The World Without Flags

by Ben Lyle Bedard

  I breathe easier. We’re alone.

  I decide to set us up in the barn. After unpacking and unsaddling him, I guide Bandit into a stall where he nickers at me petulantly. “I’m tired too,” I say, defensively. “It’s not like I wanted to walk all night either.”

  Bandit tosses and shakes his head.

  “Don’t be an asshole,” I tell him, feeling underappreciated.

  I’m so tired, I just want to get Eric into a stall, lay him down, and then crawl into the last stall by myself and sleep for about seventy hours. But as I’m maneuvering Eric, I’m struck by how much weight he’s lost since he got sick. It breaks my heart, and before I know it, I’m crying again, soundlessly. I rub the tears out of my eyes, but a feeling of guilt rises to me, hot and angry. I can’t sleep knowing he’s like this. So I find myself walking around, gathering up old, dry wood and then struggling to start a fire. Finally I get one going, crackling and snapping energetically, and I go to the backpack and come back with a kettle. Then I pour the last of the water that I brought with us. Struggling to stay awake, I wait for the water to boil. It seems to take forever. I realize I’m crying louder now, but it’s not from sadness. I’m just so tired. I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since before the Worm hit us. I’ve never cried from exhaustion before. It’s pure misery.

  After about six hours, it seems, the water boils. I wipe my eyes and pour some into an aluminum mug. I notice I’m shaking a little, but I breathe and try to control my crying. Then I stir in all of our maple sugar until it’s fully dissolved. I’m sniffling the whole time. It’s so hard just to stay awake. Then I have to wait for the boiling water to cool. I don’t want to burn Eric. After that ordeal, I bring the mug to Eric who is standing where I left him. I put the mug down carefully on the ground and move Eric into his stall. Then it’s another struggle to get him to sit.

  “Come on,” I say, tugging at him. “Just sit down!”

  “Unh,” Eric says, not budging.

  I try to trip him, but he seems pretty good at keeping his feet for some reason. Maybe I’m too tired to do it right.

  “Come on!” I yell and push him. Luckily, he stumbles a little, and I take advantage of it and pull him toward the ground. He falls slowly to the ground and then topples to one side so that his face is pushed into the dirt.

  “Unh,” he says.

  “Damn it, Eric,” I hiss, and pull him back up to a sitting position, his legs spread out in front of him like a frog. Half of his face is covered in dirt. I take out the rag from his shirt that I’m starting to think of as the drooly towel and wipe his face clean, or try to. Mostly the dirt just streaks like camouflage. I’m too tired to wipe anymore, so I leave him like that and go get the mug of very sugary warm water. It’s the last of our sugar so I’m careful with it. It could be life and death for Eric.

  I crouch in front of Eric, holding the mug carefully. Eric just sits there with his jaw open. To get his attention, I pour a few drops into his mouth. Immediately Eric jerks violently to life, sitting straight up toward me, his tongue lashing out for the water. The movement is so abrupt, he knocks the mug out of my hand. I feel the emptiness in my hand and my heart plummets inside me.

  I cry out in frustration. I look down at the empty mug and the wet earth where the last of our sugar has vanished. I could die.

  “Unh!” says Eric desperately, his black tongue waggling horribly in the emptiness in front of him.

  I grab my hair in frustration.

  “Unh!” Eric repeats.

  “Shut up!” I scream.

  “Unh!” Eric repeats. His tongue lashes back and forth like some ominous black flag.

  I can’t stand it. I lash out and slap him hard across the face. “Shut up!” I scream.

  The force of my slap doesn’t seem to affect him at all. He sits there like before, tongue out, writhing like a snake, but I see the growing red mark where I struck him. I feel sick.

  I grab the mug and stumble out of the stall, shutting it behind me. I’m shaking and trembling all over. I’ve never felt so small and petty and hateful. For all I know, Eric could be dead in the morning. And the last thing I did was slap him across the face.

  Sobbing with guilt and exhaustion and anger and a whole slew of emotions I can’t even begin to describe, I lumber into the last stall and collapse on the ground. It feels like I fall directly into darkness.

