Ethan paced back and forth in front of the cold fireplace in the living room. He had been checking his watch and stopping to look out the front windows every few minutes for the past hour, ever since Anna had grabbed her go-bag and run out of the house to go to the hospital. Everything about him, emotionally and physically, was on edge. He wanted desperately to go out, track Anna down, and drag her back to the house, regardless of what she wanted or what her supervisors said. He just didn’t feel it was safe enough for her to be out on her own without protection against any of the crazies that were now running the streets.
The sudden sharp, familiar sound of gunshots echoed out in the night. Ethan froze and looked up from his contemplation of the floorboards. He counted the shots silently, deciding that there were four of them, and then he tried to guess where they had come from. Ethan couldn’t be positive, but he had the sneaking suspicion that they’d come from the direction of Cade’s house.
Ethan frowned and grabbed his Glock 17 from the coffee table; he’d taken it out after the reports of the riots broke on the news and his bosses called him with instructions. He was unsure of what he was going to face as he headed for the front door and flung it open, but whatever it was, he’d be armed when he faced it.
Ethan turned off the safety on his gun as he walked out into the dew-dampened grass. He looked around cautiously as he crossed the front yard and headed toward Cade’s house. His dress shoes slipped on the grass, and he made a disgusted face as he glanced down at his getup. He should have changed clothes before he went to investigate the source of the gunshots. Dress shoes, pants, and a nice shirt weren’t exactly ideal clothes to wear for a potential fight.
A loud thud at the front of Cade’s house drew Ethan’s attention, and he reflexively lifted his gun. He gripped it with both hands as he halted in his journey across the yard. His green eyes narrowed, and he squinted through the darkness. The silhouette of a person ran toward him. The sound of sobbing met his ears, and he lowered the gun as he realized who it was.
“Ethan!” Cade cried out as she ran. “Ethan, help!”
Ethan ran forward, struggling to keep from slipping on the damp grass in his ridiculous shoes, and met her in the space between their houses. Cade dropped a handgun onto the grass between them and flung herself into his arms. Ethan realized only after he’d wrapped both arms around her that her arms and torso were stained with blood. The front of her shirt was ripped open, and her feet were bare and wet.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Ethan asked as he took in the sight of her. Cade choked back desperate sobs as she buried her face against his chest. Ethan could feel her entire body trembling, and he rubbed her back soothingly as he held her. “What the fuck happened?”
“Andrew killed Josie,” Cade said. She continued to cry, her voice muffled by his shirt. Ethan felt his heart drop into his gut as her words sank in. “He killed her and he attacked me and I shot him.”
Ethan focused on the handgun at his feet and the way Cade kept looking over her shoulder, as if she expected something to spring from the shadows by her house and attack. “Wait, slow down,” Ethan urged. He put his hands up in a calming gesture before he rested them both on her shoulders. “One thing at a time. What’s going on?”
“We need to get inside,” Cade said breathlessly. She grabbed Ethan’s wrist and pulled at it so hard that for a fleeting moment, Ethan thought she was about to dislocate it. “We need to lock the doors. It’s not safe out here.”
Ethan allowed Cade to lead him back inside his own house. She slammed the door shut and turned the deadbolt to lock it securely. She pulled the curtains covering the windows on either side of the front door tightly shut and checked that no light shone through them. Once done, Cade let out a slow breath and wiped at her face with the back of her hand. “He killed her,” Cade repeated. “He’s acting like … like one of those things on TV.” She rubbed at her face again, and the action left a smear of blood across her cheek. Ethan grabbed a tissue from the box on the coffee table and began to help her clean the blood from her face. “He fucking attacked Josie while she was asleep. He tore her open, Ethan!”
“Jesus,” Ethan breathed as Cade started to sob again. He wrapped his arms around her once again and closed his eyes. He wasn’t sure what to do. All of his professional training told him that he needed to arrest her and take her into the station, but his friendship with her and the constant chatter over the police scanner on the mantelpiece suggested otherwise. “I should go check it out,” he said.
“No!” Cade exploded. She took a step back from him and shook her head frantically. “No, no, don’t go over there. It’s not safe.”
“Babe, you said you shot him,” Ethan pointed out. Cade looked panicked. That fact, more than any other, scared him. Cade didn’t panic over anything. The woman was the most levelheaded person he’d ever met, and nothing seemed to faze her. Until now.
Cade breathed in a slow, shaky breath. “Yeah, I did. Four times.” She scrubbed at her left cheek with the tissue as she closed her eyes. “In the chest.”
