Origins (The Becoming Book 6)

by Jessica Meigs

  Gray leaned over in his seat to get a look at the paper for himself. “Mayb—”

  A loud thud shook the car. Both of them sat up straight so quickly that their heads knocked together. Gray winced and put a hand to his head as he whirled in his seat, squinting into the early-morning sun. “What the shit was that?”

  “Definitely not anything good,” Theo said as the vehicle rocked again. Gray unfastened his seatbelt and turned around more fully. And that was when he saw them.

  “Definitely not,” Gray agreed solemnly.

  There were infected everywhere behind them, dozens of them flooding the highway, pouring out and around cars pulled over on the side of the road, falling over each other, blocking the entire roadway. There were men, women, children, young, old, injured, uninjured, all stained with blood from their prior kills. And there were two of them at the trunk of the car, slamming against it, trying to make their way around the sides of the car. Adrenaline flooded into Gray’s veins when he saw them, and he swallowed hard.

  “Punch the gas, throw us backward,” Theo urged. “We can mow ‘em over, right?”

  “Too many of them,” Gray told him with a shake of his head. “They’ll disable the car, and then we’ll be like sardines in a fucking can.”

  “Forward?”

  “Not happening, Theo,” Gray stated. “We’re going to have to hoof it.”

  “Fuck,” Theo hissed under his breath. Gray glanced at him and stretched into the backseat, grabbing the axe and crowbar, holding both in one hand as he retrieved the unloaded hunting rifle he’d brought along for the ride.

  “Got to move fast,” Gray added. “Straight ahead into Tupelo.”

  “Can you handle it?” Theo asked. “Can you run that far?”

  “Hey, I ran two miles earlier this month,” Gray said confidently.

  “Yeah, and nearly killed yourself in the process.”

  “Don’t remind me.” Gray punched him in the left bicep and grabbed for the door’s handle. “Get your shit.”

  Theo retrieved his trauma bag and picked up the revolver from the console between the seats. He glanced at Gray once more, nodded his head in a single motion, and threw his door open. Gray kicked his own door open and clambered out into the chilly morning air. He slung the rifle by its strap onto his shoulder, securing it there and pushing his car door shut before following Theo into the heart of the wreckage.

  Theo was on top of one of the crushed cars, climbing and scrambling over the crumpled hood by the time Gray caught up with him. Theo reached for Gray, his hand closing around his wrist with a bruising grip as he helped him clamber onto the car with him. Then Theo swung him around and dumped him onto the ground on the other side of the car. When Gray struck the pavement, he fell against the side of another wrecked car and ripped his jacket, scraping his forearm on a sharp edge of metal jutting out from the vehicle. He jerked his arm back and regained his balance just as Theo’s hand pressed against his back and roughly pushed him forward.

  “Come on, move!” Theo ordered. He darted in front of Gray to lead the way, and Gray started to run again, weaving between the cars and trucks packing the street. Gray’s heart rattled in his chest, his lungs feeling like they were sticking to the insides of his ribs, and he managed to draw in a deep breath of the cold air. How Theo was able to run so easily with that bag on his back, Gray had no idea. He pushed ahead, even as Theo skidded to a halt at the sight of three people in front of them. Gray tensed when he saw the blood splattered on their faces and clothes. He tucked the crowbar into his belt and lifted the axe, ready to swing it if they got past Theo and his gun.

  “We’ve got to get around them, Theo!” Gray gasped out.

  “I know that!” Theo snapped. He leveled the gun, steadying it with both hands, and fired off a single shot. It struck one of the people in front of them in the shoulder, sending him lurching backward with the impact, but otherwise, he didn’t seem affected by the bullet. “Cut right, get over that car, onto the side of the road. I’ll catch up in just a second.”

  “Hell no. I’m not leaving you by yourself!” Gray protested.

  “I’m going to be right fucking behind you!” Theo said. He fired off another shot, and then another. Gray darted for the cars beside them. He used the front tire as a stepstool to push himself up onto the hood, skidding across it to the other side of the vehicle. He hit the soft dirt on the side of the road and started to sprint alongside the cars. Another gunshot rang out. Was that four total? Five?

