The Becoming (Book 4): Under Siege (8 page)

“What?” he questioned. “What is it? What’s
wrong?”

Remy hesitated and shook her head. She let
her hand fall to her side, her fingers curling again. Her cheeks
burned with embarrassment, and she looked away, gazing at a blue
sedan, all of its doors thrown open and luggage, long-since
emptied, spilling out onto the highway.

She opened her mouth, then closed it again.
“Are you…are you sure it’s okay? Out there?” She nodded toward the
highway and the cars.

Dominic looked at the cars and then turned
his eyes back to her. “I’ve been through here a dozen times so far
at least,” he said. “While I can’t say it’s
totally
safe, I
can guarantee that I’ve at least reduced the number of infected
along the two-mile stretch we’re about to walk.”

When she didn’t respond right away, Dominic
stepped back from the highway and turned to face her. He set his
rifle against the vehicle beside him—a bad move; even
she
knew that, and she wasn’t a former DIA agent—and took her face in
his hands, making her look up at him. “In all the time I’ve known
you, I’ve never seen you look so rattled,” he said. “Talk to me.
What’s wrong?”

“Theo,” Remy said.

Dominic gave her a look of confusion, and
she remembered that he’d never had the good fortune of knowing
Theo, had never had the pleasure of meeting their former medic and
self-sacrificing friend. A mental image of the man’s last few
minutes of life played in her head like a scattershot film of
out-of-sequence snippets—

—“
I can’t go with you! I’m fucking
infected
now! If I go, I’ll put all of you in danger, and I
will
not
do that.”—

—and she struggled to shove it aside and
explain.

“He was this man that I…that
we
knew,” she said. Her voice trembled, and she tried to cover it up.
“He was our medic. He…he died. In a highway full of cars like this
one—”

—“
Get back! Get the fuck back! All of
you!”—

“—while trying to…trying to save Cade.” She
had to force the last four words out. She was dying to look away
from Dominic, but the hold he maintained on her face wouldn’t allow
it. So instead, she closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m
overreacting.”

He finally let go of her face, picked up his
rifle, and rested it against his shoulder. “No, you’re not, Remy,”
he replied. He surprised her by taking her hand in his again. He
gently tugged it, leading her into the rows of vehicles on the
highway. She struggled to overcome the urge to bolt. “It’s not
over-reactive at all. You haven’t even mourned for him—or anyone
else—have you?”

Remy swallowed and shook her head, her eyes
darting around, searching for any oncoming dangers. Almost
unconsciously, she drew closer to Dominic. It had been so long
since she’d been outside the community, since she’d been put in
danger that she didn’t know what to do with herself. She felt
horribly exposed—a feeling she didn’t like one bit. Her fingers
itched, ready to kill something. She had a misguided belief that
killing would bring her self-confidence back.

Dominic tugged at her hand again, as if
trying to draw her attention back to the present and out of her
thoughts. “Nervous?” he asked.

“Very,” Remy admitted, despite her
reluctance to confess it.

“Good.”

Remy raised an eyebrow, and Dominic
elaborated. “If you’re nervous, it means you’re not so far gone
that I can’t teach you.”

“I know how to kill the infected,” Remy
said, glad for the diversion from her mournful thoughts. “If I
didn’t know how, I’d have gotten myself killed a year and a half
ago.”

“Yeah, but I’ve seen the way you fight the
infected,” he said.

“When?”

“When I dug you out of a bunch of them
outside the Westin five months ago.” He shook his head. “The way
you were fighting them—if you can call it fighting—was a fast way
to commit suicide.”

“Maybe that’s what I’m trying to do,” Remy
snapped without thinking about it.

Dominic stopped short and turned to look at
her, the expression on his face hinting at anger.

“Don’t say that,” he said. His tone was
clipped, and she raised an eyebrow as he looked away from her and
continued. “You’re not good to anyone dead, and if you’re
determined to slaughter as many infected as humanly possible, then
you need to get refined about how you do it so you
don’t
end
up dead.”

Remy huffed out an exasperated breath. “Why
do you want to teach me anyway?” she asked. “Why do you even
care?
”

Dominic didn’t look at her as he replied,
“Because I like you.” His tone was matter-of-fact, as if it should
have been obvious to her. “And because I’m still planning on taking
you with me to Philadelphia and will need you to be a competent
source of backup.” He angled a glance at her and added, “Unless, of
course, you don’t want to go anymore.”

