Ben Lyle Bedard

THE WORLD WITHOUT CROWS

to Matthew and Trina

who believed in this book

1

^__________

^{Wolf Creek Wilderness Area}

When it became obvious the world was ending, Eric thought the worst part would be the people in the streets, screaming or laughing or crying, or how it was impossible to be sure which ones were infected. He thought the worst part would be the sight of great dump trucks full of corpses going down the road. Or the military who showed up toward the end and started shooting people. Or the fires in the distance or the gangs roaming the streets with guns. But it wasn’t any of those things.

“Eric,” his mother said, her lips dry and flaky. Her eyes dripped blood. “Come here.” He did. Her sweaty hand took him by the collar. “I never loved your father,” she told him. “Sometimes I don’t love you either. You’re so much like him, Eric.” She began to cry. “I’m so sorry.”

Everyone thought that the end was the time to tell the truth. As if lies were what brought on the worm. As if lies had doomed them all. The things people said to each other in those last days.

The worst part about the world ending was honesty.

^_

His mother was still alive when he started to form the plan. She was locked in her room. Eric left her a plastic jug of water by the bed. She didn’t eat, but she drank. That was how it was with the Vaca B.

The first part of his plan was to get books. In the time before the worm, a time that seemed more and more distant with each passing day, Eric loved the library. On Thursday nights, he and his friends would meet there to play AD&D. Bill, Andy, Jessica, and Glenn. He saw some of them wandering the streets of Athens, Ohio, like the rest of them, wandering until they found a body of water, then throwing themselves in to drink until they drowned. He didn’t say anything to them. There was nothing to say and nothing he could do to help.

Eric went to the library. There was a Zombie there. She had been a librarian once, part time. Andy used to have a crush on her. Her name was Janice. She was thin. She had glasses and her breath stank like coffee and rancid milk. All Janice did now was stand against the wall, scraping the wall with her bloody fingers. She was harmless, waiting to die. Most of them were.

But there were others.

In the back of the library, Eric found what he wanted. He took it down from the shelf. “The CALM Wilderness Survival Guide,” by Walter Jakes. He wanted to look for more books, but Janice was scraping the wall. The sound of it in the silence terrified him.

The night after he had gone to the library, he woke up to screams. Someone was screaming, “No! Leave me alone! Leave me alone! Please! No!” Eric ran to the window.

Outside the moon was bright. There was a man, dragging one leg behind him. He was trying to get away from a cracked Zombie. It came after him slowly. The man must have shot him because the Zombie moved in lurches. It was slow but faster than the man trying to get away. The Zombie had black fluid running out of its mouth. Eric wanted to help the man, but he didn’t know what he could do. Mostly he was too scared.

The Zombie caught up with the man and started tearing apart his legs. The man was screaming. “NO! STOP! PLEASE!” But the cracked Zombie was eating his leg. The man hit the Zombie again and again, but it didn’t stop. Finally the man passed out, and the Zombie ate for a while before it collapsed on top of him. By morning, they were both dead.

Eric decided he needed a gun.

^_

When the Vaca B broke out, Eric celebrated his birthday. It was August 12, 1989. He was 16 years old. He had a small party in his basement. Glenn was there. Jessica came late. The rest didn’t make it. They spent the time eating confetti cake and making characters for their next campaign. Glenn rolled a clean 18 on three dice. They tried to get him to become a magic-user, but he put the 18 on Strength anyway. Glenn was a fighter. He was always a fighter. Jessica said he wanted to be a fighter all the time because he was so skinny. They laughed about that, but Glenn became angry. He tried not show it, but he was angry. It made Eric happy somehow. When they all left, Eric went into the living room where his mother was watching television and eating chips. She was watching the news.

At the time, the military was fire bombing Houston.

He sat beside her to watch, eating chips and licking the grease and salt from his fingers.

^_

When the days seemed to get warm enough, Eric decided to leave. When Eric left Athens, he turned north on Columbus Road. The backpack he carried was very heavy. He hoped he would get stronger. It was a long way to Maine.

When he got to the edge of downtown, he looked back. Athens was the town he had known most of his life. His mother worked at the University there. Now it was empty except for the Zombies who stumbled among the classical columns. He could still see the curling smoke from his burning house. He was crying. He had poured gasoline on her body and all over the house. He had lit the match. He loved his mother and now she was ashes.

Eric tried not to cry. He had to grow up. He had to survive.

The backpack was heavy. After an hour, he had to stop and breathe and take it off. He hadn’t even crossed the 33 yet. It was rainy and cloudy and he was wet and miserable. Eric took the backpack off and sat on it.

He looked at his boots and breathed heavily. He was so fat. Maybe it was a mistake. All of this. He could never make it to Maine.

He looked at himself.

Finally, he emptied out his backpack. He looked at what he had brought. He separated the necessary things. The book he had taken from the library said this about the survival pack:

“Making a wilderness survival pack is fun! If you pack appropriately, there’s no reason to fear the outdoors. No matter if you are in the desert or in marshes, in the forest or on the prairie, if you pack right, you’ll be able to survive any climate. Then you can sit back, relax, and enjoy God’s gift of nature, just as was intended!”

Eric decided to leave behind some things. Books. Canned food. A hammer. The radio. The extra pair of boots. When he put the backpack on again, it was lighter, but still pretty heavy. The gun he had found in a neighbor’s house, nestled inside an old shoebox, weighed down his pocket, but he would not give it up. He would have to get stronger.

When he came around a corner, he saw a billboard. He’d seen it many times before, but now it scared him. It was a picture of Jesus on the cross. He was covered in blood. His face was contorted in pain. HE SUFFERED FOR YOU! the sign read. Eric swallowed and put his hand on the gun that he kept at his side.

Jesus looked like a Zombie.

^_

The plan was simple.

When Eric was young and his father had still taken him for a few weeks in the summer, Eric had flown to Portland, Maine. His father met him at the airport and they drove to Rangeley. His father had a cabin there. They would go out in his canoe and fish. Eric couldn’t fish well. He didn’t like killing worms. It frustrated his father. The skies were always blue like the water. The forests were green. At night, the loons would call over the water. He never wanted to go home. When his father brought him back to the airport, Eric always cried. He tried not to, he knew it irritated his father, but he didn’t want to leave. Then his father married another woman. She had two boys of her own. Eric got birthday cards for a while, but then they stopped.

The plan was simple. He had to get away from the Zombies. He had to go somewhere defensible. Zombies drown themselves in water, so Eric thought he should live on an island. He should live on an island where the winters were so cold, all the Zombies would freeze to death.

Eric wanted to go back to the lake in Maine. There was an island there. He got a map and, over several weeks, he carefully planned his route. He marked it with a red pen.

He would have to walk. Having a vehicle was too dangerous. Zombies weren’t the only danger. There were gangs now. For a boy like him, Eric thought, it would be best to avoid them. He was not tough. He had seen the gangs from the window in his mother’s house. They were young men, mostly, with shotguns and rifles. They acted like the jocks he had known at school. He knew what they were like.

He would go to Maine, to the lake. There, on his island, he would be safe.

^_

Eric waddled when he walked. They called him Duck in the locker room, or Fat Fuck or Daffy Fuck, if they were feeling creative. His chin was suspended on a fold of fat. His stomach swelled up around him and drooped down in front of him. The boys in the locker room said he had tits. They grabbed and pinched them until he was black and blue. He wore sweat pants most of the time, and a large, plain sweat shirt.

He had dark, greasy hair, flecked with lice-white dandruff. He hated to wash. He hated to see his body. He didn’t like going in the bathroom because of the mirror. Whenever he saw himself, he felt despair seize him. He didn’t know how it had happened. His father said his mother ruined him.

His skin was pasty white.

But he had nice blue eyes. He knew that. His mother said so.

So did Jessica. That confirmed it. “You have such nice eyes, Eric,” Jessica told him.

Jessica was dead now.

Eric knew that because he had seen her. She was in the street. Someone had shot her. The gangs did that sometimes. They drove through and shot whoever they saw, figuring they were Zombies. Maybe she was.

Eric had liked Jessica a lot, even if her face was full of red, angry zits, and she was even fatter than he was. He thought maybe some day he would kiss her. It would have been his first kiss.

Jessica had said he had nice eyes.

It was the nicest thing a girl had ever said to him.

^_

The first night, Eric camped north of route 33. He set up his tent about sixty feet away from Route 550, under a tree. He was tired and ached all over. His feet were sore. He boiled some beans, but they were still hard after a long time, so he fell asleep without eating. He’d never been so tired.

He woke up in the morning to the squeal of tires. He came out of his tent with his gun in his hand and hid behind a tree to watch. On the road, there were two trucks. Men and women came out of the trucks laughing. They chained a Zombie up to the trucks, one arm to the back of each truck. Then the trucks drove away from each other. Eric looked away.

The trucks came back and everyone got out to inspect what was left of the Zombie. They were laughing and joking and drinking. Then there was an argument. They were too far away to hear, so Eric didn’t know about what. Suddenly two of them held a woman and another man took out a knife and stabbed her. She only screamed out once. He stabbed her for a long time. They left the corpses on the road behind them.

After that Eric didn’t walk on the roads.

^_

On the second day, Eric got lost. He cut across 550 and, using his compass, headed northeast. He thought he would come to the Old Grade Road, but he walked and walked, through fields and forests and across roads and he did not come to the road he wanted. He felt panic in him, but kept moving. His backpack was heavy. His arms and back and legs and feet were in pain. It felt like his body was full of needles and when he walked, he was pierced by them. To lighten his pack, he threw out any extra clothes.

It was late in the afternoon when he came to the cemetery. It was in a wedge-shaped field. In the distance, he could see the road he was looking for, and the fear of being lost left him. But he couldn’t move any longer.

Eric dropped his backpack at the edge of the cemetery.  He was covered with sweat, even though it was only in the sixties, and there was a faint mist of rain falling. He took off his boots and saw that his feet were bleeding.

Eric lay down for a long time. He cried for a while from the pain and the thought that he could never make it all the way to Maine.

The rain pattered down on the leaves and on the grass that had grown around the graves. You could hardly see the gravestones anymore.

Eric groaned, but roused himself. Painfully, he hobbled around and pitched his tent. He ate two granola bars. He wanted to cook more, he was so hungry, but he lay down for a moment. He listened to the quiet rain and the birds in the trees. It was spring, but the trees were still bare. He fell asleep there, outside his tent.

He woke up in the middle of the night, freezing cold. He was shivering badly. His teeth chattered uncontrollably. He shook so much, he could hardly hold the lighter steady. Somehow Eric started a fire. Soon he sat near it gratefully and then, in the light of the moon, he dried his clothes as best he could before he crawled back into the tent and his sleeping bag to sleep.

The next day he was so sore he could hardly move.

^_

In the morning, Eric crawled outside his tent. There was a faint fog over the cemetery. Cold moisture clung to everything. Only the birds were awake. Their singing was all he heard.

He felt he was the last person in the world.

Humans in the end were fragile. They vanished in less than a year.

He listened to the birds and felt the tears come. But he wouldn’t let them. He had enough of tears. Instead, he walked to his backpack and brought out a pan. He went to a small pool in the forest and filled it with water before he returned, built a fire, and boiled the water. All water had to be boiled to kill the Vaca B.

There were humans left, he reminded himself. A few. In gangs. They were dangerous.

He waited for the water to cool and listened to the birds. He realized he had never paid much attention to birds. Now they were his only companions. The world belonged to them again, the birds, the deer, the creatures of the forest.

Eric imagined all the cities of the world being reclaimed by animals. Deer in Paris. Bear in New York City. Tigers hunting in New Dehli.

It was the end of the world and all the birds were singing.

^_

Avoiding the roads, avoiding drawing any attention to himself, Eric planned to hike from Athens, Ohio to Maine. He would walk from state park to state park. In the forests, he would be safe from attention from gangs and Zombies. They would stay in the cities. Eric would go to Maine to the island. He would build a house there and live in peace and security. Eric thought about his plan much of the time.

Eric remembered the signs.

Maine: The Way Life Should Be.

^_

He thought he could make it to Wolf Creek Wilderness Area by the third day, but he couldn’t. It hurt too much to move and he had to stop often. His feet were bleeding now from a dozen blisters. He read somewhere that feet had to be looked after closely. As he limped forward, he understood why. If his feet got much worse, he would be helpless.

He had to stop at a house. An old, gray clapboard house with a garage attached to it. Eric needed supplies. He had left most of his food behind. He still had beans, which were light, but he cooked them and cooked them, and they were still hard. He needed food and to take care of his feet.

The house was empty. Already the grasses around the house were encroaching on it. The tame lawn was now feral and devouring its master. Inside a window had been left open, and the water that had come in warped the floor. Eric tried to shut the window, but he couldn’t. He sat in the kitchen and took off his boots.

His socks were red with blood. He washed his feet with boiled water. He found some antibiotic lotion in the bathroom and used it. One blister was so large and painful, he had to skewer it with a needle so he could walk. Clear liquid burst from it. He would have cried out in pain, but what was the use of that? Who would hear? Who would care? He carefully wrapped his feet with bandages. He found some cotton socks in a drawer upstairs and he put them on. It was difficult because he was so fat, it was hard to work on his feet.

There was not much food there. A can of spinach which he ate raw. It was delicious and he drank down the green water left in the can hungrily. He had never felt hunger like this before. It was not a craving, it was a painful necessity. The hunger made him feel like a ghost.

On the way out, he saw the Zombie. It was standing in the door to the garage. It was an old man with a red plaid shirt and denim overalls. He had a bloody beard down to his chest. The old man didn’t even look toward him as he moved away, quietly as he could. It was hard to tell which ones were dangerous. Some cracked. Most didn’t.

He had almost vanished when he heard the barking. The dogs came down out of the fields. They had scented the Zombie. Zombies had become easy prey to the dogs who were left. There were three of them, recently pets, Eric imagined. Now they fell upon the Zombie and ripped him apart. The Zombie was still moving as the dogs began to eat him.

^_

Eric pitched his tent in Wolf Creek Wilderness Area near a pond. The weather was cold and wet. When he built a fire, Eric stared into the flames. He wondered if there was any use in living. It was the first time he had thought this so calmly. It did not come from sadness or grief or solitude. He sat quietly and considered suicide.

Eric wondered what he would do on the island when he got there. Would he spend his life alone? Would he exist day by day, waiting for some sickness to kill him? Was that a life worth living?

Eric watched the warm, orange flames dance in the fire. He took out his pistol and placed it on his lap. He leaned back and looked up through the trees at the twisting sky, filled with flashing stars.

Stars didn’t care that they were alone in the darkness.

Somewhere an owl hooted.

Eric had never known such silence or calm.

He felt the pain in his body. It was his body shining like a star. It was living.

Eric put the gun to the side, in the green grass.

^_

Eric brought a calendar with him. It was a small, pocket calendar of the year 1990. He had marked down the day he left: Monday, May 14th. He crossed off the days as he went. It was nice to know what day it was. Eric suspected it didn’t matter anymore, but it was nice.

For example, today was Thursday.

2

^__________

^{Woodbury Wilderness Area}

Eric had lived in Ohio most of his life. His mother had moved there with him when she divorced his father, who, she said, was lazy and had no ambition. Now, hiking north from Wolf Creek Wilderness Area, over hills and through forest, following as close to roads as he dared, Ohio was unfamiliar.

He had never noticed how hilly it was or how green the leaves shined as they first sprouted. He had never noticed the sound of water or the welcome sight of the sun as it peered occasionally through the clouds. He had never noticed how wild it was.

He had also never known how difficult hiking could be. The forest was not made for humans. After being pricked and scratched by many thorns, he learned to avoid plants as best he could. It was best to disturb nothing. But it was tiresome and painful. He wondered if it would be better to take the road and hide when he heard any motorized vehicle. But all it would take was one mistake. It was far too risky.

By day, he moved north and avoided cities, towns, even houses, though this could not last forever. He would need food.

Moving north, Eric crossed route 37. There were deer there, browsing by the road. Wrecked cars were overturned to the side of the road where the military had plowed them aside in the last weeks before they too vanished. Eric crawled inside a car or two to search for food, but he found nothing.

At night, he boiled beans over his fire. He listened to the forest. His mother had said there were preachers in the hills who still charmed snakes and ate squirrels. Eric supposed they were all dead now. The beans were hard, but he was too hungry to care.

This was not Ohio to him anymore. What did it mean anymore to be Ohio? There was nothing but forest and lakes and empty roads lined with wrecks. In school, Eric learned Ohio was an Iroquois word. It meant “big river.”

Maybe it was that again, a land of forests and meadows, cut through by rivers.

Wild.

^_

Eric sat in the woods and listened to the silence. It was evening. His feet pounded with pain. Somewhere there was a crashing sound and then a high-pitched yowl. Like a cat, maybe. The silence came back then. Eric watched the last light of the sun, and felt his heart fall with it. There would be that silence soon, and the darkness that flooded the world.

Night was terrible.

^_

His legs were ligaments of bright pain. His shoulders burned. Blood still seeped from his blistered feet. He thought it would get better over the days, but he was wrong.

Many times he had to stop, breathing very hard, wiping sweat from his face, and gritting his teeth to keep from crying. When the pain was worse, when his whole body seemed to throb with fatigue and pain, his goal seemed impossible. Maine seemed another planet.

He remembered climbing onto the plane when he was a child. Sitting in comfortable seats. Soaring a mile over brambles and thorns and fallen trees. Eating peanuts. Then, mere hours later, landing with a soft thump in Portland.

Eric had never felt his body so acutely. He hated it.

It was difficult, moving through the forest, climbing hills, scrabbling down again, moving slow to avoid the roads, and crouching in nervous silence whenever he heard a sound. He never thought it would be this hard.

His plan was ridiculous. He could never make it to Maine. He was too fat and weak. It was so far away. It was over one thousand miles.

1,000 miles.

He was lucky to hike 8 in one day.

^_

Eric needed to avoid Zanesville. Fearing the gangs that were sure to be there, he studied his map. Eric moved his finger up the Muskingum River as it curved around the forests. At first, he planned to cross the river far south of Zanesville, at a town called Duncan Falls. He wasn’t looking forward to crossing the bridge there. He would be exposed. Then he saw that if he crossed there, he would only have to cross again to get to Woodbury. Instead, he decided to pass Zanesville far to the west. He would still have to cross the Licking. To do that, he would be forced to enter Zanesville.

Eric folded his map and put it in a plastic bag. He remembered the day he had found the map. His mother was still alive then. He went to the local gas station as he normally did. There was hardly anything left that day. No more candy, no more bread, no more rice, no more chips. A few cans of soup and a pack or two of noodles. He had cried because he didn’t know what to do. He had sat down and cried. When he finally looked up and wiped his eyes, the first thing he saw was fluttering paper. Maps. He took them home with the noodles. That night his mother began wandering the house, and he had to lock her inside her room. It was only a matter of time then. He spent his days planning, studying maps.

Now Eric groaned as he lifted himself to his feet. It had seemed simple then, tracing lines on a map. Now, if he was not careful, he would be lost in a dead world. His vision blurred and his heart sped up. The world was gone and none of the lines on his map mattered anymore. He was nobody in a land of nowhere.

There was no map for that.

^_

The days were cold and gusty. The rain came in quick, frigid showers. Eric tramped north, his backpack heavy on him.

In late afternoon, when he could walk no more, when the pain won, he found a high place, dry and out of sight. He built a fire and boiled water to drink. He wouldn’t drink any water that hadn’t been boiled for thirty minutes. He ate cold beans from the previous day. Then he lay down and watched the gray sky. He listened to the birds.

If there was enough light, he read.

Sometimes, he took out a little leather pouch. From it he poured crystalline dice, in all of the Pythagorean shapes. There were pyramids and diamonds and cubes and dodecahedrons. He separated them. He rolled them on the surface of his book.

At night, he often woke up clutching at the cramps in his legs and crying out. He hated the sound of his own voice. He seemed to hear it aching out over the distances, alerting everything and everyone that he was here.

He was weak and cowardly.

^_

Zanesville seemed huge to him. The southern end was smoking. Sometimes he heard distant engines, roaring, or a crack of gunfire. The gangs were there, as he feared. He had planned to follow the 70 over the bridge and then follow the Licking River north until he was far enough away from Zanesville, and then turn northeast again. Now that he was close to the city, he didn’t want to get any closer. Even if the gangs didn’t shoot him outright, Eric would not survive among them. He knew it.

At school, they had called him Porko, Chubs, Tits, Fag, and Dump Truck, among others. He was pinched, slapped, pushed, and punched with impunity. The worse were the ones in groups, who had people to impress. Eric knew what he could expect from gangs. Except now they would be in control. Now he would have nowhere to hide.

Eric crossed the 70. A military jeep was on its side. A dog was there, chewing on a bone. When it saw him, it growled but then grabbed the bone and trotted away toward the city. Eric looked toward Zanesville and the gray ribbon of the Licking River and thought how quickly he could cross. If he could only summon the courage. But he could not. He continued north.

He hadn’t gone far when he heard the engines. He ducked down in the wet grass and looked back to the 70. Several cars roared past. Eric swallowed. If he had tried to cross, they would have caught him. Maybe they would’ve shot him, thinking he was a Zombie. Maybe they would have taken him alive.

Either way.

When he reached the Licking, Eric followed it upstream until he found a boat. It was an old aluminum canoe. He pushed it into the cold river, and then carefully climbed in. He had only been in a canoe a few times before in his life, all with his father. Being exposed on the river was unpleasant, so he crossed as quickly as he could, although he loved the feeling of gliding on the water.

He hiked as quickly as he could north, away from the smoking city and into the woods.

^_

Eric had no more food. He came to a town named Dresden. He sat by the side of the road and listened carefully, but he could hear no evidence that anyone was there. He wanted to keep moving. He wanted to keep in the forests. But his stomach hurt now. All he could think about was food. Somewhere in the town, there was a house that had food in it. Beef stew, chicken noodle soup, spaghetti. The possibilities made him shake with anticipation.

He was about to climb up to his feet and go into town when he heard a clicking sound. Eric looked up to see an old man with a shotgun pointed at him.

“Don’t shoot!” Eric cried. “Don’t shoot!” He put his hands up like he’d seen in the movies.

The old man studied him and then lowered his shotgun. “Well, you’re not a Zombie,” he said.

“I’m not a Zombie,” Eric asserted.

“That’s what I said,” the man said. He reached out a hand and smiled. “Name’s Charlie.”

“Eric.” He got to his feet with effort and then shook the man’s hand.

“You look about as dirty as a Zombie though,” he said. “You hungry?”

“Yeah,” said Eric. It made him ashamed somehow.

“Come on then.”

Charlie was a short, grizzly man with gray hair and beard. He wore a bright red, plaid hunting jacket and jeans. He had a round, happy face, and long wrinkles at the corner of his eyes. He also wore rectangular glasses. He looked like Santa Claus on a hunting trip.

Charlie led him away from the town. He went down to the forest. There was an old cabin there. Smoke came from the chimney. Charlie led him inside. The cabin walls were lined with shelves of books. The cabin was warmed by a flickering fireplace. Eric had been frightened, but the warmth, the promise of food, and the sight of so many books comforted him. Charlie motioned him to sit at a table. Eric put down his backpack and sat down. It was the first time he had sat in a chair for days. It felt wonderful.

“I’ve got some stew on,” Charlie said. “Wash up first.” He motioned him toward the back of the cabin where there was a large steel basin of water. Nearby was a bar of soap. Eric washed his face and hands and then rinsed his hair. When he came back to the table, the stew was ready. Potatoes and corn and beef. Eric sat down and slurped it up hungrily, though he kept an eye on the man, who sat by the fire with a book and pretended to ignore him.

Eric ate, feeling the comforting cold of the pistol stuck in his pants.

^_

After Eric ate, he sat by the fire. Charlie put his book on his knee and started talking.

Charlie told him he had once been the town librarian. “I was an expert on Zane Grey,” he said. “Always thought I’d write a book on him.” After the Vaca B struck, he moved out of the town. He said this old shack had been his grandfather’s, and he never knew what to do with it until now. “Sure came in handy, though,” he said. “I stayed in town as long I could to help, but it got bad. At first, there was just people helping people, but then most everyone died. There weren’t no one to help anymore but ourselves. The gangs went bad.”

“I seen it too,” Eric said. “They shoot people.”

“They do worse than that,” Charlie said.

Eric swallowed, but didn’t say anything. Charlie studied him, so Eric knew it was his turn. “My Mom died of the worm,” he said.

“She crack?” he asked.

“No,” Eric answered. “She just died after a while. When she died, I knew I had to do something. I decided to move somewhere far away from the cities. Far away from gangs.”

“So you came here?” Charlie laughed. He had a deep, kind laugh.

“No,” Eric said. “I’m only passing through. I’m going to Maine.”

“Maine?”

Eric told him about his plan. He spread out his map and showed Charlie the route he would take. The island. The lake that would freeze over during the winter and the frigid nights that would freeze any Zombies solid. How there were no cities near there. How the gangs would ignore them and stay in the cities. Charlie listened and then studied him for a moment, quietly.

“You’re not a fool, are you, Eric?”

“I hope not.”

Charlie thought in silence for a while. The fire popped and snapped. “There’ll be a lot of work to do when you get there. You’ll only have a couple months before winter.” Charlie paused again. “It’s a good idea,” he said finally. “The Snakes get more active here all the time.” He studied Eric.

“You should come with me,” Eric said suddenly. The offer surprised him. It was a risk, but being alone was as bad as the fear and pain.

“I just might,” Charlie responded. “I just might. In the meantime, how about some apple pie?”

Eric smiled.

^_

Eric was getting water when the gang came. He had been thinking of how nice it was to talk to someone and hoping that Charlie would come with him when he heard the growling and barking of their engines. He dropped the bucket of water and huffed to the top of a hill where he dove to the ground. His heart beat so loud he could hardly hear the voices coming from Charlie’s shack.

He took out his gun and crawled slowly to the top of the hill through the leaves. Below him, in front of the shack, he could see three men and a woman climb out of a truck. There was a crude red snake painted on the truck. Charlie stood at the door of his shack with his shotgun. One of the men laughed and pointed, and then the others laughed too.

“This is my place,” Charlie said. “What’s here is mine.”

The woman threw up her hands and turned around, but one man stepped forward.

He might have said something. Eric couldn’t hear. He only heard the gun shot. Charlie stumbled back. His shotgun fell out of his hands. The woman screamed, “Don’t!” But the other men lifted pistols and shot. There were a dozen shots, maybe more.

Charlie collapsed. One of the men and the woman went to him, but the others ran into the shack, jumping or stepping over his body. They came out later with bags of food. The woman was crying over Charlie. They had to tug her to her feet. The other man, who had shot Charlie, he had to be pulled away too.

Then they left. The sound of their truck engine receded into the distance.

Eric waited. His hand shook. What if they were coming back for more of Charlie’s food? If they found him, he’d be shot too. Eric gripped the pistol. He’d never shot a gun before, he wouldn’t be able to defend himself. He should just leave, he decided.

But his backpack was there, in the house. His map. His calendar. His book on wilderness survival.

Eric reluctantly crept down to the shack. He didn’t look at Charlie as he stepped over him to get in the shack. He found his backpack and then looked around. He saw a can of beans on the floor, and he took that. He was on his way out when he grabbed a book from the shelf, not knowing why he did it. When he got back to the porch, he heard a rattling sound and froze, his hand on his gun.

It was Charlie, breathing through blood. Eric looked at him. One of the bullets had hit his cheekbone and took half his face off. Blood ran from his face and mouth, and over his exposed white bones where it looked like wine. Blood pooled underneath him, turning dark and thick.

Charlie wasn’t dead though. He was tough. He couldn’t say anything, but his eyes were blinking and moving. Eric waited. He bent over and put a hand on Charlie’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” Eric said. He waited until Charlie didn’t breathe anymore.

After Charlie died, Eric threw on his backpack. He had to keep moving.

That night, miles north from Charlie’s body, Eric sat by his fire. He quietly opened the book he had taken from Charlie’s private library. It was David Copperfield by Charles Dickens.

He read the opening sentence. He broke down into sobs for a long while.

^_

He dreamt he was young again. He was in his basement, at the table that teetered annoyingly. Bill and Andy were arguing about vorpal weapons. Glenn listened with an enigmatic, wide smile on his face.

“Having a sword that sharp is retarded!” Bill argued. “What’s to keep it from cutting off your own arm?”

“Presumably,” Andy said, arching his eyebrows, “you’re a fighter, and, as a trained fighter, you have undergone extensive martial training in all weapons. A very sharp sword could only be a boon for such a highly trained warrior. Chefs have very sharp knives, but they rarely cut off their own finger.”

“Cutting up potatoes is not like the chaos of battle, dumbass!”

“Accidents are unavoidable in the horror of war,” Andy conceded. “But I would rather suffer minor lacerations by my fellow warrior than be torn apart by zombies or burnt to a cinder by an ancient red dragon.”

“Minor lacerations!” cried Andy. “A vorpal weapon will take off your friggin’ arms!”

“I’ll bite your legs off, you pansy!” interrupted Glenn. They erupted into hoots of laughter.

His mother came down the stairs with a platter of chocolate cookies with white chocolate chips, his favorite. She tussled his hair. He didn’t notice when she left. Under the table, Jessica took his hand. She looked at him and smiled, her wide, round face strangely free of acne.

Eric squeezed her hand and smiled back.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s get started.” He took out the adventure he had been writing off and on for a year. It was called “The Village of the Living Dead.”

When he looked over the screen that hid his dice from the players, all his friends were dead. Jessica stared at him through the hole where the bullet had blown out her eye. Black ooze ran down her cheek.

Eric woke up, breathing hard and irregularly, like his body had forgotten the rhythm of living. He stumbled out of his tent and panted over the red hot coals of his fire. “Oh shit,” he mumbled. “Shit.” Sweat dripped from his face. He fumbled for his pistol and held it in his lap. “Shit,” he said. “Oh god.” Finally the panic receded.

But Eric would not sleep again that night.

He waited until the sun rose, watched the brilliant pink and reds spread over the wooded landscape, listened to the birds awake and cry into the light. When it was bright enough to move north, he did, grateful for the movement in his limbs.

But even so. It was a long time before the fear left him.

^_

Eric’s compass was foggy. Water had seeped inside it, and now it was difficult to read. His knife, which he used for practically everything, was getting dull. His tent leaked. After he ate Charlie’s beans, he had no more food. Now he sat on a ridge overlooking a town. It was nothing more than a few houses crowded around a crossroads. Remembering the gang and the red snake painted on the side of the truck, Eric was hesitant and fearful.

It was his stomach, in the end, who made the most persuasive argument.

Eric crept down toward the houses, pistol in his hand. He wouldn’t make Charlie’s mistake. He wouldn’t try to talk to them, he would shoot.

It wasn’t hard to pick out the right building. There was a faded old beer sign out front. It read, “One Stop.” Eric crouched and listened, but he heard nothing but the wind clapping up against the houses windows and rattling loose roofing. Eric looked cautiously up and down the road, but there was nothing. Finally, his heart beating, he walked up the steps to the store. When he opened the door, little bells rang. The sound was so loud, a crow squawked in response.

Eric stepped inside, holding out his pistol. Inside, there were several sounds he hadn’t heard from outside. Scraping, bumping, shuffling. Eric couldn’t tell if there was a window open and the wind was blowing through old papers, or if there was someone in there. He crouched down and moved as quietly as he could. But it was hard for someone like him to move stealthily. He seemed to make a lot of noise.

Then he saw her. An old woman with the paper at the counter of the store. She was looking at a paper. The headline read PARIS EVACUATED. It had a picture of the Eiffel Tower on the front. The woman was staring at the page, but Eric could see she wasn’t reading. Her face was yellow and blue. Her eyes were shrunk and black. Her lips had pulled back so that her teeth made a garish smile. Half of her hair was missing and her scalp had been scratched away on one side so that her skull gleamed underneath.

“Hello.”

Eric whirled around at the voice behind him, and, seeing images of the Snake gang, he brought up his pistol and fired. The sound made him close his eyes in shock, and he stumbled back.

When he opened his eyes to shoot again, he saw that his pistol was pointing at a little girl. She was shaking and crying and holding out her hands like she could stop a bullet.

Eric made a strangled sound and dropped his gun where it clattered on the floor. He stumbled toward the girl, and fell to his knees loudly. “Did I shoot you? Did I shoot you?”

“Please don’t shoot me!” she cried.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t know!” Eric went to grab her, but she screamed and stumbled back. “I’m so sorry!” he said. “Are you hurt? Please tell me if I hurt you!”

The girl didn’t respond, but sat down and cried. When Eric tried to approach her, she screamed. Eric shook with fear and guilt. He waited on the floor there with her. The little girl couldn’t have been more than six or seven years old. She was dressed in a pair of purple overalls and a pink sweatshirt with a puffy heart on it. They were filthy with stains. She had pink ribbons in her dark, frizzy hair, tied clumsily. She sat hugging her legs, with her head tucked between her knees. Eric didn’t dare come near her. He could only wait.

After nearly a half hour of silent crying and shaking, she started to calm. Finally, her head still between her knees, her muffled voice sounded. “I’m hungry,” she said.

Eric nodded. “I’ll find something, okay?” She didn’t respond, so Eric pushed himself with effort to his feet. Even after the gunshot, the Zombie at the counter had not moved but kept studying her newspaper. Eric ignored her and walked up and down the aisles. Then he saw in the corner of the store, a blanket and a nest of t-shirts. Around it were bags of rice. The little girl had been eating it raw. There were also dented cans of food around a hammer. Eric took off his backpack and began putting the food into them. Then he took a can of chili, and took out his can opener. He went back to the girl, and slid the food toward her. She didn’t look at him but snatched the food, and began to eat it with her fingers.

“I didn’t mean to shoot at you,” Eric said softly. “I’m really, really sorry. I was scared.”

The little girl kept eating. When she was done, she ran her finger inside the can and licked it clean.

“Don’t cut yourself,” Eric warned. “Be careful now.”

“Okay,” she mumbled. Eric took out his canteen and poured some water in the can. The little girl drank it and then held it out again. Eric gave her more water. She drank that too. Finally she put the can aside and looked at him.

“My name is Eric,” he said.

“I’m Birdie,” the little girl said. “Are you going to be my friend?”

“Yes,” Eric said. “Yes, Birdie, I’d like to be your friend.”

^_

Eric pushed the squiggly worm on the fish hook. Birdie made a face, watching the twisting worm on the hook.

At the general store where he had nearly shot Birdie, he found fish hooks, fishing line, and sinkers. Using his survival knife, he had cut a limb from a maple. Now it was his fishing pole. Eric had only fished twice before in his life, both times with his father. He had cried when his father slapped a fish’s head against the boat, killing it. “For crissakes,” his father had hissed. “Don’t be such a pussy.”

Eric dropped the line into the little brook and sat down to wait. He wasn’t sure what else to do. Birdie sat down next to him and watched the water.

Birdie had not hesitated to come with him. She just picked up a battered, faded denim backpack and followed him. She was careful at first and wouldn’t come near him. Eric thought it would be difficult to keep her moving, but she never complained and she never lagged behind. After several hours, she walked beside him. She didn’t say much. Once she said, “I was alone for a long time.” A few hours later, she said, “I’m glad you came.” Otherwise, Birdie seemed to occupy herself with her surroundings. She did so carefully, thoughtfully, with hardly no childish joy. She was careful and reflective, like someone three times her age.

Eric felt no tug of the line that said a fish had taken the bait. He pulled the line out finally and gave up. The worm was pink, soggy, and limp.

Birdie followed him as he picked a place to camp. When Eric went to get wood for the fire, Birdie helped without being asked, and when he began cooking their meal of rice and canned chicken, Birdie opened the small can of chicken while he put the rice and water on to boil. When it was done, they both ate in silent appreciation. Salty, greasy and smooth, the meal was the best Eric had tasted in weeks.

They did not speak after the meal either, but Birdie sat close to him while she poked at the fire. It was good to have her there. He didn’t want to ask her about her life before the Vaca B. He didn’t want to know what she’d suffered to be next to him. He didn’t want to tell her about his life either.

It didn’t matter anymore. That was what the silence was saying. None of that mattered. All the past did was hurt.

^_

It was windy the morning they arrived at Woodbury Wilderness Area.

They walked over the green fields and past the little, blue ponds to copses of trees and bushes. The leaves had sprouted green and lush. Rolling clouds passed through, bursting with rain showers before moving on, leaving a bright, fresh sun. Eric and Birdie set up their camp by a pond rippled by gusts of wind. Birdie tried fishing again while Eric cleaned and bandaged his feet, which were painful, sore, and bleeding.

Using his knife, Eric cut down brush to fashion a protective wind break for his tent. Birdie helped him start a fire. It crackled and spat under their pan of steaming water. While they ate, Eric told Birdie about Maine. How beautiful it was. How the air smelled like pine and fresh water. How the loons sounded over the waters of the lake. How they would be safe there on the island.

They watched deer browse in the field opposite them. There were about twenty of them, calm and peaceful. Everything was quiet as the sun began to set.

Eric took aspirin for his pain, and then they crawled into the tent, exhausted. Birdie followed him in.

“You’ll see, Birdie,” he told her in the enclosed darkness of the tent. “We’ll be safe on the island. No one will bother us there. No Zombies, no gangs. No one.”

Outside, the wind blew in gusts, flapping their tent. There were distant gunshots.

3

^__________

^Wooster

The cold wind bit at them in the morning. They shivered as they packed up their tent. When they began walking north, Eric noticed a red spot on Birdie’s sock.

“What’s wrong, Birdie?”

“Huh?”

“Your foot.” Eric pointed.

Birdie shrugged but sat down and took off her sneaker. Eric felt a pain in his heart at the sight of the blood.

“Why didn’t you tell me your foot hurt?”

Birdie shrugged.

“I know you’re a tough girl,” Eric said. “But you need to let me know if you’re in pain. Things like this can be dangerous.” Eric looked her in the eye. “Okay?”

“Okay,” she said.

He took off her socks. Her feet were blistered and bleeding. After washing them as best he could, Eric bandaged them. It wasn’t too bad. He had caught it in time. When he was done bandaging her, he put his hand on her shoulder.

“We can go slow for a while,” he said.

“I’m all right, Eric,” she said defiantly and got back up. “I can go as fast as you can.”

“I know you can, Birdie.”

Eric went slower all the same.

^_

Moving north, they came to a large creek and followed it north. Eric told Birdie he thought it was called the Killbuck, but it was hard to be sure. His map wasn’t clear.

Eric and Birdie kept to the forest when they could, but kept the road in sight. Roads were the only way that Eric could be sure he was going in the right direction. As they moved north, more signs began to have SNAKES spray painted on them.

Eric saw a person walking on the road once, but he could tell, even from far away, that whoever it was was no longer living. It had a way of walking that was clumsy and awkward. No human walked like that. The worm had rooted into its brain. It was nothing more than walking corpse.

Eric and Birdie crept back into the hills and forests and worked their way north, trying to keep clear from the roads.

They came to a very small town called Blissfield. There were only a few houses. A burned out truck decayed in the middle of the street. One of the houses had a red snake painted on it. Nothing moved in the town.

“Wait here,” Eric whispered to Birdie. “I have to see if there’s food there.”

Eric got up, but Birdie clutched his hand. “No,” she said. “I’m coming too.”

“Birdie,” Eric hissed. “It’s dangerous down there!”

“It’s dangerous every where,” she said.

She was right. “Okay, but stay close and don’t wander off.”

They went into the town.

It was quiet in the houses. Most of them were empty. They looked like they’d been abandoned for years. Squirrels, raccoons, and foxes had moved in. They had built nests all over the houses, and they scurried away when they came near. In a few, they found a couple cans of food, corn, beans, and, in one, a small can of shrimp. In one room, Eric found a box of crayons and put it in his bag with a notebook he found in the closet.

Soon afterward, Eric got a bad feeling. He didn’t like staying in these places for too long. He took what they had found and crept north out of town where the Killbuck slid past. They crossed a bridge across it and kept moving north.

The feeling wouldn’t leave Eric. He kept Birdie close to him and kept looking over his shoulder. Finally he couldn’t stand it, and they climbed up a hill into the woods to eat.

Eric kept watching around him, his hand on his gun.

^_

Eric and Birdie moved north at a greater pace. Eric still felt nervous. He was angry too, even if there wasn’t a target for his anger. He couldn’t let anything happen to Birdie. She was his responsibility now. He hated to think what might happen to a little girl in the wrong sort of gang. Birdie needed him. He kept looking over to her in concern. He felt fear like a knot in his throat.

The whistling sound came to him suddenly. He stopped abruptly, putting his arm in front of Birdie. “Shh!” he hissed. Birdie crouched near him. Eric crept toward the sound, motioning Birdie to wait. He pulled out his pistol. He could feel his heart beat rapidly in his chest, almost painfully. Peering from around a tree, he saw a lean figure against the Killbuck creek, fishing. It was a young woman, not much older than him, Eric figured. As he watched, her voice rose up around him.

“Sail away, sail away, sail away!” she sang.

It was a very popular song, right before the end. Eric relaxed his grip on the pistol. He was ashamed he pointed it at her. She pulled back suddenly, and her pole made an arc over the water. She gave a cry of triumph and, wrapping her hand around the line, dragged a fish on the bank. She took a club and brought it down upon the fish’s head, ceasing its struggle upon the shore.

Perhaps he made a sound. He was never sure. Her head snapped toward him suddenly, and without a doubt, she saw him, a fat kid with a gun. Eric froze. For an instant they stared at each other without moving or making a sound. And then her hand flashed and then glittered, holding a long, slim knife.

Eric took a step back and lifted up his pistol.

“This is my fish!” she cried. “Back off!”

“I don’t want your fish,” he replied. “We just heard you singing and—”

“We?” The young woman paled and glanced around her.

“Just me and one other person,” Eric said, unhappy he’d even mentioned Birdie.

“What do you want?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I was just, just looking. I thought you might be a part of a gang.”

“Gang?” The woman stood up and breathed out a puff of air. “Hardly. Where’s the other guy? Hiding?”

“Yes,” Eric said.

“Tell him to come out.”

“No.”

They stood and looked at each other. The young woman was probably only a year or two older than him. Her hair was yellow like corn, tied back in a pony tail. She was slim and short, her face round, with a short, squat nose. Like them, she was very dirty. She had on a jean jacket and green pants. He didn’t want her to know about Birdie. If it was just him and a little girl, maybe she would steal all their stuff and leave them out here with nothing. She looked like she’d used that knife before.

“Hi.” The both of them turned. “My name is Birdie,” Birdie said. She waved.

The effect on the young woman was instantaneous. She smiled and lowered her knife immediately. “Hello Birdie,” she said. “My name is Sarah Ross.” She glanced over to Eric. “Would you like to come and share this fish with us?”

Just then another figure strode to them. He was tall and lean, with bright red hair. His face was smothered by freckles. He looked at Eric and grimaced.

“Who the fuck are these jokers?” he asked, casually waving a gun toward Eric and Birdie.

^_

At the shore of the Killbuck, Sarah cooked the fish with Birdie’s help. After the fish had fried, Sarah stripped the flesh from the bones, added some water, a measure of powdered milk, wrinkled potatoes and a can of corn. Taking a plastic bag from her backpack, she retrieved a shaker of salt and pepper and vigorously shook them both into the pot. She also sprinkled some other herb into it. Birdie stirred it while it cooked.

It was fish chowder. Real fish chowder.

When Sarah served it to them in tin cups, Eric could hardly believe what he was holding. For weeks, he had eaten plain rice and canned beans. Birdie sat down next to him and they both spooned the chowder into their mouths.

It was the best meal Eric had ever eaten.

^_

They had just finished eating when the redhead returned. He had left angrily when Sarah invited them to dinner, stomping and swearing into the woods. His name was Brad. “How was dinner?” he asked, sitting down beside them. “Food that you ain’t worked for always tastes best, don’t it?”

Eric looked away, ashamed of himself. It was true. They had contributed nothing to the meal.

“Brad, please,” Sarah said.

“Sarah, please,” he returned. “We can’t go feeding every fuck nugget who comes waltzing by.”

“I’m not a fuck nugget,” Birdie murmured.

Brad didn’t respond to her. “We can’t be giving away our food willy nilly to every Joe, Bob, and Mary Jane that comes around, that’s all I’m saying.” He spooned some chowder in his mouth. “You know what I’m saying, don’t you?” Brad asked to Eric. “You got to feed this kid, right? Would you give us a meal for nothing?”

Eric shrugged. He liked to think he would, but he wasn’t sure.

“She’s just a little girl, Brad,” Sarah said.

“This ain’t the world it used to be,” Brad said, as if Sarah had said nothing. “We can’t be the people we once were. We can’t be nice and charitable or we’ll be nice and dead. I thought you learned that.”

“I know what the world is, Brad,” Sarah said. “I don’t need you to tell me. There’s plenty of fish in the creek. We can afford to share.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Brad said angrily. “We can’t afford to share. We can’t ever afford to share. Ever.”

They were quiet. The only sound was Brad, slurping up the chowder. After he finished and sighed, he put down his cup on a nearby stone, where it fell, clattering tinnily. He didn’t say anything more but gazed into the growing darkness of the forest. The sun was turning orange in the sky.

“We made it another day,” said Sarah, sitting back, and stretching her legs out.

Eric felt like an intruder because of Brad’s stiff, angry posture. Birdie sidled closer to him and clasped his hand. Eric relaxed and remembered something. He took out his backpack, and then took out some materials, laying it out in front of Birdie.

“Do you like to draw?” he asked.

“Oh!” she cried, “I love to draw!” Birdie dove on the crayons and paper and, eyes sparkling, set to drawing. Sarah smiled, watching her. Only Brad seemed untouched. He glared over at her.

“Where’d you find her?” he asked. “She ain’t your family, that’s obvious.”

“At a store further south,” Eric answered.

“He almost shot me,” Birdie said, drawing intensely. Eric blushed so furiously that his eyes glistened with wetness.

Brad laughed. “Afraid of black people much?”

“No,” Eric responded quickly. “I didn’t even see her before I shot.”

“Good thing you didn’t shoot her little head right off,” Brad said. “Wouldn’t that have been something?”

Eric paled and looked down at his hands. It made him sick to think about it.

“Don’t be an asshole, Brad,” Sarah said. Brad chuckled a little, as if he enjoyed being called an asshole, and then shrugged and turned back to the forest. Sarah turned back to the fire and poked at it with her stick. “Where are you from?” she asked.

Eric told most of the story. Beginning with the death of his mother, he told how he had formed a plan, and then found maps and camping supplies and emergency survival kits, and then moved north. He told them about Charlie’s murder and then finding Birdie. “That’s about it,” he finished. “I hope to be in Maine by September, so I can have time to get ready for winter.”

“You’re going to walk to Maine?” Brad laughed. “Look at you! You’re too fat to walk all that way. You’ll fucking die of a heart attack before you get out of Ohio!”

“I have to try,” Eric said timidly.

“Why don’t you just get a car and drive?” Brad asked. “Then you might have a chance.”

“Probably for the same reason we don’t have a car,” Sarah said. “Too much attention. You might as well just join the Snakes. I think it’s a great idea.” She thought about it, and then turned to Eric. “Actually, I think it’s a brilliant idea.”

Brad made a hissing sound, but then settled back. “Winter will freeze Zombies,” he acceded. “Sometimes on cloudy, cold days, they can hardly move. I’ve seen it. I think they’re cold blooded, like lizards. They need the sun to warm up their muscles.”

Eric nodded. “I think the Vaca B causes the body to shut down. That’s why they can live so long without eating, I think. Snakes can live months on one meal.”

“Winter is a good idea,” Brad repeated. “We were moving south. I figured it would be best to go somewhere warm all the time, so we wouldn’t have to worry about freezing to death. But maybe getting killed by a cracked Zombie is the thing to worry about.” He sat up.

“Maybe,” Sarah began. “Maybe we could come with you?”

They both looked at him. Eric thought about it. He didn’t like or trust Brad, but Sarah could fish and she was a good cook. They needed that. Besides, Brad seemed tough and mean. Eric would feel better with him around. He tapped Birdie on the shoulder.

“Birdie,” he said. “Do you think we should let them come with us?”

For her response, she held up her drawing. It was a picture of multicolored stick people, holding hands beneath a blazing sun. There were four of them, and in the background was a lake. In the lake was the island. It was decided.

“Okay,” Eric said. “We go together.”

^_

Over the crackling fire, Brad told Eric his story. Birdie was curled up against him, her dark hair in angry snarls. She’d fallen asleep with a crayon in her hand. Sarah sat on the opposite end of the fire, listening while Brad spoke.

“After the Vaca B came to Wooster,” he began, “things went bad quickly. Everyone I knew was either dead or dying. I was trying to find some food one day when a cracked Zombie came out of nowhere.” Brad made an expanding gesture with his hands. “It was the Snakes, they saved me. Blew off that Zombie’s head with a shotgun. I ended up joining them. It seemed the safest thing to do. They had a king, called him the King Cobra. He said we were supposed to repopulate the earth. It was our job.”

Sarah interrupted then. “He was crazy,” she said. “King Cobra had the Snakes gather girls into a compound.”

“Like a warehouse,” Brad offered.

“Like a prison. They were there just to,” Sarah said. “You know.”

“Fuck,” Brad said helpfully. “King Cobra decided who had earned the right to women every day.”

“They came in at night,” Sarah said. “They picked them out like they were dogs.”

“I was never one of them to go to the warehouse,” Brad said. “I was on Zombie round up. We put Zombies into trucks and drove them out to Lake Chippewa. When those Zombies got a good look at that water, they just walked in and drown. You know how the worm makes people crazy for water. Then we’d drag them out and burn them in great pits. King Cobra said we were cleansing the world.”

Sarah made a hissing sound. “I hate the sound of his name,” she said.

“What happened to make you leave?” asked Eric. These kind of stories were exactly the reason he was trying to avoid gangs.

