The Becoming (Book 4): Under Siege (7 page)

As his teeth sank into the meat and blood
flooded his mouth and poured over his tongue, it took everything in
him to suppress the groan of pure, unadulterated pleasure that
threatened to escape his throat. He closed his eyes as a shudder
ran down his spine, and he clapped both hands over his mouth as if
to keep anyone from taking the meat from him. He chewed furiously,
working it with his teeth, feeling like a man dying of thirst being
handed a tall glass of ice water. When he swallowed, all he wanted
was more. He grabbed the plate of meat and started to cram the
morsels into his mouth, smearing blood on his chin as he gorged
himself.

Ethan felt drowsy and heavy when he emerged
from the euphoria that eating the meat had brought on, and he
looked at the now-empty plate with a measure of forlornness. He was
fighting the impulse to lick the remaining blood from the china
when footsteps rapidly approached. He looked up to see a
thirty-something year old man with black hair. Ethan didn’t know
this man who was stepping through the kitchen door, a rifle resting
against his shoulder. Their eyes met, and the other man’s stare
widened as he took in the sight of Ethan standing there, empty
plate in hand, blood smeared on his face, and stray droplets
staining his shirt. The man swung the rifle around to point it at
Ethan, even as he yelled out, “Hey, I need help in here!
Quick!”

“That’s not necessary,” Ethan said. He
dropped the plate onto the counter and put a hand up, palm out.
“Really. Just…just don’t. Please.”

The man shook his head and adjusted his aim.
“What did you do?” he demanded. His eyes scanned the kitchen. “Who
did you hurt?”

Ethan looked at him blankly for a moment,
and as comprehension broke through the haze shrouding his brain, he
reached up and touched his face. His fingertips, already stained
with blood, came away with even more red. He must have looked
horrible, like a monster, like one of the…

“Oh God,” Ethan whispered as the shock hit
him full-force. He leaned against the counter heavily, closing his
eyes and gripping the edge like a life preserver, his knuckles
turning white. Even with his eyes closed, he could feel the other
man’s weapon aimed at his head. It would be his fortune—good or
bad, he wasn’t sure which—if the man squeezed the trigger. And as
he heard three more sets of footsteps on the living room floor, he
couldn’t help but wonder if said outcome would be preferable. He
didn’t bother to wipe at the blood on his face as Cade, Brandt, and
Kimberly came back into the kitchen. Brandt’s boots squeaked on the
tiles as he stopped, and Ethan squeezed his eyes closed even
tighter, feeling overwhelmingly ashamed.

“What the hell is going on in here?” Cade
demanded. Her words were as sharp as knives, flung out across the
room with the irritation and incredulity Ethan had come to expect
from her. “Why do you have a rifle pointed at—”

Ethan looked up then, and Cade stopped
speaking, her eyes wide as she got a look at his face. Kimberly
stood behind her, the expression in her eyes horrified. Ethan
looked away, wanting to hide his face. She was the last person he
wanted to see him this way.

“I’ll go get Derek,” Kimberly said. She
turned and hurried away.

“What happened?” Cade demanded, once the
blond woman was gone.

Ethan cast his gaze to the floor. “I just…I
don’t know,” he murmured. He reached for a towel and was disgusted
to see his hands shaking. He scrubbed at his face, trying to get
the blood off. “I don’t know. Cade, what the fuck is wrong with
me?”

Everyone left in the room was silent for
long heartbeats. Ethan twisted the towel in his hands and slouched
against the counter again. His chest felt tight, his breathing
erratic as he struggled not to panic. He felt like he was about to
hyperventilate. It took everything in him to not hit the floor as
the elated mood he’d had previously flowed out of him.

When Cade spoke again, her voice was harder
than before. “Keith, put the damn rifle down,” she said. “And, for
that matter, get the hell out of this kitchen.”

Keith started to protest, but she
interrupted.

“Don’t you
even
say a word to a
single soul out there about what you saw in here, you got it? I
don’t want this getting out everywhere.”

“I think everybody has a right to know you
have one of the
infected
stashed in here!” Keith snapped
back. “What, are you trying to pull an Alicia or something? This is
Dominic Jackson’s doing, isn’t it?”

