Eric didn't know what to say. He took the medal from her, and then put his arm about her. "It's not your fault," he said. "Carl Doyle is crazy. He would've found some excuse, I think." He didn't know if he believed what he told her. If it hadn't been for the medal, maybe Doyle would not have fixated on them. Maybe they would be back at the Slow Society. But he didn't want to tell Sarah this. She was already wracked with guilt.
"I'm so sorry, Eric," she said. "I'm so sorry." Looking out over the lead gray water, the medal seemed heavy in his hand.
Eric held Sarah by the lake for a long time.
_
They built a fire up on the knoll in the midst of a ring of stones from the beach. As they boiled water for the next few days, Sarah began making dinner. After her confession to Eric, she seemed in a much better mood. John Martin, Sergio, and Lucia had spent the afternoon fishing. They had caught a few fish and Sarah was busy preparing them. Stirring the fried fish, she added corn and canned potatoes. Tasting as she went, she added salt, pepper, and some other spices that Eric did not know. Finally she let it simmer for a long while.
The others were quiet and reflective. Birdie, who had spent the afternoon wandering on the beach, spread out a collection of stones, whose uniqueness only she understood. She ordered them in a circle, and then picked them up one by one and placed them in the circle, before taking them out again and replacing it with another. Eric was too preoccupied with the medal in his pocket to follow the logic of Birdie's game. He had promised not to tell the others, but already, this promise dug into him. By the time dinner was done, the sun had set. The fire cast a red light upon the dark waters of Lake Erie. The lake was somehow more comforting in the dark. They ate silently for a while.
"You know," John Martin said finally. "We've been talking." Here it comes, Eric thought. They want to leave us now. "We're going to be turning north soon. We'd be happy if you came with us."
Eric blinked in surprise. "You want us to go with you?"
"But we're going to Maine," Sarah said.
"Why?" asked Lucia. "Why don't you come with us?" She was looking at Eric and he tried not to blush, though he doubted he was successful.
"We're going to Maine," Sarah repeated.
"We're going to live on an island," Birdie said, looking up from her circle of stones. "Then the Zombies can't get us."
"You'd be safe with us too," said Sergio.
"You could shake Carl Doyle," said John Martin. "He thinks you’re going east.”
"I don't know," Eric said. "I have to think about it."
Sergio leaned forward to speak, but John Martin shook his head. Sergio sat back, expelling his air, exasperated. He crossed his arms and then uncrossed them before Lucia put her arm about him. Sergio gave her a little twitch of a smile, and seemed to relax.
After another moment, John Martin lifted himself to his feet. "Take a walk with me, Eric."
Eric looked around at the others before he got to his feet. Unhappy, Sarah glared at the two of them. But Eric shrugged and then followed John Martin out of the circle of red firelight, and to the moonlit shores of Lake Erie.
_
Eric had always realized the size of John Martin. He towered over the rest of them. His arms were as big around as most people's legs. But Eric had seldom noticed how careful John was with his movements. How his big hands were held to his side or used to accentuate a point with a twist. Big as he was, John Martin moved with easy, muscular grace. His eyes were wide and welcoming, and Eric felt like he listened. There was a quiet patience about him that Eric trusted.
John Martin looked at him for a moment, and then, twining his hands together, he turned his gaze at the lake. "After the plague, when everyone I knew was dead, I shut myself in my basement," he began. "My plan was to wait a year or two until everything settled and then come out again." He paused for a second. "So I hoarded all the food I could find and blocked up all the windows and doors. I started to wait. I also started to think. I thought about my aunt who raised me and the woman I should have married but didn't. I thought about the ending of everything. And I waited. Weeks and weeks. I started wondering why. What was the reason for any of it? What would I do when I came out anyway? All I had in that dark basement was myself and my own thoughts. One day, I started thinking about ending it. I had a gun. I started cleaning it. Talking out loud, arguing back and forth about whether or not to use it. One day I put the gun in my mouth. I felt the trigger. I couldn't think of a single reason to live. Not one."
