“We need to help them!” I yelled, turning to Shooter. “There’s women in there.”
I watched as one of the women started to climb out of the passenger window, and my heart froze, realizing how bad it really was. “Shooter, that’s your women! The Highwaymen women!”
His frown deepened, and his eyes went wide as my words sank in, and then he looked away from me, toward the mass of bodies trying to get into the truck as another of the women climbed out the window and onto the roof of it.
The gates thankfully hadn’t collapsed, and instead the truck was holding them in place, but that would only be for so long. Metal screamed as the truck moved under the weight of the deaders beating on it, and I covered my mouth to stifle my cry.
“How?” he grunted as we all moved forward, Butcher forgotten. “How are they even here?”
“It don’t matter how, we all die if we open those gates,” Scar snarled out, his gold teeth flashing at me. “Whoever the fuck is out there stays out there to fend for themselves.”
I stared between the two men, noting the satisfaction on Scar’s face at the very prospect that someone—a lot of someones—were going to die. He’d tried to hide it, but he hadn’t been quick enough to hide it from me. He was a madman. More deranged than I had originally thought. More deranged than I could ever have thought. In some ways he was worse than the Savages, because there was no reasoning behind his lust for death.
Gauge turned to Shooter, looking furious for all the right reasons. “Prez?”
“The gates stay shut,” Scar said again, like it was his decision to make.
It was my turn to glare at him then, my narrowed stare running up and down his body like he was something I had stepped in and needed to scrape back off. “This isn’t your clubhouse. You don’t get to make that decision, asshole.”
Scar’s mouth twitched and his gaze slid to Shooter. “Better control this woman of yours before I have to control her for you, Shooter,” he chuckled.
I shook my head, my jaw snapping open. “I’d love to see you even try!”
Scar smirked and took a step toward me, his ugly features hardening. “I like ’em feisty.” He looked me up and down. “We could definitely have some fun while I train you up. Show you how to be a good girl for me.”
“You’re disgusting, and I’d rather die!” I bit out.
Shooter suddenly barged past me, his shoulder slamming into mine in his haste to reach Scar, and I cried out in pain and shock. He grabbed Scar around the throat, his face inches from Scar’s. He pulled out his gun and pressed the end of it against Scar’s temple, the look of a madman on his face.
“I’ll show you fun,” Shooter bellowed into Scar’s face.
Scar started to laugh, literally laughing in the face of death, and I wondered at which point he’d actually lost his marbles, because clearly he had none left if he thought Shooter wouldn’t hesitate in blowing his brains out and be damned the consequences. But then I looked around us, noticing the Rejects pulling out their weapons and aiming them at the Highwaymen. Yeah, Shooter would kill Scar in a second, but then everyone else would die too. Everyone was going to die, and then what? Mikey would still be trapped with no hope of ever being rescued.
“I would back the fuck up if I were you, Prez,” Scar mocked. “That is if you don’t want your crew being blown to hell.”
“Shooter, let it go,” Gauge said, his dark eyes moving around us. “It ain’t worth it. He ain’t worth it.”
I knew he was talking about me—that I wasn’t worth it—and I agreed. Those men’s lives weren’t worth mine. Not even close. But those women by the front gate, they sure as hell were.
“Shooter,” I said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “They need our help, come on.”
I could feel the anger running through him, like a volcanic rush of heat burning through his body. My fingertips almost blistered as I touched his skin. I felt no shame in admitting that I feared him and that feeling in that moment. I feared what that sort of anger could do—of what he would do.
“He’ll get his,” I said. “Now help me save these women, please.”
More screams tore through the air as the sound of hands crashing against the metal of the truck and breaking glass could be heard. I turned to look, watching as a deader reached in through the broken window of the truck and a gunshot sounded out. The deader flew backwards, blood spraying from it. But there was no reprieve as another one took its place.
I looked over and saw O’Donnell, who must have stopped walking away when the truck had crashed, and I don’t know what it was in her stare that told me she had my back, but I knew she did. I nodded to her and I turned and headed toward the gate, hoping like hell that Shooter would follow me.
It started as a walk, but ended up as a jog and then a run as my desperation to save those women burned through me. I was pretty sure that Shooter was calling my name and Scar was yelling about not touching the damned gate, but I didn’t care what either man had to say. Those women needed my help, and I would do what needed to be done to save them.
O’Donnell was next to me. “What can we do?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied, looking up at the tall gate.
The two prospects came over to us, one a Reject and the other a Highwayman, neither of them caring that they were from apposing clubs. All that mattered was saving the people just outside our reach. They glanced back at the crowd of men walking over to us slowly, neither man looking happy.
“What can we do?” one of them asked.
“We need a distraction,” I said. “We need to get the deaders away from the truck so the people inside can get out.” I looked over the decaying faces that were pressed against the bars, their rotten teeth snapping at us. “And then we need to kill them all.”
“And quickly,” O’Donnell added. “Those gates aren’t going to hold for long now.”
She was right, I decided. The truck had crashed into the gates, and though they hadn’t been brought down, the gate on the right had definitely gotten weaker on its hinges. The telltale creak of rusted metal echoed quietly under the pressure from the horde pushing on it.
