Odium (The Dead Saga.)

by Riley, Claire C

I look at her again. She’s crying for her mom, but her mom can’t hear her cries now. Her mom is zombie chow, or a zombie; shit, who knows? My blood thumps in my ears, and I know I am more than likely killing myself by doing this. I have no training and no skills. I’m just a chick with an attitude problem and a penchant for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, as is shown by my current situation. I have nothing to offer her in the way of safety; shit, I’ll probably get us killed quicker; but then they say there’s safety in numbers, right?

  “Yes. I understand.” I nod and take a deep breath.

  Um, actually no. I’m obviously an idiot who has lost her mind. Please stop me before I kill us both.

  Pushing past him, I walk toward the steps. The men stop pushing the girl up, and try to grab me and pull me away, obviously thinking that I’m attempting to thwart their murder of her.

  Because that’s what it is: murder.

  When others were forced to leave, I felt nothing. No remorse, no guilt. I certainly didn’t feel like it was up to me to try and save the day, but that was different. They were different. They were bad: murderers, rapists, real thieves—not a starving child who was desperate. That’s what we were told, anyway.

  I look back at everyone standing and watching. Not a single other person willing to help. Mothers with their own children in their arms, and men looking ashamedly to their feet. I look away in disgust. Yes, I’ve definitely had enough of this place, and these people. I’m willing to take my chances out there. I hold my chin up high.

  “Get off me, you idiots. I’m not stopping you…” I shrug them off angrily and look up to her. She’s four steps up with tears streaming down her pretty, pale face. I know that I am doing the right thing…probably not the brightest idea I’ve ever had, but then I’ve always been told I’m reckless.

  Perhaps this has nothing to do with her. Perhaps she’s just an excuse to leave. I hate this place; I have hated it since I came here. I’m not some dumb blonde running back into the house of horrors, unaware of the murderer upstairs. No, I know exactly what I’m getting myself into, and I couldn’t be happier about it.

  “I’m going with her.” I push past them and begin to climb.

  Two.

  We stand at the top of the wall, looking out at the lush wasteland beyond. Surprise covers my face, my mouth hanging agape. This was not what I was expecting at all. It seems the world has thrived under its new management—yet another thing that Lee didn’t want us to know about.

  Wasteland would be the wrong word to describe this oasis. It’s lush and green, and alive with vibrant and healthy vegetation. Trees and flowers cover the landscape, tall and flourishing in their beauty. Yet despite this, in between all their magnificence, the horror and destruction remain.

  I look down and around the outside base of the wall, but refuse to look the way we have just come. There’s nothing—no one—around the base for the moment, and for that I’m thankful. In the distance is a town. I can make out the houses and abandoned cars. The place is a wreck, with garbage and things I’d prefer not to think about strewn all over. And then there are the zombies: small, human-shaped figures, far in the distance and far from human anymore. They kinda ruin the picturesque landscape for me.

  “Shit,” I mutter.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I look at the girl. Her dirty, tear-streaked face stares back at me with...what? Hope, maybe? I don’t know what to say to her. This was my decision, and the outcome of my decision must lie at my own feet.

  “Don’t worry about it. I hated that place anyway,” I reply.

  “I am, though. I mean, you could die because of me.” Her eyes go wide at the thought.

  “Yeah, thanks for that.” I look away.

  Would I still have left if it had been a more forgiving place to live? Probably. It’s all well and good trying to keep your moral compass facing sky-high, but that isn’t going to stop me from getting eaten. There are no free passes here. No passing Go and no collecting two hundred dollars—not that money is worth anything anymore. No, there is only blood and death, and I can’t let her live with my death on her conscience if that happens.

  “I was thinking about leaving anyway,” I add on with a shrug.

  I know we need to start climbing down the other side before Lee starts throwing things at us—or whatever the hell they do when people refuse to climb down—but I need to formulate a plan of some sort. If we climb down without a plan, we’re screwed. Hell, I guess we’re screwed anyway, since I know nothing about survival other than don’t get killed.

