The snowstorm has stopped, the herd has moved on. It’s time to get to work. I lay him flat on his back, unzip his parka. With my knife I slice through his undergarments. The sight of his pale abdomen – still fleshy with fat – triggers a low rumble in my belly. I take my time, stripping him completely. Then, with my axe, I dismember him: hacking through the limbs, lopping off the head, then halving the legs at the knees, and the arms at the elbows. He is already stiff with rigor mortis, the blood dense and congealed.
The thick thigh muscles – gluts and quads – make the best meat. I start there. The left thigh first. With my ulu I remove the skin, which I lay aside, to be dealt with later. The layer of fat beneath the epidermis makes good lamp oil. Then I cut large strips of meat off, rectangular in shape, about the size of T-bone steaks. A big thigh will yield four of these.
I do not know if I’m the only one who has discovered this, but it is the sole reason I have survived so long. Deadhead meat is edible, if treated properly. The bacteria or virus or parasite that causes the sickness can be killed. Either with heat, by cooking, or with cold, by freezing for several hours. My people have frozen meat like this for centuries, to preserve it.
Each part of a deadhead has its uses. The bones make arrowheads, spears, needles, blades, parts to repair my sled. The intestines are perfect for stringing my longbow. The skin is useless for warmth, compared to wolf or fox or bear. But it makes good leather. My tent, once rough canvas, is now almost entirely a patchwork of deadhead skin. The top of the skull can be used as a bowl, in a pinch. The fat for lamp oil, the hair as thread. You can derive salt from the blood. The body of a deadhead is like a walking cache of practical provisions.
At the moment, however, I am well-stocked in terms of tools and equipment. Some of this will have to be buried, and returned for if and when the time comes. Right now my priority is food. It is a long and arduous task, to skin and clean and butcher an entire body. It takes me most of the day. By the time I’m done, the snow all around me is bright with blood. A large patch has formed in the shape of the dismembered corpse, like a bloody snow angel. After, I wearily set up camp, digging a snowcave and windbreak, and erecting my tent within.
Only then am I ready to eat a proper meal.
Most of the meat has been frozen long enough to be safe. It is not something to be rushed, a feast of flesh this fresh. If I gorged myself I would puke it back up immediately. So I eat slowly, as darkness falls, savouring every bite, letting it thaw and melt in my mouth so I can appreciate the texture, the flavour. The selection is rich and varied. There is the muscle meat, of course, and the sweet bits of fat – so necessary to prevent protein poisoning. The organs are even more important. The liver, in particular, is very rich in minerals, and vitamin A and D. The kidneys are a great source of iron, the brain loaded with vitamin C.
It is a good meal. After, I hunker in my tent and with my oil lamp heat a cup of frozen blood until it is steaming, simmering. I sip this slowly, savouring the salty flavour. I can feel the warmth in my belly, helping digestion, radiating outward, and the strength it infuses in my limbs. Then I douse my lamp, strap down the flap of my tent, and wrap myself up in furs. I lay there, satiated, too full to even sleep. There’s nothing quite so satisfying as a deadhead feast.
∆ ∆ ∆
The next morning I load up my sled with stacks of meat – cuts of all sorts – separated by layers of skin and packed with snow. Preservation isn’t a problem. You do not need a fridge, or a freezer. Up here, in the winter, negative twenty is a mild day. The meat will keep, and feed me, for several days – a week if I eat sparingly. And there are many more deadheads to sustain me after that.
For the next few weeks, I follow the herd north. In the same way, my ancestors used to follow the herds of caribou that once roamed the tundra. Like them, these deadheads are my roving food supply. Every few days, I cull the herd by picking one off. Taking the weak, the lame, those being left behind. Or striking under the cover of night, or using the weather as I did the first time. They must be vaguely aware of me – some of them have seen me – but their memories are short, their capacity for problem solving minimal. They soon forget me, and what has become of their missing companions. They continue plodding along in stoic, blissful ignorance. I am very aware of the irony of this. It was when the whites first came that the caribou started dying out. Now the whites have become my caribou. They are far less noble, and far more stupid, but just as nourishing.
