Redemption
Date: 2015-09-22 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Zombies; Post Apocalyptic; Horror; Dystopia; Fiction
Description: When Woodside fell, Remy and her companions barely escaped. Now they’re scrambling to recover their shattered lives and find a new place to call home. But their friend Brandt Evans is still missing. Desperate to recover Brandt from the military’s grasp, Remy and her friends set out on a mission to find him–or die trying. Their search takes them back into the heart of Atlanta. What they find there are the seeds of a betrayal they didn’t expect and a world wholly different than what it had been when the Michaluk Virus struck. With the entire world turned on its head, the group finds themselves d
Publisher: Smashwords

The Becoming: Redemption

Book Five in The Becoming Series

Jessica Meigs

A PERMUTED PRESS BOOK

ISBN: 978-1-61868-599-5

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-60008

THE BECOMING: REDEMPTION

The Becoming Book Five

© 2015 by Jessica Meigs

All Rights Reserved

Cover art by Dean Samed, Conzpiracy Digital Arts

This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

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Franklin, TN 37067
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Found Written on the Back of a Credit Card Statement in a House in Charleston, South Carolina

Date Unknown

My name is Sadie O’Dell. I’m eighteen years old, and I’m almost directly responsible for the deaths of over fifty people.

My brother and I were running from zombies, just looking for a safe place to live. They had been following us for miles. They’d found us in the woods at our campsite, and when we ran, they followed. The crowd kept getting bigger and bigger, and we were stupid enough to keep going.

It was like we thought if we got to something resembling civilization, the zombies would magically stop following us.

I was such an idiot. And because I’m so damned overprotective of Jude, because I refused to read the writing on the wall, those same zombies caused all the people in Woodside to die.

I hate myself for that and I’ll spend the rest of my life—I will give my life if I have to—doing whatever I can to set it right. My life is all I have left to give, and it’s the least I can do after causing the ending of theirs.

God, I’m so fucking sorry.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 44

CHAPTER 45

CHAPTER 46

CHAPTER 47

CHAPTER 48

CHAPTER 49

CHAPTER 50

CHAPTER 51

CHAPTER 52

CHAPTER 53

CHAPTER 54

CHAPTER 55

CHAPTER 56

CHAPTER 57

CHAPTER 58

CHAPTER 59

CHAPTER 60

CHAPTER 61

CHAPTER 62

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chapter 1

When Sadie O’Dell regained consciousness, she was surprised and confused to discover that she was no longer in the back of an ambulance. With her eyes barely cracked open, she stared at the room around her. The bedroom had baby pink walls, frilly white curtains, and white-painted furniture. A little girl’s room. On the dresser, quite out of place in such a room, was a series of weapons—shotgun, machete, knives, several pistols, and a few stacks of spare ammunition magazines and shotgun shells—that she recognized as hers. Her Kevlar vest was draped across the back of a rocking chair, and her boots were on the floor in front of the chair. Her black backpack was in the chair’s cushioned seat.

Sadie’s head hurt. When she touched her forehead, she discovered a hastily applied bandage taped to her head. She pushed into a sitting position and promptly threw up off the side of the bed into a pink, flower-printed plastic trashcan that someone had placed just where it would be needed. Her stomach roiled, and she struggled to hold back another surge of sick. Embarrassed at the loss of control and still feeling queasy, Sadie swung her legs off the side of the bed and sat there, trying to get her bearings.

She closed her eyes and scrunched her nose, trying to remember everything that had happened that led to her ending up in this unfamiliar room. She remembered the flight from Woodside, the shooting, and the race to the ambulance. Most of all, she remembered the intense fear of what was to come down from the sky.

“MOAB,” Sadie whispered, recalling the term Dominic used when he’d explained it to them. The massive bomb must have been dropped. And like that, her heart sank. It was her fault. All those people, houses full of them. Women, children, the elderly… she hadn’t had the opportunity to meet any of them, though she’d seen them gathered inside the community’s gates when she and her brother had arrived, and she’d caught glimpses of them through the second-floor curtains of their safe houses. Now they were gone, every one of them.

Sadie shook loose from the grasp of despondency closing around her and tried to piece together the events surrounding the moment the bomb dropped. They’d been in the ambulance, and that was all she remembered for certain, though she had other suggestive images flashing through her mind, ones of a bright light, a hard wind, and being flung off her feet. Had they crashed? Was she the only one who’d survived? She couldn’t have been. Someone had bandaged her up and brought her to this little girl’s room. That meant someone else was still alive.

The thought of seeking out whoever was left got her moving. She pushed to her feet, mildly nauseous, and stumbled to the bedroom door, stopping at the dresser to scoop up one of her pistols and make sure it was loaded. She eased the door open a crack, peering into the darkened hallway beyond. There was a table against the wall across from the bedroom door, a mirror mounted above it. Sadie’s encounter with her reflection in the glass scared the hell out of her, and she had her pistol aimed at the figure before she realized she was looking at herself. She bit back a nervous laugh.

“Jumpy much?” she murmured, blowing out a breath. She took a step closer to the mirror, studying her reflection and scowling at how terrible she looked. Her skin was pale, and her eyes had dark circles under them, like she’d been sleeping too hard and hadn’t gotten any real rest. There was a bandage taped to her forehead, a spot of blood staining it, but other than that, she looked injury free. She backed away from the mirror and made her way down the dark hallway. There were voices somewhere near the end of it, most of them hushed. Cade’s voice rose above the others in clear anger.

“I don’t care!” she yelled, her words echoing in the otherwise quiet house. “I want to know where the hell they took my husband and why!”

Dominic’s voice came after Cade’s. “Why are you yelling at me, Cade? I have no way of knowing the answer to that. Hell, I didn’t even see which way the helicopters went when they flew away. I was too busy hiding in the fucking kitchen and trying to not get shot!”

“Cade, please, lay back down.” Derek’s voice that time. “You just—”

“I’m fine! Stop treating me like I’m made of glass!”

There was a scuff of a shoe against the floorboards behind her, and Sadie whirled around, raising her pistol to aim it at the perceived threat. Keith Fenton stood in front of her, his hands up in a defensive gesture when he found himself on the business end of a Sig Sauer P226.

“Nice to see you up and about, Ms. O’Dell. Do you mind putting the firearm away?” Keith asked. He set a fingertip against the top of the gun and applied gentle, downward pressure. Sadie lowered the gun, resting it against her right thigh.

“Where is my brother?” she asked, skipping over any formalities. She didn’t have time to follow the polite courtesies of asking how everyone was or where they’d ended up. She looked past the older man, searching the darkness for the familiar figure of her twin brother, her heart skipping a beat when she didn’t see him.

“Jude is downstairs sleeping,” Keith answered. She shoved past him so she could search for Jude, but he caught her arm and made her look at him. His expression was serious, which made her feel queasier than she already did. “How do you feel?” he asked. “You’ve been out for a while.”

“I have a headache,” Sadie admitted, “but I’ve been through worse. What happened? Where are we?”

“We’re south of Charleston,” Keith answered. He slid his hand to her elbow and tugged it, leading her toward the top of the stairs. She shook her elbow free from his grasp. A baby’s thin wail came from a room somewhere behind them. “Dominic and Isaac found a useable house, and we locked it down to wait while Cade recovers.”

“Recovers?” Sadie asked. She felt stupid and sluggish and about ten steps behind everyone else.

“From having the baby,” Keith clarified. He gave her a worried look and made like he was going to touch her bandaged head or feel at her face for evidence of a fever. “You sure you’re okay? Exactly how hard did you hit your head?”

Sadie waved his question—and his hand—away, dodging his touch. “What happened with the ambulance? And the bomb?”

“Well, the military guys who showed up dropped the bomb, obviously, and it nearly knocked us right off the road,” Keith explained. “The backdraft picked up the tail end of the ambulance and dumped it back down, and Dominic managed to keep us on all six wheels through some seriously masterful driving. I think you hit your head on one of the cabinets during that and got knocked out. Cade had her baby while we were on the road, and Derek treated you once he wasn’t tied up with her and the child.”

“Was Jude hurt?” Sadie asked. “Is he okay?”

“Jude is fine,” Keith said. “He’s been worried about you. It was all I could do to get him to leave your bedside for a couple of hours and come downstairs to eat and get some sleep.” He smiled and added, “You have a very lovely brother.”

“Lovely?” Sadie repeated.

Keith’s cheeks flushed. “Loving,” he said, correcting himself with visible embarrassment. “He’s been glued to you ever since we got here.” Sadie narrowed her eyes and didn’t respond. She slipped past him and descended the stairs to look for her brother.

Sadie found Jude lying on his back on the black leather couch in the living room, eyes closed, face relaxed in sleep. He had one arm flung above his head, the other draped across his stomach. His dark hair was a mess, tangled and knotted from lack of brushing and probably from him running his hands through it like he did whenever he was worried. He’d removed most of his weapons, which were lying within easy reach on the coffee table in front of the couch, though he still wore his boots. Sadie reached out to wake him, but when she saw the dark circles under his eyes, she pulled her hand back. Their long-held roles had been reversed: Sadie, the one who usually went without sleep for days on end in her efforts to protect her brother, was well rested, while Jude lay on the couch looking like he’d been two seconds away from collapsing when he’d been put there.

“I’m glad you made him get some sleep,” Sadie said to Keith, who had followed her down the stairs and was lurking at the bottom, his hand resting on the bannister. “He looks like he was about to wear himself out.”

“I think he might have been.” Keith moved away from the stairs and to the coffee table, where he picked up a heavy black flashlight from the jumble of supplies there, and gestured to her. “Come on, let’s step into the kitchen so we don’t wake him up.”

Sadie followed him down a short hallway and through a swinging door into what looked to have been a well-appointed kitchen. The room had been ransacked; the once-shiny cherry wood cabinets all hung open, their shelves bare, the stainless steel refrigerator and freezer doors wide open. The counters were covered in a thin film of dust and grime, and the floors were tracked with dried mud, dirt, and blood. Sadie wrinkled her nose at the dirtiness of the kitchen, and Keith chuckled.

“I know, right?” he said. “This was how we found the place. It wasn’t in good shape compared to the houses in Woodside, but we haven’t had time to clean anything yet. Not sure it’s worth the effort, since I don’t think we’re going to be here much longer.”

There was a bar stool near the island at the center of the kitchen, and Sadie climbed onto it. She rested her elbows against the edge of the grimy counter to avoid staining her long-sleeved t-shirt any more than necessary and asked, “What makes you say that?”

“Brandt’s been taken captive, by all appearances by the United States military, and Cade is hell-bent on going out to find him,” Keith explained. He set the flashlight on the island counter, balancing it onto its end so the beam shone onto the ceiling and reflected back, casting a dim, whitish glow over the room. “I suppose we’re going to ignore the fact that we have no idea where he’s been taken to or where to start looking.”

Sadie shrugged. “People have been found with less information to go on, you know. And we’ve actually got a good lead on where to start. The military took him, so we can assume it was to military bases or installations. We can eliminate the ones we know were destroyed or compromised. That will help us narrow down the possibilities to the operational ones.”

“Yeah, but none of us has the knowledge of the current status of every single military base in the continental United States,” Keith pointed out. “It’s a fool’s errand. He’s long gone. Hell, he’s probably dead already.”

“Don’t let Cade hear you say that,” a voice behind Sadie said. She twisted around to see Isaac stepping through the kitchen door, looking tired yet upbeat. “She’ll kick your ass right out the back door.”

“Literally,” Keith said.

Isaac looked Sadie over, assessing her current state of health. She gave him a tight, crooked smile, even as she wished he wouldn’t. She hated the perception that, since she’d been hurt, she was something to hover over and worry about. There were more important things to be concerned with on their plates.

“I see you’re up and about,” he commented. “How’s your head?”

Sadie sighed. “It hurts,” she said with a nonchalant shrug. “I’ve had worse pains. I can live with it. A little aspirin and I’ll be good as new.”

“Good,” Isaac said. “Your brother has been worried.”

“So I’ve heard,” Sadie said.

“He’s been chasing Derek around with a notepad trying to ask him questions since we got here,” Isaac said. Sadie could picture that, and she bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. “He’s managed to kill a pen already. We had to scrounge up another one for him earlier today.”

“How is Cade?” Keith spoke up. He had a smile on his own face at Isaac’s comments about Jude. When he noticed her looking, he erased it and schooled his features into a neutral, somber expression. Sadie raised her eyebrows, but he didn’t look at her again.

Curiouser and curiouser, she thought.

“She’s fine, considering she pushed out a baby,” Isaac answered. “A little girl that she’s named Olivia,” he said before Sadie could ask the question that sprang to the tip of her tongue. “Now that she’s actually had Olivia, though, she’s all gung-ho to head out and find Brandt. Derek is trying to get her to wait a week or three before going out on a mission that’s going to involve so much physical effort.”

“Is she listening to him?” Sadie asked.

Isaac snorted. “What do you think? It’s Cade. She never listens to anybody unless they’re telling her what she wants to hear.”

“So what are you going to do?” Sadie asked. “Tie her down to a bed for three weeks until she’s healthy enough to go after him?”

“Wish I could, but she’d find a way to escape,” Isaac said. He folded his arms over his chest, leaning against the edge of the counter beside Sadie. “She’s going to go, and that means some of us will have to go with her.”

“Which of us are going to go?” Sadie asked.

“That’s something we’re going to have to discuss,” Isaac said. “Not right now, though. How about for now, we get you something to eat and drink, and then I can take you upstairs and let Derek check on your head wound? Maybe we can get that aspirin you need and have this whole problem nipped in the bud.”

Sadie nodded absently. She slid off the stool to follow Isaac to the stairs, already planning and plotting, because she had every intention of going with Cade, no matter what.

Chapter 2

To say that Cade was angry would have been an understatement of epic proportions. She’d slid beyond angry and straight into furious. Despite the pain and the soreness she felt, despite the exhaustion that nibbled at the edges of her consciousness, she was two seconds away from coming off the bed Derek and Isaac had put her in and tearing the world a new one.

The target of Cade’s wrath stood at the foot of the bed, his arms folded over his chest. She could imagine that, at any moment, Derek would start tapping his foot with impatience, but she didn’t care. She was too furious to give a shit.

The ticking clock on the wall was the only sound in the room. She glared at Derek, struggling to hold her tongue while they waited for the conversation’s third party to return. Just when she began to wonder if she would burst, the thump of boots walking down the hall reached her ears, and Isaac stepped into the room.

“Sadie’s awake, and she needs aspirin,” he said, pushing the bedroom door partially closed. Derek crossed the room and dug into his medical kit for the requested medication. Once he had it, he passed it to Isaac, who gave it to the young woman out in the hall. He shut the door and cast a glance at the swaddled infant on the bed beside Cade, her hand resting protectively on the sleeping baby.

“Where were we?” he said, his voice low.

“I believe Derek was telling us why I can’t go find my husband and save him from the fucking United States government!” Cade snapped. “And I was telling him why he can take that explanation and shove it up his ass!”

“Hey, that isn’t fair,” Isaac said. “Derek is only looking out for your health and the baby’s health. He’s got to be concerned about this, because you sure as hell don’t seem to be.”

“I’m concerned about my health,” Cade protested, resisting the urge to slap him. He’s a friend, and he’s worried, that’s all, she reminded herself. She took a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm down, but it was in vain. Nothing was going to calm her down when she was this far gone. “I’m also concerned about the state of Brandt’s health,” she continued. “What if he’s dying? What if he’s dead? We don’t know what sort of condition he was in when they took him and—”

“If they wanted him dead, he’d already be dead, Cade,” Derek pointed out. “They wouldn’t have taken him alive if they hadn’t wanted him to stay that way.”

“They shouldn’t have taken him to begin with!” Cade said, too loudly. The baby, Olivia, stirred and made a whining sound. Cade picked her up and cradled her to her chest. The next time she spoke, she lowered her voice. “I want to know why. Why did they take him? What the hell did they need him for? And where did they take him?”

“We’ll get Dominic in here, and he can tell us everything he saw,” Derek said in a soothing tone that made Cade want to claw his eyes out with her blunt fingernails. “In the meantime, you should be resting. Put aside this idea of going after him and—”

“I’m. Going. After. Him,” Cade said emphatically. The idea of not going after her husband infuriated her, and she clenched her fists and tried to muster all the authority she’d wielded in the IDF to make the two men listen to her. “You’re not going to change my mind, so stop trying. You can either help me and be part of the solution, or you can try to stop me and be part of the problem. One way or the other, you’re going to keep out of my fucking way.”

“Cade…”

“Do not use that fucking tone with me, or so help me God, I’ll turn you inside out and shit on your organs.”

“Colorful,” Isaac commented.

“So will you help me or not?” she asked Derek, ignoring Isaac. “Because if not, I’d like to know now so I can plan accordingly.”

“Why are you so insistent on going after Brandt?” Isaac asked. His voice was gentle, inquisitive, non-judgmental, and Cade was grateful for it. “I mean, I understand that he’s your husband, but we don’t have the means or the knowledge to track down his location. It’d be the literal needle in the haystack.”

Cade sighed. “Atlanta,” she said, like that explained everything. When both men continued to stare at her blankly, she elaborated. “Earlier this year, when I was taken to Atlanta by Alicia’s people, Brandt came after me. It didn’t matter that I was perfectly capable of taking care of myself. It didn’t matter that he had no idea where in Atlanta I’d been taken. He did it anyway. And now that he’s in the same situation, I can’t not try to help him, even if that means wandering all over the United States to find him.”

“Which hopefully won’t be necessary,” Isaac said. “What about your baby? You can’t take her with you.”

“No, I can’t,” Cade agreed. “That’s a hurdle we’re going to have to cross when we get to it. In the meantime, it’d probably be best if no one pissed me off any more than I already am. I’m tired, cranky, and liable to blow a gasket.”

“We most assuredly don’t need any gasket blowing,” Isaac remarked.

Derek was still staring at her, and she arched an eyebrow in silent challenge. “I can’t go along with this, not willingly. There’s no way your health is where it needs to be for you to go off and do something like this.”

“Before all the shit hit the fan, the blasted hospitals were sending new moms home on practically the same day they birthed their babies!” Cade argued.

“True, but that was before, when we had access to far better medical care than we do now,” Derek said.

“Come on, Derek, there’s got to be something you can do to help her,” Isaac said.

Derek pointed a finger at him, giving him a warning glare that was in no way intimidating. “Not you too.” He turned his attention back to Cade. “Two weeks,” he requested. “That’s all I’m asking for. Two weeks.”

“What if Brandt doesn’t have two weeks?” Cade asked.

“Then he’s going to have to cope,” Derek said. “Physically, I don’t think it’s safe for you to be out in such circumstances, not until I’ve made sure you’re okay. I think two weeks will be enough time for me to verify that. In the meantime, we can use those two weeks to come up with a plan and prepare, because I’m not allowing you to run off half-cocked.”

Cade flopped back against her pillows. The movement jostled Olivia, and a thin wail began to emanate from the blanket-wrapped bundle. She made a shushing noise and started to jiggle the baby like she’d seen mothers do before the Michaluk outbreak. The baby girl didn’t seem to like it much, and her wails grew louder.

“One week,” Cade said, loud enough to be heard over the baby’s cries. “No more, no less. Come hell or high water, I’m leaving in one week to find my husband.”

Chapter 3

Remy had a headache from Hell. It was all she could focus on since they’d gotten to their temporary shelter outside of Charleston. She’d dosed herself with aspirin she’d found in one of the ambulance’s cabinets, but it didn’t make much of a dent in the pain. She sat secluded in one of the upstairs bedrooms, blankets hung over the windows to block the light, curled up in the darkest corner of the room with her eyes closed.

She was trying to find some hidden well of peace and solitude and painlessness inside herself. The faces of all of Woodside’s dead kept floating to the forefront of her mind, which made her feel like throwing up.

All those people were dead because of her. Because Dominic had taken her out to make her happy, and she and Dominic had found Sadie and Jude, and trying to save them had led those damned things back to their safe place.

Sure, they’d saved Sadie and Jude. But were the lives of two people worth the loss of fifty?

“No, of course not,” Remy said out loud.

“No, of course not what?” Dominic asked from the doorway.

Remy didn’t bother to open her eyes. “Nothing,” she answered. “Just thinking out loud.”

The door clicked shut, and footsteps crossed the room. Dominic had a slight limp she’d never noticed before, judging by the sound of his feet against the floor. There was a scuff on the floorboards, and she opened her eyes to find him crouching in front of her, his forearms resting against his knees. His balance on the balls of his feet was perfect, not a wobble to be seen. His steadiness made her jealous.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice low like he was afraid that someone was listening in.

“Other than the fact I’ve got a splitting headache?” Remy asked. “I wish I could say it was nothing outside of the usual parade of bullshit, but it doesn’t appear that I can tell you that.”

Dominic brushed a hand through her tangled hair, pushing it back from her face, and traced his fingers along her jaw. “Have you taken anything for your headache?”

“Yeah, about an hour ago. I don’t think it’s working.”

“Okay then, since we can’t get you anything else for it yet, let’s address the other problem,” Dominic said. “What’s bothering you?”

“What makes you think something is bothering me?”

He traced his thumb over her cheeks, first the left and then the right. “Because you’ve been crying,” he said.

Surprised, she reached up to touch her face; her fingertips came back wet. “Oh,” she murmured. “I didn’t realize…”

“It’s okay,” he said. He squeezed her shoulder in reassurance and pressed his hand against the side of her neck. “There’s no need to apologize. I want you to talk about it. Tell me what’s going on in that pretty head of yours.”

Remy almost said, “Nothing,” again, though she knew that Dominic would call her out on such an obvious lie. Besides which, she couldn’t think of any good reason to not tell him. Of all people, Dominic knew what she’d been through over the past few days, and if there was anyone she could talk to about how she felt, it was him. She cleared her throat, closed her eyes, and murmured, “Is this all my fault?”

“Is what all your fault?” Dominic asked.

“All of this,” Remy said, waving her hand around. “All those people who died in Woodside. Did they die because of me?”

There was a shuffling sound, and she opened her eyes. Dominic slid around to sit against the wall beside her. He drew a knee up, resting an arm on top of it, and stared at her, assessing her. She tried to not squirm in discomfort at his intense, steady gaze, barely able to hold her eyes onto his face. “Why would you think that was your fault?”

“Because…because those infected followed me to Woodside. If they hadn’t done that…”

“Then they would have found Woodside anyway, and we would have ended up in the exact same situation,” Dominic said. “The good thing is that, in the process, we were there to help Sadie and Jude. They might not be here today if we hadn’t gone out. And we wouldn’t have had any warning at all. We wouldn’t have gotten the cure out of Woodside before the infected got in.”

“But…fifty people, Dominic,” Remy said. “They’re all dead, and I can’t help thinking it’s my fault.”

“It’s as much my fault as it is yours,” Dominic said. He grasped her hand and laced his fingers between hers. “I took you out there, remember? I was with you when they followed us to Woodside. Us, Remy. Not you, us. It wasn’t just you who was out where you shouldn’t have been.” He sighed and added, with the faintest twinge of despair, “Some of them might have survived—we might have gotten some of them out—if it hadn’t been for the fucking military.”

Remy’s shoulders tensed and her jaw clenched at the mention of the soldiers who had invaded Woodside, at the memory of the excitement she’d felt when she’d thought they were there to rescue them—and the horror and fear she’d experienced when they’d opened fire, on both the infected and on the survivors, like they’d been one and the same. A stab of pain darted through her jaw from the force of the tension she exerted on it, and she struggled to loosen it before she did damage to her teeth.

“Fuck ‘em,” she muttered. “Fuck all of ‘em.”

“They were just following orders,” Dominic said. “There are quarantine protocols for that sort of thi—”

“Fuck their protocols!” Remy shouted, her anger surging. She sat up straighter, ignoring the pain spiking in her head. “Their protocols killed a lot of good, innocent people! Why would they be following quarantine protocols, anyway? The whole fucking world is a quarantine zone! They might as well shoot themselves if they’re killing everybody in a so-called quarantine zone!”

Dominic’s hand tightened around hers, and he shook his head, pulling her back and over against him. “Calm down,” he murmured, threading his hand through her hair soothingly. “I’m angry too. But there’s no way being as mad as you are is helping with your headache.”

“It’s not,” Remy said. “But fuck, Dominic, can you blame me? All those people. The children. Sasha and Shae. They’re all gone.” Her emotions hardening, she glared at the wall across from her, a substitute for those at whom she wished she could direct her fury. “Those sons of bitches should pay for what they did to them, and to us.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Dominic said. “But how are you proposing making them pay? God only knows where they are now.”

“I guess we’ll have to track down where they took Brandt then,” Remy said, clenching her fist with her determination. “That will bring us the added bonus of finding him, and then we could slaughter the motherfuckers that took him and killed our people in one fell swoop.”

“Are you serious?”

“Of course I’m serious.”

“Remy, you’re talking about premeditated mass murder,” Dominic said. He sounded like he was struggling to be patient. At this point, though, Remy didn’t care if she pushed his buttons. Maybe they needed to be pushed. “That doesn’t sound like the Remy I know. I’m all for teaching them a lesson. I just don’t know if I can condone setting out exclusively to kill people who aren’t infected.”

“You helped us do that with Alicia,” Remy pointed out.

“Alicia was a psychotic megalomaniac,” Dominic said. “She was an immediate danger to us all, and something had to be done about her.”

“So, what, it’s okay to kill someone in cold blood if they happen to be crazier than a road lizard, but if they’re of sound mind, suddenly it’s immoral?”

“Remy, that isn’t what I meant, and you know it,” Dominic snapped. “Jesus, where do you even get these ideas?”

“Maybe, oh, I don’t know, out of your mouth?” Remy shot back. “That’s clearly how you operate, and don’t say it isn’t, because you’ve already proven it. What happens if I go crazy like Alicia did? You going to have somebody put a bullet in my head too?”

“Is that what’s bothering you?” Dominic twisted toward her. She moved away, sliding along the hardwood floor to put some distance between them. “You think this is going to be an Old Yeller situation? That I’m going to shoot you because you might go crazy?”

“Of course not,” Remy retorted. “You’ll get someone else to do it for you. You know, like you conned Brandt and Cade into killing Alicia.”

“I didn’t con them into killing her,” Dominic said. “Both of them had a history with her and her insanity, and if I recall correctly, so did you. Or do I have to remind you of what she almost did to you back in Hollywood when she and her thugs—and yes, I’m including myself in that—took Cade?”

“No, you don’t,” Remy muttered.

“Sorry, what was that?” Dominic asked sarcastically. “I couldn’t hear you.”

“No, you don’t!” Remy yelled. Somewhere in the next room, a baby started crying. She felt a pang of guilt for waking Cade’s baby, but she ignored it, burying it where it wouldn’t bother her again. She didn’t have the space to add any more guilt onto the guilt she was already carrying.

“Jesus, would you keep it down?” Dominic admonished. “You woke the baby up.”

“She’ll live.” Remy pushed off the floor, staggering sideways a few steps as her aching head swam and her stomach churned. She braced a hand against the bedpost and drew in a deep breath, trying to steady herself. Her nerves were vibrating under her skin, and she had the irrational urge to grab the nearest warm body and dig her fingernails into its face. She shook it off, grinding her nails into the bedpost instead, and straightened, squaring her shoulders. She stiffened when Dominic’s hands pressed against her back.

“Talk to me, Remy, please,” Dominic said. His hands slid up her back, barely skimming her shirt. “You’re lashing out, and I’ve never seen you do that unless something or someone has you upset. Talk to me, okay? You know I’m not going to judge you, no matter what’s going on, even if it involves me.”

Remy closed her eyes. The temptation to go limp, to sag backwards into Dominic’s arms, was so great she almost gave in. She fought it, though. She was scared that it wouldn’t be well received and that she’d like it too much. She was still trying to tell herself that she didn’t really like him—though both of them knew that was far from the truth.

“You’re scared, aren’t you?” Dominic asked, sparing her the admission. She didn’t respond. His hands moved up to her hair, scraping through the strands to pull them back from her face. “It’s okay,” he whispered in her ear. “I am too.”

Remy raised her eyebrows and turned to look at him. “You, scared?” she said. “You can’t be scared. You’re not allowed.”

“It happens occasionally,” Dominic said. He pulled her closer, hooking an arm around her waist and holding her against him. He took her hand in his, lacing their fingers together and extending their connected hands like they were dancing at a ball. Remy smiled and slipped her hand up his chest to settle it on his shoulder in the appropriate position. He returned her smile. “I’ve been scared plenty of times in my life. I’ve been in so many situations that I almost didn’t make it out of that I had to learn very quickly how to live with that fear.”

“How did you learn to live with it?” Remy asked.

He spun her around and pulled her close again. “That is one of the things I wish I could teach you,” he murmured, brushing his lips against her cheek with a smile.

Chapter 4

The group that gathered in Cade’s bedroom later that day was dreadfully small. Dominic did a headcount of the people in the room with him, and his heart sank. They were down to eight people. Eight people out of over fifty. The low number was disheartening, and he fervently hoped that some of the others had managed to slip out of their houses and get out of Woodside before the military bombed the community.

Dominic did a sweep of those present, and despite his disappointment over them being so few in number, he was pleased with what they did have. In the center of the room, as if she were the showpiece, Cade sat on the bed, reclining against the pillows, her newborn baby cradled in her lap. Her thin fingers brushed against the sleeping infant’s forehead, rhythmically and soothingly, though Cade appeared unaware that she was doing it. Her sniper rifle, always within arm’s reach, rested against the wall by the bed, close enough that she could lean over and grab it if need be.

Remy sat at the foot of the bed, leaning against one of the bedposts with her legs crossed. She had a short-bladed knife in her right hand, twirling it between her fingers. Her dark hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail, and she looked relaxed. Dominic wondered if the aspirin she’d taken had finally helped her headache ease off. She caught him looking at her and smiled, then twirled the knife and tossed it into the air, catching it by the hilt. He returned her smile.

Jude and Sadie sat against the edge of the dresser, side by side. Jude had his arms folded over his chest, staring at the floor as if he were deep in thought, an unhappy expression on his face. Sadie had her hands braced against the dresser, and she stared at Cade with a look of determination almost equal to the other woman’s. Her expression surprised Dominic. He hadn’t known she felt so passionately about Cade’s cause—she barely knew any of them. Still, the look was there, and it was undeniable. Both of the twins were outfitted as if they were ready to go to war, their Kevlar vests Velcroed on and their weapons holstered and sheathed and strapped in place.

Keith was propped against the wall beside the dresser, his foot braced on the wall, knee bent, his head bowed as he wrote on a notepad with a stub of a pencil. Every few words, he’d pause and squint at the ceiling as if he were thinking, and then he’d return to the notepad and start writing again. Dominic assumed he was making a list of something—supplies, perhaps—for the trip that some of them would be taking in the near future.

Derek and Isaac were the last two in the room. Both men stood near Cade’s bed on the opposite side from Dominic, Isaac looking at Cade intently and Derek looking annoyed. Dominic wondered who he was annoyed at, and he figured the likely culprit was Cade. She was stubborn enough to inspire annoyance in virtually anyone who crossed her path.

The room was quiet enough to hear a pin drop, the only sound everyone’s steady breathing, and no one seemed willing to break the silence. They all appeared content to stare at each other or the floor. Dominic figured if anyone was going to get the meeting started, it would have to be him.

He cleared his throat. “So…”

That broke the tension and silence in the room, as he’d hoped. Cade sat up straighter and adjusted her grip on the infant in her arms, her blue eyes scanning across every person in the room.

“I’m going to start this off by stating the obvious,” she said. “I’ll keep it short and sweet, because I’m not in the mood for anything else.” She paused for as long as it took her to draw in a deep breath and let it out, and she said, “I’m going after my husband.”

“We were expecting that,” Dominic said. Cade ignored him and continued talking like he hadn’t spoken.

“The only problem we have to figure out is who’s going with me and who’s staying here, because not everyone can go.”

“Why not?” Remy asked.

“I thought that would have been obvious, Rem,” Dominic said. “We can’t take the baby in a potential battlefield with us.”

“Oh, right,” Remy said. She tossed the knife and caught it again. “Well, you know I’m going. No way am I letting you wander around by yourself so something can spring out of the bushes and eat you.”

“I think if anybody here should be voted least likely to be eaten by the infected, it’s Cade,” Isaac spoke up, a smile on his face.

Cade ignored him too, so focused was she on her more immediate goal. “We’ve already decided that Derek will stay,” she said, “so he can keep an eye on Olivia. But he can’t stay alone, so I think at least two of you should stay behind with him.”

“We’ve already established that Remy is going,” Derek spoke up. “I don’t think she’d have it any other way. That said, I’d like to put in my opinion that Jude and Dominic should stay here with me and the rest of you go with Cade.”

“No,” Dominic and Sadie said at the same time. Dominic waved a hand for Sadie to continue.

“I’m not going anywhere without my brother,” Sadie stated, “and I’m not staying here. We’ve already talked about it, and we’re both going with Cade.”

“And I’m going with Remy,” Dominic said. “So don’t think I’m staying here.”

“We can’t all go,” Derek said.

“I’ll stay,” Isaac said. “Dominic can go in my place. I’d rather be here helping protect Olivia anyway.”

Cade sighed. “Keith?”

“I’m going with you,” Keith said, and Dominic caught him glancing at Jude before returning his gaze to Cade. “I’m sorry. I know you’d probably rather me stay here with Olivia, but I just…I have to go.”

“I’m sure you have your reasons,” Dominic said, “but—”

“In the interest of not prolonging a potential argument over this,” Derek interrupted, “I think Isaac and I will be enough. We’re running on potentially borrowed time, at least on Brandt’s part, because we don’t know what they’re going to do to him, if anything.”

“And considering how roughly they treated him when they came into the rec center, I doubt it’s anything good,” Dominic said. He sighed and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Let’s plan for two staying and six going. What do we need to do to prepare?”

“We need infant formula,” Cade said. “As much as we can find. And we need to clean up and stock the downstairs. I’ve been told it’s not in the greatest condition. We should fortify the place and make it as safe and secure as possible. At the same time, we’ve got to plan for the six who are going. We’ll need supplies for us and for the house.”

“Be easier if we knew where we were going,” Remy said. “We need to be able to plan how much we’ll need. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to end up stuck in the middle of Bumfuck, Tennessee, with no supplies and no idea where to get them.”

“She has a point,” Dominic agreed. “Brandt could be anywhere, especially if that helicopter took him somewhere where he could be transferred to a different vehicle.”

“That’s where I’m going to need your expertise,” Cade said. “I figure if we put our heads together, we can narrow it down. However, I think we need something more solid to go on, which is why I’m proposing we go back into Atlanta and see what we can find.”

“Atlanta?” Remy repeated. “Atlanta? You actually think we’re going to be willing to go back to that hellhole? We almost died there, Cade!”

“While I’m aware of that, please, hear me out,” Cade protested. “I was thinking maybe we could go back to the Tabernacle. Brandt told us the military was using it as a staging area during the outbreak, and I thought we could see if there’s any information there that we could use, perhaps stuff that involves military personnel evacuation. I was mostly unconscious when we were there and don’t remember much, but Remy, you weren’t. Weren’t there papers all over the place? Stuff the military left behind?”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to go all the way to Atlanta just to dig through those papers,” Remy said.

“You thought it was a perfectly fine idea to go all the way to Atlanta just to dig through some papers the first time,” Cade pointed out.

“That was different.”

“How so?” Cade countered.

“That time, I didn’t comprehend the danger in Atlanta,” Remy said. “And that was before Nikola, Theo, Avi, and Gray died, and Ethan and I got infected in that damned city. And before you got kidnapped by that crazy-as-fuck lady and her cronies.” She looked at Dominic and added, “No offense.”

“None taken,” Dominic replied. “Cade has a point though. Our best bet is to get to a military installation that would be most likely to have the type of information that she’s hoping for. We could drastically narrow our search corridors if we can get our hands on intel like that, and that means we could find Brandt’s location that much faster.”

“That doesn’t even take into account trying to figure out how to get him out of wherever they have him,” Keith said.

“That’s a stone we’ll have to step on when we get to it,” Dominic said. “Needless to say, it won’t be easy, and we’ll have to negotiate it carefully. This trip is going to take a lot of planning if we expect to pull it off.” He skimmed over everyone again, trying to gauge how serious they were taking this—very, not that he’d expected otherwise—and he asked, “When are we leaving?”

“One week,” Cade said, and every eye in the room turned to her.

“One week?” Keith repeated. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No, I’m not kidding,” she said. “The sooner we get moving, the quicker we can narrow the lead they have on us. The longer we wait, the more screwed we are.”

There was silence in the room again while everyone processed this. Dominic rubbed his thumb and middle finger over his eyes and sighed. “Let’s all break and go get some rest. Start thinking about what you believe we’ll need on the trip, and write it all down. We’ll compare notes later.” He locked eyes with Derek, even as he moved to Remy and leaned over, murmuring so only she could hear, “You go get some sleep. I’ll join you shortly.”

She nodded and scooted off the bed, slipping her knife into its sheath on her belt and moving toward the door. Her movement was the spark needed for everyone else to head for their own rooms. Sadie pushed away from the dresser and said a few words to Jude before walking out, and Jude followed her with Keith on his heels. Isaac wasn’t long behind them, and then it was just Dominic, Cade, and Derek left in the bedroom.

“Doc, I’ve got to talk to you,” Dominic said before he could leave. “Both of you,” he added, deciding to include Cade in the conversation. “I don’t think either of you is going to like what I have to say.”

“Oh no,” Derek said. “This doesn’t sound promising at all. What does it have to do with?”

“Remy,” Dominic said. He motioned to the edge of the bed. “Maybe it’s a good idea if you sit down.”

Chapter 5

Jude’s head hurt from lack of sleep. The little he’d gotten hadn’t been enough. He shunted the ache aside and headed back downstairs after the meeting with Cade and the others. He wasn’t happy about any of it, but he didn’t have a choice. Sadie’s determination to go with Cade had taken the choice away from him, and he was less than appreciative about it.

Jude reached the bottom of the stairs and made a beeline for the living room couch, where he’d spent most of his time that day. Keith was already sitting on the end of the couch, his legs crossed, reclining against the cushions like he didn’t have a care in the world. He looked him over before he dropped onto the opposite end of the couch. He propped his elbows against his knees and rested his head in his hands, letting out a slow sigh.

“You okay?” Keith asked. The couch cushions shifted, and Jude assumed that Keith had scooted closer to him. He shrugged with one shoulder and sat back, digging in his pocket for his pad and pencil.

I’m tired, Jude wrote, and more than a little worried. I’m not sure I want to go on this trip.

“Then why not stay here?” Keith asked.

Because Sadie is going, and I can’t let her go by herself, he wrote.

“She’s not going by herself,” Keith pointed out. Jude wrinkled his nose at his words. That wasn’t the sort of statement he’d been hoping for, though he wasn’t sure what he’d been hoping for. “She’s going with Cade and Dominic and Remy.”

You know what I mean, Jude scribbled before flashing the notepad at him.

Keith smiled. “Yeah, I know what you mean,” he acknowledged. “I understand the need to protect your siblings. I never had any brothers or sisters myself, but it doesn’t take an idiot to know that a brother’s going to want to follow his sister into any trouble she might be getting into. I assume it’s doubly so with twins.” He paused, then asked, “Have you ever been in Atlanta?”

We went in once not long after the outbreak, Jude wrote. After that, Sadie and I avoided it at all costs.

“For good reason,” Keith said. “It’s the definition of ‘hellhole.’ When we were left alone, it wasn’t that bad. Then, when the infected got stirred up, or when some gang of uninfected humans came along and decided they wanted our territory or our supplies… things tended to get really bad. People ended up dead or infected, and we’d have to pack up and move everyone again. Alicia wasn’t a good person, and she needed to be dealt with one way or another. At the same time, she was something of a stabilizing force for all those people who harassed other survivors. I don’t know what it’s going to be like in Atlanta now that she’s gone.”

Jude nodded in understanding and wrote at the bottom of the page, That’s why I have to go with her—the unknown.

“And that’s why I’m going with you guys,” Keith said. “I figure you might need a hand keeping an eye on that sister of yours. I don’t know her well, but she seems like the kind of person who’d run off to help someone in distress, regardless of the consequences to herself.”

She is. Remind me to one day tell you about what she did to save me when the outbreak started. It’s a pretty wild story.

“Duly noted,” Keith said. “So, what now?”

Jude shrugged and chewed on the end of his pencil, thinking it over. Then he scrawled, Trip prep? on a fresh page in his notepad.

Keith grinned. “Yeah, that sounds like a plan to me. I know of some guns that need cleaning. Medical supplies weren’t the only things that Dominic had stuffed into that ambulance, and we haven’t had the chance to go through any of it yet.”

Sounds like fun, Jude scribbled, and he pushed himself off the couch. He showed Keith the notepad and offered him his hand. Keith took it, and Jude hauled him to his feet, a wide smile on his face. He tucked his notepad into his back pocket and followed Keith to the front door, watching as he unbolted it and pulled it open. Keith had his pistol out and aimed before Jude realized he’d drawn it, and he mimicked his move, sliding his own pistol out of its thigh holster and lifting it in a two-handed grip. Keith slunk out of the house first, cutting toward the right of the door, and Jude followed him, sidestepping to the left.

Jude scanned the porch and the yard, sweeping his pistol along his line of sight, searching for dangers. When nothing presented itself, he lowered his pistol to his side and glanced at Keith. Keith smiled reassuringly and lowered his own gun, then beckoned to him with his free hand.

“Come on, let’s get to the ambulance,” Keith said. “Most of the stuff is still in there. We haven’t had time to move any of it yet, what with your sister being unconscious and Cade giving birth. All we took inside were those MREs we’ve been eating and some medical supplies.”

“Is there a lot of stuff in the ambulance?” Jude signed without thinking about it. Keith stared for a second and shook his head.

“Man, I have got to learn how to do that,” he said. He reached the ambulance and grasped the back door’s latch, pulling on it. It popped open with a squeak, and he reached inside to unlatch the other door.

Jude grinned and pulled his notepad out, writing down, I could teach you. He draped an arm over Keith’s shoulder, dangling the notepad into his face so he could read it.

“I think I’ll take you up on that offer,” Keith said. “Mainly because eventually, we’re going to run out of paper for you to write on.” He grabbed the metal bar bolted inside the back door and hauled himself inside. Jude took the hand Keith offered him, clambering up into the truck behind him. “So, where should we start?”

Jude looked around at the cabinets lining the walls inside the ambulance, getting his first real look at them, since he’d been too preoccupied with Sadie on their trip here. The cabinets on the right-hand side of the truck were full of medical supplies, packed to overflowing with gauze, bandages, IV supplies, and other things that he had no idea what they were or what they were for. On the left, through the dark, semi-opaque glass over the cabinet doors, Jude could make out stacks of boxes of ammunition. In another cabinet were makeshift racks that held pistols, and another with knives. In the cabinet above the seat bolted near the head of where the stretcher had been, the cabinet doors were missing in order to make room for the rifles that Dominic had stuffed inside. There was a veritable arsenal inside the ambulance, and as the size of it became more apparent, Jude raised his eyebrows in wonder and mouthed, “Holy shit.”

Keith laughed. “Yeah, that’s what I said too when I got my first real look into the cabinets. I have no idea how he does it. Dominic is clearly talented at getting his hands on the shit we need.”

Jude skimmed his hand over the pistol cabinet and slid it open, reaching inside and pulling free a Walther PPK. He held it up to study it, and his grin widened as he fumbled for his notepad again. My dad bought my mom one of these when I was twelve. She had it up until she died last year.

“Assuming no one else needs it, maybe you can keep it,” Keith said. “For sentimentality’s sake.”

An hour later, both of them were sitting on the bench seat, the space between them covered with a pile of pistols. They’d spent most of their time counting the bullets and weapons Dominic had packed into the ambulance, jotting the numbers down on the last sheet in Jude’s notepad. When they finished counting the last of the pistols, Jude flipped to a fresh sheet and started to write the alphabet on it in careful, neat block letters.

“What are you doing?” Keith asked, leaning to look. Jude swatted him away, and then he wrote on the back of the sheet.

How about we get started on that sign language lesson you wanted?

Keith grinned. “I think that’s an excellent idea.”

Chapter 6

“How are your legs?”

It was minutes before sunset, and Kimberly’s question cut through the silence like a hot knife through a stick of butter. Walking on the uneven, cracked pavement of a quiet back road that ran parallel to Highway 17, Ethan glanced at her, and it took everything in him to not laugh at her question. She had asked him variants of it almost on the hour of every hour that had passed since they’d set out on their mission, and it was beginning to verge on the ridiculous.

Ethan suppressed a smile and hitched his backpack higher onto his back. He debated telling her the truth, that his legs hurt like hell and if they didn’t find some sort of vehicle to use soon, he would probably fall over. However, he didn’t want to deal with Kimberly’s potential mother-henning. Not that she was the type to play mother hen and flutter around him; she was more the consummate medical professional.

“I’m fine,” Ethan settled on. He stepped up the pace to emphasize his point, hoping it would be enough to keep her from questioning him further.

“You sure?” Kimberly asked, her voice doubtful. “It took you a bit to answer the question.”

Ethan shrugged. “Maybe I had to think about it.”

Kimberly snorted. “Yeah, okay, if you say so.”

“What, you don’t believe me?”

“You were practically bedridden for months, Eth,” Kimberly pointed out. “Now you’re up and moving around, with absolutely no real period of rehab, and you tell me you feel fine. Can you honestly blame me for being skeptical?”

“Not really,” Ethan said. “I do feel okay, though, considering I’ve been walking off and on for…” He paused to look at his watch, “about eight hours.”

“Your legs do hurt, don’t they?” Kimberly prompted. “And don’t lie about it, either, because mine hurt like a son of a bitch.”

“I’ve never understood that phrase,” Ethan said. “Hurts like a son of a bitch. What does that even mean?”

“Ethan…”

He sighed. “Yes, Kim, I’m sore, and I would hand my left arm over to the next infected guy that asks for it if I could sit down somewhere.”

They were silent for a few moments. Ethan scanned their surroundings, looking for a suitable spot to rest while trying to decide how much further he could make it without having to stop. His perusal was interrupted when Kimberly asked, “Why the left arm?”

“Out of all that, that’s what you pick up on?” Ethan asked, and he grinned, unable to help himself. “Left hand is the hand of the devil, you know,” he joked. “It’s the hand for doing evil things.”

“What sorts of evil things have you been doing with your left hand?” Kimberly asked, the grin on her face slanting toward mischievous.

Ethan gave her a wicked grin and didn’t answer the question. Instead, he shielded his eyes from the setting sun so he could look ahead of them. “Do you think it’s time we got ourselves a car? It might get us where we’re going much faster so we can get back and find the others sooner.”

“Do you think we’ll be able to find them again?”

“I don’t have the luxury of considering that possibility,” Ethan replied, feeling his good mood start to evaporate with the thought. He found a new burst of energy somewhere inside him, one that was enough to help him speed up his walking pace.

“It is a possibility,” Kimberly replied. She picked up her own speed to match his.

“Yeah, well, it’s not a possibility I’m willing to entertain,” Ethan said. He gritted his teeth, not liking this direction of the conversation. Deep inside him, somewhere near his ever-present hunger, he sensed the ball of anger inside him beginning to stir, and he fought to suppress it. He didn’t want to be angry with Kimberly; she was the last person to whom he wanted to show his notoriously bad temper.

“What if they’re dead?”

Ethan stopped so suddenly that Kimberly took several steps past him and had to turn around to face him. His fingers curled into fists so tight that it made his knuckles hurt, and it took everything in him to relax his hands. “You did not just say that.”

“Eth, you saw that bright light, the same as I did,” Kimberly said. “You heard the explosion and the shooting. That explosion was a damn big one too. Now I’m no expert, but there’s a pretty damn good chance that at least some of them might have died in that.”

“They’re not dead!” Ethan exploded. He moved closer to her, almost too close. She drew in an audible breath but, to her credit, didn’t back away. “If I hear you suggest anything like that again, I promise you, I may not be totally responsible for my actions.” She stared at him, her blue eyes wide, and he added, “Don’t tempt the beast, Kim. Please.”

Kimberly nodded, slowly, as if she were processing what he’d said. She took his hand in hers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m just trying to think of all the possibilities, no matter how horrible they are, so we can be prepared for them.”

“I understand where you’re coming from. However, that’s not something I’m willing to accept, not to mention think about,” Ethan said. “So please don’t mention it again.” He squeezed her hand, accepting her apology while offering one of his own. “What do you say we find a place to sit down and get a bite to eat?” he suggested, trying to distract both of them from their argument. The wad of anger inside him began to loosen, unraveling and sliding away. “I’m sure we could use a rest.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Kimberly agreed. She shifted her backpack and turned in a slow circle, searching for a good spot. She pointed to a wrecked pickup truck off the embankment alongside the road. “We could sit in the bed of that. It’s not too dirty, and the back end looks fine.”

“Good enough for me,” Ethan said, starting in that direction. Despite the stillness of the area around the truck, he was on high alert. He motioned for Kimberly to stay put on the pavement and ventured into the tall grass lining the road.

The sound of Ethan’s shoes scuffing through the grass wasn’t loud enough to drown out the sound of uneven footsteps somewhere on the other side of the truck. Ethan almost drew his pistol out of its holster, but he changed his mind and took out his machete instead. The last thing he and Kimberly needed was to make too much noise and attract unwanted attention. He held the machete at ready, prepared to swing it at anything that emerged from the grass on the passenger side of the truck.

Ethan reached the end of the truck and eased around the corner, ready to strike out at whatever waited for him. He started to swing down with the machete and checked himself in time to stop the blow. A dog, a black lab by the looks of it, stood next to the truck’s passenger door. He tensed, worried that the dog was going to attack him. Dozens of packs of wild and feral dogs roamed the streets and highways now that there were no humans taking care of them and keeping them domesticated. There had been too many stories of survivors running into such packs and ending up dead at their teeth. This dog didn’t make any negative moves toward him, though. Instead, it stood by the passenger door, its thin legs shaking, and let out the softest of whimpers, almost a whistle through its nose. Its black coat was well groomed and shiny, and it still wore a collar around its neck that looked brand new. The dog appeared well fed, and it was obvious to Ethan that someone had been taking care of it.

“It’s okay, Kim,” Ethan called. “You can come on over. It’s just a dog.”

“‘It’s just a dog’ isn’t something that makes me feel any better,” Kimberly said from the road. “Have you seen any dogs lately? They don’t signify anything good.”

“Yeah, well, this one is different,” Ethan said. He knelt, trying to present a less imposing profile, and held a hand out, palm up, toward the dog. “Come here, sweetheart,” he said, keeping his voice low and soothing. He fumbled for the side pocket on his backpack and found the packet of cooked rabbit meat he’d packed inside it and tore the packet open. The dog took a cautious step back, and Ethan pulled a chunk of meat out of the packet. He placed it in the center of his palm and extended his hand in offering to the dog, letting it catch a whiff of the meat before setting it on the grass between them. Then he backed away and let the dog creep forward and eat the morsel.

It took several tries and the entire packet of rabbit meat before the dog was willing to approach him, and by the time the packet was empty, the dog was standing beside him, letting him scratch it behind the ears as its tail beat against the side of the truck. “Kim, it’s okay to come down,” Ethan said again. “The dog’s not going to hurt us. Just do it slowly so you don’t startle him.”

There was a rustle of grass behind him, and Kimberly came into view, looking anxious. She hesitated near the back of the truck, eyeing the dog with no small degree of wariness, and eased closer to him. “You sure that thing isn’t going to attack us?” she asked.

“I’m sure,” Ethan said. “Look at him. He’s just happy to see people. I think someone’s been taking care of him until recently. He has a collar on and everything.”

Kimberly extended a hand toward the dog, who sniffed at her palm and let her pet him. “Huh,” she murmured. “What do ya know?” The dog made a movement toward her, and Ethan tensed, but the animal had only wanted to lick her face. Kimberly laughed, a bright smile on her, and Ethan returned it.

They ate their dinner, however meager it was, sitting on the opened tailgate of the wrecked truck with the black dog at their feet, begging for scraps with his large brown eyes. After they were done eating, Kimberly pulled her map out of her backpack and unfolded it, smoothing it out on the tailgate between them.

“We need to figure out which way we’re going next,” she said, taking out a flashlight and turning it on to shed extra light on the map. “We’ve got to figure out how to get there faster. At this rate, the samples are going to go bad before we find anyone to give them to.”

“Where exactly are we?” Ethan asked, taking a swig of water from his bottle. He spotted a spare hubcap in the bed of the truck, snagged it, and poured some water into it. He set the makeshift water dish onto the ground for the lab. The dog wagged his tail happily and started to lap at the water.

“We’re right about here,” Kimberly said, tapping a spot on the map. “We’ve been navigating the back roads this whole time, on Sadie’s suggestion. We’re never going to make it to Chapel Hill or anywhere else before we run out of time.”

“What are you proposing?” Ethan asked. “I’m willing to defer to your expertise on this. You know more about those samples than I do.”

Kimberly hummed and leaned against the side of the truck’s bed, staring at the map, her eyes darting over the paper while she calculated their options. Finally, she let out a long, slow sigh and folded her arms over her chest. “I think right now, our best bet is to get back to the main highway,” she said. “I know Sadie recommended we avoid it because it’s too open and we’re more likely to run into other survivors, but I think we’re in a situation where we’re going to have to risk it. These samples won’t last forever.”

“So we go to the main highways, hopefully where they’ve been cleared, and grab a car from somewhere,” Ethan said. “I can get behind that.” He gathered their trash and stuffed it into a pocket in his bag, then slid off the tailgate. “Shall we get moving, then?”

“What about the dog?” Kimberly asked, nodding toward the Labrador, who had abandoned the water left in the hubcap and come to attention when Ethan stood.

Ethan shrugged. “Let him follow if he wants,” he said. “If anything, he might serve as a good warning system if there are any infected people in the area.”

Chapter 7

It hadn’t taken Brandt long to lose track of the hours. After the female doctor who’d claimed to be Cade’s sister had left, he’d been blindfolded and hauled out of his cell, taken through a disorienting maze of hallways to a large, tiled room, and hosed down with a high-pressure water hose, clothes and all. None of the soldiers doing this had spoken to him at any time, not even to ask him questions.

Afterwards, Brandt had been blindfolded again and led in a meandering path back to his cell, his clothes soaked and dripping onto the tiles. His blindfold had been removed, and he’d been shoved back into his cell. While he’d been out, someone had stripped his cot of every scrap of fabric, which was why he was sitting on the edge of the mattress, shivering, his wet clothes clinging to his body. He felt feverish and achy, and the wounds on his arms and legs hurt with every move he made. No one had bothered to change the bandages after he’d been hosed down, and the edge of the tape was losing its stickiness and peeling up from his skin. He absently tried to smooth it back down, but when it wouldn’t stick, he gave up. He pushed up from the bed, starting to pace across the cell in the hopes that the movement would help keep him warm.

Brandt’s mind was running across everything he knew about interrogation techniques as he walked to the far end of the cell and turned to go back the other way. They’d soaked him with cold water and left his wet clothes on, and if he wasn’t mistaken, they’d turned the air conditioning to freezing levels. It was clearly a tactic they were using to try to freeze information out of him. If only he knew what that information was.

That doctor woman…that was the most intriguing mystery of all. She had said she was Cade’s sister. She looked so much like her that it was hard to deny the possibility. Out of all of them, she seemed to be the only one genuinely concerned for Brandt’s health. That didn’t mean anything, because it was clear she wanted something from him: Cade’s location, which was something he couldn’t give her, any more than he could give anyone else anything they were looking for.

Brandt had just brushed his fingers against the steel door barring him from leaving the room when the sound of boots on the tiled floor outside met his ears. The small window on the door slid open a second later, and a voice barked through the gap.

“Move to the back wall and turn to face it,” it ordered. “Put your hands flat against the wall and don’t move.”

For a second, Brandt contemplated disobeying the orders. What would they do to him if he did? They couldn’t kill him; they obviously needed something from him, and they weren’t going to kill him until they got it.

But there are lots of other things they could do to you that wouldn’t kill you, a niggling voice in the back of his head said.

He scowled, turned away from the door, and walked to the back wall, pressing his palms flat against the cold concrete.

The sound of metal scraping against metal rang out in the cell, and the door squeaked open. Brandt tensed like he were subconsciously expecting a blow. By the sound of the footsteps, three people had entered the room, outmatching him, so he couldn’t consider running. Two of them stopped several feet away, and the third one moved close, wrapping a hand around Brandt’s right wrist and twisting his arm behind his back. A cold metal bracelet clasped around his wrist, and his left arm was wrenched around and met with the same fate. Once he was handcuffed, hands grasped Brandt’s shoulders and turned him around fast enough to make his head spin.

Private Hutcherson and Private Bayer were standing at attention at Brandt’s left and right, several feet back from the man who’d handcuffed him. It was another camouflage-dressed man that Brandt hadn’t seen before. His uniform was devoid of a nametag, and he was wearing insignia that identified him as a lieutenant. He looked Brandt over, nodded once, and beckoned to the privates. “Bring him,” he ordered, and he strode out of the room.

Brandt didn’t have any choice but to follow. He wasn’t blindfolded for the trip this time, so he was able to see his surroundings. The hallway he was led down was covered in white—white tiles, white painted walls, and white ceiling tiles. At intermittent points along the hall’s ceiling were small black bubbles that were likely security cameras, probably tracking his every move. He had the impression that he was in some sort of repurposed medical facility, though he couldn’t put his finger on what made him think so.

Despite being able to see where he was going, Brandt still got dizzyingly lost in the twisting white hallways, a state that remained until he was led into the carpeted administrative area. The privates stopped him at the door near the end of the hallway, where there was a piece of unlined paper taped to the outside of the door that read in handwritten, blocky letters, “Maj. James Bradford.” Brandt read the name on the door and scowled. He kept his commentary to himself as Private Hutcherson knocked on the door and opened it.

Then Brandt found himself looking at the man who’d likely single-handedly caused the deaths of everyone he knew, and it took everything in him to not tackle the man and try to strangle him to death with his bare hands.

Major Bradford looked up from the papers scattered over his desk and smiled, a smile that made Brandt clench his fists and grind his blunt nails into his palms.

“Lieutenant Evans,” Bradford said with false warmness, as if he were greeting a friend he hadn’t seen in a long time. “So good of you to meet with me.”

“You act like I was given a choice,” Brandt said through clenched teeth.

“Oh, let’s not act like that,” Bradford said. He beckoned Brandt forward, and one of the privates shoved him a bit, encouraging him to obey the major’s orders. Brandt sat in the chair Bradford had indicated, staying on the edge of it.

Bradford sat back in his desk chair, watching Brandt for a long, silent moment. Brandt stared at him in turn, and when he couldn’t take the silence any longer, he asked, “What happened to my people?”

“Your people?”

“Yeah, my people,” Brandt said. “The other survivors in Woodside with me. Where are they?”

Bradford stared at him, like he was trying to decide what to tell him. Brandt ground his teeth together while he waited for his answer. He wanted—no, he needed to know—if what the female doctor had told him when she’d mentioned the MOAB was true. He was terrified of Bradford’s answer, but he had to know, for the sake of his own sanity if nothing else. Even if he never saw any of them again, knowing that they were out there, alive and unscathed, was enough for him.

Bradford broke the silence with a heavy sigh. “Michael,” he started, drawing the name out.

“Don’t call me Michael,” Brandt snapped.

“Oh, that’s right. You’re going by Brandt now,” Bradford said. He studied Brandt for a moment more and said, “You realize that we have to contain the spread of the contagion as much as possible.” The way he stated it indicated that it wasn’t a question and didn’t require a response from Brandt. When Brandt didn’t give one, he continued. “Approximately thirty minutes after you were taken into custody in the area you call ‘Woodside,’ all military personnel was cleared out, and a Massive Ordinance Air Blast, or MOAB, was dropped at the location. We witnessed no survivors.”

Brandt’s stomach felt like it had dropped down to his knees, and he slumped back in his chair. He clenched his fists hard enough to make his knuckles hurt, and he squeezed his eyes shut, breathing in deeply through his nose as he tried to control himself. Once he’d reined in his emotions, at least enough to not have a full breakdown in front of this bastard, he opened his eyes and glared at him. Bradford didn’t seem affected in the slightest.

“There were innocent men, women, and children in that community,” Brandt said. It was a struggle to keep his voice steady. “Innocent, uninfected people. And you slaughtered them all. Why?”

“We have to work on the assumption that everyone inside the quarantine zone is infected,” Bradford said. “We can’t risk the contagion getting out into the general population.”

“Quarantine zone?” Brandt repeated. “General population? What the fuck are you talking about?”

Bradford directed his next statements to the two men still standing behind Brandt’s chair. “Private Bayer, Private Hutcherson, please escort Lieutenant Evans back to his cell. I’m going to arrange for a show-and-tell session in the morning.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Brandt demanded. “Tell me what’s going on!”

Bradford made a motion to the two soldiers behind Brandt, and they grasped him under his arms, hauling him bodily to his feet and shoving him toward the door. He didn’t resist—Lord only knew what they’d do to him if he did—but he did manage to turn his head enough to catch a glimpse of Bradford, who still sat at his desk. He’d returned to his paperwork, completely ignoring Brandt as he was herded out of the room.

Once he was back in his cell, the door shut and locked behind him, Brandt fell to his knees beside his bare cot, ignoring the pain that jolted through them when they met the hard concrete floor. He leaned forward to rest his forehead against the edge of the thin mattress and squeezed his eyes shut as images of his friends, and of Cade, assaulted his mind.

That night, he cried like he hadn’t cried in years.

Chapter 8

It took nearly an hour of searching to find the best, safest path, but by the time the sun had set, Sadie had installed herself onto the roof of the safe house, a duffel bag full of weaponry that Cade had given her on the shingles beside her. She’d stuck two bottles of water from their meager stores in the pile of leaves in the gutter, along with a flashlight, and she felt like she was adequately prepared to wait the night out on the roof, keeping watch for anything that might pop out of the woodwork and endanger her fellow survivors inside the house.

Inside, Isaac was going from room to room, searching through every drawer, closet, nook, and cranny to find anything useful for their coming trip to Atlanta and his, Derek’s, and Olivia’s survival at the house. There wasn’t much, someone had been through the house before, but they’d overlooked the less obvious items, which were piling up on the dining table. Isaac had found a deck of playing cards in a bedroom drawer, and he’d given them to her. She pulled them out of her pocket and slid them from their paper box. She started shuffling them idly, staring down at the darkened street below, her eyes sliding from one end of the street to the other, searching between houses and cars and other obstructions for anything more out of place than she and her friends were.

The ambulance they’d arrived in was too conspicuous sitting at the curb in front of the house, and Sadie figured if they left it there too long, someone was bound to notice it, even more so if it was someone who was familiar with the street. An ambulance would be a sweet score for anybody, especially considering the possibility that they’d find supplies in it. She didn’t think it was likely that anyone would come across them; however, the thought of it was enough to make her feel paranoid. Her never-ending paranoia was what had kept her and Jude alive so far, and she’d be damned if she ignored it now. She made a mental note to say something to Isaac about moving the vehicle around to where it wouldn’t be visible from the street.

Once she’d made her assessment of the surrounding area, Sadie turned back to her deck of cards, idly dealing out and playing a few hands of poker against herself while she watched for movement below. She’d dealt four hands and was stacking the cards back together to shuffle them when she caught movement near the back of the ambulance. She stuffed the loose cards into her back pocket and unzipped the bag she’d brought onto the roof with her. There was a compound bow and a sizeable collection of arrows in the bag, along with a rifle, three pistols, six knives, two machetes, and ammunition for all the firearms. Sadie slid the rifle out of the bag and made sure it was loaded, then scooted to the edge of the roof to aim the rifle down. When she saw who it was, she blew out a breath and lowered the rifle.

“Damn it, Jude,” she muttered. She set the rifle onto the shingles beside her and returned her gaze to the ground. “What the hell are you doing?” Another figure climbed out of the back of the ambulance. It took her a second to recognize Keith, and she grimaced. “Oh. I see.” She made a mental note to talk to Jude about leaving the house without mentioning it to her, and then she discarded the thought as quickly as it had occurred to her. Most of them were going to be leaving the house soon, and it was pointless to fuss about him stepping foot outside if she’d be doing the same shortly.

Sadie went back to the duffel bag and started pawing through it again, turning her attention to the weaponry inside. She was especially intrigued by the compound bow, and she slid it out of the bag. Something small and black tumbled out with it, and she scooped it up to examine it. It was a black leather shooting glove with two fingers and a thumb, and further in the bag, she found a matching bracer, which brought a smile to her face. She hadn’t put her hands on anything archery-related in almost a year, and holding the bow felt good. It was larger than what she’d used in the past, but she was sure that, after a year of not using the smaller bow, she could compensate easily enough.

Sadie sat down on the shingles and slipped the bracer around her forearm, adjusting the tightness of the laces until it was as tight as she preferred, then slipped the glove on and wiggled her fingers, testing the snugness of the leather. She grinned and murmured, “Perfect.” She felt better about going to Atlanta already.

Sadie stood and lifted the bow, taking the proper posture and stance, and grasped the bowstring. She pulled it back, slowly and smoothly, testing the weight of the string. It wasn’t too hard to pull, though it was heavier than the last bow she’d used. However, she was stronger now, and she knew she could handle this new bow fine.

“What are you, an Amazon?” someone called out. Sadie glanced toward the ground to see Keith and Jude looking up at her, Jude with a big grin on his face. He held his notepad where Keith could see it, and Keith said, “Jude wants to know if you’re trying to add to your badass image or if it just comes naturally.”

“Oh, shut up,” Sadie replied. “And keep your damn voice down. You’re going to attract unwanted attention.”

“What are you doing up there anyway?” Keith asked.

“Keeping watch,” Sadie said. “Someone has got to do it, and no one else seems interested.”

“What am I, chopped liver?” Keith asked, and Sadie grinned at the mock indignity in his voice.

“Get up here and help me then,” Sadie replied. Jude raised an eyebrow and pointed at himself, mouthing, “Me too?” and Sadie shook her head. “No, you go get some sleep. I want to talk to him alone.” Jude looked confused, but he disappeared underneath the edge of the roof. Sadie heard him climbing the porch steps and the door opening and closing.

“So how do I get up there?” Keith asked.

“Second floor, third door on the right. Go out the window that faces the front of the house, and it’ll put you out onto the roof.”

Keith saluted her and disappeared from view. Sadie settled back into a sitting position, setting the bow on the shingles beside her so she could start looking through the bag again. She unsheathed a machete to check the sharpness of the blade and was still examining it when she heard the scrape and muffled curse from Keith as he climbed out the window. She set the machete back in the bag and fished out a knife, pulling it free from its sheath and studying the blade.

Keith sat down on the roof beside her. “What do you need to talk to me about?”

Sadie was silent, trying to get her thoughts in order. She hoped she wasn’t about to overstep her bounds. Jude was a grown man, after all, and he’d bristle if he knew she was questioning his choices, just like she would if someone were doing the same to her. Still, she had a compulsion to protect her brother from anything that could hurt him, and that included himself.

