The World Without Crows

by Ben Lyle Bedard

  9

  __________

  Susquehannock State Forest

  THEY HIKED QUICKLY the next day, heading east and south toward Susquehannock State Forest. The flat lands were a thing of the past. The landscape was folded now and forested, for the most part. The roads were easy to escape and find again, twisting and curling, up and down the hills.

  Summer had come. The temperature had risen in the past few days until they had to stop for long periods to boil water and rest in the shade of trees. Everything was green and flourishing, and they saw little evidence of other human activity. Once they came across a burning truck. In the back burned a human body. It was hard to tell if the body had burned with the truck intentionally or if there had been some kind of fight or accident. They were so used to such sights now that they talked about it as if it were a game, trying to figure what happened.

  They spent more and more time boiling water as the temperature rose.

  It seemed so long ago that John Martin had been with them. Eric was ashamed of himself. In days, he was already forgetting him. He said so to Sarah one day as they gathered firewood. They hadn't spoken much since they kissed.

  "What do you expect?" she asked. "You can only see so much death before it doesn't bother you anymore. It's just the way the mind works."

  "Maybe," he said.

  "Not maybe," she said, suddenly angry. "That's the way it is. Deal with it, Eric. People die. We're all going to die."

  "I'm sorry," he said, confused at her sudden anger.

  "I don't care if you're sorry," she spat. "Grow up, Eric." She stalked away, leaving him and Birdie alone.

  Eric blushed as he watched her walk away. She had only kissed him because she missed Brad. Now she was ashamed of herself. Now she hated him. It was obvious.

  _

  The next day, Sarah stayed away from the group. For the first time, she left them to cook for themselves. They sat around the fire, eating beans and spaghettios. Sergio talked about the best way to navigate the next day while Lucia and Eric listened. Birdie drew with her few remaining crayons. She drew dark flowers blooming in dark earth under a darkling sun. In the dark forest, dark creatures roamed and dark people held to each other with dark arms and grasping dark hands.

  Lucia asked Eric to talk about the island again. Eric was bashful but agreed.

  He told them about the aluminum canoe and the sound the water made against it. He told them about the little shops where they sold soda and doughnuts and butter and fresh bait. About the sound of pine needles crackling under your feet. About the loons calling out over the water at night, so mournful and alone, but comforting somehow, gorgeous. He told them how, on the island, you couldn't see any road, any street, any building, no sign at all of humans. Just the sound of the loons and the soft lapping of the water against the shore.

  It was not exactly with hope that they listened. Or excitement. They listened with a profound reverence that was like the call of the loon itself, mournful and hopeful at once.

  _

  They had crossed route 46 and climbed a hill to a copse of trees when Sarah collapsed. Lucia was hiking next to her when it happened. When she went to help her up and touched her skin, Lucia flinched away from her. "She's burning up!"

  Eric staggered forward and dropped to his knees in front of her. "Sarah!"

  After a moment, her eyes fluttered open. "I'm sick," she said with a sob. "I'm sick, Eric!" She cried in his arms. "I'm going to die," she said.

  "No," Eric said. "You don't know that, Sarah. You could just have a fever."

  "Don't be stupid," she said weakly. "I'm going to die."

  "Please stop saying that," Eric said. He trembled holding her and tears escaped from his eyes. "You don't know that!"

  He held her for a long time, and then they helped her to her feet. They continued east as best they could.

  The next morning, Sarah's eyes were red.

  _

  While the rest of them waited with Sarah, Eric crept into Austin, a small town surrounded by forests and hills. Not much more than a few streets. They told him it was useless, but Eric insisted, hoping to find a pharmacy. John Martin had been carrying all of the antibiotics he had found after Brad died. Now Eric hoped that John Martin had been right. If he could find enough antibiotics, maybe Sarah would survive the Vaca Beber.

