Odium IV: The Dead Saga

by Claire C. Riley

  I turn to go after her, but Ricky slams a hand down on my shoulder. “Whoa there, I’m really not sure about this.”

  “What’s not to be sure of?” I ask.

  His gaze flits from me to Phil and back again. “Because I can’t see any reason why the kid would have gone in there, that’s why!”

  Phil laughs again. “Sure he would have. It’s a circus—kids love the circus. Come on, dude. And the poster says there’s animals!”

  “We’re supposed to be heading to the barn,” Ricky says, looking warily around us—but from where we are, there’s nothing to see but the overgrown field and tall trees. We need to get to higher ground to be able to get a sense of direction.

  “We will,” Phil replies. “Right after we check out the circus.”

  We all turn and head through the path between the trees, leaving Ricky to trail after us, Phil still laughing despite his wound. Considering we all just about suffocated in the undergrowth of an old cornfield and were attacked by little masked murderers, I’m surprised that we’re all still in particularly high spirits.

  But then, that’s what this life does to you: you recover from a near-death experience—or a disaster or whatever—as quick as it happens. There’s no time to sit around and analyze a situation. Or work out how you feel about almost dying—again. You just get up, wipe yourself down, and pray like hell you don’t run into the same demons twice.

  Welcome to the apocalypse, party people. It’s a freaking ride, I’m telling you.

  I can’t work out exactly where we are in relation to the barn, so we keep on walking, following the path in the hopes that it will open up soon and we’ll be able to work out where we are exactly. After being in the field and all its many obstacles, I don’t hold out much hope of finding Adam alive anymore—if, in fact, any. We barely made it through; what hope would a little kid have? And with that in mind, I decide I need to focus on my own survival now: finding the barn, taking out whoever is inside, and getting back to Haven in time for dinner.

  The path finally opens up on a large flattened area with several circus tents of various sizes spotted about. Some collapsed long ago, and the tattered remains of them lie in heaps; others are still standing good and strong, like the day they were put up. Well, almost anyway. There are tear holes down the plastic and dried blood and gore is splattered up the sides. Pretty sure that wasn’t around when the circus came to town.

  We walk around the place, some of us in awe, others in horror, but none of us denying the fact that this place is creepy as fuck. Even me who isn’t normally bothered by clowns and things like that. Because whether clowns chill your soul or not, an empty circus with only bloody skeletal remains being picked apart by crows is enough to creep even the hardest of people out.

  “This place is awesome!” Phil calls out as he slips the curtain back on one of the tents, his bloody fingers leaving smears on the material.

  Well, maybe not everyone is freaked out.

  We hesitantly follow Phil into the tent, the dry scent of death hanging in the air like a thick cloud. This place used to house the animals, and we walk around each of the large cages and crates, taking in the sight of starved tigers and lions, a group of monkeys all huddled together, and even a bear, the skin and muscle withered and pulled back from its jaws. I don’t think it had even been legal to keep animals like this for at least the past twenty years, but then again we’re in the back streets of beyond, so I guess it didn’t really matter to these people.

  I stare in at the remains of the bear. Its picked-empty eye sockets stare into the space in front of it like dark holes, and I can’t decide what would have been better—for it to have starved to death in its cage, or to have been set free and possibly eaten alive by the undead. Neither death is a good one, I guess.

  Phil is more forlorn now, his expression grim as we move around each cage. He shakes his head and taps on the bars with his knuckles, is if hoping that one of the animals might wake up. But of course they don’t. They’re all long dead.

  “I didn’t think there were circuses like this anymore. I mean, most of these animals are protected, aren’t they?” I ask Phil.

  He shrugs. “I suspect in little backwards towns like this, none of it’s important. They do what they want. And besides, this was probably a traveling circus. No one to tell them what they can and can’t do when they move every other week.”

  O’Donnell pats Phil on the shoulder and whispers something to him. He nods and looks away. I, on the other hand, stand back from him, giving him the space that a man needs. I side-eye Ricky, who shrugs nonchalantly, and we both turn away and keep on looking around.