When she did speak, she kept her voice low and steady. “What are your intentions?”

“My intentions?” Keith repeated. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what are your intentions with my brother?” Sadie persisted. “What’s going on with you two?”

Keith shrugged. “Nothing’s going on,” he said. “At least, nothing serious. We’re just becoming friends. He’s teaching me sign language so he doesn’t have to use paper so much when we talk. Just, you know, friend stuff.”

“Friend stuff,” Sadie repeated. The concept was foreign to her. She’d never had friends growing up. She couldn’t imagine the sorts of things that would qualify as “friend stuff.”

“Yeah, friend stuff,” Keith confirmed. “I’d like to be friends with him. And really, I wouldn’t mind being friends with you too.”

Something on the street below moved, a shadow darting through a slightly lighter shadow cast by trees overhanging the road two houses down. Sadie sat up straighter, trying to get a better look at what it was through the darkening evening, mentally debating the merits of the different weapons available to her. “I don’t need any friends,” she muttered.

“Everybody needs friends.”

“Not me,” Sadie replied. She eased her hand off her leg to rest it on the compound bow beside her. She didn’t want to move quickly, mostly out of a desire to keep the man on the roof with her from making any noise in alarm.

“Oh, come on, what makes you so different?” he asked.

“I’ve never had friends, and I’ve never needed friends,” Sadie said. “Never got along with any of the people I grew up with, and I didn’t want to, either. I had nothing in common with any of them. They were a bunch of pretentious, stuck up, rich bitches that liked to make fun of people who weren’t pretentious, stuck up, or rich like themselves. I didn’t want anything to do with people like that. My mama and daddy raised me better.”

She inched her free hand into the duffel bag and slid out one of the arrows.

“What about everybody else in your class?” Keith asked.

“We went to a private school. Most of them were the rich bitch types. The ones that weren’t were the ones that liked to make fun of and bully Jude.”

“Oh,” Keith said. “Those types.”

“Exactly.” She picked out the dark shape below with her eyes and slid to her feet, simultaneously nocking the arrow on the bow.

“What are you doing?”

Sadie adjusted her grip on the bow. “Don’t make any sudden movements. There’s something down there.”

Thankfully, Keith obeyed, scooting onto his knees to look for himself. After several heartbeats of silence, during which both of them studied the slinking figure in the shadows, he spoke.

“Do you think it’s a scout?” he asked. Sadie looked at him questioningly. “Brandt told me once that some of the infected, the ones that aren’t dead, can be really smart and organized at times. He said that sometimes a few will go out to look for uninfected people like us, and when they find us, they go back and get the others. If that’s a scout, we need to kill it.”

“That’s exactly what I intend to do,” Sadie said. She raised the bow, drawing the string back, her gloved fingers gripping the arrow as she sighted her target. The shape was in the shadow of another tree, visible enough that she was sure she could take it out without any difficulty. She took aim, her muscles and her mind falling into the familiar form and motions that she hadn’t used in a while. She adjusted her aim for wind and distance. Once she was certain the arrow would go where she wanted it to, she released it.

The arrow sprang from the bowstring and arced down toward the ground. Its aim was true; it struck the figure in the face, and it tumbled to the ground. Sadie set the compound bow onto the roof and grabbed a pair of binoculars from the duffel bag, looking through them to see how accurate her aim had been.

What she saw made her grin widely. “How ‘bout dem apples?” she said, passing the binoculars to Keith. He peered through them and let out a low whistle.

“Jesus, where did you learn to shoot like that?” he asked. “You put that arrow right through his eye.”

Sadie shrugged. “Seven years of competitive archery,” she said. “It’s something my dad and I used to do together. He was my coach and trained me himself.”

“Jude didn’t do it?”

“No, Jude was more into indoor activities,” she said. “He was closer to Mom than I was because of it, but I was closer to Dad.” She squinted at the dead body on the road again, then scooped up the bow and shrugged her duffel bag onto her shoulder. “We should get inside before something else sees us,” she said. “And we need to warn the others. Where there’s one, there are probably more, and I think we should move out of the way before they get here.”

“I think that’s a fantastic idea,” Keith agreed. He pushed to his feet and scrambled up the roof to the window. Sadie followed him, clutching her bow tightly as she ducked and slid through the window.

Jude stood across from the window with his arms folded over his chest, looking thoroughly annoyed with her. Keith, thankfully, detected Jude’s mood, and he started for the door.

“I think I’ll head on down to my room and leave you two alone,” he said.

Sadie waited until Keith had left the room, and she counted to ten before she snapped, “What?”

“Why did you need to talk to him alone?” Jude asked, his hands jabbing the signs out with anger.

“I had to ask him some quest—”

“It was about me, wasn’t it?” Jude signed. “You were asking him questions about me.”

“I just wanted to know what his intentions are,” Sadie said. “I wanted to make sure he wasn’t going to hurt you.”

“I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” Jude replied, scowling. “I don’t need you to take care of me. You’re not my mother. I already had one of those, and she’s dead.”

Jude’s words were like a punch to the gut, and Sadie stepped backward. “That was so uncalled for,” she said, fighting the quaver in her voice.

“Yeah, well, it’s the truth,” Jude said. He didn’t look at her as he signed the words, looking ashamed of what he’d said. “I don’t need you to take care of me. Dad taught me things too, you know.”

“I promised, Jude. I promised.”

“Did it ever occur to you that I made the same promise?” Jude signed, and without waiting for her response, he turned away and strode out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

Sadie backed up another step and sat down on the windowsill. She dumped the bow and her duffel bag onto the floor at her feet and buried her face in her hands, drawing in a slow, ragged breath, trying her best to not cry.

Chapter 9

Remy sat on the end of the bed in the room she and Dominic had commandeered, her bolo knife unsheathed and laid across her knees, her fingertips lightly dancing over the flat of the blade. The room had once been a guest room, if Remy’s interpretation of the lack of personal objects was correct. That was how she preferred it; too much personality in a room made her think about all the dead people, both the ones she did and didn’t know, that shouldn’t have died in the ways they had. It was too damned depressing.

The day had been long and felt longer, filled with planning and coordinating their next moves, right on top of all the action and adventure of their escape from Woodside. The first full night they were spending in this house promised to feel even longer than the day, if the fact that she was wide awake was any indication. She hadn’t slept since she and Dominic had dosed her with the fluid in the vial she’d stolen from Derek, and she hadn’t felt like sleeping either. The same problem had arisen with food; none of it appealed to her, and just the thought or sight of food made her feel queasy.

She was going to have to talk to Derek about this eventually, though the thought of doing so made her queasier than the idea of eating food. She didn’t want to imagine how angry Derek would be when she confessed to him that she’d stolen one of his cure samples and dosed herself with it. He was probably going to kill her, and she couldn’t blame him in the slightest.

There was a rapid knock on the door, startling Remy out of her reverie, and she twisted around to look at it as it opened. Dominic slipped in and shut the door, then turned to her with a worried expression on his face. “What’s up?” she asked, ready to get to her feet. “Is it the infected?”

“In a manner of speaking,” he said. He knelt beside the bed, grasping one of her hands in his. “Do not be mad at me,” he started.

Remy resisted the urge to yank her hand out of his. “Any talk that starts off with, ‘Do not be mad at me,’ is guaranteed to make me mad at you,” she said. “What’s going on?”

“I told Derek,” Dominic said. Remy’s heart lurched in her chest and her pulse sped up. “He’s on his way here to talk to you.”

“Oh God,” Remy murmured. “He’s going to kill me, isn’t he? He’s totally on the warpath, right?”

“Not yet,” he said. “Just be honest with him, and he won’t be.”

Remy swallowed hard and nodded. Dominic squeezed her hand and pressed his lips against the inside of her wrist. When he lifted his head again, there was another knock on the door, and he murmured, “Be calm, and be confident. You did the right thing.”

“It doesn’t feel like it,” Remy said. The door swung open, slowly and ominously, and Derek was revealed in the doorframe, watching them silently.

“I’ll come back when you’re done,” Dominic promised, and he dropped one more kiss onto her wrist and headed to the door. He slipped past Derek, who gave him a hard look, and the doctor stepped in and shut the door behind him. Derek stood there, staring at her, his arms folded over his chest. For once, he’d tossed the customary lab coats he’d worn like a shield for as long as she’d known him, though he had probably left them all behind in the inferno of Woodside. He was wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and what looked like combat boots, an outfit so out of the norm for him that, if it had been any other situation, Remy would have done a double take or maybe cracked a joke about it. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse, low, and firm.

“Why?”

Remy shifted uncomfortably on the bed and picked up her bolo knife’s sheath, sliding the blade into it. “Why what?” she asked, hoping to buy herself some time to figure out how to explain.

“Why didn’t you come to me?”

Remy looked at him, eyes wide. “I…I d-don’t know,” she stammered. “I thought you wouldn’t help me. I asked for the cure over and over and over. I begged for it, and you wouldn’t give it to me.” Her voice cracked, and she looked away from him, staring out the window at the night again. “I thought I was going to die.”

Derek walked across the room, his boots thumping against the hardwood floor, and the bed beside her sank down when he sat on the edge of it. Remy studiously kept her eyes on the window, not daring to look at him.

“I was wrong,” he said. “I screwed up when I delayed giving you the treatment without any explanation. I should have explained. I should have told you about how it worried me. I should have told you about the side effects Ethan was experiencing so you would understand why I was delaying giving it to you.”

Remy still didn’t look at him. “What sort of side effects?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Derek said. “Uncontrollable hunger, anger issues, that sort of thing. I didn’t get the opportunity to explore it more in depth before Ethan…had to leave.”

“That’s a polite euphemism for ‘ran away,’” Remy muttered.

“These side effects are worrisome enough that I wasn’t willing to throw everything behind it all the way,” Derek went on, ignoring her. “It’s not a cure anyway.”

That was enough to bring her around with a gasp. “What?”

“It’s a vaccine,” Derek said. “Sort of. If you’re already infected when you’re given it, then you stay infected. It just replaces one type of infection with a stronger version of it.”

“So I’m still infected?”

“Yeah, and you always will be,” Derek answered. “It’s just a question of whether you’d be contagious or not, and if Ethan’s status is any indicator, the answer is no.”

“I can hear the ‘but’ in your voice,” Remy said.

“But I’m concerned that things may be different with you,” Derek said.

“Different how?” Remy asked. She was thinking back on what had happened at Woodside, when she’d walked right into a horde of infected and none of them had laid a hand on her. She put a hand up to stop Derek before he could say anything. “Wait, never mind. I’m not sure I want to know,” she said. “It won’t make a difference for me to know, especially since I’m leaving with Cade and you’re staying here with the baby.”

Derek gave her an uncertain look. “You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Remy said with a confidence she didn’t feel. “Like I said, it won’t make much difference when I’m out on the road.” She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear and sighed. “I wish we could all go. I don’t like the idea of any of us being left behind. We’ve lost too many people already…”

Derek caught her hand in his and squeezed it. “I know, Remy,” he said. “We’ve all had our share of losses, some many more than others. And even after those losses, it never gets easier.”

There was a heavy vein of sadness in the doctor’s voice, one that drew Remy toward him like a moth to a candle’s flame. It was the sense of a kindred spirit, of a fellow survivor with a darkness that, like hers, was buried so deeply in his soul that he didn’t have a hope of digging it out. He was broken inside, and she wondered if he was aware of it. She didn’t say her thoughts out loud, though. It would probably only lead to trouble. Instead, she said, “No, it never does.”

Silence fell between them. Derek seemed lost in his thoughts and was staring at the wall across the room. When he spoke, his voice was hushed. “I’m a coward.”

Remy raised an eyebrow. “What? No you’re not.”

“Yes, I am. I should be going with you guys. You’ve got the more dangerous task ahead of you, and you’re the more likely of the two groups to need medical help. Yet the moment the opportunity arose, I jumped at the chance to stay here, where it’s safer.” He curled his lip like he was disgusted with himself.

“Just because you’re not actively traveling doesn’t mean you’re safer,” Remy pointed out. “There won’t be as many of you here to guard the house and the baby, only you and Isaac. That means your resources and your ability to watch for danger are going to be really limited. Personally, I’d rather go out on the road, cause I think you’ve got the worst of the jobs, protecting Olivia while trying to keep the three of you alive.”

Derek snorted. “Nice try, Remy,” he said. “I’m afraid that just sounds like a load of horseshit.”

Remy fought to not crack a grin, and she shrugged with one shoulder. “Can’t fault a girl for trying, can you?”

Derek chuckled. “No, I don’t suppose I can.”

Chapter 10

The following week passed in a flurry of activity, more than Cade had participated in in months. She’d bent to the task without complaint, despite the pain she felt in her back, hips, and legs. She pushed on past the ache, making lists of supplies and gathering what she could. On the eve of their departure, she stood in the master bedroom, packing what little she had left. The pile of personal objects on her bed was smaller than it had ever been, most of what she’d started out with long gone, and she thought wistfully on the closet and dresser full of clothes she’d had back home before everything had fallen apart. With a sigh, she started rolling and stuffing her few articles of clothing into her backpack. All of it fit inside with plenty of room to spare.

“At least I’ll have room for extra ammo,” she muttered, turning her attention to the equally sparse weaponry on the scratched dresser near the bed. The lack of guns and ammunition there was enough to make her heart sink to her knees. How was she going to track Brandt down, charge into wherever he was being held, and save him from an entire, well-equipped military unit with one pistol, a knife, and her rifle?

“We are so fucked,” she said. It was a struggle to keep despair from settling over her at the admission, and she swallowed the lump trying to rise in her throat. Her throat felt raw from grief and worry, and she looked around for a bottle of water to soothe the ache, even as the despondency settled further over her, trying to push her into a downward spiral she wouldn’t be able to pull out of.

“What’s the point in this?” she murmured. Giving up her search for a bottle of water, she stepped away from the bed to look out the window. The sun was starting to break over the horizon, spilling the faintest blue light over the few houses nearby and pouring like liquid over the pavement, running toward the house they were bunked in. The ambulance they’d used to escape the impending inferno that was to engulf Woodside was parked at the curb, the windows glazed over with nighttime condensation. Cade pressed a hand against the glass, which was cool from the air of early fall, and closed her eyes.

“The world is too big,” she whispered. “I don’t even know where to start looking for you.”

Brandt, of course, didn’t answer. Cade’s heart broke in the silence.

Olivia made a soft whimpering sound, and Cade turned away from the window to tend to her. She spotted a dark form in her bedroom doorway, and she stopped short, sucking in a startled breath. Her fingers twitched toward her hip to grab for a pistol that wasn’t there. She caught the movement and curled her hand into a fist, ready to go on the attack. “Who’s there?” she snarled.

“Just me,” Dominic said. Cade’s shoulders sagged in relief, and she loosened her stance, uncurling her fingers from her tight fist. “I thought I’d come check in on you, see if you needed anything.”

“You could have knocked,” Cade said, trying her best to keep the annoyance out of her voice. She headed for the bed to tend to Olivia.

“I didn’t want to wake you up if you were asleep,” Dominic said. “Sorry.” He stepped into the bedroom, halting inside the door.

Cade picked up Olivia, cradling her to her chest and rubbing her back soothingly, and one of the infant’s tiny fists curled against Cade’s collarbone. Dominic took another step and set a canister and a bottle of water onto the bed.

“I brought up another can of formula,” he said. “There’s quite a few more downstairs. I scavenged all that I could over the past several months.”

Cade couldn’t muster a smile of gratitude. “Thanks.” She started to pace the floor, attempting to soothe Olivia’s whimpers. It was like the infant could sense that Cade was getting ready to leave and that she was leaving her behind.

“I heard what you said,” Dominic said, his voice hesitant. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but…”

“It was nothing,” Cade replied. “Don’t worry about it.”

Dominic sighed and came into the bedroom, sinking down onto the edge of the bed and rubbing the palms of his hands over his knees while Cade paced the room with Olivia. Cade could tell he wanted to say something but was reluctant to do so, and she gritted her teeth. She smoothed her hand over Olivia’s back, adjusting the onesie the baby wore.

“Spit it out, Dominic,” she snapped. “I’m not in the mood to watch you dance around shit.”

Dominic scrubbed his hands over his face. “I know you’re not okay,” he said. Cade opened her mouth to argue, and he put up a hand to stop her. “And don’t try to tell me you are, because I’m not going to believe it. I don’t think there’s a soul on this planet who would be okay after all the shit you’ve been put through these past two years.” He paused long enough for Cade to wander to the window to check on the progress of the dawn. “I also overheard you a minute ago. I know you’re scared and hurting—”

“I’m not scared,” Cade interrupted. “I’m pissed. I want to track down those bastards who took Brandt and tear them apart. I want to burn the motherfuckers down and scatter their ashes across the fucking planet. I want to make every single one of them pay for taking Brandt away from me and killing all of our people.”

“You need to find out where he is,” Dominic said. “That’s something I might be able to help you with.”

Hope, that forbidden emotion she’d been trying to avoid, welled up in Cade despite her best efforts, and she turned away from the window to look at him. Cade knew that Dominic could see the hope in her eyes, but she didn’t care. She had to know what he was going to say.

Dominic produced a large map from his back pocket. He unfolded it, spreading it out to its full size on the wrinkled comforter. “I took the liberty of trying to figure out the potential radius of where they could have taken Brandt.”

Cade leaned over the map to get a look, though she couldn’t see much in the dim light. Dominic took a flashlight out of his pocket, mashing the button on the end to turn it on and shining it over the map. He’d drawn large, concentric circles over the map that rippled out from the approximate location of Woodside.

“There are a lot of unknown variables,” he said. “The range of one of those helicopters is about six hundred miles. We have several possibilities.” He pointed to the smallest of the circles. “This is about three hundred miles out from Woodside in every direction. They could be anywhere in this circle if they flew straight from their starting point to Woodside and back.” He pointed to another circle, this one much larger. “This is six hundred miles out from Woodside. If they flew from a starting point six hundred miles out straight to Woodside, they’d have to refuel in Woodside to make it back to their starting point. Of course, they couldn’t do that, because Woodside had no refueling capabilities. They’d have to find somewhere that did. I’m thinking there’s a possibility they had a refueling point roughly halfway along the route and that they flew from their starting point to the refueling post, gassed up there, and then flew the rest of the way to Woodside. This would have left them enough fuel to get back to the refueling point so they could go back to wherever they came from. Or they could have gone three hundred more miles past that.” He pointed to the largest circle on the page, which encompassed both of the smaller ones. “If they refueled at their original starting point and flew out from there, then there’s no way we can even begin to know where they went.”

“So we’re practically right back where we started,” Cade said. She slumped onto the end of the bed and leaned against one of the bedposts. “With no real idea of where to look, except maybe inside one of these circles.”

“It’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack when you have no idea which haystack you’re supposed to be looking in,” Dominic said. “Which is why I think your plan might be the most sound. We’ve got to figure out exactly where he is, and that means we need better intel. The Tabernacle is the only place I know of in easy traveling distance that might have more information. Going there is a start, and I think it’s a wise idea, regardless of what anyone else says.” Cade looked up at him, her heart right there on her sleeve, and he gave her a smile. “I’ve got your back on this, Cade. I promise.”

“I hope so,” Cade said quietly, breaking her gaze from his and shifting it to Olivia, “because I’m worried that no one else will.”

“Remy has it too,” Dominic said confidently. His mention of her reminded Cade of what he’d told her and Derek seven days before.

“Were you serious about what Remy did?” she asked. “About her shooting herself up with the cure?”

“Of course I was serious,” Dominic said. “You think I’m going to make something like that up?”

Cade shrugged. “I don’t know. People have made up stranger things.”

Dominic circled around behind her, leaning over her shoulder to look at Olivia. “She’s beautiful, you know,” he said. “Looks like a perfect cross between the two of you.”

“You’re changing the subject,” Cade replied.

Dominic stepped away, going to the window, and Cade twisted on the end of the bed to watch him. He stared out at the ground below, and when he spoke, he talked to the glass in front of him.

“I’m not making it up,” he said. “I was there when she did it. I helped her.”

“You what?”

“I knew you were going to get pissed about that,” Dominic said.

“You bet your ass I was going to get pissed about it,” Cade snapped. “What the hell did you do?”

“I…helped her inject herself with the cure,” he said. At least he had the decency to look ashamed of himself. If he hadn’t, Cade would have been tempted to smack him. “Look, Cade, I had to, okay? You know there’s only so much of the suppression medication that Derek was giving her left, and we were bound to run out before he got off his ass and did what he needed to do. She was desperate, and considering the circumstances we were in, with the infected banging at the walls and about two seconds away from getting in, it wasn’t like we could shut her up in a room until we cured her like we did Ethan.”

Cade grimaced. “I want to argue with you so bad,” she said, “but I can’t, because you make too much damn sense.”

Dominic shrugged. “Yeah, the sense-making doesn’t happen very often, so when it does, relish it.” He stepped away from the window then, turning to face Cade with a grave expression. He leaned back against the window frame, studying her. She studied him right back, waiting for him to voice whatever was on his mind. “Have you finished packing yet?”

Cade motioned to the backpack propped against the wall by the bed. “Yeah, about as well as it’s going to happen,” she said. “I gave Sadie the duffel bag with my spare ammo and weapons in it. I figured she should take the time to clean it all and get familiar with it.” She paused, brushing her fingers over Olivia’s sparse, curly, dark hair. “Do you think I’m doing the right thing?”

“Do you feel like you are?”

“I like to think so, but…” Cade chewed on her bottom lip, trying to figure out the best way to phrase what was on her mind. “I don’t have a problem with going myself. I can handle anything that comes at me. I’m just worried that I’m dragging everyone else into something they might not actually be willing to do. Maybe they feel obligated to help and don’t really want to.”

“What do you think Brandt would do?”

Cade shrugged and stood, moving around the bed to lay Olivia near the center of the mattress where she wouldn’t have to worry about the infant managing to wiggle herself off the bed. “I think, considering there’s a baby involved, Brandt wouldn’t come after me,” she admitted. “He would see Olivia as the priority over me, because she can’t defend herself. But I can’t do it,” Cade said. “I feel like…like I owe him. He risked everything to come after me in Atlanta. I wouldn’t be standing here if it wasn’t for him.”

“No, you’d just be standing somewhere else,” Dominic commented. “Look, Cade, I don’t presume to speak for all of us, but me? I’m going with you because I have a hell of a lot to make up for, both to you and to the people who died in Woodside. That and I have a lot of respect for you and for Brandt. The least I can do is go with you and help you find him. I think Rem is going out of a sense of loyalty and friendship, and that’s not something you should spit on.”

“What about the others who are going?” Cade asked. She was thinking about Sadie and Jude, who were so young and so willing to risk their lives to help her, and Keith, who was always so levelheaded and mellow. They didn’t seem like the types to want to help someone they didn’t know well.

“I’m sure they have their reasons, and I’m not going to presume to know what those reasons are,” he said. “However, we’re here, and we’re willing to help. I know you don’t like asking for help, but we’re at a point that you don’t have to ask. We’d offer anyway.”

Cade tried to swallow the lump in her throat. “Thanks, Dominic. I think I really needed to hear that.”

Dominic smiled reassuringly and straightened. “Keith and Jude have gotten together all the weapons that we’re taking with us, and they’ve sorted out some that they’re going to leave here for Derek and Isaac. The vast majority of the medical supplies are staying here too, since Olivia will be here. Remy and I decided to leave most of the food here for those staying behind, since we figure they’ll need it more than us.”

“We can always hunt down some more while we’re on the road,” Cade said.

“Now we’re at the point where I need to know if there’s anything you have to handle before we leave,” Dominic said.

“Nothing I can’t do myself,” Cade said. She hesitated, then stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug. “Thank you,” she whispered, hoping her voice had as much gratitude in it as she felt. She wasn’t much of a hugging person, and she hoped he realized what it had taken for her to be willing to hug him like this. He returned the hug gently, surprised, afraid to hurt her if he squeezed too hard.

“You’re welcome,” he said warmly.

Chapter 11

“For the record, I think this is a terrible idea,” Lindsey Alton said. She stood in front of Major Bradford’s desk with her arms folded over her chest. She adjusted her grip on the folder tucked underneath her arm and did her best to not glare at the officer. “I don’t know if he’s mentally stable or not, and you’re basically asking me if it’s okay to deliver him the biggest shock of his life.”

“He can handle it,” Bradford said with a dismissive wave.

“We don’t know that,” Lindsey protested. “Not for certain. The last thing we need to create in this facility is a security risk.”

“What do you think he’s going to do, Dr. Alton?” Bradford asked. “Grab a gun and start shooting up the place?”

“He could,” Lindsey acknowledged. “He could lay all the blame for his prior living situation squarely on this facility’s shoulders and—”

“And we’re following orders from a much higher ranking person than I am,” Bradford interrupted.

“Somehow, I don’t think Evans would consider that to be an acceptable excuse.”

“We need to show this to him so maybe he’ll cooperate with us. Is it your opinion that we should hold off on showing him this because he might get pissed off?” Bradford asked. She nodded. “Is that a personal opinion or a medical one?”

“Both,” Lindsey answered.

Bradford looked away from her, turning his attention to the paperwork in front of him. Near the corner of the desk, Lindsey spotted an acquisitions form for glassware for the labs that she’d filled out and submitted for approval nearly two weeks before. It was, of course, unsigned. The man clearly didn’t give a shit about the work she and her lab partner did every day.

“I’ll keep your professional and personal opinions in mind when I make my final decision,” he said. His tone, however, suggested that he’d already made that decision, and it was the opposite of what Lindsey was encouraging.

She squeezed her hands into fists, digging her fingernails into her palms and clenching her teeth, anger flaring up in her.

“Major Bradford, this is not a good idea,” she tried again. “We still haven’t managed to get a complete history of what he’s been through. He has injuries that make it clear he’s been attacked by the infected at some point in the very recent past, and that’s only on a physical level. We don’t know what sort of scars he has mentally. We don’t know what sort of triggers this is going to activate—”

“I said I would keep your opinions in mind,” Bradford retorted, turning his eyes from his paperwork and back onto her. “You’re dismissed, Dr. Alton. I’m sure you have plenty of work to do.”

It took everything in Lindsey not to growl out her frustration. She turned away from the major’s desk and stormed out the door, not slamming it shut like she wanted to but shutting it hard enough that she hoped her displeasure came across loud and clear. She strode down the carpeted hallway until it transitioned to white tiles, heading toward the labs that she spent most of her time working in. A figure clad in the bulky, Level 4-style biochemical suit that had become a regular part of their working lives was visible through the glass wall at one of the workstations lining the hazmat room, hunched over a microscope, looking through the eyepieces with a clinical eye. She bypassed her office space and stepped into the outer room to don her own biochem protection suit. The figure looked up from the microscope, saw her, and held up a hand to motion for her to wait. She set the suit down and moved to her desk, sitting down to page through the thin folder on Michael Evans while she waited for her coworker to go through decontamination.

Her emotions on her sleeve, she jerked the cover of the paper folder open and nearly ripped it in two. Her hands shaking, she set the folder on her knees and clenched her hands again, trying to still them. She had to get a handle on herself. She let things get to her much too easily. But she couldn’t help it, not this time. The very presence of the man who’d been sitting in the cell right down the hall for the past week was a promise of a possibility of finding her sister and her daughter, both of whom had been lost to her and presumed dead when the viral outbreak had begun. That one utterance of his, when he’d looked wildly at her and said her sister’s name, clearly confused, mistaking her for her sister, had been a shot of hope to her heart. She couldn’t let that chance slide through her fingers, not if she expected to be reunited with her lost family.

The decon room’s door banged open, and Jacob Howser walked into the office, his hair still damp from the decontamination shower. He finished buttoning his dress shirt one-handed, pressing the buttons on the keypad beside the door to shut the decon room’s shower door behind him.

“What are you doing in here?” he asked. “I thought your shift was over.”

“I hung around because I wanted to talk to Major Bradford,” Lindsey said.

“Yeah? How did talking to that monumental jackass go?” Jacob asked. He went to the mini-fridge under one of the desks and opened it, taking out two Diet Cokes. He handed one to Lindsey and returned to her desk, resting his hip against the edge of it. She cracked the can open and took a swallow of the liquid before she spoke. It was cold and soothing on her parched throat.

“It went about as well as you would expect a meeting with Major Jackass would go,” Lindsey replied. “He’s already gotten what he wants into his head, and he won’t entertain any ideas or objections, no matter how logical they happen to be. He still thinks that showing Lieutenant Evans the Wall will shock him into spilling everything he knows.”

“And you think it won’t,” Jacob commented.

Lindsey shook her head. “I think it will break him, but I don’t think it will be in the way Major Bradford hopes.”

“What do you think is going to happen when we tell him?” Jacob asked, clearly curious.

“Whatever it is, it won’t be anything good,” Lindsey said. She took another swallow of Diet Coke and set the cold can down on her desk, well away from any important paperwork. “Which is why I would really like to hold off on the big reveal until Evans is evaluated psychologically.”

“And let me guess, you want to be the one to evaluate him,” Jacob said with a knowing look in his eyes.

“Well, I am the only person in the facility with any training in psychological evaluation,” Lindsey said, feeling an odd mixture of pride and defensiveness over her university minor in psychology. “Even if we only get a basic evaluation of where he is mentally, it still should be enough to determine if it’s safe to show him the Wall.” She gave him her best doe-eyed look, hoping to play on his sensibilities and his attraction to her, a poorly kept secret around the labs. He saw the look and groaned.

“You want me to pull rank and see if I can get you in to talk to him, don’t you?”

“Would you? Please?” Lindsey begged. Jacob had been in the facility longer than she had, nearly since day one, and had far more pull with the higher ups than she did. If anyone could get her permission to have a chat with Evans, maybe even a private chat, away from cameras and guards watching and listening and recording his every word, it would be Jacob Howser.

Jacob sighed and scrubbed a hand through his damp brown hair. “You owe me dinner if I succeed,” he said. It was a standard request from him whenever he did her a favor, and she had no problem granting it. It was a routine they’d been through many times before. She gave him a dazzling smile and sat up straighter, the promise of possibly meeting with Evans enough to bring her to a higher level of attention.

“If you actually get me permission, I’ll even let you pick the restaurant,” Lindsey said. “Seriously, you have no idea how much this means to me.”

The smile on Jacob’s face that had appeared when she’d agreed to go to dinner with him faded, and he leaned closer to her, looking her over with an expression as critical as the one he’d used when examining the slide under his microscope. “There something you want to tell me about?” he asked.

Lindsey glanced toward the ceiling without moving her head, a quick flicker of the eyes, indicating the camera that was mounted in the corner of the room, watching their every move. “You should come over to my apartment after work,” she said, pitching her voice loud enough to carry to the cameras. Though she wasn’t sure if they recorded sound, she acted as if they did. “We can order in some takeout, watch some bad movies, and eat too much popcorn.”

Jacob’s smile returned, lighting up his face. “Sounds like a plan,” he said, giving her a playful wink, but his eyes were serious. “This doesn’t count as the dinner you promised me, so don’t try to weasel out of it.”

“I wouldn’t even dream of it,” Lindsey said. She glanced at her watch—it was five a.m.—and scooped up her Diet Coke can, took a deep swig of it, and dropped the rest into the trashcan. “I need to get moving.” She stood and opened a desk drawer to retrieve her purse. “Traffic is already going to be hell enough without me waiting for the morning rush to start. You got my research report from last night, right?”

“Yeah, of course,” Jacob said. “It’s on my desk. I’ll go through it and check in on our test subjects, let you know how they’re currently holding together.”

“Literally,” Lindsey muttered.

“Be careful going home,” Jacob said, “and text me when you get there so I know you made it.”

That wasn’t an unusual request. Considering the world they now lived in, where a virus could skip over into the general population and spread like wildfire in the time it took to complete a short drive home, tearing through the living and turning them into aggressive, homicidal cannibals, it was typical for friends and family to ask those traveling to let them know the moment they arrived at their destinations. Lindsey patted the pocket of her black slacks, where her cell phone was tucked.

“Will do. I’ve got it all charged up, and my spare prepaid cell is still in my glove box. I’ll see you this evening, okay?” She didn’t wait for Jacob’s response. She shouldered her purse and stepped out into the hallway, letting the door fall shut behind her. Her heels clacked on the tiled floors, echoing rhythmically down the hall so anyone ahead would know she was coming. Unconsciously, she took the turn that would lead her past Michael Evans’s cell, hoping to catch a glimpse of the man who had seemingly twisted the entire facility into knots just by his presence.

Lindsey only partially got what she’d hoped for. Ahead of her, she saw Major Bradford standing outside of Evans’s cell as the two privates who had been tasked with guarding the captive lieutenant led the shackled man out of his cell. Another lieutenant that Lindsey didn’t know stood alongside them, ready to do whatever was called of him. Immediately realizing what was happening, she quickened her pace, striding forward to catch up with the men before they took Evans topside.

“What are you doing?” she demanded when she caught up with the soldiers.

Bradford barely glanced at her, signaling to the soldiers to begin walking. “I’m taking him up to see the Wall,” he said. “Not that I’m obliged to explain myself to you.”

“I asked you to wait until I’d evaluated him psychologically before you did that!” Lindsey protested. She sped up to keep pace with the group of men, mentally cursing herself for wearing heels that day and leaving her tennis shoes in her car.

“I said I would take your opinions under advisement, not that I agreed with them,” Bradford replied. Lindsey almost growled under her breath, and her face heated up with a bright red flush like it did in that awful way every time she got angry. She could see Lieutenant Evans watching her with thinly veiled curiosity, his eyes locked on her face. If she wasn’t mistaken, she could make out a hint of recognition in his eyes, even though before this, they’d never met in their lives. Maybe it was the familiarity he obviously had with her sister that prompted that expression.

“We don’t know what this is going to do to—”

“Then come along and find out,” Bradford snapped. “But if you do, you’re going to keep your damned mouth shut.” Lindsey opened her mouth to protest—she was nothing if not a contrarian—and Bradford stopped her. “Not a word or I’ll have you shipped to a different facility so fast you won’t know what happened.”

Lindsey almost mimed drawing an invisible zipper over her lips, like she’d used to do as a child when she and Cade had shared secrets with each other under cover of darkness, when they’d clamber into each other’s beds and pull the blankets over their heads and whisper to each other for hours, but she caught herself. “May I go get my med kit in case we need it?” she asked, thinking it would be smart to have some Haldol on hand in case Evans reacted badly and needed to be chemically sedated.

Bradford looked at her, his eyes slightly narrowed. He reminded her of a hawk searching for prey, a thought that made her shudder. Finally, he gave her a shallow nod. “Go get the bag. We’ll wait here. Two minutes.”

Lindsey turned back the way she’d come, hurrying down the hall and to the labs as quickly as her high-heeled shoes would allow. She ignored Jacob’s curious look, tossed her purse onto her desk, and unlocked a drawer to pull out a small red bag. She unzipped it and scanned the contents, seeing several syringes, needles, and the sought-after vials of Haldol. She zipped the bag closed again and spun on her heel, hurrying back toward where the group of men was waiting for her, Bradford practically glaring at his watch, counting the seconds until she returned.

“Got it,” she said breathlessly, holding up the red bag triumphantly. Bradford gave her an impatient look, turned away from her, and beckoned to the gaggle of men to follow him. He moved to the front of the group and led the way down the long maze of hallways, heading for the exit door that would lead to a set of stairs that ascended to the very top of the Wall.

Lindsey glanced at the prisoner as he shuffled along with the rest of them. Evans looked wary, his dark brown eyes darting from left to right, taking in every detail around them, clearly making mental notes of everything he could. The way he walked suggested that he expected something to crawl out of a corner and attack him at any moment. Considering what he had been living with for the past two years, his behavior was no surprise. She wouldn’t be surprised if he was trying to plot a way to escape at the first available opportunity. He’d never make it out of the facility alive, at least not on his own. He seemed like the type to die trying, regardless.

The group rounded the corner of the final hallway. The exit door was ahead, its sign glowing a bright, steady red. Beside it was a red and white sign that read, “STAIRS,” with a cartoon of a white figure climbing an outline of a set of steps. Bradford walked straight to it and swiped his badge through the electronic sensor below the sign to unlock the door. He ushered everyone through, holding the door for Lindsey last. He caught her by the arm before she could begin to ascend the stairs on the other side of the door. “On your guard, Dr. Alton. You should be ready with that sedative sooner rather than later.”

Lindsey took note of the deep seriousness in his eyes, and she wondered if he was starting to second-guess his decision to use the shock-and-awe technique to get Lieutenant Evans talking. She pressed her lips together and nodded. Then she brushed past him to ascend the stairs, gripping her little red medical kit in her left hand, a flutter of nervousness stirring in her stomach.

Chapter 12

The sun had sunk below the tree line when Kimberly crawled out of the back of the SUV she and Ethan had taken shelter in for the evening, yawning and shoving her messy blonde hair out of her face. Her shoulders were sore, and her entire body felt stiff from being crammed in the back of a vehicle not meant to be slept in, let alone for two people to sleep in. She glanced at the SUV’s open back door at Ethan, who was still asleep, lying on his side with his head pillowed on his arm. She debated waking him up and decided against it. There was no need to interrupt what rest he was able to get. She stretched, grabbed her backpack, and shuffled her way through the grass along the highway’s shoulder, heading for the tree line. Her bladder was screaming at her, and she wanted to get her business taken care of before Ethan woke up and wanted to hit the road again. They still had a long way to go, and they couldn’t waste one minute.

She and Ethan had been on the road for a week now, walking for hours during the day, navigating the back roads and county roads whenever possible to avoid the cleared highways. Once things had started to get more congested and the county roads started getting blocked up, indicating they were getting closer to a city, they’d started avoiding traveling during the day, resting in the backs of vehicles and trucks and moving during the night to maximize their cover. That was how they’d found themselves in the SUV they’d sheltered in earlier in the day, choosing the hotter part of the afternoon to rest.

Now that the sun was set, they were going to start traveling again. First, though, Kimberly needed to figure out where the hell they were. She knew they were somewhere north of Charleston, but she was unsure how far north. Regardless of their exact location, just being north of Charleston meant they weren’t making anything resembling good time. She was going to have to figure out what was slowing them down and where they were at before they started walking again so they could steer around any heavily populated areas. The last thing she wanted was to walk right into a mess of infected and lose the cure and her life.

When she finished her business and returned to the SUV, Kimberly found Ethan awake, sitting on the edge of the SUV’s cargo space under the shadow of the open back door. He looked exhausted. He yawned and leaned forward to scrub at his face with both hands.

“You look tired,” Kimberly commented as she joined him at the car. “How do you feel?”

Ethan grinned. “Tired. And sore, like I’ve been walking all day.”

Kimberly rolled her eyes. “Smartass.” She reached past him to set her backpack in the cargo space and swatted at him. “Scoot over.”

He shuffled over so she could climb up to sit next to him. She snagged the map out of a side pocket of her backpack and unfolded it enough to reveal the roads they’d been traveling on the previous night and most of the day. After finding Woodside on the map, she traced her finger along the roads they’d walked, frowning as she studied the small print closely.

“What are you doing?” Ethan asked. He leaned to look over her shoulder so he could see the map for himself.

“Trying to figure out where we are so I can figure out where we need to go from here,” Kimberly replied. She unfolded the map a bit more so she could see what was north of them.

“Oh, that’s easy,” Ethan said. He pointed to a spot on the map about twenty miles south of Ridgeville, South Carolina. “We’re right here.”

Kimberly raised an eyebrow. “You sure?” she asked.

“Pretty damn positive,” Ethan replied. “I saw a sign earlier when we were walking, not long before we stopped to rest. It was fallen over sideways, but I could make out that it said Ridgeville, twenty miles.” He dragged his own backpack over and unzipped it, digging around inside and pulling free a small box of cereal, like the ones Kimberly’s mom used to buy for her and Avi when they were kids. He offered it to her with a smile. “Breakfast?”

“Sure, thanks,” Kimberly said, taking the offered box. “Though you’re aware that it’s dusk, not dawn, right?”

“I’m aware,” Ethan assured her with a soft chuckle. “If we’re going to be primarily traveling at night, then you could probably consider this our breakfast time.”

Kimberly swallowed a mouthful of cereal and took a swig of water. “I know we’ve been doing it for a week, but do you think it’s a wise idea? Traveling primarily at night?”

“We don’t have much of a choice, do we?”

“Well, technically, we do,” Kimberly said. “We could walk during the day and sleep at night.”

“We could, but then we wouldn’t have the darkness for cover,” he said. “This time of the month, we have a full moon, so there’s plenty of light to see by without having to worry about using flashlights to make ourselves more easily noticed.”

“Which brings me to my other nagging thought,” Kimberly replied. “Who exactly are we trying to avoid? Other survivors, I’m sure, because they might try to take the samples away from us if they find out that we have them. I think it’s safe to assume that the military is still partially operational, if the helicopters and the bombing were any indication. Are we trying to avoid them too?”

Ethan scowled, rubbing a hand over his short beard, thinking it over. “I don’t know,” he said. “They’re obviously up and running. We don’t know what sort of mindset they’re in and what kind of parameters they are operating under, though. They could be under orders to shoot on sight, which would run the risk of us getting killed before we’ve handed the samples off and explained what they are and what they’re for.” He sighed. “Then again, if they’re not under those kind of orders, they could help us.”

“So what do you think?” Kimberly asked. “Avoid and observe until we know for certain?”

“I think that would be the wisest course of action,” Ethan stated, “if only to preserve our own safety.” He lifted his head, suddenly alert, his green eyes narrowing as he stared down the line of cars parked along the shoulder of the road. “Kim, grab your bags and get into the trees,” he said brusquely. “There’s something out there.”

“Shit!” Kimberly swore and obeyed, scooping up both her bag of supplies and the bag full of Derek’s research. She hopped off the edge of the cargo space and slung the bags onto her shoulders, then hurried toward the tree line, pulling her machete free from its sheath. She ducked into the darker shadows under the trees and slid around behind one, gripping her machete tightly, waiting to see what was going to happen next.

She counted to thirty, pressing against the tree, feeling its rough bark dig into her skin through her clothes. She heard Ethan moving somewhere behind her, back the way she’d come. When he didn’t join her, she eased to the edge of the tree and peered around it to see where he was.

It took her a second to spot him. He was lying on his stomach in the tall grass on the shoulder of the road, his feet braced in a way that would allow him to get up quickly if necessary, his backpack beside him within easy reach. His machete was in his right hand, the blade flat in the grass where it wouldn’t be noticeable. Kimberly wondered what he was doing until her ears picked out the sound of a low rumble, like a diesel engine running somewhere down the road. The sound got louder, accompanied by the occasional, confusing sound of metal against metal.

“Ethan?” Kimberly hissed. He glanced back at her. “What are you doing?”

He waved a hand at her to signal for her to stay put, then returned his focus on the road, waiting for whatever was making the noise to pass. She gritted her teeth, tempted to crawl out there and join him, but she knew that wouldn’t go over well with Ethan. She knelt down behind the tree, set her backpacks down on the damp underbrush, and waited from her vantage point in the trees.

It didn’t take long before the source of the noise came into sight. It wasn’t one vehicle; it was several, and they appeared to be military, some type of cargo-like truck with the back end covered in a thick, heavy-duty canvas. Kimberly could see four of them, trundling in a line down the road, stopping whenever they encountered a blockage and disgorging several dozen soldiers in MOPP4 suits to move vehicles and clear the roadway of debris before continuing on. The nearer they drew to her and Ethan’s hiding place, the tenser her shoulders got, the muscles drawing tight to the point of pain, and she realized she was clenching her teeth when a sharp dart of pain shot through her jaw. She forced her jaw to loosen, likewise relaxing her grip on the machete’s hilt when her knuckles began to ache. She had a sudden, terrible fear that they were going to find Ethan and do something horrible to him, and the thought was enough to draw bile up her throat. She swallowed hard to quell the nauseous feeling in her gut and resisted the urge to call out to Ethan again.

Ethan was watching the soldiers work with rapt attention, his head turning this way and that, observing their movements. When they started drawing closer to him, he slithered backwards through the tall grass, easing toward the bottom of the embankment, dragging his machete and his pack along with him. The grass swayed with his movements, and Kimberly was terrified that the soldiers would notice, but the cool evening breeze that was blowing over the entire scene thankfully masked Ethan’s activities, and he reached the bottom of the embankment without incident.

Kimberly blew out a breath of relief. It was short lived when Ethan rose into a crouch to break for the trees to join her and one of the soldiers spotted him. The gas mask the soldier wore muffled the shout he let out, but it was audible and clear enough for his comrades to understand. Three of them raised rifles to their shoulders, and Kimberly shouted, “Ethan! Look out!”

Ethan snatched his bag off the ground and sprang to his feet in one movement, dashing for the tree line as the soldiers opened fire. The initial volley of shots missed him, peppering the trees and making Kimberly duck for cover behind the one she was already sheltered behind. Bits of bark broke loose from the trees and pinged off her, and she instinctively shielded her head with her arms. Ethan dove into the tree line and skidded behind the tree three down from Kimberly’s, pressing against it and slipping his machete back into its sheath. He drew his Glock out then, holding it in an experienced, two-handed grip, and waited for the shooting to stop. He had a look of intense concentration on his face, and Kimberly easily imagined him as a police officer again, a mental image that was quickly banished as her terror at being shot at nearly overtook her.

There was no time to think about that, however, because the soldiers had quit shooting. Ethan took the opportunity in the break from the flying bullets to rush to her and grab her arm.

“Come on, we’ve got to go, now!” he said.

He barely gave her enough time to grab her backpacks again before he hauled her deeper into the trees. Kimberly stumbled over the underbrush, quickly gaining her feet, matching his longer stride as best she could as he raced through the trees, dodging around the flora, his hand still locked around her wrist in what could only be described as a death grip.

It didn’t take long before Kimberly was struggling to keep up with him, and she snapped, “Ethan! Slow the fuck down!”

“Can’t, Kim!” Ethan said. He didn’t even sound breathless, which made her want to kick him in the shins as hard as she could. “Unless, of course, you feel like dying today.” He ducked below a low-hanging tree branch, narrowly avoiding hitting it with his head. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve been through and survived enough that I don’t feel like dying now, not after all of that.”

Before she could utter a response, something lurched out of the shadow of the trees to her right and grabbed her arm, jerking her out of Ethan’s grip. Kimberly let out a startled shriek, staggered sideways, and fell onto the pine needle-strewn ground. Her machete skittered out of her grasp and out of reach. Then her attacker was on her, scrabbling at her hair and face, its stinking breath invading her nose. She thrust a hand up into her attacker’s throat, jamming it there to keep its mouth shut while she tried to get her knee up to drive it into its gut. Her backpacks were squashed underneath her, and she had a horrible thought of the vials of samples crunching under the pressure.

“Ethan!” Kimberly yelled.

A pistol shot echoed out in the gloom. A second one followed it, and the body on top of her jerked and toppled sideways.

Ethan loomed over her. He kicked the body the rest of the way off her and grabbed her hand, hauling her to her feet. He scooped up her machete and handed it to her. “Let’s go. They probably heard that.”

“Are they even chasing us?” Kimberly asked.

Ethan grasped her hand again, hurrying her through the trees, keeping the pace a fraction slower than he had before, much to her legs’ relief.

Ethan slowed enough to point back behind them. She glanced over her shoulder to see three of the MOPP4-suited men slogging through the underbrush with their rifles in their hands, pursuing them as rapidly as their suits would allow.

“That answer your question?” he asked.

“How far do you think they’ll follow us?”

“I don’t know, and I sure as hell don’t want to find out,” Ethan said. He pulled her behind a tree and drew her to a stop. Finally, she could see him breathing a modicum heavier than he’d been at the outset of their run. “We can’t run forever,” he said. “We need to do something about them. Now.”

“What are you proposing?” Kimberly asked. When his eyes met hers, she read his intentions loud and clear in his gaze. “No, Ethan,” she said. “No. We are not killing those men.”

“We have to do something,” he said. “The fact that they’re chasing us suggests they’re doing so because they want to kill us. They shot at us! They wouldn’t have done that if they wanted us alive.”

“We can’t kill them,” Kimberly protested. “We’re not like that. We’re not that kind of people. Besides, there are more of them on the road. We kill them and they don’t come back, their buddies will come after them, and then we’re up shit creek without a paddle or a canoe, because we don’t have that many bullets.” He stared at her, and she clutched his hand. “Please, Ethan. Don’t kill them.”

“Fine,” Ethan said, jamming his pistol back into its holster. “Incapacitate only. Just leave it to me.”

Chapter 13

The majority of the group departed from the safe house at dusk after having spent most of the week foraging for supplies in the surrounding areas. By the time they’d finished, they had a new vehicle to use for the trip to Atlanta, and they’d kept the barest minimum of food and water for themselves, leaving most of it with Derek and Isaac. On Sadie’s suggestion, they’d moved the ambulance to the backyard where it wasn’t visible from the street. Now that the preparations were complete, they all congregated in the front yard to say their farewells and pile into their newest vehicle to head to Atlanta and, hopefully, find out where Brandt had been taken.

That was where Dominic found himself, standing in the front yard while Remy and Derek hugged, trying to quell the spark of jealousy that burned in his gut at the sight. Jude was already in the seven-seater SUV that Keith had found. Sadie stood by the open doorway, checking over her shotgun, impatient for the show to get on the road. Dominic couldn’t blame her. He was ready to get moving too.

Cade had already said her goodbyes to Olivia. Dominic had witnessed a fragment of the emotional parting, and he knew it was something that would haunt him for some time to come. Isaac stood by the front door holding the infant, but Cade didn’t make a move towards them. Perhaps she thought that a second goodbye would make the separation more difficult.

“Let’s move out, guys,” Cade called, her voice loud enough to carry across the yard to everyone there. “We’re burning time we don’t have, and I want to be in Atlanta by dawn.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Keith said. He headed for the SUV and climbed into the back alongside Jude. Sadie gave her a single nod and circled around the front of the vehicle to climb into the passenger seat. Remy pulled away from Derek with clear reluctance, swiping at her eyes discreetly with the back of her hand. She didn’t say anything to Dominic when she passed him, though she took his hand for the barest of seconds and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“You okay?” Dominic asked, his voice low. He walked with her, hitching his backpack higher onto his shoulder. She nodded curtly and slung herself into one of the middle row seats. He slipped in on the same row beside her.

Cade had moved to the driver’s door and opened it, though she hadn’t gotten in yet. She stood grasping the door, staring back at Derek, Isaac, and Olivia, her forehead creased. She looked longingly at the trio. “Take care of my girl!” she called to them, not waiting for an acknowledgement of her order before she slid into the driver’s seat and shut the door. She started the vehicle, glanced in the rearview mirror to make sure everyone was in the vehicle, and pulled away from the curb, accelerating down the street.

When Cade turned onto a different block and the house disappeared from view, Dominic scooted forward in his seat, leaning to address her. “Are you—”

“Don’t ask me if I’m okay,” she cut in. “If any of you ask me that question, I swear to everything that’s holy I’ll pull this car over and beat the shit out of you. And afterwards, I may or may not leave you on the side of the road. I haven’t decided that part yet.”

“Duly noted,” Dominic said. “Though that’s not what I was going to ask. I was going to ask you if you’re sure you’re okay with doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“Going back into Atlanta,” he said. “Are you sure you can handle it?”

“Doesn’t matter if I can handle it,” Cade said. She grasped the steering wheel tightly, her knuckles blanching with the force of her grip. “If I expect to get Brandt back, I’ll take on anything I have to.”

“Even the entire U.S. military?”

“Especially the entire U.S. military.”

Dominic sat back in his seat. “Okay, just so we’re clear on what our limits are.”

“I’m not familiar with Atlanta’s layout,” Remy said. “The area we’re going into is the same area the Westin is in, right?”

“It’s not far from it,” Dominic said. “That area of Atlanta was part of the city’s big tourist mecca before the outbreak. There’s a lot of tourist attractions bunched up in that small space and all the big chain hotels to go with them, which means there’s a good chance we’re going to run into some problems.”

“Paint me a picture,” Cade said as she drove the vehicle out of the neighborhood they’d been in and hit the highway. “What attractions are in the area, and what sort of potential crowd can we expect around them?”

“Most prominently, there’s the World of Coca-Cola museum and the Georgia Aquarium,” Dominic answered. “Both of them, the aquarium, especially, were really big tourist draws. The aquarium was one of the largest in the world, so thousands of people went through it every day. Since they’re next door to each other and sold joint discounted tickets to both attractions, a lot of those same people passed through the museum too. When Michaluk got out and reached that area of Atlanta, it was mass chaos in the streets, people dying and getting back up left and right.”

“No shit,” Remy said. Dominic glanced at her long enough to give her a glare before continuing.

“Needless to say, it’s probably one of the more dangerous areas of downtown Atlanta, outside of anywhere near the college campuses, hospitals, clinics, or the CDC itself.”

“Sounds like the whole damn town is a barrel full of fucking monkeys,” Sadie mumbled.

“So what’s our next step?” Keith asked.

“Well, we need to actually get there first,” Dominic said. “Once we’re closer, we need to figure out which route would be the safest to take, though once we get within a certain perimeter of, say, Baker Street, we’re going to be fucked no matter which way we go or how we go about it, unless a miracle happens between now and then.”

“This trip sounds more and more exciting,” Remy quipped. “When’re we gonna get there?”

“Nine or so hours from now, assuming we don’t stop for anything,” Cade said. “If my mapping skills haven’t failed me, that is.”

“I’m going to take a nap,” Remy announced. “Maybe those of us who aren’t driving right now should do the same. That way we’ll all be awake and alert by the time we get to Atlanta.”

“Cade, I can take over driving in a few hours if you’d like so you can rest,” Dominic offered.

“I’ll be fine.”

“Cade—”

“I said I’ll be fine.” There was fire in her eyes and in her voice, enough that Dominic sat back in his seat again and gave her the briefest of nods.

“Fair enough,” he said. “Let me know if you change your mind.” As he said that, he had a feeling that nothing he said or did would make Cade change her mind about anything. She was on a mission to find her husband. She was probably going to work herself to death before all was said and done, and there was nothing he would be able to do about it.

Chapter 14

Ethan mentally prepared for the coming scuffle, adrenaline flooding his veins. The thought of incapacitating three soldiers was ridiculous. They were professionally trained men who were geared toward a shoot-first mentality, and he was a former police officer who, while trained to do what was necessary, had promised the woman he liked that he wouldn’t kill them.

But he’d be damned if he stood by while they killed him or, worse yet, Kimberly.

“Stay here,” he said to Kimberly, his voice low. “Keep behind this tree unless one of them gets too close to you. Then I want you to run. Don’t put yourself in danger. Just go where I can find you again once this is all taken care of.”

Kimberly nodded and grasped his hand for the barest of moments. “Be careful, okay?”

“Of course.” Ethan wanted kiss her in case something awful happened and he never had the opportunity to do so again. He shoved the urge aside. There wasn’t time for sentimentalities like that. He shrugged his backpack off his shoulder and handed it to her, then picked up a large stick from the underbrush. He bounced it against his palm a few times, testing the weight and balance of it, then ducked out from behind the tree, stepping into the soldiers’ lines of sight. All three of them skidded to a halt and raised their weapons to aim at him.

“Lookin’ for me?” he called, making sure their attentions stayed on the possible danger in front of them and not on the fact that there should have been two people in their sights and not just one. Then he started to run, moving parallel to the soldiers and further away from Kimberly.

He darted from tree to tree, ducking behind them for shelter, while bullets peppered the trees and shrubbery around him. He waited for them to run out of ammunition, and when there was a lull in the shooting, Ethan decided that was his cue to move. He raced out from behind the tree he’d sheltered behind, straight at the closest of the three figures. He brought the limb up and swung it with all the force he could muster. The hefty stick bashed into the man’s visor and gas mask, slamming both into his face and sending him staggering backwards off balance. He sprawled onto the ground, knocked out cold.

Ethan turned his attention to the other two that were still standing, lifting his branch again and starting toward them. Both were reloading their weapons with an air of franticness that betrayed their calm personas as they stood their ground. The soldier closest to him managed to get his weapon reloaded first, and he raised his rifle, though not in time to prevent Ethan from slamming the thick end of the branch into the man’s stomach, and when the man doubled over with the force of the blow, he jerked the branch upward underneath the man’s gas mask and into his jaw. With one last swing, he smacked the soldier on the side of the head and watched as he tumbled to the ground.

There was one soldier left, and he’d managed to finish loading his rifle. Ethan started toward him as the man chambered a round and lifted his weapon. Realizing he wasn’t going to make it to the soldier in time, Ethan dropped the limb and drew his Glock faster than a human should have been able to, lifting it up to point it at the man’s head.

“Drop the rifle, or I’ll ventilate your skull,” he ordered. The soldier hesitated, and Ethan barked out, “I said drop it.” The soldier lowered the rifle, kneeling to set it on the ground. “Now take two steps back from it.” He obeyed Ethan’s order with deliberateness, and it was then that Kimberly came running up.

“Can you get any more cliché with the lines?” she asked, stopping beside the felled soldiers and divesting them of their weapons.

“Sorry,” Ethan said. “Sometimes I say the first thing that pops into my head. I can’t help it if it sounds ridiculous.” He jerked his chin toward the soldier. “Take your mask off,” he told him. The man shook his head, and Ethan repeated, “Take your mask off, now.”

“I can’t!” the soldier said, his voice muffled by the gas mask. “If I do, they’ll kill me!”

“That doesn’t matter, because you won’t be going back to them,” Ethan said. “Take it off.”

Reluctantly, the soldier reached up and grasped the gas mask, unfastening the straps and pulling it off his face. Ethan raised an eyebrow in surprise when he got a look at the face underneath the mask. The soldier was much younger than he’d expected, around nineteen or twenty, about as green as military guys came. He looked to be of mixed race, maybe Hispanic and Caucasian, dark haired and dark eyed, his face flushed from the heat generated from the limited air circulation underneath the gas mask. He held the mask in his right hand, letting it hang at his side.

“What do you want with me?” the man asked, sounding wary. Ethan could see the terror in his eyes, and he wondered what in the hell the military had told him that would have him so scared to take his mask off.

“Information,” Ethan said. “And your help.”

“Why should I help you?”

“Because right now, you’ve got nothing to lose for doing so,” Ethan said. “You’ve said yourself that they’ll kill you for taking your mask off. By helping us, you’ll have a shot at staying alive.”

The man looked at him warily. “How so?”

Ethan paused, trying to decide the wisdom of telling the man what he and Kimberly were doing out in the middle of nowhere, but he didn’t see where it would hurt. This man was at the disadvantage here, not him. So he sighed and explained, “We’re trying to find the CDC.”

“The CDC is gone,” the soldier said.

“There are probably other medical facilities, right?” Ethan said. “Somebody out there has to be operational and working on this virus.”

“Maybe,” the soldier said. “If they were, what would you want with them? If they’ve got a vaccine, they’re not going to give it to you.”

“We have a vaccine,” Ethan said. The soldier’s eyes widened in shock. “It’s been tested, and it works. We just need to get it into the hands of someone who can actually do something with it.”

“How…how did you get this?” the man asked. “We searched the main CDC offices in Atlanta, and there was no sign of a cure, a vaccine, an antidote…nothing.”

“We’ve had the good fortune to work directly with a CDC doctor for the past seven or so months,” Ethan explained. “He’s been working nonstop on a cure since the outbreak started.”

“What do you want me to do?” the man asked.

“There are probably other medical facilities that are still operational, right?” Ethan said. “You guys are obviously up and running, so somebody has to be working on this virus. I need you to take me to them.”

The soldier’s shoulders sagged at Ethan’s words, as if he were suddenly weary, resigned to answering his questions. “The CDC is bust,” he told them. “There’s nothing in the southeast that is functioning. I do know of a research facility that’s up and running and doing research on the virus to try to create a cure. Maybe they can help you.”

“Where is this facility located?”

“Eden, North Carolina.”

Chapter 15

Brandt mounted the stairs on the other side of the exit door, feeling like his heart was going to beat right out of his chest from sheer nervousness. A cool breeze assaulted him when he reached the top, and he paused to enjoy it, closing his eyes, letting the breeze ruffle his hair. One of the soldiers nudged him in the back, and he took a few steps forward to make room for the others to get on the platform. Then he looked over his surroundings curiously.

Wherever they were, it was somewhere elevated off the ground. He stood on a metal catwalk-like walkway that ran off into the distance, with an intersection of walkways not far in front of him. When he looked down, he found himself staring at a beehive of activity, dozens upon dozens of people bustling about doing all manner of activities that were incomprehensible to Brandt. He glanced behind him, checking to see if the others were there, and he felt reassured when he saw the beautiful woman who resembled Cade standing at the back of the group. He took a deep breath and let the soldiers goad him forward toward the intersection, where he was directed to the left.

Moments later, he stood at the top of a massive wall, looking into a vast expanse of blackness. The wall had to have been at least fifty feet tall, high enough that the wind felt like it was blowing too hard where he stood. At the foot of the wall, he saw a strip of cleared ground roughly two hundred yards wide, not a tree or other sign of life anywhere in it. Beyond that stood large piles of rubble, like all the buildings had been demolished to create a makeshift outer wall. The wall he stood on ran in either direction for as far as his eyes could see, disappearing into the darkness. Spotlights shone over the strip of cleared ground, occasionally panning over to the rubble-wall as if searching for potential attacks. About fifty yards to his right was a massive gate built into the wall, large enough to march half an army through. The sight of it was enough to unsettle him.

“What…what is this?” Brandt asked, mentally grimacing at the faint tremor in his voice.

“What you’re looking at is the ruins that are the remains of the southeastern United States,” Bradford said, moving up to stand beside him. “Hundreds upon hundreds of square miles of wasteland, infection, and death.”

“And plenty of life too,” Brandt commented. “So, what, you’ve built a fortress to keep out the infected? Granted, it’s the biggest one I’ve ever seen, but who cares? There are probably miniature fortresses all over the U.S.”

Bradford stared at him for a long moment, and Brandt stared back, daring him to contradict him as the beginnings of a sinking, nauseous feeling stirred in his gut. Finally, Bradford let out a heavy breath through his nose and shook his head sorrowfully. “Lieutenant Evans, there’s a lot you’re unaware of in this new world,” he said. He beckoned to Brandt and the soldiers. “Follow me, please.”

Despite Brandt’s resistance toward doing anything the man asked him to do, he was compelled to follow.

The major led him across the catwalk back to the intersection, then kept going straight, heading toward what Brandt presumed was the other side of the wall. As they approached it, he heard an odd mishmash of sounds that he hadn’t heard in almost two years radiating from somewhere ahead of him, like car horns honking and traffic rumbling. There was a glow on the horizon, one he hadn’t noticed before when he’d been distracted looking at his immediate surroundings, and his mouth drew down in a frown.

“What is this?” Brandt asked. Then he caught a glimpse of the world on the other side of the wall, and his heart felt like it stuttered to a stop. He gripped the metal railing in front of him, his knees weak, his breath catching in his throat at the awe-inspiring sight in front of him.

A small city was spread out before him, its streets brilliantly lit by street lamps, its buildings’ windows glowing with the familiar yellow light of civilization that he hadn’t seen in two years. Cars trundled down the road, and if he squinted, he could make out the silhouettes of people on sidewalks, moving in and out of several buildings, laughing and conversing among themselves. Though there were military personnel everywhere, the city, wherever it was, was the very picture of tranquility, like its inhabitants were unfazed by the infectious menace rampaging through their world.

The sinking feeling in Brandt’s gut spiked. He turned away from the sight and faced Bradford, his face feeling tight as anger surged to the surface. “What the hell is this?” he demanded, jabbing a hand at the sight before him as best he could, considering his hands were still cuffed together.

“This is Eden, North Carolina,” Bradford said, absurdly calm in the face of Brandt’s anger.

“How did…how is…how does…?” Brandt sputtered. He was unable to formulate a complete sentence in his anger and confusion.

“How does it look so normal?” Bradford suggested. “Because it is normal, at least insofar as it partially serves as a military base. This is FOB Eden, where we’ve been doing research on the viral contaminant in the southeastern United States since shortly after its outbreak.”

As Bradford spoke, things started to slot into place in Brandt’s mind. The wall he stood on, the references to quarantine, how everyone kept referring to the “southeastern United States.” All of it started to add up to a story he didn’t want to hear, one that made his stomach churn with nausea.

“The virus never went worldwide, did it?” he managed to ask without vomiting. “It was contained, wasn’t it?”

Bradford sighed. “For the most part,” he said. “There were isolated incidents around the U.S. and parts of Europe, but we managed to stop the virus’s spread and keep it from spreading any further. We learned a lot of lessons very quickly from the southeast’s fall.”

“What about the survivors in the southeast?” Brandt asked. “Have you been launching search-and-rescue operations? Is that why some of the roads have been cleared?”

“No, unfortunately not,” Bradford said. “Some of the major roadways have been cleared to allow for troop movements, but there aren’t any rescue operations. Those were suspended when the extent of the infection’s spread became evident. Instead, we focused on quarantine measures.”

“Quarantine measures?” Brandt repeated.

“Extreme quarantine measures,” Bradford clarified. “As someone who’s been involved in that sort of thing at the CDC, you should understand what sort of extremes the quarantine measures took.”

Brandt didn’t have to take the time to think back on what had happened to him when he’d been a test subject for what had become the Michaluk virus. He remembered the chaos that had occurred when the virus had slipped out, when the federal government had ordered the complete shutdown of the testing, including the eradication of all the test subjects. It was only thanks to the CDC doctor Derek Rivers that Brandt was still standing. A lot of good men and women had met their deaths that day, and they hadn’t deserved to be cornered and shot like they were rabid dogs.

Brandt stared at the man, the full meaning of Bradford’s words setting in, and his queasy stomach finally gave up the ghost. As the magnitude of the major’s words wormed its way into his brain, he leaned over and puked on the walkway right at Bradford’s feet, bracing his hands against his knees, his stomach heaving and bile exploding from his throat. The major took a step back with a sound of disgust, a sound that pushed Brandt’s nausea away and replaced it with cold, seething anger. He straightened and launched himself at the man, wrapping his hands around Bradford’s throat and squeezing.

“You son of a bitch!” Brandt snarled. “You left us all for dead!”

Bradford’s fingers scrabbled at Brandt’s hands. Brandt clung even tighter to his throat, trying to choke the life out of him as the faces of his deceased friends flashed through his mind.

“Good people are dead because of you bastards!” he yelled, and then Privates Hutcherson and Bayer were there. They pried his hands loose and grabbed him under his arms, hauling him away from Bradford. “You left us all to rot while you people kept on living normal lives like our lives didn’t matter!”

There was movement in the corner of his eye, and the doctor woman came toward him, a syringe in her hand and a sorrowful look in her eyes. He thrashed against the men holding him, filled with a wild desire to grab this beautiful, sympathetic woman and run for the world he was familiar with, to search for his wife and try to re-establish the life they’d lived for the past two years.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured, and the needle slid into his bicep. With a press of the plunger, she injected the fluid inside the syringe into his arm. Within moments, while he continued to struggle to get loose from the soldiers holding him, his vision blurred and his brain started to fog over.

