The Becoming: Redemption (The Becoming Series Book 5) (31 page)

“Pick a building, any building,” Dominic
said. “You’ll probably have a good chance of finding her in any one
of them.” When Cade gave him a dirty look for his borderline
smartass answer, he said, “It depends on why she walked away. If
she wanted time alone, she’d pick a random, empty building. If she
was looking for something in particular, she’d have picked a
building that might have whatever she’s looking for, and
that
we have no way of knowing.”

Cade ran her fingers through her hair,
wishing for another hair band; she’d lost hers at some point during
one of the flights from various hiding places. “Why did she have to
pick
now
, of all times, to run off?” she grumbled.

“Because she’s not one to think about the
needs of others,” Dominic said. “Not usually. She tends to put
herself first, and she thinks of others second. It’s probably a
product of her upbringing.”

“She needs to take her upbringing and shove
it somewhere else,” Cade replied. “Because we don’t have time for
her to play the rebel, not when we’re so close to Brandt.”

“Assuming he’s even here,” Dominic said.

“Yeah, there’s that,” Cade muttered. She
walked out into the middle of the street and looked both ways,
trying to decide which building Remy would have been most likely to
go into. “Closer to the wall or further away?” she mused out loud,
scanning the buildings.

“I vote closer to the wall,” Dominic said.
“She’d want to watch it to see what happens around it.”

“Good point,” Cade said. She adjusted her
backpack higher onto her shoulders and started walking in that
direction, keeping to the center of the road so she could see if
Remy emerged from any of the buildings. Dominic followed her for a
few moments before speeding up to walk alongside her, his hand
resting casually on his holstered pistol. “You think we’ve made a
mistake here?” she asked as they walked closer to the torn-up
strip.

“Do
you
?” Dominic retorted. “Because
if you’ll recall, we were following
your
lead, not mine. If
you think we’ve made a mistake, maybe you should say so.”

“I’m asking for your opinion here, Dominic,”
Cade snapped. “Will it kill you to give it?”

“Probably,” Dominic said, and Cade whirled on
him with every intention of smacking him before she saw the grin on
his face. She growled and turned back forward and walking more
briskly. “My opinion? I think we’re on the right track. How far
along on the right track we are, I’m not sure.”

Cade blew out a breath. “You have no idea how
reassuring that is,” she admitted. “I’ve been agonizing over
whether or not this was the right decision dragging all you guys
out here to—”

“You didn’t
drag
us anywhere,” Dominic
said, catching her arm to stop her in the middle of the street. “We
all came willingly. We volunteered, because we wanted to help you.
Because we
care
. Besides, Brandt’s one of ours. We
have
to get him back. He’d do the same for us.”

“Yeah, he would,” Cade said. “He already did
that with me once, remember?”

“Who could forget?”

Cade spotted movement near the edge of the
street, where the buildings and road ended and the dirt began. She
unslung her rifle from her shoulder and lifted it to aim down the
street, ready to shoot whatever it was moving down there. She
relaxed when she realized it was Remy, prowling around at the dirt
line.

“Looks like you were right,” Cade observed,
pointing her out.

A big smile broke out across Dominic’s face.
It was so blatantly obvious to Cade how Dominic felt about Remy
that it was ridiculous. She only hoped that Remy returned the man’s
affections; it would be terrible to watch the fallout if she
didn’t.

Dominic sped up at the sight of Remy, and he
hurried toward her, his look a cross between joy at finding her
unharmed and concern at why she’d wandered off in the first place.
Cade followed him at a slower pace, lowering her rifle and hanging
it by its strap off her shoulder again in its usual position.

“Hey, Remy!” Dominic called out, and she
froze like a deer in the headlights of a speeding van, whipping
around to look at who was yelling for her.

“What the hell are you doing out here?” Remy
asked. She didn’t make any move to walk towards him; she stayed
back, hanging near the dirt line with a wary look on her face.
There was a streak of blood on her upper lip, smeared upward toward
her right cheek, like she’d had a nosebleed and swiped at it with
her hand.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Dominic
retorted.

