by Morris, Jacy
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 she had secretly been plotting to get rid of them the whole time for the deaths of Lou and Clara. The only thing that had stayed her hand had been their big, round bellies and the babies inside. But she hadn't thought about the other side… well, to be fair, she had, she just hadn't thought about it much. They had killed the fathers of their babies, and that was going to be hard to move past. If she were in that situation, how would she feel? She'd probably want to kill the people that did it. The idea shocked her—that her brain could even comprehend the concept of killing. Her entire life, up until the end of the world, had been dedicated to saving lives. Now, the idea of killing just flit across her mind with no more consequence than a snatch of remembered song.
She was about to say, "I can put the past behind me," when Dez spoke up and said, "Fuck that."
Theresa and Liz shared a look loaded with meaning. They had obviously expected Dez's reaction.
Dez continued on. "You fuckers left me tied up in there. You let me lie there, and you didn't lift a finger to help."
"What did you want us to do?" Theresa asked.
"Do something," Dez yelled. "Don't just sit there. You didn't even come in to see me. You didn't even come in to help, and don't think I don't know why, Theresa!" Dez was shouting now.
"Hey, keep it down," Mort said. "You're going to bring the dead."
But Dez didn't keep it down. She barreled straight ahead, "You wanted Chad for yourself, so you wanted me out of the way!"
"You didn't even want him!" Theresa shouted back.
The two rose from their seats then, and Joan began to get real nervous. She did a quick scan for weapons. There weren't many about except for her spear and the steak knives they had been using to cut their meat. If Theresa had wanted to clear the air in order to make peace, it was not going well.
"Didn't matter what I did and didn't want. You could have had his sorry ass. You didn't need to talk everyone into locking me away."
"You were going to kill yourself. You'd be dead if it wasn't for me."
"And I bet you regret that now!" Dez yelled.
They were inches from each other's faces. If Joan could have stood and walked over to them without fear of being tossed to the ground due to her leg, she would have stepped between the two. Katie seemed content to just watch. Liz and Tammy sat watching the two with a glazed expression as if they were watching an old episode of Live PD. Joan glanced over at Mort. He clearly didn't know what to do.
"You guys, this is unnecessary," Joan said.
"Stay out of it," Dez commanded without looking at her.
"Mind your own business," Theresa said.
Joan decided to bow out, but as her last word, she said, "At least drop the steak knives if you two are going to go at it."
Dez looked down in her hand. She gripped the knife tightly, her knuckles white, except where they had split from the dryness of the winter air. Her hand wavered for a second, and then she threw the knife on the ground.
Theresa realized how close she might have come to death. Her steak knife sat on her plate where she had left it. She didn't say anything for a second, and then her throat bobbed as if she was swallowing a shit sandwich. "I'm sorry," she said.
Dez didn't have anything to say to that, but Joan could see a little bit of the tension go out of her.
"What I did was wrong," Theresa said. "I know that. I could lie and say that you deserved it, or that it was between you and Chad, but I know I'm partly responsible for it. So, I'm sorry." Tears glinted in Theresa's eyes, and Joan started to feel herself getting emotional.
The ball was in Dez's court, but she just stood there, her fists clenched.
"I'm sorry, too," Joan said.
All eyes turned to look at her.
She swallowed her own lump of shit sandwich and forged ahead. "I'm sorry that we killed your friends." She hadn't actually killed any of them that hadn't been bitten, but at the moment, she didn't think any of that mattered. "I'm sorry that I've been giving you all the cold shoulder. I'm sorry that I've been thinking about getting back at you for the death of my friends. My friends were good people, and though I didn't know them, I'm sure your friends were all good people too."
Dez turned and looked at her, her eyes two dark sparkles reflecting the firepit. The sun had gone down. Joan could see from the look on her face that she was going to undo all of the apologizing she had just done.
"I'm sorry too," Mort said. "I killed some of your people. I ain't gonna make no excuses. I don't like killing. I don't think there are enough of us to be killing anyone. I won't do it again. You got my promise."
His words rang true. For all of the insecurities that Mort exhibited in social situations, he certainly had a way of coming through at exactly the right moment. Dez looked at Mort, and then the others apologized as well. They apologized for their cattiness, their whispered plans for killing the others, their refusal to lend a hand and help each other.
By the time they were done, Joan saw tears in the eyes of most of the women around the camp. The lone exception was Dez. She still stood, though Theresa had settled back down long ago. The group looked at her expectantly.
Dez looked up at the sky, as if having a conversation with an invisible person suspended in the air. The first sign that Joan had that she might be coming around was the unclenching of her fists. Without making eye contact, her eyes still locked on the sky, she said, "I apologize for killing people. I apologize for planning to kill every one of you at one point or another."
Joan was shocked. Surely, she couldn't have been on Dez's list.
"I apologize for it all… except for Chad. I don't apologize for that. If he was here, I'd kill him again." She lowered her eyes and looked at Theresa. "Is that good enough for you?"
