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

by S. A. Softley

  The next clear memory I have is of watching huge flames engulf the sporting goods shop as I stood beside the Jeep in knee-deep snow. I heard the glass storefront shatter, heard the massive blasts as propane, gas and other pressurized tanks exploded violently. I heard the staccato crackle as boxes of ammunition were set off by the intense heat. My eyes were dry now, burning and swollen.

  I remember thinking she would have wanted this. It’s better this way. She didn’t want to be one of them.

  I watched as the fire grew and grew, spreading to more buildings as the flames reached higher, licking the clouds with hungry orange tongues, as though greedily trying to reclaim even the ashes of the woman I’d loved. Thick black smoke swirled upward sending the last particles of Megan up into the air, the heat propelling her high toward the heavens, above the cruel, rotting death that consumed the earth. The last woman. She was safe now. Free.

  The next thing I recall is the image of a distant flicker of lights and the black smudge above them blending into the twilight framed within the rear view mirror as the Jeep rocked violently through the deep snow, slipping and clawing its way forward foot by foot in the growing darkness. It was impossible to tell for certain where the road was and it mattered little. The road was no more or less passable than the rest of the snow covered terrain.

  I neither knew nor cared which direction I was heading, I did not know where I might end up, or what would happen when I got there. I did not know how far my fuel would carry me. I only knew that I needed to be as far away from Lac d’Hiver as I could get.

  The earth seemed to sense the great tragedy, the dark swirling fire that had consumed the last woman; my Megan, and it cried out in pain. The warm, gentle snowfall had been replaced with a terrible blizzard, snow blowing in every direction, carried on terrible gusts that rocked and buffeted the Jeep. The treacherous North Wind blew in anger and fury, freezing the wet snow into sharp pellets of ice; daggers against the windshield. I was lost in a terrible storm that reflected my own turmoil; the rage, the cold, the death... my world consumed, never to be whole again.

  Twenty-Two

  The blacknesswas absolute and unyielding. The high beams and fog lamps seemed barely to pierce the darkness ahead. The stars and moon were hidden behind the thick, impenetrable cloud cover. In the past, a cloudy night had often been brighter than a moonlit one, especially with snow on the ground. With no light cast from towns or cities reflecting off cloud and sparkling snow, however, it was possible that the only source of illumination for hundreds of kilometres was emitted from my own vehicle.

  I didn’t know if I was still on the road. The way ahead was clear of visible obstructions and that was good enough. Several times I’d had to backtrack and find my way to an open path, having come to a fence or copse of trees. Several times I had half realized that I was driving on a large empty plain, too perfectly flat to be anything other than a frozen lake.

  I prayed bitterly that the ice would open up and swallow me into the dark freezing depths that would numb my pain and entomb me forever. My hands shook as I thought of it, the water pressing in around me, the ice closing quickly overhead as though there had never been an opening. No. I couldn’t contemplate it. It was too terrifying. I could never die trapped in the ice. I’d rather be released into the air as ash and flame. There was near infinite space up there in the sky, and only darkness and constraint down below.

  Progress was slow and I’d become stuck frequently, but the tires were good and it usually did not take long to get myself out. I operated mindlessly, my head swimming. The serpent; the iron vice still clutched at me, crushing my lungs. I was sure they would soon cease drawing air.

  I was directionless. It was too painful to think, to plan. There was no thought in my mind other than covering distance. I had no destination, just miles. There was no future or past. I’d never been alive before this moment and it did not matter if I lived to the next moment. My entire universe had collapsed in on itself, a black hole formed from the crushing mass; the gravity of my despair. Existence now included only the interior of the Jeep and the small bubble that was illuminated by the headlights.

  I can’t be certain if it was an accident or an unconscious act that caused me to press the button on the steering wheel, which brought the stereo to life. The cabin had been filled only with the noise of the engine, the dreadful wind whistling around the seals of the removable hardtop roof and the crunch and groan of deep snow under the heavy weight of the tires.

