The Becoming: Redemption (The Becoming Series Book 5)

by Jessica Meigs

  The target of Cade’s wrath stood at the foot of the bed, his arms folded over his chest. She could imagine that, at any moment, Derek would start tapping his foot with impatience, but she didn’t care. She was too furious to give a shit.

  The ticking clock on the wall was the only sound in the room. She glared at Derek, struggling to hold her tongue while they waited for the conversation’s third party to return. Just when she began to wonder if she would burst, the thump of boots walking down the hall reached her ears, and Isaac stepped into the room.

  “Sadie’s awake, and she needs aspirin,” he said, pushing the bedroom door partially closed. Derek crossed the room and dug into his medical kit for the requested medication. Once he had it, he passed it to Isaac, who gave it to the young woman out in the hall. He shut the door and cast a glance at the swaddled infant on the bed beside Cade, her hand resting protectively on the sleeping baby.

  “Where were we?” he said, his voice low.

  “I believe Derek was telling us why I can’t go find my husband and save him from the fucking United States government!” Cade snapped. “And I was telling him why he can take that explanation and shove it up his ass!”

  “Hey, that isn’t fair,” Isaac said. “Derek is only looking out for your health and the baby’s health. He’s got to be concerned about this, because you sure as hell don’t seem to be.”

  “I’m concerned about my health,” Cade protested, resisting the urge to slap him. He’s a friend, and he’s worried, that’s all, she reminded herself. She took a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm down, but it was in vain. Nothing was going to calm her down when she was this far gone. “I’m also concerned about the state of Brandt’s health,” she continued. “What if he’s dying? What if he’s dead? We don’t know what sort of condition he was in when they took him and—”

  “If they wanted him dead, he’d already be dead, Cade,” Derek pointed out. “They wouldn’t have taken him alive if they hadn’t wanted him to stay that way.”

  “They shouldn’t have taken him to begin with!” Cade said, too loudly. The baby, Olivia, stirred and made a whining sound. Cade picked her up and cradled her to her chest. The next time she spoke, she lowered her voice. “I want to know why. Why did they take him? What the hell did they need him for? And where did they take him?”

  “We’ll get Dominic in here, and he can tell us everything he saw,” Derek said in a soothing tone that made Cade want to claw his eyes out with her blunt fingernails. “In the meantime, you should be resting. Put aside this idea of going after him and—”

  “I’m. Going. After. Him,” Cade said emphatically. The idea of not going after her husband infuriated her, and she clenched her fists and tried to muster all the authority she’d wielded in the IDF to make the two men listen to her. “You’re not going to change my mind, so stop trying. You can either help me and be part of the solution, or you can try to stop me and be part of the problem. One way or the other, you’re going to keep out of my fucking way.”

  “Cade…”

  “Do not use that fucking tone with me, or so help me God, I’ll turn you inside out and shit on your organs.”

  “Colorful,” Isaac commented.

  “So will you help me or not?” she asked Derek, ignoring Isaac. “Because if not, I’d like to know now so I can plan accordingly.”

  “Why are you so insistent on going after Brandt?” Isaac asked. His voice was gentle, inquisitive, non-judgmental, and Cade was grateful for it. “I mean, I understand that he’s your husband, but we don’t have the means or the knowledge to track down his location. It’d be the literal needle in the haystack.”

  Cade sighed. “Atlanta,” she said, like that explained everything. When both men continued to stare at her blankly, she elaborated. “Earlier this year, when I was taken to Atlanta by Alicia’s people, Brandt came after me. It didn’t matter that I was perfectly capable of taking care of myself. It didn’t matter that he had no idea where in Atlanta I’d been taken. He did it anyway. And now that he’s in the same situation, I can’t not try to help him, even if that means wandering all over the United States to find him.”

  “Which hopefully won’t be necessary,” Isaac said. “What about your baby? You can’t take her with you.”

  “No, I can’t,” Cade agreed. “That’s a hurdle we’re going to have to cross when we get to it. In the meantime, it’d probably be best if no one pissed me off any more than I already am. I’m tired, cranky, and liable to blow a gasket.”

