Odium II: The Dead Saga (24 page)

Michael and Rach
el are excellent shots; I’d be impressed and applaud if there wasn’t the whole issue of imminent death. Their shots get more accurate the closer the dead get, yet the closer the dead get, the more worried I get. Maybe it’s because I’m going to have to start shooting at some point and I know I’m useless at that, or maybe it’s because the closer the deaders get, the more there appears to be—despite the fact that Rachel and Michael have already taken down so many.

“Fif
ty feet, reloading,” Michael yells. He grabs more ammo from his waist and slams it in as quick as he can, and takes back up his position in less than a minute. “Forty-five feet and closing,” he shouts. He doesn’t sound panicked in any way, but incredibly calm, which is unnerving to me.

The sound
of the gunfire echoes loudly around us, reverberating against the steel walls and high ceilings, with a nice backdrop of deader moans just for shits and giggles. It’s at times like these that I wonder why I don’t learn to keep my big fucking mouth shut. I wouldn’t be in this situation if it weren’t for trying to prove a point to Mikey that I’m some bad-ass woman who can take care of herself. Well done, Nina, real fucking splendid job.

“Forty feet
, reloading.” Rachel shouts next to me.

M
y heart beats against my breastplate so hard I think that it’s going to explode out of my chest any minute. And really, what’s the fucking point in shooting these things? Shouldn’t we hightail it out of here? After all, it doesn’t seem like this place has food or any other useful supplies. Aren’t we wasting ammo? Or is that the coward in me talking?

Rach
el’s gunfire starts back up again, and I think my brain is about ready to melt from the noise. Her gun seems louder now than it did before, and I take a quick glance and see that Nova has started to fire into the horde now too. I panic.
Shit, should I be shooting now too?
I look at the approaching dead, the mob somewhat thinned out by my bad-ass zombie killing team, but there’s still a lot of them and it only takes one to chew your face off and kill you, and I don’t have the skillset to hit them, even from this distance. I’m not stupid—one thing I learned early on in the apocalypse is that you have to know your skillset, and I know mine isn’t with a gun.

“We need to go!” I shout out, hoping that someone will hear me. I don
’t care who, anyone will do.

None of them listen
, though; they all continue to shoot, the bullets popping as they are expelled from their guns, and making a
thwack
ing sound as they hit their targets. Some are headshots, and of course those deaders fall to the ground only to be trampled on by another set of feet. Others are chest shots, which have no effect on them.

“
Thirty feet, re-loading,” Michael shouts, and pulls out more ammo. He slams it in place and takes his position back up before glancing at me. “You can do this. Shoot them, Nina.”

“Let
’s just go!” I retort back, trying not to sound desperate and pathetic.

“We have to take them down, n
ow shoot.” He aims and fires with total ease. The bullet lands in the forehead of one of the dead, and then he looks at me again. “Now!” he barks, and turns back and continues shooting.

I grab my gun from my waist again and take aim. I think about things that I had
overheard: don’t be tense, loosen your shoulders, don’t grip it too hard, and aim directly above your target. I do all those things and squeeze the trigger, but the bullet goes off somewhere else instead of into the forehead of the deader I was aiming for.

“Twenty feet,
” Nova says loudly.

I roll my shoulders, frustration burning through me
, and take aim again. I take a breath, slowly releasing it as I squeeze the trigger again. This time the shot hits the deader’s shoulder—or I presume that was my shot. There’s so many bullets going flying that I could be wrong and mine just slammed into the ground, but I’ll take the shoulder shot for my own because I need this small victory. I’m so focused on taking the next shot that I don’t realize how close the fucking thing gets to us, so when I do fire, the bullet hits its target and blows part of the deader’s face away, the soft tissue sliding away to reveal shattered bone beneath. It isn’t enough to kill it, though, and it continues toward us, its face a crumpled mess of bone and gore. I fire again. This time I must hit something important, because the thing collapses to the ground.

“Yeah! Take that, fucker!” I hoot loudly and then stop abruptly,
realizing that they are still gaining distance on us and there are still plenty more to go.

