Ben Bedard - The World Without Flags

The caravan of assholes is made up of four other bandits plus the three who surprised me. The one with the milky eye seems to be something like the leader. At least people ask him what to do and he tells them. The other four are scraggly, dirty, vicious beasts. Their eyes glitter darkly, without intelligence, just malice and cruel humor. They are like a pack of starving dogs, willing to do anything to survive, and enjoy it when it has to be done. Together they have an attitude that’s hard to describe, like looking at the edge of a sharpened blade. These are what people can become, malignant shells, ready to tear at anything that gets in the way of a full stomach or a shot of whiskey. These are the ones who kill as easy as coughing, as naturally as sneezing. These are the ones who laugh at another’s suffering, who revel in perverse joy to see pain in another person. They aren’t human anymore. If Eric and I are going to survive, I have to be very careful. I have to use my head. I have to think.

I’m not the only captive. Stumbling next to me is a woman around forty. Her face is covered in caked, dark blood. I’m not sure it’s her blood. Her black hair is going grey. She doesn’t look at me when the bandits shove me in line next to her. Both of us are bound at the hands by rough rope that is already biting into my skin. There’s another girl too, on the other side of the older woman. She’s young, younger than me. Her face is streaked with tears, but her eyes are like pits drilled into the dark earth. I look away. I don’t want to know. I don’t.

The three of us are tied to a cart. The back of the cart is a wooden cage, but so badly made, with such lack of skill, that it looks like it would fall apart in a stiff wind. Inside the cage are two people: one is Eric, who is lying where he fell when they shoved him inside; the other is a young woman who stares out of the wooden slats with dark, bleeding eyes. She has her head turned slightly up, the opposite shoulder down, in a strange contortion. It’s not hard to know that she has the Worm too. Although her hair is filthy, her face is wrecked, and her body has shriveled down to leather over bones, I can still see some prettiness in her, the way you can see the child in a man or woman if you look closely. I glance over at the two other prisoners. Mother? Sister? Was this another family who, like me, had to hide away with their diseased to keep from getting killed? Or is there no relation? Everyone is so filthy, it is hard to tell. That’s the world we live in: so covered in grime and horror that you can’t recognize anyone.

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.

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.

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.

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.