Ben Bedard: The World Without Crows

The plan was simple. He had to get away from the Zombies. He had to go somewhere defensible. Zombies drown themselves in water, so Eric thought he should live on an island. He should live on an island where the winters were so cold, all the Zombies would freeze to death.

Eric wanted to go back to the lake in Maine. There was an island there. He got a map and, over several weeks, he carefully planned his route. He marked it with a red pen.

He would have to walk. Having a vehicle was too dangerous. Zombies weren’t the only danger. There were gangs now. For a boy like him, Eric thought, it would be best to avoid them. He was not tough. He had seen the gangs from the window in his mother’s house. They were young men, mostly, with shotguns and rifles. They acted like the jocks he had known at school. He knew what they were like.

He would go to Maine, to the lake. There, on his island, he would be safe.

Eric waddled when he walked. They called him Duck in the locker room, or Fat Fuck or Daffy Fuck, if they were feeling creative. His chin was suspended on a fold of fat. His stomach swelled up around him and drooped down in front of him. The boys in the locker room said he had tits. They grabbed and pinched them until he was black and blue. He wore sweat pants most of the time, and a large, plain sweat shirt.

He had dark, greasy hair, flecked with lice-white dandruff. He hated to wash. He hated to see his body. He didn’t like going in the bathroom because of the mirror. Whenever he saw himself, he felt despair seize him. He didn’t know how it had happened. His father said his mother ruined him.

His skin was pasty white.

But he had nice blue eyes. He knew that. His mother said so.

So did Jessica. That confirmed it. “You have such nice eyes, Eric,” Jessica told him.

Jessica was dead now.

Eric knew that because he had seen her. She was in the street. Someone had shot her. The gangs did that sometimes. They drove through and shot whoever they saw, figuring they were Zombies. Maybe she was.

Eric had liked Jessica a lot, even if her face was full of red, angry zits, and she was even fatter than he was. He thought maybe some day he would kiss her. It would have been his first kiss.

Jessica had said he had nice eyes.

It was the nicest thing a girl had ever said to him.

The first night, Eric camped north of route 33. He set up his tent about sixty feet away from Route 550, under a tree. He was tired and ached all over. His feet were sore. He boiled some beans, but they were still hard after a long time, so he fell asleep without eating. He’d never been so tired.

He woke up in the morning to the squeal of tires. He came out of his tent with his gun in his hand and hid behind a tree to watch. On the road, there were two trucks. Men and women came out of the trucks laughing. They chained a Zombie up to the trucks, one arm to the back of each truck. Then the trucks drove away from each other. Eric looked away.

The trucks came back and everyone got out to inspect what was left of the Zombie. They were laughing and joking and drinking. Then there was an argument. They were too far away to hear, so Eric didn’t know about what. Suddenly two of them held a woman and another man took out a knife and stabbed her. She only screamed out once. He stabbed her for a long time. They left the corpses on the road behind them.

After that Eric didn’t walk on the roads.

On the second day, Eric got lost. He cut across 550 and, using his compass, headed northeast. He thought he would come to the Old Grade Road, but he walked and walked, through fields and forests and across roads and he did not come to the road he wanted. He felt panic in him, but kept moving. His backpack was heavy. His arms and back and legs and feet were in pain. It felt like his body was full of needles and when he walked, he was pierced by them. To lighten his pack, he threw out any extra clothes.

It was late in the afternoon when he came to the cemetery. It was in a wedge-shaped field. In the distance, he could see the road he was looking for, and the fear of being lost left him. But he couldn’t move any longer.

Eric dropped his backpack at the edge of the cemetery. He was covered with sweat, even though it was only in the sixties, and there was a faint mist of rain falling. He took off his boots and saw that his feet were bleeding.

Eric lay down for a long time. He cried for a while from the pain and the thought that he could never make it all the way to Maine.

The rain pattered down on the leaves and on the grass that had grown around the graves. You could hardly see the gravestones anymore.

Eric groaned, but roused himself. Painfully, he hobbled around and pitched his tent. He ate two granola bars. He wanted to cook more, he was so hungry, but he lay down for a moment. He listened to the quiet rain and the birds in the trees. It was spring, but the trees were still bare. He fell asleep there, outside his tent.

He woke up in the middle of the night, freezing cold. He was shivering badly. His teeth chattered uncontrollably. He shook so much, he could hardly hold the lighter steady. Somehow Eric started a fire. Soon he sat near it gratefully and then, in the light of the moon, he dried his clothes as best he could before he crawled back into the tent and his sleeping bag to sleep.

The next day he was so sore he could hardly move.

In the morning, Eric crawled outside his tent. There was a faint fog over the cemetery. Cold moisture clung to everything. Only the birds were awake. Their singing was all he heard.

He felt he was the last person in the world.

Humans in the end were fragile. They vanished in less than a year.

He listened to the birds and felt the tears come. But he wouldn’t let them. He had enough of tears. Instead, he walked to his backpack and brought out a pan. He went to a small pool in the forest and filled it with water before he returned, built a fire, and boiled the water. All water had to be boiled to kill the Vaca B.

There were humans left, he reminded himself. A few. In gangs. They were dangerous.

He waited for the water to cool and listened to the birds. He realized he had never paid much attention to birds. Now they were his only companions. The world belonged to them again, the birds, the deer, the creatures of the forest.

Eric imagined all the cities of the world being reclaimed by animals. Deer in Paris. Bear in New York City. Tigers hunting in New Dehli.

It was the end of the world and all the birds were singing.

Avoiding the roads, avoiding drawing any attention to himself, Eric planned to hike from Athens, Ohio to Maine. He would walk from state park to state park. In the forests, he would be safe from attention from gangs and Zombies. They would stay in the cities. Eric would go to Maine to the island. He would build a house there and live in peace and security. Eric thought about his plan much of the time.

Eric remembered the signs.

Maine: The Way Life Should Be.

He thought he could make it to Wolf Creek Wilderness Area by the third day, but he couldn’t. It hurt too much to move and he had to stop often. His feet were bleeding now from a dozen blisters. He read somewhere that feet had to be looked after closely. As he limped forward, he understood why. If his feet got much worse, he would be helpless.

He had to stop at a house. An old, gray clapboard house with a garage attached to it. Eric needed supplies. He had left most of his food behind. He still had beans, which were light, but he cooked them and cooked them, and they were still hard. He needed food and to take care of his feet.