Origins (The Becoming Book 6)

by Jessica Meigs

  “Getting food together to take with us,” he told her.

  “You think we’re going to need all that?”

  “I’m running on the assumption that I won’t ever be coming back here,” Marc said. “Worst thing that could happen is that I have to unload a bunch of groceries out of the back of my patrol car once all this is over.”

  “But you think we’ll need it,” Remy said. For some reason, looking at the rows of canned food and boxes of dehydrated potato flakes gave her an unsettled feeling, and the sight of it hammered home the reality of what they were facing.

  “Yeah, I think we’re going to need it,” Marc said. “Considering the speed this appears to be spreading, things are going to get a hell of a lot worse for quite a long time before they even start getting better.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

  “It’s the unfortunate reality,” Marc told her. He stared at the canned food, studying the label on a can of English peas. “You said you know how to shoot a gun, right?”

  “A rifle,” Remy said. “My father used to take me hunting when I was a kid, before he up and left.” She glanced at the pistol that Marc wore, which was in a holster hanging from a belt wrapped around his hips. “I could adjust if I have to use a handgun.”

  “Good, because you’re going to have to,” Marc said. “I don’t own a rifle, only small arms.”

  “Fine. I can handle it.”

  Marc reached into the cardboard box and withdrew a belt with a single holstered revolver hanging from it. He stared at it for a long moment, then offered it to her wordlessly. She took it and wrapped the slightly oversized belt around her waist, fastening it with the Velcro closure. “Be careful with it,” Marc said. “I don’t want you accidentally shooting yourself with it.”

  “Aye, aye, el capitan,” Remy said with thinly veiled sarcasm. She couldn’t help it; it was her fallback emotion when she was feeling nervous. She fiddled with the strap that held the revolver in its holster, unsnapping and snapping it back a few times, trying to adjust and adapt to the weight of a pistol belt around her waist. It felt absurdly heavy, like it would throw her off balance the moment she attempted to take a few steps in any direction. She imagined running from a horde of sick people, trying to get away from them, then falling because of the unaccustomed weight of the weapon. She didn’t want to imagine what would come after that.

  The idea was a bit absurd, she knew, but it didn’t change that niggling worry lurking in the back of her brain. She squared her shoulders, trying to toughen up, and pasted a smile on her face. “When are we leaving?”

  “Ten minutes,” Marc replied. “If you need to go to the bathroom, now is a good time.”

  Ten minutes later they stepped out of the house into the early morning air, and that was when Remy first spotted the woman.

  She was standing in the middle of the street, looking oddly forlorn, like she was lost. Her long blonde hair fell in a knotted, tangled mess past her shoulders, leaves and twigs entwined in the strands. Her blue jeans were ripped and torn, and her t-shirt was half off, hanging limply on her right side, exposing her multi-colored, polka-dotted bra. She looked like she’d been assaulted, and if it weren’t for the blood all over her clothes and face and the manic look in her eyes, Remy would have gone forward to see if she could help her. However, some animal part of her brain was warning her not to go near the woman; she looked dangerous, like she wanted to take a piece out of Remy’s throat.

  “Marc…” Remy said warningly, keeping her voice low. He looked up and past her, spotting the woman.

  “Stay away from her,” Marc murmured, his voice as low as hers. “She might be dangerous.”

  Feeling sick to her stomach, Remy nodded. Her hands shaking, she reached for the passenger door handle, curled her fingers around it and tugged. At the same moment, the woman in the street lunged forward, racing toward Marc’s driveway with a look of fury on her face. Remy gasped and reached to pull her revolver out; the strap was still buckled down over it, though, and when she yanked, the belt slid a couple of inches up her hip. Marc was much, much faster on the draw, though, and he had his pistol out and pointed at the woman before Remy could unsnap the strap on her holster.

  “Remy, get in the car!”

  “Are you—” Remy started.

