Ben Bedard - The World Without Crows

He approached softly on the hard ground, his pistol held out before him. He had to be quiet, he had to be close. One shot to the back of the head. Quick. Painless. Humane. But not too close. He stopped about ten feet away. Held out his arm. Aimed.

“ERIC! NO!” Lucia ran into the campground, waving her arms and screaming.

She could not make the hard decision. He could. His finger pressed the trigger.

The man turned toward him.

Eric’s hand went numb an instant before he fired. The pistol dropped to his feet and his mouth hung open.

“Hello, Eric,” the man said weakly.

It was John Martin.

All three of them huddled around John Martin who lay now by the fire. Carl Doyle’s gunshot had not killed him. All the antibiotics that John had gathered after Brad’s death had kept the wound from festering, but in his weakened state, the Vaca B invaded. His eyes were red with blood.

He breathed heavily by the fire. “I’ve been searching for you,” he said. “Thank God,” he said. “Thank God I found you. I’m out of time.”

“Don’t talk now, John,” Lucia said. “You need to eat.” She turned toward Sergio. “Get him some water and food,” she ordered. Sergio nodded and dashed away.

John Martin took a deep, labored breath that rattled in his chest, an ugly sound. “Listen to me,” he said. “The truck.” He lifted his hand and pointed east. “Birdie,” he said.

Eric felt the hair rise at the back of his neck. A thrill of lightning ran through him. “What? What did you say?”

“The truck,” John Martin repeated. “About a mile. Maybe two.”

Eric shot to his feet, and then, tearing himself away from Lucia who had clutched at him, he found he was running through the woods. Tears blinded his eyes. Tree limbs tore at his face, but he felt nothing. His heart was a ball of light in his chest. When he hit the road, he spun around and around, searching for a vehicle.

“Birdie!” he shouted. “Birdie!”

Blindly he ran down the road calling her name.

Suddenly he saw a red truck and stopped, trembling. The door opened and a figure crawled out, feet first.

“Eric?”

Eric didn’t remember moving. Birdie was suddenly in his arms and they were crying. He clutched at her and kissed her head a dozen times. She smelled like ash and peanut butter. When he became aware of himself, he was carrying Birdie in his arms through the forest, toward the camp. Birdie’s grip around his neck nearly choked him, but he didn’t care.

He listened to himself talk. “I’ll never leave you again, I swear it. I swear it, Birdie. I’ll never leave you again.” Birdie wept hotly into his neck.

It was a very long time before they released each other.

John Martin did not live through the night. For all of Lucia and Sergio’s attention, he began trembling at midnight, and, hours later, when the sky had turned blue as dawn slowly approached, he went still. When dawn came, he was dead.

Both Lucia and Sergio, who had spent so much time with him, who owed their lives to him, wept, holding each other. Then Lucia washed John as best she could. She took off his filthy jersey and replaced it with a clean shirt. With great labor and care, they carried his large body into the meadow. Over his stolid body, they piled dry wood and branches until he was underneath a great pyramid of tinder.

Before they set it afire, Sergio stood forward to speak.

“I don’t know why all this has happened. I don’t understand why some of us live and some of us die. The more I see, the more I think it’s random. It’s just luck that makes us live and bad luck that makes us die. John Martin was a good man. He didn’t have to look out for us. He probably would be alive today if he looked after himself more. But he didn’t. He wasn’t like that. I’d say he didn’t deserve to die, but that doesn’t make any sense to me anymore. I guess what I want to say is thank you. Thank you for helping us, John Martin. I swear I won’t ever forget it.” He said a few words in Spanish, but Eric did not understand.

Lucia stood forward and, her lips moving as if in speech, she lit the fire. It snapped and popped at first, but then it began to hiss and crackle and finally roar. The pyramid turned into a twisting column of fire they could not approach for the heat.

It burned hot while they packed their campsite, and, by the time they moved away through the woods toward the north, toward the island, Eric holding Birdie’s hand, the fire had become smoke and John Martin, who had saved them all, had been transmuted to ash.

How Birdie came back to them was a complicated story, filled with gaps, uncertainty, and confusion. From what John had told them before he died, which was not much, and from what Birdie herself understood, Eric was able to puzzle together something like a narrative.

John Martin had awakened after being shot by Carl Doyle. For days he could not move, but slept and rested, eating and drinking what was left in his pack. Somehow he had found a truck and began to follow them, hoping to rejoin them. How he avoided Carl Doyle or if Doyle was an impediment to him, Eric never knew. Finally John found them, but when he did, there was only Birdie.

Birdie said that John had told her that they were not coming back. They guessed that John Martin had seen them enter the deserted cabin, saw the Minutemen enter, heard the gunfire, and believed them dead. Birdie said that she didn’t want to leave, but Eric had told her to look after herself. So she did as she was told.

Then, Birdie said, they ran. From what or who, Birdie could not tell them, only that it was scary. Some days they parked their truck deep in the forest and did not move. Birdie said John would talk, but not to her. He spoke to Holly, Birdie said. “Holly was mean,” Birdie told them. “She always made John cry.” Neither Sergio or Lucia knew who this Holly was, but it was not strange. All of them had lives they no longer spoke about and people whose names were synonymous with regret and sorrow.

One day John Martin turned to Birdie and said they were alive, Eric, Sergio, and Lucia. How he knew that, Eric would never know. After that, John searched for them. Birdie said he became more sick, talked less and drank more water.

Birdie could tell them little about this time, but she gave them a drawing made with blue pen. It was folded and ragged. It was a truck hovering over a tree. Three people stood below the truck, the larger one crying. One of them had long hair but no legs, and underneath this figure was written “Holly.” All had deep frowns. Behind the tree were other trees and between them were angry eyes. Over all glowered a hideous, crescent moon that seemed to be a frown transposed to the sky.

The day finally came when John Martin found them.

A more complete version of Birdie’s journey they would never know.

Despite the death of John Martin, Eric gloried in feeling Birdie’s small, damp hand in his. He felt a wonderful thrill whenever she asked him a question or smiled. Though it could not be said they were joyful moving north toward the next circle on Eric’s wrinkled map, Granville Reservation State Park, they were energetic, hopeful.

Even Lucia and Sergio were light in their sadness. Before they had given John Martin a decent burial, they had felt miserable and guilty for leaving him there, shot down in the road like a dog. Now they walked slightly behind of Eric and Birdie, speaking in Spanish with each other. Eric did not have to know the language to understand they were speaking about their time with John in his cellar. When Sergio suddenly laughed, Lucia strode ahead and took Eric’s arm.