The Dead Saga | Book 7 | Odium 7

by Riley, Claire C.

  I felt my anger growing, but I tried to keep it in check. Something told me that losing my temper with them wouldn’t serve me well.

  “Fine,” Gauge snapped, his face a picture of fury. “Still think this is a bad idea, but no one fucking listens to me anyway. Max and Highlander will go up the ridge with you to get their bikes. Your horses are up there, so get one and follow them back down. Axe and I will wait here with our bikes and then we’ll go together. You’ve got ten minutes and then we’re gone.”

  Axe smiled like he’d won some sort of battle. Highlander and Max nodded automatically, a strange look passing between the two men. Gauge’s cigar was between his fingers and he put it to his mouth and lit it again, pulling on it until the end glowed orange and then he breathed out a mouth full of smoke.

  “Hurry the fuck up,” he grumbled, and we turned to leave.

  We left the gas station a bloody death bed and we climbed back up the ridge as Axe and Gauge moved through the bodies, searching them for anything useful. Highlander whistled as we climbed higher, Max moving ahead of us all to make sure the path was clear. Freddy needed a lot of help from Carl and Highlander, and sweat clung to us all—going up was harder than going down—and when we got to the top, Carl slipped out of his brown leather jacket and tied it around his waist.

  Only three of the horses remained; the fourth had somehow managed to snap free of its reins. Highlander and Max uncovered their bikes, moving the branches and foliage that had been hiding them. The whole time they glanced between themselves and I watched them carefully, suddenly untrusting of them.

  “I’ma need a hand getting Freddy up on the horse,” Kelli said.

  Highlander and Carl helped hoist Freddy up onto the back of the horse, and I felt a pang of sympathy as he cried out in pain. I hoped he didn’t lose his arm because of this. In the old world he would have had a really good chance, what with doctors and nurses and antibiotics, but in this world an injury like that was worse than bad. Time was ticking and we needed to get him back ASAP.

  “Stop squirming so much,” Highlander yelled at him. “Gauge said to keep your arm as still as possible, ya wee ginger shit.”

  “Stormy is still at your clubhouse,” Kelli said, a small frown popping onto her face at the realization. “Someone needs to take me there. The job’s too big for Alfie and I don’t want Freddy losing an arm because the Highwaymen decided to keep our doctor for so long instead of allowing her to come home.”

  “Och, don’t be like that. It’s not my fault, woman,” Highlander grumbled. “We didn’t keep her there, she stayed because she was needed.”

  I turned and headed away from them, moving slowly, cautiously.

  “Besides, we’re all needed here so there’s no one to take you to the clubhouse right now. Head to Haven, get your guy Alfie to look at him, and as soon as I get back to the clubhouse I’ll grab Stormy and have her at Haven before you can say ‘Highlander is a sexy motherfucker.’”

  “Where are you going, bro?” Carl called to me.

  “Thought I heard something. I won’t be a minute,” I replied as I took another step.

  “Want some help?” he asked, coming up beside me and clasping a hand on my shoulder. We shared a look and he nodded almost imperceptibly. He lowered his hand and held it out for me and I took it. Carl wore a single silver ring on his hand, a dragon engraved into it. A red stone glinted from the dragon’s eye and I looked back up into Carl’s face as he let go of my hand. Go, he mouthed, and turned from me. “I’ll check this side,” he called back as he moved away.

  I nodded. “Probably just the horse that broke free.”

  I took another step, listening as Highlander and Kelli continued to bicker about keeping Stormy for too long and how she was important and needed at Haven. How Alfie was great, but he needed her to continue training him.

  I stopped by the two large motorcycles, the keys dangling in the ignition like a dare or a taunt, and I glanced over my shoulder. Max was watching me, big brown eyes intent on my every move, his eyebrows pulled down heavy.

  Carl stepped in front of him. “Hey, did you hear that?” he asked as Max tried to step around him.

  “Get out of my way!” he yelled, shoving Carl hard enough to make the other man stumble backwards.

