The World Without Crows

by Ben Lyle Bedard

  "I need some new clothes," he said. He was covered in gore. "I need some new clothes." Eric wiped his hands on his pants, and then shivered, feeling the worms stuck on him. Stripping down, he threw the spattered clothes on the ground. "I need some new fucking clothes!" He was nearly naked now, his flesh crawling from the memory of the blood and worms against his skin.

  Lucia strode forward and clasped him at the shoulders. "It's all right, Eric," she said. "It's all right."

  "I need some new clothes," he insisted, shivering and trembling.

  "We'll get you some, don't worry," she said.

  "I can feel it," Eric said, gasping. "I can still feel it!"

  "Sergio!" Lucia cried. "Go find him some clothes in there."

  "I don't want to go back in there," Sergio whimpered.

  "Sergio!" Lucia pointed toward the door and Sergio, swearing once under his breath, went inside the cabin.

  Lucia held Eric's trembling body. He was crying now. He didn't want to be this way, but he wasn't in control of himself anymore. "I can't stand it," he said. His teeth were chattering like it was winter. "I can't stand it anymore! I can't do it!"

  Suddenly Lucia shook him so hard that he nearly fell over again. "Don't you say that!" Lucia exclaimed. "You hold on to yourself! We need you, Eric!"

  Eric looked at her numbly.

  "We need this island," Lucia said. "And we need you to get us there. It's all we got now. We need it. You can't just lose it, you understand?"

  Eric swallowed.

  "Understand?"

  Eric nodded.

  When Sergio came back, he had an armful of clothes. He dropped them in front of Eric before stumbling off and retching into the grass.

  _

  After he washed the gore from his body in the cold water of a nearby stream, Eric put on his new clothes, a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that said Muncy Indians on it. He hadn't realized how much weight he'd lost until he was in his new clothes. His protruding gut had vanished into a small paunch. His thick legs had become slim and hairy. The pants that had looked impossibly small to him, slipped on him with no difficulty. They were even a little loose.

  He was transformed.

  But it wasn't the way he once thought it might be. He didn't feel strong or capable or manly. Only moments ago, he had felt like he was losing his mind.

  What had he become now?

  He gathered himself together and joined the others.

  _

  Carrying their backpacks of food, the three soon pushed away the memory of the cabin. They were too busy thinking about eating the food they carried. The anticipation made them silly with excitement and happiness. Since they had been too busy to see what they were pulling out of the cupboards, the food that now weighed them down was mostly a mystery.

  "I know I saw a couple cans of beans," Sergio said. "I know it. I just hope we have some ravioli!"

  They groaned from the thought of it. Canned ravioli was a profound luxury.

  "I don't know what I have," Eric said. "It's like Christmas!"

  Lucia laughed. "I hope Santa brings me a can of fish," she said. "Seriously, I never thought I'd want a can of tuna so bad!"

  "Or shrimp!" exclaimed Sergio. "Can you imagine if there's a can of shrimp?"

  "What would you do with it?" asked Eric.

  "I don't know," Sergio said. "Maybe I'd mix it in with some beans. Maybe I'd just put a little hot sauce in it and eat it like that."

  "It all sounds good," said Eric.

  They were all quiet, contemplating their fierce hunger.

  _

  When they returned to their camp, Birdie had vanished.

  11

  __________

  Delaware Water Gap

  "OF COURSE CARL DOYLE took her!" Sergio cried. "Look at the tire tracks! Who else could it be!"

  Lucia shook her head. "We don't know, it could've been anyone. It could've been those men who shot up the cabin for all we know."

  "Don't be stupid!" Sergio threw his hand toward her. "It was Carl Doyle! Who else has been following us? Who else would steal her? He called her a savage!"

  "I'm not saying it wasn't,” said Lucia. “I'm only saying we don't know for sure, that's all."

  "I told you we should’ve killed him! Now look!"

  His head in his hands, Eric sat stunned. He listened to the argument as if it occurred a hundred miles away. His head was fuzzy and buzzed. He felt sick. He wanted to cry, but the thought of tears filled him with self-loathing. Tears would not bring Birdie back. Tears would not find her. Tears were selfish things. To think of what was happening to her made him shrink inside. He had sworn to protect her. Why did he leave her alone? He promised her. Now all he had was her backpack. Anger swelled inside him, mixed with dark self-hatred. He stood up.

  "It was Carl Doyle," he said. The others stopped arguing and turned to him. "You were right," Eric said to Sergio. "We should have killed him."

  "What do you want to do?" Lucia asked.

  "I'm going to get Birdie back," Eric said. "You don't have to come if you don't want to." He stood up and walked to his tent. He began pulling it down.

  "Eric," Lucia said, walking toward him. "You can't leave now, it's dark." She put her hand on his shoulder.

  "Moon's out," he said simply, without pausing.

  "I'm going with him," Sergio said. "What're you going to do when you find him?"

  “I'm going to kill him.”

