The Dead Saga (Book 4): Odium IV

by Claire C. Riley

  Odium IV The Dead Saga

  Copyright © 2016

  Written by Claire C. Riley

  Edited by Amy Jackson

  Cover Design by Eli Constant of Wilde Book Designs

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return and purchase your own copy.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author. She thinks that you are totally badass for purchasing this from a reputable place and not stealing it!

  You’re 100% awesome.

  Love for Odium The Dead Saga Series.

  “Odium The Dead Saga is an emotional ride, super funny, and full of heartache and death. But it’s one unforgettable series. Claire always delivers an unexpected ride that will have you laughing so hard one minute and crying your eyeballs the next. Lovers of suspense, post-apocalypse and The Walking Dead will really enjoy this series.”

  Loyda - Crazies R’ Us Book Blog

  https://craziesrusbookblog.wordpress.com/

  “The Odium series is must read for any zombie fan. Claire C. Riley takes readers on an emotional rollercoaster of terror and tension. I devoured each page, dreading what would happen next but desperate to know. Between the masterfully crafted endings and relatable characters, I can't stop coming back for more!”

  R. L. Blalock author of the Death & Decay series

  @RocBlalockauthor

  www.rlblalock.com

  “In a world gone mad, with enemies both alive and dead, Claire C. Riley takes her readers on one hell of a heart-pounding journey alongside a very relatable heroine. Filled with nail-biting twists and turns, Odium isn't a story you'll soon forget.”

  Madeline Sheehan

  USA Today Best Selling Author

  The Holy Trinity Series

  The Undeniable Series

  www.madelinesheehan.com

  “Odium The Dead Saga is a well-balanced horror tale filled with vivid imagery, engaging characters, and heart-racing action. This series quickly made my favorite zombie reads of all time!”

  Toni Lesatz

  My Book Addiction book blog

  & My Zombie Addiction FB group

  “Claire C. Riley books are guaranteed to send a chill down your spin! Packed with thrills and passion, each story will steal your breath away and have you begging for more. Different than anything else out there, Riley is a Must-Read author.”

  Danielle Kelly

  https://www.facebook.com/lovebooksandalcohol/

  “Odium continues to expand beyond "the wall" in unexpected ways. Claire C. Riley delivers hard-hitting action and suspense that never truly lets you feel safe, save for the glittering bits of hope and humanity you find nestled between the loss and horror. An incredible journey that I'd recommend to any lover of good fiction.”

  Jeffrey Clare - CEO of ATZ Publications

  https://www.facebook.com/groups/AllThingsZombie/

  Odium IV

  The Dead Saga

  The dead aren’t the only thing to fear…

  A kid, an old lady, and a heartbroken man…What could possibly go wrong?

  Mikey is holding true to his promise to Nina, and is doing everything he can to keep the group alive. But when something attacks the threesome in the middle of the night, things begin to take a turn for the worse.

  Luckily a new group, the NEOs, is on hand to ease Mikey’s burden and help fight alongside him. But first he must prove his worth to the leader, Aiken, and the people that follow him. Within this new group, Mikey begins to find a form of peace that he didn’t think was possible after losing Nina, and he discovers his place within this new world. A place where killing isn’t for fun, and is only ever committed as a last resort.

  His heart is still aching, but at the end of the world there’s no time to stop and mourn, and as he searches out a circus freak show and the horrors begin to stack up around him, Nina slips far from his mind.

  It’s probably best, because there are many more terrors in store for him. Because within the folds of a small town, inside an old candy store, he meets a woman named Clare, her two dogs, and something that he never saw coming.

  ODIUM IV

  The Dead Saga

  By USA Today & bestselling British Horror Writer

  Claire C. Riley

  Dedication:

  To my fellow zompoc lovers.

  I salute you.

  Chapter One

  Mikey

  The truck rumbles along with as much gusto as it did previously, yet now it feels empty. Everything feels empty. Nina went back inside. She left me with Adam and Joan, knowing I wouldn’t be able to leave them. She wanted her vengeance no matter what the cost to herself or anyone else.

  I hate her.

  My shoulders shake as I try to contain my sadness, as I try to ignore the ache of despair that bubbles away in my stomach. Adam cried himself to sleep at some point in the last hour, and Joan is still staring numbly out the window like she has been for several hours. It’s the quietest she’s been since I met her, and I wonder how much of her so-called craziness is actually real. Because the look on her face makes it clear that she fully understands the importance of what just happened.

  We won’t get much farther before the gas runs out. We’ll need to stop soon, find somewhere safe to spend the night. But nowhere is safe. I can’t run away from my past anymore. It’s all caught up with me, and now I’ve lost everything and everyone. How many more times can I do this? Run from it and them? Hide and hope that I can escape the memories of friends and family that have died because of my selfishness and stupidity? I slow the truck, wanting to turn around—and not for the first time—but then I think of Adam and Joan, and how they rely on me now, how Nina has put their safety in my hands.

