The Becoming: Redemption (The Becoming Series Book 5)

by Jessica Meigs

  Ethan shoved past several more infected as he continued forward. “Remy, what the hell are you doing?”

  Remy’s expression had betrayed her shock and surprise at his presence, but with his words, it became hard with anger. She stormed toward him, stopping short of arm’s reach, and said, “What the hell am I doing? I’m giving them what they deserve!”

  “What they deserve?” Ethan repeated. “What do you mean?” He was still pointing the pistol at her, and he lowered it, though he kept the weapon out and ready to fire.

  “All of this!” Remy said, waving her hand around. “They put this fucking thing up, and they trapped us all in that hellhole and left us to die!” A slow smirk spread across her face, casting her expression in an evil light. “All I’m doing is breaking our chains, knocking down their prison walls, and giving them a taste of exactly what they forced on us!”

  “There are innocent people on this side of the wall,” Ethan pointed out. “People like us.”

  “There is no one like us!” Remy snapped. She held her hands out to the sides, the tip of her bolo knife’s blade nicking one of the nearby infected. Ethan caught a glimpse of the gunshot wounds that riddled her body. Jesus, how is she still standing? “Look at where we are!” Remy insisted. “We are standing in the middle of a horde, and not a single damn one of them is trying to kill us.” She shook her head. “We can do this, you and me. We can make them do whatever we want them to do. We can punish the people responsible for all of this!”

  “Who are we to decide who needs punishment?” Ethan countered. “That is not our place to decide. We’re not God, Remy.”

  Remy widened her already outspread arms. “Yes, we are! We can do anything we want! We can control the dead. And we’re immortal! Look at me! I’ve been shot twelve times, and I’m still standing. If that doesn’t make us gods, then I don’t know what does.”

  “That’s blasphemy, Remy.”

  “I don’t care what it is, it’s the truth.” She looked up at the walkways above them, where several soldiers still fired into the horde. “You should let me go take care of them before they shoot one of us in the head. I’m not willing to test whether that will kill me, even if the others didn’t.”

  “No, Remy,” Ethan said. “You’re not going to kill anyone else.”

  “You going to stop me?” Remy asked, her tone high and querulous.

  “If you insist on continuing this, I’ll have to,” Ethan said. “I can’t let you hurt innocent people. You know I’m not going to stand by and let you do that.”

  “That’s too bad,” Remy said. “I didn’t want to have to kill you.” She took three brisk steps towards him and lifted her bolo knife like she was about to try to cut his head off. He took a step back, and when she moved toward him again, he lifted his pistol and fired a single shot.

  Remy stumbled, her eyes widening, a neat bullet hole in her forehead above her right eye. She collapsed, dropping to the dirt at his feet, her body twitching.

  Ethan stared until her body ceased to function, the gun still raised and pointed at her. He noticed he was shaking when he saw the barrel of the gun tremoring. “Oh God,” he said.

  He was crying. He realized this objectively, like he was standing outside of himself and watching the proceedings from afar. One of the infected jostled him from behind, and he lowered the gun, realizing he had more problems at hand, ones that meant he would have to mourn later. He stepped up to Remy’s body and gently closed her eyes before picking up her fallen bolo knife, which lay by her hand. Then, still shaking, he looked at the infected around him.

  He had a lot of work to do. And not one bit of it was going to be any fun.

  Chapter 61

  Kimberly couldn’t believe what she was watching. After Remy had fallen dead at Ethan’s feet, he’d picked up her bolo knife. Everything that followed had been nothing short of a miracle.

  He herded the infected. There was no other word for it. He yelled at them, he cajoled, he ordered, pushed, and shoved, and batch by batch, he rounded up the vast majority of them and steer them in the direction he wanted them to go—right back toward the hole in the wall, the hole Remy had put there. Most of the infected obeyed his commands, shuffling along in the proper direction. There were some that didn’t obey, that didn’t comprehend what he was trying to get them to do, and those were the ones that he plunged his knife into.

