For the first time in so many years—since Ben had died—I finally felt that someone truly cared about me. Tears escaped my eyes no matter how much I tried to stem them, and I eventually relented and sobbed against his neck, needing him so desperately—needing his arms to support me, his kisses to make me feel whole again, and his words to soothe my broken soul.
His hands moved to my face and he pulled me away from his neck, giving himself just enough room to press his mouth against mine. He kissed me hungrily, as if we’d never kissed before, and I kissed him back with just as much ferocity, devouring his kisses and feeling constantly hungry for more of them and more of him. I would never have my fill of him, or such a profound feeling of relief like the one I had right then.
“I’m so sorry,” I mumbled against his mouth.
And I was. I was sorry that I hadn’t told him the truth, that I hadn’t trusted him to keep that truth to himself, and I was sorry that I had been too stubborn to realize it. Trust went both ways, and while I had been deliriously angry with the fact that he hadn’t trusted me, I equally hadn’t trusted him.
“No, don’t apologize, that’s my job. I was a total dick to you. I know that, I know I ruined what we had. That’s on me.”
I shook my head, but he pulled away and looked carefully into my face, his eyes burning with intensity.
“None of us are perfect in this world, we’re both far from it, but when you find someone worth dying for, you have to believe that they’re worth living for too. You are worth living and dying for, and I’m sorry that I hurt you.”
“I’m sorry too.” I blinked away the tears and smiled at him. “I have so much to tell you. I want to tell you everything.”
“I know it all—Rachael, the baby, everything. You were doing the right thing, I know that, and again, I’m so sorry.” He pressed another rough kiss against my mouth and I clung to him with both hands. “God damn, woman, you’ve been driving me crazy. It’s like you’re living in my head. Everywhere I turned you were there—or at least the ghost of you.” He laughed, but I could hear the strain in his laugh, and feel how desperately he meant those words and needed me to understand them. “I’ve been such an asshole.” He shook his head and pulled me close again, his beard scratching against my neck once more.
“It was both of us,” I relented. “Not just you and not just me.”
I felt him nod. “Fine, I’ll meet you halfway,” he chuckled. “You never let up, do you?”
“Never,” I replied, and hugged him tightly, my fingers digging into his sides. “Never.”
THIRTY-ONE.
Mikey took my hand and led me around to the front of the truck. We found Nova picking through the dead. It took the term pickpocketing to a whole new level, but it was a necessary task. She grabbed discarded weapons and anything useful from any of the many pockets, and looked up at us with a huge grin.
“You two good now?” she asked, checking one of the men’s guns for bullets. “Because I can’t stand any more of her sulky bullshit.”
“I was not sulking.” I turned to Mikey. “Seriously, I was not sulking.”
“Yeah, we’re good.” He looked down at me with a soft smile that reached all the way up to his eyes, and then his face dropped into something darker. I could see the tension in his features.
“What is it? What’s happened?” I asked numbly, my gut filling with dread.
Nova came toward us, looking as worried as I felt. “Spit it out, Mikey,” she barked out bluntly.
“The base was attacked,” he said just as abruptly, the words sounding painful to him.
“The Forgotten!” I snarled angrily. “They found us.”
I had put them to the back of mind, refusing to think about Fallon and the evil scum he worked with. But suddenly it felt like my ignorance had gotten everyone killed. Because Alek had told me and Mikey that Fallon wouldn’t stop looking for us. We had been warned and we had ignored the warning. We had hoped that we had escaped him, that we had put enough distance between us the Forgotten and, but we had been wrong.
Mikey shook his head quickly. “No, it wasn’t them.”
“Fallon?” I asked.
“No, it was the dead. A huge horde, by the looks of it.” He swallowed loudly and looked away, taking a deep breath before looking back at me. “Nina, I don’t know how to say this.”
My world froze, my heart pausing on a beat as I waited in anticipation. He watched me, choosing his words as carefully as possible, and I knew it was bad—so bad that he couldn’t say the treacherous words that he knew would break my heart. He shook his head, his nostrils flaring, and he opened his mouth to speak.
