Fucking deaders. I grimace, wiping my face with my sleeve.
Everyone does their part to dispatch of the ugly deaders in their own way, slashing, shooting, and in JD’s case, generally fucking the deaders up a bit with his fists and boots before finally killing them. I sit on the end of a bunk trying to catch my breath once the job is done. Stringy sinew and gore cover the floor, and the smell just about turns my stomach over, but since I’m covered in the crap, there’s no way to escape the smell, even if I just up and left. Mikey goes to check the bathroom, but comes back without the morbid news he gave us previously.
We did it: we took back the hub. I want to smile, but the feeling seems hollow somehow as I look at the bodies scattered around my feet. All these people—dead. I look to the man partly responsible for their deaths—certainly for making their deaths all the more horrific—and cringe.
Something about Duncan gives me a fresh sense of foreboding. Is it the glazed-over look in his eyes? The sweat glistening on his forehead and the grayness to his skin? Nope, I think it’s the hungry look he has on his face while he looks us all over, like we’re prime ribs with extra seasoning.
“Uh, Duncan?” I whisper.
He licks his lips with nervous appreciation, and I stand and back-step away from the bunk.
“Duncan?” My hand reaches for the machete at my waist, the previous night’s words echoing in my mind. ‘Don’t let me turn into one of them, Nina.’
“Sorry, dude,” I whisper.
I look around at everyone else, but only Mikey seems to have caught on to my concern. His eyes are watching Duncan with an unhappy but determined frown set in them, and before I can do or say anything else, Duncan lunges toward Crunch with a growl, grabbing her neck with one clumsy hand and raking his nails around it, breaking the skin. Blood oozes out of the cuts, and the smell of the fresh blood spurs him on more; he opens his mouth wide, ready to take a bite of Crunch á la sandwich.
Mikey steps forward, his large machete raised and still full of black gore from his previous kills, and as Crunch ducks out of Duncan’s grasp, Mikey swings hard and slices into his head. His skull cracks between his eyes, much like a coconut being split down the middle, with blood and black fluid oozing from the gap Mikey just made. Duncan’s mouth continues to move, his teeth snapping away at the air. His eyes still glare at us, but are completely off balance because of the fissure in the middle of his face. Mikey cries out as tears pour from his eyes, and he swings again, slicing his blade into the opening until he hits rapidly graying brain matter. Mercifully, Duncan stops moving, his body going stiff and then falling to the floor like his batteries have just been taken out. My stomach creases in a bout of overwhelming emotions, and I struggle to stay upright.
Crunch screams—not a long, bloodcurdling one; I guess it’s more of a yelp—and I flinch and stumble further away. Blood has sprayed up onto Mikey’s face like something out of a horror movie, and my hand covers my mouth as I try to contain my own scream, tears, and god knows what else.
“WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED?” JD spins around and simultaneously shouts at us all, trying to figure out who did what and to whom.
His eyes finally land on Duncan’s body, which lies in a crumpled heap on the floor, his blood spilling out of the deep gouge down the middle of his head in a weird mixture of black and red.
Crunch’s hand gingerly touches her neck where Duncan had gripped her. Blood is oozing out of the long finger slices across her neck, but thankfully it doesn’t look too serious. Mikey sheaths his machete and holds up his hands in defense.
“He turned.” Mikey says, his voice like steel. But his eyes…his eyes say everything about how he feels. He reaches down and picks up Duncan’s guns. “He turned.”
Twenty-Five.
JD grimly nods, his face tight with anger and pain, and he takes one of the guns that Mikey hands him, hooking it into the waistband of his jeans. He acts tough and unmoved by the situation, but like Mikey, he too has a tell; his pursed lips reveal to me (and anyone who cares to notice) how hard he’s finding it.
Mikey turns to me. “Can you shoot?” His brown eyes burrow into mine, and I can tell that he wants to reach out to me, but doesn’t. His nonchalance seems only surface deep.
