“He’s not a priority,” Brandt spoke up. “Our priority is getting to the other side of this wall so we can start the search for Cade.”
“This guy was pretty skilled, well trained,” Ethan said. “If we can get to him, then it would help to have another set of trained hands with us while we search for her.”
“Yeah, true, but he’s not a priority,” Brandt repeated.
Lindsey had stopped in front of the door set into the facility’s back wall, and she punched a four-digit code into a keypad mounted on the wall beside the door. There was a soft beep and a chunk like the door’s lock was disengaging. When she pulled on the door, it didn’t open. “What the hell?” Lindsey muttered. She punched her code in and tried the door again. It still wouldn’t open. “Something’s wrong with the door. Maybe the security system has it disabled.”
“Move,” Brandt ordered, nudging everyone away from the door. He was holding a crowbar, and he jammed one end into the crack of the door at the doorjamb. He wedged it in deeper and grasped it in two hands, then pushed. His biceps bulged and his face flushed red, his body shaking with the effort to pry the door open. With one last hard shove, the door popped open with a protesting squeal, and Lindsey pulled on the door handle, swinging it open so they could enter.
“I knew having the brawn around was a good idea,” Lindsey joked, patting him on the shoulder as she entered the building. Ethan stepped in behind her, followed by Kimberly, with Brandt taking up the rear. Ethan felt a compulsion to lift his pistol when he stepped into the darkened interior of the Eden Facility again but fought against the impulse. He had to stay calm, no matter how much this place made his hackles rise.
There was noise down one of the halls to his right, echoes of shouting with the not exactly indistinct sounds of gunfire. He drew in a breath, telling his nerves to keep steady, that now wasn’t the time for them to get jumpy. “What are the chances the infected that have gotten in would have gotten this far by now?” he asked Lindsey, not knowing how much the hallways twisted and turned and if they would pose enough of a challenge to the infected to slow them down.
“I don’t know,” Lindsey admitted. “I guess it depends on how extensive the damage was. At this point, I’d assume that we should go with ‘pretty damn far’ and be pleasantly surprised when they’re not as far along as we thought they’d be.”
“Let’s go with that,” Ethan agreed. “You know your way around here. Lead the way, would you? I don’t relish the idea of getting lost in a place like this.”
Chapter 56
Leaving Sadie behind was the last thing Jude wanted to do, but he didn’t have much choice in the matter. She’d practically dove over the railing to a platform below before he could make any sign of protest, and then Keith’s hand wrapped around his forearm and pulled, tugging him down the walkway back the way they’d come. They would have to find another route down to the ground level and figure out how to meet up with his sister and Cade somewhere down there.
Keith’s hand was tight on his arm, his fingers clenched on his skin. Jude wanted to ask him to let go, or to at least loosen his grip, but he wasn’t able to; he couldn’t speak, he couldn’t write while he was running, and he couldn’t do sign language because Keith didn’t know ASL. This was precisely the situation that Sadie had been worried about when she’d said that she wanted him to come with her: him being essentially voiceless, accompanied by no one who could understand him.
Since he was taking up the rear, he glanced back behind them. There were three soldiers on the platform walkway with them, rifles in hand, pursuing them at a pace slightly faster than his and Keith’s. He spotted a metal staircase that led to one of the lower walkways and jerked at Keith’s hand to get his attention, then pointed to the staircase that led down to it.
Fortunately, Keith got what he was trying to communicate, and he veered in that direction, shoving Jude ahead of him so he put himself between him and the oncoming soldiers. Jude wasn’t thrilled with the concept. He didn’t have a way to argue with him about it, so he continued on, clambering down the metal stairs as fast as he could.
“Go down two levels,” Keith instructed, his words breathless, “then cut back to the left. We’ve got to put some distance between us and them.”
Left? Jude mouthed. He couldn’t turn his head to question Keith about it. Left would take them back toward the gates and where the bomb had gone off…and closer to the infected. He’d have thought that was the worst place they would want to go, but he trusted Keith to not get him killed. He’d go with it for now, and he’d tell Sadie what happened and let her yell at him later.
