The World Without Flags

by Ben Lyle Bedard

  As I finish the last forkful of my second corn cake, Norman gets up and goes to Franky. They’re talking in low voices. I notice they’re both wearing guns. I think I see them glance over to me. I don’t know what they’re saying, but I can guess. People will want to hear from me about Eric. I have some power here, some kind of influence, as Eric’s shadow. They are talking about that. I don’t know if it’s positive or negative, but I suddenly feel a twisting in my stomach. I don’t trust those two, not at all. I can see now that they are re-grouping with themselves as the leadership: Franky and Norman forever. I huff out in spite of myself. It’s amazing how quickly people change. Whole communities. They are either becoming different people or more themselves. It’s hard to know which is which.

  I turn my attention to the others. They are not nearly so together. Curt, who lost his mother and sister, is sitting in a kind of stupor, his food untouched in front of him. Wanda and Luna are sitting together, looking just as lost and confused. Willis and Hubert are sitting next to them protectively. They were never very talkative, but now they seem to have lost all power of communication. Even their eyes are dead. Susie Moore, who usually prattles on like a hen, just sits there, slumped down, her lips quivering, right on the edge of disaster. I see how fragile we are, how fragile we always were. If Eric didn’t need me, maybe I would be more like them, beaten down by grief and shock. As it is, I keep the grief away for Eric’s sake. If I go catatonic like them, Eric will die. They’ll shoot him in the back of the head. I can’t help imagining it. I see Franky shoot Sam. I remember him falling, the smell of smoke in the air. I see Eric then in place of Sam. Then, before I can stop it, I see Artemis in the pyre, her hair smoking and burning. I shake my head of that and focus on the people around me.

  They need a leader. I try to soften my perceptions of Franky and Norman. They probably see this too. They see that someone needs to step up. There’s nothing wrong with that. I am only paranoid because I have to lie.

  But still. I can’t shake it. I do not trust them.

  I’m not used to being seen or paid attention to. I never really thought anyone had any opinion of me, really, not beyond Eric’s shadow. When I see Norman and Franky glance at me, I see that I was wrong. They’re thinking something.

  I reach out to touch my knife. It’s there.

  32

  Franky starts speaking soon. People listen. I mean, they really listen, their bodies tense, their eyes wide open and hungry. They want direction and assurance. Franky tries to give them both. He reads out a list of names. All of them are ashes now. He says we will gather later to turn their ashes into the cemetery soil. He says the flowers are just beginning to sprout there. He says a few words about our grief, our loss, a few words about Diane and Amber.

  “But we can’t give up,” Franky says, straightening his back. “We have to keep living. They don’t want us to die. They want us to live our lives and be as happy as we can. So as hard as it is, we have to keep working.”

  He talks about the necessity of boiling water, of hauling the wood to keep the boiler going. Franky switches then into organizing jobs and he has a chore for everyone, even me. He even has a clipboard. I’m to help Crystal in the farmhouse. With Rhonda gone, she’ll need someone to help prepare the food. I nod. When he’s done, he puts down his clipboard, and looks serious.

  “Eric has left for now,” he says. I guess word has already gotten around because no one seems surprised. A few people glance at me with a variety of emotions, but mostly anger. Eric has always been that way. People need him, but they don’t appreciate him much. “Eric wants time to think about this. I’ve always been willing to give Eric the time he needs to think,” he says, and again, I hear a hidden scorn in the word. “So we’ll be patient with him and do our work until he gets back.” I don’t know if anyone else hears it, but there’s something unmistakable in his tone. Something paternal, like Eric is a wayward son. Not our absent leader at all, but someone who requires patience and even a little pity. From here, I realize, the criticisms will only magnify and grow.

  Not that I care. Whoever leads the twenty-odd people who are left doesn’t concern me. I have bigger problems than who gives orders to who in the next few years. But what does concern me is just how quickly it happened and who I have to watch. I think of Eric out in the woods, probably dying of the Worm, and I see just how precarious our position is. If they find him, he’s a dead man. Oh, they’ll be sad when they shoot him.

