of time before everyone else catches on that you’re here and that we’re doing something we shouldn’t be doing.”

Remy scowled, pressed a hand to her forehead, and closed her eyes.

Dominic pressed the back of his hand to her cheek, testing her temperature, and then said quietly, “Maybe we should think about going to Derek about this.”

“No!” Remy exploded, shaking her head almost wildly. “No, we can’t!”

“Why not?” Dominic asked. He took a seat beside her on the bed. “We need the help. You’re sick. He’s a doctor. He’ll know how to help you way better than I can.”

“We can’t,” Remy said again. Her voice was more tired than the last time she spoke, and she wobbled, looking like she was ready to slump over at any moment.

“Remy, please,” Dominic begged. “What’s done is done. He can’t do anything about what we’ve already done. But if something goes wrong, if this thing starts to kill you, then maybe he’ll be able to stop it and save you from it. You get me?”

Remy wrinkled her nose, looking like she was ready to object again. But instead, she asked, “Why do you even care, Dominic? Why are you agreeing to do all of this? I mean, you’re being oddly nice to me. What’s in it for you? What kind of game are you playing?”

Dominic grimaced and stood up from the bed abruptly. His head swam. He ignored the sensation and stalked halfway across the room, clenching his fists at his sides. “I’m not playing any games,” he snarled, more angrily than he intended. “What the hell makes you think I’m doing that?”

“You’re being too nice to me,” Remy said again. She’d sat up straighter and didn’t appear to be in imminent danger of face-planting on the floor.

“And?” Dominic demanded. “I have to have a motive to be nice to you? To want to help you?”

“Yes, you do,” Remy said. Her brown eyes were bright, fiery with anger, making her all the more attractive to Dominic—God, but he loved a beautiful, feisty woman that wouldn’t hesitate to go toe-to-toe with him. He was knocked right out of his thoughts—which were starting to take a turn that would get him into trouble sooner rather than later, at Remy’s next declaration.

“You hate me!” Remy said. “Why would you want to help me?”

Dominic’s eyes widened. “You think I hate you?” he asked.

“Of course you hate me,” Remy said. Her words were matter of fact, but there was an underlying hint of confusion in her voice. “I shot you, remember?”

“Remy…” Dominic dropped into the chair at the desk by the bed. He rubbed both hands over his face. “I don’t hate you, okay?” he started.

“But I shot—”

“You shot me under circumstances that were, frankly, warranted,” he interrupted. “We had broken into your safe house and were armed. Clearly, we intended to do you harm. You had every right to protect yourself, and that’s what you did. I personally would have been a lot more surprised if you hadn’t. So no, I’m not and never have been pissed off at you for shooting me.” He managed to give her a crooked smile. “Besides, it’s not like I’ve never been shot before. Where you shot me was more of an inconvenience than anything else.”

“An inconvenience?” Remy repeated. She sounded disbelieving. “So why are you mad at me then?” she asked. “If not for shooting you, then for what?”

Dominic shook his head. “Would you believe me if I told you that I wasn’t pissed off at you at all?” he asked.

“Nope, not a word,” she confirmed.

He squeezed his eyes shut. This wasn’t going to go as planned, he knew. This was definitely not the way he’d planned to tell her what he was about to say. “Remy,” he said. “I’m pissed off, yes. But I’m not pissed off at you. I’m pissed off about you.”

Remy sat back a little, as if he’d taken a swing at her and she was trying to dodge it. “I’m not sure I understand,” she murmured.

Dominic hadn’t really expected her to. “I just…I like you, Remy. At lot,” he finally said. “Enough so that, under any other circumstances, I’d go for it.”

“But?”

“But you’re infected, and I’m pissed because fate has taken the option away from me before I even had it,” he confessed. “It can never happen, not unless you’re cured and you survive the cure. And that’s why I want—no, I need you to agree to let me take this to Derek. Before something terrible happens that we can’t stop.”

Remy stared at him. He wasn’t looking at her, but he felt it. He wondered what was going through her mind at exactly that moment. He’d have put money on it that most of it was less than complimentary. After her long hesitation, she cleared her throat, and when he looked up at her, her expression seemed oddly vacant, like her mind was elsewhere.

“I still don’t want him involved,” Remy said quietly. “But…but if I take a turn for the worst, then you’ll go get him for me?”

“If you want me to,” Derek agreed, sitting up straighter. “I’ll do this however you want me to.” He pushed himself from his chair and went to her, leaning to press a gentle kiss to her forehead, one of the only safe places he knew where he could kiss her. His lips lingered against her soft skin for a moment before he pulled away. “Why don’t I get you some food?” he suggested. “We should do what we can to keep your strength up. You might need it.”

Chapter 19

Cade had been on edge ever since she’d heard the whistle and the opening salvo of gunshots. She’d grabbed her rifle and started for the stairs, every instinct screaming at her to get out of there, to join in whatever fight was brewing outside. To hell with the fact that she was pregnant; she was a warrior, through and through, and no one could seriously expect her to sit inside like a half-wilted, delicate flower. Besides, her husband was somewhere out there, and if she knew him and his penchant for getting into trouble, then he was going to need bailing out.

Unfortunately, someone else had guessed at her reaction to the noise, and she’d been intercepted. Derek had stood in her path, arms folded over his chest, body blocking the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked, his voice level. He seemed to have taken in everything about her and her intentions in one head-to-toe sweep.

She liked Derek; she really did. He was a great doctor and a good man, and his heart seemed to be in the right place. But damn if he didn’t have a way of getting on her nerves sometimes.

“I’m going out to help with whatever’s going on outside,” Cade said.

“No, you’re not,” Derek said. His facial expression didn’t change, and he didn’t budge from his spot against the door.

“Why not?” Cade demanded. It was a stupid question, and she knew that before she’d asked. She didn’t need to hear Derek’s response, either. She knew what he would say; she was trying to buy some time to think of an alternative escape route out of the house.

“Because you’re almost eight months pregnant, Cade,” Derek said, his tone patient. “Because, while you’re perfectly capable of shooting whatever you’d like from a distance, your body isn’t equipped to handle running, jumping, or anything resembling hand-to-hand combat right now.”

The sound of three sets of feet descending the stairs brought her around. Isaac, Sadie, and Jude were coming downstairs, all of them loaded down with assorted weaponry. The twins had supplemented the weapons they’d brought in with them with spare knives and sidearms from the bedroom upstairs that Cade called “the armory,” complete with a bandolier of shotgun shells slung across Sadie’s chest. Isaac looked ready to fight off a pack of wolves singlehandedly. He’d donned the body armor he’d been wearing when she’d met him in Atlanta; he’d looked large and commanding in it then, and with the additional muscle he’d packed on since, he looked even more imposing now.

“Derek, we’ve got to get by,” Isaac said, sliding past Cade and reaching for the deadbolt. Derek moved aside for him, and Cade saw red.

“Wait a minute!” she exclaimed. “Why the hell do they get to go and not me?”

“Because you’re pregnant!” Derek said, finally showing anger with her insistence on running into danger.

“And?” Cade said. She jabbed a finger at Sadie and Jude. “Those two are practically kids!”

“We are not kids!” Sadie started to protest, but Derek put a hand on her arm and shook his head.

“Go ahead to where you’re needed,” he told her. “I’ll deal with this.” Cade glared as they stepped onto the porch, and Derek shut the door between them. Then he stood there, his palm pressed flat against the door. “Cade, listen to me, okay? You’re pregnant. And as your doctor, I feel it’s my responsibility to not only keep you safe but to tell you when you’re being an idiot. And Cade, you’re being an idiot.”

“But that’s my husband out there!” Cade protested. She clenched her fists, ignoring how her broken nails dug into her palms. “I can’t leave him out there!”

“Yes, you can, and you will,” Derek corrected. “Believe me, I don’t like it any more than you do. He’s important, very important, to everything we’ve got going on here, and I don’t like seeing him throw himself into these situations. But you’re just as important as he is, you and your baby.”

Cade narrowed her eyes. “How so?”

“Because whatever genes make Brandt so special may have been passed to the baby,” Derek explained. “And I think that he might’ve passed that immunity to you through sexual contact.”

Cade raised an eyebrow, momentarily distracted by his theory. “What, like an STD?”

“If it’s an STD, it’s the world’s best STD to have,” Derek said. “Granted, there’s no guarantee I’m right, in which case, we have to do what we can to keep you from getting bitten.”

“That’s fine, Doc, but I’m not going to get bitten,” Cade said. “I’ll be fine, I swear. I’m just going to step out—”

“No, Cade.”

“—and find a place to set up and shoot.”

“I said no, Cade!”

His shout—a loud sound for a man so little used to raising his voice—felt like a slap across Cade’s face. She stared at him, wide-eyed and startled, as her objections died on her lips. She’d never seen Derek so angry, had never heard him have cross words with anyone, and here he was, yelling at her.

She didn’t know what to make of that. But in the face of his anger, she was shocked and speechless, and she remained so, rooted to the spot in the foyer, until the others began to return to the house.

Sadie and Jude were the first to arrive back, covered in blood, dirt, and grass stains. They smelled of rot and decay. Cade wrinkled her nose, and her stomach heaved at the scent.

“Any injuries?” Derek asked, his eyes scanning each of them in turn as he ushered them into the room. After Sadie answered in the negative for the both of them, he nodded toward the stairs. “Head upstairs and clean up, both of you. Be sure to scrub off every bit of blood you find on yourselves.”

The twins were halfway up the stairs before Cade found her voice. “Wait,” she choked out, and the two bloodied figures stopped and turned to look at her. “Brandt,” Cade said, watching the two teenagers with anxious eyes. “Is he…?” She couldn’t get the last word out. She wasn’t even sure what the last word was: “okay” or “dead” came to mind, but neither made it past her lips.

“He went to get someone named Peter,” Sadie finally said, after what felt to Cade like an eternity. “He’s okay. He’s not hurt or anything.”

Cade could have sworn she felt her soul slump over in relief. “Oh thank God,” she breathed, sagging against the foyer’s wall and dropping her head against it. The sound of the twins’ footsteps started up the stairs again, now that the news of Brandt’s okayness had been delivered. She glanced up at Derek; he’d opened the front door about six inches and stared out into the community. Then he stepped back, and Cade looked up expectantly to see Brandt stepping inside, sweaty and smeared with old blood and dirt but alive. The relief she felt was palpable. “What in the hell is going on out there?”

“Nothing good,” Brandt said. He stepped closer to her and pressed a quick kiss to her cheek, though he kept his distance since he was filthy. “Are you okay? You didn’t go out there, did you?”

Derek gave Cade a pointed look over Brandt’s shoulder, and it took everything in her to fight back a scowl. “No, I didn’t go out there,” she said, answering Brandt’s question with only a little irritation slipping through. “Though, believe me, I really wanted to. I’m sick of being stuck in this house away from all the fun.”

“I’m not sure I’d consider it fun, but you’ve always had a strange definition of that,” Brandt said.

“So what’s going on out there?” Derek asked. “And for that matter, where’s my brother?”

“Isaac’s outside, and yes, he’s fine,” Brandt said, heading off the question that even Cade could see on the tip of the doctor’s tongue. “He’s helping Peter out with something. He’ll be coming back here as soon as he’s done.

“As for what’s going on out there, simply put, the infected are getting in.”

“What?” both Derek and Cade gasped, and Cade added, “How? Are the gates coming down?”

“No, no, the gates are still holding,” Brandt said quickly. “For now, anyway. No, they’re coming up over the gates. They’re just climbing over each other and coming over the top. They staged a diversion at the front gates, had me and Keith occupied there, and then they came over at the side over there.” He pointed in the general direction of the area across the street, where the wall lay behind a row of houses. “Isaac, Sadie, Jude, and I managed to kill off what got over the wall, and we’ve got Peter on the roof of the house across the street playing sniper for anything that comes over. I got a few other men on the roofs too, watching the different sides of the community.”

“So what are we going to do?” Cade asked, stepping past him to go into the living room. There was a towel on the back of the couch; she grabbed it and brought it to him so he could start cleaning up.

“We’ve got to get these people out of here as fast as we can,” Brandt said as he swiped halfheartedly at his face with the corner of the towel. “If they’re not going to come through the gates, then they’re going to come over them, and I think it’s going to be really soon. Where are the twins?”

Cade was almost thrown off by the sudden change of topic. “They went upstairs to clean up,” she said.

“And that’s exactly where you need to go, Brandt,” Derek spoke up, pointing at the stairs. “You need to get that blood off of you. Go decon.”

Cade didn’t hesitate to add, “I’ll go with you. We should start hashing out a plan.”

He nodded and rubbed at his face again as he started up the stairs with the slow, weary trudge of the perpetually exhausted. Cade followed, her step feeling only a little lighter than Brandt’s looked.

It was only when the door was firmly shut behind them and the lantern they kept on the sink was turned on that Cade spoke.

“Brandt, what are we going to do?” she asked, even as she internally swore at how weak her voice sounded. She set her rifle against the wall and slipped past Brandt, plugging the sink and grabbing a gallon jug of water. She’d started to pour it into the sink before she realized Brandt had yet to answer. She glanced over her shoulder as the water glugged into the sink. He stared at her with a somewhat vacant expression on his face. “Brandt?”

Brandt shook his head slightly and blinked as if he were coming out of a trance. He nudged his way to the sink and grabbed a washcloth from the shelf nearby, dunking it into the lukewarm water. “I have some ideas, but you’re probably not going to like one of them,” he said, taking a second to strip his t-shirt off and dropping it onto the floor. Cade raised an eyebrow, prompting him to continue, but he didn’t say anything as he scooped the wet washcloth from the sink and started vigorously scrubbing his face and neck and arms, sloshing water down his stomach. Cade watched for a minute, then nudged his bicep.

Brandt sighed, dropped the cloth back into the sink with a splash, and turned to look at her, leaning against the sink with both hands braced against it. “I want you to leave Woodside,” he said.

Cade opened her mouth to protest, but he touched her arm, lightly, and she closed it again. The dark, serious look in his eyes unsettled her and made her more willing to hear him out. He dropped his arm back to the edge of the sink and looked away from her.

“Things are about to get ugly, really ugly. And I’m not saying that you’re incapable of defending yourself, because you are, but with you being pregnant…I’m just not sure I’m willing to risk you being put at such high risk. I think I’d prefer getting you out of here before things get so bad that we’re not given an option.”

Cade pressed her lips together, giving him the courtesy of at least appearing to think his request over before objecting. He was clearly concerned, and she couldn’t fault him for that: the situation was bad and was bound to get worse, and she was, naturally, at higher risk than most because of her larger belly. But she didn’t like the idea of leaving her husband behind while she bailed to hide out in a safer location like a coward. “Brandt, I…” She trailed off, unsure of what to say.

“I know it’s not what you want to do,” Brandt said, clearly reading what she was thinking. “In fact, I’m pretty willing to bet that you’re getting ready to object to the whole idea all together. And I really can’t stop you if you decide to stay, because even though I’m your husband, I’m not your lord and master, and you can do as you wish. I’m just putting forward my thoughts on the matter, so I can say that I’ve spoken them, and because I hope you’ll at least take them into consideration when making your own decision.”

Cade pushed a lock of her hair behind her ear, sighing. She studied Brandt, who avoided looking right at her, trying to read his mind like he always seemed to be able to read hers. There was a stain of blood on the side of his neck that he’d missed while he’d been cleaning up. She stepped forward, scooping the cloth out of the sink and squeezing it out. She pressed it to the side of Brandt’s neck. “You missed a spot,” she explained, washing it off gently with slow circles. As she wiped the blood away, Brandt’s arms slid around her, pulling her closer, and she dropped the cloth onto the edge of the sink. “And you’re right,” she murmured, resting her head against his shoulder. “I’m not going to go. Not while you’re still here. If you would go with me, I would drop everything and go in a heartbeat.”

“But I can’t go yet,” Brandt said. He took her hands in his, pressing them together and holding them tightly. “I have a responsibility to the people here. They’re a priority, but you’re an even higher priority.” He pressed his nose into her hair and whispered, “I can’t lose you.”

“You won’t,” Cade murmured back, feeling a lump in her throat. “I promise.”

His hands trailed slowly down, resting against the small of her back, and one hand shifted to rest against her side. Below the fabric of her shirt was a nasty-looking scar from when she’d been shot in Atlanta. It had been a close call for her—not because of the wound, which hadn’t been that bad, but because of the infection that had spread during her recuperation. She’d nearly died, and if it weren’t for Brandt, Remy, and their deceased friend Gray, she would most certainly have.

“We have some time,” he said, his voice partially muffled by her hair. She didn’t have to ask for elaboration; the low, husky tone of his voice was enough to allude to what he meant. “Not much, but enough.”

Cade tilted her head to look up at him and smiled. “I’ll go lock the door,” she murmured.

Chapter 20

Kimberly leaned over the dining table, her palms braced against the edge of it, as she studied the large map. A thin yellow legal pad rested nearby, a ballpoint pen on top of it. The first page of the pad was still blank. A lot like her mind, which was in a contradictory maelstrom of blankness and chaos. She was supposed to be making some plans on where to take the samples—it had been her idea to take them out, and it was her responsibility to figure out her own plans for the journey.

Her nerves were officially shot. Every time she thought about the impending trip, it felt like they would crawl right through her skin. She had no idea where to start. So far, she’d only drawn a dot over the rough location of Woodside, a bloody red color that stood out from the rest of the map.

“Son of a bitch, what do I do?” she mumbled, just loud enough that it carried across the table.

A soft tap on the doorframe drew her attention away from her map, and Kimberly turned to see Sadie O’Dell standing in the doorway, looking into the dining room cautiously. She looked different than she had earlier in the day when they’d dragged the two siblings over the wall and into the community, and it took Kimberly a moment to realize why: she was seeing the teenager with hardly any weapons, and without her Kevlar, for the first time since they’d met. Sadie wore only a pistol on her hip, with a spare magazine of ammunition in its own holster alongside it. She was thinner than Kimberly had realized, her prior appearance supplemented by the body armor. Her dark hair was no longer pulled back in the severe French braid it’d been in earlier; now, it hung in loose waves to just past her shoulders, softening features that Kimberly had thought looked too harsh.

“Hi,” Sadie greeted, sounding a bit awkward. “I was just looking for something to do, and I couldn’t find anybody to ask because they’re all busy with stuff.”

Kimberly’s mood lightened as she looked the thin girl over. She beckoned her toward the table. Sadie had been out in the greater world more recently than she had and was more familiar with the surrounding areas; maybe she could get some assistance from Sadie, even if it was just the odd suggestion. Something had to get her brain out of its paralysis, and Sadie seemed to be just the ticket.

“Maybe you can help me with something,” Kimberly said.

Sadie stood beside her now, looking down at the map with thinly veiled curiosity. “What can I do?”

“I’m planning a trip,” Kimberly explained. “We’ve got sensitive materials here that I need to get out of the community before the infected get in. I have to get these materials in the hands they need to be in before all is lost. You’ve been out and about more than I have. I was hoping you could maybe give me some information on the surrounding area so I can figure out the best route to take.”

Sadie nodded and leaned close to the map, finding Hollywood, South Carolina, and touching a fingertip to it. “Which way were you thinking about heading?” she asked as she traced first one thin line that represented a highway and then another.

“North,” Kimberly answered. “Or at least northish. I was hoping to make it to D.C. or someplace similar where I might have a good chance of finding someone who will know what to do with the materials we’ve got.”

Sadie nodded and tapped her fingernails lightly against the map, leaning forward to study it more closely. A soft hum escaped her throat, and Kimberly watched her, curious about the girl she didn’t know much about.

“Got a pen?” Sadie asked, holding her hand out. Kimberly slapped one into her palm, and she hunched over the map, tracing a path along several county roads and highways. “I’m drawing you a route that will get you as far as North Charleston. I don’t know much about any of the rest of the area, but I do know that you should try to avoid the major highways and interstates. Last time I was near one, it was a royal mess.” She shrugged. “Well, except for Highway 17, since it’s been cleared, but I wouldn’t recommend taking it all the way into Charleston unless you want to run a higher risk of getting eaten by zombies. Charleston is full of them.”

“You say that like you know from experience,” Kimberly said, leaning against the table and watching as Sadie shaded in the route she’d suggested.

Sadie peered at her through a ragged fringe of dark hair. “You have no idea,” she said, a look of hard seriousness on her face. “There were a few times when Jude and I got too close to Charleston while hunting for supplies, and we almost didn’t make it back out.”

Kimberly nodded in understanding. “Yeah, I can imagine. I came out of Atlanta.”

“Ouch.”

“Exactly.” She paused, studying the map again for a moment, and then asked, as tactfully as she could, “So, Jude. Has he always been that way?”

“What way? Mute?”

“Yeah.”

Sadie shook her head. “No, he wasn’t born that way. There was an accident when we were eight. He was lighting an oil lamp during a power outage, and there was blowback. It flashed into his face and he inhaled some of it. He was in the hospital for forever, and when he got out, he couldn’t talk anymore because of the scar tissue on his vocal cords. He can make some sounds and stuff, but talking causes him excruciating pain, so he doesn’t do it.”

“God, that’s got to be hard,” Kimberly said.

“It’s life,” Sadie said. “Nothing you can do about it except to live with it and adapt accordingly. Which we’ve done. It’s our normal now, and there’s nothing hard about it.”

Kimberly winced, realizing just how stupid that comment had been. “Sorry. I just…sorry, that was stupid. I didn’t mean it like that at all. I just have occasional flare-ups of foot-in-mouth disease, and I really stuck it in there this time, huh?”

Sadie’s lips quirked, and she turned her attention back to the map. “Need some salt and pepper for that foot?”

Kimberly bit back a snort, and both of them laughed.

“You aren’t planning to go by yourself, are you?” Sadie asked.

Kimberly almost said, “No, of course not,” but then she hesitated. The thought of going by herself had crossed her mind; she was worried that she wouldn’t be able to find a capable volunteer to go with her on such a dangerous trip. And it would be a dangerous trip; there was no doubt about it. If she didn’t die before it was all over, she’d be surprised.

“I’d like to find someone to go with me,” she finally said. “But I’ll go by myself if I have to. If nobody is willing to take the trip with me.”

“I’d go,” Sadie said. “If nobody else volunteered. But I’d have to bring Jude with me, and I don’t know if it’s something he would want to do.”

“Yeah, and I’m not sure I’d want to drag you two along with me,” Kimberly said. “It’s nothing against you guys, but I don’t know you very well, and I’m not sure I’m willing to haul you along on a trip like that.” You’re just kids, she wanted to say but didn’t.

“It’s okay,” Sadie assured her. “I understand.” She offered Kimberly her pen back, and Kimberly tucked it behind her right ear. They were silent again for another minute, and then Sadie asked, “So…is there someone in particular you want to go with you?” There was a note of mischievousness in her voice that made Kimberly raise her eyebrows.

“What makes you think there’s someone in particular?” Kimberly asked.

“Because I’m not stupid, and I saw how you were looking at that blonde guy and how he was looking at you when your back was turned earlier, when we were in the kitchen,” Sadie said. “What’s his name again? Ewan?”

“Ethan,” Kimberly corrected. Her mind slid back to the porch, to the way she’d felt when Ethan had pressed her gently against the railing and their mouths had met in that kiss. She had wanted more, so much more, and she’d nearly told him so outright. Hell, a few seconds longer and she’d have been climbing him like a tree, right there on the porch for God and everybody to see.

“No,” Kimberly finally said. “No, there isn’t much of anything going on with me and Ethan.”

“But you want there to be, don’t you?” Sadie said, a slight twinkle in her eye. “You want him to be the one to go with you, right?”

“Why are we talking about this again?” Kimberly asked. She started to gather her map, folding it carefully along the creases.

“I just want to make sure you’re going to be okay out there and that you’ll at least have some good backup,” Sadie said. “Since you said that you’ll be carrying something important, which just makes me think it has something to do with the cure for this virus.”

Kimberly raised an eyebrow in surprise.

“What? Dr. Rivers told me he used to work for the CDC, and you’re trying to get out with important stuff, and the rumor is that the CDC had something to do with the zombie virus. So you’ll probably be carrying a possible cure out of here. It wasn’t hard to figure out.”

“You’re very perceptive,” Kimberly commented.

“Yeah, that’s what my dad used to tell me when I was younger.”

Kimberly finished folding the map. “Where are your parents, anyway?”

Sadie looked away from her then, the mischievous look fading from her expression, and Kimberly knew the answer. It was the same sad-as-fuck story that they’d all had to deal with.

“Didn’t make it,” Sadie said. “Dad stayed behind to give me, Jude, and Mom a chance to get out of the house, and Mom got sick and died about a month later.”

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Kimberly said with genuine sympathy.

Sadie waved a hand at her negligently. “Don’t worry about it. Shit happens, and Dad prepared me and Jude for stuff like that.”

Kimberly gave her a curious look.

“Dad was Army Special Forces. He taught us everything we know about survival, living off the land, all that good stuff. And he taught us how to fight. If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t have survived this long.”

“Your dad sounds like a tough guy,” Kimberly commented.

“Oh, he was,” Sadie said. “Very tough. Very smart. He always thought that one day we’d need his knowledge. I don’t think he expected it to be because of zombies.”

“Nobody ever expects zombies, Sadie,” Kimberly said, fighting off a small grin that quirked at the corner of her mouth. “Just like nobody ever expects the Spanish Inquisition.” She tucked the folded map into her backpack that was on one of the dining chairs nearby and zipped the bag closed, shouldering it. “Come on, let’s see if we can track down Brandt and find out if there’s something we need to be doing. I’ve done all the planning I can for now; everything else will have to wait until I’m out on the road.”

Chapter 21

Jude was supposed to be sleeping, but with the noise outside—the constant beat of hands and bodies against the wall, the semi-erratic pop of rifle fire somewhere nearby—it was all but impossible. He had spent a couple hours tossing and turning before giving up and crawling out of the twin bed the nice foreign woman—Cade, he remembered—had shown him to earlier. He made the bed, pulling the sheets tight, tucking them in military-style, with crisp folds and tucks, just like his father had taught him. Then he went to the dresser on the other side of the room, skirting the empty twin bed that Sadie had used.

It didn’t surprise him that Sadie wasn’t in it. She’d never been one to sleep through the night, usually no more than a few hours at a time. She had become paranoid, jumping at the slightest sounds, hovering by the closed tent flap, weapon in hand.

