The Becoming (Book 4): Under Siege (9 page)

“You don’t understand,” Derek said
haltingly. He didn’t look up from his notebook but stared at the
scribbled-over pages and ran his thumb over the spiral binding.
“It’s…it’s not what you think.” He looked up, his eyes darting from
one face to the next before settling on Ethan’s. “There’s no
cure.”

“What?” Brandt exclaimed. “No cure? What are
you talking about? You cured Ethan.”

“It’s not what you think,” Derek said again.
He slid his free hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small
vial, shaking it before holding it up so they could see that it was
full of a thick, red liquid. “This? What I injected you with,
Ethan? It’s not a cure. It’s blood. It’s the virus,” he
explained.

Ethan’s brain skidded to a halt at Derek’s
words, and he could see the incredulity on his friends’ faces as
they stared at the doctor who sat on the edge of the coffee table.
The silence that followed was complete.

Dominic’s heart bounded in his chest like a
jackrabbit running from a coyote, and his fight or flight instincts
were equally stirred up. His first instinct—a purely human one—was
to turn tail and run, preferably
away
from the noise ahead
of them. His second instinct was to protect Remy from whatever was
ahead. The second instinct won out.

As Remy rushed past him toward the danger,
Dominic grabbed her left arm and hauled her backward. He nearly
dumped her onto the cracked and crumbling pavement as he spun and
shoved her against a nearby car. Her palms hit the hood, and he
pressed against her, pinning her in place. “What the
fuck
do
you think you’re doing?” he hissed in her ear.

“There’s someone down there that needs our
help!” Remy explained, pushing back against him with all of her
strength. It wasn’t enough.

“And you were just going to charge in
without a thought to your own safety
or
mine, weren’t you?”
he accused. She froze, and he nodded. “That’s what I thought. For
the love of Christ, follow me, stick close, and don’t do anything
stupid.” He let her go then, and she scowled and backed away from
the car. “Maybe you’ll learn something,” he added before turning
away and hurrying forward, keeping low to conceal himself. The
sound of Remy’s shoes scuffing the pavement behind him told him
that she was following him, like he’d told her to do.

Thank God she was listening to him. If she’d
decided not to, like it or not, he’d have to hurt her.

Dominic drew in a slow breath when he heard
another shout, something that sounded like a young woman yelling,
“Down, down, down!” The shouts were followed by a shotgun blast,
and he tensed. Swearing under his breath, he held his fist up
beside his head, signaling for Remy to stop, and pointed to the
tall grass on the side of the road. The grass rustling behind him
and to his right meant that she’d obeyed his directive.

It took several minutes of weaving between
cars before Dominic reached a point where he could see what was
going on ahead. He signaled for Remy to stop where she was and then
climbed into the bed of the pickup truck in front of him. He
crouched low and peered over the truck’s roof.

The highway beyond had been cleared of the
cars that had blocked it the last time he’d been through. Judging
by the roadway’s condition, heavy machinery had done the work; the
pavement had been crushed almost to gravel in places. There were
tracks, and if he was reading the tracks correctly, a tank might
have done some of the damage.

He looked up from the pavement, slowly
moving out of his crouch. Just up the road he saw two figures—he
couldn’t tell yet whether they were male or female—fighting
valiantly against a crowd of infected. The survivors weren’t his
concern. He was focused on the infected and the threat they posed
to himself and Remy.

Dominic nodded and slung his rifle off his
shoulder, resting it against the roof of the truck. Then he
hunkered down, took aim, and squeezed the trigger. The head of the
infected man in his sights exploded in a shower of blood and gore.
The young man and woman in the crowd continued fighting, but their
movements were almost indecipherable amongst the grasping and
clutching hands of the infected around them.

Dominic adjusted his aim. His rifle cracked,
and another infected man went down.

A burst of gunfire joined his own as Dominic
shot down a third infected attacker. Under the hail of additional,
well-placed shots, the infected began to drop like flies. He spared
a glance to his right and saw Remy leaning half over the hood of a
car with her pistol pointed toward the infected, firing into them
with carefully aimed shots.

