Slowly, as the light dwindled, I began to return to myself. I couldn’t stay out here all day. I had to figure out what to do. I didn’t feel cold, but I knew that this could be caused by shock. Hypothermia could creep up and kill quickly in this sort of situation. I needed to warm up, rest and think. I didn’t know how long I’d been in the hospital, maybe in a coma. I probably needed fluid too. Maybe, I thought, that was why I felt so odd.
Shock, perhaps, had pushed it from my mind, but as I began to stir and return to the world I found that the hunger returned as well. I had to find food and shelter. I reckoned I was fortunate that a rare warm breeze blew from the west or I might have succumbed to hypothermia as I sat there alone in the parking lot. The night would bring cold, dark and thirst and those were three problems I had to solve if I wanted to see the morning.
I walked back down Main Street aimless and slow. I was adrift. I had no goal other than food, warmth and rest. An escape from the waking nightmare I’d stumbled into. Without realizing knowing how I had come to be there, I found myself standing in front of the locked doors of the sporting goods store that I had passed by on the way to the smoke. Some part of me that refused to quit, refused to give in, had caused me to come to a stop there, realizing subconsciously, perhaps, that this store would have what I needed. I’m not sure how long I stood in front of that door before the wheels in my head started turning again, but the sky was the dim grey that comes just before dark when I came back to myself.
For a few moments I stood before the glass door wondering what to do. No lights were on. It seemed the town had no power; the street lamps should have begun to light by now and even the battery powered emergency lights, as I’d seen in the hospital, were dim. The part of me conditioned to be a good member of society rebelled against the thought of breaking in.
What if they come back? it asked, What if the police or army come to save the town? I don’t even know what the hell happened…
They ain’t coming back from that, another voice within me replied, referring to the human fire that had been burned into my mind. Whatever happened, it’s big and I think you’ll be able to explain a B n’ E under the circumstances. That or lie down and die. Your choice.
A raven cawed nearby, causing me to jump. I didn’t like the thought of freezing to death in the cold night. I was uncomfortable with living or dying among the ash-ghosts that would haunt this town until they were swept away by man or by time and nature.
In the failing light, I found a rock a little bigger than my fist and hammered it against the glass next to the deadbolt. The glass was shatter resistant. It took a few heavy strikes, but soon I’d punched out a hole large enough to reach my arm through. I groped around until I found the latch that opened the lock. I was fortunate that security was not a major concern in this town; the door was easy enough to breach.
I stepped inside. The interior of the building felt no warmer than outside. It had gone at least a day; perhaps a few, without power and heat and any memory of warmth had faded from the place. Right in front of the windows sat a couple of tills, still vaguely lit from the shadows that remained of the day. The first thing I spotted was a phone. I picked it up and put it to my ear, hoping to dial 9-1-1. There was no dial tone. The phone was not wireless. It required no power, only a working phone line to operate. It was one thing for the power to be out, but it was rare for the phone lines to be dead. I replaced the handset and looked around.
In a convenient little box on a shelf near the checkout, where things are kept that people forget they need until they go to pay, I found a pile of multi-coloured stainless steel penlights with bright white LED bulbs and fully charged batteries. I took a handful, stuffing a few in my lab coat pocket. I realized suddenly that I should have been freezing in the thin cotton coat. I set out to look for warm clothes and blankets. That was the first priority. I turned on a flashlight to guide me through the dark building.
In those days, the days before the disaster, it had been rare not to have electric light available at the flip of a switch. In my work I’d spent a good part of the year living without electricity, or at least without reliable electricity. I rarely had given it thought. Despite this, I was unnerved and disturbed to see the whole town dark. It was one thing to choose to leave an urban area behind, to leave technology and electricity with it. There had always been the choice to go back. A person was never too far from power and light, and I had always known where civilization could be found if and when I wanted or needed to return. It was a new and terrifying experience to be unsure when or where I might find a safe-haven, normalcy; a clean, well-lighted place. Humanity had won the war against darkness and it had been forced to the emptiest corners of the world. Now, it seemed, the darkness had clawed its way back. Had we so suddenly and so quickly lost the struggle that had taken centuries of advancement and ingenuity to win? The simple little flashlight had become a treasure like so many others: rarely valued until you’re lacking for it. Even I, who had mocked and disdained city-folk and urbanites for their softness was only now appreciating the full value of such a simple tool.