  Kimberly wanted desperately to go down there and help him. She knew she couldn’t. She didn’t have whatever ability Ethan had to walk invisibly among the infected. She itched to fire Cade’s rifle into the mess of them, but she only had the ammunition that was in the rifle; Cade hadn’t given her any spare magazines. All she could do was stand where she was and watch Ethan methodically clear as many infected as he could from the helipad and the surrounding area.

  Brandt joined her after a while, leaning against the railing beside her. Soldiers had begun to descend from the walkways and emerge from the facilities to help, and the work went more rapidly after that.

  “Remy’s dead,” Kimberly told Brandt, breaking the silence between them.

  “I figured that much,” Brandt commented. “It was only a matter of time before she snapped, and I always knew that when it happened, there wouldn’t be any pulling her back from it. I’m not sure Sadie is going to be okay.”

  “Did Jude…?”

  “Yeah,” Brandt said, and his voice cracked. “He didn’t make it. Neither did Keith.”

  “Shit.”

  They stared at the mess below for a long moment. The soldiers had taken advantage of what Ethan was doing, and they’d gone out to help, putting down infected while a squad worked to get portable walls deployed and maneuvered into place. Kimberly pressed her lips together, hoping that some idiot wouldn’t get the wise idea to take a potshot at Ethan. An action like that would put her in a position to start shooting, which was something she didn’t want to do.

  Fortunately, it didn’t come to that. The soldiers weren’t projecting any outward signs of ill will toward Ethan, and he stayed with them until the temporary, portable walls were erected to block the hole. When he stepped away from them, he moved back to Remy’s body and knelt there for a long moment. He slid his arms underneath her and lifted her limp form from the ground. He shifted her so she settled comfortably against him and started toward the metal stairs he’d descended, climbing them slowly. Brandt and Kimberly met him at the top of the stairs, and he smiled crookedly, though there were tears in his eyes.

  “Are you hurt?” Kimberly asked when he reached the top of the stairs. She reached out to help him with his burden, but he shrugged off her attempt at assistance.

  “Not physically,” he answered, his voice hoarse. He stepped past her, carrying Remy toward the facility building.

  “Where are you going?” Brandt asked, following behind Ethan, with Kimberly bringing up the rear.

  “I’m going to go find that Bradford bastard,” Ethan said. “We have some samples and research he stole from us that we need to get back.” He cut a glance to Kimberly. “I believe we promised we’d put it into the right hands. Nothing I’ve seen yet tells me that these are the right hands.”

  Kimberly nodded in understanding and let him lead the way to the facility’s entrance. Cade was waiting there, and Kimberly handed her rifle back.

  “Where’s Sadie?” she asked.

  “Still with her brother,” Cade explained. “Lindsey is staying with her until we’re done here.” She looked at Ethan, staring with obvious sorrow at Remy’s body in his arms. “Where are you going?”

  “To find that asshole Bradford,” Ethan replied.

  “Well, lucky you, I remember exactly where I left him,” Cade said.

  Chapter 62

  Bradford was still where Cade had left him, only now regaining consciousness from the blow she’d delivered. He was sitting slumped against the wall, his head lolling, trying to fight his way back to the waking world. When he saw her approaching him, Kimberly,
Brandt, and Ethan behind her, his eyes widened, and he instantly became more alert.

  “Well, well, well,” Cade said as she stopped in front of him. “Look who’s returned to the land of the living.” She sank into a crouch in front of him, angling her rifle so if she squeezed the trigger, the bullet would hit some part of his body, and tilted her head to the side, examining him. “You look like shit,” she said.

  Bradford stared at her warily, looking like he desperately wished for a weapon to use against her.

  Ethan joined her. He’d set Remy’s body on the floor nearby, and he had her bloodied bolo knife in his hand. He pointed the blade in Bradford’s general direction. “I believe you have something that belongs to me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bradford tried, clamping his mouth shut when Ethan tapped the edge of the knife’s blade against the underside of his chin.