However
, with the distance between them and us so close, Michael, Nova, and Rachel hit pretty much all headshots, even on a moving target. Occasionally one must go astray and is a body shot, but in less than five minutes the deaders are no more—again—and we all stop, reload, and take deep, panting breaths of stale, rotten, gore-filled air.

My ears are ringing
loudly, my shoulders burning from the effort of shooting, and my eyes are a little twitchy from seeing constant muzzle flashes in the dark, but as I look around and survey the damage—seeing body after rotten body of the dead—I feel a small victory.

It
’s strange how seeing the bones of humans in the other room filled me with such despair and dread, yet seeing the corpses of the dead in here fills me with such animalistic joy. I want to whoop at our victory, rejoice in the fact that we just kicked ass, but I don’t, because that would be kinda fucked up. Instead I look to my other team members. Michael is—as usual—frowning and counting up his ammo, Rachel is staring blankly at the bodies, her face possibly mimicking my earlier expression, and Nova is grinning from ear to ear.

Wait, what?

“That was awesome! High-five!” She laughs and holds up a hand.

“Let
’s go,” Michael simply says. “Keep a lookout and be careful.” He sets off at a brisk pace and we all follow like little sheep.

W
e pass rack after rack of boxes. Michael occasionally grabs one down and roots inside, but it’s all plastic parts for something or paperwork. No food, no ammo, nothing of actual use to us, which makes the whole journey and waste of ammo all the more pointless. We come to the back of the warehouse where there’s another set of doors that look to be barricaded from the inside, given the image through the small glass windows in the doors. I hear Michael huff out an annoyance before turning to us.

“
All right, we need to decide what to do. There doesn’t appear to be anything useful here. The info we had was wrong. So, do we clear the building and keep it as a possible safe spot or leave? Personally, I think we’re wasting time and we should leave.” He sounds seriously pissed off.

“I think it
’s too late to head somewhere else today,” I reply. “I say we secure the rest of this place, or at least a good portion of it. That way we can spend the night here and head back out tomorrow.” I offer up my suggestion, fully expecting him to come back with some smartass remark, but lo and behold, he doesn’t.

He nods in approval. “Okay, that sounds like a good plan
, actually. Everyone else agree?”

“Aye aye, captain,
” Nova snarks and salutes him, still grinning.

Rach
el shrugs, seemingly not bothered either way. Or maybe she is, I don’t know. My adrenalin rush is wearing down and I really want to sit down and feel somewhat safe for five or ten minutes; I’m sure she feels the same way. After all, she’s been traveling on an injury, and that shit has got to be hurting.

Michael looks
toward the door in front of us, I presume assessing what kind of noise it would make to force our way through. There’s no way he can have enough ammo on him to take on another horde like the last one we encountered. He bangs on the door, the sound echoing inside the darkened room. I scan behind us, gun in one hand and flashlight in the other, my samurai safely stored in its sheath on my back. Nothing comes, and it’s not a pretty sight looking at the destruction we left in our wake.

The tap-tapping of the rain on the
metal roof is somewhat calming in such a terrifying situation. My heart continues to beat heavily, and when Michael knocks on the doors again, I jump. Nothing comes from inside the room and we take it as a unanimous decision to push our way in. It takes a shitload of effort on everyone’s part. These doors were barricaded real strong, and I can’t help but wonder what the hell happened to the people that did it.

It
doesn’t take long to find out: two bodies sit prone against the wall, the splatter behind them indicating that they chose the quickest route out of this hell. Looking at their emaciated bodies, I wonder if it
was
the quickest way out; perhaps they starved for months in here before choosing this option. I shake my head sadly. I guess it doesn’t really matter anymore. They are out of this world, away from the hell and slaughter, and safely kicking it up in heaven—or that’s what I hope for them. Because of all the places to go out, this seems like a darker hell than most.

We find
more deaders trapped in a small bathroom; one is so rotted away, it’s barely clinging to its false life that it can hardly move. It still does, though, squirming its way across the cold tiles floor to us, partially eaten by another one that we find in a stall still sitting on the toilet with its head smashed in and its pants around its ankles. Sadness washes over me in waves. Such a sad end for these people.