  Gray slowed down and turned to search for Theo, but before he could spot him, something grabbed him from his blind side. He lost his balance, nearly falling into the dirt. The bloodied man who was hanging onto his jacket sleeve with the tenacious grip of a bulldog snarled at him, his teeth bared and his free hand grabbing for Gray’s face. Gray yelped, lifted his axe, and swung it wildly. The blade embedded itself in the man’s chest, knocking his hand loose from Gray’s arm. The man fell back, ripping the axe free from Gray’s grasp. Gray didn’t bother to try to recover it as he started to flee, managing a few more steps before looking back once more. A gunshot rang out, and then Theo climbed over a car and joined him on the side of the road.

  “They’re not dead,” Theo said. “Let’s go.”

  “Why didn’t you kill them?” Gray asked, struggling to get the words out past the soreness settling into his lungs.

  “Because I’m not that good of a shot,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” Gray answered, though he didn’t really feel it. “Let’s just get the hell out of here.”

  Theo led the way again, pointing to a side street and heading toward it. Gray’s lungs were hurting, and he clenched his teeth trying to ignore the strain running was causing on his lungs. Then Theo fell back a few steps and grabbed his arm to pull him closer. “Stick close,” he said. “If we need to stop, you tell me first thing.” When Gray looked back at the small crowd of infected trying to get past the cars, he added, “Don’t even worry about them.”

  “Honestly, I don’t know how much further I can go without you having to drug me up,” Gray told him. Theo slung Gray’s arm over his shoulders, looping an arm around his waist.

  “Lean on me,” he said. “I’ll try to take some of the effort off and help out.”

  Gray dug his fingers into Theo’s shoulder as he ran alongside him, matching him step for step, his own pace slowed enough for Gray to keep up with him. “How many bullets you got left?”

  “Stop talking,” Theo said. “Save your breath. And I’ve got one left in the cylinder.”

  “Shouldn’t you reload?” Gray asked.

  “I thought I told you to shut up,” Theo said, his voice harder. They limped down the street for a few more minutes of silence, the only sound between them Gray’s wheezing breaths and Theo’s own panting with the effort of running and keeping Gray upright. Then there was a shout somewhere behind them. Theo tensed against Gray’s side and grabbed him more firmly, swinging him around and shoving him behind him then turning to face the oncoming threat. He raised the revolver and pointed it at a man jogging across the street toward them.

  “Hey! Hey, stop!” the man called after them. He had a crowbar in his hand, and his dark eyes darted around the street before locking onto them. When Theo aimed the revolver at the man, he stopped several feet away and put his hands up, palms out, nearly dropping the crowbar. Gray grasped the back of Theo’s jacket with a white-knuckled grip and struggled to breathe, hoping the short reprieve from running would give him enough time to catch his breath.

  “Who are you?” Theo demanded. His voice was harsh, harder than Gray had ever heard him speak. “What do you want?”

  “I am so tired of having guns pointed at me,” the man said. His voice was scarily casual, as if he were used to being in situations that involved him being held at gunpoint. The thought made Gray uneasy, but he didn’t focus on it too much. He was already discreetly pawing at his pockets, searching for an inhaler and trying to r
emember if Theo had given him one before they’d left Plantersville. The man glanced back at one of the houses lining the street, and Gray followed his gaze. A woman hovered on the porch, a rifle in her hands, looking thoroughly militaristic, despite the flannel shirt and jeans she wore. Gray swallowed hard at the sight. “I have a hideout over there,” the man said. “Me and two of my friends. We’re trying to offer you some shelter.”

  “Why? What’s in it for you?”

  The man’s eyes flickered to the gun again and then scanned first Theo and then Gray, blatantly looking them over from head to toe.

  “Nothing,” he said with a grin. “Just the idea of additional security and helping other people. And perhaps your skills as a paramedic would come in handy too, in case we have any injuries or illnesses we can’t cope with ourselves.”