I nod, still at a loss for words, yet deeply grateful that I didn’t have to kill Duncan myself. No one would have believed me when I said he had turned, especially Crunch. My thoughts stray to what Duncan had been like on our way through all the rooms. Why hadn’t we noticed him changing? He died, for fuck’s sake. How do you die while walking? I wouldn’t have believed that was even possible if it weren’t for what just happened. And how the hell did we not know it was happening—right under our noses, for God’s sake! How long had he known that he was turning into one of them? Last night he said he felt different, but turning into one of the undead is more than just a little bit ‘different.’
“Nina?”
I look at Mikey and he offers me a small smile. It’s then that I realize he must have heard my conversation with Duncan last night. It’s the only reason for him taking over the situation so quickly. He just killed his friend to help me. Yeah, yeah, it helped all of us in the end, but he did it so I wouldn’t have to, so that I wouldn’t make any more of an enemy out of Crunch. I smile back, glad that at least he wants me to stick around, but also concerned as to how I get myself into these situations in the first place. I’m like a magnet for bad shit happening.
“I’m no hot-shot with it, but yeah, I know how to point and shoot.” I take the gun from him and make myself comfortable with it, testing its weight in my palm and checking how to load and fire it like I have previously been shown, and then tuck it safely in my jeans. Mikey offers the shotgun to Crunch, but she declines with a shake of her head.
“I’m better with my Kukris.” Her voice is low, brooding almost, and she doesn’t bother to catch his eye. Her clothes, like Mikey’s, are covered in blood—Duncan’s blood. There are sprays of it across her tight, ripped jeans and black tank top, and a large streak of it covering one side of her face, which she hasn’t bothered to wipe off yet, giving her appearance a two-tone look.
“Right, well now what?” My voice comes out harsher than I mean it to, receiving a crappy look from Crunch in return.
“Now what? Is that it? Is that all you have to say? Our friend is dead. Someone that cared about us all. He cooked for us, helped us to survive, and all you can say is ‘now what?’ What the fuck is wrong with you, Nina?”
She’s right, of course. It is harsh, it is uncaring, but this is our reality. We’re not in fucking Disneyland anymore. Someone in our group turned and would have gladly eaten us all if we hadn’t taken him out first. That’s the reality of it. We can mourn later, but right now we need to go. Of course, by the look on her face I can tell she knows this, but it’s a great excuse to have another dig at me.
“Yeah, now what?” I shrug.
Crunch comes forward abruptly, a hand raising up one of her knives. I step forward and match her knife with my own in defense, my stomach twisting into knots.
Mikey dives between us and pushes us apart, one hand on either of us to keep us separated. I glare at her, my mouth twisting into a grimace, and I back away.
“All right, ladies. That’s enough.” He eyes Crunch more than me, since she started it.
“Nina’s right.” We all look to JD. He’s kneeling by Duncan’s head. He places a hand over Duncan’s eyes and shuts them before standing back up with a deep sigh. “There’s nothing we can do for him now, but survive. He would have wanted that.”
I almost want to stick my tongue out at Crunch. Almost, but if looks could kill, I’m pretty sure I would be toast already, so I keep my trap shut for now like a good little girl.
“We need to get what we came for and get back to the others.” JD eyes Crunch, his hand touching her shoulder affectionately. “I’m going to miss him too, but we can mourn him once we’re all together and safe.”
Crunch nods, but I don’t miss the evil glare I get from her as she leaves with JD. Mikey grabs my hand, holding me back until we’re out of earshot.
“Are you okay?” Mikey’s hand touches my shoulder.
I try to shrug him off me, but he grips me harder. “I’m fine, Mikey. I survived without you all these years, you know.” I ignore the hurt look on his face. “I’m not some feeble woman that you need to keep protecting.”
I pull away from him, but his hands catch me around the waist when I try to leave and he spins me back to him, our chests bumping together.
“Don’t do that.”
