I found a glass counter that housed rugged watches, some analog, most digital. They were the type preferred by people who worked outdoors. They were plastic and unstylish but hard, waterproof and durable. I chose one that would take a great deal of abuse. It had a digital face and a sturdy strap. It was a watch that could be submerged deep underwater. Deeper than I’d ever be likely to go. A watch that could read the air temperature, air-pressure, elevation and contained a compass. The thermometer would come in very handy since I was having difficulty feeling the temperature in my skin. I unlocked the front door and rushed off to the police van, turning the key in the ignition so that the radio came to life and waited for the repeating message to repeat the time. I set the watch and felt a feeling of relief wash over me. I looked at the temperature display. Thirty-six below zero, not counting wind-chill. I couldn’t remember how they calculated wind-chill though I’d known once. Cold enough for exposed skin to freeze in seconds. I shivered reflexively, but still felt nothing.
I returned inside, locking the door behind me, happy to have saved one link to civilization: at least I would, for the foreseeable future, know how many hours had passed, at least I would maintain my position in space and time. If the physical universe existed only in relation to those that perceived it, I would continue perceiving it in the old terms. I would know my position in relation to the Gregorian calendar. I would know how many years had passed since that arbitrary year zero. I breathed a relieved sigh and climbed into the sleeping bag, warmed by the burning propane heaters.
It was early in the evening when I dozed off. Once again, deep sleep eluded me and I remained in the strange space between rest and wakefulness. Perhaps, alone and far from help, my mind was anxious and prevented my brain from entirely shutting down, and so I remained tense and aware throughout the night. In my pseudo dreams I saw hungry, blood red eyes staring back at me out of a thousand shattered mirrors that spiralled around me in a glass tornado. As the flickering shards flew ever closer, threatening to lacerate me, reflecting my gruesome features, the calm voice from the radio repeated its message over and over, shouting the time, the days and months passing with increasing rapidity until it burst into laughter and didn’t stop.
Nine
Something was wrong. I couldn’t tell what exactly, but I knew immediately that I’d woken up for a reason. My eyes snapped open and I was instantly alert. It was still dark outside, but at this time of year, that wasn’t surprising. The sun probably wouldn’t be up until eight o’ clock or later. I flicked on the lantern that sat beside my cot, filling the room with long shadows.
I rifled through my clothes from the previous day, looking for my watch. I found it halfway down a pant leg and pressed the button illuminating the dim green backlighting. It was 4:45. I sat up and listened for whatever sound or movement had disturbed me. I could hear nothing. I dressed quietly, still listening and peering out the large front windows. Nothing. Somehow I knew that it hadn’t been my imagination. I’d awoken for a reason. Like a switch, my brain had snapped alert and ready. I slipped on my jacket and boots.
There was a fair chance that the noise I had heard had been made by some kind of animal. Bears, cougars, wolves and coyotes often entered even large cities scavenging for food in the trash. They’d be even more likely to look for food in a town that was quiet and dark; recently abandoned and on the edge of the last refuges of wilderness. The town also probably smelled strongly of food and it wouldn’t take long for animals to figure out that the food was up for grabs with their number one predator gone. It was probably just that: animals. Perhaps even something as harmless as deer. I told myself three times “I reckon it’s just deer…” but I still felt uneasy. Outside I heard a light clatter.
“You could just keep the door locked…” I muttered to myself.
“Gotta check on it…” I replied, “might be stuck here a long time; want the town to be safe...” The last thing I needed was to be surrounded by increasingly bold wild animals. That had been part of my wildlife management work, to keep them scared off so that neither the animals nor the people working on remote sites were put in danger.
“Great, now you’re talking to yourself,” I observed sardonically. I wondered if it was a sign of madness or sanity that I needed to form my thoughts in an ongoing dialogue with myself. I sneered with distaste as I recalled all the times my father’s voice had given shape to my darkest thoughts since I’d awoken in the morgue. For years I’d done my best to forget that voice, for years I’d hardly paid him any mind and yet here he was in my head, my only company in the abandoned town. I shook my head to clear it.
