The Becoming: Redemption (The Becoming Series Book 5) (41 page)

“You want me to
find a
what
?” Sadie asked, raising her eyebrows in surprise
at Cade’s latest request. Cade stood in front of her with an
impatient expression on her face, her fingers hooked behind the
strap that held her rifle on her shoulder. Keith stood beyond her,
his own expression unchanging at Cade’s orders. Jude looked
completely nonplussed.

“An ambulance,” Cade said. “Or if you can’t
find one of those, maybe a fire truck or a couple of police
cars.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Sadie asked. “Where
the hell am I going to find something like that around here?” She
waved her hand vaguely, indicating the semi-destroyed ruins of the
buildings around them.

“You’re smart,” Cade replied. “Get
creative.”

“I’m not going to find one,” Sadie shot back.
She pointed at the wall in the distance. “It looks like those guys
cleared everything useful out.
Everything.
” She repeated the
word emphatically. “Then they practically razed the place. It’s not
happening. Whatever you’re thinking, you need a new plan.”

“You’re not going to do it?” Cade asked, her
tone disappointed.

“No, I’m not going to do it, and neither is
Jude, so don’t bother asking him,” Sadie said. “Besides which,
don’t you think a vehicle like that would draw their attention away
from the wall and onto us?”

“That was the idea,” Cade said. “You got a
better one?”

“Why don’t we do the most obvious thing?”
Sadie suggested. She pointed toward the east, in the direction that
ran parallel to the wall. “We go that way until we’re clear of all
this mess, then find a way to climb over the wall and go from
there.”

“It won’t be that easy,” Keith commented.
“There are guards all over the walls, remember? Not to mention the
infected.”

Sadie scoffed. “Psh. It won’t be
that
hard,” she said. “The infected are all down here, trying to get in
through the hole in the wall. The guards on the top of the wall are
probably on their way over here so they can try to stop the
infected from getting through. The likelihood of the coast being
clear is a hell of a lot higher than it would be if that explosion
hadn’t happened.”

A silence fell between the four of them as
they considered her proposition. Cade and Keith were exchanging a
look like they were communicating telepathically, but Jude
interrupted their staring contest by stepping forward and holding
up his pad of paper for them to read.

I think it’s a solid idea,
he’d
written in the neat, blocky handwriting he used when he was trying
to make sure his point was coming across clearly.
And I’m not
saying that because it was Sadie’s idea. I think it’s our best
chance of getting to the other side of the wall without getting
killed by either the infected or by the soldiers.

Cade read the words, her forehead wrinkling,
and she nodded once and stepped away, moving back to the edge of
the roof and staring out at the teeming mass several hundred yards
away. “If we go with your idea, we’re going to run into infected,”
she said.

“I think that’s a given,” Sadie said.

“We’ll have to do this quietly,” Cade went
on. “No guns. Just knives. And as little noise as humanly
possible.”

“I think that, too, is a given,” Sadie said,
wondering what Cade was getting at.

“Is everybody here up for something like
that?” Cade asked. “Staying quiet, killing up close and
personal?”

“I am,” Keith spoke up.

“Me and Jude have been doing it since we
started trying to survive out there in this shit,” Sadie added,
thinking back to the days when neither of them had access to guns
and only had bladed weapons, baseball bats, and crowbars to use for
protection. “We can handle it,” she said.

Cade turned around then, looking back at
them, acquiescence in her eyes. She blew out a slow breath and
said, “Fine. We’ll do it your way. But if any of us gets killed,
it’s on your head.” She motioned toward Sadie and turned away to
gather her supplies.

“No less than it’s on yours for dragging us
out here in the first place,” Sadie retorted, bristling at the
suggestion that she would be held responsible if any of them died
trying to get to the wall.

Cade whirled around to look at her, her eyes
wide with amazement and anger at her words. “Well,
you
didn’t have to come along,” she snapped. “You two should have
stayed behind with Derek and Isaac!”

Keith moved between them. “Stop,” he said.
“Just stop. We’re not doing this, not right now. We have enough
shit going on without bickering among ourselves.”

Cade looked like she wanted to continue to
argue, but she merely turned away and picked up her backpack. She
paced across the roof toward the far edge that faced the east.