  I hate her.

  Rubbing away the tears that have trailed down my dirty cheeks, I grit my teeth. My anger will be my fuel—my anger at her and at them, but mostly at myself. I look in my rearview mirror, seeing the setting sun behind me, slipping below the tree line and buildings that we’re passing, and I panic again.

  We’ll need to stop. They need to eat, and I’m pretty sure one or both of them has pissed themselves. I can’t care for them; I can barely care for myself. Damn her! My hands grip the steering wheel tighter, my calloused knuckles going white.

  I hate her.

  All she had wanted was to help people. Even in her bitchiest moments, that was all she had wanted. She covered her kindness with attitude, but she wanted the world back to how it was, when we helped one another, when we cared, and felt, and loved, and we survived as a human race and not as selfish individuals.

  I have never regretted anything in life—not until this moment. Even my fucked-up past I haven’t regretted, because to regret it was to change it, and if I changed one damn thing I might never have met her. And to never have met her would have been my biggest regret yet.

  I love her.

  And now she’s gone. She went back to do what I had been running from—what I had been hiding from. She went back to end this fight. And it cost her everything, it cost me everything. She was brave and beautiful, and I lost her.

  What the hell am I going to do now?

  Chapter Two

 
“Wake up,” I whisper into the back of the dark truck.

  Adam is still fast asleep, and Joan joined him around thirty minutes ago. Their soft snores had echoed throughout the truck, almost lulling me to my own sleep, but every time I had started to drift off, Nina’s face had appeared and I had jumped awake, full of anger and sadness all over again. I envied them fiercely, and their ability to slip away into their dreams—away from this day and all the nightmares that came with it.

  Neither of them has stirred, so I repeat myself, a little louder this time, and then I wait again. I check my gun, though I know it’s loaded since this is the third time I’ve checked it. It’s a worthless piece of crap, but it still works, thank God. I pull out my knife and hold it up to the waning moonlight, watching as the light glints off the tip, and then I put it back away. The knife is just like the gun—a piece of crap—but I’ve fought with worse and I’m still here, so I guess I’m still a winner. What a joke.

  “Joan, wake up,” I whisper once more, irritation finally getting to me.

  The truck has finally run out of gas, but thankfully it’s stopped only half a mile from what looks like a large farmhouse or possibly a barn. I say “possibly” because the sun has set, leaving the road, and everywhere else you look, pitch black. The world is just a murky dark shape amongst more darkness. It’s stupid to get out and travel on foot, but staying in the truck right now seems just as dangerous. It’s happened before, where I’ve slept the night inside a vehicle that’s run out of fuel, only to wake the next morning surrounded by the living dead. Both times that happened, I had a partner at my side that could help me to fight our way out. But with Joan and Adam in tow I don’t have that same luxury. So on foot to the farmhouse it is.

  At least if we get stuck in there we have more escape routes. I hope.

  Or maybe I’m acting irrationally. Maybe I’m the one that needs to get out and walk—to try and somehow walk out the frustration and sadness that I have inside me. In which case, we should probably stay where we are. Yet I still find myself checking my weapons and readying us to leave the safety of the truck and head out on foot.

  I hear movement from the back of the truck and realize that one (if not both) of my companions is finally waking. I wait a beat for whoever it is to come closer, the whites of their eyes two bright spots in the darkness.

  “Where are we?” Adam speaks, sadness and sleep still tinging his young voice.

  “Not entirely sure, kid. Is Joan awake yet?”

  He shrugs, I think, and then blinks, but has the decency to stifle a yawn. “Why’d we stop? Won’t they catch us?”

  I swallow down the hard lump in my throat at the mention of people catching us. People that were chasing us, chasing me. People that we have left behind. Friends, family…Nina. My voice gets lost when I open my mouth to speak, the words abandoning me in favor of the oppressive sadness that’s crushing me from the inside out.

  I can’t get the words out.

  I can’t breathe.

  I feel trapped and suffocating under guilt, sadness, and anger. She gave me no choice, I want to scream. She gave me no choice in any of this! I’m angry and sad and full of so much emotional baggage that I can’t think straight.

  I need to be strong for Joan and Adam, but I find myself weak and broken. A shell of a man. Maybe not even a man at all.

  She gave me no choice in this, I tell myself again and again, hoping that my anger at her and the situation will fuel me onwards and stop me from being so blind to the dangers around us.

  “I’ll go wake her up,” Adam says quietly before vanishing back into the blackness. I think he senses my despair. It would be hard not to. It feels like a real and whole thing—something you could pick up and put in a backpack. An angry, faceless monster full of rage and sadness.

  I turn to face the windshield again, looking out onto the night beyond and wishing I didn’t have this hollow feeling in my gut. Nina would hate me for acting like this. She’d want me to carry on, to get a grip and deal with the situation. She’d probably insult me with that sharp tongue of hers while she tried to motivate me too.