He couldn’t blame her for the paranoia. He’d gotten to be a little paranoid too. Considering there were zombies stomping around in the world now, he supposed it was a healthy paranoia, which was better than the kind that turned a person into a gibbering mess. At least this kind of paranoia only gave him an itchy trigger finger, which had saved his and his sister’s lives on more than one occasion.

His own weapons were laid out on the dresser top in a neat, militaristic row. His Kevlar was draped over the back of a chair. He picked up the Kevlar and started to look it over, making sure its integrity hadn’t been compromised during the last fight he and Sadie had been involved in. Satisfied that all was as it should be, he shrugged the vest on, fastening catches and snaps and buckles and bits of Velcro until its snug familiarity gave him assurance. Then he started on his weapons.

Holsters and sheaths found their ways onto belts and straps and around thighs, guns and knives and ammunition slid into pockets and against leather until he was standing by the dresser with twenty pounds added to his slight frame, shotgun in hand, ready to take on the world.

Now he just had to figure out where to take it on at.

Jude made one more pass around the room, checking for anything he’d forgotten—he didn’t know when he’d be able to return—and then grabbed his low profile backpack, sliding it onto his shoulders and settling it into place. It was identical to his sister’s, which sat on the floor beside her bed, slouching there like an insolent toddler. He sat down on the edge of the chair long enough to double-knot his boot’s laces and then headed for the bedroom door, intent on exploring his new environment and looking for weak points in security.

The hallway was quiet and still, no sign of anyone anywhere. The doors lining the hallway were shut, so he closed his own. Last line of defense against zombies and all that. He could see how someone would come to that conclusion, though he knew exactly how effective a simple closed door was against zombies: not the slightest. His father would attest to that, if he were still alive.

Jude draped the strap of his shotgun over his shoulder, letting it bump against his back as he started for the stairs. He paused at the top for a moment, listening carefully for signs of danger; all he heard were two voices, both female. One belonged to his sister. He headed downstairs and out the front door, as silent as a ghost. No one noticed his exit.

It was dark outside, the only illumination coming from the almost-full moon. He tilted his head back, closed his eyes, and breathed in deeply. The air smelled fresh and crisp, like cut pine and late summer, and he drew as much of it as he could into his lungs, holding it in, as if to cleanse them, before he blew the breath out and opened his eyes again. The stars loomed overhead. He studied them, trying to figure out the time—his watch had been broken during the fight he and Sadie had engaged in earlier, when a zombie had gotten too close and he’d resorted to punching it in the face. He gave up when his tired mind couldn’t remember the astronomy lessons his father had given him when he was younger.

A rifle pop sounded nearby, reminding him of why he had come outside to begin with. He abandoned his gaze at the nighttime sky and shifted it toward the front gates.

He wondered fleetingly what had become of Remy and Dominic; he hadn’t seen them since entering Woodside. He hoped neither of them had gotten in trouble for bringing them here.

On one of the platforms was a man, tall and lean, a rifle cradled in his hands as he stared down over the gates at the commotion below. Jude nodded decisively and started in that direction, climbing the aluminum ladder bolted to the platform, the same one he’d practically slid down earlier. He mounted the platform cautiously.

The man half-turned to look at him and gave him a small smile. “Hi,” he said. He turned away before Jude could return the greeting with a wave, focusing his eyes below. “You shouldn’t be out here. It’s dangerous.”

Jude shrugged, even though the man wasn’t able to see the gesture, and stepped forward to lean against the wall.

The man looked at him. “You’re not a very talkative one, are you?” he asked.

Jude held up a finger, indicating for the man to give him a moment, and then shrugged his backpack off one shoulder and swung it around. He dug inside until he came up with a pad of paper and a pen. He hadn’t had to use paper in a long time, but Sadie had always made sure he had some handy in case he had to communicate with someone who didn’t know sign language. He uncapped his pen with his teeth and wrote, as neatly as he could manage, “I’m mute. I can’t talk.” Then he held it up so the man could see it.

The man’s eyes skimmed the note. “Wow. I’ve never met anyone who was mute before. Have you always been like that, or…?”

Jude shook his head. “Since I was eight,” he wrote, and he paused before adding, “I’m Jude, by the way.”

The man smiled. “Nice to meet you. I’m Keith.” He offered Jude his hand, and Jude shook it. “I’m generally in charge of the guys we use to guard the community. Obviously, we’re not doing too good of a job of it.” He motioned toward the zombies, then paused, raised his rifle, and aimed. One of the zombies had started to climb the pile of dead ones mounded at the foot of the gates. With a single shot, Keith put a neat hole in the climber’s forehead and knocked him back.

“Nice shot,” Jude scrawled underneath the last note. Keith read it and smiled.

“Thanks. I used to go out deer hunting a lot before all of this went down.” He waved his hand, indicating the world at large. “Now, I just shoot the infected.”

Jude didn’t miss the way Keith’s eyes slid up and down him, like he was assessing him. Jude flushed and distracted himself by writing down another question for the other man. “Where are you from?”

Keith glanced at the note and shrugged. “Muscle Shoals, Alabama,” he answered. “You?”

Jude smiled slightly, happy to be having a conversation with someone other than his sister and without his sister here to interpret for him. He hadn’t done this in so long that he’d almost forgotten what it was like. He was a fast writer, so the pen and pad exchange wouldn’t slow their conversation. He scribbled, “My sister and I are from Cartersville, Georgia. It’s about an hour outside of Atlanta.”

Keith winced. “Oh hell, so you guys got hit pretty quick by Michaluk.”

“Not even any warning,” Jude confirmed. “It wasn’t there one day, and then it was.”

“Family?”

He shrugged and added, “Except for Sadie, they’re all dead.”

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Keith said. He sounded like he actually meant it. Jude shrugged again and chewed on the end of his pen, trying to decide what to say next. While he was excited to be communicating with someone besides Sadie, he suddenly had no idea what to say. He twirled his pen between his fingers, watching the zombies below that reached for him.

Keith motioned to Jude’s shotgun. “You any good with that thing?”

“About as good as I can be,” Jude answered, truthfully. “My dad taught me and my sister how to shoot and how to survive.”

Keith nodded and motioned towards the world beyond. “So where have you two been hiding out at since this went to shit?”

“In the woods, mostly,” Jude wrote.

“No shit?” Keith sounded surprised. “This whole time?”

Jude shrugged. “For a few months, we lived in houses. Then Mom died. We kept getting harassed by zombies and didn’t want to deal with it anymore. We got our stuff together and went to the woods. Been there ever since. Until today.”

“Impressive,” Keith complimented, and Jude grinned. “I heard a little about what happened out there with you, your sister, Remy, and Dominic. Must have been some fight.”

Jude nodded. “It was,” he agreed. “Sadie and I had a handle on it. If they hadn’t jumped in, I think we still would’ve beaten the zombies back.”

“Why do you keep calling them zombies?” Keith asked.

“Why do you keep calling them the infected?” Jude retorted, and Keith laughed.

“Fair enough,” he conceded. “I call them the infected because everyone here does. Because, I think, Dr. Rivers started it. Or someone from the core group did, I’m not sure.”

“Core group?”

“Yeah, core group,” Keith said. “The ones who founded the place.” He started counting them off on his fingers. “Brandt, Cade, Derek, Kimberly, Remy, Dominic, and that infected guy Ethan.”

“Ethan is infected?” Jude asked, feeling alarm rising up in him. Ethan had seemed fine when he’d seen him earlier. Then he remembered the scars he’d seen all over the man’s forearms. “How so?” he wrote.

“I’m not sure of the mechanics of it,” Keith said. “I just know he got bitten and then somehow got cured. But he’s still got these weird side effects and stuff that, quite frankly, make me uncomfortable.” Before Jude could ask for more details, the sound of a whistle, short like a signal, chirped out from the main house.

“What’s that?” Jude scribbled. He held the pad up for Keith to see.

“Committee meeting,” Keith answered. “They’re meeting about something. Probably what to do about these guys.” He nodded toward the zombies—the infected, Jude mentally corrected—that were throwing themselves against the wall just thirty feet below. “You should go to it,” he suggested. “See how the community works.”

“Are you coming?”

Keith shook his head. “No, someone’s got to stay and keep an eye on things right here,” he said, motioning to the infected. “They keep piling up and climbing over, or at least trying to. I’ve got to keep them from doing that.”

Jude nodded and glanced toward the main house, assessing how much time he had to join the proceedings. He could see Dr. Rivers hurrying from the house next door, a small stack of papers in his hands. Brandt stood in the frame of the front door, waiting on him.

“I’ll see you later then, yeah?” Jude finally wrote. “I’ll come keep you company. It’s too stuffy in that house.”

“Yeah, it can get a bit claustrophobic around here,” Keith agreed. “See you later.”

Jude tucked the notepad into his pocket, gave Keith a final wave, and then scooped up his shotgun, returning it to his shoulder. He grabbed the top of the aluminum ladder and practically slid to the grass. Then he jogged toward the house where the committee was meeting, curious about what was going to happen and what they were going to do.

Chapter 22

Night had fallen heavily over the community, but the darkness brought no reprieve from the sounds of the infected. If anything, their snarls, moans, and groans seemed all the louder and more ominous with the fall of night. The occasional pop of gunfire didn’t help matters. The unceasing sound was driving Cade slowly crazy, and as if sensing her anxiety, the baby stirred restlessly inside her, rolling and kicking and doing nothing to soothe her nerves. If anything, the baby made everything seem worse, serving as a reminder of everything she stood to lose.

Cade glanced at the people present for their second meeting in as many days. Isaac stood at the foot of the stairs, his large arms folded over his chest, his eyes closed as if he were meditating. Derek sat on the stairs beside him, looking exhausted, his hands surprisingly empty; he usually had a notebook or file folder in his hands in his unceasing work on the viral cure. Ethan was sprawled on the couch beside her, an arm draped along the back, leg resting against his knee. He gave her a small smile when he saw her looking at him. Dominic and Remy were both absent—again—and she couldn’t help but wonder where the hell they’d gotten off to this time. Brandt and Kimberly were talking in low voices in the kitchen, accompanied by the rustle of paper. And on the floor sat the community’s newest arrivals, Sadie and Jude O’Dell, silent as they signed to each other; judging by their facial expressions, they seemed to be arguing. Their presences surprised her, and she leaned close to Ethan and asked in a hushed voice, “What are the civvies doing here?”

Ethan shrugged. “Brandt told me he’s going to pick their brains, since they’ve been in the thick of it recently.”

Cade nodded and settled back in her seat. “So what’s going on in there?” she asked, nodding toward the kitchen. Whatever Brandt and Kimberly were talking about, it was clearly private.

“I’m not sure,” Ethan admitted. He sounded troubled, which drew her eyes back to him. “I was, obviously, not invited.”

“Something going on with you and Kimberly?” Cade asked, a small smile crossing her face as his cheeks flushed red.

“Not at all,” Ethan insisted. He grinned and added, “Yet.”

“Oh?”

He shrugged. “I’m not going to lie—I certainly wouldn’t mind,” he admitted. “I’ve gotten a fair bit…well, attached to her over the past few months. She’s been a huge help.”

“You don’t like her just because you think you’re obligated to, do you?” she asked. “Because I will seriously kick your ass if you hurt her, best friend or not.”

“No, of course not,” Ethan said. “I like her. Genuinely. Even if she hadn’t been taking care of me, I’d still be attracted to her.”

“But fortunately, you got to spend a lot of time with her while she nursed you back to health,” Cade teased. “How’s her bedside manner? Or do you guys call it something else nowadays?”

“If you weren’t pregnant, I swear I’d smack you,” Ethan grumbled, though he was fighting a grin as he said it.

“If I weren’t pregnant and you tried that, you’d end up face down on the floor, begging for mercy and writhing in pain,” Cade quipped.

“Too true.”

“Ladies and gents, we’ve got a problem,” Brandt said as he entered the living room. Kimberly followed, folding a piece of paper. She slipped past him and went to the recliner, sinking into it with obvious exhaustion and worry on her face.

“I don’t think I need to elaborate on what the problem is,” Brandt continued, “but we need to come up with a solution.

“Cade and I were discussing options earlier, and we decided we need to evacuate the community. There are simply too many infected outside to kill off, and we don’t have the ammunition to even try. But, with the front gates completely blocked off, we can’t go out that way anymore. We have to figure out an alternate route out of the community that even the elderly will be able to use, and we have to figure out where to go and how to get there.” He stepped forward and dropped a handful of folded maps onto the coffee table.

There was silence as everyone looked at one another. Brandt’s eyes met Cade’s, and she could read his stress easily. She tried to give him a small, reassuring smile, but she could tell that it hadn’t reached her eyes. Finally, she cleared her throat and spoke up to break the silence.

“Reconnaissance,” she said. “We need to figure out our destination, and then we need to gather as much information as possible about the conditions around it. And I think we should scout out a temporary safe location close by to take people to while we look for something more permanent.”

“I’m not sure we have enough time for all of that,” Brandt said, “but we’ll look into it. Anything else?”

“We should go north,” Sadie said.

“Why north?” Cade asked.

“Because there might be military in that direction,” she explained. “If we go that way, maybe we can link up with them and get some extra help.”

“But we’re not sure the military will even help us,” Isaac said. “Wouldn’t they be more focused on fighting the infected than on helping out a bunch of civilians who have already made it this far on their own?”

Brandt nodded. “We can’t count on the military,” he said. “They’ll be concerned with their own objectives. I haven’t heard of any references to survivor camps, so as far as I’m concerned, they don’t exist. If we come across the military and they’re willing to help us, then fine. But hunting them down is not a priority.”

“What about what Kimberly and I are proposing?” Derek asked. His voice sounded weary, with a face to match, and Cade frowned.

“What are you proposing?” she asked.

“We’ll deal with that later,” Brandt said before Derek could answer the question. “Evacuating our people is more important.”

“No, it’s not,” Derek said. He rose halfway off the stair, and Isaac put a hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. He sat back down with an exhausted sigh. “The cure is the most important thing in this community, but I don’t have the ability to finish it. We must get the samples out of here before they’re lost. We must.”

“I understand the urgency,” Brandt said. “Believe me. But in my mind, both of these problems are urgent. I’d like to solve the problem of the defenseless before we move to that one, please.”

“But this problem is faster to solve,” Derek insisted.

“Brandt, what’s going on?” Cade demanded.

Brandt growled low in his throat. “Fine,” he snapped. “Derek and Kimberly want to get some samples out of here and try to hunt down someone that can do something useful with them. Kimberly has volunteered to go, but she needs to know if anyone here knows of someone who they think will be willing to go with her.”

“I’ll go,” Ethan spoke up barely before the last words left Brandt’s lips.

“Ethan, I don’t think you’re healthy enough,” Brandt started to say.

“I’m fine,” Ethan retorted. “I’m perfectly fine. She needs help, and I’m willing to give it to her.”

“You just got off bed rest—”

“And I feel stronger than ever,” Ethan interrupted.

“Not. Strong. Enough,” Brandt said emphatically.

Ethan looked at Cade then, his green eyes pleading. “Cade, for the love of God, back me up on this,” he said. “I can handle it. I can. I’m a hell of a lot tougher than I look.”

“I know,” Cade agreed. “Atlanta proved that. I just…” She looked at Derek, feeling utterly helpless and unsure.

“I think, considering he’ll be with medical personnel the whole way, Ethan will be a suitable escort for Kimberly,” Derek said.

Ethan sat back in his seat with a satisfied gleam in his eyes. “Even Doc thinks I’m okay to go,” he said.

“But what about the side effects?” Brandt protested. “We still don’t know what this strain will do to you.”

“I think he’ll be okay, Brandt,” Kimberly spoke up for the first time. “I’ll be with him. If something goes wrong, we can handle it.” She glanced at Ethan and added, “Besides, there aren’t many people that I’d trust to have my back. At least he’s one of them.”

“Now that that’s settled, how are we going to get all of these people out of here before the infected get through the gates?” Isaac asked.

“I vote we do it house by house,” Cade suggested. “One house at a time, with armed guards with each group.”

“No, you should send armed folks to clear the path and then send more to escort all the elderly and children and pregnant women first,” Sadie said.

“Not all pregnant women are helpless, you know,” Cade grumbled, folding her arms over her chest, ready and spoiling for a fight.

“No, not helpless, but you’re front-heavy, and it would really suck if you got attacked and lost your baby,” Sadie said. “I’m sure you’re tough as nails when you need to be. You wouldn’t have gotten this far if you weren’t.”

Cade opened her mouth to argue—mostly on principle—but Ethan’s hand on her arm stopped her.

“I think Miss O’Dell is right,” Ethan said. “But we have to be careful about this. The last thing we need is people getting angry and panicking because they think we’re saying that some lives are less important than others. We’ll need to figure out the best way to explain this so they’ll understand without getting angry.”

“I’m not even sure any of this is feasible,” Brandt said. “Joseph’s group never came back, and that’s put us short on guards. We barely have enough to hold things together as it is.”

There was silence as everyone thought over the options. Then Brandt sighed and shook his head. “Shit, I don’t know. This is just…”

“Hopeless?” Isaac suggested.

Cade twisted in her seat to glare at him. “Don’t you say that! Don’t you dare even suggest this is hopeless! There’s always hope!”

“Look, we made it work getting these folks out of Atlanta, and we can do it again,” Brandt said. “We’re just going to have to get creative, that’s all.”

They all stared at each other, trying to come up with an idea. Finally, Brandt sighed and said, “I’m going to go to Dominic’s house and see what I can find out. If anyone has any ideas how to get these people out of here, let me know immediately. Kim, Ethan, I think you two have some planning of your own to do.”

Chapter 23

After the meeting, Kimberly and Ethan descended the basement stairs in silence. Neither had spoken a word since after the meeting, when they’d agreed to leave within the hour. Derek had gone down ahead of them, and when they arrived, they found him at the workbench, stuffing notebooks and file folders into a backpack and muttering under his breath.

Derek moved to the tiny refrigerator set underneath the workbench, pulling out test tubes and lining them in a small case he’d taken out of the mini-fridge’s freezer. Then he packed it into an insulated case, stuffed blue ice packs in with it, and sealed the case shut. He added the insulated pack to the backpack already full of papers.

“Listen to me carefully, both of you,” he began. “You have to get this to someone in authority as fast as possible. I’m not sure how long the cold packs will last, but I’m betting it won’t be as long as I’d like. Whatever you do, don’t open the insulation pack. We want to keep as much cold air in the pack as possible to help preserve the samples. You follow me?”

“Yeah, I follow,” Ethan answered. Kimberly nodded her own acknowledgment. “Which way should we go?”

“North,” Derek said. “You go north. I think we’ve already established that the CDC centers in Georgia—and probably Florida—are total losses. There are satellite CDC installations all over the place. Try some of those.”

Kimberly unfolded the map and spread it across the workbench. Derek grabbed a marker and started writing on the map. “Your closest bet is probably the facility in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. It’s still close to the outbreak’s origins, so it might not have survived the initial wave of infected, but you can try there before moving on.” He paused, scribbling a street address onto the map, and continued. “Your next closest shot after that isn’t until Maryland. I figure maybe they had enough warning to lock down and fortify.”

“Maryland is a long way from here, Doc,” Ethan said. “A hell of a lot could happen between here and there.”

“And that’s why you’re going, isn’t it? So you can protect Kimberly and make sure that that whole hell of a lot doesn’t happen to her.” He circled an area of Maryland and wrote another street address beside it. “Whatever you do, don’t get killed. I don’t think I’m speaking lightly when I say the fate of the world could depend on you getting these samples into the right hands.”

“No pressure or anything,” Kimberly muttered. She folded the map and stuffed it inside her backpack, then slung the pack onto her back. She hesitated and then flung her arms around Derek in a crushing embrace. Ethan turned away, giving the two some privacy as they said their goodbyes. When she finally rejoined him, her eyes were shiny with unshed tears, prompting him to catch her hand in his and give it a comforting squeeze.

“You sure you want to do this?” Ethan asked.

“I’m sure I have to,” Kimberly replied. “There’s no one else who has the expertise that I do, except for Derek, and he can’t go.” She paused, glancing back at Derek as if seeking reassurance, and then asked, “Are you sure you’re willing to escort me?”

“You really going to ask me that?” Ethan asked. “There’s no one else in this community I’d even consider worthy of the task.”

Kimberly’s cheeks flushed red at his declaration, and she gave him a tentative smile. “Shall we?” she asked, motioning to the basement stairs.

“We shall,” he agreed.

Upstairs, everything was controlled chaos, everyone moving around with their own personal tasks. Sadie and Jude sat on the couch, side by side, methodically topping off the ammunition in what appeared to be every firearm in the house. Brandt was nowhere to be seen, likely on his self-imposed mission to track down Dominic and find out what was going on with him. Likewise, Cade and Isaac were missing. Ethan figured they were most likely upstairs.

After a moment’s hesitation, Ethan signaled to Kimberly that he was heading up to say his goodbyes.

He found Cade and Isaac in one of the upstairs bedrooms, Cade in a chair at the window with her Galil rifle resting against the windowsill. She stared through the scope mounted on top. Every few seconds, she would shift the rifle just a fraction of an inch, narrowing her blue eyes as she took in the view. Isaac stood beside her, binoculars pressed to his own eyes as he, too, studied the ground below. Cade looked up as Ethan stepped into the room, sparing him only a passing glance before wordlessly returning her attention to the scope.

Aw hell, she’s pissed at me, Ethan thought, the realization accompanied by a sinking feeling in his gut. He cleared his throat, and Isaac tore his eyes away from whatever he was looking at and smiled.

“Ethan, I didn’t hear you come in,” he said. “Something I can help you with?”

Ethan ran a hand through his hair. “Not really. I just…I need to speak with Cade. Preferably in private.”

Isaac gave him a mock salute and stepped back from the window. “Not a problem. I’ll be in the room next door if you need anything.” He retreated, and the door clicked closed behind him.

Ethan stood silently for several long seconds, trying to figure out what the hell he was supposed to say to Cade when she was clearly mad at him. It had been so long since he’d had to deal with an angry Cade that he wasn’t sure he remembered how to handle one of her moods. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other, contemplating the motionless woman in front of him.

Cade didn’t move, didn’t even flinch, as she said, “You are an asshole, you know that?”

“I’m…what?” Ethan asked. “What brought that on?”

“You’re leaving,” Cade said. “Again. You’ve barely been up and around again, and you’re already bailing.”

“I’m not bailing, Cade,” Ethan said. He tried to keep the defensiveness out of his voice, which was a struggle. “Kim needs help. I’m willing to give it to her.”

“Like there aren’t other people here who are perfectly capable of helping her? Why does it have to be you?”

“Come on, Cade. That isn’t fair,” Ethan protested.

“The hell it isn’t,” Cade muttered. “Just tell me why. Tell me why you think it has to be you to go with her.”

Ethan stared at the back of her head and steeled his courage before admitting quietly, “Because I think I might be falling a little bit in love with her. And because of that, I don’t trust anyone else to do this.”

Cade abandoned her task of staring through the scope and finally turned to look at him. “You barely know her, Ethan. How can you say you’re in love with her? This isn’t like with Remy, you know.”

“Yeah, I know,” Ethan replied. “Because with Remy, it was just sexual attraction and infatuation, plain and simple. There was no love there between us, at least as far as I ever felt.”

“Oh, really?” she said doubtfully.

Ethan rolled his eyes. “Cade, cut it out. I know what you’re trying to do, and it’s not going to work, so you can go ahead and hang it up right now. I’m going to go. She needs me.”

“I need you!” Cade exploded, startling him enough that he took a step backward. “You’re my best friend, or at least I always thought you were. But you keep bailing on me when I need you!”

“Name one time I’ve bailed on you, Cade, because I sure as fuck don’t see where I have!”

Cade’s blue eyes grew cold. “In Atlanta, when I got shot and you thought it would be a cute idea to stay behind and try to be noble.”

“I wasn’t trying to be noble. I was trying to save you.”

“And nobody asked you to.”

They stared at each other, and Ethan’s blood pounded in his ears. When he felt like he had a handle on his rage, he ran both hands through his hair and sighed. “Cade,” he started to say, drawing the word out as he pieced together his thoughts.

“Don’t you use that tone with me,” Cade snapped, her eyes still hard with anger.

“Cade! For the love of all that’s holy, shut up, would you?” Ethan demanded. “God, I’m trying to talk to you, and I’d like it to not be a fight. Please. For all we know, this is the last time we’ll ever see each other.”

“Why do you think I’m so mad at you?” Cade asked. “You’re leaving, Ethan. Again. You’re supposed to be my best friend, and it feels like you keep bailing on me. I know you’re not, but still, that’s what it feels like. And I’m getting tired of burying you.”

“I know, and I’m sorry,” Ethan said. “Believe me, I am. It just feels like this is something I have to do. I owe a debt.”

“To who?”

Ethan shrugged. “To Derek. To the community. To the world at large. I don’t know.” He scrubbed his hand through his hair again and closed his eyes for a moment. “I shouldn’t be here. I should be dead. I should’ve been dead months ago when I was attacked in Atlanta. That fate has tipped the balance in my favor makes me feel like I’m meant to do something with the life I’m fortunate enough to have.”

“But it’s a fool’s errand,” Cade protested. “I hate to say it, but it is. There might not be anyone left to do anything with them.”

“I think it’s more foolish to lose the possibility of a cure because we didn’t take a chance,” Ethan said.

Cade sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m being selfish. But it’s just so frustrating. If I weren’t pregnant, I’d be right there with you. But I can’t, and it makes me feel useless to not be able to do anything.”

The sound of footsteps hurrying up the stairs reached Ethan’s ears. Someone knocked on the door.

“Cade, you’re far from useless,” he said, ignoring the knock. “You’ve done so much for the people here and saved and protected so many lives. I don’t think you could call that ‘useless.’”

“Ethan?” Kimberly called from the other side of the door. “We’ve got to get going.”

Ethan still didn’t move for the door.

Cade stood and stepped toward him, throwing her arms around his neck. Ethan buried his face against the side of her neck. “You take care of yourself, okay?” he said, his voice muffled. He lifted his head and saw tears in her eyes; one escaped, and he swiped a thumb at it before anyone saw. “I’m not going to say goodbye, because I’m coming back,” he said.

“How are you going to find us?” Cade asked. “I don’t know where we’re going yet, so how can I tell you where to meet us?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Ethan said. “No matter where you guys end up, I’m going to find you, okay?”

Cade pressed her lips together and nodded, scrubbing her face harshly with a hand, as if wiping away further tears that hadn’t fallen. “Be careful out there.”

