The Becoming (Book 4): Under Siege (16 page)

“You’ve lost one what?” Kimberly asked. She
frowned and snagged another stool, sinking down onto it and resting
her elbows against the workbench’s surface. Being downstairs, she
could barely hear the infected outside the gates; the absence of
noise was enough to make her want to stay down here
permanently.

“A sample,” Derek answered. “I’ve lost one
of the samples of Brandt’s blood, and I don’t know where I put it.
I’ve torn this place apart, and I can’t find it.”

Kimberly raised an eyebrow and reached for
the black case near his elbow. It was snapped closed, and as her
fingers brushed against its hard plastic surface, Derek snatched
the case back, pulling it closer to him where she couldn’t get to
it.

“Are you sure it’s missing?” she asked.
“Maybe you used it and don’t remember—”

“What sort of idiot do you think I am, Kim?”
Derek asked, sounding harsh and almost bitter. Kimberly had seen
him like that only once before, and he’d been angry with himself
then. She figured it was probably the same situation again. “I
track everything. I record
everything
. If I dispose of a
vial, I write it down in here.” He grabbed a blue notebook and
slapped it onto the workbench between them. “If I get a new sample
from Brandt, I write it in
here
.” He slammed another
notebook, this one red, on top of the first one. “And if I use one
in testing, I note it in
this
one.” He added a yellow
notebook to the pile. “I never
not
record anything. There is
a vial missing.”

Kimberly frowned and shoved her hair back as
she thought the problem over. “Do you think you might have
misplaced the one you took with you to the meeting?” she suggested.
“You had it in your coat pocket, remember? Maybe it’s still
there.”

The doctor buried his head into his hands
again. “I’ve already looked. It’s not there.”

“Shit,” Kimberly murmured. She could see why
he was concerned now. The last thing they needed was for a sample
to go missing and for the wrong person to get their hands on it.
She rocked back on her stool and thought the situation over again,
trying to decide on the best course of action.

“How do things look outside?” Derek asked
after a long silence, during which Kimberly considered and tossed
three different ideas.

“I haven’t been out since me, you, and Ethan
went to the medical house to gather some supplies,” she said. “But
I know it wasn’t good then, and I don’t expect it to have gotten
any better.”

Derek nodded and shoved a few stray papers
to the side. He rested his forehead against his hand again. “Where
are we going to go when they get in?” he asked. “We can’t expect to
be able to pick up and set up shop in a new place, can we? The
chances of finding everything we need to get the lab going again
are nonexistent.” He shook his head, rolling it back and forth
across his palm. “It’s over, Kim. I don’t see us being able to
continue our research after this. Not if we get uprooted.”

Kimberly was trying to keep a positive
outlook on what would likely be a terrible future for them all, but
with Derek talking like that, it was almost impossible. She sighed
and dragged her hand through her short blonde hair, shaking her
head and trying to focus past the sickening, ominous feeling
settling into her stomach. She straightened on her stool and
scanned the room and equipment they’d collected. “I guess we’re
just going to have to make the best of whatever comes our way,” she
said. “That’s about all we can do, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I suppose so,” Derek said. He didn’t
sound like he believed his own words, and he didn’t look at her as
he slouched lower on his stool. He rubbed at his eyes and sighed.
“We have a vaccine now, Kim, or as close to a viable one as I can
get under these circumstances. We need to get my research and the
samples into the hands of someone who can take it further. I refuse
to believe we’re the only ones left. There has
got
to be
someone out there who can take this and run with it further than I
can.”

“What are you proposing we do?” Kimberly
asked.

Derek shook his head. “I don’t know. Before,
I’d planned to talk to Brandt, to see if he’d be willing to let a
volunteer with some basic medical know-how take the samples and go
in search of someone who can possibly help us with them.” When she
gave him a wide-eyed look, he rushed to add, “No, not me. Just
someone we could trust.” He sighed. “Now, though, with the
community being attacked, I don’t know how we’ll be able to get the
possible vaccine out of here and to a safe location. All of our
work might be for nothing.”

Kimberly stood up and shook her head. “I
refuse
to think it’s over, that this is the end of the
road,” she declared. “We have worked entirely
too hard
to
just give up now, and I’m not going to let you even
think
about doing so.”

“Well then, what do you suggest we do?”
Derek demanded. “Because I hear you saying all this shit, but I
sure as hell don’t hear you giving me any solutions.”

Kimberly pushed away from the workbench and
started for the basement stairs. “I’ll take a few samples and go
myself,” she said. “I’ll hunt down someone who can take them and do
what needs to be done, do what we can’t do ourselves.”

“You can’t
possibly
think I’d let you
go on a mission like that!” Derek exclaimed. He rose from the stool
he’d been mired on since she had come downstairs, and she smiled
inwardly at the expression of determination and anger on his face.
“I need you here! I can’t do this by myself!”

“Do all of
what
by yourself, Derek?”
Kimberly retorted. “We have a grand total of two patients, and one
of them won’t be a patient for much longer. Ethan’s almost at the
point where he won’t need me for anything medical anymore, and
you’re the one dealing with Remy’s medical care. As soon as she’s
cured, you won’t have any patients, and neither will I. It’s time,
Derek. We’ve
got
to take action before it’s too late. And
the minute the infected manage to surround the entire community, it
will definitely be too late.”

“So you want to, what, take some supplies
and charge through the mess that’s right in front of the community
gates?” Derek asked. “That’s just asking for you to get eaten!”

“Don’t be so silly,” Kimberly said. “I’ll
climb over the wall at the back of the community. All it’ll take is
a ladder and some rope. It’s not
that
hard.”

“What about backup?” Derek countered.
“You’re an okay shot with a pistol, but you’re not
that
great. You’re going to need someone who can help you, and I don’t
know if there’s anyone here who will be able to do that.”

“You act like I have zero ability to take
care of myself. I’d have thought that Atlanta would have proven
that I’m capable of doing what needs to be done to keep myself
alive,” Kimberly said. She jabbed her finger at the stairs. “And
there are over fifty people up there, at least half of whom would
probably try to volunteer to take me to wherever we need to go so I
can get the samples into the right hands.”

Derek stood there silently, staring at her,
his jaw bulging as he clenched his teeth. He looked like he was
thinking over what she was proposing and disliking every second of
it. Finally, he let out a low growl and shook his head. “Fine, do
what you think you need to do,” he said. “But I get to help pick
who goes with you.”

Kimberly barely suppressed the whoop of
pleasure at his concession. She turned and started up the stairs.
“I’m going to go find Brandt and tell him what’s going on,” she
said. “Maybe he’ll help me find someone to go with me, and then we
can figure out what to do after that.”

Remy managed to move from the medical house to
Dominic’s without being accosted by anyone. As she stood on the
porch waiting for Dominic to answer the door, she focused on being
calm and controlled and on forming a plan of action to avoid the
doctor’s intended fate for her—because if the doctor was discussing
it again, then that meant he was probably planning to do something
soon. She had plenty of ideas, but almost all of them were long and
complicated or just plain stupid and almost always ended in certain
death. One idea stuck out from the rest, though, and as she mulled
it over, she wrapped her fingers around the object she’d stolen
from Derek, as if it were a talisman that would guarantee her
success. The coolness of the glass against her palm offered her
some degree of reassurance but did nothing to settle the nerves
twisting in her gut.

The door swung open, and Dominic stood in
the doorframe, looking decidedly uncomfortable at the idea of
letting her into his home—never mind that he’d invited her himself.
He looked her up and down and glanced past her as if checking to
make sure she’d come alone, and she held her breath, hoping he
wasn’t about to change his mind. She let it out as he sighed and
motioned for her to enter.

“Come in. Make yourself at home,” he said.
And as she stepped over the threshold, he added, “But not
too
much at home.”