The last thing he saw was Major Bradford shaking his head in pity as he ordered Brandt to be taken back to his holding cell. The doctor gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze and murmured in his ear, “I’ll be in your cell to talk on my next shift.”

Then everything went dark and consciousness fled.

Chapter 16

Cade and her friends’ arrival in Atlanta was met with zero fanfare, not that she’d expected any. They’d made the long trip surprisingly unmolested and trouble-free, though they’d had to change vehicles a few times until they found one that would not only run off diesel but had some in the fuel tank. They rumbled into the city in a tank of a fully loaded, extended cab Dodge pickup, everyone stuffed uncomfortably into the front and back seats of the vehicle.

The sight in front of Cade was everything she remembered from the last time she’d been to Atlanta. Cars were still jam-packed along the road, shoved wherever their owners had left them when they’d abandoned them and tried to flee the city, creating a virtual wall of vehicles that blocked the roads. Up ahead, further obstructing their path, was a massive concrete barricade that had served as a roadblock, a wall that stretched across the road. Cade didn’t remember seeing it when Alicia and her people had brought her into Atlanta months before. She figured maybe they’d taken her in through a different route that had been cleared. She pulled the truck as close to the side of the road as she could get it out of sheer habit and shifted into park, then stared out the windshield at the jumbled mess in front of the vehicle.

They’d made it. The first leg of their journey was done, and now they were entering the hard part.

Cade rested her head against the seat, letting out a slow, exhausted sigh. Just thinking about everything ahead of them was enough to make her tired. She didn’t have a choice, however; she had to do this, if it meant saving her husband from the clutches of people who, in her opinion, obviously meant to do him harm.

There was a light tap on her right arm, one that she barely felt through the soft leather of her dark brown jacket. She forced her eyes open and looked at Sadie in the passenger seat, who was staring at her with wide eyes and a look of concern on her face.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

Cade waved her off, though she tried to do it with as little irritation as possible. There was no sense in being cranky with her friends; they weren’t the reason they’d all had to come out here, and being ugly with them would alienate the only help she had. “I’m fine,” she assured Sadie. “I’m just thinking, that’s all.”

“Coming up with a plan?”

“Trying to,” Cade said. “As much of a plan as it’s possible to make in a place like Atlanta, anyway.”

There was a creak of leather, and then Remy leaned into view. She was sitting in Dominic’s lap, and Cade wondered how uncomfortable he was feeling from having her on his lap for the past two hours.

“How’s it look?” Remy asked. “Cesspool? Hell on Earth? Belching fire and brimstone?”

“Still,” Cade replied. “Quiet. Maybe a little too quiet.”

“The story of Atlanta,” Dominic muttered. “We should get out of the truck and get moving. We didn’t come in the same way we brought you in last time, so we’re not going to be able to bring the truck in through here. We can either drive further south and try to get to Alicia’s entrance, assuming it hasn’t been blocked up again by now, or we can go on foot. Might take a little longer, but we can take a more direct route if we do it on foot. Votes?”

“I vote we shut up and get the hell out of this truck,” Cade said. She cut the engine off, shoved the driver’s door open, and stepped out onto the pavement. The road under her boots crunched as she put her weight on the ground, and she glanced down to see the pavement had deteriorated in the past two years, grass and weeds growing up in the cracks, pushing them wider to make room for more. As surely as time passed, nature was beginning to take back everything that man had built, filling in the cracks with budding life. She stepped around a patch of dandelion and went to the back of the truck, taking her rifle out of the toolbox where she’d stored it and retrieving her ammunition-heavy backpack. Her companions disembarked from the vehicle, and once they were all out and gathering their packs, Cade started in the direction of the concrete wall blocking the road, leaving the others scrambling to follow.

Dominic hurried up alongside her, still shrugging on his backpack, his face shadowed from the rising sun at their backs. “You shouldn’t go off by yourself, especially not in Atlanta,” he said, his tone mild.

Cade scowled. “I can take care of myself, Dominic,” she snapped. Distracted by his commentary, she tripped over an abandoned, half-opened suitcase in the middle of her path, and he caught her arm to steady her. She wrenched it away as soon as she’d gained her footing, and he continued as if it hadn’t happened.

“It’s not a question of whether or not you can,” he said. “We’ve already established, repeatedly, that your abilities are well beyond the average person’s, and we’ve established that many times over, so I’m not going over it again.”

“Good, there’s no need to,” Cade said. She kept walking, her eyes focused on the obstacles ahead. Dominic waited until they’d climbed over a vehicle blocking their path, sliding over the hood carefully, before he spoke again.

“Do you know where you’re going?”

“Yes,” Cade said. “I’m going to the Tabernacle.”

“Do you even know where that is?”

Cade gritted her teeth, anger flashing through her at his question. “Somewhere in downtown Atlanta.” As she said it, she knew it was a stupid answer, and she could practically feel the well-deserved incredulous look he was giving her boring into her skin.

“You’re kidding me, right?” Dominic said. “That’s all you’ve got? ‘Somewhere in downtown Atlanta’? You can’t possibly think you’ll be able to get away with wandering around downtown looking for the place without being attacked.”

“Well, do you know where it is, then?”

“Of course I know where it is.”

She whirled on him, clipping his elbow with the butt of her rifle as she turned. “Then stop making a big deal over the fact that I don’t know where it is and get us there!” She shouted the last three words, and they echoed against the pavement and cars and transfer trucks around them. The others froze at her words, staring at her with wide-eyed wariness.

There was an odd snarling sound toward her left. Cade spotted one of the infected, somewhat fresh, maybe a month old, trapped in an empty space between several cars, as if he’d somehow stumbled his way into a manmade cage of mangled steel. Poor bastard looked half starved, like he’d been there for a while, maybe since he’d been turned.

Shooting one last glare at Dominic, she marched toward the infected man, shouldering her rifle. She unsheathed the machete fastened to her backpack and climbed onto the hood of one of the cars, squaring her stance so she wouldn’t lose her balance. She bounced the machete in her palm a couple of times, testing its balance. She wasn’t used to using bladed weapons; she was more the “shoot from a distance and blow shit up” kind of woman, probably the reason she and Brandt had felt that magnetic pull between them from the moment they’d first met. Crazy attracted crazy, and they both had more than a small touch of it. They were so much alike that it was hard to conceive of a life without them together in it. She twirled the blade in her hand. The infected man scrabbled at her boots, and she stood back just enough that his teeth couldn’t reach her. Lifting the blade high, she swung it down and embedded it in the man’s skull.

The bone had begun to decay since the man’s infection, and his skull partially collapsed under the blow. She yanked her blade free, and he collapsed forward, his upper body draping over the hood at her feet before sliding down to the pavement with a thump.

Satisfied that the man was deceased, Cade wiped the blade clean with a rag and sheathed it, hopped down from the car, and marched toward the others. “We’re wasting time,” she said. “We need to move faster. I want to be at the Tabernacle and out of the city before sunset. I have a feeling we’ll have a lot of ground to cover after that.”

“You ain’t kidding,” Sadie commented, brushing past Cade. She strode toward the concrete barricade, picking up speed with every step. Then she leapfrogged onto the trunk of a car, bounced off the hood, and went airborne, landing with seeming effortlessness onto the narrow top of the concrete barricade. She shrugged her bow from where she’d hooked it over her shoulder and slid an arrow from her backpack, nocking it onto the bow and grasping the bowstring. She crouched, staring at whatever was on the other side of the barricade.

Cade watched her with envy, wishing she could move like that.

“She must have taken gymnastics as a kid,” she remarked, and she saw Jude nodding out of the corner of her eye. That sort of athleticism could come in handy for them all.

Sadie let out a low whistle and dropped over the barricade and out of sight. Cade hurried forward, climbing onto a vehicle that was close enough to the barricade to allow her to reach the top. “Give me a boost,” she ordered, not caring who listened to her. Dominic joined her on the hood of the car, kneeling and cupping his hands so she could step up into them. Then she was up onto the barricade, twisting to sit down on the edge and swinging her legs over. There was a black convertible crashed against the barricade, its top missing, so she dropped down into the cushioned passenger seat, then climbed over the closed, crumpled door to the pavement.

Sadie hadn’t waited for any of them to join her before she’d begun exploring. She was climbing up the side of one of the military vehicles parked nearby, peering into the driver’s door and pulling it open to look inside. A thunk behind her told Cade that someone else had joined them on that side of the barricade, and she glanced over her shoulder to see Remy coming towards her.

“I guess the guys figured the order of the day was ladies first,” she quipped. She stopped beside Cade and stared in Sadie’s direction. “What’s she doing?”

“Exploring, I guess,” Cade said. She held her rifle in a two-handed ready grip diagonally across her body. There was silence between them while someone scuffed his way up and over the barricade, and then Remy spoke up.

“How are you feeling?” she asked. “And I don’t mean emotionally. Physically. How are you feeling?”

“What makes you think there’s something wrong with me physically?” Cade replied, trying her best to keep her temper in check. Out of all of them still with her, she refused to lose her temper with Remy, especially if it was unwarranted. Remy had been there since nearly the beginning. She was the only other person from their original group outside of Ethan and Brandt that was still alive, and Ethan and Brandt weren’t there. She understood, probably better than any of them, why Cade had to do this. So instead of snapping at Remy like she’d been doing to everyone else the past two days, Cade took Remy’s hand in her own and gave it a gentle, grateful squeeze.

“Have I told you thank you lately?” Cade asked, staring at Sadie’s silhouette through the truck’s windshield.

“For what?” Remy replied.

“For being there. For sticking it out with us through thick and thin.” Cade let go of her hand and sighed. “I know you wanted to leave, back when Ethan was cured and you thought Derek was going to give the cure to you right away too. And really, after everything that had happened, I didn’t blame you for wanting to get the hell out of there. Woodside was a bunch of people living on borrowed time, and I know you’re not one of those people who is willing to sit around and do nothing. You’re a survivor, a fighter. I’m sorry we tried to make you be anything but that.”

“You had your reasons,” Remy said. “And maybe those reasons were right.”

“What do you mean?” Cade asked.

“I haven’t felt right in the head since I got infected,” Remy said, her voice low. “Something’s…off. I can’t put my finger on what it is.”

“After you and Dominic injected you with the cure?”

“Well, it sure as hell hasn’t gotten any better,” Remy said, sounding like she was trying to be flippant and failing miserably. Cade saw right through the nonchalant attitude the younger woman was posturing with and right to the scared girl underneath. She caught Remy’s hand again for another reassuring squeeze and let go as Keith came up behind them.

“All are present and accounted for,” he announced. “Where to next?”

Cade stepped away from Remy after one more squeeze and motioned to the road ahead of them. “We start walking. As soon as we’re oriented to where we are, Dominic will take the lead and get us through to the Tabernacle.”

Chapter 17

The sun was high overhead and they’d been walking for most of the night, slogging through underbrush as the soldier they’d virtually kidnapped led them deeper into the woods. He clutched a compass in his right hand and a laminated map in the other, a look of intense concentration on his face. He didn’t look pleased to be dragging them through the woods, but Ethan looked like he couldn’t care less. After nearly ten hours of walking nonstop, Kimberly was at that point herself.

Though the soldier hadn’t told them much about himself, he had given them a few basics. Very few. His name was Chris Meiner, and he was nineteen years old. He’d enlisted in the military at the beginning of the second semester of his senior year of high school, mere weeks before Michaluk had broken out of containment and started its spread. He wouldn’t tell them anything past that, keeping everything close to his chest, like he were afraid to give them too much information about himself. Not that Kimberly could blame him for that. If someone had grabbed her and forced her to do his bidding at gunpoint, she wouldn’t be too eager to tell him much about herself either.

Chris led the way, and Ethan walked alongside him to make sure he didn’t do anything he wasn’t supposed to do. This left Kimberly to trudge along behind them, tripping over underbrush and trying to keep her lungs inflating and deflating properly. Before their little apocalypse, she’d always bemoaned her lack of being “in shape,” and she’d constantly try out new exercises, the latest fads that said, “This is how you stay slim and keep your weight down.” They would inevitably only last a week or two before she’d go back to her old ways of vegging out on the couch and watching bad sitcoms on her off days. These past couple of years, she’d been in the best shape she’d ever been in in her life, out of necessity, but that didn’t say much for her ability or lack thereof to hike over unfamiliar terrain through the woods with anything resembling grace.

She’d just muttered her fifth swear in a two-minute span, prompted by her shoulder-length blonde hair snagging on a low-hanging branch again, when Ethan said to Chris, “Keep walking. I’ve got my eyes on you.” He dropped back to walk with her, taking one of her backpacks off her shoulder wordlessly and adding it to his own.

“You doing okay?” he asked.

Kimberly couldn’t stop the dirty look she gave him as she stumbled over another fallen branch. “Ask me that again after we’ve had dinner and some sleep.”

“That bad, huh?” he asked.

“You could say that. Why exactly are we going cross-country through the woods instead of heading back to a road anyway?”

“Because he,” Ethan beckoned to Chris, “claims there’s a highway about two miles further ahead. He’s trying to get us to it so we can look for a vehicle.”

“Thank God,” she said. “My legs are killing me.” Ethan plucked a leaf out of her hair, and she dropped her voice so Chris couldn’t hear her. “How do we know he’s not walking us right into a trap for his buddies to pick off?”

“Because he won’t,” Ethan said. “He wants to live as badly as we do, and he’s not going to walk into his own execution just so his friends can bag themselves two more people.”

“You sound awfully certain about that,” Kimberly commented. Chris paused to examine his map by light of a small flashlight.

“That’s because I am,” Ethan said. “I was a cop, remember? I learned how to read people. This kid is just that—a kid. He’s not a seasoned military guy like Brandt. Sure, he’s got training, but he’s probably not battle-hardened like Brandt or even Dominic. He won’t put himself at an unnecessary risk because he doesn’t want to die.”

“That brings me to my other question,” Kimberly said. “Why were they shooting at us? You’d think they’d have been glad to see survivors, but the first thing they tried to do was kill us. Why?”

“Because you’re infected,” Chris spoke up. He glanced back at them before returning his focus to the path ahead.

“Where did you get a damn fool idea like that?” Kimberly asked, a flush of anger heating her cheeks. Ethan watched the exchange impassively, though his eyes were alight with interest. “Do we look like we’re infected to you?”

“Major Bradford said that everyone in the former southeastern sector of the United States is infected,” Chris replied in a know-it-all tone that made Kimberly want to smack him.

“You ever seen one of the infected that could talk?” Kimberly asked. “I’ve spent the past two years fighting and killing the things, and I’ve yet to find one that uttered a single word to me, even when I was cutting its head off.” She was grateful that Ethan was wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt. She didn’t think the scars that covered his arms from his attack in Atlanta would lend her argument any support.

“The ones that talk are carriers,” Chris shot back.

Kimberly looked at him incredulously. “You can’t possibly be serious.”

“I don’t think Kim is asking the right questions,” Ethan said before she could continue questioning Chris’s intelligence, not out loud, at least. “I have a few of my own, not least of which is why you talk like this is all confined to the southeastern U.S.” He paused, and a note of uncertainty had crept into his voice when he asked, “It did go worldwide, right?”

Chris’s face dawned with realization, and his expression became overwhelmingly pitying. It made Kimberly want to punch him. She held her fist in check as he said, almost delicately, “No, not exactly.”

“What the hell does that mean, ‘not exactly’?” Kimberly demanded. She realized she was clenching her fists only when Ethan’s long fingers wrapped around her right wrist and gently squeezed. She forced her fingers to relax and loosen, enough so that Ethan was able to slip his fingers between hers. They stood that way, clinging to each other like they were the other’s lifelines while they waited for Chris to answer the question. When he did, Kimberly got lightheaded and her blood pressure skyrocketed.

Chris looked like he felt a little sick at being the one to tell them his news. He chose his words with the utmost care, hesitating again before saying, “When the virus broke out…well, things weren’t good. They tried to quarantine the CDC, then the Emory University campus, then downtown Atlanta, and then the entire state of Georgia. When it looked like the Georgia quarantine was going to fail, the military and the Army Corps of Engineers drew up maps and plans and mobilized, and every single person who could get to the location who could do heavy lifting came out and built the Wall.”

“The Wall?” Kimberly repeated, tasting the words on her tongue, measuring the distinctiveness of the capitalized “W” that had been evident in Chris’s voice.

“Yeah, the Wall,” Chris said. “It’s this massive thing, runs for hundreds and hundreds of miles, from the coast all the way across to the Mississippi River and then south to the Gulf of Mexico. They built a temporary wall around all of it, just some mobile units that were used in Operation Iraqi Freedom and other places, and then they built up the Wall right behind it. No one goes in, not unless they’re in MOPP4 suits, and unless you have clearance to do so and your suit hasn’t been compromised, no one goes out of here.”

“So, what, they’ve abandoned us?” Ethan asked. His voice was low enough that the wind rustling through the trees almost drowned it out. “They decided to hell with us and let us rot?”

“Not exactly,” Chris said.

Kimberly made an exasperated noise. “There he goes again with the ‘not exactly.’” Ethan squeezed her hand in his.

Chris looked away from her, staring down at the forest floor with a chagrined look on his face. “Look, we’ve got a presidential campaign going on right now,” he said, his upper lip curling like he realized how terrible that sounded. “The Republican and Democratic candidates are tearing each other up over what to do about the southeast, and the dumbass who’s in the White House right now thought it’d be a good idea to try to make himself look tough and in charge so he can get re-elected easier.”

“So he decided to send you guys in to check things out?” Kimberly asked.

“No, he decided to send us in to wipe things out,” Chris said. “He sent in crews to do clean up on the highways and interstates to make way for any ground troops that are going to come through. They’ve got drones doing gridded flyovers of the area to pinpoint settlements of survivors, and they’re sending in helicopters and more drones and fighter jets with ordnance to bomb whatever they find. They told us that everyone on this side of the Wall that has been exposed is subject to extermination, and everyone we come across is to be shot on sight.”

“Oh dear God, you’re kidding me,” Kimberly murmured.

“Look, I don’t like doing it, okay?” Chris said. “I think it’s a terrible order, and I’m not the only one. There are a lot of us who think we should be airlifting survivors out of here and taking them to the other side of the Wall. Without new fuel for the virus’s fire, it’d die out after a while, and then we could look into making the place habitable again. We’ve already taken back Louisiana doing it that way. We walled it off on its own with the portable walls, and we kept shifting them inward until we’d killed everything infected we could find. That was early on, and the monetary costs were high, even though we didn’t lose many soldiers doing it, so the politicians sitting pretty in Washington keeping their hands clean don’t think it’s worth the money to try to save whoever happens to be left on this side of the Wall. You’re all expendable.” He spat the last word out, as if it tasted foul.

“What about the rest of the U.S.?” Kimberly asked. “The outbreak spread fast here. How could you keep it contained here?”

“We didn’t, not at first,” Chris said. “There were some isolated outbreaks around major airports. We were prepared for them that time, and we managed to quarantine and clean it up. The entire air industry is shut down, per the FAA. There hasn’t been a plane in the sky since the outbreak started, save for military flights. No air travel is allowed for civilians, and travel by car is strictly limited. People are constantly being tested for signs of the virus, and they’re required to report in to the special clinics at least once a week for testing. They’re working toward creating a way to test every day, but they haven’t figured that out yet. They’re doing this all in the name of preventing another outbreak.” Chris’s upper lip curled again. “To say personal liberties and freedoms have been limited in the past two years is probably the understatement of the decade.”

“Wait, back up,” Kimberly said. “Testing? They have a way to test for the virus?”

“Yeah, just takes a drop of blood on a slide and a few minutes for the lab techs to work whatever magic it is they do to test for it,” Chris explained.

“Son of a bitch,” Kimberly muttered. “Do you know how badly we could use something like that here? We’ve had so many instances—at least, when we were in the Westin, where we had to isolate people because we weren’t sure if they were lying about being infected.” She motioned toward Ethan without thinking, “Hell, after he—” She cut herself off and looked away, shaking her head.

“What about him?” Chris asked, and his eyes took on a cast of suspicion. “Are you infected?”

“That’s none of your—” Kimberly said.

“Get moving, Meiner,” Ethan ordered. “We don’t have all night.”

“Not until you tell me what she’s talking about,” Chris snapped back.

Ethan’s eyes narrowed, and he lifted his Glock, pointing it right at Chris’s face. “I said, get moving.”

Chris hesitated, and Ethan jabbed the gun in his direction, snapping, “Now.” With a shake of his head, Chris consulted his map and his compass and turned his back to Ethan, heading off through the trees again. Once he was moving, Ethan started to follow, lowering the pistol and tugging Kimberly along with him.

“Don’t discuss that again,” he told her. “Especially not around people like him. Not unless you want to end up dead, because he doesn’t seem like the type to be willing to talk things through.”

Kimberly clutched Ethan’s hand tighter. The soldier walked ahead of them and she hoped, once again, that Ethan was right and the man wasn’t leading them to their deaths.

Chapter 18

A search of the vehicles in their immediate vicinity for useful, portable supplies hadn’t taken long, and now they waited, lurking in the shadows of the concrete barricade, for the morning sun to rise and light their way. Remy crouched on the roof of a car, her eyes constantly scanning and examining their surroundings for any infected. They wouldn’t hurt her, she knew, though the thought still gave her the creeps, but that didn’t mean the others weren’t in danger. And while she didn’t truly give a shit about most of them, she refused to allow anything to happen to Cade and Dominic.

As the man’s name crossed her mind, a little flutter of something stirred in her chest. Remy sucked a slight breath in and pressed her fingers against her left collarbone. What was that? she wondered as the flutter quelled itself, only to return when she glanced to her right at Dominic, who stood nearby, looking over a map and consulting with Cade and Keith. Was this what she thought it was? That dreaded “L” word? No, it couldn’t be, especially not over him. After all they’d been through, the opposite sides they’d fought on, even if for a short period of time, she couldn’t possibly be in love with Dominic Jackson. It didn’t feel like what she’d felt for Ethan, not in the slightest.

No, what stirred in her chest whenever she thought about or looked at Dominic made her feel more alive than that.

Maybe because what you felt for Ethan wasn’t really love, a wicked voice taunted in the back of her head.

Remy scowled and shifted on the car’s roof, sitting down on her backside and tucking her legs underneath her.

Don’t be ridiculous, she mentally snapped at the mean little voice in her head. How could what she’d had with Ethan been anything but love? How many times had they made love in that safe house in Maplesville? How often had they just laid there, fully dressed, enjoying the other’s company and talking, sharing their deepest wishes and darkest fears? How often had she confessed her worst deeds to him, telling him stories about her life before the outbreak, her misdeeds and run-ins with the New Orleans Police Department? If she hadn’t cared for him, she’d have never gone to his room for the first time on the night after her twenty-first birthday.

Caring for a person isn’t the same as being in love with them, that wicked voice in her head said, laughing.

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” Remy muttered out loud. She dug her fingers into the knee of her jeans.

“Everything okay?” a voice to her left asked. Remy tore her gaze away from the middle distance she’d been staring into and onto the figure alongside the car she sat on. It was Sadie, and she was looking up at her with a confused look on her face. “I thought you said something.”

“I was talking to myself,” Remy said. “Nothing to worry about.”

“I don’t know about that,” Sadie commented. “We’re in Atlanta. I think there’s plenty of stuff to be worried about.”

“I’m not worried,” Remy said. “I’ve been in Atlanta before. Twice. And I came out alive both times.”

“Not unscathed though,” Dominic said from her other side. She twisted to see him approaching the vehicle she was perched on. Her heart skipped another beat. Fucking traitor heart. “Atlanta has a way of damaging people,” he continued, “and I freely admit I’m one of them. So was Alicia. And so, I suspect, are you, Brandt, Cade, and Keith. It makes you do things you never dreamed you were capable of or willing to do.”

“Yeah, right,” Remy muttered.

“Yeah, I’m right,” Dominic shot back. “You think Alicia set out with the intention to be a domineering, dictator-like bitch? No, she didn’t. She set out with the best of intentions, wanting to get as many people as she could together because she saw a situation where there was safety in numbers and she had the appropriate skills to help protect those people. I went with her and agreed to help her because I thought the same.”

“But you got out,” Remy said.

“You think I didn’t do bad shit when I was in it?” Dominic shook his head. “If you even knew…” He looked away from her. “So. We have a plan.” He shook out the map he held and spread it out on the hood of the car. As if that were the signal, everyone gathered around the vehicle, and Remy’s introspective moment was broken up by the presence of people. “We’re on Ralph David Abernathy Freeway, otherwise known as I-20,” he announced, pointing the freeway out to the others. “I know we said we would avoid the interstates, but we didn’t have a lot of choice getting here. I didn’t know this side of Atlanta well enough to get us here without getting on I-20, which we did about an hour ago.” He motioned off into the distance. “Technically, we’re in East Atlanta. Glenwood Avenue is that way, though I don’t think that means anything to any of you who’ve never been here or aren’t familiar with the city. It barely means anything to me.”

“Why are you telling us this?” Remy asked impatiently.

“In case you need to know it, that’s why,” Dominic said. “We might get separated, and you’ll need to know which way we’re traveling so you’ll be able to catch up with us.” He cleared his throat and consulted the map again. “Cade, Keith, and I debated the merits of getting off the freeway and taking side streets or following Abernathy into the city. We chose the former option, if only because of the risk of infected hiding between the cars in the freeway congestion. We’ll take Glenwood through Grant Park to Cherokee. Then take Cherokee north to Memorial Drive, follow it to Hill, and go left onto Decatur. Decatur will take you into Marietta, and then stay on Marietta until you run into Centennial Olympic Park Drive. Go right on Centennial and follow it around to the corner of Centennial and Luckie. The Tabernacle should be on the corner of those two streets. Large brick building, stained glass windows, you can’t miss it.”

“How long will it take for us to get there?” Sadie asked.

“It’s a little over four miles. Maybe an hour and a half, barring any trouble on the way.”

“Sounds too easy,” Remy commented. “What’s the catch?”

“We’ll be traveling in the vicinity of several tourist attractions, which means we’ll be potentially walking through a hell of a lot of infected,” Keith spoke up. “To say it won’t be an easy trip is probably an understatement.”

“Nothing worth fighting for is ever easy,” Cade remarked.

“Well put,” Keith said.

Dominic continued like neither of them had spoken. “What do you say we get our shit together and get moving?” He folded the map and tucked it into his back pocket. While the others started gathering their bags and preparing for the four-mile walk ahead of them, Dominic leaned against the car Remy was perched on. “Hey, you mind walking with me once we get going?” he asked.

That obnoxious little flutter in her chest stirred up again, and Remy almost told him no, just to be contrary. She could walk with Cade and maybe, in the process, avoid whatever Dominic might be inspired to talk to her about during the journey. But that nagging voice piped up again, pushing her in a whole different direction. What will it hurt? the voice asked. It’s just Dominic. Maybe he’ll say or do something that will get rid of that nasty feeling in your chest, and then you can slap the shit out of him for it.

Yeah, that sounded like a perfectly workable plan to her.

She slid down the windshield and hopped off the hood to the ground, dusting her pants off and giving him a casual, nonchalant shrug. “Sure, but if we run into anything nasty, I get to take the lead.”

“Fair enough,” Dominic agreed.

Much to Remy’s surprise, once they’d gotten off the freeway and onto Glenwood Avenue, Dominic barely spoke a word. None of them did. They walked in silence, save for the occasional murmured question or comment about their surroundings.

Glenwood Avenue hadn’t escaped the ravages of the contagion, not by far. The road was jam packed with vehicles of all types, motorcycles, sedans, and transfer trucks. Considering the road’s vicinity to the freeway, Remy figured they’d either tried to get on the freeway in their mad dash for safety, or they’d gotten off the freeway trying to get around the roadblocks. Some of the cars’ doors stood open, like their previous occupants hadn’t bothered to close them when they’d fled their vehicles, and frequently, Remy and her companions had to stop and ease doors closed to clear the narrow paths between the rows of vehicles.

Dominic stayed behind her on their journey down their chosen row of vehicles, and the one time she’d glanced at him, wondering why he hadn’t spoken to her like she’d expected, she saw that he had his weapons drawn, a pistol in one hand and a machete in the other, his dark eyes scanning their surroundings.

The group was approaching Cherokee Avenue when Sadie broke the silence. She cleared her throat and called out, “Hey, guys? Jude thinks he saw something.”

“Something like what?” Remy asked. “I see a lot of somethings.”

“Something important, obviously, or I wouldn’t bring it up,” Sadie shot back. “He’s not sure what it was, just that it was slinking through the trees over there.” She pointed to a grove of overgrown trees and bushes off to the right.

“Slinking?” Dominic repeated. “What does he mean by slinking?”

There was something in Dominic’s voice that alarmed Remy, though she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. Jude was signing frantically to his sister, his hands flying and his eyes wide. He kept glancing back in the direction he claimed to have seen something moving.

Sadie said, “Stalking. That’s the word he’s trying to use. Something is stalking us.”

“Infected?” Cade questioned.

Sadie shook her head. “Not a person,” she said. “Something the size of a large dog. Maybe bigger.”

Dominic looked more worried at that, if that were possible. “Four legs or two?”

Sadie conferred with Jude and reported, “Four.”

“What could it be?” Remy asked, her imagination running wild. Her brain shuffled through every four-legged animal it could think of in rapid succession. Before it would settle on any one option, Keith spoke up, his voice shaking.

“I know what it is,” he said, pointing in the direction they’d been walking. Fifty yards ahead of them, in one of the rare clearings in the mess of vehicles, stood a massive male lion, its huge mane framing its face. It stared down the road at them, so still that, for the barest of seconds, Remy thought she was looking at a statue. Then it shifted its weight, its muscles rippling under its tawny fur.

“Oh fuck,” Remy breathed, her brain scrambling to dredge up everything it had learned about lions from watching Animal Planet. The first thing that surfaced was how male lions never did the hunting, the females did. The males relaxed and waited for the females to bring home the bacon. She drew her Sig Sauer from its holster, gripping it in her right hand and her bolo knife in her left, wondering how much damage either weapon could do against what they were facing.

“Keep eyes all around us,” she said. “If the male is here, females might not be too far away.”

No sooner had the words left her mouth than one of the feared female lions sprang from a nearby row of cars and launched itself right at Jude.

Chapter 19

The lioness had barely launched into the air when Sadie started moving. She grabbed Jude by his shirt and shoved him to the pavement, letting herself fall with him to land on her stomach beside him. The lioness was unable to correct her trajectory in mid-flight, and she slammed into the car alongside them. Her back claws snagged Sadie’s backpack, tearing it open and spilling ammunition, food, and arrows across the pavement.

The animal barely had time to recover before the others opened fire. This time, it was Jude’s turn to drag Sadie to safety. He hooked his left arm around her and hauled her sideways as he rolled, taking them both into the shelter underneath a Hostess snack truck. He kept rolling until he came out on the other side, and Sadie followed, her ears ringing from the sound of bullets pinging off the vehicles around them. Jude helped her to her feet, and she yanked a machete from its sheath on her belt, ready to start swinging as soon as she’d regained her footing.

She’d just steadied herself when Jude touched her arm and pointed down the row of cars they now found themselves on. There were at least ten infected making their way down the row, two abreast, drawn by the sound of gunfire, stumbling and tripping over each other in their haste to get to Sadie and Jude.

“Well, shit,” Sadie commented. She twirled her machete in her right hand and wished she had enough shells to use her shotgun, but it was only for last resort. “On the cars,” she said to Jude. “One on each side. We’ll take ‘em down like dominoes.”

Jude saluted and went left while she went right, and they climbed on top of their respective rows of cars. They started running, leaping from car to car, their boots making loud metallic thumps against the vehicles as they landed, careful to pace themselves against each other. When they reached the leading edge of the infected, they both swung their blades down simultaneously, hacking at the heads and necks of the first infected in the short line. The first two toppled to the pavement, and with two more steps, the twins had moved on to the next in line.

By the time she’d killed her second one, Sadie had fallen into a rhythm: a downward swing to partially crush the skull, then a forward swing to slice through the throat to the spine. When they fell, their necks would snap, severing or damaging their spinal cords so they’d be dead or incapacitated. When she reached the sixth in line and saw there were only three left, she redoubled her efforts, drawing the pistol out of her thigh holster, aiming it, and firing at one of the infected even as she swung down at a second with her machete. Both of them went down, and Jude took care of the last one.

When the last of the infected had fallen, Sadie turned her attention to the rest of their companions. The shooting had stopped. She moved to the side of the vehicle she stood on and dropped down to the pavement to check out what was going on.

The lioness lay on her side on the pavement not far from where she’d landed at the end of her lunge, peppered with bullet wounds and oozing blood that stained her blonde fur. Sadie felt a pang of sadness at the sight of the majestic animal lying slumped on the road, but it couldn’t be helped; they couldn’t outrun an animal like that, and killing it had been their only option. That didn’t stop her from feeling a distinct sense of guilt over it, though. As a big fan of animals in almost all their forms, the sight was difficult to take.

The male lion was gone. Maybe he’d run off when the bullets started flying.

“Everybody okay?” Cade called, and Sadie waited for Jude to join her before she started in the others’ direction.

“We’re fine,” Sadie told her as soon as she’d gotten to within earshot of the older woman. “Jude and I had to take care of some infected that were in the area.” It still felt weird to call them “the infected” after two years of referring to them as “zombies.” Since that was what the rest of the group called them, Sadie had figured it best to conform to prevent confusion. “Where did it come from?” she asked, nodding toward the dead beast on the ground.

“Maybe from the Atlanta zoo,” Dominic said. “We’re in Grant Park, and the zoo isn’t far from here.”

“Maybe we’ll run into a hippo while we’re out here,” Remy said with no small amount of sarcasm.

“This isn’t a joke, Remy,” Dominic replied. “The larger animals, the elephants and such, wouldn’t have been able to escape their pens unless they were intentionally released, but the predators would have had a fighting chance of it. We might be looking at leopards and tigers and other deadly creatures stalking the streets alongside the infected. We’ve already seen lions. It wouldn’t be a stretch for there to be other animals out here.”

That statement sobered the entire group, and they looked at each other, the uncertainty among them clear. Finally, Cade went to the lioness’s corpse, shoving it aside with visible difficulty and starting to gather Sadie’s arrows and ammunition from where they’d spilled out on the pavement. Sadie moved to help her, kneeling on the pavement and scooping up several arrows, stuffing them haphazardly into the remains of her backpack.

“We’ll get you a new backpack as soon as we find a place that might have some,” Cade said, handing her several more arrows.

“Thanks,” Sadie said. “Can it be the same kind of place I might find a good quiver for these arrows?”

“We’ll do our best.”

After they’d finished gathering Sadie’s spilled supplies, Cade stood and dusted her hands against the thighs of her jeans. “Let’s go,” she urged. “The longer we delay here, the higher the chance that something will happen to Brandt. I don’t want to find out he died while we were lollygagging in Atlanta.”

The group started to move down the road again, on higher alert than they’d been before.

Sadie murmured to Jude, “Did it seem like we were lollygagging to you?”

“Not at all,” Jude signed. “She’s a very angry person right now, though, so I don’t think we should be too bothered with anything she says.”

Sadie nodded, but she was annoyed by the woman’s borderline insults. They were all trying to do the best they could, and the only thing Cade had done was snap at them rather than thank them for their help. It was maddening.

“Don’t let it bother you,” Jude signed when she didn’t respond. “It will all be fine. I hope.”

Unable to do anything else, Sadie nodded again, deciding to take Jude’s advice and focus on their survival rather than on Cade’s anger.

Chapter 20

“I told them it wasn’t a good idea, but no one ever listens to me,” Lindsey complained after she’d clocked in for her shift in the labs the following evening. She’d slumped into her desk chair with such despondency that Jacob had left his lab, changed out of his biochem suit and deconned, and came into the office to see what was wrong. He hadn’t come over the night before like they’d planned, so she hadn’t gotten the opportunity to vent like she’d wanted to. As a result, her uncertainties over Evans’s mental state and her irritability over Bradford not listening to a word she’d said had stewed inside her, threatening to burst out at the least opportune moment.

“I take it they took him up to see the Wall?” Jacob asked, rolling his desk chair over and sitting down in it, so close that their knees were almost touching.

“Yep, and it went about as well as I expected, which is to say, it didn’t.” Lindsey shook her head. “That poor man. He had no idea what hit him. It must be awful to realize that the help you thought was coming had written you off a long time ago.”

Jacob shifted in his chair, the wheels grinding on the floor as he scooted a few inches closer to her. “This got anything to do with your sister and your daughter?” he asked, a knowing look in his hazel eyes. “Because I can feel your bitterness all the way over here.”

Lindsey slumped over sideways so she could rest her elbow against her desk and her head on her hand. “Can you keep a secret?” she asked, her eyes flickering toward the camera in the corner of the room.

“Yeah, sure, of course,” Jacob said, raising an eyebrow. “Have I ever not kept one of your secrets?”

“Good point.” Lindsey hesitated, eyeing the camera again and shifting forward so she leaned closer to him. She murmured, almost imperceptibly, “I think the prisoner knows my sister.”

“What makes you say that?” Jacob asked, just as quietly.

“Because when they brought him in and I went to help with his medical assessment, he called me Cade,” Lindsey said. “What would make him think to call me that name if he didn’t know her? It’s not like Cade is all that common a name, especially for a woman.”

“If he knows your sister, what of it?” Jacob asked. “It’s not like he can take you to her. He’s locked up in here.”

“It means she’s alive, Jacob,” Lindsey said fervently. “It means she made it this far, because he didn’t hesitate to think I was Cade. If she were dead, he wouldn’t have called me that, because he’d have known she was dead.”

Jacob stared at her like he was trying to read her mind, and she could only imagine what he was thinking. Finally, after letting out a long, heavy sigh, he asked, “You want to break him out, don’t you?”

“Am I that transparent?” Lindsey asked.

“Why?”

“I want him to take me to Cade,” she said. “And before you ask, no, I don’t think he’s a threat. At least not to me.”

Jacob cocked his head to the side, studying her closely. “What’s your plan? I assume you have one?”

Lindsey let out a sigh to rival his. “Not yet. I’m still working on it.”

“It will probably be impossible,” Jacob warned. “Everyone has to submit to a test to get out of the facility. You can’t slip him past that.”

“I’ll figure something out,” Lindsey said. “I just have to think unconventionally. You’re not going to report me for thinking about this, are you?”

“To the fucking Gestapo? Hell no,” Jacob said with a snort. He was referring to the new division of government-run special police forces that were used to enforce the viability of the Wall, the population’s mandatory blood tests, and the illusion that those on the wrong side of the Wall were all infected. Anyone who heard someone talking about going to the south side of the Wall or letting someone through the Wall was supposed to report that person immediately. Jacob refusing to do so could get him into just as much trouble as Lindsey could for what she wanted to do. If there was anything Jacob hated, it was the special police, and he spoke derisively of them at any opportunity he had. For him to go against their requirements shouldn’t have been a surprise to Lindsey, but she still couldn’t deny the stir of thankfulness mixed with surprise that she felt in her stomach.

“Thank you,” she said, taking his hand and giving it a gentle, grateful squeeze.

“You’re welcome,” he said, returning her squeeze. “What do you say we get some work done today, and you think over what you want to do about this whole mess? When we get off work later, we can go out to get a bite to eat and maybe talk it over.”

“In public?” Lindsey asked. “Surely, you jest.”

“Of course not,” Jacob said. “I was thinking we could get something to go and take it to my place.”

“Will this count as that dinner I promised you?”

“Nope! That requires dressing up. I’m not taking you out to dinner in scrubs, of all things.”

“What’s wrong with scrubs?” Lindsey asked. She got up from the desk chair to gather what she needed to put on her biochem suit. “They’re stylish and pretty! Look, mine have flowers on them!” She held out an arm to show him the pattern of tiny flowers that dotted the fabric of her scrubs top.

Jacob laughed, but before he could respond, the lab’s door swung open, and a soldier that Lindsey didn’t recognize stuck his head inside. “Excuse me, I’m looking for a Dr. Alton?” he said.

“That’s me,” Lindsay said. “Can I help you?” A dart of fear rocked through her gut, despite the calm demeanor she plastered on her face. Had they found out what she’d said to Jacob about breaking Evans out of the facility’s lockup?

“Major Bradford requested that you go to the prisoner’s quarters and examine his physical and psychological health,” the soldier said.

“Is something wrong with him?” Lindsey asked, setting the clipboard she’d picked up back on her desk and gathering her medical supplies instead.

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him,” the soldier said. “I’ve only been told to take you to him.”

Lindsey rooted through her bag, making sure she had everything she might need, then slung it onto her shoulder and gestured for the soldier to lead the way. She glanced back at Jacob, whose expression was far into the category of worried, smiled at him reassuringly. “I’ll be right back.” She stepped out into the hallway to follow the soldier to the prisoner’s quarters.

Lindsey hadn’t seen the inside of Evans’ prison cell since he’d first gotten there and had been deposited inside it, and the dank chill that wafted out of the room when the soldier opened the door surprised her. She took an involuntary step back and forced herself forward, shivering when she entered the concrete cell, her bag clutched in her right hand.

Brandt was sprawled across his bare cot. His breathing appeared steady from where Lindsey stood, but his skin looked pale, like he were sick or about to be sick. There was a thin sheen of sweat on his skin, at odds with the awful chill in the room, and Lindsey frowned in concern and knelt beside his cot.

The cell’s door clanged shut behind her, and she looked in its direction. One of the soldiers was staring at her through the small window inset in the door. Otherwise, they’d left her alone in the room with Brandt.

“Lieutenant Evans?” She pressed her fingers against his wrist, checking his pulse rate. It was faster than she’d expected, and she set her bag on the floor and unzipped it to find her stethoscope. She slipped the earbuds into her ears and leaned over him, pressing the cool disk to his chest over his thin t-shirt, listening to his breathing and the rhythm of his heart.

One of Brandt’s hands darted from his side and clasped her wrist. He held it, not tightly, just firmly enough that she wouldn’t be able to pull away without effort. Lindsey squeaked involuntarily, muffling it at the last second, casting a quick glance to the door before returning her eyes to Brandt’s face. His dark brown eyes had fluttered open a crack, enough for her to tell that he was awake. She wondered if he’d been faking the unconsciousness and for how long he’d been doing it.

She leaned closer, the cup of the stethoscope still against his chest, and whispered, “Lieutenant Evans, I don’t know if you remember me or—”

“Lindsey,” he interrupted, his voice hoarse.

“Yeah, I’m Lindsey,” she confirmed. “Lindsey Alton.”

“Cade’s sister,” Brandt said.

“You know Cade?” Lindsey asked. “Cade Alton?”

Brandt nodded and shifted on the cot, as if he were uncomfortable and trying to ease sore muscles.

“Cade Evans now,” he mumbled, and Lindsey’s heart leaped at the revelation. “We got married…oh hell, three months ago?” His eyes brightened with the thought of her, then clouded over with resignation and sadness.

“She’s not…she isn’t dead, is she?” Lindsey asked, scared to hear the answer.

“I don’t know,” Brandt answered. “She was in Woodside. I don’t know if she made it out before they dropped that bomb you said they dropped. She’s very, very pregnant. I don’t know how far she could have gotten with the baby to contend with.”

“Oh hell,” Lindsey breathed, shocked to find out that her sister, a woman who’d been adamant that she’d never get married or have children of her own, was not only married, but pregnant as well.

“I’ve got to get out of here,” Brandt replied. “I’ve got to find her. I can’t stay here not knowing whether or not she’s alive.” He let out a soft snort and muttered, “Now I guess I know how Ethan felt after his wife died in Memphis.”

“Who’s Ethan?” Lindsey asked, dropping the stethoscope into her medical bag and digging inside it. She had no idea what she was looking for; she was just wasting time until the soldiers said her time with the prisoner was up.

“He’s… I guess he’s my best friend after Cade,” Brandt said. “He and Cade are the two I’ve been surviving with the longest, almost since day one.”

Lindsey dug her blood pressure cuff from her bag and wrapped it around his bicep. It was pleasantly muscular, like he’d taken pains to keep himself toned and strong. “What about Josephine?” she asked, scared of the answer but desperate to know regardless.

Brandt shifted again, his hand catching hers and squeezing gently. “I’m sorry,” he said. “As far as I understand, she didn’t make it.” Lindsey’s heart sank and tears sprang to her eyes. “Cade won’t talk about it,” he said. “I met her two days after Memphis fell, and Josephine wasn’t with her then. She never did tell me what happened.”

Lindsey mashed the button on the blood pressure machine to inflate the cuff, struggling to keep her tears at bay. It wouldn’t do for her to come out of his cell crying; word would certainly get back to Bradford, and he’d jump hoops to make sure she didn’t have contact with Evans again. She’d have to save her tears for when she got home after her shift, when she could fully process the news and try to cope with it. For now, she had to reassure herself with the news that, despite her worst fears coming true, her sister was out there, and she still had hope of reuniting with someone from her family. “Thank you,” she said, “for helping Cade at least make it this far.”

“She’s more than capable of taking care of herself,” Brandt said, “though that doesn’t stop me from trying to do the best I can to help her.”

“So she’s still as stubborn as always?” Lindsey asked, unable to help the small smile that tried to surface to her lips.

“Is she ever not stubborn?” Brandt replied, and Lindsey stifled a laugh that turned into a sob. He squeezed her hand again and let go.

“Look, will you do me a favor?” Lindsey asked. When he nodded almost imperceptibly, she continued. “Keep your head down, and try your best to do whatever they ask you to do. Stay as healthy as you can.”

“What for?” Brandt asked, sounding like he really wanted to ask, What’s the point?

“Because I’m going to do my damnedest to break you out of here,” Lindsey said fervently.

Chapter 21

Their encounter with the escaped lions was long past them. However, that didn’t change the fact that Dominic was more tense than he’d ever been before, his eyes constantly scanning their surroundings for oncoming dangers, not trusting anyone else to not miss something and end up getting him killed at the hands of the infected. Or a lion. Or a tiger. Or a gorilla.

That would be his luck, to get his face ripped off by the elusive western lowland gorilla in downtown Atlanta, a la Congo.

“You okay?” Remy asked. She was looking at him with something bordering on curiosity and worry.

“I’m not going to lie, those lions shook me up,” Dominic admitted. “Not something you expect to run into when you’re out and about in Atlanta, of all places.” For what felt like the millionth time, he twisted his head around to look back into his blind spot. “Makes me worry about what else we might run into in the city.”

“Maybe we’ll see some capuchin monkeys,” she replied. “I’ve always thought those things were adorable.”

“Yeah, adorable until they attack you en masse,” he retorted.

“You sound like you have some experience with that,” Remy commented, and he snorted.

“No, not personally. There was a CIA agent once who got himself in trouble in that manner,” he said. “Granted, they were trained monkeys, but still.”

“That is quite possibly one of the weirdest stories you’ve referenced to me yet,” Remy said. “I’m not sure if I should feel sorry for the guy or just amused.”

“Neither,” he said. “He’s probably dead.”

“Good point,” Remy agreed. She smiled brightly and asked, “So what are your plans after all of this is over and done with?”

“All of what?” Dominic asked. She motioned to the road ahead, indicating their current mission, and he sighed. “I don’t know. Help Cade get Brandt back, for sure. After that? I haven’t decided yet. Maybe I’ll stick around. Maybe I won’t.” He shrugged and rested a hand against his holstered pistol. “I’ll have to play it by ear once we get further into this mess.” He raised his voice and called, “Somebody tell me where we’re at!”

“Coming up on Hill Street!” Cade called back.

“Not much further,” Dominic commented to Remy. “Maybe half an hour of walking, give or take a little.”

“Sounds great,” Remy said. “Think we’ll run into trouble anytime soon?”

“What, the lions weren’t enough for you?” Dominic asked incredulously.

“Oh, they were plenty,” Remy answered. “I just have all this excess energy and I’m itching to burn it off.”

“Excess energy?” Dominic repeated. “You should count yourself lucky. I don’t feel like I have a crumb to spare.”

Remy held out her hand. “Here, I’ll share mine with you through osmosis,” she offered, a tiny smile on her face. Dominic glanced at her hand. A smile of his own cracked across his lips, and he slipped his hand into hers. The fact that she was taking that step, that she was actually offering him that small gesture, was enough to make his hopes soar.

“Does it work that way?” he asked.

“I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”

Dominic’s smile disappeared as she drew to a halt, her eyes widening at whatever was ahead, her fingers tightening around his. He mentally cursed his momentary lapse of focus and shifted his eyes to the scene ahead.

The road had begun to narrow halfway down the block before it became almost a tunnel, buttressed by the brick and concrete walls that had been built into the embankments rising on either side of them. Above those were an abundance of overgrown trees and bushes that sagged over the wall, shading it from the sun. The concrete walls rose higher and higher until they met a dark tunnel that passed underneath a large complex of railroad tracks, supplying a road for those trying to get to the other side without holding up traffic for trains to pass. During the attempted evacuations of Atlanta’s citizens, many of the cars that had come this way appeared to have plowed right into the concrete walls on either side of the road, further narrowing and partially blocking the path. Ahead, close to the mouth of the tunnel, was a horde of infected that swarmed out of the darkness, climbing over each other and trying to scramble over vehicles in their haste to get to their prey.

“Oh my God,” Dominic said, taking a step backward. “We’ve got to get the hell out of here!”

“Not happening,” Keith said, coming up behind him, breathless and sounding resigned, like he’d already reached his quota of freaked out for the day. “There’s a bunch behind us too. Shooting the lion was a bad idea.”

“No kidding,” Dominic said. He looked around, taking in their surroundings.

Cade pointed to their right and started in that direction. “There! That way!” she called to them, choosing what looked to be the point of least resistance. She hurried toward the waist-high chain-link fence that lined the road before the concrete wall began and scrambled over it into the shade of the trees and bushes on the other side. “Come on!”

No one hesitated to obey her suggestion, since it seemed like the easiest and most plausible escape route. Cade stood guard, rifle in hand, as first Remy, then Sadie climbed the fence, followed by Dominic and Jude. Keith was the last person to clear the fence and without a moment to spare. When his feet met the soft earth on the other side, the first of the infected reached the fence, the swarm slamming into it with enough force to take it down to the ground.

“Holy shit!” Keith yelped, stumbling, and Jude ducked back to grab his arm and haul him to his feet.

“Move, move, move!” Dominic shouted, waving them out ahead of him. He spun to face the infected, lifted his pistol, and scrambled backwards at the same time, trying to cover their retreat. A hand closed around his backpack and pulled him backwards, and Remy yelled in his ear.

“No time for that shit! They’re coming from the east too!” she shouted, yanking him around to run with her. “Go ahead of me! If anybody can hold them off, it’s me!”

“You don’t know for sure if they’ll ignore you while they’re in a frenzy like this!” Dominic protested.

Remy hesitated, looking between him and the infected with rapid glances. “You’re right, and I don’t feel like chancing dying today. Let’s go!”

They started running, scrambling up the embankment’s steep incline, their eyes on the backs of the others ahead of them. The space underneath the trees was far more shaded than the street, almost too dark to be running in, Dominic realized as he nearly ran right into one of the overgrown saplings that jutted from the ground. There was a building to their right that served as an excellent break for the infected coming from that direction, funneling them and the ones behind them into a bottleneck that slowed their progress.

The group burst into the sunlight again when they reached the edge of six sets of railroad tracks. Dominic caught up with Cade, who was breathing heavily, and they looked in either direction.

“Clear?” Cade asked.

“Yeah,” Dominic confirmed.

The group started across the tracks, stumbling and tripping over railroad ties and rails, trying to outrun the approaching horde. When they were safely across, they ducked underneath the shadow of an overpass that held more tracks, skidding down another steep embankment littered with trees.

Dominic was never so glad as he was then for his feet to meet the reassuring concrete of a sidewalk. He looked back, making sure the others were still with him. They all looked tired and winded, though he didn’t dare let them stop, not until they’d shaken the crowd behind them.

“Which way?” Cade yelled.

They were approaching an intersection. Dominic squinted, trying to make out the street sign ahead as he ran. Was that…? Did that say…?

Yes, it did. Decatur.

“Left! Turn left!” he shouted, making a wide turn and bolting across the street, dodging crashed vehicles and debris. Most of the sidewalks down Decatur were clear, and he tried to keep everyone on them so they wouldn’t expend unnecessary energy trying not to run into things. They were quickly running out of sidewalk. There was an overpass up ahead, choked with vehicles that blocked the path in several places.

Much to Dominic’s surprise, they got halfway across the overpass without any difficulty. When they were dropping into a clearing near the halfway point that would let them run at least twenty yards before having to scramble over more vehicles again, someone behind Dominic shrieked.

He shouted to Cade, “Keep running straight! This will turn into Marietta. Turn right on Spring and then left on Luckie!” He spun around to see who’d screamed.

It was Sadie. She was sprawled on her stomach across the hood of a car, several infected grabbing at her, trying to drag her back over the vehicle and into their waiting hands.

“Keep going!” he ordered Remy when she too stopped and made as if to go back to help. “I got this. Stay with Cade!”

He drew his machete and ran back the way he’d come.

Chapter 22

There was a sharp pain in Cade’s side, and her chest hurt from her struggle to breathe, but she didn’t hesitate to obey Dominic’s orders to keep running. Remy was beside her, pacing herself to Cade’s stride, though Cade knew for a fact that Remy could run faster than she could. She pressed a hand to her side, massaging at the ache there, and glanced behind her long enough to make sure that Keith and Jude were still with her and Remy. They were, though Keith had his hand clasped around Jude’s wrist, and Jude looked like he was trying to resist their forward progress. He probably wanted to go back to help his sister, and Keith was preventing it.

Good for Keith, Cade thought. The last thing they needed was for more people to be separated from the core group. She wasn’t in her best shape, and she had a feeling that, if she were attacked, she’d need as many of them as she could get to help her out of the situation.

As it was, she’d be lucky to make it to the Tabernacle at this rate.

“Not much further!” Remy reassured her, right before Cade stumbled over the shredded remains of a tire that she hadn’t seen and nearly faceplanted onto the pavement. Remy grabbed her arm and steadied her. Cade didn’t have time, or the breath, to thank her, so she just kept running.

The overpass on Decatur was left far behind them as they made it to Marietta, and the sight of the street sign was enough to give Cade her second wind, to motivate her into running faster. All her hope rested in finding Spring Street, on getting to Luckie and to the Tabernacle. She would be damned if she let even exhaustion ruin that hope for her.

Though there were no signs of infected ahead of them, she wasn’t going to take the chance of letting her guard down, not now that she’d gotten this far.

“Cade!” Remy called. Cade barely glanced at her as she powered down the street as best she could. “Spring Street! Just ahead!”

Cade found one last burst of energy somewhere deep within herself, and she surged forward, cutting right onto Spring Street. She slowed, twisting around to look behind them to see if the infected were still following them. When she didn’t see anything behind them, she slowed further, stumbling to a slow jog and then winding down to a walk. Her lungs burned and her muscles ached. She breathed in as deeply as she could, ignoring the pain in her legs. She held her sniper rifle in both shaking hands, clutching it tightly and close to her body. She saw a few infected ahead of them, halfway down the block, but they were trapped in the center of several cars that had crashed into each other, creating a corral of steel that they couldn’t get out of.

“Everybody okay?” she asked once she’d gotten enough air into her lungs to speak. Remy, who’d stopped beside her, nodded, though she was looking beyond them at the trapped infected.

“We’re okay,” Keith reported breathlessly, “but Jude wants to go back to find his sister.” He still had a grip on Jude’s wrist, and Jude struggled against him, trying to wrench himself free, looking like he wanted to bolt back the way they’d come.

“Jude, I know it sucks, but Sadie will be fine,” Cade said, examining their surroundings. “Dominic is helping her. I need you to focus and help me. We’ve got to get to the Tabernacle, and I need your attention on the here and now.” Jude stopped struggling with Keith and glared at her, and she imagined that, if he could speak, she would be getting an earful right now. No matter; she had more important things to attend to. “We can’t be very far away from the Tabernacle,” she added. “Let’s get moving. Stay alert, and don’t stop for anything.”

Despite their mad, exhausting dash, they all moved briskly, weapons at the ready in case anything assaulted them on the rest of their journey. Cade returned her rifle to her shoulder and took out the machete Dominic had insisted they all carry. She wasn’t a fan of bladed weapons when it came to fighting the infected; still, she gripped it tightly in her right hand, walking toward the three infected that were corralled among the cars. She was tempted to climb over the cars and kill them, but ultimately she had neither the time nor the energy to deal with them, especially not when there was a clear path around them to the right.

They cut around the wreckage, squeezing through a small gap between the crushed front end of a truck and the brick wall of a building, and Keith let out a pained swear. Cade twisted around, expecting the worst. She only saw him slipping the rest of the way out of the gap, a hand clamped against the side of his knee.

“What happened?” she demanded.

“I cut my leg,” Keith said, pulling his hand away to look at his pant leg. It was stained with a splotch of blood, and the fabric was torn. “No big deal,” he reported. “Keep going. I’ll keep up.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course.”

Cade turned back to the path ahead. Two cars along the way, there was a figure crouched behind the vehicle, hands gripping the hood as it peered over the edge to stare at them. Its eyes were rheumy and cloudy, and Cade had no idea how it could even see them. Regardless, it was in their path, and she would have to take care of it before they could proceed. She bounced her machete in her hand, speeding up to take on the infected woman that was rising from her spot behind the car.

She was only a few feet away from her, lifting the machete to take her swing, when Remy grabbed her shoulder and shouted, “No, don’t!”

“What the hell are you doing, Remy?” Cade exploded, checking her swing at the last second.

“I’ve got this,” Remy said. The infected woman launched herself across the hood toward Cade. Cade backpedaled, raising the machete into the swing, but Remy put her hand up to stop her and moved closer to the infected woman, staring at her with thinly veiled curiosity. She walked toward the infected woman, who stared up at her like she was enthralled with Remy. When she reached to within arms’ length of the infected woman, she stopped and pointed at a space past her and to the left. “Go away,” she ordered, her voice firm. “Get out of here.”

Much to Cade’s surprise, the infected woman listened to Remy, stumbling away in the direction she’d been ordered to go, periodically looking back toward them, which earned her another barked, “Go!” from Remy.

“What the hell was that?” Cade demanded when the infected woman disappeared from view behind a wrecked transfer truck. Remy shrugged and started walking again. Cade hurried forward and grabbed her shoulder, pulling her around to face her. “What. Was. That?” she asked emphatically.

“I don’t know, okay?” Remy snapped back, her cheeks flushing with anger. “It’s been going on since I…since I dosed myself with the stuff in Derek’s vial. It’s like I can tell them what to do, and they listen to me. Whenever I’m around them, they don’t try to attack me. They just let me pass.”

“And you planned to mention this when?” Cade asked, keeping her voice down with a valiant struggle.

“Never,” Remy mumbled, not looking at her. “It’s not like I like being a freak. The last thing I want to do is go around advertising it.”

Cade shook her head. “You’re not a freak, Remy,” she said. Before she could take the conversation any further, Remy pointed into the distance.

“Luckie Street,” she said.

They’d made it. Cade felt a rush of relief surge through her, and her questioning of Remy was forgotten when she saw the green and white sign hanging from the pole that arched above the street. “Thank God. How far from here?”

“Couple of blocks, I think,” Remy said. “If I’m remembering right, anyway.”

“Do you remember how to get into the building?”

Remy smiled, her earlier anger and frustration clearly forgotten. “Of course I do,” she said.

Chapter 23

Sadie hadn’t once felt scared on the group’s journey to or through Atlanta, not until someone had grabbed her from behind. She wasn’t the screaming type, but a shriek had bubbled up and escaped before she could stop it, echoing off the cars and concrete around her. Fingers closed onto the pant leg of her blue jeans, and she started kicking, striking back at the person clinging to her, bashing the sturdy heel of her combat boot into her assailant’s face.

Then Dominic was there, sliding across the hood of the car on one hip like an action movie star, a machete in his hand and an angry, determined look on his face. Sadie flattened herself against the car’s hood, trying to make sure she was out of his way.

The meaty thunk of the blade biting into flesh met her ears, and she shuddered. The fingers slackened their grip. She turned, snagging her own machete, ready to face whatever was coming their way.

Five more infected had shoved their ways through the cars and were gaining on them, prompting Sadie to take an impulsive step back. This only pressed her against the car she’d fallen on.

Dominic grabbed her arm and tugged her closer to him. “You still got that bow you’ve been toting around?”

“Of course,” Sadie replied.

“Get over the car, use it as a shield, and cover me,” he instructed.

Sadie mimicked his slide across the hood, dumped her ratty, ripped-up backpack onto it, and took her compound bow off her shoulder. In seconds, she had an arrow nocked into place and aimed in Dominic’s direction. She didn’t release the arrow right away, though; she waited for the infected to get closer so she could be assured that her shot wouldn’t miss.

Dominic was doing the same thing, his machete in a two-handed grip as he stood, shoulders squared, ready to swing as soon as they got to within blade’s length. Sadie didn’t understand why they couldn’t just make a run for it. Her best guess was that they were standing as a delaying tactic for the others to get further away, but the cars around them could do just as good a job at that as she and Dominic could. Unless he was doing this as a sign of machismo, and if that were the case, she was sorely tempted to put the arrow she was ready to fire right into his ass.

“Come on, Dominic,” she urged. “Let’s get the hell out of here. These cars can slow them down as well as we can.”

“I don’t want them slowed down,” Dominic replied gruffly. “I want them dead.” He stepped forward and swung his machete downward into a hard and fast stroke. The blow was hard enough to cleave halfway through one of the infected men’s necks, shattering bone and spraying old brown blood onto the pavement. Dominic barely waited for the body to fall to the ground before he moved on to the next attacker, and Sadie knew it was time to get her brain into gear. She lifted her bow, aimed at the infected woman—teenager, her brain corrected—to Dominic’s left, and released the arrow.

In the split second before it embedded in her right eye, Sadie could have sworn that the woman looked right at her with a sense of relief in her eyes.

She shook the sensation off and grabbed another arrow. She couldn’t let anything distract her, not now. Archery demanded a lot of focus if the archer expected to hit the target, and that amount of focus increased the smaller the target got. If she expected to actually kill the infected, she had to aim for the eyes; there wasn’t much elsewhere that she could shoot them that would take them down permanently.

Before she could fire her second arrow, there was a crack of gunfire, a distinctive and familiar sound from Sadie’s childhood, and the infected man that she’d aimed at dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes. Sadie looked around wildly, searching for the source of the shot, as a second bullet took down another infected, leaving them with only one more to deal with. With two brisk swings of his machete, Dominic took care of the last one and slid across the hood to join her.

“Who the hell did that?” Sadie asked, snatching up her ripped backpack and returning the arrow she held to it. “Where did those shots come from?”

“I don’t know, and right now, I don’t care,” Dominic replied. “Call it a guardian angel, and let’s get out of here before we run into a bigger problem. We’ve got to catch up to everybody else.”

Sadie’s nerves were vibrating under her skin, and despite Dominic’s urges to disregard what had happened, she scanned the overpass around them for the source of the shot. Of course, out on an overpass with only cars and trucks around, there wasn’t a living soul in sight besides the two of them.

Guardian angel, indeed, she thought, the ridiculous mental image of an angel in white, flowing robes with massive, fluffy white wings and a sniper rifle in its hands coming to mind. She almost laughed at the thought and refocused her mind on where it needed to be: the area around her, where potential danger lurked. Drawing in a deep breath, she shouldered her backpack and the compound bow and gestured for Dominic to lead the way. As they headed down Decatur at a brisk, ground-eating pace, she said to him, “Thank you.”

“For what?” Dominic asked.

“For coming back to help me,” Sadie said. “Nobody else looked like they were going to do it, not even Jude.” She was aware of how bitter she sounded, and she was beyond caring.

“What’s going on with you and Jude?” Dominic asked.

“What are you talking about?” Sadie asked.

“I’m talking about you and your brother,” Dominic said. “You two have barely spoken to each other beyond the immediate business of survival since we left for Atlanta. You were so close back at the house. What changed that?”

“That’s none of your business,” Sadie grumbled, adjusting her backpack on her shoulder.

“Anything that might threaten the cohesion of this group is my business,” Dominic said. He sounded like he was reciting something he’d heard from someone else.

“Who did you steal that line from?” Sadie asked. “Winston Churchill?”

“If you don’t want to talk about it with me, that’s fine. I will say, though, whatever is going on between the two of you, get it straightened out, because the last thing I want to see happen is your conflict getting in the way of your survival.”

“Whatever,” Sadie grumbled. His warnings didn’t make her want to talk about it. Her feelings still ached over Jude’s angry tirade at her back at the house, when he’d basically told her that he didn’t need her. Things hadn’t felt right since. She’d just been looking out for him like she always had. She didn’t understand why everything had to be different now that they were with this new group of survivors.

It almost made her want to go off somewhere away from other people. Things had been so much simpler before they’d run into Remy and Dominic.

Sadie shook her head. Now was not the time to get lost in her thoughts. If her father saw her now, he would be less than happy with her, and he’d have smacked her against the back of her head to get her to focus.

“I’ll talk it over with him later,” Sadie assured him, “assuming we ever see the others again.”

“We will,” Dominic replied. “If I have to move Heaven and Earth to make it happen, I will. You can count on that.”

“Thanks,” Sadie managed. Her throat was tight, like the word was too big to fit past her vocal cords. She cleared her throat, sticking close to Dominic. “Do you think all of this is a fool’s errand?”

“All of what?”

“This whole thing. Trying to go after Brandt. Do you think it’s an idiot’s quest?”

Dominic’s eyebrow rose, and he stared beyond them at a cluster of wrecked cars. There were three infected people trapped among the wreckage—two men and a woman—but they didn’t pose a direct threat to either of them.

“I haven’t known these people as long or as well as they have known each other,” he started. He paused to help her squeeze through the narrow gap between a car and one of the building’s walls. “One thing I can tell you is that I have never met a group of people more suicidally devoted and protective of each other in my life. These people have risked their lives for each other so many times that it has become second nature to them. In all honesty, I’ve never had anything like that. Cade’s not a fool. If she thinks she can get in and out alive and get Brandt back in the process, I have no doubt she will.”

“You seem to be really confident in her abilities,” Sadie commented, stepping around an abandoned briefcase on the sidewalk.

“And you’re not?” Dominic asked.

Sadie shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t made up my mind on how I feel about any of this.”

“What are you even doing here then?” Dominic asked. “If you have doubts, maybe you and your brother should have stayed behind with Isaac and Dr. Rivers.”

“I’m here because I have to make amends,” Sadie replied. “It’s partially my fault that the infected got to Woodside, that Brandt got taken, and the community fell. If Jude and I had never shown up, Woodside would have been fine and we wouldn’t have to be out here.”

Dominic pointed left at the intersection of Spring and Luckie streets, and they turned in that direction. “You could look at it that way,” he acknowledged. “At the same time, who’s to say they wouldn’t have found us anyway? Me and Remy were outside the community, probably where we shouldn’t have been. Who says they wouldn’t have followed us back to Woodside, regardless of whether or not we’d found you guys?”

