The Becoming: Revelations (20 page)

Another blue flash of lightning revealed that Cade needn’t have worried. Absolutely nothing, living
or
dead, was in sight. She relaxed a fraction and lowered the weapon to her side. Her shoulders slumped, and she tried to decide what to do.

This was quite possibly the worst situation in which Cade had ever been. She couldn’t recall a single time in her life when she’d been this afraid. Not even her military service approached this. She wasn’t even sure the Memphis outbreak rivaled it, because at least then she had Ethan next door to help her when she needed it. Now, she had no one. No backup. No companions. No friends. Nothing. Just herself and her brains and the gun in her hand. The thought of her friends almost made tears spring to Cade’s eyes. She quickly suppressed them. Now was the
last
time she needed to be emotional. She had to stay focused on her own survival.

Cade checked the safety on the sidearm she’d stolen from Alicia and took a moment to really look it over. It was a Beretta M9, a standard service pistol identical to the one Brandt had carried for as long as she’d known him. It gave her pause, and as she glanced toward the short retaining wall at the edge of the parking deck, she narrowed her eyes and thought over the implications. Could her kidnappers have been military? Or was this a weapon Alicia had picked up at some point during the intervening year? She traced her finger along the weapon’s slide and tried to gauge the safety of her surroundings.

There weren’t as many cars in the garage as Cade had thought there would be. In her limited line of sight, she made out only four vehicles in their parking spaces, far fewer than she’d expected in such a large city. None looked as if they’d been disturbed in the entire year they’d sat there. A police cruiser was parked near the entrance to the deck level; Cade raised an eyebrow, intrigued, and approached it, lifting the Beretta once more. As lightning flickered and flashed through the garage’s open sides, accompanied by the rumble of thunder, Cade eased to the driver’s-side door and leaned to peer into the vehicle.

A particularly bright flash of lightning illuminated the corpse in the driver’s seat, mere inches from Cade’s face. The ensuing burst of thunder covered the sound of her boots as she took several hasty steps backward in startled retreat. If she’d been a weaker person, she likely would have screamed. Instead, Cade impulsively lifted the Beretta in a two-handed grip and pointed it at the glass, her heart hammering in her chest. She blinked rapidly as another flicker of lightning revealed that the corpse hadn’t moved an inch. Cade lowered her weapon with a soft, sheepish laugh.

“God, I’m so ridiculous,” Cade muttered as she approached the car again. She circled around to the passenger door and tried the handle; it was, surprisingly, unlocked. She eased the door open and was hit by the foul, musty odor of decay that had been pent up inside the vehicle. She wrinkled her nose before leaning into the car to see what she could scavenge.

There was far more than she expected. In her search through the cruiser’s front seat, she found two magazines of ammunition in the glove compartment, which fit the Glock holstered on the dead officer’s hip. She pocketed the magazines and, after wrestling with the dead man’s belt, managed to dislodge the holster and slip it onto her own belt. She slid the weapon into its holster, tucking the Beretta into her jeans alongside it. A heavy metal flashlight was wedged between the seats; she pulled it free and turned it on, searching the rest of the vehicle by its bright beam.

There wasn’t much else in the passenger compartment, but Cade didn’t give up hope that she’d find something useful. She snagged the keys from the ignition and abandoned the front seat in favor of the trunk. If her memory served her well, she recalled that Ethan had kept quite a few emergency supplies and even riot gear in the trunk of his police cruiser. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that police officers in Atlanta did the same.

Cade slid the key into the trunk, and it opened with a muffled
whump.
She was rewarded by the sight of a large, heavy-looking blue crate. She found the key for the crate’s padlock on the key ring in her hand, and in no time, she had it unlocked and opened. As she eyed the crate’s contents, a smile spread across her face.

