Odium II: The Dead Saga

by Claire C. Riley

I pick at the bones of the now consumed rabbit, sucking hungrily on them like they’re a lollypop. There wasn’t nearly enough for all of us, even mixed in with two ration packs. I take a drink from my water bottle, finishing it off and then going to fill it with rainwater by the cave entrance. The wind is really howling now, a real storm brewing, and I hope it passes over quickly; we can’t afford to be stuck out here for too long. There isn’t enough food to get us by and it’s getting colder by the day. I screw the top back on my bottle and go sit back by the fire, my eyes feeling heavy and ready for sleep.

  By the looks on everyone’s faces, they’re feeling the same way now that we’ve eaten.

  “Let’s get some blankets and try and get some rest,” Mikey says with a yawn.

  We all cover the ground with a thin blanket and then Alek and Emily snuggle under another while Mikey looks to me to do the same.

  “Don’t be trying anything funny,” I quip as I lie down.

  He snuggles in behind me, his legs cool against my own as they slip in between. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he says, and kisses my cheek and snuggles closer.

  I can feel his funny business resting against my backside already, and I push my ass against him. “I’m serious. I need to sleep,” I whisper, glancing at Emily and Alek, who are already snoring.

  Mikey chuckles quietly and pulls me closer. “Go to sleep, Nina.”

  “‘Night, Mikey.” I yawn and chuckle at the same time.

  His hand gives a squeeze on my tummy as he holds me close, and for the first time in months—even though I’m cold and hungry—I feel safe. Safe and loved. I want to weep with the realization that these people care about me. That I hadn’t been forgotten at all, they had been plotting and working on a way to save me all along. Before I can cry at the thought, I slip into oblivion, the wind howling up a storm outside our snug little cave.

  Chapter 9

  “We need to get somewhere dry, somewhere warm,” Emily chatters, huddling around the dwindling fire.

  “It’s been three days—do you think it’ll be safe to leave here now?” I ask Mikey without looking up. The sight of the orange flames licking at the branches is giving me some semblance of warmth—especially since the fire itself actually isn’t doing much of a job.

  Mikey scratches his gruff beard, and despite the cold I want to snigger. He hates being hairy—his words, not mine. He prefers a shaved head and a shaved face, but right now he’s looking more and more like the caveman he’s living like. He sees me watching him with a grin and stops scratching.

  “I can’t be certain. I don’t want any of us walking into a trap.” He subconsciously scratches at his face again and I have to look away.

  I think the cold is making me delirious. “I think we’ll have to chance it, Mikey. Emily is right: we can’t stay here much longer. If we do, we’ll get stuck for the winter, and we will not survive that.”

  Winter has struck us hard. One minute it was a rainy autumn day and the next a full-blown winter storm. Mikey looks across at Alek for confirmation. The look makes my blood boil, like he needs another man’s approval. I raise an eyebrow at him and huff.

  “Fine, we’ll go. Pack your shit up and let’s roll,” he grumbles and storms off.

  “Touchy fucker isn’t he?” I say and storm off to my corner of the crappy little cave.

  I know we’re lucky to be alive, lucky to have found this freezing-everyone’s-asses-off cave, but the cold and the thought of the imminent winter is making us all grumpy. We’ve survived summer and the blistering heat, but winter is a new challenge, for me especially. I just about survived winter behind the walls; how I’ll manage out here I don’t know. I pull out an extra sweater, slipping it over my bony shoulders.

  Shit, that didn’t take long at all.

  “Well, I’m done,” I say with a roll of my eyes. Emily still hasn’t left the fire, and it looks like Alek is packing her things up for her. I had my reservations about him, but he’s more than proved himself. Emily is turning into a young woman, and she’s sworn to me they haven’t done anything but kiss and cuddle. For some reason I believe her.

