The Becoming: Redemption (The Becoming Series Book 5) (39 page)

By all appearances, they would be stranded on
the roof until the sun rose and gave them a better view of what lay
ahead of them.

“What do you think?” Cade asked, her voice
low.

“I think we’re going to be stuck here for a
while,” Keith answered. “With, I’d like to point out, very little
food or water.”

“No need to remind me of
that,
” Cade
replied. “If there’s anything I keep in mind pretty much always,
it’s our current food and water situation. Trust me, I’m already
stewing over that. Right now, my main concern is getting out of
here, because if we don’t, the lack of food and water won’t matter,
because we won’t have a chance of getting more.”

“Good point,” Keith acquiesced. “What are we
going to do in the meantime?”

“Study the situation and pray for a break in
the mess to slip through,” Cade said. “It could come at any moment,
so we need to be prepared.” She turned away from him and went to
Sadie, conferring with her. Sadie went toward the other end of the
building, disappearing from view.

“Where is she going?” Keith asked.

“She’s looking for a safe escape route to the
ground so when we have the opportunity, we can get out of here
quickly,” Cade replied. “We should establish some sort of watch
routine so we can keep an eye on things below and be ready to break
at a moment’s notice.”

“I can take the first watch,” Keith
volunteered. “The rest of you can get some sleep. You, especially.
You’ve been through too much, and you look beyond exhausted.”

Cade frowned, but she didn’t look game to
argue with him. She folded her arms over her chest and stared into
the distance, like she was examining the unseen horde below.
Despite her rail-straight back and her squared shoulders, she
looked like she was about to melt down right there on the roof.
Keith couldn’t imagine her actually melting down, though, and as
the thought crossed his mind, he saw her draw up on herself,
suppressing her emotions, stuffing them down deep inside her. Keith
wondered how often she practiced that routine to do it so smoothly
and easily.

“This is all our fault.”

Keith moved closer so he could hear her
better, standing beside her with his thumbs hooked into the pockets
of his jeans. “What makes you say that?”

“Because it is.” She stared emptily in the
direction of the Wall and the location of the explosion. “Remy had
a problem. She’s always been a little…
off
, because she’d
been through so much.
Too
much. But after she got
bitten…things changed.
She
changed. And we kept treating her
the same, like nothing had happened to her, when in reality she was
coming unglued right in front of us. We didn’t do much of anything
to help her. We just kept on going, blissfully acting like she
hadn’t changed at all, when she saw herself as becoming the thing
she hates the most.”

“You think that’s why she did this?” Keith
asked, motioning to the blown-up gate with a wave of his hand.

“I think she’s not acting in her right mind,”
Cade said. “I think that all the pressure of the past two years has
finally gotten to her and Dominic’s death was the final straw.
She’s hit the point where she can’t take it anymore.”

Keith sighed, long and drawn out. “What do we
do?” he asked.

“We stop her,” Cade said. “We find her, and
we stop her.”

“How?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I’m still
trying to figure that part out. I just know that we have to stop
her. She’s our responsibility, and we can’t sit by while those
people suffer.” She sighed. “In the meantime, I’m going to plot,
plan, and try to get some sleep. Wake me up the moment you see a
break in the crowds.”

Keith nodded, and she retreated from him,
heading toward an air conditioning unit built into the roof. She
sat down on the rooftop and leaned against it, set her rifle and
backpack beside her, and shifted to make herself comfortable. She
closed her eyes, breathed in deeply, and visibly relaxed. Keith
turned his focus on the building, heading toward the edge so he
could look down at the teeming masses below.

Jude joined him at the edge. While the
seconds ticked by, the unending horde surged toward the wall. A
flutter in the corner of Keith’s eye drew his attention in Jude’s
direction, and he discovered that Jude was holding his notepad out
to him. In his neat, blocky handwriting, Jude had written,
What’s the plan for getting out of here?

“We’re not sure yet,” Keith said. “Right now,
we’re praying for the opportune moment.”

Jude looked toward the wall, squinting
through the darkness. He took his pencil out of his pocket and
wrote on the page.

Did Remy go crazy?

“I honestly don’t know,” Keith answered. “But
whatever is going on with her can’t possibly be good.”

