The room still smelled of shit and piss from when Dez had been held captive. Mort sat on Dez's bed, resting. Joan leaned against a wall, keeping the weight off of her bad leg. Dez stood facing away from them, her eyes studying her carvings for some hidden meaning.
"That's a stupid idea," Joan said.
"It's the only way," Dez said back.
They must have been in the middle of an argument. "What idea?" Katie asked.
They turned to her then, noticing her presence in the doorway.
"It was nothing," Joan said. "You should be resting."
"Don't treat me like a porcelain doll. I never have been and never will be," Katie snapped.
"We should kill the others," Dez said out of nowhere. She didn't say it with any hint of regret or shame. She stated it as if it were a fact, and maybe it was.
"You can't just go around killing people," Mort said. "Especially not no pregnant ladies."
"Pregnant or not, they're going to kill us as soon as they get a chance," Dez said.
Joan said, "You can't know that."
"Oh, really? The fact that I am suggesting that we do them in is proof enough that they're probably having the same conversations."
Katie thought that Dez had a point.
"Not everyone is bad," Mort said.
"You saying I'm bad?" Dez asked, turning to Mort with a fire in her eyes.
"No, that's not what I'm saying at all."
Katie was about to agree with Dez when the door to the ranger station blew open, wind and snowflakes swirling around the entryway. A smell of something filled the air, something that made Katie's stomach do flips.
Liz stood there, scratching at her mole, her bulk filling the doorway. "Dinner's ready," she said, her voice hoarse and grating. She turned and left.
The group looked at each other and exited the ranger station. Outside, the smell of meat filled their noses. Great slabs of bear meat had been cooked over an open fire and now sat resting on plates. Steam wafted from the plates into the cold night air. The smell hit Katie's nose and her mouth watered. The pregnant women looked at them, and they all stood there for a moment, eyeing the meat.
"Well, come on and get it," Theresa said. "It ain't gonna get any warmer, not in this cold."
They didn't need to be told twice.
****
The meat was delicious. Joan had never tasted anything like it. In her pre-walking-dead life, she had only rarely eaten meat, and most of the time, that was chicken with fish mixed in occasionally. She had been missing out.
She sat on a wobbly tree round, her spear/cane close by. Her plate was mostly filled by a bear steak, seasoned to perfection. There was barely enough room for a spoonful of canned peas on the side of her plate. She cut another piece off the slab, red juices squeezing out of the steak as she applied pressure with her knife.
"Who seasoned the steak?" Joan asked.
"That was Liz," Tammy said through a mouthful of meat. Despite her small frame, she could pack away food better than Theresa and Liz, both larger ladies.
"It's delicious," Joan said.
"Thank you," Liz said, sounding like she actually accepted the compliment for once.
The wind swirled around them, and the snow had stopped, revealing a sky that was a dark orange. They huddled close to the fire, trying to keep warm.
Liz swallowed a bite of bear meat, juices running down her faintly whiskered chin. "The trick is tenderizing it. Bear's tough. You gotta pound the shit out of it to get the flavor to come out."
Katie sat mostly quietly, pressing on the meat and watching the blood come out.
Mort struggled with the knife and fork on his lap. He hadn't had a meal that required more than a spoon in some time.
Theresa cleared her throat and looked meaningfully at the other girls. Then she spoke, "We wanted to clear the air, tonight."
Dez paused in her eating, her jaw clenching immediately. Joan kept chewing and said, "What was that?" She hadn't thought she'd heard Theresa correctly and needed some clarification.
"I said, 'We wanted to clear the air tonight.'"
With a half-chewed piece of bear in her mouth, Katie asked, "Clear the air how?"
Liz spoke then. "We see the way you look at us, and fuck, we're probably looking the same way at you."
Theresa butted in, not content to let Liz explain everything. "We know we got some past. Now, we could be mad at you for killing our men. You could be mad at us for letting your friends get killed. And we could all be mad at each other until the cows come home. But in the end, all that's going to lead to is more dead people."
Joan nodded, taking in Theresa's words.
"So, what do you want to do about it?" Dez asked.
Theresa nodded as if she had expected the question, "Well, me and the girls were talking, and we wanted to do like a clearing of the air. We wanted to put everything on the table and move on."
"You sure that's such a good idea?" Dez asked.
"The alternative is we all just keep it inside until we can't stand it anymore—until someone explodes. And with the situation we find ourselves in, that seems like a selfish way to look at things." She paused then and added, "We've got kids to think about, a future. I'm willing to put the past behind us if you can."
Joan knew it was the right thing to do. There was no doubt in her mind. She didn't trust these women farther than she could piss. She realized that