“Better get on with it,” I muttered and snorted as I realized I’d unintentionally spoken to myself again.
I grabbed the pump action shotgun I’d collected and took it out of its nylon bag. Slowly and methodically, I slid a handful of rounds down into the magazine. I’d already filled the bandolier that wrapped around the stock the day before, just in case. I slung the gun over my shoulder and headed for the door.
As soon as I pushed the door open I could tell it was bitterly cold outside. I sensed it more than felt it: the crystal clarity of the air in frigid temperatures; the waves of warm air that shimmered as the door opened; the rapid fogging of the glass door as traces of water vapour froze instantly against it, creeping across the glass in delicate crystalline structures. Everything the night air touched took on a brittle feel. Despite all the signs that it was devastatingly cold, I could not feel the air suck my heat away or bite into my exposed skin as it usually did.
There’s something wrong with me, I thought again, apprehensively, trying my best to avoid talking to myself, even though there was no one around to think me crazy. Maybe the disease really had messed with some of the nerve endings or signals in my body.
Brain damage, brain damage, brain damage, the recorded message echoed, but in my father’s voice, with his spiteful sneer. I would have to limit my exposure outside. I glanced at the watch. Minus forty-one Celsius… knowing the temperature would only do so much if I couldn’t feel the damage being done. I’d have to be careful.
I set aside that concern for the present and looked around the empty street, but could not see the cause of my interrupted sleep. I wandered a few paces up and down along the sidewalk, looking between cars and down a couple of dark alleyways. I did not need the flashlight. The clarity of the air allowed even the waning moon and the crystalline stars to cast enough light for me to see. The silver light coloured everything in hues of grey so that I felt I was in a film noir. The reflected moonlight gave everything hard edges and yawning shadows.
Despite the heavy shadows that melted, liquid black, long and dark from each object and building, I decided to stick to natural light. I figured if I turned the flashlight on, it would only mess up my night-vision, which, at the moment, was good enough.
I walked a block further along the street, the barrel of my shotgun following my gaze, pivoting back and forth as I walked, scanning the street, the buildings along it and their dark alleyways. I kept my eyes moving side to side, scanning for motion.
To my left there was a loud clatter, out of place in the dead silence of the ghost town. My eyes snapped open wide, my nostrils flared like a cornered animal and a sharp intake of breath hissed through my teeth. I whipped around, shouldering the shotgun and aiming down the dark alley from which the noise had come. I narrowed my eyes, squinting into the dark, trying to pierce it with narrow focus.
There were five sets of flickering yellow points; cold, callous and calculating. They flashed moonlight back at me out of the dark. I saw them centered and reflected in the glowing green pinpricks that were the night-sites of the gun. I pumped the gun to chamber a round with a heavy threatening click. The yellow eyes just stared back, unblinking, unimpressed.
A gust of wind swept down the alley. Something small and white darted towards me out of the dark. I jumped and grunted in surprise. The eyes retreated, startled, disappearing and reappe
aring a short distance down the alley. There was a loud clattering sound as the white blur jumped two feet closer. I snapped the muzzle of the gun toward the movement.
It had come close enough now that I could see it was nothing more than a white plastic shopping bag, caught in the gust of wind with an empty tin can inside which had caused all the clattering. I took a deep breath, calmed myself and returned my attention to the eyes. They had backed away another few feet.
I’ve heard that the panic response heightens your senses and dilates your eyes to allow them to take in more light, or perhaps it was just that the light was brighter a few feet down the alley… in either case, I could now make out the shape of the creatures that owned the luminous eyes. They were medium sized dogs. Judging by their frame, athletic build and their long snouts and pointed, upright ears, I guessed they were coyotes.
