The Dead Saga (Book 6): Odium VI

by Riley, Claire C.

  I blinked and he was gone, replaced by Mikey’s deep brown eyes. His gaze was soft—comforting, even—despite the blood smeared around his mouth. He reached out, cupping my face in his palm, the warmth of it making me nuzzle into his touch as I whimpered, wanting his comfort—his love.

  “Please, Mikey,” I sobbed. “Please, don’t.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. Instead, blood dripped from the end of his tongue onto my cheek and I let out a loud sob. He coughed as more speckles of blood splattered my cheeks. Warm red liquid splashed my face and I tried to turn away from it. But there was no hiding from the inevitable. No hiding from the blood that was waiting for me. Mikey coughed again, and the droplets grew bigger, splashing against my chest and throat, and my hands curled in on themselves, my nails embedding into my palms until I felt hot blood run between my fingers.

  “Nina,” Mikey said, with tears in his eyes. His face contorted in sadness, twisting in pain as he pressed a bloody kiss to my lips. “I’m sorry,” he mouthed, and then he was groaning in pain, his back arching at an unfathomable angle as he clawed at his back.

  I was still trapped, held down to the table as I watched him stumble backwards, hands still clawing at his back. He turned in a circle and I saw the reason for his pain; a knife had been plunged between his shoulders, just out of reach of his grasping fingertips. Shooter stepped forward, a bloody piece of meat in his hand.

  “I gotcha, babe, I gotcha.” He smiled, and then he leaned down and pressed the meat to my mouth, prying my lips apart and shoving my own flesh down my throat while he murmured softly in my ear, reassuring me that everything was going to be okay.

  I tasted copper, the tang of my blood and flesh, and I gagged as Shooter held my mouth closed so I couldn’t spit it out. His hands roved over my body, touching places he shouldn’t have been touching, certainly not while feeding me my own flesh, and he sucked my earlobe into his mouth as my skin slid down my throat. I groaned, sickened by my own desires, and my stomach bubbled in hunger.

  “I gotcha, babe,” Shooter said again, and I nodded in agreement.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I shuddered, my body convulsing as I jerked awake. Nausea and bile danced at the bottom of my throat, my stomach clenching, wanting to purge itself of its contents.

  I sat up abruptly, making Axe and O’Donnell jump in their seats.

  “Fuck!” Axe yelled out in surprise.

  “You okay?” O’Donnell asked, looking at me with concerned eyes.

  I focused my eyes on the view outside the window. Darkness had fallen over the world, but the moon was high and bright, giving me a view over the flat landscape in front of us.

  “I’m fine,” I mumbled, steadying my breathing so I didn’t throw up everywhere. I swear I could taste copper in my mouth, like my dream hadn’t been a dream at all, but reality. I looked down into my lap, my hand discreetly running over my thigh and checking that everything was present and accounted for; no strips of me cut away. Check. Thank the Lord for that.

  “Well can you keep your whimpering to a minimum then? Because some of us are trying to concentrate on the road,” he replied dryly.

  “You’ve only just swapped seats with me after your little nap.” She turned to me. “I drove for a couple of hours but man he’s bossy, and not a good passenger at all.”

  “Not my fault that you’re a shitty driver.”

  “I’m a great freaking driver,” O’Donnell said flatly. “You’re a real prince charming aren’t you, Axe,”

  Axe looked over and smiled, flashing a mouth full of white teeth at us both, a glint in his eye that scared me more than I’d admit. Yet Shooter had trusted him to come on the trip with O’Donnell, so that had to count for something, right?

  Right? God, I hoped so.

  I pushed the dream to the back of my mind. There was far too much craziness for me to try to work out. Better to bury it and pretend it didn’t happen, like all problems.

  I stared at Axe’s profile, taking in the sharp edges of his face in the dim lighting of the truck. He was handsome and rugged, as most of the men in the motorcycle clubs seemed to be. It was bizarre, really. I had always thought the sort of men who rode motorcycles were bearded and dirty, gap-toothed, wonky-eyed, and with serious drug problems. Turns out I was just a judgy bitch, because they were nothing like that. They were just men. Men of all sorts, from different backgrounds and with different styles, just like any other person. And from what I’d seen of the Highwaymen, none of them were drug users with wonky eyes and gap teeth. Sheesh, I was an asshole.

