Ben Bedard - The World Without Flags

I feel his gun press into my back painfully. “Keep talking,” he says.

I don’t.

I’m hugging a tree, handcuffed. Sydney has disappeared, after giving me a particularly evil glare. I’m at the edge of a camp, looking down at my current worry: Doctor Bragg. Sydney handcuffed me next to him, to “make me watch what I had caused,” he told me, right before he disappeared in the woods toward Cairo. The doctor is in a horrible fever, his face drenched with sweat, his hair in wet tangles around his face. The Worm hit him fast, and now it’s raging through his body. He shivers and trembles and moans. I don’t feel sorry for him. No one should.

Other than Doctor Bragg laid out on a blanket, there’s a couple tents, a circle of stones around a sputtering camp fire, and the only thing that gives me some comfort, Tangerine, Randy’s horse. I imagine everyone else is in the town. I can hear the sporadic gunfire, the rolling thunder of the tank, the distant cries and shouts. When I look up, I see the dark smoke through the trees, proof that they’re setting Cairo on fire, razing it to the ground. I don’t know what Randy has told them, but I can’t imagine it’s anything good.

I have to get out of these handcuffs. Whenever I look up at the smoke, I imagine Eric and Pest caught in the fire, choking on smoke, knowing that if they leave, if they run out into the streets, they’ll be gunned down like the rest. I have to do something, I don’t know what, but something. Anything.

I remember suddenly what Norman once told me, talking about the difference between animals. “You see,” he told me, “a fox or a racoon will stay in a trap, but a wolf, a wolf will chew off its own leg to escape.” I don’t think I can chew off my own arm. But I look at my wrist, already a little bloody from pulling on the handcuffs, and I wish it would just split apart on its own. I’d rather go through life with one hand than die here. Because I can only imagine that Sydney has gone to get someone else who will probably bring Randy. Randy needs me dead.

And then there’s Eric. He needs me, I know it. If I can’t get free, he’ll die.

I tug at the cuffs, but they only cut deeper into my wrists. Finally, I stop and push my face against the rough bark of the tree. Pine, I think. Pine. The softest wood, Eric told me. But it’s hard enough to keep me here, chained up like a criminal.

Suddenly there’s a wild, high pitched scream. At first I think it’s me, calling out in frustration and fear.

Then I see things are much worse than I thought. It’s Doctor Bragg. His body is arced up, every muscle in his body tensed. A dark foam comes from his mouth and blood oozes from his eyes. My blood turns cold as ice. Doctor Bragg is not going to die easily.

He’s going to crack.

Frantically, I tug at my handcuffs. I hardly feel the pain as I pull, the blood welling up around the cuffs. Doctor Bragg’s stiff body convulses again. Soon he will rise up, cracked, crazed, ready to tear apart the first living thing he encounters: me. I thrash against my cuffs, hoping that the blood will lubricate my wrists, allowing me to slip free and run away. But Sydney, probably still enraged that I had tricked and lied to them, made the cuffs too tight for that. Even if I broke my wrist, I don’t think I would come free.

My desperation makes me scream. “Help!” I yell. “Help me!” No one comes.

Doctor Bragg howls into air, his scream ending in a long gurgle as the sound emerges from the black foam surging from his mouth.

My heart beating rapidly, I know I have to try. I have to try to bite off my own hand. I look down at my wrist and sob. Do it! Don’t think about it! You don’t have time to think! Just do it! I sob again, but this time I don’t think. I move my head down to my wrist and open my mouth. I taste blood as I put my mouth around my wrist. My teeth press down.

Then I hear a whicker and I look up, my mouth on my wrist. It’s Tangerine, looking toward Doctor Bragg and tossing her head. Her eyes are large and dark with fear.

When Doctor Bragg makes another low cry, his body tensing, Tangerine turns to one side, tossing her head. Then I see it. She’s still saddled, and, strapped to her saddle is a knife. Not any knife. MY knife, the one Eric always told to keep sharpened. Randy must’ve taken it from me when he knocked me out and kept it for himself. I need that knife. I need Tangerine.

Closing my eyes, I swallow. Tangerine never comes to me.

I breathe calmly. Then, cupping my hands, I purse my lips, and make kissing noises.

Tangerine freezes like she’s stunned.

I have to be careful not to spook her. Or I’m dead.

I hold my cupped hands higher and make kissing noises. “Come on, now,” I coax her. I cluck my tongue like Randy. “Come on, now, come get some food,” I tell her. Tangerine whickers and takes a step forward doubtfully.

I snap my tongue and then say, “Come on, now, girl, don’t be scared.” I hold up my hands as if I’m cradling a handful of maple sugar cubes. “Get some sugar, girl.”

Tangerine tosses her head one more time before she comes forward, sniffing toward my hand. Gently, as she moves forward, I rotate around the tree, forcing the horse to come closer, around the tree, the saddle brushing up against the bark of the pine.

“Good girl,” I say.

Doctor Bragg gives out another inhuman scream, and Tangerine bolts, galloping away into the forest. I don’t watch her go.

Instead, I watch as Doctor Bragg leaps up from his bed, his eyes dark with blood, dark, thick foam coursing from his mouth. His dark eyes fix on me and his features contort into a gray perversion of a human face. He screams again and then sprints toward me, arms pinwheeling unnaturally around him.

I rotate around the trunk to keep the tree between us. Then, as he hits the tree, snarling like an animal, I step around and, using what little space I have, I thrust out. Doctor Bragg stands up straight as if confused. The animal madness drops from his face and he collapses, my knife embedded in his right eye up to hilt.

Out of breath, I collapse against the pine tree. As I try to focus, I feel the pain come again from my wrists, a burning, pulsing pain. With my eyes close, I can still taste my own blood in my mouth and I feel sick thinking I was so desperate, I was going to try to bite through my own wrist. The thought makes chills of fear go through me like a wave.

I push myself away from the tree, listening to the sound of the chain on my handcuffs clinking together. I hear the wind through the trees, the distant crackle of gunfire in Cairo, the sound of my feet in the dry pine needles. I have to get free. I have to find Eric, get him far away from Randy, far away from the Stars, far away from everything. Where he can be safe.

If I’m going to do that, I need to get out of these handcuffs.

I rotate around the tree and then crouch down over Doctor Bragg’s body. He’s fallen with his head against the tree trunk, staring with dead eyes into the forest. I grasp my knife and then tug. I can’t get it free the first time, but on the second pull, it comes free, bringing a stinking, dark gore with it. Worms writhe along the blade and shivering with revulsion, I wipe it on the front of the Doctor’s shirt before I rotate away, putting the tree between the body and I.

With the knife in my hand, I feel more in charge. I always feel a little better with a knife in my hand. I only have one idea and it’s not nice to think about. I don’t have to cut off my whole hand. Just a part of it, the part below the pinky finger. Just slice off enough so that I can pull it out of the handcuffs. Just a little slice. My stomach turns and I hear myself sob.