The Penance of Leather (Book 1): Ain't No Grave

by S. A. Softley

  The man hadn’t seemed to notice the crippled limb beneath him. His eyes did not register the pain; hadn’t even flinched. His face continued to snarl and leer at us as it had done when the door opened. His stiff fingers tried to grip the cold concrete as he tried to pull himself forward with alarming determination.

  I took a deep breath and squeezed the trigger of the shotgun. There was a loud bang, a flash and a puff of smoke. The crawling creature collapsed; a smoking, gaping hole in his back. I heard the metallic staccato click as I pumped the spent cartridge out, simultaneously chambering a new one.

  There was another bang and another click. I was aware of what was happening around me, but it was all automatic. I wasn’t controlling my movements, I was watching them from somewhere outside of myself. More shots rang out and time seemed to pass slowly, my eyes now seeing nothing but blurred shapes, refusing to come to focus on the human bodies down the sights of my gun.

  When I came out of the haze I’d gone into, the barrel of the shotgun was still smoking. Seven shapes that had been human lay writhing on the ground, still hissing and gurgling in wordless animal fury. Seven shots… When had I reloaded? I thought, dazed.

  I saw their faces clearly again, my eyes refocusing at last. Though their bodies were crippled, filled with holes and turned to mulch, the diseased people were still ‘alive,’ for lack of a better word. Their faces still snarled with anger and blood lust. I didn’t see a trace of pain in their faces, only frustration and violence.

  I looked at the face of the first man I’d shot. His teeth were gnashing, biting at the air, perhaps hoping that some bit of flesh would come near enough to his mouth that he could taste one last meal. I looked at the pulpy hole in his back. His organs were unrecognizable. Bone and blood and raw meat had mixed together to create a substance the texture of raw ground beef.

  I had hit him square in the centre of his back and could see through to his front ribs, his spine shattered. I thought I could see sidewalk through his ribs in two places where bone had disintegrated but it was a mess and hard to tell for sure.

  I could tell there was nothing left of his lungs. My face tightened in horror, the barrel of my gun lowering.

  “How is that possible?” I hissed, “How… How…” my throat closed up and I gagged.

  “I told you,” Meg said, matter-of-factly, the hate had disappeared from her voice, replaced with cold emptiness. “I told you they weren’t people any more. They aren’t really alive. At least not like we’ve ever known. They truly are… undead, I suppose. Zombies.”

  It all seemed too unreal. It wasn’t possible. Undead were the stuff of bad movies. They were cheap thrills. The world’s best movie bad guy next to the Nazis. That was all. There had been a few times already where I’d felt tempted to use the term zombie to describe what I’d seen, but it had always seemed silly, unreal, inappropriate. I had thought of them as diseased people, suffering from some horrible illness, brain damaged and dangerous, perhaps, but still human. Suddenly, as I watched that man who had no business moving squirm, I realized that these really were animated corpses. They didn’t seem to need a spine, a heart or lungs anymore.

  “How the hell do you kill them?” I asked.

  “You know how in the movies you can shoot ‘em in the head?” Megan asked.

  “Yeah,” I nodded.

  “That doesn’t work. Not really, anyway.”

  “Oh.”

  “Whatever part of them is still intact moves. It took them a while to figure that out. Before everyone was gone, I saw a cop shoot one of ‘em right in the forehead. He went over to check the body and the thing bit him in the thigh. Never saw the Mountie again. They started burning the bodies once they figured it out. That seems to work.”

  “So shooting them doesn’t do any good?”

  “It works; I mean… look at them. They can’t really move much, they’re crippled, but they’re still dangerous. I mean, if you shoot it in the head and you damage enough of the head, it’s less dangerous, especially if it can’t see or smell or bite you, but they can still grab. The hands still work; the legs still work. Like a cockroach when you crush its head.” Megan had begun rambling again. She had the tell-tale glassy eyes caused by shock. They were unfocused, gazing indistinctly at the bodies that writhed before us. “I don’t know what happens if they totally lose their head… I heard somewhere that if the lowest parts of the brainstem are damaged they stop but I never saw… I don’t think you could hit the brainstem with a bullet. It’s deep… well protected… I never saw anyone stop one with a bullet. It’s no good. No good. Far as I know, burning them is the only thing that completely gets them.” Her voice was frantic, trembling and the words tumbled from her lips with unthinking speed.

