The Dead Saga (Book 5): Odium V

by Claire C. Riley

  I stop just before the first step of the stairs and turn around, pulling out my newly acquired gun and aiming it in the direction of whoever called my name. But I’m only met by closed doors and Candy and Cane’s constant barking coming from down the stairs.

  “O’Donnell…”

  I frown and let go of Tim’s arm and begin to walk forward, my heart surging into my throat. “Mikey?” I can barely get his name past my lips, in case I’m wrong and it’s not him. But I can’t be wrong. I’d know his voice anywhere. “Is that you?”

  “Yeah, yeah, it’s me. Get me out of here, please!”

  He doesn’t really sound like himself. He’s always sounded so strong, so determined, but right now he sounds incomprehensibly scared. Maybe incomprehensible is the wrong word, because I’ve seen Ricky and I’ve ended his misery. God knows what state Mikey is in.

  I stand by the door that his voice has come from, and I look along the hallways at all the other closed doors and feel sick again, wondering who and what awaits behind each one.

  And Mikey, I think, looking at his door now. What will be left of him behind his door? Will he be like Ricky? Disfigured, dismembered, and desperate for death?

  “O’Donnell? You still there?” His voice is louder now, like he’s come closer to the door. “Please say you’re still there and I’m not dreaming.”

  “Yeah, I’m still here, Mikey.” I pull out Tim’s keys from my pocket and I put the small key in the lock, and then I squeeze my eyes closed as I turn it and I hear Mikey gasp.

  The door opens inwards and I push on it slowly, frightened by what I might find behind it but more frightened by the prospect of what I might have to do.

  The room is dark and dirty, the smell of sweat and piss and something else that I can’t work out filling my nostrils as I push the door open wider. I look around the room, not finding Mikey at first. And then, finally, I see a figure huddled up on the floor on the opposite side of the room. He moves, raising his head so our gazes connect.

  “O’Donnell? Is that really you?” he says, and I can hear him swallow from across the room.

  “It’s me, Mikey,” I say.

  The dogs are going berserk downstairs now, and I can hear Clare shouting obscenities up to me, telling me to hurry up and bring Tim to the door, but I block both her and the dogs out and focus on Mikey, who seems shaky and lost.

  “Are you—hurt?” I ask him, taking a small step into the room.

  “No, not really,” he replies. “Can you unlock the chains?”

  “I think so.” I go toward him, my eyes adjusting to the dark now and letting me see him properly. He seems…okay? At least physically. He has all of his arms and legs, and I can’t see any missing patches of skin or anything. But mentally? Who knows how he is. He’s trembling and jumpy and his gaze is full of hidden horrors and too much knowledge, like he knows something that no one should ever have to know.

  I get down on my knees by him, distinctly aware that this is how I sat by Ricky, but for him it had been too late. I still have the keys in my hands, and I search for the small lock on his chains and try to get the key in it, but my hands are shaking so much that it’s making my teeth chatter.

  “I’m okay, O’Donnell,” he says softly, looking away. “I’m okay now that you’re here.”

  I nod quickly, abruptly, like I don’t really know what to believe anymore. None of this makes any sense to me. I finally get the key in the lock and twist it, and then I pull on the lock and it pops open. Mikey wastes no time in freeing himself from the chains and standing up, but I’m still on my knees wondering what kind of hell they’ve all gone through.

  Mikey reaches down with his hand and I look at it, my eyes filled with tears. I take his hand, his skin rough against mine, and he helps me up to my feet.

  “Where is he?” he growls out.

  “Tim?”

  Mikey nods. His mouth is set in a grim line, his eyes seemingly dead and empty.

  “I killed him,” I say.

  He breathes out heavily though his nose at those words, like he can’t quite believe that they’re real. Like he can’t quite believe that I’m real.

  “And the bitch?”

  “She’s downstairs,” I say.

  Mikey let’s go of my hand and barges past me.

  “She has the two dogs with her.”