“One day,” Brad began in a reluctant tone. “One day we went down to the lake with a truck load of Zombies in the back. It was me, Harry, Paul, and this kid, Willie. Willie weren’t more than thirteen, I think. He was a good kid. Never did anything to anyone.” Here Brad faltered and then cleared his throat. “Well, we got down to the lake and let the Zombies out. Paul and Harry were laughing as they all lurched into the water. The sight of all them men and women just walking to their deaths, it made your skin crawl. When they were all dead, we dragged their bodies out of the water. Paul got on the bucket loader, and we put the dead Zombies in the pit to burn. Me and Willie were down by the lake, dragging the bodies on shore when Willie found it.

“It was a silver gun with gold designs. It shined in Willie’s hand. Willie’s eyes shined too. We were making quite a noise over that gun, so Paul and Harry came down to see. Willie showed them the gun. Then Harry held out his hand and said, ‘Give it here.’ You could tell by how he said it that Willie wouldn’t ever see that gun again. So Willie said to him, ‘It’s my gun, I found it. Finders keepers.’ I remember he said that because it was like what a kid would say on a playground. Same tone and everything. ‘I’m the boss here,’ said Harry. ‘Now give it over!’ But Willie stuck the gun in his pants instead. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You ain’t the boss of me. There ain’t no bosses no more.’

“Willie was wrong though. There are still bosses. Harry kind of nodded at Paul and Paul, who was this big, quiet guy, he grabbed Willie from behind. Then Harry started beating on Willie. I wanted to say something, but they were big guys. They beat him like he was a full grown man. They beat him bloody and took the gun from him. Then they laughed and were walking away when Willie found some strength. He shouted at them, ‘You better sleep with one eye open, you fuckers! This ain’t over!’ He said it like a kid. You know how kids say those things. They don’t mean it.

“But Harry turned around and his face was dark like I never seen a face before. He took out a knife and walked back to Willie. Willie tried to move away, but Harry stuck his knee into his back and just sawed at Willie’s neck with that knife. Sawed at it like Willie was a piece of wood. I heard him gurgle and die. ‘Now what you going to do?’ That’s what Harry said to poor Willie.

“Then Paul made a grab at me. I forgot I was even there. It was like a nightmare, I couldn’t hardly believe what I saw. I knew I had to run. The King Cobra didn’t like Snakes hurting each other. He had people thrown down into this narrow pit called the Pipe for it. They stayed down there until they died. Harry and Paul wouldn’t want no witnesses. I was lucky to get away. I was lighter on my feet than those fuckers. Hope they rot in hell.”

Eric swallowed through a dry throat. He’d come close to getting caught by the Snakes.

It was a long silence. The fire crackling. Brad staring into it. Sarah looking at her hands. Eric imagined Willie and seemed to feel Harry’s knee hard on his back and the cold knife pressing into his neck. They all seemed to feel the touch of death, just at the edge of the light, just where the darkness began, out there among the lakes and forests where the shadows waited.

^_

“Fuck it,” Brad said, throwing some grass into the fire. “I’m going to sleep.” He stood up and put out his hand to Eric. Eric blinked at it for a second before he realized that Brad wanted to shake hands. Then he took it quickly. Brad’s handshake was firm and painful, but Eric hid the pain. “Don’t mind me if I mouth off once in a while,” he said. “That’s how I am.” Eric watched him leave, out into the forest where he had set his tent, away from everyone.

“It’s true,” Sarah said after the sound of Brad’s walking through the forest had subsided. “He just can’t control his mouth.”

Eric thought about it. It was strange to think they had only known each other for a day. It seemed much longer. “How about you?” Eric asked to Sarah.

Sarah shrugged, looking into the fire. “I was a girl in high school with a mother and father and two little brothers.” She didn’t look at him, but at the fire where all her memories seemed to kindle and burn in the fire. “Now I’m a woman and I’m alone.”

“We’re not alone,” Eric said after a while.

Sarah didn’t answer. She continued to look into the fire, the red flickering light reflecting in her eyes as if all her past burned there, to cinders.

^_

Moving north again, the four of them trekked through bushes and forest. Brad and Sarah kept a much faster pace than Eric had. He puffed and stumbled after them as best he could. Birdie, her feet still sore, did her best as well, and though her face was pinched in pain, she never cried or whined.

They agreed to move around the east of Wooster. Brad said he knew how to avoid the Snakes. They would be able to get to Cuyahoga Valley very soon. But at the pace they were moving, Eric, sweating and breathing hard, wasn’t sure he would make it without collapsing in exhaustion, but he would not ask Brad to slow or to stop. He didn’t care how much it hurt.

Brad scouted ahead. He had broken off a branch and used it as a walking stick. He would stop at the crest of a hill and listen while the rest of them caught up with him.  Eric kept having a distant memory. When he was very young, he had visited his aunt’s farm in Indiana. He had many cousins there, and, though he was very young at the time, they had led him through the fields, playing war. Brad reminded him of that, how his cousins held guns that were branches and would crouch in the soil, tracking down the enemy. It was no game now, but Brad was not much older than his cousins had been.

They were still children, he kept thinking. The thought made his heart beat and skin crawl. They were so young.

^_

“When I get to the island,” said Brad, “I’m going to build a house.” They had stopped for a lunch of leftover chowder. “And I’m going to build a little dock for our boats. We’ll have boats, won’t we?”

“Yes,” said Eric. “We’ll have boats. And we’ll have animals too.”

“Puppies?” Birdie looked up from her meal. Her eyes sparkled.

“If we can find one,” laughed Sarah. “I’m going to design the kitchen. A great big fireplace. Unless we can find an old cookstove.”

“Too heavy,” Brad said. “There’s no way me and Fats can move a cast iron cook stove alone.”

“Well then,” Sarah said, “a very big fireplace then. It’ll keep us warm and I can cook with it. We’ll have to dig a root cellar.”

“Yes,” Eric said. “My aunt had one of those. She said they used to store food in it all year long.”

“I guess we’ll have to learn to grow food,” said Brad. “Anyone know a damn thing about that?”

Sarah and Eric looked at each other. Eric turned back to Brad. “I don’t know, put seeds in the ground and give them water, I guess.”

“Fucking A,” Brad said. “There’s more to it than that!”

“We’ll just have to learn,” said Eric. “Trial and error.”

“Yeah, great idea,” Brad huffed. “Only one problem with that bit of fucking genius. One error and we’re dead.”

They ate quietly after that.

^_

The woods thinned. They began moving through fields, the green grass already up to their shins. They felt exposed and vulnerable. Sticking to creeks as best they could, keeping low, they moved slowly, but as quick as they could. The warm wind blew in earth-scented gusts about them. Little yellow flowers bloomed about them. Eric reached down, picked a few, and then tucked them into Birdie’s hair. She waited patiently while he did it.

It wasn’t long before they realized they needed more supplies. Unhappy about it, Brad nonetheless relented. They could see a town up ahead, sprawled out and menacing. It seemed a life time ago when such places seemed small and boring to Eric. Brad said the town was Orrville.

The four of them snuck down into the outskirts and began scavenging while Brad kept watch. “This is Snakes territory,” he told them. He positioned himself so he could see the road while they busily searched the abandoned houses.

The Snakes had cleaned up the Zombies, it seemed. The town was deserted of humans. Raccoons, mice, and dogs had moved into the houses. Cats watched them with baleful eyes. Listening for Brad’s whistle, they scavenged quickly, taking what little they could find.

In an hour, as planned, they met in the main street. They found a bag of rice, a box of instant potatoes, a large canister of oats, a jar of applesauce, and three cans of spinach. Sarah had grabbed several plastic containers of spices and a cardboard cylinder of salt. They were looking over their spoils when they heard the voice.

“Hey!”

They whirled around, both Brad and Eric pulling guns from their belt.

The man only laughed when he saw the guns. He was a tall, husky man, who loomed large over them. Under a bushy yellow mustache was a thin, red mouth. His eyes were large and seemed to take in every one of them at once, like he had no need to focus on anything. He was dressed in camouflage pants and shiny black boots. The sweater he wore over a slightly bulging stomach had leather patches at the shoulders and elbows. He had the look of a bear to Eric. In his arms, carelessly held, was an assault rifle.

“Stop pointing those at me,” he said, but his voice was not afraid. It rolled across the stillness like distant thunder.

Even Brad lowered his weapon.

He walked toward them, smiling. “Good day,” he said, holding out a beefy hand. When Eric shook it, he felt hair upon the man’s knuckles. “Pleasure to meet you,” he said to each of them. He shook all their hands but for Birdie’s, who he seemed to ignore. When he was done shaking hands, he said, “I am Carl,” he said. “Mister Carl Doyle. Follow me.”

Him being a large man with an assault rifle, they obeyed, though they glanced at each other nervously.

“I’ve watched you cross the fields to the south,” he told them as they walked. “I thought what an extraordinary thing, four children so determined to stay hidden. What times we live in, eh?” Eric thought the man was trying to sound English, like his friends imitating Monty Python. “Ordinarily, I would have nothing to do with strangers, not in these times, but something about the four of you was so pathetic, I thought I should do my utmost to assist you.” He turned back to them. “Babes in the wilderness, you understand. Not good.” He led them across the town and into a gully where there was a campsite next to a Land Rover.

Eric had only seen a Land Rover a few times in his life. Shaped like a rugged block of granite, it was light green with a white top. The windshield was outlined in white. There was mud spattered on the sides and on the little, square grill at the front. It looked unstoppable.

“Where are you headed?” he asked, hanging his gun on a rack in the Rover. Eric noticed that a samurai sword was beneath it, a gentle, smiling curve beneath the grave line of the gun.

The group looked at each other, uncertain. Doyle frowned.

“You have nothing to fear,” he said. He held up his hands. “I assure you I mean you no harm.”

Eric cleared his throat. Although Brad glared at him, Eric said, “We’re going to Cuyahoga Valley.”

“I know the place,” he said. “Quaint. Hop in, all of you.” When they didn’t move, he laughed again. “Don’t worry, I’ll have you there in no time.”

When they were all inside, Brad up front and the rest of them piled in the back, Birdie tugged on Eric’s shirt. “I don’t want to go with him,” she said. Eric blushed, her voice was so loud in the Rover, but Doyle did not seem to notice. Eric whispered to Birdie they would be all right, though he too felt unsure and nervous in the Rover. It smelled strange, sweet and metallic. When he looked in the back, he saw the source of the smell. Two skinned deer, bright red.

The Rover roared to life and then hurtled up the road.

^_

“The problem with the Snakes,” said Carl Doyle as they drove North, “is that they have no sense of order.” Doyle drove with one massive hand, his right, resting upon the top of the wheel. “That has been my experience of all the gangs. The Buckeyes are the same. They fail to understand that strength of leadership is not everything. One needs order. And the gangs care nothing for order.” He reached into a bag on the Rover’s dashboard, filled with dried strips of deer meat. “You see, the gangs are cowards at heart. They group together not for mutual benefit but because they are frightened. Like cows.”

“We’re all afraid,” said Sarah.

“Do you know what Winston Churchill said?” Doyle asked, glancing in the mirror toward Eric. He didn’t seem to have heard Sarah. “He said that courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all others. That is what the gangs lack. Courage. And that is why they lack everything else. They have no justice, no dignity, no concept of humanity. They have let fear overtake them like savages.”

Suddenly the Rover swung to the side, and, squealing tires, came to a stop in the midst of the road. Eric clutched at Birdie, holding her to the back of the seat.

“Bloody hell!” cried Doyle. He looked at them with glittering eyes. “I almost missed the bugger!” Smiling widely, he lunged into the backseat and grabbed his gun. Eric had a momentary smell of sweat, wool, and mud. Then Doyle lunged out of the Rover. Eric and the others looked outside, confused.

On the road was a Zombie. A young woman in a filthy yellow dress. Half of her hair was gone. Some Zombies clawed at their own head, perhaps in an effort to remove the worm that had burrowed in there. One side of her face was mostly gone, and was nothing but a raw mash of red muscle and gleaming white bone. Black drool escaped from her mouth and swung down in front of her as she lurched forward.

“The gangs do have one thing right,” Doyle said, leaning on the hood of the Rover, aiming his assault rifle. “They do rid the land of vermin.” The assault rifle cracked loudly and jumped in his hand, and Birdie let out a cry. The Zombie stumbled. Doyle shot again. Her head vanished in a red cloud. Her body tumbled to the ground. Doyle smiled and then climbed back into the Rover.

As they drove away, Birdie, clinging to Eric, wept quietly.

^_

Carl Doyle grew up in Ohio. After high school, he got a job at a tire factory and lived with his mother, who was sick. He worked in the warehouse. Over the years, he developed a fascination for the British. At night, after he had taken care of his mother, put her to bed, and then locked the door to make sure she could not wander off during the night, he went to his bedroom, the same bedroom he had used as a baby, then a child, then a teenager, and, finally, a man. He read. When the Vaca B hit, his mother had been dead for eight years.

He told them this as they sat about the fire. A haunch of deer roasted on a spit. They looked at it hungrily.

Carl Doyle had stopped short of Cuyahoga Valley, saying that it was dark and they should go in the morning, in the honesty of daylight.

“When the worm came,” Carl Doyle said, crouched by the fire with his massive hands dangling down to the ground, “I knew my time had come. What the world needs in times like these is order. Know how. Integrity. And I have that. I can instruct and aid.”

“I think what we need is fucking food and shelter,” Brad said. “People will be ordered when they’re full and warm.”

“Like the Snakes have order?” Doyle asked and then gave out a rumbled laugh. Then he eyed Brad and said, “And we don’t really need to use that kind of language, do we? It shows a small mind, young man.”

“I don’t give a—” Brad began hotly but Sarah put her arm on his shoulder.

“What kind of order do you mean?” she asked.

“Churchill said that courage is the bedrock,” Carl Doyle said. “We need to fashion that bedrock upon which a new and brighter civilized man can be built. That is what must be done. Bravery and courage and the mind.” Carl Doyle tapped the temple of his head with a fat finger. “What do you think about that?” he asked, swatting at Eric’s feet.

Eric grimaced, his feet being very sore still. He was glad he didn’t cry out. “I like it,” he told Carl Doyle.

“Jolly good,” Doyle responded with a laugh. He brought out from his back pocket a mirror-bright flask that glittered from the fire. He took a long drink, exposing the roughness of his freckled throat. Then he sat back with a long sigh and held out the flask to Eric who shook his head. Doyle laughed again. “Good show,” he said. “Good show.”

Doyle drank while the venison cooked. When it was done, Sarah brought out the salt and they passed it around. Then they became engrossed in eating the hot, salty meat. While they ate, Doyle talked about the power of the mind and the importance of order. “That is what they teach in the army,” he said. “I would’ve gone. I could’ve gone, but mother was. She was too sick. I could’ve been.” He waved his arm to stop himself. “That’s what they teach. Order and dignity. That’s what we need now. Bloody gangs don’t know nothing.” Having finished his leg of venison, he dropped the bone into the earth and rose to his substantial height. “My father,” he began, “my father was of a metal. A metal, a metal that is rarely seen in this world. He fought in World War Two. He saved a dozen men.” Doyle reached into his pants and took out what seemed a golden coin. “He saved a dozen men.” He held out the coin and they could see it was a medal. “He was a man of dignity and order. A great man.” Doyle looked at the medal. “Great man,” he mumbled. Then his voice rose. “And that is what we need now. Great men.” He smiled at them and then wiped his mouth of the deer grease that shined on his red lips. “I have to pee,” he said suddenly and then turned and stalked off into the bushes.

After a moment, Brad leaned close to them. “We have to get the fuck out of here!” he hissed. “This guy’s a lunatic!”

Sarah shook her head. “Not here,” she whispered back at him. Afraid they would be heard, the four of them crept away from the fire and walked down to the creek and then some distance, crouching together at last by a small waterfall that gurgled about them. It didn’t take much talking among them to agree that none of them trusted Doyle. They would wait until he passed out and then go on to Cuyahoga by themselves.

When they returned to the fire, Doyle was sitting with Eric’s map laid out on the ground.

^_

“It’s brilliant!” Doyle exclaimed, studying the map and the colored lines that traced a route from Ohio to a circle in Maine. He looked at Eric. “An island, of course!” He looked into the distance. “An island.” The phrase seemed to have some importance to him. “From the island, order. Like Victoria.” He searched the map, smiling and then looked up at Eric. “This is well done. Well done!”

“We aren’t sure about it yet,” Eric said. He wanted to take the map from him but didn’t dare.

“It’s brilliant!” Doyle repeated. “Utter brilliance!” Then he stood up tall. “I can help you,” he said, wavering slightly on his feet. “I can help you get there. We can start again. We’ll establish order on the island, as an example. An example for the whole world!”

“Okay,” said Eric after glancing uncertainly about him.

“Jolly good,” Carl Doyle muttered. “Excellent. You are fine young chaps.” He slumped back down to the ground. He sat wavering. His eyes drooped. After mumbling something into the fire, he lay back and fell asleep, his great bulk splayed out over the ground.

The rest looked at each other with relief and then began packing for their escape. Eric gathered his belongings that Doyle had taken from his backpack and carefully folded the map. He saw Brad reach back into the Rover for Doyle’s assault weapon and he spoke up, “Don’t,” he said. “He hasn’t done anything to us. We shouldn’t take anything that’s not ours.” Brad made an annoyed face, but he left the assault rifle where it was.

Eric put more wood on the fire before they set off north again. He held Birdie’s hand as they followed Brad and Sarah into the moonlit darkness.

^_

When they figured out where they were, they pointed themselves north and east, moving slowly through the forests and strips of woods, keeping as far from roads as they could. As they walked along a tree line across a field, they heard an engine. Ducking down into the bushes, the four of them huddled down into the grass. They watched the pale green Land Rover careen pass them. They couldn’t see Carl Doyle, but they imagined, from the way the Land Rover sped over the road, that he was furious. Even after he had passed, they waited in the trees, silent for some minutes.

“That guy is insane,” Brad said. He took out his gun and checked it. Eric took out his own to do the same, though he didn’t know what he was checking. “You can see it in his eyes,” Brad continued. “What’s with that fake accent? The guy thinks he’s, I don’t know, the king of England or some shit.”

Sarah took a long drink from her water and then handed it to Birdie who took it without a word. “He’s gone now,” she said. “Let’s just forget about him.”

Birdie handed Eric the water. When he took it, Eric took her hand. There was a long, angry red weal across her palm. Eric groaned unconsciously. “What happened?” he asked. Birdie shrugged. Grabbing his bag, Eric rifled through it for his medical pack. He took a salve and, after washing her hands, he applied it. His hands were shaking. “Birdie,” he said to her, holding her shoulders. “You’ve got to tell me when you hurt yourself, okay? It’s very important.”

“Ow,” said Birdie, and Eric released his clutch on her.

“It’s okay, Eric,” Sarah said, putting her hand on his shoulder.

Eric shrugged it off. “No, it’s not,” he said firmly. “Don’t you get it? It’s not! If she gets an infection, what’re we going to do? We have to be mindful. We have to be careful!” Eric shook his head. Then he looked at Brad and Sarah who were studying him, alarmed at his reaction. “It’s not okay. It’s not.”

They left him alone that evening. Eric crawled into his tent with Birdie. Later, he listened to her breathing. A powerful feeling came over him. His eyes watered and he trembled. He put his hand on her shoulder.

Just a year ago, he fantasized about the end of the world. He thought it would be nice to be on his own, away from the terror of school, away from his mother’s cloying attention, away from the stupid world and its wars, famines, fears. But the reality was cold and horrifying.

One small mistake and Birdie could die.

Eric did not sleep that night.

4

^__________

^{Cuyahoga Valley National Park}

When they arrived at Cuyahoga Valley National Park, it rained over the valley. It was a sharp, cold rain, that snapped against the new leaves, turning them glistening emerald. The valley was lush and verdant. The gentle hills made it look a sea of green. Brad led the way through the forest with his walking stick. Sarah came behind and Eric and Birdie, the slowest, were last.

Eric was in pain with every step. Since Brad came, the pace had quickened. He was so tired, he kept dragging his feet. He stumbled several times a day and fell more often than he wanted to admit. It was humiliating. His body failed him, as it always had. Though every part of his lower body shined with pain and his shoulders felt like knots of rocky pain, Eric refused to complain or ask Brad to slow down.

Brad came running down a hill then, his walking stick in his hand. His face was red and flushed, making his freckles disappear. “People,” he said breathlessly. He waved them forward.

They came to the crest of the hill and looked over. There, in a long river valley was a farmhouse and fields newly sprouted. On the lawn of the farmhouse were three picnic tables. In the middle of the field were one, two, three, four… eight men and women. They were playing volleyball. The rubbery smack of the volleyball was a dream of some forgotten past. When the ball finally fell, the people burst out laughing.

“We should go around the north,” said Brad. “We can’t stay here. Where’s the next stop, Eric?”

“Pymatuning State Park,” Eric breathed, staring at the people.

“What?” hissed Sarah. “We need food, supplies, and rest. We should talk to these people.”

“No,” said Brad, shaking his head. “They look fine, but who knows what’s in that barn, huh? Who knows what these fuckers are really up to?”

“Don’t be so paranoid,” Sarah snapped. “And you don’t get to say no and that’s it. You’re not the leader here.”

“Oh yeah? Who is then?” Brad poked Eric painfully in the shoulder. “This fat fuck?” Eric looked down at the ground.

“Yes,” said Sarah defiantly. “It was his idea to go to Maine. It’s his map. He’s in charge.”

They both looked at him angrily. Eric glared at Brad for a second and then sighed. He looked down at Birdie. “What do you think, Birdie?”

“I like them,” she said, watching the figures.

“That’s all I need,” Eric said, rolling to his knees and then lifting himself up. He looked at Brad. “Sarah’s right. We need help. We’re going to have to trust someone, some time.”

Brad hissed and stood up. Then a smile came on his face and he shrugged. “Okay,” he said. He patted Eric on the back. “If that’s what you guys want to do.” He sighed and clapped Eric on the back. “Sorry I called you a fat fuck,” he said. “I can be an asshole. Can’t I, Sarah?”

“Yes you can,” Sarah grumbled. Brad helped her to her feet, smiling. He seemed to be happy that they had all defied him.

“I’m not a bad guy though,” Brad said to Eric. “You’ll know that when you get to know me.” Brad sighed and looked down at the people. “All right, then,” he said. “But I’m telling you right now, first sign of weirdness and we’re out of there.”

^_

There were four men and four women.

Their names: Sharif, Katie, David, Mary, Cecile, Van, Mark, and Sharon. They were wary of the newcomers at first. Then, seeing they were mostly children, they became more welcoming as they approached. None of them had guns. One man with curly brown hair stepped forward. His name was Sharif. He shook Brad’s hand and then Sarah’s and finally, Eric’s. Two of the women, Mary and Cecile, descended on Birdie with cries of pleasure. Soon they were ushered lavishly inside the barn and out of the faint, misting rain. They were all soaked, but it was warm and dry in the barn.

Within minutes, they were eating. Hot vegetable stew with a rough, whole grain toast, smeared with goat cheese. The four of them ate rapaciously while the group looked over them. After the soup, they were brought thick slices of crumbling apple pie with cups of hot cider. When they were done, the man named Sharif stood up at the head of the table and formally welcomed them.

“We are happy you’ve found us,” he said. “It is a dangerous world.” The party became subdued at that statement. “Please accept our hospitality and stay as long as you wish. All we ask in return is your aid in maintaining the farm. Everyone works here. That is our way. As long as you help the community to produce what we need, you are welcome to stay.”

Eric noticed that Mark and Sharon glanced at each other. They did not look happy at Sharif’s statement. But Eric was too tired to think of it.

Brad rose to his feet and said, “We’re happy to work. Thanks for the food and everything. And the welcome.” Then he grinned toothily at everyone. Eric felt like he should say something as well, but he was too exhausted.

There were other statements then, ones that he could hardly follow. Finally, he felt an arm at his shoulder and he was led away from the barn and into the large farmhouse. His feet were suddenly upon worn, wooden steps, and he felt his wet clothes stripped from him. Before he knew it, he was between clean, smooth sheets, in a bed that seemed the softest he ever felt. The warm weight of blankets over him, the feel of quilting against his face, Eric fell into a deep sleep before his head was fully rested on the pillow.

^_

Birdie…

Birdie!

Eric sat up in a panic. For a terrifying moment, he did not know where he was. The first thing he saw was a large window, the only in the room, that overlooked a bright green field, with forests beyond. The sun was low on the horizon and shined directly into his eyes, dazzling him. He leapt out of bed and saw that his clothes were gone. He looked around desperately and found a pair of sweat pants, a flannel shirt, and new cotton socks all folded on a dresser. He pulled them on. His heart thundered in him. How could he fall asleep like that without making sure Birdie was all right? He felt sick. Bending over, he found his muddy hiking boots and pulled them on before he rushed out the door and down the steps into an unfamiliar room.

When he heard talking and the clattering of dishes, he turned left, trying to keep himself from crying out. He came into the kitchen and saw a group of them, sitting to eat. “Where’s Birdie?” he blurted out.

“Eric, good morning,” said Sharif, standing up. “We thought—”

“Where’s Birdie? Where’d you take her?” he asked, glaring at them.

The woman named Cecile, a short, round-faced women with dark hair, stood up and walked to him. “She’s okay,” she said. She took his hand. “Birdie is upstairs sleeping. She’s very tired.”

“I know,” said Eric. “I know she’s tired.” He swallowed. He felt confused and defensive. “We’ve been hiking for a long time. She never complains though. She’s a good girl. She’s tough.” He felt tears sting his eyes and he wiped them away angrily. “I know she’s tired.”

“Here,” Cecile said, guiding him to a seat. “Sit, eat some breakfast.”

Eric sat and his heart slowly calmed its frenetic pace. Soon he had a plate of pancakes in front of him with butter and maple syrup. At first, he had no appetite. He only picked at the meal while the people around him continued their discussion. However, the discussion was so innocuous, it soothed him. The four at the table, Sharif, Cecile, David, and Katie, talked about their day, what they planned to accomplish and the help they might need from others. All of it had to do with the management of the farm: taking care of goats, cows, and chickens; fixing fences, walking the fields, repairing a hole in the coop to keep foxes out. Eric calmed and began to eat.

“We didn’t expect you to be up so soon,” Sharif said. “Since you are, would you like to help me today?” Sharif had glistening brown eyes that reminded Eric of root beer candy. He had a long, handsome face, and a slender nose.

“Sure,” Eric said. He glanced nervously to the ceiling.

“Your friends will be okay,” Sharif said. “We’re letting all of you rest as long as you’d like. You can go back to bed if you want.”

“No, that’s okay,” Eric said. “I’d like to help.”

“Good,” he said, and, standing up, Sharif led Eric out over the wet lawn. The sun was coming up bright, burning yesterday’s dampness. The land of the Valley was wide and low, with forested, emerald hills all around them, gentle as sheep. There was not a city in sight. Eric breathed in the fresh morning air.

When they got to the barn, Sharif handed him a pair of gloves and a pitchfork. With the cows out to pasture, they could clean the stalls. Eric pitchforked the manure into a wheelbarrow and then rolled it to the compost pile. Sharif said they would use the manure on the fields for next year’s crop. The smell was strong but comforting. He found he liked it. Soon Eric worked up a comfortable sweat. When they were finished, they sat outside in the warm sun. Sharif brought a canteen of water and they shared it.

“How long have you been here?” asked Eric.

“A long time,” he answered. “I worked here before the worm. That’s true of almost everyone here. When it all collapsed, we decided to stay and start a new, better way of life. We started this, the Slow Society.”

“Slow Society?”

“Do you ever think why the Vaca Beber worm hit us?” Sharif asked.

“Isn’t it from Brazil?”

“Yes,” Sharif said. “But I’m talking about why it happened, Eric. If those cattle ranchers hadn’t been cutting into the Amazon, the worm would have been harmless in the forest the way it had been for millions of years. So why were those ranchers cutting down the forest?”

“For land,” Eric said.

“Yes, ranch land. They cut it down for cows, for beef, so that a lot of people up here in the north could eat cheap hamburgers. The whole country was more interested in eating quickly on their way to the office than seeing the world around them. They just wanted more and more.” Sharif nodded toward the forested hills. “All of this beauty meant nothing to them. They had no connection with the world. They just lived fast, expecting everything to be done for them. They didn’t pick their own vegetables. They had migrant workers do that. They didn’t take care of animals. They had others do that for them. They didn’t even make their own food. They had other people do that and put them in neat plastic packages that could be put in the microwave. It would be done in seconds. That civilization was only about accumulating more and more. Desire is an ugly thing, Eric. It has no end and no goal. They just kept needing more. Meanwhile, the Amazon shrunk year by year. One year they found the Vaca B. That was the choices they made. To live a fast, easy life of consumption and profit. And it destroyed them.”

Eric had never thought about this before. He remembered cooking many meals in the microwave. It was true. He’d never grown anything in his life.

“We don’t want that again,” Sharif said. “The Slow Society believes that food is the very foundation of our existence, Eric. It is our connection to the land, our connection to the planet, our connection to life itself. Without growing the food we eat, without producing what we put in our bodies, we lose that connection.”

Eric thought about it. Sharif continued:

“We strive for a world in which the central relationship is to the land and to each other. We live slowly, in the cycles of life, the cycles of seasons, the cycles of rain and snow. We try to be within these cycles, a part of them. We believe that if we stick to these principles, our species will thrive. We will have a better, healthier, more fulfilling life.”

Eric thought about the Society, living here on this farm for years and years, surrounded by the hills. “We’re going to Maine,” he said. “We’re going to live on an island, where the Zombies can’t go. We’re going to have to grow our own food too.”

“You’re welcome to stay here for as long as you want, all of you.”

Eric looked at him. “Thank you,” he said. “I don’t know what we’re going to do. I’ll have to talk with the others.”

“Of course,” said Sharif. “I just wanted to let you know you can stay.”

“Okay,” Eric said. He followed Sharif back to the barn. He looked back at the house and thought about what Sharif had said. He tried to think of the farmhouse as home, imagined Birdie running on the lawn and laughing. But the island was strong in his mind. He kept seeing the waters of the lake shimmering in the sun, hearing the gentle lap of water on the shore. He could see it if he shut his eyes, the pine trees, the water, and the paths of the wind upon the surface of the lake. He could see his father reclined in the boat with a beer in his hand. His own fishing line pointing to the water. The tinny sound of the water striking the aluminum boat.

It was just perfect.

^_

Since the Slow Society had a drilled artesian well, they still had running water. Every morning, before breakfast, Mark or Cecile built a fire under the hot water boiler with wood harvested from the nearby forest. An hour later, steaming hot water came from the pipes. Slipping into the bath for the first time, his body dark with filth, Eric sighed, even through the pain. The hot water stung his feet so badly, he had to rest them dry on the lip of the tub. Red and cratered with blisters, Eric tried not to look at them.

He washed himself and thought of the days he had spent in the forest. The cold of the evenings, the pain in his feet, the constant scrambling, the pain all over his body: the bath seemed to wash that all away.

When he finally got out, the water was dark and frothy around the edges, like hot chocolate.

^_

One night, as the four of them gathered in Eric’s room before bed, Brad was more talkative than usual.

“What did you do before the worm?” Brad asked him. But he didn’t wait for a reply. “I watched movies.”

“Really?” Eric encouraged. “I did too.”

“I went to the movies as often as I could. Sometimes like five times a week. Man, I saw everything! I’ve seen Die Hard and Bloodsport and Rainman like a hundred times, I bet. I used to sneak in with.” Brad stopped and bit his lower lip. Then he smiled and continued. “I used to sneak in and see everything. I’d pay for one movie and stay there all fucking day. All fucking day!” He clapped his knee and laughed. “One day I saw four movies! I saw this cool Italian film called Cinema Paradiso, and then they played this Japanese cartoon called Grave of the Fireflies. That was some fucked up shit. In the afternoon, they played that movie A Fish Called Wanda. We laughed so fucking hard! Then, late that night, I remember, they played Mississippi Burning. That was a great day. I won’t ever forget that day.” Brad laughed again, but then a look so dark, so painful dropped on his face, that, for a moment, Eric was afraid. A dreadful, hopeless feeling leapt upon the surface of Eric’s skin, diving and rising like some dark fish along his back and arms and the scalp of his head. But the moment passed. The darkness left Brad’s face, replaced by a wide smile. “Yeah, I loved movies, man.” His voice was quiet. “Guess they won’t be making any more, will they?” He laughed about that. “Least there won’t be a Rambo four.”

They all laughed about that.

They laughed a long time about that, but it wasn’t really funny.

^_

During the day, Sarah helped in the garden. For the rest of the day, she worked in the kitchen with Katie, an older woman with long dark hair, streaked with gray. Katie was tall and angular and so thin, her bones stuck out at her elbows. Eric had thought she was going to be mean and spiteful, but she had sparkling eyes that matched her sense of humor. Sarah and Katie became inseparable quickly. Both had a passion for food and they spoke about it often, sharing recipes, ideas, techniques. Sarah seemed radiantly happy, and, watching her, Eric doubted that she would ever leave the Slow Society to go to Maine.

Brad had found a friend too. Mark, a short, round man with a grizzly beard who wore overalls and more often than not, toted a heavy, red toolbox with him. Mark was the handyman and spent all his time fixing the myriad things that broke on the farm. When he wasn’t occupied with leaks and the maintenance of various machinery on the farm, he was on the roof of the barn, working on a set of solar panels he had scrounged. He always smoked a cigar, even while he was working. He also swore with a passion while he worked. Perhaps this was what drew Brad to him. In just a few days, Brad followed Mark around the farm, carrying the red toolbox for him, looking serious and severe.

Birdie had all the attention she wanted. Except she didn’t seem to want much. She spoke little and insisted on following Eric. In the evening, she lay by the fire and drew pictures which both Mary and Cecile praised in loud voices. Birdie, however, seemed immune to their attention. From time to time, she allowed one of them to brush her hair or run the bath for her. But she did so with a patient look on her face, as if she did it only to placate them. Then she would go sit next to Eric.

Eric was both disturbed by Birdie’s behavior and flattered by it. He didn’t know what Birdie had been through before he met her, and, in truth, he didn’t really want to know. He answered Mary and Cecile’s questions, but he resented them because they seemed to think he was not a proper figure for Birdie’s devotion. They tried to hide it, but Eric could tell. They thought Birdie needed a mother. What she really needed, Eric thought, was about a year of feeling safe.

As for himself, Eric spent much of his time with Sharif, working wherever it was needed during the day, trailing Birdie with him. Eric remembered there had been a time when he was talkative and joked and laughed, at least with his friends. He didn’t want to talk so much anymore.

One night, after supper, while the rest of them were by the fire, talking, and Birdie was allowing her thick, curly hair to be brushed, Eric went up to his room. He sat on his bed and took out his dirty backpack. He still hadn’t unpacked it. Reaching in, he brought out his calendar. He looked at the wrinkled pages, and then took out the pen and began crossing out days. It was May 30. He put the calendar back and then found his map. It was filthy and worn. He found Athens, Ohio, and then tried to estimate how far he’d come. 150 miles? 200? He traced his finger from Cuyahoga, up the Interstate 80 to Pymatuning State Park, up to Lake Erie, then over to the Alleghany National Forest. He looked at Maine and the lake with its island in the middle. There was still nearly a thousand miles to go.

He folded up the map and stuck it carefully back in its plastic bag and then replaced it in his pack. When he heard a familiar rattling, he smiled and took out a leather bag, and dumped his dice on the end table. He picked out three six-sided dice and rolled them. He loved the sound of them on the wood.

14. 12. 8.

For a moment, he thought about Jessica, the feel of her soft hand in his. Then he thought of her body in the gutter, her eye shot out. He thought of his mother, stiff in her bed, her hands clawed and bloody from scratching herself. He saw the flames of their house burning.

He put the dice away.

^_

Eric gave Birdie a glass of water. “Thank you,” she said. Birdie always said please and thank you. It was the most of what she said. “You’re welcome,” said Eric and poured his own. They had been in the barn with Sharif and had come back for some water. When they walked back to the barn, they heard raised voices. The both of them stopped still. It was Sharif and Sharon, a young woman with corn silk hair and expressive round eyes. Eric was embarrassed around her because she was so pretty. Right now, she sounded furious.

“You can’t act like this!” she exclaimed.

“Act like what, Sharon, a human being?”

“Don’t you do that to me!” Sharon said. Eric wanted to leave or to announce his presence, but they were approaching, and he didn’t want them to think he had been listening. He was still deciding how to handle the uncomfortable situation when Sharon spoke again: “You can’t just invite them to stay as if you’re the king of this place! This is not what we’re about, and you’re not king!”

Now Eric and Birdie ducked into a stall to listen. This was about them.

“I talked with everyone, Sharon,” Sharif said. “Everyone thought they should stay.”

“Not everyone,” she said. “Not me. Not Mark. And Van wasn’t sure either. That’s nearly half of us. We should’ve talked about this more.”

“They’re children,” Sharif said. “We need children.”

“There’s plenty of children at the Hollow,” Sharon spat. “But you didn’t want them here, did you?”

“That’s different,” Sharif answered. “They still have their mothers and fathers. I didn’t think splitting up families was wise.”

“We wouldn’t be splitting up anyone!” Sharon said. “It would have been a revolving system. Everyone should share in the upbringing of children.”

“We don’t have the right to take children from their parents, Sharon.”

“Are you kidding me? David is a drunk and Francine isn’t even sure he’s the father!”

“We still can’t take those kids,” Sharif said a little angrily. “We’ve gone over this before. We don’t have the right!”

“Those kids need me!”

“Sharon, stop it! You’re not getting those kids!”

There was a pause, and then the sound of Sharon, crying.

“You could’ve stayed,” Sharif said, more quietly. “I would’ve understood.”

“I love you,” Sharon said and then sobbed. “I can’t leave you.”

“Sharon, I’m sorry, I—”

“Don’t even touch me,” Sharon spat suddenly. “I hate you!” She sobbed again. “I don’t see how you can be so cruel. You accept these strangers, but those kids, those kids were mine!”

“Honey,” said Sharif. “They aren’t your children.”

“They were mine!” Sharon insisted. “Not in blood, but everything but, everything in me says it’s true! Their so-called parents were gone for months! You don’t understand, you don’t understand what it really feels like. You have more feeling for these strangers than you do for me!” Her voice had risen to a shout again. “I won’t stand for it, Sharif, and neither will Mark. They have to go! We’re not going to have a fat kid and some little nigger girl eating all our food!”

“Chrissakes, Sharon, get a hold of yourself!”

“We all work for that food! Not just you! All of us!”

Then there was a flash as Sharon left the barn in a storm. Birdie clung to Eric’s leg.  They waited for another five minutes before they emerged from hiding.

Eric walked to Sharif. He turned around, and when he saw them, smiled warmly. He handed Eric a pitchfork.

“How’s it going?” Eric asked.

“Fine,” Sharif said, and smiled again.

Eric could read nothing in that smile.

^_

Eric woke to screaming. He stumbled out of bed, dazed, and, his heart beating wildly, he fumbled for his gun that he hid under his bed. The screaming continued, somewhere nearby, a wrenching, horrible sound. Trembling, Eric gave up looking for the gun and ran outside his room in the darkness. He felt Birdie suddenly grasp his legs. The hallway began to fill with people carrying flashlights and candles. They gathered around an open door.

Inside, on the bed, Sarah grasped a pale, tortured Brad. His mouth was hung open and the scream still seemed to echo from him. Brad’s face was wet with sweat. Red hair clung to his forehead. His eyes were dark and hollow. Sarah rocked him in his arms.

“Oh god, oh god,” Brad gasped.

“It’s okay, it’s all right,” Sarah said, holding his head tight in his arms.

“No, it’s not, no, no,” Brad sobbed. He saw them watching, but he didn’t seem to care.

“Shh, quiet, it’s all right,” Sarah said.

“No, no, it’s not,” Brad sobbed.

Sarah embraced him tightly and looked at them meaningfully. They began to disperse. Eric took one last look at Sarah holding Brad and whispering in his ear before he left, taking Birdie with him. Without having to ask, Birdie crawled into bed with him.

“It’s because of his family, isn’t it?” she asked when it was quiet.

“I don’t know, Birdie,” Eric said.

“It’s because of his family,” she stated.

Eric didn’t answer. When he closed his eyes to sleep, his mother came to him again, in her bed, sweating from the Vaca Beber. Her eyes seemed so large, so red. Blood trickled from them. “Eric,” she said to him. “Eric!”

“Momma,” he said from the door frame. He was scared of her. Scared of dying how she was dying. Scared of the worm. Scared of what she might say to him.

“Eric, come here.”

He hesitated, but he did, finally.

But she didn’t say anything. She just held his hand and cried until her pillow was red with blood.

^_

They were fishing when they saw the Land Rover. Sarah saw it first. She grabbed Eric’s shoulder and pointed. Van, a middle-aged man with short brown hair and a long, wedge-shaped nose that made his face look like a hatchet, stood up straight to watch the Rover. His face went dark. They all dropped their fishing poles. Eric grabbed Birdie and they ran back to the farm.

By the time they got there, out of breath, Carl Doyle was already there, talking to Sharif and Mark. Brad was behind Mark, glaring at Doyle.

“I only want what is mine,” Doyle said. “These children stole from me.”

“Do you have anything of his?” Sharif asked, looking to them all. Eric, too out of breath to answer, just shook his head.

“We didn’t take shit from this guy!” Brad exclaimed.

Doyle shook his head. “They stole my father’s medal for service in World War Two,” he said. “He won that in the Pacific, he was a hero. I want that medal back.”

“We didn’t take anything from you,” Eric said. “Maybe you dropped it.”

“I searched,” Carl Doyle insisted, his red lips quivering. Intense, dark eyes swiveled to meet Eric’s. “I searched and I searched. Someone took it. One of you took it. I want it back immediately. Just give it back to me and we can forget all this unpleasantness.”

Eric looked to Sharif and shook his head. Sharif looked to each of them for only a second.

“I’m sorry,” he said to Doyle finally. “They don’t have your medal.”

“They do,” Doyle insisted. “I know they do.” He looked at them. “I’m not going to forget about this. I want my medal back right now, do you understand?”

Mark stood forward. “They don’t have your fucking medal,” he said.

Doyle scowled and silently looked over them. He pursed his lip and then brushed his mustache with his right hand. Then wordlessly, he got back in his Land Rover and sped away, tossing up dirt and gravel behind him. They watched him leave before they all began to go back to their work. But Eric noticed how the others glanced at them, Sharon and Mark and Van, with a glimmer of distrust. Sharif, Mary, David, and Cecile, with something like tempered sympathy, as if they believed them capable of stealing the medal, but didn’t deserve Carl Doyle to be after them. Only Katie seemed to fully believe them. She held Sarah tightly around the shoulders.

Sharif stayed back to talk to Eric.

“You didn’t take it did you?”

“No,” said Eric. “Why would we want his stupid medal?” Sharif studied him, which annoyed him. They weren’t the ones keeping secrets, Eric thought. Eric quickly summarized the afternoon they had spent with Carl Doyle. “I told everyone as we left not to take anything.” Eric looked him straight in the eye. “We didn’t take it,” he insisted.

Sharif relented. He looked to where the Land Rover was just vanishing into the forest. “I don’t think he’s stable,” he said. “He’s been here before. He wanted to trade deer meat. At first, we were open to the idea, but once he came here drunk. He started talking about order and how it was criminal that none of the women here were pregnant. He said it was their duty to produce offspring. For the species. He said if he was in charge, they would all be pregnant by now. After that, we let him know he was no longer welcome.” Sharif took Eric’s shoulder. “If you have the medal, Eric, please tell me. We’ll find a way to give it back to him. This man worries me.”

“We don’t have it,” Eric said.

“Okay,” Sharif said. He gave Eric one of his enigmatic smiles and then returned to the farmhouse.

The four of them, Brad, Sarah, Birdie and Eric, were left alone on the lawn. They gathered closer together.

“That is one crazy fuck,” said Brad. “Who cares about some stupid medal?”

“We’ve all lost our world,” said Sarah. “We need a memory of it. Something to remind us who we are.”

“Yeah,” Brad answered. “Maybe. But he’s still batshit crazy.”

“I don’t think they believe us,” Eric said. He nodded toward the house. Then he quickly told them the conversation he and Birdie had overheard in the barn. He didn’t tell them what Sharon had called Birdie. “I’m not sure how welcome we really are.”

Brad and Sarah looked troubled. Then Brad added, “Mark said that Sharon came from another farm. I guess there are a few others like this one in this Valley. He says she’s just here for Sharif. I guess she doesn’t work much.”

“Katie told me they once kicked out someone for pulling a knife on David,” Sarah said. “His name was Craig.” Sarah looked at them. “Do you think they would kick us out?”

They stood together in silence. When Eric looked up, he could see Sharif standing at the window in the house, watching them.

Brad seemed to notice too. “Just to be safe,” he said. “I think we should keep our stuff packed and ready to go. Agreed?”

They all nodded, even Birdie.

^_

Eric had new eyes during dinner. He seemed to see conspiracy everywhere. Sharif and Sharon sat together, but they were stiff and tried not to look at each other. Mark ate in silence, and, when he was done, left the group without a word. Mary and Cecile still paid a lot of attention to Birdie, but now it seemed that they did it to avoid the tension in the room. Katie stayed in the kitchen, and David, the youngest of them all, thin and short, with a strangely blank face, did nothing but try to keep his eyes away from Sharon. Van wasn’t there, which he thought vaguely sinister. Sharif was all smiles, but Eric did not believe it anymore.

As soon as they were done eating, Eric went upstairs. While Birdie drew with her crayons, Eric quietly rearranged his backpack. It was then he realized his gun was missing. He sat back and thought about it while his heart raced.

Soon there was a knock on his door that he had been expecting. It was Brad.

“The fuckers took my gun!” he hissed.

“Took mine too.”

“I should go down there and—”

“You can’t do that, Brad!” Eric interrupted. “They won’t give them back to us. You know they won’t. And they’ll ask why we were hiding them. And they’ll ask why we think we need them. It’ll just make it worse.”

Brad swore for a while, but he knew Eric was right. Finally he said he was going to talk with Sarah and left them alone.

Eric finished packing and then went over to Birdie. “What’re you drawing?” he asked. He looked over her shoulder.

It was a picture of the Land Rover. Carl Doyle sat inside. His mouth was a furious, dark zigzag and there were lines coming from his head. “What’re those lines?” he asked.

“That’s the sickness,” Birdie said. “It wants to come out his head but it can’t.”

Eric cleared his throat. His mouth went dry.

He realized he no longer felt they were safe.

^_

The scream of engines came early that morning. Eric leapt out of bed and dashed to the window. Several trucks pulled into the yard, passing by his view, their engines roaring and screaming. Stenciled perfectly in glossy red on the side of each the trucks was a stylized snake. Only the last truck had no snake. It was the Land Rover, coming up last. “Oh shit,” Eric said. He stood up and looked around, stunned and confused, his heart thudding in his chest. The door to his room crashed open, and Eric jumped before he realized it was Brad and Sarah. He could see other figures flashing by the hallway outside.

Brad pushed by him and Birdie to the window. “Fuck me!” he breathed, looking down at the scene. Then he turned to them. “Get your stuff, we have to go. We have to go right now. Right now!”

“What is it?” asked Sarah, trembling. Birdie walked over to Eric and grasped his leg tightly. “What?” Sarah repeated.

“It’s the King Cobra.” Brad was pale with naked fear. “We have to go now!” He pronounced this through clenched teeth. Brad grabbed Sarah and they both ran out of Eric’s room.

Eric turned to the window. There was a large group of people, mostly men, but a few women too. They kept their distance from a central figure. He was thin with mousy brown hair, all messed up, like a dust ball upon his head. He wore a black, cowboy shirt with ivory buttons and a red snake upon one shoulder. He didn’t walk as much as saunter.

“Can I help you?” asked Sharif. Eric couldn’t see him, he was too close to the house, but he recognized the voice.

“You sure as hell can,” said the man called the King Cobra. His voice was shrill and high. King Cobra looked around. “Nice digs you got here. Fine place.”

“Thank you,” said Sharif.

“I bet you eat pretty well here, dontcha?” King Cobra’s voice barked with contempt.

“We look after ourselves,” said a voice. Eric thought it might have been Mark.

Suddenly there was a deep throated roar from inside one of the trucks. It was a moving van. It shook now as its contents roared again.

“What do you have in there?” Sharif asked.

“Just some local wildlife,” said King Cobra. “We would like to put it back in its habitat. Let it live free.”

The others laughed.

Suddenly Eric was jerked away from the window. Brad was back with Sarah and Birdie. His eyes were wide with fear. “We have to go, Eric!” he hissed. “Get ready, get your stuff!”

“We can’t just leave them like this,” Eric said.

“Fuck them!” Brad said. He grabbed Eric and pulled him away from the window. “We have to go right now!”

“They’re talking,” Eric said. “Maybe they’ll work it out.”

“King Cobra don’t talk!” Brad hissed. “Get your stuff!” Brad pushed him again, and Eric almost fell.

“Stop pushing him, Brad,” Sarah said. She was close to tears.

“Well I’m trying to get the fat fuck to move!”

Then there was a piercing gun shot, and both Sarah and Eric let out a stunned cry. Eric went to the window, but he didn’t see anything but the Snakes.

“I think you should get out of here and don’t come back,” a breaking, scared voice called out. Eric didn’t know who it was.

“David! What’re you doing?” cried Sharif. “I said no guns!”

“You’re not my father!” exclaimed David. “You’re not the boss either!”

“Well, this just got boring,” said King Cobra. Smoothly he pulled out a giant revolver and fired. It was the loudest sound Eric had ever heard. There were shouts, screams, laughter. Suddenly Eric felt his face hum with pain, and Brad was standing in front of him. He had just slapped him across the face. Without having to be told what to do, Eric pulled on his clothes amid the turmoil, and then pulled out his backpack from under the bed. As he shrugged it on, he glanced outside. They were opening the moving van. The Snakes who had opened the door, their faces grinning in dark triumph, ran and dived back into the cab of the truck. There was another roar from the truck, and then a great shadow leapt from the back.

“Come on!” Brad grabbed him. Eric clutched Birdie’s hand and bolted out of the room. When they hit the steps, gunshots rang out downstairs. Windows shattered. As they ran downstairs, they saw Mary and Cecile at the windows with rifles. David lay in the living room, silent with shock, while Katie wrapped his arm in a white towel quickly blooming red. Eric realized numbly that David’s hand had been shot completely off. Sharif and Mark were grabbing guns.