“So let’s go take a look,” Ethan persisted. He stepped toward the door.
Cade shook her head and grabbed his wrist again, this time to stop him. She raised her head slowly to look at him, and Ethan was reminded of the creeping feeling he got when one of the characters in a scary movie was about to say something particularly ominous. “Ethan … he didn’t stay down.”
Ethan studied Cade’s face for even the slightest hint that she was joking. But he knew that the situation was too serious for jokes. “Didn’t stay down?” he repeated. “But … you shot him in the chest.”
“Yeah, and I don’t miss,” she said. Her voice trembled as much as she did. She leaned to grab a fresh tissue from the box and dabbed gently at her reddened eyes. “I don’t miss, Ethan. I hit him in the chest, right here, four times.” She touched her chest just above her heart.
Ethan shook his head slowly. “There’s no way someone should have been able to survive something like that. It’s not possible.”
“He did, Ethan. He’s still in the house right now,” she said. “God, I don’t know what’s going on anymore.”
Ethan looked toward the police scanner as it erupted in another burst of static and almost indecipherable coded chatter. He waited until it fell silent once more, and then he said, “I was just planning on going out after Anna. She’s had enough time to get to the hospital. I want to pack shit up and get the hell out of town before it falls down around our ears.” He paused and then added, “You should come with us.”
“What about your work?” Cade asked.
“Fuck work. Yours and Anna’s safety is more important.”
Cade nodded slightly in response, but she didn’t seem focused on Ethan’s words. Ethan frowned and looked to the front door for a moment. The potential dangers outside the house and the fact that his wife was somewhere out in the thick of it made him feel queasy. He was scared out of his mind for her. But at the same time, his best friend needed him. He felt torn as to which situation to handle first.
Ethan looked at Cade once more. She sat down on the edge of the couch and held her pajama shirt closed with one hand. He figured it was best to address the problem in front of him first.
“Why don’t you go upstairs and get cleaned up?” Ethan suggested. “You and Anna are about the same size; I’ll get you some of her clothes.” Cade nodded again and stood. She moved toward the stairs, but Ethan reached out and caught her by the arm. “Come here,” he said, and he pulled her into his arms in a tight hug. He ignored the additional blood that transferred from her clothes to stain his own. “You’re going to be okay, I promise,” he said into her hair as he gave the top of her head an affectionate kiss.
“God, I hope so,” Cade murmured as she clung to him. Ethan rubbed her back as she simply stood still, and he only reluctantly let go of her when she stepped back from him and wiped at her eyes with her wrist. “Upstairs, second on the right?”
“Yeah.” Ethan watched Cade walk up the stairs. Once she was out of sight, he moved briskly to the coffee table and snatched up his gun and holster. He fastened the holster to his belt and jammed the Glock into it before he approached the front door. Ethan was going to check out Cade’s house and see what he could gather about the situation inside, regardless of her discomfort with the idea of him being out of the house.
It wasn’t that Ethan didn’t believe her. Far from it. Cade was the epitome of honesty, and her IDF training had honed her powers of observation to an extreme. Ethan knew too that Cade had no reason to make up something so strange. It was just that what she had reported to him was so unbelievable that he was having trouble wrapping his mind around it. He had to see it with his own eyes to fully understand what she had said.
Ethan slipped out of the front door quietly and pulled it shut behind him with a soft click. He stepped off the front porch and approached Cade’s house for the second time that evening. His hand rested lightly on top of his holstered Glock. The house looked dark and sinister, though Ethan couldn’t place exactly what about it made him think so. After retrieving Cade’s gun from the grass in the front yard, Ethan slunk to the front door and made his way up the steps. The door was wide open and seemed to invite him in.
There was no movement in the dark entryway, so Ethan drew in a breath and stepped inside. He pulled out his gun and stepped into the foyer with caution. He raised his weapon and instinctively fell into the police procedures that had been hammered into his head for the past twenty-one years. Ethan cleared the living room with a quick sweep of his gun, using the dim light that emanated from the television to check out the area. He paused for a moment beside the couch and watched the scene behind the reporter on the screen: a large building burned. Ethan blinked as the realization that he recognized the building flitted through his mind, but not having time to pursue that avenue of thought, he shook the feeling off and headed for the kitchen.
After a quick scan of the kitchen, Ethan decided to move upstairs to look into the bedrooms. It was late, so it was reasonable to assume that Josie had been killed in or near her bedroom. The thought of the little girl, whom he adored so much, dead was enough to make pain lance through his chest. Ethan forced himself to exhale to calm himself as he made his way up the stairs.
