The Becoming: Redemption (The Becoming Series Book 5) (40 page)

Lindsey looked at him again, long enough to
judge his reaction to his question. Brandt opened his mouth like he
was about to say something, then hesitated, looking out the side
window again and heaving a sigh.

“Brandt?”

“He got bitten,” Brandt said. “We ended up in
Atlanta, and we got cornered. He stayed behind to delay the
infected and got bitten. Before he turned, he was taken to the CDC
doctor that we’ve been protecting for the past several months. That
doctor was able to prevent him from turning, and after that, he was
able to sort of cure him. He still tests as infected, but he’s not.
At least, as I understand it.”

“I feel like there’s more to the story than
that,” Lindsey said, though she didn’t press Brandt for more
details. It didn’t feel like the right time for that, and besides,
she could always ask Ethan for details once she saw him again. For
now, she’d hold her questions and hope she got answers to them
eventually.

A few minutes later, she eased her car off
the highway and onto the gravel road that led to the secluded,
abandoned house she and Jacob liked to rendezvous at when they
wanted some privacy from any potential eyes watching. It was an
excellent place for privacy. It was nearly a dead spot for cell
phones because the signal wasn’t good enough to do much more than a
voice call, there were no security cameras anywhere near, and best
of all, there were no neighbors. It was the first place that had
popped in her head for a meeting place when she and Jacob had
decided to get Ethan out of the Eden Facility. She steered up the
driveway until she reached the now-ramshackle house, swung the car
around so it faced the exit, and put the vehicle into park.

“Stay on the alert,” Brandt ordered, and his
tone was one that made Lindsey wonder if Ethan had
really
been the one in charge over the past couple of years. “If there’s a
hole in the wall, there’s a good chance that at least
some
of the infected have gotten through, and the last thing we need is
to be inattentive and get attacked by one of them.”

“Believe me, I’m aware,” Lindsey said. “We’ve
had a few near-misses in the labs with some of our test subjects,
and it’s not a fun experience.” She nodded toward the windshield.
“Should we get out of the car?”

“Nah, let’s stay in the car a little longer,”
Brandt suggested. “I’m not going to lie, I’m basking in the whole
artificial heating going on in here.” He tilted his head toward
her. “You have no idea the things you take for granted until you
don’t have constant access to them.”

“I can’t imagine,” Lindsey said. “I’m not
sure I even want to.”

“You’ll get to live it when we go across that
wall,” Brandt warned her. “No need to try to imagine it.”

The crunch of tires on gravel interrupted any
conversation that might have followed. Lindsey leaned forward in
her seat to search for the approaching car, and headlights washed
across the windshield. She wrapped her fingers around the grip of
the pistol she’d tucked into the console between the seats, in case
it was someone that had no business showing up there. She relaxed
when she recognized Jacob’s car pulling up the long gravel drive,
let go of the pistol, and reached for the door handle. “It’s
Jacob,” she told Brandt. She opened the door and clambered out. She
remained standing in the open doorway, the door acting as a shield
between her and the approaching vehicle, which slowed to a stop a
few feet away from her car. The headlights cut out, and Jacob
emerged from the driver’s seat, a smile on his face.

“We made it!” he announced. The passenger and
rear doors opened; a blonde woman slid out of the back seat, and
the familiar face of Ethan Bennett appeared. He climbed out of the
front passenger seat.

“Holy shit, you weren’t kidding,” Lindsey
said to Jacob. She skirted around the open driver’s door and rushed
toward Ethan, impacting with him so hard that she almost knocked
him to the ground and throwing her arms around him in a tight hug.
Ethan stumbled backward but kept his feet, and he wrapped his arms
around her, returning her hug with enthusiasm.

“You have no idea how great it is to see a
familiar face,” Ethan said, grasping her by her biceps and nudging
her back so he could look at her. “It is so good to see you. How in
the hell did you end up here?”

“My doctorate,” Lindsey explained. “Who knew
a degree in microbiology would come in handy in the
apocalypse?”

“I can see how it would,” Ethan acknowledged.
He released her, taking a step back to put some distance between
them, and looked her over again. “Jeez, you look good,” he
commented. “Healthy. I’m glad.”