As they hit the bottom of the stairs, the door shattered open, knocking Eric down. A darkness settled in the doorway. Eric stared up at a bear, it’s mouth oozing dark liquid and white, wriggling worms. Its eyes were dark with blood and the fur beneath them was matted with dried blood. The bear bled through a dozen holes in its body, a dark sluggish blood. It was crazed with the Vaca B. Looking at the assembled men and women, the bear stretched its head forward and roared, dark blood and white worms spewing from its open maw. Before anyone could do anything, the bear leapt on David, sinking its teeth deep in his stomach. David screamed an anguished, piercing cry. Katie pummeled its head, but the bear tugged and shook and David was ripped apart upon the floor and screamed no more. Then the bear rose up, its mouth dripping with David’s innards. Eric smelled the rank odor of its breath mixed with the moist, pungent smell of David’s body. The others, finally emerging from shock, pointed their guns and fired, but the bear swept across them with its paw. Eric saw Katie’s face disintegrate as the bear mauled her. Then it fell upon Sharif. Eric watched as Sharon lunged forward with a pistol in her hand.

“Come on!” cried Brad. “Get up! Get up!” He pulled Eric to his feet and they ran away through the house and out the back door. Behind them was the sound of gunfire and the crazed bear. They stumbled out the back door, and then sprinted toward the forest behind the farm. His lungs burned and his chest ached, but Eric felt he could run like this forever, as if he was no longer a part of the pain in his own body. He was a ball of fire, burning to live. He looked back over his shoulder and saw the Land Rover driving over the lawn toward them, honking its horn and flashing its headlights.

Eric turned back to the forest and tried to run faster. Brad and Sarah were already deep in the forest. As they hit the edge, Eric tripped and tumbled. Birdie tugged at him while the Land Rover came to a halt near them.

“Wait right there!” boomed Carl Doyle. “I want my medal back!” When he got out of the Land Rover, he had his samurai sword in his hand, unsheathed.

Eric tottered to his feet and ran into the forest behind Birdie.

“Wait!” cried Doyle. Eric heard him crash into the forest behind him. For a huge man, he moved with disturbing speed. “Wait!” he called. “Give me my father’s medal!” His voice was desperate and choked. Eric and Birdie ran faster, but the moon gave off little light in the gloom of the forest. As they moved, Eric saw a tree across his path. He tried to leap over it, but he was too slow. He hit his shins hard on the tree and tumbled forward, tasting dirt in his mouth. His vision swung from side to side as he desperately tried to raise himself. Losing his balance, he fell again. When he opened his eyes, he saw Carl Doyle standing over him, his eyes wide and white. His samurai sword, long, slightly curved and wicked, gleamed in the moonlight.

“I want my medal,” he said evenly. “That’s all I want, understand?” He had lost his fake English accent. Eric opened his mouth, but couldn’t speak. Doyle lowered the blade and pointed it at Eric’s gut. “I just want what’s mine.”

A cry went up then and Doyle vanished in a knot of legs and arms. Eric struggled to his feet. By the time he rose, he saw Doyle standing up tall. Brad stood beneath him, his face contorted in rage, his fists held tightly up. Doyle still had his sword in his hand.

“I want what’s mine,” Doyle growled.

“We don’t have your fucking medal!” Brad growled back.

“Oh, you have it,” Doyle said. He lifted his sword so that it looked ready to slash Brad in two. “I bet you took it, didn’t you? You foul-mouthed little reprobate.” Doyle’s eyes glimmered, and his hands adjusted on the sword.

“Why would I want your stupid medal?” Brad asked.

“Please,” Eric said, suddenly finding his breath. “Please, Mr. Doyle,” he pleaded. “We’d give the medal back to you if we had it. We would! But we don’t have it!”

Doyle’s eyes had not moved from Brad. He was focused upon him with an intensity that made Eric feel nauseous. Any moment now, he felt sure that Doyle would cut the sword across Brad. The sword was ivory in the moonlight. Eric’s heart thundered wildly in his body.

Doyle’s face grew calm then and his sword raised. Eric knew he had decided to kill Brad, to cut him down here, like an animal. Helplessly, he squeezed his eyes shut and turned away. There was a crashing sound in the darkness, and Eric’s eyes opened. Carl Doyle had whirled away from Brad just in time to see the diseased bear leap into the clearing where they stood. In the moonlight, the bear looked black as shadow. When it saw them, it roared, a sound that rumbled through Eric like thunder. The bear lunged at them before Eric could think. It rose up over Doyle and Brad.

Doyle didn’t pause. His sword flashed in the darkness of the bear’s shadow. The bear swiped at him with a paw that now dangled unnaturally. Brad suddenly tugged at him, and they sprinted away from the clearing. Behind them, through the sound of their pounding hearts, they could hear the bear scream.

They did not stop running when they came to Sarah and Birdie. All of them ran north, thinking of the devastation behind them. When they finally collapsed in exhaustion, it was far past dawn, and they were on a hill overlooking a farm. In the fields, they could see a Zombie lumbering back and forth between the barn and a rusted tractor. Back and forth, back and forth.

Back and forth.

5

^__________

^{On Interstate 80}

Moving north again, back to their old plans, they went slowly and carefully through the park. On the first day, they ate nearly all the food they had brought with them. None of them had thought of hoarding any more. Two or three times, they came across farms, but they didn’t dare go there, for fear of the Snakes and the Zombies they had seen wandering earlier. If these farms were the last of the Slow Society, then it was no more.

On the edge of the park, looking east, they huddled over Eric’s map. Eric traced his finger along the I80 and then north of Warren, Ohio, into Pennsylvania, and, finally, to a long lake bordered by woods, Pymatuning State Park. This was one of the stretches of the trip that Eric dreaded. It was open fields mostly. They would have to follow the I80 for some time. They would be in plain sight of the Snakes if any of them used the interstate, which, Brad informed them, they did.

As they camped for dinner that night, none of them said much. Birdie was silent, sitting next to him. Sarah dissolved into tears several times until Brad lost his patience.

“Would you stop it?” he said angrily. “They’re dead and gone, all right? They’re dead. Just leave it.”

“Just leave it?” Sarah asked. “Leave it?” Her voice broke in a sob. “It’s our fault those people are dead, Brad. It’s our fault. We led Carl Doyle to them. We brought that monster right to them. If it hadn’t been for us…” If there was a second part of this sentence, it was expressed in tears.

Brad looked at the ground, threw a couple twigs in the fire, and then said, “Shit.” He moved to Sarah and put his arm around her. Sarah sobbed violently into his shoulder. “It’s not our fault,” Brad told her. “Carl Doyle was crazy. And that’s no one’s fault.” When that didn’t seem to help, Brad continued. “The Snakes would’ve found them at some point, Sarah. You don’t think they keep cracked bears for nothing, do you? They lure them into vans with water and then shut the door. I seen’em do it with bears and dogs, even a few cats. They use them to clear out places just like that farm. That way they don’t have to fight. It weren’t our fault. It would’ve happened anyway, trust me.”

Eric crawled into his tent quietly. He listened to Sarah cry. He rolled over and tried not to think of the people who had died. He too wanted to cry. He too wanted comfort. But who would hold him? He had not felt this alone since he had first left Athens.

^_

They moved slowly along the interstate. To keep out of sight, Brad kept careful look out with the one thing he had taken from the farm: a pair of green binoculars. With them, he scanned the highway in both directions. He scouted ahead to find a safe location before the whole group of them moved on. Then they would huddle in shadow, waiting for the sound of Brad’s whistle. At first Eric thought such extraordinary care might not be worth it, but after two trucks with Snakes on their side went past as they remained safely hidden, Eric changed his mind. They made very little progress.

While they waited, Eric sat beside Sarah who was quiet. Birdie, as usual, said nothing. Eric noticed Birdie had begun to hold Sarah’s hand and was annoyed at the pang of jealousy he felt. Perhaps those ladies had been right, Eric thought. Maybe little girls needed women, not a fat little boy.

Sarah too had been quiet. Her eyes were darkly ringed.

“What is today?” she asked suddenly. Eric took off his backpack and found his calendar.

“The fourth of June.”

“Oh.”

Eric could think of only one more thing to add. “Monday,” he informed her.

They listened to the wind in the grass.

^_

On the first night, they camped in a golf course, under a maple tree. Brad dug a pit for the fire while Sarah put on the water to boil. They was not much food. For dinner they shared a can of beans. The four of them sat and watched the dark night sky. The stars glittered overhead like a handful of gems tossed into the sky. None of them had ever seen so many stars. Suddenly Brad made a hissing sound and pointed.

Not more than a mile or two distant, another fire flickered in the darkness. They eagerly took turns with the binoculars.

“There’s three of them,” Brad said. “Two men and a woman, I think.”

Sarah took the binoculars and put them to her eyes. “They’re avoiding the roads, like us.”

“Mmm,” said Brad with suspicion.

“I wonder where they’re going?” asked Eric.

“Timbuktu for all I give a shit,” muttered Brad. “I’m not ready to go announcing ourselves like we did last time. That didn’t turn out too fucking well, did it?”

The rest of them were silent and crept back nearer the fire. Brad stood where he was with his binoculars on them.

Sarah and Birdie crawled into the tent, leaving Eric to watch the stars. The stars had lost their luster to him.

^_

Sarah woke Eric. “Have you seen Birdie?” she asked.

“What?” he asked. Then he came awake. “Is she missing?” He got up out of his tent into the cold morning.

“She wasn’t here when I woke up,” Sarah said guiltily.

“Well, why wasn’t she?” Eric asked, but he wasn’t paying attention to either what she was saying or what he was saying. He scanned the overgrown golf course. And then, in the distance, under an oak tree, he saw a flutter of red. Without saying anything to Sarah, Eric waded through the wet grass down to the tree.

Birdie sat under the tree with her knees in her arms. She was crying. Eric sat down next to her. He went to put his arm around her, but she flinched away, and, hurt, he took his arm away. Swallowing, Eric turned away from Birdie. There were about twenty deer down below, feeding on the early morning grass. They didn’t seem to care that the world was ended. It occurred to Eric that for the deer, the world had not ended. It was reborn.

Eric let Birdie cry for a while as he watched the deer graze. Then he tried again. “What’s wrong, Birdie?”

“Nothing,” she muttered.

“I wish you wouldn’t walk off by yourself,” he said. “You make us very worried for you.”

“I can take care of myself,” she said. And then she sobbed again and started to cry anew.

“Do you miss the people at the farm?” asked Eric.

Birdie shook her head. She wiped her nose wetly and then turned to him. “Do you hate me now?”

“No!” he blurted. “Of course not Birdie! Why would you think that?”

“Because I left you,” she said. “When Carl Doyle came for you, I ran away. I left you alone! You’d never do that to me!” Her face contorted in misery and a painful sob shook her whole body.

“Birdie,” Eric said. He put his arm around her. Her body was stiff with guilt. “Listen,” he said to her. “I don’t blame you for running. I always want you to take care of yourself, okay?”

“You’re not mad?”

“No way,” Eric said. “You need to look after yourself. I’ll help as best I can, but sometimes Birdie, you’re going to have to run. I’m glad you run. You did the right thing. It’s okay to leave me, Birdie. The most important thing is that you’re safe.”

“You don’t hate me?”

“No, never,” Eric vowed.

 Birdie nodded.

“Do you feel better now?” asked Eric. Birdie nodded. Eric wiped her face with his shirt sleeve. Then Birdie stood up and when Eric did too, she took his hand.

As they walked back to the campsite, Brad met them halfway.

“I think they’ve already left their campsite,” he said.

“Who?”

“The other people, idiot,” he said, his eyebrows low in irritation. “We have to move fast and get out of here.”

In a hurry, the four of them broke camp. Brad kept in back of them now, always scanning for the others. As they moved east, they scattered the browsing deer, who leapt away and then, from a distance, stared at them with their cautious black eyes.

^_

June was beautiful. The sun was out and shining brightly through clear blue skies. The trees were green and full and flowers were coming up everywhere. The air was brisk and clean. They saw deer and hawks, and once, a sly, red fox darted over a hill. Birds sang in the trees, as if celebrating a much wider and more welcoming world than the one they had left last fall. If it wasn’t for the group behind them and the likelihood of being chased down by the Snakes, it would have been a wonderful day.

They came across a few houses, but they were empty of supplies. Being close to the interstate, they had been raided first. The hunger was beginning to make an impact on them. Eric felt sick from it and Sarah had grown sullen. Birdie was even more quiet than usual and Brad, even more irritable.

“Goddamn it,” he said, his eyes to his binoculars. “I can’t see them.” The group behind them had become his obsession. “They were at that house last time I saw. Now they’re fucking hiding or something.”

Eric didn’t know what to feel about the group behind them. He had watched them in his binoculars. To him, they seemed much like themselves: alone, scared, trying to stay hidden. He did not find them as threatening as Brad did.

That night they went without food. Their stomachs twisted in their bodies and they rested fitfully. The stars were glorious above them, but no one noticed.

^_

“We have to do something!” Sarah insisted. “We haven’t eaten in two days!”

“Don’t exaggerate,” Brad hissed. “We had breakfast yesterday morning.”

They were stopped at a golf course. In the distance, to the east, was the town of Warren, Ohio. Smoke rose from it lazily, peacefully. Eric knew that beneath the illusion of calm, Warren was full of Snakes and Zombies, perhaps some that had cracked and gone crazy. Sarah and Brad were arguing over whether or not to enter the town to search for supplies.

“What’re we going to do?” Sarah asked. “Start eating grass like deer?”

Brad scratched his head. “Warren is crawling with Snakes,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going to be left.”

“We need to take a chance,” Eric spoke up. “We’re hungry. It has to be done.”

“We could fish for food,” Brad said, pointing at the river which ran by the golf course.

“I left my fishing gear at Cuyahoga!” cried Sarah. “I already told you that!”

“We can fish with spears!” exclaimed Brad.

“Now you’re being ridiculous!”

Eric stood up. “Quiet,” he said. The rest of them hushed instantly. In the distance, a sound gathered. At first it sounded like running water, but then it grew. It was a vehicle. They ducked down under some bushes and crawled to the edge where they could see the road. Brad fumbled out his binoculars and put them to his eyes. “Shit,” he swore. “Goddamn it.”

“What?” Eric took the binoculars to look. When the vehicle came into focus, his heart fell. It was the Land Rover.

“I thought that asshole was dead.” Brad rolled over on his back. “Just what we need!”

“Who is it?” Sarah snatched away the binoculars and focused them. “Oh no,” she breathed. “No, no.” She dropped her head into her arms.

“Okay,” Brad said. “You’re right. We need supplies. We need to go to Warren.”

They crawled out from under the bushes to find they were no longer alone.

^_

The man’s name was John Martin and the two others, brother and sister, were Sergio and Lucia Perez Rivera. These were the people who had been following them. John Martin was a tall, black man. Although he was not bulky, his slight frame seemed powerful. His long face and powerful jaw gave him a solemn look, and his thoughtful eyes glowed with sympathy. The two others were brother and sister. Lucia, the oldest, was only slightly taller. She was beautiful and sleek, reminding Eric of a cat. Her eyes were intense and lit with intelligence. Her younger brother stood near her. His round face was unblemished and youthful and his eyes were nervous and uncertain. If his sister was a cat, Sergio was a rabbit, constantly searching the sky for any sign of hawk, the bushes for sign of wolf.

They too had been watching them. Since they looked harmless, they decided to make contact. It was strained at first, but when the new group offered to cook them rice and beans, the mood soon changed. Soon the four of them were spooning the food in their mouths with little regard for manners.

The new group were all from Cleveland. John Martin said that the city got steadily worse after the Vaca B struck. Toward the end, the military was shooting everyone on the streets. When the gangs rose, fighting soon broke out over quickly dwindling resources of food, cigarettes, and alcohol. John Martin had found the brother and sister, Sergio and Lucia, in a warehouse where they were being attacked by a gang called the 7-Outlaws.

“They wanted to punish us for burning down our house,” said Sergio.

“We burned down our house after our family died,” Lucia explained. She was wildly beautiful, and Eric could not look at her comfortably. “The fire got out of hand,” Lucia continued. “We didn’t mean to, but we burned down a few blocks. The 7-Outlaws were hanging people who started fires and carving the letter A in their foreheads.” She made a wry smile. “Justice,” she said. “If it hadn’t been for John, we wouldn’t be here now.”

“Well, maybe so,” said John Martin. His movements were measured, and his eyes, careful and probing. “Anyway, I got them away. They lived in my basement for the winter.”

“That’s when we made plans,” said Sergio. “We’re going to upstate New York. Our uncle lived there.”

“Maybe he still does,” added Lucia, her eyes flashing toward her brother.

Sergio shrugged. “My uncle told us the land is very good.”

“We’re going to start again,” added Lucia.

“That’s what we’re doing,” Brad said. Surprisingly, it was Brad who trusted them first. He outlined their plans as quickly as he could, how they would hop from state park to state park, avoiding gangs and cities as much as they could, and hike all the way to an island in Maine. “It’s his idea,” Brad said, pointing at Eric. “He planned it out. He’s the smart one.”

Eric blushed and couldn’t think of anything to say, except timidly, to Lucia, “I burned my house down too.” Lucia looked at him in the way most women looked at him, like a child who hadn’t been raised right and was now irrevocably damaged. Eric blushed even more hotly. “I think we can get to Maine by September,” he added.

“Why Maine?” asked John Martin.

Eric explained his idea about the island and winter. The three newcomers listened with growing interest. They glanced at each other. “It’s a good idea,” Sergio said, with some reluctance. John Martin nodded, but Lucia sat, back straight and severe, studying the four of them with glittering eyes.

Sarah, who had remained silent, spoke up. “We should tell them about Carl Doyle.” Without waiting, she told them the history. “So,” she finished, “he might come for us. He’s dangerous.” The others were silent for a second.

“I’ve seen him,” John Martin said. “Several times, driving back and forth in that Land Rover of his. I seen him get out once, shoot down a few Zombies, and then get back in the truck like it was nothing. I don’t like the looks of him.”

John Martin nodded his head at the other two and then all three walked away together. Eric watched as they quietly conferred. When they came back, John Martin held out his hand to Brad. “If you don’t mind,” he said. “We’d like to share the road with you for a while, at least as far as New York.” Brad looked at the others. Eric and Sarah nodded.

Brad shook John’s hand.

“Glad to have you,” Brad said, with a smile.

“Now, first things first,” John Martin said. “We need food.” He looked off to the north and east. “We got to go in there.”

“There” was the town of Warren, Ohio, with its wisps of gray smoke, like the hair of an old man, falling from the sky.

^_

They went to the north of the city, hiking wide of the airport, across a junk-strewn highway, which they scuttled across like rats, and then across a railroad to a road, behind which they could see a block of houses. To the south was the rest of Warren. From somewhere in the city came the sound of rock music, but it was too far away to say exactly what the tune was. “The Snakes,” Brad said knowingly. “We always played music loud.”

John Martin said the houses here, away from the city, might be safer from gangs but not from Zombies. “Every large center has Zombies,” he said. “And where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” he said. “There’s bound to be some cracked ones too.”

“Unless the Snakes cleared them out,” Brad said. “That’s what they usually do. They go into a new place and just drive around for a couple weeks, shooting anything that moves.”

“Maybe,” said John. “But be careful anyway.”

“We have to be careful,” Lucia agreed. “We can’t afford to think there’s no danger. That’s how people get killed.”

Brad blushed. “I didn’t mean not to be careful,” he said. “Of course we should be careful.”

“I know,” said John Martin.

Crouching with Birdie on his right and Sarah on his left, Eric was conflicted. A part of him felt he should be near to John Martin and Brad and Lucia. He should be consulted. But he also didn’t want the responsibility. He would be happy to follow John Martin’s instructions. Or Brad’s. Or Lucia’s. By Sarah’s silence, Eric imagined she felt the same way.

“We should go tomorrow,” said Lucia. “It’s getting dark.”

It was true. The shadows were stretching long across the ground. John Martin had just suggested they camp back at a shack they had passed earlier when they heard the truck.

The seven of them ducked down to the ground, beneath bushes, and waited.

It was the Land Rover. It drove by them slowly, its headlights on, and though he was too hidden to see, Eric imagined Carl Doyle searching for them along the road. When he had vanished toward the center of Warren, the group hiked quickly back through the dusk to the railroad track.

They dug a pit to hide the light of the fire. But the last of all their food was only enough to leave them wanting more. Sitting by the fire with Birdie next to him, leaning against his leg, Eric watched the others talk. Brad had already struck up a friendship with John. Sergio talked to Sarah, with Lucia next to him, quiet and contemplative. Eric was uncomfortable how quickly it had happened. They were all friends so fast. It made him nervous.

6

^__________

^{Pymatuning State Park}

The next day dawned clear and brisk. The wind sliced into them. Eric woke up miserable, having slept badly the night before. He dreamt he stood at the edge of a hole. He had to decide either to jump into the hole or be pushed into it. The hole was only as large as his body, and he knew when he fell in, he would scrape the sides all the way down until he became wedged deep below. He would stay there until he died of thirst, clawing at the smooth side until his fingers were bloody. He stood at the edge and could not decide.

Eric had a hard time waking Birdie. She groaned when she finally rose. There were large, black circles under her eyes, and she walked as if she were carrying some great weight. She needed food. Eric felt something like fear and anger both inside him. It was an uncomfortable, evil mixture. He didn’t talk to anyone as he took her hand. Without anything but a cup of water for their empty stomachs, they began to hike north.

On the way, the group outlined in hopeful terms what they needed. Cans of food, rice, good flour if they could find it, bags of popcorn, and pasta. Sarah also said they needed to find a Sears if they could, where they could find some fishing supplies and some more camping supplies to replace their own. The others seemed more excited than frightened about the prospects of Warren. Eric felt nervous and fearful. Yet he felt a fury he did not understand. He didn’t mention it, but he knew what he would be looking for today. A gun.

They agreed to break up into groups. John, Sarah, and Lucia made one. Brad, Sergio, Eric, and Birdie made up the other. As they were making groups, Lucia came up to Birdie and crouched down in front of her. “Do you want to come with us?” she asked her. Eric felt a burst of protective anger. She too thought that Eric was not good enough to take care of Birdie. He was about to snap at her, beautiful or not, but Birdie spoke up.

“No,” she said. “Eric take cares of me, not you.”

It was very blunt. Lucia blinked in surprise and then smiled awkwardly. “Okay,” she said. She looked at Eric once, but he couldn’t read the look she gave him. Was it apologetic? Doubtful? Distrustful? Whatever it was, Eric squeezed Birdie’s hand.

One group was to go down one side of the street. The other searched the opposite side. When they reached the end of the street, they would begin another. When they found what they needed, they agreed to stop together, as a group, and find a Sears.

With plans made, they emerged from the roadside and walked into town.

The Snakes had not been there yet.

There were Zombies everywhere.

^_

“Welcome to Champion Heights.”

Eric read the sign and felt sick. Nestled under spreading green trees, were rows of short, two story houses or smaller ranches. Each house was surrounded by an overgrown lawn in front of it, the grass already two feet high. Useless telephone wires crisscrossed above the streets.

Lumbering across the street, dragging one broken foot behind her, was a young woman, half of her face scratched to the bone. She walked to a house and began licking the chipping clapboard. Her tongue was ragged and frayed like a flag in the wind.

Birdie clutched at his hand.

Looking into a light blue house near them, Eric saw another Zombie, an old man this time, standing at the window. His hair was mostly ripped out. What was left was red and matted with blood. Somehow the old man had lost half his nose. It dangled from his face, connected by a thin tissue of skin. He stared at them through red eyes.

“I don’t like this,” said Eric. Brad shouldered his backpack.

“Fucking grow a pair,” he responded. Sergio chuckled next to him. Though they had just met, it was obvious that Sergio had attached himself to Brad. Brad glanced back at Eric, his face severe. “They’re only Zombies,” he said. “We need the food. As long as we keep seeing Zombies, we won’t see Snakes. They’re the real problem.”

Eric wanted to respond, but he didn’t. He knew Brad well enough now to know it wouldn’t do any good. He thought back to the Zombies on the street back in Athens. He had seen one, cracked, come racing down the street, a man in his forties, sprinting like a young man. The man was screaming, “The wind is talking! The wind is the fire!” Then he flung himself on a passing Zombie. Tearing him apart, the cracked man, eyes dripping blood, held up his bloody claws of hands. “It’s the wind! The wind!” The memory made Eric frigid.

Brad walked forward, and when the Zombie, dragging her foot, came near to him, he waited impatiently for her to cross their path. They were so close to her, they could hear the air whoosh in and out of her mouth. Black liquid oozed from her lips. She gurgled and heaved forward.

“Come on, hurry up,” Brad told the Zombie.

Sergio laughed uncomfortably.

“If I ever turn into a Zombie,” Brad said, suddenly, as the woman dragged by them. “Just kill me. Seriously. This is pathetic.” He stepped around her and headed for the first door. “Seriously, just fucking shoot me.”

They all tried to laugh.

^_

At the first house, Eric found a pantry with several cans of food, which he put in his backpack. Looking in the cupboard, he found a packet of noodles. There was a bag of flour too, but when he opened it, little moths flew out. The flour was full of worms. He found some hard candy in a little, emerald glass jar, shaped like a clamshell. He stuffed them in his pocket.

The sound in the empty house hurt somehow. He walked carefully.

There was a mantelpiece above a fake fireplace. It held pictures of men and women. Children. Smiling at the beach. Holding a baseball bat. He looked at an old photo of a man in a military uniform. He was supposed to be serious, but his eyes twinkled like it was all a joke.

In the back there was a room for children, painted purple. There were plastic toys all over the room and a chest against the wall, under the window. Eric asked Birdie if she wanted to look in there, but Birdie shook her head.

“There might be crayons,” Eric told her. But Birdie shook her head.

Eric opened the chest and searched through it. He found some crayons and put them in his bag.

“They’re all dead, aren’t they?” asked Birdie, standing in the middle of the room with her arms crossed before her and her hands clenched together.

Eric shrugged. “Probably,” he said.

“Are their ghosts here?” asked Birdie.

“No.” Eric saw that Birdie was trembling. “When people die, they just die, Birdie.” It was not harmless to believe in ghosts anymore. If she did, the world would be for the billions dead and that wasn’t the way it must be. “Do you believe me?”

“Yes,” she said, but she was still trembling.

Eric crouched in front of her. “People live on, but only in our mind and our heart,” he said. “They live in our memories, Birdie.”

“But I forget.”

Eric swallowed. It had not been long, but already his mother’s face was indistinct. “Me too,” he said. He wanted to say something. He wanted to comfort her, but he didn’t know what to say. He didn’t have an answer. No one did.

There was a thundering of footsteps then, and Eric shot up to his feet, tugging Birdie behind him.

“Look what I found!” Sergio cried, both he and Brad standing in the doorframe. He held out a dull gray pistol.

“I found bullets for it too,” said Brad happily.

Eric suddenly felt like he wanted to slap the both of them. “Don’t come crashing in like that,” he said in an even tone. “What’s wrong with you?”

They blushed and laughed uncomfortably.

As they moved to the next house, Eric felt Birdie’s hand in his. He felt strange. Larger. He moved in a world that did not scare him.

Maybe that was it, he didn’t feel scared anymore.

Maybe.

^_

When they regrouped, they were smiling. The Heights had not been scavenged, at least not thoroughly. They were heavy with supplies. Both Sarah and John Martin’s backpacks bulged. Moving through the streets, they made their way north. They hardly noticed the Zombies in the streets and houses. They were too excited about the food to be quiet.

“I can make cake!” said Sarah excitedly to them. “I could build an oven with stone. I could!”

The thought of cake made them all giddy.

“We found pasta and tomato sauce and some parmesan cheese,” Sarah continued. “Spaghetti tonight! And maybe some sausages with it. I could even make them in the shape of meatballs and cook them in the sauce!”

“Spaghetti and meatballs,” Brad breathed, wide-eyed. Their mouths burst with saliva.

“And there’s something else,” Sarah said, her eyes shining. “A surprise!” She laughed.

It was then that the Land Rover came squealing to a stop in front of them. It had emerged from a side street as if from nowhere. Carl Doyle leapt out, almost before the engine whirred down.

He carried an assault rifle.

One of his legs was torn to shreds. Carl Doyle’s eyes were red and bloody. He had the Vaca B.

“I want my medal back,” he hissed pointing at them.

^_

There was a burst of gunfire.

John Martin stood, pointing his gun toward Carl Doyle. The rest of them froze, hearts pounding.

“Calm down,” John Martin said, his gun steady. “Put that gun down.”

Carl Doyle licked his lips, but he didn’t move. He kept his gun cradled. He shook his head like something annoyed him and he could shake it free. “Excuse me, sir, I don’t have a problem with you. I am here to speak to Eric. He and I understand.” His eyes lit up. “We understand the island. I don’t have anything to say to you.”

“Just put the gun down,” John Martin said. “I don’t want to shoot you.”

“Preposterous,” said Carl Doyle. “I will do nothing of the kind. I am here to speak to Eric. We have a certain idea in common. A place where we can be civil. Civil, you understand. But without order, there is no civility. And order is what we lack. If I don’t get my medal, it means that we fail.” Doyle turned away from John Martin as if he wasn’t there. “In short, I want my medal back, if you please.”

“Mr. Doyle,” Eric spoke up. “Please listen to me! We don’t have your medal!”

“Now Eric,” Doyle laughed. “You are a solid bloke, I know. I understand, you understand, but he and them and the other savages, no. No, they understand only desire, the pinch of the stomach, savage fornication, how the blood warms at murder. That is not civility, not in the least. You and I, we can go to the island. We can have order. But first I want my medal back. Without that, there is nothing.”

“Time for you to leave,” John Martin said, his voice, already low, rumbled now.

“Don’t be absurd,” said Carl Doyle.

“Just shoot him!” exclaimed Brad. “He’s got the worm, he’s going to die anyway!”

Carl Doyle’s eyes went wide and his head snapped to Brad. “I beg your pardon! I do beg your pardon, sir!” His voice boomed about them. Even John Martin took a step back. “I have contracted no such disease! Yes, my leg is ruined. But I am in no way suffering from that Brazilian filth! Is that clear, sir!”

Brad swallowed. “Yes,” he said.

“Yes what?”

“Yes sir,” Brad said in a small voice.

There was another gunshot, and when John Martin lowered his gun again to point at Carl Doyle, he was steady again. “I’m only going to ask this one more time. Leave.”

Carl Doyle leveled his gaze upon John Martin. For a moment, his bloody eyes blazed a fire of red light. Then, without another word, he turned, climbed into the Land Rover, and sped off, shutting his door. As they watched the Rover speed away, Doyle veered to the side to strike a Zombie. It flew ten feet through the air before it hit a telephone pole.

The Zombie burst apart like a watermelon.

^_

They were quiet now and anxious as they moved north. Only Brad was vocal.

“Should have shot that fat fuck,” he said to John Martin.

“I’m not shooting anyone unless I have to,” he responded.

“He’s dying of the worm anyway!” Brad exclaimed.

“I’m not shooting anyone I don’t have to shoot.” John Martin said nothing else.

But Brad continued, upset. “Goddamn it, that crazy fuck is going to follow us all the way to Maine! We should shoot him. You fuckers don’t have the guts, but I do. If my gun was loaded, I would’ve shot him. No one talks to me like that! Did you hear him? Excuse me, sir, pardon me, sir. Well excuse me, you fat fuck, but next time I see you, I’m going to blow your fucking head off! How’s that for order?”

Sarah tried to calm him, but he jerked his shoulder away from her touch and glared at her furiously. Eric had never seen him so enraged.

When, by luck, they came across a little tackle and bait shop, Brad wouldn’t go inside. He stayed outside, waiting, and when they returned, he was still fuming. “We need bigger guns,” he said, when they had gathered outside the tackle shop. “Who gives a shit for fishing? I want a gun.”

They moved sourly north.

A Zombie boy sat numbly in a tire swing. His little blonde head was cocked unnaturally to the side. His eyes were entirely coal black.

^_

When they traveled, Eric noticed, they fell into a certain order. When he played D&D with his friends, marching order was very important. It decided who was strong, who was weak, who protected and who needed protection.

Up front, John Martin and Brad walked, not side by side, but jointly.

Behind them were Sergio and Lucia. Lucia walked with her head high, while Sergio had a way of constantly looking around them, and sometimes glancing back behind them.

Then came Sarah. Sometimes she slowed and walked with Birdie. Often Birdie preferred to walk slightly ahead of Eric. She kept her eyes to the ground, as if deep in thought.

Eric came last.

In D&D, he would be the warrior at the rear that kept them from surprise attack. The weakest fighter. The one no one was sure about. The one still trying to establish himself, to grow into who he was.

^_

They were just outside of Champion Heights when it happened.

From one of the houses, a cracked Zombie burst out the door. He was a young man or used to be. His short dark hair was half missing, and his eyes had completely turned to black jelly. His right hand was missing. He gurgled and screamed as he ran toward them. John Martin pulled out his gun and fired while the rest of them ducked down at the sound. The Zombie howled but did not halt. John Martin fired three more times. The third time took the Zombie in the neck, and its head fell to one side, held on by a flap of skin and dark, putrid muscle. It stumbled and then fell sideways in the grass. From there, it kicked and thrashed for an impossibly long time.

“That’s what you should have done to Carl Doyle,” Brad said, as the sound of the last gunshot still lingered in the still air. His statement throbbed in the air with the last echoes of gunfire.

^_

They were north of Champion Heights, quiet and pensive, the thought of food still there but distant. At some point, they would have to turn to the east to go to Pymatuning. For now, all they wanted was to find cover so they could fix some food and try to forget about the day.

They hadn’t gone far when they saw a long driveway leading to a farm. Brad stopped by the driveway and gazed at the farm.

“What’re you doing?” John Martin asked.

“A farm,” Brad said.

“So?”

“Every farmhouse has guns,” he said. “Rifles. Shotguns.” His eyes turned back to the farm. “I’m going in.”

“Brad,” Sarah pleaded. “Let’s just find a place to rest and eat! We can get the guns tomorrow. Okay?”

“No,” said Brad. “You guys can go if you want. I need a gun.” He started walking up the driveway.

“Hey,” John Martin said. “Don’t just walk off alone.”

Brad turned to him, without pausing. Walking backward, he gave him the finger. “Don’t tell me what to do,” he said.

John Martin shook his head, and then turned to them. “Go on ahead,” he said. “I’ll go with him.” They nodded.

Eric walked behind him and when John Martin noticed, he opened his mouth. “I’m going with you,” Eric stated. John Martin looked at him, shook his head again, snapped his tongue against the roof of his mouth in irritation, but nodded in the end. Halfway to the farm, he turned, hoping for some reason to see Birdie there, standing in the field, watching him.

But she wasn’t standing, waving at him. Instead, he stared into the bright yellow sun setting behind them. It burned a deep, dark yellow, like a rotten lemon.

Then Eric turned back toward the farm. He had to jog to catch up with John Martin. Brad had stopped to wait for them.

“I don’t need your help,” he spat when they came close.

John Martin didn’t stop, but passed by him without a word.

Eventually Brad followed, the three of striding toward the farmhouse.

^_

The farmhouse probably hadn’t been a working farm in half a century. The house was in passable shape, if a little sagged in one corner, but the barn roof was so bent in the middle, it looked like a saddle. The farmhouse was painted a deep cream color that had turned slightly brown with age, while the barn may once have been red, but was now the dark color of aging, rotting wood. Parked in the barn was an old truck. Its back tires were flat and gave the truck the impression of a dog sitting back on its hind legs. Around the house was a large and overgrown lawn, thick with dandelions and a few thorny plants with soft, purple flowers.

In the heavy sunlight of dusk, the windows of the farmhouse glowed like orange cataracts. It was impossible to see inside.

The quiet was thick as the light. Now that he stood in front of the house, Brad no longer looked as angry as he had before. They stood there for a moment, eyeing the house and the surroundings. Nothing stirred.

Then Brad stepped forward like he was breaking through something. He clomped loudly up the steps and onto the reverberating porch. The screen door squeaked as he opened it. The door was unlocked.

It happened in an instant. First they were outside, looking, studying, appraising, and then, as if it was the body of someone else, Eric was stepping onto the porch, listening to the porch beneath him, reaching the door, and holding the screen door as he stepped across the threshold.

Before he knew it, he was inside.

^_

Before they had gone, whoever they were, they had left the house immaculate. Everything was in its place. There were white doilies on the arms of the couch. The dishes were done and the sink was clean but for a fine coat of dust. On the coffee table there were four coasters, each facing a chair or a seat at the couch. In the middle was a vase where dead flowers stood. Petals from the flowers littered the coffee table like potpourri. All the pictures on the wall were straightened, and there was a piece of floral cloth draped over the television. It was as if the house was prepared for its own wake.

Brad walked across the carpet and threw open a closet door. He rummaged through it violently, throwing old coats and boots behind him on the floor. John opened a big wardrobe in the living room and searched inside. Eric walked quietly up the carpet steps to the bedrooms. People sometimes kept guns in their bedroom closets.

   The bedroom was as clean as the one downstairs. There was a full size bed, made and tucked in. On the nightstand next to it was a book with a ribbon lying next to it, as if waiting for a reader. Eric thought about what Birdie had asked him about ghosts. Whoever lived here was neat, ordered, but in a caring way. She did it, and Eric was sure it was a she, not to force the world into order, but to welcome those she loved. To make people feel at ease and comfortable. Eric thought her spirit was still here. Maybe that was what Birdie was talking about, this feeling. Eric worried if he had told her the right thing.

He opened the closet, but there were only clothes, shoes, and bags of knitting yarn. Eric went to the second bedroom to search when he heard a whoop of triumph downstairs. Feeling relieved, he walked down the steps. He stopped halfway down the steps.

Brad was in the living room with John and both of them were studying a shotgun. Its dark metal was long and brutal looking and the stock was made of a dark wood. It looked brand new.

“This is a nice gun,” said Brad happily. He turned it in his hands. His evil mood seemed completely dissipated.

“Did you find any shells with it?” asked John.

Brad shook his head. “They must be here somewhere.” He looked up at Eric who was standing on the steps, overlooking them. “Were there any shells upstairs?”

Eric shrugged. “I haven’t seen any,” he said. “But I’ve only checked one room.”

“What the hell have you been doing, jerking off?” asked Brad. Holding his new gun, he bounded up the steps. “We’ve searched the whole downstairs!” He said this as he went past Eric in a rush. Embarrassed, Eric followed behind him. Brad continued, happily, as they walked through the upstairs hallway. “I swear, man, you live in a dream world or something. We could search this whole house before you even decided where to start. You’re too fucking slow, man, you’ve got to hurry it up.” Brad rolled his eyes at him and opened the second bedroom door.

The cracked Zombie was on him before Eric had a chance to yell.

^_

The Zombie screeched as it leapt upon Brad. Eric stumbled back in fear, but then threw himself forward, trying to push the Zombie away. The smell of it was nauseating. Eric felt his fingers sink into numb flesh when he pushed at it. It was nearly on top of Brad, screeching and gurgling, black spittle dripping from its mouth. As Eric shoved at it, he watched the Zombie’s mouth open. It sunk its teeth into Brad’s shoulder. Brad’s eyes flew open in terror.

“Get her off me! Get her off!” He screamed. Eric grabbed at her hair and tugged, but the hair only peeled away part of her scalp. Brad pushed at her but she was clamped tightly to him. Suddenly John Martin pushed by Eric and, tugging the Zombie free of Brad, he hurled her against the door frame. The Zombie’s head crunched against the wood, and it fell to the floor, and then rolled to the side, and was motionless. Black liquid poured from the back of her head.

The Zombie was an old woman. She was shorter than Eric, old and thin as a bird. There were only a few long strands of hair over her burning red scalp. Her eyes had long ago melted into a black gel and her lips were shrunken so that her teeth were long and bared in a snarl.

Brad stood hunched over in the hallway, holding his hand to his shoulder where he bled. John Martin went to him, but Brad snarled and turned away.

“I’m all right,” he said. “I’m all right. Just look for shells.” Then he turned away and shot down the stairs.

“Help him,” John Martin said to Eric, who nodded and followed.

All the way down the stairs, he shook his hand absently, without know why. Only when he reached the bottom did he realize the old woman’s hair was snarled around his fingers. He wretched and gagged as he furiously wiped the hair off on the couch, leaving smears of dark blood.

The room was orderly no more.

^_

Brad was in the kitchen over the sink. The running water, supplied by a well, still worked. He was splashing water on the wound.

“Don’t!” Eric said. “We have to boil that water first!”

Brad whirled around. “Do you think that fucking matters! She bit me, you asshole! Does it really fucking matter!”

“Of course it does!” Eric cried. “Don’t wash it with something that could be poison!” He rummaged through the drawers and found towels neatly folded. He took one out and grabbing Brad’s hand, tugged it free of the wound, and placed the towel on it. “Hold it there!”

Brad did as he was told. “I think I need to sit down,” he said. The towel was turning red. He started to sit on the kitchen floor. Eric held him up.

“Just put your head down. Put your head down over the sink.” It was what his mother told him when he felt sick. Put your head down.

“Oh fuck, she bit me,” Brad said. He made a pathetic sobbing sound and then kicked the cabinet under the sink, splitting a wooden door in two.

Eric threw open some cupboards. Above the fridge, he found what he was looking for. He unscrewed the bottle of gin and poured it over Brad’s shoulder. Brad screeched in pain. His whole body, shuddered, and Eric saw his knees go weak. Eric held him up as he slumped. Then he took off the dish towel. Two large gashes gaped there for a moment before the blood welled up and poured over his freckled skin.

Eric doused the next towel in gin and put it on Brad’s shoulder. Brad yowled and sobbed.

“How bad is it?” he asked.

“Not too bad,” Eric said.

“How bad? Really? How bad?”

“You’ll be all right!”

“Oh god,” Brad sobbed. “How bad is it? How bad?” He viciously kicked the cupboard.

John Martin came in then, holding the shotgun. He took Brad by the arm, and Eric, following, took the bottle of gin with him. Brad had difficulty walking, so John Martin half-carried him out of the house.

“Oh god,” Brad sobbed. “It’s bad, isn’t it? It hurts. Where’s Sarah?” This new question seemed to consume him all the way back. He repeated her name all the way home. “Sarah, Sarah, Sarah.”

By the time they reached the camp, the sun had set, and the sky was dark, steel blue. When they placed Brad by the fire and he clutched Sarah’s hand, he finally stopped talking. He just lay there silently by the fire as Sarah cried with his head on her lap. Darkness settled upon them like a gently falling snow.

^_

Brad’s eyes started to bleed at about midnight that night. His head burned hot in Sarah’s lap. His red hair clung in wet curls to his forehead. Eric overheard John Martin tell Sergio and Lucia that he had never seen the Vaca B work so fast. “Maybe it’s changing,” he said. Eric cast his eyes toward them sadly. John Martin quieted and smiled apologetically. They had broken into their original groups, and avoided each other.

Birdie sat closer to Eric than usual, her arms around his waist and her head buried in his side, under his arm. She hadn’t said much or cried.

Sarah, however, was constantly weeping. She held Brad’s head in her lap and administered water to him.

The next day, the sun rose brilliant in the sky. When Brad woke, he was pale and quiet. After breakfast, Eric said to Sarah they should wash the wound and think about sewing it up as best they could. But when they took away the cloth, the wound was dark and oozed a white puss. It looked like a wound that had been festering for weeks. Eric hurriedly replaced the cloth, and then walked away, feeling dizzy. He went far into the woods and then fought to keep from losing his meal. In the end, he wretched up half of his stomach over the trunk of a tree.

Brad insisted on moving. They labored slowly over the fields, taking turns helping Brad. Blood now filled his eyes. Brad said nothing to them, moving north. When they came to a long lake, Brad waved them down. He could go no further. They made camp by the water while Sarah held Brad. His breath rasped and rattled. All that long afternoon, they waited, boiled water, cooked food, and sat silently by the edge of the water.

As night came on, Sarah asked Eric to help bring Brad to the lake’s edge. He said he wanted to look at the water. Eric was shocked at how light he was, and how much heat his body radiated. When he put Brad down, he was ashamed at being relieved to leave them there alone. Being so close to the Vaca B again was horrible. Sarah held Brad in her arms, holding his head so he could see the water, turning fiery red in the summer sunset.

Brad slept, on and off. When he woke, it was always with a strange shiver of his body. He would wake, choking, look around and ask if he was still there. And where was the river? And the clouds, were they still listening? Sarah stroked his head and said he was going to be fine. It was all right.

Far past midnight, Brad woke up. He sat up with a groan. His eyes dripped blood. “I just want you all to know,” he said. “I want you all to know.” He shook his head then and lay back down on Sarah’s lap. “You remember, right?” he asked her. “I tried to help, you know.” Then he sank into a misery of tears so terrible to hear that Eric covered his face with his hands. “There wasn’t anything I could do,” Brad pleaded. “Oh god!”

Even later he woke up and he begged. “Please! Please!” he sobbed. This went on for an hour.

In the last hour before dawn, he had grown quiet and lucid. He looked up at Sarah. “Okay,” he said. He smiled. “Okay.”

A few minutes later, just moments before the sun rose, Brad died.

^_

They made a wooden pyre on the shore of Mosquito Creek Lake and burned Brad’s body. His death happened so suddenly, it was difficult to believe that just two days ago, Brad had been scouting ahead, keeping them safe. It happened so suddenly, it didn’t seem possible that Brad was burning in front of them. It seemed that at any moment, he would come back from where he had gone and swear at them for being idiots. It had happened so suddenly, the whole world seemed unreal. The brilliant sun, the glimmering lake, the lazy twirls of smoke above Brad’s pyre, none of it seemed plausible. It had happened so suddenly, none of them knew what to say or if anything should be said. They stood by the fire downcast and silent. Only Sarah wept.

By midmorning it was done. The pyre was nothing but ashes. There was nothing to do but move on. They said nothing as they began to break camp. Looking at them, Eric saw the pain of loss. They were used to it. They knew the only reaction was to continue. It was the only response they understood.

People died. People lived. Get on with it.

There wasn’t much more than that.

Eric and Sarah solemnly unpacked Brad’s share of the goods. His backpack was mostly full of food and boiled water. He had easily carried more than his fair share. In one pocket, Eric found a plastic bag. Inside was a little child’s doll with great long, purple hair and an impish face. There was also a picture. In the picture, Brad was laughing. He was holding a little, red-haired girl. She had red pony tails, one on each side of her head, done up with pale blue ribbons. Squeezing Brad tight, the little girl was looking in the camera and smiling. Her teeth were bared, she hugged him so tightly. Eric had never seen Brad look like this. There was none of the darkness, none of the deep sadness, none of the fury and rage. He was smiling.

Sarah took the picture from him. Tears fell down her face as she looked at the picture.

“Who’s the little girl?” asked Eric.

“I don’t know,” Sarah said. “Brad never talked about life before the plague. But I think it must be his sister. Look at how happy he is.”

“I hardly recognize him,” Eric said with an attempt at a smile.

Sarah handed the picture back to him with a strange, painful shake of her head, and then wordlessly packed what she could in her own backpack before she walked away.

Eric stuffed the rest of the supplies in his own backpack and then groaned as he hefted it over his shoulders. He stood for a moment with the doll and picture in his hand. He placed them both in the center of the ashes and then, looking once at the calm water of the lake, he turned and walked away.

Late that afternoon, without speaking more than a few words between them, the party arrived at Pymatuning State Park.

7

^__________

^{Lake Erie}

They did not stay at Pymatuning to rest, as they had once planned. Their grief demanded movement. They hiked north along the shore of the great, curved lake. It was nearing mid-June now, and the days were getting hot, and beneath their backpacks, they sweated. They hiked harder and faster than was necessary. It felt to Eric like death followed close behind and, if they stopped, it would suddenly catch up to them. The feeling was so strong, sometimes he did not dare to look behind him.

As if he was moving through a storm, he put his head down and plowed forward.

^_

When they left Pymatuning, hiking north toward Erie, they had to move much more slowly. Twice they saw vehicles. It was hard to tell if they belonged to the Snakes or to some other gang or if they were just people like them, trying to find somewhere safe to live. They couldn’t take the chance. They hid in ditches and little copses of woods along fields. They dug pits for their fires to hide the light. They ate quietly and hardly spoke. One night Birdie drew a picture of Brad’s funeral pyre. In her picture, Brad flew up through the smoke on yellow wings.

Eric thought painfully about his plan. They were still hundreds of miles from Maine. And when they got there, would they really be safe? For the first time, Eric thought of their goal as a real island with difficulties of its own. How would they get all the supplies on the island? How would they survive the first, terrible winter? When he imagined it now, his father no longer lazed back in his canoe with a can of beer in one hand. His father was probably dead in Florida. Instead he thought about Sarah and Birdie and himself, alone there on the island, in the desolation of winter.

They wouldn’t be safe in Maine either. They had to prepare. There could be Zombies and disease and hunger and death by freezing. For the first time, Eric thought of stopping somewhere, anywhere, and building a life there. The island wouldn’t be safe either.

No one was safe. No one was ever safe.

^_

North of Pymatuning, the five of them hid in the woods near a creek while John Martin went into town. He said he wanted to get antibiotics. He didn’t say so, but Eric thought John believed that Brad might have been saved if they had treated him sooner. He had mentioned there were stories of people who got the Vaca B but took a lot of antibiotics quickly and survived. Eric wanted to go with him, but John wouldn’t let him.

As they waited by the fire where Sarah was boiling water and cooking, Eric watched Sergio and Lucia. They were talking to each other in Spanish. Brad’s death had separated them as a group. Now they looked at each other, somehow abashed at the other’s presence. They thought that Brad’s risks were serious and foolish and maybe they suspected they had stolen from Carl Doyle. They were trouble. Eric thought they would rather travel separately now. He found he agreed, and wished they would leave.

Eric didn’t like the way they looked at them, especially Lucia. He was used to the scorn of women, especially beautiful women, who always looked at him with the same mixture of pity and revulsion, but he didn’t like being in such intimate quarters with Lucia. He found himself watching her walk, watching her tip back her head to drink, watching her much more often than he wanted to. He hoped she didn’t notice, but he suspected she did. Beautiful women always knew they were being gawked at. Eric wished they would just leave.