He was about to return his attention to the
road when seven dark shadows lumbered out of the tree line,
stumbling and staggering in Remy’s direction. With her back to
them, she couldn’t see them approaching, and he had a sudden,
horrible vision of her being torn apart by hands and nails and
teeth, her beautiful face splattered with blood, her lithe body
ripped to shreds. “Remy! Behind you!” he shouted. He swore, dumped
his rifle into the bed of the truck, and climbed onto the edge of
the truck bed, leaping from one vehicle to the next in a race to
reach Remy before the infected closed in.

Remy turned toward the approaching infected,
lifted her pistol, and began firing frantically. Half of her
bullets missed or hit the wrong organ. As her pistol ran out of
bullets, Dominic set foot on the trunk of the car she’d been
hunkered down behind, and with another step, he launched himself
off the vehicle and tackled one of the infected, taking it to the
ground and snapping its neck in a single movement. He tucked and
rolled when he landed, drawing a knife as he came up on his knee.
He sprang forward, bent low, and tackled one of the other seven
infected, slamming it against the car. He didn’t hesitate to bring
the knife up and plunge it into the man’s temple, shredding through
the skin and thin bone and into the brain. The body between him and
the car went limp, and he ripped the knife free and spun around,
kicking the legs out from another one and falling on it. He slammed
his knife blade through its forehead, scrambled to his feet, and
readied himself to attack the next infected person.

Dominic’s actions bought Remy enough time to
reload and get into position. Now, her gunfire joined his bladed
attacks. She shot three in the head in quick succession, leaving
two still standing. One came at Remy while the other headed for
Dominic. Almost in unison, Dominic struck out with his knife and
brought the number to one, and Remy adjusted her aim and squeezed
the trigger.

The last of that group of infected collapsed
into the grass.

“You okay?” he asked her, panting.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said. “Let’s finish
this and save those two people.”

Dominic nodded, returned to the truck, and
retrieved his rifle from the bed. He worked methodically, choosing
each target and killing with the utmost care, not wanting to injure
the two survivors who ducked and darted, weaving between the
infected, shotgun firing and machete swinging. Once all of the
infected in the immediate vicinity were down, thanks to their
combined efforts, Dominic rose from his kneeling position in the
back of the pickup truck and lifted a hand to the two survivors in
greeting.

A shotgun blast took out the truck’s
windshield, and Dominic dropped down into the bed for cover,
falling into a pile of old trash and dead leaves.

“Drop the shotgun, now!” he heard Remy yell
out. “Or so help me God, I’ll blow your head off right here and
now!” There was a pause, and then Remy called out, “Dom, you okay?
You didn’t get hit, did you?”

Dominic held up a hand to signal his
okayness, then sat up cautiously, using his rifle to pull himself
out of the pile of garbage he’d landed in. He peered over the edge
of the truck. “Is it safe to get up, or am I going to meet with the
business end of a shotgun again?”

“You’re okay,” Remy said. “If either of
these bozos goes for a weapon again, I’m seriously putting a bullet
between their eyes.”

Dominic blew out a breath and hauled himself
to his feet. He got his first real look and the two survivors
they’d saved.

They were young, by the looks of it, a male
and a female, maybe in their late teens or early twenties. Even
from a distance, Dominic could see that they were related. Both had
the same dark hair and pale skin, and they were skinny, as if they
hadn’t had enough to eat in quite a while. Slowly, the girl lowered
her rifle, but in the other hand, she carried a machete. The two
came toward Dominic, stopping when they reached the other side of
his truck. Both had the same blue eyes. The girl, tall and lanky,
moved to stand protectively in front of the boy, her eyes hard as
she stared at Dominic over the roof of the truck. She lowered the
rifle to the pavement at her feet but continued to grip the
machete. Two more guns were strapped to her sides in thigh
holsters.

“Who are you?” she demanded. Her voice was
heavily accented, similar to Brandt’s, obviously Georgian. “Where
did you come from?”

