The World Without Flags

by Ben Lyle Bedard

  I can’t think of these others. I have to think about us, Eric and I. I don’t know why we’re not dead, but it’s not good. I swallow drily. It might even be worse than dying.

  I turn when there’s some joyful whoops and hollers behind me. A second later, the house and barn where Eric and I were able to rest leaps to flame. The bandits jump up and down and howl in front of the growing fire. I feel the heat from it from where I stand. The fire makes a sound like rushing wind and throws giant sparks spiraling into the air. It only takes minutes for the blaze to consume the house and the barn.

  Then the caravan lurches forward, jerking painfully at my wrists. I close my eyes and walk, trying to battle away the despair.

  72

  I learn their names while they’re arguing about which ones to rape that night.

  There’s Chris, he thinks the little girl would be best. He calls her the “freshest”, like she’s meat. He’s the one who drives the cart. There’s Gary. He argues that the little girl can’t take much more. She might die on them and then where would they be? He was in the barn, the one with the one-armed leather jacket. There’s Tony and Harry and Jason: they all want the older woman. They call her “Mom,” laughing. There’s Bert, he wants me. He says that he wants to “break in the nigger girl.” He gives me a playful kick as he says it, but the malice in his voice is terrifying. And finally, there’s Bill. He’s the one with the scar, the leader, the one with the milky eye. He doesn’t let them have the little girl. Or me. He says I’m to be saved, says that I’m special, that a man he calls Dr. Bragg will want me, clean and untouched.

  Such normal names. Boring names. Names you might give sons. Names for shopkeepers and farmers and husbands. Artemis used to say that all men are dogs. She said it playfully, almost happily. She was right, but I’m glad she’s gone. I’m happy as hell she never has to learn how right she was.

  We are quiet while they discuss us, fearing that if we say or do anything, the attention will damn us. The three of us sit motionless, frozen, waiting, preparing ourselves for what might happen. My heart is hammering in me painfully. I feel like maybe it would have been better if I had killed the both of us back in the Homestead. Just shot Eric and then shot myself for doing it. Maybe it would have been the smartest thing to do.

  In the end, Squint, that’s the name I give the one-eyed leader, Squint doesn’t let the others have any of us.

  “We got to get them home alive,” Squint says. “You already had your fun.”

  The others grumble a little, but it doesn’t come to more than that.

  “Shit,” says Bert, who wanted me, “I’m too tired to fight with the little bitch anyhow.” But his eyes sparkle as they glance at me and I feel my heart race inside me.

  They leave us to sleep.

  The little girl crawls into the other woman’s arms. They don’t make a sound. They just fall asleep.

  I’m up for a long while, thinking.

  73

  I try to keep close to the cart as we move, to watch Eric, to make sure he’s okay. He seems all right. He stands mostly, with his jaw open, his black tongue drying in the air. They give him water sometimes, laughing as he groans, lapping at the water. Sometimes they poke at him and the other girl, to see if they respond. They don’t, except for a moan, which makes them laugh. When they do this, I don’t even see them as human, but some fallen type of beast, something damned and without hope. They are entirely lost. I hate them with everything in me, a hatred so intense that I tremble and bite my tongue to keep from screaming it out. It’s not that I wouldn’t feel bad if I had to kill them, I want to kill them. I want to rid the earth of them. I want to wipe them clean from the earth, and imagine that they never existed.

  But I have to hide all these emotions. I keep my eyes on the ground, mostly. I keep quiet. I have to be as invisible as I can, melt into the surroundings. If they take too much of an interest in me, I could die. I find myself cowering into the shadows. I try to say that I’m not afraid of them, but I am. I’m terrified of them. Every time one looks at me, I feel impossibly small, vulnerable, like a fly that can be easily crushed. I want to be braver than I am, to find some courage in me, but right now, all I feel is the bright sting of fear and coursing through it, thin but unbreakable, the need to survive.

