The Dead Saga: Odium 0.5 (Nina's Story)

by Riley, Claire C.

  I put a piece of chicken in my mouth and chewed it slowly. “As I was leaving the store today, something was happening. I didn’t realize it, but it must have been this…” I gestured around us.

  Ben stopped eating and looked at me, his eyes wide and his fork hanging in the air between his mouth and his plate. “Jesus.”

  I nodded. “I know, right?” I swallowed the piece of chicken and nearly gagged on it. I really couldn’t eat just then.

  “Did you see anything?” he asked.

  “Just a bunch of people running around, and then an ambulance turned up, but you know, it didn’t even occur to me that it would be… well, this!” I snorted and put my plate down. “Like this would ever cross my mind.”

  “You need to eat,” he prompted again, pointing to my plate with his fork. “There’s hardly any of you to begin with—you can’t afford not to eat.”

  “I can’t.” I pushed my plate away like a brat.

  “Nina…”

  “I can’t, Ben.” I stood up and went to the window. The sun was setting and it should have been beautiful—just last night, it had been. But tonight? Now? Only God knew what the night would bring.

  I listened as he put his plate down, and a few seconds later his arms were around my waist and he rested his chin on my shoulder.

  “I’m sorry, I just worry about you.” He whispered the words into my ear. “I don’t know what’s going to happen next, Nina. I don’t think anyone is coming to help us.”

  “What are you saying?” I asked, feeling numb. I needed to be strong, yet I felt so weak.

  “I think we’re on our own with this.”

  I swallowed, feeling his arms tighten fractionally. “It’s going to be okay though, right, Ben?”

  “I don’t know.”

  We stayed silent, letting the moans of the dead outside fill our ears, until I finally couldn’t take it anymore. I turned around to look at him, his hands never leaving my waist. “I love you, Ben.” Sincerity poured from me. “I’ve always loved you, and I know that we have both messed things up pretty badly, I really do know that, and yeah maybe it’s taken this to sort out our marriage, and maybe it won’t work. Maybe we are still doomed and none of this even matters because we’ll die tomorrow—”

  “Don’t say that,” he interrupted.

  “It’s true though, Ben.” I moved away and pulled back a corner of the curtain to reveal the horror outside. “Look at this! I’m not stupid. There’s a huge chance that one, if not both of us are going to die. I don’t want it to be true, but that’s the fact of the matter.” I took a heavy breath as I listened to my shaky voice, and then I slumped to the floor and sobbed as the realization took hold of me. How much time had we wasted arguing and fighting when the end of the world was on our doorstep? Hindsight was a stupid bitch. “I don’t want to die and I don’t want you to either, but—”

  “We’re not going to die. We’re going to get through this…together.” His arms were around me again, and if I didn’t know any better I would have said that he was crying, too.

  Chapter Seven.

  We spent our days keeping watch over the street out front, watching the backyard slowly fill with the dead, and talking about the past. I noticed that we avoided talking about the future. We talked about when we first met, our first kiss, and our wedding day. We reminisced on the past eight years together, both skirting around the subject of the past year and where it had all started to go wrong.

  Ben showed me how to shoot, though for what good it would be I didn’t know, since we couldn’t actually fire the gun because of the noise. Regardless, he showed me how to load, aim, and fire it and it made me feel a little more competent, if nothing else. We only once spoke of his mother and father and if they were safe. Instead we chose to believe that they had made it safely to the island and we would join them soon.

  He told me the story of how he ended up with the old Smith and Wesson .38, a hand-me-down from his grandfather and then to Ben. I could tell that we were both wondering if he’d ever have the chance to pass it down to his own son in the future.

  Worst of all was the thought that we might actually have to kill the things outside. They may have been dead now, but we knew those people; they were our friends and neighbors once upon a time.

  Every night was scarier than the last as we waited for the nightmare to abate. The noises of the dead grew louder. The blackness was more foreboding. You’d think we would have gotten used to it, but we didn’t. Ben slept on top of the bed fully dressed, a blanket draped across him. He hated having to sleep, having to leave me on my own for hours while he did, but I always insisted. He would be no good to either of us if he was exhausted.

  I got up from the bed for what seemed like the hundredth time to check on them—the monsters in our backyard. I didn’t want to, but I had to. If I didn’t watch them, I felt like I was going insane; because the need to know what they were doing out there was constant, like an itch I couldn’t scratch. I went from room to room upstairs, checking out of all the windows, and staring down at them. There were more of them each day.

  Where are they coming from? I silently screamed.

  I hated this time of night, when morning seemed so far and it felt like night would never end. I wanted to wake him—Ben—because I didn’t want to be awake on my own anymore, but I didn’t; I left him sleeping and I crept downstairs and checked the TV again. Apart from that one message, there had been no word since, but that didn’t stop me from hoping.

  There was nothing on the TV when I turned it on and the growls from the backyard intensified when the people…things outside saw the glow from the TV, so I quickly flipped it back off. I snuck back up the stairs and peeked out the window overlooking the backyard to watch them again. They didn’t seem to know how to get back out of the yard, and they seem pretty pissed with the fact of being stuck. Every time another one was drawn by the noise and stumbled in, there was less and less room and they got growlier and angrier. The gate was one of those push-open ones, so once it slammed back closed, it didn’t matter how much they leaned on it from the inside—it wouldn’t open again. The only way was to either push from the other side or to pull the gate open, and neither of us were going to go outside to open it for them.