“Stop making so much damned sense,” Sadie grumbled, not wanting to admit that he was right.

“I’m just pointing out the obvious, that’s all,” he said. “Come on. I can see the Tabernacle up ahead. Let’s catch up with everybody else and get inside before more infected stumble across us.”

Chapter 24

Ethan, Kimberly, and Chris had walked through the rest of the night before they’d finished traversing the woods and had come out on an embankment that rose to the edge of a highway. It was approaching dawn when the three of them crouched into the shadows of the trees and underbrush lining the road. Ethan couldn’t deny the stir of nervousness in his gut as he studied the road above them, searching for any movement, either good or bad, so he could get a sense of whether or not Chris had led them into a trap.

“What do you think?” Kimberly asked from her spot beside him. “Think it’s safe to go up?”

“Honestly, I don’t know,” Ethan admitted. “I guess it depends on whether or not this guy,” he nodded his head toward Chris, who knelt on his other side, eating a chunk of beef jerky, “lied to us about whether or not he was taking us into a trap for his buddies to pick off.”

“I didn’t lie,” Chris grumbled. He pulled the bag of beef jerky out of his backpack and offered it to Ethan. Ethan accepted two pieces and gave one to Kimberly and the soldier continued. “If I show up with you guys and I don’t have my mask on, I’m committing suicide.”

Ethan stared at him for a long moment, during which Chris shifted uncomfortably under his scrutiny. When he didn’t see anything deceptive about the man’s mannerisms, Ethan refocused on the road ahead. “I think he’s okay.” He nodded toward the road. “One of us should go up there and check things out.”

“I’ll go,” Kimberly volunteered.

Ethan grasped the back of her shirt before she could crawl off. “Wait a minute. I haven’t agreed to that.”

“You haven’t let me pull my weight here,” she replied. “You’ve been doing everything and keeping me in the background. I understand it’s because you want to protect me, but you can’t expect me to stand back while you do all the work. Let me do this one thing, okay?”

“Fine,” Ethan said grudgingly. “If you get into trouble, I’m going to be right there behind you.”

“It’s an empty highway. What sort of trouble could I possibly get into?”

“You trying to tempt fate?” Ethan asked. “Go before I change my mind, would you?”

“Aye, aye, captain,” Kimberly said. She gave him her backpacks and started to work her way up the embankment, crawling through the thick, dew-dampened grass toward the highway above. Ethan’s eyes locked onto her slender form as she made her way toward the highway, and he found himself leaning forward, like he could will himself to be climbing the embankment right beside her.

His desire to be at Kimberly’s side must have shown on his face, because Chris cleared his throat to get his attention and asked, “So, how long have you two had something going on?”

“What?” Ethan blinked and glanced at him, then returned his eyes to Kimberly. She’d reached the top of the embankment and was crouched on the balls of her feet, her fingers resting against the grass for balance.

“You two,” Chris said, waving his hand back and forth between Ethan and Kimberly. “How long have you been together?”

“What makes you think we’re together?” Ethan asked, raising an eyebrow.

Chris shrugged. “Maybe the way you’re overprotective of her,” he said. “I figured you’re either together or she’s your sister, but with the way you look at her, I think the sister option is out.”

Ethan didn’t answer the question. He scooped up the bags Kimberly had given him and started to edge out into the tall grass to move closer to her. “Stay here,” he ordered before easing to a halfway point between Chris and Kimberly. “Hey!” he whisper-shouted to her, raising his voice as much as he dared. Kimberly turned to look at him. “What do you see?”

“A whole lot of nothin’,” she replied. “Looks like the military has already been through here. The road’s roughed up, and everything is shoved to the sides. It shouldn’t be hard for us to get where we’re going if we can find a car that works.”

“We’ll look for something diesel,” Ethan said. “Gas is probably well beyond bad at this point. Then again, considering the little I actually know about diesel fuel, it’s probably gone bad too.”

“It won’t hurt to check, will it?” Kimberly suggested with a tired smile. She still held the piece of beef jerky in her hand, and she ripped off a chunk with her teeth and started chewing. “Either way, we’ve got to do something. These samples aren’t going to hold forever, and this is already taking longer than I’d expected and hoped for.”

“Understood,” Ethan stated. He glanced back to make sure Chris was still in the tree line. “I’m sorry if it seems like I’m trying to take control of everything.” She opened her mouth to argue, and he shook his head. “Really, I mean it. I can be a bit of a control freak and more than a little impatient, and you are a saint for willingly putting up with my crap.”

“It’s not like you’re that hard to deal with, Ethan,” Kimberly protested. “I know you do things the way you do because you care, which is more than I can say for most people.”

“Yeah, well, this is supposed to be more of a democracy than what I’ve been allowing. I want you to have a say in what we’re doing.”

“And him?” Kimberly indicated the soldier huddled in the trees. “Does he get any say?”

Ethan didn’t look back at Chris. “Why should he?” he asked. “We’re at war, Kim. For all intents and purposes, he’s essentially our prisoner of war. Why should we not treat him as such?”

“Ethan,” Kimberly sighed, pressing her lips into a tight line, “when you made him take his gas mask off, you made him one of us. He won’t do anything to sabotage us, because he is one of us. It’s basic survival, status quo bullshit. We both know that. We played that game with Alicia Day, remember?”

Ethan remembered all right. He remembered that redheaded bitch in combat boots all too well. She’d played him, fucked with him—and his head and his emotions—really good before having him locked away in a bare hotel suite in the Westin in downtown Atlanta. It was a hard thing for him to admit that he’d begun to like her, to care for her, as bizarre and borderline crazy as she had been. But he had, right until she’d turned on him and tried to kill all of his friends.

His heart had hardened after that, and he wasn’t sure it had thawed completely after Derek cured him.

As he thought that, he looked at Kimberly, and his doubts of whether that was true surfaced again. He shunted them aside for now; he had more important things to worry about than how he might feel about the woman in front of him.

Chris still knelt on one knee, right where Ethan had left him, his expression openly worried and curious. He was probably wondering what they were discussing, and considering how many times Ethan and Kimberly had looked back at him, he probably knew it was about him.

“Fine,” he muttered, raking his hand through his too-long blond hair. “You win. We’ll give him a vote.”

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Kimberly asked, and a large grin spread across her face. “Things always go so much better when we’re all getting along.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Ethan agreed reluctantly. “What are you thinking we should do? Once we find an operable vehicle and get to this Eden place that Chris mentioned, what then?”

“I guess it depends on what we find when we get there,” she said. She looked past him. “I bet I know just the person who can help us with that.”

“We’re wasting time standing here, so why don’t we grill him while we walk?” Ethan suggested. “Not a moment to lose and all that shit.”

Kimberly took her backpacks from Ethan, shouldering them and adjusting them until they were comfortable. She blew a short, shrill whistle for Chris’s attention and beckoned to him. “Come on, get up here, soldier,” she called. “We’ve got a bunch of questions to ask you and a lot of distance to cover, so we’re pulling double duty.”

Over the following hour, Kimberly and Ethan learned depressingly little about Eden from Chris. It was through no fault of Chris’s; apparently, he’d only had the opportunity to go to Eden once, when his unit had been temporarily transferred there for additional training six months before. He had barely been allowed off the training grounds, or out of the barracks and the cafeteria, so he hadn’t had the chance to take a look at the facilities there. Despite that, he was able to give them a few details about the Wall in general that would hopefully help them in their quest.

“It’s about fifty feet tall,” Chris told them. “It varies in height in spots because of the quality of the building materials and the stability of the ground and everything, but for the most part, it averages around fifty feet tall all the way across. Two hundred yards in front of the Wall on this side, every tree, bush, building, whatever has been completely cleared out. Even the grass has been dug up and razed, and they’ve sprayed pesticides to keep all plant life dead.”

“Why would they do that?” Kimberly asked.

“Can’t have trees and tall grass hiding the infected,” Ethan answered for Chris. He looked at the soldier and prompted, “What else?”

“Not much else, man,” Chris replied. “Except for the fact that if you step into the two hundred yard no fly zone, you’ll get your head shot off by a sniper on the Wall.”

“Well, fuck,” Ethan muttered. “You couldn’t have mentioned that sooner? And don’t tell me it wasn’t relevant.”

“Wasn’t going to say it wasn’t relevant,” Chris argued. “Just that it didn’t initially cross my mind because I’ve never been on this side of the Wall before, so it’s never come up.”

“Never come up,” Ethan muttered, scrubbing his hand through his hair. “Fine, I’ll pretend like I believe that. What are the chances we’ll be able to get someone to listen to us without shooting us on sight?”

“I…honestly have no idea,” Chris confessed. “Once again, it’s something that’s never come up. We were always told that everyone behind the Wall was infected with the virus and contagious. The thought of someone walking up to the Wall and wanting to have a chat with someone there was inconceivable, so there were never any protocols written for that kind of thing.”

“I’m so sick of words like ‘protocols,’” Kimberly said. “I got enough of that shit from Alicia, and now I get to hear more of it? Great.”

“It’s the military,” Ethan replied. “What else do you expect?” He turned his focus back to Chris, who stared down the road with a blank look on his face. “What else do you think is important that we know that’s never come up before?”

“I think that’s all I can tell you,” Chris said. “The little I know is piecemeal. Which is probably still more than what conscripts know.”

“Conscript?” Kimberly repeated.

“Yeah, the draft is back in force,” he said. “They made us all register for it, good and proper, alongside the other guys who registered in the past. Except this time, they made the women register too. Unless you have religious, physical, or mental reasons for not being able to be drafted, everyone gets to participate in the big clean up.” He shook his head. “Things are definitely not the way they were when I was growing up. I guess the threat of a total zombie apocalypse will do that to the world.”

“How did the rest of the world fare in all of this?” Ethan asked. “We’ve always thought that everybody was involved, that the whole world was affected by the virus, and we’re only just now learning that that apparently wasn’t true.”

“The southeastern United States was definitely the solitary passenger on the good ship SS Shitstorm,” Chris said. “There were very, very minor outbreaks, mostly around airports and some universities, and those got put down quickly. The world learned from what happened here. I think the key words now are ‘constant vigilance.’”

“What about civilian life?” Kimberly asked. “Is that still the same?”

“As can be expected, considering the changes,” Chris said. “I told you about the blood tests, but for the most part, everyone goes about their business. They spend time with friends, they go to the movies, they eat out at restaurants, all the stuff that typical life is like. It’s just that more of them do it while armed.”

“Sounds positively idyllic,” Ethan grumbled, thinking back on the trials and tribulations he and everyone he knew had been through for two years. The constant fear, the running, the hiding, the foraging, everything felt like it had been unnecessary. He shoved the bitterness aside. There was no point in dwelling on it right this second.

Kimberly tapped his arm to get his attention, and he slogged out of the bitter thoughts he’d been wallowing in to look at her. “I think I see a diesel truck up ahead,” she said, pointing down the road toward one of the many vehicles shoved along the shoulder.

“Can you tell how badly it’s banged up?”

“Not from this far away,” she said. “We’d have to get closer to check things out.”

Ethan looked at Chris. “You want to take the lead?” he asked, remembering what he’d promised Kimberly about including the man and not treating him so much like a prisoner.

“Sure,” Chris said. He held his hand out toward Ethan. “Can I have my rifle back?”

Ethan stared at him, trying to gauge the wisdom of handing Chris’s weapon back to him. Finally, he took the rifle off his shoulder, holding it in a two-handed grip across his torso. “Rules,” he said. “Number one, and the most important, if you see something, don’t automatically shoot it. At least give us the chance to check things out and see what it is and whether or not it actually deserves shooting.”

“Agreed,” Chris said. “No jumpy trigger fingers.”

“Number two, don’t shoot either one of us,” Ethan said. “Don’t shoot yourself, either.”

“What makes you think I would shoot myself?” Chris asked.

“You would be very surprised at what some people would feel themselves driven to at the sight of what we’ll probably face at multiple points on this trip,” Ethan said. “Shooting targets on a rifle range is a hell of a lot different from shooting people. And they are people. Never make the mistake of thinking of them as monsters. They aren’t. They’re just people, sick people, through no fault of their own. They should be pitied, not hated.”

Chris hesitated, and Ethan could understand why. It was hard to deal with being told something that ran counter to one’s training, just like it was hard to deal with learning that the world was far different than what he’d thought for two years, that the world had moved on without the southeast. The soldier nodded, slowly, as if he were coming to some sort of understanding.

Ethan extended his arms, holding out the rifle. Chris took it, running his hands along it caressingly. “What do you say we team up and try to save the world?”

Chapter 25

Remy remembered the way Brandt had gotten them into the Tabernacle the year before, their mad, awkward scramble up and over the dumpster with Cade’s mostly unconscious body and the sheer relief she felt once they’d made it inside the darkened building. They’d taken the same path into the building this time, though she didn’t feel the relief that she’d felt before. This time she felt sheer terror and fear.

Dominic was still out there, and he had no idea how to get in here with them. What if he got killed trying to find the entrance? What if he never actually made it to the Tabernacle? Remy didn’t know if she could handle that. The thought made her want to vomit.

“Can I please go out and look for them?” she asked, her voice echoing in the cavernous main room filled with folding tables and chairs and scattered papers. They’d already searched the premises for impending danger, and once they’d discovered they were safe, Cade had dropped to the floor to start gathering the papers that had been left on the hardwood. That was where she was now, snatching up papers and stacking them haphazardly in a pile nearby, Jude and Keith doing the same on the other side of the room.

“Remy, I need you here,” Cade answered, her words directed towards the floor.

“What for?” Remy demanded. “It’s not like I’m doing anything.”

“Then get busy doing something,” Cade snapped back.

“This is so fucked up,” Remy grumbled. She snatched up a token sheet of paper and slammed it onto one of the folding tables. The slap of her palm against the tabletop echoed throughout the room. “You’re just going to leave them out there?”

“No, I’m not,” Cade said. “Dominic is a very capable man. They’ll be fine and—”

Remy slammed her hand against the table again. “You don’t know that,” she said. “They might need our help! Ask Jude how he feels about this. His sister is out there!”

“What do you care?” Cade shot back. “You’ve never cared about anybody but yourself!”

“That’s not true!”

“That most certainly is true,” Cade said, rising from the floor to face Remy head on. “Why are you even here? It’s not like you give a shit about Brandt!”

“What the fuck, Cade?” Remy demanded.

Keith approached, stepping between the two women before either one of them could resort to blows.

“Ladies, cut it out,” he ordered. “You too, Cade,” he added when she opened her mouth to say something. “We’ve got more important shit going on. Stop bitching at each other. Cade, why don’t you let Remy go outside and wait on top of the dumpster? She’s not being of any use in here, and we could probably use a lookout.” Remy glared at him, and he held his hands up defensively. “What? I’m on your side here!”

Remy spun on her heel, snatched her backpack up from where she’d left it on the floor nearby, and stormed toward the exit they’d come in through with every intention of doing exactly what Keith had suggested.

“I’m sorry. I’m just so on edge,” Cade said to Keith.

Remy paused outside the door to draw in a deep breath of the shockingly clean air, trying to steady herself. Cade wasn’t the only one on edge. She made her way to the dumpster they’d climbed to get inside the fence that surrounded the building. She settled down on the dumpster’s cold steel lid, tucking her feet underneath her and leaning back against the fencepost, staring at the street beyond the Tabernacle.

The circular tower of the Westin loomed over everything like a behemoth. It looked so dark, so threatening, even in the daylight that reflected off its remaining windows. It was in that building that her life had so irrevocably changed, that she’d felt the pain of teeth sinking into her arm and the jab of needles when Ethan had dosed her with the medication to prevent her from turning. It was in that building that Ethan himself had turned and attacked her, destroying in that one instant any love and positive feeling she’d had for him.

Perhaps she hadn’t truly loved him if her feelings could be changed so easily?

The thought was a revelation, hitting her with the ferocity of a lightning bolt to the chest. She hadn’t ever loved him, at least not like that. Sure, she’d loved him like a friend, and she’d even been attracted to him. Who wouldn’t be drawn to his vivid green eyes, dark blond hair, and the sardonic way he smiled at the world? But, as multiple women’s magazines would have told anybody who’d picked them up before the world fell apart, physical attraction didn’t equal love.

Remy tried to shake loose from those depressing thoughts and focus instead on what was in front of her, watching for Sadie and Dominic. When the mental image of Dominic crossed her mind, her attention turned fully onto him instead of her job.

Now that was an attractive man. Remy hadn’t seen it before, not when they’d first met, when Dominic had been part of Alicia’s crew and had broken into their safe house and kidnapped Cade. She’d shot him then, a near-perfect bullet plugged right into his shoulder. Unfortunately, it hadn’t been where she’d actually aimed at—she’d been aiming for his head—but that had worked out in the end. He turned out to be a damn good ally despite that and despite the near constant animosity he’d gotten from the survivors from Atlanta that they’d gathered in Woodside. Remy had to admit that he was a better person than she was; she didn’t know that she would have been able to tolerate the looks of hatred and bitterness lobbed at him daily. She would have left long before all that had started.

Not that she’d had a choice in whether or not to leave. Derek had refused to give her the cure like he’d given Ethan. He’d kept putting it off, giving her excuse after excuse, until she hadn’t been able to take it anymore.

She looked down at her hands resting against her thighs and flexed them, curling and uncurling her fingers. She still didn’t understand what had happened to her, why she appeared to be invincible to the infected. It terrified and enthralled her at the same time, and she itched to test her limits with them, to see how far she could go before they tried to kill her.

As if on cue, a single infected woman stumbled out from behind one of the Army Humvees abandoned in the parking lot beside the Tabernacle. Remy sat up straighter, looking her over with naked curiosity. She looked like she was in her early twenties, dark haired, wearing a thin tank top and jeans that were tattered with wear and tear, a variety of tattoos covering her visible skin. Her earlobes had been stretched, and one of them had a large black plug in it. The other was ripped through, like someone had tried to fight her off and had snagged the piece of jewelry and torn it out. There was a small piercing in her eyebrow too, and another tiny jewel in her nose. She looked like she’d been at a concert when the virus had claimed her, and Remy imagined the chaos that had ensued at venues like that, when the virus had broken out in the general admission, standing room only places and torn through the mosh pits like a knife through tissue paper. She shuddered, glad that she hadn’t been at a concert herself when the virus had gotten to New Orleans.

No, you were just in jail is all, her brain reminded her, and she mentally ran from the thought as quickly as she could. She shoved herself into a standing position on the dumpster and walked to the edge closest to the parking lot, leaving the gate behind her open so she could get away from the infected woman quickly if it came to that. It was about time she started testing her limits. In the middle of a fight wouldn’t be the ideal time to find out that her apparent power and control over the infected petered out the more there were around her.

The infected barely noticed Remy as she moved to the edge of the dumpster and stood there, staring down at the dirty, tattered woman. On impulse, Remy reached for her sheathed bolo knife, but she stopped herself as her fingers brushed the hilt. She didn’t need the knife, she reminded herself. She was, by all appearances, immune.

Remy took a deep breath and sat on the edge of the dumpster, then slid to the ground. Her tennis shoes barely made a sound when they met the pavement. The infected woman immediately drew to attention, stumbling around to look at her, shuffling with the weariness of someone who’d walked long, hard miles and was exhausted. Remy could sympathize.

The woman staggered toward her, a look of obvious hunger on her face, then stopped short when she got within arm’s reach of Remy, a note of confusion creeping over her face. She reached out, her arm wavering in the air between them, and Remy fought the urge to take a step back as old impulses fought for control. She wrinkled her nose at the smell coming off of her, invading her senses.

The woman stank. There was no other word for it. The odor coming off her was of unwashed bodies, sweat, dried blood, vomit, feces, and urine, all mixed into a perfect perfume that could probably be called Eau de Disgusting. On closer inspection, she looked like she had two years’ worth of rankness collected on her skin, clothes, and in her hair. It was enough to make the strongest stomach yak.

Remy pressed her wrist against her nose to block the smell and breathed through her mouth. She took a cautious step toward the infected woman, her curiosity overcoming her normal aversion to the infected. The woman stared at her as she moved closer, and she lifted her dirty, desiccated hand again. This time, Remy didn’t back away and the woman’s fingers brushed against her shirt. She managed to stay still for almost twenty seconds while the sick woman edged closer and closer to her, and then she backpedaled away from her, her instincts taking over. Controlled by her animal brain, Remy drew her bolo knife and raised it in a sharp swing, embedding it into her neck. The blade ate through the thin neck, cleaving into the muscle and veins and tearing down to the spine, where the edge of the blade stopped, unable to go any further. She wrenched the blade free. Blood splattered on the pavement and down the front of the woman’s shirt, and Remy felt an unexpected pang of regret at what she’d done.

The dead woman stumbled closer to her, her hands grasping at Remy’s shirt like she was begging with her. She looked into the dead eyes and imagined she saw horror and pleading inside them. Seemingly of its own accord, Remy’s hand raised the bolo knife and struck again, slicing the rest of the way through the neck, severing the spinal cord. The now truly dead woman collapsed to the pavement bonelessly, lying in a heap at Remy’s feet, her head rolling to rest several feet away.

“Oh God,” Remy breathed. Her hand went slack, and the knife tumbled from her grip to the pavement with a soft clang. She staggered backwards, bumping into the dumpster and sagging against it. She slid to the ground, balancing on the balls of her feet, grasping her head with her hands. “Oh my God, what did I do that for?” she asked out loud, her voice sounding stuffy to her ears, like she was fighting to not cry. She sat up straight, banging her head against the dumpster. “Why am I even upset about this? It’s just a fucking infected woman.” She had an impulse to stick her foot out and kick the body. Another impulse to not harm the infected warred against it. She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes hard enough that she saw stars, and she blew out a slow breath.

“What the hell is wrong with me?” She shook her head, attempting to shuck the foreign thoughts from her mind. This was so unlike her, to feel anything resembling pity for the infected.

She tried to distract herself from those thoughts and focused on her surroundings. She was supposed to be watching out for Dominic and Sadie’s return, and instead, she was out here having a meltdown. She scooped her bolo knife up from the pavement, took a rag out of her back pocket, carefully cleaned the blade, and returned it to its sheath. Taking a second to make sure she still had all of her belongings, she chose one of the large military trucks parked in the small parking lot alongside the building and went to it, hopping up onto the step by the passenger door and grasping for hand and footholds to climb up on top of it. It was exhausting work at first, but as she scrambled onto the edge of the opened passenger window’s frame, she felt herself getting into the groove of climbing until she stood on the roof of the cab, the cool mid-morning breeze ruffling her hair. She squinted into the brightening sunlight, her dark eyes scanning the street for any sign of her two remaining companions.

When there was no immediate sign of them, Remy looked around the parking lot, taking a mental inventory of what was there. There were at least three dozen military-style vehicles, though she couldn’t have told anyone who asked what kind they were. The only vehicles she recognized were the Humvees, and there were eight of those, lined up in a neat row near the far edge of the parking lot. There had been nine of them before, she remembered. Brandt had taken one of them the year before, when he’d evacuated her, Cade, and Gray out of Atlanta. It hadn’t been a comfortable ride, and it wasn’t one she was eager to repeat.

She looked at the cargo-like truck she was standing on top of and wondered what was in the canvas-covered storage area. Probably a whole lot of nothing, considering the Tabernacle’s proximity to the Westin. That had been one of the number one complaints that Isaac and his crew had had regarding the group of survivors that had lived in the Westin: they’d taken everything—food, water, medicine, weapons, ammunition—and hoarded it for themselves inside the towering hotel, leaving nothing for the rest of the small enclaves of survivors inside the city’s limits.

She lowered herself to her knees and crawled toward the rear of the truck, staying on the metal cab since she didn’t know how sturdy the canvas covering was. She reached behind her, withdrew a hunting knife from the sheath on the back of her belt, and stretched her arm out as far as she could reach. She stabbed the blade into the canvas and dragged the knife toward her, ripping a slice through the material and creating a gap she could look through. She returned the knife to its sheath and grabbed her flashlight, shining it into the darkness below.

To her surprise, Remy spotted several unlabeled, dark green crates inside the truck, stacked against the end closest to her. She had no way of knowing what was inside the crates or why Alicia Day’s people had decided to leave them behind, but the sight of them ate her up with curiosity. With one more glance down the road to assess whether or not Sadie and Dominic were returning, she grasped either side of the cut in the canvas and pulled, tearing it open wider so she could climb inside. She took a deep breath, grabbed one of the canvas canopy’s supports in her left hand and the edge of the cab in her right, and lowered her slim body through the tear into the gaping maw of the truck’s cargo area.

The inside of the truck’s bed was faintly pungent, and a shine of the flashlight around the interior revealed why: there was the dead body of a soldier lying face down on the floor of the truck a few feet away from the crates, so close that Remy almost stepped on it. She cringed, sidestepping away from the dead man for fear of disrespecting his corpse, and turned her attention to the crates, wondering if the body was why Alicia’s people had left this behind.

But no, a body wouldn’t be enough to deter Alicia’s crew. They had been used to seeing bodies. Hell, they’d been used to making dead bodies out of formerly live ones. She moved the flashlight’s beam around, searching for booby traps and other potential dangers. When she didn’t see anything, she checked the body for anything useful, found a grenade, and stuffed it in her backpack. She grasped the heavy black metal clasps on the case and unfastened them, then lifted the lid.

“Holy shit!” Remy gasped as she saw what was inside. If she wasn’t mistaken, she was looking at an entire case full of C4 and all the detonators she’d need to make the plastic explosives into bombs.

She almost abandoned the back of the truck and went to get Cade. Almost.

Brandt wasn’t the only person who liked a good explosion. Remy was rather fond of the spectacular sight, and she was no stranger to creating ones for herself. She had, after all, singlehandedly blown up an entire kitchen and killed the infected inside of it the year before. She hadn’t admitted it then, not even to herself, but the sight of the fireball going up, the rush of air being sucked inward toward the fire and blowing out, the debris flying into the air and littering the ground below…it had given her more than just a little thrill. She could only imagine what this haul would do.

She swung her backpack around and unzipped it, shining her light inside to see how much room she had in it. Not nearly enough to take as much as she wanted, so she started pulling things she considered unnecessary out of her bag: mostly clothes and food, since she didn’t think she needed either one. She hadn’t felt the need to eat at all since she’d injected herself with the fluid from Derek’s vial. Once she’d cleared enough space in her backpack, she started grabbing the bricks of C4 and the detonators, packing them into her backpack. When she was done with that case, she shouldered the pack, making sure it wasn’t too heavy, and shoved the case out of the way to see what was inside the one below it.

That one was empty, though it wasn’t a big deal. She had found plenty of fun stuff. She wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

She stepped over the body on the truck bed and strode to the tailgate, hopped down from the truck, and started toward Luckie Street, looking back at the Tabernacle only once as she made her way past the row of cars alongside the edge of the road to stand in the center of the street.

She was tempted, so very tempted, to bail. To just take what she had on her and walk away and keep walking until she got back to Louisiana. She was too far away from home. She wanted to be on the familiar soil of her home, to stand in the middle of Bourbon Street and smell the spilled alcohol and hear the shouts of drunken revelers during Mardi Gras, to drink chicory coffee and eat beignets at the Cafe du Monde, to breathe in deep the earthy scent of the bayous that littered the entire state. None of that existed anymore, she reminded herself. Well, except for the bayous. Those would always exist, populated with snakes and alligators and the odd bayou hermit that was probably, even now, surviving as he’d always had out in the wilderness. She wanted to crawl right into the bayou and build her own home there where no one and nothing could find her.

She knew she couldn’t do that. Not because she wanted to help Cade—the woman had done more than enough to piss her off to tempt her into walking—but because she wanted to help Brandt. It was impossible for her to forget what the man had done for her earlier that year, when she and Gray had followed him into Atlanta to rescue Cade from Alicia’s clutches. Though he hadn’t been able to save Gray, he’d fought to protect her from Alicia and her cronies, and she could never repay him for keeping her alive when she’d been up to her eyeballs in more trouble than she’d banked on.

She owed him. There was no other way around it. She had to help Cade. Helping Cade meant helping Brandt, and she owed him.

Remy’s problem with temptation was decided for her. As she stood in the middle of Luckie Street, staring off into the middle distance, someone shouted her name. It was a familiar male voice, and her heart leaped. She looked around frantically, searching for the source of the voice, and saw Dominic coming towards her from the direction of Marietta, Sadie behind him. She broke into a run, racing across the torn-up asphalt to him and flinging her arms around him in a tight, exuberant hug.

“Oh my God, you made it!” she exclaimed. “I was so worried that you…” She trailed off and shook her head. “No matter. You’re back!” She took a step backwards to look him over and frowned. He was dirtied and stained with blood, and his dark skin was damp with sweat. Sadie didn’t look much better. Remy regretted leaving her water bottles and extra food in the truck where she’d found the explosives. “Are you okay?”

“As well as can be expected,” Dominic said. “How do we get inside?”

“Follow me,” Remy replied. She turned on her heel to lead the two of them to the dumpster. Sadie cut in front of them, boosting herself up onto the dumpster, and Dominic followed, turning to offer Remy a hand. Though she didn’t need it, she accepted it anyway, letting him pull her onto the dumpster, and the three of them slipped through the gate. After securing the entrance, they went inside the building, and the door swung closed behind them.

Chapter 26

“Because I’m going to do my damnedest to break you out of here.”

After Lindsey had made her dramatic declaration and left his cell, Brandt had remained lying on his back, staring at the blank ceiling, fighting off a rising sense of hope. He had an ally, one coming from completely unexpected quarters, and a song about small worlds kept ringing through his head in an incessant loop as he contemplated the possibilities. Small world indeed. Who would have ever predicted that he’d run into his sister-in-law, of all people, in a place like this?

His brain sobered once again. He’d been going through a mental loop over and over since he’d been shut away in that cell, rising hope as the idea of getting out of there was dangled tantalizingly in his grasp and crushing despair when the reminder that Cade might not be alive anymore reasserted itself. The never-ending slosh from one emotion to the other was giving him a monster of a migraine.

He pushed himself to a sitting position and scrubbed at his face with both hands, scowling when he felt the stubble sprouting on his cheeks. He hadn’t shaved in several days even before he’d been captured, and he could feel the beginnings of a beard. He smelled pretty badly by now, too, and he wondered how hard he’d have to beg to get a shower here. He was sure if they had electricity, like the fluorescent lights above his head suggested, then they had to have running water, even beyond the high-pressure hose they’d taken to him when he’d first arrived. He wondered if he’d be allowed to use a shower if he asked.

While Brandt stewed over this and debated whether or not to ask, the sound of his cell door unlocking drew his attention. He sat up straighter and scooted down the bed, further away from the door. Private Bayer stepped inside, holding a plastic tray loaded with food. Beyond the door, Brandt could see Private Hutcherson standing guard in the hallway. Other than these two, there didn’t appear to be anyone else guarding him. Bayer set the tray down on the foot of the bed and left the room without saying a word.

Brandt waited until the door swung shut with a clang before he moved toward the tray. There was a turkey and cheese sandwich on it, alongside an apple and a paper carton of milk. It was the kind of lunch that would have been served at an elementary school cafeteria, and he scowled again, realizing that there were only enough calories on the tray to keep him at a subsistence level. Despite that, he grabbed the sandwich and took a bite, savoring the first taste of fresh bread and sliced turkey and cheese—fucking cheese—that he’d had in quite some time. He didn’t care that the turkey was salty, like it’d come from a grocery store Oscar Meyer package, or that the cheese was obviously “processed cheese product,” as the packages always said. It was different from the fare he’d been eating over the past two years, and that made it delicious.

Brandt finished off the sandwich and milk on the tray, then put it by the door and flopped back onto his bed, starting in on the apple. He ate it slowly, staring at the steel cell door, contemplating how to get through it without getting himself killed. Meal time was a weakness if they were going to make it a habit to come into the cell with only one guard standing by. He’d have to watch more carefully during the next meal time to see if the same held true, and if it did, he was going to figure out how to slip the information to Lindsey so she could use it. Maybe meal delivery would be a good time for her to bust him out of here.

Half an hour after he’d finished the apple and returned the core to the tray, the door unlocked and creaked open again, and Bayer leaned inside to pick up the tray. Brandt peered out the door as discreetly as he could, and once again, the only person visible was Hutcherson. Brandt cleared his throat to get the soldier’s attention and when Bayer looked at him, he said, “I think I’m ready to talk.”

Bayer straightened, and Brandt saw excitement coming into the man’s eyes. “I’ll go get Major Bradford.”

“No,” Brandt replied before the man could leave. “I won’t talk to him. I like that bastard about as much as I like head lice. I want to talk to Dr. Alton.”

“I don’t…I don’t know if I can do that,” Private Bayer said, his tone wary.

“I’m not talking to anyone but Dr. Alton. If you can’t get me Dr. Alton, then I’m not talking at all.”

Bayer stared at him for a long moment, and then he nodded. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said. He backed out of the cell and shut the door behind him with a clang.

A slow smile spread across Brandt’s face. His plan was now officially in motion.

Chapter 27

Within an hour after Dominic and Sadie arrived at the Tabernacle, they’d finished helping Cade gather all the paperwork scattered across tables and the floor, and she, Jude, and Keith were sitting on the stage sorting through it all in search for information on where Brandt might have been taken. Dominic kept looking at Remy when she wasn’t looking at him, watching her scoop up sheets of paper and stack them together without looking at them. His brain was muddled, confused over what had happened out on the street when he and Sadie had arrived, when Remy had looked at him with such wholehearted relief and had thrown herself on him. He wanted to know what it meant, what she’d been thinking, why she’d been so relieved that he’d come back.

He hoped it meant what his instincts thought it meant. Because if it didn’t, he was going to be crushed.

Dominic looked at the stage. Cade was rooting through the papers with a look of intense concentration on her face. Sadie wandered up, leaning against the stage and talking to Cade in a low voice. Dominic tore his eyes away, scanning the room, accounting for everyone. The only person left was Remy, and she wasn’t in the room with them. He frowned, wondering which way she went, and decided to go look for her.

He headed toward the back of the theater area, weaving between tables and chairs and passing the bar at the back to step out of the general admission area. The large, door-less frame led out into a lobby area with stairs that went up on either side, leading to the balcony. Nearby, there was a flight of stairs that went to a darkened basement area where, if Dominic recalled correctly, band merchandise sales used to take place. He aimed his flashlight beam down the staircase, and when he didn’t see anything, he decided to check upstairs in the balcony first.

After a quick debate, he took the stairs on the right and started to climb. The old wooden stairs creaked underfoot as he ascended to the landing, pausing at the short bar there before continuing on to the balcony level. He stepped through the door near the top of the stairs, looking at the rows of seats that lined the balcony, which curved around the lower floor general admission area in a semi-circle. He could see Cade and the others on the stage below, talking and sorting through papers. He angled his flashlight toward the seats, trailing the beam along the rows until it landed on a figure sitting in the back closest to the balcony’s bar. The figure didn’t move as the light played over it, and he angled the beam away and started in that direction.

He slid into the cushioned seat next to Remy. She lifted the glass bottle of vodka she had and took a swig out of it, not looking at him. She held the bottle loosely in her right hand, which she draped over the leg she had propped against the back of the seat in front of her.

“Enjoying the view?” he asked, shifting in his seat to mimic her pose, propping his feet up onto the seat in front of him.

Remy shrugged and took another swig from the bottle. The clear fluid sloshed as she lowered it. “What’s the point in all this?” she asked, staring toward the floor below. “If there isn’t any information in those papers, what’s Cade planning to do? Start wandering around the entire fucking world until she stumbles across Brandt?”

“You know as well as I do that if that’s what it takes, that’s what she’ll do,” Dominic said. “However, something tells me that’s not why you’re hiding up here drinking…” He took the bottle away from her to look at the label, “…some surprisingly expensive vodka. What’s wrong?”

Remy sighed and reached out like she was going to take the bottle back from him, but her hand dropped to the armrest between them. “There’s nothing exactly wrong,” she said and shook her head. “I take that back. Everything is wrong.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know,” she said. She sighed, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “I’ve been thinking too much, I guess.”

Dominic offered the bottle back to her. She took it, though she didn’t drink from it. “If you want to talk, I’m here.”

Remy smiled tightly before looking away again. “I know you are. But it’s hard to talk to you about my problems when you are my problem.”

Dominic looked at her with wide-eyed confusion. “Did I do something wrong? If I did, please tell me, and I’ll try to fix it.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Remy said, studying the vodka bottle like it was the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen. “It’s me. I’m all mixed up in here.” She tapped the side of her head with a fingertip, and Dominic caught her hand in his and gave it a squeeze. “I’m confused over a lot of stuff. Like…” she glanced at him like she was embarrassed, “…like you.”

Dominic’s mind dredged up the way she’d leaped on him when he reached the Tabernacle. His skin tingled at the memory, and he shifted in his cushioned seat with discomfort. “Does this have to do with what happened outside on the street?”

Remy sighed and set the vodka bottle on the floor by her feet. She twisted in her seat, shifting to sit closer to him, so close that her shoulder rested against his. She looked at him with wide eyes shadowed in the near total darkness of the balcony. “I’m scared,” she said. “Not just of what you’d think. I’m scared about what’s going on with me physically, but honestly? I’m absolutely fucking terrified of what’s going on in my head, at least in regards to you.”

Dominic’s heart leaped in his chest, and hope swelled. “Why are you scared of me?”

Remy tucked a leg underneath her so she could face him. “Do you remember when we left Woodside, before we found Sadie and Jude?” He nodded. “Do you remember what you said to me in the woods, that you wanted to kiss me but you couldn’t?”

“Yeah, I remember that,” Dominic said. He set the flashlight on the floor, the beam aiming toward the ceiling above them so it bounced off and lit the area with a faint glow.

“Were you serious, or were you just saying that to make me feel better at the time?”

Dominic smiled and caught a stray lock of her hair that had fallen out from behind her ear. “I don’t say things that I don’t mean,” he said, “especially when it comes to stuff like that.”

She pressed her lips together and looked away from him, her eyes shiny. “Do you, you know, still feel like that? Because I wouldn’t mind…if it was safe.”

Dominic traced his fingers along her jawline and leaned closer to her. “I’m willing to risk it if you are,” he murmured, remembering how Derek had told Ethan that while he was infected, he wasn’t infectious. He was banking on Remy being the same way. He tugged her closer and pressed his lips to hers in a soft kiss.

The kiss was everything he’d hoped it would be since the moment it had occurred to him that kissing her was something he wanted to do. She let out the faintest of whimpers and returned the kiss, practically crawling over the armrest to get closer to him. He looped an arm around her waist and dragged her into his lap, holding her close, cupping her face in his hands, and kissed her again and again. When they pulled back from each other, they were breathless, and her hair was disheveled from where he’d been running his hands through it.

“That was… awesome,” Remy said with a smile, staring down at him.

“More than fucking awesome,” Dominic replied. He dropped another kiss on her lips, this one light and chaste, and her smile widened. He rested his forehead against hers, and her eyes slid closed as she sighed. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“This scares the hell out of me,” she admitted. “After Ethan…” She shook her head.

Dominic smoothed his hand against her hair again. “What exactly happened in that hotel with Ethan?” he asked. “I’ve gathered a little, but you never told me the full story.”

Remy was silent for a long moment, staring at the wall behind him, before she answered. “He tried to kill me. He saved my life, and then he tried to kill me.” She blew out a breath. “Geez, I’m not making any sense, am I?”

“Enough sense that, considering what I’ve heard from others, I can gather what happened,” Dominic said. He brushed her hair back from her face and kissed her again, sweetly, and she returned the kiss with equal enthusiasm. Before they could consider taking it any further, a yelp of excitement sounded from the ground floor, and Cade’s voice rose in a joyous shout.

“I found it! I think I found it!” she said, her voice echoing off the ceiling above. Dominic sat up straighter and looked past Remy, who was twisting around to follow his gaze toward the stage below. Cade held up a page torn from a binder that was open on her lap with a triumphant grin on her face. “I think I know where they might have taken Brandt!”

“Might have,” Remy muttered, and Dominic squeezed her hand.

“It’s better than nothing,” he told her. “Come on, let’s go check out what she’s found.”

Remy slid off his lap, and he immediately regretted the lack of her weight on him. She leaned down to pick up the vodka bottle and held her free hand out to him. “Shall we?” she asked, and he slipped his hand into hers, pushing himself to his feet. When they walked past the bar, she set the bottle on it and walked with him to the stairs. “Can I make a confession?” she asked as they started down the first few steps.

“Of course,” Dominic replied, a feeling of nervousness stirring in his stomach.

“You make this whole trip a hell of a lot more tolerable,” Remy said. A warm smile spread across her face, and Dominic returned it. He caught her around the waist and backed her up against the wall, pressing another kiss to her mouth as she laughed softly against his lips.

“Only tolerable?” he asked.

“Yeah, only tolerable,” she said with another laugh.

“If we had more time, I’d show you exactly why I’m more than just ‘tolerable,’” Dominic murmured in her ear, and he let go of her and tugged at her hand. “We don’t have enough time, so maybe later.”

Remy started down the stairs, her hips swishing. Dominic had to force his eyes away as they stepped into the general admission area again. Cade had moved to the edge of the stage and sat on it, her legs hanging off.

“What you got, Cade?” Dominic called when he got to within earshot of her.

“I think I know where they took Brandt,” Cade said, waving the paper again. “There’s an evacuation plan here for the military personnel that were here.” When he reached her, she passed him the paper, and he started to read over it.

“Eden, North Carolina?” he read out loud. The name tickled his brain, and he tried to dredge up why it sounded so familiar.

“Does that mean something to you?” Cade asked.

“It might,” Dominic said. “I’m not sure. It’s ringing some bells, but I’m not coming up with anything. It will hit me eventually.”

“As soon as it does, I want to know what you know,” Cade said. She slid off the edge of the stage, her boots thudding as she landed on the hardwood floor below. “In the meantime, we now know where we’re going, at least to start with. Let’s get some rest, because as soon as the sun comes up, I want to get on the road to Eden.”

Chapter 28

The rumble of the diesel engine of the truck Kimberly and her companions had commandeered was loud enough that she was worried it would attract unwanted attention. Ethan seemed unconcerned; he was to her left, his head resting against the passenger window, asleep. Chris drove the truck at a glacial pace, swerving around debris in the street, muttering swears under his breath, his knuckles white as he hung onto the steering wheel. He looked tired, and Kimberly could sympathize. She had a burning need to crawl into a soft bed somewhere and pass out for at least twelve hours.

That wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, though, not if the backpack of research and samples had anything to say about it. She couldn’t risk wasting time with sleep and increasing the chance of the samples going bad before they found the right hands to put them into. She bit back a yawn and rubbed at her face as she tried to stay awake.

“Sleepy?” Chris asked, and Kimberly glanced at him. He still had his eyes locked onto the view beyond the windshield.

“You have no idea,” she said. “This trip hasn’t been easy so far. Not that I expected it to be.”

Chris nodded and slowed as they approached a particularly busted-up stretch of road. He eased the truck over the crumbled asphalt, the chunks of rock and pavement crunching under the truck’s tires. He waited until the truck finished crossing the worst of it before he asked, “Do you actually have a cure?”

“It’s not a cure,” Kimberly said. “It’s more of a…a vaccine.”

“How does it work?”

“As far as I gather, anyone who is injected with it would be infected with a stronger, non-contagious version of the virus,” Kimberly said, trying to figure out a way to explain what she and Derek had figured out. “So if, say, you’ve been injected with the vaccine and then later get bitten by someone who’s infected, the vaccine will eliminate the newer, weaker version of the virus that was just introduced into your system.”

“Sounds… fascinating,” Chris said. “I don’t know much about that sort of thing. How do you know it works?”

“Because they tested it on me,” Ethan spoke up. His voice sounded tired and hollow, and he didn’t lift his head from the window as he spoke. Kimberly tensed, waiting for Chris to go off the handle over the revelation, but surprisingly, he didn’t.

“I was infected,” Ethan went on, “and when Kimberly and Derek gave me their vaccine, it killed off the virus that was trying to make me attack people. I don’t have that urge anymore.”

“You’re only one person,” Chris pointed out. “That’s not much of an indicator of its effectiveness. Maybe you got lucky.”

“Maybe,” Kimberly admitted. “There was someone else. I haven’t been able to monitor her. She’s with the other doctor.”

“What about side effects?” Chris asked.

“We don’t know,” Kimberly answered. “We haven’t had the opportunity to study that yet, either. We’re hoping the researchers we find can help us. Considering the alternative, I think this is infinitely preferable in these circumstances.”

“Some people would argue that death is preferable to either of those options,” Chris replied.

“True, but I think given the option, most people would choose life,” Kimberly said. “Even if it’s life that’s a little different than what they’re used to.”

“Stop the truck,” Ethan said.

“Are you okay?” Kimberly asked, turning her gaze from Chris to Ethan.

“I said stop the truck,” Ethan repeated, more emphatically this time. Chris pressed hard on the brakes, and the truck ground to a halt. The engine idled loudly on the otherwise silent road, the sound echoing off the trees lining the road. Ethan threw open the passenger door and tumbled out to his feet. He’d barely landed before he’d started for the trees, his stride purposeful.

“What the hell is he doing?” Chris asked as the man disappeared into the shadow of the trees.

“I have no idea,” Kimberly said. She unfastened her lap belt and scooted along the bench seat, then clambered out of the truck with every intention of following Ethan. Not knowing what to expect, she slid her machete out of its sheath and said to Chris, “Stay with the truck, okay?” She started after Ethan.

“Ethan?” she called. She stopped at the edge of the road where the grass was overgrown and squinted into the shadows, trying to locate her friend. When she couldn’t find him immediately, she ventured a few steps into the grass, which soaked her pants legs and socks completely through. She trudged onward, slogging through the knee-high grass until she was halfway between the edge of the roadway and the tree line. “Ethan!”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Ethan said from the trees. “Keep your voice down.”

Kimberly obediently lowered her voice. “Do you mind telling me why you made Chris stop the truck and bolted?” she asked. “Did you get sick or something?”

“Or something,” Ethan replied, and his voice sounded suspicious enough that Kimberly started down the embankment again. She nearly slipped on the slick grass twice but caught herself both times, and when she reached the trees, she saw Ethan’s silhouette in the shadows. “Stop right there,” he said as she started to cross the tree line, and something in his tone made her freeze in mid-step.

“What’s wrong?” Kimberly asked, the medical professional in her welling up and demanding answers.

“You know those side effects we were just discussing?” Ethan asked, and Kimberly’s heart skipped a beat. Despite his warning to stay right where she was, she ducked into the shadow of the trees to find him. He was sitting on the ground against a tree, his head bowed, and when he spoke, his voice was a mixture of caution and fear. “I had to get out of that truck,” he said. “I just… I couldn’t be in it anymore. I needed a break. I… I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“What are you talking about?” Kimberly asked. “I know you’d never hurt me. What makes you think you would?”

“It’s still there, Kim,” Ethan said. “Giving me the vaccine, it didn’t get rid of it completely. I guess once you’re like that, there’s a part of you that stays that way.”

Kimberly knelt in front of him in the soft undergrowth and touched his leg to get him to look at her. “Ethan, whatever is going on, I can help you with this, okay? Talk to me.”

“I almost took a bite out of you, okay?” Ethan said. He had a frightened look in his eyes. “All that talk about the infected and the vaccine and shit stirred something up in me, and I just… I felt like I was about to go on the attack. I had to get out of there.”

Kimberly caught his hand in her grasp and squeezed it. When he tried to pull it away, she tightened her grip. “Do you feel like you’re about to turn?” she asked, looking at him with a clinical, detached eye. She was largely unsuccessful. She’d simply gotten too close to him to look at him in a doctor-patient manner. “Does anything feel off?”

“More so than usual?” Ethan asked. “No. It comes and goes. It’s like… urges.” He looked past her, back toward the road. “Maybe I don’t need to go with you if it’s going to be like this.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Kimberly said. She let go of his hand and grabbed his face in both hands, forcing him to look at her. “You are not staying behind. You’re going with me. If you think I’m going to waltz off with some random guy I barely know and not have you at my back, then I’m going to have to wonder what drugs you’ve been taking when I haven’t been looking.”

“Are you sure?”

“What the hell, Eth?” Kimberly said. She pushed to her feet, shaking her head as she paced away from him. “Of course I’m sure! If I wasn’t sure, I wouldn’t have said it!”

Ethan stood, dusting his pants off and walking toward her. “Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “We’re all entitled to a momentary breakdown on occasion, right? It’s been a couple of years since I’ve had one, so I figure I’m overdue.”

“Well, can you save the next one for later, like, maybe after we get this mission over and done with?” Kimberly asked. When he nodded, she added, “If you do have more… issues with side effects, I need you to tell me first thing instead of running off on me, okay?”

“Fine, I will,” Ethan said. He ran his hand through his hair, shoving it back from his forehead, and stepped closer to her. Kimberly’s heart sped up as he moved nearer to her, close enough that she could conceivably touch him by barely lifting her arm. He brushed his hand along her forearm, moving even closer to her. “I’m sorry if I scared you,” he said, and Kimberly’s heart leaped when he leaned toward her. She tilted her head back to meet the kiss he was about to place on her lips.

“Hey, guys?” Chris called from the road, and Ethan pulled back, much to Kimberly’s disappointment. “We’ve got a problem up here!”

“Better be a good one, or I’m going to kick some serious ass,” Ethan grumbled. He started back toward the road, and she followed, unable to help the disappointment that stirred in her over their interrupted moment. It had been too long since that intense, hungry kiss they’d shared on the main house’s porch in Woodside, a gesture that she was still feeling uncertain over. She stumbled through the underbrush to the tall grass on the embankment and scrambled up the slope behind Ethan, accepting his hand when he reached back to help her up.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“That,” Chris said, pointing down the road in the direction they’d been originally heading. Kimberly and Ethan looked, and where it’d been leaping in excitement before, Kimberly’s heart now felt like it stuttered to a stop.

Her eyes took in the sight of the road before them. “Oh my God. What is that?”

“That would be the U.S. military,” Chris said.

Humvees had gathered in the road one hundred yards ahead of them, two of them parked side by side to block the road, several more Humvees and a few canvas-covered cargo trucks beyond them, and around the vehicles were soldiers, swathed in BDUs and MOPP4 outfits, all with rifles pointed in their general direction.

“Ethan?” Kimberly asked warily. She glanced at the man standing beside her with uncertainty, waiting to take her cue from his response.

Ethan let out a slow breath and lifted his arms, putting his hands up above his head.

Chapter 29

Cade barely suppressed the excitement that stirred in her stomach over the prospect of getting on the road. She couldn’t believe she’d found it, the paper that was labeled, “Evacuation Plan A,” that detailed the military’s plans to take their personnel to Eden, North Carolina. It was clear instructions on how to get one step closer to finding her husband.

She was scared of what she’d find when she located Brandt. For all she knew, the military had spent the past several days torturing him in an attempt to get information out of him. Considering he was probably the only person in the world that was immune to the Michaluk Virus, it wouldn’t be beyond the realm of possibility that they’d figure that out—or he’d be forced to tell them—and they’d want to know how and why he wasn’t affected. The thought of him being forced to talk, of what they might have done to him already, made her heart hurt, and she struggled to shove those thoughts aside and think positively.

Before they could leave, they needed a means of transportation, since they’d been forced to abandon their vehicles on the way into Atlanta. That was why they were outside in the Tabernacle’s parking lot, most of them standing guard while Remy and Dominic went from vehicle to vehicle, searching for one that had diesel fuel in it and that they could easily get out of the lot. The rest of them kept an eye on everything in the vicinity in case something crawled out of the shadows to attack any of them.

Cade was crouched on the dumpster they’d had to climb on top of to get inside the Tabernacle’s fence line, her Galil sniper rifle clutched in her hands, her eyes skimming over the lot. The sun was settling closer to the horizon, and she was particularly worried about the darkness gathering underneath the trucks. The shadows of the tall buildings around them were stretching down the street. Not far away, the round tower of the Westin loomed over everything, many of its windows broken. It looked still and quiet, though that didn’t stop the shudder that rolled down Cade’s spine at the sight of it and the remembrance of what had happened inside it.

She tore her eyes away from the tower and onto the parking lot that she should have been paying attention to. Remy had climbed halfway into one of the trucks with Dominic and was trying to get it started. The truck’s engine whined, grinding as it struggled to turn over, and Dominic shook his head and motioned for her to climb down.

“Any luck yet?” Cade called, already knowing the answer.

“Not yet,” Remy replied. “There’s a promising one two trucks in, but everything’s in the way and we can’t figure out how to get it out.”

“Yeah, whoever the hell parked all these trucks should be smacked in the head,” Dominic remarked. “I don’t know how they thought this was a good idea. If they’d had to evacuate suddenly, they’d have been fucked.”

“I wonder how they evacuated,” Cade said, looking around and noticing that the vast majority of the lot was blocked in. None of the vehicles appeared to have been moved since they were parked.

“Probably by air,” Dominic said, approaching the dumpster. “That’s what I would have done, anyway. Troop carriers and shit. Not sure where I’d have landed it at around here, maybe the Centennial Olympic Park over there.” He pointed to the park in question, which was across the street. He looked around the parking lot again and added, “I’m going to check the smaller parking lot on the other side of the building. Maybe there’s something over there that we can use.”

“You should take someone with you,” Cade cautioned him.

“Already on it,” Dominic said. He turned and called, “Remy! Come give me a hand, would you?”

After the two had disappeared around the front of the building, Cade asked Keith, “Do those two have something going on?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t been paying much attention to anything beyond our general survival.” Keith climbed up onto the dumpster to sit beside her. “What are we going to do if none of these trucks are operable?”

“Keep going until we find one, I guess,” Cade said. “We don’t have any other choice. We have got to get out of here and get to Brandt before those fuckers that took him do something horrible to him.”

“What if they’ve already done something awful to him?”

“Then I’m going to rain hellfire and brimstone on their asses,” Cade vowed. “I’ll tear their heads off and burn the fucking place to the ground.”

“Tell us how you really feel, Cade,” Sadie said as she and her twin brother joined them. She carried her bow in her hands, and on her back was her torn backpack, which she’d rigged into a quiver with some strategic cutting, tearing, and sewing.

“Any signs of anything bad?” Cade asked, ignoring the younger woman’s comment.

“This whole city is bad,” Sadie replied. “As for specific badness, neither of us has spotted anything particularly unsavory. Yet. I figure it’s a matter of time before the infected figure out where we are and we end up neck deep in them.”

A truck rumbled to life on the other side of the building. Cade straightened and pushed herself to her feet, standing on the dumpster and turning in that direction. The engine was loud, clearly of the diesel varietya blessing, really, considering the vast majority of gasoline had gone bad over the intervening two years. The engine revved a few times.

“Sounds like they might have found something workable,” Keith commented, hopping down from the edge of the dumpster and starting toward the front of the building. The twins followed. Cade stayed where she was, keeping her vantage point on the higher elevation that the dumpster offered in case something unwelcome came along. Remy appeared at the corner of the building, a huge grin on her face. Behind her, the vehicle she and Dominic had found rolled into view on Luckie Street. It was large and sand colored, and the back of it was covered with canvas that was the same color as the cab.

“What the hell is that thing?” Keith asked over the rumble of the vehicle’s engine.

“It’s an M1078 LMTV,” Cade replied. “Standard military troop carrier. Should be perfect for what we need.” She strode to where Remy stood on the sidewalk and asked, “What sort of fuel level does it have?”

“Almost a full tank,” Remy said. “Dominic said it can get us pretty damn far before we have to worry about filling up. There are even a few empty tanks in the back of the truck that we can fill up with extra fuel for the road so we don’t have to stop too much.”

“Sounds good,” Cade said. “How long does Dominic think it will take us to get to Eden in this thing?”

“Six or seven hours,” Dominic answered, dropping down from the truck’s cab. “No more than eight, barring us running into any complications on the way.”

“That sounds doable,” Cade said. And nowhere near fast enough for my preference, she thought. Eager to get on the road to find Brandt, she added, “What do you say we get into the truck and get moving before the sun sets completely? I want to get out of the city before sundown.”

“That doesn’t leave very much time, does it?” Dominic observed. He hauled himself back into the cab of the truck, settling behind the wheel. Cade climbed in behind him, ignoring the ugly look Remy gave her as she took her seat on the passenger side of the cab. When Sadie made a move to climb up to take the third seat in the cab, Cade shook her head and pulled the door shut before she could get in.

“Cab’s closed,” she said. “Get in the back with everyone else. I’ve got to talk to Dominic alone.”

Once she was sure that everyone had gotten into the cargo bed, Cade signaled for Dominic to get the truck moving. She waited until they’d turned onto Centennial Olympic Park Drive before she spoke.

“I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to be straight with me,” she said.

“Of course, Cade,” Dominic said. “You know I’ll be up front with you about anything.”

“What are the chances we’ll find Brandt in one piece?” Cade asked bluntly.

“Fifty-fifty,” Dominic answered. When she gave him an incredulous look, he shifted gears and shrugged. “You told me to be honest, so I’m being honest. Either he’s maimed or dead, or he’s not. Either way, at this point, there’s nothing we can do about that except pray.”

“That’s not something I’ve been very good at doing over the past couple of years,” Cade said. She slouched into her seat. “It’s hard to have faith when everything in the world is imploding around you, you know?”

“Oh, I know,” Dominic said. “Believe me, I know. I’ve struggled with that since… hell, since I got recruited into the DIA years ago. When you see the worst of humanity, it’s hard to focus on the good.” He shifted gears again and the truck picked up speed, the engine roaring under the pressure he was putting on the gas pedal. “Someday you’ll be able to focus on your faith again. Something will give you a reason to do that, whether it’s your baby or your husband, and when you get that back, things will be better for you.”

“Yeah. Until then, I get to worry over whether or not Brandt is still alive and, if he’s not, how I’m going to rain Hell on the military.”

“In the meantime, I think I might have remembered a little about Eden,” Dominic said. Cade’s hopes swelled, and it must have shown on her face, because he said, “Not very much, so don’t get too excited.”

“I think we’re at the point that every little bit helps,” Cade said. “What can you tell me?”

“Just a bit that I vaguely remember from my days in the DIA,” Dominic said. “There was this plan in the event of a catastrophic failure at the CDC or a similar important government facility that involved Eden. I don’t remember all the details, but there were contingency plans in place to move essential services to Eden. I don’t know why they picked Eden. I’m not sure if there’s a strategic importance to its location or if it was chosen because of the name or what. I just know that we can probably expect a significant military presence in the city once we get there.”

“How significant?” Cade asked, already trying to calculate her odds in her head.

“Significant enough that, if we get into some sort of skirmish with them, I’ll be surprised if we survive,” Dominic said. “This is all assuming, of course, that they’re better off than we’ve been. For all we know, they’ve been wiped out too. I doubt it though, considering they were able to send out gunships and so many soldiers.”

“There’s more of a good chance than a bad one that we’re going to run into trouble in Eden,” Cade stated.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Dominic replied. “There’s also a chance they’ll listen to us and not shoot us on sight.”

Cade clutched her sniper rifle to her chest, the barrel pointed toward the window. The wind rushing into the cab tugged at her dark hair, and there was a tightness in her chest that tried to stuff itself in her throat. She fought it back, swallowing hard, struggling to keep control of herself and not let hopeless despair take over. “Thank you, Dominic. For being honest with me.”

Dominic smiled without looking away from the windshield. “Anytime, Cade. Anytime.”

Chapter 30

Jude had passed out on one of the built-in bench seats within minutes of clambering into the back of the cargo truck, his slender body stretched out along the bench that wasn’t the epitome of comfort but was better than some of the surfaces he’d slept on since the outbreak began. He managed to sleep for the first three hours of the trip from Atlanta, and he didn’t wake up until they’d passed through Spartanburg, South Carolina.

If he’d been able to talk, Jude would have groaned when he opened his eyes and blinked in the hazy darkness in the back of the military cargo truck. He rolled his head to the side and spotted his sister lying on the bench across from him, sprawled on her back with her feet still resting on the floor. Remy sat on the floor near the end of the truck bed, her knees drawn to her chest, staring at the receding topography. Jude took a mental inventory on who was missing and remembered that Dominic and Cade were in the truck’s cab. Which left Keith.

Jude twisted around, lifting his shoulders off the bench seat to get a look in the direction of the cab, and spotted Keith sitting against the front of the cargo hold, his legs stretched out in front of him. His jeans were stained with blood and ripped right above his knee, and the bandage he’d covered his wound with peeked through the hole in the denim. Keith thumbed through a paperback book, a dim flashlight propped against his right shoulder to aim onto the pages. As he turned another page, he looked up and smiled when he saw Jude staring at him.

“You’re awake,” he commented, sitting up straighter. He folded the corner of the book’s page down and tucked the paperback into his bag. “Did you sleep okay?”

Jude shrugged with one shoulder and pushed himself into a sitting position, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of a hand. He fumbled for and found his ink pen and notepad, flipping open to a fresh page and scrawling onto it, Where are we?

“North of Spartanburg,” Keith reported. “We’re about halfway to Eden. You feeling okay to make this trip? Cade said something about giving us a chance to get off the crazy train before we got too close to Eden to have the decision made for us.”

Yeah, I’m okay so long as Sadie is, he wrote. He tapped the pen against his bottom lip, deciding what to write next, then, Are YOU okay to do this? He left his own desire for Keith to stick around unspoken—or unwritten, as it were—out of worry that he wouldn’t take it well. He hesitated, then flipped the notepad around to show Keith what it said.

“I’m fine with it,” Keith said. “These guys saved me. The least I could do is help them out in repayment.”

Jude nodded and slid off the bench. He sat beside the other man, falling the last few inches when the truck hit a pothole that jarred the entire vehicle. He tumbled sideways, falling onto Keith and sprawling across his lap. Keith laughed and levered him back into a sitting position. “You okay?”

Jude picked up the notepad he’d dropped. I’m fine, he scrawled on it. What is the plan when we get there?

“I don’t know,” Keith said. “I guess it depends on what we find ourselves facing.”

Remy turned to face them. “What are we talking about?” she asked, raising her voice over the rumble of the truck.

“What to do when we get to Eden,” Keith answered. “I think that depends on what we’re expecting to run into.”

Remy crawled closer to them, catching Sadie’s arm and shaking it to wake her up as she passed. Sadie sat up with a startle, flinging her arms out to swat at whatever had grabbed her, catching her swing before it could actually hit Remy.

“Let’s look at this logically,” Remy said, settling on the floor near Keith’s feet and tucking her legs underneath her. “Considering the way the military reacted when they showed up at Woodside, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that we’ll be met with the same hostility that we received there. I think we should come up with a plan to fight back if we are attacked in Eden.”

“What if we’re not attacked and we go in guns blazing?” Keith countered. “Then we’re at risk of killing innocent people unnecessarily. God knows there are few enough of us as it is.”

“We shouldn’t risk our lives on maybes,” Remy retorted.

“Everybody is overthinking this,” Jude signed, and Sadie translated for him. “When we get there, we should send an emissary in to talk to them first. This will reduce the risk to the rest of us, and it will give us the chance to have our points of view explained to the people in charge, assuming there is even anyone left in Eden. This might be a wild goose chase, after all."

“The man has a point,” Keith said.

“You would agree with him, wouldn’t you?” Remy replied.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“That’s enough, guys,” Sadie interrupted, waving her hand between them like she was trying to distract two dogs that were at each other’s throats. “We’ve got plenty to worry about without getting ugly with each other. I think Jude’s idea about the emissary is a good one. It reduces the risk to all of us.”

“There’s a pretty big risk that the emissary, whoever it ends up being, could get killed,” Jude signed. “That’s why I think it should be a volunteer who understands the risks. It can’t be me, because it needs to be someone who can talk.”

There was a thud from the front of the truck, and the vehicle jolted like it had run over something. Remy scrambled to the tailgate and stared out of the rear of the truck before letting out a laugh. “Whoever is driving up there ran over a couple of infected,” she reported before crawling back to them.

“Must be Cade behind the wheel,” Keith said. “She’s probably hit her quota of patience for the day and is running over whatever comes into our path.”

“So long as she doesn’t trash the truck in the process, I don’t care what she hits,” Remy said. Her fingers flexed against the hilt of her sheathed bolo knife, and Jude caught a glimpse of an anticipatory gleam in her eyes. A shiver rolled down his spine at the sight, and he was struck with the sensation that this woman was unstable. He couldn’t put his finger on what about her made him think so, but something made him think she was taking a slow, steady slide into a dark and ominous place.

He shook himself free from the concerns and refocused on the conversation around him. The others’ talk had devolved into another argument, low and intense, debating who should serve as the group’s emissary to get them into whatever facility they might find so they could locate Brandt and save him. Instead of trying to join into the debate, he leaned against the cool metal of the truck and let the voices roll over him, fighting against the stir of nervousness at the impending potential fight they all faced.

Chapter 31

Much to Ethan’s relief, the soldiers didn’t immediately open fire on him and his two companions. It was the one thing he was grateful for in this entire situation. He couldn’t handle watching Kimberly die. He remained motionless, fighting the urge to grab her hand as a squad of the soldiers separated from the rest and started toward the three of them, their rifles raised and pointed at them unwaveringly.

“Excuse me, we need to speak to someone in charge,” Ethan said when the squad got to within earshot.

One of the soldiers replied, his voice muffled by the respirator he wore.

“I’m sorry?” Ethan said, looking at the masked man in confusion.

“He said get down on the ground,” Chris said, already sinking to his knees. Ethan hesitated and motioned for Kimberly to do the same, and they both dropped to their knees. The soldier who’d given the order barked something else, and Chris repeated, “Face down on the ground.”

Ethan eased onto the warm pavement between Chris and Kimberly. Heat radiated through his clothes, and he turned his head to the side to look at Kimberly. She was already staring at him, her eyes wide with worry, her fingers curling against the pavement. “It’s okay,” he mouthed to her, hoping that his reassurances wouldn’t turn into a lie.

Kimberly smiled waveringly and inched her hand toward his. He met hers halfway, resting his on top of hers and squeezing. Then his backpack was pulled off his back, and gloved hands yanked his arms behind him. Cold steel handcuffs closed around his wrists, and he was jerked to his feet. A surge of panic welled up in his gut, and he fought to not struggle. Two of the soldiers grabbed him under his arms and started half carrying him and half dragging him toward the rest of their squadron.

“No!” Kimberly yelled. He started to twist around, and one of the soldiers shoved him forward. He stumbled and nearly pitched face-first onto the pavement. “You can’t leave that backpack! It’s too important!”

Alarm swelled up in Ethan, and he struggled against the hands that were propelling him forward. “You have to bring that backpack with us!” he said, his voice frantic. “It has important research in it!”

That didn’t work, until Kimberly said the magic words that made the soldiers around them pause.

“The cure is in that bag!”

Everyone stopped where they were, and Ethan wrenched free enough to twist around to see Kimberly. She was halfway between him and their abandoned backpacks, her face alarmed and tears streaming over her cheeks. “Get the backpack,” he said, backing her up. “For the love of everybody uninfected that’s left in the world, get the backpack.”

