“It tastes good.” I offer another small shrug, accompanied by a large growl from my stomach. Everyone stares at my stomach in horror. “I think it’s saying thank you, and it wants more.” I smirk.
Emily grins. “To hell with it.” She sticks her fork into the SpaghettiOs, the little circles catching on the long fingers of the fork. She brings it to her mouth and copies my earlier action of smelling, tasting, and then stuffing the rest in greedily. She groans and closes her eyes. “So good,” she mumbles.
That’s all it takes for Alek and Mikey to join in, stuffing their faces with beans and tuna, throwing caution to the wind. It’s not until after all the food has gone that we all look around with worry—now that our stomachs have a little something in them and the hunger pangs have died off a little that we think about the possible consequence of our actions.
Emily wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and gives a little burp. “That was amazing.” She pauses, scooping more onto her fork. “I remember the last time I had SpaghettiOs, it was a couple of weeks before everything…went bad. It was my dad’s turn to cook, since Mom was working late. He was an awful cook, though, so I threw a can of Os into a pan and made some toast and we sat and ate it together at the counter in the kitchen. Dad said they were the best damn SpaghettiOs he’d ever had.” She smiles proudly at the memory. “Never thought I’d get to eat those cheery little Os again.”
My mouth quirks up in a half smile—how could I not smile at that?
“What if they were poisoned?” she whispers, her happy memory dissipating before my eyes.
“Shit,” Mikey whispers. “I’m blaming you.” He looks around at all of us. “All of you.” He points a finger at us all and then belches loudly.
“Nina, what should we do?” Emily asks, even as her hand dips back inside the can and rubs some of the leftover sauce onto her fingertips, and she begins to suck them clean.
“I don’t know. I guess we wait and see what happens.” Guilt consumes me. What if I’ve sentenced these people to death? I watch Alek scraping his fork around to get the last bits of tuna out, and the guilt washes away. They more than likely would have decided to eat this food regardless of me.
“The food wasn’t poisoned.”
We all look up at the young man—a kid, really—that stands in the doorway. He can’t be more than seventeen, with shaggy dark hair and worried brown eyes. A young girl stands close behind him, blonde, short, and paler than snow. She reminds me a little of Emily, actually.
Mikey jumps up, lifting his knife up in front of him. “Who the hell are you?” he growls.
The kid backs up. “Whoa, easy, big fella.” He waves a gun in front of him. “Gotta bigger weapon than you, see?” He smiles, even as the young girl clings to his arm and tries to hush him. He must think he’s some kind of superhero to be pulling that crap with Mikey.
Alek stands up. “That don’t mean shit.” He smiles, and gone is the calm and controlled young man that I’ve gotten to know over the last couple of days; in his place is a vicious thug, a man that would make Fallon proud. I shiver.
I watch the encounter, empty can of chopped tomatoes still firmly in my grip, without moving. The kid in the doorway stops smiling, his eyes flitting between Alek and Mikey. I know Mikey’s evil glare and, well, we’ve already discussed Alek’s.
“If I wanted to kill you, I would have done it already,” the kid snaps. Neither Alek nor Mikey back down, both continuing to give him the stink eye. “All right, all right, we come in peace!” He backs up, stumbling into the blonde girl, who lets out a little yelp.
“Put down your fucking gun,” Mikey shouts.
The kid looks at the weapon and then back to Mikey. “I can’t do that!” His voice goes up an octave too high, revealing his youth. “You guys could kill me.”
“Says the kid with the gun aimed at us,” I quip.
He looks down at his weapon and then back up to me before stuffing it down the back of his pants. He offers a nervous smile as he shows us his empty hands. “Better?”
“Much.” I finally stand back up, leaving my can on the little coffee table. I place a hand on Mikey’s shoulder. “Down, boys.” Mikey glares at me, Alek continues to glare at the young man in the doorway, and I glare at everyone. “And you are?” I point to the young man and his timid girlfriend.
“I’m Dean. This is Anne. We were the ones that left you the food.” He smiles hopefully. “And with due respect, I’m not a kid.”
The tension in the air still hasn’t broken.
