Odium IV: The Dead Saga

by Claire C. Riley

  I examine the nails holding the wood against the windows, seeing how rusty they are and deciding my theory is pretty unflawed.

  We make our way around the side of the house and into the backyard, glancing in the distance to a large barn. It’s much too far away to be a part of the house, but also close enough that it must have belonged to the same people that had owned the house. It’s at the end of a large field that was used for crops at some stage. By the looks of the overgrown field next to it, one had been plowed before the outbreak, and the other hadn’t. We try the back door of the house, finding it boarded up from the outside, and then I look at Ricky, who shrugs.

  “No welcome party?” he says. “Guess they’d prefer to be alone.”

  “Or they locked themselves up for everyone’s safety?” I guess.

  He shrugs again. “Either way, I bet there’s food in there.” He looks up at the windows, digging his fingertips into the edges to see how easily they’ll come off. “Probably gonna need tools for this,” he mumbles to himself.

  “Agreed,” I say, using the edge of my hatchet to pull up the corner of one of the boards. “This should do it,” I say, grunting with effort as I rip the first board free.

  He nods and takes the board from me, and then I set to work on the next one, ripping up each board until the doorway is free.

  “The kid’s not in there,” O’Donnell states from behind me.

  “You never know,” I say.

  “It’s pretty obvious, Mikey. No one has been in this place for a very long time,” O’Donnell sounds apologetic when she says it, which makes it hard to be mad at her. Yet I still am. All I want to do is find him—no matter what state he may be in.

  “He’s a clever little thing, survived out here for years on his own. He could have found a way in that we can’t see.” I look over my shoulder at her. “But I get that it’s unlikely.”

  She nods, her lips pursing in regret. “Well, who knows what else could be inside, right?”

  And it’s true: you never know what you’re going to find, and any time an opportunity comes up to search somewhere new, you should take it. There’s no way Adam could have gotten inside this building, but with it having been boarded up for so long, there’s bound to be some un-raided spoils for sure. And going back laden with weapons and food would definitely be a good welcome message to send.

  “You ready?” I ask Ricky.

  “I was born ready,” he snarks back as he tries the handle, finding it stiff but thankfully not locked.

  O’Donnell laughs a short, sharp laugh that makes Ricky glare at her. “‘I was born ready,’” she mocks. “Could you sound like any more of a doofus?”

  “Now now, you know how it is with Ricky,” Phil says, a slow grin spreading across his face. “He’s been waiting for this moment his entire life. He was booorn ready.”

  O’Donnell and Phil begin to laugh even harder, and I try my damndest not to join in, deciding I really need to get Ricky on my side somehow, and laughing in his face probably isn’t the best way of doing that.

  “Laugh it up, assholes,” he snaps and pushes the door open.

  The door creaks as it swings open, the light filtering inside an old kitchen. Dust motes float in the air, and a dusty scent floats out to us. We all wait, listening for the noise of deaders coming from somewhere within the building, but when nothing comes out, Ricky shoots me a quick glance and steps inside.

  I hold my hatchet tight and go in after him, sensing O’Donnell, Phil, and Fluffy behind me.

  Chapter Eleven

  It’s dark inside, the air stale and unused. O’Donnell and Phil head over to the kitchen cupboards, opening them and checking out the food stores. I’m happy to see that the cupboards seem to be relatively full.

  Phil opens a top corner cupboard and several packets fall out, giving loud, sloppy sounds as they hit the work surface.

  “Ughh,” he calls out as he steps backwards, bumping into the counter behind him and knocking over a mug rack.

  I reach for it in an attempt to stop it from falling over, but either I’m too slow or it’s too fast, and it crashes to the floor, each of those carefully hung mugs smashing loudly.

  “Shit, sorry,” Phil whispers, turning to look at us. He shakes his hands out, and whatever leaked out of those packets drips from his fingers.

  Fluffy whines and steps away from him, giving a small sneeze as she does.

