I chance a glance around me and catch a glimpse of Crunch doing a flying kick, both Kukri knives held high. I don’t see what happens when she lands, but I don’t hear her scream in pain, either, so I’m guessing that’s a good sign she’s okay.
My heart is beating wildly, the sound of blood whooshing in my ears making it hard to think straight, and the smell—goddamn, the smell is palpable in the air. I cough and splutter, biting down on the inside of my cheek to stop the vomit from rising, and slash out at a short, curly-haired deader with half its face missing, leaving me with a prime view of the inside of its mouth and teeth. I scream as I do it, a war cry to get it to back the fuck away from me, but it doesn’t back away; they never do. They don’t care about limbs and missing faces, they care about brains and new flesh to feast on. I think of Emily and fresh panic surges.
A switch in me clicks, and my fear drops into a bottomless pit. I breathe out, step away from Mikey’s back, and fight my way back to the RV. Thoughts run wild in my head, but a single goal is in mind.
I can’t lose her, I can’t lose him, I can’t lose them.
Lose? No, I can’t, I won’t—no fucking way.
Zombies surround the camper, and I want to cry as they pile in and I hear screaming coming from within. I run up behind them, decapitating several that are jammed in the doorway. Several more are inside, but when I look toward the source of the screaming I see that it’s Steve and not Emily. Our eyes meet and he stops screaming—possibly through embarrassment, possibly because he knows that his number is up. He reaches for his bottle of Jack Daniels and chugs it back as zombies surround him and dive in on the feast, Steve a la carte. I step up and into the RV, grab the nearest deader and drag it backwards and off Steve.
Its hands reach back for me, attempting to claw at me, but I swat them away and use the deader as a zombie shield as another one stops its slow execution of Steve, stands up, and makes a grab for me too. Meaty intestines hang from his dried-out lips, the blood trailing down its chin like spittle. My little zombie shield is still reaching backwards for me and I grip it firmly under the jaw, tilting its chin up to expose the soft tissue of its neck while avoiding its blackened teeth, and drag my machete across its throat. Gunk pours down and I push harder until I feel my weapon slice through the bones and tendons holding its head in place. Deader guy comes forward and I duck out of his way as I drop my now re-dead deader and send him flying toward the floor. He sprawls out, and then pushes his arms under him, attempting to push himself upwards. I stomp on him and slam my machete through his back and out through his ribcage. Somehow between kicking, stabbing him, and narrowly avoiding his neck and head, I manage to shuffle him into the doorway of the RV. I reach for the handle and pull the door closed on his face. I don’t hear the crack, but I know that the impact of the little door on his softened skull does damage, and I’m about to slam it again when Mikey makes it to me and thrusts his machete through dead guy’s eye socket just as he looks up. Bad timing for the deader, I guess. Or not. This sack of rotting meat was going to die again today, one way or another.
I duck out of the way as another deader reaches for me. He grips me by the shoulder and tries to bite me, and I yelp and pull with everything I have to get away from him, but I only seem manage to bring him possibly even closer to me as he trips on the deader on the floor and slams into my back. I scream and slap at him in a frantic attempt to shake him off, feeling every bit like a female cliché.
“Down!” Mikey’s voice rings loudly in my left ear, and I drop to my knees and out of his way without a second thought.
I feel something cold splash across my back, and when I look back, Mr. Zombie is no more. Mikey grips the front of my jacket and pulls me out of the camper as another one of the zombies turns to me, smacking its lips together in what appears to be sheer zombie delight.
I struggle to get out of Mikey’s grip, and scream at him to let me go. Steve is still in there, we can’t just leave him. I look past the deader coming toward me and see Steve. He’s drinking from his prize bottle of whiskey. A grimace is on his face as the two deaders bite down on various parts of him, his insides tumbling to the floor in a splash of hot red blood and cold dead hands.
Steve’s hand is shaky as he tips his favorite golden drink down his throat. It spills down his chin, splashing across the head of the zombie chewing on his stomach. He coughs and splutters back out the liquid, now mixed with his own blood, before the bottle slips from his hands.