  “Don’t lie to me, Bradford. I’m not in the mood for it.” Ethan’s tone was deceptively mild, but it sent chills down Cade’s spine. It was the kind of voice that she’d heard both police officers and her IDF commanders use when giving orders, the kind that said they had a finite amount of patience and an unwillingness to use any of it. “Where is my stuff?”

  “I’d talk if I were you,” Cade urged when Bradford hesitated. “I don’t know where Ethan happens to be mentally, but I can assure you that I’m not in a good place, and my trigger finger is itching to be put to use.”

  Bradford sighed. “In my office. The file drawer on the right.”

  “Is it locked?” Cade asked.

  “Most likely.”

  When he didn’t elaborate further, she growled at him. “Key?”

  “It’s on a clip on my belt,” Bradford said. He shifted and reached behind him. Ethan tapped him on the underside of his jaw with the tip of the bolo knife, and Bradford froze.

  “Nuh-uh,” Ethan said. “Cade, you get the key. Bradford, I don’t suppose I have to tell you that if you attempt to hurt or attack her in any way, I’ll give you a cricothyrotomy, whether you need it or not, do I?”

  Bradford shook his head, slowly, and Cade slid a hand along his belt. She found the clip he’d referred to and held it up for Ethan to see. “Got it. Now what are we going to do about him?”

  Ethan stared at Bradford, and Cade glanced up at him, worrying about what was going on in his head. He was rattled mentally; she could see that as plain as the nose on his face. She had no doubt that Remy’s death was taking its toll on him. It was taking a toll on her, and she was struggling to not let it. She’d mourn later, when other events around her weren’t so pressing, when she and Brandt could be alone somewhere and she could cry it out like her brain was telling her she needed to do.

  “Let’s leave him,” Ethan said, much to Cade’s surprise. “He’s not worth the extra stain on my soul that killing him would put there.”

  “You sure?” Cade asked, glancing at Remy’s body, laid out on the floor behind them. She had to admit to herself that she was itching to plug a bullet in this asshole, even if it was just his kneecap.

  “I’m sure,” Ethan said. He tapped Bradford on the underside of his jaw again. “He’s not going to do anything to us, is he?”

  “I’m not,” Bradford answered.

  “Then you can do something for us,” Brandt said, stepping forward to loom over the major. He knelt down and started frisking him while Cade watched Bradford to make sure he wasn’t going to try anything stupid with her husband. He didn’t, thankfully; he’d have paid a heavy price if he had. Brandt scrounged up a service pistol and a knife from Bradford’s belt and passed them to Kimberly. “You’re going to do whatever it takes to inform the general public that we are not infected, that there are survivors on the south side of the wall. Further, you’re going to go to whoever made the decision to abandon all of us, and you’re going to talk them into launching rescue missions for survivors to bring them over the wall where it’s safer. Don’t tell me you can’t do it, either. That answer isn’t acceptable.”

  “Anything else?” Bradford asked dryly.

  “Yeah, actually,” Brandt said, glancing at Cade for a second as if he were seeking her approval. “You’re going to supply us with a helicopter and a flight crew, and you’re going to tell them to fly us anywhere we want to go.”

  “Why would I do something like that?” Bradford snapped.

  “You don’t have a choice,” Cade said. “Because, in case you haven’t noticed, you don’t hold the power here. If you expect to get out of this alive, you’ll do as we ask.”

  Bradford looked irritated, like he wanted to argue with them, but he rolled his eyes and said, “Fine. I’ll make the arrangements.”

  “Good.” Cade pushed herself to her feet, and Brandt joined her. “Lead the way to your office before I can’t hold back the urge to kick your ass any longer.”

  Bradford stood, staggering until he got his balance, which made Cade wonder how hard she’d hit him on the head earlier. He stood there for a second, propped against the wall, then pushed off it and started down the hall at a slow, unsteady pace. Cade let Brandt walk ahead of her, just behind Bradford, and when she glanced back at Ethan and Kimberly, she saw that Ethan was kneeling to scoop Remy’s body off the floor again. She motioned to Kimberly, signaling her to go on ahead, and approached Ethan with a worried frown on her face.