“We haven’t exactly had it as hard as you
guys have,” Lindsey remarked. “Some shortages on certain materials
that were manufactured in the southeast initially. Once those were
overcome, we haven’t had much in the way of problems.”

“Lucky you,” Brandt muttered, his tone
bitter.

“We should get out of here,” the blonde woman
who’d arrived with Jacob and Ethan said, and Lindsey turned her
attention to her. The woman stood near the rear of the car, covered
in cobwebs, dust, and dirt, wearing rumpled and filthy scrubs, her
blonde hair tangled. She wasn’t the most attractive woman Lindsey
had ever seen, especially not with the mess that she currently was,
but she was pretty, with wide eyes, a good bone structure, and a
fair complexion that made Lindsey a bit jealous. Judging by the way
he turned to give the woman his full attention, Ethan hadn’t failed
to notice her prettiness either. Lindsey wondered again what had
happened over the past two years that Ethan would appear to have
forgotten about Anna—a woman he’d been so devoted and dedicated to
before the outbreak—in favor of this unknown woman.

“We’re too close to the Wall for my comfort,”
the woman was saying when Lindsey snapped back into reality and out
of the past. “With the infected getting in, it’s only a matter of
time before they reach us. It’ll be a horde. We don’t have the
supplies necessary to deal with a horde.”

“We’ve never had the supplies necessary to
deal with a horde,” Ethan said. “Kimberly’s right, though. We
should get out of here.”

“Where are we going to go?” Jacob spoke up.
“If we wait much longer, no place will be safe.”

“I’m going south,” Brandt said. Everyone
present, save for Lindsey, turned surprised gazes onto the former
Marine. “I’ve got to track down my wife. I’m not leaving her to
fend for herself, regardless of whether or not she’s capable of
it.”

“I’m going with him,” Lindsey said. “If I
have a chance to find my sister, I’m going to take it. I don’t care
about the risks.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Jacob
asked, his tone hesitant and worried.

“What makes you think it’s not?” Lindsey
retorted, already knowing the answer, fully aware that anything he
had to say would involve the words “the infected” and “the Michaluk
Virus.” She shook her head and put a hand up to stop him before he
could say anything. “Don’t answer that. I already know what you’re
going to say. Whatever you have to say isn’t going to change my
mind in the slightest.”

“I’ll help you,” Ethan offered. He’d taken a
few steps back towards the car he’d arrived in, to stand closer to
the blonde woman that Lindsey still hadn’t been introduced to. “As
soon as we find some place safe for Kimberly to go—”

“No,” Kimberly cut in, shaking her head
vehemently. “You’re not leaving me behind.”

“Kim,” Ethan said, his tone pleading. He took
her by the elbow and led her several feet away, where the rest of
them couldn’t hear their conversation. Lindsey watched them argue
for a moment, then looked to Brandt with a raised eyebrow.

“Are those two…?” she asked, trailing off her
question meaningfully.

“If not yet, then probably soon,” Brandt
commented. “They’ve been dancing around each other for months now.
It’s getting absurd.”

Ethan turned away from Kimberly and
approached them again; Kimberly followed, a scowl on her face.
“We’re both going with you to help,” he reported when he reached
them. “We have experience dealing with the infected, and we’ll be
more help going with you than staying here.”

A smile spread across Lindsey’s face. “I knew
you’d get it worked out,” she said with ill-concealed confidence.
“Now we need to figure out the best way to get on the other side of
the Wall without any of us getting killed.”

Cade awoke to
the first blushes of dawn against the sky and the faint but
constant sound of gunfire in the distance. She rubbed at her right
eye and sat up straight, pushing a strand of dark hair out of her
face, trying to remember where she was. It came back in a quick
rush of memory: Dominic’s death, Remy going crazy, the explosion,
and the mad clamber to the roof. She bit back a groan and shoved
herself to her feet with only minimal awkwardness, stretching the
kinks out of her back before she approached Keith. He sat on the
edge of the roof, his legs dangling off into space, Sadie’s shotgun
resting across his lap.

“You didn’t wake me up to take watch,” Cade
commented, sitting on the roof beside him.

