Odium (The Dead Saga.)

by Riley, Claire C

  Thirty-Six.

  Steve has been steadily drinking his homebrew throughout the day, and as nighttime approaches he decides to pull out the big guns, regardless of what we had talked about outside.

  “Damn, man, is that what I think it is?” JD holds the bottle of, well, ‘JD’ up to the light. “Jack Daniels. I’ve missed this stuff.” He unscrews the lid and takes a deep breath of it.

  “Yeah, help yourself.” Steve reaches over and grabs some glasses from one of the cupboards in the little kitchen. “I’ve been saving that bad boy for a special occasion.” He looks at me and winks. “But if this isn’t a special occasion, then I don’t know what is.”

  JD pours the whiskey into everyone’s glasses—I even let Emily have a little drop. I know she’ll hate the stuff, but this may be her only opportunity to ever try it.

  “To lost loves.” JD raises his glass.

  “To survival.” Mikey clinks my glass.

  “To friendship.” Britta clinks my glass too, and I blush a little. Damn, these people are making me go soft.

  “To better drinks,” Emily splutters after taking a sip.

  I laugh at her, and hold up my glass. “To, uh…come back to me.” I shrug.

  “To killing zombies.” Crunch stares deep into her glass.

  “I’ll second that one.” JD raises his glass again.

  “To Jane,” Steve mutters.

  He raises his glass high and we all do the same.

  “To Jane,” we echo.

  I never got to meet Jane, but she must have been a damn good woman for him to be so affected by her loss. Or maybe it’s the not knowing that’s eating him up inside. Who knows? I guess he never will—not unless he’s unlucky enough to stumble across her walking corpse.

  It’s later that night, after everyone has gone to sleep, that I find myself wide awake—again. Mikey is asleep opposite me at the table, facedown. Steve is snoring heavily on one end of the little sofa, his near-empty bottle of Jack Daniels in his hand. JD is on the other end snoring like a baby too. Emily, Crunch, and Britta have taken the bed after much persuasion from me. Britta still doesn’t trust Crunch, and I don’t blame her, but I know she won’t do anything here, certainly not while we have a good thing going. She has too much survival instinct for that. Crunch may trip you to save herself, but she isn’t a coldblooded killer. I certainly wouldn’t leave Emily alone with her if I thought for even a second that she was.

  I want to sleep, but I’m not sleepy yet; the day’s events are still weighing on my mind. My head feels a little foggy from the alcohol, but thankfully, I’m not too worse for wear because of all the food I’ve eaten. For the first time in months, my stomach actually feels full, bloated even. It’s a good feeling, one I could get used to. I wonder if we could all stay here. Maybe build a little hut or two of our own. Build some security around the place, perhaps. There really isn’t a lot of difference between this place and Ben’s parents’ cabin, from what I remember—just the home comforts—and we’re here already.

  I watch Steve snoring soundly. I know he would like the company. I bet Livvie, Tami, and Martha would too. I grin. I decide I’m going to suggest it to everyone tomorrow after speaking to Steve. I’m tired of running, tired of moving from one place to another. I just want to stay somewhere for a while. Since I left the city from behind the walls, I’ve done nothing but run. Maybe this is where we should stay now, build a life here even.

  I feel content in my surroundings as I lean back and stretch out my shoulders, finally feeling sleepy. I decide to go check the perimeter once more before calling it a night, maybe grab my bag from the car before it gets too late—it’s only a little way down the hill anyway.

  I know what you’re thinking, that this is the part where the stupid woman goes out into the night alone and gets caught and eaten by zombies. Well, I’m not stupid.

  “Mikey,” I whisper, and kick him under the table.

  He looks up at me with groggy, alcohol-drenched eyes. “What?”

  “I’m doing a perimeter check before I go to sleep. Come with me.”

  “It’ll be fine, we haven’t seen a thing all day. Just go to sleep, Nina.”

  He rests his head back on the table with a thud. I count to three in my head, and when he doesn’t look back up at me I kick him again.

  “Dude, seriously, come with me. I want to go get my bag from the car,” I plead.

