All day I plan out the evening. I think about Eric up in the Land Rover. I know that I have to leave, and I have to leave tonight. If I stay much longer, I may find it too difficult to leave. I know it’s going to hurt people when I vanish. It will be yet another blow to the Homestead. It’s not really that I am necessary here, but that I am, like Franky and Norman said, a reminder of Eric. I’m like a walking memory of more secure times, like a promise it can be that way again. I’m sorry I can’t be that for them, but I won’t let Eric die. If I stay, someone will eventually find him and, “for the good of the community,” they will kill him.
They will have to find their own hope.
I will have to find mine.
41
When I leave Franky’s side for the day, he looks at me meaningfully and says, “See you tomorrow.” I get the gist. This is supposed to be my new job, following him around like his new puppy dog. If I wasn’t planning on leaving, I’d have to think about a way out of this, but since I’m already opting for a good old fashioned skedaddle, I nod and give him a hesitant smile, like I’m still missing Eric, but following him around is giving me hope. That’s what I go for anyway. Franky turns away before I can figure if my little game seemed to work on him. But I feel like it does. I can kind of sense him thinking that he’s got things under control. He has that air about him as he walks back toward his house. I don’t stand there and watch him though, that would be creepy, so I turn away and stride back to our house.
I feel almost good when I shut the door. All day I’ve had eyes on me. Franky, Norman, Pest, Crystal, all of them. Some with concern, some with interest, some with a kind of desperate, pathetic hope, like just by being around, I can make it better that half of us just got killed by the Vaca B. I try not to think of that. I smiled at everyone, or at least tried to, but it’s a lot of pressure. It felt like lying. So getting inside a nice, dark space that is all mine feels damn good, to put it bluntly. I put the bar across the door to keep anyone from barging in and take a deep, wonderful breath of exquisite privacy. I just want to close my eyes and rest for like a week, but I shake that feeling away.
Okay, Birdie, time to plan.
I have two backpacks: one is very large and the other is much more modest. The big one is for Eric. I figure he can carry a lot, even in his state. A backpack will make him look less suspicious from a distance, and it might even disguise the janky way he walks. I feel a little guilty for thinking of Eric like some kind of pack mule, but I brush this away. It’s for his own good, after all. I have to think about food and clothes. I start stuffing in the backpack whatever I can find. Plastic bags of dried venison, jars of vegetables and pickled eggs, apples, carrots, anything we have around. Then a tent (everyone around here has tents) and some sleeping bags (we have a lot of those too), and then another bag filled with first aid stuff and whatever else I can think of taking with us, like some old, gnarled fishing line that I see. The backpack is big but not that big. It fills up depressingly fast. I unpack and start again. This goes on and on for a few hours. It’s terrible what I have to sacrifice.
Then I begin putting on layers of clothes, several of them. I feel like a stuffed turkey when I’m finished, but we’ll need these clothes. Some of these are Eric’s clothes, so I can take them off when I get to him, but for now, I have to walk around like this. I grab all of the matches I can find. There’s a lot of them, but there have to be. They don’t always work. Every year that goes by, less of them work. They’re wrapped in three or four tight layers of plastic, because if they come into contact with moisture, they deteriorate fast. I grab a couple more jackknifes too, because there’s never enough of those.
Then I realize I’m done. I’m standing in the middle of the only home I’ve ever known, or at least the only one I remember, and I realize that I’m leaving. I don’t even know if I’m coming back. My heart is suddenly wrenched, like someone grabbed it and twisted. I almost fall to my knees it hurts so bad. I don’t want to go. With my whole being, I don’t want to leave. I never realized what this house meant to me until that moment, all those nights eating at the table with Eric, playing cards with Eric, talking with him about everything, reading books to each other. All we suffered here, all we laughed. I don’t know if I’ll ever see it again. It’s another loss after everything else, and I feel myself begin to tremble and the tears start to well up in my eyes.
That’s when the door shudders. Someone tried to come in without knocking. I stand up, my tears forgotten, my heart throbbing with anxiety.
