Eric felt the hair rise at the back of his neck. A thrill of lightning ran through him. "What? What did you say?"
"The truck," John Martin repeated. "About a mile. Maybe two."
Eric shot to his feet, and then, tearing himself away from Lucia who had clutched at him, he found he was running through the woods. Tears blinded his eyes. Tree limbs tore at his face, but he felt nothing. His heart was a ball of light in his chest. When he hit the road, he spun around and around, searching for a vehicle.
"Birdie!" he shouted. "Birdie!"
Blindly he ran down the road calling her name.
Suddenly he saw a red truck and stopped, trembling. The door opened and a figure crawled out, feet first.
"Eric?"
Eric didn't remember moving. Birdie was suddenly in his arms and they were crying. He clutched at her and kissed her head a dozen times. She smelled like ash and peanut butter. When he became aware of himself, he was carrying Birdie in his arms through the forest, toward the camp. Birdie's grip around his neck nearly choked him, but he didn't care.
He listened to himself talk. "I'll never leave you again, I swear it. I swear it, Birdie. I'll never leave you again." Birdie wept hotly into his neck.
It was a very long time before they released each other.
15
__________
Granville Reservation State Park
John Martin did not live through the night. For all of Lucia and Sergio's attention, he began trembling at midnight, and, hours later, when the sky had turned blue as dawn slowly approached, he went still. When dawn came, he was dead.
Both Lucia and Sergio, who had spent so much time with him, who owed their lives to him, wept, holding each other. Then Lucia washed John as best she could. She took off his filthy jersey and replaced it with a clean shirt. With great labor and care, they carried his large body into the meadow. Over his stolid body, they piled dry wood and branches until he was underneath a great pyramid of tinder.
Before they set it afire, Sergio stood forward to speak.
"I don't know why all this has happened. I don't understand why some of us live and some of us die. The more I see, the more I think it's random. It's just luck that makes us live and bad luck that makes us die. John Martin was a good man. He didn't have to look out for us. He probably would be alive today if he looked after himself more. But he didn't. He wasn't like that. I'd say he didn't deserve to die, but that doesn't make any sense to me anymore. I guess what I want to say is thank you. Thank you for helping us, John Martin. I swear I won't ever forget it." He said a few words in Spanish, but Eric did not understand.
Lucia stood forward and, her lips moving as if in speech, she lit the fire. It snapped and popped at first, but then it began to hiss and crackle and finally roar. The pyramid turned into a twisting column of fire they could not approach for the heat.
It burned hot while they packed their campsite, and, by the time they moved away through the woods toward the north, toward the island, Eric holding Birdie's hand, the fire had become smoke and John Martin, who had saved them all, had been transmuted to ash.
_
How Birdie came back to them was a complicated story, filled with gaps, uncertainty, and confusion. From what John had told them before he died, which was not much, and from what Birdie herself understood, Eric was able to puzzle together something like a narrative.
John Martin had awakened after being shot by Carl Doyle. For days he could not move, but slept and rested, eating and drinking what was left in his pack. Somehow he had found a truck and began to follow them, hoping to rejoin them. How he avoided Carl Doyle or if Doyle was an impediment to him, Eric never knew. Finally John found them, but when he did, there was only Birdie.
Birdie said that John had told her that they were not coming back. They guessed that John Martin had seen them enter the deserted cabin, saw the Minutemen enter, heard the gunfire, and believed them dead. Birdie said that she didn't want to leave, but Eric had told her to look after herself. So she did as she was told.
Then, Birdie said, they ran. From what or who, Birdie could not tell them, only that it was scary. Some days they parked their truck deep in the forest and did not move. Birdie said John would talk, but not to her. He spoke to Holly, Birdie said. "Holly was mean," Birdie told them. "She always made John cry." Neither Sergio or Lucia knew who this Holly was, but it was not strange. All of them had lives they no longer spoke about and people whose names were synonymous with regret and sorrow.
One day John Martin turned to Birdie and said they were alive, Eric, Sergio, and Lucia. How he knew that, Eric would never know. After that, John searched for them. Birdie said he became more sick, talked less and drank more water.
Birdie could tell them little about this time, but she gave them a drawing made with blue pen. It was folded and ragged. It was a truck hovering over a tree. Three people stood below the truck, the larger one crying. One of them had long hair but no legs, and underneath this figure was written "Holly." All had deep frowns. Behind the tree were other trees and between them were angry eyes. Over all glowered a hideous, crescent moon that seemed to be a frown transposed to the sky.
The day finally came when John Martin found them.
A more complete version of Birdie's journey they would never know.
_
Despite the death of John Martin, Eric gloried in feeling Birdie's small, damp hand in his. He felt a wonderful thrill whenever she asked him a question or smiled. Though it could not be said they were joyful moving north toward the next circle on Eric's wrinkled map, Granville Reservation State Park, they were energetic, hopeful.
Even Lucia and Sergio were light in their sadness. Before they had given John Martin a decent burial, they had felt miserable and guilty for leaving him there, shot down in the road like a dog. Now they walked slightly behind of Eric and Birdie, speaking in Spanish with each other. Eric did not have to know the language to understand they were speaking about their time with John in his cellar. When Sergio suddenly laughed, Lucia strode ahead and took Eric's arm.
