“Maybe they’ll have found some condoms,” Brandt added. He draped his arm around her shoulders and tugged her closer as they walked. The barrel of her sniper rifle, strapped to her back again, dug into his arm, but he ignored it. “I’ve had four people this week alone ask me if I have any. Like I would. My wife is pregnant. We have no use for them.”
“We will eventually,” Cade pointed out, dropping her head to rest against his shoulder. Her hip bumped against his, and he stepped into the movement reflexively.
“Yeah, well, ‘eventually’ isn’t ‘today.’ And thank God for that.”
Cade snorted out a laugh and, as they came into view of the rest of the community, emerging from the shadier backyard to the front of the house and the street beyond it, she stepped away from him, letting go as if she were holding onto something that was burning her. Brandt frowned but, having grown used to her idiosyncrasies, didn’t say anything, merely shoved his hands into his pockets with as much casualness as he could muster. As they emerged into the bright sunlight, he paused on the sidewalk and scanned the community laid out before them.
The Woodside community was sixteen blocks square of a formerly upper middle class enclave, completely closed and gated in by brick and wrought-iron fencing. They’d spent long, arduous hours boarding up and building up to conceal the community’s interior, creating a thirty-foot wall that loomed over everything, even blocking out the sun in the outlying homes. Near the center of the community was a square courtyard with trees and park benches, and running alongside the far end of the courtyard was the rec center, where they fed everyone decent meals three times a day.
It wasn’t a totally comfortable set up, but it was better than any of them had had in a long time. At least in Woodside, people had the opportunity to go out and enjoy the sunshine without having to worry about getting eaten by a crowd of infected crawling out of the woodwork.
Brandt watched as a group of children played tag in the center of the courtyard, dodging among the benches and trees and shrubbery as they chased after each other. The vehicles were parked around three sides of the courtyard’s perimeter, offering additional protection to the few children in the community against the infected. A smile quirked at the corner of his lips as he watched two of the boys tackle each other and wrestle in the dirt and grass. Nearby, two little girls—Shae and Sasha, the same girls he and his friends had rescued from the Westin months before—were playing with dolls that Justin’s crew had salvaged from somewhere.
Tearing his eyes away from the children, Brandt turned to look at Cade. She had left him behind, heading for the two-story house they stayed in with Kimberly and Isaac, which had become known throughout the community as the “main” house. Beside it was the house that held Woodside’s medical facilities. At that moment, only Ethan, Remy, and Dr. Derek Rivers were in residence.
Cade was disappearing into the main house. Brandt huffed out a sigh and sped up, determined to catch up to her and help her prep for the community’s dinner service before she did too much and made herself sick.
Chapter 2
Remy Angellette was irritable. Not that there was anything particularly new about her current state of mind. She’d been feeling that way since the group’s miraculous escape from the Westin in Atlanta, Georgia, five months before, when she and her friends had gone in to take on Alicia Day—otherwise known, in her mind, at least, as the bitch that had ended the world. They’d lost Gray Carter in the city, cut down by Alicia’s bullets and the viral contaminant that Brandt had unknowingly gotten on his hands in the process of killing one of their attackers.
It still broke her heart to think about Gray. So most days, she simply didn’t.
Remy shook her head, as if the physical action would dislodge the depressing thoughts from her mind. Fat chance of that. Her mind was nothing but a cesspool of anger and hatred and sadness these days. She shifted her eyes away from the blank spot on the wall that she’d been staring at and focused them once more on the work in front of her, on the rows of cans and boxes and stacks of cellophane packages—the newest supplies brought in the day before, the supplies she should have finished inventorying and boxing up and moving to the rec center’s kitchen the hour before. Cade had set her on the task, presumably to help keep her mind occupied. She’d much rather have been doing anything but inventory; she’d have preferred to be outside the community with a gun and her bolo knife, part of Joseph Albertson’s group that went out every third day to search for the very supplies she was supposed to be counting. At least out there, she’d have had the chance to maybe hunt down and kill a few of the infected. She’d always found that activity to be particularly cathartic.
