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

by Riley, Claire C.

  I floored it and pulled around some of the things haphazardly, looking around frantically and trying to piece together a plan of some sort. I formulated one, not sure it would actually work but not really having any other choice. I did the only thing I could think of and I sped up and swung the steering wheel tightly to the right, pulling directly in front of Ben and knocking some more of the things over to boot. The truck swerved and began sliding sideways, and I gripped the wheel tighter to stop it from going any further out of control.

  Ben grabbed the side of the pickup and threw his body over into the bed of the truck. Graying hands continued to grab for him and he kicked them away, yelling and cursing as I stuck the pickup into gear and accelerated away, driving over the bodies on the ground with a satisfying crunch. I watched in my mirrors as they shambled after us like a mass of raving concert-goers. I wanted to hoot and cheer myself for getting to Ben in time and getting us out of there. I had no idea how I had just pulled off that move; I’d never done anything like that before. I could only think that it was down to watching so many action movies with Ben. Ha—and people said too much TV was bad for you.

  We drove in silence with only the pickup’s engine noise and my racing heart to keep me company. My knuckles were white on the steering wheel as I drove us out of town. The place had been destroyed in only a couple of days. Bodies and blood littered the pavements and roads. Cars sat wedged together in collisions, their metal frames burnt to nothing but blackened metal shells. The sick people roamed the ravaged streets of the place I once called home. I blinked once, twice, three times, but the images and my thoughts were still very clear on what I was seeing and what this meant.

  It was all gone, all destroyed. Everything we had known and loved, it was gone. And there was not a damn thing either of us could do about it.

  While Ben and I had been tucked up tight in our home trying to stay safe, people were out here being eaten alive. Mothers, fathers, children, grandmothers…all dead and then alive again. My eyes strayed to one of the sick huddled over a body on the ground, scooping the insides up to its mouth. It watched me as we drove past, standing up and letting the long intestines of whomever it was eating trail from its blood-ringed mouth. Its cold dead eyes hungrily followed me long after we had passed, and in my mirrors I watched as it crouched back down and continued its meal. My own stomach gurgled in retaliation, wanting to purge itself.

  I could hear Ben talking, soothing words that should have calmed me, but they didn’t help. Because all I could hear was screaming, growling and crying. And the stench of blood was filling my nose so much that I couldn’t get any clean air into my lungs.

  I couldn’t look away from the windows and mirrors to look at Ben’s face and calm myself. These things were everywhere, these monsters. Blood flowed through the streets like rivers of red rain, and the dead were rife like vermin. The smell of death and decaying bodies was seeping in through the truck’s vents, making my nostrils flare in disgust. I reached for a dial on the dashboard, turning off the outside airflow and blocking the smell from me as much as I could.

  Ben tapped on the window to get my attention, his sleeve covering his mouth and nose. But I couldn’t stop. Inside I was a volcano of emotions waiting to erupt, waiting to savagely tear myself apart and release every feeling I had pent up inside of me. Like a wildcat, my mind screamed and shook to free itself from the terrors it was witnessing.

  We left our small town behind and traveled south, passing into the beauty of the countryside. The trees and fields attempting to banish the visions that still haunted me, but they were still there. The images would always be there now, burned into my mind like history written into books.

  I didn’t know how long I had been driving. Our hometown had vanished from my view, and the congestion of vehicles which surrounded it had dissipated to just the odd vehicle here and there. I hadn’t seen one of the sick people for a while, but behind my eyes they were everywhere. The world was crawling with their festering lifeless bodies.

  “Pull over,” I heard Ben shout to me.

  I shook my head no.

  “Pull over. I’ll drive, it’s okay now.” His voice broke through to me, gentle yet forceful at the same time, and I nodded once and slowly pulled the car to the side of the road.

