The Becoming: Redemption (The Becoming Series Book 5) (44 page)

Keith’s hand was tight on his arm, his
fingers clenched on his skin. Jude wanted to ask him to let go, or
to at least loosen his grip, but he wasn’t able to; he couldn’t
speak, he couldn’t write while he was running, and he couldn’t do
sign language because Keith didn’t know ASL. This was precisely the
situation that Sadie had been worried about when she’d said that
she wanted him to come with her: him being essentially voiceless,
accompanied by no one who could understand him.

Since he was taking up the rear, he glanced
back behind them. There were three soldiers on the platform walkway
with them, rifles in hand, pursuing them at a pace slightly faster
than his and Keith’s. He spotted a metal staircase that led to one
of the lower walkways and jerked at Keith’s hand to get his
attention, then pointed to the staircase that led down to it.

Fortunately, Keith got what he was trying to
communicate, and he veered in that direction, shoving Jude ahead of
him so he put himself between him and the oncoming soldiers. Jude
wasn’t thrilled with the concept. He didn’t have a way to argue
with him about it, so he continued on, clambering down the metal
stairs as fast as he could.

“Go down two levels,” Keith instructed, his
words breathless, “then cut back to the left. We’ve got to put some
distance between us and them.”

Left?
Jude mouthed. He couldn’t turn
his head to question Keith about it. Left would take them back
toward the gates and where the bomb had gone off…and closer to the
infected. He’d have thought that was the worst place they would
want to go, but he trusted Keith to not get him killed. He’d go
with it for now, and he’d tell Sadie what happened and let her yell
at him later.

The platform was empty, the ground below them
teeming with infected. Jude shuddered when a bunch of them looked
up at him and reached up, as if they could be reached from where
they stood on the platform above their heads. The thought of what
would happen if they got their hands on him and Keith was enough to
make him want to vomit. He looked away from the mob and focused on
running. He didn’t have time to imagine the grisly death that might
lead to.

There was a figure up ahead, standing on the
platform with its hip cocked, arms hanging loosely at its sides. It
was a woman, Jude realized, and she looked like she was waiting on
someone or something. He skidded to a halt as he recognized her,
and Keith slammed into his back, nearly toppling him to the metal
walkway. He caught himself on the railing, and he heard the precise
moment that Keith recognized the disheveled, bloodied figure
standing ahead of them, blocking their paths.

“Remy?” Keith said out loud, his voice leaden
with surprise.

Her legs burning
with the effort, Sadie led Cade on an erratic, meandering path
around the metal walkways, trying to get them down to a safe spot
on ground level so they could get inside the building. She didn’t
know what she would find in there. Hopefully it would be Cade’s
husband. Though she didn’t know her well, she hoped that Cade would
be reunited with Brandt. Those two gave off the impression that
they were attached at the hip, and she hated to see people as tight
as that separated from each other.

Now wasn’t the time to stew on that, though.
They had bigger problems on their hands—like the fact that there
were hundreds of infected swarming everywhere and four soldiers
were doing their damnedest chasing them as they fled towards their
target.

She scanned the walkways frantically, and she
sucked in a breath when she noticed a walkway that connected to the
building itself, a door set into the wall at the end of the
walkway. “There!” she exclaimed, jabbing her finger in the
direction of the door, and she steered toward it, jumping over
another railing and barely waiting for Cade to do likewise. To her
surprise, the door was unlocked. She flung it open and grabbed Cade
by her shirt, hauling her inside. The door thudded closed behind
them, and she stood inside the building, panting, fumbling for her
pistol.

“Where did I just bring us?” she asked. The
power inside the building was out, and there wasn’t a spark of
light to be found. She heard Cade unzipping her backpack and
digging around inside it, then there was a sharp crack and a faint
greenish light blossomed in Cade’s hands. She shook the glow stick
to mix the fluid around inside and handed it to Sadie. There was a
lanyard on the glow stick, so Sadie looped it over her head,
letting the stick settle against her chest. “Where did you get
this?” she asked as Cade took out a second stick and activated
it.