  He pauses fractionally before continuing out of the room, and I follow him, equally desperate to get the hell out of this room. In the hallway I find Mikey standing over Tim’s body, staring down at him. There’s no expression on his face, not even one of pleasure at seeing Tim dead, and I wonder if, like me, he wanted to make Tim suffer more before he got to die.

  “Tim! Tim, where are you?” Clare is frantic downstairs now, and the dogs are growling and barking loud enough that they’ve brought the dead to the door because I can already hear the barking and groaning of them.

  Mikey looks up as I get close, and I hand over my death stick. He looks at it for a second, as if contemplating what damage he can do with it.

  “This way,” he says, not taking the death stick from me.

  I follow him down to the other end of the hallway and he opens a door.

  The room is bright, daylight flooding it from the large windows. There are shelves and crates filled with weapons—guns and knives of every sort. My jaw drops as I think of how this stuff got here, but more, where are the people that it once belonged to?

  Mikey goes over to a large open crate by the window and pulls out a couple of handguns. He checks to see if they’re loaded with the safety on, and once satisfied, he shoves one through the waistband of his pants and then grabs a large assault rifle. He turns and hands it to me and I nod and take it. This is my type of weapon, and one I’m used to handling. Mikey gets himself a rifle too, and then he turns to the crate filled with knives and hatchets. His hand pauses over his hatchet, and I don’t understand why at first, until I see what I think are Ricky and Phil’s weapons right next to it.

  “Do you know where Phil is?” I ask, quietly. I’ve been too scared to ask—not because I don’t want to hear that he’s dead, because at this point that much is obvious, but because I can’t bear the thought that he was in the same way as Ricky.

  Mikey turns around, his gaze searching my face. He reaches out, his left hand touching my cheek. His hands feel cold, frozen, like he’s never felt warmth. “I thought I’d seen the worst there could be. I was wrong,” he says, and then lowers his hand. “Come on.”

  He turns and leaves the room, and I follow him while I try to contain my tears. We head back down the stairs, and I can tell by the strength of his stride that Mikey is looking for blood. He doesn’t care about Clare, or her dogs. He isn’t after an apology, or to take her back for Aiken to deal with. He just wants her dead.

  Me? I think death is too good for her.

  Once outside the door, Mikey knocks on it loud enough for Clare to hear and calm the dogs down so that she can speak to me.

  “Is he there? Is my Tim there?” she calls, sounding like she’s barely holding it together. “If you’ve hurt him, god help you, Kelly. I will gut you and then I’ll let Candy and Cane go to town on you, you bitch! You won’t even get the chance to turn, because every time death comes knocking for you I’ll make sure to keep you alive long enough to heal and then we’ll start all over again!” By her last word, she’s screaming in anger.

  I glance over at Mikey, whose chin is to his chest while he listens to her, but like me, he’s unmoved by any of her threats. We have the upper hand here, not her.

  “Do you hear me, Kelly? Are you listening? Because you’re going to know pain, so much pain! You haven’t felt pai—”

  “Hey, Clare,” Mikey finally says.

  Clare stops talking mid-sentence, and when one of the dogs jumps up at the door and growls, she tells them to get back and to hush.

  “Who’s that?” she says cautiously.

  “I think you know who it is, Clare. And I think
you know what I’m going to do to you when I get in that room with you, don’t you?” Mikey doesn’t sound frightened anymore. In fact, he seems calm—too calm. I barely recognize the man in front of me, and once again I’m thrust back to the image of Ricky in the bath, parts of him cut off for what seemed like no good reason, and I wonder what hell they put Mikey through to make him so numb.

  “So you found our friends, did you, Kelly? Well that’s okay, we can share. We have more than enough to go around.” Clare sounds desperate now, and I’m aware that she doesn’t realize that Mikey and Ricky were actually my friends. “Tim? Tim? Let’s share with these good people, okay? They can help us, maybe take us to that new place that the other men were talking about. See, Kelly? See? We’ll look after you. All you have to do is kill that man next to you. Do it. Do it right now, and everything will all be okay.”

  Clare is going on and on and not shutting up, and I can barely comprehend what she’s telling me.

