The Becoming: Redemption (The Becoming Series Book 5) (24 page)

“Then I’m going to rain hellfire and
brimstone on their asses,” Cade vowed. “I’ll tear their heads off
and burn the fucking place to the ground.”

“Tell us how you really feel, Cade,” Sadie
said as she and her twin brother joined them. She carried her bow
in her hands, and on her back was her torn backpack, which she’d
rigged into a quiver with some strategic cutting, tearing, and
sewing.

“Any signs of anything bad?” Cade asked,
ignoring the younger woman’s comment.

“This whole city is bad,” Sadie replied. “As
for specific badness, neither of us has spotted anything
particularly unsavory. Yet. I figure it’s a matter of time before
the infected figure out where we are and we end up neck deep in
them.”

A truck rumbled to life on the other side of
the building. Cade straightened and pushed herself to her feet,
standing on the dumpster and turning in that direction. The engine
was loud, clearly of the diesel varietya blessing, really,
considering the vast majority of gasoline had gone bad over the
intervening two years. The engine revved a few times.

“Sounds like they might have found something
workable,” Keith commented, hopping down from the edge of the
dumpster and starting toward the front of the building. The twins
followed. Cade stayed where she was, keeping her vantage point on
the higher elevation that the dumpster offered in case something
unwelcome came along. Remy appeared at the corner of the building,
a huge grin on her face. Behind her, the vehicle she and Dominic
had found rolled into view on Luckie Street. It was large and sand
colored, and the back of it was covered with canvas that was the
same color as the cab.

“What the hell is that thing?” Keith asked
over the rumble of the vehicle’s engine.

“It’s an M1078 LMTV,” Cade replied. “Standard
military troop carrier. Should be perfect for what we need.” She
strode to where Remy stood on the sidewalk and asked, “What sort of
fuel level does it have?”

“Almost a full tank,” Remy said. “Dominic
said it can get us pretty damn far before we have to worry about
filling up. There are even a few empty tanks in the back of the
truck that we can fill up with extra fuel for the road so we don’t
have to stop too much.”

“Sounds good,” Cade said. “How long does
Dominic think it will take us to get to Eden in this thing?”

“Six or seven hours,” Dominic answered,
dropping down from the truck’s cab. “No more than eight, barring us
running into any complications on the way.”

“That sounds doable,” Cade said.
And
nowhere near fast enough for my preference,
she thought
.
Eager to get on the road to find Brandt, she added, “What do you
say we get into the truck and get moving before the sun sets
completely? I want to get out of the city before sundown.”

“That doesn’t leave very much time, does it?”
Dominic observed. He hauled himself back into the cab of the truck,
settling behind the wheel. Cade climbed in behind him, ignoring the
ugly look Remy gave her as she took her seat on the passenger side
of the cab. When Sadie made a move to climb up to take the third
seat in the cab, Cade shook her head and pulled the door shut
before she could get in.

“Cab’s closed,” she said. “Get in the back
with everyone else. I’ve got to talk to Dominic alone.”

Once she was sure that everyone had gotten
into the cargo bed, Cade signaled for Dominic to get the truck
moving. She waited until they’d turned onto Centennial Olympic Park
Drive before she spoke.

“I’m going to ask you a question, and I want
you to be straight with me,” she said.

“Of course, Cade,” Dominic said. “You know
I’ll be up front with you about anything.”

“What are the chances we’ll find Brandt in
one piece?” Cade asked bluntly.

“Fifty-fifty,” Dominic answered. When she
gave him an incredulous look, he shifted gears and shrugged. “You
told me to be honest, so I’m being honest. Either he’s maimed or
dead, or he’s not. Either way, at this point, there’s nothing we
can do about that except pray.”

“That’s not something I’ve been very good at
doing over the past couple of years,” Cade said. She slouched into
her seat. “It’s hard to have faith when everything in the world is
imploding around you, you know?”

