The World Without Flags

Miraculously, Pest wakes up the next morning without a fever. I expected the Worm to have dug into him by then, but he looks fine. Maybe a little pale from all the blood he lost, but otherwise, he’s healthy. He gets up and actually helps me make breakfast, using some of the last of the oatmeal he brought with him from the Homestead. He doesn’t say much, only thanks me for bandaging his arm. He says he wants to get going. He doesn’t want to stay there any longer. I think we both know what’s going to happen and we don’t want to talk about it.

While I try to feed Eric some oatmeal soup, I steal glances over at Pest. He’s patting a wildly happy Queen who can hardly keep from covering his face with dog slurp. I study him while he packs up all our stuff in his backpack. He looks like he’s always looked. A round, white face, topped by a mop of curly black hair. His blue eyes shine and sparkle. There’s darkness under his eyes, but he’s the same Pest as usual. Except he’s not. I search over his features and I think I see something under them that I hadn’t noticed before. Something in the way he moves, so deliberate, so…experienced. It’s the way an adult moves. It’s always been spooky to me.

“Unh,” says Eric. I’ve been so occupied with Pest that I hadn’t been paying attention. Eric’s black tongue is wriggling, trying to get to the oatmeal soup I’m just barely dribbling out of the aluminum mug.

“Oh,” I say to him. “Sorry, Eric.” I try not to think of Pest for a minute and concentrate on Eric. He’s looking a little better, not so gaunt as before, or, I don’t know, waterlogged. I steady him with a hand on his chest and then carefully pour the oatmeal into his mouth. I’m getting better at it, but most of it still falls all over him. His black tongue writhes toward the mug, and I cringe as I watch. “Gross, Eric,” I groan as he pushes his head up toward the mug.

“Unh,” he says, straining upward. “Unh.”

I’m glad when he finishes, so I can stand up and move away from him. Eric continues to search for more, his black tongue wriggling.

“Okay,” I tell him. “There’s no more.”

While he’s occupied with searching for more water, I take advantage of it by pulling a pair of socks over his red feet and then the new boots. As I lace them up, I look over to Pest who’s sitting down on a log not far away, looking away into the forest. As I finish putting on the boots, I look down at them. They fit him well. But I think of what a terrible price we paid for them. It makes me want to cry. It makes me want to tell Pest something, to thank him, to hold him. But when I look over to him, I’m just so confused, I don’t know what to say. I want to ask him about what I saw in his wallet, but I can’t. Not while he’s like this. Not while he’s only got a few more hours before the Worm gets him. It’s precious time. It’s his time, and I don’t want to disturb it. It’s probably the last time he’ll ever have.

I pull Eric to his feet. Eric stands straight at first and then leans forward. His arms swing senselessly down, like they’re filled with water. Eric looks like someone who’s about ready to pick up something. He clomps forward like this for two steps before I stop him.

“Stand up straight,” I tell him, trying to maneuver him. He stands up straight again, but then sags forward, but not all the way, like he’s searching for something on the ground.

“What’s wrong with him?” Pest asks, approaching us.

“Nothing,” I answer. I shrug. “He just does what he does.”

Pest looks at him and frowns. I try to read what he’s thinking, what he’s feeling, but I can’t. I wonder if he’s thinking about the Worm inside him now, how in just a few days, he could be just as Eric is now. Or he could be dead. That’s what I’d be thinking. But as much as I stare at Pest’s face as he looks up at Eric, I don’t have the first clue of what’s going on in there.

“Let’s get going,” he says finally.

We continue south, making a wide circle around the town. Neither of us mention what happened there. We just keep walking through the forest. I try to hide the glances I keep giving to Pest, waiting for signs of blood in his eyes, the flush redness in his face that would mark a fever, the sudden clumsiness in the limbs that would suggest the Worm has him. For hours we walk and I see nothing. But my heart is breaking slowly, at this walking pace through the forest, as Pest marks out the last hours of his life.

111

I keep thinking as we walk: what will be my last words to him?