Ethan’s heart
pounded and his fingers ached from the force with which he gripped
Kimberly’s hand. Jacob slipped out of the lab, through the
decontamination showers, and into the outer office. There was a
shuffling sound, like he was scrambling to do something quickly,
and the noise was followed by the telltale squeak of the lab’s main
door swinging open.

“What are you doing in here?” a man’s voice
asked, hollow and muffled by a gas mask. Ethan felt the urge to
rise up onto his knees and peer out the window. He fought it down.
Now wasn’t the time to risk everything to satisfy his curiosity. He
hunched down further, sliding a few more inches down to make sure
no part of him was showing over the short wall.

“This is my lab,” Jacob replied. “Why would I
not be in here?”

“We heard a gunshot,” another man spoke up.
“It sounded like it came from here.”

“Yes, the explosion compromised a quarantine
cell in the lab,” Jacob said. “One of the infected got out, and I
took care of the problem.” He paused and added, “You don’t want to
go in there. It’s a hot zone.”

“The problem is dealt with?” the newcomer
asked.

“Yes, it is,” Jacob said. “I was told we’re
evacuating the facility. I’m going to pack up my essential research
notes before I leave. I don’t want to risk losing them.”

“First bus leaves in twenty minutes. If you
require transportation, I recommend being on that bus before it
pulls out. There’s no guarantee we’ll be able to get a second bus
out.”

“Gotcha,” Jacob said. “I’ll be there as quick
as I can.”

Another long pause followed Jacob’s
statement, and Ethan counted to twenty before shifting to peer over
the wall into the office beyond. Jacob was heading their way,
shoving open the doors to the decontamination chamber and walking
straight through it to the labs. “You two are seriously lucky I was
here,” he said. “I think they were going to search the lab, and
when they found you, they’d have shot you.”

“Lucky us,” Ethan muttered. He pushed to his
feet and offered Kimberly his hand, helping her up from the floor.
Then he surveyed the room, looking for an alternate exit.

A gun appeared in his line of sight, and he
staggered backward out of reflex, trying to avoid the weapon’s aim.
Then he realized that the end of the barrel wasn’t pointing at him;
the grip was, and he took the offered pistol back from Jacob.

“I figure you’d feel better about all of this
and maybe be more inclined to trust me if I give the gun back,”
Jacob explained. “But I do ask you to keep an eye out for any
oncoming dangers. I’m reliant on you to keep us all safe.”

Ethan tucked the pistol into the pocket of
the lab coat. There was no need to wave it around at anything that
moved if he had the ability to delay the infected with his presence
before shooting them. He made a sweeping gesture with his hand at
Jacob. “Lead the way out of here,” he said. “Though I think it goes
without saying that if you screw us, I won’t hesitate to kill
you.”

“Understood,” Jacob said quietly. He saluted
and led them out of the lab and into the office.

The floor was littered with ceiling tiles and
broken glass, and one of the glass windows that had lined the
hallway was shattered. His footsteps crunching, Ethan followed
Jacob across the office, the glass grinding down to pulverized bits
underneath his tennis shoes. He clasped Kimberly’s hand in his and
tugged her along behind him, hoping that Jacob wasn’t about to lead
them into something that was going to get them killed.

The facility was in worse shape than Ethan
had predicted it would be. Ceiling tiles were down everywhere, and
the walls had thick cracks running the length of them. Ethan was
sure that if the walls were cracked so severely, the floor had to
be damaged too. He had more important things to worry about,
though, like getting Kimberly out of any potential line of
fire.

Jacob led them through the facility in
silence, his focus on getting out of the building, the only sound
the crunch and scuff of their shoes on the floor. Once they reached
an exit door, thankfully unmolested, he stopped there and looked
back at Ethan. “I have no idea what the conditions outside will
be,” he said. “I hope you’re prepared.”

“I’m more concerned whether or not
you
are,” Ethan said. “This is same old, same old for us. We know how
to handle ourselves around the infected. We’ve been doing it for
two years now. In this situation,
you
are the weak
link.”

