“Well, Brandt Evans, fancy finding you here,” Sadie said with a laugh.
Chapter 58
When Brandt saw the two women standing down the hallway and recognized the familiar figure of his wife—someone he could never mistake; he knew those curves too well—he couldn’t believe his eyes. She ran towards him and slammed into him with the enthusiasm of the long separated. His knees weakened, and he wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her hair. She sagged against him, and he held her tightly, swaying slightly.
“Oh Jesus, Cade,” he murmured.
“Oh my God, how are you even here?” Cade asked, and she tilted her face up to look at him, her blue eyes shiny with unshed tears. He leaned down and kissed her, slowly and deeply, cupping her face in his hands. When he pulled back, a couple of the tears had escaped from her eyes, and he wiped them away with his thumbs. “I figured out where they might have taken you, and we came here to find you. I heard you escaped and—” She broke off, her eyes flickering to the three people behind him. Her breath caught in her throat.
“May I introduce the lovely woman who helped me escape from here?” Brandt said, and he tore himself away from Cade, stepping aside so she could get a full look at the brunette woman behind him. Lindsey was already crying, her hands pressed to her mouth, and then the two sisters were throwing themselves at each other, crying and clinging to one another with what could only be described as desperate elation. Brandt looked past them at Ethan and Kimberly, who were exchanging hugs with Sadie, whose presence surprised him.
“Good to see you, Sadie,” he said, giving the young woman a hug and a gentle pat on the back. “Where is everyone else? I heard they bombed Woodside. Who survived?”
“That I know of?” Sadie started. “Me and Jude, Keith, Cade, Remy, Dominic, Derek, and Isaac. Derek and Isaac stayed behind with the baby, and—”
“Baby?” Brandt repeated, alarm rocketing through him. He whirled around, looking at Cade with wide eyes, only now noticing that she was no longer pregnant.
“I had the baby,” Cade said, lifting her head to look at him. “A little girl. I named her Olivia, just like we said we would. She’s with Derek and Isaac. They stayed behind in a safe house to protect her while I came to look for you.”
“Oh Jesus,” Brandt said, his hands shaking at the revelation.
“Congratulations, Daddy,” Ethan said with a laugh, patting him on the shoulder. Brandt barely heard him; he was too focused on keeping himself in control. Once he felt like he’d mustered it enough to shove everything non-immediate aside for now, he cleared his throat and addressed Sadie.
“Where is everyone else?”
Sadie took a step back, like she was afraid that he’d hit her. “I’m not sure,” she said. “Keith and Jude are here somewhere, but I don’t know where, and trust me when I say I don’t like that. Dominic is…he’s dead.”
Brandt’s eyebrows shot up. “Dead?” he repeated. “How?”
“He got shot by a sniper on the wall,” Cade reported, bitter anger in her voice. She stepped away from Lindsey, her face flushed with her anger.
“And Remy…we haven’t seen her since she blew up the wall,” Sadie finished.
“Remy did what?” Brandt, Ethan, and Kimberly said in unison.
“Who’s Remy?” Lindsey asked.
“My ex…something,” Ethan explained. “How did she do all this?”
“C-4, I think,” Cade said. “Blast looked like it was C-4. Where she got it, I’m not sure. Maybe she picked it up when we were in Atlanta.”
“You went back to Atlanta?” Brandt asked.
Cade patted him on the arm. “We have a lot of catching up to do,” she said. “I’ll give you the rundown once all of this is over.”
Brandt turned his attention back to the others. “What led Remy to blowing up the wall?”
“Dominic,” Sadie and Cade said at the same time.
“She’s gone off the rails,” Cade elaborated. “She was already a little wobbly, and the virus made it worse. When Dominic died…” She shook her head. “That was it for her. She threw down after that. I watched her kill four fully armed men, four soldiers, with her bare hands.”
“Oh hell,” Kimberly said.
