“And yet you’ve come into our home and killed our friends,” a child’s voice from the small herd came.
“We meant no harm. We thought they were going to kill us.”
I mean, they were going to kill us. They definitely would’ve if we hadn’t have killed them first, but it didn’t seem like the time to point that part out.
“This is our home.” Another child’s voice, this time followed by a hundred whispers of agreement.
“We apologize for overstepping. We came for supplies,” Shooter replied, and he sounded so calm that I found myself having a new admiration for him. My stomach was doing backflips like it was part of the Cirque Du Soleil troupe, and I didn’t trust myself to speak without my voice quaking.
Highlander was right: masked, weaponized kids were terrifying.
14.
Nina
The whispers continued amongst themselves and I glanced briefly to Shooter. He was staring intently at the herd of little masked monsters, his expression anxious.
“I’ve got my gun on me,” Crank whispered quietly, and I saw the telltale twitch of Shooter’s features that told me he’d heard. “Ready and loaded. Might buy us some time.”
“Och, not before the wee ones cut us to pieces and use our intestines as skipping ropes,” Highlander whispered back. “Vicious little pricks,” he snarled.
“Well, that’s a pleasant thought,” I mumbled.
I focused back on the masked kids, noting how several of them had come forward, and I took stock of them. They were all definitely kids of varying ages; I would say anything from five or six upwards. Each of them were wearing their crudely painted white masks and carrying handmade weapons of pointed sticks or homemade knives and bats wrapped in barbed wire. Glancing up higher, I noted several masked faces hiding in the rafters, but they were holding guns. Big guns, from the looks of it, and my heart sank. There was no way out of this without serious bloodshed. Not unless we tried to strike a deal or appealed to their childlike nature.
What is it that kids really want?
What motivates them?
Or what motivated them previously?
I wasn’t a mother. I’d never had children and never really wanted them either. The end of the world had only solidified that fact, because who would want to have children in a world so ugly and brutal? But kids were still kids, and they still craved childlike things: a parent’s love, a teddy bear, a book at bedtime, and candy.
I took a small step forward, leaving my little group to single myself out as a female. A woman. Someone less threatening than three big, burly bikers.
“Nina…” Shooter warned, but I held a hand up to him to placate him.
I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do or even if it would work, but we had no other choice—not really. We had to survive…all of us.
“We really didn’t mean to upset anyone. We were looking for parts,” I said, my voice softer, gentler than usual. Gone was the hard edge that I’d let build into it, and I tried for a more feminine approach instead of the usual biting, angry tone. “Parts for me, actually.”
Whispers came again, several heads turning to look at one another.
“Parts for you?” A girl’s voice.
“Are you a robot?” A boy’s voice.
I forced a fake laugh and smiled. “Sort of.” I held my arm up slowly, showing my attachment and its accompanying weapon.
“What is that?” This time the voice was more masculine, not a boy’s, not quite a man’s, but the early stages of manhood, for sure.
“I lost my arm…” I said timidly.
“To the biters?” Another girl’s voice.
I shook my head. “No, to a man. A bad man.”
More whispers, more head turning.
“There are lots of bad men out there,” the male voice came again.
I nodded. “There are lots of bad women too, I assure you. But we’re not either of those things. We’re like you, really. We’re just trying to survive.”
The large room fell silent. No whispers. No movement. You would have thought that they had been frozen. Turned to ice or carved out of marble. I waited, as patiently as I could. I was losing my nerve when they spoke next.
“You killed some of our family.” The girl’s voice. “They were our protectors.”
I bowed my head. “I apologize on behalf of us all. They attacked us.” I looked up as the whispering began again. “And rightly so—they were trying to protect you, we see that now. But we didn’t know. We weren’t aware they were good, like you.”
The room fell silent and then a small laugh erupted from the herd of children. The laughter grew and grew, echoing from above and below, surrounding us so loudly until I wanted to cover my ears. My heart slammed against my chest and I glanced back to Shooter, Highlander, and Crank, trying to read their stony expressions.
The laughter ended as abruptly as it had started, and I looked back to the children who were no more children than the deaders we’d just killed. They were far beyond those childlike personas now. Life and a lack of parental authority had driven these children into the mindset of something more monstrous.
“We’re not good,” the male voice came, and he stepped forward, out of the herd. He was their leader, even if they didn’t realize it. He ruled over them. He controlled them. He was their master. “Not even close.”
Who had this boy been before the end of the world, I wondered briefly. Before the deaders rose and evil infected the hearts of so many. His height and build suggested he was no more than seventeen or eighteen, but his mask hid his face from me. At the start of this apocalypse he would have been around thirteen or fourteen. What had he seen and done to get to this place with a masked army of weaponized children by his side?
“But you look after this family, right?” I replied, holding my arms out to his herd. “You help protect them. Keep them fed and safe and warm.”
He cocked his head to one side, and I imagined his eyes were narrowed behind his mask as he assessed what I was trying to do. What I was trying to decide.
“This is your family, and you’ll do anything to protect them, right?” I added.
