The Jeep was just shy of large enough for the four of them to sleep comfortably. Gray acknowledged this fact as readily as he acknowledged the rest of the facts with which he’d been confronted in the past month. Life had gotten as uncomfortable as the SUV in which he was now attempting to sleep, and he didn’t have a choice but to put up with it.
Gray blew out a heavy breath and rubbed the heels of his hands over both eyes. He frowned as he shifted once more in the driver’s seat. The seat was reclined as far back as he could get away with without crushing Cade in the seat behind him, but it still felt like it wasn’t enough, and his back protested the incline at which he was attempting to sleep. He fought the urge to groan as he closed his eyes again and shifted restlessly.
A light tap of a finger on Gray’s forehead made him open his eyes again. He blinked in the dim light as he saw Cade hovering over him. She gave him a little smile and leaned in closer to speak.
“Can’t sleep either, can you?” she murmured, her voice hushed in the darkened interior of the Jeep. Gray shook his head in answer, and she tilted her head to the side, indicating the door to his left. “Come on, let’s tell Brandt to get back in the car and we’ll take guard duty.”
Gray fought back a yawn and opened his door. Theo stirred in the back seat, shifting onto his side, but he didn’t wake up. Gray made a face at Theo’s sleeping form; he couldn’t deny his intense jealousy over Theo’s ability to sleep virtually anywhere, in any position. He slid out of the Jeep into the chilly garage, rubbing his hands over his bare arms before leaning to grab his jacket. Cade followed a moment later, and as she went to Brandt to send him to the Jeep, Gray tucked his hands into his pockets and took a moment to look around the building in which they’d hidden.
It was a two-car garage attached to a typical suburban family home on the southern end of Meridian, Mississippi. Gray had picked it because it was close to the outskirts of the city, in a more affluent, less populated area, and the home itself looked neat and clean. Gray had guessed that a well maintained home was more likely to have a relatively uncluttered garage that they could easily access. He had guessed right. He looked at the signs of suburban life that lined the shelves and cubbyholes and work benches around them: the pegboard full of tools, the cracked concrete floor, the weed eater and lawn mower shoved against a wall, the pile of old paint cans stacked beside them. He squeezed his hands into tight fists. The typical suburban routine that had brought all of this to life was gone, completely eradicated. The world would never again be the same.
“You look like you’ve got something on your mind,” Cade said. She emerged from the darkness of the garage and appeared at his elbow. There was a thud behind them as Brandt climbed into the Jeep and shut the door. Gray neither turned at the sound nor looked at Cade as she spoke again. “Want to talk about it?”
Gray shrugged and accepted the handgun she offered. He glanced at it to make sure the safety was on before he tucked it into the waistband of his jeans. “I don’t know,” he finally answered. “I mean, I barely know you. I haven’t even known you for forty-eight hours yet, and in that time, you’ve hardly talked to me.”
“Which is why I asked.” Cade examined her ever-present rifle nonchalantly as she spoke. “I figure if we’re going to be stuck in close proximity to each other, we might as well start the whole getting-to-know-you routine, you know?”
“I guess.” Gray’s voice was doubtful. He moved to the small door that accessed the street alongside the main garage door and peeked out the inset window. He scanned the dark street warily. He couldn’t see anything lurking nearby, and so, his concerns satisfied, he returned to the Jeep. “What exactly do you want to know about me?” he asked.
Cade hummed as she slid her hand down the barrel of her rifle. “I don’t know. Just … whatever. Like, what did you do before the world went to hell?”
Gray looked at Cade thoughtfully; she hadn’t torn her gaze from her rifle as she’d spoken. “I was, ah, a mechanic,” Gray said. “Did body work, mostly. Always been really good at fixing shit.”
“Yeah? That would be pretty useful,” Cade said. She propped the rifle against her knee and pulled the bolt back. It made an ominous clicking sound that sent a disturbing chill down Gray’s spine. The muscles in his back stiffened. “You should get some of the tools in here together and load ‘em in the Jeep,” she suggested. “Never know when we might need them.”
Before Gray could respond, Brandt burst from the Jeep, nearly spilling out onto the cracked concrete floor. Once he gained his footing, he slapped his hand against the roof of the vehicle. An echoing thud rang out through the garage. “Get over here,” he ordered. “We’ve got a situation.”
“A situation?” Cade repeated. She sat up straight and looked at Brandt with a dark, unreadable expression. She slung her rifle over her shoulder and moved toward him as a wave of nervousness welled up in Gray’s gut. A situation? What sort of situation could have arisen in the Jeep when the only people in there were Theo and Brandt? The thought that something was wrong with Theo evoked a flutter of nausea.
“What sort of situation?” Gray asked.
“There’s a girl on the scanner,” Brandt said. “Says she needs help.”
Intrigued by Brandt’s words and relieved that there wasn’t anything wrong with Theo, Gray slung himself into the driver’s seat. As he adjusted the seat back upright, the radio crackled to life, and a young woman’s voice rang out over the speaker. “Hello? Are you still there?”
Gray and Brandt fumbled for the mic at the same time. They wrestled over it for a moment before Gray successfully pulled it away and pressed the button on the side. “Yeah, we’re here. Who is this?”
“My name is Remy,” the girl’s voice came through. “Who is this? You sound different than before.”
“You were talking to Brandt then. This is Gray,” he answered. “Brandt said you needed help?”
“Yeah, I think I’m trapped,” Remy said. Gray raised an eyebrow at her words. She thought she was trapped? How could she only think she was trapped? Either she was or she wasn’t. “I might need a bit of help getting out of here,” she continued.