  “Asshole,” O’Donnell says without malice. “What is that?”

  “No fucking clue,” Phil replies, pulling open some drawers which protest and screech. He looks up at us sharply. “Sorry,” he apologizes, pulling out a dishtowel and wiping his hands with it.

  “That’s okay,” O’Donnell says. “It’s not like we were aiming for the element of surprise or anything. I mean, I’m sure there’s nothing that would want to eat us in here anyway, right?” She smirks and steps away from Phil, falling in behind me where I notice that Fluffy has also taken residence.

  “Traitor,” Phil shout-whispers to the dog, but she only whines in response and stays behind me.

  I laugh and Ricky grumbles something, and we continue through the house.

  The downstairs is empty of anything useful, barring the food in the kitchen, so we head to the hallway, ready to check out the upstairs and hopefully find something of more use than a couple of cans of food and some boxes of indigestible slop.

  Ricky stands at the bottom of the stairs, a pistol in hand. The hallway is dark, since all of the windows are boarded up and the light from the back door can’t filter this far into the house, but my eyes have adjusted to the darkness enough for me to see my companions, at least.

  Ricky takes the first step on the stairs, his weight leaning down on the unused steps and making another loud creak as if we’re in a haunted house movie and he’s the dumb blonde.

  “Keep the noise down, will you?” I joke.

  He turns his head to glare at me over the top of his shoulder, but my gaze skips his and instead looks up to the top of the stairs to see a deader take a step down.

  It misses the step completely and comes tumbling down the steps in a jumble of limbs and growls, landing against Ricky, who in turn collapses backwards onto me. Fluffy is directly behind me, but she darts out of the way with a bark and yelp and Ricky, the deader, and I collapse in a heap together.

  My hatchet has flown off somewhere into the darkness and I try to shove Ricky off of me so I can get out from under him and grab a weapon, but the deader has clambered on top of him and is currently trying to chew his face off.

  “Get it off me!” he screams as another growl sounds out from the top of the stairs, followed by the thud thud thud of its body falling down them.

  “Fuck!” I yell, trying to drag myself out from under them as deader drool lands on my face.

  Fluffy bites into the side of the deader, her loud growls and snarls echoing through the darkness. The other deader lands at my feet, and it instinctively grabs for them. Of course it grabs at my injured ankle and digs its fingers into the already-damaged flesh there, and I cry out in pain and try to kick it off.

  The deader on top of Ricky is suddenly dragged off of him and Ricky quickly rolls over, allowing me to kick my leg out with more force and send my booted foot into the face of the second deader. Its head snaps backwards, allowing me precious seconds to roll over and drag myself up to my knees. I grab for the pistol at my waist and aim it at the deader’s skull as it lurches forward again, and this time its head snaps back, followed by its withered body.

  I gasp for breath as I watch O’Donnell use my hatchet to smash into the other deader’s skull. It turns into a dead weight in Phil’s hands and he lets go of it.

  Ricky is bent over at the waist trying to get air into his lungs, while I touch around my ankle, feeling blood trickling out from beneath the bandage.

  Phil whoops loudly. “That was intense! Anyone else up there?” he calls up the stairs, banging the side of his hand against the wo
oden spindles. A sound comes from above, and Phil takes off up the stairs in search of whatever it is.

  “You two all right?” O’Donnell asks as she starts to follow Phil.

  “Fine, fine,” Ricky replies, actually not sounding fine at all. He pats over his body, checking for any bites before standing upright and looking relieved. “Yeah, fine.” He reaches out and helps me back up to my feet. “You good?” he asks.

  I put a little weight on my injured leg, testing out its strength, but it doesn’t hurt any more than it did this morning. My figuring is that some of the stitches have been ripped free. I can live with that for the moment.

  “More or less,” I reply.

  Ricky takes off up the stairs after O’Donnell and Phil and I follow suit, pausing to give a brief look at the two deaders we just killed. They don’t look like they belong around here, with their tattered business suits and what were once white shirts and blouses, and I wonder how the hell they got caught locked up in this place at all.