Keith rubbed his forehead like he was
stressed out and getting a headache. “Sadie, forgive her,” he said,
dropping his hand to his side. “She’s under a lot of stress.”

“We all are,” Sadie replied.

“Not like her,” he said. “Her husband is
missing, and she’s left her child behind. She might not ever see
either one of them again. It’s weighing on her, and she’s scared
she’s made the wrong decision. We have to do whatever we can to
make sure that we get her through this and find Brandt again so
they can be a family.”

Sadie gathered her own belongings: her
backpack, her compound bow, and the eight arrows she still had
left. She’d have to carefully conserve them and recover whatever
she fired if she expected to have enough to make it through to the
wall and beyond. She tucked the arrows into her backpack, leaving a
gap in the zipper where the fletchings stuck out for easy access,
using the backpack like a quiver—though she hated quivers with a
passion, because they were useless and spilled arrows all over the
place when the archer was forced to move quickly. However, it was
all she had, so she had to work with it.

“When are we moving out?” she asked Keith as
she tried to figure out the best way to carry her belongings so
she’d have her hands free for usage of her machete.

“I’m not sure. As soon as possible,
definitely,” he said. “We need to take advantage of the lull in the
flood of infected while it’s actually there.”

“In that case,” Sadie said, “I’m going to
look for a safe route to the ground. I’ll let you know the minute I
find anything.” She crossed the roof to what was left of the fire
escape and climbed over the edge, dropping down onto it with every
intention of doing exactly what she said.

It hadn’t taken
long for the five of them to get their shit together, but once they
had a plan in place and were on the move, Brandt found himself
sitting in the passenger seat of Lindsey’s sedan, his sister in law
in the driver’s seat, driving towards the Wall and all the activity
surrounding the newly created gap in it. Over the roar of the
engine, Brandt heard the rapid pop of gunfire ahead as the soldiers
stationed at the Eden Facility fought against infected that were
trying to get in through the Wall.

Brandt twisted around in his seat to look at
the two people in the backseat of Lindsey’s car. Ethan’s face was
stoic considering everything they were about to face. Kimberly sat
beside him, directly behind Brandt, and she looked a lot more
ruffled than Ethan did. Brandt noted the way the fingers of her
left hand were tangled together with the fingers of Ethan’s right,
her fingertips blanched with the force of her grip on his hand.
“You two all right?” he asked.

“We’re fine,” Ethan said. “Trying to get our
game faces on.”

“You look like you already have yours,”
Brandt said.

“Yeah, we’re working on mine now,” Kimberly
said, letting out a weak chuckle. “I haven’t been in many
situations that involved me facing down a bunch of infected en
masse before. When I was with Alicia and her people, they protected
me and Derek and for the most part wouldn’t let us fight the
infected often. I think there was only one time I ended up fighting
them, and that was when the infected got into the hotel’s
underground parking garage. I was just part of the shooting line,
though, not actually
in
the fight.”

“Well, you’re about to be in one,” Brandt
said. “You sure we don’t need to turn around and send you back to
Jacob?” The scientist had opted to stay out of the fight, lacking
any experience in combat, and had retreated to Lindsey’s apartment
building with the idea of fortifying her place as a base of
operations.

“No, definitely not,” Kimberly said. “My
place is right here.”

“If you’re sure,” Brandt said
uncertainly.

“I’m sure,” she said, her confidence evident
in her voice.

Brandt slid back down into his seat and
looked to Lindsey. Her forehead was creased, her attention focused
entirely on the windshield in front of her, fingers wrapped in a
death grip around the steering wheel. “And you?” he prompted.

“And me what?” Lindsey asked.

“Are you ready for this?”

“I was born ready for this,” Lindsey said,
her words coated with steel. “I’m going to find my sister. I don’t
care what it takes.”

“That’s the spirit,” Ethan said, prompting a
small laugh from Kimberly.

