Nova laughed. “Practice? Shit no, I hate the sight of blood. I vomited three times while sorting your shit out.” She pointed to the floor and a stain of what must have been hastily cleaned up vomit. “But, when we get back to base, Becky can check out the damage and sort you out good and proper. My needlepoint will have to suffice for now.”
I nodded, and then shook my head in amazement and possibly bewilderment. I was hungry, I realized. My stomach gurgled painfully, and I looked down and lifted up my top, seeing butterfly stitches across the center of my stomach.
“That wasn’t too deep, thankfully. You really need to be more careful. You could have chopped yourself in half back there!” Nova glanced back over at me and laughed again. “Crazy bitch.”
“Clearly I didn’t do it on purpose,” I replied sarcastically.
She chuckled and the truck lapsed back into silence. Well, apart from the singing I could hear coming from Joan in the back. Thankfully not another rendition of “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer” again, and not as loud either.
I rested my head back on the seat and stared out into the dark. Now that we were headed back to base, I wondered what it had all been for. Hilary was dead, and so were Deacon and the baby. I don’t think I would ever look at Nova in the same way, but in a lot of ways, now that I had calmed down, I respected what she had done. I certainly couldn’t do it. Deacon at least deserved some peace. And so did that child. And though Nova hadn’t done it for the right reasons, she had ended their misery. Perhaps now they could all be together again. If there really was a heaven, anyway. Of that I still wasn’t totally sold. If there was a heaven, then that meant that there was a God, and if there was a God, what the hell was he thinking letting zombies walk the earth? This was a messed-up game he was playing.
But while I respected what Nova did, I also couldn’t forgive it.
“So, what now?” Nova asked, her voice cutting through my dark and morbid thoughts.
“I don’t know. We head back to base and tell Jessica the bad news. We’ll need to terminate the pregnancy as soon as possible, and hope that it’s not too late.” My words sounded sad, even to my own ears.
“I meant between us,” Nova replied, sounding as equally sad.
I turn to look at her. “There is no us,” I murmured.
“We were friends. I saved your life,” she says with a scowl.
“I don’t trust you anymore. You lied to me.”
“I did what I thought was best for everyone,” she huffed out.
I shook my head. “No, you did what you thought was best for you.”
“Nina!”
“I don’t want to fight with you, Nova. It’s not you, it’s me, blah blah. I’m a judgmental asshole, et cetera, et cetera. Say what you want about me, I won’t deny it. I’m no good with people, I push everyone away, don’t take it personally. It’s just better this way.” And I truly believed that.
I had pushed everyone away. Everyone but Emily. And at the moment, she was the only reason I was heading back to the base. If it weren’t for her, I’d be heading as far and as fast in the opposite direction. Away from Mikey and Nova, away from the base and all the people there. I wanted to be on my own. I was tired of losing people. I was tired of learning to care for someone only to have them either die or turn out not to be the person I thought they were. But most of all I was tired of hurting. I knew where I wanted to go, where I would go once I knew for sure that Emily was completely safe, that she and Alek would work out and he would look after her the way I would, and then I was gone. I had realized, on this ridiculous journey of self-discovery, that I loved Mikey, but it wasn’t enough to make me stay and watch him die like everyone else I had ever loved. Because sooner or later, that’s what would happen. So I would thank him for everything, and leave. He never had to know how I felt.
There were some things you couldn’t come back from. And I wasn’t talking about Mikey breaking my heart, or Nova killing zombie babies. It was trust. I had no trust in any of those people anymore. And for that reason, I didn’t feel safe there. I didn’t want to be around them anymore, any of them. My external injuries hurt much less than the bitter war that was raging inside me.
I had used Emily as a reason to escape the walled city, but that kid had stolen my heart and kept me sane. She had brought me back from the hateful person I had become, making me think about more than just myself, more than just surviving each day, but actually living. But it was still there at the back of my mind, my reason for really going with her.
I had wanted to escape, I had wanted to continue on the journey that my husband and I had intended on going on all along. He had talked about his parents’ home out in the sticks, where he believed it would be safe, and that’s where I was going to go. Because after all these years, and all the pain that had come to pass, I still trusted Ben—my dead husband—way more than anyone else in this godforsaken world.
He was the only one who had never let me down, who had made me believe my own worth. The only one to ever make me see that I was truly important and worth going through anything for. I trusted his judgment, and he had always trusted mine, and he still held my heart after all these years.
A small part of me still niggled for Mikey, but Mikey didn’t want me, and he certainly didn’t trust me. He also didn’t love me, and how could he? How could anyone love a woman like me? I was broken, and I didn’t think there would ever be any fixing for me. And I was okay with that. Really. I had come to terms with myself, with the way I was now. I could never be the old Nina, the one before the infection. She was long gone, dead alongside her husband. This new Nina was flourishing now, and maybe she wasn’t as tough as I thought she was, maybe she wasn’t as soft as the old me, but she was strong and capable of surviving this world on her own terms.
So I was leaving, no matter what, and I would find Ben’s parents’ cabin, and I would make it safe enough to live in. I had no belief that his parents would be alive, and I was accepting of the fact that they would be deaders themselves now, and it would be up to me to finish them off and put them at peace finally. But it would be safer there than anywhere else, and at least on my own I would only have to worry about me. And that was a far better bet than loving and losing more people I cared for.