  “What you starin’ at?” Axe asked, turning his head slowly to look at me. “You like what you see?” He winked, and I smirked and shook my head. “What? Gotta at least ask, right?” He chuckled. “We could die on this little road trip. Maybe we should all get some comfort in each other, just in case.”

  I yawned and stretched, sitting up straighter in my seat. “You ever think about switching clubs, Axe?” I asked him seriously.

  His smile fell immediately. “You ever think about switchin’ clubs?” he asked, mimicking my question.

  “I’m serious,” I said.

  “So am I.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m not part of any club.”

  Axe chuckled. “You fuckin’ Shooter?”

  I hesitated, embarrassed to admit it for some reason, but he took my answer in my silence regardless.

  “Then you’re part of the Highwaymen.”

  “That’s different,” I mumbled.

  “You act like the Rejects are the bad guys in all this and the Highwaymen the good guys. It ain’t that simple, Nina. Nothing ever is. Life isn’t black and white, good and bad. It’s about survival. About makin’ it through each day, no matter what.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” I said, and looked away.

  “And after what you just heard about your man and his plans for you, I thought you would have been more open-minded.” He pulled a cigarette out of his cut pocket and lit it, blowing out the smoke through his nose. “Guess I should have known better.”

  I scoffed. “It’s not like that.”

  “What’s not like that?” he replied.

  I rolled my eyes. “I don’t agree with what any of you are doing, but you can’t say that you think your club is better than the Highwaymen. Not after the way you treat your women. I mean, they’re basically your whores. I bet if they had a choice they’d be hopping, skipping, and jumping over to join Shooter and his men.”

  “Ya think?” he replied.

  I nodded and he inhaled deeply on his cigarette before speaking again.

  “You don’t know shit, woman. Our women are happy. They have choices, and they choose to stay.”

  O’Donnell scoffed under her breath and looked away with a shake of her head and Axe slammed on the brakes and the truck came to a sudden stop. Boxes fell over in the back of the truck and Axe pulled on the handbrake and turned to scowl at me and O’Donnell.

  “You bitches think you’d fare any better out there on your own?” He pointed out the window toward the destroyed landscape. The edges of his face had turned harder and more abrupt, like he could cut glass with the point of his chin, and his dark eyes could suck your soul.

  I swallowed and lifted my chin. “Yep,” I replied. “That’s what I’ve been doing since this all began.”

  “You mean since it all ended?” he said dryly.

  I rolled my eyes again. “I don’t need you or Shooter or any other man looking after me. Never have and never will.” I felt hot and annoyed, at him and all mankind, and wanted to lash out so badly with my machete. My hands tightened into balls at my sides; the urge to grip my sword and make someone pay in blood for all the wrongs in the world was overwhelming.

  “I hear that,” O’Donnell replied. “The day I need a man—or anyone—to save me is the day I put a bullet in my own head.”

  Axe looked us over coldly, his lazy gaze traveling over our bodies like a
predator sizing up his prey. I felt naked and vulnerable under his stare, but I refused to back down.

  “And that’s why neither of you bitches will ever be old ladies.” He turned away before starting to move the truck again.

  I wondered what he meant but didn’t care enough to ask. Likely it was something sexist and pig-headed that would make me want to chop off some of his most vulnerable parts, and I really couldn’t do that without causing drama for the clubs. So instead I leaned back in my seat like I didn’t have a care in the world and I closed my eyes, letting myself be lulled back to sleep by the rocking of the truck.

  *

  “Need to pull over and take a piss,” Axe said.

  “I was going to say you need to pull over so we can switch seats anyway,” O’Donnell replied.

  Axe scowled at her and she wagged a finger in his face.

  “I told you I wasn’t telling anyone where our base was.”

  Axe snorted out a laugh. “Whatcha thinkin’ of doing—blindfolding me or some shit?” He chuckled, but it ended abruptly when O’Donnell pulled out a strip of material from her pocket. “You’re dumb as shit if you think I’m wearin’ that, bitch.”