  “Take a deep breath,” I said to her, taking my own advice. I didn’t know what to say. We took a step back and allowed the door to close. We stood in silence watching the broken, squirming shapes through the glass.

  “How’d you end up the only one here, Meg?” I asked at last, after we’d both become calm once more. It was a question that had been bothering me. “Why were you alone? No one else got away? No one else made it?” I asked, turning and looking into her eyes.

  “Don’t want to talk about it,” she replied, for just a moment she appeared haunted by a memory. Then the expression in her face closed, neutral as though a curtain had been drawn.

  “Ok.”

  “How’d you get left behind?” she asked. “I thought they’d evacuated everyone from the med centre.”

  “Well they missed me apparently,” I said. I decided not to tell her that I’d woken up in the morgue. Not yet, at least. Suddenly a thought struck me.

  “How did this thing spread, Megan? You said you never saw the Mountie again after he’d been bitten… Is that when they change? Like in the movies?”

  “I don’t really know. I doubt anyone knows for sure. I don’t think they got much time to do research before society collapsed, but I saw a lot of people get sick after they were bitten. Sometimes it was hours; I heard it was never more than a couple days before they were dead. They started checking for bite marks on people, to make sure they were clean. Personally I think it spreads in other ways too. There was… someone I knew… they caught the disease but I don’t think they got bit.”

  “Did anyone ever survive after being bitten?” I asked, my voice cold, sure I already knew the answer.

  “Not that I ever heard of,” she shrugged.

  “When do they start… coming back?”

  “Some public service announcement said anywhere from minutes to a day or two later. Again, assuming they had any clue what they were talking about.”

  We were silent again for a while. I was starting to get a sinking feeling in my gut. I imagined the large bite wound in my arm burning through my shirt, exposing me as one of them. Would anyone who saw it ever trust me? How could they? After what I’d seen I didn’t think I could trust anyone with a bite mark.

  I could almost feel the poison or bacteria or virus… whatever it was, spreading up my arm through my veins, killing me and turning me into a monster on the spot. I imagined turning toward Megan, that animal snarl on my face. I pictured myself sinking my teeth into her flesh. The burning hunger I’d felt since waking; the consuming feeling that seemed to shift between a dull heat like a glowing coal and a roaring blaze; suddenly flared as I pictured Megan with her soft skin…

  Was the illness slow-acting on me? Would I eventually succumb as the others had?

  I shook all of it out of my head. I wasn’t one of them. I’d been bitten, yes. Perhaps I’d even caught the disease and ended up in a coma, but I was here; I was alive and I was in control. If I’d ended up as one of them I wouldn’t be talking, planning for survival, listening to radios and driving cars or saving girls from alcohol poisoning and hypothermia.

  Megan herself had said that they hadn’t really gotten much information or research together before it all fell apart. There could be thousan
ds of other people who’d survived the disease. This was an out-of-the-way northern town; isolated and alone in the wilderness, with nothing much else around for miles and miles. They certainly wouldn’t have been on the cusp of information and news.

  Still, it was difficult to shake the feeling that I could be a ticking time bomb, that one day the disease that had gone dormant might, for some reason, resurface within me and kill me without warning; change me into one of them.

  I shook my head and laughed off the feeling. It felt good to laugh aloud, even as the bodies squirmed at my feet.

  “What’s funny?” Meg asked.

  “Honestly, nothing at all. None of this is funny… but I need to laugh.”

  Meg shook her head, a puzzled expression on her face. She frowned and opened her mouth as though about to reproach me. Instead she laughed as well, a giddy chuckle wiping the care from her face. We stood and laughed together for a few minutes. Anyone would have thought we’d lost it, but there wasn’t anyone left to see.

