Ben Lyle Bedard

THE WORLD WITHOUT FLAGS

For daughters

1

I call myself Kestrel. This wasn’t always my name, but people are who they need to be. That’s the way the world is now. I don’t remember when it was different, what it was like before the Worm. I was young when it came and changed my life forever. It changed all of our lives, swooping down on us like some kind of judgement. There’s some people who think that it was our fault, the plague that came and reduced everything to ruins. The Worm came through the water we drank, wriggled up our veins to our brain and lodged in there. Then it grew in your brain and it took you over. They called them Zombies, but I don’t think they ate anyway or came back from the dead. It was just the word we had for that kind of thing. They got a high fever and started yearning for water and their eyes turned red and they cried blood. That’s how you knew they were going to die, if they started bleeding from their eyes. But they weren’t zombies. They were just sick people whose brains weren’t theirs anymore. Some of them broke under the pressure. We called them cracked. They went crazy and killed and if they so much as scratched you, you’d get the Worm too. I know most people died because of it. My parents died of it. Most everyone did. There’s people left, of course. We didn’t go extinct, obviously. But not too many of us are left.

No one has gotten the Worm for years and years. It went away with the world it destroyed. The older people who remember what it was like to live in cities and cars and televisions and all that stuff, they talk a lot about why the Worm happened and why it vanished. They won’t stop talking about it. For them, I guess, it’s like it happened just yesterday. But it was like ten years ago. Most of my life, really.

I don’t care as much about the reasons for the Worm as the older people do. I don’t think it would change anything if we knew why it happened. It wouldn’t bring back my mother or my father. The older people are more angry about the Worm than we are, us younger ones. Some older people say it was made by governments. Some say the Russians did it. Some say it was just some bug in the Amazon that wouldn’t have hurt anyone if we had left the rainforests alone. Truth is, no one knows much about it, just that it started in Brazil and came north. I’ve seen people kill over whose fault it was. But I’ve seen people killed for all sorts of things. It doesn’t mean anything, really. People kill each other. That’s what people do. That’s why you have to be careful. That’s why you have to think. That’s what Eric is always telling me. Think. So I changed my name to Kestrel so I sound a little more dangerous.

You are who you are to survive. You become who you have to be. You change. You adapt. I don’t know who I’ll be tomorrow.

I just know I’ll be who I have to be.

2

We call this place the Homestead. Except for winter, I like it here. The Homestead is just a patch of land south of the lakes. On the maps we have, we live in the State of Maine, but there’s no Maine anymore. That’s just a meaningless bunch of squiggles on a map now. On the Homestead, there’s a farmhouse with faded gray clapboards and two big barns where we keep all the animals. Around the farmhouse are the fields we work hard to clear and hoe and plow. At first there was only one field but over the years we cleared two more, one behind the farmhouse and another to the west. I still remember how hard that was. Our hands bled and our bodies were tight knots of pain. One of us, an old guy named Jim, he worked so hard, he just wasted away and died one day. He died right out there in the fields. I remember that quite a lot. How he just sank down on one knee and then fell to the side. By the time we got to him, he was dead. Thing was, when he died, his mouth opened wide and when he fell, it was like he was biting the earth. It was horrible. It didn’t look peaceful at all. That was back before we really understood what we were doing. We had some bad winters then. Better not to think too much about that or about Jim.

The Homestead has trees by the river and in the summer, the fields outside turn golden. There’s trout in the Rill and bigger trout in the lakes above. There’s deer all year round. A lot of deer. A few of us have learned to hunt them with bows. We have guns, but we save the bullets. Ammunition is hard to come by and we can’t waste it on deer. In the winter, it’s cold, but I have to admit that the snow is always so peaceful and calm and beautiful.

About five or six years ago, we started building log houses because the farmhouse got too small for everyone. We built them on the hill above the farm so we could have a good look toward the south. Over the years we’ve built ten houses and one lodge. We call it the Village. We should probably have a better name for it than that, but we don't have much time to sit around and wonder what to call a few houses on a hill.

We had to completely rebuild the first few houses we tried, but the new ones aren’t nearly as bad. We’ve learned a lot about how to build log houses, how to fill in the chinks, how to build on stone foundations, how to build so that when the cabin shrinks over time, which it will, the doors don’t get stuck. We still have a lot to learn though. Franky calls it “relearning” because people had this all figured out once, how to live without electricity, directly from the land. Franky likes that term, “relearning,” and he uses it whenever he can.

There’s 43 people in the Homestead, and I could name each one of them and tell you their stories. They come from all over this area, Boston, Portland, Quebec. A few of the children were born here. We even have a little cemetery, but there’s no bodies buried there, only ashes and a big boulder where we carve people’s names. After the Worm, we always burn our dead. We put all the ashes of our dead in the cemetery and the flowers that grow there are strong and bright and beautiful. We have a library. We have music and dances when we can. We play games. We ski in the winter, swim in the summer. We have guns and knives. We try to keep people safe. We try to keep each other alive.

I know I’m lucky to have a place I can call home. A lot of people don’t have that. They live wandering the world, scrambling to survive, scavenging for whatever the old world left behind like dogs in the garbage pile. They come sometimes to the Homestead to trade. They have metal and tools and toothpaste. A lot of plastic trash that we trade for anyway. Their eyes are hollow. They’d kill you just as soon as be your friend. You can tell by looking at them that they’ve lost something important. You have to learn how to see that in this world. You have to be smart with people.

Sometimes someone comes and we trust them and let them stay. We watch them very carefully, but usually they’re okay. They start working like everyone else, and they bring whatever skills they have to help us. These are the lucky ones, like me. I know I’m lucky to be here, to have these people at the Homestead who trust me with their lives and I trust them with mine, even the ones I don’t like much.

I’ve lived here most of my life. I could say I’ve lived here all my life because I don’t remember much before we came here, before the Worm. Sometimes I dream of a woman with long, wiry dark hair, hair that I loved to feel in my hand. In my dream, she’s singing, but I can’t hear her voice. It’s more like a feeling that she’s singing. And she’s holding me but I can’t feel her arms around me. All I can feel is her hair in my hands. And I have a feeling in my dream, a feeling I never have in life. It’s like being in warm water, suspended, floating, and everything is outside of me, beyond my grasp. I’m pretty sure the woman singing is my mother. That’s pretty much what’s left of my life before the Worm.

The Homestead has changed a lot over the years. It used to be just the farm and the fields around it. Then more people came, and over time we grew and began to build the Village. We’re still building it. From the Village, we have a pretty good idea of what’s around us. I remember there used to be trees on the hill, but not anymore. We used those trees for houses or to burn during the long Maine winter. Now we have to drag trees uphill from the forests to get wood. But it’s worth it for the view.

This view. I’m sitting on the side of the hill, just below the Village, looking down at the farm. The river we call the Rill runs down to my left, down past the backfields and eventually into another river. The farmhouse is down there. I can see smoke coming from the chimney. The cows are out to pasture, and I can see Cyrus working on a fence. Even from this distance, I can tell it’s Cyrus from the way he moves, slow but powerful like an ox. I don’t think I’ve heard him say more than ten or twelve sentences my whole life. I like that about him. He’s quiet like me. Queen, our new dog, is right next to him. Pest found Queen a couple months ago, just a skinny mongrel, white with black patches all over her scraggly fur, shivering under a pine tree. Norman said she’s some strange mixture of labrador and husky or maybe hound dog. “Just a good ole American mutt,” he decided finally. Pest nursed her back to health and they’re pretty much inseparable. But if Queen isn’t bounding around Pest like a gust of wind, she’s usually near Cyrus. Strange how dogs decide they like someone and stay with them. I wonder what it is, what they sense? I wonder sometimes why Queen doesn’t come with me.

In the fields in front of the farmhouse, the fields we call, imaginatively, the “front fields,” I can see the Goon Squad. That’s what I call Crypt, Gunner, Rebok, and Pest. They’re always together. Just a bunch of adolescent boys. They’re arguing about something, as usual. Even from here, I know the figure standing quietly in the back is Pest, the youngest. He’s watching. There’s something about the way he’s standing, like he’s satisfied, that I’m sure he’s behind the fight. He might be the youngest, but he controls that group. I don’t mean to make him sound evil. He’s not. But he’s spooky smart.

As I watch, I see Matt come strolling in and call out to them. They stop fighting and go talk with him, all of them except Pest who stays where he is. Matt’s an older guy, just joined us a few years ago. He’s bald and always sad. If he laughs, which is not often, he gets this guilty look on his face afterward, like he’s ashamed for being alive, and then he walks away. Lots of the older people are like that. It’s like they break down to their core and can’t do anything but mourn whatever it was they lost. I’m glad I’m not like that. I’m glad I’m whole and not so fragile.

Whatever Matt said to the boys seems to have worked because they’re shaking hands and Rebok is hugging people, because he’s a hugger. Then it’s back to work. Just another day in the fields for those boys. Hope they don’t screw up. We’ll end up fixing it.

I take a long drink of water. It’s nice and fresh and cold. I wish I brought more bread with me, but I wasn’t hungry then. I am now. I reach into my pocket for my apple and bite into it. It’s a little old and grainy, but I don’t care. It’s kind of sweet and I like it. It’s been sitting in the root cellar for months, it’s pure luck it tastes like anything. I finish it off quickly, watching the boys turn the earth with hoes. Matt has joined them with a wheelbarrow full of manure from the barns. Unpleasant job. I’ll probably be doing it tomorrow. As long as it’s not chicken shit, I don’t mind. Chicken shit, I don’t like. Cow manure is almost pleasant, earthy. But chicken shit invades you like ammonia. I almost gag just thinking about it.

There’s still snow in the corners of the field, I notice, and under the trees. It’s still pretty cold. Cold enough for winter jackets. The wind coming up from the south has got a little bite to it, but it’s no longer the frightening jaws of winter when a wind comes up across the fields of ice and snow and makes you feel like you’ve inhaled pure death and you have to cough it out. I shiver a little, thinking about it. Then I sigh because winter is broken and spring is here and down in the cellars under the farmhouse there’s jug after jug of maple syrup and bags of maple sugar. Soon it’ll be warm enough to wear t-shirts and we’ll swim in the lake.

There’s the sound of a door shutting, and I turn around toward the houses of the Village. It’s Diane, coming out of her log house. Her kid, Amber, about 10 years old or so, follows behind her. Diane sees me and waves and I give a wave back. She and Amber walk down the path toward Franky’s house, I imagine. They live together, even though she’s like twenty years younger than him. Franky likes to tinker on things. He calls it “puttering.” He just goes around and fixes things and makes things for us and is generally a good help to everyone. I wish I could be of more help than I am. No one calls me for help. You don’t ever hear anyone say, oh, you know what this problem needs? Kestrel. We need Kestrel. Well, unless they want me to find Eric, but other than that, I’m just, I don’t know, Eric’s girl.

But Franky is busy all day, every day. Everyone wants Franky around. And Diane is so, well, not to be mean, but she’s like the apple I just ate. She’s bland and boring and kind of mushy and soft. I don’t eat the apple out of pleasure, that’s what I’m saying. I feel like Diane is like that. She came here about five years back or so, with two kids, Amber and Curt, who’s just a couple years younger than me. They came from Boston with the usual hellish story. I remember when she came here, she was as near to death as you can be without dying. She was like bones and skin and not much skin. She didn’t even talk for the first few months except to say thank you for everything. She looks better now, but still has a kind of frailty about her, like she’d crack into a thousand pieces if you said the wrong thing. She’s tall and slim and has scraggly blonde hair that she keeps long even though long hair is such a pain.

I guess I sound kind of harsh toward Diane. I don’t mean to be like that. She’s not bad. She’s just, well, damaged. She never smiles and even though she’s only in her early thirties, she looks really old. She looks tired all the time. I can tell life is very hard for her. Not the stuff that’s hard for all of us, like the fear of starving or whether or not there’s some marauding gang on the horizon. I mean just normal stuff. Like cooking and washing up and getting out of bed. She’s like on the edge, just hanging on. I think sometimes Franky’s with her because he likes to tinker. Maybe he thinks he can fix her the way he can hang a door level or patch up a hole in the wall. Franky’s very handy, but not so smart, really, when I think about it. I don’t think you can fix people. People have to fix themselves.  I’m not even sure that can be done either. Sometimes I think who we are is like a wild horse and we’re just riding it as best we can, hoping like hell we don’t fall off. Diane is a person who doesn’t hang on very well.

I watch Diane walk around the hill and out of sight and then I turn back to the fields. That’s when I notice the horse and cart. I watch for a while, my heart beginning to pound. I put my hand on my knife just to make sure it’s there. I feel the handle and breathe a little easier.

But it’s no stranger. I recognize the horse before the rider.

It’s Tangerine.

And riding the cart a little awkwardly, stiffly, in that gangly way that he has, is Randal the Vandal. I get up and start running!

He’s back!

3

By the time I get to the foot of the hill, there’s already a crowd. Diane is there with Franky at her side. Anthony and Wanda are right behind them, Wanda waddling as fast as she can and Anthony trying to get her to slow down, saying a woman in her condition should be careful. Peter and Lissa are there and Becky, their little 2-year-old, is looking wide-eyed at everything and everyone. Luna, Glenda, Ash, and Brian are already here too, crowded around Tangerine, who is tossing her head anxiously while Randal the Vandal, who’s hopped off the cart, pats her neck to calm her. Tangerine is a good horse, but she gets spooked when there are more than a couple people around her. She doesn’t trust anyone except Randy. Tangerine is steaming in the air and I can tell that Randal has been driving her harder than he should.

“Ho there, girl,” Randy says to her. “Ho there now, it’s just family, is all.” I’m always surprised at just how low his voice is. He’s such a thin guy, just bones clattering around. But if you heard his voice, you’d think it came from a big work horse of a man. It’s so low, so cavernous. It doesn’t match his face either. I don’t know what happened to him, but one side of his head is crooked like he got stepped on by a giant. Randy the Vandal, or Vandy, we call him that sometimes, or some of us do, he’s also got strange hair. He cuts it himself, but he’s got so many cow licks that his hair is just as lopsided as his face. It sticks out every which way like a messy bird’s nest. He has big teeth too. They’re straight and white and everything, but just a bit big. If I were being cruel, I’d say Randal the Vandal has the teeth of a horse. If I were being real cruel, I’d say mule. His eyes are deep green, though, like emeralds, is how Artemis describes them. He might be kind of ugly, but those eyes make all the girls smile. Randy’s our scavenger. He travels all around and meets new people and trades with them and brings stuff back. So he’s exotic and all the girls love that. My best friend, Artemis, says she’s going to let him kiss her next time he comes, so that will be something new to hear about. Anything new around her is pretty exciting.

I haven’t seen Vandy in like, I don’t know, six, seven months? I mean, I like everyone here at the Homestead, they’re all my family, basically, but NEW people. That’s really something! Not only that, but Randal the Vandal—did I mention that was what he named himself?—Randal is one of those genuinely nice people. I’m sure he can be real mean if he has to, but most of the time, he’s all smiles and jokes and winks and handshakes. He’s one of those people that say, “Glad to see you!” and you believe it. I guess you need to be that way out there. Otherwise how could you trade with anyone? Who would trust you? It’s always so nice to see Randal. Usually, he comes for a couple days and then he’s gone for months. You never know when Randal the Vandal is going to show up. Not only that, but it’s not a safe job he does. There’s a lot of bad people out there, a lot of wild ones. I don’t want to get morbid, but every time he leaves, there’s always a part of me that thinks, well, nice knowing you, Randy.

“Where’s Eric?” he asks. He’s looking around and then I notice there’s something different. He’s not smiling.

“He’s up at the lake,” Franky says. He’s taken Tangerine’s halter. He seems to notice something is wrong too. “What’s going on?”

Randal turns away from him and then he’s looking right at me with those green eyes. “Go get your father for me, will you?”

I frown. Any other time, I would say something, but I can sense something is seriously wrong. I’ve never seen Randy so serious. I feel a chill down my back that runs all the way to my legs.

I don’t look back as I turn around and begin to run.

4

While I’m running up to the lake, let’s make something clear.

Eric is not my father. I already told you my parents are dead, remember? They died a long time ago. The Worm took them like so many other people. My parents were born in one of the cities that are now just rusting, burned skeletons scattered across the landscape. I don’t even remember my father. Not a single image. Not even a feeling. But Eric is NOT my Dad. Everyone knows that. It’s obvious.

For one, I’m black and he’s white. I’ve got kinky, springy hair that is a pain and he has easy, straight black hair. He’s got blue eyes, I’ve got brown eyes. He tells people what they should do and I don’t hardly talk. We are not alike.

Also, he’s too young to be my father. He’s not even thirty yet and I’m eighteen. Or nineteen. Or seventeen. We’re not sure because I don’t exactly remember my birthday and Eric tells me that when we first met, I didn’t always give the same number when he asked me how old I was. So we’re not sure.

Ever since we first met, Eric and I have been friends. We’re friends. He might be older than me, but that doesn’t make him my father. I might have lived with him my whole life since I was a girl and he has taught me most everything I know and Eric and I have a long history together, but he is my friend.

He is not my father.

That is something that has to be said.

5

Something is wrong. Randal has brought bad news. My heart is beating so fast as I run, and not from the running. I could probably run for two hours before my heart started beating like this. No. It’s the excitement and the fear. Usually, Randal the Vandal comes back and he makes a big show of it, throwing up his arms, telling jokes, hugging people, kissing all the girls, even Beth, who’s so old, she has a hard time walking. To see him come in and without so much as a smile ask for Eric is really strange. Something is wrong and Eric has to know.

I go shooting through the pine trees and decide to take a shortcut through the forest. I leap off the path and go cutting through the forest, ducking under branches and jumping over logs. I’m nimble enough to avoid the patches of snow that remain from winter. I shoot through the forest like an arrow. It’s easy for me. I’m like this. Super fast. Eric says that I move like a deer in the forest. I call myself Kestrel because it’s a tiny little hawk that survives by being faster than the little birds that it catches. I’m like that. I’m small but so quick, you won’t even know I’m there before it’s too late. It’s no problem for me to run like this. Seriously, I could do this all day. All. Day.

I jump back on the path as it curves around and then head uphill where it levels off on the final approach to the lake. Eric went up there this morning to scout for logs. He likes to go back up to the lake, I don’t know why. Maybe because we used to live up there. Before we moved to the Homestead. For the first couple years we lived on the island. I don’t remember much about that time. It’s like my life started at the Homestead. But I do remember long, cold nights. I remember being hungry, but refusing to cry. And I remember Lucia.

That was a long time ago.

I come out of the woods and suddenly there’s the lake with the little island in the middle where we used to live. I stutter to a stop and look over the waters, lead gray on this cloudy, cold spring day. The island is like a green emerald on a pewter dish. Sometimes in the summer I swim out to it, go back to the hut that we built that first year. I look at the dirt floor, the cast iron stove that Eric had to build a wooden raft to float to the island. Back then there were still zombies. Back then you couldn’t sleep without worrying one might find you and you’d wake up screaming as it ripped you apart. Living on the island was very difficult but we slept well knowing the zombies couldn’t get to us, huddled together like puppies for warmth. I remember the smell of Lucia next to me and how sometimes Eric would reach out to touch my arm, gently, just to be sure I was still there.

But I should focus. Something is wrong and Eric should know about it as soon as possible. I look around and listen. There’s a chickadee somewhere going chick a dee dee dee. I smell the pine needles and the air is heavy with the humidity from the lake. The water is lapping softly against the bank, driven by the slight breeze in the air. I listen. I hear my own breathing. My heart beats, still thumping from the run and the excitement. The quiet and stillness extends like it’s laying down over the landscape, a phantasm.

Then far off, up a slope to my right, I hear it. Thump. My eyes fly open and I smile. I dart off to my right, following the sound, bounding over fallen trees. I know where he is. There’s another thump. He’s testing the trees, giving them a hit with the butt end of the axe, to ascertain the health of it. Such a waste of time to fell a tree and find it’s hollow or the upper half is rotting. Eric is careful with that. He must be looking for ridgepoles for new houses.

I cover the distance in just a minute, maybe less. When I jump out in front of him, he’s about to swing his axe gently with one hand, and he’s surprised enough to see me that he fumbles the axe, hits the pine tree off center, causing the axe to fall to the ground. His blue eyes fly open at the sight of me and his whole body goes rigid in fear for a second before he sees it’s just me.

“Holy crap, Birdie!” he exclaims. Birdie is my real name, as far as I know, but Eric is the absolute only person allowed to call me Birdie. Eric blows out a big breath, shaking his head. “Don’t do that! I’m going to have a heart attack one of these days!” He reaches for the axe.

Eric is tall and strong. Over the years, his arms have grown very thick, like the trees he cuts down. Ever since Lucia died, he’s grown a beard. It’s not very long, but it’s bushy. I trim it when he lets me. His hair is very dark and longer than I would like. It goes down to his shoulders. People that see him now wouldn’t recognize the Eric that I first met. He was a lot weaker then and much more fragile. Now I think he’s the strongest person I’ve ever known. I don’t think there’s anything that Eric can’t do if he wants to do it. But like all the older ones, he’s haunted. There are days when his eyes go blank as if a terrible veil dropped over them. I can tell he’s remembering people he’s lost. He’s lost inside himself, in his pain, in his past. Those are the days I leave him alone.

“You have to come back,” I tell him.

Eric loses him smile. “What is it?”

“Randal is back and he needs to see you.” I give him a serious look. “Something’s wrong.”

Eric’s smile collapses into a frown.

“Okay,” he says, swinging his axe to his shoulder. “Run back and let everyone know I’ll talk with him in the Lodge.” The Lodge is what we call our biggest house. We built it for gatherings. Eric steps forward. “Have you got it?”

I pull out my knife and show it to him.

“Is it sharp?”

I nod.

“Good,” Eric says. “Be careful, Birdie.”

I just nod and turn away. As I run through the forest, I hear Eric following behind at a trot. I can’t really explain it, but just by the way he sounds moving through the forest, I can feel him thinking. Eric is always thinking. He thinks more than anyone I know.

But there’s no time for thinking about that. I need to focus. Running through a forest is no simple thing. It requires concentration and reflexes sharp as a razor. I duck under a fir bough and then turn around a white birch before I bound up to the path. It’s way easier now. I don’t have to worry about hitting a stone, maybe turning my ankle. That happened to me once before, and it’s no picnic. I’m running as fast as I can now, although as it turns downhill, I miscalculate and have to readjust, my arms flailing. I hit the ground hard enough to jar my poor bones to slow down. Running downhill is the pits. I burst out of the forest and to level ground and speed up approaching the Village.

When I reach the Village, people are gathered. Everyone is talking and shouting at once. When they see me, they all go quiet. I hold up my hand while I catch my breath. “The Lodge,” I tell them finally. Only Artemis stays, with her hand on my shoulder. “You all right?” she asks.

I nod quickly and shrug her hand off my shoulder. I don’t like to be touched.

Artemis knows me well enough not to be offended. She’s practically my best friend. “What’s happening?” she asks. I shrug. “You don’t know anything?” She looks at me doubtfully. “Well,” she continues, “we’ll know soon enough, I guess.”

She stands there, waiting, and I realize that she’s waiting for me to come with her. I take a deep breath and then another. I feel happy that she’s waiting, but at the same time, it annoys me. I don’t like when people expect me to do things. But Artemis waits because she likes me and I appreciate that. I don’t have many friends, not really. It worries Eric, I can tell, but there’s no reason to worry. I’m just not much of a people person.

But I do appreciate Artemis. Her real name is Patty. You can see why she’d want to change that. Who’s scared of Patty? She got her new name out of a book from the second floor of the farmhouse. Eric calls it the library. Once it was the name of a goddess, a goddess of hunting, she explained, really good with a bow. The ironic thing is Artemis can’t use a bow. She tried to learn, but she couldn’t. Her arms would shake so much, the arrow would go flying in the wrong direction. She’s always been better at cooking and chatting. Also, unlike the goddess of hunting, she doesn’t really like to go out into the forest. She just likes to think she does.

Artemis crosses her arms over her breasts while she waits for me. She has much bigger breasts than I do. Not that that’s difficult, I’m like a beanpole, but it’s weird. I mean just a few years ago, we weren’t that different, and now she’s like, I don’t know, a woman, and I haven’t changed. If anything, I’ve become more wiry. I’m all bone and muscle. I don’t mind though. I know it sounds like I do, but I don’t. You should see all the trouble those breasts cause her. Sometimes I think Artemis and I are like opposites: she’s white with blonde hair and everyone likes her. I’m skinny and my hair is like steel wool, my eyes are brown as dirt, and not many people pay me much attention. She smells like candy and I, well, I just stink. Artemis steps forward and puts her hand on my shoulder. “Come on, Kestrel,” she says. “Rest inside.” She takes her hand and ruffles my hair.

That’s the one thing I really hate. Everyone wants to touch my hair.

“Quit it,” I tell her, jerking my head away. Artemis laughs. She likes to tease me.

Just then Randal comes around the corner. He’s about ready to go into the Lodge, but he sees us. Both Artemis and I stop and look at him and he looks back. It’s like he’s not the same guy we knew. He looks worried. He looks sad. He’s full of feelings I’ve never seen in him before. Randal doesn’t even try to smile at us. This is really weird because Randal likes to flirt and Artemis thinks he likes her. He just turns away and follows people inside.

“Shit,” Artemis whispers to me. “That isn’t good.” No, it’s not, I think. But I don’t say anything. We walk inside and take the first seats we can, in the back.

As we settle into our seats on the wooden benches, I have a strong feeling. It’s like today was the last day of something. Right up until now my life had been one thing and it’s about to be something else. I feel afraid. I feel sad. Life is pretty good here. I mean, it’s boring sometimes, but we’re safe, we’re together. I have a terrible feeling it’s all over, and I wish Eric was beside me. I wish I could make it stop. I don’t want this to end.

But in my heart I know it has. It’s gone already.

6

There are three rows of benches in the Lodge that face each other across a wooden stage. On the stage is a table and four chairs. Sitting at the table is Randal. When Eric comes in, everyone stands, their clothes rustling like anxious whispers. Eric hates when people do this. He puts his head down and walks to the table while everyone watches, and then Eric shakes Randal’s hand. Eric looks over us all.

“Is everyone here?”

Finally, Franky speaks up. “I think Fiona and Patrick went out to check on the fiddleheads. But other than that, yeah.” Just as he says it, I see Fiona and Patrick come in the door, looking concerned. Everyone watches them as they find a seat.

Eric looks around and then nods and sits down. Everyone else sits down too. Even the children are quiet. You could hear a dust mite scratch its ear. Eric looks around and then turns toward Randal. “Go ahead,” he tells Randal. Randal looks around nervously. I can tell, probably all of us can, that he would rather do this in private, but Eric doesn't do things like that.

Eric doesn’t do anything in private meetings. He makes all the decisions right in front of everyone, and if anyone has objections, they can make their point immediately. Eric changes his mind sometimes. If enough people want him to, he always does. People say he thinks too much, like I already said. But then again, Eric is still here and they stand when he comes in and when he tries not to be the one to make decisions, people come to our house and practically beg him to keep doing it.

“Well,” Randal says. He clears his throat. “You remember the groups I was telling you about?”

“Which ones?” asks Eric.

“The ones down south that say they’re the United States of America, what’s left of it.”

“The Gearheads and the Stars?”

Randal nods. “Like I told you, they both claim to be the rightful government of the United States. Each of them say they want to start it up again. With voting and Presidents and Congress and all that.” Randal licks his lips and then rubs at his nose with his sleeve and looks around at us. “They say it’s time to rebuild the country.”

“I remember,” Eric answers. “They aren’t the first.”

Randal looks back at Eric like he’s embarrassed. I notice one of his legs is jumpy. “Well, there can’t be but one United States.” He smiles, like he’s made a joke, but no one’s laughing, so the smile falls. “It’s war,” he says finally. “There’s a war down there.” Eric sits back in his chair. He’s thinking. So are all of us. The idea doesn’t seem to land, just teeters among us: war? Randal continues. “It started about two weeks ago, down around Boston. Little place called Danvers. There was a group of Gearheads that went down there to try to talk this community into joining them instead of the Stars, but they were already with the Stars. I guess there was an argument or something. I don’t really know. There are conflicting stories. Anyway, someone shot.” Randal shrugs. “They haven’t stopped shooting since.” Eric still doesn’t say anything. He’s thinking. Randal’s leg us still jumping around. The rest of us just watch, like this is one of our plays.

Most of us know about the Gearheads and the Stars, from Randal, mostly. We think it’s crazy to bring a country together. You can’t even travel from here to Portland without fear of getting shot or robbed. Out here, in the boondocks, there aren’t many people. Down south, we know, there are a lot more. They’re organized in all sorts of communities, most of them a heck of a lot larger than we were, at least according to Randal. The thought of them killing each other is disturbing.

The Gearheads are led by a guy named Jerome Brown. When the Worm hit, he was part of the U.S. government, somehow. Not someone real important, like the President or anything. Someone way down the line. Randy says that he calls himself President Jerome Brown, and they believe that the future is all about learning. They have schools where people practice mathematics and learn engineering. Randy says they want to rebuild the world. If I remember right, they’re centered somewhere in New Hampshire and, according to Randy, they have a lot of guns.

The Stars are the other major group. They’re in Boston. The guy in charge of that group is President Ramon Barber. Randy says these guys are more military. He says they have some kind of link to the old U.S. military, and Barber wants to unite the whole country all the way out to California, as crazy as that sounds. They’ve got guns too. I mean, their whole thing is guns. They even have tanks, I guess, though you’re a fool to trust rumors and that doesn’t sound likely. There hasn’t been any useful gasoline in years. Kerosene, gasoline, diesel, all of it just went bad a few years ago. How can they run tanks without fuel?

“How far has the fighting reached north?” Eric asks finally.

“There’s been some problems in Portland,” Randal answers. There’s a couple gasps at that. It’s awful close. Randal sniffs again, tries another faltering smile and then clears his throat. “Portsmouth’s a mess,” he says. “A goddamn mess.”

“I didn’t think they’d come that far north,” Eric says, thinking aloud.

“They didn’t,” Randal answers. “Not until the war. But now everyone has to take a side. It’s like a disease. And it’s moving fast.” He looks around at us. “I came back here as soon as I could, but sometimes it was like the war was moving faster than I could ride.”

Eric sits back, still thinking hard. His eyes are distant as stars. I look around and see everyone watching him, waiting. But I know that Eric doesn’t have anything more to say. I know that absence in his eyes. He’s thinking too hard to mind what’s going on around him. He doesn’t realize that people are waiting and they need to hear something. He’s too concentrated on the problem. I swear I can see the machine in his head grinding away at the problem. I don’t like when he does this, when he can’t tell what people need.

I stand up. “We’re safe enough out here, aren’t we?” People turn around, surprised to hear my voice. Some of them might not even recognize it. Like I said, I don’t talk much. But I can’t let Eric just sit there like that. I sit back down quick enough though.

Randal looks up at me. He clears his throat. “Truth is,” he says. “I don’t know.”

Then it’s like something broke. Everyone’s talking at once. Then the talking transforms into something more like shouting and people are standing up and Randal stands up too, and I can see by the way he keeps glancing at the doorway that he wants to make a dash for it. I realize that I made it all a lot worse with my question. I should have kept quiet like Eric. I should have waited.

But it’s too late for that now. People are scared. It’s in the air like a stench. Even Franky is shouting now, trying to get people to calm down. But it’s no use. Soon it’s all chaos and I hear someone else crying and I look over and it’s Artemis. She’s sitting and shaking and covering her face while the people all around us are shouting. I have a feeling nothing is real, like I’m suddenly surrounded by strangers.

I begin to think about war, really imagine it. Not far south people are shooting at each other and killing each other. They are dropping in the streets. They are burning in their homes. They are dying. And it’s coming here. I’m eyeing the door too, just like Randal, like an animal searching for an escape, when I hear a long whistle. I look around, half-thinking that war had come already and the whistle was just the beginning and then there’s another set of whistles, fast and loud. I look down at the stage.

It’s Eric. He has a whistle in his mouth, shining silver. His arms are up in the air and he’s waving them to get everyone’s attention. He blows the whistle again and keeps on blowing until everyone is looking at him. He stops waving his arms and takes the whistle out of his mouth. He makes a calming movement with his hands and everyone looks kind of ashamed and we sit down, first one, then several, then all of us. There’s a moment when there’s nothing but the sound of people settling back into their seats. Finally when it’s quiet, Eric takes a deep breath.

“We have nothing to do with this war,” he says. “Nothing. We are too far north to bother with. They’re not going to care whether forty-three people living by a lake in Maine join them or the other side. They probably won’t come here.”

A tiny voice rises. “What if they do?” It’s Fiona. She’s been with us since the beginning. She was with us the final year on the island.

It’s a good question. Everyone turns to listen to the answer.

Eric looks around. “We have everything we need here. Food. Shelter. Safety. There’s no reason to choose a side. There’s no reason for us to get involved. If they come, I say that we refuse to pick a side.”

“And if they force us?” This question comes from Wesley. He’s only five or six years older than me, and he’s a favorite of all the girls. He plays guitar and has long hair and thinks of himself as a carpenter.

Eric pauses, thinking, and, for a moment, I’m afraid he’ll keep thinking and vanish into himself, but then he says, “That is something too complicated to speculate about.” He looks around. “We have to wait. If that happens, we’ll deal with it then.” The crowd murmurs a bit about that. I know they want certainty. They want to feel absolutely safe. They want Eric to say something that will make it all go away. There are people who will say what people want to hear, to make people feel safe. They’ll even lie to them. But that’s not Eric. “Listen,” Eric continues. People turn back toward him. “We’re a strong community. We don’t just survive here, we thrive. We can handle this together.”

“I need to say something.” People turn to see Norman standing up. He’s one of the older guys. Like me, he doesn’t say much. He works most of the time in the barn, so he always smells like manure. He’s a tough old guy and pretty highly respected by everyone, including me. He’s wearing his patched and faded overalls and plaid shirt. People wait for a second while he gathers himself. “I just want to say that maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if we did join one of them groups.” Norman looked around them. “Seems to me we need some type of organization. Maybe then we wouldn’t have to worry so much about all the bandits on the road. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if we did join up with them. Maybe that’s exactly what we need.”

There’s a few people who nod.

But then Matt stands up, red in the face. “Yeah, easy to say that,” he says. “But how do we know which side to choose? We choose wrong and the other side will kill us dead. We sign up with the Gears, the Stars kill us. We start flying a Star and the Gears kill us.”

“What if we don’t fight? We just surrender? They wouldn’t kill us then.” This is Crystal. She spends most of her time baking in the farmhouse.

“Yeah right,” Matt scoffs. He looks around. “Don’t tell me I’m the only one who remembers what the military did when things got real bad. They killed more people than the Worm!” I don’t remember any of it myself, but people still get pissed about what was done at the end. It started when the military fire bombed Houston into ashes. It got worse after that.

“This ain’t the Worm,” Crystal argues. “This is different.”

“Believe me, it’s NOT different!” Matt returns bitterly. “I know these type of people. They don’t give a shit about people like us. When it’s war, they’ll do anything they want!”

“But what kind of threat are we?” This is Lissa’s tiny voice. I have the feeling from the sound of her voice that she didn’t mean to say that aloud, and by her blush, I can tell I’m probably right.

“I’ll tell you what kind of threat we’d be,” Matt continues. “We’d be the group that chose the wrong side. They’d always think of how many of us secretly hang up the other side’s flag in our basements.”

“We don’t have no basements.” That’s Rebok. He’s too stupid to get the point.

People chuckle a little at that, but it’s faint and disappears quickly.

“Whatever side we pick, we are screwed.” Matt looks around. “Screwed.” His face is the color of crushed strawberries. I’ve never seen him so angry. He sits down, still fuming.

People are quiet after that. I look over to Eric, kind of hoping he might provide us with direction or something, but he’s sitting down again, thinking. His eyes are in another world and doesn’t see anything around him. The meeting just kind of sputters to a confused and scary ending, and people unhappily rise from the benches and walk around in a daze.

In another fifteen minutes, the Lodge is loud with discussions and arguments. I see Sam in the back, trying to lecture everybody on what they should do, but no one is listening to him because he’s an idiot. Gunner from the goon squad is saying he thinks they should join the Gears because “we’re people like that.” There’s a dozen messy conversations happening all around.

Eventually, Eric walks away from the table and joins people, listening mostly. People are unhappy and unsatisfied. They want stronger certainty, stronger statements, but Eric isn’t that kind of leader. He just walks around, listening, hardly saying anything at all. People are talking about our guns. They’re talking about finding more. About manning all the watchtowers, doubling security. They’re talking about resisting and surrendering. There’s even some talk about picking up and moving north, away from the fight. It feels like people are just desperately grasping at anything. I think people are waiting for Eric, waiting for some kind of decision. They keep throwing out ideas, hoping he’ll catch one.

Eric listens and nods, but as the minutes turns into hours, people realize that Eric has no intention of making any decisions. He just listens. It creates frustration. I can see groups forming, some breaking part. It’s the same groups as usual. The ones who want to fight. Matt, Crypt, Rebok, Gunner, Pest, Anthony. The ones who want to flee or surrender. Norman, Lissa, Crystal, Franky. Some people get angry when they’re frightened, some people just stay frightened. I watch. I stand close to Eric when I can and listen as he does.

Matt comes over and talks to Eric. He looks angry. The four boys are behind him. I can see Pest is watching things carefully. He and I make eye contact for a second and the strength of his look makes me turn away. Crypt and Gunner and Rebok all look pissed off.

“Listen,” Matt says, “don’t you think we should be prepared for war?”

“What do you mean?” Eric asks.

Matt makes a hissing, exasperated sound. “You know, get out the guns, train, drill, increase our defenses.”

Eric shrugs. “Maybe,” he says. “The problem is that we can drill all we want, but we’ll never be able to stop them if they really decide to attack. If they roll up here looking for enemies, I’m not sure a town full of guns and trained people sends the right message. But you could be right. A show of force might save us.”

Matt looks confused and angry. He doesn’t seem to be listening.

“If you want peace, prepare for war,” he tells Eric, his lip twitching a little. I can tell he’s been planning to tell him that for an hour or two now. Once he’s said it, he smiles a little, but it’s an ugly little grin that doesn’t do much to hide his anger.

“I understand that,” Eric says. “But we also have to think about how we are perceived. If one side or the other thinks we might be a military danger or if they think we might be an effective military ally, we could get dragged into this quicker.”

“So we should do nothing?” Now Matt’s anger is naked. Behind him, the boys make a puffing sound. Only Pest is quiet, watching, his eyes intent on Eric. I can never decide whether Pest is an asset or a danger. I watch him from the corner of my eye as I pay attention to Matt and Eric.

“I’m not sure what we should do yet,” Eric answers calmly. “Maybe nothing. Maybe something. We shouldn’t make a decision based on fear. We should think about it.”

“Yeah, okay,” Matt agrees, but his eyes shine with a ferocity he’s not showing, or trying not to. He’s fairly new to us, but he’s angry. I can see he thinks he could do better. I can see him thinking that. Or maybe it was Pest that told him so. I glance again over to Pest. I’m upset to see him watching me again. He’s measuring me. I can see he doesn't know what to think. I’m uncomfortable and look away again. Pest gives me the chills. Matt shakes Eric’s hand and then walks away.

Finally people start leaving. Artemis comes over to me. Her face is swollen from crying and she still looks scared. I can tell she’s going to hug me, which I don’t like, but I know she needs it, so I relent. Her face is damp and hot against my neck. She squeezes my hand and tells me we’ll talk tomorrow. Randal the Vandal follows closely afterward, telling Eric they will talk again in the morning. He’s too exhausted to think anymore tonight. The Lodge slowly empties out.

It feels unfinished and not well done. I feel as frustrated as everyone else. I wish Eric would say something. I wish he was that kind of leader, someone to make us feel safe, or at least offer us some comfort. But at the same time, I don’t know what that would mean or what he could say that would be the truth. Eric has never been that way, as long as I remember. He just lets the world be what it is. He makes people see it. He lets people fear it. People don’t like him for it, not as much as they should.

At last, it’s just me and Eric in the Lodge. Eric sighs and sits down.

I sit down in the chair where Randal sat.

“Well, Birdie,” Eric says. “What do you think?” Eric always asks my opinion. He’s the only one.

I think about it. “I think Matt and the goon squad have it out for you,” I tell him.

Eric thinks about this and then sighs. “They’re just scared,” he says.

“I’m going to keep an eye on them,” I say. “Especially that Pest kid. He gives me the creeps.”

Eric smiles at me. “Be easy on him,” he tells me. “Pest has had a complicated life.”

Haven’t we all? I want to ask, but I don’t. I think Eric is too trusting of people, too willing to think of their point of view. I wish he was a little more careful, a little more selfish. I look over to him unhappily. “I think everything has changed.”

Eric looks at me and then scratches his beard. He releases a puff of air that is something like a sigh. Then he makes a sound, somewhere between humming and growling. “Well,” he says finally, “let’s sleep on it.”

Just like him, always waiting, always thinking. He doesn’t make decisions. I don’t know why I’m disappointed in him so much. I follow him out the door, wishing he was a little more something and a little less something else. I feel bad for wishing it, and the guilt follows me home all the way to our cabin. We eat some dry biscuits at the table and wash them down with mint tea. I keep waiting for Eric to say something, but he’s lost in himself, thinking. After we eat, we climb up into the loft and settle into our beds.

“Good night, squirrel,” I tell the darkness. His bedroom is right next to mine. We’re just separated by a few blankets hung from the ceiling.

“Good night, chipmunk,” he answers. It’s something Lucia started back on the island. It usually makes us laugh. Not tonight.

I listen to Eric breathe in the darkness. He’s not sleeping either.

It’s a long night.

7

Randy has been here for two days and all day, every day, the talk is war. I need a break. I need time to adjust. I need to think.

This is where I come to think.

On the eastern end of the lake, there’s a rusting old jeep. It’s being eaten away by water and wind and grass. The forest is creeping up through the floorboards and in through the windows. It’s an old Land Rover, a part of my past that I just barely remember. The man who owned it is gone now, dead. He was the first and only person I ever tried to kill. His name was Carl Doyle. I remember pointing the shotgun at him and pulling the trigger. I remember him floating face down in the lake. Eric tells me it wasn’t my fault, that the Worm had him, and I didn’t kill him. But I don’t think of it that way. I have some responsibility for his death. It was my finger that pulled the trigger. I still remember the shock of it and how Doyle staggered back. I don’t feel guilty exactly. I did it to save Eric, but the Land Rover always makes me feel a certain way. I look at the Land Rover and I feel something unpleasant. Something dark and brooding. A shadow falls on my heart, and I feel cold and vulnerable. I don’t know why this helps me think, but it does. I can think better. I feel freer somehow.

For the past two days, there hasn’t been any time for quiet thinking. It’s been arguments and anger and shouting and crying. Yesterday Eric agreed that both lookout towers should be manned toward the south. It’s been a long, long time since we used both. Right now, Patrick is standing up there, looking toward the south for signs of war, clouds of smoke, an approaching…what? An army? A band of soldiers? A diplomat with an entourage? None of us know what to expect. Fear is the only language we seem to be able to speak. All work has stopped, even though the fields need to be sowed. Our lives depend on planting those fields, but no one is doing it.

Randy tells us what happens when war comes. Burnt houses. Corpses in the street. Women screaming. Children crying. There doesn’t seem any reason for it. I mean, we haven’t done anything, but Randy says it won’t matter. He says that war is like a wildfire. It eats up everything it touches. Eric still likes to think that we can avoid it, but the more I listen to Randy, the more I see war as a kind of disease that’s spreading. Just like the Worm. And like the Worm, it doesn’t care what your opinion is. It will destroy you.

I sit down with my back to the tree. From here I sometimes imagine that I can hear the rust eat away at the Land Rover. In my imagination, it makes a sound like termites in wood. I will be glad when the truck is gone, when the earth takes it completely. Some things should pass away. Some things should be forgotten.

I breathe in deeply. The air coming over the lake is cold. There is no ice on the lake anymore, but it’s still frigid and dark. Through the pine trees, I can see the island, and I picture for a moment, without wanting to, the image of Lucia’s face: dark but smiling, and, for an instant, I can smell her again, feel her presence. The feeling is gone before I can remember her clearly. It’s just the beginning of her now, that’s all that’s left. I brush the thought away with my hand.

I should be thinking about this war. I know how to shoot, how to use my knife, how to bite and claw and punch and scratch. I won’t be taken prisoner and dragged from my home. I won’t let anything happen to Eric either. I feel in my heart that I’m ready to die. It’s a hard thought. Maybe it comes from the Land Rover. These are not just dark thoughts. I know it as I touch them. These things are necessary to prod and explore. If war really does come, I will be better at what I need to do if I give these thoughts time to bloom. If I don’t try to crush them out of fear.

I am ready to die. I don’t want to die. Who does? But I imagine if they come and there is fighting and they threaten Eric, I will have to fight. If I must fight, then I must be prepared to die. I can’t let the thought panic me. I can’t let it have that power. If war comes, then these are things to know. Like the rust on the Land Rover. Like the smell of the dead you can’t remember. Like the cold wind coming off the lake.

These are the things that will save me.

They are not pleasant.

8

On the way back, I run. I run as fast as I can. I feel like I outrun the wind. I feel I could run into the sky. I feel like I could disappear into the clouds. But I don’t. Instead it all comes rushing toward me faster, and I’m home again too soon and everything is just the same as it was before like I haven’t made a pact with war and death.

“You don’t know what’s coming, Eric,” Randy is saying as I come in the door. He’s sitting at our table, and Eric is sitting on the other side. “Everyone thinks they have nothing to do with this war and it comes anyway.”

Eric is quiet for a second, staring at the table like he sometimes does before he speaks, as if he’s rehearsing everything a few times before he opens his mouth. “Maybe,” he mutters finally. Even he seems unsatisfied with his response. I shut the door behind me softly.

“Look,” Randy says. “Both sides think they are inevitable. They think that it is only a matter of time before someone unites the people again. They both think they are the ones meant to do it. So they imagine there are only two sides to it.” Randy leans forward. His long nose seems to point right at Eric. “Don’t you see? If you don’t choose a side, each will assume you are choosing the other.”

Eric makes a sound somewhere between a huff and a laugh. “It’s absurd.”

“Is it?” Now I detect a little annoyance in Randy. He studies Eric for a second, sharply, incisively, almost violently. I haven’t seen Randy like this and it scares me and makes me angry at once. I step closer to Eric. But the look vanishes, or at least softens, and Randy continues. “Is it really absurd, Eric?”

“We just want to be left alone,” Eric insists, laying a hand flat on the table.

“And who do you trade your surplus food with?” Randy asks.

“We don’t have much surplus,” Eric says.

“But when you do, which side are you going to trade with?”

Eric opens his mouth and then closes it. “I see what you mean. Our actions will always choose a side, even if we don’t mean to.”

“You’re in this world,” Randy states, stabbing his finger down on the table. “You do have to choose. There’s no middle ground.”

Eric shrugs. He looks tired and demoralized. I move next to him and he turns toward me and smiles a little, faltering smile that makes my heart give out a little. Even in the midst of all this, he’s happy to see me. You can tell with people sometimes that they love you. I put my hand on his shoulder, and Eric turns back to Randy. “You’re probably right,” he says.

“I am right,” Randy says. “Listen, I know people.” He leans forward. “I can find people to talk with President Barber. You can join the Stars, and the Gearheads won’t dare come after you. I bet the Stars would send soldiers and everything to protect you.” Randy pauses and then adds quickly.

“Soldiers? Here?” Eric frowns. “I don’t know anything about the Stars. I can’t join them without knowing the first thing about them. I can’t put the Homestead at risk like that. I won’t. I have to try to stay out of this war.”

“You can’t.”

“Maybe,” Eric says again.

Randy and Eric look at each other for a few seconds, and then Randy gets up. He shrugs. “I tried,” he says, looking at me. I just hold his eyes because I don’t know what the correct response should be. “Don’t ever say I didn’t try,” he says to Eric. “It’s out of my hands now.” He shrugs before he leaves, shutting the door firmly behind him.

The silence continues for a long time.

9

After we finish a light dinner of bread and eggs, I tell Eric I’m tired and lean down and kiss the top of his head on the way to the ladder to the loft where we sleep. Eric puts his hand on the side of my head as I kiss him, but I can tell he’s distracted and won’t be sleeping that night.

I climb into the loft. It’s divided by thick wool blankets. I sleep on one side, Eric sleeps on the other. My head hurts from all the thinking. I collapse on my bed and try to stop thinking for a second, but it’s like trying to step off a racing wagon without falling. My mind won’t stop going. I’m remembering all kinds of things. I remember Carl Doyle and the violent jerk of the shotgun in my hands. I remember Eric lifting me up in his arms and telling me he won’t leave me again ever. Not ever, he says. I remember further back too, but these are just images: long roads and bleeding feet and the smell of smoke and fire and the shuffling sound of people with the Worm. I remember the light of the sky when the world was on fire. I remember the horrible, choking thirst, and the smoky, blood red skies.

I open my eyes to my dim share of the loft. It’s better than the darkness where the memories are rising. I reach over and light my bees wax candle. It gives off a weak, yellow light, but light is what I need. The darkness engenders too many memories. My room is filled with junk. Most everyone’s houses are like it, filled with memorabilia of a world that’s long vanished. In my room, there are parts of dolls, all faded; aged and ragged magazine covers of beautiful men and women, all long dead; plastic balls and figurines; ceramic cups and vases; old plastic toys, cars and trains and barnyard animals; stacks of my favorite books; old bottles of all colors and shapes; a radio that might still work if there was electricity; some albums for music I’ve never heard; wrappers from candy bars that haven’t been made in a decade; several maps; and a whole stack of National Geographic to remind me of the world that was and that might still be, somewhere. We all have rooms full of junk from the world that is no more. Sometimes it seems that that old world was only good at the production of junk, that junk is all that is left of it. Shards of emotions. Slivers of reality. Faded smiles on magazines that were never real to begin with.

But we too are from that world. We too are cast offs. Remainders. Like the wood that drifts ashore after the lake thaws. Maybe that’s why we have all this stuff. Not to remember, but to be with family.

Our family of plastic crap.

I want to laugh, but I don’t want to hear myself.

Instead I sigh and then rollover.

Below, I can hear Eric doing nothing at the table. I can hear him thinking, grinding out the possibilities, playing his endless games of what-if. It makes me feel protective of him. When I think of it that way, I feel something red hot inside me, furious and violent. I start falling asleep holding to that. Angry is a lot better than afraid.

10

“Come on, Tangerine!” I plead. The horse steps away and tosses her head. I can never get Tangerine to come to me. All I have to do is get her hooked up to Randy’s wagon, but it’s turning out to be a pain. Artemis is watching me and hiding her giggles badly with the back of her hand.

“It’s not funny,” I tell her.

At the sound of my voice, Tangerine walks back another few steps. Hitching her up to the wagon was my only job, and I can’t do it. Randy is leaving to warn other little communities of the war. All he asked was that I do this one simple thing. The thought of disappointing Randy irritates me.

I hold out my hand and make kissing noises, but Tangerine just tosses her head.

“Tangerine,” I whine. “Don’t be this way. Come on, I’m not going to hurt you!” When I hear Artemis giggle again, I turn my head and scowl at her.

Artemis bursts out with a laugh. “She’s a horse, you know,” she tells me. “She doesn’t understand what you’re saying.”

I narrow my eyes at her. “Do you want to do this?” I ask her. She forgets that I know she’s afraid of horses.

Artemis stops smiling immediately and shakes her head.

I’m about ready to try again when Randy suddenly appears, smiling his ivory smile. He looks at Tangerine and then at me and his smile grows larger, exposing even more of his teeth.

“Giving you trouble, is she?” he asks me. I shrug and shoot the horse a little glare of annoyance. Seeing this, Randy laughs his deep, booming laugh. “The thing about Tangerine,” he says, “is that she’s afraid of everything and everyone.” As if to prove his point, Tangerine backs up another step and whickers at us disapprovingly. Randy continues. “Thing is, just like people, there’s always something that defeats fear. You just got to find that thing. Then they do what you want them to do. “ Randy cups his hand like he’s holding oats and then holds it out toward Tangerine. Used to being fed by hand, Tangerine walks forward immediately, and Randy takes her bridle. Tangerine doesn’t even seem bothered that the hand was empty. Randy smiles down at me and hands me the bridle. “For Tangerine, that thing is her stomach.”

Once I have the bridle, Tangerine is easy to maneuver. As I hook her up to the wagon, a crowd gathers to say goodbye and see Randy off. When I’m done with Tangerine and get back to the group, Randy is saying goodbye and shaking hands. He smiles his toothy smile and winks at Artemis. She does that I’m-so-cute giggle and twists her body at the waist back and forth. Artemis steps forward and gives Randy a quick kiss on his cheek and says goodbye before she rushes away, apparently out of shyness, but I know that’s mostly a show. Guys like that sort of thing, don’t ask me why. Then Randy comes over to me and smiles but he doesn’t wink. He reaches into his jacket and takes out something and puts it in my hand. It’s a candy bar. It’s not chocolate, there hasn’t been chocolate for a long time now, but oatmeal and beet sugar, mostly, but there’s nuts too. A real treat. I smile at Randy.

“Make sure you share that with your Dad, kiddo,” he tells me. I frown.

“He’s not my Dad,” I tell him.

Randy shrugs and cocks his head to the side. “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…”

I don’t respond, but I narrow my eyes to let him know he’s on thin ice.

He just laughs and turns away, and I feel a little bad for getting irritated with him.  I follow and watch him leap up on the cart. He’s pretty nimble for an older guy. But then again, he’s all bones and muscle.

“Take care of yourself,” I tell him, hoping he’ll see it’s my way of letting him know I’m not really irritated with him.

“Always do,” he says. This time he does wink at me with those blue eyes of his and I can’t help but smile a little. “Up now, Tangerine!” He shakes at her reins and before I know it, the cart is clattering down the road and leaving the Homestead behind.

I don’t stay to watch him leave like a lot of people do. Instead I turn back toward our house, holding the candy bar. There’s work to do. The fields have to be plowed and planted soon, and the last few days have been a real distraction. When I get home, I hide the candy bar for later, when I can really savor it. I know I’m supposed to share it with Eric, but… well, I’m not perfect.

11

After a long day working fertilizer (shit) into the field, getting ready to plant our crops, we usually meet at the Lodge. This day is no different. The usual crowd is here: Norman, Crystal, Eric, Matt, the goon squad of Crypt, Gunner, Rebok, Pest, and Curt, Diane’s son, who’s just a year or so younger than me. Norman and Crystal are warming up some cider while the rest of us pull some benches up to the table and sit down. We all stink like a barn that hasn’t been cleaned in a week. If you don’t know what that’s like, let’s just say it’s only pleasant if you’re a maggot. The goon squad sits at another bench, poking and punching each other like they do constantly. Rebok is angry about something and the others are teasing him. Only Pest is quiet. He’s studying me, like he’s been doing ever since the news of the war. I turn away from his gaze. Spooky little freak.

There’s an iron cook stove in the corner of the Lodge, the kind covered with white enamel. It was already old when the Worm was around. It works perfectly though and even heats up the Lodge, so it’s perfect for us. We’re always on the look out for more of them. They’re way better than gold. Norman and Crystal are feeding the stove with good seasoned wood and setting up the kettle of cider. Nothing like cider to cut the taste of fertilizer (shit) out of your mouth.

Eric is sitting next to me, quiet. Across from him is Matt, fidgeting in place. Matt hasn’t been doing very well since Randy told us about the war. His eyes are dark and red. I’m sure he hasn’t been sleeping. He’s shifty and communicates in hisses and grunts, and I’ve seen him give Eric dirty looks when he thinks no one is watching. The great thing about not talking much and being practically invisible is that most people don’t notice me. I observe. I remember. I’ve told Eric that Matt’s got it out for him for some reason. Eric just looks sad and shrugs.

This night Matt is worse than usual. Probably because earlier, while he was spreading manure with a spade, he stumbled. Eric was right next to him, so, by instinct, he reached out and grabbed his arm to keep Matt from falling. Instantly, Matt pushed the helping arm away. He fell because of it, but he got up instantly, swearing, and brushing off fertilizer (shit) from his pants. The look he gave Eric made me reach for my knife. I calculated how long it would take me to reach Eric’s side, and if I should cut Matt or stab him. Luckily, none of that was necessary. Matt just hissed again and continued to work.

I was hoping that Matt would go straight home from the fields and cool down, but he didn’t. So he’s here now, giving Eric a baleful look with bloodshot eyes. I don’t like that look. I feel something’s going to happen. I move my hand closer to my knife, making sure I’m ready. Eric doesn’t seem to notice. He just sits there, thinking, as we wait for our cider. I’m ready, even if he isn’t. I calculate I can slice Matt to the bone in about the time it would take him to stand up. But I keep a nice look on my face, blank, unreadable. I hope.

Crystal and Norman come with cider and set it down on the table and the goon squad comes over to grab theirs and fight over it. I ignore them and keep my eyes on Matt. He’s taken his mug from Crystal, but he’s not drinking it, he’s just fidgeting with it and looking everywhere but at Eric. I put my hand on the warm mug of cider, and I smile and look down at it, but my attention is focused tight on Matt. If I see his body tense up like he’s about to do something, there’s going to be trouble. Suddenly I get shoved. Pest has sat right next to me, way too close.

“Sorry,” he says. He sidles away from me and then smiles at me. He has brilliant blue eyes, like Eric’s, but it’s a quizzical little thing, that smile. Gives me the heebie jeebies, as Franky would say.

I narrow my eyes at him but don’t say anything. I haven’t got time for Pest’s weirdness now. I turn my attention back to Matt. He still looks angry as hell. Norman sits beside him with that old man groan he uses whenever he sits or gets up. A couple from the goon squad laughs at the sound, I’m not sure who.

“You wait until you're my age,” Norman tells them with a severe look. “You’ll be making the same sounds, believe me.” The goon squad look away, abashed.

Eric lifts up his mug. “To another day,” he says.

“Another day of shit,” Rebok says and we all laugh—well, except for Matt—and lift our own mugs over the wooden table. Matt mumbles something while everyone drinks. I keep an eye on him over the lip of my mug. His hair is all crazy and messed up and his body is full of nervous energy, like he’s about ready to explode. Times like these I wonder why I’m the only one who sees this stuff.

“This is shit,” Matt mumbles finally.

Crystal looks over to him. “What’s gotten into you?”

Matt hisses, his whole body jerking up. My heart starts beating. When people get riled up like this, that’s when you don’t know what they’ll do.

“What’s gotten into me?” He makes another puff of a sound, the most perverse chuckle you can imagine. “This.” He waves his arm over the table. “Everyone acting like nothing’s changed, nothing’s changed. There’s a war out there and they’re coming for us!”

“Calm down now,” Norman tells him. “We know it too, but the fields have to be planted. Nothing we can do about that.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down, old man,” Matt hisses, his body tensing.

I feel Eric stiffen next to me. Most of us respect Norman, but Eric has always held him in much higher esteem than anyone else, I don’t know why.

“Matt,” Eric says in a flat voice. It’s the closest thing that Eric gets to menacing.

Matt snaps his attention away from Norman at the sound of his voice. “And you,” he says acidly. “You don’t do anything! What kind of leader does nothing?”

Eric just watches him and sets down his mug.

“What kind of man are you?” Matt asks. He stands up and my hand flies to my knife, but it’s not there! I search for it frantically, feeling my heart race. If Matt’s got a gun, this could be over before I have a chance to do anything!

“What do you want me to do?” Eric asks. He hasn’t even stood up himself. He’s sitting there, vulnerable, calm.

Matt swallows and looks around the room. I put my hand around my mug. Next plan. If he moves toward Eric, I can hit him with a mug of hot cider. I have to hit him as hard as I can in the nose. It might break his nose and scald his eyes long enough to make a difference. I scan the table. No knives, no forks, not even a damn spoon.

“You don’t know,” Matt says finally. “You don’t know what they do. You think we’re safe here? You think the war can’t touch us?”

“No, I don’t think that, Matt.” Eric’s voice is low and even.

“You know what these people are like?”

“Who?” asks Eric.

“These, these,” Matt splutters, “these soldiers! I know, I’ve seen them. After the Worm, they came in tanks and they just shot everyone.” Matt’s eyes are wild and he seems to be having a hard time talking but he can’t stop either. “They just shot everyone. I was thinking that it would pass, all of it would pass, so we just stayed in our house. I told them they’d be okay. But the soldiers came, they came into our house. They took everyone and we went into the streets and I said to be calm, just be calm, and they’d be all right. But that’s not what, that’s not who, that’s not what they’re like!” Matt throws his mug to the ground where it shatters into a hundred pieces. Norman and Crystal stand up and back away. Matt continues, his eyes wild and violent, fixed on Eric. “They shoot everyone!” he hissed. “Don’t you understand? They shot everyone! My son. My wife. My daughter. They shot them all like they were, they were nothing!” He trembles all over.

“I know,” Eric says. “I’ve seen it too, Matt.”

Matt shakes his head like he can’t believe it. “No, you don’t know.” He raises his hand and points at Eric. “If you knew, you would be getting ready. You’d be getting our guns. You wouldn’t be knee deep in shit all day!”

“Matt,” Eric says. “I know.”

“You don’t know,” he responds. But some of his crazy energy has dissipated. He’s shaking all over. He looks about ready to collapse. “They’ll kill us all.”

Eric stands up and walks around the table. “I know,” he tells Matt. He’s looking at him straight in the eyes. “I do know.”

Matt’s lips trembles like a child’s. His face collapses. “Then why don’t you do something?”

Eric reaches out and puts his hand on Matt’s shoulder. At first Matt takes a step back, but then he seems to lose the will to pull away and just stands there. “They killed everyone but me. I didn’t do anything and they killed everyone. Except me.” Matt dissolves like all the bones have left his body. His eyes are dark and empty, pits drilled into his skull. He looks like he’s going to collapse into a puddle and drain away into the earth. Eric takes him by the shoulders and gently leads him to Crystal.

“Take him home, will you?” he asks her. “He needs some sleep.”

“Sure, Eric, sure,” she says. She takes Matt from him who’s in some horrible daze and leads him out of the Lodge.

Pest sweeps up the pieces of the mug while we all silently finish our cider.

It’s Eric who speaks finally. “Please, let’s keep this to ourselves. Matt’s been through enough. Let him forget this.”

Looking around at us all, I have the feeling it’s only going to get worse from here on out.

12

As I’m leaving to follow Eric up the hill to our house, I feel a tug on my arm. I stop and turn around. It’s Pest. He’s got a smile on his face that makes me feel. Well, it makes me feel uncomfortable.

“Can I talk to you?” he asks. His voice is high like a kid’s, but there’s something adult in it. It gives me the creeps. I tell Eric I’ll meet him at home, and then turn back to Pest with my arms crossed. When Eric is out of sight, Pest takes a deep breath and lets it out slow. Pest has this dark, curly hair that I don’t think has ever been combed. I think he cuts it himself because it’s uneven and messy. It looks like something’s died an unpleasant death on his head. He has a small little nose and dark eyebrows that make his eyes even more menacing. I notice again the glimmering blue of his eyes.

“What?” I ask, crossing my arms.

He doesn’t answer, but just holds out his hands. It’s my knife. I snatch it out of his hands instantly, a flash of anger shooting through me. I should’ve known it was this little jerk!

“Don’t get pissed,” he tells me. “I did it for your own good.”

“Is that right?” I narrow my eyes at him.

“You’re too protective of Eric,” he says. “You would’ve pulled that on Matt and then things would’ve gone very badly.”

I open my mouth to deny it, but the little shit is right so I just shut up.

“Eric is more capable than you give him credit for,” Pest says to me. “He can handle himself. You should trust him.”

“You should mind your own business,” I tell him. Nothing worse than being told things you know are true by someone younger than you. And someone who you don’t like. It sucks.

Pest just shrugs at me and turns away. He walks away into the dark.

“Touch my knife again and see what happens,” I say into the night.

“Buenas noches,” I hear, already far away.

Spanish. A fleeting, unclear memory of Lucia zips painfully through my mind before I can fend it off.

Creepy jerk.

13

The view from the top of the second lookout is one of my favorites. It looks down over a green carpet of pine trees to the south and west. There’s a lake far in the south west too, like a blue eye staring upward. I don’t know the name of that place. I’ve never been very far from the Homestead, at least not that I remember clearly. I come up here myself sometimes to watch the horizon or the clouds. Sometimes I draw. Sometimes I just sit and look and listen to the quiet.

