The Becoming: Redemption (The Becoming Series Book 5) (6 page)

“What are you proposing?” Ethan asked. “I’m
willing to defer to your expertise on this. You know more about
those samples than I do.”

Kimberly hummed and leaned against the side
of the truck’s bed, staring at the map, her eyes darting over the
paper while she calculated their options. Finally, she let out a
long, slow sigh and folded her arms over her chest. “I think right
now, our best bet is to get back to the main highway,” she said. “I
know Sadie recommended we avoid it because it’s too open and we’re
more likely to run into other survivors, but I think we’re in a
situation where we’re going to have to risk it. These samples won’t
last forever.”

“So we go to the main highways, hopefully
where they’ve been cleared, and grab a car from somewhere,” Ethan
said. “I can get behind that.” He gathered their trash and stuffed
it into a pocket in his bag, then slid off the tailgate. “Shall we
get moving, then?”

“What about the dog?” Kimberly asked, nodding
toward the Labrador, who had abandoned the water left in the hubcap
and come to attention when Ethan stood.

Ethan shrugged. “Let him follow if he wants,”
he said. “If anything, he might serve as a good warning system if
there are any infected people in the area.”

It hadn’t
taken Brandt long to lose track of the hours. After the female
doctor who’d claimed to be Cade’s sister had left, he’d been
blindfolded and hauled out of his cell, taken through a
disorienting maze of hallways to a large, tiled room, and hosed
down with a high-pressure water hose, clothes and all. None of the
soldiers doing this had spoken to him at any time, not even to ask
him questions.

Afterwards, Brandt had been blindfolded again
and led in a meandering path back to his cell, his clothes soaked
and dripping onto the tiles. His blindfold had been removed, and
he’d been shoved back into his cell. While he’d been out, someone
had stripped his cot of every scrap of fabric, which was why he was
sitting on the edge of the mattress, shivering, his wet clothes
clinging to his body. He felt feverish and achy, and the wounds on
his arms and legs hurt with every move he made. No one had bothered
to change the bandages after he’d been hosed down, and the edge of
the tape was losing its stickiness and peeling up from his skin. He
absently tried to smooth it back down, but when it wouldn’t stick,
he gave up. He pushed up from the bed, starting to pace across the
cell in the hopes that the movement would help keep him warm.

Brandt’s mind was running across everything
he knew about interrogation techniques as he walked to the far end
of the cell and turned to go back the other way. They’d soaked him
with cold water and left his wet clothes on, and if he wasn’t
mistaken, they’d turned the air conditioning to freezing levels. It
was clearly a tactic they were using to try to freeze information
out of him. If only he knew what that information
was
.

That doctor woman…that was the most
intriguing mystery of all. She had said she was Cade’s sister. She
looked so much like her that it was hard to deny the possibility.
Out of all of them, she seemed to be the only one genuinely
concerned for Brandt’s health. That didn’t mean anything, because
it was clear she wanted something from him: Cade’s location, which
was something he couldn’t give her, any more than he could give
anyone else anything they were looking for.

Brandt had just brushed his fingers against
the steel door barring him from leaving the room when the sound of
boots on the tiled floor outside met his ears. The small window on
the door slid open a second later, and a voice barked through the
gap.

“Move to the back wall and turn to face it,”
it ordered. “Put your hands flat against the wall and don’t
move.”

For a second, Brandt contemplated disobeying
the orders. What would they do to him if he did? They couldn’t kill
him; they obviously needed something from him, and they weren’t
going to kill him until they got it.

But there are lots of other things they
could do to you that wouldn’t kill you,
a niggling voice in the
back of his head said.

He scowled, turned away from the door, and
walked to the back wall, pressing his palms flat against the cold
concrete.

The sound of metal scraping against metal
rang out in the cell, and the door squeaked open. Brandt tensed
like he were subconsciously expecting a blow. By the sound of the
footsteps, three people had entered the room, outmatching him, so
he couldn’t consider running. Two of them stopped several feet
away, and the third one moved close, wrapping a hand around
Brandt’s right wrist and twisting his arm behind his back. A cold
metal bracelet clasped around his wrist, and his left arm was
wrenched around and met with the same fate. Once he was handcuffed,
hands grasped Brandt’s shoulders and turned him around fast enough
to make his head spin.

