The Dead Saga | Book 7 | Odium 7

by Riley, Claire C.

  She patted my arm in a motherly way as she spoke, and my smile slid from my face like melted wax.

  “I told her that I was waiting for you and Adam,” she said, nodding happily, her eyes growing in clarity as she spoke.

  “Dead Nina?” I asked, still frowning. “You spoke to dead Nina?” My stomach squeezed painfully at the sound of her name on my lips.

  “Oh yes. A while back now, before you came back to Haven. You’d gone to find Adam and she came here with some other people—a mean man with a big axe—and she was so very sad.”

  I stopped walking and turned to her. “She was here?”

  “Yes. I’m not crazy you know!” She sounded offended, and I wasn’t sure how to respond to that because clearly she was crazy. She was seeing dead people, among other things. “She said everything was a mess, and I told her not to give up.”

  “I think you must have imagined her, Joan,” I said, my voice gruff. “Nina’s dead, remember?”

  Joan rolled her eyes. “I know that, that’s why I called her dead Nina, but she hugged me back and she said she wasn’t sure she’d ever see me again, and then she went inside with the big guy.”

  “What big guy?” I asked, feeling ridiculous that I was even entertaining this idea.

  “Tombo?” she said hesitantly.

  “Timbo?” I replied.

  Joan nodded. “She didn’t want to hear me sing though.”

  “What?”

  “I asked her if she wanted to hear me sing and she said no, which was rude because I won awards for my singing back in the day.” She shook her head, her forehead crinkling as she tried to remember something else, but then her face cleared of her current thought and she looked back at me with the craziness back in her eyes. “I need to go to the bathroom.”

  I was lost deep in my thoughts, knowing that what Joan had just said was complete madness, and yet my heart was holding on to it like Rose to that door in the ocean, and no matter how hard I tried to let go, my fingers clutched the thought that she had been here like my life depended upon it. It was impossible, I knew that, and to believe any different made me as crazy as Joan, yet my heart thumped like it was true. Like it knew something I didn’t.

  Joan had stopped walking, and she lifted her skirt up and squatted on the ground beside me. I looked down at her, confused at what she was doing until I smelled it.

  “Fuck, Joan.” I gagged and turned around, taking a few steps away from her. I was about to leave and head back to my coffee when Joan came to stand by me, linking her arm back with mine again like she hadn’t just taken a shit in the middle of someone’s lawn. “You need to clean that up,” I warned, realizing that it was SJ’s house.

  “Clean what up?” Joan asked, looking completely confused as to what I was talking about.

  I shook my head and pulled her along until we reached her house. She let go of my arm and headed up the steps, opened her front door, and then turned around to wave goodbye.

  “Where were you going?” I asked, hoping for at least one sane answer from her today.

  She pursed her lips as if deciding something, and then she reached into her bra and pulled out the small notepad and came back down the stairs toward me.

  “I’ve been making a list,” she announced with a nod of her head, her features serious. “I’ve been listing all the people that come and go from this place. I like to keep track of who is here at all times, because it helps me keep the voices straight in my head. I know then if who I’m talking to is really there or not.”

  I nodded thoughtfully. “Did you make a note of when dead Nina was here?”

  She frowned. “Well I guess I would have.”

  She opened the pad and flipped through pages and pages of names and descriptions of people. small sketches that were actually incredibly accurate. I saw Timbo eating a Twinkie, Aiken smoking a cigar, Ricky standing outside O’Donnell’s house, Phil and Aimee hand in hand, and then I saw me. It wasn’t a me that I instantly recognized though; it was obviously just after I’d gotten back from the Savages. I was thin—gaunt-looking, almost; my eyes were lost and faraway. I glanced at Joan and she was smiling at me.

  “I used to pose nude for a French painter, you know. He taught me how to draw. I still pose nude, would you like to see?” she offered.

  “No, no thank you, Joan,” I said, my words barely making it past the lump in my throat at seeing myself so broken. “Is Nina in here?” I asked.

