The seven members of the group set out an hour after sunrise the next morning. All were reluctant to leave the house right away; it’d been a pleasant night for most of them, especially when electricity and hot water were added into the equation, and many had slept better than they had in a long time. Ethan was in a surprisingly decent mood, though he hadn’t gotten as much sleep as the others likely had. He had Remy to thank for that. They’d both needed their rest, but the young woman had opted to stay with him for the night, blatantly flaunting their relationship to the others after spending three months struggling to keep it a secret. Perhaps it was their proximity to Atlanta and possible death that lifted her insistence on secrecy. Emotionally, the night did Ethan a world of good, and he wasn’t going to complain. Even the fact that they were now headed toward a city that had become synonymous with “danger” did nothing to truly dampen his spirits.
They walked for four hours before stopping at noon to eat and rest. As the others ate from cans of food scavenged from their bags and the home they’d left that morning, Brandt and Ethan leaned against a beat-up car, poring over the map of Georgia spread out on its hood. They were trying, without absolute success, to pinpoint the group’s exact location.
“I think we’re somewhere in here,” Brandt said. He ran his finger along a stretch of highway. The wind tried to blow the paper off the hood, and he let out an impatient sigh and flattened the map again. “I’m not positive exactly where, though.”
“That doesn’t do me much good,” Ethan said. He drank a swallow of soup from the can in his hand and leaned against the car, studying the landscape around them and trying to match it to the map. “I need to know how much farther we’ve got until we get there. As close an estimate as you can give me.”
“About all I can guarantee you is we haven’t passed through Villa Rica yet,” Brandt said, pushing his dark hair from his eyes. “I do know we’re closer to the interstate than I’m comfortable with. When we hit the intersection of 8 and 101, we’ll be maybe a mile, maximum two, away from it. It might get rough there. The congestion of vehicles alone will make travel difficult.”
“And then we have to worry about what’s in the vehicles,” Ethan added. He looked at the others where they sat several yards away, watching as Theo moved among them and passed out some sort of pill. Vitamins, Ethan realized. Leave it to Theo to think of all the little things that never crossed his mind. Ethan turned his eyes to Remy and watched as she ate a peach slice out of the can with her fingers. She tilted her head back and dropped the peach into her mouth, laughing at something Cade said.
Ethan averted his eyes from the woman as a flash of longing slipped into his brain and jabbed at him sharply. “Okay, lay it on me, Brandt. What are our chances?” Ethan finally asked quietly. It was a question he’d avoided since they left Maplesville, and it was one he finally decided he was ready to have answered.
Brandt stood silently and stared at the map beneath his hands as if trying to decide what to say and how to say it. He ran a hand through his hair and let out a slow breath before he spoke. “Honestly? I’m not sure,” he admitted. “It was pretty hard moving around in Atlanta on my own, when the virus initially began to spread. I don’t know how a group of seven could manage. I don’t know what the conditions in the city are like anymore. They could be bad, or they could be somewhat improved. By now, a lot of the infected could have died off or simply spread farther out, looking for more food sources. There are too many variables that I just don’t know.”
Ethan stared down at the map. “The only thing I can think of is just for us to travel quickly. Leave everything we don’t need behind, and once we get inside the city, move fast.”
It wasn’t long before they got the others to their feet and moving once more. The idea they’d come up with was to get everyone through Villa Rica as fast as they could, to move everyone for at least three more hours before stopping for the rest of the day. By tomorrow, they’d reach Atlanta.
Their arrival in Atlanta wasn’t something Ethan was particularly looking forward to.
The group passed through Villa Rica unmolested, despite Brandt’s initial fears of attack so close to the interstate. But it was as they neared Douglasville that everything began to fall apart.
The road had become more congested as they neared the city of Douglasville. The obstructions had become so plentiful that the group was forced to slow to a near crawl as they tried to pass among the cars. Cade had given up trying to wade through the cars and had moved to the road’s shoulder, where vehicles were fewer in number and spread farther apart. Brandt had followed Cade’s lead and moved to the shoulder on the opposite side, and the rest of them were spread out among and alongside the cars as they made their way toward the city.
It happened so fast Ethan didn’t have time to register the events, never mind react to them.
One moment, Cade walked along the side of the road, her rifle in her hands. The next moment, she let out a shriek as something darted from the trees lining the side of the highway and grabbed her arm. Cade jerked back instinctively, trying to free herself, and stumbled into a car that blocked her progress. Ethan realized Cade’s assailant was an infected woman, and he started to run through the cars, weaving among them as quickly as he could. The infected woman had Cade tightly in her grip, and she was attempting to drag her down to the ground.
“Cade!” a desperate shout rang out from Ethan’s left. He turned to see Brandt sliding across the hoods of cars and climbing over vehicles and other debris, moving quickly in Cade’s direction. The man raised his rifle and tried to aim, even as he moved.
Ethan knew Brandt wouldn’t be able to get a clear shot from that range, not without hitting Cade too. It was too dangerous, and Cade and the infected woman were moving too much in their desperate struggle.
Theo was closest to Cade, and he reached her first. He grabbed Cade around the waist and attempted to pull her back from the infected woman that had her fingers wrapped around Cade’s arm in a bruising grip. Theo ripped the knife from the sheath on Cade’s belt and plunged it into the infected woman’s chest.
The impact of the blade was enough to jar loose the infected woman’s grip on Cade’s arm. Cade stumbled back a few steps at the sudden absence of resistance and fell to her knees in the gravel beside the car. She scrambled to grab her rifle from the ground where she’d dropped it, then brought it up and aimed, trying to get a clear shot at the woman. But the infected woman now grappled with Theo, and Cade let out a cry of frustration. “I can’t get a shot!” she yelled in a panic. “I can’t get a fucking shot!”