The windows in this room are
once again covered by cardboard, and we peel it back to look outside. The storm is back in full force, but no thunder and lightning this time. However, the rain pounds down on the ground, making swamp-like puddles in the fields behind the warehouse. The back is locked up tight with no deaders, but beyond that, I catch stray ones shambling back and forth through the mud. I watch them hypnotically succumbing to the mud and being sucked down to their knees, not having the strength to stand back up.

“Nina.
” Rachel’s voice interrupts my thoughts and I turn to look at her. “Everything okay out there?” she asks, even though she knows it’s not. It’s like one of those things you used to do out of politeness:
Hey, everything okay? Good, good, blah, blah
. Fucking niceties and politeness don’t mean anything, really, but we get on with it, we nod our heads like everything actually is okay, like we’re holding up fine and none of this affects us. I decide to admit my weakness, my dark thoughts.

I shake my head lightly. “I don
’t know, is it? Will it ever be?” I purse my lips, realizing that it isn’t helping in any way and finally understanding why everyone always says yes that they’re fine. “God, that was fucking morbid.” I give a small, soft laugh, but there’s no real humor in it. “Yeah, everything is locked up. We’re good from this end.”

W
ithout another word, we both head back over to the makeshift camp we’ve set up. This was again offices of some sort. But the two bodies that we found with their brains blown out must have been living here for some time, because it is already arranged into a small bed made up from layers of paperwork with a sheet thrown over it all, probably to avoid any paper cuts—you know how much those hurt. A small table and chairs is set up, too, with more paper on top.

We found a note left—again—
presumably by the dead couple. It’s like a last will and testament, I suppose. Not that that shit matters anymore, but I guess they wrote in the hopes that the world would be fixed by now. It was depressing to think that nothing has changed in the time that had passed since they wrote it, but the letter itself was short, sweet, and to the point:

To my sweet Julie…my lost princess
,

Momma loves you. I hope that you
’re safe. We’ll meet again one day.

Momma. X

The other message states simply:

Jack was here, and it sucked so I moved on to better and brighter places.
Rock on Motherfuckers!

I don
’t know which note started the waterworks, but I looked away before anyone saw them.

*

I bite into my granola bar, feeling the crunchy oats getting stuck between my teeth. I pick them out with the tip of my finger. With the next bite I suffer the same thing and I have an urge to launch the stupid thing across the room, but beggars can’t be choosers when it comes to food. Still, it’s a pain in the ass and bland as crap.

I rummage around in my mouth again and grumble out my frustration. Nova snickers and
keeps smoking her cigarettes.

“I used to love this stuff,” I say to her—
shit, to anyone who’s listening. I need to speak, and stop getting frustrated with oats for a second. “Always on a damn diet, watching what I was eating, calorie counting.” I laugh. “I still am, I guess, just the other way around. Now I actually want the calories.”

“Never thought I
’d hear a woman say that,” Michael pipes up. He’s slumped down in one of the chairs, his head hanging back and his eyes closed. His gun, of course, is right by his side.

“Never dieted in my life.” Nova makes smoke rings in the air, her feet up on
the table we’re sitting around. “I actually used to be a real fussy eater. I guess that was my diet in a way.” She chuckles to herself, reaches into her bag, and pulls out a bottle of white rum. She unscrews the lid and takes a long swig, and then offers it to me.

“Probably not the best idea, but what
the hell.” I grab the bottle and take a gulp. It burns all the way down, and damn, it feels good. I cough and hand it to Rachel. “I was always more of a wine girl before—well, before.”

“Snap. That was my poison,
” Nova says with a grin.

“What about you, Rachel? What was your drink?” I ask.

“I used to love to drink a good rosé wine. I can’t handle it very well, though, anymore, so I’ll pass.” She takes the bottle from me and hands it back around to Nova.

“Hey, big man, you having some of this?” She holds out the bottle to Michael.

He doesn’t open his eyes to reply. “No, Nova, you know I’m good,” he grumbles.

