The Dead Saga (Book 4): Odium IV

by Claire C. Riley

  “Promises aren’t worth shit these days,” Aiken replies drolly.

  “You’re telling me,” I say, looking away from him and back toward the field. “But this one is.”

  Silence eclipses between us for a moment or two until he breaks it. “I can see that. However, that being what it is, we’re heading back on home. You can come with us, or you can stay here. The choice is yours.”

  “I can’t just leave him out here!” I yell. The bottle of anger and grief I’ve been holding in for the past couple of hours is ready to tip over.

  “If you want him to live, you will,” he retorts. “Your blood will be attracting all the wrong sorts of attention right now—zeds, dogs. You’re not doing him any favors by staying out here. If you want my advice, the best thing you can do is come back with us, get yourself cleaned up, and we can bring you back tomorrow to search.”

  I drag a hand through my hair, my guilt already betraying me. “I…”

  I know he’s right, and though I don’t want to leave, I have to. We’ve been looking for almost an hour with no luck, my leg is killing, and the bandage is almost soaked through with blood again. I have to leave him here and hope that he’s hiding somewhere safe. Nina would have hated me for going, but she couldn’t possibly hate me more than I hate myself already.

  Joan comes over to me, her eyes wide with concern. “He’s a crafty little thing,” she says, her gaze moving out of the field. “He’ll be hiding somewhere safe.”

  “Do you really believe that?” I ask, not wanting this decision to be solely mine.

  Joan turns and looks at me. “He survived this long without anyone else’s help, didn’t he? So yes, I think he can survive a night out here. We can’t just sit and wait for him to show up, now, can we?”

  I nod and she pats my shoulder before walking away. I look back at Aiken. “I guess I owe you,” I finally say.

  His smile widens, and he flicks the matchstick to the other side of his mouth. “I guess you do.”

  Silence falls between us, and despite the throbbing in my ankle and foot, and the anxiety coursing through me, I square my shoulders and raise my chin. Aiken chuckles, reaching out and patting me on the shoulder like Joan just did.

  “Come on,” he says, turning away from me and walking back toward the truck. “The zeds and the dogs will be sniffing us out before long, especially with the way your leg is. If your friend is alive, he’ll likely stay that way if we’re not here to draw attention to him.”

  I turn, my gaze following him. “I don’t like owing people,” I say seriously.

  Aiken stops walking but doesn’t turn around. “Good thing I don’t like people owing me either,” he says, and continues to walk away. “We’ll be back tomorrow for you, kid. Stay safe.”

  I watch him get to the truck and climb back in, and then I notice that everyone is loading up inside too, including Joan. The road floods with light again as people move away from the lights, and in the shadows I see the glowing eyes of the dogs from earlier. I glance back toward the overgrown field, feeling like a bastard for leaving, but not having any other choice. I can’t stay here, and I can’t go into that field looking for Adam—especially not in the state I’m in; the bandages have already begun to turn red as my blood soaks through.

  “Adam!” I call one last time, hoping beyond hope that he’ll come out of hiding. Silence echoes back at me and I look away from the fields with a heavy sigh. “Hunker down, kid, I’ll be back for you tomorrow,” I mumble and head toward the truck.

  With every step, I feel the burden of heavy guilt stretching across my shoulders and growing stronger with every beat of my heart. Nina wouldn’t have left…would she? But I’ll bleed to death if I don’t get my leg sewn up, and by the sound of the howls in the distance, the dogs are already sniffing me out as an easy meal.

  I step to the side of the truck, where two of Aiken’s people are waiting for me to get in. Their gazes watch me carefully, their guns staying trained at the ground, but I notice that their fingers never leave the triggers.

  No, Nina wouldn’t leave, but I realize now that this probably isn’t really a choice at all; Aiken would make Joan and I leave and go back to their camp whether we wanted to or not.

  I grab the side of the door and climb into the truck, a new sense of unease growing in me. Inside, more men and more guns sit waiting for me, and I find a seat and sit down in it. Perhaps I am the fool after all, I think, and Adam is the one who’s safe.