But I’m not alone today. Artemis is manning the lookout. We had stopped using this lookout like four or five years ago. We didn’t see the point anymore. We don’t get as many visitors as we used to. Not many bandits and gangs come this far north. It’s a long way to ride or walk to steal carrots. Once word of the war came, though, we thought we should use it again. Artemis volunteered to watch three times a week. She gets bored, so she begged me to come to visit her.

She’s standing with her elbows on the banister, looking lazily out to the south. She’s like the portrait of boredom. If I had my drawing stuff with me, I’d have to draw her, but I left it at home. I try to remember so I can draw it later. “Hey, Kestrel,” Artemis says, without looking toward me.

I make a hmmm sound to show I’m listening.

“You ever think that we’re better off now than we were before? I mean, the world, not just us, but like the whole world?” I can tell it’s a rhetorical question so I just wait for her to continue. She pauses for a second. “I was talking to Beth the other day and she was telling me all about the wars she knew. There were two World Wars, I guess, before the Worm. And then another one in a place called Korea. And another one in some place called Vietnam.” Artemis yawned and then leaned back and stretched. “I guess a lot of people got killed. Millions. I can’t even imagine a thousand people, let alone a million, can you?” Again, rhetorical, so I’m quiet. Artemis is gazing up toward the sky now. “I mean, yeah, we work a lot and sometimes we’re hungry and it can get pretty friggin boring, but at least we’re not dropping bombs on each other, right?” Artemis turns away from the balcony and comes over to sit next to me. “I know all the older people talk about the Worm being a plague and a catastrophe, but I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. Right? I mean, sometimes I really like the world just the way it is. I wouldn’t want to go back, even though all those people died. Do you think I’m a bad person for thinking that way?”

She looks at me with genuine concern. Artemis is always worried about being seen as a really nice person. Being nice for her is more important than anything else. So this isn’t a rhetorical question.

“You’re not a bad person,” I say.

Artemis smiles and nudges me with her shoulder, which is the closest she can expect to a hug. “Sometimes,” she says, yawning again, “sometimes I think it’s beautiful here, don’t you?”

We look out over the pine trees. The sun hits the lake and it shines like a golden coin.

It’s a rhetorical question, but I answer her anyway. “Very beautiful.”

14

I’m tired from planting all day, but I want to see Franky anyway. There’s been a lot of time in the fields lately. Nothing but work and sleep gets old after a while. Besides, I’m tired of talking with Eric, especially lately. Everyone else has kind of moved on from the war talk, but Eric won’t stop thinking about it. Every night, it’s the same thing. He stares off into space, his mind grinding away at the problem while I try to eat. Some people get annoyed when people eat with their mouth open. I get annoyed when you think too much while you eat. It doesn’t make a sound, but it’s way more irritating than chewing with your mouth open.

I’m filthy when I knock on the door. I’m happy when I have to wait because that means that Franky is alone. Diane and Amber must be out, probably down to the farm helping Crystal. Sure enough, Franky comes to the door alone and smiles when he sees me. He stands back from the door.

“Well look who it is?” I smile at him. “Come on in,” Franky says. He knows better than to wait for me to answer him. That’s one of the things that I like about him. He doesn’t expect me to talk much. “I have something I think you’ll like.”

I smile wider as he leads me into the backroom of their house. Most houses here are the same. It’s one big room without windows. Sometimes there are sheets hung up to separate one part of the house from the other. Sometimes, like at our house, there’s a loft. But it doesn’t change much from that. We’re not really the greatest at building houses yet. We don’t even put windows in them because winters are too cold. We learned that lesson pretty hard the first few winters. We’d much rather be warm than have a little bit of pale light.

Franky’s house is a little different. He built a wall that divides it almost exactly in two, a front part and a rear part. In the rear is his workspace. Diane and Amber are crammed into the front part. I think that’s why Diane and Amber spend so much time in other parts of the Homestead. There’s not much room for them here. It’s mostly beds and all the plastic junk we collect. I step over a faded yellow plastic duck and then through the sliding wooden door into Franky’s workshop.

I love this place. First off, I love the smell. It smells like grease and smoke and steel. To me, it’s the smell of creativity. There are shelves everywhere crammed with stuff from the old world: radios, televisions, mysterious black boxes, microwave ovens, chainsaws, little engines half-taken apart, toy cars, springs, screws, and nails, rubber bands, twist-ties, and ghostly plastic bags stuffed to the brim with other plastic bags. Then there’s shelves upon shelves of tools: screwdrivers, wrenches, hammers of all sizes, tools I don’t recognize and tools that might not even be tools at all. Something in me takes a lot of delight in all that stuff. I love the idea of getting in there, seeing how things works, fixing things, making my own things. I get excited. It’s like pure inspiration for me in here. I must have drawn this place from memory like a hundred times.

“Come here,” Franky says. “Look.” He leads me over to his workbench, which he keeps surprisingly neat considering the rest of the place.

On the workbench is a weird contraption. I feel my heart jump inside me, even though I’m really tired. If there’s one thing I love, it’s a contraption, the weirder the better. On the lip of the table is a crank, just like the one Crystal uses to grind up deer meat. The crank is hooked to an axle that turns a rubber belt. Connected to the belt is some aluminum thing bolted down to the table. There are wires running from this to a turntable. There’s a record on the turntable. I see where this is going and my heart races with excitement.

“Go ahead,” Franky says. “Crank it up!”

I should have been tired form working all day, but I forget about that as I leap to the table. I start cranking and the record player starts spinning. I look up at Franky’s whose eyes are sparkling.

“Gotta go faster than that!” he tells me. “Really give it a spin!”

I put my back into it. Then I hear it. It’s faint, but I can hear it. Distant music, like it’s playing in another house. Another time even. Ghost music. The cranking makes more noise than the music and I’m starting to sweat, but I don’t care. Is there anything better than music in the whole world? Then I hear singing and words, distant, faint, beautiful…

Mama, take this badge off of me

I can’t use it anymore

It’s getting dark, too dark to see

I feel I’m knockin on heaven’s door

I’m sweating and my arms are burning from turning the crank, and even though I’m trying hard, I’m slowing down. The music goes into slow motion and the notes start to stretch out longer than they should. It still sounds great.

“Here!” Franky cries. “Let me take a turn at it!”

I step back and Franky steps in and starts cranking. The music picks up speed and I get closer to the turntable to listen.

Knock, knock knockin on heaven’s door

Knock, knock knockin on heaven’s door

Knock, knock knockin on heaven’s door

I hear a flapping sound and the music stops. When I look over, I see the belt has slipped off the aluminum block. I look over to Franky and we both laugh, sweating from the exertion of cranking. We laugh for a bit before Franky starts coughing. When he stops, he smiles again.

“Well,” he says. “It ain’t much now. I got to figure out a way to amplify the sound and keep the power steady.”

“You need a battery,” I tell him.

“Don’t I know it,” he answers. “Batteries are hard to come by.”

“What is that?” I ask him, pointing to the aluminum block that the rubber belt was hooked to.

“Aren’t we talkative today?” Franky teases. I blush and frown a little, but thankfully Franky just smiles and answers my question. “That’s an alternator,” he says. “You can find these things in old cars and trucks. If you spin the wheel here, it generates electricity. Well, if you’re lucky it does. I imagine most of them have rusted to shit, excuse my French. I had to re-build this one to get it to work. And it doesn’t make much energy, really.”

I look at it, fascinated. I’m not like a lot of the old people who talk about things they used to have back when, you know, before the Worm, and how they wished they could have it just one more time…but I can see the real use of this! I imagine all those cassettes I have, being able to play them whenever I wanted. Hours and hours of pure, beautiful music! Oh yeah, this could come in real handy. I bend over and look in the alternator. I can see the copper wires in there and I remember some lessons that Eric gave me on electromagnetic fields from those books he hoards.

“It’s a magnet,” I say.

Franky’s eyes open in surprise. “There’s one in there, all right,” he says. “If you spin copper around a magnet—“

“You get an electric field,” I finish.

Franky wiggles his eyebrows at me. “Bullseye, kiddo.”

I feel a thrill. I love when Franky calls me kiddo. Maybe Eric’s lessons aren’t such a waste of time after all.

Then Franky gets serious. “Hey, look,” he says, “do you know what Eric’s going to do about this war thing?”

I look at him and frown and shake my head.

“He doesn’t mention it, huh?”

I feel uncomfortable suddenly with these questions, like I’m talking behind Eric’s back.

Franky smiles at me and stops being serious. “Hey, do me a favor? I want this to be a surprise for Diane for her birthday, so don’t tell anyone about the music, okay?” He looks at me, thinking. “Maybe you could help me out once in a while?”

I smile from ear to ear.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Franky says.

I go home and can’t stop smiling or thinking about that music. I don’t even mind when Eric doesn’t say a word during our dinner of venison stew.

15

I’m so exhausted from work that I can’t eat. Eric and I are sitting on the hill, overlooking the newly-planted fields. The goon squad walks around the field banging on metal pans to scare away the birds. Queen trots next to Pest and barks whenever she sees a bird or a squirrel. What we need is more dogs, but they’re hard to come by. Everyone keeps their dogs, especially the females. We’re lucky enough to have Queen. I watch as she lifts her head suddenly and then Pest points and she goes leaping away, tongue out, happy as can be. I guess Pest has been teaching her to hunt, and it seems as if she likes it.

Eric points at my sandwich to remind me to eat, but like I said, I can’t. Where my appetite should be, there’s only a dull stone. I don’t know how long it’s been, getting up at dawn, working in the fields until it’s too dark to see, and then going home and collapsing for a few hours before I have to do it again. Eric could probably tell me. He’s the one who still keeps track of the days on a calendar that he makes himself every year. He makes a copy for everyone. He gets me to draw for it, which is fun, I guess. I draw stuff like birds and dogs and people in the fields or a pine tree after a snowstorm, stuff like that. I like the drawing, but the calendar itself seems kind of useless. Who cares what day of the week it is? Who cares what year it is? Just a few months ago, Eric got excited because, he said, it was the new millennium, the year 2000. But for me, 2000 is just a dumb number. Right now, tired like I am, I don’t care if it’s Sunday or Thursday. I must be feeling grumpy. The calendar is useful when it comes time to planning for the seasons or remembering important dates, like someone’s birthday. I don’t know, I need to rest.

I lay down in the grass with a groan. Eric watches me with a frown.

“You really should eat, Birdie,” he says. I close my eyes.

“Don’t worry about me,” I answer. I’m so comfortable, I wish he’d shut up and let me rest.

I feel Eric move a little, in irritation. “You’d feel better if you ate.”

“I’ll feel better if you stop acting like my father.” Even as I say it, I hear it coming out a lot meaner than I meant it. I sound spiteful and cruel and I regret it immediately. There’s silence from Eric. In my mind, I imagine he’s looking away, hiding the hurt I know he feels. I feel ashamed of myself, and I’m thinking about what I can say to say I’m sorry without having to say sorry, which is a little too complicated for my tired mind, when I hear Eric get up and brush off his pants.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he says. If I didn’t know him so well, I would think he didn’t care a bit about what I said. But I do know him and I can detect how I’ve hurt him.

I sit up, wanting to say I didn’t mean anything by it, but Eric is already too far away to stop and I sigh and lay back down. I don’t know why I say things like that or why I feel that way toward Eric sometimes, angry, but for no reason. I wish that I didn’t make things so complicated. Sometimes I wish that Lucia had lived and so hadn’t their baby, and Eric had a real child and no one would assume that I was his daughter. It would make things clear. Even between us. Then I would be. I would be…I don’t know who I’d be. I'm too tired to think about it.

Without wanting to, really, I imagine Eric and Lucia, holding a baby, and it’s obviously their baby. It has Eric’s eyes and Lucia’s hair, and they’re happy and laughing. But I don’t feel altogether happy about it. I feel strange and distant and even a little angry. I’m a horrible person. Sometimes I think I’m relieved that they died. Maybe if they hadn’t, I wouldn’t have a place with Eric any longer, not with my frizzy black hair and brown eyes and scrawny, black body. I breathe in deeply and I’m so ashamed of thinking such a horrible thing. It’s like a terrible weight inside me, like I’ve swallowed something unwholesome that’s rotting in me. I loved Lucia. But the horrible feelings continue and I open my eyes and sit up.

I need to run.

I’m tired, but I have to run. Actually, I’m more than tired. I’m whatever comes after that: beat, bushed, spent, wasted, exhausted. But like I said, I have to run. I get up and launch myself forward, away from Eric, away from the goon squad, away from everything. As I pick up speed, jogging down toward the fields, I feel lighter. I don’t really feel my legs. They’re just moving underneath me. By the time I reach the fields and I’m running past the goon squad and ignoring Pest watching me, I’m not tired at all. I’ve gone beyond tired into some other land. I feel light and invulnerable, so I run faster. I run past the farmhouse where Crystal is cooking. Artemis is probably with her, maybe even watching me through the window, though I don’t turn my head to see. I run past the fences which Norman and Anthony are fixing. I wave and they stop for a second to wave back. People are used to me running, so they don’t think anything of it.

I run south and pick up speed on the flat, dirt road headed toward the southern watchtowers. I’m not even out of breath yet and I feel like wind, like there’s nothing to my body at all. So I run faster and harder. I feel the wind in my hair and the dark thoughts are burning out of my head like a putrid fog. It feels better than good, it feels divine. I close my eyes and feel my heart beating blood all through my body, my breathing coming in and out and feeding my body like it was a huge, red hot furnace. When I reach the woods, the trees flash by on each side of me. The feeling is incredible and it’s like I can do this forever. I can feel it burning away my thoughts and my feelings, my shame, anger, and confusion. It burns me all away until I’m just fire itself scorching over the land.

When I reach the watchtower, I do a quick U-turn and wave up at Fiona who’s taking her turn at watch. She waves down at me as I pick up speed, heading back to the Village. I plan on running as fast as I can straight to bed, my head cooked clean of all its thoughts so I can sleep in peace. Just the thought of my bed makes me pick up speed again.  I run by the same fields and wave again at Norman and Anthony, but I don’t wave at the goon squad as I zip past. When I start going uphill, I run faster, just for the challenge. Now my lungs are starting to hurt and my legs are starting to burn. The pain is nice. Not all pain is bad. This is good pain. It tells me I’m alive and capable because I run through it. I blast uphill, curving in and out of the winding paths we’ve made around our log homes. I almost knock over Beth as she comes out of her house, but I jump to the side just in time.

By the time I get to our house, the burning is so intense that I have to walk around the house, gasping for air. I lean over, and then I feel my consciousness swerve a little. I feel sick. I lean against the house. Sweat is starting to drip off me. I watch them make little wet circles in the dirt at my feet. I think somewhere in my head that it was pretty stupid to run like that when I was exhausted already. I should’ve eaten something. I should’ve just gone to bed. But I’m stubborn. I feel somehow vindicated by my pain, like it’s right that I should feel it and it makes me strong. I stand up and laugh, but I don’t quite know why. It’s like I’m two people. One is very tired and she’s watching what the other one is doing. Luckily for me, this other one stumbles in the house and climbs up the ladder into the loft and before I know it, the both of us are laying down and one of us is laughing, but I don’t know which.

I sleep like the dead.

16

I dream I float on a sea of fire. There are creatures trying to drag me down, down to some horribly hot center where I will be consumed. I open my mouth to scream, but I’m not human anymore. I don’t have lips, just skin where my mouth should be. Something grabs me, and I sink in the fire.

I begin to burn.

17

I am in the back fields when I hear the screams. I stop what I’m doing and stand up tall, listening. I hear it again. An unnatural scream like someone’s being burned alive. You can tell when a scream is given out of anger and when it’s given out of terror and pain. This is terror and excruciating pain. My heart beats in me, and, for a second, I’m confused. Then I see Eric rush by me, running toward the screaming. I follow behind, holding my hoe like a spear. I catch up to Eric soon and then pass him, running toward the barn where the scream is coming from. When we get there, we see a knot of people in front of the barn struggling with something.

From the middle of the crowd comes another scream, and then I see Rebok scrambling away on his back. He’s covered with blood. But the knot of people doesn’t break away. They’re struggling with someone. Rebok starts screaming again, looking at himself. Blood is coming from where his shoulder meets his neck. Rebok is holding his neck like he’s protecting some precious thing. I’ve never seen so much blood, so dark, so liquid, spurting out like water between Rebok’s fingers. I feel woozy and just stand there, holding my hoe. I don’t know what to do or what is happening. I feel sick and uncertain and small.

Then suddenly there’s another cry. This time the knot of people break apart and back away. It takes me a second to recognize who it is: Crypt. Except he’s standing strange, hunchbacked, his hands held out like claws. His eyes are dark holes and his face is streaked, as if he’s been crying blood. His mouth is dark with blood and so are his hands. I step back when I see that there’s something in his eyes, wriggling. Crypt makes a gurgling sound. He turns his head, but strangely, like he’s listening to something in the sky. Blood drips from his hands.

It’s been a long time, but we remember. It comes back in a horrible flash.

The Worm.

The air is shattered by gunshot. Crypt’s head snaps back and he stands up real straight for a second. He teeters two steps forward, like some freaky dance move, and then collapses in a heap. When he falls, we can see the back of his head is missing. There is something writhing there in his skull. Something white. Moving.

I lose it. I’m on my knees, heaving up everything in my stomach and then some, retching and feeling my stomach cramp painfully. I feel a hand on my shoulder. When I look up, I see Eric. He’s holding the gun. His lips are moving but I don’t understand. He could be speaking Chinese. I don’t understand.

The Worm.

I stand up. I’m not the only one stunned. None of us are right in the head. Matt is there, holding a bleeding hand. His mouth is open like he’s screaming, but there’s no sound coming out. Pest is there, not moving, staring at Crypt, dumbfounded. Gunner is standing behind Rebok, who is crying and holding his neck. I see other people running toward us. Norman, Crystal, Diane and her little girl, Amber. The girl has never seen the Worm. She doesn’t know. I look at her. I wonder what she’s thinking, what she could possibly understand. From the corner of my eye, I watch Rebok slump over and I know he’s dead just from the look of him and I think, clearly, we have to burn him now. Right now. I don't think anything kindly of him. I just want to burn him to ashes with what’s left of Crypt. Amber starts to cry and Diane grabs her.

Then sound comes back, like a rush, suddenly.

“Are you all right?” It’s Eric, still holding my shoulder. I nod. “Get up!” he tells me. I don’t know why he’s so adamant about that until I see I’m on my knees in my own vomit.

I stand up, staring around me in shock.

No one knows what to say.

Matt starts crying. “You have to kill me,” he says. He’s holding his bleeding hand. He keeps repeating, “You have to do it. You have to.” We just stand there, doing nothing, frozen in the horror of our memory.

18

In the Lodge, we argue about the Worm. It’s back, we all agree with that, but it’s not the same. No one remembers seeing them squirm out of people’s heads. None of us remember strange white eyes, writhing with worms. There are even long, thin, pale worms snaking out of Crypt’s ears; when we moved his body, his mouth opened and a black river of bile gushed out of him, bubbling with white grubs, like maggots but thinner, with tiny hooks on one end. The smell of ammonia was horrible and more than nauseating. It caused the stomach to clench. We burned Crypt right where he died, covering him with seasoned wood to make it burn as hot as possible. Then we threw Rebok on the fire too while it was burning hottest. We didn’t even say anything over the bodies. No one thought of it.

There was some whispering about shooting Matt and throwing him on the fire too, but no one dared do more than suggest it. No one but Matt himself who just repeated, “Kill me. You have to do it. You have to.” We were stunned and frightened and I watched as the people I knew began to look at each other with mistrust and fear. Who else had it? Who could we trust? It was horrible to see my community splinter so quickly. I thought we were loyal to each other, but just one glimpse of the Worm and we were already talking about murder.

Now, after burning the two bodies, we gather in the Lodge. People are angry and frightened. “This isn’t like what I remember,” says Crystal. “I don’t remember seeing any worms. It was just a name.”

“I saw some worms,” says Norman. “But nothing like what I saw come out of that kid.”

“Who cares what they look like?” cries Peter. “It’s the Worm, isn’t it? What’re we going to do about it?”

People are quiet for a second. We understand Peter is really talking about Matt. Are we going to kill him? Matt slouches on a bench, his hand wrapped in an old shirt. I sit uncomfortably in the silence. I don’t know what to do either.

“We have to be careful,” Eric says finally. His voice is measured and quiet. He’s not angry. He’s not scared. He’s reasonable. People look at him and wait for him to continue. “Norman and Crystal are right,” he says finally, standing up. “This isn’t like the Worm that I remember. It’s different. That means we have a lot to learn.”

“It’s been gone for so long,” moans Luna. “Why did it come back?” This is less of a question than a cry of despair. Luna is just a little younger than me. Her face is streaked with tears.

“It could have been in the forest all these years,” Norman speculates. “Maybe it’s just been out there all this time. Changing.”

“What does it matter?” asks Matt. It’s the first time he’s spoken since the incineration. “It’s here. We can’t do anything about it. We do what we had to do then. We get rid of the infected and take care of ourselves.” He holds up his bandaged hand. “I’m infected. You have to take care of this. You have to kill me.”

More uncomfortable silence. Matt has only been with us for a couple years, but he’s part of us now. He’s family. Looking over at him, his eyes like knots of darkness, his body loose and careless, I realize that Matt wants to die. I always sensed something strange and violent about him, but I had never been able to put my finger on it. Now I know. Matt is one of those people who secretly want to die. He’s relieved his life is over. Some of the old people are like that. They get closer to death and they’re happy about it.

“He’s right,” Eric says, to everyone’s surprise. “We have to take care of ourselves and each other.” He moves to stand next to Matt. He puts his hand on Matt’s shoulder. “That means we move the infected into one house and we watch them, twenty-four seven.” He stands taller. “That means from now on, we boil all the water. No one swims in the river.” The Worm used to get spread in the water. I kind of remember the people who had the Worm walking down into the river to die. The Worm made them do it, made them thirsty. They would drink themselves to death. Then the Worm would crawl out of the corpse, infect the water, and when anyone took a drink…

“Franky and Wesley,” Eric says. “We’re going to need a lot of boiled water. Can you get a system going?” They nod, even though usually they don’t like to work together. “Crystal, Diane, and Fiona,” Eric continues. “We need to set up a place for Matt and anyone else who shows symptoms of the Vaca B.” It’s been a long time since I’ve heard that term. Vaca B is the more scientific name for the Worm. Leave it to Eric to resurrect that from the grave. Eric continues. “The Worm seems to have changed, so maybe the symptoms have as well. Did you notice anything about Crypt before this happened?” Eric directs this at Pest, who is quiet and uncharacteristically unfocused. Pest looks up, surprised. He’s holding a hat in his hand, and I recognize it as Crypt’s, a baseball cap with the old Red Sox logo on it. I never pegged Pest as sentimental.

Pest stands up and takes a deep breath. “He was sick last night and the night before,” Pest recounts. “I could see he had a fever, but I thought it was just a flu. I saw he had red eyes, but I didn’t think it was…anything. I didn’t see him this morning. Next time I saw him…” Pest doesn’t finish the sentence.

Eric nods at Pest. “Two days,” Eric says, as if to himself. For a second, I think Eric is going to drift away again into his thoughts but after a second, he continues. “So the symptoms don’t seem to be too different. High fever. Red eyes.”

“The eyes bleed,” Diane adds. “At the last stages, they start to bleed from the eyes.”

People don’t really need to be reminded of that. No one has forgotten that, not even me.

“Remember,” Eric says to them. “Most of the people who had the Worm were harmless. They just went into a catatonic state and eventually died. Only a few of them cracked and became dangerous. I want to make this clear to everyone. We are not going to kill anyone until they become a danger. Is that clear?”

There’s a lot of nodding to this and some audible agreements. No one wants to kill anyone anyway, so it’s an easy thing to agree to. I imagine the only person who is disappointed is Matt.

“Did they always die when they got the Worm?” This question comes from Artemis. She’s like me, a little too young to remember the Worm distinctly.

The question hangs in the air. Because if Crypt could get it, any of us could have it. Maybe we are all going to get sick. I feel a knot in my stomach thinking of the worms that could be inside me already, tunneling their way up to my brain, attaching themselves with their hooks into my skull. I shudder and try to push the thought away.

“People didn’t always die,” Eric says. There’s some intake of breath at that because everyone has been told forever that there was no cure for the Worm. Whoever had it, died. That’s what I’ve always been told. I look up at Eric like everyone else, waiting for a further explanation. “I know a woman named Good Prince Billy. She says she saw a couple people come through the Vaca B. She says it was rare, but it happened. She took care of them, and, somehow, they made it. A couple.”

Good Prince Billy. Eric’s pen pal. He still gives letters to Randy to hand to her. He’s got some letters from her too, I remember. As usual, Eric surprises me. He always knows more about a situation than he tells me. It’s a little irritating.

No one else is irritated though. Eric has given them some hope. Matt is the only one who doesn’t seem to appreciate it. As the crowd breaks up, Diane and Fiona lead him out of the room. His head is hung low and he looks defeated. He lets himself be guided like some kind of prisoner going to his own execution, and he knows he deserves it. It gives me the chills, and I realize just how badly damaged Matt is. All this time with us and he seemed normal to me, at least as normal as you could be. But I see now that all that was like some illusion and now Matt has emerged, a man who craves his own death and believes to his core that he deserves it. It’s too disturbing to look at him, so I turn away.

It’s not until everyone’s gone that I notice Artemis is still sitting on the benches with her face in her hands. Eric motions for me to get her. I’m irritated. She’s always crying, and I don’t feel like comforting her. I want to go home with Eric and talk with him and think about what to do. I don’t have time to be holding her hand. I know I’m not being a very good friend, but I sigh and move over to the benches and put my hand on her shoulder. I give her a little shake, not too gently either.

“Come on, Artemis, let’s go,” I tell her impatiently.

She looks up at me. Her eyes are deeply bloodshot. Her face is so pale, she’s almost blue and there are dark bags under her eyes.

“I don’t feel good,” she says, her lips quivering. I can feel the heat coming from her where I stand.

Tears, pink with blood, flow down her face.

19

Two days later, we have three quarantine houses. Ten people are sick with the Worm. After helping Franky with the water sterilizing furnace, Wesley came down with the fever. During dinner at the Lodge, Sam threw up. In the middle of a puddle of beans was a dark knot of pale worms. Anthony was next. He stumbled in the house with a fever so high, he didn’t even make it through the night. We burned him just at dawn. Glenda and Brian, both my age, were next. I used to have a crush on Brian when I was like fourteen. We kissed once behind the farmhouse, a quick, dry kiss, thrilling, embarrassing. It was hard to see him shaking in his fever, dark crimson tears on his face. Peter collapsed in the fields. Beth fainted while she was filling a tin bucket with water. Her fever is so high, it has burnt her away. She’s mostly a skeleton now, although we have a little hope for her because her eyes aren’t red at all. Both Patrick and Fiona are sick. They came in together, both trembling from fear and sickness. We all take turns to help, hoping that no one will die when it’s our turn to care for them.

We go in the quarantine houses with gloves on and long shirts. We go in pairs or threes. We go with guns loaded with precious ammunition. One person feeds them. The other person watches, hand on their gun.

No one has cracked. Yet.

20

I am there when Artemis dies. She didn’t last long. She gave up fast. The fever hit her so hard, she couldn’t stand up to it. Her face was slick with sweat. I tried to help her as best I could, but after a while, she just wanted water. And when I gave it to her, she twisted in her bed like it hurt. She coughed up dark, almost black, blood. Worms wriggled from her mouth. I wiped them away, trying to force down my revulsion.

When she dies, it’s sudden. One moment she’s with me, breathing hard, a low rattling sound. Then she stiffens. Her legs wave back and forth as if she’s trying to swim through dark waters. She makes a strangled sound. Her jaw clenches. She bites twice at the air, her teetch clacking loudly together.

And then she relaxes. By the time she looks human again, she’s dead.

She looks peaceful. I feel glad. Her fever was so high and she was so weak, I feared her mind would crack. I was so afraid I would have to kill her. I feel ashamed for feeling glad, and then that too vanishes. I don’t feel anything looking down at her. I thought I would feel something, but I’m only tired.

21

Matt dies a few hours after Artemis. He doesn’t go as peacefully. He cries out. He kicks. He thrashes in his bed. He shouts out names we’ve never heard.

But eventually he dies without cracking.

We are able to burn him on the same pyre as Artemis. I watch my best friend burn with a man who was practically a stranger. I don’t feel anything. I don’t cry.

Maybe there’s something very wrong with me.

22

Peter dies before the pyre cools. Patrick too. His wife, Fiona, is right beside him. She’s in the thralls of the fever and clings to his body and we can’t separate them. We decide to let Fiona have him. Mostly we’re afraid of Fiona scratching us. She just holds to Peter in fevered desperation. We expect her to die in a few hours. We’re watching her closely.

Somehow Beth is still alive.

But now we have to keep someone around all the time.

Our guns are loaded and ready.

23

Wesley is the first one to crack.

One minute he is laying there and the next he’s standing on the bed. His eyes are dark with blood and worms wriggle at the corner of his eyes. He leaps toward us, but Eric is ready.

Eric shoots him three times. The third time strikes him flat on the head as Wesley hurtles toward us. He lands at our feet. Pale worms slither from his head and wave in the air, searching for something to cling onto.

I look up at Eric and see something I haven’t seen in him for years.

Holding the smoking gun, he looks sure and solid.

He almost looks comfortable.

24

Beth dies while I’m sleeping.

When they move her out of the bed, they find worms under the blankets. More pour from her ear when they lifted her, pearly white slithering masses. There wasn’t much left of her, they tell me.

The worms ate her hollow.

25

When Fiona dies, Patrick is mostly a carcass of worms. The smell is like pure death, distilled, horrible. We can’t wrap them both up in blankets. Eric vomits dragging them out to the pyre. I gag, but I haven’t eaten enough in the last couple days, so there’s nothing to come up. We struggle with Franky to get the couple on the pyre.

In death, Fiona still clings to Peter. Her arms clutch at his chest, her leg wrapped around his waist.

In life, they were always fighting about something. When you spoke with them, they complained about each other. They always said how miserable they made each other. Everyone said they should just give up on each other, live separately. After a while, they were a joke to us, like the worst couple you could imagine.

Only now, as I watch them burn, Fiona embracing Peter even in death, that I realize they loved each other profoundly.

Still I can’t cry.

I want to cry. I do.

But there’s nothing there.

26

As soon as we burn one person, it seems that another person takes their place. The days seem neverending. There are more fires, more bodies, more fevers. When I get home, I can’t stop washing. I heat up bucket after bucket of water. I fill the old porcelain tub that Eric dragged into the house a few years ago. I fill it with water that has been boiling for hours. I climb in when it’s still scathing hot and steaming. It burns me, but I don’t care. I scrub and rinse and scrub again. When I finally get out, my skin is sore and hot and steaming.

I can’t stop imagining the worms. If I lay still, I think I can feel them inside me. When I close my eyes, I see them, palely writhing, twisting up to my eyes and ears and brain.

In my dreams, I am being pushed toward a black void. I step on worms. The void is inescapable. It’s in whatever direction I run. Coming from the void is the sound of a song from long ago, the sound of my mother’s voice, but I’m terrified. Just before I wake, I fall toward the distant singing.

27

A week after Crypt’s death, we have burned almost half of the people I used to call my friends, my neighbors, my family. Peter is gone. Wesley. Only Pest is left of the people I used to call the goon squad. The ashes of my best friend is already nourishing the cemetery’s garden. Beth is gone. Patrick. Diane and Amber are both dead. So many others.

And two have entered a different state. They have come out of the fever, but they are not themselves any longer. They just stand all day and do nothing. Rhonda and Sam. They are both a lot older than me. I knew them in the way that everyone here knows each other, but they weren’t close to me. I always thought that the Homestead was so small that we all knew each other way better than we should, but I know differently now. Even in such a small group, we tend to form smaller and smaller groups. The Worm has exposed all the fine cracks that separate us. And I see now, as they all die, how little I really knew any of them.

Rhonda lived in the farmhouse and worked with Crystal in the kitchen. She was quiet, but good-humored, and when I was younger, she always let me in the back door and gave me an oatmeal cookie. She was small and plump and she liked to wear bright colors. Her face was always covered in red blotches and some of us used to call her Patches behind her back. All she did here was make sure we had food to eat. She got up every morning to cook for us, to preserve what she could, to make sure nothing went to waste. I cannot remember a single thing more about her than this.

Sam Jackman was one of the few people here that is (or was) truly lazy. He didn’t do anything. He was always complaining about his back or his constant headaches, but he was always first to sit down at the Lodge for meal time. He was always first with his opinions too, and liked to give them sitting back in his chair with his legs crossed, looking over at us from this position like we were fortunate to listen to his wisdom. He was also lecherous and handy and all of us girls knew to keep away from him. Most of us ignored him. Despite all the evidence, Sam seemed to be convinced he was the greatest thing ever to happen to the Homestead.

Now he’s standing in the corner of the quarantine house, his mouth hung open. Sometimes a little white worm rolls off his tongue and falls wriggling to the floor. He bangs his forehead against the wood sometimes, not hard though. Like he’s knocking. His eyes are black with knots of white worms in the corners.

We’re meeting in the Lodge. We’ve come to talk about what to do with them, the ones who are on duty.

I want to say that it’s a careful discussion, but it’s not. We’re beyond exhaustion. Our hearts don’t do anything but pump blood anymore. I don’t feel a damn thing. I haven’t since I saw Crypt get shot. I don’t think anyone else has either. It’s me, Franky, Norman, and Crystal who make the decision. Franky leads Sam and Rhonda out to where we’re going to burn them. They walk wherever we lead them, shuffling oddly. They don’t resist. When they get to the wood pile, they just stand, swaying slightly. Crystal shoots Rhonda first, pressing the gun in the back of her skull for a second before pulling the trigger. Crystal sobs as Rhonda collapses at her feet. Sam doesn’t move, just stares dumbly into the distance, his mouth hung open stupidly. Norman shoots him once in the back of the skull. Then they drag them onto the pyre and I walk forward with a burning length of wood from the stove. I push it into the seasoned wood and it starts to burn. I get the awful thought that we are wasting a lot of good wood and will have to pay for it next winter before I realize what I’m thinking. I cringe at my callousness and step back as the flames begin to set their red teeth into the wood.

As the flames crackle and grow and begin to consume Sam’s corpse, I realize I have no idea how many have died and how many have survived. I stand there dumbly trying to work out the terrible math. But I can’t focus. I’m looking at my hands. They’re dirty. They’re filthy. I look back into the fire and see the fire begin to burn Sam’s hair. Worms come boiling out of his mouth and nose as if trying to flee the flames. Instead they shrink and twist as they combust. My stomach turns. I turn away from the fire and start to walk home. I feel so exhausted, I feel like I too am shuffling forward like they were, hardly alive.

It’s not until I’m fully immersed in the scalding water of the tub that I wonder where Eric has gone. The days have become so filled with horror, I don’t remember when I’ve seen him last. It’s strange he wasn’t there to help us with Rhonda and Sam. I have the sudden certainty that he wouldn’t have let us kill them . He would’ve told us to be patient. And we wouldn’t have done what we did. It’s the first time I realize that what we did might have been wrong. A pang of guilt is replaced with a gut-wrenching need to see Eric, to talk to him, to ask him to forgive me. I lift myself out of the tub and grab a towel. I need to tell him what we did. I need him to tell me it’s all right, that he understands. I throw on some of my last clean clothes and then climb the ladder to the loft.

I smell him before I see him. A horrible, dark, rotten stench of death I have become too familiar with.

Eric is shivering in his bed, his eyes dark with blood.

28

Something changes in me. I grow solid inside when I see the Worm has Eric. I feel like a hard, furious crystal. I want to scream looking down at him. I want to die. I feel so many desperate desires rage through me that I fear I’m losing my mind. I shake my head.

“Think, Birdie,” I tell myself out loud. Think.

They’ll kill him if they find him like this. If he doesn’t die, if he doesn’t crack violently, he’ll still die, just like Rhonda and Sam. He’ll get put in quarantine and even if the Worm doesn’t kill him, they will. If they find him, he’s dead. I have to move him.

The sun has just vanished, leaving a blueberry sky. The fire consuming the bodies of Sam and Rhonda is still burning, lighting up the quarantine houses where a few of us are still waiting to die. Whoever is there will be inside, watching the sick ones, fighting to stay awake. The rest will be at home, sleeping or trying to choke down some food. They won’t notice us. Somehow I get Eric to his feet. I even get him a few rungs down the ladder before he falls down to the floor. I wince when he hear him hit the floor and hope he hasn’t broken anything. When I drop down to him, I check him over carefully. Luckily, he seems fine.

Yes, I think, they won’t notice us, but if they do. If they do. I look around. I stand up Eric who moans and leans against the wall, trembling. I throw a thick winter coat over him. Then I get a hat and put it down over his ears and eyes. I try not to look at the blood that smears on the hat. I’m thankful that Eric must have been too sick to take off his pants or his boots before he collapsed in his bed. If people see him from a distance, he could pass as healthy. Maybe.

Now think, Birdie.

Think.

“Come on, Eric,” I tell him. “Come on, follow me.”

I take him by the hand and give him a pull toward the door. Eric groans but follows me a few staggering steps. I open the door and look around. No one. I look toward the trees down the hill and to the northwest. It’s far. It seems like miles of open field to the dark tree line. Anyone could see us. I move to support Eric as best I can. I feel his hot, feverish breath against my neck and close my eyes against the revulsion and try not to think of the worms.

I get him out the door. He half walks, half drags himself forward, using me as support. I never realized how heavy he was. We’re both groaning now as we move toward the woods. I stop for a second to catch my breath and look back. I move my right hand to my knife and it’s there and I feel better. Then I see a shadowy figure move and I pull Eric down to the ground, which isn’t hard. He just collapses like a bag of meat. I watch the figure approaching our cabin. I see that it’s Franky. I close my eyes and hope that he didn’t see us. I can’t let him take Eric. I can’t let that happen. They’ll kill him. I know it in my heart. They’ll shoot him right in the back of the head like they did the others. Like we did. I can’t let them to do that to Eric. I won’t. I move my hand to my knife.

But Franky stops halfway to our house. He just stops and stands there. I think I know what’s happening. Franky’s like me. He’s had time to think about what we did with Rhonda and Sam and he doesn’t feel good about it. He wants to talk to Eric, just like I did. He wants to be told we did the right thing. I watch him standing there, thinking. Maybe he’s tired. Maybe he thinks we’re tired. Maybe he won’t bother us. My heart is beating and my hand is clenching the knife handle. Everything depends on what he decides to do right now.

Franky lurches forward toward the house at a big stride and my heart falls. When he finds out no one is there, there’ll be questions. Maybe he’ll smell the Worm in our cabin. Maybe he’ll come out and hunt for us. He’ll find us easy enough. I can’t let Eric die. That is not going to happen while I still breathe. It’s the way it has to be, like the decision was made in my bones. It’s a decision made without words or thought. Every part of me vibrates with the knowledge that while I live, nothing happens to Eric and no one touches him. No one.

This is what I’ll do. I feel cold, thinking about it. If Franky comes near me, I tell him to go away, if he doesn’t, I bring out the knife. Franky has a trick right shoulder, so if he comes near, I’ll move to my right. I don’t want to kill him. I don’t want to, but they’ll kill Eric. If I wound him, he’ll scream for help and they’ll kill Eric. I will make it painless. Move to the right and slice his throat. Quick, easy. It’s the only way. I play it over in my mind, but I’m trembling with fear. I don’t think I can do it, but I don’t know of any other way.

Then, as quickly as he lurched forward, Franky stops again. He’s only a few feet from our door. Maybe he’s thinking that he doesn’t want to bother us so late. We’re probably sleeping. Maybe he doesn’t want Eric’s permission for what we did. Maybe he’s thinking it’s his own conscience he has to ask. Whatever he’s thinking, he stands there, indecisive. My heart is thrumming in my chest like a bird.

Then Franky turns away and walks down the hill. The relief almost makes me sob. I don’t have time now to think how I was going to kill one of my favorite people in the world. I can’t think about how I planned such a thing. I don’t have time for that.

I drag Eric to his feet and we stumble and fall and drag ourselves to the woods. I have to tug and drag and half-carry him up the trail toward the lake. He’s breathing hoarsely and drily. He coughs and I feel something spatter on my neck and I cry out and brush it away with a shiver. It’s too dark to see if it was a worm or just a string of saliva, but the horror I feel is the same.

Finally we reach the old Land Rover. I open the rusted old doors and Eric crawls into the back, almost like he knows what’s happening. Not many people know about this place. It’s a good place to hide him. When Eric stops moaning and falls back into his feverish sleep, I walk down to the lake and dip his wool hat into the water. I need to cool his fever. I look down at the dripping water. The water is dark red from the sunset and shivers when drops of water hit the surface. I see the shadow of my own features, but it’s too dark to see myself clearly. It’s just an outline, quivering with ripples of water.

Crouched at the shore of the lake, I suddenly feel more tired than ever before in my life. I look up. I sit there and breathe until the stars begin to come out, reflected in the calm waters. The island is an inky shadow and the pine trees on it are darkly outlined. It’s quiet. I can hear the lake lap against the shore gently. Somewhere far across the lake a loon calls.

It’s a long time before I go back to the Land Rover.

29

I sleep in the front seat of the Land Rover. From the back comes the groans and mutterings of Eric. His eyes are almost black with blood. I don’t know if he’ll make it through the night. I can’t think of that. The thought of him dying, of a world without him, the closest friend I’ve ever known, fills me with a dread that I never knew I could feel. It’s more than a feeling. It’s like a beast in me, straining to be free. I feel if Eric dies, the beast will be free, and I won’t withstand the violence of it. If Eric dies, I will die too. Maybe I will continue living, but Birdie will be dead. Fear keeps me awake, but days and days of sleep deprivation and grief eventually win over. I fall into a dreadful sleep.

I dream again of being led into a dark pit. The dark pit where my mother sings. And there are beasts climbing out of it, beasts I can’t see, but I know they’re hunting me. They will find me and tear me apart. I can’t see them. I can’t even hear them. I only know that they are there, beyond my perception.

I wake up shivering in fear and cold.

I rub my eyes and look in the back seat. For a moment, I am sure that Eric is dead. He is laying as still as I’ve ever seen him. But then as I quake with fear, I realize with relief that his chest is rising and falling, just barely. I sob with relief and reach out and touch the crown of his head, just to feel his presence. The heat of his fever makes me pull away. I have to cool him down.

When I return from the lake with Eric’s hat, soaked with cool water, I dab it on his forehead. Eric doesn’t move, but a tear of dark red, almost black blood runs down his cheek. He smells like the Worm, a smell like warm ammonia and eucalyptus. I feel a trembling nausea, and I have to leave the confines of the truck. I walk back toward the lake, trembling. I hold my face and try to gather myself.

It didn’t hit me last night, but now I’m starting to realize that Eric is probably going to die. He’s going to die and leave me alone. No more long talks about subjects no one cares about any more like history and science and mathematics. No more asking me if I have my knife. No one to call me Birdie anymore.

I have to sit down in the damp pine needles. I’ve never thought how hard it would be to lose him. I’m not ready for this. I have a hard time breathing like I’ve been running for a long time. I see a few stars as I gasp at the air. The trembling continues and I wonder if this is what it’s like to go crazy. The thought chills me even further and I get to my feet and hop up and down. I tell myself, “Think, Birdie, think.” That is what Eric would say.

Then, in my mind, clear as glass, I hear Eric say, “People don’t always die.” I remember how he said at the Lodge that Good Prince Billy knew people who made it through the Worm. The Worm is different now, but not totally different. Maybe he can make it. I breathe a little easier. Some manner of hope comes to me, like a single star on a cloudy, dark night.

But Eric can’t survive without me. If anyone finds him like this, he’s dead. They’ll kill him just like I helped kill Rhonda and Sam. I have to get him somewhere safe.

I have to leave the Homestead.

When the sunlight starts streaming down through the pine trees, glittering and bright in the morning, I pick myself up off the earth and gather myself. I have to get back to our house before someone comes to look for us. I have to think of a reason why Eric isn’t here.

I shut the doors to the Land Rover as best as I can and feel a burst of guilt for leaving Eric alone, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I start jogging back toward our house. As my feet touch down on the forest floor, I think.

Thinking has always been a refuge for me. I like to disappear into the constant stream of thought that’s going on in my mind. When I’m working in the fields all day, I just vanish into this stream and let my mind do what it wants and go where it wants. But not now. Now I have to focus and try to keep it on track. It reminds me of the lessons that Eric was always giving me on everything from the history of the United States up to the Vaca B to the birth and death of stars. We would take turns reading from the books that he collected, and then Eric would ask me questions. Not just one or two, but like a dozen. Hard questions too. I had to sit and think them through, why this and why that. It was exhausting and sometimes I was sick of it and got mad at him. What was the use of thinking about all this dead science? What was the use of talking about Napoleon and Martin Luther King and World War Two in this world? What did it matter what Toni Morrison wrote and why? But as I run back to the house and feel my mind enter that space of focus, I understand that Eric was preparing me for this.

As I heat up from the jog, I start planning. The plan is only half-finished when I get home to find Norman and Franky already there, waiting at the front door. They are looking at me with frowning faces. They are puzzled and there is something there that I haven’t seen before. As I come to a stop in front of them, I realize what it is.

They don’t trust me.

I smile at them.

It starts now.

30

“Where’ve you been?” asks Franky, looking over my shoulder to the woods.

I shrug. “I needed a run,” I say. Always wrap a lie inside the truth. I did need a run, just not for the reason they think.

“Where’s Eric?” Norman asks. “We’ve been knocking on the door for a long time.” I notice they’re hands linger near their guns. They’re not stupid. They might guess that something has happened to Eric, something I want to hide. They might think Eric’s in there with the Worm, even cracked. I was right to move him.

“He’s gone,” I say.

The both of them look at me with surprise.

I push past them and open the door. I leave it open behind me as I would have on any other day. It’s dark in the house. Norman and Franky don’t follow me in. They remain in the doorway. “He left last night,” I tell them. “Said he needed to think. He was pretty angry when I told them what we did with Rhonda and Sam.”

The two look at each other uncomfortably. Franky even looks away in shame. Success.

I twist the knife a little. “He told me he couldn’t be here right now if we were going to start murdering people.”

“Shit,” Franky mutters.

“Jesus H. Christ,” Norman says. “He picked a hell of a time to leave.”

Franky hisses angrily. “I thought he would have this goddamn reaction. I came here last night to tell him myself, see if I could make him understand. We were risking lives keeping those two alive. It’s not as if we had a choice.”

“That’s what I told him,” I lie. “He just said that if there’s a chance a person can survive, we can’t let them die. No matter how small the chance.”

“Was he that angry?” Norman asks me.

I nod.

Franky grunts with annoyance and Norman looks down at his feet. I notice they’ve relaxed their grips on the guns, and I relax a little myself. Franky walks away and then back to the door again. Then, as if making a decision, he ducks through the door and walks into the house. “Well, what’re we going to do?” He’s asking Norman.

“Lord,” Norman sighs, following Franky. Their heavy boots clomp in on the dirt floor. I can feel their attention slide away from me, and I know I’m out of hot water for now. Eric is a little safer. “I should’ve seen this coming.” He sits down at our table tiredly. “Who knows, maybe he’s right. Maybe we got ahead of ourselves.”

“Bullshit,” Franky says, putting his gun down on the table before he sits. “Rhonda and Sam were dead, even if they were still standing. All they could do infect other people before they died.” This makes me nervous to hear. I think of Eric back in the truck. Maybe he’s right. Maybe Eric is nothing now but a risk to other people. To me.

Then I notice that the house smells like the Worm. Likely the other two don’t notice it because they’re still in the same clothes I saw they had on when we burned Rhonda and Sam. Probably slept in them. They’re accustomed to the smell, at least for now, wrapped in it. But any minute they could get a nose full. If they do, the next thing they’ll do is check the loft, and I can only imagine what the state of Eric’s bed is like. They’ll know Eric has the Worm and they’ll find him.

I open up the stove loudly and begin poking at the ashes. A few glowing embers emerges from last night’s fire. I reach into the wood box and pull out twigs and leaves from the bottom and throw them on the embers.

“Well, it might be so,” says Norman, “but who’s to say that one of them might’ve come through in the end? Eric said that it happened.”

“Maybe, maybe,” Franky acknowledges with a slow nod, “but maybe we can’t risk the lives of the people left. God knows there aren’t many of us.”

Norman huffs at that, his way of agreeing to a disagreeable truth. This is the solid argument that I couldn’t win. This is why I have to leave with Eric. Maybe it’s true, maybe the right thing to do is kill him, but that’s not going to happen. No one touches Eric while I still breathe.

I blow at the embers until there’s a lot of smoke. Then, as the flames start to lick at the back of the stove, I throw in some more leaves and pine needles and twigs. The smoke starts to billow out into the room. It should mask the smell.

“Well, what’re we going to do then?” asks Norman. “People will be looking to Eric for some kind of leadership.”

Franky makes a disgusted sound. “Eric’s never been the kind of leader we need.” I feel my back stiffen a little. I’ve never heard Franky speak like that against Eric. It sounds like he’s been repressing that sentence for a long time. I have to re-evaluate Franky. He’s been too good at hiding his true thoughts about Eric. It makes me angry and sad and uneasy. I take it out on the fire and blow at the embers with my eyes closed as the smoke pours from the open door. “What we need,” Franky continues, “is to organize and take care of this as a group. We should get everyone to gather at the Lodge. Let everyone know that the worst has passed. Have Crystal make us something to eat.”

I want to ask how he knows the worst is passed, but I’m good at keeping my mouth shut. Instead I throw more pine needles on the fire. I’m rewarded by acrid puffs of lead gray smoke.

“What’ll we tell them about Eric?” Norman asks.

Franky shrugs. “The truth. We say he left last night to go think.” Franky makes thinking sound way worse than dragging two sick people out and shooting their brains out, which is what we did to Sam and Rhonda. I keep my back to them to hide my anger. I feel like I’m getting to know Franky for the first time and it’s not pleasant.

“Christ sakes!” Norman coughs. “What’re you doing over there, Kestrel?”

I turn my head around innocent as apple pie. “It’s cold,” I say.

Franky coughs too. “I can’t hardly breathe,” he says and coughs again.

“Don’t exaggerate,” I respond. “It’s just a little smoke.” I throw on a piece of wood and then shut the stove door with a hearty clang.

The two get up from the table and walk to the door, holding their guns. I follow them outside in the air. The men’s eyes are watering from the smoke.

“Jesus H. Christ,” Norman says, blinking.

“Where’d Eric go, anyway?” Franky asks me. I feel his gaze before I see it. Cold and hard and calculating. Here’s a man I got totally wrong. He’s studying me and my response. This is the part of the plan that I haven’t gotten to yet. Think, Birdie.

I shrug. “He didn’t really say.” Franky’s eyes flash a little, and I realize he wants more. “He said something about an old friend.”

“You seem to be taking this well,” he says to me, with the same uncomfortable focus.

“Well, he’s not dead,” I say and hold his eyes.

There’s a moment when I’m not sure it’s working. His eyes are like points of fire on me, and my hearts speeds up when I think that I’m not sure if I have my knife or if I left it in the Land Rover.

Then Franky smiles and puts a hand on my shoulder. “No, he’s not dead,” he says. He sounds more like the man I called my friend. He squeezes my shoulder a little, like comforting me. I know I’ve won, at least for now, but I feel horrible. “Come down to the Lodge when you’re ready,” he tells me. “We have things to do.”

I nod and watch as they turn their backs. When their gaze is off me, I put my hand on my knife. It’s there, cool and certain, and I feel a little relief.

But as I watch the men’s backs as they walk down the hill toward the Lodge, I know that everything and everyone I thought I knew has changed.

It’s not a pleasant thing to know.

31

I don’t stay long at our house. I need to think, but I also need to be at the Lodge with everyone else. I need Franky and Norman to see me there, see me struggling with Eric’s absence. I don’t need their suspicion. As I trudge down to the Lodge, I pass the quarantine houses. In the midst of them is a smoking pyre. I can see two or three bodies still smoldering in the fire. I avert my eyes and continue downhill toward the Lodge. I can’t think of that right now.

When I get there, a silent crowd has gathered. I have a sinking feeling in my chest. Is this all of us? The benches have been moved around several tables. Crystal has been cooking cornmeal cakes all morning. Someone brought up a new gallon of maple syrup, and Crystal is at the stove in the corner of the room, frying a dozen onions or so. She fries the onions down until they are dark and sweet and then puts them on the cakes with some maple syrup. Everyone is eating, but it’s hard to have an appetite. I look around, trying to be thankful for who’s left, but everyone I see just reminds me of someone who is gone. When I look at Pest, all I can see is the shadows of all the people who are dead now and burned to ashes. Crypt. Gunner. Matt. Rebok. All gone. When Crystal gives me my cornmeal cake, I see Rhonda in the kitchen in the farmhouse, giving me oatmeal cookies. I see her slumping down after Crystal shot her in the back of the head.

I look around, but don’t have the heart to count people. It’s easy to see we’ve lost more than half. We eat without talking. There’s just the sound of forks and knives scraping against plates. Maybe a statement here and there about the weather. Maybe some talk about what needs to be done, but quietly, half-heartedly. We are in the company of ghosts. We can’t say anything. We can’t think too much about it. Our lives have to go on. It’s a new world, more haunted than the old one. None of us want to remember.

I finish my first cornmeal cake without noticing that I’m eating, and Crystal slides me another. Norman passes me the maple syrup from across the table, and I pour it over the yellow cake and onions. I eat quietly.

While I eat, I think. It keeps the ghosts at bay. I think about Eric burning away with fever up in the woods. I think about how I’m going to take care of him. What I should do when he dies. Will I tell people? Will I say I just found him like that? Will they believe that? What will they think when they find out that I lied to them? I think too of more practical problems. How will I get Eric to eat? How will I keep his temperature down? What will I do if he cracks? How will I find the strength to shoot him? It has to be me. I won’t let anyone else do it if it has to be done. This reminds me I have to get Eric’s gun.

I hardly notice when Franky rises. He gets up and walks around the tables, clapping backs. I watch him move around and I can tell he’s already thinking of himself as the leader in Eric’s absence. People will follow him. They’re already used to asking for his help when something breaks. I would have thought he would be useless with grief after losing Diane and Amber, but instead he seems steady. I also detect in the way he moves around the room that he’s enjoying this, enjoying his new role in the community. I begin to think he’s always wanted something like this. He’s always been waiting for his chance. Eric had a powerful influence over people, without really trying, so Franky never made a move, but now… I don’t watch Franky directly. Just out of the corner of my eye. Something about the way he comforts people. The way he smiles sadly. Squeezes their shoulder. I don’t trust it. I am more sure than ever before that if I bring Eric back now, he’s a dead man. No doubt it would be Franky himself who would put him out of his misery. For the good of us all.

As I finish the last forkful of my second corn cake, Norman gets up and goes to Franky. They’re talking in low voices. I notice they’re both wearing guns. I think I see them glance over to me. I don’t know what they’re saying, but I can guess. People will want to hear from me about Eric. I have some power here, some kind of influence, as Eric’s shadow. They are talking about that. I don’t know if it’s positive or negative, but I suddenly feel a twisting in my stomach. I don’t trust those two, not at all. I can see now that they are re-grouping with themselves as the leadership: Franky and Norman forever. I huff out in spite of myself. It’s amazing how quickly people change. Whole communities. They are either becoming different people or more themselves. It’s hard to know which is which.

I turn my attention to the others. They are not nearly so together. Curt, who lost his mother and sister, is sitting in a kind of stupor, his food untouched in front of him. Wanda and Luna are sitting together, looking just as lost and confused. Willis and Hubert are sitting next to them protectively. They were never very talkative, but now they seem to have lost all power of communication. Even their eyes are dead. Susie Moore, who usually prattles on like a hen, just sits there, slumped down, her lips quivering, right on the edge of disaster. I see how fragile we are, how fragile we always were. If Eric didn’t need me, maybe I would be more like them, beaten down by grief and shock. As it is, I keep the grief away for Eric’s sake. If I go catatonic like them, Eric will die. They’ll shoot him in the back of the head. I can’t help imagining it. I see Franky shoot Sam. I remember him falling, the smell of smoke in the air. I see Eric then in place of Sam. Then, before I can stop it, I see Artemis in the pyre, her hair smoking and burning. I shake my head of that and focus on the people around me.

They need a leader. I try to soften my perceptions of Franky and Norman. They probably see this too. They see that someone needs to step up. There’s nothing wrong with that. I am only paranoid because I have to lie.

But still. I can’t shake it. I do not trust them.

I’m not used to being seen or paid attention to. I never really thought anyone had any opinion of me, really, not beyond Eric’s shadow. When I see Norman and Franky glance at me, I see that I was wrong. They’re thinking something.

I reach out to touch my knife. It’s there.

32

Franky starts speaking soon. People listen. I mean, they really listen, their bodies tense, their eyes wide open and hungry. They want direction and assurance. Franky tries to give them both. He reads out a list of names. All of them are ashes now. He says we will gather later to turn their ashes into the cemetery soil. He says the flowers are just beginning to sprout there. He says a few words about our grief, our loss, a few words about Diane and Amber.

“But we can’t give up,” Franky says, straightening his back. “We have to keep living. They don’t want us to die. They want us to live our lives and be as happy as we can. So as hard as it is, we have to keep working.”

He talks about the necessity of boiling water, of hauling the wood to keep the boiler going. Franky switches then into organizing jobs and he has a chore for everyone, even me. He even has a clipboard. I’m to help Crystal in the farmhouse. With Rhonda gone, she’ll need someone to help prepare the food. I nod. When he’s done, he puts down his clipboard, and looks serious.

“Eric has left for now,” he says. I guess word has already gotten around because no one seems surprised. A few people glance at me with a variety of emotions, but mostly anger. Eric has always been that way. People need him, but they don’t appreciate him much. “Eric wants time to think about this. I’ve always been willing to give Eric the time he needs to think,” he says, and again, I hear a hidden scorn in the word. “So we’ll be patient with him and do our work until he gets back.” I don’t know if anyone else hears it, but there’s something unmistakable in his tone. Something paternal, like Eric is a wayward son. Not our absent leader at all, but someone who requires patience and even a little pity. From here, I realize, the criticisms will only magnify and grow.

Not that I care. Whoever leads the twenty-odd people who are left doesn’t concern me. I have bigger problems than who gives orders to who in the next few years. But what does concern me is just how quickly it happened and who I have to watch. I think of Eric out in the woods, probably dying of the Worm, and I see just how precarious our position is. If they find him, he’s a dead man. Oh, they’ll be sad when they shoot him.

But he’ll be just as dead.

33

I can’t shirk my duties. I don’t see Norman or Franky around the farmhouse, but I feel like I’m being watched. I can’t lead them to Eric, so I can’t draw attention to myself. I follow Crystal down to the farmhouse where the both of us work like dogs until noon time. All day I want to run to the Land Rover to check on Eric, to make sure he’s okay. To be there when he dies. But I can’t. I have to act like Eric’s gone somewhere to think, and I’ve decided to act a little angry about it, as I’ve observed other people are angry at his sudden disappearance. I have to act like he’s abandoned us when really it’s the other way around. They’ve abandoned him. The only thing that keeps me together is thinking. I’ve got a lot of planning to do.

While I plan, I peel. I peel potatoes and carrots and apples. I peel turnips and parsnips and beets. I peel until my fingers are red and my right forefinger is bleeding a little from a blister. Then I help boil the peelings down into a base that Crystal uses for soup. The slop that’s left goes to the pigs. Crystal is brilliant when it comes to efficiency. She uses everything. Crystal says she doesn’t cook food so much as maximize food. You don’t have to work for her for long to know what she means. When I was about thirteen or so, she banned me from the kitchen for throwing out “a perfectly good stem of broccoli.”

Because of the Worm, Crystal sets the vegetable base for soup to boil. It seems to boil a long time before she takes it off the wood stove. She looks at me through the corner of her eye, and I can tell she has questions about Eric. Everyone does. I keep my façade of anger. It seems to discourage people from interacting with me, from bothering me with any of their questions.

Finally though, Crystal can’t help herself. When she puts the vegetable base on the counter to cool, she crosses her arms over her ample breasts and looks at me. She has great, fleshy white arms, dotted with moles. Her hands are red from washing dishes all day in hot water. I keep looking at her hands. I can tell the questions are going to come and I hate lying to these people I’ve lived with my entire life.

“Do you know when Eric’s coming back?” she asks finally.

I shrug with one shoulder like I’m so angry with him that I can’t even stand thinking about him.

“Do you know where he went?”

“Who knows where he goes?” I say this with as much acid as I can muster.

Crystal stands there watching me quietly for a long moment. Then she sighs and picks up a towel and begins wiping down the countertop. “Hell of a time to leave us,” she says. “We’re hardly holding ourselves together.” The acid I had a hard time conjuring comes naturally for her. I grunt and nod like I agree, but it hurts. Eric is up there dying and it’s like everyone is stabbing him in the back. I get a little angry about that, which is useful. I can use it to seem like I’m angry with Eric.

“He can do whatever he wants,” I say. “Like I care.” I don’t meet her eyes, but I can tell by the way she pauses for a moment to look at me that she pities me a little. This statement seems to be just jerky enough to be convincing. The great thing about being young is that people assume you’re selfish and ignorant. That can be annoying, but it can also be handy.

“He’ll be back, dear,” Crystal says. I can tell that she has interpreted my anger as anxiety, which is great. If some of my anxiety is showing through, I hope people interpret it the same way. The conversation has become sufficiently emotional. I see my window.

“I need a break,” I say. I look up at her. “I need to go for a run.” It’s the first time I’ve looked at her during the whole conversation, so it’s got the power I need it to have.

Crystal walks over to me and takes my shoulders. “Of course, dear,” she says. “Anything you need. I can finish up here. You take all the time you want.”

Which is exactly the amount of time I need.

With a quick nod of thanks, I turn away from her and stride outside.

As I leave the farmhouse, I feel a great sense of relief. I’m not used to manipulating and lying and it’s not much of a consolation that I’m good at it.

In fact, it feels like hell.

34

The rhythm of running feels like thinking to me.

My breathing is one rhythm and my feet moving is another. It’s like keeping one thought in mind while you work through another. Like braiding. Or music.

I can’t run straight back to the Rover. I can’t be that obvious. Instead I run down past the back fields where newly-planted crops are budding and leafing despite the death all around it. I run past the lookout and then turn around, brushing away the memory of Artemis and I up there together, studying the southern road. Meanwhile I keep myself busy thinking. Planning.

If Eric is dead or when he dies, I will have to act like he vanished one night in anger and never returned. That will have to be the story from now on. I flesh out the details. I imagine the scene, the lie as if it really happened: Eric’s anger when I tell him what we did and my own argument for killing Sam and Rhonda. At one point I imagine myself having said, “Sam was useless anyway!” (which he was), and to this I imagine Eric having said, “We can’t start killing people because they aren’t useful to us!” And then I imagine he packed. Which means I have to return to my cabin, find his backpack, and stow it away somewhere. People might ask questions if they see it. I imagine him packing and I think I will pack what I imagine he would have taken if he had actually done what I’m imagining he did. This whole thing will have to be hidden. Maybe in the Land Rover. I could burn it, I realize. I could get back and burn his backpack and a few of the things he would have taken. But the thought hurts me so bad that I feel like I’ve been stabbed in the heart.

I stumble at the pain of it and come to a stop in my run. I breathe heavily and feel my consciousness swirl and a dark pain sear through me. I shake my head. No, I can’t burn his things. Maybe I will hide them and then, then, maybe next winter, maybe then I will burn them. Or just hide them under the Land Rover forever.

This seems to calm me enough so that I can run again. Now I run uphill to our house. I go inside and smell deeply. No trace of the sickness. Just smoke. Maybe there’s something underneath it, but it’s hard to tell if I really smell it or I’m just imagining that it’s there. The Worm. An image of Eric’s eyes, dark with blood, flashes through me, the little white tubes wriggling at the corners. I nearly choke with despair.

Think, Birdie. Think. As I calm down, I stoke up the stove so that the coals are burning red hot.

