The Dead Saga (Book 5): Odium V

by Claire C. Riley

  I lean against the wall again and look behind me again, seeing that the zed is close—too close this time. I can’t outrun it. I can’t fight it. My vision is so blurry I can barely see, and if there was anything left in my stomach I would be vomiting again for sure. As it is I’m just retching and sobbing quietly and hoping that I pass out before the zed catches up and rips my throat out. That’s the only part I’m worried about. Not the actual dying. That’s easy. I mean, it’s gotta be easier than being alive right now. But I really hate the thought of turning into a zed and eating people—I’m a vegetarian, for god’s sake.

  I try to push off from the wall, but I barely have any energy left and all I do is bump against it. Something behind me moves a little, which is weird so I turn around to see what it is. Through the blur I can see a square portion of the wall that looks out of place, and when I feel around it I realize that it’s possibly a door.

  “Oh my god,” I mumble and try to get a grip on the corner of it.

  I push on it hard, hearing it rattle and shift but not open. Something breaks the skin on my fingers, but it’s worth it when I get a grip on the door/possibly-not-a-door and I pull it open. It’s dark inside, but not as dark as my soul! Just kidding, maybe.

  Unfortunately for me, the zed is right behind me, and as it reaches for me it pushes me forward into the blackness and down a small set of concrete steps. We both roll together until we land in a heap at the bottom. Something falls on top of me, and it’s hard like wood, not soft and gooey like a zed. So now I’m fighting in the dark with a zed and possibly a tree branch, with my head cracked open and bleeding profusely, my arm broken and still no weapon.

  The zed grips my hair and pulls itself over to me, and I make a sound I’ve never made before. It’s sort of a crying, gagging noise that comes from somewhere deep within me. I reach out, my right hand finding the bottom of its jaw and punching it before it can chomp down on my face.

  I roll out from underneath it, gasping for breath and still making the weird noise. The zed makes another lunge for me but I’m ready for it this time, and my eyes have adjusted so I can see vague shapes around me. The tree branch was actually a chair leg, and I grab it and press it lengthways against the bottom of the zed’s jaw, basically closing its mouth.

  It’s going hysterical now—either from frustration because it wants to eat me so bad or because it’s sad that I’m going to snap its head off. I’m guessing it’s the first one, because I bet I smell damn tasty. But then I straddle the zed so that its head is between my thighs, and far too close to my lady parts than I would like, and I reach down with my one good hand and stick my thumb in its right eye. It’s actually pretty dry at first, though with a stretchy consistency, but as I push harder and harder, breaking the membrane, I make it through the soft tissue underneath and I hear the popping sound of the eyeball and juices begin to flow. The zed is freaking out now, and I push harder still until I feel something else pop inside its head and a small spurt of black ooze squirts me in the face and the zed stops moving.

  I gasp and roll off the zed and onto my back, and then I stare up at the dark ceiling. I want to congratulate myself for staying alive, but as the darkness above encroaches on me I know it was all for nothing.

  My survival is back at eight percent now, but it’s still not enough to actually live.

  I’m not a quitter—in fact the exact opposite—but even I have to admit that those are pretty lousy odds.

  I’m definitely going to die.

  Definitely.

  Eight per cent odds. Maybe less. It’s not much at all. Not that it really matters anymore. I just hope in my next life that I don’t eat any animals in my quest for flesh. Humans kinda deserve being eaten, but not animals.

  I blink. I know I’m crying. I’m still making that weird noise, but everything has stopped hurting now, so that’s a bonus.

  No pain.

  Finally.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I feel sluggish when I wake up. But I guess that’s what it feels like to be a zed. I mean, my insides are probably already starting to putrefy and fill my dying carcass with a ton of extra gas just waiting to escape me at the most inopportune time. Sucks to be me.

  Wait…do the dead have thoughts? A consciousness? Because I certainly do.