“Plus, zoms attract zoms,” the Reject prospect added.
“Exactly,” I agreed. I pulled out my machete, wishing it were a machine gun that could take the monsters out.
“That’s probably the least of our worries right now,” Aiken said as he came to stand with us, clearly ready to help me. And if I could have hugged him without Shooter trying to kill him, I probably would have. “I already set perimeter explosives a couple a hundred feet up the road. I’ll blow it and hopefully get some of these things to take off toward the noise.” It made sense then why Aiken’s men had been so far behind us when we’d pulled up to the clubhouse.
“Perimeter explosives?” Gauge asked, his voice a deep rumble of disapproval. He came to stand next to us, his features hardened and his jaw muscles twitching.
Aiken turned to him with a huge, shit-eating, couldn’t-car-less grin. “Yeah, brother. Huge explosives,” he laughed, gesturing with his hands. “Like you wouldn’t believe,” he chuckled, almost daring Gauge to say something about it.
“Thank fuck for that then,” Highlander laughed back. “Aye, I thought we were all goners for a minute there then. At least someone had some sense about ’em.” He winked, and I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.
The NEOs gathered around Aiken, and I noticed that the Rejects and the Highwaymen were no longer mingling together like brothers reunited. I hardly knew those men, yet it was still a horrible thing to witness after seeing how close they could be and how they had stood together, ready to fight side by side. Worry gnawed in my gut about what was going to happen with Scar in charge, but I pushed it to one side because I couldn’t think about that right then.
“The gates stay shut,” Scar said once more as Aiken pressed the button on a small control pad about the size of a cell phone.
I turned to glare at him. “
Shut the hell up!”
He chuckled and lit a cigarette, and blew out a mouthful of smoke like he didn’t have a care in the world. I turned away before I really lost my temper and took off his head with my machete.
A couple seconds went by and I looked over at O’Donnell, wondering whether Aiken’s explosive was faulty, when the ground beneath us shook and we heard the sound of a building exploding in the distance. The echoing blast rumbled into the sky, shaking the buildings around us and making the ground quake under our feet. Smoke billowed up into the sky, and as predicted, some of the deaders moved off like nosy neighbors to find out what all the commotion was about. Not enough went for my liking, but some was better than none, of course.
“Take out the ones at the front?” I suggested with a shrug.
“Sounds as good a plan as any,” Crank, the biker that had talked to me earlier, said with a smile.
He started toward the gate and O’Donnell, Aiken, and I followed suit, with the rest of the bikers copying us. I could hear Shooter talking behind me to Gauge, but I focused on drawing the attention of the deaders so we could pick them off one by one.
The first deader slid onto the end of my machete like a marshmallow and I retracted my blade, sliding it back out of its mushy skull and letting it fall to the ground before sliding my weapon back between the bars and into another. I missed the kill shot that time, but it was easily rectified as the stupid thing moved closer to me and the bars and O’Donnell reached over and slammed a hand blade into its skull. She wrenched it back out, barely avoiding being sprayed with zombie goo, and then handed me the small blade with a wink.
“Always carry a backup,” she said, and I nodded in agreement.
“Thanks,” I said, not stopping in my killing spree.
The sound of a truck’s engine had me turning after my fourth or fifth kill, and I saw Timbo driving over to the gate in one of the bigger NEO trucks. He pulled it up to the gate, close enough to stop it bending inward anymore than it was and potentially collapsing, and then Gauge and Shooter and some of the others climbed up onto the hood, raised their rifles, and started shooting into the horde with one of the bigger guns. I hated that we were wasting ammo on those deaders instead of the Savages, but there were too many lives on the line for us to go about it slowly.
The noise was ear-splitting as guns roared from all around me, but after a few minutes of it, I barely noticed. I was so busy in my own killing that I probably wouldn’t have noticed a bomb going off next to me. Deaders were surging forward, their hands reaching through the gaps of the gate, and Crank and another man were slicing them off with what looked like medieval swords. It wasn’t killing them, but it at least stopped them from grabbing at us so we could get close enough to put blades through their skulls.
My arms were beginning to tire, but I surveyed the scene in front of me with a smile because there were barely twenty of the things left. The women had started to climb out of the truck and up onto its roof, their own guns aimed down at the deaders surrounding them. The ones that didn’t have guns looked uncertainly between themselves before climbing down and taking the remaining monsters out one by one.
And then I saw the most wonderful sight ever.
Amara.
She climbed out of the back of the truck, a long katana in hand, and jumped to the ground before swiping at the deaders that surged toward her.
“Oh my god,” I laughed—and maybe I cried at the same time too, who knows. It was probably just a little zombie goo in my eye or something.
“What?” O’Donnell said next to me, panting as she stabbed at a redheaded deader with green skin and a nose with a huge wart on the end that made it look like she was a witch. All the deader needed was a broomstick to fly around on and it would have been the perfect Halloween costume.
“It’s Amara,” I said with a grin. I blinked away the zombie goo so I didn’t cry anymore. “That’s my friend!”
“Wait, you have a friend?” she snarked with a feeble attempt at a smile. “Will you hold still, stupid zombie?” O’Donnell yelled as she grabbed the deader by the shoulder and dragged it to the gate bars.
