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

by S. A. Softley

  “There were a few guys I knew that would have done a lot for an opportunity like this,” she said wryly.

  I would have been one of them, I thought, scowling. I said nothing. “Fine,” she continued, throwing on a soft bathrobe she’d found. “Your turn, then. Strip down, honey.”

  My shirt was already off. I turned my back to Megan and reluctantly undid my pants, letting them fall to the cold tile floor.

  “Make it quick,” I muttered.

  “Mhmm,” she said, her tone non-committal. She ran her fingers through my hair, gently feeling my scalp for injuries, as I had done to her. I concentrated hard, trying to remember that this was purely a matter of security. The thought of the bite on my arm and the snarling frozen faces outside helped to keep my body’s embarrassing auto nervous responses in check. While I had only visually examined the rest of her backside, her fingertips gently traced their way down shoulders and spine, pausing as they reached the waistline of my boxer-briefs.

  “You’re looking for injuries,” I reminded her in a growl.

  “It’s hard to be sure. Your underwear covers a lot more than mine does.”

  It was true. Painfully true. Images began to surface in my mind as I recalled just how little her underwear had left to the imagination.

  “Yeah, I think I’m good.” I pulled my pants back up quickly, hoping to hide any stirrings that might have been occurring below that elastic waistline. I picked my t-shirt up off the floor and pulled it roughly down over my head. Megan was smirking.

  “Relax,” she said nonchalantly. “I’m just messing around.”

  “Hasn’t it occurred to you,” I snapped, “how awkward it could get between us? It’s not as though we have a lot of choice around here. In the past, we could have gone for it and if things went bad we could just avoid each other; move on, no harm done. Not anymore, Megan. We’re stuck with each other, you and I.”

  “Hasn’t it occurred to you,” she said, a simmering heat boiling beneath her cold serious tone, “that each minute we spend alive is a minute on borrowed time? Those things may have attacked you on the plane, you may have seen the aftermath of what happened to this town but you did not see all the death, all the destruction. You didn’t see it happen.

  “If I’m going to live, I’m going to live well. I’m going to do whatever the fuck I want to do, when I want to do it. You go ahead and sit there worrying about the future if you want to but I’m living for myself. I’m living for now. Haven’t you figured it out yet? There probably isn’t a later. Later is fucking dead and gone. Even if we survive those things, even if we never run into them again, never get bit, even if we never catch the disease, society is gone. How will we survive regular infections? How will we survive every day diseases? I mean… what about fucking pregnancy? Do you know how many women died giving birth before medical science? Fuck the future. There is no future. It’s only today from here on out.”

  I was stunned into silence by the intensity and bitter sting in her voice. I couldn’t think of what to say and had to admit, if only to myself, that she had a point. She walked away before I could say anything and I decided that we could use a little while apart to cool off. The day had already been an emotional thrill ride; hot and heavy between the two of us and frantic adrenaline surging, white-knuckle combat out on the street. We could both probably use a little down time. A little quiet.

  I hopped up beside the till on the front counter and sat looking out the frosted glass of the front window. Here and there, figures shuffled stiffly around the street. The sweat from our struggle and the damp from Megan’s bath had caused the windows to become coated with condensation. The wandering creatures outside had become shadows in the fog. It caused them to appear less defined and somehow more fearsome. As in so many horror movies, the implication of the monster is always more frightening.

  Alone or in small groups, they were not necessarily a problem, but in a crowd, those things had proven how dangerous they could be. Something had attracted them, maybe our sound, maybe motion, a smell… and we’d have to be more careful in the future.

  “We’re going to need more weapons,” I mumbled to myself. Guns were good, but if we got caught in a crowd again it would be nice to have something to hack with or something to beat them back when they got up close. Machetes and baseball bats like in the movies. It was hard to believe this was real life.

  I jumped a little as music erupted from Megan’s speaker. The sound of the music was startling in the new silence that had taken hold of the world, but hearing Megan hum and sing along with the track brought a smile to my face and helped me forget our earlier disagreement. I’d apologize to her later. I could understand how she felt. Sill, some small part of my brain cautioned against the idea of starting a physical relationship with her. All the other parts of me, however, were another matter entirely.

