by Jacy Morris
"I got it."
He pulled his shirt down, attempting to straighten it, even though no iron in the world could have gotten all the wrinkles out of his frayed khaki shirt. "Good. For today, you can hang out with your friends. Tonight, come back here, bathe her down, feed her, keep her company."
"Keep her company?"
"I don't know, all that girl shit you guys do. Talk about boys, first kisses, whatever the hell you guys are into." With that Chad brushed past her, and she was left on her own.
She walked back to the trailer feeling as if she had just given up her freedom. She felt the weight of her captivity between her shoulder blades, and she was beginning to get a headache.
****
Mort heard the chain-link fence slide closed behind him. The guards on the towers didn't offer anything in the way of goodbyes. He was on his own now, and it scared him. The forest ahead of him seemed dark and ominous. He checked his rifle. At least they had given that back, though he didn't have much in the way of ammunition. He still had his hammer as a last line of defense.
It was still early yet, the sun not having yet reached its peak. Mort wanted to be out of the way and safe by the time it began to go down. He put one foot in front of the other and stepped into the woods. The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and he suddenly felt like he was being watched. He couldn't tell if it was all in his head or if there was someone actually watching him.
He took heavy steps, making sure to leave footprints and disturbances in the mud and foliage, so he could find his way back if he needed to. He pulled his hammer from his belt loop, leaving his rifle slung over his shoulder, and he began to pound markings in the bark of the trees. He thought about making a map; he still had Blake's notebook in his pocket. Sometimes, when it got dark, he would pull it out and hold it, but he couldn't bring himself to actually flip it open and look at the messages he had shared with Blake when he lost his hearing.
He wished Blake were there now. Those good ol' boys in that compound would have loved him. With Blake at his side, they would have had to let him in. Those bastards. Racism had ceased to be a problem for Mort when he had become homeless. When you were homeless, you were the lowest of the low, and nothing anyone said or did could make you feel any less like shit. Therefore, when someone was racist to you, all you could do as a homeless person was laugh, and thank the gods that people could still see you, because any other time the regular people of the world would just ignore your existence. Being homeless was like being a ghost cursed to walk the world.
But now he was bothered. Because of the color of his skin, he had been cast out into the world on his own. He had to find his own way now, at least until Joan and Mort got better. And he did want that. He wanted to be with his friends. He wanted to see them all again. He wanted to make it to the beach and see them all smiling in the sunshine with no worries about the dead or the living, just a chance to rest and walk on the sand.
He bashed another divot in a tree with his hammer, using more power than he probably needed.
"You're going to break your hammer," a voice said.
He spun around to find Katie behind him, staring at him with her cold, dead eyes. She held her pistol in her hand, and for a moment, he thought she was going to shoot him.
"Katie," he said, but he didn't have the words he needed to let her know how happy he was to see her. Truth be told, he didn't know if he was happy to see her or just relieved that he wasn't alone.
"Good to see you too," she said.
They talked underneath the swaying trees, and Katie listened as he told her everything he knew about the compound. When he was done telling his tale, she stood up and stretched her back, and Mort noticed the taught swelling of her belly.
"Should you be out here like that?" he asked.
"Like what?" she asked.
"You know... pregnant."
She laughed and slapped her belly with the barrel of her revolver, harder than Mort thought was good for her, and then she said, "This old thing. This is nothing. Gimme a couple of months, and then we'll start worrying. It'll look like I'm smuggling a basketball, but even then I wouldn't go in there... even if they had all the macaroni and cheese in the world. You know why?"
Mort shook his head.
"Because the place you described to me... that's a prison. That's a place where a woman is treated like a subhuman, and I won't live like that again. I got this," she said, referring to her handgun, "and that's all I need."
She took off into the forest, walking deliberately through the underbrush.
"Where are you going?" Mort asked.
"Come on," Katie said. "I found us a place."
Mort looked all around him, as if he could spot a better option, but all he saw were trees. He put his hammer in his belt loop, the end still sticky with sap, and he followed Katie into the forest.
****
They walked for a while. Mort didn't know how to tell the time underneath the canopy of trees, but he felt as if they had walked for an hour. Halfway through, they emerged onto an old gravel road.
"How did you know this was here?" Mort asked.
"I used to come camping up here."
"You don't seem like the type," Mort said.
"I wasn't." Katie turned away from him then, to hide the panic that showed on her face as memories of her past life came back to her. They were painful, and her first instinct was to run away. "I recognized that building in their compound. It's an old ranger station. It became unnecessary once people started building in the hills here. We're not too far from where my..." The memories came back then.
"Where what?"
"Oh, nothing," she said.
They walked down the gravel road a bit, until they came to a point where the road was washed out. It was quite a tumble to the bottom of the washout. Mort crept to the edge, ready to jump backwards at a moment's notice if the ground beneath him felt like it was going to give way. He peered over the edge, and twenty feet below him, a dented and battered pickup truck was wrapped around a tree. He saw movement inside, and he knew that there was something dead down there.