He held a curved blade in his hand, and now he ran the edge of it along a thick piece of leather strapped on to the side of his leg, sharpening it as I spoke. He was trying to unnerve me, and it was working, but the ache in my arm and the hole in my heart stopped me from being truly frightened.
“I won’t pretend that we can look after them, or you, any better. You’ve done a marvelous job already. But we can perhaps help one another. We can trade,” I suggested, readying for the kill.
I’d noted the flies that hung in the air and the stench that accompanied them, and when I looked deeper into the shadows, I noted the animal corpses strapped to the walls. The children had been using animals for their survival. I wondered how much that could destroy a child’s mind, using their pet Fluffy as a meal.
“Pretty sure you won’t want any vegetables”—I forced a light laugh—“but we have homemade bread and cakes.”
The voices began as whispers, reaching high into the rafters until the whispers grew and grew and every child in the place was talking excitedly.
Monsters they may have been, but children they still were, deep down.
“Do you have any candy?” The girl’s voice now, and this time she stepped from the herd.
The boy turned to glare at her and I caught a glimpse of his long yellow hair behind the mask.
“A little, but not much,” I said, when in truth we had none. But maybe we could find some. We’d have to if it meant surviving.
“Do you have teddies?” a little boy asked. His height suggested no more than eight or nine, and he was skinny. So, so skinny.
I nodded. “Lots of teddies. And lots of books. And we can make cookies too,” I said, thinking on my feet.
“Got a couple of bikes too,” Crank said from behind me. “And paint. I can paint ’em up real nice for you.”
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The whispers were louder now, but they were still whispers. I betted the children hadn’t used the full strength of their voices in so many years that they’d forgotten how. The thought was beyond sad.
“Enough,” the older boy said in a whisper-shout, and the talking ceased, the warehouse falling silent. “We don’t need your gifts,” he said, his tone suggesting a bitterness that came with all teenagers of that age.
He didn’t need anyone to tell him what to do.
He was a man now and would do as he pleased.
He was a teenage rebel, acting out against the adults.
I bet he was a pimply little shit with anger issues behind that mask and not the cool, calm man he pretended to be. The kids looked up to him because he was the eldest, and I wondered what would happen to each of them as they got older. Would he kill them as they reached his age? That way no one could ever try to take his power away.
I may have never wanted children, but there was no denying the maternal instinct that was growing inside me.
He lifted his knife and took a step forward, but if he thought that was going to frighten me he was going to have a shock. Little shit had no idea what I’d been through. The people I had encountered. The things I had survived. The things I had done to survive. We had all gone to some dark places in the past few years, and I had no doubt his had been a terrible time, but if he thought I was going to let him harm a single hair on my head, he was very much mistaken.
I decided to try one more time before things got bloody.
“Like I said, we don’t mean any harm to any of you. We needed some parts and we still do. We’re willing to trade you for them. Cake, bread, cookies, toys, and books as well, if you want. But we’re not leaving here without a deal to trade or taking the things we want.” I let my voice go hard at the end, the soft mother voice seeping away so he knew I wasn’t going to back down to him. He may have ruled over those children, but I was no child and neither were the men at my back.
“Tyson,” a voice whispered from the herd. I couldn’t decide if it was female or just a young male, but the tone was pleading.
Little masked monsters they may have been, but as I suspected, they were still children beneath all the horrors.
His name was Tyson. I wondered who he had been previous to all this. Tyson seemed like such a normal name for a boy. I betted that he had played football, or maybe he had wrestled. Maybe once he had dreams to go to college and find a nice girl to settle down with, but the end of the world had come and gone and he’d been forced to do unspeakable things just to survive.
“I know that you’re in control here, and you don’t need us,” I said, staring at Tyson, my gaze unwavering, as was his, “but part of survival, part of being an adult in this awful world, is knowing who is your enemy and who isn’t. It’s knowing when to kill and when to trade.”
Tyson took another step toward me. He picked at his nails with the knife, casually, trying to assert his dominance over me. I wondered what he would have done without the men at my back.
“Do you have these things with you?” he asked, casually, a fake pretense that I easily saw through.
I shook my head. “No. We have minimal things with us, a handful of food, but we can arrange a meeting time and place to trade.”
Tyson laughed, and it grew louder as he came a little closer. Step by cautious step. Slowly closing the space between us until he was three feet away and I could just about make out his brown eyes behind the mask.
“Then no trade,” he said bitterly.
“Tyson,” I pleaded, holding my arms out to placate him, but with a machete attached to one arm and a katana in the other it came across as violent and he raised his knife, the herd of children behind him going stone still. “Sorry, sorry.” I carefully sheathed my katana but there was nothing I could do about the machete. “What about if one of us stays? The others can go back for supplies, and then we can trade.”
Tyson cocked his head again, his gaze firmly on my arm. I had a feeling he was a little in awe of it. Silly boy.
Shooter was restless behind me, and I had no doubt that it was taking everything in his willpower not to drag me back to his side.
“Who stays?” Tyson asked.