I could see, too, that they had been digging through garbage cans in the alley. Trash was spread from a fallen cylindrical bin, the entrails of the coyotes’ prey. Even with man as a fearsome predator, coyotes have always ventured into towns and cities, the prospect of easy food, carelessly discarded by people, too great a temptation to resist. Now the smell of man was fading and the food left over would draw animals from miles around. Coyotes would be among the first and least dangerous animals to make a bid for the leftovers.
I breathed a sigh of relief. I didn’t know what I had been expecting to encounter out here, disturbing my attempts at rest, but I was glad to see coyotes and not whatever other nameless fear I had dreamed up. I was glad the eyes had been yellow and not that sickening diseased red.
The abandoned town was getting to me, playing tricks. It felt strange. Wrong somehow. I’d never felt this fear isolated out in the bush, where I was in the coyotes’ territory, not they in mine. There was something sinister about a human place when all the humans were gone. Too many movies, I told myself.
I held the shotgun high and pointed it up into the air. There was a great echoing crack that rang in my ears as I squeezed the trigger; smoke and spark shot from the barrel out into the night. An instantaneous flash illuminated the alleyway, the darkness immediately and jealously reclaiming the lost territory and more as the sparks died in trailing acrid smoke. The butt kicked into my shoulder, cushioned against my thick jacket. The coyotes took off down the alley, quickly out of sight, their thoughts of scavenged food replaced with instinctive fear. Fight or flight. They knew which to choose when faced with man and fire.
“Git!” I shouted redundantly, my bark an ineffective imitation of the shotgun blast. I stood for a few moments, glaring down the alley suspiciously. I slung the shotgun back over my shoulder, clicking the safety back on.
I headed back down the street, satisfied that I’d run the wildlife out of town for now. No sooner had I thought this than I heard a great crash behind me, louder than before. It sounded like glass shattering. I jumped halfway out of my skin and snapped around to face the new threat, shotgun levelled and my finger on the trigger. It wouldn’t have done much good to squeeze, given that I’d forgotten to flick the safety off or even pump out the spent cartridge.
This animal shambled toward me on two legs. It was a block and a half away; barely a shadow in the darkness. I could see that the figure was tall and thin but that was all. I couldn’t make out any other details. As it shuffled toward me, it swayed and zigzagged across the sidewalk uncontrollably. If this had been the real world I would have thought the person drunk, chuckled and carried on with my life.
But this ain’t the real world, the voice told me, this is a fucking nightmare where living people are left in morgues and the dead are burned in parking lots. Where you can’t feel the cold, the food turns to ash and the only people left’ve had their brains melted by a sick that don’t have no name. A world where if you’re soft you die, just like I told you all along, boy.
I should just go back and lock myself in the store and never come out again, I thought. I didn’t want to see this ruined person stumbling towards me. Every instinct was telling me to turn away, to get inside and lock the door to the outside world. Every instinct wanted me to use my supplies until there were none left or until rescue found me and if rescue never came, to die alone slowly and quietly.
I waited, my feet rooted. Some part of me didn’t want to believe that there was no one left, that I was alone. Even though I knew that this shambling figure coming out of the darkness would be the same as the all-but-dead man I’d seen earlier out on the street, I had to know; I had to see. My finger sat on the trigger of the shotgun, just in case the posters I’d read in the police office were right. Just in case the victims of the disease did become violent. The wound in my arm seemed to burn slightly as a reminder.
The figure was less than a block away now. I took a quick, shallow breath. I finally remembered to pump a new round into the chamber of the shotgun. The old one clicked lightly on the pavement.
“Hey,” I called in a gravelly, unused voice that didn’t project far. “Who are you?”
The figure moaned in response, scuffing the toe of its shoe on an uneven corner of pavement. It sped up its gait, hobbling now; favouring the scuffed foot. I could hear heavy ragged breathing hissing in and out sounding much like the man I’d encountered two days prior. I didn’t know what to do. My feet stayed planted despite my animal urge to flee. I levelled my shotgun, shifting the stock deeper, more solidly into the crook of my shoulder to steady my aim. My hands shook. I didn’t want to shoot a sick person, but the warning on the police poster that the ill could become aggressive and violent appeared before my eyes; the memory of the flash of hot pain as the man on the plane sunk his teeth into my arm was so vivid that I could almost feel the flesh being ripped away all over again. The figure moved closer and closer, steps scraping louder and faster against the sidewalk; breathing increasingly ragged, a light moan emanating in time with the steps.