  74

  They take the diseased girl out of the cart on the third day traveling south. They poke at her with sticks. The one named Gary gets excited and pokes at her face with a sharpened stick. My heart feels like it’s going to explode. I look around for Squint, usually he puts a stop to this kind of thing, but he’s gone and nowhere to be seen. Gary can’t resist himself and digs his stick deep inside one of her dark eyes. She flails one arm, and staggers back, making a long, painful sound, something like a rusty door closing. Then she stands up like nothing happened, one eye socket dripping with black gore, white worms waving from the pit where her eye used to be, as if searching. Gary is smiling, not with pleasure or entertainment, but with something darker and much more disturbing. Even the others stop laughing at the sight, and they quietly lead her back to the cart like little boys who realize that the game went too far, but are too stubborn to admit they did anything wrong. When they push her into the cage, she falls and just lays there. Eric stands over her without noticing.

  Later that night, while they are all sleeping, I find a loose nail in the cart. Quietly, carefully, I begin to work it back and forth, loosening it from the dry wood.

  75

  There’s a fight.

  Squint catches Tony trying to bring the older woman into the woods.

  At first they argue, and Tony says something to him, something I don’t hear very well, and Squint goes quiet in the face. It’s like he loses all emotion, all life. Then he beats him. He does it methodically, carefully, an expert with his fists. Tony tries to fight back, but he’s as helpless as a child. In the end, Squint drags him in front of the other men. Tony is groaning, bleeding from his nose and mouth, his face already swollen.

  Squint doesn’t say anything to the other men. He just looks at them. Then he bends down and grabs Tony’s throat and squeezes. Tony’s too weak from the beating to struggle too much. His arms and legs quiver at the end. Squint stands over him looking at the others with his one good eye. They don’t say anything. When Squint walks away, the others drag off Tony’s body and set it afire.

  We keep moving long into the night, the fire from Tony’s body burning behind us, like a red candle.

  76

  I keep my ears open. I need information. I listen carefully and remember. They’re out here for Dr. Bragg, to bring back zombies and to set fire to everything else. They call it a cleaning mission. I can tell by the way they say it, they’ve done it before. I can tell that they think they’re the good guys, getting rid of the Worm for the benefit of everyone. I can hear it in their voices, so smug, self-righteous. When they talk of us, the prisoners, the ones they have lashed to the carts, the ones they rape and brutalize, they speak of us as people they are saving, as if we’re lucky to be here. In their minds, they’re not raping, they’re objects of desire. Our desire. They call us sluts and whores. They call us horny. They say they can tell by the looks in our eyes that we want it. We want them all. We’re practically begging for it.

  Only Squint seems to understand. He’s quiet. He looks over us with a careful eye, the way a guard would, a guard that had the sense to fear the prisoners.

  On the third day, maybe the fourth, while we’re stopped to eat our oatmeal, our only meal of the day, we see a horse and rider in the distance. Just an outline on the horizon. The bandits stand nervously, their hands at their guns. Squint orders one of them to ride out to investigate. Gary swings up on Bandit, who reluctantly trots off to the north.

  He doesn’t come back.

  77

  Now the bandits are on alert. They ignore us for now, except to kick at us sometimes. The woman I am with and the little girl still haven’t spoken. They huddle together every
night and seem to live in a world of their own, turned inwards. It’s almost as if the rest of the world doesn’t even exist. I am relieved. I can’t look after them. I have enough to worry about, and any day now, either of them might die or be killed. I’ve seen the look they have in their eyes before. People with that look don’t last long in this world. I won’t try to describe how horrible it is to see that look in a little girl. I wonder if I have that look, if that’s what they’re thinking when they see me.

  The gang is always on the look now since Gary vanished. Their hands are on their guns. They no longer laugh or poke at Eric and the other diseased girl. They don’t bother us anymore. I no longer get greasy, disgusting looks from them, as if they could touch me with their putrid gaze. Now they are afraid, and I am glad. We have become much more invisible.