“Are you
following
me?” Remy demanded.
She looked past Dominic toward Cade. “And you brought Cade?”

“We were worried about you,” Cade said. “You
took off without a word to any of us. We thought you were keeping
watch on the roof.”

“I was looking for some stuff I needed,” Remy
said. Cade raised an eyebrow and spotted a few coffee cans nested
together and tucked underneath her arm. Remy saw her looking and
twisted around to block her view with her body; the cans rattled
with the movement. “What did you guys come all the way out here
for? It’s dangerous.”

“Once again, I could ask you the same thing,”
Dominic said. He stepped closer to her, catching her arm in a light
grip. “We were—
I
was worried about you.”

“You don’t need to worry about me,” Remy
replied. “I can take care of myself just fine.”

“I know. I just—”

Dominic’s words cut off abruptly, and he
staggered sideways. The echo of a single rifle shot vibrated
through the air, and Cade reflexively took a few steps back,
raising her own rifle.

Dominic groaned and tumbled to the
ground.

“Dom?” Remy said.

Another shot echoed out, and a pockmark
appeared in the dirt right beside Remy’s shoe. Remy barely noticed
it as she reached out for the man on the ground.

A dark stain slowly spread underneath
him.

“Dominic!” Remy shrieked when she realized
what she was seeing at the same time Cade did.

Dominic had been shot. Judging by his
appearance, the limp way he lay on the ground, the sheer amount of
blood pooling underneath him, and the lack of movement in his
chest, he was already dead.

“Remy!” Cade shouted, racing toward her as
fast as she could. She skidded to a stop at her side and hooked a
hand underneath her arm, hauling her to her feet. “Come on, we’ve
got to move!”

“Let go of me!” Remy yelled back at her.
“We’ve got to help him!”

“Remy, he’s dead!” Cade snapped. “There’s
nothing we can do for him! Let’s go before we both get shot!” As if
to punctuate her statement, another bullet pinged against the
ground, dangerously close to Cade. “I’m not getting shot for you!
Now
get up!
”

It was hard to tell whether or not Remy
listened to her; considering Cade was pulling on her arm so hard,
it might have been the force she was exerting on her. Either way,
Remy was on her feet and being led down the street before Cade
could give her any more orders, the coffee cans she still clutched
rattling loudly with every step. She and Remy ran toward the side
of the road, ducking behind a crumpled car that blocking the
sidewalk. Remy’s stifled sobs were the only sounds Cade heard
outside of the echo of gunfire that still rang in her ears. She
stared at the dead man on the ground, keeping her tight grip on
Remy’s arm, lest she take off running toward Dominic again.

“Jesus Christ, Cade, they shot him!” Remy
gasped through her sobs. “They fucking
shot him
!”

Tears welled up in Cade’s eyes, and her gaze
fixed on the dark red flood oozing out from Dominic’s body and
soaking into the dirt and the cracks in the pavement. Her breath
was short, and her entire body was shaking with adrenaline and
horror.

“I guess maybe Sadie’s emissary idea was a
really bad one,” she said shakily.

Remy was trembling, and Cade looked at her in
concern. Remy swiped at her tears with the back of her hand,
smearing the tears and the streak of blood already on her face
around further. She still stared at Dominic’s body, like she could
hardly believe what was before her.

“Remy, we’ve got to move,” Cade said, but it
was like she hadn’t even spoken. Remy still stared, unmoving.
“Remy?”

Remy turned her head to look at her, and
though tears still streamed down her cheeks, her eyes were hollow.
“They’re going to pay for this,” she said, her tone pure,
unadulterated fury. “If it’s the last thing I do in this life, I’m
going to make them
pay
.”

Ethan was
freezing. He hadn’t been this cold in nearly two years, which was,
incidentally, the last time he’d been exposed to central heat and
air conditioning. It was a different kind of cold from what he’d
become accustomed to, far different than the chill of outdoor
winter air. This was a dry cold, one that threatened to give him a
painful sinus headache, and as the thought crossed his mind, he
eyed the box of tissues on the corner of the large desk in front of
him.