  Upstairs Phil is pushing against one of the bedroom doors, but he isn’t having much luck.

  “Just leave it, man,” Ricky says. “If they can’t get out, that’s all that matters.”

  Phil turns around. “No, it’s not. We need to take them all out to secure the house.”

  Ricky and O’Donnell share a look, but neither of them says anything.

  “Is it locked from the inside? Barred maybe?” I ask.

  “No, I think it’s just the weight of them all pushing against the door. They can hear us—can’t you, you dirty rotters?” Phil bangs a fist against the door and laughs, and the groaning from inside increases. “They want their lunch. Hungry bastards,” he says with a laugh again.

  Fluffy whines at his feet, her nose pressed against the bottom of the door.

  “So, where did the other two come from?” I ask, leaning down to tighten the bandage around my bleeding leg. “Have you checked the other rooms out?”

  I don’t want any more deader surprises is what I’m really thinking. That’s what I’ve always hated the most—being caught unaware. I was never a guy that loved Halloween and all those types of creepy things. I’d once had a girl who loved all things horror. I made it through two weekends of horror movies before I had to call it quits on the relationship. It was falling asleep in the middle of Nightmare on Elm Street and waking up with her wearing a stripy red-and-green sweater that did it for me. She was dragging her nails down my chest and telling me to wake up because she had a treat for me. I still shudder at the memory.

  “Yeah, nothing in the others,” Phil says, banging against the door again. Fluffy jumps up and puts her paws against the door and begins barking at it.

  “So stand back and let’s bust it in,” Ricky says.

  Phil taps on the door with his machete. “See you in a minute, boys.” He grins like he can’t wait for the slaughter. It’s the first thing I’ve seen in this man that I haven’t liked. He lives for this gore, this horror, and I bet that in his old life he would have gotten along really well with my ex-girl.

  “Don’t be sexist,” O’Donnell says as Phil stands by her side.

  I’m still standing on the second-to-last step from the top, since the hallway is small.

  “Sexist?” Phil asks.

  “Yeah, there may be girls in there too.”

  “Okay.” Phil steps forward and taps his axe on the door again. “See you in a minute, boys and girls.” He stands back at O’Donnell’s side and looks at her. “Better?”

  “Much,” she says. “On three. One…”

  “Two,” Phil says.

  “Three,” Ricky finishes off as they all charge at the door.

  The sound of their three bodies hitting the wooden door and bouncing back off it reverberates through the house and they all groan out in pain. I take the final step up the stairs.

  “Looks like it is barred from the inside after all.” I smirk. I turn around and go into one of the other rooms to check for supplies, since Phil’s first look around was only a brief one.

  It seems to be a spare bedroom, with minimal furniture, and it only takes a quick glance around to see that there’s nothing of value here. The window is boarded up like all the rest, but there’s a gap in between the boards and blood smeared over them like something tried to eat its way out of the room.

  I leave the room and almost walk straight into O’Donnell.

  “Anything?” she asks, standing close to me—definitely closer than necessary, and I take a step away, trying to make it seem like a casual move.

  I shrug. “Nah, nothing barring a failed escape out the window.” I go into the second room with O’Donnell at my heels. Ricky is still helping Phil try to get into the room full of deaders, though it seems like a pointless exercise.

  This had been a kid’s room at one point, with books and toys on the shelves and a small chest of drawers stacked with diapers. My stomach twists because if there’s one thing I can’t stand the thought of—other than Halloween, of course—it’s zombie kids. That ex-girlfriend of mine had been reading a book while we were dating called Z-Children, or something like that, and she’d insisted on reading it aloud to me at night before we went to sleep, stating that I’d like it if I just listened. Well, I didn’t like it, not even a little bit. It was creepy as fuck and I’d had nightmares for weeks afterwards about zombie kids attacking me while I slept. Seriously, a grown man having nightmares because of a damn book! I hope to never meet the author in question because I can only imagine that their mind is as fucked up as this world.

