The Becoming: Redemption (The Becoming Series Book 5) (32 page)

“Who did you plan to give this…research to?”
Bradford asked, dragging a thumb over the stack of papers and
ruffling the edges of the pages.

“Anyone we found who appeared to not only be
reputable but who might have had the ability to do something with
it,” Ethan answered. “We have no interest in withholding it from
anyone who may need it. Neither do we have a desire to turn it over
to someone who would.”

“How did you end up in the company of this
one?” Bradford asked, nodding his head toward Chris.

“We met him on the road when his squad
attacked us,” Ethan said. “We had to get out of there, and we took
him with us. His mask had gotten pulled off in the fight, so he had
a motivation to avoid contact with other people due to your
apparent policy of shooting anyone who comes into direct contact
with what you’ve decided are the infected.”

“Speaking of,” Bradford said, and his gaze
dropped from Ethan’s face to a point lower. Ethan looked down and
realized what hadn’t clicked before: the scrubs he’d been given to
wear were short sleeved, and the scars from his attack the year
before were clearly visible. “Our medical team reported that you
appeared to have been bitten multiple times at some point in the
past. Considering you weren’t showing any signs of active
infection, they figured you’d been attacked by someone uninfected,
so they let the matter rest. However, they took a blood sample, and
the test results should be on my desk within…” he checked his
watch, “two minutes. So if you have something you’re hiding, you
better talk fast before that report arrives.”

“We ran into the squad that brought us in on
the highway quite a few miles south of here,” Ethan said, an empty
pit opening in his gut. “I’m not sure exactly where we were when
that happened, but they were willing to listen to us when we told
them we had samples and a vaccine, and so now here we are, freezing
to death in your office.”

“Does this vaccine actually work?” Bradford
asked. His tone was a mixture of hope and resignation, and Ethan
realized that the man had probably been brought up high on other
hopes for cures only to be crashed right back down when they didn’t
pan out.

“We haven’t had the opportunity to—”

“We’ve only had limited chances to test it,”
Kimberly cut in. “As far as we were able to tell, it works.” She
ignored the look of ire Bradford gave her.

“She’s more qualified to talk about this than
I am,” Ethan told Bradford. “She’s been working with Dr. Rivers
since day one, trying to find a cure for all this shit.”

The side door that Bradford had come through
earlier opened, and a thin woman with dark hair pulled back into a
severe bun stepped inside, a folder tucked under her arm. She set
the slim file onto the corner of Bradford’s desk and stepped away,
exiting the room without uttering a word. Ethan eyed the folder,
his stomach fluttering with nervousness.

“Side effects?” Bradford asked, and this time
he addressed Kimberly instead of Ethan.

“We don’t know yet,” Kimberly said. “We
haven’t been given the opportunity to test it extensively. Some
other events kept us from being able to run tests to try to
determine the side effects, if any.”

Bradford casually flipped open the folder and
scanned the page inside. When Kimberly finished speaking, he
slammed the folder closed, making Ethan, Kimberly, and Chris
startle at the loud bang it produced. “You’re lying to me,” he
declared. “You’re both lying.”

“No,” Kimberly countered. “No, we’re
not.”

“You’re here to kill me, aren’t you?”
Bradford said. “That’s why you brought
him
here.” He jabbed
his finger at Ethan.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,”
Kimberly said.

Bradford jabbed his finger at Ethan again.
“
He
is infected! His tests came back positive!” He shoved
the paper from the folder toward them, and Ethan recoiled, his
heart skipping a beat. The jig was up. “You three came in here with
every intention of deceiving me, and I will not stand for it!” He
barked to the guards lined up behind the three of them, “Get the
quarantine guards in here. I want these two taken to the quarantine
cells.” He pointed to Kimberly and Chris. “This one,” he added
another jab toward Ethan, “goes to the lab. See if Alton or Howser
want to use him for testing. If so, give them forty-eight hours to
do whatever they want with him, then take him out back and shoot
him.”