  Austin had only a few streets. Most of the buildings were squat and flat, a few were made of fine, red brick. None of them looked like pharmacies. Eric strode down the street in a rush, feeling light without his backpack. The sun was brutally hot above him.

  He came to a low, metal building with a broad triangular roof and a glass front. A grocery store. Without halting, he barged open the rusty front door, shattering glass in the process. In his right hand, he held a lug wrench he found in an abandoned car on the way in. His desperation made him fearless.

  The grocery store, located right on the street, had been ransacked several times. The shelves were empty. "Goddamn it!" Eric swore, walking down the aisles. He found nothing but a tube of toothpaste. He went to the back and kicked open the back door. He heard a yipping sound and then a few growls.

  In the back was a pack of dogs, only three or four. They were eating a Zombie, who was, technically, still alive. It's mouth worked up and down although half of its face had been eaten off already. One of the dogs was tearing away at its stomach when he opened the door, and now it gulped down the innards, and ran away, trailing intestines behind it. The Zombie's mouth opened and shut with a wet, clapping sound. Eric shut the door and then stumbled back, holding his mouth.

  The rest of the afternoon was a blur. He searched every store, every house. He saw other bodies. Other Zombies. He ignored them all, searching through the houses with monomaniacal energy. The only thing he found was a small .22 pistol and some bullets for it.

  Finally, as the sun set and it was getting hard to see, he returned without medicine.

  _

  Eric made a stretcher from some tree limbs and an old blanket he found on a clothesline. Eric got the idea from his survival guide, which had laid, long forgotten, at the bottom of his bag. He brought it out in hopes that it would have something to say about First Aid. This is what it said:

  "Before you venture out into God's land, you'll need to bring a First Aid Kit. Minor cuts and bruises can become a big deal when you're in the wilderness! Cuts can fester and cause deadly infections and minor sprains can turn an idle hike into a nightmare of pain. Be prepared and you can be assured that you will be safe in the great outdoors!"

  Flipping through it, he saw a plan for a stretcher. They put Sarah between a blanket strung between two long poles. They dragged the ends of the poles on the ground. It was not easy.

  It was a long, arduous hike to the forest, where they could safely stop. Finally they entered the calm darkness of the forest. Sweating and heaving, they dragged Sarah up a long hiking path. There was a cabin there, empty. Inside, they put Sarah onto the wooden frame of the bed, made as comfortable as they could with leaves, rags, and the blanket from the stretcher.

  "You'll be okay," Eric said, kneeling by her bed. "I'll help. I will."

  "Thank you," she said. She sobbed. "I'm sorry," she cried. "I'm so sorry."

  "Don't say that," Eric begged. He held her.

  Sarah cried in Eric's arms until she fell asleep. Her face was wet with pink blood.

  _

  Lucia grabbed Eric when he left the cabin to get more water. He had not left Sarah's side and had slept by her bed. At night, when she woke, gasping for water, he would be there to give it to her. Now Lucia clutched his arm and dragged him to the side before he could return to the cabin.

  "She's getting worse," she said to him, in a hushed voice.

  "I know," Eric said, tugging his arm free. "I know that."

  "We have to talk," Lucia said, shifting her feet uncomfortably. "We need to know what to do if--"

  "I'm not talking about that," Eric said. "Not until I have to.
"

  "We need to be prepared!" Lucia hissed. "It's better if we know. Believe me, it's better. If she cracks--"

  "I said I'm not talking about it!" Eric glared at her.

  "It's easiest if--"

  "Goddamn it," Eric swore, glaring at her. "I'm not thinking about killing her right now!"

  "Believe me, Eric, this isn't what I want to do either. But it's better if we talk about it. It's better if we have a plan. It's better--"

  "I'm not killing the first person I ever kissed!"

  Eric glared at her furiously. Lucia turned red, bit her lip and stepped back. He threw open the door and walked inside.

  It wasn't until much later that he became embarrassed by what he had revealed.