  “We most assuredly don’t need any gasket blowing,” Isaac remarked.

  Derek was still staring at her, and she arched an eyebrow in silent challenge. “I can’t go along with this, not willingly. There’s no way your health is where it needs to be for you to go off and do something like this.”

  “Before all the shit hit the fan, the blasted hospitals were sending new moms home on practically the same day they birthed their babies!” Cade argued.

  “True, but that was before, when we had access to far better medical care than we do now,” Derek said.

  “Come on, Derek, there’s got to be something you can do to help her,” Isaac said.

  Derek pointed a finger at him, giving him a warning glare that was in no way intimidating. “Not you too.” He turned his attention back to Cade. “Two weeks,” he requested. “That’s all I’m asking for. Two weeks.”

  “What if Brandt doesn’t have two weeks?” Cade asked.

  “Then he’s going to have to cope,” Derek said. “Physically, I don’t think it’s safe for you to be out in such circumstances, not until I’ve made sure you’re okay. I think two weeks will be enough time for me to verify that. In the meantime, we can use those two weeks to come up with a plan and prepare, because I’m not allowing you to run off half-cocked.”

  Cade flopped back against her pillows. The movement jostled Olivia, and a thin wail began to emanate from the blanket-wrapped bundle. She made a shushing noise and started to jiggle the baby like she’d seen mothers do before the Michaluk outbreak. The baby girl didn’t seem to like it much, and her wails grew louder.

  “One week,” Cade said, loud enough to be heard over the baby’s cries. “No more, no less. Come hell or high water, I’m leaving in one week to find my husband.”

  Chapter 3

  Remy had a headache from Hell. It was all she could focus on since they’d gotten to their temporary shelter outside of Charleston. She’d dosed herself with aspirin she’d found in one of the ambulance’s cabinets, but it didn’t make much of a dent in the pain. She sat secluded in one of the upstairs bedrooms, blankets hung over the windows to block the light, curled up in the darkest corner of the room with her eyes closed.

  She was trying to find some hidden well of peace and solitude and painlessness inside herself. The faces of all of Woodside’s dead kept floating to the forefront of her mind, which made her feel like throwing up.

  All those people were dead because of her. Because Dominic had taken her out to make her happy, and she and Dominic had found Sadie and Jude, and trying to save them had led those damned things back to their safe place.

  Sure, they’d saved Sadie and Jude. But were the lives of two people worth the loss of fifty?

  “No, of course not,” Remy said out loud.

  “No, of course not what?” Dominic asked from the doorway.

  Remy didn’t bother to open her eyes. “Nothing,” she answered. “Just thinking out loud.”

  The door clicked shut, and footsteps crossed the room. Dominic had a slight limp she’d never noticed before, judging by the sound of his feet against the floor. There was a scuff on the floorboards, and she opened her eyes to find him crouching in front of her, his forearms resting against his knees. His balance on the balls of his feet was perfect, not a wobble to be seen. His steadiness made her jealous.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice low like he was afraid that someone was listening in.

  “Other than the fact I’ve
got a splitting headache?” Remy asked. “I wish I could say it was nothing outside of the usual parade of bullshit, but it doesn’t appear that I can tell you that.”

  Dominic brushed a hand through her tangled hair, pushing it back from her face, and traced his fingers along her jaw. “Have you taken anything for your headache?”

  “Yeah, about an hour ago. I don’t think it’s working.”

  “Okay then, since we can’t get you anything else for it yet, let’s address the other problem,” Dominic said. “What’s bothering you?”

  “What makes you think something is bothering me?”

  He traced his thumb over her cheeks, first the left and then the right. “Because you’ve been crying,” he said.

  Surprised, she reached up to touch her face; her fingertips came back wet. “Oh,” she murmured. “I didn’t realize…”

  “It’s okay,” he said. He squeezed her shoulder in reassurance and pressed his hand against the side of her neck. “There’s no need to apologize. I want you to talk about it. Tell me what’s going on in that pretty head of yours.”