  “I think so.” She turned some more pages and a face flashed across the paper that I didn’t recognize. “Who’s that?”

  “That’s the axe man,” Joan said matter-of-factly. “He was here with dead Nina. I don’t know if he was dead though. I stayed away from him.”

  I stared at the image of the man, wondering who he was. His image was too accurate to be someone fake. He looked scary as shit too. Tall, broad, a rough beard, shaved head, and a big fucking axe in his hands. He looked like he was wearing a leather jacket of some sort, but the arms had been cut off it.

  She flipped another page and there she was: Nina. My Nina. And goddamn, she looked beautiful. Long dark hair flowing down her back, deep brown eyes staring off into the distance, her mouth pulled into a slight frown. I hadn’t realized I’d taken the notebook from Joan, yet I found it in my shaking hands, Nina’s image blurring as a single tear fell onto the page. In the background was Aiken’s house, and next to her were Aiken and O’Donnell. They were talking about something, and whatever it was, Nina didn’t look happy about it.

  “See?” Joan said. “There’s dead Nina.”

  “This is impossible,” I muttered. “This isn’t real.” I shook my head, closed the pad, and shoved it back into Joan’s hands. “Nina is dead. We both saw her go back inside. We heard the gunshots.” I choked on the last word, my throat constricting and strangling me. “It’s been over a year now.”

  Joan’s smile had fallen. “I’m sorry,” she said, placing a hand on my hand. “I see dead people.”

  “What?” I asked, feeling sick and dizzy. Wanting to look at the picture of Nina again, but also not wanting to see it ever again, because it hurt too damn much.

  “Like in the film, The Seventh Sense, or was it The Eighth Sense? I see dead people. They move among us all the time like they think they’re alive, but they’re not. I think Nina is the same. I think she thinks she’s alive, but she’s really dead.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, she’s dead, Joan.”

  “That’s sad,” she said, pushing the pad back into her bra. “You’re not dead though, are you?”

  I snorted on a dry laugh. “It sure feels like it at times.”

  “Sometimes living is harder than dying,” Joan said, her tone melancholy. “I need to go feed the chickens now.” And then she turned and headed back up the stairs to her house. “I would really like to see that film again. If you stumble across a video store, make sure to rent me a copy of The Sixtieth Sense, please.”

  She slammed the door shut behind her and I turned and stared back down the street, wondering why I felt a growing dread in my stomach. Nina was dead—I knew that and I believed it. Joan was as mad as a hatter, that was for damn sure, and yet her drawing had been a punch to the gut in its likeness of Nina and Aiken and O’Donnell.

  It had seemed so real. But it couldn’t be.

  This life, this world, wasn’t that fair.

  It didn’t bring people back together. It didn’t let fates be entwined enough to cross paths like that. And even if it did, that drawing couldn’t be accurate. Someone would have told me by now. O’Donnell would have surely told me. Aiken, at least.

  No one could keep a secret like that.

  Could they?

  20.

  Nina

  “Can you sing me a song?”

  “No, read me a story!”

  “No, braid my hair…”

  I stared among the dirty faces of the children surrounding me, terrified and in awe of their survival skills. They had managed out there f
or all those years with no adults. Well, there was Tyson, who was the closest to a grown man any of them were, but he had been a child when the world ended too.

  I was still sitting on the floor, my back and ass aching from sitting on the hard concrete for so long. I stretched my shoulders and glanced over at Crank again, feeling sadness in the pit of my stomach once more.

  “I can’t braid hair,” I said to the little girl in front of me. I assumed she was a little girl, going from the tangles of long brown hair sticking out from the side of her mask and the slight femininity to her tone. I held up my stub of an arm, my machete still attached—or as these kids kept calling it, my robot arm. Tyson hadn’t even tried to disarm me, which I found strange, but I was glad of. Clearly he didn’t find me a threat, and that was a mistake.

