Odium (The Dead Saga.) Read online

  I stop, leaning my back against a tree to catch my breath. I don’t even know if I’m going in the right direction. It’s like being stuck in a giant rat maze, but with trees and zombies, and no cheese prize at the end of it. My hands are sore from carrying the bags and the knife, and I lower the bag to the ground and take a look around me to make sure that I am alone.

  The knife is still smeared in black-and-red sludge from an earlier attack. It’s not like I’m completely alone in these woods. I swap the knife to my other hand—not wanting to put it down for even a minute and leave myself unprotected—and flex my hand out. The palm is red and sore from gripping it so tightly for so long. I’m hot and sweaty, and my old man shirt is sticking to me in all the wrong places. Sweat trickles down my brow and stings my eyes, and I rub it away with the back of my hand. Most importantly, I’m thirsty. I haven’t had a drink in hours. My water bottle is empty and even my candies aren’t giving me any saliva satisfaction anymore.

  Mikey said to go north and that there would be a lake or something, but I haven’t found a lake yet. I’m not sure how much further I can go. I’m pretty sure that I was going around in circles for at least the first hour before I finally found Mikey’s clue to point me in the right direction. A can of Spam —a full one, funnily enough. It must have killed him to leave it behind. At least I’m guessing and hoping that it was his, anyway, since I picked it up and followed the direction I thought it was sending me. The crushing sense of despair and fear builds in my chest, and I let out an involuntary sob, my shoulders sagging in frustration. If I can just go a little further, they could be just over the next incline. Mikey surely couldn’t have traveled that far without Emily getting worn out. Unless I really am going in the wrong direction. Or in circles. Fuck! I sob and stomp my foot. I’m being such a girl and I know it.

  Hot tears trail down my face. I hear a growl in the distance and sob loudly again. You would think I could catch a break somewhere, but it seems that no, something, somewhere is determined to make me suffer.

  I rub the tears away again, and swallow the rest of my sobs back down. I’m going to get myself killed standing here like a big crybaby. ‘Don’t be such a girl, Nina.’ I hear his voice and pick up Emily’s bag. I’ve been through it twice now in the hopes that I would find it contained nothing useful and I could leave it behind. But it’s not useless. There are really important things in here, things—that if I can get the hell out of these woods—are going to help us survive, and I’m not about to give it all up yet, no matter how exhausted and lightheaded I feel.

  I push off from the tree and start walking again. Looking up through the tops of the trees, I pray that I find Emily and Mikey soon, before it gets dark. I don’t know what I’m going to do if I don’t.

  Thirteen.

  My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth, and I think I can hear water. I want to cry again, but I don’t want to waste the energy. Mother Nature is a wild and beautiful thing, and out here that shows more than ever, but right now I hate the bitch and wish someone would take a giant fucking lawnmower to this overgrown forest. My legs feel like lead stumps, my arms and hands burn from the exertion of carrying the stupid bloody backpack. That’s not a play on words, either. It’s covered in blood from a fight with a zombie. Fucking thing nearly got me, too. The sound of water draws my attention to the left and I follow it until I break through a gap in the trees. A large lake is in front of me, with canoes tied up along the bank. The water is calm, and for a moment all I can do is stand and stare at the glassy liquid. Slowly I edge forward until my feet splash in the shallow water. I drop to my knees automatically and grab handfuls of the water, gulping it down and splashing my face.

  I’m dizzy with thirst and exhaustion. I’ve been walking for hours, and I’m almost certain that I’ve gone in circles all day. The woods just didn’t seem that big on the map. I try to process what Mikey had told me, and where to go. Something about going north and finding the lake, and then following it around until I come to his group.

  I look across the lake. It’s huge. A sob builds in my throat. It’s getting dark now, and that’s a dangerous time to be out anywhere, let alone when you’re lost in the woods with zombies on your tail and exhausted as fuck.