“I should probably ask you the same
question,” Dominic retorted. He kept his voice as pleasant as
possible, not wanting to alarm either of them, despite the fact
that one of them had shot at him. He couldn’t blame them for that,
though. They’d just been fighting a rather large group of infected
when he’d popped up. “My name is Dominic.” He glanced toward Remy,
noticing that she was still taking partial cover behind a vehicle
near the side of the road. “That over there is Remy. We come from a
community of survivors not far from here. We were heading into town
to get supplies—”

“You can’t go that way,” the girl said.

“Why not?” Remy snapped, her voice hard and
irritable with leftover adrenaline. Dominic shot her another
glance. Her stance had tensed, her fingers flexing against the grip
of the pistol.

“Remy,” he warned. He left it at that and
waited for her to relax her stance and her grip on the pistol. Then
he nodded toward the girl. “What’s going on in town that we can’t
go that way anymore?”

“There’s a flood of zombies coming this
way,” the girl said.

Dominic was only slightly amused by her use
of “zombies.”

“Hundreds of them,” she continued. “Too many
to count.”

Alarm rose in Dominic’s gut. It felt like a
siren was going off in his head. Remy had an equally alarmed look
on her face, like she was about to vomit. Dominic abandoned his
perch in the bed of the truck and climbed over the side, dropping
to the pavement.

“Something’s stirred them up,” the girl
explained. “They’re flocking like birds all over the place. We’re
looking for a place called Woodside. A man we met said we could get
help there.”

“That’s where we’re from,” Remy said. “We
can take you there.”

Dominic looked the survivors over, getting
only a partial look at the boy, who was still behind his sister. He
looked again at the shotgun at the girl’s feet, the machete in her
hand, and the pistols on her belt, one at each hip, like an Old
West gunslinger. She wore a black Kevlar vest covered with pockets
that bulged with supplies. A knife was strapped to her belt behind
one of the holsters, and a sheath for the machete was on her back.
Dominic moved to get a better look at the boy. He was outfitted
with his own pistols strapped to his belt and thigh. Three sheathed
knives lined the belt along his back. He held a baseball bat in his
left hand and an identical machete in his right. The boy and girl
looked almost para-military, like they’d been fighting a war
against the infected single-handedly; judging by the fresh blood on
them and the lingering stains that marred their jeans, Dominic
wouldn’t have been surprised.

“What are your names?” Dominic finally
asked.

“I’m Sadie O’Dell,” the girl said. “This is
my twin brother, Jude.”

Dominic looked past the two and studied the
highway. Save for the bodies that littered it, it was empty for as
far as the eye could see. The cars that had once packed the highway
had been pushed to either side, cluttering the shoulders, crushing
the tall grass. Some had even been stacked on top of each other.
“You two been out in this mess long?” he asked.

“All year,” Sadie said. She gave him a
critical look and narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

Dominic slung the rifle over his shoulder,
settling it against his back, and nodded toward the highway. “Show
me,” he said. “Take me to these zombies. I need to see them for
myself.”

“You sure that’s a good idea, Dom?” Remy’s
voice came from his right. “Could be dangerous.”

He looked at her and saw a mischievous
glimmer in her eyes, coupled with excitement. “Yeah, like
you’ve
ever objected to playing with anything dangerous,”
Dominic commented. He nodded toward Sadie. “Come on, show us. And
while we head that way, you can tell me what the hell happened to
this highway.”

“And afterwards?” Sadie prompted.

“Afterwards, we’ll take you to Woodside,”
Remy said. “We just need to gather as much information as we can
before we take this back to Brandt.”

Sadie stared at Remy and Dominic for a
moment, as if she were trying to read their intentions. Then she
nodded shortly and turned away from them, beckoning with the hand
that held the machete. “Follow me,” she said. “We’ve got to be
quick about this. I want to get to cover before nightfall.”

Ethan was still staring at Derek, his fingers
digging into the arms of his chair, as he tried to wrap his mind
around what Derek meant by saying he’d shot him up with the virus.
The thought was enough to give him nightmares. He watched, eyes
locked on Derek’s hand, as the doctor curled his fingers around the
vial, concealing it from view. “You wanna maybe elaborate on that,
Doc?” Ethan asked. “Because I’m seriously not understanding what
the hell you mean.”