by Morris, Jacy
He could see two of the dead down there, but just barely. The tops of their heads poked through the white blanket of snow, their legs trapped in the mud that had solidified around their bodies sometime in the past. The snow had drifted down there, filling up the empty space where the road used to be.
Had the dead been alive when they fell, or were they already dead? The red bumper of a beat-up old pick-up truck was the only source of color down below. He figured they must have been alive when it went down. Maybe they had stopped to drink from the small waterfall when the road disappeared from underneath them. The plummet must have been terrifying. He hoped their deaths had been quick. No one should have to die slow.
He pulled the straps of his backpack tight and arranged the straps of the rifle and shotgun so he could be flat against the cliff face. He was going to have to cross the ledge. He eyed the dull blackness where the small waterfall had frozen in the cold. Mort thought twice about crossing, but in the end, there was no way around it. He was going to have to do it or die cold and alone in some old lady's house. With his heart beating in his chest, he stepped up to the small ledge that ran underneath the cliff face. Wide enough for about half his boot to sit on comfortably, he inched across, willing his body to cling to the rough rocks of the cliff face.
He inched across, his cheek burning with the cold of the granite he pressed against. He came to the section where the ledge disappeared completely. He paused, building up the courage to make the crossing.
Mort lifted his left foot to place it on the other side of the gap. It was at that exact moment that the ledge he stood upon decided to give way. Then he was weightless, and the only thought that crossed his mind was, "I hope it's quick."
But that's not how Mort's luck ran. He plummeted through the air, falling backward, his legs rising up higher than his head. He tried to twist in the air, so he wouldn't land on the back of his head, and he was able to do so just barely. With a deep shush, he plunged into the snowdrift that had formed in the washout. It broke his fall somewhat, certainly enough to keep him from splitting open like a watermelon dropped onto a jagged rock, but it didn't prevent the pain.
His shoulder made contact with the frozen mud of the landslide, and his teeth rattled in his jaw. Worse, he was surrounded by cold snow, and he couldn't breathe. He felt something paw at his head, and he realized he wasn't dead completely, but the thing grabbing ahold of his jacket was.
With his left arm completely useless, he pushed upwards, trying to orient himself in the icy snow. He waved at the arm that gripped his jacket, and his head burst free of the drift while his body splashed snow to his left and right.
The dead thing gnashed at his face, just a few inches away, and he scrambled back in the snow. He spun the shotgun on its strap, so he could grab it with his one good arm. He held it out to the rotten face in front of him, and then he pulled the trigger. Black blood splattered the snow behind the dead thing, half its face disappearing in the blink of an eye.
The echo of the shotgun blast made him deaf for a moment, and then he saw the other dead thing in the pit stirring, its arms flailing in the snow. The shotgun held two rounds, and he still had one to go. He took aim with the shotgun, though the weight of it made his aim shaky at that distance, and he squeezed the trigger. The shotgun bucked in his hand, and it fell to his side, hanging by the strap.
He sat then, at the bottom of the washout, looking above. He heard the crunch of the snow first and figured maybe more dead in the area had come to investigate. He didn't want them plummeting over the side to land on top of him, so he scrambled down the washout, being careful not to slip and fall even further down the slope.
And that's when he realized that the sound of something moving through the snow didn't come from above but from below. He stared between the tree trunks that jutted up from the slanted river bank, unafraid of gravity, their roots holding the whole sloping riverbank together. He saw it then, a hulking shape, black and bumbling. It was coming for him.
He didn't know if it was the same bear or not, but it didn't matter. Gritting his teeth as his shoulder screamed out at him, Mort swam through the snowdrift toward the wrecked pickup truck. With every step, the bear drew closer, moving through the snow almost playfully.
It could have closed the gap on him in no time, but it moved slowly, sluggishly, as if it had been woken from a deep sleep. Mort reached the truck and took one look at the door and the crushed roof of the vehicle. It had rolled a couple of times, and all of the windows had shattered. He knew the door would never open, no matter how hard he pulled. He dove head-first into the truck through the shattered driver's side window.
Mort laid low, his breathing as deep as the pain in his shoulder. He could hear the soft snuffling and lonesome growl of the bear outside. Then the truck rocked as the bear batted at its dented metal frame. Mort screamed a bit, letting out a loose yelp that he would have been embarrassed about if he wasn't in the middle of fearing for his life.
The yelp only served to enrage the bear, and it began bashing on the hood of the truck. It crawled on top of the hood, claws screeching and scrabbling against the metal, and Mort knew the bear wasn't going to leave him alone. The gray light of the sky disappeared, blocked out by the shaggy, black fur of the bear.
