Ben Bedard - The World Without Crows

In the end, he put the drawing back in Birdie’s backpack, which he packed carefully in his own.

He would start forgetting her tomorrow. Tomorrow he would begin their new life as Mustangs. Tomorrow he would make the dreadful decision.

Tonight he would not abandon her.

Eric awoke to screams. Leaping to his feet, he blinked, his heart thudding with fear. Gunshots. He heard one, two, and then several more. Eric pulled on his pants so fast, he nearly fell over. Lucia and Sergio were at his side at the next moment.

“What’s happening?” Lucia cried.

“Come on!” Eric grabbed his backpack. “Get your things!”

People were flashing by the hall outside, crying and shouting. Eric ran to the window to see the chaos of people outside. The flash of gunfire. There was a dead body on the lawn. Eric could see figures running through the street. He saw one man running away, wearing a green sports jersey. It said McHale 32 on it.

“What’s happening?” Lucia asked. He just shook his head.

Outside he saw the Good Prince standing with several men with a shotgun in her hand. She was yelling, but in the chaos, he couldn’t tell what she was saying. Then one word rose from the crowd, repeated throughout.

“It’s the Minutemen!” Sergio cried.

As Eric watched, he saw Good Prince Billy rise up with the shotgun. A deafening blast filled the air, and a man wearing a Red Sox jersey collapsed like he was made of water. Another truck came to a screeching halt in front of the church, and men in green or red jerseys began leaping from the truck. Gunfire erupted all around them.

Eric pulled on his backpack and then turned away from the window. “Let’s go!” he cried, but Sergio and Lucia remained staring out the window, stunned. “Let’s go!” Eric tugged Sergio back so that he fell. He scrambled to his feet without a word of complaint.

Running into the church, they pelted down the stairs and then further into the church. Soon they stood before Carl Doyle’s room.

“What’re we doing?” Lucia cried as Eric threw open the door.

“Grab those keys,” Eric said to Sergio. Then he turned to Lucia. “We’re getting out of here.”

Carl Doyle was already on his feet.

“Eric, my boy!” he boomed, his arms wide. “I knew you would return! Rotten business, I hear.” He pointed up toward the sound of gunfire.

“Eric, no!” Lucia cried.

But Eric was fumbling with the lock already. The chains fell from Doyle and he made a rumbling sound that might have been a sigh or a laugh. Eric looked up at Doyle’s bloodstained face. “Get us out of here,” he said.

Doyle nodded at him severely, and then clasped him by both shoulders. He gave him a shake. “You’re a fine boy,” he said with a wink. “A fine boy.”

Then, turning toward the door, he roared, and ran up the stairs. “Wahoo Mohammed!” he cried.

“Eric!” Lucia cried when Doyle vanished. “What’re you doing?” Sergio was cursing in Spanish.

“Getting us out of here,” Eric answered. “Hurry, we don’t have much time.”

The three pelted up the stairs. Above them they heard gunfire mixed with the booming voice of Carl Doyle. When they reached the main door of the church, they saw Carl Doyle standing on the lawn. Somehow he already had a shotgun, and was firing one shot after another toward a group of Minutemen who had taken refuge behind a truck. “You goddamn savages!” Doyle boomed as he shot.

Without pausing, Eric flew out the door. At the corner of his eye, while he ran, he saw a knot of bodies, but didn’t see if the Good Prince was one of them. While Carl Doyle screamed, firing into the Minutemen, the three of them raced into the darkness.

They climbed into the silver Ford Probe. Lucia slammed it into gear and Eric fell into the backseat as the car squealed into the road. As they screeched away, Eric turned and saw more approaching lights, Minutemen reinforcements.

Within moments, there was only the road and the sound of their breathing. Then the quiet sound of sobbing. Sergio was crying in the front seat. Lucia turned to him and said something in Spanish, but Sergio didn’t stop crying.

The Probe sped north into the darkness.

Eric saw a green sign, bright from the Probe’s headlights, hanging down toward the dark earth. He had to cock his head to the side to read it.

Welcome to Vermont.

When they reached the Green Mountain National Park, they drove the Ford Probe to the edge of an embankment. The three of them pushed it over, and the car bounced down into the forest where it vanished. A pine tree shivered to mark where it hit with a crash. In the silence, Sergio began to weep again, as if the Probe had been a living creature they had killed. Lucia put her arm around her brother.

“We had to,” Eric said, without turning to them. “The Minutemen might be hunting for us. We have to be careful. No more cars. No more people.”

Sergio groaned like he had kicked him.

“Grow up,” Eric spat toward him, offended by his sorrow. Lucia flushed, looking at Eric, but with anger or shame, he didn’t know.

He didn’t care. He walked down into the forest and then turned north, toward the interior of the park and ultimately, the island.

The rolling hills had now given way to the wooded mountains of Vermont. They climbed a steep mountain and camped on an overlook. All they could see was green forest and mountains. Looking over the park, it was easy to imagine a world in which humans had never existed at all. After all, humans had existed for so short a time. For billions of years, the earth had done fine without them, and now, it would continue as if they had never been. To the earth, humans were less than a moment, less than an instant. Just as Eric would forget a single blink in his lifetime, so the earth would forget them. It did not make him sad, though Sergio, looking on the same scene, wept once more. For Eric it was comforting. What was so great about humans anyway? The world had only destroyed itself a few months ago and they were already planning for war.

Eric realized he was wrong about feeling numb. There was something in him, something terrible but powerful, something that should have frightened him but did not.

Rage.

At night, he dreamt of his father. They were in the aluminum boat, floating in the lake in Maine. His father was drinking a can of beer with his feet up. Eric rowed toward the island. The skies were green and shivered like leaves disturbed by the wind.

“Is that as fast as you can row?” his father asked. He tossed his empty beer into the lake where the red and white can bobbed in the water. “I can’t believe you’re my son.”

Eric said nothing. He pulled at the oars, but it was like rowing in thick mud. Water dripped off the oars, thick as honey.

“You’ll never get to the island,” his father said, disgusted. There was a snap and a hiss as he opened another beer. “Your mother ruined you.”

Eric grunted at the oars, but suddenly they would not budge. The oars felt lodged in stone.

His father laughed. “Holy shit,” he said. “Your mother really screwed you up.”

It was only water. Eric heaved and strained against the oars. Suddenly his father shot up and was directly in his face, his hot breath in his face, his face twisted in contempt. “What’s wrong with you?”

Eric woke up sweating, his arms flailing around him, as if he were trying to fly.

The next day, over the campfire where the water boiled, Eric announced that he didn’t want to move today. He wanted to stay at the camp. “I have to think,” he said.