  “In the car!” Marc repeated. His voice was stern but not angry, just hard enough to show that he meant business. Remy finished opening the passenger door and slid inside, pulling it shut behind her. Once she was in her seat, she immediately turned around, trying to watch what was happening through one of the windows. The driver’s seat was in the way, and the cage that separated the front and back seats distorted her view even further. She ducked her head, trying desperately to look and see what Marc was doing.

  The sound of a single gunshot outside the car rocked through the silence. Remy jumped, banging her head against the window behind her. The driver’s side door opened and Remy rocked back in her seat reflexively, alarmed, thinking maybe it was that woman climbing into the car, but her brain calmed from its tizzy the moment she saw it was just Marc.

  “What happened out there?”

  He turned the key in the ignition, and the engine roared to life. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, not looking at her as he shifted the car into reverse.

  “But I heard…did you…”

  “You didn’t hear anything.” Marc gunned the engine, still not looking at her. The car roared, racing backwards, thudding over something that felt like a speed bump but at the same time was distinctly not. Remy squeezed her eyes shut and clutched the armrest on the door, deciding resolutely to not look at the reality in front of her in favor of studying the insides of her eyelids. Things were much more pleasant there in the darkness.

  “You okay?” Marc asked after a long silence, and Remy was startled again. She hadn’t realized it, but she’d started to doze off a bit, despite her fitful sleep the night before. She blinked her eyes open and rubbed at them, then raked her messy, tangled hair out of her face. “You look rattled.”

  “Yeah?” Remy said. “You don’t, and I think that’s what surprises me.”

  Marc turned toward the road ahead of them. Remy followed his gaze. The car was moving slower than she’d expected; for some reason, she’d thought they would be racing through the streets, fleeing as fast as their vehicle would allow, but they were creeping, because there was debris and abandoned cars in the road.

  “I’m just telling myself it’s part of my job,” Marc said. “As a cop, you always expect that one of the times you pull your weapon, you’ll be forced to squeeze the trigger. I’ve been lucky enough to never have to do it before.” The unspoken, “Until now,” was heard loud and clear in the space between them.

  Remy looked out the window. Marc’s statement was a tacit admission of what he had done. She tried to picture it, the way his wrist would have kicked back when he squeezed the trigger, the flight of the bullet closing the distance between Marc and the woman, the back of her skull as it blew out and sprayed chunks of brain matter and blood all over the road behind her. She didn’t know if Marc had shot her in the head. Intellectually, she knew that police officers were taught to fire at center mass, but her brain couldn’t let go of the idea of him taking a head shot.

  Marc slammed on brakes, sending her sliding forward on her leather seat. She caught herself against the dash with both hands. “What the hell?” she yelped, straightening, then she looked through the windshield and saw exactly what had made Marc hit the brakes.

  “Oh hell…” She pressed back in her seat like she could melt right through it. She clutched the armrest and tried not to scream, though she could feel one attempting to bubble up. “Marc…”

  “I see it,” Marc said.

  There was no way he could have missed it, not with the way the entire street ahead of them was blocked. The street was one of those narrow side roads that was a bit off the beaten path, and therefore less subjec
t to the tourist traffic that clogged many of the other roadways; however, that hadn’t stopped a large number of sick people from finding it. There were dozens and dozens of them, packing the street from sidewalk to sidewalk, spilling back down the road for several blocks. The crowd was made up of all manner of people: men, women, young, old, black, white… There was even a priest near the head of the pack, his once-white collar stained red with blood. Even though the windows were closed, Remy could smell the pure, animalistic stench of them, that odd scent of old blood and other bodily fluids she didn’t want to think about, hovering over the street like a miasma.

  Remy had just registered these sights, rapid fire, her brain barely processing the images, when they started moving toward the police cruiser.

  “Get us out of here, Marc!”

  “Working on it!”

  Marc shifted gears, the tires squealed on the pavement, and the car lurched backwards. Remy grabbed the armrest on the door with both hands as Marc drove the car backwards the way they’d come, unable to take her eyes off the scene in front of them. The sick people—infected—broke into a run, slow at first, then gaining speed and momentum, and the crowd started to chase them down the street.

