Exit Kingdom (17 page)

At first the others don’t seem to notice – then, as they pass the first few vehicles of the
caravan, some of Fletcher’s men begin calling out. By the time they reach the front
of the caravan, guns are unsheathed and aim is being taken – and Moses can see Fletcher himself in the rearview mirror – standing there atop the truck, throwing in fury the half-empty
bottle of wine so that it spins end over end through the air and spills its contents onto the snow, staining the earth with a
burgundy that looks like day-old blood.

Some potshots are fired, one of them thunking into the plastic of the bumper – but they are too far gone for an effective hit.

Now what? says the Vestal.

Now we outrun em, Moses says. They’re slow, but we’ve got a tail we got to stay ahead of. Besides, Abe’s waitin on me. Let’s get this business finished for once and
all.

They drive five hours straight, though the roads are icy and slow going. They pass places with names such as Mountain Village, Sawpit and Loghill. The road begins to decline,
and they find themselves coasting down out of the mountains where the snow diminishes and finally disappears altogether. In a city called Montrose, they veer off onto a highway going east. It is
good driving for a while,
and Moses sees no sign of the caravan behind them.

Maybe they gave up, says the Vestal. I can’t be worth all this.

Maybe they gave up, but I do doubt it. The more I take you away, the more of a holy grail you get to be to Fletcher. There’s not much can come between a man and his grail –
particularly not reason.

A what?

Grail. It’s a cup.

A cup?

Not a cup. A goblet I guess.
The one Jesus drank out of.

Jesus drank out of a cup?

That surprises you?

I don’t know. I guess I always pictured him drinking out of his hands like you do at a river or something.

Well, he drank out of a cup at least once. And there for a while everyone was lookin for it.

When? When were they looking for it?

I don’t know. The time of the knights.

Did they find it?

He considers this.

You know something, I don’t remember that part. Maybe they did and maybe they didn’t. Anyway, it was the looking for it that counted.

You know a lot.

He looks at her to see if she is making fun of him, but she doesn’t seem to be.

I don’t really, he says. It was just different when I was growing up. You had time to learn a lot of things that didn’t matter much.

For a while they find themselves driving parallel to a large, elongated reservoir. There are no signs of life on either of its shores – just pale-brown hills under the rutted sky. They
come to a place where the road turns and crosses a two-lane bridge over the reservoir to the north shore, but there is a pile of burned-out cars blocking the route.

Is that where we need to go? asks the
Vestal.

Yup.

Can we go around another way?

We maybe could. But it’d be a long way out of our way, and I don’t like the risk of it.

Can we move the cars?

He looks at her.

Then what? she says.

We walk across. I reckon we can find another car on the other side. Plus it’ll slow Fletcher down considerable. Those that move in bulk don’t do so good with obstacles.

So they
take their things and put them in duffel bags. Then they say goodbye to the car and run it down the slope into the reservoir to confound Fletcher’s trackers for a little while at
least. They watch the car sink, as though it were a symbol of something important.

Then Moses climbs up on the parapet of the bridge and helps the Vestal up behind him. They walk on the parapet until they are beyond
the pile of cars, then they hop down onto the concrete and
follow the broken and faded centreline in, she on one side and he on the other.

Halfway across, they find three dried-up corpses that begin to rise when they hear footsteps. As the slugs pull themselves up, Moses can see their brittle white bones cracking from misuse under
their loose skin. There is a clicking coming from their
throats, as though their tongues and gullets had shrivelled up and speech were now a thing of bone and grit.

Stay back, Moses says to the Vestal Amata as he drops the duffel and pulls from it a pistol.

Sure, I’ll stay back.

The Vestal walks casually to the side of the bridge and hoists herself up to sit dangle-footed on the parapet. Moses has forgotten, for a moment, that the slugs
pose no threat to her, but he is
reminded by the complete lack of alarm in her expression – as though she were taking her seat for a weakly acted matinee performance.

As the three slugs drag their feet in his direction, he takes aim and fires. The first shot goes wide. The second is too low, hitting one of the slugs in the chest, and the third blasts off an
ear. On the fourth shot, the
slug on the right drops back down to the ground. The other two continue forwards. Moses takes aim again.