  I walk past the rows of knocked-over chairs looking for…for something, but I’m not exactly sure what. Adam’s jacket perhaps, or some small handprints in the dust? An Adam was here sign scratched onto the tent walls? I’m not really thinking I’ll find any of these things, but I also don’t want to shout out his name and bring half of the undead circus to us, because the quiet moans that are hanging in the air lead me to believe that somewhere around here, there are deaders. And I have a feeling that I won’t like it when I find them. But I hold out hope that Adam is safe somewhere. He’s a born survivor, and he survived many years without any help. I have no doubt that he could do the same again.

  Hope does that to you: it clings on long after you want it to let go, daring you to wish for more.

  “It’s just so sad,” Phil says as O’Donnell leads him out of the tent.

  “I know, I know,” she replies, and she even sounds sincere about it.

  Phil takes a seat on one of the small benches near an old popcorn cart. The cart is on its side, the popcorn long since gone. He pulls out a small tin from his pocket and rolls up a joint before lighting it and taking a long drag.

  “I’m gonna need a minute, guys,” he says. He pulls his glasses off his face and rubs at his eyes, and I can’t decide if he’s crying or if it’s just sweat rolling into his eyes. Either way I decide that this is another one of those private moments a man needs.

  “I’m going to keep looking around,” I say.

  “I’ll come with you,” Ricky mutters, and follows me while O’Donnell takes a seat next to Phil.

  We walk in silence as we move past different tents, both of us ignoring the elephant in the room, so to speak. We don’t like each other. But we have to make this work, so we get on with doing our job. There’s a deader crawling along the ground, its face mostly caved in as if something rolled over it, but not quite hard enough to kill the brain. Its dried-up eyes are bugging out of its head and its hands claw at the earth to pull itself along since its legs are nothing more than crumbled and crushed bone.

  “I’ve got it,” I say and I close the small distance between us and the deader.

  It sees me, or senses me, or however they work, and it begins to go wild, growling for me and clawing at the ground harder. If it had a tail I’m almost certain it would be wagging it right now like an overexcited puppy.

  I stand above it, letting its fingers claw at my boot, and then I raise my hatchet and slam it into the back of its skull. It stops moving instantly, the aged, soft skull no match for my hatchet. I pull my weapon out and wipe the blade across the deader’s back and then turn to look at Ricky.

  “When Phil first arrived,” Ricky says, “he was all cut up about someone. Kept on rambling about some blonde and how she didn’t make it and how it was all his fault. So we thought, logically, it was his wife, or girlfriend, maybe even a kid, you know?”

  I nod in understanding, though really I’m only half listening to what Ricky has to say because I’m more in shock that he’s talking to me at all. It’s probably the first civilized conversation we’ve had since I arrived. We continue to walk, heading over to a larger tent with an ominous stench coming from inside it, and I grip my hatchet tighter.

  “We fed him up, rehydrated him, and he perked right back up, but he was still banging on about the blonde,” Ricky continu
es, and looks toward the plastic flap of the tent entrance as it shifts and moves in the lazy breeze. “We eventually worked out that the Blond he was referring to wasn’t his girlfriend or wife—not even a next-door neighbor. No, it was one of his ferrets.” He shakes his head. “A fucking ferret named Blond, man.”

  I laugh and look over to Phil and O’Donnell sharing the joint. He has his head back, his eyes closed as he talks to her, and she nods like she understands what he’s going through, but I have a feeling that no one knows what he’s going through. Some people are just made that way. They’re just more in tune with animals than they are with humans. Phil had said it himself: his animals are his family, and he puts them above everyone.

  “He loves those critters,” I say.

  “Probably too much. Have you seen his woman—Aimee? She’s hot, too hot for him. They can’t live together though because he won’t get rid of those animals.”

  “He sees them as family,” I shrug. “It’s weird, but it’s all he’s ever known.”