  Remy almost said, “Nothing,” again, though she knew that Dominic would call her out on such an obvious lie. Besides which, she couldn’t think of any good reason to not tell him. Of all people, Dominic knew what she’d been through over the past few days, and if there was anyone she could talk to about how she felt, it was him. She cleared her throat, closed her eyes, and murmured, “Is this all my fault?”

  “Is what all your fault?” Dominic asked.

  “All of this,” Remy said, waving her hand around. “All those people who died in Woodside. Did they die because of me?”

  There was a shuffling sound, and she opened her eyes. Dominic slid around to sit against the wall beside her. He drew a knee up, resting an arm on top of it, and stared at her, assessing her. She tried to not squirm in discomfort at his intense, steady gaze, barely able to hold her eyes onto his face. “Why would you think that was your fault?”

  “Because…because those infected followed me to Woodside. If they hadn’t done that…”

  “Then they would have found Woodside anyway, and we would have ended up in the exact same situation,” Dominic said. “The good thing is that, in the process, we were there to help Sadie and Jude. They might not be here today if we hadn’t gone out. And we wouldn’t have had any warning at all. We wouldn’t have gotten the cure out of Woodside before the infected got in.”

  “But…fifty people, Dominic,” Remy said. “They’re all dead, and I can’t help thinking it’s my fault.”

  “It’s as much my fault as it is yours,” Dominic said. He grasped her hand and laced his fingers between hers. “I took you out there, remember? I was with you when they followed us to Woodside. Us, Remy. Not you, us. It wasn’t just you who was out where you shouldn’t have been.” He sighed and added, with the faintest twinge of despair, “Some of them might have survived—we might have gotten some of them out—if it hadn’t been for the fucking military.”

  Remy’s shoulders tensed and her jaw clenched at the mention of the soldiers who had invaded Woodside, at the memory of the excitement she’d felt when she’d thought they were there to rescue them—and the horror and fear she’d experienced when they’d opened fire, on both the infected and on the survivors, like they’d been one and the same. A stab of pain darted through her jaw from the force of the tension she exerted on it, and she struggled to loosen it before she did damage to her teeth.

  “Fuck ‘em,” she muttered. “Fuck all of ‘em.”

  “They were just following orders,” Dominic said. “There are quarantine protocols for that sort of thi—”

  “Fuck their protocols!” Remy shouted, her anger surging. She sat up straighter, ignoring the pain spiking in her head. “Their protocols killed a lot of good, innocent people! Why would they be following quarantine protocols, anyway? The whole fucking world is a quarantine zone! They might as well shoot themselves if they’re killing everybody in a so-called quarantine zone!”

  Dominic’s hand tightened around hers, and he shook his head, pulling her back and over against him. “Calm down,” he murmured, threading his hand through her hair soothingly. “I’m angry too. But there’s no way being as mad as you are is helping with your headache.”

  “It’s not,” Remy said. “But fuck, Dominic, can you blame me? All those people. The children. Sasha and Shae. They’re all gone.” Her emotions hardening, she glared at the wall across from her, a substitute for those at whom she wished she could direct her fury. “Those sons of bitches should pay for what they did to them, and to us.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more,” Dominic said. “But how are you proposing making them pay? God only knows where they are now.”

  “I guess we’ll have to track down where they took Brandt then,” Remy said, clenching her fist with her determination. “That will bring us the added bonus of finding him, and then we could slaughter the motherfuckers that took him and killed our people in one fell swoop.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Of course I’m serious.”

  “Remy, you’re talking about premeditated mass murder,” Dominic said. He sounded like he was struggling to be patient. At this point, though, Remy didn’t care if she pushed his buttons. Maybe they needed to be pushed. “That doesn’t sound like the Remy I know. I’m all for teaching them a lesson. I just don’t know if I can condone setting out exclusively to kill people who aren’t infected.”

  “You helped us do that with Alicia,” Remy pointed out.

  “Alicia was a psychotic megalomaniac,” Dominic said. “She was an immediate danger to us all, and something had to be done about her.”