  I pry my eyelids open and look around me. Everything is still pretty dark, but nothing like previously. There’s a soft glow in two of the corners of the room, but I can barely turn my head to look. I feel like my body is in a vise, my head clamped in place by a headlock. It’s a weird feeling. Maybe I’m not quite dead, but almost. Maybe my body is turning, its muscles seizing up, and it’s dead and just waiting for my brain to catch up and die.

  Wow, dying sucks, but at least it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. I didn’t get eaten to death, so that’s a bonus.

  There’s a sound behind me, but since I’m already in the throes of death I’m not too worried. What’s the worst that could happen? I’m already dead so no zed is going to eat me.

  A shadow falls across me and I look up toward it, expecting to see a zed looking pissed off that it missed out on the O’Donnell buffet, but instead I see a woman. I can’t see much about her through my blurry haze, but what I do see is that she’s very human.

  “Hey,” I croak out unexpectedly. “How’s it going?”

  She doesn’t say anything, but continues to move her dark-eyed gaze over me.

  “I’m dead,” I say matter-of-factly to warn her away before I gain some strength and decide to eat her. I have to admit, if only to myself, that she’s starting to smell pretty damn tasty. Damn, I can see what attracts the zeds now.

  “No, you’re not,” she says bluntly. “Not yet anyway.”

  And then she’s gone from my eye line. I can hear her moving around but I can’t turn my head to find her in the dark since my muscles have seized up and locked in place.

  But she did say something pretty good. I’m not dead. Not yet anyway. She still smells good enough to eat though, so there’s that of course. Maybe I’m at the turning point—not quite human and not quite zed.

  I don’t know how I’ve survived so far, or if I actually will indefinitely, but there’s a small bubble of hope growing inside me that I might actually make it back to camp. If my body is on the fence as to which way to fall, I just might not turn. That would be really good.

  My survival odds are growing, and I’m at least back up to twenty percent again. Go me.

  There’s a scraping behind me, sort of like the noise a chair makes when it’s dragged across the floor. But I still can’t see what’s going on.

  “Any chance of sitting up, lady?” I croak out to her.

  “No,” she replies from somewhere behind me.

  “Please?”

  “No.”

  “You need to work on your bedside manner,” I mumble.

  Moments later she’s back, her face hovering over mine. She has a small bowl in her hands and she sets it down before dipping her hands in. She pulls out a glob of something before rubbing it over my injured shoulder and arm. The cream smells odd, like mint and antiseptic and herbs, and my skin tingles and lightly burns. It doesn’t hurt, but it’s not pleasant. I’d forgotten all about my broken arm, or shoulder, or whatever is going on with that part of me, but it’s beginning to ache again now that she’s touched it.

  “Please don’t touch it anymore,” I say, and she roughly spreads more cream on it.

  “This will hurt.”

  “It already does.”

  “No, this will hurt a lot.”

  “Let’s just leave it alone then, okay?” I plead.

  She pushes the bowl to one side and I let out a small sigh of relief. That is until she lifts up a wooden spoon and puts it up to my mouth.

  “Open,” she instructs.

  My eyes widen, and I clamp my lips together and shake my head before humming a fuck no to her. I have no idea what she’s about to do to me, only that she just said it
’s going to hurt. She reaches out with her herb-smelling fingers and pries my lips apart before shoving the wooden spoon’s handle lengthways across my mouth and forcing my jaw to clamp down on it.

  “This will hurt,” she says again, as if I had somehow forgotten her first warning. “I don’t want you to bite your tongue off.”

  Tears sting my eyes and I shake my head no, but she’s not even looking at me anymore.

  “Your choice then,” she says.

  I try to turn my head to see what she’s doing when I feel the most horrendous pain rip through my body, and I clamp my teeth down and scream against the pain before my vision blacks and I pass out.

