The Becoming: Redemption (The Becoming Series Book 5) (36 page)

“How are you feeling?” Brandt asked. Lindsey
pointed him to the right.

“How do you think I feel?” she asked after he
made the turn. “I found out for certain that my daughter is dead
after spending two years praying for the contrary, and my sister
might as well be, for all the distance between us.” He flinched
when she mentioned Cade, and the look in his eyes shifted from
concerned to sad. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I forget that you’re
grieving too.”

“I’m not grieving,” Brandt said, grinding his
hands against the steering wheel. “Because she’s not dead.”

“How can you be so sure of that?”

“Because I’m her husband,” Brandt said. “I
think if she were dead, I would have sensed it. I
know
I
would have. She’s not dead.”

His confidence that Cade was alive was
buoying, and Lindsey sat up straighter. “We need a game plan,” she
said. “I can handle everything on this side of the Wall, but I’ve
never been on the southern side. I’m going to need your help.”

Brandt wasn’t paying attention to her. He was
staring out the windshield with narrowed eyes, turning his head to
follow a sign on the side of the road. “I thought you said we were
in Bowling Green, Kentucky,” he said, his tone accusatory.

Lindsey raised an eyebrow. “When did I tell
you that?”

“The day they brought me in,” Brandt said.
“When I was captured and brought in. You told me then that we were
near Bowling Green, Kentucky.”

Lindsey drew in a slow breath as realization
hit her, and she recalled the events of the night that Brandt had
been brought into the Eden Facility. “Oh hell, I forgot about
that,” she said ruefully, wrinkling her nose. “That was Bradford’s
doing. We were told to not tell you where you really were so if in
the off-chance you escaped, you wouldn’t know where to go.”

“And you thought it was acceptable to not
mention it to me at
some
point over the past day?” Brandt
asked. He jabbed his finger at the windshield. “That said North
Carolina. When were you planning to tell me that I wasn’t even in
the same
state
you told me I was in?”

“Brandt, it was a mistake, okay?” she said.
“An oversight. Ever heard of those? I’ve had a lot of shit on my
mind, including figuring out how to get
you
out of the
facility.” She flopped back in her seat, folding her arms over her
chest, scowling. “Would a thank you hurt?”

“No, but you’re not getting one until you get
me back where I belong,” Brandt said. “Which would be on the other
side of that fucking wall.”

“I’ll get you there,” Lindsey promised. “Only
if you take me with you.”

Brandt didn’t respond until he made the next
turn that Lindsey signaled for him to take. He extended his hand
into the passenger side of the vehicle, and she grasped it tightly
in her own. “Deal,” he agreed.

Lindsey grinned hesitantly and shook his hand
firmly, but before she could say, “Deal,” the prepaid, disposable
cell phone she kept hidden in her glove box started to ring.

Ethan had almost
drifted off half a dozen times since he’d been stuffed into his
clear-walled cell, but every time he slid so precariously close to
sleep, one or both of the infected on either side of him would slam
themselves against the glass hard enough to startle him back awake.
They never let up from their hyper-vigilant pursuit, something that
Ethan didn’t understand. The last time he’d encountered infected up
close and personal, they hadn’t reacted to him like these two were.
If anything, the last ones he’d run into had seen him like he was
one of them. These weren’t reacting in the same way, and he
couldn’t figure out why.

He could take his time to come up with all
sorts of theories, and he could even bounce them off that scientist
who’d visited him earlier. To hell with that. He’d be damned if he
gave the man anything more than any bare essentials. He wouldn’t
spend the last two days of his life trying to help these
assholes.

He slid down the wall, stretching out flat on
his back on the floor. His spine popped and cracked, his back
muscles seized, and he groaned out loud at the pain that thrummed
through him. He draped one of his arms across his forehead and
stared at the half-rotten infected man in the cell beside his. The
man was mashing his face against the glass, leaving smears of old
blood and who knew what else on the pane. Ethan curled his lip in
disgust and closed his eyes, shifting his arm to shade his eyes
from the fluorescent glare above.

