She closed the door behind her. Mort heard a stream of obscenities through the rickety wooden door, and then he turned back to Joan. The question that had been on his mind for the last half-day was on his lips, but he felt like he already knew the answer.
Joan looked up at him with a smile on her face. When she saw his face, the smile melted away like a candle in a fire. "Where's Clara?"
"She's dead."
Mort backed up against the wall until he bumped into it and then slid down, his body unable to hold him up any longer. He listened in silence as Joan explained what had happened in the compound. He listened as she told of Chad Mauer burying Clara in the ground. He listened as she told of the chaos that had ensued when Katie and Mort had assaulted the compound, the rescue of Clara, and the moment when she had turned.
It was too much for him. He cried, tears trailing down his face unashamedly. An unseen fist gripped his heart, and he couldn't breathe. Clara… she didn't deserve to be dead. She had never done nothin' to nobody. He could see her face in his mind's eye, and he realized that he had been dreaming of seeing Clara's face for some time.
At night in the old lady's house, while laying next to the fire, his stomach grumbling, he had dreamed of all of their faces, picturing them one by one, and fantasizing about getting the group back together and heading to the ocean. Now there were only three of them left, himself, Katie, and Joan. He pictured the faces of the dead, of the people they had lost, Lou, Blake, and now Clara. Good people. His friends. The only good friends he'd ever had since he was a kid. A selfish part of him wished that he had never made friends in the first place, but then he knew he would be dead too. And he didn't want to be dead. He felt his life like it was an actual physical thing. He held his palms upwards, cradling the weight of his own existence, and panic welled within him, as he realized things could not go on as they were. They needed to get someplace safe. They needed to escape. Right now. This minute.
Mort stood up, ignoring the aches and chills in his bones. "We gotta go," he said.
"We can't," Joan said, her words falling on deaf ears.
"We gotta get someplace else. We need to get to the ocean, get out of these mountains. They're going to be the death of all of us."
"We can't," she said. "My leg won't handle the snow. Katie's not well… there's something wrong with her."
"It don't matter. We gotta leave. We gotta survive."
"We will," Joan said. "We're gonna make it. But we need some time. I can't leave; not with all these pregnant people running around. I don't care about the moms, but the kids, they at least deserve to breathe air."
"Kids," Mort said, a lone word breaking through his panic and his sorrow. "Kids." He smiled then. "You know, I've never held a baby before."
Joan laughed then. "Stick around. You'll be holding a lot of them. When these mothers start popping, I'm going to need your help."
Mort's panic arose anew. "You mean you want me to…" he pointed at Katie, lying on her side, her belly resting on the bed. "You want me to go and…" He couldn't say the words. He didn't have the vocabulary to talk about what Joan wanted him to do without sounding crass.
Joan nodded. "When they're out, we can go. My leg will be healed by then, or at least better, and then we can get the fuck out of here. See the ocean, be safe, and then we'll never have to run again."
"You sure about that?" he asked.
"As sure as I can be. There's less people there. Less dead things. We can fish, go clamming. It hardly snows there, and if you get yourself a house on the beach, you can see for miles. None of those dead things will ever sneak up on us there."
Mort nodded now, dabbing at his red eyes with the back of his sleeves. "Yeah, I'd like that."
Joan just nodded at him.
"Mort? Is that you?" a trembling voice asked.
Mort laughed and smiled as big as he ever had. It was Katie. She looked at him, not quite believing her eyes. "It's me," he said. "Everything is going to be alright."
He stepped to the side of the bed and grabbed her hand, but she was gone again. But she had recognized him. Maybe that meant she was going to get better. Maybe that meant that everything would be alright.
Chapter 8: Doors and Dibs
They snoozed in the conference room, all except for Masterson and Day, who were keeping watch, listening for any broken windows. That would mean the Annies were coming. Izzy Allen slept fitfully on the floor. His first chunk of sleep had been broken by the face of Diana in his dreams. He thought he had done an excellent job of holding his feelings for the woman at bay, but his dreams told him differently. His dreams told him how he really felt. He was never going to hold her in his arms again. He was never going to make love to her again. He was never going to fall asleep next to her again. When he was awake, he would admit that this was a good thing. But in his half-dream state, he felt a sadness about it.
Her naked body danced in his mind, so real he could almost