He pulled his rifle around as the bear swatted at him, the claws coming inches away from his face, from his throat. He aimed the barrel of the rifle at the bear, but it swatted it out of the way just as he fired. The first shot missed. He retrained the rifle on the bear, gritting his teeth, and he pulled the trigger once more. This shot went home, penetrating the trunk of the bear's body. It groaned in pain but did not relent in its pursuit. Mort pulled the trigger repeatedly, firing until the rifle clicked empty, his ears ringing in pain.
When he was done, he felt terrible. But the bear lay dead on the hood of the truck. He gasped in pain, not believing what had just happened to him. So much for the luck of the hobo. Although, I am still here, I guess.
He heard a noise behind him, and he sat up in the cab of the truck, his empty rifle clutched in his hands. Oh, Lord.
One of the dead had tumbled into the washout behind him. It was extricating itself from the snowdrift with its one good arm. The other hung, broken and twisted from the fall.
Mort didn't want to wait for it. He had already fired plenty of rounds, and he knew that more of the dead would follow. You could get away with one shot, maybe two, but anything more than that, and you could count on a visit from the dead. He hung the top half of his body out of the truck and let gravity do its work.
He landed on his good shoulder and popped back up on his feet, too concerned about the dead to care about the pain. He headed downslope, hoping to intersect the river and travel along its icy bank.
The crash of more of the dead could be heard as he went, his legs sinking knee-deep in the snow between the trees. He fumbled in the jacket pocket where he used to keep his beauties, hand-rolled cigarettes that tasted of chemicals and cheapness. Now he kept his new beauties in there–– brass-bound beauties, cylindrical, and capable of traveling a couple thousand-feet-per-second.
He plucked one from his pocket and thumbed the round into his rifle. He wanted to stop and re-load completely, but he would have to hope that the one bullet would be enough to carry him to safety. He slid down the rest of the slope, and then he heard the trickle of water. The river's edge was close. He emerged through a bank of trees, and the river appeared before him, black like ink, snaking through the valley, its edges bound by thick ice, jagged like teeth.
He stepped onto the ice, sliding and pressing his way forward. Fifty yards ahead, the riverbank on his side sloped gently upward. He could climb to the road that way. He could escape. His legs felt fine, and that was one thing that he was thankful for.
Behind him, he heard the crashing of the dead as they tumbled down the slope. They weren't concerned about injuring themselves or falling into the river. The dead had only one concern, eating Mort. He t
ossed a glance over his shoulder, as a trio of the dead stepped out onto the icy surface of the river.
They slipped and fell on the ice, their arms pinwheeling in the air as they were thrown off balance. It was almost comical. Mort allowed himself a brief smile as one of the dead's feet went out from under it, and it landed flat on its back, breaking the ice underneath it. It disappeared into the dark river.
Mort continued to shuffle across the slippery surface, ignoring the groans of the dead behind him. He was more concerned about the dead in front of him. A small campsite sat off to the side of the river, a blue tent flapping in the wind. A child and its parents slipped towards him, walking along the icy riverbank. He knew they were dead by the way they walked, toddling along the uneven surface, their arms outstretched in his direction. Mort reached into his pocket and thumbed a couple more of his beauties into the rifle. When he looked up, the family was slipping along the ice at the edge of the river. He took aim, wincing at the loud crack of the rifle. He shot the father first, clad in a red flannel shirt. The dead man fell backward, the impact of his body shattering the ice underneath him. In a flash, the family was gone, plunged into the dark, winter water of the river. Cracks formed around the break in the ice, jagged like summer lightning.
I can't go that way, Mort thought. Beneath his feet, the face of the dead child scraped along the underside of the ice. Mort pushed the image from his mind and stepped onto the snowy slopes of the river bank. It was slower going on the slope, but he didn't want to disappear into the river the way the dead had. He imagined the water swallowing him up and dragging him along underneath the ice, freezing him as his breath bubbled out of his lungs to be replaced by water.
Uh-uh. Not this man. The shot from his rifle would change the angle of the dead. They would be locking in on his current position now. They were coming. He had to get back up to the road. He let his rifle drop to his side, and using his good arm, he held onto the trunks of bushes and low-hanging tree branches as he maneuvered towards the small camp in the woods.
He could hear the dead coming, the shush of their feet as they tromped through the snow, their eerie calls as they sought out the source of the gunshot. With a last heave, he made it to the level ground of the campsite. The tent was situated in the middle of a small clearing that was surrounded by the rounded earth of a small ridge. He suspected there was a path that led out of the clearing, but underneath the snow, he couldn't find it. Then he spied a large straight branch sticking up from behind the ridge. No, it wasn't a branch; it was an antenna.
