The Dead Saga (Book 5): Odium V

by Claire C. Riley

  I look over at Clare again, seeing that she’s still staring at me. Her face is dirty and streaked with tears, and her hands are still gripping her weapon, but she has the sort of look on her face that I expect a cornered bear to have. She’ll go down fighting if she has to.

  I’m almost tempted to put a bullet in her brain before she can try to kill me, but the thought of Phil being alive somewhere stops me. I’m almost certain it’s been five minutes, and I’m prepping to go and look for Mikey when I hear his heavy footsteps come stomping back down the hallway.

  He stumbles into the room, sweaty and dirty, with an unconscious man leaning heavily on him and a large bag of weapons thrown over one shoulder. I don’t bother to ask who he is. Instead I grab the door handle and throw it open before looking out onto the street and checking for zeds.

  It seems that they’ve all been attracted to the noise at the front, so I wheel Clare over the small step and out into the sun. She raises a hand to her eyes and squints against the brightness. Mikey comes out after me, but he pushes past and tells me to follow him, and I do.

  The man is starting to come around, and he mumbles something as Mikey continues to jog to the end of the alleyway. As we reach the corner, Mikey leans the man against the wall and looks around the corner, checking for the all clear. The guy looks like some old biker, from what I can see, with a leather cut and long, straggly hair. His T-shirt under his cut has been ripped open and huge chunks of flesh are missing, along with the guy’s left arm.

  His head is rolling on his shoulders, and I can see a large skull tattoo on the side of his neck. He manages to open his eyes and look up at me, though I doubt he can focus properly.

  “All right,” Mikey says, coming back around and grabbing the guy. “All clear. There’s an old army truck at the end of this road. We need to go right past the store to get to it, and the place is flooded so we need to be quick and ready for anything. You ready?” he asks me.

  I nod and look down at Clare. “Be ready with that gun of yours,” I snarl.

  Clare sneers at me and grips her gun tighter.

  “Alright, let’s do this,” I say to Mikey.

  Mikey gets a better grip on the other man, who’s awake enough now to speak.

  “Give me a gun,” he says, his voice gravelly and thick.

  Mikey reaches into his waistband and pulls out the handgun before pressing it into the man’s hand. He’s not going to be able to aim properly; his right arm is gone and he needs his left arm to hold onto Mikey. But at least if anything happens to Mikey the guy can try to defend himself.

  Mikey nods once more and then we’re off, moving around the corner and hiding behind abandoned trucks and cars in the street as we slowly move down the road. We reach the candy store and Clare gasps when she sees the state of it. The windows have been smashed and the door is hanging by one hinge. The store is filled with zeds of every description, all moving around in search of the food that they know was in there.

  “Bastards,” Clare mutters.

  I glare down at her. “Really?” I continue to push her, and when I look on ahead, I can see the truck that Mikey was talking about. There’s a Humvee right near it, and damn I wish we had the keys for that instead.

  Mikey looks back over his shoulder, his gaze staying fixed on me and not daring to go to Clare. The guy Mikey has groans and coughs, and Mikey stops walking and leans him against the side of a car. He presses his dirty hand to the other man’s mouth to suppress the noise, but it doesn’t help. A handful of zeds come to the doorway and start to shamble out, and I know that it won’t be long before more come.

  “Let’s go,” I whisper to Mikey.

  He nods and then we’re moving again, ducking behind every car we see. We make it to the army truck and I let go of the wheelchair and throw open the doors while Mikey lays the man down in the back and then climbs in the front. He pulls a key from his pocket and sticks it in the ignition and turns it. The truck chokes a little and I panic about the attention the noise will bring, but then it catches and starts up. It’s loud, but it doesn’t matter as long as we can get the hell out of here.

  Mikey climbs back out and between us we grab Clare and help her get in the back of the truck with the injured man, and then we fold up the wheelchair and throw that in the back too. We both move to the front of the truck and climb in, with Mikey getting behind the wheel, and then we slam our doors closed and start to drive.