  Ben climbed down from the bed of the pickup and came around to my door. My hands were still gripping the steering wheel tightly, and for the moment neither of us could say anything. I finally looked at Ben, and in his face was something that I had never seen before—not really. Not until now. I thought I had, but I had thought wrong, because this right here, written across my husband’s handsome face, was the real fucking deal.

  It was fear.

  You think you have seen fear before, witnessed it for all of its glory. You think you know it, but you don’t. You couldn’t truly know what it was to fear something or someone, to feel fear’s hands clasping you by the spine, ready to drag your body apart. Not until you have witnessed a hell like we had.

  Ben climbed in and I scooted across the seats to the passenger side. He started to drive while I curled up in a ball, and at some point I drifted off to sleep—the constant hum of the engine and the lack of adrenalin pumping through my veins sending me off into a heavy slumber. When I woke it was dark out and rain was hammering the windows. The wipers were squeaking as they swished the rain away from the glass.

  I watched Ben’s profile for a few minutes before he became aware of my stare. He turned to look at me. He looked older now, I realized. The lines in his face were set harder, and more determined than ever before.

  “You okay?” His voice broke the silence between us. His voice didn’t sound like his; it was foreign, an intruder on the man I love.

  I shrugged, my expression unchanging.

  “I’ll get us somewhere safe, Nina. I’ll look after you. I promise.”

  When did he get so protective? I couldn’t find my voice to answer him, so I closed my eyes in response, trying to squeeze the tears back. The last thing he needed was me breaking down into a quivering girly wreck. I needed to pull my shit together. I turned in my seat, arching my back as I stretched.

  The night was so dark, and I had no idea where we were. Only the headlights of the truck lit the way. The road looked like a thick black tongue. It reminds me of their tongues, lolling from their wretched, snapping mouths. Their fingers tapping at the windows, begging for entry. A shudder ran through me. It occurred to me that there were no lights on anywhere; everywhere I looked I was met with the same blackness. I sat up properly and looked out my side window, seeing that the streetlights were there, but they remained unlit. As if all the bulbs in the world had been popped.

  “They went off an hour or so ago. They were on, and then…they were off.” He answered my unspoken question, his voice bringing a new chill to my bones.

  “It’s still happening then?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I thought… I don’t know, I guess I still thought that after a couple of days, the army, or the government, or someone would be able to stop them. That maybe it was just our town.” My eyes had become more accustomed to the darkness now and I could see cars littering the side of the highway. Thankfully, and also ironically, it was too dark for me to make out if there were any people near the cars. “But no one’s coming, are they? I mean, if the power has gone out, that means it’s still spreading, right?”

  He waited a moment before replying. “I guess so.”

  I took a glance at the speedometer and saw we were doing just thirty miles an hour.

  Ben saw my gaze. “They can’t run, seems no point in using up all the fuel by driving like a maniac.” He replied to my second unspoken question with a shrug.

  I guessed he was right, but I would still have felt safer driving faster. In the movies, some of them can run really fast…I shuddered again.

  “What are they, Ben?” I asked, not looking at him, my gaze still fixed on the outside world as we passed by it in a blur
. I knew what they were but I was too afraid to say the word aloud.

  “Zombies,” he replied instantly.

  That one word cut through me like I was nothing. I felt pain with that one word, pain and anger and sadness and so many other things that I couldn’t describe. I hated that word with every ounce of my being, because that word had stolen my life from under me. But I also didn’t want to use it. It seemed wrong, inadequate somehow, almost farcical. Zombies? Zombies were from movies and literature; they didn’t exist. And yet these monsters—these abominations—did exist.

  “I can’t call them that,” I said, pressing my palm against the glass of my window to feel the coolness against my skin.

  “So we’ll call them something else.”

  I turned to look at him. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know.” His gaze left the road for a moment to meet mine. “Moaners?”

  I shook my head no. That word was wrong for them. “Biters?” I shuddered on the word, my stomach tightening at the thought of their teeth ripping into my flesh. “No,” I said in response to my own choice.

