The Becoming: Redemption (The Becoming Series Book 5)

by Jessica Meigs

  Lindsey mashed the button on the blood pressure machine to inflate the cuff, struggling to keep her tears at bay. It wouldn’t do for her to come out of his cell crying; word would certainly get back to Bradford, and he’d jump hoops to make sure she didn’t have contact with Evans again. She’d have to save her tears for when she got home after her shift, when she could fully process the news and try to cope with it. For now, she had to reassure herself with the news that, despite her worst fears coming true, her sister was out there, and she still had hope of reuniting with someone from her family. “Thank you,” she said, “for helping Cade at least make it this far.”

  “She’s more than capable of taking care of herself,” Brandt said, “though that doesn’t stop me from trying to do the best I can to help her.”

  “So she’s still as stubborn as always?” Lindsey asked, unable to help the small smile that tried to surface to her lips.

  “Is she ever not stubborn?” Brandt replied, and Lindsey stifled a laugh that turned into a sob. He squeezed her hand again and let go.

  “Look, will you do me a favor?” Lindsey asked. When he nodded almost imperceptibly, she continued. “Keep your head down, and try your best to do whatever they ask you to do. Stay as healthy as you can.”

  “What for?” Brandt asked, sounding like he really wanted to ask, What’s the point?

  “Because I’m going to do my damnedest to break you out of here,” Lindsey said fervently.

  Chapter 21

  Their encounter with the escaped lions was long past them. However, that didn’t change the fact that Dominic was more tense than he’d ever been before, his eyes constantly scanning their surroundings for oncoming dangers, not trusting anyone else to not miss something and end up getting him killed at the hands of the infected. Or a lion. Or a tiger. Or a gorilla.

  That would be his luck, to get his face ripped off by the elusive western lowland gorilla in downtown Atlanta, a la Congo.

  “You okay?” Remy asked. She was looking at him with something bordering on curiosity and worry.

  “I’m not going to lie, those lions shook me up,” Dominic admitted. “Not something you expect to run into when you’re out and about in Atlanta, of all places.” For what felt like the millionth time, he twisted his head around to look back into his blind spot. “Makes me worry about what else we might run into in the city.”

  “Maybe we’ll see some capuchin monkeys,” she replied. “I’ve always thought those things were adorable.”

  “Yeah, adorable until they attack you en masse,” he retorted.

  “You sound like you have some experience with that,” Remy commented, and he snorted.

  “No, not personally. There was a CIA agent once who got himself in trouble in that manner,” he said. “Granted, they were trained monkeys, but still.”

  “That is quite possibly one of the weirdest stories you’ve referenced to me yet,” Remy said. “I’m not sure if I should feel sorry for the guy or just amused.”

  “Neither,” he said. “He’s probably dead.”

  “Good point,” Remy agreed. She smiled brightly and asked, “So what are your plans after all of this is over and done with?”

  “All of what?” Dominic asked. She motioned to the road ahead, indicating their current mission, and he sighed. “I don’t know. Help Cade get Brandt back, for sure. After that? I haven’t decided yet. Maybe I’ll stick around. Maybe I won’t.” He shrugged and rested a hand against his holstered pistol. “I’ll have to play it by ear once we get further into this mess.” He raised his voice and called, “Somebody tell me where we’re at!”

  “Coming up on Hill Street!” Cade called back.

  “Not much further,” Dominic commented to Remy. “Maybe half an hour of walking, give or take a little.”

  “Sounds great,” Remy said. “Think we’ll run into trouble anytime soon?”

  “What, the lions weren’t enough for you?” Dominic asked incredulously.

  “Oh, they were plenty,” Remy answered. “I just have all this excess energy and I’m itching to burn it off.”

  “Excess energy?” Dominic repeated. “You should count yourself lucky. I don’t feel like I have a crumb to spare.”

