The Becoming (Book 4): Under Siege (3 page)

Remy Angellette was irritable. Not that there was
anything particularly
new
about her current state of mind.
She’d been feeling that way since the group’s miraculous escape
from the Westin in Atlanta, Georgia, five months before, when she
and her friends had gone in to take on Alicia Day—otherwise known,
in her mind, at least, as the bitch that had ended the world.
They’d lost Gray Carter in the city, cut down by Alicia’s bullets
and the viral contaminant that Brandt had unknowingly gotten on his
hands in the process of killing one of their attackers.

It still broke her heart to think about
Gray. So most days, she simply didn’t.

Remy shook her head, as if the physical
action would dislodge the depressing thoughts from her mind. Fat
chance of that. Her mind was nothing but a cesspool of anger and
hatred and sadness these days. She shifted her eyes away from the
blank spot on the wall that she’d been staring at and focused them
once more on the work in front of her, on the rows of cans and
boxes and stacks of cellophane packages—the newest supplies brought
in the day before, the supplies she should have finished
inventorying and boxing up and moving to the rec center’s kitchen
the hour before. Cade had set her on the task, presumably to help
keep her mind occupied. She’d much rather have been doing
anything
but inventory; she’d have preferred to be outside
the community with a gun and her bolo knife, part of Joseph
Albertson’s group that went out every third day to search for the
very supplies she was supposed to be counting. At least out
there,
she’d have had the chance to maybe hunt down and kill
a few of the infected. She’d always found that activity to be
particularly cathartic.

Remy sighed and tossed her notepad onto the
dining table in frustration. Who
cared
if there were
eighteen more packages of ramen noodles and twelve new cans of
chicken noodle soup? It wouldn’t change anything, especially not
for her. She threw her pen across the room and slouched into one of
the chairs, dropping her head into her hands and groaning. She
rested her elbows on the edge of the wooden dining table and dug
her fingers into her dark hair.

“This whole place is bullshit,” she muttered
to the can of tomato soup directly below her face. Frustrated tears
pricked at her brown eyes—tears she allowed to appear, hoping they
would help flush out her emotions and cleanse her mind. She
squeezed her eyes shut. She was ready to
go
, ready to get
out of Woodside. It felt like there was nothing left for her here.
Nothing left at all.

In the months since the events in Atlanta,
Remy had fought desperately to retain some semblance of herself and
her sanity. She’d spent hours holed up in her bedroom, seeing only
Dr. Rivers, spending the rest of her time huddled in her bed. She’d
hibernated for three weeks, avoiding mirrors and barely eating,
getting up from her bed only when nature demanded it. And when
those weeks had passed, when she’d braved getting out of bed to
look in the mirror one night, she’d been horrified by what she’d
seen in the reflection over the dresser.

The scratches in the skin on her face had
been surprisingly deep, and while they had scabbed and scarred with
the passage of time, they hadn’t become any less ugly and
appalling. There’d been eight of them, four on each side, starting
near her ears and tapering off at her nose and lips. Similar marks
had adorned her neck, forearms, and even her upper chest. She’d
reached up in her horror, her fingers coasting against the glass
before touching her cheek, not sure if what she’d looked at was
actually herself. Then she turned away, her movements as slow and
dazed as they’d been when she had beheld herself in the mirror.
She’d bitten back her tears and had shoved them deep down inside.
She hadn’t cried since then.

At least, not until now. As she slouched at
the dining table with the stacks of supplies in front of her, Remy
felt tears pricking at the insides of her closed eyelids. She bit
down hard on her bottom lip and pressed the heel of her hand
against one of her eyes until she saw stars in the blackness. As
she drew in a ragged breath, the sound of combat boots against
floorboards met her ears. She darted out of her chair, nearly
knocking it over in the process, and wiped hastily at her eyes.
Then she snatched up her notepad and looked around wildly for her
pen. The memory of her pitching it across the room in a fit of
anger flashed before her mind’s eye. She swore again as Dominic
Jackson stepped into the dining room.