  My hair is slick with hot sweat and my head is pounding from dehydration. I untie my hair and grab handfuls of water, and tip it over my head. It takes a couple of minutes to cool me down, but finally my thirst is quenched, and my breathing and temperature seem to be getting back to normal. I stand back up with shaky legs and start walking along the bank, the straps of the bag still digging into the soft flesh on my palms and rubbing at the blisters that have formed until I know that they have popped. Mikey said he would be watching out for me; I can only hope to God that he is.

  Up ahead I can see something in the trees. There’s a little light glowing up high, and low murmuring sounds. The woods are dark, the lake is dark, everything is dark now. The blackness surrounds me from every angle, and I can’t remember the last time that I felt fear like this. I pause and wait, wondering what the little light could be. Mikey said they had a camp, but this doesn’t seem like a camp. Perhaps I’m imagining it. Perhaps I’ve passed out and am dreaming while zombies slowly shamble in on my position, ready to chow down on my brains.

  I traipse deeper into the woods, forcing myself away from the lake edge and shadowing myself against the trees so as not to be seen. As I get closer, the voices get a little louder and my eyes go wide when I realize that I can hear Emily’s voice coming from up in the trees.

  I half stumble and fall into a clearing.

  “Emily?” I look up, my neck straining with the effort, my voice croaky and dry. “Emily!”

  “Nina?” There are voices above me, more than just Emily’s, and the relief that she is safe and not alone or dead floods me, right before I see a deeper black than just the woods and pass out.

  My eyes open and I’m instantly alert but dizzy and nauseous, sitting bolt upright and clutching a hand to my head in pain. Pain shoots through my head. Then pain shoots through my hands. I don’t know which part of me to grab.

  “Ow, shit! Emily?” I try to stand, but a woman’s face comes close to mine. It’s too dark to focus on her features properly, and I’m too exhausted to try very hard.

  “Stay sitting down.” Her hand is firm on my shoulder, yet I resist and try to stand up again. “I said—stay sitting the fuck down. You are in no state to be moving around,” the voice snaps at me. I take heed of what it tells me this time, and sit back down.

  “Emily?”

  Emily comes over to me, but from where I’m not sure. It’s so dark out here, I can hardly see a thing, but I can tell I’m outside—that much is clear by the rustle of the trees and the breeze on my face.

  “Nina, you’re awake.” Her arms are around my neck, hugging me to her before I can say anything else. Surprisingly, I find myself hugging her back. Maybe trying to comfort her, or maybe myself, I’m not really sure. I do know that both of us are crying.

  Hands finally pry us apart. “How do you feel?” the other voice prompts, though she doesn’t sound in the least bit concerned—more like an overly busy doctor being paid to ask the right questions.

  “My head hurts, and my hands and feet are sore, but I feel fine apart from that. Where are we?” I croak out, before someone passes me a plastic bottle filled with water. I swallow it down, gulping comically loud.

  “We’re safe. Where were you?” Emily sobs again, and I vaguely see the other person stand up and leave with a tut. “We were so worried, Nina. You were gone for hours. I thought—I thought that you…”

  I place my hand on her arm, or I try to, but it’s so dark it could have been a leg, and my hand hurts when I put pressure on it, so I pull it back and clasp it to my chest. “I’m fine, Emily. I just got lost. It takes more than that to kill me. Where’s Mikey?” I didn’t miss that she said ‘we’ were so worried. Obviously not so worried that he has bothered to come and s
ee me though.

  “He should be back soon.” She pauses a fraction before continuing. “He went to find you.” I hear something in her voice resembling guilt.

  “What did you do, Emily?” I swallow the rest of the bottle of water down, and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.

  “I shouted at him.”

  “So? I shouted at him.”

  “I told him it was his fault that you had probably been killed. If he wouldn’t have shown up, we would have been on the road, and we would have been fine, and…”

  “Emily, you don’t ever blame someone else,” I snap at her, and she stops midsentence. Even in the darkness, I can make out the wetness in her eyes. “If anything ever happens to me…if I die, it’s no one’s fault but mine. You never blame someone else.” I soften my voice. “If I make a mistake out here, it’s my fault and mine alone. I’m not your responsibility and I’m no one else’s either. Do you understand?” I grab her hand in mine.

