Good Prince Billy. Eric’s pen pal. He still gives letters to Randy to hand to her. He’s got some letters from her too, I remember. As usual, Eric surprises me. He always knows more about a situation than he tells me. It’s a little irritating.
No one else is irritated though. Eric has given them some hope. Matt is the only one who doesn’t seem to appreciate it. As the crowd breaks up, Diane and Fiona lead him out of the room. His head is hung low and he looks defeated. He lets himself be guided like some kind of prisoner going to his own execution, and he knows he deserves it. It gives me the chills, and I realize just how badly damaged Matt is. All this time with us and he seemed normal to me, at least as normal as you could be. But I see now that all that was like some illusion and now Matt has emerged, a man who craves his own death and believes to his core that he deserves it. It’s too disturbing to look at him, so I turn away.
It’s not until everyone’s gone that I notice Artemis is still sitting on the benches with her face in her hands. Eric motions for me to get her. I’m irritated. She’s always crying, and I don’t feel like comforting her. I want to go home with Eric and talk with him and think about what to do. I don’t have time to be holding her hand. I know I’m not being a very good friend, but I sigh and move over to the benches and put my hand on her shoulder. I give her a little shake, not too gently either.
“Come on, Artemis, let’s go,” I tell her impatiently.
She looks up at me. Her eyes are deeply bloodshot. Her face is so pale, she’s almost blue and there are dark bags under her eyes.
“I don’t feel good,” she says, her lips quivering. I can feel the heat coming from her where I stand.
Tears, pink with blood, flow down her face.
19
Two days later, we have three quarantine houses. Ten people are sick with the Worm. After helping Franky with the water sterilizing furnace, Wesley came down with the fever. During dinner at the Lodge, Sam threw up. In the middle of a puddle of beans was a dark knot of pale worms. Anthony was next. He stumbled in the house with a fever so high, he didn’t even make it through the night. We burned him just at dawn. Glenda and Brian, both my age, were next. I used to have a crush on Brian when I was like fourteen. We kissed once behind the farmhouse, a quick, dry kiss, thrilling, embarrassing. It was hard to see him shaking in his fever, dark crimson tears on his face. Peter collapsed in the fields. Beth fainted while she was filling a tin bucket with water. Her fever is so high, it has burnt her away. She’s mostly a skeleton now, although we have a little hope for her because her eyes aren’t red at all. Both Patrick and Fiona are sick. They came in together, both trembling from fear and sickness. We all take turns to help, hoping that no one will die when it’s our turn to care for them.
We go in the quarantine houses with gloves on and long shirts. We go in pairs or threes. We go with guns loaded with precious ammunition. One person feeds them. The other person watches, hand on their gun.
No one has cracked. Yet.
20
I am there when Artemis dies. She didn’t last long. She gave up fast. The fever hit her so hard, she couldn’t stand up to it. Her face was slick with sweat. I tried to help her as best I could, but after a while, she just wanted water. And when I gave it to her, she twisted in her bed like it hurt. She coughed up dark, almost black, blood. Worms wriggled from her mouth. I wiped them away, trying to force down my revulsion.
When she dies, it’s sudden. One moment she’s with me, breathing hard, a low rattling sound. Then she stiffens. Her legs wave back and forth as if she’s trying to swim through dark waters. She makes a strangled sound. Her jaw clenches. She bites twice at the air, her teetch clacking loudly together.
And then she relaxes. By the time she looks human again, she’s dead.
She looks peaceful. I feel glad. Her fever was so high and she was so weak, I feared her mind would crack. I was so afraid I would have to kill her. I feel ashamed for feeling glad, and then that too vanishes. I don’t feel anything looking down at her. I thought I would feel something, but I’m only tired.
21
Matt dies a few hours after Artemis. He doesn’t go as peacefully. He cries out. He kicks. He thrashes in his bed. He shouts out names we’ve never heard.
But eventually he dies without cracking.
We are able to burn him on the same pyre as Artemis. I watch my best friend burn with a man who was practically a stranger. I don’t feel anything. I don’t cry.