One look inside the guest room where the little girl had slept was enough for Ethan. He closed his eyes for the barest of moments and backed away. He turned toward Cade’s bedroom and wished desperately that he hadn’t looked inside the guest room. The sight of the bloodstained sheets and the child’s motionless body was enough for him to know that there was no hope for her anymore. Andrew, though…
Ethan found the man slumped on the floor beside Cade’s bed. He eased up to Andrew and gripped his gun tighter in his sweating palm. A sense of unease settled in his gut as he stared down at the body. Gingerly, he stretched out a leg and nudged Andrew with the toe of his dress shoe. The man didn’t move. Ethan dropped to a knee beside Andrew and pushed him gently over onto his back. He felt over the man’s carotid artery, searching for a pulse; there didn’t appear to be one. The man was, as far as Ethan could ascertain, dead. Perhaps leftover adrenaline had kept Andrew moving even after the fatal shots, Ethan thought as he frowned. That would explain Cade’s perception that Andrew hadn’t stayed down after she’d shot him.
Ethan scanned the room as he straightened, and he noticed a black case resting on the bed beside a duffel bag. It was Cade’s new rifle, he realized as he moved closer to it. The key was in the lock, and the case’s lid was cracked open. Ethan lifted the lid to peer inside and make sure everything was in it; he noted the rifle, the scope, and the magazine inside its gray foam confines. Ethan closed the case’s lid and locked it before he picked it up and tucked the key into his pocket for safekeeping. It would be best to return the rifle to Cade. She would want it with her on their trip out of the city. Hopefully it wouldn’t get them into any serious trouble—or into any situations where they might be forced to use it.
As Ethan carried the case toward the door, a glint of steel in the corner of his eye caught his attention. He spotted a wicked-looking hunting knife on the bedside table next to Cade’s IDF portrait. Ethan picked the knife up and examined it for a moment before searching for its sheath. Once he’d found it in the drawer, he sheathed the knife and tucked it into his back pocket. Then he scooped up the duffel bag on the bed and slung it over his shoulder. When he had everything he thought he should get, Ethan headed back out into the hall.
Ethan was surprised to find Cade standing at the end of the hall, near the head of the stairs. The Israeli woman wore Anna’s clothes and stood with her arms crossed over her chest and a worried look on her face. She looked as if she were hugging herself as she stared warily at her surroundings. Ethan could just make out one of his spare Glocks dangling from one of her hands.
“What the fuck are you doing over here?” Cade hissed as Ethan approached.
“I came over to check things out,” Ethan said defensively. He didn’t bother to keep his voice down as he set the duffel bag at her feet; there really was no need. He held out the rifle case with a quick roll of his eyes. “And I got your bag and your rifle,” he added. “You’re welcome.”
Cade looked down at the bag, and her gaze softened. “Thanks,” she said. She reached out and took the black case from him, and then she picked the bag up slowly. She draped the strap over her shoulder and looked past Ethan, down the dark hallway toward the guest bedroom. Ethan frowned and reached out to touch her shoulder.
“Hey, do you need to…?” Ethan trailed off. The rest of the question hung in the air between them. He didn’t need to finish it; they both knew what he’d been about to say.
Cade hesitated, and then she nodded slightly and took a step toward Josie’s room. Ethan watched as she stopped in the doorway and turned her head. Her blue eyes looked into the darkness.
“Where is she?” Cade asked. The question caught Ethan by surprise, and he strode over to her, his eyebrows raised as he spoke.
“She’s right there,” Ethan replied. He moved around Cade and gestured into the room. “What the fuck,” he whispered as he saw the interior of the room for himself. Josie’s bed was inexplicably empty. Where the small body of the four year old once lay was just a dark stain on the sheets. There was an additional splotch on the floor near the doorway, one that Ethan didn’t remember seeing there before, though he couldn’t be sure.
“Where is she, Ethan?” Cade asked. Her voice rose in volume, and her accent became thicker in her agitation as she took a step back from the doorway.
“I don’t know, Cade! She was just right there!” Ethan said. He reached out to catch Cade as she moved backwards. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and pull her away, out of the house and back to the safety of his own home.
Ethan tugged Cade away from the door and a few steps closer to the head of the stairs. As they came within feet of the top stairs, a soft creak of the floorboards behind him was the only warning Ethan had that something was amiss. He sucked in a breath as he let go of Cade and turned on his heel. A figure ran toward them in the dim hallway, its arms outstretched. Ethan let out a shocked cry and twisted away, pulling Cade with him; his back thudded against the hallway wall, and Cade slammed into the sheetrock beside him. A framed photo fell to the floor with a crack, and Ethan fumbled for his gun.
