The Becoming (Book 4): Under Siege Page 8

  “Conceivably,” Derek acknowledged. “But I won’t do it, not yet.”

  Ethan gaped at him and tried to rise out of his recliner. “Why the hell not?” he demanded. “It could save so many people—”

  “Because I don’t know if it’s safe,” Derek said. “I don’t know what the side effects are—and there are side effects, if what happened in the kitchen earlier is any indication. And because I don’t know if I just got lucky with you or if it’s a sure thing, I’m not subjecting anyone to anything that isn’t a sure thing. I don’t know what I’d do if something went wrong.”

  Ethan sank back into his recliner. The doctor’s point was one he could understand, as much as he hated to agree with Derek in the face of humanity’s possible salvation. He tried to focus on the other problem facing the group, the reason the meeting had been called in the first place. “What about Remy?”

  “The fact of the matter is that the only combination that remains untested is the Evans and Day Strains,” Derek said. “I don’t know what’ll happen if they come into contact with each other. They’re both essentially lab-pure strains, and they’ve already shown they can be unpredictable, the Day Strain in particular.”

  “It’s why we need to roll Remy off the medications we’re giving her before we inject her with the Evans Strain,” Kimberly said. “We’re predicting that if we take her off the medications, the Michaluk Strain that’s being subdued by the Day Strain will make a resurgence, and when we introduce the Evans Strain into her bloodstream, it’ll behave as it has with Ethan.”

  “That’s the best case scenario,” Derek said. “I’ve already explained this to her. She got very ugly with me and has refused to talk to me since, even to answer questions about how she feels during exams. Obviously, she isn’t taking this well.” He turned to Ethan with a solemn look on his face. “Which is why I’m going to ask you to please try to talk to her about it. The last thing I need is her to go off and do something stupid because she doesn’t like what she’s hearing.”

  “So you told her she’s going to have to turn before you do anything for her?” Ethan asked. “Doc, that was a bad, bad move. You have no idea how she feels toward the infected. It’s like every single one of them has done something personal against her, and she’s not going to take kindly to becoming one, even if only for a short time. I think she’d kill herself before she’d let that happen.”

  “That’s why I’m bringing it up now,” Derek said. “You understand her psychology. You’ve known her far longer than I have and, as far as I understand, you’ve had…romantic entanglements with her. She’ll listen to you.”

  “Had,” Ethan pointed out, not liking the turn in the conversation, especially with Kimberly sitting beside him. “She’s obviously less than thrilled with the idea of seeing or speaking to me, in case you haven’t noticed. She didn’t once come to see me while I was bedbound. She doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because I tried to kill her!” Ethan exploded, coming halfway off his seat again and digging his fingers into the armrests. Brandt started to stand, but Cade pulled him back and shook her head.

  “You can work around that, can’t you?” Derek asked.

  “Oh my God,” Ethan groaned. He flopped into the recliner and dropped his head back against the headrest. “I can’t just work around that. Remy doesn’t function that way. You’d never believe the way that woman holds onto a grudge.”

  “Why do you think I’ve brought it up, and especially to you?” Derek asked. “Because you know how to handle her.”

  “I used to know how to handle her,” Ethan replied. “She’s changed, Derek. Just based off what Brandt and Cade and Kim have told me, she’s not the same Remy I knew before March.”

  “What about your love for her?” Derek asked.

  Ethan fought to not smack himself in the forehead or let out a groan. “Doesn’t that count for something?” Derek continued.

  “It would if I loved her,” Ethan snapped.

  The room fell silent, the tension crackling in the air as everyone exchanged glances. The declaration surprised even Ethan, though he couldn’t say that he was wholly surprised. Five months of hell and avoidance would be enough for almost anyone to fall out of love, especially if it’d been a relationship predicated on physical attraction. He stared blankly at the carpet. “I don’t…I don’t feel that way about her anymore. Not like that. There’s someone else.”