I look up at him, our close proximity making me a little breathless. “Do what?”
“Act like you don’t give a shit about what just happened—that you don’t give a shit about me.”
I don’t know what to say to that. I want to tell him I don’t give a shit, but we both know I would be lying. I bite my bottom lip in thought, wondering what I can say that will explain how I feel about him without being a total jerk. Well, any more of a jerk than I already have been.
His hand comes up and tugs my lip free, and he looks at me before leaning in, slowly at first, and then quicker once he sees my fight-or-flight response kick in. He kisses me abruptly, and I push back at him, my body simultaneously betraying me as I groan into the warmth of his mouth, his hands curling into the back of my hair. My lips press roughly against his, hungry almost, and with that thought I finally pull out of his kiss and stare at him, feeling confused. My eyes stay tightly locked on his bloody face while I try to work through my feelings.
I swallow hard, saying the first thing that comes to mind: “You need to brush your teeth.” I pull out of his hold, and whether I catch him off guard or he lets me go of his own choice I don’t know, but I’m glad that I don’t have to explain myself. At least for now.
We reach camp by late afternoon, after packing some food up for the others into our backpacks. We each grab either a harness or a weapon, making the journey back to camp all the more uncomfortable with all the heavy gear. This is why we went through all this, though, and there will be plenty more trips like this in the next few weeks if we want to salvage anything useful from the hub and make the stay up in the trees more comfortable.
Britta is devastated by the loss of Duncan, though she doesn’t actually say very much, preferring to keep herself busy with cooking and feeding everyone, seemingly taking over his role. Several times I catch her staring off in to an empty space, her lower lip trembling as she stirs the food in silence. I had known that there was something between them, but honestly hadn’t been sure exactly what. Until now, that is.
JD makes me think of what Lee should have been like as a leader. How he should have ruled, and looked after the people behind the walls. Instead, he chose to look after himself, feeling that it was more important that everyone knew he was the big boss man than to actually be a real leader and protect the needy.
It’s a true test of character when you have the opportunity that he did, and it’s a test he failed. Once the government collapsed and help wasn’t being sent anymore, chaos broke out and Lee found his true feet. He was a disciplinarian through and through, but one that bent the rules to his own advantage. A vicious tyrant of a man, not the sort of person that you would want to protect you. He proved that in the years that followed. However, once he had a couple of people on board with his plan, receiving their share of the bounty, everyone else fell in line. What choice did we all have? It was either do as we were told or be thrown out. No one wanted to die, at least not a death that we would be coming back from. A real death, at times, would have been a blessing.
JD is settled in front of the fire, his arm around Josie. The group is quiet, and deep in thought, but looking forward to going back over to the hub tomorrow and getting yet more supplies. Britta seems as broken as Crunch over what happened to Duncan, but at least she doesn’t seem to have taken the fact that he got bitten and turned into one of the undead out on me. Unlike Crunch, who seems to still be brooding about my comment from before, and has taken an even bigger dislike to me; or maybe she’s just using it as an excuse to hate me even more. I couldn’t really give a shit, but the fact is that living in such close proximity means there’s no escaping each other when the shit goes down.
Mikey has been trying to get me alone all night; every time I stand to go to my hut, he stands too. Emily is another one that’s hardly left my side since we got back. I can’t help but be offended that she thought perhaps I wouldn’t come back. I’ve gotten us this far, surely she should have a little more faith in me. I could really do with some space; time to think about everything that’s happened this last week and what it all means.
Britta comes and sits down next to me. Yay, another leech.
“Nina, I’m going down to the lake to wash up. Would you come with me and keep watch, please?”
I cringe at my nasty thoughts and force a smile at her.
“Sure.” I turn to Emily. “Do you want to come?” Both of us could do with a decent wash, especially me. I’m still covered in the grime from the dead, after only a cursory cleanse. I’ve changed clothes, but these smell bad too—hell, all my stuff smells bad.