  But he’ll be just as dead.

  33

  I can’t shirk my duties. I don’t see Norman or Franky around the farmhouse, but I feel like I’m being watched. I can’t lead them to Eric, so I can’t draw attention to myself. I follow Crystal down to the farmhouse where the both of us work like dogs until noon time. All day I want to run to the Land Rover to check on Eric, to make sure he’s okay. To be there when he dies. But I can’t. I have to act like Eric’s gone somewhere to think, and I’ve decided to act a little angry about it, as I’ve observed other people are angry at his sudden disappearance. I have to act like he’s abandoned us when really it’s the other way around. They’ve abandoned him. The only thing that keeps me together is thinking. I’ve got a lot of planning to do.

  While I plan, I peel. I peel potatoes and carrots and apples. I peel turnips and parsnips and beets. I peel until my fingers are red and my right forefinger is bleeding a little from a blister. Then I help boil the peelings down into a base that Crystal uses for soup. The slop that’s left goes to the pigs. Crystal is brilliant when it comes to efficiency. She uses everything. Crystal says she doesn’t cook food so much as maximize food. You don’t have to work for her for long to know what she means. When I was about thirteen or so, she banned me from the kitchen for throwing out “a perfectly good stem of broccoli.”

  Because of the Worm, Crystal sets the vegetable base for soup to boil. It seems to boil a long time before she takes it off the wood stove. She looks at me through the corner of her eye, and I can tell she has questions about Eric. Everyone does. I keep my façade of anger. It seems to discourage people from interacting with me, from bothering me with any of their questions.

  Finally though, Crystal can’t help herself. When she puts the vegetable base on the counter to cool, she crosses her arms over her ample breasts and looks at me. She has great, fleshy white arms, dotted with moles. Her hands are red from washing dishes all day in hot water. I keep looking at her hands. I can tell the questions are going to come and I hate lying to these people I’ve lived with my entire life.

  “Do you know when Eric’s coming back?” she asks finally.

  I shrug with one shoulder like I’m so angry with him that I can’t even stand thinking about him.

  “Do you know where he went?”

  “Who knows where he goes?” I say this with as much acid as I can muster.

  Crystal stands there watching me quietly for a long moment. Then she sighs and picks up a towel and begins wiping down the countertop. “Hell of a time to leave us,” she says. “We’re hardly holding ourselves together.” The acid I had a hard time conjuring comes naturally for her. I grunt and nod like I agree, but it hurts. Eric is up there dying and it’s like everyone is stabbing him in the back. I get a little angry about that, which is useful. I can use it to seem like I’m angry with Eric.

  “He can do whatever he wants,” I say. “Like I care.” I don’t meet her eyes, but I can tell by the way she pauses for a moment to look at me that she pities me a little. This statement seems to be just jerky enough to be convincing. The great thing about being young is that people assume you’re selfish and ignorant. That can be annoying, but it can also be handy.

  “He’ll be back, dear,” Crystal says. I can tell that she has interpreted my anger as anxiety, which is great. If some of my anxiety is showing through, I hope people interpret it the same way. The conversation has become sufficiently emotional. I see my window.

  “I need a break,” I say. I look up at her. “I nee
d to go for a run.” It’s the first time I’ve looked at her during the whole conversation, so it’s got the power I need it to have.

  Crystal walks over to me and takes my shoulders. “Of course, dear,” she says. “Anything you need. I can finish up here. You take all the time you want.”

  Which is exactly the amount of time I need.

  With a quick nod of thanks, I turn away from her and stride outside.

  As I leave the farmhouse, I feel a great sense of relief. I’m not used to manipulating and lying and it’s not much of a consolation that I’m good at it.

  In fact, it feels like hell.

  34

  The rhythm of running feels like thinking to me.

  My breathing is one rhythm and my feet moving is another. It’s like keeping one thought in mind while you work through another. Like braiding. Or music.

  I can’t run straight back to the Rover. I can’t be that obvious. Instead I run down past the back fields where newly-planted crops are budding and leafing despite the death all around it. I run past the lookout and then turn around, brushing away the memory of Artemis and I up there together, studying the southern road. Meanwhile I keep myself busy thinking. Planning.