Before he could tell her not to, Katie had turned to face the wall of rock that rose above them. She stepped out onto what little bit remained of the road and began to skirt sideways.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"You'll see," she said, smiling at him. It was a weird smile.
Mort turned and did the same, though his fear of falling into the washout was damn near debilitating. In his mind, he saw himself broken and twisted but still alive, while the dead feasted on him. He pressed his face against the cool rocks, sliding his feet along the ledge of the road. The back half of his feet hung in the air, only his toes keeping him from tumbling to his death. Though the skin of his cheeks, the only part of his lower face not covered by graying beard, scraped against the rough rocks, he dared not lean backwards even an inch. He searched for handholds with sweaty palms as perspiration dripped from his forehead and into his eyes. Then he was across. He looked back at the washed out road and dreaded going back that way again. On the bright side of things, it was a handy way to keep the dead from following them. He turned and found Katie waiting for him, her face grim. Her skin was paler than usual, which was saying something, and she looked like she was lost in her own mind.
"You ok?" he asked.
Katie jerked into consciousness as if she hadn't even seen Mort there. "Yeah, I'm fine. Come on." Katie set a quick pace, and Mort could barely keep up with her, which left him feeling a little ashamed. Soon they were walking up an overgrown gravel road. It hadn't been used in some time as weeds were poking up between the gravel. It rose for fifty yards and then doubled back upon itself. Up and up they went, hugged by trees and greeted by the hoots of songbirds in the afternoon.
Then the forest gave way, and Mort's mouth dropped open. He stood in front of a beautiful old house. It was a large, three-story affair. One couldn't help but be stricken by the feeling of home when lo
oking at it. The bottom floor was nothing spectacular. Cords of wood sat neatly stacked underneath the wraparound porch of the second floor, which seemed to serve as the main floor of the house. The third floor was all peaks and gables, and sneaky windows looking out onto the forest.
"How did you know this was here?" Mort asked.
"I stayed here once." More memories flooded Katie's mind, and she squeezed her eyes shut and blinked her eyes rapidly, hoping that no more would follow.
"You stayed here? Was you rich or something?"
"Hardly," she laughed. "It was with a large group of teachers and their families. We all sort of pitched in to give the kids..." Katie trailed off.
Mort was worried about her. As they neared the house, she had seemed to become gradually more fractured, confused. Now she was leaving off her sentences right in the middle. He didn't know how to comfort her. He didn't know if she wanted to be comforted, so he did the only thing he could do. "Let's see if anybody's home."
Mort took the lead, climbing the wooden steps that led up to the wraparound balcony. The steps were firm and solid. He didn't hear Katie climbing up behind him until he was near the top. He pulled his hammer from his belt loop and reached for the doorknob, only to find that it was locked.
"What do you think? Should we bust in?" he asked. There was no answer from Katie. When he turned around, there were tears in his eyes, and the sight of them brought him to an awkward standstill. She put her hands up to her face and began to cry quietly, her shoulders shrugging with her muffled sobs. Mort edged closer to her and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. She didn't shrink from him the way he imagined she would, so he wrapped his arms around her. She buried her face in his chest and began to cry uncontrollably.
Behind them, he heard a banging on the glass door, and he knew that someone was indeed home in the house hidden in the woods, but they could wait. Katie needed him. Still, he rocked her around so that he could keep an eye on the front door. The top half was paneled glass, the inside hidden by a lacy, white curtain. Behind that curtain he stared into the eyes of one of the dead.
They stayed that way until the glass broke. Mort let Katie go, and when she raised her pistol to fire at the dead thing slashing itself upon the broken glass of the window, he gently put his hand out and pushed the barrel of the gun down. He pulled his hammer from his belt loop and approached the door. He swung five times, bashing out the framing of the window, then it took two more swings to get the thing to stop moving. He waited patiently to see if any more were inside, but he heard nothing.
Mort reached inside the door and unlocked it, ignoring the stench of the rotting woman. The dead woman at his feet was an older lady. The skin on her face was sunken, but there appeared to be no bite marks on her. Her arms and body were emaciated, and as he dragged the body out to the porch, her shirt came up and her hip bones jutted out like the breastbone of a picked clean turkey. He had seen bodies like hers before on the streets. She had died of starvation. How long had she huddled in her house hoping for someone to come and save her? At what point did she realize she needed to go out and find food, only to find that she was too weak to do so? This world was no place for the elderly. If he could find a shovel, he would bury her. He seemed to have nothing but time on his hands. He didn't know how long they would have to wait until Joan and Lou were able to leave that place.
They stepped inside the house. The first thing that Katie checked was the kitchen. The cupboards were bare. On the counter, there were empty spice bottles, the old lady's last meal Mort guessed.
"I knew her, you know?" Katie talked as if she were somewhere else, reliving memories that made her squint as if she were in pain. She rubbed her belly unconsciously, and Mort waited for her to speak more.
"She was the caretaker here. She kept the yard tamed. It must have been a full-time job. Come on, I'll show you."