I see you ain’t a sharpshooter, says the Vestal from her seat. She breaks in half a twig she’s been carrying and uses it to clean her teeth while she watches.

It takes him five shots to bring down the second one.

You’re burnin through our ammo, says the Vestal. Well, at least it’ll
make a lighter load for us to tote.

When he fires the pistol at the third and hears the click, he is reminded that he needs to reload. He reaches down to do so, but the slug is only a few paces away now – slow in movement
but undeviating in purpose, more machine than animal, its rusty, ossified mechanics grinding away with click and bristle, enslaved to its single appetite.

Before Moses
realizes, the dead man’s hands are on him, his sandy, brittle fingers pawing at Moses’ jacket. Moses drops the gun – it’s too late now to load it. Instead,
he takes the creature by the neck with both hands to keep the deadly snapping jaw away from him. The dead man has little strength left in his body, so Moses can hold him, like a snake wrangler, out
of danger, but there is little else he
can do without releasing the slug.

He is still undecided about his next move when the slug’s face explodes before him, splashing his own face with moist, papery gore. He can also hear the bullet whistle by his ear, and when
he drops the dead man to the ground he can see the Vestal standing behind him, her pistol still aimed at where the slug’s head was a moment before.

Goddamnit, he
says to her. You could of killed me.

She looks at the pistol as though confused by its purpose.

I didn’t think it would go all the way through him, she says. Did I get you?

He grabs the gun away from her, his heart trilling in anger.

Naw, you didn’t
get
me. Though it ain’t for want of tryin. You’re a goddamn menace.

Well, pardon me for tryin to come to your rescue. It seemed
like you were in some peril – I ain’t ever seen so many bullets flyin wild.

Moses stuffs the guns back in the duffel and swings it over his shoulder. He does not want to look at her. She is a reckless thing, a shameful thing.

You know something? he says. I got a theory on you, and it’s a goddamn miserable one.

A theory! I bet nobody ever mistook you for a philosopher.

I got a theory
that maybe you wore out your soul whorin and deceivin. Maybe some part of you’s already dead – which is why they don’t take you.

The moment is stricken by silence. A breeze blows cold and harsh across the bridge. Moses moves his feet against the sandy tarmac but makes no show to walk away. It would seem that there are no
directions leading away from this moment.

Jesus, says the Vestal
quietly. That’s an awful theory.

I told you it was, says Moses almost in a whisper.

Is that really what you think?

He shifts his feet against the tarmac again. He would walk away from everything in the world if he could. A wandering man.

Hey, look, he says, straining a note of apology. I’m shook up. You did me a service here. I ain’t the shooter of the family.

They walk on
in silence to the opposite side of the bridge where Moses climbs down to the water’s edge and washes the blood out of his hair and beard.

The Vestal sits by him, soaking her feet in the cool water.

So you never really learned how to shoot, huh? she asks.

He holds up his right hand, palm downward, to show her. It is a thick, calloused paw, and it trembles as if in withdrawal from punching.

I ain’t so steady, he says. I guess I’m more of a cudgel man.

I would say so.

They walk, and they examine the cars abandoned on the road. It is more difficult than Moses had thought to find an operational vehicle. The tyres are blown out from the heat,
the gas burned out of the tanks, the engines rusted still. The weather in this area is harsh. It is easier in the south,
where he is from.

They walk all day and find no vehicle. They stay on the road that follows the reservoir’s north bank, and in a few hours they are beyond its tip where the barren dirt plains give way to
patches of pasture and farmland. Up ahead in the distance, Moses points to some buildings – but the sun is lowering on the horizon.

It’s a town, he says. Gunnison. We’ve been seein the
signs. We can probably find a car there, but it ain’t advisable to approach a strange town after dark. You like to have
your eyes open for whatever’s comin your way.

So they find an abandoned farmhouse where they can stay the night. They gather wood and start a fire in the fireplace, and there are some cans of chili left behind in the cupboards, so they heat
those and put them into ceramic
bowls and eat with spoons. They sit next to each other on the couch and watch the fire and wait for their eyes to become heavy with sleep.