They sat around the fire quietly, hardly speaking.

“This is good,” Lucia said finally, pointing at the beans and corn that Sarah had made.

“Thank you,” she said.

“What is that flavor?”

“Sage.”

Then the conversation died and they returned quietly to their meal.

Just as the sun touched the horizon, John Martin returned. He brought with him a plastic bag of medical supplies and packages of penicillin and amoxicillin. He was also wearing a new, thinner jacket. He didn’t look happy, however. When he put his backpack on, he sat down, frowning into the boiling water. “I saw the Land Rover,” he said. “Doyle is still following us.”

Eric felt a chill and his heart fell. Maybe Brad had been right. Maybe they would have to kill him. Brad had been prepared to do it. But when Eric thought of doing it, he felt nauseated and afraid.

As they sat by the fire, silent, Eric thought there was a test ahead of him. He could feel it. It would be the test of his life. He would have to face it. Some day, maybe soon. He could not avoid it. But he shrunk from it, terrified.

The thought tortured him and he could not sleep.

^_

Lake Erie was huge. Eric had never seen the ocean before, so it was the most water he had ever seen. The gray waters, calm and flat, stretched to the north and west. They arrived at the shore haggard but strong. The beach was made of stone pebbles, some round, some large and flat and gray. Eric and Birdie and Sarah sat on the rocks and looked at the water. John Martin, Sergio and Lucia sat together on a knoll overlooking the stones and water. The waters lapped gently against the rocks. The plan was now to move east, but for now, they didn’t seem much interested in anything except staring at the huge lake.

The waters seemed to go on forever. It seemed strangely lifeless to Eric. Thinking of the lake, he had imagined waters glowing blue as sapphire. But the lake was the color of lead, flat and endless. The sight made him think this whole idea was useless. He should have stayed home. He should have stayed in Athens. Maybe it would’ve been better, after a while. Maybe the gangs would settle down. Why had he thought that hiking hundreds of hundreds of miles was a good idea? Was it, in the end, only because he missed his father, only because he still felt empty somehow without him? Was it all about him and his stupid desires and foolish fears? Looking out over the gray waters, Eric thought such thoughts and grew heavy with self-loathing and doubt.

Suddenly Sarah burst into tears. She put her face in her hands and then dropped her head against Eric’s shoulder. Eric stiffened in surprise, but then awkwardly put his hand around her shoulders. Her yellow hair snarled on his shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,” Sarah sobbed. “It’s all my fault! This is all my fault!”

“It’s okay,” Eric said, trying to soothe her.

“No! No!” Sarah was inconsolable. Eric didn’t say anything, but just rubbed her arm. Sarah opened up her hand in front of him. For a while, Eric couldn’t understand what he was looking at. Then it resolved into a flat round piece of shining metal.

It was Carl Doyle’s medal.

“Why?” asked Eric, before he could stop himself.

“I don’t know,” Sarah sobbed. “I-I found it while we were escaping. He must have dropped it in the forest.” She gave out a tortured groan. “My grandfather had one, and maybe, I…I don’t know, Eric. I just took it.” Eric didn’t know what to say, but his heart fell in him. Sarah cried. “I wanted to give it back, but I was scared. Then it all got so crazy, I really didn’t dare. I’ve been so scared, Eric. Now-now, look what happened. All those people are dead! Brad is dead and it’s all my fault!”

Eric didn’t know what to say. He took the medal from her, and then put his arm about her. “It’s not your fault,” he said. “Carl Doyle is crazy. He would’ve found some excuse, I think.” He didn’t know if he believed what he told her. If it hadn’t been for the medal, maybe Doyle would not have fixated on them. Maybe they would be back at the Slow Society. But he didn’t want to tell Sarah this. She was already wracked with guilt.

“I’m so sorry, Eric,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” Looking out over the lead gray water, the medal seemed heavy in his hand.

Eric held Sarah by the lake for a long time.

^_

They built a fire up on the knoll in the midst of a ring of stones from the beach. As they boiled water for the next few days, Sarah began making dinner. After her confession to Eric, she seemed in a much better mood. John Martin, Sergio, and Lucia had spent the afternoon fishing. They had caught a few fish and Sarah was busy preparing them. Stirring the fried fish, she added corn and canned potatoes. Tasting as she went, she added salt, pepper, and some other spices that Eric did not know. Finally she let it simmer for a long while.

The others were quiet and reflective. Birdie, who had spent the afternoon wandering on the beach, spread out a collection of stones, whose uniqueness only she understood. She ordered them in a circle, and then picked them up one by one and placed them in the circle, before taking them out again and replacing it with another. Eric was too preoccupied with the medal in his pocket to follow the logic of Birdie’s game. He had promised not to tell the others, but already, this promise dug into him. By the time dinner was done, the sun had set. The fire cast a red light upon the dark waters of Lake Erie. The lake was somehow more comforting in the dark. They ate silently for a while.

“You know,” John Martin said finally. “We’ve been talking.” Here it comes, Eric thought. They want to leave us now. “We’re going to be turning north soon. We’d be happy if you came with us.”

Eric blinked in surprise. “You want us to go with you?”

“But we’re going to Maine,” Sarah said.

“Why?” asked Lucia. “Why don’t you come with us?” She was looking at Eric and he tried not to blush, though he doubted he was successful.

“We’re going to Maine,” Sarah repeated.

“We’re going to live on an island,” Birdie said, looking up from her circle of stones. “Then the Zombies can’t get us.”

“You’d be safe with us too,” said Sergio.

“You could shake Carl Doyle,” said John Martin. “He thinks you’re going east.”

“I don’t know,” Eric said. “I have to think about it.”

Sergio leaned forward to speak, but John Martin shook his head. Sergio sat back, expelling his air, exasperated. He crossed his arms and then uncrossed them before Lucia put her arm about him. Sergio gave her a little twitch of a smile, and seemed to relax.

After another moment, John Martin lifted himself to his feet. “Take a walk with me, Eric.”

Eric looked around at the others before he got to his feet. Unhappy, Sarah glared at the two of them. But Eric shrugged and then followed John Martin out of the circle of red firelight, and to the moonlit shores of Lake Erie.

^_

Eric had always realized the size of John Martin. He towered over the rest of them. His arms were as big around as most people’s legs. But Eric had seldom noticed how careful John was with his movements. How his big hands were held to his side or used to accentuate a point with a twist. Big as he was, John Martin moved with easy, muscular grace. His eyes were wide and welcoming, and Eric felt like he listened. There was a quiet patience about him that Eric trusted.

   John Martin looked at him for a moment, and then, twining his hands together, he turned his gaze at the lake. “After the plague, when everyone I knew was dead, I shut myself in my basement,” he began. “My plan was to wait a year or two until everything settled and then come out again.” He paused for a second. “So I hoarded all the food I could find and blocked up all the windows and doors. I started to wait. I also started to think. I thought about my aunt who raised me and the woman I should have married but didn’t. I thought about the ending of everything. And I waited. Weeks and weeks. I started wondering why. What was the reason for any of it? What would I do when I came out anyway? All I had in that dark basement was myself and my own thoughts. One day, I started thinking about ending it. I had a gun. I started cleaning it. Talking out loud, arguing back and forth about whether or not to use it. One day I put the gun in my mouth. I felt the trigger. I couldn’t think of a single reason to live. Not one.”

He looked at Eric. His eyes were sad and large. Eric thought back to that starry night just a few days out of Athens when he had similar thoughts. Fear crept up his arm at the memory. He had been so close.

“But I couldn’t do it,” he said. “Instead I broke out of my own prison. I began to wander the streets. And that’s how I found Lucia and Sergio.” He smiled. “They think I saved them, but they saved me. You can’t just shut yourself off from people, Eric. We need each other.”

Eric thought about it and looked out over the water. The moonlight sparkled there.

Maybe John Martin was right. Maybe the island had never been about safety. Instead, it was about escape and fear and shutting himself away from the world.

“I have to think about it,” Eric said. “I have to talk to Sarah and Birdie.”

John Martin didn’t say anything more. After another moment, he left him alone, listening to the water’s edge, the waves hushing through stone, and the moonlight glittering on the dark surface of the lake.

^_

They stayed the next day at the shore of the lake. Though the sun was brilliant above them, the lake remained the color of steel. Eric and Birdie spent the day wandering on the beach while Sarah fished. She joined them for a while. They talked about whether to join the others and go to a farm in northern New York, or if they should continue to Maine, to the island. Sarah was strangely adamant about Maine. She said it was far enough away to be safe. Eric wasn’t so sure.

“I want to see the island,” Birdie said.

“Wouldn’t it be good to live with John and Sergio and Lucia?” asked Eric.

“They should come with us,” Birdie said. She picked up a flat stone and sent it sailing into the lake. Sarah smiled smugly and looked at Eric who could only shrug.

In the afternoon, Eric helped Sarah clean the fish she caught. When he was little, with his father, he had sickened and cried when his father gutted the fish. His father had given him a sour look, as if to say this is no son of mine. Now Eric didn’t have a problem. Although he still hated the feeling of the knife cutting through skin.

While he cleaned, he watched Sergio and Lucia play catch with a baseball. Both of them had carried gloves and a baseball with them. It seemed bizarre to watch them play, the white ball hurtling through the air. They laughed and talked back and forth in Spanish as they played. It was like nothing had happened and they were on vacation. Except, sometimes, when they grew quiet and solemn, Eric guessed they were thinking of different times and people who were no longer with them. Even in these times, the baseball spun through the air and smacked into the soft leather of their gloves. In the afternoon, after they had been playing for a while, Lucia jogged over to them. Eric turned his head away from her to study the entrails of the fish as he pulled them out with his fingers.

“Sergio could use a break,” she said. “Do you want a turn?”

Eric continued to clean the fish. Sarah poked him in the side, and Eric looked up at Lucia’s smooth face, dark hair, and deep eyes.

“Me?” he asked.

Lucia laughed. “You,” she said.

Eric shook his head and blushed. “I don’t play baseball.” The only contact with baseball he had was with the jocks who played it. It had not been pleasant.

Lucia made a strange face, something between surprise and disappointment, or maybe, Eric thought, mockery. He cleared his throat and picked up another fish, pushing the knife into its anus and then sliding the point up the pale belly. It’s red and purple innards spilled out on the rock.

“Okay,” Lucia said. Eric heard but did not watch her walk away.

“She likes you,” Sarah said when she was gone.

“Shut up, Sarah,” Eric said angrily. He blushed, dropped his knife and then walked to the shore to wash his hands of blood.

By the shore, he thought of his father, his mother, Brad, Jessica shot in the gutter, all the friends he had lost.

At some point, Birdie joined him, and they wordlessly sat together. They watched the water until the sun had turned the gray waters red and the sun had dipped low in the sky. By then Eric knew he wanted to keep moving to Maine.

They would not be going to the farm with Lucia.

The decision seemed obvious.

^_

When they woke up, they ate a quiet breakfast. Eric had told John Martin his decision the night before. They did not seem happy about it. John Martin had shaken his head in disapproval, the same way he had done when Brad announced he was going to the farm to look for a gun. Sergio and Lucia looked at them with disbelief and some anger.

Now they consulted the map together for the last time. The plan was to move to Allegheny National Forest. From there, they would split up, John Martin, Sergio, and Lucia would move north into New York, while the rest of them would continue east to Susquehannock State Forest. All of them wanted to put miles between them and Cleveland. In the clear morning air, they could see smoke rising from the city, a black, acrid cloud that gathered over the city like an omen. The city was burning to the ground.

“It’s the gangs,” John Martin said. “They’re trying to burn each other out.”

Nobody knew if this was true or not, but they said nothing in response. John Martin loaded his gun that morning with profound gravity.

Rested and fed, they hiked swiftly east. Not long in the morning, they noticed the signs had changed. Somewhere they had left Ohio and were now in Pennsylvania. The land was a patchwork of forest and field. They were able to keep out of sight mostly, moving east steadily through the day. They had finished eating a quick lunch and continuing east when Sergio came up to walk next to Eric.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” Eric mirrored, his thumbs hooked in his hiking straps.

“I don’t mean to be pushy, man,” he said. “But why won’t you come with us? I mean, we all like each other, don’t we?”

“Yeah,” Eric said.

“Then come help us start a new life,” he said. “Everyone wants you to come with us. I don’t understand what’s so special about this island.” He paused, but when Eric didn’t say anything, he continued. “It’s hard to find people you like, you know. Don’t you think you might regret it?”

“Maybe,” Eric admitted. He looked up from his feet. Lucia and John Martin were walking ahead of them. Lucia had a way of walking that made his mouth dry. He turned to look back down at his feet.

“I wish you’d change your mind,” Sergio said.

“It’s not my decision,” said Eric. “It’s Birdie’s and Sarah’s too.”

“Come on,” Sergio said. “They listen to you. You could persuade them if you wanted. What is it? You don’t like Latinos or something?”

“No,” Eric said. “I just. I don’t know. I’ve got to go there. It’s what I set out to do.”

Sergio sighed and then threw up a hand. His hand twisted in anger and he said something in Spanish that Eric didn’t think was too polite. “Whatever, man!” he exclaimed. “I think you’re making a mistake, a big mistake. You’re going to lead these people to their death, that’s what I think!” He hissed and then walked swiftly ahead of them.

Eric paused for a second. His heart pattered in his chest. He had never thought of himself as anyone’s leader. The idea nearly choked him.

^_

The weather was beautiful. Blue skies with lazy white clouds. A brisk but warm wind fluttered their hair. Through green fields they hiked. Deer bounded away from them or picked up their heads and followed them cautiously as they passed with their large, dark eyes. Yellow flowers and purple thistles bloomed at their feet. Crickets and beetles hummed and birds swooped. Far above them, black turkey vultures circled, and once, Eric saw a brightly colored little hawk, blue and brown, dive upon a feeding flock of kinglets. The kinglets fluttered away, safe, while the hawk perched stoically upon a fence post, unsuccessful but undaunted.

There were times when it was easy to think that there had not been such things as humans here.

^_

For days they hiked, though now slowly and carefully. They saw a convoy of vehicles once, heading west, about fifteen cars, trucks, and vans. In the back of one of the trucks were men wearing military fatigues and holding assault rifles to their sides, barrels pointed at the sky. Sergio “took point,” which was his term for scouting ahead as Brad had once. Eric guessed John Martin let him do it because it made him proud and happy. John was constantly scanning the land around them with binoculars, so there was little danger. The two groups had talked little over the past days, as if rehearsing for their ultimate separation.

Eric, however, studied them more, tortured now by his decision. There were hundreds and hundreds of miles left to hike, through towns and around cities, up and down mountains, all of it through land threatened by Zombies and gangs of armed people. He shuddered thinking of the times they would be forced to scavenge for supplies. The longer they traveled, the more chance they had of being caught by paranoid and armed strangers who had no reason to trust them. Or they could be surprised by a cracked Zombie, like Brad. And even if they reached the island, was there any guarantee it would be safer? Would they be able to find the supplies to survive the winter? Just the three of them? If he led them to a slow death by starvation in Maine, he would die first of guilt. He tried to tell himself he was not the leader, but Sergio was right, he knew it. If he asked them to, both Sarah and Birdie would, in the end, agree to join with John Martin.

He found himself looking at Lucia more, trying to indelibly write her movements upon his mind. He listened when she talked, thinking of her accent, how wonderful and subtle it was. And he thought of her asking him to join her and her brother in a game of pass, and hearing Sarah say she liked him. The cruel thought stuck in him like a thorn.

He was sullen and quiet at night. He only talked with Birdie, and, because she talked so very little, this was not much. It was only in these times, when he watched Birdie draw with her dwindling crayons, watched her frizzy hair move in the wind, saw her smile at him sometimes, a brittle, tender smile, as delicate as any flower, it was only at these times when, filled with a protective, fierce determination, he ever felt sure of himself.

It was a solemn group that tramped east, through a land beginning to rise and fall in ever greater folds until, one day, they saw in front of them, no more than a mile or two in the distance, the forested hills of the Alleghany National Forest.

It was then a cracking shot pierced them. They ducked in fear as the gunshot echoed about them. It was Sarah who grabbed him and pulled him forward.

“Run!” she screamed.

Sprinting for the cover of the forest, Eric looked once over his shoulder. There, by the road they had been following, was the motionless body of John Martin, just another stone on the numb earth.

8

^__________

^{Alleghany National Forest}

“What happened?” Eric asked again. He had asked many times, but hadn’t heard the answer. He didn’t feel real. Nothing did. He blinked around at the forest where they had hid. Nothing made any sense to him. Trees were alien creatures burrowing into the sky. Birdie was next to him, her face pressed into his side. Sergio was clinging to Lucia next to him, low in the bushes, and Sarah was on her stomach, looking past the trees toward the road. Somewhere on the road out there was John Martin, shot down. “What happened?”

“Shut up,” Sarah hissed. “It’s Carl Doyle.” She tugged him down to the ground.

As if summoned, the Land Rover appeared over the crest of the hill. It was moving so slow, it reminded Eric of a stalking cat, moving closer and closer to its prey.

“Enough of this,” said Eric. He pushed himself to his feet.

Sarah clutched at his clothes, but Eric tugged himself free. He walked alone, out of the forest, and toward the Land Rover. He couldn’t feel his feet.

^_

When Eric found himself alone, his hands in the air, he had second thoughts. He had no plan. He had no gun. He had nothing but a determination to end it.

As he walked, he looked at the ground. It was strange how his feet walked through the grass, crushing flowers and thorns. It was strange they kept moving when all he wanted to do was run in the opposite direction.

^_

“That’s close enough!” Carl Doyle barked. Eric stopped, his hands in the air.

“I want to talk!” Eric called out.

Carl Doyle opened the door to the Land Rover and stood out. Eric swallowed when he watched Doyle approach him. He looked worse than ever. His eyes were entirely red and oozed a dark, almost black, blood. The hair on his head was thinning, and though he walked with both legs, one was stiff. It gave him a strange, rolling gait. The sweater and pants he wore, once neat, were now covered with filth. Even the Land Rover, behind him, that had looked so immaculate once, was covered in gore.

“Well, well,” Doyle said, looking at him. “It’s Eric.” He said this as if he was genuinely surprised to recognize him. His fake accent came back. “I’ve been searching for you. And now I’ve found you, old chum. Jolly good!” He slapped his leg, and then all the emotion dropped from his face. “It’s the savages, don’t you know. The savages. You wouldn’t believe it if you saw it. I’ve been traveling here for years, and I can’t find it. I find nothing. Just more of this.” He waved his arm around. “The Congo,” he said. Eric looked around and swallowed.

“Mr. Doyle,” Eric began.

“Yes, sir?”

“Mr. Doyle,” Eric began again. “If we return your medal, will you please leave us alone?”

“Of course!” Doyle exclaimed. “The medal! If it was mine, if it was here, with me, don’t you know, sir, if it were, then it would mean something. It would bring all of this into a center. You know what I mean, don’t you? The circle. The point from which it all makes sense. The island!” His eyes glittered. “The old girl was right, by god!” Doyle laughed and drew his sleeve over his eyes. Blood smeared across his face.

“If I give you the medal, are you going to leave us alone?” Eric asked again.

“I can talk to you, can’t I, Eric?” Doyle took a step toward him. Eric shrunk away without meaning to, but Doyle didn’t seem to notice. “You and I know, don’t we? You and I see. If there’s nothing but this waste.” Doyle waved his arm about him. “Nothing but this, then there’s nothing at all. I’m talking about order, sir! Order and then civility and then we have something. Otherwise, it’s nothing but savages! And we’ve seen a lot of them, haven’t we now?”

“Yes, we have,” Eric agreed. He reached into his pocket and took out the medal. He held it toward Carl Doyle between his thumb and finger. “We just found it,” Eric said. “I swear if I knew we had it, I’d have given it to you sooner.” His hand shook as he held it toward him.

Carl Doyle seemed hypnotized by the medal. He picked up his chin and thrust it forward. Stepping forward, he took it from Eric’s hand. Then, letting the medal rest in the palm of his great, meaty hand, Doyle looked down on it. An expression came upon his face that Eric would never forget. It was sadness and pain, mixed with a strange, incessant, depthless greed and hunger. Doyle closed his fist upon the medal. For a moment, he seemed feeble and helpless, ashamed. His hand went to his pocket and then his face was blank once more. He looked at Eric and, clearing his throat, put a hand upon his shoulder and shook him gently. “Good show,” he said. He winked at him, and a drop of blood pulsed wetly down his face.

Only moments later, the Land Rover was gone, leaving Eric alone in the field of grass.

^_

In the forest, they became lost. Lucia and Sergio were in tears over John Martin and walked in a daze. Stopping sometimes as if aware suddenly of their surroundings, they tried to turn back, to find John Martin. Eric stopped them, arguing that they needed to get away from Carl Doyle. They needed space between them. Eric feared he might snap at any time and kill them, just as he had shot down John Martin.

In grief, they staggered up and down inclines, over downed trees, across dirt roads, deeper into the forest. Eric felt sick when he thought of John Martin back there, motionless upon the road. He tried to tell himself they were doing the right thing, but he was sure that John would not have left any of them. But they had no weapons, and Carl Doyle was crazy. Eric led them on through a maze of woods and thorns, down into the heart of the forest, as far from roads as they could get. By nightfall, they had climbed to a hilltop, overlooking the undulating forest. They threw down their backpacks and collapsed, exhausted. They were too shouldered with grief and guilt to build a fire.

Birdie was the most confused of any of them. “Where’s John?” she kept asking. “Where’d he go? Eric? Eric?”

That night, Eric heard Birdie in his sleep. Where’s John? Eric?

Eric?

^_

They had never journeyed so far into a forest. When they woke up the next morning, they could see nothing but trees. Birds twitted noisily in the forest, and, as they made a fire, a chickadee came down, perched on a branch, and watched them curiously until the fire was sparked. Then it flew away and did not return.

Eric felt he woke into a nightmare. John Martin was truly gone. He hadn’t realized how much safer he felt with John near them. Now they were alone and helpless. Anything, anyone, could do what they wanted with them. As he waited for the water to boil, Eric kept his hands in his jacket pockets.

They were shaking.

^_

They pushed east through Allegheny, avoiding roads, houses, any sign of other people. Sergio and Lucia, in their sorrow, seemed to have abandoned any thought of going north and leaving them. Eric only wanted to keep moving, and didn’t want to ask them about their plans.

Up and down they hiked, through the forests of Pennsylvania. The time for flat lands and fields seemed long ago. Now the hills became steeper and harder to climb. They hiked with a kind of desperation, as if the sweat and exertion could melt away their guilt for leaving John Martin behind.

On the second morning, they woke to find one of their backpacks missing. After finding a trail where it had been dragged, they followed it down to a brook where the backpack and its contents had been shredded by raccoons. It was Sarah’s backpack. All of their salt was missing and most of the spices she had scavenged. Standing over the mess, Sarah sobbed great, heaving gasps, such as they had not seen in her before, even when Brad had died. She sat down hard in the water and couldn’t be moved.

They waited until she lifted herself from the water and then they quietly helped her salvage what they could, setting it out to dry before they re-packed it in Eric’s bag.

“Where are we going?” Sergio asked him later that day.

Eric just pointed east. “That way,” he said.

^_

Sergio hurt his ankle. They were crossing a stream whose bed was made up of smooth, round stones. He slipped, turned his ankle strangely, and then yelped in pain. The ankle swelled alarmingly quickly. To keep the swelling down, they put him by the stream, with the ankle in the cool running water. They made camp there and boiled water. Lucia stayed by her brother most of the time. She and Sarah wrapped his ankle in gauze, but he could not move that day.

Eric stayed up far into the night, staring at the fire. They had begun to hoist their backpacks up into the trees at night to keep them from raccoons. When the wind blew, the backpacks swung and caused the branches to creak eerily. Birdie sat with her head against him, sleeping.

Lucia emerged from her tent and came to sit at the fire, next to him.

“How is he?” asked Eric.

“The swelling is going down,” she said. “I don’t think it’s serious, he’ll be okay.” She threw a twig into the fire. “I wanted to be a lawyer,” she continued abruptly. “Imagine that. A lawyer. I thought I would be able to make a difference in the world. Now the world that I wanted to help is gone. Gone. I can’t even help my own brother.” She gave him a weak smile. “Tell me about your island, Eric.”

So Eric told her what he knew, what he remembered. The call of the loons over the calm water. The smell of pine trees. The gentle lapping of the water against the shores of the lake. The hills, the mountains, the lakes between them, and nothing, as far as you could see, but green and blue. He told her about the cabin they would build, maybe two, for the first winter. Then how in the following years, they would build from there, planting fields with corn and squash and beans.

When he was done, Lucia had a calm look on her face. “If it was just us two, Sergio and I,” she said. “If it was just us and Sergio broke his foot, what would happen?”

Eric’s face constricted sourly. It was a terrible thought.

“We need each other,” Lucia concluded. “You know that, don’t you?”

Eric nodded. She got up and went back to her tent without another word, but Eric knew that they were coming with them to Maine.

^_

Sergio’s ankle was much improved the next day. He argued to let him walk, but they couldn’t risk it. So for another day, they rested uncomfortably in their grief and guilt. Eric, Sarah, and Birdie stayed away from the siblings. It was like when Brad died, grief separated them. Lucia and Sergio had been saved by John Martin, they had lived with him for months, and together they had planned on starting a new life. Now he was gone and they had left him. They hardly had words for their guilt. They sat together, talking Spanish in hushed voices.

Sarah and Eric went fishing. Eric was getting better at it. He knew where to drop his line, in the shadows and the dark, swift water, where the trout swam. The two of them pulled several fish from the waters, which emerged like wild miracles from the cold water. They strung the trout through the gills with a branch and then carried them back to camp.

On the way, they stopped on the crest of a hill. They sat over the green expanse of the forest. It was easy to think that the world that had been, the world of cities and roads and stores, the world of fast food and blaring music, the world of television and movies, of guns and jets and nuclear missiles, all that world had never been. There were just these forests and the hot sun above them. Eric could sense the whole forest, breathing.

It was then that Sarah kissed him, first on the cheek, and then, turning his head, full on his lips. He’d never been kissed before. He imagined it would be a wild, exciting moment, but, instead, it was deeply calming and soothing. He held her when she was done, her yellow hair falling down upon his back.

He was going to tell her something. He felt he should tell her something, but he never got the chance.

Sarah was weeping on his shoulder.

^_

Lucia wanted to stay another day, but Sergio was insistent on leaving. The swelling in his ankle was nearly gone, but he limped heavily on his tightly wrapped foot. They fashioned something like a crutch from a tree branch, and Sergio tried to keep up the pace.

In the early afternoon, they emerged from the Alleghany forest. Below them was a town, and, because they needed supplies, they circled it, warily. Using the binoculars, Eric scanned the town. There were several Zombies, but no sign of cracked Zombies or gangs.

Now that they had no weapons, they had to be more careful than ever. Sergio, because he could not run, had to stay behind with Birdie. Sarah, Lucia, and Eric crept down together while they still had light. They just wanted to creep inside a few houses, get what they needed, and then leave.

The name of the town was Kane.

^_

Zombies were everywhere. They slumped on lawns, ambled on the roads, stood on the porches of houses. There were men and women, little girls and little boys. There was even a Zombie sitting listlessly in a wheelchair. It was stuck on a stump, and though it kept spinning the wheels, it did not move.

Kane was a small town.

When they came closer to the center, the houses became larger. They stopped in front of a big red and white clapboard house with strange roof peaks. On the eastern side of the house alone, there was a jumble of small windows. The western side was just a clapboard wall. Next to that house was a sprawling white clapboard house with sagging porches, enclosed with aluminum framed mosquito screens. The lawns were all overgrown, grass quickly working to reclaim the varieties of garbage and waste the houses had produced. Everywhere vehicles sat, dejected, already rusting away. As they watched, a few blocks away, several white-tailed deer walked through a yard, stopped to eye them disinterestedly, and then continued onward to graze at the sweet grass of overfed lawns.

Eric found all of the houses threatening. They were too big and sprawling, filled, he imagined, with secret rooms, large closets, labyrinthine passages. Once they may have been the scene of a happy family or several families. No longer. In Eric’s imagination, every room harbored a cracked Zombie, every basement a hoard of them, every turn and twist of a hallway, only further cover for some mentally deranged survivor.

Every foraging expedition was potentially disastrous. Brad was proof of that.

To make matters worse, Lucia, who had taken over command, it seemed, said they should split up, each take one house, and then meet back in the streets.

Why did they split up? Eric wanted to say something to Lucia, but he didn’t want to be in charge either. Let her have that role.

But the thought bothered him. With only two people, when was splitting up ever a good idea?

^_

Eric’s heart pounded as he opened the squeaking door to the first house.

It was a big, block of a house, dark gray with pea green trim. The porch was on either side of the house, jutting out like an afterthought.

When he walked inside, the musty smell hit him first. This, he thought, must be what a tomb smells like. The inside of the house was in shambles. Whoever had left, had left in a hurry. Clothes were scattered on the floor, along with books, dishes, photos, and papers, as if they didn’t know what to take with them when they left.

Eric didn’t want to be in there any longer than he must. He walked swiftly to the kitchen and began opening the cupboards, his heart beating. Without hardly looking, he pulled canned food down and stuffed them into his bag, trying to keep an ear out for trouble.

After he was finished with the food, he stopped by the wooden stairway that led up to the bedrooms. He could leave the house. He had what he came for, and the door was directly in front of him. But the bedrooms. That’s where people kept their guns.

He walked up the stairs, softly, and put his ear to the nearest door. He strained to hear any movement from within. In his mind, he kept seeing the old woman leap upon Brad, her diseased mouth clamping down upon his neck and shoulder. He took a deep breath and put his hand on the knob.

“What can I do for you?”

Eric stumbled backward in surprise and terror.

She stood in the hallway. She held a shotgun pointed at his chest.

^_

“Calm down,” the woman said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Eric stepped back and stumbled against a wall. Then, losing his balance, he slid against the wall and fell back.

The woman repeated, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Eric sat up. The woman had dark, long hair that she had tied behind her. Her skin was brown, and her cheekbones pronounced and high.

“You’re an Indian,” he said out loud, without meaning to.

“I’m Seneca,” she said. She held out her hand to him. “My name is Kaye Cornplanter.” Eric took her hand and she pulled him to his feet. She searched him with her eyes, and Eric told her his name. “Come,” she said. Eric went first back down the stairs to the living room where Kaye sat down, resting her gun across her legs. “Sit,” she said.

“I’m just here for food,” said Eric.

“There’s no food in the bedrooms,” Kaye answered.

Eric didn’t say anything. Kaye waited. The silence weighed on Eric. Finally, he admitted to looking for a gun. “I need it,” he said. “It’s dangerous out there.”

“Yes it is,” Kaye agreed. “Sit,” she said again. Eric glanced at the door and considered running, but, instead, he did as he was told. He couldn’t outrun a shotgun blast. Kaye studied him. “Where’re you going?”

“East,” Eric said.

“Good,” she answered. She reached into her pocket and took out a can of sardines. She snapped off the key and unrolled the lid. She offered it to Eric who carefully lifted out some of the oily fish with his fingers.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” she answered. “It’s not safe to the north,” she said. “You shouldn’t go that way.”

“Gangs?”

Kaye laughed, a tiny, barking sound. “You could call us a gang, I suppose.” When Eric looked puzzled, Kaye continued. “When the Vaca B came, all the Senecas came home. Many died, but some did not. Those of us who are left are taking back our land.” Kaye leaned back in the chair and studied him. “For many years the Americans had our land. But they abused it and now they’re gone. There were always some of us who thought it would happen.” She smiled, not altogether friendly but not hostile either.

Eric looked at her gun. “What’re you going to do with me?”

Kaye shrugged. “Nothing,” she said. “As long as you continue east, you are no enemy of mine.”

“I am going east,” Eric stressed. They studied each other. “Is there war north?”

“No,” Kaye said. “There is liberation north. This time there will be no treaties, no deals, no talk. We will take our land and we will keep it forever.”

Eric felt a morbid curiosity about the struggle. “What’s it like?”

“Buffalo is burning,” she said. “We are burning it, block by block. In the end, there will be no city by the lake. Just a ruin for birds to nest upon.”

“The whole city?”

“The city began as a military camp. It will not be one again. In time, it will be swamp as it once was, a feeding place for birds. The time of the Americans is over. Look at what happened to your people when it mattered. They became nothing but gangs, fighting each other. Or they died wandering in the streets or starved in the forests. There is nothing in you that holds you together. You have no connections to each other, no connections to the lands you steal. The land belongs to those who are a part of it, who understand it. It was always our land here and now it is our time again. The time of the Haudenosaunee.”

Eric did not know what to say or do. He felt awkward and uncertain. “Can I go?” he asked finally, glancing at the door.

“You can go,” she said. He started to move, but Kaye continued, her words stopping him as he lifted himself from the chair. “But don’t go north. If I see you north, our meeting will not be so peaceful.”

Eric had no doubt she would shoot him. He nodded deeply, almost a bow, and then, faster than he wanted, he sped out the door, and down the steps of the porch. He felt Kaye Cornplanter’s eyes upon him as he joined Lucia and Sarah in the street.

“What is it?” Sarah asked.

“Let’s go,” he hissed. “We have to go now!”

Without another word, they slipped away from Kane, and vanished back into the protective shadows of the trees. They didn’t question him until much later. Eric told them about the Seneca woman and the war for Buffalo. Lucia and Sergio were quiet and solemn. If there had been any lingering doubts about their path, the story extinguished them.

9

^__________

^{Susquehannock State Forest}

They hiked quickly the next day, heading east and south toward Susquehannock State Forest. The flat lands were a thing of the past. The landscape was folded now and forested, for the most part. The roads were easy to escape and find again, twisting and curling, up and down the hills.

Summer had come. The temperature had risen in the past few days until they had to stop for long periods to boil water and rest in the shade of trees. Everything was green and flourishing, and they saw little evidence of other human activity. Once they came across a burning truck. In the back burned a human body. It was hard to tell if the body had burned with the truck intentionally or if there had been some kind of fight or accident. They were so used to such sights now that they talked about it as if it were a game, trying to figure what happened.

They spent more and more time boiling water as the temperature rose.

It seemed so long ago that John Martin had been with them. Eric was ashamed of himself. In days, he was already forgetting him. He said so to Sarah one day as they gathered firewood. They hadn’t spoken much since they kissed.

“What do you expect?” she asked. “You can only see so much death before it doesn’t bother you anymore. It’s just the way the mind works.”

“Maybe,” he said.

“Not maybe,” she said, suddenly angry. “That’s the way it is. Deal with it, Eric. People die. We’re all going to die.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, confused at her sudden anger.

“I don’t care if you’re sorry,” she spat. “Grow up, Eric.” She stalked away, leaving him and Birdie alone.

Eric blushed as he watched her walk away. She had only kissed him because she missed Brad. Now she was ashamed of herself. Now she hated him. It was obvious.

^_

The next day, Sarah stayed away from the group. For the first time, she left them to cook for themselves. They sat around the fire, eating beans and spaghettios. Sergio talked about the best way to navigate the next day while Lucia and Eric listened. Birdie drew with her few remaining crayons. She drew dark flowers blooming in dark earth under a darkling sun. In the dark forest, dark creatures roamed and dark people held to each other with dark arms and grasping dark hands.

Lucia asked Eric to talk about the island again. Eric was bashful but agreed.

He told them about the aluminum canoe and the sound the water made against it. He told them about the little shops where they sold soda and doughnuts and butter and fresh bait. About the sound of pine needles crackling under your feet. About the loons calling out over the water at night, so mournful and alone, but comforting somehow, gorgeous. He told them how, on the island, you couldn’t see any road, any street, any building, no sign at all of humans. Just the sound of the loons and the soft lapping of the water against the shore.

It was not exactly with hope that they listened. Or excitement. They listened with a profound reverence that was like the call of the loon itself, mournful and hopeful at once.

^_

They had crossed route 46 and climbed a hill to a copse of trees when Sarah collapsed. Lucia was hiking next to her when it happened. When she went to help her up and touched her skin, Lucia flinched away from her. “She’s burning up!”

Eric staggered forward and dropped to his knees in front of her. “Sarah!”

After a moment, her eyes fluttered open. “I’m sick,” she said with a sob. “I’m sick, Eric!” She cried in his arms. “I’m going to die,” she said.

“No,” Eric said. “You don’t know that, Sarah. You could just have a fever.”

“Don’t be stupid,” she said weakly. “I’m going to die.”

“Please stop saying that,” Eric said. He trembled holding her and tears escaped from his eyes. “You don’t know that!”

He held her for a long time, and then they helped her to her feet. They continued east as best they could.

The next morning, Sarah’s eyes were red.

^_

While the rest of them waited with Sarah, Eric crept into Austin, a small town surrounded by forests and hills. Not much more than a few streets. They told him it was useless, but Eric insisted, hoping to find a pharmacy. John Martin had been carrying all of the antibiotics he had found after Brad died. Now Eric hoped that John Martin had been right. If he could find enough antibiotics, maybe Sarah would survive the Vaca Beber.

Austin had only a few streets. Most of the buildings were squat and flat, a few were made of fine, red brick. None of them looked like pharmacies. Eric strode down the street in a rush, feeling light without his backpack. The sun was brutally hot above him.

He came to a low, metal building with a broad triangular roof and a glass front. A grocery store. Without halting, he barged open the rusty front door, shattering glass in the process. In his right hand, he held a lug wrench he found in an abandoned car on the way in. His desperation made him fearless.

The grocery store, located right on the street, had been ransacked several times. The shelves were empty. “Goddamn it!” Eric swore, walking down the aisles. He found nothing but a tube of toothpaste. He went to the back and kicked open the back door. He heard a yipping sound and then a few growls.

In the back was a pack of dogs, only three or four. They were eating a Zombie, who was, technically, still alive. It’s mouth worked up and down although half of its face had been eaten off already. One of the dogs was tearing away at its stomach when he opened the door, and now it gulped down the innards, and ran away, trailing intestines behind it. The Zombie’s mouth opened and shut with a wet, clapping sound. Eric shut the door and then stumbled back, holding his mouth.

The rest of the afternoon was a blur. He searched every store, every house. He saw other bodies. Other Zombies. He ignored them all, searching through the houses with monomaniacal energy. The only thing he found was a small .22 pistol and some bullets for it.

Finally, as the sun set and it was getting hard to see, he returned without medicine.

^_

Eric made a stretcher from some tree limbs and an old blanket he found on a clothesline. Eric got the idea from his survival guide, which had laid, long forgotten, at the bottom of his bag. He brought it out in hopes that it would have something to say about First Aid. This is what it said:

“Before you venture out into God’s land, you’ll need to bring a First Aid Kit. Minor cuts and bruises can become a big deal when you’re in the wilderness! Cuts can fester and cause deadly infections and minor sprains can turn an idle hike into a nightmare of pain. Be prepared and you can be assured that you will be safe in the great outdoors!”

Flipping through it, he saw a plan for a stretcher. They put Sarah between a blanket strung between two long poles. They dragged the ends of the poles on the ground. It was not easy.

It was a long, arduous hike to the forest, where they could safely stop. Finally they entered the calm darkness of the forest. Sweating and heaving, they dragged Sarah up a long hiking path. There was a cabin there, empty. Inside, they put Sarah onto the wooden frame of the bed, made as comfortable as they could with leaves, rags, and the blanket from the stretcher.

“You’ll be okay,” Eric said, kneeling by her bed. “I’ll help. I will.”

“Thank you,” she said. She sobbed. “I’m sorry,” she cried. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t say that,” Eric begged. He held her.

Sarah cried in Eric’s arms until she fell asleep. Her face was wet with pink blood.

^_

Lucia grabbed Eric when he left the cabin to get more water. He had not left Sarah’s side and had slept by her bed. At night, when she woke, gasping for water, he would be there to give it to her. Now Lucia clutched his arm and dragged him to the side before he could return to the cabin.

“She’s getting worse,” she said to him, in a hushed voice.

“I know,” Eric said, tugging his arm free. “I know that.”

“We have to talk,” Lucia said, shifting her feet uncomfortably. “We need to know what to do if—”

“I’m not talking about that,” Eric said. “Not until I have to.”

“We need to be prepared!” Lucia hissed. “It’s better if we know. Believe me, it’s better. If she cracks—”

“I said I’m not talking about it!” Eric glared at her.

“It’s easiest if—”

“Goddamn it,” Eric swore, glaring at her. “I’m not thinking about killing her right now!”

“Believe me, Eric, this isn’t what I want to do either. But it’s better if we talk about it. It’s better if we have a plan. It’s better—”

“I’m not killing the first person I ever kissed!”

Eric glared at her furiously. Lucia turned red, bit her lip and stepped back. He threw open the door and walked inside.

It wasn’t until much later that he became embarrassed by what he had revealed.

^_

They found a kerosene lamp in the cabin and lit it. The light was eerie, bright but fuzzy. The kerosene made the cabin smell bitter. Sarah’s yellow hair was wet and stringy and clung to her forehead. The lips he had once kissed were parched and peeling. She was asleep now, but her fever raged inside her and she slept uneasily, sometimes waking up, demanding unseen people for mysterious objects. When she slipped back to sleep, Eric wiped her eyes of blood, and kept a cool cloth on her forehead. Birdie slept on a blanket at the other end of the cabin.

Lucia and Sergio came in the cabin rarely, to give him food or fresh water. Eric hated to see them. They looked at him with pity but not sadness. He wanted to shout at them. This was Sarah! This was Sarah, for godsakes! It seemed years ago that he had first seen her by the river, back in Ohio, singing while she fished. What would he do without her?

Cooling her forehead, he remembered his mother. She had worn a nightgown. It had once been lemon yellow, but it became stained with blood and sweat, and, by the end, dark, almost brown, urine. He still smelled her in his nightmares. It was the smell of emptiness, grief, disaster, humiliation, and the end. The end of all things.

The Vaca B killed like this. Brought humans low with fever and thirst, scraping away their consciousness, their memories, leaving a shell that could walk, drink, and do little else. For a few, a rare but horrifying few, the stress of the transformation was too much, or they fought so hard, something broke inside them. They cracked. They raved and killed anything that moved. And they lived on and on and on, in this state, this madness for life that devoured it. He had feared it would happen to his mother. Now, he waited to see how Sarah, the first woman who had ever kissed him, would die.

A part of him hoped that Sarah would never speak, but go gently to her end. It was selfish to think so, he knew it, but he couldn’t help it. He sat by her, tortured by the thought she would die, tortured by the thought she might continue. He wanted her to die peacefully. He wanted her to live. He sat next to her, a maelstrom of grief and fear.

If he had to shoot her in the end. If he had to shoot the first woman he had kissed. Eric didn’t know if he could survive that. Something in him would have to die too.

^_

Birdie stayed by Eric and made sure he ate and slept.

Once, when he was just coming out of a dazed sleep, Birdie was speaking to Sarah.

“You’ll be all right,” she was saying. “There’s a man who comes, my mother told me once. He comes to give us dreams. If we’ve been good, we have good dreams. I think you’ll have good dreams, Sarah. Don’t worry, the man will come.”

Eric had rarely heard Birdie speak so much at one time. He wondered if he was dreaming, and then either fell back to sleep or his dream melted away into inarticulate shadow.

^_

Late in the night, Eric crept outside of the cabin to go to the bathroom. He stood under the brilliant stars and tall trees and listened to his urine gently splash on the leaves. When he was done, he didn’t go back to the cabin right away.

Lucia and Sergio’s campfire was nothing but glowing coals. They were sleeping nearby on their sleeping bags. It was hot, so they slept in t-shirts and underwear with their skin to the cool air. Lucia’s long legs, moist with sweat, glistened in the starlight. Eric tossed a log on the fire, and watched the sparks spiral above it, dying in the air a few feet from the fire. He smelled smoke and ash.

There was a time when death had not been such a presence in his life. He had laughed and eaten and been with his friends. They had spent glorious hours together, alive and well, in his basement, tossing dice and slaying imaginary creatures and arguing about the interpretation of rules. There had been no thought of death as anything but a plaything, the goal of a game. Kill the dragon. Kill the evil lich king.

But now death had come. It was terrible. Profound. Horrifying. It was sickening and arbitrary. He lived with it. It was all around him. Death in life and life in death. Together. He knew its smell and its gaze. He had watched the whole world die. He felt a little death in him every time he breathed.

He knew death was no mystical thing. People died mechanically and necessarily, both the good and the bad. Few survived and of those, it was impossible to know why. Death followed no rules except the grand rule that everyone, in the end, came to it. Eric had once thought that life taught lessons. That, as one grew, a person accumulated wisdom and became a better human. It was the myth of the hero, the myth of the trial, from which the hero emerges, stronger, more wise, beautiful and capable, a greater human. But this, he realized, was the mentality of a schoolboy, who thought that the world, in all its intricacies and complexities, all its mystery and variety, could be reduced to a list of lessons, that once learned, could then be checked off. But there was no greater knowledge, no rising above life. There was only death and it decided all things.

All things die for no reason except that they once lived. And life, for all its beauty and variety, is nothing but a spark above a campfire that may be extinguished at any time and fall down to earth, once fiery bright, a hot flame against a dark night, but now, nothing but cold ash.

Eric picked himself up and went back into the cabin where Sarah was moaning. He sat next to her and put a wet cloth to her forehead.

“Mangy dogs,” she muttered. “Wash them! Wash!” She choked and coughed. Then she was quiet again and lay back.

Eric sat back and cried a few silent tears.

There was no wisdom in death, unless wisdom’s absence is a wisdom of itself.

But a strange wisdom it was, unsettling. Empty as the darkness between the stars, like death itself.

^_

Sarah died the next morning.

She had no last words, at least none that was fit to remember. The blood from her eyes had turned nearly black by then. The last few moments had been unpleasant. Sarah stiffened suddenly, grit her teeth together, and then gasped for air between her teeth. Dark liquid oozed from her mouth, and her stiff legs shook and then kicked. She gurgled once and then slowly relaxed, as if a sheet of calm was being thrown over her body. When she settled, she was dead.

Eric didn’t cry again. None of them did.

They wrapped her body in the blanket she slept on. Then the four of them, the survivors, built a pyre in a clearing not far from the cabin. They found a can of kerosene and doused the dry wood.

Carrying Sarah’s body to the pyre was painful. She was so light. The fever had eaten away her body. They lifted Sarah to the pyre and then stood back.

Eric felt something should be said, but he didn’t know what. He held a burning branch in his hand, but he didn’t light the pyre. He stood there, thinking.

“We’ll miss you,” he said finally, tonelessly. It was all he could think to say. Eric stabbed the wooden pyre with the burning branch and it leapt to awful light.

Eric stayed to watch the fire consume her. When the fire began to die, Sarah’s bones were visible, burnt but whole. The sight tortured him. He might have stayed watching the smoking ruin for some time, Sarah’s bony hands clutching at ash, her skull staring at the horizon, if Lucia and Sergio had not pulled him away. Even Birdie tugged at him.

“Come on, Eric,” she said.

For the rest of his life, he would dream of her bones, sticking from the ashes, and wake up, sweating and uneasy.

10

^__________

^{Loyalsock State Forest}

For days, Eric lived in a haze. As they walked east, through forest and field, he saw little of what was around him. Fear had finally left him, but now he felt hollow and unreal. It was as if he had died and not Sarah or Brad or John Martin. Now it was he that was the Zombie. He thought of himself that way, like a shambling body, slowly rotting away, waiting for his end.

Staring out once into the forest, he saw movement. He stood still and watched. It was a deer, scraping its head against a slender tree, whose leaves shivered at the touch. As he watched, he saw there was blood on the tree. The deer had the Vaca B. It was rubbing its head bloody against the tree.

Eric turned away, and did the only thing he could now. He kept moving.

^_

They sat on a high ridge, overlooking great waves of green forest. Their camp was behind them. Beans and rice were cooking on the fire. Sergio and Birdie gathered wood, stacking it some distance away. An aluminum pot of water heated in the fire.

Eric sat on a promontory of stone that stuck out from the hill like an accusing finger. It was flat on the top. After lugging back the water from a stream, Eric sat on the rock, his legs dangling over the side. He looked out over the forest and felt a stinging emptiness. If it wasn’t for the pain, he would feel absolutely nothing. Below him was a fifty foot drop to the forest floor.

Lucia came and sat next to him. At another time, Eric might have felt any number of things with Lucia so near him. Anxiety, fear, self-loathing, shame. Desire. Now he felt nothing.

“You know,” Lucia said. “I wanted to be a lawyer before all this. I was going to fight for the rights of immigrants. My parents were illegals, you know. They did all those jobs that Americans didn’t want to do. They worked hard for us. I was scared for them. What would we do if they got caught and sent back to Mexico? What would we do? I thought if I could be a lawyer, I could change all that. Now it’s all gone. No more laws, no more borders. No more family. It’s gone. Sometimes I still can’t believe it.”

Below them, a gust of wind moved the tops of trees, pushed underneath them, and blew back their hair.

“What did you want to do?” she asked him. “Before the Vaca Beber?”

“That time doesn’t even seem real anymore.”

“What were you going to do?” she insisted.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe computer programming.” He didn’t care anymore about any of that. It was all nonsense. “You know what I do miss?” he asked. Lucia shook her head. “I miss the way clothes smelled when they came out of the dryer.”

“I hate to think what we smell like now,” Lucia said.

They both smiled then, looking down at their filthy clothes and the abyss beneath them.

“It’s going to be okay,” Lucia said. She put her hand on his shoulder. Eric nodded at her.

“I know,” he lied. Lucia squeezed his shoulder and then stood up and walked away. He wondered if she really believed in that lie. There was no way to know if it was going to be all right. Looking back at the forest beneath him, he decided she did not. No. She lied to make him feel better.

That’s what humans do. They lie to make the world a better place.

^_

At night, Lucia continued talking. Around the campfire she spoke, as Eric stared at the flickering flames. Exhausted, Birdie slept next to him, her arms wrapped around him. Sergio listened to his sister, his eyes sparkling.

