The Dead Saga | Book 7 | Odium 7

by Riley, Claire C.

  There were plenty of Savages dotted about the room: some carving the flesh from already dead bodies, others cleaning bones over buckets, others hanging the flesh onto stretching racks to dry.

  I gagged as a Savage woman gripped hold of a woman by her hips and carved a chunk out of her ass cheek. The woman screamed so loud I thought my eardrums would pop. She begged and pleaded for her to stop, but the Savage continued, unmoved by the pain she was causing.

  She held up the flap of fat and muscle for another Savage to see. “Rump steak,” she cackled, and the other Savage laughed with her.

  The woman was still crying, her blood trailing down her body as she swung around on the wooden structure. The other Savage had a large filleting knife and she dug the tip of it into the man hanging on front of her. He screamed as she expertly filleted the skin off his thigh, rotating his body as she stripped away the flesh to reveal his bloody muscle beneath.

  Once done, she slapped the large strip of skin into a bucket and raised an eyebrow at her friend, who clapped approvingly.

  “Touché,” she replied, sounding proud of herself instead of sick to her stomach like any normal person would be. It was like watching a Saw movie, only it was real. These people weren’t actors and actresses. They were real people who had already gone through hell, and had somehow ended up there…slowly being butchered while those sick bitches laughed about it. My stomach turned and flipped, nausea and anger fighting for dominance.

  The Savage woman turned to the injured woman in front of her, trailing the tip of her knife up her stomach and between her breasts as she pondered her next move. A thin trail of blood was left in the knife’s wake, a red line like a glowing arrow up the woman’s naked torso.

  “What about…” she said thoughtfully, tapping the tip of her knife against the woman’s soft breasts.

  “I can’t watch this anymore,” I whispered. The rage inside me was an inferno and I couldn’t control it any longer. Axe looked anxiously back to the way we had just come, and I wasn’t sure if he was thinking of bolting or just wishing we’d brought other people in there with us, but it didn’t matter to me. I was doing this now, with or without him.

  I lifted my machete and stalked forward out of the shadows. No one noticed me at first, and then, as the woman that was slowly bleeding to death spun in a circle noticed me, she let out a sob of relief.

  Her eyes squeezed closed, her face contorting in pain and relief. “Oh thank God,” she sobbed loudly.

  The Savage woman looked up sharply, her gaze finding me immediately, and without hesitation she ran toward me, her bloody knife in hand as she screamed, fury filling her features. I swung down hard with my machete and it skimmed off her back. She screamed again, fresh blood bursting from the injury. It wasn’t enough to stop her, though, as she turned and ran back toward me, looking even more furious.

  The other Savages had spotted me by then and they came running over, their spears and knives raised as they dodged between the living and the dead dangling from the ceiling. The same look of hate was on their faces. The same expression of evil. Axe stepped beside me as the first Savage woman came at me again and I stabbed her deep in the side, feeling my machete blade tear through her flesh. She called out in pain and fell to the floor. As she tried to stand up, Axe swung his axe down onto the top of her head, crushing it instantly, the sound of bone and brain crushing loud enough to hear over the top of the screaming Savages.

  Axe and I faced away from one another, but kept our backs pressed together as the Savages surrounded us like a pack of wild dogs. They looked hungry and bloodthirsty as they dove their spears in at us, some hitting, others not. Either way, we were surrounded and outnumbered. Essentially we were fucked. It seemed cruel to have let me get that far—to be so close to stubbing out those animals for me to just die. Memories of Clare and Tim’s candy store. Of Ricky carved up and dying in the bathtub. Of Butcher with an arm missing and chunks cut out of him. Of all the people those sickos had tortured and killed. Traded like cattle. It all flooded me like a tsunami until the images in my mind felt like they were going to drive me insane.

  “My pet.” Aife’s familiar voice filled the tomb-like room and I almost crumpled to the ground at the sound of it. “I’ve missed you,” she said, her voice coming closer.