“What the hell is going on here?” a muffled voice asked from behind him. Ethan turned back in the direction of the military convoy. A MOPP4-outfitted man strode toward them in a manner that suggested he meant business. Not wanting to put Kimberly in the line of fire any more than necessary, Ethan straightened and faced the man with as much authority as he could muster.

“We’re looking for a medical facility that we heard was in Eden, North Carolina,” he explained. “We think we have the cure, or at least the key to the cure, and we’re trying to get it into the hands of someone who might know what to do with it.” The masked soldier stared at him. “It’s true,” Ethan implored. “We were surviving with a CDC doctor who worked with the virus. He was still working on it when we connected with him. Kimberly, who is with me, she was his assistant. They found a rudimentary vaccine for the virus that, in certain circumstances, can reverse the effects of the virus and potentially be a cure.”

The soldier stared at him for another long heartbeat and motioned to the squad surrounding Ethan, Kimberly, and Chris. “Get the backpacks and bring the three of them to one of the trucks. We’ll let Major Bradford decide what to do with them.”

One of the soldiers jabbed Ethan in the back with the barrel of his rifle, indicating for him to start walking. He gritted his teeth at the rough treatment but obeyed, allowing the soldiers to goad him toward one of the Humvees blocking the road. A soldier standing by the Humvee opened the back door, and Ethan slid inside awkwardly. Kimberly scooted in seconds later, and the door shut behind her.

“Where’s Chris?” Ethan asked.

“They put him in the other Humvee,” she replied.

Two soldiers climbed into the front seat. The one in the passenger seat twisted around to watch them, his rifle angled so he could get it raised and fire into the backseat in an instant.

“No talking,” the soldier ordered, and Ethan swallowed and nodded.

The Humvee jerked forward, and Ethan lurched toward the front seat involuntarily. Thankfully the soldiers didn’t think he was about to attack them, because they didn’t react. He slouched back against the seat, the metal bracelets of his handcuffs digging into his wrists, and looked at Kimberly. She was looking back at him, no longer crying, though her cheeks were stained with previously shed tears. He was dying to wipe them away, but with his hands cuffed behind his back, that was impossible.

“Are you okay?” he mouthed to her.

Kimberly shrugged and mouthed back, “I don’t know. Not what I expected.”

“Me neither,” Ethan said.

The two of them looked away from each other and watched the miles and the scenery roll by. Ethan struggled to stop the spiral of terror over Kimberly’s safety as he imagined everything that these soldiers could possibly do to her.

His shoulders were hurting from tension when the convoy turned onto a long, remote road that, by all appearances, led to a rural airstrip. Four hulking black helicopters sat on the runway in a widely spaced row, several military vehicles arrayed near them with soldiers standing guard, rifles in hand. This looked like a well-run operation, and Ethan started to have second thoughts on how well the rest of the world had survived. For all he’d known before, Chris had been lying or exaggerating about the circumstances the world was in. He couldn’t conceive that the world at large had had that little of a problem with the Michaluk Virus considering the speed with which it had spread in their own cities. The extensive military presence on the airstrip was a good indicator that everybody else had it a hell of a lot better than Ethan and his companions had had over the past two years.

The thought of everyone living their lives normally didn’t make Ethan angry; it made him incredibly sad. After everything he and his friends had been through, after the deaths of his wife, and Nikola, Theo and Gray, among others, it made him feel like they’d gone through it all for nothing.

One of the soldiers opened his door and motioned for him to climb out, and he slid to the pavement, trying to roll his stiff and sore shoulders. The soldier shut the door behind him and pointed to one of the helicopters. “You’re getting in that one,” he said, nudging him in the back. “Get moving.”

“Are we going to Eden?” Ethan asked and started walking toward the helicopter as instructed.

“We’re taking you to see Major Bradford,” the soldier said, and Ethan sent up a silent prayer of thanks that someone was willing to tell him a little about what was going on.

“Is he the one in charge?” Ethan asked.

This question the soldier didn’t answer. “Have you ridden in a helicopter before?” he asked.

“Yeah, several years ago when the police department got its own helicopter and the pilot took us all out for joy rides,” Ethan said.

“You were a cop?” the soldier asked.

“Yeah. I’d just gotten promoted to major at the Memphis Police Department the day before all this shit started,” Ethan answered.

“Memphis?” the soldier repeated, and through the man’s gas mask, Ethan could see his eyes light up. “My brother was an officer in Memphis. Caleb Jones. Did you know him? He was at the second precinct.”

“I’m sorry,” Ethan said. “I worked in the first precinct. The name rings a bell, but I don’t think I knew him.”

The soldier sighed, the sound hollow as it echoed through his gas mask filters. “Oh well. I thought maybe…” He motioned toward the helicopter again. “Climb on in. We’re going to take you to see the major, and maybe he can help you with this cure thing you say you have.”

Ethan clambered into the helicopter. One of the soldiers already inside put a helmet on his head and fastened the buckles for him. Ethan settled back and saw Chris and Kimberly being led to the same helicopter. While the soldiers who’d helped Ethan into his seat assisted them, he watched the soldier who’d asked him about the Memphis Police Department and wondered if the man would serve as a potential ally in whatever was going to happen next.

Chapter 32

Lindsey was sitting at her desk, a binder full of typewritten pages opened in front of her, her head resting against the palm of her hand. She was trying to study the most recent report the day shift had left her and Jacob, but she wasn’t having much success. Her mind was still stuck on her worries over Michael Brandt Evans, her apparent brother-in-law, and how and when she could attempt to get him out of the military’s custody. It was a difficult problem, and it was one she was putting her powerful brain to, shuffling through possibility after possibility, trying to find one that would be most likely to work.

She’d tossed four different ideas by the time she realized her lab partner had gone into the decontamination chamber, and she jerked to attention when the steady hiss of the chamber’s water shut off. A few moments later, the door to the chamber slid open, and Jacob stepped out, fully dressed, still drying his hair off with a towel. Lindsey glanced at him, then licked her thumb and turned a page in the binder, though she had no idea what the page she’d just left had said.

“You look like you’re very deep in thought,” Jacob said. He sat on the edge of her desk and tapped his fingertip against her forehead. “You’re going to get worry wrinkles right here if you frown any harder.”

Lindsey slammed the binder shut. “I have no idea what I’ve read,” she said. “I’ve been staring at these notes for hours now.”

“That means you’ve missed out on all that I’ve been doing in the lab,” Jacob said. He motioned toward the door. “What do you say we get out of here and I’ll fill you in over some coffee?”

“Is it Earth-shatteringly important?” Lindsey asked, and Jacob nodded. “Let me get my stuff.” She opened a desk drawer and shoved the binder into it, then retrieved her purse and keys from another drawer. “Your car or mine?”

“Let’s take mine,” Jacob said. “I have an urge to drive.”

They processed out of the building, retrieved Jacob’s SUV from the parking garage, and started on their way to the coffee shop. Jacob was changing lanes to get to the shopping center that was home to a Starbucks they liked to frequent when Lindsey cleared her throat and asked, “So what’s going on?”

“You know that guy the military brought in? The lieutenant?” Jacob asked. Lindsey nodded. “I don’t know if you’re aware, but the results of his blood tests came back. He’s showing positive for infection with the Michaluk Virus.”

“Oh hell,” Lindsey muttered.

“Sort of.”

Lindsey raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean by, ‘sort of’?”

“I don’t know how to explain it,” Jacob said. “I barely understand it myself. I think he’s infected with a different strain than what we’ve seen in the infected we’ve captured so far. The paperwork the military scavenged from the remains of the CDC alluded to multiple strains of the pathogen. I think we’ve found one of them.”

“Really?” Lindsey asked. “Are you serious? It’s one of the missing strains?”

“I believe so,” Jacob said, “though I can’t say for sure.”

Lindsey frowned. “Wait. He’s not showing any symptoms. Are you sure?”

“Positive,” Jacob said. “I ran the tests four times to make sure.”

“Well hell,” Lindsey said. “I don’t know, then.”

“Maybe he’s a carrier,” Jacob suggested. “He could be infected and not showing symptoms.”

“Like Typhoid Mary?”

“Exactly,” Jacob said, his tone delighted at the fact that she got where he was going with this. “So what were you plotting when you were in the offices just now?” Lindsey didn’t answer, staring out the passenger window. He pulled the car into the drive-thru at Starbucks and asked, “You’re still thinking about what to do about that lieutenant, aren’t you?”

“His name is Michael,” Lindsey corrected. “And I found out earlier that he’s my brother-in-law, or he says he is.”

“Do you believe him?”

“He knows enough about Cade to make him seem believable,” Lindsey replied.

“So you still want to get him out of there? Even knowing he’s most likely infected?”

“Yes, because he might know where my sister is,” Lindsey said. “And right now, she’s the most important thing to me, even beyond the work we’ve been doing.”

“Any idea how you’re going to do it yet?”

Lindsey sighed. “Not a clue. He always has guards on his cell, and I don’t know how I can get past them to get him out of there. Then there’s getting him out of the building…”

Jacob paused in the conversation long enough to put in their orders, and once they’d pulled forward, he said, “Maybe we can tell Bradford we need to do a medical exam and get him moved to one of the medical rooms.”

“That won’t work,” Lindsey said. “They handcuff him to the bed in there, and they don’t give me a key. Besides which, the last time he was in there, the guards insisted on staying in the room with him. The medical ward is out.”

“Shit,” Jacob drawled. He pulled his wallet out and sorted through the cards inside for his debit card, then passed it to the cashier at the delivery window. Once he’d paid and gotten their drinks—a hot mocha latte for him and a caramel frappuccino for her—he pulled away from the window. “Do you think you could take me to him, let me examine him?”

“He won’t trust you,” Lindsey warned. She took a sip of her drink and set the cup in one of the cup holders between them. “He barely trusted me until he found out who I was. You, he won’t tell you anything, and he won’t believe anything you say.”

“Then I’m going to have to make him believe,” Jacob said.

“Why?” Lindsey asked. “What do you need to see him for, anyway?”

“You can’t possibly think I’m going to let you deal with all this on your own,” Jacob said. He put his cup in its cup holder and took her hand in his, squeezing it lightly. “I’m here to help in any way I can.”

“Why?” Lindsey asked. “What’s in it for you?”

Jacob steered into a random parking lot and pulled into a space, shoving the car into park and turning in his seat to look at her. “Do you really not know, or are you playing at ignorance?” he asked. Thankfully, he didn’t sound like he meant it insultingly, or Lindsey would have crawled across the car and smacked the shit out of him. “You honestly don’t know that I like you?”

“No, I didn’t,” Lindsey said, her eyes widening with surprise. “But, Jacob, I don’t know if the two of us is a wise idea. I don’t… I don’t date coworkers.”

A fleeting look of disappointment came into his eyes, and he nodded. “Understandable,” Jacob said. “That doesn’t mean I won’t help you, though.”

“How?”

“I’ll help you get him out of there,” Jacob said. “I’ll help you figure it out, and I’ll do whatever needs to be done to make sure you make it out of the facility in one piece.”

Lindsey smiled warmly. “You’re a good man, Jacob. You know that?”

He smiled sheepishly. “I do my best. So what do you say we get back to the facility and start looking for holes to slip your lieutenant through?”

Twenty minutes later, Lindsey and Jacob were walking back into the lab, coffee cups in hand, when a soldier rushed inside and stopped at Lindsey’s desk. “He’s asking for you,” he told her as she stared up at him in bafflement.

“Who is?” Lindsey asked. She set her grande frappuccino cup on the coaster near the corner of her desk calendar and looked at him in confusion.

“The prisoner,” the soldier explained. “He said he’s ready to talk, and he’s specifically asking for you.”

Lindsey pushed away from the desk, and in her haste to grab her medical kit, she knocked her drink over. Ignoring the tan-colored liquid that spilled across her calendar, she followed the soldier out of the room at a near run.

Brandt sat on the edge of his cot, his hands pressed together and resting on his lap, rocking back and forth slightly. When the door creaked open, he looked up at Lindsey expectantly, and though his face remained somber, there was excitement in his dark eyes.

“Lieutenant Evans?” she said, keeping her tone measured and steady as she walked toward him. “You wanted to speak to me?” Brandt nodded, and she glanced back at the soldiers briefly then stepped closer to him. After a second’s hesitation, she sat on the edge of the cot, far enough away to maintain a professional demeanor but close enough that he could speak with a reduced risk of being heard. “What is it?” she asked, her voice low. She opened the zipper on her medical bag and made a show of rooting through it.

“They fuck up around meal times,” Brandt said. “They let their guards down when they bring me my meals.”

“How much do they let it down?”

“Enough that you could use it,” he replied. “I’ll take care of the immediate obstacles if you can get here to get me out.”

Lindsey started to wrap her blood pressure cuff around his bicep, smoothing it out and taking out her stethoscope. “I’ll check the meal schedule,” she murmured, making a show of unkinking the stethoscope’s cable. “Don’t make any moves until the meal after next.” She plugged the stethoscope’s earbuds into her ears and pressed the cuff to the crook of his elbow, starting to inflate the cuff.

Once she’d taken his blood pressure and pulled the cuff away from his arm, he said, loudly enough for the guards to hear, “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t feel like talking right now.”

It was a fight for Lindsey to suppress the grin that teased her lips while she stuffed her blood pressure cuff into her bag and stood. “I understand,” she said. “I’ll come back later and see if you’re ready to chat then.”

When Lindsey left the cell, her hopes were soaring with excitement and elation as she made her way back to the labs. She was getting Brandt out two meals from now, and after that, he would be able to take her to her sister.

Chapter 33

Remy’s head had started to hurt again, badly enough that it felt like her skull was about to split open. The bumping and rumbling of the truck wasn’t helping, and not for the first time since they’d gotten out of Atlanta, she wished she could crawl into the cab, throw Cade out of it, and curl up in the passenger seat where the trip was bound to be quieter and more comfortable. But the last person she wanted to piss off was Cade; that woman could wipe her across the floor without breaking a sweat. Rather than grumble about the pain in her head or the ache forming in her lower back from sitting on the hard cargo bed for so long, Remy kept her mouth shut, sucked it up, and dealt with it as best she could.

She’d almost dozed off, her head lightly thumping against the side of the truck bed with the rhythm of the tires on the road, when the truck screeched to a halt, jerking her to attention. She sat up straight, looking around the darkening cargo space myopically. “What the hell is going on?”

“No idea,” Sadie replied, and Remy made out the shape of her pushing her way through a crack in the canvas covering the cargo area. As her lithe body slid halfway out into the open air, Remy levered herself to a standing position, hanging onto one of the canvas supports arching above her head. Keith and Jude had also come to attention when the truck had rocked to a stop and were scrambling for weapons and other supplies in case they needed them. Remy didn’t look at them, watching Sadie, waiting for her word.

“What’s going on out there?” Keith asked.

Sadie slipped back inside, and when Remy got a glimpse of her face, her heart sank to her stomach. Sadie’s face was pale, and her dark eyes were as wide as saucers. “We ran into a horde,” she reported, a quaver of fear in her voice.

“How big of a horde are we talking about?” Remy asked.

“Big enough that we probably can’t drive through it,” Sadie replied. “We’d trash the truck.”

On cue, the truck’s gears ground together, and the truck lurched backwards, nearly throwing Remy onto the floor. She tightened her grip on the support and wavered on her feet. They traveled backwards for dozens of feet, weaving from side to side as Dominic fought to drive a straight line in reverse. She braced her feet at shoulder-width apart for balance, but it didn’t help her stay upright when a crunch of metal met her ears and the truck lurched to a stop. Remy tumbled to the floor, falling at Keith’s feet, and he leaned down to help her stand back up.

“What the hell is he doing up there?” Remy asked. “Whatever it is, it isn’t driving.”

“Presumably, he’s trying to get us out of here,” Keith replied.

Remy ignored him, because another sound had caught her attention. It was the thud of one of the cab’s doors flying open and striking something alongside the truck. Footsteps started thudding on metal on one side of the truck, and there were boots on the pavement on the other side. The canvas flaps on the back of the truck flipped open, and Dominic stuck his head inside.

“We’ve got to go,” he said. “There are too many infected ahead, the road is totally blocked, and there’s no way we can get through them.”

Remy put her backpack on and went to the back of the truck, allowing him to lift her over the tailgate and down to the pavement. “What are we going to do?” she asked.

“Backtrack until we find a route out of here or a vehicle that still works,” Cade said, stopping beside her.

“Why don’t we turn around?” Sadie asked. She swatted away Dominic’s offer of assistance and swung herself out of the truck, dropping to the pavement smoothly. Keith and Jude followed.

“The road isn’t wide enough to do a three-point right here, and we don’t have time for anything else,” Dominic said. He grabbed Remy by her upper arm and started to haul her down the road. “No more questions. Just run.”

As they cleared the truck and the road beyond came into view, Remy chanced a glance back to see what the highway ahead of their vehicle looked like. She wasn’t one to be afraid of the infected—far from it, she had developed a love-hate relationship with them, but what she saw made her stomach sink. To define it as a “horde” was an understatement. There were easily five hundred infected, likely more, stumbling down the highway in their general direction, a moving, roiling mass of bodies, so many of them clustered together that they looked like one large, single-bodied mass, an amoeba that threatened to swallow up everything in its path.

“Oh hell,” Remy said, understanding why Sadie had looked so pale. While the infected didn’t pose a threat to her, they would definitely kill her friends the first chance they had. There were at least two members of this group that she refused to entertain the idea of anything happening to. So she squared her shoulders and turned her focus back to the road, though she allowed the others to get ahead of her so she could run at the back of the group. Cade took the lead, and as Remy ran, Dominic started to drift back toward her.

“What are you doing way back here?” he asked, breathless with the exertion of his run. He had a pistol out of its holster and gripped in his right hand.

“I could ask the same thing of you,” she pointed out, doing her best to keep pace with him. “As for me, I’m running interference for you guys. Those things don’t want to attack me, and I’m taking advantage of that fact.”

“That’s smart thinking,” Dominic said, “though I can’t necessarily agree with anything that puts you in higher danger than the rest of us.”

“You should take a blessing when you see it, Dom, and not get all pessimistic and protective over someone who doesn’t need it.”

“Touché,” he acknowledged, and there was no more talking, only running, hurrying, scurrying down the cleared highway back the way they’d come.

The group hadn’t made much time when Remy realized that they weren’t going to outrun the massive gang of infected surging down the highway. They hadn’t had enough time, enough warning to stop and reverse and get moving without delays. Dominic backing into the other cars lining the road had been a delay. She looked back at their pursuers one more time and swore, grabbed Dominic by his arm, and yelled to the others. “Stop!” she shouted. “Right where you are!”

“Are you shitting me?” Cade yelled.

“Trust me!”

Cade growled in frustration and anger, but much to Remy’s relief, the rest of them were willing to give her a moment to do whatever she was going to do. She shoved her friends together into a single group. “Stick close to me,” she ordered. “We can’t outrun them.”

“Remy, you’re going to get us killed, aren’t you?” Cade asked from over her right shoulder. “You’re going to fuck around on one of your little suicide binges and you’re going to get us all killed.”

“Shut up, Cade,” Remy snapped, “and stick close to me unless you want to get eaten.”

At that, the others pressed closer to her, smashing against her back like she was their human shield. In a way, she was. Because she was the only thing that stood between her friends and the oncoming horde.

She only hoped this worked as well as she wanted it to.

“What do you guys say we get our truck back?” Remy asked, digging deep for the cocky attitude she kept buried inside her and bringing it to the fore.

“Is that the precursor to a Kurt Russell joke?” Cade asked.

“Not at all,” Remy replied. “It’s total coincidence that that line sounds like it’s from Big Trouble in Little China.”

“Can we please focus on our immediate problems and not on who’s quoting what cheesy eighties movie?” Keith asked. He sounded like he was dangerously close to losing his temper, enough so that Remy sobered up and adjusted her focus onto the crowd ahead of them.

The leading edge of the infected had reached the front of the truck they had abandoned in their haste to get away from the mash of impending doom. Remy wasn’t fazed by the sight. Even before she’d been infected, cured, and apparently rendered invisible to the infected, she wouldn’t have hesitated to walk into a mess like that, bolo knife swinging and her anger on her sleeve.

This time, though, there was no anger. There was only a serene calmness, a steady assurance that she would be fine, even if she walked straight ahead into the middle of the pack.

She was right.

She broke through the leading edge of the infected mob, and they parted, sweeping past her and her friends like she was Moses and they were the Red Sea. She heard her companions’ startled intakes of breath, and she imagined they were horrified at being right in the midst of their enemies. Dominic was the only one who didn’t make a sound. He’d been in this position before. His hand was warm in hers, his fingers clutching hers tightly. She offered what little assurance she could, because the sensation of being surrounded by the horde was unnerving, no matter how many times she did it.

When the group reached the truck, Remy signaled to the cargo area. “Everybody but Dominic in there,” she ordered. “Dom, you drive. I’ll walk in front of the truck and clear us a path.” She winked cheekily. “Just don’t run over me in the process, yeah?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, doll,” Dominic said. Remy took him to the passenger door. He climbed inside and closed the door behind him. Once he was in the relative safety of the truck’s interior, what little interest the infected had in their group dissipated. Reassured at their reactions, Remy squared her shoulders and moved ahead of the truck. The infected shuffled aside, making a path for her, as they continued to move onward in the direction Remy and her companions had come.

Remy glanced back once, when the rumbling roar of the truck’s engine groaned to life, and then she started walking, her pace steady and brisk. With a grinding of gears, the truck followed her, nudging a wider path through the one the infected had already given her.

As she walked, untouched by those she’d always considered enemies, Remy was fascinated by the figures that moved past her. In the previous two years, her hatred for the things had blinded her, had prevented her from seeing them for what they were. She spread her arms wide, her fingertips brushing their dirtied clothes, their bloodied hands and broken limbs, like the Pope blessing a crowd of worshippers. A few, the ones who appeared freshly turned, who didn’t have as many wounds or bloodstains as the others, reached toward her in return, their cold fingers brushing against her bare forearms.

She started to understand why Alicia Day had kept them in her hotel instead of killing them.

The infected were nature’s ultimate biological weapon. If Remy could figure out a way to harness the inherent power in their nature, then she and her friends could establish a new place to live, a new community, a new home, one that was protected by the infected as if they were guard dogs, assuming she could figure out a way to keep them from attacking the community’s residents, of course.

There’s nobody left to even create a community from, a nasty voice in the back of her mind said. And it’s all the fucking military’s fault.

No, another ugly voice said, speaking up from somewhere else in her head. It’s all your fault.

Remy nearly stopped in the middle of the road as the thought occurred to her, but she continued walking after a minimal pause in her stride, her dark eyes staring ahead. The back edge of the horde came into view. She shouldered her duty once more, feeling like she should have been staggering under the heavy load. The infected around her slowed, their heads swiveling towards her, looking at her as if they were seeking and awaiting her orders. The fact that she was able to give them orders that they would actually follow was still incredible to her. She looked back at them, jabbed her thumb over her shoulder. “Keep moving.” She didn’t even feel a tinge of surprise when those that had stopped turned their heads back around and started walking again, obeying her command without hesitation.

It took a few more minutes for Remy to break free of the infected, the truck carrying her friends right behind her. She walked a few more feet, feeling like she was sleepwalking, her brain hazy from the effort she hadn’t realized she’d been expending while walking through the crowd. She stopped, standing in the middle of the street, and couldn’t muster the energy to turn around and face the truck.

The truck ground to a halt, and the sound of a door opening and boots striking the pavement met her ears. Then Dominic was at her side, gently touching her elbow. She forced her head to turn so she could look at him. The expression on his face was concerned.

“Are you okay?” he asked. His voice sounded like it was coming from far away, like they were standing at opposite ends of a long hallway and were struggling to make themselves heard to the other. “Your nose is bleeding.”

Remy squeezed her eyes shut and then opened them again. She hadn’t noticed the wetness on her upper lip until he’d mentioned it. Her brain felt like it was spiraling, like she was on a potent drug. She hadn’t felt like this the other times she’d walked through groups of infected. Maybe it was because there had been so many more of them this time.

“Dom, what the fuck is wrong with me?” Remy slurred. Then she fell backwards, and the last thing she remembered before everything went dark was Dominic’s arms coming around her to catch her before she hit the ground.

Chapter 34

The sound of helicopter rotors was partially blunted by the massive helmet contraption that one of the soldiers had put on Kimberly’s head, and the repetitive sound was getting on her last nerve. Her fingers had curled into fists, her fingernails digging into her palms, and she craved the ability to smash her hands over her ears in a futile effort to clamp the sides of the helmet more firmly over them. But she couldn’t, not with her hands cuffed behind her back as they were, and that infuriated her. She was clenching her teeth so tightly that it was painful. She forced her jaw to relax, shifting it from side to side to work the soreness out, and looked at Ethan.

Ethan and Chris were on either side of her, trussed up similarly to her. Ethan looked concerned but, surprisingly, not fully worried, and he was staring right at her. She raised her eyebrows at him, and he gave her a tentative, marginally reassuring smile.

“You okay?” she mouthed to him.

“Fine,” he replied. “Thinking.”

Kimberly wanted to ask him what he was thinking about, but the three soldiers across from them were watching them, and if Ethan was planning something, she didn’t want to accidentally give the game away. She shifted on the hard seat and looked at the backpacks between her feet. The soldiers had, thankfully, decided to leave their bags with each of them, though she had no idea why they would do that. If she, Ethan, and Chris escaped, they’d have everything they would need to survive. It was a stupid mistake, one that Alicia had known better than to make. Whenever they’d had new arrivals at the Westin, Alicia’s standing orders had been to strip them of everything remotely useful—backpacks, weapons, belts, shoelaces—and put them into quarantine. Kimberly vividly remembered doing that to an unconscious Ethan when Alicia’s people had brought him in, removing all of his clothes and bathing and bandaging his wounds. She’d never told Ethan that she’d been the one to care for him then. She was sure that he believed Alicia had done it, and knowing the now-dead redheaded woman, she had probably never disabused him of the idea.

The helicopter swayed in midair, and Kimberly’s stomach lurched, bile rising into her throat. “We’re about to land,” the pilot’s tinny voice said through the contraption over her ears. “Everyone brace for touchdown.”

There was a strap above Kimberly’s head. She stared at it longingly. Resigned to falling out of her seat, she braced herself with her feet against the helicopter’s metal floor. Chris and Ethan did the same, Chris with practiced ease, Ethan completely unconcerned. Kimberly wished she could say she felt the same.

The helicopter touched down with a light thud on the ground, and Kimberly once again fought off a surge of bile. Her body felt too light, like the helicopter was still in the air, and it took several long moments before her brain settled onto the idea of being on the ground again. The helicopter’s rotors ground to a halt, and the soldiers disembarked. Kimberly craned her neck, trying to get a look out the door so she could figure out where they were, but two of the soldiers returned, their bodies blocking her view. They climbed into the compartment and began to unbuckle Ethan’s shoulder straps and lap belt.

One of the soldiers pointed at her and Chris each in turn. “Do not attempt to get up,” he ordered. The mask he wore muffled his voice. “Someone will escort you off the aircraft momentarily. If you attempt to leave the helicopter without an escort, you will be shot. Understood?”

“Understood,” Kimberly replied.

A third soldier reached into the helicopter and picked up Ethan’s bag, then the first two soldiers hauled him to his feet and led him out of the helicopter.

“Where do you think we are?” Kimberly asked Chris, her voice overly loud in the now-quiet helicopter interior.

“Most likely, we’re in Eden,” Chris said. “If we’re lucky.”

“And if we’re not lucky?” Kimberly prompted.

Chris shrugged. “Then we’re not in Eden and are about to get killed.”

Kimberly frowned at his pessimism. “If they planned to kill us, they’d have shot us on the highway, not given us a free helicopter ride and brought us here, wherever ‘here’ is.”

Three more soldiers boarded the craft. One of them grabbed her bags while the other two unstrapped her and helped her out of her seat. She kept her eyes on her bags as they led her out of the helicopter. The soldier carrying it was doing so carelessly, and Kimberly exclaimed, “Please, be careful with that bag!”

“You heard the lady,” one of the soldiers said snidely. “Be careful with that thing.”

Kimberly gritted her teeth and fought the urge to wrench herself free from the soldiers who were holding her by the arms. She squared her shoulders and continued on, letting them take her to another Humvee, where Ethan sat in the back seat under armed guard. A guard pressed a hand against the top of her head to shield it from banging against the doorframe, and she slid into the seat next to Ethan. The soldier with her bags dumped them onto her lap, and one of them tumbled to the floor, landing on her feet with a thud.

“You okay?” Ethan asked.

“About as well as can be expected, considering the circumstances,” Kimberly said. The Humvee’s door slammed shut, a soldier climbed into the driver’s seat, and the engine revved to life. “Where’s Chris?”

“Other truck,” Ethan answered. Kimberly leaned over enough to see past him, and she spotted Chris sitting in the back of the Humvee alongside theirs. He nodded to them like he was telling them that all was well, and she returned the gesture.

“I’m more concerned with where we are than where he is, though,” Ethan said.

Kimberly leaned forward to address the masked soldier in the Humvee’s passenger seat. “Excuse me, where are we?” The soldier didn’t answer, much to Kimberly’s frustration. She refrained from kicking the back of his seat, though she desperately wanted to. “Hell of a lot of help you are,” she muttered.

The soldier picked up a radio microphone from the dash, mashing the button on the side and speaking into it in code and jargon that Kimberly didn’t understand. The Humvee drove into shadow, the light outside darkening, and Kimberly leaned in to get a good look out the window.

“What the hell is that?” Kimberly said when she caught a glimpse of what loomed over the convoy of vehicles. She couldn’t make out much in the way of details, but what she saw whetted her curiosity.

“If I’m not mistaken,” Ethan said, “I think it might be that wall Chris mentioned.”

The convoy broke free of the decimated city landscape they’d been driving through to emerge into open space. Kimberly swung her head from side to side, taking in everything she could as she tried to figure out where the heck the military convoy had brought them. The land that stretched along either side of them had been cleared by heavy equipment, the buildings and trees razed, the grass dug up so it was only torn and scraped dirt. Concrete foundations dotted the landscape, some of the concrete freshly poured, like whoever had razed the buildings had taken the time to fill in the basements so the infected—or anyone else—couldn’t use them.

Marveling at the landscape and the serious work it must have taken to get it to the condition it was currently in, Ethan had leaned forward in his seat, and his exclamation of, “Ho-ly shit,” drew Kimberly’s attention back to him. “Would you look at that?”

Kimberly spotted what that had captured Ethan’s attention, and she drew in an amazed breath of her own.

“Is that it?” she asked. “Is that the wall?”

“Yeah, I think it is,” Ethan replied.

“Jesus, it’s huge,” Kimberly replied. “Way taller than ours. Must be…forty feet tall.”

“I think it’s closer to fifty,” Ethan said. “What’s that made out of, concrete?”

“Looks like it.” Kimberly trailed her eyes along the massive gray structure, picking out the sight of a guard tower far to the right. She could barely see the two figures inside its glass-walled booth, and she assumed they were soldiers standing guard.

What was directly in front of the Humvees, though, was far more interesting. The line of vehicles was approaching a massive gate made of stone, slightly shorter than the wall in which it was set. Guard towers flanked the section of wall, similar to the one she’d already spotted, except these two were more heavily armored and fortified. Soldiers practically crawled over the towers and walked along the top of the gate, bristling with weapons. Kimberly noticed the distinctive sight of sniper rifles in the hands of a few of the men.

The gate started sliding open on hidden tracks with a loud grinding noise that set Kimberly’s teeth on edge. She balled her hands into fists, wishing she could cover her ears. Even the Humvee’s driver and passenger seemed irritated by the sound. Then the Humvee moved forward, driving through the open gate to reveal a massive facility swarming with military personnel and what appeared to be their civilian staffers, all armed with rifles or sidearms, all well-organized.

“Thoughts?” Ethan asked.

“I think I’ll reserve them for later,” Kimberly said. The caravan came to a halt. Soldiers surrounded the Humvee, and doors flew open. Kimberly was hauled out of one side of the vehicle, and Ethan was dragged out of the other. Her bags were whisked away, and two female soldiers wearing the same MOPP4 suits that the other soldiers were had grasped her upper arms with gloved hands. Everyone else had scattered at the caravan’s appearance, and within moments, the area around the caravan was devoid of anyone but Ethan, Chris, Kimberly, and the suited military men and women.

“Come with us,” one of the women said, her voice weirdly hollow through the mask.

“Where are we going?” Kimberly asked. They’re not going to kill me, she told herself. If they were, they’d have already done it.

“We’re taking you to the women’s decontamination room.”

Chapter 35

Dominic glanced repeatedly at Remy in the passenger seat of the military cargo truck. She sat in the seat, slumped awkwardly with her head resting against the passenger window, her eyes closed and her body slack. She hadn’t moved since Dominic had caught her when she’d fallen and stuffed her into the seat an hour ago, and it was starting to worry him. Her last words to him before she’d lost consciousness—“Dom, what the fuck is wrong with me?”—were haunting him, because he couldn’t give her an answer. He didn’t have any idea what to tell her.

What made him worry more was that they were drawing ever closer to their destination, and she still hadn’t woken up. He had a feeling he was going to really, really want her to be awake by the time they arrived in Eden. He had a suspicion that what they were going to run into there would likely be the same military guys that had taken Brandt from them. He needed Remy to be awake during that. He might need to have her finger on the trigger.

For the third time since he’d stuffed her into the truck, Dominic pulled her into a sitting position, trying to make her more comfortable. When he let go of her bicep, he trailed his fingers down the soft skin of her arm, his fingertips coasting over her wrist to her hand. He pulled his hand away and returned it to the steering wheel.

Another twenty minutes passed before Remy grunted and her dark eyes fluttered open. Her hand flopped out and slapped against the glass beside her head. She pushed against the glass into a sitting position and shoved a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes and yawned, then scrubbed at her face and looked out the windshield. “Where the hell are we, and how long have I been unconscious?”

“I’m not sure of the where in regards to the nearest town. I think we’re maybe an hour away from Eden,” Dominic reported. “As for how long you’ve been unconscious, almost an hour and a half.”

“Figures,” Remy muttered. She rubbed her eyes again and studied the road. “Has it been clear like this the whole way?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Dominic answered. “There have been a few rough patches where I had to steer around obstacles, like a tree and a car that wasn’t fully off the road, but other than that, it’s been surprisingly smooth sailing.”

“That doesn’t reassure me, you know,” Remy said. She started yawning midway through her statement and kept talking through the yawn. “It makes me wonder when the other shoe is going to drop.”

“You think there’s going to be another shoe?”

“At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if it ended up being an entire shoe store,” Remy said. She pulled her hair loose from its ponytail, raking her fingers through the strands to gather them into a fresh tail. “God, what I would do for a hot shower.”

Dominic’s brain immediately conjured up the mental image of Remy in a shower, naked and wet, and he cursed as the truck swerved. He straightened it out without over-compensating, grinding his hands against the wheel and fighting to regain control of his brain. He smiled at Remy and said, as casually as he could, “A shower would be Heaven right about now. Maybe we’ll get lucky and there will be one wherever we end up.”

“Where do you think we’re going to end up, a luxury resort?”

“Hey, you never know,” Dominic said with as much good cheer as he could muster. “For all we know, they’re stationed in a resort, and Brandt is living it up in one of their rooms getting a back massage from a pretty lady in a string bikini.”

“Your mind works weird,” Remy said. “You think Brandt would let any woman except Cade touch him?”

“Probably not, but the thought of how she’d react is pretty damn amusing,” Dominic chuckled.

“Maybe for you. I wouldn’t want to be the one to have to clean up the blood,” Remy said.

“Brandt’s?”

“No, the woman’s who dared to touch him. Cade would massacre her.”

Dominic suppressed his grin and changed the subject before Cade overheard what they were talking about. “So how do you feel?”

“Like shit,” Remy said. A stray lock of hair had fallen from her ponytail again, and she scraped it back, stuffing it behind an ear with frustration. “Like I’ve been through ten rounds in a boxing ring.”

“You’ve been through ten rounds in a boxing ring before?” Dominic asked.

“No, but this is what I imagine it feels like.” Remy rested her head in her palms, massaging her temples with the heels of her hands. “I think I might have broken my brain. I have a headache from Hell, and it doesn’t appear to want to go away anytime soon.”

Dominic frowned and reached across the space between their seats, pressing his hand against the side of her neck and her cheek. Her skin was overly hot, and moving his hand to her forehead confirmed his concerns. “You feel feverish,” he told her. “Not dangerously so but noticeably.”

“Well, fuck,” Remy said. She dropped her head against the headrest, groaning. “Just what we need, one of us getting sick.”

“Are you sure this isn’t a side effect?” Dominic asked. “Maybe that vaccine sample thing we shot you up with is having a bad effect.”

To his surprise, Remy’s face didn’t even register alarm. She looked tired and resigned. “The thought doesn’t surprise me anymore,” she said. “When it comes to me, Murphy’s Law is in effect: if it can go wrong for me, it will.”

“Oh, come on,” Dominic protested. “Not everything goes bad for you, does it?”

“You would be surprised,” Remy said. She stared out the window, still massaging her right temple with one hand. “Can I tell you something I’ve never told anyone else since all this shit started?”

“Of course, Remy,” Dominic answered, undeniably curious.

“When all this first started, when the virus first got to New Orleans… I was in the custody of the New Orleans Police Department.”

Dominic raised his eyebrows. He couldn’t say he was surprised; he’d always guessed that she’d been involved in less than savory occupations before the apocalypse. “May I ask what you did to end up in the hands of the illustrious NOPD?”

“I stole a carton of cigarettes,” Remy said, and her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “Not to smoke, but to sell.” She shrugged and muttered, “I didn’t have any money.”

They both fell silent, the only sound between them the crunch of the crumbled pavement under the cargo truck’s massive tires. When the silence had stretched for too long, Dominic cleared his throat and asked, “What was the money supposed to be for?”

Remy looked confused at his question, as if her mind had wandered and she’d lost track of what they’d been discussing. “What?”

“The money you were going to sell the cigarettes to get,” Dominic said. “What was it for?”

“I was trying to save up to get the hell out of Dodge,” Remy said. “Things at home weren’t great, and I was wearing out my welcome.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Dominic said. “Where did you plan to go?”

“Honestly, I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” Remy said. “My destination mostly consisted of, ‘anywhere but New Orleans.’” She squinted through the windshield, then leaned forward to get a better look out and asked, “What the hell is that?”

“What the hell is what?” Dominic asked. He slowed the truck down so he could get a look at whatever had caught Remy’s attention, worried that it was something that was about to roll into their path and hoping he wouldn’t hit it. He caught a glimpse of a dark shadow looming in the distance, but it was too far away for him to make out what it had been. “What was that?”

“I don’t know. Whatever it was, it was big,” Remy said. “Very, very big. Maybe we should head in that direction and check things out.”

“How about we stay on this road instead?” Dominic suggested. “Our priority is getting to Eden, not checking out anything that looks remotely weird between here and there.”

“Spoilsport,” Remy muttered, smiling.

“We can’t run off to kill everything you want to kill,” he said. “I know you’re totally badass and everything, but there’s a limit.”

Remy rolled her eyes. When she turned her gaze back to the window beside her, her smile widened.

The next hour passed without a word spoken between them, though Dominic could make out the murmur of voices in the truck’s cargo bed. He figured the others were plotting out what they were going to do when they reached Eden, something he hadn’t taken the time to think out for himself. His overall plan involved backing up Remy in whatever she needed to do, regardless of what that happened to be. He hoped that they wouldn’t be strolling into a life-or-death situation. He had high hopes that it would be an easy talk, that they wouldn’t have a problem sitting down with whoever was in charge and talking to them about their attack, maybe helping the survivors instead of enacting their scorched earth policy. He didn’t think their negotiations would be successful, but he had that hope.

As for what he’d do if they shot first and asked questions later? He hadn’t considered it.

When they passed a sign that said “Eden City Limits,” Dominic couldn’t quell the excitement that stirred in his gut. A long journey was coming to an end, like they were only a few steps away from all of this being over with. He didn’t expect any of this to ever be truly “over with,” though, even after they got Brandt back. The world wasn’t going to magically change or get better because they freed Brandt from the clutches of a possibly rogue military branch. At this point, it was about increasing their chances of survival. Dominic knew that they needed Brandt, if not for his knowledge of survival skills then for the morale for the rest of their group, however small it might have become. And then there was that matter of his immune status. They needed him because he couldn’t get infected. He was, in essence, their walking, talking insurance policy.

Dominic slid deep into thought, his mind half on the road, pondering the multitude of situations they might run into in their attempt to recover their friend. Remy gasped and exclaimed, “Holy shit, what is that?”

Dominic slammed on brakes reflexively, thinking he was about to hit something. The back end of the cargo truck fishtailed on the gravel, and his heart leaped in alarm. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and did his best to maintain control of the vehicle before looking around wildly.

“What?” he demanded. “What is it?”

Remy didn’t have to answer, because the question was barely out of his mouth when he saw it. Or rather, when he didn’t see it.

There should have been more to Eden than the little bit they’d traveled through. Though it hadn’t appeared to be a big city, it had most certainly looked larger than this on the map he’d consulted before they’d left Atlanta. Maybe half a mile down the road, all the buildings and cars and sidewalks and trees dropped away into nothingness before a long stretch of dirt and torn-up roads. Looming over it all, as far as the eye could see in either direction, was a massive concrete wall, casting the cleared area in front of them into deep shadow.

“Oh, God no,” Dominic murmured, gazing at the wall before them. He knew what this meant; he knew why that wall was there.

He was going to be sick.

“Dominic?” Remy’s voice sounded like it was coming from the end of a long tunnel. “What the hell is that?”

“Get out of the truck,” Dominic said. He cut the engine and threw the door open.

“Why?”

“I have to meet with everyone,” he said, and he dropped to the pavement. His boots crunching on the road, he walked to the back of the truck without hesitation, climbing onto the tailgate to look into the back. “Everybody out,” he announced. “We have a problem.”

“What sort of problem?” Cade asked. She looked irritable, roughed up and banged around, and unhappy at hearing the word “problem” coming out of his mouth.

“A life-altering problem.” He let go of the canvas flap and dropped to the pavement to wait for his companions to join him. Once they did, Cade stopped right in front of him, her arms folded over her chest.

“What’s going on?” she demanded.

Dominic pointed down the street toward the wall. “That,” he said. “That changes the entire game.”

“What the hell?” Keith muttered.

“That wall can only mean one thing,” Dominic continued. “The virus didn’t go global. We’ve been quarantined.” To punctuate his statement, the far-off buzz of helicopter rotors filled the air, and in the distance, several of the aircraft disappeared over the wall. “I’m not positive, but I think they have enacted a scorched earth policy,” he said once the helicopters had vanished from view. “They’re assuming we’re all infected, and they’re taking us out accordingly. That’s why they attacked Woodside like they did, rather than attempting to help us or evacuate us.”

“So you’re saying they’ve abandoned us?” Remy asked, her voice rising in both pitch and volume as the realization dawned on her.

“Yeah, I’m saying they abandoned us,” Dominic confirmed.

Watching Remy’s face as he told her this was a horrible thing. Her expression had been one of confusion at first, as she had tried to puzzle out why he’d stopped the truck and why he’d reacted the way he had to what had lain ahead. As the realization hit her, the confusion leeched out of her face like water running down glass, and her skin paled to a grayish cast. She swallowed, repeatedly and compulsively, her dark eyes wide. Then her face flushed red in an instant, and she visibly shook with her anger.

“Those sons of bitches abandoned us!” she snarled, her tone sounding like she was ready to draw the bolo knife sheathed at her hip and start gutting everything nearby that moved. “How dare they?” Her hands curled into fists, and Dominic took a reflexive step back. “Are we not worth saving too?”

“Remy, they have protocols they’re required to foll—” Dominic started to say, but she interrupted him with a howl of rage.

“Does it look like I give a shit about their stupid-ass protocols?” she screeched. “We’re citizens of this fucking country too! What the hell makes us second class just because we live in the wrong part of the country? It’s not our fault all this has happened, so why are we being punished for it?”

“I don’t know,” Dominic stated. He looked at Cade. She wasn’t looking back at him; she was staring at Remy with an expression of concern on her face.

Remy sobered, her face relaxing and her stance calming. She didn’t say anything further; she fell silent and waited for one of them to speak. There was another bout of uneasy silence, and then Cade spoke.

“What do you propose we do?” she asked, and it took Dominic a second to realize she was addressing him. Since when had he become the leader of this group?

“Why don’t we do what I suggested in the back of the truck?” Sadie asked, stepping up to insert herself more fully into the conversation.

“What did you suggest in the back of the truck?” Dominic asked.

“An emissary,” Sadie said. “I suggested that we send one of us into whatever facility we found, white-flagging it, and see if they would talk to us.” She looked past him at the wall that loomed in the distance. “Though I wasn’t quite expecting something like this when I suggested it.”

Dominic studied the length of wall that he could see from where he stood. If he squinted, he thought he could make out the sight of a few figures walking along the top of the wall, which, combined with the sight of the helicopters that had gone to the other side of the wall, suggested there was some sort of base of operations there. Assuming the soldiers there weren’t operating on shoot-on-sight orders, Sadie’s idea might actually have been a good one. If someone was going to do it, however, it was going to be him. There were too many variables at play, and when he didn’t know what the other side was playing with, he didn’t want to ask someone else to put themselves at risk of getting shot because he’d asked them to play emissary.

“I’ll do it,” he said, hopefully in a tone that brooked no argument from the others. “I’ll be the emissary.”

Chapter 36

Somehow, Brandt had remained calm and collected in the intervening time between when Lindsey had made her plans and when she’d carried them out. He’d spent his time sitting on the bare cot in his cell or pacing to keep his muscles warmed up, doing push-ups to limber up his shoulders and arms. He’d accepted the first meal after her visit—another sandwich and an orange—with as much calmness as he could, eating every bite on the tray until only orange peels remained.

The action didn’t happen until it was time for the second meal to be delivered. Brandt had waited patiently for the two privates to arrive with his tray of dinner, counting off the seconds. When he heard the distinct thud of two sets of boots coming down the tiled hallway beyond his door, he sat up straighter on the edge of the cot, ready to leap into action the second the door opened.

The key scraped in the lock. The lock clicked, and the door swung open. Private Bayer stepped into the room, a tray of food grasped in both hands. Beyond him, waiting impatiently in the hallway, was Private Hutcherson. Neither of them looked happy to be there, and both of them looked distracted. Bayer had his head turned to look at Hutcherson instead of at Brandt, in the middle of saying something. The setup couldn’t have been more perfect if Brandt had staged it.

He lunged from his spot on the edge of his cot and went at Bayer, his fist swinging up and slamming into the man’s chest with a blow hard enough to send Bayer staggering backwards. A swift uppercut sent the private sprawling, unconscious, onto the floor.

Brandt caught the dinner tray that had started to fall from Bayer’s hands, and when Hutcherson opened his mouth to let out a yell of alarm, he threw the tray like a Frisbee, rushing toward him. The edge of the tray caught Hutcherson in the throat, and he fell back against the wall, sputtering and gasping for air. The tray clattered to the floor as Brandt rushed out of the room and grabbed Hutcherson by the sides of his face. He thumped the man’s head back against the concrete wall hard enough to render him unconscious.

Once Hutcherson slipped to the floor, Brandt looked in either direction down the hall, ascertaining that no one was visible, then grabbed Hutcherson under his arms and started to drag him into his cell. He froze at the sound of hurried footsteps, but his tensed shoulders relaxed when he recognized the now-familiar form of Lindsey coming around the hallway corner toward him.

She rushed towards him. “Holy shit, what did you do?” she hissed. Despite her astonishment, she grabbed one of Hutcherson’s wrists and helped him drag the man’s unconscious body into the cell, out of sight of anyone that might come walking down the hallway.

“I told you I’d take care of the guards, didn’t I?” Brandt said. He hauled the man against the side of the cot and pulled Bayer in the rest of the way. A search of their belts revealed two pairs of handcuffs, so he made short work of securing them to the metal cot bolted to the wall.

“You didn’t have to kill them, did you?”

“They’re not dead,” Brandt argued. “They’re unconscious.” He ducked into the hall long enough to scoop up the tray and the fallen food—another sandwich; why was he not surprised?—and dumped it onto the floor inside the door so nothing would look out of the ordinary. “Please tell me you have a plan to get me out of here.”

“I have a plan to get you out of here,” she confirmed, and a wave of relief washed over Brandt.

“Thank God,” he said. “Let’s get moving.”

“Not so fast,” she said, snagging his arm to stop him from leaving the room. “Wait.”

“Wait?” Brandt repeated. “Wait for what?”

“For my help to arrive,” Lindsey said. The faint sound of something squeaking on the floor permeated the room. Seconds later, a man Brandt had never seen before rolled a stretcher into the room, upon which was folded the slouched, crumpled form of a body bag.

“Who is this?” Brandt demanded, looking the man over warily.

“This is Jacob Howser,” Lindsey said. “He’s my coworker in the lab. Trust me, he’s here to help.” She grabbed the body bag off the stretcher, and she and Jacob expertly lowered the stretcher to a manageable level. After spreading the body bag onto the cot’s thin, hard mattress, she unzipped it and motioned towards it. “Get in.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” Brandt said.

“No, I’m not,” Lindsey said. “If you want to get out of the facility undetected, you will get in this body bag. You can either do that or rot here.”

“You wouldn’t leave me here,” Brandt challenged.

“You’re right, I wouldn’t,” Lindsey replied. “But I don’t feel up to getting shot for treason or whatever charges they feel like throwing around today, so please get in the body bag and help us get you out of here with minimal danger.” She waggled the edge of the bag and added, “It’s a new bag. Never been used.”

Brandt sighed exasperatedly and moved to the stretcher. Lindsey unzipped the bag, and he climbed onto the stretcher, sliding into the bag simultaneously. Lindsey gave him a perky grin that reminded him of the same mischievous expressions that Cade often gave him when she was up to no good. She pushed his head down to the stretcher and zipped the body bag closed.

“Whatever you do, stay perfectly still,” she said.

“I wish you hadn’t said that,” Brandt replied. “That makes me want to squirm.”

“You better not, because the military is obligated to fill any dead bodies moving around here full of holes,” Jacob warned. “Regardless of whether or not they’re in a body bag.”

“Got it,” Brandt said. He drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes, forcing himself to relax, his muscles going limp. Dead body, dead body, he chanted mentally, breathing shallowly so the body bag would move as little as possible. The stretcher started moving, rolling out of the door and into the hallway.

“You have your keys and wallet, right?” Jacob’s voice filtered through the bag over the squeak of the stretcher’s wheels.

“Of course,” Lindsey replied. “They’re in my lab coat. Did you get your friend to disable the cameras in and around the incinerator?”

It took everything in Brandt to not say anything at the mention of an incinerator. He refrained, and he focused on his jail breakers’ voices.

“Yeah, I got it taken care of,” Jacob said.

“You didn’t tell him why, did you?” Lindsey sounded alarmed at the idea. “The more people we bring into this, the higher the chances someone will talk!”

“I didn’t tell him why,” Jacob replied. “I implied that it involved me and you and slipped him two hundred bucks under the table. I let him assume whatever he wanted, and he promised he’d cut the cameras.”

“What if he doesn’t cut them?” Lindsey asked.

“Then I guess we’re about to get busted.”

“You’re so reassuring,” Lindsey muttered. Her words were followed by several beeps and the distinctive swish of a card sliding through a card reader. There was a clunk as a door was pushed open, and two hard thumps, then the stretcher was steered out into the great outdoors. Brandt could hear the whump of helicopter rotors in the distance, alongside the distinct sound of Humvees’ engines roaring. The stretcher bumped over rough, rocky pavement, presumably toward the incinerator, and Brandt wondered what time of day it was. He guessed that it was sometime late in the evening. Under all the noise, he could hear the faint, rhythmic undertone of crickets chirping away.

“Get the door open, would you?” Lindsey asked, followed by the distinctive sound of another door being opened. There were a couple more thumps, the stretcher was rolled into another building, and the door banged shut behind them.

The ambient temperature beyond the body bag skyrocketed, and Brandt broke out in a sweat. Even though he had agreed to lay as still as possible, he took in a sharp, deep breath of air at the suddenness of the heat. The stretcher dropped without warning, and despite his promise to the contrary, he instinctively flailed out, trying to find something to grab onto.

“Thank God there are no soldiers around,” Lindsey said. “That would have gotten us shot for sure.” The body bag’s zipper ground open, and she peeled it back to smile down at him. “We’re safe, for the moment, at least.”

Brandt sat up, shoving the bag’s flaps aside and scrambling to get off the stretcher. “Jesus, woman, it’s practically the temperature of Hell in here,” he said. Sweat was beading up on his forehead. “Where the fuck are we?”

“Incinerator building,” Lindsey replied. She stepped away from him and went to the corner of the room, where a black trash bag waited. She tore it open. “It’s where we come to destroy samples and biohazardous materials.”

“Test subjects, too,” Jacob said cheerfully. “And according to our paperwork, you’re test subject number eighty-two, recently deceased, officially incinerated as of…” He checked his watch. “Seven fifty-eight p.m.”

Lindsey emptied the trash bag onto the stretcher, revealing a bundle of clothing and a pair of boots. “I got your sizes off the clothes you came in with,” she explained. “Those were, incidentally, also incinerated in here.” She nudged the pile. “Get dressed.”

Brandt stripped off the scrubs shirt he was wearing and tossed it on the floor, then grabbed the black t-shirt she’d supplied him. “What’s the plan once we’re out of here?” he asked.

“At this point, you two are on your own,” Jacob said. “I’ve done everything I can do up to here.”

“But—” Lindsey started to protest.

“But nothing,” Jacob replied. “If we’re both gone from the lab, someone is bound to notice. One of us has to stay behind, and I vote that it be me.”

“Why you?”

“Because if they interrogate me, it’ll be easier for me to hold out on giving them any information.”

Lindsey’s eyebrow arched, and she looked like she was ready to protest again. Brandt rolled his eyes and shucked his pants off to change into the jeans that Lindsey had brought him. “Lindsey, to be honest, I’d rather go with you than him,” he told her. “By all accounts, you’re my sister in law, and I think it’d be better if family stuck together.”

“Fine,” Lindsey said. “As for the plan, as soon as you’re finished dressing, we’re torching these clothes, the body bag, and the mattress from the stretcher. Then Jacob is pushing it back to the lab while I go out to my car, ostensibly to retrieve something I’ve forgotten. You’ll follow me at a discreet distance. Once I’m at the car, I’ll pop the trunk and get into the driver’s seat. You get into the trunk and close it, and leave everything else to me.”

“So I get to hitch a ride in the trunk of a car,” Brandt said. “Please tell me you drive something fairly large and not some little Volkswagen Beetle or something.”

“It’s a Toyota sedan,” Lindsey said. “Yeesh, you think I’m going to cram you into a Beetle’s trunk? Look at you. That’d be like trying to shove ten pounds of wet cat in a five-pound sack.”

“You trying to say something about my weight?” Brandt joked as he stuffed his feet into the boots she’d brought.

“No, not at all!” Lindsey replied. “You’re just…very muscular.”

“I’m kidding.” He leaned down and laced his boots up, then straightened. “Let’s get this show on the road, yeah? I need to try to find my wife.”

Lindsey gave him a mocking salute and stepped around him to haul open a steel door set into the wall behind him. She and Jacob gathered the clothes and body bag and the thin mattress on the stretcher and shoved it all into the glowing confines of the incinerator. She pushed the door shut with a loud clang.

“We’re moving,” she said, grabbing one end of the stretcher. Jacob grabbed the other, and they started for the door. “Remember what I said to you,” she said, looking at Brandt pointedly. They opened the door and stepped outside. Brandt slid up behind Lindsey, easing through the door behind her without making it obvious there was a third person present. Lindsey and Jacob were making a show of laughing and cutting up, like they’d have been expected to do under normal circumstances. Brandt kept to the shadows as best he could, considering how relatively brightly lit the area was. Lindsey was saying something to Jacob in a voice too low for Brandt to hear, and she lightly smacked herself on the side of her head and said loudly, “Shoot! I’ve got to run to my car real quick. I left my wallet in there earlier, and I’m going to need it if I expect to eat tonight.”

“I could spot you, you know,” Jacob said, and the way he said it made Brandt think this was a conversation similar to one they’d had before.

“Come on, you know how I feel about that,” Lindsey protested. “Let me go to my car. You okay to get this back to the lab on your own?” She patted the stretcher rail casually.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Jacob said. “I’ll see you inside.” He winked at her, then took a firmer grip on the stretcher and rolled it toward the doors that Brandt guessed they’d come out to begin with. Lindsey smiled and split off from Jacob and the stretcher, walking briskly and purposefully toward a parking lot near the back of the building. Brandt followed, slinking through the darkness not far from her. She led the way to a black, low-key newer model Toyota. At the vehicle, she took out a set of keys from her lab coat pocket and punched two buttons on it. The first made the trunk latch release; the second unlocked the car doors. She circled the vehicle to the driver’s door and opened it, then made a show of sliding inside and starting to dig into the console between the front seats. Brandt darted forward, grabbed the trunk lid, and slid inside, pulling the lid down over him until it thunked shut.

As the darkness closed over him, Brandt was extremely grateful that he wasn’t claustrophobic. Even so, things that he couldn’t see were crushing down on him, and the feeling of being trapped was unnerving. He spotted the glow-in-the-dark emergency trunk release handle and focused his eyes on it, keeping them locked there and his fingers only inches away from it in case he needed to make a quick escape.

The car’s engine started, and with a jolt, it backed out of its parking space and, he assumed, moved toward the exit gates. The car rolled smoothly, and he found he was holding his breath as the tires crunched over gravel littering the pavement. A few moments later, the car eased to a halt, and he heard voices, one Lindsey’s and the other a man’s, though he couldn’t make out what they were saying. The vehicle started moving again, and the sound of hard rock music began blasting from the vehicle’s interior. Lindsey started to sing along, off key but enthusiastically, and the vehicle picked up speed. Brandt counted as the vehicle moved, ticking off minutes on his fingers each time he reached sixty. After eight minutes, the vehicle slowed down and took a slight right, then drove for another minute before making a sudden hard right that made him bang his head against the side of the trunk.

The road they’d turned on was rough and curvy, judging by the jouncing of the car’s back wheels over ruts and the jarring turns. After a moment more, the tires crunched over gravel, and the car came to a stop. Brandt worried that Lindsey had brought him out somewhere where no one would hear him scream—not that he was the screaming type—and he fumbled around in the trunk until he found a tire iron, grasping it in his right hand. The sound of shoes on gravel met his ears, then the trunk lock popped open with a whump and the lid swung open to reveal Lindsey staring down at him.

She looked him over incredulously and asked, “What the hell are you doing with my tire iron?”

“Seemed like a good idea to have a weapon,” Brandt said. He set the tire iron down and sat up, keeping his head ducked low to avoid striking it on the inside of the trunk lid. Lindsey offered him a hand, and he accepted it, swinging both feet out of the trunk and scooting out until he found solid ground once more. “Where are we?”

“We’re still in Eden,” Lindsey answered. “At an abandoned house about three miles away from the facilities. Some people weren’t comfortable with living so close to the wall, so they abandoned their houses and moved on elsewhere. This is one of them.”

“What now?” Brandt asked, barely glancing at the overgrown house fifty yards away.

“We—or rather, I—have to play this cool,” Lindsey said. “With any luck, no one has noticed that something is wrong. I need to get back to my lab before someone does realize there is an issue. Jacob can only cover for me for so long.”

“You can’t possibly think you’ll be able to go back there,” Brandt protested. “It won’t take long for Bradford to put two and two together. You have a sister named Cade, I have a wife named Cade, and we both went missing at the same time? It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that we left together.”

“What are you saying I should do?” Lindsey asked. “Abandon my job tonight and take off with you?”

Brandt snorted. “You make it sound so…illicit.” She growled at him, and he sighed. “Look, you’re the one who was all, ‘Let’s break you out of here.’ So you’ve broken me out, and you did it for the express purpose of finding Cade. So let’s go find Cade. I would really prefer reconnecting with my wife sooner rather than later, especially considering the fact she’s pregnant and will need me.”

Lindsey stared at him, then looked at the watch on her wrist and dug her cell phone out of her pocket. Brandt thought she was about to make a call, but she dropped it onto the ground and stomped on it until the screen was shattered and its innards were battered and broken. Then she shucked off her lab coat, rolled it up, and tossed it into the still-open trunk. “We have to go to my house for supplies before we leave,” she said. “Because I’m pretty damn sure they confiscated your weapons when they took you into custody, and all I have is one pistol and the ammunition for it.”

A slow smile spread across Brandt’s face. “And after that?”

“After that, we’re going to kick ass, take names, and find out where my sister is.”

Chapter 37

Once they’d discovered the existence of the wall, Cade and her companions had decided—rather forcefully, on Remy’s part—to retreat, observe, and assess what the next step needed to be. They’d taken shelter in one of the buildings not far from the metaphorical line in the sand where all the buildings had been razed, setting up camp as comfortably as they could and waiting for dark to fully settle on everything. Cade had a Sterno stove in her backpack, and she took it out and lit it, opening open cans of food to warm them for everyone to eat. Sadie, Jude, and Keith sat against a cracked sheetrock wall on the other side of the room, a single flashlight balanced on its end with the beam aiming toward the ceiling. Sitting in the middle, Jude looked to be teaching Keith sign language; the older man was focused on Jude’s hands and notepad in turn, mimicking the signs Jude was making with his hands. Sadie sat cross-legged, sharpening their machetes with a kit that Cade figured she’d had in her own backpack, her compound bow beside her with its arrows lined up alongside it. She looked like she was in her own world, but she occasionally tore her eyes away from her work to interject her own instruction into Jude’s ASL lesson.

Dominic was to Cade’s right, sitting against that wall, his knees pulled to his chest. He grasped one of his pistols in his right hand, resting it against his right knee, and he stared into the middle distance in front of him, deep in thought. Cade would have given her left arm to know what was on his mind; she hoped it was a plan for how they were going to approach the wall. She didn’t have the greatest confidence in the emissary idea the others had come up with in the back of the truck on the trip from Atlanta. There was nothing that would stop the men in the guard towers along the wall from shooting every one of them the minute they walked into sight.

Cade attacked a can of beans with a can opener, looking around for the last missing member of their party. Remy was nowhere to be seen, a fact that was concerning in and of itself. She stuffed the can opener into the side pocket of her backpack and set the can carefully on the Sterno stove, then asked Dominic, “Where is Remy?”

“Last I saw her, she said she was going to sit on the roof and think,” Dominic said. “Should I go check on her?”

“Do I even need to dignify that question with a real response?” Cade pulled a spoon out of her backpack and stuck it in the warming can, stirring gently to distribute the heat.

Dominic pushed to his feet, sliding his pistol into its holster. “I’ll be right back,” he said and slipped out the door. Seconds later, Cade heard the metallic thunks of his boots on the fire escape ladder outside the building, heading toward the roof where Remy was supposed to be.

“Anybody hungry?” she asked the others. “These beans are ready if anybody wants them.”

“I’ll take some of them,” Sadie said, making a few final passes over her machete’s blade with the whetstone. She set the stone on Jude’s knee, examined the blade, then carefully sheathed it and got up to join Cade. She settled down onto the floor opposite Cade, the Sterno stove between the two of them, her legs tucked underneath her. Cade pulled out several plastic plates and divided the beans between them before taking out her can opener again and starting to open another can to heat.

“Have you come up with a workable plan yet?” Sadie asked. “Or are we still thinking about doing the whole emissary thing?”

Cade rubbed at the bridge of her nose with her thumb and middle finger, pinching it between them. “I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“I think it’s probably the only option we have,” Sadie said.

“Yeah, I know what you think,” Cade grumbled. She poked another spoon in the can on the Sterno stove, jabbing more forcefully than necessary. “Do you know the risks associated with one of us walking out there trying to play emissary?”

“Yeah, they could listen to us,” Sadie said. “We could get a chance to meet with them.”

“Or whoever we send out there could end up dead,” Cade retorted. “Honestly, I’m not sure I’m willing to risk it.”

“What if Dominic is?” Sadie asked.

“Then that’s his business, but I won’t condone it,” Cade said. “I want to get Brandt back, yes. However, I don’t want to ask anyone else to risk themselves because of my desire to rescue my husband.”

“I don’t know Brandt well, but he’s one of us,” Sadie countered. “You can’t expect the rest of us to sit back and let you run it by yourself.”

Cade didn’t know how to respond to that. Thankfully, Dominic’s return spared her from having to do so. He slipped back inside the building with a look of dark concern on his face, his shoulders set in a manner that suggested he was deeply worried. “What is it?” Cade asked, instantly on the alert.

“It’s Remy,” Dominic said. “She’s not on the roof.”

Cade sat up straight, alarmed. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“Not at all,” Dominic said, and Cade got up from the floor. “I looked around for her, but I didn’t dare call out for fear of drawing too much attention to our position too soon.”

“Any sign of which way she went?” Cade asked. She put the Sterno stove out, leaving it on the floor to cool, and gathered her weapons.

“No clue,” Dominic replied. “I looked, but I didn’t see any signs giving me any ideas.”

“Son of a bitch,” Cade snarled. “I’m going to kick her ass the minute we find her.” She looked to Sadie, Jude, and Keith. “You three stay here in case she shows back up before we locate her. We’ll be back shortly. If we don’t come back in, say, an hour, assume the worst and move on.” She walked out the door, Dominic right on her heels. “Where could she have gone?” she asked.

“Pick a building, any building,” Dominic said. “You’ll probably have a good chance of finding her in any one of them.” When Cade gave him a dirty look for his borderline smartass answer, he said, “It depends on why she walked away. If she wanted time alone, she’d pick a random, empty building. If she was looking for something in particular, she’d have picked a building that might have whatever she’s looking for, and that we have no way of knowing.”

Cade ran her fingers through her hair, wishing for another hair band; she’d lost hers at some point during one of the flights from various hiding places. “Why did she have to pick now, of all times, to run off?” she grumbled.

“Because she’s not one to think about the needs of others,” Dominic said. “Not usually. She tends to put herself first, and she thinks of others second. It’s probably a product of her upbringing.”

“She needs to take her upbringing and shove it somewhere else,” Cade replied. “Because we don’t have time for her to play the rebel, not when we’re so close to Brandt.”

“Assuming he’s even here,” Dominic said.

“Yeah, there’s that,” Cade muttered. She walked out into the middle of the street and looked both ways, trying to decide which building Remy would have been most likely to go into. “Closer to the wall or further away?” she mused out loud, scanning the buildings.

“I vote closer to the wall,” Dominic said. “She’d want to watch it to see what happens around it.”

“Good point,” Cade said. She adjusted her backpack higher onto her shoulders and started walking in that direction, keeping to the center of the road so she could see if Remy emerged from any of the buildings. Dominic followed her for a few moments before speeding up to walk alongside her, his hand resting casually on his holstered pistol. “You think we’ve made a mistake here?” she asked as they walked closer to the torn-up strip.