  I swiped a hand over my chin and turned away from them, stepping quickly to his motorcycle and climbing on.

  “Hey!” Max called behind me, and I heard him start to move toward me.

  I turned the key and started the engine and it roared to life beneath me, and then I was pulling away, heading through the trees and the undergrowth and toward the mines that the Savages were hiding in.

  It was time to end this.

  End them.

  30.

  Nina

  I was holding on to Shooter with my good arm, my other arm clipped to his front to secure me to him so I didn’t fall off. My face was pressed against his hard back as we rode, twisting along the broken highways and avoiding debris that was scattered across the gray asphalt.

  We’d found them.

  Goddamn but we’d found them, finally.

  When Highlander had come back, maps in hand, my heart had frozen, glee and fear and desire building in me. Glee that we had found them, fear because they terrified me, and desire for their blood to spill.

  I had braced myself for the argument with Shooter, already knowing that he didn’t want me to go, but true to his word, he agreed to let me come with him. He hated it—I knew he hated it—and yet he also knew that he either agreed or I’d find a way to go anyway.

  The Savages were mine.

  I was going to take them apart piece by piece.

  It didn’t matter anymore if I lived or died. All that mattered was that I killed them. That I made them pay for every heinous thing they had done. I needed them to pay for the pain they had caused. Perhaps then, if I survived this, I would want to live again. Maybe I would want to become part of the future instead of barely surviving the past.

  “You okay back there?” Shooter called back to me.

  “Yeah,” I replied.

  “We’re almost there. I’m pulling over in a minute.”

  I nodded and tried to get the frantic beating of my heart under control.

  We’re almost there.

  The words just didn’t seem impactful enough to highlight the monumental moment.

  Everything had been leading to this. From leaving Mikey to go back into that warehouse so I could save his life. To meeting Shooter and the other Highwaymen and then letting Michael leave. To finding O’Donnell and Butcher and discovering the horrors of Mikey’s situation. To then finding him, half starved, exhausted, and almost dead at the side of the highway with a deader grasping for him…

  I glanced over, seeing the trucks from Haven and their people—O’Donnell being one of them.

  He chose her… the voice whispered to me.

  I know, I know! I wanted to call back. Because I did know. He’d chosen her, and I had accepted that long ago. My revenge on the Savages was so much deeper than that now though. It was beyond comprehension how much I despised them. It wasn’t even really to do with Mikey anymore because I had accepted his loss already, and in some ways they had brought us back together. They had given me a moment to see—to know—that he was alive, and he was okay. No, my hate for the Savages was so much more than that now.

  Highlander had been right all along.

  So had Gauge and Shooter and Balls.

  My hate for the Savages wasn’t just because they were monsters, it was because Scar wasn’t there to punish. And I needed to punish someone. Anyone. I needed someone to know my pain. To understand my loss. And then to die at my hand because of it.

  I wanted to be doing it for the right reasons, but I was only human, and my humanity was calling for my rage to be sated and my vengeance to be bestowed upon their necks.

  Shooter slowed the motorcycle and then he pulled to the side of the road. The bikers behind did the sam
e, and as a convoy we headed deep into the forest.

  The Savages were in a mine about a mile from the road. No doubt they would have scouts everywhere, and that was fine. We weren’t going in quietly, sneaking in upon our enemy in the dead of night in the hopes to catch them unawares. No, we were going in guns blazing. Storming their castle and dismembering their army in one heavy swoop.

  We were armed to the teeth and we were prepared for casualties—deaths and worse. But none of us seemed to care. No one had backed down from this fight, this battle to end evil, and in a way it felt like we were all fighting our own secret war inside. This was more than ending the Savages. This was our way of fighting back against every loss we had endured since the dead had risen. We had been helpless to stop those monsters, but these were our second chances. If we could rid the world of this plague upon humanity, then perhaps we had taken a small step toward saving the world from all evil.

