The Dead Saga | Book 7 | Odium 7

by Riley, Claire C.

  We were each other’s medicine in this world full of death. An intoxicating high against the backdrop of nightmares. We were one another’s penance for all the wrongs we had committed.

  Shooter walked me to the table and laid me down on it, taking my body over and over, each heavy thrust an attempt at branding me, at owning me, at forcing me to be his and his alone.

  I said no to him, even as I begged for more. My hand clawing at his muscular shoulder, my nails digging into his skin so hard that small bloody half-moons appeared. I cried and wished for it to end even as I implored him not to stop. His hands gripped my hips as he slammed into my body, his ice blue eyes boring into mine, filled with both love and anger, hatred and need. Like any bad drug, he wanted to give me up, but he couldn’t.

  We found our equal releases, the table legs breaking from the weight of our two bodies on top, and the table creaked and crashed to the floor. Shooter hoisted me back up to his body and we rode out the waves of pleasure kissing, holding each other, loving and hating one another. Wishing we could let go even as we refused to.

  25.

  Mikey

  I stared out the truck’s window, looking at the world beyond the glass and the thick tree line in the distance. The sun was high in the sky and we were already back with a semi-filled truck of food. We’d managed to find an old, abandoned farmhouse off grid where someone had gone canning happy. We’d stocked up on everything the house had to offer, including blankets and clothes, old boots and farm tools, and then we’d gone into the basement and had stared in amazement at the shelves of food lined up all pretty and ready for the taking.

  Jars of beets, and pickles, potatoes, tomatoes, beans, corn, and carrots. Seeds, oats, nuts…everything you could ever need to survive. And someone had just left it.

  There clearly hadn’t been anyone living there in a really long time, going by the fact that everything, including the sofas and beds and even the carpet, was covered in a thick layer of dust. But to leave it seemed like madness. We’d considered that maybe they’d been killed somewhere close by, but after a quick search of the house we couldn’t find any sign that blood had been spilled there.

  So we loaded up the truck, stripping the house bare of everything useful and thanking our lucky stars that we didn’t need to go any further afield that day. Not even next week, with such a haul.

  As we approached the gates, I saw them already opening and another truck and two motorcycles leaving. They sped by noisily and I sat up straighter and stared as they raced by, taking a good look at the men inside. I hadn’t seen most of them before, but the bald guy from Joan’s pictures was there, driving one of the motorcycles, and he eyeballed me as he sped past.

  “Do you think we should we go after them?” I asked, anxiety unfurling in my stomach.

  “No,” O’Donnell replied automatically. She was currently driving, her expression neutral as she faced forward without giving the men a second glance.

  Freddy was in the back of the truck with Alfie, and neither one of them seemed concerned in any way, like they’d seen them before. I was guessing it was before I’d come to Haven. Another group that they hadn’t mentioned before, perhaps.

  We pulled into Haven and the large wooden gates were closed behind us, and O’Donnell pulled the truck to the right of Haven where all the store buildings were. We didn’t normally drive that far in unless we’d found something good, so when she shut off the engine and we all jumped out, plenty of people had come out of their homes or small buildings where they worked to see what all the noise was.

  Aiken came out of his house, jogging down the small steps and coming toward us looking pleased.

  “Well, well, that was a quick day trip,” he said, pulling the toothpick from the corner of his mouth. “I do hope you’ve found us something good and aren’t just playing with my balls.”

  “Oh, we’re not teasing with this haul,” O’Donnell said with a wink. I grabbed one of the doors and Freddy grabbed the other as we swung both doors open and O’Donnell pointed inside. “Ta da!”

  A few gasps came from around us, and then they turned to woops and claps. Aiken stepped forward and nodded, a huge grin on his face.

  “Now this is what I’m talking about.” He reached in and grabbed a jar before giving the lid a hard twist. It opened with a loud pop and Aiken reached inside and pulled out a long green bean before biting the end of it. He chewed silently for a moment before securing the lid back on the jar and handing it off to Timbo, who was standing behind him. He turned to O’Donnell. “You have outdone yourself this time.”

  “I aim to please,” she laughed, her cheeks turning pink under his praise.

  Aiken reached for her, pulling her in for a brief hug, his heavy arms falling around her shoulders as he smiled. “You did really good.”

  Her cheeks went pinker still but she hugged him back. “Well, it was a joint effort.”

  “No way,” Freddy jumped in. “It was your idea to take that shortcut. How many times have we gone down that same route and never detoured from it?”

  “Too many times,” Alfie added. “Aiken’s right, you did good. You went with your gut and now we have this to show for it.”

  Aiken patted her on the shoulder, smiling over at her, and I stood there watching, feeling proud and uncomfortable all at the same time.

  “Who were the visitors?” I asked, interrupting the good mood of the group.

  Aiken turned to me, his smile faltering momentarily before he slipped the toothpick back into his mouth and pushed it to the edge. “Old friends.”

  I frowned, sensing he was keeping something from me. “Old friends I should know about?”

  The crowd had begun to disperse and I was glad, because Aiken’s caginess was making me anxious and I could feel my anger building for some insane reason. I willed myself to get a grip and chill out.

