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

by S. A. Softley

  She looked at me with teasing satisfaction, having caught me looking her over again. She was winning our little struggle by miles and knew it.

  “What’s for dinner?” she asked, adjusting her robe absently. She did not arrange it to cover more of her. I turned away and began rummaging through our food supply, glad for the excuse to take my eyes off her.

  Why did we have to find that damn pool? I asked myself ruefully.

  Twenty

  The winebottle was almost empty and the small amount of dinner I’d managed to force down was sitting like lead. Meg was humming pleasantly along with the stereo leaning back in her chair, completely relaxed. She hadn’t dressed and was still wearing the soft bathrobe, which still barely covered the parts of her I instinctively wanted to see. My self-control was weakening rapidly. It would almost have been easier to resist her if she had just gone completely nude to dry off. The ‘v’ of her robe drew my eyes downward like the irresistible pull of gravity. The hint of the skin beneath was more tantalizing for its mystery; more desirable because I was trying so desperately not to want it. I was having trouble fighting my gaze and she was noticing. Often.

  I was half hopeful and, to be honest, half regretful when she had shivered and goose bumps rose on her skin. I thought perhaps she would have to change into the less revealing pyjamas I’d found for her. Instead, she slid the propane heaters closer and warmed herself to the point where she began to look a little too warm, a situation she resolved by sliding the robe off her shoulders to reveal more of her glowing skin.

  The snow had continued to fall as the sun went down. The ploughing and shovelling we’d done through the day had proven almost entirely inconsequential. Only the slightest trough in the thick snow cover remained to indicate where we’d cut a pathway.

  “I wonder if we should go shovel out a bit more, at least around the Jeep,” I mused to myself.

  “I just got warm, dry and comfortable,” Megan said, “You go if you want but I plan on sitting here with a glass of wine and watching the snow fall. Besides, where do we have to be tomorrow? Or the next day for that matter? Or next week?”

  I had to admit, she had a point. There was no urgency.

  “I just don’t want us to get stuck,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant.

  “Worried?” Megan asked, peering at me. “What do you think would happen if we got stuck here for a while?”

  “I don’t know… I mean, I ain’t worried, I just don’t like the idea of getting trapped…” I fished around, trying to put my vague concern into words. The more I thought about it, the more I felt the panic begin to rise in my chest. The thought of being snowed in, encased in a frozen tomb… “This place has a flat roof,” I said suddenly, “We’ll need to keep the snow from piling up too much or it could cave-in.”

  “Relax,” Megan said smiling calmly. “This place has been here fifty years with no trouble. The guy who owned this place had the roof redone a couple years ago. He’s owned this place as long as I can remember and I can tell you, he was a cheap, lazy son of bitch. I guarantee you he never once got up on this roof to shovel it off.”

  “That’s not very reassuring,” I replied darkly. “The guy didn’t maintain the building… or at least maintained it for as little money as possible, and that’s supposed to make me feel better?”

  “I’m saying it’s still here, winter after winter, and doesn’t look like it’s going to fall down any time soon. Just relax. Nothing’s going to happen.”

  “Look it’s just…”

  “Relax!” She said again. “If it makes you feel better, go out and shovel away, but I’m just going to chill out. We could die tonight, tomorrow, or fifty years from now. We could be bitten, eaten, crushed to death, frozen solid, starved… who the hell cares? We’re alive now and, at the moment at least, we’re happy, healthy. We have everything we need and more.” she spoke calmly but with force behind her voice.

  I could see wild somewhere in her eyes; could hear in her voice that the speech was accompanied by a certain amount of desperation. She needed everything to be ok. She needed me to be relaxed. I could see now that she was making a great effort hold her own panic in check. I had forgotten again just how far she’d travelled down the road to despair… to giving up. She was showing great strength and I knew that she needed me to do the same. I could see now that just beneath her calm, flippant surface, she too was near a breaking point. It wouldn’t take much to push her past. That pleading in her voice when she said ‘relax’. She was just as distressed as I was, perhaps more so.

