“What the hell is that?” Kimberly said when she caught a glimpse of what loomed over the convoy of vehicles. She couldn’t make out much in the way of details, but what she saw whetted her curiosity.
“If I’m not mistaken,” Ethan said, “I think it might be that wall Chris mentioned.”
The convoy broke free of the decimated city landscape they’d been driving through to emerge into open space. Kimberly swung her head from side to side, taking in everything she could as she tried to figure out where the heck the military convoy had brought them. The land that stretched along either side of them had been cleared by heavy equipment, the buildings and trees razed, the grass dug up so it was only torn and scraped dirt. Concrete foundations dotted the landscape, some of the concrete freshly poured, like whoever had razed the buildings had taken the time to fill in the basements so the infected—or anyone else—couldn’t use them.
Marveling at the landscape and the serious work it must have taken to get it to the condition it was currently in, Ethan had leaned forward in his seat, and his exclamation of, “Ho-ly shit,” drew Kimberly’s attention back to him. “Would you look at that?”
Kimberly spotted what that had captured Ethan’s attention, and she drew in an amazed breath of her own.
“Is that it?” she asked. “Is that the wall?”
“Yeah, I think it is,” Ethan replied.
“Jesus, it’s huge,” Kimberly replied. “Way taller than ours. Must be…forty feet tall.”
“I think it’s closer to fifty,” Ethan said. “What’s that made out of, concrete?”
“Looks like it.” Kimberly trailed her eyes along the massive gray structure, picking out the sight of a guard tower far to the right. She could barely see the two figures inside its glass-walled booth, and she assumed they were soldiers standing guard.
What was directly in front of the Humvees, though, was far more interesting. The line of vehicles was approaching a massive gate made of stone, slightly shorter than the wall in which it was set. Guard towers flanked the section of wall, similar to the one she’d already spotted, except these two were more heavily armored and fortified. Soldiers practically crawled over the towers and walked along the top of the gate, bristling with weapons. Kimberly noticed the distinctive sight of sniper rifles in the hands of a few of the men.
The gate started sliding open on hidden tracks with a loud grinding noise that set Kimberly’s teeth on edge. She balled her hands into fists, wishing she could cover her ears. Even the Humvee’s driver and passenger seemed irritated by the sound. Then the Humvee moved forward, driving through the open gate to reveal a massive facility swarming with military personnel and what appeared to be their civilian staffers, all armed with rifles or sidearms, all well-organized.
“Thoughts?” Ethan asked.
“I think I’ll reserve them for later,” Kimberly said. The caravan came to a halt. Soldiers surrounded the Humvee, and doors flew open. Kimberly was hauled out of one side of the vehicle, and Ethan was dragged out of the other. Her bags were whisked away, and two female soldiers wearing the same MOPP4 suits that the other soldiers were had grasped her upper arms with gloved hands. Everyone else had scattered at the caravan’s appearance, and within moments, the area around the caravan was devoid of anyone but Ethan, Chris, Kimberly, and the suited military men and women.
“Come with us,” one of the women said, her voice weirdly hollow through the mask.
“Where are we going?” Kimberly asked. They’re not going to kill me, she told herself. If they were, they’d have already done it.
“We’re taking you to the women’s decontamination room.”
Chapter 35
Dominic glanced repeatedly at Remy in the passenger seat of the military cargo truck. She sat in the seat, slumped awkwardly with her head resting against the passenger window, her eyes closed and her body slack. She hadn’t moved since Dominic had caught her when she’d fallen and stuffed her into the seat an hour ago, and it was starting to worry him. Her last words to him before she’d lost consciousness—“Dom, what the fuck is wrong with me?”—were haunting him, because he couldn’t give her an answer. He didn’t have any idea what to tell her.
What made him worry more was that they were drawing ever closer to their destination, and she still hadn’t woken up. He had a feeling he was going to really, really want her to be awake by the time they arrived in Eden. He had a suspicion that what they were going to run into there would likely be the same military guys that had taken Brandt from them. He needed Remy to be awake during that. He might need to have her finger on the trigger.
For the third time since he’d stuffed her into the truck, Dominic pulled her into a sitting position, trying to make her more comfortable. When he let go of her bicep, he trailed his fingers down the soft skin of her arm, his fingertips coasting over her wrist to her hand. He pulled his hand away and returned it to the steering wheel.
Another twenty minutes passed before Remy grunted and her dark eyes fluttered open. Her hand flopped out and slapped against the glass beside her head. She pushed against the glass into a sitting position and shoved a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes and yawned, then scrubbed at her face and looked out the windshield. “Where the hell are we, and how long have I been unconscious?”
“I’m not sure of the where in regards to the nearest town. I think we’re maybe an hour away from Eden,” Dominic reported. “As for how long you’ve been unconscious, almost an hour and a half.”
“Figures,” Remy muttered. She rubbed her eyes again and studied the road. “Has it been clear like this the whole way?”
“Yeah, pretty much,” Dominic answered. “There have been a few rough patches where I had to steer around obstacles, like a tree and a car that wasn’t fully off the road, but other than that, it’s been surprisingly smooth sailing.”
