The Becoming: Revelations (49 page)

Three Months Later

Cade stood on the front porch of the newest safe house the remains of their group had staked out, leaning against the railing with a mug of warm tea in her hands and squinting across the yard. The early summer sun bore down on the men and women who labored in a yard across the street, digging up and turning over the soil, working to get everything prepared for the first plants they were going to attempt to grow. It wasn’t hard to pick Brandt out in the group, laughing and joking with a couple of other men as he jammed a shovel into the ground. Even from where she stood, Cade could see the bulge of his muscles as he lifted the shovel and turned the dirt over, dumping the shovelful back onto the ground. She scanned the yard. It wouldn’t be long before they had an entire yard turned up for planting. She relished the thought of fresh vegetables; after nearly a year and a half of running and hiding, she was tired of eating out of cans.

Brandt seemed to sense Cade’s staring, because he stuck his shovel into the dirt and turned toward her. He smiled and lifted a hand in greeting. She returned it, taking a careful sip of her tea, and rubbed a hand lightly over her growing stomach. She was over four months along now. Barring complications, she’d have her child in November. There could have been worse times to have a baby, she mused as she set her tea mug on the porch railing and started for the steps. Like in the middle of July, having to fight against discomfort and heat without the benefits of air conditioning. The thought wasn’t pleasant.

Before she made it down the three steps leading to the cracked path attached to the sidewalk, a voice spoke up from the front entryway behind her.

“Mrs. Evans?”

It took Cade a few scant moments to realize she was being addressed. It’d only been a week since the small ceremony performed in the living room of one of the houses the group of forty-four had claimed in a gated community outside of Charleston, South Carolina. Cade still wasn’t used to her new name; she figured it would come to her more easily with time, but that time definitely hadn’t arrived yet.

Dr. Derek Rivers stood in the doorway of the house Cade and her closest friends—including the doctor, Kimberly Geller, and Dominic Jackson—had claimed as their own, his fingertips tapping nervously on the doorframe as he watched her. She glanced one more time in Brandt’s direction before retreating back to the shade of the porch, stopping in front of the doctor and giving him a tentative smile.

“Dr. Rivers,” she greeted him warmly, retrieving her mug from the porch railing. “Is everything okay? You usually don’t come down here like this.”

“I needed a little fresh air,” he admitted. He eased onto the porch and sat on one of the lawn chairs that had been placed there. “Kimberly’s upstairs with Ethan. I figured it’d be okay if I stepped out for a few minutes.” He leaned forward in his chair and studied the activity across the street. “Wow, they’ve really made some headway on that, haven’t they?”

Cade tossed the remains of her tea out across the yard and leaned against the railing, folding her arms. The ceramic mug dangled loosely from one hand. “I know you didn’t come all the way down here to talk about the community’s agricultural attempts,” she said pointedly.

Derek let out a soft chuckle and sat back in his seat again. “I make myself that obvious, huh?”

“Glaringly.”

Derek chuckled again and scrubbed a hand slowly over his graying beard. He suddenly looked aged, every single one of his fifty-seven years showing in his face. Cade almost took a step toward him, but then he spoke. “Ethan is awake,” he told her. “Has been for about three hours now.”

Cade’s mouth went dry. She wished she hadn’t tossed out the tea. “Is he …?”

“I think it took,” Derek said with no small amount of pride in his voice. He deserved to be proud of himself; he’d worked hard to find the cure for the Michaluk virus. Whether or not it worked with Ethan Bennett would be the definitive answer to the question of whether he’d succeeded. “He’s very weak and incredibly malnourished. I think the next few days are going to be really touch-and-go. I should warn you that he’s so weak, there’s a chance his body might just give out on him before he gets well.”

Cade felt her heart freeze up, but she managed to ask shakily, “So what’s the bad news, Doc?”

Derek gave a wan smile at her lame excuse for a joke and slouched in his chair. “I think if he makes it through the next couple of days, he’ll be fine.”