“I will. And you take care of Brandt, yeah?” Ethan added. “Man’s liable to lose his head without you around to keep him on task.”

Cade laughed. “Don’t remind me. We all saw how he almost cracked up when Alicia’s people took me. Man was a basket case.”

Ethan chuckled, and Kimberly knocked on the door again.

“You should go,” Cade said. “You’re right this is important.”

Ethan gave her one more squeeze and smiled. “I’ll be back,” he assured her.

“I’m counting on it,” Cade said.

Ethan walked out without looking back. The click the door made as it swung closed behind him felt as final as a gunshot.

Chapter 24

Remy awoke to the sound of gunshots, her brown eyes fluttering open as her mind tried to slog its way through the fog of sleep to the world of consciousness. She couldn’t remember where she was or what she was doing there, and she struggled to remember as she sat up.

She felt weak. So weak. Had she been sick? She couldn’t remember. She pressed a hand against her right temple and blew out a breath. Her skin was damp with sweat, and her hands trembled. She looked down and discovered she was in her underwear, both the bra and panties rendered almost sheer with sweat. She brushed a hand down her ribs, feeling the slightest indentations between them.

Another gunshot rang out, and Remy found herself halfway across the floor before she realized she had moved. Panting, she looked around the darkened room wildly, searching for the source of the sound.

“Where the hell am I?” she whispered, her voice hoarse and cracking. She slammed her eyes shut and forced herself to breathe; her lungs felt constricted, like a vice had been wrapped around her rib cage and was slowly being wound shut.

Another gunshot popped out, and then she remembered.

“Dominic!” Remy gasped. Then she managed to raise her voice and say his name again. “Dominic!” She stumbled across the room, bumping into the desk, trying to find a light. Her hand hit a bottle of water, and she picked it up, drinking greedily, trying to clear her throat of its soreness. Then she tried again. “Dominic!”

There were heavy footsteps in the hallway, something banged against the door, and it swung open. Remy almost took a step back. Then she recognized the silhouette in the doorway, a flashlight in his hand.

“Are you okay? What’s wrong?” Dominic asked.

“Yeah, I think—” Remy broke off and shook her head. “What’s going on out there?”

Dominic didn’t answer her right away. Instead, he stepped into the room and pushed the door shut behind him. He stared at her, and she eyed him back.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

Irritation rose in a wave. “What does it matter how I feel?” she demanded. “What the hell’s going on outside? I heard gunshots!”

Dominic sighed. “The infected that followed us here are trying to get inside, just like they were before. From what I’ve seen, a few of them have figured out how to come over the wall. I’m not going to say it’s not a big deal, because it is, but it’s not something I want you stressing about right now. How do you feel?”

Remy folded her arms over her chest, suddenly aware of how little she was wearing. “Right now? I feel cold. And underdressed. Where are my clothes?”

“You took them off while you were feverish,” Dominic said. He stepped forward and gently pressed the back of his hand against Remy’s forehead and cheek. “I think the fever’s broken. It didn’t last very long. Seems like it tore right through your system and burned out whatever it was after.” He retrieved another bottle of water from the nightstand and gave it to her.

“So what have I missed?”

“There was another one of those committee meetings,” Dominic said as he rummaged through a dresser. “From what I gathered while I was prowling around, they’re planning to evacuate.” He pulled free a pair of jeans from the top drawer and held them up by the waistband. He studied them before tossing them to her. “These should be about your size,” he said.

Remy caught the pants. “Should I ask why you have a pair of jeans in my size in your dresser drawer?”

“They got mixed up with some other clothes that got sent my way,” Dominic said, waving a hand dismissively.

“So you kept them instead of sending them back to get bounced to someone else?”

Dominic waved his hand again and turned his attention back to the drawer. “Anyway, I’ve been downstairs getting some supplies together for us. As soon as the coast is clear and everyone else has gotten out, I want us to bug out, maybe head for Philly like we’d planned. Assuming you’re better, anyway.” He looked up from the drawer and asked, “Are you better?”

“Are you a doctor?” Remy quipped. “I don’t know if I’m better or not. Maybe we should ask Derek that question, since he’s the bloody doctor around here.”

“I’m not asking you to tell me what you think he’d say,” Dominic said, his tone snappish. “I want you to tell me how you feel. Do you feel any different?” He threw a too-big t-shirt at her. She snatched it out of midair, shook it out, and pulled it over her head.

Remy hadn’t given much thought to how she felt, but as she focused inward, she realized that she was much better now than before being injected from the vial. She probed deeper, searching her body for any of the aches, the pains, the hunger that she’d felt unyieldingly for months. The hunger was there, nagging but faint, where it wouldn’t plague her anymore.

Though she couldn’t say why, she decided to downplay her health for Dominic. “I’m fine. I feel okay. Did you tell Derek about what I did?”

“I haven’t,” Dominic said. “I didn’t want to leave you here alone, so I prayed for the best and hoped I wouldn’t need him.”

Before Dominic could take the conversation further, gunfire erupted outside again. They instinctively whirled to face the boarded-over windows. Out of habit, Remy felt at her waist, searching for her bolo knife and pistol, and then blew out a frustrated breath when she discovered they weren’t there.

“Where’s my gun and knife?” she asked, looking around the room, searching for the weapons.

“They’re downstairs,” Dominic said. “I took them down there when you got sick after we shot you up with that stuff in that vial. I didn’t want to walk in and have you go crazy and hack me to death with that blasted knife of yours.”

Remy smirked. “Yeah, good point,” she agreed. “I can’t promise I wouldn’t have done something stupid. I think I was pretty out of it.” She sat on the edge of the bed long enough to pull her shoes on, lacing them tightly, then headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” Dominic asked, hot on her heels.

“To get my weapons,” Remy said, as if it should have been obvious.

“And then?”

“And then I’m going to go out and kill something,” Remy said. “I haven’t killed anything in forever, and I feel the need to. Besides, if things are bad outside, like I’m suspecting they are, then I’m going to need to get in shape sooner rather than later.”

Another pop of gunfire rang out as she descended the stairs, moving with a surprising amount of energy, feeling it flood her limbs the longer she moved. The adrenaline made her want to keep moving, just for the sheer pleasure of it. It was powerful, exciting, and intoxicating all at once. She’d never felt anything quite like it.

She wanted more.

But there were more important things at hand, like the activity stirring up outside, activity she wanted a hand in, too. She found her bolo knife, still sheathed, laying on the dining table, her holstered pistol laying beside it, the belt she kept them on rolled up in a coil between them, and the sheathed tactical knife horizontally above it all. She grabbed the buckle and uncoiled the belt with a snap. She took the weapons out of their sheaths and holsters and threaded the holsters onto the belt in smooth, practiced motions.

Dominic stood in the doorway, watching as she methodically belted on her holsters and slung the lot around her waist, fastening everything over her hips. She checked her pistol to make sure it was loaded and slipped her knives back into their sheaths.

“You said you’d listen to me,” Dominic said. “Do you still agree to do that?”

Remy gave him a slight, crooked smile. “Do you really have that much to teach me?”

“More than I can fit into the short time we have left here,” Dominic confessed. He started strapping on his own weapons then, sliding guns into holsters and buckling the belts across his chest, belts that secured machetes to his back. It occurred to Remy then that she’d never seen him wear the machetes unless he was about to do something dangerous. The thought excited her like nothing else had in months. And she knew that if she wanted to have a hand in whatever Dominic had planned, she’d have to do exactly what he said.

“I’ll follow your lead and do exactly what you say,” Remy vowed.

Dominic seemed satisfied by the concession. He slipped the final pistol into the holster strapped around his thigh and buckled the strap over it. “Do you need anything to eat before we go out?”

Remy shook her head. She felt invigorated, excited, almost jumpy with adrenaline, but nowhere near hungry.

“Well, let’s go then,” Dominic said. He moved to the front door and started to unbolt it. He paused, looking back at her. “We’re going to the main house, just for a few minutes,” he said. “I want Derek to look you over and make sure you’re not about to spontaneously turn on me and chew a hole in my neck.”

Remy wrinkled her nose. “Do we have to?”

“Just for my peace of mind, Remy, please.”

Remy heaved a heavy sigh and waved a hand at the door. “Fine, fine. Onward, good sir.”

Dominic gave her a smile that lit up his entire face, and then he pulled the door open. Cool air rushed inside.

Remy smiled in anticipation as she emerged into the darkness outside.

Chapter 25

Sadie O’Dell was exactly where she shouldn’t have been: outside, in the community proper, slowly roaming through the bushes, shrubs, and cars that sat hulking in the darkness. The air was crisp and cool with early fall, a welcome respite from the increasing stuffiness of the main house.

Sadie hated enclosed spaces. They made her feel trapped, which brought out a wildness in her that she was hard-fought to suppress. Jude had felt it too; she’d seen it in the brown eyes that were so like hers, a borderline panic. So the first opportunity she’d seen, she slipped out of the house, tugging her brother along with her.

“I’m not sure I like it here,” Sadie said, her voice low as she paused beside a Humvee. It was painted a dull Army green, maybe a military leftover abandoned in the chaos of the fall and commandeered by those who ran this place. She pressed a hand against the vehicle’s cool metal and added, “There are too many people here.”

Jude nodded, making several gestures with his hands that she interpreted easily. “We’re no safer here than we were in the woods.”

“I agree,” she answered. Jude signed to her again, and she sighed. “We can’t,” she replied. “It’s too late to go back now. Too dangerous, what with all the damned zombies out there.” She tapped her fingers against the holstered pistol on her belt, humming thoughtfully. “I’m a little surprised, though. I figured they’d take all our weapons away from us the minute we walked through the gates.”

“Seems like they’ve got more important things to worry about at the moment,” Jude signed.

“Yeah, maybe so.” Sadie heard a scuff nearby, and she snatched the pistol on her hip from its holster, whirling to aim it at the source. She dropped low so she couldn’t be easily seen. Jude followed her lead. The shush of a blade slipping from its sheath was the only sound that marked Jude’s movements. His hand touched her wrist to get her attention. He motioned in the direction of the front gates. There were two figures hurrying along through the darkness, heavily armed. The figures scurried alongside the rec center with the urgency of people on a mission. After a moment’s study, Sadie recognized Remy and Dominic. She lowered her pistol, silently castigating herself for her jumpiness and the fact that she’d put entirely too much pressure against the trigger. She stuffed the weapon into the holster.

“Son of a bitch, I hate it here,” she muttered, half to herself. “Too many fucking people.”

Jude touched her wrist again, and when she glanced at him, he motioned toward the front gates. “What, you want to go check things out?” she asked. He nodded, and a slow smile spread across her face. “Well, come on, then. Let’s go.” She straightened from her crouch, and they started toward the front gates.

There was only one person in sight. He stood on one of the two tall platforms that flanked the gates. As they approached, the sound of the infected grew louder; their bodies and hands slammed against the fence in a staccato drumbeat that seemed to pound in rhythm with Sadie’s footsteps. The gates themselves let out ominous creaks under the pressure, and Sadie’s breath came shorter and faster the closer she drew to them. She stopped short, halfway between the fence and the small courtyard full of cars, shaking her head as the full weight of what was mere yards away settled on her. Jude paused and gave her a questioning look.

“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Sadie explained. “Shouldn’t we be avoiding the gates and not walking toward them?”

Jude shrugged and then darted forward, running straight toward the gates; Sadie barely suppressed a cry of alarm at the suddenness of his movement. She raced after him, despite her trepidation. There was no way she was going to leave her brother—her twin, the other half of her soul. When she caught up with him, he was prowling at the gates, studying the walls around them, examining the gates themselves, and smoothing his hand over a massive crack that had formed right through the middle of the wood shoring up the gates. Sadie could smell the fresh, sappy pine scent of the broken wood, and she could hear the creaks and groans of the metal fittings that held the original gates in place. The sound sent chills up her spine and suggested it could give away at any moment under the immense pressure.

Jude touched her arm to get her attention again and made several gestures. She nodded and took his hand, taking several hasty steps back from the gates and pulling him along with her. Her heart pounded in her chest, and she felt a little sick from the surge of adrenaline that had washed through her. Jude looked just as shaken, his eyes wide and worried. Then he tugged away from her and moved back toward the gate again. She reached out to stop him, but he waved her off and went to the foot of the aluminum ladder, grasping it and climbing a few rungs. She grabbed his ankle.

“Where are you going?” she hissed.

He pointed to the platform.

“Why?”

He hooked an arm around a ladder rung and signed awkwardly, “I’m going up to talk to Keith.”

“Who’s Keith?”

Jude jabbed his finger up toward the platform and then started to climb again, leaving Sadie at the bottom to wonder just how he knew that the guy on the platform was named Keith—and when he’d found the chance to meet him. She paced, anxiously cutting her eyes toward the gates, her fight-or-flight instincts screaming at her to run but her brain refusing to ditch her brother. What was he doing up there? And what was so important that he had to harass the guard?

Jude slid down the ladder a few moments later, his cheeks flushed. “We should get back to the main house,” he signed to her almost as soon as his boots hit the grass. “Keith says he won’t be able to stay here much longer. Things are starting to get bad.”

“Just starting?” Sadie said, only half sarcastically. “How do you know that guy, anyway? I don’t know him.”

“What, I can’t meet people without you around?” Jude signed. He seemed irritated, his face a scowl of annoyance that surprised Sadie. He turned on his heel and started toward the main house without looking back, and she followed him, wondering what that was all about.

Sadie was just reaching to knock on the door when it flung open. A flashlight blinded her as the bearer shone it in her face. She put her arm up to shield her eyes. Then she saw Brandt glowering in the doorway.

“Where the hell have you been?” Brandt demanded, lowering the flashlight. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you two!”

“For what?” Sadie asked.

“What do you mean, for what?” Brandt said. “Get the hell in here.” He practically shoved them into the house and slammed the door behind them, bolting it shut and turning to face Sadie. “What the hell do you think you were doing, leaving this house unaccompanied and without permission?” he asked.

Sadie felt her anger rise as the older man castigated her, and she curled her fingers into fists, stepping up to meet him toe to toe and word for word. She could sense Jude lurking somewhere behind her, somewhere near the door. “I wasn’t aware I had to ask your permission for anything,” she said, struggling to keep her temper steady.

“I’m in charge here, Ms. O’Dell!” Brandt raged, his voice barely below a shout. “Me. And because of that, yes, you do have to ask for permission before going out during lockdown. You can’t leave the house alone when we’re on lockdown. I thought maybe you’d have had the sense to figure that out! There are rules—”

“That nobody has bothered to tell us!” Sadie snapped back. She felt a hand touch her shoulder and give it a gentle squeeze, as if wordlessly signaling for her to back down. She stiffened, resisting the suggestion, and added, “We’re new here, Mr. Evans! And nobody has told us shit. You expect us to just figure out and know these things without anyone telling us, and that’s not possible. You’ve lived here for months. We haven’t even been here a day yet. How the hell were we supposed to find out these rules?”

“Brandt, are you yelling at them after I asked you not to?” a woman’s voice asked from the direction of the stairs.

Sadie cut her eyes to the dark-haired pregnant woman with the odd accent who was coming down the stairs carrying a large rifle. Ethan and Kimberly were behind her, the two of them clearly dressed for the expedition they’d volunteered for during the meeting. Kimberly carried a bulging backpack, and Sadie saw another backpack propped beside the front door.

Brandt was still glowering at them, but at the sound of his wife’s voice, he seemed to relax imperceptibly. He stepped back from Sadie and Jude, giving them space and breathing room.

“We were just having a discussion,” Brandt said.

“A discussion?” Cade repeated as she reached the bottom of the stairs. “This is my fault. In all the craziness surrounding their arrival, I didn’t get the chance to sit down and explain the community rules and procedures to them. So don’t yell at them for something they didn’t know.” She looked Sadie up and down and asked, “So, did you spot anything interesting we might need to know about?”

Sadie shrugged. “We just needed some fresh air,” she said. “And we wanted to get a look at the condition of the gates for ourselves, so we could maybe get a better feel for how much longer they’d hold out.” Jude tapped her elbow and made a walking motion with his forefinger and middle finger, then held the fingers up to signal the number two. Sadie hesitated, unsure if she wanted to spill the beans on seeing Remy and Dominic out and about during the lockdown—something that was, she now knew, against the rules. But Cade and Brandt had both seen the gestures Jude had made, and they were looking at them pointedly, expecting an explanation. So Sadie sighed and said, “We also saw Remy and Dominic outside. They looked like they might have been heading in this general direction, maybe to the house next door, but we didn’t follow them to be sure.”

Brandt looked like he was ready to explode with curses again, but Cade merely said, “Huh,” and gave him a knowing look. Then she turned her attention back to Sadie. “We’ve got some business to attend to. Do you guys want anything to eat? I know most of us missed dinner earlier, and you’re probably pretty hungry by now.”

Sadie wasn’t particularly hungry, but she looked back to Jude anyway, prompting him for his answer. He shook his head and made a few gestures.

“No thanks,” Sadie said. “I think both of us could use more rest before everything goes crazy, though, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course I don’t mind,” Cade said, beckoning to both of them. As she moved away from Brandt, she grasped his forearm and squeezed it gently. She smiled at him before letting go and starting up the stairs again. Sadie gave the man one last glance before she followed, sending him a silent apology. Jude was right on her heels.

Chapter 26

Kimberly wasn’t going to lie: she was nervous about going outside the community. She hadn’t been outside the walls since the gates had been closed, and she was worried that she might be rusty when it came to fighting the infected. She hadn’t killed one in a while, and the last thing she wanted was to freeze up the moment she faced one down and end up getting killed. And, worse, putting Ethan in danger of the same.

Ethan stood beside her in silence as Cade led the twins up the stairs. He and Brandt watched each other closely—why, Kimberly didn’t know. Ethan looked alert but pensive, and Brandt just looked exhausted. She was sure, before the night was through, that they’d all be dancing on that line. Finally, Ethan tucked his hands into the pockets of his jeans and asked, “What was that all about?”

Brandt sighed. “I don’t know, man. I blew up, I guess. Too much stress, what with all this shit going on, and I’ve got no outlet for it all. I found out they broke a rule, and I snapped.”

“Happens to all of us,” Kimberly spoke up. “You can apologize to them for using them as a metaphorical punching bag later. For now, Ethan and I need your assistance.”

“With what?” Brandt asked. He came to attention like any good soldier would, his spine straightening and his shoulders squaring, seemingly out of pure reflex. Kimberly almost smiled at the gesture, but the monumental task that lay ahead of her was enough to squash the impulse before it could fully form.

“We need to get into the rec center for supplies,” she told him. The rec center was padlocked, a decision made shortly after one of the survivors, Rico Gutierrez, broke into the storage area where the food was kept and stole every drop of booze in the place. After that, only two people had access to the storage rooms: Cade and Brandt. But there was no way Kimberly would ask Cade to put herself at risk just to unlock a door for them. Brandt’s help would suit her just fine.

Brandt pulled a chain out of his pocket and passed it to her; the key dangled from it. She twined the chain around her fingers and clutched the key tightly.

“Don’t worry about bringing the key back,” Brandt said. “Cade has one, and we won’t be here much longer anyway, once we start evacuating.”

“I’ll leave the key in the storage room’s padlock,” Kimberly offered. “We won’t take much, if you want to pack supplies for the evac.”

Brandt shook his head. “No, we’re leaving it. We don’t have a way to move it out of here right now, and besides, everyone in Woodside is supposed to have their own bug-out bags. Anyone who hasn’t prepared theirs is shit out of luck.”

“Kim, we’re wasting time,” Ethan said, scooping up the second bug-out bag and shifting it onto his shoulder. “We really, really need to get moving before conditions deteriorate.”

Brandt wrenched the door open, and a hint of cool evening air flowed in. He turned back to face them and swept Ethan up in a hug. Ethan returned it with a vigorous pat on the back. Kimberly was surprised when Brandt hugged her too.

“You two be extra careful, okay?” he said. “I’ll leave a note hidden in the grandfather clock with information on where we end up going, in case you make it back and it’s safe to come inside.”

Suddenly, there was a loud crack, like the sound of wood being forcibly split in two. The groan of metal against metal followed it.

Ethan grabbed Kimberly’s hand. “Time to go,” he said urgently, pulling her out of the house and onto the porch.

Kimberly didn’t have time to think about how scared she was as they moved. They paused for a second at the end of the sidewalk, and Ethan looked around as if he were trying to get his bearings. Kimberly took her cue from him, sweeping her eyes over their surroundings, searching for any nasty surprises in their path to the rec center. Nothing moved. Not even a breeze stirred the few stunted, half-stripped trees that were left. The thirty-foot wall surrounding Woodside blocked most of the wind.

Then Kimberly shifted her eyes in the other direction, turning her attention to the gates, and she could have sworn her heart skipped a beat. The gates had begun to lean inward, the structural integrity undermined by the hands that beat on it and the bodies that pressed against it. She swallowed compulsively, her nerves almost getting the better of her, and grasped the hilt of her machete, grinding her fingers into it. Even as she watched, the sound of wood cracking and metal squealing met her ears again, and the gates sagged further. She moved closer to Ethan, and nudged his arm to get his attention. “Eth, look at that!” She pointed, and Ethan followed the direction of her hand.

“Damn, they must have shifted the metal gate off its track,” Ethan guessed. “I’ll be surprised if it lasts the night.”

He sounded shaken, and Kimberly figured his mind was on the friends he was leaving behind. She took his hand in her free one and squeezed, trying to reassure him that everything would be okay. He gave her a small, grateful smile in return and nodded in the direction of the rec center. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get moving while we still can.”

Kimberly followed him to the rec center’s back entrance, letting him push the door open and lead the way into the dark building beyond. The door swung shut with a click, enveloping them in total darkness, where all Kimberly could hear was the sounds of her and Ethan’s breathing, his slow and steady, hers harsh and erratic. Then a flashlight clicked on, the beam aimed away from them, and Kimberly squinted against the sudden light as she got a look at their surroundings.

The back door deposited them into the center’s kitchen, and Ethan’s flashlight reflected off the room’s stainless steel appliances. Kimberly’s shoulders relaxed as she eyed the gas-powered industrial stove, the large stainless steel countertops, and the pots and pans that hung from the racks above the counters. She was intimately familiar with this room, having spent as many hours here as she had in the medical house, helping to cook and prepare foods for storage. The massive walk-in freezer—that hadn’t been anywhere in the realm of cool in over a year—was set into the wall. She pulled the key free from her pocket.

The sound of a shoe scuffing against the tiled floor met her ears, and she glanced back at Ethan, thinking he’d made the sound. But Ethan hadn’t moved. He’d heard the sound too, because he was more alert, his eyes wide as he scanned every inch of the room visible from his position. When she raised her eyebrows in silent question, he shook his head and motioned for her to continue on. She nodded and lifted the padlock. Then she let it go. It struck the stainless steel door with a clang. “Holy shit,” she said, her voice low but loud enough to carry to Ethan.

“What?” Ethan asked.

Kimberly traced her finger along the U-shaped hasp of the padlock, her fingertip catching on the sharp, uneven edge that cleaved the U in two. “Somebody’s been in here,” she reported to Ethan. “I think they cut the padlock with bolt cutters.”

A shoe squeaked against the floor, and Ethan raced to her side. He angled his body to block her from whatever—whoever was with them. Kimberly was alarmed to see he had his Glock in his right hand. “Ethan,” she started, but he gave her a quick shake of his head to cut her off.

“There’s someone in here with us,” he whispered.

Her shoulders stiffened. She felt a target paint itself between her shoulder blades.

“Is it one of the infected?” Kimberly asked, thinking of the way the front gates were collapsing under the weight of their bodies and the way the infected were climbing over the wall in batches. Suppose one of them had gotten into the center? The thought gave her chills.

Ethan suddenly lifted his pistol and aimed it at the back door. “Stop right there,” he barked.

Kimberly heard the hardness in his voice, and she followed his gaze but couldn’t see who—or what—he was addressing.

“Don’t move a muscle, or I’ll introduce your brains to the wall behind you,” he added.

“I don’t think that will be necessary, Ethan,” a familiar voice said. The shadows shifted, and Kimberly’s eyes adjusted enough to make out the shape of a person—Dominic Jackson. Her shoulders relaxed, but only a fraction, as her annoyance reared its ugly head.

“Dominic, what are you doing in here?” she demanded. She noticed Ethan hadn’t lowered his pistol; it was still pointed in the other man’s general direction. Good. That meant Ethan trusted Dominic about as much as she did, which meant not at all.

“Probably the same thing you’re doing, unless I’ve missed the mark.”

Ethan adjusted the flashlight’s beam, and Dominic came into view. He stood near the door with a bulging backpack on his back and loaded down with weapons like he was getting ready to wage a one-man war. The sight of the oversized backpack made Kimberly grit her teeth. “No, you’re not doing the same thing we are,” she snapped. “Because we have a key, while you’re breaking in and stealing things like a thief.”

Dominic was unperturbed by her pronouncement. He glanced at her before turning his dark eyes back to Ethan. “You aren’t planning to do something stupid with that gun, are you?” he asked, his voice steady and his tone measured. “Thinking about arresting me for stealing a few supplies? There’s no law here anymore, Ethan, and you’re not a cop. Hell, you won’t even be a citizen of Woodside for much longer, judging by your own bags. Where are you going?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Ethan replied, “because it looks like you’re planning to give up your citizenship of Woodside too.”

“I was never a citizen of Woodside,” Dominic replied. “Atlanta’s survivors don’t want me here. I’m making arrangements to make that happen for them.”

“They won’t be here much longer either,” Ethan said. “They’re evacuating the community ahead of the infected.”

Dominic didn’t seem to hear him. “Where are you going to go?”

“North,” Ethan replied vaguely.

“Ah.” Dominic glanced toward the kitchen door that led into the large, open dining area. “We’re heading to Philadelphia.”

“We?” Kimberly repeated. As far as she could see, it was just Dominic in the kitchen.

“Yeah, me and Remy.”

Kimberly felt a sudden vibe of hostility rolling off Ethan. She wanted to take his hand again and try to calm him down, but she didn’t dare touch him when he was so infuriated. At the same time, she couldn’t help but wonder why he was angry. A surge of jealousy welled up in her, and she did her best to fight it back, even as Ethan snarled, “What the hell kind of bullshit did you tell Remy to get her to go along with something like that?”

