The Becoming: Redemption (The Becoming Series Book 5) (23 page)

“Sleepy?” Chris asked, and Kimberly glanced
at him. He still had his eyes locked onto the view beyond the
windshield.

“You have no idea,” she said. “This trip
hasn’t been easy so far. Not that I expected it to be.”

Chris nodded and slowed as they approached a
particularly busted-up stretch of road. He eased the truck over the
crumbled asphalt, the chunks of rock and pavement crunching under
the truck’s tires. He waited until the truck finished crossing the
worst of it before he asked, “Do you actually have a cure?”

“It’s not a cure,” Kimberly said. “It’s more
of a…a vaccine.”

“How does it work?”

“As far as I gather, anyone who is injected
with it would be infected with a stronger, non-contagious version
of the virus,” Kimberly said, trying to figure out a way to explain
what she and Derek had figured out. “So if, say, you’ve been
injected with the vaccine and then later get bitten by someone
who’s infected, the vaccine will eliminate the newer, weaker
version of the virus that was just introduced into your
system.”

“Sounds… fascinating,” Chris said. “I don’t
know much about that sort of thing. How do you know it works?”

“Because they tested it on me,” Ethan spoke
up. His voice sounded tired and hollow, and he didn’t lift his head
from the window as he spoke. Kimberly tensed, waiting for Chris to
go off the handle over the revelation, but surprisingly, he
didn’t.

“I was infected,” Ethan went on, “and when
Kimberly and Derek gave me their vaccine, it killed off the virus
that was trying to make me attack people. I don’t have that urge
anymore.”

“You’re only one person,” Chris pointed out.
“That’s not much of an indicator of its effectiveness. Maybe you
got lucky.”

“Maybe,” Kimberly admitted. “There was
someone else. I haven’t been able to monitor her. She’s with the
other doctor.”

“What about side effects?” Chris asked.

“We don’t know,” Kimberly answered. “We
haven’t had the opportunity to study that yet, either. We’re hoping
the researchers we find can help us. Considering the alternative, I
think this is infinitely preferable in these circumstances.”

“Some people would argue that death is
preferable to either of those options,” Chris replied.

“True, but I think given the option, most
people would choose life,” Kimberly said. “Even if it’s life that’s
a little different than what they’re used to.”

“Stop the truck,” Ethan said.

“Are you okay?” Kimberly asked, turning her
gaze from Chris to Ethan.

“I said
stop the truck,
” Ethan
repeated, more emphatically this time. Chris pressed hard on the
brakes, and the truck ground to a halt. The engine idled loudly on
the otherwise silent road, the sound echoing off the trees lining
the road. Ethan threw open the passenger door and tumbled out to
his feet. He’d barely landed before he’d started for the trees, his
stride purposeful.

“What the hell is he doing?” Chris asked as
the man disappeared into the shadow of the trees.

“I have no idea,” Kimberly said. She
unfastened her lap belt and scooted along the bench seat, then
clambered out of the truck with every intention of following Ethan.
Not knowing what to expect, she slid her machete out of its sheath
and said to Chris, “Stay with the truck, okay?” She started after
Ethan.

“Ethan?” she called. She stopped at the edge
of the road where the grass was overgrown and squinted into the
shadows, trying to locate her friend. When she couldn’t find him
immediately, she ventured a few steps into the grass, which soaked
her pants legs and socks completely through. She trudged onward,
slogging through the knee-high grass until she was halfway between
the edge of the roadway and the tree line. “Ethan!”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Ethan said from the
trees. “Keep your voice down.”

Kimberly obediently lowered her voice. “Do
you mind telling me why you made Chris stop the truck and bolted?”
she asked. “Did you get sick or something?”

“Or something,” Ethan replied, and his voice
sounded suspicious enough that Kimberly started down the embankment
again. She nearly slipped on the slick grass twice but caught
herself both times, and when she reached the trees, she saw Ethan’s
silhouette in the shadows. “Stop right there,” he said as she
started to cross the tree line, and something in his tone made her
freeze in mid-step.

“What’s wrong?” Kimberly asked, the medical
professional in her welling up and demanding answers.

