The Dead Saga | Book 7 | Odium 7

by Riley, Claire C.

  There was nothing there today, and I realized that I was disappointed by that. With nothing to kill, I might as well head home. However, I wasn’t ready for home yet. I wasn’t ready for Haven and its normalcy amongst the abnormal, a small slice of life in a world full of death.

  I sighed and gritted my teeth, the two feelings warring for space inside my empty chest. Sadness and resentment clawed at me, both of them too strong to ignore.

  “Hey,” she said, and I turned to see O’Donnell coming from between the trees, her gun slung over one shoulder, her cheeks smeared with dirt.

  She looked beautiful in that moment—a warrior amongst the chaos. Her features were calm, as usual, but there was something in her eyes that told me she wasn’t okay.

  “Hey,” I replied, wrapping my arms around her as she comes closer. I kissed the top of her head as she melted into my touch.

  I wished I could offer her more than that. More than me.

  I wished I could yearn for her the way she yearned for me. Instead, all I could think about is how she wasn’t Nina. How she wasn’t my one and only, but she was my one for now. That made me a bastard, I knew it did, but we do what we have to to survive, right?

  I plastered my stupid fake smile on my face as she pulled away and looked up into my eyes. I pushed the hair back from her face and leaned in to place a kiss on her lips. She accepted it, like always. Even though she knew it was bullshit.

  “What are you doing out here?” O’Donnell asked as we separated.

  “Could ask you the same thing,” I replied. “Creeping off into the woods alone is a sure-fire way to get yourself killed.”

  She laughed, but we both knew I was serious.

  “Just killing strays,” she said casually, and then her gaze went across the empty lake like she wanted to say more but didn’t know how to start. I didn’t want a serious conversation though; that wasn’t who we were.

  Since the Savages had almost killed me, I’d refused to be the sort of man that took things for granted. I was happy—if only on the outside; I was smiling and joking and pretending that everything was A-OK, when everything was anything but A-OK. I refused to let those psychopaths take away the man I was and destroy him. I’d never liked Drag, but I damn well respected him after what he went through. Right up until the end, he was still Drag. Cut to pieces, broken, bloody and dying, he was still a wisecracking, smartass, cocky bastard. They didn’t break him, and they wouldn’t break me.

  At least, I wouldn’t show how broken I was.

  I wouldn’t show how I barely slept.

  How I could hear screaming inside my head every time I closed my eyes.

  How the smell of meat turned my stomach sour because all I could think about was the stench of burnt flesh.

  How the memory of looking through the keyhole and seeing my friend beaten to death haunted me.

  “So?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Same as you—looking for strays. Just dumped the latest corpses into the pit and thought I’d come check out the lake, see if any more washed up before I head home.” I dragged a hand through my hair.

  “You always do that when you’re lying,” O’Donnell said, her eyes back on me. She nodded toward my hair. She took a step closer to me, looking up into my face. “I see you, Mikey.”

  I wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her closer. She put up a little resistance at first but eventually relented. I leaned down and kissed her mouth again, savoring her soft lips against mine. When I was done silencing her worries, I pressed my forehead against hers and closed my eyes.

  “I dumped the corpses in the pit and came here to kill any strays that had washed up,” I said, repeating my last statement, “I wanted to be on my own for a while. It gets noisy in there, you know,” I added on, admitting some truth to her.

  I felt her nod and I opened my eyes. She was so close that I couldn’t focus on her properly. She was a blur in front of me, our foreheads touching, our arms wrapped around one another, breathing in each other’s air.

  “I got you something,” O’Donnell said, and I released her and looked at her with a frown.

  She wasn’t much smaller than me, so we could look each other in the eye without me having to lower my gaze. She had a little dirt smudged against her right cheek, and when I looked closer I realize it was dried deader blood.

  “Yeah? What’s that?” I asked, forcing a smile to my face.

