The World Without Flags

by Ben Lyle Bedard

  “Please,” I beg. “Please don’t do this.” I fight to keep calm. I have a feeling that if I become too emotional, he’ll just restrain me tighter. I have to be calm. I have to reason with him. “Please.” But I know as I say it that he won’t stop. Whatever he wants to do, he is going to do. There is no argument possible to stop him.

  “Let’s not do that, shall we?” This time Doctor Bragg attempts a smile, but it’s much, much worse than nothing. The widening of his lips is purely mechanical like making a corpse smile. “This will be over quickly,” he says, the smile dropping away from him like discarded garbage.

  “Please.” I whisper it, hoping that a whisper will make it through to him. But he ignores me.

  There is a rolling sound, and I see that Doctor Bragg is in a rolling chair. He slides over next to Squint. Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a scalpel and pulls away a protective plastic cover. The blade glints terribly in the light.

  “Please,” I repeat, hardly able to get the word out. I don’t want to beg. I’ve got nothing else. Nothing. I used to think that I was beyond that, that I could withstand anything, that I would rather die with dignity than beg and whimper and cry, but I was wrong. I was so wrong. “Please don’t do this.” I’m trembling. Tears roll down my face. My heart is a storm inside me that I can hardly contain.

  Doctor Bragg ignores me. He reaches up and grabs a clump of Squint’s hair, pulling his head down.

  “Mmmmm,” Squint says through his barbed wire, cage of a mouth.

  In one movement, Doctor Bragg inserts his scalpel into one side of Squint’s eye, slices around with a twist of his wrist, and then, with a gloved hand, plucks his eye from his head. It all happens so quickly that I don’t even have time to turn away or close my eyes, although I would give anything not to have seen it.

  “Mmmmm,” Squint says.

  Doctor Bragg lets the eye drop on a metal plate that I just now notice is sitting on his lap. He lets go of Squint’s hair and the infected man just straightens up as if nothing has happened. Thick, dark liquid oozes from the hole where his eye had been.

  “It’s puzzling,” says Doctor Bragg, looking back at me. “The eye actually grows back. This is the second specimen I’ve removed from him.” He holds the metal plate forward as if for me to inspect. As if I am curious about it. The eye sits on a pile of long, thin worms, all contorting and twisting as if they were being impaled on a hook. “Even more curious,” the Doctor continues, “he moves around with the same accuracy as before. I think the worms sense their surroundings. Certainly, as you can see, there is no ocular input whatsoever. Curious.” Doctor Bragg looks up at Squint and blinks slowly as he considers this curiosity. Then he turns back to me and, after a filthy attempt at a smile, rolls his chair back to me. I’m too scared now to say anything. My lip trembles.

  Doctor Bragg tries to smile again. The fleshy attempt hits his face like roadkill. Then it falls as quickly as it appeared. “I know that to you,” he says, his eyes dark and bottomless, “this must seem cruel. Unfair.” He clears his throat. “And you’re not wrong.” He shakes his head. “No, you're entirely right. Strictly speaking, this is a hideous crime, what I’m about to do to you. Hideous. Barbaric. I won’t argue with you.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” I breathe, my whole face trembling.

  The Doctor shrugs slowly. He looks at me almost apologetically. “Well, there’s the rub,” he says. “I do have to do this. This is the only way to know. This is the only way to protect us all. I have to know.” He takes a deep breath. “I’m very sorry it has to be you, and I know there’s no forgiving me. I don’t expect that.”

