I can’t do this by myself.
I grab Eric’s hand and tug him forward.
I need to find the Good Prince.
94
Not long later I have to stop. I notice that Eric’s feet are bleeding. I forgot that he lost his boots in the river. I stop and struggle to get him to sit down. He is stiffer than usual today and stronger somehow. I try to push the back of his knees to get him to fold, but he won’t budge. I have to swing him off balance and then push him to the ground as gently as I can. When he falls, he rolls on his stomach and pushes his face into the dirt. “Unh,” he says, muffled in the leaves.
“Roll over,” I tell him. I don’t want him to breathe in leaves or dirt. I tug at him, but his body is like a wooden plank.
“Unh,” he says, and I swear I could hear some kind of defiance in his grunt.
“Damn it,” I hiss pulling at him, “damn it!”
Finally I get him on his back again. His black eyes stare blankly past the naked branches into the clear blue sky.
His feet are worse than I thought. Most of the day he stomped over rocks and branches and whatever was in his path. I’m disgusted that one of his toes is completely turned around, the bone shattered and mangled. Both of his feet are red and wet with dark blood. As I look closer, I see a long piece of wood sticking from the bottom of one foot. I take hold of it and pull. It slides out of his foot about an inch, followed by a gout of dark, stinking blood. I throw the wood shard into the forest with disgust.
“Damn it, Eric,” I tell him. “You really messed yourself up.”
Eric continues to stare darkly upwards.
“I guess you don’t feel a thing, do you?” I watch him quietly for a second. I wonder what he sees, what he knows, what he understands about any of this. Is he in there? Is the Worm in charge and he’s just along for the ride? Or is he there at all? Or what if he is in there? What if he sees everything? Understands everything? He just can’t do anything. All he can do is stare out as if through a dirty window. I shiver at the thought and shake it off. For his sake, I hope he’s not aware of any of this. I can’t sit here and stare at him. We have to move. I’ll just have to be careful where I lead him.
I tug him to his feet and then continue more carefully south and west.
95
I wake up and see that all the branches above me are strung with green buds. Winter is fully gone, and spring is here. Finally. But I find no happiness in me at the thought. Somehow spring is making me sad. Worse than sad. I’m so hungry. I walk all day thinking about it and feeling miserable.
I wish I were a tree. I wish I could just sink my feet into the earth and my toes would thin and elongate and become long, wispy roots that would dig far, far down into the fertile earth. From there I could drink. And then my body would stretch and my arms would spread out and my fingers would sprout leaves and my hair would become a canopy of leaves, and when the bright sun shined on me, I would be energized. A life without pain and hunger. Only wind and rain and glorious sun.
I stop to close my eyes for a second to imagine it.
Then the darkness comes down.
96
I’m dreaming. I know I’m dreaming, and I struggle to stop dreaming. I say to myself, wake up, get up, you can’t sleep all day. I say this again and again, even as the darkness grows and the horizon starts to burn.
Then the silky feel of hair in my hand. I look up and she’s looking down at me. I see her lips smile and she says to me, “You’re going to be fine.” And she keeps smiling and rocking me and I feel like I’m made of clay, like she could mold me into whatever shape she wanted. I keep looking at her teeth and feeling her hair, and then I realize I’m crying, great sticky drops of tears. They burn down my cheek.
That’s when the screaming starts.
97
I thought I needed rest and I’d be okay. But when I wake up from my nightmares, I just feel worse. I can’t feel my fingers. All I can feel is this stone where my stomach should be. This stone that drags everything toward it. I reach out and pull out some moss from the forest floor. I eat that, but it’s so hard to swallow that I cough up half of it. Besides it doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t stop the pain, the hollowness, the darkness where I used to be.
I notice Eric beside me, but I can’t reach him. I try to turn my head, but when I move, I feel bright stabs of pain. I look up at the trees and see leaves, so many leaves. Distantly, I wonder how there could be so many in just one day. I must have been sitting here for longer than I thought. How long have I been here?
I must have the Worm.
This is what it must feel like.
