The Becoming: Redemption (The Becoming Series Book 5) (38 page)

“Compromised how?” Kimberly asked.

“Somebody blew up the main gates,” he
explained. “It’s totally destroyed. The facility’s administration
is currently making plans to evacuate the place, but that’s
delaying the inevitable. The gates being compromised exposes
everyone north of the Wall to the possibility of infection.”

“And we can’t have that, now, can we?” Ethan
muttered sourly.

“No, we can’t,” Kimberly said. “Just because
these people fucked up and left us all to suffer doesn’t mean
everyone else in the general population should suffer.”

“You’re right,” Ethan said contritely. “I’m
being shitty. I’m sorry.” He lowered the pistol to his side, though
he didn’t put it away. “So, Jacob, how can we trust you?”

“There’s absolutely nothing I can say to make
you trust me,” Jacob said. “You don’t know me, so you have no
reason to believe anything that comes out of my mouth. And I
understand that. I’m not going to
ask
you to trust me. What
I will ask is that you come with me and let me take you to the
rendezvous spot with Lindsey so she can get you out of here. You
trust
her
, don’t you?”

“I don’t even know who
her
is,”
Kimberly spoke up. She looked to Ethan and asked, “Who is this
woman that you apparently know?”

“Cade’s younger sister,” Ethan explained.
“The one that lives—
lived
—in Israel. How the hell did she
end up over here working in this place?”

“I’ll leave her to tell you that story,”
Jacob said. “For now, we need to get you…” He trailed off and
twisted around, looking back toward the laboratory’s entry door.
“Someone’s coming,” he said, and a new urgency seeped into his
voice. “You need to hide.”

Kimberly whipped her head around, searching
for somewhere to stuff herself, but Ethan grabbed her arm and
shoved her toward the wall that divided the office from the lab
proper. The bottom half of the wall was concrete, leaving only the
top half of the wall exposed to view from the office and the
hallway. “Get down,” he said, shoving her to the floor. She dropped
down, hunkering against the wall, and Ethan joined her.

Jacob waved his hand at Ethan frantically.
“Give me the gun,” he said, his voice low and hushed.

“Why?” Ethan hissed back, looking like he was
prepared to shoot the scientist before he handed him the only
weapon he had.

“So they’ll believe me when I told them I
shot that infected guy back there,” Jacob said.

“Eth, give him the fucking gun,” Kimberly
said.

Ethan handed the gun to Jacob, though it was
obvious he didn’t want to do it. To keep him from rebelling, she
fumbled for and grasped his now-empty hand, holding it tightly in
hers, squeezing it too hard. The look on his face was strained as
he tried to smile at her, and he switched the flashlight off,
plunging them into darkness.

Brandt’s nerves
were on edge when he and Lindsey arrived at her apartment building
twenty minutes after she’d hung up her burner phone and revealed to
him that Ethan Bennett had somehow found his way into the Eden
Facility and was being held in a manner similar to how he’d been
held. He was so strung out and worked up that his hands were
shaking. He clenched them tightly around the steering wheel in an
effort to hide his jitters and followed Lindsey’s instructions as
she guided him into the building’s parking lot and to her
designated space. Only when the car was parked and the engine
turned off did he speak.

“Now that we’re here, what’s the plan to get
Ethan out of that hellhole?” he asked, unbuckling his seatbelt. His
mind was already spinning, whirling, searching for the plan that
would get his friend out of the hock he’d landed in.

“Here’s what I’m thinking,” Lindsey said,
mirroring his actions. The seatbelt snapped out of her hand and she
whipped it off her shoulder, the buckle smacking into the window
with a loud
clack.
She opened her door, sliding out so she
could lead the way inside.

A rumble rattled the air, seconds before the
sound coalesced into a roar that made Brandt’s ears want to fold in
on themselves. He recognized the sound instantly for what it was.
Without hesitation, he fell back into the car, the gearshift
digging painfully into his side, and stretched across to the
still-opened passenger door. He grabbed Lindsey by one of her belt
loops and dragged her back into the car, pulling her down so she
would be shielded from any falling debris, since in his haste, he
hadn’t bothered to check to see where the explosion had come from.
Lindsey tumbled into the car with him, her hands clapped over her
ears to muffle the sound. She hooked her foot in the storage
compartment on the bottom half of the door and yanked the door
shut; Brandt did the same, hoping it would help dampen the sound.
It did, minimally, but it was enough that they could sit up to look
out the windows.

