The World Without Flags

There’s Chris, he thinks the little girl would be best. He calls her the “freshest”, like she’s meat. He’s the one who drives the cart. There’s Gary. He argues that the little girl can’t take much more. She might die on them and then where would they be? He was in the barn, the one with the one-armed leather jacket. There’s Tony and Harry and Jason: they all want the older woman. They call her “Mom,” laughing. There’s Bert, he wants me. He says that he wants to “break in the nigger girl.” He gives me a playful kick as he says it, but the malice in his voice is terrifying. And finally, there’s Bill. He’s the one with the scar, the leader, the one with the milky eye. He doesn’t let them have the little girl. Or me. He says I’m to be saved, says that I’m special, that a man he calls Dr. Bragg will want me, clean and untouched.

Such normal names. Boring names. Names you might give sons. Names for shopkeepers and farmers and husbands. Artemis used to say that all men are dogs. She said it playfully, almost happily. She was right, but I’m glad she’s gone. I’m happy as hell she never has to learn how right she was.

We are quiet while they discuss us, fearing that if we say or do anything, the attention will damn us. The three of us sit motionless, frozen, waiting, preparing ourselves for what might happen. My heart is hammering in me painfully. I feel like maybe it would have been better if I had killed the both of us back in the Homestead. Just shot Eric and then shot myself for doing it. Maybe it would have been the smartest thing to do.

In the end, Squint, that’s the name I give the one-eyed leader, Squint doesn’t let the others have any of us.

“We got to get them home alive,” Squint says. “You already had your fun.”

The others grumble a little, but it doesn’t come to more than that.

“Shit,” says Bert, who wanted me, “I’m too tired to fight with the little bitch anyhow.” But his eyes sparkle as they glance at me and I feel my heart race inside me.

They leave us to sleep.

The little girl crawls into the other woman’s arms. They don’t make a sound. They just fall asleep.

I’m up for a long while, thinking.

73

I try to keep close to the cart as we move, to watch Eric, to make sure he’s okay. He seems all right. He stands mostly, with his jaw open, his black tongue drying in the air. They give him water sometimes, laughing as he groans, lapping at the water. Sometimes they poke at him and the other girl, to see if they respond. They don’t, except for a moan, which makes them laugh. When they do this, I don’t even see them as human, but some fallen type of beast, something damned and without hope. They are entirely lost. I hate them with everything in me, a hatred so intense that I tremble and bite my tongue to keep from screaming it out. It’s not that I wouldn’t feel bad if I had to kill them, I want to kill them. I want to rid the earth of them. I want to wipe them clean from the earth, and imagine that they never existed.

But I have to hide all these emotions. I keep my eyes on the ground, mostly. I keep quiet. I have to be as invisible as I can, melt into the surroundings. If they take too much of an interest in me, I could die. I find myself cowering into the shadows. I try to say that I’m not afraid of them, but I am. I’m terrified of them. Every time one looks at me, I feel impossibly small, vulnerable, like a fly that can be easily crushed. I want to be braver than I am, to find some courage in me, but right now, all I feel is the bright sting of fear and coursing through it, thin but unbreakable, the need to survive.

74

They take the diseased girl out of the cart on the third day traveling south. They poke at her with sticks. The one named Gary gets excited and pokes at her face with a sharpened stick. My heart feels like it’s going to explode. I look around for Squint, usually he puts a stop to this kind of thing, but he’s gone and nowhere to be seen. Gary can’t resist himself and digs his stick deep inside one of her dark eyes. She flails one arm,  and staggers back, making a long, painful sound, something like a rusty door closing. Then she stands up like nothing happened, one eye socket dripping with black gore, white worms waving from the pit where her eye used to be, as if searching. Gary is smiling, not with pleasure or entertainment, but with something darker and much more disturbing. Even the others stop laughing at the sight, and they quietly lead her back to the cart like little boys who realize that the game went too far, but are too stubborn to admit they did anything wrong. When they push her into the cage, she falls and just lays there. Eric stands over her without noticing.

Later that night, while they are all sleeping, I find a loose nail in the cart. Quietly, carefully, I begin to work it back and forth, loosening it from the dry wood.

75

There’s a fight.

Squint catches Tony trying to bring the older woman into the woods.