The Becoming: Redemption (The Becoming Series Book 5) (45 page)

“Fucker tried to get one up on me when you
left,” Cade snarled. “He’s lucky I didn’t put a bullet in his
head.”

“Very lucky,” Sadie said.

“Fucker still won’t tell me where Brandt is,
either,” Cade growled.

“Not here,” Sadie told her. “I just got told
that he escaped.”

“
What?
” Cade exploded, turning all her
rage onto the Major. “You stupid mother fucker! You weren’t even
going to tell me that, were you?” Bradford stared at her, his
expression stony. Cade’s face flushed, and she let out a growl that
made Sadie think of a pissed-off housecat before lifting her rifle
and slamming the butt as hard as she could across the man’s face.
He crumpled, dropping to the tiled floor like a sack of sand. Cade,
apparently still not satisfied, landed several kicks on the man’s
abdomen before Sadie grabbed her arm and pulled her away.

“Come on, Cade,” she said. “He’s useless.
Let’s try to find information on our own.”

“Stupid fucker,” Cade snarled, kicking the
man one more time before letting Sadie pull her away. Sadie let go
of her arm, hoping she wouldn’t race back over and start assaulting
the major again, and sent up a silent thanks that Cade started
walking the way they’d initially been headed, deeper into the
facility. They pulled their glow sticks out of their pockets and
put them back on around their necks. They weren’t necessary,
though; ahead of them, around a bend, light spilled down the hall,
filtered through something—a door, perhaps.

Circling the corner, Sadie stopped short when
she realized the light came from small, round security lights
mounted on the wall close to the ceiling. They cast sporadic pools
of light down the long stretch of hallway. It wasn’t the lights
that had made her stop, however; it was the four people down the
hall, near where a T-section crossed with the hall she and Cade
were on. She raised her pistol, ready to fire at the newest
potential threat to her and Cade. Cade cried out—Alarm? Joy? Sadie
wasn’t sure—and took off running down the hall towards the figures
and threw herself at one of them. When the figures came into focus,
Sadie couldn’t stop the smile that spread across her face.

“Well, Brandt Evans, fancy finding you here,”
Sadie said with a laugh.

When Brandt saw the
two women standing down the hallway and recognized the familiar
figure of his wife—someone he could never mistake; he knew those
curves too well—he couldn’t believe his eyes. She ran towards him
and slammed into him with the enthusiasm of the long separated. His
knees weakened, and he wrapped his arms around her and buried his
face in her hair. She sagged against him, and he held her tightly,
swaying slightly.

“Oh Jesus, Cade,” he murmured.

“Oh my God, how are you even
here
?”
Cade asked, and she tilted her face up to look at him, her blue
eyes shiny with unshed tears. He leaned down and kissed her, slowly
and deeply, cupping her face in his hands. When he pulled back, a
couple of the tears had escaped from her eyes, and he wiped them
away with his thumbs. “I figured out where they might have taken
you, and we came here to find you. I heard you escaped and—” She
broke off, her eyes flickering to the three people behind him. Her
breath caught in her throat.

“May I introduce the lovely woman who helped
me escape from here?” Brandt said, and he tore himself away from
Cade, stepping aside so she could get a full look at the brunette
woman behind him. Lindsey was already crying, her hands pressed to
her mouth, and then the two sisters were throwing themselves at
each other, crying and clinging to one another with what could only
be described as desperate elation. Brandt looked past them at Ethan
and Kimberly, who were exchanging hugs with Sadie, whose presence
surprised him.

“Good to see you, Sadie,” he said, giving the
young woman a hug and a gentle pat on the back. “Where is everyone
else? I heard they bombed Woodside. Who survived?”

“That I know of?” Sadie started. “Me and
Jude, Keith, Cade, Remy, Dominic, Derek, and Isaac. Derek and Isaac
stayed behind with the baby, and—”

“Baby?” Brandt repeated, alarm rocketing
through him. He whirled around, looking at Cade with wide eyes,
only now noticing that she was no longer pregnant.

“I had the baby,” Cade said, lifting her head
to look at him. “A little girl. I named her Olivia, just like we
said we would. She’s with Derek and Isaac. They stayed behind in a
safe house to protect her while I came to look for you.”

“Oh Jesus,” Brandt said, his hands shaking at
the revelation.

