The Dead Saga (Book 5): Odium V

by Claire C. Riley

  He laughs again and grabs his crotch. “You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen ’em.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “If that’s an offer to look at whatever is festering in your pants, then I’m going to have to very impolitely decline.”

  He laughs even harder and thankfully lets go of his crotch and holds out his hand. “Name’s Balls.”

  “Balls?” I snort out a laugh and shake his hand as I finally let my guard down. “Seriously?”

  “The one and only,” he retorts.

  I laugh even harder and pick up some more bullets. “Just the one? Sounds like a painful experience,” I snark, glancing back up at him. It takes him a second, but he gets there and then he roars with laughter.

  “I fuckin’ like you,” he says, pointing at me.

  I don’t feel threatened or sexualized by him, or even worried. In fact, the exact opposite. He just seems too fucking nice to be mean, if anything. Completely gone is his previous grumpy attitude toward me, replaced by a small joke over his balls.

  “He has the biggest balls that any of us had ever seen,” Gauge says, coming toward us. He’s smoking a cigar and is wearing sunglasses like it’s the middle of summer and he’s a fucking mafia Don or something. “And he has two, not one.”

  I can’t get a read on Gauge because of his glasses, but his demeanor is screaming “asshole” to me. He seems like he’s defending Balls from me, yet equally taking the piss out of him. Maybe it’s a biker thing. I really have no idea.

  Balls shoves Gauge in the shoulder and smirks. “She knows that, brother. She’s just being spunky.”

  I hand over the last of the bullets to Balls.

  “I’ll see you around,” he replies, and I take that as my cue to move along like the good little woman I am.

  “Yeah, I hope so,” I reply, and head back over to my cabin in the hopes of some alone time to gather my thoughts, because it’s been a long and exhausting day. Not to mention confusing. Or maybe I’m just growing soft? Some decent food, a semi-comfy bed and being able to close my eyes at night and know that I was protected by a group of fearless bikers did that to a girl.

  *

  I wake up feeling anxious, like something isn’t right, but I don’t know what.

  I’ve slept longer than I meant to; I mean, I hadn’t meant to sleep at all, but the cabin had been warm and my bed comfy, and well, when you put A and B together I felt my eyes rolling and I relented and lay down before pulling my blanket over me.

  Now, though, I sit up and throw the small blanket off me. All is the same as it was before I’d fallen asleep. My body feels sticky with sweat, and my mouth dry and in need of something to drink. I swing my legs over the edge of the bed and sit with my head in my hands while I try to get my bearings about me, because I’m still half asleep.

  The feeling that something isn’t quite right hasn’t left me either. There’s a sense of dread hanging over me like a black shroud, but when I look around the room, there’s nothing and no one here.

  Maybe that’s it. There’s always someone here.

  I stand up and I’m about to head outside when I hear a loud bang. It’s not the sound of a gun firing, so I don’t completely freak out, but there’s definitely something not right about the noise so I quickly walk over to the window and look outside.

  Everything seems normal; the sun is beginning to set and small drums have been pulled out and fires lit inside of them, and somewhere in the distance I can hear people talking. It must be dinnertime and most people will be eating, I guess.

  I chew on my bottom lip, still feeling uncertain. My gut is screaming at me to take action, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned to trust in this rotten world, it’s my gut. It’s the one thing that I can always rely on, no matter what the circumstances.

  I go back to my bed and reach under my mattress before pulling out the machete that I keep there, and then I head to the door and open it. The air is cool, and the smell of burning from the drums is in the air. For a moment I’m so at ease with the normality that I forget what I was doing until I hear the bang again.

  I frown and move outside, following where I heard the sound coming from. I head around the back of my cabin and through the small group of trees there, ignoring the biting gnats that are out this evening, and I follow the path right up to the tall wooden fence that surrounds this place. But when I look up at the guard post, there’s no one there. And I know that there should be someone there.

  I move my gaze left and right, scanning up and down the perimeter of the fence, but I still can’t see anyone. I take a step back, my instincts on high alert now, though other than a guard not being at his post, there’s nothing really wrong with this situation.

  Until I hear the bang again, and I realize that it’s coming from the other side of the fence. I walk along my side of the fence, my machete in hand, and I’m concentrating so hard on locating the banging noise that I bump straight into the back of someone.

  When she turns around I see it’s the woman Shooter had brought in earlier. Though she looks entirely different now. Same clothes, same hair, same face, and the same angry glare in her eyes. However, gone is the pretense of fear and sadness and instead her entire body is seeded with something else. Violence, I quickly realize as she swings for me.

  Ain’t it always violence?

  I duck out of her way, not even having enough time to yell “I fucking knew it.” She kicks out and trips me up, and I land flat on my back and the air leaves my lungs in a gust. And then she’s on me, her skinny legs wrapped on either side of my body as she straddles me to hold me still, the knife in her hand drawing closer to my throat with every second that passes.

  And the whole time, the banging at the fence increases until I hear the creak and groan of wood splitting, and the fence begins to lean inwards.

  “Nearly ruined it all, bitch!” the other woman snarls into my face, her eyes wild and full of rage. She forces her thin blade closer to my face, so close I can see my own reflection in it.

