Exit Kingdom (3 page)

What’re you doin? Abraham asks.

Nothin, Moses says, startled. Come on. Let’s
collect what there is to collect.

At the end of one runway is an overturned plane, its fuselage bent and cracked in the middle. There are bodies, long ago dried up, but they have been taken care of. Every one of
them has a gunshot wound in the skull. They hunch over, some still buckled in, even though they and their clothes have become indistinguishable from the upholstery
upon which they sit.

A breeze blows through the massive metal straw, and Moses can see the filaments of hair on these dead skulls whipping to and fro like blades of summer grass.

Bleak pastoral.

But the broken plane has been picked through before. Abraham finds some packets of ibuprofen in one of the seat-back pockets and a set of dried-up watercolour paints in the pink backpack of
one
of the little girl corpses.

What’re you gonna do with those? Moses asks.

I don’t know. Maybe take up paintin. Maybe it’s an artist’s eye I got.

You mean the one eye that ain’t beat shut from your debauchery?

But Abraham remains unfazed.

That’s the one, he says.

Emerging again from the fuselage onto the tarmac, Abraham runs a hand over his scruffy chin and considers
the massive terminal in the near distance.

I bet there are some treasures to be found in there, he says. All shut up tight away from prying hands other than ours.

Moses too looks at the terminal.

Look at all those windows, he says.

So? his brother asks.

We’re off the grid here. You notice any lights last night?

No.

Me neither.

Moses knows that where the population
is dense enough to be strategic, there are people barricaded in power stations, keeping segments of the power grid alive. There are even a few who have
managed to recapture and run refineries. Corpus Christi is one Moses has seen with his own eyes. Gas and electric. Infrastructure. Humanity clawing back some of what was taken from it.

But between those oases of civilization, there are vast
wastelands of dark – and it is in these places that the settlers have reverted to primal frontier living.

If you were gonna take up residence in this area, Moses continues, wouldn’t you want to do it in a stronghold that’s got unbreakable glass walls and all the light you need?

Oh, Abraham responds. You think there’s people in there? People who don’t care for the scavenging likes of us?

What do you think, little brother? You feelin watched?

Always, Abraham says. But usually by you. Anyway, if it ain’t been co-opted, that makes it prime co-opting for us.

So they find a way in, bashing in one of the maintenance doors and climbing their way up an unlit concrete stair until they come through a door and into the terminal building proper. Inside,
there are very few signs
of disturbance – almost as if the place were shut up and made relic before the chaos of the dead had a chance to crumble it.

The light coming through the tinted panes of glass all around is dimmed to a faint blue that’s almost like sweetness, and over everything is a thin coating of dust, the settling of the air
itself as though time makes all things – even breath – palpable and falling.

They pass a number of gates until they arrive in an open area that Moses recognizes as what used to be a food court. Above is a mezzanine level, but both escalators leading up to the balcony are
barricaded with heavy chairs, tables, vending machines, barbed wire and other debris.

What’s all that for? Abraham wonders.

Don’t know, Moses replies. Ain’t no other signs of skirmish. Could
be this was a last stand. But if it was, then where’s the bodies?

Et up?

You ever seen a slug eat someone so clean and mannerly they leave no trace? They ain’t the napkin-usin type.

So what’s all this then? Abraham asks again.

This time he’s answered not by his brother, but by a megaphone voice from the balcony above.

I’ll tell you what it is, the screeching voice says. It’s
a couple of addlepates tryin to elbow in on what’s mine.

The brothers cast their gazes upwards through the grimy light filtering in through the windows. But there’s nothing to be seen behind barricades of airport furniture. The
voice comes first from one place and then another – and the megaphone projects it loud, even though they could have heard the man easily without it.

We ain’t here to pillage, Moses calls out. We’ll work for food and shelter – if you have a mind for it. Otherwise we’ll take our leave.

You’ll take nothing! the voice says from above. Now it seems to be coming from the far left, and there are clanking sounds, as of bolts being drawn and chains unwound. You’ll take
nothing! I gave no permission!

What’s that sound? Abraham asks his
brother in a low voice, pointing to the left where, on their level, is a double set of maintenance doors. As they watch, the doors shudder slightly, and
then there’s a sound like rat’s feet on cold stone.

How many of you are there? Moses calls up to the man with the megaphone.

How many? the voice calls back. He wants to know how many! I been here three years. I got a big marble floor.
All I use it for is a calendar. You count the days, don’t you? That’s
how you know.

Do you think he’s the only one? Abraham says to Moses.

Could be.

More activity comes from behind the double doors, and another metallic sound, like a metal bar being shifted aside and clanging to the ground – like a barrier being drawn.

We better get, Abraham says.

What’s your name? Moses
calls up to the balcony.

My name? comes the voice. Then Moses can see some movement behind the furniture barricades. The small shape of a man dressed in colourful clothes moving back and forth in a frenetic way. He
catches glimpses of the man through the niches in the stacked furniture.

My name? the man continues. He wants to know my name now. If you guess it right I’ll let you live.

Let us live? Abraham calls up. Man, you best learn some manners or you’re gonna—

We’ll just leave, Moses calls up, not liking the sound of what’s behind that door. We’re leaving now.

He moves in the direction of the corridor down which they originally came. But before they get there, a demented laugh comes from above, and a steel gate comes smashing down over their only exit
from
the food court. Abraham runs to lift it, but the gate is solid.

All right, listen, Moses calls up to the shape moving back and forth above them. We ain’t here to cause any fuss. We’ll just go peaceful.

Now the voice comes from directly above, in the middle of the balcony.

It’s the work of months behind those doors, the man says. Rounding them up, one at a time. Using myself as bait.
Months of work. And when you two are dead – well, then, the work
starts all over. But that’s just the nature of time, ain’t it? It goes on ahead, and we follow. Now guess! Guess my name!