  If Eric is dead or when he dies, I will have to act like he vanished one night in anger and never returned. That will have to be the story from now on. I flesh out the details. I imagine the scene, the lie as if it really happened: Eric’s anger when I tell him what we did and my own argument for killing Sam and Rhonda. At one point I imagine myself having said, “Sam was useless anyway!” (which he was), and to this I imagine Eric having said, “We can’t start killing people because they aren’t useful to us!” And then I imagine he packed. Which means I have to return to my cabin, find his backpack, and stow it away somewhere. People might ask questions if they see it. I imagine him packing and I think I will pack what I imagine he would have taken if he had actually done what I’m imagining he did. This whole thing will have to be hidden. Maybe in the Land Rover. I could burn it, I realize. I could get back and burn his backpack and a few of the things he would have taken. But the thought hurts me so bad that I feel like I’ve been stabbed in the heart.

  I stumble at the pain of it and come to a stop in my run. I breathe heavily and feel my consciousness swirl and a dark pain sear through me. I shake my head. No, I can’t burn his things. Maybe I will hide them and then, then, maybe next winter, maybe then I will burn them. Or just hide them under the Land Rover forever.

  This seems to calm me enough so that I can run again. Now I run uphill to our house. I go inside and smell deeply. No trace of the sickness. Just smoke. Maybe there’s something underneath it, but it’s hard to tell if I really smell it or I’m just imagining that it’s there. The Worm. An image of Eric’s eyes, dark with blood, flashes through me, the little white tubes wriggling at the corners. I nearly choke with despair.

  Think, Birdie. Think. As I calm down, I stoke up the stove so that the coals are burning red hot.

  I go up to the loft and go to Eric’s bed. Just as I thought, the blankets are bloody and so is the old mattress. I throw the blankets down and then turn over the mattress, so that the bloodstain is facing the floor. I climb down from the loft and start cutting up the blankets with my knife, throwing the shreds into the fire, hoping that no one notices the billows of smoke coming from our stove pipe. Then I go back up to the loft and look around for blood spatters. Thankfully, I don’t see any. I grab Eric’s backpack and then throw in a few things that I think Eric would have taken with him, including the book he was reading, The Left Hand of Darkness. Then I see a bundle of papers held together by rubber bands. I recognize his handwriting. On a whim, I grab the papers and throw it in the backpack.

  Without wanting to, I pick up Eric’s holster and the gun he’s had forever. It’s heavier than it looks. I don’t like the feel of it. Strange how personal a gun feels. I feel like I’m trespassing somehow. But I need the gun, just in case, in case Eric. . . I try not to finish the thought, but for the briefest instant, I picture Eric running for me, cracked, and my hand going up and my finger pulling the trigger. I can’t breathe for a second as I shake off the thought. To throw off the thoughts, I pack all the ammunition I can find. I realize I’m whistling loudly, and I stop. It feels unnatural.

  I don’t like being in Eric’s half of the loft. I never realized how carefully we let each other have our privacy. Living in a small place like the Homestead can often feel suffocating, like everyone knows everything about you and there’s nowhere to go and nowhere to hide. Eric was always careful about making sure he never went into my part of the loft. It was always closed off with sheets. Strange how successful a little sheet of cloth can be to create a sense of your own space, your own world, a place that is just yours. I hadn’t really thought of it before now. Eric knew I needed that space. I feel my heart constrict for him. It’s more evidence of how much I need him, how much he means to me. I thought I realized it, but I didn’t. I didn’t have a clue.

  I feel a choking sob come up in me, looking at Eric’s side of the loft. His stacks of magazines and books. His crystal dragon and little figurines of soldiers and old knights. The poster on his wall of sandy beaches that says “Florida: coast to coast to coast.” The little board that he would lay on his lap and use as a writing desk. The green plastic cup filled with pencils and pens. Right by his bed, the bracelet of copper and silver wire that Lucia made for him back on the island. I lean over and pick that up. It’s smooth and electric to the touch. I put it in the backpack too. I feel a wetness on my cheek, but I can’t cry. Not now.