Theresa nodded, sniffling.
Dez moved around the firepit and retook her seat. She picked up her plate and sighed. "This is really good," Dez said.
With that, it was as if all of the pressure had been let out of a balloon. They each picked up their plates and began to eat again. The meat was cold now, but it was still amazing. It had been so long since Joan had eaten something fresh.
"We should make a pact," Katie said.
They spent their time around the fire, hammering out the words and making promises to each other. When the time came, Joan read the words on a scrap of paper Dez had found in the ranger station.
"The past is the past, and it no longer has a hold on me. I vow to survive and cause no harm to my fellow survivors."
It was a simple pact, but it covered everything they needed. When they all went to bed, to get away from the cold, they did so unburdened, and sleep came easily for most of them…
****
She stood in the snow, looking at the spot where the meat had been packed away. She felt a hunger that threatened to consume her. Her stomach was still full from the night's feast, but she wanted to eat more. A fierce heat pulsed in her shoulder, and in her mind, all she could do was picture the red blood on her plate as she had pressed on the bear meat with her knife. The bear had been overcooked. She squatted down in the snow, resisting what her body told her to do. No, I won't eat the meat raw. But the hunger told her different
ly.
Chapter 10: A Day to Remember
Walt awoke with a start. He didn't know why. His eyes snapped open, and he groped for his flashlight in the darkness of a storage unit among old furniture and crates full of photo albums. He had spent the evening before looking through the old photos, running his fingers over them, as if he could actually touch the pictures of a world that didn't exist any longer.
He saw birthday parties, smiling people, smiling children… cake. And he wanted to be there, so bad. He flipped through a photo album dedicated to someone's wedding, glossy 8x10s of someone else's life, everyone dressed to the nines. He had fallen asleep then, drifting into dreams inspired by the photos. He dreamed about a birthday party he was having, and then he was getting married. He had struggled to see his bride's face under her veil. It was too thick, the shadows in the church too dark. When the priest had asked, "Do you, Andy, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?" he had corrected the priest. "Walt," he said, and the priest repeated the line with the correct name.
He had said, "I do," and in the dream, he realized it was something that he had wanted to say for a long time. Just as he went to kiss the bride, as he was lifting the veil, his eyes had sprung open.
Now he was trying to recall if he had seen the woman's face, so he could be on the lookout for it in the future. But no, there was nothing. Then there was another sound, and he realized he had heard the sound before, that it was what had awakened him in the first place—a gunshot.
He bolted up from his sleeping bag. He shoved his boots on his feet unlaced and threw up the rolling door of the storage unit. He heard the same from other units. He stepped into the concrete hallway, and he saw a sleepy-eyed Tejada rubbing at the back of his head, trying to shake off sleep.
"You hear that?" Tejada asked him.
He nodded.
"Wake 'em up, Walt," Tejada said. Then he turned and went back into his storage unit to pack his shit.
Walt walked down the line of storage units, banging softly on the metal, loud enough to wake the occupants, but not loud enough to alert anything outside that they were inside the storage facility.
When he was done, all the doors had been raised, and people were scrambling to pack up all of their gear. Walt rushed back to his own unit, thoughts of a bride and her unseen face all but forgotten. He squatted down and rolled up his sleeping bag, rolling it as tight and compact as he could. He fastened it to his backpack, and then took the time to lace his boots, double knotting the laces so that they wouldn't come undone at an inopportune moment. He lifted his huge, heavy pack onto his back and let it settle in. His back was sore from the previous day. They had done some training in full gear throughout the fall months, but that pack had been lighter, and he hadn't carried it all day, the way he had yesterday.
As he tightened the straps of his backpack, he heard several more shots.
Tejada was already standing in the hallway when he stepped out.
"What do you think, sir?" Allen asked.
Tejada had given up on asking the soldiers to stop calling him sir. "I think we got gunshots out there, and we have to decide whether someone's in trouble or if someone is trouble. They got guns, which could mean one or the other. But you know me, I'm always looking for a good fight."
They took a vote, and everyone, with the exception of Whiteside, voted to investigate the gunshots. With that settled, they made sure their weapons were locked and loaded. They double-checked their bags and double-checked the storage units they had slumbered in. No one wanted to leave anything behind. It would be a real pain in the ass if you lost a can-opener or a spoon.
When they were finished, they left the doors to the storage units open and stepped out onto the snow-covered pavement of the storage facility's parking lot. Annies waited for them at the main gate, but they hadn't encircled them. Walt could see that if they were quick, they could escape through the backside of the storage facility before the Annies could reach them.
They moved quickly, and Walt stretched his legs as he went. It was going to be tough going if he pulled a muscle. They repeated the steps they had gone through the previous day, sending over Epps and Allen first while Masterson and Brown helped Tejada get up and over the fence. Tejada was sore today. They could see the strain on his face.