I reach up to touch my eyes, to see if the Worms are there, waving, searching, sprouting from my eyes like the roots of some backward plant whose roots are fed by the air and whose terrible flower blossoms in my brain. But then I’m sleeping again.
98
I wake up to some wet thing dragging itself across my face. I turn my head to look away and smell hot breath. My eyes flutter open. I see the snout of a dog lick my face from nose to forehead and move to push the dog away when I see more clearly.
Queen! It’s Queen!
“Get away now,” a voice calls. “Come on, now, let her be.” It’s a voice I recognize immediately. Then a familiar face comes into view, round, boyish, with dark curls.
“Well, hello there, Birdie,” says Pest, smiling.
“Don’t call me Birdie,” I say drily. I try to raise my hand, but I’m too weak.
Pest’s smile grows wider. “You rest,” he says. “I’ll make you some soup.”
How dare he, I think to myself, a pit in me burning, how dare he call me Birdie?
But I’m asleep again almost immediately.
99
I’m not good for anything except eating and sleeping. I didn’t realize how much it took from me. I didn’t notice how my own body had shrank, how my own skin stretched across my bones. I feel as light as air, but somehow still too heavy to move. Such a strange, humiliating feeling. It took everything I had to get Eric away from Dr. Bragg. If it hadn’t been for Queen and Pest, I’d be dead. I don’t have the Worm. I’m just starved and tired.
Queen lays against me as I rest. I’m grateful for the warmth, and I stroke her fur when I’m awake and not eating. Pest made me some soup with rice and dried meat and some carrots. It’s the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted, smooth and sweet and meaty. I eat all I can. I keep waiting to get more energy, but I’m still so tired. Pest is trying not to seem like he’s watching me as he sits by the fire, but I can tell that he is. I hate that he sees me like this, so weak, so pitiful. I wish he’d leave me alone. I fall asleep with my arm around Queen.
100
I wake up to the sun rising through the trees, a stunning, bright light. I shade my eyes and for the first time, I feel well enough to get up. My legs ache as I move, but my body seems to glow. I get up easily and stretch and groan. I feel my whole body is filled with sunlight. I feel time again, not shooting by me like some strange, heavy thing, but time as a rhythm, like my breathing, my heartbeat. I feel awake and alive and the stony, blind weight of my stomach is gone, replaced by the normal itch of hunger.
Queen picks up her head and yawns, her long tongue curling out of her mouth. I smile and pat her head, scratching behind her ears. Eric is sitting with his back to a tree and I see that his eyes are covered with a band of yellow cloth that has already begun to grow dark. It annoys me. I also see that there’s little flecks of food down his front, which tells me he’s been fed, but not cleaned up very well afterward. This makes me frown.
“Good morning,” I hear. I turn around to see Pest get up from the sleeping bag he had near a fire that has now died down to gray ash.
I answer with a grunt.
“Feel better?” Pest asks. His face is open and earnest. The way he talks, you’d think he was like ten years older than me.
“Why’d you put that on his eyes?” I asked, pointing at Eric.
<
br /> Pest looks over to Eric, confused. He looks back at me and shrugs. “I don’t like seeing the Worms.”
“And why didn’t you clean him up a little better?” I ask, ignoring his question.
Pest’s eyes narrow at me. “Aren’t we a delight in the morning,” he says.
“He isn’t an animal, you know,” I tell him. I feel hot and angry all of a sudden and I stride over to Eric and begin to wipe the bits of food from his shirt. Pest watches me and, I notice, so doesn’t Queen. I brush at Eric some more while those two watch me. I feel myself blush again and I don’t know why. “Stop staring at me,” I say and it comes out a lot more bitter than I meant. In fact, it comes out cruel. I hear it and I’m confused. Actually I feel pretty grateful to him for finding me and for feeding Eric at all. I know it’s not easy. But for some reason, I’m just annoyed. Really annoyed. I know I should be saying thank you, but instead, I sound like I hate him.
