Jessica Meigs - The Becoming

by Brothers in Arms

“Yeah, I know your zombie theory,” Theo muttered. “Should we run?”

  “He’ll just follow us,” Gray pointed out. The man took a step toward them, and Gray used the flat side of the crowbar’s hook to shove him back again, holding him at bay. It proved difficult, though, on the level of trying to herd cats. The absurd thought nearly made Gray laugh. “You know what we’re going to have to do, right?”

  “I’m trying to not think about it.”

  The man took a shuffling step forward, pushing past Gray’s crowbar and easing toward him as if stalking him. “I think it might be a moot point anyway,” he said. He adjusted his balance before swinging out with the crowbar. He slammed the curved side of the crowbar’s hook into the side of the man’s head. The man’s temple gave with a crunch, and the man collapsed against the car. Despite the deep indentation in the side of his head—a blow that would have killed or at least severely incapacitated any other human being—the man was up and coming after them again almost immediately.

  “Jesus,” Theo gasped. His hand closed into Gray’s jacket and dragged him back from the man; Gray let him do it without protest. “Jesus, why didn’t that kill him? It should have killed him!”

  “I told you!” Gray crowed. He waved his crowbar at their attacker. “I told you they were fucking zombies, man!”

  “Get out of the way, you idiot!” Theo snapped. He shoved Gray aside. Gray caught himself against a light pole and watched in horrified fascination as Theo swung the axe into their attacker’s forehead. The crunch of bone sent a chill of disgust up Gray’s spine. He shuddered and took a short step back, away from the curb. The man was still standing, held up only by the axe embedded in his skull, the axe still gripped tightly in Theo’s hands.

  Theo stood in wide-eyed shock as he held onto the axe, staring at the man in front of him. Gray could see the fine tremors running through Theo’s shoulders, and he gently put a hand on his brother’s bicep. “Let’s get out of here,” he suggested. “We’ve got to find a car and get moving. The pharmacy, remember?”

  Theo nodded and tightened his grip on the axe, wrenching it free from the man’s skull. Blood and bits of flesh splattered against one of Theo’s boots as the man fell to the pavement bonelessly. Gray stretched out a leg and gingerly nudged the man with the toe of his shoe, testing to see if he was, in fact, dead. Once he was satisfied that the man was going to remain motionless, Gray huffed out a breath of relief and looked at Theo again.

  “Let’s go,” Theo agreed hoarsely. “I think we should definitely use your hotwiring plan. I suddenly don’t feel like taking the time to walk all the way to the base anymore.”

  Gray looked the street over, running his hand through his hair to push the strands back from his eyes. He could practically feel Theo shaking beside him, and he blindly put his hand out to squeeze his forearm. “How about that one?” he suggested, pointing out the Toyota Camry resting against the opposite curb. “I think I could maybe get that one’s engine going.”

  “Whatever you think you can handle,” Theo said. Gray glanced at him in concern and frowned. Theo too was looking at the street around them, clutching the axe in his right hand as if nothing had happened, as if some stranger’s blood and brain matter weren’t dripping from the blade to add to the splatter already on his utility boots and the concrete. Gray pressed his lips together, unsure how to broach the subject, and then just shook his head. It was probably better—for the moment, at least—to let it rest and let Theo bring up what was on his mind on his own time. At present, they didn’t really have time for ruminations in the street. Rolling his head from side to side to loosen the muscles in his neck, Gray glanced either way down the street before venturing out into it with a slow, cautious step. When nothing happened, he sped up, aiming for the Camry and pulling on the driver’s-side door handle as soon as he reached it.

  Gray hadn’t realized he was holding his breath until the door opened, and he let the trapped air out of his lungs in a rush. His shoulders sagging in relief, he slid into the car and looked up at Theo. “You going to keep guard for me?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.

  “Of course,” Theo answered readily. “What do you think I am, an idiot?”

  Gray cracked a smile at the old joke. “Well…” he said, trailing off in his customary response.

  Theo made a face at him and swatted at his head. Gray ducked the blow and bit back a laugh before digging into the small shoulder bag he was carrying. He fished out the tools he would need and, with one last glance at Theo, got to work.

