The Becoming: Revelations (10 page)

“Derek! I know you’re in here! You never leave!”

Ethan bit back a laugh, but the sound dropped off as a tall, slender black man emerged from the short hallway leading to the bathrooms. He rolled up his sleeves as he looked at the two of them curiously. Ethan returned the look. His eyes took in the man’s dirty trousers, his rumpled dress shirt, the wire-framed glasses perched on the bridge of his hawkish nose. Ethan had never met the infamous Dr. Derek Rivers, but he’d certainly heard of him. And he wasn’t sure if the scrawny man before him lived up to the mental image he’d cultivated.

“I should’ve known it was you, Kimberly,” Derek said in a deep, sonorous voice, with all the affection of a father talking to his wayward middle child. “You’re the only one who comes in here hollering like you’re at a football game.”

“That’s because I’m always happy to see you!” Kimberly joked. She motioned to Ethan. “I figured it was time I brought Ethan to meet you,” she explained. “So, Derek, this is Ethan Bennett. Ethan, this is Dr. Derek Rivers, the one who’s going to save us all.”

Derek laughed and shook his head. “Not quite how I’d have phrased it, but one can only hope that’s what actually happens.” He approached and extended a hand, offering it to Ethan with a friendly smile. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Bennett. I’ve heard a great deal about you.”

“All
good
things, I hope.” Ethan took Derek’s hand in a firm grasp and shook it. “And you can just call me Ethan. No need for the whole formal Mr. Bennett thing.”

“In that case, I’ll go by Derek then,” the doctor said. He released Ethan’s hand and motioned for both of them to come deeper into the room. He stepped past them to shut and secure the door, and then he turned his attention to Kimberly and asked in a brisk, almost urgent tone, “Is she still gone?”

“If she weren’t, I wouldn’t have risked bringing him here,” Kimberly replied. She slid past Derek to sit in one of the two chairs.

Ethan gave Kimberly a questioning glance, but his attention was brought back to Derek as the man addressed Ethan directly. “I’m sure you’re wondering what’s going on around here,” Derek started. He paced away from Ethan and stopped at the table with the notebooks piled on it. He dragged his fingertip along the spirals of a notebook, and it was then that Ethan noticed the disturbed look in the doctor’s dark eyes.

“The thought
did
cross my mind,” Ethan admitted. “I’m beginning to suspect it’s a lot more than I was originally told.” His eyes narrowed as he watched the tall man carefully.

“If Alicia Day is the one who told you, then yes, she likely hid a lot from you,” Derek acknowledged. “That’s almost all she does. How much do you know?”

Ethan pressed his lips together as he thought back on what Alicia had told him. There wasn’t much to think over; Alicia had made it a point to give him as little information as possible. It was one of the many reasons why Ethan couldn’t understand why she’d left him in charge in her absence. He cleared his throat and tore his eyes away from the carpet he’d been studying intently, looking up at the doctor.

“Truth be told, Alicia hasn’t told me much,” Ethan said. “Everything’s been on a need-to-know basis, and I think she decided I didn’t need to know.”

Derek and Kimberly exchanged knowing glances. “That’s not surprising,” Kimberly said. “The only people who seem to know what’s really going on around here are the ones in her exclusive little circle.” She motioned to Ethan and directed her next statement to Derek. “Fill him in, oh great one.”

Derek nodded and pulled a notebook from the bottom of the stack. He offered it to Ethan and motioned to the remaining chair. “You might want to sit down for this,” he warned. “It’s all … definitely a lot more serious than you think it is.”

The day after Brandt and Gray left found Cade pacing back and forth across the small second-floor bathroom. Her hands were twisted together in front of her, and her face was the very definition of “freaked out.” Remy smirked slightly as the woman glanced at the sink again, and she shook her head at Cade and sighed.

“It’s not really that big a deal, Cade,” Remy said. Her eyes tracked the woman’s movement as she stalked slowly toward the door. It was a desperate ploy to soothe the woman so near to coming apart at the seams right in front of her. It must have been the wrong thing to say, though, because Cade turned on her, her blue eyes wide and almost shocked at Remy’s admittedly cavalier attitude.