  We drive in silence for a few moments before I dare to open my mouth to speak, but before the words can leave my mouth, Mikey turns to look at me.

  “I can’t talk about it, O’Donnell. Maybe not ever,” he says.

  And though I want to know what happened to him, to Ricky and all those other people, I decide that it’s one nightmare I can live without knowing.

  “Okay,” I say, and I reach across and put my hand on top of his. “It’s okay.”

  He swallows and then raises my hand to his lips and kisses my knuckles. “Thank you, O’Donnell. I thought I was gone, that that was it.”

  My fingers entwine with his and I smile. “You’ll never be gone, Mikey, because I’ll always find you, if you want me to.”

  He kisses my knuckles again and then turns back to look at the road. It wasn’t a yes, but it wasn’t a no either, and I feel a spark of hope. And after all the horrors and death I’ve just seen, I need that spark of hope like I need air.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  A mile or so outside of the city, Mikey pulls over and switches off the engine. He gets out and I follow, and together we go to the back of the truck. I’m half expecting to see the other man has died and turned and has killed Clare. Or maybe that’s what I’m hoping.

  At the back of the truck, we find the other man sitting up and leaning against the wall of the truck. He’s pale and sickly looking, but he’s awake, which is something. Clare is sitting on the other side of the truck, facing him. She looks so innocent and calm, and I can’t help but feel a sudden surge of anger toward her for all the people that she must have won over with that sweet face.

  Mikey opens the back door and turns to Clare. “Where is he?”

  A slow smile rises on Clare’s face. “Why should I tell you? You’re going to kill me as soon as I tell you.”

  Mikey breathes out heavily. He raises his gun, removing the safety, and aims it at Clare. “There’s no way out of that fate for you, but maybe you can do some good before you go to hell.”

  Clare’s smile grows wider, but the fear is bright in her eyes: she doesn’t want to die. “No thank you, I’d rather die with my secrets.”

  Mikey glances at me and I nod. I didn’t believe Phil was really alive anyway, I had just hoped. It was all just a ploy to get her out of there, and I can’t believe that we even fell for it. The biker guy starts coughing and Mikey walks away to the front of the truck. When he comes back he has a small bottle of water. He climbs into the back of the truck and unscrews the lid before helping the biker to drink.

  When he’s done, the other man nods his thanks. “Name’s Butcher.” He raises an eyebrow and tries to smile. “I already get the irony in that.”

  Mikey pats him on the shoulder. “How you doing?”

  “I’ve been better.”

  “No shit,” Mikey replies. He turns his attention back to Clare. “How about this. How about I promise not to kill you if you tell me where he is?”

  Clare’s smile falters. “You wouldn’t do that.”

  “I will if it saves Phil’s life,” he replies. I’m not certain that I believe him though.

  Clare looks thoughtful for a minute, holding Mikey’s stare as if she can read his mind just by looking at him. “We sold him,” she finally says.

  “Sold him?” I whisper in confusion, though I’m loud enough for Clare to hear and look over at me.

  “Well, we can’t live off just meat, can we? We need other supplies too.” Her eyes are wide. “We’re not animals!”

  “Yes, you are,” I reply.r />
  “Who did you sell him to?” Mikey asks.

  Clare looks back to him. “The Savages—that’s what they call themselves, anyway. We trade sometimes when we have too many.”

  “Too many?” Mikey asks, but by the way his expression falls he gets it all too late.

  “Too much produce,” she says. “We trade supplies. A meat sack for toiletries or canned goods, or—”

  “Meat sack!” Mikey grinds out. “You mean humans. People!”

  Clare snorts. “If that makes it easier for you to stomach, then yeah, people. We trade soap and water for people—for our dinner. It’s business, nothing personal.”

  I raise my gun and aim it at her, and her eyes widen when she looks at me.

  “You sold my friend like he was a freaking taco?”

  I’m done. I’m seriously done with this psycho. I’m going to shoot her in the stomach and then chop off bits of her while she’s bleeding out and then feed them to her. See if she can stomach that! I take a step closer and Clare raises her gun. But I don’t care. I can’t even think straight, I feel so angry and sick to my stomach.