“He didn’t have to tell me anything to get me to go along with it,” Remy said as she stepped through the dining room door to join them. Her expression was grim, almost sad, as she let the door swing shut behind her. “Hi, Ethan. Long time, no speak.”

Chapter 27

Dominic had the sensation that he was stuck between two immovable objects as Remy and Ethan stood on opposite ends of the room and stared at each other. With the exception of the moment they’d faced off outside the gates, they hadn’t seen each other since Ethan had succumbed to the Michaluk Virus. The confrontation, when combined with their history and Dominic’s feelings for Remy, made him uncomfortable. Judging by the look on Kimberly’s face, she shared his discomfort.

Finally, Ethan cleared his throat, lowered his gun, and shifted. “Remy, what are you doing here?”

“I’m going with Dominic,” she said, as if it should have been obvious to everyone in the room.

Dominic had a feeling that he knew where this was going, and it wasn’t anywhere pleasant. The tension was starting to amp up, and Ethan’s next words would set the tone for the argument to follow.

“You’re sick, Remy,” Ethan said. “You shouldn’t be going anywhere without Derek.”

“I’m not sick,” Remy replied. “Not anymore.”

Kimberly sputtered, her face flushed as she tried to get the words out. “You!” she exclaimed, jabbing her finger at Remy. “That’s where Derek’s sample went! You stole it!”

“You can’t steal what rightfully belongs to you!” Remy bit back. She clenched both hands into fists, and Dominic stepped closer to her so he could interfere if she tried to do something rash.

“It didn’t belong to you!” Kimberly retorted. “It belonged to Derek!”

“Technically, it belonged to Brandt,” Ethan spoke up. “It was, after all, his blood.”

“Blood?” Remy repeated. She sounded stricken, similar to how the surprise in Dominic’s gut felt. “That was blood?”

“What the hell did you think it was?” Kimberly snapped. “Cherry Kool-Aid?”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Dominic spoke up. “What’s done is done, and there’s no sense fighting over what can’t be changed. We’ve got more important shit to deal with.”

“He’s right,” Ethan said, surprising Dominic. “Kim and I have samples we need to get out of here before the infected get in. Any help you can give us would be great.”

“Where are you taking the samples?” Dominic asked.

“Derek told us about some CDC facilities up north,” Kimberly said. “We’re going to try to find one that’s still operational to see if they can do anything with the samples, since Derek can’t take his research any further.” Though Kimberly didn’t trust Dominic, she knew that he wasn’t a bad person and would never get in the way of a possible cure. Maybe he could even offer some advice.

“Try USAMRIID, if you can’t get anyone at the CDC,” Dominic suggested. He shrugged his pack off his shoulder and started digging through it, pulling free bottles of water and packages of food. “Here, take these,” he offered. “I can restock later. The sooner you get out of here, the better, especially if you’ve basically got the fate of the human race in your backpacks.”

“No pressure or anything,” Ethan muttered, accepting the supplies. Dominic ignored his sarcasm and dug further into his bag, searching for anything else he could offer them. Ultimately, he gave up; everything left in his bag were the basics, stuff Ethan and Kimberly likely already had in theirs.

“So where are you guys going to try first?” Dominic asked, zipping his backpack closed and shouldering it. “Or is that a classified information kind of thing?”

Ethan and Kimberly exchanged a look, and Dominic could read the answer plainly in their eyes. Neither of them had any intention of telling him anything. It was obvious that, despite everything he’d done for Woodside, he still wasn’t trusted or accepted. He’d come to expect that from almost everyone; after all, most of the people there had no idea of the pains he’d taken on their behalf. He expected it from Ethan, since he was unaware of things that had happened in Woodside since he’d been there. But from Kimberly? He expected better. She, of all people, knew what he’d done to help Woodside, and her distrust hurt the most.

“Never mind,” he muttered. “Not like you’re going to tell me anyway.”

“Dominic,” Kimberly started to say, but he put up a hand to stop her.

“We need to get you two out of here while there’s still time,” he said. “I’m sure it won’t be long before the infected either encircle the community or break through the gates, and personally, I’d rather not be here when it happens.”

“How do you propose doing that?” Ethan asked.

“I could ask you the same question,” Dominic retorted. “You were planning to leave. Did you not consider how you were going to get out?”

“We were planning to climb the wall,” Kimberly said. Even as she spoke, Dominic heard the growing doubt in her voice.

“You two are hopeless,” Dominic muttered. He glanced toward the door they’d entered through and then motioned to them both. “Come on. The least I can do is help you guys get out safely,” he offered. “Everything after that is, of course, up to you.”

“Where are we going?” Ethan asked. “Just in case we get separated if something happens between here and there.”

Dominic looked at him dubiously, trying to decide if his loss of privacy was worth the risk. “My house,” he said. “If we get separated, head for my house. You should be able to get inside with no problem, because I left the front door unlocked. Worst case scenario, lock yourselves inside, and we’ll catch up when we can.”

When they were halfway to Dominic’s house, with Dominic and Remy leading the way, Remy spoke up. “I say we go with them,” she said. “They’re heading somewhat north, and the least we could do is escort them until we need to split off for Pennsylvania.”

“And what point would that serve?” Dominic asked. “I doubt they want us along. Besides, it’d be safer for them if we didn’t go with them. Smaller group means less chance of getting noticed by the infected.”

“But what if they end up needing help?” Remy protested.

“So what if they do?” Dominic retorted. “They’re adults who have tons of experience handling themselves against the infected. They’ll be fine. Besides, we should help evac the rest of the community.”

Remy made a face but didn’t respond, just gave him a short nod and shifted the sheathed bolo knife on her belt so it sat a few inches further back. “So when are we going to split?” she asked.

“As soon as we finish getting everyone out,” Dominic started, but his words were cut off by a sound from the front of the community. He missed a step, staggering off the edge of the sidewalk and into the gutter. If it weren’t for Remy’s surprisingly strong grip on his bicep, he would have fallen onto the hard pavement. He regained his balance and half-turned to look in the direction the sound had come from, squinting in the darkness as if he could make something out despite the distance.

It had been a crack, loud and sharp, like a rifle report but without the crispness of a bullet leaving a barrel. It echoed into the night, bouncing off buildings to reach his ears, stopping his heart in one breath only to restart it in the next. Then it rang out again, this time longer, more drawn-out, groaning as if some great beast were in its death throes. Then a crash, a rending of metal and wood, followed the groan. Dominic’s brain snapped out of its confused haze, and realization struck.

“Oh shit,” he breathed and grabbed Remy’s arm. He propelled her ahead of him. “The gates!” he shouted. “I think the gates have just collapsed!” He ushered Ethan and Kimberly out in front of him and took up the rear. He drew his pistol from the holster.

“Remy!” Dominic shouted, and she glanced over her shoulder at him. “Get them to the wall! I’ll be there in a minute!” She acknowledged his orders with a nod, and he veered off toward his house, bounding up the porch steps and throwing open the front door. His rifle was propped against the wall just inside. He grabbed it, scooped up the few remaining magazines of ammunition from the narrow table by the door, and stuffed them into his bag. He ran to join the others.

Remy, Ethan, and Kimberly were gathered at the door he’d cut into the wall; Ethan had the padlock in his grasp and was pulling at it, wrenching it on its hasp, trying to rip it free from its lock. “Move!” he barked, raising his rifle in a two-handed grasp. Ethan barely made it out of the way before Dominic brought the butt of the rifle down onto the padlock. It took three strikes, but the lock snapped on the final blow. He tore the padlock free and tossed it into the grass before ripping the panel from the wall, swinging it aside and holding it out of the way. Ethan stepped through the open gap in the fencing. He lifted his Glock and a flashlight, sweeping the immediate surroundings outside the wall. Once he was satisfied the way was clear, he motioned to Kimberly. She slipped out, and before Ethan could move away, Dominic reached through the gap and caught him by the bicep.

“Look, you two take care of each other and be careful,” he said. He dug a half dried-out pen and a scrap of paper from his backpack and scribbled an address on it before pressing the paper into Ethan’s hand. “This is the last address that I know of to a USAMRIID facility,” he explained. “If the CDC doesn’t pan out, try them. Considering they were probably involved in the virus’s creation, they’ll be equipped to deal with the samples.”

Ethan stuffed it into his pocket. “Will do,” he agreed. “Take care of Cade for me, okay? Promise me you won’t let anything happen to her or the baby.”

“I swear on my life,” Dominic promised. Ethan stared at him for a moment and then nodded like he was satisfied.

“We’ll be back,” Ethan said, clapping Dominic’s shoulder before turning to join Kimberly.

Dominic swung the door shut again, scooped up the padlock, and slipped it through the hasp, leaving it unlocked like he’d done on the supply room’s door in the rec center earlier.

Remy stood beside him, looking like she was ready to come unglued. Her eyes flickered between the wall where Ethan and Kimberly had just exited, his face, and the area beyond where the front gates were. She looked like she was itching for a fight. Dominic was going to give her one. He hefted his rifle and motioned to her.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go slaughter our way to the main house.”

Chapter 28

Brandt waited until ten minutes after Ethan and Kimberly had left before he moved into action. He wanted there to be less people on their tails so as to not draw the attention of the infected. Then he’d gathered Keith and the few men he had left and gave them instructions about dividing the survivors into groups. He told them to gather at the back of the community until he arrived to show them how to get out.

Brandt ran his options through his head again, inventorying where everyone was at. He didn’t know where Remy or Dominic were, but it was number one on his list to at least find Dominic; he had to ask him exactly how he was getting in and out of the community. He needed to know, and he needed to know now. Sadie and Jude were upstairs resting, and Cade was upstairs with them.

When the infected managed to break past the walls and gates, there would no longer be any safe places in Woodside, but at least upstairs would be some semblance of safer than downstairs. Brandt had spent his first week in Woodside rigging up every house’s staircases to blow and collapse, just like he’d done to the group’s safe house in Maplesville. It was a last resort measure, but the infected wouldn’t get them immediately.

Starvation might, though, a nasty voice in the back of his mind muttered darkly. He shook his head, trying to dislodge the thoughts, and refocused on the task at hand.

Derek was, last he knew of, downstairs packing up his basement lab. Brandt intended to send him upstairs to shelter with Cade once he finished packing; the doctor was important to Cade, since he was the one who was supposed to help her birth Brandt’s child. He had zero desire to leave that to chance.

The last person on his list was Isaac Wright. He hadn’t seen the man since the meeting they’d had earlier. Isaac was likely upstairs. He hadn’t decided what he was going to do with him yet; it probably involved figuratively shackling him to Cade and giving him orders to ensure she survived anything that came her way.

Sure, Cade could survive anything that came her way on her own, but he would feel better if he knew Isaac was there to back her up in the event that he wasn’t.

Decisions made, Brandt stepped out onto the front porch and turned his attention to the gates, studying them as well as he could in the low light. What he saw made his heart sink.

“That gate is not going to last much longer,” he murmured, taking a few steps toward it so he could get a better look. It was leaning inward, bowing precariously under the weight of the infected on the other side, and he started recalculating their survival chances as he reassessed how long they had until the infected got in.

Not long enough, clearly.

As he stared at the gates, willing them to stand upright under the onslaught of infected, they wobbled, wavering under the pressure. Brandt’s heart jumped up from his knees to his throat. “Son of a bitch,” he choked out as everything he stood to lose flooded his mind: Cade, their unborn child, safety, security, his life, the lives of everyone! He stuffed his heart back down where it belonged and bucked up his courage and determination. It was time for plan B, his fallback should the community find itself in the situation it was in now. With one last glance toward the gates and another at the main house, he started jogging toward the courtyard near the center of Woodside, aiming for the military Humvee parked there.

Several months before, when they’d run into trouble in Atlanta and Ethan had stayed behind to die so they could live and Cade had lain bleeding in his arms from a gunshot wound, Brandt had taken the few of them that were still alive through the dangerous streets of downtown Atlanta to the Tabernacle on Luckie Street. During the outbreak in Atlanta, the military had commandeered the former church-turned-concert-venue to use as a staging post and command center, and he’d thought he could use the radio to get in touch with someone in charge that could fly them out. He hadn’t succeeded—his pleas for help to Major Bradford were refused, with the excuse that it was “too risky”—so he’d stolen a Humvee and had gotten them out of Atlanta himself. That raced through his mind as he opened the driver’s door and climbed in, settling into the seat before hitting the aux switch to power on the Humvee’s battery, watching as the dash lights came to life.

The radio was mounted into the transmission hump, a contraption that looked deceptively easy to use to the untrained eye. Thank God I’m not an amateur, he thought as he switched it on and picked up the mic. He weighed it in his hand for a moment, debating the futility of trying to summon help, since it hadn’t worked last time he’d tried.

But no, he couldn’t not try, not with what was outside the community, not with what was about to be inside the community. Not with his pregnant wife’s life in imminent danger. And so, resolved, he started clicking through each channel, testing them, calling out for someone, anyone to answer him.

Brandt was nearly through all of the channels and starting to feel despair when he got a hit.

Just after his tentative call-out of, “Hello? Is anybody there?” a man’s voice broke through the static, clipped and authoritative.

“This is a secured channel. Identify yourself.”

“Oh thank Heaven, we’ve got a chance,” Brandt said, and then he clicked the button and spoke into the microphone. “This is Lieutenant Michael Evans, United States Marine Corps,” he started. “I’m putting out a mayday call and am requesting assistance.”

The pause that followed was long. And Brandt worried that whoever was on the other end had decided not to bother with him. His heart thumped harder in his chest, and he looked through the windshield, squinting in the moonlight at the front gates, trying to see how bad things were getting. Bad enough: the gates leaned even further over than before. Then the voice came back on, and he blew out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

“What is your SITREP, Lieutenant Evans?”

Brandt’s brain snapped into business mode, and he started to explain. “I’m currently holed up in a gated community with approximately fifty survivors, men, women, and children, some elderly. We’re under siege from the infected. There are at least a thousand of them outside our walls, and they’re dangerously close to getting in. I’m requesting assistance, either brute force or evacuation to a safer location.”

There was another pause, longer than the one before. Brandt tried to imagine what was happening on the other end of the radio. He pictured a man dressed in BDU’s, sitting at a radio, and surrounded by a beehive of military activity. He imagined a nameless base somewhere, a couple of officers hovering behind him as they debated on whether or not it was worth it to assist them.

“Please, please, please,” Brandt whispered, watching the gate more intently as it swayed. A loud crack shattered the air, and Brandt tensed as a slab of wood near the middle split, broke, and fell free. Infected arms thrust through the newly created gap as the wood gave way.

But then the voice came back on the radio, and his attention returned to the microphone in his hands.

“Lieutenant Evans, I’ve been asked to find out your location,” the man said. “Please tell us where you are, and be as detailed as possible.”

“Oh thank God,” Brandt said, and then he pressed the button and began to explain where they were, even as he toggled the beacon built into the radio, figuring it wouldn’t hurt to have double the location information. “We’re in a gated subdivision called Woodside, about two miles to the southwest of downtown Hollywood, South Carolina,” he said. “There are fifty-two of us at last count, but a group went missing this morning, so it’s less now.” He decided to drop his ace in the hole, sure that it would prompt the military into a rescue. “You should also know we have a CDC doctor here with us, and…and there might be a cure for the virus too.”

The silence on the other end of the radio was oppressive, and his eyes gravitated toward the gates again as he waited for their answer. A horrible squealing noise, like metal grinding against metal, had begun to emanate from the gate, and it sagged even further, far enough that he could see some of the infected climbing the steep slope, their dirtied, bloodied hands hooking over the top as they dragged themselves up, up, up, climbing over and on top of each other in their eagerness to get inside. He realized his breath was coming in short, painful gasps, and he forced himself to breathe slower before he hyperventilated like an idiot.

“Lieutenant Evans, I’ve been told to inform you that help will be on the way soon,” the man’s voice said over the radio. “Just sit tight. Extraction is en route to your location.”

“Copy,” Brandt said, but the word felt hollow. He had the sinking certainty that the military wouldn’t make it in time. Because, even as the man on the radio finished speaking, the gates let out a loud squeal of protest under the growing weight of the infected. Then the gate crashed fully to the ground in a tangle of metal and wood and bodies.

As they flooded inside, Brandt realized that he was entirely too far away from the main house—and Cade. There was no way he could outrun the horde pouring into Woodside.

There was no way to get to her before they tore him apart.

Chapter 29

Jude was still awake when a loud crash sounded outside the house, drawing him into a sitting position in a single, quick movement. He looked, wide-eyed, toward the window on the other side of the room, staring at it as if he expected the source to reveal itself without investigation. Then he rolled sideways until he nearly fell off the bed, bending his legs and planting his feet on the floor. He straightened and went to the window, pushing it open and leaning out into the cooler night air. He had to see what the noise was all about.

What he saw nearly made his heart stop.

“Shit,” Jude mouthed, pushing away from the window so quickly he nearly hit his head on the underside of the frame. He dashed across the bedroom, literally running across his bed, and staggering to a stop beside his sister’s twin bed. Sadie was asleep, lying on her side with her left hand tucked underneath her pillow, her right hand resting against the hilt of the sheathed machete that was beside her. He grabbed her shoulders and shook her roughly awake.

Sadie opened her eyes with a start and a flail, swinging her fists wildly at the intruder. Jude, used to the way his sister reacted when awakened unexpectedly, ducked her swing, shook her again, and immediately began to sign.

“The gates are down. The infected are in the community.” His hands moved with the same urgency that sent his heart racing in his chest.

Sadie blinked tiredly and rubbed at her face before giving him a confused, cloudy look. “What?”

“The gates are down,” Jude signed again, his movements jerky and impatient. “What do we do?”

“Are you serious?” Sadie asked, her eyes widening much like his when he’d heard the sound of the gates crashing to the ground.

“No, I just thought it would be a great joke to play on you,” Jude signed, rolling his eyes. “Of course I’m serious. They’re coming in now, and you’re wasting time. We need to go warn everyone else.” He didn’t wait for Sadie’s response; he turned on his heel and ran from the room.

Judging by the noise and chaos going on in the hallway and adjacent bedrooms—the doors to which had been thrown wide open—everyone else already knew that the gates had collapsed.

He heard Cade speaking urgently in one of the rooms near the end of the hall. He heard Isaac’s voice too. Incredibly, they were arguing about something, but he wasn’t going to stop and investigate. No, his sights were on something else entirely.

Jude hurried downstairs to the first floor. He wanted to check the front door and make sure it was secure. He was halfway across the entryway when a voice said from the shadows to his right, “Fancy finding you down here.”

Jude’s nerves nearly jumped out of his skin, and he had the pistol from his thigh holster out and aimed at the shadows before he’d even realized he’d done it.

“Hold your fire, kid. It’s just me.”

Jude felt his shoulders relax as Keith stepped into the meager light, his own pistol in hand but not aimed. “I’d ask what you’re doing down here, but it’s obvious,” Keith said, moving closer to him and giving him a small, friendly smile. “I’ve already checked the doors down here, but you’re welcome to double-check. It couldn’t hurt.”

Jude nodded and moved to the front door, checking to make sure all the locks were secured. He was surprised at the number of deadbolts that were on the door, and he figured that Brandt or one of his friends had added the extras as a precaution when they’d moved in. Assured of the front door’s relative safety, he checked the back door, noticing that Keith followed him as he walked through the house. He paused in the kitchen, digging into his ever-present backpack to pull free his notepad and pen, and then he wrote, “Any particular reason you’re following me?”

“Not really,” Keith admitted. “Company, I guess. Everybody else is upstairs. I figured I’d stay down here and keep an eye on things, but it can be lonely work when nobody else volunteers for the job.”

“Everybody upstairs is making too much noise,” Jude added. “We need to get them to shut the hell up. They need to be quiet so they don’t draw any attention to the fact we’re in here.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Keith said. “We should go tell them that. I don’t know about you, but it’d be great if we could, say, survive the night.” He started for the stairs, and Jude followed, already writing his note to whoever would listen to him. But when he reached the second floor, he realized he didn’t need it. Sadie was already in the bedroom telling Cade and Isaac that the noise needed to be cranked down to only the necessary. Both of them looked less than pleased to be getting a lecture from a teenager.

“The girl’s right,” Keith spoke up as he entered the room and heard what they were talking about. “And so is her brother. He was just telling me the same thing. We all need to shut the fuck up, and we need to do it right now.”

“That’s my husband out there,” Cade hissed, jabbing her finger at the window, her face a mask of fury. “He needs backup, and I’m not going to sit by and not do something to help him!”

“Well getting yourself and the rest of us killed because you can’t shut up isn’t going to help him at all,” Jude signed, forgetting in his irritation that Sadie was the only person in the room who could understand him. “We need to come up with a plan before we do anything else.” When everyone but Sadie stared at him like he’d been speaking Greek, he blew out an exasperated breath and stormed out of the room.

Let Sadie handle all that shit, he thought. He didn’t have time to stand there and write everything out, and he was too impatient to wait for Sadie to interpret for him to a bunch of adults who probably wouldn’t listen to a word he had to say—or sign—anyway.

It took him a moment to realize that Keith had followed him out of the room, and by then he was already halfway down the stairs. He glanced at the older man and then dug his notepad back out of his pocket and wrote down, a bit messily, “We should take an inventory of where everyone is at.”

Keith nodded. “I agree. You and I, your sister, Isaac, Cade, and Derek are in the house,” he said. Jude flipped to a new page and started making a list.

“Brandt?” Jude mouthed, and Keith read his lips well enough to answer.

“Last I saw him, he was going outside to try to track down Dominic and find out his exit point in the community. He hadn’t made it back before the gates fell.”

“Who else?” Jude wrote in the margins of his page.

“Remy and Dominic, but God only knows where they’re at,” Keith said, making a face. “I wouldn’t trust Dominic further than I could throw him anyway.”

“Why not?”

Keith read his question and then snorted softly. “Long story, kid. Maybe I’ll tell you sometime.”

“I’m not a kid,” Jude wrote, wrinkling his nose. “I’m eighteen.”

“Oh really?” Keith looked him up and down, as if reassessing something in his head, and then smiled. “Good to know. I’ll keep that in mind.”

Jude raised an eyebrow and almost wrote, “For what?” but decided against it. He started to lift his hands to sign but then stopped, embarrassed, and flipped to a fresh page to write, “We should try to figure out where Brandt is and try to get him over here. Something tells me we’re going to need every capable set of hands we can get.”

Chapter 30

Brandt’s first instinct was to run. As he sat in the driver’s seat of the Humvee, watching the oncoming crush of infected flood through the newly created gap in the wall, trampling each other in their eagerness to get to the uninfected humans inside, he felt the urge to fling the door open, fall out of the Humvee, and just run in any direction that would take him further away. But that was suicide, he knew. He had to be smart about this, even if it was an impossible situation.

Brandt flipped the aux switch, twisting it to turn the battery off. The last thing he needed was to risk drawing attention to himself with the glow from the dashboard’s lights. Once the lights were out, he slouched in the seat, sliding lower so he wouldn’t chance being visible. He began to inventory what he had on him, trying to come up with a plan.

He had his M9 Beretta; he always carried that with him, holstered on his right hip. Alongside it were two small mag holders with spare magazines, and the knee pocket on his pants held a handful of loose ammunition. His survival knife—the same one he’d used to kill one of the infected earlier that day—was sheathed on the back of his belt, and he had a KA-BAR knife tucked into a sheath on his combat boot. Everything else was in the main house.

In short: he didn’t have nearly enough to make it from point A to point B on his own—and it was questionable even if he had help.

“What to do, what to do,” Brandt muttered to himself, almost chanting. He eased up in his seat, trying to peer out into the community to assess his options. The main house was about four hundred yards away, on roughly a diagonal line from where the Humvee was parked. But he didn’t think that was an option; any route he took toward the main house would put him on a path right through the oncoming horde and draw said horde to the main house.

Taking the Humvee wasn’t an option. The assortment of vehicles were parked too close together, and he’d left the ring of keys to the cars at the main house.

To the right of the main house was the medical house, but he discounted that option too; it was simply too close to the main house for his comfort.

Brandt turned his head in the other direction. The houses closest to him were to his left and empty—useless due to lack of materials. They hadn’t secured any of the empty houses from invasion from the infected. He wanted to punch himself for the oversight.

His next option was the rec center, which lay almost directly behind him, by about a football field’s length. It was well stocked with food, and there was the possibility of a few weapons inside; at the very least, there was a pretty significant stash of alcohol inside that he could turn into weapons, assuming he could get inside, of course. He glanced at the infected through the windshield. They were gaining on him, fast, and if he was going to move, he needed to do it now.

Brandt took in two deep breaths, steeling his nerves, and snatched the keys out of the ignition. He flung the driver’s door open. Then he was out and running, dodging around an abandoned bicycle. He ran as fast as he could toward the rec center.

The sounds of the infected filled the air. Their pounding feet hammered the ground, slapping against pavement and concrete and dirt and other bodies. They shoved their way around and over each other. They flowed into Woodside like water, the stench of rot and decay breezing in with them, turning the air into a choking, bitter thickness.

Brandt fought to not glance over his shoulder, knowing it would slow him down; at the same time, he did not want to know just how close the infected were to him.

Brandt’s boot came down on a doll lying in the dirt, and his foot twisted. He toppled to the ground with a muffled curse. The utterance wasn’t loud, but it was just loud enough for several of the infected to hear, and they adjusted course and started toward him. He wanted to swear again, but he bit it back, grinding his palms against the dirt and levering himself up.

He’d barely gained his feet when something slammed into him from behind, taking him back down to the ground with a snarl of hunger. Brandt bucked upward, throwing the infected that had landed on him off like a bull. Then he rolled over onto his back and snatched at the knife on his belt with one hand. The man scrambled back on top of him. Using his free hand, Brandt held the man off as he fumbled for the clasp that held the knife in its sheath. The man on top of him growled, baring his teeth, snapping at him with hunger. Brandt gasped as he pushed the man harder. He swung the knife up, slamming it into his temple. The man went limp, and he kicked the body off of him, rolling to the side and regaining his feet once more.

In the meantime, while he’d been fighting off that first target, the leading edge of the infected had begun to reach him, and he immediately tried to fight them off, swinging his knife at those closest to him. He sliced one across the face and another on the chest, moving backward the entire time, doing his best to steer his way toward the rec center. He switched his knife to his left hand, squeezing it tighter, and drew his Beretta from its holster, aiming it into the crowd, knowing it would be a bad idea to squeeze the trigger. He didn’t have a chance to even use the pistol, though, because two more infected came at him from the sides, dragging him back down to the earth again. He struggled, twisting, trying to free himself from their hands. It was then that he realized that the cuff of his pants had been pulled free from his boot, at about the same time a set of ragged, broken teeth sank into the flesh of his calf muscle.