  She swung her backpack off her shoulders and crouched down before opening it up. She rummaged inside for a few seconds until she found what she was looking for and stood back up. O’Donnell was smiling, and the smile was infectious and made me smile wider.

  “Hold out your hand.”

  I held out my hand.

  “Close your eyes.”

  I closed my eyes.

  I felt something drop into my palm and I frowned, trying to work out what it was.

  “Open your eyes,” O’Donnell said, a smile in her voice.

  I opened my eyes and looked down into my palm and saw a pack of Starburst. I smiled and tore at the wrapper before pulling one out and shoving it into my mouth.

  “Damn, that’s good,” I groaned. I missed candy so bad. Like, out of everything out there that was gone, it was candy that I missed the most. Not beer or chicken wings or potato chips, but candy. I blamed my mom for my sweet tooth. It made the candy bar loss to Moo so much worse.

  “I remembered you saying that they were your favorite.” She was smiling triumphantly, like a cat bringing in a dead mouse to its owner to show its love and affection.

  “Thank you,” I said, and continued sucking on the candy, taste buds going crazy for the sugary treat. “I love it. I love it so much I’m not sharing it with you.” I grinned childishly and she smirked.

  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that they weren’t my favorites—not even close. My favorites were Jolly Ranchers. Cherry flavored, to be even more specific. I didn’t tell her that and instead I ground my back teeth down on Starburst and gave her my best grin in appreciation.

  “We should get back to Haven,” she said, and I nodded in agreement, looking up and seeing that the sky had changed to a soft orange as the sun began to set.

  Aiken didn’t like people being out for too long without knowing where they were. And after the mess of losing Phil and Ricky, no one was permitted out overnight. I hated it. I felt like a caged animal, trapped and bound to the walls surrounding Haven and the people within it. I’d leave—get the hell out of there—but I took from them two of their best fighters and they still came to find me and saved my life, so it was kind of my duty to stick around. So that was what I did: I stayed, I fought, I killed, I cleaned, I cooked… I did whatever I was asked because I was a good citizen of Haven now and I owed them my life.

  Even if every inch of my being wanted to get in the truck and drive and drive and drive

  …

  8.

  Mikey

  Aiken flicked the wooden toothpick from the left side of his mouth to the right as he listened intently to Timbo. I knew he was listening carefully to every word said by the big man, because when Aiken was listening he looked casual as hell—leaning back in his chair, shoulders relaxed, flicking that toothpick over and over. Timbo could have been talking about the second coming and Aiken would’ve had the same posture.

  “So, there you have it. Scouts have seen a decline in the zed population heading our way for the past couple of weeks. It’s like they’re heading away from us, toward something else.” Timbo shrugged and wiped his arm across his sweaty brow, and slumped back in his seat like all that talking finally wore him down.

  “Or someone else,” O’Donnell piped in, and Aiken’s attention moved to her. “I’m just saying, it’s not normal for them to just pass us by. The only plausible explanation is that someone is drawing the zeds to them.”

  “But why?” Timbo asked, exasperated.

  “Does it matter? The fact is, we have a clear path out now. We should hea
d out to look for those Savage bitches before we get stuck in here again.” Aimee was pacing the floor, her usual easygoing persona blown to pieces. She’d been like that for months now. With every passing day, the revenge she wanted against the Savages consumed her more and more.

  I knew exactly how she felt, but I also wasn’t stupid enough to want to go anywhere near them ever again. I’d take my survival with a side order of keeping all my body parts, thank you.

  O’Donnell sat up straight. “It matters. Of course it matters, Aimee, take your head out of your ass and think about it.”

  “I agree with O’Donnell,” SJ said. She didn’t normally sit in on the meetings, but she and her kid Moo had been coming to more and more of them. With Phil and Ricky gone, we were down a couple of decent fighters and these two had stepped into their shoes. “I think we need to really think about what’s happening here. Think of the consequences.”

  “Screw the consequences!” Aimee yelled. “They took Phil from me and I need to make them pay for that.”