She nods and follows us, climbing down after me.
The lake is bitterly cold, even with the sun warming it, but it’s a great thing to be getting clean. It’s the simple things in life that I miss: clean water, fresh breath, and a hot cup of coffee. I don’t have the coffee, but I have the toothbrush and toothpaste that I stole from Old Man Riely’s house and the freezing lake, so two out of three ain’t bad.
In the center there’s a small man-made island, and we swim over to it and all strip out of our filthy clothes, washing them in the water with a bar of soap and then lying them flat out to dry. I dive under the water, letting the cold bite at every part of me, reminding me that I’m still alive. My hair is filthy and I think it’s about time I cut it short and made it more manageable. I untie it from its knotty bun and rinse it in the water, scrubbing at my scalp and pulling my fingers through the black tangles with a satisfying groan. I grab the shampoo that I stole from the women’s dorm in the hub and scrub my scalp till I think it might bleed, wanting to wash out every bit of the last couple of years. As if this will make a difference. Of course I know it won’t, but by God, it will be damn good to smell like something floral for a change.
Yeah, these are the things that I’m thinking about. Vain? Yes, but even when the world has gone to shit, you can’t help but want to look your best—even if your best still looks like crap. I guess it reminds you of your previous life, when you took everything for granted, like having a new toothbrush and some toilet paper. I dunk myself under the water, holding my breath for as long as possible before I come to the surface gasping.
I look around, watching Emily for a couple of minutes, swimming and looking as equally happy as I am about getting clean. When all the crap is washed from her face, she looks even less like her age. A young woman and not a child anymore. She’s missed out on so much: a childhood, a family, prom. I snort to myself. Of course these things seem petty in comparison to what other people have lost, but it’s kids that I feel the most sorry for. They have lost so much more, and for them it must be even harder to come to grips with. What the fuck do I know? Maybe it’s easier for their minds. They never really got to see the world pre-apocalypse. For a lot of them, this is all they know. Now that’s a dark fucking thought.
“Emily?” I shout over to her. When she looks at me, I hold up the bottle of shampoo, giving it a little taunting shake, and she smiles even wider. I throw it to her and she catches it with a happy laugh.
My eyes scan the surrounding banks and catch a movement at the shoreline. A lone zombie has spotted us and somehow seems to know that it can’t go into the water to get to us. That’s something that I never thought about before—zombies, can they swim? Clearly not. You learn something new every day. I grab my machete and swim toward the ba
nk. It’s difficult going with the water pushing against the machete, and I have to move quickly to stop myself from being cut by the sharp edge. When I get within a couple of feet of the deader, I let myself sink underneath the water and come up closer to it, stepping out in all my naked-assed glory with my machete in hand. It groans and smacks its chops together, its hands reaching for me before I raise my machete high and drop it down across the top of its skull, surprising myself when it makes a clean shot and the deader’s bloated body collapses to the ground.
I stare down, looking into its eyes that look right back up at me. They’re empty and lost of any color, and now match its rotten, graying skin. A scruffy beard hangs from its chin, with patches missing from it, and most of its teeth are broken and smashed away. Unlike many zombies, this one was still has all of its appendages intact, but they aren’t in good shape. The bones are visible in the fingers, the flesh obviously becoming too thin and weak to contain the bones underneath them when they grabbed for stuff. The deader is in overalls, which were once probably a rich royal blue, but are now a mixture of dried blood and black sludge. Its nametag says James. It hits me hard that I feel nothing for him—nothing at all. No sympathy, no hate, just a blank void where emotions should be. This poor man—whoever he once was—is dead, and I couldn’t give a shit about it. How did I get like this, so unmoved by death?
“Hey.”
I startle and look up as Mikey comes out from behind some trees, his eyes scanning the lake and shoreline and then returning to wash over me with a greedy appreciation.
Pervert. I can’t help but smile.
Odium (The Dead Saga.) Page 18