Remy sighed and tossed her notepad onto the dining table in frustration. Who cared if there were eighteen more packages of ramen noodles and twelve new cans of chicken noodle soup? It wouldn’t change anything, especially not for her. She threw her pen across the room and slouched into one of the chairs, dropping her head into her hands and groaning. She rested her elbows on the edge of the wooden dining table and dug her fingers into her dark hair.
“This whole place is bullshit,” she muttered to the can of tomato soup directly below her face. Frustrated tears pricked at her brown eyes—tears she allowed to appear, hoping they would help flush out her emotions and cleanse her mind. She squeezed her eyes shut. She was ready to go, ready to get out of Woodside. It felt like there was nothing left for her here. Nothing left at all.
In the months since the events in Atlanta, Remy had fought desperately to retain some semblance of herself and her sanity. She’d spent hours holed up in her bedroom, seeing only Dr. Rivers, spending the rest of her time huddled in her bed. She’d hibernated for three weeks, avoiding mirrors and barely eating, getting up from her bed only when nature demanded it. And when those weeks had passed, when she’d braved getting out of bed to look in the mirror one night, she’d been horrified by what she’d seen in the reflection over the dresser.
The scratches in the skin on her face had been surprisingly deep, and while they had scabbed and scarred with the passage of time, they hadn’t become any less ugly and appalling. There’d been eight of them, four on each side, starting near her ears and tapering off at her nose and lips. Similar marks had adorned her neck, forearms, and even her upper chest. She’d reached up in her horror, her fingers coasting against the glass before touching her cheek, not sure if what she’d looked at was actually herself. Then she turned away, her movements as slow and dazed as they’d been when she had beheld herself in the mirror. She’d bitten back her tears and had shoved them deep down inside. She hadn’t cried since then.
At least, not until now. As she slouched at the dining table with the stacks of supplies in front of her, Remy felt tears pricking at the insides of her closed eyelids. She bit down hard on her bottom lip and pressed the heel of her hand against one of her eyes until she saw stars in the blackness. As she drew in a ragged breath, the sound of combat boots against floorboards met her ears. She darted out of her chair, nearly knocking it over in the process, and wiped hastily at her eyes. Then she snatched up her notepad and looked around wildly for her pen. The memory of her pitching it across the room in a fit of anger flashed before her mind’s eye. She swore again as Dominic Jackson stepped into the dining room.
“Nice to see you too, Remy,” Dominic greeted. Remy didn’t bother to look at him. Instead, she focused on her notepad, even as she tried to discreetly shake her hair down to cover her face. She wasn’t going to lie—she was still self-conscious about the scars that marred her skin. Even if Dominic had seen them before, she still didn’t want to flash them around more than necessary. “You busy?” Dominic asked.
“Actually, yes,” Remy muttered. She patted at her pockets in a vain search for another pen and kept her eyes focused on the food in front of her. On anywhere but the man who’d just entered the room. “I’m supposed to be inventorying the new food supplies for Cade.”
Dominic crossed the floor,
his footsteps thumping audibly in time with her heartbeat, and he stopped behind her, leaning over her shoulder to peer down at her notepad. “Doesn’t look like you’re making much progress there,” he commented. His breath was hot against her ear, his mouth mere centimeters from her skin.
Remy grimaced and slammed the notepad face down on top of the soup cans, even as she fought off the shiver of attraction that threatened to run down her spine. She faced Dominic and found herself standing uncomfortably close to him, so close that she could feel the warmth of his body against hers, so close that she was pinned between him and the dining table. She fought back the surge of terror and anxiety—maybe even a little intrigue—that welled up inside her and made her nauseous. She hated how he made her feel. She hated that, even if she dared assess whether he felt the same way, it would never happen between them. Ever. All she could do was push him away.