  _

  They found a kerosene lamp in the cabin and lit it. The light was eerie, bright but fuzzy. The kerosene made the cabin smell bitter. Sarah's yellow hair was wet and stringy and clung to her forehead. The lips he had once kissed were parched and peeling. She was asleep now, but her fever raged inside her and she slept uneasily, sometimes waking up, demanding unseen people for mysterious objects. When she slipped back to sleep, Eric wiped her eyes of blood, and kept a cool cloth on her forehead. Birdie slept on a blanket at the other end of the cabin.

  Lucia and Sergio came in the cabin rarely, to give him food or fresh water. Eric hated to see them. They looked at him with pity but not sadness. He wanted to shout at them. This was Sarah! This was Sarah, for godsakes! It seemed years ago that he had first seen her by the river, back in Ohio, singing while she fished. What would he do without her?

  Cooling her forehead, he remembered his mother. She had worn a nightgown. It had once been lemon yellow, but it became stained with blood and sweat, and, by the end, dark, almost brown, urine. He still smelled her in his nightmares. It was the smell of emptiness, grief, disaster, humiliation, and the end. The end of all things.

  The Vaca B killed like this. Brought humans low with fever and thirst, scraping away their consciousness, their memories, leaving a shell that could walk, drink, and do little else. For a few, a rare but horrifying few, the stress of the transformation was too much, or they fought so hard, something broke inside them. They cracked. They raved and killed anything that moved. And they lived on and on and on, in this state, this madness for life that devoured it. He had feared it would happen to his mother. Now, he waited to see how Sarah, the first woman who had ever kissed him, would die.

  A part of him hoped that Sarah would never speak, but go gently to her end. It was selfish to think so, he knew it, but he couldn't help it. He sat by her, tortured by the thought she would die, tortured by the thought she might continue. He wanted her to die peacefully. He wanted her to live. He sat next to her, a maelstrom of grief and fear.

  If he had to shoot her in the end. If he had to shoot the first woman he had kissed. Eric didn't know if he could survive that. Something in him would have to die too.

  _

  Birdie stayed by Eric and made sure he ate and slept.

  Once, when he was just coming out of a dazed sleep, Birdie was speaking to Sarah.

  "You'll be all right," she was saying. "There's a man who comes, my mother told me once. He comes to give us dreams. If we've been good, we have good dreams. I think you'll have good dreams, Sarah. Don't worry, the man will come."

  Eric had rarely heard Birdie speak so much at one time. He wondered if he was dreaming, and then either fell back to sleep or his dream melted away into inarticulate shadow.

  _

  Late in the night, Eric crept outside of the cabin to go to the bathroom. He stood under the brilliant stars and tall trees and listened to his urine gently splash on the leaves. When he was done, he didn't go back to the cabin right away.

  Lucia and Sergio's campfire was nothing but glowing coals. They were sleeping nearby on their sleeping bags. It was hot, so they slept in t-shirts and underwear with their skin to the cool air. Lucia's long legs, moist with sweat, glistened in the starlight. Eric tossed a log on the fire, and watched the sparks spiral above it, dying in the air a few feet from the fire. He smelled smoke and ash.

  There was a time when death had not been such a presence in his life. He had laughed and eaten and been with his friends. They had spent glorious hours together, alive and well, in his basement, tossing dice and slaying imaginary creatures and arguing about the interpretation of rules. There had been no thought of death as anything but a plaything, the goal of a game. Kill the dragon. Kill the evil lich king.

  But now death had come. It was terrible. Profound. Horrifying. It was sickening and arbitrary. He lived with it. It was all around him. Death in life and life in death. Together. He knew its smell and its gaze. He had watched the whole world die. He felt a little death in him every time he breathed.

