Odium (The Dead Saga.)

by Riley, Claire C

  “I wasn’t suggesting that we leave him behind,” I reply darkly.

  Wasn’t I? What the hell was I suggesting then?

  “Well we’re not killing him either,” Crunch hisses at me angrily. “He’s our friend, more than can be said for you.”

  “This isn’t about friendships, Crunch, this is about survival. And I wasn’t suggesting killing him, either. I don’t know what I’m saying. I just think that we need to watch him, in case he turns into one of them.”

  Mikey leans forward in his chair. “Ladies, calm down. You’ll wake him, and he needs to rest. Nina, we don’t know for certain that he won’t turn, but we’ve all had plenty of dealings with zombies now, and I’m sure that we have had plenty of their gunk all over us. The likelihood is that some of it has gotten in us. Maybe through our mouths, or eyes, or whatever. Either way, we all seem fine...”

  I try to interject, but he cuts me off.

  “… also, Crunch has been bitten before. In truth it wasn’t as bad as Duncan’s injury, but she’s fine, isn’t she? She isn’t some crazed zombie woman out for blood, is she?”

  I look at Crunch with a smirk, and surprisingly she mirrors it.

  “Well, maybe not all the time,” she laughs.

  JD has been silent the entire conversation. I wonder what his opinion is on the matter, but he doesn’t seem like the sort of person I would want to piss off, and if he agreed with me I guess he would have said so by now. I pick my ration pack back up and continue squeezing the mush into my mouth. Yummy.

  As night draws in, Duncan starts sweating like a fat man chasing the lunch truck, and panting heavily. So much so that JD has decided that we need someone on watch at all times, so we take it in shifts to watch him through the night. JD takes the first shift, with Crunch following him. I’m so happy that I’m not on first watch; after eating and all the exertion, I’m exhausted. I barely have time to nod and smile through a halle-fuckin’-lujah before I’m asleep.

  By the time Crunch wakes me up I would reckon on it being around one in the morning, but who really knows. Everyone is snoring his or her little head off, and I’m not impressed about being woken up one bit. This is what it takes to be a part of a team though: teamwork. There is no ‘I’ in ‘team,’ as the old saying goes.

  I always hated that saying.

  Crunch takes my place on the floor, throwing her jacket over herself, her head resting on a small sack of rice.

  I stand and stretch, feeling my joints crack and groan with the movement. I never thought I would say this, but I miss our little tree houses. I sit on one of the tables, my feet resting on a chair, and survey the room. The building has been surprisingly quiet since we killed the first horde of zombies. I can only think that the others who were trapped in here when it all went down have either gotten away or are trapped in their bedrooms as Mikey suggested. I shudder at the thought. What a horrible way to go, to starve to death. Not that there is ever a nice way to go, but you know what I mean. If Crunch is right and it’s death that brings on animation and not a bite or something else, then once one of the survivors died from starvation, the others were all doomed anyway. Probably even too weak to try to escape or fight the deader off them. There was never any hope.

  Tears fill my eyes and I rub them away stubbornly. I look around at my sleeping group. JD has his back to me, but I can see his hand wrapped around the handle of his scythe. Crunch also has her knives next to her, and she’s snoring softly already. I look at Mikey and see him watching me. It’s dark and I’m not sure how much of me he can actually see, but I can see him clearly. His dark eyes, his shaved head, his large shoulders. He closes his eyes and buries his face further down into his jacket.

  Jesus, what’s wrong with me?

  I swore to myself that I wouldn’t ever care about another person. Now here I am with a group of people that I’m growing increasingly fond of, looking after a young girl who I really care about, and quite possibly falling for a man I barely know. This can come to no good. No fucking good at all.

  I do a lap of the room, checking through the small squares of glass in the doors to see if the corridors outside are clear, and then go to the windows, peeling back the shutters to check the outside.

  All is clear and all is quiet everywhere. Zombies don’t sleep, so this area must just be amazingly free of the evil things, which is strange since deaders tend to be attracted to old civilization areas. I squeeze the bridge of my nose and sigh. Though my mind is active with thoughts, my body is tired and achy from the fights won earlier. I wish there was time to train; I have a feeling that the people in this group could teach me a hell of a lot about survival.