∆ ∆ ∆
I can see something on the horizon which doesn’t blend into the natural contours of the landscape. A low oblong, squat as a concrete block. It is towards this that the deadheads are moving. As it grows larger, I see that it is a manmade structure, quite large. It looks too big to be a weather station. It could be an old outpost of some sort, or a research base.
The deadheads trudge steadily towards it. They must remember it. This must be what they have been heading towards so purposefully all along. As they get closer, I notice movement out front of the building. I stop, kneel, and raise my field glasses. Somebody is standing there, in a blue jacket, toque, and scarf. It’s hard to tell but by the features it looks like a woman. She has binoculars of her own, and has them trained on the approaching herd. I remove my skis and lay myself flat in the snow, in case she scans the terrain. She is sentient, a survivor. I know that much already. She watches them for some time (counting numbers, maybe?) before ducking inside. The door – a makeshift piece of plyboard – is shut behind her. There are storm shutters on the windows. Hands appear to close them, latch them. There looks to be several people inside – I count at least four – and they seem to know what they’re doing.
It takes another ten minutes for the herd to reach the station. I stay where I am, watching from a distance. The building itself is solid. They will not get through concrete. But the door is a weak point. The windows, too. The storm shutters are designed to keep out wind and snow, not half a dozen clawing, hammering hands. And of course it is to these openings that the deadheads are drawn. When it comes to self-preservation they’re useless, but they do have a certain animal cunning where food, and prey, are concerned.
Three or four of them are already battering at the door, leaving bloody handprints, but it is one of the shutters that goes first. A weak hinge snaps, and the whole thing comes away. Behind it there is only a pane of glass, which the deadheads punch through heedlessly. A hand appears, swinging a club to keep them at bay. It’s a brave but fairly stupid idea. They grab the club, and then they grab the hand. A man is dragged through the window. They fall on him, clawing and biting and tearing. Arterial blood sprays wildly, spattering the snow.
From within the hut, a ball of flame blossoms forth: somebody has fired a flare. Not as an alarm, but as a weapon. It smashes into one of the deadheads and gets lodged in his jacket, which promptly ignites. He wanders around, wailing, his torso engulfed in flames, trailing a column of smoke. But if the survivors have other flares, they don’t have time to use them. The deadheads have begun scrambling through the open window. The door is in danger of collapsing, too. From within the shelter, I can hear the sounds of struggle. Shouting, smashing, that dull animal wailing of the deadheads. But no gunshots. Apparently these survivors aren’t all that well equipped. I wonder if they’ve been waiting for this rescue party – if they sent out some kind of SOS. Imagine their surprise, then, when the rescuers arrived, intent on eating them rather than saving them. I could step in here to help, but the situation is too uncertain and chaotic. It is better, and safer, to let it play itself out.
A trio of survivors emerge from inside. One is wielding a fire axe – either painted red, or already red with blood. The other has a two-by-four, which is fairly useless. The third – the woman in the blue jacket – has a hammer and knife. The one with the axe looks to be injured, his arm bitten and bloody. There are half a dozen deadheads out front. Upon seeing the people, they rush in. It’s surprising how fast they can move when they want to. At
first the survivors fare quite well. One deadhead is neatly decapitated by the axe. Another gets cranked by the two-by-four. I watch all this through my field glasses, the images reaching me before the sounds. An odd disparity between image and noise.
But more deadheads are converging. The wounded man makes a desperate, heroic effort – waving the others away. He swings his axe, dropping a third deadhead, then turns to take on a fourth. This time, the blow comes down on its shoulder, cleaving into the chest, and gets embedded there. The man struggles to tear it free. He’s still trying as two others fall on him, bear him down to the snow. He flails and fights, biting and clawing back at them, and for a few moments it’s hard to tell which is human, which is deadhead.