Lucia talked about how quickly the world of humans dissolved around them. It had only been a year since the Vaca B. Already the roads were beginning to crack. Dirt and grass grew in patches on it. Towns and cities, partially burned to the ground, were already succumbing to nature. Swallows nested in houses, raccoons had moved back into the suburbs, deer grazed on what had been golf courses or fields of corn. In another five, ten years, Lucia guessed, the world would be completely changed. In another fifty, it would be like humans never came to this continent, except for the skeletal remains of skyscrapers. It all disappeared so quickly. Vanished.

“When we get to the island,” she continued, “we’ll have to start all over again. The food won’t last. We have to plan for next year.”

“We’ll grow fields of corn,” said Sergio. “Whole fields of vegetables. We’ll can them for the winter. And Eric and me, we’ll hunt. There’ll be plenty to eat, you’ll see.”

“It’s not going to be that easy, Sergio,” she warned her brother. “We need to find seed. There will be others looking for seed too. Even if we do find seed, there’ll be a lot to learn. We’ve never grown so much as a flower, have we?”

Sergio shrugged. “You’re smart, Lucia,” he said with supreme confidence. “You’ll figure it out.”

“We’ll try to find goats and chickens,” Lucia continued, ignoring her brother’s last comment. “I can learn to make goat cheese and we’ll need the eggs for protein.”

“We’ll have horses too,” Sergio said.

“We’ll get some solar panels, so we’ll have some light, even in the winter.”

“I know what it was,” Eric said, his voice low and serious.

“What was?” Sergio asked.

“I know what killed Sarah,” he said. Sergio and Lucia looked at the flames but didn’t say anything. “I’ve been thinking about it. How did she get the worm? She drank the same water, ate the same food. And then I remembered. She told me once that a good cook tastes the food while they cook it. She was always tasting what she was cooking. That’s how she got the Vaca B, tasting the food before it boiled enough to kill the worm. She got the worm cooking for us.”

The discussion ended. Lucia and Sergio crawled into their tent to sleep. Eric stayed up, looking into the fire. He stayed that way a long time.

^_

Leaving the forest, Sergio took point. He scouted ahead. Binoculars slung around his neck, he would stride ahead to a look out point, crouch in the bushes and scan around them. Sometimes he would climb a tree, and from far above, he would study the landscape. It seemed to Eric that they spent most of their time waiting, watching.

When they came to a road (Route 287, Sergio informed them), he swung up into a towering pine tree. He stayed up there a long time, the rest of them waiting. Then he came down, landed in the pine needles at his feet and clapped his hands together. “All clear,” he said.

So they continued.

^_

With the absence of Sarah, they cooked together. The food was tasteless. At night, they slept away from the fire. It was too hot now to sleep near it. Summer was high among them. Taking out his battered calendar, Eric saw it was July 10th. The trees were full and green, and the hot weather dried the paths they walked to dust and crackling leaves. Without human noise to distract them, no trucks or cars or jet planes in the air, no sirens or car horns, they listened to bird song, to crickets, to the whir of beetle wing in the summer air. It was surprising how loud it became.

Eric couldn’t sleep. The buzz of insects filled the air. He crawled out of his tent and sat by the smoldering fire. Slowly he became aware of a squeaking, clicking sound, and shadows flitting through the darkness. The bats were out and they were feeding. He’d always been afraid of bats. Their tiny mouths filled with gnawing, sharp teeth.

Not anymore. The sound was gentle now, even playful, as they swooped in and out of the horde of insects. He sat in the darkness and watched the shadows of bats streak across the night.

^_

They had just climbed to the top of a ridge when Sergio came to them, waving his hands in a downward motion, like a large bird trying to take flight. Eric was puzzled, until he felt a tug by Lucia at his side. Eric ducked down and then, following Lucia’s lead, got down on his stomach. Lucia was to his right and Birdie buried her head in his left side. Lucia’s hair had swept into his face, and Eric, blushing, brushed it away. If Lucia noticed, she said nothing.

Sergio dove beside them. Wordlessly he pointed at a road running south of them. His face was pale as he handed Eric the binoculars.

At first, he saw nothing. Then there was a flash, and it came into focus quickly.

It was the Land Rover. Eric could see the dark figure of Carl Doyle inside.

“What is it?” hissed Lucia. Eric handed her the binoculars. Lucia made a coughing sound when she saw him. Distantly they heard the Land Rover pass. For a few moments, they said nothing. Vaguely leaf-shaped patches of sunlight, piercing through the canopy of leaves overhead, swooped over their bodies like golden birds.

^_

“Why don’t you grow up and be a man!” cried Sergio angrily. “We have to kill him!” They sat at the campfire. Eric didn’t respond, but continued to pick at his food. Sergio was red with anger. “It’ll be easy,” he said, obviously trying to remain calm. He slid closer to Eric. “All we have to do is set some trap for his Land Rover. You see how he drives. He’ll hit it fast and bam!” Sergio slapped his hands together. “If he’s still alive, we’ll just shoot him.” When Eric said nothing, Sergio put his hand on his shoulder. “I’ll shoot him, Eric, you don’t have to.”

Eric shrugged Sergio’s hand off his shoulder. “No,” he said.

Sergio frowned and then shot up and angrily kicked some leaves toward the forest.

“Sergio, tranquilo,” Lucia said.

“What?” Sergio asked. “Why? This guy is following us. He’s already killed John Martin. Who’s next? Why’re we letting this crazy bastard live?” Sergio finished this with an appeal to his sister in rapid Spanish. Lucia shook her head.

“No, Sergio,” she said. “We’re a group now. We have to do things together. If Eric agrees, I’ll help.”

Sergio turned to Eric with a pleading look, but Eric wouldn’t look up from his dinner. Sergio kicked some leaves toward him in fury and frustration. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked. “What kind of man are you?” He stalked off into the forest.

“I’m sorry,” Lucia said to him in a small voice. She stood up to follow her brother into the darkness.

When the two were gone, Birdie came and sat next to him. She put her small hand in his. Eric looked at the tangle of her hair. It was full of twigs and broken leaves like a bird’s nest. “Come here,” he said to her. He began picking her hair clean. While he worked, Birdie hummed a tune that Eric did not recognize.

Above them the stars were vanishing as the storm moved in.

^_

Everything they owned was wet. The rain persisted, sometimes in great, thundering gasps of water that blurred the landscape around them, sometimes as a faint mist. Eric had never been so thoroughly wet in his life. Water permeated him and seemed to swell his skin. His clothes were heavy and clung to him, and for the first time, he realized how difficult it was to move in the voluminous clothes he wore. He must have lost a lot of weight, the way the clothes hung from him. His heavy jeans had to be held up with one hand as he walked. His belt was as tight as he could make it.

They had been lucky with the weather to this point. Now the rain came as if furious at having been denied an outlet all these days. Steadily, slogging through the wet forest, across swollen brooks, they made their miserable way east. All day, they trudged through it, and when night came, they found no respite. They couldn’t start a fire and their tents were wet inside and out, as were their sleeping blankets. It was like sleeping inside a sponge.

The next day was no better. Worse perhaps because they were thirsty. They ate cold beans from the can and finished off what little water they had boiled the last time they had a campfire. They had not planned ahead more than a day with their water supply and that was a mistake. They held their mouths open to the rain, figuring rainwater was safe from the Vaca B, but once it reached the ground, they no longer trusted it. They didn’t even trust the pans they had to be free of the Vaca B, so they couldn’t catch the water. For all the water cascading down the hillsides in gushes, they were parched.

The only good part of the rain was that in the midst of their suffering, Sergio dropped the subject of Carl Doyle though he often shot an angry look toward Eric, and walked ahead, even shunning his sister’s company at times.

At the end of the third day, the sun finally broke free. The temperature soared. The skies were crystalline clear and blue. Everything was still too wet to build a fire, but they spread out their belongings in the grass to dry. They stripped down to their underwear and stood waiting for their clothes to dry.

Eric stood bashful, trying to keep from looking at Lucia’s long, sleek body, her tiny red panties and her red spotted bra. He couldn’t stand tall like Sergio. He stood with his arms in front of him. Birdie stood next to him, watching her clothes on the ground with disturbed fascination. “It’s like I’ve disappeared,” she said, pointing at her clothes.

They all laughed, but Birdie looked at them strangely. “What’s so funny?” she asked.

Eric took her hand. “Nothing,” he said. “We’re just naked, that’s all.”

They all looked at each other.

Just a couple days of rain had reduced them to this, nakedness and thirst.

They were such small, pathetic things.

^_

Perhaps it was the rain.

The Zombies came out in the afternoon, emerging from the forests in shambling crowds, oblivious to each other, to their surroundings. There were dozens of them, maybe hundreds. The wetness seemed to bring them nothing but misery. Some of them were on their hands and knees, lapping at puddles. Some scooped great handfuls of wet mud into their mouths and then, bloated, they groaned and kicked and died on the ground.

The group climbed the trees to avoid them. The Zombies passed by underneath them, moving all in one direction, perhaps by some mysterious sense of water nearby. These Zombies were all old ones, emaciated as skeletons, eyes lost, mouths stretched open, clothes tatters around them. Most of them had long ago torn their hair from their heads. One Zombie, once a woman, was half-naked. One of her breasts was torn open, like it had been gnawed by an animal. Long after they passed, Eric and the rest of them stayed in the trees like nesting birds, reluctant to leave.

“What happened to us?” Sergio asked, staring after the Zombies. They looked at him, perched in the tree. “What did we do to ourselves?”

“We didn’t do anything,” Lucia answered her brother. She sounded angry.

“We did,” Sergio shot back. “You won’t admit it, but we did!”

They climbed down out of the tree. Sergio picked up a stone and threw it viciously at a tree where it careened off, making a loud knocking sound.

“Stop it,” Lucia said to him. “Stop being such a child.”

“I’m not a child!” Sergio spat back. “How can you say that to me, after the things I’ve seen! After the things we’ve all seen! Look at her!” He pointed at Birdie who stared at them unblinking. “Do you think she’s a child anymore! None of us are. There are no children anymore.”

Sergio shrugged on his backpack and stalked away.

They followed him wordlessly.

^_

In a storm-swollen stream, nearly a hundred Zombies had succeeded in drowning themselves. The stream was so choked with bodies that the water was dammed, and a shallow pond had risen behind them.

The air stank in the heat of the clear sun. Flies buzzed in dark clouds above them. The group, covering their mouth, walked downstream and crossed the trickling stream.

They didn’t speak of it.

^_

The cabin was in the middle of nowhere. Shingled and painted deep brown, it crouched nervously in a small clearing in the forest.

Zombies walked around it listlessly. The four of them looked down on it with concern.

They were running out of food.

“I don’t like it,” Sergio said. “All those Zombies, man. There’s bound to be some pendejos around here.” Pendejos was Sergio’s term for cracked Zombies. “I’m telling you, man, there’s pendejos around.”

“We need food,” said Eric simply. There was no argument against that.

There were four Zombies that they could see. There were more inside, they saw them moving past the windows from time to time. The four Zombies outside were harmless. One sat in the yard. A little girl once, now her skeletal frame picked up handfuls of dirt and let them fall before the caves that were her eyes. Another walked around a snowmobile, again and again. His footsteps had dug down a path around it. The third and fourth both walked around the field surrounding the house, with no apparent purpose.

They went back to their camp and formed a plan. Sergio would stay outside the cabin, watching with his binoculars while Lucia and Eric went inside and ransacked the house for food. Birdie would wait for their return at the campsite.

To the Zombies, they seemed invisible. Nervously clutching at their weapons, the three of them crept up to the door and opened it.

Inside were several Zombies. They didn’t even look toward them when the door opened. Men and women, young and old, it was difficult to know. Their skin was like leather. They stood in the small cabin and did not move. The room was stagnant with their stench. Covering their mouths, the three moved gingerly about them. In the corner, one of them began to make wheezing, coughing noises, splattering a black, worm-filled ooze upon the wall. Eric shut his eyes from the sight, despite himself.

In the kitchen, they opened the cupboards, and began to pull down cans of food without even looking at what it was. It didn’t matter.

They had almost filled their bags when the shooting began.

^_

Eric, Sergio, and Lucia huddled together in the dug out, dirt basement of the cabin. Sergio had found it when the shooting started, and they had all dove down the dark hole and shut the trap door behind them. They were in near darkness. Above them the shots continued.

When the door to the cabin crashed open, Eric gripped his fists together and closed his eyes. Above him, a man cried out and then the guns rang out again, this time impossibly loud. The shooting seemed to go on forever. When it stopped, finally, and the ringing in Eric’s ears began to quiet, there were voices in the cabin.

“We’re not here to shoot Zombies,” one voice said.

“We’re supposed to be recruiting,” said another.

“Fuck that, you pussies,” said a third. “If I see dirty fucking Zombies, I’m going to kill dirty fucking Zombies. That’s how it is.”

“We’re supposed to be recruiting,” someone repeated. “We need more Minutemen. We’re wasting all our ammunition on this bullshit. I didn’t come all this way to do this.”

“This isn’t what the President sent us out here to do.”

“All right, stop your fucking whining. Goddamn pussies.”

Above them, the men walked. They heard the cupboards open and shut. Motionless, they waited. Even after the men left and they heard engines driving away, they stayed motionless for a long time.

The only sound was the rancid blood dripping through the floor boards.

^_

The Zombies were cut apart on the floor of the house. The gunfire had torn their bodies apart. They were only body parts now in lakes of black, putrid blood. Stepping over them, the three made their way to the door. Suddenly Eric slipped. He landed on the torn torso of a Zombie, like hitting a cold sponge. The rancid corpse burst apart beneath him. White worms wriggled through its flesh. Pouncing to his feet, Eric gave out a gasp of disgust, and then bolted out the door, wiping his bloody hands on his clothes.

“I need some new clothes,” he said. He was covered in gore. “I need some new clothes.” Eric wiped his hands on his pants, and then shivered, feeling the worms stuck on him. Stripping down, he threw the spattered clothes on the ground. “I need some new fucking clothes!” He was nearly naked now, his flesh crawling from the memory of the blood and worms against his skin.

Lucia strode forward and clasped him at the shoulders. “It’s all right, Eric,” she said. “It’s all right.”

“I need some new clothes,” he insisted, shivering and trembling.

“We’ll get you some, don’t worry,” she said.

“I can feel it,” Eric said, gasping. “I can still feel it!”

“Sergio!” Lucia cried. “Go find him some clothes in there.”

“I don’t want to go back in there,” Sergio whimpered.

“Sergio!” Lucia pointed toward the door and Sergio, swearing once under his breath, went inside the cabin.

Lucia held Eric’s trembling body. He was crying now. He didn’t want to be this way, but he wasn’t in control of himself anymore. “I can’t stand it,” he said. His teeth were chattering like it was winter. “I can’t stand it anymore! I can’t do it!”

Suddenly Lucia shook him so hard that he nearly fell over again. “Don’t you say that!” Lucia exclaimed. “You hold on to yourself! We need you, Eric!”

Eric looked at her numbly.

“We need this island,” Lucia said. “And we need you to get us there. It’s all we got now. We need it. You can’t just lose it, you understand?”

Eric swallowed.

“Understand?”

Eric nodded.

When Sergio came back, he had an armful of clothes. He dropped them in front of Eric before stumbling off and retching into the grass.

^_

After he washed the gore from his body in the cold water of a nearby stream, Eric put on his new clothes, a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that said Muncy Indians on it. He hadn’t realized how much weight he’d lost until he was in his new clothes. His protruding gut had vanished into a small paunch. His thick legs had become slim and hairy. The pants that had looked impossibly small to him, slipped on him with no difficulty. They were even a little loose.

He was transformed.

But it wasn’t the way he once thought it might be. He didn’t feel strong or capable or manly. Only moments ago, he had felt like he was losing his mind.

What had he become now?

He gathered himself together and joined the others.

^_

Carrying their backpacks of food, the three soon pushed away the memory of the cabin. They were too busy thinking about eating the food they carried. The anticipation made them silly with excitement and happiness. Since they had been too busy to see what they were pulling out of the cupboards, the food that now weighed them down was mostly a mystery.

“I know I saw a couple cans of beans,” Sergio said. “I know it. I just hope we have some ravioli!”

They groaned from the thought of it. Canned ravioli was a profound luxury.

“I don’t know what I have,” Eric said. “It’s like Christmas!”

Lucia laughed. “I hope Santa brings me a can of fish,” she said. “Seriously, I never thought I’d want a can of tuna so bad!”

“Or shrimp!” exclaimed Sergio. “Can you imagine if there’s a can of shrimp?”

“What would you do with it?” asked Eric.

“I don’t know,” Sergio said. “Maybe I’d mix it in with some beans. Maybe I’d just put a little hot sauce in it and eat it like that.”

“It all sounds good,” said Eric.

They were all quiet, contemplating their fierce hunger.

^_

When they returned to their camp, Birdie had vanished.

11

^__________

^{Delaware Water Gap}

“Of course Carl Doyle took her!” Sergio cried. “Look at the tire tracks! Who else could it be!”

Lucia shook her head. “We don’t know, it could’ve been anyone. It could’ve been those men who shot up the cabin for all we know.”

“Don’t be stupid!” Sergio threw his hand toward her. “It was Carl Doyle! Who else has been following us? Who else would steal her? He called her a savage!”

“I’m not saying it wasn’t,” said Lucia. “I’m only saying we don’t know for sure, that’s all.”

“I told you we should’ve killed him! Now look!”

His head in his hands, Eric sat stunned. He listened to the argument as if it occurred a hundred miles away. His head was fuzzy and buzzed. He felt sick. He wanted to cry, but the thought of tears filled him with self-loathing. Tears would not bring Birdie back. Tears would not find her. Tears were selfish things. To think of what was happening to her made him shrink inside. He had sworn to protect her. Why did he leave her alone? He promised her. Now all he had was her backpack. Anger swelled inside him, mixed with dark self-hatred. He stood up.

“It was Carl Doyle,” he said. The others stopped arguing and turned to him. “You were right,” Eric said to Sergio. “We should have killed him.”

“What do you want to do?” Lucia asked.

“I’m going to get Birdie back,” Eric said. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.” He stood up and walked to his tent. He began pulling it down.

“Eric,” Lucia said, walking toward him. “You can’t leave now, it’s dark.” She put her hand on his shoulder.

“Moon’s out,” he said simply, without pausing.

“I’m going with him,” Sergio said. “What’re you going to do when you find him?”

“I’m going to kill him.”

^_

They set off south and east, planning to move far south of Wilkes-Barre. Eric planned to hike fast toward his next goal: the Delaware Water Gap. For whatever reason, Carl Doyle had latched onto his plan. He had only glimpsed his map for a moment, as far as Eric knew, but he knew exactly where Eric was headed. Once the thought had filled him with dread. He had hoped many times that Carl Doyle would die of the Vaca B and leave them alone. Several times he had convinced himself that Doyle was dead, only to see the Land Rover emerge once again from the wilderness. Now he relied on Doyle’s strange compulsion to follow him. Eric would go on toward the island and hope that Doyle did too, bringing Birdie with him.

As dawn crested over the horizon, they moved around a town called Picture Rocks. The dark shells of burnt out trucks littered the one road through the town. Several of the large, clapboard houses had burned to the ground. Scanning the town quickly with the binoculars he had taken from Sergio, Eric saw only a few Zombies, stumbling through the town. No sign of Doyle.

Eric turned east and walked around the town, heading down through the hilly terrain and woods, where deer and squirrels scattered before him. He hiked in a long, loping stride that he did not know he had developed from the journey from Athens. His mind tortured him with thoughts of Birdie. Birdie in the back of the bloody Land Rover. Birdie tied up in the front seat. Birdie hurt somehow, bleeding.

His legs carried him across the terrain with ferocity.

^_

Eric had never killed anyone before. He had never understood what happened to a person that would make them capable of murder.

Until now.

It was like there was light inside him that shone on forgiveness, love, sympathy, understanding, and that light had gone out.

He was dark there now.

Eric thought to himself that this was what it was like to make hard decisions and do the necessary things. This was what it was like to do anything he had to do to protect those he loved. This was what it felt like to be a man.

It felt like nothing. It felt like absence.

It felt like dying.

^_

They did not stop. Sacrificing caution for speed, the three hiked through field and forest, leaping brooks and climbing ravines. Eric stopped only to scan the road with his binoculars or to sit quietly on rocks and eat cold beans or vegetables from cans. They continued until they could not see any longer, the darkness falling around them.

Even then, Eric would choose a high spot to camp. There, above the rolling landscape, he sat watch, looking for the bright headlights of vehicles to illuminate the darkness.

He kept his pistol on his lap.

^_

When they came to Lake Pocono, Lucia forced them to stop and build a campfire. They needed water. Although he wanted to keep moving, Eric relented, and helped build a roaring fire. He chose dry, hard wood that burnt hot, at one point snapping at Sergio for throwing a length of pine on the fire. Sergio blushed with anger but didn’t answer. When Lucia shot him a scathing look, Eric held her eyes angrily. Then she too blushed and looked away. Eric felt a thrill of triumph, which, an instant later, made him hate himself. He turned and walked to the water’s edge.

He was not unusually surprised by the corpses floating in the water. There were several of them, drowned and stinking in a cloud of flies. Once the sight would have sickened him, he would have run away, holding his mouth with his hand. Now he studied them with a careless eye. There were two men, a woman, and a little child, who might have been a girl or a boy. There was not enough left to be sure. Staring at the corpse, Eric thought how full of holes the human skull was. Great dark gaping holes. As if the world was seeking to engulf the mind, or the mind struggled to be released into the world. He wondered who won in the end. Which way was the collapse: did the mind go into the world or did the world extinguish the mind?

“Eric,” Lucia said, coming up behind him.

Eric turned toward her, but didn’t meet her eyes. “I know,” he told her. “I’m not being nice.”

“It’s not that,” she said. She put her hand on his shoulder. “It’s going to be all right, you know.”

Eric made a grimace of a smile. “That’s what Birdie used to tell me,” he said. He looked at her and ignored the sympathy there on her face. He didn’t care for that anymore. “Don’t tell me that,” he said, stepping away from her hand so that it fell from him. “I’m not an idiot. It’s not going to be okay. Even if we find her, even if we get her safe from Carl Doyle, even if she’s fine, it’s not okay. I was supposed to watch her. I was supposed to protect her. I failed her. That’s not okay. It’ll never be okay.”

Lucia had nothing to say to that. Eric could see her struggle for a response, but in the end she just put her hand on his shoulder and said, “I’m sorry, Eric.”

Eric turned back to the lake. “We need to find a different place to get water. This place is full of death.”

^_

Eric took out Birdie’s denim backpack. He had never opened it. The contents of Birdie’s backpack were:

—Four, stubby crayons, one brick red, one black, one orange, and one gray.

—Six drawings and three blank sheets of paper.

—A small can of mandarin oranges.

—A water bottle, half-full.

—Two red barrettes with white flowers, clasped together in an X.

—A glossy cover of a magazine with the Little Mermaid on the front with flowing red hair, folded carefully into a square.

—Three round pieces of red and white hard candy.

—A box of pancake mix, unopened.

—One packet of strawberry Kool-Aid.

—A small screwdriver with a translucent yellow handle.

—One pair of child’s sunglasses in a white frame.

—A diamond wedding ring with All My Love Always etched on the inside.

—Six paperclips.

—Two dull pencils and one pen.

—One creased picture of a white cat.

—A slip of paper with GRAFTON written in Birdie’s handwriting.

—One quarter, a dime, and four pennies.

—Three rubber bands, two red and one blue.

^_

From the top of a forested hill, opened to the eastern side so they could see the smoking ruins that was New York City far on the horizon, they saw the largest horde of Zombies they had ever seen. Thousands of them, groaning and lumbering, pushed toward the ruined city. They made a low, rumbling sound painful to hear. Eric felt he was on the lip of hell and looked down upon damned souls.

“They must smell water,” Lucia said breathlessly.

Sergio trembled at the sight and then finally turned away and walked down into the woods to escape it.

“But for the grace of God, there go I,” said Eric, unable to look away.

“What?”

“It was something my mother used to say.”

They were quiet then until an explosion ripped through the Zombie horde. They staggered back in terror, the bright, blooming fire and smoke pushing corpses high into the air. The horde made a groaning sound, deep, low and horrific, like the song of some tortured leviathan of the black depths.

Into the gap created by the explosion, the Land Rover drove. Eric fumbled for his binoculars, breathless.

Another explosion followed as Doyle threw sticks of dynamite into the Zombies. Eric’s hand shook as he tried to hold the binoculars steady on the Rover. Carl Doyle was leaning out the window, red sticks of dynamite in his hand. His dark face was contorted and all shadow.

“Do you see her?” Lucia asked. “Do you see Birdie?”

Trembling with excitement and fear, Eric tried to keep the binoculars on the Land Rover as it bumped and dove among the burning Zombie corpses. There was another rocking explosion. Sergio stumbled up the hill toward them, his eyes wide with terror.

“Jesus Christ,” he swore when he reached the top.

The Zombies let out another groan as the Rover plowed through them. Now Carl Doyle was driving with one hand. The other hand held out his samurai sword which stabbed and slashed awkwardly out the window.

“Is she there?” Lucia repeated. “Do you see her?”

The Land Rover plowed through another moaning group of Zombies and then shook as it hit a road. A second later, covered with dark gore, the Rover vanished into the woods to the east. Eric dropped the binoculars.

“Well?” Lucia looked at him anxiously.

“I didn’t see her,” Eric said. “It was too dark.” He looked at them and felt a twist of anger for the expectant hope he saw there.

He didn’t have much hope himself. He didn’t realize until then, but he didn’t have hope for Birdie, and he resented they did. Brad had died. So had Sarah and John Martin. Birdie was dead too. He could feel it.

They were all going to die.

12

^__________

^{Catskill Park}

The chase was on.

Instead of resting at the Delaware Water Gap, they pushed on, turning away from the rising sun and heading north toward Catskill Park. That was where Doyle expected them to go, so that was where they would be. Eric kept his gun in his front belt now and spent most of his time daydreaming of killing Doyle.

As they hiked quickly away from the belt of forest around the Water Gap, they tried to ignore the great, gasping clouds of dark smoke rising in the east. It seemed like all the east coast was on fire.

None of them mentioned the fire or the smoke.

When they talked, which was infrequent, they spoke of food and water.

Only Birdie mattered otherwise.

They didn’t speak her name anymore.

^_

Hiking as fast as they could, they stuck to the Delaware river, with great hills rising on each side of them, the northern arm of the Appalachian mountains. As they snaked their way north, following the river, the hills grew softer and began to flatten into overgrown farmlands. They came at last to a road, Route 209.

Without pause, Eric turned onto the road, hiking fast across the dirt and leaf covered path through the forest. Beneath it was the asphalt, but it looked like no one had driven on the road for a while. Eric searched the road for any side of Carl Doyle, but saw nothing.

“We shouldn’t walk on the road,” Lucia said, following close behind Eric’s fast pace.

“I’m not hiding anymore,” Eric answered. “We don’t have time for that.”

^_

That night they crossed Interstate 84 and camped in the lightly wooded fields. Eric spread out his map. It was ragged and lined with creases like an old man’s face. Eric’s finger traced a line of blue, the Delaware River.

“We need to cross somewhere,” Eric said.

“Why don’t we swim?” Sergio asked.

Eric shook his head. “Too much risk,” he said. “If we swallow even a little water by accident, we would end up with the Vaca Beber. Those rivers are poison. Also,” he added, looking at him. “Doyle needs a bridge.”

Eric traced his finger down the map and then stopped at a town.

“Are you sure?” Lucia asked. “It’s right through a town, Eric.”

“I’m sure,” he said. “Every day we wait is another day Birdie is with Doyle. We cross now.”

Eric tapped a dot on the map.

Port Jervis.

^_

Sergio and Eric sat together, looking east, where the horizon glowed dirty red. Twice the horizon lit up brightly for a moment, a soundless explosion in the dying city. Sergio stared at it. His bravado failed him. He suddenly looked frightened and small to Eric.

“I don’t really like baseball,” he told Eric. He didn’t take his eyes from the burning horizon. “My Dad loved it though. Watched it whenever he could.” He swallowed and then smiled thinly. “Mets,” he said, looking at Eric. He was quiet then for a while before he began again. “Guess I must’ve been a little of a disappointment to him. I never played sports. I played video games.” Something like laughter emerged from him. “Doesn’t that seem like a lifetime ago? Or maybe it was never real.”

Eric didn’t have anything to say. It did seem unreal, that life. It seemed more unreal with each day that passed. Had he ever got up to frying bacon? Had they gathered to watch movies and eat pizza? Had he ever sat next to his mother on the couch and rested his head on her shoulder?

“It doesn’t matter,” Eric said finally. “None of it matters now.”

“What does matter then?” Sergio asked quietly.

Eric looked at him. “We need to find Birdie,” he said. “And we need to kill that son of a bitch, Carl Doyle. That’s what matters.”

^_

Eric imagined himself seeing a bloody, limping Carl Doyle, coming down the road toward him. He pulled his pistol out, stretching out his arm to its length. He pulled the trigger and shot with rhythmic certainty. Bang. Bang. Bang. In his mind, Carl Doyle clutched at his chest, stumbled forward, and then fell. He felt triumph fill his veins, elation and euphoria. Then Birdie ran to him from the Land Rover and Eric embraced her and felt her hard plastic barrettes against his cheek.

^_

On the Pennsylvania side of the river, the town was called Matamoras. On the New York side, Port Jervis. The northeastern part of the town, across the river, was a dark ash ruin. The rest of the town was quietly crumbling. Under the blue skies of July, it was still except for the sound of the wind through the empty town. With water so near, the streets were devoid of Zombies, most of them having thrown themselves in the river weeks ago. Several skeletal corpses, picked to bone by fish and crow, clung to the banks of the river.

As Eric walked into town with Lucia and Sergio to each side of him, he kept his hand upon the pistol in his pocket. It was warm and smooth and his finger nestled into the trigger guard like a chick under its mother. Although they needed food, they always needed food, the object was to cross the bridge. So they moved through the dead streets with firm but careful strides. Sergio clicked his tongue nervously, until Lucia told him to stop, a sharp whisper in the stillness.

The landscape had flattened into swells as if some quiet ocean existed just underneath the soil. The bridge stretched across the blue expanse of the river. Eric had the sense that it was trying to hold the two sides together. In the months since the plague, the bridge had suffered. Several burned out cars were on it, crumpled to the side of the bridge. There were two gaping holes in the side of the bridge where vehicles must have plowed through and toppled over into the river, proof of some tragedy that would never be known or reported or put down in any statistics, vanishing into the great obscurity of a time beyond history. History had died with humanity. It left Eric feeling cold and alone. He grasped the pistol tighter in his pocket.

It didn’t take any time to arrive at the Pennsylvania side of the bridge. The wind blew their hair as they stood contemplating the crossing. Once they were on the bridge, they would be vulnerable and easily spotted. Sergio began clicking his tongue again, but this time, Lucia said nothing.

Eric walked toward the bridge. The others followed.

There were several burnt out cars on the bridge. As the wind moved by them, it whispered through burnt scraps of metal and clattered against loose flaps of plastic. Below them, the river moved quietly, glassy and bright blue.

They were near the middle of the bridge when the Land Rover suddenly appeared before them, its color obscured by gore. Carl Doyle hunched over the steering wheel. Eric’s heart thumped in him and he clutched the pistol, but he was not surprised. This was exactly what they had all feared. It was the obvious place to wait for them. To ambush them. Sergio took a step back, but when his sister didn’t move, he stepped forward again.

The Land Rover stopped in the middle of the bridge, and Carl Doyle stumbled out the driver side door. He slammed it shut behind him, and then hopped forward, dragging his bad leg.

“Let’s kill him now,” Sergio whispered.

“No,” Eric hissed. “Not until we know where Birdie is.”

“She’s in the jeep!” Sergio insisted.

“We don’t know that,” Lucia said.

“Eric!” boomed Doyle.

“Let’s kill him now!” Sergio pleaded.

“No!” Eric insisted. He looked them both in the eye. “Nobody does anything until we know where Birdie is, do you understand?” They nodded, though Sergio looked pale and uncertain. “I’ll go talk to him,” Eric said. “You two stay here.”

“No, we’re coming with you,” Lucia said. Eric knew by her tone that there was no arguing with her.

Carl Doyle looked worse than he had before. His eyes were red with blood now, and half of his mustache was gone, leaving a patch of yellowish skin, speckled with dark scabs. He wore a hard pith helmet with a dark leather strap over the front brim. His clothes, however, still had a strangely neat appearance, despite the filth of his clothes and the ruined mess where the bear had mauled him. Eric thought was even larger than before.

“Ho ho!” Doyle cried, dark spittle coming from his mouth. “Look who it is! By God, it’s Eric.” He laughed a grumbling deep laugh. “It’s good to see you, my boy!” He didn’t seem to have eyes for either Sergio or Lucia, who stood to either side of him. “It’s been a hell of a trip through the wilderness, hasn’t it? I’ve searched the Congo, my boy, I’ve searched it to its dark heart. Cut my way through armies of savages to get here. And now I find you again! Excellent! Each day, we are moving closer and closer to the grand objective!” Blood trickled from his eye and dripped from his chin to the ground.

“Where’s Birdie?” Eric asked as steadily as he could.

“Who?” Carl Doyle absently wiped his face with his arm, streaking it with light, pinkish blood.

“The little girl,” Eric said. “The little girl you took from us!”

“Ah, the little Negro girl, you mean,” Doyle said. He looked out over the bridge and grew silent. He looked with such intensity that Eric turned to follow his gaze. He saw nothing but air over water. Angrily he turned back to Doyle to repeat his question, but Doyle began before he could open his mouth. “You don’t think the darkness lives, do you?” he asked. He didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s the savages, Eric, they’re not like us. They don’t feel. They don’t hunger for meaning. They just walk around, as if it all didn’t mean anything. You and I understand, don’t we Eric?” He gave them a ghastly smile, all dark teeth and bleeding gums.

“Where’s the girl?” Sergio asked.

Doyle went on as if he heard nothing. “The island! We know it. We need it, you and I. From it, we can make a stand. We can build. Without it, there’s just wilderness. Savagery. Winston Churchill said it best when he said. He said.” Doyle took off his pith helmet to scratch his head. They held their breath in revulsion. His scalp was bare and the skin was red and raw. In places, the skin was broken and bleeding. Doyle scratched at a bloody surface before he put his hat back on. “If you’re going through hell, keep going!” Doyle smiled. “That’s what he said.”

“Please listen to me,” Eric said. “What did you do with the little girl?”

“We can’t stop now!” Doyle said excitedly. “We have to keep going, meet the savages head on! The only thing they understand is brute force! We must battle them from here to the island!” He smacked one fist into the meat of his palm. Then a puzzled look came upon his face. “What girl? The little Negro girl?”

“Yes!” Eric exclaimed. “What did you do with her? Is she with you?”

“She’s a traitor,” Doyle said. “Don’t think of her, my boy. She’s gone. A traitor to the island!”

Eric stepped forward. “Doyle, listen very carefully. I want the girl back. Tell me where she is. Now.”

Carl Doyle smiled. “You can’t make friends with traitors. The point is this,” he said. “You can’t appease a crocodile, you understand? We have to fight our way to the island. We can continue as we have been while I, while I clear the way. You continue, my dear boy, I’ll clear a path!” He waved his hand over the land like a magician.

“Tell us where she is!” Sergio cried.

Lucia stepped forward. “Mr. Doyle,” she began.

“What?” Carl Doyle turned to Lucia, his eyes blazing with sudden fury. Lucia froze. “Where did you pick up this little trollop?” His bleeding eyes searched Lucia up and down. His voice grew low and dangerous. “Fornicator! Beware of this one,” he said to Eric, pointing at her. “A little savage whore, is what she is.”

Sergio gave out a cry and Eric saw him pull out his gun. “No!” Eric cried. Then the world slowed to a crawl. He could feel his own heartbeat pump in him, terrified and painful. Sergio’s hand moved toward Doyle, clutching his weapon. Eric moved to stop him, but he fired. Eric saw a puff of sweater erupt from Doyle’s shoulder where the bullet grazed him. Doyle roared like a bull and sprang toward Sergio. Eric felt Lucia pounce by him, knocking him back. Lucia stood in front of Doyle, her hand held outward as if she could stop him with the power of her mind. With one meaty arm, Doyle swept her to the side with terrible violence. She flew to the edge of the bridge where one of the gaps yawned toward the air, and tripping, she vanished over the side. Sergio stared in horror at the emptiness for an instant before Doyle grappled with him. Eric fumbled for his gun.

Doyle pulled Sergio’s gun from his hand and then lifted him effortlessly over his head. In a daze of panic, Eric held out his pistol, but Doyle shoved pass him and the gun clattered to the ground from Eric’s loose grip. Doyle stepped to the edge of the bridge. For just an instant, Doyle held him there, suspended over his head, where Sergio struggled in a panic.

“No don’t! Please! Please!” cried Sergio, held in the air over the bridge.

Carl Doyle grunted and tossed him over the side. Sergio’s blood-freezing scream ended abruptly.

For the space of a heartbeat, there were the small, meaningless sounds that were left. The wind across the bridge. The heavy breathing of Carl Doyle. The humming idle of the Land Rover, as if purring at its master’s triumph.

Eric didn’t think. He felt himself move forward. He slipped out of his backpack, letting it fall to the road. He took one, two steps toward Doyle, and then he was running. Eric leapt past him, hurling himself into the void. He wanted to dive, but when he jumped into the embrace of the air, his body tumbled and rolled.

There was air. His wildly beating heart. A fleeting glimpse of Carl Doyle on the bridge, looking down at him. The rushing wind about him. He thought about Birdie. He thought about Lucia. He thought about Sarah’s charred bones and Jessica in the gutter with her eye shut out. Then his mother, smiling, as they snuggled down on the couch at night to watch television. She smelled like baby powder.

Then he hit the water.

^_

When Eric surfaced from his darkness, he was surrounded by bubbling water. For a moment, he did not know up from down, just the clutch of the water and the pain of his impact. His whole right side flamed with pain. It was a strange moment there, held by the water, not knowing his place in the world. He knew one way was up, toward the surface and life. The other was down to the river bottom where he would gasp, fill with water, and then slide along the bottom until he died. Which way should he swim?

Held there in that suspense of water, Eric felt the first cold hands of death. It was surprisingly gentle. What was living anyway? Pain, suffering, grief, toil, and fear. Yet the cold, sinuous hands of the river were tender and held him complete. They did not care he was fat. They did not care that he had failed to protect Birdie. All of these lives were nothing to them. They promised him peace, at last, and the wonderful, almost unimaginable, absence of fear. Death was kind. Death was a gift. In that moment of suspension, the world of water bubbling about him, Eric felt more comfortable than he had in all his life. He never realized how much terror his heart held until it released him.

Then he kicked upward and followed the bubbles around him.

Death was a gift, but one he would not accept until his time.

This was not it.

^_

Eric broke the surface and gasped a lungful of air.

As he struggled in his soaked clothes, he became aware that someone was screaming. Turning around in the water, he tried to find the source.

“Lucia!” he cried. “Lucia!”

“Eric!” she screamed back. “Get him! Get my brother!”

Eric could see her waving on the bank of the river frantically. She was pointing downstream, where a tree had fallen, its branches submerged in the river. Sergio was there, face down, snagged by the branches. Awkwardly swimming, still in pain from the fall, Eric kicked toward Sergio.

The river tried to pull him further down the river, but it was midsummer, low and sluggish. Eric fought to the side of his friend. When he tugged him free and began pulling him toward the riverbank, Lucia cried on the bank, unintelligible words meant for her brother. He was almost to the bank, his body exhausted and burning with pain, when Sergio suddenly jerked to life behind him. Spouting water, he began kicking and waving his arms, clutching at Eric, and dragging him under the water.

Eric choked on the water and struggled with Sergio, who was pulling him down. His fingers were claws that dug in him. Sergio clutched at him like he was a life preserver. He was killing them both. Then Eric too began to panic, the pain of the water in his lungs making him flail, trying to get free of Sergio.

Then strong hands grabbed him and he felt grass and mud beneath him. He lifted himself up to vomit water on the riverbank. He gasped in painful gulps, before choking and vomiting again. Finally, completely exhausted, he rolled over on his back.

The clouds above shined incredibly white like the wings of birds. They moved so slowly, so patiently across the blue, so aimlessly.

And then he fell asleep.

^_

They sat quiet around the campfire. They were naked but for the towels Lucia had found still clinging to some clotheslines. Their clothes were drying on a line that Lucia had strung between two trees. In the heat of July, it would not take long.

They had returned to the bridge. Doyle was long gone, but Eric’s backpack was still there, the only one left. They had been forced to enter houses in Port Jervis. They needed food and Eric needed new hiking boots. His had come off when he hit the water. He found a pair, but they were slightly too large and very heavy. The only food they found was a bag of rice in the back of a cupboard, half eaten by mice. They had just finished that meal.

In the quiet, Sergio spoke first. “What now?”

“We hunt him down, shoot his legs out from under him, and we force him to tell us what he did with Birdie. Then we kill him.”

They were quiet then, listening to the crackling of the fire.

^_

It wasn’t hard following Doyle. He left carnage behind him. Burning vehicles, smoldering houses, and ripped open corpses marked his trail. Eric spent his day with his finger on the trigger of the .22 that he had dropped on the bridge. It was now their only weapon.

But it would do. Even a .22 bullet, humble as it was, would cut into a man, lodge in bone, tear through lung, punch through muscle, and tunnel into the tender heart.

This time he would give Doyle all the mercy he had shown Lucia, Sergio, and poor Birdie.

Doyle deserved to die, Eric told himself. He had it coming.

^_

As they left Port Jervis, they came across a small library. Eric went inside, saying there might be food, but he was looking for a book. He found it.

How to Clean a .22 pistol:

1) Make sure the gun is unloaded. Place the gun on a towel.

2) Spray solvent on your bore brush. Insert your bore brush into the breach side of the barrel. (This is not the side of the barrel where the bullet emerges.) Pass the bore brush through the barrel until the barrel is free of residue.

3) Pass a cleaning cloth through the barrel with the rod until it comes clean from the barrel.

4) Clean any dirt or rust from the gun’s action with a small wire brush. Be gentle, these are delicate parts of your weapon. Make sure all these parts are thoroughly cleaned with solvent.

5) Wipe all areas clean with a dry cloth. Then wipe all areas with lubricating oil.

Remember, the book said, a clean weapon is a reliable weapon.

^_

Meanwhile they waited for signs of the Vaca B. It was impossible to know how much water they had swallowed when they hit the river. They searched each other for red eyes, flushed, feverish faces, muttering, and irritability. No one mentioned what they were doing. They all searched each other secretly.

But they all knew they were being watched.

They searched for antibiotics, but they couldn’t find any. John Martin had been carrying all their medicine when Carl Doyle shot him down.

It was worse in the morning when it seemed they had nothing to say to each other. They studied each other like lab rats.

^_

As they hiked quickly to overtake Doyle, Lucia appeared beside Eric. He didn’t slow down, so Lucia took him by the arm.

“Eric,” she said. “You haven’t said hardly anything since the bridge. Are you okay?”

Eric couldn’t look at her, but his heart thumped painfully. “I failed her again,” he said to her finally, with effort. Lucia looked at him with soft eyes, filled with pity for him. It filled him with anger that he fought to control. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

“Eric, you didn’t fail Birdie,” Lucia said gently. “This is not your fault.”

Eric couldn’t bear it any longer. “Yes it is!” he exclaimed. He jerked his arm away and glared at her. “She was right there, in that goddamn Land Rover. She was right there! And I chose you! I jumped off that bridge to save you and I left Birdie behind!”

Lucia blinked at him with surprise. “But you saved Sergio,” she said quietly.

“He might’ve lived,” Eric said, still seething with anger. “You might’ve saved him. Then we’d all be together now. Instead I dove into those poisonous waters and left Birdie behind!”

“Eric…”

But Eric had enough. “No,” he said. “It is my fault. It is. She needed me. She’s just a little girl, Lucia.” Eric clenched his jaw and trembled. “Just a little girl,” he hissed between his teeth.

^_

Not far from the Catskills, as the land began to fold once more into hills, the three hiked to the top of a rise only to drop to the ground immediately at the sound of gun fire.

Down below them, they saw the Land Rover sitting in the middle of a field. Doyle was running toward it. Emerging from the forests came several people, running toward him. Two trucks roared into the field from the south, cutting off Doyle’s path to the Land Rover. When the men caught up with him, Doyle roared and attacked them. But they seemed used to such attacks, and they only backed away. Soon coils of rope fell down around Doyle’s body, and he was tugged off his feet and trussed up. It took four men to lift him and throw him in the back of a truck as Doyle struggled and screamed. Then they sped away, leaving the Land Rover in the field.

After several minutes of tense waiting, they sprinted down to the Rover.

Eric threw open the doors. He covered his mouth at the stench. Flies escaped in dark clouds. Eric held his breath and climbed inside.

“Birdie?” he called, holding his hand to his mouth. “Birdie?”

Lucia and Sergio opened the back, letting out another cloud of flies. Lucia retched for a moment before going back to search.

Birdie was not there. There was no sign of her.

Eric staggered away from the smell finally. He collapsed on the ground, tears welling up in his eyes. “She’s gone,” he said. “And we’ll never find her without Doyle.”

Lucia and Sergio sat next to him. Sergio put his head down. Lucia put her arm around his waist and her head upon his shoulder. The sobs came finally as despair clutched him. Birdie was gone, and there was nothing he could do about it anymore.

“I’m so sorry, Birdie,” Eric sobbed. “I’m so sorry.”

^_

When they finally reached Catskill Park, Eric sat silently as Lucia and Sergio started the fire.

Eric took out his map and the calendar.

They had finally left Pennsylvania. When they had climbed out of the river at Port Jervis, nearly drowned, they had reached New York. It had been long enough now. None of them had the Vaca B from the river. They gradually stopped studying each other’s every move.

It was July 30, 1990.

13

^__________

^{Good Prince Billy}

The sign said South Lake Campground. Looking up at it, Eric felt the sign was a reminder of a day when hot water poured from faucets and showerheads, when, clean and glowing with heat, people had tucked themselves into dry, warm beds. It was a time when the world of rain and damp earth and sleepless nights and blistered feet were fiction, and reality was soda pop, pizza, and late night television’s ghostly flash on the vacuumed carpet. It was a time, just a year ago, though it seemed a lifetime in the past, when nature was an aesthetic experience. Once he had lived that life. Once he had lived in a world of campgrounds. That was not the world anymore.

They didn’t stay in Catskills for long. Eric needed to move. He hadn’t said a word since he had cried back at the Rover. Lucia kept glancing at him with concern. He hated that. If she had to feel sorry for someone, she should feel sorry for Birdie.

Eric couldn’t think of what was happening to Birdie. Or what had happened. His imagination was detailed, cruel and violent.

Without Birdie, the island was unimportant. Once the thought of it had soothed him. Now it left him feeling empty. As he walked, step after step, he struggled to find some kind of reason to keep moving. He could not imagine the island without Birdie. Sitting on the island without her, brooding over his loss and guilt, seemed to him an acute torture. Birdie had trusted him and he had failed her.

When they came to a road, Route 32, Eric felt immeasurably tired. He felt as if any moment, he might just stop. He felt it in him. Just stop and never move again. What was the point? Everything was gone. Why not him?

Suddenly Sergio grabbed him, and the three flung themselves to the ground at the side of the road. A moment later, a car flew by and then a truck. In the back of the truck, men and women, rifles pointed in the air, were laughing. They sped past, leaving silence and a few fluttering leaves in the air. One of the trucks Eric recognized as belonging to the group who had abducted Carl Doyle.

It was the laughter that did it. Eric stood up, kicked at the ground, and then strode swiftly up the road. He stuck his head in the nearest vehicle. There were no keys.

“What’re you doing?” Sergio called.

Eric threw open the door to the next car and looked inside. There were keys, but when he slid inside and turned it, nothing.

“Eric, please, stop it,” Lucia said, right behind him.

“Stop it, man!” Sergio pleaded. “You’re going to get us killed! Every gang around will notice us driving around!”

Without a word, Eric got out of the car and then walked to the next one, a burnt out pick-up. But the steering wheel was melted and bent, so he continued down Route 32, car by car.

“Stop it, Eric!” Lucia exclaimed. “Sergio’s right, you’re going to get us killed!”

Eric whirled around to face them. “So what?” He glared at them. “I told Birdie I would protect her! And that’s what I’m going to do!”

“Eric,” Lucia said gently.

“Carl Doyle knows where she is,” Eric said. “I’m going to find him and he’s going to tell me. I’m not giving up on her!”

Lucia tried to stop him. “Eric, please—”

“You don’t have to come,” Eric said. “I can’t live with myself if I leave her. I’d rather die than abandon Birdie. Don’t you understand? I’d rather die!” Eric turned away from them. He heard them follow him, but didn’t turn. Up the road, he found a car that started. Lucia sat in the front while Sergio slipped in the backseat.

Eric had never driven before. He put the car in gear and hit the gas. The tires squealed in response, the car slid gently to one side, and then straightened out.

 He would find out what happened to Birdie or he would die doing it.

^_

The car was a 1989 Ford Probe, sleek and silver and responsive. Eric had seen commercials for the car as it drove around corners to the tune of electric guitars. He had wanted one so badly. It would make him cool. He would be someone other than the fat kid. Now he cared little for anything but Birdie. Still the music of the commercial echoed meaninglessly in his head as he swerved the car around wrecks.

Have you driven a Ford lately?

^_

The Probe slid past a sign that said Cairo. Underneath it, painted on a piece of plywood in garish, bloody red, were the words: NO MINUTEMEN ALLOWED.

“I don’t like this,” Sergio said as they swung around three overturned vehicles and then into the town itself.

Up ahead, there was a crowd of vehicles parked haphazardly in the street and on lawns. Eric pulled out his .22 and set it on his lap.

The vehicles, mostly trucks, were parked in front of a plain, block-style church, with only the faintest hint of a steeple, a mere box crouched upon the church like a gargoyle. Wide double doors were propped open. Above the door, like the masthead of a ship, was a wooden black bear, with one paw forward, as if it was trying to say hello. Directly over the door and under the bear was a sign, painted in blue. It read GOOD PRINCE BILLY.