He looked at Eric. His eyes were sad and large. Eric thought back to that starry night just a few days out of Athens when he had similar thoughts. Fear crept up his arm at the memory. He had been so close.
"But I couldn't do it," he said. "Instead I broke out of my own prison. I began to wander the streets. And that's how I found Lucia and Sergio." He smiled. "They think I saved them, but they saved me. You can't just shut yourself off from people, Eric. We need each other."
Eric thought about it and looked out over the water. The moonlight sparkled there.
Maybe John Martin was right. Maybe the island had never been about safety. Instead, it was about escape and fear and shutting himself away from the world.
"I have to think about it," Eric said. "I have to talk to Sarah and Birdie."
John Martin didn't say anything more. After another moment, he left him alone, listening to the water's edge, the waves hushing through stone, and the moonlight glittering on the dark surface of the lake.
_
They stayed the next day at the shore of the lake. Though the sun was brilliant above them, the lake remained the color of steel. Eric and Birdie spent the day wandering on the beach while Sarah fished. She joined them for a while. They talked about whether to join the others and go to a farm in northern New York, or if they should continue to Maine, to the island. Sarah was strangely adamant about Maine. She said it was far enough away to be safe. Eric wasn't so sure.
"I want to see the island," Birdie said.
"Wouldn't it be good to live with John and Sergio and Lucia?" asked Eric.
"They should come with us," Birdie said. She picked up a flat stone and sent it sailing into the lake. Sarah smiled smugly and looked at Eric who could only shrug.
In the afternoon, Eric helped Sarah clean the fish she caught. When he was little, with his father, he had sickened and cried when his father gutted the fish. His father had given him a sour look, as if to say this is no son of mine. Now Eric didn't have a problem. Although he still hated the feeling of the knife cutting through skin.
While he cleaned, he watched Sergio and Lucia play catch with a baseball. Both of them had carried gloves and a baseball with them. It seemed bizarre to watch them play, the white ball hurtling through the air. They laughed and talked back and forth in Spanish as they played. It was like nothing had happened and they were on vacation. Except, sometimes, when they grew quiet and solemn, Eric guessed they were thinking of different times and people who were no longer with them. Even in these times, the baseball spun through the air and smacked into the soft leather of their gloves. In the afternoon, after they had been playing for a while, Lucia jogged over to them. Eric turned his head away from her to study the entrails of the fish as he pulled them out with his fingers.
"Sergio could use a break," she said. "Do you want a turn?"
Eric continued to clean the fish. Sarah poked him in the side, and Eric looked up at Lucia's smooth face, dark hair, and deep eyes.
"Me?" he asked.
Lucia laughed. "You," she said.
Eric shook his head and blushed. "I don't play baseball." The only contact with baseball he had was with the jocks who played it. It had not been pleasant.
Lucia made a strange face, something between surprise and disappointment, or maybe, Eric thought, mockery. He cleared his throat and picked up another fish, pushing the knife into its anus and then sliding the point up the pale belly. It's red and purple innards spilled out on the rock.
"Okay," Lucia said. Eric heard but did not watch her walk away.
"She likes you," Sarah said when she was gone.
"Shut up, Sarah," Eric said angrily. He blushed, dropped his knife and then walked to the shore to wash his hands of blood.
By the shore, he thought of his father, his mother, Brad, Jessica shot in the gutter, all the friends he had lost.
At some point, Birdie joined him, and they wordlessly sat together. They watched the water until the sun had turned the gray waters red and the sun had dipped low in the sky. By then Eric knew he wanted to keep moving to Maine.
They would not be going to the farm with Lucia.
The decision seemed obvious.
_
When they woke up, they ate a quiet breakfast. Eric had told John Martin his decision the night before. They did not seem happy about it. John Martin had shaken his head in disapproval, the same way he had done when Brad announced he was going to the farm to look for a gun. Sergio and Lucia looked at them with disbelief and some anger.