  Chapter Four

  “I’m just so excited to meet some more strapping young men like yourselves,” Joan giggles. “It’s not often that a woman like myself gets so many strong men coming to her aid.”

  I shake my head as I listen to the crazy bat jabber on with herself. Joan is verging on at least seventy. And that’s being kind. These men are young enough to be her sons, maybe even her grandsons, and you can see the shock on their faces at her incessant flirting with them.

  The truck rumbles along loudly, the smell of too many people crammed into too small a space almost palpable in the air. Sweat and dirt and the stench of blood fill my nostrils. It’s dark in the truck, but I can still see enough to get a rough approximation of how many people are here, and the odds are not in our favor.

  “So where are you from?” Aiken calls from the front of the truck. “I know it ain’t from around here.”

  “Yeah?” I say, my tone laced with wariness.

  “Yeah. You’re a virgin to these roads—otherwise you would have known to stay in your truck. No one gets out of their vehicle without adequate backup around these parts. Rabid dogs, zeds, and God knows what else rule these parts.” Aiken laughs darkly.

  “Not to mention you guys, huh?” I reply with dry sarcasm.

  Aiken laughs again and his crew joins in with him. “Yeah, not to mention that.”

  “And here I was thinking that you were all good boys,” Joan chimes in. “Didn’t realize you were as bad as the people we were running from.”

  A loud slap sings out, and I look sharply across to where Joan is sitting, my fists already clenched and ready to take down whoever just hit the old broad. But my assumptions are way off base—or at least it seems that way. By the look on the man next to her, who’s gingerly rubbing his jawline, I’m wrong.

  “Fiends! All of you. Only after one thing,” Joan curses.

  The man looks shocked and shakes his head as one of the others laughs at him.

  “Someone chasing you two down?” Aiken says, ignoring Joan.

  I notice that all humor has gone from his voice now.

  I think over whether to be totally honest with him or not, but decide on keeping my mouth shut for the time being. What he doesn’t know can’t hurt us. But what he does know could kill us.

  “It’s like that, huh?” he says in return for my silence.

  “Yeah, it’s like that,” I reply.

  I hear him chuckle again, but he doesn’t say anything else, and the rest of the journey is done in silence. Who knows where they are taking us, or how far from Adam we will end up. I have to hope, though, that since he hinted at sending people out searching for Adam when it was daylight that he will hold true to that. Well, as long as neither Joan nor I piss him off too much.

  My thoughts stray to Adam, out there on his own, and I find myself not knowing what I wish for him. He’s just a little boy, yet he’s been through more than any grown man should ever have to go through. Is it really fair for him to have to live in this world anymore? Wouldn’t it be better for him if I wished him dead? Release him from this world so he can finally go wherever it is we go after death takes us? Or is that my own guilt talking because I’ve left him out there to survive all on his own?

  My chin falls to my chest as I lower my head, aching remorse running through me.

  The truck finally pulls up to a large set of wrought iron gates covered with sheets of metal to keep out probing hands and eyes. And deaders, of course. I crane my neck to look out one of the small
windows of the truck, expecting that at any moment someone will stop me, but no one does. Dark shadows in the shapes of people with guns move along the top wall. Two men swing open the large gates, both armed to the teeth and gesturing for the truck to move inside.

  “Home sweet home,” Aiken says from the front seat.

  “You the only one who can talk around here?” I snap, stress making me short-tempered. The sight of so many guns is making me anxious. That and the fact that the throbbing in my leg is getting difficult to ignore.

  “Mikey, don’t go being rude to these fine men,” Joan tuts. “Apart from this one, of course,” she says, glaring at the man she slapped earlier, though there’s a definite glint in her eye when she looks at him.

  Aiken turns in his seat to look at me. “Nah, my people can talk—they just choose not to talk to people they don’t know,” he says. “They don’t like to get to know people unless they know they’re going to be sticking around, if you get what I’m saying.”