  I looked around, trying to see between the faces that surrounded us, but the shadows were too dark and my panic too wild. The shadows seemed deeper, darker, thicker somehow, like they had tentacles that were reaching out to slowly strangle the life out of me.

  Bodies still swung lifelessly in the background. Those still alive had already given up and wanted it to be over. They craved the death that the Savages were giving, but they wanted it quick and abrupt. Over in the blink of an eye.

  “Can’t say I’ve missed you,” I replied, my voice sounding stronger than I felt. “In fact, it would have been better if I never saw you ever again.”

  “Tut tut. You hurt my feelings, pet,” she said before laughing loudly. The Savages around us laughed too, each laugh nails on a blackboard.

  “You know what you’re doing?” Axe said, elbowing me in the ribs.

  “Nope,” I replied, because I didn’t. I had no idea what to do next. Or how to get us out of this. As far as I could see, there was no way out.

  “Okay, keep it up then because I’m out of ideas too.” He swung his axe at a spear that got too close to him, smashing the end of it off, and a Savage dove close, snapping her teeth at him like a dog. “Fucking bitch,” he grunted, swinging his axe at her and missing.

  “Have you come back to play with me?” Aife asked, her voice in front of me, beside me, behind me. She was everywhere. Just like she’d been for the past year. She was the stuff of nightmares.

  I looked left and right, trying to find her. Trying to pin her down as my terror rose inside of me and I tried in vain to push it back down. The panic I’d felt when things got too much was back, and it was swelling like the ocean, ready to pull me under and drown me. And all I could think was please make it quick.

  “I’ve come to kill you, if that’s what you mean,” I barked out, my voice cracking on the last word as I choked on my panic.

  Aife cackled and clapped her hands. “So you have come to play!”

  “Brother, we need to do something,” Axe grunted behind me, and I heard the smash and crack of another spear.

  “Yes, let’s do something!” Aife said, the Savages in front of me finally parting and allowing me full view of her.

  She was just like I remembered: tall, thin, long hair, leather clothes, and a look in her eye that would scare the Devil. She smiled, a wide, thin smile that split her face and transformed her from Devil to monster. It was like she was morphing in front of me, turning from a demon to something inexplicable. I knew deep down that it was in my head. That she was just a woman. Just a woman with a sick appetite for flesh and bone and pain. But the war in my heart and my head was raging, because I only saw the monster. I only saw the way her tongue slipped out between her sharp, pointy teeth. A viper’s tongue whipping back and forth, a fork at the end as she hissed. Her eyes narrowed to slits, the red glow of her pupils. Her claw-like fingers, with nails as long as knives, reaching for me.

  I groaned, my heart throbbing in my chest hard enough to make me think I might have been having a damn heart attack. My grip slipped on my machete, weakening fingers loose around the handle as I bent at the waist, head dipped even as I tried to hold her gaze, too terrified to look away from her.

  “Mikey, man, what the fuck…” Axe bellowed. “Stand the fuck up and end this bitch,” he ordered.

  But I was done.

  I was gone.

  The fear.

  The pain.

  The panic.

  The loss and the love and everything in between.

  I was done for, and Aife knew it.

  “Mikey, goddamn it!” Axe yelled, his stern voice reverberating off the hellish walls of the mine.

  I couldn�
��t hear him anymore. I couldn’t listen. The scent of death clung to my skin, sinking in beneath my flesh as it bored itself inside of me like a maggot finding its way through rotted fruit. And that was exactly what I was: I was rotted fruit. I was liquidizing and turning putrid, my heart empty of love and filled with only despair.

  Aife stepped closer, her wide smile growing wider as my machete fell from my limp hand and clanged loudly on the floor at my feet. I bent lower, desperate for air in my lungs, which now felt like two shriveled-up prunes in my chest.

  A hand reached out and cupped around the bottom of my chin as I felt the heat of Axe’s body leave mine. I heard him grunting as he fought. The clash of weapons. The snap of bones. Blood pooling at my feet. Screams and cries. Angry and vicious.