Crowded around the church were about two dozen people. Above a pit dug on the lawn a deer slowly roasted over an open fire, and two other carcasses waited, skinned.

Nearly every one of those dozen people had a rifle. And they were pointed at them.

^_

Eric shook off Lucia’s arm and stepped out of the car with the pistol in his hand.

“Who are you?” one of them called.

“You one of them Minutemen?” another added.

Eric walked toward them. “I’m looking for a man in a pith helmet,” he said.

“What the hell is a piss helmet?” The crowd laughed.

“I think you picked him up this morning,” Eric continued. “I just need to talk to him.”

A dozen rifles tensed toward him.

Eric thought about Birdie. He could see her in his mind. It was the only thing that kept him from dropping his pistol and holding up his hands.

“Kid,” said one of them. “I think you best get in that car of yours and keep moving.” Before he could respond, a figure emerged from the church, a stocky old woman with bold hair, curled and silver.

“Hold on,” she said. “Put your guns down, for crissakes. Jim, Rudy, Beth. Come on now, these are just kids.”

They lowered their guns. “That’s a kid with a gun, Billy,” one said defensively.

“I’d have a gun too if I were them,” the woman said. “Wouldn’t you, Jim? World ain’t exactly welcoming these days.” She walked up to Eric and extended her hand. “My name’s Billy,” she said. “They call me Good Prince Billy around here. Welcome to Cairo.”

^_

Good Prince Billy had rough, dry hands.

She was short, even shorter than Eric. She wore jeans and a denim shirt over a plain, pink t-shirt. Her face was wrinkled, and a crease that made her seem constantly reflective dominated the bridge of her sharp nose. Cunning eyes seemed to cut into him as she appraised him. Eric felt small and embarrassed under her gaze. Despite himself, he handed over his pistol.

“That’s for the best,” she said, taking the gun and winking at him. “Don’t want no misunderstandings.”

Eric shook his head. “I didn’t mean to, you know,” he stammered. “You know, scare anyone.”

“I know you didn’t, honey,” Good Prince Billy said. She slipped the gun into her pocket and turned toward the crowd. “All right,” she said, waving at them. “Get back to whatever it was you were doing. I’ll take care of our guests.” She motioned at them with a round wave of a hand and a thin, somehow humorous smile. “Follow me,” she said.

And they did.

^_

The pews had been removed from the inside of the church. At each end were rows of bunk beds. “We all sleep in here,” Billy said. “People need each other, especially in times like these.” She looked them over. “That’s what happened to your friend,” she said. “Too much solitude will sour a man, drive him crazy.”

“He’s not our friend,” Lucia said.

“Well,” Billy said, “friend or not, he’s not right in the head. Don’t help he’s got the Vaca B neither.”

“Can we see him?” Eric asked.

Billy sized them up. “Why?”

Eric swallowed. “He took one of our friends, a little girl named Birdie. We want to know what he did with her.”

Billy stared at them. Her eyes softened. “Sorry to hear that,” she said. “It’s a hell of a world, ain’t it?” She walked to the back of the church and then opened a door.

They followed her down steps lit by a fluorescent light. It was the first time Eric had seen artificial light in some time. Billy noticed him looking up at it. “We got a generator down in the cellar,” she explained. “Let’s us have light, powers the kitchen upstairs. Keeps us sane.”

“Who are the Minutemen?” asked Lucia.

Billy looked at her and smiled. “No time for that story now, honey,” she said, starting back down the stairs. “Let’s just say there’s folk who want to be left alone and folks who want to meddle in other people’s lives.”

“And you just want to be left alone?” asked Eric.

Billy laughed. “Well, we ain’t interested in no war, that’s for sure.”

“War?” Sergio asked.

“Like I said,” Billy continued, going down a hall at the base of the stairs. “No time for that story now. Tell me what you know about this man.” Good Prince Billy turned, opened a door and led them down a hallway.

“His name is Carl Doyle,” Eric said. Their footsteps echoed. “We met him back in Ohio. We told him where we were going before we realized he wasn’t right in the head. He’s been following us ever since.”

“He killed our friend,” Sergio added. “Just shot him down in the street.”

“Where are you headed?” asked Billy. “And why does he care?”

Eric stopped as they came to another door, this one thick metal. Billy turned to him, waiting for his answer. “We’re going to Maine,” he said. “We’re going to live on an island.”

“Escaping?” Good Prince Billy laughed. “I don’t know, honey. I think you’ll find the world has a way of following you. Ain’t no man an island.” She winked at him. “I read that somewhere.”

Eric wanted to explain to her about the winter, about being surrounded by water, about being far from urban centers, but Billy had a way about her. She was right. He felt silly and naive. “Who are you?” he asked.

“I wasn’t no one,” she said. “Now I’m the Good Prince. Life is a strange thing.”

She opened the door.

There was another set of stairs, this time lit only by a light bulb swinging from a wire. It was an old basement. It hadn’t been used in years, maybe decades. It still smelled of moist earth, but beneath the cold and the damp, Eric smelled the stench of rot.

“I know it looks harsh,” Good Prince Billy warned them before they descended. “But there ain’t no help for it. We make them as comfortable as we can, but they’re dangerous.”

“Who?” asked Sergio.

“The cracked ones,” she said. “Most of the time they wither away and die, but sometimes they live. Sometimes the crazy bastards beat the Vaca B. We leave them down here to fight it through, one way or the other. We wish them the best. We give them a chance. It’s all we can do.”

When they reached the bottom of the stairs, they saw a large, empty room with a moist, cement floor. In one corner huddled Carl Doyle, chained to an iron bar that ran the length of the back wall. He wasn’t moving, and they couldn’t see his face, but it was Doyle.

“He might live?” asked Eric, turning to Billy.

At the sound, Carl Doyle turned to them, his face dark with blood. “Eric? Is that you, my boy?” His chains rattled coldly as he rose to his knees. “I knew you’d come!” His pith helmet gone, his ravaged skull lay open, a gleaming white scar. Wisps of ragged hair grew on the side of his head. His square jaw still looked strong, but his face was caked with dark, dried blood. His leg had a small splint on it, but even from where Eric stood, he could smell it, rotting.

“It’s me,” Eric said, his mouth dry. He couldn’t help but think of Doyle as a wounded bear, chained to a cage.

“Good show!” he said. “I’m proud of you, my boy! Now we can continue. We can reach the island, Eric, I feel it deep inside me. It’s like another heart in me, beating. I hear it sometimes at night. It’s like.” Doyle licked his chapped and ragged lips. “It’s the origin. It’s where we can make a stand, dear boy. We can rebuild from there. They say the sun never set again. No. That’s not right.” Carl Doyle scratched his head, his fingers coming away wet and red. “Anyhow,” he continued. “You and I, we understand, even if no one else does. Churchill said that success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” He looked up at them and grinned. Half of his teeth were missing. “I have lost no enthusiasm for this, our venture.”

“This is the first time he’s talked,” Good Prince Billy whispered to them.

“Doyle,” said Eric. He crouched down in front of him, but careful to stay out of reach. “Please listen to me very carefully. We can all go to the island, but we need to go together.”

“Of course!” Doyle exclaimed. “Solidarity and what not! We all need to do our part to rid the world of these Huns!”

“Doyle, listen,” Eric said. “Please, god, make him listen.” He put his hands in his face, took a deep breath, and then started again. “We need to go to the island as a group. All of us.” He took another breath. “Doyle, where is Birdie?”

“What? Who?”

“The little girl,” Eric said, grinding his teeth in frustration. “The little black girl,” he added reluctantly.

“What? Her?” His chains rattled as he heaved his bulk to his full height. He towered over them and Eric, despite himself, stepped away. “What do we need of savages!” he bellowed. “There is no room on the island for savages!”

Eric stood up, enraged. “She’s not a savage!” he yelled. “She’s just a little girl!”

“Savages!” cried Doyle. “We will build a world without them! All they do is spread chaos! They suck the life from us! And we, the two of us, you and me, we are the ones to create order! Order!”

“Fuck order!” Eric shouted. “Tell me what you did with Birdie, you son of a bitch! Tell me right now!” He stepped toward him. “Right now!”

“That’s how it is, huh?” Carl Doyle’s voice dropped low and his English accent vanished. “You turning into some foul-mouth little punk, huh? Just a little fucking punk.”

“What did you do with her Doyle?” Eric growled. “Did you kill her? I swear to god, Doyle, if you killed Birdie, I’ll bury you. Do you understand that? I’ll fucking bury you!”

“Okay, that’s enough.” Good Prince Billy took Eric by the shoulders. When he went to move out of her grasp, her strong hands tugged him back. “I said enough.” Eric looked down at his feet. He saw a tear fall from his face. The clear drop of salty liquid hit the cold cement without a sound.

“All right,” he said, wiping his face. “All right.”

As they left the room, Eric turned back. Doyle slumped back down on the floor and curled into the corner, without another word.

As they climbed back up into the church, Eric had never felt so certain that Birdie was gone forever. He was going to have to live with it. This is how life is, he thought. Brad is gone. Sarah is gone. John Martin is gone. Birdie is gone.

There’s nothing you can do about it.

You have to grow up. Be a man.

^_

The people in Cairo called themselves the Mustangs.

They hadn’t been in a big group of people since the beginning of the outbreak. Good Prince Billy said they were fifty four of them. They lived in the church and the houses surrounding it. At night they gathered around the church and inside it. A series of floodlights lit the area. In the light, people stood, talking and laughing. There were old men and women, there were babies, innocent of the world that was so recently destroyed. There were sullen teenagers and happy couples. Serious people, whispering. Smiling people, telling tall tales. Quiet people, listening. People ignoring them, people watching them. So many people.

At first Eric filled with terror. His heart hammered in his chest painfully. He felt like he wanted to run for the shadows, to the comfort of the wooded night. From Lucia and Sergio’s wide eyes, he could tell they felt the same. But the grief of Birdie’s absence kept him from the full force of his fear. A part of him no longer cared if he lived or died. It was not such a serious thing. Like most of the people he had ever known, some day he too would die. There was no amount of fear that could conquer that fact.

After Good Prince Billy left them outside the church to talk with a group of people inside, Eric planned on going to the car, to sit inside the silence and breathe easier. But he was surprised by Jim, the man who had confronted him with his rifle earlier. Eric took a step back, expecting anger.

“Peace hombre,” Jim laughed. “I brought this for you and your friends.” He handed them a platter of juicy venison. Eric took it thankfully.

“Thank you,” he said. Even the smell of the meat was making him melt inside. He thought he might cry.

“No problemo,” said Jim. “If the Good Prince thinks you’re okay, you’re okay in my book.”

Forgetting their fear, the three sat outside the church of Good Prince Billy and ate roasted venison until their faces glistened with fat.

^_

What Eric remembered about that night with the Mustangs:

—There was an old man whittling on a park bench.

—A man and woman spent the evening necking behind a tree.

—At the side of the road, there were two posted guards. Each had on a protective vest. Each had an assault rifle. Each had somber eyes.

—A small band playing fiddle, guitar, banjo, and flute sang the song “Froggie Went a-Courting,” and “The Mule.” Everyone cheered this part of the song most:

Oh you’ll think you were struck by seven kinds of lightning
If you neglect to follow this golden rule:
You’d be too much broken up to join the angels
If you bother ‘round the hind parts of a mule.

—Two young children, no older than ten, played a game of hide and seek. One ended up crying because something “wasn’t fair.”

—Two teenage boys sat on the back of a truck watching the party.

—A circle of men stood around the fire, talking in turns, throwing wood on the fire.

—A woman introduced herself to Lucia as Amy. She said they were all welcome. She said Lucia had beautiful hair and Lucia said thank you.

—A woman came around with bowls of corn, rice, and beans mixed together. When she gave them out, she smiled at them.

—An argument broke out over the Minutemen, but Eric couldn’t hear what was said.

—Late in the night, four people began a game of horseshoes. A woman named Gretchen won.

—A truck drove up and a man came out, looking serious. Good Prince Billy went to speak to him. They talked alone in the shadows.

—There were a group of little girls there, playing with beautiful dolls. Eric trembled just to hear them. “Of course I love you,” said one little girl to another. “This is how it is going to be. I’m going to kiss you and then you’ll stay here, in my house. Okay?” The other agreed and then the two dolls kissed, a touching of plastic lips under a storm of blonde curls.

^_

Around midnight, Good Prince Billy led them to their rooms. To make them more comfortable, they would share a smaller room with only a few other people, including Jim.

“I know you’ve just come here,” she said to them as they stood awkwardly before her, “but I have a feeling about you kids. I won’t tell you what to do, we ain’t about that around here, but I will say you’re all welcome to stay here as long as you like. We need all the help we can get.” Billy smiled and her narrow, bright eyes twinkled.

“Thank you,” said Lucia. Sergio and Eric shook hands with the Good Prince.

When she left them, the group stood in a tight circle, looking at each other. They had been so long only in each other’s company, they never noticed how close they had become. They looked at each other shyly, uncertain how to express the realization of each other. Finally Sergio patted him on the shoulder and Lucia squeezed his hand, and they left him for a bunk in the corner.

Alone in the bottom of his bunk, Eric sank into the incredibly soft bed. After weeks of sleeping on the ground, the bed seemed to be made of clouds and feathers. Rarely had he felt so comfortable or so secure. He trusted these people, much more than he had ever trusted the Slow Society. There was something genuine about them. They had no grand ideas. They only wanted to live.

Maybe this was where they should stay. He had thought this once back at the Slow Society, but this time it felt more right. What was the island but a dream of security and companionship? Two things he could have here. He would not be in charge. There would be no responsibility. He had failed Birdie miserably, had failed all of them. So many of the people he had met were dead. He was not the person to protect them. Let that responsibility fall on people like Good Prince Billy. She was stronger than he was. The more he thought of it, the more he thought it was the right decision.

I’m sorry, Birdie, he thought to himself in the slight darkness inside the church. I wish I had been stronger for you, but I wasn’t. I’m sorry. Eric closed his eyes and sleep clutched him like a jealous lover.

^_

Eric woke abruptly when Jim climbed into the bunk above him. He let out an instinctive cry, small and scared, before he could restrain himself.

“Sorry,” Jim said. “I’m being as quiet as I can, amigo.”

Feeling his heartbeat slow, Eric watched Jim’s legs swing into the bed above him. Jim’s head came next, narrow, pock-marked and red. He looked like a man weathered by the sun and hard labor. Men like him had always scared Eric, made him feel soft, young, and vulnerable. Jim studied him for a few moments, as if trying to guess his weight.

“So you guys going to be Mustangs or what?” he asked. His head disappeared, but he didn’t stop talking. His voice was the loudest whisper Eric had ever heard. “I tell you what,” he continued. “You can feel safe with us. The Mustangs are some tough hombres, that’s the truth of it. We don’t allow no one to come in and tell us what to do. Not only that, but we got the Good Prince and she keeps us straight. You can take that to the bank and cash it.”

There aren’t banks anymore, Eric thought, but said nothing. “Who is she?”

“Prince Billy?” Jim’s head reappeared. “She’s our own personal hero. She might look old and all that, but she’s as tough as nails. She proved that at Rip Van Winkle.”

“Rip Van Winkle?” Eric encouraged when Jim stopped.

“That’s where we faced down with the Minutemen,” he explained. “That’ll teach them dirty sons of bitches to come in here with their damn pamphlets and tell us what we ought to do. No one rules over us. We ain’t interested in starting up a new country. President Jacobs, my ass. Didn’t no one vote for that son of a bitch.”

Eric was busy thinking about this when Jim continued.

“You guys are coming from the west, ain’t you? Probably haven’t heard of them yet, have you? The Minutemen are from Boston,” he said. His voice had lost even the pretense of a whisper. “They got a President, calls himself Jacobs. Says they’re all that’s left of the US government and that everyone ought to join with the Minutemen.” He scoffed angrily, like a snorting horse. “Load of bullshit. Buuuullllshiiit,” he pronounced slowly. “Ain’t nothing left of the US of A. Even if there was, I wouldn’t want no part of it. If you ask me, it was them government sons of bitches who were to blame for the Vaca B in the first place. We didn’t have no business in Brazil, now did we? We ought to look after us and our own. No,” he said soundly. “Them days are over, amigo. From now on, it’s us. We don’t need no one else.”

“What’s Rip Van Winkle?” Eric prodded again.

“Oh yeah,” said Jim. “Lost track of what I was saying.” He pulled his head back, and rolled over, so that Eric pictured him talking to the high ceiling. “Rip Van Winkle is a bridge,” he continued. “That’s where Billy met them Minutemen and made them give back the boy. You see, what them Minutemen do is they go into a town and they just start recruiting. That’s what those bastards call kidnapping. Then they bring the ‘recruits’ back to Boston where Jacobs is building the new capital. An army too, I guess, but no one knows for sure. No one who goes to Boston ever comes back. They’re pushing east and south. Billy reckons that Jacobs wants to take New York City, and he’ll need a hell of an army for that. That city ain’t nothing but a burning mess, filled with gangs who’re ripping each other to pieces for food. The Minutemen are recruiting as far as Pennsylvania, they say.”

Eric blinked, trying to digest all this information.

“Well,” Jim continued, “the Minutemen fucked with the wrong person. One day this girl comes in crying. She says the Minutemen just up and took this boy away. They were from Warren, not far from here. Billy says to us, if we let them take this boy, they’ll be taking us next, so we grab some guns and Billy has us set up on each side of the Rip Van Winkle. When they tried to cross, we ambushed them. It was a quick, dirty little gun fight, but the Minutemen surrendered. Then Billy takes back the boy and tells them sons of bitches how it is. After that we started calling her Good Prince Billy.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” Jim said. “I think it’s a song.”

“Who is she?”

“Used to be just Mary who worked at the grocery store. Had some trouble with her second husband, that was what most everyone knew of her. After the Vaca B, that all changed. She helped us get things together, take care of ourselves, organize. It was tough as hell, but without her, we would’ve vanished like a lot of towns round here done. She was just what we needed, I guess. And before the worm came all she did was work at the grocery store. Strange, ain’t it?”

“Yeah,” Eric agreed. “Strange.”

Jim’s head appeared again. “You know I wouldn’t be telling you shit, amigo, but Billy likes you. She says you people are welcome to stay here, and you ought to know what you want to know.”

“Is that why you’re sleeping here?”

Jim rested back in his bed. “Anymore questions?”

“Not now, no,” Eric said.

“Good, I’m bushed.” The bed creaked above him, and then went quiet. It took a few minutes for Eric to realize that the conversation was completely over and Jim was probably asleep.

Sleep did not come as easily for Eric.

When he did sleep, he had uneasy dreams. Birdie was emerged in still water, her hands clasped on her chest as if she were in a coffin. Her eyes were closed peacefully, and her hair floated about her head in soft tangles. He wanted to reach her, but he didn’t dare touch her dead body. But he couldn’t leave her either.

He just hovered in the water, indecisive, drowning.

^_

During breakfast, a beautiful meal of bacon, pancakes, and fresh eggs, Lucia slid next to him. Her body was so close to him, he helplessly imagined the silky warmth of her skin.

“Good morning,” she said to him with a smile.

Eric smiled shyly at her. Now, without the stress of being out there, alone, he saw her again as she was: beautiful, with shining brown eyes and luminous, smooth skin. Her lips were moist and shined. His heart stumbled in his chest like a drunk.

“Morning,” he managed with difficulty.

“They have a farm,” she told him. “Not far from here. They’ve converted an old brick house into a barn.” She smiled widely at him. “I’m going to help with the cows today.”

“Good, that’s good,” he said. He knew what she wanted.

“Sergio is already there,” she continued. She looked down at her plate. “I have a good feeling about these people. Don’t you, Eric?”

Eric didn’t answer. She was asking him to abandon Birdie. To stay here with these people, maybe for the rest of their lives. Maybe she was right. Alone, they were such a disaster. He was thinking of it. It hurt.

All he could do was shrug.

^_

It wasn’t until after lunch, slices of bread covered with chopped venison, onions, and carrots, that Good Prince Billy came to see him. During the day, she looked even more formidable. Her hair, in tight silver curls, formed a tidy circle around her head, like a crown. Her eyes, narrow and shallow, shined with the same, intelligent energy as it had the night before. Today she walked with the aid of a cane, the handle of which was a deer leg, the cloven hoof bent toward her. When she saw Eric sitting under a tree outside the church, his empty plate in front of him, she came to him. Halfway to him, however, a man intervened.

“Billy,” the man said. “Jenny and Dale are at it again. Jenny says she ain’t letting no one work on her place until it’s been dealt with.”

“What is it this time?”

“Jenny says Dale’s goats been in her garden. She says he does it on purpose.”

“Goddamit,” Billy said. “Them two are worse than badgers. All right, that’s it. I’m moving Jenny and her cows to the east side. Get Mack and Bob to help get that place set up, the one we was looking at last week for horses.”

“What about horses?”

“We’ll use Jenny’s place.”

“She ain’t going to like it.”

“Let me tell her,” Billy said.

“What if she don’t want to move?”

“She’ll move,” Billy said. When he seemed doubtful, Billy smiled. “You are a young one, ain’t you? Them two say it was a mutual break up, but I don’t believe it. I’ll just let Jenny know that moving away from Dale will prove to him she don’t give a damn for him no more. It’ll irritate the hell out of Dale. She knows that. Them two ain’t done with each other yet.”

“All right, Billy,” the man said with a smile, obviously impressed.

“Damn world is gone, and them two are still bickering like teenagers. Don’t nothing really change, remember that.” The man nodded at her, still smiling, and left them alone.

Good Prince Billy, leaning on her cane, sat next to him. She groaned as she sat, and then clasped her hands on her lap and turned to him. “Well,” she said. “Where should I start?”

^_

“I guess you know by now that I’d like you to stay with us,” Good Prince Billy began. “I been talking with Sergio and Lucia this morning. Nice folk, them two. I think the both of them are glad to be here. I can see they want to stay here, I can see it in their eyes. I think you can too. But they got an awful respect for you. They won’t stay if you leave. I’ve seen this kind of thing before. There are bonds that, once made, can’t be broke. Not love, not hate, not anything will stand between two people who’ve been brought together by catastrophe and terror. It’s a bond even stronger than blood. I know you haven’t asked for this. I can see how uncomfortable you sit with yourself. You don’t think you’re set to be no leader, and I know you never asked for the responsibility, but there it is, Eric, whether or not you like it.

“I don’t know but the best leaders are the ones who never wanted it. Responsibility ought to hurt. It ought to keep you up at night. But like it or not, they follow you. They’ll go if you go, but they don’t want to.

“I know you feel like you need to search for this little girl. I respect that. I do. But I want you to understand something. Out there, there is danger. There’s the Minutemen coming in from the east, making people awful jumpy around strangers. There’s other gangs too. Who knows how many between here and this island of yours? To say nothing of starvation and deprivation. Or Zombies or the cold winter you got waiting for you if you get there. Maybe that’s something you can risk for yourself, but how about them two? You going to drag them into it, too?

“I can promise this to you. If you stay and help us build something here, I’ll help you look for Birdie best I know how.”

Good Prince Billy patted his leg and then raised herself up with another groan. She looked down at him. Before she left, she said:

“You don’t have to say nothing now, honey. You just think on it. I ain’t telling you what to do, but I will say that, for my part, I think you ought to stay. I think we’re your best shot.”

^_

After Eric ate his meal of pork stew with carrots and turnip, he retreated from Sergio’s excited talk of horses and cows. He walked to his bunk and sat alone on his bed. He watched his hands twining and detaching. The Good Prince was right, he knew it, but Birdie would not leave his mind. At the last, he took out her backpack. Eric took out her drawings.

One showed two orange people under a yellow sun, holding hands, one small with curling orange hair, the other large with an expansive round face, like a pumpkin. They had smiles so large they escaped the confines of the face and twirled into the atmosphere. Shoots of copper grass grew under their feet. Innocently, the figures faced the viewer, naked with orange emotion. Behind them was a copper tree with yellow leaves.

Good Prince Billy was right, Sergio and Lucia wanted to stay, but he was the one who would have to live with leaving her. He would have to live with it for the rest of his life. He stared at the drawing and willed his hands to crumple it, to tear it, to throw it from him. He tried telling himself that Birdie was dead, that now the lives of two people depended on him realizing that fact. Dealing with it. He wanted to prove it by destroying Birdie’s drawing. He tried to will his hands to move, to clutch the paper, but nothing happened. He could not do it.

In the end, he put the drawing back in Birdie’s backpack, which he packed carefully in his own.

He would start forgetting her tomorrow. Tomorrow he would begin their new life as Mustangs. Tomorrow he would make the dreadful decision.

Tonight he would not abandon her.

^_

Eric awoke to screams. Leaping to his feet, he blinked, his heart thudding with fear. Gunshots. He heard one, two, and then several more. Eric pulled on his pants so fast, he nearly fell over. Lucia and Sergio were at his side at the next moment.

“What’s happening?” Lucia cried.

“Come on!” Eric grabbed his backpack. “Get your things!”

People were flashing by the hall outside, crying and shouting. Eric ran to the window to see the chaos of people outside. The flash of gunfire. There was a dead body on the lawn. Eric could see figures running through the street. He saw one man running away, wearing a green sports jersey. It said McHale 32 on it.

“What’s happening?” Lucia asked. He just shook his head.

Outside he saw the Good Prince standing with several men with a shotgun in her hand. She was yelling, but in the chaos, he couldn’t tell what she was saying. Then one word rose from the crowd, repeated throughout.

“It’s the Minutemen!” Sergio cried.

As Eric watched, he saw Good Prince Billy rise up with the shotgun. A deafening blast filled the air, and a man wearing a Red Sox jersey collapsed like he was made of water. Another truck came to a screeching halt in front of the church, and men in green or red jerseys began leaping from the truck. Gunfire erupted all around them.

Eric pulled on his backpack and then turned away from the window. “Let’s go!” he cried, but Sergio and Lucia remained staring out the window, stunned. “Let’s go!” Eric tugged Sergio back so that he fell. He scrambled to his feet without a word of complaint.

Running into the church, they pelted down the stairs and then further into the church. Soon they stood before Carl Doyle’s room.

“What’re we doing?” Lucia cried as Eric threw open the door.

“Grab those keys,” Eric said to Sergio. Then he turned to Lucia. “We’re getting out of here.”

Carl Doyle was already on his feet.

“Eric, my boy!” he boomed, his arms wide. “I knew you would return! Rotten business, I hear.” He pointed up toward the sound of gunfire.

“Eric, no!” Lucia cried.

But Eric was fumbling with the lock already. The chains fell from Doyle and he made a rumbling sound that might have been a sigh or a laugh. Eric looked up at Doyle’s bloodstained face. “Get us out of here,” he said.

Doyle nodded at him severely, and then clasped him by both shoulders. He gave him a shake. “You’re a fine boy,” he said with a wink. “A fine boy.”

Then, turning toward the door, he roared, and ran up the stairs. “Wahoo Mohammed!” he cried.

^_

“Eric!” Lucia cried when Doyle vanished. “What’re you doing?” Sergio was cursing in Spanish.

“Getting us out of here,” Eric answered. “Hurry, we don’t have much time.”

The three pelted up the stairs. Above them they heard gunfire mixed with the booming voice of Carl Doyle. When they reached the main door of the church, they saw Carl Doyle standing on the lawn. Somehow he already had a shotgun, and was firing one shot after another toward a group of Minutemen who had taken refuge behind a truck. “You goddamn savages!” Doyle boomed as he shot.

Without pausing, Eric flew out the door. At the corner of his eye, while he ran, he saw a knot of bodies, but didn’t see if the Good Prince was one of them. While Carl Doyle screamed, firing into the Minutemen, the three of them raced into the darkness.

They climbed into the silver Ford Probe. Lucia slammed it into gear and Eric fell into the backseat as the car squealed into the road. As they screeched away, Eric turned and saw more approaching lights, Minutemen reinforcements.

Within moments, there was only the road and the sound of their breathing. Then the quiet sound of sobbing. Sergio was crying in the front seat. Lucia turned to him and said something in Spanish, but Sergio didn’t stop crying.

The Probe sped north into the darkness.

Eric saw a green sign, bright from the Probe’s headlights, hanging down toward the dark earth. He had to cock his head to the side to read it.

Welcome to Vermont.

14

^__________

^{Green Mountain National Park}

When they reached the Green Mountain National Park, they drove the Ford Probe to the edge of an embankment. The three of them pushed it over, and the car bounced down into the forest where it vanished. A pine tree shivered to mark where it hit with a crash. In the silence, Sergio began to weep again, as if the Probe had been a living creature they had killed. Lucia put her arm around her brother.

“We had to,” Eric said, without turning to them. “The Minutemen might be hunting for us. We have to be careful. No more cars. No more people.”

Sergio groaned like he had kicked him.

“Grow up,” Eric spat toward him, offended by his sorrow. Lucia flushed, looking at Eric, but with anger or shame, he didn’t know.

He didn’t care. He walked down into the forest and then turned north, toward the interior of the park and ultimately, the island.

^_

The rolling hills had now given way to the wooded mountains of Vermont. They climbed a steep mountain and camped on an overlook. All they could see was green forest and mountains. Looking over the park, it was easy to imagine a world in which humans had never existed at all. After all, humans had existed for so short a time. For billions of years, the earth had done fine without them, and now, it would continue as if they had never been. To the earth, humans were less than a moment, less than an instant. Just as Eric would forget a single blink in his lifetime, so the earth would forget them. It did not make him sad, though Sergio, looking on the same scene, wept once more. For Eric it was comforting. What was so great about humans anyway? The world had only destroyed itself a few months ago and they were already planning for war.

Eric realized he was wrong about feeling numb. There was something in him, something terrible but powerful, something that should have frightened him but did not.

Rage.

^_

At night, he dreamt of his father. They were in the aluminum boat, floating in the lake in Maine. His father was drinking a can of beer with his feet up. Eric rowed toward the island. The skies were green and shivered like leaves disturbed by the wind.

“Is that as fast as you can row?” his father asked. He tossed his empty beer into the lake where the red and white can bobbed in the water. “I can’t believe you’re my son.”

Eric said nothing. He pulled at the oars, but it was like rowing in thick mud. Water dripped off the oars, thick as honey.

“You’ll never get to the island,” his father said, disgusted. There was a snap and a hiss as he opened another beer. “Your mother ruined you.”

Eric grunted at the oars, but suddenly they would not budge. The oars felt lodged in stone.

His father laughed. “Holy shit,” he said. “Your mother really screwed you up.”

It was only water. Eric heaved and strained against the oars. Suddenly his father shot up and was directly in his face, his hot breath in his face, his face twisted in contempt. “What’s wrong with you?”

Eric woke up sweating, his arms flailing around him, as if he were trying to fly.

^_

The next day, over the campfire where the water boiled, Eric announced that he didn’t want to move today. He wanted to stay at the camp. “I have to think,” he said.

The others didn’t argue. They both seemed to have pulled away from him. They found consolation in each other. They stayed close together, speaking only in Spanish. Normally, Eric would have felt lonely and hurt. Now he felt relief. He wanted to be alone.

He was thinking about leaving them.

^_

There was a freedom to solitude. Eric could feel it, sitting at the crest of a ravine, his legs dangling over the hundred foot drop. He had failed at everything important to him. And those around him suffered for it.

A gust of wind blew over the forest, tossing the leaves in a great rolling wave, turning the forest into a sea of green. Birds fluttered in the trees above him, chickadees, yellow warblers, and a group of voluble goldfinches. Dark turkey vultures traced lazy, slow circles in the air above.

Eric tried to think of the future. Why should it matter? For an instant, he detached from his dream of the island. There was another possibility. He could wander. All his life. Like birds, he could move south in the winter, and then return north, moving, always moving, with no place to call home, no goal he could fail to reach. No people he could lose or put in danger. He looked over the mountains of Vermont and saw the wilderness, not as something to pass through, but as his ultimate destination. He could wander.

The hell with the island.

^_

During the day, the others gathered food. Sergio fished while Lucia gathered berries.

She found a patch of blackberries, buzzing with bees under the August sun. While she picked the tender berries that stained her fingers purple, she happened upon a meadow of blueberries. The meadow sloped up the mountain, and, on the other end, Sergio tossed his line into a mountain stream.

Lucia was picking blueberries when she heard it. Up at the edge of the meadow, a black bear plodded out of the forest. It was aware of her immediately, stopping and sniffing. They looked in each other’s direction, Lucia’s heart pattering inside her. She was on the edge of panic, thinking of the great, diseased brown bear that Eric had told her about. But just before she cried out to Sergio, the black bear looked away, sat lazily in the midst of the blueberries, and then began licking its paw. Apparently it decided they were no threat.

Lucia watched the bear, the fear dissipating from her limbs. When she returned to the job of picking berries, she began to weep silently, in gratitude. Toward what, she did not know.

She never told anyone about the bear.

^_

Eric spooned the food in his mouth mechanically, thinking of when he was going to tell the others that he was no longer interested in going to the island, that he was no longer interested in being with them. The food was tasteless.

Sergio and Lucia ate with happiness. Lucia had fried the trout perfectly and covered it with mashed blueberries. They finished with a dessert of blackberries sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. Lucia, inspired by their meal, boiled blackberries in water and then ran the mixture through cloth. After adding a sprinkle of sugar, she shared the tea with Sergio, but Eric turned his away with a wave of his hand.

The meal seemed to revive the brother and sister. Even Sergio, who had been inconsolable since they fled Cairo seemed content. Eric found it distasteful. Were they such creatures of their body that their mood could be radically changed by a decent meal? Did fried fish and crushed fruit bring back Birdie? Did it rid the world of the Vaca B? Did it repopulate the towns and rebuild the scorched cities?

Finally he could not stand them anymore. He got up without a word and walked away from them, into the darkness of the forest, where he had pitched his tent.

^_

At breakfast, Eric said he did not want to move again, not yet. In reality, he was finding the right time to make his exit. He had decided he would not even say goodbye. He would simply pack up and leave. He would head south and leave them all behind. He ate the oatmeal that Sergio had mixed with blueberries he had gathered at dawn, thinking of the relief he would feel, free of them.

“Do you think they’re alive?” Sergio asked Eric. When Eric looked up, his eyes were cold. “The people of Cairo?” he prodded when Eric only stared at him.

“Some of them,” Eric said. “The ones who fought are dead. The rest are in Boston by now. They probably burned Cairo to the ground to make a lesson of them.” He added this last with cruelty that twisted inside him.

“You don’t know that,” Lucia said, disgusted, when Sergio looked away from Eric quickly to hide his pain. Lucia turned to her brother and said something soothing in Spanish.

“No, he’s probably right,” Sergio said quietly. He made a sound that was supposed to be a chuckle, but came out like a choke. “We’ve come all this way, and it’s not the Zombies I’m scared of. It’s the people. They’re the real disaster.” Sergio shook his head and, standing up, swiftly walked away.

Lucia turned furiously toward Eric. “Was that really necessary? Don’t we have enough bullshit to deal with? Sergio met a girl in Cairo, you know. They kissed, Eric. His first kiss. Can’t you give him a little hope?”

“I’m tired of lying,” Eric said. He meant to look at her steadily, but he felt his gaze turn to a glare, and Lucia blinked at him, hurt by his anger. She turned away from him, thinking of something to say, something that would ease his suffering.

But Eric didn’t want that. What hope did any of them have? So what Sergio had his first kiss? The girl he meant to kiss first, she was dead in the street, shot through the eye. The woman who had kissed him first had done so out of grief before she too died. He got up noisily and dumped the rest of his water into the campfire where it hissed angrily, spewing out steam. He walked away, thinking they would be better without him. That night, he thought, while they were sleeping. That night he would leave them.

Perhaps they would find hope. For him, it could never be.

^_

Eric stayed away from camp that day. He walked up and down the mountain, once spooking a group of does from their browsing. Their white tails flagged behind them as they leapt away. When he walked back up the mountain, he climbed a tree at the edge of the meadow and watched Sergio fish.

Eric hadn’t noticed, but Sergio had quietly become accomplished, holding the thin fishing line in his hand, waiting for a bite to electrify the line. He had already caught four trout. He had strung them by the gills with clothesline and, to keep them fresh, immersed the fish in a cool eddy of water. Eric watched until Sergio caught one, crying out as it came flapping free of the brook, amidst the crystals of water droplets. He smacked it hard against a rock and then strung it on the line with the others.

Watching him, Eric felt the first real pain of leaving them. It would not stop him, he knew that, but it hurt to watch him, a distant, almost nostalgic pain, as if he were already years in the future and remembering this moment.

^_

When Eric walked back to camp, he stopped abruptly at the edge.

There was a man at the campfire. He wore a Red Sox jersey.

Pulling out his pistol, Eric walked toward him. There was little fear. His only emotion was a kind of satisfaction that the man who meant to surprise them when they returned was going to be the one surprised. As a Minuteman, he would be carrying weapons, Eric thought. It was better to shoot first.

Eric walked forward, aiming his pistol. He had never killed anyone before. This would be his first time. The thought made him scared but resilient. This was something he had to do. He must do it. This was the world they lived in. Eric pointed the gun and was content to see that his hand was not shaking. Once he would have been frightened. No more. If only his father could see him now.

He approached softly on the hard ground, his pistol held out before him. He had to be quiet, he had to be close. One shot to the back of the head. Quick. Painless. Humane. But not too close. He stopped about ten feet away. Held out his arm. Aimed.

“ERIC! NO!” Lucia ran into the campground, waving her arms and screaming.

She could not make the hard decision. He could. His finger pressed the trigger.

The man turned toward him.

Eric’s hand went numb an instant before he fired. The pistol dropped to his feet and his mouth hung open.

“Hello, Eric,” the man said weakly.

It was John Martin.

^_

All three of them huddled around John Martin who lay now by the fire. Carl Doyle’s gunshot had not killed him. All the antibiotics that John had gathered after Brad’s death had kept the wound from festering, but in his weakened state, the Vaca B invaded. His eyes were red with blood.

He breathed heavily by the fire. “I’ve been searching for you,” he said. “Thank God,” he said. “Thank God I found you. I’m out of time.”

“Don’t talk now, John,” Lucia said. “You need to eat.” She turned toward Sergio. “Get him some water and food,” she ordered. Sergio nodded and dashed away.

John Martin took a deep, labored breath that rattled in his chest, an ugly sound. “Listen to me,” he said. “The truck.” He lifted his hand and pointed east. “Birdie,” he said.

Eric felt the hair rise at the back of his neck. A thrill of lightning ran through him. “What? What did you say?”

“The truck,” John Martin repeated. “About a mile. Maybe two.”

Eric shot to his feet, and then, tearing himself away from Lucia who had clutched at him, he found he was running through the woods. Tears blinded his eyes. Tree limbs tore at his face, but he felt nothing. His heart was a ball of light in his chest. When he hit the road, he spun around and around, searching for a vehicle.

“Birdie!” he shouted. “Birdie!”

Blindly he ran down the road calling her name.

Suddenly he saw a red truck and stopped, trembling. The door opened and a figure crawled out, feet first.

“Eric?”

Eric didn’t remember moving. Birdie was suddenly in his arms and they were crying. He clutched at her and kissed her head a dozen times. She smelled like ash and peanut butter. When he became aware of himself, he was carrying Birdie in his arms through the forest, toward the camp. Birdie’s grip around his neck nearly choked him, but he didn’t care.

He listened to himself talk. “I’ll never leave you again, I swear it. I swear it, Birdie. I’ll never leave you again.” Birdie wept hotly into his neck.

It was a very long time before they released each other.

15

^__________

^{Granville Reservation State Park}

John Martin did not live through the night. For all of Lucia and Sergio’s attention, he began trembling at midnight, and, hours later, when the sky had turned blue as dawn slowly approached, he went still. When dawn came, he was dead.

Both Lucia and Sergio, who had spent so much time with him, who owed their lives to him, wept, holding each other. Then Lucia washed John as best she could. She took off his filthy jersey and replaced it with a clean shirt. With great labor and care, they carried his large body into the meadow. Over his stolid body, they piled dry wood and branches until he was underneath a great pyramid of tinder.

Before they set it afire, Sergio stood forward to speak.

“I don’t know why all this has happened. I don’t understand why some of us live and some of us die. The more I see, the more I think it’s random. It’s just luck that makes us live and bad luck that makes us die. John Martin was a good man. He didn’t have to look out for us. He probably would be alive today if he looked after himself more. But he didn’t. He wasn’t like that. I’d say he didn’t deserve to die, but that doesn’t make any sense to me anymore. I guess what I want to say is thank you. Thank you for helping us, John Martin. I swear I won’t ever forget it.” He said a few words in Spanish, but Eric did not understand.

Lucia stood forward and, her lips moving as if in speech, she lit the fire. It snapped and popped at first, but then it began to hiss and crackle and finally roar. The pyramid turned into a twisting column of fire they could not approach for the heat.

It burned hot while they packed their campsite, and, by the time they moved away through the woods toward the north, toward the island, Eric holding Birdie’s hand, the fire had become smoke and John Martin, who had saved them all, had been transmuted to ash.

^_

How Birdie came back to them was a complicated story, filled with gaps, uncertainty, and confusion. From what John had told them before he died, which was not much, and from what Birdie herself understood, Eric was able to puzzle together something like a narrative.

John Martin had awakened after being shot by Carl Doyle. For days he could not move, but slept and rested, eating and drinking what was left in his pack. Somehow he had found a truck and began to follow them, hoping to rejoin them. How he avoided Carl Doyle or if Doyle was an impediment to him, Eric never knew. Finally John found them, but when he did, there was only Birdie.

Birdie said that John had told her that they were not coming back. They guessed that John Martin had seen them enter the deserted cabin, saw the Minutemen enter, heard the gunfire, and believed them dead. Birdie said that she didn’t want to leave, but Eric had told her to look after herself. So she did as she was told.

Then, Birdie said, they ran. From what or who, Birdie could not tell them, only that it was scary. Some days they parked their truck deep in the forest and did not move. Birdie said John would talk, but not to her. He spoke to Holly, Birdie said. “Holly was mean,” Birdie told them. “She always made John cry.” Neither Sergio or Lucia knew who this Holly was, but it was not strange. All of them had lives they no longer spoke about and people whose names were synonymous with regret and sorrow.

One day John Martin turned to Birdie and said they were alive, Eric, Sergio, and Lucia. How he knew that, Eric would never know. After that, John searched for them. Birdie said he became more sick, talked less and drank more water.

Birdie could tell them little about this time, but she gave them a drawing made with blue pen. It was folded and ragged. It was a truck hovering over a tree. Three people stood below the truck, the larger one crying. One of them had long hair but no legs, and underneath this figure was written “Holly.” All had deep frowns. Behind the tree were other trees and between them were angry eyes. Over all glowered a hideous, crescent moon that seemed to be a frown transposed to the sky.

The day finally came when John Martin found them.

A more complete version of Birdie’s journey they would never know.

^_

Despite the death of John Martin, Eric gloried in feeling Birdie’s small, damp hand in his. He felt a wonderful thrill whenever she asked him a question or smiled. Though it could not be said they were joyful moving north toward the next circle on Eric’s wrinkled map, Granville Reservation State Park, they were energetic, hopeful.

Even Lucia and Sergio were light in their sadness. Before they had given John Martin a decent burial, they had felt miserable and guilty for leaving him there, shot down in the road like a dog. Now they walked slightly behind of Eric and Birdie, speaking in Spanish with each other. Eric did not have to know the language to understand they were speaking about their time with John in his cellar. When Sergio suddenly laughed, Lucia strode ahead and took Eric’s arm.

“Want to hear a story about John?”

Eric nodded.

Lucia smiled. “We’d been in the cellar for weeks at this point. This place was damp and dark and it smelled like, like—”

“Old socks,” Sergio helped with a smile.

“No,” Lucia laughed. “Not that. It smelled like lint. Like hot lint.”

“Which you get from old socks,” said Sergio.

“Anyway”’ Lucia said, ignoring her brother. “We were all so sick and tired of that place. Three people living so close together. All day, all night.” She laughed again. “We’d been eating canned beans for days. And John suddenly says that we should cook something different. Leaving the basement was so dangerous, we tried to talk him out of it, but he said we’d all go crazy if we ate another bean. So he left. There was nothing we could do about it.”

“When John made up his mind,” Sergio said, “John made up his mind.”

“He came back hours later with an armful of food,” Lucia said. “Just random stuff. Like spaghetti and canned fish and those little cans of pink sausages and bags of dried fruit. So much stuff!”

“But none of us knew how to cook!” Sergio laughed.

“That’s not true,” Lucia said, smiling. “I can cook, I just can’t cook what he brought. It was all just random. What can you do with spaghetti and dried fruit?”

“So anyway,” Lucia continued. “We all cooked together. And it was very serious too. We argued about everything. What to put in what and all that. In the end there was this like huge pile of stuff on top of spaghetti.”

“I don’t even know what was in it!” Sergio laughed.

“It was so disgusting,” Lucia said. “So gross, you have no idea! We laughed so hard! John laughed hardest of all. He had risked so much and the meal was so bad!”

“You almost couldn’t eat it!” Sergio laughed.

Eric smiled, but he didn’t think it was funny.

“We ate it all too,” Lucia said.

“Yeah, we ate it all,” Sergio agreed. “Hard to keep it down!”

Then they dropped back, laughing, returning to Spanish. Somehow, Eric thought, they all felt like a group again. It was John Martin’s last gift to them. He had saved them even in his death.

^_

That night, in the flickering light of the fire, Eric sat by Birdie. He returned her pink backpack and she smiled and pulled out her crayons and paper. She lay by the fire with her legs in the air behind her. Eric lay next to her and watched her draw. Eric couldn’t remember ever feeling so happy and content, and at the same time, determined and heartless. He would never be separated from her again. Nothing was more important to him, not even his own life. He would not be separated from her again, and if he had to kill to make sure of it, he would not pause or doubt himself for an instant.

“Why’re you crying?” asked Birdie, looking at him suddenly. She looked back at her picture with a frown. “This is supposed to be a happy picture.”

“I know it is,” Eric answered, wiping his face. He hadn’t known he was crying and it was embarrassing. “I don’t know, Birdie. I’m glad you’re here, that’s all.”

“Oh,” she said. She smiled at him and then turned back to the drawing.

Eric watched her add orange tears to a smiling face.

^_

They were down to a cup of rice and a bag of beans. They had to make a supply run.

It was strange how quickly they seemed to forget everything that had happened. Although Eric knew he would never be the same person he was before he lost and found Birdie, they crept to the edge of the forest and surveyed the nearest town as if nothing had changed. They knelt down together, and Sergio nervously licked his lips as he looked at the town. Birdie sat next to Eric, watching the town and clutching his hand.

Lucia was the only one who seemed different. There was none of her usual stoic braveness obscuring her fear. Her trepidation was naked on her face. She bit her lower lip.

“I don’t know, Eric,” she whispered. “This place. It’s just. I don’t like it.”

“We don’t have a choice,” Eric said. “We need food.”

“There’ll be another town,” she said. “There’s always another town.”

“Just like this one,” Eric answered.

Lucia didn’t answer, but when Sergio muttered something encouraging to her in Spanish, Lucia stopped him with a hiss. “No me gusta,” she told him. Sergio looked away, more nervous than usual.

“It’ll be all right,” Eric said. He felt angry with both of them. They needed food. “This is another town, like any other. We’ll get in, get some food, and get out again.” Then a welling up of anger and annoyance came suddenly from inside him, and, before he could stop himself, he added, “Of course you don’t like it, you think I like it? We have to do what we have to do. That’s it. Don’t make this harder.” His tone was acidic, like his own father’s when he mentioned his mother.

Lucia looked at him and blushed, deep and red. She looked like she had something to say, but, instead, she swallowed and turned back to the town.

Eric felt a warm glow of power, followed quickly by regret and then he felt slightly ill and dizzy. He took a deep breath to steady himself, and then stood up and walked out of the forest toward the town, not looking back to see if the others were following him. He knew they were.

^_

The town’s name was Wallingford.

It was a small town with large houses and a narrow road. Once it might have been described in a travel book as “sleepy” or “quaint.” Now it seemed like a vast temple for the dead. The roads were clogged with abandoned cars and trucks. It was quiet, except for birds and the wind and their footsteps on the asphalt. On the side of the road was a burnt out truck, its hood up. It had the look of a dead thing whose jaw hung open. One of its fenders was whiter than the rest. They walked by it with a solemn silence, as if it were a corpse that demanded respect.

They searched together, instead of splitting up. They could no longer imagine leaving each other’s sight. The first few houses were empty and looked like they had been looted already. One of them was burnt on the inside. The kitchen was a cave of ash, and when Eric looked in, he saw a blackened corpse, all charred bone, with its head stuck in the black remains of a gas stove. Eric turned Birdie away, but he was pretty sure she had already seen it. Birdie had seen a lot already. She’d seen worse.

When they re-grouped, Lucia looked nervous again. Sergio, picking up on his sister’s apprehension, was beside himself with fear. He kept moving from one foot to the other.

“Hey man,” he said to Eric. “There’s nothing here. Let’s try the next town.”

“No,” Eric said angrily. “We’re here, we need the food, we’re doing it.” He didn’t know why he was so adamant about it. Sergio made a whining sound, but then cut it off, as if he had betrayed himself. Lucia put a comforting hand on her brother’s shoulder, but wouldn’t look at Eric.

They continued down the street and then came to a large, sprawling light blue house with gray trim. The upper story was all gothic gables, and the largest gable, which hung over a large window and the entrance, was topped by a cast iron fence. It looked fortified, a wooden palisade of a house. Eric stopped in front of the white picket fence that ringed the yard and listened to the wind in the maple tree in the yard.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Sergio, staring at the house.

“It was probably an inn or something,” Eric said, without looking at him. “It has food inside. I know it.”

He didn’t know it. He just didn’t like the look of the house. It was a challenge to him. It mocked him somehow. It seemed to say, “You’re a fucking coward, Eric. You don’t dare come in here. Your mother ruined you!” Eric stood in front, motionless.

There was a crash then and a gurgling scream. Sergio and Lucia sprang back and were halfway down the street when three zombies came out of the house.

^_

Behind him, he could hear Lucia, Sergio, and Birdie, running, but Eric did not move.