The crate was packed to the gills with everything Cade could possibly need to survive in a fight. A shotgun was fastened to the inside of the lid—the first thing Cade noticed when she opened it. Right below the shotgun, just at the top of the crate, was a black lump that, on further inspection, revealed itself to be a little-used Kevlar vest. She shook it out and held it up, examining it with an appreciative eye. After setting it on the concrete at her feet and aiming her flashlight into the crate, she dug deeper into its contents and began to sort the supplies into two piles.

Once she’d finished sorting the supplies, Cade donned the bulky Kevlar vest and began to load herself down with the weapons and ammunition she’d collected from the cruiser. Once Cade had the shotgun on her back, the Glock holstered on her hip, and the Beretta tucked into the waistband of her jeans, a survival knife sheathed at the small of her back, and a black backpack on her back stuffed with the minimal first-aid supplies and ammunition she’d found, Cade felt better about her current situation. It wasn’t exactly an
ideal
situation, but at least she didn’t feel so helpless anymore.

“Okay, so what now?” Cade asked out loud. She rested her hands on her hips and squinted into the darkness surrounding her. She wondered if she should leave the parking garage and seek better shelter. She didn’t feel up to venturing into the rain and lightning and thunder and darkness, however, regardless of how reasonably well armed she now was.

Cade retreated to the hallway she’d occupied previously, setting her newly acquired belongings down and sliding back against the wall to the floor again. She had no watch, so she was unsure of the time. She hoped the rain would stop and morning would come soon. Hunger gnawed at her stomach, and she’d need to begin the search for food and water before much more time passed.

She leaned forward and rested her head against her knees with a heavy sigh before asking in a hushed whisper to herself, “Jesus, Brandt, where the fuck are you?”

Despite Brandt’s insistence that they travel through the night, Remy and Gray managed to convince him that it’d be a wiser idea to find a place to camp until dawn. It had taken a good deal of poking and prodding—and more than just a little swearing on Remy’s part—but now the three sat at a very small campfire in total silence just into the edge of the woods on the side of the highway.

Remy fed a few twigs into the fire, and it snapped and cracked in response. She peered over it at Brandt. He knelt across from her in the space they’d cleared, examining his pistol and pointedly ignoring her. Remy didn’t expect to get any conversation from Gray, either; the man had lain down on top of his sleeping bag and passed out at the first available opportunity. Remy grimaced at his sleeping form. He’d left her with just Brandt for company, and something told her that Brandt would be less than
pleasant
company.

Finally, when Remy could stand the silence no longer, she cleared her throat. Brandt didn’t move, didn’t flinch, didn’t so much as acknowledge her attempt to get his attention. Remy rolled her eyes and tossed a twig across the fire at him. Brandt still didn’t look up as he ejected the magazine from his gun, but he did finally speak.

“What, Remy?” Brandt’s voice was tired and heavy, and it held a faint trace of annoyance. Remy was pretty sure the irritation was aimed at her. She didn’t really care.

“You don’t look—or
sound
—too terribly happy,” she observed. It was a poor attempt at starting a conversation, but it was all she could think of that was potentially non-confrontational. Then again, with the mindset Brandt was seemingly in, he’d probably take everything as confrontational.

“Oh, you guessed?”

Remy shrugged and fed a few sticks into the campfire. “I know you’re not happy about having to stop for the night when Cade is out there,” she said.

Brandt snorted. “You’re telling me,” he muttered. He locked the Beretta’s slide back and squinted into its innards.

“
But,
” Remy continued with emphasis, “we’ve got to put that aside for now. Cade is tough. Hell, outside of you, she’s the toughest person I know. She can take care of herself just fine.”

“But she’s
pregnant,
Remy,” Brandt said with impatience.

“And? You think that’s going to stop Cade from kicking ass and taking names?” Remy pointed out. “You think she’s going to let some assholes stop her from showing them who’s
really
in charge, just because she’s pregnant?”

“No, and that’s the
problem,
” Brandt said. He unlocked the Beretta’s slide and slammed the magazine back into the gun’s grip, chambering a round. He flipped the safety on and slid the weapon into its holster before continuing. “She doesn’t
know
that bitch like I do. She doesn’t
know
what she’s capable of.” He clenched his fists, looking ready to hit something. The expression made Remy nervous. She didn’t want it to be
her
. “She doesn’t understand what’s wrong with Alicia.”