The platform was empty, the ground below them teeming with infected. Jude shuddered when a bunch of them looked up at him and reached up, as if they could be reached from where they stood on the platform above their heads. The thought of what would happen if they got their hands on him and Keith was enough to make him want to vomit. He looked away from the mob and focused on running. He didn’t have time to imagine the grisly death that might lead to.
There was a figure up ahead, standing on the platform with its hip cocked, arms hanging loosely at its sides. It was a woman, Jude realized, and she looked like she was waiting on someone or something. He skidded to a halt as he recognized her, and Keith slammed into his back, nearly toppling him to the metal walkway. He caught himself on the railing, and he heard the precise moment that Keith recognized the disheveled, bloodied figure standing ahead of them, blocking their paths.
“Remy?” Keith said out loud, his voice leaden with surprise.
Chapter 57
Her legs burning with the effort, Sadie led Cade on an erratic, meandering path around the metal walkways, trying to get them down to a safe spot on ground level so they could get inside the building. She didn’t know what she would find in there. Hopefully it would be Cade’s husband. Though she didn’t know her well, she hoped that Cade would be reunited with Brandt. Those two gave off the impression that they were attached at the hip, and she hated to see people as tight as that separated from each other.
Now wasn’t the time to stew on that, though. They had bigger problems on their hands—like the fact that there were hundreds of infected swarming everywhere and four soldiers were doing their damnedest chasing them as they fled towards their target.
She scanned the walkways frantically, and she sucked in a breath when she noticed a walkway that connected to the building itself, a door set into the wall at the end of the walkway. “There!” she exclaimed, jabbing her finger in the direction of the door, and she steered toward it, jumping over another railing and barely waiting for Cade to do likewise. To her surprise, the door was unlocked. She flung it open and grabbed Cade by her shirt, hauling her inside. The door thudded closed behind them, and she stood inside the building, panting, fumbling for her pistol.
“Where did I just bring us?” she asked. The power inside the building was out, and there wasn’t a spark of light to be found. She heard Cade unzipping her backpack and digging around inside it, then there was a sharp crack and a faint greenish light blossomed in Cade’s hands. She shook the glow stick to mix the fluid around inside and handed it to Sadie. There was a lanyard on the glow stick, so Sadie looped it over her head, letting the stick settle against her chest. “Where did you get this?” she asked as Cade took out a second stick and activated it.
“I’ve been saving them in my kit for a rainy day,” Cade replied. “To answer your first question, I’d hazard a guess that we’re inside the facility. Just where I wanted to be.” She put her own glow stick around her neck, and the muddled yellow light illuminated the hard, determined look in her eyes.
“So what now?” Sadie asked. “We go hunting?”
Cade’s face spread into a slow smirk. “Oh yeah. We go hunting,” she confirmed. “I’ll lead, and you follow. Stay on the alert. We don’t know how many of the infected are in here.”
“Or other people who’d have the itch to do us wrong,” Sadie added. S
he waited for Cade to lift her big-ass rifle and take the lead. They started down the hall, and Sadie was grateful she wasn’t on the wrong end of that rifle. Cade looked like she had the fury of a thousand warriors in her eyes. She’d obviously been pushed to her limits, and Sadie knew that the moment she encountered the people who had Brandt, all bets were off.
The hallway’s walls, floor, and ceiling were all white. The sheer cleanliness of them, the austere, unmarked purity of them suggested medical facilities, hospitals, nursing homes, everything that Sadie hated. She suppressed a shudder at the frigid sterility of it and kept going, following Cade at a brisk walk, a pistol in her right hand and a machete in her left. She felt reasonably prepared for anything they might run into, so long as that “anything” wasn’t so plentiful that she ran out of bullets. Even with the three spare magazines on her belt, she wasn’t sure she had enough ammunition for all of this.
The facility was a maze that challenged even the most confusing hospital Sadie had ever been in. She had sickening memories filtering through her mind, memories of her frantic dash through the hallways of Grady Memorial Hospital, searching for the pharmacy, hoping to find the medication her mother had needed, and failing miserably. She tried to jar her thoughts loose from those horrible memories; now wasn’t the time to be thinking about all of that. Not when she was supposed to be backing up Cade, and especially not when Brandt’s life might have been riding on her ability to keep her head in the game.
