"We didn't take anything from you," Eric said. "Maybe you dropped it."
"I searched," Carl Doyle insisted, his red lips quivering. Intense, dark eyes swiveled to meet Eric's. "I searched and I searched. Someone took it. One of you took it. I want it back immediately. Just give it back to me and we can forget all this unpleasantness."
Eric looked to Sharif and shook his head. Sharif looked to each of them for only a second.
"I'm sorry," he said to Doyle finally. "They don't have your medal."
"They do," Doyle insisted. "I know they do." He looked at them. "I'm not going to forget about this. I want my medal back right now, do you understand?"
Mark stood forward. "They don't have your fucking medal," he said.
Doyle scowled and silently looked over them. He pursed his lip and then brushed his mustache with his right hand. Then wordlessly, he got back in his Land Rover and sped away, tossing up dirt and gravel behind him. They watched him leave before they all began to go back to their work. But Eric noticed how the others glanced at them, Sharon and Mark and Van, with a glimmer of distrust. Sharif, Mary, David, and Cecile, with something like tempered sympathy, as if they believed them capable of stealing the medal, but didn't deserve Carl Doyle to be after them. Only Katie seemed to fully believe them. She held Sarah tightly around the shoulders.
Sharif stayed back to talk to Eric.
"You didn't take it did you?"
"No," said Eric. "Why would we want his stupid medal?" Sharif studied him, which annoyed him. They weren’t the ones keeping secrets, Eric thought. Eric quickly summarized the afternoon they had spent with Carl Doyle. "I told everyone as we left not to take anything." Eric looked him straight in the eye. "We didn't take it," he insisted.
Sharif relented. He looked to where the Land Rover was just vanishing into the forest. "I don't think he's stable," he said. "He's been here before. He wanted to trade deer meat. At first, we were open to the idea, but once he came here drunk. He started talking about order and how it was criminal that none of the women here were pregnant. He said it was their duty to produce offspring. For the species. He said if he was in charge, they would all be pregnant by now. After that, we let him know he was no longer welcome." Sharif took Eric's shoulder. "If you have the medal, Eric, please tell me. We'll find a way to give it back to him. This man worries me."
"We don't have it," Eric said.
"Okay," Sharif said. He gave Eric one of his enigmatic smiles and then returned to the farmhouse.
The four of them, Brad, Sarah, Birdie and Eric, were left alone on the lawn. They gathered closer together.
"That is one crazy fuck," said Brad. "Who cares about some stupid medal?"
"We've all lost our world,” said Sarah. “We need a memory of it. Something to remind us who we are."
"Yeah," Brad answered. "Maybe. But he's still batshit crazy."
"I don't think they believe us," Eric said. He nodded toward the house. Then he quickly told them the conversation he and Birdie had overheard in the barn. He didn't tell them what Sharon had called Birdie. "I'm not sure how welcome we really are."
Brad and Sarah looked troubled. Then Brad added, "Mark said that Sharon came from another farm. I guess there are a few others like this one in this Valley. He says she's just here for Sharif. I guess she doesn't work much."
"Katie told me they once kicked out someone for pulling a knife on David,” Sarah said. “His name was Craig." Sarah looked at them. "Do you think they would kick us out?"
They stood together in silence. When Eric looked up, he could see Sharif standing at the window in the house, watching them.
Brad seemed to notice too. "Just to be safe," he said. "I think we should keep our stuff packed and ready to go. Agreed?"
They all nodded, even Birdie.
_
Eric had new eyes during dinner. He seemed to see conspiracy everywhere. Sharif and Sharon sat together, but they were stiff and tried not to look at each other. Mark ate in silence, and, when he was done, left the group without a word. Mary and Cecile still paid a lot of attention to Birdie, but now it seemed that they did it to avoid the tension in the room. Katie stayed in the kitchen, and David, the youngest of them all, thin and short, with a strangely blank face, did nothing but try to keep his eyes away from Sharon. Van wasn't there, which he thought vaguely sinister. Sharif was all smiles, but Eric did not believe it anymore.
As soon as they were done eating, Eric went upstairs. While Birdie drew with her crayons, Eric quietly rearranged his backpack. It was then he realized his gun was missing. He sat back and thought about it while his heart raced.