“Nice to see you too, Remy,” Dominic
greeted. Remy didn’t bother to look at him. Instead, she focused on
her notepad, even as she tried to discreetly shake her hair down to
cover her face. She wasn’t going to lie—she was still
self-conscious about the scars that marred her skin. Even if
Dominic had seen them before, she still didn’t want to flash them
around more than necessary. “You busy?” Dominic asked.

“Actually, yes,” Remy muttered. She patted
at her pockets in a vain search for another pen and kept her eyes
focused on the food in front of her. On
anywhere
but the man
who’d just entered the room. “I’m supposed to be inventorying the
new food supplies for Cade.”

Dominic crossed the floor, his footsteps
thumping audibly in time with her heartbeat, and he stopped behind
her, leaning over her shoulder to peer down at her notepad.
“Doesn’t look like you’re making much progress there,” he
commented. His breath was hot against her ear, his mouth mere
centimeters from her skin.

Remy grimaced and slammed the notepad face
down on top of the soup cans, even as she fought off the shiver of
attraction that threatened to run down her spine. She faced Dominic
and found herself standing uncomfortably close to him, so close
that she could feel the warmth of his body against hers, so close
that she was pinned between him and the dining table. She fought
back the surge of terror and anxiety—maybe even a little
intrigue—that welled up inside her and made her nauseous. She
hated
how he made her feel. She hated that, even if she
dared assess whether he felt the same way, it would never happen
between them. Ever. All she could do was push him away.

She fumbled behind her for the edge of the
dining table, gripping it both for reassurance and support, and
asked pointedly, “Is there a
reason
you’re in here pestering
me?”

“What, I can’t pester you just to pester
you?” Dominic asked. There was a lilting tone to his voice, as if
he were teasing her. He reached up and lightly twisted a lock of
her dark hair in his fingers, tugging on it before letting it go.
Remy raised an eyebrow and fought at the quirk that threatened the
corner of her mouth. The man had zero reason to like her or to talk
to her, especially considering the healed bullet wound in his
shoulder—the one that
she
had put there. The thought of it
almost brought a full-on smile to her face. She squelched it before
it could make itself known.

“Why in the hell would you want to pester
me
?” Remy asked. She managed to cross her arms over her
chest in the narrow space between them, her forearms pressing
against the strong muscles underneath Dominic’s thin t-shirt, and
she successfully pulled off the look of annoyance that she’d
intended to give him.

Dominic didn’t respond to her question.
Instead, his dark eyes flickered over her face, as if every unhappy
thought she’d ever had was laser-etched into her cheekbones. He
opened his mouth, a gentle look on his face, like he was preparing
to ask her something personal. But then he closed it again and
shook his head before asking, “Have you seen Cade or Brandt? Or,
preferably, both of them?”

Remy couldn’t deny the twinge of
disappointment she felt, though she couldn’t decide what she was
disappointed over. She sidestepped, wiggling out from between him
and the table, and grabbed her notepad again. Avoiding the heat of
his gaze against her back, she flipped through the pages to find a
blank one and began to surreptitiously search for her pen. “Cade is
out. Brandt went to find her.”

“Any ideas when they’ll be back?” Dominic
asked.

Remy fought to not roll her eyes. Good God,
the man was nothing if not persistent. Instead, she shook her head
as she finally spotted her pen, resting between two stacks of
single-serving instant mashed potato packets. “No idea,” she
replied. She lunged for the pen, snagging it and knocking both
stacks over in the process. They fanned out across the table and
onto several boxes of instant macaroni and cheese. “Why don’t you
go look for them and just…I don’t know, leave me alone or
something?”

Dominic didn’t seem to have any intention of
leaving her alone, though. He stepped back and leaned against the
counter that divided the kitchen and dining areas, folding his arms
over his strong chest. She could still feel his eyes on her as she
tapped her pen along a row of cans, miming counting in the hopes
he’d take the hint and leave.

“Need any help?” he offered after a
moment.

