The Becoming: Redemption (The Becoming Series Book 5) (16 page)

The animal barely had time to recover before
the others opened fire. This time, it was Jude’s turn to drag Sadie
to safety. He hooked his left arm around her and hauled her
sideways as he rolled, taking them both into the shelter underneath
a Hostess snack truck. He kept rolling until he came out on the
other side, and Sadie followed, her ears ringing from the sound of
bullets pinging off the vehicles around them. Jude helped her to
her feet, and she yanked a machete from its sheath on her belt,
ready to start swinging as soon as she’d regained her footing.

She’d just steadied herself when Jude touched
her arm and pointed down the row of cars they now found themselves
on. There were at least ten infected making their way down the row,
two abreast, drawn by the sound of gunfire, stumbling and tripping
over each other in their haste to get to Sadie and Jude.

“Well, shit,” Sadie commented. She twirled
her machete in her right hand and wished she had enough shells to
use her shotgun, but it was only for last resort. “On the cars,”
she said to Jude. “One on each side. We’ll take ‘em down like
dominoes.”

Jude saluted and went left while she went
right, and they climbed on top of their respective rows of cars.
They started running, leaping from car to car, their boots making
loud metallic thumps against the vehicles as they landed, careful
to pace themselves against each other. When they reached the
leading edge of the infected, they both swung their blades down
simultaneously, hacking at the heads and necks of the first
infected in the short line. The first two toppled to the pavement,
and with two more steps, the twins had moved on to the next in
line.

By the time she’d killed her second one,
Sadie had fallen into a rhythm: a downward swing to partially crush
the skull, then a forward swing to slice through the throat to the
spine. When they fell, their necks would snap, severing or damaging
their spinal cords so they’d be dead or incapacitated. When she
reached the sixth in line and saw there were only three left, she
redoubled her efforts, drawing the pistol out of her thigh holster,
aiming it, and firing at one of the infected even as she swung down
at a second with her machete. Both of them went down, and Jude took
care of the last one.

When the last of the infected had fallen,
Sadie turned her attention to the rest of their companions. The
shooting had stopped. She moved to the side of the vehicle she
stood on and dropped down to the pavement to check out what was
going on.

The lioness lay on her side on the pavement
not far from where she’d landed at the end of her lunge, peppered
with bullet wounds and oozing blood that stained her blonde fur.
Sadie felt a pang of sadness at the sight of the majestic animal
lying slumped on the road, but it couldn’t be helped; they couldn’t
outrun an animal like that, and killing it had been their only
option. That didn’t stop her from feeling a distinct sense of guilt
over it, though. As a big fan of animals in almost all their forms,
the sight was difficult to take.

The male lion was gone. Maybe he’d run off
when the bullets started flying.

“Everybody okay?” Cade called, and Sadie
waited for Jude to join her before she started in the others’
direction.

“We’re fine,” Sadie told her as soon as she’d
gotten to within earshot of the older woman. “Jude and I had to
take care of some infected that were in the area.” It still felt
weird to call them “the infected” after two years of referring to
them as “zombies.” Since that was what the rest of the group called
them, Sadie had figured it best to conform to prevent confusion.
“Where did it come from?” she asked, nodding toward the dead beast
on the ground.

“Maybe from the Atlanta zoo,” Dominic said.
“We’re in Grant Park, and the zoo isn’t far from here.”

“Maybe we’ll run into a hippo while we’re out
here,” Remy said with no small amount of sarcasm.

“This isn’t a joke, Remy,” Dominic replied.
“The larger animals, the elephants and such, wouldn’t have been
able to escape their pens unless they were intentionally released,
but the predators would have had a fighting chance of it. We might
be looking at leopards and tigers and other deadly creatures
stalking the streets alongside the infected. We’ve already seen
lions. It wouldn’t be a stretch for there to be other animals out
here.”

That statement sobered the entire group, and
they looked at each other, the uncertainty among them clear.
Finally, Cade went to the lioness’s corpse, shoving it aside with
visible difficulty and starting to gather Sadie’s arrows and
ammunition from where they’d spilled out on the pavement. Sadie
moved to help her, kneeling on the pavement and scooping up several
arrows, stuffing them haphazardly into the remains of her
backpack.