Now they consulted the map together for the last time. The plan was to move to Allegheny National Forest. From there, they would split up, John Martin, Sergio, and Lucia would move north into New York, while the rest of them would continue east to Susquehannock State Forest. All of them wanted to put miles between them and Cleveland. In the clear morning air, they could see smoke rising from the city, a black, acrid cloud that gathered over the city like an omen. The city was burning to the ground.
"It's the gangs," John Martin said. "They're trying to burn each other out."
Nobody knew if this was true or not, but they said nothing in response. John Martin loaded his gun that morning with profound gravity.
Rested and fed, they hiked swiftly east. Not long in the morning, they noticed the signs had changed. Somewhere they had left Ohio and were now in Pennsylvania. The land was a patchwork of forest and field. They were able to keep out of sight mostly, moving east steadily through the day. They had finished eating a quick lunch and continuing east when Sergio came up to walk next to Eric.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey," Eric mirrored, his thumbs hooked in his hiking straps.
"I don't mean to be pushy, man," he said. "But why won't you come with us? I mean, we all like each other, don't we?"
"Yeah," Eric said.
"Then come help us start a new life," he said. "Everyone wants you to come with us. I don't understand what's so special about this island." He paused, but when Eric didn't say anything, he continued. "It's hard to find people you like, you know. Don't you think you might regret it?"
"Maybe," Eric admitted. He looked up from his feet. Lucia and John Martin were walking ahead of them. Lucia had a way of walking that made his mouth dry. He turned to look back down at his feet.
"I wish you'd change your mind," Sergio said.
"It's not my decision," said Eric. "It's Birdie's and Sarah's too."
"Come on," Sergio said. "They listen to you. You could persuade them if you wanted. What is it? You don't like Latinos or something?"
"No," Eric said. "I just. I don't know. I've got to go there. It's what I set out to do."
Sergio sighed and then threw up a hand. His hand twisted in anger and he said something in Spanish that Eric didn't think was too polite. "Whatever, man!" he exclaimed. "I think you're making a mistake, a big mistake. You're going to lead these people to their death, that's what I think!" He hissed and then walked swiftly ahead of them.
Eric paused for a second. His heart pattered in his chest. He had never thought of himself as anyone's leader. The idea nearly choked him.
_
The weather was beautiful. Blue skies with lazy white clouds. A brisk but warm wind fluttered their hair. Through green fields they hiked. Deer bounded away from them or picked up their heads and followed them cautiously as they passed with their large, dark eyes. Yellow flowers and purple thistles bloomed at their feet. Crickets and beetles hummed and birds swooped. Far above them, black turkey vultures circled, and once, Eric saw a brightly colored little hawk, blue and brown, dive upon a feeding flock of kinglets. The kinglets fluttered away, safe, while the hawk perched stoically upon a fence post, unsuccessful but undaunted.
There were times when it was easy to think that there had not been such things as humans here.
_
For days they hiked, though now slowly and carefully. They saw a convoy of vehicles once, heading west, about fifteen cars, trucks, and vans. In the back of one of the trucks were men wearing military fatigues and holding assault rifles to their sides, barrels pointed at the sky. Sergio "took point," which was his term for scouting ahead as Brad had once. Eric guessed John Martin let him do it because it made him proud and happy. John was constantly scanning the land around them with binoculars, so there was little danger. The two groups had talked little over the past days, as if rehearsing for their ultimate separation.