When he, Kimberly, and Chris had arrived at
the Eden Facility, as their captors had called it, they’d been
separated and taken to different decontamination rooms. He’d been
forced to strip off every stitch of clothing, which had all
probably been incinerated or subjected to some other equally
heinous treatment. He’d been hosed down with a water hose that felt
like it was set to only a notch below “power wash.” Afterwards,
they’d thrown towels at him to dry off with and given him a very
thorough medical exam that made him feel violated. Only then was he
allowed to put clothes on, if the incredibly thin scrubs they’d
given him could rightly be called “clothing.”

Kimberly sat in the chair to his right,
outfitted in identical clothing, and her entire body randomly shook
with shivers and chills. She sat hunched in her chair, rubbing her
palms over her bare arms in a vain attempt to warm herself. Ethan
itched to reach over and wrap his arm around her, maybe tug her
chair closer to his so he could lend her what little body warmth he
had, but there were soldiers standing guard behind their chairs,
and he had a feeling if he made any moves towards Kimberly, he’d
probably end up with a bullet in the back of his head.

Chris sat on Ethan’s left, his arms folded
over his chest, his eyes staring blankly at the desk and the empty
chair behind it. He looked disgusted by the whole situation, and
Ethan couldn’t blame him. If it wasn’t for him, Chris would be in
his barracks with his fellow soldiers, not sitting in this freezing
cold office in a pair of scrubs waiting for whatever punishment was
about to drop down on them.

A door on the side of the office swung open
and a tall, imposing man strode into the room. He was outfitted in
a service dress uniform that was heavily decorated with medals and
ribbons, a clear attempt to make himself look accomplished and
imposing. His nameplate read, “Bradford.” Though Ethan wasn’t
wholly familiar with which uniform insignia was which, he was
pretty sure that the gold leaf on the man’s shoulders meant he was
a Major. He was an older man with graying brown hair and a tanned,
weatherworn face, and he looked like the type that took everything
that dropped in front of him completely seriously. He carried a
stack of notebooks and loose papers, and Ethan realized that the
officer had all of Derek Rivers’ research on the Michaluk Virus in
his possession.

Beside him, Chris flinched, like he had been
about to get out of his chair to rise and salute a superior
officer. But one of the guards behind Chris clamped a hand onto his
shoulder, pinning him down into his chair and aborting Chris’s
movement.

“Well, what do we have here?” Bradford asked,
setting the stack of notebooks on his desk and dropping into his
chair. He rocked back in his seat, staring at the three of them for
a long moment, long enough that Ethan started to feel unnerved by
the intensity of the man’s gaze. Then Bradford nonchalantly said,
“My men tell me that this,” he tapped a finger against the stack of
research, “has the baseline of a cure for the Michaluk Virus in
it.”

“It’s a vaccine, not a cure,” Kimberly spoke
up. “It won’t do much for those who have been infected for an
extended period of time. If they’re already wasting away or if
they’re already dead, they’re gone, and there’s nothing we can do
for them.”

“Did I ask you to speak?” Bradford
replied.

“Well, no, but—”

“Then shut up.” He sat back in his chair and
examined each of them in turn. “Which one of you is the leader of
your merry little band?”

Ethan hesitated, briefly exchanging glances
with Kimberly and Chris. “I suppose that would be me.”

“Then
you
speak,” Bradford
ordered.

Ethan heaved a slow sigh and started talking,
his voice almost a monotone, like he was reciting a long-rehearsed
and memorized script. “We’ve been living in a small community in
South Carolina for eight months or so with a scientist that used to
work for the CDC.”

“Got a name?” Bradford asked, picking up a
pen.

“Derek Rivers,” Ethan answered, and the major
wrote the name down. “He’s been doing hands-on research on the
virus and its effects, and he thinks he might have found a vaccine
for it. Being out in the middle of nowhere with no appropriate
facilities, he hasn’t been able to
do
anything with it.
Kimberly and I volunteered to take the research and some samples
out of the community and track down someone who could double-check
his research, run tests on the vaccine, and maybe figure out
production and distribution for those who have survived all this
shit.” He glanced around the office. “It appears that some are
doing a hell of a lot better than we’ve been doing.”