The Becoming (Book 5): Redemption

by Jessica Meigs

  Bradford broke the silence with a heavy sigh. “Michael,” he started, drawing the name out.

  “Don’t call me Michael,” Brandt snapped.

  “Oh, that’s right. You’re going by Brandt now,” Bradford said. He studied Brandt for a moment more and said, “You realize that we have to contain the spread of the contagion as much as possible.” The way he stated it indicated that it wasn’t a question and didn’t require a response from Brandt. When Brandt didn’t give one, he continued. “Approximately thirty minutes after you were taken into custody in the area you call ‘Woodside,’ all military personnel was cleared out, and a Massive Ordinance Air Blast, or MOAB, was dropped at the location. We witnessed no survivors.”

  Brandt’s stomach felt like it had dropped down to his knees, and he slumped back in his chair. He clenched his fists hard enough to make his knuckles hurt, and he squeezed his eyes shut, breathing in deeply through his nose as he tried to control himself. Once he’d reined in his emotions, at least enough to not have a full breakdown in front of this bastard, he opened his eyes and glared at him. Bradford didn’t seem affected in the slightest.

  “There were innocent men, women, and children in that community,” Brandt said. It was a struggle to keep his voice steady. “Innocent, uninfected people. And you slaughtered them all. Why?”

  “We have to work on the assumption that everyone inside the quarantine zone is infected,” Bradford said. “We can’t risk the contagion getting out into the general population.”

  “Quarantine zone?” Brandt repeated. “General population? What the fuck are you talking about?”

  Bradford directed his next statements to the two men still standing behind Brandt’s chair. “Private Bayer, Private Hutcherson, please escort Lieutenant Evans back to his cell. I’m going to arrange for a show-and-tell session in the morning.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Brandt demanded. “Tell me what’s going on!”

  Bradford made a motion to the two soldiers behind Brandt, and they grasped him under his arms, hauling him bodily to his feet and shoving him toward the door. He didn’t resist—Lord only knew what they’d do to him if he did—but he did manage to turn his head enough to catch a glimpse of Bradford, who still sat at his desk. He’d returned to his paperwork, completely ignoring Brandt as he was herded out of the room.

  Once he was back in his cell, the door shut and locked behind him, Brandt fell to his knees beside his bare cot, ignoring the pain that jolted through them when they met the hard concrete floor. He leaned forward to rest his forehead against the edge of the thin mattress and squeezed his eyes shut as images of his friends, and of Cade, assaulted his mind.

  That night, he cried like he hadn’t cried in years.

  Chapter 8

  It took nearly an hour of searching to find the best, safest path, but by the time the sun had set, Sadie had installed herself onto the roof of the safe house, a duffel bag full of weaponry that Cade had given her on the shingles beside her. She’d stuck two bottles of water from their meager stores in the pile of leaves in the gutter, along with a flashlight, and she felt like she was adequately prepared to wait the night out on the roof, keeping watch for anything that might pop out of the woodwork and endanger her fellow survivors inside the house.

  Inside, Isaac was going from room to room, searching through every drawer, closet, nook, and cranny to find anything useful for their coming trip to Atlanta and his, Derek’s, and Olivia’s survival at the house. There wasn’t much, someone had been through the house before, but they’d overlooked the less obvious items, which were piling up on the dining table. Isaac had found a deck of playing cards in a bedroom drawer, and he’d given them to her. She pulled them out of her pocket and slid them from their paper box. She started shuffling them idly, staring down at the darkened street below, her eyes sliding from one end of the street to the other, searching between houses and cars and other obstructions for anything more out of place than she and her friends were.