What Tejada really needed was time to heal, but Walt knew that there wasn't enough time for that. He was going to have to heal on the fly. He didn't know if that was possible. None of them were doctors. Hell, he, Rudy, and Amanda weren't anything at all. The world had ended before they could find their careers. At least the others could call themselves soldiers. He guessed that was what he was now. The others treated him as such, though his bond with the others wasn't as great. He hadn't gone through basic training. He hadn't watched the city fall apart in front of his eyes while his friends were devoured. The other soldiers had seen those things, but they still considered him one of them. He hoped so, at least.
When they were all up and over, they found themselves standing between the iron fence and a grassy hill that sloped upwards. They didn't climb the hill but moved parallel to the fence, heading west. They listened for gunshots as they went, glancing toward the horde of Annies that were trying to push their way through the fence's iron bars to get at them. Walt silently thanked the gods that they didn't have the power to think. They could gain some ground on the Annies as long as they were stuck at the fence.
As soon as they passed the fence and were away from the storage facility, the dead started shuffling after them. There was a good hundred yards between their group and the dead. They circled around a strip mall filled with boring things like mattress stores and a carpet warehouse. To their right, they could see the hell that was the highway. It was separated from their position by a hundred yards of grassy berm and a chain-link fence with spiky metal tips jutting above the cross pole. Hundreds of the dead milled around the highway, some trapped in cars, some wandering aimlessly between the snow-covered road. No one suggested they make their way to the highway. It would be a death sentence.
Instead, they rounded the corner of the strip mall and pushed their way through the snow to the main road. They were careful as they approached, avoiding the drainage ditches on the side of the road to prevent twisted ankles or worse.
As they reached the road, they heard the gunshot again. They were close.
Walt pointed in the direction he thought the gunshot came from, and they tore ass down the street. He had his bowling ball unslung from around his shoulders. The dead ahead of them were on the march. Even if he was deaf, Walt would know from which direction the shots came because he could see the dead homing in on them.
Walt ran in the lead, his breath pluming out before him. He swung American Express through the air, crushing any of the dead he happened to pass. As another gunshot rang out, the dead stayed locked onto the sound of the living, unaware that food was right behind them.
He crushed several skulls, sending the dead to the ground. The others laid into the dead with their hatchets. They didn't stop to check and see if the dead were truly dead. There wasn't time. Whoever was firing off their gun might as well have been ringing a dinner bell.
They kept to Cornell Road until they saw another road peel off through a shopping area. Walt's mouth watered as they ran past an Old Chicago pizza joint. He would kill for a slice of pizza. Up the hill they went, knocking down the dead as they went.
He was coming up on a woman with long gray hair, when she turned suddenly, her arms held out to Walt. He swung his bowling ball sideways just as the Annie turned, sending the bowling ball sailing past her head, the rope wrapping around the Annie's neck like a bolo. It pulled the Annie closer to him, and he dropped the rope and stepped back to avoid the Annie as it fell on its face, clawing at his retreating form. It landed face down in the snow, and Walt stepped between its shoulder blades and pulled on the rope wrapped around its neck. The bowling ball wouldn't come free. So he stomped on the back of the creature's he
ad until the gray hair turned red with slushy blood. When the Annie stopped moving, he unwrapped the rope from around the creature's neck.
Walt stood and realized he was in last place now. Everyone else, even Tejada, held between Rudy and Amanda, had passed him.
He hurried to catch up, his thighs and calves burning from slogging through the snow. There was another gunshot, and this time the sound was closer. It was coming from one of the stores down the way. The sun came out then, glinting off the snow, and he squinted his eyes as the reflection off the snow threatened to blind him.
****
Allen marveled at the brightness of the sun. It had been so long since he had seen it. He welcomed it like an old friend. It blasted off the surface of the snow, creating a glare that he had to squint to see through, but the sunshine felt good on his vitamin-starved skin.
They moved through the snow, and images of dogsleds popped into his head. Imagine how much easier this would all be if they had dogs pulling them along. But no, they were the dogs; they were pulling their own sleds.
They passed a Best Buy on the right, a bank on the left, and then they saw the source of the gunfire. A woman stood with her back to the sliding glass doors of a Target. The dead closed in on her position.
"I see someone," Allen called back to Tejada, pointing with his free hand. His other held a hatchet that dripped with blood, thick like maple syrup.
"Let's get 'em on our side," Tejada called. "Make some noise. We got 'em spread out, so no guns. Every Annie within a mile is probably on its way here, so let's be quick about it. Guns are a last resort."
With the rules of engagement established, Allen put on a burst of speed. He whooped and hollered, trying to get the attention of the dead. It worked. Those Annies closest to him turned, spinning in the snow, and they came at him. He hefted the hatchet in his hand as he sprinted past the first one. It felt good to run. It felt good to push himself. He put everything he had into his first swing, and he felt the meaty crunch of the hatchet as it dug into the Annie's skull. It dropped to the ground immediately, and he placed a boot on its jaw, bent down, and yanked his hatchet free.