  Mikey makes a weird groany-growly noise, but still doesn’t look up at me. “Go to sleep, woman!”

  “Fine,” I stand with a huff. “I’ll go myself.”

  I am so not going by myself. Even if there are no deaders out there, it’s still freaking dark!

  I take a couple of tentative steps toward the door, my hand touching the handle before Mikey does his weird growly thing again and stands up.

  “Fine,” he picks up his machete from under the table, “but you owe me.”

  “Fine,” I snap back with a smirk.

  It’s dark outside, the moonlight only just peeping through the treetops, but like earlier, the only things I can smell are pine and damp soil. No deaders, no death, and no rotting corpses. Similarly, there’s no moaning and groaning of deaders hungry for brains—well, not including Mikey, obviously.

  We skirt around Steve’s little fence-and-wire rig, using my solar flashlight as our guide. We go around twice, but find nothing. I can’t help but smile, and as we go around the second time I dip my hand under the vegetable patch netting and nab a tomato with a grin.

  “You really like it here, huh?”

  I look at Mikey as I bite the tomato and it spurts onto my tongue. I give out a little moan of satisfaction and nod at him.

  We walk down the hill, shining the flashlight all around us into the trees to make sure there aren’t any deaders sneaking up on us for a midnight snack, but as with the area around camp, there’s nothing. Well, there are trees, obviously, but no dead people.

  Our vehicles are just where we left them, hidden away from the path under the canopy of a particularly large tree. I climb up and sit on the hood of the van and Mikey joins me, his grumpiness finally dispersing as the fresh air sobers him up.

  “I do, I like it here. I feel safe, and the food! Oh man, the food is amazing,” I laugh.

  He laughs. “I hate to say it though, Nina, but the food won’t last, and this isn’t the safest location. It’s good, but not great.”

  “Don’t ruin it,” I pout.

  “Me don’t ruin it? Isn’t it normally you who’s the voice of reason?”

  “Yeah,” I smile as I look at his face, “maybe you’ve converted me, huh?” I chuckle. “Maybe it isn’t all doom and gloom after all,” I smirk.

  He leans over suddenly, his hand touching the side of my face, and before I can stop him he pulls me into a kiss. I falter for a second or two before I give in to him and kiss him back hard. Our tongues dance over one another’s, and his fingers make their way to my hair, grip it, and tug me closer to him. I moan into his mouth, my hands finding his waist, tugging up his shirt and touching the hot skin underneath.

  He pulls back slowly and smiles at me. Jesus, I feel almost girly under his stare, and I blush furiously, my mind working to think of something else to say. My feelings for him have been growing, and I’m finally learning to trust again. I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize that, but then my new motto seems to be the whole ‘moving forward’ thing, and this is moving forward, I guess.

  I smile and clear my throat. “So, before all this, what did you do? You seem to have a few tricks up your sleeve—they can’t all be post-apocalypse, surely?” I lean back to stare up at the stars.

  “You’d be surprised what I’ve learned post-apocalypse,” he laughs. “I was, uh…” He looks back at me, seeming unsure of himself. He takes a deep breath and continues. “But yeah, I guess before all this…I, um, I was a thief.”

  That doesn’t really surprise me; the knack for getting into places with locked doors kind of gave tha
t game away. I shrug.

  “I was a bit of a bad boy,” he laughs, “as you women like to put it.”

  “Don’t tar us all with the same brush, Mikey. We’re not all as dumb as a box of rocks, you know.” I laugh.

  “Sorry,” he shrugs. “It was my thing.” Mikey drags a hand across his face in embarrassment.

  “The bad boy thing?” I laugh loudly.

  He leans back next to me, one arm across his face. “Shit, this is embarrassing. Yeah, the bad boy thing.”

  “What made you so bad then, eh? So you did a bit of breaking and entering, what’s the big deal?” I can’t believe that I’m not more bothered, actually, and am brushing his criminal past off so easily, but these days it doesn’t exactly matter what your past was, and I tell him so.