  Silence fell across the room as Aimee’s words settled over us like a heavy blanket. Everything in my body wanted to go to her and hold her and apologize for letting Phil get taken, but it was too far past that now. She blamed me, and I let her.

  Aiken sat forward in his chair with a heavy sigh before pulling out the toothpick. “All right, all right, ladies, that’s enough.” He sighed again and stood up, walking toward Aimee. He put a hand on either arm and peered into her tired face. “I know this shit with Phil has cut you up—I know and I get it, believe me, but Haven can’t afford to lose any more of its people. There are others here, and they need protecting.”

  His voice was soothing and full of compassion, and it seemed to do the trick on Aimee because she nodded and let out a shaky breath.

  “I just…” she whimpered, and he nodded in agreement.

  “Now I’m not saying we don’t go. I’m just sayin’ we need to think this through clearly. We rushed out last time with a half-assed plan, and look what happened.” He glanced at me and I hung my head shamefully. I wasn’t sure if he was doing it to be a dick, but purposeful or not, the small act makes me feel smaller than an ant.

  Like an amoeba.

  Maybe even smaller than an amoeba.

  Like an amoeba’s shit.

  Yeah, that’s what I was.

  I was amoeba shit.

  “So what are you saying?” SJ asked, her eyes locked on Aiken, but I knew she was thinking of her daughter, Moo. She wouldn’t risk her only daughter’s life, and I didn’t blame her.

  “I’m saying that we get a small team together, go out on small runs to see if we can find the reason behind the lack of zed activity.” He sighed and patted Aimee’s arm before going back to his seat. “We’re going to need to do another supply run too. I’m being told that we’re running low on a lot of things, and we have Stormy heading back from the Highwaymen camp in the next week or so and she’ll need more supplies and a safe route home. We’ve got people here who need taking care of and she’s been gone long enough. So we coincide the supply run with a small scouting mission, but I don’t want anyone running off to save anyone from anything, ya hear me?”

  We all nodded and he shook his head irritably. I couldn’t really blame him. Every time we left the gates we ended up trying to save someone, but it never worked out right. Someone else always died. We saved someone and we lost someone. It’d gotten to the point that if you got in a life-or-death situation we needed to start handing out DNS forms. Do not save.

  “Achillies will be happy to see Stormy,” Moo said, a smile on her face.

  Kid needed a bath. Dirt was smudged over her cheeks, and her hair looked like it hadn’t seen a brush in months. SJ was looking the same, and then I looked around and realized that we all were. We’d all been on such high alert that no one had really had time to wash or clean, or even eat properly. We were all a mess. NEO was a mess. We were missing three people, but you would think it was twenty for the effect their absence was having on the group.

  “Those bikers okay now?” I asked. I’d heard there’d been a huge fight just before I was found. The Highwaymen and another motorcycle crew called the Devil’s Rejects had all been in some big brawl right before pulling their shit together and heading out with the NEOs to come rescue me and Phil. They’d found me causally strolling on down the highway without a care in the world. Well, barring the couple of deaders that had been on my tail for miles. Couldn’t shake them no matter what I did. Exhaustion and hunger had finally caught up with me and I was one staggering step away from crashing to the ground and letting them tear into me when O’Donnell and the huge army of people she’d gotten together found me.

  O’Donnell had saved my ass. She’d somehow managed to end the biker feud and put together a small army of men and women to come and find me. She really was an incredible woman. I could imagine that Nina would have really liked her.

  However, a lot of people had gotten hurt from the feud that day, apparently, but none had seen any real action with the Savages since they’d gone on the run. Stormy had stayed behind to fix everyone up. She’d almost had Aiken bring her dog Achillies to her once she’d realized that she was going to be staying for a while, but then she couldn’t do it to poor Fluffy. Fluffy was Phil’s dog and the poor thing had no idea what was going on. She’d been pining for Phil since he’d been gone, hopefully waiting by the front gate all day and night. Achillies had stayed with her the entire time.

