“Then there’s Remy Angellette,” Cade continued. “We pulled her out of a tight spot in Biloxi about a month after everything went sideways. Brandt and I almost got killed in the process, but it could have been worse. And I guess you could say it was our first experience working as a team helping someone else. It’s what gave us the idea to do what we do, I suppose.” She shrugged nonchalantly and shot Ethan a warning glance when he opened his mouth to speak up. “Remy doesn’t have any military experience or anything, but she’s smart and driven and tough, and she learns quickly. And she’s very resourceful.” She fell silent as she continued her work on the rifle.
“Who else is there?” Avi prompted when she didn’t start speaking again right away.
“Well, there’s Brandt Evans,” she said. She finished assembling the rifle and set it carefully on the table. “We met him in Gadsden the day after the virus hit Memphis. He’s a Marine. That’s probably why Ethan likes to stick me and Brandt in the lead on missions. Out of the entire group, we know what the hell we’re doing and what to look out for better than any of the others.” Her tone wasn’t arrogant, just matter of fact, as if it was something they all acknowledged.
“And lastly, Nikola Klein. She’s the youngest in the group, but she’s really good at figuring out where to look to find supplies we need,” Cade said, a hint of pride in her voice. “Ethan picked her up on a…well, let’s just call it a solo mission to Memphis. Lucky for her, too. I’m sure if he hadn’t, she’d be dead by now.
“You’ll probably meet all of them late this evening or, at worst, in the morning,” Cade added. “They’re all out on supply right now, and Theo is on the roof keeping watch. Ethan and I are the only ones here.”
Avi nodded. Cade picked up the weapon in front of her, snapped a magazine into it, and lifted it to her shoulder, holding it as if she were ready to shoot something. Avi hoped the rifle was unloaded, though the few holes in the dining room wall suggested the opposite was a regular occurrence, and that Cade was halfway as competent shooting the rifle as she was pointing it. Avi’s concerns were alleviated a bit as Cade squeezed the trigger. The rifle dry-fired. Cade nodded thoughtfully and set it on the table once again.
“What kind of gun is that?” Avi asked. She rocked onto the balls of her feet to get a better look at the rifle.
“This?” Cade asked. She patted the rifle and rubbed a hand lightly along it. “Oh, this is my baby.” She practically glowed as she talked about the weapon.
“Oh man, we’re in for it now,” Avi heard Ethan mutter.
“It’s a seven-point-six-two-millimeter Galil sniper rifle,” she explained, speaking slowly and reverently. Avi raised an eyebrow. Cade’s tone made her sound like she was reciting an owner’s manual long-since memorized. “Semi-automatic, rotating bolt, twenty-five-round magazine, with a ten-by-forty Nimrod scope. I hoard the ammo for this thing like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Cade, you’re starting to talk Greek again,” Ethan spoke up. He chuckled as he came up behind the woman, teasingly flipping her ponytail with one hand. “None of us understands a word you’re saying when you get going about all your gear.”
She rolled her eyes and gave the rifle one last pat. “Philistine,” she joked, tilting her head back to look at Ethan. Then her voice suddenly turned serious. “When are we going to talk to the others?” Her blue eyes slanted toward Avi.
“In the morning,” Ethan replied shortly. He beckoned to Avi. “Come on, Ms. Geller. I’ll show you where you can get some sleep. You look like you haven’t had any real rest in days.”
“I haven’t slept, no,” Avi admitted with a nonchalant shrug, as if sleeplessness were a common state. She suspected this group went without sleep more regularly than she did, and she refused to admit that she was bordering on exhaustion. “It’s not really a big deal, though.”
“Yes, it is,” he shot back. “As long as you’re going to be with us, you’ll be treated like one of us. That includes decent amounts of sleep and as much rations as we can spare. If we decide to go with you, you’d better get used to that.”
“Well, I guess I could do with some rest,” she conceded. Then she paused in mid-step. “When can I get my things back?” she asked, half-turning to Cade. The other woman rose from her seat.
“Oh, tomorrow, probably,” Cade replied. She headed to the kitchen, adjusting her ponytail. “I’m going to sharpen your machete, and maybe we’ll get you something else to go with it. A backup. You good with a gun?”
“Not very,” Avi confessed, embarrassed at the admission. Her colleagues had mostly kept her out of situations involving the need for guns since she wasn’t very good at hitting what she aimed at. As a result, she was the equivalent of a pencil pusher rather than a fighter. She hadn’t had much further experience with firearms.
“Don’t worry about it,” Cade said assuredly. “If you end up staying with us, worst-case scenario is we’ll teach you. But as long as you can handle your blade well, you should be okay in a reasonably small life-threatening situation.” She disappeared through the kitchen doorway, leaving Avi feeling vaguely unsettled.
Avi hurried to catch up with Ethan, who’d already climbed half the stairs and left her behind. Ethan paused at the second-floor landing to wait for her, leaning against the railing, his legs crossed at the ankles and his hands braced against the wooden rail behind him. “Ms. Geller,” he said when she drew level with him. He started up the second flight. “I don’t suppose I have to tell you what’ll happen if you get in our way, either here or out there.” He kept his tone mild, but she wasn’t fooled. She heard the threat under his words. “We take our safety very seriously, and we don’t need anyone interfering if they’re not going to help.” He paused at the top of the stairs and looked at the closed doors in the hall then nodded and led her to the second door on the right. “This is where you’ll stay,” he announced as he opened it.