  “I’ll get some kerosene for the bodies,” Megan said after a while, giving one last chuckle and wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. I doubt if even she knew whether or not the tear had come from desperation and grief or the mad laughter.

  Fourteen

  That afternoonI decided to arrange a surprise for Megan. It looked as though it had been some time since she’d washed and I figured a hot bath would help relieve any lingering hurt from the alcohol, cold and shock from the last few days.

  Megan had decided, still weak and tired, to rest. She was beginning to doze when I told her I was heading out for a short look around and asked her to stay inside with the doors locked until I returned. I didn’t want her to wake up disoriented or wondering why I was gone, though I was not terribly comfortable with leaving her on her own. I would only be gone a few minutes, I decided, and left once I was sure she was sleeping.

  I walked a couple doors down to a motel where I broke into a room to find a small but clean tub. The pipes seemed dangerously cold and I worried that they would soon crack and burst.

  I figured it wouldn’t be long before water mains started blowing out all over town and with no one to fix them; we’d soon be reduced to whatever water we could find stored in bottles and containers. In the mean time, I thought, we might as well use up whatever tap water is available for as long as it was available.

  I unpacked a few kettles and propane burners that I’d brought with me to heat the water. It took half an hour but at last I filled the tub with hot, clean water. The cheap motel bathroom felt like a luxury spa. I’d even managed to find a bag of bath salts. The hot steam from the water helped my joints move more easily and some colour returned to my waxy skin. I stared at my changed face in the steam-fogged mirror.

  Megan hadn’t seen my eyes yet, they had been hidden behind my sunglasses or masked by the dark of night, but they were disconcerting; even horrific, still stained dark with blood. I wondered what would happen when she saw at last, as she inevitably would. How would I explain it? Would she run in terror, thinking I was sick? Would she try to kill me in fear that I would turn on her; infect her? Would she wait for an explanation? I wanted desperately for her to stay, broken as she was. I pushed it from my thoughts, knowing that there was nothing I could do about it.

  Despite all the thoughts that weighed on me, I felt rejuvenated when I walked out into the cold bright afternoon, eager to share my surprise with Megan. I was careful to put my sunglasses on, hoping to keep my eyes and my wound hidden from her for as long as possible. I knew at some point she would see the unmistakeable haemorrhaging but it wouldn’t do any good to think about that now. I pictured her screaming; shouting that I was one of them. I closed my eyes and rubbed them, hoping that the blood red stain on my eyes would simply wipe away.

  When I returned to the sporting goods shop, my breath caught in my throat. The door I had carefully locked had been left unbolted. I rushed inside and saw that Megan’s sleeping bag had been cast aside and a box of shotgun shells stood open on the table, a handful missing. I’d taken my shotgun with me to the hotel. It hung from the strap at my shoulder. I looked toward the back of the room and could see in the dim shadows that the gun cabinet, which I had closed and secured after choosing the two guns I’d wanted, had been opened. The cabinet lock had been knocked off and dangled from the sliding glass door. There was a new empty space in the rack where a shotgun had previously been.

  Meg had gone off alone, taking a gun with her. I worried that she’d decided again to end it. Properly this time. I rushed out the door, my own shotgun ready for any of those things, my sense of dread and abandonment increasing with every minute.

  “Damn it Megan, where the hell are you…” I hissed angrily. I wanted to shout for her, but knew that my shouts would echo through the empty streets and who knew what sort of trouble that would attract.

  Just then I heard a shot ring out, followed closely by another and another. Three shots.

  I ran down the street, turning towards the gunshots. Megan was meandering casually down the street, a couple of heavy looking grocery bags hanging from her elbows, her shotgun resting casually in her hands, a lingering trace of smoke still streaming from the barrel. Two bodies lay writhing in the street behind her. Another was ambling hungrily toward her from the left. She took her time, lining up her sights and getting a better grip. She waited calmly until the figure was almost within arm’s reach and then let off another shot, a fine mist of reddish brown rising in the air. The figure dropped and squirmed like the others behind her. She continued walking calmly down the street. As she came closer, I could hear that she was humming softly to herself. I didn’t recognize the tune.