  We move around the room, a shitty sliver of light sliding in through the cracks in the wood panels across the windows. I kick a couple of toys around, my feet nudging old trucks and dolls. I kick a toy baby buggy out of the way and it falls over, tipping onto its side, and for some reason I lean over and pick it up, setting it upright again.

  Still crouched down, my hand still resting on the handle of the toy buggy, my gaze lands on one of the baby dolls—only, I realize in horror, it isn’t a baby doll at all. It’s a real baby. It’s long dead, and thankfully—or not—it had never awoken as a deader. There’s a small piece of satisfaction in that.

  “O’Donnell.” I say her name, my voice quiet in the dark.

  I hear her coming over, I even hear her gasp, and then she reaches down and picks up its small body from the floor before laying it back in its crib. She pulls the pink blanket over its tiny face and looks back at me.

  I’m staring, confused as to why it never reanimated. I mean I’m glad, of course I am, but mercy isn’t something that lives at the end of the world, and the fact that it died and didn’t come back is a merciful thing indeed.

  “Someone went in through the side of its head,” she says as she leaves the room, her eyes downcast.

  I follow her out of the room, clicking the door closed behind us and saying a silent prayer to whoever did the right thing for this child, no matter how hard it was.

  Chapter Twelve

  We scour the house from top to bottom and find nothing barring a couple of cans of food and some dried pasta. Phil gives up on getting at the deaders in the locked room, and I’m glad. I honestly don’t see what the point is, since they’re doing no harm. But then I wonder if that’s what’s worrying him at all. Perhaps it’s just that he doesn’t want them suffering any longer. I know I want someone to do that for me if it comes to it. I can’t imagine having to live forever as one of these things. That hunger, that pain, that aggression. It’s hard not to wonder if they realize what’s happening to themselves, or if they have no knowledge whatsoever.

  It’s an easy thing to hate them, and of course we all do. But there has to be that small part of you buried deep inside that feels at least an ounce of sympathy. How can you not? They sure as hell don’t want to feel how they do.

  We leave the house feeling dirty and sweaty, and not just because the temperature has risen and the dust inside was everywhere. No, it’s more than that. It’s the sort o
f dirty that doesn’t wash off.

  “We should check the barn,” I say, not wanting to but knowing we have to. I’m beginning to lose hope in finding Adam alive. I had honestly pinned all my hopes on finding an easier way into that house and finding Adam inside, hiding and safe. With every passing minute it seems that his chances of being alive are shortening.

  I turn to look at the barn, seeing that it’s almost as big as the farmhouse itself, though it isn’t boarded up like the house was. We all head over, our weapons at the ready—swords, machetes, axes, and guns. We’re armed to the teeth, yet I still don’t feel safe. Then again, in this world I never do. This is more, though. The feeling of being watched is making my skin crawl, but no matter where I look there is no one in sight.

  O’Donnell sees my gaze shifting around us, and her stare follows my own to a set of three trees at the side of the barn.

  “You got something, Mikey?” she asks.

  I shake my head no, but my gaze stays on those trees regardless. I can’t see anything—not a flicker of clothing or the blink of an eye—yet I can’t tear my gaze away. It’s like my instincts are warning me of something.

  “Mikey?” O’Donnell says my name, slowly and quietly.

  “Nah, nothing, just paranoid,” I finally reply, looking away from the trees.

  “From my experience, paranoia tends to come from past experience of a situation,” she says matter-of-factly.

  I look back the way we came from, half expecting to see the boards gone from the upstairs windows and someone’s face to be at one of them. But when I look, there’s no one there.

  Fluffy whines as we walk, and I notice that her leg is bleeding.

  “Stop,” I say crouching down to look at her injured leg. “Looks like we’re twins today, girl,” As I squat down I hear the loud crack of a gun going off shortly before something whizzes over my head. “What the hell was that?” I yell.