  “What’s your name?” Her voice makes her sound younger than I believe her to be. Soft and childlike.

  “Nina. Yours?”

  “My parents used to call me Emily-Rose.” She gives me a slight smile. “But these days it’s just Emily. Thanks for…trying to help, for coming with me. You didn’t have to and I appreciate it.” Her voice is quiet, her words mumbled. “I’m not a thief…not normally.” Her cheeks flame.

  “Like I said, don’t worry about it.” I shrug again.

  I lift a leg over the top of the wall and shuffle myself so that I’m sitting astride it cowgirl-style. If only this was a horse, then I could ride away into the distance and forget all this stuff. Shit. I wonder if there are even any horses left. Emily does the same, her sad eyes staring into my face for some clue as to what we are going to do.

  Now that it’s actually come to this—sitting atop the Great freaking Wall of China, watching the desolate city in the distance full of monstrous things—I realize that I’m actually pretty pissed off about it all.

  I’m pissed off at Lee, and his so-called rules of the new society. I’m pissed off at all the other people for not intervening in some way; hell, I’m pissed at her too: Emily-Rose.

  “I used to live over there.” She points a hand over to the city with a vague smile.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Maybe my house is still there.” She looks at me with a spark of optimism. Her limp hair clings to her neck, and despite the warm sun that beats down on us, she looks chilled to the bone.

  “It probably is,” I say, and she smiles wider. “But it’s more than likely going to be over-run with zombies.” I stick a giant pin in her cheery red balloon and watch her happiness float away. I feel like a real bitch, but ho-hum, so is life. Especially recently.

  “We need to get going.” My eyes make out a bunch of cars. Looks like it was a huge twenty-car pileup at one time. There could be zombies amid the wreck, but I haven’t seen any movement yet. Perhaps all the zombies have skipped this side of town for lack of food. We all know that zombies are herbivores, right? Ha, yeah exactly. Zombies are distinctly carnivores, and this place is crawling with vegetation, so maybe there is just nothing left for them to eat around here—not that they know of, anyway—hence the safety of the walled city, I guess. That was another reason for the walls being so high in the first place, so I’m told: to hide our human smell, and any sounds that we make.

  It just all seems so bizarre. I’ve had long enough to get used to it, but I can’t quite grasp the fact of it—any of it. Deaders, for one, and then this crazy-beautiful overgrown world, for two. I can’t disguise the shock from my face, while Emily seems unmoved by it all. This just isn’t what I expected my first glimpse of the world to look like.

  “Where are we going to go?”

  “I’m not totally sure, Emily. Maybe we can head for those cars over there, then make a beeline for those trees.” I point further out.

  I reach for my matted hair, pulling it up into a high bun with a band from around my wrist. To think, my dark hair used to be one of my favorite features. What I would do to have a long, hot shower. I sigh. I still refuse to look down at Lee and his men, but I can hear them shouting at us to get going. I wonder why they haven’t followed us up. Perhaps it’s the guilt. They know that this is wrong.

  “We need to go. Once we hit the ground, we need to run—fast. Do you understand me?”

&
nbsp; She nods a yes, but she’s busy picking at a hole in her dirty cargo pants. I’m not sure that it’s safe for us to go down the ladder together. It was made by Lee and his men, I think, and I can’t imagine that they put a whole heap of effort into making it strong; but I’ll be damned if either of us is going to be waiting around once we hit the bottom, so we’ll have to risk the climb together. I’m told that there’s actually another entrance into this place, but no one seems to know where that is. At least, no one willing to tell the civilians of this little hell-hole, anyway. Lee likes to keep important details like an escape route to himself.

  The progress is slow. I guess neither of us are in a hurry to die today. The slight breeze rocks the ladder every now and then, and my knuckles go pink from the exertion of holding on. I look up and beyond Emily-Rose, and think I spy Lee looking over at us, but the face is gone before I can be sure.