“So don’t,” I said abruptly, my eyes like fire. “Don’t say it, don’t tell me. Please.”
Because I knew, I could see it in his face. I could already hear it in his tone. And it would break me, break every single part of me and everything I was. I couldn’t face it—his words, the pain I knew they would bring me.
“Please, Mikey,” I pleaded, my chest feeling tight and painful. I didn’t want to listen. I wanted to run away from him and his words. He offered me no comfort now, because I knew he was about to crush me with his words.
Mikey shook his head and looked forlornly to the floor. “She’s gone, Nina. I’m so sorry,” he whispered, his words getting stuck in his throat. Because he knew that he had to say them, no matter how much I begged him not to, because if he didn’t I would never accept it, I would never truly believe that she could be gone and I wouldn’t get to see her ever again.
The words left his mouth and I heard them. Hell, I even felt them. Like tiny splinters, they cut me—small shards of fine yet deadly glass embedding themselves in my skin, burying deep inside my flesh and tearing me apart from the inside out. I heard his words and I saw his own pain, telling me that Alek was gone also, but I’d left, I’d checked out. I couldn’t think about what he was saying. I couldn’t think of the sweet girl that was now dead. The woman that she would never get to become, the future that she would no longer have. And the things that she would never experience.
Mikey’s arms were around me before I collapsed to my knees, and he pulled me up against his body even while I thumped manically against his chest, blaming him for my loss, for her death, and for the fact that the world just sucked so much ass right then.
I cried, I wailed, and I sobbed. I ached because of the hole that her loss had already left inside of me. It made no sense that I’d never see her face or hear her sweet voice again. And then there was the crushing, soul-destroying guilt that I hadn’t even bothered to say goodbye to her when I came on this stupid, pointless journey with Nova. That was what burned through every part of me. I could never make it up to her.
Somewhere in the fog I heard Nova asking about others from the base—her friends, Michael—and then I heard her join me in my misery at the loss of so many people. She’d lost just as much as me, perhaps more. She had lived with these people for months, grown close to them, defended and protected them, and now they were gone.
I looked up sluggishly through my tear-soaked lashes and saw her pull out her gun and march over to the deaders on the ground. It was senseless and pointless since they were already dead, but wasn’t that the beauty of pain—that there was no understanding of it, no making sense of the way it ate you up like acid and ruined everything, blending it all into one giant blur of throbbing pain?
She shot at the deaders on the ground, turning them to rotten mush with each bullet. It was a waste of ammo and would draw more deaders to us—she knew it, and I knew it—but pain wasn’t reasonable. It didn’t let you think logically, it just was. And I understood it, and I felt her pain, and if I could find the strength, I would have done the same. I would hack and chop and stab and slice away at the dead, because the need to kill and destroy these things—these things that so freely take the lives of our loved ones—was suddenly so mind-consuming that I could hardly breathe from it.
Nova stopped abruptly an
d dropped to her knees, landing in the pile of sludge and gore that was once a deader. A deader that was once a human being just like her or me, but was now so very far removed from that. As she began to cry I finally found my strength and quickly went to her, falling to my knees in front of her shaking body. We leaned into one another, holding each other close as we cried, letting our misery add kindling to our already raging anger. Because someone, or something, would have to pay for our losses.
*
I hiccupped through another angry, retching sob and took a long swallow of water from my bottle before taking a steadying breath. I felt dehydrated from all the crying, but it was needed, and I couldn’t have stopped myself even if I had wanted to. A part of me realized that it wasn’t just Emily-Rose I was crying over, though of course her loss was the greatest loss of all. But it was the years that had gone by, the hurt that had been building up inside me. My body was overflowing with pain, but I felt ready now to take on whatever I needed to, to get her some retribution. To get some vengeance for Emily.