  “Eth, what are you doing?” she asked.

  He slid his arms underneath Remy’s slender, limp form and eased her off the cold floor. “Picking her up,” Ethan said. “What’s it look like?”

  “Why don’t you leave her here until we wrap this up?” Cade suggested, trying to keep her voice gentle.

  “No,” Ethan stated firmly, straightening and lifting her off the floor. “I’m not leaving her behind. Not again.” His eyes met Cade’s, a depth of sorrow in his gaze that she’d never seen before, not even when he’d come back from Memphis with Nikola and reported the news to her that his wife Anna was definitely dead. “I shouldn’t have left,” he said. “I shouldn’t have come here. I should have stayed at Woodside. Maybe I could have talked to her. Maybe I could have, I don’t know, stopped her from going down this path.”

  “You think you could have stopped this from happening?” Cade asked. “Eth, she was a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. And believe me, when it comes to bombs, they’re made to go off. You couldn’t have stopped it.”

  “You can’t tell me that and expect me to believe it,” Ethan said. He brushed past her, carrying Remy with him down the hall in the direction the others had gone. Cade sighed and followed him. There wasn’t going to be any reasoning with him; he’d already convinced himself this was his fault, and he wasn’t going to change his mind because Cade argued with him over it.

  In Bradford’s office, the Major stood by and waited while Brandt unlocked the desk drawer in question and pulled out a familiar stack of battered notebooks. Brandt stacked them on the corner of the desk and straightened, taking the backpack Cade offered him and stuffing them into it. Once he was done, he offered the pack to Kimberly, and she shrugged it on.

  “What now?” Bradford asked.

  “Now for that helicopter,” Brandt said.

  “Helicopters,” Ethan spoke up, emphasizing the plural. “Wherever you’re going, I’m not going with you.” He looked down at the body in his arms and, at their curious gazes, explained, “I have a stop I have to make first.”

  Epilogue

  I.

  The whomp-whomp of the helicopter rotors above Brandt’s head was soothing, a familiar sound that stirred up memories from his time in the military, the camaraderie he’d shared with his fellow soldiers. Those were times he occasionally missed, because life had been so uncomplicated then. Sure, he’d had to deal with getting shot at and with the horrible, gritty feeling of sand making its way into his uniform on a constant basis, but it hadn’t been anything he couldn’t deal with.

  His life now, though, he wasn’t too sure about.
He was immune to the Michaluk Virus, one of the greatest viral threats to ever attack humanity. And not only that, he was the carrier for what could in essence become a vaccine or a cure for the very same virus. He rubbed at his forearm, fingering the edge of the medical tape that held one of the fresh bandages over his wounds. Lindsey had changed the dirty bandages out before he and Cade had boarded the helicopter, and the tape was tugging at his arm hair, reminding him of the wounds there and on his shoulder every time he felt the sharp pain of the tugs. Thoughts of his wounds reminded him of how he’d gotten them and the sheer terror and desperation he’d felt when he’d been under attack.

  It wasn’t something he wanted to experience again.

  Lindsey had stayed behind at the Eden Facility, and the last time he’d seen her, she’d been at the desk of an office she’d commandeered, poring over the research that Derek Rivers had compiled, assisted by Chris Meiner, who they’d found still in his quarantine cell, alone and probably forgotten, and Jacob Howser. Brandt hoped that Lindsey and Chris would figure out how to use it, maybe do something to cure all this mess. Perhaps Lindsey could solve the puzzle so no one else had to go through what he dealt with on a daily basis.

  Cleanup from the detonation in the wall was still ongoing in Eden. Methodical sweeps were being conducted, searching for any infected that had managed to get through to the other side, systematic searches of the city and the surrounding areas that they were predicting would take weeks yet. As soon as he got back to Eden, he had every intention of joining in on that search, if only because he felt some partial responsibility for what had happened.

  “You okay?” Cade’s voice, accented and tinny, filtered through the speakers on his headset, startling him out of his reverie of worry and stress. The headset she wore looked comically large on her head. He shook his head, then nodded, then shrugged.