The hammer hung cold and heavy in his left hand. He was not left-handed, and his confidence in the hammer was shaken. With his right hand, he felt he could take on four or five of the dead at a time. With his left, he felt like he would be lucky to face down one or two. The swing, the power, they just weren't the same with his left hand. But his right shoulder was too jacked up to be of any use at the moment.
Maybe Joan could take a look at it when he got to the compound. Maybe she would tell him it was alright, and all he needed was some time. He hoped that was the case. He flexed his right shoulder and winced in pain. He didn't think that anything was broken, but he knew how injuries worked. They could seem fine one moment, and then, the next day, he might not be able to move the damn thing.
His mind wandered as he slogged through the snow. It was not a quick walk to the compound in the best of times. At the end of the summer, when they had first chased Joan down to the bottom of the valley after she had plummeted from the highway, the forest floor had been littered with plants, old branches, and fallen trees. Even in those conditions, where one could actually see the forest floor, it was a solid, hour-long walk to the old lady's house. It would take twice as long to move through the snow, if not longer.
As one of the dead stumbled into his path, he cocked his left arm, and then hesitated, lacking confidence in his left arm. He moved a couple of steps backward, trying to allow for more space to get the timing right, and then unleashed a blow that would have been a killing blow from his right hand. In his left hand, the hammer glanced off the cheekbone of the dead man, snapping his head to the side but not putting it down. He hopped back a few steps, out of reach of the monster. The man, dressed in cutoff jeans and a ragged, white Beatles t-shirt, came on, stumbling through the snow. Mort took another swing, but just before he made contact, the dead man tripped over a branch hidden in the snow.
The resulting tumble sent the dead man barreling into Mort's midriff. Mort spun, landing on his injured shoulder once more and grunting in pain. He rolled so he was on top of the man, straddling him. He pushed and fought the man below him, the hammer flying free from his hand. Mort tracked its arc and watched as it made a perfect hammer shape in the snow a few feet away. He slapped at the man's pawing arms and tried to roll off of him.
The dead man's cold hands clawed at his jacket, and he pushed the man backward, as far away as he could. Grunting as pain shot through his shoulder, he broke the man's grip on his jacket and rolled off the man. Mort crawled through the snow toward his hammer. He felt the dead man flip over on his belly and begin crawling up Mort's legs. He was torn between wanting to stand up and get the man off of him and wanting to reach his hammer.
He couldn't use the guns now, not this close to the compound and the highway. His guns would draw more of the dead, and he was having trouble with just one of them at the moment. He pictured an army of the dead tumbling off the highway and into the woods, closing in on him and the location of his gunshots. As the nightmare of his own flesh being torn apart by the dead filtered through his mind, he grasped the hammer's handle with his left hand.
He spun, torqueing his body and bringing the head of the hammer down on the top of the dead man's skull. The dead man jerked for a second but still tried to get at Mort. He brought the hammer down again, and this time he heard the audible crack of the hammer as the man's skull broke. But still he came, his face pressed into Mort's abdomen, his mouth opening and closing with mindless hunger. Mort aimed again, hitting the same spot as before, and this time he felt the head of the hammer push past the man's skull and into something softer. The dead man went still, but Mort didn't have the time to catch his breath.
He could hear their footsteps in the woods, the cracking of branches broken in passing. He was being encircled, rounded up.
Rather than strain his shoulder any more than he already had, instead of bench-pressing the corpse off his body, he slid out from underneath the man. Mort's body was cold now, heated only by his own exertions. His hands felt like blocks of ice, and as he bumbled through the snow-filled forest, he wondered how long he could go for.
He stumbled now, his energy burned up. His stomach felt like a cold pit in his core. He knew that feeling—had known it for years of living under bridges and overpasses, riding trains from place to place to avoid weather like this. He knew it was only temporary, and that the feeling would go away as soon as he had a chance to eat something.
But he wasn't prepared for the cold. He didn't like the snow, hated it. He had never been so cold in his life. He had spent his winters in places like California, Texas, always avoiding the South, the ghost of his father's memory, making it permanently off-limits to him. Mort wished he was there now, though, and every time he
