The Dead Saga (Book 4): Odium IV

by Claire C. Riley

  A meat hook from an slaughterhouse hangs on a metal chain from one of the crossbeams of the warehouse, and Aiken grabs hold of it with both hands, letting his weight rest as he leans. He flicks the matchstick from left to right with his tongue, watching me carefully for several moments as he assess both me and the situation.

  “There are a lot of people here, and we can’t just go letting anyone in.” Aiken cocks his head to one side. “I mean, have you met some of the people that survived?” He whistles. “They are not good people.”

  “Boss?”

  Close to my right-hand side, a voice from behind has me automatically tensing, but I control myself enough not to show it.

  Aiken’s gaze shifts from me to the person behind me before coming back to me again. His smile grows, and he lets go of the meat hook and stands up straight again. “Come and meet my men, get something to eat, and let’s fix up that leg of yours before you pass out. I’d like to hear your story.”

  “And what if I say no?” I say, slowly standing up. I wait to see if someone—one of his men, crew, whatever he wants to call them—will grab me and slam me back down in my seat, but no one does.

  Aiken laughs. “Well, then you can be on your way. But I wouldn’t suggest you do that tonight—not with your leg all banged up like it is.” Aiken laughs darkly. “So much blood will have all the monsters in these parts making you their Sunday lunch, and if you’re going to find that kid of yours, dying isn’t a good way of going about it.” And then the squeak of the door sounds as he leaves the warehouse.

  I turn to look behind me, putting a face to the voice. Three people are standing there, each of them looking threatening, yet none of them move toward me. They don’t look happy about me being here, but if Aiken’s their boss then they’re his underlings, and what good little underlings they’re being right now.

  “Is that his thing?” I ask the biggest underling. “Walking away dramatically?” I move my gaze across to the other two. “I reckon he watched too many cowboy movies as a kid and he’s trying to reenact the dramatic walk off into the sunset. What do you think?” I smirk.

  “I think you should take the boss up on his offer,” the smallest of the three replies.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” he says.

  “And why’s that?” My tone’s full of attitude, but I thank God that no one can see the raging in my blood, or the pounding in my ears as worry strokes up my sides.

  “Because the boss normally knows what’s best for everyone,” the biggest underling says, making no big show of his statement, which only irritates me more.

  None of this makes any sense. Why rescue me and Joan, convince me to leave Adam behind, and then lock me in a warehouse and see if I would try to escape, only to then patch me up, feed me, and send me on my way the next day? No, none of this makes any sense at all.

  This still feels like one big test. And with Joan and Adam’s lives on the line, I’m not about to mess it up. I make up my mind and decide to play it cool. To play a part in all of this until I decide what the best thing to do is. Because he’s right in that I couldn’t leave right now—not in this sort of mess with my leg busted up the way it is. I wouldn’t make it a mile down the road before I got eaten by something. And I can’t let that happen, because I have a promise to keep.

  “So, what’s for dinner?” I ask, my cocky smirk still in place—mainly because I can tell it irritates the shit out of Aiken’s men. “Please tell me it’s steak, because I’ve been hankering for a steak for a good few years now.”

  Chapter Five

  Dinner looks good. Real good.

  And for a brief few moments I forget how I got here, and instead I stare down at my full plate in ravenous hunger. I haven’t eaten or drunk anything in almost two days, and up until now I haven’t really thought about it. Hunger is a way of life these days. It’s sort of part and parcel with the damn zombie apocalypse. You begin to forget what the empty, hollow ache in your gut or the shakiness of your hands means. But now that food is in front of me, I take note of how my vision is swaying from both hunger and thirst.

  Thank God my plate’s full. And full of things I haven’t eaten in far too long. Things I thought I’d never see again.

  Tomatoes and carrots, mushrooms and onions, all cooked together with some honest-to-God meat. I have no clue what type of meat it is; I only know that my mouth salivates at the sight of it. I’m about to dive in with both hands when a new underling hands me some silverware—a knife and fork—and even a little white paper napkin, which makes me want to bark out a laugh.

  I’m hallucinating.

  I have to be.

