Odium IV: The Dead Saga

by Claire C. Riley

  “You’re quiet,” Phil comments as he hacks away at the brambles. “Something on your mind?”

  The way he says it makes me wary, so I shrug. “Not really, just thinking about the kid—Adam–and hoping that he’s okay.”

  Phil grunts a response and continues to hack away. The confines of the field enclose around us. Winding branches and waist-high weeds cling to every part of us, making every step drag and slow us down. Some parts are so high that they tower over us and thrust us into a green-tinted world where all you can smell and see is the rot and decay of dying plants and weeds.

  We push through, Phil and I continuing to take the lead with our hatchets and machetes. I stay several steps behind Phil, giving him the space he needs to chop his way through the brambles, sometimes only following him by the sight of his bright blue Hawaiian shirt. I chop the path wider for O’Donnell and Ricky, who both have guns aiming into the foliage around us in case anything tries to run up on us.

  It’s warm as the sun rises higher in the sky, and the day keeps on growing hotter and hotter until sweat is pouring down our faces and my own shirt is soaked through and sticking to my body.

  I can’t deny the fact that I’m regretting coming into this field as left becomes right and up becomes down and we get more and more lost. I’ve never been one to get claustrophobic before, but I can’t pretend I’m not feeling it now as the plants and weeds press against me on all sides. Not to mention the extra weight of our backpacks with all of our ammo and extra weapons in them. And then, as if our luck isn’t shitty enough already, the sound of deaders can be heard coming from somewhere nearby.

  “Keep your voices down,” Ricky shout-whispers to us all, throwing his gaze around in all directions as he tries to work out where the deaders are. But the growls seem to be everywhere, echoing back and forth like our own breaths.

  We keep our weapons at the ready, barely being able to see beyond the plants in front of us, never mind if there are any deaders close by. Yet still we push onwards. Chopping and hacking at the forest in front of us and hoping we aren’t going in circles, and that at some point soon we’ll come out the other side of this nightmare. The original plan of coming up behind the barn has pretty much gone to shit now, since we can’t even tell what direction we’re going in anymore. But at least my plan to look for Adam is on course as we check every inch of the sludgy ground that we walk over.

  The ground of the field is covered in a thick kind of gloop made up of rotted plants and sticky mud, making every step we take even harder as it sucks at our feet and tries to keep them planted against it.

  “As a kid I used to love mazes,” I say as Phil stops to catch his breath. Sweat is pouring down his cheeks, and he reaches back and ties his hair away from his face. “My mom used to take me to one every weekend and I’d spend hours working out the quickest and most logical way to escape.”

  Phil wipes a hand down his face, pushing the hair back from his neck. “Anytime you want to put that logic to use now would be great, dude.”

  “Ain’t no logic in this shit,” I say, rolling my shoulders as Phil begins to cut away at the nonexistent path in front of him. “This is insane.”

  “Then why’d you bring it up?”

  I shrug. “Just making small talk.”

  Phil barks out a laugh. “Small talk.”

  Ricky quickly hushes him, and I catch Phil’s eye as we smirk at one another. Ricky really is a serious bastard, and under normal situations I’d have great fun winding him up. But this isn’t a normal situation, and it isn’t just my life on the line.

  “Sorry,” I mumble, grabbing hold of a face-high branch and slashing my machete across it. I throw the branch down to my feet and take a step forward. It’s only when I feel something grab for my foot that I know we’ve stumbled upon deaders.

  I look down, seeing skeletal hands reaching through the undergrowth to get to me, and I kick out. Of course a kick doesn’t do shit to these monsters who don’t feel any pain, and it keeps on pulling itself along the muddy ground toward me, its painfully bony fingers digging into my ankle as it uses my own body as leverage to pull itself free of the brambles.

