The World Without Flags

If Eric and Pest are still in that town, the Stars will treat them just like anyone else. Afterward, they will burn the town to the ground to be certain they have disinfected the whole place. Looking down at the tiny soldiers pouring into Cairo, I know they think they are protecting people. They don’t realize they’re puppets in Randy’s perverted scheme. I study the town, what little I can see of it through the trees, hoping to see some sign of Eric and Pest. I have to get to them. I have to find a way to get them free. I’ve got no resources, no guns, not even a flask of water.

I cross my arms and think furiously about what I need to do.

That’s when I feel cold steel pressed into my back.

“You move and you’ll be dead before you hit the ground.”

150

I freeze in place and instinctively raise my hands above my head.

“Turn around,” the voice commands.

If they kill me, no one will ever know that Randy was just using the war between the Stars and the Gearheads to get what he wanted. If they kill me, Eric will not survive. I feel like my heart has transformed to coal. Slowly I turn, keeping my hands high up in the air to keep him from shooting. When I see who it is, I gasp.

“Sydney!” I cry.

“Keep your hands up!” he growls. His eyes narrow at me and his grip on his pistol tightens.

I keep my hands up, but look behind him. “Is Boston here too?” I ask.

Sydney’s eyes flash darkly. “Nevermind where he is,” he says. Suddenly, there’s the crack and rattle of machine gun fire from the town. I wince, but Sydney keeps his eye focused on me. “We should’ve killed you when we had the chance. Now the whole town is infected because of you.”

“You don’t understand,” I say in a low, calm voice. I need to get through to him, but I can tell by the way he looks at me that I have very little chance of that.

“I think I do,” Sydney says. He jerks his gun at me. “Turn around. Put your hands behind your back.”

I don’t dare say anything, I’ve lied to him too much in the past. At first, when I turned around and saw Sydney, I thought I was lucky, but now I think I’m very unlucky. He hates me, and Boston probably does too. There’s no way he’s going to believe anything I say. He’s going to need more than words, he’s going to need some kind of evidence, some kind of proof of Randy’s crime. I let him tie my hands behind my back without struggling, fearing that if I say anything, he might just knock me out with his gun rather than listen. Or worse.

When I’m tied up, Sydney tugs at my arm and starts to lead me away down into the forest. I look back over my shoulder, my heart throbbing, hoping to see some sign in the streets of Cairo that Eric and Pest are alive. I can’t see anything through the trees.

Sydney shoves me forward. “Come on, move it.” We move forward into the shadow of the forest. I turn away from Cairo. My mind races. I have to think, have to focus on my problem. Eric needs me.

“This isn’t what you think,” I say to Sydney as we move through the forest.

I feel his gun press into my back painfully. “Keep talking,” he says.

I don’t.

151

I’m hugging a tree, handcuffed. Sydney has disappeared, after giving me a particularly evil glare. I’m at the edge of a camp, looking down at my current worry: Doctor Bragg. Sydney handcuffed me next to him, to “make me watch what I had caused,” he told me, right before he disappeared in the woods toward Cairo. The doctor is in a horrible fever, his face drenched with sweat, his hair in wet tangles around his face. The Worm hit him fast, and now it’s raging through his body. He shivers and trembles and moans. I don’t feel sorry for him. No one should.

Other than Doctor Bragg laid out on a blanket, there’s a couple tents, a circle of stones around a sputtering camp fire, and the only thing that gives me some comfort, Tangerine, Randy’s horse. I imagine everyone else is in the town. I can hear the sporadic gunfire, the rolling thunder of the tank, the distant cries and shouts. When I look up, I see the dark smoke through the trees, proof that they’re setting Cairo on fire, razing it to the ground. I don’t know what Randy has told them, but I can’t imagine it’s anything good.

I have to get out of these handcuffs. Whenever I look up at the smoke, I imagine Eric and Pest caught in the fire, choking on smoke, knowing that if they leave, if they run out into the streets, they’ll be gunned down like the rest. I have to do something, I don’t know what, but something. Anything.

I remember suddenly what Norman once told me, talking about the difference between animals. “You see,” he told me, “a fox or a racoon will stay in a trap, but a wolf, a wolf will chew off its own leg to escape.” I don’t think I can chew off my own arm. But I look at my wrist, already a little bloody from pulling on the handcuffs, and I wish it would just split apart on its own. I’d rather go through life with one hand than die here. Because I can only imagine that Sydney has gone to get someone else who will probably bring Randy. Randy needs me dead.