  But it’s the best hallucination I’ve had since…well, since forever.

  I pick up my fork, the metal object feeling foreign in my clumsy, uncivilized grasp. It’s equally heavy and light, all at the same time. I stare at my hand for a moment, feeling a frown cross my features as I stare at the metal implement, and I try to think back to the last time I held a fork. I think for minute upon minute, letting my mind go further and further backwards through history, but the only thing that comes to me is the day my world fall apart. I squeeze my eyes shut to try to think harder, because that couldn’t be it…could it? It couldn’t have been that long.

  “Alfie here’s our medic. He’s going to patch up your leg before you eat, if that’s okay.” Aiken says, disturbing my inner turmoil.

  I open my eyes, ignoring my own distress, and I force myself to smile once again. It’s just a fork. A stupid damn fork. Yet in the grand scheme of things, it means everything right now. The fork is civilization. It’s life. It’s real. And it’s here in my hand.

  A man so young he’s almost a kid is standing in front of me—the same young kid from the roadside. He’s wearing a black vest and jeans, and I notice that his arms are covered in small scars all the way down. Teeth marks, I realize as I stare.

  “You mind?” he says, pointing to my leg and ignoring my stare.

  I shake my head no and he gets down on his knees and opens up his bag.

  He begins pulling out all sorts of things, and then he drags on a pair of gloves and unwraps the bandage from my leg. I have to look away because it looks like a dog chewed on my leg…Yeah, yeah, a dog did chew on my leg. That’s my point exactly, and no one wants to see that crap.

  “Where’s Joan?” I ask. I don’t feel good. In fact, I feel damn shitty. I feel exhausted from fighting, and from the lack of eating and drinking, but mostly I feel like I’ve gone ten rounds with my emotions. From sadness and anger to suspicion and guilt. I’m not sure how much more I can take. The bottle has started to tip over and everything is ready to spill out.

  “She’s getting treated by our other medic. She took a couple of bites as well—nothing as serious as yours, though. Then she asked for a bath and an apple pie.” Aiken shrugs and laughs. It’s a deep, booming laugh that bounces off the walls and soaks into your skin. “She’s a crazy one for sure.”

  I wince as I look back down at my throbbing leg. The blood had started to congeal, but the wound has opened back up with the bandage moved out of the way. He sprays something on it and begins to clean the wound, but I refuse to pay too much attention to what’s happening. The pain is enough of a notification on that front.

  “Yeah, she is,” I reply.

  I look around the room, taking in everyone and everything. Several more minions are peppered around the room, all looking unimpressed that I’m here. I give one of them a little wave and a flash of teeth. His angry gaze darts to Aiken, who chuckles and waves off his minion’s glare.

  “This is Ricky. He’s not too happy about letting more people join us. Can’t say I blame him. Most people aren’t the good sort, if you know what I mean,” Aiken says. “I should tell you more about us. Seems only fair. We’ve seen the color of your blood, so maybe you should know ours, right?”

  I shrug, feeling the pinch of a needle in my skin, but I still refuse to look down. “I won’t be sticking
around, so it’s up to you,” I say.

  Aiken smiles. “Well, we’re the New Earth Order. NEO for short. We’re a community of people who are sick of all the killing.”

  “As in NEO from The Matrix?” I joke, ignoring the “no killing” remark because that’s just another absurdity all on its own.

  “I hadn’t thought of that. You’re a funny guy.” He laughs again.

  “So I’m told,” I bite out, finally giving in to the temptation and glancing down at my leg—and wishing almost instantly that I hadn’t. It’s not pretty. Not at all. “You sure you’re qualified to do this, kid?”

  Alfie looks up at me, catching me in his blue-eyed stare. “Not really.” He grins. “Whatcha’ gonna do though, right?” He shrugs and gets back to work.

  I can’t argue with that point. “So, you’re named after a long-dead movie character and your group doesn’t kill?” I say, holding Aiken’s stare. “I think I can see the color of your blood just fine.”