Brandt screamed out in pain, kicking his leg, thrashing it, and tearing it from the teeth that had clamped down. He’d only just freed his leg when another set of teeth bit down on his right forearm…and another on his left shoulder. Nerveless fingers released his weapons, involuntarily, and as hands pawed at his clothing, and as he continued to struggle against them, Brandt prayed that Cade would survive the onslaught of infected, even if he didn’t.

Chapter 31

Remy’s heart was jack hammering in her chest, almost painfully so, as she followed Dominic at a dead run through the community, racing toward the main house. Every instinct inside her was telling her to run, not toward the danger but away from it, back in the direction from which they’d come and right out of the community to join Ethan and Kimberly. No matter how scared she was of Ethan—irrationally so—it had to be safer with him than it was in Woodside. But the rest of her friends were ahead, not behind, and she had to help them while she could.

The leading edge of the infected was just ahead; Remy was already freeing her bolo knife from its sheath, ready to face them head on, but when she put on a burst of speed to engage them, Dominic caught her arm and pointed her in a different direction.

“Stay parallel to them!” he ordered. “Evasion is important here, because there are too many of them to fight!”

“Shit,” she swore, knowing he was right. But his words were warring with her competing desires to flee or to wade in and get her hands dirty. She swore again and adjusted her course to one that would avoid as many of the infected as possible.

When a pained scream filled the air, stretching out over the sounds of the infected, she froze, stutter-stepping right there in the middle of the street. She nearly fell on her face when her brain caught up with the sound and registered what—and who—she was hearing.

She knew that sound. She knew that voice.

Without a second thought, without any consideration for where she was or what she was about to do, Remy screamed out, “Brandt!” Then she turned on her heel and charged in the direction of his screams, toward the courtyard by the rec center and right into the closest gathering of the infected.

Somewhere behind her, Remy heard Dominic grunt and swear. She heard a meaty thunk as one of the blades he carried struck flesh. She heard the thud of a body hitting pavement. He’d followed her, right into the thick of it, and she hadn’t meant for him to. But it was too late now; they had the horde’s attention. She glanced over her shoulder to see Dominic fighting off several infected, their movement alerting even more to their presence. She couldn’t leave him to fend for himself, so she squared her shoulders and doubled back to help. Out of reflex—or maybe one of those ingrained suicidal tendencies she seemed to have—she inserted herself between Dominic and the oncoming infected, her bolo knife up and ready to strike.

“What are you doing?” Dominic demanded.

“Saving your ass,” Remy bit back.

A woman ran toward her, her hands out, her teeth bared like a crazed, rabid animal. Remy tightened her grip on her bolo knife as the woman shifted to her right, and with one hard sweep, Remy sliced the blade into the woman’s throat. She ripped it free as the woman staggered with the force of the blow. Another swing took the woman’s head clean off.

Remy didn’t pause to examine her handiwork. Instead, she turned to the next attacker in line, stabbing the man in the stomach to slow him down, ripping the blade free, and spinning, using the force of her body’s momentum to slice the man’s head off too.

It was then—after Remy had killed the second infected and was readying herself for the third—that she realized that something was very, very wrong.

The infected were running past her.

They were running past her, like she wasn’t even there.

“What the hell?” Remy said out loud, which earned her a few glances from some of the infected, but other than that, they continued moving past her, flooding toward Dominic. She swore again and pushed her way toward him, killing infected that didn’t even look at her as she took them down. She sliced her way through to him and grabbed his arm, nearly earning herself a machete to the face for her trouble. She ducked to avoid the blow and shouted over the ruckus, “Dominic! Come on!”

Dominic looked at her with wide, startled eyes, stumbling as she dragged him free of the crowd of infected. He seemed to register immediately that the infected weren’t attacking Remy. “Why aren’t they attacking you?” he asked breathlessly as they broke free of the grasping hands, hands that hesitated when in her proximity.

“I don’t know, but don’t bitch about it,” Remy replied, “because I just saved your ass from getting eaten. Now come on. We have to find Brandt and help him!” She didn’t wait for Dominic to agree to her plan; she simply hauled him along, right through the infected, which parted before her like the Red Sea had for Moses, closing ranks again just barely behind Dominic. She could hear his breaths, ragged and gasping with horror, but she didn’t have time to be horrified herself, not if she was going to save Brandt.

The infected ahead were clustered around a black Ford truck. They reached under the truck as if desperate for something that lay underneath, and Remy knew that that was where Brandt was hiding. Her suspicion was confirmed when one of the infected jerked back with a snarl of pain, cradling a stump where a hand had once been. Remy couldn’t help the small smile that crossed her face. If he was still fighting, then he was still alive, and that meant there was a chance she could get him out of there.

Now, it was just a matter of how.

Remy had never been one to practice the fine arts of subtlety, and she didn’t see any reason to start now. She glanced back at Dominic. “Whatever you do, stick close to me.” Then she charged forward into the mess surrounding the truck.

It worked just like Remy had hoped. The sea of infected parted, leaving a temporary corridor for her to walk through to the truck. Cold, clammy hands reached for her, brushing against her arms, touching her hair, sending chills over her skin as she fought not to gag. Dominic squeezed her hand tightly, almost painfully, as she pulled him through the crowd. She felt his nervousness vibrating down his arm and into his hand. She worried that he would do something stupid.

When Remy reached the truck, she glanced back at Dominic before taking a knee to look underneath. Brandt stared back at her from the darkness under the truck, blood stained and in obvious pain. He reached toward her, and she stretched her arm out, clasping his hand in her free one.

“How is he?” Dominic asked, and the infected around them seemed to tense, several of them making snarling sounds and pushing forward. Remy was jostled until she was shoved against the truck.

“Shut up!” Remy hissed, glaring at him as she pushed herself off the truck. “Not another word. You’re stirring them up.” Then she leaned back down to look at Brandt. “Are you okay?”

“I’m hurt,” Brandt whispered.

“How bad?”

He shrugged and winced. “I don’t know.” He tightened his fingers on hers and breathed, “I don’t know how you’re doing it, but please, get me the hell out of here.”

Remy looked up at the crowd, trying to guess at the number. At least a hundred, if she had to guess, but she’d never been very good at guessing. Clearly, she had some sort of camouflage against them, perhaps caused by whatever she and Dominic had injected into her earlier; otherwise, she’d never have been able to walk through them unscathed. And it seemed that her camouflage extended to Dominic to some degree. She was curious how far that camouflage would expand past just one person, but she didn’t know if it was time to be experimenting with it. Regardless, she had to get Brandt out of there. Leaving him behind was out of the question.

“Dominic, help me,” she said, pulling at his hand. He took a knee and peered under the truck, his eyes widening. He reached underneath and wrapped his hand around Brandt’s wrist.

“Come on, man, let’s get you out of here,” he said. And with one tremendous pull, he yanked Brandt halfway out. Brandt grunted in pain, his entire body tensing, but other than that, he didn’t make a sound.

He didn’t have to, though.

The moment he was dragged out into the open, the infected went wild, throwing themselves forward, hands outstretched, scrabbling at both him and Dominic. Remy let out a cry of alarm and dove between her friends and the horde, pushing the infected back, trying to force them away from the two men.

“Back! Get back!” she yelled without thinking, and to her shock, they obeyed, backing away from the three of them. It was only a step or two, but it was enough to give them breathing room and to give Dominic the opportunity to get Brandt onto his feet.

Dominic slung Brandt’s arm over his shoulder, smearing blood on his hand and shirt, and said to Remy, “We’ve got to go!”

“Where?”

“Rec center,” Brandt choked out. “It’s closest.”

“Head that way,” Remy said, tugging Brandt’s other arm around her shoulders and starting forward. With her free hand, she pushed infected out of their way, shoving them aside to force a path wide enough to accommodate the three of them. “I doubt this is going to last,” she said to Brandt as she waded through the crowd. “Any chance you can move a little faster?” Brandt grunted, but he did pick up his pace just enough to be noticeable, limping along beside her, his fingers digging into her shoulder as he clung to her.

The infected behind them began to crowd closer the further they moved from the truck until they were pressed against them, their hands grabbing at Remy’s hair and tugging at her shirt again, as if they were fans trying to get a touch of their idol. She shuddered, itching to pick up her pace, but if she did, she’d outpace Brandt and leave him behind. So she soldiered on and forced herself to keep moving.

The rec center’s front door was just ahead, so close that she felt like she could reach out and touch it. Three more limping steps and then they were there, pushing the door open, staggering inside, and slamming it shut behind them. Brandt slumped to the floor with a groan, and Remy rushed forward to help Dominic as he worked on barricading the doors, throwing the locks at the tops and bottoms and helping to slide a large, thick board through the handles.

Now that they were out of sight of the infected, the creatures seemed to forget their adoration for Remy. They surged against the doors, slamming against them and making them bow inward half an inch. Remy stumbled backward, nearly tripping over Brandt, and dragged Dominic with her.

“Go check all the doors, make sure they’re secured,” Remy said to Dominic. She pushed away from him and went to Brandt, kneeling on the floor to check his injuries. As Dominic scrambled to check the rec center’s other doors, she turned Brandt onto his back and dumped her backpack onto the floor. After unzipping it, she started to dig through the supplies for her first aid kit. “What happened out there?” she asked as she found the kit and tore it open, pawing through the contents.

“I was in the Humvee, and they got in,” Brandt said, trying to sit up. Remy planted a hand against his chest and pushed him back down.

“Lay still,” she ordered, making her voice as stern as she could. She found her trauma shears and grabbed the hem of his t-shirt. She cut it free from his torso.

“I didn’t have a clear path to the main house or the medical house, and my only real option was here,” he continued. “I made a run for it, but I didn’t make it.”

“Obviously,” Remy muttered, pushing the shredded remains of his t-shirt aside and moving on to his pant legs. “I hope you have another set of clothes somewhere nearby,” she commented, as she used the shears to cut a slit in the bottom of his pant legs, sawing through the cuffs. She grabbed the two sides of the slit and pulled, ripping each of his pant legs up to his knees, revealing bloodied, wounded calves. “Son of a bitch,” she said. “What did you do, let them use you for a chew toy?” Without waiting for his answer, she grabbed a bottle of sterile water from her supplies and ripped the cap off. “Hold still,” she ordered, and then she upended the bottle over the wounds on his arms and legs.

To Brandt’s credit, he merely grunted, his back arching off the floor slightly before he collapsed back against the tile. “Holy shit,” he breathed. Remy finished washing away the blood on one of the wounds and then sucked in air through her teeth.

“Jesus, that looks painful,” she said, examining the bite marks that were decorating his skin. “You’ll be lucky if this doesn’t get infected.”

“I’ll be lucky if I don’t get infected,” Brandt said. “We haven’t established my immunity yet.”

“Well, no time like the present to work on that.” Remy pulled out gauze and tape and started to bandage his wounds. She crawled up to get to his arms. When she took one by the wrist to examine the first wound she planned to bandage, Brandt twisted his hand around to grasp hers tightly.

“How did you do that?” he asked. “How did you make them ignore you like that?”

Remy paused in the act of opening a package of sterile gauze squares and looked down at her hands. She spread her fingers wide, studying them like they were different.

“Honestly? I don’t know,” she admitted quietly.

Chapter 32

The woods around Ethan were uncomfortably quiet as he eased his way under the shadow of the trees, his pistol out in a two-handed grip. Kimberly was just ahead of him, her machete in her hand, and even from several feet back, Ethan could tell that her shoulders were tight and stiff with tension. He could hardly blame her for that; he felt like he was going to crawl right out of his own skin at any moment.

It was quiet. Too quiet. There seemed to be no other living creatures besides the two of them in the woods, when there should have been squirrels, birds, deer, insects. But there was just them, crunching through the underbrush and the dead leaves. He glanced around, wondering where the animals had gone. He wondered if they’d cleared out around Woodside when the infected had shown up. His heart stuttered in his chest as he thought about the hordes of infected gathering outside the community’s walls and the friends he’d left inside of those very same walls.

Ethan shook the thought loose from his head. Now wasn’t the time to even think about those he was leaving behind. There was only ahead, only the woman he was supposed to be helping, only the job he had committed to guarding her for. And she was getting too far ahead of him for his comfort.

“Kim,” he hissed, trying to keep his voice down and somehow get her attention. She half-turned to look back at him, eyebrows raised, and then seemed to realize just how far ahead of him she’d gone, because she slowed down to let him catch up.

“Sorry,” she murmured, her voice coated with embarrassment. “My nerves are getting the better of me out here.”

Ethan nodded in understanding, releasing his grip on his pistol with one hand to unclip his compass from one of his belt loops. “It’s okay,” he assured her. “I totally understand. If you’re not used to being out in the open like this, it can be nerve-wracking. Hell, it can be even if you are used to it.”

She nodded in agreement, moving closer to him and asking, “What are you doing?” She wasn’t looking at him, her blue eyes rapidly scanning their surroundings instead. Good thing, too. Visibility was poor—most of the light from the almost-full moon overhead was blocked by the overhanging branches above—but that was no excuse to let her attention lapse.

“I’m trying to get my bearings, or at least some semblance of them,” Ethan explained. “I’m thinking we should head east for now, put as much distance as we can between us and the infected and Woodside. Then we can start for the first CDC installation that Derek directed us to.”

Kimberly nodded slowly. “I’m going to follow your lead for now,” she said. “I haven’t been out in this mess much, and my brain is too frazzled to even try to cope enough to plan right now.”

Ethan clipped the compass back onto his belt loop and gestured to her. “Come on, then. The sooner we get moving, the sooner we can get further away from this party and the sooner we can get these samples into the right hands.”

Kimberly was silent as they started walking again, trying to keep their steps on the crunchy ground as quiet as possible. Ethan had his Glock back in his two-handed grip, walking just slightly ahead of Kimberly this time, on the alert for any movement. As he carefully slid through the dark spaces around trees, he had a sudden moment where he felt like he was back in the normal world, in the one before the outbreak, when he’d been just a police officer doing his daily duties to his community, trying his best to serve the people he’d been committed to serving. There had been a time, early in his career, where he’d participated in a drug bust—an activity he’d always hated doing, but only because of the uncertainty over what he might walk into. It had been a dark, dark night, similar to the one he was currently walking through, and his nerves had been on edge. He’d only just started to relax, started to guess that the occupants of the house he and his fellow officers were approaching weren’t going to put up a fight, when the gunfire had erupted from the building, peppering the ground and trees around them and sending Ethan’s heart leaping into his throat.

That feeling of terror and nervousness at the idea of someone getting the drop on him had resurfaced, slowly but surely, in the minutes since he and Kimberly had stepped out through the gap in the wall. He forced himself to take in measured breaths to stay calm and focused. And it was because of that effort that he was relaxed enough to notice the first infected person stagger out from behind a large oak tree. He held his hand up, motioning for Kimberly to stop where she was.

She caught sight of the infected man stepping out into the little bit of moonlight around them, and she gasped.

“Shh,” Ethan breathed out, catching one of her hands.

They stood silently, watching as the man stumbled through the trees. His clothes were tattered, dirtied, and Ethan could see just how thin he was through his threadbare clothing; his collarbones jutted, and his shoulder blades reminded Ethan of bird’s wings. It was hard to tell how old the man had been when he’d been alive; his hair had long since fallen out, and his skin was desiccated, tight against his bones like he’d been starving for months. In that moment, Ethan felt nothing but pity for the undead thing yards away from him, not because of what it was but because of what it could have been. The man was just a victim of the virus that had spread like wildfire through their world. He couldn’t help that he’d gotten sick, any more than Ethan could.

And that, he realized immediately, was the crux of his thought process. That man was what he could have become, what he had become for several months, and compared to that man, he was lucky to have the friends that he had, friends willing to stick their necks out for him and take his presumably hopeless body back to Dr. Rivers and pray for a miracle. They’d gotten their miracle, even if he wasn’t feeling quite as whole as before he’d turned.

It was that pity that drove Ethan’s next actions. He slowly slid his Glock back into its holster. He pulled the machete from its sheath on his belt. He glanced at Kimberly, motioned for her to stay put, and then approached the infected man at a slow walk, not bothering to keep his steps silent. The infected man stumbled around at the sound of his approach and swiveled to look in Ethan’s direction. But his cloudy gaze slid past Ethan to Kimberly. Ethan shifted with the man’s gaze, inserting himself between the two, trying his best to keep the man’s focus on him, only him.

It seemed to work, because the infected man’s eyes were drawn right back to him, and he started to shuffle in Ethan’s direction, moving as if his limbs were arthritic. He stopped less than a foot from Ethan, and the scent of filth and rot filled Ethan’s nose. It was all he could do to not clap his hand over his face to block out the smell. Instead, he kept his eyes on the man, his hands down at his sides, his grip steady and sure on the machete, ready to react to anything the infected man might try to do to him. The man only stared at Ethan as if he were a particularly interesting-looking insect. Ethan stared back, trying his damnedest to stay calm; he’d never been so close to one of the infected, not like this, not while he wasn’t fighting to kill one before it killed him. He couldn’t understand how the infected man could even see him with the cataracts clouding his vision, but the man somehow knew he was there, knew exactly where he was standing. He wondered what mechanism the infected used to track their prey, especially the ones who were in that second stage of infection, where someone had killed them and they’d come back, like they were zombies. But ultimately, he wondered about how this man had gotten sick and if it was anything like what had happened to him.

And that was the reason he lifted the machete and drove it into the underside of the man’s chin, angling the blow to slice through desiccated muscle and tissue, severing the spinal cord. The man collapsed at his feet. Ethan wiped the blade of his machete off with a rag from his pocket and then sheathed it before motioning to Kimberly.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her deeper into the trees. They walked in silence for half a mile; the only sounds were their breathing and the crunching of debris under their shoes. It was only after they had put sufficient distance between themselves and the infected that Kimberly finally spoke.

“So what was that all about back there?” she asked, a little breathless with the exertion of climbing over the tangled underbrush.

“What was what all about?” Ethan asked.

“That.” She motioned over her shoulder with an emphatic jab of her thumb. “The whole thing with the infected guy back there. It didn’t even try to attack you or anything. It just stood there staring at you, and you were staring at it like you two were having a…I don’t know, a moment or something.”

Ethan glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “What, you jealous of mine and the zombie guy’s moment?” he joked, barely suppressing a grin.

“No, of course not,” Kimberly said. “Only…if you being able to stare down one of the infected and not end up zombie chow is a side effect of Derek’s cure for you, well, that’s definitely an unforeseen side effect that could be incredibly beneficial.”

“And yet another thing to make me freakishly set off from the rest of humanity,” Ethan grumbled.

“You’re not a freak,” Kimberly said.

The crunch of leaves underfoot from somewhere to their right silenced her. Ethan stopped and grabbed her arm, tugging her closer to him as he squinted into the darker foliage, trying to decipher what was making the sound. As his eyes registered the shapes in the darkness, he drew in a breath.

“Kim?” he said, his voice low as he nudged her further behind him. “Do me a favor?”

“Yeah?”

“Run. Now.”

Kimberly didn’t hesitate. Ethan followed her.

At least two dozen infected emerged from the trees and gave chase.

Chapter 33

Dominic paced the rec center’s dining area, glancing at the barricaded doors every time he walked past. It had been less than an hour since the gates had fallen, and things outside didn’t seem to be getting any better. If anything, the situation was worse. Hands banged rhythmically against the glass panes of every door and window in the place, and it was loud enough to drown out any conversation that wasn’t yelled. The infected weren’t making any headway at getting inside, but they were sure as hell making his migraine worse.

He massaged his temples with his thumbs, trying to think past the ache and figure out his options. The situation was, in a word, dire. Brandt had come down with a fever and had begun to sweat since they’d brought him inside, and he wasn’t sure if the man was going to turn into one of the infected or not; Remy was apparently some sort of super woman with magical camouflage abilities that made her virtually invisible to the infected. Ethan and Kimberly were long gone, and Cade and everyone else might as well have been on another planet.

He had few resources—at least in regards to weapons—and precious few sets of hands to help use them. With Brandt fallen ill and weakening, he had even fewer. It was just him and Remy against the horde outside the doors, and if they got in, he would be fucked. He stopped in front of the doors, scowling, his arms folded over his chest.

“What are you over here being so growly about?” Remy asked as she approached. She stopped beside him and took up a stance similar to his, watching the doors carefully.

“You have to actually ask that question?” Dominic asked. He motioned at the doors and added, “I figured that that was answer enough for you.”

Remy shrugged and shifted to tuck her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “Just making idle conversation, since it seems like we’ll probably be stuck here for a while.”

Dominic rocked his head in Brandt’s direction. “How’s the third part of our party?”

“Hanging in there. I think.” She glanced behind them and added, “His fever has spiked pretty high. I’m starting to get really worried.”

“Maybe that’s normal for him,” he suggested.

“Yeah, maybe.” Remy sounded doubtful, though, and Dominic couldn’t blame her. For all he knew, Brandt was slowly turning and would, sometime soon, get up and try to eat their faces off.

At that thought, Dominic turned to look at Brandt more closely. Remy had helped Brandt dress and had built him a pallet on the floor out of clothes from the storage room, and he lay on it, his head resting on top of a rolled-up bundle of t-shirts and blue jeans, his eyes closed in sleep. Even from where he stood, Dominic could see the sheen of sweat on the other man’s skin and the way his chest rose and fell irregularly. He wasn’t a fan of Brandt’s, but he did respect him greatly, and he hoped—both for Brandt’s sake and Cade’s—that Brandt didn’t turn, and that he really was immune to the Michaluk Virus.

Dominic turned his attention back to the doors, and out of the corner of his eye, he could see Remy staring at him. He looked at her, eyebrow raised, and she said, “I’m just wondering what’s on your mind.”

“I’m trying to figure out how to get us out of this,” he answered.

“Any ideas you feel like running by me?”

He hummed as he considered his options again. “Well, right now, you’re our greatest asset. You seem to be able to waltz your way right through those fuckers without them touching you. And it even seems like you can get one or two people out with you. Brandt doesn’t seem to be able to do that, considering the infected tried to eat him.”

“So what exactly are you thinking?” Remy asked. “That I can evacuate Woodside one person at a time?”

“The thought did cross my mind,” Dominic admitted.

Remy shook her head. “It would never work,” she said. “Psychologically, most of the people here could never handle having that many of the infected around them. They wouldn’t be able to keep their mouths shut, and they’d get themselves killed while I was trying to get them out.”

“It’s a viable idea, Remy. What else are we supposed to do? Leave everybody in their houses to rot?” Dominic asked.

“Of course not,” Remy replied. “The infected would get inside long before then.”

Dominic stared at her, aghast at the nonchalance with which she discussed the deaths of all of Woodside’s residents. He ground his teeth together and shook his head.

“Remy, you shouldn’t say things like that.”

“Why not? I’m just speaking the truth.”

“Yeah, and sometimes the truth isn’t something that people need to hear,” Dominic said. “And I’m sure the people in Woodside don’t need to hear you basically saying the situation is completely hopeless and that they’re going to die.”

Remy shrugged, as if she didn’t care what the besieged citizens of Woodside thought of her defeatist pronouncement, and Dominic gritted his teeth again. The people of Woodside didn’t like him, and he wasn’t exactly a fan of theirs as a result, but he didn’t think it was right to be so blasé about their potential deaths, to basically give up on them without even trying to save them. And he had to try; he couldn’t just sit there and let them die.

He went to the storage room, and Remy followed him, her face a mask of naked curiosity. “What are you doing?”

“I want to check out what’s going on outside,” Dominic replied. He opened the door and began pulling mops, mop buckets, brooms, and cleaning supplies out of the way, shoving them against the dining area’s wall.

“We’re surrounded by infected,” Remy retorted. “What’s there to check out?”

“You would be surprised.” Dominic fished a small metal flashlight out of his pocket, pressed the button on the bottom of the light, and shined its beam up towards the closet’s ceiling. There was a trap door at the top and a yellow ladder bolted to the wall. A padlock held the door shut so no one could go through it and get themselves hurt. Dominic frowned; he’d forgotten about the padlock, and he wasn’t sure where to begin looking for the key. But then he remembered: he didn’t need a key. A screwdriver or some other similar tool would do just fine.

“Help me find something I can open that lock with,” he said to Remy, not bothering to turn and look at her. “I want to get up on the roof.”

Remy nodded and headed toward the kitchen to search for a tool while he searched the closet itself. He pushed cleaning supplies around, picking up one object before tossing it onto the floor and choosing another. He made zero headway until Remy brought him a sharpening steel, a long metal rod with a handle that Cade used to sharpen the knives she cooked with.

“Perfect,” he said approvingly, and then he stuck the steel between his teeth and grabbed the ladder’s rungs, scrambling up it as quickly as he dared. Once he was at the top, he hooked his arm through the rungs and stuck the steel into the lock, twisting, prying, and trying to leverage the hasp to pop out. Finally, after much cursing, the lock snapped under the pressure. He tossed it to the floor, tucked the steel into his belt, and shoved against the door. It opened with a squeal of rusty hinges, sticking halfway before letting out a final creak and crashing to the rooftop. The stench of rot and unwashed bodies flowed into the cramped storage closet through the opening, and Dominic wrinkled his nose. He glanced down at Remy to see her reaction. She stared up at him, her hands on her hips, seemingly unaffected by the stink rolling down into the building. The look in her eyes suggested that she was debating whether to stay in the dining area with Brandt or climb the ladder to join Dominic on the roof.

He didn’t wait for her to decide; Dominic climbed the remainder of the ladder and emerged into the cooler air outside, trying to ignore the smell as he stepped away from the trap door.

Just moments later, Remy joined him, crawling out onto the roof and finding her footing, carefully testing each step for stability as she made her way toward him. He stood several feet back from the edge of the roof where he wasn’t easily seen by the hordes below. As she approached, he heard her sharp intake of breath and a murmured, “Holy shit,” as she took in the view.

To say there were infected as far as the eye could see was a bit of a misstatement, because Dominic could just make out the street that led to the community’s front gates. But even so, there were more infected tumbling down to join the horde that was already inside. The sight and scope of such horror was breathtaking, and Dominic’s hopes of managing Woodside’s evacuation, despite the mass’s presence, were dashed. There was just no way anyone alive and uninfected could get through them all.