“Do you?” Dominic retorted. “Because if you’ll recall, we were following your lead, not mine. If you think we’ve made a mistake, maybe you should say so.”

“I’m asking for your opinion here, Dominic,” Cade snapped. “Will it kill you to give it?”

“Probably,” Dominic said, and Cade whirled on him with every intention of smacking him before she saw the grin on his face. She growled and turned back forward and walking more briskly. “My opinion? I think we’re on the right track. How far along on the right track we are, I’m not sure.”

Cade blew out a breath. “You have no idea how reassuring that is,” she admitted. “I’ve been agonizing over whether or not this was the right decision dragging all you guys out here to—”

“You didn’t drag us anywhere,” Dominic said, catching her arm to stop her in the middle of the street. “We all came willingly. We volunteered, because we wanted to help you. Because we care. Besides, Brandt’s one of ours. We have to get him back. He’d do the same for us.”

“Yeah, he would,” Cade said. “He already did that with me once, remember?”

“Who could forget?”

Cade spotted movement near the edge of the street, where the buildings and road ended and the dirt began. She unslung her rifle from her shoulder and lifted it to aim down the street, ready to shoot whatever it was moving down there. She relaxed when she realized it was Remy, prowling around at the dirt line.

“Looks like you were right,” Cade observed, pointing her out.

A big smile broke out across Dominic’s face. It was so blatantly obvious to Cade how Dominic felt about Remy that it was ridiculous. She only hoped that Remy returned the man’s affections; it would be terrible to watch the fallout if she didn’t.

Dominic sped up at the sight of Remy, and he hurried toward her, his look a cross between joy at finding her unharmed and concern at why she’d wandered off in the first place. Cade followed him at a slower pace, lowering her rifle and hanging it by its strap off her shoulder again in its usual position.

“Hey, Remy!” Dominic called out, and she froze like a deer in the headlights of a speeding van, whipping around to look at who was yelling for her.

“What the hell are you doing out here?” Remy asked. She didn’t make any move to walk towards him; she stayed back, hanging near the dirt line with a wary look on her face. There was a streak of blood on her upper lip, smeared upward toward her right cheek, like she’d had a nosebleed and swiped at it with her hand.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Dominic retorted.

“Are you following me?” Remy demanded. She looked past Dominic toward Cade. “And you brought Cade?”

“We were worried about you,” Cade said. “You took off without a word to any of us. We thought you were keeping watch on the roof.”

“I was looking for some stuff I needed,” Remy said. Cade raised an eyebrow and spotted a few coffee cans nested together and tucked underneath her arm. Remy saw her looking and twisted around to block her view with her body; the cans rattled with the movement. “What did you guys come all the way out here for? It’s dangerous.”

“Once again, I could ask you the same thing,” Dominic said. He stepped closer to her, catching her arm in a light grip. “We were—I was worried about you.”

“You don’t need to worry about me,” Remy replied. “I can take care of myself just fine.”

“I know. I just—”

Dominic’s words cut off abruptly, and he staggered sideways. The echo of a single rifle shot vibrated through the air, and Cade reflexively took a few steps back, raising her own rifle.

Dominic groaned and tumbled to the ground.

“Dom?” Remy said.

Another shot echoed out, and a pockmark appeared in the dirt right beside Remy’s shoe. Remy barely noticed it as she reached out for the man on the ground.

A dark stain slowly spread underneath him.

“Dominic!” Remy shrieked when she realized what she was seeing at the same time Cade did.

Dominic had been shot. Judging by his appearance, the limp way he lay on the ground, the sheer amount of blood pooling underneath him, and the lack of movement in his chest, he was already dead.

“Remy!” Cade shouted, racing toward her as fast as she could. She skidded to a stop at her side and hooked a hand underneath her arm, hauling her to her feet. “Come on, we’ve got to move!”

“Let go of me!” Remy yelled back at her. “We’ve got to help him!”

“Remy, he’s dead!” Cade snapped. “There’s nothing we can do for him! Let’s go before we both get shot!” As if to punctuate her statement, another bullet pinged against the ground, dangerously close to Cade. “I’m not getting shot for you! Now get up!”

It was hard to tell whether or not Remy listened to her; considering Cade was pulling on her arm so hard, it might have been the force she was exerting on her. Either way, Remy was on her feet and being led down the street before Cade could give her any more orders, the coffee cans she still clutched rattling loudly with every step. She and Remy ran toward the side of the road, ducking behind a crumpled car that blocking the sidewalk. Remy’s stifled sobs were the only sounds Cade heard outside of the echo of gunfire that still rang in her ears. She stared at the dead man on the ground, keeping her tight grip on Remy’s arm, lest she take off running toward Dominic again.

“Jesus Christ, Cade, they shot him!” Remy gasped through her sobs. “They fucking shot him!”

Tears welled up in Cade’s eyes, and her gaze fixed on the dark red flood oozing out from Dominic’s body and soaking into the dirt and the cracks in the pavement. Her breath was short, and her entire body was shaking with adrenaline and horror.

“I guess maybe Sadie’s emissary idea was a really bad one,” she said shakily.

Remy was trembling, and Cade looked at her in concern. Remy swiped at her tears with the back of her hand, smearing the tears and the streak of blood already on her face around further. She still stared at Dominic’s body, like she could hardly believe what was before her.

“Remy, we’ve got to move,” Cade said, but it was like she hadn’t even spoken. Remy still stared, unmoving. “Remy?”

Remy turned her head to look at her, and though tears still streamed down her cheeks, her eyes were hollow. “They’re going to pay for this,” she said, her tone pure, unadulterated fury. “If it’s the last thing I do in this life, I’m going to make them pay.”

Chapter 38

Ethan was freezing. He hadn’t been this cold in nearly two years, which was, incidentally, the last time he’d been exposed to central heat and air conditioning. It was a different kind of cold from what he’d become accustomed to, far different than the chill of outdoor winter air. This was a dry cold, one that threatened to give him a painful sinus headache, and as the thought crossed his mind, he eyed the box of tissues on the corner of the large desk in front of him.

When he, Kimberly, and Chris had arrived at the Eden Facility, as their captors had called it, they’d been separated and taken to different decontamination rooms. He’d been forced to strip off every stitch of clothing, which had all probably been incinerated or subjected to some other equally heinous treatment. He’d been hosed down with a water hose that felt like it was set to only a notch below “power wash.” Afterwards, they’d thrown towels at him to dry off with and given him a very thorough medical exam that made him feel violated. Only then was he allowed to put clothes on, if the incredibly thin scrubs they’d given him could rightly be called “clothing.”

Kimberly sat in the chair to his right, outfitted in identical clothing, and her entire body randomly shook with shivers and chills. She sat hunched in her chair, rubbing her palms over her bare arms in a vain attempt to warm herself. Ethan itched to reach over and wrap his arm around her, maybe tug her chair closer to his so he could lend her what little body warmth he had, but there were soldiers standing guard behind their chairs, and he had a feeling if he made any moves towards Kimberly, he’d probably end up with a bullet in the back of his head.

Chris sat on Ethan’s left, his arms folded over his chest, his eyes staring blankly at the desk and the empty chair behind it. He looked disgusted by the whole situation, and Ethan couldn’t blame him. If it wasn’t for him, Chris would be in his barracks with his fellow soldiers, not sitting in this freezing cold office in a pair of scrubs waiting for whatever punishment was about to drop down on them.

A door on the side of the office swung open and a tall, imposing man strode into the room. He was outfitted in a service dress uniform that was heavily decorated with medals and ribbons, a clear attempt to make himself look accomplished and imposing. His nameplate read, “Bradford.” Though Ethan wasn’t wholly familiar with which uniform insignia was which, he was pretty sure that the gold leaf on the man’s shoulders meant he was a Major. He was an older man with graying brown hair and a tanned, weatherworn face, and he looked like the type that took everything that dropped in front of him completely seriously. He carried a stack of notebooks and loose papers, and Ethan realized that the officer had all of Derek Rivers’ research on the Michaluk Virus in his possession.

Beside him, Chris flinched, like he had been about to get out of his chair to rise and salute a superior officer. But one of the guards behind Chris clamped a hand onto his shoulder, pinning him down into his chair and aborting Chris’s movement.

“Well, what do we have here?” Bradford asked, setting the stack of notebooks on his desk and dropping into his chair. He rocked back in his seat, staring at the three of them for a long moment, long enough that Ethan started to feel unnerved by the intensity of the man’s gaze. Then Bradford nonchalantly said, “My men tell me that this,” he tapped a finger against the stack of research, “has the baseline of a cure for the Michaluk Virus in it.”

“It’s a vaccine, not a cure,” Kimberly spoke up. “It won’t do much for those who have been infected for an extended period of time. If they’re already wasting away or if they’re already dead, they’re gone, and there’s nothing we can do for them.”

“Did I ask you to speak?” Bradford replied.

“Well, no, but—”

“Then shut up.” He sat back in his chair and examined each of them in turn. “Which one of you is the leader of your merry little band?”

Ethan hesitated, briefly exchanging glances with Kimberly and Chris. “I suppose that would be me.”

“Then you speak,” Bradford ordered.

Ethan heaved a slow sigh and started talking, his voice almost a monotone, like he was reciting a long-rehearsed and memorized script. “We’ve been living in a small community in South Carolina for eight months or so with a scientist that used to work for the CDC.”

“Got a name?” Bradford asked, picking up a pen.

“Derek Rivers,” Ethan answered, and the major wrote the name down. “He’s been doing hands-on research on the virus and its effects, and he thinks he might have found a vaccine for it. Being out in the middle of nowhere with no appropriate facilities, he hasn’t been able to do anything with it. Kimberly and I volunteered to take the research and some samples out of the community and track down someone who could double-check his research, run tests on the vaccine, and maybe figure out production and distribution for those who have survived all this shit.” He glanced around the office. “It appears that some are doing a hell of a lot better than we’ve been doing.”

“Who did you plan to give this…research to?” Bradford asked, dragging a thumb over the stack of papers and ruffling the edges of the pages.

“Anyone we found who appeared to not only be reputable but who might have had the ability to do something with it,” Ethan answered. “We have no interest in withholding it from anyone who may need it. Neither do we have a desire to turn it over to someone who would.”

“How did you end up in the company of this one?” Bradford asked, nodding his head toward Chris.

“We met him on the road when his squad attacked us,” Ethan said. “We had to get out of there, and we took him with us. His mask had gotten pulled off in the fight, so he had a motivation to avoid contact with other people due to your apparent policy of shooting anyone who comes into direct contact with what you’ve decided are the infected.”

“Speaking of,” Bradford said, and his gaze dropped from Ethan’s face to a point lower. Ethan looked down and realized what hadn’t clicked before: the scrubs he’d been given to wear were short sleeved, and the scars from his attack the year before were clearly visible. “Our medical team reported that you appeared to have been bitten multiple times at some point in the past. Considering you weren’t showing any signs of active infection, they figured you’d been attacked by someone uninfected, so they let the matter rest. However, they took a blood sample, and the test results should be on my desk within…” he checked his watch, “two minutes. So if you have something you’re hiding, you better talk fast before that report arrives.”

“We ran into the squad that brought us in on the highway quite a few miles south of here,” Ethan said, an empty pit opening in his gut. “I’m not sure exactly where we were when that happened, but they were willing to listen to us when we told them we had samples and a vaccine, and so now here we are, freezing to death in your office.”

“Does this vaccine actually work?” Bradford asked. His tone was a mixture of hope and resignation, and Ethan realized that the man had probably been brought up high on other hopes for cures only to be crashed right back down when they didn’t pan out.

“We haven’t had the opportunity to—”

“We’ve only had limited chances to test it,” Kimberly cut in. “As far as we were able to tell, it works.” She ignored the look of ire Bradford gave her.

“She’s more qualified to talk about this than I am,” Ethan told Bradford. “She’s been working with Dr. Rivers since day one, trying to find a cure for all this shit.”

The side door that Bradford had come through earlier opened, and a thin woman with dark hair pulled back into a severe bun stepped inside, a folder tucked under her arm. She set the slim file onto the corner of Bradford’s desk and stepped away, exiting the room without uttering a word. Ethan eyed the folder, his stomach fluttering with nervousness.

“Side effects?” Bradford asked, and this time he addressed Kimberly instead of Ethan.

“We don’t know yet,” Kimberly said. “We haven’t been given the opportunity to test it extensively. Some other events kept us from being able to run tests to try to determine the side effects, if any.”

Bradford casually flipped open the folder and scanned the page inside. When Kimberly finished speaking, he slammed the folder closed, making Ethan, Kimberly, and Chris startle at the loud bang it produced. “You’re lying to me,” he declared. “You’re both lying.”

“No,” Kimberly countered. “No, we’re not.”

“You’re here to kill me, aren’t you?” Bradford said. “That’s why you brought him here.” He jabbed his finger at Ethan.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Kimberly said.

Bradford jabbed his finger at Ethan again. “He is infected! His tests came back positive!” He shoved the paper from the folder toward them, and Ethan recoiled, his heart skipping a beat. The jig was up. “You three came in here with every intention of deceiving me, and I will not stand for it!” He barked to the guards lined up behind the three of them, “Get the quarantine guards in here. I want these two taken to the quarantine cells.” He pointed to Kimberly and Chris. “This one,” he added another jab toward Ethan, “goes to the lab. See if Alton or Howser want to use him for testing. If so, give them forty-eight hours to do whatever they want with him, then take him out back and shoot him.”

“What?” Kimberly exploded, rising out of her chair. “You can’t do that!”

One of the soldiers clamped a gloved hand down on her shoulder and shoved her into her chair hard enough that her teeth clacked together. “Stay in your seat,” the man ordered, his voice oddly hollow through his mask.

Bradford flicked a hand, signaling to the men behind Ethan. Two of them wrapped their hands around his biceps and hauled him out of his chair to his feet and dragging him around the chair before he was able to find his balance. Kimberly had twisted around in her chair, and she watched with wide, horrified eyes as he was dragged out of Major Bradford’s office.

The last thing he saw before the door swung shut to block his view was Kimberly trying to rise from her chair again and then falling into an unconscious heap when one of the soldiers slammed his rifle into the back of her head.

Chapter 39

The rage that Remy felt was like nothing she had ever experienced before. It was all powerful, all consuming, washing through her like a wildfire through a dry forest. She could practically feel her veins and tendons snapping and crackling in the blaze of her pure hatred. By the time she and Cade had returned to the group’s hiding spot, one person short, her tears had dried up in the heat of her fury, and she had felt hollow and empty. Now, as she sat on the roof again, where she’d retreated to get away from the others and Cade’s explanation to them of what had happened, she felt nothing but her anger.

How dare they? How dare they take away one of her best friends and then kill the man she’d begun to fall in love with? How dare they quarantine them, take away any chance of a normal life they might have lived, wall them away in the hell they’d endured for the last two years, while they lived in comfort behind their concrete walls?

Remy’s eyes narrowed as the thought of the rest of the world’s creature comforts crossed her mind. She was going to take away everything those people held dear, just like they’d done to her.

Her mind went back to the coffee cans and other materials she’d collected and then abandoned on the sidewalk below when Cade had hauled her back into their hiding place. She would need those, which meant she would have to go back down to the street.

She pulled herself to her feet and grabbed her backpack, then went to the fire escape ladder and scurried down it, beginning to rethink the plan she’d formulated earlier. She’d initially thought to use the coffee cans as part of an insurance policy. She no longer had insurance policies on her mind. All she could think of was vengeance.

It took her only minutes to make the bombs out of the coffee cans, the C-4, and the detonators she’d found in Atlanta. Scavenged nails, marbles, and chips of concrete added to the cans made for excellent shrapnel. Once she had carefully sealed the cans, she packed them into her backpack and stood up in time to spot the small squad of soldiers slowly approaching the area where she and her friends were hiding. They looked like aliens in their biohazard suits and their gas masks, and they all carried rifles in two-handed grips. A quick count of them revealed only six. They were clearly intended as a mop-up group to clean up what their superiors probably thought were only two infected people in the area.

“Hell yes,” Remy said, surge of adrenaline and excitement rushing through her, mixing with the cold anger already filling her veins. Someone had to pay, and she might as well start with these six.

She set her bomb-filled backpack on the ground beside the car she and Cade had hidden behind and reached for the bolo knife on her hip with her right hand, her left hand easing to the holstered pistol. After a moment’s hesitation, she chose the pistol, leaving the knife in its sheath for now. She abruptly straightened, lifted her pistol in a two-handed grip, and fired three shots in quick succession.

Remy had never been the world’s best marksman. In fact, she’d only learned how to shoot after the Michaluk Virus had broken out, when she’d been forced to shoot her infected mother in the face with a revolver. Today, her lack of expert shooting skills didn’t matter; all three bullets found their marks. One of the soldiers let out a yelp of pain and collapsed, grasping at his stomach, his rifle clattering to the ground. The other two dropped and didn’t move or make another sound.

The three remaining soldiers shouted in alarm and started to fan out, raising their rifles to aim them in Remy’s direction. She dropped to her knees, huddling behind the car as the soldiers opened fire. Bullets peppered the other side of the car, clanging loudly against the vehicle’s metal in the otherwise quiet air. She hunched up on herself, covering her head with her arms to protect her face as bits of shattered safety glass sprayed over her.

The moment the firing stopped, Remy dropped her pistol and scrambled along the length of the car, heading toward the tail end of it. She peered around the trunk to assess the situation beyond.

One of the soldiers still stood in the middle of the street, his rifle up, aiming it at the car she’d taken shelter behind. Another one was circling around the front of the car, clearly looking to see if they’d managed to hit her. The third uninjured one was tending to their still-living injured companion.

The soldier in the street was focused on the soldier near the front of the vehicle. Now was Remy’s chance.

She rushed from behind the vehicle, running full speed at the man, and grabbed him around the waist, nearly tackling him to the ground. He grunted and planted one of his feet, keeping himself upright, and she grabbed at his rifle, trying to wrest it from his grip.

The other soldier had noticed the activity, and he’d begun to turn toward them. Remy caught the movement in the corner of her eye, and letting go of the rifle, she grabbed the soldier again and spun him around to face his companion, taking cover behind him as the man opened fire. Bullets smacked into the man’s body, making him jolt with the impacts. Three of them broke through and embedded in Remy’s body, one tearing into her left shoulder and two puncturing her abdomen.

The pain from the bullet wounds tearing into her registered in her brain, and Remy’s vision went red. Something flooded through her veins, taking control of her limbs, grabbing hold of her brain. With an animalistic snarl of anger, she picked the dead man she still gripped up from the ground and flung him at his companion. Both of them toppled to the ground, and she whirled on the one that had been tending to the injured soldier. With another growl, she lunged toward him, grabbed his gas mask and hood, and tore them completely off his head. He let out a shout of alarm, and she shoved his head back and sank her teeth into his throat. With one sharp jerk of her head, she ripped it out and spat it onto the ground.

Her face splattered with the blood of her enemy, Remy turned her attention onto the remaining soldier. He’d just recovered from having his fellow soldier’s dead body thrown at him, and his face drained of all color, going pale and grayish at the sight of her. She gave him a slow smile, drew her bolo knife, and rushed him.

Thirty seconds later, it was done. The entire squad of soldiers lay dead around her, bled out and dismembered. Her shirt and jacket were soaked with blood, theirs and hers, and her face and hands were stained with the viscous red fluid. The bullet wounds she’d received from the soldiers’ guns didn’t even hurt. She felt alive, more alive than she had since she’d been infected months before. She felt like dancing, like twirling around in circles in the middle of the street. She refrained, because there were more important things to attend to.

Cade and the others were watching her from inside the building. She couldn’t see them, though she could sense them, huddled around broken windows, peering out at the carnage on the street beyond. She didn’t go to them. Why would she? There was nothing they could do to help her in her mission. They’d be in the way.

Besides, she felt something in her bones, humming in her marrow, like a bell ringing inside her. She turned to look down the street, her back to the wall, and she knew, she just knew, what was in the distance.

A horde of infected was coming her way, lured by the sound of gunshots, which must have carried quite some distance. Where the sight of one of these hordes used to stir hatred and disgust in her chest, this time, Remy smiled as the leading edge of them came into view at the far end of the street.

This was going to factor into her plan wonderfully.

She looked away from the horde and saw Cade standing in the doorway, a look of concern and fear on her face. Remy stared back at her, then shouted, “Get back inside!”

She started walking toward the horde, intending to join it and direct its movements. A door slammed somewhere behind her, and then Cade was jogging toward her.

“What the hell have you done?” she asked breathlessly, trying to keep up with Remy. “Look at me, damn it!”

Remy grabbed Cade’s arm and shoved her away. “Get back inside, Cade. I don’t want you caught in the middle of this.”

“In the middle of what?” Cade asked. “Remy, what are you doing?” She caught Remy’s bicep and tried to make her turn around, but Remy wrenched herself free and lifted her pistol, pointing it right at Cade’s face. Cade stumbled backwards, her eyes wide. “You’ve lost it, haven’t you?” she asked. “You’ve finally fucking lost it.”

“Get. Back. Inside,” Remy ordered, her voice hard and steady. “Now.” Cade looked at the oncoming horde then fled back into the building. The door slammed shut behind her, and even where she stood, Remy heard Cade barricading it against the masses coming their way. She hated that she’d had to resort to such drastic measures to get Cade to listen to her. In all honestly, she was amazed that the woman had been willing to approach her, considering her current physical condition. She slid the pistol back into its holster and stopped in the middle of the street, waiting for the horde’s arrival.

It took two more minutes for the first of them to arrive, sweeping past her in a flood of stinking bodies and limbs, flowing around her like she was a rock in the middle of a river. She let them pass, watching as they flooded toward the massive concrete wall, trampling over the remains of the soldiers. They all, however, obeyed her will and swept around Dominic’s body, leaving it untouched. Once a sufficient number of them had passed her, she started to walk with them, letting them carry her forward toward the wall.

The soldiers lining the top of the wall were shouting to each other and, as soon as the horde crossed from crumbled pavement to scraped dirt, they took aim and opened fire. Bullets peppered the leading edge of the infected, several of them dropping to the ground as the bullets found their marks in heads. The rows behind them simply stumbled over their bodies and kept going, mindless in their advance on the uninfected soldiers manning the wall. Remy encouraged them on, pushing them to keep going, faster and faster, hastening their charge to her intended target. As she drew closer and closer to the massive wall and the gate set into it, she unslung her backpack from her shoulder and unzipped it, ready to take her homemade bombs out at a moment’s notice.

The infected were falling all around her, their blood spattering on her clothes, but not one bullet touched her as she approached the gate. The bullet wounds already in her body had long ceased to ache or even bleed, save for a thick, sluggish ooze that was well on its way to ceasing altogether. When the infected woman immediately to Remy’s right fell to the ground with the force of a bullet that slammed into her chest, Remy squeezed her eyes shut for a long moment, listening to the slow, sluggish thump of her heart.

It beat three more times, and then it stopped.

When she opened her eyes again, Remy Angellette was no longer Remy Angellette.

The thing that had once been Remy Angellette continued forward with the rest of the mob, until it smashed directly against the gates. She ordered the mob to part, exerting her control over them effortlessly, creating a narrow path for her to slip through. Once she was at the gate, she took the makeshift bombs out of her backpack and stuffed the coffee cans against the gate near the center and the hinges. All the while, bullets pinged off the ground around her and embedded into the other infected. Still, none of them met their marks.

Once the coffee cans were positioned where she wanted them, the woman who had formerly been Remy stepped away from the gate and began walking in the opposite direction, tugging free a grenade from her backpack—the same grenade her host body had taken off a dead soldier in Atlanta. Working efficiently, she pulled the pin from the grenade, released the lever, and tossed it against the largest of the coffee cans.

“Protect me,” she ordered the infected surrounding her, even as she sped up, moving further away from the gates. “Shield me.”

The infected scrambled to obey, surging around her, swarming her and piling over her, shielding her with their bodies.

The ensuing explosion ripped through bodies and concrete, tearing off limbs and sending shrapnel soaring outward, flinging bodies away from the blast’s epicenter. The gate tore free from its steel tracks, twisting and breaking apart under the force of the explosion, and one of the guard towers alongside the gate toppled, leaning outward before crashing down onto the teeming horde below.

The debris had barely stopped falling when the woman who had once been Remy Angellette ordered her undead shields off of her. She rose from underneath the mob, ignoring the dust settling over everything, and tilted her head back to shout at the top of her lungs.

“Go!” she yelled. “Show them the meaning of the words ‘Hell on Earth!’”

Chapter 40

When Kimberly stirred into consciousness, her head spinning, it took everything in her to not throw up. She opened her eyes then squeezed them closed again, pressing her fingers to her temples, trying to figure out where she was.

She lay on an overly hard mattress that was so thin she could feel the metal slats underneath it. The blanket was a scratchy wool that would make her itch for hours. Once she felt steady enough to sit up, she braced her hands underneath her and pushed upright, then slowly opened her eyes again.

She was in a small room, a cell really, with off-white cinderblock walls. The floor was a sterile gray concrete, and the room was unadorned beyond the metal-framed bed she lay on and the corner with a prison-style toilet and sink. There were no windows. She was the only person in the room; Chris was nowhere to be seen.

Kimberly swung her feet to the side to rest them against the floor, sending up a silent thank you that she still had her tennis shoes on. The rest of her was swathed in the light blue scrubs that the Eden Facility’s people had dressed her in. Disturbingly, there was a spot of blood on the shoulder of the top, and she touched it lightly then moved her fingers to the side of her head. There was a cut on her head, presumably where something had struck her, and she scrunched her eyes shut as she tried to remember exactly what had happened.

It came back to her relatively quickly. She recalled the meeting with Major Bradford, during which he’d treated her like a second-class citizen, presumably because she was female, and directed all his questions to Ethan. When he’d gotten the paperwork showing Ethan as infected and had gone off his rocker, accusing them of conspiring to assassinate him with one of the infected, and then he’d given the order to have her and Chris quarantined, and Ethan…

“Oh God,” Kimberly whispered.

How long had she been unconscious? Was Ethan already dead? Was she already too late?

She pushed herself off the bed, standing still for long enough to ensure she wasn’t going to immediately fall over as her orientation changed. She went to the door, examining it for any weaknesses. It was a heavy steel door, solidly constructed, and the hinges were apparently affixed to the outside, since she couldn’t see them from where she stood. There was a narrow window set into the steel door, about a foot long, running vertically up the door above the handle. Thin black wires crisscrossed inside the glass, preventing it from being broken. She peered out the narrow window into a pristine white, empty hallway. Cupping her hands to either side of her head to cut out additional light, she looked in either direction, searching for signs of light. When she didn’t see anything, she tried calling out.

“Hello?” she said, raising her voice as loud as she dared. “Is anybody out there?”

A long pause, followed by no answer.

“Hello?”

When there was still no answer, Kimberly growled under her breath in frustration, lifted a fist, and started pounding on the door.

She’d just established a decent rhythm that wouldn’t wear her out when three figures appeared on the other side of the door. One of them leaned down to peer into her room, a soldier wearing a gas mask and some type of biohazard suit, which made her roll her eyes. What did they think she was going to do, eat their faces off? Spit in their eyes? She was far more professional than that.

“Hey!” Kimberly yelled, hoping they’d hear her through the glass. “Hey, when the fuck are you letting me out of here?” It probably wasn’t the greatest question to lead with, but her internal filter was on the fritz after the blow to the head she’d taken.

The soldier retreated from view, and Kimberly slapped her hand against the door again. “Hey!” she yelled, ignoring the pain in her head. “Come back here! I’m not done talking to you!”

Another man appeared in the glass. This one was obviously a scientist; he wasn’t wearing a blatantly military-issued biohazard suit. He had one that was meant for high-containment laboratory settings. He made a shooing motion toward her to indicate for her to back up, and she took two steps back. He kept making the motion, so she stepped back again, and they kept going like this until she bumped against the wall across from the door. He motioned for her to put her hands up, so she obediently raised them, palms out, alongside her head. She heard the distinctive sound of the lock unfastening and the creak of the door when one of the soldiers pulled it open.

The scientist stepped into the room, pausing inside the door to study her with a curious expression that she could barely make out through the plastic-y face shield built into his hood. “What is your name?” he asked, raising his voice to be heard through the hood. His tone suggested he already knew who she was but was testing her to see if she knew.

“Kimberly Geller,” she answered. “Where am I?”

“You’re at the Eden Facil—”

Kimberly interrupted him with a frustrated growl. “I know that, you jackass,” she snapped. “I mean where am I?” She waved her hand around, indicating the room she stood in, and a look of clarity dawned on the man’s face.

“Oh!” he said brightly, like he were getting the opportunity to teach a young girl something new. “You’re in one of the Eden Facility’s quarantine rooms. Major Bradford ordered that you and your friend Chris be isolated here until we determine that you’re clean. It’s for our safety as well as yours.”

Kimberly rolled her eyes. “Oh, spare me the bullshit. Where’s Chris?”

“Chris is in a quarantine room similar to this one,” the man replied. “No need to worry about him. He is as safe as you are.”

Kimberly didn’t find that reassuring in the slightest.

“What about Ethan Bennett?” she asked, getting to the real point of her questioning. “Where is he?”

The man looked confused for a split second before his expression smoothed into one of neutrality. “He’s in another quarantine room, the same as you and Chris. He’s in good hands.”

Kimberly didn’t believe a word of it.

“Who are you?” she asked. “You seem to know who I am, but you don’t appear willing to share in kind.”

The man sighed and motioned for her to lower her arms; she obeyed, though she stayed exactly where she stood. “My name is Dr. Jacob Howser,” he answered. “I’m a pathologist here at the Eden Facility that has been tasked with finding a cure for the Michaluk Virus.”

“Your facility’s solution to having someone with intimate knowledge of the virus walk in through the front door is to knock her out and imprison her and her companions?”

Jacob stared at her before asking, “How much knowledge do you have about Michaluk?”

“I’ve worked directly with the disease alongside a former CDC doctor who was on the team that developed the pathogen that later became the Michaluk Virus,” Kimberly said. “We were able to develop something that appears to be a vaccine. It’s worked on one person, and we were preparing to test it on a second when we were forced to leave our safe house because the infected had found us and were about to attack.”

Jacob stared at her for another long moment, as if he couldn’t believe what she was saying. “You’re telling me you’ve developed a vaccine?” he repeated. “Jesus. Why wasn’t I told about this?”

“Because obviously someone didn’t want you to know that one of your quarantined prisoners was actually valuable,” Kimberly snapped.

Despite Jacob’s confusion, resolve entered his eyes. “Sit tight, Ms. Geller. I’m going to get to the bottom of this. As soon as I know something, I’ll come back here, get you cleared to leave quarantine, and maybe we can discuss your potential usefulness in the lab. To say we need all the help we can get is an understatement.”

Kimberly wanted to ask what he thought she could do about anything. As far as she was concerned, her personal involvement in the creation of the vaccine was over and done with. She didn’t give a shit what he thought of her potential to “help” them, especially after the shitty treatment they’d dumped on her and her friends when they’d been trying to help and had even brought along the walking, talking, definitive proof that the vaccine worked, at least on some level.

The scientist turned around and strode out of the room. The two soldiers that had accompanied him waited until he was in the hallway before they backed out of the room, one by one, keeping their eyes on her the entire time.

Kimberly didn’t move until the heavy metal door clanged shut. Then she pushed off the wall and strode to the door, slapping both her palms against it and yelling, “Let me out of here, damn it! I wasn’t done talking to you!” When she didn’t get an answer to her yelling, she gave up, giving the door a solid, parting kick that made her entire foot ache.

Kimberly scowled and hobbled to the bed, dropping onto the edge of it and massaging her foot through her tennis shoe. She had a fleeting concern that it was broken, but after stripping off her shoe and sock, she assured herself that the bones were all intact. The last thing she needed was a busted foot to prevent her from getting the hell out of there.

Jacob’s visit had told her a few things that would probably come in handy. First, that the people at this facility were paranoid enough about her that they wouldn’t come in the room without the requisite protective gear. Second, Jacob brought two soldiers with him as a protective detail, and she figured maybe if she played her cards right, she might have a shot against them. Third, the cell door swung outward into the hall.

That last one felt like it was the most important of the three.

Kimberly settled back on the bed, twisting so she could watch the door, folding her feet underneath her. She was a patient person. She had no problem waiting for the most opportune moment to present itself before she made her move. Even if it took all day to arise.

She was going to get out of there. Then she was going to track down Ethan and, yes, even Chris and get them out too. She would be damned if she helped these people anymore, especially after the treatment they’d received.

She just had to figure out the best way to do it.

Chapter 41

To say that Ethan was pensive about his future would be an understatement. He was forcibly marched down the hallway toward his unknown destination, shivering with cold, his muscles trembling as the cold air cut through the thin excuse for scrubs that he wore and chilling him to the bone. Two soldiers had his biceps in tight, vice-like grips, and he could practically feel bruises forming under the strength of their grasps. A quick twist of his upper body revealed a third soldier directly behind him, a rifle pointed at his head.

There’s no getting out of this one, Bennett.

The guards steered him around several hallway corners, thoroughly confusing him in the facility’s dizzying maze.

What the hell have you gotten yourself into?

Ethan still couldn’t figure out how he’d gotten where he was right then, being shoved down a long hall toward an unknown fate, the thought of which made him queasy. He tried to keep track of the twists and turns on the off chance he’d have the opportunity to escape. There was a fat chance of that happening, but he’d stay on the alert regardless. However, the facility was built with no clear pattern to its hallways, and he quickly lost his bearings. That was until the four of them arrived at a large door flanked by glass walls. A sign that read “Laboratory” was attached to the door.

One of the soldiers holding Ethan’s arms pushed the door open and shoved him through it. They stopped him in the middle of the room, and he assessed his surroundings. He stood in an office space outside the actual labs. There were two desks in the room, one to the far right and another against the wall to the right of the door. Both of the desks’ tops were nearly bare and as immaculate as he’d ever seen a desk. Directly across from him was a room that divided the office area from a lab. There were nozzles on the walls inside it, and he assumed it was a decontamination chamber. The lab itself was spotless, all stainless steel counters and tons of lab equipment, half of which he could actually identify, thanks to the forensics and criminal investigative classes he’d taken. Several computers were on a desk near the far wall. To the left side of the lab, down a short hallway with clear walls, there looked to be something that resembled cells or maybe cages. He squinted at them, but without his glasses, he couldn’t say anything for sure.

When Ethan had come out of his months’ long coma, as he liked to call it—there was something horribly uncomfortable about admitting he’d lived as one of the infected for several months—his eyesight had gotten noticeably worse. That wasn’t something he’d divulged to anyone yet, not even Kimberly. It wasn’t like anyone could do anything about it. Optometrists had once been a dime a dozen, but now he could say that finding one in a post-Michaluk world would be impossible. And getting a new glasses prescription filled was even more impossible than finding the person who could write it.

Right now, though, glasses were the last things on his mind. While he’d been examining the room, the soldiers had been taking turns guarding him and checking the security of each other’s biohazard suits. Once they were done with this, they shoved him forward, steering him toward the entrance to the decontamination chambers. They didn’t stop in there, though; they continued on through them into the lab. Once they were inside the colder room, they took a sharp left and shoved him toward the clear-walled hallway. As they drew closer, Ethan saw that cells lined the walls, and inside several of them were infected. Though he knew they couldn’t hurt him, Ethan’s instincts caused him to freeze up. He tensed and dug his heels into the tile, trying to prevent them from taking him any further. The two men who were holding on to his biceps nearly picked him up off the floor to keep him moving.

They shoved him into one of the cells, between two other infected, one of which looked like a live one and another that was half rotted. The cell’s walls and door were clear plastic glass, and Ethan met one face to face as he was shoved against the one furthest from the door.

“Move from this spot before we’re out of the cell, and I’ll put a bullet in the back of your head,” one of the soldiers said. Ethan nodded, and the man let go of him and backed away.

Ethan waited until the cell’s door thudded shut before he pushed away from the wall and whirled around, glaring at the three suited men on the other side of the hazy glass. “Let me out of here!” he shouted, slapping his hand against the glass. The bang of his palm drew the attention of the infected in the cells to either side of him, and they plastered themselves against the clear walls that separated his cell from theirs.

There was a small slot on the door barely wide enough to squeeze his fingers through. One of the soldiers slid the small door over it aside and called through it, “Major Bradford’s orders. You’re not going anywhere.” He slid the door shut and walked away, leading the two other soldiers with him through the lab and into the decontamination showers.

At any other time, Ethan might have watched them go through the decontamination process, if only because he was curious about how they handled the decontamination of their rifles. Right now, he was too angry to care. He focused on trying to find a way out of the glass box, trying to ignore the infected that were plastered against the glass, attempting to get to him through the impenetrable barrier between them.

Ethan paced the cage, searching for gaps, seams, a way out of the too-small space he’d been stuffed in, but the only option he had was the door, and that wasn’t much of an option. The edge of the door overlapped with the wall alongside it, a narrow lip on the door that prevented him from wedging his fingers in any gaps that might have been there otherwise. He swore and slapped his hand against the door, frustrated at his lack of success.

Ethan sat down on the floor against the far wall, scowling. He tried to ignore the infected on either side of him, resting his elbows against his thighs and staring at the cell door before him.

He was stuck here. There was no clear escape from this cell. He would have to bide his time and wait for an opening. He would only be here for forty-eight hours, and he had a sinking feeling that it wouldn’t be enough time for him to find and take advantage of any openings that presented themselves.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered. He leaned forward, dropping his head into his hands and rolling it from side to side. He was at a loss of what to do, and the feeling was detestable. He hated feeling hopeless and helpless, because it made him angry and prone to lashing out at the nearest person. Seeing as how there were no other people nearby, all he could do was stuff that frustration down inside him, where it would undoubtedly simmer and stew until eruption.

The banging of the infected on either side of him was muffled but rhythmic, like a heartbeat. He closed his eyes, trying to tune the noise out before it drove him crazy, and sent up a silent prayer to whatever deity would deign to listen to him that he’d find a way out of this and would be given the opportunity to track down Kimberly and make their escape.

Chapter 42

Roughly two hours ticked by, and Kimberly was getting antsy. She was pacing back and forth across her tiny cell, counting minutes to calculate hours, trying to keep track of the time that was passing. She was ready for something, anything to happen already. The lack of action was driving her insane.

Occasionally, she went to the door and peered out the narrow window, watching for long moments for the least bit of activity in the hallway. Once, she’d seen a thin woman with a short blonde bob power walking down the hall, her heels click-clacking with every step. Kimberly thought about smacking her hand against the door to get the woman’s attention, but something had held her back. Her hand, raised and halfway to the door, dropped uselessly to her side.

That woman was the wrong target. She couldn’t get Kimberly out of there. She looked too low on the totem pole to have any say in the matter.

That was, by Kimberly’s count, thirty-eight minutes ago, and she hadn’t seen another soul in the hallway since. After those thirty-eight minutes, she’d started peering out the window with each pass, searching for anyone—the guards, the scientist who’d visited her before, Chris, Ethan, anybody. She wanted to get out of the tiny room so badly it burned.

Kimberly rubbed at her face, tilting her head back and pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes. She saw bright, blotchy red stars in the darkness behind her eyelids, and she reveled in them. She stood for a moment longer, her eyes still closed, then blinked them open and stared at the tiled ceiling.

At the tiled ceiling.

“Jesus,” Kimberly whispered. “Damn it, Geller, why didn’t you notice that earlier?”

It was so horribly action-movie cliché, and Kimberly hated that she was even considering it, but she had to do something, and sitting around hoping for another solution wasn’t going to cut it. She stared at the ceiling, trying to calculate the distance between the top of her head and the ceiling tiles, and guessed it to be between five and six feet. Too high for her to reach from the floor or by standing on the bed.

Kimberly turned her attention to the sink. She thought maybe it would give her enough of a boost to reach the ceiling tiles.

She glanced at the door, wondering if she should wait until the scientist who’d stopped in before made another appearance before she tried climbing around in the ceiling. It was hard to judge whether now or later would be the better course of action; she’d lost all accounting of time during her unconsciousness, when that stupid soldier had smacked her on the head with the butt of his rifle. For all she knew, it was the middle of the night, and no one would come by for hours, hours that she could spend getting as far of a lead on anyone who would follow them as she could.

Worst case scenario, someone was about to find her standing on the sink.

Kimberly went to the toilet and stared at it for a second. It was a metal contraption, much like the sink, with no lid, so she was going to have to balance on the metal seat and pray she didn’t slip. With one last glance at the door, she braced her hands against the wall and climbed on top of the commode, balancing on it with one foot on either side of the seat. Once she was sure that her stance was steady, she shifted to put all her weight on one side of the commode and quickly hauled herself up onto the sink.

Standing on the sink ended up being a lot harder than it looked, and her balance was precarious. She stretched an arm up and nudged at the ceiling tile above her head. It shifted easily, and she smiled.

“Jackpot,” she murmured, shoving it out of the way. She pushed it into the ceiling’s crawl space and felt around in the gap she’d left behind, searching for hand holds to haul herself up with. She hooked her fingers around the framework that held the tiles, sent up a prayer that they would hold her weight, and pulled.

Within moments, Kimberly was in the narrow space between the dropped ceiling and the building’s actual ceiling. It was dusty up there, and long strands of dark cobwebs hung down from the narrow rafters above her head, like a series of veils spread randomly throughout the crawl space. The idea of the cobwebs being loaded with spiders was enough to make her want to crawl back into her cell. But no, she had to do this. Finding Ethan was imperative.

Kimberly twisted around to pick up the displaced tile, sliding it into place silently. When it thunked into place, the little light that had been illuminating her surroundings vanished, plunging her into a murky darkness that set her teeth on edge. She crouched there, her feet planted carefully on two of the junctions where the framework crossed over itself, and waited impatiently for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Once the subtle shapes of cobwebs and the ceiling’s framework shifted into focus, she took a deep breath, nearly choking on an errant cobweb in the process, and picked a random direction to start crawling in.

The journey was a lot more awkward than she’d expected it to be. The framework was relatively sturdy, but every time she set her knee against one of the places where the bars overlapped, she swore the ceiling sagged slightly. Whenever her imagination kicked into gear and she pictured herself plunging through the ceiling onto some unsuspecting soldier or lab technician below, she prayed that her worst fears wouldn’t be realized.

Kimberly hadn’t been shuffling her way through the roofing for long when her eyes picked out a bright light shining up from the darkness. She made her way toward it so she could decide whether she needed to shift course.

It was some sort of vent, maybe an air conditioning outflow grating that had been put there but hadn’t been connected to anything. Kimberly eased her way to it, lurking near the edge, bracing her hands in order to lean at the right angle where she could see below without being seen. She found herself looking down on what appeared to be some sort of laboratory; it didn’t appear to have been used in quite some time. The equipment on the counters was dusty, and there wasn’t anyone in sight. She wondered why the light had been left on, but she figured maybe all the lights in the facility were on all the time. Regardless, she stayed where she was, examining what little she could see of the room below, and debated whether to exit the ceiling there or at a point further away from her cell. She looked back in the general direction she’d come, staring into the darkness, then looked beyond the light in front of her and searched for another light source. She spotted one quite some distance off, maybe twenty or thirty yards, and decided it was best to go to that location and see what was there.

When she got there, she discovered that she was looking down at another lab, this one more obviously well used than the other. The steel countertops below were polished to a mirror shine, and the instruments that were laid out on it were equally clean. It was more brightly lit than the last lab she’d peered down into, too, which made her suspect that she might have been looking down at one of the primary labs in the facility.

There was movement below. Kimberly recoiled reflexively, pulling back away from the grate and hoping she hadn’t been spotted. When she was assured she hadn’t been, she eased forward again, bracing her hands against the framework and squinting at the lab below. A man had entered the lab, swathed in the familiar biohazard suit, a clipboard in his hand. He walked across the room before disappearing from view.

Kimberly scooted backward, easing toward the direction the man had gone, hoping to hear anything he said. The voices she heard were muffled, though, and it took a long moment for her ears to focus enough to make out words. When she gathered what was being said, her heart leaped into her chest and hope flooded through her.

“Who are you?” the scientist asked, and it took Kimberly a second to recognize the voice as Jacob Howser’s, the same scientist that had visited her in her cell a couple of hours before. His voice was severely muffled, both by the distance and by the hood he was wearing. His confusion was obvious. “What are you doing here? Nobody told me I had a new volunteer.”

“I’m not a volunteer,” a man replied, his voice noticeably angry. Kimberly recognized whose voice it was, and her eyes widened. Ethan.

“Then how the hell did you end up in one of my cells?” Jacob asked.

“Your asshole soldier boys stuck me in here,” Ethan snapped. “It’s not like I asked to be put in here. Where the hell am I?”

“You’re at the Eden Facility, in the main labs,” Jacob explained. “I’m Dr. Jacob Howser. I’m an epidemiologist who’s been hired to help find a cure for the Michaluk Virus, and I’m also in charge of the laboratory.”

“Fine, then let me out of here and take me to my friends,” Ethan demanded.

“Why are you not already in the quarantine cells with your friends?” Jacob asked.

“I guess I pissed off the wrong person.”

“You must have really done a fantastic job of it to end up in the cell between these two guys,” Jacob said. “What did you do?”

“I managed to get myself infected and then vaccinated, and it actually worked,” Ethan said. “Apparently, your Major Bradford seems to think that that’s unacceptable.”

“Major Bradford thinks everything is unacceptable,” Jacob said. Kimberly heard him move around below, and he added, “This file says you were bitten seven months ago?”

“That’s right,” Ethan replied.

“How have you survived this long like this?” Jacob asked. “Because these results Bradford sent over show you as testing positive for the Michaluk Virus.”

Kimberly didn’t hear Ethan’s response; she was busy making her way back to the grating she’d initially looked through, hoping to catch a glimpse of the scientist below, maybe even wiggle around enough to get a look at Ethan. She doubted she’d be able to see him, but she had to try. She had to see for herself exactly what condition he was in.

“I’ll be right back, okay?” she heard the scientist saying as she crawled to the grating. “I want to see what sort of information I can find out about why you were brought in here.”

Jacob Howser came into view almost at the same time Kimberly reached the grating again, and she saw him exiting through the decontamination chambers that led out of the lab into the office beyond. There was another grating just beyond that looked like it might have been over the offices, so while Jacob was decontaminating, Kimberly scrambled over to it, careful to stay as quiet as possible so she didn’t draw his attention upward.

The grate opened up where she thought it would: right over one of the desks inside the office area. Both of the desks were bare, though each had a telephone situated at the upper right corner of the desk, and there was a desktop calendar across one of them. Nothing identified anything in specific about who typically occupied the desks.

Dr. Howser walked into the office, his hair damp, dressed in black sweatpants and a white t-shirt. He went to the desk without the calendar on it and unlocked a drawer, opening it and taking out a cell phone. He turned it on and thumbed through the menus, selecting a name in the screen and putting the phone to his ear. After a moment, he hung up, then dialed another number. When the person he called answered, he cleared his throat and asked, “Why are you on your burner?” He paused, nodding slowly to himself, then asked, “Did you two get out?” Another pause and then he added, “Good, because I have a problem. I think I have another one.” Another pause. “Major Bradford had him hauled to the labs. He’s another one that’s asymptomatic but has a positive Michaluk profile.”

Another pause, then he said, “A name? Ah…” He flipped a few pages in the folder he’d set on his desk and answered, “Ethan Bennett.”

Kimberly could practically hear a feminine shriek on the other end of the man’s cell phone.

“You know this one too?” Jacob asked with a heavy note of incredulity in his voice. “How many of your friends are they going to be hauling in here?”

Kimberly frowned, wondering what the hell Jacob was talking about—friends? Who was this person on the phone that he was talking to? And this other friend he referenced, who was he talking about?

“Look, I can’t get him out of here too,” Jacob said. He’d dropped his voice, and Kimberly strained to hear him as he added, “As soon as they realize the other one is missing, and you’re not here, they’re going to play connect the dots, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out where those dots are going to lead. You need to get back here. I need help with this. Stash him somewhere safe and get back to work before someone realizes you’re both gone.”

After listening to whatever the person on the other end of the line had to say, Jacob hung up his cell phone, turned it off, and returned it to the drawer in his desk. He looked around the room, as if he were suspicious that someone was listening to him, then left the office, heading for the doors that led into the hallway.

Kimberly stayed still, counting off three minutes in her head before she dared to make a move. She examined the area below the tiles, deciding that the man’s desk would probably be the best landing point she would have. She had to get out of the ceiling and get to Ethan.

Kimberly grasped the tile alongside the grate, wedging her fingernails into the narrow space between the tile and the frame so she could pry it up. She levered it up and stared down into the dizzying distance to the desk and the floor below.

It was now or never.

She shoved the tile aside, double checked that she wasn’t going to get busted by anyone the minute she dropped down from the ceiling, and then slid her legs through the gap. With another deep breath, she dropped out of the hole, hung by her fingertips for, and then let go.

The drop was longer than she thought it’d be, and she landed on the desk with a louder thud than she’d meant to. Her right ankle turned when she landed, and she instinctively went with it, falling sideways right off the desk and onto the hard tile floor. Her breath rushed out of her lungs, and she barely managed to keep her head from smacking the tile when she landed. Struggling to get breath back in her lungs, she scrambled underneath the desk in case someone had heard the commotion and was about to come into the office to investigate.

Nobody showed up. Kimberly’s lungs steadied, her breath returning to them until she felt more settled. Then she crawled to the edge of the desk and peered around the corner of it, searching to make sure no one was coming.

Once she was assured that her fall from the ceiling hadn’t been heard, Kimberly turned her attention to getting into the laboratory area and, hopefully, tracking down Ethan on the other side of those doors.

Chapter 43

The trip to Lindsey’s apartment near the center of Eden was made in silence, not a word spoken between her and her passenger as she steered her sedan through the twilit city streets. Brandt stared out the window alongside him with a look suggestive of ones she’d seen on prisoners who’d just been released from jail. Relief at getting out was there, along with envy at the apparent ease of the life they all led. But what worried her the most was his pure, hard anger.

The anger was filling up the car, oozing out of Brandt’s pores to stain everything around him. His fists alternately clenched and unclenched, and he glared with hatred at everything moving by. It made Lindsey afraid that he was going to come across the center console at her. However, he didn’t seem like the type to hurt a woman, no matter how angry she made him. If he were, her sister would never have married him.

Thoughts of her sister were enough to sink her spirits again. Cade was still out there, somewhere on the wrong side of the Wall. She was pregnant, possibly alone, surrounded by creatures that wanted to kill her. She might even be dead by now. That thought made her chest hurt. Cade was all she had left; her parents were gone, her brother was gone, and her daughter—

A sob surged from her chest and up her throat, escaping her mouth before she could stop it. She tried to choke it down, but it exploded out, shattering through the essence of Brandt’s stew of anger to smack against the windshield and reverberate throughout the car. She hunched over the steering wheel, grinding her palms against its leather-covered surface, as the gut-wrenching pain of grief tore through her.

“Lindsey?” Brandt’s voice queried through the haze of her grief. A horn blared somewhere beyond her car, and she instinctively jerked the wheel, getting the car out of the lane she’d drifted into. “Lindsey, pull over,” Brandt said, and something in his tone of voice was enough to cut through to her logic and reason. She steered the car to the side of the road. The wheels on the passenger side ground against the curb, and she fumbled at the gearshift, trying to shove it into park. Brandt did it for her, and then his arms wrapped around her in a crushing hug, practically squeezing the life out of her. She accepted his too-tight embrace without complaint, burying her face against his shoulder and sobbing out everything that had been trapped inside her since he’d confirmed her daughter’s death.

When she came back to herself, Lindsey was surprised to discover that only five minutes had passed since she’d broken down. It had felt like an eternity that she’d sat there, crying into Brandt’s arms, the gearshift digging painfully into her side. Brandt’s hand was rubbing soothing circles against her back, and when she pulled away from him to mop her face with her sleeve, she could read the worry in his eyes.

“I’m okay,” Lindsey tried to assure him. The worry in his eyes turned to doubt.

“No, you’re not,” Brandt contradicted, shaking his head. “You’re a hot mess. I’m not sure that you should be behind the wheel. Let me drive.”

“You don’t know where you’re going,” Lindsey protested. Her voice sounded rough, tired, and weak. She grimaced and wiped at her face again.

“You can give me directions,” Brandt said. “Come on, swap off. You’re in no condition to drive.”

Lindsey sighed, wanting to argue but at the same time not feeling up to it. It would all end the same way anyway, with him behind the wheel and her in the passenger seat. “Fine,” she muttered. She unbuckled her seatbelt and got out of the car, and they made quick work of the switch then got on the road again.

Her brain still fuzzy with grief, Lindsey collapsed into the passenger seat, sagging back against the leather with the bonelessness reserved for the terminally exhausted. It took everything in her to not slip into sleep. Brandt needed her to give him directions. She couldn’t do that if she was unconscious.

“How are you feeling?” Brandt asked. Lindsey pointed him to the right.

“How do you think I feel?” she asked after he made the turn. “I found out for certain that my daughter is dead after spending two years praying for the contrary, and my sister might as well be, for all the distance between us.” He flinched when she mentioned Cade, and the look in his eyes shifted from concerned to sad. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I forget that you’re grieving too.”

“I’m not grieving,” Brandt said, grinding his hands against the steering wheel. “Because she’s not dead.”

“How can you be so sure of that?”

“Because I’m her husband,” Brandt said. “I think if she were dead, I would have sensed it. I know I would have. She’s not dead.”

His confidence that Cade was alive was buoying, and Lindsey sat up straighter. “We need a game plan,” she said. “I can handle everything on this side of the Wall, but I’ve never been on the southern side. I’m going to need your help.”

Brandt wasn’t paying attention to her. He was staring out the windshield with narrowed eyes, turning his head to follow a sign on the side of the road. “I thought you said we were in Bowling Green, Kentucky,” he said, his tone accusatory.

Lindsey raised an eyebrow. “When did I tell you that?”

“The day they brought me in,” Brandt said. “When I was captured and brought in. You told me then that we were near Bowling Green, Kentucky.”

Lindsey drew in a slow breath as realization hit her, and she recalled the events of the night that Brandt had been brought into the Eden Facility. “Oh hell, I forgot about that,” she said ruefully, wrinkling her nose. “That was Bradford’s doing. We were told to not tell you where you really were so if in the off-chance you escaped, you wouldn’t know where to go.”

“And you thought it was acceptable to not mention it to me at some point over the past day?” Brandt asked. He jabbed his finger at the windshield. “That said North Carolina. When were you planning to tell me that I wasn’t even in the same state you told me I was in?”

“Brandt, it was a mistake, okay?” she said. “An oversight. Ever heard of those? I’ve had a lot of shit on my mind, including figuring out how to get you out of the facility.” She flopped back in her seat, folding her arms over her chest, scowling. “Would a thank you hurt?”

“No, but you’re not getting one until you get me back where I belong,” Brandt said. “Which would be on the other side of that fucking wall.”

“I’ll get you there,” Lindsey promised. “Only if you take me with you.”

Brandt didn’t respond until he made the next turn that Lindsey signaled for him to take. He extended his hand into the passenger side of the vehicle, and she grasped it tightly in her own. “Deal,” he agreed.

Lindsey grinned hesitantly and shook his hand firmly, but before she could say, “Deal,” the prepaid, disposable cell phone she kept hidden in her glove box started to ring.

Chapter 44

Ethan had almost drifted off half a dozen times since he’d been stuffed into his clear-walled cell, but every time he slid so precariously close to sleep, one or both of the infected on either side of him would slam themselves against the glass hard enough to startle him back awake. They never let up from their hyper-vigilant pursuit, something that Ethan didn’t understand. The last time he’d encountered infected up close and personal, they hadn’t reacted to him like these two were. If anything, the last ones he’d run into had seen him like he was one of them. These weren’t reacting in the same way, and he couldn’t figure out why.

He could take his time to come up with all sorts of theories, and he could even bounce them off that scientist who’d visited him earlier. To hell with that. He’d be damned if he gave the man anything more than any bare essentials. He wouldn’t spend the last two days of his life trying to help these assholes.

He slid down the wall, stretching out flat on his back on the floor. His spine popped and cracked, his back muscles seized, and he groaned out loud at the pain that thrummed through him. He draped one of his arms across his forehead and stared at the half-rotten infected man in the cell beside his. The man was mashing his face against the glass, leaving smears of old blood and who knew what else on the pane. Ethan curled his lip in disgust and closed his eyes, shifting his arm to shade his eyes from the fluorescent glare above.

A soft thud from somewhere nearby caught his attention, and he slid his arm off his eyes a fraction, lifting his head slightly. The hall outside his cell was still empty. He was tempted to get up and check out the source of the sound, but he figured it came from one of the two people on either side of him, so he shrugged and dropped his head back down on the floor.

There was a clang that sounded like it had come from the lab. Ethan ignored it, figuring it was the scientist returning to the lab to grill him a little more. He stayed where he was, breathing steadily, forcing himself to look relaxed, hoping that he would fool the man into thinking that he was asleep and leaving him alone.

A rapid tapping on the plastic-glass door of his cell made him fully uncover his eyes. It was a frantic, rhythmic tapping, one that was designed to catch his attention while making minimal noise. He lolled his head to the side, trying to not stir up the infected to either side of him any more than necessary, and his eyes widened when he saw Kimberly kneeling on the cold tiles outside his cell.

She was filthy, her pale blue scrubs and her shoulder-length blonde hair covered in streaks and stains—and were those cobwebs all over her clothes? He scrambled off his back and slid across the floor to the door, pressing his palms against the glass.

“Jesus, Kim, where have you been?” Ethan asked, raising his voice as loud as he dared so she could hear him through the glass. “Are you okay? They didn’t hurt you, did they?” The sight of the dried blood crusted in her hair made his long-dormant anger surge up in him again.

“I’m fine,” Kimberly said. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

“How did you find me?” Ethan asked, bewildered.

She pointed up, and he glanced at the ceiling. “I crawled through the ceiling,” she said. “It wasn’t the most pleasant experience.” She shuddered, then shook it off. “I’m here to bust out you out, damsel in distress.”

“I could argue about which of us qualifies as a damsel, but right now, I’ll be happy if you just get me the hell out of here,” Ethan admitted.

“I will as soon as I figure out how…” She trailed off, examining the door’s lock closely, a look of intense concentration on her face. “Key?”

“I haven’t seen one,” Ethan said. “I think either one of Bradford’s men has it, or the scientist has it.”

“Scientist?” Kimberly repeated. “You mean Dr. Howser?”

“I don’t know what the hell the man’s name is, and I really don’t care,” Ethan said. “Just get me out of here.”

Kimberly examined the lock closer and nodded to herself. “I’ll be right back.” She crawled away, scurrying back in the direction of the lab, a look of determination on her face. Ethan’s heart crammed itself into his throat, and he slid back from the door a few inches.

He tilted his head back to look at the ceiling above him, wondering why the thought of escaping through the ceiling hadn’t occurred to him. The ceiling was solid sheetrock, though, so any escape attempt from his cell would have been a moot point anyway. He had to give Kimberly credit for her ingenuity. He wasn’t sure he’d have thought about crawling through the ceiling to bust out of this place.

He was still waiting for Kimberly to return when the scientist came back from wherever he’d gone, swathed once again in his biohazard suit. Ethan did his best to not look past the man in a search for Kimberly; he wanted to avoid alerting Dr. Howser that there was anything going on out of the ordinary.

“I apologize for earlier,” the scientist said. “Your presence caught me by surprise, and I didn’t take the time to make proper introductions. I’m Dr. Jacob Howser. I’m an epidemiologist here at the Eden Facility that has been tasked with helping to find a cure for the Michaluk Virus.”

“Yeah, good luck with that,” Ethan grumbled.

“Your file tells me that your name is Ethan Christopher Bennett.”

“So you can read,” Ethan said. “Good for you.”

“The file tells me quite a few other things about you,” Jacob said. “Like the fact your blood type is A-positive, you are forty-one years old, and you’ve been bitten twelve times by at least one infected, probably more.”

Ethan raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to continue.

“It also tells me that you test positive for the Michaluk Virus,” Jacob said. “Which, I assume, you contracted via those twelve bites you’ve sustained at some point in the past couple of years.” Despite himself, Ethan nodded, a single bob of the head in acknowledgment of the doctor’s supposition. “What the file doesn’t tell me is how you ended up here and why.”

“Well, it certainly wasn’t because this was the hottest vacation destination in the southeast,” Ethan said. He made to shove his hands into his pockets before realizing that the scrub pants didn’t have pockets. He scowled again and folded his arms across his chest, leaning against the wall across from Jacob.

Jacob shifted uncomfortably and glanced toward his labs. “I should get you out of your cell and do a full physical workup.” He flipped the clasp on his clipboard up and pulled free a key. “If I let you out of there, are you planning to attack me? Because if you’re going to make this hard, I can easily leave you in there.”

“I’m not going to attack you,” Ethan said. There was no way he was going to do anything this man could construe as antagonizing if he was going to get him out of that cell, and he was especially not going to do anything when he wasn’t sure where Kimberly was.

The doctor stared at Ethan like he was trying to assess how truthful he was being. Then he slid the key into the lock and turned it, and the door swung open.

The temptation to rush out of the room and make a break for it was overwhelming, but Ethan refrained, stepping out of the cell at a sedate pace. Jacob closed the door, clipped the key back onto his clipboard, and led him toward the labs. The moment they entered the room full of stainless steel tables and lab equipment, Ethan immediately started scanning the room, searching for both Kimberly and for an escape route other than the door to the office beyond the lab. There had to be an emergency exit somewhere in there, didn’t there? It was a lab; they worked with caustic chemicals all the time and needed an escape route in case something blew up in their faces.

Ethan saw neither an escape route nor Kimberly, and his heart sank a little.

The doctor had stopped halfway through the lab, setting his clipboard on one of the tables. He looked at Ethan, the expression on his face serious. “Lieutenant Michael Brandt Evans.”

Ethan’s heart leaped in his throat, and he guessed that that showed in his expression, because a knowing smile crept across Jacob’s face.

“So you do know him.”

“Of course I know him!” Ethan said. “He’s one of my closest friends. My question is how the hell you know him!”

A tremor rumbled through the floor. For the barest of seconds, the thought that he was actually experiencing an earthquake crossed Ethan’s mind. Then the floor heaved itself up toward the sky and threw him and Jacob to their knees. Ceiling tiles rained from above, and Ethan put his arms up to shield his head, scrambling underneath one of the stainless steel tables. The fluorescent lights flickered, flashing off and on several times and plunging the lab into total darkness.

Ethan crammed himself further under the table beneath which he’d sheltered, panting from the fight-or-flight rush of adrenaline. He cupped a hand over his nose and mouth against the dust filtering down while the upheaval ground to a halt. It left behind the sounds of shifting stones, falling tiles, and gushing water from an unseen burst pipe.

“What the hell happened?” Ethan called.

There was a pause, during which Ethan heard Jacob coughing, and then the scientist answered. “I have no idea. Whatever it is can’t possibly be good.” His voice was hoarse from breathing in dust.

There was a clank and the sound of a drawer sliding open. Seconds later, a bright light flicked on and swept the lab until it found him. Jacob wielded a large black metal flashlight similar to the heavy one Ethan had used as a police officer; dust danced in the halogen beam between them.

“You hurt?” Jacob asked, and Ethan took a quick assessment of himself. Other than a scrape on his right forearm, he was free of injury. He shook his head. “Good,” Jacob said. “I’m going to find out what happened. Wait here. I’ll be back in a minute.” He hurried out the door, leaving Ethan alone in the dark with no idea how to get out of there.

“Kimberly!” Ethan hissed, raising his voice to be heard over the distant spew of water. “Kim!” The only response was the sound of some debris crashing to the floor.

“Fuck this,” Ethan muttered. He crawled out from under the table and felt around for drawers, for storage closets, for anything that might have had something useful in it.

In the third drawer he searched, Ethan found what he was looking for: a chunky MagLite flashlight and, to his surprise, a .22-caliber pistol. It looked like it had been made with a woman’s smaller hands in mind, but Ethan wasn’t going to turn his nose up at it. He palmed it and dug further into the drawer, finding a leather zipper bag inside which were three more magazines for the pistol.

“Jackpot,” Ethan murmured. He scanned the rest of the immediate area and spotted a lab coat draped across a stool. He snagged it, shrugged it on, and dropped the magazines in the left pocket, the pistol in the right. Now that he felt sufficiently armed to get out of the immediate vicinity, he rose to his feet and shined the light around the ruins of the lab, searching for Kimberly with his heart in his throat.

Chapter 45

Cade cowered in a corner of the room, fear vibrating through her bones, shivering through her entire frame as first one, then another, explosion rocked the building in which she and her friends had taken shelter. Her breath came short in her throat, in hyperventilating gasps, and her eyes were moist with tears. The building shifted under the shockwaves from the explosions, and a thin trickle of dust and plaster rained from the ceiling.

Cade couldn’t get the sight of Remy out of her head. Remy, beautiful Remy, her face, her hands, her clothes, all splattered and soaked with blood. The thought of how that blood had gotten there to begin with haunted her.

The building creaked again, more ominously than before, and the distinctive sounds of massive numbers of infected outside reached her ears. The stamp of their feet, their low moans, groans, and snarls echoed in the room, adding to the instability of the building. A surge of bile rose in her throat, but she masterfully forced it back down. Now was definitely not the time to get sick.

Keith broke away from the corner to her right, where he had been shielding Jude and Sadie from the possibility of falling debris. He slunk along the wall until he reached her, grasping her hand in his and leaning close to murmur in her ear.

“What the hell is going on out there?” Keith asked, and Cade realized with a sinking feeling that he hadn’t seen anything that had happened and that she would have to explain it to him.

“Remy,” Cade said, and to her disgust, she discovered that her voice was shaking as much as her body was. “I think she’s finally lost it. I think—”

“Are you telling me that Remy did all of this?” Keith asked.

“I don’t know how, but yes, she did,” Cade said.

“Where did she get the explosives?”

“What does it matter where she got the explosives?” Cade asked loudly. “She had them, and she used them, and now we’re up shit creek.”

“In a building that’s acting like it wants to drop on our heads,” Keith said with another cautious glance at the ceiling. “We should get out of here.”

“Where the hell are we going to go?” Cade demanded. She jabbed her finger at the windows, covered by thin particleboard scavenged from desks to shield the view of the building’s interior. “The street is full of infected, and even if we go up, there’s not many other places to go from there, because the buildings around here aren’t in fantastic shape to begin with.”

“Up is better than being eaten,” Keith replied. “Come on, what do you say we take what’s probably the only option available at the moment? We can get a good look at everything around us and see what other choices are available.”

Cade glanced between the windows and the cracked ceiling above. “Fine,” she sighed.

“I can find us a route up,” Sadie said from her spot across the room. “Shouldn’t be too hard to find one that we can all navigate.”

“Go,” Cade ordered. Sadie scampered off, going down a short hall and disappearing out a window that Cade would have sworn was too small for Sadie to fit through. Once Sadie was gone, Cade turned back to Keith. “We’re still looking for Brandt.”

“Believe me, I had no doubts about that,” Keith said. “We still have two problems. Where is he and how the hell are we going to get out of here?”