  “I don’t,” I say.

  “Until they know the color of their blood, my friend,” Aiken says calmly.

  I don’t bother to reply, but continue to stare out the window, noticing the shadowed structures dotted about the area. The walls are high, but not so high that they can’t be infiltrated, I decide. Which means one of two things: either people don’t know about this place, or they’re so afraid of it that they stay away.

  For some reason option one worries me as much as option two.

  Aiken is talking quietly to the driver and the other man up front, but I can’t make out what they’re saying as Joan leans forward in her seat and begins to speak.

  “Mikey?” her voice whispers to me. “We’re going to find the little one tomorrow, aren’t we? Advil needs us. He’s just a little boy, all alone in the big wide world.”

  I swallow, not wanting to worry her any more than she already is. “Yeah, we’re going to find him tomorrow. Don’t you worry about that.”

  None of the other people in the truck say anything to disagree with me, though I’m not stupid enough to take that as a good sign. In fact, the opposite. But there’s no time to ask questions, or try to reassure Joan anymore, as the truck comes to a stop and the doors are flung open.

  Aiken stands in the doorway, with two other men by his side. “Sorry about this, friend.”

  I grit my teeth. “We’re not friends,” I reply, my adrenalin spiking.

  “That’s what I thought,” he says, and gestures with a nod of his head to the men beside him.

  Both men reach in and I’m simultaneously dragged and pushed out of the truck and a bag is immediately shoved over my head. And then we’re walking. Or rather I’m dragged as I turn my body into a leaden weight, trying to pull from their grip. The ground is hard and compact, the occasional crunch of gravel underfoot and the cussing of Joan to keep me company in the dark.

  The screech of a metal door opening and then closing has me on high alert, and then I’m being forced to sit down in a chair while my hands are cuffed behind my back. Honest to God metal handcuffs! The kind that my wrists used to be so familiar with, all those many moons ago. It’s both a blessing and a curse, I decide.

  A rope is tied around my waist to keep me strapped to the chair. Nina’s sarcastic voice is ringing loud and clear in my head.

  Stranger danger, Mikey! Stranger danger. Get your sorry ass out of here!

  And then there’s nothing.

  Just the sound of retreating footsteps and the door closing behind them as they leave.

  “What, no parting words of wisdom?” I yell into the dark, the soft cloth of the material sticking to my sweaty face, and not even Joan’s talk to keep me company. Either she’s dead or they took her somewhere else, I decide.

  I listen intently, willing my raging heart to quiet the hell down, but to no avail. It’s hard not to panic when you’re tied to a chair with a bag over your head! The worst possible scenarios are flung to the forefront of my mind—deaders released into the room to eat me alive being the main culprit.

  But after what seems an eternity, there’s still nothing but silence.

  Not even outside noises can be heard, no matter how hard I strain my ears.

  And then the paranoia kicks in—the thought that perhaps I’m not alone after all, but that there are others here. Men, women, who the fuck knows. But they’re all sitting around watching me, and waiting to see how long it’ll take before I freak out. Before I move and try to escape. Or before I call for help. And what then? What happens to me then? And not just me, but Joan. Where have they taken her, and what will happen to Adam if they kill me here tonight?

  “Damn you, Nina,” I mutter, hating her once again for the fact that she’s thrust the responsibility of other people’s lives on me.

  I grit my teeth and will myself to calm down, to think through everything I have heard and seen thus far.

  Aiken and his crew rescued us out on the road. There’s no doubt about that. I was about to become a prime rib for those wild dogs, and I have no doubt in my mind that Joan would have been the accompanying rack of ribs.

  So that makes Aiken a good guy. Doesn’t it? Surely he wouldn’t put his life and his men’s lives at risk for nothing. He has to be getting more out of this than just tying me to a chair and feeding me to the deaders.

  I swallow and take a slow, steady breath, the black material of the bag on my head making me feel claustrophobic as it presses against my mouth. I listen harder as my heartbeat begins to level out. No more a rampaging train, but the steady thump thump thump I’m used to.