Cade nodded, and both of them fell silent for several thoughtful minutes. When she finally spoke again, her voice was tight, and she had to clear her throat before she could get her question out. “So what’s next, Derek?”

“I think Miss Angellette,” Derek said. “Though I’m not sure how this cure will work for someone who hasn’t … fallen completely under, so to speak. I don’t know how the medications she’s already on will interact with the cure. Hopefully, it won’t prove to be a fatal case of trial and error.”

“She’d do it regardless of the risks,” Cade said. “She doesn’t care about risks. She wouldn’t let that stop her.”

“I know, and that’s a little worrisome,” Derek admitted. “I’m concerned about the effect Michaluk has had on her mind.”

Cade looked at him sharply. “You don’t think she’s turning out like Alicia, do you?”

“Oh no, no,” Derek tried to reassure her quickly. “Just that she’s a little … melancholy, I think. She spends a lot of time on the roof alone.”

“She did that before you met us, when I was sick with an infection,” Cade said. “At least, that’s what Brandt tells me, anyway. That she’d hide on the roof to get away from everybody and think.”

“Do you know what her plans are if the cure works for her?” Derek asked. There was a note of curiosity in his voice as he reclined further and looked up at her. Cade averted her eyes from his and shrugged slightly.

“I don’t know. That’s not something we’ve discussed,” she said evasively. Really, she didn’t think it was Derek’s business what any of their future plans were; she didn’t know him well enough to trust him enough to divulge things to him yet. She believed she’d become at least as distrusting as Ethan had once been.

Cade brushed her bangs out of her eyes and looked across the yard at Brandt for another moment before she cleared her throat and spoke again. “Look, I think I need to get inside,” she said. “It’s hot out here, and it’s making me feel a little queasy.”

Derek seemed to go further on the alert with Cade’s words. He sat up straighter and gave her a concerned look. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Do you need anything?”

Cade waved him off. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” she said. “I just need more shade, maybe more tea.” She didn’t wait for Derek to reply. Instead, she turned on her heel and strode into the house, letting the shadowed air inside cover her like a cool blanket. She dropped her mug off in the kitchen sink and headed for the stairs, determined to hunt Remy down and give her the latest news on Ethan’s condition.

Remy was in the first place Cade checked: the bedroom she’d staked out as her own for the past three months. She stood beside the bed, shaking out a fitted sheet to spread over the bare mattress, a frown gracing her face. Cade stopped in the doorway and watched her for a second, trying to determine if it was safe to enter, before she tapped two knuckles lightly against the doorframe. Remy startled and turned, giving Cade a tight, compressed semblance of a smile before returning to her work with the sheet.

“Hi,” Cade greeted her. She took a couple of steps into the room to lean against the wall. “You need a hand?”

“No, I’ve got it,” Remy muttered. She climbed onto the mattress to hook the sheet over the top edge of it.

“So, ah, Ethan’s awake,” Cade said, deciding not to hedge around the reason she’d come there. Remy seemed completely indifferent to the revelation, which suggested to Cade that she’d already heard the news. Cade sighed and crossed her arms, cupping her elbows in her palms. “You still plan to leave?”

“Yes,” Remy said. She snapped the end of the fitted sheet around the foot of the mattress. “Nothing that’s happened—or
not
happened—in the past three months has changed my mind on that.” She smoothed both hands over the sheet and grabbed the flat one, shaking it out. “Just waiting on Derek to wrap things up with Ethan so I can take my turn.”

Cade pressed her lips together and watched how Remy avoided her gaze. Rather than mention it, she merely asked, “Where do you plan to go?”

“Somewhere,” Remy said. “Anywhere but here.” She flung the sheet out from her and let it drift down onto the bed. “Dominic has some family up in Pennsylvania he wants to try to find. I might just go with him.”

Cade raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Dominic? I thought you hated Dominic.”