  Theo hesitated. Gray shook his head in warning, though Theo couldn’t see the action. He didn’t trust this guy; he’d never seen him before, he didn’t know what he really wanted, and he didn’t like the look of the woman with the rifle. For all he knew, she was going to shoot both of them the minute they approached the house and steal everything they had. Before Theo could answer the man’s offer, she yelled out from the house.

  “Brandt, there’s infected coming this way!”

  “Fuck!” the man exclaimed. He lifted the crowbar and turned away from Gray and Theo, putting his back to them and looking around the street wildly. Gray couldn’t help but do so himself, searching for the infected, the same ones that had probably followed them. “Where? Where are they?” the man yelled back.

  The woman jerked her chin to her right and swung her rifle up, aiming it down the street in the direction Gray and Theo had come. Gray tensed and dug his fingers into Theo’s jacket even harder. Another flood of adrenaline hit Gray and stole more of his precious air.

  “Shit, if she’s actually about to fire that thing, it’s fucking serious,” the man said. He grabbed Theo’s arm and jerked him forward. Theo yelped and stumbled, and Gray went with him, dragged inexorably along by his grasp on Theo’s jacket. “Come on, we’ve got to go!” The man began to run, hauling both of them along until they started to move on their own, across the street and straight toward the house. And toward a future they couldn’t possibly know or plan for.

  The Becoming Deliverance

  By Jessica Meigs

  Chapter 1

  “Your parents are so going to kill you.”

  Remy Angellette wrinkled her nose and scoffed at the girl in the driver’s seat, turning her arm around to study the design that had been newly inked onto her left bicep. The skin was still tender and sore from the experience of having dozens of needles rapidly jabbed into it, but in Remy’s opinion, the pain had been well worth it. It wasn’t her first tattoo, not by far. By now, her mother should have expected that sort of thing from her. She wasn’t particularly worried about either her mother’s or her stepfather’s reaction to the newest addition of art on her body.

  “Mom will be fine with it,” Remy assured Casey. “She’s pretty open-minded about stuff like this. And Jason isn’t my father, so I don’t really care what he thinks.”

  “Yeah, but what would your real dad think?”

  Remy glanced at the newly tattooed dragon on her arm again and then looked at Casey with a smile on her face. “I can imagine he’d definitely approve. Did you forget he had, like, eighteen tattoos himself?”

  “No, I hadn’t forgotten,” Casey said. “Your dad was only the coolest parent in existence.” She reached to turn the volume up a notch when a rock song came on the stereo speakers, piped in via a cord running to the iPod in the console between the two black leather seats, drumming her fingers against the leather-covered steering wheel in time to the beat.

  Remy scooped up the mp3 player to see who the song was by and found it wasn’t by anyone she’d ever heard of. It was rather catchy, though, and she bobbed her head with the music, subconsciously tapping her foot on the floorboard.

  “So what are your plans for today?” Remy asked, raising her voice to be heard over the thumping beat from the stereo.

  “I have a paper to write,” Casey said with a motion of her hand toward the messenger bag by Remy’s feet. “Emily Browning.”

  “Could be worse,” Remy said thoughtfully. “Her love poems were pretty awesome.”

  “Yeah, definitely could be worse.”

  Remy shifted against the leather seat again, trying to make herself comfortable, and realized that her bare shoulder had stuck to the leather seat in the warmth of the car. She didn’t want to imagine what the seat was doing to her bare thighs. She leaned forward slightly to unstick her shoulder from the seat and pulled her dark hair back with one hand, holding it off her neck in a makeshift ponytail.

  “I’ve been thinking of maybe going to college,” Remy piped up. “Maybe majoring in something to do with music.”

  “Remy, with the way you get tattoos and buy guitars and stuff, you’d never be able to afford it,” Casey pointed out matter-of-factly.

  “I know. It’d be nice, though.” Remy let go of her hair and tucked the locks behind her ears, careful to avoid the still-healing ring that pierced the cartilage of her left ear. “It’d give me something to do besides stare at a computer screen and surf the internet all day.”

  “I thought you liked surfing the internet all day,” Casey teased.

  “I do. But Facebook only stays entertaining for so long, and Twitter is just starting to get old,” Remy complained. “I need something new to happen in my life. I need all this monotony broken, you know?”