  Sixteen

  I heard a sob from behind a shelf. My heart dropped. My face went slack. She’d been so strong; so brave. It was inevitable that she would crack under the strain of it all. Something in me wondered if it was inevitable that I would crack. It was a thought I didn’t want to have, so I pushed it aside.

  I just hoped that she wouldn’t slide too far back into depression. I hoped she would not sink back into the despair that she’d so bravely overcome.

  I waited, unsure of what to do. Did she need to be alone with her sorrow, with her grief? Or did she need a shoulder to cry on and arms around her? Did she need to talk or did she need quiet?

  I waited. She remained silent, sniffing through her nose softly. I silently cursed my family for my stunted emotions. My father had never expressed a feeling other than displeasure in his life as far as I could tell and my mother had wandered through life with blinders on, forcefully unaware that she’d married an asshole. No, I’d never been good with emotional stuff at the best of times, and this was not the best of times.

  I realized suddenly how ridiculous my expectations were. I’d never had anything that could have been construed as a successful relationship, even with my own family, and here I was, alone in a strange town, trying my best to make it work with an emotionally scarred woman who was likely still in terrible shock… probably would be for the rest of her life. It would be lucky as hell if each and every surviving human being did not have posttraumatic stress disorder. I held my head in my hands and felt a weight around my neck that seemed to pull me into the ground. It felt as though the weight pulled me down into a dark grave. I shuddered, remembering the tin walls of that morgue.

  What ya gonna do, boy? You should run while you can. You’ll just fuck this up.

  I mentally told the voice to go away, tired and in no mood for it.

  “Megan?” I called softly, my voice sounding weaker and emptier than I had intended. She didn’t reply. I wasn’t sure she’d heard me. I decided to leave it for a while.

  The music was still playing. Perhaps it had covered my voice. Perhaps she wanted it to cover her sobs. She was, after all, still grieving. She’d lost everyone she’d ever known.

  I looked vaguely around the front of the shop and spotted a newspaper stand by the exit that I’d never noticed. I shuffled through the papers that had been left there, untouched and pristine. They were copies of the Edmonton Journal but thinner than any edition I’d ever seen. Each copy was only a couple of folded pages thick. The front page read, in bold print:Edmonton Evacuation Notice.

  Other by-lines included City in Flames! and International Borders Remain Closed: No Travel by Air, Land or Sea andOttawa Shuts Down. There were no frivolous pages. No advertisements, no sports standings, classified ads or economic charts.

  I didn’t bother reading the articles; my eyes wouldn’t focus on the print. I shuffled through the pages, one after the other. Throughout the paper startling photographs had been printed, some with captions and explanations, others seemed to be collected pictures from around the world with no accompanying story. A picture of an Edmonton suburb, flames rising over rooftops
, the charred remains of condominiums standing out against the horizon like the bones in the ash pile that still haunted my sleep. A photo of a little boy, no more than five years old, lying on cracked pavement, blood pooling around a terrible shoulder wound, his flesh eaten away until the collarbone was exposed. His face was deathly pale but his eyes were open; bloodshot.

  There was a disquieting picture of the parliament building, the first floor windows and doors boarded with unceremonious plywood sheets; the regally arched stone window frames hidden. Anonymous armed men in Kevlar vests and gas masks were positioned around parliament hill, standing behind thick sandbag walls, their guns pointing outward, menacingly indiscriminate. The Canadian flag was noticeably absent atop the great central clock tower, a symbol that all was crumbling. I recalled the forlorn flagpole outside the police office in town and shuddered. It had been one thing to hear Megan talk about it, to read frightening notices written in black ink, but it was another thing entirely to see the pictures.

