The World Without Flags

At some point, I can’t vomit any longer, and the cramps in my stomach lessen.

“Unh,” Eric says as he sits up, his eyes turned up toward the sky.

The sound makes me laugh out loud. Suddenly I’m on my knees in the water, weeping, and looking at him. I’m crying and laughing at the same time. From his eyes, long tendrils of white Worms are waving up toward the sun, like a host of angels, praying.

92

It’s not a cave. Not really. It’s just that the granite stretches over us a little, giving us a little protection from the rain, from the wind, but most importantly, from eyes. I dragged us here yesterday, and I bent over some trees and wove some branches together so that it’s difficult to see us. Then I dug down at the base of the rock. That’s where we are, sitting in a muddy, cold pit under a rock, waiting. Waiting for me to die.

I sit shivering in the pit. There’s no way I didn’t get the Worm, I think. I keep checking my head for a fever. I can’t tell. Every time I cough, I think it’s coming. Every time I tremble from the cold, I think it’s the beginning of the sickness that will kill me. I think sometimes I can feel the Worms in my stomach, writhing, multiplying, sending its offspring to my brain where they will sink their hooks into me. Will I just die of the fever or will I turn into something like Eric? Or will it be much worse? Will I crack and run crazy through the forests, killing everything in my path, and passing on the disease?

Eric is next to me, quiet. I look at him and wonder what it feels like to have the Worms in your eyes. I wonder what it feels like to be what he is. Is he in there? Is he distant, like he’s watching himself for a long way off? Or is he gone completely? What will happen to me when it comes? What will I become?

Where will I be?

I’m hungry, but I don’t want to eat. I think now I’m just feeding Worms. When I think this, my appetite vanishes. But it always comes back, more vicious than before.

I put my head on Eric’s shoulder. I’m not afraid of touching him anymore. I’m not afraid of his smell. I’ve tasted it now. It doesn’t have the same power over me as before. Soon I will smell like that. What a pair we’ll be. Out here in the forest, sitting under this rock, wasting away to skeletons. But it’s better that we go together. I couldn’t watch him go, I couldn’t do that. I had my chance to live and I chose him. I chose Eric. I will always choose him.

Although I get close to Eric, there’s no real heat in his body. Since he came from the water, he seems better somehow, clearer. He doesn’t drool as much and his breathing is clean and easy. I haven’t replaced the bandages on his eyes, although I thought about ripping up a part of his shirt. What’s the use? When I see the waving Worms in the corners of his eyes, I’m not as disgusted as I was before. That’s what I am going to become. That’s going to be me. There’s nothing I can do about it. The Worms have lost their power to disgust or frighten me. I feel like I’m ready for the end.

I’m so tired. So tired.

I get closer to Eric and put an arm around him. I touch him as I haven’t really touched him since he got sick. I miss him. I reach up and kiss his frigid cheek.

“I love you, Eric,” I whisper. I’ve never really said that to him. I comb his hair back with my fingers. “I’m not going to leave you. We’re just going to wait together.”

“Unh,” he says, and I smile through some tears. He looks better, almost like the Eric I knew. His face is lean and so pale, it’s almost blue, but I see him. I see the man who has taken care of me my whole life, who has made me what I am.

I put my head on his shoulder and cry.

I have a feeling that if I fall asleep, the fever will come, and the Worm will invade me completely, and I will never wake up again. I’ll just slip away and be wherever it is I go.

But I close my eyes anyway.

I’m ready.

93

I wake up shivering. My teeth are clattering together so violently, I’m afraid of biting my tongue. I get up and jump up and down, trying to warm myself, but I’ve been sleeping in a muddy hole, and my body is resistant. The cold is like a stiff, painful weight all over my body. I put a hand to my head to check for a fever, but I can’t tell, my hands are too numb from the cold. But I’m still alive, I’m still here. It’s been a full day. A day and a half, I think, looking up at the sun through the bare branches of the trees. I should be dead. Gone.

Unless I’m lucky. Unless somehow I didn’t get the Worm.

I look down at Eric. He’s sitting in the mud, his arms at his side. He reminds me of a picture I saw in one of the history books that Eric made me read, a solider dead in the trenches of the first World War, dead in the mud, with his hands in the cold water. I can’t stand the idea and I climb back into the muddy hole and pull at Eric.

“Unh,” he moans.

“Get up now,” I tell him. “We have to move.”

“Unh,” he says. He stands then. For some reason, he rises onto his tip toes like a ballet dancer in a painting and stands there stiffly.