With each sliding step, he looked over his shoulder, hoping that the dead wouldn't be there. They were fewer now. He didn't know why, but there were fewer of them in the woods these days. Perhaps the snow had locked them in, perhaps they simply didn't cover as much ground in the deep snowpack. Either way, he was thankful.
But when he was really swinging it, the axe brought them. The sound of metal sinking into wood traveled through the empty forest, and it occasionally brought one of the dead to him, a simple reminder that they were still there. They were still hungry.
His legs burned as he pulled the wood back to the camp. He was looking forward to going back. He missed the camaraderie of the others. He knew now that he never wanted to be alone. He wouldn't be alone. Not if he were given a choice. He'd rather choose death.
A noise came to Mort's ears. He was familiar with the noise. It was the sound of a dead thing moving clumsily through the snow, raspy, destructive. Mort only had one nice thing to say about the snow; it kept the dead from sneaking up on him. And that was a good thing. He stood his ground, pulling his hammer from his belt.
He heard the dead thing before he saw it. He waited, and it came, locked in on his position like a guided missile. He let the hammer hang from his hand, saving his energy and steadying his breathing.
The creature that came at him had been a male with a square jaw and sandy blonde hair that flopped on his head. He had been muscular when alive, and Mort knew that those arms still contained the strength, if not the speed, of the living man. A dead man didn't worry about hurting itself or overextending its muscular reserves. A living man might grab a person's arm and squeeze with seventy-percent of their force, reserving the rest for extreme emergencies. A dead man squeezed an arm with a hundred percent of their force, not burdened by thoughts of what came next or what might happen to the arm it was squeezing. A dead thing, like the one slogging through the snow like a sluggish sled dog, might grab an arm and break it with one squeeze. It might twist and pull that broken arm until the flesh tore and the tendons and ligaments snapped. He wondered if that is what happened to the man before him. It reached out its stump, frozen and black, and Mort danced to the side.
He pushed the man in the back, and it fell face-forward into the snow. He crushed the back of the dead thing's skull with his hammer, one quick hit on the back of the man's head where the neck met the skull. It was the weakest spot, the one that gave nine times out of ten to a hammer blow.
When he was sure it was dead, he searched through the man's pockets. Anything could be useful now, a book of matches, a lighter. Supplies were becoming scarce around the compound. They were already rationing their food. Tammy kept talking to him about ice fishing, but the idea of crawling out onto the ice over the black river and cutting a hole did not appeal to him. But, if they ran out of food, and the snow clung to the land longer than they expected, he might have to.
In the meantime, he contented himself with looking through the man's pockets. He pulled a wallet out, a well-worn piece of rich, brown leather. He found the man's driver's license, his debit cards, and credit cards, a business card for an accounting firm, a couple of pictures of people that didn't matter anymore. He looked at them for longer than he should have anyway. It was always nice to see a picture of the beforetimes, even if the man's reality hadn't been his. He particularly held onto the sunshine in the picture, imagining it warming his body the way it did the people in the picture, a little girl with raggedy blonde hair and missing teeth, a woman with dark piercing eyes, and the man himself. He held a surfboard with one arm, and his other wrapped around his wife. He placed the cards and pictures back inside. He checked the cash compartment, just for fun. Forty-seven bucks. A fortune to Mort once. He closed the wallet and stuffed it in the man's back pocket. It wasn't his, and though the man was dead and had no need of it, it still felt wrong to take it from him, unless it was something that could help him survive. A superstitious part of him also thought that it might be bad luck, and he liked to keep his luck good. It had kept him going for some time.
He flipped the man over. He wore a torn polo shirt stained with blood. His nipple, so blue it made Mort shiver, poked through a rent in the fabric. He checked in the front pocket of the man's jeans. He found a small butterscotch wrapped in gold plastic and nothing else. He twirled the butterscotch in his hands, looking at it. It looked like the sun to him. The color of the wrapper was beautiful. It had been so long since he had seen anything as colorful.
The entire world felt washed out. The dead came at him in clothes that were faded and weatherworn. The world around him was white, black, gray, and brown. Even the green pine needles seemed more gray than green. But the butterscotch, it was bright. It was food for his eyes. He stared at