The light was not the only unappreciated treasure that awaited me inside the shop. The town was a supply stop for campers, anglers, lake-goers; professional and amateur outdoorsmen, and all manner of people enjoying or passing through the edge of civilization, where humanity begins at last to give way to nature.
The sporting goods shop was well stocked for these people. Hunting, fishing and camping supplies covered the dark shelves, a great cache for even the most discerning survivalist.
I gave in to my hunger first, tearing open the foil packaging of a trail-mix bar, which sat beside the flashlights near the till. I took a bite, shoving half the bar into my dry mouth in one motion. I barely chewed before swallowing. After I had gulped down the bar I opened another, but paused, puzzled. I could taste nothing but dry ash; as though the bar had been pressed from the remains of the very fire I had just left. I imagined, with a horrible retching feeling that convulsed from groin to tongue, that I’d taken a bite of the charred remains. I nearly choked as I swallowed the last mouthful. I coughed and sputtered for a few moments, convinced that something was wrong with the bar.
I wondered if it had expired and mouldered, though I knew bars like these were made to last ages before going bad. Perhaps the package had accidentally opened. I held the flashlight over the package and sniffed at it. I couldn’t smell much, but the package looked untainted. I couldn’t see the expiration date, but the package looked shiny and new. The second bar I had opened showed no signs of any spoiling either. Cautiously, I took a small bite but spat it on the floor. This, too, tasted of ash. Perhaps I had breathed in too much soot from the fire and it had coated my mouth.
The thought made me feel worse. Intentionally or not, it meant that particles from those many people had entered my body, had been ingested. The room spun around me and my face contorted as I began to gag again. I put out a hand to steady myself, knocking over boxes of trail mix and bars that sat on the shelf I’d grabbed at. The clatter was unwelcome in the dark, silent room.
I lost my appetite and turned the flashlight further into the shop. Water. I needed water. I needed to rinse the human ash from my mouth. I explored the store, grabbing from shelves things that I would need to survive a day or two until I could find rescue and report the whole strange story to some authority.
Where the hell are the Mounties? I’ll need to find their office in the morning, I thought. If there isn’t anyone there, at least I might find some record of what the hell happened here.
In the meantime, I prepared myself to spend a night in the sporting goods store. There was hardly anything for me to do. In the center of the store a display had been set up with all the best camping gear arranged on fake turf, as though in a campsite. A folding cot and warm sleeping bag were already laid out for me, and a florescent lantern sat on a folding card table, waiting to cast a bright light around my campsite.
Two propane heaters and a stov
e sat nearby, already hooked up to a tank. I switched them on as well and dim blue and orange flames hissed and flickered gently to life, offering instant warmth, though I still did not feel cold.
I put my small flashlight down and picked up the bright lantern instead, wandering through the aisles of the shop casting long shifting shadows in the dim light. Water was the first priority. If I couldn’t find water here, I’d have to look in buildings until I found some. Some shop or building was bound to have a supply of water bottles or the big tubs used in water coolers.
It was likely that the taps would still have pressure, although that depended on how long the town had been abandoned, whether or not pipes had frozen and how the town’s water was supplied. If the town had a water tower, pressure would be gravity driven, but I could not remember if I’d seen a water tower during my walk in from the medical center.
It didn’t take long to find a shelf of bottled water in containers of all sizes. I immediately opened one bottle and began to rinse my mouth, spitting out mouthful after mouthful right on the tile floor. The water burned as it passed my lips. Soon the bottle was empty and, though the ash taste was still present, I felt better; relieved to have washed away the offensive particles. I picked up a flat of twelve bottles and a package of the vitamin and mineral tablets and brought them back to my campsite.