  He smiles, a slow smile that creeps up his face as if he knows something that I don’t. “Never said we didn’t kill, only that we don’t like to. We do what we’ve gotta’ do to protect our own,” Aiken says. “I’m sure you can understand that, my friend.”

  He picks up his silverware and starts to eat, gesturing with a nod of his head that I should do the same. I look down at my plate, my stomach rumbling loudly just as Alfie finishes up his job on my leg.

  “Not going to be entering any beauty pageants with legs like this,” he jokes, “but the stitches will hold.” He packs all his things up in his doctor’s bag and stands back up. “Someone will drop off some antibiotics and pain relief later on for you.”

  “Okay,” I reply with a frown. He seems like a good kid—the sort that was once a boy like Adam. The thought makes my stomach clench in guilt and anger. How could I have left him there? All alone? I squeeze my eyes closed, feeling disgusted with myself.

  “You had no choice,” Aiken says, as if reading my mind.

  I open my eyes and avoid his stare, instead choosing to look down at my plate and stab a tomato with my fork. Now that the immediate danger is over, I’ve made eating my next priority, and my stomach is thankful as it grunts in pain and hunger. A little juice squirts out of the side of the tomato, and a small laugh abruptly leaves me. Aiken’s sitting at the other end of the long table we’re at, and though he’s eating his own food, I can feel his gaze shifting to me every once in a while.

  “Never really liked vegetables before all of this,” I say in an attempt to break the awkward silence in the room. My voice carries down to him, and when I look up, he’s placed his own fork down and is staring at me. He smiles and nods his head slowly.

  “Can’t say I did either,” he replies. “Apart from tomatoes. My ma used to make the best tomato pasta sauce. Made the entire thing from scratch as well. None of this premade jar stuff. All homegrown vegetables from our backyard.” He falls back into silence, probably thinking about the pasta sauce his ma used to make.

  I can’t say I blame him. I can’t even think about my mom’s apple pie without my eyes welling up. What I would do for one last slice of that pie. My mom was a terrible cook when it came to anything else.

  I push the memories to one side and move on, like I always do when I think of my past life—my old family and friends, or anything to do with that part of history. Because that is what it is: history. A past life.

  I have to live in the here and now if I’m going to survive.

  “Well, I hate to break it to you, buddy, but tomatoes aren’t really a vegetable. They’re a fruit.” I finally raise my fork and push the tomato into my mouth almost nonchalantly, as if this isn’t the first fresh-grown piece of food I’ve eaten in years. The truth is, I have now been a part of several new colonies that have begun to grow their own food. It isn’t an uncommon thing, really. What is uncommon is that it’s a tomato, and tomatoes are my favorite. Now if someone could mush one of these bad boys up and make it into some ketchup, I’d be running on gold.

  The flavor is amazing, and I would like several minutes in silence just to let my taste buds jack themselves off, but Aiken breaks my intimate moment.

  “Yes, they are,” he says, sounding pissed off at me—which is surprising, really, since I haven’t once seen him angry since we met a couple of hours ago. Actually, that’s not really that long, so forget I said that. I also decide then and there that some of Nina’s talent for making friends must have rubbed off on me. “Tomatoes are a vegetable,” he says indignantly.

  I shake my head and stab at another tomato while my teeth continue to work at the one still in my mouth. “Nope. Tomatoes are a fruit. I can promise you that. How’s the woman that I came in with,” I ask, referring to Joan since I hadn’t seen her since I was blindfolded and tied to a chair.

  The second tomato tastes just as good as the first, and the urge to groan in satisfaction is growing stronger. My head is all over the place—one minute up, the next minute down. My usual selfish nature is at war with the side that Nina has brought out in me—the compassionate side. Or perhaps it’s just exhaustion catching up to me and fucking with my brain.

  I glance up as Aiken puts down his fork. The noisy clatter of it against the porcelain dish seems to make everyone in the room look uneasy.

  “The old lady you came in with is fine,” he says gruffly. “But I’m telling you, tomatoes are a vegetable.” Aiken looks over at one of his underlings. “Shane, I’m right, right?”