Because I would prefer to be alone in this world than continue to go through this emotional torture.
TWENTY-EIGHT.
We had driven in silence for several hours, the night passing us by in a blur. Nova had refuted any attempts at me taking over the driving, no matter how much I had bitched at her. Really, I knew that she wanted the distraction of driving; her thoughts were clearly as dark as my own, but she kept them to herself.
“I need to pull over,” she said with a loud yawn.
“I can drive,” I offered again, but knew there was no real point in asking—she wouldn’t let me.
“No, we can just pull over and sleep for the night. We’re high up, we’ll be fine.”
“What about Joan?” I asked, giving a loud yawn myself. I downed a couple of the painkillers that Nova had given me earlier, washing them down with water from my flask.
They were marvelous little white pills that numbed not just the pain in my shoulder and stomach but helped with my flu also. Thankfully, my flu was definitely on its way out. I was still snotty, but nothing like I had been three days ago. I had to agree that it probably wasn’t the flu after all and just a crappy cold, but I wasn’t going to admit that to Nova anytime soon.
Nova pulled the truck to the side of the road and switched off the lights. “I’ll go check on her. It’s going to get cold out with the engine off. She’d be safer and warmer sitting up here with us.”
“Sure, want me to come?”
“No, stay here, no point both of us getting cold. I’ll be right back.”
“There were blankets we packed from the city?” I asked, not remembering packing anything like that. She nodded and climbed down, closing her door behind her.
I
listened to the soft voices coming from the back of the truck for a minute of two and then the sound of things being moved around. I shivered, the cold already seeping into the truck now that the engine was off. I’d be glad when summer arrived and it wasn’t so damn cold all the time. Saying that, by summer I would be in warmer climates anyway. Ben’s parents’ cabin had been far south, and it was almost always warm there. That was bad news for deaders, since they tended to smell worse in the sun and the cold helped to slow them down, but it was good news that I wouldn’t have to worry about being frozen to death all the time.
Besides, I never was one for snow and rain; I was always much more of a beach girl. God, what I’d have given to be sunbathing on a beach right then instead of freezing my ass off inside a filthy truck in the middle of nowhere surrounded by deaders.
The apocalypse sucked.
My door opened, making me jump, and Joan’s face peered up at me.
“Room for a little one?” she said cheerily.
“Sure.” I grinned and moved over to allow her room.
She climbed up, carrying several blankets with her, and a moment later I heard the door on the back of the truck slam closed and Nova opened the driver’s door and climbed in, also carrying blankets.
She wiggled her eyebrows at me. “Time for a slumber party, ladies!”
Despite everything, I freaking chuckled. I was tired and achy and still sniffly, it felt like there was no hope in this world anymore—but really, there hadn’t been for the past three years or so, so what was new? So I giggled.
“Are we going to be having a pillow fight?” I asked between laughs.
“Don’t you fuckin’ know it?” Nova laughed back.
I looked across at Nova and we both burst into unrestrained laughter. And damn, it felt good to laugh. I mean, it hurt my shoulder and stomach, but my heart lifted with each loud laugh that escaped my cracked lips. As if the heaviness that had been burdening me for the past week was finally letting go. I glanced back over to Joan and saw her grinning expectantly.
“Is that a yes?” she asked.
Joan snuggled into me, and her smell almost knocked me out. I choked and spluttered, coughing on bile that rose in my throat, and I cruelly and apologetically pushed her away.
“I’m sorry, we can’t snuggle. You still smell too bad.” I grimaced.
I could practically taste her stench on my tongue, and that was not a smell I wanted to taste! Why couldn’t she smell like something yummy, like peaches and cream or ice cream? No, she smelled like piss and shit, raw sewage and zombie gore. It was vile and made my stomach twist painfully with the urge to purge itself of its contents. It coated my teeth, leaving a film of month-old piss and decay across them. Joan looked hurt—offended, even—but it couldn’t be helped.
“Really, I am sorry, but no. Just no.” I shuffled away, pulling my blanket up to cover my mouth and nose. I couldn’t even try and be polite about this, and I’d like to shake hands with anyone that could.
She huffed out an annoyed breath and turned over, dragging her own blanket over herself and muttering something I didn’t care to hear. I should have felt bad, but I didn’t. It wasn’t like we could even open a window to let fresh air in. For the first time in a week I was actually grateful for the cold/flu that I had. At least it blocked out some of her smell.
I snuggled further down in my seat, wrapping the blanket tightly around me, making sure it was pulled right up around my neck and covered my ears. It was ridiculous, but I’d always had this thing about bugs crawling in my ears while I slept. Even the zombie apocalypse couldn’t shake that fear. I closed my eyes and listened to the wind howling outside the windows and let my thoughts drift to the monsters outside.
They didn’t feel the cold, or the wind. They didn’t care about snow or rain. They only cared about filling the unfillable hole in their stomach, feeding the insatiable craving they had. What must that feel like to them? I wondered. The anger and hatred that I saw every time in their eyes when they spotted new flesh. The hungry, painful groans they emitted because that feeling they have inside them persisted no matter what they did.