  “Oh.” She sounded sad and she shuffled from foot to foot, looking uncertain of herself. “Can I have a hug then?” she asked, and dear God what was happening?

  I glanced over at Tyson sitting on his throne, his legs thrown over the arm while he leaned back on the other, watching us all. Some of the children were playing with my hair, fascinated with the long dark strands, for some reason. Others were talking to me, making up stories similar to the ones I’d been telling them for the past few hours. All of them whispering. Little voices, both male and female, chattering about puppies and flying unicorns and swimming in the ocean. My memories, my stories were coming back to haunt me through their hushed voices, the stories twisted and turned upside down as they included some of their own memories into them. And they were not nice memories. They were stories of parents being torn apart and unicorns whisking them off to safety. Of men snatching little girls and then turning into monsters that devoured human life. Of wild dogs who tore apart the children’s enemies, but then they all went swimming…

  It was horrifying listening to the stories, more so because they all seemed so unperturbed by it all, each brutal and bloody death inciting laughter or squeals of excitement. Each victim in the story turning into a hero as they befriended the monsters.

  Tyson’s mask was still in place and I wondered, not for the first time, what he looked like underneath it. Would he still be as terrifying if I could see his face? If I could make out his childlike features?

  He suddenly sat upright, his gaze falling from me toward the door, and the children fell silent and moved away from me, scattering into the darkness as the doors opened and two children whose height suggested an age of around eleven or twelve came toward him.

  “They’re here,” one of them said, moving into the shadows.

  They were hiding like they were afraid, but I doubted that was the reason. I still wondered if I needed to hide too. Was I in danger by being there? I mean, clearly I was in danger by being there, but at least this threat—these children—I was aware of. What other threat could there be?

  Tyson stood up and moved toward me. He stared at me on the floor before crouching down so he could look into my face, his head cocking to one side as he spoke. That kid had seen one too many horror movies before the world had gone to shit, that was for damn sure.

  “I would suggest that you don’t draw any attention to yourself,” he warned. “Our guests aren’t as nice as us.”

  Nice? I wanted to snort in laughter. I’d been sitting on the cold, hard floor for hours, my friend’s dead body slowly decaying next to me. I was surrounded by creepy little kids demanding my one hundred percent attention and recalling some of my favorite childhood memories but inserting death and gore into each and every one of them… There was nothing nice about any of that. But of course I kept my mouth shut, because loose lips sink ships and all that, and I wasn’t ready to die just yet.

  I nodded, and he stood back up and moved away from me, and I watched as masked children filed behind him until there was a group. A herd of them, almost.

  The doors I’d watched Shooter and Highlander go through opened and four people entered. I wondered briefly if it was going to be Shooter, but then noted the slender frames of these people. It was too dark and they were too far away for me to ascertain anything else about them, and I hated that I felt so vulnerable sitting there, but it was too late to move and hide.

  Horrifyingly, Tyson held my life in his hands, I realized as the people came closer. I narrowed my eyes to try to get a better look at them, wondering who would be crazy enough to willingly come to speak to these masked feral kids.

  “Do you have the water?” Tyson asked. The children around him whispered so quietly amongst themselves that I couldn’t make out what any of them were saying.

  “Yes. As always, we keep our word,” a female voice replied. “Do you have our trade?”

  So they were there to trade… The situation was getting weirder by the second. I could see that they were all women, and none of them looked even vaguely frightened of Tyson or the other kids. The whole thing seemed surreal, and I wondered if the kids were as dangerous as we’d first assumed, but then I glanced over at Crank’s dead body and knew that we’d definitely been correct in our assumption.

  “We do.” Tyson glanced over to the left and nodded, and the crowd of children moved, scattering off into the darkness. “Two this time,” he said, and the woman looked dissatisfied.

  “This one,” the woman said, glancing over at me, “is she part of our trade too?” She asked simply, as if I wasn’t even there.

