The Dead Saga (Book 5): Odium V Read online

  And let me tell you, he does not look in good shape.

  Blood is trailing from the wound in his head. One of his eyes is mostly bloodshot red and the side of his face is swollen. Not to mention that glass is embedded into his cheeks and covering his hair.

  “Dizzy,” he mumbles when he tries to get up. “Whoa.” He shakes his head to help clear the dizziness away, but instead all it does is splatter some more of his blood on me. “Okay, where’s my gun?”

  “I don’t think so, buddy, not a good idea in your current state.”

  “Gimme my damn gun. I’m fine!” he snaps and begins to fumble around on the floor for his gun. I tut at him and when he can’t find his gun I decide to hand over my shotgun to him. He’s a better shot than me anyway, even concussed no doubt.

  When he moves I can make out where the bullet skimmed down the side of his head, which is both good and bad. Good because it didn’t go in his brain, bad because he may end up having to have a really high undercut as a hairstyle for a while and he once told me how much he hated that hairstyle. I would chuckle at the unfortunateness of it all, but death is a sneaky fucker and it’s sneaking up on us.

  He rolls his shoulders and then we both climb out the passenger window. He scrunches his face up at the brightness of the sun before speaking, and I’m already regretting giving him my gun.

  “How many are there?” he asks. He’s trying to stand up straight, but no matter how hard he tries, he’s leaning to one side and stumbling around like he’s drunk. I realize, with morbidity, that my odds of survival have now been drastically reduced because the wound to his head is actually pretty bad. It may not have gone into his brain, but it’s definitely done some sort of damage.

  “Ten, twenty, maybe, who knows. Too many,” I say. I peer round the front of the truck again and take a good look, not liking our odds at all. “Far too many.”

  At the moment they’re just stood around waiting, looking relaxed like they’re waiting for us to just walk right out. But even their calmness is frightening. The size of these men, the dark looks on their faces, and of course the weapons in their hands makes it pretty obvious that we’re doomed.

  “I’ll shoot, you run,” Michael says, breaking through my morbidity.

  I turn back to shake my head and simultaneously glare at him. “Shut up.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.”

  “Do you have any idea what a group of men like that will do to a woman like you?” He looks angry and frustrated, and he’s still stumbling around so I lean him against the truck for stability.

  “For fuck’s sake, stay still,” I grumble.

  “Well? Do you?” he snaps, ignoring me.

  “Well, I’m guessing they won’t be asking me to play Monopoly any time soon, so yeah, I get what they’ll do to me,” I say, my voice tinged with worry. (Ha ha, I say worry, but it’s more deep psychological trauma than just worry.) “But it doesn’t matter, I’m not leaving you.”

  “Nina, will you quit being so stubborn. I’m dead anyway, they’ll shoot me and be done with it. But you—,”

  “Michael, where would I go? Look around us, there’s nowhere to hide even if I did take off.”

  And as if he read my thoughts, one of the bikers shouts out.

  “Come on out, little lady, there’s nothing to hide from and nowhere to go. We can help you, don’t be worried.”

  His voice is like nails down a blackboard, and my anger rises because he just called me “little lady.”

  “You motherfucking piece of ass!” I lean out and yell to them. “I will chop your dick off and feed it to you if you ever say that—,”

  Michael grabs the back of my jacket and pulls me back around the truck to the roaring laughter of the bikers.

  The blood has stopped pouring from Michael’s head now. Instead there’s a sticky, red, dried-up mess at the side of his skull. His face is pale, and his eyes look like a frightened rabbit’s—wide-eyed and spaced out. It’s then that I know we need to hand ourselves over. Maybe they’ll help him…save him. Maybe they’ll just gun him down. Either way, I have to do something before he keels over and dies right in front of me. Sure, it puts me in danger, but that beats the other option of letting someone else die like I’ve let everyone back at the mall.