It took Ethan a moment to register that the darkened figure was a man and that the front of the man’s body was stained with a large quantity of blood. It took Ethan an additional instant to realize that his green eyes were taking in the sight of Cade’s boyfriend, Andrew.
Cade’s breath rasped in her throat as she stood frozen beside Ethan, her palms flattened to the wall behind her, fingernails digging into the paint. Ethan took a step from the wall and positioned himself between Cade and Andrew, blocking Andrew’s view of the woman in an instinctive need to protect Cade.
“Andrew?” Ethan croaked out as he focused on the younger man’s face. Andrew’s dark eyes were devoid of any recognition. They locked like lasers onto Ethan’s face. Something in the man’s gaze gave Ethan the distinct feeling of prey in the sights of a hunter. He swallowed hard as he tried to steady himself.
“Andrew, are you okay?” Ethan tried, regardless of the look the man gave him. “You’re hurt. Let me go get you some help.”
Andrew didn’t respond to Ethan’s suggestion. Instead, he took a slow step closer to him. Ethan gripped his gun tighter and began to ease it out of the holster at his hip. His stomach churned with nervousness as he pulled the gun free. He inched along the wall, away from Andrew, and nudged Cade toward the stairs.
“Andrew, I think it’s probably a good idea if you stop right there,” Ethan said. He took a deep breath and lifted the gun. He pointed it in Andrew’s direction, even as he took another step to put more distance between himself and the dangerous man.
Andrew didn’t seem to process Ethan’s request. The look on his face suggested that he was studying a particularly nice-looking piece of meat. Ethan swallowed again and motioned with his gun. “Sit down on the floor,” he ordered. “You’re hurt. You shouldn’t be up walking around.” You shouldn’t be breathing, Ethan thought as he took another step back. Cade pressed hard against his back, her hand gripping his shirt. Andrew watched Ethan’s actions and slowly tilted his head to the side. He took a shuffling, deliberate step toward them.
“Oh God, Ethan,” Cade whispered. Ethan fought the urge to turn, fought the urge to take his eyes off of Andrew as the man advanced on them at the odd, creeping pace he’d adopted. “Behind him,” Cade warned, her voice still hushed.
Ethan reluctantly shifted his gaze away from Andrew and to a spot just past the man, to an area at the level of his waist. A small pigtailed figure shuffled toward them, a bloodied stuffed gray elephant clutched in one hand. Ethan swore his heart stopped beating for the barest second.
“Josie?” Ethan breathed. Cade took in a sharp breath and dodged around Ethan to go toward the little girl. Ethan lunged forward and hooked his arm around Cade’s waist. He dragged her back against him, gripping her tightly to him. “Cade! No!” he barked out. He hauled her toward the stairs. “Get back! Something isn’t right!” His instincts screamed at him, hammered in his head and in his chest as he watched the little girl. The way she moved, the open wounds she shouldn’t have survived, the horrible similarity between hers and Andrew’s jerking, lurching walks; whatever was wrong with Andrew was wrong with Josie too.
“Ethan! Help her!” Cade shrieked. She fought against his grip and clawed at his arm. Ethan winced as pain shot through his skin, and he swung her around and away from Josie, setting her on the top step.
“Cade! Get down the stairs! Now!” Ethan ordered. His voice was hard and cold and stern, and he glared at her with as much anger as he could muster.
Cade opened her mouth to argue. The distant, familiar whir of tornado sirens interrupted anything she’d been about to say. Both of them froze in place, and Cade’s blue eyes skipped over the side of the banister and focused on the large plate-glass windows at the front of the house.
Ethan turned back to Andrew and Josie. Neither had stopped in their advances on them. Their paces had quickened, though, and Ethan instinctively backed away from them. “Cade, down the stairs,” he warned again as he pointed his gun at Andrew. “Stop,” Ethan warned the man. “Stop right there or I’ll shoot.”
The man didn’t stop.
Ethan swallowed and flexed his finger on the trigger. He debated shooting the man. The tornado sirens blasting outside echoed in his head, making it increasingly difficult to think.
“Ethan, just shoot him,” Cade urged. “Just shoot, please!”
Ethan shook his head and took another step back. “Get down the stairs,” he repeated. He grabbed Cade’s duffel bag from her shoulder. “Go, now.” He nudged her again, and they both stumbled down the stairs, leaving Andrew and Josie on the second floor. Ethan didn’t know if Josie and Andrew could make it down the stairs, but he wasn’t going to stick around long enough to find out.