He pulled out his pistol.

The first Zombie had lost an arm, and it walked in strange lunges. Its face was black, and there were holes where his nostrils once were. There was still a few tufts of bright red hair on his head. Eric leveled his .22 and fired. The Zombie stumbled, fell to its knees, snarling like a wolf. Eric fired two more times, both in the head. The holes in its skull spewed forth a black bile as if the contents had been under pressure. Then the cracked Zombie fell forward onto the lawn.

The other two lurched around the body. Eric shot once at a jawless Zombie in overalls before his pistol clicked empty. Turning, he ran down the road, following Lucia and Sergio and Birdie. While he ran, he flipped open his pistol and began reloading. When he reloaded, he turned and aimed. The next shot took the jawless Zombie in the chest, and it halted to spit up gobs of red and black from his mouth. The other came in something like a run. It was once an old woman and its face was wrinkled and black, like an olive. The cavities that were once eyes wriggled with white worms. Eric fired three times, and one of the shots caught her in an empty eye socket. She fell to the ground not more than six feet from him. The last one was still vomiting up its innards when Eric walked toward it, shooting. He shot it three times in the crown of the head before it feel forward. More black bile poured from its skull in spurting streams. The smell of the bile hit him like a hammer. It was like chemical warfare. Eric dropped to his knees and retched up his stomach on a lawn.

When he recovered, he was looking at three pair of legs standing beside him. The little legs next to him, he noticed, had pink socks.

“Let’s get out of here,” Sergio said in a shaky voice as Lucia helped him up.

“No,” Eric said firmly. “I’m going in the house.”

^_

Inside the gothic house, there was graffiti on the wall in thick black paint:

Fuck the Minutemen! Minutemen are Massholes! Green Mountain Boys!

There was other graffiti. Names. Numbers. Dates. Inscrutable drawings. It was all painted messily over a floral wallpaper in the main room. The words dripped the same color as the black bile that had gushed from the Zombie’s skull.

In the back of the house, in the kitchen, they found a stainless steel door, still locked. Eric smashed the lock with a cast iron skillet. Inside was an untouched larder.

^_

The walk-in was putrescent. They cupped their hand around nose and mouth as they passed through. Boxes once filled with lettuce and tomato now dripped a dark fluid. The floor was slippery with it. In the back, however, were three wire shelves filled with cans. Beans, corn, beets, peas, carrots, spinach, pickles, cranberry sauce, creamed corn, all of it untouched. While Eric filled their bags, he heard Sergio outside cry out.

“Flour!” he said. “And rice!” Then came a flood of Spanish as Lucia joined him.

When they left the house, their bags were bursting with food. So much that it was difficult to walk.

No one complained.

^_

That night they feasted.

They mixed beans with corn. They ate spoonfuls of cranberry sauce, which tasted as sweet as candy. They slurped up cans of spinach and crunched into pickles pinched free from their salty, green brine. Mixing flour with their drinking water, Lucia fried the batter over the fire, and they had something like bread, which they dunked into cans of creamed corn happily. Their appetite was enormous.

Afterward, they sat content in front of the flickering flames.

Eric stayed up late, watching the fire and cleaning his gun. Birdie slept with her head next to him, the light from the fire warm and gentle across her body.

He could not understand what he felt. It was not entirely good. He listened to his own breathing, low and even. Nothing could touch them.

^_

They entered Aitken State Forest the next day, moving north. All day they plunged through the forest. Weeks of walking had made their strides long and deep. They devoured the hilly terrain, stopping only to drink water and eat a hurried meal. Eric had never felt so close to the island. It no longer seemed a dream, but was real now, attainable.

They hiked to the foot of Bald Mountain and stopped to make camp when Sergio heard it.

“Listen,” he said, holding out his hands. They heard nothing. When Lucia said something in Spanish, he shook his head. There was only quiet around them, but Eric drew out his pistol. He had a feeling. He pictured the Land Rover crashing through the forest.

Then he heard it. Distant. Up the mountain somewhere. A chugging, puffing engine.

After quick conferral, the four of them crept slowly up the side of the mountain, following the sound. Around a bend, they saw a wooden shack, under green maple trees. Once it might have been a sugar shack, used for boiling down maple sap into syrup. Now the hole that once vented out the steam was covered with bright blue tarpaulin. Chugging outside was a small, single piston generator. An orange drop cord connected it to the shack like an umbilical cord. They stood transfixed by the oddity of it. Eric hardly had time to pull out his pistol before the old man came out the door.

He was carrying a metal pan of water when he walked out the door. Seeing the .22 pointed at him, he dropped the pan to the ground.

They stared at each other to the beat of the chugging engine.

^_

“I was digging a new hole for the generator,” the old man explained. “The old one was filling with water. I didn’t figure having it outside just two or three days would do no harm. Go figure, heh?” He looked at them and smiled. Most of his teeth were missing, and those left were brown. “Just goes to show you,” he said, wagging a wrinkled finger at Birdie, “wherever you find luck, you find bad luck.” Birdie just stared at the old man.

They were standing outside the shack. After the first few moments of shock, Eric had lowered his gun. The old man was bent and mostly bald, except for a few spider silk strands of gray hair. Perhaps to make up for this, he had grown a long silver beard that was discolored yellow around his mouth. His face was round and drooped with age, but his eyes glinted and shined. His nose was slightly crooked and had several large bristles of hair poking from it.

He introduced himself as Remember, and when they looked at him incredulously, he laughed, a deep, carefree rumble, and assured them the name had a long and illustrious history in Vermont. “I’m practically tradition,” he said. “But I’m not, Tradition’s my sister!” He laughed at what seemed a very old joke. He ended his laughter with a loud cough and then spit loudly on the ground.

Remember told them his history, which, like all personal histories now, it seemed, began with the outbreak. About the time they stared fire bombing Houston, he had a feeling it was all going to get worse. (“Just a feeling”, he said, “a prem-O-nition.”) He remembered his father taking him to this old shack when he was young to watch the syrup being stirred in great aluminum tables. He decided to stay there until the epidemic stopped. Of course it never did. Now, he only went back to towns to get supplies. “It ain’t bad,” he told them. “I’ve always lived alone anyhow.”

Now, as a show of faith, they handed him a can of creamed corn and he eyed it with hungry eyes. “I can make a chowder with this,” he said hungrily. He looked up at them with flashing, greedy eyes. “I got Buster and Lady Boomer to help me out with milk.” He pushed a thumb over his shoulder and they saw the two goats. The goats were fenced in with chicken wire stapled to trees. Both goats looked at the new group with staring indifference. “Now,” said Remember, “I got something to show you all.” He winked at them and waved them toward the shack. He walked back and turned toward them. “Come on,” he said, waving encouragingly. “You’re going to like this.” He vanished inside the house.

“I’m getting my own prem-O-nition about this guy,” Sergio said. “You ever hear those stories about kids being lured into an old shack?”

“He’s okay,” Eric said. For some reason, he was thinking about Charlie. It seemed years ago. Like a flash of pure, perfect memory, he saw Charlie again, gurgling out his last breath. He shook it off with difficulty.

Lucia agreed with him, so, after a fearful sigh from Sergio, they walked inside.

And immediately saw Remember’s secret.

^_

“This one here is all about these kids, right?” Remember held up a VHS tape to Birdie. “They’re going to lose their homes unless they find a pirate’s treasure.”

“Pirate treasure?” Birdie looked at the cover of the movie with awe. Remember cackled and let Birdie hold the movie.

They stood inside the shack, crowded, shoulder to shoulder. Inside the shack was a leather sofa with several blankets piled on top of it. The sofa faced a very large television. Eric had never seen such a large television before in his life. On one side of the wall was a small hot plate, surrounded by dishes, and underneath a small shelf, what looked like a few cans of food and some sacks of flour or rice.

The remainder of the shack was taken up by Remember’s secret. From the ceiling to the floor, all around three walls of the house, opening up only for a couple narrow windows, were stacked hundreds and hundreds of VHS tapes. Horror, action, comedies, documentaries, all stacked one on the other. On the floor in front of the television, amidst a web of wire, was a VHS player, still as a patient spider.

“Look here,” Remember said, flourishing his arms. “I got damn near every movie there ever was!” He laughed, proud of his collection. “I been to every video store I could find in Vermont, searching for new movies. I reckon this is about all there is.” When he looked at them, his eyes twinkled with passion. “All night, all I do is watch movies. That’s all!” He crossed his arms and stood up straight and proud. “Hell, turned out the end of the world weren’t too bad for me. I got everything I need. Fine comfortable place to sleep, big ole TV, and more movies than I can remember!” He laughed at his own pun. “I tell you what,” Remember said. “If you folk help me dig a new pit for my generator, you’re welcome to watch any movie you want! Any which one as pleases you!”

“This one!” Birdie exclaimed, holding up the movie Remember had given her. “Can we, Eric? Please?”

They looked at each other and then Eric turned to Remember. “All right,” he said, holding out his hand. “You have a deal.”

^_

Remember was not like Charlie. Eric wondered if the old man had gone a little crazy. Sometimes, when they paused in the digging of the pit, Remember would turn to the two goats and say something, just as if they were having a conversation. “I ain’t going to make that mistake this time,” he told them once. “Don’t you worry none. I’m digging this pit with a drain.” The goats looked at him with empty curiosity.

Eric and Sergio worked with rusty spades while Lucia hauled away buckets of dirt. Birdie and Remember stood to one side and watched, Remember giving directions. The pit they dug had a small, cone-shaped bottom. Remember lined it with a hard plastic made from sleds. The bottom of the cone was drained with PVC pipe that Remember had already installed. The pipe ran downhill and emptied in a large, blue plastic container. Over the cone, they put a steel grate and then a steel mesh over that. On this, Remember poured gravel. Finally, over the gravel was placed a wooden palette. The four of them slowly lowered the generator down into the pit, using ropes and a triangular wooden frame over the pit. They set it steadily in it’s new home. When they were done and the wire was strung up out of the ground to the house, Remember cackled happily, and cranked the generator to a puttering, chuffing start. As a last step, he stuck a pipe from the engine up through the pit, to allow for exhaust and fresh air, and then, over everything he laid down a sheet of heavy plywood. Even though the generator chugged right beneath them, they could hardly hear the sound. Eric thought the old man had a mind for practicality. He would need to think like him when they arrived at the island.

Remember smiled and clapped their backs and told them how much work they had saved him. “That’ll keep them sons a bitches away,” he said to the goats, who did not answer. Eric didn’t know who he meant, but he didn’t need to. The Minutemen? Some other gang? Did it matter? For another, painful moment, he could see Charlie again, sitting by his fire with a book on his lap. He smelled Charlie, a woody, spicy smell, and his heart lurched.

They stood over the covered pit, sweating and breathing hard. Remember looked at them. “I got to thank you folks,” he said. “I would’ve broke my back doing this myself. Nearly killed myself moving that TV up here. I couldn’t hardly move. Near starved to death. Back ain’t been right since either.”

“You’re welcome,” said Lucia. “Glad to help. I have to say, we’re looking forward to some chowder and a movie.”

Remember smiled. “Well, it’s the least I can do,” he said. “I’m just plain lucky you guys come along. Plain lucky.”

^_

The tang of goat’s milk in the chowder seemed sweet to them. Remember had also made a batch of soft biscuits, which came steaming from an oven that Eric had missed before. Now they dunked the fresh biscuits in the chowder. As they ate, Eric blinked off memories of Sarah and the soup she had made for them. In his mind, her bones still smoked on the mountain. He shuffled in his seat uncomfortably.

They had fresh blueberry jam over hot biscuits for dessert. While they ate, Remember showed Birdie how to put the movie in the VHS player. The machine clicked and whirred when Birdie pushed the play button. When the television screen flickered, rolled, and then came to life, Birdie let out a cry of pleasure. Eric thought of Brad, how he had loved movies, how he would loved this, but he too was gone, his body burnt to ashes on the shore of Mosquito Creek Lake. Eric swallowed. The golden light from the television flickered over them.

Eric had seen the movie before. Glenn had gone to the movies with him to see it. It was the first time they met after school and Eric had been nervous. At the time, he had no friends. Everyone avoided Daffy Fuck as if obesity was a plague. Glenn was a tall, rigid boy with a great, wide mouth. His brown hair was festooned with cow licks. Whenever he spoke, his teeth seemed to strain against the several pounds of braces that bound them. He spoke rarely and when he did, he usually followed what he said with a barking laugh. They called him Chewbacca because of how often he impersonated the character, bending his neck back and letting out a cry with uncanny precision. Glenn thought the name was a compliment. It wasn’t. He was avoided also, but he hardly noticed. The outside world didn’t seem to quite penetrate Glenn’s world. He was always smiling, always ready with a joke. Eric never saw him ashamed or humiliated. He was so nervous before the meeting at the movies, he couldn’t eat the whole day before. His stomach was knotted painfully, and the night before, he had prayed that he would not do or say anything to make Glenn dislike him. His mother had seen this and held him close. “You worry too much,” she said. “Anyone that gets to know you will see what a great person you are, Eric.” She kissed him. “You’ll see.”

Now, as Birdie and Lucia and Sergio laughed, Eric remembered Glenn’s booming laughter in the theater, how it had scared him at first, but then, little by little, he had joined in, and it was as simple as that. Glenn was his first friend. Now, Glenn was. Now Glenn was. What was Glenn? What had happened to him? It was worse somehow, not knowing, worse than the memory of Jessica, shot in the street.

Maybe he was alive. Maybe, like him, he had hid away from the Vaca B. Why hadn’t he searched for him? Why hadn’t he gone to his house? Fear. Cowardice.

When the movie finally ended, Eric was relieved. The others were laughing and smiling, and Remember looked as proud as if he himself had made the movie. Birdie was the most excited. She sat facing them, telling them what she had seen as if they had not been watching it too.

“And he had springs in his jacket!” Birdie recounted with a bright laugh. “It was so funny!” She talked excitedly at them all, but especially Eric. “That was the best movie!” she exclaimed, shaking her head. “The best one ever!”

Eric nodded his head, smiling, but felt no pleasure.

Finally, when they all settled on the floor with their sleeping bags and Remember had shut down the generator, when there was only the quiet sounds of sleep around him, Eric searched in his backpack. He found the book he had taken from Charlie’s house. The pages were warped and stained from the hike, and the book was bent and discolored. Eric flipped past the introduction to the first chapter.

“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life,” Eric read, “or whether that station will be held by anyone else, these pages must show.”

He had read this sentence a hundred times, but little else. He had a hard time getting past this thought.

^_

Eric woke suddenly to the sound of birds at the window. He had seen them in his dreams, multi-colored birds, flapping at the window, beating their wings against the glass to get inside. His mouth seemed full of feathers. Then he focused and blinked and sat up in the darkness of the shack, and realized it was only a dream. There were no birds at the window. But the sound of their wings remained.

Eric looked about him in the gloaming light of the first dawn, and saw, faintly, a crouching figure in the darkness. He knew it was not any of them, he had been with Lucia and Sergio and Birdie so long, he would recognize their figures anywhere. It was a malignant, crooked figure, like some troll. Eric’s heart shrieked when he realized it was going through their backpacks with the quiet agility of a thief.

“Hey!” Eric cried, springing to his feet. His voice pierced the silence like a knife. “Get away from that!”

The figure leapt away guiltily. Eric stepped forward, his heart filled with rage. “Get away from there!” he shouted.

The others had woken now, and someone flicked on an electric light. The darkness ripped apart. The figure stood revealed in front of Eric. It was Remember, and he looked terrified.

“What’re you doing?” shouted Eric. “What’re you doing in our bags?”

“Calm down,” the old man said, trying to smile. “I was looking for some aspirin is all,” he said. “My teeth hurt something awful.”

“What’re you doing in our stuff?” Eric cried again, as if the old man hadn’t said anything.

“I told you,” Remember said. “Just calm down, son, I didn’t want to wake none of you.”

“You’re a thief!” Eric yelled.

“Eric,” Lucia said. She stepped to his side and put a hand on his arm, but Eric slapped it away without looking at her. His eyes flashed at Remember.

“You’re a thief,” he hissed. “You’re a goddamn thief!” Remember swallowed and looked at Lucia and Sergio as if for help. This enraged Eric more. “You think we’re stupid? You think we’re going to come in here and let you steal everything we have?” Eric moved toward him and Remember stepped back, stumbling over a pile of VHS tapes. The sight made Birdie begin to cry. “What would you have done if you found something you wanted?” Eric stepped toward him again. “Then what, huh? Knife us in our sleep?”

“I swear,” Remember said, holding up his hands. “I swear to you, I just wanted some aspirin.” He smiled a broken smile at them. “It’s my teeth,” he explained. “They give me all sorts of pain.”

“Is that right?” Eric asked, his voice a hiss. “Why not ask us before you went to bed?”

“Didn’t hurt then,” Remember said weakly.

“Eric, calm down,” Lucia said, but she didn’t approach him this time. “Just calm down.”

Eric ignored her, his whole body trembling with fury. “You think we need this shit?” he cried. “You think you can lure us in here with your goddamn television and movies and steal from us?”

Remember shook his head. His shining eyes were wide.

Eric stalked to the kitchen and picked up a huge, iron pan. “You think we’re going to be fooled?” he cried.

“Stop it, Eric!” Lucia yelled.

Eric hurled the pan into the TV. There was a burst of bright light and a horrible sucking sound. Then the room was sprayed with foul smelling glass. The television was a smoking ruin, a dark mouth filled with shards of teeth.

Remember howled with pain. He stumbled to the television and then rested his forehead on it like it was a dead thing. “What’d you do that for?” he moaned. “Look at what you done!” He began weeping miserably. “Why’d you do that? Why’d you take that from me? It’s all I got! Why’d you do that?” Remember sobbed then, holding his arms around his head.

While the old man cried, the others wordlessly gathered up their belongings.

“Why’d you do that?” Remember asked again, turning his blue eyes toward them. “I nearly broke myself getting this here. I’ll never have another like it. Why’d you do that to an old man?”

Eric turned and stalked out the door. Birdie followed, still crying. She kept crying as they walked away into the forest, her breath coming in painful, deep gasps. Later she picked up Remember’s terrible refrain. “Why’d you do that?” she asked. She continued asking for a long time, but Eric said nothing.

16

^__________

^{White Mountain National Forest}

Vermont was beautiful. It seemed there were more birds now, fluttering everywhere, singing loudly at dawn. Birds that Eric had never seen before and birds he knew by name like cardinals and chickadees and buzzing Ruby-throated hummingbirds. Forced by steep hills to follow rivers and roads, they found themselves on old farm lands. The grass grew high without cows to graze them. Evidently cows could not survive without humans. Goats could, however, and pigs. Sometimes they would see a great bristling pig appear at the edge of the woods and eye them with ambivalent malice. Pigs were mostly solitary, but the goats moved in herds. But there were not many of them, and they looked harried and stressed and not long for the world. The howling dogs at night and the yips of coyotes boded nothing but extinction to what remained of human husbandry. Only the pigs would remain, turned back to boars, with great bristles and tusks, reclaiming their dignity as if their slavery had never happened.

^_

Birdie was not speaking to him. At night, she slept close as usual, but when she looked at him, her eyes were conflicted. It broke Eric’s heart. He wanted to explain to her that trust had died long ago inside him. He wanted to say that Remember wasn’t what he seemed to be, that he was just as much an illusion as the movies he watched. But he was not sure of this. Many times he had wondered if Remember had actually been looking for aspirin. He wanted to explain all this to Birdie, but how could you explain to a child that sometimes you had to do bad things because there was nothing certain in life. No trust. No faith. No ability to be sure of anyone or anything. Why would you say that to a child? It was better that she be angry with him than to hear such terrible cynicism.

Lucia too was silent with him. The siblings switched to Spanish, as they always did when the group suffered stress. Eric saw that now. He seemed to see much more than he ever had. Things were clear to him, clear as Birdie’s soft and solid hand in his. That was real. That was certain.

They had moved through the town of North Tunbridge and had camped in within sight of route 91, when, after they had set up camp and eaten, and Birdie had drifted into sleep, Lucia approached him. The wild, womanish scream of foxes were sounding around them.

“Are you okay, Eric?” she asked.

“I am, yes,” he said. She frowned, as if this was not the answer she wanted to hear. She would prefer it, Eric realized, if he was tortured by what he had done.

“Why did you do that to Remember?” she asked.

“I did it because he might’ve been stealing from us,” he said.

“You can’t treat people like that. It was cruel.”

“It was,” Eric agreed. “And I would do it again.”

“Eric,” Lucia sighed, disappointed.

“What I did was only cruel if he wasn’t stealing from us,” Eric said. “What if he was? What if that’s his thing? He lures people up to his cabin and steals from them. Maybe he kills them too, who knows?” Eric shrugged. “He shouldn’t have been in our bags. He broke the trust, not me. If he would do that, what else would he do?”

Lucia shrugged, but Eric could see she was unconvinced.

“I don’t take chances. Not anymore.” Eric looked away, into the darkness that hovered over the fields.

“Okay,” Lucia said, but her voice was strained with irritation, sadness, even anger.

They sat together anyway, watching the clouds pass over the moon and listening to the screaming of foxes.

^_

The next day they came to the Connecticut River and began following it north. It was too dangerous to swim. They would have to find a bridge. The weather was beautiful and warm and the landscape was green, cut through by the flashing, dark river. At around noon, Sergio asked to stop. He took out his fishing gear and walked down to the river.

Eric and Birdie sat by the river and watched him fish. He had become a good fisherman. Perhaps he was a natural, a gift he would never have found if the world had not ended. He stood at the bank and flicked his wrist, sending the line over the water. Then he waded into the water, holding the line in one hand, watching as his line pulled down the river.

“Do you want to draw, Birdie?” Eric asked.

“I don’t have any crayons left,” she answered. She put her chin on her knees stoically.

“Why didn’t you say something?”

Birdie shrugged heavily. Eric put his hand on her head.

“I’ll get you more, okay?”

Birdie nodded her head, but she wouldn’t look at him.

For lunch, Lucia and Eric cooked the fish Sergio caught. As they ate, Eric watched Sergio. He sat back at ease, watching the river. Eric had never seen him as relaxed. He was becoming who he was meant to be.

^_

Lucia tried to talk Eric out of it. She said that it was dangerous and foolish to risk cracked Zombies for crayons. But Eric would not be dissuaded. He couldn’t explain to Birdie why he had treated Remember the way he did, but he could find crayons.

The house they found was up on a bank overlooking the river. It was a two-story Victorian with peeling blue paint and white trim. It had a vast wooden deck and a barbecue rusting upon it. Eric imagined a large family had once gathered there to eat hamburgers and watch the river. A large family with children, grandchildren. Crayons. Now, like all houses, it carried with it a lugubrious silence, like grief solidified. Despite their pleas, Eric insisted that Sergio and Lucia stay with Birdie while he went inside. Eric wouldn’t risk anyone but himself. Birdie was strangely quiet, as if she understood that Eric did this for her, to make up for Remember, as if this was justice and Eric deserved it.

Leaving them at the forest line by the river, Eric pulled on his empty backpack, pulled out his .22, and walked into the open. Beneath his feet, his steps resounded hollowly on the wooden deck. He had a feeling then of utter foolishness, that he was risking his life for nothing. It was the reason Brad had died, in his obsessive need of a gun. Eric would die for crayons.

But he didn’t stop. He didn’t turn around. It was dumb, he knew it, but he owed Birdie something. His heart beat inside a great feeling of foreboding. As he neared the house, the feeling of doom increased. When he touched the sliding glass door to the house, he thought to himself, this is it. There is something here. There is something here and I am going to die.

He pulled the sliding door open.

Inside was a quiet plush carpet, the color of robin eggs. Eric stepped inside, listening for any sound of a Zombie, scratching a wall or shuffling in their mindless way. There was nothing, only the carpet beneath his feet. There was a couch at one end of the room and a television on the other. In the middle was a glass coffee table. Everything was covered with dust. Eric stepped forward, his gun ready. Through the living room was the kitchen, where he would find food. Maybe. He stepped quickly across the room and then winced as his hiking boots clomped on the linoleum.

Then, turning, he saw him: a man with a gun. Eric froze, staring at the man, who likewise didn’t move but kept his gun trained on him. His dark hair was knotted and long. He had a lean dirty face and cold eyes. The man was ruthless, he could tell. Tough, relentless. He was like a haggard, starving dog, vicious and merciless. He could see it in his coldly burning eyes, measuring him, searching for weakness. Cruel, unsympathetic eyes. His clothes hung off him in tatters. He still had the gun pointed at him, and his hands did not shake. He was a killer, he could see it plainly, a man who had done things and would do more. It was in his eyes. Oh god, Eric thought, he’s going to kill me. Eric had to make a decision. When he pulled the trigger, the blast roared in his ears. The man shattered to pieces and fell to the floor. Where he had stood, there was only shards of glass.

Eric stood in shock and then felt ill. His mind buzzed as he slowly understood. He fell to his knees, sick. When the rest of them burst into the room, they saw Eric kneeling on the floor amidst broken glass.

“What happened?” Lucia asked, her face pale.

“It was a mirror,” he said to them blankly.

“But who did you shoot?” Sergio asked.

“Myself.”

^_

The house was empty of Zombies. While the rest of them looted all they could find, Eric stepped quietly into the bathroom, locked the door behind him, and looked at himself in the mirror. Again, he felt as if a stranger were looking at him. Eric had lost all his extra weight. His arms were strong and his face, lean and hawkish. He moved his face first one way and then the other, searching for something to recognize. But his cheekbones were strong and tall, his chin came to a rounded point, like a hammer, and there was even a darkish growth on his face, uneven. It was difficult to see the Eric in his own image.

He was filthy. He reminded himself of a stray dog, dangerous and starving, like the ones he had seen devouring the putrid remains of Zombies. Eric searched and found a razor and a bar of soap. In a bedroom, he found a new pair of clean jeans and underwear and a long-sleeved but light shirt that advertised the Tunbridge World’s Fair. Since 1867, it said.

With a pair of scissors he found in a drawer, Eric sheared his long hair. Then he shaved his face, painfully, in the mirror. When he was done, he walked down to the river with soap and shampoo and scrubbed himself, the soapy water running dark and gray from his body. He scrubbed until his skin was raw and sore.

The others didn’t bother him during the process, although Lucia came to him after he was done with a pair of scissors. Wordlessly, Eric allowed her to trim his hair, fix the garish cuts he had made. Her lithe fingers were tender as they worked. After she finished, Eric said thank you and gave her an abashed smile. She smiled back, a look of pity on her face, Eric thought.

Later that night, after they had eaten fresh fish caught by Sergio with a side of beans and rice, Eric sat down next to Birdie who was breaking in a new box of crayons.

“I’m sorry, Birdie,” he said.

“I know,” she said, without looking at him.

“I’ll be more careful,” he said.

“Okay.”

Eric sat down and looked at the campfire. The reflection of the flames in the river stretched across the water in long, red lines. Eric stared at it for a long time.

^_

The next day they came to Samuel Morey Bridge.

It was a simple steel frame bridge, an arc of green across the river.

There were guards on their side of the bridge, a man and a woman, each holding dark assault rifles.

From a distance, they took turns watching the guards with the binoculars. The guards paced back and forth, sometimes sitting on the hood of a red truck, sometimes talking, sometimes pointing their guns playfully over the river.

“We’ll have to find another way across the river,” Lucia said. Sergio said something in Spanish, but Lucia shook her head. “We have to get across.”

They were in the midst of making plans when the Land Rover sped up to the bridge.

^_

Doyle came to a screeching halt. The two guards had their assault rifles pointed at him. They were shouting for him to stop and get out of the truck. Carl Doyle, looking immense, even from this distance, pulled himself out of the Land Rover.

The shooting began almost immediately.

The first guard died instantly. Doyle shot him in the face. The other guard, the woman, cried out in pain, shot in the stomach. She lurched over and fell face down. Doyle walked over and shot her in the back of the head. Twice.

When he got back in the Land Rover and drove over the bridge, he ran over both bodies, mangling them, and leaving long, red tire tracks on the bridge.

^_

“How did he survive?” Sergio cried. “How does he keep surviving? Why doesn’t he die and leave us alone?”

“I don’t know,” Eric said.

“It’s because he’s crazy,” Lucia said. They looked at her. “That’s what they say. God protects crazy people and drunks.”

They were silent, walking north along the river. After the gunfight, the bridge was clear, but Eric insisted they avoid it. “They were guards for someone,” he explained. “If we’re found anywhere near that massacre, they’ll blame us for it. We need to get away from this bridge.” They had been walking for a while now, and were tired and upset. It was horrible to think of Doyle still out there, still following them.

They came then to a bend in the river. There was a tiny shack there, and, as Eric had hoped, it was a boathouse. Creeping inside quietly, they found several aluminum canoes. They put them in the water, and, after careful testing, they climbed inside two: Eric and Birdie in one, Sergio and Lucia in another.

Side by side, they paddled the canoes into the river.

It was late afternoon. The sun was hot and orange on the horizon. The air over the water was cool, and, as they paddled to the other side, Eric saw a kingfisher skimming over the water, hunting. In the midst of the river, there was a feeling of safety mixed with the danger of exposure. It was easy to spot canoes on the river. But they continued north all the same, and did not land until it was getting too dark to see. They landed at a park where a bridge had once been. Only the stone piers were left. They climbed up the bank, dragging the canoes behind them. The four of them stood watching the river.

“I’ve never been in a canoe before,” Sergio said. He smiled. “It was cool.”

For some reason, that made Eric laugh. Lucia soon joined him, and Sergio himself a second later. Only Birdie didn’t laugh.

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” she said. “It was cool.”

That really made them laugh.

^_

After consulting Eric’s tattered map, they decided it was time to stop moving north. Now they turned east, with the goal of the White Mountain National Forest in mind. Thinking of the dead guards, they hit route 25, also called the Moosilauke Highway, and stayed well away from it. But it was difficult. The terrain had swelled around them and soon mountains rose up steep where hills had been. Not great blue and white monsters like they saw on the horizon, but big, green furry ones, with rocks bursting from them like earthy muscles.

Near Benton State Forest, Sergio, with his binoculars, called down from the tree he had climbed, “It’s Doyle! He’s behind us!” He pointed toward the highway and Eric strained his eyes. He saw a glint of sunshine light like fire from Doyle’s windshield, and then the unmistakable square shape of the Rover coming toward them.

“Damn it,” Eric swore as the four of them huddled together. Eric looked at them, these three faces that were so important to him now. Lucia’s sharp, beautiful face; Sergio’s round face with his anxious eyes; Birdie’s calm, mysterious face. For an instant, he was filled with love for them all, a hot feeling that he could feel blush his face. He swallowed it down and cleared his throat.

“What’re we going to do about this guy?” asked Sergio. Eric could see on his face that he wanted to set up an ambush, and rid themselves of Carl Doyle forever. A part of him felt that way too. It felt like something that had to be done, that he would have to do eventually. But he also remembered John Martin word’s: “I’m not going to shoot anyone unless I have to.”

“We’re going to keep away from him,” Lucia said. “That’s what we’re going to do.” She shot her brother an angry look, and Eric knew they had talked about this before, that Sergio was trying to pull him on to his side.

“We can’t outrun a guy in a truck!” Sergio exclaimed.

“We’re not trying to outrun him,” Eric said to him. “We’re trying to avoid him.” He stood up and motioned behind them. “We go over the mountain. He can’t follow us there.”

^_

There were no real trails where they hiked now. They struggled up steep hillsides, rocks and leaves slipping under their feet. At times, they had to circle, looking for a way around a rock outcropping. At other times, they scrambled up as best they could. When they reached the summit, the green carpet of forest beneath them, they collapsed, breathing hard as the sun set, red and orange in the west.

Eric and Birdie built a fire in a pit, under a tree, to keep the light from Doyle’s eyes. After a scant meal of rice, the four of them sat, fatigued and sore, around the crackling fire.

“We can’t keep running from this guy,” said Sergio. “He knows where we’re going. We’re going to have to face him sometime.”

“He’s sick,” said Lucia. “He’s got the Vaca B. He can’t survive forever. Every time we see him, he’s worse than he was.” It was an argument they had before. They were having it again, this time for Eric’s benefit.

“He might not die,” argued Sergio. “You heard what Prince Billy said. Some of them survive. He’s dangerous! Look at what he did to those guards! He killed them just to get across a bridge. We should set a trap and kill him.”

“Why are you so sure we can do that?” asked Eric. “Doyle seems to survive everything. He’s fought Zombie bears, for crying out loud. What makes you think he’s afraid of a couple of pistols?”

“We could get something stronger. A shotgun,” Sergio suggested.

Eric shook his head. “He’s too dangerous for us to handle. If he can fight off the Minutemen, what chance do we have?” Eric poked at the fire. Sparks burst up from the fire. “Besides,” he added after a pause. “He’s trying to help us.”

“Help us?” Sergio asked incredulously. “Help us? You’ve got to be kidding me! Have you forgotten John Martin already?”

“No,” Eric said quickly. He blushed. “Of course not.”

“How can you say that bastard is helping us?” Sergio was red with anger.

“If it wasn’t for Doyle, we’d either be dead or in some jail in Boston by now,” Eric reminded him. “You’re right, he’s dangerous, he’s a murderer, but we need to avoid him, not kill him. John Martin wouldn’t murder him either, remember?”

“It’s not murder,” Sergio spat.

“It is.”

“It is,” Lucia agreed.

Sergio kicked a stump and crossed his arms in irritation. They said nothing for a long while. They watched the water boil and listened to the fire. Eric turned his attention to the stars. There were no clouds and the sky was awash with starlight. Eric could only pick out one constellation for certain. The Big Dipper. He was somewhat sure he could find the North Star too, but not sure enough to guide them if he had to.

“We need to learn some astronomy,” said Lucia suddenly.

“I was just thinking the same thing,” Eric said, keeping his head up.

“You two,” Sergio said venomously. “The stars aren’t our problem now. Our problem is down here, but you just keep looking up. Look away.” He hissed and stood up, striding away, kicking up dirt into the fire.

Eric turned back to the stars. Birdie, who had been sleeping next to him, suddenly sat up, and then lay back down, this time with her head in his lap.

“He’s just scared,” Lucia said, apologizing for her brother.

“I know,” Eric said.

They were too tired to say anything more, but they watched the stars silently for a long while.

^_

In the morning, as they hiked down the mountain, Lucia told Eric about a dream she had the night before.

She was flying over a lake. It was night and the dark water reflected the sky. Stars shivered from the disturbance of her passage over the water. She came to an island of tall pine trees, so tall they seemed to pin their tops to the sky. She circled the island again and again, feeling the wind through her hair and smelling the pine trees. Then she saw Birdie and Sergio down at the shore of the island, waving at her. Eric wasn’t there. She flew through the trees and searched the entire island, but he wasn’t there. He never made it.

When she finished telling him, she gazed at him with deep, serious eyes. “Please be careful, Eric. I don’t want to lose you.” She put her hand on his arm.

Eric smiled awkwardly. “I’ll be careful,” he said.

But all that morning, he thought of it. The island without him. It seemed right to him, somehow. He would be their guide, but he would not reach it with them. The feeling was strong and painful inside him. The island was for a new beginning, and he was old, with most of his life still back before the Vaca B, a world of movies and junk food and schools crowded with clean, well-dressed children and expansive malls.

Maybe the island was not for him. Maybe the things he would have to do to get there would make him unsuitable for it. Maybe it was reserved for new fresh beginnings with pure hearts, for people like Birdie and Lucia. Not him. He would be forced to do things.

He would have to kill Carl Doyle before the end.

^_

Across the Pemigewasset River was a town full of block-shaped clapboard houses. Each house had a large, overgrown lawn. Sergio scanned the town and the bridge leading to it with the binoculars, but he saw nothing. No Zombies, no gangs, nothing. But the empty town made Eric nervous. He drew out his .22 and checked to see if it was loaded. A second later he checked again.

They had little choice but take the bridge.  Swimming across was too dangerous, especially because the water could be infected with the Vaca B. All it took was a single gulp of water to kill them. They had survived that danger once, but it was no guarantee they would survive again.

As they moved down toward the bridge, Eric up front with Lucia, and Sergio and Birdie hanging back, Eric felt the same sense of doom he had earlier. He felt that all the time now. Walking across the bridge, Eric’s heart thumped in his chest, but all he heard was the wind over the river. The bridge was a simple, short overpass, but it seemed to take forever to pass over the bridge. Eric felt he could see them moving over the bridge from some great height. Four specks in a haunted world. From that height, it seemed ridiculous and dangerous to be so exposed. For a moment, his heart pattered in him dangerously fast. His face flushed. He had the urge to run, but he didn’t. Somehow he kept himself together until they reached the other side. His heart calmed from its furious pace.

While he stood there, with some portion of relief, he watched as a cat with bright yellow fur walked lazily to the middle of the road and sit down. The cat watched them with false indifference, licking its paws. When they approached, the cat rolled over on its back and Birdie stroked it, laughing. When Sergio approached, the cat rolled to its feet and dashed away.

“Oh,” whined Birdie. “Why’d you scare it, Sergio?”

“I didn’t do nothing,” said Sergio.

They all watched the cat vanish under a house. Birdie looked at Sergio angrily.

Sergio shrugged. “I didn’t do nothing,” he repeated.

“Well I wish you hadn’t done nothing,” said Birdie angrily. “Nothing scared it.”

^_

While they were in the town, they agreed to search it. They always needed food. Eric and Birdie went to one side of the street, Lucia and Sergio to the other. The town had no Zombies in it, they were fairly sure. At least they had seen none, and Eric doubted any cracked ones would have been able to resist the lovely blue waters running just west of the town. They were careful all the same, moving through the houses quietly and checking all the doors and closets before they rummaged through the kitchen and basement.

In the first house, as Birdie crawled inside the bottom cupboards to look for cans of food lost in the shadows, Eric stared at the refrigerator. It was covered with photographs. There were children dancing in absurd costumes. There were old people sitting on deck chairs. There was a picture of a boat and several people waiting to board it, lit by yellow Tiki lights stuck in the sand of a beach. There was a postcard from Las Vegas and another from Los Angeles. Stuck to the fridge by a round green magnet was an American History quiz about the Civil War with a 98 written and circled with red ink. The answer to the first question, written carefully, was FORT SUMTER. Eric reached out to touch a picture when he heard an engine.

Grabbing Birdie by the legs, he pulled her out of the cupboard.

“Don’t Eric!” she cried.

But then she heard it too, the sound of screeching tires and then a door slamming. Eric ran to the window facing the street, dragging Birdie behind him.

It was Carl Doyle. He had a rifle pointed at Lucia and Sergio, who had their arms up, cans of food rolling around their feet.

“Where is my boy!” boomed Doyle. “What did you traitors do to him?”

Carl Doyle tensed his rifle to his shoulder, and, before he had time to think, Eric flew out the door, waving his arms, and shouting, “Doyle, I’m right here! Don’t shoot!”

Doyle turned to him and then let his rifle drop. “Eric, my boy! I knew you’d make it, by God!”

^_

Doyle’s eyes were almost black now, dripping with thick, mud-like tears. His head was nearly bald and dark with dried blood, except for disturbing patches, shining like pearl, where his skin had been itched away to the skull. His clothes were ripped and covered with gore and filth. His leg was now bound in a wooden splint. The slats of wood were tied together with oily rope. It made him walk in a rolling movement with his leg out to one side. Still, he moved surprisingly fast toward Eric. For a second, he thought Doyle was going to catch him up in an embrace. His heart pattered in him like a mouse scampering to hide from a cat. But Doyle stopped a few feet from him and grinned. His teeth were dark as molasses.

“There you are, my boy, there you are,” he said, his fake accent even thicker than usual, as if it were a symptom of the Vaca B. He cradled his assault rifle in his arms. “I knew you’d make it through the jungle.” He looked around, blinking away a dark tear from his eye. Eric watched it roll down his face like snot. “Look at this place,” Doyle mumbled. “Nothing but darkies and savages and traitors. No civilization, no order. Nothing.” He looked back up at Eric. “But it’s a gift,” he said to him seriously. “It’s our chance to start again, to do it right. We can build something pure and good, something orderly. A blinding whiteness, my boy,” Carl Doyle said. “Like dawn. A new. A new. New…” Carl Doyle bit his upper lip and then smacked his lips. His tongue was swollen and the purple color of a deep bruise. “My boy,” he said confidentially. “Can you spare me some water?”

Eric nodded, his mouth dry. He pulled out his canteen and handed it to Doyle. After leaning his gun against his leg, Doyle upturned it and swallowed noisily. The water swirled and sucked and gurgled down his throat. When Doyle handed it back, his lips had left dark blood on the mouth of the canteen. The sight of it made Eric’s stomach turn.

“Water!” Doyle said. “That is an apt metaphor for what we need. Water, Eric. Pure, clean, necessary.” His small eyes glittered dangerously as they slid toward Lucia and Sergio. His accent dropped suddenly when he growled, “We don’t need any fucking mud in the waters.” When he turned back to Eric, the glittering anger was finished. His smile returned. Eric saw Sergio’s hand drift down toward his gun. It was supposed to be cunning, but it looked clumsy and obvious. Eric felt like choking, but instead, he locked eyes with Sergio and shook his head almost imperceptibly. Sergio scowled, but his hand stopped.

“Come now, my boy,” said Doyle. He clapped Eric on the shoulder with such unthinking violence, Eric stumbled to the side and almost fell. Doyle didn’t seem to notice. “Let’s go,” he said.

“Go where?” asked Eric, his face going pale with fear.

“Why, the island, old chap.” Doyle smiled. “It’s close! We shall be there before sundown!”

Eric looked at Lucia and Sergio. He turned his head on his shoulder and saw Birdie standing on the porch of the house, one hand grasping the railing.

“What’re you looking at?” asked Carl Doyle, his accent crumbling. “We don’t need these savages,” he said. Doyle’s body grew tense. Eric watched as he adjusted his rifle and put his finger to the trigger. His heart thundered in him so forcefully, it was hard to hear. His arm was moving. His hand was reaching for his gun. He wouldn’t leave Birdie. Over Doyle’s shoulder, Eric saw Sergio reaching for his gun. It was happening. It was really happening.

Then the gunshots crashed through the air, and Eric wondered who had shot. Was he shot? Eric looked around, confused. Only Doyle seemed to move, loping toward the Land Rover. There were more shots. Eric blinked. Nothing made sense. He felt his heart, but everything else in him was still. He might have been a Zombie himself, he felt so utterly devoid of control over his body. He felt his hand clasp the cold grip of his .22. Then the gun, in his hand, swung around his body. All he could see was Doyle’s retreating back.

There was more gunfire, but not from him or Doyle. Eric felt confusion seep into his body as the .22 came up level to Doyle’s back. But his finger froze. Then Doyle was in the Rover and it leapt away. Eric’s arm with the gun fell.

It was then he noticed the other trucks, and the men and women pouring out of them, firing toward the Land Rover. Others pointed their weapons at him. They were yelling something and Eric took a moment to hear them.

“Put the gun down! We will shoot you! Put the gun down!”

Finally the roar in his head vanished. Eric dropped the gun and put his hands in the air.

It was only then that he noticed that Sergio had fallen, and Lucia was over him, screaming.

17

^__________

^{Crawford Notch}

Sergio slumped between Lucia and Eric, bleeding over the seat. Lucia sobbed, her hands pressed on the gunshot wound. The blood oozed around her fingers. One man kept a gun on them during the drive.

“Please help!” Eric cried. “He’s bleeding to death!”

“Good,” the man said.

Sergio was dead before they arrived, his pale face pressed limply against his sister’s chest.

Lucia let out a wail.

Birdie pressed her hands on her ears, her eyes squeezed shut.

^_

When the trucks stopped, they were tugged out of their seats. The men had to pull Lucia out of the truck by her hair, screaming and kicking. When they dragged out Sergio, they let his body collapse limply on the lawn. A woman leaned forward and spat on him. Lucia let out a howl and sprang toward her, but a man, laughing, gripped her in his arms while another began to tie her legs and arms. Eric stood motionless.

They were on the lawn of a church, a great, steepled clapboard structure. Over the double doors was written in red, GRANITES. Lucia screamed and wailed until they finally gagged her. When they were done tying up Lucia, they turned to Eric who held out his hands numbly.

Eric couldn’t keep his eyes from Sergio. His body was face up, his face pale, his eyes open to the sky. He looked surprised. The sight of him made Eric’s head go fuzzy, as if he was on the verge of fainting.

When they were trussed up tightly, they were dragged into the church.

“Keep your fucking mouths shut,” they were told.

^_

The church was crowded with people. Standing at the head, where the priest would usually stand, was a tall, thin man. His face was long like a horse. His hair was dark and very short. His eyes shined toxic green. They glittered when he saw them, but the man’s face was as emotionless as a blank piece of paper. Behind the man were two closed caskets.

“It is another sad day for us Granites,” he said in a voice as strong and cold as stone. The crowd muttered in agreement. “Here lie Leo Jackson and Jane King,” he continued. “Excellent people, the both of them. I could tell you all about these two, but we know them, don’t we? There ain’t a one of us here who don’t know these two. And we known a lot more, haven’t we?” There were nods and choking sounds. “Cause these two are only the latest. Weren’t too long ago and there were more of us, Lord knows that’s true. We were just simple folk, trying to lead decent lives, trying to mind our business. But the outside world came anyway, didn’t it?” Someone let out a guttural bark, inarticulate and furious. “It struck us down!” cried the man with new, terrifying energy. The whole crowd seemed to hold their grief and rage in the same hand where it became confused and horrific.

The man stared at them with his ruthless green eyes. “Do you know where the Vaca B came from? Where the worm came from? The scientists told us it came from Brazil, before they too were struck down. The worm lived in the Brazilian jungles. They cleared the land for ranches so that McDonalds could make a profit. Somehow the cattle got the worm down there. Then the cattle ranchers got the worm. Then the cities got the worm. Then everyone started dying or going crazy. The whole world fell because of a worm in Brazil. Everyone knows that. But do you know that no feather falls on this earth without the assent of God?” He looked at them sternly. “Not a single feather, ladies and gentlemen. Nothing happens in this world unless God approves it. Nothing. Not so much as a particle of sand is out of place in the universe.”

Silence.

“The worm might have been the agency, but it was not the REASON, folks. The parasite they named the Vaca Beber was only the physical manifestation of God’s displeasure! Think of the world that was so recently destroyed. Think of it! We were destroying what God gave us to care for. We were supposed to be the caretakers of this planet, but instead, we were killing it. We were living in vice and filth! The rich kept all their money while the poor died like animals. What kind of Christians were we? What kind of people would live like that? Is it any wonder that God should look down upon us in His terrible wrath? Is it any wonder that we were judged? And that judgment was terrible. He struck us hard!”

The man’s voice had fallen to a tortured whisper. “It fell to us, the survivors of that judgment, to build another world, a just world. Oh, my fellows, my friends and neighbors, how that weighs on me!” He shook his head. “How often I think, like all of us do, why was I spared, Lord? Why am I standing here while good people like Leo and Jane here, they are not?”

The congregation held its breath in anticipation.

“No one can know the answer to that question, folks.” The man shook his long, severe head. “We do not have access to the mind of God. We cannot know what He knows.” He paused for a long time, his gaze falling over the whole crowd. “But we do know this. Folks, we do know something.”

No one moved.

“Today we live another day because people like Jane and Leo here fought to protect us. They died trying to keep us whole and safe. We don’t want no more of the world outside.” He shook his head. “No. We want to be left to ourselves. No Minutemen, no United States of blah blah blah. Just ourselves, taking care of each other like we were always supposed to do. Love your neighbors, not some damn jungle in Brazil! That’s what God wants. He wants us to be here, HERE, in this place, taking care of our own. That’s what Leo and Jane were doing out there on the bridge when they were gunned down and their bodies were horribly mutilated. That’s what they died to protect! For you. And me. And God’s plan. That’s why we’re all here today. That’s why I’m thanking God for my life, for all you folk, and for Leo and Jane. I intend to repay them with full obedience to the ideas they died to protect. We won’t be moved. No sir. Our resolve will not be diluted. We will stand independent. We will live free or we will die. And I swear to each of you this,” the man said, his voice dropping to a hiss.

“There will be vengeance,” he said. Then his voice rose high and terrible, shaking the church. “There will be Almighty Vengeance for those who seek to destroy us!”

The crowd leapt to their feet, screaming, cheering, and weeping.

Through the crowd of people, between the aisles, Eric watched the man walk toward them. He eyed Eric for a moment and then turned to the man who held them.

“Take him to the Cave,” he ordered. “Bring the females to Becky.”

^_

Grief is more various than death. Death is simple. The heart stops, the brain ceases to function. It is the same with each human being and most animals. But the experience of death never stays the same. Grief moves, transforms, and is always unexpected. Eric was learning this in the Cave. He had seen so many people die. He had lost nearly everyone he had ever cared about. His life was surrounded by death. Eric thought he would become used to it by now.

But slumped down in his chains in the Cave, Eric could not rid his mind of Sergio’s eyes, the surprised, wide-open look he gave to the sky. Was he surprised to find himself dying? Had he seen something in those last moments to surprise him? Or was it just meaningless contortions of the face at death and it meant nothing?

He had lived with Sergio for weeks, but what did he know of him? Not much. They had rarely spoken, and when they had, it had often been practical. Did you bring the water? Do you see anything on the road? Help me with my tent. The more he thought of him, the more it seemed to Eric that Sergio had somehow become more important to him than he knew. Sergio had been a part of his life so completely, he had been nearly invisible. Now Sergio would never speak to him again. Never help him up. Never smile his way. Never scramble up a tree to scan the horizon with his binoculars. Eric would never know him any better than he did right now.

In the darkness of the Cave, he could see Sergio fishing, the shining line arcing over the river. The contented look on his face after he emerged from the river, the wet fish hung from a rope in his right hand. Sergio was never more at ease, and Eric wanted to know this man.

The grief was he never would.

^_

What they called the Cave was a dugout basement next door to the church. Two men dragged Eric there, tugging at the rope around his wrists until they burned. They pushed him down a flight of wooden stairs. Eric fell the last few steps, stumbling forward, smelling mildew and cold, moist air. He lifted his face from the ground and spat out damp earth. One man jerked him up so roughly that Eric cried out in pain, though he meant to keep silent.