  “Yes.”

  I feel guilty for shouting at her. She’s right in one sense: it was his fault that we got caught in the store; but it was my fault for trying to get my Hummer. I wasted precious time when I should have been trying to catch up to them.

  “I’m sorry, Emily. I just don’t want anyone being responsible for my life, do you understand that?”

  There’s no answer and so I prompt her with a nudge.

  “I nodded,” she replies quietly.

  I can tell she’s still in a foul mood with me, but I don’t know what else to say to make her feel better. Thankfully there’s a commotion off to my right that distracts us both. A male voice comes closer as it whispers my name, and I recognize it to be Mikey.

  “Nina?” He crouches in front of me, his hands on my shoulders. “Are you okay? Are you bitten? Injured?”

  “Hell, no. I’m fine other than my bruised ego,” I sulk.

  “When did you get back?” In the darkness his face is just a blur, but the concern in his voice is evident. His hands hold my face gently, and I have the urge to shrug him off, but for some reason I don’t. His hands feel nice on my face, and the fact that he gives a shit means a lot.

  “I have no idea; I kinda collapsed into a clearing when I heard Emily’s voice, and then woke up here. Speaking of which, where is here? And where is my stuff?”

  “We’ll talk more in the morning. Your stuff is safe, but it’s hard to explain where we are; you really need to see it to believe it.” He stands up and starts to leave just as abruptly as he came. “I’m glad that you’re okay,” he says while walking away.

  I feel kind of weird, like he’s just declared something to me, but I’m stumped as to what. I can’t deny that there is an attraction there. I’m not stupid, I can feel it. But whether it is because he’s the first male that hasn’t tried to demand something off me or because of actual attraction, I don’t know. I’m guessing he’s feeling something too. I feel uncomfortable with that thought, but since I can’t see a damn thing it doesn’t seem like we have an awful lot of options right now. The grumpy doctor comes back from wherever she had gone and takes my hands, plastering them in a thick cream and wrapping them in bandages, which hurts so much that it makes me swear until even Emily shouts at me to shut up.

  “Can I sleep next to you, Nina?” she asks, after the evil doctor has put away her medical torture bag and we’re finally left alone.

  “Are we safe? Wherever here is?” I tense up at the thought of sleeping out in the open like this.

  “Yes, without doubt.” She chuckles. “Just trust me on this one.” Emily snuggles in next to me before I can further reply, one arm thrown over my stomach. I don’t seem to have much choice, and I’m still beyond exhausted. I feel safe and warm, but something is nagging at me. Something Mikey had said about it being easier for me to see and understand where we are than for him to explain. I can only imagine what I’m going to find when I wake up.

  I can hear trees swaying gently, and the deep smell of the forest still surrounds me, but I’ll be damned if understand where I am. I try to focus my eyes for a couple of minutes, but the soft breathing and warmth coming from Emily begin to lull my senses and I give in and close my eyes.

  Trust her? It seems I have no choice right now.

  “Are you serious?” Their faces look shiftily from each other to me and back to each other again. “I am not living up in the trees like a freaking Ewok!”

  “Nina, stop overreacting. It’s not as bad as you think.” Emily rolls her eyes at me and then chances another quick glance at Mikey, who’s grinning from ear.

  “You can get rid of that stupid smile from your face too,” I snap with a growing familiarity. It’s a funny world when you can meet someone one day and feel like you have known them your entire life the next.

  “Nina…”

  “I said no.” Though now when I look around, it’s actually a pretty clever idea. I’m not telling them that, though. A high ropes activity course is my savior, it seems. Who would have thought? Though I’m not afraid of heights, I never imagined living up in the trees would be a dream come true. It seems like more than just an activity course; there are little huts built into the trees at certain points, and platforms big enough to walk around on and to seat people. In between each platform or hut is a new pathway to get to each stage. Some look easy, with a thin piece of wood to walk across and built-up sides to make it safe. Others look damn-near impossible—to me anyway. I have no idea why anyone would build something so crazy, either.