I cross my arms in front of me. “We’ve been here since yesterday and only now you introduce yourselves. Why now—kid?”
“Because you’re going around and breaking into everyone’s houses.” He sounds angry as he continues. “I thought you would get bored after a while and decide to leave like everyone else, but you didn’t. You kept going around breaking things and making a mess. Do you know how hard it’s been keeping everything clean and tidy?”
I snort out a laugh. “Sweetheart, I think a little dusting should be the least of your worries right now. And while we’re asking questions, where the hell are all the deaders?”
Anne shuffles forward, tugging her bangs behind her ears. “You mean the sick people?”
I look from Anne to Mikey and then back again. “Yeah, the really sick people—as in the dead ones! You know, the zombies?” My words make them both flinch. “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like such a bitch, but seriously, where are they?”
Anne looks proudly to Dean. “He kept them away.” She grips his forearm and keeps on smiling with doe eyes, as if we’re not here.
“Um, how?” both Emily and I say at the same time.
“Dean’s a whiz with electronics.” Anne grins, patting his arm. “He…uh…he should probably explain it. I’m no good with stuff like that.”
Dean’s cheeks flush red and he smiles. “First, when are you leaving?”
I raise an eyebrow. “What’s it to you?”
“This is our town, and you’re going around breaking stuff. I don’t like it. I’ve given you some food, but we’d like you to leave.” Dean’s eyes swing to Mikey, who’s practically growling like a goddamned pit bull, almost making me want to laugh as Dean tacks onto the end of his sentence: “As soon as you can, please.” He smiles, trying to show his friendliness, like a dog baring its belly at its enemy.
“Your town? This is a free country now, Dean. We were leaving today, since we didn’t find anything here worth staying for. Now, however…” I let my words trail off as I look to Alek. “I’m still feeling pretty hungry. How about you?”
Alek rubs a hand over his stomach, still staring Dean down. “Starved.”
“Fine, fine, we’ll bring you more food if you promise to leave. We don’t have much, though.” He backs out the doorway, Anne close behind. “Don’t go anywhere.”
We hear the click of the front door as it closes behind them. Mikey runs up the stairs as soon as he hears it, and Alek runs to the main window. Emily shrugs, looking confused, and I grin. “Watching where they’re going, dumbass,” I say playfully.
“Oh.” She smiles.
Mikey comes back down a couple minutes later. “I watched them go through a gap in the fence of one of the houses across the street, but couldn’t see further than that.”
“Shouldn’t we follow them?” I ask.
“How dangerous can two kids be? Besides, they said they’d come back.” Mikey picks up his can and scrapes fingers around the rim, much the same way Emily had.
“What if they don’t? What if it’s a trap?”
“Then we destroy stuff until they come back,” he says matter-of-factly. “And again, how tough can two kids be?”
I yawn and stretch, the little bit of food in my stomach making me feel sleepy despite the tension of the situation. I hardly slept the previous night; constant dreams of Rastas selling me skulls full of margarita cocktails kept waking me up.
I sit back down on
the sofa, eager for more food, more answers, and to get a little shuteye at some point today. The sofa isn’t particularly nice; it’s old fashioned with graying flowers printed on it. The dark stain on the arm of it, though, is more than likely what stops me from resting my head on it and getting in two minutes’ worth of a nap.
I’m still eyeing the stain on the arm of the sofa when Dean and Anne return, loaded down with some more canned goods. We hear them stomping their boots on the welcome mat at the front door before coming inside and placing everything on the table in front of us.
“That okay?” Dean asks, his attitude gone now. I’m guessing Anne gave him a grilling when they left here, something along the lines of ‘stop trying to intimidate the guests, they’re bigger and scarier than you.’ Yeah, that would probably do it.
I grab a can from the center—a small can of mushrooms—and start to open it up. “So, Dean, spill it. Where are the deaders? Where is everyone from this town? And do you have an OCD problem? Seriously, this place is way too clean for an apocalypse.” I peer inside the can of mushrooms with a grimace. I used to hate these things before everything happened; even starvation can’t make me like them. “Anyone want to swap?”