“That’s not the Remy I know,” Ethan spoke up. “What the hell happened to her?”
“I don’t know,” Cade said. “I think she was going slowly crazy, and we didn’t notice.”
“Fuck,” Brandt muttered. He scrubbed his hands over his face and sighed. “What do we do?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Ethan said. “We’ve got to track her down and stop her.”
“How do you propose we do that?” Brandt asked.
“Just leave it to me,” Ethan replied.
Chapter 59
Keith’s instincts were yammering at him. He stared at Remy, who stood on the platform ten yards away from him and Jude. He always listened to his instincts; they knew him better than he knew himself at times, but everything about the situation in which he found himself embroiled felt like a contradiction. Remy was supposed to be an ally. Intellectually, he knew this, knew that she’d been fighting on their side as long as she’d been in Woodside. However, his instincts were shrieking at him to grab Jude and get away from her as fast as he could.
There was nowhere to go, of course. Remy was in front of them, covered in blood and gore and who knew what else, and the soldiers that had been chasing them were behind them. He was forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, and he wasn’t sure which of his options qualified. When Remy started to move toward them, he got a clearer look at the expression on her face, and his instincts made the decision for him. He grabbed Jude and shoved him behind him, putting himself between him and the soldiers. Sure, it could result in Jude getting shot, but he was banking on the soldiers realizing that Remy was the threat, not him.
Because Remy was most assuredly the threat in this scenario. The expression on her face was one of barely concealed fury, so hard and bitter that Keith had no idea how she’d contained it so far.
“Remy,” Keith said, keeping his voice level and as soothing as he could make it, considering his nerves wanted to crawl out through his skin. “Remy, it’s me, Keith.” She kept walking, not acknowledging his words. There was no change to her expression, no acknowledgment in her eyes at all. “Oh shit,” he murmured, taking a step back, herding Jude toward the soldiers. His unease amped up to fear. He had a sinking suspicion that Remy no longer saw him or Jude as friends.
Keith pulled his pistol free from its holster, though he kept it held low, hoping he wouldn’t have to use it. “Remy, you need to stop right there,” he warned her.
She had her bolo knife in her hand. Keith hadn’t noticed before that she had it, and he fleetingly wondered where she’d been hiding it. The blade was covered in bright red blood, and Keith suspected that the blood didn’t come from any infected humans. He swallowed and tightened his grip on his pistol, taking another couple of steps back.
“Stop right there!” someone behind Keith and Jude shouted. One of the soldiers had seen Remy and had hopefully decided she was the bigger threat to them than he and Jude were. Remy’s eyes flickered past Keith to the soldiers, and to his amazement, the fury in her eyes became more inflamed. She raced forward, her knife raised, looking like she was willing to cut down Keith and Jude to get to the soldiers.
Remy wasn’t going to stop; he could tell she wasn’t aware she needed to stop. Not seeing any other choice, Keith fired a shot at her. The bullet winged off her right bicep. He’d hoped that would wake her up. He didn’t have that sort of luck.
She stabbed the blade of her bolo knife right into Keith’s abdomen, angled up to pierce into his chest from below his ribcage.
The pain took a couple of seconds to kick in, long enough that she had time to rip the blade free. He gasped as the metal slid from his gut, staggering sideways as the pain rocketed through him. It was overwhelming, and he clasped his left hand over t
he wound. Remy shoved past him, and he did his best to shunt the pain aside and turn, determined to protect Jude from her wrath.
Jude was backing up, stumbling toward the soldiers that had been chasing them. Remy sped up now that Keith was out of her way, and Keith knew that Jude wouldn’t reach the soldiers before Remy did. Sliding to his knees, he lifted his pistol again and aimed it at her, firing two bullets at her back.
Remy staggered at the bullets’ impacts, nearly dropping her knife. She regained her balance too quickly, not giving him enough time to get a better shot at her while she’d been momentarily incapacitated. She started to turn back toward him, but before she could, Jude darted forward and plunged a knife into her chest.