  “I guess so, I still think it’s weird though,” Ricky says, nodding his head to a stripy red-and-white tent. “Let’s try this one.”

  It’s larger than most of the others, and I wonder if it’s the main circus tent. If I was a kid, I’d probably head to this one, with its bright colors.

  “Sure,” I say, and I start to walk in but Ricky continues talking.

  “I need to give you a chance,” he says, and I turn around to look at him properly. “I know that.” He looks me dead in the eye before continuing. “We’ve had people try to screw us over before, and honestly, everything in me tells me that you’re trouble and not worth all of this.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I say bitterly and start to walk away again.

  He grabs hold of my arm and I turn back and glare at him.

  “What?” I snap, feeling an overinflated sense of anger at him. Or maybe it’s not just him. Maybe it’s everything. Maybe it’s my guilt for not finding Adam, or for letting him get away in the first place. Survivor or not, this world is no place for a kid on his own. Or maybe it’s just the fact that this world is shit and I’m sick to death of it—of the losses and the small wins, and the crazy people.

  “The last time we trusted someone, I lost my wife and my kid, not to mention a lot of other NEO’s.” He lets that hang in the air for a moment so that I understand why he has an issue with me. “I don’t trust easily, and I can smell trouble a mile away. And you stink of trouble.”

  “I hear you,” I finally reply because I know he’s right.

  “Do you?” he says calmly. “Do you know what it’s like to lose your entire family, but still manage to hold onto your wife? To survive this long, together, only to have her taken away because we trusted the wrong person?”

  “I’ve lost plenty of people too. I just lost someone right before getting picked up by Aiken, so yeah, I get it,” I say, the words clogging my airways.

  Ricky shakes his head. “Nah, we’ve all lost someone during the apocalypse. That’s different. What makes that so different than every other sob story we’ve heard?” He turns away from me.

  The anger I felt moments ago is nothing compared to what I feel now. The fire of grief and hurt lick up the sides of me until I’m clenching my hands together.

  “She was all I had left,” I say. “She was everything to me. And now she’s gone. Sacrificed herself because of me…for me. And Adam.” My anger is red hot, but my grief is suddenly drowning. “That’s why I have to find him—I can’t let her down again.”

  Ricky turns back to me, the small crease of a frown between his eyes.

  I shake out my fists, refusing to lose it with this guy. “I’m not here to hurt anyone,” I say instead. I feel guilty for saying that, because I’ve already warned Aiken of the shit cloud that seems to follow me around everywhere.

  “I hope not, because it never ends well for the people that try to screw me or our group over, if you get what I’m saying.” And with that, Ricky walks away toward the tent with his head low. Though his demeanor is still ballsy as hell, I feel like we’ve actually come to an understanding of sorts, and I decide to try and get along with the guy. That is if he lets me.

  I look over at Phil and O’Donnell and see that they’re on their way to us. Phil seems happier now, if not lightly buzzed, which should probably worry me yet doesn’t. I have a feeling that he works better buzzed anyway.

  They catch up and we walk as a trio over to the tent, pushing the flap aside and stepping into the shade of it. Inside a stagnant scent hangs in the air like rotting meat—a smell that only means death was here quite recently. I catch Phil’s eye and we share a look of yeah, that’s not good.

  This tent isn’t like the other one. It opens up on a short corridor filled with wacky mirrors—you know, the sort that bend and distort your body image so much that you look like a skinny leprechaun or an obese strong man. The results are never very good, and my image in these mirrors, splashed with blood and bones at my feet, is even less appealing.

  “What is that smell?” O’Donnell asks, looking around us, her mouth turned down in disgust. “That’s not zeds, that’s something else.”

  Ricky is ahead of us and he looks back briefly before he pushes a flap out of the way and steps deeper into the tent.

  I walk past the mirrors, forcing myself to not look at my reflection and instead focus on the posters lining the wall at the far end of the small corridor where another stripy red-and-white flap hides what lies inside.