I stabbed the short blade she’d given me through its forehead and yanked it back out.
“Thanks,” she said with a grin.
I took a step backwards, using the side of my arm to wipe the goo and sweat off my face. It didn’t matter how fit a person thought they were—put them up against an endless supply of zombies and it really showed you should have been working on your cardio more.
The shooting had finally stopped, and I looked to see the last of the deaders twitching on the ground. The ones that had gone off to check out Aiken’s explosion were already on their way back, though, so we needed to get the truck and the women inside the compound quickly.
I turned, finding Scar in the crowd behind me, smoking a cigarette.
“We good to open the gate now, asshole?” I snapped.
He nodded his approval and I glared at him in disgust as Shooter whistled and made a motion with his hand and the two prospects started to unlock the gate. Timbo began backing the truck up so they could open the gates, and I prayed that the whole damn thing didn’t come down.
Scar smiled slowly and threw his cigarette to the ground before walking toward me. I stood my ground, and when his arm came up so he could grab the bottom of my chin I held my machete to his ribs, hard enough that he flinched.
“Don’t ever touch me,” I bit out, holding his stare and shaking my face free from his grip.
I was so over those men that thought they could take what they wanted. Touch what they wanted. And basically do whatever the hell they wanted. If it wasn’t for Mikey I would have left them all to just kill each other. I was so done with them all.
“You boys gonna let this stand?” Scar growled out to the Rejects. “This bitch is threatening me.”
I kept my machete pressed against his side but turned my attention to his men. They looked unhappy, uncertain, and undecided on what to do, so I decided to help them out.
Shooter jumped down from the truck, his heavy footsteps heading toward me. “Nina, what the hell are you doing?”
It was stupid and reckless, and after doing everything in my power to stop anarchy from descending between those men, it was going to be me in the end that caused it.
I ignored Shooter and focused on the Rejects. Focused all of my energy on holding the blade that was pressed against Scar’s ribs steady in my hand.
“Are you all really ready to fall in line behind this man?” I asked the Rejects, the words bitter on my tongue. “I mean, if you could really call him a man,” I said, pressing harder with my blade when he tried to move away. “Wasn’t it only an hour or so ago that you were all reminiscing about old times and remembering when you were one club, one brotherhood? And now what? You’re turning your backs on your brothers again, just because this piece of shit says so?” I looked back at Scar. “I don’t get it.”
“You don’t get what, darlin’?” he replied with a sneer.
“I don’t get why anyone would follow a coward like you.” I shook my head. “I wouldn’t follow you anywhere, no matter what the consequences.”
“A coward?” he snarled, a sick smile on his ugly face. “Gimme five minutes in a room with you and I’ll show you how much of a coward I am, bitch.” He snapped his gold teeth at me like a deader. “You’ll follow me anywhere I tell you to after that.”
He had to go, I decided, and be damned the consequences. He had to, because if he didn’t die there, then, under my hand, he was going to get all those other people killed. He was going to poison their minds against everything that we were fighting.
Was I scared? Of course I was.
But I was also angry.
Angry that he was ruining everything for no reason other than because he could. Because he wanted to. Because he was vain and wanted the power. Because he hated for no reason. Because people like him saw the end of the world as an opportunity to
kill, maim, and hurt other people just because they wanted to.
I also really hated it when people called me “bitch.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Don’t do it,” Shooter warned from my right-hand side, like he was psychic and could sense my decision. “You’ll start a war, Nina.”
“Or finish one,” I replied, my gaze burning into Scar’s. “He’s ruining everything,” I said.
Shooter placed a hand on my back. His strength poured into me, his heat warming my soul. “I know. That’s just what he does. That’s what he did before when he tore us apart, and that’s what he’ll always do. But he can’t go like this.”
Scar raised his chin, his gaze going to Shooter. “It’s her or me, brother.”
“No, it’s not. We’ve still got Drag to save, and you need us for that. So she’s going to drop the knife and you’re going to back the fuck up.” Shooter’s hand moved up my back, leaving heat in its wake.
“That okay with you, brothers?” Scar asked with a smile. “You still wanna go see if Drag’s alive? ’Cause I think we all know that he’s gone by now, right? And if he’s gone then why are we risking our lives to work with the Highwaymen again?”
Gauge had moved to my left-hand side and I felt him tense up. “It don’t have to be like this, brothers.”
“We’re not your brothers. We’re your enemy,” Scar replied.
Why? was all I could think. Why would anyone want this—to destroy these two clubs? To tear them apart and set them against each other? Only a madman, surely. And you couldn’t reason with a madman.
I looked at the Rejects and the Highwaymen, their weapons aimed at each other but none of them wanting it that way. If I killed Scar I’d be as bad as he was, because then it would be club against club, man against man, and that was exactly what he wanted. What he was hoping for. And he was willing to die for it.
“Please,” I begged them all. “Please don’t do this.” Tears filled my eyes. Angry, frustrated tears. Not because I was scared of dying, but because I felt so helpless to stop it all.
The Dead Saga (Book 6): Odium VI Page 23