  I feel a little hope rise in me. There’s an opportunity here, if I can just take advantage of it.

  78

  The next day the rain begins. It comes down in gray sheets, cold and miserable. They drive us hard, fearing the mysterious rider. All day we push through the rain, without stopping to eat. After several hours of stumbling forward, my wrists bleeding, I see why. My heart falls. If I had a chance on the road to escape them somehow, I’ve lost that chance.

  As the sun begins to set, we arrive at their base. It’s about a dozen clapboard houses and a long, steel warehouse, all surrounded by a corrugated steel fence, about ten feet tall. The gate is open when we get there. Other bandits, looking only slightly less ragged and carrying shotguns and rifles, shut the gate when we stumble through.

  By the time the gate shuts, we’re surrounded by these new men—and they are all men—who laugh and point and spit in our direction. They brave the onslaught of rain for the chance to see the new arrivals. They point at the cart with whispers of fear and hatred. I hear several of them refer to the “nigger girl.” I get that same fury and fear in me as the word slices into me. I feel like some kind of circus freak on show. They move us slowly up the crumbling asphalt road toward the warehouse.

  As we slog through the rain and mud, I keep an eye on Eric in the cart. His head is pressed against the wooden slats of the cart, his jaw hanging open, his black tongue coiling out, trying to capture the rainwater as it falls. I shiver and look away, hoping that none of the onlookers decide to throw a rock at him. If these bastards hurt him, I think to myself, I’ll have a new goal rather than escape. I’ll burn every single one of these sons of bitches to the ground. The anger gives me strength and I straighten up a little as I walk, not enough to bring any attention my way, but enough for my own good. Enough to know that I’m still alive and thinking for myself.

  Our pathetic caravan stops in front of the warehouse. I look up to see Squint swing off his horse. He looks back toward us with his good eye. I can see he’s proud of what he’s accomplished. He’s brought back his goods, untouched—mostly—just as he was told. He gives us a smile. I look away, but can’t help but watch him out of the corner of my eye as he disappears into the warehouse. A moment later the large doors clatter open and the cart is maneuvered inside, with all of us prisoners following. I look over to see the woman and the young girl walking close together with their heads down. I have a terrible feeling they’re already dead and don’t know it. Maybe we all are.

  I can’t think that way. I can’t. I have to keep it together for Eric. I can’t lose it. I can’t lose hope. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. In my mind, I try to remember better days. Summer days at the lake with Eric. Swimming. The warm waters all around me, comforting, cool, fresh. The way the water drops sparkle like jewels when I come out of the water. The fireflies over the fields. Eric reading to me in the cabin by candlelight. His voice in the night answering mine. “Good night, chipmunk.”

  I’m not done yet. Eric has no chance if I give up. None.

  I won’t be defeated so easily.

  79

  Inside, the comfort of dryness is replaced with claustrophobic fear. I’d rather be soaked to the bone. The warehouse is a steel and wire labyrinth of rooms and passages that turn this way and that. We are brought through several turns to a long corridor of small rooms with steel doors. The place smells like an outhouse that’s never been cleaned. But there’s something else beneath, something rotten and sweet that makes my stomach turn. I’m familiar with the smell of death, but I’m not used to it and I hope I never will be. At the end of the corridor, Squint opens a door, and shoves the woman and little girl inside. Then he pushes the diseased young woman with the wrecked eye inside after them and shuts the door. He locks it with a brutal little twist of his wrist.

  The next room is ours, and it’s the only one where the entire door is made of bars. He opens the door with a clang and pushes Eric inside. Then he makes a face and glances at me. “Hold her,” he tells the other bandit behind me, one of the new ones I don’t know. I feel his arms grasp me tightly by the shoulders. It hurts but I don’t show it.