“For the where, I’m hopeful he’s in this Eden place,” Cade said. “As for the how? I don’t know.”

“I do,” Sadie said, sliding agilely through the window with a smile on her face. “I just found us a way out of here.”

Chapter 46

Kimberly knew an explosion when she heard one. Lord knew she had heard enough grenades going off while she’d lived under Alicia Day’s roof. When the explosion ripped through the Eden Facility while Kimberly was searching through a drawer looking for a tool to bust Ethan out of his cell, her heart leaped into her throat. Cheap particleboard tiles plummeted from the ceiling, and Kimberly threw herself against the cabinets on the far side of the lab, huddling there with her arms over her head, trying to avoid getting struck by debris.

The floor bucked upward, throwing her backward, and her already abused and aching head banged against the cabinets behind her. There was a sharp pain on her scalp, but she ignored it and curled up tighter into a fetal position, hoping that nothing heavier fell on her.

A microscope toppled from the counter and crashed to the floor right beside her, and then the room went pitch black.

“Ethan,” Kimberly whispered, not daring to speak louder. Even if she could have been heard over the rumble of the ceiling caving in, there was the question of the scientist in the lab with both of them. She was terrified he would hear her and then both she and Ethan would get shot. She was there to save Ethan, not to get them both killed.

By the time the dust settled and objects stopped falling from the ceiling, Kimberly was half buried underneath broken ceiling tiles, covered in dust, dirt, and cobwebs. She grimaced and pushed her hair out of her face, raking cobwebs out of the strands and shaking them onto the floor. She didn’t get up right away. She stayed where she was, waiting to see what was going to happen next, hoping that Dr. Jacob Howser had been knocked unconscious by some random chunk of debris.

A flashlight flicked on halfway across the room, and Kimberly heard Ethan and Jacob exchanging words. Jacob got up and left the lab, taking the flashlight with him and plunging the room into darkness once more.

A long moment later, another flashlight blinked on, and Kimberly caught a glimpse of Ethan through the darkness, his blond hair catching the light enough to make the strands glow. He slung a lab coat on and called her name. She opened her mouth to reply, but her teeth were coated with dust, and she choked. She hacked dirty saliva onto the floor and tried again.

“Eth! Here!”

The flashlight swung around and pointed in her general direction. She shoved a few pieces of tile off herself and sat up. Ethan rushed to her, his tennis shoes crunching over the ceiling tiles and kicking away debris that littered the floor. He skidded to a halt beside her, dropping to his knees and taking her face in his hands. His flashlight thunked to the floor between them.

“Oh God, tell me you’re okay,” he said, his eyes wide and intense in the light from the flashlight. “Are you hurt?” In the same breath, he said, “Oh fuck, you’re bleeding.”

“I am?” Kimberly asked. She touched her head. With his words, the ache in her skull came to her attention with a vengeance. When she pressed her fingers against the back of her head where she’d struck it on the cabinets, her fingertips came back stained with blood. “Crap.”

“We need to find something to bandage it,” Ethan said. He stepped away from her to rummage through drawers, practically tearing them out of the counters in his search for first aid supplies. He found a white plastic box with a bold red cross on it, brought it over, and popped it open, kneeling beside her to tend to the wound on her head. Once he had it bandaged enough to get the bleeding to stop, he smiled cautiously. “How’s that feel?”

“Like I’ve been smacked in the head and bandaged up,” Kimberly said with a tiny smile. She held a hand up to him. “Help me stand up?”

Ethan grasped her hand and tugged, kicking away a few shattered tiles, pulling her to her feet. She nearly slipped when she stood, but he looped an arm around her waist to steady her.

“What’s the game plan?” Kimberly asked. “I’m sure step one involves getting the hell out of here. What about after that?”

“I’m not sure,” Ethan said. “I’m tempted to wait for that doctor guy to come back. He knows Brandt.”

“I overheard him making a phone call before I found you,” Kimberly told him. “He was talking to someone, and he told them your name and sounded surprised that it was someone who already knew you. He asked how many of that person’s friends were going to be dragged in here.” She licked her lips as Ethan stewed over what she had told him. “I think there’s someone here who knows you, and I think they know Brandt. I also think that Brandt was here and they somehow got him out of here.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Ethan said, his confusion obvious. “Brandt was in Woodside when we left. How would he have ended up here?”

“We’ve been gone from Woodside for a week, Eth,” Kimberly reminded him. “There’s no telling what’s happened in the meantime.”

“There was that bomb…”

“I know, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t get out,” she said. “They were planning an evac, remember? Maybe some of them got out. And maybe somehow, Brandt ended up here.”

“Where he happened to run into someone that knows him, that knows both of us, who then got him out of here?” Ethan asked. “Hell, that sounds ridiculous even to my ears.”

Kimberly shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m shooting in the dark here as much as you are. I have—”

Something crashed somewhere in the lab. Kimberly clamped her mouth shut and whirled in the direction the sound had come from; it sounded like it had come from somewhere in the neighborhood of the cells that Ethan had been in earlier.

“Oh God, what was that?” she asked.

“There were infected in cells to either side of me,” Ethan said. “Maybe they got out in the explosion.” He fumbled at the pocket of the dirty white lab coat he was wearing and pulled free a pistol. “Stay here.”

“To hell with that,” Kimberly said. “I’m coming with you.”

“Kim—”

“Don’t argue,” she said. She picked up one of the metal stools littering the room, holding it in a two-handed grasp by its legs. “I’m armed and ready,” she said confidently, “but I’ll let you take the lead, if it makes you feel better.”

“How gracious of you.”

He started in the direction of the sound, sweeping the beam of his flashlight across the room, searching for the source of the noise. Kimberly stuck close to him, holding the stool in a position where she was ready to swing it at anything that moved threateningly toward either of them. It wasn’t necessary, because Ethan looked like he could handle almost anything.

The source of the sound was apparent soon enough; one of the infected from a cell beside Ethan’s had gotten loose and was stumbling its way out of the debris on the far side of the lab, trying to follow the sounds of their voices. Ethan put his hand out, indicating for her to stop where she was. The infected man caught sight of them and started to move more quickly toward them, extending his arms in a classic zombie movie style. Ethan advanced, slow and steady, the pistol in his right hand extended toward the infected man, the flashlight held in his left hand near his shoulder, tucked in close so he didn’t lose it.

There was a crack somewhere to their left, and both she and Ethan whipped their heads in that direction, eyes wide. Jacob Howser stumbled back into the lab, accompanied by entirely too much noise. Kimberly tensed, raising her stool higher, like she was going to smack the doctor with it. He froze when he spotted first her, and then the infected man across the room, and he gasped in alarm.

“Quiet!” Ethan barked at him. He advanced toward the infected man and fired the pistol. A neat bullet hole appeared in the infected man’s forehead, and his body toppled to the ground with a crunch of ceiling tiles and a crack of skull against the utilitarian tiled floor. The body had barely finished falling before Ethan was turning, shifting the aim of the pistol from the infected man to the scientist. “Don’t move,” he ordered, and Jacob put his hands up defensively, dropping his flashlight on the floor.

“Ethan,” Kimberly said warningly. He didn’t pay any attention to her.

“How did you get out of your cell?” Jacob asked, directing the question to Kimberly.

“Ceiling,” she replied simply, pointing at the ceiling in question. Jacob raised an eyebrow.

“Look, you can put the gun away, okay?” Jacob said, this time aiming his words at Ethan. “I’m on your side here.”

“Yeah? Prove it,” Ethan said. “Because right now, the only person on my side that I actually believe is on my side is her.” He bobbed his head toward Kimberly. “Give me a reason why I shouldn’t just shoot you and haul ass out of here.”

“Because Lindsey Alton asked me to get you out of here myself,” Jacob said.

Ethan’s eyebrows shot up, and the grip on his pistol wavered. “How do you know Lindsey Alton?” he asked, and his pistol steadied once more.

“She’s my lab partner here at the facility,” Jacob said. “I’ve been working with her for a while now, ever since the outbreak began and the government decided to establish this place for research.”

“Lab partner?” Ethan repeated.

“Yeah, microbiologist, remember?” Jacob said. “She knows you’re here. She’s trying to get back here so she can get you and, I’m assuming, Ms. Geller out of here. She’s already stashed Brandt somewhere, so I’m assuming you’re next.”

“So Brandt is here?” Ethan asked. “How did that happen?”

“It’s a long story, and I’m sure he’ll be more than happy to tell you all about it,” Jacob said. “In the meantime, we need to get you two somewhere where she can get you out of here. There’s been an explosion, and the facility has been compromised.”

“Compromised how?” Kimberly asked.

“Somebody blew up the main gates,” he explained. “It’s totally destroyed. The facility’s administration is currently making plans to evacuate the place, but that’s delaying the inevitable. The gates being compromised exposes everyone north of the Wall to the possibility of infection.”

“And we can’t have that, now, can we?” Ethan muttered sourly.

“No, we can’t,” Kimberly said. “Just because these people fucked up and left us all to suffer doesn’t mean everyone else in the general population should suffer.”

“You’re right,” Ethan said contritely. “I’m being shitty. I’m sorry.” He lowered the pistol to his side, though he didn’t put it away. “So, Jacob, how can we trust you?”

“There’s absolutely nothing I can say to make you trust me,” Jacob said. “You don’t know me, so you have no reason to believe anything that comes out of my mouth. And I understand that. I’m not going to ask you to trust me. What I will ask is that you come with me and let me take you to the rendezvous spot with Lindsey so she can get you out of here. You trust her, don’t you?”

“I don’t even know who her is,” Kimberly spoke up. She looked to Ethan and asked, “Who is this woman that you apparently know?”

“Cade’s younger sister,” Ethan explained. “The one that lives—lived—in Israel. How the hell did she end up over here working in this place?”

“I’ll leave her to tell you that story,” Jacob said. “For now, we need to get you…” He trailed off and twisted around, looking back toward the laboratory’s entry door. “Someone’s coming,” he said, and a new urgency seeped into his voice. “You need to hide.”

Kimberly whipped her head around, searching for somewhere to stuff herself, but Ethan grabbed her arm and shoved her toward the wall that divided the office from the lab proper. The bottom half of the wall was concrete, leaving only the top half of the wall exposed to view from the office and the hallway. “Get down,” he said, shoving her to the floor. She dropped down, hunkering against the wall, and Ethan joined her.

Jacob waved his hand at Ethan frantically. “Give me the gun,” he said, his voice low and hushed.

“Why?” Ethan hissed back, looking like he was prepared to shoot the scientist before he handed him the only weapon he had.

“So they’ll believe me when I told them I shot that infected guy back there,” Jacob said.

“Eth, give him the fucking gun,” Kimberly said.

Ethan handed the gun to Jacob, though it was obvious he didn’t want to do it. To keep him from rebelling, she fumbled for and grasped his now-empty hand, holding it tightly in hers, squeezing it too hard. The look on his face was strained as he tried to smile at her, and he switched the flashlight off, plunging them into darkness.

Chapter 47

Brandt’s nerves were on edge when he and Lindsey arrived at her apartment building twenty minutes after she’d hung up her burner phone and revealed to him that Ethan Bennett had somehow found his way into the Eden Facility and was being held in a manner similar to how he’d been held. He was so strung out and worked up that his hands were shaking. He clenched them tightly around the steering wheel in an effort to hide his jitters and followed Lindsey’s instructions as she guided him into the building’s parking lot and to her designated space. Only when the car was parked and the engine turned off did he speak.

“Now that we’re here, what’s the plan to get Ethan out of that hellhole?” he asked, unbuckling his seatbelt. His mind was already spinning, whirling, searching for the plan that would get his friend out of the hock he’d landed in.

“Here’s what I’m thinking,” Lindsey said, mirroring his actions. The seatbelt snapped out of her hand and she whipped it off her shoulder, the buckle smacking into the window with a loud clack. She opened her door, sliding out so she could lead the way inside.

A rumble rattled the air, seconds before the sound coalesced into a roar that made Brandt’s ears want to fold in on themselves. He recognized the sound instantly for what it was. Without hesitation, he fell back into the car, the gearshift digging painfully into his side, and stretched across to the still-opened passenger door. He grabbed Lindsey by one of her belt loops and dragged her back into the car, pulling her down so she would be shielded from any falling debris, since in his haste, he hadn’t bothered to check to see where the explosion had come from. Lindsey tumbled into the car with him, her hands clapped over her ears to muffle the sound. She hooked her foot in the storage compartment on the bottom half of the door and yanked the door shut; Brandt did the same, hoping it would help dampen the sound. It did, minimally, but it was enough that they could sit up to look out the windows.

There was a fire in the south near where the Wall stood. In the fading light of evening, Brandt saw a shower of stone and shrapnel raining down in the distance, like a great hand had slid underneath the Wall and jerked sharply upward, sending pieces of it flying into the air. Beside him, Lindsey gasped and pressed a hand against her lips.

“Holy shit,” she said, her voice muffled against her fingers. “Holy shit, what is happening?”

“Looks like someone might have blown up the Wall or something near it,” Brandt said. “Though I’d put my bets on the Wall itself being the victim.”

“Who the hell would do something like that?” Lindsey cried. “The Wall is the only thing that protects the people who live north of it from the infected!”

“I’m aware of that,” Brandt said. A thick column of smoke began to rise from the vicinity of the explosion.

“The Wall is probably compromised,” Lindsey said, her voice hushed. She was obviously processing what had happened; Brandt could practically see her brain’s gears chugging. “That means the infected on the other side will be on this side, soon if they’re not already. I’m not going anywhere until I’m loaded for bear, and I suggest you do the same.”

“I figured that part was a given,” Brandt said. “I feel naked without my fucking guns.” He opened his door and climbed out again, waiting for her to do the same. “After we get ourselves armed, then what?”

“Well, I guess that depends,” Lindsey said. Her voice still shook from the initial shock of the explosion, but she soldiered on nonetheless. “What are your plans?”

“Does it require stating?” Brandt asked. “I’m going to get Ethan out of that cesspit, and then I’m going after my wife.”

“I thought as much, and I’m going with you.” She started walking toward the building’s entrance, and Brandt scrambled to follow.

“Are you sure about that?” he asked after they walked inside and stepped through a door into a stairwell made of concrete and steel and more concrete. “I’m not sure you have a real comprehension of what’s on the other side of that wall.”

“Oh, I have more than a little comprehension,” Lindsey replied. “I work with these things in the lab at the Eden Facility all the time. There is a team of soldiers that captures them and brings them in for my and Jacob’s examinations and experiments. It’s how we get our test subjects.”

“Well, imagine being completely surrounded by those test subjects,” Brandt spat. He followed her onto the third floor and to one of the apartment doors, waiting until after she’d unlocked the door and they were inside before he continued. “You probably dealt with those test subjects in a controlled setting on a one-on-one basis. It’s not like that on the other side of the wall. Out there, there’s every chance you could get surrounded by the infected, and unless you keep a cool head and know what you’re doing, you’re going to get killed.”

“I’m more capable than you think I am,” Lindsey retorted. “I served in the IDF, the same as Cade, you know.”

“Yeah, but she was there for seven years,” Brandt said. “She made a career of it. Did you?”

“No. I did my mandatory two years, and I like to think I wasn’t that shabby at it,” Lindsey replied. “I’m pretty sure I can take care of myself.”

Brandt folded his arms over his chest and leaned against the wall next to Lindsey’s couch, studying her thoughtfully. She stared back at him, her brown eyes challenging, daring him to argue with her. He sighed and looked away from her, scanning his eyes over the living room. It was tastefully decorated, the couch beige and plump and covered with pillows, the coffee table holding several magazines and books, and the large-screen television mounted on the wall, the cable box resting on a small table below it. The place looked homey, but it didn’t appear lived in: the television had a thin layer of dust on it, and the pillows on the couch looked like they hadn’t been disturbed since they’d first been put on there. He looked longingly at the TV. It had been so long since he’d been able to relax and do something as simple as watch a show on television that he ached to pick up the remote and turn the device on.

While he’d been ogling the television, Lindsey had started to flip over couch cushions and dig through drawers, retrieving pistols and magazines and holsters. Brandt raised an eyebrow when she fished another holstered pistol out of the space between the recliner’s cushion and arm. “Do you always keep guns hidden all over your house like this?”

“Not normally,” Lindsey said. “I used to not do it, because I was worried about my daughter coming across one and accidentally shooting herself. Since she hasn’t been here, I’ve been stockpiling, even though the government has made that illegal.”

“Stockpiling is illegal?”

“Yeah, the government has decided they don’t want people hoarding weapons and ammunition, because there is, they claim, nothing to worry about,” Lindsey said. “I said fuck that, and I started collecting what I could as often as I could.” She smiled sheepishly. “Some of the ammunition might actually be stolen.”

“Oh, you’re a criminal?” Brandt said, his tone half joking. He thought it was horrible that people had been reduced to stealing what they needed to protect themselves and their families in the event of an outbreak—one that might be there now, knocking on their doors, if that explosion had been any indication.

“I do what I need to do to survive,” Lindsey said. “If that means stealing ammunition for my guns so I can shoot my way to safety in the event of a mass outbreak north of the Wall, then so be it.”

“I like the way you think,” Brandt said. She approached him with two different pistols and held them out to him. He accepted them both and reached for his belt buckle before realizing he wasn’t wearing one. “You got a spare belt I could use? One that, preferably, isn’t intended for women?”

“What’s wrong with women’s belts?” Lindsey asked, a distant smile flitting across her face, though the expression didn’t reach her eyes.

“Well, considering they’re not intended for men to wear…” Brandt trailed off with a helpless shrug. “I don’t know. I just want something that will actually go around my waist and isn’t as thin as a string.”

Lindsey did laugh at that, and she retreated to what Brandt assumed was her bedroom. After a minute, she emerged with a thick, heavy leather belt that was obviously military issued. “Will this work?”

“It’s perfect, thanks,” Brandt said. He took it from her and strapped it around his waist, sliding the gun holsters onto it and working it through his belt loops.

“What else do we need to have for our trip south?” Lindsey asked. “Obviously weapons, but what else? Food?”

“I think we should travel lightly,” Brandt said. “Out there, being weighed down with too many supplies can mean the difference between life and death.”

“What if we end up in a situation where we have no food?” Lindsey asked.

“It’s a bit of a Catch-22 kind of scenario,” Brandt admitted. “We should be able to scavenge enough to survive on while we’re there. If I have anything to say about it, we won’t be gone long.”

“And if we’re gone longer than you think we’re going to be?” Lindsey prompted.

“We’ll figure it out,” Brandt said. “Like me and Cade and all the others always do.”

Chapter 48

Keith scaled the fire escape staircase mounted to the outside of the building they’d been hiding in, a nervous wreck. Sadie climbed the ladder in front of him soundlessly, somehow keeping her boots from clanging on the metal steps. Keith tried to emulate her, without success. He wasn’t built to make that little noise.

Behind him, Jude trudged upward, his feet landing on the metal steps, making soft, metallic thunks. Cade brought up the rear, that mean-looking rifle of hers resting against her back, the look in her blue eyes hard and determined.

Keith couldn’t ask for better companions and allies on this crazy journey he was stuck on. If it hadn’t been for these people and the rest of their group, he’d have died back in Woodside, if not long before that. He’d follow every one of them to the ends of the Earth if they asked him to. He owed them that much.

Ahead of him, Sadie disappeared over the edge of the roof, and a few more steps brought him to it. He hauled himself up and over, then turned to assist Jude and Cade, even though it was likely that neither of them actually needed the help. Once all four of them were safely on the roof, Keith turned his focus onto the panoramic view of the building’s surroundings that the roof offered him.

What he saw made his heart sink.

A sea of infected surrounded the building, undulating in waves of bodies and stench and rot, staggering and stumbling down the street, heading toward the wall. Hundreds of them had been drawn by the sound of the explosion, but in the dark, it was impossible to tell how far back they stretched. Shining a flashlight to try to get a better look was out of the question, not if they wanted to avoid drawing attention to themselves.

By all appearances, they would be stranded on the roof until the sun rose and gave them a better view of what lay ahead of them.

“What do you think?” Cade asked, her voice low.

“I think we’re going to be stuck here for a while,” Keith answered. “With, I’d like to point out, very little food or water.”

“No need to remind me of that,” Cade replied. “If there’s anything I keep in mind pretty much always, it’s our current food and water situation. Trust me, I’m already stewing over that. Right now, my main concern is getting out of here, because if we don’t, the lack of food and water won’t matter, because we won’t have a chance of getting more.”

“Good point,” Keith acquiesced. “What are we going to do in the meantime?”

“Study the situation and pray for a break in the mess to slip through,” Cade said. “It could come at any moment, so we need to be prepared.” She turned away from him and went to Sadie, conferring with her. Sadie went toward the other end of the building, disappearing from view.

“Where is she going?” Keith asked.

“She’s looking for a safe escape route to the ground so when we have the opportunity, we can get out of here quickly,” Cade replied. “We should establish some sort of watch routine so we can keep an eye on things below and be ready to break at a moment’s notice.”

“I can take the first watch,” Keith volunteered. “The rest of you can get some sleep. You, especially. You’ve been through too much, and you look beyond exhausted.”

Cade frowned, but she didn’t look game to argue with him. She folded her arms over her chest and stared into the distance, like she was examining the unseen horde below. Despite her rail-straight back and her squared shoulders, she looked like she was about to melt down right there on the roof. Keith couldn’t imagine her actually melting down, though, and as the thought crossed his mind, he saw her draw up on herself, suppressing her emotions, stuffing them down deep inside her. Keith wondered how often she practiced that routine to do it so smoothly and easily.

“This is all our fault.”

Keith moved closer so he could hear her better, standing beside her with his thumbs hooked into the pockets of his jeans. “What makes you say that?”

“Because it is.” She stared emptily in the direction of the Wall and the location of the explosion. “Remy had a problem. She’s always been a little…off, because she’d been through so much. Too much. But after she got bitten…things changed. She changed. And we kept treating her the same, like nothing had happened to her, when in reality she was coming unglued right in front of us. We didn’t do much of anything to help her. We just kept on going, blissfully acting like she hadn’t changed at all, when she saw herself as becoming the thing she hates the most.”

“You think that’s why she did this?” Keith asked, motioning to the blown-up gate with a wave of his hand.

“I think she’s not acting in her right mind,” Cade said. “I think that all the pressure of the past two years has finally gotten to her and Dominic’s death was the final straw. She’s hit the point where she can’t take it anymore.”

Keith sighed, long and drawn out. “What do we do?” he asked.

“We stop her,” Cade said. “We find her, and we stop her.”

“How?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I’m still trying to figure that part out. I just know that we have to stop her. She’s our responsibility, and we can’t sit by while those people suffer.” She sighed. “In the meantime, I’m going to plot, plan, and try to get some sleep. Wake me up the moment you see a break in the crowds.”

Keith nodded, and she retreated from him, heading toward an air conditioning unit built into the roof. She sat down on the rooftop and leaned against it, set her rifle and backpack beside her, and shifted to make herself comfortable. She closed her eyes, breathed in deeply, and visibly relaxed. Keith turned his focus on the building, heading toward the edge so he could look down at the teeming masses below.

Jude joined him at the edge. While the seconds ticked by, the unending horde surged toward the wall. A flutter in the corner of Keith’s eye drew his attention in Jude’s direction, and he discovered that Jude was holding his notepad out to him. In his neat, blocky handwriting, Jude had written, What’s the plan for getting out of here?

“We’re not sure yet,” Keith said. “Right now, we’re praying for the opportune moment.”

Jude looked toward the wall, squinting through the darkness. He took his pencil out of his pocket and wrote on the page.

Did Remy go crazy?

“I honestly don’t know,” Keith answered. “But whatever is going on with her can’t possibly be good.”

Chapter 49

Ethan’s heart pounded and his fingers ached from the force with which he gripped Kimberly’s hand. Jacob slipped out of the lab, through the decontamination showers, and into the outer office. There was a shuffling sound, like he was scrambling to do something quickly, and the noise was followed by the telltale squeak of the lab’s main door swinging open.

“What are you doing in here?” a man’s voice asked, hollow and muffled by a gas mask. Ethan felt the urge to rise up onto his knees and peer out the window. He fought it down. Now wasn’t the time to risk everything to satisfy his curiosity. He hunched down further, sliding a few more inches down to make sure no part of him was showing over the short wall.

“This is my lab,” Jacob replied. “Why would I not be in here?”

“We heard a gunshot,” another man spoke up. “It sounded like it came from here.”

“Yes, the explosion compromised a quarantine cell in the lab,” Jacob said. “One of the infected got out, and I took care of the problem.” He paused and added, “You don’t want to go in there. It’s a hot zone.”

“The problem is dealt with?” the newcomer asked.

“Yes, it is,” Jacob said. “I was told we’re evacuating the facility. I’m going to pack up my essential research notes before I leave. I don’t want to risk losing them.”

“First bus leaves in twenty minutes. If you require transportation, I recommend being on that bus before it pulls out. There’s no guarantee we’ll be able to get a second bus out.”

“Gotcha,” Jacob said. “I’ll be there as quick as I can.”

Another long pause followed Jacob’s statement, and Ethan counted to twenty before shifting to peer over the wall into the office beyond. Jacob was heading their way, shoving open the doors to the decontamination chamber and walking straight through it to the labs. “You two are seriously lucky I was here,” he said. “I think they were going to search the lab, and when they found you, they’d have shot you.”

“Lucky us,” Ethan muttered. He pushed to his feet and offered Kimberly his hand, helping her up from the floor. Then he surveyed the room, looking for an alternate exit.

A gun appeared in his line of sight, and he staggered backward out of reflex, trying to avoid the weapon’s aim. Then he realized that the end of the barrel wasn’t pointing at him; the grip was, and he took the offered pistol back from Jacob.

“I figure you’d feel better about all of this and maybe be more inclined to trust me if I give the gun back,” Jacob explained. “But I do ask you to keep an eye out for any oncoming dangers. I’m reliant on you to keep us all safe.”

Ethan tucked the pistol into the pocket of the lab coat. There was no need to wave it around at anything that moved if he had the ability to delay the infected with his presence before shooting them. He made a sweeping gesture with his hand at Jacob. “Lead the way out of here,” he said. “Though I think it goes without saying that if you screw us, I won’t hesitate to kill you.”

“Understood,” Jacob said quietly. He saluted and led them out of the lab and into the office.

The floor was littered with ceiling tiles and broken glass, and one of the glass windows that had lined the hallway was shattered. His footsteps crunching, Ethan followed Jacob across the office, the glass grinding down to pulverized bits underneath his tennis shoes. He clasped Kimberly’s hand in his and tugged her along behind him, hoping that Jacob wasn’t about to lead them into something that was going to get them killed.

The facility was in worse shape than Ethan had predicted it would be. Ceiling tiles were down everywhere, and the walls had thick cracks running the length of them. Ethan was sure that if the walls were cracked so severely, the floor had to be damaged too. He had more important things to worry about, though, like getting Kimberly out of any potential line of fire.

Jacob led them through the facility in silence, his focus on getting out of the building, the only sound the crunch and scuff of their shoes on the floor. Once they reached an exit door, thankfully unmolested, he stopped there and looked back at Ethan. “I have no idea what the conditions outside will be,” he said. “I hope you’re prepared.”

“I’m more concerned whether or not you are,” Ethan said. “This is same old, same old for us. We know how to handle ourselves around the infected. We’ve been doing it for two years now. In this situation, you are the weak link.”

“Touché,” Jacob acknowledged. “I didn’t think of it that way. I keep forgetting…” He shook his head. “Never mind.” He grasped the push-bar on the door, took a deep breath, and shoved the door open. A cool rush of air flowed inside, ruffling Ethan’s hair, and Jacob pointed to a silver sedan parked on the other side of the parking lot. “That’s my car,” he said. “We’re aiming to get to it. If we encounter any infected between here and there, I trust you’ll take care of them?”

“Of course,” Ethan said with a nod that was as reassuring as he was willing to make it. He didn’t want to reassure the man too much; he wanted Jacob to stay on his guard around him.

The scientist examined the path ahead of them and stepped out into the night air. “Straight to the car,” he said. “Simple, right?”

“You’d be surprised,” Kimberly muttered.

The three of them rushed across the parking lot, heading toward the silver sedan with a prayer that they wouldn’t get stopped by any soldiers or encounter any infected. Thankfully, they made it to the vehicle unmolested, and Ethan climbed into the passenger seat, giving Kimberly the back seat in the hopes that it would keep her more protected from anything that came their way.

“Where are we going?” Ethan asked Jacob once the scientist was behind the wheel and the engine was running.

“There’s an abandoned house about a mile north of here,” Jacob said, whipping the car out of its space and steering through the parking lot. “It’s set off from the highway a bit, so no one will see us up there. Lindsey is going to meet us there. I don’t know if she’ll have the lieutenant with her, but hopefully she will. Maybe that will reassure you of our good intentions.”

Chapter 50

Lindsey made short work of getting her guns and ammunition into her car, loading everything up without any of her neighbors or any bystanders on the street catching sight of the weapons. Most of them—and all of the ammunition she possessed—were stashed away in the trunk, though she’d kept a couple of pistols and a box of ammunition for each in the front seat where she could get to them quickly if she needed to. Brandt had scrounged up some supplies from her kitchen, despite his oath to travel lightly; she figured the food he’d gathered was more for her reassurance than anything else.

“Where are we going?” Brandt asked the last time she descended the stairs to the first level, carrying a backpack that was slightly too heavy.

“Back to that house we were at when I let you out of the trunk,” she told him. “Jacob is supposed to meet us there with Ethan. Then we can figure out how to find my sister.”

“I am totally behind this plan,” Brandt said. He waited for her to unlock the doors, and he slid into the passenger seat. Lindsey joined him, slipping into the driver’s seat and starting the car. It was chilly in the vehicle, so she cranked the heat up for a few minutes to warm the interior, then backed out of the space and navigated to the street.

“Do you think Ethan will be able to help us?” she asked Brandt. “The last time I saw him, it was almost three years ago. Back then, he didn’t seem like the kind of person who could survive something like this. He wasn’t very…aggressive, at least compared to most guys that I knew.”

“People grow fast when they have the real-world equivalent of zombies trying to kill them,” Brandt said. “Ethan is one of the strongest people I know. There’s a reason he’s been the leader of our merry little band of survivors since this shit all started.”

“I wasn’t aware he’d come that far,” Lindsey admitted. “Hell, I wasn’t aware he was still alive until Jacob called me and said he was at the facility. I figured…well, I guess I figured he’d be dead by now, to be honest. The Ethan I knew wouldn’t have been able to survive all of this.”

“He probably wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been for Cade,” Brandt said. “He was a mess those first few weeks, just stumbling along. I think his wife’s death landed a whammy on him. She died the first day the outbreak started in Memphis, and Ethan couldn’t rest until he was sure, so he left us for a while to verify that she was dead before he tracked us back down.” Lindsey glanced at him. He was staring out the side window, his expression sad. “He’s lost a lot more than most of us have,” he said. “And his losses have been very, very hard on him.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Lindsey said, and she was. She hated that anyone would have to go through everything that Brandt suggested Ethan to having been through. However, that brought up another question, spurred by something Jacob had said on the phone when he’d called her with the news of a second Michaluk-positive person at the Eden Facility. “How did Ethan get infected?” she asked. “Better yet, how did he get infected without showing any symptoms of infection other than a positive test?”

Lindsey looked at him again, long enough to judge his reaction to his question. Brandt opened his mouth like he was about to say something, then hesitated, looking out the side window again and heaving a sigh.

“Brandt?”

“He got bitten,” Brandt said. “We ended up in Atlanta, and we got cornered. He stayed behind to delay the infected and got bitten. Before he turned, he was taken to the CDC doctor that we’ve been protecting for the past several months. That doctor was able to prevent him from turning, and after that, he was able to sort of cure him. He still tests as infected, but he’s not. At least, as I understand it.”

“I feel like there’s more to the story than that,” Lindsey said, though she didn’t press Brandt for more details. It didn’t feel like the right time for that, and besides, she could always ask Ethan for details once she saw him again. For now, she’d hold her questions and hope she got answers to them eventually.

A few minutes later, she eased her car off the highway and onto the gravel road that led to the secluded, abandoned house she and Jacob liked to rendezvous at when they wanted some privacy from any potential eyes watching. It was an excellent place for privacy. It was nearly a dead spot for cell phones because the signal wasn’t good enough to do much more than a voice call, there were no security cameras anywhere near, and best of all, there were no neighbors. It was the first place that had popped in her head for a meeting place when she and Jacob had decided to get Ethan out of the Eden Facility. She steered up the driveway until she reached the now-ramshackle house, swung the car around so it faced the exit, and put the vehicle into park.

“Stay on the alert,” Brandt ordered, and his tone was one that made Lindsey wonder if Ethan had really been the one in charge over the past couple of years. “If there’s a hole in the wall, there’s a good chance that at least some of the infected have gotten through, and the last thing we need is to be inattentive and get attacked by one of them.”

“Believe me, I’m aware,” Lindsey said. “We’ve had a few near-misses in the labs with some of our test subjects, and it’s not a fun experience.” She nodded toward the windshield. “Should we get out of the car?”

“Nah, let’s stay in the car a little longer,” Brandt suggested. “I’m not going to lie, I’m basking in the whole artificial heating going on in here.” He tilted his head toward her. “You have no idea the things you take for granted until you don’t have constant access to them.”

“I can’t imagine,” Lindsey said. “I’m not sure I even want to.”

“You’ll get to live it when we go across that wall,” Brandt warned her. “No need to try to imagine it.”

The crunch of tires on gravel interrupted any conversation that might have followed. Lindsey leaned forward in her seat to search for the approaching car, and headlights washed across the windshield. She wrapped her fingers around the grip of the pistol she’d tucked into the console between the seats, in case it was someone that had no business showing up there. She relaxed when she recognized Jacob’s car pulling up the long gravel drive, let go of the pistol, and reached for the door handle. “It’s Jacob,” she told Brandt. She opened the door and clambered out. She remained standing in the open doorway, the door acting as a shield between her and the approaching vehicle, which slowed to a stop a few feet away from her car. The headlights cut out, and Jacob emerged from the driver’s seat, a smile on his face.

“We made it!” he announced. The passenger and rear doors opened; a blonde woman slid out of the back seat, and the familiar face of Ethan Bennett appeared. He climbed out of the front passenger seat.

“Holy shit, you weren’t kidding,” Lindsey said to Jacob. She skirted around the open driver’s door and rushed toward Ethan, impacting with him so hard that she almost knocked him to the ground and throwing her arms around him in a tight hug. Ethan stumbled backward but kept his feet, and he wrapped his arms around her, returning her hug with enthusiasm.

“You have no idea how great it is to see a familiar face,” Ethan said, grasping her by her biceps and nudging her back so he could look at her. “It is so good to see you. How in the hell did you end up here?”

“My doctorate,” Lindsey explained. “Who knew a degree in microbiology would come in handy in the apocalypse?”

“I can see how it would,” Ethan acknowledged. He released her, taking a step back to put some distance between them, and looked her over again. “Jeez, you look good,” he commented. “Healthy. I’m glad.”

“We haven’t exactly had it as hard as you guys have,” Lindsey remarked. “Some shortages on certain materials that were manufactured in the southeast initially. Once those were overcome, we haven’t had much in the way of problems.”

“Lucky you,” Brandt muttered, his tone bitter.

“We should get out of here,” the blonde woman who’d arrived with Jacob and Ethan said, and Lindsey turned her attention to her. The woman stood near the rear of the car, covered in cobwebs, dust, and dirt, wearing rumpled and filthy scrubs, her blonde hair tangled. She wasn’t the most attractive woman Lindsey had ever seen, especially not with the mess that she currently was, but she was pretty, with wide eyes, a good bone structure, and a fair complexion that made Lindsey a bit jealous. Judging by the way he turned to give the woman his full attention, Ethan hadn’t failed to notice her prettiness either. Lindsey wondered again what had happened over the past two years that Ethan would appear to have forgotten about Anna—a woman he’d been so devoted and dedicated to before the outbreak—in favor of this unknown woman.

“We’re too close to the Wall for my comfort,” the woman was saying when Lindsey snapped back into reality and out of the past. “With the infected getting in, it’s only a matter of time before they reach us. It’ll be a horde. We don’t have the supplies necessary to deal with a horde.”

“We’ve never had the supplies necessary to deal with a horde,” Ethan said. “Kimberly’s right, though. We should get out of here.”

“Where are we going to go?” Jacob spoke up. “If we wait much longer, no place will be safe.”

“I’m going south,” Brandt said. Everyone present, save for Lindsey, turned surprised gazes onto the former Marine. “I’ve got to track down my wife. I’m not leaving her to fend for herself, regardless of whether or not she’s capable of it.”

“I’m going with him,” Lindsey said. “If I have a chance to find my sister, I’m going to take it. I don’t care about the risks.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Jacob asked, his tone hesitant and worried.

“What makes you think it’s not?” Lindsey retorted, already knowing the answer, fully aware that anything he had to say would involve the words “the infected” and “the Michaluk Virus.” She shook her head and put a hand up to stop him before he could say anything. “Don’t answer that. I already know what you’re going to say. Whatever you have to say isn’t going to change my mind in the slightest.”

“I’ll help you,” Ethan offered. He’d taken a few steps back towards the car he’d arrived in, to stand closer to the blonde woman that Lindsey still hadn’t been introduced to. “As soon as we find some place safe for Kimberly to go—”

“No,” Kimberly cut in, shaking her head vehemently. “You’re not leaving me behind.”

“Kim,” Ethan said, his tone pleading. He took her by the elbow and led her several feet away, where the rest of them couldn’t hear their conversation. Lindsey watched them argue for a moment, then looked to Brandt with a raised eyebrow.

“Are those two…?” she asked, trailing off her question meaningfully.

“If not yet, then probably soon,” Brandt commented. “They’ve been dancing around each other for months now. It’s getting absurd.”

Ethan turned away from Kimberly and approached them again; Kimberly followed, a scowl on her face. “We’re both going with you to help,” he reported when he reached them. “We have experience dealing with the infected, and we’ll be more help going with you than staying here.”

A smile spread across Lindsey’s face. “I knew you’d get it worked out,” she said with ill-concealed confidence. “Now we need to figure out the best way to get on the other side of the Wall without any of us getting killed.”

Chapter 51

Cade awoke to the first blushes of dawn against the sky and the faint but constant sound of gunfire in the distance. She rubbed at her right eye and sat up straight, pushing a strand of dark hair out of her face, trying to remember where she was. It came back in a quick rush of memory: Dominic’s death, Remy going crazy, the explosion, and the mad clamber to the roof. She bit back a groan and shoved herself to her feet with only minimal awkwardness, stretching the kinks out of her back before she approached Keith. He sat on the edge of the roof, his legs dangling off into space, Sadie’s shotgun resting across his lap.

“You didn’t wake me up to take watch,” Cade commented, sitting on the roof beside him.

Keith shrugged. “I wasn’t tired,” he replied, “didn’t think I could sleep, so I let you have some extra rest.”

“Thank you,” Cade acknowledged, “but don’t you need rest too?”

“I’ll be fine,” Keith said. “I’ve gone without sleep more often than I’ve had it over the past three or four years.”

“Insomnia issues?” Cade asked sympathetically.

“Off and on since I finished college,” Keith said. “I’ve learned to deal with it.”

Cade stared at the chaos in the distance, at the infected teeming around the break in the wall, all trying to shove themselves through the gap to the other side. She imagined that the world on the other side of the wall was a veritable smorgasbord for them. Tendrils of smoke curled skyward from the detonation that Remy had set off to open the gap, and if she squinted, Cade could see the outline of figures moving around on top of the wall, aiming rifles into the mass of infected and firing into them. Uselessly, she knew.

“There’s no way they have enough ammunition to deal with all of that,” she said out loud.

“Man, that looks like it’s going to be hell to get through,” Keith acknowledged. “Any ideas how we’re going to do it?”

“I haven’t the foggiest,” Cade said. “Getting out of here will be hard enough. Getting over there? Probably impossible. The only thing that comes to mind is shooting our way through.”

“Do we have enough ammunition for that?” Keith asked.

“Probably not,” Cade acknowledged. “But we have to try.”

“What about Olivia?” Keith asked hesitantly.

A pang of regret and sadness arced through Cade, and she closed her eyes, trying to push the feeling aside. She couldn’t think about her child, not right now, not with everything going on right there in front of them. “I’m doing this for her,” she said. “I can’t… right now, the world is more important, because if we don’t do something about that,” she pointed toward the wall, “then there won’t be a safe world left for her to live in.”

“The rest of us could do all that,” Keith said. “You could go back to be with her…”

“I can’t,” Cade said. “I could never live with myself if I left you guys to clean this up without me.” She looked out at the mess beyond and added, “Besides, my husband is out there somewhere. I can’t go home without bringing him with me, can I?”

“I guess not,” Keith said, and his voice sounded begrudging, like he didn’t want to give her that concession. “But how the hell are we going to do this? We need to come up with a plan that will get you out of this alive, because while you couldn’t live with yourself if you bailed on us, I couldn’t live with myself if you got killed in the process.”

“Thank you for your concern, Keith,” Cade said. She grasped his wrist and squeezed it briefly. “Trust me, though, I can take care of myself. I’ve done so under worse circumstances.” She leaned forward from her perch to examine the ground below. “Hey, look at that,” she said, pointing down the street. “The infected are thinning out.”

“You think this first wave is trickling to a stop?” Keith asked.

“First wave is a good description,” Cade said, “and yeah, I’m thinking it is. Maybe another hour and we might get a chance to get the hell out of here and see what we can do to help.”

“You sure you want to do this?” Keith asked.

“I’m more concerned if the other two are willing,” Cade said. “They’re so young, barely eighteen. They shouldn’t be involved in this.”

“They have as much stake in this as we do,” Keith said. “It’s their world too, you know? They want to fight for it. Hell, they’re more than capable of it. Have you seen Sadie fight? It’s insane.”

“She reminds me of a much saner Remy,” Cade agreed. “I don’t know that I’m willing to put them in the line of fire, though.” She nodded toward the wall. “You saw what those people did to Dominic. A shot like that, it takes a serious expert marksman to hit a target that small all the way from that wall. That shot had to be, hell, two hundred yards. I don’t hold any illusions that they won’t try the same to us on approach.”

“We need a distraction,” Keith suggested.

“Or maybe something so out there that they won’t shoot us on sight,” Cade said. “Something that will make them realize that we’re on their side and that we’re not sick.”

“You look like you have an idea tickling around in your head.”

“Yes, I think I do,” Cade said. She stood and dusted off her jeans. “We need to find two vehicles, conspicuous ones if this is going to work the way I’m thinking.”

Chapter 52

“You want me to find a what?” Sadie asked, raising her eyebrows in surprise at Cade’s latest request. Cade stood in front of her with an impatient expression on her face, her fingers hooked behind the strap that held her rifle on her shoulder. Keith stood beyond her, his own expression unchanging at Cade’s orders. Jude looked completely nonplussed.

“An ambulance,” Cade said. “Or if you can’t find one of those, maybe a fire truck or a couple of police cars.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Sadie asked. “Where the hell am I going to find something like that around here?” She waved her hand vaguely, indicating the semi-destroyed ruins of the buildings around them.

“You’re smart,” Cade replied. “Get creative.”

“I’m not going to find one,” Sadie shot back. She pointed at the wall in the distance. “It looks like those guys cleared everything useful out. Everything.” She repeated the word emphatically. “Then they practically razed the place. It’s not happening. Whatever you’re thinking, you need a new plan.”

“You’re not going to do it?” Cade asked, her tone disappointed.

“No, I’m not going to do it, and neither is Jude, so don’t bother asking him,” Sadie said. “Besides which, don’t you think a vehicle like that would draw their attention away from the wall and onto us?”

“That was the idea,” Cade said. “You got a better one?”

“Why don’t we do the most obvious thing?” Sadie suggested. She pointed toward the east, in the direction that ran parallel to the wall. “We go that way until we’re clear of all this mess, then find a way to climb over the wall and go from there.”

“It won’t be that easy,” Keith commented. “There are guards all over the walls, remember? Not to mention the infected.”

Sadie scoffed. “Psh. It won’t be that hard,” she said. “The infected are all down here, trying to get in through the hole in the wall. The guards on the top of the wall are probably on their way over here so they can try to stop the infected from getting through. The likelihood of the coast being clear is a hell of a lot higher than it would be if that explosion hadn’t happened.”

A silence fell between the four of them as they considered her proposition. Cade and Keith were exchanging a look like they were communicating telepathically, but Jude interrupted their staring contest by stepping forward and holding up his pad of paper for them to read.

I think it’s a solid idea, he’d written in the neat, blocky handwriting he used when he was trying to make sure his point was coming across clearly. And I’m not saying that because it was Sadie’s idea. I think it’s our best chance of getting to the other side of the wall without getting killed by either the infected or by the soldiers.

Cade read the words, her forehead wrinkling, and she nodded once and stepped away, moving back to the edge of the roof and staring out at the teeming mass several hundred yards away. “If we go with your idea, we’re going to run into infected,” she said.

“I think that’s a given,” Sadie said.

“We’ll have to do this quietly,” Cade went on. “No guns. Just knives. And as little noise as humanly possible.”

“I think that, too, is a given,” Sadie said, wondering what Cade was getting at.

“Is everybody here up for something like that?” Cade asked. “Staying quiet, killing up close and personal?”

“I am,” Keith spoke up.

“Me and Jude have been doing it since we started trying to survive out there in this shit,” Sadie added, thinking back to the days when neither of them had access to guns and only had bladed weapons, baseball bats, and crowbars to use for protection. “We can handle it,” she said.

Cade turned around then, looking back at them, acquiescence in her eyes. She blew out a slow breath and said, “Fine. We’ll do it your way. But if any of us gets killed, it’s on your head.” She motioned toward Sadie and turned away to gather her supplies.

“No less than it’s on yours for dragging us out here in the first place,” Sadie retorted, bristling at the suggestion that she would be held responsible if any of them died trying to get to the wall.

Cade whirled around to look at her, her eyes wide with amazement and anger at her words. “Well, you didn’t have to come along,” she snapped. “You two should have stayed behind with Derek and Isaac!”

Keith moved between them. “Stop,” he said. “Just stop. We’re not doing this, not right now. We have enough shit going on without bickering among ourselves.”

Cade looked like she wanted to continue to argue, but she merely turned away and picked up her backpack. She paced across the roof toward the far edge that faced the east.

Keith rubbed his forehead like he was stressed out and getting a headache. “Sadie, forgive her,” he said, dropping his hand to his side. “She’s under a lot of stress.”

“We all are,” Sadie replied.

“Not like her,” he said. “Her husband is missing, and she’s left her child behind. She might not ever see either one of them again. It’s weighing on her, and she’s scared she’s made the wrong decision. We have to do whatever we can to make sure that we get her through this and find Brandt again so they can be a family.”

Sadie gathered her own belongings: her backpack, her compound bow, and the eight arrows she still had left. She’d have to carefully conserve them and recover whatever she fired if she expected to have enough to make it through to the wall and beyond. She tucked the arrows into her backpack, leaving a gap in the zipper where the fletchings stuck out for easy access, using the backpack like a quiver—though she hated quivers with a passion, because they were useless and spilled arrows all over the place when the archer was forced to move quickly. However, it was all she had, so she had to work with it.

“When are we moving out?” she asked Keith as she tried to figure out the best way to carry her belongings so she’d have her hands free for usage of her machete.

“I’m not sure. As soon as possible, definitely,” he said. “We need to take advantage of the lull in the flood of infected while it’s actually there.”

“In that case,” Sadie said, “I’m going to look for a safe route to the ground. I’ll let you know the minute I find anything.” She crossed the roof to what was left of the fire escape and climbed over the edge, dropping down onto it with every intention of doing exactly what she said.

Chapter 53

It hadn’t taken long for the five of them to get their shit together, but once they had a plan in place and were on the move, Brandt found himself sitting in the passenger seat of Lindsey’s sedan, his sister in law in the driver’s seat, driving towards the Wall and all the activity surrounding the newly created gap in it. Over the roar of the engine, Brandt heard the rapid pop of gunfire ahead as the soldiers stationed at the Eden Facility fought against infected that were trying to get in through the Wall.

Brandt twisted around in his seat to look at the two people in the backseat of Lindsey’s car. Ethan’s face was stoic considering everything they were about to face. Kimberly sat beside him, directly behind Brandt, and she looked a lot more ruffled than Ethan did. Brandt noted the way the fingers of her left hand were tangled together with the fingers of Ethan’s right, her fingertips blanched with the force of her grip on his hand. “You two all right?” he asked.

“We’re fine,” Ethan said. “Trying to get our game faces on.”

“You look like you already have yours,” Brandt said.

“Yeah, we’re working on mine now,” Kimberly said, letting out a weak chuckle. “I haven’t been in many situations that involved me facing down a bunch of infected en masse before. When I was with Alicia and her people, they protected me and Derek and for the most part wouldn’t let us fight the infected often. I think there was only one time I ended up fighting them, and that was when the infected got into the hotel’s underground parking garage. I was just part of the shooting line, though, not actually in the fight.”

“Well, you’re about to be in one,” Brandt said. “You sure we don’t need to turn around and send you back to Jacob?” The scientist had opted to stay out of the fight, lacking any experience in combat, and had retreated to Lindsey’s apartment building with the idea of fortifying her place as a base of operations.

“No, definitely not,” Kimberly said. “My place is right here.”

“If you’re sure,” Brandt said uncertainly.

“I’m sure,” she said, her confidence evident in her voice.

Brandt slid back down into his seat and looked to Lindsey. Her forehead was creased, her attention focused entirely on the windshield in front of her, fingers wrapped in a death grip around the steering wheel. “And you?” he prompted.

“And me what?” Lindsey asked.

“Are you ready for this?”

“I was born ready for this,” Lindsey said, her words coated with steel. “I’m going to find my sister. I don’t care what it takes.”

“That’s the spirit,” Ethan said, prompting a small laugh from Kimberly.

The car fell silent, and Brandt stared out the window, watching the blocks pass by as they moved inextricably towards the massive wall and the mess ahead of them. The closer they drew to it, the worse the scenery around them became; rubble from the wall littered the sidewalks and street, forcing Lindsey to steer carefully around it all, and there were people walking toward the wall, drawn to the chaos like people inevitably were when something different or unusual was going on. Though they shouldn’t have been out at all, Brandt hoped that the people out there had at least had the foresight and common sense to go out armed.

“Hey, Brandt,” Ethan said, rocking forward in his seat and pointing down the street ahead of them. “Is that what I think it is?”

Brandt turned back to the windshield, examining the cityscape ahead for signs of what Ethan was looking at. He squinted, trying to pick it out, and spotted several people making their way down the center of the street, grouped together, stumbling like they were drunk. They had that swagger, that distinctive walk so common among the infected they’d encountered over the past two years, and Brandt’s breath caught in his throat.

“Son of a bitch,” he said. “Stop the car.”

“What for?” Lindsey asked.

“Just do it,” Brandt barked. She eased the car to a stop, looking at him questioningly. “Infected,” he clarified. “Straight ahead. Six of them.” He twisted in his seat again, looking back at Ethan. “You and me,” he said, and Ethan nodded. “Lindsey, Kimberly, you two stay here.”

“What?” Kimberly cried.

“You’re our backup,” Brandt said, reaching for the door handle. “We need you to hold back in case you have to save our asses.”

“Right. Like that’s going to happen,” Kimberly grumbled, flopping back in her seat in frustration.

Brandt ignored her and slid out of the car; Ethan did the same, and they shut their car doors simultaneously.

Ethan grinned widely as they circled around to the front of the car. “Just like old times, huh?” he said.

“You act like old times were a long time ago,” Brandt said as he checked his pistol. “How do we want to do this?”

“Quietly,” Ethan said. “We don’t want to draw more of them with gunfire.”

“I figured that was a given,” Brandt said. He holstered the pistol he’d started to draw out and instead chose a couple of the military-style KA-BAR knives Lindsey had given him, palming one in each hand, holding them in a manner that would allow him to use them with ease. “Lead the way,” he said to Ethan. He wanted to see where the man was physically, how he was able to hold up after everything he’d been through over the past several months. He’d be right there to back him up if he got into trouble if it came to that.

Not that he expected it to.

There were six infected directly ahead of them, and beyond the initial group, Brandt made out three or four more. The people on the sidewalks, the ones who’d come to rubberneck at the aftermath of the explosion, hadn’t realized what was happening, that the people coming from the direction of the blast were a danger to them. He hoped they’d get moving once he and Ethan took care of the problem and that they wouldn’t contribute to it by interfering and putting themselves in harm’s way—and potentially getting bitten and becoming part of the problem in the process.

Ethan reached the leading edge of the group of infected while Brandt stewed on this. The infected simply parted and started to go around him, focusing on Brandt instead. Brandt raised his eyebrows, wondering how in the world Ethan had learned that particular trick, but he didn’t have time to dwell on it. He lifted his knives and tore into the first of the infected that grasped for him, a woman who looked like she’d seen better days. Her skin was weather-beaten and peeling, and her hair was falling out in clumps. She wore a dirty pair of light blue scrubs that were torn and stained with old, dried blood, and her limbs were thin and emaciated. When she reached for Brandt, he slammed the knife in his right hand into her temple. The body crumpled to the pavement, and that was when the screaming from the bystanders began.

“Ah, hell,” Brandt said, abandoning the body to its spot on the pavement and stepping over it to go to his next target. He and Ethan needed to take care of these things before they were drawn to the sound of the bystanders’ screams and shouts. Ethan hadn’t paused at the sound of the screams like Brandt had; he was still moving, stepping behind each of the infected and dropping them with a sharp, quick stab to the back of the neck, driving the blade of his knife up into their skulls to sever their spinal cords and pierce their brain stems. The infected were dropping around him like weeds, collapsing to the ground as he systematically worked his way through the group of infected. He was like a grim reaper swishing his scythe through souls that should have left the Earth long ago, gathering them to him so he could set them free.

Brandt shook himself out of his reverie and back to the task at hand, moving forward to help Ethan, who paced down the street toward the second group of infected moving toward them. He cast a quick glance back to assess everything behind them and saw that some of the bystanders had caught on to what was happening and had begun to flee in the opposite direction. Lindsey had eased the car forward, trying to steer around the bodies to stay close to Brandt and Ethan, the high beams of her headlights illuminating the scene before them.

He and Ethan had taken care of the few stragglers behind that first small group of infected when Lindsey and Kimberly jogged up to them, carrying backpacks full of weaponry and wearing anxious looks on their faces. “Why are you two out of the car?” he asked, keeping his voice short of demanding.

“The police are coming,” Lindsey said. “I can hear the sirens.” Brandt’s ears picked up the faint strains of the sirens in question, far off in the distance, getting gradually louder as they approached. “I think a bystander called the cops.”

“We’re leaving the car and heading out on foot from here,” Kimberly told him. “Lindsey says we’re not much further from the wall, so the going will probably get a lot tougher from here.”

“I didn’t think we’d have to ditch the car so soon,” Brandt said. “I thought we’d be able to get closer.”

“Me too,” Lindsey said, “but I suppose we thought wrong.” She patted at her sides, checking to make sure she had everything she needed, and handed Brandt one of the backpacks she had on her shoulder. He put it on, noting that Kimberly had given Ethan his.

“As usual, we have shit for luck,” Brandt said. “Come on, then. Let’s get out of here before those cops show up.”

Chapter 54

Her heart pounding, Cade raced parallel to the wall, her three companions spread out behind her, on the alert for any infected as they ran. They’d been going like this for almost thirty minutes now, hurrying through the dusky dawn. The destroyed, leveled cityscape had long given way to a wooded stretch that ran alongside the remains of a road that had been partially dug up by some sort of excavator, part of the two hundred-yard stretch of cleared land extending out from the wall. The same stretch of cleared ground that she’d have to figure out a way to get across without getting shot.

There was movement in the trees ahead. It wasn’t the first time she’d spotted something rustling in the bushes, but it was the first one she’d seen directly in their path. She raised her machete into position, and as she jogged past the infected man, she swung out hard, partially severing the man’s head from his shoulders. Behind her, Sadie completed the man’s destruction with a blow of her own, slicing the man’s head from his shoulders. He crumpled to the dirt. Cade and Sadie never broke stride, and neither did Keith and Jude. They continued on, repeating the process for three more infected.

One for each of us, Cade thought caustically.

She stopped after another twenty minutes’ jogging, panting as she slowed and nearly stumbling to her knees. She caught herself against a tree, her chest heaving, and leaned over, struggling to catch her breath. The other three were drawing to a stop around her, looking just as winded as she felt. Jude sank to his knees beside his sister, bracing his hands against his thighs. He looked like he was about to vomit, but he held it back.

“Everybody okay?” Cade asked once she recovered enough to speak. “No twisted knees, sprained ankles?” Everyone shook their heads, and she pushed away from the tree and started toward the tree line, intending to see how far away they’d gotten from the main mob of infected. Sadie followed her, her boots crunching on the dead leaves, a determined expression on her face. Cade asked, “What do you see?”

Sadie fished in her bag and pulled out a pair of compact binoculars with red lenses. She lifted them to her eyes to examine the wall ahead of them. “I see…no guards,” she reported. “I guess we were right that they’d be drawn to the action and away from their immediate posts. I also see…” she trailed off, studying the wall, “the wall’s blocks are uneven.”

“Uneven how?”

“Like the wall was put up quickly and they didn’t have time to line up the blocks properly,” Sadie said. “The blocks are stacked unevenly, so we’ll have some handholds and footholds to climb with. Which would solve any problems with trying to figure out how to get a rope to the top and secured for us to climb.” She lowered the binoculars and looked at Cade with the utmost seriousness. “What happens when we get to the top?”

Cade gestured in the direction they’d come from. “We go back that way,” she said. She caught a glimpse of dread and exhaustion in Sadie’s eyes and added, “Don’t worry. I’m not going to insist we run all the way back.”

“Thank God,” Sadie said. “I like to think I’m in pretty good shape but—”

“No think about it,” Cade assured her. “You are in better shape than I am.”

Sadie smiled fleetingly. “Thanks. Even I don’t think I can manage another run like that. I can tell you that Jude definitely can’t. I’m amazed he didn’t throw up.”

“He did look a bit queasy, didn’t he?” Cade said with a smile. She considered everything that they were about to do, and she added, “Maybe he and Keith should stay behind.”

“Not an option,” Sadie said. “He stays with me. I can’t risk him getting separated from me and me getting killed. He won’t have a way to communicate with anyone then, not without writing. And that takes time.”

“Understandable,” Cade acknowledged. “We’re walking into a pretty dangerous situation, and I wanted to make sure you’re fully aware that there’s a chance he could get killed.”

“There’s a chance we could all get killed,” Sadie said. “I try not to lose too much sleep over it.”

Cade was surprised at Sadie’s blasé attitude toward death; maybe the girl was bullshitting a front that made her appear braver and tougher than she was. She adjusted her rifle on her back and focused on the wall again before saying, “I think I’m ready to do a little free climbing. How about you?”

“I was born ready,” Sadie said with more confidence than Cade felt. She went back into the trees, and Cade looked at the wall again. She was trying to judge how tall the wall was, how high she would have to climb to make it to the top. Thinking about free-climbing made her think about the last time she’d done anything climbing-related. It had been a little over a month into the post-outbreak world, when they’d gone into Biloxi, Mississippi, to rescue Remy from an RV surrounded by the infected. She and Brandt had gotten separated from the others in the process and had ended up holed up in an office building…and that had ended with them rappelling from a fifth-story window to get away from the infected.

That had been terrifying, rappelling without a semblance of proper equipment, but she’d managed it, and if she could handle that, then she could handle this.

By the time the others joined her, Cade had psyched herself up for the impending climb, and she barely waited to confirm that the others were ready before she started across the two hundred yards that separated them from the wall. The others followed her, keeping up with her brisk pace, not uttering a word of question or contention.

When they reached the base of the wall, Cade said, “Now is the time to back out if you don’t think you can make the climb. If you fall, we won’t be able to come back for you.”

“Understood,” Keith said, and Jude nodded in agreement. Sadie looked completely unperturbed by the idea.

Cade blew out a breath, stretched her arm up as high as she could reach, and grasped the first viable handhold that she could curl her fingers around. As if that was their cue, the other three spread out along the wall and mimicked her motion, and they all began to climb, slowly but steadily.

The climb was harder and longer than Cade had expected, and the muscles in her arms and shoulders had begun to burn long before she’d reached the halfway point. She soldiered on, though, not letting something as inconsequential as pain stop her from reaching the top of the wall. Her fingers and knuckles were scraped red and raw halfway up, and by the time she’d reached three-quarters of the way up, they were bleeding, staining the stone with traces of dark red fluid to mark her passage. She didn’t care; nothing would prevent her from meeting her self-appointed goal.

She was going to find her husband, come hell or high water. Or both.

Reaching the top of the wall and finding the energy to climb over the iron railing there was the second-hardest thing that Cade had ever had to do. Standing up from the metal walkway she rolled onto was the hardest. Her limbs trembling from exertion, she knew if she stopped for a rest, she’d never get moving again.

The other three had made it to the top safely. Sadie was leaning against the railing that lined the edge of the wall, massaging her shoulders, her chest heaving. Jude lay on his back on the metal walkway, his knees drawn up and his feet flat on the walkway, and Keith leaned over him, trying to catch his own breath.

“Everybody okay?” Cade asked, hating the way her voice shook from the mere effort of talking.

“I feel like I’m going to puke,” Keith announced, “but it’s nothing I can’t power past.”

Jude waggled a hand from side to side, making a gesture that meant “so-so,” and grasped Keith’s extended hand so he could help him up.

Sadie merely shrugged and said, “I’ll live.”

“Okay, then,” Cade said. She straightened and took her rifle from her shoulder. “Let’s go.”

“Can we have five minutes to catch our breath?” Keith asked.

“We don’t have five minutes,” Cade said. “Brandt probably doesn’t either. We’ve got to find him before someone gets it into their heads that killing him is a good idea.”

Keith sighed. “Look, I understand. Completely. But we aren’t any use to him if we exhaust ourselves. We’ve got to stay healthy if we expect to help him.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Cade asked, giving him the dirtiest look she could muster. “I know how this shit normally works. But it’s Brandt. It’s my husband. He’s one of us. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him. Most of us wouldn’t be. He’d follow me into a fire to help me, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to drag ass on doing the same for him.”

Keith stared at her, and she stared right back, her chin jutted out, challenging him to contradict her. Fortunately, he wasn’t so inclined. Maybe he’d seen the determination in her eyes and had realized there was no way she was going to budge. He sighed, cutting his gaze away somewhere to his right, and muttered, “Whatever.” Cade turned her back to the rest of them to examine their surroundings more carefully.

The space to her left opened onto the southern side of the wall, and it dropped off into a steep plunge that made Cade marvel at the fact she’d managed to climb it without falling. To her right was another drop off; this one revealed several buildings below and a metal staircase about a tenth of a mile ahead of her that led to the ground. She debated whether or not they should leave the wall via the metal staircase, and she rejected that idea. There would be more obstructions on the ground, and at least the top of the wall afforded her not only a straight shot to her destination but a panoramic view of her surroundings. Adjusting her grip on her rifle, she called out, “Come on, let’s get moving.”

She started walking down the metal walkway, her boots clanking against the steel as she strode to the west. Her rifle was comfortable and familiar in her hands, its heavy weight soothing. So long as she had her rifle, nothing would happen to her. She wouldn’t let anything happen to her.

Cade and her friends had been walking for thirty minutes, completely unmolested, when she saw, below them, the first straggling edges of the infected mob that was besieging the wall. They were flooding toward the blown-out section of wall, and Cade picked up her pace, anxious to get there herself.

When she drew closer to the chaos surrounding the location of the former-gate-turned-smoking-hole, Cade’s heart skipped a beat. It looked so much worse up close than it had from far away. The infected were a seething mass of ugliness, stepping on and climbing over each other in their efforts to get to the fresh prey on the other side of the wall. The wall itself was a twisted ruin, the walkway she and her friends were traveling on sheared away and dropping down into nothing. The sound of gunfire was continuous and rapid, overlapping until it all sounded like one solid, unceasing wall of noise. Several soldiers were lined up on either side of the gap, firing into the crowd, and more soldiers were perched on the maze of walkways to Cade’s right, doing the same. She was tempted to join her fire in with theirs, but she refrained; she couldn’t risk running out of the few bullets she had.

“Hey!” a voice shouted from somewhere to her right. Cade twisted in the direction of the shouter. She stopped herself from lifting her rifle, keeping the barrel pointed down at the ground. The man who’d yelled was young, too young for the rank he held, and he wore a dusty, dirty uniform that gave the impression that he was currently in charge. “Who are you?” the man demanded. “You’re in a military facility! You shouldn’t be here!”

“I think that’s our cue to get the hell out of here,” Keith said. He grasped her elbow and tugged her back the way they’d come.

Cade wrenched her elbow out of his grip. “You three, go,” she ordered. “I’m not stopping.”

She slung her rifle onto her shoulder, grasped the iron railing alongside her, and vaulted over it to drop to another walkway ten feet below. She landed with a clang that reverberated off the surrounding wall, and she heard the man that had confronted them shouting about a breach above ground level.

Another clang brought her around to her right, and she rapidly retrieved her rifle and aimed it at the perceived threat. She was greeted by the sight of Sadie, who crouched a few feet away from her, where she’d landed when she’d completed her own jump.

“I’ve got the other two headed back the way we came,” Sadie said, straightening, unfazed by the rifle pointed at her. “They’re going to find another way in.”

“Good,” Cade said. She wouldn’t admit, even to herself, that she was relieved she’d have backup on this…even if it came in the form of an eighteen-year-old girl with zero training beyond what her Special Forces father had given her. “Come on,” she urged, “before someone gets the wise idea to start shooting at us.” As if on cue, a bullet pocked into the concrete behind her, mere inches from her head. She swore and shoved Sadie ahead of her, scanning the complex for cover as they fled down the walkway. It was a tangle of walkways, metal staircases, and scaffolds, with nothing solid enough to take cover behind. They would have to keep moving quickly and inventively and hope their luck stayed with them.

Chapter 55

Back towards the Eden Facility was the last place Ethan had any desire to go, but that was where he was headed, moving at a brisk jog, hoping that he, Lindsey, Brandt, and Kimberly would be able to help stem the tide of infected before they got too far into the city of Eden and its uninfected populace. He had no idea if they would be fired on the moment they were spotted by any of the military personnel that were entrenched at the facility. The thought of Kimberly bleeding out on the ground made him almost physically ill. He shoved the thought aside; he didn’t have time to dwell on the terrible consequences that might come to pass due to their actions.

At some point during their dash down the street, Brandt had fallen back, taking up the rear, and Kimberly had joined Ethan at the front of the pack. Her blonde hair was a rumpled, dirty mess, and the scrubs she was still wearing were filthy, but she was the most alive thing he’d seen in months. He itched to take her hand, to pull her into his arms and drag her off someplace nice and quiet to hide from all the terrible shit they were going to be facing. That, however, wasn’t an option. Maybe after all this was over, they could get away for a while and get to know each other better than they already did, without the looming specter of the infected hanging over them.