He doesn
’t say it with any sort of malice—more like he’s used to being the sober one around these two. It’s funny, until this moment, I hadn’t realized that these three were more like siblings than anything else: the way that they argue and bicker with one another, yet have each other’s backs no matter what. I would hate to piss any of them off for fear that the other two would turn on me. It’s a good thing, I think, to have other people so willing to have your back for you that others will be afraid. I know I have that with Mikey, but that feels different from this.

I frown
, and Nova sees it and smirks. “Michael doesn’t drink. Hasn’t touched a drop in eighteen years…so he says.”

“That
’s because it’s true,” he says, his eyes still closed. “I’m teetotal.”

N
ova hands the bottle back to me but I shake my head. “No, it’s been too long since I had a drink. I don’t want to get drunk.”

She shrugs and swigs some more back. “
Jesus, it’s fucking catching.”

“Can I ask a question?” I ask.

“You’re a chatty one tonight,” she laughs.

I roll my eyes. “I know, I
’m not usually. I’m more of a ‘my thoughts aren’t actually appropriate for human consumption so it’s best to keep my trap shut’ kind of girl, but go figure.” I smile. “Why didn’t we run earlier? Why did you waste all that ammo killing those deaders? It seems such a waste.”

Michael opens his eyes and looks at me. “What if there
were
people in here?” His eyes stray to the two bodies, which we’ve covered up. “Alive people. Would it have been a waste then? How many bullets would you want us to waste saving Emily or Mikey?” Again, he doesn’t say it with anger; more like he’s used to being asked this question.

“Okay
, I see your point.” I drink from my water canteen, but Michael isn’t finished.

“At some point, if mankind is going to come back from near extinction, these things—these fucking deaders
, as you call them—they’re all going to need to be killed.” He yawns and stretches his arms above his head. “If we’re gonna be the hero in this story, might as well do it right.” He smiles—actually fucking smiles—and I feel my eyes widen in shock. He wipes the smile from his face quickly and closes his eyes, going back to sleeping off the day’s dramas.

Nova
leans her head back against the wall, takes one more swig of the white rum, and closes her eyes like Michael. She keeps the bottle in her hand, though.

I pick up my stupid granola b
ar and continue to nibble on it. I’m starved, but this tastes like crap. Maybe I’ve been spoiled the last couple of weeks with all the food at the base. There was a time that I wouldn’t have turned my nose up at any type of food—food was food, and if it stopped the aching in my stomach, I’d eat it. But things are different now. Sure, things are still shitty, but I finally feel like all the pieces of my life are clicking back into place after years of misplacement.

My arms and back
and especially my shoulder are still aching from all the driving I’ve done today, but it felt good to be out on the road, it felt good knowing that I had three people that could take care of themselves—and hopefully me, if I got into trouble. And somehow I always get myself into trouble. I love Emily, but the constant worrying about her is endless and exhausting. I think back to the woman that I ran over—the one they stood in front of the truck and Rachel had forced me to run down.
Will they do that on the way back? Surely not
. I look across at Rachel. She’s busy staring into the flame of one of the candles we’ve lit.

“Why did you make me kill that woman? Surely there must be another way?” I ask her.

Her eyes look up and meet mine, and they’re filled with such dark sorrow that my heart aches for her. “There isn’t,” she says simply.

“But
why would they keep killing their own?” I ask, taking a quick glance at Nova’s drink. God, I could do with that now. The feel of the woman’s bones crunching beneath my wheels is as realistic as if it were happening right now.

“If you stop, you
’re done for. They’ll take your equipment, they’ll take…whatever they can and whatever they want, and they’ll kill you if they don’t get their own way.”

“Hence the woman in the road,
” I say quietly.

Rachel nods. “It
’s not like I wanted you to have to kill her, but if it’s her or me, there’s no question of who is coming out of this alive.” Rachel looks up at me quizzically. “What did you do before all this? You know a lot about the infection—the zombies. How they’re made. Do you know how to stop it?” She looks almost angry when she says the last part.

“What? Stop it? Don
’t be stupid. There’s no way to stop it. You just have to live and survive.” I shake my head, annoyed. “What kind of question is that, anyway?”