I don’t know what I expect from Pest, but he surprises me by staying silent. He crouches down in front of Queen and strokes her between the ears. Queen makes a little whine of pleasure, and Pest smiles at her. I’m not used to seeing him smile. It makes him look even younger. He’s just a kid. But then the way he turns to me with those eyes and he says, “You want some breakfast?” It’s like the right thing to say. The grown up thing to say. Just to ignore my silly mood. It’s really annoying and I appreciate it too at the same time. Pest confuses me.
“Breakfast sounds good,” I mutter. I’m annoyed, but my hunger easily overpowers all that. As I finish cleaning up Eric, Pest starts another fire. He brings out a canvas bag and pours flour into a bowl. Timidly, a bit ashamed of myself for not saying thank you immediately, I poke at the fire and encourage it along while he gets out a big slab of delicious yellow butter and begins to mix it with the flour. He adds drops of water to the mixture and then puts a pan on the fire and, pressing the flour and butter into neat little buns, he puts them on the pan to cook. The smell of it cooking is pure pleasure. I sit back, almost overcome with the smell of cooking flour and butter.
“Biscuits,” I breathe.
Pest doesn’t look up from the cooking, but I can see the corner of his mouth bend upward in a smile. I wonder if it’s too late to say thank you. I wonder if now it seems like an apology for being so mean earlier. I don’t want it to be an apology. I really mean it. I really want to thank him. But I think I ruined it. I think I missed my chance. Nice going, Birdie. I remember then clearly the last words I said to Eric, how mean I am without knowing why. Why am I so mean? What is wrong with me? I poke away at the fire and avoid Pest’s gaze.
When the biscuits are done, we sit back and lay them down on little plastic plates that Pest takes from his backpack. When mine lay steaming open in front of me, Pest quietly passes me a thick pad of butter and then a jar of blueberry jam. I groan from pleasure when I see the deep purple jam. I can’t wait for the biscuit to cool. Soon I’m chewing on the soft bread, mixed with melted butter and sweet jam. It’s burning my mouth a little, so I have to wave my hand in front of my face. Pest laughs, and I’m too happy to do anything but laugh in return. The biscuit is gone before I know it, and without saying anything, Pest makes us two more. Then two more after that. At last, stomach content and filled with warm, fresh biscuits, I sit back in front of the fire, and sigh.
We listen to the cracking and snapping of the fire. Pest stares into the burning wood, absently scratching at Queen, who’s sleeping, motionless except for an occasional twitch of her ears. The sun has some real heat to it this morning. I listen to the birds in the trees.
“Unh,” says Eric. I turn my head toward him. While we were eating, Eric has moved up to his knees and turned his face toward the tree. He looks like a child who has been sent into the corner for being naughty.
I turn back to Pest who’s looking at me with a serious, but completely inscrutable look on his face. I turn away, feeling my face flush. I need to say something to him.
“How’d you do it?” I ask.
“Do what?”
“Find us.”
Pest looks at me and smiles. “Long story,” he says.
101
Pest tells me that when he and Norman returned to the Homestead, there was a big argument about whether or not I should be hunted down. Although Franky argued that we should get bring me back home where you belonged, and that the Homestead had a responsibility for Eric, to make sure that he wouldn’t infect anyone else, in the end, people voted just to leave me alone, especially when they learned how I had fought for Eric. “There was just no stomach for it,” Pest says. So people went back to planting. Pest, however, had other ideas. Pest went into our cabin and grabbed one of my dirty shirts then he packed some stuff and left with Queen. At the time, he thought I was going to Good Prince Billy, so he went west. About two days later, he saw the first burning house. While Pest and Queen stayed hidden, they watched as the bandits dragged out someone with the Worm and put them in their cart. Other people they just killed. Wanting to avoid the bandits, he figured we could do a long circle around them by going north. While he made this circle to north, he came across a horse, probably one that belonged to one of the houses that the bandits had burned. It still had a saddle on it and everything. The bridle was tangled up in some bushes and it just stood there, waiting, so he took the horse and went north, Queen padding behind them.
That’s when Pest saw another group of bandits. This time he recognized one of the horses. It was Bandit. He knew that I was one of the prisoners and one of the infected in the wagon was Eric.