"Want to hear a story about John?"
Eric nodded.
Lucia smiled. "We'd been in the cellar for weeks at this point. This place was damp and dark and it smelled like, like--"
"Old socks," Sergio helped with a smile.
"No," Lucia laughed. "Not that. It smelled like lint. Like hot lint."
"Which you get from old socks," said Sergio.
"Anyway”' Lucia said, ignoring her brother. "We were all so sick and tired of that place. Three people living so close together. All day, all night." She laughed again. "We'd been eating canned beans for days. And John suddenly says that we should cook something different. Leaving the basement was so dangerous, we tried to talk him out of it, but he said we'd all go crazy if we ate another bean. So he left. There was nothing we could do about it."
"When John made up his mind," Sergio said, "John made up his mind."
"He came back hours later with an armful of food," Lucia said. "Just random stuff. Like spaghetti and canned fish and those little cans of pink sausages and bags of dried fruit. So much stuff!"
"But none of us knew how to cook!" Sergio laughed.
"That's not true," Lucia said, smiling. "I can cook, I just can't cook what he brought. It was all just random. What can you do with spaghetti and dried fruit?"
"So anyway," Lucia continued. "We all cooked together. And it was very serious too. We argued about everything. What to put in what and all that. In the end there was this like huge pile of stuff on top of spaghetti."
"I don't even know what was in it!" Sergio laughed.
"It was so disgusting," Lucia said. "So gross, you have no idea! We laughed so hard! John laughed hardest of all. He had risked so much and the meal was so bad!"
"You almost couldn’t eat it!" Sergio laughed.
Eric smiled, but he didn't think it was funny.
"We ate it all too," Lucia said.
"Yeah, we ate it
all," Sergio agreed. "Hard to keep it down!"
Then they dropped back, laughing, returning to Spanish. Somehow, Eric thought, they all felt like a group again. It was John Martin's last gift to them. He had saved them even in his death.
_
That night, in the flickering light of the fire, Eric sat by Birdie. He returned her pink backpack and she smiled and pulled out her crayons and paper. She lay by the fire with her legs in the air behind her. Eric lay next to her and watched her draw. Eric couldn't remember ever feeling so happy and content, and at the same time, determined and heartless. He would never be separated from her again. Nothing was more important to him, not even his own life. He would not be separated from her again, and if he had to kill to make sure of it, he would not pause or doubt himself for an instant.
"Why're you crying?" asked Birdie, looking at him suddenly. She looked back at her picture with a frown. "This is supposed to be a happy picture."
"I know it is," Eric answered, wiping his face. He hadn't known he was crying and it was embarrassing. "I don't know, Birdie. I'm glad you're here, that's all."
"Oh," she said. She smiled at him and then turned back to the drawing.
Eric watched her add orange tears to a smiling face.
_
They were down to a cup of rice and a bag of beans. They had to make a supply run.
It was strange how quickly they seemed to forget everything that had happened. Although Eric knew he would never be the same person he was before he lost and found Birdie, they crept to the edge of the forest and surveyed the nearest town as if nothing had changed. They knelt down together, and Sergio nervously licked his lips as he looked at the town. Birdie sat next to Eric, watching the town and clutching his hand.
Lucia was the only one who seemed different. There was none of her usual stoic braveness obscuring her fear. Her trepidation was naked on her face. She bit her lower lip.
"I don't know, Eric," she whispered. "This place. It's just. I don't like it."
"We don't have a choice," Eric said. "We need food."
"There'll be another town," she said. "There's always another town."
"Just like this one," Eric answered.
Lucia didn't answer, but when Sergio muttered something encouraging to her in Spanish, Lucia stopped him with a hiss. "No me gusta," she told him. Sergio looked away, more nervous than usual.
"It'll be all right," Eric said. He felt angry with both of them. They needed food. "This is another town, like any other. We'll get in, get some food, and get out again." Then a welling up of anger and annoyance came suddenly from inside him, and, before he could stop himself, he added, "Of course you don't like it, you think I like it? We have to do what we have to do. That's it. Don't make this harder." His tone was acidic, like his own father's when he mentioned his mother.
Lucia looked at him and blushed, deep and red. She looked like she had something to say, but, instead, she swallowed and turned back to the town.
Eric felt a warm glow of power, followed quickly by regret and then he felt slightly ill and dizzy. He took a deep breath to steady himself, and then stood up and walked out of the forest toward the town, not looking back to see if the others were following him. He knew they were.
_
The town's name was Wallingford.
It was a small town with large houses and a narrow road. Once it might have been described in a travel book as "sleepy" or "quaint." Now it seemed like a vast temple for the dead. The roads were clogged with abandoned cars and trucks. It was quiet, except for birds and the wind and their footsteps on the asphalt. On the side of the road was a burnt out truck, its hood up. It had the look of a dead thing whose jaw hung open. One of its fenders was whiter than the rest. They walked by it with a solemn silence, as if it were a corpse that demanded respect.