  I think of how Shooter had tried to help her. How he’d seen her as a victim and had brought her here and put her under his protection, and I feel my own set of rage bubbling. I push back on her wrists, moving the blade out of my eye-line, and she leans over me. I grit my teeth, stretch my head up, and head-butt her in the face. She groans and her hands automatically go to her face, dropping the knife, which lands on me—thankfully not tip down, or I would be dead.

  I snatch the blade from where it falls on my chest and then I reach up and grab the front of her shirt with my left hand. I swing out with my right hand, my hand still clutching at the blade, but at the last second I curl my first in and raise my elbow, feeling satisfied at the crunching sound it makes when it smashes into her cheekbone. Her body goes limp and I throw her off of me and jump up to my feet, grabbing the machete that I’d dropped and slipping the knife into the waistband of my pants.

  I can hear people yelling from both sides of the fence now, and I turn around to see Shooter and a bunch of his men storming through the darkness. He looks surprised to see me, but only falters for a split second before he charges up to me.

  “Gauge, Gunner, Spearhead, ready on the left. Balls, Backtrack, Highlander, ready on the right, brothers. Everyone else in the middle,” he yells.

  All the men move off to their positions and Shooter turns and glares at me, his eyes scanning my body and face for serious injury. They briefly stop on the cut on the bridge of my nose but move on quickly.

  “Get back to your room, Nina, and bar your door,” he says through gritted teeth and starts to walk away from me.

  There’s blood pouring down my face from a split at the bridge of my nose, and my adrenaline’s pumping like I’ve just had a jump start, and he wants me to go back to my room and cower like a little baby? I grip his shoulder, ready to give him a mouthful, but he swings around, grabbing me and turning me until my back is to his front and his mouth is at my ear.

  “Don’t argue with
me on this, woman,” he grits out angrily. And then he roughly pushes me away from him like I’m nothing more than shit on his shoe. Maybe less, because at least he might stop to clean the shit off his shoe.

  I stagger forward and watch him stalk away. I’m in more shock that he grabbed me so roughly than I am that the fence is about to come down and god knows who or what is on the other side of it. But the look in his blue eyes was anything but the calm I have seen, and I decide to take heed and I head away from him.

  When I get to the front of my cabin, I look across and see women running into other ones and dragging the curtains across their windows. I can hear shouting from every direction, crying from even more, and above all that, the rage burning in my blood. I purse my lips and try to think clearly, but all I can think is that I shouldn’t be hiding inside, but that I should be helping.

  So I do.

  I head over to the armory and see that no one is on guard, though of course the door is locked. I use the handle of my machete and smash it against the lock once, twice, three times, and when that doesn’t work I turn and start scouring the ground for a rock to smash it open with.

  “You’d do better with the key,” Michael says from the shadows.

  I startle and almost drop my machete. “You should be in bed,” I snap.

  “You should be locked in your room like a good little woman, apparently,” he retorts.

  I glare at him. “Touché.”

  He comes forward, one hand on his side. He bends down and picks up a large rock and then goes over and begins to smash the lock. The rock cracks in half, but so does the lock, and he pulls off the broken padlock and throws it to one side and then steps to one side to allow me access to the weapons.

  I go inside, and I’m momentarily taken aback by how organized it is. Each wall has been reinforced with wood sheets and holders put in place so the guns can hang from them. There’s a section for large guns, small handguns, knives, daggers, and even a section for the larger stuff like…

  “Is that a flamethrower?” Michael says.

  I look up at it, my eyes wide. “I think so.” I shake my head and move away from it. There’s no way I’m going to be toasting anyone like a marshmallow today. Instead I grab a large rifle and a handgun.

  Michael grabs the same and we head back outside, and I smile when I see Amara and two other women already heading my way.

  “Had the same thought,” she says, giving me a quick hug. “You met Anne earlier, and this is Rachel. They don’t want to hide away either.”

  “My kinda women,” I say. “But this is dangerous and none of you are ready yet.” I start to walk away from them, unwilling to put them in danger.

  “I’m a black belt in karate and I used to go to the shooting range at least once a month for twelve years before…before everything,” Rachel says.

  I turn back to look at her, my gaze hard. I look at Anne and Amara. “I’m not protecting any of you.”

  “Okay,” they all say automatically.

  I sigh heavily. “You could get killed!”

  “We know,” Amara replies. “We still want to help. Anne can shoot too. She worked on a farm and had to kill foxes all the time.”

  I nod. “Okay, and you? What about you, Amara?” I don’t mean to sound mean, but I do anyway. I don’t have time to feel any guilt for that, though, because I can’t have her blood on my hands if she gets herself killed. When Amara doesn’t say anything, I nod. “Exactly. You’ll get yourself killed out there. Go back to your room.”

  I turn and start to walk away again, but Amara calls after me.

  “I’m going to help whether you like it or not, Nina.”

  I stop in my tracks and look over at Michael. He shakes his head once. When I look back at Amara, Anne, and Rachel, I nod. “Okay, just keep out of the main fight. Stay in the shadows, somewhere safe. Promise me?”

