Ben Bedard - The World Without Crows

Eric looked to Sharif and shook his head. Sharif looked to each of them for only a second.

“I’m sorry,” he said to Doyle finally. “They don’t have your medal.”

“They do,” Doyle insisted. “I know they do.” He looked at them. “I’m not going to forget about this. I want my medal back right now, do you understand?”

Mark stood forward. “They don’t have your fucking medal,” he said.

Doyle scowled and silently looked over them. He pursed his lip and then brushed his mustache with his right hand. Then wordlessly, he got back in his Land Rover and sped away, tossing up dirt and gravel behind him. They watched him leave before they all began to go back to their work. But Eric noticed how the others glanced at them, Sharon and Mark and Van, with a glimmer of distrust. Sharif, Mary, David, and Cecile, with something like tempered sympathy, as if they believed them capable of stealing the medal, but didn’t deserve Carl Doyle to be after them. Only Katie seemed to fully believe them. She held Sarah tightly around the shoulders.

Sharif stayed back to talk to Eric.

“You didn’t take it did you?”

“No,” said Eric. “Why would we want his stupid medal?” Sharif studied him, which annoyed him. They weren’t the ones keeping secrets, Eric thought. Eric quickly summarized the afternoon they had spent with Carl Doyle. “I told everyone as we left not to take anything.” Eric looked him straight in the eye. “We didn’t take it,” he insisted.

Sharif relented. He looked to where the Land Rover was just vanishing into the forest. “I don’t think he’s stable,” he said. “He’s been here before. He wanted to trade deer meat. At first, we were open to the idea, but once he came here drunk. He started talking about order and how it was criminal that none of the women here were pregnant. He said it was their duty to produce offspring. For the species. He said if he was in charge, they would all be pregnant by now. After that, we let him know he was no longer welcome.” Sharif took Eric’s shoulder. “If you have the medal, Eric, please tell me. We’ll find a way to give it back to him. This man worries me.”

“We don’t have it,” Eric said.

“Okay,” Sharif said. He gave Eric one of his enigmatic smiles and then returned to the farmhouse.

The four of them, Brad, Sarah, Birdie and Eric, were left alone on the lawn. They gathered closer together.

“That is one crazy fuck,” said Brad. “Who cares about some stupid medal?”

“We’ve all lost our world,” said Sarah. “We need a memory of it. Something to remind us who we are.”

“Yeah,” Brad answered. “Maybe. But he’s still batshit crazy.”

“I don’t think they believe us,” Eric said. He nodded toward the house. Then he quickly told them the conversation he and Birdie had overheard in the barn. He didn’t tell them what Sharon had called Birdie. “I’m not sure how welcome we really are.”

Brad and Sarah looked troubled. Then Brad added, “Mark said that Sharon came from another farm. I guess there are a few others like this one in this Valley. He says she’s just here for Sharif. I guess she doesn’t work much.”

“Katie told me they once kicked out someone for pulling a knife on David,” Sarah said. “His name was Craig.” Sarah looked at them. “Do you think they would kick us out?”

They stood together in silence. When Eric looked up, he could see Sharif standing at the window in the house, watching them.

Brad seemed to notice too. “Just to be safe,” he said. “I think we should keep our stuff packed and ready to go. Agreed?”

They all nodded, even Birdie.

Eric had new eyes during dinner. He seemed to see conspiracy everywhere. Sharif and Sharon sat together, but they were stiff and tried not to look at each other. Mark ate in silence, and, when he was done, left the group without a word. Mary and Cecile still paid a lot of attention to Birdie, but now it seemed that they did it to avoid the tension in the room. Katie stayed in the kitchen, and David, the youngest of them all, thin and short, with a strangely blank face, did nothing but try to keep his eyes away from Sharon. Van wasn’t there, which he thought vaguely sinister. Sharif was all smiles, but Eric did not believe it anymore.

As soon as they were done eating, Eric went upstairs. While Birdie drew with her crayons, Eric quietly rearranged his backpack. It was then he realized his gun was missing. He sat back and thought about it while his heart raced.

Soon there was a knock on his door that he had been expecting. It was Brad.

“The fuckers took my gun!” he hissed.

“Took mine too.”

“I should go down there and—”

“You can’t do that, Brad!” Eric interrupted. “They won’t give them back to us. You know they won’t. And they’ll ask why we were hiding them. And they’ll ask why we think we need them. It’ll just make it worse.”

Brad swore for a while, but he knew Eric was right. Finally he said he was going to talk with Sarah and left them alone.

Eric finished packing and then went over to Birdie. “What’re you drawing?” he asked. He looked over her shoulder.

It was a picture of the Land Rover. Carl Doyle sat inside. His mouth was a furious, dark zigzag and there were lines coming from his head. “What’re those lines?” he asked.

“That’s the sickness,” Birdie said. “It wants to come out his head but it can’t.”

Eric cleared his throat. His mouth went dry.

He realized he no longer felt they were safe.

The scream of engines came early that morning. Eric leapt out of bed and dashed to the window. Several trucks pulled into the yard, passing by his view, their engines roaring and screaming. Stenciled perfectly in glossy red on the side of each the trucks was a stylized snake. Only the last truck had no snake. It was the Land Rover, coming up last. “Oh shit,” Eric said. He stood up and looked around, stunned and confused, his heart thudding in his chest. The door to his room crashed open, and Eric jumped before he realized it was Brad and Sarah. He could see other figures flashing by the hallway outside.

Brad pushed by him and Birdie to the window. “Fuck me!” he breathed, looking down at the scene. Then he turned to them. “Get your stuff, we have to go. We have to go right now. Right now!”

“What is it?” asked Sarah, trembling. Birdie walked over to Eric and grasped his leg tightly. “What?” Sarah repeated.

“It’s the King Cobra.” Brad was pale with naked fear. “We have to go now!” He pronounced this through clenched teeth. Brad grabbed Sarah and they both ran out of Eric’s room.

Eric turned to the window. There was a large group of people, mostly men, but a few women too. They kept their distance from a central figure. He was thin with mousy brown hair, all messed up, like a dust ball upon his head. He wore a black, cowboy shirt with ivory buttons and a red snake upon one shoulder. He didn’t walk as much as saunter.

“Can I help you?” asked Sharif. Eric couldn’t see him, he was too close to the house, but he recognized the voice.

“You sure as hell can,” said the man called the King Cobra. His voice was shrill and high. King Cobra looked around. “Nice digs you got here. Fine place.”

“Thank you,” said Sharif.

“I bet you eat pretty well here, dontcha?” King Cobra’s voice barked with contempt.

“We look after ourselves,” said a voice. Eric thought it might have been Mark.

Suddenly there was a deep throated roar from inside one of the trucks. It was a moving van. It shook now as its contents roared again.

“What do you have in there?” Sharif asked.