  I had my head lowered, but I glanced up through my lashes then, my heart pounding in my chest, more than ready to cut her head off if she came anywhere near me.

  “No, this one is mine,” Tyson replied.

  “Ours,” a small female voice whispered from behind him.

  “Yes, ours. She’s all of ours,” more voices agreed, and a chill ran down my spine.

  The woman and another person came closer, looking down at me as if I were beneath them. A pet that they might kick. Or an animal in a zoo that they might poke through the bars.

  “She’s fat,” she announced suddenly. “I will trade you for her.”

  My breath caught in my throat at her words too quickly for me to even comment on the fact that she’d just called me fat and no one had called me anything but skinny or tiny in years. I looked up at her sharply, her sharp, angular features coming into view.

  The strange woman above me stared down, her features smooth and relaxed like she didn’t have a care in the world. Her clothes were leather and brown and her hair was long and braided down her back. She was no more frightening than any other woman had ever been, and yet she was terrifying enough for me to want to get up and run. Enough for me to not be able to squeeze a word out of my too-tight throat, and yet I didn’t know why.

  “I’m not for trade,” I bit out, my eyes narrowed on her.

  “She’s ours,” the children whispered desperately.

  The woman was still staring down at me, her pale face exceptionally beautiful despite her creepiness. I glared up at her and a slow smile spread across her lips.

  “No, she’s not for trade,” Tyson said in his best stern voice.

  “I want her,” the woman argued, standing up. “I will take her with us and you can have twice as much water.”

  The hushed whispers of the children filled the warehouse, some in agreement, others in disagreement. And I realized that my life was being bartered for. That Shooter and Highlander would come back and find me gone. Gone to where I wasn’t sure, but gone I would be. And then what? Then he’d blow the place apart and kill everyone inside, and I wasn’t in complete disagreement with that, but I would still be gone!

  There were too many people there for me to fight at once. Too many children with weapons and nothing to lose because they held no compassion, no empathy for human life. And despite the women not having any guns on them that I could see, I knew danger when I saw it and they encompassed the word and very meaning wholeheartedly.

  I looked over at Tyson, thinking of the longing in his voice earlier. He wasn’t a child anymore, he was almost a man, and
a man always wanted one thing only.

  “Tyson,” I said, my tone pleading, and the children gasped because I’d used his name in front of these other women. “Sorry, sorry,” I mumbled, moving away from the strange woman staring down at me and crawling over to Tyson on hands and knees. Which was incredibly difficult to do with only one arm.

  When I reached his feet I looked up at him beseechingly, trying my best to not look too terrified and instead give him my best sexy gaze.

  “Please let me stay with you,” I said, reaching for him, my only hand grazing over his ankle and up his trouser leg to stroke along the skin and coarse hair underneath.

  I was a thirty-something-year-old woman and he was still a teenage boy on the cusp of manhood. This was wrong on so many levels, but I didn’t care; I’d promise him anything right then to make sure I stayed there and didn’t go with those women. Something about them was evil. I could feel it in my bones, even though I couldn’t say exactly what was wrong with them.

  He looked down at me and I watched the slow bob of his Adam’s apple at the promise of something he’d possibly never had before but wanted so much. Probably dreamed about. Wishing and waiting for one of these masked girls to grow up so he could have his way with her. The thought made me feel sick, even if it was a practicality of life.

  “She stays,” he said firmly, looking back up at the woman, his chin jutting out.

  No matter what the age, or state of the world, men were still pretty damn simple when it came down to it, and I breathed a grateful sigh of relief.

  The children that had left came back, dragging behind them something heavy wrapped in a dirty bedsheet. It was large, whatever it was. The dirty, gray-white cotton being pulled along the floor stretched over a lumpy shape beneath and I frowned at it, wondering what it could be and if it would be enough to appease the freak that wanted to take me with her.

  She held her expression firm, a cold, calculated look on it as she turned her attention to the sheet. She was pissed off now. I guess people didn’t normally refuse her. “Open it,” she ordered.