She fumbled behind her for the edge of the dining table, gripping it both for reassurance and support, and asked pointedly, “Is there a reason you’re in here pestering me?”
“What, I can’t pester you just to pester you?” Dominic asked. There was a lilting tone to his voice, as if he were teasing her. He reached up and lightly twisted a lock of her dark hair in his fingers, tugging on it before letting it go. Remy raised an eyebrow and fought at the quirk that threatened the corner of her mouth. The man had zero reason to like her or to talk to her, especially considering the healed bullet wound in his shoulder—the one that she had put there. The thought of it almost brought a full-on smile to her face. She squelched it before it could make itself known.
“Why in the hell would you want to pester me?” Remy asked. She managed to cross her arms over her chest in the narrow space between them, her forearms pressing against the strong muscles underneath Dominic’s thin t-shirt, and she successfully pulled off the look of annoyance that she’d intended to give him.
Dominic didn’t respond to her question. Instead, his dark eyes flickered over her face, as if every unhappy thought she’d ever had was laser-etched into her cheekbones. He opened his mouth, a gentle look on his face, like he was preparing to ask her something personal. But then he closed it again and shook his head before asking, “Have you seen Cade or Brandt? Or, preferably, both of them?”
Remy couldn’t deny the twinge of disappointment she felt, though she couldn’t decide what she was disappointed over. She sidestepped, wiggling out from between him and the table, and grabbed her notepad again. Avoiding the heat of his gaze against her back, she flipped through the pages to find a blank one and began to surreptitiously search for her pen. “Cade is out. Brandt went to find her.”
“Any ideas when they’ll be back?” Dominic asked.
Remy fought to not roll her eyes. Good God, the man was nothing if not persistent. Instead, she shook her head as she finally spotted her pen, resting between two stacks of single-serving instant mashed potato packets. “No idea,” she replied. She lunged for the pen, snagging it and knocking both stacks over in the process. They fanned out across the table and onto several boxes of instant macaroni and cheese. “Why don’t you go look for them and just…I don’t know, leave me alone or something?”
Dominic didn’t seem to have any intention of leaving her alone, though. He stepped back and leaned against the counter that divided the kitchen and dining areas, folding his arms over his strong chest. She could still feel his eyes on her as she tapped her pen along a row of cans, miming counting in the hopes he’d take the hint and leave.
“Need any help?” he offered after a moment.
No such luck.
“You know,” he continued, “since you’re not making much headway on that and all.”
“I’m fine,” Remy said, more snappishly than she intended to. She didn’t know why she was so rude to him. It wasn’t like most of the people in Woodside were very accepting of her presence, especially once word of her current state of infection had leaked. The Atlanta survivors seemed to believe that she would go crazy like Alicia Day had and kill them all in a frenzy of psychosis. Dominic was one of the few people in Woodside—outside of the friends she’d gained the year before—who treated her like a human being, even with Woodside’s populace ostracizing him for his involvement with Alicia. She knew she shouldn’t act like such an ass toward him. But, as much as she tried, she couldn’t seem to help it. It was like her emotional defense mechanisms had short-circuited and were preventing her from being able to make the necessary connections to accept his offer of friendship. She jotted down a random number on her notepad, since she had no idea how many cans she’d actually counted, and moved on to the next row.
“Are you saying no because you really don’t need my help or because it’s me that’s offering it?” Dominic asked. His words were laced with annoyance. She was getting under his skin. Good.
“Because I don’t need help,” she said. She wrote down the correct number that time. She still didn’t look at Dominic. God only knew what he would see in her eyes if she did.
“So if Ethan Bennett came over and offered to help you, you’d tell him no too?”
“Ethan Bennett isn’t even allowed to leave his fucking room,” Remy retorted.
“Oh, so you’ve been to see him then.”
Remy gritted her teeth, feeling the creak of her jaw as the muscles shifted almost painfully. She slapped the notepad down onto the table again, knocking over several packages. “No, I have not,” she snapped, struggling to ignore the tightness in her chest that mention of the man’s name brought forth. She barely stopped herself from throwing her pen across the room again. Or at Dominic’s head. The latter option was looking more appealing with every passing moment.