  *

  When I wake up it’s still dark. The earlier smell of food is gone, replaced by the scent of piss and sweat. I’m taking it that means that I’m all human again. I try to move and realize that I’m not restricted anymore—well, at least not by my own body. I’m aching all over—you know, like I fell off a building onto a pile of zeds, then fell down some stairs, and fought in the dark with a zed. You know, that sort of ache.

  I roll onto my right side and push myself up to my knees, realizing that my left arm is in a sling. It hurts so bad when I move it, but staying still isn’t even an option at this point.

  “Hungry?” a voice says in the dark.

  I look over to the doorway where the voice came from and I see the woman from earlier. Her skin is so dark that she blends into the shadows and I can’t get an impression on her. Sure, she hasn’t killed me yet, but there’s still time. She comes forward, her face expressionless.

  “Are you hungry?” she asks again. When I don’t respond she pulls out a long-handled knife and sighs.

  “Wait,” I say hurriedly, holding my hands up. “I’m not dead, I don’t think.” I pat myself down to be sure. It hurts in some of the places that I touch, which is confirmation enough for me. Pretty sure the dead don’t feel pain.

  “Are you hungry?” she says again, her nose crunching up in disgust.

  “Depends on what you have to eat, lady,” I reply, already planning my escape.

  “Meat,” she says.

  “Meat?” I ask, and it’s my turn to scrunch up my nose. “Animal, mineral, or vegetable?” I joke, but I’m actually serious.

  She comes closer. “It’s cat, but it tastes like—”

  “Chicken,” I interrupt. “I bet it tastes like chicken.”

  She nods. Odds of survival are rising again. Thirty percent and looking good, I tell myself, sitting back on my haunches.

  “Everything always tastes like chicken,” I say, and she nods in agreement. “My arm?” I ask, concerned by how much it’s hurting.

  “Your shoulder was dislocated. I put it back in places and you passed out. I don’t think anything is broken, but I’m no doctor,” she replies.

  “Dislocated is good,” I say to myself, looking down at my arm.

  “Your head was cracked open; looked worse than it was, but it was still bad,” she continues. “I glued it and bandaged it.”

  “You glued my head together?” I say in horror, my hand reaching back to touch my skull but only touching a bandage. It’s wrapped all the way around, passing over my forehead and is fastened at the side.

  “Yes. It’s an old trick. It should hold. Hopefully. So try not to disturb it, okay?”

  “Okay,” I reply, feeling nauseous. I squeeze my eyes closed. “Odds are thirty-five percent.” I look up. “Did you see anyone else out there? My friends? How long have I been out?”

  My questions begin to come thick and fast as I think of more and more that I need to ask her, and she scrunches up her nose at me as if she can’t take so many questions at once. But there’s an urgency now that hadn’t been there earlier. I can survive this. I can find my group and we can go home together. Thirty-five percent odds are good odds in this world. On any given day they’re only ever at seventy-five percent anyway, so I’m at almost halfway. This is good.

  “Two days,” she says. “You’ve been out two days. Your friends were on the roof but they’ve moved on.”

  “Shit!” I say with rising panic in my tone. “Shit!” I repeat, for emphasis.

  “Food?” she asks.

  “I need to go find them. Can you help me? Will you help?” I plead.

  She looks thoughtful, her rich, dark brown eyes staring at me for several long moments before she turns away. “No.”

  It takes me a moment to comprehend what she’s saying, and when I do I’m speechless for a moment longer.

  She turns away and I sit up and watch her, my mouth agape in shock at her refusal to help me. Her hair is short, like crew cut short, but there’s no mistaking that she’s female, with those curves. She’s wearing dark jeans and black boots and a thin T-shirt that’s definitely seen better days. But it’s her belt that’s caught my attention, and the many weapons dangling from it.

  “No?” I ask, certain that I must have misheard her.

  “No, I will not help you find them,” she says without turning around.

  “But you have to! You have to help me!” I say furiously.

  When she finally turns to face me, she looks seriously irritated by me. “Have I not already helped you? Did I not already save you from the monsters? Did I not fix your arm? Am I not willing to share my food with you—a stranger who I know nothing about?”