  My feet find purchase on the ground, and I survey our surroundings. The air smells surprisingly clean—fresh, even. The last time I was out here, it stank with the decay of rotting corpses. Now it smells like… What does it smell like? Nothing. Just air. I can’t smell car fumes or pollution. Bonus for Mother Nature, I guess. It feels warmer over on this side of the wall too. On the inside, it is always cold. The shadows that the walls cast seemed to prevent any heat from getting to us.

  Emily drops down next to me and I steady myself with a deep breath. My nerves are bubbling away in my empty stomach; I’m half glad that I haven’t eaten today. Or yesterday, come to think of it.

  “Ready?” I look at her deadpan. She is visibly shaking and I know that, no matter what happens now, I have done the right thing.

  She nods and swallows loudly. “Let’s go.”

  We begin to run, with Emily lagging behind a little. Our eyes continuously scan around us for movement, but there’s nothing—quite literally nothing—around. No zombies, no animals, no direct vegetation…nothing. I guess that’s how they have kept the zombies away from us, from our town. They repeatedly clear the area of anything. There are no hiding places. There is nothing to attract the zombies to us. The walls are high and dull-looking. Nothing about them would be spectacular or interesting for a zombie, or shout ‘hey, zombie chow over here.’ I guess they may have come and had a little shamble around once upon a time, but not recently. Our little fortress—quote: prison camp—has been built a couple of miles out from another town, and surrounding that…nothing. If there were zombies around, we would see them. I slow to a walk and Emily catches up quickly.

  She looks at me expectantly.

  “There’s nothing here.” I gesture around us. “No point in running; we might as well save our energy.” I look behind us and then forward again. It feels weird to be out in the open, a warm breeze on my face, fresh air in my lungs. Almost nice.

  Emily looks around us and comes to the same conclusion, stress leaving her face almost instantly.

  “We still need to be on guard, Emily, so keep a lookout, okay? Don’t go all daydreamy on me.”

  She looks at me and rolls her eyes. “I’m not a kid, you know. Not anymore.”

  “Sure thing, whatever.” I roll mine back at her. “The first thing we need to do is find some weapons,” I whisper.

  “What type of weapons? I can’t fire a gun.” She pales even more. I didn’t think that was possible; she’s ghostly pale as it is.

  “We aren’t going to find a gun around here; that stuff had to have been looted years ago. But we need something to defend ourselves with—a tree branch for a club, or a rock or something. Anything, really. So keep your eyes peeled.”

  She nods and looks like she’s pondering something before speaking up. “Old Man Riely, who lived down the road from us, he was as mad as a March Hare. He used to be in the army or something like that. I’m pretty sure he would have a gun. In fact, if I remember correctly, he used to have a bomb shelter at the back of his yard—not that anyone knew about it. He dressed it up to look like just a normal shed. I bet that has everything we need in it.” She smiles widely at me.

  The plan sounds doable, even if I don’t believe that there will be anything left for us. I find it hard to believe that it wouldn’t have been raided already, but we have nothing to lose. Well, nothing but our lives.

  “Okay, sounds like a plan.”

  She does a little skip next to me and I raise an eyebrow. She’s a perky little thing.

  “Nina?”

  “What?”

  “Do you think that we could check on my house? Maybe my parents…”

  “How do I say this without sounding like a prize bitch? There is literally no chance that your parents are alive, Emily. None at all. If they were, they would have tried to make it to the wall.”

  Her skip slows, her head lowering as my words sink in. I can’t believe that she would be so naive to think that they would be there. Alive, even.

  We are about a hundred yards out from the cars now, and have been walking for a good half hour. The road is starting to clutter with luggage and whatnot strewn around. Bushes are scattered along the edge too. I panic upon the realization that they would be a perfect hiding place for any zombies, but thankfully, I can’t hear or smell anything that resembles the dead.

  I look at some of the luggage as we move through it. Old clothes, photos—I swear I can see a yellow polka-dot bikini.

  Christ, what was that person thinking?

  We finally reach the cars; I gesture with a finger to my lips, and Emily nods. Her smile is gone, and to be fair, the girl looks serious and ready to kick some zombie ass. With what, though, I’m honestly not sure. I’m more inclined to hide and then run for it, but you know kids: always think they know best.