  68

  When I wake up, it’s still daylight. I slept so profoundly that it takes me a few seconds to remember where I am and why. For those seconds, I’m confused that I’m not in our cabin in the Homestead. I expect to wake up and look at the roof of our house, to see the sheet that acts like a curtain and separates our beds. I expect to smell breakfast, to hear Eric walking around below in his heavy boots. I expect to get up and work. Then the confusion evaporates and I remember everything. It happens suddenly, like someone opened a curtain in my mind and let the sun in.

  Only it’s not welcoming like sunlight. All those people dead. Eric on the edge of death. He and I fugitives from the only home I’ve known. I cringe when I remember the look of surprise and horror on Norman’s face when he thought I shot him. I feel the disgusting thud of striking him with the butt of my gun, how it shook my whole arm up to the shoulders. Then I see the aluminum mug next to me on the stall’s floor and I remember slapping Eric across the face and I blush hotly with shame. In all of our years together, Eric never once raised a hand on me, never once even threatened me. I blush even hotter. I feel sick with shame.

  I breathe out slowly and tell myself that it won’t ever happen again. It was because I was exhausted, I tell myself. I lost my temper. It won’t happen again. But I’m scared of myself, scared of what I might do. I’ve never been scared of myself before. It’s a bad feeling, almost worse than the mistake itself.

  I have to get up and move. I have to shake myself free of this guilt and shame.

  I jump a little in place in my stall.

  Bandit hears me moving and he neighs loudly. He’s hungry and needs to be fed. I’m relieved to have something to do. When I lead him outside, I see that it’s late afternoon. The sun is out and warm and the blue sky is filled with great puffs of cloud. The insects are so numerous, they’re like a haze over the golden fields. Taking advantage of them are swooping, darting barn swallows. I tie Bandit loosely to a fence post where there’s a lot of grass, and I watch him shake his mane and bend his neck down to eat. Then I look at the position of the sun. It’s strange for some reason. Shouldn’t it be night? It slowly comes to me that I must have slept much, much longer than I thought. No wonder Bandit was so hungry.

  When I look back at the barn, another thought comes to me. It freezes me in place. Did Eric survive? Will I find him sprawled out dead on the floor? I remember his skeletal face and I start to tremble a little. I can’t think of what I would do without him. I’ll never forgive myself if the last thing I did was strike him in anger. I walk around outside a long time before I turn back toward the barn. I have to see. I have to know.

  I walk slowly to Eric’s stall. It’s silent in the barn except for the chirping of swallows as they pass in and out through the barn doors. I don’t hear anything coming from Eric’s stall. I move to open it, but my hand stops. I have to prepare. If he’s dead, I have to be prepared. I try to tell myself that maybe it’s not the worst thing. If he’s dead, I could go back to the Homestead. I could apologize to them and hope they understand I did what I did for Eric. I could be safe and warm and not so hungry and exhausted all the time. And I did the best for him. I did everything I could. I begged for him.

  But none of that makes me feel prepared.

  When I think that I might open the stall door to the corpse of the only father I’ve ever known, I just don’t know if I can live without him. I try to open the stall, but again my hand freezes and I turn around and walk to the barn door nervously. I remember Eric long ago, before the Homestead, before the island, even before Lucia. I was so hungry then too.
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br />   I begin to tremble. I haven’t thought about any of this in a long time.

  I was just a little girl, alone. I was starving. I found a can of food in a store, but I couldn’t open it. I remember smashing the can against the wall, trying to get it to open. Hitting the can with boards and trying to pierce it open with a screwdriver. I even tried to chew through it. Then Eric came in alone. At first, he walked right by me. He was holding a gun and he scared me. I tried to sneak out but I must have made a sound. When Eric heard me, he whirled around and shot. The sound was so loud that I was shocked and stunned motionless. Eric ran to me and asked me if I was hurt and told me he was sorry, that he didn’t mean to shoot. When he saw I wasn’t hurt, he took out his utility knife and opened the can of food. The smell of the food released me from my terror and I took the can. He watched me as I ate it, and I felt safe again. He has been with me ever since.

