The Becoming: Redemption (The Becoming Series Book 5) (33 page)

“In the middle of what?” Cade asked. “Remy,
what are you doing?
” She caught Remy’s bicep and tried to
make her turn around, but Remy wrenched herself free and lifted her
pistol, pointing it right at Cade’s face. Cade stumbled backwards,
her eyes wide. “You’ve lost it, haven’t you?” she asked. “You’ve
finally fucking lost it.”

“Get. Back. Inside,” Remy ordered, her voice
hard and steady. “
Now.
” Cade looked at the oncoming horde
then fled back into the building. The door slammed shut behind her,
and even where she stood, Remy heard Cade barricading it against
the masses coming their way. She hated that she’d had to resort to
such drastic measures to get Cade to listen to her. In all
honestly, she was amazed that the woman had been willing to
approach her, considering her current physical condition. She slid
the pistol back into its holster and stopped in the middle of the
street, waiting for the horde’s arrival.

It took two more minutes for the first of
them to arrive, sweeping past her in a flood of stinking bodies and
limbs, flowing around her like she was a rock in the middle of a
river. She let them pass, watching as they flooded toward the
massive concrete wall, trampling over the remains of the soldiers.
They all, however, obeyed her will and swept around Dominic’s body,
leaving it untouched. Once a sufficient number of them had passed
her, she started to walk with them, letting them carry her forward
toward the wall.

The soldiers lining the top of the wall were
shouting to each other and, as soon as the horde crossed from
crumbled pavement to scraped dirt, they took aim and opened fire.
Bullets peppered the leading edge of the infected, several of them
dropping to the ground as the bullets found their marks in heads.
The rows behind them simply stumbled over their bodies and kept
going, mindless in their advance on the uninfected soldiers manning
the wall. Remy encouraged them on, pushing them to keep going,
faster and faster, hastening their charge to her intended target.
As she drew closer and closer to the massive wall and the gate set
into it, she unslung her backpack from her shoulder and unzipped
it, ready to take her homemade bombs out at a moment’s notice.

The infected were falling all around her,
their blood spattering on her clothes, but not one bullet touched
her as she approached the gate. The bullet wounds already in her
body had long ceased to ache or even bleed, save for a thick,
sluggish ooze that was well on its way to ceasing altogether. When
the infected woman immediately to Remy’s right fell to the ground
with the force of a bullet that slammed into her chest, Remy
squeezed her eyes shut for a long moment, listening to the slow,
sluggish thump of her heart.

It beat three more times, and then it
stopped.

When she opened her eyes again, Remy
Angellette was no longer Remy Angellette.

The thing that had once been Remy Angellette
continued forward with the rest of the mob, until it smashed
directly against the gates. She ordered the mob to part, exerting
her control over them effortlessly, creating a narrow path for her
to slip through. Once she was at the gate, she took the makeshift
bombs out of her backpack and stuffed the coffee cans against the
gate near the center and the hinges. All the while, bullets pinged
off the ground around her and embedded into the other infected.
Still, none of them met their marks.

Once the coffee cans were positioned where
she wanted them, the woman who had formerly been Remy stepped away
from the gate and began walking in the opposite direction, tugging
free a grenade from her backpack—the same grenade her host body had
taken off a dead soldier in Atlanta. Working efficiently, she
pulled the pin from the grenade, released the lever, and tossed it
against the largest of the coffee cans.

“Protect me,” she ordered the infected
surrounding her, even as she sped up, moving further away from the
gates. “Shield me.”

The infected scrambled to obey, surging
around her, swarming her and piling over her, shielding her with
their bodies.

The ensuing explosion ripped through bodies
and concrete, tearing off limbs and sending shrapnel soaring
outward, flinging bodies away from the blast’s epicenter. The gate
tore free from its steel tracks, twisting and breaking apart under
the force of the explosion, and one of the guard towers alongside
the gate toppled, leaning outward before crashing down onto the
teeming horde below.