I go up to the loft and go to Eric’s bed. Just as I thought, the blankets are bloody and so is the old mattress. I throw the blankets down and then turn over the mattress, so that the bloodstain is facing the floor. I climb down from the loft and start cutting up the blankets with my knife, throwing the shreds into the fire, hoping that no one notices the billows of smoke coming from our stove pipe. Then I go back up to the loft and look around for blood spatters. Thankfully, I don’t see any. I grab Eric’s backpack and then throw in a few things that I think Eric would have taken with him, including the book he was reading, The Left Hand of Darkness. Then I see a bundle of papers held together by rubber bands. I recognize his handwriting. On a whim, I grab the papers and throw it in the backpack.

Without wanting to, I pick up Eric’s holster and the gun he’s had forever. It’s heavier than it looks. I don’t like the feel of it. Strange how personal a gun feels. I feel like I’m trespassing somehow. But I need the gun, just in case, in case Eric… I try not to finish the thought, but for the briefest instant, I picture Eric running for me, cracked, and my hand going up and my finger pulling the trigger. I can’t breathe for a second as I shake off the thought. To throw off the thoughts, I pack all the ammunition I can find. I realize I’m whistling loudly, and I stop. It feels unnatural.

I don’t like being in Eric’s half of the loft. I never realized how carefully we let each other have our privacy. Living in a small place like the Homestead can often feel suffocating, like everyone knows everything about you and there’s nowhere to go and nowhere to hide. Eric was always careful about making sure he never went into my part of the loft. It was always closed off with sheets. Strange how successful a little sheet of cloth can be to create a sense of your own space, your own world, a place that is just yours. I hadn’t really thought of it before now. Eric knew I needed that space. I feel my heart constrict for him. It’s more evidence of how much I need him, how much he means to me. I thought I realized it, but I didn’t. I didn’t have a clue.

I feel a choking sob come up in me, looking at Eric’s side of the loft. His stacks of magazines and books. His crystal dragon and little figurines of soldiers and old knights. The poster on his wall of sandy beaches that says “Florida: coast to coast to coast.” The little board that he would lay on his lap and use as a writing desk. The green plastic cup filled with pencils and pens. Right by his bed, the bracelet of copper and silver wire that Lucia made for him back on the island. I lean over and pick that up. It’s smooth and electric to the touch. I put it in the backpack too. I feel a wetness on my cheek, but I can’t cry. Not now.

I pick up my own backpack and put Eric’s backpack inside it. To hide it from prying eyes.

Then I step outside and do my best to check to see if anyone is watching without seeming like I am looking around. No one. I tighten my backpack, turn toward the woods, and take off at an inconspicuous stride.

When I hit the shade of the trees, I feel free enough to turn up the speed. Running through the woods, I can’t hold back the worry I feel for Eric any longer. He could be dead. He could have cracked. He could be drowned in the lake, drawn to the water like everyone in the late stages of the Worm. My heart speeds up and adrenalin pumps through me. I’m nearly in a panic by the time I get to the Land Rover.

When I come bursting out of the woods, I stutter to a full stop in horror.

Eric is standing next to the truck.

He turns toward me. “Unh,” he says.

His eyes stream dark blood, worms coiling in the darkness.

35

I am too shocked to pull out the gun. I’m not sure I would have shot him even if I had. I stand there, waiting to get torn apart. As I watch, Eric starts to sway back and forth, his mouth open and closing, drooling a black bile. His eyes are swarming with worms. I realize that if he had cracked, he would have killed me by now and at the same time, I know that I would rather die than harm Eric. I feel it certainly, that our lives are connected far, far deeper than I ever imagined. It would be easier for me to shoot myself than to shoot Eric. It’s a relief to feel the certainty.

Eric groans and then sways to one side, his jaw clicking shut. He raises one hand and then drops it. His body convulses suddenly and he violently coughs up a stream of bile. It seems to do him good as he breathes more deeply. The bile he coughed up is on the ground, writhing with little, noodle-thin worms, pale and nauseating. Eric opens and closes his mouth, making a wet sound. Then he leans back on the truck and doesn’t move any longer.

I sit down on the forest floor, watching him. He’s entered one of the last stages of the Worm. Most people die of the fever before this stage. Others crack under the pressure and go crazy, ripping at everything near them. Some, like Eric, they just become something else. Not quite living, not quite dead. Just some strange between-thing.

Suddenly, I feel good watching him. Relieved. He’s made it through. He won’t die of the fever. I’m so relieved, I’m crying a little. I thought he was going to die.

“Good job, Eric,” I tell him. He doesn’t even move his head toward me.

After ten or fifteen minutes of relief, I feel scared and uncertain. I wipe my eyes. What do I do with him now? Soon he will start thirsting for water and if I don’t watch him all the time, he’ll wade out into the lake and drink until he drowns. I can chain him to the Land Rover, I think. I can chain him there and come visit when I can. But how long before someone follows me? After a while, it will become conspicuous. People will start to wonder where the hell I am all the time. Where does Kestrel go every day? Homestead is way too small to hide a massive secret like this. Maybe if I’m careful, I could keep it secret for a week, but not forever. People aren’t stupid, and I don’t know if I trust Franky. I don’t know if he believes me entirely. I think he has suspicions, and if he finds Eric, they will kill him. They will say it’s for the good of everyone. They will say he’s already dead. He’s just suffering. They will say a lot of things, but what they won’t say is that we should wait, we should trust in him, we should give Eric a chance to survive, a chance to fight. Only I will say that, and it won’t matter.

But I trust Eric. I remember clearly what Eric told me. Good Prince Billy told him that not everyone dies. Some make it through. And if there’s even the smallest, even the tiniest chance that Eric will live, I will stand by him. I will defend him against anyone who threatens him. For the first time I reach down to Eric’s gun instead of my knife handle. My heart thrills dangerously at the touch of it. It’s not a good feeling exactly, it’s dark and overwhelming, but it’s what I need.

I feel more relief at the certainty of my decision. I was so afraid I would have to kill Eric. I was afraid that I wouldn’t have the strength to stand by him. But now that I see him, now that I know he’s still here with me, fighting, and I feel in me the absolute certainty that I will kill for him, I will die for him, it’s a big relief. It’s a relief to learn that I’m the person I want to be.

But I do have to think.

I have to leave.

It comes to me with a kind of peace.

Eric moves a step forward, dragging his foot through the pine needles. He moans as he does it like he can’t understand why he did it. He sways there for a moment and then opens and shuts his jaw. A long line of black drool reaches almost to his knees.

“Gross, Eric,” I tell him.

“Unh,” he answers. The black drool drops to the ground. “Unh,” Eric says again and then drags his other foot forward.

I might know what I have to do, but looking at Eric, I breathe in very deeply.

It isn’t going to be easy.

36

Think, Birdie.

All right.

One scratch, one accidental bite from Eric and I’m a goner. I have to take precautions. Tough gloves for his hands and something like a muzzle for his mouth. A hat to cover his head. Some sunglasses for his eyes, so I don’t have to look at the worms all day. Then a rope. A rope to tie him up at night, so he doesn’t wander away, so I can control where he is. I don’t know if he can still crack or not, but I’ll sleep better knowing I’m not going to wake up to my leg getting chewed off.

Nutrition. What will I feed him? He must have to eat, but I don’t know how to feed him or what he’ll eat. That will take some experimentation. I look over at Eric. His mouth is open and he’s drooling that black bile again. That will not be fun.

Where do we go? I have to get him far away. Somewhere he can’t be found. If people know he has the Worm, they’ll kill him. I’m certain of it. It’s best if I move north, where there are fewer people. I’ll find some abandoned house somewhere and keep Eric locked away safe. Then I’ll just scrounge for food as usual. Hunt deer. It’s spring. I’ll find something. Just stay away from people.

I have to get Eric out of here as soon as I can. I have to leave the Homestead, and I have to do it at night. Not tonight, though. There’s too many things to do, too many plans to make. It will have to be tomorrow night, at the earliest. I need time to gather and pack and think.

The thought of leaving the Homestead frightens me. For years now, I’ve thought that I wanted to see other places. I’ve wanted to be like Randy the Vandal and travel all over. Meet new people. Have adventures. Be the person that people run out to meet when I return, laden with supplies. Now, when it comes time that I actually have to leave, I don’t like it.

I think about my room in the loft of our house. I think of Crystal and the kitchen, the people who I thought of as my family, the fields I’ve worked all my life, the animals I’ve helped care for, and I feel lonely already. Homesick. And I haven’t even left yet! I was safe here all my life. The Homestead took care of me and made me safe. Now that’s over and I don’t want it to be. Now I wonder why I ever wanted to leave.

But I have to leave, there’s no other alternative.

I look up to watch Eric shuffle toward the Land Rover. He makes a confused groan sound when he hits it. His head arcs up as one arm quivers. “Unh,” he says.

“I know how you feel,” I tell him. “Life’s a bitch.”

37

I leave Eric in the Land Rover. This time I make sure all the doors are shut and the windows are rolled up. When I left him, he was just staring up at the ceiling. It was strange to guide him in. He doesn’t seem to understand anything about his surroundings, but he’s easy to guide. Just give him a little push and he does what you want. It’s strange though. Some muscles are tense and others are relaxed in ways that are very unnatural.  It’s Eric’s body, but he’s not in there. I just hope he’s still in there somewhere. But I can’t think of that. I wrapped his coat around him tightly to keep him warm during the night and left him there.

When I get home, I’m so tired, I just want to sleep for a week. It’s not all bodily tired either. It’s like my heart is heavy and I want to hide from the world and rest. I haven’t had time to think about all the horrible things that have happened to me. I don’t even know if I will ever have the strength to think about it. All that death and horror, it’s just lined up inside me, waiting for the chance to disable me, to make me so sad that I can’t do anything. And I can’t afford that. I have to ignore it all. And that takes effort. I think that’s why I’m so tired.

When I open the door, I see it’s not going to be that simple. Franky and Norman are there, sitting at my table. Obviously, they were waiting for me. My first reaction is anger. I don’t remember anyone ever coming inside our house without an invitation when Eric was here. Never. But for me? Oh yeah, come on in boys! Make yourself at home. For an instant, I try to hide my anger, but then I remember that I’m supposed to be angry—at Eric. I can use it. I’ve still got some work to do before I can hit the pillow.

“What do you want?” I ask bitingly, taking off my coat.

“We were waiting outside,” Norman explains apologetically. “But it got cold. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Where’ve you been?” Franky asks. No apology from him. I shrug and look around the house as I hang up my coat. I do it without moving my head to make sure they don’t think I’m doing what I’m doing, which is trying to figure out what they’ve been doing in my house while I’m gone. It’s not hard to see that they didn’t come in here just for warmth. There’s little things out of place. I’m glad I hid Eric’s backpack before I left. That might have saved his life. They’ve been looking around.

“We’re worried about you, Kestrel,” Norman says. “It’s not good for you to be spending all day in the woods. Not now. We need to be together.” I look at him. He seems genuine, but out of the corner of my eye, I can see Franky studying me. Franky’s got other motives, but Norman is here because he’s concerned. At least that’s what he’s been convinced of. “You know,” Norman continues. “Everyone is here for you. You don’t have to be alone.”

“We need to see you,” Franky says. I look toward him. He’s leaning back in his chair with his legs crossed. He’s shaved recently, which is new. Franky was never the kind of person to worry about his shave. His clothes are new too. He’s dressing the part. The leader. I don’t really care if he wants to be the leader, but I see in his eyes that I’m part of his plan and I’m messing it up for him.

“I’m just pissed off right now,” I say. “No one needs to see that.”

“We all need each other right now,” Norman offers. I glance his way. I’ve never known Norman to be so sentimental. Actually, I’ve never known him to be sentimental at all, but I guess losing half of the Homestead in just a few days will do that to a person. Norman sighs. “Look,” he says. “We don’t want to bother you, Kestrel. We just want you to know that we’re here for you.” He gets up, and at first I think he’s going to try to hug me or something, but instead he turns toward the door. “We’ll let you be,” he finishes and walks toward the door.

“I’ll be right there,” Franky says. Norman turns toward him and nods and then smiles sadly at me before putting his hat on and stepping out the door. When he shuts it behind him, it makes a hollow sound. After a moment of silence, Franky clears his throat. “Have a seat,” he says. It sounds like an order. I feel my eyes narrow. I don’t like to be ordered around. Not even Eric ordered me around. But I don’t want to start anything with him. I got plans, and the last thing I need is some stupid confrontation with Franky to complicate it. I can’t let my emotions get the better of me. I have to think. So I sit down.

Franky takes a deep breath and studies me. I study him back. The atmosphere in the room has changed completely since Norman left. I realize I’m smarter than him and it relaxes me. But what sickens me is how different Franky is now than he was before. He has this know-it-all kind of aura about him. It’s like seeing him shining through all the fog, like he’s revealed himself. And it’s not pleasant.

“Look,” he says to me after a while. I think it’s supposed to be a parental voice. “I’m going to be honest with you. You’re a smart girl, you can handle the truth.” He uncrosses his legs and then leans toward me. “People here, everyone looked up to Eric. He started this place, he kept it going. He made people feel safe somehow.” He smiled as if the people he were talking about were stupid. “Now he’s gone and people are scared. They feel lost. What they need is continuity. Do you know what that means, Kestrel?”

Of course I know what it means, asshole.

But that’s not what I say.

I just nod.

“You see, in ancient times, when the old king died, sometimes the new king would marry the queen. Or the princess. Just to make people comfortable. Just to give them a sense of continuity.” He lets this soak in for a second. I don't say anything. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“You want to marry me?” I ask, purposefully stupid.

Franky laughs. “No, Kestrel, I don’t,” he says. But I detect a sparkle somewhere in his eye. I think of all his attention toward me a lot differently now, and it makes me want to shudder. “But if we’re seen together, people will feel that sense of continuity. They will feel more secure. All you have to do is be here, with me. Not out in the woods, sulking like a little girl. You’re going to have to grow up pretty fast now, okay?”

Condescending shit. Out in the woods sulking? I’d like to punch him in the face, but like I said, I have to control myself. After all, it’s evidence that they’re believing me, that they think I’m just angry at Eric or shocked with grief. They don’t suspect that Eric is still alive, hidden away in the old Land Rover, and I’m about ready to get him the hell out of here, as far away from Franky as possible. So I’m winning here, even if it feels differently.

“What do you think, Kestrel? Can you do that for me?” It’s the old Franky now, the one I liked so much. His whole mannerism has changed. It repulses me how quickly he can change, but I hide it.

I smile and nod. “Sure,” I say. Then I add a “Sorry,” just for some bite.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about.” Franky stands up. He puts a hand on my shoulder, but there’s something noticeably different about it now. Something more gentle, more intimate, and, at the same time, much more menacing. I cringe on the inside, but outwardly I smile a little and look up at him. “See you in the morning,” he says. I feel relieved when he stops touching me and heads toward the door. He opens it, but before he walks out, he turns back to me. “You’ll tell me if you see Eric, right?”

I can’t see his face with the light coming in from the open door, but I can hear something disturbing and dark. A threat? I don’t know. But it’s not good.

“Of course,” I say with a huff, like I can’t wait to get Eric in trouble or something stupid like that.

“Good,” Franky says. Then he steps out the door and shuts it behind him.

After a minute I get up and shake my arms and head to rid me of all the creepy feelings. After I climb up into the loft and collapse in my bed, I think about Franky and his new creepiness and I try to look at the bright side of things. At least now I’m not so sad to leave the Homestead.

38

I dream of a voice. Its far away, but I don’t like it. I’m trying to get away, but the voice is coming from all directions. I start running, but my legs are stuck to the ground.

Then I’m walking. The world around me is burning. My feet hurt and I’m thirsty. I look behind me and I see that the sky is red with flames. I don’t know if I’m dreaming or if this is something that happened to me. As I trudge down the road, I try to think. Am I dreaming? Did this happen? Memory or dream?

Suddenly Artemis is next to me and she takes my hand. She says that I was a cute girl. I don’t really hear her say this, but she’s saying it. I feel her hand in mine. It’s warm and smooth and soft, like always. I don’t remember she’s dead until then. I look up and she turns toward me and frowns. She tells me with her eyes that I can’t keep going like this. I can’t keep walking away. Then she’s gone.

I keep walking. Ashes are falling from the sky. I see shapes in the street and I crawl underneath cars to wait for shuffling feet to pass. I don’t cry. I just hold on to the straps of my backpack and I wait. When there’s no one left, I crawl out from under the car. It’s still night time. A house is on fire. Someone far away is screaming.

No, it’s not screaming. It’s the voice again.

I turn to run, but the voice moves faster. It’s a man’s voice, deep and familiar.

I see a man with bleeding eyes. He’s holding my hands. His hands are so large and strong. He presses a diamond ring into my hand. He does it so firmly, it almost hurts. “You can do it, Birdie,” he tells me. He coughs. “I know you can. Grafton. Write it down, honey.”

The words don’t mean anything to me, but the voice terrifies me. I try to run away, but I don’t know where I am, in the streets, in a house, in my bed. Confused and terrified, I run in nothing, only darkness. Behind me, the voice calls out to me, following me into the darkness. I stumble and fall, twisting into the abyss.

39

I wake up sweating and breathing hard. My t-shirt is stuck to my body because of the sweat. I can’t stop shaking. In the darkness of the loft, I seem lost and falling. I can hear the voice in my mind. After lighting a candle, I scramble out of bed and open up the chest that Eric found for me years ago. All my most precious things are in there.

There’s an old pink backpack in the chest. It’s my oldest belonging. I’ve had it for as long as I can remember. I had it even before that. I open up the zipper and then dump out the junk on the floor. I haven’t opened this in years. I can’t remember the last time I’ve looked at it. I search the material. Some old barrettes. Some stupid magazine cover with the Little Mermaid on it. Then I pick it up. The diamond ring. I try to read the inside, but I can’t, not in this light. I know what it says. All My Love Always. It’s the same ring in my dream. I’m shaking. I continue scrambling through the stuff. I see what I’m looking for. A scrap of paper. I pick it up and bring it to the light, trembling. It’s my handwriting from when I was very young. It says GRAFTON.

The voice from my dream repeats in my head like thunder. “Write it down, honey.”

I sit down, stunned.

I recognize that voice now. Now it’s clear as day.

It’s my father’s voice.

40

There’s not much time to think about the revelation that I haven’t forgotten my own father, that he’s still hidden somewhere in my mind. I don’t have the luxury of time. I can’t just sit around the cabin, thinking, hoping I will remember more of the man I thought I had forgotten. I don’t have time to imagine that there might be more memories inside my head waiting to come out. I don’t have time to ask myself why now? Why are these memories coming back now? I don’t have time for any of that. I have to keep moving.

I have to get Eric far away from the Homestead, and I have to do it tonight.

But first I have to spend the day at the Homestead, acting like I’ll be here with them for the rest of my life. Norman and Franky come for me pretty damn early in the morning. It’s hardly dawn when they bang on the door. After a quick breakfast of a dried old apple and a fried egg, I have to follow around Franky like his personal pet, or like, well, like his princess, going from house to house, checking on people, solving problems, holding people’s hands as they cry.

I’ve been too shocked by the whole resurgence of the Worm and Eric’s horrible transformation to think about anyone else. But as I follow Franky, I see that the damage of the Worm to the Homestead was more than a pile of ashes where our friends used to be. People are barely keeping it together. Some people can’t even get out of bed. Others are walking in some kind of stupor, like zombies. Franky tells them what to do and they do it, more like machines than people. Others throw themselves into work, people like Crystal who basically starts doing the work of like four people in the kitchen. She works without break. Pest too is like that. He works by himself in the field, all day long, as if trying to resurrect his friends by doing what they normally would have done. As if they would live again if he could only do all their work. When we visit him, he looks up, gaunt and filthy, his eyes haunted like a child’s should never be. He doesn’t look at me the whole time. He only takes the water that Franky offers him and drinks until he’s full. Franky claps him manfully on the back. Pest picks up his hoe and goes back to the field. I feel sorry for him, but I can’t think of anything to say. Queen is sitting at the edge of the field, watching Pest protectively as if she can sense the danger around us. I watch Pest attack the earth with his hoe, wishing there was something I could do or say. I never thought I’d feel bad for Pest.

As we move from place to place, I see that Norman and Franky were right. We need each other. The Homestead is just barely hanging on. If it wasn’t for Crystal, I could easily imagine that everyone would just wander away on their own, in some kind of daze, and the place I grew up in would be no more. I used to think that the Homestead was unbreakable, something as unshakeable as a rock, but now I see it as it probably always was—fragile and precarious. It’s another revelation to me. Like most of the others, it’s discomfiting.

All day Franky is like the old Franky. He’s kind and gentle and helpful. He walks from house to house and person to person with his tool box in his hand, as if it was like the old days, as if he was coming to ask about some broken hinges and not to make sure you weren’t in the process of hanging yourself or guzzling rat poison. I feel most of my rancor toward him dissipate. Most of it. Sometimes, when we are alone, I can see him looking at me with distrust. And maybe something else, something dark and intense. Although I know the Homestead needs him badly, it’s dangerous for me to stay here. I can feel it. I am more certain than ever that if Franky found Eric, it would be the end of Eric’s life. I have no doubt.

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.

But we have to be far from the road. I’ve got no choice but to lead him farther away. I had thought that I could take a quick bearing of our location on the road and then just walk in the woods, roughly parallel to the road, but now I’m convinced that we can’t do that. It would only take one little fall from Eric to torpedo this whole plan. We have to walk on the road and I’m not walking during the day. It’s too risky.

By the time the sun comes up, I find a big boulder, split in the center, like an inverted V. The way it sits makes a perfect little cave. I make a quick check for bears, but it looks pretty clean in there, so I lead Eric inside. I find a nice tough root to tie him to on the opposite side of the cave, and then I struggle to get him to sit down. I know he needs the rest, even if he doesn’t. Finally he sits, his legs splayed out in front of him, his arms laying on his thighs, palms up. He snaps his jaw a couple times at me and then wheezes and gurgles and finally coughs up a little black drool. I shudder and wipe his chin.

“Unh,” he says.

I sigh. His eyes are darker than normal. The worms are collecting in knots in the corner of his eyes. I move away, feeling grossed out.

Then I set up a little bed for myself, out of reach of Eric’s rope. Just in case. I keep the gun out and right beside me. It’s loaded.

I lay down to sleep, but I can’t. Whenever I close my eyes, I see the white worms wriggling in the corner of Eric’s eyes. When I open them, Eric is staring straight forward, not moving, his mouth open. Tracks of blood run from his eyes, but the blood is very, very dark, almost black. Finally, I get up and open the backpack. I take out an old, crimson t-shirt that says HARVARD on it and I rip it into long strips. I go to Eric and wrap his eyes in the bandages, trying to ignore the smell coming from him. When I’m done, Eric looks much better. If it wasn’t for his slack jaw, he’d look almost normal. Well, as normal as a guy in a blindfold can look.

I go back to bed, but I can’t sleep. So much has happened to me in the last couple days. I can feel it inside me, waiting to come out, waiting for me to remember. I’m so tired, but now I’m full of nervous energy. I feel like if I let myself sleep, maybe everything will come back to me, everything that I’ve lost, and it’ll be too much for me. I feel like I might just break down, just completely lose my mind.

I’ve seen it happen before. There was a woman named Candy once a few years back. She showed up one summer, half-starved to death. She was quiet and middle-aged, with long, thin blonde hair. She had black bags under her eyes and she didn’t speak so much as mutter. She was always rubbing her nose, and I remember her elbows were really dirty. I don’t know why I remember that so vividly, but I do. Those filthy dark brown elbows. We all thought she was okay, that she would fit in with us eventually. We all thought she just needed some food and some rest. About a week later, we found her in the forest, eating dirt. We couldn’t get her to stop. She said she was keeping the sky away. We tried everything and finally tied her down in her bed. One day she got loose and we found her in the fields, vomiting up mud and manure. She died a few days later.

I’ve never been afraid of something like that happening to me before. But that was before I lost everything, my home, the only family I ever knew, my best friend. Now I’m wandering in the woods with a zombie. I don’t know where I’m going. Now I seem to understand people like Candy a lot more than before. Sometimes it’s too much. Sometimes there’s no overcoming what’s happened to you. It just breaks you.

It scares me. It scares me so much I can’t sleep. I just tremble in the cave most of the day, trying to avoid reality. Trying to escape it, just not too much. I don’t know how to manage the difference between the two. Late in the afternoon, I finally fall asleep.

45

By dawn the next morning, we reach the old town of Eustis. Maybe a day’s rest was what Eric needed because he walked a little faster the next day. I can’t say the same for myself. I feel worse than I did the day before. I know I’m not thinking very well. I’m so tired, I’m finding it difficult to understand the difference between dreaming and reality. I had to stop myself from shooting at a squirrel, thinking it would be good to eat. A gunshot, of course, would be heard for miles. I know I have to sleep, but I’m afraid of my dreams, my memories.

Eustis is just a dozen of old, clapboard houses. A few houses burned down at some point. The rest are sagging in the middle like an old horse, their windows broken. The grass and trees have taken over completely. I know the houses have been searched and searched again over the years. There’s not anything here anymore that might be useful to anyone, unless you want firewood from tearing the houses down.

At Eustis, this road ends and another begins, stretching north and south. Going through the town feels like it might be stupid, but we’re making good time on the road. I’m also afraid that Eric will hurt himself off the road. If we can avoid getting caught for the next two days, I can stop worrying about Franky following us. There’s no way they have the time or the resources to search for more than a couple days. They have fields to work, and they need all the horses for that. I just have to keep up this pace for a couple more days, I tell myself, and then we’ll be a little more safe. But I’m nervous and anxious and paranoid. Sometimes for no reason, I think I hear horses. I tug Eric off the road and shove him to the ground and wait, heart thumping, but nothing. There’s never anything. I don’t know if it’s lack of sleep or what. I don’t know what I’m hearing. My own nightmares probably. Maybe it’s dumb I walk right through town, but I’m doing it. I want to move as fast as we can. The plan is to walk through town and then, about a mile or so north, walk into the woods and rest for the remainder of the day.

Eustis is spooky. I don’t leave the Homestead much. Okay, I don’t ever leave the Homestead. I haven’t seen these remnants of the old world in many years. Everything seems so quiet. Just these big, looming old houses, with their broken windows that look like diseased eyes. There’s even water stains under them that makes it look they have the Worm, like they’re bleeding from their eye sockets. As we walk through the town, the silence is horrible. Eric keeps walking as always, without a care. He makes so much noise, it’s like an army is walking through Eustis. The sound of his stomping echo off all the buildings, and make horrible sounds inside. I shudder just to think what’s inside these buildings.

“Shhh,” I tell Eric. I know it’s useless to shush him, but I do it anyway. Eric continues striding forward. He doesn’t move his arms when he does this though, so it makes him lurch, which makes a lot more noise than I want to hear.

All the way through Eustis, to the last house with its double garage all grown over with trees and shrubs, I feel horribly anxious. My heart is thumping in me like crazy. I have to keep my fists balled up tight just from the tension.

But then the houses fade away and there’s just trees and a battered old road that’s half gone back to the wild. I begin to calm down. Eric doesn’t care one way or the other. He just moves forward, as usual. With the forest around me again, I feel a little more secure, and I tell myself that I’m never going to do that again. We are easy targets. I mean, it’s not as if Eric can run. I can’t take that risk again. That was very foolish.

We’re not far north when this becomes painfully clear. I hear horses. This time, it’s not my imagination.

46

There’s nowhere to run, even if we could.

On both sides of us are bodies of water. The road cuts right between two ponds. On either side, it’s just open grass to the water, nowhere to hide. I stand motionless, stupid. I can’t think of anything to do. The horses are coming from the north. I think there are two. I feel a tug suddenly. Eric has kept moving, of course, and yanked the rope right out of my hand. He’s striding forward without a care in the world, right toward the riders.

I run forward and grab his rope and give him a little tug. He comes to a stop eventually and then just stands there.

“Unh,” he says.

The riders appear then, riding out of the forest a quarter of a mile ahead of us. There are two of them and they see us right off. I know there’s no hope in running, even if Eric could run. The horses stop. I see the two figures on the horses talking. My heart is in my throat. I look for familiar features. Is it Norman? Franky? Anyone from the Homestead? I stand there, squinting at shadows, trying to decide if I recognize anything about them, a telltale gesture or way of holding themselves. Maybe even a hat I might recognize. Nothing. I reach into my belt and hold Eric’s gun for a second, but then I put my hands to my side. Better keep my hands visible. People out here are nervous on the best of days, and if they think I have a gun, they might shoot me first and figure out the rest later.

But I know the gun’s there if I need it.

The riders move forward. From here, they are just outlines. Their shadows stretch out to my left, over the field. I don’t recognize the horses either, but I can’t be sure. I can’t be sure.

I don’t know which would be worse, people from the Homestead or strangers. People out here, they’re not okay in the head. Most would kill the both of us for a cucumber, let alone all the supplies we’re carrying. It occurs to me that we’re prime targets for murder and looting. Eric is hefting a treasure trove on his back for a lot of people. Food, clothes, tent, blankets. We’re a real lucky find.

I didn’t think too much about that either.

At least if they’re people from the Homestead, I might be able to talk our way out of this. Maybe I can convince them not to kill Eric. It’s a better shot than strangers. Maybe I was wrong to leave.

All these doubts fly through me as the riders approach.

It’s obvious soon enough that I don’t know them.

There’s two of them.

Their guns are out, pointed at us. They haven’t shot yet. That’s something.

Think, Birdie.

47

When Eric taught me how to shoot, we were still on the island. Lucia was still alive then, and she was watching us. He had set up several old cans on a stump. It was a summer day. I remember that because I wanted to shoot the guns and then go swimming. I didn’t want to shoot. The noise scared me. Eric had to crouch down to talk to me.

“Okay, Birdie,” he told me. “Hold out the gun. There you go. Now breathe. Aim steady. Yes, like that. Breathe out. While you’re breathing out, see how it steadies your arm? See that? Now breathe out, steady, good. Now squeeze the trigger. Don’t pull it, that will make you miss. Squeeze it gently. Good. Go ahead. When you’re ready. Don’t forget to breathe.”

I shot. Once. Twice. Three times. Two cans fell. I was proud, but Eric didn’t seem happy or unhappy. He just looked down at me.

“But you know what the most important part of a gun is?”

I shook my head.

“Your own head.” Eric gazed into my eyes with his, which were as blue as the lake behind him. “You have to think, Birdie. Think.”

48

Two strangers, both with guns pointing at me. No time to pull on them. One of us would be dead before I shot. Maybe both. If they wanted us dead, they could have shot already, meaning they might not be all bad. Or they might be afraid there are other people nearby. I watch their body language. The way they sit on their horses. Careful, but not afraid. Maybe even a little excited. I can’t see their faces yet, but they seem eager to approach. Horses at a trot. Horses are moving well. Well-fed, well-looked after. Good sign. These people can’t be totally gone if they’re caring for their horses. I might be able to talk with them.

As they ride closer, I get a better look. One’s tall and slim, wearing a plaid shirt and a baseball cap with Red Sox written on it. He has red hair. His skin is pale with red splotches. His eyes are narrow and bright and pale in color, almost like copper. He’s holding a hand gun with a large magazine, probably has four times the shots I do. The other man is shorter, stocky. His nose is bulbous, like an onion, and one of his ears is mashed up so it looks like cauliflower. He’s got bushy, brown hair, and there’s a ratty, uneven growth of a beard to match. His eyes are rounder, more kind somehow, and greenish in the morning light. They’re both fairly clean. I wonder if they’re part of another community around here, but I find that doubtful because we would have heard of another group so close to us. They aren’t your normal bandits, who are dirty as hell, and have a vacant emptiness in their eyes. These guys have something, they are a part of something. I don’t know if that makes them more or less dangerous.

I try to keep my hands from straying near to my gun. Better they think I don’t have one. It’s not easy.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” the short, stocky one says, his pistol pointed at me. They ride closer.

The slim one stops a dozen feet away and leans forward in his saddle. “What’re you tied up for?”

I’m confused for a second before I realize that he’s talking to Eric. I think fast.

“He doesn’t talk,” I say. The two look at me.

“Unh,” Eric says. They look at Eric and then back at me.

“Except for that,” I add quickly. “He’s simple in the head,” I explain. The two study us for a second. Gradually I see them relax. Their guns are still pointed our way, but with less resolve, less tension. I continue, seeing an opportunity I don’t want to go to waste. “I found him this way. They took his eyes out.” I point toward Eric’s bandaged head.

The taller one frowns. “Who?” he asks.

I shrug. “Some bandits, I guess,” I say. “I found him like this. Bandaged him up the best I could.”

They both look at Eric with pity. At least that’s what I’m hoping.

“What’s the rope for?” the short one asks. There’s still suspicion in his voice.

“He wanders off,” I answer. “He’s not right in the head.”

“Where’re you coming from?” It’s the short one asking again. The tall one has his eyes on me too. They both seem to be satisfied with my story about Eric.

“West,” I say. “I used to be with Good Prince Billy.”

“Why’d you leave her?” The tall one asks this question. They both seem to recognize the name. I wonder immediately if it was a good idea to use it.

I shrug. “I had some stuff to trade.”

“You come all this way alone?” asks the short one gruffly, his eyes kind glancing him around him.

“I’m what’s left,” I say simply.

The two look at each other. “Lots of goddamn bandits around,” the short one says.

They seem to relax. Their eyes stop their focus on me and wander to the trees and over the lake. Then the short one with the onion nose looks back at me. His eyes search me up and down, but without menace. Like he’s sizing me up as a person, not as a threat. He puts away his gun then, and the taller one does the same.

“My name’s Sidney,” he says. “This is Boston.”

The tall one touches the visor of his baseball cap. “Nice to meet you.”

“We’re here from the United States of America,” he says.

“President Barber himself,” Boston adds.

Sidney gives him an impatient glance, but then turns back to me. “We’ve come here looking for people to help rebuild our nation.”

“And keep it safe from Gearheads,” Boston says.

“That too.” Sidney nods. “That too.”

The war.

I forgot all about the war.

49

We aren’t exactly prisoners. We aren’t exactly free either. Eric and I are walking back along the road we just came, headed back to the Homestead. The only good part of meeting Boston and Sidney, besides the fact that they didn’t just shoot us down in the road, is that obviously they haven’t heard of the return of the Worm. That means that either it just happened in the Homestead or that it hasn’t come any farther. It’s good information. The bad part is that I can’t think of a good reason to refuse to join them. I can’t do anything suspicious. We look too damn pathetic to refuse help. So here we are, walking back the way we came while I think of a way to shake them.

Boston is ahead of us and Sidney is behind, walking their horses as slow as they can go. For some reason, Eric has lost his stride and he’s back to plodding. The two are still watching us. Their guns aren’t out and they haven’t searched us for weapons, but it’s obvious I don’t have much choice but to join them. War has made them suspicious of people. Well, even more suspicious. No one trusts anyone out here. No one who lives very long.

“There’s a community around here somewhere. I guess it’s built on a hill. You’ll be safer there, trust me,” Boston tells me, turning slightly to face me. “It’s dangerous out here, especially with the Gearheads around.” What can I do? I can’t say we want to go walking off into the wilderness to trade with squirrels and raccoons. I can’t tell him that the most dangerous place for me is the place they’re taking me. It’s like a death sentence for Eric. And if they kill Eric, my life will be over. I can only join them until I can slip away or think of something.

“Well, I haven’t seen any Gearheads,” I say. I’m hoping to talk them into letting us move on alone by ourselves.

Sidney makes a gruff sound behind me. “They’re around.”

Something in his tone. Maybe he’s worried that we are Gearheads. Spies or something. Like them? Is that what they’re doing? Are they spies for the Stars? I want to ask some questions to get more information, something I can use to get free of them, but I ask myself, what do spies want? Information. The more questions I ask, the more suspicious they’ll become. So I do what I’ve done most of my life. Keep my mouth shut.

With every step, we are closer to the Homestead. I feel a sense of doom. I know in the end, I will have to pull my gun. It will have to be at the desperate end. These two seem like hardened soldiers. They’ve been trained. They’ve seen battle. All I did was shoot someone with a shotgun once, and it nearly broke my shoulder. Pulling my gun has to be the last resort. It almost certainly means that I will die, and Eric soon afterward. But what’s the difference if we die out here or back at the Homestead?

Boston slows his horse to ride next to me.

“I wish we had some horses for you two,” he says. His orange eyes glimmer down at me.

I shrug. “He doesn’t ride,” I say, jerking my head toward Eric. “He just falls off.”

Boston looks back at Eric who is plodding ahead as usual.

“And he doesn’t move faster than that, I take it?” he asks.

I shake my head.

Boston studies me for a moment. I watch him out of the corner of my eye. I try to figure out what he’s studying me for. There’s a certain look, a way that a man has when his intentions aren’t decent. I’m looking for that. Maybe he sucks a tooth or licks his lips or lets his eyes rake at me, up and down. I don’t think I’m much to look at, but that’s never stopped men before, especially out here. I’m not stupid. I have to watch myself.

But Boston doesn’t seem like that. He’s curious and suspicious, but not malignant, or he hides it well. The other one, Sidney, I don’t know yet. He’s behind me, so I can’t study him, though I feel his presence.

“Well, if you ask me, you’re lucky,” Boston says after a second. “Most bandits would’ve just killed you in the road and then taken your stuff. You’re lucky they let you go.”

I glance over to him. Boston is looking ahead, but I can tell he’s prodding at the weak point in my story, seeing if I get uncomfortable. He’s studying me like I studied him.

“You can thank Eric for that,” I say quickly. Hesitation here would sound false. “We were all camped one night and he got loose from the rope. By the time I found him and got back to camp, everything was gone.”

“Eric?” Boston asks. “How’d you know his name?”

Damn it. “I don’t know his name,” I say as easily as I can. “That’s the name I gave him.”

“Looks like Eric saved your life,” Boston says, seemingly satisfied. “Lucky.”

“Lucky,” I agree. Boston seems satisfied and gives me a little twitch of a smile. Then his horse gradually moves ahead and leaves us alone again. It’s hard to get a horse to walk as slow as Eric. I notice that Sidney has to stop his horse every quarter mile or so and let us get ahead.  It’s a boring, grindingly slow pace, but I’m glad for it. It gives me time to think of how to get us out of this mess.

My immediate worry is that Eric will cough up a big blob of black muck, crawling with worms. That would give him away. Or just the fact that he drools some weird black fluid, that could do it too, so I’m constantly wiping at his face. A couple of times, I do notice a worm or two, and, trying to keep my breakfast down, I wipe them away.

My second worry is myself. I’m tired. Really tired. I’ve already been walking all night and now it’s midday. And I didn’t really sleep much the night before. I’m starting to feel so tired that I begin to think that it wouldn’t be that big of a deal if I just stopped, fell to the ground, and took a big, beautiful, fat nap. When you get as tired as I am right now, it’s almost impossible to think straight. Life and death don’t seem as important anymore. I really just want to sleep. If death is just a good long sleep, it sounds pretty good to me right now. My eyes feel swollen and scratchy. My legs are like stone. And I keep thinking the same phrase again and again in my head: Think, Birdie, think. I repeat it like some mantra in my head, and I can’t stop doing it. Think, Birdie, think. Think, Birdie, think. It’s driving me batty. To say I’m miserable is not even close.

Finally, I get some luck.

“Let’s stop for a rest,” Sidney announces behind me.

Almost immediately, I stumble to the side of the road and then sink to the ground. I tug at the rope until Eric stops. He just stands there with him mouth hanging open.

Boston circles around and then walks his horse near to me. He looks down at me.

“You guys been walking all night?”

I don’t see the use in lying. I nod.

“Should have said something,” Sidney chimes in. He has already dismounted. “No wonder you’re moving so slow.”

Before I know it, the two have started making camp. I can tell by the way they do it that they have a system. They’ve been traveling together for a long time. Without speaking, they know who does what. Sidney tends to the horses while Boston unpacks. Then Sidney finds stones for a campsite while Boston unpacks the cooking material. It’s all I can do to get to my feet and struggle with Eric to get him to sit down and rest his legs.

“Unh,” he says finally and lets me pull him to the ground. His legs straighten out and he lays there stiffly on his backpack, his legs off the ground.

I notice that both Boston and Sidney are watching this strange position. I shrug at them and they go back to what they’re doing. I crawl up to wipe Eric’s mouth, trying to ignore the foul odor coming from his mouth. I lay next to him and close my eyes.

Then I must have gone to sleep because the next thing I know, there’s a campfire going and I smell something cooking. Oats, I think.

Which reminds me. I look over to Eric, and it’s just as I thought: he’s looking thin. I can see his cheekbones stick out more than ever before. His head looks like a skull. I have to figure out how to get him to eat.

But my head hurts. Real bad. I need to shut my eyes for a second.

50

When I wake up, it’s late afternoon. The sun is low and weak. There’s no sign of Boston and Sidney, but their horses are tied up nearby, so they haven’t left us. I look next to me. Eric has moved to a sitting position. His head is up, but I have no idea if he is sleeping or not. Or even if he sleeps. I notice unhappily that I didn’t tie him up, which is the kind of mistake that could get me killed. I will have to be more careful. My headache is gone, but I’m still weak and tired. There’s a bowl of oatmeal next to me, and the minute I see it, I feel ravenous.

There’s nothing but oatmeal, no dried fruit or maple syrup or even a dash of salt. It’s cold and so thick, it’s almost solid. It’s like eating half-dried concrete. I don’t care. It tastes like heaven to me. I finish it all off quickly and then notice there’s another bowl, presumably for Eric.

I sit up and take the bowl in my hand. I take out a spoonful and hold it under Eric’s nose. I figure if he smells it, he might eat it. It’s not as easy as it sounds. I’m scared he’ll bite me.

But he doesn’t do anything. No response at all.

“Come on, Eric,” I say. “You have to eat.”

He doesn’t even move.

Looking at his wide-open, disgusting mouth, dark and smelling like week old urine, I steel up my nerves. “Okay,” I say. “Here goes.” I put the spoonful of oatmeal in his mouth. But Eric doesn’t move or do anything. I dump the oatmeal on his tongue and then, grimacing with disgust, I shut his jaw. Eric tenses and then coughs violently with his whole body, spraying out a vile mixture of black bile and oatmeal all over me. For a moment, I’m frozen in horror.

“Oh God!” I yell and leap to my feet. I dance around in disgust, shaking my hands. “Oh man!” I cry out. I scramble for the towel I use to wipe his mouth and then the thought of using that to wipe my own face repulses me, so I go to my bag. I pull out a shirt and start wiping myself down. “Eric!” I tell him. “Gross!”

“Unh,” he answers.

Then I have to clean him up too. There’s black oatmeal everywhere. It’s so disgusting that I feel my stomach rumble, but I resist the urge to vomit. I need the food. So doesn’t Eric. Or he’ll waste away to nothing. I can’t let that happen to him.

“So you’re not going to eat, huh?” I ask him.

“Unh.”

“Great,” I say, throwing down the shirt I used to wipe myself at Eric’s feet. “Another thing to worry about.”

That’s when I notice my gun is gone.

51

Around sunset, Boston and Sidney return with a fat buck. I must have been sleeping so deeply that I didn’t even hear the gunshot. That worries me. I watch the two men toss a loop of rope around the deer’s neck and then, throwing the rope around a tree branch, they hoist it up off the ground. Boston makes quick work with his knife and then Sidney skins it. The deer carcass is bright red. Then they come back to the campfire and sit down, all without saying much to me. I join them.

The two of them are sitting wordlessly by the fire, which Boston is poking at with a stick. They nod at me as I join them.

“Are we staying here for the night?” I ask.

“Think we better stay for a day or so,” Sidney says. His voice is low and smooth. It might be comforting if he wasn’t a stranger who stole my gun. He looks up from the fire. “You two are too tired to keep going. How long you been going like this?”

I shrug. “I lost track,” I say. Then, after a second, I take a deep breath. “So who’s got my gun?” I ask. If I don’t make this a subject real soon, they’ll be suspicious. Anyone who pretends not to be concerned about their missing gun is hiding something.

They both look at me. The fire light flickers on their faces. I wish I could read minds.

“I do,” Boston says. He makes that twitch of a smile again. “I forgot all about it. It fell out while you were sleeping.” He reaches into his jacket and comes out with the gun. My hand clenches, I want it so bad. Boston hands it toward me and I snatch it quick as I can. I snap open the cylinder. “You can relax,” Boston says. “It’s still loaded.”

He’s right. The gun is loaded. I swing the cylinder shut with a twist of my wrist and holster it in the small of my back. “Thanks,” I say to them.

There’s a long silence then.

I’m thinking to myself what it means that they let me have a loaded gun.

The fire crackles and snaps.

Above us, the clouds are red and yellow and orange as the sun sets.

I try to give Sidney a smile, but I know that behind him, to the south and west, is the Homestead, where they’re taking me. I can’t run because they have horses and Eric, well, Eric doesn’t run. If I try to leave, they’ll begin to suspect something, and if they study Eric a little too closely, if they start disbelieving my whole story, they’ll find out he has the Worm and they’ll shoot him dead right here. I’m sure of it. Something bad has to happen. I have to do it. I haven’t had to do anything really bad since I was a little kid and I shot that man by the lake. I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to shoot anyone.

“Unh,” says Eric behind us. “Unh.”

I get up and go to him. His mouth is hanging open. He doesn’t even turn his head as I approach.

“Unh,” he says again.

I crouch down next to him and pick up the shirt that I’m using to wipe his mouth. I guess it’s a rag now. I’m never wearing it again, I guarantee that. I wipe his mouth, but I have no idea what he wants.

“Unh,” he repeats. One of his leg kicks out and then bends strangely. “Unh.”

“Looks like he’s got a cramp,” Boston says. I look up to see the redhead standing right over us.

“I know that,” I say, but I didn’t know that. Boston crouches down next to me and moves toward Eric, but I shove him away. “I can do it,” I say. “I know what I’m doing.” The thought of someone else touching Eric makes me panic.

Boston doesn’t seem to be hurt by the push, although now I regret it. It wasn’t smart, but I didn’t think at all. I just reacted. That’s not good either. But I can’t let him get too close to Eric, he’ll find out. I watch Boston for signs of irritation or anger or something even darker, but he just nods at me and moves back to the fire.

I do my best to massage the tight muscle in Eric’s leg while ignoring the horrible, and I mean horrible, stench of him. He stinks like a dead horse that’s drowned in a cesspool on a hot day. I really should clean him up, but that is way down on my list of worries right now. Right now I just need to keep him alive. I work on his leg until the muscle stops being so stiff. I don’t know if that was it, but Eric doesn’t make any more sounds.

Working on his leg makes me thirsty so I go to the campfire and ask for water.

“Right there,” Sydney says. He points to a tin bucket filled with water from a nearby stream. That’s when I realize I have another dilemma. I don’t dare to drink water that hasn’t been boiled to kill the Worm. These guys don’t know the Worm has returned. If I insist on boiling water before I drink it, that will be weird. Once you start lying, it’s real difficult to keep at it. I have to lie about everything, it seems. It’s almost as exhausting as walking for a day and half non-stop. Almost.

I go back to Eric and open the backpack that’s strapped to him. I reach in and fish out the aluminum kettle and then search around until I find what I’m looking for.

I fill the kettle with water and set it on the fire.

“Want some?” I ask Sidney, holding up a bag of herbs.

“What is it?” he asks.

“Mint,” I say.

“Sure,” Sidney responds with a shrug of his shoulders. “Why not?”

When the kettle boils, I pour out four mugs of piping hot tea and then drop some of the dried mint into each one. “Just enough to give it some zing,” I say as I do it. There, I think to myself, another disaster averted. I just like mint tea, that’s all. Nothing odd about that.

I feel pretty smart as I sit down next to Boston.

“So who is Eric really?” Sidney asks.

I look up from my tea in surprise.

“Come on,” Boston says. “Out with it. We’ve watched you worry over him all day long. Nobody is that protective of a stranger they just found on the road.”

My heart pounds. My paper house of lies is trembling, threatening to crumble. What I need is some truth. “He’s my Dad,” I say. I say it without thinking too much. It feels good to say.

“Your father?” Boston looks over my shoulder at Eric and then back at me. “But you’re black,” he says.

“I am?” I laugh a little. I take a sip from my tea. The two are watching me. “He took me in when I was a kid.”

“What happened to him?” Sidney asks.

“I didn’t tell you the exact truth this morning,” I admit.

“We noticed,” Sidney says drily.

“Eric wasn’t the one who wandered off when the bandits came,” I explain. “I was.” I look down at my tea like I was emotionally disturbed by the memory, but really I’m thinking and inventing like crazy. “He always told me never to wander off, but I did anyway, maybe just because he told me not to. When I got back to camp, the bandits had done this to him.” I jerk my head toward Eric. “They beat him so bad, I thought he would die.” I choke on some emotion. It’s not entirely untrue. I feel bad about how Eric is right now. I can use that. I let a few tears slip. “He didn’t die,” I continue. “But he’s never been right in the head afterward.”

Boston makes a sound like ohhhh, looking over at Eric.

“Why didn’t you tell us that before?” Sydney asks. It’s a good question.

“I didn’t know you guys at all,” I say. “Some people don’t like the thought of blacks and whites mixing like that.”

“She’s right about that,” Boston says with a huffing sound. Sidney nods. “You’re right,” Boston continues. “I’ve known some men, let me tell you.”

“I’m sorry about lying to you two, but you know how it goes out here.”

They both nod at that and sip at their tea. I feel my heartbeat slow a little. I think it’s going better. I think they buy everything. It doesn’t get us free of them, but it does save us from being taken as prisoners outright. Or worse.

Boston and Sidney turn their attention to the buck then. They take out long hunting knives and begin carving away the flesh in long strips. They hang the strips on a branch to dry.

I take the chance to go to Eric. I bring the cup of mint tea. It’s just barely warm now and safe for him to drink. I get my rag ready and crouch down in front of Eric. When I lift the cup, he immediately sticks out his tongue. I tip the mint tea into his mouth. Eric’s tongue laps at it like a dog.

“Unh, unh, unh,” he says as he laps.

“Careful you don’t get any in your mouth,” I tell him. “You might actually drink some.”

“Unh, unh, unh,” Eric keeps saying. Finally the cup is done, and I wipe his mouth, trying to keep my oatmeal down. Eric turns his head one way and then the other as if searching for more water, but then his jaw hangs open.

“Unh,” he says, and then seems to relax all over.

I look over my shoulder, but neither Boston nor Sidney seems to be paying attention to us. I’m glad. I don’t want anyone to see Eric like this.

My fatigue hits me then. Like a boulder dropped on me. I just want to lay down again and sleep. I thought maybe my little siesta would make me feel better, but instead it has only emphasized how badly I need sleep. I haven’t had a decent night’s rest since the Worm broke out. I’ve only been sleeping a few hours a night, and then not well. It’s catching up to me.

But as exhausted as I am, I can’t go to sleep without taking care of Eric. I have to get him to a tree, so I can tie him to it. I can’t risk him wandering off, or worse. I get up and pick up Eric’s rope. I tug at it, and Eric responds immediately. He kind of flails there. The backpack is too heavy for him. I grit my teeth and reach down and shove him over. He lays there on his stomach and doesn’t move.

“Unh,” he says.

“Good job, Eric,” I tell him. “Now you can get up.” I tug at the rope, and Eric uses his arms and legs to rise to his feet. He just stands there, jaw open. I wipe off a long, thin, black line of drool. Taking the rope, I lead him into the forest a few dozen yards to a big pine tree. I tie him to it, and then struggle to get him to sit down underneath it.

As he half-falls to the ground, he reaches out and brushes against me with the palm of his hand. The glove has fallen off. For a minute, I recognize the hand. It’s the same one that use to reach out to me in the night, just to make sure I was safe. It’s the same one that took my hand so many times when I was young. And I remember for an instant, like a flash, long, long ago, when it was just him and I on the road, before the Homestead, before Lucia. His hand in mine, leading me away from danger. Protecting me.

I’m crying before I can stop myself. I put my hand on Eric’s head as I cry. I don’t dare to touch him nearer to the mouth than that, in case he bites. I’m trembling then as I cry. I can’t let myself be weak.

I sniff and straighten my back. I take my hand from Eric’s head and step back.

“Good night, squirrel,” I say.

“Unh,” he says.

It takes everything I have left in me not to collapse in grief.

52

I dream someone takes my hand in theirs. It’s not Eric’s hand. It’s much larger. I don’t have to look around to know the world is on fire. I can smell the smoke. I look at the hand in mine. It’s large and black and is wearing the ring. The hand is warm and smooth. I tighten my grip on it.

“You can do it, Birdie, I know you can.” It’s the same voice, deep and beautiful as honey.

I look up to see my father, but his face is in shadows. I smell it then. The stench of old urine and dead things. White worms writhe in the darkness. My father’s mouth yawns open and black bile begins to spew out over me and I can do nothing but feel the worms wriggle on my skin.

53

I wake up shaking and sweating. I’m trembling so hard that it’s hard to breathe. I take deep, deep breaths to calm myself. I can still feel the dream, lingering like a stench. I slide out of my sleeping bag and let the cool night air take some of my sweat. I shake my head and walk down the road, away from the fire that’s burned down to weak, orange coals. As I walk, reality comes back to me. The dream fades.

The moon is bright. Trees whisper in the cool breeze. The sound of my footsteps crunching on pine needles and leaves comforts me. The dream tatters in the breeze. My breathing calms. I even start feeling a little cold. I turn around and walk back toward the fire. I see the little campfire ahead of me, a tired, brick-colored, ancient thing, gloaming in the coals and ashes. I pick up some fallen wood for the fire. When I return to the fire and feed it, little yellow flames licking at the dry wood, I wish that everything could be solved so easily.

But it can’t. Boston and Sidney are taking us back to the Homestead, and I don’t know how I can get Eric away. At the Homestead, they will certainly kill him, walk him out solemnly to the fields and give speeches. They’ll be sad and solemn when they do it, but they’ll put a bullet through his brain all the same. Even if they don’t, Eric is dying. He won’t eat. He’s just going to turn to skin and bones and then shrivel up and die. That is, if the Worm doesn’t kill him first, if he doesn’t crack and then I have to do something I don’t think I can do. Nothing is simple. I feel like I’m failing Eric. I sit by the fire, poking at it, prodding it back to life. If Eric could run, there’s a chance we could vanish into the forest. We could get somewhere alone and then I could deal with the other problems. But he can’t run. Sometimes he can hardly walk. If we disappear tonight, I feel sure Boston and Sydney would hunt for us. They would want to know why. They are spies after all. At least that’s what I think they are.

I look up from the fire. Boston is fast asleep in his sleeping bag near the fire. Sidney is on watch, I guess, his back against the tree, snoring. Snoring?

I stand up quietly to investigate. Walking silently as a cat, I go over to Sidney. Yes. He snores lightly through his huge nose. He’s fallen asleep with his gun on his lap. They’re both asleep.

I reach back and take out my gun.

I probably won’t have a better time than this.

Think, Birdie. Think.

I could do it. One shot in Sidney’s head and then, twirling around fast, another in Boston’s before he even realizes what has happened. Two rapid shots and then we’d be gone. Bang. Turn. Bang. Easy as feeding the fire.

My heart starts beating rapidly.

The gun is warm and real and heavy in my hand. If I don’t do this, Eric could die. I can’t let that happen. I swore I wouldn’t let that happen. I put my finger on the trigger and add pressure. What do I know of these guys? Who knows how many people they’ve killed? Women and children both probably. Who knows? I lift up the gun in the darkness and point it at Sidney. I’m just a few steps away. I won’t miss. Just two shots. Bang. Turn. Bang.

I take a deep breath.

Squeeze the trigger.

If I don’t, Eric will die. I squeeze. I picture the movements I need to make. The last pressure of the trigger, the turn at the waist, pointing the gun at Boston who will probably sit up straight at the sound of the gun. And then the second shot. Easy. I squeeze.

If I don’t, Eric will die. I steady my aim and take a deep breath.

But my finger won’t move.

I can’t do it. I can’t.

I let the gun drop. I have to find a different way.

When I get back to my sleeping bag, I feel sure Eric would be proud of me. I slip inside and close my eyes.

This will give me no consolation if he dies because I couldn’t do what had to be done.

54

The next day I wake up to blinding sunlight. The sun is almost directly above me. I slept until midday. I feel a lot better than I did last night. When I sit up, I see it’s a beautiful day. There are long, lazy clouds in the sky, but otherwise the skies are deep blue. To each side of the road are tall pine trees. Boston and Sidney are by the fire, drying long strips of venison. The sight of the meat makes me ravenous. I think I could eat half the deer myself. I sit up and stretch. Somewhere a chickadee calls out. Chick-a-dee-deee-deee.

“There’s some breakfast left, if you want some,” Sidney says, noticing I’m up.

Do I want some breakfast? Talk about an understatement.

I try not to think about how close I came to shooting him last night as I go to the fire. There’s a pan in there with two large deer steaks. Soon I’m sitting down and gorging myself. I eat both of the steaks without so much as a pause. Then I sit back, wiping my greasy face with my sleeve, and take a deep breath. I could almost take another nap.

But I remember Eric then, so I boil some more tea. The sleep has done me some good. I’m thinking much more clearly. I’ve got an idea.

Boston and Sidney work silently on the deer, but I notice Sidney watches me as I get up.

“Thanks for the breakfast,” I tell him.

“No problem,” Boston says. Sidney just nods, his big onion nose dipping down and then back up. When he turns away, I see his cauliflower ear and I wonder for a second what happened to him before I stop myself. Best not to think about that. I don’t know what’s going to happen. There’s a good chance that all of this is not going to end well. It doesn’t seem smart to wonder about the past of a man you might have to kill. So I just turn and walk away.

Eric has moved during the night. He’s lying on his stomach in the pine needles with the heavy backpack on top of him. From the sound of his breathing, it sounds like the weight of the backpack is not easy for him.

“Come on, Eric,” I say. I push him over. His face is covered with black bile.

I stand up and walk away, trying to hold down my breakfast. “Oh, man,” I say, covering my mouth with my wrist. “That’s nasty.”

But there’s nothing to do but clean him up as best I can, so I hold my breath and get the rag. Then I go through the bag until I find the bag of maple sugar I brought from the Homestead. I mix some in with the mint tea. This way Eric will get some kind of nourishment. Better than nothing, I figure.

I have to turn my head away as Eric drinks it though, with his lapping tongue that has turned black. It’s too gross to watch. The smell alone is brutal. But I think I got some food in him, so that feels good.

After the tea is gone, I clean him up again, and help him stand up.

“Unh,” he says when I’ve finally hefted him to his feet.

I walk him around a little, just to exercise him, get the blood to his muscles. Then I stand next to him and look back through the trees, down at the camp where Boston and Sidney are working on drying the strips of deer meat. Eric’s mouth hangs open. His breathing is rough and makes a gurgling noise, like he’s trying to draw air through liquid. I turn away from him.

I try not to look at Eric too much. He doesn’t look like the man I remember. He looks like a skull with a beard now. The wrappings I made for his eyes are stained deeply black. I don’t even want to imagine what’s underneath that. And his clothes are just too disgusting to mention. With his jaw hanging open and a little to the side, he looks like a stranger. It’s hard to imagine this is the same person who used to teach me mathematics during long winter nights, who used to read books to me, who taught ne everything I know. It breaks my heart to see what he has become. I want to hug him or something, but I can’t because he might bite me. I feel my chest kind of freeze up.

Eric suddenly tenses up and then makes a horrible, wet hacking sound. A fist-sized blob of black bile, writhing with pale worms, rolls out of his mouth and then down the front of his shirt. It leaves a stinking, wriggling trail on his clothes as it drops to the forest floor.

That does it. I stagger to the nearest tree and wretch out a good portion of my breakfast into the bushes.

“Damn it, Eric,” I say, spitting on the ground when I finish.

When my stomach settles, I take a few deep breaths. I have to clean him up now.

It takes a few tries before I can do it without gagging. Finally, I’m done. I stand back with the rag and look at Eric. He’s leaning forward with his arms dangling down, his jaw hung open. At least he’s breathing better now.

“Unh,” Eric says.

“Well, I’m glad you feel better,” I tell him, “because I don’t think I’m ever going to eat again in my life.”

55

When I get back to the fire, Boston and Sidney are sitting down, enjoying another meal. They have a frying pan full of potatoes on the fire as well as a boiling kettle. They are smiling and talking to each other. They quiet down when I approach. By the time I sit at the fire, they are quiet, watching me.

“How’s he doing?” Boston asks. Sidney just studies me. I’m not sure how much these guys really trust me.

“He’s all right,” I ask. I take a breath and decide to get to the matter at hand. “Can I ask you something?” Boston nods and Sidney just shrugs in a way that says well, if that’s what you want to do. So I continue. “Are you spies?”

Sidney smiles, but Boston looks serious. Then it’s like they switch parts. Boston laughs out loud and Sidney gets real serious. I wait until they settle into their parts. They both look at each other and smile faintly and shrug and seem to communicate a lot by just looking at each other.

“We’re not exactly spies,” Boston says after a second. “The President sent us north to look for supporters. We try to talk to them before the Gearheads can recruit them.”

“And to see if the Gearheads have come this far north?” I ask, watching them.

The question seems to make Boston nervous. But Sidney chimes in. “Yeah, you could say that,” he answers. “As we look for supporters, we’re supposed to watch out for Gearheads.”

“Seen any?” I asked.

They’re quiet, looking at me. “You tell us,” Sidney says finally. “Have we?”

Now they’re both studying me. The tension has gathered suddenly between us, like a fog has rolled in. I even notice that they’re keeping their gun hands at the ready by holding their tin plates with their left hands. I smile and then give out a little laugh.

“I’m not a Gearhead,” I say. “I’m just trying to get my father back to the Good Prince.”

“Well, there’s the thing,” Boston says. “The Good Prince isn’t siding with anyone. Not yet. But she will. Thing is, maybe she’s got spies of her own.”

I puff out some air. “Yeah, like a girl and her mentally deranged father make a really good pair of spies.”

They both keep looking at me.

“Seriously?” I cock my head at them.

“Since we’re being honest,” Sidney says, “I’ll just come out and say it. Something isn’t right with your story. You’re hiding something.”

“If I'm so suspicious, why’d you give me my gun back?” I ask. When they keep studying me without responding, the answer comes to me. Fear crackles down my back. “Those aren’t real bullets in my gun, are they?”

They don’t answer which is answer enough. I thought about the night before, my gun pointed at Sidney. I almost shot a blank. That would have been the end of me. They would have killed me and then Eric. I get up, feeling a knot of panic in my chest. I feel my heart in my throat. The feeling of security I had until a few seconds ago is gone.

“Calm down,” Boston says, not moving. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

“We could’ve done that a thousand times by now,” Sidney adds, which sounds threatening, but actually does calm me a little. I step back though. Without a weapon, I feel lost and a little angry. My knife isn’t even with me. I should have listened to Eric. He’s told me a million times never to go anywhere without it.

“So what do you want with us?” I ask.

“Nothing much,” Boston says.

“Just information,” Sidney adds. “Just the truth. Whatever you’re hiding.”

My mind explodes with buzzing thoughts, each one clambering for attention. Obviously I can’t tell them that Eric has the Worm. They’ll shoot him where he stands. I need to tell them some truth though. Something that seems to give up what I’m actually hiding. A truth to hide the lie. My head buzzes with different scenarios. I have to pick one and fast.

I sigh and sit back down. “Yeah, all right,” I say. “I’m not from Good Prince Billy. We didn’t get attacked by bandits.” I shrug at them. “I’m from the Homestead, the little community on the hill you’re taking me to. Eric is my father, but he didn’t get beat up by bandits. He got kicked by a horse a few months back.”

They’re studying me, seeing if they trust this new story. Waiting.

I clear my throat. “At first everyone helped take care of Eric, but he just got worse and worse. And people started saying it might be kinder if they…well, if they…you know,” I say. I let it catch in my throat like a sob, which is easy enough because they would have killed Eric if they knew he had the Worm so it’s close to the truth. I sigh and blink like I’m fighting not cry. “So we had to leave. We snuck away just a few nights ago.”

They wait for more, but I’m silent. I sniffle a little and wipe my nose with my sleeve. As I’m doing it, I notice a little white worm crawling on my arm. I make a noise before I can help it and then cross my arms roughly over my chest, hoping they didn’t see anything, I feel the worm with my left hand and, doing everything to keep my disgust hidden, crush it. While I do this, I look back at them, searching for any signs they had seen a conspicuous, little white worm crawling on my clothes. They are still studying me for truth. No sign that they saw any worm. That’s one relief anyway.