“I will.” Alek takes my can and I take his, realizing my misfortune far too late.
“Canned spinach?” I sniff the contents and gag, and look up at Dean. “Well, go on then, don’t let me stop you.”
“I don’t have OCD,” he chuckles. “I just want everything to be as normal as possible for everyone when they get back.”
I lift out a forkful of the disgusting spinach. “Who . . . gets back?” I say slowly, swallowing the slimy spinach down with a shudder.
“Everyone,” Anne replies softly.
“Everyone?” I ask. Anne nods and I continue. “Like, everyone from this town?”
“Yeah.” She smiles.
“Where did they go?”
“They all ran away when the sick arrived,” Anne says softly, her eyes filling with sadness.
I look around at my friends to see if they are getting the same information as me, and wonder who is going to be the one to tell these poor kids the truth: that they won’t be having a family reunion anytime soon.
Chapter 12
“You know that pretty much everyone is dead, right?” I say slowly, just to make sure they understand everything I’m saying. We didn’t draw straws, but somehow I ended up drawing the damn short straw—the grand prize: getting to make these kids well aware of the current state of the world.
Dean shakes his head. “No, they’re not. They’re just hiding. These sick people, they scared everyone away.” His face has paled to match his girlfriend’s, and I have the urge to shake the poor sap.
“Dean,” I start, but then don’t know how to break it to him, so I change my line of questioning. “Have you been here all this time? On your own?”
Dean shakes his head. “No, Anne’s been here with me too. We’ve been securing the place, cleaning, storing food. The mailman stopped coming.” He scratches his head, looking lost for a minute. “He was always on time—9:15 a.m., sharp.” Anne prods him and he looks down at her startled. “Oh, sorry. Yeah, well, TV went off, and no one seemed to be bringing any more food to the supermarkets, so we decided to gather everything we could, store it, and ration it all until everything went back to normal. The hardest part was getting the sick out of town.” He looks away sadly. “There was another one of us, but he got sick, too, so we had to put him outside of town.”
“I’m confused. You put the sick outside town?” I ask, pinching the bridge of my nose as I spoon another mouthful of the spinach in. Hungry or not, this stuff tastes like crap. Alek isn’t faring too much better with the mushrooms, though, so at least I have that small satisfaction.
“Come on, we’ll show you.” Anne smiles and gestures for us to follow.
I put down my can, all too eager to quit eating for the minute, and one by one we follow Dean and Anne outside. They head off to the end of the street with us trailing behind them. The sun is shining down on us, the snow glistening up, giving an almost ethereal look to everything. At least it’s stopped snowing now. If we set off soon, we could still get to the army barracks before nightfall. I look around us, enjoying the peace and quiet, barring the chirp of small birds in the trees. If there’s food here, maybe we could stay—at least until the rest of town gets back. I almost snigger. What are the chances of that happening?
At the end of the street we take a right and head down another snow-covered street lined with white picket fences, and then take a left at the end. We pass tons of cars, covered head to toe—um…wheel—in blankets, and several stores with their shutters down, as if closed for the evening. Dean looks back and sees our stares.
“We closed them all up, to protect everyone’s things inside. Insurance premiums will be at an all-time high when everything gets going again, and everyone is going to be rioting. At least our town won’t have anything to worry about.” He smiles again and I choke back a laugh.
He can’t be serious?
“I wasn’t sure what to do about the cars.” He scratches his head. “I remember watching this program once about cars rusting, and decided to cover them all. Every day we try and get around to start a couple of the cars—the ones we can find the keys for, anyway—you know, to keep the engines turning over.” He pouts. “Honestly, I’m not sure it’ll do any good, but I tried, right?” He absently brushes snow off the top of a car.
I don’t know whether to think that this kid has lost it or is a genius. He’s thought of everything and yet doesn’t seem to have a clue what the hell’s going on. How is that possible? I glance at Mikey with a raised eyebrow and mouth ‘Is he for real?’ He shrugs, looking as confused as me before putting a hand on my arm and stopping me. I don’t argue with him as I hear what’s made him get the heebie-jeebies all of a sudden. In fact, now I have them.