  Amara nods and the three women head inside. I turn back and start walking, but Michael isn’t with me. In fact he’s walking in the opposite direction.

  “Where are you going?” I call after him, completely confused.

  “I don’t want to be around when you get these women killed,” he says, looking back briefly over his shoulder. “I’ve seen what guilt does to you, and it ain’t pretty.”

  I can think of a million responses back to him, but I don’t say any of them because deep down I know he’s right. It will be my fault if any of these women get hurt, and the guilt will destroy me, but at some point sooner or later they have to join the fight. And that’s on them, not me. So I keep my mouth shut and let him leave.

  When the three women come back out, they’re all loaded up with a small gun each and either a machete or a knife apiece.

  “Good choices,” I say as we all begin to walk toward where we can hear the fighting starting. “Now please don’t get yourself killed or you know Shooter will never let me live it down.” I laugh, but it’s only to ease their fears. Because I don’t feel any humor in walking these women directly into danger. If anything, I already feel guilty.

  Chapter Twelve

  I don’t head back to where Shooter is. Obviously.

  I mean, I’m not stupid. That was one angry-looking dude. Not only do I not want to be yelled at again, but I have a feeling that he’d personally deliver me to my room and lock me inside if he saw me right now.

  So instead, we all head toward the main entrance where more sounds of fighting are coming from. I’m guessing that this was a two-way attack to throw the Highwaymen off guard, and it clearly worked because we don’t even make it to the main entrance when we’re greeted by a large black man with a handgun and a grin like a viper. I mean, if vipers could grin of course. My instincts are already alive and kicking, and I lift my gun and shoot him dead before he even realizes what’s happened. I hear Amara and the others gasp behind me and I know how they feel. Truly I do. I remember a time when I used to feel that same shock and horror at such blind killing. At the brutality of it all.

  But now I feel nothing.

  I turn around to face the women, feeling angry at their judgmental looks but trying to control my anger all the same.

  “What did you think would happen out here?” I ask in a hushed tone. “Those guns in your hands, they kill people. That’s what they’re for. That knife in your hand, what did you bring it for if not to kill anyone who threatened your safety?” I let my gaze move across each one of them and I shake my head. “If you can’t do this, you need to go and hide somewhere, now. This is no place to be having second thoughts. Out there,” I point to where we are going, “you will be killed if you don’t kill. So go if you need to go back to your room, go, and don’t feel any shame in that. Or stay if you want to be your own protector.”

  Rachel looks at Amara, and I already know she’s gone before she leaves.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t. I thought I could,” she mumbles and then turns and runs in the opposite direction.

  “Amara? Anne?” I ask.

  “I’m with you,” Amara says.

  Anne quickly steps forward, her gun hanging uselessly at her side for all the good that it’s doing. I’m about to yell at her to make a damn decision when she throws the knife in her other hand at me. It whizzes past my face, almost catching me in the cheek, and I hear a thump of something behind me. When I turn, I see another man on the ground, with Anne’s knife sticking out of his forehead.

  “What the fuck?” I splutter, looking down at the biker dude and seeing how close he had come to killing me.

  “I wasn’t aiming for you,” Anne says quickly as if that was my initial thought process.

  Is it weird that that thought hadn’t even occurred to me? I’m more in shock at her knife-throwing accuracy than anything else, but now that she mentioned it…holy shit, I could have just died…again. I almost shrug at the normality of that realization.

  “How did you do that?” I ask.

  She grins. “I also used to have a bit of a hobby for knife throwing.”
>
  “No shit,” I reply with another shocked shake of my head. The fighting sounds even worse now, and in fairness we could go back to our rooms and hide since we’ve already helped somewhat by taking out two guys. But of course we don’t. We’re not those sorts of women. “Come on,” I say with a jerk of my head. I pull the knife out of his head and hand it back to Anne, and then all three of us head around to the front.

  It looks like hell has been unleashed out here, I soon realize, as we march straight into the center of the battle. The Highwaymen are fighting another group of men, but I also note that there are women mixed into the other group also, and I have to give them a little respect for that, at least. It’s like a biker-on-biker war with a little deader action on the side when we make it to the front and see the main gates swinging wide open and letting in all hell.

  Amara and Anne don’t waste any time in getting stuck in, and we move forward and begin fighting. The Highwaymen don’t look impressed at all when they see us, and even move to try and block us from the fight in what I can only assume they think is chivalry but is actually nothing more than pig-headedness.

  And I tell them so.

  Repeatedly.

  Anne has disappeared off into the fight, and Amara is close by fighting a skinny chick with long dreads down her back. I almost feel sorry for the little dreaded warrior when Amara grabs her head and knees her in the face in a move I showed her just this afternoon. Almost. My heart swells with pride when blood explodes from the dreaded woman’s face and she falls to the ground.

  I’m unfortunate enough to grab the attention of a big burly looking dude with a cool as hell skull and crossbones eyepatch! He has the grimmest expression as he comes toward me, a large hatchet in hand which he swings at my head, and I’m almost not quick enough to dodge out of the way. How embarrassing would that have been? Not that I would have been around long enough to know how much he laughed over the top of my bloody corpse, what with being dead and all.