  “Not out here, no. Inside where business is normally conducted, sure thing,” Aiken replied. He turned to O’Donnell. “Get this put away and come and see me.” He turned and started to walk away and I stared after him, anger and irritation ready to overflow.

  “Should I come or should I give you two love birds some space?”

  “Mikey!” O’Donnell snapped, giving me a filthy look that showed me exactly how much of an asshole I was being. “Stop it.”

  I glared at her, but my anger quickly dissipated. She was embarrassed and angry, and shame quickly filled the empty hole my anger left behind. Freddy, Alfie, and Timbo were all staring awkwardly and I opened my mouth to apologize to everyone but couldn’t get the word out.

  “I think you need to take a minute and go get some space, Mikey,” Aiken drolled.

  “It’s been a long day,” I said uncomfortably. “The truck just leaving,” I began.

  “I’ll talk about that later at the meeting,” Aiken interrupted.

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  “Just go get some air,” O’Donnell snapped. “We’ll be heading inside as soon as we’ve unloaded this.” And then she turned away from me.

  I nodded again and turned and left. I dragged my hands through my hair, wondering what the hell had just gotten into me, and where it had come from.

  Joan was sitting on her porch as I passed, a chicken in her arms. She was holding it like a cat, and both of them looked thoroughly content. I wished I could feel some of that contentment right then; instead all I felt was a churning feeling in my gut.

  “Mikey!” She waved me over and I thought about just ignoring her and walking away. I wasn’t in the mood for any of her crazy shit, but I had no doubt she’d just get up and follow me if I tried to ignore her. Or worse. God, what could be worse than her following me? Waking up in the middle of the night to find her standing next to my bed, chicken in arms? Or maybe popping up in the truck while I was driving deader bodies to the pit.

  I made a sharp turn and headed back to her. “What is it, Joan? I’m pretty busy,” I lied.

  “Did you get that movie for me?�
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  “Movie?”

  “The Ninth Sense. I asked you to rent it for me. Me and Chickidoo wanted to watch it later.”

  I didn’t know whether I should bother going into the complexities of there being no electricity or the fact that she was basically having date night with a chicken, but decided straight-up honesty probably wasn’t the best way forward with her today.

  “Sorry, no, the store was closed,” I said.

  She frowned and then stood up, coming closer, one arm holding the chicken under her arm and the other still stroking its little ginger head as she examined my face. It felt like I was under a microscope, like she was examining me and could see my lies, and I was about to come clean and just explain that we hadn’t gotten that far, that the film was called The Sixth Sense, that she wouldn’t be able to watch it even if I got it for her, and that she really needed to meet a man because instead of being the crazy cat lady she was currently the crazy chicken lady, but then she held the chicken out to me.

  “Want to pet her?” she asked, and I shook my head no. Her mouth tugged as she chewed the inside of her cheek.

  I glanced behind me, seeing that we were alone. “Hey, did you see who was just here?” I asked, not sure why it had become so important to me.

  “I might have,” she replied cautiously, giving a suspicious glance around her. “What’s it worth?”

  “You know I don’t have anything useful,” I replied. “Come on, show me your book of drawings,” I pleaded, and she gasped and stepped back, tucking her chicken under her arm as her gaze darted from left to right.

  “How do you know about that?”

  I sighed. Dealing with Joan was like pulling teeth sometimes: painful and unnecessary.

  “You told me about it this morning. You showed me some of the pictures in it. You…you told me about dead Nina,” I replied, my words quiet.

  She looked from left to right again before holding the chicken out to me. “Hold my chicken.”

  I gingerly took it from her, and she reached into her bra and pulled out the notepad she’d shown me that morning and started to flip through it. She paused momentarily on one in particular, but I couldn’t see what it was before she moved on.

  “Here,” Joan finally said, holding the book over to me so I could see.

  It was the same man from earlier. Shaved head, leather jacket, mean expression, tattoos, only this time he was with other men just like him. Some were bigger, some had longer hair and even longer beards.

  “Did they threaten Aiken?” I asked.

  “Goodness, no. They came to talk about the Savages,” she replied, and I looked up at her sharply, dread and awareness filling me to the point of overflowing.

  “You know about them?”

  “Who?”

  “The Savages?”

  “Who are the Savages?”

  I blinked. “You just said—”

  “You’re talking in riddles, Mikey. You’re not making any sense,” she snapped, sounding irritated, and then she reared back and slapped me across the face.

  “Jesus Christ, Joan!” I yelled in surprise.

  It was time to get out of there and go see Aiken. I wanted to know who those men were and what they knew about the Savages. I also wanted to get away from Joan before I really lost my temper.

  “Take your damn chicken,” I grumbled, holding out the fat bird to her.

  She stared blankly from it to me and then back again. “That’s not my chicken, Mikey.”

  “You were just holding it,” I spluttered, thrusting it to her again.

  It had started to get a little stressed and began flapping its wings, little red feathers floating to the ground between us. Joan looked less than impressed.

  “If you can’t look after an animal then you shouldn’t adopt, Mikey. An animal is for life, not just for Christmas.” She tutted and shook her head.