  I tried to imagine what it must have been like for the people who had seen this on television… the sights and the sounds brought into their own homes. Never mind television, I realized, everyone had lived it. Megan had lived it. It had been in her house, next door, down the street, on the evacuation bus…

  I closed my eyes, wishing I never had to open them again, but I did anyhow. I flipped to the next page, feeling that somehow I owed it to the world to look, to bear witness. The feeling made me think of another newspaper article. Anthropic principle. The idea that it wouldn’t have meaning unless I saw it with my own eyes, unless I was here, mourning and remembering a world that was gone.

  The remaining pages had little text. Probably the reporters had no context, no story to go along with the images they printed. They were collected photographs from across the country and around the world. Videos and pictures uploaded to the Internet without explanation or context.

  A photograph of the burning wreckage of what looked to be a large passenger jet that had crashed right into the outer wall of a huge round stadium. A pile of bodies, thousands and thousands stacked carelessly; burning in some historic looking town centre, an old gothic church bearing witness with shattered and empty eyes, fragments of stained glass still clinging to stone. In a flagstone courtyard, a group of red-robed Buddhist monks sat calmly accepting fate, their eyes closed in meditation as rampaging creatures swarmed them with terrible bloodlust in their sickened eyes. An older man, nearly naked and smeared with gore limped down a sidewalk trying desperately to pull an intravenous drip along with him… Page after page of desperate, ruinous photos. The last moments of humanity gone viral, spread by an electronic network far tougher than civilization itself.

  I heard Megan sob again and put down the paper. She had lived this.

  “Megan,” I called again, my voice firmer and more resolute; determined to provide comfort. I passed down the aisles until I found her crumpled on the floor, her eyes behind her trembling hands. Her body, which had, just minutes ago, looked so attractive, so sleek and strong, now appeared feeble and withered. It was as though her spirit had accounted for a third of her body mass and had now deserted her, leaving her empty and hollow.

  “Megan, its ok, I’m here.”

  She sobbed again but did not reply. I walked over and stood for a moment, hesitant and unsure, my emotional unavailability striking once more. I frowned, frustrated at myself and knelt beside her, laying a hand on her trembling shoulder. She broke. Her ribs were wracked with body-wrenching gasps as she balled up against me. She laid into me, pounding my chest with clenched fists, crying out wordlessly at the terrible injustice of the world. I made no move to stop her. I merely sat, my arms around her absorbing her weak blows with resolute calm. I felt pain I’d rarely known deep inside me. Tears seemed to well up just behind my eyes but refused to release, the pressure steadily growing, almost unbearable.

  We sat for a long time, Megan shuddering while I remained devoid and blank on the outside, inexpressible emotion roiling within, with no outlet, nowhere to go.

  “He was my teacher,” Megan gasped at last, each word formed as she gulped down tumultuous breaths.

  “Who?” I asked, trying to keep my voice soft and calming. “Who was your teacher?”

  “I shot him. Out there.”

  I nodded, my chin against her crown.

  “I knew… I knew them all. Not all their names, but the faces. I knew those.” She sobbed quietly for a few moments and then tried to catch her breath again.

  “I don’t know… I don’t know why… it’s just hitting me now. It just hit me and I couldn’t…” she gasped again.

  I nodded again, stroking her arm gently. I’d forgotten. How could I have forgotten? This had been Megan’s town. She had not been a stranger here, as I was. It had been such a small town. She would have known just about everyone here. All those faceless creatures, all those bloodthirsty things… I saw them as monsters, horrible abominations, but she’d known them before all that. She’d known the people behind those bloody lifeless eyes. I wondered how she’d ever been brave enough to face it all, to come back from the dead, drunken stupor I’d found her in, knowing what she’d see. How had she had the courage to hope again? To joke? To flirt? I felt new admiration for her and something else; an emotion I knew I should call love. I refused it. I could not love her.

  “You know the worst part?” she asked, chuckling desperately between gasping breaths. “The worst part is I’m going to need to go find tampons soon.” She broke into another round of heavy sobs. “Bet you never thought of that in all your fucking survival plans, did you?” she said bitterly; accusingly. I had to admit, she had me there. The thought had never occurred to me. Not once.

