The World Without Flags

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

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

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

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

45

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

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

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

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

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