I looked at the children, weapons in hand, still as statues, watching us through the narrow slits in their masks, and I knew who it had to be.
“I’ll stay,” I replied.
“Like hell you will,” Shooter bellowed as if he’d been poised, ready to strike.
“Shut up,” I snapped at him.
He closed the short distance between us, pushing in front of me. “I’ll stay. I’m the president of these people, this club. I’m in charge, so you know they’ll come back for me.”
“Shooter!” I shoved at him, frustrated and annoyed that he’d not only try to take over my deal but that he thought he could take charge of my life like that. “No—you’re needed by the Highwaymen, I’m not. I’m expendable.”
“Like hell you are,” he replied.
“Gotta agree with her, boss,” Crank said from behind.
“Neither of you feckers are expendable,” Highlander grumbled.
“We’ll take the woman,” Tyson interrupted, clearly seeing he had the upper hand. “She stays or you all die.”
“Then we die!” Shooter snarled, rolling his shoulders like he was ready for a fight.
“Shooter, for God’s sake, see some sense!” I yelled.
“Ain’t no God left, darlin’, and I ain’t leavin’ my old lady behind with these vicious little—”
I grabbed him with my good hand and tried to turn him so he’d look at me. He was like stone, but eventually he let me move him.
“You’re not stayin’,” he said, his expression as black as night. “Ain’t up for debate, Nina.”
I looked into his bright blue stormy eyes and shook my head. “You’re not risking these men’s lives for me. Out of stubbornness. Out of your innate desire to protect me.”
“And you’re not getting yourself killed because you don’t see much to live for,” he retorted.
I shook my head. “I won’t. I see now—honest, I do. My life isn’t over, it’s just different. I get it. Being on the back of your bike, killing those deaders… I see now, I promise.”
We stared at each other silently, a tangled web of anger and affection between us. We were both trying to protect the other at any costs; it would have been poetic if it weren’t for the little monsters watching us.
“The club will fall apart without you, Shooter. The Rejects are still uncertain of where they belong—they need you to show them the way,” I pleaded. “I’m nothing to them, but you are everything.”
“She’s right, Prez,” Crank said, and when I looked, he at least had the decency to look apologetic at throwing me to the wolves.
“You stay alive,” Shooter ordered me, and I looked back at him and nodded.
“I will, I promise.” I turned to Tyson quickly, before anyone could change their minds again. “Okay, I’ll stay, they’ll go and get supplies and come straight back with them. We’ll trade—the things we need for food and toys.”
It was a deal.
It was decided.
Tyson glanced up at the ceiling, where the kids were holding guns, and he nodded before looking back at me.
“For the family you killed on your way in,” he said, his head cocked to one side, and then a single gunshot sounded out loudly.
15.
Nina
I covered my head with my hands and automatically ducked, expecting death to finally come for me as the crack of the gun sounded loudly, but nothing came. My ears were ringing in my ears, my heart pounding obnoxiously hard in my chest, but I was still alive, still breathing. I removed my hands and stood up quickly.
“Shooter!” I called his name and turned at the same time, terrified of what I might see.
There was blood.
So much blood.
But Shooter was ali
ve and so was Highlander, both of them bent over the prone body of Crank on the ground. Everything went silent despite seeing Shooter and Highlander yelling and shouting, holding their hands up as they dripped with the bright red blood of their brother.
Highlander stood up, his look terrifying enough to make my heart skip a beat. He pulled out his gun and aimed it at Tyson, his hard gaze unwavering, and Tyson, for the teenage boy that he was, stood there like a man and didn’t cower away. Shooter stood up and pulled at Highlander, yelling orders in his face, but the world was still silent momentarily as my head and my heart struggled to catch up with what was happening.
And then, like coming up for air from diving, everything came back into focus. So loud and bright that it startled me.
“You’re dead, little boy,” Highlander was snarling, his dark eyes focused solely on Tyson. “I’m gonna cut off your fuckin’ head and shove it up your arse, you wee little bastard.”
“Back off, Highlander, that’s a goddamn order!” Shooter was yelling in his face but Highlander didn’t seem to be listening, and honestly I got it, and no doubt Shooter did too. But if Highlander lost it and went all death and destruction, we were all dead and everything so far would have been for nothing.
My gaze went to Crank on the ground, and sadness gripped my heart. His handsome face was turned to the side, his eyes staring blankly into nothing, the red puddle of blood under him growing.
Was it my fault?
We’d come here so that Highlander could get parts to build things for my arm, so was this death now on my hands? Another death. Another bloodstain on my soul.
I felt sick and sad and heartbroken at the thought.
“Highlander.” I said his name, not quietly, but loudly. So loud that he heard me and his gaze broke from Tyson to slide to me. My throat squeezed tight at the pain in his eyes, and I realized that he blamed himself too. “You need to leave,” I said. “You both need to leave, now. Take Crank with you.”
“I’m not leavin’ you here,” Shooter growled, scowling at me, his eyebrows pulled low.
The Dead Saga | Book 7 | Odium 7 Page 11