  Remy held out her hand. “Here, I’ll share mine with you through osmosis,” she offered, a tiny smile on her face. Dominic glanced at her hand. A smile of his own cracked across his lips, and he slipped his hand into hers. The fact that she was taking that step, that she was actually offering him that small gesture, was enough to make his hopes soar.

  “Does it work that way?” he asked.

  “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”

  Dominic’s smile disappeared as she drew to a halt, her eyes widening at whatever was ahead, her fingers tightening around his. He mentally cursed his momentary lapse of focus and shifted his eyes to the scene ahead.

  The road had begun to narrow halfway down the block before it became almost a tunnel, buttressed by the brick and concrete walls that had been built into the embankments rising on either side of them. Above those were an abundance of overgrown trees and bushes that sagged over the wall, shading it from the sun. The concrete walls rose higher and higher until they met a dark tunnel that passed underneath a large complex of railroad tracks, supplying a road for those trying to get to the other side without holding up traffic for trains to pass. During the attempted evacuations of Atlanta’s citizens, many of the cars that had come this way appeared to have plowed right into the concrete walls on either side of the road, further narrowing and partially blocking the path. Ahead, close to the mouth of the tunnel, was a horde of infected that swarmed out of the darkness, climbing over each other and trying to scramble over vehicles in their haste to get to their prey.

  “Oh my God,” Dominic said, taking a step backward. “We’ve got to get the hell out of here!”

  “Not happening,” Keith said, coming up behind him, breathless and sounding resigned, like he’d already reached his quota of freaked out for the day. “There’s a bunch behind us too. Shooting the lion was a bad idea.”

  “No kidding,” Dominic said. He looked around, taking in their surroundings.

  Cade pointed to their right and started in that direction. “There! That way!” she called to them, choosing what looked to be the point of least resistance. She hurried toward the waist-high chain-link fence that lined the road before the concrete wall began and scrambled over it into the shade of the trees and bushes on the other side. “Come on!”

  No one hesitated to obey her suggestion, since it seemed like the easiest and most plausible escape route. Cade stood guard, rifle in hand, as first Remy, then Sadie climbed the fence, followed by Dominic and Jude. Keith was the last person to clear the fence and without a moment to spare. When his feet met the soft earth on the other side, the first of the infected reached the fence, the swarm slamming into it with enough force to take it down to the ground.

  “Holy shit!” Keith yelped, stumbling, and Jude ducked back to grab his arm and haul him to his feet.

  “Move, move, move!” Dominic shouted, waving them out ahead of him. He spun to face the infected, lifted his pistol, and scrambled backwards at the same time, trying to cover their retreat. A hand closed around his backpack and pulled him backwards, and Remy yelled in his ear.

  “No time for that shit! They’re coming from the east too!” she shouted, yanking him around to run with her. “Go ahead of me! If anybody can hold them off, it’s me!”

  “You don’t know for sure if they’ll ignore you while they’re in a frenzy like this!” Dominic protested.

  Remy hesitated, looking between him and the infected with rapid glances. “You’re right, and I don’t feel like chancing dying today. Let’s go!”

  They started running, scrambling up the embankment’s steep incline, their eyes on the backs of the others ahead of them. The space underneath the trees was far more shaded than the street, almost too dark to be running in, Dominic realized as he near
ly ran right into one of the overgrown saplings that jutted from the ground. There was a building to their right that served as an excellent break for the infected coming from that direction, funneling them and the ones behind them into a bottleneck that slowed their progress.

  The group burst into the sunlight again when they reached the edge of six sets of railroad tracks. Dominic caught up with Cade, who was breathing heavily, and they looked in either direction.

  “Clear?” Cade asked.

  “Yeah,” Dominic confirmed.

  The group started across the tracks, stumbling and tripping over railroad ties and rails, trying to outrun the approaching horde. When they were safely across, they ducked underneath the shadow of an overpass that held more tracks, skidding down another steep embankment littered with trees.

  Dominic was never so glad as he was then for his feet to meet the reassuring concrete of a sidewalk. He looked back, making sure the others were still with him. They all looked tired and winded, though he didn’t dare let them stop, not until they’d shaken the crowd behind them.

