Read The Dead Saga (Book 3): Odium III for Free Online

big. And it was in the direction of where Nova’s camp had been.
    I turned to her, seeing the anxiety etched across her face. “What do you want to do?” I asked.
    “I don’t know, we should see what happened, right?” She looked at me, her eyes full of sincerity. “They could be in trouble.”
    I looked back toward the smoke. “I think it’s too late to help them if they are in trouble.” I looked down into my lap, not being able to meet her gaze. “Do we even want to help them? After what they did?”
    She was quiet for a beat before she replied. “They weren’t all bad. They just wanted to find a cure,” she said, her words hard and unforgiving.
    “But that poor woman, what they did to her—”
    “That was all Rachael. We can’t blame the majority for one person’s mistake.” I could tell it pained her to admit that, to say out loud that her sister had been seriously messed up in the head. But I didn’t believe that it was all Rachael’s fault.
    I looked at her sharply. “Yet they all stood by and let it happen. How many more women, children, people have they harmed trying to find this cure?”
    “You’re so fucking high and mighty, Nina.” Nova lit another cigarette, blowing the smoke out angrily. “What if it worked? What then? Surely the pain of a few is worth it for the cure?”
    “You sound just as crazy as she was,” I said angrily, my eyes burning vicious holes into her.
    Her mouth opened and closed as she struggled to come back with an equally cruel retort, but there was nothing crueler than that, so she gave up, the air leaving her as if she had been deflated. And I felt lousy because I hadn’t mean to hurt her; it was just that my stupid mouth making me say things before I really had time to think them through.
    “Can we go see?” she asked quietly, almost as if she was afraid to ask.
    I hated it when she did this to me, making me seem like the asshole if I said no to her. I mean, you can’t say no to someone that pouts this much!
    I watched the smoke rising in the distance, imagining the horror that might be waiting for us. The horror of all the people stuck there—trapped, held prisoner while they were tested on in the hopes of finding a cure for the disease which had ravaged this planet. But deep down I knew we had no choice. This place, this prison camp, is what we’d set out to find. Sure, we were looking for Hilary and Deacon, too, but it was this place that fascinated me the most. Me and my morbid curiosity.
    “It’s your call,” I said quietly, knowing the answer before she gave it to me. Because we had to help as many people as we could. Surely that was the point of being strong—to help the weak, the people in need. Without that, what were we? Animals? Probably worse. We’d be more like the deaders. And that was why I had come on this trip to start with, right? To prove that I wasn’t not bad—if only to myself.
    Nova spun the truck around in the middle of the road, sending mud and dirt flying up around the wheels and then setting back off the way we had come. She eyed the road carefully, leaning forward as she drove and slowing down as she came to a thicket of trees. She turned down it, the long branches from overgrown brush scraping noisily down the side of the old truck. My stomach lurched and tumbled the further she drove, twisting in on itself in nervous anxiety. The road was overgrown and muddy as hell, and the rain had started to come down again—a light showering of pure freezing cold water that made Nova turn on the windshield wipers.
    A mile or so down the road, she slowed down until we were practically creeping along at a snail’s pace, every bump and knock to the truck noticeable. She wound her window down and leaned out as she drove, all the while muttering to herself.
    I wound my own window down, hating the smell of the fire and smoke that lingered thickly in the air, it made my stomach ache with worry at the thought of what could have happened