  My eyes were red and sore from staring out the window and forcing myself to stay awake, so when Ben’s hands guided me toward the bed I didn’t have the energy to resist. He lay me down on it and covered me with the blanket, and though it was still my shift, I couldn’t keep my eyelids from closing. I felt my boots being removed and then heard the soft pad of his footsteps as he walked away, and I drifted into the blackness.

  “Baby, baby, wake up!”

  Hands shook me awake, strong fingers digging into the soft flesh of my upper arms. I opened my eyes groggily, and for a moment, just one sweet moment, everything was back to normal. There were no sick people, no death, and no blood.

  Reality hit me across the face. Or rather Ben’s palm did—softly, of course—just enough to get me to wake the hell up since I was still stuck in gaga land and couldn’t seem to rouse myself properly.

  “We need to go, now. Get up.” He dragged me up to sitting and I stared at him in confusion for a moment, blinking sluggishly as I waited for the world to make sense again. “Get up, Nina.”

  Monsters. Death. End of the world. Wake up, Nina. Wake up!

  I jumped up, my mind finally coming to alert a moment before my body. I reached for my boots—boots that I didn’t even remember taking off—and looked up at Ben through tired, burning eyes.

  “What? What’s happening?” I had slipped my Doc Martens back on before I’d even finished my sentence.

  “We need to go. There’s too many of them.” Ben looked frantic.

  When my boots were finally on, he grabbed my hand and dragged me through the house to the spare room. We looked out the window and out onto the patio below.

  “There’s too many of them,” he repeated, as if I hadn’t he
ard him the first time.

  Words could not express the true horror of the vision before me. The garden was crammed full with sick people, monsters, whatever you want to call them. My neighbors. My friends. The bitch from down the road who always used to complain about Ben putting the trash cans out the night before collection. They were all there, and they all looked and sounded really pissed off. Shuffling past each other and bumping shoulders, arms, legs, some were even crawling across the ground and causing others to trip. The noise was deafening—or maybe that was just the blood rushing in my ears because the entire neighborhood had decided to converge in my backyard like some trippy summer BBQ party that I wasn’t invited to.

  “The dead attract the dead,” I mumbled to myself as the conclusion finally dawned on me.

  We had known this time was coming; there had been more and more of them coming for days. I had just hoped that help would arrive before it actually happened.

  “I don’t want to leave,” I whispered without looking away from the window.

  “We have to.”

  “But, Ben—”

  “We have to, Nina. We have to make a run for it now, before they smash through the patio window.”

  “I can’t. I’m scared.” My hands were shaking, and I balled them into fists by my sides. Neither of us moved. We both stood and stared, each waiting for the other to make the first move.

  A cry escaped my mouth as one of the things bumped into the patio window.

  Ben grabbed my arm, dragging me away. “Move, Nina.” His voice was harsh but controlled, and I was glad he was being the brave one because I didn’t think I could. I felt weak and frightened, numb to everything. All I wanted to do was go to sleep and never wake up.

  “Nina, come on.” He shouted louder to get my attention.

  We were in the hallway, with Ben still pulling me, and I knew that I needed to pull my shit together, and I knew that it was now or never time. I knew all of this and yet I still felt drunk with panic.

  Ben grabbed my arm and pulled me down the stairs. He slipped one of the backpacks onto my shoulders. It was heavy and cumbersome, much more than I remembered it being when we’d first packed it, and even more panic set in that I wouldn’t be able to run with it on—that it would be too heavy for me to get up enough speed to outrun the monsters outside my front door.

  I could hardly breathe and tears stung my eyes. I didn’t want to leave; I couldn’t. I knew this house, this safe space, but I didn’t know what lay outside of my front door. That was the unknown, that was the horror story, and that was something I didn’t want to have to face.

  Ben gripped my face in his hands. Like always, he was firm but gentle as he looked into my eyes. “I’m going to run down the street and try to direct them all away from the house.” He pulled the curtains at the front window to one side so I could see out. “There’s too many of them by the pickup still, but they’re slow. I can outrun them.”

  Ben took my hands in his before peeling my fingers back and forcing my nails away from my palms. He placed his truck keys in my right hand. “You get to the pickup and then you come and get me.”

  I looked up into his eyes, warm tears spilling down my face.

  “I can’t do this,” I mumbled, shaking my head.

  “You can. You have to. I’ll lead them away, you get to the truck and come get me. Do you understand?”

  Do I understand? No, not really. We’re going to die, aren’t we? Those were the words that rattled around my head, stopping me from thinking straight. His words were hollow, like he didn’t truly believe them himself. They echoed around in my head like marbles in an empty tin can as he tried to shake some sense back into me.

  Jesus, we’re going to die. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to be like Emma—I like my arms just where they are.

  I looked at Ben; he was sweating and panicking, too. He needed me. Ben needs me right now. I bit down on my lower lip, hard, until pain broke through the crazy fog in my head. The pain made me focus more.