“Of course I do!” she exclaimed. “God,
anything
to get away from Woodside.”

Dominic raised an eyebrow. “Anything to get
away from Woodside, or away from Ethan Bennett?”

“God, I fucking
hate
him!” Remy
exploded before she could stop herself.

Dominic looked at her with surprise,
stutter-stepping before regaining his composure. She clenched her
fists and kicked the back tire of the nearest car.

“I wish he’d died for real!”

“No, you don’t, Remy,” Dominic started.

“Yes, I do!” Remy argued. “He did nothing
but make my life miserable! It’s because of
him
that I’m
fucking sick and that my face is messed up!”

Dominic stopped again and turned to face
her, blocking her path.

Still angry, she raised her hands to shove
him aside, but he caught her wrists and wrapped his strong fingers
around them, halting the attempt. His thumbs rubbed against her
wrists, gently, soothingly, clearly trying to calm her down.

“Remy,” he said, and the way he said her
name was warm like melted caramel. She swore her backbone melted
under the onslaught. “Your face is
not
fucked up. If you ask
me, I don’t think it’s nearly as bad as you seem to think it is.”
His thumbs lightly brushed against the scars on either side of her
face, tracing upward along them as far as his thumbs could
reach.

Remy’s eyes welled up with tears, and she
swallowed hard, trying to choke them back. Suddenly, she felt like
a shy, ridiculous schoolgirl being told by Mr. Popular Jock
Football Player that he wanted to go to the Senior Prom with her.
She almost scrunched her nose up at the thought; she’d never been
the type who was asked out on dates by the good, straight-laced
guys, just the users and the losers. She squeezed her eyes closed
for a moment before opening them again and asking softly, “Do you
actually like me, or are you just saying all that to make me feel
better?”

“I like you enough to want to kiss you right
now,” he murmured without hesitation.

“But you can’t.”

“I can’t,” he agreed.

“Because I’m sick.”

“Because, as you say, you’re sick.”

Before Remy could respond, a shout echoed
down the highway. She stiffened. Dominic let go of her wrists and
spun toward the noise, sliding himself between her and the
possibility of danger. Both of them squinted, searching for the
source of the noise.

Another shout echoed, followed by several
more. It was a feminine voice, indistinct but high-pitched with
panic.

“That isn’t an infected person,” Dominic
said.

Remy pushed past him and started in the
direction of the noise. “Come on, then! We should go help!”

Ethan relaxed in the reclining chair across from the
couch as best as he could, though his knees and hips still ached
from the exertion he’d indulged in earlier in the day. He didn’t
regret it, though, not for a second. If anything, the movement had
made him feel alive. And he was glad he’d been allowed to attend a
meeting and see the community in action. He’d missed being in the
thick of things, and he was eager to get caught up on what was
going on in the world.

Despite the better mood he appeared to be
in, though, Ethan’s brain was trying to run laps around what had
happened in the kitchen barely an hour before. He’d eaten a rabbit.
On the face of it, that didn’t seem like a big deal. He’d been born
and raised in the south, and his father had been an avid game
hunter from the moment he’d been old enough to aim a rifle, so he’d
eaten his fair share of rabbit and deer and squirrel meat in his
life. But this was different. He’d eaten the rabbit
raw
. It
had been a compulsion he hadn’t been able to think through, and he
was terrified that that meant there was something screwed up in his
head.

No, no, I can’t think about that right
now,
he thought, trying to push it all to the back of his mind.
It was too much to handle, and he couldn’t even begin to try to
cope with it. He’d save it for later, when he had time to dwell on
it and consider all the possible implications of what he’d done.
Instead, he started to scan the room, looking over everyone who had
turned out for the committee meeting.

Brandt was leaned against the banister at
the bottom of the staircase, observing the people who’d gathered
for the meeting. They almost had a full house, with most of the
committee members present.

Kimberly told Ethan, after she guided him to
the recliner, that the majority of time attendance was sparse due
to all the work that needed to be done around the community.

There were two people conspicuously absent:
Remy Angellette and Dominic Jackson. Ethan didn’t care where
Dominic was, but considering the meeting was about Remy and, by
extension, himself, it was probably a good thing she wasn’t
here.