The other two survivors are trying to flee. But the snow is deep, and they are slow. The deadheads have the benefit of following the tracks plowed by the fugitives. When the man with the two-by-four stumbles, sinking into a drift up to his knees, the woman stays behind to help, trying to drag him on. The few remaining deadheads catch up. Then there is a futile, final skirmish, which seems to go on endlessly. All this flailing around in the snow, this bloody thrashing. Even if the people survive, they’ll both be infected.
I rise and brush the snow off my parka and step into my skis. I skate forward at a good clip. By the time I reach this last struggle, both the humans are dead. Three of the deadheads are feasting on the fallen man. They hear me coming and stand up, curious, and look at me as dopily as deer caught in high beams. There is blood trickling from their chins, flesh hanging from their maws. I plant my poles and unsling my bow and notch an arrow. When the first deadhead drops – with an arrow through its eye – the others howl and begin wading towards me. But they are easy targets, compared to the wolf. Two more arrows sizzle through the air, embedding themselves in the throat of one, the chest of the other.
I reach for another arrow, and look around.
The man they were feeding off is a mess – his head caved in, brains spilling like porridge across the snow. The woman looks done, too. One of the deadheads, though, is crawling around, keening. It has been blinded somehow. Maybe stabbed in the eyes and face. I step out of my skis, pad up behind it, and tap the back of its head with my axe.
Then I approach the hut. The snow here is soaked in blood, more red than white. There are eight or nine bodies – both human and deadhead – out front, all motionless. But I can hear noises coming from inside. Clattering and banging. Something’s still alive in there.
I plant my bow upright in the snow, leave my quiver of arrows beside it. It would be useless in closer quarters. I take my axe with me instead, and my umiuk: my long-bladed skinning knife. I also tug a leather gauntlet onto my left forearm, and lace it snug. Outside the caved-in door, I crouch and squint into the darkness, allowing my eyes to adjust, before scuttling inside.
The area just within is a kitchen of some sort. One of the deadheads is standing at the stove. He has a pot on the burner, and is stirring it aimlessly. The burner is out, the pot empty. To one side, next to him, he’s got what looks like somebody’s arm. I’m so struck by the oddness of this sight – and the comedy of it – that I almost get taken by surprise.
I am saved by a tin can. A soup can, actually. I hear it rattle, and turn left to see hands reaching for me from the shadows. One is missing a finger, and that detail, for some reason, stands out. I duck and swat the hands aside. I stab up with my ulu, into and under the chin of an Asian lady, then swing around with my axe, catching her temple clean. There is the familiar sound of bone breaking. My axe is blunt and dull, deliberately so. I find it the most effective way to minimize blood spray. Blood is a carrier, too.
As that deadhead drops, I turn back to the chef. He is right there, now, lunging for me, practically on me. I get my left arm up in time. He bites into the gauntlet and I swing down, over the top, tapping his scalp. It crunches, and he crumples. But his bite is so hard that his teeth stay fixed in my gauntlet, pulling me down to a crouch. To free myself I have to pry his jaws apart, like a dead pitbull’s.
I scan the rest of the room. Opposite the kitchen is a living room, with a tatty old sofa, a TV with a broken screen, some bookshelves. Sprawled on the floor are three bodies. They’re so bloody and mutilated that it’s hard to tell if they were human or deadhead, and it doesn’t matter. I give each of their heads a tap with my axe, just in case. Then I check the other rooms. One is a bunkhouse, with six beds and some gear lockers; the other is some kind of lab, with microscopes, monitors, computers, technical equipment. Both rooms seem to be empty. When I’ve made sure of this, I lower my axe and check my gauntlet. The bite broke through the leather. I pull the gauntlet off, roll up the sleeve of my parka, and study my forearm. The faint indent of incisors – a twin set of white lines – is visible, but the skin is not broken. I wipe at them to make sure, but there is no blood. A millimetre or two was all that separated me from becoming one of them.
Then, a groan from out front. I stand, taking my axe, and step outside. The woman in blue is still alive. Barely. She is bleeding, her torso torn open. Guts spilling everywhere. Grey tubes snaking across the snow. Her teeth chattering from cold and shock. She sees me approaching. I wonder what I must look like, with my weapons and weather-blasted face. My eyes two slits, my mouth a slash. A death mask. I stand over her and raise my axe.