  Chapter 12

  It didn’t take long for Gray to get the Camry’s engine running, and watching him work was almost like magic to Theo. His brother had pulled from his bag a flathead screwdriver, ripped the panel beneath the steering wheel out, did something fancy with some wiring inside it, and less than five minutes later, the car’s engine roared to life.

  Theo kept forgetting how skilled Gray was at almost everything related to cars. Sometimes, it was scary how much he knew.

  “Ready to roll?” Gray asked. The wide-eyed, excited look he gave Theo struck him as remarkably similar to one a small child would have given his mother as he presented her with a wart-covered toad. He bit back a chuckle at the mental image and nodded, circling the car to the passenger side.

  “Yeah, but you’re driving,” Theo said. “I don’t think I can focus enough right now.” He slung his bag into the backseat and set his pilfered axe on the floorboard, wrinkling his nose as the blood on it smeared on the carpeting. He slid into his seat, reflexively buckled his seatbelt, and then hit the power-lock button. Gray gave him an odd look, and he shrugged. “Can’t be too careful, can you?”

  “True,” Gray conceded. He put the car in drive and tapped the gas to roll it off the curb. “Thank God we live in such a small town, you know?” he said. He let the car coast into the street and began to speed up. “Lower population, which means fewer crazy people and less chance we’ll end up getting killed. Theoretically.”

  “Yeah,” Theo said softly. He looked out the window as the downtown area rolled by, propping his elbow against the edge of the door and resting his head on his hand. He wasn’t really thinking about the rest of the town. Truth be told, he didn’t really care about the rest of the town. All he cared about was the younger man sitting beside him and, of course, himself. He was aware that that sounded incredibly selfish, even to his own ears, but he didn’t care about that either. His brother was all he had left.

  Gray was still chattering beside him, going on about road congestion, or the lack thereof, and what they were going to do as soon as they got to the house they’d inherited from their parents. Theo nodded noncommittally whenever it seemed appropriate, but he didn’t focus on Gray’s words. He couldn’t. There was too much on his own mind at the moment, too much weighing heavily on his conscience for him to worry about whatever Gray was nattering on about.

  In the past three days, Theo had committed murder. Not just once, but twice. It was an action so against his nature, so against his impulse to help people, not hurt them that he couldn’t reconcile the blows he’d delivered with the axe and the oxygen tank with what he knew of himself. He kept trying to tell himself that it had been necessary, that it would continue to be necessary in order to protect himself and his younger brother. But he just couldn’t get past the horror that still stirred in his mind. He could almost still smell the metallic tang of blood from the latest victim.

  “Hey, are you even listening to me?” Gray’s voice broke into the haze of thoughts. Theo startled and looked to his left, where Gray was repeatedly glancing back and forth between him and the windshield. When he didn’t answer right away, his brain still catching up, Gray prompted with a soft, uncertain, “Theo? You okay?”

  Theo cleared his throat. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Just…thinking is all.” He shook his head, as if trying to rattle the thoughts in his mind loose, and then forced himself to focus on the man sitting beside him. “What’s up?” />
  Gray glanced at him several more times. Theo was sure that if they hadn’t been in a moving vehicle, Gray would have been staring at him as if he could read his mind. The thought of Gray being able to do so was, frankly, terrifying. “I was just asking,” Gray finally began. “Do you think this craziness is happening just in Plantersville? Or do you think it’s everywhere?”

  Theo pressed his lips together as he looked out the windshield, studying the horizon. He wasn’t sure what he was searching for. Smoke? Explosions? Some red haze in the air to indicate some form of biological attack? Alien invasion? He had no idea.

  “Theo?” Gray prompted again.

  “Sorry, I was thinking.” He rubbed a hand over his hair and sighed, letting the breath out slowly. “Honestly, I don’t know if I want to speculate,” he finally said. “Best-case scenario, it’s just here. Then the National Guard could come in and help evacuate people like us who haven’t gotten sick or whatever it is causing all this…crazy shit.”

  “But what if it’s, like, worldwide or something?” Gray asked. Theo could hear the clear reluctance to ask the question in the other man’s voice, and he frowned.

