The Becoming (Book 4): Under Siege (34 page)

Yet,
a nasty voice in the back of her
head murmured darkly.

She shook it off and hurried to the stairs,
her heart pounding as she descended them to look for Jude. When she
reached the bottom, he seemed to appear out of the darkness,
sliding almost silently from the shadows to meet her. “Jesus, Jude,
way to give me a fucking heart attack!” she hissed.

“
They’re shooting up the house across the
street,
” Jude signed to her, his hands shaking to the point
that his words were almost indecipherable. “
What do we do,
Sadie?
”

“We get the hell out of here,” Sadie said,
grabbing for his wrist. “We should never have come here. We should
have just stayed in the damned woods where we belonged.”

Jude resisted, pulling in the opposite
direction that Sadie was trying to haul him. He twisted free of her
grasp. “
We can’t leave,
” he signed to her, glaring at her in
the dim light. “
It’s our fault that the infected and the
military are here,
” he elaborated. “Our
fault.
” He
gestured between the two of them emphatically, a scowl on his face.
“
We can’t just ditch out without helping them get out of
here.
”

Sadie rolled her eyes and threw her hands
into the air. “
Fine,
” she said, the word oozing with her
frustration. “But as soon as we help get them clear, we’re getting
the hell out of here.”

Footsteps running across the living room met
her ears, and she drew her pistol and pointed it in the direction
of the sound. Jude lurched forward, grabbing her arm and pushing it
down to aim the weapon at the floor. Keith hurried out of the
shadows and grabbed them both by their biceps. He didn’t seem to
notice the gun Sadie had just pointed at him, or he didn’t
care.

“We need to move,” he said, his tone urgent.
“One of the helicopters just finished shooting up the place across
the street and took off, and I think the other one is swinging
around to aim at this house. Get out the back door, now!”

“What about everybody else?” Sadie asked,
twisting to look at the stairs even as he shoved her and her
brother toward the kitchen.

“You let me worry about that,” Keith said.
“Move
now
.” Then he shoved them both through the kitchen and
to the back door. He unfastened the locks and pushed them onto the
back porch before slamming the door again. Sadie heard him through
the door, running across the kitchen, his boots thudding dully on
the stairs. She looked at her brother with wide eyes.

“What now?” Sadie asked.

“
We wait for the others,
” Jude signed
without looking at her. His eyes scanned the back yard and what
could be seen of the side yard. She took her cue from him and
mimicked his actions. He tapped her arm to get her attention and
then quickly signed, “
There are some infected in the side yard
and a few coming around the corner of the house from the other
way.
”

“What do you want to do about them?”

“
We can’t leave them for the others to
run into, especially not Cade,
” Jude replied, hands flying.
“
Not comfortable with her fighting while in labor. We should
lure them into the backyard where there’s cover and kill them
quietly.
”

Despite the impending danger, despite the
helicopter on the other side of the house, despite the fact that
their very lives hung by a thread, Sadie smiled.

Dominic waited until the helicopter and the soldiers
had left, taking Brandt with them, before he dared to creep through
the kitchen and out the back door. He’d had to fight the impulse to
rush out to Brandt’s defense the entire time the soldiers had been
taking him into custody and shoving him into the helicopter,
telling himself over and over that his intervention wouldn’t come
to anything but his own death. So he’d waited, biding his time,
prioritizing those who were likely unable to help themselves.

Once Brandt and the squad of soldiers were
gone and he’d stepped outside into the cool night air, he’d watched
from around the corner of the rec center as two AH-60L DAP
helicopters opened fire on the community’s fortified houses, the
ammunition shredding through the facades like they were made of
cake. His heart had sunk as he’d watched the bullets tear through
the front of the medical house, knowing that there was a good
chance that Remy was inside, that even if she wasn’t, she would
most certainly be in the main house, which was likely to get the
same treatment as the medical house.

Then the helicopter had turned its mini-guns
onto the house across the street from the main house, and Dominic
had been unable to contain his horror. “There are children in that
house, you bastards!” he yelled, his throat hoarse with the volume
he was unaccustomed to, but the soldiers wouldn’t have been able to
hear him over the sound of their weapons anyway.