Soon there was a knock on his door that he had been expecting. It was Brad.
"The fuckers took my gun!" he hissed.
"Took mine too."
"I should go down there and--"
"You can't do that, Brad!" Eric interrupted. "They won't give them back to us. You know they won't. And they'll ask why we were hiding them. And they'll ask why we think we need them. It'll just make it worse."
Brad swore for a while, but he knew Eric was right. Finally he said he was going to talk with Sarah and left them alone.
Eric finished packing and then went over to Birdie. "What're you drawing?" he asked. He looked over her shoulder.
It was a picture of the Land Rover. Carl Doyle sat inside. His mouth was a furious, dark zigzag and there were lines coming from his head. "What're those lines?" he asked.
"That's the sickness," Birdie said. "It wants to come out his head but it can't."
Eric cleared his throat. His mouth went dry.
He realized he no longer felt they were safe.
_
The scream of engines came early that morning. Eric leapt out of bed and dashed to the window. Several trucks pulled into the yard, passing by his view, their engines roaring and screaming. Stenciled perfectly in glossy red on the side of each the trucks was a stylized snake. Only the last truck had no snake. It was the Land Rover, coming up last. "Oh shit," Eric said. He stood up and looked around, stunned and confused, his heart thudding in his chest. The door to his room crashed open, and Eric jumped before he realized it was Brad and Sarah. He could see other figures flashing by the hallway outside.
Brad pushed by him and Birdie to the window. "Fuck me!" he breathed, looking down at the scene. Then he turned to them. "Get your stuff, we have to go. We have to go right now. Right now!"
"What is it?" asked Sarah, trembling. Birdie walked over to Eric and grasped his leg tightly. "What?" Sarah repeated.
"It's the King Cobra." Brad was pale with naked fear. "We have to go now!" He pronounced this through clenched teeth. Brad grabbed Sarah and they both ran out of Eric's room.
Eric turned to the window. There was a large group of people, mostly men, but a few women too. They kept their distance from a central figure. He was thin with mousy brown hair, all messed up, like a dust ball upon his head. He wore a black, cowboy shirt with ivory buttons and a red snake upon one shoulder. He didn't walk as much as saunter.
"Can I help you?" asked Sharif. Eric couldn’t see him, he was too close to the house, but he recognized the voice.
"You sure as hell can," said the man called the King Cobra. His voice was shrill and high. King Cobra looked around. "Nice digs you got here. Fine place."
"Thank you," said Sharif.
"I bet you eat pretty well here, dontcha?" King Cobra’s voice barked with contempt.
"We look after ourselves," said a voice. Eric thought it might have been Mark.
Suddenly there was a deep throated roar from inside one of the trucks. It was a moving van. It shook now as its contents roared again.
"What do you have in there?" Sharif asked.
"Just some local wildlife," said King Cobra. "We would like to put it back in its habitat. Let it live free."
The others laughed.
Suddenly Eric was jerked away from the window. Brad was back with Sarah and Birdie. His eyes were wide with fear. "We have to go, Eric!"
he hissed. "Get ready, get your stuff!"
"We can't just leave them like this," Eric said.
"Fuck them!" Brad said. He grabbed Eric and pulled him away from the window. "We have to go right now!"
"They're talking," Eric said. "Maybe they'll work it out."
"King Cobra don't talk!" Brad hissed. "Get your stuff!" Brad pushed him again, and Eric almost fell.
"Stop pushing him, Brad," Sarah said. She was close to tears.
"Well I'm trying to get the fat fuck to move!"
Then there was a piercing gun shot, and both Sarah and Eric let out a stunned cry. Eric went to the window, but he didn’t see anything but the Snakes.
"I think you should get out of here and don't come back," a breaking, scared voice called out. Eric didn’t know who it was.
"David! What're you doing?" cried Sharif. "I said no guns!”
"You're not my father!" exclaimed David. "You're not the boss either!"
"Well, this just got boring," said King Cobra. Smoothly he pulled out a giant revolver and fired. It was the loudest sound Eric had ever heard. There were shouts, screams, laughter. Suddenly Eric felt his face hum with pain, and Brad was standing in front of him. He had just slapped him across the face. Without having to be told what to do, Eric pulled on his clothes amid the turmoil, and then pulled out his backpack from under the bed. As he shrugged it on, he glanced outside. They were opening the moving van. The Snakes who had opened the door, their faces grinning in dark triumph, ran and dived back into the cab of the truck. There was another roar from the truck, and then a great shadow leapt from the back.
