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

by Riley, Claire C.

  “Sir, we could use more hands on this job.”

  I frown even harder, Colonel Smith frowns, and Masterson looks uneasy about asking for yet more help. The civilians already outnumber the soldiers on Operation Clear All, with Masterson tending to keep guard in the truck. And I say that with inverted commas and a giant stick up my ass. The guy is a grade A pussy. I don’t even know how he made the cut when it came to joining the army, because he’s a little bitch where the undead are concerned.

  “Sir, we need more armed people on watch and we need some more clearers. We lost two last week, and—”

  “What? Who?” I interject. I haven’t heard anything about losing people. My people.

  Masterson pays me no attention, mainly because he’s an arrogant asshole who doesn’t think my input is needed, but also because he’s clearly uncomfortable answering my questions. I look to the colonel, hoping to see the same shock on his face at the news of two casualties, but instead he seemed impassive about the whole thing.

  “Very well, Nina can arrange for two more civilians and Carter can arrange another marksman. Is that everything?” He looks back down to his pad and continues to scribble notes.

  “Yes, sir,” Masterson agrees, offering me a smug side-glance like this is all some big freaking joke and he isn’t bartering with people’s lives.

  “Sir!” I snap. “I wasn’t informed of any deaths.” I glare at Masterson, who continues to ignore me. “I can’t willingly agree to send more people out to their deaths.”

  Colonel Smith looks up, his eyes still not showing any sign of emotion. “Nina, we need people to clear the area to help keep everyone safe. We need marksmen to keep the dead back from our walls while we fortify them, and I need everyone in this operation working together to keep this project running smoothly. It’s for everyone’s benefit. We all have a stake in this, and we are all at risk whether behind the walls, behind a gun, or neither.”

  “But why wasn’t I informed of the deaths?” I grind out, feeling patronized.

  He stares at me, humour in his expression.

  “So help me, if you say it’s because I’m a woman!”

  “Well, what can I say? You’re too emotional about death, Nina.” Masterson speaks from across the table.

  I glare back across at him. “How am I supposed to feel about death?”

  In a way, he’s right: I am emotional about death. Each one cuts me, burrowing deep inside my soul and promising to give me nightmares for many years to come. But I can’t just let the deaths skip by me like they are nothing. Because they aren’t nothing.

  “Perhaps it’s you that’s at fault,” Masterson continues. “After all, how did you not notice that you were down two people?”

  “You’re such a fucking fucker!” My teeth grind together until my jaw aches and I can barely drag my gaze away from him when the colonel begins to talk.

  “Nina, this is exactly what he’s talking about. You need to disconnect from certain things or you’re no good to me. Do you understand?” Colonel Smith clasps his hands on the table in front of him and I have to bury the rage that burns in my belly. I understand the warning he’s giving me. The ultimatum of sorts.

  Either do your job or get out.

  I nod and chew on the inside of my cheek. People would kill for this position, and while I don’t care for it in the sense of having more power than others, I do believe that I have everyone’s best interests at heart and will do good for them all. Besides, the constant business of the job stops me from thinking about my own internal misery.

  “How are the new lodgings treating our civilians?” The colonel moves on from my outburst and his threat without so much as a blink of an eye. But his talk of the new housing is like the salve for my open wound. He’s good at doing that.

  “Good. They’re much better than previous,” I answer.

  Silence follows as he waits for me to say more, and I awkwardly clear my throat.

  “People are much happier with them now. I’m not sure how warm they will be come deep winter, but we’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  The first thing I had discussed with Tesrin had been to get everyone proper housing. Or at least semi-proper housing. If things were going to stay like this for a while, then people needed more than just a piece of cardboard on the floor. Those had been short-term solutions, where our problem was now long term. So over the past month we had created a sort of civilian village and had scavenged enough sleeping bags and pillows from abandoned homes in the closest town.

  Tents had been constructed for the most part, but children, the elderly or anyone with a family, now slept inside once again. They shut their doors at night and locked out the horrors, and for a few short hours they could pretend that this was all a nightmare. There had been an uproar at the start, a small group of men believing that they deserved real walls instead of tents much more than women, children, and the elderly, but if anything that had made the colonel more adamant in the denial of their requests.

  I guess everyone’s a selfish asshole at the end of the world.

  “And our other problem?” The colonel watches me sternly.

  “I think it’s sorted.” I swallow. I think our little problem is sorted. At least I hope so. One of the civilians—Jamie—had been caught stealing food, and the colonel had left it up to me to make an example of him.

  He doesn’t want people doubting his authority, and he doesn’t want to get his hands dirty. So he had given me the task of deciding Jamie’s punishment.

  As much as I wanted to tell the colonel to suck it because I wasn’t going to do his dirty work, I knew that it was in Jamie’s best interest if I did. So now he had latrine duties for the next six months and he got no extra rations when the carriers brought in a haul. In the grand scheme of things, he had gotten off lightly. It wouldn’t always be like this—of that I had no doubt. Once this place was fully operational, I had no doubt that real laws would be put in place and me and my bullshit punishments would be discarded.

  Truthfully, I’m okay with being discarded; having real laws again scares me, though. History is being rewritten.

  Colonel Smith narrows his eyes at me, a warning hidden in their depths, but I hold his gaze until he nods and moves on. He continues around the table and asks questions of everyone else until he’s satisfied that he knows exactly what’s going on in this place. Like me, the colonel does not like to be kept in the dark. On anything. Ever.

  The meeting is adjourned and we all stand up to leave. As I’m exiting the door, I hear Colonel Smith call Carter back, and I hate that I have to leave without knowing what’s being said.

  Outside the sun is up and yet the air is still cool. Daniels was right, though: winter is on its way. I move around the compound looking over the tents in the civilian village and deciding that they aren’t nearly acceptable if winter hits us hard, like has been predicted.

  But what can we do? There isn’t any more room for any more real structures. Not just that, but we’re running out of time. The deaders have been relentless in their attacks. Of course they are—they’re dead; they don’t care that we’re trying to survive the winter. We had lost a lot of people recently due to us trying to gather and hoard as many supplies as possible. There are more and more people heading outside the walls when we should be hunkering down. But we can’t, not yet. I get that, I do. I just don’t like it.

  A noise from the main entrance draws my attention and I turn, frowning in the direction. Gunfire erupts from the top of the wall. Slowly at first, just one or two quick shots being fired off in the direction of whatever their target was. And then it gets worse.

  Chapter Sixteen.

  Civilian movement is what finally spurs me into action, and I take a step forward as the gates begin to open and army personnel began to stumble backwards into the compound, all the while still firing at their targets.

  Targets that I can now see.

  Deaders. And lots of them.

  T
he doors are being pushed back closed even as a few of the dead make it inside. My heart catches in my throat as one of the deaders grabs onto the closest living thing it can find—a young soldier who can’t be more than twenty-one. It latches onto his throat even as bullets from a soldier to my left pound into its body. Its teeth find purchase and it chomps down on the soft flesh as his life gushes down and into its throat.

  The man screams loudly before being cut off. His arms flail as he pushes and stumbles, all sense of protocol gone as he continues to beat at the monster. Bullets still hit it, but between its own frenzied attack and the young soldier freaking out, a direct shot is out of the question.

  The other deaders that have managed to get inside are now being chased down and killed, and the marksmen on the top of the wall are busy shooting down the deaders trying to beat their way into our city.

  The soldier and the deader fall to the ground in a tumble of limbs and blood, and the shooter next to me turns his attention to a deader closing in on him. All the while, the poor solider is still being taken apart piece by bloody piece.

  I take a step forward and then stop myself, unsure of what to do. I’m frozen in the middle of the courtyard, and all around me is death, death, and more death. Yet all I can do is stand and stare at everything in shock. I’m as bad as Masterson.

  Chills run over me, and I will myself to move forward, to do something, to help in some small but significant way before everything we have worked toward for the past month is ripped away from us. I look over at the soldier, finally noticing that he has a pistol holstered at his side—a pistol which he never had a chance to take out, I can’t help but think.

  I dart forward, trying to ignore the stench of flesh rot that hangs thickly around the deader. The soldier has been silenced, but he’s not gone from this world yet. He hasn’t given up on life, and if I or someone else doesn’t do something about that, he won’t be able to give up on death either, because he’s minutes away from turning—that much is clear. Life still pumps through his veins, but not for much longer.

  The deader moves on to the soldier’s chest, its broken fingers pressing through the flesh, muscle, and bone, to get at whatever lies inside. The sound of bones cracking and flesh tearing as it rips into his chest cavity is unmistakable.

  It barely pays me any attention as I lean down and pull at the pistol. I grip it and tug it to me, but it’s held in place by a holster strap. I pull again, my shaking hands trying to snap the holster open, but the movement causes the deader to pause in its feast, its eyes finally looking up at me. I finally have the pistol in my grip, but I’m frozen in the moment as I stare into the deader’s face.

  Not an ounce of humanness is left in this monster’s decrepit body.

  Carnage rains all around me, gunshots and yelling, growls of deaders, screams of frightened people, but I can only stare at the thing in front of me, watching as it climbs back up to its feet and takes a stumbling step forward in its pursuit of another meal for its ever-hungry stomach.

  A tear slides unwillingly out from one of my eyes, and as the thing gets too close I swing the butt of the pistol as hard as I can and I smash it into the side of its skull.

  It falls sideways, crashing into the blood-soaked ground and already trying to get back to its feet before it has even fully fallen over. I move closer and swing again.

  And again…

  And again…

  I will kill it. This thing. This monster. This deader.

  I will kill it and put it out of its misery. I will stop it from hurting anyone else, ever again.

  I could fire the pistol into its skull, destroying its brain, but I don’t. I choose to beat this thing to death, to put my life on the line in the desire for its bloody death.

  I smash and smash until my eyes can barely understand what they’re seeing anymore. Until all that remains of its face is shattered bone and a bloody, pulpy mess. I smash until the pistol is pried from my trembling fingers and I look up into Carter’s hardened yet equally concerned face.

  “You got it. It’s gone.” He speaks calmly, as if this is all normal—an everyday occurrence.

  I guess to him it is.

  He pulls me to my feet, dragging me away from the bodies of both man and monster. His arm is heavy around my shoulders, weighing me down and yet giving me strength. He walks me away—to where, I don’t care. The rage is still burning through me, and all I want to do is kill something and someone, because that mindless violence felt so damn good. Like I was finally making a difference.

  I look back at the mess I had created of its face, frightened yet not ashamed by my own manic need to kill it in such a brutal way. My face feels hot and I run a shaking hand down it, realizing that both things are covered in rotten blood and skull fragments.

  And then I vomit.

  *

  “Are you okay?”

  I look over my shoulder at Carter, the graying sheets of the makeshift hospital bed a stark contrast to my bloodthirsty thoughts. I look away from him, staring at the person in the bed next to me.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I answer, lying profusely.

  No, I am not okay. At all. I had lost it out there. Like, completely fucking batshit crazy lost it. Like, lock this crazy chick up lost it. He knows it and I know it. I’ve spent the past several hours desperately trying to claw my mind back from the crazy that has awoken in me.

  Seeing that deader so close…seeing its anger and hatred and hunger…something inside of me, something tripped up, stumbling over all the happy things I had convinced myself of for the past month. And now it had crumbled away, leaving behind a dark void of depression.

  “You don’t seem fine.”

  “Well neither did all the people that just got eaten alive, but you know, shit happens and all that.” I squeeze my eyes closed, hating the sound of my own voice. “Has Tesrin returned yet?”

  “No, not yet,” he replies. “The horde outside the walls was…it was huge. I’m sure they’re hiding out somewhere because they couldn’t get near the place.”

  “Okay,” I reply. I feel sick. Sick with anger, sick with worry, and sick with the torment of what our future holds. And the other part wants to beat myself senseless for being obnoxious enough to get swallowed up by my own emotions.

  I am alive, and many are not. I need to get a fucking grip, and soon.

  Carter places a heavy hand on my shoulder. “I’ll be here when you need me.”

  Silence falls between us and I try to Jedi mind-trick him into going away. It works and I listen to his retreating steps, all the while thinking about the underlying meaning to his words.

  I continue to stare at the man in the bed next to me. His eyes are closed and there is a bandage across his left arm. Superficial bite. That’s what they had said when they checked on him earlier.

  It was superficial. That’s what they had said.

  It’s a sincerely fucked-up world when we dismiss a four-inch hole being bitten out of your arm as superficial.

  They’ve strapped him to his bed for both his and our safety, and I can’t deny that I’m glad about that. We don’t know yet how the disease is passed on, how the dead keep on coming back to life, and until we do, every precaution has to be taken. I get that and I’m accepting of it.

  Until I’m the one strapped to the gurney, of course.

  The room I’m in contains six other people, all of us having so called superficial, non-life-threatening wounds varying from bites to gunshots to a sprained wrist. Another ward has been set up in the building next door, which contains more than the supposed superficial wounds, like missing limbs and such. I guess in context to those injuries, a four-inch hole is superficial after all.

  I close my eyes and try to rest, forcing away the ache in my chest. Forcing back the image of Tesrin and my worry for her safety. She’ll be okay; she has to be.

  I chant the words to myself, ensnaring them inside myself and refusing to believe anything else is possible but for her to be aliv
e and well.

  She’s okay.

  She’s okay.

  She has to be. She’s my only friend.

  *

  The room is dark when I wake up, just the dim glow from the emergency lights at the doorway to keep the darkness from fully encroaching. The echo of screams are still ringing in my ears, deep groans of hunger still bouncing around my head like it’s the here and now and I’m not safe behind the walls. I can almost smell the stench of death washing over my face, the snap of a mouth opening, ready to take a chunk out of me…

  …I dive out from my bed, narrowly missing the snap of jaws that lunge for me as I tumble to the floor in a crash of tangled limbs.

  “Deaders!!!” I scream as loudly as I can before I begin to scramble underneath the bed, moving across the floor of the room and toward the exit as quickly as I can, the sound of the deader right behind me.

  The room is pitch black, but the sounds of yelling and stumbling are clear and bright. The deader loses me in the darkness, letting its interests fall to the bodies of men that are finally waking thanks to my screams.

  I barely hear the first cry of pain as the main doors swing open and the room explodes into noise and brightness. Everything is engulfed in gunfire and screams as I hide underneath a bed, my hands covering my ears, and my knees drawn up to my chest. I wait for the soldiers to put the deader down. I try not to think of who it had been, whether it was a civilian or a soldier, because it doesn’t matter. They just need to kill it. End it. Finish it. Whoever it was is gone, and now only evil remains.

  I stay there while the room is lost to the deafening roar of bullets and screams, and I cry until there are no more tears inside of me. And then finally, the room falls back into silence.

  The glow of flashlights light the room—bright, high-powered LED flashlights that blanket everything in a false yellow glow. I cry out at the dead bodies littering the floor and the river of blood that passes by my feet.