It had been his chance, though, and he’d run
across the street into the backyards, climbing over fences and
staying low in the tall grass, hoping he wouldn’t be sighted from
above as he hurried toward the medical house, intent on looking for
Remy—or Remy’s body.

He dropped over the privacy fence between
the medical house and the house next door just in time to glimpse
Remy walking rapidly through the grass, toward the main house as if
she were on a mission.

“Oh thank God,” he breathed. Then he called,
“Remy!” but she didn’t seem to hear him over the helicopters. So he
picked up the pace, racing after her across the yard.

That was when the helicopters grew louder
and when soldiers started dropping from the sky.

Cade stood at the main house’s back door, flanked by
Derek on one side and Keith on the other. Isaac bustled around
upstairs, gathering a few last-minute supplies he thought they
might need. Cade desperately wished he would hurry up. She was
ready to get moving, and she preferred to do so
before
she
dropped a baby in the middle of the kitchen floor.

She hadn’t had a contraction in almost ten
minutes. That meant she was probably due for one, soon. The
anticipation of the pain was almost as bad as the pain itself, she
reflected as she drew the pistol she’d insisted on carrying and
ejected the magazine to make sure her weapon was fully loaded and
ready to fire. It was, just as she’d verified the
last
time
she’d handled it.

“Why do you think they’re shooting us up?”
Keith asked suddenly, breaking the hush in the kitchen. “It’s the
military. I thought they were supposed to help us.”

“If I had to take a guess?” Cade slammed the
magazine back into the pistol’s grip and slid it back into its
holster. “Maybe they have orders to fire on anyone suspected of
having direct contact with the infected.”

“Quarantine,” Derek suddenly said, drawing
the word out, as if he were thinking something over.

Cade looked at him and raised an eyebrow.
“What?”

“It reminds me of what happened at the CDC
in Atlanta, back when all of this first started,” Derek explained.
“When the military showed up with orders not to help us but to
terminate the entire project and everyone involved. Maybe they’re
running under similar orders here.”

“And in that case,” Isaac spoke up from
behind them as he entered the kitchen, carrying a bulging army
green duffle bag, “then we shoot anything that’s wearing
camouflage. Because I don’t know about you, but I have no interest
in dying today.”

“Hear, hear,” Keith muttered.

Isaac didn’t acknowledge Keith’s agreement.
Instead, he took a rifle off his shoulder and extended it to Cade.
She grinned as she realized it was her Galil. “Got your rifle for
you,” he said.

“Thanks,” Cade replied, her grin widening as
she took it from him. She settled it onto her shoulder, resting it
against her back, where it belonged, and watched as Isaac scanned
the room.

“Where are the twins?” Isaac asked. “I
looked for them upstairs but couldn’t find them.”

“I, ah, put them out onto the back porch
when I thought the helicopter was about to take a pass at this
house,” Keith answered. When Cade gave him an incredulous look, he
held his hands up defensively. “What? I was thinking the more walls
between them and the helicopter, the better.”

None of them could really argue with that
logic, but Cade still didn’t like it. He’d shoved two
kids
outside to fend for themselves? Who cared how capable they were!
That just came off as a little cold-hearted. She grabbed the
doorknob with the intention of checking to make sure the two
teenagers were still alive when something thumped on the front
porch and then banged against the front door. All four of them
jumped, and Cade half-turned in that direction as she asked, “What
the hell was
that
?”

“I’ll go check it out,” Keith offered, but
Derek practically threw himself across Cade to grab the man’s arm
and stop him.

“No, don’t!” he exclaimed. “If my theory
about it being a military action is correct, then you’re going to
get yourself shot if you go that way.”

“Not if I shoot them first,” Keith replied,
wagging the pistol he held in his right hand.

“Oh, please,” Isaac muttered. “You’re not
going anywhere, Keith. We need you here, not in the front hall
getting shot to death.”