“Jude, no!” Keith yelled, his voice hoarse with pain. It was too late. Jude’s actions had turned Remy’s full attention onto him, and before Keith could lift his gun again, she shifted her bolo knife around and rammed it home. Jude’s mouth fell open in a soundless cry, his back arching slightly, and he instinctively grabbed at the blade. Remy pulled the blade free, slicing his fingers as she withdrew the steel, shoved him aside, and stormed past him.
Somewhere nearby, Keith thought he heard a woman scream.
Remy was going after the soldiers further down the walkway. They’d seen what she’d done to the two of them and had wisely decided that fleeing was a good option.
Jude fell against the railing, collapsing to the walkway. He pressed his bloodied hands to his abdomen, trying to staunch the flow of blood from the wound. Keith felt his own blood spilling out, pulsing with each heartbeat, and he knew there would be nothing anyone could do for him. Jude looked to be in a similar condition. He was already shaking, pushing his hands against the wound like he could cram the blood back inside. Keith found the energy in his waning reserves to crawl forward, dragging himself to Jude, and he grasped one of the young man’s hands in his own.
“It’s okay, Jude,” he said, trying to sound soothing despite the pain wracking his body. He dragged himself closer and pulled Jude to him. “It’s okay.”
Jude huddled against him, shaking, his hand fisted into Keith’s shirt. He was dying, and he knew it. Keith was as sure of that as he was sure of his own impending death. He didn’t have to strain to feel the fear that Jude was experiencing, and he held him tightly, trying to comfort him as much as possible.
It didn’t take long. One moment, Jude was there, clinging to him, and the next, his grasp slackened, he exhaled, and then he was gone.
Keith’s last thought before his vision fuzzed over and he slipped into unconsciousness was that he really hoped it wouldn’t be long before he saw Jude again.
Chapter 60
Ethan couldn’t believe his eyes.
When Sadie and Cade had told them that Remy had essentially lost her mind, he hadn’t believed them. Remy had always seemed a little off to him, even before she’d been bitten and infected. He supposed too much trauma would do that to a person, and Remy had more than her fair share of trauma under her belt. But this was so far removed from anything he’d expected that he was having trouble processing it.
They’d come out onto a platform attached to the building after climbing a flight of metal stairs that left Ethan feeling winded by the time he reached the top, to be greeted by the sight of pure, absolute chaos. At the sight of Remy running Jude O’Dell through with her bolo knife, Sadie had screamed, the wordless sound shrill and filled with terror, anguish, and pure anger, and she started forward like she planned to go after Remy herself. Ethan caught her arm to stop her.
“No, Sadie!” he shouted. “Go to your brother. Try to help him.” He looked to Cade. “Make sure she doesn’t go after Remy. She can’t handle her.”
“Where are you going?” Cade asked.
Ethan turned to Remy. She’d finished killing a handful of soldiers on the platform with Keith and Jude, and now she was making her way to the ground, where all of the infected were. “I’m going after Remy,” he announced. “Brandt, take care of them,” he said. “No matter what happens.” Brandt nodded, and he turned away, searching for a way to the ground.
It took Ethan a second to realize he was being followed. When he turned to see who it was, he was horrified to discover Kimberly behind him.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded. “You’re supposed to be with the others!”
“You’re kidding yourself if you think I’m letting you do this without backup,” Kimberly replied.
“You don’t need to be here,” Ethan protested. “You can’t go onto the ground with me. They’ll eat you alive. Literally.”
“I’m not going onto the ground,” Kimberly said, and she held up a rifle—Cade’s rifle, he realized—so he could see it. “I’m staying up here. If you fail, at least I can try to shoot her from up here.” She smiled slightly. “Just call me Plan B.”
“Son of a bitch,” Ethan grumbled. He didn’t have time to argue with her over it; he was losing sight of Remy by the second. “Come on, then. But be careful. I’ll never forgive myself if you get killed.”