  “What if your past follows you?” he asks quietly, staring up into the trees himself now. “It wasn’t just breaking and entering, it was worse than that. I mean, I never killed anyone or anything, but—I don’t even know why I’m telling you this.”

  I turn my head to stare at his profile. I haven’t seen this side of him before. I’ve seen protective Mikey, funny Mikey, dangerous Mikey, but this version baffles me and—strangely—makes me like him all the more.

  “It’s all good, baby.” I watch as he turns to look at me. “I don’t need to know about that person if you don’t want to tell me. It’s who we are now that matters. It was a clean slate when the world went to shit.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  I shrug. “Yeah, everyone deserves to have a second chance, I guess. I mean, obviously it depends what you did, but a little breaking and entering is okay. Like you said, you never killed anyone.” I think about Duncan, and know that everyone really does deserve a second chance—especially if you try to make up for all the bad you did previously. Mikey has helped every one of us more times than I can count, so I guess that gets him a get out of jail free card.

  Silence echoes around us and I think of Ben. My stomach does a flip, and tugs at my insides. I close my eyes and look back up into the sky, finding it hard to breathe.

  “Hey.” Mikey’s hand touches my chin, and turns me to face him again. “What’s up with that?”

  “Nothing. Like I said, we’ve all done bad stuff. Things that we regret, and things we had no choice but to do. It just doesn’t make it any easier.” I swallow. “That being said, we have to learn to let things go, and move on.”

  Mikey nods in agreement, and I take a steadying breath.

  “It’s time to put things like that behind us. We need to forget the bad and work on more of the good, because there just isn’t enough of the good to go around these days. So maybe you’re right.” I look at him and he sits up to get a better look at me. “Maybe it really isn’t all doom and gloom after all.” I smile at him. “You’re a good man, Mikey. Everyone can see that, so whatever you did before the world collapsed, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

  He looks panicked but smiles to cover it, and when he goes to say something I press a finger to his lips.

  “Will you just kiss me already?”

  He stares at me for a second, looking sweetly unsure of himself before he finally leans down and presses his lips against mine. His strong hands cup my face, and his tongue moves against mine—slowly at first, and then faster when I reciprocate and he realizes that I’m not going to kick his ass anytime soon. His body shifts until he’s on top of me, his strong arms pinning me in place as he grinds against me and I moan into his mouth. It feels right—no, he feels right: the wanting, the desire, the giving and taking. I want him and me, and all of that other crazy shit.

  He pulls away, looking into my face, his thumb stroking my lower lip, seemingly trying to decide on his next move. I smile and reach for his hair, grasping it tightly, and pull his face back down to me. His hand paws at my breast through my shirt, his mouth leaving mine and moving to my throat, trailing soft wet kisses down to my chest until it meets material and he pulls it to one side to access my naked flesh.

  He lifts up my shirt, pulling my bra to one side as he takes my breast in his mouth, and I moan even louder at the sweet satisfaction. His other hand moves to his jeans, and he fumbles for a minute with the button before nearly falling off the hood, and I laugh loudly. He looks up at me with a grin, and I shove him off me and to one side. He looks hurt and confused, and I smile again as I slide off the hood of the van with a soft thud. I straighten my shirt as he sits up, his eyes following me as I go around the side of the van. I open up the back doors and climb inside. “Are you coming or what?” I call out to him. “It’s now or never, bad boy,” I laugh.

  I hear his feet hit the ground, and a couple of seconds later his face looks in through the doorway with a big grin before he climbs in and shuts the doors behind him.

  In the dark, we are Nina and Mikey. We are the people we were, not the people we’ve been forced to become, and it’s good. It’s so good. His body on mine, his hands touching me and wanting me, and hell, I fucking need it. I need to be touched like this, and I need to feel truly wanted again by someone—not just used. With each touch and caress, I feel my walls breaking down. With each thrust, I feel myself melting, and my heart letting go of the pain and guilt that I’ve carried with me. I cry out, my head tilting back towards the ceiling of the van, and he nibbles on my chin, sliding his tongue down my throat as my body wracks with pleasure. When we have wrung every ounce of pleasure from each other, he rolls off me and holds me in his arms. I flinch, waiting for…fuck, something, I don’t know what. The pain to start, maybe? The memories of the wall—the pain and abuse that I suffered—don’t fade that easily I guess, but as I lay in his arms and he kisses the back of my neck, I know now that they just might, given time. I’m not saying it’s love, but it’s possibly as close to love as I’m ever gonna get.