The fire popped and crackled between the two of them. Gray shifted in his sleep, rolling onto his back, but he didn’t wake up. When no further words were forthcoming from Brandt, Remy growled under her breath and barely refrained from throwing another stick at him.

“Well then, do you care to fucking
enlighten
me?” Remy snarled. “I’m tired of all the damned lies and deceptions. I’m tired of people hiding shit from me. Especially
you!
” She jabbed her finger at him, nearly singeing her jacket sleeve as her arm got too close to the fire. “Now, for once in your damned life, Brandt Evans, tell me
everything
about what the hell’s going on. Or has lying become so second nature to you that you don’t even notice when you’re doing it anymore?”

Brandt didn’t look at her. “I’m not fucking lying. Not anymore. I was telling the truth when I said I didn’t know the details of her testing. But I
do
know how she reacted to it.”

“Which was?” Remy prompted impatiently.

“She lost her fucking mind,” Brandt said. “And I don’t mean that figuratively. I think they had her on some variant of Michaluk, but I don’t know what kind. About … I don’t know, a week or so before project shutdown, Alicia attacked two orderlies and a lab tech. It took three more orderlies to get her off the guys. Needless to say, the aftermath wasn’t pretty. A lot of broken bones and shit.

“But it’s gotten me thinking, you know? About Alicia, about me, about the shit they were or weren’t doing to us at the CDC. Do you remember what you said last month in the back of that truck?”

Remy sighed and rolled her eyes. “I barely remember what I said last
week,
” she said. “What are you talking about?”

“The whole super-soldier thing,” Brandt prompted. “When I was explaining what was going on at the CDC, you started babbling about Kurt Russell and said you thought maybe they were experimenting to create a super-soldier. I’m beginning to wonder just how far off the mark you were. Or weren’t, as the case may be.”

Remy fed a few more twigs to the fire, watching in silence as the flames eagerly devoured them, before she said simply, “Explain.”

Brandt ran a hand through his dark hair and let out a sigh of his own, studying the flames before averting his gaze to the trees around them. “Okay, see if you can follow me on this,” he began, his tone hesitant. “Not long after they started doing the tests, some of the test subjects began to have some … abilities they didn’t have before admission into the program. Like … well, let’s just take Alicia as an example. You’ve seen her recently, right? Still skinny as a rail?”

“Yeah, she is,” Remy confirmed. “Looks like she really needs to eat a fucking cheeseburger. But what’s that got to do with—”

“Does she look like the type with the physical ability to whip the asses of three men at least as big as me, singlehandedly?” Brandt persisted.

Remy looked Brandt over, humming thoughtfully. He
was
a big guy—all height and muscle, granted, but big nonetheless. Remy thought back on the redhead and what she’d seen of her. She definitely didn’t look like she could handle herself in a fight against Brandt. But looks could be deceiving, Remy thought. Maybe Brandt wasn’t as tough as he looked, or maybe Alicia was tougher. Remy sighed again and tossed another stick on the fire for want of anything else to do. “What are you driving at, Brandt?”

“That maybe the virus did something to Alicia that she isn’t even aware of,” Brandt tried to explain. “That maybe she’s a … well, a super-soldier, just like you said. That she’s got some abilities that she didn’t have prior to testing, ones that would be beyond her normal skill set otherwise. That
maybe
they actually
were
doing super-soldier-style testing and that they actually
did
have some level of success at it, at least with her. If not others.”

A nasty chill slimed its way down Remy’s spine as she contemplated the possibilities. “But how could they get away with all that?” she asked. She flung the remains of her sticks into the fire. “I mean, wouldn’t word have eventually gotten out?”

“Remy, it’s the government,” Brandt pointed out. “They have been and always will be the ultimate masters of lies, deceptions, and cover-ups.”