“You know those side effects we were just
discussing?” Ethan asked, and Kimberly’s heart skipped a beat.
Despite his warning to stay right where she was, she ducked into
the shadow of the trees to find him. He was sitting on the ground
against a tree, his head bowed, and when he spoke, his voice was a
mixture of caution and fear. “I had to get out of that truck,” he
said. “I just… I couldn’t be in it anymore. I needed a break. I… I
didn’t want to hurt you.”

“What are you talking about?” Kimberly asked.
“I know you’d never hurt me. What makes you think you would?”

“It’s still there, Kim,” Ethan said. “Giving
me the vaccine, it didn’t get rid of it completely. I guess once
you’re like that, there’s a part of you that stays that way.”

Kimberly knelt in front of him in the soft
undergrowth and touched his leg to get him to look at her. “Ethan,
whatever is going on, I can help you with this, okay? Talk to
me.”

“I almost took a bite out of you, okay?”
Ethan said. He had a frightened look in his eyes. “All that talk
about the infected and the vaccine and shit stirred something up in
me, and I just… I felt like I was about to go on the attack. I had
to get out of there.”

Kimberly caught his hand in her grasp and
squeezed it. When he tried to pull it away, she tightened her grip.
“Do you feel like you’re about to turn?” she asked, looking at him
with a clinical, detached eye. She was largely unsuccessful. She’d
simply gotten too close to him to look at him in a doctor-patient
manner. “Does anything feel
off
?”

“More so than usual?” Ethan asked. “No. It
comes and goes. It’s like… urges.” He looked past her, back toward
the road. “Maybe I don’t need to go with you if it’s going to be
like this.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Kimberly said. She
let go of his hand and grabbed his face in both hands, forcing him
to look at her. “You are not staying behind. You’re going with me.
If you think I’m going to waltz off with some random guy I barely
know and not have you at my back, then I’m going to have to wonder
what drugs you’ve been taking when I haven’t been looking.”

“Are you sure?”

“What the hell, Eth?” Kimberly said. She
pushed to her feet, shaking her head as she paced away from him.
“Of course I’m sure! If I wasn’t sure, I wouldn’t have said
it!”

Ethan stood, dusting his pants off and
walking toward her. “Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “We’re all entitled
to a momentary breakdown on occasion, right? It’s been a couple of
years since I’ve had one, so I figure I’m overdue.”

“Well, can you save the next one for later,
like, maybe after we get this mission over and done with?” Kimberly
asked. When he nodded, she added, “If you do have more… issues with
side effects, I need you to tell me first thing instead of running
off on me, okay?”

“Fine, I will,” Ethan said. He ran his hand
through his hair, shoving it back from his forehead, and stepped
closer to her. Kimberly’s heart sped up as he moved nearer to her,
close enough that she could conceivably touch him by barely lifting
her arm. He brushed his hand along her forearm, moving even closer
to her. “I’m sorry if I scared you,” he said, and Kimberly’s heart
leaped when he leaned toward her. She tilted her head back to meet
the kiss he was about to place on her lips.

“Hey, guys?” Chris called from the road, and
Ethan pulled back, much to Kimberly’s disappointment. “We’ve got a
problem up here!”

“Better be a good one, or I’m going to kick
some serious ass,” Ethan grumbled. He started back toward the road,
and she followed, unable to help the disappointment that stirred in
her over their interrupted moment. It had been too long since that
intense, hungry kiss they’d shared on the main house’s porch in
Woodside, a gesture that she was still feeling uncertain over. She
stumbled through the underbrush to the tall grass on the embankment
and scrambled up the slope behind Ethan, accepting his hand when he
reached back to help her up.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“That,” Chris said, pointing down the road in
the direction they’d been originally heading. Kimberly and Ethan
looked, and where it’d been leaping in excitement before,
Kimberly’s heart now felt like it stuttered to a stop.

Her eyes took in the sight of the road before
them. “Oh my God. What is that?”

“That would be the U.S. military,” Chris
said.

