The Becoming: Redemption (The Becoming Series Book 5)
Read The Becoming: Redemption (The Becoming Series Book 5) Online
Authors: Jessica Meigs
Tags: #becoming series, #thriller, #survival, #jessica meigs, #horror thriller, #undead, #horror, #apocalypse, #zombies, #post apocalyptic
The Becoming: RedemptionBook Five in The Becoming Series
Jessica Meigs
A PERMUTED PRESS BOOK
ISBN: 978-1-61868-599-5
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-60008
THE BECOMING: REDEMPTION
The Becoming Book Five
© 2015 by Jessica Meigs
All Rights Reserved
Cover art by Dean Samed, Conzpiracy Digital
Arts
This book is a work of fiction. People,
places, events, and situations are the product of the author's
imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or
historical events, is purely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without
the written permission of the author and publisher.
Permuted Press
109 International Drive, Suite 300
Franklin, TN 37067
Found Written on the Back of a Credit Card Statement
in a House in Charleston, South Carolina
Date Unknown
My name is Sadie O’Dell. I’m eighteen years old, and
I’m almost directly responsible for the deaths of over fifty
people.
My brother and I were running from zombies, just
looking for a safe place to live. They had been following us for
miles. They’d found us in the woods at our campsite, and when we
ran, they followed. The crowd kept getting bigger and bigger, and
we were stupid enough to keep going.
It was like we thought if we got to something
resembling civilization, the zombies would magically stop following
us.
I was such an idiot. And because I’m so damned
overprotective of Jude, because I refused to read the writing on
the wall, those same zombies caused all the people in Woodside to
die.
I hate myself for that and I’ll spend the rest of my
life—I will give my life if I have to—doing whatever I can to set
it right. My life is all I have left to give, and it’s the least I
can do after causing the ending of theirs.
God, I’m so fucking sorry.
When Sadie O’Dell
regained consciousness, she was surprised and confused to discover
that she was no longer in the back of an ambulance. With her eyes
barely cracked open, she stared at the room around her. The bedroom
had baby pink walls, frilly white curtains, and white-painted
furniture. A little girl’s room. On the dresser, quite out of place
in such a room, was a series of weapons—shotgun, machete, knives,
several pistols, and a few stacks of spare ammunition magazines and
shotgun shells—that she recognized as hers. Her Kevlar vest was
draped across the back of a rocking chair, and her boots were on
the floor in front of the chair. Her black backpack was in the
chair’s cushioned seat.
Sadie’s head hurt. When she touched her
forehead, she discovered a hastily applied bandage taped to her
head. She pushed into a sitting position and promptly threw up off
the side of the bed into a pink, flower-printed plastic trashcan
that someone had placed just where it would be needed. Her stomach
roiled, and she struggled to hold back another surge of sick.
Embarrassed at the loss of control and still feeling queasy, Sadie
swung her legs off the side of the bed and sat there, trying to get
her bearings.
She closed her eyes and scrunched her nose,
trying to remember everything that had happened that led to her
ending up in this unfamiliar room. She remembered the flight from
Woodside, the shooting, and the race to the ambulance. Most of all,
she remembered the intense fear of what was to come down from the
sky.
“MOAB,” Sadie whispered, recalling the term
Dominic used when he’d explained it to them. The massive bomb must
have been dropped. And like that, her heart sank. It was her fault.
All those people, houses full of them. Women, children, the
elderly… she hadn’t had the opportunity to meet any of them, though
she’d seen them gathered inside the community’s gates when she and
her brother had arrived, and she’d caught glimpses of them through
the second-floor curtains of their safe houses. Now they were gone,
every one of them.
Sadie shook loose from the grasp of
despondency closing around her and tried to piece together the
events surrounding the moment the bomb dropped. They’d been in the
ambulance, and that was all she remembered for certain, though she
had other suggestive images flashing through her mind, ones of a
bright light, a hard wind, and being flung off her feet. Had they
crashed? Was she the only one who’d survived? She couldn’t have
been. Someone had bandaged her up and brought her to this little
girl’s room. That meant someone else was still alive.
The thought of seeking out whoever was left
got her moving. She pushed to her feet, mildly nauseous, and
stumbled to the bedroom door, stopping at the dresser to scoop up
one of her pistols and make sure it was loaded. She eased the door
open a crack, peering into the darkened hallway beyond. There was a
table against the wall across from the bedroom door, a mirror
mounted above it. Sadie’s encounter with her reflection in the
glass scared the hell out of her, and she had her pistol aimed at
the figure before she realized she was looking at herself. She bit
back a nervous laugh.
“Jumpy much?” she murmured, blowing out a
breath. She took a step closer to the mirror, studying her
reflection and scowling at how terrible she looked. Her skin was
pale, and her eyes had dark circles under them, like she’d been
sleeping too hard and hadn’t gotten any real rest. There was a
bandage taped to her forehead, a spot of blood staining it, but
other than that, she looked injury free. She backed away from the
mirror and made her way down the dark hallway. There were voices
somewhere near the end of it, most of them hushed. Cade’s voice
rose above the others in clear anger.
“I don’t
care!
” she yelled, her words
echoing in the otherwise quiet house. “I want to know where the
hell they took my husband and
why!
”
Dominic’s voice came after Cade’s. “Why are
you yelling at
me
, Cade? I have no way of knowing the answer
to that. Hell, I didn’t even see which way the helicopters went
when they flew away. I was too busy hiding in the fucking kitchen
and trying to not get shot!”
“Cade, please, lay back down.” Derek’s voice
that time. “You just—”
“I’m fine! Stop treating me like I’m made of
glass!”
There was a scuff of a shoe against the
floorboards behind her, and Sadie whirled around, raising her
pistol to aim it at the perceived threat. Keith Fenton stood in
front of her, his hands up in a defensive gesture when he found
himself on the business end of a Sig Sauer P226.
“Nice to see you up and about, Ms. O’Dell. Do
you mind putting the firearm away?” Keith asked. He set a fingertip
against the top of the gun and applied gentle, downward pressure.
Sadie lowered the gun, resting it against her right thigh.
“Where is my brother?” she asked, skipping
over any formalities. She didn’t have time to follow the polite
courtesies of asking how everyone was or where they’d ended up. She
looked past the older man, searching the darkness for the familiar
figure of her twin brother, her heart skipping a beat when she
didn’t see him.
“Jude is downstairs sleeping,” Keith
answered. She shoved past him so she could search for Jude, but he
caught her arm and made her look at him. His expression was
serious, which made her feel queasier than she already did. “How do
you feel?” he asked. “You’ve been out for a while.”
“I have a headache,” Sadie admitted, “but
I’ve been through worse. What happened? Where are we?”
“We’re south of Charleston,” Keith answered.
He slid his hand to her elbow and tugged it, leading her toward the
top of the stairs. She shook her elbow free from his grasp. A
baby’s thin wail came from a room somewhere behind them. “Dominic
and Isaac found a useable house, and we locked it down to wait
while Cade recovers.”
“Recovers?” Sadie asked. She felt stupid and
sluggish and about ten steps behind everyone else.
“From having the baby,” Keith clarified. He
gave her a worried look and made like he was going to touch her
bandaged head or feel at her face for evidence of a fever. “You
sure you’re okay? Exactly how hard did you hit your head?”