I thirstily gulped down an entire bottle of the water, but coughed and sputtered half of it back up onto the floor. My mouth and throat were so dry that the liquid burned everything it touched as I drank. I realized then just how badly dehydrated I was. I knew well that drinking too much or too quickly after extreme dehydration could kill. I opened another bottle and contented myself with another painful, tortured sip and set the water aside. I decided I would have a sip every few minutes and begin to rehydrate myself slowly through the night.
I stripped out of the outfit I had borrowed from the hospital and found clothes that were more suited to me and looked a little less like a bad Halloween costume. I found plenty in my size, picking up several pairs of thick socks, cotton undershirts that were warm but light, flannel over-shirts, sweaters, and a couple warm jackets. I couldn’t resist the temptation to take a long duster jacket of supple brown leather with thick, quilted lining. I grabbed several pairs of thermal knit long johns and a few pairs of khaki cargo pants. All the time I’d spent patrolling the rigs had taught me to dress warm, but in layers. Sweat could be as much a killer as cold. After dressing, I stuffed what remained of my chosen supplies into a strong hiking backpack that would easily fit everything I’d need if I had to walk to the next nearest town. I found a couple pairs of good boots; warm and made of leather with good hiking grip.
After piling all the stuff I figured I’d need for the night, I settled into the cot warmed by the heat radiating from the propane burners. I actively shut down all the thoughts that came to me as I relaxed into sleep: all the unanswered questions, all the unimaginable answers… Where would I go? What would I do? What tragedy had occurred here? Was anyone left?
I pushed it all away as though swatting at the crows that shouted at me in their cracking voices as they circled the moving pile of burnt humans, which now squirmed like worms disturbed from their rest in the dark soil. I did not know where waking thought ended and uneasy dreams began, but my head swam until morning on the blurred and wavering border that exists between consciousness and sleep.
Five
To say that I awoke would not be correct for one who never truly slept, but as the light of morning came through the windows, I gave up the pretence of sleep and allowed my eyes to open. Through the whole night I doubt I was ever more than half asleep, and the few times that I had begun to drift a little further into unconsciousness, I was plagued with uneasy dreams filled with tight coffins, crows, blackened writhing bodies and fire. When grey light began to grow, I dreamt for a moment of the sick man who had died on the plane beside me. In the dream he had begun vomiting copious amounts of viscous, copper-smelling blood all over me. I was instantly aware of a severe pang of the intense hunger I’d been feeling knotted in my gut. My dream self had just been preparing to take a bite out of the sick man’s arm, desperate to satisfy the hunger.
After all the shock from the day before, I had all but forgotten that flight and that man. As I laid on the cot trying to trick myself into slipping back into sleep, it occurred to me that he, maybe, had been the cause of all this. His illness was one I’d never seen before. The thick foam suffocating his breathing, the blotchy red swelling in his face, the foaming and congealing blood in his eyes and mouth… It sounded like all the horrible plagues you read about. Ebola, bubonic plague, small pox, Spanish flu… Something serious. I started to put a story together for myself.
I wondered if perhaps I’d come down with the same disease, whatever it was. Maybe, I thought, that’s how I’d ended up unconscious, possibly in a coma. Maybe it had spread fast; maybe it killed fast. That would explain all the burned bodies. People working to contain the outbreak trying to make sure it couldn’t spread from the dead.
Maybe I’d been mistaken for dead or had somehow been forgotten in the evacuations, or maybe they just couldn’t risk bringing me for fear of spreading the disease. However it had happened, they had stuffed me in a morgue fridge. It explained why the hospital looked as though a disaster had struck but the rest of the town was empty and untouched. A quick, organized evacuation might look like that, I thought. People would take what they needed and lock up the rest and wait until it was safe to return. They probably had to move out quick, I guessed.
Yes. A sudden deadly outbreak explained a lot. I couldn’t think of any other reason an entire town would be deserted and bodies burned unceremoniously in a parking lot; especially here in quiet Canada where nothing like this ever happened.