  “Deaders. We’ll call them deaders,” Ben said.

  “Deaders,” I replied, sounding the word out, letting my tongue get a feel for it. I didn’t like it, either, but it suited them better than zombies. Zombies sounded foolish almost childlike. It didn’t accurately describe how dangerous these things really were. “Deaders,” I said again with a firm nod.

  And just like that, we had given voice to our nightmares. Named them and let them fully take place in our hearts.

  Chapter Nine.

  Daylight stretched out over the horizon in a beautiful mirage of colors—oranges, yellows, and pinks. If I had my camera with me, I would probably have taken a picture of it as a keepsake. It was overly beautiful, especially in contrast to our ugly surroundings.

  Death and destruction still littered the world around us. Town after town we had passed, but always with the same conclusion: death.

  The dead didn’t sleep, it seemed. They only killed. We, however, did need to sleep. We were exhausted and hungry, our bladders fit to burst, and we were seriously low on fuel. I didn’t know how far we had traveled, but even Ben’s diesel pickup could only stretch the fuel so far.

  “I think there would be good.” Ben pointed to a house in the distance. It was a lonesome-looking country home, small enough to be considered a cottage, I guess, but large enough to house more than one or two deaders.

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “We aren’t going to make it much further, Nina.”

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  “It has a truck in the driveway.”

  “It has a swing in the yard,” I stated coldly.

  “So?” He raised an eyebrow at me.

  “So, that could mean…kids.”

  Ben looked at me in confusion. “So?”

  “Are you ready to kill kids…deader kids? Because that’s what might happen.”

  Ben held my gaze for several beats before slowly shaking his head and admitting that no, he wasn’t ready to kill deader kids. In truth, I didn’t think he was ready to kill deaders, period.

  We kept on driving, passing the house and yet still looking for any signs of movement in or around it. We saw nothing up ahead, no other house, just the long empty stretch of road that could go on for miles. At the last possible moment, Ben swung the wheel of the pickup, nearly doing a full 360. He straightened us back up and drove toward the house with me huffing and tutting at him the entire time.

  We pulled up in front of the house and stared out the truck windows, still watching for movement again. Apart from the swing that gently blew in the breeze, I couldn’t see any movement. I squinted my eyes up at the top windows and checked the surrounding fields, and I saw Ben doing the same. It was quiet—almost peaceful. The sort of place that we would more than likely have retired to.

  “I don’t like this.”

  “We might not see another house for miles, and we don’t have the fuel to get us that much further. This is our best shot, Nina.” Ben reached into the back of the truck and grabbed his backpack, pulled out a knife, and handed it to me.

  “You wait here. I’ll go check it out, and if it’s safe I’ll come back for you.” He grabbed his gun from the dashboard.

  “No way. You are not going in there alone. If you insist on going, then I’m coming with you.”

  He shook his head and I put a hand up to hush him.

  “This isn’t up for debate. Sure, I can’t fire a gun, and sure, I can’t fight for shit. And I know that I haven’t been much use so far, but I’m working on it, I’m trying to pull myself together, because we’re in this together. I love you, Ben, and let’s be honest: I couldn’t survive in this world without you anyway. So really if you want to protect me, then you have to let me come with you.”

  He smiled at me before I continued with my babbling.

  “And yes, I do realize that I just gave you no good reason for letting me go in there with you, since I can’t fight or shoot, and the sight of those dead things makes me queasy, but that’s just your tough luck because I’m still coming.”

  We both laughed, which seemed totally inappropriate given the current situation, but there you had it. Misplaced laughter at the end of the world was the most soothing balm. Ben leaned over and kissed my lips tenderly, and I let him. I kissed him back, hoping to gain some of his strength, because I needed to; I hadn’t been lying when I said I couldn’t survive without him.

  Ben pulled out of the kiss and looked at me, his eyes soft and tender. “I love you too, but if there is any sign of trouble don’t try and be a hero. You run back to the truck and lock the doors. I need to know that you’ll do that.”