  He cocks his head slightly and then shrugs, as if the decision was beyond him. Then he attempts another nauseating smile and it’s all I can do not to spit in his face. “You see, Birdie,” he says, “I’ve been able to learn so much. I’ve learned that what we think of as the Worm is actually something like a super organism, like a bee’s hive or an ant’s nest. There isn’t just one kind of worm. I’ve been able to identify six distinct types of worms. Six.” Sweat is gathering on his upper lip as if in excitement. “Each type of worm has its proper role. Ones in the stomach seem to be focused on reproduction. Ones that latch onto the brain stem. Ones that seem to work their way through the blood stream, invisible to the naked eye, constantly nourishing the body, keeping the host in a kind of suspended animation, a kind of living death. Ones that plant themselves into the heart, ones that seem connected to the ear, and another type that seems to live in the pancreas and liver. I’ve learned so much about them.” He holds up the plate with the ball of worms. “But the ones that inhabit the optic nerve, these I have not studied thoroughly.” He looks at them with an open, acidic hatred. Not disgust, but hatred. “This last type remains mysterious to me, especially when it comes to someone of your unique ancestry.” He looks at them as if they were an affront to him.

  After a moment he turns back to me. “You can help me, and, in so doing,” he explains, “help everyone. Your whole species.” He gives a twitching, brutal little smile. “If you think of it, your sacrifice is kind of an honor.” I want to say something back to him, something biting, something that can communicate the terror coursing through me, but my mind is blank from terror.

  Suddenly I feel a sudden prick. I look down and see a needle in my thigh. I realize he’s been talking only to distract me. I feel heavy suddenly, heavy and distant. The skin on my face sags, begins to feel like mud.

  “It’s easier if you don’t struggle,” he explains. He looks at his watch and waits patiently as the numb feeling spreads through my body. Only my fear and horror remain undulled.

  After a minute, Doctor Bragg suddenly stands up and takes my jaw in his hand. I hardly feel it as he forces my mouth open. My heart is screaming, but I can’t move. I can’t make a sound. Helplessly I watch as he lifts the sprawling, wriggling mass of worms to my mouth. I feel it fall onto my tongue and then he shuts my mouth with a clamping sound and plugs my nose. My body is beyond my ability to control, and I feel myself swallow, feel the cold, writhing eyeball slip down my throat, twisting and contorting like a living octopus. Then it passes and it is done. Doctor Bragg looks down at me.

  “There now,” he says. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  134

  This is it. There’s no use in thinking or breathing, dreaming or remembering. I sit in the cage I only escaped days ago. I imagine the worms inside me multiplying, sending out new worms to invade my brain, latch themselves into the most central part of me. I will be the Doctor’s next source of worms, his next research subject. There will be no one to care for me, no one to give me that slim chance for survival that began all this. I am slowly dying. It should take no more than twenty four hours to know what it feels like to be Eric. I will know what he has known these weeks. I will understand if he has vanished or if he still exists somewhere inside him. I will be gone or I will be there to witness what atrocities the Doctor will do to me. I have only a day before the fever begins, before it starts taking me. If I survive the fever, I will be shuffling around the cell in only a day or so, if it happens as quickly as it happened to Squint. Only a day.

  There is a strange relief in knowing that it will be over, all this struggle, all this worry and anxiety, this pain and suffering. I think of Eric and Pest back in Cairo, and I think that Pest will protect him. Perhaps they escaped the outbreak that Randy caused. If they survive and Eric somehow makes it through all this, it will have been worth it. I think of the people left back at the Homestead. I wonder if they have sowed the fields. I wonder if Crystal is cooking pancakes on Sunday mornings as usual. And I think, as I haven’t had a chance to do, of our little graveyard strewn with the ashes of everyone I called friend, everyone I thought of as family. The flowers will bloom beautifully there, I know it. I wish I could be there, with them. But that is too tender, too hurtful. My mind recoils from it.

  Time slows as if relishing my fear. In my cage, there is o
nly shadows within shadows. It’s not completely dark because of windows high up in the warehouse, but the windows are filthy and they only allow a dim, oily light to pass. I am left with my mind and the horrible knowledge of my own death. My mind casts dreariness around me until my heart is so heavy, I feel like I could fall through the earth.

