“So you’re a king just because you infect people?” I ask bitterly.
“No,” he scoffs. “I thought you were smarter than that. Eric always used to think you were a genius.” Each time Eric’s name comes out of his mouth, I want to reach out between the bars and choke the life from his scraggly, chicken neck. But I could never get to him fast enough. He would scrabble away like a crab, laughing. Randy crosses his arms as he looks at me. “You have to think bigger than that,” he says. He waits for me to say something, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to give him the satisfaction. When he realizes I don’t plan on saying anything, Randy continues. “War brings opportunity to the ones smart enough not to fight in it.” I can see he’s just twitching to let me know what a genius he is, but I would rather die right now than give that to him, so I stay silent. “All I have to do is make one side think the other is using the Worm as a weapon,” he says. “Then I just have to convince them that me and the good Doctor Bragg have a solution to their problem. Then I’m the important one. Then I get to really live. I get the house with the carpet and the television and the oil furnace.”
“You did all this for a nice house?” My lips curl in disgust.
He laughs. “You don’t know,” he says finally. “You really don’t understand what it was like back then, before all of this.” He looks around him in disgust. “I refuse to live like an animal. I want to be human again.” His smile strikes me like a sledgehammer. I have things to say to him, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to talk to him or listen to him or see his face ever again. It’s one of the only good things I feel about dying, even in the terrible way I’m going to die. At least I want have to see or listen to Randy ever again.
I don’t say anything, but Randy seems to read the hatred I have for him on my face. His smile hardly changes though. Only in his eyes do I see a change, a kind of resignation, an ending. He’s coming to his point. “Well,” he says with a sense of finality. “I do feel bad for you, though, I really do. So I wanted to ask if I could do anything for you. Like a last request kind of thing.”
At first I want to spit in his face. I want to hurl insults at him. I want to say something so horrible, so cruel, so incisive, that it will stay with him until the day he dies. I will be like a ghost, haunting his life of luxury and comfort. But just as I begin to do that, my mind fills with flowers and a desire that feels more like a necessity. “You can do something for me,” I say before I even realize I’m talking. “When I’m dead, can you take my ashes back to the Homestead? Back to the garden?” My voice is small and timid as a mouse. It hurts to ask something of him, but I can’t stop myself. I want to go home.
Randy watches me for a second. He sniffs. “I was thinking of something more like a last meal or a note to give to someone.” I don’t say anything, can’t even look at him. “Thing is,” he continues, “by the time the Doctor is done with you, I’m not sure how much of you will be left.” I don’t respond. I don’t look up. I’ve said as much as I’m going to say to this pig. I hear him get up and then stand quietly for a second. “Yeah, all right,” he says finally. “I’ll see what I can do.” I think he’s waiting for a thank you. I feel him standing looking at me, but I won’t look up. It was hard enough asking the filthy murderer for something, let alone thanking him for it.
Wordlessly and silently, Randy leaves me alone finally. I hear the steel door shut and the echo reverberate through the warehouse. I make sure he’s gone a long time before I start to cry as quietly as I can, with my head buried deep in my arms.
137
Drained by tears, sleep begins to take me. Knowing that I might never awake, I struggle against on the edge of sleep, thinking desperately of Eric, of Pest, of all the people at the Homestead I will never see again. I think of the feeling of a warm breeze against my skin, the taste of sweet cider on a brisk autumn night, the softness of a bed, the fields glimmering with fireflies in the summer, the sound of the ckickadees in the forest. My heart is lacerated by the knowledge that I will never know it again. I will never awake. I fight to stay conscious, to meet my end fully aware, to feel the fever of the Worm take me, to even enjoy these, the last sensations that I will ever know. It is all precious, even the pain. But the last of the drug and the exhaustion and despair combine to push me into what might be my last night of dreaming, my last night of existing in this world. The soft obscurity of dreaming accepts me into the last hours of my life.
138
I’m walking down a road. A dark road. Fires flicker like candles at the tips of the pine trees. The forest is all in flames, but it somehow burns gently, even peacefully. I am overcome with thirst and the thought of water consumes me. Beside me, as usual, my father and mother walk, guiding me forward. We walk through a tunnel of smoke, flame, and fire, my mother humming, my father’s quiet presence comforting beside me.
At the end of the tunnel, Eric is waiting for me. His eyes are full of worms, all undulating toward me, but he stands the way he used to stand, strong and steady, aware and himself. When we get to him, he turns away and waves us to follow him. All four of us walk through the smoke and fire. Then we stop. All of them turn to me, their eyes dripping white worms that drop to their feet where they turn to wisps of smoke. They stare at me as if waiting.
“Think, Birdie,” Eric says, his eyes a wriggling mass of white.
“You can do it, honey,” my father tells me in his low voice.
I look down at my feet. Worms fall to the ground. I watch as they swirl into smoke until I am standing knee deep in a fog of smoke.
139
When I wake up, I blink for a moment in disbelief. I rub my eyes and check my hands. No blood. I feel my head. No fever. I blink, searching myself for signs of weakness, dizziness, nausea. Nothing! It’s been enough time. I swallowed a ball of worms the size of a peach! I should be taken by the Worm by now. I should be infected! Above me the skylight is bright with morning. My heart stops and then races ahead. I’m still alive! I’m still me! I leap to my feet and almost cry out in joy. Instead I make a little squeal of delight and jump in place.
The elation doesn’t last long. Maybe the fever will start a little later. Maybe I’ll be dead in just another few hours. I check my forehead again. Nothing. I feel fine. In truth, I feel great—alive , energetic, healthy. But I should be…gone. I should be wherever it is that Eric has vanished, deep within himself, if he’s there at all.
Think, Birdie.
I remember resuscitating Eric when he dived into the river, the black liquid he vomited into my mouth. How wasn’t I infected by that? How wasn’t I infected when Eric coughed up on me? After all the contact I’ve had with Eric, after all the times I’ve wiped him clean, shouldn’t some little drop have infected me? Some people are infected by the smallest scratch, the lightest cut by a ragged, infected fingernail. How have I avoided it all this time? How am I not infected?