Next came Dez. She came down ass-first with her back turned to the forest so as not to injure the unnamed baby in her backpack. Mort guided her to the ground, and then turned back to the forest, gripping his hammer like it was a live eel trying to escape. He wanted to shout at the dead in the trees, yell at them to come out and fight, but his words would be lost on their dead ears.
The others made their way down, Mort helping Joan to the ground. Katie was the last one, and she jumped down. No sooner had she gotten to her feet than the first of the dead appeared atop the guard post. Mort threw Tammy over his shoulder with a grunt, and as a group, they moved west, the direction they had been going from the very beginning of the apocalypse, towards the beach, towards the ocean.
Mort tried not to think about the fact that they had a long way to go. He tried not to think about the fact that to the north was a field of stalled cars and dead that they could never hope to escape. He tried not to think about the washout and the cliff to the south. He tried not to think about the impassable ridge to the east. His only thought was for the river to the east, their only chance of escaping. He swore at himself in his head for not finding a boat. A boat could have gotten them across the river, no problem. Instead, they were going to have to cross the ice on foot. Images of the dead being swept away in black water filled his head.
Rifle shots roared in the forest, and once they stepped away from the compound, they sank into snow up to their thighs. The going was slow as Liz and Theresa broke a trail through the drifts for Mort and Joan.
The dead behind them had no such issue. They boiled over the side of the guard post, oblivious to the fall. They fell in the snow and rose to their feet, walking easily through the path that the survivors had just made.
Mort could see that they would never make it. Katie fired into the mass of the dead behind them steadily, dropping them one by one. But she only had so much ammo. To their left and right, the dead honed in on them, their progress somewhat slowed by the snowdrifts. Ahead of them, more of the dead slogged towards them, and Theresa and Liz tried to clear the way. They weren't very good shots, better than Mort certainly, but they missed more often than they hit.
Still, they pushed on, though the realization dawned in their head that they were all certainly screwed. The baby on Dez's back began to cry and wail, sending up the dinner bell for all the dead within earshot, though the boom of the rifles was probably doing an even better job of that.
If they could get to the country road to the east, then things would be easier. They could run along its length for a bit and create some distance. As it was, he kept getting tangled in underbrush buried by snow. His body steamed with sweat, but he knew it was a false warmth. They were on a timer here. Even if they managed to escape, which was looking less and less likely, they were going to find that the cold would be their biggest enemy. One thing at a time, Mort thought to himself. One thing at a time.
He cracked one of the dead across the jaw with his hammer, and it flew backward in the snow, never to get up again. Tammy groaned from the sudden movement. "It's gonna be alright," he said to her reassuringly.
"I'm out!" Katie said.
Mort reassessed his reassurances. "We gotta move!" Mort shouted, though he couldn't see how they could possibly escape. To his left, Joan labored, her face a rictus of pain.
"Where did they all come from?" Liz asked as she thumbed another cartridge into her rifle.
No one answered. Mort heard the thwack of something hard against a skull, and he turned around to see Katie finishing the swing of her rifle. She had dropped one of the dead with the butt of her gun, but she was retreating, moving closer to him and Joan.
"We're out of time!" Mort yelled. "We need to circle up, fight until we can move again."
Mort didn't know if Liz, Theresa, or Dez heard him. He set Tammy on the ground. She groaned, her head lolling to the side, as he set her in the snow. He saw bloodstains on her shirt and knew that Tammy's stitches had popped. Then he stood next to Katie, his hammer bobbing up and down as he loosened up his killing arm. Joan stood to his right, and the crunch of the snow told him that Theresa, Liz, and Dez hadn't abandoned them.
"Oh, we're gonna die!" Liz whined.
Mort didn't have anything positive to say to that. As the first of the dead approached, its arm outstretched, he swung his hammer as hard as he needed to. It was going to be a long fight if he had anything to do about it. Liz and Theresa swung their empty rifles at the dead. Joan wielded a spear weakly as she straddled the useless form of Tammy on the ground. Dez jabbed with another spear. And, with their backs to each other, they fought the wave of the dead that broke over them. They had never even made it