Avi stepped inside and looked around the room. It was mostly bare of furniture, though there was a twin-sized bed on each side of the room. The one to her right had been recently used; the bed was unmade, and a hairbrush and toothbrush had been carelessly tossed onto the mattress. A satchel leaned against the wall near the headboard.
“You’ll share a room with Remy tonight,” Ethan said. “That is, assuming she gets back before sunset. Otherwise, she’ll hole up somewhere else and you’ll be here alone.” He glanced over the room and added, “We’ll discuss your proposition in the morning, once everyone is back and has had some rest.”
Avi nodded and swept her eyes over the room once more. She opened her mouth to thank Ethan once again for his hospitality and consideration, but before she could get the words out, he turned on his heel and stalked into the hall, shutting the door firmly in her face.
* * *
Nikola Klein slowly lowered herself into a crouch behind a massive oak tree alongside the road, setting her aluminum softball bat down on the overgrown grass beside her so she could tighten her long blond ponytail. She eyed the gas station across the street, studying it for movement, waiting to see if there was anything in or around it that might pose something of a danger to her.
Truth be told, she really shouldn’t have been this far away from the safe house; Ethan would smack the crap out of her if he knew—not literally; the man wasn’t remotely abusive, but Lord knew he was a master of the ass chewing. She would certainly get one if he knew that she had ranged out more than a mile away from the safe house alone. But she couldn’t help it. it was getting harder and harder to find useful supplies in the houses and buildings in the immediate vicinity that she could actually access, so she’d started searching farther and farther away from base to find the useful stuff they needed.
Hence why she was two miles away across the street from a gas station that actually looked—mostly—untouched. It was such a weird sight that she couldn’t help but second-guess if she should go in. But there was nothing else she could do, so she straightened, checked to make sure h
er messenger bag was secure against her side, and eased around the tree, striding across the street in a straight line, heading for the gas station like she belonged there.
The parking lot was, much to her relief, empty and completely devoid of movement, save for some paper litter that stirred gently in the light afternoon breeze. Nikola blew out a steadying breath, wishing fleeting that she had some backup, then approached the glass entrance and tugged on the door experimentally. The door started to swing open then stuck on something, refusing to open any further. She scowled and yanked on it harder; it let out a loud squealing sound, grinding against the floor, and when she knelt to examine it, she realized the door had somehow gotten damaged and wasn’t going to open much farther without making a tremendous amount of noise. Giving up on the door, she adjusted her bag and opted instead to slide sideways through the foot-wide gap between the door and the frame, wincing as the doorjamb scratched her lower back through her shirt. Then she took a careful look around to make sure she was alone before focusing in on the store’s condition.
The convenience store was nothing short of a mess, though Nikola wasn’t totally sure that “mess” was a word that fully covered the chaotic wreck that the store was. There were several shelves toppled over, their contents spilled over the white tiled floor, and there was a sour milk stench in the air. She immediately zeroed in on the source of the smell: a cooler full of dairy goods left open to spoil after the power went out. Nikola was honestly amazed that the smell had hung around after a year.
Once she’d ascertained that she was, in fact, alone, she did a quick tour of the store, searching for supplies that weren’t super perishable. It was honestly slim pickings, which was no surprise, since they were a year out from the outbreak and they weren’t the only survivors on the planet. She spotted several cans of what appeared to be soup underneath the space created by a fallen shelving unit that was propped precariously against its neighbor and made mental note of them, intending to come back for them once she’d finished surveying for other, more easily accessible supplies.
Twenty minutes later, she’d packed her messenger bag as full as she could carry it with a wide array of supplies and other useful bits she’d come across in the convenience store and was laying on her stomach, trying to get to the cans of soup she’d spotted underneath the shelving unit, when she heard something from somewhere in the store, a soft scraping noise, the kind of sound suggestive of a foot brushing against the floor. She reflexively jerked her head up, promptly banging it against the shelves above her, and winced, rubbing her head as she started trying to crawl out from underneath the shelves without making any noise, a task that proved virtually impossible considering the heavy bag on her side and the debris on the floor around her. She finished wiggling out, grabbed her bat, and rolled up onto her feet, lifting the bat in a one-handed grip as she stuffed the soup can she still held into her bag.
She turned in a slow circle, pausing in the middle of it to kick a stray candy bar away from her foot, but didn’t see anything or anyone in the store with her. But she wasn’t alone, she was certain of it. She had heard the telltale signs of a presence with her own ears, the very same signs, however small, that experience and Ethan Bennett had taught her to listen for. The shuffling noise reached her ears again, followed by a slightly louder thump. She whipped her head around and spotted the black swing door she’d missed before, the one nestled in a nook by the unisex bathroom door; it was swaying slightly, like it had been blown by a breeze. Even as she watched, something bumped against it from the other side, setting it in motion again. She jumped, just slightly, and took a cautious step back further from the door, trying to decide what exactly she needed to do and the best way to do it to avoid getting herself caught in a bad spot.