There were footsteps somewhere ahead of them, hurried ones, like someone was striding rapidly toward a particular destination and wanted to get there without outright running. Cade drew up short and pulled her glow stick off, shoving it into her pocket, and Sadie followed her lead. There was light ahead, like the person who was coming down the hall had a flashlight. When she heard a voice, Sadie realized it was two people. Either that, or someone was really into talking to himself.
Cade’s hand pressed against her arm, and she followed the woman’s guidance to back up against the wall. “There’s two sets of footsteps,” Cade breathed to her. “You take whoever is on the left, and I’ll take the one on the right. Get on the other side of the hall and wait.”
Sadie smoothly and silently darted to the other side of the hall, just before the flashlight beam held by one of their targets swept around the corner.
A rapid assessment in the glow of the flashlight’s beam showed that their company was two men, one an obvious guard of some type—though he was outfitted in the standard digital camouflage that the military used now—and the other a superior officer. Sadie mentally rifled through all the military branches and their insignias that her father had painstakingly taught her and settled on Major. This guy was highly ranked; Sadie wouldn’t have been surprised to find out he was in charge of this place or very close to holding that title. The lower-ranked soldier carried the flashlight, and the Major’s hands were empty. It looked like Cade would have a slightly easier time of it than Sadie. The man with the flashlight was on Sadie’s side, and it wasn’t a small flashlight either—it was one of those big, heavy metal flashlights. A smack with that would hurt massively, and it was definitely a blow she wanted to avoid.
The flashlight beam illuminated the hall and their positions against the walls, and one of the men said, “What the hell?” Sadie raced forward, lifting her pistol, and plowed right into the soldier with the flashlight. The light dropped to the floor, spinning away, and she smacked the man against the side of the head with the butt of her pistol. He fell to the floor, stunned, and Sadie hauled him to his knees and put the machete’s blade against his throat.
“I wouldn’t move if I were you,” she said, her voice low. “I like to keep my blades very, very sharp.” The man stilled, and Sadie looked up from him to make sure Cade was okay.
She shouldn’t have expected anything less. Cade stood in front of the Major, her rifle on her shoulder, the barrel leveled at his face. Her expression was hard, emotionless, stony. Her finger rested against the trigger rather than staying outside the trigger guard, which was a good indicator of what Cade really wanted to do.
“I don’t care who you are or what you do,” Cade said. “What I care about is what the fuck you did with my husband.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the Major said. He seemed unruffled by the fact he was staring down the barrel of an IMI Galil SAR sniper rifle being held by a woman who not only knew how to use it but looked like she was itching to.
“Did I mention I hate liars?” Cade asked, her voice deceptively casual. “Sadie, tell him how much I hate liars.”
Sadie grinned. “The last person who lied to her ended up with no tongue and a hole in his head,” she said, realizing the irony of lying about how much someone hated lying.
“I cut the tongue out for the fun of it,” Cade said. She prodded the Major on the forehead with the rifle. “Now, where is my husband?”
“Who is your husband?” the Major asked. His voice wavered slightly.
“Brandt Evans,” Cade said, and the Major’s face paled.
“He knows him,” Sadie said, noticing the flicker of recognition in the man’s eyes that he tried to hide. “You can see it in his face.”
“I see it,” Cade acknowledged. “Where is he?”
“He’s in his cell,” the Major said. “We were just heading there.”
“I’m sure,” Cade said, her tone suggesting she didn’t believe a word he said. She nudged him with the rifle. “You’re going to tell us exactly where you stashed my husband. If not, well, I know some infected guys I can introduce you to that will be very happy to see you.”
“That’s not necessar—”
Cade jabbed him with her rifle again. “I will decide what’s necessary, not you,” she snapped. “Sadie, get rid of the extra.”
Sadie hesitated, trying to figure out what Cade meant, and when her brain caught up, she shook her head. “No,” she said. “He hasn’t done anything to me. I’m not killing him.”