  “Sorry,” I murmured, “I just hate tight spaces.”

  “That’s ok,” she said, the panic that had risen just below the surface of her voice receded and she seemed genuinely calm once more. “I get it.” Her eyes flashed. “I meant what I said before. We could die tomorrow. We could die now. We both know it. Why are we doing this? What is surviving if we’re alone and apart; if we can’t enjoy whatever is left of our lives? I can help you stay calm and you can help me. It would be such a relief… a release. We both want it so let’s just… be with each other,” she said in a low voice.

  She rose from her seat; her eyes never leaving mine, never flinching away from my ruined sclera. Her face was certain, her chin set at a determined angle. Her mouth was taut and her jaw thrust forward in defiance. She walked slowly toward me, shrugging her robe to the floor.

  Something in her tone, some subtle difference, let me know that while in the past she’d been teasing, playing a game, engaging in a caricature of seduction, now she was intently serious. To reject her now would cause damage and embarrassment, perhaps irreparably. She was now truly putting herself out there, asking me to accept her. I wanted to with a pain and desperation I’d rarely known.

  I was tired of fighting. I was ready to give up on my fear; ready to stop planning and consent to the moment as it came. She was right. We could be dead tomorrow but we had each other now.

  I unabashedly allowed my eyes to drink in every detail of her as she took the short steps to stand right in front of me. Her skin was a wintery pale and yet glowed with the memory of the summer sun that had played upon it and browned it only months ago. A spattering of dark freckles dotted her stomach and breasts like constellations. I could spend hours gazing, connecting the dots, creating new images on her skin. She was full figured and yet clearly athletic. I looked up at her, and her dark eyes blazed into mine. There was a hard edge to them and the promise of a softness that waited just below the surface if I would only accept her.

  I made to stand and meet her in an embrace but she applied a gentle pressure on my chest with her hands, forcing me back into my chair. She straddled me and pressed her body into mine, kissing me feverishly. My hunger erupted as I breathed in her sweet scent. I kissed her with desperation, my hands grasping forcefully across her back and buttocks.

  Something fell over on the table as she leaned further into me and I threw back my arm to support myself, bumping the flimsy surface. I spared a quick glance to make sure that it hadn’t been a burning lantern toppling. It took a great effort to pull away even for that small moment and then, when I confirmed it had been a wine glass falling, my attention was fully back on Megan.

  The powerful swell of emotion swept us up in a riptide, the current drawing us farther and farther from conscious thought into the depths of animal instinct and nature. It was an outlet through which we released our pent up fears, tensions and frustrations; a conduit for the pressures that had mounted over the days and weeks during which we’d seen our worlds crumble. In our burning need for each other we’d become almost like them: unthinking, desperate in our hunger for each other’s body. The tempest swept over us and threw our bodies into contortions against each other, our muscles no longer resisting, the touch of skin on skin was lightning that sparked in the night.

  Something more than lust overtook me as Megan, for those moments, became my whole world. Nothing outside of her existed for me. I can’t claim that we f
ell in deep, immortal love at that moment, but some greater thing than purely sexual desire; a love of some kind, more powerful than I’d felt in years, sparked between us.

  Minutes, hours or days later; time had ceased to matter; as we lay on the verge of consummating our love, I forced myself out of my fugue and returned to the conscious world for just long enough to ask questioningly “should we…?” The words were painful to utter. Every cell in my body screamed silently to shut up and complete the ancient ritual we’d begun. A few evolved neurons struggled against millions of years of base instinct to form the question, to worry just for one moment about the future.

  Speech looked to be as much a struggle for Meg as for me. “I’m still taking the pill,” She slurred breathlessly, “just habit.”

  With that, my conscious brain broke under the strain and I surrendered fully to the night. We made love as though racing to see how many times we could be together before the world ended. The snow fell and fell through the night until exhausted and aching wonderfully, we slept in each other’s arms.