  I shrug out of Michael’s grip, which is pretty easy since he’s rapidly losing all strength. I look him in the eye when he tries to protest. “It’s okay, I’ve got this.” I nod, and I’m surprised by how confident I actually sound, because I certainly don’t feel it.

  Michael starts to say something to me but I’m already moving, walking around the front of the truck with my hands in the air but my gun still tight in my palm.

  “I’m coming out, nobody shoot me,” I say.

  Chapter Four

  Most of the bikers are standing. Though some are still sitting on their bikes, smoking and cautiously watching everything that’s playing out in front of them.

  “Go get the dog!” the biker at the front says to two of the men next to him. He’s a big, burly looking guy with a short beard and long shoulder-length hair and the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. He steps toward me, his gaze on my gun. “There’s no call for that now, honey, you’re safe with us,” he says calmly, his hand held out ready to take the gun from me.

  The two bikers pass me, giving me small nods of their heads as they go.

  “He’s hurt,” I say as the two bikers drag a passed-out Michael from behind the truck. “Be careful with him, please, he’s lost a lot of blood.”

  “You don’t need to worry about him, we’ll take care of him,” the one reaching for my gun says, and it’s ridiculously ominous the way he says it. He steps forward, reaches up, and takes the gun from my hand. “You don’t need this now either. We gotcha, darlin’.”

  I watch them drag Michael towards one of their trucks, the back doors opening so they can put them inside, and I swallow down the fear I feel when I realize that I’m on my own now. Michael is passed out and locked away, so whatever happens next, is on me. I can either save us both, or get us both killed. Since I don’t have a great track record of keeping people alive, I’m not feeling too confident.

  “What’s your name?” the man with my gun says, his voice deep and husky. He’s younger than I’d realized—more my age than I originally thought.

  “Nina,” I reply hesitantly, my voice shaking despite how much I try to control it.

  He nods, forces a smile, and places a heavy hand on my shoulder. “I’m Shooter, an’ you ain’t got nothin’ to worry about while I’m around. Come on, you can ride with me.”

  “Don’t hurt him,” I plead, nodding towards the truck with Michael inside. “Please.”

  Shooter frowns. “You should be worrying over yourself, not him.”

  “Well then, don’t hurt me either, please!” I splutter, all confidence evaporated.

  Shooter holds me in his stare, and maybe it’s my survival instinct that’s completely out of whack, I’m not really sure, but if I’m going to be taken prisoner by anyone, I can’t help but think that I’d rather it be this guy than anyone else. Because underneath all that rough, gruff exterior, he seems like he might be…nice? Can I use the word nice when I’m talking about a thug biker that just almost got me and my friend killed and is now taking us prisoner? Maybe nice is the wrong word. But he doesn’t seem like he wants to hurt me. Kidnap me, almost kill Michael and I by inadvertently running us off the road, but not hurt me.

  Shooter turns to his men. “Empty the truck and drain the tank. I want us leaving here in three minutes—company is on the way.” He speaks to everyone yet no one in particular, but everyone gets moving, stripping the truck down of all of our supplies: water, guns, ammo, food, blankets—all of our stuff. Then they get to draining the tank and taking off the tires and anything else they deem useful. It’s sad to see our truck reduced to a rusty metal shell in a matter of minutes, but the crash had pretty much destroyed it as a useable vehi
cle. I should be more annoyed, I know I should, but right now I’m more concerned with staying alive.

  “Why are you doing this?” I ask as he places his hand on my lower back and starts guiding me toward his bike.

  “Because there’s too much evil in this world already and it’s time to turn the tide on that shit.” His tone is soothing, as are his eyes, which makes me realize that something is very off about this whole situation. “I’m sorry that you got hurt, but we’ve got meds back at the clubhouse. We’ll get you fixed up, no need to worry.” He reaches over and strokes his thumb over my brow and down the side of my face and I shiver involuntarily at his touch.

  Why is he telling me that I’m going to be okay when he’s the one who caused this entire situation? We reach his motorcycle and I pause, looking down at it. I’ve never been on a bike before. Never really wanted to, truth be told.