Keith shrugged. “I wasn’t tired,” he replied,
“didn’t think I could sleep, so I let you have some extra
rest.”

“Thank you,” Cade acknowledged, “but don’t
you need rest too?”

“I’ll be fine,” Keith said. “I’ve gone
without sleep more often than I’ve had it over the past three or
four years.”

“Insomnia issues?” Cade asked
sympathetically.

“Off and on since I finished college,” Keith
said. “I’ve learned to deal with it.”

Cade stared at the chaos in the distance, at
the infected teeming around the break in the wall, all trying to
shove themselves through the gap to the other side. She imagined
that the world on the other side of the wall was a veritable
smorgasbord for them. Tendrils of smoke curled skyward from the
detonation that Remy had set off to open the gap, and if she
squinted, Cade could see the outline of figures moving around on
top of the wall, aiming rifles into the mass of infected and firing
into them. Uselessly, she knew.

“There’s no way they have enough ammunition
to deal with all of that,” she said out loud.

“Man, that looks like it’s going to be hell
to get through,” Keith acknowledged. “Any ideas how we’re going to
do it?”

“I haven’t the foggiest,” Cade said. “Getting
out of
here
will be hard enough. Getting over there?
Probably impossible. The only thing that comes to mind is shooting
our way through.”

“Do we have enough ammunition for that?”
Keith asked.

“Probably not,” Cade acknowledged. “But we
have to try.”

“What about Olivia?” Keith asked
hesitantly.

A pang of regret and sadness arced through
Cade, and she closed her eyes, trying to push the feeling aside.
She couldn’t think about her child, not right now, not with
everything going on right there in front of them. “I’m doing this
for her,” she said. “I can’t… right now, the world is more
important, because if we don’t do something about that,” she
pointed toward the wall, “then there won’t be a safe world left for
her to live in.”

“The rest of us could do all that,” Keith
said. “You could go back to be with her…”

“I can’t,” Cade said. “I could never live
with myself if I left you guys to clean this up without me.” She
looked out at the mess beyond and added, “Besides, my husband is
out there somewhere. I can’t go home without bringing him with me,
can I?”

“I guess not,” Keith said, and his voice
sounded begrudging, like he didn’t want to give her that
concession. “But how the hell are we going to do this? We need to
come up with a plan that will get you out of this alive, because
while you couldn’t live with yourself if you bailed on us,
I
couldn’t live with myself if you got killed in the process.”

“Thank you for your concern, Keith,” Cade
said. She grasped his wrist and squeezed it briefly. “Trust me,
though, I can take care of myself. I’ve done so under worse
circumstances.” She leaned forward from her perch to examine the
ground below. “Hey, look at that,” she said, pointing down the
street. “The infected are thinning out.”

“You think this first wave is trickling to a
stop?” Keith asked.

“First wave is a good description,” Cade
said, “and yeah, I’m thinking it is. Maybe another hour and we
might get a chance to get the hell out of here and see what we can
do to help.”

“You sure you want to do this?” Keith
asked.

“I’m more concerned if the other two are
willing,” Cade said. “They’re so young, barely eighteen. They
shouldn’t be involved in this.”

“They have as much stake in this as we do,”
Keith said. “It’s their world too, you know? They want to fight for
it. Hell, they’re more than capable of it. Have you
seen
Sadie fight? It’s insane.”

“She reminds me of a much saner Remy,” Cade
agreed. “I don’t know that I’m willing to put them in the line of
fire, though.” She nodded toward the wall. “You saw what those
people did to Dominic. A shot like that, it takes a serious expert
marksman to hit a target that small all the way from that wall.
That shot had to be, hell, two hundred yards. I don’t hold any
illusions that they won’t try the same to us on approach.”

“We need a distraction,” Keith suggested.

“Or maybe something so out there that they
won’t shoot us on sight,” Cade said. “Something that will make them
realize that we’re on their side and that we’re not sick.”

“You look like you have an idea tickling
around in your head.”

“Yes, I think I do,” Cade said. She stood and
dusted off her jeans. “We need to find two vehicles, conspicuous
ones if this is going to work the way I’m thinking.”