They walked through the living room, past comfy-looking furniture that had an old country feel to it. A colorful red Afghan rested on the back of a rocker that sat next to a bookshelf with aged, leather-bound books. The room was devoid of the knickknacks that one would find in a regular home. There were no pictures on the walls, nothing that spoke of personality, and there was no TV. The only decorations were a few paintings on the walls, some flowers, a mountain painting, the type of stuff you'd see in a hotel room.
They walked across the polished wooden floors and reached the backdoor. Katie pushed it open, and they stepped out onto the back deck. Mort's breath was taken away. The porch jutted out onto a backyard that was something that Mort had never seen before. A gentle field of grass sloped down and away to a river bank, still looking inviting despite its overgrown state. Decorative trees and shrubs of all sorts of colors framed the edge of the grass, and cleverly manicured trees rose to the sky, their bases covered in circles of bark dust. A small stream ran down the north side of the house, creating a border to keep the encroaching forest back.
"It's beautiful," he said.
Katie just nodded, her memories rushing through her so fast that she had to grip the wooden railing of the deck. She looked out onto the field of grass and she saw them, her husband and her son playing Frisbee with another family. She saw their faces as plain as if they were actually in front of her. She squeezed her eyes shut, no longer wishing to relive the memories, but her mind replayed the scenes anyway. She became dizzy and lightheaded, and she fell to her backside, her teeth clacking together painfully.
Mort rushed to her side. "Are you alright?" Katie could say nothing. Mort picked her up and guided her upstairs to one of the bedrooms. They were small, but there were many of them. He lay Katie down on a bed, and then went to find a blanket. He found one in a hall closet, and then he rushed back to Katie and spread it over top of her. She curled into a fetal position and brought the blanket tight around her. Mort could see tears rolling from her closed eyes and down the bridge of her nose. A teardrop hung there for a second and then fell onto the magenta comforter, turning it a dark red color.
He backed away and left her to her sadness, knowing that there was nothing he could do for the pain that she felt. It was inside her. He couldn't reach in there and fix it. All he could do was wait around for her, to be there when she needed him. He closed the door behind him and, after another quick check of the house, went downstairs and closed the front and back doors.
He found a door that led downstairs. It was dark, even though there were windows. He found some spare wood, and then set about searching for a hammer and nails. In a corner, among a bevy of yard maintenance equipment, he found what he was looking for and returned to the second floor. He dropped the plywood on the floor and proceeded to cut it to shape using a hand saw he had also taken from downstairs.
Mort worried about Katie as he worked. She had proven to be volatile emotionally, and he was worried about her. He hadn't known many women like Katie on the streets, but the ones he had known were dangerous; they could explode at any point, harming themselves or others.
He finished boarding up the broken glass of the front door and then went and sat in the rocking chair. He pulled the Afghan from the back of the rocker and spread it over himself. It was warm, and after a night spent in the woods, he fell asleep.
****
Reed was pleasuring himself to thoughts of the new lady when his brother entered his room. He quickly threw a blanket over his disrobed lower half and looked at Chad angrily. He pushed his glasses up on his nose with his jacking hand, smelling the funky odor of his penis as he did so.
"Put away your pecker, Reed. We've got some things to talk about." His brother sat down on the edge of his bed.
Reed sat up, his erection fading. "What do you want?" he spat.
"We've got some work to do."
Reed knew what was coming next. Over the last month, after they had managed to bring all the trailers up, he had had talks like this with Chad before. Chad needed something dirty done. This was fine with Reed, as he had long ago gotten rid of whatev
er conscience he might have had, and Chad always rewarded him well. Perhaps Chad would let him take another spin with Dez. He never knew being with a pregnant woman could be so erotic, but there was something about her that made him hard every time he looked at her.
"What kind of work?"
"The kind you're good at," Chad said. Chad made a show of looking towards a corner of the room as Reed pulled his pants up under the blanket. He enjoyed the feel of the zipper on his balls, and he regretfully stuffed his gear into his pants before he zipped up. Everything he did lately felt sexual, everything.
Reed was only good at a few things, getting loaded, fucking, and hurting people. He had always known about the first two, but the last one had been something of a fortunate discovery.
Chad continued speaking. "We've got a problem."
"When do we not have a problem?"
"We have to kill the black guy," he said. Reed just listened. "Those girls are good stock. The one is a little mouthy, but that's a good thing in a child, I suppose. Don't want our offspring to be docile and stupid. But, if that black man wakes up and tells what I did to him, we're going to lose a couple chickies."
Reed smirked. "We can just take them. What does it matter if they want to stay or not?"
Chad looked at Reed with that big bro look on his face. Reed had seen that look three or four times a day since they were teenagers. That look served two functions. On one hand, it told Reed to pay attention to something important. On the other hand, it let Reed know that his brother loved him, despite all of his quirks.
"We have to get them to want to be here because we need them to breed, and a woman that is forced to do things against her will doesn't make a very good mother. In fact, they might actually hurt themselves to hurt the baby."
"Is that what happened with you and Dez?"
Chad cuffed him on the back of the head, as he had done off and on since they were knee-high, and Reed knew he had opened his big mouth just a little too wide.
"Never you mind about me and Dez," Chad said.
"So what do you want me to do?" Reed asked.
