—“I can’t go with you! I’m fucking infected now! If I go, I’ll put all of you in danger, and I will not do that.”—
—and she struggled to shove it aside and explain.
“He was this man that I…that we knew,” she said. Her voice trembled, and she tried to cover it up. “He was our medic. He…he died. In a highway full of cars like this one—”
—“Get back! Get the fuck back! All of you!”—
“—while trying to…trying to save Cade.” She had to force the last four words out. She was dying to look away from Dominic, but the hold he maintained on her face wouldn’t allow it. So instead, she closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m overreacting.”
He finally let go of her face, picked up his rifle, and rested it against his shoulder. “No, you’re not, Remy,” he replied. He surprised her by taking her hand in his again. He gently tugged it, leading her into the rows of vehicles on the highway. She struggled to overcome the urge to bolt. “It’s not over-reactive at all. You haven’t even mourned for him—or anyone else—have you?”
Remy swallowed and shook her head, her eyes darting around, searching for any oncoming dangers. Almost unconsciously, she drew closer to Dominic. It had been so long since she’d been outside the community, since she’d been put in danger that she didn’t know what to do with herself. She felt horribly exposed—a feeling she didn’t like one bit. Her fingers itched, ready to kill something. She had a misguided belief that killing would bring her self-confidence back.
Dominic tugged at her hand again, as if trying to draw her attention back to the present and out of her thoughts. “Nervous?” he asked.
“Very,” Remy admitted, despite her reluctance to confess it.
“Good.”
Remy raised an eyebrow, and Dominic elaborated. “If you’re nervous, it means you’re not so far gone that I can’t teach you.”
“I know how to kill the infected,” Remy said, glad for the diversion from her mournful thoughts. “If I didn’t know how, I’d have gotten myself killed a year and a half ago.”
“Yeah, but I’ve seen the way you fight the infected,” he said.
“When?”
“When I dug you out of a bunch of them outside the Westin five months ago.” He shook his head. “The way you were fighting them—if you can call it fighting—was a fast way to commit suicide.”
“Maybe that’s what I’m trying to do,” Remy snapped without thinking about it.
Dominic stopped short and turned to look at her, the expression on his face hinting at anger.
“Don’t say that,” he said. His tone was clipped, and she raised an eyebrow as he looked away from her and continued. “You’re not good to anyone dead, and if you’re determined to slaughter as many infected as humanly possible, then you need to get refined about how you do it so you don’t end up dead.”
Remy huffed out an exasperated breath. “Why do you want to teach me anyway?” she asked. “Why do you even care?”
Dominic didn’t look at her as he replied, “Because I like you.” His tone was matter-of-fact, as if it should have been obvious to her. “And because I’m still planning on taking you with me to Philadelphia and will need you to be a competent source of backup.” He angled a glance at her and added, “Unless, of course, you don’t want to go anymore.”
“Of course I do!” she exclaimed. “God, anything to get away from Woodside.”
Dominic raised an eyebrow. “Anything to get away from Woodside, or away from Ethan Bennett?”
“God, I fucking hate him!” Remy exploded before she could stop herself.
Dominic looked at her with surprise, stutter-stepping before regaining his composure. She clenched her fists and kicked the back tire of the nearest car.
“I wish he’d died for real!”
“No, you don’t, Remy,” Dominic started.
“Yes, I do!” Remy argued. “He did nothing but make my life miserable! It’s because of him that I’m fucking sick and that my face is messed up!”
Dominic stopped again and turned to face her, blocking her path.
Still angry, she raised her hands to shove him aside, but he caught her wrists and wrapped his strong fingers around them, halting the attempt. His thumbs rubbed against her wrists, gently, soothingly, clearly trying to calm her down.
“Remy,” he said, and the way he said her name was warm like melted caramel. She swore her backbone melted under the onslaught. “Your face is not fucked up. If you ask me, I don’t think it’s nearly as bad as you seem to think it is.” His thumbs lightly brushed against the scars on either side of her face, tracing upward along them as far as his thumbs could reach.