  I nod in agreement, because everything she’s saying is true. She’s gone out on a limb for me, I get that, but it will be for nothing if I can’t get back to my group. I push myself up to standing, feeling lightheaded and weak.

  “I need to find my group before it’s too late,” I say while the rooms spins around me. I take a step toward the doorway and then I feel myself sag against the wall. “What have you done to me?”

  She comes over and shakes her head. “You need to eat. I will make you something and it will be the last time I save you.”

  She cocks her eyebrow at me and storms away, and I groan and slide back down the wall, a mixture of hunger and self-pity crawling over me. She’s right: she’s saved me and she’s still saving me, but I have to get back to my group.

  I look around the room that we’re in, taking in the cluttered walls full of old photos and posters, graffiti, and material hung from every wall to decorate it. The room is small, but I can see that it leads off into others, though what’s in them is anyone’s guess. From the looks of it, she lives alone and probably has for some time. I try a different tactic on her, because I need to get her on board if I’m going to find Ricky and the others.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to sound so ungrateful. I just don’t want to be separated from my group. They’re good people, and it’s not often that you meet people like that in this world, you know?”

  She’s standing on the other side of the room, stirring a pot over a small flame. Her shoulders are hunched, and they lower even further as I talk, so at least I know that she’s listening to me.

  “You seem like a good person too. You could come back with me.”

  She turns around slowly, but I can’t see her expression from where I am.

  “We always need people with skills like yours. You’ll be welcomed.” I’m not lying either; she would be welcomed. Aiken is always looking for strong people, survivors willing to help others. “What’s your name?” I ask. “I’m O’Donnell.”

  She turns back around and continues to stir the pot, and I worry that I’ve pushed it too far by getting personal, but then she replies.

  “Korah,” she finally says. Her shoulders fall, like it’s exhausting to say that name. “My name is Korah.”

  “Well, Korah, I need your help.” I’m desperate now, because with no weapons and a busted arm I can’t go out there alone. “My odds for survival are about thirty-five percent, but if you don’t help me they’re pretty hopeless. I’m talking ten percent, maximum. Do you see? Do you see why you have to help me?”

  She looks down at the bowl in her hands, a fleeting ex
pression passing over her soft features. I’m about to speak again when she walks toward me and holds out the bowl.

  “Eat. Then we’ll talk.”

  I nod and take the bowl from her, because at least it isn’t a direct no this time. And the food—cat, ughh, let’s just call it meat—smells delicious.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I begin to eat, barely chewing the chunks of meat before swallowing them down. I’m pretty sure the sound of the food hitting my empty stomach is audible to Korah. She sits in a chair on the other side of the room and silently watches me eating. By the time I’m done I’m feeling much better—less dizzy and nauseous than previously.

  I stand up slowly, my legs feeling like jelly, and I take the bowl over to where she was making the food and place it down. My arm and shoulder are throbbing painfully, and my back feels like I’ve been repeatedly punched in it. I reach up to touch the back of my head, but then remember that she told me not to disturb the wound so I pull my hand away instead.

  My eyes have fully adjusted to the dark now, and what I see isn’t encouraging. I can see fully the state that she lives in, and it becomes apparent very quickly that she doesn’t get out much. Maybe not at all. Like, in a really long time. But that is encouraging because right now it looks like she’s got nothing to lose and everything to gain. I just need her to see it that way.

  Her gaze is now downcast and she looks to be deep in thought. On the floor by where I was sitting are some chains, and I realize that she had chained me down, presumably in case I turned. Can’t say I really blame her, and at least I know why I couldn’t move earlier now.

  “These people—your group,” she begins.

  “Yes?”

  “You say that they’re good people? How are they good? Why are they good?”

  I think about what to say to her. Or more, I think about what will convince her to help me, because the truth isn’t always what people need to hear. In fact, it’s almost never what people want to hear. Especially in this world.