Remy hadn’t said anything after her first amazed utterance, and Dominic glanced at her, wondering what she was thinking. She chewed her bottom lip, her eyes darting around, closely examining one spot before moving on to the next. Just when he was about to speak, she broke the silence, pointing toward the right. “I think I could get through right there,” she said thoughtfully.

“Through to where?” Dominic asked, hoping she was putting together a plan.

“The main house, of course,” Remy said. “I want to check on Cade and make sure she’s okay. Hopefully, that will relieve any of Brandt’s concerns. And while I’m there, I want to get some more weapons for us, or at least some more ammunition. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have very much on me, and I’ll feel a lot better if I can get some more.”

Dominic nodded his agreement. “Can you make it?” he asked, gauging the distance with his eyes. It was at least four hundred yards between the rec center and the medical house and then a little more to the main house. He figured that if anyone could do it, Remy could, but all the same, he wanted her to be careful. For all they knew, what had happened on the ground outside the rec center had been a fluke, and the last thing he wanted was for her to step outside and be killed. The thought of that happening put a lump in his throat. He swallowed it down and clenched his fist.

“Yeah, I can make it,” Remy said, and while she sounded confident and assured, she didn’t sound boastful for once. “I’ll be fine. I can get over there, check on Cade, get some supplies for us, maybe take some over to them while I’m at it, and then get back over here. Hopefully before Brandt wakes up and wonders where I’m at.”

Dominic nodded again, trying to think over her plan—as sparse as it was—and look for holes in it. But he couldn’t think past the mental image of Remy making it halfway across the courtyard and the infected suddenly turning on her and killing her where she stood. Which was why, when she turned to go through the trap door, he reached out and caught her by the wrist, pulling her toward him. She gasped as her body collided with his, and then he caught her face in his hands and tilted it up.

The kiss he pressed to her lips wasn’t anything passionate or elaborate; he didn’t have time for that. Instead, it was a simple kiss, chaste, just lips against lips. “Be careful,” he requested as she looked up at him with wide, surprised eyes.

“Of course,” she replied. She still stared at him, not stepping away, as she asked, “What was that for?”

Dominic shrugged and dropped his hands from her face. “I just wanted to be able to say I’d done it once in my life.”

Remy smiled and squeezed his hand. “Maybe you’ll get to do it again sometime,” she said before stepping away from him and heading for the trap door.

“Really?” Dominic called after her.

Remy slid through the opening and looked back at him from the top rung of the ladder. Her smile widened, and she winked. “Count on it,” she promised, and then she descended the ladder and disappeared from view.

Chapter 34

Several hours passed, and Cade felt every minute of them slide by her, heightening her anxiety over where Brandt was. She’d spent a good portion of the past several hours lurking in the window of the second-floor bedroom that she and Brandt shared, a night-vision scope clutched in her hand, searching the crowds almost frantically for some sign of her husband, alive or dead.

In her heart, she knew he was alive. He had to be. She just had to find him; that was all. And then, if he was in any trouble, she had to plan out a rescue mission.

The sound of heavy footsteps met her ears, and then Isaac spoke. “Any luck?” he asked. He knew what she was doing; he’d figured it out the moment she’d taken up residence on the uncomfortable chair in front of the window, the moment she’d taken her night-vision scope out of her bag. She wondered if he thought it was futile, but she was afraid to ask.

Cade sighed and shook her head. “No, nothing. Just a bunch of stinking corpses.”

Isaac frowned and grabbed another chair from the other side of the room. He placed it next to hers and sank down on it with an exhausted sigh. “Anything I can do?”

“Develop psychic powers and get in touch with Brandt to make sure he’s okay and to find out where he is?” Cade suggested, and even as she said it, the barest of smiles tugged at her lips.

“I’m glad to see that you at least have a little of your sense of humor,” Isaac commented. He reclined in his chair, rocking it on its back legs. He watched her closely. “He’s okay, you know,” he finally said after a long silence. “Brandt’s never been the type to sit back and let himself get killed. He’s a fighter, and he’s a good one. I have no doubt he’s somewhere safe.”

“God, I hope so,” Cade murmured. “I couldn’t stand it if he wasn’t.” She leaned over and grabbed her water bottle from the floor beside her chair. She twisted the cap off and took a slow sip. “I’m ready for this to be over. I don’t care how it ends anymore. I just can’t take the stress.”

The silence fell again, as heavy as before. Cade returned her water bottle to the floor and took up her search, propping her elbow against the windowsill for support as she shifted her gaze from one wasted face to the next. It was like a slideshow of horror below, a mix of wounded and desiccated and rotted faces, ugly faces, ex-people that she knew would kill her and everyone she knew. The thought almost made her piss herself.

Speaking of…

“Hold this,” Cade ordered, shoving the scope into Isaac’s hands. He looked at her in confusion as she levered herself to her feet.

“Where are you going?” Isaac demanded, concern creasing his forehead.

“A girl can’t pee without getting the third degree?” Cade retorted, raising an eyebrow. Isaac grinned and let out a laugh, holding both hands up in mock defense.

“Sorry, my mistake,” he said. “I thought for a moment there you were about to go out and do something stupid. Next time, I won’t bother to think.”

“Yeah, you do that,” Cade said with a half grin, and then she turned and headed for the bathroom, feeling like she was waddling every step of the way. She’d definitely been sitting down for too long, she decided as she opened the bathroom door. She would have to remember to get up a little more often, if only to stretch her legs.

Cade was just about to close the bathroom door when she felt a warm, wet dampness against the inside of her leg. She reached down to press a hand against her inner thigh and wrinkled her nose. Oh God, I’ve finally done it, she thought with no small degree of embarrassment. I waited too long, and now I’ve pissed myself. Then a thought occurred to her, and her eyes widened. “Oh hell,” she said out loud, her voice echoing against the bathroom walls.

“Everything okay in there?” Isaac called. “You didn’t fall in or anything, did you?”

“No,” Cade replied, though she wasn’t sure which question she was answering. She cautiously sniffed her dampened fingers and frowned. It didn’t smell like urine; it didn’t really smell like much of anything, which told her everything she needed to know.

“It’s too early. It’s too early,” she said out loud, almost chanting the words, as if that would change the upcoming events. “Please, not now.”

“What is it?” Isaac’s voice called through the door, laden with the concern he’d clearly not shed yet. Good thing, too; Cade was going to need some concern to match her own.

She went to the door and pulled it open. She looked up at him with wide, almost frightened eyes. “Isaac, I need you to go get your brother,” she said, keeping her voice as calm and steady as possible.

“Why? What’s wrong? Is something wrong?” Isaac asked, his questions rapid-fire.

“Yeah, maybe,” Cade said. She swallowed hard and cleared her throat before she added quietly, “I think my water just broke.”

Isaac’s eyes widened. “Oh, hell,” he said.

“My thoughts exactly,” Cade commented wryly.

“Oh, hell.”

“Your brother,” Cade said again, more emphatically, hoping to knock him out of his shock.

“It’s too soon, Cade,” Isaac said. “You’re barely eight months along. It shouldn’t be coming now.”

“I know.”

“This is the worst time for this.”

“I noticed.”

“What are we going to do?”

Cade gritted her teeth and nearly yelled, “Go get your brother, Isaac! Now.”

That seemed to do the trick. Isaac took a step back from her, moving in the direction of the bedroom door. “Derek. Right. I’ll go get him now. You just…” He made a settling motion with his hands. “Stay here.”

Cade rolled her eyes. “As if I have somewhere else to go?” she said, but Isaac was already clomping down the stairs as he went in search of his brother. When the sound of his boots faded from her hearing, she went to the dresser to fetch a fresh set of clothing. Her hands shook as she pulled free a clean pair of sweat pants. She wadded them up in her hands and breathed in deeply.

She’d read the books that the supply team had so thoughtfully scrounged up for her, and she had some idea of what to expect. But those books had been written for a world where there were doctors aplenty and hospitals to go to when one’s water broke. In the books, wonder-drugs were given via epidural to dull the pain. There was none of that now. There was only the sheer luck of having Dr. Derek Rivers present in Woodside. But if anything went wrong, there would be no drugs, no machines, nothing at the compound to help her if she needed it. Only Derek’s wits and medical know-how.

“If the women in biblical and medieval times could do it, so can I,” Cade said with a determination and confidence that she didn’t really feel.

It would be so much easier if she had Brandt beside her! She scowled at the thought as soon as it crossed her mind. Since when had she become so weak that she thought she had to have Brandt by her for every little thing? She had always prided herself on being tough, strong, and independent; she’d spent seven years in the Israeli Defense Forces honing not only her fighting skills but her mindset, strengthening both until she felt like she had been forged from steel. It had been long, arduous work, and she’d always been pleased with the results. And now, here she was, acting like she needed a man. What had changed?

“You fell in love like an idiot, that’s what,” she muttered. “And look where it got you: knocked up, moony, and about to shove a baby out in the middle of the fucking zombie apocalypse.”

There was a soft tap at the door, and she turned, sweat pants still in hand, to see Derek in the doorway. Isaac stood a few feet behind him. “Hi, Cade,” Derek greeted, giving her a tight smile that didn’t come close to reaching his eyes. “Isaac tells me that you believe your water has broken?”

Cade nodded but didn’t say anything. She wasn’t sure she could manage words right that second, not as the full weight of what was coming started to crawl its way into her brain.

Derek either didn’t notice or wasn’t inclined to comment on her silence, because he turned to Isaac and said, “Can you give us a few minutes alone, please? And make sure we’re not disturbed.”

“No problem,” Isaac agreed, and he gave Cade a reassuring smile before leaving the room and closing the door.

Derek blew out a breath and slowly turned to face her again, looking her up and down, taking in the sight of her wet pants and nervous expression. “Okay, Cade, so let’s talk about what’s going on with you for a few minutes, shall we?”

Chapter 35

Remy stood in the rec center’s kitchen, wondering not for the first time what she thought she was doing. What the hell had she been thinking, offering to go out into the thick of things and wade right through the infected? It was suicide, pure and simple. And while she would be the first to admit that she was too reckless, she wasn’t exactly suicidal.

But the infected weren’t the only things that made her regret her decision to try walking right through them. No, Dominic Jackson seemed to be doing everything in his power to add himself to the list of regrets.

She stared almost emptily across the kitchen, her fingers pressed against her lips, as she thought back on the kiss he’d given her on the rec center’s roof. It hadn’t been the most spectacular kiss she’d ever received from a man, but somehow Dominic’s simple kiss had been the most passionate, the most intense kiss she’d ever received. That one act, combined with the look in the man’s eyes, had told her everything she needed to know about exactly how he felt.

Remy shook her head and started to gather her long hair into a ponytail. Then she braided it and curled it into a coil on her head. Now it would be harder for the infected to grab. Not that she expected to be grabbed, not after their behavior earlier. Regardless of whether they would do her harm or not, the feeling of their cold, clammy hands in her hair would still be creepy as hell. She wished she had long sleeves to wear, but her other clothes were still at the medical house.

“Nothing doing,” she muttered, and she shouldered her bag and turned to go. She stopped short as she caught sight of Dominic standing in the doorway between the kitchen and dining area, that same look of concern still marring his features, stirring up an odd flutter in her belly. “Is everything okay?” she asked. “I mean, aside from the obvious.”

“Brandt’s fever has spiked,” Dominic reported. “He’s up to one-oh-three.”

“Shit,” Remy breathed.

“If you can make it into the medical house and get some medicine for this, that might be a really good idea,” Dominic said. “Maybe even a higher priority than checking in on the others. They are safe for now, but if Brandt’s fever keeps going up, it could kill him.”

“Yeah,” Remy said, pressing her fingers to her lips again, this time in horror as she tried to imagine what things would be like with Brandt dead. The thought gave her chills.

“Are you getting ready to head out?” Dominic asked. She nodded, and he added, “Just…like I said earlier, be careful.”

“I will,” she assured him. “I’ve got my bolo knife and my guns. And I’ve got my confidence and good looks.” A grin spread across his face at the terrible joke. “I’ll be fine.”

“Good.” He nodded toward the back door that Ethan and Kimberly had come through earlier. “I checked things out from the roof, and the back of the building is the clearest. Your best chance of getting through them probably starts there.”

“Thanks.” Remy took a half-step towards him, the thought of returning his kiss with one of her own crossing her mind. But no, that would feel too much like goodbye, and this wasn’t going to be goodbye. So she just hitched her backpack higher up on her shoulders, gave him a soft smile, and said, “I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere without me.”

Dominic actually laughed at that. “Believe me, I’m not going anywhere.”

Remy smiled and gave him a short nod, then turned and went to the back door. She grabbed the knob with one hand and the deadbolt with the other. She hesitated and glanced back at Dominic. He’d followed her to the door and lurked just behind her, his pistol in hand, ready to re-lock the deadbolt. Then she sucked in a deep breath, unlocked the door, and flung it open.

She stepped out into the cool night air scented by the stench of undead bodies.

The door clicked shut behind her.

“Oh hell,” she whispered, and then she forced herself to start walking, striding unhesitatingly around the corner and into the mob of infected that were attacking the community. In the time they’d been inside the rec center, more infected had come into Woodside and were starting to curve around the back of the rec center, making their ways toward more of the survivors’ houses. She hoped they were prepared and fortified against the bodies coming their way.

But she didn’t have time to think about that. Brandt needed her to focus, to toughen up, to do what she needed to do to get to the medical house. So she squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, and began to walk more confidently into the mob surrounding the medical house.

Remy was almost halfway across the courtyard, reveling in her ability to walk through the infected unmolested, when she chanced a glance back the way she’d come. Dominic stood on the roof, watching her progress, a rifle in his hands. She couldn’t help but smile. Even though she wasn’t with him, Dominic was trying to look out for her. The backup was, at least, reassuring.

It took her only moments to reach the medical house. She shoved her way through the crowd until she reached the porch. There were more on the porch, and the front door hung crookedly on its hinges, broken by the beating hands and rotten bodies that smashed against it. She wrinkled her nose and pushed her way inside, drawing her bolo knife as a precaution. She didn’t spend much time trying to figure out how to bar the door; not many of the infected had come inside—or if they had, they’d left after discovering no prey in the house—and they posed no threat to her anyway. Despite that, she kept the noise level down; there was no sense in stirring the infected up any more than necessary.

Remy crept up the stairs in the dark, not bothering with a flashlight since, to her surprise, she could see well enough to navigate to Derek’s room. The door was closed and locked, and she scowled at the door as if it would magically unlock itself. She looked at the head of the stairs again, as if she expected something to lurch to the top if she made enough noise. She tucked her bolo knife back into its sheath and drew the KA-BAR she’d been given in Atlanta months before. She wedged the tip of the blade into the doorjamb, wiggled it around the gap, pushed, shoved, and twisted. Something popped, and the door opened with a squeak. She grinned and returned the knife to its sheath before stepping into the room.

It seemed like weeks since she’d last been here, stealing medication for herself. That nothing had changed was unsettling. She thought that, with the mess going on outside the house, something inside should be different, should reflect the conditions outside. But then she shook the thought off and focused on her objective.

The medicine cabinet was a large storage unit made of plastic. It had been commandeered from one of the houses when they’d first arrived. Derek had outfitted it with homemade dividers and handwritten labels. The labels were stuck to the outsides of the clear plastic drawers, which helped her find what she was looking for more quickly. She scanned the labels, tracing her finger over each one, until she found the fever reducers. She pulled the entire plastic drawer out of the unit in her haste. She shifted her backpack around, unzipped it, and shook the medicine bottles into the bag. She almost left it at that, but something made her stop and take a closer look at the rest of the drawers. And, as she scanned the room, the tackle boxes stacked beside the storage unit caught her eye. The medicine inside was too valuable to just leave behind. If they had to establish a new community somewhere, they would need this to get started.

She swore and started pulling drawers open, grabbing medicine bottles and blister packs by the handful. She dropped them into the backpack with the fever reducers. Then she attacked the tackle boxes, popping the latches on each one in turn, pulling out suture kits and forceps and tweezers and scalpels and needles and IV catheters, all packaged individually in sterile plastic packs. After she’d cleaned out everything that she could reasonably carry, she headed for the door, intending to go back to the yard and cross to the main house. She had to figure out how to get inside the building next door without letting the infected in with her.

Remy hitched her backpack higher on her shoulders as she started back down the stairs, running through a variety of ideas and possibilities for how to get into the main house. But try as she might, she was having a lot of trouble coming up with something that would get her inside safely. If only the trees around the houses hadn’t been cut down to build the fencing! She could have climbed through a second story window and across the tree that used to be there without ever touching the ground.

Remy had just reached the bottom of the stairs when a strange sound met her ears. She paused, gripping the banister with her left hand, and strained her ears. It was an odd chugging sound, almost a whump, repetitive like a train going down tracks, and it was coming from somewhere above her. She frowned and started to creep back up the stairs, trying to place the sound. She went to the first bedroom she came to and looked out a window that faced the front of the house. She flung it open and leaned out as far as she safely could, hands braced against the windowsill, and twisted around to look up at the sky. What she saw there took her breath away.

It was a helicopter, hovering above the street in front of the house like a great black bug. It was monstrous, unlike any helicopter she’d ever seen—most of which had been compact medical helicopters lifting and landing at the hospital not far from where she’d lived in New Orleans. It seemingly bristled with weaponry; two barrels stuck out from the front of the helicopter, and there were more weapons in several other places, but with her layman’s knowledge of guns, she was unable to identify them. As she gawked at the war machine that hovered above her, the sound of more helicopters filled the air, their rotors stirring up the air and blowing several of the infected right off their feet. Elation swelled up in her as she realized that it must be the military—it had to be. She couldn’t imagine anyone else having the capabilities to get so many helicopters into the air; and now that she looked more closely, she could see even more of them in the distance, enough that she thought they were mounting a rescue mission.

The lead helicopter swooped low as she watched, adjusting itself into an angle that kept the nose toward the ground. The occupants opened fire on the infected below. Remy let out a whoop of excitement and encouragement as the large-caliber ammunition tore into the masses, shredding bodies and sending blood and gore and limbs spraying into the air and splattering onto the pavement. The first helicopter swept the field, firing nonstop as it flew towards the rec center, and then it stopped firing and pulled up. As it did, the second helicopter swooped in behind it, performing the same firing exercise, chewing up even more of the infected.

Even though she was anxious to watch the show, Remy turned away from the window and started for the stairs.

It was a decision that saved her life.

Chapter 36

To say Brandt felt sick was an understatement. His head pounded, the ache inside his skull pulsing like a heartbeat, and he felt like he had bugs crawling underneath his skin. He shuddered as a pang of nausea churned in his gut, and he tried to swallow it down. Even in his haze of illness, the last thing he wanted to do was throw up all over himself.

He rolled his head to the side, squinting in the almost nonexistent light, searching for Remy. He didn’t see her; by all appearances, there wasn’t a soul in the room with him. Just another example of my miserable luck. His lips felt parched and cracked, and if his legs would have supported him, he’d have walked naked and covered in hot sauce through a crowd of infected for a bottle of water.

Brandt forced himself onto his side, then rolled until he was lying on his stomach across the cold tile floor, just off the edge of the passably soft palette someone had laid him on. The easy part was over; now he had to tackle the hard part: getting to his hands and knees and then, once that was accomplished, somehow standing on his own two feet. His palms were slick with sweat against the floor as he tried to lever himself up, and he nearly slipped and fell on his face as his hands slid around underneath.

“Whoa, Brandt, what are you doing?” a voice asked from behind him. Brandt twisted around enough to see Dominic hurrying toward him from the direction of a supply closet. He scowled. Of all the people in Woodside to come to his assistance, it had to be Dominic.

“I need water,” Brandt muttered almost incoherently. His tongue felt thick in his mouth. He licked his lips and managed to get to his hands and knees, his elbows shaking as they struggled to support the weight of his upper body.

“You shouldn’t be up like this,” Dominic said, and Brandt felt him loop an arm around his waist and pull him to stand. “You’re sick as a dog. You should be resting.”

“Fuck you,” Brandt said, slurring the words.

“No need for the attitude,” Dominic retorted. “I’m trying to help you.”

“I don’t need your damn help,” Brandt said. Dominic let go of him, and he promptly fell on his face.

“Fine. I’ll leave you there then.”

Brandt glared at him and snapped, “Don’t be an asshole.”

“Hey, I could say the same thing to you,” Dominic said. He grabbed Brandt’s arm then and hauled him to his feet. He steered him to a chair at one of the tables scattered around the room, dumping him unceremoniously into it. Then he went to his backpack and dug a bottle of water out. He placed it on the table at Brandt’s elbow with a thump.

“Where’s Remy?” Brandt asked as he twisted the cap off the bottle. He fumbled with it and nearly dropped it. At the last second, he righted the bottle and set it back on the table.

“She’s out there somewhere,” Dominic said, nodding his head toward the front door. “She was going to go for medicine for you and to try to check and make sure everything was okay at the main house.”

Brandt nodded and took a small sip of water from the bottle, forcing himself to swallow it down. “What’s wrong with me?” he asked as he set the bottle back on the table. “What happened?”

“You don’t remember?”

“I can’t focus on much of anything at the moment, no,” Brandt replied. He propped his elbow against the table and put his forehead in his hand. He was burning up with what felt like a high fever; no wonder he felt like hell.

“Brandt, you got bitten,” Dominic said. “Repeatedly.”

Brandt frowned at his water bottle. “Oh, yeah. That.”

“That’s all you’ve got to say?”

“What, there’s more to say about it?” Brandt asked. He rolled his head from side to side against his hand and took another sip of water to quell the nausea churning in his stomach. “There’s nothing we can do about it at this point. Maybe we’ll just prove Derek’s theory about my immunity right. Or wrong.”

“Yeah, but I’m not sure this is the way I personally would have wanted to do it.” Dominic said.

Brandt glanced at him blearily. He sat a few tables away, his feet kicked up in a chair. Dominic stared back at him, studying him closely in the dim light.

“Brandt, I—”

But Brandt didn’t get the opportunity to hear what Dominic wanted to say. A noise familiar to both of them broke the air, and they immediately looked up toward the ceiling.

“Is that…?” Dominic trailed off, his eyes widening in surprise. “Is that a helicopter?”

“More than one by the sounds of it,” Brandt observed. He couldn’t help the slight smile that flitted across his face. Helicopters were in the air, and Brandt could think of only one entity with the capability to get multiple helicopters off the ground a year and a half after the outbreak. “It’s the military,” he said, resting his head back onto his hand again.

“The military?” Dominic repeated. “How…how would they even find us?”

“What do you think I was doing in the Humvee in the first place?” Brandt mumbled. “I was playing with the radio, trying to see if I could get in touch with someone who could help us. It was my plan B, and it seems to have worked. I told them where we were, but it was a crap shoot if they were even going to show up.”

“And it appears they have,” Dominic said. He started across the dining room, heading back toward the storage closet at a jog. “Stay here. I’m going up on the roof to check things out.”

Brandt scowled again, wishing he could go up on the roof himself, but he doubted he could even walk across the room without assistance at this point. He groaned and started to yell out, “Dominic, let me know what you see!” But large-caliber weapons opening fire drowned out his words.

Brandt’s instincts were too finely honed for him to ignore, and he dove off the chair without a second thought. He could hear bullets striking the ground outside and then hammering the front of the rec center. He crawled underneath the closest table and covered his head with both hands. Several rounds broke through the wood that covered the windows and slammed into tables and chairs and walls.

“Holy shit!” he heard Dominic exclaim in between rounds.

Brandt looked toward the supply closet’s open door just in time to see the former DIA agent fall from his perch halfway up the yellow ladder. Dominic’s fall sent mops and brooms and buckets clattering. He groaned at the impact, then rolled over and kicked the door shut. Brandt imagined he’d done that for extra cover.

There was a break in the shooting, and Brandt cautiously lifted his head, looking toward the pockmarked windows at the front of the building. “Dominic, you okay?” he called.

“Yeah, I’m fine!” Dominic yelled back through the door. “Why are those sons of bitches shooting at us?”

“I think they’re dealing with the inf—”

Brandt’s voice was drowned out as the helicopters opened fire again, and he ducked his head back down, flattening himself against the rec center’s floor. Several stray bullets punched through the building’s defenses, and one of them struck a support holding up the table that Brandt was sheltering under. It nearly collapsed on his head. He scooted backward as one end of the table gave way and crashed to the floor. He narrowly avoided getting struck in the head, and he scrambled to another table for cover.

As suddenly as the second round of shooting started, it stopped. Everything was silent except for the helicopter’s rotors. Brandt lifted his head slowly; it felt as heavy as a cement block. He looked toward the ceiling. It sounded like the helicopters were starting to move away; the noise from the rotors was gradually quieting. The supply closet’s door swung open silently, and Dominic slipped out, moving toward Brandt in a bent-over, brisk walk. He dropped down to the floor beside the table Brandt was under, reached out, and lightly touch his arm.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “You’re not hit, are you?”

“No, not hit,” Brandt answered. “Though that doesn’t stop me from feeling like road kill.” He groaned and rolled over onto his back. He scrubbed his overheated face with both hands before wiggling from underneath the table.

“Think they wiped out the infected outside?” Dominic asked, glancing toward the front of the dining area. The sheets of wood that covered the windows were shredded in places, and large chunks were missing in others.

“With the rate of fire and the amount of fire? Maybe,” Brandt replied. “Though I don’t know about you, but I’m really not game to go look. Hell, I’m barely even game to get off this floor.” He’d managed to roll out from under the table in a burst of energy that dissipated just as quickly as it had appeared. He levered himself back onto his hands and knees with some difficulty, and Dominic looped his arm around Brandt’s waist and helped him off the floor.

“Maybe I should go up on the roof again and check things out,” Dominic suggested.

“Probably a good idea,” Brandt agreed. He half turned, intending to sit down in the nearest chair, but the sound of more approaching helicopter rotors drew him up short. He looked warily toward the ceiling, his body tensing in anticipation of more bullets ripping through the building, but the sound only got louder and louder on approach. Then something landed on the roof with a loud thud, and the rotors drowned out anything Brandt and Dominic could have said to each other. The roar slowly receded to a high-pitched whine and soon fell silent.

“What the hell is going on out there?” Brandt asked.

“Sounds like someone might have landed on the roof,” Dominic replied, and then, as the sound of boots on the roof reached their ears, he amended, “Okay, definitely landed on the roof.” They listened for a moment, and then he asked, “Military?”