  I pick up my own backpack and put Eric’s backpack inside it. To hide it from prying eyes.

  Then I step outside and do my best to check to see if anyone is watching without seeming like I am looking around. No one. I tighten my backpack, turn toward the woods, and take off at an inconspicuous stride.

  When I hit the shade of the trees, I feel free enough to turn up the speed. Running through the woods, I can’t hold back the worry I feel for Eric any longer. He could be dead. He could have cracked. He could be drowned in the lake, drawn to the water like everyone in the late stages of the Worm. My heart speeds up and adrenalin pumps through me. I’m nearly in a panic by the time I get to the Land Rover.

  When I come bursting out of the woods, I stutter to a full stop in horror.

  Eric is standing next to the truck.

  He turns toward me. “Unh,” he says.

  His eyes stream dark blood, worms coiling in the darkness.

  35

  I am too shocked to pull out the gun. I’m not sure I would have shot him even if I had. I stand there, waiting to get torn apart. As I watch, Eric starts to sway back and forth, his mouth open and closing, drooling a black bile. His eyes are swarming with worms. I realize that if he had cracked, he would have killed me by now and at the same time, I know that I would rather die than harm Eric. I feel it certainly, that our lives are connected far, far deeper than I ever imagined. It would be easier for me to shoot myself than to shoot Eric. It’s a relief to feel the certainty.

  Eric groans and then sways to one side, his jaw clicking shut. He raises one hand and then drops it. His body convulses suddenly and he violently coughs up a stream of bile. It seems to do him good as he breathes more deeply. The bile he coughed up is on the ground, writhing with little, noodle-thin worms, pale and nauseating. Eric opens and closes his mouth, making a wet sound. Then he leans back on the truck and doesn’t move any longer.

  I sit down on the forest floor, watching him. He’s entered one of the last stages of the Worm. Most people die of the fever before this stage. Others crack under the pressure and go crazy, ripping at everything near them. Some, like Eric, they just become something else. Not quite living, not quite dead. Just some strange between-thing.

  Suddenly, I feel good watching him. Relieved. He’s made it through. He won’t die of the fever. I’m so relieved, I’m crying a little. I thought he was going to
die.

  “Good job, Eric,” I tell him. He doesn’t even move his head toward me.

  After ten or fifteen minutes of relief, I feel scared and uncertain. I wipe my eyes. What do I do with him now? Soon he will start thirsting for water and if I don’t watch him all the time, he’ll wade out into the lake and drink until he drowns. I can chain him to the Land Rover, I think. I can chain him there and come visit when I can. But how long before someone follows me? After a while, it will become conspicuous. People will start to wonder where the hell I am all the time. Where does Kestrel go every day? Homestead is way too small to hide a massive secret like this. Maybe if I’m careful, I could keep it secret for a week, but not forever. People aren’t stupid, and I don’t know if I trust Franky. I don’t know if he believes me entirely. I think he has suspicions, and if he finds Eric, they will kill him. They will say it’s for the good of everyone. They will say he’s already dead. He’s just suffering. They will say a lot of things, but what they won’t say is that we should wait, we should trust in him, we should give Eric a chance to survive, a chance to fight. Only I will say that, and it won’t matter.

  But I trust Eric. I remember clearly what Eric told me. Good Prince Billy told him that not everyone dies. Some make it through. And if there’s even the smallest, even the tiniest chance that Eric will live, I will stand by him. I will defend him against anyone who threatens him. For the first time I reach down to Eric’s gun instead of my knife handle. My heart thrills dangerously at the touch of it. It’s not a good feeling exactly, it’s dark and overwhelming, but it’s what I need.

  I feel more relief at the certainty of my decision. I was so afraid I would have to kill Eric. I was afraid that I wouldn’t have the strength to stand by him. But now that I see him, now that I know he’s still here with me, fighting, and I feel in me the absolute certainty that I will kill for him, I will die for him, it’s a big relief. It’s a relief to learn that I’m the person I want to be.