The Becoming: Revelations (41 page)

“How much longer?” Remy asked hoarsely. A flicker caught the corner of her eye, and she turned, instinctively brandishing her knife.

“Just a minute more,” Ethan promised.

Remy located the source of the movement when she turned her head to the left. She drew in a sharp, startled breath at the sight of infected. There were at least ten, and they were headed straight for the two of them.

“Want to make that just a few seconds, Eth?” Remy snapped. She stepped forward to meet the infected, even as she warned, “We’ve got company.”

Ethan glanced up from his work, and his eyes widened. “Shit, shit,
shit,
” he chanted emphatically. He worked more frantically at the lock, not worrying about the noise he made anymore.

The infected were closing in fast. Remy knew Ethan wouldn’t get the gate opened before they got there. So she did the only thing she could do.

With a short step forward, Remy raised her knife and lashed out, turning sharply to the right. The blade caught the nearest infected man across the face, splitting his nose and cheeks wide open, and he went down in a splatter of blood. Remy gritted her teeth and reversed her swing, bringing the knife back around to attack a second infected person. With a two-handed grip, she slashed at a woman, embedding the knife’s sharp blade into the side of the woman’s neck, ripping it free, and slamming the blade into the woman’s chest. The blow wouldn’t kill the woman; Remy wasn’t so stupid as to think that. But the goal wasn’t total death and dismemberment. Remy only wanted to slow them down long enough for Ethan to get the damned gate open.

“Hurry the hell up!” she barked out to him. She slashed at another infected man and missed him by centimeters. “Get that gate open! Now!”

“What the hell do you think I’m trying to do?” Ethan snapped back. There was a squeal of metal against metal behind her, and Ethan called out breathlessly over the fray. “Got it!” Remy barely listened as she lit into another enemy, slicing and hacking at his hands and arms. A hand, disconnected from its owner’s body, fell to the marble floor with a sickening wet sound as Remy’s blade struck home. She kicked it into the crowd and, despite Ethan’s shouted, triumphant statement, she kept fighting, slashing at the infected with everything in her. “Remy, come on!” Ethan yelled impatiently.

Remy started to turn, but a hand closed around her right forearm, the one that grasped her bolo knife. She swore and yanked her gun from its holster, spinning and pressing the barrel against the forehead of the infected woman that grabbed her. She squeezed the trigger.

The snap of the gunshot was surprisingly loud as the sound ricocheted and magnified against the marble flooring, even as blood and other matter Remy didn’t want to think about fanned out from the infected woman’s head in a spray. Remy swore again and wrenched herself backward toward the gate. Ethan was already on the other side, holding the gate open two feet off the floor; clearly, he’d simply rolled underneath it once he’d managed to get it open. Remy slung her bolo knife underneath the gate and grasped the bottom of the flimsy-looking barrier. With one last glance at the infected surging toward them, she swung herself under the gate, flattening her body to clear the two-foot space. Once she was in, Remy twisted, walking her hands over each other and using her full body weight to slam the gate closed, even as she gained her footing again. She scrambled to her feet, panting, and she and Ethan both stumbled back from the gate. It took her only seconds to recover her knife, and then they just stood there, wide-eyed, watching as the infected on the other side flung themselves at the gate.

“Shit,” Ethan hissed.

“My thoughts exactly,” Remy muttered. While Ethan had the gate covered, she turned on her heel to check out the rest of the small restaurant they’d entered. It was a bar more than a restaurant, full of small, round two- and four-seater tables and booths. A large menu board behind the bar listed an assortment of alcoholic and nonalcoholic drinks and included a noticeably bigger advertisement for fresh oysters. Remy raised an eyebrow as Ethan spoke up.

“Ah, an oyster bar,” he said. He winked at Remy and added jokingly, “Think they got any fresh ones?”

Remy wrinkled her nose, shuddering with disgust, and glanced at the infected. They shook the gate with their hands, shoving it with their bodies. “If I had to choose between eating oysters of
any
kind and running into a horde of infected with steak sauce all over my body, I’d choose the infected,” she said. She snagged a serving cloth from a table and wiped the blood from the blade of her knife, following Ethan farther into the bar.