Eric, however, studied them more, tortured now by his decision. There were hundreds and hundreds of miles left to hike, through towns and around cities, up and down mountains, all of it through land threatened by Zombies and gangs of armed people. He shuddered thinking of the times they would be forced to scavenge for supplies. The longer they traveled, the more chance they had of being caught by paranoid and armed strangers who had no reason to trust them. Or they could be surprised by a cracked Zombie, like Brad. And even if they reached the island, was there any guarantee it would be safer? Would they be able to find the supplies to survive the winter? Just the three of them? If he led them to a slow death by starvation in Maine, he would die first of guilt. He tried to tell himself he was not the leader, but Sergio was right, he knew it. If he asked them to, both Sarah and Birdie would, in the end, agree to join with John Martin.
He found himself looking at Lucia more, trying to indelibly write her movements upon his mind. He listened when she talked, thinking of her accent, how wonderful and subtle it was. And he thought of her asking him to join her and her brother in a game of pass, and hearing Sarah say she liked him. The cruel thought stuck in him like a thorn.
He was sullen and quiet at night. He only talked with Birdie, and, because she talked so very little, this was not much. It was only in these times, when he watched Birdie draw with her dwindling crayons, watched her frizzy hair move in the wind, saw her smile at him sometimes, a brittle, tender smile, as delicate as any flower, it was only at these times when, filled with a protective, fierce determination, he ever felt sure of himself.
It was a solemn group that tramped east, through a land beginning to rise and fall in ever greater folds until, one day, they saw in front of them, no more than a mile or two in the distance, the forested hills of the Alleghany National Forest.
It was then a cracking shot pierced them. They ducked in fear as the gunshot echoed about them. It was Sarah who grabbed him and pulled him forward.
"Run!" she screamed.
Sprinting for the cover of the forest, Eric looked once over his shoulder. There, by the road they had been following, was the motionless body of John Martin, just another stone on the numb earth.
8
__________
Alleghany National Forest
"WHAT HAPPENED?" Eric asked again. He had asked many times, but hadn’t heard the answer. He didn't feel real. Nothing did. He blinked around at the forest where they had hid. Nothing made any sense to him. Trees were alien creatures burrowing into the sky. Birdie was next to him, her face pressed into his side. Sergio was clinging to Lucia next to him, low in the bushes, and Sarah was on her stomach, looking past the trees toward the road. Somewhere on the road out there was John Martin, shot down. "What happened?"
"Shut up," Sarah hissed. "It’s Carl Doyle." She tugged him down to the ground.
As if summoned, the Land Rover appeared over the crest of the hill. It was moving so slow, it reminded Eric of a stalking cat, moving closer and closer to its prey.
"Enough of this," said Eric. He pushed himself to
his feet.
Sarah clutched at his clothes, but Eric tugged himself free. He walked alone, out of the forest, and toward the Land Rover. He couldn’t feel his feet.
_
When Eric found himself alone, his hands in the air, he had second thoughts. He had no plan. He had no gun. He had nothing but a determination to end it.
As he walked, he looked at the ground. It was strange how his feet walked through the grass, crushing flowers and thorns. It was strange they kept moving when all he wanted to do was run in the opposite direction.
_
"That's close enough!" Carl Doyle barked. Eric stopped, his hands in the air.
"I want to talk!" Eric called out.
Carl Doyle opened the door to the Land Rover and stood out. Eric swallowed when he watched Doyle approach him. He looked worse than ever. His eyes were entirely red and oozed a dark, almost black, blood. The hair on his head was thinning, and though he walked with both legs, one was stiff. It gave him a strange, rolling gait. The sweater and pants he wore, once neat, were now covered with filth. Even the Land Rover, behind him, that had looked so immaculate once, was covered in gore.
"Well, well," Doyle said, looking at him. "It's Eric." He said this as if he was genuinely surprised to recognize him. His fake accent came back. "I've been searching for you. And now I've found you, old chum. Jolly good!" He slapped his leg, and then all the emotion dropped from his face. "It's the savages, don't you know. The savages. You wouldn't believe it if you saw it. I've been traveling here for years, and I can't find it. I find nothing. Just more of this." He waved his arm around. "The Congo," he said. Eric looked around and swallowed.
The World Without Crows Page 11