  Twenty-One

  Something stirrednearby, drawing me out of my doze. A great feeling of relaxation and relief had lifted an enormous weight from my chest and I felt whole and healthy in a way that I hadn’t for ages; a sense I’d only felt on those rare perfect days alone in the silent wilderness.

  I groaned pleasurably, stretching. I could hear Megan reply with a similar wordless sigh. She was somewhere out of sight, perhaps getting washed up or finding something to eat.

  Why had I fought this for so long? Why had I forced myself to live in fear and worry when complete contentedness had been right here all along, begging to be recognized? Why had I wasted so many hours taking the weight of a dead society on my shoulders? Why had I felt that a single lonely man could do anything at all against the great forces and tides that had swept across the earth, purging it of a species… my species? Who was I to shoulder any responsibility and, even if I took up the burden, what was I but a single insect tossed in the storm, helpless and alone?

  I was now going to allow myself to float wonderfully free on the winds around me rather than struggling against them with every waking breath. My heart was full, my body satisfied and my mind at peace. I hoped wistfully that Megan felt even a fraction of the contentment that I felt.

  “I feel fantastic,” I said, my voice hoarse from sleep. I heard Megan murmur in what sounded like agreement. It felt unusual to feel my mouth stuck in a permanent grin. I was so used to frowning in care and concern that it felt unnatural and a little silly, but it was beyond my control. The corners of my mouth were lifting upward, pulled by the strings of a biological puppeteer and I was unable and unwilling to turn them back down.

  Outside, the snow still fell but only sporadically, a few flakes at a time making a graceful descent to the ground. The sky had brightened somewhat, but still a dome of steel grey blocked out the sun. The snow lay in great dunes, several feet high, blown into gentle slopes by the growing wind. It was still stunning and surreal to see the pure white landscape unmarred by tracks, ploughs, dirt and salt. Snow was still somewhat of a novelty for me, despite my time up north. Growing up in the Southern States, I’d seen little of it and on the rare occasions that snow fell, it never stuck around long.

  “Looks like it’s lightening up out there,” I said, not needing to speak loudly to be heard in the silence. Meg muttered her assent again. I took a deep breath and sighed, stretching over my head, gazing out at the white world outside.

  Megan emerged from behind a shelf and wandered casually over to the window. I grinned appreciatively. She was wearing nothing at all and her shadowy silhouette added greatly to the view of pure snow that flooded in through the plate glass. I let my eyes wander over her slowly; admiring and appreciating each soft sloping curve. She was shaped by gentle wind, I thought, like the snow.

  “You are beautiful,” I said softly. She made a soft cooing sound at the back of her throat.

  She placed her hand up against the frosty window and slowly dragged her fingers down, leaving four long streaks in the condensation. I was happy just to watch her move, happy to watch this beautiful woman who had chosen to stay alive with me stand there looking out at the sparkling snow. She reached out again, pressing harder into the glass and dragged her fingers downward, this time causing a soft squeak to vibrate through the glass. I watched, puzzled as she repeated the motion again and again, each time pressing more forcefully against the glass.

  “Meg?” I asked, “You ok?” She groaned in response but continued to press against the window. “Megan?” I called again in growing alarm. “Megan, what’s wrong?”

  This time she turned to face me. Her face was vacant, her gaze unfocused as she peered around the room. Her eyes travelled over me but it was as though she could not see me. I gasped and felt my world crumble. My stomach turned cold and my hands erupted into a violent nervous tremor. The room spun around me. The orientation of gravity seeming to twist, no longer holding me to the earth.

  “Megan!” I was shouting now. Something was terribly wrong. Dried and caked blood smudged beneath her eyes and a pinkish foam speckled the edges of her mouth and chin. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…” I began swearing repeatedly. My eyes were wide, darting around. I did not know what to do. I could not believe what I was seeing. It wasn’t reality

  This is a dream, I thought. This is a terrible dream. Wake up.