“By the sounds of it,” Brandt agreed. Something banged, and there was the distinctive sound of a combat boot thumping against the top rung of the metal ladder. “Also sounds like they found the trap door.” Brandt hesitated, then added, “Something doesn’t feel right about this.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Call it instincts,” Brandt said.

Dominic gave him an incredulous look.

“How did they know to stop here at the rec center?” Brandt explained.

“The infected outside?”

“I don’t know,” Brandt said with a shake of his head. “Might be more to it than that.” He paused, scanning the room, and then pointed to the kitchen doors. “Do me a favor and go in there. Just in case. If it turns out to be nothing, then you can call me an idiot later.”

Dominic gave Brandt a short nod and retreated to the kitchen, easing the door shut behind him. The first of those descending the ladder reached the supply closet. As Brandt got his first look at the men entering the rec center, he nearly took a step back in surprise.

The men entering the room were dressed head to toe in full MOPP 4 gear. Each wore a camouflage-printed over-garment, thick gloves, and a hood with a protective gas mask. Each bore an M240 and had a bag buckled to their belt that, presumably, had more ammunition and supplies in it. None of them had any visible markings to denote rank or name, save for the very last person to enter the building. This man had his name on his chest and the unit’s crest on his shoulder. And unlike the others, his rank denoting him a major was on his helmet. He strode toward Brandt as if he belonged there, stopping in front of him and studying him closely. Then he beckoned to one of the soldiers, who stepped forward with a scanner-like device in his hand.

“Extend your right arm,” the soldier said. When Brandt hesitated, the man grabbed his wrist with a gloved hand and yanked his arm out. Brandt, already feverish and a bit unsteady on his feet, stumbled forward, and every soldier in the room suddenly lifted their rifle and aimed at him. The soldier tightened his grip on Brandt’s wrist and passed the device over the inside of his arm. The device beeped, and the man let go of Brandt.

“It’s him,” the soldier said, taking a step back and tucking the scanner into the bag on his hip.

“Good,” the man who was presumably the leader said. He took a step closer to Brandt, studying him through the clear lenses of his gas mask. Brandt stared back at him, waiting for him to speak, waiting for someone to tell him what was going on. It seemed that his instincts that something wasn’t right had been right on the nose. Finally, after several heartbeats of silence, the man queried, “Michael Evans?”

“Yes?”

“Lieutenant Michael Evans?”

“Yeah, that’s me,” Brandt confirmed with only minimal impatience. His curiosity was rapidly winning out over any irritation he might have felt. He narrowed his eyes and studied the man in front of him more closely. “Major…Bradford?” he asked, surprise running through him. The last time he’d spoken to Major Bradford had been when he was in Atlanta, sheltering in the Tabernacle as he tried to summon help for himself, Cade, Gray, and Remy. At the time, Bradford had refused to send help, saying that the risks versus benefits didn’t make it worth it. But now here he was—the very same man who’d deemed their lives not worth saving—standing in front of him, backed up by a full squad of well-armed soldiers. He couldn’t help but wonder what had changed.

The man gave a slight nod to indicate that Brandt’s guess at his identity was correct. Then he pulled a paper from the bag strapped to his belt and held it up for Brandt to see. “Lieutenant Evans, I have been authorized by the United States government to take you into custody.”

“Custody?” Brandt repeated, his curiosity rapidly replaced by incredulity. “For what?”

“Charges have yet to be finalized pending further investigation,” Major Bradford said, “but they’re considering treason.”

“Treason?”

“For your part in the release of what has become known as the Michaluk Virus,” Bradford explained. He signaled to two of his men and instructed, “Cuff him. If he resists, tase him.” As Brandt gawked at the man, Major Bradford turned on his heel and started toward the roof access ladder, raising his voice to announce, “And issue commands to your squads to initiate Operation Whiteout.”

“What’s Operation Whiteout?” Brandt asked as two of the soldiers stepped toward him. He moved forward, aiming for the gap in between the two, intending to go to the major and make him answer his question. “Major Bradford, what’s Operation Whiteout?”

In hindsight, Brandt shouldn’t have taken that step forward. At the time, though, the thought of keeping his distance hadn’t occurred to him until gloved hands grasped his shoulders and body-slammed him backwards onto the hard tile floor. His breath raced out of his lungs in a whoosh, and his head banged against the floor, intensifying the headache he already had until it pulsed angrily at his temples and behind his eyes. He lifted a hand to press it to his head, grimacing, but someone grabbed his wrist and slammed it down onto the floor again, and then hands rolled him over onto his stomach and wrenched his arms behind his back.

Zip ties encircled his wrists and tightened into place.

“Please don’t make this harder on yourself than it needs to be,” one of the soldiers said. Then he was hauled to his feet and shoved toward the front doors. He stumbled, but the soldiers kept him on his feet. Above them, the whine of the helicopter’s engines filled the air. The whine turned into the rhythmic chug of rotors, picking up faster and faster until they blended together into one solid scream. Brandt could pinpoint the exact moment the helicopter lifted off the roof, but it didn’t fly away like he’d expected. Instead, it lifted off the roof just to hop to the ground in front of the building.

Two of the soldiers stepped forward to unbolt the doors, and then they swung them open, letting in the cool night air. The helicopter rested on the ground fifty yards away, the rotors still spinning, sending hard gusts of air into the dining area and tumbling tables and chairs in the onslaught.

“Keep your head down unless you want to lose it!” one of the soldiers yelled into his ear. The soldiers didn’t wait for his acknowledgment before they started shoving him toward the helicopter.

“What about the other survivors?” Brandt asked, but none of the soldiers answered him. They just kept goading him forward, closer to the helicopter, and when he reached it, his head ducked low to avoid the rotors. Hands bodily picked him up and threw him into the helicopter, where he landed in a heap on the metal floor. He lifted his head as the soldiers boarded the aircraft and looked right at Major Bradford, who was staring down at him with apparent contempt.

“What is Operation Whiteout?” Brandt asked again, directing his question to the major. Major Bradford ignored him and signaled to the helicopter pilot. Brandt’s stomach lurched as the helicopter lifted from the ground. He swallowed bile down and looked out the still-open door as the helicopter slowly swung around. One of the soldiers leaned to slide the door shut, but the door didn’t slide closed in time to block Brandt’s view of two AH-60L DAP helicopters swooping down onto the community. And he let out a cry of alarm and anguish as the DAPs opened fire, their M134 mini-guns pouring ammunition directly into the front façade of the medical house.

Chapter 37

The first volley fired from the DAPs tore into the medical house, shredding through wood and plaster, embedding into the furniture, shredding fabric, and breaking glass. Remy had been halfway between the top of the staircase and the second-floor landing when the firing had begun, and she screamed as large-caliber bullets embedded into the wall just above her head. Ducking and covering, she scampered down the stairs, scrambling to the bottom and bolting toward the back of the house. She slipped and skidded across the kitchen floor, taking cover behind the island at the center of the kitchen, figuring it was safe enough for the moment since it was made of brick. Then she pulled her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around her head, and closed her eyes, fighting to hold back the second scream that bubbled up in her throat.

Then the shooting stopped.

Remy didn’t hesitate. She flew to her feet, ran to the back door by the fridge, and fumbled with the locks. Then she was in the backyard, running full tilt for the main house next door, her shoes shushing through the tall, dew-dampened grass.

She had to get to Cade and the others before the shooting started again.

Chapter 38

Sadie had watched in horror from the window of her and Jude’s upstairs bedroom as the massive black helicopter bristling with weaponry had fired at the house next door, peppering the entire front of the building with round after round of ammunition. It had taken everything in her to not scream out in horror, up to stuffing her knuckles half into her mouth to muffle the whimpers that were escaping.

Then she’d come to her senses and dropped to the floor, ducking down low so nothing of her showed over the windowsill. Her only thoughts were that there was no guarantee that the helicopters would stop with the medical house and that she had to get to Jude right now.

Sadie waited for a lull in the shooting before she made her move. Quickly checking the security of her weapons, she scrambled forward, half crawling to the door and out into the hall. She tried to remember where the last place she’d seen Jude was, and as she lurked in the hallway trying to remember, the firing started again. She reflexively ducked, cowering in the hallway, before she realized the gunfire hadn’t been turned onto the main house.

Yet, a nasty voice in the back of her head murmured darkly.

She shook it off and hurried to the stairs, her heart pounding as she descended them to look for Jude. When she reached the bottom, he seemed to appear out of the darkness, sliding almost silently from the shadows to meet her. “Jesus, Jude, way to give me a fucking heart attack!” she hissed.

“They’re shooting up the house across the street,” Jude signed to her, his hands shaking to the point that his words were almost indecipherable. “What do we do, Sadie?”

“We get the hell out of here,” Sadie said, grabbing for his wrist. “We should never have come here. We should have just stayed in the damned woods where we belonged.”

Jude resisted, pulling in the opposite direction that Sadie was trying to haul him. He twisted free of her grasp. “We can’t leave,” he signed to her, glaring at her in the dim light. “It’s our fault that the infected and the military are here,” he elaborated. “Our fault.” He gestured between the two of them emphatically, a scowl on his face. “We can’t just ditch out without helping them get out of here.”

Sadie rolled her eyes and threw her hands into the air. “Fine,” she said, the word oozing with her frustration. “But as soon as we help get them clear, we’re getting the hell out of here.”

Footsteps running across the living room met her ears, and she drew her pistol and pointed it in the direction of the sound. Jude lurched forward, grabbing her arm and pushing it down to aim the weapon at the floor. Keith hurried out of the shadows and grabbed them both by their biceps. He didn’t seem to notice the gun Sadie had just pointed at him, or he didn’t care.

“We need to move,” he said, his tone urgent. “One of the helicopters just finished shooting up the place across the street and took off, and I think the other one is swinging around to aim at this house. Get out the back door, now!”

“What about everybody else?” Sadie asked, twisting to look at the stairs even as he shoved her and her brother toward the kitchen.

“You let me worry about that,” Keith said. “Move now.” Then he shoved them both through the kitchen and to the back door. He unfastened the locks and pushed them onto the back porch before slamming the door again. Sadie heard him through the door, running across the kitchen, his boots thudding dully on the stairs. She looked at her brother with wide eyes.

“What now?” Sadie asked.

“We wait for the others,” Jude signed without looking at her. His eyes scanned the back yard and what could be seen of the side yard. She took her cue from him and mimicked his actions. He tapped her arm to get her attention and then quickly signed, “There are some infected in the side yard and a few coming around the corner of the house from the other way.”

“What do you want to do about them?”

“We can’t leave them for the others to run into, especially not Cade,” Jude replied, hands flying. “Not comfortable with her fighting while in labor. We should lure them into the backyard where there’s cover and kill them quietly.”

Despite the impending danger, despite the helicopter on the other side of the house, despite the fact that their very lives hung by a thread, Sadie smiled.

Chapter 39

Dominic waited until the helicopter and the soldiers had left, taking Brandt with them, before he dared to creep through the kitchen and out the back door. He’d had to fight the impulse to rush out to Brandt’s defense the entire time the soldiers had been taking him into custody and shoving him into the helicopter, telling himself over and over that his intervention wouldn’t come to anything but his own death. So he’d waited, biding his time, prioritizing those who were likely unable to help themselves.

Once Brandt and the squad of soldiers were gone and he’d stepped outside into the cool night air, he’d watched from around the corner of the rec center as two AH-60L DAP helicopters opened fire on the community’s fortified houses, the ammunition shredding through the facades like they were made of cake. His heart had sunk as he’d watched the bullets tear through the front of the medical house, knowing that there was a good chance that Remy was inside, that even if she wasn’t, she would most certainly be in the main house, which was likely to get the same treatment as the medical house.

Then the helicopter had turned its mini-guns onto the house across the street from the main house, and Dominic had been unable to contain his horror. “There are children in that house, you bastards!” he yelled, his throat hoarse with the volume he was unaccustomed to, but the soldiers wouldn’t have been able to hear him over the sound of their weapons anyway.

It had been his chance, though, and he’d run across the street into the backyards, climbing over fences and staying low in the tall grass, hoping he wouldn’t be sighted from above as he hurried toward the medical house, intent on looking for Remy—or Remy’s body.

He dropped over the privacy fence between the medical house and the house next door just in time to glimpse Remy walking rapidly through the grass, toward the main house as if she were on a mission.

“Oh thank God,” he breathed. Then he called, “Remy!” but she didn’t seem to hear him over the helicopters. So he picked up the pace, racing after her across the yard.

That was when the helicopters grew louder and when soldiers started dropping from the sky.

Chapter 40

Cade stood at the main house’s back door, flanked by Derek on one side and Keith on the other. Isaac bustled around upstairs, gathering a few last-minute supplies he thought they might need. Cade desperately wished he would hurry up. She was ready to get moving, and she preferred to do so before she dropped a baby in the middle of the kitchen floor.

She hadn’t had a contraction in almost ten minutes. That meant she was probably due for one, soon. The anticipation of the pain was almost as bad as the pain itself, she reflected as she drew the pistol she’d insisted on carrying and ejected the magazine to make sure her weapon was fully loaded and ready to fire. It was, just as she’d verified the last time she’d handled it.

“Why do you think they’re shooting us up?” Keith asked suddenly, breaking the hush in the kitchen. “It’s the military. I thought they were supposed to help us.”

“If I had to take a guess?” Cade slammed the magazine back into the pistol’s grip and slid it back into its holster. “Maybe they have orders to fire on anyone suspected of having direct contact with the infected.”

“Quarantine,” Derek suddenly said, drawing the word out, as if he were thinking something over.

Cade looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“It reminds me of what happened at the CDC in Atlanta, back when all of this first started,” Derek explained. “When the military showed up with orders not to help us but to terminate the entire project and everyone involved. Maybe they’re running under similar orders here.”

“And in that case,” Isaac spoke up from behind them as he entered the kitchen, carrying a bulging army green duffle bag, “then we shoot anything that’s wearing camouflage. Because I don’t know about you, but I have no interest in dying today.”

“Hear, hear,” Keith muttered.

Isaac didn’t acknowledge Keith’s agreement. Instead, he took a rifle off his shoulder and extended it to Cade. She grinned as she realized it was her Galil. “Got your rifle for you,” he said.

“Thanks,” Cade replied, her grin widening as she took it from him. She settled it onto her shoulder, resting it against her back, where it belonged, and watched as Isaac scanned the room.

“Where are the twins?” Isaac asked. “I looked for them upstairs but couldn’t find them.”

“I, ah, put them out onto the back porch when I thought the helicopter was about to take a pass at this house,” Keith answered. When Cade gave him an incredulous look, he held his hands up defensively. “What? I was thinking the more walls between them and the helicopter, the better.”

None of them could really argue with that logic, but Cade still didn’t like it. He’d shoved two kids outside to fend for themselves? Who cared how capable they were! That just came off as a little cold-hearted. She grabbed the doorknob with the intention of checking to make sure the two teenagers were still alive when something thumped on the front porch and then banged against the front door. All four of them jumped, and Cade half-turned in that direction as she asked, “What the hell was that?”

“I’ll go check it out,” Keith offered, but Derek practically threw himself across Cade to grab the man’s arm and stop him.

“No, don’t!” he exclaimed. “If my theory about it being a military action is correct, then you’re going to get yourself shot if you go that way.”

“Not if I shoot them first,” Keith replied, wagging the pistol he held in his right hand.

“Oh, please,” Isaac muttered. “You’re not going anywhere, Keith. We need you here, not in the front hall getting shot to death.”

Keith blew out a breath and shoved his pistol back into its holster. “Fine, fine, let’s get moving,” he said, starting forward and pulling the already unlocked kitchen door open. Jude and Sadie were on the porch—Jude with a baseball bat in his hand, Sadie holding two machetes; all three weapons were dripping blood.

“About time you guys showed up,” Sadie quipped. “You missed all the fun.”

“Not all of it,” Cade replied, stepping out onto the back porch. “We’ve got a bigger problem, and it’s one that’s probably a hell of a lot harder to kill.”

“What?”

“Trained soldiers,” Cade answered. “Unlike the infected, they don’t just try to eat you. No, these guys will try to kill you.”

“Shit,” Sadie muttered. “I’ve only ever killed actual people once before, and it was not a pleasant experience.”

“Cade!” someone yelled to their right, and everyone turned as one, weapons raised and aimed at the potential threat. Cade saw the figure running toward them, and as she recognized the shape of it, she let out a breath of relief and lowered her pistol.

“Jesus, Remy, are you trying to get yourself shot?” she asked, exasperated. Remy looked terrible, her clothes and hair covered in splinters of wood and flecks of paint, and she was flushed and panting.

“No, but we’ve got incoming, and we need to get out of here,” Remy replied. She looked Cade up and down and added, “Brandt will be happy to know you’re okay.”

Cade’s eyes widened. “You know where Brandt is?” she asked, urgency welling up in her. “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine,” Remy said, but she didn’t look at Cade as she said it. “We need to get the hell out of here, now.”

“Remy, please,” Cade begged, but her pleading was cut off by a wave of pain that built, crested, and finally washed over. She bit down on her lip, fumbling for and grabbing the porch railing in a white-knuckled grip.

“Cade, are you okay?” Remy asked in alarm.

But Cade couldn’t answer, since she was too busy grinding her teeth into powder.

“What’s wrong with her?” Remy asked.

“It’s a contraction, that’s all,” she heard Derek say distractedly.

“Contraction?” Remy exploded. “She’s in labor?”

The wave of pain backed off and passed, and Cade breathed in deeply, almost panting, as if she had run a mile. “Yes, I’m in labor.”

“Perfect timing, Cade. Just wonderful,” Remy said.

“It’s not like I plan this shit, Remy.”

Isaac stepped into the brewing argument with his hands up. “Okay, ladies, cut it out. We don’t have time for this. We need to get out of here, and we need to find a vehicle as soon as possible after that. Then—”

The sounds of a scuffle near the side of the house drew Cade’s attention, and she held up a hand to hush Isaac. She swung both her pistol and a flashlight around to point it in the direction of the noise. The beam lit onto two men fighting in the dirt, one clad in filthy jeans and a t-shirt, the other in head-to-toe camouflage. The men were throwing punches, slamming each other to the ground, rolling into bushes, and crushing plants and grass.

Remy let out a cry of alarm and vaulted over the porch railing, diving into the fight before anyone else could move, her dark hair flying out behind her. Cade watched, wide-eyed, as Remy shoved the dirty man—Dominic, she realized, as he fell backwards onto the grass—out of the way and practically pounced on the camouflaged man. She grabbed him by the front of his gas mask and started slamming his head into the ground over and over. Then she grabbed the hood, tore it off, and ripped free his mask, dropping it onto the grass.

“No!” the soldier cried out, scrambling for the mask. Remy kicked it away and grabbed the man, hauling him to his feet with only one hand. Then, before any of them could react, she grasped the man’s head in her hands and gave it a sharp twist. There was a snap, and then the man sagged and fell to the ground like a boneless rag doll, his neck bent at an unnatural angle.

“Jesus, Remy!” Cade cried. “We could have interrogated him!”

“We don’t have time for that,” Remy replied. “We have to get out of here!” She turned to Dominic and asked, “Where is Brandt?”

“He’s gone,” Dominic said.

“What?” Cade said, starting down the porch steps. It felt like she’d been punched in the gut, and she fought to not throw up. “Brandt’s dead?”

“No, no, no,” Dominic rushed to add. “He’s gone. They took him. The military took him into custody.”

“What for?”

Dominic lifted his hands to his sides in an exaggerated shrug. “Does it look like I know? Either way, we’ve got a shit storm coming down on our heads, and we need to move!”

“To where?” Isaac asked.

“Get to my house,” Dominic said. “There’s a way out through the wall next to it. Remy knows the way. We should split into two groups to make us less noticeable.”

“What about everybody else?” Cade asked, looking back toward the house, as if she could see through it to the others beyond. “We need to help them, don’t we?”

Even as she asked that, the sounds of gunfire and screaming met their ears, and Cade clapped a hand over her mouth. Sadie looked like she was about to throw up, Jude looked horrified, and Derek, Isaac, and Dominic just looked pissed. Remy, though, she looked blank, like she was completely impassive to what was going on in the rest of the community, and the expression on her face—or lack thereof—disturbed Cade almost as much as the apparent slaughter going on elsewhere.

Dominic cleared his throat and spoke up then, breaking her out of her thoughts. “I think…I think it might be too late for the rest of the community.”

Chapter 41

It hadn’t taken long to split them into two groups, Cade, Isaac, Remy, and Sadie in one group and Dominic, Keith, and Jude in the other. Jude wasn’t sure he liked the arrangement—he never liked being separated from his sister, since she was the only person he knew who could interpret for him and act as his mouthpiece.

He understood what Dominic had been doing when he’d divided them up the way he had—he’d put the strongest or most skilled with Cade, since she was not only pregnant but in labor—but just because he understood the logic didn’t mean he agreed with it.

At least he had Keith with him in his group. He had gotten to know the man a little bit when they’d chatted on the watch platform and in the darkened living room. While he hadn’t known him long, Jude still considered him a friend.

The other group was long out of sight, and in an effort to keep them additionally safe, Dominic had opted to lead them on a different route to his house. The others had headed for the back of the community furthest from the gates, taking the darker, less likely to be noticed route, and Dominic had led them toward the front of the community, where the vast majority of the action was taking place. Jude felt it was a suicide mission.

The wall loomed high above their heads as they crept, single file, through its shadow. Dominic led the way, and Keith brought up the rear. Bodies lay everywhere, mostly of the infected variety, though Jude recognized a few faces very vaguely from the group that had been gathered at the gates when he and Sadie had arrived. He didn’t know those people, but he still couldn’t deny the pang of sadness in his chest at their deaths, even as he wondered how they’d lost their lives. They still clutched weapons in their hands, mostly of the melee variety, and their faces wore wide-eyed expressions of shock and pain. He looked past the bodies, out into the community proper, and watched as a squad of soldiers kicked the door in on one of the houses and rushed inside. Moments later, screams erupted, and he could just make out the bright flash of guns firing through the open doorway and the small cracks between the boards over the windows.

Jude turned away from the sight, sick to his stomach by what he’d just witnessed. He didn’t even realize he had tears running down his face until Dominic brought them to a halt, crouching behind a low hedge to assess the path ahead. “Are you okay?” Dominic asked him in a low, almost frantic tone. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

Jude shook his head and touched his chest, then pointed toward the houses beyond them. Dominic followed his gaze and then nodded in understanding. “Yeah, it hurts for me too, kid,” he acknowledged, then signaled to them both to lean closer. “Listen, this is the hard part,” he said in a voice that barely carried. “Not only will we be heading out into the open while we’re crossing the street, but we’ll have infected coming in on one side and soldiers on the other.”

Jude wanted to ask him why he’d brought them this way if it was so damned dangerous, but he couldn’t. So instead, he listened closely, hoping the man had a plan for the next few minutes. Lord knew he wasn’t exactly the world’s best strategist; he usually left a lot of that up to his sister, who was much better at critical thinking.

“We’re going to take this one at a time,” Dominic continued. “I’ll go first and cover you two, since I have more experience at this sort of thing.” He pointed to where the hedge broke at the edge of the street and continued again across the street. “We’re aiming for that spot right there,” he said. “Once you’re in the street, for the love of God, don’t stop for anything. Understood?”

Jude nodded and gave him a salute, and he heard Keith breathe out a, “Yeah, got it.”

“Good. Let’s go.” Then Dominic was off and moving, ducking low to minimize his profile. He held his pistol in a two-handed grip. That was when Jude realized it: this man was former military. He could tell by the way he moved, the fluid way he half-ran in a crouch, his head turning from one side to the other, as if he were constantly monitoring his surroundings. Jude could never hope to replicate the man’s moves so easily; he’d probably fall on his face if he tried.

Then it was his turn to move, and despite his awkwardness, he attempted to jog across the street in his own half-crouch, trying to move as smoothly as Dominic had, but he kept tripping over the dead bodies that littered the street and over his own feet. His breath rasped painfully in his throat, making his perpetually sore throat hurt even worse. He focused on the path ahead of him.

Suddenly, a soldier was coming at him, pistol raised and aimed right at his head. All Jude had in his hand was his aluminum baseball bat, and he had only a second to curse himself for not having his gun out of its holster. He raised the bat and swung it hard. The bat connected with the man’s gloved hands hard enough to let out a crack, knocking his pistol to the ground. Jude lunged for the gun the man had dropped, but before he got to it, the report of a rifle rang out, and blood exploded from the side of the man’s neck.

“Holy shit,” Jude mouthed, stumbling back a step from the corpse and tripping over another one. He fell backward, sprawling in the street, and grimaced as he felt blood soak into his shirt. Then Keith was there, hauling him to his feet and shoving him toward the other side of the street.

“Come on, Jude, move,” he ordered, nudging him forward again.

But rather than go in the direction Keith indicated, Jude lunged toward the soldier’s corpse. He scooped up the man’s pistol and pulled the spare magazines on the man’s belt free. Then he scrambled for the man’s knives, rifle, and rifle magazines.

“Jude!” Keith said.

Jude ignored him and stuffed the newly acquired weapons into his backpack, put the rifle on his shoulder, and then straightened. He was about to motion for Keith to follow him when he noticed the radio on the man’s belt. He snatched it, unhooked the earpiece from it, turned it off, and clipped it to his own hip before he nodded to Keith. He raced across the street, feeling more confident after he’d stripped the soldier of everything useful. When he reached the curb and practically skipped into the hedge, Dominic clapped him on the shoulder.

“Nice job, kid,” he said.

And Jude wondered for just a second if the man was being sarcastic, but when he looked up at him, all he saw was admiration in his eyes.

“That was a gutsier move than a lot of kids your age would have made.”

Jude gave him a one-shouldered shrug and motioned for him to lead the way. Dominic nodded, and they started back on their journey toward the exit. Jude glanced back to make sure Keith was still bringing up the rear of their trio before he followed the larger man, feeling more confident than ever before.

Now all he had to do was find his sister before anything happened to either of them.

Chapter 42

As Jude, Keith, and Dominic made their way toward Dominic’s house, Sadie and the other three had already arrived without incident. They marveled when Remy showed them the exit that Dominic had constructed. Now, they stood in a clearing, not far from the woods, waiting for the other three. Cade panted as she struggled through another contraction. But Sadie didn’t care anything about that. No, all she cared about was her brother, who hadn’t made it to the woods yet, and could have been, for all she knew, dying inside those damnable walls without her there to help him.