  I drink another full bottle of rainwater and stand it to fill back up. Sure, it’s not the most hygienic thing to do, but it’s better than dying of thirst. And anyway, what could be fresher and cleaner than rainwater? There were too many chemicals in our old lives anyway—chemicals in our water, our food, and our hygiene products. Sure, things were easier, but how many of us were actually killing and destroying our bodies with all that crap without even realizing it? Things are simpler now. We wash when we can and nearly all the time with nothing but water. We drink fresh rainwater, we eat food from the land—organically grown, so to speak: rabbits, fowl, weird-tasting plants that taste and look like crap but Alek swears to the almighty heavens that I won’t die from eating them. So now our bodies are pure and wholesome. Hell, we should live to be a hundred at this rate. Oh, deep joy.

  Can you imagine a couple of old ladies with rusted old walkers being chased by a horde of the undead? Jesus, would the deaders spit out the dried up meat or would they not care? Hell, while I’m thinking about it, what the hell will happen then? At what point will these fuckers die off—again—and we can go about building some normal semblance of a life?

  “Earth. To. Nina. I think we’re ready to go.”

  I look over at Mikey with a grim smile.

  “Sorry, baby. I know I’ve been grumpy. I’m just . . . worried.” He scratches at his head and then sees my stare and stops. “And I fucking hate being hairy!” He frowns.

  I don’t know when it happened, when he started calling me by pet names like baby and peaches. I don’t know whether I like it or not, but I haven’t stopped him yet, so I guess I’m stuck with it. For now, at least.

  We all climb down the cliffside, thankful that it’s stopped raining long enough for us to do so without the wind lashing our backs. The chill in the air is heavy with the threat of snow—yet another promise of the oncoming winter. The wind whips loose strands of my dark hair around my face and into my eyes, making them sting and cry fake tears. My booted feet sink into damp earth, mud sucking at them as I try to pull them free. I stumble, nearly falling to my knees, until Alek’s arm wraps around my middle and steadies me. He offers me a small smile before letting go and continuing to walk, one of his strong hands covering Emily’s. Her eyes are downcast as she carefully dodges the muddy puddle I just stood in, narrowly avoiding being sucked into its depths.

  I look up every now and then, scanning around us for signs of life—and death—but thankfully, we’re alone. The land has turned, in a matter of days, from a bounty of life to a drab, washed out existence.

  We’ve been walking for a good couple of hours when I look up ahead and see the shadows of buildings and houses. It gives me the extra burst I need to keep me going. My joints are seizing up through cold, and my muscles are aching from the extra strain. I can’t wait to get inside one of those buildings. I just hope I have the energy left in me to fight if I need to. Of course I worry that they will be filled to the brim with the living dead, but I’m freezing and nothing is keeping me away out of those four dry walls today. Not undead or alive.

  I pass Alek with a newfound determination in my footsteps, eventually finding myself trudging along next to Mikey. He lifts his gaze to mine as we walk.

  “How you doing?” he asks.

  “Be happier when I’m inside somewhere,” I grumble.

  “Won’t we all,” he retorts with a snort.

  As the town gets closer, it becomes clear that it’s deserted—or from a brief once-over from this distance it certainly looks that way, anyway. My heart does a little leap of joy at the thought. A town with no deaders: wouldn’t them be some cool breaks?

  Crouching by a burnt-out car with a stack of fleshless bones inside, we each catch our breath, no thoughts but those of getting warm in our minds. Mikey looks from me to Alek and Emily with a nod before heading out from behind the car and into
the street.

  It’s deserted, a dead town. Literally. We slowly walk from building to building, checking in windows and such for any sign of life—or death—but come up empty. The only thing for us to see is destruction. Pretty much everywhere we look things are burnt out, vandalized, or spray-painted upon. It seems odd, eerie even, and I hope to God that we haven’t stumbled upon some weird psycho town of hillbilly crazies. My mind can’t seem to find any other alternative. I mean, why else would there be no deaders around? As we get closer to the center of town, everything changes and things look cleaner and tidier, which is even more confusing.

  “Does anyone else find this shit weird?” I whisper.

  Emily raises a hand. “Me. I seriously do—this place is way creepy.”

  “Well, we’re here now,” Mikey says. “Let’s find somewhere to hold up for the night, then we can figure out what to do and where to go tomorrow. Nightfall is coming, so there isn’t time to go anywhere else.”

