Ben Bedard - The World Without Crows

What had he become now?

He gathered himself together and joined the others.

Carrying their backpacks of food, the three soon pushed away the memory of the cabin. They were too busy thinking about eating the food they carried. The anticipation made them silly with excitement and happiness. Since they had been too busy to see what they were pulling out of the cupboards, the food that now weighed them down was mostly a mystery.

“I know I saw a couple cans of beans,” Sergio said. “I know it. I just hope we have some ravioli!”

They groaned from the thought of it. Canned ravioli was a profound luxury.

“I don’t know what I have,” Eric said. “It’s like Christmas!”

Lucia laughed. “I hope Santa brings me a can of fish,” she said. “Seriously, I never thought I’d want a can of tuna so bad!”

“Or shrimp!” exclaimed Sergio. “Can you imagine if there’s a can of shrimp?”

“What would you do with it?” asked Eric.

“I don’t know,” Sergio said. “Maybe I’d mix it in with some beans. Maybe I’d just put a little hot sauce in it and eat it like that.”

“It all sounds good,” said Eric.

They were all quiet, contemplating their fierce hunger.

When they returned to their camp, Birdie had vanished.

“ Of course Carl Doyle took her!” Sergio cried. “Look at the tire tracks! Who else could it be!”

Lucia shook her head. “We don’t know, it could’ve been anyone. It could’ve been those men who shot up the cabin for all we know.”

“Don’t be stupid!” Sergio threw his hand toward her. “It was Carl Doyle! Who else has been following us? Who else would steal her? He called her a savage!”

“I’m not saying it wasn’t,” said Lucia. “I’m only saying we don’t know for sure, that’s all.”

“I told you we should’ve killed him! Now look!”

His head in his hands, Eric sat stunned. He listened to the argument as if it occurred a hundred miles away. His head was fuzzy and buzzed. He felt sick. He wanted to cry, but the thought of tears filled him with self-loathing. Tears would not bring Birdie back. Tears would not find her. Tears were selfish things. To think of what was happening to her made him shrink inside. He had sworn to protect her. Why did he leave her alone? He promised her. Now all he had was her backpack. Anger swelled inside him, mixed with dark self-hatred. He stood up.

“It was Carl Doyle,” he said. The others stopped arguing and turned to him. “You were right,” Eric said to Sergio. “We should have killed him.”

“What do you want to do?” Lucia asked.

“I’m going to get Birdie back,” Eric said. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.” He stood up and walked to his tent. He began pulling it down.

“Eric,” Lucia said, walking toward him. “You can’t leave now, it’s dark.” She put her hand on his shoulder.

“Moon’s out,” he said simply, without pausing.

“I’m going with him,” Sergio said. “What’re you going to do when you find him?”

“I’m going to kill him.”

They set off south and east, planning to move far south of Wilkes-Barre. Eric planned to hike fast toward his next goal: the Delaware Water Gap. For whatever reason, Carl Doyle had latched onto his plan. He had only glimpsed his map for a moment, as far as Eric knew, but he knew exactly where Eric was headed. Once the thought had filled him with dread. He had hoped many times that Carl Doyle would die of the Vaca B and leave them alone. Several times he had convinced himself that Doyle was dead, only to see the Land Rover emerge once again from the wilderness. Now he relied on Doyle’s strange compulsion to follow him. Eric would go on toward the island and hope that Doyle did too, bringing Birdie with him.

As dawn crested over the horizon, they moved around a town called Picture Rocks. The dark shells of burnt out trucks littered the one road through the town. Several of the large, clapboard houses had burned to the ground. Scanning the town quickly with the binoculars he had taken from Sergio, Eric saw only a few Zombies, stumbling through the town. No sign of Doyle.

Eric turned east and walked around the town, heading down through the hilly terrain and woods, where deer and squirrels scattered before him. He hiked in a long, loping stride that he did not know he had developed from the journey from Athens. His mind tortured him with thoughts of Birdie. Birdie in the back of the bloody Land Rover. Birdie tied up in the front seat. Birdie hurt somehow, bleeding.

His legs carried him across the terrain with ferocity.

Eric had never killed anyone before. He had never understood what happened to a person that would make them capable of murder.

Until now.

It was like there was light inside him that shone on forgiveness, love, sympathy, understanding, and that light had gone out.

He was dark there now.

Eric thought to himself that this was what it was like to make hard decisions and do the necessary things. This was what it was like to do anything he had to do to protect those he loved. This was what it felt like to be a man.

It felt like nothing. It felt like absence.

It felt like dying.

They did not stop. Sacrificing caution for speed, the three hiked through field and forest, leaping brooks and climbing ravines. Eric stopped only to scan the road with his binoculars or to sit quietly on rocks and eat cold beans or vegetables from cans. They continued until they could not see any longer, the darkness falling around them.

Even then, Eric would choose a high spot to camp. There, above the rolling landscape, he sat watch, looking for the bright headlights of vehicles to illuminate the darkness.

He kept his pistol on his lap.

When they came to Lake Pocono, Lucia forced them to stop and build a campfire. They needed water. Although he wanted to keep moving, Eric relented, and helped build a roaring fire. He chose dry, hard wood that burnt hot, at one point snapping at Sergio for throwing a length of pine on the fire. Sergio blushed with anger but didn’t answer. When Lucia shot him a scathing look, Eric held her eyes angrily. Then she too blushed and looked away. Eric felt a thrill of triumph, which, an instant later, made him hate himself. He turned and walked to the water’s edge.

He was not unusually surprised by the corpses floating in the water. There were several of them, drowned and stinking in a cloud of flies. Once the sight would have sickened him, he would have run away, holding his mouth with his hand. Now he studied them with a careless eye. There were two men, a woman, and a little child, who might have been a girl or a boy. There was not enough left to be sure. Staring at the corpse, Eric thought how full of holes the human skull was. Great dark gaping holes. As if the world was seeking to engulf the mind, or the mind struggled to be released into the world. He wondered who won in the end. Which way was the collapse: did the mind go into the world or did the world extinguish the mind?

“Eric,” Lucia said, coming up behind him.

Eric turned toward her, but didn’t meet her eyes. “I know,” he told her. “I’m not being nice.”

“It’s not that,” she said. She put her hand on his shoulder. “It’s going to be all right, you know.”

Eric made a grimace of a smile. “That’s what Birdie used to tell me,” he said. He looked at her and ignored the sympathy there on her face. He didn’t care for that anymore. “Don’t tell me that,” he said, stepping away from her hand so that it fell from him. “I’m not an idiot. It’s not going to be okay. Even if we find her, even if we get her safe from Carl Doyle, even if she’s fine, it’s not okay. I was supposed to watch her. I was supposed to protect her. I failed her. That’s not okay. It’ll never be okay.”