The Becoming: Revelations

• Title Page
  
• Prologue:
  
• Chapter 1
  
• Chapter 2
  
• Chapter 3
  
• Chapter 4
  
• Chapter 5
  
• Chapter 6
  
• Chapter 7
  
• Chapter 8
  
• Chapter 9
  
• Chapter 10
  
• Chapter 11
  
• Chapter 12
  
• Chapter 13
  
• Chapter 14
  
• Chapter 15
  
• Chapter 16
  
• Chapter 17
  
• Chapter 18
  
• Chapter 19
  
• Chapter 20
  
• Chapter 21
  
• Chapter 22
  
• Chapter 23
  
• Chapter 24
  
• Chapter 25
  
• Chapter 26
  
• Chapter 27
  
• Chapter 28
  
• Chapter 29
  
• Chapter 30
  
• Chapter 31
  
• Chapter 32
  
• Chapter 33
  
• Chapter 34
  
• Chapter 35
  
• Chapter 36
  
• Chapter 37
  
• Chapter 38
  
• Chapter 39
  
• Chapter 40
  
• Chapter 41
  
• Chapter 42
  
• Chapter 43
  
• Chapter 44
  
• Chapter 45
  
• Chapter 46
  
• Chapter 47
  
• Chapter 48
  
• Chapter 49
  
• Chapter 50
  
• Chapter 51
  
• Chapter 52
  
• Chapter 53
  
• Chapter 54
  
• Chapter 55
  
• Chapter 56
  
• Chapter 57
  
• Chapter 58
  
• Chapter 59
  
• Chapter 60
  
• Chapter 61
  
• Chapter 62
  
• Chapter 63
  
• Epilogue
  
• About the Author
  

A PERMUTED PRESS book

published at Smashwords.

ISBN (trade paperback): 978-1-61868-040-2

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-041-9

The Becoming: Revelations
copyright © 2013

by Jessica Meigs.

All Rights Reserved.

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.

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March 21, 2010

My name is Ethan Bennett, and I am a dead man.

I officially died a month ago at the hands of a group of homicidal people infected with the Michaluk virus. I suffered serious injuries and contracted the virus while attempting to delay their pursuit of my friends. I was saved from succumbing to the virus by sheer luck—and with the help of a medication cocktail that holds the virus at bay. For now, I only have a low risk of becoming like those who killed me.

For now.

I’m with a group led by a woman named Alicia Day. She’s former Marine Security Forces, and the people here hold her in very high regard. She leads roughly one hundred and fifty men, women, and children at the Westin. Through their hard work, they’ve turned this hotel into a small village. Almost thirty of those people are infected with the virus in a manner similar to me. It’s only through the miraculous chance of having a CDC doctor here that I’m able to write this, that the infected living here are able to continue with their lives, such as they are. Despite the daily medication regimen, they’ve eked out a reasonably productive existence in the hopes that something more permanent can one day be discovered. They live for that hope, though there’s always the chance their bodies will hit the point where the medications are no longer effective.

Alicia tells me it is imperative we find Brandt Evans. He was one of my companions before I became infected, and I don’t know where he is. I can’t remember where
any
of my friends were to go after Atlanta. And honestly? That terrifies me. Because if what Alicia tells me about Brandt is even remotely true, then my best friend Cade and my lover Remy and hell, even Gray (as much as I dislike the bastard)—they’re all in danger. If Brandt
is
infected, he poses a major risk not only to Cade, Gray, and Remy, but to the entire world.

But Brandt Evans is also a hope. A possibility of a key to the cure for the Michaluk virus. And
that
is a chance we can’t afford to let pass.

Our bodies have begun to adjust to the medications. I’m fine for now, but there are many who aren’t. The drugs are losing their effectiveness for many; there have already been four people to spontaneously fall ill this week alone. Four people Alicia took away from the others and put down, as she felt it was her responsibility to do.

We can’t keep losing numbers like this. We need a cure, and we need it fast.

And we’re hoping Brandt Evans can give us one.

Remy Angellette’s nights had become filled with entirely too much coffee. That
wasn’t
a good thing. The liquid—however dark and rich and deliciously bitter it was—kept her awake far more than she’d already been before the group’s flight from Maplesville over a month before. Her nerves jittered at the thought of them running out of the sparse supply of coffee grounds to which they’d already been reduced. But the sleeplessness caused by the caffeinated drink and her own willpower was far better than the nightmares that plagued her every time she closed her eyes.

Remy wasn’t sure if Brandt had caught on that she wasn’t sleeping, but Gray definitely had. Oddly enough, he hadn’t said anything to her about it. Instead, he’d often join her on the roof of their newest safe house late at night, and together they’d sit in companionable silence, watching the stars and dwelling on their thoughts, their hopes, their dreams, or their lack thereof.

