“Britta.” A hand to the left of me shoots into my line of sight. I turn to look and see a woman with fair skin and pretty, warm blue eyes, her dark blonde hair cut to a manageable, shoulder-length style. I sense an accent of some sort there, too, but I have no idea what. She smiles almost shyly at me, and it lights up her face. Thankfully, she doesn’t attempt to hug me like Josie did.
“Crunch.” The woman with the choppy blonde hair and a scowl speaks up. She raises an eyebrow at me, and I wonder whether she is daring me to question her ridiculous name, or if she just doesn’t like me. Either way her scowl makes up my mind, and I keep my trap shut on the subject of her stupid name.
“I’m Duncan.” Another man comes over to me and holds out a hand. He seems pleasant enough, and I can tell he’s a real outdoorsy type.
They all continue to stare at me, and I’m guessing this is supposed to be my turn to introduce myself, though the point seems invalid if I’m honest, since Mikey must have told them who I am.
I cross my arms across my chest. “I’m Nina. I guess you know Emily-Rose by now.”
There’s silence as I wait for a unison chorus of ‘Hi Nina,’ like I’m at an AA meeting.
Fourteen.
“So, you all really live up here in the trees?” I ask between mouthfuls of hot mushroom soup. I’m surprised I can actually get any words out, I’m so ravenous and this is so damn good. It seems Duncan is the group chef around here, and I can see why. If only I had a tasty, crusty roll to dip into it, and a nice glass of red wine too. A girl can dream. A couple of the others—Britta and the loved-up couple—are already done, and have left the rest of us to finish up.
“Yeah. I used to work here…well, I owned it—the activity center—before the, uh… outbreak or whatever. Somehow, I escaped and got myself up here, and slowly the group has grown. Mikey seems to be the one bringing in—”
“The strays,” Crunch butts in.
I narrow my eyes at her, but she seems completely unperturbed by everything and everyone.
Duncan tuts. “I was going to say ‘brings in the survivors he stumbles across,’ since he does most of the scavenging and scouting for us. Well, at least from the local shops and houses,” Duncan replies before he drains the last of his soup by picking up his bowl and tipping it into his mouth.
“You say ‘local’ like they’re next door, Duncan.” Mikey is leaning back against the wooden wall, once again biting at his nails. Him doing the scavenging would explain why he seems to know his way around, I guess.
“It’s a good thing that they aren’t too local, Mikey. The safety of this place isn’t just the height we’re at, but the reclusiveness of it, and the fact that the survival equipment is here for us to use. Anywhere else and I don’t think we would have been so lucky.” Duncan’s eyes are warm and caring, but the seriousness of his tone is nothing to miss. “We can survive for—well, for as long as we need up here, as long as we’re careful about it and don’t attract too much attention to ourselves.”
“And you say ‘he brings in the survivors’ like he does that a lot. When me and Emily met Mikey, he was about to take my Hummer and leave our asses stranded,” I snipe, giving a hefty glare in Mikey’s direction.
“Maybe he should have,” Crunch mumbles under her breath.
“Shoulda, woulda, coulda,” I snap back, giving her another glare, to which she rolls her eyes.
“I wouldn’t have really left you. You’re both far too pretty to be left out here in this big bad scary world without a man to look after you.” Mikey smirks, his eyes lingering on me a moment longer than necessary.
“We didn’t need your help, we were doing just fine without you. In fact, since meeting you we’ve actually been worse off.” Which is true really, if you leave out the incident at Old Man Riely’s house.
“Please,” Mikey snorts. “You two girls made a rookie mistake when you didn’t bother to arm yourself or search the store for people before food. You’re just lucky it was me that found you and no one else. Anyone would think that you were new to all this.” He waves his arms around his head and laughs.
I look at Emily, not sure what to say. Everything he said is right, and this world is kinda new to us.
“Where are you two ladies from, anyway?” Duncan asks.