  We crouch down in front of the first car to listen. I try to turn on my Spidey Sense, but I guess my superpower isn’t working today. If only. Peeking around the bottom of the car, I don’t see anything. Just more crap all over the road. There are old brown bloodstains all around the place, but no body parts. I guess that’s a bonus.

  We shuffle between the cars, checking under each one for zombies in wait. It’s clear, as far as I can tell. We peek in through the car windows as we creep past. There’s nothing that we can use on the roadside for a weapon; I can only hope that there is something inside one of the vehicles. I’m not expecting to find anything really; this must be the first place that everyone comes to when they go over the wall.

  I check the first one regardless. Chancing a quick look, I see that all the doors are closed and there are no bloodstains on the inside, which is a good sign. However, when I try to open the door I realize that it’s locked. I don’t want to smash any windows and draw attention to us. Besides, there doesn’t seem to be anything inside worth taking, so we move on to the next one.

  This car is painted a dull red color, which does nothing to improve my mood, since red reminds me of blood, and blood reminds me of... Well, it puts me in an even fouler mood. When I look inside, I see that the windows are covered with dried blood smears in the shape of handprints. I shudder when I see a baby car seat in the back, filled with sludge, and I lower myself back to the ground. I can’t think about things like that now; I’ve contained my emotions for months and kept strong.

  I take a deep breath and raise myself back up slowly, coming face to face with Emily on the other side of the glass. I start and fall back on my ass. She’s climbed inside the car and is looking out at me with another one of her cheery smiles. I feel anything but cheery. I mouth at her to get out and she rolls her eyes and continues rooting around. Typical teenager—they never fucking listen.

  Her head pops back into view with a smile, and she holds up a penknife for me to see. I nod my approval. It’s small, and rusty as shit, but it’s something, I guess. And something is always better than nothing. However, my attention is diverted to something else. A smell.

  My stomach clenches in anxiety.

  It’s the smell of the dead.

  Three.

  I look around
us frantically, my heart beating at an insanely high speed, and I wonder if maybe I’m having a heart attack. I clasp a hand to my chest, feeling my racing heart going wild within it, and take a couple of slow breaths.

  Breathe. Just breathe, Nina.

  I peek around the corner of the car, expecting to come face to face with a deader, but there is nothing. Yet I know there’s something here…somewhere. I plead with my ears to find the noise that shouldn’t be there, the one that stands out from the rest. I need to see the abomination before it sees me.

  There.

  A scrape. A low thump. A moan.

  Now that I’ve heard it, I feel stupid that it took me so long to hear it in the first place. Yep, something’s here with us. I grit my teeth, slide to the other side of the car, and peek around it. Still nothing.

  Shit. Where the hell is it?

  The stench is getting worse, and it’s all I can do to stop myself from praying out loud that there’s only one. We may have a chance with one; any more and we’re dead. I hope that Emily’s heard the noise and is hiding. The last thing I need is her jumping out and drawing attention to us.

  I crouch in front of the car and peek up through the windshield right out through the car and out the back window.

  There it is. I look at everything but its face. It’s the faces that haunt me the most.

  A singular rotting deader is lurching our way. I assume that it has no idea we’re here yet, since it seems to be minding its own zombie business.

  Emily peeks up. Her face puckers into shock and fear and she ducks back down.

  Good girl.

  Perhaps we can hide from it. If it doesn’t know that we’re here, then it might just keep on walking. I fall to my knees, and slide myself under the car as quietly as I can, though every noise my body makes on the ground sounds like a fireworks display being set off. I can almost imagine the giant red arrow pointing at my location: ‘She is here; dinner is served.’

  It’s reached our car, but its feet continue to make their slow shuffle past us. One foot is broken at its ankle and only hangs on by dried-up brown tendons—hence the thump and slide, I guess. I shudder and look away from the sight; that foot is not going to be on for very much longer. My nose is to the ground, like a hound dog on a hunt, as the shuffling moves past.