  Squint moves inside and I can’t see what he’s doing. My heart stutters with the fear he’s doing something to Eric, something horrible just to prove he can, the way the man poked that poor woman’s eye out. I’m shaking despite myself, but not out of fear. I feel energy pulse through me, and I begin to think, to plan what I’ll do if I hear him do anything to Eric. I will drop out of this idiot’s grasp, turn around and punch up quickly right between the moron’s legs, and when he bends over, I’ll push my thumbs through his eyeballs. Then while he’s screaming and cursing, I’ll deal with Squint as best I can. . .

  But that doesn’t happen.

  Squint walks out of the prison cell holding something. I can’t tell what it is for a second and then I recognize it: it’s the maple and oatmeal bar that Randy gave me back at the Homestead. I forgot all about it. Now I remember slipping it in one of the pockets of Eric’s overalls before we left the Homestead. I’d totally forgotten it was there. It seems like another life.

  “What’s this?” Squint asks me. I shrug. He crouches down in front of me, and unwraps the bar. The smell of the maple sugar makes me weak with hunger, but I hope I don’t show it. He’s staring at me with his one good eye. The other one is milky blue, with a dark center, like the yolk of an egg that’s gone very, very rotten. “How long you known about this, eh?” Squint asks. I shrug again, and he smiles and then takes a bite out of the bar. He chews it slowly in front of me. “Niggers don’t know how to share, do they?” I try not to move, not to clench my jaw or my fist. Not to have any reaction, nothing he can use as an excuse to beat me, which is what he wants.

  Squint sniffs loudly and then takes another extravagantly large bite out of Eric’s bar. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” he tells me as he chews wetly. “Monkeys don’t share neither, you know.” He looks at me, searches me, hoping I’ll do something, say something. When I don’t give him anything, he continues. “Monkeys, dogs, and niggers,” he says. “None of them know how to share.” The last of the bar goes into his mouth. He pokes me with a finger, hard, right on the breastbone. “And you know, sharing is what makes a community, isn’t that right, Henry?” Squint turns his head toward the man holding my shoulders.

  Henry laughs. “You are one hundred percent correct there.”

  “That’s why we usually kill niggers,” Squint continues. “We want a civilized community. This isn’t the jungle. This isn’t Africa, is it?” When I don’t answer, he pokes me hard again. It hurts like hell, but I don’t show it. I won’t ever show it. “Is it?” he insists.

  “No, sir,” I answer.

  “You can’t survive out here without a sense of community,” he tells me. “You need to rely on each other when winter comes, isn’t that right, Henry?”

  “Winter is a hell of a thing,” the other man answers.

  “Where there’s winter, there’s a sense of community. Where there’s summer all the time, shit, it’s like monkeys and dogs. Every asshole out for himself. That’s why niggers don’t share and Jews just take advantage of
everyone.”

  “No sense of winter,” Henry says. His fingers dig into my shoulders.

  “No goddamn sense of community,” Squint continues. Squint eyes me, like he’s expecting me to argue with him. He’s hoping I’ll say something, so he can lay his hands on me. I won’t give him that satisfaction. I just stand there, quiet, trying not to look like how I feel. “It’s a wonderful thing the snow brings,” he continues. He counts them off on his hand. “A sense of community, honor, white skin and blonde hair.” He pops the rest of the maple bar into his mouth and smiles as he chews. “That way we know who to kill.” I’d like to tell him his hair isn’t blonde, but I’m not stupid.

  “White skin is God’s badge of honor,” Henry adds. “That’s the truth.”

  “Just to let you know,” Squint says. “Keeping you alive isn’t my idea.” He stands up, grabs me by the shoulder, and flings me into the room. I don’t weigh much, so I practically fly through the air right into Eric. We both collapse in a pile, and I struggle to get away from Eric before he accidentally bites or scratches me. When I disentangle myself and stand up, Squint is standing at the door. “Thanks for the candy bar,” he says.

  Then the two men leave the hallway, and my face contorts into anger, the first time it’s been allowed to be free in days.