Mort spotted a couple loose cans of food on the ground, and without a second thought, he dropped his backpack to the ground, threw the cans in the bag, and had it slung over his shoulder again in the blink of an eye. He didn't feel bad about it. The owners of the food didn't need it anymore.
With nothing more to gain at the camp, Mort slogged through the snow, at times sinking up to his waist in the drifts. He most certainly hadn't found the hidden path. He climbed, dove, and clawed his way up the hill, scraping himself against hidden branches. The true joy came when he found himself blocked by a buried bramble of blackberries, its half-inch-thick barbs sinking into his legs and crotch before he realized what was going on.
He had to go back the way he came. He eyed the ridge and chose a different path, testing the ground underneath the snow tentatively as his own blood froze on his pants.
Mort found solid dirt underneath the snow, and he tried to climb up over the fifteen-foot ridge once more. The only good thing about the ridge was that the dead would most likely have as much trouble getting in as he would getting out. But he couldn't spend the night out in the cold. He would die, and his body was covered in his own sweat. He already felt it cooling as he gingerly broke a trail through the snow.
Up and up he went, stomping his feet down through the snow, making sure that he wouldn't impale himself on another blackberry briar. He was halfway up the rise when he heard them, the dead, somewhere above him on the other side of the ridge. For a moment, he toyed with the idea of hiking up the river to another exit, but he was already halfway there, and if he went further upstream, he would just have to backtrack to find the small road that led to the compound in the woods. As it was, he was only half sure he could find the compound in the snow. Everything looked different under the blanket of white.
He pressed forward, pausing long enough to load his rifle with as much ammunition as it would carry. He breathed a sigh of relief that he wasn't anywhere near a city. If this had been Portland, he would be dead already. No, the only source of the dead that he knew of came from the highway to the north where a semi-truck had blocked traffic for miles, and the dead had overtaken every living thing. That's where these dead came from, drawn by gunshots or stumbling along the path of least resistance.
Before he reached the top of the ridge, a group of the dead saw him. There were three of them, gnarled and trashed, their bodies broken in several places, the skin gray and stiff-looking. The first approached him, a tall son of a bitch with hands as wide as Mort's head. It reached out to him, stepping to the edge of the ridge, and Mort grabbed its hand and spun, grunting in pain as his shoulder complained. The tall dead man flipped over Mort's back, rolling and tumbling into a patch of blackberries bushes. It struggled to rise, and Mort turned his back on it.
He moved forward, running the last few steps to step into a small clearing. Through the trees, he could see the flat surface of the road thirty yards away. To his left, an SUV sat camouflaged underneath a pile of tree branches, its antenna jutting upwards into the gray sky. The two remaining dead came at him, and he smacked the first across the face with the butt of his rifle. Its teeth flew through the air, and the creature tumbled backward.
Mort let the rifle drop and grabbed the frozen handle of his hammer. He had toyed with giving it a name, like an old friend, but something about the idea turned his stomach. Maybe it was the fact that he wasn't killing evil things like in a story. These weren't evil knights, or demons, or dragons he was slaying. He was killing ordinary people like himself, who hadn't had the luck that he had.
He swung the hammer at a woman wearing a Crossfit T-shirt and tight-fitting workout pants. The image of the woman standing in the freezing cold seemed wrong in his mind. His mind kept telling him that he should offer the woman his jacket because she should be freezing. But she was dead, and he aimed to make her even deader. He swung the hammer at the side of her head and caved it in, dropping the dead woman in the snow.
As the other dead man struggled to rise, Mort fell upon him, smashing the back of his head in. He wanted to stand and catch his breath, but he knew more of the dead would be coming, so instead, he ran to the road and took a left, heading for the path that would lead him to the compound.
Ages ago, when he had been a part of a group of 5 survivors, he had made marks on the trees with his hammer to show the path to follow. The freshness of those wounds had faded with time, but he was still able to see them. He moved quickly, scanning the trees for the wounds he had made in their bark. He used these as guideposts.
Around him, the dead came, slow but steady. He held his hammer in his left hand, his right now useless, his shoulder radiating waves of pain with each step. Adrenaline flooded Mort's body, and his head steamed in the heat. The steam rose up and then curled around his forehead, so he could just barely see the mist out of the corner of his eye. The snow was deep in the forest, and it sank under his weight. Sometimes he would sink fast, into drifts that were deeper than he expected, or he would step on a branch buried in the snow. Each time, he thanked the lord up above that he hadn't twisted or broken his ankle. But with each step, he knew that the potential was there.
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 sa
me 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.