  The ambulance they’d arrived in was too conspicuous sitting at the curb in front of the house, and Sadie figured if they left it there too long, someone was bound to notice it, even more so if it was someone who was familiar with the street. An ambulance would be a sweet score for anybody, especially considering the possibility that they’d find supplies in it. She didn’t think it was likely that anyone would come across them; however, the thought of it was enough to make her feel paranoid. Her never-ending paranoia was what had kept her and Jude alive so far, and she’d be damned if she ignored it now. She made a mental note to say something to Isaac about moving the vehicle around to where it wouldn’t be visible from the street.

  Once she’d made her assessment of the surrounding area, Sadie turned back to her deck of cards, idly dealing out and playing a few hands of poker against herself while she watched for movement below. She’d dealt four hands and was stacking the cards back together to shuffle them when she caught movement near the back of the ambulance. She stuffed the loose cards into her back pocket and unzipped the bag she’d brought onto the roof with her. There was a compound bow and a sizeable collection of arrows in the bag, along with a rifle, three pistols, six knives, two machetes, and ammunition for all the firearms. Sadie slid the rifle out of the bag and made sure it was loaded, then scooted to the edge of the roof to aim the rifle down. When she saw who it was, she blew out a breath and lowered the rifle.

  “Damn it, Jude,” she muttered. She set the rifle onto the shingles beside her and returned her gaze to the ground. “What the hell are you doing?” Another figure climbed out of the back of the ambulance. It took her a second to recognize Keith, and she grimaced. “Oh. I see.” She made a mental note to talk to Jude about leaving the house without mentioning it to her, and then she discarded the thought as quickly as it had occurred to her. Most of them were going to be leaving the house soon, and it was pointless to fuss about him stepping foot outside if she’d be doing the same shortly.

  Sadie went back to the duffel bag and started pawing through it again, turning her attention to the weaponry inside. She was especially intrigued by the compound bow, and she slid it out of the bag. Something small and black tumbled out with it, and she scooped it up to examine it. It was a black leather shooting glove with two fingers and a thumb, and further in the bag, she found a matching bracer, which brought a smile to her face. She hadn’t put her hands on anything archery-related in almost a year, and holding the bow felt good. It was larger than what she’d used in the past, but she was sure that, after a year of not using the smaller bow, she could compensate easily enough.

  Sadie sat down on the shingles and slipped the bracer around her forearm, adjusting the tightness of the laces until it was as tight as she preferred, then slipped the glove on and wiggled her fingers, testing the snugness of the leather. She grinned and murmured, “Perfect.” She felt better about going to Atlanta already.

  Sadie stood and lifted the bow, taking the proper posture and stance, and grasped the bowstring. She pulled it back, slowly and smoothly, testing the weight of the string. It wasn’t too hard to pull, though it was heavier than the last bow she’d used. However, she was stronger now, and she knew she could handle this new bow fine.

  “What are you, an Amazon?” someone called out. Sadie glanced toward the ground to see Keith and Jude looking up at her, Jude with a big grin on his face. He held his notepad where Keith could see it, and Keith said, “Jude wants to know if you’re trying to add to your badass image or if it just comes naturally.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Sadie replied. “And keep your damn voice down. You’re going to attract unwanted attention.”

  “What are you doing up there anyway?” Keith asked.

  “Keeping watch,” Sadie said. “Someone has got to do it, and no one else seems interested.”

  “What am I, chopped liver?” Keith asked, and Sadie grinned at the mock indignity in his voice.

  “Get up here and help me then,” Sadie r
eplied. Jude raised an eyebrow and pointed at himself, mouthing, “Me too?” and Sadie shook her head. “No, you go get some sleep. I want to talk to him alone.” Jude looked confused, but he disappeared underneath the edge of the roof. Sadie heard him climbing the porch steps and the door opening and closing.

  “So how do I get up there?” Keith asked.

  “Second floor, third door on the right. Go out the window that faces the front of the house, and it’ll put you out onto the roof.”

  Keith saluted her and disappeared from view. Sadie settled back into a sitting position, setting the bow on the shingles beside her so she could start looking through the bag again. She unsheathed a machete to check the sharpness of the blade and was still examining it when she heard the scrape and muffled curse from Keith as he climbed out the window. She set the machete back in the bag and fished out a knife, pulling it free from its sheath and studying the blade.