  Shooter stopped the bike, and with one quick flick he unhooked me from him. I reached behind me and pushed my stump into the waiting machete attachment. Balls had worked all night on making it so I could fix each weapon on myself. Without the metal and tools they had gotten from the warehouse, it wouldn’t have been possible. I felt a tiny stab of guilt because of Crank’s death there, and yet I was incredibly grateful all the same.

  I felt rebuilt. Like a new woman. Like Frankenstein’s monster brought back to life. A new lease pumped through my veins, vengeance and fury carrying me onwards toward an end I could not possibly understand yet, and yet somehow inexplicably knew would be worth it.

  Shooter pulled the folded map out of his cut and laid it on the ground, and as everyone climbed off their motorcycles and out of their trucks, they all gathered around.

  “There’s only two ways in and out,” Shooter began, pointing to two areas on the map. “Course, there’s always ways that we can’t expect—who knows what damage has been done, or changes have been made—but the map shows these two ways into the site. There’s only one way, that we can see from this, into the mine.” He pointed to a circle on the map, which had already been drawn. “There’s a large lake with a small waterfall next to the first entrance into the site. We need one crew heading there to clear it so no one can sneak up on us. The other crew is heading right for the entrance.”

  He stood up and looked across at every one of us, his jaw steel and his blue eyes determined. He sighed and I felt every part of that weight on his shoulders. This wasn’t easy for any of us, but for Shooter, for Aiken, for Rev and for Anne, this had to be heartbreaking. They were the leaders of their groups and they knew that this might be the last time they saw some of them alive.

  The Highwaymen and the Rejects were joining back as one club after today, but for the moment they were still two clubs, two leaders, two men sending their people to their possible deaths. Axe had left Rev in charge while he went with Team A, though he assured us he’d be coming if he could.

  We all knew what that meant.

  Gunner had insisted that he come along, and so had the two remaining nomads, Sketch and Battle. Balls, Backtrack, and Spearhead had also come, and I saw in each of their eyes that they were ready to die for Shooter, for their club, and for this cause.

  Axe had sent Rev and Nitro and three others that I didn’t know so well: Linc, Texas, and Crow. Texas was utterly terrifying in every possible way. His whole demeanor screamed nightmare. He was huge, and always scowling. His voice deep like bass. Linc, however, was the exact opposite of Texas. He was young, barely twenty-five, and tall with broad shoulders and a mop of thick brown hair that he wore slicked back. He had gray flecks in his hair that framed his face, and I found that strange because he was so young. He also wore thick-framed black glasses that had the arms taped on, and he swore that they were his last pair and panicked about breaking them on a daily basis. But mostly, Linc was—from what I’d heard—one of the kindest souls. I hadn’t heard a bad thing about the guy. He was polite, considerate, and I wondered how he’d ended up in a group like the Rejects. I didn’t really know much about Crow, other than to stay out of his way.

  Aiken had come with people from Haven—some that I knew and some that I didn’t. O’Donnell was among them, alongside a woman called SJ, a man called Timbo, and a stunning, fierce-as-hell-looking woman named Aimee. And then there were my warrior women. Four of them had come along: Anne, Rachel, Lois, and Bianca. I didn’t know Lois and Bianca that well, but they seemed unfazed at the prospect of dying, and in turn, of taking life.

  “Do we have any idea how many of them there are?” Linc asked, pushing his glasses up his nose.

  “Honestly, no. They’ve only ever been seen in small groups,” O’Donnell said. “I will warn you all though. We saw them a couple of days ago. They were leading the dead somewhere.”

  A heavy silence fell momentarily as we all considered that, and then Anne broke the silence.

  “Maybe they were clearing them? Moving them somewhere else to kill?” She shrugged.

  “Maybe,” O’Donnell replied, but she didn’t sound convinced.

  “All right, I need two groups. One to head to the waterfalls and another to head straight to the mines.” Shooter looked around at the group of men and women before him, a frown on his face. The groups began to separate into two, and then Aiken and Shooter divided them again, splitting them so that they were equal in weight and weaponry.