Nova was carefully patching my bite back up, since all my machete-swinging awesomeness had torn it back open. It stung to hell and back, and I could see how worried Mikey was about it. After all, we had both been witness to what bites did to people. I guess we just had to be grateful that the zombie virus was brought on by death and not fluid transference. And Nova had adamantly insisted that despite my crying like a baby over how much she was hurting me, it was not life-threatening.
“So, who else is left?” Nova asked sluggishly, her words sounding rough and raw in her dry throat.
I held my water bottle out to her and she poured a little over her hands to wash them clean of my blood before rubbing them along the rough ground.
“Zee, but he’s in really bad shape—no saying if he’ll actually survive. Michael and Melanie were with me, so they’re okay. Matty and Jessica…” Mikey looked up at me as Jessica’s name fell from his lips. “Did you find anything out? About the other woman?”
A deep shudder wracked my body and I shook my head. “No, it was all pointless. She died, and…and…” I squeezed my eyes shut, the words feeling too traumatic and dirty to leave my treacherous lips.
Mikey reached for my hand, giving it a squeeze of comfort, but it brought none.
“They were both zombies by the time we got there,” Nova explained darkly, and I listened as she lit another cigarette. She didn’t bother to explain whether she meant Hilary and Deacon or Hilary and the baby, and I didn’t care to explain either.
“Fuck,” Mikey muttered. “Fuck!” he repeated, harsher this time. “How long has Jessica got?” he asked.
“Not long. We need to get back to her as soon as we can,” Nova said.
I opened my eyes and looked over to her. “And then what?”
“Then we get that thing out of her.” She took a long drag on her cigarette, staring at me as the smoke left her lips. “We get it out of her anyway we can,” she said, enforcing the situation that we both knew must happen. “I won’t let what happened to Hilary happen to Jessica.”
“Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of beer…”
Mikey jumped to his feet and pulled out his gun. In all the stress of the last hour I had completely forgotten about the crazy pants.
I grabbed his leg. “It’s okay, she’s okay. Well, she’s not okay, but she’s not a threat anyways.” I quirked an eyebrow.
Joan jumped down from the truck and danced over to us, and Nova snorted out a dry, humorless laugh.
“Someone needs to actually get her ‘Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer’ to shut her skinny ass up,” she bit out, sounding almost angry.
I got up as she came closer and I offered her some small semblance of a smile. It wasn’t much, but it was the best I could do, and given that my world had just crumbled, I was surprised I managed anything at all. “Hey, Crazy Pants, how are you doing?”
“I’m doing wonderful!” She twirled around in a circle happily, and I couldn’t stop the small laugh that escaped my cracked lips.
She’d slept through everything—the attack of the deaders, the killing of the men, and the misery of us finding out we’d lost our loved ones. Her happiness seemed so out of place, yet it was welcome. Because I felt like I was drowning in unhappiness, it was engulfing me and pulling me under, and I could see the same thing happening to Nova.
“So, tell me, what’s for breakfast?” Joan looked over at Mikey and whistled through her gums, because, well, there weren’t a lot of teeth left in her mouth anymore. “Well, hello there, young man.” She licked her lips and winked.
Mikey looked to me, his eyes wide in horror. “Nina?”
Nova laughed, a small sound that slowly built in a full-on crescendo. I joined her, and soon even Crazy Pants was joining in, though I was almost certain she had no idea what she was laughing about, but she laughed as if we were at a stand-up comedy show. Mikey was the only one who didn’t laugh, instead choosing to look plain confused by the mass hysteria that had taken hold of the crazy women in this little group. I didn’t even know why we were laughing, and as my laugh began to tail off, I let out another choking sob.
I got a grip on myself finally and introduced them. “Mikey, this is Joan, also known as Crazy Pants. Crazy Pants, this is Mikey.”
“And is he…you know…single?” she asked from the side of her mouth as if he wasn’t standing right in front of her and listening to everything that she was saying.
I smirked and looked at Mikey. “No, he’s not. He’s with me.”
Mikey smiled back at me, and then I turned back to Joan.