  Keith sat down on the roof beside her. “What do you need to talk to me about?”

  Sadie was silent, trying to get her thoughts in order. She hoped she wasn’t about to overstep her bounds. Jude was a grown man, after all, and he’d bristle if he knew she was questioning his choices, just like she would if someone were doing the same to her. Still, she had a compulsion to protect her brother from anything that could hurt him, and that included himself.

  When she did speak, she kept her voice low and steady. “What are your intentions?”

  “My intentions?” Keith repeated. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what are your intentions with my brother?” Sadie persisted. “What’s going on with you two?”

  Keith shrugged. “Nothing’s going on,” he said. “At least, nothing serious. We’re just becoming friends. He’s teaching me sign language so he doesn’t have to use paper so much when we talk. Just, you know, friend stuff.”

  “Friend stuff,” Sadie repeated. The concept was foreign to her. She’d never had friends growing up. She couldn’t imagine the sorts of things that would qualify as “friend stuff.”

  “Yeah, friend stuff,” Keith confirmed. “I’d like to be friends with him. And really, I wouldn’t mind being friends with you too.”

  Something on the street below moved, a shadow darting through a slightly lighter shadow cast by trees overhanging the road two houses down. Sadie sat up straighter, trying to get a better look at what it was through the darkening evening, mentally debating the merits of the different weapons available to her. “I don’t need any friends,” she muttered.

  “Everybody needs friends.”

  “Not me,” Sadie replied. She eased her hand off her leg to rest it on the compound bow beside her. She didn’t want to move quickly, mostly out of a desire to keep the man on the roof with her from making any noise in alarm.

  “Oh, come on, what makes you so different?” he asked.

  “I’ve never had friends, and I’ve never needed friends,” Sadie said. “Never got along with any of the people I grew up with, and I didn’t want to, either. I had nothing in common with any of them. They were a bunch of pretentious, stuck up, rich bitches that liked to make fun of people who weren’t pretentious, stuck up, or rich like themselves. I didn’t want anything to do with people like that. My mama and daddy raised me better.”

  She inched her free hand into the duffel bag and slid out one of the arrows.

  “What about everybody else in your class?” Keith asked.

  “We went to a private school. Most of them were the rich bitch types. The ones that weren’t were the ones that liked to make fun of and bully Jude.”

  “Oh,” Keith said. “Those types.”

  “Exactly.” She picked out the dark shape below with her eyes and slid to her feet, simultaneously nocking the arrow on the bow.

  “What are you doing?”

  Sadie adjusted her grip on the bow. “Don’t make any sudden movements. There’s something down there.”

  Thankfully, Keith obeyed, scooting onto his knees to look for himself. After several heartbeats of silence, during which both of them studied the slinking figure in the shadows, he spoke.

  “Do you think it’s a scout?” he asked. Sadie looked at him questioningly. “Brandt told me once that some of the infected, the ones that aren’t dead, can be really smart and organized at times. He said that sometimes a few will go out to look for uninfected people like us, and when they find us, they go back and get the others. If that’s a scout, we need to kill it.”

  “That’s exactly what I intend to do,” Sadie said. She raised the bow, drawing the string back, her gloved fingers gripping the arrow as she sighted her target. The shape was in the shadow of another tree, visible enough that she was sure she could take it out without any difficulty. She took aim, her muscles and her mind falling into the familiar form and motions that she hadn’t used in a while. She adjusted her aim for wind and distance. Once she was certain the arrow would go where she wanted it to, she released it.

  The arrow sprang from the bowstring and arced down toward the ground. Its aim was true; it struck the figure in the face, and it tumbled to the ground. Sadie set the compound bow onto the roof and grabbed a pair of binoculars from the duffel bag, looking through them to see how accurate her aim had been.

