The Dead Saga: Odium 0.5 (Nina's Story)

by Riley, Claire C.

  Love for Odium. The Dead Saga Series.

  "Claire C. Riley is a name you need to add to your list. She may very well be the best writer you have never heard of...but need to."

  TW Brown—author of the DEAD series, That Ghoul Ava, The Zomblog series and editor for May December Publications

  “Riley's subtle variances on traditional zombies make for a brilliant read. Odium 3 is a must-read for zombie enthusiasts everywhere.”

  Shana Festa—The Bookie Monster Blog & Author of Time of Death series.

  "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

  Thicker than Blood Series

  www.madelinesheehan.com

  “Odium 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 blog &

  My Zombie Addiction FB group

  Odium 0.5

  The Dead Saga

  Nina’s Story.

  By USA Today

  &

  Bestselling British Horror Writer

  Claire C. Riley

  Odium 0.5 The Dead Saga

  Copyright © 2015

  Written by Claire C. Riley

  Edited by Amy Jackson

  Cover Design by Eli Constant of Cosmo Constant Designs

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold 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.

  Also by Claire C. Riley

  Odium 0.5 The Dead Saga

  Odium 1 The Dead Saga.

  Odium 1.5 The Dead Saga

  Odium II The Dead Saga.

  Odium 2.5 The Dead Saga

  Odium III The Dead Saga.

  Odium 3.5 The Dead Saga*

  Odium IV The Dead Saga*

  Limerence (The Obsession Series)

  Limerence II (The Obsession Series)

  Twisted Magic Raven’s Cove Series (Book One)

  Short Stories/Anthology contributions

  Proud contributor to the ‘Let’s Scare Cancer to Death’ charity anthology. (Choices)

  Horror Novel Reviews Presents: One Hellacious Halloween Volume One. (The owl in the Tree)

  State of Horror Illinois anthology (Out Come the Wolves)

  The Dark Carnival anthology (Dancing Bear)

  At Hells Gates charity anthology (A Different Cocktail)

  Co-Authored Books

  Thicker than Blood #1

  Beneath Blood and Bone #2

  Shut Up & Kiss Me

  All books available in paperback, eBook and audiobook

  *Coming Soon

  ‘She writes characters that are realistic and kills them without mercy.’

  Eli Constant

  Author of several full-length horror novels including:

  The Dead Trees series and Z-Children

  Dedication:

  To the fans that have been with Nina since the start.

  Thanks for sticking with her…

  and me.

  Biggest of love to my amazing beta readers – Shelly and Jessica, to my cover designer and best friend – Eli Constant, and of course to my awesome editor – Amy Jackson.

  I couldn’t do any of this without your help, so thanks for taking time out of your busy lives for me. But mostly, thanks for your belief in me.

  Love you xx

  About the book.

  Nina wasn’t always a bitch. But surviving an apocalypse has made her that way.

  It’s the end of the world, and the dead have risen. Devastation reins and destruction lives. Mankind is holding on by bloody and desperate fingers. Death comes when you least expect it; in the quiet of the night or in the harsh light of day. It sneaks in and takes everyone and everything you ever loved, until you’re left with nothing at all. And the person standing in the aftermath is forever changed.

  Even after finding a protective haven amongst the chaos, Nina learns that the worst monster is mankind itself. Hope is gone. A heart is broken and humanity is slipping away. But for Nina, catastrophe has made her stronger. If she wants to keep breathing, she has to be. After all, being hard is the only way to survive.

  Odium 0.5

  The Dead Saga

  Nina’s Story.

  By USA Today

  &

  Bestselling British Horror Writer

  Claire C. Riley

  Life Ever After: Part One.

  Chapter One.

  My Tuesday started like any Tuesday: I got up. I got dressed. I bitched at my husband. I drank a green tea and seaweed smoothie, which I hated, and I went to work. I ate a 234-calorie lunch, which I also hated, and then I bitched about my boss to the women that I worked with but didn’t call my friends.

  I finished up my current work project, closed down my computer, and then I went shoe shopping before heading home to spend the night getting eye strain from the amount of eye-rolling I intended on doing toward my lazy-assed husband.

  My Tuesday was as it should be. Until it wasn’t.

  “Evening, Nina.”

  I paused by my car, cringing at the sound of Emma Watson’s voice. She was our nosy-as-hell neighbor from across the road and she was the second-to-last person I wanted to speak to right then. I grabbed my shoebox and slammed the car door shut before turning completely around to face her, watching as she smiled expectantly at me. I waved at her, offering her the blandest smile I could in the hopes that she would get the idea that I didn’t want to chitchat. No such luck apparently. She made her way across the street, her hands wringing in front of her nervously. I arched an eyebrow because, well, Emma didn’t play the nervous victim very well. Or at all, normally. She was a strong, determined woman, the sort of woman that I could relate to and yet I also found equally annoying. I think it was her perfectness. She was slim, blond, had flawless skin, and a toned ass that didn’t look like it had ever had to see the inside of a gym. I kind of hated her.