She really needed to get out of there before she got in a jam, but she really, really wanted to look behind the cash register before she did. The good stuff was always kept behind the cash counter; everyone who’d ever been in a convenience store knew that. But it wasn’t cigarettes she was after. She was hoping for something far more useful than that.
With one last glance at the still moving swing door, Nikola quietly crept toward the cash counter in question, trying her best to stay as quiet as possible as she slipped behind it, where she crouched down, making sure her head was below the top edge of the counter, and immediately began rummaging through the detritus that was still piled up on the wooden shelves underneath the counter. Her eyes lit onto a small cardboard box set back on one of the shelves, and she grinned, recognizing it instantly, before grabbing it. Just as her fingers curled around the cardboard, a much louder thud sounded from the direction of the black swinging door she’d been suspiciously eyeing a few moments before. She snatched the box to her chest, clutching it there as she took in a deep, shaky breath, then slowly eased up just enough to peer over the edge of the counter. She almost let out an involuntary gasp before ducking right back down again.
One of the infected was in the convenience store with her.
Nikola almost swore in frustration but managed to refrain. Swearing, even in a whisper, would be too much noise for her comfort. Especially when the only thing she had to defend herself with was a baseball bat. And while she was pretty confident in her ability to swing it like nobody’s business, the last thing she wanted to do was test her ability to hold up against one of the infected with just the bat, especially against an infected person that was the size of two of her put together.
And this one was big. If she had to guess, he stood about six feet tall, and he was built like what her dad used to call “a brick shithouse,” all massive and square and big beefy biceps that looked like he spent too many days at backyard barbecues when the world had been normal, crushing beer cans with his arms like some macho tough guy. His formerly white T-shirt was a mess of old stains and bodily fluids, and she could smell him all the way from where she knelt behind the counter—a rank smell that was bad enough to choke a horse. As big as he was, it was no wonder he was still stuck in here, even after a year, considering the door wouldn’t open more than about a foot. He couldn’t have fit through that gap even if he’d tried.
Speaking of…
Nikola slowly rose to counter level again, peering out to see what he was doing. The man was milling around near the door, looking around the store like he sensed that she was there but was confused because he couldn’t see her. She watched him, staying absolutely still, even as the hand that held the box she’d snatched from under the counter carefully lifted the flap on her messenger bag and slid the box inside. Then she hoisted her bat in a two-handed grip, waiting for when he turned away from her.
The second he moved in the direction opposite her, she started crab-walking to the cash counter’s exit, circling around the end of the counter so she could creep in the direction of the store’s main doors. As she turned the last corner of the counter, the end of her bat clipped the wooden counter, letting out a startlingly loud bang that drew the attention of anything and everything in the building with her.
Which was to say, the one infected guy in the vicinity that she really didn’t want to get into a confrontation with.
The infected guy in question whipped around at the sound of the bat’s blow, lighting right into her, and this time, she did let out a curse, abandoning any attempt to remain silent as she leaped to an upright position and hauled ass for the door, her heavy messenger bag banging vigorously against the backs of her thighs. The entry door was still wedged open in its miniscule foot-wide gap, but that didn’t stop her for lunging for it, cramming herself through as quickly as she could. She managed to slither through the gap, but as she started to move away from the door, something jerked her to a stop, and she glanced back to see that her overstuffed messenger bag had gotten stuck in the gap. And the infected guy in the store was lumbering in her direction, prompting her to let out a string of swears as she yanked on the bag, trying desperately to dislodge it before the infected man got his hands on it.
As he reached the door and stretched out his hands for the bag, Nikola ran to the door, bat raised, and jammed it through the gap in the door like a spear, smashing the larger end right into his face. He staggered backward at the blow, which bought Nikola the time she needed to maneuver the bag full of precious supplies around so she could yank it free from the door. She stumbled backward, catching herself just before she slipped off the little curb on the sidewalk lining the front of the building, something that would surely have dumped her right on her ass. Then she adjusted her bag, hoisted it up onto her shoulder more firmly, and started to run as fast as she was able away from the scene, aiming to head back for the safe house, even as she mentally decided that she was not going to tell Ethan about what had just happened to her.
* * *
Cade looked up from her quiet contemplation of the front door as Ethan came back downstairs. He looked grumpier than usual, likely from lack of sleep. She could sympathize. She still suffered from chronic exhaustion brought on by the less than four hours of sleep she’d managed a night for the past year—when she was lucky. That sort of exhaustion could bring the strongest men to their knees; she had no idea how she was still able to function at times. But she was sure if Ethan had an inkling of how tired she was, he wouldn’t be pleased.
“Is anyone back yet?” Ethan asked as he reached the bottom of the staircase. His tone suggested he was unconcerned with her answer, but the expression in his eyes spoke of how worried he actually was about their companions.
She hesitated and glanced at the door again, debating how to break the news to him. A straightforward approach was likely best. He hated people beating around the bush when telling him bad news. Cade returned her eyes to his face and shook her head slowly.
Ground Zero Page 2