There was a fire in the south near where the
Wall stood. In the fading light of evening, Brandt saw a shower of
stone and shrapnel raining down in the distance, like a great hand
had slid underneath the Wall and jerked sharply upward, sending
pieces of it flying into the air. Beside him, Lindsey gasped and
pressed a hand against her lips.

“Holy shit,” she said, her voice muffled
against her fingers. “Holy shit, what is happening?”

“Looks like someone might have blown up the
Wall or something near it,” Brandt said. “Though I’d put my bets on
the Wall itself being the victim.”

“Who the hell would do something like that?”
Lindsey cried. “The Wall is the only thing that protects the people
who live north of it from the infected!”

“I’m aware of that,” Brandt said. A thick
column of smoke began to rise from the vicinity of the
explosion.

“The Wall is probably compromised,” Lindsey
said, her voice hushed. She was obviously processing what had
happened; Brandt could practically see her brain’s gears chugging.
“That means the infected on the other side will be on
this
side, soon if they’re not already. I’m not going
anywhere
until I’m loaded for bear, and I suggest you do the same.”

“I figured that part was a given,” Brandt
said. “I feel naked without my fucking guns.” He opened his door
and climbed out again, waiting for her to do the same. “After we
get ourselves armed, then what?”

“Well, I guess that depends,” Lindsey said.
Her voice still shook from the initial shock of the explosion, but
she soldiered on nonetheless. “What are your plans?”

“Does it require stating?” Brandt asked. “I’m
going to get Ethan out of that cesspit, and then I’m going after my
wife.”

“I thought as much, and I’m going with you.”
She started walking toward the building’s entrance, and Brandt
scrambled to follow.

“Are you sure about that?” he asked after
they walked inside and stepped through a door into a stairwell made
of concrete and steel and more concrete. “I’m not sure you have a
real comprehension of what’s on the other side of that wall.”

“Oh, I have more than a little
comprehension,” Lindsey replied. “I work with these things in the
lab at the Eden Facility all the time. There is a team of soldiers
that captures them and brings them in for my and Jacob’s
examinations and experiments. It’s how we get our test
subjects.”

“Well, imagine being completely surrounded by
those
test subjects
,” Brandt spat. He followed her onto the
third floor and to one of the apartment doors, waiting until after
she’d unlocked the door and they were inside before he continued.
“You probably dealt with those test subjects in a controlled
setting on a one-on-one basis. It’s not like that on the other side
of the wall. Out there, there’s every chance you could get
surrounded by the infected, and unless you keep a cool head and
know what you’re doing, you’re going to get killed.”

“I’m more capable than you think I am,”
Lindsey retorted. “I served in the IDF, the same as Cade, you
know.”

“Yeah, but she was there for seven years,”
Brandt said. “She made a career of it. Did you?”

“No. I did my mandatory two years, and I like
to think I wasn’t that shabby at it,” Lindsey replied. “I’m pretty
sure I can take care of myself.”

Brandt folded his arms over his chest and
leaned against the wall next to Lindsey’s couch, studying her
thoughtfully. She stared back at him, her brown eyes challenging,
daring him to argue with her. He sighed and looked away from her,
scanning his eyes over the living room. It was tastefully
decorated, the couch beige and plump and covered with pillows, the
coffee table holding several magazines and books, and the
large-screen television mounted on the wall, the cable box resting
on a small table below it. The place looked homey, but it didn’t
appear lived in: the television had a thin layer of dust on it, and
the pillows on the couch looked like they hadn’t been disturbed
since they’d first been put on there. He looked longingly at the
TV. It had been so long since he’d been able to relax and do
something as simple as watch a show on television that he ached to
pick up the remote and turn the device on.

While he’d been ogling the television,
Lindsey had started to flip over couch cushions and dig through
drawers, retrieving pistols and magazines and holsters. Brandt
raised an eyebrow when she fished another holstered pistol out of
the space between the recliner’s cushion and arm. “Do you always
keep guns hidden all over your house like this?”