  “Are you going to hurt me?” I ask bluntly, deciding that I need to ask because the anxiety of worry about it would drive me insane if I didn’t. Plus, what did I have to lose by asking?

  He shakes his head. “Not if I can help it.”

  I lick my lips and look back towards his men. “And what about them? Will they hurt me?”

  “Not a fuckin’ chance,” he replies instantly, and sounding vicious as hell. As if the very thought of someone hurting me made him angry. He watches me, patiently waiting for me to make my decision, though we both know I don’t really have a choice because they have Michael and I have nowhere to go.

  “Sir…I—”

  “Shooter.”

  “Shooter, I really don’t—”

  Shooter gets on the bike, grabs his helmet from the handlebars, and hands it to me. “Put this on, climb on the back and hold tight.”

  “Hold on to what?” I ask incredulously, wondering if I’ve somehow missed the special handlebars for me.

  He smiles—or at least I think he does. His beard is thick, but I definitely see it twitch. “You hold on to me.”

  “Oh,” I say, not feeling comfortable with that.

  The other bikes, including Shooter’s, suddenly flare to life with a loud roar. I look around me, seeing that everyone is waiting for me, and then I look back to our truck. There’s barely anything left of it now that’s it’s been stripped down—so much so that you would think it had been there for years, rusting away under the heat of the sun. In the distance I can see movement, the sign of deaders heading toward the noise.

  “I can’t force you to come with us, but I think we both know that it’s the best choice right now, Nina.”

  I frown at my name on his lips, the sound giving me a sense of longing deep inside. “Where will you take me?”

  “To our clubhouse. It’s safe there. There’s walls, weapons, food, and plenty of women like you to keep you company.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel any better,” I reply tartly.

  “So, you comin’?” he asks jerking his head towards the back of his bike.

  I nod and take a deep breath before reluctantly climbing on to the back of Shooter’s bike.

  “Hold on tight,” he says.

  I pull the helmet on and then wrap my arms around his muscled waist, hesitantly at first, because it feels too personal a gesture holding him like this. But then we’re moving, back up the embankment that we just crashed down, and heading down the freeway and toward somewhere and something else and I cling to him tighter so I don’t fall off.

  As Shooter picks up speed, I press my cheek against his back the smell of his leather jacket drifting over me, half scared to death that I’m going to fall off and get run over by the many bikers riding behind us. The combination of the crash and the world passing me by in a blur as we pick up speed starts to make me feel dizzy. I squeeze my eyes closed and hope for the best.

  Every once in a while I open my eyes to see where we are. Shooter seems to be the leader, and he always rides front and center. Another man, with an open-faced helmet with a gold eagle spray-pained onto the side of it, always drives on the left side of Shooter, his gaze always facing forward. But the position to the right of Shooter always changes. Sometimes it’s an overweight man who likes to smile and wave at me, and other times it’s a younger man whose face seems to be in a permanent scowl position.

  “You okay back there?” Shooter asks me after twenty to thirty minutes traveling, the deep rumble of his voice echoing through his body.

  “Yeah,” I call back, not sure if he can hear me over the wind. “My ass is going numb though,” I add on and I think I hear him laugh. The helmet he’s given me is also open faced, and I have to keep my mouth closed as much as possible, or my head ducked low, or I get a mouth full of bugs. It’s a lesson I learned quickly.

  “Not too much farther,” he calls back.

  “Okay,” I reply. And it is okay, because my thighs are killing me and I need to get off this bike and stretch them wide or I’ll be walking like John Wayne in an old Western movie for the rest of my life. Not even the threat of torture could encourage me to stay on this bike for much longer. I’m more than ready to take the risk of arriving at his clubhouse, or whatever he called it, if it means I can get off this damn bike.