“Stop there,” I called, “don’t you come no closer.”
The figure shuffled on, undeterred and unheeding of my warnings. My unsteady finger squeezed harder against the cold trigger.
Ten
My finger squeezed, depressing the trigger slowly. My hand was unsteady. I naturally took a breath and held it. Hold steady to shoot, boy. Take a breath. Squeeze slow but firm so you don’t know when the shot’ll come. So you don’t jerk away. Don’t be a coward, boy, shoot the damn thing.
Another millimetre and the hammer would click forward, striking the percussion cap and igniting the powder, unleashing a chain reaction that would send a multitude of lead balls spraying out of the barrel toward the chest of a human target; the only human at whom I’d ever pointed a gun. I took another deep breath and held it, squeezing half a millimetre further. Any moment the gun would go off. In my mind’s eye, I could see a dark red mess of flesh and bone and cloth open in a fist-sized circle on the figure’s chest.
“Please,” I said softly through gritted teeth, “don’t make me shoot.”
There was a sharp intake of breath
“Don’t shoot!” said a slurred, creaking voice. “Don’ shoo! ’m nah sick!”
My finger sprang away from the trigger; my elbow snapped the barrel of the shotgun up into the air out of the path of the figure. I blew out the air I’d been holding in with a spray of thick, viscous spittle.
“Fuck!” I spat, “I just about shot you! What the fuck are you doing?” I could barely form the words through my shaking and spluttering.
“Jus’ heard’a gun…” the figure slurred. Judging by the voice, the figure was female. The voice was deep and coarse for a woman, but still somehow feminine. “Thought the cops’r back. You a cop?”
“No,” I said angrily, “I ain’t a cop.”
“Huh… Too bad…” she sighed, ”They’re coming. Need a drink?”
“A drink?” I said in disbelief, “Uh, no, I’ve got food and water down the street. Wait… who’s coming? The cops?”
“Wadder? Ha!” she swayed a bit as she stoo
d, her head rolling a little. “Honey, this’s the end of th’ world. Gonna need somethin’ stronger tha’ wadder. See?” she held up her empty hand. “Oops,” she giggled, “must’a dropped th’ bottle.”
I stared at her in stunned silence, not knowing what to say. She wobbled for a moment, still giggling and then shakily sat down on the sidewalk, cross-legged. She was young, probably in her early twenties. She had a dark complexion, long brown hair, currently matted and unwashed but I could tell from the recent cut that her hair had previously been well cared for. She was beautiful in the dim light.
“Silent type?” she said, renewing her giggling, “hope you’re strong n’ silent… end of th’world is tough.”
“What’s your name?” I asked after a moment.
“Meg,” she said, but didn’t ask for mine. “Iss short for Megan and I’m a singer,” she added, weight in her voice as though it explained some great mystery that had needed answering. “It’s ok,” she said. I waited for her to continue but she sat in silence, seeming to have lost her train of thought.
“What’s ok?”
“I’ve got more,” she said dismissively. Again, I waited for her to continue and again the pause drew on.
“More what?” I asked at last.
“More wine!” she said impatiently, “Lost m’ bottle. It’s ok. Gotta whole store to m’self. You can have some… if y’want.” She stretched out her legs and laid her head back, sprawling across the sidewalk. She was passing out. I could tell that her final waking act had been to find the source of the shot; to find me.
“You can’t sleep here,” I said, “Can you get up?”
She muttered a vague response.
“Hey! Megan!” I barked, “It’s too cold, we have to get inside. Can you get up?”
The Penance of Leather (Book 1): Ain't No Grave Page 8