In the weeks since the terrible events in Atlanta, Remy had dwelled incessantly on Ethan, on Theo, on Nikola, and on Avi—
especially
on Avi. Every time Remy’s thoughts lit on the woman, she was bothered by the suspicion there was something
more
to the story. Avi had hidden something important from them—her mannerisms, the way she’d avoided directly answering questions, her flowery speeches, and her flat-out helplessness when facing down infected all made that glaringly obvious—but what that “something” was, Remy had no way to find out. The other woman was dead and therefore impervious to Remy’s questions and accusations, no matter how loudly she made them in her head. Remy hadn’t been affected by the woman’s death, beyond the initial shock of it—after all, she’d only known the woman for a few days—but the one who’d fallen only minutes after her …

A sob threatened to well up in her throat as Ethan’s face appeared in her mind’s eye, but Remy quickly tamped it down. She couldn’t stop the tears that stirred in her gut, though. Ethan had fallen, had met a terrible death at the hands of the infected while trying to save the rest of them. While trying to save
her.
And Remy had fought, had tried to get to him before it was too late, but Brandt hadn’t allowed it. He’d held her down, pinned her to a rooftop, while on the ground below, Ethan died.

Remy wasn’t sure she’d
ever
forgive Brandt for that.

Boots scraped on the roof behind her, shuffling and bumping as their owner climbed through the second-story window to join her. Remy pulled her knees to her chest and set her bolo knife beside her, lovingly tracing her fingertips over its wooden hilt before wrapping her arms around her knees. The owner of the boots approached.

“Hey,” a quiet voice greeted her. Brandt. Of course. Her chest constricted at the sound of his voice, and she couldn’t help but think on the words he’d said to her when he broke the news of Ethan’s sacrifice:
He stayed behind to give the rest of us a chance.

But Remy hadn’t wanted that chance. She just wanted Ethan.

“Hey, Brandt,” Remy replied. She suppressed a sigh as her hope for peace and quiet was dashed. She
could
just ask Brandt to leave her be, and he’d likely do it. But, despite the lurking bitterness she felt toward him, Remy still wanted his company,
any
company. So she kept her mouth shut and pressed her lips together as the tall man settled onto the shingles beside her.

“I thought it was Gray’s turn to keep watch,” Brandt said. He rested an arm against his bent knee and glanced at Remy. “What are you doing up here?”

Remy shrugged and kept her eyes locked onto the darkness. She couldn’t see it, but if she strained her ears, she could make out the faint sounds of the Atlantic Ocean, its dark gray waters breaking on the beaches a mere two blocks away. Remy had seen it only once, when they first arrived in the tiny coastal South Carolinian town near Hollywood. She’d immediately disliked it. It was a far cry from the beautiful blue waters and sugar-white sands of the Gulf of Mexico near which she’d grown up. Compared to
that
paradise, the coastline in the distance looked like something out of Dante’s
Inferno.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Remy admitted after the silence stretched too long. “Figured I’d let Gray get some rest since I’m awake anyway.”

Brandt gave Remy a sad smile that she just barely saw in the moonlight. “Thinking too much?” he asked gently, understandingly.

Remy didn’t want his understanding. “You don’t even know the half of it,” she muttered. Her voice revealed how disgusted she was. At whom, though, she wasn’t sure.

“You could try me?” Brandt offered. His own voice was tinged with a fair amount of the concern that did a fantastic job of pissing Remy off. She didn’t want Brandt to waste his time being concerned over her. There wasn’t anything to be concerned
about.

Remy glanced at Brandt, ready to offer a blunt refusal, maybe an excuse for why she didn’t want to talk to him. But as she opened her mouth, Remy caught a glimpse of the darkness in Brandt’s eyes and quickly shut it again. It was a haunted, disturbed look—the look of a man who’d stared into the pits of Hell for far too long, had seen things that couldn’t be unseen. The expression unsettled Remy. Maybe Brandt wanted an excuse to talk about some things. Maybe his concern over Remy’s problems was a pretense for examining his own.

“Are you okay?” Remy ventured. She tucked her feet beneath her and settled onto her boots to cushion her seat against the roof. She locked her eyes onto Brandt’s, trying to force the man to look at her. He glanced at her fleetingly before his eyes darted back to their surroundings.

“What do you think I’m asking you?” Brandt replied. He ran his hands through his dark hair. The gesture reminded Remy, painfully, of Ethan. “You’re not sleeping,” he continued. “You’re getting, what, two or three hours every couple of nights? That’s not healthy.”

“You’re not my father,” Remy muttered. “Not even Eth—” The name caught in her throat, and she drew a deep breath. Her eyes welled with tears, despite her best efforts to prevent their appearance. “Not even
he
could get away with ordering me around like that.”

Brandt didn’t reply right away, though he did finally look at Remy, studying her closely in the moonlight. She looked back at him through tears threatening to spill. Memories flooded her brain, hammered at her skull, trying to force the tears from her eyes against her will. Brandt gave her a sad smile and squeezed her shoulder. “Yeah, I miss him too,” he admitted.