  I may still be alive years after the dead rose, but that is all down to living behind the walls, not actual skills. Sure, I’ve killed some deaders, but it’s the same again—sheer luck. I need real skills, and I need real strength, not just dumb luck. JD and Mikey said that they see the Forgotten ones quite a bit, but I have managed to avoid contact with them so far. But for how long can that continue? I wouldn’t last in a battle with another human. Deaders aren’t actually that hard to fight, especially these days. They have no muscle strength, and are decomposing at a steady rate. I wonder at what point they stop, you know, being alive-dead? Their brain surely must switch off at some point.

  “Could you pass me some water?” Duncan’s voice cuts through my morbid thoughts and the room’s silence, making me jump.

  “Yes. Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.” I hand him an energy drink, and then hesitate. “Do you want your other drink? The one JD gave you.”

  “No thanks, this will be fine. Better save that for someone more deserving.” He takes the energy drink, leans up on one arm, and takes a swig.

  “More deserving?” I prompt, with only a touch of confusion.

  “Yeah, someone you don’t want dead.” He stops what he’s doing and looks at me. “I heard you earlier, sentencing me to death, Nina. Don’t act so coy about it.”

  “I’m not being coy.” I narrow my eyes at him, not that he can see it. The moonlight has gone now since I’ve let the blinds close tight again. “I didn’t say that I wanted you dead, either. You’re just jumping to conclusions.”

  “So, you don’t want me dead then?”

  “I never said that either,” I whisper.

  “What if I turn?”

  “Then that’s a different story,” I reply grimly.

  “Well, I’m not going to.”

  I swallow hard. “Good.”

  “I don’t think.” His voice cracks.

  “What?”

  “I don’t feel right.” Duncan lies back down, his eyes never leaving mine.

  “What do you mean, you don’t feel right?” I step back from him.

  “I can’t explain it. I just don’t feel right.”

  My hand covers the weapon at my hip, but I don’t grab it. Not yet. “Could be just an infection setting in,” I add.

  “Could be.” He’s still watching me. “But we both know what an infection means for me. Look, if I start to turn, Nina, you have to kill me. Don’t let me become one of them, don’t let me hurt anyone else.” His voice chokes out on the last few words.

  I nod and then realize that he can’t see me, so I add an “okay” to my nod too. He closes his eyes, and is asleep again within seconds.

  I muse for a minute that maybe that hadn’t actually just happened, that maybe I’ve fallen asleep on guard and just dreamt that whole conversation. By asking me to kill him if I think he’s going to turn, he’s also putting me and Emily at risk. There’s no way the group will let me kill him and get away with it, unless he’s a full-blown deader.

  There’s also the other thought in my mind: Could I do it? Kill another human being—even one that is just about to turn into one of the undead and kill everyone?

  Twenty-Four.

  I am the worst guard ever!

  At some point in the early hours, I must have fallen asleep, because when I wake I’m
curled up on top of one of the tables. Mikey is sitting in a chair by my head, his legs stretched across onto another chair, and he’s watching me.

  I think I surprise him when I open my eyes, because his legs slip off the chair, making it squeak along the floor, and he looks around guiltily to make sure that everyone is still sleeping.

  Ha, serves him right for being creepy.

  The sun seems to be only just coming up. There’s an odd warm feeling to the room, or maybe it’s because Mikey’s dark brown eyes are still staring intently at me. Either way, the moment seems calm and relaxed for a change. I stretch and sit up.

  “Sorry.” I rub my shoulder back to life. “I don’t even remember falling asleep.” I grimace.

  “No harm, no foul, right?” He smiles.

  “I guess.” I swing my legs over the edge of the table. “How’s Duncan doing?”

  “Hot and sweaty, but sleeping like a baby.”

  We both go over to where Duncan’s sleeping, and sure as shit he’s drenched in sweat and pale as a ghost. A little shiver tremors through his sleeping form every now and then.