“I’m sorry I lied to you guys,” I continue. “I just didn’t know if I could trust you.” Truth is, I wish I had come up with this lie at the beginning. It’s much better, but I had no idea they were going to take me toward the Homestead. It was the best I could think of at the time. I guess I’m not as good at this lying thing than I thought.

Boston and Sidney are quiet watching me. Finally Boston speaks up. “So we’re taking you and Eric to the very community that wants to kill him?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“What were you going to do?” Sidney asks.

I shrug. “I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking very well, I guess.”

“No wonder you seemed nervous,” Boston says.

Yeah, no wonder. I wait, looking for some sign that they’re buying this story. It’s the closest to the actual truth I can give them.

Boston smiles suddenly and then pours me a cup of boiling water. “Relax,” he says, holding out the mug. “Have some tea.”

I smile at them and they smile back. I take the mug of tea and sit down.

Another crisis averted. For now.

56

My new, closest-I-can-get-to-the-truth story seems to satisfy them. Around the fire, Boston gets chatty. He tells me how the two of them met in something like boot camp, back when President Barber was just Barber. They helped him carve out a place in Boston, a place free of gangs and violence, a sanctuary in the center of the ruinous disaster that followed the years after the Worm. The sanctuary grew every year until Barber came up with the idea of the Stars and, after a swift vote, declared himself President of the United States. Their sanctuary grew much faster than that, reaching north, south, and west. To the west, it pressed against the growing faction of the Gearheads. Despite the Gearheads’ claim that thye too had a president, President Brown, at first there was respect between them, even hope, Boston tells me, but things went sour in just a few years. When the war between the Gearheads and the Stars broke out, President Barber sent the two north by boat to Eastport. Since then, they’ve been heading back to Boston, stopping at all the communities they can find, searching for allies…and potential enemies. All this time, they’ve been keeping detailed notes, ready to give a report back to their President.

“The President is going to create order,” Boston says. “You’ll see. No more bandits. No more uncertain winters. No more lawlessness, murder, and all that. President Barber will end that for everyone, just like he ended it in Boston.”

Sidney nods. “No more killing people just because they’re damaged,” he tells me meaningfully, glancing toward the forest where I have Eric tied up, just in case I didn’t get the drift.

“What about the Gearheads?” I ask. “Won’t they do the same thing?” I’m genuinely curious about this whole war. I’m not faking anything. I don’t understand how two organizations that have the same goal can end up as enemies. I try to put this words for them. “If you both want peace and security, why not work together?”

Boston makes a hissing sound and Sidney shakes his head. “The Gearheads are just interested in power,” Sidney says. “They don’t give a shit for anything else.”

“At first,” Boston continues, “we were willing to work with them. They keep order over there and we keep order over here, works great for both of us. But then, all of a sudden, they’re pushing toward us and forcing people to fly their flag.”

“We never force anyone to fly the Stars,” Sidney says. “They do it because they see it’s the right thing to do. The Gearheads force people to follow them.”

“All those Gearheads care about is power,” Boston explains to me. “They could have stayed where they were, but no, they had to move south and east. They had to expand and force people to join them.”

“And build an army,” Sidney adds. He flicks his eyebrows. “With tanks.”

“You think they’re fixing up tanks to be friends?”

The two of them laugh bitterly. I’ve heard that the Stars have tanks too, but I don’t mention it. I don’t think it would be smart to get into a political debate. Maybe I’ve already pushed further than I should have. I suddenly wish I could talk to Eric. I feel it so bad, it’s like a pain, like something is being torn inside me. I turn my head down to hide the pain from them. In my sudden grief, the ghosts of the Homestead come to me, like they’ve been waiting for some kind of gap in my emotional defenses: Artemis, Diane, Fiona, Crypt, Gunner, they all do a silent, ghostly march through my mind. The pain is so intense, it’s like being immersed in frigid water on a hot day. I have to repress a gasp as my head swims. To hide it, I shake my head and laugh bitterly, as if I’m joining them, as if I have the slightest idea who really is at fault for the war, the Stars or the Gears.

It’s then, behind Boston and Sidney, I see a horse riding toward us.

Even from this distance, I would know the riders anywhere, just from how they seat the horse. Norman and Pest.

My laughter dies like it was stabbed by a knife.

57

Why can’t I catch a break?

The thought flashes past me as the next few seconds happen almost instantly.

When I stop laughing, Boston and Sidney turn around. They spring into action so fast, I can hardly keep track of what’s happening. They each have their guns out, and I reach out and grab mine, not thinking that my gun is useless, loaded with blanks. Norman and Pest are riding toward us at a nice clip. I see the both of them have guns. I assume they recognize my figure just as I recognized them. I don’t know what to do. They must know that Eric has the Worm. It wouldn’t take much searching in our abandoned cabin to find evidence of that. They’ve been sent out to find us, I’m sure. They’ll bring us back, and then, after a lengthy debate, they will drag Eric off to a solemn funeral, kill him, and then burn his body to ashes. And expect me to live with it.

The thought occurs to me that if I open fire, someone might get confused and start shooting real bullets. In the resulting fire fight, I could sneak off with Eric.

I squeeze my trigger, but then relent. I can’t sneak anywhere with Eric, or successfully escape if people are pursuing us. I need another way.

I lower my gun as Norman and Pest approach. When I make out their faces, a strange pain hits me. These are my friends, the closest thing I know to family. It’s like I forgot that until I saw their faces.

“Don’t shoot!” I cry to Boston and Sidney. “Don’t shoot! I know these guys!”

Boston and Sidney glance back at me and then back to the approaching horse. I see they’re not convinced. Norman and Pest both have their guns raised, pointed at Boston and Sidney. My heart thumping, I find myself doing something stupid: I leap between them, waving my arms.

“Don’t shoot!” I cry. “Please! Lower your guns!” I’m waving my arms like I’m trying to fly.

The horse stops and Pest is the first to dismount, swing off it gracefully, and landing without relaxing his aim. It’s strange to see him with a gun, but he’s holding it like it’s an old friend. I realize I don’t know as much about him as I thought. Pest looks angry and keeps flashing his eyes from Boston and Sidney and then back to me. Norman stays on the horse, but his gun is lowered. Slowly Norman dismounts too. I’m not sure why, but it registers then that they’re riding Bandit, the most stubborn horse at the Homestead.

Both Boston and Sidney are not relaxing their guard.

“It’s okay,” I tell them, turning toward them. “I know these guys, they’re from the Homestead.”

That doesn’t seem to relax them much, so I turn back to Norman. “It’s okay,” I say to him.

“Are you okay, Kestrel?” Pest asks. I look at him. His eyes glint dangerously. His voice has a thin quality that I’ve never heard. His finger is tense on his trigger.

“These guys have been watching out for me,” I say. “I’m okay.”

All the men just keep glaring at each other. Murder is just a bad look away.

“Everyone just calm down,” I continue.

Guns start to falter. Norman is the first to put his gun away, followed by Sidney. Pest keeps his in his hand, even after Boston puts his away, although he points it at the ground. Norman turns toward me, looking tired and sad and disappointed. I feel ashamed, even though I’m sure I’ve done the right thing since the beginning. I’ve always thought of Norman as something like a grandfather.

“I didn’t have any choice,” I tell him.

Norman shakes his head. “Maybe I’d a done the same thing,” he says sadly.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“Sometimes doing the right thing and the good thing aren’t the same,” Norman tells me. “Maybe you did what was good, honey, but not what was right.”

Boston makes a sound. “So killing a helpless man is right?”

Norman glances at Boston and then back at me. “You didn’t tell them?”

My heart falls. I’m sorry, Eric. I tried to protect you. I tried. I sink to my knees and shake my head.

“Tell us what?” Sidney growls.

“About the Worm,” Norman says. “That helpless man is carrying the disease that near wiped out the human race.”

Boston and Sidney look at me. I watch as looks of recognition come to their eyes, old, old memories of the Worm and the people who had it. How they looked. Behaved. Smelled. I see the certainty of it pass over their eyes. For a minute, with their jaws hanging like that, they look like Eric.

I’m sorry, Eric. I tried. I really did.

“I touched him,” Boston says weakly. His face loses all color, and then he stumbles to the side and leans over clasping his knees. For a minute I think he’s going to puke, but he doesn’t.

58

Think, Birdie. Think.

Now there’s four and they all know the truth. They will all want him dead and burned. They will do it for the greater good, for everyone’s future.

I’m sorry, Eric.

My body feels weak and helpless. Think, Birdie.

I need to convince them. I don’t have a weapon. I don’t have the strength or ability to fight them. I need to argue. My mind begins to buzz with the arguments, the counter-arguments, which ones are better suited to Pest, which ones might work better on Boston or Sidney, which ones I can use to make Norman see as I do. Think.

On my knees, surrounded by armed men, I feel an old strength kindle. Eric would never give up on me. Never.

I won’t give up on Eric.

I stand up.

59

Everyone is talking. I feel like it’s happening in another world. Very far away. Distant. Everything is muffled. My own mind is louder than reality, careening, grinding, buzzing. I see their lips moving, the disbelief on their faces, the anger, the sadness, the fear. I see all of these emotions leading to a decision. The decision to kill Eric. They think they’re making the hard decision, but it’s the easy one. Then suddenly Pest is in my face.

“Kestrel?” His voice is clear. He sounds concerned.

Then he’s pulled away and I see Norman. I realize it’s the first time I’ve seen him out of his canvas overalls. He’s wearing a red, plaid shirt and jeans. He frowns down at me. I’ve never seen him like this. Like he’s made of iron.

“It’s a simple question,” he says. “Where’s Eric?”

I can’t say anything.

“He’s in the forest,” Sidney tells him. He points into the afternoon darkness of the woods. “That way.” Sidney shoots me a look of pure fury. I see I’ve made an enemy.

Norman nods at Sidney and then turns toward the forest, gun in his hand. I can see in the way he holds himself, the strength in his back, the slow sadness of his walk, determined but painful, what exactly he plans to do. I imagine how it will be: he walks up to Eric, who just stands there with his mouth open, Norman moves behind him, puts the gun to his head, he says sorry, Eric, and then he pulls the trigger.

“No!” I cry and move toward him. I feel a hand hold me back, and I come to a jerking stop. “NO!” I yell again toward Norman’s back. I struggle against the hand and then turn around. It’s Boston grasping me.

“You could’ve killed all of us!” he snarls.

Suddenly my hand is free as Boston is hurled to the ground.

“Get your hands off her!” It’s Pest, standing next to me, his gun out again.

Boston springs back to his feet and lunges toward Pest, but Sidney is there to hold him. Pest stands straight his gun pointed at the ground, his chin thrust forward. I don’t see even a glimmer of fear in him. He looks strong and solid, and to see it in someone so young is blood-curdling. I stare at him for an instant, kind of hypnotized, before I leap to my feet and stumble toward the woods after Norman. I only have time to hope that Boston and Sidney don’t kill Pest before I vanish in the woods.

“Norman!” I scream. “Don’t! Just wait!”

I race through the forest and catch up to him just as he’s found Eric.

Eric is standing with his face against a tree for some reason. Norman has stopped a few feet away. He raises his gun toward the back of Eric’s head.

“WAIT!” I scream.

Norman turns his head toward me, but he doesn’t lower his gun. “Just turn around and go back, Kestrel,” he tells me. “You don’t want to see this.”

He levels his gun.

“NO!” I scream. Norman pauses.

“Please don’t make me do this in front of you.”

But I’ve got him listening. “Norman, Norman,” I say, holding my hands out to him. “Just look at me. Look at me for a second.” Norman turns his head toward me reluctantly. “Wait, just hear me out, okay? Just lower the gun and listen to me.”

“The longer we wait, the harder this will be.”

“Norman,” I say. “Listen to me, please. It’s been days now, what’s a few more minutes? Just a couple minutes to listen, okay?”

“You think this is easy for me?” Norman asks. “He was my friend too. But what you have to realize is that he’s gone. This isn’t Eric. Eric’s already dead. The longer we wait, the harder this will be. And it’s already the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.” This thought seems to comfort him. He steadies his aim.

“NO!” I scream. His finger pauses on the trigger. I lower my voice a little, trying to get his attention. “Norman, I’ve known you all my life. You’re like a grandfather to me. Please listen to me.” I get down on my knees and clasp my hands together. “I’m begging you to listen.”

Norman chokes. “Don’t do this to me, Kestrel.” His mouth is quivering.

“He’s the only father I’ve ever known,” I say.

“Don’t say that,” he says.

“Please don’t kill my father.” I’m trembling, my hands held out to him.

“Stop saying that,” Norman says. “That is not Eric.”

I’m crying now. “I’m begging you, Norman.” I let out a sob. “Just give me a minute. Just one minute. Let me explain.”

Tears run down his face. “Don’t do this to me,” he says. His finger quivers on the trigger.

“Please, Norman,” I beg. “Give me a chance to explain. Please!” I can hardly speak through the sobs.

Norman’s arms fall to his side. He wipes his face with the crook of his elbow. I close my eyes with relief. Norman turns to me.

“One minute,” he says. “Then you’re going to leave me to do what has to be done.”

I nod, my chest still heaving with emotion.

“One minute,” he repeats.

Norman sits down on a nearby rock and waits, his head hung in defeated sorrow.

My one minute begins.

60

I stand up from my kneeling position. I’ve never begged anyone for anything. I’ve never done anything like that. I feel shame and relief, gratitude and anger, all at the same time. I feel like hugging Norman. I feel like killing him. I’ve never called Eric my father. Never in my whole life. I didn’t even think I thought that way. I didn’t just say it for Norman. It came out of me without thinking. It was raw and true. I feel lightened somehow by having said it. I feel stunned by it. I’ve never felt so many things at once. I feel sensitive and confused. But I can’t, I can’t deal with any of that right now. I have to focus.

I take a deep breath and let it out slow.

I have one minute to save my father’s life.

61

“First of all,” I say to Norman, “Eric told me himself that not everyone died of the Worm. So Eric could make it!” I pointed at him. “He could still be in there, alive, fighting. If you shoot him, you’ll be killing Eric, not just some walking disease. You have to give him a fighting chance. You have to trust in him.”

“How does Eric know that?” Norman asks. “I was alive when the Worm came the first time. I remember what it was like. I don’t remember anyone coming back.”

“Probably because everyone was like you,” I answer. “No one gave those people a chance.”

Norman makes a powerful puffing sound. He isn’t agreeing with that. I don’t want to push too hard at this point. Who knows how many people with the Worm he shot back then? I don’t want to make him feel like a murderer.

“Look,” I continue, “this is what Eric told me. He told me that Good Prince Billy saw it with her own eyes.”

“I’ve never met this Good Prince Billy,” Norman says. “Why would I trust her? Maybe she doesn’t even exist.”

“Eric never lies,” I tell him. “You know that.”

Norman glances over at Eric at the tree and then he looks down at the ground. He knows that is true at least.

“Norman,” I continue, seeing a little weakness in him, “if you agree that there’s even the smallest, remotest chance that Eric might survive, you can’t kill him. You have to give him that chance. You told me yourself that Eric was the toughest son of bitch you ever met. Remember that? You have to let him fight. If you even have the smallest doubt, then it’s murder. The price of being wrong is just too high.”

“What if I don’t kill him and he ends up infecting three other people?” Norman asks. “And what if those three people go on to infect a whole community? And that community goes on to destroy what’s left of humanity? That’s on me. That’s a hell of a risk!” He looks at me sadly. “I can see why you would take that risk. But how can I?”

I swallow. It’s the heart of the issue. “It’s a risk,” I say. “But look, Norman, Eric doesn’t bite, he doesn’t scratch, he hardly does anything. If we put him in a special room and take care of him very carefully, maybe it’s not as big of a risk as you think.”

Norman looks at Eric. I study him, but I don’t know what he’s thinking. I can’t make out if he’s agreeing with me or not. He’s just a block of stone looking at Eric. This instant scares me. I decide to take advantage of his indecision.

“Look, Norman,” I say, “it’s complicated, right? Why don’t we take Eric back to the Homestead? We can all decide what to do there. You don’t have to make a decision right now.”

Norman looks at me and something drops down over his eyes. My heart drops with it. I’ve made a terrible mistake.

“We already made that decision, Kestrel,” he says. “Franky gathered us all together and told us what he’d found in your cabin. He told us that Eric had the Worm, and we discussed it. We all agreed what the best thing was.”

I start to tremble. Franky. Of course he’d want to get rid of Eric as soon as he could.

Norman stands up. “I know it’s hard to hear,” he tells me. “But we already decided what to do.” His eyes are steel. “I’m sorry, but your father is already dead. That isn’t Eric.” He points at Eric with his gun. “Right now, he’s just a disease. And I have to do this.”

I open my mouth to argue, but I can see in how he’s standing, in the iron in his back and the stone in his eyes that Norman has made up his mind. I watch him step forward.

“Don’t make me do this in front of you,” he says. There’s nothing soft in his voice. He’s readying himself and I know there’s nothing more I can say. Nothing more anyone can say. Eric is a dead man.

62

It’s like slow motion. My heart thumping. Norman’s gun raising. Waiting for the gunshot. Then maybe it’s the pressure that does it, but I remember something. It goes off in me like a blast of light.

My gun leaps to my hand. “Stop Norman!” I yell. “Don’t make me shoot you!” Of course, my gun is full of blanks.

But Norman doesn’t know that.

Norman’s hand falters. He looks at me and I can see he’s more sad than afraid. He doesn’t think I’ll do it. I cock back the hammer and place my legs a little farther apart.

“Put the gun down,” I order him. I’m also thinking pretty fast about my next move.

Norman’s gun hasn’t moved. “You wouldn’t,” he says.

I pull the trigger.

The gun jumps in my hand. The sound of it is deafening. Norman throws up his hands as if that would protect him from the bullet. His gun falls to the ground. There’s this frozen instant, his face clenched up like he’s expecting pain or death to come to him at any moment. He’s on the tips of his toes. An instant. Then his eyes open. Just as he realizes he hasn’t been shot, I rush forward and swing the gun at his head. I feel the grotesque impact shudder up my arm. His legs give out like they’re made of water and he falls to the ground, unconscious.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” I say to him as I bend over to make sure he’s okay. It’s a terrible thing to strike people you love. Trembling, I look over him closely. He’s bleeding a little from where I hit him, but he’s breathing. He’s okay.

“Unh,” Eric says into the tree.

“It’s okay,” I tell him, without looking at him. “It’s over now.”

But it’s not really over, not yet. There’s still those other three. I pick up Norman’s gun and release the clip. It’s full of ammo. Somewhere between 10 and 14 rounds, I'm not sure which. I don’t know guns very well and I don’t have time to count. I push the gun into my pants and then pull my shirt over it.

I have to think fast.

Going over to Eric, I open up the backpack, and look for something to tie up Norman with. I can’t find anything, so I do what I think I have to: I untie Eric from the tree and then from the rope itself. I have to use that. I just have to hope with every fiber in my being that Eric doesn’t get in his head to walk back to camp. I push him face first into the tree.

“Stay,” I tell him, like he’s some kind of dog.

Eric doesn’t have anything to say to that.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be back,” I tell him. I pat his back. Again, like he’s a dog.

Then I go to Norman and roll him over and tie his hands behind his back. In case he wakes up, I stuff a clean sock in his mouth from our backpack and tie it with a shirt. Then I roll him back over and tie his legs to his arms. When I stand up and see what I’ve done, for a minute, I think I’m going to be sick. Norman, who was like a grandfather to me, is tied up like a criminal. I did that. My diseased father standing with his face against a tree. What a family.

I feel horrible so I squat down next to Norman. I’ve never really touched him before, but suddenly I kiss the top of his head. “I’m really sorry about this,” I say. I see the lump on his head where I hit him, fast turning a ugly, vicious blue color, and I have to get up and stop thinking about what I’ve done. I need to focus on the future.

I shake my arms and jump up and down a little. Then I close my eyes and try to feel bad. I’m so full of adrenalin that it’s hard to get myself to cry. I jump up and down again and then take a deep breath. Closing my eyes, I see all the people who have died. I see my best friend’s hair begin to curl and then smoke and finally burn. I help carry people I’ve known for years to their funeral pyre. I roll over Eric and see the dark blood roll from his eyes. Then, deep inside me, from some depths I thought I’d forgotten, the image of the man I know now is my father comes to me. My real father. From before the Worm. He’s in bed, holding my hand. His face is round, his brown eyes deep and caring. He’s giving me his ring and he’s telling me in his warm voice that I can do it. I can do it.

I’m crying now, real tears. Once the crying starts, it’s hard to stop. Before I know it, I’ve succeeded far better than I meant to. I’m not just crying, I’m sobbing.

But this is what I need.

I got some acting to do.

63

I stumble out of the woods, sobbing and wiping my face with my arms.

I notice Boston and Sidney standing angrily by the last remnants of the fire. They have their arms crossed as they watch me move toward them. Pest is at my side before I know it. He puts an arm around my shoulders and leads me forward.

“He, he, he killed him,” I tell Pest through stuttering sobs.

“I know,” he says. I’m having a hard time breathing because I’ve been crying so much. My breath is coming in quick, shallow gasps. It’s not fake.

“He, he, he shot him,” I tell Pest.

“Quiet, now,” Pest says to me. I close my mouth to try to stop the gasping, which is embarrassing. Pest’s arm around me is strangely comforting. I look at him. He’s so small. Strange how solid his arm feels. He smells like smoke and corn and honey.

Boston and Sidney watch as Pest leads me to the fire and sits me down. I hug my legs and sniff and try not to make eye contact with them. They’re staring at me with unhidden anger.

“Where’s the other one?” Boston asks me.

I point toward the woods. “He’s going to burn him, him,” I say, having a little hiccup at the end.

“That’s what we should have done,” Boston tells me acidly.

I feel Pest stiffen. “Hey,” he says. “She just lost her father.” His voice cuts like a razor. I look over to him. His blue eyes look at me with sadness and compassion. I try not to think of Norman tied up like a slaughtered pig.

I see Boston has something more to say until Sidney grabs his arm. The two step away from the fire and begin talking to each other rapidly. I pretend to bury my face between my knees, but I’m really trying to keep a better eye on those two. I feel like I can handle Pest. I can talk to him. Those two have been lied to once too often, and I only have Norman’s gun to rely on if it comes to that. I keep an eye on the woods. Part of me imagines the hell that would break out if Eric came out of the woods, walked to the fire, and said, “Unh.”

That would not be good.

Then I feel Pest get up. I look up at him, perplexed.

“I should help Norman,” he explains, looking blankly at me.

I clutch at him. “Please don’t leave me alone with those two,” I whisper. I sure am doing a lot of begging lately. I really detest it, but it works.

Pest looks at Boston and Sidney and his eyes narrow. He nods at me and then sits back down. This time, however, he doesn’t put his arm around me, which, surprisingly, shockingly, I should say, makes me a little sad.

“Thanks,” I say. I wipe my eyes and wonder, out of the blue, what I must look like after days of travel without washing. It’s a stupid thought to have, but it does shoot through my head. Why I should care what I look like is beyond me. I don’t have time to reflect on that stupidity though because Boston and Sidney come walking up to us.

“We’re leaving,” Sidney says.

“We’ve got to let the President know about the return of the Worm,” Boston says.

I don’t know what to say. It’s my first bit of luck in a very long time. I just nod. For a minute, I think I might thank them for helping me out, but in the end, I decide that silence is best. They don’t like me much anymore, I can tell. Who can blame them? I brought history’s worst plague right in their camp and lied to their faces about it.

“Goodbye then,” Pest says. There’s no love lost between him and Boston, that’s clear. The two kind of glower at each other until Boston does that thing where he realizes he’s hating a little kid and he sighs. That happens a lot with Pest.

“You be careful with this one,” Sidney says to Pest, pointing at me. “I’ve seen some liars in my day, but this one.” He makes a hissing sound. I feel my face flush at that. It’s true though, so what can I say? In fact, I’m in the middle of doing it right now. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to defend myself. I want to tell him, “I’d like to see what you’d do if it was your father,” but it’s better not to say anything.

Pest doesn’t say anything. He just moves a little closer to me.

I wonder suddenly if Norman is conscious and struggling in his ropes. Having him come running back to the camp would certainly be a major problem. I glance at the woods nervously. The sooner those two ride away, the better. Then there’s only Pest to deal with. I don’t know yet what I’m going to do with him. One thing at a time, I tell myself.

I keep my face down as Boston and Sidney break down their camp. They do it even faster than they set it up. In just a few minutes, they’ve packed up their horses. I notice they’ve left almost all the venison they had dried. They must be planning to move fast.

Finally the two of them swing up on their saddles and walk the horses toward us. Both Pest and I stand up as they approach. The two of them silently glower at me for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” I tell them. I am sorry.

Sidney stops looking at me and turns toward Pest. “Good luck to you,” he says.

“We’re coming back,” Boston says then. The way he says it, it’s hard to say if it’s a threat or a promise or what.

“Good luck to you too,” Pest says. I look over to him and feel that funny wrong feeling I get sometimes with Pest. There’s like layers and layers of meaning in it that you wouldn’t expect from a kid. Maybe Boston and Sidney have this feeling too because they both kind of half-smile at Pest, like they don’t know what else to do. Then they turn their horses away, get up on their horses, and start riding east, from where we came. They finally vanish from sight around the corner and a minute or so later, we can’t even hear the horses. I wave of relief hits me. I feel like I weigh nothing. I could almost laugh.

“Well, they’re gone,” Pest says.

“Good,” I say.

“Now, explain this to me, Kestrel,” Pest says. I turn to him, confused. Pest is frowning at me and holding out Norman’s gun in his hand. The blood drains from my face. I feel at the the small of my back by instinct, but there’s no gun. That’s the second time he’s done that to me. “Well?” Pest asks.

The momentary relief vanishes.

I’ve got new problems.

64

“Okay,” I say, holding out my hand, “just listen to me before you do anything.”

Pest hisses and starts walking toward the woods. “Did you kill him?” he asks over his shoulder as I follow. For some reason, this really irritates me.

“No, I didn’t kill him,” I say angrily. “Who do you think I am?”

Pest makes a sound between a cough and a laugh. “Oh, I know exactly who you are,” he says. “That’s why I asked.”

My face burns with shame. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you would do anything to protect Eric.”

Suddenly we’re in the shade of the woods and I can’t think of anything to say. My heart is hammering. I left my gun with the blanks back with Norman. I don’t have many options to deal with Pest. I look ahead and see him walking toward Eric and Norman. Most likely, Pest will untie Norman. And then when he wakes up, I’ll be in the same predicament as before. If Pest doesn’t shoot Eric himself. The thought panics me and I jump forward and run in front of Pest.

“Listen,” I say. “Just let us go. You don’t have to kill Eric.”

“Eric’s already dead,” Pest answers. He looks determined and he pushes by me. I think for a second it might be my chance to tackle him. Maybe wrestle the gun from him. But I’ve seen Pest fight. I saw it once last year. Gunner wrestled him to the ground and Pest just wriggled his way from under him and then beat him so bad, Gunner was in bed for two days. He’s small but scary. I will only try when it’s my last resort.

“No, he’s not,” I argue with his back. “Eric told me that some people survive the Worm.”

Pest doesn’t slow down.

“He said that Good Prince Billy told him that.” Suddenly we’re back with Eric and Norman. Neither of them has moved. Eric has his face directly in the tree, his nose squashed to the bark. As Pest turns to me, I continue, “If there’s a chance that Eric can come through, I have to make sure he has that chance.”

Pest eyes me and then glances toward Eric. Then he eyes me again. He has that spooky look I remember so well, the one that seems to hit me like heat vision, like he’s scanning my mind. It’s everything I can do not to look away from him like I usually do. I stand up straighter. Pest gives me that eye for another uncomfortable moment before he walks over to Eric. He studies him. I bite my lip. I don’t want to ruin this moment. Let him think. I’m afraid that if I push Pest too far, he’ll go against me, no matter what the argument.

“He’s never violent?” he asks, turning away from Eric.

“Never.” I shake my head.

“No biting or anything? No growling or screaming?”

“None of that,” I answer.

Pest reaches out and puts his hand on Eric’s shoulder for a second. It’s a gesture I didn’t expect. A touch of tenderness. It surprises me. Then Pest turns away and goes to sit on the same rock where Norman sat while I argued for Eric’s life. He sits and looks at Norman and then to Eric and then to me. He rubs his head with the butt of Norman’s gun. I stand, waiting, my heart thumping in me, planning what I should do based on whatever he decides. My options are not good.

“We’re supposed to kill him,” he says to me, finally. “We all gathered at the Lodge and that’s what we decided, or that’s what Franky wanted us to decide.” He looks at me steadily. “But that’s not what I decided.”

“What did you decide?” I ask. I don’t like how small my voice is now, but I’m afraid of this moment.

“I decided to help you,” he tells me.

I have to sit down. I’m crying a little again, soundlessly, from relief. I have never cried so much in my life. It’s exhausting.

“I owe it to Eric,” Pest explains. He puts away Norman’s gun. “There weren’t many people who would take in a gang of boys from the road. Most people drove us away.” Pest nodded toward Eric. “If he hadn’t let us in, if Eric hadn’t given us a chance, we’d all be dead. I owe him a chance.” Pest stands up and then begins to untie Norman.

“What’re we going to do?” I ask.

Pest shrugs. “We can’t leave Norman like this. He’ll die.”

I nod and help by taking the gag off of him. He groans when the sock comes out of his mouth. I look up at Pest who’s untying the rope. I reach out and touch his shoulder to get his attention.

“Thanks,” I tell him.

Pest just nods at me and then looks back at the knots.

When Norman is untied, I walk back to Eric. I pull him away from the tree.

“Unh,” he says.

“You’re okay,” I tell him. I reach into his shirt and pull out the rag I use to wipe his mouth. I clean him up a little, and I’m glad to see the quantity of black bile has gone down a lot since he coughed up that worm ball. I’m so glad that he’s still here, with me, that I don’t mind his smell that much. I want to hug him, but I’m afraid that he might snap his jaw and bite me accidentally. I settle for rubbing his shoulder. “You’re okay,” I tell him again. Then I tie the rope around him again.

When I turn back, Pest has Norman sitting up against a tree. I’m glad to see him unbound, but it makes me a little nervous too. Pest walks over to me and sighs.

“He’s going to wake up soon,” he says.

“He’s determined to kill Eric,” I say. “What’re we going to do?”

Pest looks at Eric and then at me. I watch as the dawn of a plan lights his face. “You’re going to run,” he says.

65

There are three horses at the Homestead: Bandit, Jezebel, and Flint. We use them all for work, so they don’t get ridden too much. Like I noticed before, the one that Norman and Pest rode on is Bandit. He was never my favorite. He was always lazy and obstinate and never wanted to do what he was told. The only person who could ever ride him well was Norman, and that was mainly out of fear. Norman has no patience with horses. If they don’t do what they are told, they know about it, quick. It’s my bad luck that when they went out in search of me, Norman took Bandit, just because he was the only one who could ride him well. As we try to get Eric up on Bandit, I wish we had Jezebel. She’s a sweet old thing.

Bandit, however, hates the smell of Eric. We planned on just tying him down to the saddle like a corpse, but Bandit won’t even let us do that. I can’t say that I blame the poor horse much. Eric’s smell is so bad, both Pest and I have to walk away and gag a couple of times during the whole process. We try and try, but Bandit will not let us load him with Eric. He neighs, his eyes roll, he tosses his head, and then prances away nervously. Once we almost had it, but then Bandit bucked just a little, and before we knew it, all three of us were on the ground. Pest and I scrambled to get out from under Eric. Then we stood back, defeated.

Now we’re sitting down by the fire, exhausted and confused about what to do. There’s no way to get Eric on Bandit. We don’t have much time. Norman could wake up at any moment. Eric is standing next to the fire, leaning forward and to the right awkwardly. We had to take off the backpack and without it, he looks even weirder than normal. However Eric stands, it just looks wrong. No human would ever stand like that. He’s like a handful of broken twigs.

I’m sitting, looking into the fire and eating dried meat when I remember one of the books that Eric made me read for history. Eric used to divide up the days among subjects when I was younger. One day would be math and another day would be science and another day would be history. I think Eric liked history most. He’d get excited talking about events from hundreds of years ago. It was hard for me to be too excited about it after a hard day in the fields, or on a cold winter day when we had to huddle near the fire to keep from shivering. But Eric always liked talking about history and reading about it and encouraging me to read about it. What I remember suddenly is that Native Americans didn’t have the wheel, so they didn’t have carts or wheelbarrows or anything like that. When they moved camp, they used a different method.

“I’ve got an idea,” I tell Pest, springing to my feet. “Come on, help me!”

Pest follows me into the forest, and when I tell him what I have in mind, he catches on immediately. We don’t have a hatchet to cut down small trees which would have been the best, so we have to settle on gathering fallen trees and branches. We gather them into a pile, and then we quickly pick out the best, dragging them back to the camp. We arrange the wood into a kind of sled and then lash it together as best we can with the rope I use to tie up Eric. I’m kind of at a loss as to how to attach the sled to Bandit until Pest pulls out some more rope from Bandit’s saddlebags.

“What’d you bring rope for?” I ask Pest as we work tying one end to the makeshift sled.

Pest doesn’t answer at first. “Franky wanted us to bring you back.” He doesn’t look at me when he says it.

I narrow my eyes. How Franky convinced everyone to hunt down Eric, kill him, tie me up, and drag me back to the Homestead is beyond me. I guess people will do anything if they’re scared. For a minute, I get angry, but then I remember all the things I almost did to keep Eric safe and the anger cools. We do what we have to do. What we think is right. I don’t blame them, but Franky. He’s a different story. His reasons aren’t so noble.

We harness up the sled to Bandit, and then turn to Eric. He has been standing motionless the whole time near the fire. He is leaning back with one arm sort of forward like he’s reaching to get something. It’s creepy. When I go grab him, he grunts, like he’s reluctant to move away from the fire. But it doesn’t take much to get him to the sled. Getting him to lie down on it is another thing entirely. We pull and tug at him for a while, before we have to just trip him. He falls on the sled hard and then just lies there.

“Unh,” he says.

“You’re okay,” I tell him.

Pest and I tie him down with clothes, twisted up blankets, and Eric’s own belt. Then we throw the backpack on him and strap that to Eric. I check to make sure he can breathe okay and wipe his mouth and his face. I stand back and survey the construction. With the backpack on top and the log sled on bottom, Eric looks squashed in the middle.

“It’s like an Eric sandwich,” Pest observes.

“Just for a little while, okay?” I say to Eric.

Eric doesn’t make a sound.

Then I go to Pest who’s packing the rest of my stuff in Bandit’s saddlebags. I feel nervous or something about talking with him. When he turns to me, his round face is blank. He brushes his black hair out of his eyes.

“Go west,” he tells me. “Find Good Prince Billy.” His eyes have that depth and intelligence that spooks me in someone so young. “It’s the only way to keep Eric safe.”

“Thanks,” I say, although my first impulse is to tell him I can take of Eric fine myself. Pest makes me feel that way. “Listen,” I say. I take a deep breath. It’s hard for some reason to say what I want to say. “Thanks for helping me and Eric. Without you…” I can’t finish the sentence.

Pest shakes his head, like he’s annoyed with me. “You don’t have to thank me,” he says. There’s a touch of irritation in his voice. “I owe him.”

We look at each other for a second. I want to put my hand on his shoulder, but when I move toward him, Pest steps away suddenly. “Good luck,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say. “You too.” I watch him as he walks away. He gets to the edge of the woods and turns back to watch me leave. Pest is so weird.

I get up on Bandit who nickers a little. He doesn’t like to be ridden much. He doesn’t like to do anything really. Then, watching behind me, I give him a little nudge and shake his reins. “Up now,” I tell him.

When he moves forward, the sled drags forward easily. Eric is jostled a little, but it holds. Soon we’re headed down the road and away from Pest. I look up to see him still watching us leave. I lift a hand to wave, but he doesn’t wave back.

I know I owe him a lot, but I can’t help feeling that he’s a creepy kid.

Then we’re gone and Norman is behind us. It isn’t until it’s far too late to turn back, when I realize that I don’t have a single gun anymore, not even one loaded with blanks.

66

As we ride into the night, the moonlight falls lightly on the road. Dragging Eric is noisy business, but somehow it feels quiet to me. I have time to calm down. It’s been a horrible couple days. I ride lightly on Bandit and chew on strips of meat. It seems like such a pleasure, such a luxury, to have time. I don’t even mind being tired riding into the night. It feels nice to be drowsy and to know that I’m putting miles between me and, well, everyone else. It feels good to know that Eric is safe. As I ride, I feel sure that things from here on will be easier. I will ride west and find a nice little house somewhere safe. Then I’ll stay there and take care of Eric until he either gets better or… Anyway, I’ll just stay there and wait it out. I don’t need Good Prince Billy. I wouldn’t even know where to start looking for her. It’s safer to keep Eric away from everyone. Soon everyone will know the Worm is back, and Eric will be in even more danger.

When I pass the road that leads south to the Homestead and keep heading west, I feel much better. It’s weird to be so close to home again. I feel like the past couple of days have been a waste of time, like I’m going in circles. For a second, it frightens me, but then I feel better. The real goal is keeping Eric alive. If I lead him in circles until he gets better, I will call that a success. But I certainly have to get some space between me and the Homestead.

The road turns north to go around a lake. In the moonlight, the lake looks silver. As Bandit clops up the road, I marvel at the stillness of the water and how it shines in the light, like it’s been polished. After all the chaos of the last few days, having a few moments to look and see the world seems like a luxury. The silence of the night is welcome too. No gunshots. No whispered talking or scheming. I’m so relieved I don’t have to think a hundred miles an hour that it seems like everything is slow and beautiful, a rhythm of serenity. I feel myself begin to tear up, not from sadness, but from sheer relief. Both Eric and I are still alive, walking among silver lakes, pine trees shining at their edges like sharpened blades, fields populated by shards of crystalline grass. The peace I feel is immense, almost overpowering.

But it doesn’t last. Soon the beauty flakes away, and I begin to helplessly recall the faces of the people who won’t see this beauty ever again. Artemis and Peter and Matt and all the boys of the goon squad that are mostly dead now, except for Pest. And I see Pest himself, his round, white face, like a baby’s, his dark, curly hair, and his shining blue eyes, shimmering with intelligence and cunning. I wonder if, like all the rest, I will ever see him again. The thought makes my heart drop in my chest.

Then, as if my dropping heart has raised another memory, like my emotions are some kind of watery deep inside me, I remember again the days following the Worm, not recently, but a decade in the past when I was just a little girl. I remember a night like this. I’m walking under trees. Leaves crunch at my feet. Eric is walking next to me. He stops suddenly and looks down at me. He’s smiling. He puts his hand on my shoulder. I’m so tired, but his hand gives me energy because I don’t want to let him down. I want to keep going. Then he takes my hand.

It’s the memory of the hands that brings me racing to another memory, one older and more confused. Of my actual father. The feel of his large hand in mine, warm and soft, comes with images of fire and smoke. I’m frightened. I hear him talking to me, but I can’t understand all he’s saying. Only these words focus clearly: “You can do it, Birdie.”

That’s when I hear the crash, and I realize I’ve been sleeping. I look back. The sled has fallen apart.

67

I swing off Bandit and go back to check on Eric. He’s fine, lying flat on his back on a ruined sled. It’s all the same to him if he’s moving or not. I take the opportunity to wipe the black bile from his chin and face. He’s getting even thinner. I have to figure out a way to feed him or he’ll just waste away. I can’t keep giving him sugar water. I don’t have enough sugar for that. I look at him, concerned. I can’t help but brush his hair out of his eyes with my fingers. I feel my heart twinge in me so painfully, I have to get up and get away from him. I’m not going to be any use to him if I start crying my guts out.

It doesn’t take too long before I realize the whole sled is completely unfixable. The rope we used to lash it together has been frayed by the dragging. I try to use the remaining pieces to fix it, but it’s hopeless. When I think I have it fixed and get back on Bandit, he steps forward and rips it all apart again. Eric just lies there on a pile of logs in the middle of the road.

“Unh,” he says, but I don’t bother to answer him. I jump down from Bandit to survey the remnants of the sled and think. I stand there for a while under the moon.

Bandit is grazing on the side of the road, not a care in the world. At first I get very frustrated, but then I shrug. What can I do? I feel grateful that the sled lasted this long, just far enough to be ahead of Norman and Pest. It will take them all night to walk back to the Homestead. It gives Eric and I the start we need to vanish.

“Well,” I say to Eric, beginning to untangle him from the ruined sled. “I guess we walk from here.”

“Unh,” he says as I tug him to his feet.

“I’m not happy about it either,” I tell him. I pat him on the back.

There’s enough rope left to lash Eric’s backpack to Bandit. Then I climb on Bandit, who is annoyed at this and tries to step away, but I swing into place before he can get far. It’s the first trouble he’s given me, so I feel more lucky than annoyed. “Hush now,” I tell Bandit as he walks sideways for a second with the new weight. Then I prick him forward with my heels.

Looking back, I watch Eric get tugged forward by the rope and then walk. He walks faster without the backpack, I’m happy to see, but he doesn’t walk fast enough to keep from getting pulled by the rope every couple of minutes. Every time the rope goes tight, he staggers a little forward before finding his stride. Everything is great then for a minute or two before Bandit’s pace takes up the slack in the rope and the cycle starts again. If Eric would speed up just a little, it wouldn’t happen, but Eric is a one-gear machine, so every minute or so, I have to pull the reins on Bandit and get him to stop. Then I wait for Eric to walk closer before getting Bandit to move again. It’s a real pain, to say the least. I can’t think of any way to change the pattern.

At least the rhythm of stopping and going keeps me awake. I’m not too excited about the thought of falling asleep and dreaming. Things are tough enough, I don’t know why my stupid brain has decided that now is the best time to dredge up all those old memories of my father. It seems needlessly cruel.

Rounding the lake, we turn south and follow the road until I see another, in worse state, headed off to the west. I take that one and keep following it, putting as much space between me and the Homestead as I can. At some point, just as the sky starts to turn that deep violet color right before dawn, I see a road to the north and I take it.

This road is considerably worse. Sometimes it’s hard to see it’s even a road. There’s crumbled asphalt everywhere and it’s hard to walk. I have to keep an eye on Eric to make sure he doesn’t trip and fall. If he falls, he won’t even try to protect himself like a normal human. He’ll just fall. Hard. If he breaks a leg, I don’t know what I’ll do. Finally I have to get off Bandit and lead Eric more carefully. Now I’m the one tugging at Bandit, who stops whenever he can to munch on grass or just stand there, looking at nothing, not moving in the slightest. I really don’t know what’s going through his head when he acts like that. Maybe the dumb horse has the Worm too. I laugh a little at that, but I guess it’s not really that funny.

“Come on,” I say to Bandit, giving his rope a tug. “Stupid zombie horse.”

“Unh,” says Eric.

“That’s right,” I say. “You tell him, Eric.”

We’re walking mostly uphill now, sometimes steeply. With the dawn light coming, it’s easier to see and maneuver around the pits in the asphalt road, but it’s still not easy going. I’m really tired, and guiding Eric is hard. He’d walk right over a cliff if I pushed him in that direction. A couple of times, he stumbles and almost falls, but I get to him just in time, putting my shoulder to his chest to keep him upright. Whenever I do this, I almost gag just from Eric’s smell. It’s getting worse, it seems. Plus, when I put my shoulder into his chest, I can feel his bones. Sharp. Distinct. Eric was always tough and broad around the shoulders. Now he isn’t much more than a skeleton. I feel like every mile we walk is dragging him that much closer to death. If Eric doesn’t eat, I don’t see how he’ll live much longer.

If this worry isn’t enough, there’s also Bandit. Now that there’s no one riding him, he’s got the idea that he’s his own boss. He must be tired too because he just wants to stand in that obstinate way of his, motionless, head straight forward, not budging at all. It seems like every fifteen minutes, I have to yank at his reins to get him to move. Between Bandit and Eric, it’s hard as hell to move at all, let alone the miles and miles I want to get away from the Homestead.

Just then we crest a hill. There’s no trees at the top of the hill and the morning sunlight is brilliant. I shade my eyes and blink.

“Unh,” Eric says. I give his rope a tug and he stops.

“Yeah, it’s bright,” I agree.

Below us are rolling hills, fields sparkling with dew, acres of jewels, bordered by evergreen. About a mile off, I see a herd of deer lazily rising from their night’s rest. There must be a hundred of them. After the humans all died off, the deer inherited these fields and have been multiplying like crazy ever since. That might change in the future. Randy used to tell us stories of wolves, pushing down from the north. I look down at the deer and think their easy days are numbered. For now though, they look peaceful and content.

Then I see it, up ahead. In the middle of the field, on the crest of another hill, is an old clapboard farmhouse with a lopsided barn next to it. It’s just the kind of place I’ve been looking for. Just seeing the place and the hope it represents makes me forget my exhaustion. We can rest there. I tug at Bandit’s rein and eventually he starts forward and then I give Eric a little shove in the back to get him going, and our slow train moves ahead, one plodding footstep at a time. The sun is rising to our right, cutting across the glimmering fields and shining bright in a cloudless sky. Already the fields have started to steam from the evaporation of the dew. The birds have come alive in the sun too and as we make our slow way to the farmhouse, I watch swallows dart and fly over the field, catching their breakfast of insects and chattering as they go.

The sun has climbed far over the trees before we reach the farmhouse. I tie down both Eric and Bandit to a fence before I eye the farmhouse apprehensively. Now that I’m here, I have to deal with the idea that the farmhouse might not be empty. I haven’t got a weapon either. Not a gun filled with blanks. Not even my knife. I survey the house. I don’t see any evidence of people using it. It looks like it hasn’t been entered in a very long time. But I can’t afford to be stupid, so I circle around, looking for the slightest evidence of use. The barn doors are open, but there are no footprints or hoof prints in the dirt around it. There’s no sound. The only movement I can see are the barn swallows who dive in and out of the barn through the open door.

Finally I creep into the barn and look around. It’s a simple barn with a few stalls and a hay mount above. In the back corner there’s a chicken coop, but there’s only a few old gray feathers to show it was ever used. Carefully I climb the wooden ladder to the hay mount. Nothing up there but a few piles of hay, rotted almost to dirt. I climb back down and look in the stalls, but the barn has been thoroughly cleaned out. There’s nothing in there that could be of any use whatsoever. Not so much as a stray nail. I pry a thin board off the wall between the stalls. It’s got a nice heft to it, and I give it a practice swing. That should do some damage if it comes to that. Emboldened, I move closer to the house with my new weapon.

The house isn’t in great condition. As I get closer, I see some details that I missed before. All the windows are broken. The roof is sunk in on one side and looks on the verge of collapsing. The door is open too, but only a crack, as if someone forgot to shut it on their way out. I can’t help but imagine that a family must have lived here once. Laughing kids, barking dogs, a few cars, maybe a horse or two in the barn. I open the front door carefully, but the hinges screech, which makes me cringe.

Still, I tell myself, it’s a good sign. No one has opened that rusty door in a very long time. I slip inside with my plank ready to swing. The living room, or what’s left of it, is fairly large. A rotting couch happily sprouts grass in the center of the room. A bowed coffee table sits in front of it. Surveying the damage is a wrecked television set, shattered long ago, probably just for the hell of it. I don’t see any other reason to smash a television set. Behind the television is a wall covered with moss and dripping water. This is where the collapsed roof leaks in. The water has rotted out the wood in the ceiling. The house smells like wet, damp earth. But no sign of anything alive…yet.

When I move to the kitchen, I see that the place has already been searched over, many times. All the cupboards are open, some of them broken. There’s not a can left, not a toothpick, nothing. Not even an old knife or fork. It’s completely scavenged like a dead deer after the wild dogs have fought over it. There’s absolutely nothing here. But this is good news. I’m not looking for supplies, I’m looking for a place to stay.

I check the second floor, but it’s even worse than the first. Someone has even scavenged the mattresses, shoving them out of broken windows is my guess, by the looks of the windows, which aren’t just broken but totally smashed away. I don’t stay on the second floor long. The floor creaks and whines too much and I don’t trust the house. It looks like it might start collapsing any day now. Eric used to tell me that the worst thing that can happen to a house is a leaking roof. Then it’s only a matter of time before it’s totally ruined. Looking at the house, I can see why. It won’t be long before it just crumbles in on itself.

I breathe easier. We’re alone.

I decide to set us up in the barn. After unpacking and unsaddling him, I guide Bandit into a stall where he nickers at me petulantly. “I’m tired too,” I say, defensively. “It’s not like I wanted to walk all night either.”

Bandit tosses and shakes his head.

“Don’t be an asshole,” I tell him, feeling underappreciated.

I’m so tired, I just want to get Eric into a stall, lay him down, and then crawl into the last stall by myself and sleep for about seventy hours. But as I’m maneuvering Eric, I’m struck by how much weight he’s lost since he got sick. It breaks my heart, and before I know it, I’m crying again, soundlessly. I rub the tears out of my eyes, but a feeling of guilt rises to me, hot and angry. I can’t sleep knowing he’s like this. So I find myself walking around, gathering up old, dry wood and then struggling to start a fire. Finally I get one going, crackling and snapping energetically, and I go to the backpack and come back with a kettle. Then I pour the last of the water that I brought with us. Struggling to stay awake, I wait for the water to boil. It seems to take forever. I realize I’m crying louder now, but it’s not from sadness. I’m just so tired. I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since before the Worm hit us. I’ve never cried from exhaustion before. It’s pure misery.

After about six hours, it seems, the water boils. I wipe my eyes and pour some into an aluminum mug. I notice I’m shaking a little, but I breathe and try to control my crying. Then I stir in all of our maple sugar until it’s fully dissolved. I’m sniffling the whole time. It’s so hard just to stay awake. Then I have to wait for the boiling water to cool. I don’t want to burn Eric. After that ordeal, I bring the mug to Eric who is standing where I left him. I put the mug down carefully on the ground and move Eric into his stall. Then it’s another struggle to get him to sit.

“Come on,” I say, tugging at him. “Just sit down!”

“Unh,” Eric says, not budging.

I try to trip him, but he seems pretty good at keeping his feet for some reason. Maybe I’m too tired to do it right.

“Come on!” I yell and push him. Luckily, he stumbles a little, and I take advantage of it and pull him toward the ground. He falls slowly to the ground and then topples to one side so that his face is pushed into the dirt.

“Unh,” he says.

“Damn it, Eric,” I hiss, and pull him back up to a sitting position, his legs spread out in front of him like a frog. Half of his face is covered in dirt. I take out the rag from his shirt that I’m starting to think of as the drooly towel and wipe his face clean, or try to. Mostly the dirt just streaks like camouflage. I’m too tired to wipe anymore, so I leave him like that and go get the mug of very sugary warm water. It’s the last of our sugar so I’m careful with it. It could be life and death for Eric.

I crouch in front of Eric, holding the mug carefully. Eric just sits there with his jaw open. To get his attention, I pour a few drops into his mouth. Immediately Eric jerks violently to life, sitting straight up toward me, his tongue lashing out for the water. The movement is so abrupt, he knocks the mug out of my hand. I feel the emptiness in my hand and my heart plummets inside me.

I cry out in frustration. I look down at the empty mug and the wet earth where the last of our sugar has vanished. I could die.

“Unh!” says Eric desperately, his black tongue waggling horribly in the emptiness in front of him.

I grab my hair in frustration.

“Unh!” Eric repeats.

“Shut up!” I scream.

“Unh!” Eric repeats. His tongue lashes back and forth like some ominous black flag.

I can’t stand it. I lash out and slap him hard across the face. “Shut up!” I scream.

The force of my slap doesn’t seem to affect him at all. He sits there like before, tongue out, writhing like a snake, but I see the growing red mark where I struck him. I feel sick.

I grab the mug and stumble out of the stall, shutting it behind me. I’m shaking and trembling all over. I’ve never felt so small and petty and hateful. For all I know, Eric could be dead in the morning. And the last thing I did was slap him across the face.

Sobbing with guilt and exhaustion and anger and a whole slew of emotions I can’t even begin to describe, I lumber into the last stall and collapse on the ground. It feels like I fall directly into darkness.

68

When I wake up, it’s still daylight. I slept so profoundly that it takes me a few seconds to remember where I am and why. For those seconds, I’m confused that I’m not in our cabin in the Homestead. I expect to wake up and look at the roof of our house, to see the sheet that acts like a curtain and separates our beds. I expect to smell breakfast, to hear Eric walking around below in his heavy boots. I expect to get up and work. Then the confusion evaporates and I remember everything. It happens suddenly, like someone opened a curtain in my mind and let the sun in.

Only it’s not welcoming like sunlight. All those people dead. Eric on the edge of death. He and I fugitives from the only home I’ve known. I cringe when I remember the look of surprise and horror on Norman’s face when he thought I shot him. I feel the disgusting thud of striking him with the butt of my gun, how it shook my whole arm up to the shoulders. Then I see the aluminum mug next to me on the stall’s floor and I remember slapping Eric across the face and I blush hotly with shame. In all of our years together, Eric never once raised a hand on me, never once even threatened me. I blush even hotter. I feel sick with shame.

I breathe out slowly and tell myself that it won’t ever happen again. It was because I was exhausted, I tell myself. I lost my temper. It won’t happen again. But I’m scared of myself, scared of what I might do. I’ve never been scared of myself before. It’s a bad feeling, almost worse than the mistake itself.

I have to get up and move. I have to shake myself free of this guilt and shame.

I jump a little in place in my stall.

Bandit hears me moving and he neighs loudly. He’s hungry and needs to be fed. I’m relieved to have something to do. When I lead him outside, I see that it’s late afternoon. The sun is out and warm and the blue sky is filled with great puffs of cloud. The insects are so numerous, they’re like a haze over the golden fields. Taking advantage of them are swooping, darting barn swallows. I tie Bandit loosely to a fence post where there’s a lot of grass, and I watch him shake his mane and bend his neck down to eat. Then I look at the position of the sun. It’s strange for some reason. Shouldn’t it be night? It slowly comes to me that I must have slept much, much longer than I thought. No wonder Bandit was so hungry.

When I look back at the barn, another thought comes to me. It freezes me in place. Did Eric survive? Will I find him sprawled out dead on the floor? I remember his skeletal face and I start to tremble a little. I can’t think of what I would do without him. I’ll never forgive myself if the last thing I did was strike him in anger. I walk around outside a long time before I turn back toward the barn. I have to see. I have to know.

I walk slowly to Eric’s stall. It’s silent in the barn except for the chirping of swallows as they pass in and out through the barn doors. I don’t hear anything coming from Eric’s stall. I move to open it, but my hand stops. I have to prepare. If he’s dead, I have to be prepared. I try to tell myself that maybe it’s not the worst thing. If he’s dead, I could go back to the Homestead. I could apologize to them and hope they understand I did what I did for Eric. I could be safe and warm and not so hungry and exhausted all the time. And I did the best for him. I did everything I could. I begged for him.

But none of that makes me feel prepared.

When I think that I might open the stall door to the corpse of the only father I’ve ever known, I just don’t know if I can live without him. I try to open the stall, but again my hand freezes and I turn around and walk to the barn door nervously. I remember Eric long ago, before the Homestead, before the island, even before Lucia. I was so hungry then too.

I begin to tremble. I haven’t thought about any of this in a long time.

I was just a little girl, alone. I was starving. I found a can of food in a store, but I couldn’t open it. I remember smashing the can against the wall, trying to get it to open. Hitting the can with boards and trying to pierce it open with a screwdriver. I even tried to chew through it. Then Eric came in alone. At first, he walked right by me. He was holding a gun and he scared me. I tried to sneak out but I must have made a sound. When Eric heard me, he whirled around and shot. The sound was so loud that I was shocked and stunned motionless. Eric ran to me and asked me if I was hurt and told me he was sorry, that he didn’t mean to shoot. When he saw I wasn’t hurt, he took out his utility knife and opened the can of food. The smell of the food released me from my terror and I took the can. He watched me as I ate it, and I felt safe again. He has been with me ever since.

When I remember, I think to myself for the first time that Eric didn’t have to help me. I was a stranger. Did he do it just because he was a decent person? Was he lonely? Or did he just feel guilty that he almost shot a starving little girl? I don’t know why he did it. I don’t know why he saved me, why he looked after me. I don’t know why I’ve never wondered that before. I’m scared that I’ll never get to ask him. I’m terrified I’ll never get to thank him for it, and I’m ashamed I’ve never thought of thanking him, not once in all these years together. The regret twists in me like a knife.

I realize there’s no preparation for Eric’s death. There’s only pain.

I just have to do it.

I stride to the stall door and throw it open.

Eric is lying on his stomach. His arms and legs are splayed out wide. His face is on the ground. He doesn’t move at all. Flies buzz around him, drawn to his stench. I step forward and crouch down, listening for the sound of his breathing. I don’t hear anything, but it’s hard to hear through the sound of my own heart beating. I bend down closer to his face. I watch the dirt near his mouth, searching for any sign of breathing, just the merest trembling of dust. Nothing. I reach out fearfully. I’m horrified of touching him, terrified of feeling numb, cold, waxy skin. But I have to know.

I feel his face with my finger.

“Unh,” Eric says. I leap away from him.

“You scared the shit out of me!” I cry, holding my chest as if I’m afraid my heart will crash through my ribcage, it’s beating so hard.

“Unh,” Eric says again. I’m so glad he’s alive, I laugh out loud.

“Yeah, good to see you too!” I exclaim. I roll him onto his back, and then grunt as I pull him up to a sitting position. Eric sits with one shoulder hunched up while he leans forward. He looks like someone is giving him a wet willy and he’s trying to shrug them away. I’m so happy that he’s not dead that I laugh at the sight. I wipe away a tear of relief. “Are you hungry?” I ask him. “I’m starving. I’ll make us some breakfast.”

“Unh,” he says, his jaw drooling a line of black filth. I wave away the flies that crawl on his face. I could kiss him. In theory. I’m not going to, but I could. I put my hand on his shoulder instead and give him a squeeze. Then I reach into his coat and pull out the drooly towel. I really have to wash it, I think to myself, as I try to wipe his face and scrub away the black bile that dried in his beard overnight. It falls from his face like pepper. “There you go,” I say happily. “You’re growing quite a beard, aren’t you?” I smile at him and stand up.

I have a plan for breakfast. The sleep has been good for me. I’m thinking a lot more clearly. I take out our food from the backpack and my jackknife. Then I begin to slice deer meat into smaller and smaller pieces before I add some bread. I break this down too. Then there’s the problem of water. When I look around for a well and don’t find anything, I walk through the field to the line of trees and sure enough, there’s a babbling little brook underneath the trees and I fill up our kettle with water. Back at the farmhouse, I start a fire and wait for the water to boil. In the meantime, I slice up the bread and deer meat into even smaller pieces. Then I mash it into a paste. When the water boils, I pour it into a mug, and then add just enough of the meat and bread to make a thin soup. Eric will drink, that’s no problem. I just have to trick him into eating some food along with the water.

When I go back to Eric, I’m careful. I’ve learned my lesson. When he begins to lap at the soup greedily, I steady him with a hand on his chest. I want to look away as his black tongue laps away at the soup, but I can’t, I have to make sure it’s getting in his mouth. It’s messy and disgusting and his open mouth stinks like death. It takes me like an hour to feed him all the soup I can. More of it is wasted than I’d like. The soup is all over his beard and down the front of his shirt. I take out his drooly towel and wipe him off as best I can. Then I take the towel out to wash it with boiled water. I wring black water from it and then lay it out on a rock to dry in the afternoon sun.

Only after I lie down do I realize that I’m hungry. Not like normal hunger either. It hurts. I look over at the food I have and it’s not much. Some deer meat, a little bit of bread, a jar of pickles, two shriveled little apples, a big, rubbery carrot, and four, rock-hard potatoes. I want to eat the deer meat and bread, but it’s all I have to feed Eric. I put the potatoes in a pot to boil while I eat both apples without hardly pausing. The hunger pains subside, but I’m still famished. I open the jar of pickles and eat three of them. They are wonderful and salty and it’s all I can do not to eat the whole jar. I drink some of the pickle juice and then look greedily at the deer meat and bread. My stomach twists in me. I bite my lip. I tell myself that I could have just a little meat too, maybe just one piece. I have to stay strong too, right? I reach out, but I stop myself. I have to save it for Eric.

I have to get up and walk away from the meat. It’s too much temptation. If I had a rifle, I could hunt down a deer easily enough. Hunger makes you a really good hunter. But I don’t have a gun. All I have is a few jackknives. I’m going to have to figure out a way to get food. The problem scares me for a second before I walk away the panic. I’m out in the middle of the field, thinking now. I don’t have a gun, I don’t have the material for a trap, it’s really too early in the season for foraging. Spring is still pretty new. When the fear wears away and I feel a little more practical, I turn stride to our backpack. I take out everything and survey what I have. While I look at our stuff and think, I crunch into the carrot and then stab the potatoes and cut them open. They’re far too hot to eat.

When I turn my attention back to our inventory, I take a deep, pensive breath. It’s not much. For a second, I regret that I hadn’t packed with a little more forethought, but then I push that thought away. I did the best I could under the circumstances. There’s no use in whining about it anyway. Then I find what I’m looking for: a few paperclips that Eric used to hold together his papers, which I don’t know why I brought. I take the paperclips and look at them with a smile. They just might work. I have an idea. I did have the smarts to bring some fishing line, but it takes me a while to carefully disentangle the thing and wind it carefully on a nice, supple piece of solid wood. During the process, I find an old rusty hook which makes me so happy, I feel giddy. A real fish hook is way better than the one I was going to try to make with a paperclip. I’m feeling much more positive as I eat the boiled potatoes. They’re not bad, but I really wish I had salt.

After I put Bandit back in his stall, I check on Eric before I go down to the brook. He’s sitting exactly how I left him. Just to be safe, I tie Eric up to the stall before I go. “I’ll be right back,” I tell him. Then, shrugging on my backpack, I head down to the brook. On the way, I pull up some grass out of the field and pick some worms out of the roots.

I don’t know if the fishing was this good before the end of the world, but the brook is full of beautiful, colorful rainbow trout. I fish three fat ones out of the same little dark rapids and clap their heads down on a rock to kill them before I string them out on a branch through their bright red gills. The fishing is so good, I don’t want to stop, even though it’s headed toward evening. I follow the brook downhill until it vanishes into some swampy area. It’s late afternoon and a bit hard to see, but I’m having a lucky day. There are fiddleheads sprouting up everywhere! I forgot about these beautiful ferns! It’s the perfect season for them.

I waste no time and fill up my backpack with dark green fiddleheads. I feel like some conquering hero as I walk back to the barn, laden with my spoils, a backpack full of fiddleheads and seven plump trout.

Soon the fire is crackling and our pan is bubbling with boiling fiddleheads and the fish is frying in the pan, their tails getting wonderfully crispy. I’m too hungry to wait for long, so I devour the first trout before it’s even fully cooked. It tastes like fresh water and a hot spring day and it’s the best fish I’ve ever eaten in my life. Then I pull a bunch of fiddleheads out of the boiling water with a knife and put them on a plate to cool. I have the patience to wait this time until the second fish is cooked and crispy and I eat it with little fingerfulls of soft, warm fiddleheads. They melt in my mouth like butter. It’s indescribably delicious and I hardly pause before I eat a third and fourth trout. I eat them as soon as they are ready, one right after the other. Finally I lay back and sigh. I haven’t felt this good since before the Worm came back. I’m full and comfortably tired and there’s a gentle breeze in the air.

The first stars are just coming out. Looking up at them, I feel lucky. I’m still alive. So is Eric. The farmhouse was a real stroke of luck. We can stay here and live off trout and fiddleheads for a long time. Maybe as long as we need to. If Eric makes it through the Worm, we can go back to the Homestead together. I think about the sour look on Franky’s face when Eric returns alive, how Franky will fake being happy, and I feel a thrill of pleasure, a little taste of revenge. But it won’t be the same. I’ll remember what Franky’s really like. I’ll make sure Eric knows. Together we’ll talk about it, think it through.

The thought of Eric reminds me that I should try to feed him again. I feel a little guilty suddenly that I just leave him in the barn like an animal, but it passes. It’s for the best, I guess. He’s safe. I’m safe. It’s the way it has to be for now. I try to tell myself it has nothing to do about how I feel when I look at him or how horrible he smells. The guilt I feel tells me I’m not entirely successful with this.