“Please tell me again why you people thought it would be a good idea to put Jude with the other group?” Sadie asked, not bothering to turn and look at the others who had gathered around Cade.

“We had to split the group up,” Remy said from somewhere behind her. “And that meant some people were going to be in the other group that we might not like being separated from.”

“Yeah, but if I’m not there with him, then please explain how anyone is going to know what Jude is saying!” Sadie burst out. “Seriously, none of you knows ASL, do you? Because if you don’t, then that means that if my brother is in trouble or needs anything, he has no way to even ask for it if I’m here and he’s there.” She jabbed her hand emphatically toward Woodside’s wall, a dim shadow in the darkness under the trees.

There was a crunch of feet against underbrush, and then Remy was at her elbow, her dark eyes narrowed in anger. “What, you think we did it on purpose? It’s just the way shit fell, okay? He’ll be fine. He’s with Dominic, and if anybody can watch out for him and keep him from getting killed, it’s Dom. Besides, you two seem like you handle yourselves around the infected just fine, from what I’ve seen.”

“That’s totally beside the point,” Sadie argued. “I need him here. Okay? I can’t do this without him. I don’t even want to imagine trying to do this without him. He is literally all I have left in this world, and I don’t want to even think about having to sludge through this shit of a world without him. If he gets dead because of you people, you’re all dead, because I’ll kill you. And then, after I kill you, I’ll kill myself because there’d be no point in continuing on after that. Got it?”

“What, you think none of us has someone like that?” Remy retorted. “Mine is in that group too! I’m sure Keith means something to someone out there! And God, don’t even get me started on what Cade’s going through! She’s popping out a kid, and her husband has, by all appearances, been taken captive by the fucking military! So stop playing like you’re the only person here who risks losing something or someone you love, okay? You are not in any way more special than the rest of us.”

“I never said I was more special than anyone else!” Sadie protested. “I just—”

“You just think your needs and worries are more important than anyone else’s,” Remy said, but this time her voice didn’t have the same angry irritation that it had had before. There was a moment of silence between them, and then Remy added, “It’s okay. Really. I’m being a bitch. Hell, I should be applauding the fact you’ve managed to hang onto your sibling like you have. There are way too many brothers and sisters who have lost their brothers and sisters, and it’s…such a rarity to find someone who hasn’t. The last two I knew, one of them died to save Cade while the other one died trying to save me.”

It was then that Sadie realized what was underneath Remy’s voice, why she was so angry at Sadie’s protestations about them being separated. It was guilt. The woman felt guilty because of those brothers she’d mentioned dying and her involvement in it. Before she could say anything reassuring or even remotely comforting, there was a rustling in the underbrush behind them, and Sadie whirled around, drawing her pistol and her machete simultaneously, aiming the pistol into the trees as she squinted, looking for the oncoming danger.

Sadie nearly let out a sob of relief when she saw three familiar figures slipping through the trees, Dominic in the lead with her brother just behind him. She returned her machete to its sheath and ran toward him, holstering her pistol as she ran, and threw her arms around him in a tight hug. “Oh God, I was so scared they were going to come out of that community and tell me you’d gotten eaten by something or shot by someone,” she said, her voice muffled as she buried her face against his neck and squeezed him more tightly. “Are you okay? Please tell me I didn’t miss the memo that you got eaten by something or shot by someone.”

Someone touched her shoulder, and she turned to see Keith standing behind her. “I don’t think he can tell you anything with his hands mashed between you like they are,” he said, his voice gentle, even as he smiled at her.

Sadie pulled back from her hug with Jude and looked him over, checking for visible injuries. Her heart nearly stopped when she saw blood soaking the back of his t-shirt and Kevlar vest. She reached out as if to touch it.

He noticed her looking and signed, “I’m okay. It’s not my blood.”

“Thank God,” Sadie muttered. She raised her eyebrows and saw the combat rifle on his shoulder. “Where the hell did you get that?”

“Off the soldier I hit with a baseball bat and Dominic shot.”

“Ah, I see.” She studied him even closer then and spotted the radio on his belt. “Is that what I think it is?” she asked, even as she snatched it off his side to examine it. He tried to snatch it back, but she twisted to keep it out of his grasp and turned the power switch to “on.” Immediately, the sound of military chatter flooded out of the speaker, sounding so loud that she imagined that every creature in the woods in a fifty-mile radius could hear it. She fumbled for the switch, intending to turn it off again, but Dominic grabbed the radio out of her hand, adjusted the volume down, and then put it near his ear. He listened closely. Everyone watched him, the tension in the air thick enough to cut, waiting for him to report on what he was hearing. Somewhere in the background, Cade let out a low, pained groan that was almost immediately drowned out by the chop-chop-chop of helicopter rotors above.

“They’re moving all the soldiers out,” Dominic finally said, raising his voice to be heard over the helicopter. Then his eyes widened, and in a stricken voice, he added, “They’re using the word ‘MOAB.’”

“Did you say MOAB?” Cade asked, her own voice rising.

“Yeah, MOAB,” Dominic confirmed. “We’ve got to get moving fast. We don’t have long.” He started toward Cade and grabbed her arm, draping it over his shoulder and helping her along as he moved through the trees. “There’s an ambulance pulled over on the road somewhere up here through the trees,” he explained. “I’ve been stashing spare medical supplies in it for the past few months. We can use it to get as far away from here as we can manage.”

“What’s a MOAB?” Sadie asked, hurrying as everyone started to follow Dominic.

“A bomb,” he explained, calling over his shoulder without looking back.

Sadie felt her heart drop.

“We’ve got to get out of the blast radius,” Dominic said.

“How big is that?” Sadie asked.

“About a mile,” Cade answered.

Sadie could see Cade digging her fingers into Dominic’s shoulder as she hobbled alongside him.

“So we should aim for two miles,” Cade panted.

“Tell me where this ambulance is, and I’ll go ahead of us and make sure it’s still secure,” Keith offered.

Dominic motioned him forward, talking to him in a low voice that Sadie couldn’t hear. Keith nodded and turned to wave. To Sadie’s surprise, Jude returned the gesture, and then Keith started jogging into the trees, disappearing rapidly from sight.

“You two got something going on there?” Sadie asked Jude as she continued to follow the rest of the group. It wasn’t exactly a proper time to be bringing up something like that, but she needed a distraction from the looming reality that a bomb might drop on her head at any moment.

“Is it really a good time for this?” Jude signed to her, and even the movement of his hands conveyed his exasperation.

“Probably not, but I need to think about something other than our impending doom,” Sadie replied.

Jude rolled his eyes. “How defeatist of you,” he signed.

“I aim to please.” She nodded toward the trees where Keith had disappeared. “So, Keith?”

“I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”

“Jude…” Sadie trailed off, debating how much to tell him and what to tell him. She wasn’t sure Jude knew that she’d learned his big secret; it wasn’t like it had been hard for her to figure out—she wasn’t an idiot, and she was closer to him than anyone else on the planet. “I know,” she finally said.

“You know what?” Jude asked.

“I know…” She trailed off again and looked at the others before switching to sign language. “I know you’re attracted to guys, Jude.”

Jude’s cheeks flushed pink, and he didn’t look at her for a long moment, just continued walking through the weedy underbrush. “How did you figure it out?” he asked, looking resigned to having the conversation.

“I’m not an idiot. And nobody knows you better than me.”

Sadie saw Jude mouth the words, “Damn it,” and then he shrugged and stared into the trees. “There’s not anything going on with Keith,” he responded. “He’s a nice guy. That’s all. I’m just making friends.”

“If you say so,” Sadie murmured, and she refocused on the path ahead.

The group emerged from the trees five minutes later after two stops for Cade to catch her breath and fight off pain from another contraction. Sadie couldn’t help but notice that the waves of pain seemed to be coming closer and closer together. She didn’t think it would be very long before Cade had her baby, and having a baby while on the run wasn’t Sadie’s idea of a good time.

The ambulance was parked at the side of the road, just enough junk around it to make it look like it had been thoroughly abandoned, and Keith stood near the front of it with his rifle on his shoulder, his eyes moving over the landscape and the partially cleared road. Isaac slipped to the back of the vehicle and opened the rear doors, pulled out a flashlight, and scanned the interior of the truck before letting out a low whistle.

“Wow, Dominic, you really went all out,” he commented. “There’s even a stretcher in here, and it’s clean like it’s brand new. Why did you do all this?”

“Just in case we ever had to bail with Cade,” he replied, and then he easily scooped Cade into his arms and set her into the back of the truck. “Get comfortable. I’m pretty sure the ride won’t be.” Then he raised his voice and added, “Everybody get in, wherever you can fit. If Cade starts to have the baby, do whatever you can to help Doc, but don’t get in his way.”

“Funny,” Sadie muttered. She pulled open the side door and hauled herself in, then reached to help Jude into the truck. It was only when everyone was inside, with Dominic behind the wheel and Keith riding shotgun, that Sadie let out the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. The engine ran with a loud, somewhat coughing rumble.

It was cramped in the back, with not enough places for everyone to sit, but it was manageable. Cade lay on the stretcher that was locked into place and taking up most of the room. Isaac and Derek sat on the bench seat alongside her. There was another seat to her right, and Remy was perched in it, holding onto Cade’s hand and murmuring soft, coaching words into her ear. Jude sat on a bolted chair near the head of the stretcher, and since there was no other place to sit, Sadie merely stood near the hatch that allowed her to communicate with the two in the cab of the truck. She held onto one of the metal bars that were bolted to the ceiling to keep her balance.

The truck spun gravel and lurched forward on the road.

It was slow to accelerate, the engine groaning after so long of not being used. Sadie could hear Dominic chanting, “Come on, you stupid truck, come on.”

“Got to go faster, Dominic,” Keith said, and when Sadie glanced into the cab, she saw Keith with a hand braced against the dashboard as he looked between the windshield and the side mirrors almost frantically.

“Tell me something I don’t know!” Dominic snarled, and then something in the truck’s engine seemed to catch. It roared and began to pull the truck forward, easing up into the thirties, the forties, the fifties. Sadie silently cheered the large box truck on, rooting for it to go even faster, and it answered her summons, leaping forward. They were approaching seventy miles per hour now, and Sadie couldn’t tear her eyes away from the windshield, not even as she heard Cade let out another gasp of pain and the ripping of plastic somewhere behind her.

“Put those rails down, now!” she heard Derek order behind her.

Then there was something like a high-pitched whistle somewhere behind them, and before Sadie could turn around to look, the interior of the ambulance was flooded with light. There was a whomp, and seconds later, the back end of the ambulance lifted completely off the road. Screams filled the back of the truck. Sadie lost her grip on the metal bar and was flung forward, right off her feet. Her head struck the cabinets beside the side door, and then she knew no more.

Chapter 43

Ethan and Kimberly had been alternating between walking and running for several hours, and they had long since burned off most of the adrenaline they’d been running on since fleeing the community. Ethan’s legs were killing him. The muscles felt like burning tongues of pain, and his chest hurt like someone had used his lungs for punching bags. They had traveled nearly four miles, spending most of it on the actual road so they could see ahead of them.

Suddenly, Ethan reached out and grabbed Kimberly’s arm, signaling for her to stop.

“You okay?” Kimberly asked, gasping for air as she struggled to breathe. “You’re not hurting or feeling sick, are you?”

“I’m hurting, yeah,” Ethan admitted. He didn’t hesitate when confessing that to her, because there was no sense in it. She’d catch on soon enough that he was in pain. “I’m not used to moving like this. I just need a break, time to catch my breath.”

Kimberly nodded in understanding and took his hand, pulling him out of the road and into the cover of the trees alongside it. Once they both made sure the area was clear of infected, Ethan took the opportunity to sink into the soft grass underneath a tree. He leaned his back against its trunk and dropped his head back against the rough bark. He closed his eyes for a few moments, listening as Kimberly dropped, what sounded like, her backpack beside him. He listened as she unzipped it and dug around inside. Then a bottle of water was pressed into his hand.

“Drink this,” Kimberly ordered. “Slowly. Too fast and you’ll puke all over yourself.”

“You make it sound so appealing,” he commented, opening his eyes only long enough to twist the cap off and take a slow, careful sip of the water.

“If you think that’s appealing, just wait until I really get going,” Kimberly joked with a small laugh. There was a rustle, and he reopened his eyes to see her dropping into the grass beside him, stretching her legs out and leaning over them to massage her calf muscles. “You let me know any time you need to stop, okay? I don’t mind taking breaks. Lord knows my legs don’t mind either.”

“Same to you,” Ethan replied, watching her profile as she grimaced and worked her hands over the muscles. “If you need a break too, that is. I don’t mind stopping either.”

She broke her grimace to give him a small smile. “Good.” Once she’d given up on massaging the ache out of her legs, she swung her bag back into her lap and dug into it. She pulled free their map and starting to unfold it. “Now we need to figure out exactly which way to go from here. Sadie marked a route on our map, but I’m not sure if it’s one you’d be willing to take, and I’d like to see what you think.”

“I’m thinking that I know next to nothing about the area around Woodside, and it would probably be best if we went with what Sadie suggests,” Ethan replied. “I’d come up with a really great analogy about what asking for my opinion of the area is like, but my brain is too tired to dig up something suitable right now.”

Kimberly started to laugh but cut the sound off abruptly, as if she were afraid to make too much noise. “Well at least check out what she drew on the map and see what you think of it,” she suggested, and then there was the rustling of paper as she unfolded the map and spread it out on the grass.

Ethan let out a slow sigh, careful to keep his annoyance out of the sound, and opened his eyes. He leaned forward to look at the paper in the darkness, fumbling for the small flashlight in his pocket and turning it to the map. A bold red line had been drawn along one of the highways, tracing it north and a little east until it stopped just short of a town marked North Charleston. Ethan traced the line to its terminus with his forefinger and shrugged. “I’m assuming it’s a good route to take,” he said. “I mean, would Sadie send us this way if it wasn’t at least partially safe?”

“I don’t know,” Kimberly admitted. “I don’t know the girl well enough to say if she’d lead us astray intentionally or not.”

“Well, I guess we’re just going to have to go with what she recommends for now,” Ethan said. “We can play it by ear as we go.” He paused, tilting his head as he listened carefully. He thought he had heard something somewhere above them, but he wasn’t sure. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Kimberly asked, raising an eyebrow. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“Listen.” Ethan pushed himself to his feet, as if inching closer to the sky would help him hear better. He frowned as he tried to identify the faint sound he was hearing. It was far away, muffled by distance, and if it had been in the pre-outbreak days, he’d have never heard it. He rested his hand against his holstered pistol and strained his ears to the point that he nearly gave himself a headache. “I think…I think that might be a helicopter.”

Judging by the look on Kimberly’s face, she’d finally noticed the noise too. “More than one, by the sounds of it,” she concluded. She started for the side of the road, and he followed her, hoping to get a glimpse of the machines, even though he knew they were probably too far away from their position to see.

“Where do you think they came from?” Ethan asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe there’s a military base nearby that’s still operational,” Kimberly suggested. The tone of her voice was light, almost excited.

He glanced at her and saw that her eyes were bright and wide as she stared up at the sky. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

“What?”

“It means we stand a pretty damn good chance of locating someone to take these samples to.” She patted her backpack to emphasize her point, and her grin widened. “And that means we stand a good chance of getting it into their hands or at least getting directions on where to take it and, maybe, having a vaccine developed. Or maybe even a cure.”

“One can only hope,” Ethan muttered, and that was when the sound of gunfire met his ears, loud and continuous, as if a major battle were being fought nearby. He stiffened and looked back at the sky, as if it would tell him something about where the noise was coming from. Though he could at least ascertain that it wasn’t coming from anything in his or Kimberly’s immediate vicinity, he still grabbed her bicep and hauled her back into the trees, pushing her behind a trunk and slouching alongside her.

“Who is shooting what?” Kimberly asked, twisting to look around the tree.

“I don’t know, but it sounds like it might be large caliber weapons,” Ethan answered. He closed his eyes, hoping that that would help him focus more fully on the direction the sound was coming from. “And it sounds as if it might be coming from…that way.” He pointed.

Kimberly gasped.

“That’s back in the direction of Woodside,” she murmured.

“Oh God,” Ethan whispered, pushing himself away from the tree as if he were going to race back toward the community. He took two steps in that direction before Kimberly grabbed his wrist.

“Where are you going?” she demanded.

“We have to go help them, Kim!” he exclaimed. “I don’t know what’s going on, but we can’t just bail! If that gunfire is coming from Woodside, then they might be in serious trouble!”

“No, we’ve got to keep going,” Kimberly said, and Ethan whirled on her in anger.

“You can’t seriously expect me to just abandon my friends—”

“That’s exactly what I expect you to do, because that’s what you agreed to do,” Kimberly interrupted. “You agreed to help me on this task, no matter what, and we can’t afford to get delayed by going back. The samples will only keep for so long, and we don’t have a moment to waste. I’m sorry, Eth. I know you want to go back to help them. I do too. I can’t stand the idea of any of them getting killed. But we’ve got a chance to save the rest of humanity, and we can’t afford to let it go to waste because we turned back when we should have continued going forward.”

Ethan stared at her for a second, grinding his teeth together, his anger almost too much to deny. Finally, he spun away from her and snarled out, “Fuck.” She was right, and he knew she was right, but that didn’t make him feel any better about turning his back on the rest of his friends. He sent up a silent prayer to anyone above who might be listening, asking them to protect his friends and see them safely out of whatever was going on back at the community. Then he ran his hands through his hair, pushing it back from his face.

“Okay,” he said, and he was surprised to discover that his voice was hoarse. He cleared his throat and dropped his hands to his sides. “Okay. You’re right. I hate to admit it, but you’re right. We need to get these samples out of here. There’s entirely too much at stake right now to do otherwise.”

Kimberly folded the map she still held and stuck it into the waistband of her jeans, then took his hand and gave it a comforting squeeze. It helped, but only a little. It didn’t do anything to get rid of the sick, heavy feeling in his gut. “They’re going to be fine, Eth,” Kimberly was saying. “They’re tough. They’re fighters. They can out-run and out-kill just about anything. Besides, they might even have the military over there helping them.”

Ethan didn’t reply to that. He just closed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and middle finger, shaking his head slowly. “If you say so, Kim,” he murmured.

Chapter 44

When Brandt regained consciousness, he was disoriented and partially blinded by the lights above him. The fluorescents, set into the tiled ceiling, sent stabs of pain through his head, and he squinted, trying to reduce the brightness. He started to assess what the hell had happened and where he was. The lights made it almost impossible; he couldn’t think with the ache in his head. He started to lift a hand to shade his eyes and was surprised when his arm jerked to a stop only a few inches above the mattress. A few more experimental tugs told him that his hands were restrained. A few tugs of his legs suggested the same. He craned his neck to the side, almost enough for it to be painful, and saw that he had padded straps wrapped around his wrists, and the ends of them were fastened to the metal rails on either side of his bed.

“What the hell?” he whispered, keeping his voice so low that it was almost inaudible.

A quick scan of his surroundings showed that he was in some sort of hospital room, and the bed he was lying on was one of those metal contraptions with rails, a too-thin mattress, and an almost paper-flat pillow. Several machines were hooked to him, including a heart monitor, which let out steady beeps in time with his heart. He frowned at the sight of it and rolled his head further to the side. He caught sight of the door and froze.

There was a heavily armed soldier standing guard at the door, his M4 rifle held at the ready, staring at him almost unblinkingly. Brandt stared back, unsure if he should even speak to the man watching him. Knowing his luck, the man would swing that rifle around and put a bullet in his head the moment he opened his mouth.

Thoughts of bullets brought the events he’d witnessed just before being taken from Woodside crashing back. He remembered the sight of the AH-60L DAP helicopters firing into the houses inside the community. His stomach tried to revolt as he thought about it, and he fought to swallow down the bile that was trying to push itself up into his throat. Once it had settled enough that he could speak without fear of vomiting, he turned his eyes back to the soldier and asked hoarsely, “Where is my wife?”

The soldier stared at him for a second longer, then turned and slipped out the door, shutting it behind him. Brandt frowned and turned his attention back to his restraints, pulling and straining against them, trying to wiggle at least one of his hands out of the strap so he could unfasten himself. But it was no use. He still felt sick and weak from his fever and his bout of unconsciousness, and he couldn’t get enough leverage to pull anything free. But he couldn’t just give up, not without knowing what had happened to Cade and the others.

His right hand had just begun to slip free of its restraint when the hospital room’s door swung back open. Three lab-coated doctors and two soldiers entered, all looking like they meant business, and Brandt rapidly assessed them with his eyes. The two soldiers were men, obviously the brawn of the group, who looked so much alike that they could have been mistaken for brothers, save for their different last names: one’s uniform was labeled “Hutcherson,” and the other’s said, “Bayer.” They would probably be his biggest threat if he found himself having to resort to an escape attempt.

He turned his attention to the doctors in the room instead. Two of them were men. One was a gray-haired, pot-bellied white man who was clearly eating well despite the apocalypse. The second male doctor was a young, somewhat skinny black man who was listening to the other doctor’s chatter intently; Brandt strained his ears, trying to make out what was being said, but the voices were too low. Giving up on them, he turned his gaze to the lone woman in the room, and his heart caught in his throat.

He could have sworn that he was looking at his wife. A woman who looked so strikingly like Cade that she could have been Cade stood just behind the two male doctors. She watched him with clinical detachment. Her eyes were the same icy blue, her hair the same dark brown, her skin tone the same olive-like complexion. He had to force his eyes away from her so he could re-assess the rest of the room for changes, but his gaze kept returning to her. He kept wondering how someone could be so much a doppelganger for Cade.

“Where am I?” he finally ventured to ask, and the two male doctors quieted and turned to him with the same detachment that the woman had had.

The white doctor stepped closer, clipboard in hand, looking like the pompous jackass that Brandt had expected. “What is your name?” he asked, and Brandt scowled.

“I want to know where my wife is, damn it,” Brandt replied. “Where is Cade?”

Just at the periphery of his hearing, he heard the female doctor let out a surprised gasp.

“Your name, sir,” the doctor repeated, pen poised over the clipboard in anticipation of his answer.

“Brandt—Michael Brandt Evans,” Brandt said in frustration. “Where is everyone from Woodside?”

“Are you currently experiencing any pain?” the doctor prompted.

“Who are you people?” Brandt asked.

The doctor looked unaffected by his reticence. “Are you currently experiencing any pain?” he repeated.

“Yeah, in my ass,” Brandt snapped, and he heard the female doctor let out a little giggle.

“Are you feeling any nausea, fever, delirium? Any confusion or abnormal thoughts?”

“I’m experiencing plenty of confusion, doc,” Brandt said. “Because nobody’s answering my fucking questions!” His voice reverberated off the tile and the concrete walls, and the doctors flinched at the sound.

Finally, the gray-haired doctor sighed and beckoned to the two soldiers. “He seems fine. Secure him and take him to his cell. I’ll let the major know that he’s conscious and available for questioning.”

The two soldiers saluted and moved toward the bed. His restraints were unfastened, but before he could make a move, he was hauled into a sitting position, and his hands were cuffed behind his back. “Off the bed, please,” Hutcherson said.

Bayer let the side rail down so Brandt could get up.

“Would someone please answer my questions?” Brandt asked. “Where am I?”

The female doctor seemed to take pity on him, because she stepped forward and held up a hand to signal for the soldiers to wait. “You’re in CDC medical facilities that have been established in conjunction with the United States military,” she explained, in an accent remarkably similar to Cade’s, only thicker.

Relieved that he was finally getting some of his questions answered, he asked, “So where are these facilities?”

“I can’t give you an exact location,” the woman said apologetically, “but I can tell you we’re near Bowling Green, Kentucky.”

“Kentucky?” Brandt repeated. “What the hell am I doing in Kentucky? And what happened to the rest of the people from my community? And why was I taken into custody?”

The black doctor cleared his throat and said quietly, “We don’t know anything about anyone else or any community. You were the only person brought in. As for why, we don’t know. That’s something that you’ll have to ask the major.”

“Okay, that’s enough,” the gray-haired doctor said. “Get him moving to his cell. We don’t have all day.”

Before Brandt could protest, he was hauled off the bed to his feet and steered toward the hospital room’s door. It expelled him out into a hallway that was empty save for him and the two soldiers. But not for long; seconds later, he heard the click of high heels against the tiles as someone hurried to catch up with them. He glanced over his shoulder to see the dark-haired woman walking at a brisk pace, following them through the winding halls of the facility and down multiple flights of stairs until they reached a bona fide prison cell with a solid steel door and a single slot to, presumably, slide food through. Bayer opened the door and swung it wide, indicating that Brandt should step inside.

“Excuse me,” the female doctor said, moving to intercept. “I need to take his vitals before you lock the cell, please.” She swept her hand toward the cell and addressed Brandt. “If you’d please sit on the edge of the bed?” And to the soldiers, “And if you’d wait at the door for me, it will only take a second.”

Brandt obeyed, partially out of curiosity. He sat on the edge of the bed and watched as she placed a bag onto the absurdly thin mattress beside him. She opened it, pulled out a stethoscope, and plugged it into her ears. Then she leaned over and pressed the cup to his chest.

“Don’t react. Just listen,” she whispered as she pretended to examine his lungs. “Deep breath,” she said loudly.

He obeyed.

She continued in the same hushed voice as before. “Things aren’t what they seem here. Don’t tell them anything.”

He schooled his features into impassivity as she moved the stethoscope’s cup to his upper back and added, “As for your community, I’m not sure it exists anymore.”

It took everything in Brandt to not respond, to not react in the slightest to her statement, but he did manage to whisper, “What makes you think that?”

“I overheard Major Bradford talking,” she said. “I don’t know what everything he said meant, but he mentioned a MOAB, and I know what that is.”

“Oh hell,” Brandt breathed, and he closed his eyes.

“Just…don’t tell them anything beyond what’s absolute necessary,” the woman said. “And don’t worry. I’ll get you out of here as soon as I can.” She stepped back and pulled a blood pressure cuff from her bag.

“What’s your name?” Brandt asked when she leaned down to wrap the cuff around his arm and take his blood pressure.

“Lindsey Alton,” the woman said, and Brandt could have sworn he felt his heart stop.

“Lindsey Alton?” he repeated, almost too loudly.

“Yes, Lindsey Alton,” she confirmed. “And if I’m not mistaken, you know my sister. And when I get you out of here, you’re going to help me find her or die trying.”

Table of Contents

From the Journal of Remy Angellette

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44