Ben Bedard - The World Without Crows

“What happened to us?” Sergio asked, staring after the Zombies. They looked at him, perched in the tree. “What did we do to ourselves?”

“We didn’t do anything,” Lucia answered her brother. She sounded angry.

“We did,” Sergio shot back. “You won’t admit it, but we did!”

They climbed down out of the tree. Sergio picked up a stone and threw it viciously at a tree where it careened off, making a loud knocking sound.

“Stop it,” Lucia said to him. “Stop being such a child.”

“I’m not a child!” Sergio spat back. “How can you say that to me, after the things I’ve seen! After the things we’ve all seen! Look at her!” He pointed at Birdie who stared at them unblinking. “Do you think she’s a child anymore! None of us are. There are no children anymore.”

Sergio shrugged on his backpack and stalked away.

They followed him wordlessly.

In a storm-swollen stream, nearly a hundred Zombies had succeeded in drowning themselves. The stream was so choked with bodies that the water was dammed, and a shallow pond had risen behind them.

The air stank in the heat of the clear sun. Flies buzzed in dark clouds above them. The group, covering their mouth, walked downstream and crossed the trickling stream.

They didn’t speak of it.

The cabin was in the middle of nowhere. Shingled and painted deep brown, it crouched nervously in a small clearing in the forest.

Zombies walked around it listlessly. The four of them looked down on it with concern.

They were running out of food.

“I don’t like it,” Sergio said. “All those Zombies, man. There’s bound to be some pendejos around here.” Pendejos was Sergio’s term for cracked Zombies. “I’m telling you, man, there’s pendejos around.”

“We need food,” said Eric simply. There was no argument against that.

There were four Zombies that they could see. There were more inside, they saw them moving past the windows from time to time. The four Zombies outside were harmless. One sat in the yard. A little girl once, now her skeletal frame picked up handfuls of dirt and let them fall before the caves that were her eyes. Another walked around a snowmobile, again and again. His footsteps had dug down a path around it. The third and fourth both walked around the field surrounding the house, with no apparent purpose.

They went back to their camp and formed a plan. Sergio would stay outside the cabin, watching with his binoculars while Lucia and Eric went inside and ransacked the house for food. Birdie would wait for their return at the campsite.

To the Zombies, they seemed invisible. Nervously clutching at their weapons, the three of them crept up to the door and opened it.

Inside were several Zombies. They didn’t even look toward them when the door opened. Men and women, young and old, it was difficult to know. Their skin was like leather. They stood in the small cabin and did not move. The room was stagnant with their stench. Covering their mouths, the three moved gingerly about them. In the corner, one of them began to make wheezing, coughing noises, splattering a black, worm-filled ooze upon the wall. Eric shut his eyes from the sight, despite himself.

In the kitchen, they opened the cupboards, and began to pull down cans of food without even looking at what it was. It didn’t matter.

They had almost filled their bags when the shooting began.

Eric, Sergio, and Lucia huddled together in the dug out, dirt basement of the cabin. Sergio had found it when the shooting started, and they had all dove down the dark hole and shut the trap door behind them. They were in near darkness. Above them the shots continued.

When the door to the cabin crashed open, Eric gripped his fists together and closed his eyes. Above him, a man cried out and then the guns rang out again, this time impossibly loud. The shooting seemed to go on forever. When it stopped, finally, and the ringing in Eric’s ears began to quiet, there were voices in the cabin.

“We’re not here to shoot Zombies,” one voice said.

“We’re supposed to be recruiting,” said another.

“Fuck that, you pussies,” said a third. “If I see dirty fucking Zombies, I’m going to kill dirty fucking Zombies. That’s how it is.”

“We’re supposed to be recruiting,” someone repeated. “We need more Minutemen. We’re wasting all our ammunition on this bullshit. I didn’t come all this way to do this.”

“This isn’t what the President sent us out here to do.”

“All right, stop your fucking whining. Goddamn pussies.”

Above them, the men walked. They heard the cupboards open and shut. Motionless, they waited. Even after the men left and they heard engines driving away, they stayed motionless for a long time.

The only sound was the rancid blood dripping through the floor boards.

The Zombies were cut apart on the floor of the house. The gunfire had torn their bodies apart. They were only body parts now in lakes of black, putrid blood. Stepping over them, the three made their way to the door. Suddenly Eric slipped. He landed on the torn torso of a Zombie, like hitting a cold sponge. The rancid corpse burst apart beneath him. White worms wriggled through its flesh. Pouncing to his feet, Eric gave out a gasp of disgust, and then bolted out the door, wiping his bloody hands on his clothes.

“I need some new clothes,” he said. He was covered in gore. “I need some new clothes.” Eric wiped his hands on his pants, and then shivered, feeling the worms stuck on him. Stripping down, he threw the spattered clothes on the ground. “I need some new fucking clothes!” He was nearly naked now, his flesh crawling from the memory of the blood and worms against his skin.

Lucia strode forward and clasped him at the shoulders. “It’s all right, Eric,” she said. “It’s all right.”

“I need some new clothes,” he insisted, shivering and trembling.

“We’ll get you some, don’t worry,” she said.

“I can feel it,” Eric said, gasping. “I can still feel it!”

“Sergio!” Lucia cried. “Go find him some clothes in there.”

“I don’t want to go back in there,” Sergio whimpered.

“Sergio!” Lucia pointed toward the door and Sergio, swearing once under his breath, went inside the cabin.

Lucia held Eric’s trembling body. He was crying now. He didn’t want to be this way, but he wasn’t in control of himself anymore. “I can’t stand it,” he said. His teeth were chattering like it was winter. “I can’t stand it anymore! I can’t do it!”

Suddenly Lucia shook him so hard that he nearly fell over again. “Don’t you say that!” Lucia exclaimed. “You hold on to yourself! We need you, Eric!”

Eric looked at her numbly.

“We need this island,” Lucia said. “And we need you to get us there. It’s all we got now. We need it. You can’t just lose it, you understand?”

Eric swallowed.

“Understand?”

Eric nodded.

When Sergio came back, he had an armful of clothes. He dropped them in front of Eric before stumbling off and retching into the grass.

After he washed the gore from his body in the cold water of a nearby stream, Eric put on his new clothes, a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that said Muncy Indians on it. He hadn’t realized how much weight he’d lost until he was in his new clothes. His protruding gut had vanished into a small paunch. His thick legs had become slim and hairy. The pants that had looked impossibly small to him, slipped on him with no difficulty. They were even a little loose.

He was transformed.

But it wasn’t the way he once thought it might be. He didn’t feel strong or capable or manly. Only moments ago, he had felt like he was losing his mind.