"Come on!" Brad grabbed him. Eric clutched Birdie's hand and bolted out of the room. When they hit the steps, gunshots rang out downstairs. Windows shattered. As they ran downstairs, they saw Mary and Cecile at the windows with rifles. David lay in the living room, silent with shock, while Katie wrapped his arm in a white towel quickly blooming red. Eric realized numbly that David’s hand had been shot completely off. Sharif and Mark were grabbing guns.
As they hit the bottom of the stairs, the door shattered open, knocking Eric down. A darkness settled in the doorway. Eric stared up at a bear, it's mouth oozing dark liquid and white, wriggling worms. Its eyes were dark with blood and the fur beneath them was matted with dried blood. The bear bled through a dozen holes in its body, a dark sluggish blood. It was crazed with the Vaca B. Looking at the assembled men and women, the bear stretched its head forward and roared, dark blood and white worms spewing from its open maw. Before anyone could do anything, the bear leapt on David, sinking its teeth deep in his stomach. David screamed an anguished, piercing cry. Katie pummeled its head, but the bear tugged and shook and David was ripped apart upon the floor and screamed no more. Then the bear rose up, its mouth dripping with David's innards. Eric smelled the rank odor of its breath mixed with the moist, pungent smell of David's body. The others, finally emerging from shock, pointed their guns and fired, but the bear swept across them with its paw. Eric saw Katie's face disintegrate as the bear mauled her. Then it fell upon Sharif. Eric watched as Sharon lunged forward with a pistol in her hand.
"Come on!" cried Brad. "Get up! Get up!" He pulled Eric to his feet and they ran away through the house and out the back door. Behind them was the sound of gunfire and the crazed bear. They stumbled out the back door, and then sprinted toward the forest behind the farm. His lungs burned and his chest ached, but Eric felt he could run like this forever, as if he was no longer a part of the pain in his own body. He was a ball of fire, burning to live. He looked back over his shoulder and saw the Land Rover driving over the lawn toward them, honking its horn and flashing its headlights.
Eric turned back to the forest and tried to run faster. Brad and Sarah were already deep in the forest. As they hit the edge, Eric tripped and tumbled. Birdie tugged at him while the Land Rover came to a halt near them.
"Wait right there!" boomed Carl Doyle. "I want my medal back!" When he got out of the Land Rover, he had his samurai sword in his hand, unsheathed.
Eric tottered to his feet and ran into the forest behind Birdie.
"Wait!" cried Doyle. Eric heard him crash into the forest behind him. For a huge man, he moved with disturbing speed. "Wait!" he called. "Give me my father's medal!" His voice was desperate and choked. Eric and Birdie ran faster, but the moon gave off little light in the gloom of the forest. As they moved, Eric saw a tree across his path. He tried to leap over it, but he was too slow. He hit his shins hard on the tree and tumbled forward, tasting dirt in his mouth. His vision swung from side to side as he desperately tried to raise himself. Losing his balance, he fell again. When he opened his eyes, he saw Carl Doyle standing over him, his eyes wide and white. His samurai sword, long, slightly curved and wicked, gleamed in the moonlight.
"I want my medal," he said evenly. "That's all I want, understand?" He had lost his fake English accent. Eric opened his mouth, but couldn't speak. Doyle lowered the blade and pointed it at Eric's gut. "I just want what's mine."
A cry went up then and Doyle vanished in a knot of legs and arms. Eric struggled to his feet. By the time he rose, he saw Doyle standing up tall. Brad stood beneath him, his face contorted in rage, his fists held tightly up. Doyle still had his sword in his hand.
"I want what's mine," Doyle growled.
"We don't have your fucking medal!" Brad growled back.
"Oh, you have it," Doyle said. He lifted his sword so that it looked ready to slash Brad in two. "I bet you took it, didn't you? You foul-mouthed little reprobate." Doyle's eyes glimmered, and his hands adjusted on the sword.
"Why would I want your stupid medal?" Brad asked.