  We’ve somehow made our way back to the edge of town without realizing it, and back into the crummy shithole part.

  “We need to pick a building then,” I suggest in a whisper as I spin in a circle, trying to pick the easiest-looking building I can. Even whispering, my words carry in the wind and seem louder than they should.

  The thing about the apocalypse is that everywhere is silent. You’d be surprised how much noise the world makes until it’s all gone. Cars, talking, phones, music—it all adds up. In a world without noise, it doesn’t take long to hear something out of place. I guess that’s how the deader stumbling toward us found us: our whispers and footsteps in a silent world are a dead giveaway. Pardon the pun.

  “I got this.” Alek steps forward and raises his gun.

  “No guns,” Mikey yells. “We don’t want to attract every zombie for miles.”

  Alek puts his gun away, sidestepping out of the deader’s way as it reaches for him clumsily. It snaps its jaw, showing blackened, broken teeth, and growls. Alek pulls out a large knife, and as the deader lunges for him again, he rams the knife through its forehead. Black ooze gurgles up around the wound, and when it falls to the ground he leans down and retrieves his knife, wiping it across the deader’s back to clean away the gore.

  We pick a little cul-de-sac of houses, choosing the one farthest from the main part of town for us to hole up for the night. We head around the back of the house and into the overgrown jungle that used to be a back yard.

  “Shit, I was always on my husband’s case for not cutting the lawn, but even he wouldn’t have let it get this bad!” I snort with a chuckle. Mikey looks at me without saying anything. “What? I resort to tacky humor when I’m nervous.” I shrug. Then I realize that I mentioned my husband, and I grimace but don’t say anything.

  At the back door, Alek uses his elbow to smash in the small window, then reaches inside and unsnags the lock and we all rush inside. The house is eerily quiet, just like the rest of the town, and I have a weird memory of doing this very thing with Emily after we first escaped the walled city. Only this time, there’s no banging coming from old man dead guy upstairs, and no thumping at the back door from deaders to let them in. This house is still and quiet; nothing stirs.

  I almost jump out of my skin when Emily coughs, and all three of us turn to her and hush her loudly.

  “Sorry,” she whispers.

  Mikey treads quietly along the hallway that leads from the back door to the kitchen. The carpet has long ago grown moldy and mildewed underfoot, but it’s as if someone has tried to clean it away, leaving an odd musty lemon smell in the air. The house is the image of perfection. In the kitchen, teacups line shelves perfectly, plates stacked clean and white in their cupboards. The cloth even hangs from the tap over the sink, as if waiting to be used.

  I peek into a cupboard, and the one thing that I would want to see is missing—food. I pout and close the door. Into the living room we go, and there upon the table is what was most likely once a beautiful birthday cake but is now a long ago rotted pile of dried up mush. The room is decked out in streamers and birthday signs; unopened presents are piled in the corner, empty glasses upon the table. This was someone’s birthday party at one time, I think morbidly. Stains dot the carpet where blood must have once soaked through. No bones are here, though; in fact, the room is spookily clean, with only a couple of telltale signs that something isn’t right.

  “Anyone else finding this all a little weird?” I ask.

  “Again, yes, me!” Emily speaks urgently by my side, even raising her hand like she’s in school. “I don’t like it here, can we go to a different house?”

  My eyes look out the window where soft white snowflakes have started to dance down from the skies. “Well, if we’re going to a different house, we need to go now, before that gets any heavier.” I look around the living room. “In fact, I definitely want to leave.” I tug on Mikey’s elbow, feeling like a frightened little girl, but something isn’t sitting right with this house.

  We head back through the house, passing through the clean yet barren-of-food kitchen to the back door, exiting into the back yard and heading over to the next house along the row. We go through the same process of breaking the small window on the door, picking the lock, and sneaking inside, but find the situation is pretty much the same here, too—barring the missing birthday celebration, anyway. Everything is immaculate; the only odd thing out of place is a pinky-brown smudge on the beige walls—which I assume was at one time blood, which someone has tried to clean off—and a pool of browny crusted something-or-other on the floor. Again, I’m going with blood. Bravo, give the lady a prize!