I hesitate for a moment before deciding to play the honesty card. “Well, we’ve been behind the walls since the world went to shit. Well, after the first few initial weeks, anyway.” I shrug, and feel a shiver of uncertainty as everyone stares at us open-mouthed. “What? You never met someone from behind the walls before?”
“Not anyone that lived for very long.” Crunch looks up at me. “Most either get eaten or killed.”
I feel my forehead crease in frustration. “You say that likes it’s two different things.”
“It is,” Crunch replies.
I drag a hand across my face. “You’re giving me a headache.” I have no idea what they’re all talking about. Getting eaten and getting killed are the same thing. Getting eaten and killed or getting bitten and dying, however, are very different.
“What was it like in your cushy little home?” Crunch continues to snipe at me like she has a fucking clue what it’s really like behind those damn walls.
“Cushy? It was hardly cushy,” Emily shouts.
I turn to look at her with a smile. That’s my girl.
“How hard could it be, little girl?” Crunch glares up through her lashes. “Did you have the dead beating at your door every morning? No? Well perhaps it was having a nice warm bed, three meals a day, and some friendly neighbors that made it so damn hard for you?” Crunch slams her spoon down into her bowl and leaves the room before me or Emily can reply.
They really have no idea what it was like if that’s how they imagined it.
Silence falls across the little lunchroom. I chance a glance at Mikey and Duncan, who are both still staring at me as if wanting to know more about my life behind the walls. Well, tough luck. After the warm welcome we just received from Crunch, I’m not about to come clean with all my nightmares.
“Moving on from this now,” I snap, and look down at my hands. This is not what I want to talk about.
“So, you’re really from behind the walls?” Mikey asks, leaning forward in his chair like it’s fucking story time, like he hasn’t heard me tell them to move on from the discussion. “How long have you been out?”
“What was it like in there?” Duncan butts in.
“This isn’t moving on,” I tut.
“You have to tell us something!” Mikey glowers at me, his hand hitting the table with a thud, making Emily jump.
“I don’t have to tell you shit, actually. But if you’re really so insistent, it was hell. We were starved, beaten, robbed of everything from our belongings to our pride and dignity, and…” I pinch the bridge of my nose. I don’t want to talk about that place anymore. It’s over, it’s done with. “Let’s just say it wasn’t all peaches and cream, okay?” I look up at him, my look and mood darkening by the second.
Duncan looks shocked and nods, while Mikey continues to glower but relents. He turns his attention back to Duncan. “Well, we have things pretty good out here, don’t we, Duncan?”
“Well, we make do with what we have.”
“Things would be a hell of a lot easier if we could get inside the base though.” Mikey stares at Duncan as he stands, but Duncan doesn’t rise to the bait. “All I’m saying is that we need more weapons—fact.” Mikey pushes off from the wall and leaves. It seems like this is a discussion that they have had before.
Emily, Duncan, and I sit in silence for a while before Emily stands with a huff and leaves too.
“Okay, I give up,” I say. “What’s the base?” I look at my empty bowl and know that I could easily eat ten more. The hollow in my stomach is still there, but for now, it has at least stopped growling so loudly.
“It’s the hub of the activity center.”
“Aah, okay, what’s the acti
vity center? Not being funny here or anything, but I’m not an outdoor type of girl, if you know what I mean.” I stand and stretch, feeling the soup sloshing in my belly, making me need to pee.
“It’s where you are—here. Ravendale Outdoor Activity Center.” Duncan stands too, and collects everyone’s bowls and spoons, piling them all into a small basket. We walk out the door together—well, we lower our heads as we duck outside, since there is no actual door, per se. “This was my business. My dream, I guess. I’d only been open a couple of months when the outbreak happened. My third set of team-building exercises were underway and going really well.” He stares out through the trees before continuing. “They’re still there.”
I look out to where he’s looking and then back to him. Since all I can see is trees, I’m guessing he’s lost in his own reverie for the moment.