“I’ve been saving them in my kit for a rainy
day,” Cade replied. “To answer your first question, I’d hazard a
guess that we’re inside the facility. Just where I wanted to be.”
She put her own glow stick around her neck, and the muddled yellow
light illuminated the hard, determined look in her eyes.

“So what now?” Sadie asked. “We go
hunting?”

Cade’s face spread into a slow smirk. “Oh
yeah. We go hunting,” she confirmed. “I’ll lead, and you follow.
Stay on the alert. We don’t know how many of the infected are in
here.”

“Or other people who’d have the itch to do us
wrong,” Sadie added. She waited for Cade to lift her big-ass rifle
and take the lead. They started down the hall, and Sadie was
grateful she wasn’t on the wrong end of that rifle. Cade looked
like she had the fury of a thousand warriors in her eyes. She’d
obviously been pushed to her limits, and Sadie knew that the moment
she encountered the people who had Brandt, all bets were off.

The hallway’s walls, floor, and ceiling were
all white. The sheer cleanliness of them, the austere, unmarked
purity of them suggested medical facilities, hospitals, nursing
homes, everything that Sadie hated. She suppressed a shudder at the
frigid sterility of it and kept going, following Cade at a brisk
walk, a pistol in her right hand and a machete in her left. She
felt reasonably prepared for anything they might run into, so long
as that “anything” wasn’t so plentiful that she ran out of bullets.
Even with the three spare magazines on her belt, she wasn’t sure
she had enough ammunition for all of this.

The facility was a maze that challenged even
the most confusing hospital Sadie had ever been in. She had
sickening memories filtering through her mind, memories of her
frantic dash through the hallways of Grady Memorial Hospital,
searching for the pharmacy, hoping to find the medication her
mother had needed, and failing miserably. She tried to jar her
thoughts loose from those horrible memories; now wasn’t the time to
be thinking about all of that. Not when she was supposed to be
backing up Cade, and especially not when Brandt’s life might have
been riding on her ability to keep her head in the game.

There were footsteps somewhere ahead of them,
hurried ones, like someone was striding rapidly toward a particular
destination and wanted to get there without outright running. Cade
drew up short and pulled her glow stick off, shoving it into her
pocket, and Sadie followed her lead. There was light ahead, like
the person who was coming down the hall had a flashlight. When she
heard a voice, Sadie realized it was two people. Either that, or
someone was
really
into talking to himself.

Cade’s hand pressed against her arm, and she
followed the woman’s guidance to back up against the wall. “There’s
two sets of footsteps,” Cade breathed to her. “You take whoever is
on the left, and I’ll take the one on the right. Get on the other
side of the hall and wait.”

Sadie smoothly and silently darted to the
other side of the hall, just before the flashlight beam held by one
of their targets swept around the corner.

A rapid assessment in the glow of the
flashlight’s beam showed that their company was two men, one an
obvious guard of some type—though he was outfitted in the standard
digital camouflage that the military used now—and the other a
superior officer. Sadie mentally rifled through all the military
branches and their insignias that her father had painstakingly
taught her and settled on Major. This guy was highly ranked; Sadie
wouldn’t have been surprised to find out he was in charge of this
place or very close to holding that title. The lower-ranked soldier
carried the flashlight, and the Major’s hands were empty. It looked
like Cade would have a slightly easier time of it than Sadie. The
man with the flashlight was on Sadie’s side, and it wasn’t a small
flashlight either—it was one of those big, heavy metal flashlights.
A smack with that would hurt massively, and it was definitely a
blow she wanted to avoid.

The flashlight beam illuminated the hall and
their positions against the walls, and one of the men said, “What
the hell?” Sadie raced forward, lifting her pistol, and plowed
right into the soldier with the flashlight. The light dropped to
the floor, spinning away, and she smacked the man against the side
of the head with the butt of her pistol. He fell to the floor,
stunned, and Sadie hauled him to his knees and put the machete’s
blade against his throat.

“I wouldn’t move if I were you,” she said,
her voice low. “I like to keep my blades very,
very
sharp.”
The man stilled, and Sadie looked up from him to make sure Cade was
okay.

