Ben Bedard: The World Without Crows

“You should come with me,” Eric said suddenly. The offer surprised him. It was a risk, but being alone was as bad as the fear and pain.

“I just might,” Charlie responded. “I just might. In the meantime, how about some apple pie?”

Eric smiled.

Eric was getting water when the gang came. He had been thinking of how nice it was to talk to someone and hoping that Charlie would come with him when he heard the growling and barking of their engines. He dropped the bucket of water and huffed to the top of a hill where he dove to the ground. His heart beat so loud he could hardly hear the voices coming from Charlie’s shack.

He took out his gun and crawled slowly to the top of the hill through the leaves. Below him, in front of the shack, he could see three men and a woman climb out of a truck. There was a crude red snake painted on the truck. Charlie stood at the door of his shack with his shotgun. One of the men laughed and pointed, and then the others laughed too.

“This is my place,” Charlie said. “What’s here is mine.”

The woman threw up her hands and turned around, but one man stepped forward.

He might have said something. Eric couldn’t hear. He only heard the gun shot. Charlie stumbled back. His shotgun fell out of his hands. The woman screamed, “Don’t!” But the other men lifted pistols and shot. There were a dozen shots, maybe more.

Charlie collapsed. One of the men and the woman went to him, but the others ran into the shack, jumping or stepping over his body. They came out later with bags of food. The woman was crying over Charlie. They had to tug her to her feet. The other man, who had shot Charlie, he had to be pulled away too.

Then they left. The sound of their truck engine receded into the distance.

Eric waited. His hand shook. What if they were coming back for more of Charlie’s food? If they found him, he’d be shot too. Eric gripped the pistol. He’d never shot a gun before, he wouldn’t be able to defend himself. He should just leave, he decided.

But his backpack was there, in the house. His map. His calendar. His book on wilderness survival.

Eric reluctantly crept down to the shack. He didn’t look at Charlie as he stepped over him to get in the shack. He found his backpack and then looked around. He saw a can of beans on the floor, and he took that. He was on his way out when he grabbed a book from the shelf, not knowing why he did it. When he got back to the porch, he heard a rattling sound and froze, his hand on his gun.

It was Charlie, breathing through blood. Eric looked at him. One of the bullets had hit his cheekbone and took half his face off. Blood ran from his face and mouth, and over his exposed white bones where it looked like wine. Blood pooled underneath him, turning dark and thick.

Charlie wasn’t dead though. He was tough. He couldn’t say anything, but his eyes were blinking and moving. Eric waited. He bent over and put a hand on Charlie’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” Eric said. He waited until Charlie didn’t breathe anymore.

After Charlie died, Eric threw on his backpack. He had to keep moving.

That night, miles north from Charlie’s body, Eric sat by his fire. He quietly opened the book he had taken from Charlie’s private library. It was David Copperfield by Charles Dickens.

He read the opening sentence. He broke down into sobs for a long while.

He dreamt he was young again. He was in his basement, at the table that teetered annoyingly. Bill and Andy were arguing about vorpal weapons. Glenn listened with an enigmatic, wide smile on his face.

“Having a sword that sharp is retarded!” Bill argued. “What’s to keep it from cutting off your own arm?”

“Presumably,” Andy said, arching his eyebrows, “you’re a fighter, and, as a trained fighter, you have undergone extensive martial training in all weapons. A very sharp sword could only be a boon for such a highly trained warrior. Chefs have very sharp knives, but they rarely cut off their own finger.”

“Cutting up potatoes is not like the chaos of battle, dumbass!”

“Accidents are unavoidable in the horror of war,” Andy conceded. “But I would rather suffer minor lacerations by my fellow warrior than be torn apart by zombies or burnt to a cinder by an ancient red dragon.”

“Minor lacerations!” cried Andy. “A vorpal weapon will take off your friggin’ arms!”

“I’ll bite your legs off, you pansy!” interrupted Glenn. They erupted into hoots of laughter.

His mother came down the stairs with a platter of chocolate cookies with white chocolate chips, his favorite. She tussled his hair. He didn’t notice when she left. Under the table, Jessica took his hand. She looked at him and smiled, her wide, round face strangely free of acne.

Eric squeezed her hand and smiled back.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s get started.” He took out the adventure he had been writing off and on for a year. It was called “The Village of the Living Dead.”

When he looked over the screen that hid his dice from the players, all his friends were dead. Jessica stared at him through the hole where the bullet had blown out her eye. Black ooze ran down her cheek.

Eric woke up, breathing hard and irregularly, like his body had forgotten the rhythm of living. He stumbled out of his tent and panted over the red hot coals of his fire. “Oh shit,” he mumbled. “Shit.” Sweat dripped from his face. He fumbled for his pistol and held it in his lap. “Shit,” he said. “Oh god.” Finally the panic receded.

But Eric would not sleep again that night.

He waited until the sun rose, watched the brilliant pink and reds spread over the wooded landscape, listened to the birds awake and cry into the light. When it was bright enough to move north, he did, grateful for the movement in his limbs.

But even so. It was a long time before the fear left him.

Eric’s compass was foggy. Water had seeped inside it, and now it was difficult to read. His knife, which he used for practically everything, was getting dull. His tent leaked. After he ate Charlie’s beans, he had no more food. Now he sat on a ridge overlooking a town. It was nothing more than a few houses crowded around a crossroads. Remembering the gang and the red snake painted on the side of the truck, Eric was hesitant and fearful.

It was his stomach, in the end, who made the most persuasive argument.

Eric crept down toward the houses, pistol in his hand. He wouldn’t make Charlie’s mistake. He wouldn’t try to talk to them, he would shoot.

It wasn’t hard to pick out the right building. There was a faded old beer sign out front. It read, “One Stop.” Eric crouched and listened, but he heard nothing but the wind clapping up against the houses windows and rattling loose roofing. Eric looked cautiously up and down the road, but there was nothing. Finally, his heart beating, he walked up the steps to the store. When he opened the door, little bells rang. The sound was so loud, a crow squawked in response.

Eric stepped inside, holding out his pistol. Inside, there were several sounds he hadn’t heard from outside. Scraping, bumping, shuffling. Eric couldn’t tell if there was a window open and the wind was blowing through old papers, or if there was someone in there. He crouched down and moved as quietly as he could. But it was hard for someone like him to move stealthily. He seemed to make a lot of noise.

Then he saw her. An old woman with the paper at the counter of the store. She was looking at a paper. The headline read PARIS EVACUATED. It had a picture of the Eiffel Tower on the front. The woman was staring at the page, but Eric could see she wasn’t reading. Her face was yellow and blue. Her eyes were shrunk and black. Her lips had pulled back so that her teeth made a garish smile. Half of her hair was missing and her scalp had been scratched away on one side so that her skull gleamed underneath.