“We’ll get you a new backpack as soon as we
find a place that might have some,” Cade said, handing her several
more arrows.

“Thanks,” Sadie said. “Can it be the same
kind of place I might find a good quiver for these arrows?”

“We’ll do our best.”

After they’d finished gathering Sadie’s
spilled supplies, Cade stood and dusted her hands against the
thighs of her jeans. “Let’s go,” she urged. “The longer we delay
here, the higher the chance that something will happen to Brandt. I
don’t want to find out he died while we were lollygagging in
Atlanta.”

The group started to move down the road
again, on higher alert than they’d been before.

Sadie murmured to Jude, “Did it seem like we
were lollygagging to you?”

“
Not at all,”
Jude signed. “
She’s a
very angry person right now, though, so I don’t think we should be
too bothered with anything she says.”

Sadie nodded, but she was annoyed by the
woman’s borderline insults. They were all trying to do the best
they could, and the only thing Cade had done was snap at them
rather than thank them for their help. It was maddening.

“
Don’t let it bother you,”
Jude signed
when she didn’t respond. “
It will all be fine. I hope.”

Unable to do anything else, Sadie nodded
again, deciding to take Jude’s advice and focus on their survival
rather than on Cade’s anger.

“I told them it
wasn’t a good idea, but no one ever listens to me,” Lindsey
complained after she’d clocked in for her shift in the labs the
following evening. She’d slumped into her desk chair with such
despondency that Jacob had left his lab, changed out of his biochem
suit and deconned, and came into the office to see what was wrong.
He hadn’t come over the night before like they’d planned, so she
hadn’t gotten the opportunity to vent like she’d wanted to. As a
result, her uncertainties over Evans’s mental state and her
irritability over Bradford not listening to a word she’d said had
stewed inside her, threatening to burst out at the least opportune
moment.

“I take it they took him up to see the Wall?”
Jacob asked, rolling his desk chair over and sitting down in it, so
close that their knees were almost touching.

“Yep, and it went about as well as I
expected, which is to say, it didn’t.” Lindsey shook her head.
“That poor man. He had no idea what hit him. It must be awful to
realize that the help you thought was coming had written you off a
long time ago.”

Jacob shifted in his chair, the wheels
grinding on the floor as he scooted a few inches closer to her.
“This got anything to do with your sister and your daughter?” he
asked, a knowing look in his hazel eyes. “Because I can feel your
bitterness all the way over here.”

Lindsey slumped over sideways so she could
rest her elbow against her desk and her head on her hand. “Can you
keep a secret?” she asked, her eyes flickering toward the camera in
the corner of the room.

“Yeah, sure, of course,” Jacob said, raising
an eyebrow. “Have I ever
not
kept one of your secrets?”

“Good point.” Lindsey hesitated, eyeing the
camera again and shifting forward so she leaned closer to him. She
murmured, almost imperceptibly, “I think the prisoner knows my
sister.”

“What makes you say that?” Jacob asked, just
as quietly.

“Because when they brought him in and I went
to help with his medical assessment, he called me Cade,” Lindsey
said. “What would make him think to call me that name if he
didn’t
know her? It’s not like Cade is all that common a
name, especially for a woman.”

“If he knows your sister, what of it?” Jacob
asked. “It’s not like he can take you to her. He’s locked up in
here.”

“It means she’s
alive,
Jacob,” Lindsey
said fervently. “It means she made it this far, because he didn’t
hesitate to think I was Cade. If she were dead, he wouldn’t have
called me that, because he’d have
known
she was dead.”

Jacob stared at her like he was trying to
read her mind, and she could only imagine what he was thinking.
Finally, after letting out a long, heavy sigh, he asked, “You want
to break him out, don’t you?”

“Am I that transparent?” Lindsey asked.

“Why?”

“I want him to take me to Cade,” she said.
“And before you ask, no, I don’t think he’s a threat. At least not
to me.”

Jacob cocked his head to the side, studying
her closely. “What’s your plan? I assume you have one?”