  Mikey is still looking at me, grinning like an idiot.

  “What?” I sigh heavily, my eyebrows pinching in as I narrow my gaze on him. My hands are stinging like a bitch, my head has the dull ache of a hangover, but without all the fun of drinking, and now I’m stuck up in the trees with a bunch of people I don’t know, don’t want to know, and don’t trust. I look at Mikey again, whose Little Boy Blue dimples are showing on both cheeks. I roll my eyes. And to make matters worse, I’m stuck with this idiot.

  “What? You’re still staring!” I huff.

  “You’ve watched Star Wars. That’s pretty cool, for a girl anyway,” he chuckles at me while chewing on a fingernail, and I’m about to come back with a snarky comment that I was forced to watch it by my husband when he interjects.

  “Come on, let me introduce you to the others.”

  I had woken up extremely early, when the sun had risen above the trees and glared down. Emily had rolled over onto her side and away from me, allowing me to sit up and finally look around and examine my surroundings. We were on some sort of wooden platform, with built-up sides to stop us from rolling off the edges. There was no roof, but the trees offered a nice canopy. I rubbed at my eyes, tired and confused, until I stood and realized how high up we actually were. I kicked Emily in the butt to wake her up and she woke with a jump.

  Emily and I follow him across one of the narrow beams of wood nestled securely between the branches of a tree. I grip onto the rope dangling down in front of me for security, swapping each one for a new one as we walk and trying not to look down. There’s a rope net on either side of the walkway to stop anyone from falling off the narrow beams, and like I said, heights have never been a problem for me, but it still takes a lot of balance and I’m glad when I reach the other side. I have no idea how the hell they got me up here last night. It’s like an enigma wrapped in a conundrum wrapped in a big fucking rose-tinted question mark. Why rose-tinted, you might ask? Well it sure as hell couldn’t have been pretty dragging my passed-out ass up here, now could it?

  There are trees to the left of me, but I can see for miles to the right, right over to the other side of the lake that I was edging along the previous night. I shudder at the thought of how close I had come to being zombie chow. If I hadn’t heard the voices from the camp, deaders could have found me when I collapsed.

  We arrive at a flattened area between the large branches of some trees. They look like they have been woven together like rope, the branches mingling a
nd forming a strong and sophisticated bond. It’s covered with a real roof made of wood and what looks like straw. It’s kind of like a tree house, but for big kids. Inside there are benches, and there’s even a long table. Then there are people—several of them, to be precise—and their eyes are all trained on me and Emily as we enter. I reach for her hand without thinking, like a frightened little kid.

  “So, Nina, this is…um. Well, these are…” Mikey scratches his dark shadow of a beard, acting shy and seeming uncomfortable.

  “Come on, Mikey, get on with it.” A woman with a choppy blonde bob looks up from the table. She looks like she only has one expression—a scowl—and ice-cool blue eyes to match. I recognize her voice from the previous night as the woman that had checked me over. She looks at him, her eyes washing down his body and back up, before those icicle eyes fall on me. I feel uncomfortable under her scrutiny. Shit, I feel uncomfortable under all their stares.

  Mikey’s grin falters before he continues. “Well, these are my friends—I guess, sort of.” He scowls back at the woman, though she doesn’t seem fazed in the slightest by him. If anything, she seems happier to have had the attention.

  “I’m JD,” a voice at the back of the little room speaks up. The man stands and comes over to shake my hand. He’s tall and well-built, with brown, untidy hair and pale skin. Although he doesn’t smile, and there’s something about him that seems haunted, his demeanor is relatively friendly. Though I can’t see him throwing me a welcome party any time soon, I don’t think he’d kick me out, either. I chance a quick but uncomfortable smile as we shake hands.

  “I’m Josie.” An attractive blonde woman stands up and comes toward me, leaning in for a hug before I can back away from her. It’s awkward and clumsy, mainly from my part, but she doesn’t seem to notice. Or she doesn’t care. She smiles at me warmly and sits back down next to JD, her hand straying to his knee in an overly affectionate way.