Remy’s eyes welled up with tears, and she swallowed hard, trying to choke them back. Suddenly, she felt like a shy, ridiculous schoolgirl being told by Mr. Popular Jock Football Player that he wanted to go to the Senior Prom with her. She almost scrunched her nose up at the thought; she’d never been the type who was asked out on dates by the good, straight-laced guys, just the users and the losers. She squeezed her eyes closed for a moment before opening them again and asking softly, “Do you actually like me, or are you just saying all that to make me feel better?”
“I like you enough to want to kiss you right now,” he murmured without hesitation.
“But you can’t.”
“I can’t,” he agreed.
“Because I’m sick.”
“Because, as you say, you’re sick.”
Before Remy could respond, a shout echoed down the highway. She stiffened. Dominic let go of her wrists and spun toward the noise, sliding himself between her and the possibility of danger. Both of them squinted, searching for the source of the noise.
Another shout echoed, followed by several more. It was a feminine voice, indistinct but high-pitched with panic.
“That isn’t an infected person,” Dominic said.
Remy pushed past him and started in the direction of the noise. “Come on, then! We should go help!”
Chapter 7
Ethan relaxed in the reclining chair across from the couch as best as he could, though his knees and hips still ached from the exertion he’d indulged in earlier in the day. He didn’t regret it, though, not for a second. If anything, the movement had made him feel alive. And he was glad he’d been allowed to attend a meeting and see the community in action. He’d missed being in the thick of things, and he was eager to get caught up on what was going on in the world.
Despite the better mood he appeared to be in, though, Ethan’s brain was trying to run laps around what had happened in the kitchen barely an hour before. He’d eaten a rabbit. On the face of it, that didn’t seem like a big deal. He’d been born and raised in the south, and his father had been an avid game hunter from the moment he’d been old enough to aim a rifle, so he’d eaten his fair share of rabbit and deer and squirrel meat in his life. But this was different. He’d eaten the rabbit raw. It had been a compulsion he hadn’t been able to think through, and he was terrified that that meant there was something screwed up in his head.
No, no, I can’t think about that right now, he thought, trying to push it all to the back of his mind. It was too much to handle, and he couldn’t even begin to try to cope with it. He’d save it for later, when he had time to dwell on it and consider all the possible implications of what he’d done. Instead, he started to scan the room, looking over everyone who had turned out for the committee meeting.
Brandt was leaned against the banister at the bottom of the staircase, observing the people who’d gathered for the meeting. They almost had a full house, with most of the committee members present.
Kimberly told Ethan, after she guided him to the recliner, that the majority of time attendance was sparse due to all the work that needed to be done around the community.
There were two people conspicuously absent: Remy Angellette and Dominic Jackson. Ethan didn’t care where Dominic was, but considering the meeting was about Remy and, by extensio
n, himself, it was probably a good thing she wasn’t here.
Now, Kimberly reclined in the bay window, leaning against the boards that covered the glass, her hands folded in her lap as she talked to Isaac Wright. Isaac leaned against the wall beside the window. Every time he glanced at her, Ethan felt a stirring of emotion, things he hadn’t felt in ages: attraction mixed with desire and, inexplicably, a pang of sadness and insecurity. He imagined how he looked: his skin too pale, his face covered with too much facial hair, the circles under his eyes too dark, and his wrist bones sticking out too much. As he contemplated that, he realized Brandt was staring at him, and he looked at him questioningly. He nodded to Ethan in acknowledgment and asked, “How are you feeling?”
Ethan wasn’t sure how to answer the question, because he hadn’t figured it out himself. So he settled on, “As well as can be expected, I guess.”
With that, Ethan shifted his eyes to the sofa. Cade relaxed at one end of it, her head propped against her hand as she stared across the room, waiting for the meeting to start. She looked uncomfortable, and Ethan couldn’t decide if she felt sick or if she was upset over what she’d witnessed him doing to the dead rabbit in the kitchen. The memory of what he’d done combined with the memory of the taste of it surged in his brain again, and he wrestled it aside, not ready to deal with it right then, and turned his attention back to Cade. No one else occupied the couch, largely due to the sniper rifle laid out across the other two cushions. After he gave her a small smile, he settled his eyes onto the last man in the room.