Maybe there’s something very wrong with me.
22
Peter dies before the pyre cools. Patrick too. His wife, Fiona, is right beside him. She’s in the thralls of the fever and clings to his body and we can’t separate them. We decide to let Fiona have him. Mostly we’re afraid of Fiona scratching us. She just holds to Peter in fevered desperation. We expect her to die in a few hours. We’re watching her closely.
Somehow Beth is still alive.
But now we have to keep someone around all the time.
Our guns are loaded and ready.
23
Wesley is the first one to crack.
One minute he is laying there and the next he’s standing on the bed. His eyes are dark with blood and worms wriggle at the corner of his eyes. He leaps toward us, but Eric is ready.
Eric shoots him three times. The third time strikes him flat on the head as Wesley hurtles toward us. He lands at our feet. Pale worms slither from his head and wave in the air, searching for something to cling onto.
I look up at Eric and see something I haven’t seen in him for years.
Holding the smoking gun, he looks sure and solid.
He almost looks comfortable.
24
Beth dies while I’m sleeping.
When they move her out of the bed, they find worms under the blankets. More pour from her ear when they lifted her, pearly white slithering masses. There wasn’t much left of her, they tell me.
The worms ate her hollow.
25
When Fiona dies, Patrick is mostly a carcass of worms. The smell is like pure death, distilled, horrible. We can’t wrap them both up in blankets. Eric vomits dragging them out to the pyre. I gag, but I haven’t eaten enough in the last couple days, so there’s nothing to come up. We struggle with Franky to get the couple on the pyre.
In death, Fiona still clings to Peter. Her arms clutch at his chest, her leg wrapped around his waist.
In life, they were always fighting about something. When you spoke with them, they complained about each other. They always said how miserable they made each other. Everyone said they should just give up on each other, live separately. After a while, they were a joke to us, like the worst couple you could imagine.
Only now, as I watch them burn, Fiona embracing Peter even in death, that I realize they loved each other profoundly.
Still I can’t cry.
I want to cry. I do.
But there’s nothing there.
26
As soon as we burn one person, it seems that another person takes their place. The days seem neverending. There are more fires, more bodies, more fevers. When I get home, I can’t stop washing. I heat up bucket after bucket of water. I fill the old porcelain tub that Eric dragged into the house a few years ago. I fill it with water that has been boiling for hours. I climb in when it’s still scathing hot and steaming. It burns me, but I don’t care. I scrub and rinse and scrub again. When I finally get out, my skin is sore and hot and steaming.
I can’t stop imagining the worms. If I lay still, I think I can feel them inside me. When I close my eyes, I see them, palely writhing, twisting up to my eyes and ears and brain.
In my dreams, I am being pushed toward a black void. I step on worms. The void is inescapable. It’s in whatever direction I run. Coming from the void is the sound of a song from long ago, the sound of my mother’s voice, but I’m terrified. Just before I wake, I fall toward the distant singing.
27
A week after Crypt’s death, we have bur
ned almost half of the people I used to call my friends, my neighbors, my family. Peter is gone. Wesley. Only Pest is left of the people I used to call the goon squad. The ashes of my best friend is already nourishing the cemetery’s garden. Beth is gone. Patrick. Diane and Amber are both dead. So many others.
And two have entered a different state. They have come out of the fever, but they are not themselves any longer. They just stand all day and do nothing. Rhonda and Sam. They are both a lot older than me. I knew them in the way that everyone here knows each other, but they weren’t close to me. I always thought that the Homestead was so small that we all knew each other way better than we should, but I know differently now. Even in such a small group, we tend to form smaller and smaller groups. The Worm has exposed all the fine cracks that separate us. And I see now, as they all die, how little I really knew any of them.
Rhonda lived in the farmhouse and worked with Crystal in the kitchen. She was quiet, but good-humored, and when I was younger, she always let me in the back door and gave me an oatmeal cookie. She was small and plump and she liked to wear bright colors. Her face was always covered in red blotches and some of us used to call her Patches behind her back. All she did here was make sure we had food to eat. She got up every morning to cook for us, to preserve what she could, to make sure nothing went to waste. I cannot remember a single thing more about her than this.