  When I remember, I think to myself for the first time that Eric didn’t have to help me. I was a stranger. Did he do it just because he was a decent person? Was he lonely? Or did he just feel guilty that he almost shot a starving little girl? I don’t know why he did it. I don’t know why he saved me, why he looked after me. I don’t know why I’ve never wondered that before. I’m scared that I’ll never get to ask him. I’m terrified I’ll never get to thank him for it, and I’m ashamed I’ve never thought of thanking him, not once in all these years together. The regret twists in me like a knife.

  I realize there’s no preparation for Eric’s death. There’s only pain.

  I just have to do it.

  I stride to the stall door and throw it open.

  Eric is lying on his stomach. His arms and legs are splayed out wide. His face is on the ground. He doesn’t move at all. Flies buzz around him, drawn to his stench. I step forward and crouch down, listening for the sound of his breathing. I don’t hear anything, but it’s hard to hear through the sound of my own heart beating. I bend down closer to his face. I watch the dirt near his mouth, searching for any sign of breathing, just the merest trembling of dust. Nothing. I reach out fearfully. I’m horrified of touching him, terrified of feeling numb, cold, waxy skin. But I have to know.

  I feel his face with my finger.

  “Unh,” Eric says. I leap away from him.

  “You scared the shit out of me!” I cry, holding my chest as if I’m afraid my heart will crash through my ribcage, it’s beating so hard.

  “Unh,” Eric says again. I’m so glad he’s alive, I laugh out loud.

  “Yeah, good to see you too!” I exclaim. I roll him onto his back, and then grunt as I pull him up to a sitting position. Eric sits with one shoulder hunched up while he leans forward. He looks like someone is giving him a wet willy and he’s trying to shrug them away. I’m so happy that he’s not dead that I laugh at the sight. I wipe away a tear of relief. “Are you hungry?” I ask him. “I’m starving. I’ll make us some breakfast.”

  “Unh,” he says, his jaw drooling a line of black filth. I wave away the flies that crawl on his face. I could kiss him. In theory. I’m not going to, but I could. I put my hand on his shoulder instead and give him a squeeze. Then I reach into his coat and pull out the drooly towel. I really have to wash it, I think to myself, as I try to wipe his face and scrub away the black bile that dried in his beard overnight. It falls from his face like pepper. “There you go,” I say happily. “You’re growing quite a beard, aren’t you?” I smile at him and stand up.

  I have a plan for breakfast. The sleep has been good for me. I’m thinking a lot more clearly. I take out our food from the backpack and my jackknife. Then I begin to slice deer meat into smaller and smaller pieces before I add some bread. I break this down too. Then there’s the problem of water. When I look around for a well and don’t find anything, I walk through the field to the line of trees and sure enough, there’s a babbling little brook underneath the trees and I fill up our kettle with water. Back at the farmhouse, I start a fire and wait for the water to boil. In the meantime, I slice up the bread and deer meat into even smaller pieces. Then I mash it into a paste. When the water boils, I pour it into a mug, and then add just enough of the meat and bread to make a thin soup. Eric will drink, that’s no problem. I just have to trick him into eating some food along with the water.

  When I go back to Eric, I’m careful. I’ve learned my lesson. When he begins to lap at the soup greedily, I steady him with a hand on his chest. I want to look away as his black tongue laps away at the soup, but I can’t, I have to make sure it’s getting in his mouth. It’s messy and disgusting and his open mouth stinks like death. It takes me like an hour to feed him all the soup I can. More of it is wasted than I’d like. The soup is all over his beard and down the front of his shirt. I take out his drooly towel and wipe him off as best I can. Then I take the towel out to wash it with boiled water. I wring black water from it and then lay it out on a rock to dry in the afternoon sun.

  Only after I lie down do I realize that I’m hungry. Not like normal hunger either. It hurts. I look over at the food I have and it’s not much. Some deer meat, a little bit of bread, a jar of pickles, two shriveled little apples, a big, rubbery carrot, and four, rock-hard potatoes. I want to eat the deer meat and bread, but it’s all I have to feed Eric. I put the potatoes in a pot to boil while I eat both apples without hardly pausing. The hunger pains subside, but I’m still famished. I open the jar of pickles and eat three of them. They are wonderful and salty and it’s all I can do not to eat the whole jar. I drink some of the pickle juice and then look greedily at the deer meat and bread. My stomach twists in me. I bite my lip. I tell myself that I could have just a little meat too, maybe just one piece. I have to stay strong too, right? I reach out, but I stop myself. I have to save it for Eric.