  “Mikey! Tell her to put that down right now,” Clare is still aiming her gun at me, but I’ve seen the shake to her hand—there’s only a low risk that she’d hit me, barely thirty percent, whereas I’d hit her one hundred percent, no problem. It’s more than an acceptable risk, in my eyes.

  Mikey makes a move toward me, looking anxious. “O’Donnell, think about this first.”

  “I’m going to kill her,” I snarl out.

  “As much as that seems like the perfect solution, you can’t,” Mikey says, reluctance tinging his tone. “She’s the only one who knows where Phil is.”

  Clare laughs, but it’s not filled with any humor. “I need you to take me to them. That way I’ll know I’ll be safe.”

  “To who?” Butcher says, finally joining in the conversation.

  “The Savages. Take me to them and maybe you can buy your friend back.” Clare looks at us all while we let her words sink in.

  “They’ll kill us if we go there,” Mikey says, though he sounds uncertain.

  “Not if you go with fresh produce.” Clare glances at Butcher and then back to Mikey. “And me, you take me and I’ll be your guarantor.”

  Mikey turns to look at me, a thousand unspoken questions on his lips. He turns back to look at Butcher, who is staring at us all like we’ve all gone crazy.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Butcher says, his voice low and deadly. And despite his injuries and his missing arm, I have no doubt that he’d take one or all of us down if we tried to hurt him. Maybe that’s what makes him so valuable in the first place. Clare had said Tim wanted to break Mikey because they could see he was the strong one. I mean, Christ, if these cannibals were looking at us all like we were food, then big, strong men like Mikey and Butcher were like the buffalo burgers of the cannibal world. Do stronger people taste different? Oh god, I can’t even begin to think about that.

  “Not gonna happen,” Mikey says to Butcher and pats his leg.

  “Damn fuckin’ right it’s not,” Butcher retorts.

  “Give me to them,” Mikey says, turning to look at me. “Trade me for Phi—”

  “Absofuckinglutely not!” I yell, cutting him off. “I’m not losing one man to save another. That serves no purpose.”

  Mikey turns and jumps out of the truck. He places his hands on either of my arms and looks me in the eyes. “It does. I’ll be safe, for a while. Phil won’t be—that is if he’s still alive. You get back, get Aiken and the others, and come back for me. It’ll all work out.”

  I shrug out from under his grip. “I said no.”

  Mikey takes a step back from me. He turns to look the way we just came, his hands on his hips. Out in the daylight, he looks even worse than he did inside, with the dark masking all the things that Tim and Clare put him through. Things that they took from him that he can never get back. I take a step toward Mikey, placing my hand on his shoulder. He reaches over and places his hand on top of mine.

  “I have to help him,” he says, his gaze still fixed on the road. “God knows what they’re doing to him right now. He needs our help—my help—and I can’t walk away from it.” He turns back to face me. “Not this time. It’s time I faced the consequences, no matter what the cost. No matter who gets hurt.”

  Tears have filled my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall. I can’t let him do this—can I? Do I even really have a choice? I weigh up the odds and come up with a number that I’m less than comfortable with.

  “Ten percent,” I say.

  Mikey raises an eyebrow in question and I carry on.

  “That’s the odds of survival. Ten percent. That’s a ninety percent certainty that they’ll kill you before I can get back to Haven and get Aiken and the rest to come rescue you. We’re miles from home and these people don’t hold back. They may not kill you right away, but they will hurt you, they will—”

  “I know. But I can’t walk away from it. I can’t leave Phil there, with them,” Mikey replies.

  I turn back to look at Clare. She’s watching us, her gun still in her hand. Her eyes narrow when she sees the hate in my stare, and she keeps the gun aimed at me.

  “How far is it?” I ask her.

  “Not too far. Tim said it would normally take them around twenty minutes to arrive once he contacted them.”

  “How did he contact them?” Mikey asks.

  “The old-fashioned way,” Clare replies. “Smoke signals.”