“Earth to Duncan. Who’s still there?” I touch his arm.
“My customers.” He turns to look at me. “My staff—everyone. Some of them were out on a canoe trip when it all started. When they got back…it was like hell itself had invaded earth.” He stops talking and walking and turns to me with a grimace. “Sorry.” He shakes off his darkened mood. “You’re more than welcome to stay here for as long as you want. The more people that are helping out, the safer we all are.”
“I’m not sure I’ll be staying.” I like him and I think that he deserves a real answer—no bullshit. “I promised myself that I would get Emily somewhere safe, and well, this place seems as safe as any I’ve found yet.”
“So, why wouldn’t you stay?” His mouth puckers into confusion.
“Because I have nothing to offer you all. I can’t fight, I have zero survival skills, and I mean, I’m more of a liability than anything.” I shrug honestly.
He laughs. “What? And you think leaving us with a temperamental teenager is going to be more helpful to us? Besides, maybe at one time you had nothing to offer, maybe at one time you couldn’t even fight, but there is strength in you, Nina. Emily told us how you have been protecting her. You’re a strong woman, both mentally and physically, even if you don’t want to believe it yourself yet.”
I try to defend my words, but I know that he’s right, and decide to continue with my whole ‘honesty is the best policy’ line. “I don’t want to get attached to anyone, and the best way to do that is to be on my own.”
“And you think that you’re not already attached to Emily-Rose?” He lifts an eyebrow at me and smiles.
A breeze washes through the trees, rustling the leaves. Being this high up, with the sun and the smell of nature, anyone would be forgiven in thinking that we were safe; but there’s always more to fear in this world.
I turn and look at Duncan with a more critical eye. “Why weren’t you allowed behind the wall?”
He holds his hands up in mock defense. “Why weren’t you?”
“I was.”
“Yet here you are, both of you.” He raises an eyebrow at me again.
“We were kicked out.” I pause. “Well, Emily was kicked out. I sorta decided that I wanted to leave. So I’ll ask you again: why weren’t you allowed behind the walls?” I step back from him.
“Calm yourself. I never tried to get behind the walls; I didn’t want to leave here. Besides, I wouldn’t have been able to make it that far without being…eaten or whatever.” He swallows loudly, and I want to tease him about being a big scaredy-cat to ease the tension, but decide to keep my mouth shut—again. I’m getting good at this whole not putting my foot in it thing.
We start walking until we get to one of the platforms we need to cross using the high ropes. I can see the others on the next platform, and I know that my only way to get to them is by using the damn ropes. Now who’s the big scaredy-cat? Duncan’s hands move around my waist and I jump at his touch. He looks at me and smiles sheepishly.
“There are ropes and harnesses to stop you from falling. I’ll show you later on how to tie them so you can do this yourself if you want. Some of the harnesses are still there, but others have broken, and some parts of the course weren’t completed, so we didn’t have anything to get us from point A to point B.” He goes back to fiddling with the rope around my waist, reaching down between my legs and pulling it up on either side of them. “I’m hoping that in time we can finish this place, make it even better and more secure. We could build a perimeter around it and make it a real home. Find more people and…”
“Easy, don’t get ahead of yourself.” My cheeks feel hot with embarrassment, since he’s still crouched down between my legs.
Duncan grins and stands back up, checking his knots. “Sorry, and yeah, I know. I just think we could really make this work.”
“I got that.” I smile, and I’m sure I feel my face crack at the action. I realize that we seem much higher up than I would have expected us to be. This is meant to be outdoor activities, yet we seem to be at a more extreme height.
“How high are we?” I ask nervously and hold onto the side of the platform.
He finishes tying another knot and makes short work of yet another one, which he attaches to the original one and stands back to assess his work. “Good question. This was the first camping, rope extreme, team-building exercise platform in the country.” He smiles from ear to ear at me like a big dumb oaf, yet his cheeriness is lost on me since I have no idea what he’s talking about.