  I hadn’t chosen my group yet. Instead I was standing on the outskirts, waiting to see where Shooter went so I could go in the opposite one. If I was by his side, he’d be in more danger because he’d be constantly watching for me and making sure I was okay.

  Shooter frowned when he saw me standing to one side, and he gestured me to come stand by him, which I did.

  “You look like you’re plotting,” he said, his deep voice a thick growl.

  “I am,” I agreed readily. “I need to be where you’re not.”

  I waited for him to yell at me. To demand that I stay by his side. To order me to do as he said. But instead he merely replied with…

  “All right.”

  “Just ‘all right’?” I asked, quirking an eyebrow at him.

  “Well, it’s an all right and don’t get yourself killed, okay?” Shooter leaned over, pushed his hand in my hair, and pressed his mouth to mine. He kissed me hard and slow, taking his time over every stroke of his tongue and every move of his lips, and when he pulled away I saw an incredible sadness in his eyes.

  I swallowed, glancing around us, embarrassed, but no one was watching us. “Don’t get killed either,” I said, and moved to the other group.

  Shooter held my hand until the last possible moment, my fingers slipping from his grip slowly until we were parted, and then we were moving away from each other. Heading deeper into the woods, toward possible death.

  “You two still going strong then?” O’Donnell asked as she sidled up to my side.

  Sweat trailed between my breasts, the heat suffocating now that we were deeper in the woods. We walked with care, our gazes moving around us all constantly, checking for traps, checking for zombies, checking for Savages. Checking for anything and everything, but already knowing that we’d likely miss something because we couldn’t really know what the Savages had planned. There were so many dangers hidden away in this place, and that thought was enough to make me think smart and not rush into anything.

  “Something like that,” I replied, hating her, envying her. “And you?” I asked, wondering if she and Mikey were still together. Still strong. Still in love.

  “Yes, very much. I think we’ll get married,” she replied without missing a beat.

  I, however, stumbled a step, her words making my muscles soften and then contract and turn to stone momentarily while I comprehended what she had just said. The words hung between us like a pendulum blade, slicing back and forth as they cut me in half, eviscerating the air between us.

  “He’s asked you?” I said, my words barely audible. My stomach ached like I’d
eaten something bad, and I wished she would just go away. Just leave me the fuck alone. I didn’t want to speak to her. I didn’t want to hear what she had to say. I didn’t need to know about her happy life with Mikey. My Mikey… “Never mind, it’s none of my business.”

  “We’re very happy together,” she said, and the pain lanced through me, the pendulum swinging ever closer to my heart.

  “Good,” I said, forcing a smile to my face. “I’m really happy for you both,” I lied. But my lie was firm and strong, like it wasn’t a lie at all but the truth. I needed it to be the truth. I needed him to be happy and for me to be…to be…I don’t know. I didn’t know what I wanted for me anymore.

  “How’s the arm?” she asked, changing the subject, and I turned my head to take in her expression.

  She was looking at me, her gaze skipping from my damaged arm to the ground so she didn’t trip, but it was obvious that it wasn’t a kind or caring question. It was just a way for her to show me that I was broken, and she was whole, and that was why she and Mikey worked and we never would.

  O’Donnell was the better woman and I was nothing but a used-up rag toy.

  A part of me shriveled up inside, and I found I couldn’t hate her anymore because I hated myself more. I hated that I was useless. I hated that I was broken. I hated that she was beautiful and whole and capable and I was just this damaged, shattered woman barely hanging on. I had been kidding myself the past few days, telling myself that I was still strong.

  I felt small and feeble. Like a newborn deer, my legs felt unsteady and shaky, and I trembled with grief for myself. I would have loved nothing more than to wallow in self-pity and despair, and I would, eventually. But not now, not today.

  I straightened my back and swallowed my pain. “Just super,” I replied. “I’m like Robocop or something now. They built some cool attachments and honestly, it’s probably the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” I lied through my teeth again, feigning happiness as I swiped the air in front of me.