I go through the whole soup making process again, using the last of the deer meat and bread. Tomorrow, I will have to find something else to feed him. Fish soup, I guess. I can boil the fish heads and bones to make a nice base, I think as I cut up the deer and bread. Finally I have a nice soup and go to the barn.

When I open his stall, I see that Eric is standing in the corner, tangled up in his rope. His face is pressed into the wall of the barn. I put down the mug of soup carefully.

“Why do you do this?” I ask him as I carefully try to free him from the rope. “I don’t understand why you press your face into things. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“Unh,” Eric says as he turns around. He moves to step forward, but I block him.

“Stay still,” I say. “This’ll be easier.” I untie the rope from him and then unwind it. When I see that it’s even around his neck, I shiver thinking that he could have hanged himself if he tripped. “You’re going to hurt yourself,” I scold him.

“Unh,” he says.

“Yeah, well,” I respond. “I wish you’d just lie down, okay? Just rest.”

Then I tug him down into a sitting position, which isn’t as difficult as it was the day before. Eric just sits there while I wipe his mouth. I try not to notice the wriggling white worms in the blackness of his mouth. Or the smell of death that surrounds him. As I feed him the best I can, I have to steady him with one hand. The only time he’s really animated is when there’s water around, and I have to be careful he doesn’t scratch me or bite me accidentally. By the time I’m finished, I’m exhausted. Eric sits there with his legs spread out in front of him, covered in slobbered soup.

“Unh,” he says.

“You just, just be quiet,” I say, a little out of breath. And more than a little grossed out, to be honest. My dinner is rumbling inside me, and I breathe in deeply to keep it down. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to Eric’s smell.

After a second of rest, I get the newly-cleaned drooly towel filthy again immediately, wiping Eric’s face clean. I look at the blindfold around his eyes, which is now so dark that I can hardly remember it was originally red. I think about taking it off and washing it, but I can’t bear to think about looking at his eyes. They were blue once. Now I imagine dark holes writhing with worms. I can’t deal with that.

When I’m done cleaning him, I shut the stall carefully and use the rope to lock it up tight. After what I saw, I’m too afraid to tie him down in the stall. I don’t know what I’d do if Eric hung himself because of some stupid mistake I made. Then I decide to go back to the fire, but I can’t move. I mean, I can, but I don’t. I just stand there, looking over the stall door at the shadow that is Eric. It breaks my heart to leave him. I don’t know how long I stand there, watching him.

I remember when we first lived on the island. It was so cold that first winter. We didn’t have anything to eat except canned beans, which Eric had found in a nearby house, like four whole cardboard boxes full of canned beans. It was too cold to leave the little shack that Lucia and Eric built. We just huddled together all day and all night. It was such a long winter. At night, Eric would light a candle. We had those for a few years after the end, bright, wax candles, not like the bees wax candles we make now. He sat and read to us every night. I loved those stories. Back then, I didn’t think much of it. I was just excited about the stories, who would live, who would die, who would fall in love, and who would be left alone. But now, when I think of it, I know that Eric did it so that we would survive. He made life bearable. He gave us something to think about other than the gnawing cold, the biting hunger, the numbing boredom of another can of beans. He gave us the prospect of living and enjoying it. We suffered, but we suffered much less than we might have. It makes me tear up a little, thinking of it like this. I’ve never thought of those nights, not like this.

I open up the stall and go back in. He doesn’t look much like Eric, he doesn’t smell like him, or sound like him. But it’s Eric. My Eric.

“Come on,” I tell him and tug him to his feet.

“Unh,” he says as he rises.

I take him by the hand and lead him back to the fire. It’s almost completely dark out now. Eric is walking strangely, bringing his knees too far up. He looks like he’s marching. It’s kind of funny, so I laugh a little.

“Calm down there, soldier,” I tell him as I stop him by the fire. Then I stand behind him and push the back of his knees with my own knees. It’s something us kids used to do to each other as a joke, especially the boys. I don’t know why I just thought of it. It makes Eric slump down and then I guide him as gently as I can into a sitting position. I have to drag him back a little when his boots almost end up in the fire.

“Unh,” Eric says. His jaw yawns open and he lifts one shoulder like he’s going to shrug but the shoulder just stays up in the air. “Unh,” he says again.

Then I get the book from the backpack , the book that Eric was reading, The Left Hand of Darkness. The one I took without knowing why. Now I think I know why. I flip through the pages and come to the bookmark where Eric had stopped reading, a good fifty pages in. This is where he stopped reading. I’m suddenly overcome with emotion. If he dies, he’ll never finish his book. It kills me. I take a deep breath.

“How about we start at the beginning?” I ask.

“Unh,” Eric says.

I turn to the opening page, and, by firelight, in a low voice, I begin to read.

69

Our second day at the farm is even better than the first. I wake up late in the morning and have a breakfast of fried fish and cold fiddleheads. Even though I still ache for a handful of salt, the breakfast is delicious. I boil a kettle of water and then pour it over the fish bones and trout heads. I boil it for a while and then pour out the broth into the aluminum mug. I add some mashed fiddleheads and stir it up. It doesn’t look too appetizing. Looks like fish guts to me, but there’s not much I can do about that. Besides, Eric doesn’t care.

I get Eric from the stall and bring him to the fire. Then, as the sun gets hotter around us, I feed him three mugs of the fish/fiddleheads soup stuff. I wonder how much of it actually gets in his stomach, he makes such a mess, but I don’t have much control over that. After I wipe him down with his drooly towel, I let him sit out in the sun to dry off. I try not to look at him too much, but I can’t ignore that he isn’t looking good. His face is hardly recognizable, all sharp angles and bones and beard. His whole body looks skeletal, and his clothes hang from him like rags. He attracts a constant cloud of flies. But I try to ignore all that. I read him a few pages from his book before I put him back into the stall and head down to the brook to fish.

The fishing is just as good. Today I have even more time, so I leisurely fish up and down the brook until I have eight, fine brook trout. I’m feeling so rich with luxuries that I throw back a ninth, just because it’s a little too small. I watch its sinuous black body vanish back into the brook. Watching it, I can’t help but get a little sentimental. We’re a lot alike, after all, both survivors. Then I go around a tree and, with my jackknife, I clean the fish who weren’t quite as lucky today.

When I get back to the farmhouse, I decide to bring Bandit down to the brook to drink and get him out of the sun. After checking on Eric, who is sitting stone still in his stall, I grab our backpack and head back to the brook, leading Bandit. When we get there, I watch Bandit drink greedily and feel a little guilty for not bringing him down here sooner. “I’m doing the best I can,” I tell the horse. Bandit ignores me and keeps drinking. Watching him drink the unboiled water, I hope horses can’t get the Worm.

Pulling off the backpack, I dig around for Eric’s papers. I thought earlier, while I was fishing, that maybe some of these papers were letters that he exchanged with Good Prince Billy. For years when Randy the Vandal would return from trading, he’d bring letters to Eric. I knew they were from several people in different communities, but I never asked him about it and he never said anything. He’d just sit in the cabin by the stove and read them and then sit and stare at the wall so intensely, I could hear his mind grinding away, thinking. I never thought to ask him about it. Maybe there’s some information here, in these letters, that can help us.

The first couple letters are from people I don’t know. Some guy named Burt and a woman, Jenni. The letters are filled with news about crops that work and don’t work, troubles in their community, an interesting attempt to form a court, but nothing that could help us. The third letter is from Good Prince Billy. She signs it “Good Prince.” I wish there was a date on it, something to give me an idea of how old it is, but there isn’t. She talks about her community. Lots of names I don’t recognize. Some speculation about various other groups that I don’t know. A passing mention of the Gearheads. All in all, pretty disappointing.

The next page is folded. I can tell it’s old because the paper is yellow and brittle at the edges. The letter makes me hopeful because I’m looking for information about the Worm and the older the letter, the more likely it is that they will be talking about it. When I open it, I’m stunned.

It’s an old drawing. It shows two people under a blazing orange sun. They have smiles that reach out of their heads, twirling into the page like their joy cannot be contained. There’s a big man with a large head and a smaller person with curly hair. It’s my drawing. I did this many years ago with the crayons that Eric scavenged on our way across a dangerous landscape, during the Worm. Eric kept it all these years. Drawing was the only thing that made me calm and relaxed and happy after the collapse of everything. Eric knew that. He always made sure I had crayons. Always. I study the drawing and then shake my head. I don’t have time for this. I wipe away a couple tears, annoying things, and then tuck the drawing behind the other letters.

“Come on, Birdie,” I say. “Focus.”

But it’s hard. I flip to the next letter and the next. There’s just not much in the letters that would help us. Most of it is about how to manage farms and keep people happy and focused. Lots of it is just worrying about winter. Once in a while there’s a mention of the Stars or the Gearheads and in one letter the Good Prince mentions Carl Doyle. That was the man I shot, the one who was trying to kill Eric. The man who owned that old Land Rover. But it’s just a quick mention, it doesn’t help us. After I go through all the letters, I look down at them with disappointment. I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe some details about the people that the Good Prince had helped get over the Worm, maybe just a few tidbits about how she accomplished that little feat. But there’s not much about the Worm. It’s as if everyone was trying to forget that it even happened. They just talked about whatever was happening in their lives as they struggled to learn how to run a farm and a community at the same time. I guess I understand, but I’m frustrated. I feel like throwing the letters into the brook. But I contain myself.

Instead I fold them up carefully. They’re Eric’s. He kept them for a reason, and I’m not going to throw them away. I tuck the letters under one arm and grab up the trout with the other and then begin to walk back to the farm.

That’s when I see the smoke.

70

I’m running full tilt back to the barn, my heart racing in me much faster than my legs can go. Eric’s papers flutter behind me. I know the smoke is much farther away than the barn, but where there’s smoke, there’s bandits. They could be headed our way. My mind conjures up images of them finding Eric. They won’t hesitate to kill him. Not for one moment. There won’t be any amount of begging I can do to keep Eric alive. The thought pushes me forward. I’m flying over the fields, faster than I’ve ever run.

When I race up the hill to the barn, I can see plainly that I was right to run. From the north, with the column of smoke behind them, there’s a small gang of bandits, some on horses, dragging a couple carts with them. They’re headed toward us. I have to get Eric out of here! Dashing to the barn, I throw open the doors.

But I’m too late.

Inside the barn, their guns pointed toward me, are three ragged-looking bandits. I can tell they’ve been waiting for me. They have sneers on their faces, happy to have caught me in their little trap. Putting up my hands, I look toward Eric’s stall and see him standing with his face in the corner. I’m scared, but I’m relieved to see that they haven’t killed him, not yet. My heart is pattering in me as I try to think through the surge of fear. I’m not sure why they haven’t shot the both of us.

“Look at this!” one laughs. “We hit the goddamn motherlode with this one!” He laughs again, looking over to his companions. “We got a little nigger girl too!”

The others laugh.

I freeze. I’ve heard that word before. Nigger. I’ve heard it. I’ve read it. But I’ve never heard it like this before. So naked, so full of derision, hate. I’ve never had it pointed at me, never felt it directed at me. Until you’ve heard it like this, until you’ve felt it, raw and putrid, crawling around your skin, you can’t know. You can’t know what it does to you. It feels like being stripped naked in front of a laughing crowd. It feels like being beaten in public. It feels like being locked up in a filthy cage. In my mind, I imagine wrestling a gun from one of their hands, pointing it at the bandit’s face and drilling a hole through his head. But I can’t do that. I have to think. A move like that will kill us both.

“Oh, she didn’t like that,” says the bandit on the right. He’s wearing an old, stained leather jacket that’s missing an arm. He smiles widely at me, showing me a mouth full of rancid, brown teeth.

“Well, I don’t blame her,” the first bandit says. “If I were a nigger, I wouldn’t want to be one either.”

The others laugh at that. I keep my hands up.

When they’ve stopped laughing, the first bandit comes forward, stepping out of the shadows toward me. He’s got a lean, dirty face, with thin, cruel eyes. The eyebrow on his right eye is almost totally missing from a scar, and his right eye has a milky color to it. I doubt he sees through it. His good eye shimmers with dark intelligence. This one is dangerous. “Now don’t you move so much as an inch,” he says as he comes closer. “Don’t you budge.” His gun is tense in his hands. I keep as steady as I can, but it’s hard not to shake a little, knowing just the tiniest movement could end your life. “There you go,” he says to me as he gets closer. “There you go.” He’s close enough now so that I smell him, a mixture of smoke and sweat and dried shit. He takes my hands and spins me around. Before I know it, he’s got me down on the ground, tied up.

With my face pressed to the ground, I watch as they guide Eric out of his stall. The way they do it tells me they know what he is. They’re careful to stay clear of his face and hands, and the way they guide him with gentle tugs tells me they’ve done this before. These aren’t normal bandits, I realize. They know what they’re doing. My mind races. Why would they want to keep an infected person alive? I’m glad they do, it keeps Eric alive a little longer, but the question is disturbing. I try not to think what they want with me alive. I can’t think about that. I have to plan a way to get both of us out of this alive.

71

The caravan of assholes is made up of four other bandits plus the three who surprised me. The one with the milky eye seems to be something like the leader. At least people ask him what to do and he tells them. The other four are scraggly, dirty, vicious beasts. Their eyes glitter darkly, without intelligence, just malice and cruel humor. They are like a pack of starving dogs, willing to do anything to survive, and enjoy it when it has to be done. Together they have an attitude that’s hard to describe, like looking at the edge of a sharpened blade. These are what people can become, malignant shells, ready to tear at anything that gets in the way of a full stomach or a shot of whiskey. These are the ones who kill as easy as coughing, as naturally as sneezing. These are the ones who laugh at another’s suffering, who revel in perverse joy to see pain in another person. They aren’t human anymore. If Eric and I are going to survive, I have to be very careful. I have to use my head. I have to think.

I’m not the only captive. Stumbling next to me is a woman around forty. Her face is covered in caked, dark blood. I’m not sure it’s her blood. Her black hair is going grey. She doesn’t look at me when the bandits shove me in line next to her. Both of us are bound at the hands by rough rope that is already biting into my skin. There’s another girl too, on the other side of the older woman. She’s young, younger than me. Her face is streaked with tears, but her eyes are like pits drilled into the dark earth. I look away. I don’t want to know. I don’t.

The three of us are tied to a cart. The back of the cart is a wooden cage, but so badly made, with such lack of skill, that it looks like it would fall apart in a stiff wind. Inside the cage are two people: one is Eric, who is lying where he fell when they shoved him inside; the other is a young woman who stares out of the wooden slats with dark, bleeding eyes. She has her head turned slightly up, the opposite shoulder down, in a strange contortion. It’s not hard to know that she has the Worm too. Although her hair is filthy, her face is wrecked, and her body has shriveled down to leather over bones, I can still see some prettiness in her, the way you can see the child in a man or woman if you look closely. I glance over at the two other prisoners. Mother? Sister? Was this another family who, like me, had to hide away with their diseased to keep from getting killed? Or is there no relation? Everyone is so filthy, it is hard to tell. That’s the world we live in: so covered in grime and horror that you can’t recognize anyone.

I can’t think of these others. I have to think about us, Eric and I. I don’t know why we’re not dead, but it’s not good. I swallow drily. It might even be worse than dying.

I turn when there’s some joyful whoops and hollers behind me. A second later, the house and barn where Eric and I were able to rest leaps to flame. The bandits jump up and down and howl in front of the growing fire. I feel the heat from it from where I stand. The fire makes a sound like rushing wind and throws giant sparks spiraling into the air. It only takes minutes for the blaze to consume the house and the barn.

Then the caravan lurches forward, jerking painfully at my wrists. I close my eyes and walk, trying to battle away the despair.

72

I learn their names while they’re arguing about which ones to rape that night.

There’s Chris, he thinks the little girl would be best. He calls her the “freshest”, like she’s meat. He’s the one who drives the cart. There’s Gary. He argues that the little girl can’t take much more. She might die on them and then where would they be? He was in the barn, the one with the one-armed leather jacket. There’s Tony and Harry and Jason: they all want the older woman. They call her “Mom,” laughing. There’s Bert, he wants me. He says that he wants to “break in the nigger girl.” He gives me a playful kick as he says it, but the malice in his voice is terrifying. And finally, there’s Bill. He’s the one with the scar, the leader, the one with the milky eye. He doesn’t let them have the little girl. Or me. He says I’m to be saved, says that I’m special, that a man he calls Dr. Bragg will want me, clean and untouched.

Such normal names. Boring names. Names you might give sons. Names for shopkeepers and farmers and husbands. Artemis used to say that all men are dogs. She said it playfully, almost happily. She was right, but I’m glad she’s gone. I’m happy as hell she never has to learn how right she was.

We are quiet while they discuss us, fearing that if we say or do anything, the attention will damn us. The three of us sit motionless, frozen, waiting, preparing ourselves for what might happen. My heart is hammering in me painfully. I feel like maybe it would have been better if I had killed the both of us back in the Homestead. Just shot Eric and then shot myself for doing it. Maybe it would have been the smartest thing to do.

In the end, Squint, that’s the name I give the one-eyed leader, Squint doesn’t let the others have any of us.

“We got to get them home alive,” Squint says. “You already had your fun.”

The others grumble a little, but it doesn’t come to more than that.

“Shit,” says Bert, who wanted me, “I’m too tired to fight with the little bitch anyhow.” But his eyes sparkle as they glance at me and I feel my heart race inside me.

They leave us to sleep.

The little girl crawls into the other woman’s arms. They don’t make a sound. They just fall asleep.

I’m up for a long while, thinking.

73

I try to keep close to the cart as we move, to watch Eric, to make sure he’s okay. He seems all right. He stands mostly, with his jaw open, his black tongue drying in the air. They give him water sometimes, laughing as he groans, lapping at the water. Sometimes they poke at him and the other girl, to see if they respond. They don’t, except for a moan, which makes them laugh. When they do this, I don’t even see them as human, but some fallen type of beast, something damned and without hope. They are entirely lost. I hate them with everything in me, a hatred so intense that I tremble and bite my tongue to keep from screaming it out. It’s not that I wouldn’t feel bad if I had to kill them, I want to kill them. I want to rid the earth of them. I want to wipe them clean from the earth, and imagine that they never existed.

But I have to hide all these emotions. I keep my eyes on the ground, mostly. I keep quiet. I have to be as invisible as I can, melt into the surroundings. If they take too much of an interest in me, I could die. I find myself cowering into the shadows. I try to say that I’m not afraid of them, but I am. I’m terrified of them. Every time one looks at me, I feel impossibly small, vulnerable, like a fly that can be easily crushed. I want to be braver than I am, to find some courage in me, but right now, all I feel is the bright sting of fear and coursing through it, thin but unbreakable, the need to survive.

74

They take the diseased girl out of the cart on the third day traveling south. They poke at her with sticks. The one named Gary gets excited and pokes at her face with a sharpened stick. My heart feels like it’s going to explode. I look around for Squint, usually he puts a stop to this kind of thing, but he’s gone and nowhere to be seen. Gary can’t resist himself and digs his stick deep inside one of her dark eyes. She flails one arm,  and staggers back, making a long, painful sound, something like a rusty door closing. Then she stands up like nothing happened, one eye socket dripping with black gore, white worms waving from the pit where her eye used to be, as if searching. Gary is smiling, not with pleasure or entertainment, but with something darker and much more disturbing. Even the others stop laughing at the sight, and they quietly lead her back to the cart like little boys who realize that the game went too far, but are too stubborn to admit they did anything wrong. When they push her into the cage, she falls and just lays there. Eric stands over her without noticing.

Later that night, while they are all sleeping, I find a loose nail in the cart. Quietly, carefully, I begin to work it back and forth, loosening it from the dry wood.

75

There’s a fight.

Squint catches Tony trying to bring the older woman into the woods.

At first they argue, and Tony says something to him, something I don’t hear very well, and Squint goes quiet in the face. It’s like he loses all emotion, all life. Then he beats him. He does it methodically, carefully, an expert with his fists. Tony tries to fight back, but he’s as helpless as a child. In the end, Squint drags him in front of the other men. Tony is groaning, bleeding from his nose and mouth, his face already swollen.

Squint doesn’t say anything to the other men. He just looks at them. Then he bends down and grabs Tony’s throat and squeezes. Tony’s too weak from the beating to struggle too much. His arms and legs quiver at the end. Squint stands over him looking at the others with his one good eye. They don’t say anything. When Squint walks away, the others drag off Tony’s body and set it afire.

We keep moving long into the night, the fire from Tony’s body burning behind us, like a red candle.

76

I keep my ears open. I need information. I listen carefully and remember. They’re out here for Dr. Bragg, to bring back zombies and to set fire to everything else. They call it a cleaning mission. I can tell by the way they say it, they’ve done it before. I can tell that they think they’re the good guys, getting rid of the Worm for the benefit of everyone. I can hear it in their voices, so smug, self-righteous. When they talk of us, the prisoners, the ones they have lashed to the carts, the ones they rape and brutalize, they speak of us as people they are saving, as if we’re lucky to be here. In their minds, they’re not raping, they’re objects of desire. Our desire. They call us sluts and whores. They call us horny. They say they can tell by the looks in our eyes that we want it. We want them all. We’re practically begging for it.

Only Squint seems to understand. He’s quiet. He looks over us with a careful eye, the way a guard would, a guard that had the sense to fear the prisoners.

On the third day, maybe the fourth, while we’re stopped to eat our oatmeal, our only meal of the day, we see a horse and rider in the distance. Just an outline on the horizon. The bandits stand nervously, their hands at their guns. Squint orders one of them to ride out to investigate. Gary swings up on Bandit, who reluctantly trots off to the north.

He doesn’t come back.

77

Now the bandits are on alert. They ignore us for now, except to kick at us sometimes. The woman I am with and the little girl still haven’t spoken. They huddle together every night and seem to live in a world of their own, turned inwards. It’s almost as if the rest of the world doesn’t even exist. I am relieved. I can’t look after them. I have enough to worry about, and any day now, either of them might die or be killed. I’ve seen the look they have in their eyes before. People with that look don’t last long in this world. I won’t try to describe how horrible it is to see that look in a little girl. I wonder if I have that look, if that’s what they’re thinking when they see me.

The gang is always on the look now since Gary vanished. Their hands are on their guns. They no longer laugh or poke at Eric and the other diseased girl. They don’t bother us anymore. I no longer get greasy, disgusting looks from them, as if they could touch me with their putrid gaze. Now they are afraid, and I am glad. We have become much more invisible.

I feel a little hope rise in me. There’s an opportunity here, if I can just take advantage of it.

78

The next day the rain begins. It comes down in gray sheets, cold and miserable. They drive us hard, fearing the mysterious rider. All day we push through the rain, without stopping to eat. After several hours of stumbling forward, my wrists bleeding, I see why. My heart falls. If I had a chance on the road to escape them somehow, I’ve lost that chance.

As the sun begins to set, we arrive at their base. It’s about a dozen clapboard houses and a long, steel warehouse, all surrounded by a corrugated steel fence, about ten feet tall. The gate is open when we get there. Other bandits, looking only slightly less ragged and carrying shotguns and rifles, shut the gate when we stumble through.

By the time the gate shuts, we’re surrounded by these new men—and they are all men—who laugh and point and spit in our direction. They brave the onslaught of rain for the chance to see the new arrivals. They point at the cart with whispers of fear and hatred. I hear several of them refer to the “nigger girl.” I get that same fury and fear in me as the word slices into me. I feel like some kind of circus freak on show. They move us slowly up the crumbling asphalt road toward the warehouse.

As we slog through the rain and mud, I keep an eye on Eric in the cart. His head is pressed against the wooden slats of the cart, his jaw hanging open, his black tongue coiling out, trying to capture the rainwater as it falls. I shiver and look away, hoping that none of the onlookers decide to throw a rock at him. If these bastards hurt him, I think to myself, I’ll have a new goal rather than escape. I’ll burn every single one of these sons of bitches to the ground. The anger gives me strength and I straighten up a little as I walk, not enough to bring any attention my way, but enough for my own good. Enough to know that I’m still alive and thinking for myself.

Our pathetic caravan stops in front of the warehouse. I look up to see Squint swing off his horse. He looks back toward us with his good eye. I can see he’s proud of what he’s accomplished. He’s brought back his goods, untouched—mostly—just as he was told. He gives us a smile. I look away, but can’t help but watch him out of the corner of my eye as he disappears into the warehouse. A moment later the large doors clatter open and the cart is maneuvered inside, with all of us prisoners following. I look over to see the woman and the young girl walking close together with their heads down. I have a terrible feeling they’re already dead and don’t know it. Maybe we all are.

I can’t think that way. I can’t. I have to keep it together for Eric. I can’t lose it. I can’t lose hope. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. In my mind, I try to remember better days. Summer days at the lake with Eric. Swimming. The warm waters all around me, comforting, cool, fresh. The way the water drops sparkle like jewels when I come out of the water. The fireflies over the fields. Eric reading to me in the cabin by candlelight. His voice in the night answering mine. “Good night, chipmunk.”

I’m not done yet. Eric has no chance if I give up. None.

I won’t be defeated so easily.

79

Inside, the comfort of dryness is replaced with claustrophobic fear. I’d rather be soaked to the bone. The warehouse is a steel and wire labyrinth of rooms and passages that turn this way and that. We are brought through several turns to a long corridor of small rooms with steel doors. The place smells like an outhouse that’s never been cleaned. But there’s something else beneath, something rotten and sweet that makes my stomach turn. I’m familiar with the smell of death, but I’m not used to it and I hope I never will be. At the end of the corridor, Squint opens a door, and shoves the woman and little girl inside. Then he pushes the diseased young woman with the wrecked eye inside after them and shuts the door. He locks it with a brutal little twist of his wrist.

The next room is ours, and it’s the only one where the entire door is made of bars. He opens the door with a clang and pushes Eric inside. Then he makes a face and glances at me. “Hold her,” he tells the other bandit behind me, one of the new ones I don’t know. I feel his arms grasp me tightly by the shoulders. It hurts but I don’t show it.

Squint moves inside and I can’t see what he’s doing. My heart stutters with the fear he’s doing something to Eric, something horrible just to prove he can, the way the man poked that poor woman’s eye out. I’m shaking despite myself, but not out of fear. I feel energy pulse through me, and I begin to think, to plan what I’ll do if I hear him do anything to Eric. I will drop out of this idiot’s grasp, turn around and punch up quickly right between the moron’s legs, and when he bends over, I’ll push my thumbs through his eyeballs. Then while he’s screaming and cursing, I’ll deal with Squint as best I can…

But that doesn’t happen.

Squint walks out of the prison cell holding something. I can’t tell what it is for a second and then I recognize it: it’s the maple and oatmeal bar that Randy gave me back at the Homestead. I forgot all about it. Now I remember slipping it in one of the pockets of Eric’s overalls before we left the Homestead. I’d totally forgotten it was there. It seems like another life.

“What’s this?” Squint asks me. I shrug. He crouches down in front of me, and unwraps the bar. The smell of the maple sugar makes me weak with hunger, but I hope I don’t show it. He’s staring at me with his one good eye. The other one is milky blue, with a dark center, like the yolk of an egg that’s gone very, very rotten. “How long you known about this, eh?” Squint asks. I shrug again, and he smiles and then takes a bite out of the bar. He chews it slowly in front of me. “Niggers don’t know how to share, do they?” I try not to move, not to clench my jaw or my fist. Not to have any reaction, nothing he can use as an excuse to beat me, which is what he wants.

Squint sniffs loudly and then takes another extravagantly large bite out of Eric’s bar. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” he tells me as he chews wetly. “Monkeys don’t share neither, you know.” He looks at me, searches me, hoping I’ll do something, say something. When I don’t give him anything, he continues. “Monkeys, dogs, and niggers,” he says. “None of them know how to share.” The last of the bar goes into his mouth. He pokes me with a finger, hard, right on the breastbone. “And you know, sharing is what makes a community, isn’t that right, Henry?” Squint turns his head toward the man holding my shoulders.

Henry laughs. “You are one hundred percent correct there.”

“That’s why we usually kill niggers,” Squint continues. “We want a civilized community. This isn’t the jungle. This isn’t Africa, is it?” When I don’t answer, he pokes me hard again. It hurts like hell, but I don’t show it. I won’t ever show it. “Is it?” he insists.

“No, sir,” I answer.

“You can’t survive out here without a sense of community,” he tells me. “You need to rely on each other when winter comes, isn’t that right, Henry?”

“Winter is a hell of a thing,” the other man answers.

“Where there’s winter, there’s a sense of community. Where there’s summer all the time, shit, it’s like monkeys and dogs. Every asshole out for himself. That’s why niggers don’t share and Jews just take advantage of everyone.”

“No sense of winter,” Henry says. His fingers dig into my shoulders.

“No goddamn sense of community,” Squint continues. Squint eyes me, like he’s expecting me to argue with him. He’s hoping I’ll say something, so he can lay his hands on me. I won’t give him that satisfaction. I just stand there, quiet, trying not to look like how I feel. “It’s a wonderful thing the snow brings,” he continues. He counts them off on his hand. “A sense of community, honor, white skin and blonde hair.” He pops the rest of the maple bar into his mouth and smiles as he chews. “That way we know who to kill.” I’d like to tell him his hair isn’t blonde, but I’m not stupid.

“White skin is God’s badge of honor,” Henry adds. “That’s the truth.”

“Just to let you know,” Squint says. “Keeping you alive isn’t my idea.” He stands up, grabs me by the shoulder, and flings me into the room. I don’t weigh much, so I practically fly through the air right into Eric. We both collapse in a pile, and I struggle to get away from Eric before he accidentally bites or scratches me. When I disentangle myself and stand up, Squint is standing at the door. “Thanks for the candy bar,” he says.

Then the two men leave the hallway, and my face contorts into anger, the first time it’s been allowed to be free in days.

“Unh,” Eric says. He’s still on the ground, his face pressed onto the concrete floor.

“Yeah,” I tell him. “Me too. All of them.”

80

When I settle down and stand Eric in the corner of the room, I have time to think. The rain pounds on the steel roof, filling our prison with a raucous sound, like standing underneath a waterfall. Eric is on the tips of his toes, straining upward at the sound of water, as if he doesn’t understand he can’t fly. It’s good to have Eric near me again, even though the smell of him in this confined space is nothing less than an abomination. I’m glad he’s avoided any permanent harm like that poor woman, but I don’t feel good about any of this. I don’t know why they’ve taken Eric alive, or myself for that matter. But it can’t be good. I have to think of a way out of here before it’s too late.

“Unh,” Eric grunts, straining up toward the water.

“I’m thirsty too,” I tell him.

After exploring my surround and a few hours of thinking, I’m not sure there’s anything I can do to help us escape. The door is securely locked. There’s a slit of a window near the roof of the cell, but it’s too small for a cat to climb out of, let alone two grown people. The door is too firm to force open, and even if it weren’t, all the noise we would make by breaking it down would only bring them running. The floor is made of concrete, so there’s no digging our way out, and the ceiling is steel. We’re basically sealed in here. I can’t think of any way to force our way out. Even if I were to trick one of them into opening the door, even if I were able to overpower them without getting hurt, even if all this noise didn’t bring more, how could I lead Eric out unseen? He won’t run. He won’t hide. He won’t do anything, but be an obvious zombie. Even if you couldn’t smell him from half a mile away, just by glancing at the way he moves that he has the Worm. I was lucky with Boston and Sidney, they still hadn’t heard about the return of the Vaca B. All these bastards know. They can spot a zombie a mile away.

I look over to Eric. I shouldn’t think of him as a zombie, I really shouldn’t. I study him, looking for signs of the man I knew, who raised me, but it’s like trying to see the bottom of a lake through muddy water.

But in the past few days, I’m more grateful to him than I was before. I was never stupid about the way people looked at me, about the way they saw me because of my skin. How they always wanted to touch my hair. How people would look at me when they thought I wasn’t paying attention, not with hate exactly, but just studying me, like I was something strange that they were always trying to understand. At the Homestead, people never treated me like these bandits had. Even the ones that came to trade, even the ones who looked at me with eyes of hate, they didn’t dare say anything, not in front of Eric, who was so obviously my protector. No, they were always good to me. Because of Eric, I never had to endure the hatred, the pure animosity that I feel from these bandits. I wasn’t naïve or anything, I mean, I knew people were like this. Eric had always told me that I had to be careful, that there were people who wouldn’t like me because of the color of my skin, that there were those who would want to hurt me because of it. But it’s one thing to know it in your mind, to know it’s true, to see little glimpses of it hidden in the attitudes of strangers, and it was something else completely to see it naked and revealed and shameless.

As I sit and think of it, remembering the hatred in their voices, the sparkle of joy in their eyes at the prospect of causing me pain, I wonder maybe if Eric has protected me too much. I look over to him. He’s turned around, as if facing the other way might help me reach up past the steel roof to the rain crashing down. His face is covered by his filth-encrusted beard. The band around his eyes that used to be crimson red is now entirely black, and I can’t help imagining the dark pits beneath, writhing with worms. What would he say to me if he could?

He would say he wanted the best for me. I’m sure of it as I think it. Why expose me to the very thing that hurts me? It’s like poisoning someone because you’re afraid of them being poisoned. He did what he did because he loved me.

Loves me.

He’s in there somewhere. I won’t think he’s not. I won’t.

“Unh,” Eric says. Suddenly his body goes rigid and then he coughs loudly. A ball of black bile rolls out of his mouth, writhing with worms. It rolls down his chin and beard, then down his overalls before landing wetly on the concrete beneath it.

“Gross, Eric,” I tell him. Then I go over to him and reach in his pocket to get his drooly towel, which thankfully is still tucked in a pocket. I wipe his mouth carefully.

“Unh,” Eric says, his tongue reaching out toward the ceiling.

“Don’t,” I tell him. “Stop it.”

His tongue waggles for a second before calming down. I finish wiping his face clean of the little worms before tucking the drooly towel back in his overalls and then going to sit down.

“Unh,” Eric says.

“I don’t know what to do either,” I answer.

81

I don’t know how long we’re kept in the cell before Squint comes for us. It might have been a day or two. It’s impossible to keep track of time. The rain doesn’t hardly let up in all that time. I try to get Eric to sit and relax, but he won’t. He continues to stretch with all of his strength toward the rain and water he can’t possibly reach. I give up trying to get him to relax. The desire for water is far too elemental. It seems to be the only thing that makes him aware. I just sit there with my back against the cold concrete, thinking, trying to figure some way for us to get out of there. But when Squint comes for us again, I still haven’t got a clue.

Squint comes alone, with a torch. His dark hair is slicked back and his clothes are new and clean. He smells like soap. When I smell it, I can’t help but feel jealous and a little angry. I can’t remember the last time I was able to wash with soap. It seems a small thing, but freshly cleaned, I feel more human. Squint opens the padlock with a little brass key that I see he slips into his front shirt pocket and then looks at me without emotion. “The Doctor wants to see you,” he says.

A feel a shiver of fear and a desperation takes me. I picture myself wildly flying out the door, and my muscles tense to leap. But if I do that, I will almost certainly be killed. Even if I do make it, I’ll leave Eric alone. I have to do this if we’re both going to survive. Eric would do it for me.

“Come on,” Squint tells me. “Get up. Don’t make me get you.” He says this last in a dangerous tone. I can’t feel my legs very well, but I get to my feet somehow.

“What does he want?” I ask. I hate that my voice is shaking from fear, but I can’t hide it.

“You’ll see,” Squint says. He steps back from the door. “Move slow.”

I’m moving forward, but I’m trembling, and, hating myself a little for it, I hear myself whimper a little. A real whimper. It escapes from me before I can stop it. When Squint hears it, he chuckles.

“You oughta be scared,” he says and gives me a shove.

I see the door shut behind me, a final glimpse of Eric with his legs splayed out in front of him, then Squint’s face, smirking a little now, and before I know it, before I’m even close to ready, there’s a door, and I have to push it open. A short hallway, flickering from torchlight, and then another door, this one bigger, with a handle. I hear Squint tell me to open it. I hear him saying it, but I can’t do it, my hands are shaking. I feel a shove at my back and another chuckle from Squint, and I watch as I move my arm and then my hands touch the handle. I can’t feel. I can’t feel anything I’m so scared. I hear the click as I push the handle and then I’m stepping into blinding light. I close my eyes the light is so painful. I hear the distant thrumming of a generator. The room is hot.

I can’t focus. I can’t see anything in the light, but I feel Squint’s steel grip on my arm. His fingers are sickeningly thin, like the branches of trees in the winter. I feel myself dragged forward and then shoved into a wooden chair. My wrists are put inside cold steel shackles. I smell something familiar, something horrible, like old urine.

“Thank you,” says a low, calm voice. “You can leave.”

“Sure thing, Doc,” says Squint.

I blink. My eyes are beginning to focus. I hear a steel door shut and I know that Squint has left me alone with the Doctor.

“Hello,” I hear. “My name is Doctor Bragg.”

82

His face is the first thing I see. It’s lean and long and reminds me of a lizard somehow. His nose is squashed and flat, like it’s been broken in the past. The Doctor has long, glossy black hair that goes down to his shoulders. His eyes are heavy-lidded, like he’s tired or bored, and strangely lifeless, as if nothing in the world really interests him anymore. Even though he’s looking at me, his eyes seem to focus somewhere behind me, like he’s looking through me. He’s young, probably Eric’s age.

“Good evening,” he says.

Behind him, over his shoulder, I see the woman who was on the cart with Eric. I must’ve been sleeping harder than I thought. They came and got her without waking me up. She’s strapped down with wide canvas straps to an aluminum table. Even her head is strapped down so she can’t move. Her one good eye is facing me, and I can see she’s staring up at the ceiling through dark eyes, still alive.

“I hope they’ve not treated you too badly,” the Doctor says. His face drops. “I know what we do here is not kind, but there’s no need to be cruel.” A smile flickers across his face like a wind through grass. “I’ll allow what I do is not civilized, exactly, but that’s no excuse for incivility.” I get the feeling these little jokes are rehearsed and he’s testing them. Although I’m trembling with fear, I try to smile, try to make some connection with this guy that might help me. “There,” he says, seeing my smile. “This does not have to be a terrible ordeal. We’re not going to cause you any pain, I swear it.” He holds up one blue-gloved hand and smiles again. This time the smile stays, greasily, upon his face.

“Wh-wh-at,” I stammer. I breathe in and try to control myself. My mouth is horribly dry. I close my eyes, concentrate. Try to listen to my own heartbeat. Keep it together, Birdie. If I lose it, I won’t be a help to anyone, not me, not Eric, not anyone. I open my eyes and wet my lips with a dry tongue. “What are you going to do to me?” I ask. I feel myself sweating all over.

Doctor Bragg seems to be waiting for something. I have a feeling that I need to let him decide the rhythm of the conversation or there probably won’t be one. While he’s thinking or waiting or doing whatever the hell he’s doing, I notice that we’re in a large room, like a garage, with a high ceiling, crisscrossed by metal girders. On the sides of the room are long benches and shelves that disappear into shadows. In the corner of the room behind me, just barely visible in my line of sight, I see there’s another door, opposite to the one we entered. In front of me, behind the woman on the operating table, there are rows of metal shelves. A menagerie of glass jars sit on the shelves filled with some dark liquid. I can’t stop shaking. I’m shackled tight to the chair.

“What am I going to do?” Doctor Bragg asks. “Study, experiment, learn.”

“Experiment?” I ask, trembling.

He looks at me and comes closer. “I won’t cause you any pain,” he says. “But I think it’s best if you think of yourself as a hero. A hero in the fight for human survival.”

“Hero?” I ask shakily.

“Oh yes,” Doctor Bragg tells me, nodding his head. “Without you and people like you, we wouldn’t know as much as we do. You’re saving lives. That’s what I call a hero.” He steps away from me and walks to the woman on the surgical table. “Look at this poor woman,” he says. Then he looks up at me. “She’s been taken by the Worm. Like so many billions of others before her. Maybe you’re too young to remember. But I remember.” His eyes suddenly become more hollow than before, dark, horrible pits, and I see clearly that he’s as lost as the woman on the table in front of him, just as lifeless, but with even less hope. The woman might survive the Worm, if she’s cared for. There’s no returning from where Doctor Bragg has gone.

“I remember,” I tell him.

He nods solemnly. “We remember,” he says. “And we never understood why. We never understood the Vaca Beber, we never knew anything. It just came and nearly destroyed us and then vanished. So we could never learn about it. We could never prepare if it came back. It just disappeared.” The Doctor snapped his fingers, which made a strange rubbery sound because his hands were in gloves. I noticed then that there was a scalpel in one of his hands, its edge glinting dangerously in the light. “It came and it took everything from us and then it went away. But we need to know. I searched and I searched and I experimented and finally, finally, I coaxed them back to life. From nothing. From skin and bones.”

“You brought the Worm back?” My skin crawls with revulsion.

He looks at me. “You think that it was gone forever? You think it wouldn’t come back on its own, stronger, more resilient?”

I don’t know what to say.

Bragg moves to the shelves and picks up one of the glass jars. “I wish you could understand,” he says, under his breath. He carries the jar toward me. I see that it’s filled with Worms, all floating in some amber liquid, like overcooked spaghetti in root beer. He holds the jar to my face, and I smell some strange, acrid, chemical smell. Inside, I see the Worms are dead, and I can see their star-shaped mouths and the vile hooks I imagine are designed to sink into our brains. I shudder and turn my head away. “Yes,” Doctor Bragg says. “They are horrible, nasty creatures. They took everything from me.” If pure, consuming hatred had a face, it would be Dr. Bragg’s at that moment as he stared at the contents of the jar. “I will eradicate them forever.” His voice is somehow both acidic and empty of emotion at once. He turns toward me and lowers the jar. “I wish you could understand what we do. I wish you could.”

“I do,” I say, nodding my head. “I do.” I need him to be on my side, to feel some connection to me.

He smiles weakly before he turns away, walks back to the shelf, and returns the jar from where he took it.

“They took everything from me too,” I continue. I note the desperation and fear in my voice, but there’s no way I can hide it. “They took my mother and father and my whole family. I do understand!”

The Doctor turns back to me slowly. He looks resigned. Then he looks away. “Yes,” he says, “you say you understand. But you won’t make the sacrifice. You’ll scream like all the others.”

The sentence makes me tremble again. My mouth clamps shut. My mind seems to shut down in terror. I look at the scalpel in his hand. The Doctor moves to the woman on the table. I see that he’s put a blue sheet over her and there’s a square cut out exposing her stomach. He stands facing me, lifts his scalpel, and then, so quickly I can’t look away, cuts deeply into her skin and slices open a long slit across her belly. The woman’s body lurches and she makes a gurgling, screeching sound that doesn’t sound human at all. I cry out in surprise and tug uselessly at my shackles.

“I need tests,” Doctor Bragg says. He reaches his hand inside the living zombie and continues talking. “The Vaca B is a very complex organism. It doesn’t engender one kind of worm but four, actually six if you count the microscopic ones. Little maggot-like Worms in the stomach, thin, nematode-like Worms in the eyes, long, hooked Worms for the brain that are very much like marine arrow worms. There’s a thin, flat Worm of the ear that I don’t understand. Somehow they all work together.” His hands are moving inside her body and she is making a low, gurgling groaning sound. Her whole body twitches. The Doctor continues pitilessly, talking as he works. “How do they communicate? Which type of Worm is the most efficient at infection? How do they produce different types of Worms and when? Do they work the same in all populations? Women, children, Asians, Africans? So many questions.” The Doctor suddenly reaches down into the red hole he has cut in the poor woman and makes another cut. With horror, I watch as he pulls out a handful of small, wriggling, maggot-like Worms from her stomach. He walks toward me, a fistful in his hand, dripping them behind him. “These are questions that we need to answer. We will answer them, but it will take sacrifice. Heroes.” He leans in closer to me. “Heroes like you.” He looks at me. “I need diverse specimens to study. We don’t see many like you. Young female with African ancestry. We need you.”

My eyes are wide with horror. The smell coming from the woman now is noxious. He wants to infect me I realize. I’m shaking as the Doctor returns to the table. My heart throbs as he picks up a strange, plastic tube with a plunger on one end, like a gigantic needle, and begins to put live Worms in it. I open my mouth to scream, but nothing comes out.

“No, no,” I say, trembling.

“I need specimens,” he repeats. “I can watch what it does to you. You can save countless people. You can be the hero.”

“Please,” I say, my lip trembling with fear.

“I know I’m not the hero,” he says without feeling. “That is my sacrifice.”

“Don’t do this to me,” I plead, but my voice is hardly a whisper.

He straightens up and examines the wriggling worms inside the tube. “This is when the screaming starts,” he says.

I open my mouth to scream, when I see that Doctor Bragg is looking down at the corpse of the woman. He prods her once. I clamp my mouth shut, watching. “When did she die?” he asks, annoyed. He looks at me. “Was she dead before or after I acquired the Worms?”

I look at him speechless.

Doctor Bragg puts down the maggot-filled tube and examines the dead woman. His shoulders slump. He sighs and then looks up at me, almost apologetically. “I had to acquire the Worms from a live host.” He seems embarrassed by the mistake, or like I should feel pity for him. Relief hits me so hard that I begin to weep. Doctor Bragg leans over the corpse. “If I hadn’t been talking to the girl,” he mutters. “If I was more professional and not so…” he trails off into inaudible muttering.

I’m still weeping with relief when Doctor Bragg shouts for Squint.

I am so relieved, I can’t concentrate. I hardly notice when the Doctor is standing in front of me again, giving orders to Squint. “Get her back to her room and feed her, please. I’ll be using the other one to acquire the specimens tomorrow.”

Although he’s planning to do to Eric what he did with that woman, I’m too relieved to think about it. I’m shaking and weeping when Squint shoves me back in my cage. For a long time, I can’t think of anything. I lay there for a long time, shuddering, trying to forget the sound of the woman groaning as the Doctor reached inside her body. I keep hearing it again and again until, somehow, I fall asleep.

83

I wake up to a metallic clatter. Squint has tossed a steel plate of food on the floor in front of me, beans and corn, it looks like. As I grab the food, I notice Squint is still looking at me, angrily somehow, as if I’ve misbehaved. As he backs away and shuts the iron bars, I ignore him and scuttle across the floor to put my back to the cement wall, next to Eric. Squint stares at me for a second, glares I should say, and then he rests on the bars and wipes his forehead, and I hear him mutter something there’s no need to repeat. Ignoring him as best I can, I eat the beans and corn with my fingers as the bastard couldn’t be bothered to bring me a spoon. Finally Squint pushes himself away from the bars and walks away, strangely unsteady on his feet. I have the feeling he’s drunk.

Eric is sitting in the corner with his legs stretch out and his arms lying placid in front of him. I realize the silence suddenly. The rain has stopped while I slept, and freed from the torture of his desire, Eric has slumped into the corner. As I study him, happy that he’s more relaxed, I imagine him on an operating table. I imagine Doctor Bragg standing near with a  scalpel in his hand. When he makes the cut, Eric just goes, “Unh.” The whole scenario shoots through my consciousness like a flaming arrow before I can stop it. I shiver in revulsion and shake the evil image out of my head.

I look down at my food. I’m not finished, but I’ve completely lost my appetite. I put the plate down and hug my knees to my chest. Think, Birdie. Think. If you don’t figure a way out of this cage, that insane bastard is going to mutilate your Dad! Think!

“Hey!” I cry out suddenly. “Hey! Get me some water!”

Maybe it’s not a good idea to poke the drunken bear, but it’s all I got.

“Hey! Squint!” I shout. I get to my feet and grab the bars. Shouting is making me feel a little better. “Get me some water!” A moment passes in silence. Eric sits in ignorant bliss on the concrete floor. “Squint!” I shout from the bottom of my lungs. I take a deep breath to yell again when I hear a door flung violently open. Squint comes striding toward me, thunderously angry. He’s carrying an iron bar. I leap away from the door just in time. Squint hits the door with the iron bar, making hideously loud sound and causing sparks to leap away. For an instant, in the light of the sparks, I see Squint’s face contorted in rage.

“What’d you call me?” he hisses. He presses his face between the bars of the door. “What did you call me, you little bitch!” he cries. Now that I see him up close, I notice that he’s sweating, and his eyes are bloodshot. He’s not drunk, I realize. He’s got the Worm.

“I want some water,” I say in a small voice, keeping my back to the concrete.

“What?” he asks. He blinks. His face is still pressed between the iron bars, making his eyes strangely slitted.

“Water,” I say timidly. “So I can feed Eric.”

“Eric?” Squint asks, confused. He pulls his face free of the bars. “Who’s Eric?”

I point down next to me.

“Oh,” he says. He blinks stupidly, looking first at Eric and then over to me. His milky eye seems to roam all around the cell. I see tiny tracks of pinkish tears running from his eyes. My heart races.

“Why don’t you rest?” I suggest to him in a kind voice. “You look tired. You must work hard.”

“I do work hard,” he agrees. He’s uncertain on his feet. “If it wasn’t for me…” He lifts his hand like he’s going to continue, but instead he drops the iron bar. It clatters loudly on the concrete. He sways like a tree in the wind.

“Just rest,” I tell him. “Just rest for a little while.” I creep out of the shadows toward the door. “You deserve it,” I say to him soothingly. “You do all the work.”

He swivels his head toward me and looks angry again. “I do,” he insists. He closes his eyes and then one hand comes out and holds onto the bar. He bends over and his knees shake. “I just,” he says. Then he stumbles back a few steps before he falls to his knees, opens his mouth and vomits a black mess on the floor. Then he collapses face first into it, smearing the vomit across the floor as he stretches away. I stand very still, listening to see if there’s anyone coming, but it’s all silent.

My heart races. This is my chance.

There won’t be another.

84

I reach my hand out between the bars, but I can’t reach Squint’s body. The son of a bitch collapsed just outside of my reach. No matter how hard I stretch, I can’t reach him. I even try with my legs, hoping I can hook a leg around him and drag him closer, but I can’t get to him. Squint’s breathing is ragged and I can feel the heat coming off his body. The Worm is shooting through him fast. In just the few minutes that I’ve been trying to get to him, his eyes have already started to bleed more. For some people, it hits this fast. He’ll either be dead in a few hours, or Doctor Bragg will have a new specimen to work with. I reach out of the bars and groan with the effort, but I can’t get to him. If I just had another couple inches of reach, I could grab him. Just a few inches!

I look over to Eric. I peer with envy at his long, strong arms. But Eric isn’t a puppet. I rack my brain, but I can’t think of a way to get Eric to help me. After the first hour I get desperate, and I pull Eric up from his sitting position and lead him to the barred door. I point toward Squint and say, “Water! Look Eric, get some water!”

I don’t know why I think that might work, but it doesn’t. Eric just stands at the barred door. Eventually he pushes one side of his face into a bar, and says, “Unh.” I look at his bandaged eyes for a second then sigh.

“Yeah, okay, Eric,” I say. I lead him back to the wall and lean him against it. He stands there, drooling a black puddle on the cement floor. “It’s not your fault,” I tell him.

I turn back to Squint’s body and think desperately. At some point, someone is going to come and find him. They will drag him away and my only chance to escape with Eric will be lost. The both of us will end up in the Doctor’s experiments. I remember the wriggling maggots filling up in the plastic tube. In desperation, I get down on the floor and reach out with my arm as far as I can. I push my shoulder against the bars so hard, I’m afraid something might break, but it’s no use. I finally give up and sit down in the corner of the room, rubbing my shoulder.

Time passes. Any moment I expect one of the others to come in and put an end to all my hope. But no one comes. I stare at Squint, listen to his haggard breathing which has gone shallow and rapid. I study the blood dripping from his eyes, watch it grow darker until, after an hour so, the corners of his eyes are almost black, even the milky, dead one. Squint’s body just lays there, taunting me. I can almost feel the little brass key that opens the padlock to my door in the front pocket of his shirt. I can feel it pressing into the cement floor. Or at least I imagine I can. It’s so tantalizingly near.

In the time that passes, I imagine what I would do if I had the key. How I would get Eric out of the warehouse. How I would sneak out to the forest. How I would push and prod and drag Eric into the forest, find some hole or cave to crawl into, and hide for days. I groan in frustration.

“Unh,” Eric says on the floor.

“I’m trying,” I tell him.

“Mergh.”

“Quiet,” I say. “I’m thinking.”

“Mergh.”

Suddenly I realize the sound isn’t coming from Eric. I creep forward.

Squint is getting up, rising from a puddle of vomit and mucus. I watch as he picks himself up, strands of black mucus stretching from his face. He stands, his jaw grinding back and forth, his eyes dripping black blood.

“Mergh,” he says.

85

“Come on,” I say to him. “Come on, Squint, you ugly bastard, come here.”

Squint just stands there, his back hunched. He’s looking at the back wall behind me, or seems to be. He doesn’t move.

I wave my arms at him and jump up and down. I pull Eric to his feet and wave his arms up and down, hoping Squint will come to his own kind, I guess. I kick at the door, making it rattle. I even sing him a song. Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s doors, I sing. Knock knock knockin’ on heaven’s doors. But Squint doesn’t move. He doesn’t do anything.

Only sometimes he goes, “Mergh.” And that’s it. He stands there steadily, hunched forward like a gorilla, dark drool running from the corners of his mouth. The Worms have started to come out of the corner of his eyes too. I can see them waving there.

To make matters more frustrating, I can now see the key to my cage. One end is hooked on his front pocket. I can see the outline of the rest in his plaid, puke-covered shirt.

I’ve tried everything and I can’t get Squint to make that one, that one little step toward me. That’s all I need. One lousy little step! I could pull him toward the bars, get the key, open up the door and Eric and I would be gone. Gone! But the only thing that gets the attention of these things is water, and I don’t have a single drop of it. I’m so dry that I can even muster up any spit. I pace the cell, knowing that at any second, someone else could come, and that would be the end of us. Think, Birdie. Think!

I stop suddenly. I rush over to Eric and turn him so he’s facing the wall. Then I rip two long strips of cloth from his drooly towel and carefully stuff his ears with them. Finally, I take off Eric’s shirt and wrap it around his head, hoping he can’t hear a thing.

Ready at last, I go to the back of the cell and pull down my pants. I squat in the shadows of the corner and concentrate. “Come on, come on,” I mutter. Just when I think I won’t be able to, I begin to pee.

It makes the wet, splashing sound on the cement that I hoped for.

Immediately, Squint picks up his head. “Mergh!” he says through his clenched jaw.

I really let it fly. It sounds like there’s a waterfall in here. Excitedly, I watch Squint step one, two, three times until he comes to a stop right against the bars! “Mergh! Mergh!” he groans, his arms reaching inside toward me.

“Gross,” I answer, and then, done peeing, I pull up my pants and run toward Squint. I duck under his grasping arm and then reach into his front pocket.

The key!

“Unh,” says Eric at the back of the cell.

“Let’s not ever talk about what just happened,” I say to him, and then I shove Squint back roughly and fumble for the padlock. Squint just stands there like nothing happened. The key fits and the door opens forward! I race to the back of the cell and unfurl Eric’s shirt from his head, pulling it on him as quick as I can, trying to ignore the disgusting black stains in his t-shirt underneath. The feeling of grabbing Eric and leading him through the cell door is so gratifying that I laugh out loud and notice that I’m crying too, silent tears. I wipe my eyes and sniff and then I carefully lead Squint into the cage before I shut the door behind him.

“Have fun with the Doctor,” I say before I drop the key to the floor.

But we’re not free yet.

86

I’m about to leave with Eric when I remember the little girl and the woman. I stand there, indecisive. I breathe and think. Down the hall, I see the solid metal doors, and behind some of them, I imagine, are prisoners, all risking the same fate that I so narrowly avoided. Every moment I stand there, I know I’m risking being caught. I think about Doctor Bragg and his experiments. Can I leave them to be infected and then slit open and studied while they’re still alive? I look up at Eric and wish he could tell me what to do. He stands there senselessly, his jaw open. Suddenly, I know what Eric would do.

“Stay here,” I say to Eric needlessly.

I move down to the other doors. Unlike my door, they are not locked, only latched from the outside. I begin to open them up one by one, without seeing if there’s anyone in them. I don’t know why, but I don’t want to see their faces. I just want to give them this chance. That’s what I can give them. That’s what I can offer. It’s not much, but I can’t do more. I hear some rustling in a couple of the cells, but I don’t stay to see. I rush back down the hall and grab Eric. I thought I would feel good about opening the doors, but I don’t. I feel as if there is more that I can do, if I was just brave enough. I can’t think about it right now. I can’t.

There are only two doors out of this area: one leads back through the labyrinth of hallways and doors in the warehouse. I remember that area but only vaguely. The thought of wandering through all those hallways while at any moment someone could come around a corner feels hopeless to me. Even if we did move through that maze, the door opens up to a main street that runs through the town. I remember all those filthy, scarred faces jeering at us when we arrived. We can’t go that way. The other option is not much better. When I was strapped down in Dr. Bragg’s chair, I noticed another door, the door in the corner. It might lead outside. It’s a big gamble, but I feel it’s the only choice I have.

I turn away from the hallway and lead Eric back, pass our prison cell. I notice for a moment that Squint is standing where I left him facing the wall, his right arm held out and dangling strangely from the elbow. He looks like a scarecrow. I turn away and nudge Eric toward the first door. Without the pounding rain, everything seems quiet now, still and dangerous. I move through the little hallway, listening to Eric shuffle loudly. Before I’m ready for it, I’m standing in front of the door to Doctor Bragg’s laboratory, breathing as hard as I had last time I was here. I can’t believe that I’m going to go back in there. By choice. I clench my hand to keep from shaking. It’s my best choice, I tell myself. It’s our best chance of getting out of this hell alive. I turn Eric’s to the wall, knowing he can’t sneak or be quiet. I have to go myself to make sure the way is clear. Then I’ll come back for him.

I reach out and push the handle slowly.

The door opens and a draft blows in the foulness of corpses and Worms.

I tremble and then crouch down. My heart thunders and my vision blurs.

Leaving Eric at the door, I crawl inside.

87

The laboratory is dark this time, lit only by a single lamp on a bench at the far end of the room. It’s soundless and there’s a suffocating stench of chemicals in the room that is so strong, I’m surprised it can’t be seen like a smog.

I crawl forward, quiet as a cat on the prowl. When I was bound in the metal chair, I couldn’t see behind me. Now I see there’s two rows of stainless steel shelves here, filled with jars and cans and all kinds of implements that I’m not going to think about. For a second, I wonder if I could burn the place down. I’d love to see it go up in flames, turning all this insanity and perversity to ashes, but I’m not sure if I could get out with Eric safely. It seems suicidal. Still the thought of seeing this place caught in a fiery blaze is a powerful temptation.

I inch low across the floor toward the door at the opposite end, listening carefully. I’m relieved to find that I’m alone. I stand up carefully into a crouch and creep forward, searching for the outlines of the door ahead of me. As I approach the end of the shelves, in the wall ahead of me, I see what I’ve been looking for: the door. The sight makes my heart skip, and I step carefully forward. I put my hand on the handle and push, opening the door, but only the barest sliver. Immediately I smell fresh air. I peer out through the crack of the door with one eye.

The moon is bright and large. I see in front of me dozens of rusted automobiles and trucks, like a junkyard. A path runs to the front of the warehouse. My heart thumping in me, I open the door and stick my head out, looking behind the warehouse. I see a large, rusting tank with a wood furnace underneath it. Gray smoke pours out a long tin stovepipe. I don’t know how it works, but that must be where the good Doctor gets the power for his laboratory.

Then I hear the river. The roaring sound comes up from past the steam engine tank, down a banking. I guess there’s a river down there. It’s what we need. A way to escape. I duck back inside and make my way back to Eric. I just have to get him through the laboratory, down the bank, and we can cross the river and get away. It will be easy leading him toward water. Eric’s standing with his face against the wall. When I grab him, he pivots and then walks directly into the open door, causing an echoing crash to pulse through the hallways.

“Unh!” he grunts.

I wait, counting heartbeats. No sounds. “Damn it, Eric,” I hiss. “Be careful!”

I maneuver him more carefully through the door and then down the hallway of shelves. He’s walking strangely again. He keeps shooting out his right arm. I have to keep pushing it down as he walks forward, in case he hits one of those horrible glass jars and brings it crashing to the floor. Then he takes a few steps and shoots it out again. I’m thinking to myself why now?! as we make our way down the long hallway toward the door when I hear a clattering. I push my knees behind Eric’s knees and drag him to the ground as the door opens loudly behind us.

I put my hand over his mouth and press firmly, hoping he doesn’t react by biting me.

He doesn’t. I lay beneath him, holding his mouth, as I listen to footsteps on the concrete. I look through the shelves and see shoes. Not boots, but shoes, leather shoes, polished, hardly dirty. Then the shoes walk away from me.

I feel Eric’s drool against my hand, but I hold him firmly. If he makes a sound, we’re dead. I look around on the shelves for a weapon, but there’s only jars full of dark liquid.

I stretch my neck to see what the Doctor is doing. I see his clean leather shoes in front of the chair. I watch his feet turn as he sits down on the chair where they shackled me before. I can’t see what he’s doing. Then I hear him groan a little. My heart beats, and I’m shaking. I hear him sniff then, and I think, he’s crying. Is he crying? Somehow this frightens me more. I’m trembling, holding on to Eric. I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping that Eric won’t make a sound. The Doctor makes a strong sound, like a growl or a moan. He coughs.

“Bill!” he cries suddenly. I just about jump out of my skin. “Bill!” He’s shouting for Squint. He makes a sound and heads for the door toward the prison cells. For a terrible moment, when he reaches the door, all the Doctor has to do is turn his head. Just a little bit. Just a fraction. And he’ll see us here on the floor, me beneath Eric, with my hand around his mouth. I see him clearly in that moment, his long black hair, his long, pale face, turned toward the door, his corduroy pants, leather shoes, his immaculate robin egg blue shirt. And then he swings the door open and vanishes, crying out, “Bill!”

The minute the door closes behind him, I scramble to my feet. I tug at Eric, my heart racing wildly. Any moment now, he’ll find Squint in the cell, and he’ll know we’ve escaped! Eric has no sense of urgency and goes “Unh” as he gets slowly up to his feet. I shove him forward more violently than I mean to, the adrenalin pulsing through me so hard I can’t think of anything except getting out of the warehouse. My shove sends Eric into the shelving and glass jars topple wildly off and crash to the floor.

“Run!” I plead. “Please run!”

I take Eric’s hand and pull him roughly forward as I hurl myself toward the open door. I push the handle and then Eric crashes into me from behind.

“Unh!” he exclaims. He has me pinned against the door so I can’t open it.

“Back up!” I cry. I arch my back and push him backward and then throw the door open.

“Stop!” I hear, and my heart falls. I turn around and Doctor Bragg is standing in the middle of the hallway. He’s got a gun in his hand pointing toward us. “Stop!” he says again. He pulls the hammer back on his gun. His aim is steady. My mind is running too fast to think. I can only stand there terrified. We’re so close to freedom! So close!

Suddenly there’s a tremendous shattering sound and the Doctor falls to the ground. Standing over him is the woman from the prison, holding the remains of a jar. Next to her is the little girl, looking dispassionately down at the Doctor. The woman looks at me for a moment without emotion. She just stands there. We all just look at each other. Suddenly my heart races to life, and I grab Eric and we bolt outside into the cool, night air. I leave the door open, in case the woman and the little girl follow, but I can’t think of them. I can still feel their eyes on me, but I don’t understand what they want. Standing in the cold, fresh air, I see their eyes gazing at me, the hollowness of them, the darkness.

88

Finally I take Eric’s hand and lead him down the bank toward the river, trudging through leaves and mud. It feels like I’m dragging Eric forward, which I practically am. He doesn’t act any different as he always does, oblivious to the fact that we’re fleeing for our lives and that if anyone sees us, we’re dead. There are several loud gun shots that seem so loud, the sky seems to crack in half. I stop and look back, but I don’t see anyone charge out of the steel warehouse as I feared.

“Please, please, please run!” I beg Eric. I realize I’m crying again as I drag him forward toward the sound of the river.

And then he is running. He’s running faster than I’ve ever seen him run, even before he had the Worm. I’m gleeful for a moment, thinking it’s a miracle, until I realize he’s running for the water. I bolt after him, thinking that I have to stop him from drinking himself to death, when I run out of the trees and almost die from terror.