“Just stuff him somewhere,” Cade said. “Make sure he doesn’t have a way to communicate with anyone. Otherwise, I don’t give a shit what you do to him.”
“Buddy, it’s your lucky day,” Sadie said. She pulled the machete away from his neck and pointed the pistol at him instead. “Get up and walk.”
The man obeyed, standing up on shaking legs and casting the Major a wide-eyed look. The Major didn’t return the look; he kept his eyes on Cade and her rifle. The lower-ranked man started walking, making his way down the hall back the way Sadie and Cade had come.
“What’s your name?” Sadie asked him.
“Private Hutcherson.”
“No, your first name.”
“Dean,” the man said. “Why do you want to know? Are you going to kill me?”
“I’m not going to kill you,” Sadie said with exasperation. She picked a random door and nudged it open with her foot. It was a supply closet of some sort, empty of everything, including supplies. She motioned toward the empty room with her pistol. “Get in.” She waited for him to step inside and turn to face her, and once he had, she asked, “You know anything about Brandt Evans?”
“Lieutenant Evans?” Dean repeated. “Yeah, they had me helping guard him. He hit me on the throat with a dinner tray and smashed my head on the wall before he escaped.”
Sadie snorted out a laugh. Escaped? “Count your blessings that you’re still breathing,” she said. “I hear he’s a mean bastard.”
“Obviously,” Dean said. He looked around warily and asked, “Are you going to lock me in here? We’re under attack, you know.”
“I’m aware,” Sadie said and shut the door. There was no real way to lock it from the outside without a key, but that didn’t stop her from looking. “Stay in there for ten minutes,” she called through the door. “If you come out before then, I’ll know, and I’ll hunt you down and make you regret disobeying me.” She waited for his acknowledgment, then turned and jogged back down the hall to wher
e she’d left Cade and the Major.
Sadie found Cade standing in the center of the hall. The Major was on his feet and backed up against the wall, his hands up in a defensive gesture. He was bleeding freely from a cut on his forehead, and what looked to be a significant bruise was forming on Cade’s jaw. “What happened?” Sadie asked.
“Fucker tried to get one up on me when you left,” Cade snarled. “He’s lucky I didn’t put a bullet in his head.”
“Very lucky,” Sadie said.
“Fucker still won’t tell me where Brandt is, either,” Cade growled.
“Not here,” Sadie told her. “I just got told that he escaped.”
“What?” Cade exploded, turning all her rage onto the Major. “You stupid mother fucker! You weren’t even going to tell me that, were you?” Bradford stared at her, his expression stony. Cade’s face flushed, and she let out a growl that made Sadie think of a pissed-off housecat before lifting her rifle and slamming the butt as hard as she could across the man’s face. He crumpled, dropping to the tiled floor like a sack of sand. Cade, apparently still not satisfied, landed several kicks on the man’s abdomen before Sadie grabbed her arm and pulled her away.
“Come on, Cade,” she said. “He’s useless. Let’s try to find information on our own.”
“Stupid fucker,” Cade snarled, kicking the man one more time before letting Sadie pull her away. Sadie let go of her arm, hoping she wouldn’t race back over and start assaulting the major again, and sent up a silent thanks that Cade started walking the way they’d initially been headed, deeper into the facility. They pulled their glow sticks out of their pockets and put them back on around their necks. They weren’t necessary, though; ahead of them, around a bend, light spilled down the hall, filtered through something—a door, perhaps.
Circling the corner, Sadie stopped short when she realized the light came from small, round security lights mounted on the wall close to the ceiling. They cast sporadic pools of light down the long stretch of hallway. It wasn’t the lights that had made her stop, however; it was the four people down the hall, near where a T-section crossed with the hall she and Cade were on. She raised her pistol, ready to fire at the newest potential threat to her and Cade. Cade cried out—Alarm? Joy? Sadie wasn’t sure—and took off running down the hall towards the figures and threw herself at one of them. When the figures came into focus, Sadie couldn’t stop the smile that spread across her face.
The Becoming: Redemption (The Becoming Series Book 5) Page 33