Kimberly’s smile widened and she stepped forward and kissed him, quickly and sweetly. When she pulled away, Ethan missed her already. “I won’t get killed,” she said. “Promise. Now get down there and save the world.”
Ethan almost laughed at that. Save the world? Who did she think he was, Superman? He shook the thought aside. There was serious business in front of him, and he was certain that either he or Remy would end up dead before the end of it. Now was the last time he needed to crack jokes in his head. He hurried down the steps that led to the ground level, jumping the last few steps to land on the dirt. He stood there for a second, getting acclimated, trying to get oriented on where Remy was in relation to his current position. He glanced up at Kimberly, high above him on one of the metal walkways, and she pointed, showing him which direction he needed to go. He nodded in acknowledgment and started in that direction.
There were infected everywhere, both the living kind and the already deceased, walking dead ones. The stench from them was indescribable, a miasma of old and fresh blood, shit, piss, and rot that made him gag. He breathed shallowly through his mouth, which made him feel like he could taste the odor, and he soldiered on, his pistol in his right hand, a knife in his left. He shoved his way through the crowds, jostling infected people aside, occasionally pausing to kill one that presented the opportunity without increased effort on his part, trying to reach Remy before she got away. He had to stop her, and if that didn’t work, he had to kill her.
He didn’t want to have to kill her. Though after what he’d witnessed on that platform, seeing her stab Jude and, presumably, Keith, who’d been half collapsed onto the platform behind her, he figured he might end up having to take that course. When they’d gone in search of her, Cade had filled him and Brandt in on what had happened on their journey to Eden, on how Remy could control the infected. He believed the claim. He’d noticed that, while the infected apparently recognized him as one of their own, they also were willing to follow his orders, even though it was something he hadn’t experimented with much. While he didn’t know if it was possible to manipulate this many infected, he couldn’t rule it out, not when he took his own experiences into consideration.
If she’d actually blown a hole in the wall and made all these infected show up en masse to do whatever she was thinking she wanted them to do, then that was something he couldn’t forgive.
Ethan shoved past another batch of infected, jostling one that had been a small woman before death, made smaller by wasting away from starvation, and caught a glimpse of Remy. He picked up his pace, fighting his way through the claustrophobic press of bodies surrounding him. He approached Remy, realizing he’d lost focus of another threat to his safety besides the infected and Remy herself: the soldiers. Bullets were still flying down from above, pocking into dirt and bodies, dropping walking corpses to the ground, and there was a real chance he could get shot.
“Price to be paid,” he sai
d aloud, not wholly sure he understood what he meant. Several of the infected around him turned toward him at the sound of his voice, and he snarled, “Oh, fuck off.”
A bullet embedded into the head of an infected man ahead of him, sending a spray of old blood and bits of brain matter out from his head and onto Ethan. He gagged as the rotten stench around him increased tenfold, spitting to clear the nasty taste of the smell from his mouth. It didn’t work, so he continued on, lifting his pistol in a two-handed grip, the knife in his left fist, blade sticking out so all he’d have to do was let go of his pistol with that hand and stab out.
As soon as he thought he was within shouting distance, raising his voice enough to be heard over the sound of gunfire, groans, moans, and snarls, Ethan yelled, “Remy!”
She was cutting across the open courtyard-like area, passing in front of a helicopter, when she stopped and tensed. She stayed like that for a long minute, not flinching when a bullet pinged off the helicopter above her head. She turned around, and Ethan was horrified by her appearance.
Remy was covered in blood. Her jeans were stained with spatters of blood from the knees up, as was her white tank top. He couldn’t tell how much of it was on her leather jacket, but it wouldn’t have been unreasonable to assume it was likewise smeared with blood. Her bolo knife was in her right hand, held by her hip. Her long dark hair was disheveled and matted with who knew what.
The Becoming: Redemption (The Becoming Series Book 5) Page 34