  I was going to die now, here in this hellhole. This pit of despair.

  I was going to be devoured. Eaten, piece by piece. Torn apart by pointed teeth and clawed hands. Parts of me traded off to others. My bones boiled. My skin flayed.

  It was time.

  And the thing that struck me the most was that it had all been for nothing.

  The loves and the losses.

  The sacrifices… It was all for nothing.

  Aife tilted my face up to her, and I focused in on her face.

  I was sure at one time she was a beautiful woman. Proportioned features sat in porcelain skin with clear eyes. Plump pink lips, high cheekbones, a button nose. Yeah, Aife would have been a knockout at one time, but not anymore. Now she was evil incarnate. A writhing sack of cruelty that lived and breathed pain and destruction.

  “I think we’ll keep you alive for a little longer than your friends,” she said, her words smooth as silk, like she wasn’t talking about my life. “I still haven’t had chance to play with you properly.” She closed her eyes and sighed. “Oh, how I’ve thought about you, pet.” She opened her eyes and smiled again.

  I squeezed my eyes closed, breathing in and out and trying to ignore everything that was going on around me. The cries of pain, the sound of dying, the taste of blood in the air. The scent of evil so close that it was scorching my skin like acid.

  “We’ll have fun, you and I, pet. Just like I had with your other friend all that time ago,” she crooned.

  Drag… His image flashed in my mind. He’d been strong to the end. He’d never given up, and look where that had gotten him.

  “He was fun, if not a little annoying.” Her smile fell at the memory of Drag.

  Drag… He’d ordered me to make them pay.

  “Aife…” I said her name, the single word a grasp for life on my dry lips.

  “Yes, pet?” Her nails dug into the skin n my chin.

  “Drag says fuck you.” I pulled out the knife from its sheath at my waist and reared back with it, stabbing it into her belly in one deep thrust. I felt the serrated blade slice through skin and muscle, flesh and bone, fat and blood, and then I retracted it, pulling it back out sharply before plunging it back into her.

  Aife called out and attempted to stagger back away from me, but I stood upright, gripping her with my left hand and pulling her closer and stabbing her again. My knife dove into her body repeatedly. Her stomach, her chest, her heart…they all found the end of my blade, and with each stab she grunted in pain, blood spluttering from between her lips as I watched the light die in her eyes.

  35.

  Mikey

  I released Aife, letting her body fall to the ground, surrounded by a pool of blood, her eyes staring up at me hatefully.

  And then the world went mad.

  The other Savages screamed and turned their attention from Axe to me. Knives and spears attacking us. From somewhere up above the earth shook with the sounds of an explosion. I thought of Aiken’s words, that the other group would let off an explosion if things were going to shit, and I knew that was exactly what was happening.

  Things were going to shit.

  But Aife was dead, burning in hell. It couldn’t end like this, damn it.

  I turned and spun, my leg kicking out at a Savage woman that got too close to me. She staggered backwards as I dove forward, attacking her before she had chance to right herself. I’d picked my machete back up and I swung it, slicing at her neck, which made her head fall to the side with a long arc of blood. Axe moved in front of me, fighting two Savages at once, and then I saw another biker, and another, and another, and I knew the others had found us.

  We all fought each Savage woman until the last of them fell. Blood and death and screams of pain echoed all around us as they fell to the dirty ground. It sounded like there was a stampede above us, the constant drone of feet marching across the ground as an army moved across the land, but I couldn’t think about that now, or worry about what was happening up there. Because right here, right now, we were winning.

  More bodies fell and I stepped over a man on the floor, noting the kid whose bike I’d stolen earlier and the now empty look on his young face. Max, he was Max. He had a name. He’d lived and he’d fought and we’d win because of his sacrifice. I swung out with my machete, slashing it into the side of a Savage woman with short hair and a long scar down her face. She screamed but kept on coming, relentless in her pursuit of killing me. Like a machine possessed, she attacked and attacked, fueled by her hatred.