  “Hey, Emma.” I clutched onto my shoebox, making sure to keep the logo facing toward her and feeling gleeful when her eyes darted toward it. I could tell she wanted to ask about them. I didn’t blame her: I would have been green with envy if I had seen her clutching onto a Jimmy Choo box. But she didn’t ask me about them; instead she looked back to her house.

  “Have you seen the news?” She turned back and met my gaze head on.

  “Not yet, why?” I frowned, my eyes flitting over her face and finally seeing that she looked less than her perfect self for once.

  “They’re talking about a virus, it’s making everyone sick—”

  “That’s what viruses do, Emma.” I seriously didn’t have time for this. Or her. Mainly her.

  She waved my flippant comment away. “No, like really sick. They’re advising people to stay indoors unless it’s
absolutely necessary to go outside. Not to even go to the hospital.”

  I frowned harder. “Well that seems extreme. But whatever, people never listen to those CDC warnings.”

  “I know.” Emma nodded and looked back toward her house again. When she looked back, she spoke hesitantly. “Andy hasn’t been feeling well all day. Should I be worried?”

  I refrained from rolling my eyes at her for being so dramatic, though I also couldn’t deny the anxious feeling that was growing in my stomach. Emma didn’t do victim; she was a no-nonsense type of woman, so this was hugely out of character for her, yet my inner bitch was itching to be let loose.

  “Well, it depends. Is it man flu? I mean, if so, then ignore his whining, make him some soup, and tell him to man up.”

  She ignored my smart-assed remark, continuing as if I hadn’t said a word. “Do you think I should take him to the hospital?”

  “I don’t know, I mean if the CDC say to stay at home then—”

  “You just said that no one listens to those warnings!” Her voice rose until it was a shrill yell.

  “All right! Don’t yell at me,” I replied with a huff, shifting the box and my purse to the other arm. “Look, I really need to get inside. I hope he feels better. I’m sure it’s just the flu.”

  Blah blah blah. Insert impatient eye roll.

  “So you think he’ll be okay?”

  “I have no idea, Emma. Look, I really need to go.”

  Turning on my heel I walked away, cutting off Emma’s last words to me. I didn’t have time for her shit right now. We weren’t friends. In fact, as far as I remembered, she didn’t have any friends to speak of. It was just her and Andy and they tended to stick together pretty tightly. He was a hen-pecked husband and she, the nagging wife, they fit into their proverbial character-defining cutouts well in that respect.

  I unlocked the front door and pushed it open before stepping inside and kicking it shut behind me. I dropped my purse on the sofa, kicked my heels off by the door, and went upstairs, taking them two at a time and making my way to my bedroom. I placed the box on my bed and lifted the lid off with a triumphant grin.

  Jimmy Choos. Jimmy-freaking Choos. I had always wanted a pair of these, and now I had them. I was practically salivating.

  I sat down and eagerly slipped them on. I stood up unsteadily and stared down at them in awe. They pinched a little around the toe but they were amazing. Blue, beautiful, and all mine. A grin rose to my face and I watched my feet as I paced up and down the bedroom. I had no idea when I would ever get the chance to wear them, and I didn’t really care. I worked hard and deserved to buy the things I wanted. Ben would hate them, but that fact only made me like them even more.

  The growl of Ben’s noisy old truck came to a stop in the driveway and I quickly slipped the shoes off my feet and shoved them back in the box. I put the box in the bottom of my closet and made my way back downstairs as casually as I could, my big toes a little red where the shoes had pinched.

  Ben came in the door just as I made it to the bottom step, and we stared at one another for a moment in silence before he broke the standoff with a smile. His smile was what had first attracted me to him. It was boyish and sexy and completely masculine. It disarmed me and broke through my bitchy, hard exterior. But that was then and this was now. Now I just found him irritating and selfish, and his once-handsome smile was now nothing to me because I knew how fake it was.

  “Hey babe. How was your day?” He walked straight past me and headed to the kitchen, making it apparent that he didn’t actually give a damn how my day had been. The question was just another nicety to get us through yet another uncomfortable evening together.

  I wasn’t sure exactly when things had gotten like this between us, and truthfully, I wasn’t really concerned—not anymore. Our marriage had soured and neither of us had the desire to try to fix it. It had been months of tit for tat, sly digs, and one-ups on each other. But we couldn’t go on much longer like this.

  I followed him through to the kitchen, not because I wanted to talk to him but because I was hungry. He was dragging baloney and mayonnaise out of the refrigerator when I pushed the door open, and he barely looked up to acknowledge my presence. I rolled my eyes even though he couldn’t see me and I set about making myself a healthy stir-fry of turkey and bean sprouts. I was on a diet—I was always on a diet—and as he bit into his loaded sandwich I envied him and most of the male population for their ability to not care about their appearance. To not care about carbs and calories and fat and all the other stupid crap that women worried about.