“That doesn’t reassure me, you know,” Remy said. She started yawning midway through her statement and kept talking through the yawn. “It makes me wonder when the other shoe is going to drop.”
“You think there’s going to be another shoe?”
“At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if it ended up being an entire shoe store,” Remy said. She pulled her hair loose from its ponytail, raking her fingers through the strands to gather them into a fresh tail. “God, what I would do for a hot shower.”
Dominic’s brain immediately conjured up the mental image of Remy in a shower, naked and wet, and he cursed as the truck swerved. He straightened it out without over-compensating, grinding his hands against the wheel and fighting to regain control of his brain. He smiled at Remy and said, as casually as he could, “A shower would be Heaven right about now. Maybe we’ll get lucky and there will be one wherever we end up.”
“Where do you think we’re going to end up, a luxury resort?”
“Hey, you never know,” Dominic said with as much good cheer as he could muster. “For all we know, they’re stationed in a resort, and Brandt is living it up in one of their rooms getting a back massage from a pretty lady in a string bikini.”
“Your mind works weird,” Remy said. “You think Brandt would let any woman except Cade touch him?”
“Probably not, but the thought of how she’d react is pretty damn amusing,” Dominic chuckled.
“Maybe for you. I wouldn’t want to be the one to have to clean up the blood,” Remy said.
“Brandt’s?”
“No, the woman’s who dared to touch him. Cade would massacre her.”
Dominic suppressed his grin and changed the subject before Cade overheard what they were talking about. “So how do you feel?”
“Like shit,” Remy said. A stray lock of hair had fallen from her ponytail again, and she scraped it back, stuffing it behind an ear with frustration. “Like I’ve been through ten rounds in a boxing ring.”
“You’ve been through ten rounds in a boxing ring before?” Dominic asked.
&nb
sp; “No, but this is what I imagine it feels like.” Remy rested her head in her palms, massaging her temples with the heels of her hands. “I think I might have broken my brain. I have a headache from Hell, and it doesn’t appear to want to go away anytime soon.”
Dominic frowned and reached across the space between their seats, pressing his hand against the side of her neck and her cheek. Her skin was overly hot, and moving his hand to her forehead confirmed his concerns. “You feel feverish,” he told her. “Not dangerously so but noticeably.”
“Well, fuck,” Remy said. She dropped her head against the headrest, groaning. “Just what we need, one of us getting sick.”
“Are you sure this isn’t a side effect?” Dominic asked. “Maybe that vaccine sample thing we shot you up with is having a bad effect.”
To his surprise, Remy’s face didn’t even register alarm. She looked tired and resigned. “The thought doesn’t surprise me anymore,” she said. “When it comes to me, Murphy’s Law is in effect: if it can go wrong for me, it will.”
“Oh, come on,” Dominic protested. “Not everything goes bad for you, does it?”
“You would be surprised,” Remy said. She stared out the window, still massaging her right temple with one hand. “Can I tell you something I’ve never told anyone else since all this shit started?”
“Of course, Remy,” Dominic answered, undeniably curious.
“When all this first started, when the virus first got to New Orleans… I was in the custody of the New Orleans Police Department.”
Dominic raised his eyebrows. He couldn’t say he was surprised; he’d always guessed that she’d been involved in less than savory occupations before the apocalypse. “May I ask what you did to end up in the hands of the illustrious NOPD?”
“I stole a carton of cigarettes,” Remy said, and her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “Not to smoke, but to sell.” She shrugged and muttered, “I didn’t have any money.”
They both fell silent, the only sound between them the crunch of the crumbled pavement under the cargo truck’s massive tires. When the silence had stretched for too long, Dominic cleared his throat and asked, “What was the money supposed to be for?”
Remy looked confused at his question, as if her mind had wandered and she’d lost track of what they’d been discussing. “What?”
“The money you were going to sell the cigarettes to get,” Dominic said. “What was it for?”
“I was trying to save up to get the hell out of Dodge,” Remy said. “Things at home weren’t great, and I was wearing out my welcome.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Dominic said. “Where did you plan to go?”
“Honestly, I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” Remy said. “My destination mostly consisted of, ‘anywhere but New Orleans.’” She squinted through the windshield, then leaned forward to get a better look out and asked, “What the hell is that?”
“What the hell is what?” Dominic asked. He slowed the truck down so he could get a look at whatever had caught Remy’s attention, worried that it was something that was about to roll into their path and hoping he wouldn’t hit it. He caught a glimpse of a dark shadow looming in the distance, but it was too far away for him to make out what it had been. “What was that?”
“I don’t know. Whatever it was, it was big,” Remy said. “Very, very big. Maybe we should head in that direction and check things out.”
“How about we stay on this road instead?” Dominic suggested. “Our priority is getting to Eden, not checking out anything that looks remotely weird between here and there.”
“Spoilsport,” Remy muttered, smiling.
“We can’t run off to kill everything you want to kill,” he said. “I know you’re totally badass and everything, but there’s a limit.”
Remy rolled her eyes. When she turned her gaze back to the window beside her, her smile widened.