Sam Jackman was one of the few people here that is (or was) truly lazy. He didn’t do anything. He was always complaining about his back or his constant headaches, but he was always first to sit down at the Lodge for meal time. He was always first with his opinions too, and liked to give them sitting back in his chair with his legs crossed, looking over at us from this position like we were fortunate to listen to his wisdom. He was also lecherous and handy and all of us girls knew to keep away from him. Most of us ignored him. Despite all the evidence, Sam seemed to be convinced he was the greatest thing ever to happen to the Homestead.
Now he’s standing in the corner of the quarantine house, his mouth hung open. Sometimes a little white worm rolls off his tongue and falls wriggling to the floor. He bangs his forehead against the wood sometimes, not hard though. Like he’s knocking. His eyes are black with knots of white worms in the corners.
We’re meeting in the Lodge. We’ve come to talk about what to do with them, the ones who are on duty.
I want to say that it’s a careful discussion, but it’s not. We’re beyond exhaustion. Our hearts don’t do anything but pump blood anymore. I don’t feel a damn thing. I haven’t since I saw Crypt get shot. I don’t think anyone else has either. It’s me, Franky, Norman, and Crystal who make the decision. Franky leads Sam and Rhonda out to where we’re going to burn them. They walk wherever we lead them, shuffling oddly. They don’t resist. When they get to the wood pile, they just stand, swaying slightly. Crystal shoots Rhonda first, pressing the gun in the back of her skull for a second before pulling the trigger. Crystal sobs as Rhonda collapses at her feet. Sam doesn’t move, just stares dumbly into the distance, his mouth hung open stupidly. Norman shoots him once in the back of the skull. Then they drag them onto the pyre and I walk forward with a burning length of wood from the stove. I push it into the seasoned wood and it starts to burn. I get the awful thought that we are wasting a lot of good wood and will have to pay for it next winter before I realize what I’m thinking. I cringe at my callousness and step back as the flames begin to set their red teeth into the wood.
As the flames crackle and grow and begin to consume Sam’s corpse, I realize I have no idea how many have died and how many have survived. I stand there dumbly trying to work out the terrible math. But I can’t focus. I’m looking at my hands. They’re dirty. They’re filthy. I look back into the fire and see the fire begin to burn Sam’s hair. Worms come boiling out of his mouth and nose as if trying to flee the flames. Instead they shrink and twist as they combust. My stomach turns. I turn away from the fire and start to walk home. I feel so exhausted, I feel like I too am shuffling forward like they were, hardly alive.
It’s not until I’m fully immersed in the scalding water of the tub that I wonder where Eric has gone. The days have become so filled with horror, I don’t remember when I’ve seen him last. It’s strange he wasn’t there to help us with Rhonda and Sam. I have the sudden certainty that he wouldn’t have let us kill them . He would’ve told us to be patient. And we wouldn’t have done what we did. It’s the first time I realize that what we did might have been wrong. A pang of guilt is replaced with a gut-wrenching need to see Eric, to talk to him, to ask him to forgive me. I lift myself out of the tub and grab a towel. I need to tell him what we did. I need him to tell me it’s all right, that he understands. I throw on some of my last clean clothes and then climb the ladder to the loft.
I smell him before I see him. A horrible, dark, rotten stench of death I have become too familiar with.
Eric is shivering in his bed, his eyes dark with blood.
28
Something changes in me. I grow solid inside when I see the Worm has Eric. I feel like a hard, furious crystal. I want to scream looking down at him. I want to die. I feel so many desperate desires rage through me that I fear I’m losing my mind. I shake my head.
“Think, Birdie,” I tell myself out loud. Think.
They’ll kill him if they find him like this. If he doesn’t die, if he doesn’t crack violently, he’ll still die, just like Rhonda and Sam. He’ll get put in quarantine and even if the Worm doesn’t kill him, they will. If they find him, he’s dead. I have to move him.