“Besides, your husband would not be a happy man if you went and hooked up with someone new, now, would he?” Never mind the fact that her husband was dead…
Her eyes glistened mischievously. “No, he wouldn’t. Real shame though.”
“Is she for real?” Mikey asked with a bemused smile.
I smiled affectionately at her. “Yeah, she’s for real.”
Nova stood up. “We need to get our shit together and get going back to base. They’re going to need some help securing the place. We’re taking this truck, right?” she said, gesturing to the men’s truck.
“Damn straight we are. It’s the least they can do,” I replied.
“We’re not going back to the base. It’s too badly compromised,” Mikey said, and I think both Nova and I breathed out a sigh of relief at that. I was glad to see that I wasn’t the only emotional wreck around there.
“Where are we going then?” Nova asked with a tight frown.
“We’re going to the mall,” he said, his grin wide and his dimples showing.
“The mall?” both Nova and I said in unison.
“Yeah. Instead of continuing to go back and forth for supplies, we’re going to stay there. Everyone is already on their way there. Or at least they were getting their shit together to leave and head there when I left to find you.” He smiled happily, and I guessed that the mall must have been Mikey’s idea.
“I still don’t see why we can’t go back to the base,” Nova said, though I knew she was relieved about it.
Mikey’s smile dropped and he swallowed. “The base is too big for us to manage. There aren’t enough of us now to keep watch. The gates were pulled down, and there were a lot of breaches.” He paused before continuing. “Besides, I don’t think anyone could stomach staying there now.”
Now that I could understand and get behind. I wasn’t sure the mall was a much better option than the base. I mean that was, after all, where Rachael had tried to kill me and I’d discovered the level of crazy I had been traveling with. But I knew it would be so much worse on Nova.
“Is that wise? Will it be safe enough?” I asked, but I didn’t know why I bothered with the question, because it wouldn’t have been decided upon if they didn’t believe it to be safe. So I asked the real question I was pondering: “Nova, are you cool with this?”
Nova was like a machine, thro
wing items and things into the cab of her truck. She grabbed guns from the ground, prying them from cold, dead fingers without so much as a pained look. “I’m cool with it,” she replied blankly, her voice washed clean of any and all emotion.
But I could tell from the sad look on her face that she wasn’t cool with it, but I also knew that she would be fine no matter what, that she’d deal with it all regardless. She was a survivor, like me, and survivors picked themselves up and got on with the job. I felt exhausted from my meltdown, from the ache of losing Emily, but I felt stronger for releasing all the pent-up anxiety that had been building inside of me for weeks.
So I did what I always did, what I’ll always do: I got up and dusted myself off, and I got ready to fight again. To survive again. And to make it through another day. Because that’s all you could do, all you could really hope for in this life.
Just one more day.
THIRTY-TWO.
“Nova, can I take our truck? I don’t want to drive theirs.” I pointed to the other men’s truck, and Nova shrugged.
“Sure, whatever,” she said while trying to scrape something that resembled a piece of brain off the side of her boot.
“Joan, are you riding with Nova?” I added quickly.
Nova abruptly looked up, but before she could shut me down, Joan leaned over and hugged her.
“We can sing songs!” She smiled happily as she skipped past me, and I patted her shoulder.
“You owe me,” Nova groaned, and walked away to her newly acquired truck.
I smirked at how Joan would fit into the little group that was now on its way to the mall. I thought of Michael, and what a dick he was, and then I thought of how much Joan was going to piss him off and it brought me a small amount of sickly satisfaction.
“Will you be okay driving on your own?” Mikey asked, interrupting my thoughts. His posture was rigid, and I quirked an eyebrow as he hurried to correct himself. “What I meant was—” He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck and sighed. “I don’t know what I’m saying. I guess I just don’t want you anywhere but next to me, as ridiculous and chauvinistic as that sounds.” He shrugged and took my hand in his. “It feels like I only just got you back.”
The Dead Saga (Book 3): Odium III Page 21