  135

  The drug is still heavy in me and sleep sometimes comes. I dream of fire. I wade in ashes, and my body is heavy and almost impossible to move. The ashes plug my nose, my mouth, and my breathing is distant. I can hardly see through the ashes that gather in my eyes. It’s like looking through mud. I sense the fire around me. I sense the flickering heat. I hear the sound of water. I smell it. I try to get to it, to find it, but there’s always something there. Someone. My parents, my real parents are always there, guiding me.

  “You can do it, Birdie,” my father says.

  My mother doesn’t talk. She only sings. I can feel her hair on my cheek when she holds me.

  I hear Eric’s voice like thunder: Think, Birdie. THINK!

  136

  When I wake up, I think that I hear Eric’s voice, but it’s not Eric. It’s Randy.

  “Birdie!” he calls to me from outside the bars. “Birdie!”

  I open my eyes and gaze at him. I hate him, but my hatred feels distant. Soon, nothing will matter.

  “Are you still there?” Randy asks.

  “I’m here,” I say. I want to stand up, to be defiant. But I don’t feel defiant. I’m dying.

  “Hasn’t got you yet, huh?” he asks. He smiles at me with his disgusting teeth. “You always were tough.”

  I don’t say anything to that.

  Randy sits down awkwardly in front of the cage, folding his long legs beneath him. He studies me in silence for a moment. “I don’t expect you to understand,” he says. “You know, it’s nothing personal. I always kind of liked you. Eric’s little black daughter.” He laughs. “God, Eric was a strange dude.”

  I just glare at him.

  Randy sniffs loudly and then leans his odd face toward the bars. “You don’t know what it’s like,” he tells me. His eyes roll up in his head, as if pointing to the sky. “Living out there. You grew up at the Homestead. I was outside.” He smiles again, through the bars. “You have no idea of the things I’ve had to, the things I’ve had to see.” The smile is steady on his face, and I realize that what I took for friendliness all those years was actually pure insanity. “Some live inside, some live outside.” His smile collapses. “I want to be inside.”

  “You could’ve stayed with us,” I tell him acidly. “Everyone liked you, we would’ve been happy if you stayed.”

  Randy sits back and laughs. “And do what? Live in one of your dark houses that you spend half your life repairing? Work in the fields everyday? Nearly starve every winter?” He makes a huffing sound. “No thank you.” Randy gets closer to the cage. “You know what they have in the south? Do you know what they’re building?” His eyes flash and he pushes his face close to the bars. “They have it all down there, electricity, fuel, houses with running water. Just not for everyone. Just for the important ones. I don’t want to just survive like an animal. I don’t want to scrape out a living like a fucking dog. I want it like it used to be. I want carpets and televisions and music. I want to really live.” His smile grows thin on his face. “You don’t remember what it was like before. You don’t remember how good it was, how easy, how comfortable. You just remember this.” Randy holds out his arms. “Just this world with its death and suffering and starving. This ugly, horrible existence. We used to live in this world like kings and queens, and now we scurry around it like rats.” He laughs. “I don’t want to live in your rat world. I want to be a king.”

  “So you’re a king just because you infect people?” I ask bitterly.

  “No,” he scoffs. “I thought you were smarter than that. Eric always used to think you were a genius.” Each time Eric’s name comes out of his mouth, I want to reach out between the bars and choke the life from his scraggly, chicken neck. But I could never get to him fast enough. He would scrabble away like a crab, laughing. Randy crosses his arms as he looks at me. “You have to think bigger than that,” he says. He waits for me to say something, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to give him the satisfaction. When he realizes I don’t plan on saying anything, Randy continues. “War brings opportunity to the ones smart enough not to fight in it.” I can see he’s just twitching to let me know what a genius he is, but I would rather die right now than give that to him, so I stay silent. “All I have to do is make one side think the other is using the Worm as a weapon,” he says. “Then I just have to convince them that me and the good Doctor Bragg have a solution to their problem. Then I’m the important one. Then I get to really live. I get the house with the carpet and the television and the oil furnace.”

  “You did all this for a nice house?” My lips curl in disgust.

