She chewed on the side of her mouth and then said, "Fuck it." She had to know if he was out there. In the days after she and Joan had taken the compound, she had spent the better part of a month recovering from her wounds. Joan, in an effort to save her life, had shot one of the dead through the head. Of course, the bullet hadn't stopped in the dead thing's skull; it had continued through her shoulder, missing the bones completely. For days afterward, she had been unconscious, feverish.
In her dreams, she had been visited by familiar faces. Images of her dead husband and Kevin, her dead son, tormented her for what seemed like an eternity. They had seemed so real, so alive. It hurt to see them, and even though in the dreams she wasn't aware that they were dead, she had always felt like there was something off. When she finally woke up, Joan was there, and she cried in her arms. Her face blushed thinking about it, the uncontrollable sobbing, the motherly shushing and patting of Joan. Worst of all, it felt as if her husband and son had been ripped away for a third time. The first time was when they had joined the ranks of the living dead, the second when she had killed them permanently, and then the third time, when she had awakened and they had melted away again.
But she had recovered a few weeks later, and by then, she had only one burning question. "Where the hell was Mort?"
Joan had seen neither hide nor hair of the man, and if any of the other denizens of the compound had seen him, they weren't saying. But she had to know. While her body regained its strength, a frustratingly slow process, she had done several circuits of the grounds outside the compound, looking for signs of his body. But she had found no sign of Mort. All she did find were a few rotting corpses underneath some trees. The wounds on their skulls could have been made from the impact of a hammer, so she held out hope that he was still alive.
She stepped out onto the ledge, turning her body to face the cliff wall. She inched sideways slowly, the bulge of her pregnant belly threatening to push her backward. Behind her, a twenty-foot drop ended with jagged rocks, a hillside buried under snow, and a couple of the dead looking longingly up at her. The dead had been trapped for months, buried up to their waist in the mud from when the road had washed out. She slid to the side and came to the treacherous part of the ledge, a gap that she would have to jump across. On the other side of the ledge, the small waterfall that ran down the cliff face had frozen to ice.
She eyed the shine of the ice and thought twice about crossing. Katie squeezed her eyes shut and blocked out the world, and before her mind could tell her, "No," she had leaped across the gap. She pressed her face against the cliff face hard, her legs straining to keep her body pressing against the cliff. When she opened her eyes, she was still alive, still suspended above the washout below. She inched sideways, stepping over several icy spots.
When she reached the other side, she bent over and grabbed her knees, her breath coming in ragged gasps. She felt like she had run a marathon. Looking back at the path she had crossed, a feeling of dread washed over her. She would have to cross it again to get home. But first, she needed to make her way to the house.
She adjusted the strap of her rifle on her back so it wouldn't clock her in the head with each step and then set out on the path that would lead her to where Mort had been hiding out. Hopefully. With each step, her back protested, and it was all Katie could do to avoid lying on the ground for a minute. Her need to find Mort kept her going.
The other side of the road was relatively free of the dead. She didn't see any tracks in the fresh snow, so she walked with confidence. She walked up a small lane that no one would notice unless they had been there previously. The blanket of snow made the world look different, and if she hadn't known the small road was there, she would have passed it by. There were footprints this time, fresh.
Katie stood looking down at the footprints. Was the pattern in the snow a match for Mort's boots? It seemed the right size. No, maybe it was a little too big. She eyed the direction of the footprints. They went down the main road away from the washout. She thought about following the path, but she was already exhausted, and she didn't know how far Mort had gone. If she knew for sure that she would find Mort at the end of the trail, she would have followed it. But if she found one of the dead, she was in no condition to fight it off hand to hand. She would have to use the rifle, and the sound of the rifle would bring more of them, and then she would have to use the rifle again… and she could see where that road would take her, straight to a dead end.
She turned and walked up the smaller road, dead branches and leafless trees broken only by towering evergreen trees. Here and there, a leafless plant jutted up out of the snow. By next year, the path would be completely overgrown, and no one would know that