  Suddenly, the sound of music filled the world. Her music. Somehow, again either by unintentional coincidence or unconscious action, Megan’s playlist issued through the speakers that surrounded me. Her phone had found its way into the jeep, left by her to charge.

  Ain’t no grave can hold my body down

  There ain’t no grave can hold my body down

  When I hear the trumpets sound I’ll rise right out of the ground

  There ain’t no grave can hold my body down…

  My eyes filled with tears. The way ahead, already concealed and murky was further obscured. The song was a message; a sign. No, there would be no more graves. Only anonymous ash piles remained. Ash that would scatter in the wind and snow leaving no monument to the person the ashes had once been. No relics to be found and revered. No inscription or memory. No artefacts to be displayed in a museum. Ash and wind.

  The songs came and went, the music continuous; random. I could not bring myself to turn it off but also could not bear to listen. It was hers and it was beautiful. Too beautiful for a damned mortal such as me. She’d been an angel and I’d touched her. Ruined her. Contaminated her with the vile uncleanness of this world.

  Yet I could not reach my thumb to the button on the wheel and end the music. It was the last thing of hers on this earth that I knew of. I’d never heard such wrenching melodies or complimenting harmonies. There were many times, the thoughts pushed back as far as possible in my head, when I wondered tentatively if I was listening to a recording of her. The voice was familiar, ageless, with a quality that spoke of both youth and maturity, both newness and comfortable use. That voice of smoke and clear water. I could not check the screen to discover if it was indeed her voice to which I listened. It wasn’t for me to know.

  A thick lump returned frequently to my throat making it difficult to breathe smoothly or swallow. There was a painfully hollow spot in my chest that I’d never noticed before. I wondered when it had happened that Megan had come to occupy that space and why it had never felt so empty before meeting her. Surely I had loved and lost in the past… Not like this. Not the same, the voice in my head broke in. I had to hold my breath to hold off the wrenching sobs that threatened to throw me into spasms. And then in my moment of weakness, the thoughts I’d avoided struck me full force.

  You did this. My father’s voice.

  What? What did I do?

  You know it’s true. You been avoiding it, boy.

  I don’t want to think anymore.

  How’d she die?

  You know how. You saw.

  Answer.

  She became one of them. She was gone when I woke.

  No. How’d she die?

  I…

  You killed her.

  No, she was gone already. She didn’t want to be one of them. That’s what scared her the most. I released her in the flames.

  And before?

  She died in the night. She was gone already.

  How?

  I don’t want to.

  How?

  I don’t know how.

  You do. How?

  I was…

  You were infected. You…

  No. I survived. I was fine. Immune.

  You fucked her.

  I made love…

  You knew what would happen and you fucked her anyway.

  I didn’t know…

  You spread it to her. You infected her. Killed her. Her worst fear.

  I’m not sick. I loved…

  You fucked he
r and now she’s dead. If it spreads through bites you knew it would spread…

  “NO!” I shouted out loud, startling my mind into silence.

  My body drove on automatically while my mind wanted to park in the midst of the pristine planes of white, turn off the jeep and curl up and allow the cold to take me. It looked comfortable. Soft. Surely this was how it should end. The cold would purify just as well as flame. I would be where I’d always felt best, out in the wide-open, miles of untouched nature on all sides. Buildings and people would crowd around me no more. I could stop, I could sleep.

  The cold is false. It preserves as it destroys. Your sickness, your guilt, your rotting corpse will last in the cold. It will not be purified. It will slow time. Unbearable, unending. The flame is for you.

  My body carried on impervious to the pained cries of my broken heart and mind. My foot pressed and released, controlling the throttle automatically as my hands struggled with the wheel, keeping the course. I noticed, for the first time, that through some automatic sense I’d been heading vaguely south. The dashboard compass flicking from S to SW to S to SE over the course of the journey.

  Outside, the temperature had continued to fall. The warm humid storm had passed and a cold front had blown in. Tiny crystals of ice, hard as diamond hung in the air and blew, blasting the windshield like sand.