The sun has just vanished, leaving a blueberry sky. The fire consuming the bodies of Sam and Rhonda is still burning, lighting up the quarantine houses where a few of us are still waiting to die. Whoever is there will be inside, watching the sick ones, fighting to stay awake. The rest will be at home, sleeping or trying to choke down some food. They won’t notice us. Somehow I get Eric to his feet. I even get him a few rungs down the ladder before he falls down to the floor. I wince when he hear him hit the floor and hope he hasn’t broken anything. When I drop down to him, I check him over carefully. Luckily, he seems fine.
Yes, I think, they won’t notice us, but if they do. If they do. I look around. I stand up Eric who moans and leans against the wall, trembling. I throw a thick winter coat over him. Then I get a hat and put it down over his ears and eyes. I try not to look at the blood that smears on the hat. I’m thankful that Eric must have been too sick to take off his pants or his boots before he collapsed in his bed. If people see him from a distance, he could pass as healthy. Maybe.
Now think, Birdie.
Think.
“Come on, Eric,” I tell him. “Come on, follow me.”
I take him by the hand and give him a pull toward the door. Eric groans but follows me a few staggering steps. I open the door and look around. No one. I look toward the trees down the hill and to the northwest. It’s far. It seems like miles of open field to the dark tree line. Anyone could see us. I move to support Eric as best I can. I feel his hot, feverish breath against my neck and close my eyes against the revulsion and try not to think of the worms.
I get him out the door. He half walks, half drags himself forward, using me as support. I never realized how heavy he was. We’re both groaning now as we move toward the woods. I stop for a second to catch my breath and look back. I move my right hand to my knife and it’s there and I feel better. Then I see a shadowy figure move and I pull Eric down to the ground, which isn’t hard. He just collapses like a bag of meat. I watch the figure approaching our cabin. I see that it’s Franky. I close my eyes and hope that he didn’t see us. I can’t let him take Eric. I can’t let that happen. They’ll kill him. I know it in my heart. They’ll shoot him right in the back of the head like they did the others. Like we did. I can’t let them to do that to Eric. I won’t. I move my hand to my knife.
But Franky stops halfway to our house. He just stops and stands there. I think I know what’s happening. Fra
nky’s like me. He’s had time to think about what we did with Rhonda and Sam and he doesn’t feel good about it. He wants to talk to Eric, just like I did. He wants to be told we did the right thing. I watch him standing there, thinking. Maybe he’s tired. Maybe he thinks we’re tired. Maybe he won’t bother us. My heart is beating and my hand is clenching the knife handle. Everything depends on what he decides to do right now.
Franky lurches forward toward the house at a big stride and my heart falls. When he finds out no one is there, there’ll be questions. Maybe he’ll smell the Worm in our cabin. Maybe he’ll come out and hunt for us. He’ll find us easy enough. I can’t let Eric die. That is not going to happen while I still breathe. It’s the way it has to be, like the decision was made in my bones. It’s a decision made without words or thought. Every part of me vibrates with the knowledge that while I live, nothing happens to Eric and no one touches him. No one.
This is what I’ll do. I feel cold, thinking about it. If Franky comes near me, I tell him to go away, if he doesn’t, I bring out the knife. Franky has a trick right shoulder, so if he comes near, I’ll move to my right. I don’t want to kill him. I don’t want to, but they’ll kill Eric. If I wound him, he’ll scream for help and they’ll kill Eric. I will make it painless. Move to the right and slice his throat. Quick, easy. It’s the only way. I play it over in my mind, but I’m trembling with fear. I don’t think I can do it, but I don’t know of any other way.
Then, as quickly as he lurched forward, Franky stops again. He’s only a few feet from our door. Maybe he’s thinking that he doesn’t want to bother us so late. We’re probably sleeping. Maybe he doesn’t want Eric’s permission for what we did. Maybe he’s thinking it’s his own conscience he has to ask. Whatever he’s thinking, he stands there, indecisive. My heart is thrumming in my chest like a bird.
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