Private Hutcherson and Private Bayer were
standing at attention at Brandt’s left and right, several feet back
from the man who’d handcuffed him. It was another
camouflage-dressed man that Brandt hadn’t seen before. His uniform
was devoid of a nametag, and he was wearing insignia that
identified him as a lieutenant. He looked Brandt over, nodded once,
and beckoned to the privates. “Bring him,” he ordered, and he
strode out of the room.

Brandt didn’t have any choice but to follow.
He wasn’t blindfolded for the trip this time, so he was able to see
his surroundings. The hallway he was led down was covered in
white—white tiles, white painted walls, and white ceiling tiles. At
intermittent points along the hall’s ceiling were small black
bubbles that were likely security cameras, probably tracking his
every move. He had the impression that he was in some sort of
repurposed medical facility, though he couldn’t put his finger on
what made him think so.

Despite being able to see where he was going,
Brandt still got dizzyingly lost in the twisting white hallways, a
state that remained until he was led into the carpeted
administrative area. The privates stopped him at the door near the
end of the hallway, where there was a piece of unlined paper taped
to the outside of the door that read in handwritten, blocky
letters, “Maj. James Bradford.” Brandt read the name on the door
and scowled. He kept his commentary to himself as Private
Hutcherson knocked on the door and opened it.

Then Brandt found himself looking at the man
who’d likely single-handedly caused the deaths of everyone he knew,
and it took everything in him to not tackle the man and try to
strangle him to death with his bare hands.

Major Bradford looked up from the papers
scattered over his desk and smiled, a smile that made Brandt clench
his fists and grind his blunt nails into his palms.

“Lieutenant Evans,” Bradford said with false
warmness, as if he were greeting a friend he hadn’t seen in a long
time. “So good of you to meet with me.”

“You act like I was given a choice,” Brandt
said through clenched teeth.

“Oh, let’s not act like that,” Bradford said.
He beckoned Brandt forward, and one of the privates shoved him a
bit, encouraging him to obey the major’s orders. Brandt sat in the
chair Bradford had indicated, staying on the edge of it.

Bradford sat back in his desk chair, watching
Brandt for a long, silent moment. Brandt stared at him in turn, and
when he couldn’t take the silence any longer, he asked, “What
happened to my people?”

“Your people?”

“Yeah, my people,” Brandt said. “The other
survivors in Woodside with me. Where are they?”

Bradford stared at him, like he was trying to
decide what to tell him. Brandt ground his teeth together while he
waited for his answer. He wanted—no, he
needed
to know—if
what the female doctor had told him when she’d mentioned the MOAB
was true. He was terrified of Bradford’s answer, but he had to
know, for the sake of his own sanity if nothing else. Even if he
never saw any of them again, knowing that they were out there,
alive and unscathed, was enough for him.

Bradford broke the silence with a heavy sigh.
“Michael,” he started, drawing the name out.

“Don’t call me Michael,” Brandt snapped.

“Oh, that’s right. You’re going by Brandt
now,” Bradford said. He studied Brandt for a moment more and said,
“You realize that we have to contain the spread of the contagion as
much as possible.” The way he stated it indicated that it wasn’t a
question and didn’t require a response from Brandt. When Brandt
didn’t give one, he continued. “Approximately thirty minutes after
you were taken into custody in the area you call ‘Woodside,’ all
military personnel was cleared out, and a Massive Ordinance Air
Blast, or MOAB, was dropped at the location. We witnessed no
survivors.”

Brandt’s stomach felt like it had dropped
down to his knees, and he slumped back in his chair. He clenched
his fists hard enough to make his knuckles hurt, and he squeezed
his eyes shut, breathing in deeply through his nose as he tried to
control himself. Once he’d reined in his emotions, at least enough
to not have a full breakdown in front of this bastard, he opened
his eyes and glared at him. Bradford didn’t seem affected in the
slightest.