The door shudders again, this time more violently.
It must be Franky. Fear grips me. I’m standing in the middle of the house with all my belongings packed. I’m wearing so many clothes, I’m swollen up like a tick. There won’t be any way of explaining this. He’ll want to know where I’m going. And why. And nothing I say, no elaborate lie is going to hide this.
“Hey, Kestrel, you in there?!” a voice calls out, followed by a couple bangs on the door.
It’s Pest. I’m relieved, but not happy to hear his voice.
“What do you want?” I cry out toward the door. I didn’t have to pretend to be annoyed. “I’m washing up in here!”
Maybe that would have caused some shame in most people. Not Pest. “Franky wants to know if you’re coming to the Lodge for supper.”
“What are you, his messenger or something?”
“Something like that,” Pest says. He kicks the door softly. “You coming or what?”
“What,” I answer. Maybe I should be a little smarter about this, but something about Pest gets to me.
“So you’re not coming to eat?” he asks. “You don’t want to eat?” He sounds doubtful.
“I can eat here, you know,” I say. But my own tone sounds more belligerent than it should, even to me. So I continue. “Listen, I’m tired and dirty. I just want to clean up and have some bread and go to bed.”
“You using boiled water to clean?” Pest says through the door. “Norman says boiled water from now on, even to clean.”
“Yes, I’m using boiled water to scrub my armpits, all right? Any more questions or can I finish what I’m doing?”
“All right, all right! Don’t lose your shit, for crying out loud,” Pest answers. That really irritates me for some reason.
“I’ll lose my shit if I think my shit needs losing!” I cry out. “If I need someone to tell me when and when not to lose my shit, I’ll let you know. You can be my official finder of shit, how’s that? If I lose my shit, you’ll be the first shit sniffer I call. How’s that?”
“Someone’s moody,” Pest says. “Okay, then, good night, Birdie.”
“What did you call--!?” I stride toward the door in anger, but I’m so loaded up with clothes that I immediately fall forward on the floor. I’m wearing so many clothes, nothing is hurt except my pride. I flail on the floor, intending to jump to my feet and tell Pest what a perfect name he was given, and to warn him what would happen if he ever dared to call me Birdie again, but I have to say the whole effort was unsuccessful. I was like a turtle flipped on its shell. A very angry turtle.
By the time I get up, Pest is long gone. I have the insane idea of throwing open the door, running him down and giving him a swift kick in the smartass, when I realize how truly idiotic that would be. Pest irritates me so much! I growl out loud and then realize that all in all, it was a very good thing. Now they will all think I am sleeping, exhausted, while they eat at the Lodge. When, in fact, I’ll be long gone by morning.
Even pests can be useful.
42
Eric is in the Land Rover where I left him. Somehow he’s crawled face first into the front passenger seat. His legs are up over the seat, his back twisted in what should be a very painful angle, and his head is jammed into the floor under the dashboard. It takes me a while to get him out. Finally, I slide him out of the Land Rover and he collapses on the forest floor and says “Unh” right into the ground. His eyes are leaking blood.
I’m breathing hard, but I answer him. “Yeah, sucks,” I agree.
Then I heave him to his feet and try to dress him in the clothes I brought. This is way harder than I thought it would be and I didn’t think it would be easy. Every time I get one arm in a shirt, for example, and I’m trying to get the other in, all the while, being very careful of Eric’s hands and fingernails, Eric makes some move or groans or jerks weird and I have to start over. When I try to get a pair of overalls on him, I practically have to wrestle him into the ground. Then I have to hold up his legs like he’s an infant and pull the clothes over his legs. Then I roll him over and start tugging. It’s exhausting. Keep in mind that Eric is a big guy, a big guy who got that way by swinging an axe all damn day. When he moves, I can’t really stop him.