  It ain’t, my father’s voice replied in my head.

  “My god… my god… god…” I begged, demanding a response to my wordless plea. “This isn’t happening…”

  It is.

  And it was happening. Had already happened. I could feel how real it was; more real than any of the many nightmares from which I’d frequently awoken, crying out and throwing off the blankets that had wrapped around me too tightly. This was a nightmare from which I could not wake. Would never wake. There was no solution. No adjusting the blankets into a less constricting arrangement. No calling for Ma to help, hoping my father was out at work. It was real.

  My chest felt as though a crushing vice was tightening around it. A band of iron pressed from all sides, slowly compressing. Inescapable and constricting; the truth wrapped round me like a monstrous serpent.

  Somehow, during the night, I had lost Megan and she had been replaced by one of those things. She was lost and was not coming back.

  We’d found each other, despite everything, the last two survivors. We had come to know each other at last, to truly understand each other, only the night before. She was gone now, in a state worse than death, hauntingly beautiful as she moved stiffly in the icy cold light. An illusion of life but nothing more. Soon her skin would begin to blacken and rot like those wandering things out in the cold. She was gone and there was nothing that could bring her back.

  Maybe she’s immune, like me, I thought. I was in a coma for weeks. Maybe she can come back.

  No, his voice replied, She’s gone.

  A scarlet rage erupted behind my eyes. I screamed in wordless emotion. Fear, regret, fury, the most utterly black sadness I’d ever felt, all of it pouring out in a series of cries that transcended language.

  “She’ll come back… she’ll come back… she’ll come back to me,” I murmured over and over, my voice cracking hysterically.

  I went over to her and touched her. I held her hand. Her fingers were stiff. They did not grasp for mine. I wrapped her in my arms. She stood stiffly, still gazing around unseeing in a stupor. She was rigid as I held her and did not react. It was as though I was not there.

  I felt for her neck, my vision clouding as painful shuddering sobs wracked my body. I felt for a pulse and found none. I grabbed her wrist, pressing harder, trying to find a pulse buried somewhere deep in her arm. No matter how I dug into her soft forearm, I could feel nothing stirring beneath her skin except muscle and tendon, which twitched occasionally with her movements.

  I pressed my cheek against her cold lips, feeling for breath. T
here was a slight breeze occasionally when she made a sound in her throat, but no regular breath left her airways. I knelt before her, pressing my ear into her naked chest, listening desperately for a heartbeat. I pressed my face harder into her, coating her breast in cold tears and mucus. I imagined that they were tinted scarlet, the blood inexorable.

  In desperation, I beat her, slammed her into the window, trying to shock her, desperately trying to force her heart to start again. I held her to the cold ground and compressed her sternum over and over and over. I pressed my mouth to hers, trying to inflate her lungs. There was no resistance. The air flowed into her lungs and out again, but her breath did not return.

  She showed no reaction when I desperately slapped at her, trying to jolt her brain back into life. I collapsed to the floor and she rose, standing stoically above me, unfeeling.

  I lay there, screaming and railing against the cruelty and hopelessness of the world. To have her turn now, after I’d finally surrendered to my growing love for her… I’d never felt such pain. I kissed her lifeless lips again and again hoping to feel some hint of warmth, some flicker of movement as she kissed me back, a gentle trickle of breath entering past my lips. Nothing came. Not even enough for a desperate man to cling to in hope.

  For a long while, I lost myself. I cannot remember anything more that occurred in that cursed town. Images of black depression and white-hot rage flash back. I vaguely recall destroying things; knocking over shelves, the sound of smashing glass, the sound of shotgun blasts… At other moments, I recall complete silence. Sitting, possibly for hours at a time, vegetative, my mind numb and empty. The ground itself seemed unstable, as though the world itself had been knocked off its axis by the force of my grief. The room seemed to spin in many directions at once like a twisting gyroscope. I stumbled through the vertigo.