Now, Kimberly reclined in the bay window,
leaning against the boards that covered the glass, her hands folded
in her lap as she talked to Isaac Wright. Isaac leaned against the
wall beside the window. Every time he glanced at her, Ethan felt a
stirring of emotion, things he hadn’t felt in ages: attraction
mixed with desire and, inexplicably, a pang of sadness and
insecurity. He imagined how he looked: his skin too pale, his face
covered with too much facial hair, the circles under his eyes too
dark, and his wrist bones sticking out too much. As he contemplated
that, he realized Brandt was staring at him, and he looked at him
questioningly. He nodded to Ethan in acknowledgment and asked, “How
are you feeling?”

Ethan wasn’t sure how to answer the
question, because he hadn’t figured it out himself. So he settled
on, “As well as can be expected, I guess.”

With that, Ethan shifted his eyes to the
sofa. Cade relaxed at one end of it, her head propped against her
hand as she stared across the room, waiting for the meeting to
start. She looked uncomfortable, and Ethan couldn’t decide if she
felt sick or if she was upset over what she’d witnessed him doing
to the dead rabbit in the kitchen. The memory of what he’d done
combined with the memory of the
taste
of it surged in his
brain again, and he wrestled it aside, not ready to deal with it
right then, and turned his attention back to Cade. No one else
occupied the couch, largely due to the sniper rifle laid out across
the other two cushions. After he gave her a small smile, he settled
his eyes onto the last man in the room.

Dr. Derek Rivers sat on the edge of the
coffee table, scribbling something in a rapid, messy hand into a
notebook resting on his knee. He’d met with Ethan just before the
meeting, grilling him relentlessly in the dining room as Brandt
waited in the doorway, the doctor gathering information so he could
piece together possibilities and put together his theory of why
Ethan had felt the compulsion to do what he’d done.

As Ethan muddled through that, Brandt
cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention. Ethan looked up at
him as the others did the same, and once all eyes were on him, he
cleared his throat again and spoke.

“Ya’ll probably already have some idea of
what we called this meeting for,” he began. “But in case anyone
feels particularly ignorant, I’ll enlighten you anyway. We’re not
here on official community business. More like friend-related
business, because
someone
in here isn’t telling us things we
need to know regarding Ethan,” here, Brandt nodded his head toward
Ethan, “and Remy and their current states of health.”

“Since it seems that
someone
feels it
prudent to allow Remy to die when he has the means to cure her,”
Cade added.

Kimberly came off her seat on the bay
window, fists clenched, her brown eyes wide and practically
glowing. “That’s not fair!” she exploded. “You don’t know
everything—”

“And neither do you,” Brandt interrupted.
“You don’t know what Remy is going through. You can’t possibly
begin to even
understand
it.”

“Oh, and you do?” Kimberly challenged.

Ethan shook his head and leaned forward,
figuring it was time he spoke up and got everyone calmed down.
Clearly, this was a touchy subject for all involved, and they’d
likely already formed opinions based on incomplete facts and
assumptions. “No, he doesn’t understand what she’s going through,
but I do,” Ethan said. He kept his voice quiet and controlled, but
it was enough to command the attention of everyone in the room.
Despite the spotlight he’d put himself under, he reached out and
rested a hand against Kimberly’s arm, trying to calm her. She
backed off, taking a few steps away from Brandt and sitting on the
arm of Ethan’s recliner. Once she was there, reassuringly present
and less than an arm’s reach away, he continued. “Unlike any of
you, I know what Remy’s going through. I know the anger she feels,
the fear, and yes, even the hunger. I
know
what it’s like to
be infected. Better than any of you because I’ve been there. I’m
the only person here who’s qualified to truly speak on her behalf.”
He paused and looked at Derek, trying to figure out what the doctor
was thinking. “You have no idea what you’re condemning her to, Dr.
Rivers. You have no idea what it’s like to have that virus inside
you, eating away at your sanity and at everything that makes you
you
, eating away for every moment you’re infected with it
and being fully aware of what’s happening to you the entire time.
You’re condemning Remy to a life that isn’t a
life
and
forcing her to accept that she’s going to turn into one of the
infected and that she might hurt one of the people she cares about.
To be infected…that’s a fate I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. You
have
got
to do something for her, Derek. Give her the
cure.”