  “You’re right, you’re right,” I agreed, more than ready to do whatever it took to make the conversation go away. “But could you look after my chicken? Because I’m clearly irresponsible.”

  She tutted again and gestured for me to give her the chicken, taking it from me abruptly and then going to sit back down.

  I swiped a hand down my short beard, wondering what the fuck had just happened, and then decided it didn’t really matter. With Joan you just accepted that shit was bonkers and never made much sense. Apart from when it did.

  I turned from her before looking back with a small frown. “Was dead Nina here again?” I asked, my heart pausing as it waited for her answer. It felt like hours went by before she replied to me, and when she did, the sick feeling I’d been carrying around with me all day returned.

  “No, I haven’t seen her in a long time, but if you see her will you tell her I said hi?” she replied.

  I nodded, feeling stupid for even asking her about Nina and even stupider for agreeing to say hi to her if I ever saw her again.

  Nina was dead.

  Long dead.

  And at times, it felt like I wasn’t far behind her.

  26.

  Mikey

  “That was a damn good find,” Aiken drolled, and the room erupted into cheers.

  Food stocks had begun to get to dangerously low levels. Though we still had the fresh veggies growing in the allotments, it wasn’t enough to feed all of Haven. Plus, the one thing that hadn’t changed at the end of the world was that you still had to fight kids to get them to eat their veggies. Though most of the canned and jarred stuff we’d found in the cellar of the old house had been fruit and vegetables; there had been other things too.

  I was standing at the back of the room, hidden away from O’Donnell’s scowl, my mind only really half there. The other half was still thinking about the men that had just left, the pictures in Joan’s book, and the feeling of dread that had been building inside of me since we’d seen the Savages the day before.

  I felt like a ticking time bomb, my timer counting down to when I would explode, no doubt destroying everything in close proximity. When that happened, I needed to make sure I wasn’t anywhere near Haven or its civilians.

  I owed those people everything and I couldn’t fuck up now.

  “Well, it was a group effort. If they hadn’t trusted in my instincts,” she replied good-naturedly.

  In all honesty, it had been all her. We had all tried to convince her to stay on the main road because going off road was always dangerous. You just never knew what you were going to run into, so as best as you could, you stayed to what you knew—because what you knew, you could trust. At least to an extent. But O’Donnell had fought us, and thank God she had, because the house we’d found had been a goldmine.

  “Well thank God those instincts of yours had been yelling at you,” Timbo said, reading my mind.

  “Amen,” Aiken said, a slow grin climbing his face. “You’ve given Haven another three months of relative peace and comfort, safe in the knowledge that we have food for everyone’s bellies. Need to keep going though—keep planting and growing, keep searching for more, because it’s going to be a long, hard winter, that’s for damn sure.”

  Aiken’s gaze searched the people in the room until his eyes found mine. He gave a small nod of his head, and I hoped that meant he wasn’t too pissed at me.

  “Now for other news, and it ain’t pretty news, but it’s the news we’ve been waiting to hear,” he continued, and the room lapsed into silence, the happiness evaporating like we’d just been told the Easter bunny was dead. “Yesterday, a group of you spotted the Savages.”

  He let the words settle between everyone for a moment as gasps and hushed voices rang out, and then he continued.

  “And today, the Highwaymen came to us. They think they know where the Savages’ base is. Certainly know a way to find it.” He leaned forward in his chair, his elbows resting on his knees, before plucking the toothpick from between his teeth. “They want us to team up and fight with them.”

  My heart stuttered in my chest.r />
  This was it.

  This was what I’d been waiting for.

  The Savages.

  It had been a long year of dark, haunted dreams. Of wanting to find them and kill them. To take the head of Aife and make her pay for everything she’d done. To eradicate the rest of her people and make sure they were never allowed to continue in their evil ways.

  “We’ve been here before,” O’Donnell began, and Aiken nodded in agreement. “We all think we’ve found their base, but when we get there, they’re gone. What makes this one so different?”

  “I thought you found them yesterday,” SJ asked in confusion.

  “We did,” Aimee said, coming into the room, and I watched as Aiken pursed his lips in frustration at her being there, but he didn’t stop her from coming in, and I was glad. She deserved to be there as much as anyone. “We found them yesterday but there weren’t enough of us to take them on. They’re a dangerous group—possibly the most dangerous we’ve ever come across—and that’s not to be taken lightly.” She looked at Aiken as she came to stand in front of him. “I see that now.”

  He nodded and gestured to an empty chair, and she sighed a breath of relief and sat down.

  “And my question?” O’Donnell said, sounding more on edge than was usual for her. She was right: we had been there before, and I’d never seen her so tense about it. Normally she was just eager to get going, but not today. Today she seemed worried, anxious. Like the consequences of finally ending the Savages might be too much for her.

  “The Highwaymen ran into them twice yesterday. Once they nearly took one of their group and another time they were trapped in a gas station surrounded by the dead. They helped them out of there and arranged a meetup to trade.”

  A loud gasp escaped from somewhere in the room and we all knew why. Aiken held his hand up to silence the protests.

  “They had no idea who they were. They just thought they’d run into another group that was willing to trade.”