“Not that big a deal?” Cade repeated incredulously. “Remy, this is
so
a big deal. It’s probably the biggest big deal to happen in … hell, I don’t know how long.” Her watch beeped, and she snatched the pregnancy test off the sink’s edge and looked at it before throwing it into the sink with the other three in disgust. Remy sat up straighter and squinted at the test. Its little blue plus sign glared evilly at both women. “Do you think maybe they’re defective?” Cade asked hopefully. “I mean, they
have
just been sitting in the medicine cabinet for over a year.”

Remy shook her head slowly. “If it’d just been the one, I’d say yes. Two, I could maybe even concede that point. But four?” Remy stood and caught Cade by the shoulders, forcing the other woman to stand still. “Face it, honey. You’re pregnant.”

Cade’s shoulders slumped, as if she’d hoped that Remy would tell her otherwise. She let out a heavy breath. “Oh man, what the hell am I going to tell Brandt?”

Remy snorted and sat back on the edge of the tub. “Just get him alone, sit him down, and say, ‘Baby, I’m pregnant!’” Remy completed the mock announcement by throwing her arms out to her sides and giving Cade a cheesy grin.

“You’re really looking to get punched, aren’t you?” Cade grumbled.

“Why do you ask? Am I on the fast track to getting there?”

“Absolutely.”

“Awesome.”

Cade gave Remy another odd look and rolled her eyes before continuing. “It was
one time,
Remy. You and Ethan were practically like rabbits for three months, and you didn’t have this problem.”

“You’re thirty-three. Are you
seriously
telling me you’ve never heard of condoms?” Remy asked before she added flippantly, “Besides, Ethan was sterile, so we didn’t have to worry about all that.”

Cade paused in mid-step and gave Remy a baffled glance. “Ethan was sterile? He never told me that. No wonder he and Anna never had kids.” She shook her head and ran her hands through her hair, starting to gather it into a ponytail. “And Brandt and I weren’t thinking about that kind of thing. It was more like, ‘Oh shit, we’re probably going to die tomorrow, let’s get laid!’”

“That’s not what it was for him,” Remy said in a singsong voice. That only prompted another ugly look from Cade. “What? I’m just saying. The man is hardcore in love with you, and you’re totally avoiding it. You need to … I don’t know … live a little and maybe acknowledge it. Because I will seriously smack the shit out of you if you blow him off.”

“Since when have you been so protective of Brandt?” Cade asked, snapping the elastic into place on her hair. “You don’t even like him all that much.”

“Since I’ve seen the way he looks at you. He’s head over heels for you,” Remy explained. “Give him some hope and quit being a frigid bitch over the whole thing. You two are going to have a kid. I think you’re past the I-don’t-want-a-relationship stage.”

Cade opened her mouth to reply, but a loud crash from downstairs preempted whatever she was going to say. Both women looked to the cracked bathroom door simultaneously, and Cade reached for her rifle, which sat propped against the wall by the door.

“Do you think Brandt and Gray came back early?” Remy asked. She grabbed the gun she’d left on the sink and silently cursed her luck; she’d left her bolo knife in her bedroom, thinking they wouldn’t be long. Now all she had was the Glock in her hands and the Ruger that Gray had given her in the waistband of her jeans. She hesitated, then grabbed the Ruger and slipped the tiny pistol under her shirt, tucking it into her bra. She wasn’t sure what made her do it, but instinct insisted, so she obeyed.

“I’ll go check it out,” Cade said. She shouldered her rifle and slid her flashlight from her pocket. “You stay here. Be ready to run.”

Remy rolled her eyes and flipped the safety off on her Glock. “Fuck that. Everybody could use the backup. Especially you.”

“Remy—” Cade started to protest. She clamped her mouth shut, her eyes darting to the bathroom door. There was the distinct sound of multiple sets of booted footsteps in the hall, moving slowly and stealthily along the floorboards. The indistinct sound of a woman’s whisper filtered through the door, and Cade’s jaw visibly tightened. She signaled for Remy to stay still and quiet, and then she eased to the crack in the door, hovering next to it. She pressed flat against the wall and pocketed the flashlight, gripping her rifle in both hands. After a long silence, in which Remy’s heart hammered wildly against her ribs, the voices in the hall faded away, the footsteps retreating to the stairs once more.