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  He handed me his backpack and I noticed that it was even heavier than mine, but I only had to get to the pickup.

  Only.

  “You have to take that with you—I can’t carry it and run.”

  I nodded, and grimaced again at the bag’s weight, but I didn’t comment on it.

  He could see my worry, my anxiety threatening to spill over as the patio window creaked under the pressure of bodies pressing against it from the outside.

  “Drop it if you have to.” Ben pulled the gun from the waistband of his jeans. “If it’s you or the bag, you drop the damned bag, okay?”

  “Okay.” I bit my lip again as he turned to the front door, his hand resting on the handle of it.

  He took a deep breath and glanced back at me. “Are you ready?”

  I shook my head no and then gave him a half-hearted attempt at a smile. He smiled and then turned and kissed me with so much force that I nearly fell over from it. It was a kiss goodbye, a kiss hello, and the kiss of life. Everything was in that kiss and I took it, greedy for whatever I could get. Something hit the glass of the patio door with a loud thud and interrupted our goodbye.

  His hand stroked down my cheek. “I love you, Nina.” He pressed his forehead to mine. “Be safe.”

  “You, too,” I whispered.

  “I’ll see you soon.”

  I nodded again. We were both delaying it, putting off the inevitable until we really had to. The sound of banging was getting worse and I knew that at any minute the glass would give way and the house—our home—would be overrun with those evil things.

  He looked at me one last time and nodded, then he turned the handle and ran outside.

  The smell was what hit me first. It smelled like rotten meat that had been left out in the sun for too long. The smell made me gag and I felt blinded by the need to vomit.

  I looked out the door and watched Ben running down the street; the things had begun to follow, slowly shambling after him. I waited a few seconds until a path to the pickup cleared. The glass doors to the patio decided that now was the best time to give out, and with a great creak they imploded, and the sick people—the monsters—tumbled into the living room. There wasn’t that moment that you get in movies where everything pauses, giving people time to reassemble themselves and get their bearings. There was only the hungry growl of the dead as they lurched toward me, tripping over themselves and each other in their eagerness for breakfast à la carte.

  I screamed and ran out the door, coming straight smack into a stray zombie thing. Her hands clawed for me, scratching at my clothes, and her head leaned forward while her mouth opened eagerly to take a bite out of my face. I pushed her back with all my force and swallowed down my scream, which was threatening to erupt from me at any moment. I slapped her hands away, and using Ben’s backpack as a shield, I jumped around her.

  The pickup seemed an infinite distance away from me. The more I ran toward it, the farther away it was. Running, running, running, through sand and mud and water until—mercifully—I reached it. I opened the door, threw Ben’s backpack in, and climbed in after it before slamming the door shut behind me.

  I took a gasping breath and turned to look at the horror story that was now my home. The things stumbled out my front door, and my terror increased as one after another they saw me. I quickly shrugged the backpack off my shoulders and threw it into the footwell of the truck. My hand fumbled with the key for a second or two, attempting to push the stupid thing into the little ignition hole. I screamed in frustration and nearly dropped it, and then I screamed again when a hand hit the window next to me.

  The key finally slipped in and I turned it, sticking the vehicle into gear and nearly forgetting to take the handbrake off as I slammed it into reverse.

  The pickup skidded wildly away from the curb as I attempted to turn it around and go after Ben, attracting more attention with all the noise I was making. I looked up the road and saw Ben
still running, every now and then glancing behind, looking for me. The sick were exploding out from every corner of the street and I slammed my foot down and hauled ass after him.

  “I’m coming, baby.”

  Chapter Eight.

  I smashed into their rotting bodies, their skin leaving slimy brown blood trails across the hood of the truck. I didn’t intend on hitting them, but there were so many, standing shoulder to shoulder and filling the road so much that at times it was hard to dodge them. Each time I hit a new one it would give a throaty growl at me, staring in through the thin glass that separated us before sliding to the ground. Yet when I looked in my rearview mirror, they were standing back up as if I had tickled them with a feather and not driven over them at thirty miles per hour.

  As I got closer to Ben I aimed for them, skidding from side to side in an attempt to hit as many as possible and slow their progress. My speed dropped to thirty miles an hour, then twenty, and then I was dawdling along at ten miles an hour like I didn’t have a care in the world.

  They were slow, and yes, they were stupid, but there were so freaking many of them that I could hardly spot Ben. If it hadn’t been for the frantic looks behind him, I wouldn’t have been able to see him from the crowd. Because in a horde of the undead, Ben was just one man surrounded by rotting corpses.

  I had no idea how I was going to get to him; he was tiring, slowing down, and a horrendous thought crossed my mind that I wouldn’t reach him in time. That it would be too late, and that they would get to him before I could. I screamed in terror as more of the damn things came out of the houses lining the road. How could there be so fucking many of them? It was a quiet suburban street, and yet right now it was overflowing with dead people. Our street was ending, and beyond that was the main town. There were shops and businesses and more homes, and if there were that many people here, in this little side street, then we were screwed if I didn’t get to Ben before he reached the town because things were only going to get worse there.