Free The Becoming by Jessica Meigs Page A

toward the building. The sky had an unusual glow that she couldn’t place. She grasped the case in her lap tighter.
    “No. No, no, no, ” Ethan gasped. The Jeep lurched forward, and Cade sucked in her breath as she pitched forward against the seatbelt. The belt dug into her collarbone, and she grabbed at it to pull it away from her shoulder. It took her a moment to realize the source of Ethan’s distress.
    The hospital’s emergency room was on fire.
    Cade jumped out of the vehicle before it stopped moving. She left her rifle behind on the passenger floorboard and strode toward the burning building with the authoritarian air of someone who belonged there, the Jericho handgun Ethan had recovered for her grasped firmly in her hand. Ethan’s car door slammed as he too got out. Cade glanced over her shoulder to see him running toward the flaming emergency department. Cade sprinted after Ethan as she kept an eye on their surroundings. She knew Ethan would need the backup; he was so out of his mind with fear and worry that he wasn’t paying any attention to anything around them.
    The parking lot was utter chaos. Dozens of people stumbled around the lot in the light of the fire, the wounded being tended to by the few doctors and nurses available to do so. Others tried to haul patients out of other areas of the burning building. Everyone appeared to avoid the emergency room.
    “Anna!” Ethan shouted as he drew closer to the building. Beads of sweat formed on Cade’s forehead and back; the air felt almost too hot to breathe. She nearly ran into a patient pushing his own IV rack along beside him and stumbled around first him and then a couple of nurses pushing a hospital bed with two people on it toward the opposite end of the parking lot. Cade caught Ethan by the shoulder to stop him as she realized he was taking them too close to the heat of the fire. He paused to shade his eyes against the glare from the fire and shouted again. “Anna Bennett!”
    “Ethan!” a voice yelled from their right. Cade turned in that direction, gravel crunching under the heel of her boot, and barely stopped herself from raising her gun to point it at the woman who had shouted. An unfamiliar blond woman limped in their direction, and Cade’s shoulders stiffened as she lurched toward them.
    “Jesus, Lisa!” Ethan exclaimed. He hurried toward the woman and put his arm around her for support. The woman almost lost her balance at the impact of Ethan’s body against hers, and he caught her by the arm to keep her from falling. “Fuck, are you okay?”
    Cade let the gun hang at her side as she realized that Ethan knew the woman. Cade skimmed her eyes over the woman’s tired face and dirty scrubs; the woman had a hand clasped tightly to her shoulder. Blood oozed from between her fingers and stained the front of her light blue scrubs. Cade wondered what had happened, but she didn’t get the chance to ask as the woman spoke up.
    “No, not really,” Lisa said. She panted, short of breath as if she’d been running a long distance. “Everything has gone to hell. I’m trying to find somebody to take a look at this so I can get back to work, but they labeled me a low priority on the triage list.” She pulled her hand away from her shoulder just enough to show Ethan and Cade the wound. Cade frowned. It looked as if something or someone had bitten Lisa on the shoulder hard enough to break skin and draw a significant quantity of blood.
    “That looks bad,” Cade agreed. She tore her gaze away from the wound to scan their surroundings again. She shifted her index finger to rest lightly against the trigger of her handgun as she squinted into the flickering darkness. She felt oddly exposed; a creeping sensation of danger worked its way up between her shoulder blades and latched into her brain at the base of her skull. It was partly instinctual, she knew, but at the same time, she couldn’t help but compare it to the similar feelings she’d had on the