  Kimberly shifted uncomfortably on the arm of Ethan’s chair, and Ethan continued to avoid everyone’s gazes. He felt painfully embarrassed, like he was a teenage boy confessing his crush. Thankfully, Brandt chose that moment to draw everyone’s attention away from Ethan and onto himself, prompting Ethan to shoot him a grateful look.

  “Now that I—that we—have a better understanding of what we’re dealing with right now, meeting’s adjourned,” he announced. “We’ve all got a lot to think about, and we’re burning daylight just sitting here.”

  Chapter 10

  Remy wasn’t sure how she felt about the two teenagers she and Dominic had stumbled across. Her distrust was innate, she knew; it’d been quite a while since they’d seen any survivors outside their little commune, and she was worried that these two would bring trouble to the community.

  Assuming, of course, that she and Dominic weren’t about to do that themselves.

  As they followed Sadie and Jude toward the town of Hollywood, Sadie did most of the talking, filling them in on what little she knew. Jude, it seemed, was content to follow her and keep an eye out for encroaching dangers. Remy did likewise, following closely behind Dominic.

  “How did you hear about Woodside?” Dominic asked. “We haven’t exactly broadcasted our existence everywhere.”

  “A man named Joseph told us to go there,” Sadie answered. “We ran into him and some other guys while we were trying to get away from the zombies we told you about.” She motioned with the barrel of her shotgun toward the town that lay in the distance.

  “Where’s Joseph now?” Remy interjected. “And the rest of his group, for that matter.”

  “I think he’s dead,” Sadie said, her tone apologetic. “He and his guys got swamped. He told us which way to run and said that when we came across it to ask for a man named Brandt.”

  Remy heard Dominic swear under his breath, and she felt a sinking sickness settle into her stomach. Joseph and his crew were dead. Their supply team was dead. She couldn’t pretend elation at the thought of a new supply team forming or of herself being on that team, even if Dr. Rivers listened to her pleas and cleared her for work. She liked Joseph, had liked his friendliness and his understanding and the way he’d rallied for her when she’d tried to get onto his team. And now he was dead.

  “So where have you been hiding during all of this?” Dominic asked as she refocused on the conversation.

  “All of what? The outbreak?” Sadie asked.

  Dominic nodded.

  “We’ve been living off the land, hiding in the woods where we’re less likely to run into any zombies.”

  “You’ve been roughing it?” Remy asked. “How long?”

  Sadie shrugged. “Six, seven months now? We tried staying in town and holing up in houses but got tired of the zombies bothering us. Our parents used to take us out camping a lot, so we got all the stuff together that we thought we’d need, hiked into the woods as far away from anything resembling civilization as we could get, and set up camp.” She spoke as if shutting herself and her brother away from other survivors and any support they could offer was no big deal. “We haven’t had much contact with zombies until now. And we hadn’t seen any other people for several months until we ran into that Joseph guy and now you two.”

  “But why would you do that?” Remy asked. “Why would you shut yourselves away from people like that?”

  “Because it’s safer that way,” Sadie said, as if the answer should have been obvious. “We only ever went near towns o
r put ourselves into situations where we might run into people when we needed supplies that we couldn’t scavenge out of the woods. That’s how we ran into Joseph. We’d run out of a lot of stuff that we couldn’t do without anymore, so we went into town to try to find supplies.”

  Remy stumbled on a crack in the pavement, and Jude’s hand darted out, grasping her elbow. “Thanks,” Remy said.

  Jude merely nodded but stayed silent, continuing to walk alongside them, his blue eyes scanning their surroundings.

  “So where did all the zombies you told us about come from?” Remy asked, directing the question at Sadie, since Jude didn’t seem up to talking.

  “I don’t know,” Sadie admitted. “We hadn’t seen any zombies in weeks and weeks. So damn long I actually lost track. And then it’s like, bam, there they all were.”

  “What about the highway?” Remy asked. “What happened to it?”