“Oh, I know,” Dominic said. “Believe me, I
know. I’ve struggled with that since… hell, since I got recruited
into the DIA years ago. When you see the worst of humanity, it’s
hard to focus on the good.” He shifted gears again and the truck
picked up speed, the engine roaring under the pressure he was
putting on the gas pedal. “Someday you’ll be able to focus on your
faith again. Something will give you a reason to do that, whether
it’s your baby or your husband, and when you get that back, things
will be better for you.”

“Yeah. Until then, I get to worry over
whether or not Brandt is still alive and, if he’s not, how I’m
going to rain Hell on the military.”

“In the meantime, I think I might have
remembered a little about Eden,” Dominic said. Cade’s hopes
swelled, and it must have shown on her face, because he said, “Not
very much, so don’t get too excited.”

“I think we’re at the point that every little
bit helps,” Cade said. “What can you tell me?”

“Just a bit that I vaguely remember from my
days in the DIA,” Dominic said. “There was this plan in the event
of a catastrophic failure at the CDC or a similar important
government facility that involved Eden. I don’t remember all the
details, but there were contingency plans in place to move
essential services to Eden. I don’t know why they picked Eden. I’m
not sure if there’s a strategic importance to its location or if it
was chosen because of the name or what. I just know that we can
probably expect a significant military presence in the city once we
get there.”

“How significant?” Cade asked, already trying
to calculate her odds in her head.

“Significant enough that, if we get into some
sort of skirmish with them, I’ll be surprised if we survive,”
Dominic said. “This is all assuming, of course, that they’re better
off than we’ve been. For all we know, they’ve been wiped out too. I
doubt it though, considering they were able to send out gunships
and so many soldiers.”

“There’s more of a good chance than a bad one
that we’re going to run into trouble in Eden,” Cade stated.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Dominic replied. “There’s
also a chance they’ll listen to us and not shoot us on sight.”

Cade clutched her sniper rifle to her chest,
the barrel pointed toward the window. The wind rushing into the cab
tugged at her dark hair, and there was a tightness in her chest
that tried to stuff itself in her throat. She fought it back,
swallowing hard, struggling to keep control of herself and not let
hopeless despair take over. “Thank you, Dominic. For being honest
with me.”

Dominic smiled without looking away from the
windshield. “Anytime, Cade. Anytime.”

Jude had
passed out on one of the built-in bench seats within minutes of
clambering into the back of the cargo truck, his slender body
stretched out along the bench that wasn’t the epitome of comfort
but was better than some of the surfaces he’d slept on since the
outbreak began. He managed to sleep for the first three hours of
the trip from Atlanta, and he didn’t wake up until they’d passed
through Spartanburg, South Carolina.

If he’d been able to talk, Jude would have
groaned when he opened his eyes and blinked in the hazy darkness in
the back of the military cargo truck. He rolled his head to the
side and spotted his sister lying on the bench across from him,
sprawled on her back with her feet still resting on the floor. Remy
sat on the floor near the end of the truck bed, her knees drawn to
her chest, staring at the receding topography. Jude took a mental
inventory on who was missing and remembered that Dominic and Cade
were in the truck’s cab. Which left Keith.

Jude twisted around, lifting his shoulders
off the bench seat to get a look in the direction of the cab, and
spotted Keith sitting against the front of the cargo hold, his legs
stretched out in front of him. His jeans were stained with blood
and ripped right above his knee, and the bandage he’d covered his
wound with peeked through the hole in the denim. Keith thumbed
through a paperback book, a dim flashlight propped against his
right shoulder to aim onto the pages. As he turned another page, he
looked up and smiled when he saw Jude staring at him.

“You’re awake,” he commented, sitting up
straighter. He folded the corner of the book’s page down and tucked
the paperback into his bag. “Did you sleep okay?”

Jude shrugged with one shoulder and pushed
himself into a sitting position, rubbing at his eyes with the heel
of a hand. He fumbled for and found his ink pen and notepad,
flipping open to a fresh page and scrawling onto it,
Where are
we?

“North of Spartanburg,” Keith reported.
“We’re about halfway to Eden. You feeling okay to make this trip?
Cade said something about giving us a chance to get off the crazy
train before we got too close to Eden to have the decision made for
us.”