The debris had barely stopped falling when
the woman who had once been Remy Angellette ordered her undead
shields off of her. She rose from underneath the mob, ignoring the
dust settling over everything, and tilted her head back to shout at
the top of her lungs.

“Go!” she yelled. “Show them the meaning of
the words ‘Hell on Earth!’”

When Kimberly
stirred into consciousness, her head spinning, it took everything
in her to not throw up. She opened her eyes then squeezed them
closed again, pressing her fingers to her temples, trying to figure
out where she was.

She lay on an overly hard mattress that was
so thin she could feel the metal slats underneath it. The blanket
was a scratchy wool that would make her itch for hours. Once she
felt steady enough to sit up, she braced her hands underneath her
and pushed upright, then slowly opened her eyes again.

She was in a small room, a cell really, with
off-white cinderblock walls. The floor was a sterile gray concrete,
and the room was unadorned beyond the metal-framed bed she lay on
and the corner with a prison-style toilet and sink. There were no
windows. She was the only person in the room; Chris was nowhere to
be seen.

Kimberly swung her feet to the side to rest
them against the floor, sending up a silent thank you that she
still had her tennis shoes on. The rest of her was swathed in the
light blue scrubs that the Eden Facility’s people had dressed her
in. Disturbingly, there was a spot of blood on the shoulder of the
top, and she touched it lightly then moved her fingers to the side
of her head. There was a cut on her head, presumably where
something had struck her, and she scrunched her eyes shut as she
tried to remember exactly what had happened.

It came back to her relatively quickly. She
recalled the meeting with Major Bradford, during which he’d treated
her like a second-class citizen, presumably because she was female,
and directed all his questions to Ethan. When he’d gotten the
paperwork showing Ethan as infected and had gone off his rocker,
accusing them of conspiring to assassinate him with one of the
infected, and then he’d given the order to have her and Chris
quarantined, and Ethan…

“Oh God,” Kimberly whispered.

How long had she been unconscious? Was Ethan
already dead? Was she already too late?

She pushed herself off the bed, standing
still for long enough to ensure she wasn’t going to immediately
fall over as her orientation changed. She went to the door,
examining it for any weaknesses. It was a heavy steel door, solidly
constructed, and the hinges were apparently affixed to the outside,
since she couldn’t see them from where she stood. There was a
narrow window set into the steel door, about a foot long, running
vertically up the door above the handle. Thin black wires
crisscrossed inside the glass, preventing it from being broken. She
peered out the narrow window into a pristine white, empty hallway.
Cupping her hands to either side of her head to cut out additional
light, she looked in either direction, searching for signs of
light. When she didn’t see anything, she tried calling out.

“Hello?” she said, raising her voice as loud
as she dared. “Is anybody out there?”

A long pause, followed by no answer.

“Hello?”

When there was still no answer, Kimberly
growled under her breath in frustration, lifted a fist, and started
pounding on the door.

She’d just established a decent rhythm that
wouldn’t wear her out when three figures appeared on the other side
of the door. One of them leaned down to peer into her room, a
soldier wearing a gas mask and some type of biohazard suit, which
made her roll her eyes. What did they think she was going to do,
eat their faces off? Spit in their eyes? She was far more
professional than that.

“Hey!” Kimberly yelled, hoping they’d hear
her through the glass. “Hey, when the fuck are you letting me out
of here?” It probably wasn’t the greatest question to lead with,
but her internal filter was on the fritz after the blow to the head
she’d taken.

The soldier retreated from view, and Kimberly
slapped her hand against the door again. “Hey!” she yelled,
ignoring the pain in her head. “Come back here! I’m not done
talking to you!”

Another man appeared in the glass. This one
was obviously a scientist; he wasn’t wearing a blatantly
military-issued biohazard suit. He had one that was meant for
high-containment laboratory settings. He made a shooing motion
toward her to indicate for her to back up, and she took two steps
back. He kept making the motion, so she stepped back again, and
they kept going like this until she bumped against the wall across
from the door. He motioned for her to put her hands up, so she
obediently raised them, palms out, alongside her head. She heard
the distinctive sound of the lock unfastening and the creak of the
door when one of the soldiers pulled it open.