Humvees had gathered in the road one hundred
yards ahead of them, two of them parked side by side to block the
road, several more Humvees and a few canvas-covered cargo trucks
beyond them, and around the vehicles were soldiers, swathed in BDUs
and MOPP4 outfits, all with rifles pointed in their general
direction.

“Ethan?” Kimberly asked warily. She glanced
at the man standing beside her with uncertainty, waiting to take
her cue from his response.

Ethan let out a slow breath and lifted his
arms, putting his hands up above his head.

Cade barely
suppressed the excitement that stirred in her stomach over the
prospect of getting on the road. She couldn’t believe she’d found
it, the paper that was labeled, “Evacuation Plan A,” that detailed
the military’s plans to take their personnel to Eden, North
Carolina. It was clear instructions on how to get one step closer
to finding her husband.

She was scared of what she’d find when she
located Brandt. For all she knew, the military had spent the past
several days torturing him in an attempt to get information out of
him. Considering he was probably the only person in the world that
was immune to the Michaluk Virus, it wouldn’t be beyond the realm
of possibility that they’d figure that out—or he’d be forced to
tell them—and they’d want to know how and why he wasn’t affected.
The thought of him being forced to talk, of what they might have
done to him already, made her heart hurt, and she struggled to
shove those thoughts aside and think positively.

Before they could leave, they needed a means
of transportation, since they’d been forced to abandon their
vehicles on the way into Atlanta. That was why they were outside in
the Tabernacle’s parking lot, most of them standing guard while
Remy and Dominic went from vehicle to vehicle, searching for one
that had diesel fuel in it and that they could easily get out of
the lot. The rest of them kept an eye on everything in the vicinity
in case something crawled out of the shadows to attack any of
them.

Cade was crouched on the dumpster they’d had
to climb on top of to get inside the Tabernacle’s fence line, her
Galil sniper rifle clutched in her hands, her eyes skimming over
the lot. The sun was settling closer to the horizon, and she was
particularly worried about the darkness gathering underneath the
trucks. The shadows of the tall buildings around them were
stretching down the street. Not far away, the round tower of the
Westin loomed over everything, many of its windows broken. It
looked still and quiet, though that didn’t stop the shudder that
rolled down Cade’s spine at the sight of it and the remembrance of
what had happened inside it.

She tore her eyes away from the tower and
onto the parking lot that she should have been paying attention to.
Remy had climbed halfway into one of the trucks with Dominic and
was trying to get it started. The truck’s engine whined, grinding
as it struggled to turn over, and Dominic shook his head and
motioned for her to climb down.

“Any luck yet?” Cade called, already knowing
the answer.

“Not yet,” Remy replied. “There’s a promising
one two trucks in, but everything’s in the way and we can’t figure
out how to get it out.”

“Yeah, whoever the hell parked all these
trucks should be smacked in the head,” Dominic remarked. “I don’t
know
how
they thought this was a good idea. If they’d had to
evacuate suddenly, they’d have been fucked.”

“I wonder how they evacuated,” Cade said,
looking around and noticing that the vast majority of the lot was
blocked in. None of the vehicles appeared to have been moved since
they were parked.

“Probably by air,” Dominic said, approaching
the dumpster. “That’s what I would have done, anyway. Troop
carriers and shit. Not sure where I’d have landed it at around
here, maybe the Centennial Olympic Park over there.” He pointed to
the park in question, which was across the street. He looked around
the parking lot again and added, “I’m going to check the smaller
parking lot on the other side of the building. Maybe there’s
something over there that we can use.”

“You should take someone with you,” Cade
cautioned him.

“Already on it,” Dominic said. He turned and
called, “Remy! Come give me a hand, would you?”

After the two had disappeared around the
front of the building, Cade asked Keith, “Do those two have
something going on?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t been
paying much attention to anything beyond our general survival.”
Keith climbed up onto the dumpster to sit beside her. “What are we
going to do if none of these trucks are operable?”

“Keep going until we find one, I guess,” Cade
said. “We don’t have any other choice. We have
got
to get
out of here and get to Brandt before those fuckers that took him do
something horrible to him.”

“What if they’ve already done something awful
to him?”