  At some point, the blackness had begun to give way to grey. The clouds, still dull steel overhead, had lightened. They were breaking apart and shredding in the unrelenting assault of arctic air. A single icy star emerged. The top layer of the once soft, heavy, moisture-laden snowdrifts had become a harsh plain of wind-swept crust that crunched and broke harshly under the Jeep’s tires rather than yielding softly to the weight.

  In places, the wind had picked up and swept clean swaths of ground, dirty brown tufts of grass emerging through the white in the dim light. There were times when I almost believed I’d seen patches of pavement. This did not make the journey easier. For every path the wind cleared it piled snow further down into great dunes, some metres high.

  I carried on mindlessly, able to see farther ahead and behind as the light grew. The world around me emerged once again. The illusion that I had fallen into a perpetual vortex of swirling black shattered in the grey. I could see the tracks stretching behind me, weaving through indistinguishable white until they blurred in the distance, the wind working quickly to conceal all traces of my exodus. Ahead of me lay nothing but dead and dormant trees and empty fields; a desolate white wasteland.

  The Jeep rocked along, almost on its own. Another hour or two had passed during which I was barely aware of anything around me. I was doing little to control the course or speed of the vehicle. It was blissful simply to allow the wheels to cut their own path. The path nature intended, the path of least resistance, my foot tapping gently back and forth between the gas pedal and brake. The wind whipped around the vehicle, whistling through rubber seals. The sun grew stronger and the clouds had relented, coming apart in ragged tatters like the frozen, torn flesh that clung to the demons that haunted the back of my eyelids. The thing that Megan had become.

  An eighth of a tank left, I noticed dully, emerging just for a moment out of my daze before plunging back down.

  Suddenly the back end of the Jeep swept out behind me, the snow beneath the tires gave way and slid down a steep dune in a small avalanche. The Jeep tilted wildly as more of the embankment collapsed. Instinctively, I twisted madly at the steering wheel and pressed on the throttle, trying to find grip, trying to get the four large snow tires to find purchase. I could feel them sinking deeper and deeper, the soft, wet under layer beneath the icy surface compressing and sliding.

  The Jeep seemed to hang at an unbelievable angle for a long heart-stopping moment. I didn’t dare twist the wheel or touch the gas pedal; I didn’t dare breath, my right foot pressed hard into the brake.

  At last, gravity had its way and the vehicle swung violently. The cabin erupted with deafening noise. Airbags fired like gunshots and carefully stored gear was flung against the roof. The removable hardtop panels were thrown off and cold snow and ice were flung in my face, the hard pieces of crust slashing at me like tiny crystalline knives. My neck whipped brutally as the Jeep rolled over and over, tumbling to the bottom of the steep bank. A window shattered raining thick glass cubes upon me and loud metallic pops sounded as steel panels were hammered and bent under the vehicle’s own weight.

  At last it was over. The Jeep rested on its side, where I knew it would lay rusting forever until at last the steel bones themselves would disintegrate. I would lay with it, but my bones would not last nearly so long. The engine sputtered and choked, whining as it clung to life; continued to run and fire, despite the damage to the engine, despite the parts that had become bent and now rubbed and squealed against each other. I turned the key and allowed it to shudder its last coughing breath, eager for the peace. I looked up through the shattered roof at the snow hill that had ended the journey. Supplies and debris were scattered down the slope and a rough violent track had been pounded out.

  The icy wind was already sucking the cabin’s heat from my skin. It was over, I knew with relief. I could lay in this seat forever while the cold slowly sapped the life from my body. It would be like drifting to sleep. I could forget Megan; forget the horror of what the world had become. It was over. I did not have to fight it any longer.

  I closed my eyes and drifted away.

  Twenty-Three

  I couldhear. Something was clanking nearby. It sounded like a pot being stirred. A fire crackled. I could feel. Something covered me, tight against my skin like the iron vice that had paralyzed my breath. But this was no serpent. Neither was it the snow and ice that covered me. Something softer; warm. I could smell. There was one smell that was pungent; distasteful. Another smell was delicious and enticing. I was starving. The hunger was worse than ever.

