Ben Bedard - The World Without Crows

“Tell us where she is!” Sergio cried.

Lucia stepped forward. “Mr. Doyle,” she began.

“What?” Carl Doyle turned to Lucia, his eyes blazing with sudden fury. Lucia froze. “Where did you pick up this little trollop?” His bleeding eyes searched Lucia up and down. His voice grew low and dangerous. “Fornicator! Beware of this one,” he said to Eric, pointing at her. “A little savage whore, is what she is.”

Sergio gave out a cry and Eric saw him pull out his gun. “No!” Eric cried. Then the world slowed to a crawl. He could feel his own heartbeat pump in him, terrified and painful. Sergio’s hand moved toward Doyle, clutching his weapon. Eric moved to stop him, but he fired. Eric saw a puff of sweater erupt from Doyle’s shoulder where the bullet grazed him. Doyle roared like a bull and sprang toward Sergio. Eric felt Lucia pounce by him, knocking him back. Lucia stood in front of Doyle, her hand held outward as if she could stop him with the power of her mind. With one meaty arm, Doyle swept her to the side with terrible violence. She flew to the edge of the bridge where one of the gaps yawned toward the air, and tripping, she vanished over the side. Sergio stared in horror at the emptiness for an instant before Doyle grappled with him. Eric fumbled for his gun.

Doyle pulled Sergio’s gun from his hand and then lifted him effortlessly over his head. In a daze of panic, Eric held out his pistol, but Doyle shoved pass him and the gun clattered to the ground from Eric’s loose grip. Doyle stepped to the edge of the bridge. For just an instant, Doyle held him there, suspended over his head, where Sergio struggled in a panic.

“No don’t! Please! Please!” cried Sergio, held in the air over the bridge.

Carl Doyle grunted and tossed him over the side. Sergio’s blood-freezing scream ended abruptly.

For the space of a heartbeat, there were the small, meaningless sounds that were left. The wind across the bridge. The heavy breathing of Carl Doyle. The humming idle of the Land Rover, as if purring at its master’s triumph.

Eric didn’t think. He felt himself move forward. He slipped out of his backpack, letting it fall to the road. He took one, two steps toward Doyle, and then he was running. Eric leapt past him, hurling himself into the void. He wanted to dive, but when he jumped into the embrace of the air, his body tumbled and rolled.

There was air. His wildly beating heart. A fleeting glimpse of Carl Doyle on the bridge, looking down at him. The rushing wind about him. He thought about Birdie. He thought about Lucia. He thought about Sarah’s charred bones and Jessica in the gutter with her eye shut out. Then his mother, smiling, as they snuggled down on the couch at night to watch television. She smelled like baby powder.

Then he hit the water.

When Eric surfaced from his darkness, he was surrounded by bubbling water. For a moment, he did not know up from down, just the clutch of the water and the pain of his impact. His whole right side flamed with pain. It was a strange moment there, held by the water, not knowing his place in the world. He knew one way was up, toward the surface and life. The other was down to the river bottom where he would gasp, fill with water, and then slide along the bottom until he died. Which way should he swim?

Held there in that suspense of water, Eric felt the first cold hands of death. It was surprisingly gentle. What was living anyway? Pain, suffering, grief, toil, and fear. Yet the cold, sinuous hands of the river were tender and held him complete. They did not care he was fat. They did not care that he had failed to protect Birdie. All of these lives were nothing to them. They promised him peace, at last, and the wonderful, almost unimaginable, absence of fear. Death was kind. Death was a gift. In that moment of suspension, the world of water bubbling about him, Eric felt more comfortable than he had in all his life. He never realized how much terror his heart held until it released him.

Then he kicked upward and followed the bubbles around him.

Death was a gift, but one he would not accept until his time.

This was not it.

Eric broke the surface and gasped a lungful of air.

As he struggled in his soaked clothes, he became aware that someone was screaming. Turning around in the water, he tried to find the source.

“Lucia!” he cried. “Lucia!”

“Eric!” she screamed back. “Get him! Get my brother!”

Eric could see her waving on the bank of the river frantically. She was pointing downstream, where a tree had fallen, its branches submerged in the river. Sergio was there, face down, snagged by the branches. Awkwardly swimming, still in pain from the fall, Eric kicked toward Sergio.

The river tried to pull him further down the river, but it was midsummer, low and sluggish. Eric fought to the side of his friend. When he tugged him free and began pulling him toward the riverbank, Lucia cried on the bank, unintelligible words meant for her brother. He was almost to the bank, his body exhausted and burning with pain, when Sergio suddenly jerked to life behind him. Spouting water, he began kicking and waving his arms, clutching at Eric, and dragging him under the water.

Eric choked on the water and struggled with Sergio, who was pulling him down. His fingers were claws that dug in him. Sergio clutched at him like he was a life preserver. He was killing them both. Then Eric too began to panic, the pain of the water in his lungs making him flail, trying to get free of Sergio.

Then strong hands grabbed him and he felt grass and mud beneath him. He lifted himself up to vomit water on the riverbank. He gasped in painful gulps, before choking and vomiting again. Finally, completely exhausted, he rolled over on his back.

The clouds above shined incredibly white like the wings of birds. They moved so slowly, so patiently across the blue, so aimlessly.

And then he fell asleep.

They sat quiet around the campfire. They were naked but for the towels Lucia had found still clinging to some clotheslines. Their clothes were drying on a line that Lucia had strung between two trees. In the heat of July, it would not take long.

They had returned to the bridge. Doyle was long gone, but Eric’s backpack was still there, the only one left. They had been forced to enter houses in Port Jervis. They needed food and Eric needed new hiking boots. His had come off when he hit the water. He found a pair, but they were slightly too large and very heavy. The only food they found was a bag of rice in the back of a cupboard, half eaten by mice. They had just finished that meal.

In the quiet, Sergio spoke first. “What now?”

“We hunt him down, shoot his legs out from under him, and we force him to tell us what he did with Birdie. Then we kill him.”

They were quiet then, listening to the crackling of the fire.

It wasn’t hard following Doyle. He left carnage behind him. Burning vehicles, smoldering houses, and ripped open corpses marked his trail. Eric spent his day with his finger on the trigger of the .22 that he had dropped on the bridge. It was now their only weapon.

But it would do. Even a .22 bullet, humble as it was, would cut into a man, lodge in bone, tear through lung, punch through muscle, and tunnel into the tender heart.

This time he would give Doyle all the mercy he had shown Lucia, Sergio, and poor Birdie.

Doyle deserved to die, Eric told himself. He had it coming.

As they left Port Jervis, they came across a small library. Eric went inside, saying there might be food, but he was looking for a book. He found it.

How to Clean a .22 pistol:

1) Make sure the gun is unloaded. Place the gun on a towel.