“Nina? Are you awake?” Nova whispered next to me.
I didn’t open my eyes, but I was glad for the break in the silence. “Yes,” I replied.
“I need to ask you something, it’s really important.”
“Sure, go ahead.”
Silence followed and I started to wonder if she had actually fallen asleep, when she spoke again. “This is really important. I need the truth. No matter what.”
“Okay,” I replied hesitantly.
“I can take it.”
“Dude, will you just ask already?” I snapped, beginning to feel nervous.
Joan had started to snore next to me, and I’d heard her snoring before. It didn’t abate the deeper into sleep she got; it only worsened. I had hoped to fall asleep before her, but instead she was happy in the land of Nod and I was now wide awake, filled with worry and dread at what Nova was going to say next.
“Okay, I think I’m ready to ask,” she whispered, and I listened to the ruffle of her blankets as she turned to face me.
I did the same, turning my head to look directly at her. In the darkness her eyes glistened, and I could just about see the apprehension on her face, the slight tremor in her words as she spoke.
“What is it?” I asked sincerely.
“I feel silly asking.”
I groaned. “Seriously, you’re killing me. Ask already!”
“Okay, okay.” She cleared her throat and I waited anxiously, feeling like I was at the edge of the abyss ready to fall in. “Did you still want to spoon?”
It took me a second to comprehend what she was saying, and then I reached out of my covers and punched her in the arm.
“You’re such an asshole!” I said loudly, not caring if I woke Joan up.
She chuckled, fending off my hits. I sat back down with a grumble of annoyance.
“Nina?”
“Whaaaat?” I groaned, exaggerating the word and simultaneously pulling the covers back up around me to cover my ears, but even though I groaned, a smile still sat on my face. “No, dude, no spooning,” I added on, just to be clear on the subject.
She chuckled again, almost inaudibly this time. “I’m sorry I let you down.”
She said it so quietly that I barely heard it, I turned my head to look at her again, but her eyes were closed. She wasn’t asleep, but clearly she didn’t want to talk about it anymore. And I was okay with that. Whatever I said always seemed to be the wrong thing anyway, and I knew that there was no way to make her feel any better.
She had lost her older sister, and I think she was hoping that I would be her surrogate one. With her recent actions she knew now that would never be possible. I loved Nova, truly I did, and I didn’t judge her for what she had done. Like I’d said, I respected it in many ways. She did what was necessary, but I no longer trusted her, or anyone else at the base.
I was lonely. I was lonely surrounded by people, and I was lonely on my own. I had come to realize that I had merely traded one walled city for another. I was lonely behind them, and outside of them. Maybe it wasn’t other people that were broken, maybe it was me. I was the one that was constantly struggling with my actions, with others’ actions.
And if that were true, then I really was better off on my own in this world. Lonely or not.
TWENTY-NINE.
The noise of deaders was what woke me—the hungry growls and the beating of hands on the truck. I woke with a start, shaking off nightmares of teeth and hands, nails being dragged down my back and carving my skin up like a cheese board.
I looked over and saw Joan and Nova still sleeping, and frowned in amazement that they could sleep through all the noise. The only good thing was that the truck was high up, and there was no chance of the deaders actually getting in to us. It was still damn unnerving, though. That and being trapped in this truck with Joan all night had only fermente
d her smell.
I rubbed the sleep away from my eyes and leaned forward, looking down into the mass of deaders with a grimace. They were gross. And by the looks of it they had been out there for a while. What were once men and women, and one child—because obviously seeing just zombie men and women isn’t enough of a freaking nightmare to wake up to in itself, so we had to include a little girl with wonky pigtails into the mix—all converged around us. They went a little wild when they saw me looking down at them. Their jaws snapped hungrily, fat rotten tongues lolling out of their putrid decaying mouths. Their clothing hadn’t fared well, and gaping holes revealed far too much sagging gray flesh hanging from decaying bodies.
I gagged and sat back, before reaching into my pocket and pulling out more pain meds. My nose was almost fully blocked thanks to the stupid cold, but I was somewhat grateful as I could practically taste the smell inside the truck. And it did not taste good.
I made showering my first priority when we got back to base—possibly even above getting my wounds treated properly, and maybe even above finding Jessica and letting her know that she needed to terminate her demon spawn. What was another hour of being pregnant and crushing her dreams against me being clean for the first time in over a week? Exactly. It was an undisputable argument.
Okay, so I was a bitch. But at least I’d be a clean bitch.
The sound of another vehicle in the distance had me sitting bolt upright again, and I looked out the window as another truck began moving closer to us. Several of the deaders turned, attracted by the new noise, and they began shambling toward it. I pushed Nova gently, but she didn’t move and so I pushed her again, a little harder this time. Her head slid along the window in her door, yet she still continued to snore loudly.
I leaned in close to her ear and whispered, “Spiders.”
She jumped alert almost immediately, pushing me so hard that I flew backwards and tripped over Joan’s legs. Joan grumbled but continued snoring.
The Dead Saga (Book 3): Odium III Page 19