  I’m stuck in the thick of some gnarled branches, the overgrowth scraping against my face and making it almost impossible to try and step away from this thing. I swing down at it, managing to slash across the back of its head and slice its skull right open, but it isn’t enough to put it down and all I end up doing is splashing myself with black gore. I swing again, but my shirt snags on a gnarled branch behind me and I have to reach back with my other hand to try and loosen the branch’s grip on me. I panic for a second as I feel the deader’s mouth trying to close around my booted foot, and I kick out and continue fumbling to free my arm, but I don’t want to drop my hatchet and lose my only weapon. Ricky presses his heavy-booted foot onto the deader’s back so that it can’t move any farther forward, and then he aims his gun downwards and fires a single shot into the back of the deader’s skull.

  The shot rings out loudly, and the growls of deaders intensify around us.

  “Thanks,” I mumble, sweat trailing down my face and over my lips, realizing how close he just came to blowing my toes clean off.

  “NEO,” he replies darkly. And I know he’s telling me that he didn’t do it for me, but for the group. Because this is the New Earth Order way of life, and if it wasn’t, there was no way he’d be risking his life and sweating his balls off in this field with me.

  The low moan of deaders can still be heard, and we all try to pick up our pace and get the hell out of the mess that we’re currently in, but with the weeds and brambles tightening with every step we take, it’s not looking good.

  “There’s zeds trapped in here, and not enough room to fight them,” O’Donnell says urgently. “We need to turn back.”

  “I agree,” Ricky replies.

  Phil turns to look at me. His glasses are steamed up with condensation, but he still has on a smile. A cigarette dangles from between his lips, smoke curling up in front of his face, but he pulls it out to speak. “I think we’re almost at the other side of the field. We just need to press on, guys. Turning back will be worse than keeping going.”

  “We didn’t want to get to the other side. We wanted to find Adam and then go around the back of the barn!” O’Donnell says, her voice sounding panicked and desperate. I have a feeling that she’s suffering from claustrophobia, and I wish she would have warned us in advance.

  I drag a hand down my face. “Look, I want to get out of this sweat box as much as anyone, but I think we should press on regardless. If we’re nearly at the other side, then we can still make it around the back of the barn. But it needs to be a group decision.” I add that last part on to try and gain some sway with O’Donnell, if not Ricky as well. But by the looks of his sour expression, he isn’t having any of it.

  “No way. We could be walking for miles yet. You can’t tell that we’re nearly out. We need to turn back!” Ricky snaps.

  “O’Donnell, come on girl,” Phil says, ignoring Ricky—or at least choosing not to argue with him.

  O’Donnell looks uncertain, and her uncertainty seems to grow as the growls of the dead begin to echo around us. Her gaze darts back and forth, and she wipes the sweat away from her face.

  “I just want to get the hell out of here in one piece,” she eventually says, sounding breathless. “Whichever way is the quickest.”

  “Then let’s keep going. Whatever is on the other side can’t be as bad as what’s in here,” Phil replies. He doesn’t wait for Ricky to argue, or O’Donnell to agree further. Instead, he turns around and continues moving through the thick undergrowth once more, his sharp blade hacking at the branches, and trampling as much of the foliage back as he can with his feet. I stay behind him, helping to press back the larger branches and clear a better path for O’Donnell and Ricky, who are carrying the firepower.

  I look into the thick of the branches, seeing something white flash there quickly
—so quick I wonder if I imagined it. I keep on hacking at the branches, my eyes darting left and right as I think I see it again.

  My steps slow as I squint into the green mass to the left of me. I strain so hard my eyes blur, but I still see nothing.

  “Hurry the fuck up,” Ricky snaps behind me.

  “I could have sworn I saw something,” I say, moving forward again, but my gaze still to the left. Phil has managed to get quite far ahead by now, and I’m grateful to see that the field is beginning to thin out enough for us to walk without being grabbed by branches every step.

  “Yeah, you saw a bunch of zeds tracking us through this mess, now let’s get out of here,” O’Donnell calls from behind. She sounds anxious, and I can’t blame her. Her skill is in long-range shooting, and though she can fight hand to hand, it isn’t her forte, and of course these aren’t the ideal circumstances.

  “No, like…I don’t know, something else.” I squint into the leaves again. “You know what they say about getting a feeling like this.”

  “I do, so hurry up and let’s get out of here,” O’Donnell says.