At this point in the story, I have to ask. “Why didn’t you run away? You’re just one kid against armed bandits.”
“I owe Eric,” he tells me. “I owe him more than you think.” I want to ask more about that, but Pest continues his story.
Pest made the mistake of falling asleep in the saddle, and the bandits saw him. They sent a rider after him and Pest galloped away. The guy followed him, and didn’t seem like he was going to give up. Pest didn’t notice that they were headed into a bog until it was too late. When they hit it, the horse came up fast like they’d hit a wall and Pest went flying over the saddle and over the horse’s head, splashing down into the thick swamp. When he came up out of the water, the bandit was smiling at him with his gun level to his head, sitting on his horse. Queen came leaping out of the forest and bit him in the leg. His horse skittered and then reared up away from Queen, and the man couldn’t keep his seat. He kind of half fell off, with his ankle caught in the stirrup. The horse reared up again, and Pest heard the man’s leg snap like dry wood. Queen leapt forward again and the man’s horse, spooked, bolted away, the bandit screaming and yelping in pain as the horse dragged him away. The horse Pest found ran away too, leaving them on foot.
Pest didn’t think of returning to the Homestead. He kept following the bandits. By the time the rain started, he had followed them all the way to their compound, but he didn’t have any plan. There were too many people and too many guns. He thought it was impossible, but he couldn’t turn back. Pest just waited in the forest, watching the compound, thinking and hoping an opportunity to help would come.
When the gunshots went off, it was early in the morning. Pest woke up and saw a lot of people running around outside the warehouse. He saw them drag out two bodies. At first, he was sure it was me and Eric, that we tried to escape and they shot us, but when he took out his binoculars and got a better look, he could see it was a woman and a little girl. They dragged them out in the middle of town and set fire to them. There was a lot of arguing and I saw some people get on horses and ride down the road to the south. That’s when Pest knew someone had escaped, and they were looking for them.
So that night Pest went south past the warehouse and to the river, figuring that anyone who escaped would go into the forest. By the river, he knelt down and gave Queen my shirt. She found my trail by the river. Although it took them awhile to find us, Pest says it was lucky of me.
> “You were almost dead,” he tells me.
“I would’ve been okay,” I lie to him. I can’t stand the thought that I owe my life to Pest. But I reach out to Queen who is watching us and give her a good scratching behind the ears. “Good girl,” I tell her. “Good girl.”
Pest looks at me sourly.
102
While Pest tells his story, I watch his face. I don’t think I’ve ever studied him so closely before. I’ve never heard him talk so much. I see something that I never saw before, someone who thought about other people, who cared, really cared. I’ve always thought that Pest was scheming for himself and the rest of the goon squad. He was just too intelligent and I never trusted that. Now I see as I watch him that maybe he’s right, maybe I don’t understand everything. There’s still a lot I have to learn.
After another day’s rest and several more delicious biscuits and jam, Pest and I are sitting at the fire. The sun has set, and I’m feeling better, more calm. Just fed with a thin soup of water and dried meat, Eric is sitting nearby, his face as clean as I could get it. The yellow bandage over his eyes is already almost black. If it wasn’t for Pest, he’d be dead too. Pest is prodding the fire with a stick when I look over to him. Although the kid gives me the creeps, I have to say something. It takes me three tries before I get it out.
“Thank you,” I say to Pest finally.
Pest looks up at me. He stops poking at the fire for a moment. His dark, ruffled hair seems even darker than the night around us. His face reminds me of the moon. The fire reflects in his eyes. I see his intelligence flickering there, his uncanny intelligence that usually makes me shiver. Right now, it doesn’t. He doesn’t seem so strange anymore. But there’s still something in his gaze that makes me uncertain, embarrassed, and I turn away, feeling my face heat up as I blush. “I’m just glad you two are okay,” he says finally, and then I can almost feel as he turns his gaze away from me and back to the fire. Relieved that he’s not looking at me anymore, I start tossing twigs in the fire.
The World Without Flags Page 24