Cade eased toward the door, and nervousness churned in Remy’s gut. Something was wrong. If this was an attack, something was different about it. The people in the hallway weren’t infected, by the sounds of it. The infected didn’t talk. Remy swallowed hard and moved to stand beside Cade, leaning close and whispering in her ear.

“Maybe we should just stay in here,” she suggested. “Something isn’t right about this. I don’t like it.”

Cade merely waved her hand at Remy to indicate silence before she reached for the doorknob.

It happened almost too fast for Remy to comprehend. As Cade reached for the knob, the door flew open, striking Cade before she could dodge back from it. Cade staggered at the impact, and she raised her rifle instinctively. Remy darted deeper into the bathroom and lifted her Glock. A hand closed around the barrel of Cade’s rifle and drove it up. A bullet discharged into the ceiling with a deafening bang as a large black man pressed forward into the room. Cade gasped as her rifle was wrenched from her grasp.

“Cade, move!” Remy yelled. The woman, thankfully, obeyed, twisting to the side. Once she was clear of the doorway, Remy squeezed the trigger. A bullet slammed into the man’s shoulder and knocked him back into the wall across from the door. Cade’s rifle skittered across the hallway floor, and Remy lowered her gun as Cade grabbed her arm.

“You okay?” Cade asked. Without waiting for Remy’s answer, she pulled Remy with her into the hall, retrieving her rifle from the floor as the man regained his footing with a pained grimace. “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here,” she said urgently.

Remy followed Cade wordlessly, sparing a squinted glance at the dark hallway, hoping there wasn’t anyone else hiding in the darkness. No one came at them, though, and they made it safely down the stairs. “Where are we going?” she finally asked as they reached the bottom.

“I don’t know. We’ll figure something—”

Cade was cut short when she rounded the corner into the living room and the butt of a rifle slammed into her face. She landed flat on her back with a grunt of pain. Remy moved to help, lifting her Glock defensively, but someone dove from the living room’s shadows and grabbed her arm. Her gun was wrested from her grasp, and then she was swung around and slammed face down onto the floor. Her arms were pinned underneath her, and her breath rushed out of her lungs in a harsh gasp. She tried to push herself up, but a heavy booted foot pressed down between her shoulder blades, holding her in place.

The click of a gun cocking behind her was accompanied by the words, uttered in a harsh male voice, “Don’t fucking move, or I’ll blow your damned brains out.”

Remy obediently froze, panting as she tried to get enough air back into her lungs. The gun in her bra dug painfully into her skin, and a hand at her hip smoothed around the waistband of her jeans, presumably searching for weapons. When the hand pulled away, she closed her eyes. A scuffle broke out nearby, followed by a woman’s voice.

“Where is he?” the unknown woman asked, her voice hard and strong.

“Where is
who?
” Remy heard Cade snap back. Her voice was just as strong as the unnamed woman’s, laced with a vein of cold, hard anger. Despite the anger, Remy heard a faint tremor of pain under the words.

“Michael Evans. Where is he?”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

There was a scrape of boots, and then the woman spoke again. “Get her up. On her knees.”

Remy managed to turn her head, and the scene beside her came into view. Cade knelt on the floor, her head bowed, her arms extended to her sides, palms out. A redheaded woman stood over her, a gun in her hand, her arms crossed as she glared at Cade. A Hispanic man stood behind Cade with a gun pressed to the back of her head. The black man Remy had shot sat on the stairs, a bath towel pressed to his shoulder as he grimaced in pain. Remy swallowed hard.

The woman leaned to look into Cade’s face again. “Where is Michael Evans?” she repeated, speaking slowly and sternly.

“I don’t know anyone named Michael,” Cade shot back, visibly gritting her teeth. A trickle of blood inched down her chin, and a large swollen area decorated the side of her face where the rifle had struck her.

“You’re lying,” the redhead shot back. “Where’s he hiding?”

“He’s not here,” a man announced as he came down the stairs. He was just out of sight, and Remy didn’t dare turn her head any farther to look at him. “There were bags and other things upstairs that indicated it’s more than just these two. And there were these.” A small object flew into Remy’s line of sight, and the redhead caught it. She held it up, and Remy recognized it at once as the dog tags Brandt had given Cade before he left. As the woman studied them, the man who’d come down the stairs knelt beside the black man and started tending to his shoulder.