“Wait, you’re from New Orleans and you don’t like oysters?” Ethan asked, raising an eyebrow and stepping behind the bar.

“I had an awful experience involving a raw oyster and a bad bet when I was a child, okay?” Remy said in exasperation. “And just because my family is of Cajun descent doesn’t mean we shotgun raw seafood. Now what was so important that you felt the need to detour from our assigned mission to come in here?”

Ethan picked up a glass bottle and held it up for her to see. “This,” he said, slinging his backpack around to set it on the counter. He unzipped it and started grabbing bottles, stuffing them in his bag as rapidly as he could, arranging t-shirts he’d already cut into strips around them to keep them from getting broken.

“Wait, you threw us on a detour and possibly stuck us in a trap so you could grab a bunch of whiskey?” Remy demanded incredulously.

“I thought
you
were the one who’d been around Brandt too much,” Ethan said pointedly.

“I have not,” she protested. “I think you’ve gotten me confused with Cade.”

“Do I have to remind you about the stove in Maplesville?”

Remy smirked. “That was just a rare moment of creative ingenuity,” she proclaimed. “These are for Molotovs, aren’t they?” A grin split her face. “Aw, Ethan. Brandt would be
so
proud of you.”

Ethan snorted and stuffed a few more bottles in his bag before zipping it shut. “Who said I got the idea from him?” he asked. He shouldered the bag and settled it close to his body. “Don’t let me do something stupid that will get these bottles busted. I don’t want to end up smelling like an alcoholic hobo.”

Remy bit back a laugh as he circled around the counter and headed for a door in the corner of the bar. A sign of a little stick person climbing cartoon stairs was stuck to the wall next to the door. “I don’t think they call them hobos anymore,” she pointed out as Ethan paused at the door and checked over his Glock.

Ethan let out another undignified snort. “I don’t think they call them much of anything anymore.” He grasped the door handle and wrenched the door open, quickly stepping through and swinging his flashlight and gun around, searching the stairwell for any immediate dangers. When he didn’t see anything, he beckoned to Remy. “Come on, babe. Let’s get this shit taken care of.”

Remy smirked at the nickname and slithered into the stairwell, her newly cleaned bolo knife grasped firmly in her hand, the sound of the infected on the other side of the security gate still echoing in her ears.

Cade Alton was seeing red, and it had nothing to do with Alicia Day’s hair color. She caught her balance against the edge of the table and eyed the woman, watching how she held her firearm, how it was pointed right at Brandt’s face, how tight her grip was on the weapon, how her finger rested loosely against the trigger. Cade gritted her teeth and backed up quickly, careful to keep her boots from making a sound on the carpeted floor. Her hands found the metal folding chair at the end of the table, and she eased it closed, hefted it into both hands, and took two brisk steps forward. Gripping the chair tightly, she swung it with all her strength and slammed it into the woman’s back.

Alicia staggered forward with the force of the blow. At the same time, Brandt brought his arm up and slammed his fist against Alicia’s hands, knocking her weapon to the floor. It tumbled across the carpet and disappeared into the darkness under a table.

Alicia caught herself on the tables to either side of her before she fell. She righted herself with a grace that Cade had only ever seen in Remy. Before Cade could react, Alicia twisted and lashed out with a foot. Her booted foot struck Brandt across the face as he reached for his sidearm, and knocked him flat on his back. Once he was temporarily out of commission, Alicia faced Cade with a grimace.

“Well, if it isn’t the bitch who caused me so many fucking problems,” Alicia snarled.

“If it isn’t the bitch who just took a cheap fucking shot like a coward by kicking me in the back of the knee,” Cade retorted. She slid easily into a defensive position, struggling to not be the first to launch an attack against the woman.

“Too bad I didn’t take a fucking cheap shot in your damned skull,” Alicia said. She raced forward and swung her fist in an arc, aiming for the side of Cade’s head. Cade put her own arm up and blocked the strike. A pang of pain shot through her forearm as Alicia’s knuckles struck her skin. She would have a bruise there in the morning.