  He laughs. “You don’t know,” he says finally. “You really don’t understand what it was like back then, before all of this.” He looks around him in disgust. “I refuse to live like an animal. I want to be human again.” His smile strikes me like a sledgehammer. I have things to say to him, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to talk to him or listen to him or see his face ever again. It’s one of the only good things I feel about dying, even in the terrible way I’m going to die. At least I want have to see or listen to Randy ever again.

  I don’t say anything, but Randy seems to read the hatred I have for him on my face. His smile hardly changes though. Only in his eyes do I see a change, a kind of resignation, an ending. He’s coming to his point. “Well,” he says with a sense of finality. “I do feel bad for you, though, I really do. So I wanted to ask if I could do anything for you. Like a last request kind of thing.”

  At first I want to spit in his face. I want to hurl insults at him. I want to say something so horrible, so cruel, so incisive, that it will stay with him until the day he dies. I will be like a ghost, haunting his life of luxury and comfort. But just as I begin to do that, my mind fills with flowers and a desire that feels more like a necessity. “You can do something for me,” I say before I even realize I’m talking. “When I’m dead, can you take my ashes back to the Homestead? Back to the garden?” My voice is small and timid as a mouse. It hurts to ask something of him, but I can’t stop myself. I want to go home.

  Randy watches me for a second. He sniffs. “I was thinking of something more like a last meal or a note to give to someone.” I don’t say anything, can’t even look at him. “Thing is,” he continues, “by the time the Doctor is done with you, I’m not sure how much of you will be left.” I don’t respond. I don’t look up. I’ve said as much as I’m going to say to this pig. I hear him get up and then stand quietly for a second. “Yeah, all right,” he says finally. “I’ll see what I can do.” I think he’s waiting for a thank you. I feel him standing looking at me, but I won’t look up. It was hard enough asking the filthy murderer for something, let alone thanking him for it.

  Wordlessly and silently, Randy leaves me alone finally. I hear the steel door shut and the echo reverberate through the warehouse. I make sure he’s gone a long time before I start to cry as quietly as I can, with my head buried deep in my arms.

  137

  Drained by tears, sleep begins to take me. Knowing that I might never awake, I struggle against on the edge of sleep, thinking desperately of Eric, of Pest, of all the people at the Homestead I will never see again. I think of the feeling of a warm breeze against my skin, the taste of sweet cider on a brisk autumn night, the softness of a bed, the fields glimmering with fireflies in the summer, the sound of the ckickadees in the forest. My heart is lacerated by the knowledge that I will never know it again. I will never awake. I fight to stay conscious, to meet my end fully aware, to feel the fever of the Worm take me, to even enjoy these, the last sensations that I will ever know. It is all precious, even the pain. But the last of the drug and the exhaustion
and despair combine to push me into what might be my last night of dreaming, my last night of existing in this world. The soft obscurity of dreaming accepts me into the last hours of my life.

  138

  I’m walking down a road. A dark road. Fires flicker like candles at the tips of the pine trees. The forest is all in flames, but it somehow burns gently, even peacefully. I am overcome with thirst and the thought of water consumes me. Beside me, as usual, my father and mother walk, guiding me forward. We walk through a tunnel of smoke, flame, and fire, my mother humming, my father’s quiet presence comforting beside me.

  At the end of the tunnel, Eric is waiting for me. His eyes are full of worms, all undulating toward me, but he stands the way he used to stand, strong and steady, aware and himself. When we get to him, he turns away and waves us to follow him. All four of us walk through the smoke and fire. Then we stop. All of them turn to me, their eyes dripping white worms that drop to their feet where they turn to wisps of smoke. They stare at me as if waiting.

  “Think, Birdie,” Eric says, his eyes a wriggling mass of white.

  “You can do it, honey,” my father tells me in his low voice.

  I look down at my feet. Worms fall to the ground. I watch as they swirl into smoke until I am standing knee deep in a fog of smoke.

  139