"You alright in here?" a voice asked. It wasClara, checking on her. They all checked on her, way more than any of theothers. They thought she was crazy, and maybe she was, but if being free meantyou were crazy, if being able to decide who you were without the input ofothers made her crazy, then maybe that's exactly what she was.
"Yeah, I'm alright. It's just a kid's room."Katie turned to smile at Clara and let her know that nothing was wrong. Hersmile didn't produce the desired effect. Clara's face was one of confusion."What?" Katie asked.
"Nothing, you just seem different."
"We're all different, honey."
Clara just nodded her head and turned around. Katie wentback to ransacking the room, finding nothing of interest besides a couple ofstashed dirty magazines. She left them where they were, glad that she hadn'thad to go through that phase with her own child. He would forever be a child inher mind, free of the warts and ugliness that come with adulthood. She wouldnever have to meet the woman he would fall in love with. She would never haveto babysit the grandkids. She would never have to look at their faces as shegrew older and faded away. It was good that her kid was dead.
****
Mort stood next to the front window, his stomach rumblingas it digested. He looked at the house across the street and wondered what newwonders awaited inside. Just sitting in the house of these dead folks had shownhim an entire lifetime of experiences that he had never had. There were bedssoft as clouds, furniture that felt like it hugged you, carpet that made everyfootstep a luxury... and this wasn't even a fancy house according to Clara.
All he had ever known since leaving the tin shack he andhis father had called home was the occasional dorm room, cots that felt likethey were trying to eat you alive, and hard floors that smelled of antisepticand abrasive cleaners. Even in his home with his dad, the floors had been coldhard wood, aged with years of traffic, the passing of a thousand footstepsetched into the floor. His bed had been nothing more than an aging mattresssitting on the floor. If he rolled the wrong way, he would get a bed spring inthe ribs for his trouble. It had happened so many times that when he hadtransitioned to sleeping on the dirt or in the grass, it had been like nothingto him.
Now he stood staring across the street, wondering whatother wonderful things there were to see in the house across the way. Lou wasright to avoid the houses with multiple stories. While they presented morelikelihood of food or weaponry, they also represented a greater chance offinding more of the dead. Large houses meant families. Families meant fightingto live. Those that weren't successful in that fight, as most people weren't,wound up walking among the dead. Those houses with families inside... thosewere not the places they wanted to be.
"Hey, maybe we should check out that other houseover there," Mort said to no one in particular.
Lou came and stood by him, poking his head out throughthe blinds and peering at the blue house across the street. "Might besomething we can use in there. Doesn't seem to be anyone else around,"Mort said.
In the street, there was only one of the dead shufflingabout, looking left and right, wondering which way to go. Something about thenature of the cul-de-sac seemed to confuse them. Circles... maybe they weren'tinto circles. But that was ridiculous. What would circles have to do withanything?
"Let's do it," Lou said.
Mort pulled his hammer from his belt loop and walked tothe front of the door. That stumbling dummy out there was his, and then hewould get to see what another house was like. He was giddy with the feeling.Something about breaking into someone's house excited him in a way that fewthings had over the years. Even the anticipation of killing the dead woman thatwas shuffling in the street was exciting to him now. He didn't think it shouldbe that way, but that's how it was working out. He was changing.
Maybe it was the death of Blake that had sparked thechange in him. Where before he had only felt an equal mix of fear andrevulsion, now there seemed to be a slowly smoldering coal of hate permanentlyglowing in his chest. When he saw the dead, it were as if the wind were fanningthe coal to life, causing it to glow hotter and brighter.
He wanted to kill them now. He wanted to make the worldsafer, so that no one else would have to know the pain of losing someone thatreally mattered to them.
Mort threw the door open, and he slowly jogged, breathingin sharply every time his knee sent pain shooting up his leg. Before the deadlady could even turn his head toward her, he was swinging his hammer at her. Hewatched as the hammer clanged off the side of the woman's skull, rocking herhead, as if in slow-motion. Her eyes rolled up into her head, and the stiffnessof her body was gone instantly. She fell loosely, a blood flowing from a crackin her skull, and then she was on the ground. Mort didn't even bother checkingher. She was dead now.
Lou ran ahead of him, kneeling low, and he explodedupward, throwing his shoulder into the front door of the blue house. It did notexplode inward as the other had done. Instead it rattled heartily in the jamb,bouncing Lou backwards. As Lou rolled out of the way, Mort brought his own heelup and kicked at the door. The door still managed to hold on.
"They got that deadbolt on. We could kick at thatthing all day, and it wouldn't budge. Let's check the back, it might beeasier," Lou said.
They sprinted around the side of the house, vaulting overa waist-high wooden fence and landing on a concrete sidewalk. The backyard ofthe house was as overgrown as everywhere else in the suburbs. Branches brushedagainst their pant legs as they circled behind the house. An old grill stoodrusting in the sunshine. A