“Congratulations, Daddy,” Ethan said with a
laugh, patting him on the shoulder. Brandt barely heard him; he was
too focused on keeping himself in control. Once he felt like he’d
mustered it enough to shove everything non-immediate aside for now,
he cleared his throat and addressed Sadie.

“Where is everyone else?”

Sadie took a step back, like she was afraid
that he’d hit her. “I’m not sure,” she said. “Keith and Jude are
here somewhere, but I don’t know where, and trust me when I say I
don’t like that. Dominic is…he’s dead.”

Brandt’s eyebrows shot up. “Dead?” he
repeated. “How?”

“He got shot by a sniper on the wall,” Cade
reported, bitter anger in her voice. She stepped away from Lindsey,
her face flushed with her anger.

“And Remy…we haven’t seen her since she blew
up the wall,” Sadie finished.

“Remy did
what
?” Brandt, Ethan, and
Kimberly said in unison.

“Who’s Remy?” Lindsey asked.

“My ex…something,” Ethan explained. “How did
she do all
this
?”

“C-4, I think,” Cade said. “Blast looked like
it was C-4. Where she got it, I’m not sure. Maybe she picked it up
when we were in Atlanta.”

“You went back to Atlanta?” Brandt asked.

Cade patted him on the arm. “We have a lot of
catching up to do,” she said. “I’ll give you the rundown once all
of this is over.”

Brandt turned his attention back to the
others. “What led Remy to blowing up the wall?”

“Dominic,” Sadie and Cade said at the same
time.

“She’s gone off the rails,” Cade elaborated.
“She was already a little wobbly, and the virus made it worse. When
Dominic died…” She shook her head. “That was it for her. She threw
down after that. I watched her kill four fully armed men, four
soldiers
, with her bare hands.”

“Oh hell,” Kimberly said.

“That’s not the Remy I know,” Ethan spoke up.
“What the hell happened to her?”

“I don’t know,” Cade said. “I think she was
going slowly crazy, and we didn’t notice.”

“Fuck,” Brandt muttered. He scrubbed his
hands over his face and sighed. “What do we do?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Ethan said. “We’ve got to
track her down and stop her.”

“How do you propose we do that?” Brandt
asked.

“Just leave it to me,” Ethan replied.

Keith’s instincts
were yammering at him. He stared at Remy, who stood on the platform
ten yards away from him and Jude. He always listened to his
instincts; they knew him better than he knew himself at times, but
everything about the situation in which he found himself embroiled
felt like a contradiction. Remy was supposed to be an ally.
Intellectually, he knew this, knew that she’d been fighting on
their side as long as she’d been in Woodside. However, his
instincts were shrieking at him to grab Jude and get away from her
as fast as he could.

There was nowhere to go, of course. Remy was
in front of them, covered in blood and gore and who knew what else,
and the soldiers that had been chasing them were behind them. He
was forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, and he wasn’t
sure which of his options qualified. When Remy started to move
toward them, he got a clearer look at the expression on her face,
and his instincts made the decision for him. He grabbed Jude and
shoved him behind him, putting himself between him and the
soldiers. Sure, it could result in Jude getting shot, but he was
banking on the soldiers realizing that Remy was the threat, not
him.

Because Remy was most assuredly the threat in
this scenario. The expression on her face was one of barely
concealed fury, so hard and bitter that Keith had no idea how she’d
contained it so far.

“Remy,” Keith said, keeping his voice level
and as soothing as he could make it, considering his nerves wanted
to crawl out through his skin. “Remy, it’s me, Keith.” She kept
walking, not acknowledging his words. There was no change to her
expression, no acknowledgment in her eyes at all. “Oh shit,” he
murmured, taking a step back, herding Jude toward the soldiers. His
unease amped up to fear. He had a sinking suspicion that Remy no
longer saw him or Jude as friends.

Keith pulled his pistol free from its
holster, though he kept it held low, hoping he wouldn’t have to use
it. “Remy, you need to stop right there,” he warned her.

She had her bolo knife in her hand. Keith
hadn’t noticed before that she had it, and he fleetingly wondered
where she’d been hiding it. The blade was covered in bright red
blood, and Keith suspected that the blood didn’t come from any
infected humans. He swallowed and tightened his grip on his pistol,
taking another couple of steps back.