  _

  They set off south and east, planning to move far south of Wilkes-Barre. Eric planned to hike fast toward his next goal: the Delaware Water Gap. For whatever reason, Carl Doyle had latched onto his plan. He had only glimpsed his map for a moment, as far as Eric knew, but he knew exactly where Eric was headed. Once the thought had filled him with dread. He had hoped many times that Carl Doyle would die of the Vaca B and leave them alone. Several times he had convinced himself that Doyle was dead, only to see the Land Rover emerge once again from the wilderness. Now he relied on Doyle's strange compulsion to follow him. Eric would go on toward the island and hope that Doyle did too, bringing Birdie with him.

  As dawn crested over the horizon, they moved around a town called Picture Rocks. The dark shells of burnt out trucks littered the one road through the town. Several of the large, clapboard houses had burned to the ground. Scanning the town quickly with the binoculars he had taken from Sergio, Eric saw only a few Zombies, stumbling through the town. No sign of Doyle.

  Eric turned east and walked around the town, heading down through the hilly terrain and woods, where deer and squirrels scattered before him. He hiked in a long, loping stride that he did not know he had developed from the journey from Athens. His mind tortured him with thoughts of Birdie. Birdie in the back of the bloody Land Rover. Birdie tied up in the front seat. Birdie hurt somehow, bleeding.

  His legs carried him across the terrain with ferocity.

  _

  Eric had never killed anyone before. He had never understood what happened to a person that would make them capable of murder.

  Until now.

  It was like there was light inside him that shone on forgiveness, love, sympathy, understanding, and that light had gone out.

  He was dark there now.

  Eric thought to himself that this was what it was like to make hard decisions and do the necessary things. This was what it was like to do anything he had to do to protect those he loved. This was what it felt like to be a man.

  It felt like nothing. It felt like absence.

  It felt like dying.

  _

  They did not stop. Sacrificing caution for speed, the three hiked through field and forest, leaping brooks and climbing ravines. Eric stopped only to scan the road with his binoculars or to sit quietly on rocks and eat cold beans or vegetables from cans. They continued until they could not see any longer, the darkness falling around them.

  Even then, Eric would choose a high spot to camp. There, above the rolling landscape, he sat watch, looking
for the bright headlights of vehicles to illuminate the darkness.

  He kept his pistol on his lap.

  _

  When they came to Lake Pocono, Lucia forced them to stop and build a campfire. They needed water. Although he wanted to keep moving, Eric relented, and helped build a roaring fire. He chose dry, hard wood that burnt hot, at one point snapping at Sergio for throwing a length of pine on the fire. Sergio blushed with anger but didn't answer. When Lucia shot him a scathing look, Eric held her eyes angrily. Then she too blushed and looked away. Eric felt a thrill of triumph, which, an instant later, made him hate himself. He turned and walked to the water’s edge.

  He was not unusually surprised by the corpses floating in the water. There were several of them, drowned and stinking in a cloud of flies. Once the sight would have sickened him, he would have run away, holding his mouth with his hand. Now he studied them with a careless eye. There were two men, a woman, and a little child, who might have been a girl or a boy. There was not enough left to be sure. Staring at the corpse, Eric thought how full of holes the human skull was. Great dark gaping holes. As if the world was seeking to engulf the mind, or the mind struggled to be released into the world. He wondered who won in the end. Which way was the collapse: did the mind go into the world or did the world extinguish the mind?

  "Eric," Lucia said, coming up behind him.

  Eric turned toward her, but didn't meet her eyes. "I know," he told her. "I'm not being nice."

  "It's not that," she said. She put her hand on his shoulder. "It's going to be all right, you know."

  Eric made a grimace of a smile. "That's what Birdie used to tell me," he said. He looked at her and ignored the sympathy there on her face. He didn't care for that anymore. "Don't tell me that," he said, stepping away from her hand so that it fell from him. "I'm not an idiot. It's not going to be okay. Even if we find her, even if we get her safe from Carl Doyle, even if she's fine, it's not okay. I was supposed to watch her. I was supposed to protect her. I failed her. That's not okay. It'll never be okay."

  Lucia had nothing to say to that. Eric could see her struggle for a response, but in the end she just put her hand on his shoulder and said, "I'm sorry, Eric."

  Eric turned back to the lake. "We need to find a different place to get water. This place is full of death.”

  _

  Eric took out Birdie's denim backpack. He had never opened it. The contents of Birdie's backpack were:

  --Four, stubby crayons, one brick red, one black, one orange, and one gray.

  --Six drawings and three blank sheets of paper.

  --A small can of mandarin oranges.

  --A water bottle, half-full.

  --Two red barrettes with white flowers, clasped together in an X.

  --A glossy cover of a magazine with the Little Mermaid on the front with flowing red hair, folded carefully into a square.

  --Three round pieces of red and white hard candy.

  --A box of pancake mix, unopened.

  --One packet of strawberry Kool-Aid.

  --A small screwdriver with a translucent yellow handle.

  --One pair of child's sunglasses in a white frame.

  --A diamond wedding ring with All My Love Always etched on the inside.