His eyes go wider as the deader growls into the cavernous hole it just made, and his hand unintentionally pats away the face chewing on him. He makes a gurgled scream as he loses the fingers on that hand for his trouble.
“He’s gone,” Mikey shouts, and drags me backwards again. This time I don’t fight him on it. This time I can hear Emily screaming from somewhere outside.
I take one last look at Steve, saying a final goodbye to our brief friendship, and turn away from him, knowing that Mikey is right—Steve’s gone. But Emily isn’t, and she needs me.
I scan our surroundings. More deaders are coming from the tree line.
How the fuck did they find us?
Mikey grabs my hand and we run toward the screaming. Emily and Britta are fighting off some deaders. They’re surrounded, and damn it, I’m teaching Emily how to shoot if we make it out of this alive. She’s still using her stupid little Swiss army knife, like that’s going to help. Britta, on the other hand, has a long knife in her hand and is swiping away at the zombies. She’s faring well considering she’s still injured, but with more deaders on the way, I know she can’t keep it up.
Mikey and I run toward them, en route picking up a bloodied Crunch and JD. Crunch is limping and clearly in pain, but she looks focused on getting to the tow truck. I realize that if she gets there before any of us, she’ll most likely leave us behind.
“Shit,” I breathe out.
Mikey looks at me, and then at Crunch, possibly coming to the same conclusion. Either that or he’s just appeasing me, because he nods and pulls me and we run faster. Either way we are all going to have to fight. The deaders are surrounding the tow truck and JD has the keys. Mikey slips on the uneven forest ground and we slide down the incline and end up in the thick of the fight between my girls and the deaders. I grip a zombie by the scruff of its neck and fling it to the ground. Mikey stabs it through the face as I grab another one and toss it to the other side, stabbing my own machete through the center of its head. Thick black blood bursts up from around the wound. It’s still tinged red, and I can only assume it hasn’t been dead long.
We stumble and push our way toward the tow truck, only stopping for a breath when my legs collide with its front bumper. I kick out at a fat zombie with deep oozing gashes down its face, my stomach gurgling in protest as my foot sinks into its stomach.
“Aaah,” I yelp out as I lose my balance. Thank God I’m by the tow truck or I would be on my ass and the zombie would be chowing down.
I grip the bumper and try to shake the damn thing off, but it’s like sinking sand, and the more I struggle the more my foot sinks in. Emily reaches out to grab my leg and pull it out, but the zombie lurches for her, and she screams and steps back.
JD strikes it across the back of the skull, and when it goes limp and begins to fall down, pulling me with it, he wraps his arms around its meaty waist and pulls my foot free. He drops fat guy and almost instantly connects his elbow with a zombie’s face and makes a run for the door of the truck. We edge around the side of the vehicle, aiming for the back of the truck. I look in through the window and see Crunch staring out at me. She mouths something to JD beside her and I shiver. I know what she just said. I look at JD, our eyes meeting briefly before he turns the key and starts the truck.
My heart leaps into my throat as he revs the engine harder and a grin spreads across Crunch’s face.
Thirty-Eight.
“No!” I scream out, tears springing to my eyes. I grip Emily’s hand in mine, ready to thrust
her forward in the hopes that he will at least take mercy on her.
JD looks back at me, his eyes flicking to Emily and then Mikey.
“Hurry the fuck up then,” he shouts.
Crunch turns to stare at him. She doesn’t say anything, but she’s pissed off without a doubt, her lip turned up in an angry snarl. Her arm is pumping with blood, and there’s a deep gash across her face. All of us run to the back of the truck before JD can change his mind. I grab Emily, hoist her up, and pretty much throw her in the back, finding the strength from somewhere to climb up and in myself. There’s virtually no room as Britta and then Mikey climb in, but at least there’s plenty to hold onto with all the equipment that normally hoists the cars up in the center of the truck. I grip the rigging with one hand, and my other chops off the fingers of a deader that’s holding onto the side of the truck.