A chorus of moans catches in the wind and blows around us like the putrid breath of the dead. It sounds like there’s a lot of them. More than a lot—hundreds, possibly? Oh God, please not hundreds.
I grab Emily’s arm and we dart across the road, Mikey and Alek closely following, and press our backs to the side of the closed up ice cream parlor, complete with pastel pink shutters with painted-on ice cream cones and everything. Mikey and Alek are beside us too, knives drawn, ready to fight to the death. Another chorus of moans drifts toward us, and I feel the tremble that runs through Emily because it runs through me too.
I look up to the sky as soft snowflakes begin to fall again, and can’t help but think what rotten luck we’re having today. I close my eyes briefly, trying to calculate the distance the deaders are from us. I open my eyes back up and cast a glance at Dean and Anne, who are still standing in the middle of the road, looking highly amused.
“What are you all doing?” Dean shouts across to us.
“Get out of the road, there’s deaders somewhere,” Mikey shout-whispers to them.
Anne smirks and elbows Dean. “Come with us,” she says. “It’s fine, honestly.”
The wind picks up, whipping loose strands of hair into my eyes and making them water. I rub at them, confusion and a little bit of fear mixing in with my watery eyes.
“Are you crying?” Emily whispers.
“No, I am not crying,” I huff. “I’m getting pissed off with their games, if you want to know.”
“You and me both,” Mikey says and starts to follow after our unlikely boy scout.
I trail after him, keeping my own knife drawn and ready and feeling Emily close behind me. Alek stays to the rear—I presume to keep lookout behind us. If I’m honest, I don’t think it would matter. By the sound of the amount of deaders nearby, if they manage to sneak up behind us, we’re goners for sure. There would be no escaping the wrath or teeth of this many deaders trying to eat us.
I’m still working on my pessimism scale, gimme a break.
We turn the final corner and find ourse
lves in the center of the town. In the middle is a large bandstand, little seats and stands for music sheets still in place. The whole place is creepy, I decide, and I do not want to stay here anymore. Another growl of deader love whistles up into the wind, making me cringe.
“Seriously, where the hell are you taking us?” I snap. A chill is running down my spine, and I can’t shake it. Maybe it’s a draft from the oncoming storm that’s caught the bottom of my jacket. Or maybe it’s the fact that the storm means we’re going to be stuck here with these freaks and a bunch of deaders, and that’s what’s really bothering me.
Dean actually looks a little perturbed by my outburst. “Look, lady, it’s just at the end of town. It’s not something I can explain.”
“It really isn’t,” Anne agrees softly.
“No, it really is. I want answers now.” I scowl.
“All will be revealed.” He smiles and does a weird hand movement, which I’m guessing is supposed to be an attempt at a magician impersonation. He sees my scowl and drops the act. “Fine. The sick people can’t hurt us. Trust me.”
“Trust you? Why would I? I don’t know you.”
He looks down to his shoes sadly. “No, you don’t, but we came to you, we brought you food. I don’t mean to freak you out, and I’m sorry if that’s what I’m doing, I just want you to come and see. Maybe then you can help us.”
“Help?” Mikey asks.
“Yes, help. You’ll see.” With that he smiles widely again, turns tail, and keeps on walking, with my group following behind. As we reach the edge of town, the growling that I’m all too familiar with gets louder until it’s an almost deafening roar of white noise. We turn one last corner and there it is—or rather, there they are: deaders. Hundreds of them.
Next to a massive hydro plant they stand, like an army of the undead, being held back by a heavy metal barrier which surrounds the entire place. It’s leaning forward in places, and it doesn’t look like long before it will collapse. They growl and push and shove each other, not caring when one of their comrades falls to the ground and gets trampled into the soft, ripe earth. Dean and Anne keep walking, but my little happy foursome has stopped dead in its tracks. Emily cowers behind me—why, I have no idea, since she has her big-ass boyfriend now. Mikey is standing slightly ahead of me, looking like a real tough guy brute, though he pulled off the look better when he had a shaved head and no beard. I would snigger but I’m kinda terrified. Dean looks back to us.
Odium II: The Dead Saga Page 9