Ben Bedard - The World Without Crows

One stitch down.

About fifty more to go.

The first night at the farmhouse Lucia could not sleep. Despite cleaning and bandaging his wounds as best she could, Eric was restless with fever. She didn’t know what she could do, but stay by him and cool his forehead with a damp cloth. She had to make sure he didn’t roll over in his misery and rip open the wounds she had so carefully cleaned and sewn. In the end, she lost count of the stitches. There were many. The canyons on his back was replaced with the railroad tracks of stitches, as if his skin were a frontier being developed.

Birdie slept on the couch next to him. She had wanted to curl up next to him on the mattress, but Lucia thought it might aggravate his wounds. Even in the moments when Eric calmed and all was quiet, Lucia did not dare to shut her eyes.

She knew Sergio was waiting for her in her dreams.

Inevitably, however, deep in the night, only a few hours from dawn, as the sky outside turned dark blue, Sergio came and sat next to her. Lucia was dreaming.

“I was always the middle one,” Sergio said. His voice, however, had lost all his former fear. He sounded like their father. “No one paid attention to me. You were older, Diego was younger. You don’t even have time for me when I’m dead.”

“That’s not true, Sergio,” Lucia said.

“I know,” he said. “These are your worries, not mine. Do you think I care about any of this? Do you want to know what I thought about, sister? Just before I died?”

“Yes.”

“Gloria,” her brother answered. “We kissed behind the church. She said she’d never felt so much for another person. She said she didn’t understand it. She wanted me to stay with her. Gloria was her name, did I tell you that?”

“Yes,” Lucia said.

“I thought about her in the end,” Sergio said. “I belong with her. Not with you. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“That doesn’t mean you should forget me, Lucia,” he said. Sergio was angry with her. “Don’t you dare forget me.”

“I’m sorry, Sergio.”

“Don’t forget me like you do everyone else!”

Lucia jerked awake, crying out. Outside, the sun was rising, brilliant and bright. Eric’s breathing was calm and measured. Lucia wept at the sound.

She knew then Eric was going to live.

They stayed at the farmhouse for three days, letting Eric’s tender wounds heal. Birdie never left his side, and, usually so quiet, she now talked to Eric so much, it was as if all of the things she had never said to him had broken free. Eric listened through a haze of intense pain he tried to hide.

Lucia spent her days foraging in the local farmhouses for food. There was not much left, but, in a trailer in the woods, she found a stash of canned food and bottled water. Sitting on a chair outside the trailer was a Zombie. He had long ago shrunk down so much that, nearly skeletal and lacking eyes, he could not move. On the ground next to him was a shotgun. He had died guarding his food. When Lucia approached the gun, the Zombie opened and shut its mouth, making a creaking sound like an old wooden door.

Now they had a shotgun.

On the third evening, Lucia sat on the porch, watching the fireflies. Their green lights flashed in the evening. She thought about Sergio. Life happened so quickly. Lights in the darkness, winking to brilliant existence and then descending into shadow. She looked up with a start when the porch door slammed.

Eric stood on the porch, one hand on Birdie’s shoulder, who looked up at him with pride.

“You shouldn’t be up, Eric,” Lucia said, standing. “You need to rest.”

“Yes,” Eric agreed, “but not here.” He hobbled forward, unable to keep the pain from his face. He sat down next to her, hissing in air between his teeth.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t find any pain medication,” Lucia said.

Eric ignored the comment. “It’s too dangerous to stay here. Carl Doyle is looking for us.” Lucia had told him everything about Doyle’s assault on Daniel Sullivan, how they had escaped, and how she had seen Doyle crash into a pharmacy window. “We have to keep moving.”

“You’re not well, Eric,” she said. “You have to rest.”

“I’m well enough.” Eric stood up, grimacing. “You know it’s true, Lucia,” he told her. “The longer we stay here, the more chance that Doyle will find us. Or someone else.” He looked out over the fireflies flashing in the field. “We have to leave tomorrow.”

Lucia said nothing, but watched him walk slowly back into the house.

Now that the night was her last at the farmhouse, it was far more pretty, far more peaceful. For a long time then, finally, she cried, at first quietly and then in heaving sobs. When she was done, she was so exhausted, she lay out on the bench on the porch and fell into an empty, deep sleep of the kind that she hadn’t known in weeks.

When they reached Grafton Notch State Park, they pulled the truck to the edge of an embankment. Eric was nervous about meeting Carl Doyle or anyone else and insisted they abandon the truck. Lucia tried to argue with him, saying that they were so close, they could be there in hours, but Eric was adamant.

“It isn’t worth the risk,” he said. “Trucks are moving targets. We’ve walked this far, we can walk to the end.”

Lucia finally agreed. Once they unpacked the truck, Lucia put the truck in neutral, and, grunting, they pushed the stubborn truck off the road. When the truck finally bounced down the edge, rolling over once at the bottom, and ending up back on its wheels amid shattered glass, Lucia noticed Eric’s t-shirt. It was dark with red slashes of blood.

They walked up into the pine-filled forest, and, not too far from the road, they made camp.

After a quick dinner of rice and lentils, Birdie settled down next to Eric with her crayons. Lucia glared at Eric.

“What?” he asked, after a long time of trying to ignore her.

“You know what,” she said. “Take off your shirt.” Eric’s eyes narrowed in anger, but Lucia’s gaze was not to be questioned.

Eric gave out a little cry of pain as he peeled the shirt off.

It was as she feared. “You tore it open,” she said, looking at his back.

Birdie looked up from her crayons with concern. “Are we going to have sew him up again?”

Eric looked at her with Birdie’s question in his eyes.

“Yes we are,” Lucia said to her. “If Eric had rested like I said, we wouldn’t have to do this again.”

“Can I try this time?” she asked, setting down her crayons.

Eric laughed. Then Lucia followed, though the thought of piercing him with a needle again infuriated her. “It hurts when I laugh,” Eric said.

“Good,” Lucia said. “I should let her, Eric. I really should.”

“Can I?” Birdie asked, not seeing the humor. “Please?”

Eric and Lucia laughed again.

“Stop it,” Eric said. “Seriously, it hurts.”

Luckily Eric only needed a few stitches to close the wound that had re-opened. After caring for Eric’s back once more, they walked up a hill to a small clearing near a brook. They set up camp to stay until Eric’s back wasn’t so tender he couldn’t move without tearing out the stitches.

Eric spent his time on his stomach. He had lost all of his materials, his map, his calendar, the book he had taken from Charlie’s house, his polyhedral dice, everything that had once linked him to the past world. The loss of the calendar was the worst for him. They had already replaced the map when they found a road map of Maine in the glove compartment of an abandoned car, but even if Eric could find a calendar, how could he know what day it was? Was it still August or had September crept in? With a chill of fear, he realized the time for calendars was over. They would think in seasons from now on. Their plans would be based on temperature, the migrations of birds, the fluctuating color in the leaves of trees.