JD shifts the truck into reverse and we begin to back down the hill. Zombies follow us as quickly as their bodies can go, which—to be fair—isn’t very quick at all, but there are more coming from all angles. They slip on the decline and fall over, bumping and tripping on one another. More are on their way up the hill, and we all—barring Emily, who I warn with threat of a serious ass-whooping if she goes anywhere near the side of the truck—swing our weapons as the deaders get too close to the truck. The path widens and JD swings the truck around to face the right way before putting his foot down and heading off down the hill even faster. I just manage to keep myself in the truck, hanging on with both hands and still gripping my machete. I keep hold of the rusty metal rigging with a death grip as we go over bumps, deaders, and just general forest stuff.
We squeeze the truck back through the gap in the trees that we had originally come through and the truck crashes back on to the road. JD seems to speed up even more, which I didn’t think was actually possible in this old truck.
The road flashes past us in a blur, but I don’t watch too much. I look at Mikey and Emily, shocked by the realization of my own feelings for them both, and relieved that they are both alive. I swore I wouldn’t feel like this again—reliant on other people and actually giving a shit whether they live or die—yet here I am. When I left the walls with Emily, I did it for selfish reasons; she was just my get out card, my excuse to leave. I feel dirty admitting it, but I guess I used this vulnerable young girl. However, I never in a million years thought I would actually learn to love and care for her. I blink back the tears that are building, but when I look at Emily, her face contorted in misery, I let the sobs escape. I half hug her with one of my arms, trying to offer her some condolence for what she just had to go through. I feel like her mother, her friend, her rescuer, all wrapped up in one. And Mikey, Jesus, what the fuck is that all about? How have my feelings grown so much for him?
I look at him grimly watching the road pass by, his jaw grinding in that way it does when he’s deep in thought with worry. A single scratch tears down one cheek, leaving a small trickle of blood in its wake. What would I have done if I had lost him back there? My chest tugs in pain at the thought, and I hug Emily harder to me. I feel his eyes on me, but can’t look at him, knowing that it would just set me off even more.
I’ve spent the past the last couple of years building up my own wall, my own protective barrier to block out the pain, and between these two people they have managed to full-out annihilate it. Damn them.
An hour or so later, JD pulls the truck to the side of the road. I slowly release my death grip and flex my fingers. Sensation runs back through into my arms, and I grab Emily and pull her into a fierce bear hug. She starts up her sobbing again, if only just for a few minutes, before we separate and I kiss her forehead.
“You’re fine, Em. I got you, okay?”
She nods and wipes the tears away with the back of her hand.
JD steps out of the truck, looking pissed off and—well, just pissed off, really. Crunch however, looks in pain. It dawns on me then that we don’t have any of our things. We lost everything. My stomach twists in on itself under the realization. All that time collecting, saving, rationing—for nothing! I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. My eyes stray to Emily and Mikey, my friends—well, Britta, and the other two. I guess we should look on the bright side that we are all just safe. For now at least.
I swallow down my anger, climb down from the truck, and go over to check Crunch’s arm and face, since I’m the next nurse-in-training after her, but she shrugs away from me. I hear Mikey, Britta, and Emily climb down too, and make their way over to us.
“Let me look, damn you.” I grab her arm and a fresh spurt of blood pumps out of the wound.
“I’m fine, go do your girlfriend routine with loverboy over there. I don’t need your help,” she snaps.
“Calm down, Crunch,” JD barks out. Even he seems to be tiring of her drama queen act.
“What is your problem?” I rip a strip of cloth from my shirt. “I know you would have left us all to die up there if it hadn’t been for JD, but I don’t know what it is that I’ve done to piss you off so much in the first place. What makes it okay that you would willingly let me die?” I wrap the material tightly around her bleeding arm to stem the blood.
“Please, go do your saint act somewhere else, Nina.” She snatches her arm back from me and tries to stare me down, but for once, with her at least, I stand my ground.