  I turn to the others. “It’s like someone’s tried to clean up the mess. You know, the zombie mess. This is weird.”

  “I don’t like it, I say we keep going,” Alek suggests.

  “Too late for that,” Mikey says.

  We follow his gaze out the window to see the sky heavy with snowfall; fat flakes fall endlessly to the ground below, quickly covering it in a light dusting of white.

  “Crap,” I breathe out.

  The tension in the air is thick as we pile to the upstairs of the house. We go from room to room checking out of the windows, seeing nothing but the slowly whitening ground.

  “I say one of us keeps watch tonight.” Mikey sits on the edge of the bed. “Something isn’t sitting right with this place.”

  I snort. “Really? What, the weird ghost town in the middle of nowhere, freshly cleaned of all zombie remnants and barren of food—is that what doesn’t sit right with you?” I shake my head at him. “Can’t see why. I mean it’s nothing like that crappy old horror movie House of Wax or whatever it was called. No, nothing at all like that.” I stare out the window with a grumble.

  Mikey doesn’t say anything, and a tug of guilt lies in my gut.

  I turn to look at him, noticing him looking more worried than before. “Jesus, what now?” I snap.

  “That movie used to scare the crap out of me,” he says with a shudder. “Why would people do that to each other?”

  I scowl. “Are you serious? People don’t do that to each other, that’s why it’s a movie.”

  “But they could.” He gestures around us. “Look at this place—it has serial killer town written all over it.”

  “Shut up, Mikey.” A shiver runs down my spine now. Damn it. “It’s just a stupid movie that isn’t even scary, and this town is nothing like that.” I look back out the window. “Nothing at all,” I repeat, not believing my own words.

  Emily comes in, followed by Alek. “It’s freezing.”

  “I know.” I head to a walk-in closet and pull open the pine doors, shuffling through the racks of clothes, finding nothing but summer outfits. “Stupid summer apocalypse.”

  I reach up to the top shelf of the closet, standing on my tiptoes, and fumble around until my fingers grip a large cardboard box, and I pull it down. I rifle through the contents, finding only old photos, books, and old pottery—mementoes from a
life long ago. I step back inside and reach up again, grabbing another box and stepping backwards with it until I can set it down on the bed. I tug open the corners and pull out sweaters and winter coats with a whoop.

  “Score.”

  Emily comes over, sees my find, and smiles the biggest smile I’ve seen all day. Together we rifle through the belongings until we are decked out in sweaters and thick coats.

  “That’s so much better,” Emily says, snuggling further down into her coat. “You need to see if there’s anything in your size, Alek.”

  “I’m not wearing women’s sweaters,” he states seriously.

  “Dude, it’s just a sweater,” she says as she roots through some of the drawers in the room. “You’ll freeze at this rate. You need dry clothes no matter what color they are. Now stop being a baby.”

  “I’m not wearing women’s clothes,” Alek grumbles at Emily’s back as she moves on to a second drawer.

  “Alek, it’s only a sweater,” Mikey laughs. “Quit being such a baby.”

  I look at him with a raised eyebrow. “Well, go on then. Go find something to wear.”

  “What?” He stops laughing, eyeing the box and then me. “I don’t think there’ll be anything in my size.”

  “I bet there will,” I reply.

  “No, no, I’m a big guy…”

  “Not that big,” I interject. I shuffle through the box, finding a couple of things that would be around his size, and hold them up. “These’ll do.”

  Mikey’s eyes go wide. “No. Hell no, I’m not wearing that!”

  Emily turns back around with an armful of clean socks and smiles.

  *

  It’s my turn to keep watch, but really, only Emily is actually sleeping. That girl can sleep through anything. Alek cuddled her until she fell asleep and then stood up with a stretch and a yawn. He comes into the bedroom where Mikey and I are talking, and sits down.

  “You should sleep while you can,” I whisper to him.

  “I know, but my mind won’t turn off. I can’t seem to turn it off. I keep coming up with different plans.” Alek shuffles on the small sofa bed to get comfy. It groans under his weight. “I keep thinking about Fallon and what he’s going to do now.”