  “Some people look down their noses at what we do, but you have to do what you have to do to survive, right? And meat is meat, there’s no denying that fact. But a long time ago, that’s what we humans did, because it was okay then, so why not now? What’s wrong with eating it now? Nothing, nothing I tell ya! So join Tim and I and we’ll let you in on our way of life. We’ll keep you safe.” She finally stops talking and waits for me to reply to her.

  I look across at Mikey, but he’s still not looking at me. Instead he’s solely focused on the door, and Clare behind it. One hand is on the door, his hatchet gripped in his palm, and in his other hand is his gun. His jaw is moving, grinding away at his frustrations.

  “I’m going to kill you when I get in there,” he says. “And I’m going to kill those fucking dogs and eat them, and when you’re all dead I’m going to burn this place down.”

  Clare is laughing now, but it’s not real. Nothing about her is real. And I agree with everything he says. We’ll burn this place down together once we kill her and those dogs. This place will cease to exist and no one will ever be hurt by these people again.

  “You can’t kill me—not without going through my dogs, and these bitches will eat you up before you get in here!” She laughs louder. “Just like you ate your friend!”

  Mikey winces and then glances sideways at me, and I try to hide the shock from my face as the realization hits me of what she means.

  “Did he taste good? Did he?” Clare taunts. “I thought so. But I tell ya, Mikey, it was you that I was really looking forward to eating! Handsome man like yourself, bet you would have tasted real good.” She laughs again, and the dogs continue to bark and growl and she doesn’t bother to calm them down now. I think she’s even given up on winning me over now, which is good, because there was never any chance of that working before. But now, as the pieces start to slot together and picture becomes clear of what this place is and what these people have been doing, all I can think of doing is cutting this bitch’s head off and feeding it to her dogs.

  Mikey walks away from the door and I think he’s just going to leave—just walk away as if none of this nightmare ever happened. I mean, it’s the easier option. There’s no way Clare can survive on her own, so she’ll be dead in a week or two anyway, right? If her dogs don’t eat her first, because loyal or not, once those dogs start to starve, they’ll turn on her.

  “Tim’s dead,” I say to Clare, wishing that I could see her face and the pain it will cause her.

  “No,” I hear her whisper.

  “Yes,” I reply.

  Mikey comes back, and in his hand is some rolled-up newspaper and a box of matches. He takes out a match and strikes it against the wall, and then he holds it against the paper and we both watch the flames take hold. He drops it at the bottom of the door and then he pulls out a small bottle of something from the waist of his pants. He aims it at the flames and squirts, and the flames burst upwards as the door sets alight.

  He looks over at me, and I nod and head over to the chest of drawers leaning against the wall. I pull out the drawers and drag the clothes from them and throw them onto the fire, watching as they crackle and burn.

  Clare is calling for Tim on the other side over and over, but Tim isn’t going to save her this time. Tim isn’t going to be able to save her ever again.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “What are you doing out there? What’s that smell? Kelly? Tim?” Clare is calling, and the dogs are slamming themselves up against the door, and the whole world is so fucking noisy right now that I can’t think straight.

  “I got a new plan, Clare…I’m going to burn the witch,” Mikey says.

  “No, no, you can’t do that to me. You can’t do this to me!” Clare screams over and over as the flames take over and begin to lick up the wood of the door. “You’ll never find your friend. You won’t be able to save him! Please, please!”

  I look over at Mikey with a frown. He’s staring at the door, lost in the moment, and I wonder what she’s talking about, and if Mikey even heard her, when snaps out of it.

  “What?” he yells, coughing on the smoke that’s quickly filling the hallway.

  I put my arm across my mouth and nose, the smoke still managing to make it through the thick material of my jacket.

  “Your friend—the one in the colorful shirt. You’ll never find him without me,” Clare screams and coughs. The dogs are whining from the other side, but they sound further away now. “Get me out of here!”

  “Phil’s dead. I watched your sick fuck of a husband kill him,” Mikey yells back, and I can tell he’s regretting starting the fire because there’s only one emotion left inside of him when he turns to look at me. Revenge.

