The Becoming: Revelations by Jessica Meigs Read Free Book Online

anger, irritation, and apprehension. “You’re going to get killed.”
    “So you decide to follow me and, what, witness my inevitable demise?” Ethan retorted. He rolled his eyes and focused on climbing down the escalators. Alicia lunged forward and grabbed the back of his jacket, hauling him back and nearly toppling him to the metal steps. He righted himself and turned on her. “I’m already a dead man, Alicia!” he pointed out. “The least you can do is let me do what I can to fucking help before I bite it.”
    “You see, this is what I have a problem with,” Alicia snapped. “You’re so damned defeatist. It’s going to get you killed .”
    “Do you really think I care?” Ethan asked. He pulled away from her and started down the escalator again, stepping onto the tiled hallway floor leading to the parking garage. He ran down the short hallway and burst through the glass doors at the end, emerging into the garage just as the infected managed to pull the parking garage’s gate high enough to break the chain holding it closed. They swarmed the garage with single-minded intent.
    “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Ethan groaned. He lifted his Glock and aimed for the infected man leading the pack. It took two shots, but he brought the man down with a clean bullet to the forehead. The man fell back to the concrete, knocking two of his fellow infected down with him. Ethan fired twice more into the mass as they rushed toward him, his shots erratic and misplaced, striking limbs and torsos. He swore at the wasted ammunition and scanned the garage, spotting Dominic nearby. The man had a rifle to his shoulder, and he fired repeatedly into the cluster of infected coming toward him, his shots mechanical and rhythmic as he plugged one bullet after another into the infected, his aim unerring.
    Ethan didn’t concern himself with the other man any further once he’d ascertained he was still alive and fighting. Instead, he eyed the blond woman he’d seen on the fourth floor. She’d taken up position on the other side of the garage to Ethan’s left, sheltering behind a dusty sedan and joining her rifle fire with Dominic’s. Ethan shook free from his rapid observations and squeezed the trigger of his own weapon, shooting an infected woman drawing too close to the blond woman’s position for his personal comfort.
    “We’ve got to get that gate closed,” Alicia suddenly said to his right. Ethan glanced at her and found that she’d joined him, her weapon raised. But she didn’t fire any shots into the mass. Instead, her eyes focused, laser-like, on the opened gate. The chain that had held it shut had been strained to the breaking point; its snapped ends dangled from the bottom of the gate. “If we can keep more from getting in, we can pick off what’s left and then work on the others outside.”
    “Cut them off from the source,” Ethan said, seeing the wisdom in Alicia’s suggestion.
    An infected girl no older than sixteen, her face littered with piercings, snagged Ethan’s arm. Ethan put the barrel of his gun against her forehead and squeezed the trigger. She fell back, sprawled limply on the concrete, and didn’t move again. He gritted his teeth and forced his focus to the mess in front of him once again.
    “So how do you propose we get to the gate through these bastards?” Ethan called over the gunfire echoing through the garage.
    Alicia hesitated, looking between Ethan and the gate uncertainly. An Asian man in a dirty business suit got uncomfortably close to them, and Ethan put a bullet in the man’s skull. Uncertainty was a look that didn’t suit Alicia’s normally confident features, Ethan reflected as he calmly grabbed an infected man by the arm and dragged him to the floor before shooting him in the face. They were on a battlefield; it wasn’t the time or place for Alicia’s indecisiveness. Anger and irritation at Alicia rose from his gut in a massive wave.
    “Oh, fuck it,” Ethan snarled. He