  --Six paperclips.

  --Two dull pencils and one pen.

  --One creased picture of a white cat.

  --A slip of paper with GRAFTON written in Birdie's handwriting.

  --One quarter, a dime, and four pennies.

  --Three rubber bands, two red and one blue.

  _

  From the top of a forested hill, opened to the eastern side so they could see the smoking ruins that was New York City far on the horizon, they saw the largest horde of Zombies they had ever seen. Thousands of them, groaning and lumbering, pushed toward the ruined city. They made a low, rumbling sound painful to hear. Eric felt he was on the lip of hell and looked down upon damned souls.

  "They must smell water," Lucia said breathlessly.

  Sergio trembled at the sight and then finally turned away and walked down into the woods to escape it.

  "But for the grace of God, there go I," said Eric, unable to look away.

  "What?"

  "It was something my mother used to say."

  They were quiet then until an explosion ripped through the Zombie horde. They staggered back in terror, the bright, blooming fire and smoke pushing corpses high into the air. The horde made a groaning sound, deep, low and horrific, like the song of some tortured leviathan of the black depths.

  Into the gap created by the explosion, the Land Rover drove. Eric fumbled for his binoculars, breathless.

  Another explosion followed as Doyle threw sticks of dynamite into the Zombies. Eric's hand shook as he tried to hold the binoculars steady on the Rover. Carl Doyle was leaning out the window, red sticks of dynamite in his hand. His dark face was contorted and all shadow.

  "Do you see her?" Lucia asked. "Do you see Birdie?"

  Trembling with excitement and fear, Eric tried to keep the binoculars on the Land Rover as it bumped and dove among the burning Zombie corpses. There was another rocking explosion. Sergio stumbled up the hill toward them, his eyes wide with terror.

  "Jesus Christ," he swore when he reached the top.

  The Zombies let out another groan as the Rover plowed through them. Now Carl Doyle was driving with one hand. The other hand held out his samurai sword which stabbed and slashed awkwardly out the window.

  "Is she there?" Lucia repeated. "Do you see her?"

  The Land Rover plowed through another moaning group of Zombies and then shook as it hit a road. A second later, covered with dark gore, the Rover vanished into the woods to the east. Eric dropped the binoculars.

  "Well?" Lucia looked at him anxiously.

  "I didn't see her," Eric said. "It was too dark." He looked at them and felt a twist of anger for the expectant hope he saw there.

  He didn't have much hope himself. He didn't realize until then, but he didn't have hope for Birdie, and he resented they did. Brad had died. So had Sarah and John Martin. Birdie was dead too. He could feel it.

  They were all going to die.

  12

  __________

  Catskill Park

  THE CHASE WAS ON.

  Instead of resting at the Delaware Water Gap, they pushed on, turning away from the rising sun and heading north toward Catskill Park. That was where Doyle expected them to go, so that was where they would be. Eric kept his gun in his front belt now and spent most of his time daydreaming of killing Doyle.

  As they hiked quickly away from the belt of forest around the Water Gap, they tried to ignore the great, gasping clouds of dark smoke rising in the east. It seemed like all the east coast was on fire.

  None of them mentioned the fire or the smoke.

  When they talked, which was infrequent, they spoke of food and water.

  Only Birdie mattered otherwise.

  They didn't speak her name anymore.

  _

  Hiking as fast as they could, they stuck to the Delaware river, with great hills rising on each side of them, the northern arm of the Appalachian mountains. As they snaked their way north, following the river, the hills grew softer and began to flatten into overgrown farmlands. They came at last to a road, Route 209.

  Without pause, Eric turned onto the road, hiking fast across the dirt and leaf covered path through the forest. Beneath it was the asphalt, but it looked like no one had driven on the road for a while. Eric searched the road for any side of Carl Doyle, but saw nothing.

  "We shouldn't walk on the road," Lucia said, following close behind Eric's fast pace.

  "I'm not hiding anymore," Eric answered. "We don't have time for that."

  _

  That night they crossed Interstate 84 and camped in the lightly wooded fields. Eric spread out his map. It was ragged and lined with creases like an old man's face. Eric's finger traced a line of blue, the Delaware River.

&
nbsp; "We need to cross somewhere," Eric said.

  "Why don't we swim?" Sergio asked.

  Eric shook his head. "Too much risk," he said. "If we swallow even a little water by accident, we would end up with the Vaca Beber. Those rivers are poison. Also," he added, looking at him. "Doyle needs a bridge."

  Eric traced his finger down the map and then stopped at a town.

  "Are you sure?" Lucia asked. "It's right through a town, Eric."

  "I'm sure," he said. "Every day we wait is another day Birdie is with Doyle. We cross now."

  Eric tapped a dot on the map.

  Port Jervis.

  _

  Sergio and Eric sat together, looking east, where the horizon glowed dirty red. Twice the horizon lit up brightly for a moment, a soundless explosion in the dying city. Sergio stared at it. His bravado failed him. He suddenly looked frightened and small to Eric.