Brandt opened his mouth to say something and
then closed it. He still looked shell-shocked, like he couldn’t
comprehend what he was looking at. Ethan really hoped that meant he
wasn’t about to put a bullet in his head himself.

“He isn’t infected!” Cade said.

“Like hell he isn’t! Look at him!” Keith
took a step toward him, and Ethan reflexively tried to back away.
“I don’t know what kind of bullshit you’re trying to pull in
here—”

“And I don’t care what you
think
it
might be,” Brandt interrupted. He grabbed Keith’s shoulder and
shoved him toward the door. “Shut the fuck up. Don’t say a word, or
I will personally make sure you regret it. And if you even
think
about trying to harm him, I will cast you out of
Woodside so fast your head will spin.”

Keith and Brandt glared at each other for
long moments, during which Ethan forced himself to take in large,
gulping breaths. Finally, Keith seemed to crack, looking away from
Brandt. “This isn’t over,” he muttered as he pushed past Brandt and
stormed out of the kitchen.

“No, it isn’t,” Brandt mumbled.

When the front door slammed, Ethan flinched,
and a sudden, terrible fear of being revealed to the entirety of
Woodside burrowed its way into his stomach. He bit back a surge of
bile as Brandt moved toward him. Ethan didn’t look up at Brandt,
who studied him as if he were a butterfly under a magnifying glass.
Cade kept her distance, not that Ethan blamed her.

Brandt’s hands came up then, resting against
the sides of Ethan’s face, his fingers hooking under his jaw, and
Ethan was forced to look up. The two men stared at each other,
Ethan reluctantly and Brandt intently. When Brandt spoke, his voice
was hushed. “How long?”

Ethan closed his eyes again. “Since I woke
up. Since Dr. Rivers did whatever he did to me.”

“What were you feeling? Before?” Brandt
prompted. He searched Ethan’s face before dropping his hands.

“I was hungry,” Ethan said. “It never
stopped, no matter how much I ate. It was just there. It wouldn’t
leave me.”

“And now? How do you feel now?”

Ethan had been so focused on how everyone
else was reacting that he hadn’t taken the time to figure out how
he
was reacting. So at Brandt’s prompting, he focused
inward, studying not only his mental state—shaky at best—but his
physical state too. And, much to his surprise, he discovered that
the hunger was gone, that he was feeling better than he had since
emerging from the months of insanity brought on by the Michaluk
Virus. With a startled jolt, he looked at Brandt, nodding. “I
feel…like me,” he tried to explain. “Healthier. Stronger. It’s
gone. The hunger…it’s just gone.”

“What is going on?” Cade demanded then.
Brandt didn’t tear his eyes away from Ethan as he answered her.

“I’m not certain,” Brandt admitted. “I have
my suspicions, but…” He trailed off and shook his head. “I think we
couldn’t have timed this committee meeting any better than we have.
Derek’s got some answers he needs to start handing out, and a lot
of them have to do with Remy and Ethan. I want to know what’s going
on with them, and I want to know yesterday.”

Remy felt a sense of freedom and liberty she hadn’t
felt in months as she walked underneath the trees surrounding
Woodside. The sun shone down through the thick tree canopy above
her, and the breeze felt more refreshing than it did when it eked
over the wall and into the community. She breathed in deeply,
smelling the scents of damp earth, rotting leaves, and foliage: the
distinct smell that accompanied every forest and woody area she’d
ever been in. Closing her eyes for the barest of moments, she sent
up a silent thank you to whoever was listening that Dominic had
been nice enough to get her out of the community, if only for a
little while.

She looked to the man in question, who
walked ahead of her, almost creeping through the foliage, following
a deer track toward destinations unknown. Remy didn’t care where
they were going; Dominic had mentioned searching out supplies, but
they could have been taking a trip to the moon and she’d have been
just as pleased. Her eyes lit onto his broad shoulders as he
meandered along the path, and she smiled as she watched him pause
to check his compass. He beckoned to her, and she hurried to catch
up.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“We’re coming close to town,” Dominic said.
“Maybe another half mile.” He paused before adding, “There are
infected in town.”

A bright smile spread across Remy’s face
before she could stop it. “Infected?” she repeated. “I’m game for
taking on some of those.”