  “Yeah, I don’t remember it being like this last time I came through here.” Dominic motioned toward the ground, referencing the crushed pavement underfoot.

  “We noticed this a couple of weeks ago,” Sadie said. She dug into the black pack on her back and pulled a bottle of water free, uncapping it and taking a long swallow before continuing. “We were heading along Highway 162, which we’re on right now, and it was cleared,” she said, passing the bottle to her brother. “Totally cleared. Three weeks before that, it had been jam packed with cars and trucks, as far as the eye could see.” She swept her hand sideways, as if to illustrate her point. “There were so many cars that we could barely cross it. It’s one of the highways that comes west out of Charleston, you know?”

  “Not really,” Dominic admitted. “Neither of us is native to South Carolina. It’s just where we ended up.”

  “Well, 162 splits off from 17 and heads southwest from Charleston,” Sadie explained. “I always thought maybe people got off 17 and onto 162 thinking they could make it out of Charleston before things got bad, but they bottlenecked themselves outside of town.

  “Anyway, five weeks ago, Jude and I slipped into the outer edges of Charleston to gather supplies and had our usual trouble getting across 162. Two weeks ago, we came back the same direction to get additional supplies, and all the cars in the center of 162 were gone. The highway had been cleared, and all the cars were shoved onto the shoulders, like giant metal walls. We started following the road to see how far it was like that, and we got as far as Hollywood before we were attacked. Someone is clearing 162, and I don’t know who it could be. I wouldn’t think there’d be anyone left with the manpower or tools to move so many cars so quickly and so…discreetly.” She pointed at the pavement beneath their feet. “The road is buckled and collapsed like this the whole way. It’s chewed up like something’s rolled over it that was way too heavy for the pavement to handle. Maybe it was something that happened when the cars were cleared out. I don’t know.”

  “Are you sure the cars themselves didn’t do this?” Remy asked.

  Dominic shook his head. “No, this isn’t damage from the cars,” he said, pausing to kneel and get a closer look at the pavement. He ran a hand over the tracks and added, “This is heavy machinery, like a tank or something like it. You can see where the treads tore up the pavement.” He touched the indentations in the pavement, perfectly spaced, to emphasize his point.

  “A tank?” Remy repeated, feeling excitement welling up. “Like, the military? Do you think they’re finally coming to help us? Do you think they’re taking back everything from the—”

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” Dominic snapped, and Remy gritted her teeth. He straightened and brushed his hand against his pant leg. “Even if they are, they’re not going to have time for people like us.”

  “You mean people like me,” Remy retorted. “They’d love people like you, what with your experience in the—”

  Dominic gave her a sharp look, and she cut herself off. She gave Sadie and Jude a wary glance. “Sorry.”

  “Continue,” Dominic said to Sadie, giving her and her brother a short wave to indicate they should keep walking.

  “We’ll need to get quiet now,” Sadie said. “We’re coming close to where the infected should be, if I’m estimating the distance versus speed right.”

  Obligingly, Remy and Dominic fell silent and followed the twins up the final hill to Hollywood. Jude stopped them several feet away from the crest of the hill and signaled for them to go into the trees on the side of the road. They obeyed, climbing over the cars lining the highway and scrambling into the shadow of the brush. Dominic held his rifle at the ready, and Remy drew her bolo knife, and they continued parallel to the highway until Sadie motioned for everyone to stop.

  “They should be right ahead,” she whispered. “They were just milling around last time we saw them, but they were drifting this way. The uphill coming out of town has them slowed down. It takes a lot of time for them to get going up steep slopes like that.” She wove between the trees expertly, clearly on a path she’d taken before. Remy followed, and as they reached the cusp of the hill, she got her first look at the town of Hollywood and what she and Dominic had almost walked into.

  Dominic let out a gasp beside her, and she swallowed down one of her own.

  A sea of infected. Hundreds upon hundreds of them.

  And they all appeared to be heading in the direction of Woodside.