  I pick up my pace to catch up with Phil, who has disappeared around a bend, but he’s at least easily trackable in this field. I see the flash of his Hawaiian shirt just up ahead and jog to catch up, watching as something dives out of the undergrowth and lands on top of him.

  “Shit,” I call out. I pick up speed, tripping on a thick root sticking up through the mud and almost falling flat on my face. I expect to see a rotten deader on top of Phil, its grasping hands clawing for his face, its teeth snapping to sink into his flesh—you know, the usual stuff. But when I get close, the thing on top of Phil turns to look at me, and I realize that it’s not a deader at all.

  It’s human, whoever it is.

  They’re wearing a white plastic mask to cover their face, giving them an emotionless expression. They raise a small knife, ready to stab Phil in the shoulder while simultaneously pressing a hand over his mouth and nose. It takes me a second to register exactly what I’m seeing, and another second to jump into action as they let go of Phil’s mouth and use both hands to try and stab him. I see another flash of white to the right of me, and I duck just in time as a spear flies past my face, close enough to make my hair move.

  “Shit,” I call out for the second time. “A little help here!” I yell to Ricky and O’Donnell.

  A shot rings out, and I hope to God it’s O’Donnell and not whoever was in the barn, because if it is we’re already halfway to hell. Deaders, masked killers, and then the barn maniacs. Jesus, can our luck get any worse? All we need now is a couple of wild dogs to finish off the shit paella we’ve clearly been baking since coming back here.

  “Mikey, let’s move,” Phil calls out. Whoever was on top of him is now lying on their side. Their mask is still on and I have the urge to pull it off and see who’s underneath it, but there’s no time. Like Phil said, we need to move, and quick.

  I drop to a crouch and edge toward Phil. “You good?” I ask.

  He raises an eyebrow. “No, I’m not good. The little fucker stole my cigarettes!” he says, his face red in anger as he feels in his top pocket for where he keeps his cigarettes.

  “Could have been worse,” I say. Another spear lands at my feet, missing my foot by barely an inch and I pluck it out of the ground. “I’m keeping that,” I shout angrily.

  I grab hold of Phil and start to drag him to standing and then I take point and begin to lead us all out of here, hacking and chopping at the foliage to clear a path.

  “What the hell was that?” Ricky calls from somewhere behind me, shortly before he yells and another shot rings out.

  More shouts sound out, ringing loudly in my ears, but thankfully none seem to be aimed toward me, and I take solace in the fact. Ricky and O’Donnell catch up, looking flustered, and then we all press forward, all of us hacking and chopping and pushing to get out of this damned nightmare before anything else attacks us.

  Whoever those masked people are, they are still here somewhere. Every now and then I see a flash of mask, but no one attacks us. We travel like this for another five or ten minutes more, with flashes of white-masked faces in the brambles and the growls of deaders, and a shot firing out every once in a while as one or both get to close. But they seem like the longest minutes of my life, as the air becomes so compact and thick that I can barely breathe, and the sound of pissed-off and frustrated deaders continues to follow us.

  My heart is heaving in my chest and my shoulders are burning from the constant slashing with my hatchet, but I’m definitely inspired to get the fuck out of here.

  Eventually the foliage begins to thin out, and the air becomes a little sweeter and a little easier to breathe. Phil glances over his shoulder at me and smiles.

  “Almost there, I think I can see daylight,” I call, my feet almost tripping over one another in a bid to get out of here quicker.

  Almost fifty steps later we all come stumbling out of the nightmare cornfield that’s now more or less just brambles and weeds. O’Donnell collapses to her knees, her blade stabbing into the soft earth near her as she gasps for breath. She holds her gun steady and aims it at the field, ready to shoot anything that comes out of it. Her face is pale, her eyes skittish, and I note the blood splattered down her shirt.

  “I hate stab wounds,” Phil says, pressing his hand to a slash mark across his arm. “They are the least fun injury to get.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “You’re really going to say that to the man who got chewed up by a dog.”

  “All right, the second-worst injury,” Phil replies.

  Chapter Twenty

  “What the fuck were they?” O’Donnell says, looking thoroughly freaked out, though her breathing has returned to normal.