“I’m fucking serious, Crunch! With everything else that is going on around here, the last thing I need is your emotional baggage because you can’t handle the fact that Mikey likes me more than you. Get a fucking grip, woman. You’re becoming an embarrassment.” I turn to walk away when I feel Crunch grab both my arms.
Her grip tightens and she slams me to the ground, her weight collapsing onto the back of me as she holds my face into the dirt.
“Is that really what you think this is about, little girl? Please, you don’t even know him.” Her mouth is close to my ear, and I swear that if she were a snake, her little v-shaped tongue would be hissing down my ear canal right about now. I struggle to shake her off, and by the sounds of it, so is everyone else. Not that I can see with my face in the dirt.
“Crunch, get the fuck off her.” Mikey’s voice is above me, and I feel her weight shift as he finally drags her off my body.
I climb up and turn around to meet her venomous stare. “I know what I need to know, Crunch.”
“You don’t know shit!” she laughs. “What, you think he’s some good little boy that’s come to save you and your kid? He’s just like me.” She looks at JD. “Just like you. In fact, he’s probably worse than both of us put together.”
“Crunch, please,” Mikey begs.
The sound of his whiny voice releases a whole new set of anger, and I reach back with all my strength and land a punch square on her jaw. She flies backwards and lands on her ass. “He’s nothing like you.” I turn and walk away from her.
“You have no idea who or what he is!” she screams after me.
“Crunch, shut the fuck up!” Mikey shouts louder to drown her out.
I hear her voice as she stands back up and comes toward me, but when I turn, JD is holding her back. “He’s one of them, Nina.”
“Crunch, shut up,” Mikey pleads again.
I look at them all. Only Crunch and Mikey seem to know what she’s talking about; Britta and JD look just as confused as I am.
“One of who?” I ask warily.
“He’s one of them, one of the Forgotten. Your perfect guy used to murder and torture innocent people. So you see, Nina, that’s why he’s better off with me than he’ll ever be with you. We’ll always share something you won’t.”
JD has let go of Crunch, and we all stare at Mikey, who looks devastated. But I can’t believe that he was ever with the Forgotten. She has to be lying. I can’t believe that he ever did any of those things.
“Mikey?” is the only word I manage to get out, my eyebrows furrowing together in confusion. My hand reaches for him, but he steps back from my touch.
“But, you said…” I begin, but I can’t finish the sentence. The sickening feeling in my gut just keeps on growing.
“It’s not like you think,” he mumbles. I wait for his apology, his explanation, anything, but he offers me nothing but silence and a look filled with shame.
My head swims. I trusted him. I thought he could protect us, and all along he was the bad guy. “As soon as we can get our own truck, we’re leaving.” I grab Emily and pull her close to me.
“See why it would never work between you two?”
I look up at Crunch and see her smirk, but I can’t even come back with a witty, smart-ass retort. I’m too shell-shocked that the man I have fallen in love with would do such horrible things. He told me what the Forgotten did to people—innocent people—and to find out that he was a part of it all along makes me sick to my stomach.
“Nina?” Emily whispers my name.
I look down at her and see my nails are digging in to her flesh. “Sorry.” I let her go, feeling numb and broken. I don’t know what to do with myself. Where do we go from here now? I still intend on going up to Ben’s parents’ cabin, but there’s no way I want Mikey there. Or Crunch. But what sway do I hold with these people? There’s surely no way that JD is going to listen to anything I have to say.
“There’s someone coming.” Britta’s voice breaks through the uncomfortable silence that surrounds the group.
I look back the way we have just come and see what looks like a small freaking army headed our way, but these guys don’t look like they are here to help us. I swallow the hard lump in my throat and reach for my machete, feeling almost dirty and traitorous to all the innocent people that Mikey more than likely killed with this very weapon. A fresh burst of anger surges through me.
“Should we go?” Crunch asks, her voice actually sounding a little worried. Good, is all I can think.
Odium (The Dead Saga.) Page 28