Gray motioned to Brandt to give him the bag at the man’s feet. The older man picked it up and opened it, and Gray snatched it from him to dig out the maps himself, giving Brandt an ugly look. “Where exactly is ‘here’?” Gray asked. He pulled out his atlas and started to search for the map of Mississippi.
“I’m stuck in an RV in Biloxi,” Remy said. Gray frowned as he detected a nervous quaver in her voice. “There are some of those … things outside. And I think I broke my ankle, but I’m not sure. It could just be a bad sprain. It’s swollen like hell, and I can’t really walk on it.”
“Damn, that might complicate things,” Brandt muttered, his words barely audible. What in the world was Brandt talking about? Gray caught a glimpse of Brandt’s eyes, and he fought back a groan. Brandt was planning something, probably a rescue mission; Gray could tell by the glint in his eyes. He didn’t know if they had the resources or skills for something like that.
But Gray knew one thing above all else: they were going to have to try it anyway.
Gray let out a steadying breath and keyed the mic again. “Hey, uh, Remy? Where exactly in Biloxi are you? We need the nearest intersection to your location.”
As Remy spoke, Gray grabbed a pen from his bag and scribbled the information she gave him on the back of the map, across the state of Missouri. Cade leaned against the doorframe and watched intently.
“Are we going to go after her?” Cade asked as she leaned in to read what Gray had written.
Gray paused as Remy’s voice fell silent, and he lowered the pen to look at each of his companions. Brandt looked determined, his jaw set in a tight clench as he slid out of the Jeep and darted to the back of it. Cade looked almost excited, and Gray wondered momentarily if she felt a thrill at the idea of shooting something. Considering how attached Cade was to her rifle, Gray wouldn’t have been surprised if that were the case.
The last person Gray turned to was Theo. His older brother sat silently in the back seat; he hadn’t spoken a word since Remy’s voice had woken him and sparked the night’s excitement. Theo’s eyes met Gray’s, and he nodded shortly to signal his agreement.
“Yeah, I guess we are going after her,” Gray said. “Why shouldn’t we, really? We’re going in that direction anyway, right?”
“My thoughts exactly,” Brandt said. He reappeared in the opened passenger door and dumped an armload of liquor bottles onto the seat. Gray startled at the loud clink of glass against glass and frowned as he saw the multiple bottles of alcohol.
“What’s all that for?” Gray demanded. “Planning on opening up the first operating bar post-Michaluk?” Brandt ignored the question and started to sort through the bottles carefully, counting under his breath. When he finally spoke again, it was to bark out orders.
“Theo, get up here in the front seat,” Brandt said. He gathered the bottles back into his arms, cradling them against his chest. “You’re going to help Gray navigate for a bit while Cade and I take care of this.”
Gray raised an eyebrow as Brandt shifted the bottles enough to open the back passenger door. “What exactly is the ‘this’ you and Cade are going to be taking care of?” Gray asked. A heavy sense of dread settled in his stomach.
Theo slid out of the back seat and gave Gray a smirk as he scrambled into the front. “I’m not sure we want to know,” he confided. “Especially if it involves all of that alcohol.”
Gray bit back a snort of amusement as he realized that Theo had practically read his mind. He twisted around in his seat to look back at Brandt. The older man cracked open a bottle of Jameson and waved to Cade to get into the Jeep. “Wait, are we leaving now?” Gray asked incredulously.
“I don’t see why not,” Brandt said. He gave the bottle in his hand a thoughtful look. Then he leaned out the door and began to pour the liquor onto the concrete floor of the garage.
“What the hell are you doing?” Gray exclaimed as the amber liquid spilled out of the bottle. “You’re wasting that!”
“I’m making Molotovs,” Brandt said mildly. The sound of the garage door sliding up nearly drowned out his words. Gray startled at the sound, and he turned to see what had caused it. Cade stood by the opened garage door, her rifle up on her shoulder as she scanned the street outside before she joined her companions at the Jeep once more.
“It’s all clear,” she announced. She jumped into the back seat and pulled her door shut. “I’m ready whenever you guys are.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Gray insisted. “Why are we leaving now? It’s dark. It’s dangerous. The last thing we should be doing is heading out after sunset.”
Brandt rolled his eyes, which only served to make Gray clench his jaw in annoyance. Brandt capped the bottle in his hand and set it on the seat before he leaned up between the front seats and grabbed the scanner’s mic again. “Remy, you still around?” he asked into it, glaring pointedly at Gray.
“Yeah, I’m still here.”
“What’s your situation with food and water?” Brandt asked. He glanced back at Cade as she took over the opening of alcohol bottles in the back seat.
“I’ve got two bottles of water left, but I’ve been out of food for five days now, I think,” Remy said. The sheer exhaustion in her voice made a knot of concern form in Gray’s stomach. “It might be four days. Somewhere around that, anyway.”
“Shit,” Theo breathed out. “She could go longer without the food, but with the way things are, I wouldn’t recommend it. And she’s dangerously close to running out of water. Two bottles won’t last her nearly as long as she’ll need to stay adequately hydrated. I bet she’s about to hit the point where she’ll be too tired to run. If she hasn’t already hit that point, that is.”
“We shouldn’t make her wait until morning before we go help her,” Cade said solemnly. The crack of a seal breaking on a bottle cap punctuated her sentence. “We need to get moving and give her whatever help we can lend.”
As much as Gray wanted to help Remy, he wasn’t comfortable with traveling in the dark. There were too many unknown dangers, visibility was too low, and it was much easier to get jumped by the things that crept about in the night. But he also realized that, despite his discomfort at the idea, he was outvoted by the other three in the Jeep, and if he didn’t drive, someone else would. Regardless of his choice, Gray would be dragged along involuntarily, and so he resolved himself to going along with the plan, turning the key in the ignition with a heavy sigh.