  “Then you’re dumber than me if you think you’re coming anywhere near Haven or any of my people, bitch,” she bit out.

  They glared at each other, and despite the tension of the situation I couldn’t help a snort of laughter from escaping. They both turned to glare at me and I shrugged.

  “You two calling each other ‘bitch’ is hilarious an all, but I think we have bigger fish to fry.” I pointed out the window toward the huge crater in the middle of the road, which was filled with deaders and what looked like swamp water or something equally disgusting.

  “Shit on a stick. That your doing?” Axe asked O’Donnell.

  She frowned at him, a look of indignation on her face. “Did I somehow create a giant crater and fill it with zombies? Seriously?”

  “It’s a pretty cool roadblock,” I said with a shrug.

  She deadpanned me and then turned her attention back to Axe. “No, this is not my doing. Idiot.”

  “Well it’s someone’s doing. That shit sure as hell ain’t Mother Nature.”

  We stared at the moving mass of zombies for a couple of minutes in silence, each of us contemplating our next move. The smart move would have been to turn around and find a different route through, but clearly none of us were smart because when Axe shut of the engine and opened his door to go and get a better look at the deadly roadblock, O’Donnell and I both followed.

  The smell was wretched—a cross between your household drains being blocked by a dead skunk and rotting corpses sinking in swamp water…I mean, I know the second option was the actual reason for the smell, but just describing it like that didn’t do the smell enough justice. This was a smell that you could taste and feel. It was almost a real thing that you could capture and mold. And yeah, it was really, really gross.

  Axe pulled out his gun, his hard gaze roving around us. I took that as my cue to pull out my machete, and I noticed O’Donnell already had her gun out.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “You mean not stating the obvious?” O’Donnell whispered.

  I stared at her with a raised eyebrow.

  “These deads are fresh,” Axe said, nodding toward them.

  I looked over, making a point of looking closer that time, and he was right—those people were only a couple of days old. The flies were still on them, the blood still putrid. Most deaders you ran across now tended to be dry and crispy. Their bones dry, like old wood left out in the sun too long. Their skin paper thin and splitting in places. But not those. Those deaders barely had the milky film over their eyes.

  “A trap?” I asked, wishing I’d stayed at the Highwaymen headquarters then.

  “Well it ain’t a welcome party, that’s for damned sure.” Axe took a couple steps closer to the pit of deaders, his face expressionless. I wasn’t sure how he was doing it. Did he not have a sense of smell or something?

  “Dude,” I said, gagging a little. “That smell—”

  “Ain’t right, I know,” Axe finished off for me. “This ain’t a trap for us.”

  “Then who’s it for?”

  “For him,” a female voice said to the left of us.

  We all swung in that direction, Axe letting off a shot before I could even blink. Someone shot back at him and Axe ducked and rolled to one side while O’Donnell and I crouched and ran back to the truck.

  We hid down the side of the truck, peering around it as a spray of bullets let loose at Axe’s feet and he cursed and fired back blindly.

  “Put the gun down!” the voice yelled out again.

  “It’s a woman,” I mouthed, turning to look at O’Donnell.

  Her eyebrows suddenly raised as realization climbed her features. “Aimee?” O’Donnell whispered before stumbling up to her feet and rounding the truck. “Aimee? Is that you? Don’t shoot me!”

  “O’Donnell?” the other woman called out, the words tumbling from her mouth in a half sob. “Oh my god, O’Donnell, is that really you?”

  A woman broke out of the tree line, her gun still raised and aimed at Axe, who was still on his knees, looking pissed off. She started toward O’Donnell, her watery gaze moving between Axe and O’Donnell the whole time.

  “You okay?” Aimee asked. “Did he hurt you?”

  “I’m fine, I’m fine, and no, he didn’t hurt me. He’s helping me.”

  “Where’s Phil? Is he with you?” Aimee’s voice broke on his name. “Please tell me he’s with you!”

  “I’m sorry,” O’Donnell said, the two words sounding painful as she said them. “I wish he were, but he’s not.”

  Luckily for Aimee, O’Donnell was there to catch her as she sagged, her shoulders heaving.

