Morgan looked around, pleased at the life he would now be able to have with his son. A clear-cut mountaintop, a house with a generator, an arsenal of weapons, a well and enough supplies to last for ten years, he estimated. This place was like a fortress. There was even a smokehouse filled with what seemed like an enormous number of animal carcasses. He doubted he'd be trying any of those, since he had no idea how to tell if the meat was still safe, and he didn't have a taste for opossum and other small animals. Still, thank God for militia members. Those guys had been expecting this for years. Well, maybe not this.
He took a look around the place. It was spotless, and quite homey, actually. The owners clearly were proud of what they had made. There was also an impressive selection of books, although some of them were on subjects he had little interest in, like taxidermy. He looked around the house more, trying to figure out who had owned this place. One of the rooms appeared to be a bedroom, but it didn't have a bed, just a bed-sized straw mat. It looked like there was a Buddhist shrine on the dresser, but otherwise the room was pretty much empty. It appeared there had once been clothes in the closet, but now all that remained was what looked like…monk's robes? He was having a tough time reading this one. The other bedroom was more what he expected – there was clutter, a video game console, books and a few framed photos. One of the photos stood out – two men posing with hunting equipment. It looked like they were about to set out on an expedition. The familiar way the older man wrapped his arm around the younger one made him think that they were relatives. They both had the same heavily lidded blue eyes. Brothers, maybe. Or father and son, although they didn't look like more than a decade separated them.
Maybe they were educated mountain men of some sort. That would make sense. In addition to an impressive collection of the works of Rumi, the thirteenth-century mystic poet, there was some serious weaponry in this house, including some really lethal-looking knives. It looked like the younger man in the picture had some sort of mechanized bow and arrow thingamajig that looked pretty lethal. (Morgan's life as a college professor in comparative literature had not provided him with any sort of knowledge in this area.) However, he'd found no sign of it anywhere in the house, so he assumed the man had taken it with him.
He took a minute to wonder what might happen if the mountain men came back. It seemed like a longshot, but considering how prepared the two men were, and how experienced with weapons, he couldn't rule it out entirely. They looked like survivors. He wasn't that worried, though. He had a feeling they were reasonable men. After all, one of them was a Buddhist – weren't they supposed to be non-violent?
He thanked his lucky stars that he had decided not to look for Rick Grimes. He had tried for days to answer Rick's transmissions but had received no response. He had finally realized that the man was using the radio for some sort of rambling monologue and then immediately turning the radio off. At first Morgan was irritated that Rick didn't seem to get the idea of two-way communication. However, irritation soon gave way to compassion; the poor guy had clearly snapped and was living in an alternate reality. Nothing Rick was saying could possibly be true. No group of people could be that stupid and survive. It would be funny if it weren't so tragic.
