The World Without Flags

I cry out and stamp down as hard as I can on his foot. I feel bones crunch and Doctor Bragg releases me with a screech of pain. I stumble out of his reach into the chair before I feel his hands at my shoulders. I shake him free, grasping out at the tray. I turn around, holding one of the test tubes in my hand as the Doctor moves toward me, his arms wide. In desperation, I stab at his face with the test tube. It shatters and slices his face under his eye, splattering his face with dark ooze. The Doctor stumbles back, eyes wide, holding his face. He looks at his hands, covered in blood and black ooze. Then his face falls in disappointment and I know he’s been infected. He’ll be dead in a day or two. I see that he knows it too, but there’s no fear on his face, no sadness, just disappointment.

The Doctor shows me his hands. “Look what you’ve done,” he tells me. “Who will kill the Worm now? Who?” All the fight has leaked out of him.

I turn away and run for the door. I throw it open and bolt outside, and, without looking around, I run for the river. I haven’t run far when I hear the door slam open behind me.

“Come back!” The Doctor cries after me. “We need you!”

But I don’t listen. When I reach the edge of the bank over the river, I launch myself into the air over the river, my heart beating free and alive inside me as I twist and fall through the air.

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When I climb out of the river, coughing up water, I pause for a moment to listen. Although the current is not nearly as fast as it had been when Eric leaped into it, it’s still fast enough to get me down river pretty fast. I listen carefully for noises of pursuit, but I don’t hear anything. I don’t have time to wait. I have to make it to Cairo, to see if I can find Pest and Eric, to know if they’re still alive. I spring to my feet and, turning south, I begin to run.

Feeling my heart beat and my legs stretch out and my lungs fill with cool, springtime air, I am filled with relief. I duck under branches and leap over logs. I control my breathing and fall into a rhythm, running through the woods, finding the paths of least resistance, even if I have to move in long loops. Not only do I have to put space between me and the crazies behind me, but now that I’m free, now that I'm not about to die, I am full of anxiety about Eric.

I imagine the scene in Cairo. In my mind, I see them unwrapping the plastic oatcakes, eating them without knowing the poison they contain, the poison Randy fed to them. A day later, they start to get sick. First one, then another, then a dozen. The fear turns to panic when the sick begin to cry tears of blood. The panic turns to rage when the first die. The rage turns to violence when they have to kill the first one that turns. The village blames Eric and they blame Pest for bringing him. Pest is no idiot, he hides in the church. He goes down into the basement and barricades the doors. The people of Cairo try to get in. They bash at the door.

What happens next, I can’t imagine. I can. I can imagine it, but I won’t.

If they’re dead, all of this has been for nothing. All of this was meaningless suffering. I can’t think of that. I won’t even imagine it.

It is best to keep running, to lose myself in fatigue and pain and the constant rhythm of my feet striking ground. If I stop, I will think, and if I think too much, I will lose my mind.

It is better to run.

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I run for hours. I hit my pace about an hour into the run. I don’t feel my legs at all or my arms. I feel as light as the air around me. I’ve always been skinny, I know that, but now, after all I’ve been through, I am not much more than bones and long, thin muscle. It is as if I’m floating through the forest, not running. I leap and duck and jump over and under branch, without losing my rhythm, without losing this weightless feeling I have. There is pain. In my legs. My lungs. Sometimes my feet. But the pain is removed from me, somehow distant, at arm’s length, not outside myself exactly, but a curiosity. It is a pain that is almost theoretical. I recognize it as mine, but it’s not a part of me somehow.

For hours I run in the rhythm. The pounding of my feet. The beating of my heart. The slow intake and outtake of breath. The feeling I could go forever, effortless as a cloud.

The rhythm of it all, the lightness of my entire being, they make it impossible for thoughts to connect to me. My mind is too slippery for thoughts to grasp. They just slip away before I can understand them. After a few hours, even the images in my mind become inexact, muted, like something bleached by the sun. My memories cannot haunt me. My thoughts cannot disturb me or shove me into despair. They are slow, feeble things that cannot exist long enough to solidify, that do not have the strength to latch onto my mind and demand attention.

I am grateful for the run. I am grateful to be alive.

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