  “This doesn’t look good,” I say, trying to sound every bit the concerned citizen, but actually thinking about my conversation the previous night, and what the fuck I will do if I have to kill poor Duncan, other than—well, kill poor Duncan, obviously.

  “He needs antibiotics, and fucking quickly by the looks of it. We need to get back to camp so I can do a run out to find some.”

  “I didn’t see any in the garage.”

  “No, but there’s a town about ten miles from the garage, and another one Duncan’s told us about before. I need to ask him about it when he wakes up, though, since I haven’t been to that one. It’s somewhere across the lake, that much I do know.” Mikey shrugs.

  “I would have thought you would have scavenged from all the nearby towns by now,” I question.

  “I’ve only been here for six months or so. I was…somewhere else before here. Somewhere—not as welcoming,” Mikey replies.

  I quirk my eyebrow up at him in further question.

  “I’d been alone for a long time, Nina, struggling to survive, and stumbled upon Crunch one day, strangely in that little store I found you in.” He smiles.

  I nod, and want to probe further, but my stomach gives a loud echoing rumble, and I stifle a laugh. “Okay, well, I’m going to find something for breakfast.”

  We make our way into the kitchen again, and scramble to put together some sort of meal. We arm ourselves with cans of Spam, energy drinks, some more food pouches and protein bars, and make our way back into the diner just in time for everyone waking up. I can’t wait to actually cook something with the supplies. There’s pasta and rice and canned vegetables… My stomach grumbles at my meager offerings, but cold food pouches will have to suffice for now.

  Crunch stands when she sees us coming out of the kitchen together. “Where have you two been?” Her eyes narrow in on me.

  “Breakfast,” Mikey replies as he strides past me, his arms loaded down with some of our goods.

  We eat our food in silence, each of us seemingly weighed down by our own troubles. I look around at each of them between mouthfuls of—what’s this that I’m eating again? I check the pack—beef stew, yeah right, and try to guess what they’re thinking about. Duncan, well that’s obvious: he’s thinking about turning into a zombie. He looks worse than he did last night, and he’s not eating, which in this world is never a good sign. You never know when you will be getting food, so you always stock yourself up on it when you do get some. JD looks like he’s thinking up a plan of some kind—he usually is. Crunch is staring into her beans looking pissed off as usual, probably thinking up new ways to make me suffer. When I look at Mikey, I see him watching me with a grin that I can’t help reciprocating.

  We pack up our supplies after breakfast, and Crunch examines Duncan.

  “What’s the verdict, Doc?” Duncan jests, but I can see he’s in pain and worried as hell.

  “I’ll be honest with you, Duncan,” she sighs. “It’s not good. An infection has set in, and without antibiotics, well…” Her voice trails off.

  “I can make a run for some. Nina’s Hummer might still be at the garage, and I can take off straight from here. I could be back before nightfall,” Mikey suggests.

  Crunch swallows and looks anywhere but at Duncan before replying. “I’m not sure he has that much time.”

  “It takes a lot longer than that for an infection to set in and kill someone, Crunch,” Mikey snaps.

  She shrugs, but offers no explanation. I guess we just don’t know much about whatever it is that brings you back to life after you die. No one knows for sure what causes it—no one that I’ve ever met, anyway. From what the group said last night, it’s not the bite per se that kills you, but death itself. Kind of like a ‘you’re a deader when you’re dead’ situation, not because you get infected or bitten by them, but literally because you’re dead, you turn into them. Crunch’s eyes finally meet Duncan’s, and for a moment he seems frozen, unblinking and unmoving, before finally looking across at me with a look just short of desperation. I give the tiniest shake of my head and try to let him know that there is no way I’m killing him while he’s still human. No fucking way. I’m not a murderer, and while he’s still human, that’s what it would be: murder. Why he’s given me the joyous task in the first place, I have no idea, but if I can palm his plan off on someone else and get them to do the gruesome task, I sure as hell will.

  Several long minutes go by before any of us speaks. What is there to say? Nothing can make that news any better, and there are a lot of questions running through everyone’s heads, without a doubt. Surprisingly, it’s Duncan who breaks the heady silence.