Before anyone else could reach Theo and Cade to assist them, the infected woman hauled Theo closer with a mighty pull of her arm and, in the blink of an eye, sank her teeth into Theo’s exposed forearm.
Theo let out an agonized scream and thrashed away from the woman, kicking wildly at her. He braced his foot against her stomach and shoved her away from him, tearing his arm from her teeth. He scrambled backwards as quickly as he could, taking shelter between two cars and cradling his arm to his chest.
Cade and Brandt lifted their rifles at the same time. Two shots echoed against the trees. The infected woman collapsed into the grass beside the road.
Ethan reached Theo as the body fell. Rapid footsteps behind him announced the arrival of the others. Gray shoved Ethan harshly out of the way, and Ethan fell against the car as Gray slid to the ground beside Theo.
“Oh God, fuck, Theo,” Gray gasped out. He threw his arms around his older brother’s shoulders. “Are you okay?”
“Get back, Gray,” Theo ordered hoarsely. He shoved Gray hard away from him. “Get back.”
“Why? What’s wrong?” Gray asked urgently.
A sinking feeling settled into Ethan’s stomach. Gray didn’t know. Gray hadn’t seen what had happened.
“Get back!” Theo yelled again, more desperately than before. “Get the fuck back! All of you!”
Ethan took Gray by the elbow, tugging gently to pull the younger man away from Theo, even as Gray’s eyes finally took in the sight of the wound on Theo’s forearm. “Oh Jesus,” Gray whispered softly. “Oh Jesus, no.” His eyes were wide at the sight of the blood that ran down Theo’s arm.
Theo pulled his arm tighter against his chest. His hand pressed hard against the wound as he tried to staunch the bleeding. “I need my pack,” Theo said, his voice trembling. “I dropped it when I started to run.”
“Here,” Remy said breathlessly as she jogged up. Avi was just behind her, and she fell to her knees beside Theo. Remy set the bag on the ground beside the paramedic and added, “I found it back there when I almost tripped over it.”
“Is there anything we can do?” Gray asked Ethan frantically, looking up to the older man. Ethan could see the fear in Gray’s eyes, and he knew the man had to be very afraid if he looked to Ethan for guidance. Ethan looked at Theo and watched for a moment as Theo held his arm tightly and directed Avi on what to look for in the bag. Then he shifted his eyes back to Gray once more.
“I don’t know, Gray,” Ethan admitted, a slight tremor in his own voice. “I don’t think so.”
Gray let out a pained, choked sound and turned away. He put his back to Ethan and Theo and covered his mouth. Remy moved forward in two strides and wrapped her arms around Gray tightly, attempting to soothe him. For once, Ethan wasn’t the slightest bit jealous of the affection she showed Gray. If anything, Gray desperately needed someone at that moment, because he faced what all of them at some point had faced before: the impending death of a family member.
None of them had had to watch it happen quite like this before, though.
“I can’t go with you,” Theo said. Ethan looked at Theo again and saw that he was holding his wounded arm out to Avi. She’d donned a pair of latex gloves and was carefully wrapping Theo’s arm in gauze and bandages to help stop the bleeding.
“What? Why not?” Gray demanded. He pulled himself free from Remy and looked at Theo with wide eyes. “Why not? You have to come! We can’t just leave you here!”
“You have to, Gray! I can’t go with you!” Theo insisted, raising his voice. “I’m fucking infected! If I go, I’ll put all of you in danger, and I will not do that.”
“There’s got to be something we can do, Theo!” Gray protested.
“Yeah, you can give me a gun and a bullet and get the fuck out of here,” Theo said, his voice heavy with so much bitterness that Ethan nearly took a step back. “I’m not going to live like one of those things, not knowing who the fuck I am anymore and trying to kill anything that moves.”
Remy slid past Gray, kneeling beside Theo and reaching over to stop Avi’s hands as the blond woman tried to wrap Theo’s arm. Remy took a handgun out of her bag and ejected the bullets from the magazine, starting to unload them into her hand.
“What are you doing?” Gray demanded, turning on Remy and grabbing her hands to stop her.
“Gray, stop,” Remy said in a soft, steady voice. She didn’t look at Gray as she dropped the handful of bullets into her bag and put a single bullet back into the magazine. Once she’d returned the magazine to the gun, she chambered the round and set the gun carefully onto the ground beside Theo’s knee. “For when you’re ready,” Remy said, leaning in and pressing a soft kiss to the older man’s forehead.
Ethan choked up at Remy’s words. It was when she did things like this—helping others out in her own ways, caring and showing love for her friends—that Ethan realized just how much they’d all been hurt and changed by the Michaluk Virus, physically and psychologically. He closed his eyes and took in several deep breaths to calm himself before he lost it. The last thing he needed was to break down in front of the others when they needed him to take charge and keep them together.
Disregarding any animosity that might have existed between them, Ethan put his arm around Gray’s shoulders and pulled him gently away. “Come on, Gray. You don’t need to be here for this,” he said.
Gray pulled free again and went to Theo. He wrapped his arms around his brother in a tight hug and mumbled something none of them could hear.
“I know,” Theo said simply as he gave Gray a long one-armed hug in return. “Now go. Please.”
Gray gave Theo a short nod and straightened, and then he started to walk, back straight, down the highway once more. His blue eyes shone with tears as he passed Ethan on his stoic journey.
Ethan hesitated, debating whether or not he should go after Gray. Instead, he took a moment to look down at Theo. He asked the other man, softly, “You’re going to be okay. Right?”
Theo looked up at Ethan unblinkingly and asked in return, “Are you?”