  I have to get up and walk away from the meat. It’s too much temptation. If I had a rifle, I could hunt down a deer easily enough. Hunger makes you a really good hunter. But I don’t have a gun. All I have is a few jackknives. I’m going to have to figure out a way to get food. The problem scares me for a second before I walk away the panic. I’m out in the middle of the field, thinking now. I don’t have a gun, I don’t have the material for a trap, it’s really too early in the season for foraging. Spring is still pretty new. When the fear wears away and I feel a little more practical, I turn stride to our backpack. I take out everything and survey what I have. While I look at our stuff and think, I crunch into the carrot and then stab the potatoes and cut them open. They’re far too hot to eat.

  When I turn my attention back to our inventory, I take a deep, pensive breath. It’s not much. For a second, I regret that I hadn’t packed with a little more forethought, but then I push that thought away. I did the best I could under the circumstances. There’s no use in whining about it anyway. Then I find what I’m looking for: a few paperclips that Eric used to hold together his papers, which I don’t know why I brought. I take the paperclips and look at them with a smile. They just might work. I have an idea. I did have the smarts to bring some fishing line, but it takes me a while to carefully disentangle the thing and wind it carefully on a nice, supple piece of solid wood. During the process, I find an old rusty hook which makes me so happy, I feel giddy. A real fish hook is way better than the one I was going to try to make with a paperclip. I’m feeling much more positive as I eat the boiled potatoes. They’re not bad, but I really wish I had salt.

  After I put Bandit back in his stall, I check on Eric before I go down to the brook. He’s sitting exactly how I left him. Just to be safe, I tie Eric up to the stall before I go. “I’ll be right back,” I tell him. Then, shrugging on my backpack, I head down to the brook. On the way, I pull up some grass out of the field and pick some worms out of the roots.

  I don’t know if the fishing was this good before the end of the world, but the brook is full of beautiful, colorful rainbow trout. I fish three fat ones out of the same little dark rapids and clap their heads down on a rock to kill them before I string them out on a branch throu
gh their bright red gills. The fishing is so good, I don’t want to stop, even though it’s headed toward evening. I follow the brook downhill until it vanishes into some swampy area. It’s late afternoon and a bit hard to see, but I’m having a lucky day. There are fiddleheads sprouting up everywhere! I forgot about these beautiful ferns! It’s the perfect season for them.

  I waste no time and fill up my backpack with dark green fiddleheads. I feel like some conquering hero as I walk back to the barn, laden with my spoils, a backpack full of fiddleheads and seven plump trout.

  Soon the fire is crackling and our pan is bubbling with boiling fiddleheads and the fish is frying in the pan, their tails getting wonderfully crispy. I’m too hungry to wait for long, so I devour the first trout before it’s even fully cooked. It tastes like fresh water and a hot spring day and it’s the best fish I’ve ever eaten in my life. Then I pull a bunch of fiddleheads out of the boiling water with a knife and put them on a plate to cool. I have the patience to wait this time until the second fish is cooked and crispy and I eat it with little fingerfulls of soft, warm fiddleheads. They melt in my mouth like butter. It’s indescribably delicious and I hardly pause before I eat a third and fourth trout. I eat them as soon as they are ready, one right after the other. Finally I lay back and sigh. I haven’t felt this good since before the Worm came back. I’m full and comfortably tired and there’s a gentle breeze in the air.

  The first stars are just coming out. Looking up at them, I feel lucky. I’m still alive. So is Eric. The farmhouse was a real stroke of luck. We can stay here and live off trout and fiddleheads for a long time. Maybe as long as we need to. If Eric makes it through the Worm, we can go back to the Homestead together. I think about the sour look on Franky’s face when Eric returns alive, how Franky will fake being happy, and I feel a thrill of pleasure, a little taste of revenge. But it won’t be the same. I’ll remember what Franky’s really like. I’ll make sure Eric knows. Together we’ll talk about it, think it through.