Yeah, I’m okay so long as Sadie is,
he
wrote. He tapped the pen against his bottom lip, deciding what to
write next, then,
Are YOU okay to do this?
He left his own
desire for Keith to stick around unspoken—or unwritten, as it
were—out of worry that he wouldn’t take it well. He hesitated, then
flipped the notepad around to show Keith what it said.

“I’m fine with it,” Keith said. “These guys
saved me. The least I could do is help them out in repayment.”

Jude nodded and slid off the bench. He sat
beside the other man, falling the last few inches when the truck
hit a pothole that jarred the entire vehicle. He tumbled sideways,
falling onto Keith and sprawling across his lap. Keith laughed and
levered him back into a sitting position. “You okay?”

Jude picked up the notepad he’d dropped.
I’m fine,
he scrawled on it.
What is the plan when we get
there?

“I don’t know,” Keith said. “I guess it
depends on what we find ourselves facing.”

Remy turned to face them. “What are we
talking about?” she asked, raising her voice over the rumble of the
truck.

“What to do when we get to Eden,” Keith
answered. “I think that depends on what we’re expecting to run
into.”

Remy crawled closer to them, catching Sadie’s
arm and shaking it to wake her up as she passed. Sadie sat up with
a startle, flinging her arms out to swat at whatever had grabbed
her, catching her swing before it could actually hit Remy.

“Let’s look at this logically,” Remy said,
settling on the floor near Keith’s feet and tucking her legs
underneath her. “Considering the way the military reacted when they
showed up at Woodside, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that
we’ll be met with the same hostility that we received there. I
think we should come up with a plan to fight back if we are
attacked in Eden.”

“What if we’re not attacked and we go in guns
blazing?” Keith countered. “Then we’re at risk of killing innocent
people unnecessarily. God knows there are few enough of us as it
is.”

“We shouldn’t risk
our
lives on
maybes,” Remy retorted.

“
Everybody is overthinking this,”
Jude
signed, and Sadie translated for him. “
When we get there, we
should send an emissary in to talk to them first. This will reduce
the risk to the rest of us, and it will give us the chance to have
our points of view explained to the people in charge, assuming
there is even anyone left in Eden. This might be a wild goose
chase, after all."

“The man has a point,” Keith said.

“You
would
agree with him, wouldn’t
you?” Remy replied.

“What the hell is
that
supposed to
mean?”

“That’s enough, guys,” Sadie interrupted,
waving her hand between them like she was trying to distract two
dogs that were at each other’s throats. “We’ve got plenty to worry
about without getting ugly with each other. I think Jude’s idea
about the emissary is a good one. It reduces the risk to all of
us.”

“
There’s a pretty big risk that the
emissary, whoever it ends up being, could get killed,”
Jude
signed. “
That’s why I think it should be a volunteer who
understands the risks. It can’t be me, because it needs to be
someone who can talk.”

There was a thud from the front of the truck,
and the vehicle jolted like it had run over something. Remy
scrambled to the tailgate and stared out of the rear of the truck
before letting out a laugh. “Whoever is driving up there ran over a
couple of infected,” she reported before crawling back to them.

“Must be Cade behind the wheel,” Keith said.
“She’s probably hit her quota of patience for the day and is
running over whatever comes into our path.”

“So long as she doesn’t trash the truck in
the process, I don’t care what she hits,” Remy said. Her fingers
flexed against the hilt of her sheathed bolo knife, and Jude caught
a glimpse of an anticipatory gleam in her eyes. A shiver rolled
down his spine at the sight, and he was struck with the sensation
that this woman was unstable. He couldn’t put his finger on what
about her made him think so, but something made him think she was
taking a slow, steady slide into a dark and ominous place.

He shook himself free from the concerns and
refocused on the conversation around him. The others’ talk had
devolved into another argument, low and intense, debating who
should serve as the group’s emissary to get them into whatever
facility they might find so they could locate Brandt and save him.
Instead of trying to join into the debate, he leaned against the
cool metal of the truck and let the voices roll over him, fighting
against the stir of nervousness at the impending potential fight
they all faced.