“There were innocent men, women, and children
in that community,” Brandt said. It was a struggle to keep his
voice steady. “Innocent,
uninfected
people. And you
slaughtered them all. Why?”

“We have to work on the assumption that
everyone inside the quarantine zone is infected,” Bradford said.
“We can’t risk the contagion getting out into the general
population.”

“Quarantine zone?” Brandt repeated. “General
population? What the fuck are you talking about?”

Bradford directed his next statements to the
two men still standing behind Brandt’s chair. “Private Bayer,
Private Hutcherson, please escort Lieutenant Evans back to his
cell. I’m going to arrange for a show-and-tell session in the
morning.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Brandt
demanded. “Tell me what’s going on!”

Bradford made a motion to the two soldiers
behind Brandt, and they grasped him under his arms, hauling him
bodily to his feet and shoving him toward the door. He didn’t
resist—Lord only knew what they’d do to him if he did—but he did
manage to turn his head enough to catch a glimpse of Bradford, who
still sat at his desk. He’d returned to his paperwork, completely
ignoring Brandt as he was herded out of the room.

Once he was back in his cell, the door shut
and locked behind him, Brandt fell to his knees beside his bare
cot, ignoring the pain that jolted through them when they met the
hard concrete floor. He leaned forward to rest his forehead against
the edge of the thin mattress and squeezed his eyes shut as images
of his friends, and of Cade, assaulted his mind.

That night, he cried like he hadn’t cried in
years.

It took nearly
an hour of searching to find the best, safest path, but by the time
the sun had set, Sadie had installed herself onto the roof of the
safe house, a duffel bag full of weaponry that Cade had given her
on the shingles beside her. She’d stuck two bottles of water from
their meager stores in the pile of leaves in the gutter, along with
a flashlight, and she felt like she was adequately prepared to wait
the night out on the roof, keeping watch for anything that might
pop out of the woodwork and endanger her fellow survivors inside
the house.

Inside, Isaac was going from room to room,
searching through every drawer, closet, nook, and cranny to find
anything useful for their coming trip to Atlanta and his, Derek’s,
and Olivia’s survival at the house. There wasn’t much, someone had
been through the house before, but they’d overlooked the less
obvious items, which were piling up on the dining table. Isaac had
found a deck of playing cards in a bedroom drawer, and he’d given
them to her. She pulled them out of her pocket and slid them from
their paper box. She started shuffling them idly, staring down at
the darkened street below, her eyes sliding from one end of the
street to the other, searching between houses and cars and other
obstructions for anything more out of place than she and her
friends were.

The ambulance they’d arrived in was too
conspicuous sitting at the curb in front of the house, and Sadie
figured if they left it there too long, someone was bound to notice
it, even more so if it was someone who was familiar with the
street. An ambulance would be a sweet score for anybody, especially
considering the possibility that they’d find supplies in it. She
didn’t think it was likely that anyone would come across them;
however, the thought of it was enough to make her feel paranoid.
Her never-ending paranoia was what had kept her and Jude alive so
far, and she’d be damned if she ignored it now. She made a mental
note to say something to Isaac about moving the vehicle around to
where it wouldn’t be visible from the street.

Once she’d made her assessment of the
surrounding area, Sadie turned back to her deck of cards, idly
dealing out and playing a few hands of poker against herself while
she watched for movement below. She’d dealt four hands and was
stacking the cards back together to shuffle them when she caught
movement near the back of the ambulance. She stuffed the loose
cards into her back pocket and unzipped the bag she’d brought onto
the roof with her. There was a compound bow and a sizeable
collection of arrows in the bag, along with a rifle, three pistols,
six knives, two machetes, and ammunition for all the firearms.
Sadie slid the rifle out of the bag and made sure it was loaded,
then scooted to the edge of the roof to aim the rifle down. When
she saw who it was, she blew out a breath and lowered the
rifle.