  Chapter 11

  When Brandt woke with the sun in his face, it took him all of two seconds to realize he’d overslept from the nap he’d been taking with Cade. He grunted and rolled onto his side, putting his back to the window to block the early evening sun. He relaxed again, forcing the tight, strained muscles in his shoulders to loosen. The bed was comfortable, the sheets were cool, and if he closed his eyes, he could pretend there hadn’t been an apocalyptic viral outbreak that had been raging for over a year and a half.

  “It’s about time you woke up,” a voice said from somewhere near the foot of the bed. The smell of tea brushed against his nose. Cade. Of course.

  Brandt grunted again, huffed out a breath, and opened his eyes. His wife stood at the foot of the bed, fully dressed in her customary jeans and tank top—how many of those things did she own now, Brandt wondered—with her dark hair pulled back in a tight ponytail and a ceramic mug grasped in her hand. She nudged his foot through the bed sheets. “Come on, time to get moving, lazy,” she chided.

  Brandt flipped his arm over to look at the watch on his wrist. “It’s six?” he said in surprise. He’d been asleep for almost four hours. “Why didn’t you wake me up earlier?”

  “You looked like you could use the sleep,” Cade admitted. “You’ve been working hard lately, and I figured the others could handle things without you for a little bit. But now it’s business time, so get up.”

  Brandt levered himself into a sitting position. The bed sheet fell down to his waist, and he saw Cade eyeing his torso with obvious appreciation. “Business time?” he repeated.

  “Yeah, come on,” Cade said, nudging his foot again. He looked her over and noticed for the first time what his sleep-fogged brain had initially missed: the look of worry in her blue eyes and the crease of concern marring her forehead. He wanted to crawl to the end of the bed and rub the crease away.

  “What happened?”

  Cade hesitated, then went to the dresser and set her mug on top of it. She dug fresh clothes out of the drawers for him as she answered. “Joseph’s supply team didn’t come back when they were supposed to.”

  That was enough to get Brandt moving. He flipped the bed sheets off and swung his feet to the floor. “What happened? Does anybody know?”

  “All we know right now is that Joseph told Keith that he and his crew would be back by three and they never showed up,” Cade said. She tossed a black t-shirt and a worn pair of camouflage pants onto the bed beside him.

  “They filed their search plans though, right?” Brandt said. He scooped the t-shirt from the bed and tugged it on over his head. “We can
send somebody after them and make sure they’re okay. Maybe they’re just holing up somewhere for the night. It wouldn’t be the first time.” He pulled his pants on and stuffed his feet into the combat boots by the bed.

  “They didn’t file one,” Cade said.

  Brandt paused in the act of lacing one of his boots and tilted his head to look at her in surprise.

  “Somebody obviously fell down on the job,” Cade said. “So we’re not sure which direction they went. Keith was just letting us know so if they don’t show by sunset, someone can go tell Joseph’s wife.”

  Brandt blew out a breath and shook his head, finishing the double-knot in his bootlaces before standing. “No. I’m tired of telling people their husbands and wives and lovers are dead or missing. I wouldn’t like it if someone told me something happened to you, and I sure as hell don’t want to be the one to do it to any more people. I’m fucking tired of losing people.”

  “So what do you propose we do?” Cade asked, retrieving her ceramic mug. She downed the rest of her tea in a quick gulp.

  “We should get together a search party. I’m sure Keith at least knows the direction they headed in when they left. I don’t see why he wouldn’t have noticed that. God knows he notices everything else.” He scooped his gun belt from the table by the bed and buckled it around his hips.

  “Can I speak candidly?” Cade asked. Brandt glanced up and saw that she hadn’t moved from her spot in front of the dresser. Her empty mug dangled loosely in her fingers, precariously close to dropping to the floor.

  “I wouldn’t like it if you didn’t,” Brandt said. She’d never asked anything like that before, and he wondered at her question.

  Cade pressed her lips together, as if she were thinking over her words, and she said, “I’m not certain going after them is a good idea.”