  “We should go out and do something spontaneous,” Casey suggested. “Maybe take a road trip or something. What do you think?”

  Remy shrugged halfheartedly and took a cup out of the cup holder beside her. She took a sip and thought it over. “I don’t know. Maybe,” she said. “I don’t know if I’d have the money for something like that.”

  “Maybe you could get a new job,” Casey said. She steered the Mustang off the paved street and onto a dirt road winding back into the trees.

  “Yeah, and maybe I could get a lobotomy too,” Remy said, taking another sip from her cup.

  “I heard Mr. Carter—you know, the swim coach from high school?—I heard he’s looking for somebody to help lifeguard at the pool this spring.”

  Remy pushed her hair back from her face again. “I don’t know. I’ll think about it, okay?” she conceded. “Mr. Carter is a douche, though, so I doubt I’d even think about working for him.”

  “Well, just work for somebody,” Casey pressed. “Then you can buy your own car and quit bumming rides off me all the time.”

  “Casey, your Mustang is just so nice,” Remy said as the car bumped to a stop outside Remy’s house. Dodson, the mailbox read. Remy glanced at it and rolled her eyes before unlocking the passenger door and sliding to the edge of the seat. “I’ll see you later, chick. Skype me after dinner when you get the chance.”

  “Will do!” Casey said cheerfully. She waved her fingers at Remy, and Remy wiggled her fingers back at her then walked toward the house.

  Casey pulled away as Remy reached the bottom of the porch steps, which Remy was silently thankful for. It didn’t matter how many times Casey had been there, Remy was still embarrassed to have her friends see her house. When she climbed the wooden steps leading to the porch, the planks wobbled under her Chucks, but she was used to it. Despite her attempts to repair the broken steps, they’d stayed irreparably shaky for as long as she could remember. The porch wasn’t much better. She stepped nimbly around the soft, rotten spots in the wood and took out her keys, unlocking the front door and stepping into the stuffy house.

  A soft, repetitive clicking sound was coming from the kitchen, so Remy started in that direction, scooping a stray hair clip off the table by the door and twisting her long hair into a bun, fastening it on top of her head. Remy found her mother standing at the kitchen counter, knife in hand, chopping up a butternut squash int
o cubes.

  “Hi, Mom,” Remy greeted. She dropped a kiss on her cheek, then went to the refrigerator to get a bottle of tea out. “Any mail for me today?”

  “Why? Were you expecting some?” her mother asked.

  “Nothing in particular,” Remy replied. It was a lie; she was hoping for a package that she’d ordered the week before from an online adult novelty store. She popped up onto a stool by the counter and cracked her tea bottle open, taking a swig. “What’s for dinner?”

  Her mother scooped up a handful of squash with the blade of her knife and dumped it into a bowl. “I thought I asked you to not get any more of those,” she said, her voice tinged with disappointment and disapproval.

  “Get any more of what?” Remy asked, playing dumb.

  “Tattoos,” her mother said. “It’s not…ladylike.”

  “Mama, I’m not ladylike,” Remy argued. There were chopped carrots in a bowl, and she stole a piece and popped it into her mouth, crunching it between her teeth. “And I’m over eighteen. I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s just a tattoo. It’s not like I’m doing drugs or anything.”

  Remy’s mother seemed willing to drop the subject at Remy’s declaration. Remy smirked triumphantly and reached for another bite of carrot, only to receive a smack on the back of her hand with the flat of her mother’s knife. “Dinner will be ready in an hour,” her mother said. “Go do something useful. Clean your room.” She looked Remy over and added, “And put on something other than that skirt. It’s too short, and you know how your stepfather feels about that.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t really care what he thinks,” Remy mumbled. She retreated before her mother could interject.

  Remy left the kitchen and went up the stairs straight to her bedroom. Once inside, she shut the door and locked it, grinning in satisfaction. She headed for her closet, unfastening her skirt in mid-walk, to find something a little less revealing to change into. After donning her favorite lounge pants and a t-shirt, she buzzed over to the computer, jiggled the mouse to wake the screen up, and with a few keystrokes, was online and checking her email.