“
What?
” Kimberly exploded, rising out
of her chair. “You can’t
do
that!”

One of the soldiers clamped a gloved hand
down on her shoulder and shoved her into her chair hard enough that
her teeth clacked together. “Stay in your seat,” the man ordered,
his voice oddly hollow through his mask.

Bradford flicked a hand, signaling to the men
behind Ethan. Two of them wrapped their hands around his biceps and
hauled him out of his chair to his feet and dragging him around the
chair before he was able to find his balance. Kimberly had twisted
around in her chair, and she watched with wide, horrified eyes as
he was dragged out of Major Bradford’s office.

The last thing he saw before the door swung
shut to block his view was Kimberly trying to rise from her chair
again and then falling into an unconscious heap when one of the
soldiers slammed his rifle into the back of her head.

The rage that Remy
felt was like nothing she had ever experienced before. It was all
powerful, all consuming, washing through her like a wildfire
through a dry forest. She could practically feel her veins and
tendons snapping and crackling in the blaze of her pure hatred. By
the time she and Cade had returned to the group’s hiding spot, one
person short, her tears had dried up in the heat of her fury, and
she had felt hollow and empty. Now, as she sat on the roof again,
where she’d retreated to get away from the others and Cade’s
explanation to them of what had happened, she felt nothing but her
anger.

How
dare
they? How
dare
they
take away one of her best friends and then kill the man she’d begun
to fall in love with? How
dare
they quarantine them, take
away any chance of a normal life they might have lived, wall them
away in the hell they’d endured for the last two years, while they
lived in comfort behind their concrete walls?

Remy’s eyes narrowed as the thought of the
rest of the world’s creature comforts crossed her mind. She was
going to take away everything those people held dear, just like
they’d done to her.

Her mind went back to the coffee cans and
other materials she’d collected and then abandoned on the sidewalk
below when Cade had hauled her back into their hiding place. She
would need those, which meant she would have to go back down to the
street.

She pulled herself to her feet and grabbed
her backpack, then went to the fire escape ladder and scurried down
it, beginning to rethink the plan she’d formulated earlier. She’d
initially thought to use the coffee cans as part of an insurance
policy. She no longer had insurance policies on her mind. All she
could think of was vengeance.

It took her only minutes to make the bombs
out of the coffee cans, the C-4, and the detonators she’d found in
Atlanta. Scavenged nails, marbles, and chips of concrete added to
the cans made for excellent shrapnel. Once she had carefully sealed
the cans, she packed them into her backpack and stood up in time to
spot the small squad of soldiers slowly approaching the area where
she and her friends were hiding. They looked like aliens in their
biohazard suits and their gas masks, and they all carried rifles in
two-handed grips. A quick count of them revealed only six. They
were clearly intended as a mop-up group to clean up what their
superiors probably thought were only two infected people in the
area.

“Hell yes,” Remy said, surge of adrenaline
and excitement rushing through her, mixing with the cold anger
already filling her veins. Someone had to pay, and she might as
well start with these six.

She set her bomb-filled backpack on the
ground beside the car she and Cade had hidden behind and reached
for the bolo knife on her hip with her right hand, her left hand
easing to the holstered pistol. After a moment’s hesitation, she
chose the pistol, leaving the knife in its sheath for now. She
abruptly straightened, lifted her pistol in a two-handed grip, and
fired three shots in quick succession.

Remy had never been the world’s best
marksman. In fact, she’d only learned how to shoot after the
Michaluk Virus had broken out, when she’d been forced to shoot her
infected mother in the face with a revolver. Today, her lack of
expert shooting skills didn’t matter; all three bullets found their
marks. One of the soldiers let out a yelp of pain and collapsed,
grasping at his stomach, his rifle clattering to the ground. The
other two dropped and didn’t move or make another sound.