Lindsey let out a sigh to rival his. “Not
yet. I’m still working on it.”

“It will probably be impossible,” Jacob
warned. “Everyone has to submit to a test to get out of the
facility. You can’t slip him past that.”

“I’ll figure something out,” Lindsey said. “I
just have to think unconventionally. You’re not going to report me
for thinking about this, are you?”

“To the fucking Gestapo? Hell no,” Jacob said
with a snort. He was referring to the new division of
government-run special police forces that were used to enforce the
viability of the Wall, the population’s mandatory blood tests, and
the illusion that those on the wrong side of the Wall were all
infected. Anyone who heard someone talking about going to the south
side of the Wall or letting someone through the Wall was supposed
to report that person immediately. Jacob refusing to do so could
get him into just as much trouble as Lindsey could for what she
wanted to do. If there was anything Jacob hated, it was the special
police, and he spoke derisively of them at any opportunity he had.
For him to go against their requirements shouldn’t have been a
surprise to Lindsey, but she still couldn’t deny the stir of
thankfulness mixed with surprise that she felt in her stomach.

“Thank you,” she said, taking his hand and
giving it a gentle, grateful squeeze.

“You’re welcome,” he said, returning her
squeeze. “What do you say we get some work done today, and you
think over what you want to do about this whole mess? When we get
off work later, we can go out to get a bite to eat and maybe talk
it over.”

“In public?” Lindsey asked. “Surely, you
jest.”

“Of course not,” Jacob said. “I was thinking
we could get something to go and take it to my place.”

“Will this count as that dinner I promised
you?”

“Nope! That requires dressing up. I’m not
taking you out to dinner in scrubs, of all things.”

“What’s wrong with scrubs?” Lindsey asked.
She got up from the desk chair to gather what she needed to put on
her biochem suit. “They’re stylish and pretty! Look, mine have
flowers on them!” She held out an arm to show him the pattern of
tiny flowers that dotted the fabric of her scrubs top.

Jacob laughed, but before he could respond,
the lab’s door swung open, and a soldier that Lindsey didn’t
recognize stuck his head inside. “Excuse me, I’m looking for a Dr.
Alton?” he said.

“That’s me,” Lindsay said. “Can I help you?”
A dart of fear rocked through her gut, despite the calm demeanor
she plastered on her face. Had they found out what she’d said to
Jacob about breaking Evans out of the facility’s lockup?

“Major Bradford requested that you go to the
prisoner’s quarters and examine his physical and psychological
health,” the soldier said.

“Is something wrong with him?” Lindsey asked,
setting the clipboard she’d picked up back on her desk and
gathering her medical supplies instead.

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him,” the
soldier said. “I’ve only been told to take you to him.”

Lindsey rooted through her bag, making sure
she had everything she might need, then slung it onto her shoulder
and gestured for the soldier to lead the way. She glanced back at
Jacob, whose expression was far into the category of worried,
smiled at him reassuringly. “I’ll be right back.” She stepped out
into the hallway to follow the soldier to the prisoner’s
quarters.

Lindsey hadn’t seen the inside of Evans’
prison cell since he’d first gotten there and had been deposited
inside it, and the dank chill that wafted out of the room when the
soldier opened the door surprised her. She took an involuntary step
back and forced herself forward, shivering when she entered the
concrete cell, her bag clutched in her right hand.

Brandt was sprawled across his bare cot. His
breathing appeared steady from where Lindsey stood, but his skin
looked pale, like he were sick or about to be sick. There was a
thin sheen of sweat on his skin, at odds with the awful chill in
the room, and Lindsey frowned in concern and knelt beside his
cot.

The cell’s door clanged shut behind her, and
she looked in its direction. One of the soldiers was staring at her
through the small window inset in the door. Otherwise, they’d left
her alone in the room with Brandt.

“Lieutenant Evans?” She pressed her fingers
against his wrist, checking his pulse rate. It was faster than
she’d expected, and she set her bag on the floor and unzipped it to
find her stethoscope. She slipped the earbuds into her ears and
leaned over him, pressing the cool disk to his chest over his thin
t-shirt, listening to his breathing and the rhythm of his
heart.