Pest nods toward the fire, and I know what I have to do. I put the knife blade into the hottest part of the fire. Pest leans over and blows into the red hot coals to make them even hotter. It isn’t long before the end of the blade is blazing orange. I realize suddenly what I have to do and my stomach recoils. Still, I can’t show Pest how I feel. I don’t want him to know. I don’t want him to do it. No one touches Eric but me. No one.
I get up from the fire and walk to Eric. I kneel down in front of him and look at the festering wound. Although it was just a small puncture wound, it’s swollen to the size of a golf ball. The swollen wound is seeping grayish, stinking ooze like some nasty volcano. I swallow and try to steady myself. I close my eyes and take a deep breath.
“The knife is cooling,” Pest says.
“Water is wet,” I snap at him. “Anything else intelligent to say?”
“All I’m saying is that you have to hurry up,” he responds.
I growl at him, but since I know he’s right, I don’t say anything more. I look up at Eric, and, for a moment, I want to say something to him, but with Pest looking over my shoulder, I'm aware of how silly that would be, so I turn back to the suppurating volcano. I swallow and raise up the point of the red hot knife. Breathing out, I squint my eyes and then push the point into the wound. The knife hisses and the gray goo boils around the tip, giving off a smell more putrid than anything I’ve ever smelled. I hear Pest stumble away from us, gagging. But I can’t do that. I push the knife inside deeper, hoping to burn away the infection. There’s a sudden motion under Eric’s skin and then small wriggling maggots begin to boil up out of the wound, falling onto the leaves beneath him. I fight to keep my stomach down and twist the blade in the wound. More worms come wriggling out. I keep moving the knife until all the ooze is gone and no more worms come out. During the whole ordeal, Eric doesn’t even grunt.
When I stand up, Pest is beside me, looking down. “I’ve never seen anything so nasty in my life,” he breathes. “I don’t see how you could do that and not lose it.”
I want to say something smart, but instead I go stumbling away into the forest, clutching my knife. It’s a long time before I stop gagging and vomiting up nothing.
105
After three solid nights of sleep, I feel like a new person. Pest wants to stay in camp for one more day, but I tell him that each moment we wait, Eric gets closer to wasting away to nothing. Pest can’t argue with that, so we pack up camp and head south and west through the forest, Queen leading the way, ecstatic to be moving.
Our first job is to find boots for Eric. His wound is better now, not nearly as swollen, but it still doesn’t look great. We bandaged it up as best we could, but after a few minutes walking through the leaves and branches, the bandages just fall away. We have to find him boots. As for Eric, he doesn’t seem to be aware of his foot at all. He just trudges ahead as usual. But he looks gaunt and his skin has turned darker, from pale white to gray. It makes him look ghoulish and I can’t look at him very long without my heart breaking. Before we head out, Pest puts a rope around Eric. It’s good to have the rope again, it makes me feel like I have more control, but it also hurts. Not even Queen has a leash.
While we walk through the forest, I realize that I haven’t told Pest my story yet, what happened to us after we left him on the road. I begin to tell him because I feel like I owe it to him. I tell him about the barn and the rainbow trout I pulled from the brook. I tell him about how I mashed up food and mixed it with water to feed Eric. I tell him about the arrival of the gang and about what they did to the woman and the little girl. I tell him how one of them mutilated the other prisoner with the Worm, and I tell him about Squint and Doctor Bragg and how we escaped. I tell him everything except one thing: I don’t tell him about how I resuscitated Eric when I dragged him out of the river. I just say he puked up a lot of water and that I was lucky. I don’t tell him about breathing life back into his black mouth, about the taste of the Worm in my mouth, about how Eric vomited a jet of black, putrid liquid directly into my face. I don’t tell him I expected to die of the Worm. I don’t tell him it still might happen, I still might die. I might have the Worm. Truthfully, I don’t Understand why I don’t. I don’t know why I’m still here, still walking. I must have swallowed some of that horrid, black water. I must have the Worm.
Maybe I should tell him. But I can’t. I open my mouth to tell him. I want to tell him. He has a right to know. What if I crack? What if I’m one of those people who get the Worm and just lose their minds, run through the world, killing everything in my path? Pest should know, he should prepare himself for killing me. But I can’t do it. I can’t say the words. I don’t know if it’s because I fear what Pest might do or that he’ll treat me different or if it’s myself I’m scared of. I don’t want to hear the words. I can’t.
So I don’t tell him. I end the story where Queen found us, at the base of the tree, nearly dead from cold and hunger. During the whole story, Pest listens without commenting, without asking any questions. He keeps his head down, only nodding once in a while. When I’m finished, he lifts his head and stops. Looking at me with those intelligent, blue eyes, he says, “I think that’s the most I’ve ever heard you talk.”
I laugh, but it comes out like a bark. I don’t know why I act so differently around Pest. I’ve never made that sound in my life. I sigh and then shrug. “I don’t like talking,” I tell him.
“Water is wet and fire is hot,” Pest responds. “Anything else to say, Miss Obvious?”
I laugh at that, but this time, it’s more natural. I feel a tug at my leading rope, so I turn and follow Eric who had walked ahead while we paused. He hits his shoulder on a tree as he passes.
“Unh,” he says to it.
“Careful, Eric,” I say. I walk ahead and try to guide him on a straight path through the trees ahead.
I have to keep watching him. He could hurt himself. I feel bad for joking around with Pest when I should have been watching him. Pest walks a little ahead, and I can’t help but look at him sometimes, his curly hair, his careful movements through the forest. He certainly doesn’t move like someone his age. He moves like someone with a lot of experience. But I guess we all have that kind of experience now. I remind myself that he and the goon squad were alone out here for a long time before they found the Homestead. I know a lot less about Pest than I’ve realized. Still, it’s strange to watch him. I get that old spooky feeling I’ve always had with him. There’s more to him than I know. I tell myself to keep an eye on him.
There’s just something not right with that kid, I can feel it.
106
Late in the afternoon, we come across a town. Or settlement. Whatever you want to call it. We come out of the woods on a hill, and there it is below us, a few houses, a barn, and several badly-made shacks. There’s a ramshackle wall around the whole place and outside the wall, surrounding the whole place, is a big agricultural field. It just takes a moment to realize that something is wrong. It’s the sound that does it, or lack of it, to be exact. It’s completely silent. A settlement like this should be busy, bustling with people. There should be shouts and calls and ringing bells. But there’s nothing but silence. Not even the wind makes a sound as it passes through.
We crouch down and Pest grabs Queen. He hisses for her to stay while he rummages for his binoculars. Queen whines a little and then licks her jaws and sits reluctantly. I turn Eric toward a tree so he doesn’t wander off. Eric pushes his face into the bark of the tree.