"Please," Eric said, suddenly finding his breath. "Please, Mr. Doyle," he pleaded. "We'd give the medal back to you if we had it. We would! But we don't have it!"
Doyle's eyes had not moved from Brad. He was focused upon him with an intensity that made Eric feel nauseous. Any moment now, he felt sure that Doyle would cut the sword across Brad. The sword was ivory in the moonlight. Eric's heart thundered wildly in his body.
Doyle's face grew calm then and his sword raised. Eric knew he had decided to kill Brad, to cut him down here, like an animal. Helplessly, he squeezed his eyes shut and turned away. There was a crashing sound in the darkness, and Eric's eyes opened. Carl Doyle had whirled away from Brad just in time to see the diseased bear leap into the clearing where they stood. In the moonlight, the bear looked black as shadow. When it saw them, it roared, a sound that rumbled through Eric like thunder. The bear lunged at them before Eric could think. It rose up over Doyle and Brad.
Doyle didn't pause. His sword flashed in the darkness of the bear's shadow. The bear swiped at him with a paw that now dangled unnaturally. Brad suddenly tugged at him, and they sprinted away from the clearing. Behind them, through the sound of their pounding hearts, they could hear the bear scream.
They did not stop running when they came to Sarah and Birdie. All of them ran north, thinking of the devastation behind them. When they finally collapsed in exhaustion, it was far past dawn, and they were on a hill overlooking a farm. In the fields, they could see a Zombie lumbering back and forth between the barn and a rusted tractor. Back and forth, back and forth.
Back and forth.
5
__________
On Interstate 80
MOVING NORTH AGAIN, back to their old plans, they went slowly and carefully through the park. On the first day, they ate nearly all the food they had brought with them. None of them had thought of hoarding any more. Two or three times, they came across farms, but they didn't dare go there, for fear of the Snakes and the Zombies they had seen wandering earlier. If these farms were the last of the Slow Society, then it was no more.
On the edge of the park, looking east, they huddled over Eric's map. Eric traced his finger along the I80 and then north of Warren, Ohio, into Pennsylvania, and, finally, to a long lake bordered by woods, Pymatuning State Park. This was one of the stretches of the trip that Eric
dreaded. It was open fields mostly. They would have to follow the I80 for some time. They would be in plain sight of the Snakes if any of them used the interstate, which, Brad informed them, they did.
As they camped for dinner that night, none of them said much. Birdie was silent, sitting next to him. Sarah dissolved into tears several times until Brad lost his patience.
"Would you stop it?" he said angrily. "They're dead and gone, all right? They're dead. Just leave it."
"Just leave it?" Sarah asked. "Leave it?" Her voice broke in a sob. "It's our fault those people are dead, Brad. It's our fault. We led Carl Doyle to them. We brought that monster right to them. If it hadn't been for us. . ." If there was a second part of this sentence, it was expressed in tears.
Brad looked at the ground, threw a couple twigs in the fire, and then said, "Shit." He moved to Sarah and put his arm around her. Sarah sobbed violently into his shoulder. "It's not our fault," Brad told her. "Carl Doyle was crazy. And that's no one's fault." When that didn’t seem to help, Brad continued. “The Snakes would’ve found them at some point, Sarah. You don’t think they keep cracked bears for nothing, do you? They lure them into vans with water and then shut the door. I seen’em do it with bears and dogs, even a few cats. They use them to clear out places just like that farm. That way they don’t have to fight. It weren’t our fault. It would’ve happened anyway, trust me.”
Eric crawled into his tent quietly. He listened to Sarah cry. He rolled over and tried not to think of the people who had died. He too wanted to cry. He too wanted comfort. But who would hold him? He had not felt this alone since he had first left Athens.
_
They moved slowly along the interstate. To keep out of sight, Brad kept careful look out with the one thing he had taken from the farm: a pair of green binoculars. With them, he scanned the highway in both directions. He scouted ahead to find a safe location before the whole group of them moved on. Then they would huddle in shadow, waiting for the sound of Brad’s whistle. At first Eric thought such extraordinary care might not be worth it, but after two trucks with Snakes on their side went past as they remained safely hidden, Eric changed his mind. They made very little progress.
The World Without Crows Page 7