“Touché,” Jacob acknowledged. “I didn’t think
of it that way. I keep forgetting…” He shook his head. “Never
mind.” He grasped the push-bar on the door, took a deep breath, and
shoved the door open. A cool rush of air flowed inside, ruffling
Ethan’s hair, and Jacob pointed to a silver sedan parked on the
other side of the parking lot. “That’s my car,” he said. “We’re
aiming to get to it. If we encounter any infected between here and
there, I trust you’ll take care of them?”

“Of course,” Ethan said with a nod that was
as reassuring as he was willing to make it. He didn’t want to
reassure the man too much; he wanted Jacob to stay on his guard
around him.

The scientist examined the path ahead of them
and stepped out into the night air. “Straight to the car,” he said.
“Simple, right?”

“You’d be surprised,” Kimberly muttered.

The three of them rushed across the parking
lot, heading toward the silver sedan with a prayer that they
wouldn’t get stopped by any soldiers or encounter any infected.
Thankfully, they made it to the vehicle unmolested, and Ethan
climbed into the passenger seat, giving Kimberly the back seat in
the hopes that it would keep her more protected from anything that
came their way.

“Where are we going?” Ethan asked Jacob once
the scientist was behind the wheel and the engine was running.

“There’s an abandoned house about a mile
north of here,” Jacob said, whipping the car out of its space and
steering through the parking lot. “It’s set off from the highway a
bit, so no one will see us up there. Lindsey is going to meet us
there. I don’t know if she’ll have the lieutenant with her, but
hopefully she will. Maybe that will reassure you of our good
intentions.”

Lindsey made short
work of getting her guns and ammunition into her car, loading
everything up without any of her neighbors or any bystanders on the
street catching sight of the weapons. Most of them—and all of the
ammunition she possessed—were stashed away in the trunk, though
she’d kept a couple of pistols and a box of ammunition for each in
the front seat where she could get to them quickly if she needed
to. Brandt had scrounged up some supplies from her kitchen, despite
his oath to travel lightly; she figured the food he’d gathered was
more for her reassurance than anything else.

“Where are we going?” Brandt asked the last
time she descended the stairs to the first level, carrying a
backpack that was slightly too heavy.

“Back to that house we were at when I let you
out of the trunk,” she told him. “Jacob is supposed to meet us
there with Ethan. Then we can figure out how to find my
sister.”

“I am totally behind this plan,” Brandt said.
He waited for her to unlock the doors, and he slid into the
passenger seat. Lindsey joined him, slipping into the driver’s seat
and starting the car. It was chilly in the vehicle, so she cranked
the heat up for a few minutes to warm the interior, then backed out
of the space and navigated to the street.

“Do you think Ethan will be able to help us?”
she asked Brandt. “The last time I saw him, it was almost three
years ago. Back then, he didn’t seem like the kind of person who
could survive something like this. He wasn’t very…aggressive, at
least compared to most guys that I knew.”

“People grow fast when they have the
real-world equivalent of zombies trying to kill them,” Brandt said.
“Ethan is one of the strongest people I know. There’s a reason he’s
been the leader of our merry little band of survivors since this
shit all started.”

“I wasn’t aware he’d come that far,” Lindsey
admitted. “Hell, I wasn’t aware he was still
alive
until
Jacob called me and said he was at the facility. I figured…well, I
guess I figured he’d be dead by now, to be honest. The Ethan I knew
wouldn’t have been able to survive all of this.”

“He probably wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been
for Cade,” Brandt said. “He was a mess those first few weeks, just
stumbling along. I think his wife’s death landed a whammy on him.
She died the first day the outbreak started in Memphis, and Ethan
couldn’t rest until he was sure, so he left us for a while to
verify that she was dead before he tracked us back down.” Lindsey
glanced at him. He was staring out the side window, his expression
sad. “He’s lost a lot more than most of us have,” he said. “And his
losses have been very, very hard on him.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Lindsey said, and
she was. She hated that anyone would have to go through everything
that Brandt suggested Ethan to having been through. However, that
brought up another question, spurred by something Jacob had said on
the phone when he’d called her with the news of a second
Michaluk-positive person at the Eden Facility. “How did Ethan get
infected?” she asked. “Better yet, how did he get infected without
showing any symptoms of infection other than a positive test?”