The river is not a calm thing, gently gurgling its way to the ocean. It's a roiling, boiling mass of white water, churning up river stones and tearing whole trees from the banking, roots and all. The flooded river has cut a swathe through the area, and there’s a huge, granite outcrop on our side—Eric is sprinting straight for the edge! I hurl myself forward, bursting forward with every ounce of energy I can find. I race toward him, reaching out, hoping I can get to him before he reaches the deadly river. I hammer forward with my legs, expending every bit of energy I have. I sprint forward and reach out for him. I feel my fingers graze his back and then he drops away from me. I skid to a halt and watch with terror as Eric falls, falls, falls, his body turning strangely below me until he vanishes under the white water.

“Eric!” I scream. My whole body goes cold and distant. I look over to see Eric’s red shirt downriver, impossibly far away already.

Time seems to slow. My heart beats once, languidly, like it has to pump ice through my veins.   I am stunned he’s gone. It doesn’t seem possible or real. I can see my hand out there, still reaching for him. My heart thumps again. I can get him, I tell myself. I look down at the boiling river and I think it doesn’t look bad. I can jump. I can still get him. I feel myself begin to jump, and then I stop.

“Think, Birdie!”

It’s like a voice. Like his real voice. Like Eric’s in my head talking to me.

My heart thumps again.

Think.

If I jump, we’re both dead. I see it. It’s obvious. Below me, a tree passes, shuddering as it shoots by. If I had jumped, the tree would have struck me. I turn away from the bank and start running downriver, following the pounding water on its course, racing into the dark forest as the light of dawn begins to brighten the sky.

89

I dash through the forest downriver as fast as I can.

I see him sometimes, up ahead, in the river, usually only a glimpse of his red, plaid shirt, bright as blood in the white water before he vanishes in a maelstrom of roiling water.

I have to concentrate on the run. I jump over rocks and duck under tree branches. When I can, I turn to the river to see if I can see him, to see if the river hasn’t washed him up on the shore, or if some overhanging branch hasn’t snagged him. But the river is moving too fast to stop him. The water is all I can hear now, a thundering, rushing noise in my head.

I breathe. I run. I concentrate.

I look for signs of him and I think I will probably never see him again. The river will take him away from me, tear him apart as it crashes downstream, leaving me nothing, nothing.

But this doesn’t come to me as a thought. It’s just a feeling of doom, of loss, of horrible, aching emptiness. In the end, after all I’ve gone through, I lost him to a river! I lost him because I didn’t think about the sound of water and what it would do to him. I lost him because I forgot what he has become.

I run longer than I’ve ever run before. I notice that the sun is up. I see the sun shining, the blue sky, the rays of bright light striking the white water, sometimes highlighting the blood red shirt that surfaces for just a moment.

The sun is high when the river widens and slows and darkens. I see Eric floating face down. Turning in the river. Spinning slowly under the sun.

90

I splash into the water, grab him by the shoulders, and drag him to the bank where I turn him over. The bandage over his eyes are gone. He stares up at the sky, up through a pale face, through eyes black with blood. His chest is unnaturally large, bloated with flood water. The force of the flood has stripped the boots and socks both from him. His feet are white and pathetic in the light. He doesn’t breathe. He doesn’t move.

“Eric,” I whisper. I reach out and touch his face. It’s cold. Cold and stiff like leather in the morning. The touch sends shivers up my arm. For a moment, I think I’m going to break. I’m going to shatter like glass. And then I feel a shudder come over me. It’s followed by a complete absence of feeling, like I’ve stepped into death. I don’t feel anything. I don’t want to cry. I don’t want to move. I don’t even exist. I’m not even here. Everything is unreal, distant, and I don’t care at all. I feel like the river has hollowed me out, leaving nothing behind. It’s worse than death, it’s a living death because I’m here to experience it. I can feel all the nothing around me, cold and horrible. It’s in the blackness of Eric’s eyes. It’s in the brittle, senseless rays of sun that strike us. It’s in his frigid skin and his strange, swollen, fish-like feet. It’s in my body, which can’t feel anything, and in my heart that won’t work.

It finally happened. Eric’s dead. I am suddenly in a world of nevers. A world I can never share with him. Never ask him questions. Never hold his hand. Never feel how I always felt when he smiled at me and called me Birdie. A never world, hollow and cold. A world entirely without.

91

“No, Birdie. Don’t give up yet.”

I speak aloud, from the emptiness. I have to hear it, have to have some hope.

I lean over him and push down on his chest. Eric’s mouth, almost black, opens and water flows out. I push again and more water comes out. I know what I have to do, but I think of his dark mouth wriggling with Worms. But this isn’t the time for thinking. I plug his nose, take a deep breath, and then groan. I could get infected so easily. I really could. This is stupid, a great way for me to become a zombie just like him. Doing what I’m about to do is practically suicide. I imagine some Worm crawling from Eric’s mouth into mine, working its way into my stomach, through my body, up to my brain. I see it wriggling, slithering, creeping its way through me, attaching itself to my brain. But I can’t live thinking I haven’t done everything I can. I have to try.

I take a deep breath and then, closing my eyes, I bend over, cover his cold mouth with my lips, and blow as hard as I can. I smell ammonia and urine and turn away and gag. I push down on his chest and watch as more water comes out of his mouth. I take another deep breath, plug his nose, and then blow the air into his lungs again, trying to ignore the cold feeling of his lips, the smell of the Worm that is so strong this close to him. I take another breath and blow it in, without waiting, without pausing to think about what I’m doing, how I could be killing myself. I pump down on his chest with my hands and watch as more water comes gurgling up from him. Then I bend over and again breathe into his lungs. Again and again. My head is swimming and dizzy, but I can’t stop, not until I’m sure, not until I’m certain that he’s gone. My mouth tastes sour.

I lean over to breathe air into him again when Eric suddenly erupts. A fountain of dark, stinking water spurts into my face and inside my mouth. I leap away, rubbing away the stinking water, and then collapse to the side, vomiting. My stomach churns with revulsion at the smell of ammonia and the bitter taste in my mouth. I keep thinking I can feel Worms in my mouth, turning and twisting, and so I keep vomiting. Finally, my stomach begins to cramp painfully, and groaning in pain, I struggle to stop heaving.

Somewhere through the pain, I’m aware of the dark fountain that continues to spout from Eric’s mouth. I want to help, want to turn him over, but I can’t do anything but hold my stomach. I’m so relieved, but at the same time, I’m completely overcome with nausea. Finally, between retching, I go over to Eric and roll him over. I watch in equal horror and relief as Eric vomits out enormous amounts of putrid water. I notice innumerable Worms wriggling inside the water. I stagger away and then go to the river to vomit and wash my face in the frigid water. I rinse my mouth with cold water and then vomit and then rinse again, trying to rid myself of the acrid taste.

At some point, I can’t vomit any longer, and the cramps in my stomach lessen.

“Unh,” Eric says as he sits up, his eyes turned up toward the sky.

The sound makes me laugh out loud. Suddenly I’m on my knees in the water, weeping, and looking at him. I’m crying and laughing at the same time. From his eyes, long tendrils of white Worms are waving up toward the sun, like a host of angels, praying.

92

It’s not a cave. Not really. It’s just that the granite stretches over us a little, giving us a little protection from the rain, from the wind, but most importantly, from eyes. I dragged us here yesterday, and I bent over some trees and wove some branches together so that it’s difficult to see us. Then I dug down at the base of the rock. That’s where we are, sitting in a muddy, cold pit under a rock, waiting. Waiting for me to die.

I sit shivering in the pit. There’s no way I didn’t get the Worm, I think. I keep checking my head for a fever. I can’t tell. Every time I cough, I think it’s coming. Every time I tremble from the cold, I think it’s the beginning of the sickness that will kill me. I think sometimes I can feel the Worms in my stomach, writhing, multiplying, sending its offspring to my brain where they will sink their hooks into me. Will I just die of the fever or will I turn into something like Eric? Or will it be much worse? Will I crack and run crazy through the forests, killing everything in my path, and passing on the disease?

Eric is next to me, quiet. I look at him and wonder what it feels like to have the Worms in your eyes. I wonder what it feels like to be what he is. Is he in there? Is he distant, like he’s watching himself for a long way off? Or is he gone completely? What will happen to me when it comes? What will I become?

Where will I be?

I’m hungry, but I don’t want to eat. I think now I’m just feeding Worms. When I think this, my appetite vanishes. But it always comes back, more vicious than before.

I put my head on Eric’s shoulder. I’m not afraid of touching him anymore. I’m not afraid of his smell. I’ve tasted it now. It doesn’t have the same power over me as before. Soon I will smell like that. What a pair we’ll be. Out here in the forest, sitting under this rock, wasting away to skeletons. But it’s better that we go together. I couldn’t watch him go, I couldn’t do that. I had my chance to live and I chose him. I chose Eric. I will always choose him.

Although I get close to Eric, there’s no real heat in his body. Since he came from the water, he seems better somehow, clearer. He doesn’t drool as much and his breathing is clean and easy. I haven’t replaced the bandages on his eyes, although I thought about ripping up a part of his shirt. What’s the use? When I see the waving Worms in the corners of his eyes, I’m not as disgusted as I was before. That’s what I am going to become. That’s going to be me. There’s nothing I can do about it. The Worms have lost their power to disgust or frighten me. I feel like I’m ready for the end.

I’m so tired. So tired.

I get closer to Eric and put an arm around him. I touch him as I haven’t really touched him since he got sick. I miss him. I reach up and kiss his frigid cheek.

“I love you, Eric,” I whisper. I’ve never really said that to him. I comb his hair back with my fingers. “I’m not going to leave you. We’re just going to wait together.”

“Unh,” he says, and I smile through some tears. He looks better, almost like the Eric I knew. His face is lean and so pale, it’s almost blue, but I see him. I see the man who has taken care of me my whole life, who has made me what I am.

I put my head on his shoulder and cry.

I have a feeling that if I fall asleep, the fever will come, and the Worm will invade me completely, and I will never wake up again. I’ll just slip away and be wherever it is I go.

But I close my eyes anyway.

I’m ready.

93

I wake up shivering. My teeth are clattering together so violently, I’m afraid of biting my tongue. I get up and jump up and down, trying to warm myself, but I’ve been sleeping in a muddy hole, and my body is resistant. The cold is like a stiff, painful weight all over my body. I put a hand to my head to check for a fever, but I can’t tell, my hands are too numb from the cold. But I’m still alive, I’m still here. It’s been a full day. A day and a half, I think, looking up at the sun through the bare branches of the trees. I should be dead. Gone.

Unless I’m lucky. Unless somehow I didn’t get the Worm.

I look down at Eric. He’s sitting in the mud, his arms at his side. He reminds me of a picture I saw in one of the history books that Eric made me read, a solider dead in the trenches of the first World War, dead in the mud, with his hands in the cold water. I can’t stand the idea and I climb back into the muddy hole and pull at Eric.

“Unh,” he moans.

“Get up now,” I tell him. “We have to move.”

“Unh,” he says. He stands then. For some reason, he rises onto his tip toes like a ballet dancer in a painting and stands there stiffly.

“What’re you doing?” I ask him, smiling.

His jaw clenches and his dark tongue laps at his lips. “Unh,” he says, and begins to walk forward on his tip toes. I put a hand on his chest gently to keep him from falling. I can’t help but laugh a little.

“You’re silly this morning,” I tell him. Eric doesn’t say anything. He just shuts his jaw with a wet clapping sound. He turns his head away from me and then back to me. The white Worms are receded this morning, but his eyes are almost completely black. His dark gaze eradicates any feeling of humor in me. When he looks at me like that, with those eyes, I feel a knot of emptiness in my stomach. That black gaze is the Worm, studying me. I shiver and prod him slightly backwards. He comes down from his tippy toes and then looks away from me.

In the quiet of the forest, I hear the birds sing, and I begin to think. We’re alone. No food. No supplies. If I’m not dying of the Worm, then I have to find food or we’ll die of hunger. When I look at Eric, I see now the sharpness of his features, his skin thin and tight over his cheekbones. I see the loose way his clothes hang from him. There isn’t much left of him. The Worms are eating him alive.

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.

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.

“What now?” I ask without looking away from the fire.

Pest sits back and looks over at Eric. He points a smoking branch toward him. “We got to get him somewhere safe.”

I nod and then smile. That’s another thing we agree on.

103

That night I dream I’m walking. The night is on fire. There are moans around me and shuffling footsteps. I’m tired and hungry and confused. Everyone has left me. Everything is on fire. I look up to the sky, but it’s only smoke and ash and the flashing light of fire.

I hear singing, the singing I know now is my mother, and then I feel a hand in mine. I look up, wanting to tell my mother that I’d be okay, I could do it, she could rest.

The face staring down at me is Eric’s, white worms wriggling from his eyes. He looks down at me and a black tongue snakes out of his mouth. His grip tightens on my hand, and I tug to get away, but I can’t. His grip is painful and I cry out. Eric’s black mouth twists in a perverted grin, and he leans down toward me, the worms in his eyes writhing in the smoky air.

104

I wake up at dawn. The bird’s are singing. For a moment, the darkness of Eric’s eyes seems to stay with me. Like I’m awake but still dreaming. I have to get up and walk it off, walk off his eyes, the feel of his grip on my hand. I tremble and shiver. It takes me a moment to realize that both Pest and Queen are nowhere to be seen. Eric is in the same place as always, sitting with his back to the tree. His jaw is hanging on his chest, his dark mouth agape like a putrid cave. But the disgust of his disease is no longer as strong as it was, and I shrug off the feeling and go to him. By the time I get him to his feet for some exercise, to get some blood pumping through his stiff legs, I’ve mostly forgotten my dream.

“Unh,” Eric groans as I lead him around the little camp.

“Just a little more,” I tell him. He begins to kick out his left leg at a strange angle like he’s trying to shake something off.

“What’re you doing?” I laugh. I wait for him to stop and then lead him forward again. He walks with a strange stiffness on his left side and I start to get a little worried. I bring him back to the tree and ease him down to a sitting position as best I can.

I see the problem right away. It’s the wound in his foot, it’s festering. Well, festering is probably not the right term. There’s dark blood coming out of it, but it’s grayish and stinks like rotten eggs. I stare at it, frowning, not knowing what to do, when suddenly I am pushed down to the ground. I see a flash of white and black fur. A wet tongue rakes across my forehead. I put my hand up.

“Queen!” I cry. “Don’t do that!”

I hear a laugh and then a short whistle and Queen backs away. When I get up and brush myself off, I see Pest standing there with two fat squirrels in his hand, already skinned and ready for the pot.

“It’s not funny,” I mumble. “I didn’t see you guys coming.”

“Yeah, I know,” Pest says with a smile. “But it’s still a little funny.” His dark eyes twinkle at me and I frown.

“I’ll sneak up on you sometime and see how you like it,” I tell him with a scowl.

“Como quieres,” Pest says in Spanish. Lucia’s face shoots across my consciousness, and I feel a lightning bolt of pain.

“Don’t do that,” I tell him, harsher than I mean to.

“Do what?”

“Speak Spanish,” I say. I feel myself glare at him, my eyes like focused lasers.

Pest looks at me for a moment. Then he shrugs. He holds up his dead squirrels and shakes

them at me. “Breakfast,” he says. “And lunch too, probably.” Queen trots around him, her tongue lolling out as she looks up at the squirrels with hunger. “No, not for you,” Pest says. “Go on, now, go find your own food.” Queen licks her jaws and then pushes her head into Pest’s leg. Helplessly, I feel that same jealousy I always feel when animals like other people more than me. I don’t know why I’m like that, but I am. Pest pats her roughly on the head. “Go on now.” Queen gives a little whine and then looks at me once before bounding away into the forest.

“What will she eat?” I ask.

“What won’t she?” Pest asks back. He sees me looking out into the forest after Queen. “Don’t worry about her,” he says. “She can take care of herself.” He crouches down in front of the circle of stone and ash that had been last night’s campfire and lays out the squirrels on one of the rocks. I watch him start building a fire for a minute before I go back to Eric, looking with concern at the wound in his foot. I need to clean it and get him some boots. I go back to the campfire and help Pest build it. I’ll need boiling water to clean that wound. When the fire is going, I take the pot to the nearby stream and come back with it brimming with water. Pest is watching me with those thinking eyes of his. I’m suddenly struck by something I’ve never thought before. The way he thinks, no, the way I can see him thinking, it reminds me of Eric. It makes me uncomfortable, that connection.

“How’s he doing?” Pest asks, motioning toward Eric. I explain the wound in his foot without looking up. Pest gets up and goes to see for himself, and I have to bite down annoyance. I don’t like other people messing with Eric, even if they mean well. Or maybe it’s just Pest, I don’t know. He looks up from the wound. “It’s bad,” he says with a concerned voice.

“What gave you the clue? The stinking hole or the gray puss?” I know I sound like a real jerk, but it just comes out of me before I have time to stop it.

Pest ignores my tone. “We might have to burn it out,” he says.

“What?” I look at him with wide eyes.

“Just look at it,” Pest says. “If this thing spreads, he’ll lose the whole foot.”

“What’re you, a doctor now?” I try to keep from being a jerk, but…

“No,” Pest says, “but I know a bad infection when I see it.”

I know he’s right when he says it. But I don’t like it. And I don’t like that I didn’t see it right off. I know he’s right. The darkness of the wound is already spreading and long red lines of infection cover his foot like a web.

“We should do this now,” Pest says. He gets up and goes to the backpack, rummaging inside it. He takes out something and then walks toward me and hands it to me. “You forgot this,” he tells me. For a moment, I’m puzzled before the recognition lights up my face. My knife! The minute my hands grasp it, I feel a sense of relief come over me. It’s so strong that I gasp out loud.

“Thank you!” I exclaim. I feel tears coming to my eyes, and I turn away and wipe them away in the crook of my elbow, embarrassed. I look at him and smile. “I don’t know why I’m crying, it’s just a stupid knife.” I try to laugh, but I feel more tears come, and I remember as clearly as if it’s happening all over again, Eric look over and tell me, keep it with you and keep it sharp. Keep it sharp. I laugh a little. How could I have ever lost it?

Pest nods toward the fire, and I know what I have to do. I put the knife blade into the hottest part of the fire. Pest leans over and blows into the red hot coals to make them even hotter. It isn’t long before the end of the blade is blazing orange. I realize suddenly what I have to do and my stomach recoils. Still, I can’t show Pest how I feel. I don’t want him to know. I don’t want him to do it. No one touches Eric but me. No one.

I get up from the fire and walk to Eric. I kneel down in front of him and look at the festering wound. Although it was just a small puncture wound, it’s swollen to the size of a golf ball. The swollen wound is seeping grayish, stinking ooze like some nasty volcano. I swallow and try to steady myself. I close my eyes and take a deep breath.

“The knife is cooling,” Pest says.

“Water is wet,” I snap at him. “Anything else intelligent to say?”

“All I’m saying is that you have to hurry up,” he responds.

I growl at him, but since I know he’s right, I don’t say anything more. I look up at Eric, and, for a moment, I want to say something to him, but with Pest looking over my shoulder, I'm aware of how silly that would be, so I turn back to the suppurating volcano. I swallow and raise up the point of the red hot knife. Breathing out, I squint my eyes and then push the point into the wound. The knife hisses and the gray goo boils around the tip, giving off a smell more putrid than anything I’ve ever smelled. I hear Pest stumble away from us, gagging. But I can’t do that. I push the knife inside deeper, hoping to burn away the infection. There’s a sudden motion under Eric’s skin and then small wriggling maggots begin to boil up out of the wound, falling onto the leaves beneath him. I fight to keep my stomach down and twist the blade in the wound. More worms come wriggling out. I keep moving the knife until all the ooze is gone and no more worms come out. During the whole ordeal, Eric doesn’t even grunt.

When I stand up, Pest is beside me, looking down. “I’ve never seen anything so nasty in my life,” he breathes. “I don’t see how you could do that and not lose it.”

I want to say something smart, but instead I go stumbling away into the forest, clutching my knife. It’s a long time before I stop gagging and vomiting up nothing.

105

After three solid nights of sleep, I feel like a new person. Pest wants to stay in camp for one more day, but I tell him that each moment we wait, Eric gets closer to wasting away to nothing. Pest can’t argue with that, so we pack up camp and head south and west through the forest, Queen leading the way, ecstatic to be moving.

Our first job is to find boots for Eric. His wound is better now, not nearly as swollen, but it still doesn’t look great. We bandaged it up as best we could, but after a few minutes walking through the leaves and branches, the bandages just fall away. We have to find him boots. As for Eric, he doesn’t seem to be aware of his foot at all. He just trudges ahead as usual. But he looks gaunt and his skin has turned darker, from pale white to gray. It makes him look ghoulish and I can’t look at him very long without my heart breaking. Before we head out, Pest puts a rope around Eric. It’s good to have the rope again, it makes me feel like I have more control, but it also hurts. Not even Queen has a leash.

While we walk through the forest, I realize that I haven’t told Pest my story yet, what happened to us after we left him on the road. I begin to tell him because I feel like I owe it to him. I tell him about the barn and the rainbow trout I pulled from the brook. I tell him about how I mashed up food and mixed it with water to feed Eric. I tell him about the arrival of the gang and about what they did to the woman and the little girl. I tell him how one of them mutilated the other prisoner with the Worm, and I tell him about Squint and Doctor Bragg and how we escaped. I tell him everything except one thing: I don’t tell him about how I resuscitated Eric when I dragged him out of the river. I just say he puked up a lot of water and that I was lucky. I don’t tell him about breathing life back into his black mouth, about the taste of the Worm in my mouth, about how Eric vomited a jet of black, putrid liquid directly into my face. I don’t tell him I expected to die of the Worm. I don’t tell him it still might happen, I still might die. I might have the Worm. Truthfully, I don’t Understand why I don’t. I don’t know why I’m still here, still walking. I must have swallowed some of that horrid, black water. I must have the Worm.

Maybe I should tell him. But I can’t. I open my mouth to tell him. I want to tell him. He has a right to know. What if I crack? What if I’m one of those people who get the Worm and just lose their minds, run through the world, killing everything in my path? Pest should know, he should prepare himself for killing me. But I can’t do it. I can’t say the words. I don’t know if it’s because I fear what Pest might do or that he’ll treat me different or if it’s myself I’m scared of. I don’t want to hear the words. I can’t.

So I don’t tell him. I end the story where Queen found us, at the base of the tree, nearly dead from cold and hunger. During the whole story, Pest listens without commenting, without asking any questions. He keeps his head down, only nodding once in a while. When I’m finished, he lifts his head and stops. Looking at me with those intelligent, blue eyes, he says, “I think that’s the most I’ve ever heard you talk.”

I laugh, but it comes out like a bark. I don’t know why I act so differently around Pest. I’ve never made that sound in my life. I sigh and then shrug. “I don’t like talking,” I tell him.

“Water is wet and fire is hot,” Pest responds. “Anything else to say, Miss Obvious?”

I laugh at that, but this time, it’s more natural. I feel a tug at my leading rope, so I turn and follow Eric who had walked ahead while we paused. He hits his shoulder on a tree as he passes.

“Unh,” he says to it.

“Careful, Eric,” I say. I walk ahead and try to guide him on a straight path through the trees ahead.

I have to keep watching him. He could hurt himself. I feel bad for joking around with Pest when I should have been watching him. Pest walks a little ahead, and I can’t help but look at him sometimes, his curly hair, his careful movements through the forest. He certainly doesn’t move like someone his age. He moves like someone with a lot of experience. But I guess we all have that kind of experience now. I remind myself that he and the goon squad were alone out here for a long time before they found the Homestead. I know a lot less about Pest than I’ve realized. Still, it’s strange to watch him. I get that old spooky feeling I’ve always had with him. There’s more to him than I know. I tell myself to keep an eye on him.

There’s just something not right with that kid, I can feel it.

106

Late in the afternoon, we come across a town. Or settlement. Whatever you want to call it. We come out of the woods on a hill, and there it is below us, a few houses, a barn, and several badly-made shacks. There’s a ramshackle wall around the whole place and outside the wall, surrounding the whole place, is a big agricultural field. It just takes a moment to realize that something is wrong. It’s the sound that does it, or lack of it, to be exact. It’s completely silent. A settlement like this should be busy, bustling with people. There should be shouts and calls and ringing bells. But there’s nothing but silence. Not even the wind makes a sound as it passes through.

We crouch down and Pest grabs Queen. He hisses for her to stay while he rummages for his binoculars. Queen whines a little and then licks her jaws and sits reluctantly. I turn Eric toward a tree so he doesn’t wander off. Eric pushes his face into the bark of the tree.

“What do you see?” I whisper to Pest as I crouch next to him.

“Nothing yet,” he responds. “But those fields are newly planted. This was a place where people lived recently. I just don’t—” he makes a hissing sound and then sucks a tooth. “Shit,” he says, dropping his binoculars.

“What?” I ask. Pest hands the binoculars to me as an answer. I lift them and then focus. I don’t see anything at first, just lopsided shacks, piles of wood, and a well-kept street between them, asphalt that’s been brushed and weeded to keep from breaking up. I sweep over a human form and have go back.

I know right away the person is infected. He stands unnaturally stiff, one of his arms hanging as if useless, the other at a strange, crooked angle. He doesn’t move. Then I see another one, shuffling across the road, her jaw hanging open. She walks hunched forward and I see that one of her arms is torn off. Her dress is stained black on one side.

“Damn it,” I say, handing the binoculars back to Pest.

Pest stands up and he has that look that I recognize. He’s thinking. He rubs his chin with his hand like an old man scratching his beard and I get that same spooky feeling I get when I watch him. For a moment, I can’t tell if he’s twelve or forty. “I have to go in,” he says suddenly, looking up to me and snapping me out of it.

“Why?” I ask incredulously. “We can just walk to another place.”

“No, we can’t,” he argues. “We need to get Eric boots. It’s not just the wound he has. He could get another one real easily. What’re we going to do if he hurts himself? Besides,” he continues, “we can’t run out of food. I need to get in there, get what we need, and get back here.” He’s right. We need food and Eric is one mis-step away from being crippled.

“Well, you’re not going alone,” I say.

“There’s no need to risk both of us,” Pest argues. “You stay here and watch Eric and I’ll be right back.” He starts to move away, but I grab his arm. He turns back.

“I said,” I reiterate, my voice low and dangerous, “you’re not going down there alone.”

We glare at each other until his shoulders relax a little and I see that I’ve won. I feel a touch of triumph and then I think about it and I’m not sure I should be happy.

Now I have to go down there.

107

There are infected people everywhere. Some of them stand with their jaws hanging open without moving. Some of them shuffle randomly around the town. Some of them are sitting in chairs, as if waiting. Their eyes are dark and waving with pale worms. Men, women, even children. There must be a dozen of them here. I guess it must have happened quickly because they don’t look as emaciated as Eric. If it wasn’t for their rigid, unreal walking and their black eyes squirming with worms, I might think they were people, enjoying a sunny, spring day. But they’re not.

Pest and I move quietly through the open gates to the village and slowly up the street. I notice Pest has a gun out and just as quickly notice that it’s Eric’s old gun, in other words, my gun, but I’m not going to say anything now, of course. But it still irritates me.

“That’s my gun,” I hiss at Pest. Immediately I regret it. Didn’t I just tell myself I would wait until a more appropriate time? Didn’t I just finish saying that to myself? It’s Pest’s fault, I think. He makes me act this way.

Pest looks at me, and I could swear he was going to roll his eyes at me. My blood boils just to think of it. But he doesn’t, he stops himself. “I’ll give it back later,” he whispers.

I have three or four smartass responses, but this time I keep them to myself. I just nod. I have other things to worry about, and I breathe in deeply to try to focus on the job at hand. It’s so stupid to be thinking about Pest right now as we move through this village of the dead.

We fall into a pattern. With my knife out and ready, I watch outside while Pest goes into a house to look for supplies. I listen to him while he’s gone. He seems so loud, clomping around in the house, opening drawers, looking under beds. When he comes out, he usually shakes his head. Nothing. Then we move to the next house on the street. Outside the next house, there’s a little girl, no older than I was when the Worm first brought civilization down. While Pest is gone, I study her blonde hair and the raspberry barrette in her hair. She stands soundlessly, the tip of her tongue poking from her mouth. The tongue has been hanging out for so long, it’s dry and swollen black. I can see long, thin, almost transparent worms snaking from her ear. I try to keep an eye out like I’m supposed to, but I keep going back to the little girl.

It’s while Pest is searching the fourth house, when we’re almost in the center of the village, that I see him, a balding old man with a red hunting jacket on. He’s trudging forward, dragging one leg behind him. It looks as if dogs have attacked him. His clothes are all ripped and his jeans are shredded. But what really grabs my attention are his boots: they are perfect for Eric: good, solid, black leather and what looks like steel toes. I turn to call for Pest, but I hear him rummaging around and stop. I don’t want to make any more noise than is necessary. I can do this myself.

I move forward cautiously, and as I get closer, I can see that his leg is nearly torn completely off. It’s only held together by a shard of born and some yellow tendons. Approaching him carefully, I put out my hand and place it on his chest. He comes to a sudden stop. His head picks up a little and he makes a long sound. “Errrrrrrrrrr.” Black blood dribbles from his mouth, pocked by white worms. I shudder and then move behind him.

“Sorry,” I whisper. I push my knee into the back of his one good knee and try to ease him to the ground like I do with Eric, but he just collapses immediately.

“Ahrg! Ahrg!” he cries loudly. Black blood spits from his mouth. He begins to struggle on the ground, scraping the damp earth with his hands. With the loss of his leg, he doesn’t seem to know how to get up. “AAAHRG!” he shouts and then, shuddering, hacks up a massive blob of wriggling worms and black bile. It lands in a pile on the ground in front of him, and the smell of it makes me take a step backwards, putting my hand to my mouth.

Pest bursts from the shack he has been searching and begins to point his gun everywhere, frantically. Then he levels his gun at the infected man and looks at me with confusion. “What’s happening?” he asks.

“AAAHRG!” the man cries, even louder than before.

“His boots!” I say. “I was just getting his boots!”

“You should’ve waited for me!” Pest exclaims, stepping toward the man. He points his gun at him.

“No!” I say. “Don’t shoot him!”

“He’s making too much noise!”

“AAAAHRG!” the man calls out, as if to punctuate his point.

“Oh yeah and a gunshot is real tranquil,” I say to him.

Pest doesn’t respond. He just looks around the village nervously.

I move to the man and crouch down. While the man moves and cries, I unlace his boots and tug them free. Then I tie the laces together and sling the boots over my shoulder. I stand up and watch as the old man struggles on the ground, scraping and howling and shuddering. I wonder if we should shoot him, put him out of his misery. But what’s the difference between killing him and killing Eric? Doesn’t this poor man deserve a chance to get better too? I stare down at him as he cries, fixed by my own thoughts.

I hear it then, a different cry, high-pitched, inhuman. I turn away to see the thing coming down the street. It’s a pig, or it used to be. Now it’s black eyes are covered with wriggling worms, and from its snout pours a black foam that drips maggots. One of its tusks is shattered and broken and the other is black. It’s once-pink hide is now gray and cracked. As it charges toward me, it lets out another inhuman squeal, so loud and terrifying that I stagger backward and trip over the infected old man. I feel myself fall, and, as if time slows, I see Pest leap forward, his gun raised. He begins shooting. I crash backwards, feeling the concussion of the gun shots in my chest.

Everything rolls and spins and blurs. I hear more shots and the pig wailing. I roll backward, and try to come to my feet, but I can’t keep my balance and fall backward, sprawling to a stop. I hear yet another shot as I rise to my feet and spin around, my knife ready to confront the cracked animal.

Instead, I see Pest standing over the corpse of the pig, his gun held to the side, still smoking. The smell of corpses and death mixes with gun powder. The pig’s head has three dark holes in it, one right below the eye socket. Black blood and long tendrils of thin worms pour from it like liquid from a bottle. Shakily, I step forward. Pest turns toward me.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

That’s when I notice his left arm, torn and bleeding where the pig managed to gore him.

108

By the time we get back to camp, I’m practically carrying Pest. He’s lost a lot of blood. My heart racing, I drag him next to the smoldering camp fire. I try not to think of the infection pumping through him, try not to think about what that means. Pest struggles into a sitting position, his back against a fallen tree. He looks up at me and smiles, but his smile is weak and it flitters across his face, fragile as a butterfly.

“Don’t worry,” he says and then takes a deep breath. “Don’t worry about me.”

“Of course I’m going to worry, you idiot,” I hiss. I get down on my knees and open up his shirt. There’s a long, red gash down his left arm. I grimace when I see his wound is smeared with gray foam. I can almost see the tiny, microscopic little worms wriggling their way into his bloodstream, pumping through his body, reaching up into the temple of his brain. I shudder and turn away. I have to wash it. I have to clean it.

Pest looks down at his arm and his face turns sickly pale. “Oh man,” he breathes. He turns away, but I see it’s too late. He blinks several times and then his eyes roll up in his head. His shoulders twitch as he passes out. I’m relieved that he won’t be awake while I wash his wound. I can’t afford to be gentle.

It takes a long time for the water to boil. My mind is thinking about what to do now that Pest is infected. Will we go on? Will we wait here while he gets sick? Will I have to take care of him too like I take care of Eric? The thought of leading the two of them to the Good Prince fills me with fatigue. I struggle just to take care of Eric, I think. How can I take care of both? And I’m thinking too that it could go an entirely different way. Pest could crack. The disease could be too much for him to take and he’ll crack. Then I’ll have to shoot him. I’ll have to shoot him and the man who saved me. Not once, not twice, but three times!

Did I just think of Pest as a man? He’s just a boy, I tell myself. Just a kid.

But the way he looks. The way his eyes flash with intelligence. His patience. How he always thinks before he acts. How I trust and respect him. It makes me think of him as much older. It’s easy to make that mistake.

But it’s a mistake. He’s just a little boy, years younger than me.

Years, I tell myself.

I’m so upset that I sit back, overwhelmed. I grab my legs and hug them close to my body. Why is all this happening to me? Why does it all have to go wrong all the time? I feel myself shaking, trembling, and I hug myself harder to keep steady.

“Keep it together,” I say out loud. “Keep it together, Birdie.”

Think.

I take a few deep breaths.

“All right,” I say. “All right.” I sniff loudly and realize I’ve been crying again. Tears of pure frustration. I wipe my eyes clean with my shirt. “All right.”

“Unh,” Eric says, his face still pressed into the tree where I left him.

“Not now,” I mutter. “I got things to do.”

109

Halfway through cleaning Pest’s wound, Queen comes back. She whines and paces, worried. She tries to reach in with her snout and lick at his wound, but I push her away. Then she starts to circle the camp. Her circles grow and then, at some point, I don’t see her anymore.

I’ve decided that sometimes thinking isn’t the best way to handle a situation. Sometimes you just have to deal with what is right in front of you. You have to shut off your mind and focus. I can’t think about what I’m going to do later when Pest turns or when he cracks or if he just dies. There’s no use in thinking about it. Whatever happens, I’ll deal with it then. If I worry too much about the future, I’ll break down.

After I clean his wounds, I drag Pest’s backpack over near the fire and begin to rummage through it. I find a shirt and put it in the boiling water. I bring the water to a boil again and then take out the shirt while it’s still steaming and hang it from a branch. After a few minutes, when it’s cooled enough, I take it down, wring it out as dry as I can, and then begin to reduce it to long strips. I wrap up Pest’s arm as best as I can, and then I sit back. I watch the flames. I listen to Queen out in the woods, pacing, whining. I look at the gun that used to be Eric’s, still is, I guess. Soon I will have to pick it up and load it and get ready because I might have to do it. I might have to shoot him. If he cracks.

But I can’t get myself to do it. I look over at Pest, his round face surrounded by dark curls, his eyes closed almost serenely. He stepped in front of that pig to save me. He put himself in danger to keep me safe, and now he’s suffering from it. I study his face and I’m suddenly struck by it. I feel myself go rigid with the force of it. Why? Why would he do that? He said he owes a lot to Eric, but what does he owe me? I’ve never treated him very well. Actually, I think I’ve treated him very badly. But that didn’t seem to matter to him. Why would he risk his life for me?

“No one asked you to,” I tell him out loud. And then I blush because it’s a mean thing to say to the person who just saved you, even if he is unconscious. I don’t know why I’m so mean to him. I don’t know why I’ve always distrusted him and thought he was a creep. Looking back on it, I can’t think of a single cruel thing he’s ever done to me, except maybe speaking in Spanish. And now it seems he’s sacrificed himself just to keep me safe. Just for a pair of boots for Eric.

I see that I’m crying again. I feel so lonely. So confused. So tired.

I wipe my face. “All right,” I tell myself. “Enough of that.” I sniff wetly. “Seriously, though. Enough.”

I go back to Pest’s backpack and begin to look through it. We have to eat, and, besides, I need to know what my resources are. I need to do a little inventory, so I begin pulling out everything: socks, shirts, an extra pair of pants, a pair of swimming shorts, two different swiss army knives, a little plastic bag of hooks, a spool of fishing line, a hunting knife, a compass, another pair of socks, that’s good, a plastic He-Man, okay, that’s random, a dog-eared copy of Dune: Messiah, nice, sunglasses, binoculars, a pair of heavy duty scissors, a matchbox filled with razor blades, good one, a bundle of green, nylon string, a cigar box filled with oh, good idea, aspirin, cold medicine, a little packet of sewing needles, some other pills that I don’t recognize, and what’s this?

I stop.

It’s my drawing case.

I sit back and open it. All my drawing materials there surrounding a pad of white paper.

I begin to tremble and then look over to Pest. He brought this for me.

I try not to cry. I really try.

I shut the case gently and close the little, brass latch.

I can’t afford these feelings right now. I blink away the tears and put the case down gently on the ground. Then I go back to inventory.

There’s nothing left in the main compartment of the backpack. When I search the other pockets, I find a little notebook in a plastic bag and a leather wallet. I know these are personal, but I open them up anyway. Maybe I shouldn’t. I tell myself I shouldn’t, but even while I’m thinking it, I’m still doing it. I flip through the notebook and stop randomly. It says, “The winter days are the worse. The cold bites like an angry dog. I get tired of the people. I get tired of seeing them every day and having the same, inane conversations. If one more person says cold enough for ya, I’m going to kill them with my bare hands.” I flip again and stop to read: “…still can trust some people. I didn’t think it was true, but Eric has shown me it can still be like this. I have to add this to the list of things I owe him. I don’t have much faith in this world, but all I have left, all I’ve been able to keep, it’s thanks to him.” I want to read more, but finally the voice telling me to stop wins over and I close the diary. I put it back in its plastic envelope even though I am burning with desire to read the whole thing.

I open the wallet and search through it. When I read the card, I look at Pest in astonishment. I can hardly sleep that night, thinking about it, disbelieving my own eyes.

110

Miraculously, Pest wakes up the next morning without a fever. I expected the Worm to have dug into him by then, but he looks fine. Maybe a little pale from all the blood he lost, but otherwise, he’s healthy. He gets up and actually helps me make breakfast, using some of the last of the oatmeal he brought with him from the Homestead. He doesn’t say much, only thanks me for bandaging his arm. He says he wants to get going. He doesn’t want to stay there any longer. I think we both know what’s going to happen and we don’t want to talk about it.

While I try to feed Eric some oatmeal soup, I steal glances over at Pest. He’s patting a wildly happy Queen who can hardly keep from covering his face with dog slurp. I study him while he packs up all our stuff in his backpack. He looks like he’s always looked. A round, white face, topped by a mop of curly black hair. His blue eyes shine and sparkle. There’s darkness under his eyes, but he’s the same Pest as usual. Except he’s not. I search over his features and I think I see something under them that I hadn’t noticed before. Something in the way he moves, so deliberate, so…experienced. It’s the way an adult moves. It’s always been spooky to me.

“Unh,” says Eric. I’ve been so occupied with Pest that I hadn’t been paying attention. Eric’s black tongue is wriggling, trying to get to the oatmeal soup I’m just barely dribbling out of the aluminum mug.

“Oh,” I say to him. “Sorry, Eric.” I try not to think of Pest for a minute and concentrate on Eric. He’s looking a little better, not so gaunt as before, or, I don’t know, waterlogged. I steady him with a hand on his chest and then carefully pour the oatmeal into his mouth. I’m getting better at it, but most of it still falls all over him. His black tongue writhes toward the mug, and I cringe as I watch. “Gross, Eric,” I groan as he pushes his head up toward the mug.

“Unh,” he says, straining upward. “Unh.”

I’m glad when he finishes, so I can stand up and move away from him. Eric continues to search for more, his black tongue wriggling.

“Okay,” I tell him. “There’s no more.”

While he’s occupied with searching for more water, I take advantage of it by pulling a pair of socks over his red feet and then the new boots. As I lace them up, I look over to Pest who’s sitting down on a log not far away, looking away into the forest. As I finish putting on the boots, I look down at them. They fit him well. But I think of what a terrible price we paid for them. It makes me want to cry. It makes me want to tell Pest something, to thank him, to hold him. But when I look over to him, I’m just so confused, I don’t know what to say. I want to ask him about what I saw in his wallet, but I can’t. Not while he’s like this. Not while he’s only got a few more hours before the Worm gets him. It’s precious time. It’s his time, and I don’t want to disturb it. It’s probably the last time he’ll ever have.

I pull Eric to his feet. Eric stands straight at first and then leans forward. His arms swing senselessly down, like they’re filled with water. Eric looks like someone who’s about ready to pick up something. He clomps forward like this for two steps before I stop him.

“Stand up straight,” I tell him, trying to maneuver him. He stands up straight again, but then sags forward, but not all the way, like he’s searching for something on the ground.

“What’s wrong with him?” Pest asks, approaching us.

“Nothing,” I answer. I shrug. “He just does what he does.”

Pest looks at him and frowns. I try to read what he’s thinking, what he’s feeling, but I can’t. I wonder if he’s thinking about the Worm inside him now, how in just a few days, he could be just as Eric is now. Or he could be dead. That’s what I’d be thinking. But as much as I stare at Pest’s face as he looks up at Eric, I don’t have the first clue of what’s going on in there.

“Let’s get going,” he says finally.

We continue south, making a wide circle around the town. Neither of us mention what happened there. We just keep walking through the forest. I try to hide the glances I keep giving to Pest, waiting for signs of blood in his eyes, the flush redness in his face that would mark a fever, the sudden clumsiness in the limbs that would suggest the Worm has him. For hours we walk and I see nothing. But my heart is breaking slowly, at this walking pace through the forest, as Pest marks out the last hours of his life.

111

I keep thinking as we walk: what will be my last words to him?

I make different speeches in my head. I thank him for what he’s done for us. I tell him that Eric and I will never forget him. In some version, I tell him I’m sorry for the way I treated him. It seems unfair. I don’t know why I get so angry with him. But the speeches don’t sound right. They sound false. When I plan it, it sounds then like someone else talking. I want to say those things, but I don’t know how. I don’t know how to talk about these things. I remember the last thing I said to Eric, about him not being my father, and I remember how I felt even as I said it, like I didn’t know why I was saying it or why it came out sounding so cruel. I don’t know how to say goodbye to Pest, and I don’t know why, after all the death I’ve seen, the thought of Pest being gone from my life makes me feel weak and vulnerable.

“Stop it,” Pest says suddenly.

“Stop what?” I ask, shaken from myself and my thoughts.

“Stop diagnosing me with your eyes,” he says flatly. “I’m okay, trust me.”

“I’m not diagnosing you,” I scoff. But of course I am.

Pest doesn’t argue with me but he makes the slightest huff sound that says everything I need to know. It annoys me. Even though I’m lying, I’m offended he doesn’t believe me. I know that sounds stupid, but that’s what Pest does to me.

“I saw your wallet,” I tell him. Pest stops and then I stop too, giving Eric’s rope a sharp pull to get him to stop.

Pest looks at me. I can’t tell what the look he’s giving me is. Anger? Frustration? Patience? He’s impossible to read. “I thought probably you had,” he says finally. He leans over and pats Queen who’s come running back. Eric obediently stands next to them with his jaw wide open and his dark mouth stinking. Pest turns away from Queen and stands to look at me. “Yes,” he says. “I’m eighteen years old.” That was what it said on his school ID: born in the year 1982.

I cross my arms. “How is that possible? You look twelve.”

Pest clears his throat. He looks over to Eric and then back at me. “Shit,” he says finally. “I guess it was only a matter of time.”

“Just tell me,” I say.

Pest looks away into the forest and then back at me nervously. He sucks on a tooth and then clears his throat again.

“What is it?” I ask. He’s worrying me.

“You know why I haven’t got the Worm right now?” Pest asks. He looks at me steadily in the eye. “You can’t get the Worm twice.”

112

“Don’t look at me like that,” Pest says. “Just listen to me, Birdie. Don’t get angry, just listen for a second. Yes, sit down.

“I had the Worm. Back then, when it first came. I was young, like eight or nine, I guess. I remember getting sick. I remember the fever and the nightmares. But when I woke up one morning on the side of the road, the world was different. My parents were gone. All my friends were gone. There were three other boys with me. The oldest one, Shawn, had taken me because he felt sorry for me. I don’t know why they didn’t leave me or kill me. Maybe they didn’t know either. But they took me with them, and for some reason, I didn’t die from the Worm. I was like Eric for two or three months, I guess, and then I got better. I really don’t know why.

“After that I wandered from place to place with the boys. One by one, they died. Shawn was shot by a gang while we were looking for food. The boys didn’t last long. They died of sickness or hunger or by accident. But there were new boys that came to replace them. Always new kids, everywhere we went.

“I didn’t realize that I wasn’t like them until after the first few years. They were getting bigger. I wasn’t. The ones that lived were growing up fast and strong and tough. I wasn’t, at least not like they were. I grew slowly. Something about the Worm changed me. It slowed down some clock inside me. It wasn’t stopped, but it was slower. And because I wasn’t strong like the other boys were, I had to learn to think. I had to use my head to get what I wanted. But even so, I don’t think I would’ve survived much longer. I was lucky we found the Homestead. I was lucky they let us in.

“You asked me what I owe to Eric. I’ll tell you. He knew I once had the Worm. Eric is smart and he saw problems with my story. After a year had passed and I hadn’t grown much, he began asking me questions. I don’t know why I told him the truth. Something about Eric said I could trust him, or maybe I was too tired of keeping it all to myself. Eventually, when the rest of the boys grew and I didn’t, there would be questions, I knew that. So I told him. Anyone else would have either kicked me out or killed me on the spot. But Eric didn’t. He told me that my secret was safe with him. He told me never to tell anyone else. Most people would think I was a danger. They’d kill me. But not Eric.

“When the Worm broke out again at the Homestead, Eric knew it was possible to survive because of me. And I knew, I mean I know, that it’s possible that Eric can survive because I survived. I couldn’t let them kill him, and I couldn’t let you be out here alone.

“I owe Eric that. Without him, I’d be dead.”

113

“So you don’t have to worry about me,” Pest finishes. “I’m not going to get infected.”

I look at him in disbelief. It’s a lot to take in. I want to say something, but what can I say? I find the whole thing confusing. He’s older than me, for one, and two, he has this connection to Eric that I never even guessed. Pest is standing in front me, waiting, I guess, for some reaction. I have to say something, but I feel paralyzed with confusion. He keeps looking at me. I have to say something!

“So you’ve been lying to me this whole time?” I ask. It sounds strangely petulant coming out of my mouth, and I blush a little bit.

Pest tilts his head to the side and makes a little hissing noise and then turns away.

That didn’t go well.

I stride after him, wanting to say something much, much better than that, when Eric’s rope goes taut. I turn back and give Eric a tug to get him moving. Eric lumbers forward, his jaw hanging open. By the time I turn back, Pest is far ahead in the forest, Queen following happily behind him, tail in the air. I sigh in frustration and tug at Eric’s rope again.

“Come on,” I tell him, pulling his rope.

“Unh,” Eric says as his head tilts back and he stumbles ahead, almost falling. I feel worse. Going to Eric, I take out his new drooly towel from his shirt, which I put there with the leftover cloth that I used to make Pest’s bandage. I wipe the dark drool from Eric’s mouth.

“Sorry,” I whisper.

“Unh,” Eric responds. From the angle of his face, it seems he’s looking over my shoulder, but I know he sees nothing through the bandana over his eyes. When I turn back, I see that Pest has vanished ahead, and I’ve lost my chance to say the right thing. I always seem to fail that test.

114

We hike all day without talking or taking much of a break. I don’t think either of us wants to face the other. All this time, I’ve been thinking about Pest as some weird kid, and it turns out he’s older than I am. No wonder he has that look in his eyes. I think again as we plod along at Eric’s pace that I’ve been wrong about a lot, and being wrong about Pest is just another example. I guess I’m not as smart as I thought I was. Or maybe we never know each other and that’s the truth, no matter how smart we are. There’s always secrets, always things we don’t know about someone, things that change everything. When I think about Pest now, I wonder how I never guessed it, how I never saw that Pest’s intelligence was strange enough to start thinking there might be something more there than I knew. Eric realized that. I never did.

By the time we stop, the sun is low in the sky and the shadows are long in the forest. The leaves are really starting to show now, and their shadows flicker on the forest floor. It’s still only spring though and it’ll get cold again tonight, and I wish suddenly that we had a house. Four walls, a ceiling, and a fireplace. I ache for it. I’m so tired in my bones from all this that I want to cry.

But I’ve done enough of that. Get ahold of yourself, Birdie.

Pest looks like I feel. He’s sitting on a rock with his head down, grasping at his wounded arm. Even if it doesn’t infect him, it must hurt like hell. It hurts me just to see him suffer. I loop Eric’s rope around a nearby pine tree and tie it off.

“Why don’t you rest,” I tell Pest softly. “I’ll get the wood tonight.”

He looks up at me, and there’s defiance in his face, but when he sees that I’m being genuine and not a jerk, his face softens and he nods. I nod back at him and then start walking through the forest, picking up the driest branches I can find. Most everything is damp, but there’s still a lot of good, dry wood. I bring back a few armfuls and then look for more substantial logs. It’s not hard. I drag a few back. Then I dig a pit in the earth and ring it with stones. It’s hard to get the fire started with old matches and some leaves, but eventually, with a lot of care and frustration, the fire is crackling and popping.

Pest watches me without saying anything, patting Queen’s black and white patchwork head which is resting on his lap. I sit back and feel the warmth. It’s nice, but I’d do anything to have a rabbit or squirrel to roast in the fire. I’m too tired to hunt though, and even though there’s probably some fat trout in the nearby stream, I can’t get myself to go fishing. I just need a few minutes to rest. I’m kind of glad I’m so tired. I’ve been dreading this moment all day, and now I’m too tired to care if it’s awkward between Pest and I or not. I feel like a bomb could go off and I wouldn’t even bother to turn my head to see what happened.

“I wish I could’ve told you the truth,” Pest says softly, staring at the fire. “I’ve never told it to anyone except Eric. I can’t even believe I told him. I don’t know exactly why I did.”

“Eric had that way with people,” I tell him. “People trusted him. People told him everything.”

“I guess I should’ve trusted you, but—”

“Don’t worry about it,” I interrupt. “Really, I understand. I wouldn’t have told me either.” I sigh and toss a branch into the fire.

We listen to the wood spark and burn.

I look up at him. “Do you think that Good Prince Billy really knows how to help Eric?”

“What do you mean? Didn’t Eric say she did?”

“Well,” I answer him, “now I’m thinking he said that to protect you.”

“What?”

“Maybe the Good Prince never said anything like that,” I continue. “Maybe he knew people could survive the Worm because of you, but he couldn’t say that. They might’ve killed you. So he made up the whole thing with the Good Prince to keep your secret.”

Pest looks over to Eric, who’s sitting with his back against a tree, his head turned upward for some reason. “I didn’t think of that,” he says.

“Maybe this whole trip is for nothing,” I say. “Maybe there’s nothing anyone can do. It’s all chance. Either Eric makes it through or he doesn’t. Maybe it’s best if we just find a shack somewhere and wait.” I put my hand on my head and sigh. “I’m so tired,” I say, looking up at the darkening sky through the trees.

There’s a long silence. Pest moves closer to me, and I’m surprised to feel his arm around my shoulders. I’m even more surprised that I don’t recoil. Usually I don’t like to be touched, but I feel myself relax. More than that, I feel strangely safe this near to Pest. I find myself leaning into him and laying my head on his shoulder. It feels good and right. And Pest doesn’t ruin it by talking. We just sit there, listening to the fire crackle and snap.

“What’s your real name?” I ask him in a soft voice. I don’t usually talk like this, low and gentle and, I don’t know, vulnerable and delicate, but that’s how Pest makes me feel, I guess.

“You already know if you saw my school ID,” he answers with a little chuckle.

“Corey?”

“Corey,” he states. We both smile and chuckle a little. The name fits strange on him, like clothes that are too large. “You can keep calling me Pest, if you want.”

“I will,” I laugh. I sigh and then put my arm around him. “You can call me Birdie, if you want.” My voice is so small, I hardly recognize it.

“I will,” he answers me. His voice sounds just as small.

We stay that way for a long time without talking, but eventually hunger forces us to part. When I stand up and walk away from him, I feel my heart stretch, as if it was reluctant to leave and stayed with him.

That night I have a hard time sleeping. Every time I close my eyes, I think about Pest and the feel of his arm around me. How safe I felt. And how, for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel so alone. When I can’t sleep, I just lie awake, listening to Pest breathing in the night.

115

The next morning I feel stupid. This isn’t the time for romance.

I berate myself for silliness while I get wood for the fire. I think maybe Pest is thinking the same thing because we don’t talk much. We focus on our jobs. We don’t even look each other in the eye. There’s work to do. We have to find the Good Prince, even if she can’t help us. We have to take that risk. It could be Eric’s only chance. Later, while I feed Eric some hot water and the last of the oatmeal, I feel ashamed of myself. I should be concentrating on Eric. He needs me now. I don’t have time for boys. Especially not Pest.

The both of us kind of avoid each other during breakfast and getting ready for another day’s walking. I take care of Eric and he takes care of Queen. The only exception is when I insist on checking his wound.

“Just sit down,” I order him when he tries to argue he feels fine. He listens to me, although he doesn’t look happy about it. I sit down next to him and start unwrapping his bandage. Pest winces and jerks in pain. “Sorry,” I say to him more gently. I try to focus a little and stop being so brusque. The wound is red and angry, but it doesn’t stink and there’s no sign that it’s getting worse. I tell him so. “I’m going to wash it anyway,” I finish. He opens his mouth to argue, but I give him the look that says he shouldn’t bother. He hardly makes a sound as I wash the wound. He just stares off into the forest over my shoulder. “There,” I say when I’m done and the bandage is back in place.

“Thanks,” he tells me. When I look up at him, just for a second, I can’t help but touch his shoulder. Just for a moment. Lightly. The feeling takes away my breath. I swallow and turn away, surprised by the strength of it. Not now, I say. There’s no time for this!

I feel Pest clutch my hand before I can move away, and I turn back.

“Birdie,” he begins.

“Please,” I say. “Please, not now. I have to think about Eric.”

“I know,” he says. “I just want to say.” He takes a deep breath.

“What?”

“You know, just in case, something, you know, happens.” He sounds so awkward, so unlike himself. It makes me feel like holding him. Instead I’m standing in front of him, waiting. He clears his throat. “Just that,” he says. He swallows. “It’s just that I’ve never met anyone like you, and I don’t know, I don’t know.”

I squeeze his hand. “Hey,” I tell him. “We don’t have to do this now.”

Pest shakes his head. “I do, I do,” he says. He shakes his head and I see that his eyes are filling with tears. “People come and go,” he continues. “In this world, people just come into your life and then they’re gone, you know?” He looks at me as if he needs my help.

“I know,” I say to him.

“I just want to say…” He trails off and takes a deep breath. “I’m just grateful I know you.”

I’m having a hard time keeping myself together. I squeeze his hand again. “Me too,” I say. It sounds stupid, but I can’t think of anything else to say. “But nothing’s going to happen,” I continue. “We’re going to find the Good Prince, and then we’re going to have all the time in the world to talk, okay?”

Pest nods. He stands up and takes a deep breath. I see one single trail of a tear on his cheek, and I’m aware suddenly at how bad the both of us are with this. How just the thought of making a connection seems brutally stupid and impossible in this world. How it nearly breaks us to take this chance. I understand the effort it must have been for him to say what he said and the effort it takes just for me to hear it without running for the hills. For the first time I see something about myself that I know I will have to change. We can’t live like this. I have to reach out to him. I never reached out to Eric either. I never said I loved him. I never told him how much he means to me. I’ve always thought of myself as brave, but I realize now that I’m just terrified, terrified of everyone that I care about, terrified that they’ll leave me alone, just like so many have left me before. What Pest just did was the real act of bravery, and I’m filled with admiration for him. I need him, I see that. He can help me learn to live in this world, learn to truly live. Not just to breathe and eat, but much more than that. I know then suddenly, stunningly, that I know a lot, but I don’t know the first thing about how to love someone.

The realization is so powerful that I want to tell Pest that I’m just awkward and new at this and that if he’ll just be patient, we can talk as much as he wants, but that right now, I have to focus on getting Eric some help. I want to say all this as best I can and hope he understands, but just then Queen’s ears prick up and she leaps to her feet and bounds into the forest.

“Someone’s coming,” Pest says and darts away after the dog. I follow as quick as I can, and when I come to edge of the forest, I see a familiar figure on horseback riding leisurely through the forest.

116

“Oh man,” Randy the Vandal says as I lead Eric to him. “You’ve looked better, buddy,” he tells Eric. I appreciate that he talks to him.

For once we’re having some good luck! When we saw it was Randy riding Tangerine, the both of us ran down the hill to greet him. We both trust him to do the right thing. Just to see Randy turn towards us in surprise and then laugh in recognition made my heart rise. We really need the help.

“We’re trying to get him to the Good Prince,” I explain. “Eric said that she knew how to help people with the Worm. She’s his only chance.”

Randy turns his head toward me. His brilliant green eyes twinkle like sunshine on a lake. “You’re in luck,” he says with a wink. “I’m headed her way right now.”

I actually cry out in delight and before I know it, I give Randy a good, tight hug. He hugs me back with a laugh, but I can tell he’s surprised by my attention because his body is tense.

“It’s good to see a familiar face out here,” Pest says as I pull away from Randy.

“I imagine it is,” Randy says with a smile. “It’s not easy out here on the best of days. Dragging around him must have complicated matters somewhat.” He points at Eric with a grin.

“Unh,” Eric says.

“You said it, pal,” Randy chuckles. He smiles over at me. I don’t know why, but it makes me uncomfortable somehow. Randy might have seen the discomfort on my fact because he smiles a crooked, mischievous smile at me like he’s playing a joke on me or something. I can’t help but laugh a little.

“We have to move,” he says finally. “We’ll talk on the road. I think if we push it, we can make it to the Good Prince by late evening.”

I feel like I’m almost floating from relief. Finally a little relief, a little luck. In no time at all, the three of us are marching down the road. As usual, Eric sets the pace with his shambling walk. I wish Randy had his wagon as he normally does. Then we could really make time. But it’s a minor gripe, considering.

I try to walk close to Randy so that I can join in the conversation, but Tangerine is spooked by Eric’s smell. If I get to close, she begins to get skittish, and when she actually kicked out once, I have to give up and fall back, watching as Pest walks beside Randy. The two of them talk back and forth, but I can only hear little parts of what they’re saying. The rest of it is taken away by the wind. It’s annoying. All I can gather is that the whole area is infested with the Worm and that Randy is headed to warn the Good Prince, if she doesn’t know already. To make matters worse, I can tell the Stars and Gears are still a problem, although I can’t really get any details.

Of all the times to worry about armies and guns and flags, it has to be now. I stop and let Eric pass me, reaching into his pocket as he passes to get his drooly towel. I wipe his chin and mouth as he ambles forward. His tongue snakes out and briefly touches my hand. I snatch my hand away, feeling a shiver of revulsion.

“Gross, Eric,” I mutter.

Eric doesn’t say anything, just continues his walk forward.

Not only do I have to try to get Eric somewhere safe and avoid the Worm outbreaks, I also have to worry about the war. I think for a second about Boston and Sydney and the look on their faces when they discovered that I had lied to them. I wonder where they are and if they’re all right. I wonder if they’ve warned people in the south about the Worm. I wonder how bad the infection has gotten. I haven’t really thought about it too much. I haven’t thought about the thousands of people living in Boston and Portsmouth and Portland. I wonder if they’re okay or if this second infestation might be the one that kills the whole species off for good. It’ll just leave people like Pest, people who’ve had the Worm before and somehow survived. Truth is, I’ve been so beset by misery and horror that I haven’t thought at all about any of these larger questions. I look over to Eric and sigh. I’d give anything to talk with him about it. He’d have ideas, good ideas. Instead there’s just me and Pest and I feel like we don’t know much at all.

As we plod along behind Randy and Pest, I suddenly remember the black fountain of gore erupting from Eric’s mouth after I pulled him out of the river. I shiver and squeeze my eyes shut as if just by willpower, I could forget it ever happened. But it did happen. I remember the taste of that black bile in my mouth and how I couldn’t get it out no matter how many times I rinsed in the river. I won’t ever forget the taste of it, that deep, acrid ammonia that was almost sweet at the edges. My stomach turns thinking of it.  I don’t understand why I’m not infected just like Eric. There’s a chance it will just take longer. The thought makes my blood run cold. Am I infected right now and just don’t know it?

I realize that one of the benefits of being chased and worrying about Pest is that I didn’t have to think about these things. Now that I don’t have to worry about how to find the Good Prince or how we’re going to eat today, now that I can let other people think about those things, now my mind has the opportunity to think about all those other things that I’ve ignored.

It’s not exactly a blessing.

117

Just as Randy said, the four of us reach the village of Cairo just as the sun is turning the rooftops red as blood. There’s a wooden and steel wall cobbled together that surrounds the whole place. At the gate of Cairo, made of rusted but thick corrugated metal, they make us wait. From below, we can hear arguing. I hear the word “Worm” several times. It’s a long discussion. Finally they agree to let Randy in, but not the rest of us.

Randy turns to us and stretches his lips over his teeth in that smile of his. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll talk to the Good Prince.”

“Tell her it’s Eric from the Homestead,” I say to him needlessly.

He nods and then two men open the gate, and point guns at us while Randy slips through. The three of us slump down on the grass outside Cairo, waiting. While we’re waiting, I ask Pest about what Randy and he were talking about earlier.

Pest sighs. “The War, mostly,” he tells me. The Stars and the Gearheads are moving through the area pretty fast.” He tells me that the outbreak of the Worm has made both sides paranoid. There’s a rumor, Randy told him, that it’s the Gearheads who have been spreading the Worm, using it like a weapon to wipe out any community that have sided with the Stars.

“That’s ridiculous,” I tell him. I haven’t told him much about Doctor Bragg. It’s not a memory I like to revisit, but I tell him about the Doctor and how it was him who resuscitated the Vaca B. “I didn’t see any flags around his compound, did you?”

“No,” Pest admits. “But when people are scared, they believe anything.” He shakes his head. “Besides, I don’t think we know the whole story at that compound.”

I have to admit that he’s right. Doctor Bragg didn’t seem to me the kind of guy who leads people. Someone must have set up that rat nest of bandits. For all we know, it could be the Stars. Or the Gearheads. “I guess spreading the Worm isn’t something they’d want to wave a flag about.”

Pest takes a deep breath. “When it comes to war, people will do almost anything.”

I look at Pest with his ruffled dark hair, his face turned toward the ground where he’s picking at grass, and I can see him thinking. I know he’s older than he looks, but it’s still jarring to see it. I move closer to him and nudge him with my shoulder. When he looks up, I smile at him. I want to say that I’m glad that he’s with me, that it’s been so lonely trying to understand all of this myself. But all that comes out is that smile. Pest smiles back. It’s so little, but it seems to be enough for us right now. I have the feeling that it’s us against whatever is happening, and it’s a great feeling. It’s the best feeling I’ve had since this all began.

Maybe we would have said more if the gate didn’t open. Randy comes out with a hop in his step and walks over to Tangerine. He looks at us and winks. “The Good Prince will see us,” he says. As he comes up next to us, he gives us a more serious look. “Don’t expect a party though. Welcoming the Worm into Cairo is not exactly a popular decision.” As we pass through the open doors of the gate, and they shut it quickly behind us, I see there’s a big, black horse painted on the inside of the gate. The word MUSTANGS makes an arc over the rearing horse.