Dr. Derek Rivers sat on the edge of the coffee table, scribbling something in a rapid, messy hand into a notebook resting on his knee. He’d met with Ethan just before the meeting, grilling him relentlessly in the dining room as Brandt waited in the doorway, the doctor gathering information so he could piece together possibilities and put together his theory of why Ethan had felt the compulsion to do what he’d done.
As Ethan muddled through that, Brandt cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention. Ethan looked up at him as the others did the same, and once all eyes were on him, he cleared his throat again and spoke.
“Ya’ll probably already have some idea of what we called this meeting for,” he began. “But in case anyone feels particularly ignorant, I’ll enlighten you anyway. We’re not here on official community business. More like friend-related business, because someone in here isn’t telling us things we need to know regarding Ethan,” here, Brandt nodded his head toward Ethan, “and Remy and their current states of health.”
“Since it seems that someone feels it prudent to allow Remy to die when he has the means to cure her,” Cade added.
Kimberly came off her seat on the bay window, fists clenched, her brown eyes wide and practically glowing. “That’s not fair!” she exploded. “You don’t know everything—”
“And neither do you,” Brandt interrupted. “You don’t know what Remy is going through. You can’t possibly begin to even understand it.”
“Oh, and you do?” Kimberly challenged.
Ethan shook his head and leaned forward, figuring it was time he spoke up and got everyone calmed down. Clearly, this was a touchy subject for all involved, and they’d likely already formed opinions based on incomplete facts and assumptions. “No, he doesn’t understand what she’s going through, but I do,” Ethan said. He kept his voice quiet and controlled, but it was enough to command the attention of everyone in the room. Despite the spotlight he’d put himself under, he reached out and rested a hand against Kimberly’s arm, trying to calm her. She backed off, taking a few steps away from Brandt and sitting on the arm of Ethan’s recliner. Once she was there, reassuringly present and less than an arm’s reach away, he continued. “Unlike any of you, I know what Remy’s going through. I know the anger she feels, the fear, and yes, even the hunger. I know what it’s like to be infected. Better than any of you because I’ve been there. I’m the only person here who’s qualified to truly speak on her behalf.” He paused and looked at Derek, trying to figure out what the doctor was thinking. “You have no idea what you’re condemning her to, Dr. Rivers. You have no idea what it’s like to have that virus inside you, eating away at your sanity and at everything that makes you you, eating away for every moment you’re infected with it and being fully aware of what’s happening to you the entire time. You’re condemning Remy to a life that isn’t a life and forcing her to accept that she’s going to turn into one of the infected and that she might hurt one of the people she cares about. To be infected…that’s a fate I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. You have got to do something for her, Derek. Give her the cure.”
“You don’t understand,” Derek said haltingly. He didn’t look up from his notebook but stared at the scribbled-over pages and ran his thumb over the spiral binding. “It’s…it’s not what you think.” He looked up, his eyes darting from one face to the next before settling on Ethan’s. “There’s no cure.”
“What?” Brandt exclaimed. “No cure? What are you talking about? You cured Ethan.”
“It’s not what you think,” Derek said again. He slid his free hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small vial, shaking it before holding it up so they could see that it was full of a thick, red liquid. “This? What I injected you with, Ethan? It’s not a cure. It’s blood. It’s the virus,” he explained.
Ethan’s brain skidded to a halt at Derek’s words, and he could see the incredulity on his friends’ faces as they stared at the doctor who sat on the edge of the coffee table. The silence that followed was complete.
Chapter 8
Dominic’s heart bounded in his chest like a jackrabbit running from a coyote, and his fight or flight instincts were equally stirred up. His first instinct—a purely human one—was to turn tail and run, preferably away from the noise ahead of them. His second instinct was to protect Remy from whatever was ahead. The second instinct won out.