“A what?” I ask, dumbfounded.
He grins. “Yeah, I was still working on the name.”
He gestures for me to start across to the other walkway, but the path to get to the other side consists of small planks of wood held by rope on either side. The idea being, I’m guessing, to step across each moving step without falling. I try the first one out warily. It sways and I grip my rope tighter and try not to yelp. Sure, there’s the protective rope net on either side again, but I still don’t want to fall.
“Well, you’ve heard of the high ropes haven’t you?”
I move forward slowly, with Duncan following closely behind. Each step makes me sway from side to side, making my stomach lurch. I always hated fairground rides, and this is like the biggest one ever.
“Yeah, I’ve heard of those. Is this one of those?” Two more and I’ll be across. Duncan is right behind me, waiting patiently. Clearly he’s more of an old hand at this than I am.
“Sort of. It’s the high ropes, but higher. The highest yet, in fact, and it’s built into the trees instead of its own premade base, and the best part is…”
I step onto the other side, my feet feeling finally secure without all the swaying. I can’t help but smile that I made it across. Duncan joins me and begins to undo all the knots holding us to the long rope above us.
“The best part is that I had huts built, like tree houses, so that it would be a full-on camping, outdoors experience, but in the trees!” He guides me over to the others with a huge grin. They’re all sitting looking out over the lake and talking quietly. They’re sitting around a large circular metal fire pit in the floor, which—I’m presuming from the lack of trees above this platform—is where some of the cooking comes from, and perhaps even a fire pit for at night to cook marshmallows on. Yeah, I wish.
“Basically, if you think about it as a small scale bio-dome experience, but without the dome—and in the trees.” He shrugs and continues. “You live up here, eat up here, use the bathroom up here, and compete in challenges up here. Or that was the idea before…well, you know.” His smile fades away.
Bless him, I think with a roll of my eyes.
“Is he telling you how amazing his tree house is?” Britta looks over and smiles.
“Yep.” I smile back and take a seat on a log next to Emily.
“I was just telling Nina about her new home. We’ll need to teach both of them how to get around the place and give them jobs to do if they’re going to stay.” Duncan sits down with the group and gives me a knowing look. “The more people there are, the more work there is, but the safer we all are.”
<
br /> Emily looks at me. “We’re staying?” She smiles happily.
“Why wouldn’t they be staying?” Mikey looks puzzled.
“For now, at least,” I reply grimly.
Emily takes my hand and squeezes it tightly, and I try to give her a reassuring smile.
“Has Duncan told you about his customers yet?” Mikey asks, his expression blank. He’s talking to me, but seems to be directing his question at Duncan again.
I raise a questioning eyebrow. “Yeah, sorta.” I watch the exchange between the two with narrowed eyes, realizing that I’m missing something. “I thought he had. Why?” I sigh.
“Not this again, Mikey. You’re like a dog with a bone. We’re not going over there; it’s too dangerous,” Duncan snaps and stands back up. Mikey matches his stance, and they stand foot to foot, looking ready to start swinging at each other any minute. Well, that was a quick turn of events.
“There are guns, crossbows, more harnesses—food, even! We need those things. If those guys come back and find us, we’re all screwed, Duncan. I mean, they have guns…we don’t. It’s a simple equation, adding up to us being killed unless we go and get the weapons.”
I stand up too, pulling my hand from Emily’s. “Whoa, what guys?” I look from Duncan to Mikey, but neither of them replies, instead choosing to continue their macho standoff with each other. “Well?” I press with more urgency.
“The Forgotten,” Mikey says without looking at me. His jaw grinds slowly, the shadow of his beard emphasizing the movement.
A chill runs up my spine. The mood has gone from lighthearted to scary shit in a nanosecond. I don’t like it one bit.
“The who?” I bite my lip to hold in my anger and possibly my fear too. Why hadn’t they warned me and Emily that there are people looking for them?
Odium (The Dead Saga.) Page 10