Cade didn’t take the time to worry about her arm, though. Instead, she stepped forward, meeting Alicia head-on. She twisted her arm around and grasped the woman’s wrist, hauled her forward, and slammed her own fist into the woman’s nose. Cartilage gave under her fingers, and a spurt of blood accompanied the punch. Alicia staggered backward as blood poured down her upper lip and chin. The grimace twisting her face was made worse by the blood.

Alicia didn’t bother saying anything. She didn’t even cry out in pain at the strike. She only retaliated.

In a move that Cade found frightening, if only because of its speed, Alicia leaped onto a chair and then onto a table. She took three quick steps and kicked out. Her boot struck Cade’s chest, sending her stumbling back and falling to the floor as the pain of the boot’s impact radiated through her sternum. The air rushed from her lungs, and her head bumped the carpet hard enough that, for a moment, she saw stars.

Thankfully, the knock on her head wasn’t quite enough to distract her from Alicia’s next attack. Even as she struggled to get air flowing back into her lungs, Alicia launched herself off the table at Cade. Cade rolled flat on her back and kicked out with both feet. Her boots connected with Alicia’s midsection, and she pushed up, flipping the woman over her head and slamming her heavily to the floor.

Alicia uttered a low groan as Cade rolled to the side and climbed to her hands and knees before regaining her feet. She steadied herself with a hand against a table and pulled her Glock from its holster. Alicia still lay on the floor, conscious but her chest heaving, as if Cade had returned the favor of knocking the air from her lungs. She took a slow step toward Alicia as the other woman let out another groan.

Cade bumped the woman’s leg with the toe of her boot. “Don’t fucking move,” she ordered breathlessly. “But I suppose that goes without saying.”

Alicia’s eyes slid open, and she glared at Cade hatefully. Then she struck out again, her foot hooking behind Cade’s knee and pulling. Cade’s leg was jerked out from under her, and she toppled backward. The back of her head struck the edge of a table, and she yelped as she tumbled to the floor, stunned. Her Glock skittered out of her hand.

Alicia came into her line of view moments later, stepping over her and picking the dropped weapon up from the floor. She studied it for a moment before aiming it down at Cade’s face. Cade blinked at her stupidly. Her brain felt hazy, and the back of her head hurt like hell. She couldn’t get her thoughts together, couldn’t force her limbs to cooperate with her brain, couldn’t tell herself to move. She groaned and squeezed her eyes closed as Alicia pulled the slide of the Glock back—unnecessary, really, because Cade had already chambered a round. It was obviously meant to intimidate. And, frankly, it was working.

Cade forced her eyes open and looked up the barrel of her own gun.

“Stop right the fuck there!” a voice yelled. “Drop the fucking gun, or I swear to
God
I’ll drop
you
.”

Alicia froze, her eyes narrowing, as she looked up at the owner of the voice. Even Cade managed to tilt her head back, and just like that, a grin split her lips. Brandt stood near the spot where Alicia had knocked him out just a few moments before. A slow trickle of blood oozed down the side of his head and shone in his dark hair. His hands gripped his M-4 Carbine tightly but confidently. And his eyes held a hardness that Cade had never before seen in them, a hardness speaking of a catalog of awful things he wanted to do to Alicia for daring to threaten Cade’s life. Alicia seemed to sense the danger she was in; she moved the Glock from Cade and aimed it instead at Brandt as the Marine spoke.

“I’m going to give you one fucking chance,” Brandt said, his voice low and cold. He didn’t loosen his grip in the slightest on his weapon.

“One fucking chance to
what?
” Alicia bit out.

“One fucking chance to save your damned life,” Brandt snarled. Alicia tensed almost imperceptibly, but from her position on the floor, Cade couldn’t help but notice. As Brandt barked out his next statement, Cade slowly eased her hand underneath herself, slipping it down to the small of her back. “I want to know why the
fuck
you decided to do this.”

“Because
somebody
fucking had to!” Alicia replied. She tensed further, adjusting her grip on the weapon she’d pilfered from Cade. Cade held her breath as her fingers brushed the pommel of her survival knife.
Almost there,
she thought.
Knife in a potential gunfight. Fucking brilliant.
“You’ve got the cure! You’re supposed to save everybody!”