Cairo is a bunch of old, clapboard houses surrounded by a wooden fence. All the windows have bars on them and the doors are all reinforced with steel. It looks like a place that’s been under siege for about a decade, which, I guess, maybe it has. Lining the road as we walk through are more than two dozen men and women, all holding guns. None of them look very welcoming. They all stare at Eric in open hatred. One old man, mostly bald and toothless, leans out and squirts out a thin line of spit in front of us.

Once again I’m grateful for Randy. There’s no way we would have gotten this far into town without him. I watch him up ahead, smiling at the people who hate us. He’s got a talent, all right. He doesn’t seem to be bothered at all by them. He looks at them all like they were the best of friends. As for myself, I seem to feel every gun pointed my way, and it makes me nervous as hell to think of how any one of these people could shoot Eric down right now and no one would blame them. I don’t have very many warm feelings for these people. All I care about is getting Eric somewhere safe as fast as I can. I look around for the Good Prince, but I don’t see anyone.

Randy leads us to an old church, with its little block of a steeple topped by a brass cross. Once the church must have been bright yellow, but now it’s faded and chipped. The windows are all completely barred with steel. The double doors in front are also made of steel, inexpertly welded, patchworked together from whatever they could scavenge. Above the door is a strange wooden bear, seemingly carved with a  chainsaw from a single block of wood, and painted deep black, except its eyes which are disturbingly white. Under the bear and just over the double steel doors, GOOD PRINCE BILLY is written in garish, bright pink letters.

There’s a man waiting for us outside the church. He’s dressed like many of the others, in faded and ripped blue jeans with a worn plaid shirt. He’s got a long beard and cradles a shotgun in his folded arms. His thin face studies us as we approach.

“This is Jim,” Randy whispers over to us. “He’s been in charge of the Mustangs for a while now.”

“Where’s the Good Prince?” I ask Randy nervously. “I don’t like this.”

“Me either,” agrees Pest.

Jim chimes in before Randy can answer. “Let me see Eric,” he says.

Feeling nervous, I step ahead and give Eric a little tug forward. Eric shambles forward toward the church. I put out my hand and stop him at the base of the steps. Jim looks down at us for a second and then comes down the steps to look closer. He eyes me for a second.

“He bite?” he asks.

I shake my head.

Jim comes forward and studies Eric up close. Then he steps back and looks him up and down. “Shit,” he says. “Hey there, amigo.” Jim smiles weakly and pats Eric on the shoulder. He turns toward me. “He came through here a long while back. He was just a kid then.” He looks at Eric again. “It was a memorable day.” His eyes seem to drift off and then he turns away and strides up the steps. He turns back and waves us forward. “Billy will want to see him.”

It’s hard to get Eric up the steps. I never thought of it, but Eric has never had to use steps before. He keeps stumbling and tripping. He falls over a couple times. The crowd that we’ve attracted seems to find this funny. They laugh every time Eric stumbles or falls trying to get up the steps. It makes me burn with anger, but I smile at them like I’m in on the joke too. I’d rather have them laughing at Eric than shooting him. After Eric falls hard enough to draw a black wound on his cheek, and the crowd roars with laughter, Pest and I decide just to drag him up the steps. He’s lost so much weight, it’s easy to do. Feeling ashamed and humiliated and enraged by the laughter of the crowd, I quickly lead Eric into the church. I could’ve kissed Pest from gratitude when he shut the church doors behind us. In the silence of the church, I take out Eric’s drooly towel and wipe the black blood from his face.

“Sons a bitches,” I say under my breath as I clean him.

“Unh,” Eric agrees. Black bile drips from his mouth and stretches down nearly to his knees before it breaks off and lands wetly  on the church’s wooden floor. I wipe his mouth and then put the drooly towel back in the pocket of his shirt.

The inside of the church is empty except for a table near the back. Behind the table, I can see a door. On the opposite wall, there’s steel where there must have been a large window. The steel is painted to look like a stained glass window, but instead of any kind of religious imagery, the painting is a silhouette of a horse, but done in many colors, like a painting of a mosaic. The church is full of dust, and I have the feeling that no one uses it anymore. Sitting at the table is Good Prince Billy. With visible, shaking effort, she pushes herself up from the table using a cane, and then hobbles slowly toward us.

She’s older than I thought she’d be. Her hair is silver white and thin on her head, and her eyes are clouded so badly, I wonder how much she can see. Her face is wrinkled as a prune and in one of her hands, she clutches a cane that she leans on heavily. She’s wearing a worn and faded floral shirt and a pair of overalls so old, they’re almost the same color as her hair. She smells like the forest on a hot, dry day, all pine needles and dust. The Good Prince peers over me at Eric, but I don’t know how much she sees.

“Is that Eric?” she says in a dry, tired-sounding voice.

“Yes,” I answer.

“Well, I can smell him,” The Good Prince answers, wrinkling her noise. She turns her sightless gaze toward me and clears her throat. “You’re Birdie, aren’t you?”

The sound of my true name coming from a stranger’s voice is disconcerting. I feel uncomfortable, but I have to say something. “How’d you know my name?” I ask her.

The Good Prince smiles at me. “You live as long as me and you hear things other people don’t hear.” To my surprise, she reaches out a hand and takes Eric’s arm. “I can hear him in you. Plain as day for those that know how to listen.” She pulls Eric forward.

“Unh,” Eric responds and starts walking forward. Instinctively, I put out a hand and stop him.

The Good Prince turns her head just slightly toward me. “It’s okay, honey,” she says. “I’m going to help him best I know how.”

I take my hand away from Eric’s chest and feel a little ashamed. “Thank you,” I say.

The Good Prince laughs then, dryly, and ends up gently coughing. “Well, don’t thank me yet,” she says. “You won’t like what’s about to happen, I can tell you that.” She gently pulls Eric forward again. “First thing we got to do is get Eric cleaned up.” She leads him forward toward the back of the church, and when I don’t immediately follow, The Good Prince turns her head toward me. “You too, honey,” she says. “This is something you got to do.”

I look toward Pest who smiles weakly at me. The smile says “So glad not to be you” plain as day. He nods toward the back of the church where the Good Prince is disappearing through a door with Eric. I feel uncertain. Then I turn before I can think about it too much more and follow the Good Prince and Eric through the door and down into the dark basement.

118

The basement is divided into three jail cells. Facing the cells is a short hallway with a wooden table in the corner, against the wall. Near the table, there’s a cast iron wood stove burning hotly so the basement is dry, almost hot. The basement is lit by two kerosene lamps, one inside one of the jail cells, and another sitting on the table next to a plastic jug and an aluminum mug. There’s something underneath the table too, but I can’t see what it is. Two chairs are set at the table. In the jail cell, I see a large tin bucket and a mop. Gently, the Good Prince leads Eric into the jail cell with the lamp inside. He walks to the corner and presses his face into the cement. Leaning on her cane, the Good Prince hobbles out and, with great effort, sits at one of the two chairs next to the table. She takes a deep breath and then taps the other chair with her cane.

“Come sit,” she says. It’s more like an order than a request and something in me rebels against that. I just stand there.

“Can I get something to eat first?” I ask. “I’ve been walking all day.”

“Believe me,” the Good Prince says. “You’re not going to want to do this on a full stomach.” She taps the chair. “You can eat all you want after.” She laughs then. It’s almost a cackle really, like something a witch might do. I don’t know what’s coming, but I know I’m not going to like it. The Good Prince taps on the chair a third time and this time I move obediently and sit down.

“Why do they call you the Good Prince?” I ask her. I’m stalling and I can tell that the Good Prince realizes it immediately.

She ignores the question. “This is what is going to happen,” she begins, her blind eyes fixed toward me but somehow not at me. “First, you’re going to get all those horrible clothes off him. All of them. We’re going to have to burn them,” she says. “Then you’re going to pick up this cup.” She points to the aluminum mug on the table. “And fill it with salt water from this jug.” She points vaguely toward the old plastic jug. “You’re going to make Eric drink as much as he’ll drink, but no more than this gallon.”

“Salt water?” I look over at Eric. “Won’t that hurt him?”

“Hurts the Worm worse,” she answers. “The salt water kills the worms. Right now his stomach is full of them, and from there they get into his blood and all through his system. We got to throw water on the fire, understand?”

I nod, but then remember that she’s practically blind. “Yes, I understand,” I say to her.

“After he’s done with that,” she continues, “you’re going to wash him from head to toe with that bucket of soapy water. I mean you got to wash him good, understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I answer. I’ve never used the word “ma’am” before, but it seems appropriate for the Good Prince.

“When that’s over,” she says, “we’ll get him a clean robe.”

“Then what?”

“Then we wait.”

My lips are quivering. I never would have thought of salt water. “Thank you,” I say.

“Okay, Birdie,” she says to me. “Better get to it. I know it ain’t pleasant, but the longer you wait, the worse off you’ll be.” She sits back. Her eyes palely glow in the light from the kerosene lamp. For a moment, I don’t want to do any of this. I don’t want to strip Eric naked, I don’t want to scrub him clean, I don’t want to make him drink salt water. I wish someone else could do it. But I know they can’t. I know I’m the one who has to risk it. No one else should have to put themselves in danger of a scratch or a bite or even just a bit of black bile flying in their mouth. I’m the only one here who will do this for him.

Eric needs me.

Taking a deep breath, my heart pumping, I push myself up from the chair and walk toward the jail cell.

119

I start with the bandana around his eyes. The cloth peels off his eyes, bringing some long, pale worms with it. I fling the bandana to the corner of the jail cell with shivering disgust. In the flickering lamp light, Eric’s eyes seem impossibly dark. Immediately his eyes begin to leak a black, stinking fluid. They trace horrid lines down his face like black tears.

“Unh,” Eric says and his black tongue snakes out to lick at the liquid as it passes. I turn away in disgust. I feel my stomach clench, and I step back and breathe.

“You can do it,” I hear the Good Prince tell me. “Keep going.”

I take a deep breath to steady myself.

Next I try to take off his shirt, but Eric won’t keep his arms up. Even after I unbutton it, he won’t let me pull the shirt away. Finally I give up trying to do it gently. There’s a long ripping sound as I tear the shirt away from him. When I see Eric’s bare chest, I turn away with a gasp. His skin is gray and rough and stretched impossibly thin over his rib cage. He looks more like a skeleton than a human being. His skin is covered in tiny red blotches, some them of leaking a gray, thick liquid. I begin to cry quietly. There’s hardly anything left of him. I’m shaking and trembling as I toss the shirt into the corner with the bandana. I take a few gasping breaths and then turn back to Eric.

Eric’s slouched forward, his mouth open and dark. His pants are hanging on his hips, his tightened belt the only thing keeping them up. I shudder thinking of touching his bare skin. But I have to do it. I have to do it. I step forward and grasp his belt. Quickly I unclasp it and pull it loose. When his pants fall, the smell is so horrific that I step back, stumble, and fall to the hard ground. I get one look of him standing there with his pants around his ankles, his legs covered in filth and squirming with worms, his dark pubic area horribly recessed, and I turn on my stomach and begin to crawl away, heaving. I’m sobbing and gagging at the same time. For a long time, I sit in the corner, hugging my legs, my head down so I don’t have to look at what Eric has become.

“I know it’s hard, honey,” the Good Prince says, “but you got to keep going.”

“Yeah,” I breathe. “Yeah.” I want to say more, but I’m afraid if I keep talking, I’ll break down. I’ll just start crying and won’t be able to stop. I would rather do anything and be anywhere than where I am. I don’t want to see what he’s become. But there’s no choice. Eric wouldn’t give up on me.

I take a deep breath and pull myself up, feeling weak. Stepping forward, I gently pull Eric toward me. He stumbles a little, but finally walks out of his pants. With his clothes off, his stench is overpowering. He’s surrounded by a sphere of putrescence that I have to step inside. Recoiling at the feel of his dry, cold skin, I gently push Eric to a stop and then back away, kicking his pants into the corner with the other clothes. Without looking at him, I walk to the mop, wanting to wash him.

The Good Prince hears me grab the mop. “Not yet, honey,” she says. “The salt water first.”

“Why?” I ask her. I want to wash Eric badly, to get rid of the stinking filth, to make it easier.

“Salt water first,” she repeats gently.

I want to argue, but I don’t. She knows better. I know the right thing to do is what she says, but I also don’t want to approach Eric again. I try not to look at him as I pour the salt water into the mug and then walk back into the cell. Finally I have to look. Eric is standing naked in the cell, his jaw open, his eyes oozing dark liquid over his face. His hair is tangled and crazy on his head, like a bird’s nest. With his gray skin, he looks like some troll or goblin out of a nightmare. His tongue hangs indecently out of his mouth. I step forward, holding my breath against his stench. Usually when you approach a living person, you can feel their heat, but with Eric it’s the opposite. He seems to radiate cold. I step forward without wanting to, and, putting a hand on his chest to steady him, I begin to pour the salt water on his tongue.

Immediately, Eric lunges toward the liquid. “Unh!” he cries. “Unh!” I make a face at his disgusting black tongue, and pour the salt water into his mouth. He swallows eagerly, making horrible gurgling sounds. When the can is empty, I go back to refill it. Eric stays where he is, his head pointed upward as if expecting water to drop from the ceiling. “Unh! Unh!”

He takes three cups of salt water before I begin to hear the deep, gurgling sound rising from Eric’s stomach. Eric turns his head away suddenly and then takes a step back. I watch with concern. Eric’s head jerks back and then I see the muscles in his stomach constrict. He coughs for a moment and then there’s another gurgling sound. I step back in disgust just as he leans forward and hacks up a massive ball of dark liquid, pocked with white balls of worms. They aren’t wriggling as usual. They’re coiled on themselves. The ball hits the floor and lands like a dropped scoop of demented ice cream. Eric hacks up another, this one even larger. It lands with a sickening splat on the cement floor. Eric picks his head up toward me, black bile running from his nose and mouth and even the corner of his eyes. He hacks up a third ball, this time it rolls gruesomely down his chest before it oozes onto the floor. I stumble back, and start vomiting in the corner, all over the clothes I took from him. The both of us are hacking and vomiting for a while then. When I turn back, Eric is covered with black bile and dead worms from his mouth all the way to his legs. My stomach painfully clenches, but there’s nothing left to come up.

“More salt water, honey,” the Good Prince says.

Without answering, I stumble to the salt water and fill the mug. Three times he drinks and three more times he hacks up the worms. The whole basement is filled with the stench of them. My eyes are stinging with ammonia. When I dry heave, little flecks of blood are in my spittle.

“Okay, that’s good for now,” the Good Prince says. “You can wash him.”

The mop water is warm and very soapy, smelling of flowers. When I approach Eric with the mop, he just stands there in his filth with his jaw open. I start at the top, washing the black bile from his face. Eric licks at the mop as I wash him. Soon I have to return to the bucket, but Eric is excited by the water and tries to follow me. I push him away, but he keeps coming.

“Unh,” he says, striving against me. “Unh.”

I feel his cold, soapy skin against my fingers. It’s like touching waxy leather. Turning back to the bucket, I quickly rinse out the mop, keeping Eric at bay with one hand. Then I pull him back toward the middle of the cell and begin to mop at him again. He keeps his head up, waiting. With his crazy eyes wide open and his dark tongue searching the empty air, he reminds me of a baby bird squawking in the nest to be fed. I walk around, scrubbing him with the mop. When I see him from behind, my stomach clenches painfully. I gasp and take a step back. A black, scab-like material is encrusted all over his backside. I never realized that all this time, he’d been going to the bathroom in his pants. I’m sobbing and gagging as I wash his buttocks and legs with the mop. The black, sudsy water gathers at his feet, emptying out through a drain in the floor of the cell.

I keep washing him until there’s no more soapy water left in the bucket. Eric stands in the center of the cell, no longer stinking, but horribly clear to my eyes. His cold skin gleams wetly as he stands naked in front of me. I’m trembling so hard I can hardly take the robe when the Good Prince hands it to me through the bars of the cell.

“You did good, honey,” she says.

After I throw the robe back on Eric, I walk shakily to the table and sit down heavily on the chair. Good Prince Billy shuts the jail cell and then walks over to me, her cane tapping on the floor. “Come on, now,” she says gently. “Eric will be okay. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

It’s then that I look down at myself. I’m covered with dark gore and specks of worms. That’s when the Good Prince lights the lamp inside a second jail cell that I hadn’t seen in the darkness. Inside there’s a cot with wool blankets and a thick, white cotton robe. In the corner, there’s another bucket of soapy water sitting next to a washcloth and towel.

“Now the same for you,” she says. She turns her back to me as I strip out of my clothes and begin washing, trembling, my lower lip quivering. “He’s lucky to have you,” she tells me over her shoulder. “He’s lucky he made it this far. You’ve done a good job. A real fine job.” I keep scrubbing as I listen to her walk away and struggle up the steps.

When I’m done, I sit down on the floor and begin to cry. I’ve never cried as long or as hard in all my life.

120

In the fire, I hear screams. There is a darkness at the edges of the fire, waving, undulating. Like water. I move toward the fire. I’m so thirsty. Waving flames and shadows and undulating water. I move close. I am surrounded in flames, but I feel cold and dying of thirst.

Birdie.

I reach out for the flames and watch as they wrap around my hand. My flesh is burning. But I’m so cold.

Birdie.

So cold.

121

“Birdie,” I hear. I realize I fell asleep after I cleaned myself. I’m on the floor wearing the thick cotton robe. When I look up, I see Pest gazing down at me with his expressive, dark eyes. He gives me a small smile when he sees that I’m awake. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s get breakfast.”

I groan as I rise. My stomach and throat hurts from the night before. “I don’t know if I can eat.”

Pest doesn’t say anything as he helps me to his feet. He’s brought clothes with him too, new, clean clothes. Nothing fancy, just a pair of jeans, a t-shirt that has LAS VEGAS written on it in gold letters, a long-sleeved plaid shirt, and a pair of fresh socks. I take them gratefully, and walk into the shadows to dress myself. When I walk out of the cell, Pest is standing in front of Eric’s cell, looking at him. Eric’s kneeling in the corner, leaning forward so that his face is smooshed into the corner. I go to stand next to Pest and for a while we say nothing.

“He looks different,” Pest says finally. “Smaller.” I look over at Eric, and I struggle not to cry. I’m tired of crying. “You cleaned him?”

“I did,” I say. “And no, I don’t want to talk about it.” I swallow. “I don’t ever want to talk about it.”

Pest nods, and I see a flash of sympathy cross his face before he turns away. That’s all I need. Just that little sympathy. I couldn’t take more than that.

When we go upstairs, there’s a table with four chairs around it. It’s set at the head of the room, right where once the priest would’ve given his sermon, I guess. But there’s no sermon. There’s food! The table is practically groaning with the weight of all the plates. Although I said just a second I didn’t know if I could eat, just the sight of all that food banishes all the bad memories from my head. There’s eggs and fruit and pancakes and even…

“Is that bacon!” I cry, leaping toward the table.

Pest doesn’t respond, but goes to the table himself, and lifts a piece of delicious, brown, crispy, salty bacon in his hand like a scepter. He marvels at it like a scientist who’s just found the cure for death. I can tell that he didn’t know about this table before he came for me. Someone set it up for us while Pest went down to get me. My mouth is full of bacon before I even sit. There’s a jar of sweet and smoky maple syrup, warm to the touch. I can’t help but to take a drink of it before I even get a pancake. Pest laughs at me as some of it spills down my chin, but I don’t care. I laugh too. There’s a whole pitcher of milk too, and I pour out a whole glass and drink half of it. Then there’s plates full of eggs and pancakes and crispy fried potatoes with onions. The both of us eat until it hurts and then a little more. Finally breathing with difficulty, we sit back, smiling and chuckling. I am filled with gratitude and love and if the Good Prince appeared just then, I’d’ve probably got down on my knees and kissed her feet.

But there’s so much food in our stomachs that the both of us can’t help but collapse on the floor of the church where there’s a pile of blankets. Pest lays down beside me. We’re smiling and still half-laughing when I feel a wet tongue against my cheek. An instant later, Queen curls up next to me and puts her head on my hip. I close my eyes in contentment and fall into a deep sleep almost immediately.

122

Over the next few days, Pest and I fall into a routine. First I take care of Eric. I strip down into a gown and make him drink more salt water. After he vomits up his dark balls of dead and dying worms, I feed him as best I can with a wet mixture of oatmeal, ground venison, and maple sugar. After that, I clean myself of whatever disgusting stuff I got from Eric, put on my clothes and go up to the church to meet Pest for breakfast.

For our own safety, the Good Prince tells us, we’re not allowed to leave the church, which doesn’t surprise me. We’re not very popular with the people of Cairo. They’re not exactly thrilled to welcome the Worm into their community. I don’t blame them. There are no visitors except for the Good Prince, who comes at least once a day to see how we’re getting along. Pest and I are both tired anyway, and we spend a lot of time sleeping, so I don’t think of it too much. When we’re not sleeping, we’re eating whatever they give to us. The Good Prince also gave us a deck of cards, my drawing materials, and an old board game with so many missing pieces, Pest and I have to make up our own rules to play the game.

At night, Pest and I go down into the basement to play cards and keep Eric company. We try to get Queen to come down with us, but the smell is too much for her, and she won’t come. Pest looks great in new clothes and combed hair, and his arm is freshly bandaged with bleach white gauze. He looks better every day, and I imagine that I do too. Even though we can’t leave the church and we’re basically in prison, I feel fine. I feel safe and stronger every day. For the first time in a long time, I feel safe, but I’m not stupid.

I know it can’t last.

123

We are dealing out another hand of cards when we hear the slow, careful steps of the Good Prince as she comes down to the basement. I want to get up and help her, but I get the feeling she wouldn’t like that. She has that kind of untouchable dignity about her that I don’t dare challenge. Pest must feel the same because he doesn’t move to help her either, but he does stand up when she approaches us. Not knowing exactly why, I do too.

“Sit down, sit down,” the Good Prince says, waving her cane at us. “I’m not the damn queen.” She gives out a coughing laugh as we sit down. She stands at the table and then pokes Pest gently in the leg with her cane. “Go fetch a chair upstairs,” she says gently.

“Yes, ma’am,” Pest says and the chair screeches out from under him as he jumps to his feet. I’ve never seen Pest act like that. As soon as I see him disappear up the stairs, I laugh a little. Then the Good Prince settles into his chair with a groan. She takes a deep breath, and then leans forward, both hands resting palm down on her cane. She seems to be looking at Eric, but I don’t think she can see through those cloudy eyes.

“You’ve done a good job with him,” she says to me without turning away from Eric. “It’s funny how these things work. Last time Eric was here, he came to help you.”

“Help me?” Eric and I never talked much about how we got to the Homestead, and I don’t remember too much anymore.

The Good Prince turns toward me. Her face is serious, reflective. “Last time, he was looking for you.” She takes a deep breath. “I told him he could stay, he and his friends. I tried to talk him into staying, but he left. He couldn’t give up on you.”

I don’t know what to say. I haven’t heard this story.

The Good Prince sighs and then looks toward me. “When Lucia died, he wrote to me. I was sorry to hear it.”

I look down at the table. I don’t like to think about Lucia. “Ma’am,” I say. “Do you think Eric will make it?” I need to change the subject.

“I don’t know,” she answers me. “We never knew who would make it. It took us a long time to learn how best to treat someone. A lot of people died down here. The Worm is a terrible thing. It don’t affect everyone the same. Even if they did survive, they weren’t the same. They all reacted to the Worm differently. There were some people who said the Worm was sent by God as a test of character.”

“A test of character?” I ask. The thought disturbs me.

“I don’t believe it myself,” the Good Prince says. “That’s what some said because it seemed so random, who made it, who didn’t. I guess they wanted it to have some reason, so some people said the good ones were able to fight it out, and the real bad ones, they were the ones who cracked completely. People need to have reasons for things.” She looks straight at me then, and I don’t doubt she sees me. Sees right into me. “They’ll do anything to find a reason.”

Pest comes clattering down the steps then, carrying a chair awkwardly as it bumps against the walls and the stairs. He seems apologetic of the noise as he comes over to the table, puts the chair down and then sits. I have the sudden urge to reach out and touch him, but I don’t. It seems absurd. But then I do it anyway. I reach out my arm even while I’m thinking it might be weird and I give his arm a little touch with my finger. He shoots me a smile and I feel my heart thump heavily in me. It’s funny. Ever since I learned his true age, I don’t really see him as young anymore. I mean he looks real young, but I don’t see him that way. Now when I look at Pest, he doesn’t give me that spooky feeling that he used to. I understand him. He makes sense now.

We’re quiet, waiting for the Good Prince to talk. She is looking in Eric’s direction when she takes a deep breath and turns toward me, looking sad and sympathetic and immediately, my heart falls. Bad news is coming. “I suppose you know about the war?”

I nod.

The Good Prince seems to be about to say something, but then she grows thoughtful. After another moment, she speaks. “The last time Eric was here, we were having trouble with the Minutemen. They thought they were going to bring it all together.” She makes a huffing sound. “They were the first, but they weren’t the last, not by a long shot. Now there’s The Gearheads and the Stars, each one flying their own flag, each one proclaiming themselves the rightful rulers.” She laughs, but not with bitterness, with actual humor. “Rulers of what? We’re just a bunch of bad farmers trying not to freeze or starve to death. It’s hardly what you’d call a mighty empire. Still they’re killing a bunch of folk for the right to fly their damn flags over it.”

Pest and I sit quietly.

The Good Prince turns her cloudy eyes back to Eric. “When the old world died, it took with it a lot of things, but it kept the flags.” She sighs and then continues in a whisper, as if to herself. “What’d I’d give for a world without flags.” She says this last almost like we aren’t here. There’s a pause and in it, I can see her imagining what a world like that might be, how much more simple, how much safer, how much less complicated. Then she clears her throat, dispelling the moment, and says, “That ain’t the way of things.” She seems to study us. I can feel Pest squirm under her strange gaze. “I don’t think you can stay here for long,” she continues. “I wish it weren’t that way, but it is. Folk aren’t happy to have the Worm back here, and there’s rumors that the Worm is being spread by the Gearheads. I imagine there’s people here who think you are a spy, here to infect us. I don’t think many, but it don’t take many to scare people. I still have some clout in this community. They’ll listen to me but not forever. It’ll change when the war gets here. War brings out devils and demons, all the worst that humans got. You don’t want to be here when it comes.”

I hang my head in disappointment. All I had to do was wait here. Eric was either going to get better, or… either way, it’d be over. Now I feel the fear of the outside again. It leaves me cold and empty.

“But where are we going to go?” Pest asks. It’s the question I was about to ask.

The Good Prince shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

I look over to Pest helplessly. “I don’t know what to do. Being here was the best idea I had. I don’t know what else to do.”

“You got time to think it over,” the Good Prince tells me. “I can give you a week, but if I were you, I wouldn’t push much farther than that. I just wanted to tell you how things were.” She leans over and takes my chin in one of her warm, wrinkled hands. She holds it gently. “I’m sorry, honey. I done what I can.”

“I know,” I say. “Thank you.”

But as she raises herself from the chair with a  groan and begins to walk out of the basement, I feel abandoned rather than grateful. Coming to the Good Prince was the only idea I had for Eric. I look over to him. Through the bars of the jail cell, I see him crouched down, face first in the corner. He’s wearing the robe, and for once, he doesn’t look half-bad. I feel like staying here is his best chance. I feel like if he’s going to survive this, he’s going to do it here and no where else. “I don’t know what to do,” I say. My voice sounds pitiful and small.

Pest moves his chair next to mine and puts his arm around my shoulders. I put my head on his shoulder. “We have time,” he says. “We’ll think of something.”

But looking at Eric, I doubt any amount of thinking will help him.

124

The next morning, just as we’re sitting down to breakfast, Randy comes to visit us. He sits down at our table and smiles his big-tooth smile. We eat and talk about simple things like the weather and how wonderful bacon is and how the maple syrup tastes a little different every place you go. Randy doesn’t ask about Eric, which I guess sounds weird, but it doesn’t feel weird. When so many people die around you, you get used to focusing on other things and ignoring everything else. Bad news comes easily all by itself. There’s no need to ask for it.

“Listen,” he says finally, his smile vanishing. “I have to go.”

I frown and Pest’s shoulders collapse. Randy was the only good luck we’ve had in a while. I think that if it hadn’t been for him passing through when he did, I’m not sure that Eric would’ve survived. I didn’t realize how close he came to death until I saw him naked, all bones. Now he is getting a little better every day, I can tell. His eyes are clearer, his breathing is less labored, and when he drools from his mouth, it isn’t as black as it used to be. These are good signs. If it wasn’t for Randy, Eric wouldn’t be improving. I owe him a lot.

“Why do you have to go?” I ask. “Isn’t it dangerous out there with the Worm and the war and everything?”

“It’s because of the Worm I have to go,” Randy says. He shrugs. “There’s a lot of communities out there that don’t know.” He fixes me with a  serious look. “Someone has to warn them.”

“And the war?” Pest asks.

Randy waves a hand. “It’s still too far south to worry about.” He sees that Pest isn’t convinced and he laughs and gives him a friendly swat on his leg. “I can take care of myself,” he says.

I have a horrible feeling that I won’t see him again. Going out there again seems like suicide.

“You shouldn’t go,” I tell him. “It’s not the smart thing to do.”

Randy looks at me smiling. “You are Eric’s kid, aren’t you?”

A month ago, this would have infuriated me. Now, I feel proud. I lift my head.

Randy shrugs and looks at us with his shining green eyes. “Sometimes smart ain’t the way to go,” he tells us. He looks at me pointedly. “That’s what Eric never understood. I think maybe you do.” I meet his intense green eyes with my own. I want to challenge him on Eric, but I think he’s right. Maybe there are times when thinking doesn’t do you any good and you just have to act.

“Maybe,” I answer him. An idea suddenly lights upon me like a butterfly on a flower. I say it immediately. “Can we come with you?”

Both Pest and Randy look at me in surprise. Randy’s face goes from surprise to frown. “I think it’s best if you stay right here,” he says.

“The Good Prince told us we’re going to have to move on,” I insist. “This town doesn’t want us. It’s only a matter of time before they either kick us out or…” I let the thought straggle off.

Randy’s frown deepens. “I can’t go around with a zombie,” he states solidly.

“Eric isn’t a zombie,” I say angrily.

“Well, whatever he is,” Randy says with a scornful laugh, “no one will let me in their town while I’m dragging him along. No, no,” he shakes his head forcefully. “I can’t take you with me.”

“What about just me?” Pest asks, suddenly. I look at him in surprise. Pest turns to me. “Randy can show me a safe place for us, and then I can come back for you.” I don’t like the thought of us being separated.

Randy makes a gruff sound. He looks at the door of the church like he wishes he could be outside. I get the feeling he wishes that he never told us at all, that he just left Cairo without saying a word to us. It’s strange to see Randy with a big, shadowed frown on his face. It makes his face even longer and more horse-like than usual.

“All you have to do is show me a nice secluded spot, and then I’ll be out of your hair,” Pest cajoles. “I swear I won’t be any trouble. I can take of myself.”

Randy makes a sound, and then turns back to us. His frown turns into a thin, unhappy smile. “You’re just a kid,” he says with a laugh.

Pest’s face darkens with fury. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to be his age and stuck in the body of a child. Pest leans forward over the table. “I was out on the roads by myself for a long time,” he says in a low, barely-controlled voice. “I’m a lot tougher than I look.”

Randy and Pest glower at each other for a moment, and then Randy smiles widely, his teeth shining white. He jabs a finger toward me suddenly. “I’ll take her,” he says, still looking at Pest. “She can take care of herself.” He turns toward me. “Ain’t that right, Birdie?”

The sound of my name grates against me, but he’s right. “Yeah,” I say. “I can.”

Pest is quivering with anger, his lips tight. He turns away from Randy toward me. “I can go,” he says. “I can find us a place.”

“Except I ain’t taking you,” Randy states flatly.

Pest snaps his head toward him angrily, but before he can speak, I grab his shoulder and jerk him to get his attention. Reluctantly, he looks away from Randy and toward me. “You have something else to do,” I tell him. When Pest tries to turn away, still angry, I give his shoulder another tug. “Look at me!” He does, at first reluctantly, but when we’re looking at each other, I see his blue eyes soften, and the stiffness in his face relaxes. “Listen,” I tell him. “I can do this, but I need you to do something for me.”

“What?” Pest asks.

“You have to promise me to look after Eric,” I say. “You don’t know what I’ve already been through to keep him safe.” I look at him with sharp eyes. “Eric means more to me than anything in this world. I wouldn’t think of leaving him with anyone but you. But you have to promise me. You have to promise me that you’ll look after him.”

Pest and I look at each other for a moment, in silence, eyes glistening. I can see him thinking, feel him trying to figure out another way. And I feel some communication between us, something difficult to describe, something like trust and faith and weakness all together. It’s a strange feeling that passes between us, like we’re indestructible and fragile all at once. Finally Pest nods at me, once, curtly, accepting this new deal. The next second he pulls away from the table, his chair screeching against the floor like the scream of a witch. He shoots a foreboding, hateful look at Randy, and then turns away and retreats from the room, down to the basement. We hear him slam a door shut. It echoes in the church.

Randy chuckles and when I turn back to him, his smile goes wide, and he’s all teeth and green eyes. “Well,” he says. “Guess it’s just you and me.” He stands up. “You better go say your goodbyes. We leave in an hour.”

125

I don’t know how to say goodbye to Pest. I don’t know how he became so important to me in such a little time. Or maybe it hasn’t been such a little time, really. In the end, we stand with Eric in his cell. Neither of us want to look at each other. I tell him he has to wash Eric every day, that he has to try to get him to eat, that he has to feed him salt water. I tell him to be careful that he doesn’t get scratched or accidentally bitten, even though I know it doesn’t matter. You can’t get the Worm twice.

I don’t know how to say goodbye to Eric either. He stands tall and straight these days, sometimes even on the tips of his toes, as if he’s trying to lift himself into the air. He keeps his eyes wide open, but sometimes, and I have no clue as to why, he squints his left eye real tight. It’s almost like a wink, except that it lasts a long time, sometimes as long as a minute, and then his face relaxes and his jaw drops again. He’s got his eye shut now, pinched tight, and it really seems to me that he’s saying goodbye somehow. But I have no idea. Looking in his other eye, I don’t see any sign of the Eric I knew. I see nothing but a dark pit and the wriggling of worms.

“Take care of yourself,” I tell him. I embrace him, trying not to notice his cold body against mine, or the smell of soap and ammonia. He smells like a place that has been scrubbed and disinfected and is now off limits to living things. But the smell is far, far better than before, and it makes me feel like we’re winning. I put my hand on his gray cheek. “I’ll be back so soon, you won’t even miss me.”

His face suddenly relaxes and then his jaw drops. “Unh,” he says softly.

Suddenly I get an awful feeling that I’ll never see him alive again. I freeze on the spot, stiff with fear.

“I’ll take care of him,” Pest whispers to me, putting his hand on my shoulder.

I turn toward him, fighting down tears. “Don’t let anything happen to him,” I tell him. “Promise me!”

He pulls me in for an embrace. I put my head on top of his and try not to cry. “I promise,” Pest says. “Nothing will happen to him.”

Then I pull away from him, falling back into the loneliness of my own body. I can’t bear to look at them, either of them, so I turn away. I leave the basement without looking back, but the feeling that I’ll never see them again won’t go away. It follows me all the way up the stairs, out the door, and into Randy’s cart where I’m too proud to show any tears or weakness. But as the church shrinks in the distance and the gates of Cairo shut behind us, I feel like I’m falling into a dark emptiness.

126

Randy doesn’t speak to me the whole first day. He sits on the riding board of the cart he bought in Cairo, holding Tangerine’s reins loosely in his hand. Sometimes he hums or sings or whistles. Mostly he just watches the road.

That whole first day, I feel like I’ve made a big mistake. I should never have left Eric. I keep waiting for the feeling to subside, but it doesn’t. It just grows bigger and more certain. I tell myself that I’m not leaving him, not forever, that I’m doing this for his own good, for our own good, but it doesn’t diminish the hollow feeling of guilt I am carrying. It’s like a dark eye in me, always open, always probing my mistake. I swore I wouldn’t leave him.

And I did.

127

The first night, on our journey to the north and east, Randy builds a fire. While he does that, I take Tangerine down to a stream to drink. After I tie her to a tree where she can get some fresh grass, I make my way back to the fire. Randy has planted himself in front of the fire. The way he does it is so natural that I can tell he’s done it thousand times. His long, spindly legs are crossed, and his feet are bare, being warmed by the fire. He looks like a scarecrow that’s collapsed.

He looks up at me when I come closer and smiles as I join him. Randy looks different out here, more real somehow, like visiting someone for the first time in their own house where they feel free to be truly themselves. I see there’s two pots on the fire, one with water, and one filled with a kind of stew made from old, wrinkled potatoes, shrunken carrots, and dried venison. Without wanting to, I think of how easy it would be make a thin mash of it to feed to Eric. I know he’s not there, I don’t forget that, but I think of doing it. The dark eye inside me opens.

“You don’t remember what it was like before the Worm, do you?” Randy asks me suddenly. I turn toward him and shake my head before I sit down near the fire and hug my legs to my chest. I notice for some reason that Randy’s hair is so messy, it looks like it’s trying to crawl off his head. “I envy your generation,” he says, smiling, but looking deeply in the fire. “I think it’s worse for those of us who remember what life used to be.” I think he’s waiting for me to ask him what it was like, but I don’t.

Randy sighs. “You know, there was a time when I used to drive Pop’s car to the movies. When the movie was done, we’d all meet up at the diner. We’d eat burgers and drink shakes. We thought it was all going to last forever.” He laughed. I’d never heard him be so bitter before, but then again, I’d never talked with him much before and never about the time before the Worm. Eric always told me that people could be divided into two: those that never talked about the time before the Worm, and those that couldn’t talk about anything else. Those who did all the talking and remembering, he told me, they were the ones who didn’t make it. “You ever seen a movie?” Randy asks me.

I nod. “One time,” I tell him. “I saw one on a big television, back when the generators were still working.”

“Hell of a thing, movies,” he says to me, like I said nothing. “You get in this dark room, and everyone is talking and whispering, eating popcorn, and slurping soda. Then the room goes dark except for this flickering light up in the booth. And everyone goes real quiet. Like it’s a funeral. Then suddenly, boom!” Randy holds up his hands. “Light!” He laughs, all the bitterness gone. “The movie starts and you’re in a total different world. For like two hours, you don’t notice anyone. You might as well be sitting in a cave all by yourself. Then, when it’s over, it’s everyone wakes up, like we’ve dreaming together and we wake up together. And we’ve all had the same dream. A wonderful dream.” His eyes drift away into the fire.

“Sounds nice,” I say to him, but I can tell he’s not listening. The firelight flickers in Randy’s eyes. He’s lost to his memory. Usually, I’m not bothered by silence, but this time, it prickles at me. “You think there’s a place around here we can hide Eric?” I ask him. “I don’t want to go too far.”

“What’s that?” Randy asks, looking away from the fire. I repeat the question and Randy sighs and then smiles at me, his teeth shining. “I’ve been thinking about that,” he says. “I think I know of a place, a perfect place for you all to rest.” He winks at me. “I think we’ll come across it tomorrow, but if not, the next day for sure.”

“Good,” I say.

“You in a hurry to leave my company?” he asks me and holds his hand to his heart like I’ve hurt his feelings.

“No,” I say with a little chuckle. “I just can’t stop thinking about Eric.”

“Thinking’s a bitch,” he tells me. Then he smiles. “Dreaming is worse.”

I laugh but I don’t know why.

That night, after a meal of stew, I climb onto the back of the cart. The stars are out, but I don’t remember any of the astronomy that Eric taught me. Besides the North Star and the Big Dipper, I don’t recognize anything. When I close my eyes, I see Eric standing alone in the darkness. Although I’m exhausted, it’s a long time before I fight my way through the guilt to sleep.

128

I wake up miserable. My neck hurts and I can’t seem to get warm, no matter how close I sit to the fire. I don’t remember my dreams, but I feel the wake of them. I feel like my heart’s been dragged through a patch of thorns and thickets. The guilt for leaving Eric is so strong in me that I almost tell Randy that I’ve changed my mind and have decided to go back. For a moment, I figure that Pest and I can find our own place, north of Cairo. We can just walk into the forest and hole up in some abandoned shack or even a cave. But as I eat breakfast and think of a way to tell Randy, I begin to remember the good reasons why I’m here. If there’s anyone who knows of a place where we’ll be safe, it’s Randy. He’s spent his whole life out here, I tell myself. He knows every road and every community, big and small, that scrape out a living around here. He knows how people move, he knows where they go, and, most important for us, he knows where they don’t go. All I have to do is be a little more patient.

So I don’t return to Cairo.

But my bad night’s sleep and feelings of guilt don’t make me a very good travelling companion. I don’t do much that second day except nod and scowl. When Randy tries to talk to me, I just give him a dark look that tells him to leave me alone. He doesn’t seem to mind or notice, but just smiles and turns back to the road.

I’m in this mood all through the long day. We don’t find the place he told me about the night before. “Tomorrow,” Randy tells me. “We’ll get there tomorrow.”

I spend the day watching the roads, frowning, bitter about every mile that passes beneath the cart, taking me farther away from Eric and Pest. I hardly even say thank you for the evening meal and just go back to the cart to sleep. Thankfully, on the second night, my exhaustion wins over my guilt, and sleep comes to me almost immediately.

129

I dream of summer. I’m walking. I’m thirsty.

When I look over to my right, the man I know as my true father is walking beside me, holding my hand. When I look to my left, it’s my mother, holding my other hand. She smiles down at me, and her face is more clear to me than it’s ever been before. She’s got a thin face and long, straight black hair. Her eyes are golden and her neck is long and graceful. I never knew she was so beautiful.

Everything is clear in my dream. My father’s voice, my mother’s face, the feeling of asphalt under my feet. My father tells me, “Birdie,” he says. “I know you can do it. You’re going to be just fine, you hear me?”

I look up at my mother who leans down toward me. “Sometimes when the monster swallows you,” she says sweetly. “It spits you right back up!” She laughs and taps my nose.

“You’re going to be right as rain,” my father says. “You’ll see.”

But when he looks at me, his eyes are full of worms, and a river of dark fluid runs from his mouth.

130

I wake up suddenly, violently sitting up, protecting my face from the river of filth coming from my father’s mouth. When I realize I’m awake, I sit there, breathing heavily, and, I have to admit, moaning a little. I’ve never dreamed so clearly of my mother and father. Eric told me that I used to tell different stories about them when I was younger. I said they shot each other, I said they died of the Worm, I said they vanished, I said that they were killed by gangs. Over time, Eric and Lucia realized I didn’t really remember. As time passed, Eric told me, I stopped talking about them at all. All these years I thought I had truly forgotten them. These memories shake me. It’s a long while before the dream fades away. I breathe deeply, in and out, the way that Lucia taught me so long ago when I feel overwhelmed.

I focus on the smoldering campfire and Randy’s figure curled up in a sleeping bag next to it. By the time I settle down, I realize that it’s dawn. I breathe in and out and watch the sunrise. I listen to the birdsong and the wind in the trees.

Finally I feel better and the nightmare loses its hold on me. I don’t forget it exactly, but I can feel it dispersing, drifting away, melting into the dark corners of my mind. I breathe a lot easier, and even though I woke up so violently, I feel much better than I did the day before. Almost immediately, I feel bad for my attitude with Randy. He hasn’t done anything. He didn’t deserve the scowls and grunts I pointed his way the day before. He was, after all, doing us a favor. Wanting to make up for it, I decide the best thing to do is to make him some breakfast, surprise him when he wakes up.

I start by silently scraping up some hot coals in the fire and then putting a few dry pieces of wood on them. Then, while it smokes and sputters to life, I step lightly over the cart and begin rummaging through the food. I’m looking for a treat, something sweet, something that says, hey, sorry I was such a jerk yesterday. That way I don’t actually have to say it. I don’t find much except dry venison and some vegetables that are so old and wrinkled, they look like the fingers of dead old men. I shiver and continue searching. There must be something more than that. In one of the bags in the corner of the cart, I find them, like a treasure trove, bar after bar of roasted oats, honey, and nuts, wrapped in plastic. They’ll make a perfect breakfast. To make it even better, I find in another bag, resting close up against a sack of water to keep it cold, two glass jars of fresh milk, yellowish with cream. He must’ve got that from Cairo.

My mouth waters thinking of the fresh milk, and when I hear the fire crackle behind me, I go back to check to see if there’s enough water for tea in the aluminum pot from last night. I’m happy to see that there is and it’s already bubbling at the bottom, tiny pearls of air clinging to the bottom. Nothing seems better to me right now than a hot cup of tea, made creamy with fresh milk. I go back to the cart to get the mugs, bowls, and spoons for breakfast. I sit down by the fire and break up the oatmeal bars in the bowls while I wait for the water to boil.

By the time Randy wakes up, I have everything ready. He takes his tea in his hand with a smile and then yawns. “What’s this?” he laughs. “Four star service?”

I have no idea what “four star service” is, but he looks so funny in the morning that I laugh too. His hair is exactly the same as always, exploding out in every direction like some kind of confused meteor shower.

“Someone feels a lot better today,” Randy says, sipping at his tea.

“I needed some sleep,” I tell him. This is about as close as I plan to get to admitting I was a jerk the day before or apologizing.

“So did I,” Randy agrees, stretching and groaning luxuriously. When he’s done with that, he takes the bowl I hand to him and sets it on his lap. He nods and winks at me in way of thank you, and I’m grateful he doesn’t hold my behavior yesterday against me. “Listen,” he tells me as I sit down cross-legged to sip my tea. “We ought to come across that place today. Might even get there this morning.” He coughs suddenly, turns to the side, and spits out into the forest. He wipes his mouth and looks at me with his green, sparkling eyes. “Let me tell you,” he continues, “that place is like the best for you guys. There’s a house and a basement and a little barn and everything.” He takes a drink of his tea. “Best thing is,” he says, “this place is way off the road. I guess there used to be a driveway, but you can’t even tell now. It’s a hike into the forest, all right, but no one goes there. No one knows it’s there. Except for the ole Vandal.” He winks at me.

“Sounds perfect,” I say. I feel more optimistic than I have in a long time. I feel a little embarrassed for moping all that time and thinking the worse of everything. All I have to do is find this place with Randy and then go back to get Eric and Pest. We should be settled in just a few days. Then I can take care of Eric until…well, until. “Thanks,” I say.

“No,” he says with a grin, “thank you for bringing along some granola! That’s how I know you’ll be just fine. Planning!”

I laugh as Randy picks up the bowl of cereal and jabs his spoon into it. “Well, I can’t take credit for that,” I tell him. Randy looks up at me as he puts the spoon in his mouth. “I found those granola bars in your cart. I hope you weren’t saving them for anything.”

Randy’s face goes as pale as the moon. He turns to the side and spits out the granola on the ground. Then he pours the hot tea in his mouth and spits out into the dirt frantically. He springs to his feet and begins to spit into the grass, retching and gagging desperately.

“What’s wrong?” I stand up, confused. For a moment, I think the milk must be spoiled and I’m about ready to laugh, but then I see them in my mind. They flash eagerly in my mind. The granola bars wrapped in plastic. Randy gave them to us at the Homestead. I remember how most everyone ate them and then the Worm came. Then the bar I slipped into Eric’s pocket. Squint ate that one, just hours before he turned. That granola bars. I jump to my feet and stab out an accusing finger at Randy. “You infected us with the Worm!”

Randy turns toward me. His face is no longer marked with careless laughter. His green eyes flash. He wipes his mouth of spit and vomit and strides toward me. “You had to poke around,” he tells me darkly.

I stumble back as he lunges toward me. I try to raise my arm to protect myself, but the last thing I see is Randy’s arm swinging wildly toward me and a brief, beautiful flake of the morning sky as I tumble into darkness.

131

I can’t see properly, like I’m walking through fog or smoke or that I have a thin cloth stretched tight over my eyes. I feel myself walking. One step after another. But it’s not like me. It’s me, but it’s like I’m riding in myself, like I’m watching things happen from a distance. To each side of me are people walking. I look up and it’s my father, a big, burly, hulk of a man. On the other side is my mother, beautiful, thin, delicate with long flowing hair. The world around us is on fire.

I see my father then, his round face, his deeply caring eyes. He takes my face in his hands. “You’ll be okay, Birdie. Do you understand?”

Then he begins to twitch. He closes his eyes and when he opens them, worms begin to writhe out of them, curling in the air, reaching for me. I can’t move. They come closer and closer.

“You’re going to be fine,” my father says as the worms begin to tap at my face as if searching.

Somewhere my mother is singing.

132

I wake up choking. I roll over and sit up. My hands and feet are tied so tightly that they’re numb. I take deep breaths, trying to rid myself of the nightmare.

“She’s awake,” I hear. It’s a voice I recognize and my blood chills.

“I told you she was tough,” answers Randy.

“Still it was unwise to risk striking her so forcefully.” The both of them are behind me, and I struggle to turn around to face them. When I get turned around, I almost wish I hadn’t.

Sitting next to a crackling fire is Randy, smiling at me, revealing his long donkey teeth. Next to him, sitting on a log is Doctor Bragg. He isn’t smiling. He has a long, jagged red scar on his forehead where he was knocked unconscious with the glass jar. It’s angry and red, not entirely healed. His dark, empty eyes are looking at me, but I can’t read that emptiness. Worst even than that is what they have tied up near them. It’s Squint, now entirely claimed by the Worm. His eyes are writhing white clumps of worms. His jaw is crudely sewn shut with barbed wire. The wire enters beneath his chin, through his jaw, and emerges just beneath his nose before the two ends are twisted around each other. Dark ooze drips from this wreckage down his shirt. The two nostril holes where his nose used to be have little metal cones shoved into them. I look away as quick as I can.

“Oh yeah,” Randy laughs. “He’s gruesome, ain’t he?” He laughs again.

“Crude,” Doctor Bragg says unhappily.

“I ain’t having him bite me,” Randy snaps at him. “I told you that.”

“And I informed you,” explains Doctor Bragg with exaggerated patience, “that he is harmless.” He sighs. “You’ve reduced his useful lifespan by half.”

“You’ll have plenty to work with,” Randy says, smiling toward me. “Trust me.”

“You don’t seem to understand,” the Doctor continues. “She is a different specimen. I haven’t had nearly enough subjects of African heritage. I have to infect her differently. She won’t be of any use to me afterwards. Not like him.”

“There’ll be others,” Randy says, still smiling at me. “Lots of others.”

Doctor Bragg looks at me with his long face. For a moment, I see a shock of sadness, like a kind of horror cross his face. But then it’s gone, leaving nothingness in its wake. “No doubt.”

Looking at Randy, a sudden thought fills me, and although I didn’t want to say a thing, I blurt out, “Did you poison Cairo too?”

Randy looks over to me, his green eyes shining in the firelight. “You were supposed to be there to see the whole thing. By this time,” he tells me, “that town is burning its dead.”

“They’re useless to me burned,” says the Doctor unhappily.

I ignore him, seething with anger, and concentrate on Randy. “But why?” the sound comes to me like a hurt cry. I want to sound tougher than that. “You were our friend!”

Randy scoffs. “Yeah, the Vandal is everyone’s friend when he’s got something. When he has something they want. But when he doesn’t, oh, that’s a different story then.” He turns toward the fire. “There ain’t friends anymore.”

“I don’t understand,” I whimper, tears coming to my eyes. “I don’t understand why you’d do this.” Tears fall from my eyes, even though it’s the last thing I want to show the traitor.

“You don’t have to understand,” Randy tells me. “It’s just how it is. Like the rest of this world.”

Suddenly the Doctor lurches toward me with a needle in his hands.

“NO!” I shout, trying to move away from him.

“I’m not listening to this all night,” the Doctor says, jabbing a needle in my leg.

Almost immediately, I feel my muscles turn to water.

Darkness begins to leak into my vision and I feel myself fall to the side.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I hear Randy say as if from very far away.

“I did,” answers the Doctor. “Yes, I did. You would tell her everything.”

Their speech melts into night and even though I feel them speaking, like a vibration in my bones, I don’t understand a word. I am aware of nothing but the burning light of the moon and a feeling somehow of barbed wire.

133

A blink later, it seems, I wake up alone in a familiar room, in a familiar metal chair. I’m back in the warehouse I escaped only days before. It seems for a moment that I never left, that Eric is in his cell, and that I never made it to Cairo at all. All that is different is that my head pulses with pain like it’s being struck by a shovel. But the feeling of familiarity ebbs away, and my fear tells me this is new and it’s going to be worse. I was lucky before. This time, there’s no hope of escape.

In front of me, in the place of the aluminum surgical table, Squint is standing, naked, his eyes dripping white worms that fall and writhe at his feet. When I try to move, pain shoots up from my wrists and ankles, as if they are burning. Looking down, I see that my wrists are bloody from the ropes that bind me. I hear the generator running and the hum of the bright lights above me. Otherwise there is only my own scared, uneven breathing, and the booming pain in my head.

I try to do what Eric told me all those times to do. Think, he told me. But any coherent thought is ripped to shreds by the painful boom boom booming in my skull. I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping that the darkness will give me some relief, but instead it makes me feel sick. I open my eyes but I feel nauseated and I have to fight to keep from vomiting. I don’t know how long this struggle continues. The pain in my head is so intense, it distorts time. Has it been an hour? A moment? I don’t know, can’t understand anything. Finally I feel the wave of nausea pass over me and recede.

“Oh thank you,” I hear myself breathe. It seems so pathetic that I have to repeat it. “Oh thank you.” I don’t know who I’m thanking. I’m just so relieved. The headache and the nausea together were unbearable, but with the dizziness gone, it seems like something I can endure. “Thank you,” I repeat a third time. Suddenly I remember Lucia in the cabin. I remember how we trembled, how we shivered, how fear gripped us like the winter’s cold around us. So long ago, that first winter. I never think of it. Never. Hardly ever think of her. She holds me and tells me to breathe. “Breathe deeply,” she tells me. I feel her hand in my hair. I feel her hold me close. Lucia.

I breathe deeply. In. Out.

I feel the headache recede. Not entirely. Only just a little relief. And just like that, I can’t remember Lucia anymore. She’s just gone, but she has left me this. I breathe deeply. In. Out.

Think, Birdie.

“Yes, the headache is terrible,” I hear. I lift my head. Doctor Bragg is in front of me. He looks at me with fake sympathy. Or is it real? His dark eyes give me no comfort. There is something in them that I don’t understand: pity, self-hatred, defiance, or a kind of terrible determination to continue like a fatally wounded animal that nonetheless tries to flee. “It’s the quality of the anesthesia, I’m afraid,” he continues. “I have to make do with what is left behind, you see. We all have to make do with what is left to us.” His long face doesn’t change as he says this, although there is something shimmering in his eyes, but I can’t understand it. My heart races inside my chest.

“Please,” I beg. “Please don’t do this.” I fight to keep calm. I have a feeling that if I become too emotional, he’ll just restrain me tighter. I have to be calm. I have to reason with him. “Please.” But I know as I say it that he won’t stop. Whatever he wants to do, he is going to do. There is no argument possible to stop him.

“Let’s not do that, shall we?” This time Doctor Bragg attempts a smile, but it’s much, much worse than nothing. The widening of his lips is purely mechanical like making a corpse smile. “This will be over quickly,” he says, the smile dropping away from him like discarded garbage.

“Please.” I whisper it, hoping that a whisper will make it through to him. But he ignores me.

There is a rolling sound, and I see that Doctor Bragg is in a rolling chair. He slides over next to Squint. Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a scalpel and pulls away a protective plastic cover. The blade glints terribly in the light.

“Please,” I repeat, hardly able to get the word out. I don’t want to beg. I’ve got nothing else. Nothing. I used to think that I was beyond that, that I could withstand anything, that I would rather die with dignity than beg and whimper and cry, but I was wrong. I was so wrong. “Please don’t do this.” I’m trembling. Tears roll down my face. My heart is a storm inside me that I can hardly contain.

Doctor Bragg ignores me. He reaches up and grabs a clump of Squint’s hair, pulling his head down.

“Mmmmm,” Squint says through his barbed wire, cage of a mouth.

In one movement, Doctor Bragg inserts his scalpel into one side of Squint’s eye, slices around with a twist of his wrist, and then, with a gloved hand, plucks his eye from his head. It all happens so quickly that I don’t even have time to turn away or close my eyes, although I would give anything not to have seen it.

“Mmmmm,” Squint says.

Doctor Bragg lets the eye drop on a metal plate that I just now notice is sitting on his lap. He lets go of Squint’s hair and the infected man just straightens up as if nothing has happened. Thick, dark liquid oozes from the hole where his eye had been.

“It’s puzzling,” says Doctor Bragg, looking back at me. “The eye actually grows back. This is the second specimen I’ve removed from him.” He holds the metal plate forward as if for me to inspect. As if I am curious about it. The eye sits on a pile of long, thin worms, all contorting and twisting as if they were being impaled on a hook. “Even more curious,” the Doctor continues, “he moves around with the same accuracy as before. I think the worms sense their surroundings. Certainly, as you can see, there is no ocular input whatsoever. Curious.” Doctor Bragg looks up at Squint and blinks slowly as he considers this curiosity. Then he turns back to me and, after a filthy attempt at a smile, rolls his chair back to me. I’m too scared now to say anything. My lip trembles.

Doctor Bragg tries to smile again. The fleshy attempt hits his face like roadkill. Then it falls as quickly as it appeared. “I know that to you,” he says, his eyes dark and bottomless, “this must seem cruel. Unfair.” He clears his throat. “And you’re not wrong.” He shakes his head. “No, you're entirely right. Strictly speaking, this is a hideous crime, what I’m about to do to you. Hideous. Barbaric. I won’t argue with you.”

“You don’t have to do this,” I breathe, my whole face trembling.

The Doctor shrugs slowly. He looks at me almost apologetically. “Well, there’s the rub,” he says. “I do have to do this. This is the only way to know. This is the only way to protect us all. I have to know.” He takes a deep breath. “I’m very sorry it has to be you, and I know there’s no forgiving me. I don’t expect that.”

He cocks his head slightly and then shrugs, as if the decision was beyond him. Then he attempts another nauseating smile and it’s all I can do not to spit in his face. “You see, Birdie,” he says, “I’ve been able to learn so much. I’ve learned that what we think of as the Worm is actually something like a super organism, like a bee’s hive or an ant’s nest. There isn’t just one kind of worm. I’ve been able to identify six distinct types of worms. Six.” Sweat is gathering on his upper lip as if in excitement. “Each type of worm has its proper role. Ones in the stomach seem to be focused on reproduction. Ones that latch onto the brain stem. Ones that seem to work their way through the blood stream, invisible to the naked eye, constantly nourishing the body, keeping the host in a kind of suspended animation, a kind of living death. Ones that plant themselves into the heart, ones that seem connected to the ear, and another type that seems to live in the pancreas and liver. I’ve learned so much about them.” He holds up the plate with the ball of worms. “But the ones that inhabit the optic nerve, these I have not studied thoroughly.” He looks at them with an open, acidic hatred. Not disgust, but hatred. “This last type remains mysterious to me, especially when it comes to someone of your unique ancestry.” He looks at them as if they were an affront to him.

After a moment he turns back to me. “You can help me, and, in so doing,” he explains, “help everyone. Your whole species.” He gives a twitching, brutal little smile. “If you think of it, your sacrifice is kind of an honor.” I want to say something back to him, something biting, something that can communicate the terror coursing through me, but my mind is blank from terror.

Suddenly I feel a sudden prick. I look down and see a needle in my thigh. I realize he’s been talking only to distract me. I feel heavy suddenly, heavy and distant. The skin on my face sags, begins to feel like mud.

“It’s easier if you don’t struggle,” he explains. He looks at his watch and waits patiently as the numb feeling spreads through my body. Only my fear and horror remain undulled.

After a minute, Doctor Bragg suddenly stands up and takes my jaw in his hand. I hardly feel it as he forces my mouth open. My heart is screaming, but I can’t move. I can’t make a sound. Helplessly I watch as he lifts the sprawling, wriggling mass of worms to my mouth. I feel it fall onto my tongue and then he shuts my mouth with a clamping sound and plugs my nose. My body is beyond my ability to control, and I feel myself swallow, feel the cold, writhing eyeball slip down my throat, twisting and contorting like a living octopus. Then it passes and it is done. Doctor Bragg looks down at me.

“There now,” he says. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

134

This is it. There’s no use in thinking or breathing, dreaming or remembering. I sit in the cage I only escaped days ago. I imagine the worms inside me multiplying, sending out new worms to invade my brain, latch themselves into the most central part of me. I will be the Doctor’s next source of worms, his next research subject. There will be no one to care for me, no one to give me that slim chance for survival that began all this. I am slowly dying. It should take no more than twenty four hours to know what it feels like to be Eric. I will know what he has known these weeks. I will understand if he has vanished or if he still exists somewhere inside him. I will be gone or I will be there to witness what atrocities the Doctor will do to me. I have only a day before the fever begins, before it starts taking me. If I survive the fever, I will be shuffling around the cell in only a day or so, if it happens as quickly as it happened to Squint. Only a day.

There is a strange relief in knowing that it will be over, all this struggle, all this worry and anxiety, this pain and suffering. I think of Eric and Pest back in Cairo, and I think that Pest will protect him. Perhaps they escaped the outbreak that Randy caused. If they survive and Eric somehow makes it through all this, it will have been worth it. I think of the people left back at the Homestead. I wonder if they have sowed the fields. I wonder if Crystal is cooking pancakes on Sunday mornings as usual. And I think, as I haven’t had a chance to do, of our little graveyard strewn with the ashes of everyone I called friend, everyone I thought of as family. The flowers will bloom beautifully there, I know it. I wish I could be there, with them. But that is too tender, too hurtful. My mind recoils from it.

Time slows as if relishing my fear. In my cage, there is only shadows within shadows. It’s not completely dark because of windows high up in the warehouse, but the windows are filthy and they only allow a dim, oily light to pass. I am left with my mind and the horrible knowledge of my own death. My mind casts dreariness around me until my heart is so heavy, I feel like I could fall through the earth.

135

The drug is still heavy in me and sleep sometimes comes. I dream of fire. I wade in ashes, and my body is heavy and almost impossible to move. The ashes plug my nose, my mouth, and my breathing is distant. I can hardly see through the ashes that gather in my eyes. It’s like looking through mud. I sense the fire around me. I sense the flickering heat. I hear the sound of water. I smell it. I try to get to it, to find it, but there’s always something there. Someone. My parents, my real parents are always there, guiding me.

“You can do it, Birdie,” my father says.

My mother doesn’t talk. She only sings. I can feel her hair on my cheek when she holds me.

I hear Eric’s voice like thunder: Think, Birdie. THINK!

136

When I wake up, I think that I hear Eric’s voice, but it’s not Eric. It’s Randy.

“Birdie!” he calls to me from outside the bars. “Birdie!”

I open my eyes and gaze at him. I hate him, but my hatred feels distant. Soon, nothing will matter.

“Are you still there?” Randy asks.

“I’m here,” I say. I want to stand up, to be defiant. But I don’t feel defiant. I’m dying.

“Hasn’t got you yet, huh?” he asks. He smiles at me with his disgusting teeth. “You always were tough.”

I don’t say anything to that.

Randy sits down awkwardly in front of the cage, folding his long legs beneath him. He studies me in silence for a moment. “I don’t expect you to understand,” he says. “You know, it’s nothing personal. I always kind of liked you. Eric’s little black daughter.” He laughs. “God, Eric was a strange dude.”

I just glare at him.

Randy sniffs loudly and then leans his odd face toward the bars. “You don’t know what it’s like,” he tells me. His eyes roll up in his head, as if pointing to the sky. “Living out there. You grew up at the Homestead. I was outside.” He smiles again, through the bars. “You have no idea of the things I’ve had to, the things I’ve had to see.” The smile is steady on his face, and I realize that what I took for friendliness all those years was actually pure insanity. “Some live inside, some live outside.” His smile collapses. “I want to be inside.”

“You could’ve stayed with us,” I tell him acidly. “Everyone liked you, we would’ve been happy if you stayed.”