Once on the ground floor, Ethan went to the front window and looked out. He couldn’t see much, but he could just make out the sound of gunfire from somewhere down the street, accompanied by screams. Even as he watched, a man ran down the street, chased by two other men, both as befouled with blood as Andrew and Josie were. Ethan swallowed hard and took a hesitant step back from the window.
“What is it?” Cade pressed. “Can you see anything?”
Ethan looked back at Cade. She stood beside him in a protective stance, the Glock she’d lifted from his house pointed up the staircase at her boyfriend. Her former boyfriend, Ethan mentally corrected. He had his doubts as to whether the man was even still alive anymore, though an explanation as to why a dead man would be attempting to stumble his way down the stairs wasn’t exactly forthcoming.
“I think we need to get into the basement,” Ethan said. He grabbed Cade’s arm and tugged gently, hooking his fingers around her elbow. “As soon as we can.”
Cade took a few steps back in the direction Ethan guided her. Her eyebrows rose at the uncertainty in his voice. “What is it? What did you see?”
“Just go!” Ethan snapped. He pushed her toward the kitchen’s entryway. “Do what I said! Get in the basement! I’ll catch up with you in a minute!”
Cade took a step away from Ethan and looked at him, wide-eyed. In all the time Ethan had known her, he’d never raised his voice at her like that. Ethan couldn’t imagine what Cade was thinking as she nodded and moved toward the kitchen.
Ethan didn’t wait for Cade to disappear into the basement before he lifted his gun. He aimed it up the stairway, directly at Andrew’s head. “Sorry, man,” he said softly before he depressed the trigger.
The man at the top of the stairs staggered backwards at the bullet’s impact. He fell back as the top of his head exploded onto the wall behind him in a shower of blood and gore. The blood oozed slowly over the paint, already partially congealed as it sprayed the wall.
Ethan shifted the aim of his gun as a small figure appeared at the top of the stairs and stumbled over Andrew’s fallen body. He swallowed hard, but he couldn’t bring himself to squeeze the trigger again. He shook his head and turned on his heel, fleeing to the kitchen.
Cade waited for Ethan near the basement door, despite Ethan’s orders for her to get into the basement. Ethan made a face at her and pushed her firmly toward the basement door. “I told you to get downstairs,” he said. He reached around her to the doorknob.
“What did you see?” Cade snapped back. She looked up at him and met his eyes. In that instant, Ethan knew that Cade knew what he’d just done. She caught his hand as it moved past her and gripped it tightly. He hesitated before he squeezed her hand in return.
“I’ll tell you when we get in the basement,” Ethan said. He swallowed hard and cleared his throat; it felt like a vice was slowly closing around it, strangling his words. He turned the doorknob and pushed the basement door open.
As a cool draft wafted up from the dark stairwell and blew strands of hair back from Cade’s face, the sound of glass breaking behind them drew their attention away from the dark rectangle in front of them. Ethan turned on his heel and shielded Cade with his body as the glass patio door slammed open and the glass shattered.
“Oh God,” Ethan gasped as a pale-skinned, shirtless older man lurched into the kitchen through the broken door. His face and torso were covered in blood—whose blood, Ethan couldn’t know—and a large wound in his bicep oozed wetly. Ethan pushed Cade gently backwards to the basement steps as he tried to move away from the man. “Get down there! Now!”
Cade stumbled down a few steps, but she turned to look back as Ethan joined her. He tried to close the door, but the pale man reached for them, his hand in the gap between the door and doorframe. His hand stretched, his mouth open in an angry, hungry snarl. Ethan had never seen such animalistic hatred in a human being’s eyes. Ethan braced his shoulder against the door and pushed with all his strength against the heavy man. Despite his attempts to shove the door shut, he could feel it give a couple of inches.
“Cade! Help!” Ethan yelped.
Cade darted to Ethan’s side in an instant. She lifted her gun and pointed it into the gap. The sound of the gunshot right next to Ethan’s head deafened him. He stumbled forward as the pressure against the door gave way. It closed with a loud slam and blanketed them in darkness. Ethan’s hand fumbled, seemingly of its own free will, for the door’s lock. He slid the bolt home with another gasp and sagged against the door. He struggled to catch the breath adrenaline had snatched away.
Footsteps thudded out above them, staggering and running through the kitchen and living room. Ethan found Cade’s hand, and he wrapped his arm around her as they guided each other down the stairs to the dark room below.