The Dead Saga (Book 3): Odium III by Claire C. Riley Page B

to take a step backwards. Her smile dropped just as I started to turn my back on her. Both Nova and I kept on walking until we were back at the steps, and we started to make our way down cautiously.
    “We do?” I asked, genuinely surprised. “Have a spare key, I mean.”
    “No,” Nova said flatly, looking sideways at me as we carefully went down the slippery steps and making me feel like a dumbass for asking. As we reached the bottom step we heard the woman yell to us.
    “Don’t leave me.” She sounded so sad and broken—defeated, almost—and I felt bad for a split second. Until I sneezed again.
    I turned around, seeing her dejected face looking truly every one of her sixty-three years, three months, two weeks, one day, fifty-nine minutes, and however many seconds old she was now. Her eyes were miserable and lost, her mouth wrinkled and downturned, and she came down the stairs slowly, her arm outstretched with the keys clutched tightly in her palm. Her hair was plastered to her face, like long gray cattails, but she did nothing to brush it out of the way. Close up I could see how her body trembled, and I hoped that it was from the cold and not anything age-related.
    “Please, don’t leave me here,” she pleaded sadly.
     

 
EIGHT .
     
    The tent was toasty warm, and the strong smell of damp and mildew hung thickly in the air. But that was a much better smell than the stench of death and festering bodies that had greeted on our arrival, so I wasn’t complaining too much.
    We all undressed once we double-and triple-checked the entire compound and secured the main entrance as best we could. There was no way, without lots of help, that we could get the gate back up and running, but there were plenty of trucks that we could park in front of the gate to stop any deaders from getting in. If other people stumbled upon this place, well…so be it, because there was no way to keep them out.
    We had only found one stray deader trapped inside a laboratory, its arms pinned to an examination table by several knives, as if someone had turned it into their own tortured experiment. The deader growled up at me, its dull gray eyes following me as best they could. It wore a lab coat, and I couldn’t help but think of the justification and badass karma that had come to seek its own revenge on this person. I had stabbed a knife through the back of its skull, putting it out of its eventual misery without hesitation or guilt.
    We hung our older rain-soaked clothes over some string that we hung from one end of the room to the other, and dressed in some old combat gear that had been left behind: green camo pants, matching jacket with a long-sleeved tan T-shirt underneath, and of course my big black boots. I looked like I should have been in the army or something, and felt completely uncomfortable wearing the uniform, like an imposter of some kind. But I was hugely grateful for clean, dry clothes—especially since my cold now had me in its death grip. I coughed and sneezed, feeling like total shit as my eyes streamed.
    Nova looked right at home—happy, even—despite the current circumstances. She tucked into one of the ration packs, a meat and potato concoction of some sort. I had eaten these cold previously, and they were vile, though of course I was always happy to have food in my stomach. This time, though, the food was warm—hot, even—and it tasted like a mouthful of heaven. Seriously. Like if heaven were something you could eat, it wouldn’t be chocolate and marshmallows; it would be meat, potatoes, and thick, gloopy gravy. I slurped another mouthful in, knowing without even thinking about it that I would definitely be having another after I was done. It was the type of food I used to make whenever my husband was sick: meat and potatoes, to warm the soul and fight a cold. Okay, so soup was actually better at fighting colds, but meat and potato stew was a good second.
    Crazy pants had fallen asleep right after changing into