  The underling named Shane looks unsure. He glances across the room at someone else, his cheeks flaming a little red because he clearly doesn’t know the answer. His breathing hitches and he shuffles from foot to foot and continues to look around.

  “I could go ask Phil. He might know, boss,” Shane says with a small shrug, his face still looking flushed with embarrassment that he doesn’t know the answer.

  And I can’t help it: I laugh.

  All eyes in the room immediately move to me, but I don’t even care that there are six heavily armed men and women staring at me and wondering why I’m laughing my ass off at them and their boss. If anything, I laugh even harder.

  “Is this some kind of joke? Are you punking me right now? Is Ashton Kutcher going to come through that door with a camera? Because honest to God, of all the things that have happened to me in the last couple of years, it really wouldn’t be the weirdest,” I say between laughs. I stab my fork into another tomato and it explodes, and the sight of the juice and seeds sprayed across my plate of food like bloodied brains is more than I can take and I laugh even harder. “And just so you know, I’d punch that dick Ashton in the throat if he did walk in here because he’s annoying as fuck and Demi Moore was way too damned hot for him if you ask me, and so is Mila Kunis. I seriously don’t understand how he keeps getting such hot women in his bed. I mean, he’s not even funny!”

  The room, barring my laughter, is still silent—almost deafeningly so—and I feel rage begin to bubble inside of me. I’m laughing my ass off right now because we’re discussing whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable and the world is infested with zombies. I just lost the woman I love because of my own stupid mistakes, and I’m still alive. Adam is out there somewhere, maybe alive but probably dead, and I’ll be dropping my pants later to get a rabies shot. How is any of this even possible? How do I continue to escape death at every turn and yet everyone else, people I care about, die every other day?

  Everyone is still staring at me like I’m a dumbass, and all it does is make me angrier. Where once I was full of grief and sadness, now I’m filled with rage. I need to get the hell out of here. The walls are closing in, exhaustion and frustration ready to topple my feeble walls. I don’t belong here; I should be on my own, away from anyone that can get hurt in the aftershocks of the walking bomb that I am.

  “Ashton’s a dick,” Aiken begins, “but you need to take it easy. You’re making my men nervous. And I don’t like it when they get nervous. So eat your food an
d calm down.”

  My stomach growls louder, eager for more food, and I laugh again, not feeling the humor but laughing all the same. Shane laughs with me, and I glare at him to shut him the hell up. This isn’t funny. None of this is funny. Yet that’s all I am to these people—that’s all I ever am. A clown. A joke. A Goddamned fucking laugh-a-minute Larry. That’s all I was to Nina too. Probably why she ran back inside—so she could get away from me and my patheticness. Well fuck her.

  And just like that my jar topples over and everything comes spilling out.

  I drop my stupid damn fork to my plate and I start scooping the food up and shoveling it into my mouth like an animal. Because that’s what I am. That’s how I’ve been made. That’s how I live now. I don’t need Joan or Adam, I don’t need Aiken and his damned silverware, and I certainly don’t need Nina and all her emo bullshit. So I’m glad she’s dead and gone. And I’m glad Adam’s probably dead too, because there’s no place in this world for someone innocent like him. And I’m glad Aiken brought me here because now I can leave Joan’s wrinkly old ass behind and go back to my roots. Back to it being just me looking after me. None of this Kumbaya bullshit I’ve been doing for the past year.

  I don’t need anyone.

  “I said, calm down,” Aiken says. “We need each other, but right now you’re not making yourself very likeable to my people.”

  But I don’t listen. Instead I shovel more food in, and then the food is gone, and I’m swallowing down the last tomato and throwing my glass of water to the back of my throat and letting it dribble down my chin. I shove my chair back angrily, letting it scrape along the floor.

  “I don’t need anyone!” I yell and push my plate across the table, knocking over the salt and pepper shakers as I do, and I do a double take.

  “Salt and pepper.” I laugh louder. “You have salt and fucking pepper!” I grab the salt and tip some into my hand and I throw it into my mouth. It’s disgusting and foul and makes my tongue want to shrivel up like a slug, but it’s also great, because it makes me feel sick and brings me back down to earth with a heady dose of realization.