  “What the fuck, Meg?” I said once she was in shouting distance, seething with anger.

  “What?” she asked sweetly.

  “Where the fuck were you? I was worried sick.” She shrugged dismissively.

  “I figured we could use a decent dinner tonight before it all goes bad. We might as well find all the perishables now, right?”

  “What?” I snapped, angry and uncomprehending. Apparently I hadn’t been the only one arranging a surprise.

  “While it’s cold. We might as well eat all the food that needs refrigeration. Besides, in a few months… if we’re around in a few months…” she added, as though ensuring that I understood there was a caveat, a loophole; that she hadn’t decided for certain to stick around. “…I bet you anything we’ll be sick of canned shit.” I had to admit, she had a point. There was bound to be a lot of good food out there that would soon be going bad. Might as well get what we could while we could.

  “You should’ve fucking told me, Meg, you can’t pull crazy shit like that,” I shouted, unwilling to let go of my frustration. “I thought you were fucking…” I trailed off, taking a deep breath, hesitating at the look that flashed in her eyes.

  “You’ve got me on suicide watch?” she sneered. What should I call you? Warden? Nurse? Doctor? I’m not your fucking child. I never asked you to save me. I don’t belong to you because you fucking found me.”

  I took a deep breath and held it, counting. I decided to let it go. This was not a conversation; not a fight to have right now. I hardly knew her and what I did know was that she was traumatized and bitter. We both were and understandably so. She made it clear she hadn’t committed to living yet and, if I wanted her to stay, I had to be careful until she made that commitment.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, the words a terrible struggle to release. “It’s just not safe…” I stopped myself giving a lecture. She knew that better than I. “You left the goddamn door unlocked…” I added feebly.

  “You took the goddamn key,” she retorted. We glared at each other in silence for seconds longer, flames flickering in each of our eyes.

  “What did you get?” I asked at last after a long, dark silence, my voice surly but deflecting the conversation away from my anger.

  “There’s a nice steakhouse over there.”
The tone of her voice drew back from a vehement hiss to a forced, simmering calm. “Got us a couple twelve-ounce steaks, potatoes, onions, sour cream, bacon, asparagus… the works. And a couple of these,” she held up a heavy looking bag that clinked and sloshed.

  The sun went down in the early evening in a blaze of colour and fire. It looked warm with the white snow on the lake lit in bright oranges and reds, burning even through the polarized lenses of my sunglasses. The sun could fool you like that. It could look beautiful, sunny and warm, but the clear skies brought the coldest weather. Sure enough, the thermometer on my watch indicated that it was intensely cold and quickly getting colder. I’d been out for about ten minutes, checking the radio as I’d done a few times throughout the day.

  There was nothing on the police channels and the AM signal seemed to be weaker. It could have just been atmospheric conditions, but I worried that a nearby station or signal repeater had gone down, leaving us with a distant and distorted signal. Something about losing the broadcast frightened me breathless.

  Megan was inside, preparing dinner. I could smell it faintly through the door. I’d hardly spoken to her since the morning and fluctuated frequently between a chest tightening anger that she’d gone off alone and damn near given me a heart attack and a guilty feeling in the pit of my stomach about having been so angry with her. I shook it off.

  I shut off the van and pulled out the keys, satisfied that I would find nothing but the repeating emergency message on CBC radio. I sat looking at the sunset, squinting into it. In a few minutes the sun would be gone, the orange would dim to a purple, a grey and then black.

  I was worried. Megan was making dinner for us. Dinner that we would eat together by the light of a lantern. Light that would not justify the wearing of sunglasses. She would see my eyes. She would look at them in horror; recognize them as the same eyes that had replaced the eyes of the others in the town… her loved ones. She would scream. She might attack. She might run. I sighed. It was time to face it.