I remembered, vaguely, sitting on the flight, passing over the newspaper article about the new super flu, thinking it another media over-reaction. Perhaps this one time the journalists who cried wolf had had it right. It was the only explanation I could think of, so I stuck with it.
It also gave me a plan. I would head south along the roads and make for more populated areas and find out what was going on. They might quarantine me for a while to make sure that whatever illness had afflicted me had passed and that there was no risk of contagion, but I could deal with that. If I headed south, I’d probably hit some police roadblock. I might spend a few days, a month maybe, bored in a warm hospital room with showers and hot food, monitored by disease control doctors in those thick rubber suits and masks; I might be poked and prodded with needles and I.V.s, but then it would be over and I could get on with my life.
Maybe I’d watched too many disaster movies. I could imagine evil government members debating whether or not to wipe out an epidemic with nukes or force infected people into refugee camps with inadequate supplies. I worried that the roadblocks might have been given orders to gun down the sick to stop the spread of the illness. I forced the thoughts out of my head as ridiculous over active imaginings, but decided that I’d have to be careful.
I realized that if Canada had been hit by a disease so deadly and contagious that an entire town had either been wiped out or evacuated, people would be getting jumpy. They might get nervous and shoot me at a checkpoint. If there was a serious quarantine or travel ban, I realized, they might not let me through. They might not be able to get me to a hospital. They might not take the risk of having another infected patient in a hospital bed. They might have to quarantine me out here for a while, out in the wilderness.
I decided that before leaving the town I’d search around and gather all the supplies I’d need to last a few months if I couldn’t get south. Fortunately, I’d already found most of these in the sporting goods shop. I began to wander around the shop, packing up bags with all the things I figured I’d need if I were to spend a week or more away from civilization. Before long I had enough gear and supplies to make even the most hard-core survivalist weep tears of joy.
/> I realized that this provided another clue as to how fast this thing had happened. Any time disaster rears its head, people panic. I had been too young to take notice, but remembered hearing about the Y2K scare, when fear had spread that a calendar bug in computer systems would cause some sort of worldwide error or crash when the clock struck midnight on December 31, 1999. All kinds of people had raided supermarkets, department stores and sporting goods shops. There had apparently been shortages of canned food, gas and bottled water. The same thing had occurred after September 11th, and among some wound-up people in December of 2012, when the Mayan calendar had been set to end. Again and again it had happened; during floods and fires, earthquakes and eruptions… People had often stocked up, ready to run for the hills. There were many who had made a lifestyle out of the practice.
Here, in this town, I could see no evidence of that. Here everything was well stocked. There was no run on bottled water, fuel or non-perishable food. Everything was neat and tidy; in its place on the shelves. Business as usual. They didn’t have time to prepare; didn’t have time to panic, I thought.
I built two stacks of gear and consumables. One was a small stack, a couple of backpacks worth of supplies; just the essentials; what I could carry on foot. The bare bones. The other stack was a huge stockpile. It was probably enough to last me a month or two, and that if I was being careless. The larger pile was all the stuff I wanted. All the things I’d take if I could find a vehicle or, if need be, a place to hole up for a while.
As it turned out, finding a vehicle wasn’t difficult at all. At the back of the sporting goods shop, by the gun cabinets and ammo stock, a big heavy ring of keys had been left on the counter beside the cash register. Attached to the key ring was a key and remote fob moulded with the Jeep logo. It was perfect luck.
I went outside and looked up and down the street. The sun was high and ice crystals sparkled and drifted lazily, hanging in the air, blowing off the lake in the light breeze. The town’s buildings were low and non-descript. None were taller than two or three stories. Some of the buildings, like so many in the towns around here, bore false western-style facades. A steak house nearby had a veranda and street-front built of rough, saw hewn boards but the remainder of the building was modern brick and mortar, painted plain grey to draw the eye instead to the false, overtly western front. A couple of wooden wagon wheels with rusted iron bands leaned against the door frame and two porch lights hung above them built of antlers, the glass around the electric light bulbs made to look like hurricane lamps.
The Penance of Leather (Book 1): Ain't No Grave Page 4