  I cooked in silence, adding some seeds I had gotten from the health food store which promised to help burn more calories from your body if you ate them twice a day. They tasted vile and they smelled even viler, and I hadn’t noticed any difference in the weeks I had been eating them but I still continued to eat them regardless. I finally scraped the contents of the pan onto my plate and grabbed a fork.

  “I don’t know how you can eat that,” he said, finishing off the last of his sandwich and licking mayo off his fingers.

  I shoved my fork into the stir-fry, loaded it up, and raised it to my mouth. “Because some people actually care what they put into their bodies, Ben. They don’t want to fill themselves with toxins and fat constantly.”

  He grimaced. “But it smells so bad.”

  I opened my mouth and shoved the forkful of stir-fry inside, trying my damndest to eat it without gagging. He wanted to laugh, I could tell from the small crinkles around his eyes.

  “It tastes great,” I replied. “You should try some instead of eating crap all the time. You’re beginning to get a line of fat around your middle.”

  “This is winter weight.” He grinned, patting his stomach.

  “It’s summer,” I snarked back.

  “I’m preparing.” His grin stretched wider and then he turned to the refrigerator and grabbed a beer, popping the top off on the side of the kitchen counter. He took a long hard swig of it, wiping the back of his mouth with his hand. I wanted to yell at him. He always did that on the countertop and it was scratched and beginning to chip because of it. He stared at me as he drank, almost daring me to say something because he knew how much it pissed me off. But instead I swallowed another mouthful of my food and looked away. This was our game: he tried to get a rise out of me, knowing that once I lost it I couldn’t reel my temper back in. He always made me look like the asshole in this relationship.

  “Emma said that Andy is sick,” I finally said when most of my food was gone. I couldn’t eat another mouthful of it and so I scraped the last of it into the trash and put my plate in the dishwasher. I noticed his plate was still on the counter and I grabbed that with a huff and loaded it in the dishwasher also.

  “So what was she telling you for?” he asked with a laugh, knowing that I couldn’t stand her.

  I shrugged. “She said the CDC have said to remain at home if at all possible.”

  “I haven’t heard anything,” he replied while picking bits of sandwich from between his teeth.

  I hadn’t either, and I had brushed off Emma’s worries just as easily as he was doing to me, yet his easy carefree attitude annoyed me.

  “Besides, no one listens to those cautions.” He downed the last of his beer and placed the empty bottle on the counter. “I have work tomorrow and we need to go food shopping, so there’s not a chance of us staying inside.”

  “I hate food shopping,” I grumbled under my breath.

  “So I’ll go on my own, in my lunch hour.”

  I looked up, my gaze slowly meeting his. Was this his peace offering? An olive branch perhaps? As the seconds passed and the silence continued to envelop us, I wondered who would break first. We were still staring into one another’s eyes, and I saw a speck of the man I had fallen in love with. I hoped that he saw a little of the woman he fell in love with in my eyes.

  “That would be great.” I finally broke our silence, wishing I could smile at him inste
ad of worrying that he would get all the wrong things for me to eat.

  “It’s fine, whatever.” He shrugged again and grabbed another beer from the fridge like we hadn’t just shared a moment. That perhaps our marriage wasn’t totally dead. But I had seen it, the love that had once been strong, and like a snap of his fingers he had purposefully turned it off. “Better than dealing with your sour face and bitching all the way around the store.” He turned and walked out of the room and I stared at the space he had just been, feeling hurt and rejected.

  When I walked back into the living room. He had his PlayStation on, and was playing some stupid man game that involved shooting and killing everything in sight. His feet, still wearing his dirty work boots, were resting on the coffee table next to his beer bottle. I counted backwards from ten to try and calm myself down as I watched the condensation slipping down the side of the bottle and onto the table. I walked back up the stairs and threw on my running gear, needing to get out of the house for a little while. It was suffocating me, he was suffocating me, but mainly, my own anger was suffocating me.

  “I’m going out for a run,” I said as I made my way back downstairs.

  “Okay,” he replied, not bothering to turn around or pause his game.

  For some reason, even though I disliked him as much as he disliked me, it still hurt. Maybe because for once I wanted him to fight for me—us—so that I could then stop being such a stubborn bitch and do the same. But he didn’t. He never did. Because where I was stubborn, so was he. Neither of us would back down from this, and sooner or later our world would come crumbling down around us because of our own stupidity.

  Stepping outside, closing the door behind me, I stretched out my calf muscles. The air was finally starting to cool as the sun set. So far it had been a long, hot summer, but fall would be coming in a couple of weeks, and I couldn’t wait for that. Fall was my favorite time of year. Not too hot and not too cold. The leaves falling away, stripping the trees bare, ready to start afresh in the spring. It always made me feel hopeful. Like soon there could be fresh starts, and new beginnings. Like the death of old life rotting away just below the surface of the earth could be forgotten in favor of a new start.