  Balls came up behind her and grabbed her head, slicing a long thin knife along her throat, and an arc of blood flew out of the now gaping hole as he released her body and let it fall to the ground at his feet.

  I was breathless and bloody, my shoulders aching as I dodged between the bodies hanging from the ceiling to avoid being speared. The spear missed me, instead ramming itself into the thigh of a man hanging there. He roared in pain, piss trailing down his leg as he spun in a slow circle. She reared back to spear me again, and this time I lashed out with my machete, my blade slamming into the wooden pole and lodging there. I pulled her close in one movement and rammed my knife up through the bottom of her jaw and into her skull. Her eyes bulged and then faded to empty.

  I yanked my knife back out, a gush of blood exiting her head at the same time, and I dropped her body to the ground. My machete was still stuck in the pole and I gripped it tightly and pulled it free. When I stood back up I saw a room of hanging bodies, of corpses on the ground and bikers standing over the bodies and plunging weapons into the skulls to stop them from reanimating, and I knew it was over.

  We moved through the room, taking in the people hanging from the ceiling. Most were already dead, or so close to death that they could touch it, and we ended them swiftly, putting them out of their misery. The ones that were still alive begged for death. They wanted the mercy of something other than this cruel, bleak world. They wanted their journey over with.

  No matter what came next for them, whether it be heaven or hell or nothing at all. They wanted it, and I couldn’t blame them at all. We pulled them down from their binds and laid them on the dirty ground, asking them to close their eyes as we plunged knives into the backs of their skulls and ended their pain for them.

  It was a mercy, I knew it, yet it felt anything but good.

  When it was done, the evil and the pure dead on their way to the place after living, I stood up and looked around, feeling a mixture of relief and agony.

  We’d done it.

  We’d won.

  The Savages were gone.

  Aife was gone.

  And I hoped that the nightmares would be gone now too.

  *

  Nina

  I stepped back from Timbo’s body, feeling empty. I wanted to feel something for the man he had been, but I didn’t know him well enough to feel anything other than a flicker of sadness at the death of another human at the hands of the Savages.

  SJ was crying and we stood back to give her a moment with him. The job was far from done and there wasn’t much time left to do it. Things had been set in motion and we needed to hurry up before the plan fell apart. Right now we had the advantage, but for how long was anyone’s guess. />
  I looked around us, taking in the death and devastation, noting the pit of flaming zombies. They still writhed wildly, but they wouldn’t last much longer. They were trapped in a pit and the flames would eventually reach their brains and kill them once and for all.

  Gunner and Nitro were rounding up stray deaders that had come close and were either killing them outright or pushing them into the pit. I watched as Nitro high-fived Gunner and smiled. He looked pleased to have finally helped, to have finally done something worthwhile. He was still following orders, but at least now he was on the right side of those orders. I felt a deep sadness for him and for everything that he had gone through. He’d warred for so long, moving from group to group just to find his place, and maybe now he had.

  As I thought this I watched as Gunner slapped him on the back, a smile on his face as he pulled Nitro close. Nitro’s face contorted from happiness to pain, his mouth falling open in a silent plea, his eyebrows raising. My expression hardened as I focused in on them, watching as Gunner’s arm moved back and forth repeatedly, stabbing Nitro over and over, his own smile now long gone. He finally released Nitro and placed both hands on his chest as he shoved him into the flaming pit of deaders behind him and I gasped, my hand flying to my mouth.

  I staggered backwards, panic and fear swelling inside me as Gunner threw his knife into the pit and then looked up, his gaze moving to me and noting that I’d seen him. I’d known Gunner for over a year and I’d never seen that side of him, though Shooter and others had tried to warn me that he wasn’t a quiet, calm man. That he’d been a monster before Shooter had taken him under his wing. I saw it now. I saw that monster inside of him. The beast that wanted to get out, that he kept so tightly wrapped up and locked away.