“Why not?” Dominic asked in the same placid tone she’d only ever heard from psychiatrists, Dr. Rivers, and him.
“I don’t think that is any of your fucking business.”
Dominic seemed unfazed by her statement. He reclined more comfortably against the counter and watched her. The scrutiny was unnerving and made her want to fidget. “He’s been asking for you, you know,” he said once the silence between them had surpassed uncomfortable and slipped into something less identifiable. A wall of tension had leeched into the room, and Remy tried to assess what was going on in Dominic’s head, why he felt the need to even bring up her former lover. She blew out a breath and looked away from him.
“I know,” Remy finally said. “I’ve been told by everybody a million times.”
“And you still won’t go see him?”
Remy gritted her teeth yet again—she just knew she was going to have a sore jaw that evening—and turned on Dominic. “Would you go out of your way to see someone who tried to kill you?”
Dominic arched an eyebrow. “I’m hanging out with you right now, aren’t I?” he asked.
Remy conceded his point, though she wanted to argue it with him.
Before Remy could dredge up a witty retort—something she was very much out of these days—the sound of the front door opening drew her attention away from Dominic. As Cade and Brandt’s voices met her ears, she scowled at the former intelligence officer and turned on her heel. She abandoned her task and stormed out the side door, slamming it closed before she did anything she might regret later.
Chapter 3
Kimberly Geller climbed the medical house’s main staircase with all the attitude of someone who had done it a thousand times before and wasn’t looking forward to doing it again. Truth be told, she hated stairs. She’d developed a raging hatred for them while spending seven months living in the Westin tower in Atlanta, and her attitude toward them hadn’t gotten any better once she’d settled into Woodside. But she had a job to do, an incredibly important one, and it wasn’t one that she could pass off onto someone else just because she’d developed an intense hatred of stairs. Someone had to monitor Ethan Bennett’s health and progress, and as Dr. Rivers’ assistant and a former veterinarian—and the only other person in the community besides the doctor with
medical expertise—that task had fallen to her.
It wasn’t necessarily that she disliked caring for Ethan. Far from it. She enjoyed sitting with him after taking his vitals and talking about everything they could think of. She found herself liking him more and more as the days passed.
And that was the problem. She didn’t want to like him. Judging by what he’d told her—and that hadn’t been much—he’d gotten her younger sister Avi killed. She should hate his guts. Instead, she spent half of her rare moments of downtime fantasizing about him and his intensely green eyes.
Sometimes, Kimberly wanted to slap herself. This was one of those times.
When she reached the top of the stairs, she threw a quick glance at Remy’s room. The door was closed and, presumably, locked, though Kimberly could hear voices on the other side: Remy’s somewhat twangy, girlish voice and the rumble of an indistinct male voice that could belong to Brandt, Dominic, or Derek. The voices were raised just enough that, while Kimberly couldn’t make out what was being said, she could easily make out the tones: Remy’s angry, the man’s placating. She debated knocking on the door but shook her head. Whatever was going on, it wasn’t her business. She was supposed to be doing the first of her twice-daily assessments of Ethan Bennett, not nosing into something that didn’t involve her.
Kimberly focused her attention on the task at hand: Ethan. After tapping on the door with a knuckle to alert him that she was coming inside, she eased the door open and slipped through, shutting it quietly behind her. Ethan was sitting up in bed, studying the contents of a battered hardcover book—a glance of the title revealed it was War and Peace. Who the hell read War and Peace for fun? He grimaced at the page and leaned close to read it, forehead wrinkled in a squint because he was without his reading glasses. As always, Kimberly was taken aback by his appearance. He looked up at her and gave her a smile, and she couldn’t help but compare how he looked now to how he’d looked when she had first met him all those months ago in the Westin.
The Becoming (Book 4): Under Siege Page 2