  He knew death was no mystical thing. People died mechanically and necessarily, both the good and the bad. Few survived and of those, it was impossible to know why. Death followed no rules except the grand rule that everyone, in the end, came to it. Eric had once thought that life taught lessons. That, as one grew, a person accumulated wisdom and became a better human. It was the myth of the hero, the myth of the trial, from which the hero emerges, stronger, more wise, beautiful and capable, a greater human. But this, he realized, was the mentality of a schoolboy, who thought that the world, in all its intricacies and complexities, all its mystery and variety, could be reduced to a list of lessons, that once learned, could then be checked off. But there was no greater knowledge, no rising above life. There was only death and it decided all things.

  All things die for no reason except that they once lived. And life, for all its beauty and variety, is nothing but a spark above a campfire that may be extinguished at any time and fall down to earth, once fiery bright, a hot flame against a dark night, but now, nothing but cold ash.

  Eric picked himself up and went back into the cabin where Sarah was moaning. He sat next to her and put a wet cloth to her forehead.

  "Mangy dogs," she muttered. "Wash them! Wash!" She choked and coughed. Then she was quiet again and lay back.

  Eric sat back and cried a few silent tears.

  There was no wisdom in death, unless wisdom's absence is a wisdom of itself.

  But a strange wisdom it was, unsettling. Empty as the darkness between the stars, like death itself.

  _

  Sarah died the next morning.

  She had no last words, at least none that was fit to remember. The blood from her eyes had turned nearly black by then. The last few moments had been unpleasant. Sarah stiffened suddenly, grit her teeth together, and then gasped for air between her teeth. Dark liquid oozed from her mouth, and her stiff legs shook and then kicked. She gurgled once and then slowly relaxed, as if a sheet of calm was being thrown over her body. When she settled, she was dead.

  Eric didn't cry again. None of them did.

  They wrapped her body in the blanket she slept on. Then the four of them, the survivors, built a pyre in a clearing not far from the cabin. They found a can of kerosene and doused the dry wood.

  Carrying Sarah's body to the pyre was painful. She was so light. The fever had eaten away her body. They lifted Sarah to the pyre and then stood back.

  Eric felt something should be said, but he didn't know what. He held a burning branch in his hand, but he didn't light the pyre. He stood there, thinking.

  "We'll miss you," he said finally, tonelessly. It was all he could think to say. Eric stabbed the wooden pyre with the burning branch and it leapt to awful light.

  Eric stayed to watch the fire consume her. When the fire began to die, Sarah's bones were visible, burnt but whole. The sight tortured him. He might have stayed watching the smoking ruin for some time, Sarah's bony hands clutching at ash, her skull staring at the horizon, if Lucia and Sergio had not pulled him away. Even Birdie tugged at him.

  "Come on, Eric," she said.

  For the rest of his life, he would dream of her bones, sticking from the ashes, and wake up, sweati
ng and uneasy.

  10

  __________

  Loyalsock State Forest

  FOR DAYS, ERIC LIVED in a haze. As they walked east, through forest and field, he saw little of what was around him. Fear had finally left him, but now he felt hollow and unreal. It was as if he had died and not Sarah or Brad or John Martin. Now it was he that was the Zombie. He thought of himself that way, like a shambling body, slowly rotting away, waiting for his end.

  Staring out once into the forest, he saw movement. He stood still and watched. It was a deer, scraping its head against a slender tree, whose leaves shivered at the touch. As he watched, he saw there was blood on the tree. The deer had the Vaca B. It was rubbing its head bloody against the tree.

  Eric turned away, and did the only thing he could now. He kept moving.

  _

  They sat on a high ridge, overlooking great waves of green forest. Their camp was behind them. Beans and rice were cooking on the fire. Sergio and Birdie gathered wood, stacking it some distance away. An aluminum pot of water heated in the fire.

  Eric sat on a promontory of stone that stuck out from the hill like an accusing finger. It was flat on the top. After lugging back the water from a stream, Eric sat on the rock, his legs dangling over the side. He looked out over the forest and felt a stinging emptiness. If it wasn't for the pain, he would feel absolutely nothing. Below him was a fifty foot drop to the forest floor.