  “Oh God, Marc, they’re coming this way,” Remy squeaked, her voice barely loud enough to be heard over the roar of the engine.

  “I’m aware, Remy!” Marc growled.

  Remy looked at him. He was turned around in his seat, looking back behind the car, squinting through the cage that separated the front and back seats. He steered the car relatively straight, considering he was driving backwards. Remy could see the sick people gaining on them, because Marc just couldn’t drive fast enough going backwards, and as the leading edge of the sick people thudded into the car’s grill and they grabbed ahold of it, she knew in that second that she was going to die.

  “No, no, nonono,” Remy chanted, the repetitions running together in her panic. She jammed her feet against the floorboard, pressing her shoulder blades back into the seat, as if a couple of more inches might mean the difference between life and death.

  “Hang on!” Marc yelled and whipped the car around, tires squealing as they skidded across pavement, coming to a stop in a near-180 degree turn. Two of the sick people clutching the grill tumbled away with the momentum of the turn, falling out of sight. Then Marc shifted gears, producing a grinding sound from under the hood, and slammed his foot on the gas pedal. The car shot forward, pressing Remy back into her seat, and she suppressed a gasp, throwing her hands into the air as if she were on a roller coaster.

  “Yes!” she cried. “You did it!”

  “Not in the clear yet,” Marc warned her.

  He had his eyes fixed onto the windshield, his hands fastened to the steering wheel as if he were a drowning man and it was his life preserver. He cut the wheel to the right, barely avoiding two cars fender-bendered in the middle of the road, and swerved onto a side street. It was blessedly clear of sick people, but several cars were parked along the sidewalk on either side, abandoned by their owners.

  “Where are we?” Remy asked. “I’ve honestly lost track.”

  “I think I have too,” Marc said. He was leaned forward in his seat, squinting out the windshield, his eyes scanning every inch of the road ahead of them, presumably looking for a street sign. “Look for anything you recognize.”

  “You’re a cop,” Remy said. “I thought you guys were supposed to know your territory better than this.”

  “This isn’t my territory,” Marc told her. “I patrol the area where that convenience store you knocked over happens to be located.”

  “I did not knock over that store,” Remy protested. “I think what I did was technically considered shoplifting. A misdemeanor, I’ll have you know.”

  “I’m aware,” Marc said. “Consider the charges dropped.”

  Remy laughed. The absurdity of having this conversation with her arresting officer at this point in time was absolutely ridiculous.

  “So how come you don’t know the city that well?” she asked. “I mean, I’ve lived here all my life, and I usually can get around pretty easily.”

  “Because I’m not from here,” Marc said. “I’m from Baton Rouge. I only moved here three years ago.” He tapped the brakes and steered around another vehicle, this one sticking out a bit too far into the street, and on the sidewalk nearby, Remy spotted what looked like two men hunched over the body of a woman. There was blood, so much blood. Remy shuddered and looked away. She didn’t want to know where that blood was coming from.

  “Well, that explains a lot,” Remy said. She shifted her eyes forward, determined not to look back at the men on the sidewalk again as the police cruiser rolled past. “What made you move to NOLA?”

  “Think we can talk about this later?” Marc asked. “Like, maybe when we’re not in the shit and I’m not trying to keep us from getting killed?”

  Remy flopped back in her seat with a huff. “Fine. Geez. Sorry. I was just trying to keep my mind off of shit.”

  Marc’s expression softened. “Yeah, I just need to focus. I don’t want to wreck.” He turned his head slightly from side to side, like he was studying the lay of the land, and then a smile flickered across his face. “I think I know where we are.”

  Remy blew out a breath of relief. “Oh thank God.”

  “I should be able to get us out of h—”

  The thud of the body bouncing against the hood of Marc’s patrol car interrupted the rest of what he’d been about to say. Remy gasped, and Marc slammed on the brakes instinctively, the tires squealing on the pavement.