  “Freak unique spectacular,” I say, reading the sign, my voice louder than I expected it to be within the small confines.

  “Fuck. That.” O’Donnell comes to stand beside me. “The kid won’t have gone in there,” she says, nodding at her own statement as if to convince herself of the fact.

  “We don’t know that,” I reply, not wanting to go inside either, but knowing that I have to.

  “Well he’s a little asshole if he did,” she splutters out.

  “That’s probably true,” I smirk, and I can tell she’s already resigning herself to going inside.

  “Come on, O’Donnell, I know you’re made of stronger stuff than that,” Phil laughs, slapping her on the shoulder. He pushes the loose strands of hair back from his face and then he rolls his shoulders as if gearing himself up.

  “It’s the weed, dude,” she replies, her gaze skitting around the room and then back to Phil.

  “I know, I know, paranoia extraordinary. I told you that you shouldn’t have had any—you know how you get,” Phil laughs. “We’ve gotta’ do it though.”

  O’Donnell grumbles something under her breath and makes a disgusted noise. “Fine,” she snarls, and pushes the flap aside before walking in.

  We all follow her inside, the smell making us gag and stare around the room warily. I note Ricky standing still, his head cocked to one side as he listens intently for any movement. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust in the dark, but eventually I begin to make out the shelves and stands around the room, and I make my way over to them, peering at the jars and cages on each shelf and stand. I can’t work out what they are at first, my eyes not quite understanding what I’m seeing.

  “Jesus,” Ricky mumbles from across the room.

  I read the small cards that are in front of the jars and cages, feeling grossed out as I put the item with the name.

  Two-headed snake.

  Four-eyed turtle.

  Largest deformed rat.

  Albino spider.

  Each item is weirder than the last. Or they would be if they weren’t almost decayed beyond recognition. But I can imagine what they looked like originally—a neck stretched wide enough to accommodate two hissing heads, four blinking eyes staring up at me; a rat with half of its face missing yet still walking around and trying to live. I was never a fan of these sorts of places. Staring at oddities, curiosities, a bearded lady or a man with gills was never my idea of a fun time. And at the end of the world
, it’s the last thing I want to see.

  “This is amazing,” Phil says from next to me. He’s picked up a jar from a shelf and is staring into it in awe. “Can you imagine how cool this thing was when it was alive?”

  The jar he’s holding has the skeletal remains of a bat inside. It’s larger than any bat I’ve seen before, and I can see the long fangs that hang down from its mouth. The label says vampire bat, and I’m guessing this is the literal sense of the word by the looks of those teeth.

  “Oh yeah, very cool, right up until it sunk its teeth into my neck and sucked me dry,” I reply.

  “Nah, it’s just a baby. Bet it wouldn’t even have been able to get a quarter of a pint off you,” he laughs.

  I do not see the funny side of it. There are enough things trying to bite me in this life. So as far as I’m concerned, I’m glad it’s dead and gone.

  “Well, it’s a quarter too much,” I reply irritably. I drag a hand through my beard and walk away from Phil and his skeletal vampire bat remains. My footsteps seem loud in the enclosed space, and I move across the room toward where O’Donnell is hunched over something on the ground.

  She stands up when I get close, her eyes finding me in the darkness. “I’m just as freaked out as I am awed,” she says, pointing at the shape on the ground.

  I frown, not making out what it is, so I do as she had been doing and crouch down to get a closer look, wishing I hadn’t.

  It’s a deader—a dead deader. A newly dead deader. Oh, the irony of it.

  But it isn’t normal, and as I stare closer, I realize why.

  “Jesus,” I gasp almost falling onto my ass when I finally work out what I’m looking at. It’s hard, between the decomposing of the deader and the deformity it had been, to make out the bulbous forehead and stretched skin across the bubbled cheeks. “I’m glad it’s dead,” I say, my voice a whisper as I stand up, not wanting to look at it any longer.