  But beyond the blackness there’s still nothing but silence.

  My eyes strain to distinguish something beyond the material, but there’s nothing but blackness, so I do what any man would do when he got sick and tired of being tied to a chair with a bag over his head…

  I dislocate my right thumb.

  Pain spasms through my hand and tears well in my eyes. Damn, I’d forgotten how much it hurts to do that. I hiss and grit my teeth as I take a couple of slow breaths while I wait for the pain to subside. Once it slows to a dull ache, I wriggle my hand free of the cuffs. And once one hand is free, I drag the bag off my head and stare around the room, eyeing up left and right quickly in case anyone is standing around watching my little contortionist act. However I’m only disappointed by yet more blackness in every direction.

  It looks like I’m in a warehouse of some sort, with a high roof that has several huge holes in it, letting in a cool night breeze. I guess I’m a lucky boy that it’s not raining, I think with a frown. I squint into the darkness around me, trying to remember which direction the footsteps had retreated in, but I can’t work it out. The warehouse is vast with large ceilings, meaning sounds echo, throwing me off the direction they could have gone.

  Happy that I’m alone, I grit my teeth and push my thumb back into place, almost gagging on the pain. I wait several moments to let the nausea subside. Bile has built in the back of my throat as yet again pain throbs through my hand in waves. There was a time, once, when I had popped my thumbs out like this quite frequently—to the point where the pain had even stopped bothering me. It was part and parcel with the territory. Breaking and entering, thievery, robbery, whatever you wanted to call it. I hadn’t been a good guy, though I had tried for a while, and while I was learning my trade I had escaped more than my fair share of handcuffs.

  With the pain at the point of being a low throb now, I begin moving the rope from around my waist to bring it to my front so I can try and untie it. It only takes a couple of minutes of fumbling in the dark to get the knot untied and then I stand up and take a step away from the chair, readying to make my escape from this place.

  And then I stop moving, my left foot hovering in the air mid-step. I stare into the darkness around me with a frown. The more I stare, the more I frown. Because deep down I know this isn’t right—it can’t be.

  It’s too easy.

  The ache in my thumb continues
to jar me back to the here and now every time I try to think what the hell they could be playing at. The thing that gives it away the most is that I haven’t heard a peep from Joan. Not a single cuss or grumble. Which means she’s either dead or she isn’t here at all. And if she’s not here, then why am I?

  Why would they separate us only to kill us?

  My mind grabs hold of the reason and holds on tight: Joan isn’t a threat—but I am.

  My left foot settles on the ground to join my right, and I close my eyes and listen once again for any noises around me, but still don’t hear anything. My choices are simple: I either make a run for it and leave Joan here, or I sit my ass back down, tie myself back up, put my cuffs back on, and wait to see what happens.

  I know for a fact what Nina would do. Damn it and damn her.

  I look up at the sliver of moon through the hole in the roof, and then I sit back down in my chair. My ass hasn’t even hit the seat when footsteps come forward from the darkness.

  “Good choice, my friend. I knew we were going to get along,” Aiken says.

  I stay silent, watching as lamps are lit around the room.

  “I said to my men, ‘he’s all right, he’s one of us,’ and it would seem I was right, wouldn’t you say?”

  I can see him now, much better than I had at the side of the road.

  “I know, I’m a pretty boy, ain’t I?” he chuckles, running his hand along the long red scar that’s etched into the side of his face.

  “What the fuck is this?” I reply, forcing myself to look away from the scar.

  “This,” Aiken says, with his arms wide open, “this was a test. I wanted to check out your loyalty. Because loyalty is what I’m all about.” He smiles, ignoring my frown. “What you said at the side of the road about promises meaning something, well that’s the sort of philosophy we tend to live by around here. But not many others in this world do anymore. What I just saw in you—sitting yourself back down and not abandoning your friends—well, that showed me exactly the color that runs through your veins. And it ain’t yellow.”