  We start heading upwards on a slight incline and I grip Shooter harder, my face pressed against his back to stop the cool wind from stinging my cheeks. I think—but I can’t be certain—that he’s laughing, the slight rumble of his chest vibrating through him and onto my face. Irritation begins to build in me and I’d love nothing more than to let go, to show him I’m not afraid of him or his biker buddies, but of course then I’d fall off the back of the bike and be run over by the other twenty behind us, so I hold on for dear life instead, suffering through the humiliation, my cheeks burning red in embarrassment as I grip both Shooter and the bike as tightly as I can.

  Eventually the bike begins to slow, and I look up, trying to see over Shooter’s shoulder. In front of us are some large wooden gates with spikes on the top. They remind me of medieval days, where they used to keep the heads of their enemies spiked through wooden posts at the front of the castle. Only these aren’t heads, these are deaders. There are men walking along a platform of some sort at the top of the fence, guns in hands, scowls on their faces. A large wooden sign hangs above the gates, and when I look I can see that it once said “Girl Scouts of America” but has now been painted over with big black letters to say “Hell’s Highwaymen.”

  We’re at a stop until Shooter whistles loudly and the gates begin to open, and I almost fall off the back (since I’ve loosened my death grip on him) as he drives us through the gate and heads over to where there are what seems like hundreds and hundreds of motorcycles. He drives the bike over to a spot before backing it into position and shutting off the engine.

  “We’re here,” he says, patting my hand.

  I flinch and let go, feeling unsteady as I climb off the back. The vibrations from the bike are still coursing through my body, making my legs feel like jelly and the rest of me tingle. Shooter reaches over and unclips my helmet for me before pulling it off my head and hanging it on the bars of his bike. He pulls out a cigarette from the top pocket of his cut and lights it, smiling up at me through the smoke. Once again I’m blown away by how gruff he looks, but his eyes shine through the tough exterior regardless.

  “What now?” I ask, my gaze hard.

  “Come with me.” Shooter jerks his head to the left and starts to walk away. When I don’t immediately follow, he stops and looks over his shoulder at me. “No one is going to hurt you. Not here and certainly not under my watch.”

  “This is the end of the world—everyone is out to hurt you,” I snark, and he smirks back at me.

  “You might be right there,” he says without apology.

  I look away from him, scanning the other bikes for signs of Michael. The other bikers are unloading their spoils—most of it my stuff, which pisses me off—but the really important thing is that I don’t see Michael. But I know they didn’t leave him b
ehind, so I’m guessing I must have missed them unloading his unconscious body.

  “Where’s my friend?” I ask, looking back to Shooter.

  Shooter’s expression changes, his mood souring the air like acrid smoke and his eyes darkening. “You don’t need to worry about him,” he says firmly.

  He turns to walk away from me, and I notice that some of the other bikers are getting a little too close for comfort, their easy gazes sliding up and down me, so I quickly go after Shooter, deciding that I’m probably safest with him right now. One of the bikers, the big guy with the eagle on his helmet, follows, leaving his helmet swinging from the bars of his bike. His stride is long yet he stays behind us the whole way. He doesn’t look at me, and his downturned mouth suggests sadness with himself, or me, or this place. I’m not so sure which.

  Shooter rounds the main building at the front, and the place opens up to more small huts that have been built at the back of the camp. He goes to one of the biggest and opens the door, holding it open as he waits for me to catch up. I look inside, seeing the long, dark corridor stretching out, and I raise an eyebrow at Shooter.

  “Seen many horror films lately?” I look over my shoulder and see the big guy is still following us, and then I look back at Shooter. “Yeah, I’m not going in there with you two.”

  Shooter’s beard twitches in what seems like amusement. He looks from me to the big guy behind me. “Gunner, you wait on the door.”

  Gunner takes a step back and nods, and then Shooter focuses on me again.

  “Better?”

  I shrug as I try to decide if I could take on Shooter if I needed to. Despite his constant ramblings of you’ll be all right, I’m still not certain if I can trust him. I mean, what kind of man has a violent and bloodthirsty biker gang at their disposal and uses it for good? Is it for good? Does he really mean me harm? Or is he just trying to look after me?