A soft thud from somewhere nearby caught his
attention, and he slid his arm off his eyes a fraction, lifting his
head slightly. The hall outside his cell was still empty. He was
tempted to get up and check out the source of the sound, but he
figured it came from one of the two people on either side of him,
so he shrugged and dropped his head back down on the floor.

There was a clang that sounded like it had
come from the lab. Ethan ignored it, figuring it was the scientist
returning to the lab to grill him a little more. He stayed where he
was, breathing steadily, forcing himself to look relaxed, hoping
that he would fool the man into thinking that he was asleep and
leaving him alone.

A rapid tapping on the plastic-glass door of
his cell made him fully uncover his eyes. It was a frantic,
rhythmic tapping, one that was designed to catch his attention
while making minimal noise. He lolled his head to the side, trying
to not stir up the infected to either side of him any more than
necessary, and his eyes widened when he saw Kimberly kneeling on
the cold tiles outside his cell.

She was filthy, her pale blue scrubs and her
shoulder-length blonde hair covered in streaks and stains—and were
those cobwebs all over her clothes? He scrambled off his back and
slid across the floor to the door, pressing his palms against the
glass.

“Jesus, Kim, where have you been?” Ethan
asked, raising his voice as loud as he dared so she could hear him
through the glass. “Are you okay? They didn’t hurt you, did they?”
The sight of the dried blood crusted in her hair made his
long-dormant anger surge up in him again.

“I’m fine,” Kimberly said. “Nothing I can’t
handle.”

“How did you find me?” Ethan asked,
bewildered.

She pointed up, and he glanced at the
ceiling. “I crawled through the ceiling,” she said. “It wasn’t the
most pleasant experience.” She shuddered, then shook it off. “I’m
here to bust out you out, damsel in distress.”

“I could argue about which of us qualifies as
a damsel, but right now, I’ll be happy if you just get me the hell
out of here,” Ethan admitted.

“I will as soon as I figure out how…” She
trailed off, examining the door’s lock closely, a look of intense
concentration on her face. “Key?”

“I haven’t seen one,” Ethan said. “I think
either one of Bradford’s men has it, or the scientist has it.”

“Scientist?” Kimberly repeated. “You mean Dr.
Howser?”

“I don’t know what the hell the man’s name
is, and I really don’t care,” Ethan said. “Just get me out of
here.”

Kimberly examined the lock closer and nodded
to herself. “I’ll be right back.” She crawled away, scurrying back
in the direction of the lab, a look of determination on her face.
Ethan’s heart crammed itself into his throat, and he slid back from
the door a few inches.

He tilted his head back to look at the
ceiling above him, wondering why the thought of escaping through
the ceiling hadn’t occurred to him. The ceiling was solid
sheetrock, though, so any escape attempt from his cell would have
been a moot point anyway. He had to give Kimberly credit for her
ingenuity. He wasn’t sure he’d have thought about crawling through
the ceiling to bust out of this place.

He was still waiting for Kimberly to return
when the scientist came back from wherever he’d gone, swathed once
again in his biohazard suit. Ethan did his best to not look past
the man in a search for Kimberly; he wanted to avoid alerting Dr.
Howser that there was anything going on out of the ordinary.

“I apologize for earlier,” the scientist
said. “Your presence caught me by surprise, and I didn’t take the
time to make proper introductions. I’m Dr. Jacob Howser. I’m an
epidemiologist here at the Eden Facility that has been tasked with
helping to find a cure for the Michaluk Virus.”

“Yeah, good luck with that,” Ethan
grumbled.

“Your file tells me that your name is Ethan
Christopher Bennett.”

“So you can read,” Ethan said. “Good for
you.”

“The file tells me quite a few other things
about you,” Jacob said. “Like the fact your blood type is
A-positive, you are forty-one years old, and you’ve been bitten
twelve times by at least one infected, probably more.”

Ethan raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to
continue.

“It also tells me that you test positive for
the Michaluk Virus,” Jacob said. “Which, I assume, you contracted
via those twelve bites you’ve sustained at some point in the past
couple of years.” Despite himself, Ethan nodded, a single bob of
the head in acknowledgment of the doctor’s supposition. “What the
file
doesn’t
tell me is how you ended up here and why.”