The car fell silent, and Brandt stared out
the window, watching the blocks pass by as they moved inextricably
towards the massive wall and the mess ahead of them. The closer
they drew to it, the worse the scenery around them became; rubble
from the wall littered the sidewalks and street, forcing Lindsey to
steer carefully around it all, and there were people walking toward
the wall, drawn to the chaos like people inevitably were when
something different or unusual was going on. Though they shouldn’t
have been out at all, Brandt hoped that the people out there had at
least had the foresight and common sense to go out armed.

“Hey, Brandt,” Ethan said, rocking forward in
his seat and pointing down the street ahead of them. “Is that what
I think it is?”

Brandt turned back to the windshield,
examining the cityscape ahead for signs of what Ethan was looking
at. He squinted, trying to pick it out, and spotted several people
making their way down the center of the street, grouped together,
stumbling like they were drunk. They had that swagger, that
distinctive walk so common among the infected they’d encountered
over the past two years, and Brandt’s breath caught in his
throat.

“Son of a bitch,” he said. “Stop the
car.”

“What for?” Lindsey asked.

“Just do it,” Brandt barked. She eased the
car to a stop, looking at him questioningly. “Infected,” he
clarified. “Straight ahead. Six of them.” He twisted in his seat
again, looking back at Ethan. “You and me,” he said, and Ethan
nodded. “Lindsey, Kimberly, you two stay here.”

“What?” Kimberly cried.

“You’re our backup,” Brandt said, reaching
for the door handle. “We need you to hold back in case you have to
save our asses.”

“Right. Like that’s going to happen,”
Kimberly grumbled, flopping back in her seat in frustration.

Brandt ignored her and slid out of the car;
Ethan did the same, and they shut their car doors
simultaneously.

Ethan grinned widely as they circled around
to the front of the car. “Just like old times, huh?” he said.

“You act like old times were a long time
ago,” Brandt said as he checked his pistol. “How do we want to do
this?”

“Quietly,” Ethan said. “We don’t want to draw
more of them with gunfire.”

“I figured that was a given,” Brandt said. He
holstered the pistol he’d started to draw out and instead chose a
couple of the military-style KA-BAR knives Lindsey had given him,
palming one in each hand, holding them in a manner that would allow
him to use them with ease. “Lead the way,” he said to Ethan. He
wanted to see where the man was physically, how he was able to hold
up after everything he’d been through over the past several months.
He’d be right there to back him up if he got into trouble if it
came to that.

Not that he expected it to.

There were six infected directly ahead of
them, and beyond the initial group, Brandt made out three or four
more. The people on the sidewalks, the ones who’d come to
rubberneck at the aftermath of the explosion, hadn’t realized what
was happening, that the people coming from the direction of the
blast were a danger to them. He hoped they’d get moving once he and
Ethan took care of the problem and that they wouldn’t contribute to
it by interfering and putting themselves in harm’s way—and
potentially getting bitten and becoming part of the problem in the
process.

Ethan reached the leading edge of the group
of infected while Brandt stewed on this. The infected simply parted
and started to go around him, focusing on Brandt instead. Brandt
raised his eyebrows, wondering how in the world Ethan had learned
that
particular trick, but he didn’t have time to dwell on
it. He lifted his knives and tore into the first of the infected
that grasped for him, a woman who looked like she’d seen better
days. Her skin was weather-beaten and peeling, and her hair was
falling out in clumps. She wore a dirty pair of light blue scrubs
that were torn and stained with old, dried blood, and her limbs
were thin and emaciated. When she reached for Brandt, he slammed
the knife in his right hand into her temple. The body crumpled to
the pavement, and that was when the screaming from the bystanders
began.

“Ah, hell,” Brandt said, abandoning the body
to its spot on the pavement and stepping over it to go to his next
target. He and Ethan needed to take care of these things before
they were drawn to the sound of the bystanders’ screams and shouts.
Ethan hadn’t paused at the sound of the screams like Brandt had; he
was still moving, stepping behind each of the infected and dropping
them with a sharp, quick stab to the back of the neck, driving the
blade of his knife up into their skulls to sever their spinal cords
and pierce their brain stems. The infected were dropping around him
like weeds, collapsing to the ground as he systematically worked
his way through the group of infected. He was like a grim reaper
swishing his scythe through souls that should have left the Earth
long ago, gathering them to him so he could set them free.