Then I hear: “Stop!”
In the doorway behind me is a boy. Maybe eighteen or nineteen. He’s got a flare gun in his hands, though it’s probably the one they shot off. I look at him. The woman at my feet does as well.
“That’s my mother,” he says.
“Not for long.”
“It’s okay,” the woman says. To her son, I think. “It’s okay.”
I shrug, lower my axe, and step aside. Still pointing the flare gun at me, the boy makes his way to his mother. I leave them, let them have their dramatic moment, their sentimental goodbye.
While they do, I go around tapping heads, making sure all the rest are fully dead. Then I begin dragging the bodies into a pile by the door. The next time I look at the boy, he is kneeling in the snow, his shoulders shaking, sobbing silently. He has let the flare gun drop at his side. I go and pick it up. Just in case.
∆ ∆ ∆
I set up a makeshift work area in their lab: clearing the equipment off a desk, shoving all the electronic detritus into one corner. Without power, it’s useless anyway. Then I drag the first body inside and heft it onto the table. It’s a scrawny white man. Or it was. I strip him down, slice him from throat to groin, and begin the arduous chore of dismemberment. Hacking through muscle, sawing through bone. Tearing tendons and cartilage.
I’m in the process of scraping the fat off a strip of back skin – using my ulu – when the boy appears in the doorway. He takes a look at me, at the tool in my hand, at the blood on my forearms, at the mutilated body in front of me, and he pukes. Or retches. Not much comes out. He doesn’t look like he’s had a lot to eat. None of the humans have. They were wasting away up here, without a clue as to how to survive once their supplies ran out. The deadheads will make better feeding. The corpse on my table is gaunt and scrawny.
“What are you doing?” the boy asks.
“We have to eat.”
“But these are people.”
“They were people. Now they’re meat. Just like the deadheads out there. And you look like you could use some meat.”
“I know him!”
I shrug. “I don’t.”
I turn my back, and resume my work. He watches, dumbfounded, then stumbles away. I hear him retching in the kitchen. Then I can hear him sobbing again, like a child.
∆ ∆ ∆
The stove in the kitchen – the one the deadhead was using – is a two-burner camp stove. It attaches to a propane tank beneath the sink. The gauge reads half full. They ran out of food, apparently, before they ran out of fuel. The stove even has a lid, like a barbecue, for baking and broiling. There is salt and sugar, too. For the thaw, I
’ll be able to make smoked meat, and jerky. The summer months, and the mild weather, bring different challenges. Food is more readily available – tubers, berries, other animals – but it doesn’t keep so long when the world isn’t one big freezer.
After burying the majority of the meat cuts and organs out back, I turn on the stove. On one burner I fry a sirloin, on the other I boil a leg bone, halved, in water, seasoned with blood and salt and kidneys. It should make a good broth. When the pot starts steaming, I lean over it and breathe in deeply, savouring the scent. I’ll be eating well for some time.
I’m standing like that, leaning over the stove, when the boy tries to kill me. He makes a clumsy job of it, swinging the fire axe I saw one of the survivors using. But he is noisy, and slow. I sidestep, and the axe plows into the counter – splintering the laminate. Before he can swing again I step into him, bodychecking him. He is so light and scrawny he bounces off me, sprawling out on the floor and smacking his head. He lies there, groaning, gazing up at me with dull eyes. Not even particularly angry, or scared. Just empty.
I leave him lying there. My steak is nearly done. Since it’s human, and fresh, I’ve left it a little raw. It should be uninfected. I was careful not to take a cutlet from anywhere near a wound. There’s always a chance, of course, that I’ll catch something, but I enjoy the thought of that risk. It’s like eating blowfish, or whatever it is. The one that’s poisonous if prepared improperly. I put the steak on a plate, pour myself a bowl of broth, then step over the boy and go to sit at the table. I have not sat down, eaten like this, for years. I saw into the steak like a proper white man. Appropriate, since I’m eating white man.
Dead North: Canadian Zombie Fiction Page 2