The next hour passed without a word spoken between them, though Dominic could make out the murmur of voices in the truck’s cargo bed. He figured the others were plotting out what they were going to do when they reached Eden, something he hadn’t taken the time to think out for himself. His overall plan involved backing up Remy in whatever she needed to do, regardless of what that happened to be. He hoped that they wouldn’t be strolling into a life-or-death situation. He had high hopes that it would be an easy talk, that they wouldn’t have a problem sitting down with whoever was in charge and talking to them about their attack, maybe helping the survivors instead of enacting their scorched earth policy. He didn’t think their negotiations would be successful, but he had that hope.
As for what he’d do if they shot first and asked questions later? He hadn’t considered it.
When they passed a sign that said “Eden City Limits,” Dominic couldn’t quell the excitement that stirred in his gut. A long journey was coming to an end, like they were only a few steps away from all of this being over with. He didn’t expect any of this to ever be truly “over with,” though, even after they got Brandt back. The world wasn’t going to magically change or get better because they freed Brandt from the clutches of a possibly rogue military branch. At this point, it was about increasing their chances of survival. Dominic knew that they needed Brandt, if not for his knowledge of survival skills then for the morale for the rest of their group, however small it might have become. And then there was that matter of his immune status. They needed him because he couldn’t get infected. He was, in essence, their walking, talking insurance policy.
Dominic slid deep into thought, his mind half on the road, pondering the multitude of situations they might run into in their attempt to recover their friend. Remy gasped and exclaimed, “Holy shit, what is that?”
Dominic slammed on brakes reflexively, thinking he was about to hit something. The back end of the cargo truck fishtailed on the gravel, and his heart leaped in alarm. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and did his best to maintain control of the vehicle before looking around wildly.
“What?” he demanded. “What is it?”
Remy didn’t have to answer, because the question was barely out of his mouth when he saw it. Or rather, when he didn’t see it.
There should have been more to Eden than the little bit they’d traveled through. Though it hadn’t appeared to be a big city, it had most certainly looked larger than this on the map he’d consulted before they’d left Atlanta. Maybe half a mile down the road, all the buildings and cars and sidewalks and trees dropped away into nothingness before a long stretch of dirt and torn-up roads. Looming over it all, as far as the eye could see in either direction, was a massive concrete wall, casting the cleared area in front of them into deep shadow.
“Oh, God no,” Dominic murmured, gazing at the wall before them. He knew what this meant; he knew why that wall was there.
He was going to be sick.
“Dominic?” Remy’s voice sounded like it was coming from the end of a long tunnel. “What the hell is that?”
“Get out of the truck,” Dominic said. He cut the engine and threw the door open.
“Why?”
“I have to meet with everyone,” he said, and he dropped to the pavement. His boots crunching on the road, he walked to the back of the truck without hesitation, climbing onto the tailgate to look into the back. “Everybody out,” he announced. “We have a problem.”
“What sort of problem?” Cade asked. She looked irritable, roughed up and banged around, and unhappy at hearing the word “problem” coming out of his mouth.
“A life-altering problem.” He let go of the canvas flap and dropped to the pavement to wait for his companions to join him. Once they did, Cade stopped right in front of him, her arms folded over her chest.
“What’s going on?” she demanded.
Dominic pointed down the street toward the wall. “That,” he said. “That changes the entire game.”
“What the hell?” Keith muttered.
“That wall can only mean one t
hing,” Dominic continued. “The virus didn’t go global. We’ve been quarantined.” To punctuate his statement, the far-off buzz of helicopter rotors filled the air, and in the distance, several of the aircraft disappeared over the wall. “I’m not positive, but I think they have enacted a scorched earth policy,” he said once the helicopters had vanished from view. “They’re assuming we’re all infected, and they’re taking us out accordingly. That’s why they attacked Woodside like they did, rather than attempting to help us or evacuate us.”
“So you’re saying they’ve abandoned us?” Remy asked, her voice rising in both pitch and volume as the realization dawned on her.
“Yeah, I’m saying they abandoned us,” Dominic confirmed.
Watching Remy’s face as he told her this was a horrible thing. Her expression had been one of confusion at first, as she had tried to puzzle out why he’d stopped the truck and why he’d reacted the way he had to what had lain ahead. As the realization hit her, the confusion leeched out of her face like water running down glass, and her skin paled to a grayish cast. She swallowed, repeatedly and compulsively, her dark eyes wide. Then her face flushed red in an instant, and she visibly shook with her anger.
“Those sons of bitches abandoned us!” she snarled, her tone sounding like she was ready to draw the bolo knife sheathed at her hip and start gutting everything nearby that moved. “How dare they?” Her hands curled into fists, and Dominic took a reflexive step back. “Are we not worth saving too?”
“Remy, they have protocols they’re required to foll—” Dominic started to say, but she interrupted him with a howl of rage.
“Does it look like I give a shit about their stupid-ass protocols?” she screeched. “We’re citizens of this fucking country too! What the hell makes us second class just because we live in the wrong part of the country? It’s not our fault all this has happened, so why are we being punished for it?”
The Becoming: Redemption (The Becoming Series Book 5) Page 21