  There was something beautiful in that—in Fluffy still waiting for Phil, and Achillies waiting for Fluffy. Something almost human about their love and how neither of them would quit on the other.

  It was also deeply depressing, and every day when I saw those dogs lying there waiting, I felt a stab of pain because Phil being gone was all my fault and I took 100% of the responsibility. If I hadn’t convinced them to help me look for Adam, then a whole chain of events wouldn’t have been set in motion. Lives would still be safe. Instead all I was left with was an empty hole in my chest, and when I tried to sleep the guilt filtered into it until it compressed my heart and I couldn’t breathe. People had died because of me. People had died for me. I wondered, on those dark and terrifying nights when I could still smell the rotting flesh inside those caves, how many other people had suffered because of me. What else did people lose because of me.

  “Yeah, pretty much back up to a hundred percent health,” Aiken said, not really looking at me. He seemed distracted. Hell, I guess we all were these days. “So, I need volunteers for a supply run and a small, and I mean small, scouting opp.”

  I raised my hand because how could I not.

  O’Donnell, Aimee, and another guy I didn’t know so well, Freddy, opted to go on the mission too, and we all filed out.

  “Mikey, can I grab a word?” Aiken said as everyone headed off to go get their stuff.

  I turned back to him, giving a small wave to O’Donnell to tell her to get going. She looked uncertain about leaving me, so I gave her a small smile and she hesitantly took off for home. I climbed back up the steps and stopped in front of him. Aiken pulled the toothpick from his mouth, replacing it with a rolled-up cigarette.

  “You want me to keep an eye out for tobacco?” I asked, nodding toward his thin cigarette.

  He blew out a thin stream of smoke. “Don’t go getting yourself killed for it, but if you see some, of course.” He walked to the railing and I followed, both of us stopping to look out upon Haven.

  It was evening, so most people were in their homes, though of course the platform surrounding Haven had the ghostly shapes of people walking along it and keeping watch. The evening was cool—verging on cold, even—the moon high and giving just enough light over Haven that we could practically see all the way down the main street. The air smelled of cooking—of bread baking in ovens, thanks to the solar panels—and from somewhere further down I was pretty sure I could hear music playing. If I closed my eyes right then, I could pretend that I
was back home. Back before this all began.

  All these years on the run and this was what I had been searching for: Somewhere safe. Somewhere I could belong. Where I had a place that meant something. With good people and something worthy of working for. Nina would have loved it there.

  “I’m not a man to pry,” Aiken began, interrupting my thoughts. “Ain’t nothing to do with me or anyone else what goes on between a man and a woman, but since O’Donnell is my right-hand woman and all, I figured it wouldn’t be too much of a imposition to ask you a personal question, but of course you feel comfortable enough to tell me to mind my own damn business if you please, all right?” His lazy drawl was thicker as he spoke, and I was good enough at reading people to know that it meant he had something serious to ask me.

  I frowned. “Okay.”

  “Well, all right then.” He took another drag of his cigarette. “So tell me: are you going to be letting her down slowly or quickly? Because that kind of shit could mess with Haven’s security.”

  I frowned harder, confused. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Aiken tutted and turned away from the street. Leaning back against the small railing, he looked at me, cigarette dangling from between his lips and a wonky smile on his face. His hair had been cut that day, and the sharp lines around the side made his face look more angular. The length on top was slicked back to keep it out of his eyes.

  “Now, I know you do, Mikey, and I’ve been good enough to let you stay here—welcomed you with open arms, even—saved your life and didn’t ask for nothing in return, but I do not like liars, and I do not like people thinking they can pull the wool over my eyes.” He plucked the cigarette from between his lips and smiled widely at me, that crazed twinkle in his eye that he got when he knew someone was bullshitting him. He was good at that, and right then he could see right through my bullshit like he had his own bullshit magnifying glass. But I wasn’t ready to admit anything to him or anyone else. And I wasn’t letting O’Donnell go. She loved me. How often does a man get to say that in his life?