Remy shrugged and tossed a blanket haphazardly onto the bed. “Shit changes,” she said, her voice a bit coarse. “So do people, for that matter.” She glanced through the bedroom door to the closed one just across the hall. “I can’t be around him. Not after …”

“Not after seeing him like that for the past three months?” Cade suggested gently.

“Not after he tried to kill me,” Remy corrected. The scars from Ethan’s attack marred her features, stripping away part of her natural beauty.

Cade nodded in understanding and let her arms drop to her sides. “Are you going to come back some day?”

“I might. I don’t know yet.”

Cade sighed and moved to the younger woman, hesitating only a second before wrapping her into a tight hug. Though she’d never been one for displays of affection, for once, the gesture didn’t make Cade uncomfortable. “Just be careful, okay?” she requested as Remy returned the hug. “You’re like a little sister to me, and I don’t want you to just disappear and never come back.”

“When I get my shit settled, you’re never going to be able to get rid of me,” Remy said with a little laugh. “Besides, I’m not leaving for at
least
three more days. You’re not quite rid of me yet!”

Cade gave her another squeeze before letting go. “Just don’t randomly take off in the middle of the night, okay? Not unless you’re on a mission to piss me off, that is. Because then I’ll just track you down and smack you with a shoe.”

Cade’s Journal

July 3, 2010

It’s been three months since the hell we fought through in Atlanta, Georgia. We fought, some of us died—but we accomplished what we set out to do. We stopped Alicia Day.

And yet, I feel no real sense of victory in writing that.

To say Alicia Day was pretty messed up is probably an understatement. She made absolutely terrible decisions, decisions that cost many people their lives. But, in the end, Alicia was just as much a victim of the Michaluk virus as the rest of us. If not more so.

The virus was controlling her, altering her instincts and her behaviors, making her take actions she normally wouldn’t have. The virus was behaving in exactly the same way as it did in every other infected person roaming the world. The only difference was that Alicia still had her conscious mind, her
human
mind, competing with the virus’s effects. It wasn’t all Alicia’s fault, any more than it is the fault of those others who are infected—they’re only reacting in the way the virus tells them to. Nothing more.

The danger didn’t end with Alicia’s death. The infected didn’t magically disappear when Brandt and I fired those two bullets. They’re still something we have to live with, something we have to guard against. Alicia wasn’t the only threat. But she was
a
threat, and I believe even she recognized that in the end.

Those of us who survived—there were forty-four in all—found a place to establish what we believe to be the first real community in the southeast, inside a gated housing development outside of Charleston, South Carolina. In the past couple of weeks, we have begun experimenting with agricultural ideas, toying with what to grow and where to grow it. A few scavenging groups even found several hens—next up is, by all accounts, a rooster. I personally would like to see some cows, for the milk, but I’m not holding my breath.

In other news, Derek seems to have done his job. The moment we returned from Atlanta, he treated Remy to the best of his ability and then moved on to his research. Just last week, he achieved what I had begun to believe would never be achieved: he found a cure for the Michaluk virus. And Alicia was right: it
had
been in Brandt’s blood all along.

Brandt may have saved us all. Just like I knew he would.

As Cade wrote the last words in her journal entry, Brandt finally came in from his work across the street, dripping with sweat from the heat of the sun. He retreated to the bathroom to clean up, and when he returned, he flopped backward on the bed with a low groan. “I feel like I’ve been run over by a herd of sheep.”

Cade raised her eyebrows and looked up from the notebook in which she’d been scribbling by the light of the camping lantern. “A herd of
sheep?
” she repeated. She slipped her pen into the notebook and slowly closed it, setting it on the table and shifting to face the man sprawled on the bed.

“Yes, sheep,” Brandt confirmed. He pushed himself up into a sitting position and leaned back against his elbows. “I helped with the digging today—I know you saw that. And I walked the perimeter to make sure the fence was still secure and the guys patrolling it were okay for the night shift tonight.”