  “So, what, it’s okay to kill someone in cold blood if they happen to be crazier than a road lizard, but if they’re of sound mind, suddenly it’s immoral?”

  “Remy, that isn’t what I meant, and you know it,” Dominic snapped. “Jesus, where do you even get these ideas?”

  “Maybe, oh, I don’t know, out of your mouth?” Remy shot back. “That’s clearly how you operate, and don’t say it isn’t, because you’ve already proven it. What happens if I go crazy like Alicia did? You going to have somebody put a bullet in my head too?”

  “Is that what’s bothering you?” Dominic twisted toward her. She moved away, sliding along the hardwood floor to put some distance between them. “You think this is going to be an Old Yeller situation? That I’m going to shoot you because you might go crazy?”

  “Of course not,” Remy retorted. “You’ll get someone else to do it for you. You know, like you conned Brandt and Cade into killing Alicia.”

  “I didn’t con them into killing her,” Dominic said. “Both of them had a history with her and her insanity, and if I recall correctly, so did you. Or do I have to remind you of what she almost did to you back in Hollywood when she and her thugs—and yes, I’m including myself in that—took Cade?”

  “No, you don’t,” Remy muttered.

  “Sorry, what was that?” Dominic asked sarcastically. “I couldn’t hear you.”

  “No, you don’t!” Remy yelled. Somewhere in the next room, a baby started crying. She felt a pang of guilt for waking Cade’s baby, but she ignored it, burying it where it wouldn’t bother her again. She didn’t have the space to add any more guilt onto the guilt she was already carrying.

  “Jesus, would you keep it down?” Dominic admonished. “You woke the baby up.”

  “She’ll live.” Remy pushed off the floor, staggering sideways a few steps as her aching head swam and her stomach churned. She braced a hand against the bedpost and drew in a deep breath, trying to steady herself. Her nerves were vibrating under her skin, and she had the irrational urge to grab the nearest warm body and dig her fingernails into its face. She shook it off, grinding her nails into the bedpost instead, and straightened, squaring her shoulders. She stiffened when Dominic’s hands pressed against her back.

  “Talk to me, Remy, please,” D
ominic said. His hands slid up her back, barely skimming her shirt. “You’re lashing out, and I’ve never seen you do that unless something or someone has you upset. Talk to me, okay? You know I’m not going to judge you, no matter what’s going on, even if it involves me.”

  Remy closed her eyes. The temptation to go limp, to sag backwards into Dominic’s arms, was so great she almost gave in. She fought it, though. She was scared that it wouldn’t be well received and that she’d like it too much. She was still trying to tell herself that she didn’t really like him—though both of them knew that was far from the truth.

  “You’re scared, aren’t you?” Dominic asked, sparing her the admission. She didn’t respond. His hands moved up to her hair, scraping through the strands to pull them back from her face. “It’s okay,” he whispered in her ear. “I am too.”

  Remy raised her eyebrows and turned to look at him. “You, scared?” she said. “You can’t be scared. You’re not allowed.”

  “It happens occasionally,” Dominic said. He pulled her closer, hooking an arm around her waist and holding her against him. He took her hand in his, lacing their fingers together and extending their connected hands like they were dancing at a ball. Remy smiled and slipped her hand up his chest to settle it on his shoulder in the appropriate position. He returned her smile. “I’ve been scared plenty of times in my life. I’ve been in so many situations that I almost didn’t make it out of that I had to learn very quickly how to live with that fear.”

  “How did you learn to live with it?” Remy asked.

  He spun her around and pulled her close again. “That is one of the things I wish I could teach you,” he murmured, brushing his lips against her cheek with a smile.

  Chapter 4

  The group that gathered in Cade’s bedroom later that day was dreadfully small. Dominic did a headcount of the people in the room with him, and his heart sank. They were down to eight people. Eight people out of over fifty. The low number was disheartening, and he fervently hoped that some of the others had managed to slip out of their houses and get out of Woodside before the military bombed the community.