“I know, and that’s what I wanted to talk to
you about,” Dominic said. He paused, as if gathering his thoughts
and figuring out what to say. “I want—no, I
need
you to
please stick close to me. Don’t rush off to fulfill whatever
burning need you have to slaughter any of the infected. I’m
bringing you along to watch my back, not to perform wholesale
slaughter.” She must have had a disappointed look on her face to
match the disappointment she felt, because he hurried to add,
“Besides, you do it sloppily, and if you’re still going to go with
me to Philadelphia, you need to learn how to do it more effectively
and efficiently.”

“And, what, you’re going to teach me?” Remy
asked, stopping in the middle of the path and folding her arms over
her chest. It was a challenge, and she knew it, but she wanted his
promise that he was going to do so before they went any
further.

“Actually, yes,” Dominic said, as if
realizing that answering in any other way would send her on the
warpath. “But you’re going to learn how to kill them
my
way.” He took her elbow and tugged. She let him lead her down the
trail as he continued. “I’ve got actual training in how to take
down enemies, remember?”

“What, they actually taught you how to kill
zombies in the DIA?”

Dominic snorted. “No, not zombies. Just
people,” he said. “But the infected
are
people. They’re just
sick, and some of them are dead.”

“And still walking around trying to eat us,”
Remy added. She paused, biting her lip as she ducked below a
low-hanging branch. “You don’t think I’m going to go like that, do
you?”

“Like what? A batch of infected eating you?”
Dominic asked, raising an eyebrow and glancing at her.

“No, just…like
them,
” she said. She
was being vague and knew it, but actually saying the words felt
like it would make the possibility too real, too likely to
happen.

Dominic stopped and stared at her, examining
her face, reading the possibilities there like he was so skilled at
doing, like he’d done earlier in the main house’s kitchen when
she’d gotten so pissed at him for daring to show he cared. Then he
slowly shook his head. “No, Remy, I don’t think you’d ever go that
way,” he said. “I think you’d go down in a blaze of glory, taking
as many of them with you as you could.” He gave her a slight smile
and added, “I’ll make you a promise, though, right here and now. If
you ever show signs of turning, I’ll personally make sure you never
turn into one of the infected. I’ll take care of it myself.” Remy
gave him a smile that quavered at the corners of her lips, and he
reached out, taking her hand in his and giving it a comforting
squeeze. “You’re going to be okay, Remy. You know that, right?”

“I hope so,” Remy murmured. She laced her
fingers with his and squeezed his hand in return, holding onto it
as if it were her only salvation. She glanced at their joined
hands, focusing on them and feeling calluses and rough spots
against her fingers. Then she forced herself to pull her hand out
of his, inwardly cursing her momentary weakness. She prided herself
on not needing other people as much as they needed her, and after
the fiasco of Ethan’s death and resurrection, the last thing she
was willing to do was let herself actually
feel
something—anything—for another person.

Dominic seemed to pick up on her discomfort,
and he studied his hand before looking forward into the trees. He
pressed his lips together and rocked his head forward at the path
ahead. “We should get moving,” he said. “We’ve got a lot to do, and
we need to try to get back before the sun sets and you need your
medication.”

The rest of the trip to the outskirts of
Hollywood, South Carolina, was made in a silence that, while not
uncomfortable, was stiff with tension. As the two emerged from the
shadow of the trees and into the bright afternoon sunlight, Remy
found herself standing beside Dominic at the side of a highway. The
grass alongside the road nearly reached her waist, and cars
stretched down the pavement as far as the eye could see. It was a
familiar sight, one that Remy had seen repeatedly over the past
year and a half—

—“
I can’t get a shot! I can’t get a
fucking shot!”—

—and, in Remy’s opinion, was one of the most
dangerous settings in the world, outside of dark buildings with
lots of rooms. She drew a breath, fighting it into her lungs. Her
hands trembled, and she curled her fingers into fists, digging her
nails into her palms. Dominic started forward, stepping through a
gap between two cars, his hand resting on a holstered pistol at his
hip and the other gripping the strap of the rifle he’d brought with
him. Remy’s heart leaped into her throat, and she lurched forward
and grabbed Dominic by his right bicep to stop him. He turned to
face her, his forehead wrinkled in confusion.