Keith blew out a breath and shoved his
pistol back into its holster. “Fine, fine, let’s get moving,” he
said, starting forward and pulling the already unlocked kitchen
door open. Jude and Sadie were on the porch—Jude with a baseball
bat in his hand, Sadie holding two machetes; all three weapons were
dripping blood.

“About time you guys showed up,” Sadie
quipped. “You missed all the fun.”

“Not all of it,” Cade replied, stepping out
onto the back porch. “We’ve got a bigger problem, and it’s one
that’s probably a hell of a lot harder to kill.”

“What?”

“Trained soldiers,” Cade answered. “Unlike
the infected, they don’t just try to eat you. No, these guys will
try to kill you.”

“Shit,” Sadie muttered. “I’ve only ever
killed actual people once before, and it was
not
a pleasant
experience.”

“Cade!” someone yelled to their right, and
everyone turned as one, weapons raised and aimed at the potential
threat. Cade saw the figure running toward them, and as she
recognized the shape of it, she let out a breath of relief and
lowered her pistol.

“Jesus, Remy, are you trying to get yourself
shot?” she asked, exasperated. Remy looked terrible, her clothes
and hair covered in splinters of wood and flecks of paint, and she
was flushed and panting.

“No, but we’ve got incoming, and we need to
get out of here,” Remy replied. She looked Cade up and down and
added, “Brandt will be happy to know you’re okay.”

Cade’s eyes widened. “You know where Brandt
is?” she asked, urgency welling up in her. “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine,” Remy said, but she didn’t look
at Cade as she said it. “We need to get the hell out of here,
now
.”

“Remy,
please,
” Cade begged, but her
pleading was cut off by a wave of pain that built, crested, and
finally washed over. She bit down on her lip, fumbling for and
grabbing the porch railing in a white-knuckled grip.

“Cade, are you okay?” Remy asked in
alarm.

But Cade couldn’t answer, since she was too
busy grinding her teeth into powder.

“What’s wrong with her?” Remy asked.

“It’s a contraction, that’s all,” she heard
Derek say distractedly.

“Contraction?” Remy exploded. “She’s in
labor
?”

The wave of pain backed off and passed, and
Cade breathed in deeply, almost panting, as if she had run a mile.
“
Yes,
I’m in labor.”

“
Perfect
timing, Cade. Just
wonderful
,” Remy said.

“It’s not like I
plan
this shit,
Remy.”

Isaac stepped into the brewing argument with
his hands up. “Okay, ladies, cut it out. We don’t have time for
this. We need to get out of here, and we need to find a vehicle as
soon as possible after that. Then—”

The sounds of a scuffle near the side of the
house drew Cade’s attention, and she held up a hand to hush Isaac.
She swung both her pistol and a flashlight around to point it in
the direction of the noise. The beam lit onto two men fighting in
the dirt, one clad in filthy jeans and a t-shirt, the other in
head-to-toe camouflage. The men were throwing punches, slamming
each other to the ground, rolling into bushes, and crushing plants
and grass.

Remy let out a cry of alarm and vaulted over
the porch railing, diving into the fight before anyone else could
move, her dark hair flying out behind her. Cade watched, wide-eyed,
as Remy shoved the dirty man—Dominic, she realized, as he fell
backwards onto the grass—out of the way and practically pounced on
the camouflaged man. She grabbed him by the front of his gas mask
and started slamming his head into the ground over and over. Then
she grabbed the hood, tore it off, and ripped free his mask,
dropping it onto the grass.

“No!” the soldier cried out, scrambling for
the mask. Remy kicked it away and grabbed the man, hauling him to
his feet with only one hand. Then, before any of them could react,
she grasped the man’s head in her hands and gave it a sharp twist.
There was a snap, and then the man sagged and fell to the ground
like a boneless rag doll, his neck bent at an unnatural angle.

“Jesus,
Remy
!” Cade cried. “We could
have interrogated him!”

“We don’t have time for that,” Remy replied.
“We have to get out of here!” She turned to Dominic and asked,
“Where is Brandt?”