  I smiled and nodded, finally taking the knife from him. There was not a chance that he was going to let me go in there with him unarmed.

  “Just aim and shoot,” he mumbled to himself. He looked at me and I nodded in agreement, hoping to reassure him.

  “I guess aim for the head. That’s what everyone always says to do, right?” I added on.

  “Who says?” Ben cocked his head to look at me.

  “The films, the movie makers, you know?” I spluttered, feeling kind of stupid saying it out loud.

  Ben smirked and nodded his head. I wasn’t sure if he agreed with me or not, but I didn’t have to ponder it any longer. “Time to go,” he said as he opened his door.

  We got out and looked around. It was strangely comforting having the sun warm on my skin and fresh air filling my lungs. But what really kept me calm was the smell—or lack thereof. Lasts night’s rain had made the air clean—pure, almost. I couldn’t smell any of the dead, and that thought alone gave me some quiet peace, at least for the moment.

  We walked together hand in hand, eyeing the surroundings as we went. When we reached the abandoned truck on the driveway, Ben tried the handle and it opened with ease. He climbed in and fumbled around for a moment before jumping back out.

  “No keys, but it looks in good condition. If the keys are in the house, then we need to take them. Let’s hope it has more fuel than the pickup.” He closed the door quietly and came back to my side.

  A rustle behind us made me turn and aim with my knife. Ben did the same, raising his gun upwards, but it was only a squirrel. It scurried up a tree and into safety. I looked down the road in both directions before turning back to face the house. Squirrels, a cool calm breeze… It all felt surreal, as if the apocalypse hadn’t touched this area, and yet I knew that was impossible. Town after town had been destroyed and there was no way the deaders had just skirted around this one house.

  The lower windows were boarded up. Hell, even the letterbox had a piece of wood nailed across it. Ben tried the door handle anyway, but of course it was locked.

  We turned to look at each other.

  “Should we, like, say something? Knock maybe?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. If anyone is still in there, then we don
’t want to scare them.”

  “Yeah, but we don’t want them shooting us, either. At least if we knock and say hello, they’ll know that we’re human,” I replied, “and not…those things.”

  Ben looked around us again, eyeing the horizon before replying. “I guess so. If there are deaders in there, at least we’ll know when they come for us.”

  Ben reached down and gestured for my knife, which I gladly handed over. He forced the knife under the piece of wood covering the letterbox and began to pry it off. Once he’d made a gap big enough for his fingers to slip under, he gripped the wood and ripped it away. It was noisy and made us both tetchy as the sound echoed around the deserted yard. I knelt down and looked through the letterbox, moving the draft excluder out of the way. There were no sounds coming from inside, and I couldn’t see any blood, either, though the hallway was a mess from some sort of disturbance. I didn’t want to poke my hand in too far since I didn’t know what was inside.

  I cleared my throat. “Hello?” I kept looking through the letterbox, knowing that Ben had my back. “Um, if anyone is in there, can you say something? We need fuel, or your truck. We’re not one of the dead.” I felt kind of silly kneeling down talking to a letterbox, and just as I was about to stand up I heard a movement from inside. “Ben!”

  He nudged me out of the way and knelt down, with me standing guard over him. I watched the squirrel jump from one branch to the next, giving me a nervous glance and scurrying away again. They seemed to have the right idea, hiding up in the trees, not trusting anyone. That seemed the best way to go. Now if only we could do that: hide up in the trees and away from the horror.

  “I can’t see anything.” Ben stood up. “Let’s go try around back.”

  We moved around to the back of the house, checking any windows we came across, but they all seemed to be covered from the inside by a sheet, or were boarded up. The backyard was a mess, and it was obvious that it had definitely seen some deader action in the past week. By the looks of the blood splattered on the grass, someone human also died there recently—though there were no bodies, either re-dead or undead.