  “Which way?” Cade yelled.

  They were approaching an intersection. Dominic squinted, trying to make out the street sign ahead as he ran. Was that…? Did that say…?

  Yes, it did. Decatur.

  “Left! Turn left!” he shouted, making a wide turn and bolting across the street, dodging crashed vehicles and debris. Most of the sidewalks down Decatur were clear, and he tried to keep everyone on them so they wouldn’t expend unnecessary energy trying not to run into things. They were quickly running out of sidewalk. There was an overpass up ahead, choked with vehicles that blocked the path in several places.

  Much to Dominic’s surprise, they got halfway across the overpass without any difficulty. When they were dropping into a clearing near the halfway point that would let them run at least twenty yards before having to scramble over more vehicles again, someone behind Dominic shrieked.

  He shouted to Cade, “Keep running straight! This will turn into Marietta. Turn right on Spring and then left on Luckie!” He spun around to see who’d screamed.

  It was Sadie. She was sprawled on her stomach across the hood of a car, several infected grabbing at her, trying to drag her back over the vehicle and into their waiting hands.

  “Keep going!” he ordered Remy when she too stopped and made as if to go back to help. “I got this. Stay with Cade!”

  He drew his machete and ran back the way he’d come.

  Chapter 22

  There was a sharp pain in Cade’s side, and her chest hurt from her struggle to breathe, but she didn’t hesitate to obey Dominic’s orders to keep running. Remy was beside her, pacing herself to Cade’s stride, though Cade knew for a fact that Remy could run faster than she could. She pressed a hand to her side, massaging at the ache there, and glanced behind her long enough to make sure that Keith and Jude were still with her and Remy. They were, though Keith had his hand clasped around Jude’s wrist, and Jude looked like he was trying to resist their forward progress. He probably wanted to go back to help his sister, and Keith was preventing it.

  Good for Keith, Cade thought. The last thing they needed was for more people to be separated from the core group. She wasn’t in her best shape, and she had a feeling that, if she were attacked, she’d need as many of them as she could get to help her out of the situation.

  As it was, she’d be lucky to make it to the Tabernacle at this rate.

  “Not much further!” Remy reassured her, right before Cade stumbled over the shredded remains of a tire that she hadn’t seen and nearly faceplanted onto the pavement. Remy grabbed her arm and steadied her. Cade didn’t have time, or the breath, to thank her, so she just kept running.

  The overpass on Decatur was left far behind them as they made it to Marietta, and the sight of the street sign was enough to give Cade her second wind, to motivate her into running faster. All her hope rested in finding Spring Street, on getting to Luckie and to the Tabernacle. She would be damned if she let even exhaustion ruin that hope for her.

  Though there were no signs of infected ahead of them, she wasn’t going to take the chance of letting her guard down, not now that she’d gotten this far.

  “Cade!” Remy called. Cade barely glanced at her as she powered down the street as best she could. “Spring Street! Just ahead!”

  Cade found one last burst of energy somewhere deep within herself, and she surged forward, cutting right onto Spring Street. She slowed, twisting around to look behind them to see if the infected were still following them. When she didn’t see anything behind them, she slowed further, stumbling to a slow jog and then winding down to a walk. Her lungs burned and her muscles ached. She breathed in as deeply as she could, ignoring the pain in her legs. She held her sniper rifle in both shaking hands, clutching it tightly and close to her body. She saw a few infected ahead of them, halfway down the block, but they were trapped in the center of several cars that had crashed into each other, creating a corral of steel that they couldn’t get out of.

  “Everybody okay?” she asked once she’d gotten enough air into her lungs to speak. Remy, who’d stopped beside her, nodded, though she was looking beyond them at the trapped infected.

  “We’re okay,” Keith reported breathlessly, “but Jude wants to go back to find his sister.” He still had a grip on Jude’s wrist, and Jude struggled against him, trying to wrench himself free, looking like he wanted to bolt back the way they’d come.