  “You people are crazy,” Butcher says.

  I turn to look at him, knowing how accurate he is right now. Crazy? Yes, most definitely. Maybe even a full-on case of insanity. Because who in their right mind hands themselves over to cannibals?

  Apparently us.

  “I still don’t like it,” I say.

  “I’ll be fine,” Mikey replies, but I don’t think either of us believe him.

  “What if I don’t get back in time? It’s probably a two-day drive to Haven, and that’s if we don’t encounter any problems on the way. I just…” I shake my head. The odds are dropping; I can’t even see ten percent any longer.

  “I have people that can help,” Butcher says, and both Mikey and I turn to look at him. “I have a crew. They don’t normally go in for the caring and sharing shit, but you did me a solid back there when you didn’t have to. I can speak to them, plead your case. I think they’d do it, for me.”

  “How far away are they?” Mikey asks.

  I glance over at Clare and see the frantic look on her face, and I can’t help but smile. It won’t be long till I can kill her, and then we can go back to Haven. That day can’t come soon enough.

  “Not far—an hour or two, max. I was scouting the town when I got caught by these two sick fucks.” Butcher turns to glare at Clare. “I only have one condition if I’m going to help you.”

  “Name it,” Mikey replies.

  “We get to keep her.” Butcher is still staring at Clare.

  “Not a problem. As long as you intend to kill the bitch.”

  “You do realize that I have a gun, don’t you? That I could kill every one of you right now if I felt like it?” Clare is yelling. “And let’s not forget that I know where the Savages live, so I won’t be taking you there unless you promise me that I’ll be safe.”

  “Bitch, please,” Butcher interrupts. “I know where the Savages are, and I know who they are. As soon as you said their name, I knew that I had you.”

  “So it’s settled?” I say, praying that it all is as it seems. “We’ll take you back to your crew, you keep Clare and do as you please with her, and your crew helps us get our friend back from the Savages?”

  “Damn straight,” Butcher replies. “Now get this gun away from her stupid ass.”

  I raise my gun and aim it at Clare, and she looks frantically across us all, not knowing who to aim the gun at.

  “Keep back, all of you,” she calls angrily, but her sob
s break down into tears. “You’ve taken everything from me. You took my Tim and my girls and my home. I don’t even have my meds, you animals!” Her hand is trembling as she aims the gun at Mikey, deciding that he’s obviously the biggest threat.

  Mikey isn’t in the slightest bit fazed, though, and climbs back in the truck and moves toward her.

  “I will blow your fucking brains out!” she screams at him and squeezes the trigger.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Mikey moves to one side at the same time as he knocks the gun from her hand. “No, no you won’t,” he shouts in her face as he stands back up. He reaches back and punches Clare in the face, and I feel the punch as if it were my own fist that’s connected with her.

  Blood explodes from her nose and she starts to cry loudly. “I’m sick, you have to help me. I need my meds. I need my Tim! What have you done?”

  “Gonna need to help me into the front if you want to get in my compound, brother,” Butcher says.

  Mikey helps the other man up and then they both get out of the back of the truck, leaving Clare sobbing in her chair, oblivious to what’s going on around her. I guess it’s true that the bad shit always catches up to you in the end. It sure caught up with Clare. And I wouldn’t wish to be in her shoes right now.

  I close the truck door on Clare and her crying and we all go to the front of the truck and climb back in. Butcher is sitting in the middle, and though he’s missing his left arm and has a bandage wrapped tightly around his middle, slowly soaking up with blood, he doesn’t seem fazed by any of it.

  “Drive north ten miles,” he says. “I’ll direct you from there.”

  Mikey starts to drive, and I can practically feel our odds rising with each mile that we pass.

  Twenty percent.

  Twenty-five percent.

  Thirty percent.

  By the time we reach the ten-mile mark, Butcher’s eyes are rolling to the back of his head, Clare has gone silent, and I put our chances of survival at fifty percent. Not bad, considering we’d been at barely ten percent a couple of hours ago.