The scientist stepped into the room, pausing
inside the door to study her with a curious expression that she
could barely make out through the plastic-y face shield built into
his hood. “What is your name?” he asked, raising his voice to be
heard through the hood. His tone suggested he already knew who she
was but was testing her to see if
she
knew.

“Kimberly Geller,” she answered. “Where am
I?”

“You’re at the Eden Facil—”

Kimberly interrupted him with a frustrated
growl. “I know
that
, you jackass,” she snapped. “I mean
where
am
I?” She waved her hand around, indicating the room
she stood in, and a look of clarity dawned on the man’s face.

“Oh!” he said brightly, like he were getting
the opportunity to teach a young girl something new. “You’re in one
of the Eden Facility’s quarantine rooms. Major Bradford ordered
that you and your friend Chris be isolated here until we determine
that you’re clean. It’s for our safety as well as yours.”

Kimberly rolled her eyes. “Oh, spare me the
bullshit. Where’s Chris?”

“Chris is in a quarantine room similar to
this one,” the man replied. “No need to worry about him. He is as
safe as you are.”

Kimberly didn’t find that reassuring in the
slightest.

“What about Ethan Bennett?” she asked,
getting to the real point of her questioning. “Where is he?”

The man looked confused for a split second
before his expression smoothed into one of neutrality. “He’s in
another quarantine room, the same as you and Chris. He’s in good
hands.”

Kimberly didn’t believe a word of it.

“Who are you?” she asked. “You seem to know
who
I
am, but you don’t appear willing to share in
kind.”

The man sighed and motioned for her to lower
her arms; she obeyed, though she stayed exactly where she stood.
“My name is Dr. Jacob Howser,” he answered. “I’m a pathologist here
at the Eden Facility that has been tasked with finding a cure for
the Michaluk Virus.”

“Your facility’s solution to having someone
with intimate knowledge of the virus walk in through the front door
is to knock her out and imprison her and her companions?”

Jacob stared at her before asking, “How much
knowledge do you have about Michaluk?”

“I’ve worked directly with the disease
alongside a former CDC doctor who was on the team that developed
the pathogen that later became the Michaluk Virus,” Kimberly said.
“We were able to develop something that appears to be a vaccine.
It’s worked on one person, and we were preparing to test it on a
second when we were forced to leave our safe house because the
infected had found us and were about to attack.”

Jacob stared at her for another long moment,
as if he couldn’t believe what she was saying. “You’re telling me
you’ve developed a vaccine?” he repeated. “Jesus. Why wasn’t I told
about this?”

“Because obviously someone didn’t want you to
know that one of your quarantined prisoners was actually
valuable
,” Kimberly snapped.

Despite Jacob’s confusion, resolve entered
his eyes. “Sit tight, Ms. Geller. I’m going to get to the bottom of
this. As soon as I know something, I’ll come back here, get you
cleared to leave quarantine, and maybe we can discuss your
potential usefulness in the lab. To say we need all the help we can
get is an understatement.”

Kimberly wanted to ask what he thought
she
could do about anything. As far as she was concerned,
her personal involvement in the creation of the vaccine was over
and done with. She didn’t give a shit what he thought of her
potential to “help” them, especially after the shitty treatment
they’d dumped on her and her friends when they’d been trying to
help
and had even brought along the walking, talking,
definitive proof that the vaccine worked, at least on some
level.

The scientist turned around and strode out of
the room. The two soldiers that had accompanied him waited until he
was in the hallway before they backed out of the room, one by one,
keeping their eyes on her the entire time.

Kimberly didn’t move until the heavy metal
door clanged shut. Then she pushed off the wall and strode to the
door, slapping both her palms against it and yelling, “Let me out
of here, damn it! I wasn’t done talking to you!” When she didn’t
get an answer to her yelling, she gave up, giving the door a solid,
parting kick that made her entire foot ache.