  It’s still dark inside the van, though I know it’s morning by the sun gleaming in from under the door. My head is resting in the crook of Mikey’s arm, and surprisingly, he isn’t snoring for once. The air is stuffy in the van and I begin to dress after untangling myself from Mikey’s body.

  He stirs and opens his eyes, looking up at me with a smile.

  “I could get used to this,” he says groggily.

  “Me too.” I lean over and kiss him with a smile. “Come on, though. I can’t wait to see what we’re having for breakfast today. Maybe Tami laid another egg,” I laugh.

  “You wanna?” Mikey grins.

  “No, last night was just fine for me. Right now I want to eat.” I slip my feet into my boots.

  “I feel used.” He feigns shock.

  “Get used to it,” I smirk. “Just not right now.”

  “Really?” He grabs me, and when I try to pull away he drags me down on top of him.

  We kiss and I can tell we’re both getting carried away, but my stomach rumbles for food and breaks the spell. I laugh and roll off him, and he dresses by the light of my flashlight.

  “You ready?” I ask, opening the van doors and stepping out into the bright day. “Jesus.” I pinch my nose to get rid of the smell as my eyes widen to the size of saucers. “Mikey!” I scream.

  Thirty-Seven.

  My one moment of happiness is broken, crushed, trampled upon by the undead that surround the van and tree line around us.

  “Mikey!” I scream again, and reach for my machete.

  My hand hits air where my machete normally hangs, and I stumble backwards in search of it and bump into Mikey. He pushes me behind him, and I drop to my knees in search of my machete and holder. The moaning is getting louder, the smell of us reaching the dead and drawing their attention to us.

  My hand finally lands on my weapon, and I strap it around myself and pull the machete out. Mikey has already jumped down and is fighting with a deader. My heart skips a beat, and in that moment, I know that if he dies now—if the dead get him and I’m left in this shit-hole without him—that I may as well be dead myself. I run the length of the van and jump o
ut with a guttural scream and my machete raised high. Probably not my wisest decision, since noise attracts the creepy dead dudes, but I’m sure it looks pretty awesome!

  I land awkwardly on the ground, but stand up quickly and chop through the center of a deader like he’s a prime rib and this is a five star restaurant—now all I need is a tasty side sauce. I kick at him as I pull out my machete. His insides are mush, and my machete slides out of him with relative ease, releasing his intestines to the ground. I slice across his neck and take his head from his shoulders, a splatter of black blood and gore spurting out from the hole in his neck where his head once proudly sat.

  “Crunch! JD!” I scream their names as more of the dead surround us, and the air gets harder to breathe with the stench of the cold, rotting bodies.

  We move back to back, our weapons slashing wildly around us and cutting down anything that gets too close, as we try to make it around to the front of the van. Jesus, they’re everywhere. There must be thirty of them. Where the hell did they all come from? Steve said he hadn’t seen any in weeks, and even then only the odd one or two.

  I can hear more fighting toward the RV, and I hope to God that it is Crunch and JD, and not Emily. I know that she can handle herself, but the thought of her fighting makes my stomach crawl.

  A deader reaches for me and I take off his arm in a swift movement that takes even me by surprise. He looks down at it in confusion before reaching for me with his other hand. I take that too, and nearly laugh as his little forehead furrows in frustration, his brain—or whatever it is that makes them tick—still telling him to grab me, but with what exactly? The deader comes forward, face-first this time, and I kick out at him, my foot hitting his left kneecap with a crunch and making him collapse down to the ground. I kick him in the head, he falls backwards, and Mikey stomps on his face, crushing it under his heavy boot as we continue our backwards scuttle.