  Seventeen

  Dinner that night was a quiet and subdued affair. With the last hour of daylight we had quietly scavenged the restaurant’s freezers again and had decided on chicken with rice as our main course. The crowd of undead that had swarmed us had dispersed, leaving only a few stragglers to cause trouble for us. The crippled ones that we’d shot in our escape still lay in the street and parking lot near the hotel, dragging or rolling themselves in random motions across the pavement. We deliberately avoided looking at the knot of bodies that still squirmed there, sickening, irreparably injured but still dangerous.

  I’d left Meg for a moment in the restaurant and ducked into a drug store, feeling as awkward as a boyfriend who had been asked for the first time to pick up feminine products. She hadn’t asked me to get her anything, but I thought it would be good to have them handy. I could just quietly leave them somewhere she’d find them and we’d never have to discuss it. I felt embarrassed, though there was no one here to judge, no acne spattered teenage sales clerk to scan my items and smirk. I turned my collar up against the eyes that weren’t there.

  I perused the aisle, walking back and forth restlessly. Why the hell were there so many options? What was I supposed to choose? Would she even want me to pick these up for her or would she be angry? Embarrassed? Had she only mentioned it in momentary desperation?

  While picking up the black and neon box that was trying far too hard to look striking and trendy for the private, personal items it contained, I noticed, not far away, another uncomfortable item that might one day be needed. I contemplated the idea unhappily. Although the tension had been building I didn’t think there was much chance of needing them soon after our recent blowout but it couldn’t hurt to be prepared, could it? I felt juvenile as I picked up the box of latex condoms, peering at them with scrutiny. Another product with an unnecessarily vast number of choices.

  Most people just wanted to pick the most discrete box and leave, preferably without speaking to or making eye contact with anyone… didn’t they? I looked at another box, black and neon coloured with various shapes that suggested an assortment of flavours. That would be very presumptuous, I thought. In the end, I left with a few brands of tampons and no condoms. The last thing I wanted was for her to think I was pus
hing for anything. Especially now. We’d had enough emotional rollercoaster rides for one day. Besides, I was trying to stall the physical relationship, not prepare for it.

  The chicken was cooking slowly on a rotisserie over a propane grill and the smell that filled the shop was mouth watering. We had also pillaged another bottle of red wine from the restaurant’s cellars, an expensive Bordeaux this time. I sipped at it, but again, did not particularly enjoy the drink. Meg drank most of it and by the end of dinner; she’d finished the bottle. I knew it would annoy her, but I couldn’t help worrying about how much she’d drunk.

  We hadn’t spoken much and Megan was moody and sullen. She seemed to be slipping back into depression. I didn’t know how to fix it or what I could say that wouldn’t make it worse. What little conversation I tried to make was feeble and had lasted only a few moments before the dialogue was ended and awkward silence returned. I knew that she was in pain, seeing the people of her town turned into mindless, murderous animals. With her shotgun, she’d shattered bodies and faces that she’d known for years. On top of it all, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d done something to damage our relationship beyond repair. She’d been desperate. I’d known there was desperation behind her flirtations and I’d rejected her off hand, partly out of my own selfish fear of relationships. Out of anxiety over some non-existent future.

  I’d been a loner all my life and yet I was surprised by how much I needed Megan around, how much I needed conversation and companionship. Why was it that I could go for months at a time up north with only one or two other men, none of whom were ever much as conversationalists, and feel perfectly fine and yet now I was desperate for someone to be here; to want to be here? I was desperate for communication, for her laughter, for the unexpected things she said that kept me on my toes, and yet I had no idea how to begin, or if I would ever have that with her again.

  It frustrated and unnerved me, all the more so because I was not adept at being around people. I wasn’t good at this, and yet I needed it. It was that typical human reaction; always wanting what we can’t have. In the past, I’d known people were there; knew I could find them if and when I needed or desired them. They were a few hours drive away at most and a quick plane flight away to the nearest major population centre where I could find over a million bodies. Bodies. That was what they were now. They were all just bodies. And that was why people had suddenly become so valuable. If Megan was gone, it was possible that I could search my whole lifetime and never find another living person.