  “Jude, I know it sucks, but Sadie will be fine,” Cade said, examining their surroundings. “Dominic is helping her. I need you to focus and help me. We’ve got to get to the Tabernacle, and I need your attention on the here and now.” Jude stopped struggling with Keith and glared at her, and she imagined that, if he could speak, she would be getting an earful right now. No matter; she had more important things to attend to. “We can’t be very far away from the Tabernacle,” she added. “Let’s get moving. Stay alert, and don’t stop for anything.”

  Despite their mad, exhausting dash, they all moved briskly, weapons at the ready in case anything assaulted them on the rest of their journey. Cade returned her rifle to her shoulder and took out the machete Dominic had insisted they all carry. She wasn’t a fan of bladed weapons when it came to fighting the infected; still, she gripped it tightly in her right hand, walking toward the three infected that were corralled among the cars. She was tempted to climb over the cars and kill them, but ultimately she had neither the time nor the energy to deal with them, especially not when there was a clear path around them to the right.

  They cut around the wreckage, squeezing through a small gap between the crushed front end of a truck and the brick wall of a building, and Keith let out a pained swear. Cade twisted around, expecting the worst. She only saw him slipping the rest of the way out of the gap, a hand clamped against the side of his knee.

  “What happened?” she demanded.

  “I cut my leg,” Keith said, pulling his hand away to look at his pant leg. It was stained with a splotch of blood, and the fabric was torn. “No big deal,” he reported. “Keep going. I’ll keep up.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, yeah, of course.”

  Cade turned back to the path ahead. Two cars along the way, there was a figure crouched behind the vehicle, hands gripping the hood as it peered over the edge to stare at them. Its eyes were rheumy and cloudy, and Cade had no idea how it could even see them. Regardless, it was in their path, and she would have to take care of it before they could proceed. She bounced her machete in her hand, speeding up to take on the infected woman that was rising from her spot behind the car.

  She was only a few feet away from her, lifting the machete to take her swing, when Remy grabbed her shoulder and shouted, “No, don’t!”

  “What the hell are you doing, Remy?” Cade exploded, checking her swing at the last second.

  “I’ve got this,” Remy said. The infected woman launched herself across the hood toward Cade. Cade
backpedaled, raising the machete into the swing, but Remy put her hand up to stop her and moved closer to the infected woman, staring at her with thinly veiled curiosity. She walked toward the infected woman, who stared up at her like she was enthralled with Remy. When she reached to within arms’ length of the infected woman, she stopped and pointed at a space past her and to the left. “Go away,” she ordered, her voice firm. “Get out of here.”

  Much to Cade’s surprise, the infected woman listened to Remy, stumbling away in the direction she’d been ordered to go, periodically looking back toward them, which earned her another barked, “Go!” from Remy.

  “What the hell was that?” Cade demanded when the infected woman disappeared from view behind a wrecked transfer truck. Remy shrugged and started walking again. Cade hurried forward and grabbed her shoulder, pulling her around to face her. “What. Was. That?” she asked emphatically.

  “I don’t know, okay?” Remy snapped back, her cheeks flushing with anger. “It’s been going on since I…since I dosed myself with the stuff in Derek’s vial. It’s like I can tell them what to do, and they listen to me. Whenever I’m around them, they don’t try to attack me. They just let me pass.”

  “And you planned to mention this when?” Cade asked, keeping her voice down with a valiant struggle.

  “Never,” Remy mumbled, not looking at her. “It’s not like I like being a freak. The last thing I want to do is go around advertising it.”

  Cade shook her head. “You’re not a freak, Remy,” she said. Before she could take the conversation any further, Remy pointed into the distance.

  “Luckie Street,” she said.

  They’d made it. Cade felt a rush of relief surge through her, and her questioning of Remy was forgotten when she saw the green and white sign hanging from the pole that arched above the street. “Thank God. How far from here?”