  “No, no he’s not. That wasn’t him; that was someone else!”

  “It was him! I saw him!” Mikey calls back. He’s breathing hard, but it’s not from the smoke, it’s in anger.

  “No, we put your friend’s shirt on him. Tim just wanted to break you. He could see that you were the strongest, and he made it his mission to break you. Why do you think you’re still here? We always save the strong till last! The fun is in tenderizing you!”

  Clare is coughing hard now, and I can barely see through the smoke filling the hallway. I try to look across at Mikey, but he’s covering his face too. It’s decision time: we either need to get the hell out of here or put out this fire before it’s too late. I know what I’d prefer to do, but if there’s even the possibility that Phil is alive then surely we have to take that chance.

  Before I can voice that opinion, Mikey is using a fire extinguisher to put out the fire. I don’t even know where he got it from, I only hope that we don’t come to regret the decision. Once the fire is out, Mikey puts the extinguisher down at his feet. We’re both covered in smoke and residue from the extinguisher and are coughing like crazy. At this moment in time it seems that maybe we’re the ones that came out worse from the fire.

  I can hear banging coming from somewhere in the building and the sound of breaking glass, and I quickly decide it’s the zed horde that was out front, and they heard all the commotion and came to investigate.

  “Mikey?” I cough out his name, trying to get his attention.

  “Get ready with the gun,” he says, and I lower my arm and raise my rifle.

  My eyes are streaming and the hallway is still filled with smoke, but I’ve hit the crack shot in worse situations, so I’m not too worried.

  Mikey reaches back with his leg and kicks at the door. I can hear the dogs on the other side of the room growling and barking, and I’m guessing that they’re busy with the zeds, which means we don’t have long. Mikey kicks at the door again and the sound of wood breaking echoes out. The door lock brakes on the third kick and he reaches down and pushes it open.

  I was right and the zeds have gotten in. Candy and Cane are busy dealing with them on the other side of the room, although it doesn’t seem like they’ll be able to for much longer as more and more zeds are pushing their way in. Clare is sitting in her cha
ir, her blanket thrown back and a shotgun in her hands. She glances at us and then back to the zeds, her eyes wide with fear. She calls out when one of her dogs lunges at a zed’s leg, clamping its teeth into the rotting flesh. Another zed drops to its knees, and before anything can be done it grabs hold of the dog and bites down. The dog howls as the zed pulls away a chunk of flesh, and the scent of blood sends the rest of the zeds into a frenzy and they all pile on.

  “Get me out of here!” Clare screams.

  I’m aiming my gun and shooting at anything that starts to head our way, but we’re vastly outnumbered so we don’t have long before this isn’t going to work. I look at Mikey, and from the expression on his face I can tell he wants to shut the door and let her be eaten.

  “Mikey,” I say, grabbing his attention. “Get her. She’ll pay her dues soon enough.”

  Mikey nods and grits his teeth, and then he’s striding toward Clare and wheeling her back to me. He drags her out of the room and I pull the door closed behind us. Mikey is already pulling the chest of drawers over to block the doorway and Clare is aiming her gun at us both, but I know she won’t kill us—not yet, at least. She needs help getting out of here.

  “Get her to the back door. If I’m not back in five minutes, go without me,” Mikey says and then he’s heading up the stairs, two at a time, without looking back.

  I don’t even have time to argue with him and tell him that there’s no way I’m leaving him behind, or that he’d better not leave me with this psycho, or even ask where he’s going. I sling my rifle over my shoulder and start to wheel Clare to the back door with the sound of the other dog yelping out in pain, and then Clare crying.

  This whole building is a maze of rooms and corridors, as if they’ve knocked through from one building to the next. I find the back door that Tim brought me through a little over an hour ago, and despite the heat of fear traveling through me, and the burning smoke in my lungs, I feel chilled.

  Clare is staring at me and I can tell she wants to say something, but I can’t look at her, never mind speak to her. The sound of more zeds filling the building echoes through to us, and I pace back and forth, praying that Mikey will make it back in time.