This Rotten World | Book 4 | Winter of Blood

by Morris, Jacy

  "Chad's brother, I guess you guys killed him. That's what Katie says. He used to come in there and look at me. I always thought he would do something, but I think he was afraid of Chad. When I told Chad about it, he just said Reed was weird, and that he didn't mean nothin' by it."

  She smiled at Mort then. "I'm glad you killed Reed. He was a bad person."

  "Yeah, he didn't seem all there to me," Mort said as they followed his footsteps to the camouflaged truck, its antennae poking up into the sky.

  "Are any of us all there anymore?"

  Mort shrugged. "Be careful when you go down this. Lots of roots underneath the snow."

  Dez nodded her understanding, and they made their way down the ridge into the clearing. "Your friend, Clara. She set me free. I liked her. I'm sorry she's dead."

  "Yeah, me too."

  Mort and Dez took the time to examine the abandoned camp next to the river. They grabbed the items they thought might be useful, a sleeping bag, some clothing that still looked serviceable, and then they moved on down the river bank.

  "Be careful about this ice," Mort said. "It's not thick, and if you fall in that water, you're a goner." They hiked along the snowbank, leaning to their sides to help balance as they trudged along above the icy river. It was a treacherous way to go, but it was the only way to go unless they wanted to jump down from the lip of the washout.

  "I got to kill him," Dez said. "Did you know that?"

  "Uh-uh," Mort said.

  "Well, I did. I stabbed him right up while he was trying to kill your friends."

  Mort had nothing to say to that. He didn't know what the woman wanted to hear, so he kept quiet.

  "It felt good, you know? I don't think killing people is supposed to feel good, but for what he did to me, I was happy to do it."

  Mort stumbled in the snow, and Dez reached out to him to steady his body, preventing him from tumbling onto the ice. The ice might have held his body, but he was glad he didn't have to test it out.

  "You probably think I'm crazy, like everyone else. I know it's not supposed to feel good to kill people, but he wasn't a person, I guess."

  "Not one that I'd want to know," Mort said.

  They reached the spot underneath the washout, and they climbed upwards, digging their hands and feet into the snow until they could find tree roots to pull themselves up by. There was no sign of the dead that he had killed. The snow had covered them up completely. The truck had more powder on its roof, and the carcass of the bear was covered in white snow, the bear's giant head still sticking through the windshield.

  They spent the next hours breaking apart the bear's body. Dez said that normally you'd string the bear up and cut it open to pull out all the guts, but the slope was too dangerous for that, and there were no suitable trees within range, so they harvested the bear's meat limb by limb. There was a lot of it.

  "You ever eat bear?" Dez asked.

  "Nope. Never."

  She smiled at Mort, and for a moment, she didn't seem all that crazy.

  "Well, you're in for a damn treat."

  With their bags loaded down with bear meat, they turned and slid down the washout and down to the river. Mort most definitely didn't want to be down on the ice with an extra hundred pounds of bear meat on his back.

  They made their way along the river bank and to the clearing when Dez called out, "Hey, you want a baby?"

  "Huh?" Mort asked over his shoulder.

  "Well, I got this damn bastard baby inside of me, and when it comes out, I don't want nothing to do with it. I was figuring maybe you wanted to be a daddy or something."

  Mort laughed a little bit, not at the question, but at the thought of him being a father. "I can't be no daddy for no white kid. How's that going to work?"

  "You sure? You'd probably be good at it. You're strong, not a dick. I mean, what else is there to being a father in this world?"

  "A daddy," Mort said, amused.

  "You oughta think about it. I mean, if we don't find any other men, there's gonna be five little kids running around camp looking for someone to look up to. Maybe you ought to have one of your own, ya know?"

  This Dez… she was most definitely crazy, Mort decided.

  For the first time in a long time, Mort was able to walk through the woods without the fear of the dead appearing out of nowhere. Their journey back to camp with the bear meat was entirely forgettable. Mort thought he would remember that snow-filled, peaceful walk for the rest of his life.

  When they reached the gate, Tammy opened it right up for them, and though they didn't receive a hero's welcome, they were greeted somewhat more cordially than he had expected.

  ****

  Theresa couldn't believe it. They had returned, and they were both intact. Maybe it wasn't as bad out there as she thought. She could tell by the strained way that Mort moved that their mission had been successful. Her mouth watered at the idea of fresh meat. How long had it been? Months?

  When Chad and the others had still been alive, they had experienced a week of living off venison. Chad said that there were fish to be had in the river as well, but it had never been safe enough to venture out and get them. Maybe they had thinned the dead out enough for some fishing to be done as well. Fish offered a lot of vitamins and things that her baby could use.

  Hell, maybe the highway wasn't as dangerous either. The highway sat two miles up the road, and Chad, the last time he had ventured that way, said it was clogged with the dead due to a rockslide and a jack-knifed truck. The cars stretched for miles. How many of the dead could that be? Hundreds? A thousand?

  They had certainly made a dent in that number in the days after Chad died. His plan to blast music hadn't been the smartest idea, but even without the men, they had been able to handle it. The hard part had been piling the bodies up and soaking them in gasoline. All those bodies. She shook her head as Dez and Mort laid down their bundles.

  She had found herself wandering in her mind recently. Her thoughts were her own best company. Liz and Tammy were fine as far as their physical presence went, but they weren't much for conversation. Half of the time, they complained, and the other half of the time, they talked about things that they missed, coffee, cigarettes, getting blackout drunk, shit like that. The other day, she had listened to Liz go on and on about a NASCAR race she had watched.

  Mort opened the bag, showing them the meat. They would eat well tonight. Theresa and Tammy fetched a cooler to store the meat in. When they had first arrived at camp, it had been filled with things like beer and hot dogs that they could roast over the firepit, but now it sat empty. There was nothing that they needed to keep fresh anymore. They packed the cooler with snow and placed the cuts of meat inside. Still, there was more meat than there was room in the cooler. They chose a section of the camp that they didn't walk over, and they set the meat down in the snow and covered it over, leaving the cooler there as a marking spot to prevent people from actually walking over the spot or taking a leak there.

  "Nice job," Theresa said to Mort.

  He nodded at her and then headed into the ranger station. Dez followed him, casting a hard glare in Theresa's direction.

  Theresa didn't worry about the others. Katie was crazy, but she got the distinct impression that if she left the woman alone, she would never even notice that she was there. Joan didn't have a vindictive bone in her body as far as she could tell, and Mort just seemed like a genuinely nice guy, almost childlike.

  She did worry about Dez. She knew good and well that Dez knew that she had made the suggestion of tying her to the bed. If she had known Chad wasn't going to be around, she never would have suggested it. It had been convenient for her at the time. Get Dez out of the way, and maybe she could spend more time with Chad. That's not how it had worked, though. Chad had ignored her, turning in upon himself and doting on Dez, talking about how she was his one true love. That didn't stop him from spending his time in her trailer, but there was no emotion there. She might as well have been a hole in the
wall for all Chad cared.

  "You flirting with the black fella?" Liz asked in her dumbfuck, backwoods drawl.

  "What are you? Stupid?" she asked. "I ain't flirtin'. I'm jus' tryin' to set him up."

  A stupid look crossed Tammy's face, and her lower lip stuck out so that Theresa could see her crooked bottom teeth. "Set him up for what?"

  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 sense to Dez. Some of the carvings didn't even seem like words, more like Dez had hacked at the walls, trying to damage the wood in any way that she could.

  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."