Ben Bedard - The World Without Crows

Brad slept, on and off. When he woke, it was always with a strange shiver of his body. He would wake, choking, look around and ask if he was still there. And where was the river? And the clouds, were they still listening? Sarah stroked his head and said he was going to be fine. It was all right.

Far past midnight, Brad woke up. He sat up with a groan. His eyes dripped blood. “I just want you all to know,” he said. “I want you all to know.” He shook his head then and lay back down on Sarah’s lap. “You remember, right?” he asked her. “I tried to help, you know.” Then he sank into a misery of tears so terrible to hear that Eric covered his face with his hands. “There wasn’t anything I could do,” Brad pleaded. “Oh god!”

Even later he woke up and he begged. “Please! Please!” he sobbed. This went on for an hour.

In the last hour before dawn, he had grown quiet and lucid. He looked up at Sarah. “Okay,” he said. He smiled. “Okay.”

A few minutes later, just moments before the sun rose, Brad died.

They made a wooden pyre on the shore of Mosquito Creek Lake and burned Brad’s body. His death happened so suddenly, it was difficult to believe that just two days ago, Brad had been scouting ahead, keeping them safe. It happened so suddenly, it didn’t seem possible that Brad was burning in front of them. It seemed that at any moment, he would come back from where he had gone and swear at them for being idiots. It had happened so suddenly, the whole world seemed unreal. The brilliant sun, the glimmering lake, the lazy twirls of smoke above Brad’s pyre, none of it seemed plausible. It had happened so suddenly, none of them knew what to say or if anything should be said. They stood by the fire downcast and silent. Only Sarah wept.

By midmorning it was done. The pyre was nothing but ashes. There was nothing to do but move on. They said nothing as they began to break camp. Looking at them, Eric saw the pain of loss. They were used to it. They knew the only reaction was to continue. It was the only response they understood.

People died. People lived. Get on with it.

There wasn’t much more than that.

Eric and Sarah solemnly unpacked Brad’s share of the goods. His backpack was mostly full of food and boiled water. He had easily carried more than his fair share. In one pocket, Eric found a plastic bag. Inside was a little child’s doll with great long, purple hair and an impish face. There was also a picture. In the picture, Brad was laughing. He was holding a little, red-haired girl. She had red pony tails, one on each side of her head, done up with pale blue ribbons. Squeezing Brad tight, the little girl was looking in the camera and smiling. Her teeth were bared, she hugged him so tightly. Eric had never seen Brad look like this. There was none of the darkness, none of the deep sadness, none of the fury and rage. He was smiling.

Sarah took the picture from him. Tears fell down her face as she looked at the picture.

“Who’s the little girl?” asked Eric.

“I don’t know,” Sarah said. “Brad never talked about life before the plague. But I think it must be his sister. Look at how happy he is.”

“I hardly recognize him,” Eric said with an attempt at a smile.

Sarah handed the picture back to him with a strange, painful shake of her head, and then wordlessly packed what she could in her own backpack before she walked away.

Eric stuffed the rest of the supplies in his own backpack and then groaned as he hefted it over his shoulders. He stood for a moment with the doll and picture in his hand. He placed them both in the center of the ashes and then, looking once at the calm water of the lake, he turned and walked away.

Late that afternoon, without speaking more than a few words between them, the party arrived at Pymatuning State Park.

They did not stay at Pymatuning to rest, as they had once planned. Their grief demanded movement. They hiked north along the shore of the great, curved lake. It was nearing mid-June now, and the days were getting hot, and beneath their backpacks, they sweated. They hiked harder and faster than was necessary. It felt to Eric like death followed close behind and, if they stopped, it would suddenly catch up to them. The feeling was so strong, sometimes he did not dare to look behind him.

As if he was moving through a storm, he put his head down and plowed forward.

When they left Pymatuning, hiking north toward Erie, they had to move much more slowly. Twice they saw vehicles. It was hard to tell if they belonged to the Snakes or to some other gang or if they were just people like them, trying to find somewhere safe to live. They couldn’t take the chance. They hid in ditches and little copses of woods along fields. They dug pits for their fires to hide the light. They ate quietly and hardly spoke. One night Birdie drew a picture of Brad’s funeral pyre. In her picture, Brad flew up through the smoke on yellow wings.

Eric thought painfully about his plan. They were still hundreds of miles from Maine. And when they got there, would they really be safe? For the first time, Eric thought of their goal as a real island with difficulties of its own. How would they get all the supplies on the island? How would they survive the first, terrible winter? When he imagined it now, his father no longer lazed back in his canoe with a can of beer in one hand. His father was probably dead in Florida. Instead he thought about Sarah and Birdie and himself, alone there on the island, in the desolation of winter.

They wouldn’t be safe in Maine either. They had to prepare. There could be Zombies and disease and hunger and death by freezing. For the first time, Eric thought of stopping somewhere, anywhere, and building a life there. The island wouldn’t be safe either.

No one was safe. No one was ever safe.

North of Pymatuning, the five of them hid in the woods near a creek while John Martin went into town. He said he wanted to get antibiotics. He didn’t say so, but Eric thought John believed that Brad might have been saved if they had treated him sooner. He had mentioned there were stories of people who got the Vaca B but took a lot of antibiotics quickly and survived. Eric wanted to go with him, but John wouldn’t let him.

As they waited by the fire where Sarah was boiling water and cooking, Eric watched Sergio and Lucia. They were talking to each other in Spanish. Brad’s death had separated them as a group. Now they looked at each other, somehow abashed at the other’s presence. They thought that Brad’s risks were serious and foolish and maybe they suspected they had stolen from Carl Doyle. They were trouble. Eric thought they would rather travel separately now. He found he agreed, and wished they would leave.

Eric didn’t like the way they looked at them, especially Lucia. He was used to the scorn of women, especially beautiful women, who always looked at him with the same mixture of pity and revulsion, but he didn’t like being in such intimate quarters with Lucia. He found himself watching her walk, watching her tip back her head to drink, watching her much more often than he wanted to. He hoped she didn’t notice, but he suspected she did. Beautiful women always knew they were being gawked at. Eric wished they would just leave.

They sat around the fire quietly, hardly speaking.

“This is good,” Lucia said finally, pointing at the beans and corn that Sarah had made.

“Thank you,” she said.

“What is that flavor?”

“Sage.”

Then the conversation died and they returned quietly to their meal.

Just as the sun touched the horizon, John Martin returned. He brought with him a plastic bag of medical supplies and packages of penicillin and amoxicillin. He was also wearing a new, thinner jacket. He didn’t look happy, however. When he put his backpack on, he sat down, frowning into the boiling water. “I saw the Land Rover,” he said. “Doyle is still following us.”