“Well, it certainly wasn’t because this was
the hottest vacation destination in the southeast,” Ethan said. He
made to shove his hands into his pockets before realizing that the
scrub pants didn’t have pockets. He scowled again and folded his
arms across his chest, leaning against the wall across from
Jacob.

Jacob shifted uncomfortably and glanced
toward his labs. “I should get you out of your cell and do a full
physical workup.” He flipped the clasp on his clipboard up and
pulled free a key. “If I let you out of there, are you planning to
attack me? Because if you’re going to make this hard, I can easily
leave you in there.”

“I’m not going to attack you,” Ethan said.
There was no way he was going to do anything this man could
construe as antagonizing if he was going to get him out of that
cell, and he was especially not going to do anything when he wasn’t
sure where Kimberly was.

The doctor stared at Ethan like he was trying
to assess how truthful he was being. Then he slid the key into the
lock and turned it, and the door swung open.

The temptation to rush out of the room and
make a break for it was overwhelming, but Ethan refrained, stepping
out of the cell at a sedate pace. Jacob closed the door, clipped
the key back onto his clipboard, and led him toward the labs. The
moment they entered the room full of stainless steel tables and lab
equipment, Ethan immediately started scanning the room, searching
for both Kimberly and for an escape route other than the door to
the office beyond the lab. There had to be an emergency exit
somewhere in there, didn’t there? It was a lab; they worked with
caustic chemicals all the time and needed an escape route in case
something blew up in their faces.

Ethan saw neither an escape route nor
Kimberly, and his heart sank a little.

The doctor had stopped halfway through the
lab, setting his clipboard on one of the tables. He looked at
Ethan, the expression on his face serious. “Lieutenant Michael
Brandt Evans.”

Ethan’s heart leaped in his throat, and he
guessed that that showed in his expression, because a knowing smile
crept across Jacob’s face.

“So you
do
know him.”

“Of course I know him!” Ethan said. “He’s one
of my closest friends.
My
question is how the hell
you
know him!”

A tremor rumbled through the floor. For the
barest of seconds, the thought that he was actually experiencing an
earthquake crossed Ethan’s mind. Then the floor heaved itself up
toward the sky and threw him and Jacob to their knees. Ceiling
tiles rained from above, and Ethan put his arms up to shield his
head, scrambling underneath one of the stainless steel tables. The
fluorescent lights flickered, flashing off and on several times and
plunging the lab into total darkness.

Ethan crammed himself further under the table
beneath which he’d sheltered, panting from the fight-or-flight rush
of adrenaline. He cupped a hand over his nose and mouth against the
dust filtering down while the upheaval ground to a halt. It left
behind the sounds of shifting stones, falling tiles, and gushing
water from an unseen burst pipe.

“What the hell happened?” Ethan called.

There was a pause, during which Ethan heard
Jacob coughing, and then the scientist answered. “I have no idea.
Whatever it is can’t possibly be good.” His voice was hoarse from
breathing in dust.

There was a clank and the sound of a drawer
sliding open. Seconds later, a bright light flicked on and swept
the lab until it found him. Jacob wielded a large black metal
flashlight similar to the heavy one Ethan had used as a police
officer; dust danced in the halogen beam between them.

“You hurt?” Jacob asked, and Ethan took a
quick assessment of himself. Other than a scrape on his right
forearm, he was free of injury. He shook his head. “Good,” Jacob
said. “I’m going to find out what happened. Wait here. I’ll be back
in a minute.” He hurried out the door, leaving Ethan alone in the
dark with no idea how to get out of there.

“Kimberly!” Ethan hissed, raising his voice
to be heard over the distant spew of water. “Kim!” The only
response was the sound of some debris crashing to the floor.

“Fuck this,” Ethan muttered. He crawled out
from under the table and felt around for drawers, for storage
closets, for anything that might have had something useful in
it.

In the third drawer he searched, Ethan found
what he was looking for: a chunky MagLite flashlight and, to his
surprise, a .22-caliber pistol. It looked like it had been made
with a woman’s smaller hands in mind, but Ethan wasn’t going to
turn his nose up at it. He palmed it and dug further into the
drawer, finding a leather zipper bag inside which were three more
magazines for the pistol.