“Ethan, your left!” Lindsey called out, and he looked in the indicated direction to see two infected coming their way. He intercepted, putting them down with quick jabs of his knife to the bases of their skulls, then rejoined the other three, who’d slowed to a stop nearby.

“Can I just say it’s disturbing how easy you make that look?” Kimberly remarked when he caught up with them.

“It’s a talent,” Ethan said. “What’s the hold up?”

“Lindsey said there’s an entrance not far from here where we can get into the facility without having to go directly to the gates,” Brandt reported. “She thinks we should go in through there.”

“Is it safe?” Ethan asked.

“Is anything safe anymore?” Lindsey countered, and Ethan agreed with her statement. “It’s the best we can do, which is about all I can say. It’s either that or walk right into the mess at the gate, and I think that we should come at it from the side so we can have the chance to assess what we’re stumbling into.”

“She has a point,” Brandt said.

“I’m not arguing it,” Ethan replied. He looked at Lindsey. “You okay to lead?”

“It’s not like I have a choice,” Lindsey said. Without further discussion, she moved to the front of the group. Ethan and Kimberly fell back to keep an eye on her as she started forward again, leading them toward the entrance.

“You doing okay?” he asked Kimberly once the four of them were on the move again.

“As well as can be expected, considering we’re about to walk into something that will probably end up killing us,” she said. Despite her words, she sounded upbeat. “Other than all that unpleasant mess, I think I’m okay.”

“Any regrets?”

Kimberly didn’t answer right away. She seemed to be thinking the question over as she darted forward and took down an infected woman that was staggering toward Lindsey from her right. “Us,” she said simply when she rejoined him, wiping down her knife with a scrap of fabric.

“Us?” Ethan repeated, surprised at her answer.

“Yeah, us,” Kimberly repeated. Ethan spotted another infected and killed it with disturbing effortlessness. Once he was back alongside her, she continued. “I regret that we didn’t figure out any of this,” she waved her hand back and forth in the space between them, “sooner. So much lost time, you know?”

“Maybe if we both make it out of this, we can work on making up for some of that lost time,” Ethan suggested, irrationally afraid that he was about to get a rejection.

Kimberly’s grin lit up her entire face, and her eyes met his. “I think I’d really like that.”

Ethan reached across the gap between them with his empty right hand and grasped her left hand tightly, squeezing it gently before letting go and forcing himself to refocus on the task at hand. He wasn’t going to get the opportunity to spend more time with her in a situation that wasn’t immediately life threatening if he didn’t make sure they actually survived it first.

They soon reached the security gates that admitted people to the employees’ parking lot. The booth at the entrance was empty, and Ethan assumed that the guards that had once been in there had abandoned their posts, headed further into the facility to help deal with whatever problems had arisen after the explosion. The gates were closed and chained shut, but climbing over them posed no real difficulty. Ethan scaled the chain links to the top and draped the stolen lab coat over the barbed wire at the top, then slung himself over the top and dropped to the pavement. He landed in a crouch to absorb the impact and lifted his pistol, holding it so he could deal with any oncoming, uninfected threats to his friends while they climbed over the fencing to join him.

“This is the same lot Jacob brought me and Kimberly through when he was getting us out of here, isn’t it?” Ethan asked, recognizing a few of the cars parked around the lot.

“It is,” Lindsey said. She was breathless from her climb over the fence when she dropped down beside him, but she seemed exhilarated at the same time. “It’s also the same lot I brought Brandt through when I got him out of here.”

“What about inside?” Brandt asked as he joined them, helping Kimberly down from the fence. “What did the explosion do to the interior?”

“There’s debris everywhere,” Ethan said. “Lot of ceiling tiles fell, and some of the walls are cracked. For the most part, though, the facility’s intact. Granted, we weren’t that close to the epicenter of the explosion, so it could be worse closer to where it happened.”

“I can guarantee that,” Brandt said with confidence, and his tone reminded Ethan of the fact that the former Marine was a demolitions expert when he was in the military. Or, as he often liked to put it, he was a specialist “in blowing shit up.” “If I knew what happened with the explosion, if it was sabotage or if it was just shitty luck, maybe what sort of demolitions material was used if it was sabotage, then I could have a better idea of what to expect.”

“What about the infected?” Lindsey asked. “What do you think we can expect there?”

“A metric shit-ton of them,” Brandt said. “And all of them want to eat us.”

“Except maybe Ethan,” Kimberly said with a slight smile in his direction.

“How do you do that, anyway?” Lindsey asked, looking at him. He felt like squirming under her scrutiny as she looked him up and down, resisting the urge to stuff his hands into his pockets, which he didn’t even have. “It’s like they barely notice you’re there. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“It has to do with the vaccine,” Ethan said. He looked across the parking lot, searching for the door that would lead into the facility. “Look, we can discuss my apparent superpower later, yeah? I don’t think this parking lot is the best time or place for it.”

“Definitely to be continued,” Lindsey said. The look in her eyes was predatory, like the scientist in her was anxious to get her hands on him and turn him into a lab experiment. He knew she wouldn’t actually do it. If there was anyone who was science-inclined that would be the last person to experiment on him, it would be her.

The four of them started across the parking lot, Lindsey taking the lead again so she could let them into the building. The lot was oddly abandoned, none of the Eden Facility’s employees anywhere in sight. Ethan thought that was weird. After an explosion like that, shouldn’t people have been flocking out of the building, like middle-schoolers during a fire drill? “Where is everyone?” he asked. “Shouldn’t there be evacuees out here?”

“Not necessarily,” Lindsey said. “The facility has a lot of shelter-in-place policies. People close to the actual detonation would be evacuated. Everyone else would be ordered to shelter in place. We’re far enough away from the gates that the people who normally park in this lot would have stayed where they were.”

“What are the chances they’ve realized we’re missing?” he asked, motioning to Kimberly to include her in the question.

“Slim to none, depending on how hung up they are with what’s going on at the gates,” Lindsey said. “Why?”

“Maybe I should ask what the chances are that we’d be able to get a friend out of the holding cells you guys have here,” Ethan said.

Lindsey’s eyes narrowed. “What friend?”

“His name is Chris,” Kimberly said. “We met him on the road. He was brought here with us, and we haven’t seen him since.”

“Chris…Chris…” Lindsey mused. “I think I checked out a Chris before they put him in quarantine. If he’s still there, we might be able to try to get to him, but only if they put him where they usually put the quarantined folks.”

“He’s not a priority,” Brandt spoke up. “Our priority is getting to the other side of this wall so we can start the search for Cade.”

“This guy was pretty skilled, well trained,” Ethan said. “If we can get to him, then it would help to have another set of trained hands with us while we search for her.”

“Yeah, true, but he’s not a priority,” Brandt repeated.

Lindsey had stopped in front of the door set into the facility’s back wall, and she punched a four-digit code into a keypad mounted on the wall beside the door. There was a soft beep and a chunk like the door’s lock was disengaging. When she pulled on the door, it didn’t open. “What the hell?” Lindsey muttered. She punched her code in and tried the door again. It still wouldn’t open. “Something’s wrong with the door. Maybe the security system has it disabled.”

“Move,” Brandt ordered, nudging everyone away from the door. He was holding a crowbar, and he jammed one end into the crack of the door at the doorjamb. He wedged it in deeper and grasped it in two hands, then pushed. His biceps bulged and his face flushed red, his body shaking with the effort to pry the door open. With one last hard shove, the door popped open with a protesting squeal, and Lindsey pulled on the door handle, swinging it open so they could enter.

“I knew having the brawn around was a good idea,” Lindsey joked, patting him on the shoulder as she entered the building. Ethan stepped in behind her, followed by Kimberly, with Brandt taking up the rear. Ethan felt a compulsion to lift his pistol when he stepped into the darkened interior of the Eden Facility again but fought against the impulse. He had to stay calm, no matter how much this place made his hackles rise.

There was noise down one of the halls to his right, echoes of shouting with the not exactly indistinct sounds of gunfire. He drew in a breath, telling his nerves to keep steady, that now wasn’t the time for them to get jumpy. “What are the chances the infected that have gotten in would have gotten this far by now?” he asked Lindsey, not knowing how much the hallways twisted and turned and if they would pose enough of a challenge to the infected to slow them down.

“I don’t know,” Lindsey admitted. “I guess it depends on how extensive the damage was. At this point, I’d assume that we should go with ‘pretty damn far’ and be pleasantly surprised when they’re not as far along as we thought they’d be.”

“Let’s go with that,” Ethan agreed. “You know your way around here. Lead the way, would you? I don’t relish the idea of getting lost in a place like this.”

Chapter 56

Leaving Sadie behind was the last thing Jude wanted to do, but he didn’t have much choice in the matter. She’d practically dove over the railing to a platform below before he could make any sign of protest, and then Keith’s hand wrapped around his forearm and pulled, tugging him down the walkway back the way they’d come. They would have to find another route down to the ground level and figure out how to meet up with his sister and Cade somewhere down there.

Keith’s hand was tight on his arm, his fingers clenched on his skin. Jude wanted to ask him to let go, or to at least loosen his grip, but he wasn’t able to; he couldn’t speak, he couldn’t write while he was running, and he couldn’t do sign language because Keith didn’t know ASL. This was precisely the situation that Sadie had been worried about when she’d said that she wanted him to come with her: him being essentially voiceless, accompanied by no one who could understand him.

Since he was taking up the rear, he glanced back behind them. There were three soldiers on the platform walkway with them, rifles in hand, pursuing them at a pace slightly faster than his and Keith’s. He spotted a metal staircase that led to one of the lower walkways and jerked at Keith’s hand to get his attention, then pointed to the staircase that led down to it.

Fortunately, Keith got what he was trying to communicate, and he veered in that direction, shoving Jude ahead of him so he put himself between him and the oncoming soldiers. Jude wasn’t thrilled with the concept. He didn’t have a way to argue with him about it, so he continued on, clambering down the metal stairs as fast as he could.

“Go down two levels,” Keith instructed, his words breathless, “then cut back to the left. We’ve got to put some distance between us and them.”

Left? Jude mouthed. He couldn’t turn his head to question Keith about it. Left would take them back toward the gates and where the bomb had gone off…and closer to the infected. He’d have thought that was the worst place they would want to go, but he trusted Keith to not get him killed. He’d go with it for now, and he’d tell Sadie what happened and let her yell at him later.

The platform was empty, the ground below them teeming with infected. Jude shuddered when a bunch of them looked up at him and reached up, as if they could be reached from where they stood on the platform above their heads. The thought of what would happen if they got their hands on him and Keith was enough to make him want to vomit. He looked away from the mob and focused on running. He didn’t have time to imagine the grisly death that might lead to.

There was a figure up ahead, standing on the platform with its hip cocked, arms hanging loosely at its sides. It was a woman, Jude realized, and she looked like she was waiting on someone or something. He skidded to a halt as he recognized her, and Keith slammed into his back, nearly toppling him to the metal walkway. He caught himself on the railing, and he heard the precise moment that Keith recognized the disheveled, bloodied figure standing ahead of them, blocking their paths.

“Remy?” Keith said out loud, his voice leaden with surprise.

Chapter 57

Her legs burning with the effort, Sadie led Cade on an erratic, meandering path around the metal walkways, trying to get them down to a safe spot on ground level so they could get inside the building. She didn’t know what she would find in there. Hopefully it would be Cade’s husband. Though she didn’t know her well, she hoped that Cade would be reunited with Brandt. Those two gave off the impression that they were attached at the hip, and she hated to see people as tight as that separated from each other.

Now wasn’t the time to stew on that, though. They had bigger problems on their hands—like the fact that there were hundreds of infected swarming everywhere and four soldiers were doing their damnedest chasing them as they fled towards their target.

She scanned the walkways frantically, and she sucked in a breath when she noticed a walkway that connected to the building itself, a door set into the wall at the end of the walkway. “There!” she exclaimed, jabbing her finger in the direction of the door, and she steered toward it, jumping over another railing and barely waiting for Cade to do likewise. To her surprise, the door was unlocked. She flung it open and grabbed Cade by her shirt, hauling her inside. The door thudded closed behind them, and she stood inside the building, panting, fumbling for her pistol.

“Where did I just bring us?” she asked. The power inside the building was out, and there wasn’t a spark of light to be found. She heard Cade unzipping her backpack and digging around inside it, then there was a sharp crack and a faint greenish light blossomed in Cade’s hands. She shook the glow stick to mix the fluid around inside and handed it to Sadie. There was a lanyard on the glow stick, so Sadie looped it over her head, letting the stick settle against her chest. “Where did you get this?” she asked as Cade took out a second stick and activated it.

“I’ve been saving them in my kit for a rainy day,” Cade replied. “To answer your first question, I’d hazard a guess that we’re inside the facility. Just where I wanted to be.” She put her own glow stick around her neck, and the muddled yellow light illuminated the hard, determined look in her eyes.

“So what now?” Sadie asked. “We go hunting?”

Cade’s face spread into a slow smirk. “Oh yeah. We go hunting,” she confirmed. “I’ll lead, and you follow. Stay on the alert. We don’t know how many of the infected are in here.”

“Or other people who’d have the itch to do us wrong,” Sadie added. She waited for Cade to lift her big-ass rifle and take the lead. They started down the hall, and Sadie was grateful she wasn’t on the wrong end of that rifle. Cade looked like she had the fury of a thousand warriors in her eyes. She’d obviously been pushed to her limits, and Sadie knew that the moment she encountered the people who had Brandt, all bets were off.

The hallway’s walls, floor, and ceiling were all white. The sheer cleanliness of them, the austere, unmarked purity of them suggested medical facilities, hospitals, nursing homes, everything that Sadie hated. She suppressed a shudder at the frigid sterility of it and kept going, following Cade at a brisk walk, a pistol in her right hand and a machete in her left. She felt reasonably prepared for anything they might run into, so long as that “anything” wasn’t so plentiful that she ran out of bullets. Even with the three spare magazines on her belt, she wasn’t sure she had enough ammunition for all of this.

The facility was a maze that challenged even the most confusing hospital Sadie had ever been in. She had sickening memories filtering through her mind, memories of her frantic dash through the hallways of Grady Memorial Hospital, searching for the pharmacy, hoping to find the medication her mother had needed, and failing miserably. She tried to jar her thoughts loose from those horrible memories; now wasn’t the time to be thinking about all of that. Not when she was supposed to be backing up Cade, and especially not when Brandt’s life might have been riding on her ability to keep her head in the game.

There were footsteps somewhere ahead of them, hurried ones, like someone was striding rapidly toward a particular destination and wanted to get there without outright running. Cade drew up short and pulled her glow stick off, shoving it into her pocket, and Sadie followed her lead. There was light ahead, like the person who was coming down the hall had a flashlight. When she heard a voice, Sadie realized it was two people. Either that, or someone was really into talking to himself.

Cade’s hand pressed against her arm, and she followed the woman’s guidance to back up against the wall. “There’s two sets of footsteps,” Cade breathed to her. “You take whoever is on the left, and I’ll take the one on the right. Get on the other side of the hall and wait.”

Sadie smoothly and silently darted to the other side of the hall, just before the flashlight beam held by one of their targets swept around the corner.

A rapid assessment in the glow of the flashlight’s beam showed that their company was two men, one an obvious guard of some type—though he was outfitted in the standard digital camouflage that the military used now—and the other a superior officer. Sadie mentally rifled through all the military branches and their insignias that her father had painstakingly taught her and settled on Major. This guy was highly ranked; Sadie wouldn’t have been surprised to find out he was in charge of this place or very close to holding that title. The lower-ranked soldier carried the flashlight, and the Major’s hands were empty. It looked like Cade would have a slightly easier time of it than Sadie. The man with the flashlight was on Sadie’s side, and it wasn’t a small flashlight either—it was one of those big, heavy metal flashlights. A smack with that would hurt massively, and it was definitely a blow she wanted to avoid.

The flashlight beam illuminated the hall and their positions against the walls, and one of the men said, “What the hell?” Sadie raced forward, lifting her pistol, and plowed right into the soldier with the flashlight. The light dropped to the floor, spinning away, and she smacked the man against the side of the head with the butt of her pistol. He fell to the floor, stunned, and Sadie hauled him to his knees and put the machete’s blade against his throat.

“I wouldn’t move if I were you,” she said, her voice low. “I like to keep my blades very, very sharp.” The man stilled, and Sadie looked up from him to make sure Cade was okay.

She shouldn’t have expected anything less. Cade stood in front of the Major, her rifle on her shoulder, the barrel leveled at his face. Her expression was hard, emotionless, stony. Her finger rested against the trigger rather than staying outside the trigger guard, which was a good indicator of what Cade really wanted to do.

“I don’t care who you are or what you do,” Cade said. “What I care about is what the fuck you did with my husband.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the Major said. He seemed unruffled by the fact he was staring down the barrel of an IMI Galil SAR sniper rifle being held by a woman who not only knew how to use it but looked like she was itching to.

“Did I mention I hate liars?” Cade asked, her voice deceptively casual. “Sadie, tell him how much I hate liars.”

Sadie grinned. “The last person who lied to her ended up with no tongue and a hole in his head,” she said, realizing the irony of lying about how much someone hated lying.

“I cut the tongue out for the fun of it,” Cade said. She prodded the Major on the forehead with the rifle. “Now, where is my husband?”

“Who is your husband?” the Major asked. His voice wavered slightly.

“Brandt Evans,” Cade said, and the Major’s face paled.

“He knows him,” Sadie said, noticing the flicker of recognition in the man’s eyes that he tried to hide. “You can see it in his face.”

“I see it,” Cade acknowledged. “Where is he?”

“He’s in his cell,” the Major said. “We were just heading there.”

“I’m sure,” Cade said, her tone suggesting she didn’t believe a word he said. She nudged him with the rifle. “You’re going to tell us exactly where you stashed my husband. If not, well, I know some infected guys I can introduce you to that will be very happy to see you.”

“That’s not necessar—”

Cade jabbed him with her rifle again. “I will decide what’s necessary, not you,” she snapped. “Sadie, get rid of the extra.”

Sadie hesitated, trying to figure out what Cade meant, and when her brain caught up, she shook her head. “No,” she said. “He hasn’t done anything to me. I’m not killing him.”

“Just stuff him somewhere,” Cade said. “Make sure he doesn’t have a way to communicate with anyone. Otherwise, I don’t give a shit what you do to him.”

“Buddy, it’s your lucky day,” Sadie said. She pulled the machete away from his neck and pointed the pistol at him instead. “Get up and walk.”

The man obeyed, standing up on shaking legs and casting the Major a wide-eyed look. The Major didn’t return the look; he kept his eyes on Cade and her rifle. The lower-ranked man started walking, making his way down the hall back the way Sadie and Cade had come.

“What’s your name?” Sadie asked him.

“Private Hutcherson.”

“No, your first name.”

“Dean,” the man said. “Why do you want to know? Are you going to kill me?”

“I’m not going to kill you,” Sadie said with exasperation. She picked a random door and nudged it open with her foot. It was a supply closet of some sort, empty of everything, including supplies. She motioned toward the empty room with her pistol. “Get in.” She waited for him to step inside and turn to face her, and once he had, she asked, “You know anything about Brandt Evans?”

“Lieutenant Evans?” Dean repeated. “Yeah, they had me helping guard him. He hit me on the throat with a dinner tray and smashed my head on the wall before he escaped.”

Sadie snorted out a laugh. Escaped? “Count your blessings that you’re still breathing,” she said. “I hear he’s a mean bastard.”

“Obviously,” Dean said. He looked around warily and asked, “Are you going to lock me in here? We’re under attack, you know.”

“I’m aware,” Sadie said and shut the door. There was no real way to lock it from the outside without a key, but that didn’t stop her from looking. “Stay in there for ten minutes,” she called through the door. “If you come out before then, I’ll know, and I’ll hunt you down and make you regret disobeying me.” She waited for his acknowledgment, then turned and jogged back down the hall to where she’d left Cade and the Major.

Sadie found Cade standing in the center of the hall. The Major was on his feet and backed up against the wall, his hands up in a defensive gesture. He was bleeding freely from a cut on his forehead, and what looked to be a significant bruise was forming on Cade’s jaw. “What happened?” Sadie asked.

“Fucker tried to get one up on me when you left,” Cade snarled. “He’s lucky I didn’t put a bullet in his head.”

“Very lucky,” Sadie said.

“Fucker still won’t tell me where Brandt is, either,” Cade growled.

“Not here,” Sadie told her. “I just got told that he escaped.”

“What?” Cade exploded, turning all her rage onto the Major. “You stupid mother fucker! You weren’t even going to tell me that, were you?” Bradford stared at her, his expression stony. Cade’s face flushed, and she let out a growl that made Sadie think of a pissed-off housecat before lifting her rifle and slamming the butt as hard as she could across the man’s face. He crumpled, dropping to the tiled floor like a sack of sand. Cade, apparently still not satisfied, landed several kicks on the man’s abdomen before Sadie grabbed her arm and pulled her away.

“Come on, Cade,” she said. “He’s useless. Let’s try to find information on our own.”

“Stupid fucker,” Cade snarled, kicking the man one more time before letting Sadie pull her away. Sadie let go of her arm, hoping she wouldn’t race back over and start assaulting the major again, and sent up a silent thanks that Cade started walking the way they’d initially been headed, deeper into the facility. They pulled their glow sticks out of their pockets and put them back on around their necks. They weren’t necessary, though; ahead of them, around a bend, light spilled down the hall, filtered through something—a door, perhaps.

Circling the corner, Sadie stopped short when she realized the light came from small, round security lights mounted on the wall close to the ceiling. They cast sporadic pools of light down the long stretch of hallway. It wasn’t the lights that had made her stop, however; it was the four people down the hall, near where a T-section crossed with the hall she and Cade were on. She raised her pistol, ready to fire at the newest potential threat to her and Cade. Cade cried out—Alarm? Joy? Sadie wasn’t sure—and took off running down the hall towards the figures and threw herself at one of them. When the figures came into focus, Sadie couldn’t stop the smile that spread across her face.

“Well, Brandt Evans, fancy finding you here,” Sadie said with a laugh.

Chapter 58

When Brandt saw the two women standing down the hallway and recognized the familiar figure of his wife—someone he could never mistake; he knew those curves too well—he couldn’t believe his eyes. She ran towards him and slammed into him with the enthusiasm of the long separated. His knees weakened, and he wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her hair. She sagged against him, and he held her tightly, swaying slightly.

“Oh Jesus, Cade,” he murmured.

“Oh my God, how are you even here?” Cade asked, and she tilted her face up to look at him, her blue eyes shiny with unshed tears. He leaned down and kissed her, slowly and deeply, cupping her face in his hands. When he pulled back, a couple of the tears had escaped from her eyes, and he wiped them away with his thumbs. “I figured out where they might have taken you, and we came here to find you. I heard you escaped and—” She broke off, her eyes flickering to the three people behind him. Her breath caught in her throat.

“May I introduce the lovely woman who helped me escape from here?” Brandt said, and he tore himself away from Cade, stepping aside so she could get a full look at the brunette woman behind him. Lindsey was already crying, her hands pressed to her mouth, and then the two sisters were throwing themselves at each other, crying and clinging to one another with what could only be described as desperate elation. Brandt looked past them at Ethan and Kimberly, who were exchanging hugs with Sadie, whose presence surprised him.

“Good to see you, Sadie,” he said, giving the young woman a hug and a gentle pat on the back. “Where is everyone else? I heard they bombed Woodside. Who survived?”

“That I know of?” Sadie started. “Me and Jude, Keith, Cade, Remy, Dominic, Derek, and Isaac. Derek and Isaac stayed behind with the baby, and—”

“Baby?” Brandt repeated, alarm rocketing through him. He whirled around, looking at Cade with wide eyes, only now noticing that she was no longer pregnant.

“I had the baby,” Cade said, lifting her head to look at him. “A little girl. I named her Olivia, just like we said we would. She’s with Derek and Isaac. They stayed behind in a safe house to protect her while I came to look for you.”

“Oh Jesus,” Brandt said, his hands shaking at the revelation.

“Congratulations, Daddy,” Ethan said with a laugh, patting him on the shoulder. Brandt barely heard him; he was too focused on keeping himself in control. Once he felt like he’d mustered it enough to shove everything non-immediate aside for now, he cleared his throat and addressed Sadie.

“Where is everyone else?”

Sadie took a step back, like she was afraid that he’d hit her. “I’m not sure,” she said. “Keith and Jude are here somewhere, but I don’t know where, and trust me when I say I don’t like that. Dominic is…he’s dead.”

Brandt’s eyebrows shot up. “Dead?” he repeated. “How?”

“He got shot by a sniper on the wall,” Cade reported, bitter anger in her voice. She stepped away from Lindsey, her face flushed with her anger.

“And Remy…we haven’t seen her since she blew up the wall,” Sadie finished.

“Remy did what?” Brandt, Ethan, and Kimberly said in unison.

“Who’s Remy?” Lindsey asked.

“My ex…something,” Ethan explained. “How did she do all this?”

“C-4, I think,” Cade said. “Blast looked like it was C-4. Where she got it, I’m not sure. Maybe she picked it up when we were in Atlanta.”

“You went back to Atlanta?” Brandt asked.

Cade patted him on the arm. “We have a lot of catching up to do,” she said. “I’ll give you the rundown once all of this is over.”

Brandt turned his attention back to the others. “What led Remy to blowing up the wall?”

“Dominic,” Sadie and Cade said at the same time.

“She’s gone off the rails,” Cade elaborated. “She was already a little wobbly, and the virus made it worse. When Dominic died…” She shook her head. “That was it for her. She threw down after that. I watched her kill four fully armed men, four soldiers, with her bare hands.”

“Oh hell,” Kimberly said.

“That’s not the Remy I know,” Ethan spoke up. “What the hell happened to her?”

“I don’t know,” Cade said. “I think she was going slowly crazy, and we didn’t notice.”

“Fuck,” Brandt muttered. He scrubbed his hands over his face and sighed. “What do we do?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Ethan said. “We’ve got to track her down and stop her.”

“How do you propose we do that?” Brandt asked.

“Just leave it to me,” Ethan replied.

Chapter 59

Keith’s instincts were yammering at him. He stared at Remy, who stood on the platform ten yards away from him and Jude. He always listened to his instincts; they knew him better than he knew himself at times, but everything about the situation in which he found himself embroiled felt like a contradiction. Remy was supposed to be an ally. Intellectually, he knew this, knew that she’d been fighting on their side as long as she’d been in Woodside. However, his instincts were shrieking at him to grab Jude and get away from her as fast as he could.

There was nowhere to go, of course. Remy was in front of them, covered in blood and gore and who knew what else, and the soldiers that had been chasing them were behind them. He was forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, and he wasn’t sure which of his options qualified. When Remy started to move toward them, he got a clearer look at the expression on her face, and his instincts made the decision for him. He grabbed Jude and shoved him behind him, putting himself between him and the soldiers. Sure, it could result in Jude getting shot, but he was banking on the soldiers realizing that Remy was the threat, not him.

Because Remy was most assuredly the threat in this scenario. The expression on her face was one of barely concealed fury, so hard and bitter that Keith had no idea how she’d contained it so far.

“Remy,” Keith said, keeping his voice level and as soothing as he could make it, considering his nerves wanted to crawl out through his skin. “Remy, it’s me, Keith.” She kept walking, not acknowledging his words. There was no change to her expression, no acknowledgment in her eyes at all. “Oh shit,” he murmured, taking a step back, herding Jude toward the soldiers. His unease amped up to fear. He had a sinking suspicion that Remy no longer saw him or Jude as friends.

Keith pulled his pistol free from its holster, though he kept it held low, hoping he wouldn’t have to use it. “Remy, you need to stop right there,” he warned her.

She had her bolo knife in her hand. Keith hadn’t noticed before that she had it, and he fleetingly wondered where she’d been hiding it. The blade was covered in bright red blood, and Keith suspected that the blood didn’t come from any infected humans. He swallowed and tightened his grip on his pistol, taking another couple of steps back.

“Stop right there!” someone behind Keith and Jude shouted. One of the soldiers had seen Remy and had hopefully decided she was the bigger threat to them than he and Jude were. Remy’s eyes flickered past Keith to the soldiers, and to his amazement, the fury in her eyes became more inflamed. She raced forward, her knife raised, looking like she was willing to cut down Keith and Jude to get to the soldiers.

Remy wasn’t going to stop; he could tell she wasn’t aware she needed to stop. Not seeing any other choice, Keith fired a shot at her. The bullet winged off her right bicep. He’d hoped that would wake her up. He didn’t have that sort of luck.

She stabbed the blade of her bolo knife right into Keith’s abdomen, angled up to pierce into his chest from below his ribcage.

The pain took a couple of seconds to kick in, long enough that she had time to rip the blade free. He gasped as the metal slid from his gut, staggering sideways as the pain rocketed through him. It was overwhelming, and he clasped his left hand over the wound. Remy shoved past him, and he did his best to shunt the pain aside and turn, determined to protect Jude from her wrath.

Jude was backing up, stumbling toward the soldiers that had been chasing them. Remy sped up now that Keith was out of her way, and Keith knew that Jude wouldn’t reach the soldiers before Remy did. Sliding to his knees, he lifted his pistol again and aimed it at her, firing two bullets at her back.

Remy staggered at the bullets’ impacts, nearly dropping her knife. She regained her balance too quickly, not giving him enough time to get a better shot at her while she’d been momentarily incapacitated. She started to turn back toward him, but before she could, Jude darted forward and plunged a knife into her chest.

“Jude, no!” Keith yelled, his voice hoarse with pain. It was too late. Jude’s actions had turned Remy’s full attention onto him, and before Keith could lift his gun again, she shifted her bolo knife around and rammed it home. Jude’s mouth fell open in a soundless cry, his back arching slightly, and he instinctively grabbed at the blade. Remy pulled the blade free, slicing his fingers as she withdrew the steel, shoved him aside, and stormed past him.

Somewhere nearby, Keith thought he heard a woman scream.

Remy was going after the soldiers further down the walkway. They’d seen what she’d done to the two of them and had wisely decided that fleeing was a good option.

Jude fell against the railing, collapsing to the walkway. He pressed his bloodied hands to his abdomen, trying to staunch the flow of blood from the wound. Keith felt his own blood spilling out, pulsing with each heartbeat, and he knew there would be nothing anyone could do for him. Jude looked to be in a similar condition. He was already shaking, pushing his hands against the wound like he could cram the blood back inside. Keith found the energy in his waning reserves to crawl forward, dragging himself to Jude, and he grasped one of the young man’s hands in his own.

“It’s okay, Jude,” he said, trying to sound soothing despite the pain wracking his body. He dragged himself closer and pulled Jude to him. “It’s okay.”

Jude huddled against him, shaking, his hand fisted into Keith’s shirt. He was dying, and he knew it. Keith was as sure of that as he was sure of his own impending death. He didn’t have to strain to feel the fear that Jude was experiencing, and he held him tightly, trying to comfort him as much as possible.

It didn’t take long. One moment, Jude was there, clinging to him, and the next, his grasp slackened, he exhaled, and then he was gone.

Keith’s last thought before his vision fuzzed over and he slipped into unconsciousness was that he really hoped it wouldn’t be long before he saw Jude again.

Chapter 60

Ethan couldn’t believe his eyes.

When Sadie and Cade had told them that Remy had essentially lost her mind, he hadn’t believed them. Remy had always seemed a little off to him, even before she’d been bitten and infected. He supposed too much trauma would do that to a person, and Remy had more than her fair share of trauma under her belt. But this was so far removed from anything he’d expected that he was having trouble processing it.

They’d come out onto a platform attached to the building after climbing a flight of metal stairs that left Ethan feeling winded by the time he reached the top, to be greeted by the sight of pure, absolute chaos. At the sight of Remy running Jude O’Dell through with her bolo knife, Sadie had screamed, the wordless sound shrill and filled with terror, anguish, and pure anger, and she started forward like she planned to go after Remy herself. Ethan caught her arm to stop her.

“No, Sadie!” he shouted. “Go to your brother. Try to help him.” He looked to Cade. “Make sure she doesn’t go after Remy. She can’t handle her.”

“Where are you going?” Cade asked.

Ethan turned to Remy. She’d finished killing a handful of soldiers on the platform with Keith and Jude, and now she was making her way to the ground, where all of the infected were. “I’m going after Remy,” he announced. “Brandt, take care of them,” he said. “No matter what happens.” Brandt nodded, and he turned away, searching for a way to the ground.

It took Ethan a second to realize he was being followed. When he turned to see who it was, he was horrified to discover Kimberly behind him.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded. “You’re supposed to be with the others!”

“You’re kidding yourself if you think I’m letting you do this without backup,” Kimberly replied.

“You don’t need to be here,” Ethan protested. “You can’t go onto the ground with me. They’ll eat you alive. Literally.”

“I’m not going onto the ground,” Kimberly said, and she held up a rifle—Cade’s rifle, he realized—so he could see it. “I’m staying up here. If you fail, at least I can try to shoot her from up here.” She smiled slightly. “Just call me Plan B.”

“Son of a bitch,” Ethan grumbled. He didn’t have time to argue with her over it; he was losing sight of Remy by the second. “Come on, then. But be careful. I’ll never forgive myself if you get killed.”

Kimberly’s smile widened and she stepped forward and kissed him, quickly and sweetly. When she pulled away, Ethan missed her already. “I won’t get killed,” she said. “Promise. Now get down there and save the world.”

Ethan almost laughed at that. Save the world? Who did she think he was, Superman? He shook the thought aside. There was serious business in front of him, and he was certain that either he or Remy would end up dead before the end of it. Now was the last time he needed to crack jokes in his head. He hurried down the steps that led to the ground level, jumping the last few steps to land on the dirt. He stood there for a second, getting acclimated, trying to get oriented on where Remy was in relation to his current position. He glanced up at Kimberly, high above him on one of the metal walkways, and she pointed, showing him which direction he needed to go. He nodded in acknowledgment and started in that direction.

There were infected everywhere, both the living kind and the already deceased, walking dead ones. The stench from them was indescribable, a miasma of old and fresh blood, shit, piss, and rot that made him gag. He breathed shallowly through his mouth, which made him feel like he could taste the odor, and he soldiered on, his pistol in his right hand, a knife in his left. He shoved his way through the crowds, jostling infected people aside, occasionally pausing to kill one that presented the opportunity without increased effort on his part, trying to reach Remy before she got away. He had to stop her, and if that didn’t work, he had to kill her.

He didn’t want to have to kill her. Though after what he’d witnessed on that platform, seeing her stab Jude and, presumably, Keith, who’d been half collapsed onto the platform behind her, he figured he might end up having to take that course. When they’d gone in search of her, Cade had filled him and Brandt in on what had happened on their journey to Eden, on how Remy could control the infected. He believed the claim. He’d noticed that, while the infected apparently recognized him as one of their own, they also were willing to follow his orders, even though it was something he hadn’t experimented with much. While he didn’t know if it was possible to manipulate this many infected, he couldn’t rule it out, not when he took his own experiences into consideration.

If she’d actually blown a hole in the wall and made all these infected show up en masse to do whatever she was thinking she wanted them to do, then that was something he couldn’t forgive.

Ethan shoved past another batch of infected, jostling one that had been a small woman before death, made smaller by wasting away from starvation, and caught a glimpse of Remy. He picked up his pace, fighting his way through the claustrophobic press of bodies surrounding him. He approached Remy, realizing he’d lost focus of another threat to his safety besides the infected and Remy herself: the soldiers. Bullets were still flying down from above, pocking into dirt and bodies, dropping walking corpses to the ground, and there was a real chance he could get shot.

“Price to be paid,” he said aloud, not wholly sure he understood what he meant. Several of the infected around him turned toward him at the sound of his voice, and he snarled, “Oh, fuck off.”

A bullet embedded into the head of an infected man ahead of him, sending a spray of old blood and bits of brain matter out from his head and onto Ethan. He gagged as the rotten stench around him increased tenfold, spitting to clear the nasty taste of the smell from his mouth. It didn’t work, so he continued on, lifting his pistol in a two-handed grip, the knife in his left fist, blade sticking out so all he’d have to do was let go of his pistol with that hand and stab out.

As soon as he thought he was within shouting distance, raising his voice enough to be heard over the sound of gunfire, groans, moans, and snarls, Ethan yelled, “Remy!”

She was cutting across the open courtyard-like area, passing in front of a helicopter, when she stopped and tensed. She stayed like that for a long minute, not flinching when a bullet pinged off the helicopter above her head. She turned around, and Ethan was horrified by her appearance.

Remy was covered in blood. Her jeans were stained with spatters of blood from the knees up, as was her white tank top. He couldn’t tell how much of it was on her leather jacket, but it wouldn’t have been unreasonable to assume it was likewise smeared with blood. Her bolo knife was in her right hand, held by her hip. Her long dark hair was disheveled and matted with who knew what.

Ethan shoved past several more infected as he continued forward. “Remy, what the hell are you doing?”

Remy’s expression had betrayed her shock and surprise at his presence, but with his words, it became hard with anger. She stormed toward him, stopping short of arm’s reach, and said, “What the hell am I doing? I’m giving them what they deserve!”

“What they deserve?” Ethan repeated. “What do you mean?” He was still pointing the pistol at her, and he lowered it, though he kept the weapon out and ready to fire.

“All of this!” Remy said, waving her hand around. “They put this fucking thing up, and they trapped us all in that hellhole and left us to die!” A slow smirk spread across her face, casting her expression in an evil light. “All I’m doing is breaking our chains, knocking down their prison walls, and giving them a taste of exactly what they forced on us!”

“There are innocent people on this side of the wall,” Ethan pointed out. “People like us.”

“There is no one like us!” Remy snapped. She held her hands out to the sides, the tip of her bolo knife’s blade nicking one of the nearby infected. Ethan caught a glimpse of the gunshot wounds that riddled her body. Jesus, how is she still standing? “Look at where we are!” Remy insisted. “We are standing in the middle of a horde, and not a single damn one of them is trying to kill us.” She shook her head. “We can do this, you and me. We can make them do whatever we want them to do. We can punish the people responsible for all of this!”

“Who are we to decide who needs punishment?” Ethan countered. “That is not our place to decide. We’re not God, Remy.”

Remy widened her already outspread arms. “Yes, we are! We can do anything we want! We can control the dead. And we’re immortal! Look at me! I’ve been shot twelve times, and I’m still standing. If that doesn’t make us gods, then I don’t know what does.”

“That’s blasphemy, Remy.”

“I don’t care what it is, it’s the truth.” She looked up at the walkways above them, where several soldiers still fired into the horde. “You should let me go take care of them before they shoot one of us in the head. I’m not willing to test whether that will kill me, even if the others didn’t.”

“No, Remy,” Ethan said. “You’re not going to kill anyone else.”

“You going to stop me?” Remy asked, her tone high and querulous.

“If you insist on continuing this, I’ll have to,” Ethan said. “I can’t let you hurt innocent people. You know I’m not going to stand by and let you do that.”

“That’s too bad,” Remy said. “I didn’t want to have to kill you.” She took three brisk steps towards him and lifted her bolo knife like she was about to try to cut his head off. He took a step back, and when she moved toward him again, he lifted his pistol and fired a single shot.

Remy stumbled, her eyes widening, a neat bullet hole in her forehead above her right eye. She collapsed, dropping to the dirt at his feet, her body twitching.

Ethan stared until her body ceased to function, the gun still raised and pointed at her. He noticed he was shaking when he saw the barrel of the gun tremoring. “Oh God,” he said.

He was crying. He realized this objectively, like he was standing outside of himself and watching the proceedings from afar. One of the infected jostled him from behind, and he lowered the gun, realizing he had more problems at hand, ones that meant he would have to mourn later. He stepped up to Remy’s body and gently closed her eyes before picking up her fallen bolo knife, which lay by her hand. Then, still shaking, he looked at the infected around him.

He had a lot of work to do. And not one bit of it was going to be any fun.

Chapter 61

Kimberly couldn’t believe what she was watching. After Remy had fallen dead at Ethan’s feet, he’d picked up her bolo knife. Everything that followed had been nothing short of a miracle.

He herded the infected. There was no other word for it. He yelled at them, he cajoled, he ordered, pushed, and shoved, and batch by batch, he rounded up the vast majority of them and steer them in the direction he wanted them to go—right back toward the hole in the wall, the hole Remy had put there. Most of the infected obeyed his commands, shuffling along in the proper direction. There were some that didn’t obey, that didn’t comprehend what he was trying to get them to do, and those were the ones that he plunged his knife into.

Kimberly wanted desperately to go down there and help him. She knew she couldn’t. She didn’t have whatever ability Ethan had to walk invisibly among the infected. She itched to fire Cade’s rifle into the mess of them, but she only had the ammunition that was in the rifle; Cade hadn’t given her any spare magazines. All she could do was stand where she was and watch Ethan methodically clear as many infected as he could from the helipad and the surrounding area.

Brandt joined her after a while, leaning against the railing beside her. Soldiers had begun to descend from the walkways and emerge from the facilities to help, and the work went more rapidly after that.

“Remy’s dead,” Kimberly told Brandt, breaking the silence between them.

“I figured that much,” Brandt commented. “It was only a matter of time before she snapped, and I always knew that when it happened, there wouldn’t be any pulling her back from it. I’m not sure Sadie is going to be okay.”

“Did Jude…?”

“Yeah,” Brandt said, and his voice cracked. “He didn’t make it. Neither did Keith.”

“Shit.”

They stared at the mess below for a long moment. The soldiers had taken advantage of what Ethan was doing, and they’d gone out to help, putting down infected while a squad worked to get portable walls deployed and maneuvered into place. Kimberly pressed her lips together, hoping that some idiot wouldn’t get the wise idea to take a potshot at Ethan. An action like that would put her in a position to start shooting, which was something she didn’t want to do.

Fortunately, it didn’t come to that. The soldiers weren’t projecting any outward signs of ill will toward Ethan, and he stayed with them until the temporary, portable walls were erected to block the hole. When he stepped away from them, he moved back to Remy’s body and knelt there for a long moment. He slid his arms underneath her and lifted her limp form from the ground. He shifted her so she settled comfortably against him and started toward the metal stairs he’d descended, climbing them slowly. Brandt and Kimberly met him at the top of the stairs, and he smiled crookedly, though there were tears in his eyes.

“Are you hurt?” Kimberly asked when he reached the top of the stairs. She reached out to help him with his burden, but he shrugged off her attempt at assistance.

“Not physically,” he answered, his voice hoarse. He stepped past her, carrying Remy toward the facility building.

“Where are you going?” Brandt asked, following behind Ethan, with Kimberly bringing up the rear.

“I’m going to go find that Bradford bastard,” Ethan said. “We have some samples and research he stole from us that we need to get back.” He cut a glance to Kimberly. “I believe we promised we’d put it into the right hands. Nothing I’ve seen yet tells me that these are the right hands.”

Kimberly nodded in understanding and let him lead the way to the facility’s entrance. Cade was waiting there, and Kimberly handed her rifle back.

“Where’s Sadie?” she asked.

“Still with her brother,” Cade explained. “Lindsey is staying with her until we’re done here.” She looked at Ethan, staring with obvious sorrow at Remy’s body in his arms. “Where are you going?”

“To find that asshole Bradford,” Ethan replied.

“Well, lucky you, I remember exactly where I left him,” Cade said.

Chapter 62

Bradford was still where Cade had left him, only now regaining consciousness from the blow she’d delivered. He was sitting slumped against the wall, his head lolling, trying to fight his way back to the waking world. When he saw her approaching him, Kimberly, Brandt, and Ethan behind her, his eyes widened, and he instantly became more alert.

“Well, well, well,” Cade said as she stopped in front of him. “Look who’s returned to the land of the living.” She sank into a crouch in front of him, angling her rifle so if she squeezed the trigger, the bullet would hit some part of his body, and tilted her head to the side, examining him. “You look like shit,” she said.

Bradford stared at her warily, looking like he desperately wished for a weapon to use against her.

Ethan joined her. He’d set Remy’s body on the floor nearby, and he had her bloodied bolo knife in his hand. He pointed the blade in Bradford’s general direction. “I believe you have something that belongs to me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bradford tried, clamping his mouth shut when Ethan tapped the edge of the knife’s blade against the underside of his chin.

“Don’t lie to me, Bradford. I’m not in the mood for it.” Ethan’s tone was deceptively mild, but it sent chills down Cade’s spine. It was the kind of voice that she’d heard both police officers and her IDF commanders use when giving orders, the kind that said they had a finite amount of patience and an unwillingness to use any of it. “Where is my stuff?”

“I’d talk if I were you,” Cade urged when Bradford hesitated. “I don’t know where Ethan happens to be mentally, but I can assure you that I’m not in a good place, and my trigger finger is itching to be put to use.”

Bradford sighed. “In my office. The file drawer on the right.”

“Is it locked?” Cade asked.

“Most likely.”

When he didn’t elaborate further, she growled at him. “Key?”

“It’s on a clip on my belt,” Bradford said. He shifted and reached behind him. Ethan tapped him on the underside of his jaw with the tip of the bolo knife, and Bradford froze.

“Nuh-uh,” Ethan said. “Cade, you get the key. Bradford, I don’t suppose I have to tell you that if you attempt to hurt or attack her in any way, I’ll give you a cricothyrotomy, whether you need it or not, do I?”

Bradford shook his head, slowly, and Cade slid a hand along his belt. She found the clip he’d referred to and held it up for Ethan to see. “Got it. Now what are we going to do about him?”

Ethan stared at Bradford, and Cade glanced up at him, worrying about what was going on in his head. He was rattled mentally; she could see that as plain as the nose on his face. She had no doubt that Remy’s death was taking its toll on him. It was taking a toll on her, and she was struggling to not let it. She’d mourn later, when other events around her weren’t so pressing, when she and Brandt could be alone somewhere and she could cry it out like her brain was telling her she needed to do.

“Let’s leave him,” Ethan said, much to Cade’s surprise. “He’s not worth the extra stain on my soul that killing him would put there.”

“You sure?” Cade asked, glancing at Remy’s body, laid out on the floor behind them. She had to admit to herself that she was itching to plug a bullet in this asshole, even if it was just his kneecap.

“I’m sure,” Ethan said. He tapped Bradford on the underside of his jaw again. “He’s not going to do anything to us, is he?”

“I’m not,” Bradford answered.

“Then you can do something for us,” Brandt said, stepping forward to loom over the major. He knelt down and started frisking him while Cade watched Bradford to make sure he wasn’t going to try anything stupid with her husband. He didn’t, thankfully; he’d have paid a heavy price if he had. Brandt scrounged up a service pistol and a knife from Bradford’s belt and passed them to Kimberly. “You’re going to do whatever it takes to inform the general public that we are not infected, that there are survivors on the south side of the wall. Further, you’re going to go to whoever made the decision to abandon all of us, and you’re going to talk them into launching rescue missions for survivors to bring them over the wall where it’s safer. Don’t tell me you can’t do it, either. That answer isn’t acceptable.”

“Anything else?” Bradford asked dryly.

“Yeah, actually,” Brandt said, glancing at Cade for a second as if he were seeking her approval. “You’re going to supply us with a helicopter and a flight crew, and you’re going to tell them to fly us anywhere we want to go.”

“Why would I do something like that?” Bradford snapped.

“You don’t have a choice,” Cade said. “Because, in case you haven’t noticed, you don’t hold the power here. If you expect to get out of this alive, you’ll do as we ask.”

Bradford looked irritated, like he wanted to argue with them, but he rolled his eyes and said, “Fine. I’ll make the arrangements.”

“Good.” Cade pushed herself to her feet, and Brandt joined her. “Lead the way to your office before I can’t hold back the urge to kick your ass any longer.”

Bradford stood, staggering until he got his balance, which made Cade wonder how hard she’d hit him on the head earlier. He stood there for a second, propped against the wall, then pushed off it and started down the hall at a slow, unsteady pace. Cade let Brandt walk ahead of her, just behind Bradford, and when she glanced back at Ethan and Kimberly, she saw that Ethan was kneeling to scoop Remy’s body off the floor again. She motioned to Kimberly, signaling her to go on ahead, and approached Ethan with a worried frown on her face.

“Eth, what are you doing?” she asked.

He slid his arms underneath Remy’s slender, limp form and eased her off the cold floor. “Picking her up,” Ethan said. “What’s it look like?”

“Why don’t you leave her here until we wrap this up?” Cade suggested, trying to keep her voice gentle.

“No,” Ethan stated firmly, straightening and lifting her off the floor. “I’m not leaving her behind. Not again.” His eyes met Cade’s, a depth of sorrow in his gaze that she’d never seen before, not even when he’d come back from Memphis with Nikola and reported the news to her that his wife Anna was definitely dead. “I shouldn’t have left,” he said. “I shouldn’t have come here. I should have stayed at Woodside. Maybe I could have talked to her. Maybe I could have, I don’t know, stopped her from going down this path.”

“You think you could have stopped this from happening?” Cade asked. “Eth, she was a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. And believe me, when it comes to bombs, they’re made to go off. You couldn’t have stopped it.”

“You can’t tell me that and expect me to believe it,” Ethan said. He brushed past her, carrying Remy with him down the hall in the direction the others had gone. Cade sighed and followed him. There wasn’t going to be any reasoning with him; he’d already convinced himself this was his fault, and he wasn’t going to change his mind because Cade argued with him over it.

In Bradford’s office, the Major stood by and waited while Brandt unlocked the desk drawer in question and pulled out a familiar stack of battered notebooks. Brandt stacked them on the corner of the desk and straightened, taking the backpack Cade offered him and stuffing them into it. Once he was done, he offered the pack to Kimberly, and she shrugged it on.

“What now?” Bradford asked.

“Now for that helicopter,” Brandt said.

“Helicopters,” Ethan spoke up, emphasizing the plural. “Wherever you’re going, I’m not going with you.” He looked down at the body in his arms and, at their curious gazes, explained, “I have a stop I have to make first.”

Epilogue

I.

The whomp-whomp of the helicopter rotors above Brandt’s head was soothing, a familiar sound that stirred up memories from his time in the military, the camaraderie he’d shared with his fellow soldiers. Those were times he occasionally missed, because life had been so uncomplicated then. Sure, he’d had to deal with getting shot at and with the horrible, gritty feeling of sand making its way into his uniform on a constant basis, but it hadn’t been anything he couldn’t deal with.

His life now, though, he wasn’t too sure about. He was immune to the Michaluk Virus, one of the greatest viral threats to ever attack humanity. And not only that, he was the carrier for what could in essence become a vaccine or a cure for the very same virus. He rubbed at his forearm, fingering the edge of the medical tape that held one of the fresh bandages over his wounds. Lindsey had changed the dirty bandages out before he and Cade had boarded the helicopter, and the tape was tugging at his arm hair, reminding him of the wounds there and on his shoulder every time he felt the sharp pain of the tugs. Thoughts of his wounds reminded him of how he’d gotten them and the sheer terror and desperation he’d felt when he’d been under attack.

It wasn’t something he wanted to experience again.

Lindsey had stayed behind at the Eden Facility, and the last time he’d seen her, she’d been at the desk of an office she’d commandeered, poring over the research that Derek Rivers had compiled, assisted by Chris Meiner, who they’d found still in his quarantine cell, alone and probably forgotten, and Jacob Howser. Brandt hoped that Lindsey and Chris would figure out how to use it, maybe do something to cure all this mess. Perhaps Lindsey could solve the puzzle so no one else had to go through what he dealt with on a daily basis.

Cleanup from the detonation in the wall was still ongoing in Eden. Methodical sweeps were being conducted, searching for any infected that had managed to get through to the other side, systematic searches of the city and the surrounding areas that they were predicting would take weeks yet. As soon as he got back to Eden, he had every intention of joining in on that search, if only because he felt some partial responsibility for what had happened.

“You okay?” Cade’s voice, accented and tinny, filtered through the speakers on his headset, startling him out of his reverie of worry and stress. The headset she wore looked comically large on her head. He shook his head, then nodded, then shrugged.

“I haven’t decided yet,” he said, adjusting the mike on the headset.

“What’s on your mind?” she asked, taking his hand. He twisted his hand around to lace their fingers together, his grip tight enough to blanch the blood out of his fingertips. Cade wasn’t fazed by the pain she must have felt at the force of his grasp.

“What if they’re not there anymore?” Brandt asked. “What if something happened and they had to bail?”

“Then they’d have left a note telling us where they went,” Cade replied.

“What if they didn’t have time to leave a note?”

“Then we’ll look for them,” Cade said. “We’ll tear the entire country apart to find them if we need to.”

“I’m glad you’re more confident than I am right now,” Brandt said. “Things like this never work out for me.”

“It worked out for you when you came looking for me,” Cade pointed out, and at that, he smiled. She leaned over and rested her head against his bicep, then sat up straight again. “It’s going to be fine, Brandt. I promise.”

“I hope so.”

“We’re touching down in two minutes,” the pilot announced over the headsets.

“This is it, Brandt,” Cade said with a huge grin. “You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

The touchdown was bumpy, maybe because it had been so long since Brandt had been in a helicopter—well, while conscious, that was. He barely waited for the soldier in the back of the helicopter to open the doors before he threw his headset off and dropped to the pavement. He drew the pistol holstered on his hip, partially out of reflex but mostly because he knew the sound of a helicopter would attract a lot of unwanted attention to their location. The rotors slowed and the motor started to wind down. Cade joined him, lifting her rifle, surveying the scene around them.

“See anything?” Cade asked.

Brandt examined every nook and cranny his eyes would allow him to see into and shook his head. “Not a thing,” he reported. He looked back to the pilot and the soldier that had come with them. “You guys okay to stay here?”

“We’ll be fine,” the soldier assured him.

“Lead the way, would you?” Brandt said to Cade. “I don’t know where I’m going.”

The house was a modest two-story affair, a suburban-style family home before the Michaluk Virus tore up the southeast that was showing signs of wear and tear, probably beyond its years. There were no vehicles in front of the house, but he could make out tire tracks that had torn up a bit of grass leading toward the back of the house. The windows on the first floor were barricaded, and everything looked still and undisturbed.

“Back door,” Cade said. She started ahead of him, cutting across the yard, following the tire tracks in the grass. Brandt stuck close to her, noting the odd appearance of an ambulance parked in the backyard—where the hell had that come from?—and followed her up the back deck stairs to the door. She rapped on it, several sharp knocks that Brandt was sure carried across the entire yard, then the sound of locks being unfastened reached their ears. The door flew open, and Isaac Wright stood in the doorframe, a look of pure joy on his face.

“Holy shit, you’re still alive!” he exclaimed, wrapping his arms around first Cade and then Brandt in bone-crushing embraces.

“You can’t possibly have expected anything else,” Cade commented, patting him on the arm. She stepped back, closer to Brandt, like she was seeking refuge from the man’s extremely enthusiastic hugs.

“I shouldn’t have,” Isaac acknowledged. He looked Brandt up and down and opened his mouth to say something, but the thin wail of a baby’s cry interrupted him. Brandt’s head snapped up, zeroing in on the sound, and he pushed past Isaac to enter the house.

The noise was coming from somewhere upstairs. Brandt charged up the stairs, taking them two at a time, barely noticing that Cade was right behind him. He stopped at the head of the stairs, listening, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound, and picked the door near the end of the hall. He rushed to it, pushing the door open, and stopped short inside the door. Derek Rivers stood by the window, an infant nestled against his shoulder, rubbing her back, gently patting to soothe her.

“Oh my God,” Brandt said. He stared with wide eyes at the tiny baby against the doctor’s shoulder.

Derek turned at the sound of his voice, and a big grin spread across his face. “You’re back.”

“Yeah. I’m back.” Brandt stepped forward to meet his daughter for the first time.

II.

Ethan stood in the front yard of a ramshackle house he’d never been to before that day, listening to the rotors of the helicopter that had dropped him off there as they slowly wound up. He stared down at a two by six pile of dirt that he’d both dug up and replaced. The temperature was warmer than he had expected, the air humid and heavy, and his skin was already soaked with sweat, which had prompted him to discard his jacket not long into his project. He pushed his hair back from his forehead and wished for the fifth time since he’d gotten there that he’d taken the time to shave off his facial hair; the heat and sweat were making his face itch.

Kimberly stood beside him, leaning against her shovel, the blade buried in the dirt. She looked as uncomfortable in this heat as he felt. The moment she’d set foot off the helicopter, she’d started pulling her blonde hair into a high ponytail to get it off her neck. Her shirt was damp with sweat, and she wore a pair of large-framed sunglasses that made her look a bit bug-like.

Sadie knelt nearby, studying the surrounding landscape like it was the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen. Her expression was blank, like it had been since she’d lost her twin brother, and her jaw was clenched. Ethan still had no idea why she’d asked to come with him and Kimberly on his self-imposed mission. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to stay in Eden with people she didn’t know. With Cade and Brandt headed back to Hollywood, South Carolina, to meet up with Derek, Isaac, and their newborn child, there hadn’t been anyone else she knew in Eden to keep her there.

“You okay?” Kimberly asked, raising her voice to be heard over the sound of the helicopter crew’s pre-flight check off.

Ethan set his shovel on the ground, motioning with his head toward the dilapidated house they stood near. “Yeah, I’m okay,” he said. “I’m going in there for a few minutes.” He didn’t wait for Kimberly’s acknowledgment; he started walking forward, his shoes crunching on the mostly dead grass that covered the house’s front lawn.

The house would have been dilapidated even before it had been abandoned at the onset of the outbreak. The humidity and the weather hadn’t helped. The front porch, a hand-built wooden affair that looked at least twenty years old, sagged in the middle, like the entire thing would fall in with a wrong step. The steps weren’t in much better condition, and the wooden railing had broken away and lay on the ground alongside the steps.

“My family didn’t have very much money,” he remembered her saying. “Mama was lucky to get my dad to pay his child support on time.”

He ascended the steps carefully and went to the front door. It hung open, dangling by a single hinge, the glass that was once set in it broken and littering the porch. His tennis shoes crunched on the glass as he stepped inside.

The interior was dark, so he took out his flashlight, but he didn’t bother pulling a weapon. If there were any infected in here, they wouldn’t pose a threat to him. He shone the flashlight beam around the entryway, and the first thing he saw was a body laying on the bottom few steps of the staircase leading to the second level. It was face down, one arm stretched up the stairs. The body was desiccated, and it looked like it had once been a woman.

“I shot her at the bottom of the stairs. I didn’t have a choice. She just wouldn’t stop. And she’d already killed Maddie…”

Ethan paused there for a long moment, bowing his head respectfully, then stepped past the stairs to the kitchen.

“Jason died in the kitchen. He was trying to hold the back door, trying to keep them from getting in. He couldn’t do it by himself. He wasn’t strong enough.”

The vague remains of what might have once been a man were smeared across the cracked, torn vinyl tiles that covered the kitchen. There were random bits littering the floor, and a long-dried, dark brown streak ran from near the back door to the floor beside the four-seater dining table tucked into a corner of the kitchen. Once again, Ethan paused there, then stepped away and turned back the way he’d come.

The stairs looked daunting. The weather had taken its toll on the steps, warping the wood and bending it up at the corners. He stepped around the body at the foot of the stairs and ascended to the second floor, searching for the last bit of the puzzle that was supposed to flesh out the story.

“I ran upstairs and got my dad’s shotgun, and I fought my way out of the house and into the woods behind the house…”

Ethan found the bedroom near the end of the hall, just before the master bedroom. It was the room of a rebellious young adult, almost stereotypically so, with band posters papering the walls. The bed was unmade, clothes littered the floor, and the desk held a large, bulky desktop computer that looked like it’d seen better days, covered with stickers advertising bands and tattoo parlors and even a couple of nightclubs. He stepped away from the desk and turned his head, looking toward the closet.

A small form lay slumped inside the closet, lying on its back. Ethan stepped forward and shone the flashlight into the closet, crouching to examine the body inside.

“She killed them both. And she was coming after me.”

Ethan had never been able to get a real read on her story. It’d always changed, shifting from one version to the next. When he’d been a police officer, a story like that would have rung alarm bells in his head. He supposed that it had done that very thing on a subconscious level. Otherwise, why would he be there, falling into his investigative habits?

There were footsteps on the floor in the hall, hesitant ones, and he knew it was Kimberly. She stepped into the room behind him and stopped several feet away. He could feel her eyes on him. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“She lied,” Ethan said. He rested his elbows against his thighs.

“Who?”

“She lied about what happened here.” He looked up at Kimberly, a sick surge in his gut. “Her mother didn’t kill her sister. And her sister doesn’t appear to have been infected.”

“What are you getting at?” Kimberly asked.

Ethan stood and slipped past her, heading back toward the stairs. Fortunately, Kimberly didn’t pursue the line of questioning, didn’t speak again until they were back out in the front yard. “What now?”

“Now you and Sadie get on that helicopter and go back to Eden,” Ethan said.

“I think you’re missing part of the equation there,” Kimberly said. “There are three of us.”

“I’m not going back with you.”

“What?” Kimberly cried, and Ethan saw the stunned expression in her eyes, like he’d slapped her. “You can’t… I mean… why?”

“I don’t belong there, Kim,” Ethan said. He sat down on one of the rickety porch steps. “I’m infected. I’m a walking biohazard. I might not be infectious—that we know of—but I’ll always pose a threat to the part of the world that’s uninfected. I can’t expose people to the risk that I might somehow one day start another outbreak. It’s better if I’m here, on this side of the wall. Here, I can do what I can to eradicate the infected and locate survivors for evacuation.” He motioned to the large backpack that he’d left on the ground near the grave he’d dug earlier. “The military even gave me a solar-powered radio to contact them with whenever I find people.”

“That’s something you can’t do by yourself,” Kimberly said. “I’m staying with you.”

“Kim, please,” he protested, but she leaned down and pressed her lips to his, silencing any opposition he might have had. He cupped her face in his hands and caressed her cheeks with his thumbs as she moved her mouth against his.

“Shut up,” she said when she pulled away from him. “Don’t argue. I’m staying. I’m not going back. There’s nothing for me there. Everything I want is here.” She pressed a hand against his chest, right over his heart.

Ethan heaved a sigh. “Fine,” he muttered. “I’m not going to talk you out of it anyway, am I?”

“Damn right,” Kimberly agreed.

Someone behind her cleared their throat, and Ethan looked past her to see Sadie standing nearby, looking determined. “I had every intention of sneaking out of here the minute your backs were turned and going off on my own,” she said. “Because, like you guys, I don’t have anything left for me in Eden. But if you’re going to be staying…do you mind if I stick around with you?”

Ethan couldn’t help it. He laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he commented. “Of all the people I know, I bring the two with me that have absolutely nothing left for them in civilization. It’s like my subconscious was trying to sabotage my attempts to run off by myself.”

“I take it that’s a yes then?” Sadie asked.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s a yes,” Ethan said with another laugh. He stood and crossed the yard, picking up the heavy backpack that was loaded full of his immediate essentials, and started toward the helicopter. “Come on, let’s let the helicopter crew know that they’re not going to have any passengers for the trip back to Eden.”

“And then?” Kimberly asked as she and Sadie scrambled to keep up with him.

Ethan glanced at her and smiled widely. “I think I promised you that I’d try to save the world.”

Acknowledgments

Writing a novel is hard, hard work. Writing a series is even more so. Finishing this series has been so difficult for me. I started writing the first book in 2009, back when I was still working in retail. Since then, when I first envisioned this as a single volume, it’s ballooned into five books and several novellas, all exploring this weird little infected world I created all those years ago. And in my personal life, things have changed as equally drastically: I left retail to start a job in EMS, I started writing an entirely new series, and I experienced the most traumatic event of my life thus far with the loss of my father, the last of which embedded itself into the narrative of this book in ways I never expected.

I’m not going to lie: it’s heartbreaking leaving this world. I’ve spent so much time with these characters that I don’t want to give them up. At the same time, however, I can’t help but admit some measure of relief. I’ve spent so much time immersed in this world that I’m ready to explore some other worlds and new characters. That said, it’s not totally the end. There’s still a book of novellas to be released in the form of an expanded edition of The Becoming: Origins. So I hope you’re looking forward to reading those stories.

I suppose this is also the point where I take a few moments to offer up some thank yous. There are a lot of people to thank, so if I leave anyone out, I apologize, but know that it’s most certainly not intentional!

First, I’d like to take a few moments to thank my parents. They’ve supported me all throughout the writing of this series, and even though my dad is no longer here, I know that he’d be proud of me for what I’ve accomplished. I also have to thank my older sister Amanda and my younger sister Stephanie for all their support and encouragement.

Many, many thanks to Michael and the crew at Permuted Press for giving me the opportunity to continue this series beyond the third book.

A big thank you to Felicia A. Sullivan for the hard work she put in editing this book to make it readable.

I also would like to thank all the folks that have given me encouragement and have been beta readers for me over the course of this series. I don’t dare list them all by name, because I’m terrified I’ll forget someone, but you all know who you are.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank Kevin Michaluk, the Chief Media Officer of Mobile Nations. If it weren’t for his innocent little question, I’d never have gotten this far writing this series (and he wouldn’t have a fictitious zombie virus named after him)!

Of course, I can’t not thank Hannah Gordon, my agent, for taking the time to negotiate the deal that made these last couple of books possible.

And lastly, but most certainly not least: READERS! Thank you for buying these books, reading them, reviewing them, spreading the word about them, and offering up your opinions and encouragements. An author is nothing without readers to read the books, and I couldn’t ask for a better group of readers!

About the Author

Jessica Meigs is the author of The Becoming, a post-apocalyptic thriller series that follows a group of people trying to survive a massive viral outbreak in the southeastern United States. After gaining notoriety for having written the series on a variety of BlackBerry smartphones, she self-published two novellas that now make up the first book in the series. In April 2011, she accepted a deal with Permuted Press to publish The Becoming as a series of novels. The first of the series, entitled The Becoming, was released in November 2011 and was named one of Barnes & Noble’s Best Zombie Fiction Releases of the Decade by reviewer Paul Goat Allen. Five more novels and an assortment of novellas followed.

In 2014, Jessica signed a deal with Permuted Press/Post Hill Press to publish a series of urban fantasy/horror novels entitled The Unnaturals. The first book in the series, The Unnaturals, is expected in 2016.

Jessica lives in semi-obscurity in Demopolis, Alabama. When she’s not writing, she works full time as an EMT. She can be found on Twitter @JessicaMeigs, on Facebook at facebook.com/JessicaMeigs, and on Goodreads at goodreads.com/JessicaMeigs. You can also visit her website at www.jessicameigs.com.

Jessica is represented by Hannah Brown Gordon of Foundry Literary + Media. For any rights inquiries, please contact Hannah at HGordon@foundrymedia.com.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 44

CHAPTER 45

CHAPTER 46

CHAPTER 47

CHAPTER 48

CHAPTER 49

CHAPTER 50

CHAPTER 51

CHAPTER 52

CHAPTER 53

CHAPTER 54

CHAPTER 55

CHAPTER 56

CHAPTER 57

CHAPTER 58

CHAPTER 59

CHAPTER 60

CHAPTER 61

CHAPTER 62

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR