The Dead Saga (Book 5): Odium V

by Claire C. Riley

  Odium V

  The Dead Saga

  By

  USA Today Bestselling Author

  Claire C. Riley

  Odium V The Dead Saga

  Copyright © 2017

  Written by Claire C. Riley

  Edited by Amy Jackson—awesome badass!

  Cover Design by Eli Constant of Wilde Book Designs—also an awesome badass!

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold 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 has been used with that person’s permission.

  Thank you for respecting the hard work of myself and for purchasing this from a reputable place and not stealing it like a seriously un-cool pirate!

  Dedication:

  To anyone who’s ever loved and lost.

  And to anyone who has been lost and then found love.

  But mostly, to those who still believe that even after the end has come and gone, and the world is a shadow of its former self, there will still be a place for

  love in this broken world.

  About the book:

  ODIUM V

  The Dead Saga

  On route to find their friends, Nina and Michael find so much more.

  After almost being killed by the Hell’s Highwaymen—a fifty strong motorcycle gang, Nina and Michael are forced to take refuge at their headquarters until Michael recovers.

  Finding a new purpose in life isn't easy, but Nina is realizing that she's stronger than she believes and needed more than she knows. At least, that’s what Shooter—the brutish, blue-eyed president of the biker gang, keeps telling her.

  *

  Meanwhile, Mikey is trapped in the candy store.

  Phil is gone, so is O’Donnell, and who knows what’s happened to Ricky. All Mikey knows is that he’s in for a whole world of pain unless he can think of a way to escape before Tim and Clare turn him into their lunch.

  *

  With both of their lives hanging in the balance and heading in completely different directions, Nina and Mikey drift further apart. And it’s not just distance that separates them. Because when your fates keep pulling you away from one another, maybe it’s time to just call it a day and move on.

  Odium V

  The Dead Saga

  By

  USA Today bestselling Author

  Claire C. Riley

  Chapter One

  Nina

  Well, that hurt, I think as the rough knuckles of Michael’s fist connect with my cheek and I groan in pain, blinking away the stars that twinkle around my head like in a cartoon show.

  Michael aims his fist at my face again, but thankfully I duck just in time and he hits the tree behind me. He cusses up a storm as blood wells to the surface of his skin and I lash out with both feet, kicking him in the side of his thigh and making him fall to one knee.

  “All right, all right, Nina. Jesus fucking Christ, woman!” Michael holds up his hands in defense and I smirk.

  I jump in the air, arms raised to the sky like I’m Rocky Balboa and I just won a fight against the huge Russian dude Ivan Drago in Rocky IV.

  “Champion!” I cheer up to the sky. “Nina is the champion and Michael sucks ass!” I laugh and grin down at him, but he only scowls. I reach out to help him back up, but he ignores me and starts to get up on his own.

  I may be a bitch, but at least I’m a polite bitch.

  “You okay? Did I hurt you that bad?” I snort with laughter as he rubs at his thigh where I just landed my badass ninja kick. In truth, it was purely accidental, but he doesn’t ever need to know that, and I’ll just make a mental note of the move for future use.

  “Fuck off,” he replies while flexing his fingers. “We wasn’t supposed to actually—”

  “Hurt one another?” I interrupt. “Because it sure as shit didn’t feel like you were holding back when you smashed your fist into my face.” I touch my cheek, wincing slightly as my fingers come into contact with the tender patch.

  “I didn’t mean to do that. I guess I got caught in the moment,” he replies. And to be fair, he looks guilty, and I feel a little shitty for hurting him. “Plus I thought your reflexes were better than that,” he adds on.

  And there he is.

  Michael the asshole.

  Michael the moody.

  Michael the can’t-take-a-freaking-joke.

  Michael the no-holds-barred-whether-I’m-a-woman-or-not.

  In all honesty, that last one is one of the things I actually like about him. But I don’t tell him I think that.

  “You’re a dick,” I reply before sauntering off toward the truck. “And I’m eating your granola bar,” I call over my shoulder.

  I take it that he doesn’t care because he doesn’t reply, so when I reach the truck I rummage through our supplies in the back and find his granola before tearing open the package and taking a huge bite. I pull out some of the beef jerky and hand it to him as he makes it to the back of the truck. And I totally don’t miss that he’s limping a little.

  He takes the food, unwraps it, and take a huge bite before leaning back against the truck. We eat in silence for a little bit, both of us glad of the food but neither of us enjoying it. Let me tell you something. If you ever find yourself in an apocalypse and someone offers you some granola before you starve to death, let yourself starve. Because granola—without any of the sugary goodness we had come to know—tastes like crap. It’s just seeds held together by sticky god-knows-what.

  So why am I still eating it?

  I’m too far gone in this life to say no to any type of food. Okay, okay, and I’m just plain greedy and all my taste buds are dying a slow, painful death anyway, so what the hell, right?

  Michael wraps up the last couple slices of jerky and puts them back in the bag. He grabs a canteen of water and takes a great big gulp before handing the bottle to me. Note…granola is dry as all hell.

  “Thanks,” I reply and down half the canteen. “The jerky any good?”

  “Hell no. Tastes like butt,” he grumbles. He takes the canteen back from me, has another swig, and then screws the lid back on. “You ready to roll?”

  “Yeah,” I say, finishing off the granola.

  Yes, I finish it, because if there’s one thing worse than dry, brittle, tasteless granola, it’s the homemade jerky that we have with us. Hence why I stole his granola.

  We head back to the front of the truck and climb in. Michael starts the engine and we set off, pulling out of the woody clearing we had parked in and back onto the dirt road. We’d stopped the previous night to grab some sleep, hoping to set off as the sun rose. But strangely, for the first time in as far back as I can remember, I’d slept like a baby. And so had Michael. Now you may think that given everything that had happened at the mall, I was the most heartless bitch there ever was. I mean, how could I sleep so well given that I’d just sentenced so many people to death?

  The truth is, I have no idea.

  Maybe the fact that we had traveled for six hours in total silence, leaving me alone with only my morbid thoughts and crippling guilt to keep me company. Who knows?

  But I slept. Michael slept. And we woke up hungry, thirsty, and aching all over from sleeping in such cramped spaces. But hey, at least we weren’t surrounded by a hungry horde of deaders, so that was something, at least.

  Wan
ting to wake up our muscles, and since there were no deaders in sight, we decided to have a little sparring session. That and Michael said he didn’t trust me to be his sidekick because I tended to attract life-and-death situations like a magnet.

  I can’t deny that he may have been onto something with that comment.

  So we sparred for a little while, with him supposedly teaching me some “mad skillz” (note the z), as he put it. And of course we all know where that ended…with me ninja-kicking his ass and him nearly breaking his knuckles. Score one for Nina.

  “Where’s the map?” Michael asks, interrupting my thoughts.

  I reach down and rummage in the backpack at my feet, pulling out the little map and unfolding it. He glances over, keeping one hand on the wheel and using his other to point out where he thinks we currently are. He mumbles something, glances at the road, and then looks back to the map, his face looking anxious.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Missed a turn. It’s fine, I think we can get us back on track without turning around. We’ll just need to cut through a couple of towns.” He puts both hands back on the wheel and stares out the window with a frustrated look on his face.

  That’s one of the things that I’ve learned about this man: he’s not a big sharer. He’d rather keep all of his thoughts bunched up inside himself, brooding over the problem and worrying rather than sharing it and letting someone help him. He’s clearly never heard the saying “a problem shared is a problem halved.”

  “Do you want me to drive today?” I ask, folding the map back up and putting it in my pocket.

  “No,” he replies bluntly.

  I refrain from rolling my eyes. The truck lapses back into silence, and it’s okay for a little while, but then my guilty conscience starts talking to me again. The names of the people we just left behind, the crazy ways that Ashley will kill them, their screams, their cries of pain, and why, Nina? Why would you leave us?

  Because I had to. I fucking had to!

  I swallow down my self-pity and open the glove box, hoping for some CDs that we can put on so I’ll have some music to keep me company, but it’s empty so I slam it closed. My thoughts stray to Joan and her singing, and I can’t help but grin as I think about her singing “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” Goddamn, that woman is annoying, yet I’m looking forward to being reunited with her and Adam as much as I am Mikey.

  “Are you singing?” Michael asks, breaking into my thoughts.

  I feel my grin grow. “I didn’t realize I was doing it out loud,” I laugh. “Sorry. But I hate the quiet and you really don’t make great company.”

  He doesn’t respond and I finally find a CD to put on—The Best of Britney Spears. It’s seriously tragic, but it’s all we have and any music is better than no music right now, because all I can hear in my head are the screams of my dying friends and Ashley’s mocking laughter. I shove the CD in the player and turn it on loud, but Michael turns it down. Normally I’d fight with him over it, but I don’t today. Instead I sing along to “Oops I Did It Again,” thinking about how fitting the song is, given my track record of getting people I care about hurt.

  After we’ve listened to the CD three times, I’m about to turn it on again but Michael ejects the CD and throws it out the window. He turns to look at me with a look of pleading.

  “No more, please, no fucking more.”

  I start to laugh, the noise sounding natural and not forced. “Okay, okay.” I grin and look away. “You’re acting like 2007 Britney.”

  He quirks an eyebrow at me. “What?”

  “She had a breakdown—shaved her head…” I let my words trail off. “You know what, ignore me. That’s not funny.” I let out a sigh and we fall back into silence again.

  The hours pass, and at some point I must fall asleep. When I wake up, I’m groggy and disorientated and Michael is calling my name.

  “Nina?”

  I blink and try to focus on him. “What?” I sit up with a yawn and look around us. “Where are we?”

  “Not really sure. Couldn’t get us back on track after that missed turn. The other road was barricaded and so I backtracked to the main freeway. Ended up here, just outside this little hick town,” he says. “Thought we could take a look around. It’s almost nightfall, so we’ll need to check it’s safe to stay here for the night before we make camp anyway, but it looks pretty damn deserted.”

  I nod okay and unbuckle my belt, and then we climb out. My door gives a groan as I open it and I yawn and nod in agreement at the groaning sentiment. I jump down and slam the door shut behind me. Michael has parked us in-between the thick of some trees so that the truck isn’t too noticeable from the road, and I head around the front to join him so we can make the short walk into town.

  The sun is low in the sky and I reckon we only have an hour or so before nightfall, but Michael is right—it looks pretty deserted, at least from where I’m standing. The main drag into town is lined by broken-down vehicles that are all rusted and weatherworn. We both instinctively know that there’s no point in trying any of these for fuel or supplies; they’re much too far gone.

  The first building we come to looks like it’s been hit by a bomb; the full right-hand half of it is missing, showing the rooms and contents inside like an old dollhouse. We keep on moving, our weapons tight in our grip as we keep to the shadows and make as little noise as possible. By the time we reach the center of the town, it’s apparent that Michael was right and the town is completely deserted. More vehicles fill the main road, their doors wide open, and any luggage scattered across the blacktop.

  Michael looks at me to gauge my opinion and I look to the sky to see where the sun is at. I reckon we only have another twenty minutes before the sun sets, so we need to get inside either a house or a store, or back to our truck because being in a strange place, with limited ammo in the dark is not one of my favorite things to do. Michael taps my shoulder and I follow him as we head down a side road.

  The road eventually turns into a dirt path and the path eventually leads to an overgrown trailer park, and I roll my shoulders in anticipation of a fight ahead as I see one or two deaders dotted about.

  Michael continues with the lead and we head to a largish trailer by the west side of the park. Its door is closed and it’s a little further set out than the others, giving it more space around it. I guess this was the rich side of the trailer park, if there’s such a thing. I stand on one side of the door and Michael stands on the other, and then I reach up to try the handle. It moves under my grip, giving a screech of stubborn refusal as I attempt to pull it open.

  It finally gives in and I let the door swing open and then we wait to see if anything is going to come out. When nothing happens, I head up the three stairs to get inside and Michael follows, closing the door behind him. It’s dark inside—the windows are already boarded up and blocking out the last of the remaining daylight—but Michael pulls out his flashlight and shines it around.

  There’s a small entranceway, which we’re standing in now, and Michael gestures that I go right, toward what I reckon is the bedroom and bathroom, while he goes left to the main living area and kitchen. I dislike splitting up the main one being that he has the flashlight, though my eyes have adjusted enough that I can see better now. Michael must sense my reluctance because he places the flashlight on a high shelf in the main entrance hall so that it illuminates a little left and right for both of us.

  I nod my thanks and turn to my right, heading slowly in the direction of the bedroom. There’s a small doorway on my right and I take a quick look in, seeing a toilet, small sink, and shower room. I duck back out and carry on toward the bedroom, to which the door is shut. I try the handle and push the door open, and my nose turns up at the smell that comes from inside.

  Chapter Two

  This wasn’t a bedroom, it was a grow farm, and what were once thriving cannabis crops are now wilted and dead, but the smell of them still hangs in the air like a drug dealers
emporium. Michael must smell them as well, because he comes to my side and looks in, a huge grin on his face like he just won the apocalypse lottery.

  “Damn it, this was almost the motherlode,” he says. “Maybe we can still smoke it.”

  “Are you serious?”

  He grins wider. “Fuck yeah, I’m serious.”

  I turn away with a laugh, leaving him to breathe in the sweet aroma that sings to his heart. I’m back in the entrance hall when I sense something behind me and turn back around just in time to see the deader stumble out of the bathroom and lurch for Michael.

  “Shit,” I cuss loudly and swing for it, but I barely graze its back as it keeps on moving forwards.

  Luckily Michael hears me and turns around in time to raise his gun and shoot the deader right between the eyes. It falls backwards and Michael looks up at me exasperatedly. I glance back in the bathroom and see the curtain pulled to one side and smears of black gunk across the wall.

  “Always check the shower stall,” Michael says from behind me, making me jump.

  “Sorry,” I reply, feeling stupid for not checking.

  “Don’t worry about it, I’ve done it before,” he says and heads back out of the bathroom and towards his little cannabis haven.

  *

  The trailer has a few meager things that we can still use, but like most things post-apocalypse, they’re either dirty, tasteless, or broken. Still, we do find some canned Spaghetti O’s that we eat cold and straight from the can. They still taste better than the jerky though, and neither of us complain.

  I take the unofficial first watch after Michael discovers that he in fact can still smoke the cannabis plants and he falls into a deep sleep across the sofa. His smoke gives my own head a little buzz, but it’s one I can handle, thankfully.