They searched together, instead of splitting up. They could no longer imagine leaving each other's sight. The first few houses were empty and looked like they had been looted already. One of them was burnt on the inside. The kitchen was a cave of ash, and when Eric looked in, he saw a blackened corpse, all charred bone, with its head stuck in the black remains of a gas stove. Eric turned Birdie away, but he was pretty sure she had already seen it. Birdie had seen a lot already. She'd seen worse.
When they re-grouped, Lucia looked nervous again. Sergio, picking up on his sister's apprehension, was beside himself with fear. He kept moving from one foot to the other.
"Hey man," he said to Eric. "There's nothing here. Let's try the next town."
"No," Eric said angrily. "We're here, we need the food, we're doing it." He didn’t know why he was so adamant about it. Sergio made a whining sound, but then cut it off, as if he had betrayed himself. Lucia put a comforting hand on her brother's shoulder, but wouldn't look at Eric.
They continued down the street and then came to a large, sprawling light blue house with gray trim. The upper story was all gothic gables, and the largest gable, which hung over a large window and the entrance, was topped by a cast iron fence. It looked fortified, a wooden palisade of a house. Eric stopped in front of the white picket fence that ringed the yard and listened to the wind in the maple tree in the yard.
"You've got to be kidding me," said Sergio, staring at the house.
"It was probably an inn or something," Eric said, without looking at him. "It has food inside. I know it."
He didn't know it. He just didn't like the look of the house. It was a challenge to him. It mocked him somehow. It seemed to say, "You're a fucking coward, Eric. You don't dare come in here. Your mother ruined you!" Eric stood in front, motionless.
There was a crash then and a gurgling scream. Sergio and Lucia sprang back and were halfway down the street when three zombies came out of the house.
_
Behind him, he could hear Lucia, Sergio, and Birdie, running, but Eric did not move.
He pulled out his pistol.
The first Zombie had lost an arm, and it walked in strange lunges. Its face was black, and there were holes where his nostrils once were. There was still a few tufts of bright red hair on his head. Eric leveled his .22 and fired. The Zombie stumbled, fell to its knees, snarling like a wolf. Eric fired two more times, both in the head. The holes in its skull spewed forth a black bile as if the contents had been under pressure. Then the cracked Zombie fell forward onto the lawn.
The other two lurched around the body. Eric shot once at a jawless Zombie in overalls before his pistol clicked empty. Turning, he ran down the road, following Lucia and Sergio and Birdie. While he ran, he flipped open his pistol and began reloading. When he reloaded, he turned and aimed. The next shot took the jawless Zombie in the chest, and it halted to spit up gobs of red and black from his mouth. The other came in something like a run. It was once an old woman and its face was wrinkled and black, like an olive. The cavities that were once eyes wriggled with white worms. Eric fired three times, and one of the shots caught her in an empty eye socket. She fell to the ground not more than six feet from him. The last one was still vomiting up its innards when Eric walked toward it, shooting. He shot it three times in the crown of the head before it feel forward. More black bile poured from its skull in spurting streams. The smell of the bile hit him like a hammer. It was like chemical warfare. Eric dropped to his knees and retched up his stomach on a lawn.
When he recovered, he was looking at three pair of legs standing beside him. The little legs next to him, he noticed, had pink socks.
"Let's get out of here," Sergio said in a shaky voice as Lucia helped him up.
"No," Eric said firmly. "I'm going in the house.”
_
Inside the gothic house, there was graffiti on the wall in thick black paint:
Fuck the Minutemen! Minutemen are Massholes! Green Mountain Boys!
There was other graffiti. Names. Numbers. Dates. Inscrutable drawings. It was all painted messily over a floral wallpaper in the main room. The words dripped the same color as the black bile that had
gushed from the Zombie's skull.
In the back of the house, in the kitchen, they found a stainless steel door, still locked. Eric smashed the lock with a cast iron skillet. Inside was an untouched larder.
_
The walk-in was putrescent. They cupped their hand around nose and mouth as they passed through. Boxes once filled with lettuce and tomato now dripped a dark fluid. The floor was slippery with it. In the back, however, were three wire shelves filled with cans. Beans, corn, beets, peas, carrots, spinach, pickles, cranberry sauce, creamed corn, all of it untouched. While Eric filled their bags, he heard Sergio outside cry out.
"Flour!" he said. "And rice!" Then came a flood of Spanish as Lucia joined him.
When they left the house, their bags were bursting with food. So much that it was difficult to walk.
No one complained.
_
That night they feasted.
They mixed beans with corn. They ate spoonfuls of cranberry sauce, which tasted as sweet as candy. They slurped up cans of spinach and crunched into pickles pinched free from their salty, green brine. Mixing flour with their drinking water, Lucia fried the batter over the fire, and they had something like bread, which they dunked into cans of creamed corn happily. Their appetite was enormous.
Afterward, they sat content in front of the flickering flames.
Eric stayed up late, watching the fire and cleaning his gun. Birdie slept with her head next to him, the light from the fire warm and gentle across her body.
The World Without Crows Page 20