“Not normally,” Lindsey said. “I used to not
do it, because I was worried about my daughter coming across one
and accidentally shooting herself. Since she hasn’t been here, I’ve
been stockpiling, even though the government has made that
illegal.”

“Stockpiling is illegal?”

“Yeah, the government has decided they don’t
want people hoarding weapons and ammunition, because there is, they
claim, nothing to worry about,” Lindsey said. “I said fuck that,
and I started collecting what I could as often as I could.” She
smiled sheepishly. “Some of the ammunition might actually be
stolen.”

“Oh, you’re a criminal?” Brandt said, his
tone half joking. He thought it was horrible that people had been
reduced to stealing what they needed to protect themselves and
their families in the event of an outbreak—one that might be there
now, knocking on their doors, if that explosion had been any
indication.

“I do what I need to do to survive,” Lindsey
said. “If that means stealing ammunition for my guns so I can shoot
my way to safety in the event of a mass outbreak north of the Wall,
then so be it.”

“I like the way you think,” Brandt said. She
approached him with two different pistols and held them out to him.
He accepted them both and reached for his belt buckle before
realizing he wasn’t wearing one. “You got a spare belt I could use?
One that, preferably, isn’t intended for women?”

“What’s wrong with women’s belts?” Lindsey
asked, a distant smile flitting across her face, though the
expression didn’t reach her eyes.

“Well, considering they’re not intended for
men to wear…” Brandt trailed off with a helpless shrug. “I don’t
know. I just want something that will actually go around my waist
and isn’t as thin as a string.”

Lindsey did laugh at that, and she retreated
to what Brandt assumed was her bedroom. After a minute, she emerged
with a thick, heavy leather belt that was obviously military
issued. “Will this work?”

“It’s perfect, thanks,” Brandt said. He took
it from her and strapped it around his waist, sliding the gun
holsters onto it and working it through his belt loops.

“What else do we need to have for our trip
south?” Lindsey asked. “Obviously weapons, but what else?
Food?”

“I think we should travel lightly,” Brandt
said. “Out there, being weighed down with too many supplies can
mean the difference between life and death.”

“What if we end up in a situation where we
have no food?” Lindsey asked.

“It’s a bit of a Catch-22 kind of scenario,”
Brandt admitted. “We should be able to scavenge enough to survive
on while we’re there. If I have anything to say about it, we won’t
be gone long.”

“And if we’re gone longer than you think
we’re going to be?” Lindsey prompted.

“We’ll figure it out,” Brandt said. “Like me
and Cade and all the others always do.”

Keith scaled
the fire escape staircase mounted to the outside of the building
they’d been hiding in, a nervous wreck. Sadie climbed the ladder in
front of him soundlessly, somehow keeping her boots from clanging
on the metal steps. Keith tried to emulate her, without success. He
wasn’t built to make that little noise.

Behind him, Jude trudged upward, his feet
landing on the metal steps, making soft, metallic thunks. Cade
brought up the rear, that mean-looking rifle of hers resting
against her back, the look in her blue eyes hard and
determined.

Keith couldn’t ask for better companions and
allies on this crazy journey he was stuck on. If it hadn’t been for
these people and the rest of their group, he’d have died back in
Woodside, if not long before that. He’d follow every one of them to
the ends of the Earth if they asked him to. He owed them that
much.

Ahead of him, Sadie disappeared over the edge
of the roof, and a few more steps brought him to it. He hauled
himself up and over, then turned to assist Jude and Cade, even
though it was likely that neither of them actually needed the help.
Once all four of them were safely on the roof, Keith turned his
focus onto the panoramic view of the building’s surroundings that
the roof offered him.

What he saw made his heart sink.

A sea of infected surrounded the building,
undulating in waves of bodies and stench and rot, staggering and
stumbling down the street, heading toward the wall. Hundreds of
them had been drawn by the sound of the explosion, but in the dark,
it was impossible to tell how far back they stretched. Shining a
flashlight to try to get a better look was out of the question, not
if they wanted to avoid drawing attention to themselves.