The Becoming (Book 4): Under Siege Read Free Page A

her
and help her prep for the community’s dinner service before she did
too much and made herself sick.

Chapter 2
     
    Remy Angellette was irritable. Not that there was
anything particularly new about her current state of mind.
She’d been feeling that way since the group’s miraculous escape
from the Westin in Atlanta, Georgia, five months before, when she
and her friends had gone in to take on Alicia Day—otherwise known,
in her mind, at least, as the bitch that had ended the world.
They’d lost Gray Carter in the city, cut down by Alicia’s bullets
and the viral contaminant that Brandt had unknowingly gotten on his
hands in the process of killing one of their attackers.
    It still broke her heart to think about
Gray. So most days, she simply didn’t.
    Remy shook her head, as if the physical
action would dislodge the depressing thoughts from her mind. Fat
chance of that. Her mind was nothing but a cesspool of anger and
hatred and sadness these days. She shifted her eyes away from the
blank spot on the wall that she’d been staring at and focused them
once more on the work in front of her, on the rows of cans and
boxes and stacks of cellophane packages—the newest supplies brought
in the day before, the supplies she should have finished
inventorying and boxing up and moving to the rec center’s kitchen
the hour before. Cade had set her on the task, presumably to help
keep her mind occupied. She’d much rather have been doing anything but inventory; she’d have preferred to be outside
the community with a gun and her bolo knife, part of Joseph
Albertson’s group that went out every third day to search for the
very supplies she was supposed to be counting. At least out there, she’d have had the chance to maybe hunt down and kill
a few of the infected. She’d always found that activity to be
particularly cathartic.
    Remy sighed and tossed her notepad onto the
dining table in frustration. Who cared if there were
eighteen more packages of ramen noodles and twelve new cans of
chicken noodle soup? It wouldn’t change anything, especially not
for her. She threw her pen across the room and slouched into one of
the chairs, dropping her head into her hands and groaning. She
rested her elbows on the edge of the wooden dining table and dug
her fingers into her dark hair.
    “This whole place is bullshit,” she muttered
to the can of tomato soup directly below her face. Frustrated tears
pricked at her brown eyes—tears she allowed to appear, hoping they
would help flush out her emotions and cleanse her mind. She
squeezed her eyes shut. She was ready to go , ready to get
out of Woodside. It felt like there was nothing left for her here.
Nothing left at all.
    In the months since the events in Atlanta,
Remy had fought desperately to retain some semblance of herself and
her sanity. She’d spent hours holed up in her bedroom, seeing only
Dr. Rivers, spending the rest of her time huddled in her bed. She’d
hibernated for three weeks, avoiding mirrors and barely eating,
getting up from her bed only when nature demanded it. And when
those weeks had passed, when she’d braved getting out of bed to
look in the mirror one night, she’d been horrified by what she’d
seen in the reflection over the dresser.
    The scratches in the skin on her face had
been surprisingly deep, and while they had scabbed and scarred with
the passage of time, they hadn’t become any less ugly and
appalling. There’d been eight of them, four on each side, starting
near her ears and tapering off at her nose and lips. Similar marks
had adorned her neck, forearms, and even her upper chest. She’d
reached up in her horror, her fingers coasting against the glass
before touching her cheek, not sure if what she’d looked at was
actually herself. Then she turned away, her movements as slow and
dazed as they’d been when she had beheld herself in the mirror.
She’d bitten back her tears and had shoved them deep down inside.
She hadn’t cried since