The three remaining soldiers shouted in alarm
and started to fan out, raising their rifles to aim them in Remy’s
direction. She dropped to her knees, huddling behind the car as the
soldiers opened fire. Bullets peppered the other side of the car,
clanging loudly against the vehicle’s metal in the otherwise quiet
air. She hunched up on herself, covering her head with her arms to
protect her face as bits of shattered safety glass sprayed over
her.

The moment the firing stopped, Remy dropped
her pistol and scrambled along the length of the car, heading
toward the tail end of it. She peered around the trunk to assess
the situation beyond.

One of the soldiers still stood in the middle
of the street, his rifle up, aiming it at the car she’d taken
shelter behind. Another one was circling around the front of the
car, clearly looking to see if they’d managed to hit her. The third
uninjured one was tending to their still-living injured
companion.

The soldier in the street was focused on the
soldier near the front of the vehicle. Now was Remy’s chance.

She rushed from behind the vehicle, running
full speed at the man, and grabbed him around the waist, nearly
tackling him to the ground. He grunted and planted one of his feet,
keeping himself upright, and she grabbed at his rifle, trying to
wrest it from his grip.

The other soldier had noticed the activity,
and he’d begun to turn toward them. Remy caught the movement in the
corner of her eye, and letting go of the rifle, she grabbed the
soldier again and spun him around to face his companion, taking
cover behind him as the man opened fire. Bullets smacked into the
man’s body, making him jolt with the impacts. Three of them broke
through and embedded in Remy’s body, one tearing into her left
shoulder and two puncturing her abdomen.

The pain from the bullet wounds tearing into
her registered in her brain, and Remy’s vision went red. Something
flooded through her veins, taking control of her limbs, grabbing
hold of her brain. With an animalistic snarl of anger, she picked
the dead man she still gripped up from the ground and flung him at
his companion. Both of them toppled to the ground, and she whirled
on the one that had been tending to the injured soldier. With
another growl, she lunged toward him, grabbed his gas mask and
hood, and tore them completely off his head. He let out a shout of
alarm, and she shoved his head back and sank her teeth into his
throat. With one sharp jerk of her head, she ripped it out and spat
it onto the ground.

Her face splattered with the blood of her
enemy, Remy turned her attention onto the remaining soldier. He’d
just recovered from having his fellow soldier’s dead body thrown at
him, and his face drained of all color, going pale and grayish at
the sight of her. She gave him a slow smile, drew her bolo knife,
and rushed him.

Thirty seconds later, it was done. The entire
squad of soldiers lay dead around her, bled out and dismembered.
Her shirt and jacket were soaked with blood, theirs and hers, and
her face and hands were stained with the viscous red fluid. The
bullet wounds she’d received from the soldiers’ guns didn’t even
hurt. She felt
alive
, more alive than she had since she’d
been infected months before. She felt like dancing, like twirling
around in circles in the middle of the street. She refrained,
because there were more important things to attend to.

Cade and the others were watching her from
inside the building. She couldn’t see them, though she could sense
them, huddled around broken windows, peering out at the carnage on
the street beyond. She didn’t go to them. Why would she? There was
nothing they could do to help her in her mission. They’d be in the
way.

Besides, she felt something in her bones,
humming in her marrow, like a bell ringing inside her. She turned
to look down the street, her back to the wall, and she knew, she
just
knew
, what was in the distance.

A horde of infected was coming her way, lured
by the sound of gunshots, which must have carried quite some
distance. Where the sight of one of these hordes used to stir
hatred and disgust in her chest, this time, Remy smiled as the
leading edge of them came into view at the far end of the
street.

This was going to factor into her plan
wonderfully
.

She looked away from the horde and saw Cade
standing in the doorway, a look of concern and fear on her face.
Remy stared back at her, then shouted, “Get back inside!”

She started walking toward the horde,
intending to join it and direct its movements. A door slammed
somewhere behind her, and then Cade was jogging toward her.

“What the hell have you done?” she asked
breathlessly, trying to keep up with Remy. “Look at me, damn
it!”

Remy grabbed Cade’s arm and shoved her away.
“Get back inside, Cade. I don’t want you caught in the middle of
this.”