She shouldn’t have expected anything less.
Cade stood in front of the Major, her rifle on her shoulder, the
barrel leveled at his face. Her expression was hard, emotionless,
stony. Her finger rested against the trigger rather than staying
outside the trigger guard, which was a good indicator of what Cade
really
wanted to do.

“I don’t care who you are or what you do,”
Cade said. “What I care about is what the fuck you did with my
husband.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the
Major said. He seemed unruffled by the fact he was staring down the
barrel of an IMI Galil SAR sniper rifle being held by a woman who
not only knew how to use it but looked like she was itching to.

“Did I mention I hate liars?” Cade asked, her
voice deceptively casual. “Sadie, tell him how much I hate
liars.”

Sadie grinned. “The last person who lied to
her ended up with no tongue and a hole in his head,” she said,
realizing the irony of lying about how much someone hated
lying.

“I cut the tongue out for the fun of it,”
Cade said. She prodded the Major on the forehead with the rifle.
“Now, where is my husband?”

“Who is your husband?” the Major asked. His
voice wavered slightly.

“Brandt Evans,” Cade said, and the Major’s
face paled.

“He knows him,” Sadie said, noticing the
flicker of recognition in the man’s eyes that he tried to hide.
“You can see it in his face.”

“I see it,” Cade acknowledged. “Where is
he?”

“He’s in his cell,” the Major said. “We were
just heading there.”

“I’m sure,” Cade said, her tone suggesting
she didn’t believe a word he said. She nudged him with the rifle.
“You’re going to tell us exactly where you stashed my husband. If
not, well, I know some infected guys I can introduce you to that
will be
very
happy to see you.”

“That’s not necessar—”

Cade jabbed him with her rifle again. “I will
decide what’s necessary, not you,” she snapped. “Sadie, get rid of
the extra.”

Sadie hesitated, trying to figure out what
Cade meant, and when her brain caught up, she shook her head. “No,”
she said. “He hasn’t done anything to me. I’m not killing him.”

“Just stuff him
somewhere
,” Cade said.
“Make sure he doesn’t have a way to communicate with anyone.
Otherwise, I don’t give a shit what you do to him.”

“Buddy, it’s your lucky day,” Sadie said. She
pulled the machete away from his neck and pointed the pistol at him
instead. “Get up and walk.”

The man obeyed, standing up on shaking legs
and casting the Major a wide-eyed look. The Major didn’t return the
look; he kept his eyes on Cade and her rifle. The lower-ranked man
started walking, making his way down the hall back the way Sadie
and Cade had come.

“What’s your name?” Sadie asked him.

“Private Hutcherson.”

“No, your first name.”

“Dean,” the man said. “Why do you want to
know? Are you going to kill me?”

“I’m not going to kill you,” Sadie said with
exasperation. She picked a random door and nudged it open with her
foot. It was a supply closet of some sort, empty of everything,
including supplies. She motioned toward the empty room with her
pistol. “Get in.” She waited for him to step inside and turn to
face her, and once he had, she asked, “You know anything about
Brandt Evans?”

“Lieutenant Evans?” Dean repeated. “Yeah,
they had me helping guard him. He hit me on the throat with a
dinner tray and smashed my head on the wall before he escaped.”

Sadie snorted out a laugh.
Escaped?
“Count your blessings that you’re still breathing,” she said. “I
hear he’s a mean bastard.”

“Obviously,” Dean said. He looked around
warily and asked, “Are you going to lock me in here? We’re under
attack, you know.”

“I’m aware,” Sadie said and shut the door.
There was no real way to lock it from the outside without a key,
but that didn’t stop her from looking. “Stay in there for ten
minutes,” she called through the door. “If you come out before
then, I’ll know, and I’ll hunt you down and make you regret
disobeying me.” She waited for his acknowledgment, then turned and
jogged back down the hall to where she’d left Cade and the
Major.

Sadie found Cade standing in the center of
the hall. The Major was on his feet and backed up against the wall,
his hands up in a defensive gesture. He was bleeding freely from a
cut on his forehead, and what looked to be a significant bruise was
forming on Cade’s jaw. “What happened?” Sadie asked.