  “Or who?” I reply, my gaze still on the green foliage that’s swaying under the light breeze. I feel like we’re being watched. “We should keep moving,” I pant, happy to have fresh, clean air in my lungs again but not so happy to be so out in the open with nothing for cover.

  Phil, O’Donnell and Ricky stand up and follow me, walking backwards and never once turning their backs on the field in case those little mini-demons come out with their spears drawn and their masks firmly in place.

  When I figure we’re far enough away, we sit back down, with Phil resting against the trunk of a tree. His hand is still pressed to the wound on his arm and blood is dribbling from in between his fingers. Ricky drops to his knees next to Phil and pulls out some medical supplies from one of the pockets in his cargo pants.

  “Let me look,” he says to Phil before prying his hands away and pulling his shirt to one side. He pokes and prods the wound, ignoring Phil’s gasps of pain, and then he grabs a medicated wipe and tears the packet open before pressing it upon the wound.

  “Well?” O’Donnell asks Ricky. “What’s the deal?”

  Ricky looks up at her. “It should be fine. It’s clean, nothing important sliced through.”

  “You say that but it’s not your arm that’s had a mini-icepick slashed through it,” Phil says between gritted teeth.

  “Is that what it was?” I ask.

  He nods. “That’s what it looked like when he was trying to stab me in the eye with it, yeah.” He shudders at the memory. “I thought it was a blade, like a pocket knife or something, but it was sharper and pointier than that. Then again, I was fighting for it not to be stuck in the center of my forehead at the time, so maybe I’m wrong.”

  “Damn,” Ricky says, his tone anxious. He wraps the wound with gauze and a bandage and then closes Phil’s shirt back up. “You’ll be fine, but we should probably get a move on.”

  “Where to?” Phil asks, his voice pained.

  Ricky looks at me briefly before looking away. “We stick to the plan. We didn’t find the kid in the field, so now we need to head to the barn. Let’s just hope we’ve come out where we wanted.”

  I want to argue with him, but know it would be futile. We all just risk
ed out lives going through that field to find Adam, only we didn’t find him. Instead we found…so much more.

  “Has anyone seen anything like them before?” I ask, recalling their masked faces and their blinking, dark eyes hidden beneath.

  “Hell no,” O’Donnell says, her breath returning to normal. “I would remember meeting those little freaks. Do you think they had anything to do with the people in the barn?”

  “It seems logical that they would,” I say.

  “You and your logic,” Phil says, forcing out a pained laugh.

  I grin. “Well, you know, I am the smartest of us all.”

  He grins back. “Well, that makes me the attractive one then I guess.”

  “All right, all right, if you two can stop sucking each other’s dicks for a minute so that we can figure out what to do next,” Ricky grumbles, standing up. He looks around us, heading toward a tree with a wooden sign hanging from one nail. He lifts it, reads the words, and then drops it like it’s a dirty diaper.

  I frown and walk over to see what it is that has him so freaked out, my own eyes widening when I read the sign. “Guys,” I call out. “You’re going to want to see this.”

  Sweat is glistening off of Ricky’s forehead. “Do you think this is real?”

  I shrug, because yeah, it looks pretty real. “Not afraid, are you?”

  “Fuck no,” he snaps back.

  Phil and O’Donnell finally make it over, and Phil begins to laugh before stopping to have a coughing fit as he lights up a cigarette.

  I frown and he grins.

  “I always bring two packs,” he says. “So what is it that’s got Ricky looking ready to piss his pants?”

  “Fuck you,” Ricky snaps.

  “Circus Extraordinaire?” O’Donnell says as she reads the sign aloud. “There better not be any clowns.”

  “Scared?” Phil jokes, his coughing finally over.

  O’Donnell sneers. “Fuck no. I mean, if I can stay away from the weird and the wacky, then I’m gonna, ya know. But it’s not a fear, it’s just common sense,” she says with a shake of her head, though I suspect she’s lying. She pulls out her gun, a .35 revolver, and eyes me. “So let’s get going.” She walks away, and I know she’s fronting but I decide not to be an asshole and call her out. I’m saving those nuggets of humiliation for Ricky.