  “Better get a move on and clear this place while I’m still me then, eh?” He swallows and picks up his gun.

  “We should just head back to camp.” JD steps forward, his hand resting on Duncan’s shoulder.

  Duncan shakes his head. “No way, I can’t go back there if I’m—dying.” He looks down sadly. “It would put everyone at risk

  —all of you, and the girls. Emily, Josie…Britta.” He shakes his head, and a tremor ripples through his body. “Sorry, I’m just cold. No, better help you all as much as I can, while I still can. You never know, I might be all right yet.” He looks at Crunch hopefully.

  “Yeah.” She shrugs and gives a brief but grim smile. Unfortunately I think we all see through her nonchalance.

  We ready ourselves to leave the canteen with the intention of going straight to the male and female sleeping quarters. We exit through the doors at the back, and turn right, heading to the women’s dorms first. I can smell the deaders inside as we reach the door, and I chance a glance at the rest of the group. Barring Duncan, they all seem to carry the same grim determination on their faces. Duncan just seems to be trying to keep his pain under control, and I wonder if it was a good idea to bring him along after all. He lifts his guns up ready to shoot and looks me in the eye with a shaky breath and a nod to let me know he’s okay, but I don’t think he is. He seems to be falling fast.

  The door is solid with no windows to look through, and as Duncan predicted, it’s locked from the inside. Bloody handprints, however, do cover the outside of the door, with long gouge marks and even a couple of what look like broken fingernails wedged into the wood of the door frame. I check behind us and see that Crunch has us covered.

  “Shoot it open, Duncan,” JD orders, and we all step to one side.

  Duncan fires at the handle and blows it away. The noise is loud and echoes along the corridor, and we all wait to see if anything is going to come and greet us with all the noise we just made. There’s no sound coming from anywhere, though, so JD kicks it in and we’re confronted with an empty room. We enter and scout it out, knowing that something is in here, somewhere.

  “Found it,” Mikey shouts out from one of the bathrooms. He comes out and shuts the door behind him. “Foun
d what was left of it anyway.”

  “Eaten?” Duncan asks, coming forward forlornly.

  Mikey shakes his head. “No, she ended it.”

  Duncan opens the door to the bathroom and goes inside. He’s in there for several minutes before he comes back out, looking worse than when he went in.

  “I think that’s Chrissy. She was a good girl, hard worker. She had kids and a husband.”

  Even from where I’m standing I can see the tears fill his eyes. He’s sweating, and I guess it must be taking all of his control not to break down. After all, this was his fault; he sealed their fate when he locked them all in. Shit, I have to stop doing that. What’s done is done, like Mikey said.

  The rest of the room is clear, so we move on to the men’s dorm. It’s near the gym, which we check and clear on the way, finding it both covered in blood and disturbingly empty at the same time.

  The men’s room is locked also, and Duncan happily shoots out the lock on it, seemingly finding some sort of release in shooting things. Who can blame him? JD kicks in the door, and we follow him in, jumping straight into the action as zombies on all sides move toward us with hungry, frustrated growls. I try to count how many there are, but it all seems to be happening too quickly. I kick out at a particularly nasty-looking deader with eyeballs that seem to swivel in their sockets. Its putrid jaw hangs low to its chest as it approaches, and I can see right into the back of its throat. It’s like a black, cavernous hole—leading into a cesspool of rotted flesh, by the funky smell of its breath. I grimace and slash my—sorry, Mikey’s—machete across its neck. Well actually it hits its shoulder, but the second slash definitely hits the neck! Its head lolls uselessly to one side at an awkward angle, and the lips of the deader continue to work as it moves forward again to grab me. It lets out a throaty groan, like I’ve just given it a sensual back massage and not tried to lop its head off like I was She-Ra. I swing and hit it again, this time cutting through the rotten, swollen flesh on its neck, releasing yet more toxic gases and black gunk, which splatters my face. The deader’s head falls to the floor like a lead weight, quickly followed by its body, which lands with a loud splat. It would actually be kind of comical if it wasn’t for the splash-back of gore that I get up my legs.