  “I don’t know,” Theo admitted. “I’m not sure what would happen then. Probably a total breakdown of civilization.”

  “What kind of breakdown?”

  “Sort of like what we’re already seeing.” Theo twisted in his seat to face Gray, resting his back against the door. The armrest dug into his back painfully, but he ignored it. “Do you remember all that stuff we saw on television back when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans?” he prompted. “All the lootings and shootings and the lack of food and water and all that?” When Gray nodded, he continued. “It would probably be a lot like that. Maybe even worse, since it’d be everywhere and not just confined to one city.”

  “I can’t even imagine that,” Gray commented. “I mean, New Orleans was bad enough. Worldwide sounds like something out of a horror movie.”

  “This coming from the guy who suggested that everybody out there is turning into zombies,” Theo said with a soft chuckle. “Zombies are a physical impossibility.”

  “Last week, I’d have said that all of this,” Gray waved his hand around at the windshield vaguely, “was a physical impossibility, but I think the world’s pretty much proven us wrong on that.” He slowed down and eased their stolen car around a wrecked vehicle jutting out into the roadway. “If it has affected places outside of Plantersville…what are we going to do, Theo?”

  Theo shrugged. “What we have to do,” he said. “Whatever it takes to survive.”

  After they made their pharmacy run—blessedly unimpeded by anyone or anything—and fully loaded themselves down with every bit of medication Theo saw that looked like it could be useful, it took them another hour to travel the rest of the short distance between Gray’s apartment and their inherited home, a drive that normally would have taken only fifteen minutes. As they drove farther out of town, the evidence of the chaos that had engulfed Plantersville seemed to slacken until it was almost nonexistent—but not totally gone. There were several more wrecked cars littering the road, the occasional smashed bit of luggage or broken cooler, and a few bicycles lying in tangled heaps.

  Theo wasn’t paying much attention to their drive—he was more absorbed in sorting through the medication bottles stuffed inside the plastic CVS bags at his feet—when Gray let out a sharp gasp. The car began to slow, and Theo shifted his eyes away from the bag to look at his brother in confusion. “What?” he asked before he noticed what Gray was looking at. It was a wrecked ambulance, the very same ambulance from which he had crawled three nights before. In the daylight, it looked far worse than Theo remembered; cracks spider-webbed almost across the entirety of the windshield’s span, mirrors were shattered, and bullet holes littered the exposed roof. He couldn’t see Jonathan’s body at the end of the ambulance from where he sat; he wasn’t sure he wanted to.

  “Is that…that’s not anyone you know, is it?” Gray asked hesitantly.

  Theo cleared his throat and didn’t look at Gray as he answered. “Yeah. It was…that was ours. Mine and Jonathan’s truck.”

  “Shit, you’re kidding me,” Gray said. Theo could hear the horror and shock in his voice as he breathed the words out, and he tensed slightly, ready to get railed at by Gray. “You didn’t tell me you were in a wreck! I thought you guys just ditched out or something! Are you okay? You’re not hurt, are you?”

  “No, I’m not hurt,” Theo said. He tried to keep the irritation out of his voice; Gray was only asking because he cared, because he was concerned, he reminded himself. And he could hardly fault him for being horrified at what he saw. The wreckage looked bad; Theo was sure he’d have been fairly shocked if he hadn’t experienced it himself. “I’m okay. Really,” he insisted when he realized Gray was still staring at him.

  Gray didn’t look much comforted, despite Theo’s reassurances. “Are you absolutely sure you didn’t get hurt?” he persisted.

  “Yes, Gray, I’m sure,” Theo said with a heavy sigh. “I mean, I bumped my head, but it wasn’t a big deal. There wasn’t even any blood.”

  “If you say so,” Gray muttered. There was a gentle lurch as he pressed on the gas again, and the car started to roll forward once more. He steered the vehicle around the wreckage of the ambulance. As they passed, Theo couldn’t help but let his eyes flutter toward the end of the ambulance, where one of the doors still hung open, resting against the pavement. Jonathan’s body was still lying on top of the door, sprawled sideways, the blood long dried and congealed into a puddle beneath the man’s head. Theo swallowed hard and forced his eyes away; the thought that that could have been him lying there like that jabbed frantically at the back of his mind. He didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t want to imagine what would have happened if he hadn’t gotten away from the site, if he hadn’t made it to Gray’s apartment in time. The very thought was enough to send his brain spinning like a top.