  Could I see? It was hard to tell. I was not sure if my eyes were closed. A confusing murk hung like fog around my brain. I was trying to send a signal to open my eyes but it took a great deal of effort to force a response. At last my eyelids peeled back slowly. Painfully. It felt as though sharp grains of sand had worked their way into my cornea. Dry crusts had glued my eyelashes together, hair and skin tore apart as I opened them. My vision was blurred; opaque.

  I moved to hold my eyes with my hands, to wipe them free and comfort them from the dry burn but my arms stopped with a sudden jerk. I tilted my head up and saw through the blurriness that I lay on a brass bed under thick quilts. Beneath the quilts I could feel hard bands binding me to the bedframe, cutting slightly into my skin. Care had been taken to ensure that the bonds were tight enough to prevent me from moving or slipping out, but not so tight as to produce more than mild discomfort. I felt a seed of panic take root deep in my gut. I was trapped. As in so many nightmares, I was wrapped tightly in blankets that I could not remove. I took deep calming breaths and forced the fear to recede back into a small hard kernel. I needed to be clear. I needed to observe. It wouldn’t do to panic now.

  I blinked repeatedly, trying to clear my dry eyes. Slowly, the shock of the light receded and a room emerged out of the bright cloudiness.

  The room was not large. In the corner sat a black cast iron wood-burning stove. I could see a worn leather sofa and a recliner that had seen even more use. The walls were built of thick, smoothed logs. A window was cut into one wall and dim sunlight poured through. It was late afternoon, or perhaps morning.

  On two of the log walls there hung proud deer heads placed onto polished wood plaques. They stared out through glass eyes, majestic and ambivalent, unaware and unconcerned with the troubles of the world. I envied them. Suddenly I recalled Megan’s glassy empty eyes as she stood at the shop front, gazing but unseeing. No soul had remained behind her eyes. The deer were a sham, a cheap mockery of life. I shuddered and lidded my own eyes, trying to drive out the haunting images. I felt sick, struggled to contain a gagging which threatened to e
ject whatever might remain in my stomach. I gasped and caught my breath, squeezing my eyelids tightly shut.

  I regained control and pushed the nightmare images away. I looked around the room once more, carefully avoiding the stares of those creatures, which hung silently judging, blind like justice. There was another log wall that stretched part way across the room, a division with no door. Beyond this wall I could hear movement. The sound of the pot being stirred came through the opening.

  “Hello?” I called out, or tried to. It came out as an unintelligible moan. My voice was hoarse from lack of use. I was reminded of the feeling I’d had waking up in the morgue drawer. I heard a deep masculine sigh from beyond the doorway. The sigh seemed laden with bitterness. The stirring resumed.

  “Eh-oh?” I tried again. The sound was still wrong, but more closely resembled the word. There was a deep wordless grumble from beyond the wall. My heart stopped. Not another one of them, I thought. I couldn’t bear to see another person turned into a mindless shell.

  Panic erupted again, the kernel that had contained it exploding outward. I could feel fear spread through my chest, at once both burning hot and icy cold. My breath came in short, shallow, violent bursts. I struggled to maintain control. If I allowed the panic to take control… To be honest I didn’t know what would happen if the panic took control, I only had a strong sense that I had to keep myself from it, had to think clearly.

  “Yer awake?” a voice mumbled from the doorway.

  “Yes!” I gasped, nearly succumbing to a fit of sobbing at hearing a voice that could still produce language. “Yes, I’m awake. I’m fine. I’m ok.” I had to explain that I was safe, not one of them. My breathing was still ragged and desperate.

  “Hmm,” said the voice, a deep, chesty grumble.

  “Please,” I called, trying to force my gasping to calm, trying to force my voice into its normal pitch. “Please, I’m alright. Can you untie me?”