  “No, no, don’t stop!” Remy screeched. The horrible mental image of the two men bending over the corpse of that woman flickered through her mind, and she banged a fist against the dash. “Go, Marc, go!”

  It was too late. A flood of people emerged from alleys, doorways, and the shelter of cars and poured across the street toward them.

  “Oh shit!” Marc exclaimed. He shifted into reverse, intending to back down the street like he’d done before. But the street behind them was blocked, so there was no escape that way. More sick people were coming down the street from the direction they’d been heading.

  Remy whipped her head in either direction, searching for a gap they could flee through, but there wasn’t one.

  They were trapped. Solidly and irrevocably trapped.

  “Oh God, Marc, we’re going to die here,” Remy moaned as the sick crowd converged on the police cruiser. “We can’t get out of here, and we’re going to die here.”

  “No, you’re not,” Marc said, his voice strong, his jaw set with determination. He stared at the mess beyond the car, unblinkingly. “You’re not going to die here.” He shifted the car into park, unbuckled his seat belt, and reached for his gun. “Get in the driver’s seat,” he told her without looking at her. “When you see an opening, take it.”

  “Wait, where are you going?” Remy demanded, grabbing his arm to keep him from budging from his seat.

  “We need a distraction,” Marc said. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the sick and violent; the crowd surrounding the vehicle had begun to slap their fists and palms against the car in a discordant, disorienting rhythm. “I am going to create one.”

  “But…how will you get back to the car?” Remy asked, her voice weak.

  “I won’t be able to,” Marc said. “I have to draw them away while you get out of here.” He gave her a tight smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine. I know where you live. I’ll catch up with you there.”

  That was a lie. She knew it, and he knew it. Nevertheless, it didn’t stop him from reaching for the door’s handle. He popped the lock on the door, then she grabbed his arm again and tugged. “Come here,” she said, and she dragged him halfway across the console between them and pressed her mouth to his.

  It wasn’t a spectacular kiss, not by any means, most certainly not the best she’d ever given anyone. But the meaning behind it was more important, and she hop
ed that Marc realized what it was.

  A goodbye.

  Marc gave her a somewhat mournful look when he pulled away, his eyes searching her face, like he was committing every inch of her to memory. “Be careful,” he said, and then he was gone, shoving his way out of the car into the crowd outside without a backwards glance. As he did so, a sick man grasped the door and wrenched at it, trying to pull it open to get to Remy. She could hear gunfire outside the car, and she added her own to it, ripping the revolver from its holster and pointing it at the man, squeezing the trigger twice in rapid succession. The man staggered backward, and Marc kicked the door, slamming it shut.

  That was the last time Remy ever saw him.

  Chapter 8

  Marc had been out of the vehicle for several moments before Remy managed to get herself together enough to climb into the driver’s seat. Her heart felt as if it were rattling in her chest like a castanet, and her lungs heaved, struggling to take in enough air past her terror. She shifted in the leather driver’s seat, clutching the steering wheel with one hand and the gear shift in the other, her right foot on the brake, waiting for her moment, struggling to see past the tears swimming in her eyes.

  “Damn it, Marc,” she whispered. She didn’t fully understand why he had been so quick to run off. He could have stayed with her. They could have made a different plan. Now he was gone, bailed.

  There was nothing she could do about it. He was already out of the car and out of sight, the sick people attacking the car had begun to follow him, and the crowd behind the car was already thinning out. She hesitated, wondering if she should attempt to follow, but his instructions had been clear. She shifted the car into reverse and eased her foot off the brake, letting the car roll backward under its own power.

  Driving backwards was more awkward and difficult than Marc had made it look, and she clipped more than a few of the parked cars with the back bumper until she reached a point where she could get the vehicle turned around. Then, facing the mostly empty street the correct way, she slammed her foot against the pedal and raced away, not daring to look back at the scene she’d just left.