  It wasn’t long before the gravel driveway crunched underneath the Camry’s tires, and Theo drew in a slow breath as the two-story house came into view, the trees lining the long driveway parting like an evergreen curtain to reveal the building sitting solitary in its plot. As Gray pulled the car to a slow stop, Theo leaned forward in his seat, narrowing his eyes as he studied the area around the house, looking for anything out of the ordinary. When he didn’t see anything, he leaned over the seat to retrieve his axe and bag from the back seat and then nodded to Gray.

  “Come on, looks clear,” Theo said. He eased his door open and climbed out into the cool, nippy morning air. A moment later, the Camry’s engine cut off—presumably via some more of that vehicular magic Gray seemed to work—and then his brother joined him, staring at their surroundings with a wary look in his eyes. Theo could sympathize. He was almost hesitant to step forward, to make a move that might draw attention to them.

  Quit being stupid, he berated himself. There’s nothing here. If there were, it would have come at us by now. He sighed and pushed his car door shut, beckoning to Gray. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go see what we can do to get set up in here.”

  Chapter 13

  Gray took in a deep breath as he stepped into the house behind Theo, inhaling the musky scent that could only be defined as “home.” The foyer’s floorboards let out the familiar creak he’d heard growing up as he walked over them, and as Theo closed the door behind them and snapped the locks into place, he couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face. It felt good to be home again, even if the circumstances weren’t exactly ideal.

  “I think we should cover the windows,” Theo said from behind him without any preamble. Gray hardly paid him any attention; he was too busy looking over the slightly shabby foyer and slowly walking toward the living room beyond. It didn’t look like Theo had replaced a single thing since he’d involuntarily moved out three months before. Gray would have been pissed off if Theo had. Every bit of furniture and every speck o
f paint in the house had been carefully chosen by their mother, and Gray had often stated his desire that they leave it all as she’d wanted. Despite the fact that she’d passed away nearly five years prior, Gray still thought of the house as their parents’ house, not his and Theo’s.

  “What do you want me to do?” Gray asked after studying the living room. He set his bag on the couch and his crowbar on the coffee table and looked to Theo; the other man was giving an attentive study to the large picture window that graced the wall across from the couch. He seemed to snap out of it at Gray’s question.

  “There’s black plastic sheeting in the garage,” Theo said, heading for the kitchen. Gray scrambled to follow him. “I need you to cover all the windows on the bottom floor. Make sure they’re totally covered and sealed at the edges with duct tape. I don’t want any light to leak through whatsoever.”

  “And what are you going to be doing?”

  “I’m going to work on searching every room in this house and gathering up everything even remotely useful,” Theo replied. “So get whatever you’re thinking about me being lazy out of your system now, because I know that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Gray almost flushed at that; it was like Theo had read his mind. Definitely not a good place for his brother to be.

  He pushed past Theo and stepped through the garage’s side door. The garage was chilly, and he reflexively wrapped his jacket tighter around himself as he ventured deeper into the building. He flipped the light switch and scanned the large room under the dim light from the single strip above where the car would have been parked if there’d been a car inside.

  When he was a small child, Gray had always been scared of the garage. He wasn’t sure why; it wasn’t like it was particularly terrifying as compared to any other place in the house. He remembered how, when he was a small child, his mom would constantly try to send him into the garage for a tool or for one of her canning jars, and he’d throw a temper tantrum trying to avoid it. Even as an adult, he was still unnerved by the badly lit room, though he was far too old for such nonsense. He rolled his eyes at himself and practically ran to his father’s workbench across the room, snatching up the two solitary packages of black plastic and a couple of rolls of duct tape. Once the necessary supplies were in his possession, Gray tucked the plastic under his arm, looped the rolls of tape around his wrist, and then raced back to the garage door, hopping up the three steps to the kitchen entryway. With one last glance over his shoulder at the garage, he hit the switch to turn the lights off and then shut and locked the door behind him.