Then I find out he has lost all concept of backpack. He doesn’t like it. Every time I get one strap on and move to put the other one on, he goes “Unh” and jerks it off. I tell him it’s for his own good, but it’s like talking to a rock. I tell him anyway. Finally, after like eight tries, I get the backpack on and I clip in the chest straps so he can’t jerk it off. At first he goes “Unh, unh” and moves around in a circle, but then he stops and just stands there again, so I guess he gets use to it. Or whatever the hell is going on in his head.
Then I tie a rope around his waist and tie a couple pair of gloves to his hands. That was the weirdest part for me. He must have touched me with those hands a million times, but when I touch them now. . .I get the most horrible feeling. Everything is both wrong and right. I recognize the shape, the size, all the callouses and fingernails, but they aren’t right. They move very weirdly, like just the pinky finger will move and the others will stay still. Or the fingers will move in opposite directions or just a little behind the other. It’s gross. It’s the Worm. To think that a disease is moving Eric makes me sick. I almost vomit once, it’s so weird. Or it might have been the smell of the Worm coming out of his mouth, I don’t know.
I didn’t find a muzzle, but I did find a dust guard. I put it on, and I have to say, Eric looks a lot better when I don’t have to see his jaw hanging down and black drool coming out of his mouth. He looks more like himself.
Finally I give him a pair of sunglasses, trying to look away, so I won’t have to see the white worms at the corner of his eyes.
When I’m done, Eric looks almost normal. He stands weird though, kind of slumped forward and to one side. No human stands like that, with his arms hanging like meat at his side. I put on his wool hat now, which used to be forest green but is now almost black, and the effect is complete.
“Unh,” Eric says as I step back.
“You look fine,” I say.
“Unh,” Eric says.
“Nope,” I answer. “You don’t look stupid in those overalls at all.” He does though. A little.
43
Eric is easy to guide. I mean, real easy. I only have to give a little tug on the rope and Eric follows. He even follows the sound of my feet, mostly, so I don’t even have to constantly pull at the rope. He just shuffles forward in his big boots. The problem is that he doesn’t go very fast and there’s really no hurrying him. It’s just this constant movement forward at a velocity best described as a “plod.” It doesn’t matter how much I pull at the rope, Eric is a one speed machine. This isn’t good because it’s going to be a long night. I have to put as much space between me and the Homestead as I can. I don’t know if they’ll come looking for me, but they might. When I think of Franky, the way he looked at me, I think it’s likely he will look for me. And I did the best I could, but all they have to do is turn over Eric’s mattress to see the blood stains. From there, it’s pretty easy to start piecing things together.
It’s only when I realize how slow Eric moves that I really begin to think of the trouble I’m in. After a few hours of moving under the nearly full moon, we’re still far too close to the Homestead. I could probably run back there in a half hour if I really put my mind to it. That means someone on horseback could get to us even quicker than that. The thought makes my heart beat faster and I realize I should have thought this through better than I did. I was only thinking of getting Eric away with all the food and supplies we need. It never occurred to me that he would move this slow.
To make it slightly worse, we have to follow an old road. After ten years without traffic or maintenance, these roads are all overgrown. The asphalt is broken up and trees and shrubs are growing up in the middle of the road. I know traveling on the road makes us easy to find, but I can’t walk off-road in the dark, it would be even slower. I figure I have until dawn before I have to get off the road. I don’t know how far we can get, not at this pace, but I know it’s not far enough. Franky has horses. If they find us, Eric is dead, and I’m stuck as Franky’s princess, or maybe his soon-to-be-queen. The thought is so disgusting, I give Eric a tug to get him to move faster.
“Unh,” he says. But he doesn’t go any faster. Like I said, he’s a one speed machine.
To make matters worse, much worse, the silence is getting to me. The night is quiet and full of shadows. Once in a while, I hear a loon in the distance, but otherwise, it’s silent. Usually I like the silence, but this silence brings ghosts. I start to remember. I remember Artemis hugging me, the look in her eyes when she laughed. I remember Diane and her tired smile. I remember how I used to help in the fields, working with the goon squad and how Crypt would smile dumbly at me. I think he had a crush on me or something. I remember the first day Matt stayed with us. How he walked around the Homestead like he was hollow, helping everyone. So grateful. So alone. I remember Norman and Franky helping to build Beth’s house and how she used to tell us stories in the Lodge, of a time long before the Worm, when there weren’t televisions yet. I remember laughing and dancing and crying and fighting. I remember way too much and before I know it, I’m stumbling ahead, sniffling and crying.