  The thought makes me smile for the first time in several hours. Not a full smile, but a small tug at the corner of my mouth as I hear her voice ring out in my head.

  Stop acting like a little bitch, Mikey, and get these people to safety!

  “Are we safe yet?” Joan’s croaky voice says from behind me.

  I turn in my seat once more. I want to say yes—to tell the old broad that everything is going to be okay, that I’ve rescued them both and gotten them to safety, and now I’m going back for Nina and our friends. Or at least to get my revenge for her and them. For us. But I know it isn’t possible.

  We aren’t safe. And if these last few years have been anything to go by, we will never be safe again. Not just from the monsters, but from the people that remain. Because the men and women that have survived this long, they’re just as bad as the monsters that roam the earth.

  “We ran out of gas,” I reply instead. “I think there’s a house a half a mile or so due north. We need to hole up there for the night and assess things in the morning when I can see more than a couple of feet in front of my face.”

  I wonder whether Joan will argue with me and tell me my plan is stupid—perhaps even refuse to get out of the damn truck. The woman is a little bonkers, after all. And I’m not exactly coming across as Mr. Reliable right now either. But she doesn’t argue, and I’m grateful, though she’ll never know it.

  “Okay, come on then, Advil,” she says, reaching for Adam.

  Adam blinks at her, his face smooth of expression even though I know he’s confused at what she just called him. But he doesn’t say anything. Instead he takes her hand in his.

  I open my door, letting in the damp night air, and I listen for any sound of deaders. Moments go by before I jump down from the truck and look back inside, watching as Adam and Joan climb over the headrests and over my seat before climbing out too.

  Joan carries a large piece of wood in her bony hands; it looks pretty dangerous too. Large nails and jagged bits of wood stick out of it from where it was ripped away from the side of something. Color me impressed.

  “Stay close behind, no talking, as quiet as you can,” I whisper to them both.

  “You’re talking now,” Joan whispers back in confusion. “Or do you mean no talking from this moment on?”

  I huff out my annoyance. “From now on.”

  “So you mean from now?” she questions, her voice so close to my face that I can smell the stench of her decaying teeth. Yet the night is so dark that I can barely make out her expression to see if she’s being serious or just being an asshole.

  “What?” I snap.

  “Silence from now?”

  “Yes,” I reply and turn away. I turn back and add on, my tone angry because this is ridiculous: “From now. Like right this second, no talking.” I point at them both—not that they can see it, but taut tension is in my arms and shoulders and it’s difficult to ignore.

  “Okay,” she replies. “No need to get all bent out of shape. You hear that, Advil? No talking.”

  I scowl and turn away from her, and together we began walking toward the dark shape of the house in the distance. Or at least what I hope is a house. Without streetlights the air is thick and black like tar. It’s suffocating in its closeness, and as we are swallowed up into it, it becomes darker still.

  We stay in the middle of the road, avoiding the thickened bushes and trees at the roadside which grab at the dark, clinging to it like a lifeline.

  Each step we take echoes around us.

  Each breath sounds too loud.

  Even my heartbeat can be heard above the crickets in the night.

  Zombies—or deaders—don’t bother me. Not anymore. I’ve killed more than my fair share of them. What bothers me is the being alone in the dark with them. How can I defend myself, never mind a kid and an old lady like this? It’s stupid, and with each
step we all take, the night seems to swallow us up more and more, drenching us in its darkness, drowning us in the blackness of it all.

  Even the moon has hidden itself behind dark clouds that are ready to burst their banks. I shake my head and grip my gun tighter.

  Adam coughs, a small splutter that he tries to stifle with his hand or sweater—or perhaps it was Joan. But he coughs and the sound is almost immediately stifled. It doesn’t matter, though, because beyond the raging beat of my heart and the quickening breath at my neck from Joan and the tip-tap of Adam’s small footsteps on the asphalt—beyond that is a sound I dread more than anything.

  The sound of growls.

  I’ve only encountered this once before, and even then, with another fighter by my side, we barely made it out alive. My stomach clenches tightly and I unbuckle the knife from its sheath as I grit my teeth and prepare myself to fight.

  Another growl sounds out, closer this time, and I suck in a sharp breath and glance over my shoulder, meeting Joan’s gaze.

  “Was that me?” she asks. “I guess I am getting hungry.”

  “We’re going to need to run soon.” I say the words as quietly and as calmly as possible, ignoring her comment. Yet my voice still sounds too loud. “Like run really, really fast. You hear me?”

  Joan doesn’t speak this time, but even in the dark with only the whites of her eyes to light up her face, I can sense that she understands that something is about to go down.

  “Keep ahold of the kid, and keep going straight. No matter what,” I say with dread sinking in my gut as the growls grow louder and more obnoxious. “You don’t stop for me.”

  The obviousness of the growls against the quiet night is too much for Adam and I hear him give a soft whimper of a cry. The farmhouse is rising out of the night like a phoenix rising from the ashes. Yet it doesn’t matter because I know in my gut that we won’t make it that far.