They shoved him through a brown, dirt passage shored up with boards. It was lit by hanging light bulbs shining like a yellow disease. The passage sloped down, and as he descended, he felt the air grow more stagnant. Dangling roots brushed against his face like cobwebs. Soon it seemed to Eric no living thing existed anymore. Nothing but mildew and worms.

But he was wrong.

They came to a small, square room, lit only by the light from the dirt passageway that led to it. Huddled in the corners of the room, chained to lengths of rebar stuck to blocks of buried concrete, were several people. A few of them were wearing jerseys of Boston sports teams, marking them as Minutemen. But their clothes were in rags and their faces were gaunt as skulls. The room smelled like an outhouse. Eric stumbled to his knees as a man jerked him downward to cuff him to a loop of rebar.

“Please,” one prisoner rasped near him. “Please give us water.” His voice was sand. When none of the guards said anything, he repeated, “Please.”

One of his guards, a huge man, suddenly stepped forward, and quick and brutal, smashed the prisoner down with the butt of his rifle. “I told you fuckers not to say anything,” the guard hissed. He lifted his rifle and struck the prisoner again, shattering his jaw against the cold earth.

The rest of the prisoners moaned in sympathy, but crawled closer into their shadows, cringing away from the guard.

Eric sat and said nothing.

When the guards left, Eric listened as the man who had been struck choked on his blood.

No one said anything. Eric doubted they had the strength.

So he had come to it at last. This was what he had been running from. This was what had made him avoid gangs. But it had found him anyway. Sitting in the Cave, Eric felt as if he had always known it would come to this. He was destined for this.

Eric had found his hell.

^_

There were no guards in the Cave. They just left them chained there. There were no visits. No water. No food. Most of the prisoners were too weak to speak. One of them was already dead, the body chained uselessly to the ground. The man who had begged for water died the first night Eric spent there.

When the guards left, the Cave was darkness. Cold, utter darkness, of a kind Eric had never known. Soon light seemed to be nothing more than a memory. In the complete dark, Eric could not believe in the dazzling sun. Within hours it was hard for him to imagine he had once hiked underneath a summer sun. As the days passed and no light touched his eyes, he listened. Smelled. Felt the ground around him. With each passing hour, he felt less like a human and more like a worm. He felt like those worms baked alive on dark asphalt in summer, dried out into coils of stiff flesh.

Eric the worm.

^_

Eric thought of Birdie, somewhere alone up above. He thought about Lucia and her grief and hoped she would find a way to conquer it, to be strong for Birdie. He thought of ways of escaping.

He imagined he pulled the steel rebar from its sheath of concrete. Like Arthur and Excalibur. He imagined he held the steel like a sword, and advanced with stealth back up through the passageway. He broke through a door. When the guards turned to him, he crushed their skulls with the rebar, grunting with the effort, and listening to the crunch of their shattered bones with careless exultation. Holding the steel in his hand, which dripped a trail of blood and gore, he entered the church where the green-eyed man held Lucia and Birdie among a crowd. Into the crowd he waded, his steel bar flashing. He fought his way to them, blood arcing from his swinging steel. The dying moaned about his feet, but he did not care. He took Birdie in his arms, Lucia by the hand, and led them from that place, back into the green forests, lit by the hot sun.

But it was fantasy. He was no King Arthur. He was Eric the worm. The rebar was solid in its cement home. The steel cuffs were tight against his wrist. He could not move. When he could hold it no longer, he had to piss in his pants. The warmth of it sickened him with grief and shame. He tried not to cry in the sensitive silence, but tears came anyway.

The fantasies stopped.

All he could think of was water.

^_

All the different kinds of water. Rain water. River water. Water in lakes and water in ponds. Dew caught in the grass. Water that collects in your hair when you walk through a fog. The cold water of melted frost. Water in puddles, on roads, dripping from roofs. Loud water rushing down a waterfall. Silent water, still and contemplative as a monk. The first glass of water of the day and the one you have at night. The water that waits for you in a glass. Water in an aluminum canteen and water from a plastic jug. Boiled water. Fresh rain water. Frothing water and pouring water. Blue water, green water, water the color of sand, and water as dark as night. The gold water of the reflected sun and the pale water of the moon. The turquoise water of curling waves cresting, with their white hats. The gray water of storms and the brown water of floods.

Clear water.

He could think of nothing else, even when the thinking became something worse than desire. When the pain began.

^_

Alone in the darkness, dying of thirst, Eric felt himself begin to shrivel. His body seemed slow, his blood moved through him like mud. His mouth burned and his tongue felt like a dry dead thing in his mouth, except for the pain.

When he had first come to the Cave, he had tried to speak to the prisoners. “Hello?” he had asked the darkness. “Is there anyone there?” There was no reply, maybe a whimper or two in the darkness, the other worms, wriggling on the floor. He had thought then that they were too afraid to speak, but now he understood.

It hurt. His tongue was so swollen and dry, he could not imagine speaking with it anymore. It hurt to swallow. Speech was impossible.

^_

A blazing yellow light appeared. And then the raucous sound of their captors. They emerged from the light like burning angels. Their movements seemed effortless, weightless, blessed. What a miracle it was to be whole. Before he could accustom his eyes to their presence, they grabbed him up and dragged him out.

“Fucking stinks in here,” one of the guards said to the prisoners as they left, as if it were their fault.

They dragged Eric up the passage. He stumbled, trying to follow. It was astonishing to him how weak he was. It was not like in the movies where the prisoners managed to keep their dignity despite all their inhuman treatment. In reality, it was easy to break someone.

They carried him through a room and dumped him down in front of a desk where he groaned and coughed through a dry throat. Using what little strength he had, blinking in the blinding light, Eric struggled to stand. When he did, he saw the green-eyed man sitting behind the desk, studying him cooly. There was no sympathy there. If anything, the man was casually amused.

He saw Lucia first. She was in a corner, looking at him, her face bruised and her lip split. One of her eyes was swollen shut. Beside her was Birdie, staring at him with quiet anguish. He knew they had been told not to utter a word. Eric turned away. He didn’t want them to see him like this.

“My name is Daniel Sullivan,” spoke the man with green eyes, “and I’m going to give you two ways to die. I want you to choose.”

^_

Eric didn’t move as Daniel Sullivan spoke. He fought hard not to tremble. Not in front of Lucia and Birdie.

While Sullivan explained his choices, Eric concentrated on his green eyes and the little crescent shaped white scar on his forehead.

It was difficult to listen to him.

There was a glass of water on the table, full and glistening.

^_

“Well, Eric,” said Daniel Sullivan, “this is how it is.” He picked up a pen and twirled it in his hand. “I’ve talked with these two lovely ladies, and I know the whole story. I understand your position with Carl Doyle. I also know that you are not responsible for the deaths of my fellows.

“But that doesn’t matter much to me, Eric. I know it’s going to be hard for you to understand, maybe impossible, but I’m going to explain to you once why you have to die. It’s up to you to decide the manner of that death. That’s the best I can do for you.”

Lucia made a hissing sound, but when Daniel Sullivan turned his head toward her slightly, she shrank into the corner.

“Carl Doyle is a menace, but he’s dangerous. After what beautiful Lucia told me, I’m not sure we could take him without suffering grievous losses. We’ve had enough of that. I won’t put my people at risk. Yet this leaves me with a quandary, Eric. Because my people need justice. Justice binds us together, you see. Without justice, we’re only a gang. With justice, we’re a people, a culture, a civilization. We are brothers and sisters. People are the bones of a society. Justice is the muscle, the cartilage, the flesh.”

Daniel Sullivan revolved in his chair, picked up his pen, twirled it in his fingers, and then silently studied him for a second.

“This leaves me with the question, what is justice? Have you thought of that? What is it? Is it knowing right and wrong? Or is it simple, animal revenge? I thought about this for a long time. And it came to me finally. We’re just human beings, we don’t know right and wrong. Only God Almighty can know that. Revenge is unsatisfying and leads to reprisal, enmity, feud, war. I understood it finally, one night, while I was at prayer at the feet of Our Lord.

“Justice is sacrifice. We need people to die for what we believe. We need them to make the ultimate sacrifice. Their blood gives life meaning. Their final exhalation breathes life into a society, Eric. That is the lesson of Our Lord, the son of God. Sacrifice is the root of justice. We ask these people who have done us wrong to sacrifice themselves for the good of us all. Everything else is mere machinery toward that end.”

Daniel Sullivan let his pen drop. His chair squeaked as he leaned toward Eric. His eyes were terrible upon him.

“It doesn’t matter if you are guilty or if you are not. What matters is the sacrifice. When my people see you die, they will come together. Be it in grief or rage, be it in agreement or disagreement, it won’t matter. Your death will bind us as one, make us a stronger people. That is why you have to die, Eric, for the good of us all. You must die.”

Daniel Sullivan’s eyes grew gentle, almost grateful, though Eric saw there also a bright mote of pleasure that made Eric’s skin crawl with revulsion.

“But I can let you choose the manner of your death,” he said. He rocked back in his chair so that it squealed again. “These are the choices open to you. I can take you and your two accomplices here, I can truss them up, put a gag in their mouths, and line all of you up against a wall and shoot you. That would be sufficient.”

Eric felt a groan rise up in him, but the only sound he made was a dry rasp.

“Or,” Daniel Sullivan continued, “you can walk up in front of my people and confess to what you’ve done. You can tell them you conspired to kill our people, that you are agents of the Minutemen sent to test our borders. You can say that you pledged your heart, your mind, your very soul to President Jacobs, that you kneeled at his feet and you kissed his hand. You will say you kidnapped these two fine women for your own use. Then you will be taken to a wooden wheel and bound there, hand and foot, and you will be whipped until you die. If you do this, Eric, we will spare the little girl and the lovely Lucia. We will take them into our company.”

Trembling, Eric turned his attention to Lucia and Birdie.

Birdie’s face ran freely with tears and she trembled. Lucia made a retching sound, more like an animal than a human. Eric swallowed and then turned back to Sullivan.

He made a rasping sound.

“Here, my boy,” Daniel Sullivan said, pushing the glass of water toward him. “Have a drink, son.”

Eric took the glass and, his hand shaking, lifted it to his lips. He had never experienced anything so sweet. His mind seemed full of golden lightness, and it opened to a clarity he had forgotten existed. He took a breath and then drank again. And again. Finally, he set the glass down empty. He kept his eyes closed for a moment, savoring the feeling, which was already leaving him. Then he opened his eyes and gazed steadily at Daniel Sullivan.

“Don’t call me son,” he croaked. Sullivan’s eyes narrowed slightly, but he waited. “I’ll do it. I’ll say what you want. Just don’t hurt them.”

“No!” Lucia cried, sobbing. “No, Eric, no!”

Daniel Sullivan turned his eyes toward her. “What did I tell you, woman?”

Lucia’s eyes shut and she shuddered and said nothing more. Her lip was bleeding again and tears flowed down her face. Birdie had her eyes squeezed shut and her hands on her ears.

Sullivan turned back to Eric. “It won’t be easy. You will suffer more pain than you thought possible, but you must endure. If you utter one word of your innocence during the ordeal, I will have to re-investigate the issue. If I do that, your friends will die.”

Eric trembled, but he picked up his chin. “I can,” he began, but a sob threatened to interrupt him. He swallowed. “I will do it,” he finished with effort.

“I thank you for your sacrifice, Eric,” Daniel Sullivan said.

Eric said nothing, but his eyes were unwavering.

Daniel Sullivan smiled a crooked smile, and then whistled. When the guards came in, Sullivan nodded toward Eric.

“Bring him to the holding cell,” he said. “Let him have all the water he wants. He has an important speech to make.”

^_

When it came time, Eric hardly knew what he was saying. It was as if he was speaking through another’s mouth. He stood in front of the group of strangers and said that he had plotted to destroy them, to bring them into the new state of President Jacobs. He described how he had snuck up on the two guards, shot them, and then, wanting to instill terror into them, had driven over their bodies, again and again. He said he had kidnapped Lucia and Birdie, to be used as his wives.

It was over before he knew it. They dragged him through a shouting crowd to a large wooden wheel. They ripped the shirt from his back, and then tied him down. He did not resist.

Eric kept his head down. He stared at a red, brick wall. It smelled cool and innocent. Behind him, he could hear Daniel Sullivan give a speech, but he did not listen to him. When it was over, the crowd was silent, expectant, solemn. He could hear the hard soles of boots strike asphalt. There was a gasp from the crowd, and Eric prepared himself. He prayed he would have the strength to resist, to be quiet.

The first lash was like a fire lit in his mind. He cried out in the heat and intensity of the pain. Someone in the crowd shouted that he deserved it. When the second lash hit, Eric already felt exhausted. By the fourth lash, the crowd was absolutely silent. Eric was crying now, in great sobs, but he was careful they were inarticulate. He would say nothing, as he promised. After the fifth lash, he heard Lucia scream in anguish, and it helped him somehow, the thought that he would not die without someone to mourn him.

At the sixth lash however, when the whip cut into his muscle, he no longer cared for sympathy. He only wanted the strength to die in silence, on his own terms, with something like dignity.

The seventh lash eradicated even that.

When the eighth lash burnt across his body, Eric slumped against the wheel.

^_

On the island there was no pain. The lake waters lapped the shore. Chickadees and blue jays flew among pine trees. The low sun glittered on the water’s surface as a cool breeze swept down from the blue skies. There was a house there, rough and awkwardly made. Outside the house there were two wicker chairs, whitewashed as clean as clouds. Out on the blue waters bobbed a single canoe. In it there were people, indistinct, shadows of people.

As Eric watched, a bright stroke of lightning struck the island and blinded his vision and his world cracked open like a gunshot. Through the crack poured blinding pain.

18

^__________

^{Grafton Notch}

Lucia pulled over the truck and leaned over Eric. He was pale and unconscious.

“Keep going!” Birdie cried, her voice pitched high. “Don’t stop!” She was holding Eric’s head in her lap. Her hands trembled.

“It’s okay,” Lucia whispered. “They won’t follow us, okay? We’re all right. Eric,” Lucia continued, turning to Eric. “Are you awake?” She pressed her hand to his thin face. His skin was hot with fever. Lucia could see the blood on the truck seat. She had bandaged him as best she could, but they needed a place to stop so she could do it better. “Look,” she said, pointing out the truck window to a sign by the side of the road. “You did it. You got us here.”

The blue sign had white letters:

Maine, The Way Life Should Be.

Eric’s eyes did not open.

^_

When Lucia pulled off the road onto Route 26, she looked and soon found a suitable house. She drove up the long, curling gravel road to the farmhouse. Taking the only weapon she had found, a tire iron, she crept into the farmhouse.

It had been ransacked, but it was totally empty of Zombies.

Lucia found a bedroom on the second floor and dragged down the mattress. As gently as she could, she pulled Eric out of the truck, brought him into the house, and put him stomach down on the mattress. His back was an angry map of a red chain of mountains, swollen, purple and oozing blood.

Birdie stood over him, sniffling and crying. “Is he going to die?” she asked her. “Is he, Lucia? Is he going to die?”

Lucia wanted to answer her, but Birdie was no ordinary girl. They had been through too much together. She couldn’t lie to her about this. She couldn’t say it was all going to be all right.

^_

Lucia checked her rear view mirror. No Carl Doyle, not yet. He had followed them after they had fled Daniel Sullivan, but somewhere he had turned off, bringing the pursuit with him. She hadn’t seen him since. Now, without Eric to stop him, Lucia knew he was dangerous to both her and Birdie. To Doyle, they were traitors, savages, darkies. And they had no weapons to defend themselves.

It was dangerous to enter Bethel, but she had no choice. Eric needed medication or he would die of infection. She didn’t know what she would do without Eric. She had lost Sergio and that was too much to bear already. She left Birdie to care for Eric, swung up into the truck, and headed for the town.

Bethel was a small town in a rolling valley. Mountains rose in the distance, their heads shaved with ski slopes. Clapboard houses lined the streets of Bethel where, before the Vaca B, ski tourists once walked the streets. Now Lucia crept into the empty town slowly.

She hadn’t gone far when she saw Carl Doyle.

^_

Doyle stumbled around his Rover, which was half inside the pharmacy, covered with glass. Lucia had parked the truck far down the street and slowly approached to watch Doyle.

As she crouched silently behind a car, Doyle leaned against the Land Rover and put his head on the roof. He stayed that way for so long, Lucia thought he might be dying right before her eyes. Yet he picked up his head, said something she couldn’t hear and then opened the door to the Rover and climbed in. A second later, he pulled the Rover out of the pharmacy and screeched out of Bethel, toward western Maine.

Lucia waited until she was sure Doyle would not return before she went into the pharmacy. Lying in the glass where Doyle must have struck it was a Zombie, looking more like a skeleton than a human. Lucia stepped over it, crunching through the glass and into the pharmacy.

It was another instance of Doyle saving them. If the Zombie was cracked, Lucia would have been at its mercy. As she searched the shelves of the mostly empty pharmacy, she thought about Doyle.

He had saved Eric. If he had not attacked when he did, Lucia doubted he could have lived through many more lashes. One moment the whip had been raised, the next the man with the cowboy hat and boots had been dead, shot through the right eye. The whip fell before he did. Then the crowd had erupted into shouts and cries of terror. Gunfire ripped through them, and, as people dropped in the street, Lucia grabbed Birdie and ran to Eric. In the chaos of Carl Doyle’s onslaught, as he fired into the crowd from some distant rooftop, Lucia had dragged Eric into a truck. That was the escape. Without Doyle, Lucia would have spent her life with Daniel Sullivan. She shuddered. She would not think of him again. Never again.

Lucia could find no serious antibiotics in the pharmacy. Almost everything was gone. In the end, all she found was a tube of antibacterial salve, a container of aspirin, and a bottle of isopropyl alcohol. She also found the skeleton of a child, with many of its bones missing. It looked like it had been torn apart by dogs.

She was about to leave when she heard the knocking.

^_

The sound came from underneath a trap door behind the counter of the pharmacy. The door was chained shut with a bright steel padlock. Lucia stood over it. The faint noise continued.

Was there a rhythm to the knocking? The question coursed through her. Were Zombies capable of rhythm or had someone locked innocent people down there? She opened her mouth to call down through the door, but then shut it quickly. What if it was a cracked Zombie and the sound of her voice drove it crazy? What if it burst through the door? What if this door was not the only way it could get out? She had only a tire iron to protect her.

The sound continued.

What if it was a human, like her, like Eric, like Birdie? A survivor imprisoned by some sick, twisted person like Carl Doyle. The knock came again and she swallowed. If she could tell if there was a rhythm to the sound, maybe it would be different.

She crouched down. Her heart thudded in her chest. The knocking sound continued. Lucia bent down closer. If she could hear a rhythm or maybe a groan from inside, some indication that it was Zombie or human, she would know whether to open the door or not. She trembled and bent down even further until, finally, her ear touched the cold metal of the door.

The knock came again. She listened, holding her breath, trying to separate the sound of her own heartbeat from the silence throbbing below the trap door. She closed her eyes.

Immediately, as if he had been waiting for her, her brother came to her.

“Lucia,” Sergio said. “No seas tonta.” His voice was solemn with the power of the dead.

Lucia leapt away from the trap door with a soundless cry, blinking. She could still hear the knocking sound, but she scrambled away and leapt out the pharmacy window.

She did not look back.

^_

Lucia had never sewn anything before. She took out the needle and the two pieces of cloth and began to practice. Her first try would not be on Eric’s skin.

Birdie sat beside her, watching her quietly.

“Puta!” she cried and sucked her finger.

“Use this,” Birdie said, and passed her a thimble.

“Oh, is that what that’s for?” Lucia smiled at her.

Trying to remember her mother, Lucia bent over the cloth. Her mother had always tried to get her to learn, but she had been dismissive. She was going to be a lawyer. Yes, her mother said, yes, good, but even lawyers lose buttons. “Mother,” she had groaned. “Don’t be so old fashioned.” She always talked to her mother in English when she wanted to make that point.

“No,” Birdie said, watching her. “Smaller stitches. It’ll cinch up if you do it like that.”

Lucia nodded her head and began again. It would be one thing to sew this cloth, another to pierce living skin. For an instant, her breath caught inside her, and she felt on the verge of screaming. But she caught herself by focusing on Birdie. She pushed the needle through the cloth and pulled the thread all the way through.

Sergio was dead.

The thought came to her like that. Sometimes there was no reason to it, just a flash of horrible knowledge, trailing misery and grief like a comet’s tail. There had been no chance to sew his wound. Just a single gunshot had done it. He had bled to death within minutes. No last words, no chance to tell him it was okay, to tell him she loved him. He just died. He was just gone.

Her hands shook.

There was not even time to grieve.

Lucia turned away from the cloth and taking the needle and thread in her hand, she began searching Eric’s back. There wasn’t time to practice long. The wounds glistened with blood. She felt sick for a second and had a moment of severe, crippling doubt. She could not do this. She couldn’t even sew a button. Then she felt Birdie’s hand on her shoulder, and Lucia took a deep breath.

She must do this.

“All right,” she said. “All right.”

She chose the most serious wound, a great ugly canyon that cut from his shoulder blade down to the middle of his back. Starting at the end nearest the shoulder blade, she took his skin between her fingers and pressed it together. Blood and clear liquid oozed up between the skin. Eric’s breathing was uneven, but otherwise, he did not move or make a sound. Lucia took the bright needle in her hand. Eric’s flesh was soft and warm between her fingers. Closing her eyes, she muttered a quick prayer to Mother Mary, and then, in one movement, stuck the needle through the flesh. Eric groaned but did not awaken. Pulling the dark thread through, Lucia turned the needle back and stuck it through Eric’s flesh again. This time his back twitched and his left arm rose a little.

“Hold him down,” Lucia ordered Birdie.

With only a whimper of protest, Birdie moved to Eric’s left side and pressed down on his arm.

“Try not to let him move, Birdie,” Lucia said to her. “He could hurt himself.”

Birdie nodded and pressed down harder.

Lucia focused on the wound. She tried not to notice the blood on her fingers.

One stitch down.

About fifty more to go.

^_

The first night at the farmhouse Lucia could not sleep. Despite cleaning and bandaging his wounds as best she could, Eric was restless with fever. She didn’t know what she could do, but stay by him and cool his forehead with a damp cloth. She had to make sure he didn’t roll over in his misery and rip open the wounds she had so carefully cleaned and sewn. In the end, she lost count of the stitches. There were many. The canyons on his back was replaced with the railroad tracks of stitches, as if his skin were a frontier being developed.

Birdie slept on the couch next to him. She had wanted to curl up next to him on the mattress, but Lucia thought it might aggravate his wounds. Even in the moments when Eric calmed and all was quiet, Lucia did not dare to shut her eyes.

She knew Sergio was waiting for her in her dreams.

Inevitably, however, deep in the night, only a few hours from dawn, as the sky outside turned dark blue, Sergio came and sat next to her. Lucia was dreaming.

“I was always the middle one,” Sergio said. His voice, however, had lost all his former fear. He sounded like their father. “No one paid attention to me. You were older, Diego was younger. You don’t even have time for me when I’m dead.”

“That’s not true, Sergio,” Lucia said.

“I know,” he said. “These are your worries, not mine. Do you think I care about any of this? Do you want to know what I thought about, sister? Just before I died?”

“Yes.”

“Gloria,” her brother answered. “We kissed behind the church. She said she’d never felt so much for another person. She said she didn’t understand it. She wanted me to stay with her. Gloria was her name, did I tell you that?”

“Yes,” Lucia said.

“I thought about her in the end,” Sergio said. “I belong with her. Not with you. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“That doesn’t mean you should forget me, Lucia,” he said. Sergio was angry with her. “Don’t you dare forget me.”

“I’m sorry, Sergio.”

“Don’t forget me like you do everyone else!”

Lucia jerked awake, crying out. Outside, the sun was rising, brilliant and bright. Eric’s breathing was calm and measured. Lucia wept at the sound.

She knew then Eric was going to live.

^_

They stayed at the farmhouse for three days, letting Eric’s tender wounds heal. Birdie never left his side, and, usually so quiet, she now talked to Eric so much, it was as if all of the things she had never said to him had broken free. Eric listened through a haze of intense pain he tried to hide.

Lucia spent her days foraging in the local farmhouses for food. There was not much left, but, in a trailer in the woods, she found a stash of canned food and bottled water. Sitting on a chair outside the trailer was a Zombie. He had long ago shrunk down so much that, nearly skeletal and lacking eyes, he could not move. On the ground next to him was a shotgun. He had died guarding his food. When Lucia approached the gun, the Zombie opened and shut its mouth, making a creaking sound like an old wooden door.

Now they had a shotgun.

On the third evening, Lucia sat on the porch, watching the fireflies. Their green lights flashed in the evening. She thought about Sergio. Life happened so quickly. Lights in the darkness, winking to brilliant existence and then descending into shadow. She looked up with a start when the porch door slammed.

Eric stood on the porch, one hand on Birdie’s shoulder, who looked up at him with pride.

“You shouldn’t be up, Eric,” Lucia said, standing. “You need to rest.”

“Yes,” Eric agreed, “but not here.” He hobbled forward, unable to keep the pain from his face. He sat down next to her, hissing in air between his teeth.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t find any pain medication,” Lucia said.

Eric ignored the comment. “It’s too dangerous to stay here. Carl Doyle is looking for us.” Lucia had told him everything about Doyle’s assault on Daniel Sullivan, how they had escaped, and how she had seen Doyle crash into a pharmacy window. “We have to keep moving.”

“You’re not well, Eric,” she said. “You have to rest.”

“I’m well enough.” Eric stood up, grimacing. “You know it’s true, Lucia,” he told her. “The longer we stay here, the more chance that Doyle will find us. Or someone else.” He looked out over the fireflies flashing in the field. “We have to leave tomorrow.”

Lucia said nothing, but watched him walk slowly back into the house.

Now that the night was her last at the farmhouse, it was far more pretty, far more peaceful. For a long time then, finally, she cried, at first quietly and then in heaving sobs. When she was done, she was so exhausted, she lay out on the bench on the porch and fell into an empty, deep sleep of the kind that she hadn’t known in weeks.

^_

When they reached Grafton Notch State Park, they pulled the truck to the edge of an embankment. Eric was nervous about meeting Carl Doyle or anyone else and insisted they abandon the truck. Lucia tried to argue with him, saying that they were so close, they could be there in hours, but Eric was adamant.

“It isn’t worth the risk,” he said. “Trucks are moving targets. We’ve walked this far, we can walk to the end.”

Lucia finally agreed. Once they unpacked the truck, Lucia put the truck in neutral, and, grunting, they pushed the stubborn truck off the road. When the truck finally bounced down the edge, rolling over once at the bottom, and ending up back on its wheels amid shattered glass, Lucia noticed Eric’s t-shirt. It was dark with red slashes of blood.

They walked up into the pine-filled forest, and, not too far from the road, they made camp.

After a quick dinner of rice and lentils, Birdie settled down next to Eric with her crayons. Lucia glared at Eric.

“What?” he asked, after a long time of trying to ignore her.

“You know what,” she said. “Take off your shirt.” Eric’s eyes narrowed in anger, but Lucia’s gaze was not to be questioned.

Eric gave out a little cry of pain as he peeled the shirt off.

It was as she feared. “You tore it open,” she said, looking at his back.

Birdie looked up from her crayons with concern. “Are we going to have sew him up again?”

Eric looked at her with Birdie’s question in his eyes.

“Yes we are,” Lucia said to her. “If Eric had rested like I said, we wouldn’t have to do this again.”

“Can I try this time?” she asked, setting down her crayons.

Eric laughed. Then Lucia followed, though the thought of piercing him with a needle again infuriated her. “It hurts when I laugh,” Eric said.

“Good,” Lucia said. “I should let her, Eric. I really should.”

“Can I?” Birdie asked, not seeing the humor. “Please?”

Eric and Lucia laughed again.

“Stop it,” Eric said. “Seriously, it hurts.”

19

^__________

^{Mooselookmeguntic Lake}

Luckily Eric only needed a few stitches to close the wound that had re-opened. After caring for Eric’s back once more, they walked up a hill to a small clearing near a brook. They set up camp to stay until Eric’s back wasn’t so tender he couldn’t move without tearing out the stitches.

Eric spent his time on his stomach. He had lost all of his materials, his map, his calendar, the book he had taken from Charlie’s house, his polyhedral dice, everything that had once linked him to the past world. The loss of the calendar was the worst for him. They had already replaced the map when they found a road map of Maine in the glove compartment of an abandoned car, but even if Eric could find a calendar, how could he know what day it was? Was it still August or had September crept in? With a chill of fear, he realized the time for calendars was over. They would think in seasons from now on. Their plans would be based on temperature, the migrations of birds, the fluctuating color in the leaves of trees.

His birthday was in August. He was now seventeen, he reflected. But he could no longer be sure what day that was. It was also the end of birthdays.

Had he been seventeen in the Cave? Ever since he had first been shackled to the steel rebar, he had felt seventy. He couldn’t remember being whipped. He only remembered being dragged out into the crowd, and then nothing but a red wall. He thought he had died.

Instead, he had come alive again in Maine. He was only miles from the island. It didn’t seem real. They were going to make it. After all they had been through, after everyone who had died, they were going to make it.

His heart was a hard thing now, like a stone, polished smooth with suffering and grief. He felt everything from a distance, a careful, considered distance. From this distance, his heart would not allow him to rejoice. In it there still glowed a modicum of doubt.

They hadn’t made it yet. It wasn’t over.

^_

Four days they remained in camp. Lucia wouldn’t allow Eric to move. She changed and washed his wounds several times a day. She could tell it caused Eric a great deal of pain, but she was worried. It would be easy for the wounds to become infected. He could die. Lucia had enough ghosts haunting her. She couldn’t take another.

When she wasn’t cleaning Eric’s wounds, she was fishing and gathering food with Birdie. It was late summer and Birdie found blueberries to pick. Lucia stood at the edge of a stream with a fishing pole she found in the farmhouse in Bethel. She wasn’t as good at fishing as Sergio had been. It was impossible not to think of him, peaceful, thoughtful, gentle, pulling the fish from the water with grace.

One day, perhaps the third day of their stay, Birdie came and sat down on the moss beside the stream where Lucia was fishing. She wrapped her arms around her legs. “You know what?” she asked.

Lucia turned to her. Birdie spoke so infrequently that when she did, she commanded attention.

“What, Birdie?”

“My Daddy had to kill Mommy because she was sick.”

Lucia felt her heart drop. She went to Birdie and sat down next her, putting her arm around her. “I’m sorry, Birdie,” she said.

“She had the worm,” Birdie said. “Then Daddy had it. He told me to go to my granma’s house in Grafton. He made me write it down. He said I had to leave, but he would meet me later.” Birdie looked up at Lucia. “Daddy shot himself, didn’t he Lucia?”

Lucia shook her head. “I don’t know, Birdie.”

“He did,” Birdie said. “He isn’t ever going to meet me, is he?”

“I don’t think so,” Lucia said.

Birdie put her head down on her knees and cried. Lucia held her and tried to think of something to say. There was nothing to say.

^_

Lucia brought out some extra clothes and took Birdie down to the stream. There, the stream curved around a corner and left a small, eddying pool, shaded by pine trees. They crept in the cold water with bars of soap and shampoo. Birdie let Lucia scrub her, though Lucia could tell she didn’t like it. They washed for a long time. Lucia had never felt so filthy, or so clean when they were finished.

Birdie had to wear a pair of jeans and an oversized t-shirt while Lucia scrubbed their clothes and put them out to dry.

It was a beautiful day.

They stretched out under the sun to dry. A blue jay squawked in a tree while little black and tan chickadees flitted restlessly from branch to branch.

Birdie reached out and held her hand.

It was the closest thing to perfect Lucia ever remembered feeling.

^_

After four days, Eric insisted on leaving. He was anxious and irritable, jumping at the slightest noise. Lucia tried to argue with him, tried to tell him that there was no rush, they should stay a week, time enough for his wounds to heal well. But his face darkened.

“There is a rush,” he argued. “It’s late, Lucia. We need to get ready for winter. We need food. We need to build a house. We need supplies, food, maybe a generator, portable heaters, medication in case we get sick. We need coats and mittens, maybe a snowmobile.” He said none of this gently. “There is a rush, Lucia.”

“Don’t lecture me, Eric,” she said.

“Someone has to.”

They didn’t talk again. She couldn’t stop him from packing his material. Birdie helped him, after giving Lucia a shrug. Annoyed, she could do nothing but begin to pack herself.

Suddenly, it seemed, Lucia found herself hiking behind Eric and Birdie. They were on their way, the last miles on their journey.

^_

At first they tried to hike in the woods, to keep away from the roads. But Eric wasn’t capable of it. It was too strenuous. Even he had to admit he was risking ripping open his wounds. When they came to Bemis Road, they stood silent, breathing hard in the hot, late summer sun. Then, instead of crossing into the forest, Eric stepped on the road. They would have to risk it.

^_

Eric remembered the sweet smell of pine needles. He remembered the sound of wind through the tall pines and the chirping of chickadees as they flew down to investigate the newcomers. He remembered the moist wind, with its promise of cool waters. They were so close.

But Eric no longer cared to remember his father. That was in a different world, long ago and unreal. Now when he thought of it, he saw himself as if from a height, sitting in an aluminum boat, a child, frightened by the thought that his father did not love him, and a spiteful, shallow man who wanted nothing to do with his own son. He saw little connection to himself in that child or that man. They were phantoms. It was as if he had lived fifty years time since the Vaca B began. Life was not the same. He was not the same. Neither was the world.

Crows were the proof of it. There were no more crows. It was something that struck Eric suddenly, a silence he suddenly noticed. He had not seen crows since, well, he couldn’t remember when. The crows, unlike most birds, fed on corpses. Perhaps they too suffered from the Vaca B. It had wiped them out.

Some things would not survive. Parts of his past, whole regions of his heart, all were gone now. They still had to discover what kind of people lived afterward, in this new land, in his new skin.

In a world without crows.

^_

When it happened, it was sudden. There was no warning. One moment the three of them were walking along the curving road, forests on both sides. Then, as they came to a winding curve, the forest dropped away, and they saw it below them. Mooselookmeguntic Lake.

And in the middle of it, an island, shining emerald green in the sun. Breathless, stunned, the three of them stared down soundlessly. It was Birdie who spoke first.

“The island,” she said, pointing. She looked up at Eric. “It looks like an eye.”

It did. The island seemed the pupil of a great eye staring up at the sky.

They were silent. There were no words for the sight. It was the end. Their hearts grew and spilled over. Lucia trembled. Eric took a numb step forward to the edge of the road.

The island.

How far he had come. Over hills and bridges, through death and fear, down a long road of grief and suffering. He thought he would be ecstatic when he saw it. He thought they would cheer and embrace each other. He thought there would be some revelation, some feeling of wholeness, security. Righteousness. But the island was silent, unseemly in its reality. And instead of the people standing next to him, the people he would have died to save, Eric thought of the people who had not made it.

Poor Brad, angry and foolish, but loyal and strong. Burned to smoking bones on the shore of a lake. Sarah who had taught them how to fish and cook, who had held them together through disaster until she too was burnt to ashes, the first woman he had ever kissed. John Martin, tall and steadfast as rock, who had saved Lucia and Sergio, who had shown him it was no sign of manhood to kill. Shot down for no reason but his strength and the fear Doyle had in his heart. Sergio, poor Sergio, fearful but gentle, killed for nothing. Charlie who died at his feet. The men and women of the Slow Society, so brave and kind, dead only because they had dared to be hopeful. His mother in her burning bed and Jessica in her ditch. His friends. The herds of men and women, minds eaten by the Vaca B, shambling toward water, drowning, dying, or living on, meaningless and vacant. The cracked ones, furious to continue in the world of beauty and pleasure, minds bent and broken by their proximity to the cold darkness of death, killing and dying with equal ferocity.

And for what?

Eric’s eyes fluttered with tears.

For this.

A green island set in the blue of a lake, staring up at the azure sky. The brilliance of living. The beauty of it standing against the darkness. The wonder.

Eric covered his face with his hands. As the sobs came to him, he felt Lucia and Birdie grasp him. The three survivors cried in each other’s arms and could not let go.

They were the ones who lived and they did not know why.

^_

From the shore of Mooselookmeguntic, the island looked flat, like a green plate floating upon the water. The sun was setting and turned the lake to fiery gold. They had already set up camp and Lucia had set a pan of water on the fire to boil. Eric’s heart felt tight in his chest, like cold stone. Birdie, tired from the day’s hike, had crawled underneath the ragged canvas tent they found in the Bethel farmhouse.

Eric stood at the shore.

They had made it. It was impossible to believe. The wind coming off the lake seemed as soft as cotton. There was no sign of humans. No smoke from another fire. No floating corpses. There was only the lake, waving gently against the shore. Standing there, he heard the ghostly call of a loon. It echoed off the lake with mysterious poignancy.

“It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?” Lucia asked, suddenly next to him.

Eric turned to her. “I’m sorry about Sergio,” he said. “I haven’t said so yet. I’m sorry.”

Lucia looked away, over the lake, then down at her feet, then back at him. Tears swelled in her eyes. She looked about to say something, but the look just hung there until she shook her head and swallowed.

“You know,” said Eric, “I didn’t think I’d make it here. I was sure of it sometimes. Now that I’m here, I don’t understand. I don’t understand why we made it. How are we here when so many other people aren’t?” Eric choked up, but continued. “It was all so random. Brad was just trying to protect us, Sarah died cooking for us. I don’t know why John Martin had to die. It was so…” Eric struggled for the words. “Meaningless,” he finished. “Meaningless.” He looked out over the lake.

“Don’t say that,” Lucia answered. She took his arm and jerked it until he looked at her again. “Don’t say that again, Eric.” Her eyes were fierce. “Sergio died for us to get here. So did John. They died for us. They died so we could be here and live in peace.” She felt suddenly enraged. “What did you think you would find? The meaning of life?” She gave out a painful laugh. “Why do you have to think like that? From that distance? Life is here. It’s there. It’s all around us. It’s not in here!” She stabbed at her head ferociously. “You don’t find meaning in there. It’s out there!” She started to cry, but when Eric touched her arm, she calmed.

“I didn’t mean it,” he said to her softly. “I’m sorry. I won’t say it again. I won’t think it. You’re right.” Eric pulled her into his arms. “You’re right,” he repeated, smelling her hair. “I won’t say it again.”

They were both quiet then, absorbed in each other’s embrace. They had never been so intimate with each other, so close. Eric closed his eyes, smelling her hair. He found the coldness of his heart loosening, easing, like a knot slowly being undone. With it came a softness that was almost painful. Eric squeezed his eyes shut against the violence of the feeling. But he could escape it no longer. He loved her. He loved her with all that remained in him to love.

“Eric, my boy!” a voice boomed, causing Eric and Lucia to leap away from each other. “We made it!”

^_

The top of Carl Doyle’s head was entirely gone. There was only bone left. A flap of scalp and hair hung off to one side of his head like a toupee that had blown off. His eyes were filled with dark blood so that they were dark as ebony. His putrid leg was stank like death and a cloud of flies buzzed around him. A new gunshot wound in his shoulder oozed black blood. His clothes, once neat and perfect, were now torn, ripped, and stained with blood. His upper lip was half-chewed away. When he opened his mouth to speak, Eric could see white specks of worms writhing inside his mouth and gums. The smell from him was sickening and sweet.

“Eric, my boy!” Doyle laughed. “I thought you’d survive. I could see it in you, you understand. You weren’t just some bloody native. No sir! You had good sturdy bones. Tough, you know. Right to your bones. A good Englishman, I could tell.” He limped forward. In his right hand was his samurai sword, its once glistening blade, dark with filth. “It’s like Churchill once said, my boy. If you’re going through hell, keep going!” Doyle lifted up the sword and gave it a little flourish in the air. “You and I,” he said, leveling the sword at Eric. “You and I. Through all those bloody savages! Imagine that, will you? Cut a bloody swathe right through them, didn’t we, boy?”

“Yes,” said Eric. He pushed Lucia away from him, hoping she would go to Birdie and get her away from him. When she moved, however, Doyle flashed his dark eyes over her.

“What’d you bring her for?” he asked, his accent dropping. “Fucking savage. You’re not thinking of ruining the island for us, are you, Eric?” He lumbered forward again, his sword pointed at him. “You thinking of bringing this fucking spick slut to the island? You going to raise a goddamn family of half spick mongrels on our island!” A white worm wriggled out of the corner of his mouth and stuck there, its little head tasting the outside.

“Calm down, Doyle,” Eric said.

“Remember,” Doyle said, picking up his accent again. “Remember, this island is our new beginning. It’s time to get everything right. A new order. From the island, it all begins. This time we do it right, Eric. There’s no room for savages. This time we won’t try to save them. There will be no burden, not any longer. It’s just us, my boy. You understand, right?” Doyle’s sword wavered and then dipped down. His bloody eyes pleaded with him. “You understand it can’t happen again, right? It’s got to be the last time. It has to be.” His voice was small and pathetic. Then he drew in a great breath, groaned, and stood upright, straight, tall and thick as a bear. “We must have order,” he stated forcefully. His eyes focused on Lucia, who was staring at him with wide, frightened eyes.

Just then Birdie came out of the tent. She had the shotgun in her hands.

“You leave us alone,” she said, her voice low and ominous. The shotgun looked like a cannon in her hands. Her tiny finger was on the trigger.

Doyle turned to her. His face contorted with hatred and rage. Raising his sword, he yelled, “Traitor!”

Birdie shot. The gun flew out of her hand, and she fell to the ground.

Doyle hardly moved, but he was hit in the side. Doyle’s face burned with fury. “Traitor!” he boomed again, and lunged forward.

Eric dove toward him and hit his side. Both of them fell to the ground. Eric felt sick from the smell of him as he struggled to get the sword from his hand. Grasping with both his hands at Doyle’s meaty fist, he still couldn’t loosen his grip on the deadly sword. Doyle’s strength was unstoppable. Doyle reached back his other hand and clubbed him once on the shoulder. Pain rushed through him, but Eric clung to the sword hand. If he let go, Doyle would cut them all down. Doyle picked up his fist to hit him again, when he saw Lucia grab it with both hands. For a moment, he seemed subdued, with Lucia on one hand and Eric on the other.

But he was far too strong. He jerked up to a sitting position, and then, with a cry of anger, he pulled Lucia forward with violence, sending her flying through the air. Watching her hit the ground, Eric felt wild with rage. With all his strength, he punched Doyle in the face with his left hand. Eric felt bone crack and flesh tear. But Doyle did not seem to be hurt. Instead his own left hand crashed down into Eric’s chest, and, helplessly, Eric let go of Doyle’s sword arm to clutch at his chest for breath.

Doyle pushed himself to his feet, using his sword as a crutch. It bent under his weight, and, once he stood again, to his full height, he now flourished a sword shaped like a capital C.

Regaining his breath, Eric pounced to his feet and then moved to stand between Doyle and Birdie. Doyle lunged forward with a gurgling call, swinging his bent sword. Eric stepped back, away from the sword, and then he dove again at Doyle.

This time Doyle’s bulk held steady. Eric felt great arms lift him from his feet. Doyle had dropped the sword, and was now crushing him in a terrible embrace. His strength was massive and horrifying. Eric cried out in pain as Doyle’s grip ripped open his back again. He nearly blacked out, but he struggled back to the light, feeling sick and weak. If he lost consciousness, he would either never wake again or he would awake to find both Lucia and Birdie killed. He fought to keep the darkness from consuming him. It was like drowning in an immense inky water, in which he thrashed to keep from the darkness.

He heard a splashing sound and realized that Doyle had carried him into the lake. Suddenly his body was lifted and shoved brutally under the water. Eric saw only one glimpse of Doyle’s dark face before it dissolved into water and waves. Eric held his breath. He could feel Doyle’s iron grip now around his neck.

In a panic, he kicked out with his legs. He kicked at Doyle’s bad leg. He thrashed in the water like a fish. But Doyle was as immovable as rock. There was the pain in his chest and the swelling in his head. The soundless darkness approaching. And the final thought: I was right, I’m going to die in the lake without ever setting foot on the island.

Then the light came to him.

^_

Eric gasped for breath at the shore of the lake. Doyle had let him go. Air pushed in his lungs and his eyes focused away from the darkness.

Doyle stood in the water up to his thighs, looking toward the island. His hands were in the air.

“So much water!” he called as if he had never noticed it before. “I never saw it so beautiful before.” He staggered forward into the lake.

Watching Doyle, Eric suddenly heard the click of a gun. He turned to see Lucia standing near him, at the shore, with the shotgun pointed toward Doyle. Eric shot to his feet and pulled the gun up toward the sky. Lucia looked at him with fury in her eyes.

“Look at him,” he told her. “It’s over.”

Doyle waded further in the water. “The island,” he said. “The island.”

“We should shoot him just to be safe,” Lucia said.

Eric shook his head. “We shouldn’t shoot anyone,” he said. They watched as Doyle began swimming in great, flapping strokes toward the island. The strokes began to slap at the water. Then they came less often until they stopped altogether. Doyle floated face down in the water. Eric looked down as Birdie joined them.

“Is he dead?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“Did you kill him, Eric?”

“No,” he said. “The Vaca B killed him.”

They were silent for a few moments, watching Doyle’s body float in the lake.

Finally Lucia said, “Let’s get him out. He’s polluting our water.”

^_

They burned Carl Doyle that night on the shore of the lake. After covering his body with pine boughs and wood, they lit the fire and then stood back. Lucia and Birdie didn’t stay long, but went to make dinner.

Eric stayed. He listened to the fire roar as it consumed him. Eric himself was consumed by the thought, who was this man? Where had he come from? He remembered that first night they had spent with him. He had been strange but not bad. How much of what happened was Carl Doyle and how much of it was the Vaca B? Eric didn’t know how to feel about the man who now burned before him. He was relieved. He was a little sad.

That night, as Eric sat at the fire, listening to the loon, he thought about Carl Doyle, who he might have been if the world had not been destroyed.

He imagined that in normal times, if the Vaca B had never been, Doyle was the type of man to become obsessed with model trains. Eric imagined him in his garage, painting trees and houses for his train to speed by, his great paws of hands holding delicate brushes. Occasionally, he might let some child come in to see the model train, the little towns it went through, the bridges it crossed, the forests it traversed. When the child reached out to touch some intricately painted miniature, Doyle would snap at him, telling him to leave it alone. He was not gentle.

That was the kind of man he was. Everything else, Eric decided, that was the worm.

It didn’t matter if it was true.

It was the right thing to think.

20

^__________

^{Student’s Island}

On a particularly cold day in winter, bundled in bulky coats, heavy wool mittens and hats, Eric and Birdie were standing over a hole in the ice when they heard Lucia shout.

When they looked up, they saw them, in the distance. Three people: two adults and one child. One of them was holding the other up as they limped across the frozen lake.

Lucia came running through the snow and wind to stand next to Eric.

They stood together and watched the people approach them. They were the first people, Zombies or not, they had seen since they built their cabin on the island. As they got closer, Eric could see that one of the adults was hurt. Even closer and he could see they were a man and a woman. The woman was much older than the man, with white hair dangling in front of her face. The man was probably in his thirties. His pale face was full of misery and fatigue. The child was so bundled up it was impossible to tell if it was a girl or a boy. They were all starving to death.

Lucia looked at Eric with concern but said nothing.

The woman stopped in front of them. She seemed too tired to speak. Her eyes were dull and listless with suffering. The two groups stared at each other. The frigid wind blasted pass them.

Birdie was the first to act. She held out her hand toward the child. When the child stepped toward them and took it, Eric felt for the first time that everything was going to be all right.

“Come with us,” Eric said. “It’s warm in the cabin and there’s food.”

They had truly survived.

The End

A Word from the Author

^__________

I began this book several years ago and have been working on it, off and on, ever since. It has spent a long time on my computer. I tried to find an agent or a publisher who was interested in it, but with no luck. So I either had to self-publish or just let the book rot on my desktop. If it wasn’t for the encouragement of a couple people, early fans of the book, that’s probably what I would have done. Self-publishing is difficult and it takes as much time as you can give it. There’s always something more that you can do, and it’s always doubtful whether that thing will help you find readers or not. It’s enormously challenging to get the word out about your book. What I’m asking is that if you enjoyed this book, please share it with your friends. Write a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Follow my blog at https://benlylebedard.wordpress.com. Follow me on Twitter @benlylebedard. Follow the Facebook fan page for The World Without Crows. Do one of these things or do them all. It really helps me out and encourages me to get some of my other books out of the hard drive and into the light.

Your support is appreciated!

About the Author

^__________

Born in Buckfield, a rural town in the state of Maine, Ben Lyle Bedard grew up in the country. One of the first in his family to attend college, Bedard studied at the University of Maine at Farmington. To see the world, he took part in student exchange programs and studied in France, England, and Australia, where he studied rainforest management in Far North Queensland. After graduating from college, he eventually moved across the country to Oregon and then California, where he studied for his Master’s Degree at Mills College, in Oakland. Here he developed his love of reading and writing and discovered a deep appreciation of music. After receiving his Master’s Degree, Bedard traveled to the midwest and then back to Maine where he worked construction while he applied for a doctorate program. He was finally admitted to and graduated from the University of Buffalo with a PhD in English. With more free time on his hands, he published two books of science fiction with the small press, BlazeVox Books, as well as numerous works in other small publications. In Buffalo he met his future wife, a Fulbright scholar from Chile. When she had to return to Chile as part of the requirements of her scholarship, he followed her, despite not knowing more than a few words of Spanish. They were married in Olmué, Chile. Together with his wife, Fernanda Glaser, he co-wrote a short biography of the Nobel prize-winning poet Gabriela Mistral, Regional Creature: An Introduction to Gabriela Mistral, which was published by LetrArte in 2017. Now they live by the ocean in La Serena, Chile, where Ben teaches English and writes novels in many genres. When he’s not writing, Ben enjoys playing video games, practicing his Spanish, listening to music, cooking, and reading.

Copyright

The World Without Crows copyright © 2017 Ben Lyle Bedard

All Rights Reserved

Cover by Raphael Koehler-Derrick