It’s too much. It’s all too much. I’m a fugitive from the only home I’ve even known, or the only one I remember. My best friend is dead. Most of the people I’ve known and loved have been turned to ashes. And Eric is a goddamn zombie!
A really, really slow zombie.
I give his rope a vicious tug as I sob.
“Unh,” he says. He stumbles forward and then trips up and falls down hard, right on his face. He doesn’t even try to catch himself. He just slams down face-first.
I feel horrible as I try to help him up. The sunglasses I gave him are broken. His face is bloody so I have to take off the dust guard.
“Unh,” Eric says.
Black blood oozes out of his mouth and a few white worms fall out to the ground. I stand back and try not to puke. Now I’m crying and gagging. After I pull him to his feet, Eric stands there in the moonlight, bleeding, his face scratched all to hell. I start to feel lost and uncertain in a way I’ve never felt before. Like the whole world is nothing. Like I’m floating in nothing. I feel it all drop away. What’s the use in doing anything? I feel every ounce of myself reduced to nothing. I want to sit where I am and cry and not do anything forever. I feel my knees start to buckle, like I’m going to give up right there, fall down, and never get up again.
“Unh,” Eric says. He’s just standing there in the moonlight. He’s hunched forward, his arms dangling unnaturally. His eyes are darker than the shadows. His head is angled forward strangely like he’s looking for something he can’t see. But he’s still there, like he’s always been. Eric was there when I was a kid and needed help. He was there to bring me to the Homestead. He was there to build our house. He was there after Lucia died and he was there to read with me on all those cold winter nights. He’s here now. I can’t see him under the Worm, but he’s there, like he’s always been. I think to myself, there’s Eric, as always, fighting. Always fighting. And I know that as long as he doesn’t give up, as long as Eric keeps fighting, I’ll keep fighting too. I feel strength come back to me. My legs grow straighter and I feel the earth under my feet. Eric was there for me.
Now I’ll be there for him.
I wipe my eyes dry and suck it up.
I take off my backpack and reach in for a towel. I go to Eric and wipe his face of blood and whatever the hell it is that comes out of his mouth. I shudder as I do this, but it’s not as bad as before. I don’t even gag more than a couple times. I wipe his face as clean as I can. I’m glad to see his nose isn’t broken. His face is scratched up pretty bad, but it could be worse. I hate to see him like that. I have to work to keep from crying again.
“I’m sorry, Eric,” I tell him. “I didn’t mean to pull so hard.”
“Unh,” he answers.
“I’ll be more careful,” I say.
He gurgles a bit.
“I promise,” I tell him.
Then I take up the rope and we start off again, headed north, under the moonlight.
44
When dawn comes, we haven’t gone more than eight miles, maybe. I’m exhausted. For the past couple miles, I feel like I’ve been sleeping as I walk. My mind is full of half-dream thoughts. I think about the last time Eric and I were on the road. I don’t really remember this, but I imagine it or dream it. I’m small and he holds my hand. We’re alone on a long road. There’s fire in all the towns and we walk through forests, quietly. When I glance behind me, I see Eric plodding, his mouth half open, drooling. The hands that I used to hold are covered with gloves.
When the sky starts to lighten, I pull Eric off into the forest. We walk over pine needles and stones, deeper and deeper into the forest. It’s a lot harder to guide Eric now. He doesn’t avoid anything, but just walks in a straight line. He’ll even walk straight into trees if I’m not there helping him. He falls over twice, but thankfully doesn’t hurt himself. I hadn’t thought of this either. What if he twists his ankle? What will I do then? I have to stand behind him and guide him forward around any obstacles.
The World Without Flags Page 11