Theresa sighed. "Set him up for whatever we need."
"What do we need?" Tammy asked.
"We need food and wood for the fire. He can get that for us."
"So you was flirtin' with him?" Liz laughed. "I knew it."
Theresa shook her head. "Let's cook up some of this food. Anyone know how to cook up bear?"
Liz nodded her head. Say what you will about her, the woman could cook. Theresa's own cooking expertise started at hot dogs and ended at macaroni and cheese. She could cook the meat, but it probably wouldn't have any flavor.
They grabbed some of the bear meat and went to their trailer to prepare it for the fire.
****
Katie was glad to see Mort, and to a lesser extent, Dez. She knew the others felt a little conflicted about Dez, but Katie didn't have any problem with the woman being out of her mind. Hell, she had been out of her mind for months now. She wondered if the fact that she knew she had been out of her mind meant that she was no longer insane.
It was so hard to figure out who she was these days. Who was the true her? The housewife? The cold killer who had bludgeoned a man after sex? Or the heroic savior of a lost cause in Clara? She physically cringed at using the word heroic to describe herself, even if it was in her own mind. The truth was she didn't know who she was anymore.
That being said, she understood the problem Dez was dealing with. In her mind, Katie called the issue "identity reacquisition." She was no psychologist. Hell, she had only spent a couple of years at community college before she had encountered her husband, a kindhearted soul who had liked to drink but cared for her the way she had never dreamed anyone could.
She had tailored herself to her husband, molding herself into the woman she thought he wanted. When Kevin came along, she had morphed again, changing into a mother, borrowing the best parts of her own mother and the best examples of mothers on TV to form some sort of Pollyanna matriarchal concoction. When her husband and son had been taken from her… no, when she had taken them from herself, she mustn't forget that fact. When she had killed them, she had found herself stripped bare, like a hermit crab without its shell. She had been searching for a new shell ever since… a new identity.
The process had been difficult. Without guidance, she had waved back and forth, like underwater grass at the edge of a rain-swollen pond, slowly drowning just underneath the surface of the water. She thought she had found herself in a world where the dead walked, and survivors were just grateful for another person to talk to. She thought she knew who she was.
As she lay in her fever dreams, parts of her past had come to visit her. These visits were painful, but in the end, they had allowed her to let go of her wounds, allowed them to scab over and scar. When she woke from her fever to find Mort there, she only experienced a little loss as the dreams of her husband and her son faded away.
She knew who she was now. She was a survivor, a person that would do anything to keep going. Not because she had anything to live for, but because that was her job now. That was her role.
She could see the same process occurring in Dez. She had been a daughter, a child really, afloat amidst her parents' whims. Then she had been a kept thing, a bird in a cage owned by a psychopath. Then she had been a prisoner. Now she was free, cast afloat on the tide. She would either drown in the deep of the ocean or wash up on the beach changed. If Katie had to put money on it, she would bet on the latter. She had seen too much strength in the girl to do otherwise.
Dez could be no more than twenty-years-old. She had never asked her how old she was. There was no point in that question anymore. You were either old enough to survive on your own, or you weren't. All those who could survive on their own were adults; everyone else was a child.
A child… she looked down at her round belly and placed her hands on it. She hadn't been very fair to the child inside her. She had risked her life several times, driven herself to overexertion, and now there was something wrong with her. She had seen the dark circle around the bullet scar in her shoulder, noting the way it spread out from her. What would happen if it continued to spread? What would happen to the child?
Joan seemed to think that her body was holding the infection in check, but if she pushed herself too hard, she wouldn't be able to fight it off. That's why she had nearly passed out in the woods. She was stuck here, stuck inside for the safety of herself and the child growing within her, Zeke's unborn child, the last bit of life he had left on the earth. It wasn't her child. It never would be. It was always going to be Zeke's child. She was not that person anymore. Her identity had changed. She had used up all of the mother she had left in her.
Katie rose from the bed, testing out her legs. She was still a little weak from her bout with the infection, but she could move well enough. She heard the others talking in Dez's room. She pulled her jacket from a pile in the corner and threw it on. She stepped into Dez's room, noting the carvings on the walls, profanity after profanity, and phrases that only made