Randy sits back and laughs. “And do what? Live in one of your dark houses that you spend half your life repairing? Work in the fields everyday? Nearly starve every winter?” He makes a huffing sound. “No thank you.” Randy gets closer to the cage. “You know what they have in the south? Do you know what they’re building?” His eyes flash and he pushes his face close to the bars. “They have it all down there, electricity, fuel, houses with running water. Just not for everyone. Just for the important ones. I don’t want to just survive like an animal. I don’t want to scrape out a living like a fucking dog. I want it like it used to be. I want carpets and televisions and music. I want to really live.” His smile grows thin on his face. “You don’t remember what it was like before. You don’t remember how good it was, how easy, how comfortable. You just remember this.” Randy holds out his arms. “Just this world with its death and suffering and starving. This ugly, horrible existence. We used to live in this world like kings and queens, and now we scurry around it like rats.” He laughs. “I don’t want to live in your rat world. I want to be a king.”

“So you’re a king just because you infect people?” I ask bitterly.

“No,” he scoffs. “I thought you were smarter than that. Eric always used to think you were a genius.” Each time Eric’s name comes out of his mouth, I want to reach out between the bars and choke the life from his scraggly, chicken neck. But I could never get to him fast enough. He would scrabble away like a crab, laughing. Randy crosses his arms as he looks at me. “You have to think bigger than that,” he says. He waits for me to say something, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to give him the satisfaction. When he realizes I don’t plan on saying anything, Randy continues. “War brings opportunity to the ones smart enough not to fight in it.” I can see he’s just twitching to let me know what a genius he is, but I would rather die right now than give that to him, so I stay silent. “All I have to do is make one side think the other is using the Worm as a weapon,” he says. “Then I just have to convince them that me and the good Doctor Bragg have a solution to their problem. Then I’m the important one. Then I get to really live. I get the house with the carpet and the television and the oil furnace.”

“You did all this for a nice house?” My lips curl in disgust.

He laughs. “You don’t know,” he says finally. “You really don’t understand what it was like back then, before all of this.” He looks around him in disgust. “I refuse to live like an animal. I want to be human again.” His smile strikes me like a sledgehammer. I have things to say to him, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to talk to him or listen to him or see his face ever again. It’s one of the only good things I feel about dying, even in the terrible way I’m going to die. At least I want have to see or listen to Randy ever again.

I don’t say anything, but Randy seems to read the hatred I have for him on my face. His smile hardly changes though. Only in his eyes do I see a change, a kind of resignation, an ending. He’s coming to his point. “Well,” he says with a sense of finality. “I do feel bad for you, though, I really do. So I wanted to ask if I could do anything for you. Like a last request kind of thing.”

At first I want to spit in his face. I want to hurl insults at him. I want to say something so horrible, so cruel, so incisive, that it will stay with him until the day he dies. I will be like a ghost, haunting his life of luxury and comfort. But just as I begin to do that, my mind fills with flowers and a desire that feels more like a necessity. “You can do something for me,” I say before I even realize I’m talking. “When I’m dead, can you take my ashes back to the Homestead? Back to the garden?” My voice is small and timid as a mouse. It hurts to ask something of him, but I can’t stop myself. I want to go home.

Randy watches me for a second. He sniffs. “I was thinking of something more like a last meal or a note to give to someone.” I don’t say anything, can’t even look at him. “Thing is,” he continues, “by the time the Doctor is done with you, I’m not sure how much of you will be left.” I don’t respond. I don’t look up. I’ve said as much as I’m going to say to this pig. I hear him get up and then stand quietly for a second. “Yeah, all right,” he says finally. “I’ll see what I can do.” I think he’s waiting for a thank you. I feel him standing looking at me, but I won’t look up. It was hard enough asking the filthy murderer for something, let alone thanking him for it.

Wordlessly and silently, Randy leaves me alone finally. I hear the steel door shut and the echo reverberate through the warehouse. I make sure he’s gone a long time before I start to cry as quietly as I can, with my head buried deep in my arms.

137

Drained by tears, sleep begins to take me. Knowing that I might never awake, I struggle against on the edge of sleep, thinking desperately of Eric, of Pest, of all the people at the Homestead I will never see again. I think of the feeling of a warm breeze against my skin, the taste of sweet cider on a brisk autumn night, the softness of a bed, the fields glimmering with fireflies in the summer, the sound of the ckickadees in the forest. My heart is lacerated by the knowledge that I will never know it again. I will never awake. I fight to stay conscious, to meet my end fully aware, to feel the fever of the Worm take me, to even enjoy these, the last sensations that I will ever know. It is all precious, even the pain. But the last of the drug and the exhaustion and despair combine to push me into what might be my last night of dreaming, my last night of existing in this world. The soft obscurity of dreaming accepts me into the last hours of my life.

138

I’m walking down a road. A dark road. Fires flicker like candles at the tips of the pine trees. The forest is all in flames, but it somehow burns gently, even peacefully. I am overcome with thirst and the thought of water consumes me. Beside me, as usual, my father and mother walk, guiding me forward. We walk through a tunnel of smoke, flame, and fire, my mother humming, my father’s quiet presence comforting beside me.

At the end of the tunnel, Eric is waiting for me. His eyes are full of worms, all undulating toward me, but he stands the way he used to stand, strong and steady, aware and himself. When we get to him, he turns away and waves us to follow him. All four of us walk through the smoke and fire. Then we stop. All of them turn to me, their eyes dripping white worms that drop to their feet where they turn to wisps of smoke. They stare at me as if waiting.

“Think, Birdie,” Eric says, his eyes a wriggling mass of white.

“You can do it, honey,” my father tells me in his low voice.

I look down at my feet. Worms fall to the ground. I watch as they swirl into smoke until I am standing knee deep in a fog of smoke.

139

When I wake up, I blink for a moment in disbelief. I rub my eyes and check my hands. No blood. I feel my head. No fever. I blink, searching myself for signs of weakness, dizziness, nausea. Nothing! It’s been enough time. I swallowed a ball of worms the size of a peach! I should be taken by the Worm by now. I should be infected! Above me the skylight is bright with morning. My heart stops and then races ahead. I’m still alive! I’m still me! I leap to my feet and almost cry out in joy. Instead I make a little squeal of delight and jump in place.

The elation doesn’t last long. Maybe the fever will start a little later. Maybe I’ll be dead in just another few hours. I check my forehead again. Nothing. I feel fine. In truth, I feel great—alive , energetic, healthy. But I should be…gone. I should be wherever it is that Eric has vanished, deep within himself, if he’s there at all.

Think, Birdie.

I remember resuscitating Eric when he dived into the river, the black liquid he vomited into my mouth. How wasn’t I infected by that? How wasn’t I infected when Eric coughed up on me? After all the contact I’ve had with Eric, after all the times I’ve wiped him clean, shouldn’t some little drop have infected me? Some people are infected by the smallest scratch, the lightest cut by a ragged, infected fingernail. How have I avoided it all this time? How am I not infected?

In my dreams, my mother is always holding me, her eyes bleeding. My father’s eyes are bleeding. But I made it, I was safe. I think of all my dreams, how thirsty I always am, how I see through fog and smoke, as if through a layer of mud.

Or a layer of worms, I think suddenly.

I’m not infected because I’ve already had the Worm! The revelation comes to me with a feeling like my head has grown seven times larger. I feel dizzy and sit down on my cage floor. That’s what my parents were doing! They were taking care of me because I was sick with the Worm! My father was telling me I could make it because I was infected! I had always thought he was telling me I could make it across the country, but he was encouraging me to beat the infection! I’ve already been infected! I can’t be infected again!

The hope that I feel is almost too much for me. I lean against the wall, weak with relief. Any other person in my place would have been infected a dozen times taking care of Eric. Any other person with a bellyful of eye worms would have had a fever long ago. I feel like I’ve been pulled from the edge of a pit. It’s like a whole new life, like being born again.

I look around at my cage with new eyes. I don’t see it as my coffin.

Now I’m looking for a way to escape. I’m alive.

I’m thinking.

140

The greatest advantage you can have in this world is when you’re the only one who knows. And I’m the only one here who knows that I can’t be infected. To Randy, to Doctor Bragg, I will succumb to the Worm at any moment. They have no idea that I’m healthy as a horse. If I’m going to escape, I have to use that to my advantage.

Watching the steel door nervously, anyone could come in at any moment, I sit down on the cement floor and search my body. I feel the metal on the zipper of my jeans, and smile with excitement. I begin to twist and pull at the zipper until the metal tab finally comes free. I lift it up and examine it. The edges where it broke free are sharp and serrated, just as I hoped. I roll up my pant leg, take the gleaming metal tab of the zipper, and, without thinking too much, drag it across my leg, grimacing at the pain. It’s not a very deep scratch, but the blood comes to the surface. I dab my fingers in it and then rub my eyes with the blood, blinking and tearing up as best I can. I keep repeating this until I feel like my eyes are a bloody wreck, like I’ve been crying tears of blood. Then I roll down my pant legs, slip the zipper tab into my pocket and lie down.

Then, thinking of Eric, I get up, stand with one shoulder lower than the other, let my jaw hang open.

“Agh,” I groan. I clear my throat and try again. “Ergh,” I say.

I hear the clanking of the door being opened and I let the focus of my eyes go wide.

Get ready, I tell myself. Time for the show of my life.

The door opens.

141

“Yeah, you’re right, she’s not dead,” says Randy over his shoulder as he walks through the door. He strides in and then stands behind the bars, looking at me, smiling. “Don’t worry, you’re still cute,” he tells me in a low voice, winking at me. I struggle to contain a shiver a revulsion at his words. It’s hard, but I do it. I remain motionless.

Doctor Bragg walks in behind him and examines me coldly. “She’s turned very cleanly,” he says. He thinks for a moment, his gaze on me like a spotlight. “There’s hardly any sign of the sickness.” His eyes study me from head to foot. “Excellent,” he says at last. “She will endure many weeks.”

Randy laughs. “You’re a gruesome son of a bitch, you know that?”

Doctor Bragg looks at Randy sourly. “Not all of us have the luxury of inaction.”

“None of us have any luxury at all,” Randy responds to him with equal bitterness.

The Doctor looks at Randy for a moment longer, as if carefully measuring the appropriate response. Apparently deciding it best to drop the entire subject, the Doctor sighs and turns back toward me. “I’ll need a sample,” he says, “several of them.”

“I ain’t going near her,” Randy says, shooting a horrified glance my way. “Not until you wire her jaw shut.”

“Yes, I'm well aware of your phobia,” the Doctor responds drily.

Randy looks like he’s going to respond angrily, but instead he just shrugs and shows his horse teeth in some strange parody of a smile.

When the Doctor takes out his keys to open the cell door, Randy takes a step back, his smile fading. The Doctor comes in and stands in front of me with the same appraising eyes as always, empty, dark, inscrutable. He gives me one of his empty smiles. “Let me see here,” he says, and then puts his hand on my head. It’s all I can do not to jerk away in horror, but, remembering Eric, I just let him do what he wants. He pushes my head back.

“Ergh,” I say.

Randy laughs. “That’s more than she usually says alive.”

The Doctor holds my jaw and gently presses it open. I can feel him staring into my mouth. When he releases my jaw, he looks deep into my eyes. It’s almost impossible to keep my eyes from focusing and moving, but somehow I keep them under control. Finally the Doctor steps back and says, “She’s turned very gently.”

I let my jaw fall open, and then hunch forward a little, putting my left shoulder higher as I’ve seen Eric do a hundred times.

“Listen,” Randy says, the impatience obvious in his voice. “We have to get this going. We have to meet Raymond by tomorrow. Get your samples so we can get on the road.”

Doctor Bragg turns toward Randy. I don’t see his face, but I can hear his disapproval. “You should call him President Barber,” he says.

“Don’t worry,” Randy scoffs. “I know what to call him.”

Taking me by the arm, Doctor Bragg leads me out of the room. “I would still prefer we stay out of this war,” he says. “It seems to me we can get plenty of subjects without involving these people.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Randy hisses. “How long do you think we can go around infecting people without them catching on? Huh?” As they talk, they’re leading me out of the room. I follow in the awkward steps of the infected.

“As I’ve said before,” Doctor Bragg argues, “I believe infecting whole populations is wasteful. We could very well do this one by one. Involving these armies seems dangerous.”

I can tell by their tones that they’ve had this argument several times before. “Look,” Randy says in an exasperated tone. “You want to find out how to kill the Worm, don’t you?”

“Yes.” The clipped word has venom in it.

“Well,” Randy says, “this will give you all the freedom you want, trust me. You need to experiment on people, you’re going to need an army. Like I’ve told you a thousand times. You can’t hide it forever. This war was lucky for us. It gives us freedom to work.”

They lead me through the door and into the hallway that leads to the operating room, research space, whatever it is. Careful to keep my jaw hanging open, I think furiously of a way to escape. I have to be patient, wait for the perfect time. I’ll only have this one chance. One opportunity. If Doctor Bragg finds out that I’ve already had the Worm and survived, I don’t even want to contemplate what he’ll do to me. But I have to be patient. I have to wait.

Randy walks ahead of us and opens the door, holding it for us as we pass. When I move by him, he grimaces and turns away. I’d like nothing more than to snap at him, even bite him, give him the scare of his life, but that would give it all away. After we pass, I hear Randy behind us shut the door. “You really need me for this?” he asks.

Doctor Bragg positions me in front of the chair and lets me go. I’m standing where Squint stood yesterday. I can see the door to the outside where Eric and I escaped last time. Everything in me wants to sprint for the door, throw it open, and run for the river, but I beat the feeling down. I could easily get caught. I only have this one chance or I’m dead. With Doctor Bragg, I’m way worse than dead, I’m a living experiment. It takes all my determination to keep from trembling.

“No, I don’t need you,” the Doctor answers, looking back to Randy, who is standing far from me. “I want you to tell me what is happening, why we are meeting President Barber, why we are moving from here.” The Doctor stands up and faces Randy, his face a blank. “You never tell me what is happening until it has already happened.”

Randy crosses his arms, looking at him. Then he smiles his toothy smile. “It works out, doesn’t it?” He throws his hand toward me like I was a chair or a table, just some object he was able to find.

“That is not the point,” Doctor Bragg says flatly.

Randy laughs. “It kind of is the point though,” he says. “Look, you’re good at this.” Randy points at me. “And I’m good at everything else. You lost her, I found her. I wanted her to die with the rest at Cairo, but this is even better, isn’t it? You do your thing, I do my thing. It works out for us, let’s not change things now.”

“It disturbs me that you are so reluctant to share your plans.”

Randy studies him and then shifts from one foot to the other. Doctor Bragg doesn’t move. He just stands there, eyes fixed on Randy, his back straight, his long face emotionless and disturbingly steady. As they focus on each other, I study what I can of the room without moving my eyes. On the chair next to me, where I was strapped down the day before, I see an aluminum tray. On it glimmers a scalpel and several glass tubes, some of which are filled with some dark liquid. I can almost feel the scalpel in my hand.

“Yeah, all right,” Randy says to the Doctor suddenly. “I’ve convinced the Stars that the Gearheads have been spreading the Worm. They’ll give you all the people you need to find the cure for the Worm that they think the Gearheads are spreading. You’ll have all you need. I’ll make sure of that.”

Doctor Bragg is silent, thinking. After a moment, he says, “Good. Thank you.”

As the two eye each other, I study the scalpel. It’s only a couple feet from me. I could have it in a flash, and, before the two were even aware I wasn’t infected, I could slash the scalpel down Randy’s face and then slice out at Doctor Bragg. Then I could run for the door. But I doubt I could move fast enough. All it would take was one of them to be a little quicker, to grab me, force the scalpel from my hand, and I would be caught. By the end of the day, Doctor Bragg would have me sliced open like a fish on his surgical table. I have to be patient. I have to wait for my time.

Doctor Bragg comes back to me, turning away from Randy. He turns my head to one side. His hands are strangely warm on my neck, hot and dry as a desert. His face is so close to mine, I can smell warm eggs on his breath. Over the Doctor’s shoulder, as he examines me, Randy watches us. His face is filled with disgust and scorn. Then the Doctor pushes my head back. With a movement of his hand, his gently shuts my jaw. Then, urging me forward with a slight push, he makes me stand next to the chair. He tilts my head to the side, and I can feel him looking into my ear. I can’t see Randy anymore, but I feel him glaring at us. I hear the sound of the scalpel being taken from the aluminum tray, and a shudder of horror moves up my body before I can stop it.

“Ergh,” I say, to hide my terror. The Doctor puts a hand on my shoulder almost tenderly, as if to comfort me.

“No worms yet,” he says and makes a snapping sound with his tongue. Doctor Bragg turns to Randy. “It means I’ve caught it before the worms have had a chance to colonize the auditory nerve.”

“So?” Randy says. He sounds like a petulant teenager who refuses to admit that knowledge is useful.

“So if I remove the ear and the auditory nerve,” the Doctor answers, “I’ll be able to observe how the organism reacts.”

“You’re going to cut out her ear?” asks Randy in a disgusted voice.

“Just one of them,” he answers coldly. I'm glad they’re not looking at me because I’m trembling. I fight to control myself. I have to be patient, I have to wait my time.

The Doctor turns to me, scalpel glistening in his hand.

“This is too much for me,” says Randy with a laugh. He waves his hands toward us and then walks to the door leading outside. “You have fun with that.” He shuts the door behind him, and leaves the two of us alone.

I steel my resolve. My moment is here.

142

Time is a strange thing. Sometimes there’s more of it than you could ever need. It’s all around you, flowing in abundance, a flood, and you drown in a kind of eternity. Then suddenly time is a knife, sharp, detailed, and profound, and there is not nearly enough of it. You exist in a drought, moving as if through sand, hoping that what you do in that exact moment is the right thing because there isn’t time for a second try. It’s simple, brutal, unforgiving. Either it is done right or it is not. A choice. An action. A single movement. There’s no going back. There’s no way to try again. Time is a killer because all of the things that could’ve happened, never will. All those possibilities are gone and they’re not coming back.

I feel time like that now. It’s sharp and unforgiving. I have to wait, just moments as Doctor Bragg prepares his scalpel to cut into my ear. I have to wait. In my mind, I see Randy walking away from the door. I must give him time to get farther away, time enough so that he might not see me as I burst out the door. He’s walking so slow and the Doctor’s scalpel is moving toward me. I feel his hand on my shoulder. I feel him behind me, lifting himself on his tiptoes. In my mind’s eye, I see that Randy is still in sight. He will see me if I move. I have to wait. I have to wait.

My heart is speeding forward like a shooting star. I can feel the Doctor steady himself for the cut.

In a motion, I release all my energy. I jab my elbow back into the Doctor as hard as I can, and at the same time, I whirl around. I see the Doctor’s face in a painful grimace as both my hands grab at the wrist whose hand holds the glinting scalpel. I jerk the wrist forward, hoping to get him to release the scalpel, but the Doctor has recovered a little and resists the pull. Desperately I kick out, but the Doctor twists away and my feet only hits his thigh. We stumble forward, struggling with the scalpel. I twist my body and his wrist, and the scalpel loosens in his hand. As the Doctor cries out in pain, I jerk his arms forward. The scalpel falls from his hands and clatters on the floor, but now the Doctor surges forward and grasps me in a tight hug, lifting me off the ground.

“You’re immune!” he cries, his voice filled with equal surprise and happiness.

I cry out and stamp down as hard as I can on his foot. I feel bones crunch and Doctor Bragg releases me with a screech of pain. I stumble out of his reach into the chair before I feel his hands at my shoulders. I shake him free, grasping out at the tray. I turn around, holding one of the test tubes in my hand as the Doctor moves toward me, his arms wide. In desperation, I stab at his face with the test tube. It shatters and slices his face under his eye, splattering his face with dark ooze. The Doctor stumbles back, eyes wide, holding his face. He looks at his hands, covered in blood and black ooze. Then his face falls in disappointment and I know he’s been infected. He’ll be dead in a day or two. I see that he knows it too, but there’s no fear on his face, no sadness, just disappointment.

The Doctor shows me his hands. “Look what you’ve done,” he tells me. “Who will kill the Worm now? Who?” All the fight has leaked out of him.

I turn away and run for the door. I throw it open and bolt outside, and, without looking around, I run for the river. I haven’t run far when I hear the door slam open behind me.

“Come back!” The Doctor cries after me. “We need you!”

But I don’t listen. When I reach the edge of the bank over the river, I launch myself into the air over the river, my heart beating free and alive inside me as I twist and fall through the air.

143

When I climb out of the river, coughing up water, I pause for a moment to listen. Although the current is not nearly as fast as it had been when Eric leaped into it, it’s still fast enough to get me down river pretty fast. I listen carefully for noises of pursuit, but I don’t hear anything. I don’t have time to wait. I have to make it to Cairo, to see if I can find Pest and Eric, to know if they’re still alive. I spring to my feet and, turning south, I begin to run.

Feeling my heart beat and my legs stretch out and my lungs fill with cool, springtime air, I am filled with relief. I duck under branches and leap over logs. I control my breathing and fall into a rhythm, running through the woods, finding the paths of least resistance, even if I have to move in long loops. Not only do I have to put space between me and the crazies behind me, but now that I’m free, now that I'm not about to die, I am full of anxiety about Eric.

I imagine the scene in Cairo. In my mind, I see them unwrapping the plastic oatcakes, eating them without knowing the poison they contain, the poison Randy fed to them. A day later, they start to get sick. First one, then another, then a dozen. The fear turns to panic when the sick begin to cry tears of blood. The panic turns to rage when the first die. The rage turns to violence when they have to kill the first one that turns. The village blames Eric and they blame Pest for bringing him. Pest is no idiot, he hides in the church. He goes down into the basement and barricades the doors. The people of Cairo try to get in. They bash at the door.

What happens next, I can’t imagine. I can. I can imagine it, but I won’t.

If they’re dead, all of this has been for nothing. All of this was meaningless suffering. I can’t think of that. I won’t even imagine it.

It is best to keep running, to lose myself in fatigue and pain and the constant rhythm of my feet striking ground. If I stop, I will think, and if I think too much, I will lose my mind.

It is better to run.

144

I run for hours. I hit my pace about an hour into the run. I don’t feel my legs at all or my arms. I feel as light as the air around me. I’ve always been skinny, I know that, but now, after all I’ve been through, I am not much more than bones and long, thin muscle. It is as if I’m floating through the forest, not running. I leap and duck and jump over and under branch, without losing my rhythm, without losing this weightless feeling I have. There is pain. In my legs. My lungs. Sometimes my feet. But the pain is removed from me, somehow distant, at arm’s length, not outside myself exactly, but a curiosity. It is a pain that is almost theoretical. I recognize it as mine, but it’s not a part of me somehow.

For hours I run in the rhythm. The pounding of my feet. The beating of my heart. The slow intake and outtake of breath. The feeling I could go forever, effortless as a cloud.

The rhythm of it all, the lightness of my entire being, they make it impossible for thoughts to connect to me. My mind is too slippery for thoughts to grasp. They just slip away before I can understand them. After a few hours, even the images in my mind become inexact, muted, like something bleached by the sun. My memories cannot haunt me. My thoughts cannot disturb me or shove me into despair. They are slow, feeble things that cannot exist long enough to solidify, that do not have the strength to latch onto my mind and demand attention.

I am grateful for the run. I am grateful to be alive.

145

I run until the evening gets too dark and then I continue south and west on a road I find, running by the light of the moon. If I see lights, I tell myself, I will go back to the woods and hide. But there is no light, there are no pursuers, or if there are, they are not here. I continue running in the opalescent light.

In the calm of the road, when I don’t have to keep constant awareness of my surroundings or get knocked down by a branch or tripped up by a fallen tree, my thoughts find root in me. I begin to dream as I run. Images, faces, conversations, they brush by me or pass through me. Anxieties come fearfully , stopping my heart, and then blur by me. Nothing is constant.

I feel like I’m running out of my own life. Running straight into a strange land where I am newborn, empty of history, ambivalent as the night sky.

146

There is the rhythm of my feet. The pounding earth under me. Sometimes it is not I who moves, but the earth itself, rising up to hit my feet and then bouncing away from me. We are two beings caught together, I realize. We need each other.

147

I see them dead. Burned and left on a heap of other bodies. Eric and Pest both.

I see them alive. Sheltering together under the church.

“You can make it,” my father tells me. I turn to him as I run, but his face begins to break apart as if he was smoke and fog. My mother sings to me. I can feel Lucia’s hands in my hair, braiding them, speaking to me in a language I am only beginning to understand. My mother sings. I see Artemis climb from the wood pile where they burned her. Her hair is smoking, but she brushes the ashes off her dress and then bounds over to me and hugs me. I smell her burning hair. I see Eric, his face pressed into the corner, in his cell under the church. He is dark and covered with filth. Anxiety reaches out to me sometimes with its skeletal hands. The coldness tells me that if I don’t run, if I don’t reach them, they’ll die. They need my help. They need me.

But when my heart cries out in pain, I know it is I who need them.

148

I reach familiar roads. Houses I’ve seen before, as if in a dream. I see myself in the landscape now, hiding with Pest. I see myself hiding, slouching, pulling Eric along with me. I follow roads and paths without realizing what I’m doing. I’m too exhausted to realize what I am doing. I am just moving, just running, just putting one foot in front of the other. Sometimes they are with me. Mostly I am alone, in a blurring world.

Then I feel a spinning emptiness. I’ve fallen.

I get up and the world sways.

Then I smell grass and I feel leaves in my hair.

My breathing seems so loud.

I think I am crying.

149

A noise awakens me, a rumbling roar, a sound I have not heard for many years. An engine. I blink awake into a cutting sunlight. My whole body throbs with exhaustion and pain. I sit up, groaning.

Below me, from the ridge where I collapsed the night before, I see Cairo and the broken asphalt road leading up to it. At first, I see nothing, and then I rub my eyes. Soldiers and trucks are moving toward the town. The roaring sound that woke me up is not just trucks. It’s a tank, rolling slowly up the hill toward the town, its diesel engine howling and grinding like a furious beast, its heavy steel tracks tearing up the earth as it moves toward the flimsy gate. The whole column moves slowly toward Cairo.

I stand up, blinking in the morning sun, shading my eyes, trying to see into the town, to the church. From this distance, I can’t see a thing.

Suddenly the world explodes with a boom so loud that I stumble back and fall on my backside in surprise. The tank just blew the steel gates inward with one shattering blast! Smoke curls up from the massive barrel of the tank. The soldiers cheer and I notice in the back, for the first time, an olive-colored jeep. A flag flutters from the back of the jeep: red and white stripes with one star in the corner: the flag of the Stars.

But that’s not what I’m interested in. In the jeep, I see three people. I recognize one of them from where I sit. It’s Randy. He’s come to destroy the town that he himself infected. I shudder when I realize that I am the only one who knows his plan, knows he is the one who has been spreading the Worm. He’s come for me. I stand up and peer into the town as the soldiers begin to run through the destroyed gates. I know they all think they are doing what’s best for everyone, eradicating the infected.

If Eric and Pest are still in that town, the Stars will treat them just like anyone else. Afterward, they will burn the town to the ground to be certain they have disinfected the whole place. Looking down at the tiny soldiers pouring into Cairo, I know they think they are protecting people. They don’t realize they’re puppets in Randy’s perverted scheme. I study the town, what little I can see of it through the trees, hoping to see some sign of Eric and Pest. I have to get to them. I have to find a way to get them free. I’ve got no resources, no guns, not even a flask of water.

I cross my arms and think furiously about what I need to do.

That’s when I feel cold steel pressed into my back.

“You move and you’ll be dead before you hit the ground.”

150

I freeze in place and instinctively raise my hands above my head.

“Turn around,” the voice commands.

If they kill me, no one will ever know that Randy was just using the war between the Stars and the Gearheads to get what he wanted. If they kill me, Eric will not survive. I feel like my heart has transformed to coal. Slowly I turn, keeping my hands high up in the air to keep him from shooting. When I see who it is, I gasp.

“Sydney!” I cry.

“Keep your hands up!” he growls. His eyes narrow at me and his grip on his pistol tightens.

I keep my hands up, but look behind him. “Is Boston here too?” I ask.

Sydney’s eyes flash darkly. “Nevermind where he is,” he says. Suddenly, there’s the crack and rattle of machine gun fire from the town. I wince, but Sydney keeps his eye focused on me. “We should’ve killed you when we had the chance. Now the whole town is infected because of you.”

“You don’t understand,” I say in a low, calm voice. I need to get through to him, but I can tell by the way he looks at me that I have very little chance of that.

“I think I do,” Sydney says. He jerks his gun at me. “Turn around. Put your hands behind your back.”

I don’t dare say anything, I’ve lied to him too much in the past. At first, when I turned around and saw Sydney, I thought I was lucky, but now I think I’m very unlucky. He hates me, and Boston probably does too. There’s no way he’s going to believe anything I say. He’s going to need more than words, he’s going to need some kind of evidence, some kind of proof of Randy’s crime. I let him tie my hands behind my back without struggling, fearing that if I say anything, he might just knock me out with his gun rather than listen. Or worse.

When I’m tied up, Sydney tugs at my arm and starts to lead me away down into the forest. I look back over my shoulder, my heart throbbing, hoping to see some sign in the streets of Cairo that Eric and Pest are alive. I can’t see anything through the trees.

Sydney shoves me forward. “Come on, move it.” We move forward into the shadow of the forest. I turn away from Cairo. My mind races. I have to think, have to focus on my problem. Eric needs me.

“This isn’t what you think,” I say to Sydney as we move through the forest.

I feel his gun press into my back painfully. “Keep talking,” he says.

I don’t.

151

I’m hugging a tree, handcuffed. Sydney has disappeared, after giving me a particularly evil glare. I’m at the edge of a camp, looking down at my current worry: Doctor Bragg. Sydney handcuffed me next to him, to “make me watch what I had caused,” he told me, right before he disappeared in the woods toward Cairo. The doctor is in a horrible fever, his face drenched with sweat, his hair in wet tangles around his face. The Worm hit him fast, and now it’s raging through his body. He shivers and trembles and moans. I don’t feel sorry for him. No one should.

Other than Doctor Bragg laid out on a blanket, there’s a couple tents, a circle of stones around a sputtering camp fire, and the only thing that gives me some comfort, Tangerine, Randy’s horse. I imagine everyone else is in the town. I can hear the sporadic gunfire, the rolling thunder of the tank, the distant cries and shouts. When I look up, I see the dark smoke through the trees, proof that they’re setting Cairo on fire, razing it to the ground. I don’t know what Randy has told them, but I can’t imagine it’s anything good.

I have to get out of these handcuffs. Whenever I look up at the smoke, I imagine Eric and Pest caught in the fire, choking on smoke, knowing that if they leave, if they run out into the streets, they’ll be gunned down like the rest. I have to do something, I don’t know what, but something. Anything.

I remember suddenly what Norman once told me, talking about the difference between animals. “You see,” he told me, “a fox or a racoon will stay in a trap, but a wolf, a wolf will chew off its own leg to escape.” I don’t think I can chew off my own arm. But I look at my wrist, already a little bloody from pulling on the handcuffs, and I wish it would just split apart on its own. I’d rather go through life with one hand than die here. Because I can only imagine that Sydney has gone to get someone else who will probably bring Randy. Randy needs me dead.

And then there’s Eric. He needs me, I know it. If I can’t get free, he’ll die.

I tug at the cuffs, but they only cut deeper into my wrists. Finally, I stop and push my face against the rough bark of the tree. Pine, I think. Pine. The softest wood, Eric told me. But it’s hard enough to keep me here, chained up like a criminal.

Suddenly there’s a wild, high pitched scream. At first I think it’s me, calling out in frustration and fear.

Then I see things are much worse than I thought. It’s Doctor Bragg. His body is arced up, every muscle in his body tensed. A dark foam comes from his mouth and blood oozes from his eyes. My blood turns cold as ice. Doctor Bragg is not going to die easily.

He’s going to crack.

152

Frantically, I tug at my handcuffs. I hardly feel the pain as I pull, the blood welling up around the cuffs. Doctor Bragg’s stiff body convulses again. Soon he will rise up, cracked, crazed, ready to tear apart the first living thing he encounters: me. I thrash against my cuffs, hoping that the blood will lubricate my wrists, allowing me to slip free and run away. But Sydney, probably still enraged that I had tricked and lied to them, made the cuffs too tight for that. Even if I broke my wrist, I don’t think I would come free.

My desperation makes me scream. “Help!” I yell. “Help me!” No one comes.

Doctor Bragg howls into air, his scream ending in a long gurgle as the sound emerges from the black foam surging from his mouth.

My heart beating rapidly, I know I have to try. I have to try to bite off my own hand. I look down at my wrist and sob. Do it! Don’t think about it! You don’t have time to think! Just do it! I sob again, but this time I don’t think. I move my head down to my wrist and open my mouth. I taste blood as I put my mouth around my wrist. My teeth press down.

Then I hear a whicker and I look up, my mouth on my wrist. It’s Tangerine, looking toward Doctor Bragg and tossing her head. Her eyes are large and dark with fear.

When Doctor Bragg makes another low cry, his body tensing, Tangerine turns to one side, tossing her head. Then I see it. She’s still saddled, and, strapped to her saddle is a knife. Not any knife. MY knife, the one Eric always told to keep sharpened. Randy must’ve taken it from me when he knocked me out and kept it for himself. I need that knife. I need Tangerine.

Closing my eyes, I swallow. Tangerine never comes to me.

I breathe calmly. Then, cupping my hands, I purse my lips, and make kissing noises.

Tangerine freezes like she’s stunned.

I have to be careful not to spook her. Or I’m dead.

I hold my cupped hands higher and make kissing noises. “Come on, now,” I coax her. I cluck my tongue like Randy. “Come on, now, come get some food,” I tell her. Tangerine whickers and takes a step forward doubtfully.

I snap my tongue and then say, “Come on, now, girl, don’t be scared.” I hold up my hands as if I’m cradling a handful of maple sugar cubes. “Get some sugar, girl.”

Tangerine tosses her head one more time before she comes forward, sniffing toward my hand. Gently, as she moves forward, I rotate around the tree, forcing the horse to come closer, around the tree, the saddle brushing up against the bark of the pine.

“Good girl,” I say.

Doctor Bragg gives out another inhuman scream, and Tangerine bolts, galloping away into the forest. I don’t watch her go.

Instead, I watch as Doctor Bragg leaps up from his bed, his eyes dark with blood, dark, thick foam coursing from his mouth. His dark eyes fix on me and his features contort into a gray perversion of a human face. He screams again and then sprints toward me, arms pinwheeling unnaturally around him.

I rotate around the trunk to keep the tree between us. Then, as he hits the tree, snarling like an animal, I step around and, using what little space I have, I thrust out. Doctor Bragg stands up straight as if confused. The animal madness drops from his face and he collapses, my knife embedded in his right eye up to hilt.

153

Out of breath, I collapse against the pine tree. As I try to focus, I feel the pain come again from my wrists, a burning, pulsing pain. With my eyes close, I can still taste my own blood in my mouth and I feel sick thinking I was so desperate, I was going to try to bite through my own wrist. The thought makes chills of fear go through me like a wave.

I push myself away from the tree, listening to the sound of the chain on my handcuffs clinking together. I hear the wind through the trees, the distant crackle of gunfire in Cairo, the sound of my feet in the dry pine needles. I have to get free. I have to find Eric, get him far away from Randy, far away from the Stars, far away from everything. Where he can be safe.

If I’m going to do that, I need to get out of these handcuffs.

I rotate around the tree and then crouch down over Doctor Bragg’s body. He’s fallen with his head against the tree trunk, staring with dead eyes into the forest. I grasp my knife and then tug. I can’t get it free the first time, but on the second pull, it comes free, bringing a stinking, dark gore with it. Worms writhe along the blade and shivering with revulsion, I wipe it on the front of the Doctor’s shirt before I rotate away, putting the tree between the body and I.

With the knife in my hand, I feel more in charge. I always feel a little better with a knife in my hand. I only have one idea and it’s not nice to think about. I don’t have to cut off my whole hand. Just a part of it, the part below the pinky finger. Just slice off enough so that I can pull it out of the handcuffs. Just a little slice. My stomach turns and I hear myself sob.

“Don’t start, Birdie, damn it,” I tell myself. I breathe quickly, trying to gather the courage to do the only thing I can think of doing, the only thing that will save me and Eric. I sob again without wanting to. It sounds like someone else. I realize that tears are coming down my face. I breathe in and out quickly and then pull at my left hand. I look where the skin bunches against steel, where it keeps the cuffs from sliding off. Trembling, I close my eyes. I don’t have time for this. I breathe. They could come back at any moment, and that would be the end.

I breathe and then hold out my left wrist. I put the shining blade just below where I have to cut. The blade is cold and hard and very sharp. I press down, feel the pressure against my bone.

I close my eyes.

Hold my breath. Feel my body steady.

And then, with one swift movement of my arm, I slice.

154

I come loose suddenly with a feeling like an electric shock in my left wrist. I stagger back, shaking with pain, but I’m free and the elation makes me forget the flesh I leave behind. Without looking at my carved up hand, I run to the campfire where there’s a rag drying on a rock. Feeling faint, I wrap up my cut and broken wrist. I clench my teeth to keep from screaming as I pull the rag tight. Suddenly, my vision starts to darken, like someone poured a dark liquid into my eyes. I sink down to my knees, struggling not to faint from loss of blood, from pain, from the relief of escaping. I struggle against the liquid darkness boiling up inside me, but I feel like I’m drowning in it. I put out my hand and feel the pine leaves of the forest floor. For some reason, this steadies me. I feel the tide of darkness pull away from me. The pain in my wrist roars back to life, and gritting my teeth, I push away from the ground and stand up.

“Don’t you move.”

I hear the warning before I see anyone. But I recognize the voice. It’s Randy.

There’s really only one thing I can do. I have to run and hope that he misses when he shoots with the gun he certainly has pointed at my back. If I stay, he’ll only kill me at his leisure. I’d much rather die running. I tense to sprint into the forest, turning ever so slightly, so that I run at an angle away from him, a little harder to shoot down.

“Don’t do it, Birdie!”

I stop dead in my tracks. I recognize that voice too.

It’s Pest.

155

I turn around slowly. When I see them, my heart doesn’t know whether to despair or celebrate.

“You try to run for it, and I kill them both,” Randy warns me. With Randy’s gun pointed at his head, Pest stands looking at me, his face black with ashes and smoke; beside him, his jaw hanging open, his eyes bound tightly with a red bandana, is Eric. They are both safe. Alive. At least for now. At least for a few minutes longer. I’d give anything to run to Eric, but I know if I start moving, Randy would shoot me down.

Randy smiles at me with his pearly wall of teeth. “I knew I was right to keep these two alive until I had you.” He smiles at me like we’re sharing a joke. He looks around, taking in Doctor Bragg’s corpse and the bloody handcuffs dangling from my right hand. Pest and I look at each other but say nothing. Randy shakes his head. “Goddamn,” he says finally. “You’re a survivor, no doubt about that. Nearly cut your own hand off, I bet.” His face twists into something like pride, but the way his eyes flashes at me is not as innocent as that. “It’s a shame, really.”

Randy raises his gun and takes slow aim at my chest. The sick grin never leaves his face.

“Hold on there!”

My heart stutters in me as I turn my head. Boston and Sydney come striding out of the forest. Randy doesn’t lower his gun, but his grin is gone. It’s been replaced by a stiff frustration that seeps into his eyes, which glint malevolently at me like sharpened knives. He had his chance to get rid of me easily and he’s lost it. He just had to talk. I can feel the regret coming off him like heat waves.

Behind Boston and Sydney, another man enters the camp.

“The President wants to talk to her,” says Boston as they walk forward.

I turn away from Randy to face the President of the Stars, a man I’ve never met who now holds our fate in his hands.

156

President Ramon Barber is a short man, dressed in clean, perfectly fitting military fatigues. You would never know looking at him that the world had ended ten years ago. His combat boots are black and impeccably polished. His buzz-cut hair is black as night with no sign of gray. What I notice is his deeply-pocked face, his skin as rough and uneven as a battlefield. His brown eyes search me with interest, but his eyes aren’t exactly friendly. I can see that he’s a man who makes important decisions, decisions of life and death, and he never questions them, even if he is wrong. He’s a man without regret, pointing forward. That’s not good. To him, I’m a member of the Gearheads who’s been poisoning innocent people with a terribly contagious disease. There’s no good decision from his point of view that ends up with me alive. I’m much safer to him dead. I’ve still got enough sense to be afraid, enough sense to keep my mouth shut until he asks his questions. I’ve got to think. Over Barber’s shoulders, I see Randy watching us, looking uncomfortable, his gun hanging at his side.

“What’s your name, girl?” Barber asks me. His breath smells like coffee.

“Birdie,” I answer.

Barber looks me up and down, pauses at my broken and bound wrist, bright red with fresh blood, and then looks me in the eyes again. “How old are you?”

I shrug. He frowns and I can see by the indignant little flicker in his eye that I better respond with words. “I don’t know,” I say. “Sixteen or seventeen, I guess. Maybe more.”

He seems satisfied with that answer, but the indignation hasn’t left his eyes. “You going to do something with that?” He nods down at my hand, and, confused, I follow his gaze. I’m surprised to see that I’m still holding my knife. Instantly, I let it drop from my hand.

“She didn’t do anything!” cries Pest suddenly. He steps forward, but falls suddenly from a blow to the back of his head. He collapses to the ground, groaning. Randy shrugs at Barber, still holding the gun that knocked him down. Barber turns back to me, and I see it doesn’t bother him to see a defenseless boy struck down. He’s seen worse. He’s done worse. I have to be careful with him, and no matter how careful I am, it might not save me. I glance over to where Boston and Sydney are standing, watching, and I can tell from their hard eyes that I won’t find any help from them. The both of them have the attitude of people witnessing harsh but fair justice. There isn’t a spark of sympathy from either of them. It’s not just my life they’re judging, but Eric’s and Pest’s too. If I can’t find a way to convince them I didn’t try to spread the Worm for the Gears, we are all dead. I feel a horrible electric spasm of fear pulse through me. It’s so strong that I have to close my eyes to keep from sprinting away out of fear. I don’t want Eric to die. I don’t want Pest to die. I don’t want to die.

For the first time in my life, I feel it. I mean, my own life. Not in terms of the life I have lived, my memories, my dreams, people I’ve known and loved. Instead, I think of my life as this thing ahead of me, this space of time that hasn’t arrived yet, and I see that it could be, it should be, much, much longer than what has come before. I see my life as this tiny thing waiting to happen, like I haven’t even had a chance to do anything. I feel that I haven’t even begun living and I’m going to die. I begin to tremble. I’m trying to hold it together, but it’s hard. It’s so hard.

“You ought to shoot her and get it over with,” Randy says suddenly, and I open my eyes. It’s the hate I feel for him that drives away the weakness in me. I feel myself steady.

President Barber holds up his hand, still looking at me. “I’ll decide what I ought to do,” he says. The grit in his voice is startlingly, but he doesn’t turn away from me. I’m ready to beg if it will help us, but the grit in his voice tells me that it’s not the way to go. Begging would make me look guilty in his eyes. He’s that kind of man. Begging would make him shoot me quicker. I focus my attention on him. I struggle to keep myself steady, even, strong. I’m not any of these things, but I can appear to be. I need to think, be calm and think.

The President of the Stars steps forward, his shining black boots glistening in the pine needles. His eyes are intense, almost crackling with energy as he studies me. He’s about ready to speak. I can see the time is coming.

I will either make my case or we will all die.

157

“Well, Birdie,” President Barber says, “You seem like a smart girl. I don’t have to tell you why you need to answer my questions truthfully, do I?”

“No,” I say, then I quickly add, “sir.”

“Randy here tells me that you’ve been working for the Gearheads, dragging this zombie around the whole country, infecting town after town.”

“That’s not true, sir,” I say when Barber pauses. His eyes darken. He doesn’t like to be interrupted. I swallow, my throat dry.

“It’s kind of strange that all the towns that come down with the disease have sympathies for the Stars.” Barber looks at me dangerously. “That is very strange, don’t you think?”

“That would be strange if it were true,” I say, holding his eyes as best I can. “Sir,” I add again.

Barber grins at me and then puts his hands on his hips. “Boston and Sydney tell me you lied to the both of them so well that they didn’t even see the evidence of the Worm that was right in front of their faces.” He made a gruff sound. “And I know these boys here. They are not the most credulous of folk, let me tell you.” Over his shoulder, I can see Boston and Sydney glare at me, their faces turning red with shame. I get the uncomfortable feeling that the both of them would like to shoot me right now. Barber continues, “I’m not sure I can believe a word out of your mouth.”

“Then why even bother to talk to me?” I ask. I’m scared to say it, but I have to be tough. He will listen to tough and defiant. He won’t listen to weak and groveling. I can feel it.

Randy makes a gruff laugh behind him. “She’s got a point there,” he barks out. “Just say the word and I’ll put her down without another false word out of her mouth.”

Barber barely turns his head toward Randy, keeping his eyes on me. “Keep quiet,” he says in a stiff, dangerous tone. Randy clears his throat uncomfortably.

“He really wants me dead,” I say in a low voice, keeping my eyes locked with Barber’s. “I’d love to tell you why, if you’ll listen.”

“I think I already know why,” Barber returns with a cold frown.

“I doubt that,” I say, but when his face falls dangerously far, I know I’ve pushed him too far. “Sir,” I add, hoping to soften my impudence. He seems to be slightly satisfied with that. Such a strange and delicate mixture of defiance and formality I have to manage. Just one word too far, and Boston and Sydney will shoot me down. I’m sure Randy will join the fun too.

“I met your President last year. President Brown of the Gearheads. He seemed a reasonable man, an intelligent man, a man I thought I understood. I didn’t think he was too much different than I am. We both want unity, we both want to rebuild.” He studies me. “I can understand him coming against me out here, just to test the boundaries.  What I don’t understand is that when I wanted to know about the Gearheads, I sent these two.” Barber nods his head in the direction of Boston and Sydney. “Two fighters, real scrappers, two men who’ve seen their share of the general shit and survived it. Two men who I know, if it comes to it, are as dangerous as the Devil himself. And who did Brown send? A little black girl and a goddamn Zombie.” Barber’s eyes narrow at me. “I’m trying to understand that. I’m trying to see the whole picture. I don’t think this is it.”

“You’re right,” I say, holding my head high. “What you’re seeing isn’t the whole picture at all.” We look at each other. Over his shoulder, I see Randy glower and grip his gun tightly. My heart beats wildly. Barber pauses, giving me just a moment, just an instant of time to push through, to make my case. “You’re being fooled, President, sir,” I say. “It isn’t me that’s been infecting people, it’s Randy.” Boston and Sydney burst out in guffaws of humorless laughter. Randy attempts a laugh himself, but his hand is tight on his gun.

Barber doesn’t look amused. He steps closer to me. For the first time, I smell him, a mixture of some kind of strong alcohol and wood smoke. For some reason, it frightens me, and I take a helpless step backward. Barber’s hand flashes out and he clutches my wounded wrist. I cry out in pain and drop to one knee.

“Don’t you lie to me,” Barber hisses. “Not to me, understand?”

“I’m not lying, sir!” I cry out. The pain in my wrist is exploding all the way up my arm. “Randy’s been infecting all of us! He’s got infected oatmeal bars in his bag! You can check, you can see!” Barber presses harder on my wrist and I collapse in a ball at his feet.

“Don’t you lie to me!” he cries.

“Search the bags on his horse!” I scream. “Search them! You can shoot me if I’m lying! You can shoot me!” Barber releases my wrist.

“I can shoot you anyway,” he tells me, standing over me.

“She’s just trying to buy time with this ridiculous story,” Randy says. “Let’s shoot her and burn this Zombie and get the hell out of here.”

Barber glowers down at me. His eyes study me with open distrust and hatred. Then he turns toward Boston and Sydney. “Get the horse,” he says. “Let’s see what’s in those bags.”

“You stupid shit,” says Randy through clenched teeth.

Then the shooting begins.

158

The first shot is meant for my head, but Barber moves in front of me and gets it in the stomach. The shot explodes through him and I feel a warm spray of blood against my face as I scramble away to find cover. I don’t know where the next shots hit, but when I get to the nearest tree, I see that Sydney is on the ground and Boston is standing shocked near him. Eric is standing where he was without looking the slightest bit concerned. Randy shoots at Boston, and I see him dive to the side, crying out in pain. Randy fires two more shots toward Boston as he tumbles away into the forest. Now’s my only chance!

I run up the hill slipping on the pine needles and grab Eric.

“Unh,” he says as I tug him away toward the forest.

But it’s not fast enough. Not nearly fast enough. Randy turns back toward us and his horse teeth grins at me widely. Raising his weapon toward me, his face shines with elation.

Suddenly Randy is shoved violently to the side and goes crashing down into the forest.

“Go!” yells Pest, standing where Randy had been a second before. “Run Birdie!”

I want to tell him to follow, I want to tell him thank you, but there’s no time for that. I grab Eric and pull him toward the forest.

“Unh!” Eric groans.

We stumble into the forest as best we can. We haven’t gone more than half dozen steps when I hear shots behind us. My heart drops. There’s no way I can outrun Randy with Eric, and there’s no way I can leave him. This is it. This is really it.

Then I hear something. Eric hears it too.

“Unh!” he moans and begins to dart through the forest.

The sound of water!

159

At his breakneck pace, it’s hard to keep Eric from crashing into trees, but at least he’s running. I have to tug him to guide him, weaving him through the trees as he bolts as fast as his legs can carry him toward the sound of the river. When I dare, I look back over my shoulder. I see Randy running after us, too far behind to shoot through the trees, but not so far away that if Eric hits a tree and we fall, Randy won’t shoot us both where we land.

“Birdie!” Randy cries out. “I’m going to shoot Eric first! I’m going to kill him first so you can watch! You hear me?”

Yeah, I can hear you, you goddamn, murdering, traitorous, donkey-toothed son of bitch!

But I’ve got no time to think of that or to feel my rage. I have to guide Eric’s headfirst plunge through the forest. Eric’s only has his thundering, consuming thirst for water to guide him, and he’s running forward with all his will and considerable strength. It’s everything I can do to keep up with him, to shove him from one side or the other to keep him from smashing face-first into a pine tree and ending both of our lives. I’ve got no plan beyond just running.

That becomes obvious when we suddenly reach the bank of the river, and Eric just goes hurtling over the bank. I follow him into the water, hoping that it will carry us downstream, far away from Randy. But I’m not that lucky. Not this time.

The water is deep and cold and hardly moving at all. I realize immediately that now I have another problem. If I don’t get Eric to the shore, he’ll drown, drinking himself to death. I lunge through the dark water, reaching out for him. I feel him suddenly, his jacket maybe, or his pants, and, clutching at it, I pull him toward the shore. I’m hoping it’s the opposite shore, but as my head breaks free of the water, I'm greeted by a familiar, odious face.

Randy grabs my hair and drags me out of the water. He viciously kicks my grip on Eric free.

“No!” I scream, struggling to get to Eric, who’s slowly rotating in the water, face down.

I feel the cold circle of a gun muzzle pressed against the back of my neck.

“Keep struggling, you dumb bitch,” Randy hisses.

Sobbing and trembling, I stop struggling. Randy yanks me painfully to my feet with my hair. He grips me from behind, keeping my head pointed toward Eric.

“I told you I’d make you watch,” he spits into my ear.

I refuse to cry, but I feel tears run down my face. Eric slowly spins in the dark water, making no movement at all. All of this for nothing. All of it, for nothing. I sink senselessly to my knees in the river. The water is all around me. I hear Randy chuckle and move to stand in front of me. I know he’s pointing his gun at me. I know he’s smiling with those shining teeth of his. But I don’t care, not anymore. Just let him shoot. Let it be over.

“Look at me,” Randy says. I don’t. “Look at me!” he cries again. But I don’t. I don’t care what happens. I don’t care what he does. It’s all been for nothing.

“Just shoot me,” I tell him. “Stop talking and shoot.”

I feel my head snapped back as he claws at my hair. “You listen to me,” he hisses. “You think it can’t get any worse for you? You look at me or I swear to God I’ll keep you dying for a week.”

Reluctantly I open my eyes. For a second all I can see is Randy’s jacket, and then he strides through the cold water and turns back toward me. Grinning as malevolent as a troll, he points his gun at my forehead. Behind him, Eric’s body rotates silently in the water. I have no feeling left. Not even fear. Just a fatigue so profound, heavy as a thousand dark worlds, that I am looking forward to his bullet, looking forward to the endless rest and the comforting darkness. I don’t have anything left in me. It’s over.

“All of this for a goddamn Zombie,” Randy hisses.

“Eric’s not a Zombie,” I tell him. “He’s my father.”

“No, he’s not!” Randy yells. “You stupid little bitch, look at him!” Randy points his gun toward Eric’s corpse while he looks at me. “He’s white as mayonnaise and you’re black as charcoal! You ever look in the mirror, for crying out loud?”

I’m not sure if I’m seeing what I see. I blink. I see it again. I see Eric’s hand twitch.

“He’s got blue eyes! Your eyes are the color of horseshit! That ever make you think?”

Eric begins to move. His arms reach down through the water to the stones of the riverbed. His body stops rotating. My eyes widen in disbelief.

Randy points the gun at me again. “All you had to do was let Eric die! That’s all you had to do. Just let him die! Everyone dies, you know, it’s not such a big fucking deal!”

Putting his legs underneath him, Eric rises out of the water behind Randy. If Randy wasn’t screaming at me, he might notice. The red bandana around Eric’s eyes slips away. His blue eyes are clear as a summer sky, but his face is dark with fury.

“Now you’ve ruined everything for me, you stupid, little bit—”

Eric’s arms wrap themselves around Randy and lift him out of the water. Randy’s eyes go wide and he drops his gun as he flails his arms to free himself. With arms formed by years of chopping trees, Eric easily begins to crush him. Randy’s eyes bulge and his face turns red and then purple. I hear the sickening crack of his ribs and Randy squeals in pain. Eric cries out and throws him down into the water with intense violence. Striding forward, Eric puts his knee on Randy’s back and pins him under the water.

Regaining myself, I splash forward through the water and cling to Eric.

“No!” I cry. “No, don’t! Don’t kill him!”

At first, Eric doesn’t listen to me. His body is like steel, holding Randy underwater.

“We need him to talk!” I cry. “Think about it! Think!” I shake him. “Think!”

Eric suddenly lurches off Randy and then drags the man to the shore. Randy splutters up water and then, rolling to his back, he passes out. Eric stands up and looks around him. Trembling, I walk to him and take his hands. “Eric?” I look up at him.

He looks back, his eyes unfocused, cloudy with confusion. Looking at me, this slowly fades as his eyes come to rest on me. “Birdie?” He reaches out his arms toward me.

It isn’t until I hear his voice that I realize I never really believed he would survive. Not until this moment. I collapse into his arms, crying and gasping for breath. The tears shudder through my body like spasms beyond my control. Eric doesn’t say anything for a long time. He just holds me and lets me cry.

Finally, after a long time, I stop crying and look up at him, wiping my tears away.

“Birdie,” he says, putting his hand on my shoulder. “Where the hell are we?”

160

Back at the Homestead, I have to help support Pest to the cemetery garden. Randy shot him, well, there’s no delicate way to put it, Randy shot Pest in the butt. I should say buttocks. When I say butt, I want to laugh, but it’s not funny. Really, it’s not. Pest has a hard time walking and sleeping, and Eric says it will probably be a few more weeks before it gets too much better. Bringing him with me wasn’t my idea, I thought he’d be better at home, resting, but the truth is, after all we went through together, we don’t like to be apart. Eric lets Pest sleep in our house, on a mattress near the stove. Sometimes at night, I have to whisper down to make sure he’s there. He always is.

When we get to the cemetery, I take out the blankets and get a place ready for Pest. As you can imagine, it’s very difficult for him to sit, and it’s complicated to get him comfortable. He doesn’t complain or anything, but I can tell when he’s in pain. It takes a few minutes to get him just right under the tree with the blankets.

“Thanks,” he tells me. “Now stop worrying about me. Do your thing.” He smiles at me and takes out a book that Eric gave to him. For a minute, I see him look out toward the fields. Like me, I think he sees the people he misses. Rebok and Crypt and all the others from the goon squad. His eyes look tired for a second and then he turns his attention back to the book.

I sit down and get out my drawing materials. The paper is yellow and brittle with age, and reminds me that I’m going to have to learn how to make paper, but the pencils are top notch. Boston and Sydney brought them to me from Boston. After the Barber funeral, which, by the way, also stopped the war, at least for now, Boston and Sydney have been coming regularly up north, establishing a safe, but not entirely safe, trading route. They always visit me and bring me stuff. I don’t know if they do it to make me feel better or for themselves. It’s awkward. As I look at my fancy pencils, I think Boston and Sydney must feel pretty guilty for almost shooting me to hunt these bad boys down. By the time we dragged Randy back to camp, they had found some oatmeal bars laced with Worms in Randy’s bag, and when he tried to lie his way out of that, they found a lot more of them back at the warehouse where Dr. Bragg did his…work. Not only that, but there were a lot of idiots there who were more than happy to tell them the whole process of how they kidnapped people with the Worm and gave them to the Doctor. The warehouse itself was full of evidence, including several notebooks penned by the dear departed Doctor. There was plenty of evidence to hang Randy, but they didn’t. They shot him instead.

I begin to sketch out the cemetery. It’s not the time of year to start thinking about the new calendar, but this year, I want to do something special. It’s been a rough year for everyone, and we all need to remember it. Summer is nearly over, but a lot of the flowers are out in full bloom. There must be twenty different species, all different colors, all different shapes, red triangles and orange ellipses and buttery yellow circles. It will take a lot of work to sketch them out, but for now, I just outline them.

I’m just about ready to turn back to my drawing when I see a flash of black and white fur, followed close by a little bundles of yipping mayhem. It’s Queen, the new mother, leading her four puppies to Pest. When the fire started in Cairo, it was too much for her and she ran away. When we left Cairo, she still hadn’t returned, and we all thought she would never come back. But just a few weeks ago she returned, just in time to give birth to four puppies in the barn. They are all glossy brown in color except for one fluffy white one with brown spots which has taken a liking to me. I was going to call him Prince, but with the Good Prince living with us, I thought it would be more appropriate to call him Duke. Now Duke comes up to me, wagging his tail so wildly that he falls over, nipping at my hand as I pat him.

When the puppies bound away to play in the grass and Queen follows after them, I turn back to my drawing. I’ve been so busy running with Eric and then coming home again that I haven’t had time to think of the people we lost, the people I called my family. Once it was all over, I thought there would be time, but it never seemed to be over. There was always something else to take my time. First there was the burial at Cairo. Almost everyone in the town was dead. We didn’t get there in time to stop the Stars from shooting everyone with Worm. All we could do was help the few that were left gather up all of the bodies and burn them. The worst was the Good Prince. The day after the Worm broke out in Cairo, they dragged her out of her home, and almost hung her. The man we met on the stairs, Jim, he didn’t let that happen, but they locked her up in church like a criminal in one of the jail cells in the basement. The fires that burned down Cairo spared the church, mostly. After it was all over, the Good Prince left Cairo. Too much had happened for her to stay. Now she lives with us here, in the Homestead, in Beth’s old house. We’re happy to have her, but losing Cairo has broken her heart. She doesn’t talk much anymore, but even so, Eric and I still go sit with her to look out over the fields.

I begin to sketch out the tree and the roots, the branches and the spreading leaves.

The days right after the burning of Cairo were hard. Although Boston and Sydney knew we were innocent, after President Barber was shot and killed, there was confusion in the Stars. There were rumors of insurrection, assassination, some fiendish plot by the Gearheads to take control. We had to stay and tell our story at something like a trial held in the church of Cairo, or what was left of it. Some of the back wall was burned out. It was unsettling, but by the time it was over, everyone seemed satisfied that the truth was out. They gave the President a decent funeral. They shot their guns in the air and wrapped up Barber’s body in a flag before they burned him. It was all very solemn, and, I have to say, a little ridiculous. I remember Pest told me after the funeral when we were sure that we were alone that it was a lot of show for nothing. “No one will remember that flag in ten years,” he said. “Someone should have just talked about who he was.” But no one talked about Barber. Maybe no one knew anything about him. Maybe that’s why the flag was so important to them, something that marked him, something that told everyone who he was and what he thought and felt and believed when no one really knew that much at all.

I start to capture a little of the background. I make sure to catch the sloping hill behind the tree and the fields. This is what we believe. This is more than a place, it’s who we are. I was so happy to see it when we returned that I forgave Franky and Norman and I think they’ve forgiven me, although I do get some looks from time to time, puzzling looks, sad but also hurt? Betrayed?  I don’t think they will ever look at me the same way again. I lied to everyone, but I did it for a good reason. They will have to understand that. Now that Eric is back and healthy, they have to admit that I was right to do what I did. I don’t think they like that, but they respect me more for it. They look at me different now. They tell me that I am different, that I’m not the same person I was before. I’m more talkative, they say, and I laugh more. They’re right, I have changed, but I don’t tell them how I think I’ve changed. I don’t tell them that I know things about myself now that I wish I never knew. I’m easier to fool than I ever thought, I’m capable of doing very bad things to survive, and I know a place inside me that is dark and devoid of feeling. Every time I look down at my healing wrist, I’m reminded of just how delicate this whole thing is. Not just life itself, but all the connections between us, all those things that hold us together and make us family and friends and make other people enemies. It can all change. It can all change in a moment.

I feel a shiver of fear and take a deep breath. I’m not here to think about myself. I’m here to think about them. I open my eyes and sigh and look up at the tree. I would do anything to see them again. All of them who died because they ate an oatmeal bar given to them by someone they trusted. Crypt, Gunner, Rebok, silly boys, always fighting, but I loved them; Matt with his secret suffering; Patrick, Fiona, Peter, Beth, so many. And Artemis. I look down at my paper, my lips trembling. My best friend who always needed hugs I never wanted to give. I take a sharp breath. I haven’t allowed myself to think of her, and now that I do, I suddenly remember how she smelled like candy. I rub my nose and realize that I’m weeping.

“Are you okay?” I feel Pest’s hand on my shoulder, and I reach out and put my hand on his.

“I will be,” I say. “Some day.”

Pest looks at me with sympathy and squeezes my shoulder. I can see that he’s searching for something else to say. I can see the thoughts working there behind his eyes. Such adult thoughts on such a young face. But it doesn’t make me feel weird anymore. All of us who’ve had the Worm have this strange disconnect between our hearts and our body. They don’t seem to match exactly. All the weirdness I’ve ever seen in Pest, now I recognize as part of myself too. Pest’s eyes stop searching for something more to say. He’s smart enough to know that sometimes silence is best. I give his hand a squeeze and then turn back to my paper.

My pencil hits the page, but doesn’t move. I bite my lip. It’s not easy. I feel a hand on my shoulder, and I look up. It’s Eric. Tall and strong, wearing new clothes, his blue eyes shining down on me, I can’t see any sign of the Worm on him. Just last week, he let me cut his hair and shave his scraggly beard. He sits down next to me on the boulder. It’s strange to see how quickly he’s recovered, strange and wonderful.

“How’s it going?”

I shrug. Eric looks down at my brief sketch, just light outlines and shapes.

“I like the flowers,” he tells me.

I smile at him, and then I can’t resist putting my head on his shoulder. I feel his hand gently hold me, and, for a moment, I can almost imagine that none of this has happened. Nothing has changed. But when I open my eyes, I know that everything has changed, and not all of it has been bad.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I tell Eric. He knows that I mean to say I love him. Eric looks a little surprised, maybe a little embarrassed. He blushes, but he squeezes me.

“Don’t forget Matt,” he says to me, pointing at the page.

I sit up and go back to the page. I won’t forget any of them. I want to create a record of them, the people we’ve loved and lost. I want to draw them all under this tree with us, so that we remember them, not for some flag that they were buried with, but for who they were and for how much we loved them, how much they will be missed. I imagine them all standing, smiling, posing for me. Artemis pretends to be shy and then laughs. Quiet, strong Cyrus, Amber in Diane’s arms, Crypt and Rebok embracing each other. Patrick and Fiona stop arguing for a moment to hold each other and look toward me. Lucia is there too, smiling and waving. When I look at the tree again, as Pest sits underneath it, reading, I see two figures that I haven’t planned to be there, my tall, kind father, holding my mother, her slender body and long hair like a song. They’re all here. They’re all with me.

I put my pencil to the paper, and, sighing to steady my trembling hand, I begin to draw.

THE END

Content

Ben Lyle Bedard
THE WORLD WITHOUT FLAGS

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