  What she saw made her grin widely. “How ‘bout dem apples?” she said, passing the binoculars to Keith. He peered through them and let out a low whistle.

  “Jesus, where did you learn to shoot like that?” he asked. “You put that arrow right through his eye.”

  Sadie shrugged. “Seven years of competitive archery,” she said. “It’s something my dad and I used to do together. He was my coach and trained me himself.”

  “Jude didn’t do it?”

  “No, Jude was more into indoor activities,” she said. “He was closer to Mom than I was because of it, but I was closer to Dad.” She squinted at the dead body on the road again, then scooped up the bow and shrugged her duffel bag onto her shoulder. “We should get inside before something else sees us,” she said. “And we need to warn the others. Where there’s one, there are probably more, and I think we should move out of the way before they get here.”

  “I think that’s a fantastic idea,” Keith agreed. He pushed to his feet and scrambled up the roof to the window. Sadie followed him, clutching her bow tightly as she ducked and slid through the window.

  Jude stood across from the window with his arms folded over his chest, looking thoroughly annoyed with her. Keith, thankfully, detected Jude’s mood, and he started for the door.

  “I think I’ll head on down to my room and leave you two alone,” he said.

  Sadie waited until Keith had left the room, and she counted to ten before she snapped, “What?”

  “Why did you need to talk to him alone?” Jude asked, his hands jabbing the signs out with anger.

  “I had to ask him some quest—”

  “It was about me, wasn’t it?” Jude signed. “You were asking him questions about me.”

  “I just wanted to know what his intentions are,” Sadie said. “I wanted to make sure he wasn’t going to hurt you.”

  “I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” Jude replied, scowling. “I don’t need you to take care of me. You’re not my mother. I already had one of those, and she’s dead.”

  Jude’s words were like a punch to the gut, and Sadie stepped backward. “That was so uncalled for,” she said, fighting the quaver in her voice.

  “Yeah, well, it’s the truth,” Jude said. He didn’t look at her as he signed the words, looking ashamed of what he’d said. “I don’t need you to take care of me. Dad taught me things too, you know.”

  “I promised, Jude. I promised.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that I made the same promise?” Jude signed, and without waiting for her response, he turned away and strode out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

  Sadie backed up another step and sat down on the windowsill. She dumped the bow and her duffel ba
g onto the floor at her feet and buried her face in her hands, drawing in a slow, ragged breath, trying her best to not cry.

  Chapter 9

  Remy sat on the end of the bed in the room she and Dominic had commandeered, her bolo knife unsheathed and laid across her knees, her fingertips lightly dancing over the flat of the blade. The room had once been a guest room, if Remy’s interpretation of the lack of personal objects was correct. That was how she preferred it; too much personality in a room made her think about all the dead people, both the ones she did and didn’t know, that shouldn’t have died in the ways they had. It was too damned depressing.

  The day had been long and felt longer, filled with planning and coordinating their next moves, right on top of all the action and adventure of their escape from Woodside. The first full night they were spending in this house promised to feel even longer than the day, if the fact that she was wide awake was any indication. She hadn’t slept since she and Dominic had dosed her with the fluid in the vial she’d stolen from Derek, and she hadn’t felt like sleeping either. The same problem had arisen with food; none of it appealed to her, and just the thought or sight of food made her feel queasy.

  She was going to have to talk to Derek about this eventually, though the thought of doing so made her queasier than the idea of eating food. She didn’t want to imagine how angry Derek would be when she confessed to him that she’d stolen one of his cure samples and dosed herself with it. He was probably going to kill her, and she couldn’t blame him in the slightest.

  There was a rapid knock on the door, startling Remy out of her reverie, and she twisted around to look at it as it opened. Dominic slipped in and shut the door, then turned to her with a worried expression on his face. “What’s up?” she asked, ready to get to her feet. “Is it the infected?”