This is nice, says the Vestal Amata, ain’t it? It’s like we’ve set up housekeeping. Like we’re a newly-wed prairie couple or something.

Moses grunts non-committally.

They are quiet. They wait. Then the Vestal speaks again.

You worried about
your brother?

He’ll last it, Moses says. He’s hard like a tree root.

He is at that. You two are very different. He ain’t the most decent man in the world. I guess you know that. But you protect him.

I’m his brother, Moses says. I ain’t much of anything in this world – but one thing I am is Abraham Todd’s brother. For good or poor.

For a while Moses says nothing else, and it seems
as though the conversation will end there. Then he breathes in deep, still gazing into the fire, and speaks again.

He could of turned out different given different circumstances. I guess we all could have. But I’m talking about before. Before the slugs even.

You must of seen him grow up, says the Vestal.

I did and I didn’t.

You got a lot of years between you.

We sure enough
do, Moses confirms and stares deeply into the fire as though his entire history were contained in the flames. We got different mothers. My father, I didn’t know him. He left
before I was born. I got raised up by my mother. I knew
of
him, though, my pa. You heard about him all around the county. There wasn’t any honour or nobility to him. He was just your
run-of-the-mill degenerate. He never
had much to say to me, nor I to him. When I was fifteen a young girl died givin birth to a baby boy she claimed was his. She was fourteen years of age, that
girl. Her boy was Abraham.

He pauses, and for a while nothing is said. There is a pop in the fireplace, and an ember leaps out and comes to rest on the floor before them. It glows, the little burning punk, and then smokes
itself out.

Your father raised him? the Vestal asks.

Naw, Moses says. He never admitted Abraham was his. Wouldn’t submit to a test. Abraham had it hard. He was raised by the state. Foster homes and institutions. There wasn’t nothing I
could do – I was just a teenager. But I listened around about him. I always knew where he was. He had it hard, Abe did. Just a little scrawny twig of a boy, and nobody
on his side.

He pauses again and looks out the window into the distant dark, and he wonders if maybe the boy is still out there somewhere in the reachable past.

When everything went sour, he goes on, my ma got taken early. I was twenty years of age by then, wanderin here and there. I wasn’t there to protect her. By the time I got back to my
hometown, she was already gone. There weren’t
much left at all, just a bunch of people all panicking themselves to death in the hospital. I found Abe there, took him with me. No one stopped
me. No one was stoppin anybody at that time.

Moses breathes deep.

Anyhow, he says, whatever took him, whatever malignancy’s got him in its teeth, he was already took when I collected him at five years old.

The fire snaps again and fizzes.
It is guttering down now, glowing red like a beating heart that refuses to stop.

Say, he says and turns to her where she sits next to him on the couch. Back there. The thing I said about you – your soul.

Forget it, she says. She leans her head on the back of the couch and gazes at him. Her eyes sparkle like embers popped from the fire.

Mose, she goes on. Did you ever have a woman?
You know, a real woman of your own? A wife?

He opens his mouth to respond and then closes it again, as though something is short-circuiting in him. He opens his mouth again, and this time the words come out.

A wife, he says. Yeah, a wife. And a kid, too. A daughter. I was supposed to meet em in Jacksonville. The caravan they were in, it never showed. Could be they’re still out there, but
I
reckon not.

He feels something in his throat, his chest. He coughs and bites down hard as though to keep something from erupting inside him.

I would of took care of them, he says, raising his finger and pointing it hard at the Vestal, angry even. I would of killed anything – anything to come near them with malign intent. I
would of – I would of been a good – I swear I would of killed—

His words stumble over each other, and he has no control of them any more. They are spilling out of him, and he is embarrassed. But then the Vestal stops him, perhaps in an act of glorious pity
– rises suddenly and climbs onto his lap and closes his mouth with her own so that the words stop coming. Because it is the words that are most treacherous, the words that spread like ripe
contagion,
the utterance that makes things true – calamitously and inexorably true.