As Remy rushed past him toward the danger, Dominic grabbed her left arm and hauled her backward. He nearly dumped her onto the cracked and crumbling pavement as he spun and shoved her against a nearby car. Her palms hit the hood, and he pressed against her, pinning her in place. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he hissed in her ear.
“There’s someone down there that needs our help!” Remy explained, pushing back against him with all of her strength. It wasn’t enough.
“And you were just going to charge in without a thought to your own safety or mine, weren’t you?” he accused. She froze, and he nodded. “That’s what I thought. For the love of Christ, follow me, stick close, and don’t do anything stupid.” He let her go then, and she scowled and backed away from the car. “Maybe you’ll learn something,” he added before turning away and hurrying forward, keeping low to conceal himself. The sound of Remy’s shoes scuffing the pavement behind him told him that she was following him, like he’d told her to do.
Thank God she was listening to him. If she’d decided not to, like it or not, he’d have to hurt her.
Dominic drew in a slow breath when he heard another shout, something that sounded like a young woman yelling, “Down, down, down!” The shouts were followed by a shotgun blast, and he tensed. Swearing under his breath, he held his fist up beside his head, signaling for Remy to stop, and pointed to the tall grass on the side of the road. The grass rustling behind him and to his right meant that she’d obeyed his directive.
It took several minutes of weaving between cars before Dominic reached a point where he could see what was going on ahead. He signaled for Remy to stop where she was and then climbed into the bed of the pickup truck in front of him. He crouched low and peered over the truck’s roof.
The highway beyond had been cleared of the cars that had blocked it the last time he’d been through. Judging by the roadway’s condition, heavy machinery had done the work; the pavement had been crushed almost to gravel in places. There were tracks, and if he was reading the tracks correctly, a tank might have done some of the damage.
He looked up from the pavement, slowly moving out of his crouch. Just up the road he saw two figures—he couldn’t tell yet whether they were male or female—fighting valiantly against a crowd of infected. The survivors weren’t his concern. He was focused on the infected and the threat they posed to himself and Remy.
Dominic nodded and slung his rifle off his shoulder, resting it against the roof of the truck. Then he hunkered down, took aim, and squeezed the trigger. The head of the infected man in his sights exploded in a shower of blood and gore. The young man and woman in the crowd continued fighting, but their movements were almost indecipherable amongst the grasping and clutching hands of the infected around them.
Dominic adjusted his aim. His rifle cracked, and another infected man went down.
A burst of gunfire joined his own as Dominic shot down a third infected attacker. Under the hail of additional, well-placed shots, the infected began to drop like flies. He spared a glance to his right and saw Remy leaning half over the hood of a car with her pistol pointed toward the infected, firing into them with carefully aimed shots.
He was about to return his attention to the road when seven dark shadows lumbered out of the tree line, stumbling and staggering in Remy’s direction. With her back to them, she couldn’t see them approaching, and he had a sudden, horrible vision of her being torn apart by hands and nails and teeth, her beautiful face splattered with blood, her lithe body ripped to shreds. “Remy! Behind you!” he shouted. He swore, dumped his rifle into the bed of the truck, and climbed onto the edge of the truck bed, leaping from one vehicle to the next in a race to reach Remy before the infected closed in.
Remy turned toward the approaching infected, lifted her pistol, and began firing frantically. Half of her bullets missed or hit the wrong organ. As her pistol ran out of bullets, Dominic set foot on the trunk of the car she’d been hunkered down behind, and with another step, he launched himself off the vehicle and tackled one of the infected, taking it to the ground and snapping its neck in a single movement. He tucked and rolled when he landed, drawing a knife as he came up on his knee. He sprang forward, bent low, and tackled one of the other seven infected, slamming it against the car. He didn’t hesitate to bring the knife up and plunge it into the man’s temple, shredding through the skin and thin bone and into the brain. The body between him and the car went limp, and he ripped the knife free and spun around, kicking the legs out from another one and falling on it. He slammed his knife blade through its forehead, scrambled to his feet, and readied himself to attack the next infected person.
The Becoming (Book 4): Under Siege Page 6