Ben Bedard - The World Without Flags

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 only 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.

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!

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.