No such luck.

“You know,” he continued, “since you’re not
making much headway on that and all.”

“I’m fine,” Remy said, more snappishly than
she intended to. She didn’t know why she was so rude to him. It
wasn’t like most of the people in Woodside were very accepting of
her presence, especially once word of her current state of
infection had leaked. The Atlanta survivors seemed to believe that
she would go crazy like Alicia Day had and kill them all in a
frenzy of psychosis. Dominic was one of the few people in
Woodside—outside of the friends she’d gained the year before—who
treated her like a human being, even with Woodside’s populace
ostracizing him for his involvement with Alicia. She knew she
shouldn’t act like such an ass toward him. But, as much as she
tried, she couldn’t seem to help it. It was like her emotional
defense mechanisms had short-circuited and were preventing her from
being able to make the necessary connections to accept his offer of
friendship. She jotted down a random number on her notepad, since
she had no idea how many cans she’d actually counted, and moved on
to the next row.

“Are you saying no because you really don’t
need my help or because it’s me that’s offering it?” Dominic asked.
His words were laced with annoyance. She was getting under his
skin.
Good.

“Because I don’t
need
help,” she
said. She wrote down the correct number that time. She still didn’t
look at Dominic. God only knew what he would see in her eyes if she
did.

“So if Ethan Bennett came over and offered
to help you, you’d tell him no too?”

“
Ethan Bennett
isn’t even allowed to
leave his fucking room,” Remy retorted.

“Oh, so you’ve been to see him then.”

Remy gritted her teeth, feeling the creak of
her jaw as the muscles shifted almost painfully. She slapped the
notepad down onto the table again, knocking over several packages.
“
No,
I have
not,
” she snapped, struggling to ignore
the tightness in her chest that mention of the man’s name brought
forth. She barely stopped herself from throwing her pen across the
room again. Or at Dominic’s head. The latter option was looking
more appealing with every passing moment.

“Why not?” Dominic asked in the same placid
tone she’d only ever heard from psychiatrists, Dr. Rivers, and
him.

“I don’t think
that
is any of your
fucking business.”

Dominic seemed unfazed by her statement. He
reclined more comfortably against the counter and watched her. The
scrutiny was unnerving and made her want to fidget. “He’s been
asking for you, you know,” he said once the silence between them
had surpassed uncomfortable and slipped into something less
identifiable. A wall of tension had leeched into the room, and Remy
tried to assess what was going on in Dominic’s head, why he felt
the need to even bring up her former lover. She blew out a breath
and looked away from him.

“I know,” Remy finally said. “I’ve been told
by everybody a million times.”

“And you
still
won’t go see him?”

Remy gritted her teeth yet again—she just
knew
she was going to have a sore jaw that evening—and
turned on Dominic. “Would
you
go out of your way to see
someone who tried to kill you?”

Dominic arched an eyebrow. “I’m hanging out
with you right now, aren’t I?” he asked.

Remy conceded his point, though she wanted
to argue it with him.

Before Remy could dredge up a witty
retort—something she was very much out of these days—the sound of
the front door opening drew her attention away from Dominic. As
Cade and Brandt’s voices met her ears, she scowled at the former
intelligence officer and turned on her heel. She abandoned her task
and stormed out the side door, slamming it closed before she did
anything she might regret later.

Kimberly Geller climbed the medical house’s main
staircase with all the attitude of someone who had done it a
thousand times before and wasn’t looking forward to doing it again.
Truth be told, she hated stairs. She’d developed a raging hatred
for them while spending seven months living in the Westin tower in
Atlanta, and her attitude toward them hadn’t gotten any better once
she’d settled into Woodside. But she had a job to do, an incredibly
important one, and it wasn’t one that she could pass off onto
someone else just because she’d developed an intense hatred of
stairs. Someone had to monitor Ethan Bennett’s health and progress,
and as Dr. Rivers’ assistant and a former veterinarian—and the only
other person in the community besides the doctor with medical
expertise—that task had fallen to her.