  “I thought…I thought he was still alive.” She clutched a hand to her chest. “I thought I’d know if he were gone.” She frowned and O’Donnell pulled Aimee to her, hugging her.

  They hugged for a long time, with both of them sobbing quietly against one another while Axe and I stared on in awkward silence.

  He finally got off his knees and stalked toward me. “She’s hot,” he said, nodding toward Aimee as he lit a cigarette.

  “Is that all you can think about?” I snapped at him.

  “Nope, I’m thinking about how she nearly shot me and how I’ll make her pay for that.”

  I turned to him slowly, my mouth hanging agape. “You’re not serious!”

  His mouth split into a grin. “Of course I’m not serious, I’m not an animal.” He shook his head. “Always so fuckin’ serious, Nina. You and Shooter are perfect for each other,” he chuckled.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “What is this?” O’Donnell asked, looking down into the deader road swamp.

  “We got hit after you left,” Aimee said, and O’Donnell sucked in a sharp breath. “We’re okay—a couple of injuries but nothing Stormy couldn’t fix up. But it was bad, and worrying, and then you guys didn’t come back so we put two and two together and assumed maybe it was Mikey that had told people where our group was. After that, Aiken wouldn’t send out a team to look for you in case we got hit again.”

  “So you built a zombie sludge party to welcome us back?” O’Donnell said with a grimace. “Umm, gee, thanks, I guess?”

  Aimee chuckled, and her laughter sounded like the sort of laugh a princess would have. It was so pretty and delicate. She was everything I wasn’t in the girl department—feminine and girly.

  “We convinced Aiken to let us build roadblocks to stop any direct routes to Haven, to stop anyone finding us. I come out and check it once a week.” Aimee started to walk and we followed her into the edge of the woods and away from the stench of death.

  There was a huge oak tree with lines carved into it, and Aimee pulled out her knife and pointed up to a sign carved around the tree base.

  “Miss Foxxxy Love & Lavender miss you,” I
mumbled. I looked at another tree, reading the words. “Lavender wants you to come home. Okay, who’s Miss Foxxxy Love and Lavender and who are they missing?”

  “My Phil.” Aimee smiled sadly, a crease forming between her dark eyebrows as she looked back at O’Donnell. “What happened to him?” she said, the words sticking in her throat. She swiped away tears from under her eyes and lifted her chin like she was preparing for the worst.

  O’Donnell looked back at me, her usually hard gaze pleading with me to help her out. Aimee looked like she was about to cry, so I took a deep breath and filled her in on the good and bad news.

  “We think he could be still alive,” I said, and Aimee nodded, her chin trembling. “He’s been taken by some bad people who want to do bad things to him, I guess is the least brutal explanation. O’Donnell and I teamed up with some other semi-bad people to try and rescue him and Mikey. He’s a friend of mine,” I say uncomfortably.

  “And mine!” O’Donnell cut in, and Aimee looked between us two as the awkwardness of the situation continued to simmer below the surface.

  “Semi-bad? What the fuck?” Axe snapped. “Semi-bad ain’t even in the cosmos where we’re concerned.” He grinned. “And where these bad people are concerned, I prefer to call them psychos.” He sneered.

  I groaned and put my hands on my hips, my machete banging against my side. “If you two think you can explain this mess any better than that, then be my guest.”

  Axe shook his head and looked Aimee up and down like she was a slab of meat before cracking his knuckles. “Let’s put it this way: there’s a bunch of crazy cannibal bitches eating people and selling off humans to the highest bidder like they’re at a meat farm. Your boy sounds like he’s one of them. We’re building a big ol’ army to take these psychos down and we’ve come here to see if your leader will help before it’s too late,” Axe drolled. “And just an FYI, the people they’re selling off for burgers—they’re not dead.”

  “Too late as in—”

  “As in they get seasoned and then thrown onto the barbeque, sweetheart.” Axe threw his cigarette to the ground, ignoring the stunned look that Aimee threw O’Donnell. “So how do we get to your base? Because we ain’t got much time left before my brothers go in, guns blazing, whether we’re back or not. And I don’t think any of the people any of us give a shit about are gonna make it out alive if that happens.”