Ben Bedard - The World Without Crows

So they continued.

With the absence of Sarah, they cooked together. The food was tasteless. At night, they slept away from the fire. It was too hot now to sleep near it. Summer was high among them. Taking out his battered calendar, Eric saw it was July 10th. The trees were full and green, and the hot weather dried the paths they walked to dust and crackling leaves. Without human noise to distract them, no trucks or cars or jet planes in the air, no sirens or car horns, they listened to bird song, to crickets, to the whir of beetle wing in the summer air. It was surprising how loud it became.

Eric couldn’t sleep. The buzz of insects filled the air. He crawled out of his tent and sat by the smoldering fire. Slowly he became aware of a squeaking, clicking sound, and shadows flitting through the darkness. The bats were out and they were feeding. He’d always been afraid of bats. Their tiny mouths filled with gnawing, sharp teeth.

Not anymore. The sound was gentle now, even playful, as they swooped in and out of the horde of insects. He sat in the darkness and watched the shadows of bats streak across the night.

They had just climbed to the top of a ridge when Sergio came to them, waving his hands in a downward motion, like a large bird trying to take flight. Eric was puzzled, until he felt a tug by Lucia at his side. Eric ducked down and then, following Lucia’s lead, got down on his stomach. Lucia was to his right and Birdie buried her head in his left side. Lucia’s hair had swept into his face, and Eric, blushing, brushed it away. If Lucia noticed, she said nothing.

Sergio dove beside them. Wordlessly he pointed at a road running south of them. His face was pale as he handed Eric the binoculars.

At first, he saw nothing. Then there was a flash, and it came into focus quickly.

It was the Land Rover. Eric could see the dark figure of Carl Doyle inside.

“What is it?” hissed Lucia. Eric handed her the binoculars. Lucia made a coughing sound when she saw him. Distantly they heard the Land Rover pass. For a few moments, they said nothing. Vaguely leaf-shaped patches of sunlight, piercing through the canopy of leaves overhead, swooped over their bodies like golden birds.

“Why don’t you grow up and be a man!” cried Sergio angrily. “We have to kill him!” They sat at the campfire. Eric didn’t respond, but continued to pick at his food. Sergio was red with anger. “It’ll be easy,” he said, obviously trying to remain calm. He slid closer to Eric. “All we have to do is set some trap for his Land Rover. You see how he drives. He’ll hit it fast and bam!” Sergio slapped his hands together. “If he’s still alive, we’ll just shoot him.” When Eric said nothing, Sergio put his hand on his shoulder. “I’ll shoot him, Eric, you don’t have to.”

Eric shrugged Sergio’s hand off his shoulder. “No,” he said.

Sergio frowned and then shot up and angrily kicked some leaves toward the forest.

“Sergio, tranquilo,” Lucia said.

“What?” Sergio asked. “Why? This guy is following us. He’s already killed John Martin. Who’s next? Why’re we letting this crazy bastard live?” Sergio finished this with an appeal to his sister in rapid Spanish. Lucia shook her head.

“No, Sergio,” she said. “We’re a group now. We have to do things together. If Eric agrees, I’ll help.”

Sergio turned to Eric with a pleading look, but Eric wouldn’t look up from his dinner. Sergio kicked some leaves toward him in fury and frustration. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked. “What kind of man are you?” He stalked off into the forest.

“I’m sorry,” Lucia said to him in a small voice. She stood up to follow her brother into the darkness.

When the two were gone, Birdie came and sat next to him. She put her small hand in his. Eric looked at the tangle of her hair. It was full of twigs and broken leaves like a bird’s nest. “Come here,” he said to her. He began picking her hair clean. While he worked, Birdie hummed a tune that Eric did not recognize.

Above them the stars were vanishing as the storm moved in.

Everything they owned was wet. The rain persisted, sometimes in great, thundering gasps of water that blurred the landscape around them, sometimes as a faint mist. Eric had never been so thoroughly wet in his life. Water permeated him and seemed to swell his skin. His clothes were heavy and clung to him, and for the first time, he realized how difficult it was to move in the voluminous clothes he wore. He must have lost a lot of weight, the way the clothes hung from him. His heavy jeans had to be held up with one hand as he walked. His belt was as tight as he could make it.

They had been lucky with the weather to this point. Now the rain came as if furious at having been denied an outlet all these days. Steadily, slogging through the wet forest, across swollen brooks, they made their miserable way east. All day, they trudged through it, and when night came, they found no respite. They couldn’t start a fire and their tents were wet inside and out, as were their sleeping blankets. It was like sleeping inside a sponge.

The next day was no better. Worse perhaps because they were thirsty. They ate cold beans from the can and finished off what little water they had boiled the last time they had a campfire. They had not planned ahead more than a day with their water supply and that was a mistake. They held their mouths open to the rain, figuring rainwater was safe from the Vaca B, but once it reached the ground, they no longer trusted it. They didn’t even trust the pans they had to be free of the Vaca B, so they couldn’t catch the water. For all the water cascading down the hillsides in gushes, they were parched.

The only good part of the rain was that in the midst of their suffering, Sergio dropped the subject of Carl Doyle though he often shot an angry look toward Eric, and walked ahead, even shunning his sister’s company at times.

At the end of the third day, the sun finally broke free. The temperature soared. The skies were crystalline clear and blue. Everything was still too wet to build a fire, but they spread out their belongings in the grass to dry. They stripped down to their underwear and stood waiting for their clothes to dry.

Eric stood bashful, trying to keep from looking at Lucia’s long, sleek body, her tiny red panties and her red spotted bra. He couldn’t stand tall like Sergio. He stood with his arms in front of him. Birdie stood next to him, watching her clothes on the ground with disturbed fascination. “It’s like I’ve disappeared,” she said, pointing at her clothes.

They all laughed, but Birdie looked at them strangely. “What’s so funny?” she asked.

Eric took her hand. “Nothing,” he said. “We’re just naked, that’s all.”

They all looked at each other.

Just a couple days of rain had reduced them to this, nakedness and thirst.

They were such small, pathetic things.

Perhaps it was the rain.

The Zombies came out in the afternoon, emerging from the forests in shambling crowds, oblivious to each other, to their surroundings. There were dozens of them, maybe hundreds. The wetness seemed to bring them nothing but misery. Some of them were on their hands and knees, lapping at puddles. Some scooped great handfuls of wet mud into their mouths and then, bloated, they groaned and kicked and died on the ground.

The group climbed the trees to avoid them. The Zombies passed by underneath them, moving all in one direction, perhaps by some mysterious sense of water nearby. These Zombies were all old ones, emaciated as skeletons, eyes lost, mouths stretched open, clothes tatters around them. Most of them had long ago torn their hair from their heads. One Zombie, once a woman, was half-naked. One of her breasts was torn open, like it had been gnawed by an animal. Long after they passed, Eric and the rest of them stayed in the trees like nesting birds, reluctant to leave.