Remy smiled and stepped into the house,
pausing in the foyer as he pushed the door shut and locked it
again. As Dominic bolted the door, she took a few moments to
examine the interior of the house that no one else in the community
had seen. It was dark, all of the windows having been boarded over,
so she couldn’t make out much beyond the halo of light cast by the
small camp lantern that Dominic held. She could see the outline of
a table to her right, shoved against the wall with several tools
laid on it, and hooks had been driven into the wall above it;
jackets and coats and some sort of backpack—emergency supplies, if
she knew Dominic—hung from them. She shoved her hands into her
pockets, the fingers of her right hand caressing the vial tucked
inside, and rocked on her boot heels as she said, “Nice place you
got here.”

“Stop blowing smoke up my ass,” Dominic
muttered, though even in the dim light, Remy could see the grin on
his face. He slipped past her, tapping her on the arm. “Come on,
follow me. Dinner should be ready.”

“Oh really?” Remy asked. Enthusiasm slipped
back into her voice for the first time since Cade had yelled at her
near the gates. “When did you start cooking this? There’s hardly
been enough time between me stepping into the medical house and me
getting here to get anything done.”

“It’s soup,” Dominic said. “I cooked it
earlier today and just warmed it up.”

At her dubious look—soup didn’t seem like
the most enticing meal to serve a woman after inviting her into his
home—he added, “It’s the good kind, not that canned crap. Well, not
totally. The vegetables came out of cans.” He shrugged. “And I
think it might actually be thick enough to qualify as stew.”

“Does it have meat in it?” Remy asked.

“Well, yeah, some squirrel. Why?”

“Then it’s a stew, because stews have meat
in them,” she said, smiling as she followed him into the kitchen.
She leaned against the counter as he pulled the lid off of a small
pot on the propane-fueled camp stove set up on the counter.

“And what, soups don’t? How do you explain
chicken noodle soup?”

“I’ve never been totally convinced that that
chicken is real chicken,” Remy quipped, and Dominic laughed. As he
ladled the stew into two bowls, Remy felt the tension in her
muscles and back melting away like butter in a warm pan. She
fingered the vial in her pocket again and bit her lip, trying to
decide if she wanted to let him in on her plan. She didn’t know
what would happen, and if it backfired, she might need assistance
that she couldn’t give herself. Assistance that might require
bullets.

She shook the thought away and focused on
Dominic. That was something to be broached after they ate, she
decided. The last thing she wanted was to spoil dinner with talk of
death, especially since he seemed to be reaching out to
someone—
finally
—after all his time in Woodside.

Remy remained quiet for as long as she could
while she and Dominic ate their meals by the light of his LED
lantern. The stew ended up being very good by Remy’s estimation;
she’d had no idea Dominic knew how to cook. When her spoon scraped
against the bottom of the bowl, she rested it against the side and
pushed it away from her. “That was pretty damned good. Where did
you learn to cook like that?”

“I had five siblings and an absent dad,”
Dominic said. He scooped another spoonful into his mouth before
adding, “It was a necessity, because my mom had to work all the
time. I was the oldest, so I had to take care of everyone else. The
usual sad story.”

“These the same siblings you wanted to find
in Philadelphia a few months ago?” she asked.

“Yeah, but I don’t see that happening
anytime soon,” he admitted. “And it was halfway an excuse to get
out of Woodside. People here, they don’t like me, and I don’t like
them. I’d be better off out of here.” He dropped his spoon into his
bowl and muttered, “They’re probably all dead, anyway, and it
doesn’t matter with the infected out there. We’re not getting out
of here now.”

Remy wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she
looked at the table, sliding her fingers into her pocket again and
hooking them around the vial. She slipped it out and held it under
the edge of the table. “If I ask you to do something for me, can I
trust you to do it?”

Dominic must have heard the seriousness in
her voice, because he set his spoon down again and studied her
closely in the lantern’s light. “Depends on what it is, I
think.”

Remy ran her left hand through her hair
before she set the vial onto the table between their bowls. The red
fluid inside it shined dully in the light from the lantern. Dominic
leaned forward to get a better look, and his eyes widened.