“Stop right there!” someone behind Keith and
Jude shouted. One of the soldiers had seen Remy and had hopefully
decided she was the bigger threat to them than he and Jude were.
Remy’s eyes flickered past Keith to the soldiers, and to his
amazement, the fury in her eyes became more inflamed. She raced
forward, her knife raised, looking like she was willing to cut down
Keith and Jude to get to the soldiers.

Remy wasn’t going to stop; he could tell she
wasn’t aware she
needed
to stop. Not seeing any other
choice, Keith fired a shot at her. The bullet winged off her right
bicep. He’d hoped that would wake her up. He didn’t have that sort
of luck.

She stabbed the blade of her bolo knife right
into Keith’s abdomen, angled up to pierce into his chest from below
his ribcage.

The pain took a couple of seconds to kick in,
long enough that she had time to rip the blade free. He gasped as
the metal slid from his gut, staggering sideways as the pain
rocketed through him. It was overwhelming, and he clasped his left
hand over the wound. Remy shoved past him, and he did his best to
shunt the pain aside and turn, determined to protect Jude from her
wrath.

Jude was backing up, stumbling toward the
soldiers that had been chasing them. Remy sped up now that Keith
was out of her way, and Keith knew that Jude wouldn’t reach the
soldiers before Remy did. Sliding to his knees, he lifted his
pistol again and aimed it at her, firing two bullets at her
back.

Remy staggered at the bullets’ impacts,
nearly dropping her knife. She regained her balance too quickly,
not giving him enough time to get a better shot at her while she’d
been momentarily incapacitated. She started to turn back toward
him, but before she could, Jude darted forward and plunged a knife
into her chest.

“Jude, no!” Keith yelled, his voice hoarse
with pain. It was too late. Jude’s actions had turned Remy’s full
attention onto him, and before Keith could lift his gun again, she
shifted her bolo knife around and rammed it home. Jude’s mouth fell
open in a soundless cry, his back arching slightly, and he
instinctively grabbed at the blade. Remy pulled the blade free,
slicing his fingers as she withdrew the steel, shoved him aside,
and stormed past him.

Somewhere nearby, Keith thought he heard a
woman scream.

Remy was going after the soldiers further
down the walkway. They’d seen what she’d done to the two of them
and had wisely decided that fleeing was a good option.

Jude fell against the railing, collapsing to
the walkway. He pressed his bloodied hands to his abdomen, trying
to staunch the flow of blood from the wound. Keith felt his own
blood spilling out, pulsing with each heartbeat, and he knew there
would be nothing anyone could do for him. Jude looked to be in a
similar condition. He was already shaking, pushing his hands
against the wound like he could cram the blood back inside. Keith
found the energy in his waning reserves to crawl forward, dragging
himself to Jude, and he grasped one of the young man’s hands in his
own.

“It’s okay, Jude,” he said, trying to sound
soothing despite the pain wracking his body. He dragged himself
closer and pulled Jude to him. “It’s okay.”

Jude huddled against him, shaking, his hand
fisted into Keith’s shirt. He was dying, and he knew it. Keith was
as sure of that as he was sure of his own impending death. He
didn’t have to strain to feel the fear that Jude was experiencing,
and he held him tightly, trying to comfort him as much as
possible.

It didn’t take long. One moment, Jude was
there, clinging to him, and the next, his grasp slackened, he
exhaled, and then he was gone.

Keith’s last thought before his vision fuzzed
over and he slipped into unconsciousness was that he really hoped
it wouldn’t be long before he saw Jude again.

Ethan couldn’t
believe his eyes.

When Sadie and Cade had told them that Remy
had essentially lost her mind, he hadn’t believed them. Remy had
always seemed a little off to him, even before she’d been bitten
and infected. He supposed too much trauma would do that to a
person, and Remy had more than her fair share of trauma under her
belt. But this was so far removed from anything he’d expected that
he was having trouble processing it.

They’d come out onto a platform attached to
the building after climbing a flight of metal stairs that left
Ethan feeling winded by the time he reached the top, to be greeted
by the sight of pure, absolute chaos. At the sight of Remy running
Jude O’Dell through with her bolo knife, Sadie had screamed, the
wordless sound shrill and filled with terror, anguish, and pure
anger, and she started forward like she planned to go after Remy
herself. Ethan caught her arm to stop her.