Jesus Christ, Abraham says.

No, it ain’t Jesus Christ, says the man.

Then the doors open. There is no drama, no bursting. They sway open slowly, inch at a time, because what’s behind them is in no
hurry. Instinct can afford to move slow, because it moves
with a surety of purpose foreign to most things.

Slugs. A lot of them. They push through the door, stumbling over each other. The first few fall to the ground and climb back to their feet slowly. The ones behind begin to lumber in the
direction of the brothers.

Okay, Abraham calls upwards. Okay. How about James? Robert? Michael?
Frank? Richard?

Abe, get straight, Moses says and brings a pistol out from his satchel.

Goddamnit, Abraham says. How many of em do you reckon?

Fifteen, twenty. Don’t shoot wild, we’re low on ammo.

Abraham drops his satchel on the ground and unzips it. From it he pulls a blunted shotgun, the barrel sawn off just beyond the stock.

The first few they take out with quick head shots
to thin the herd. Then Abraham circles around the side of the group and begins tossing obstacles in their way – tables and light aluminium
chairs, artificial plants in clay pots, light-weight kiosks. Anything that will stumble them up and make them easier to deal with one at a time. As he does this, Abraham continues to cry derision
upwards to the man on the balcony.

We’re gonna get you,
you asshole. Billy, Fred, Simon, Lee, Gary, Paul, Albert, Roger, Carl, Michael.

You already said Michael, the man above says through squealing laughter.

Prick.

Abraham grapples with one slug that’s got behind him somehow. The dead man is dressed in grey overalls with his name embroidered on them. He has a stringy beard and milky eyes – and
when Abraham turns, the slug’s mouth is
already open and ready to bite. Abraham takes aim with the shotgun and pulls the trigger, but he has miscounted the shells and realizes he’s out.
Stumbling back against a metal counter, he reaches behind him to a canister filled with plastic utensils, grabs a handful of plastic knives and shoves them into the dead man’s open maw. Then
he uses the palm of his other hand to ram the knives in deep,
where they lodge with thick wetness in the back of the slug’s throat.

Unable to bite down, the slug claws at Abraham with his useless cold hands, and Abraham pushes him backwards, sending him tumbling along the floor.

On the other side of the food court, Moses has taken an iron adze from his satchel and backed himself against the metal gate. There are four slugs shambling towards him.
He looks in their eyes.
Humans made animal. He, too, has been animal on the earth. He feels no hatred towards these things, nor pity neither. They – the slugs and Moses himself – are objects in contention for
space. That is all. And which object ultimately holds sway, he knows, is more a matter of nature’s hazard and caprice than the will of any bearded Overseer with a mission for humankind.

Still and all, there’s got to be an order. There’s got to be.

All right, he says. All right.

He rushes forwards, raises the adze and, putting all his weight behind the swing, buries the curved blade of the instrument in the skull of one of the slugs. It is a woman, and her head hinges
apart as though made to do so. Then Moses wrenches the adze out of her head and, in the same motion,
swings it across the face of the next slug, whose jaw shatters. Fragments of teeth and bone fall
to the cold tile floor like a smattering of summer hail. Another woman already has her teeth on Moses’ forearm, but he wears a leather jacket for just such a reason, and she has trouble
gaining purchase. Instead, she leaves a long smear of rancid drool on his sleeve. He pushes her back and cleaves
the side of her skull with the adze. Instantly, the life goes out of her, and she
collapses to the ground.

Where does it go? Moses wonders. All that motion, all that force. It must be released, invisible, into the world. If you could only catch it – then we would be as a civilization again
instead of lost, lonely children wandering a wreckage of man.

He takes care of the other two
slugs, first an old man with spectacles and then the one without teeth.

There is no grace in his motions, he knows. No elegance. It is not a dance. It is a labour, a hewing of wood, a digging of stone. He is a labourer, has always been. His hands have no delicacy.
They are rough from use, prone to clumsiness, but also forceful. There are sniper hands and shotgun hands, and his are shotgun
hands. If you give them an approximate mark, they are bound to do big
and unsubtle damage.

Across the way, he sees his brother Abraham rising from a pile of inanimate corpses. They have survived again – and it is no victory.

There is one remaining slug, a man in overalls, stumbling to and fro, choking on a fistful of plastic knives jammed into the back of his throat. As Moses watches,
Abraham moves slowly, as though
exhausted, to where the last slug stands. With a thoughtfully tilted head, Abraham considers the dead man for an extended space of seconds, pushing aside the slug’s grasping fingers. Then he
seems to glance around him, searching for a tool to finish the job.

Moses steps over the pile of slugs before him and walks to where his brother is. He reaches out and
offers Abraham the adze. His brother takes it, looks wearily once more at the slug with the
mouthful of plastic, and then uses the adze to get shut of the business.

Then the world comes back, the sound of their own deafening heartbeats fading into the background. And above them they hear the cackle of the man.

Couple of gladiators, ain’t they? his voice says, half through the megaphone
and half not as he is distracted from its use. It’s my own personal coliseum. You could get to be a rich
man in the wasteland, couldn’t you? Games of chance – you ante up your life. So it goes, ain’t it?

That way, Moses says to his brother, pointing to the collection of debris piled on the escalator to the mezzanine. Abraham goes first, delicately beginning the climb upwards, balancing against
the shifting objects on the escalator. It is a slow climb, one they could not have accomplished with a passel of the dead behind them. But they will make it.

Hey, says the little man on the balcony. Hey! It is not permitted! You ain’t guessed my name yet!

They ignore him and continue to climb. Moses, a heavy bull of a man, makes a misstep and sends a deckful of chairs crashing down below,
and for a second the whole assemblage threatens to
collapse beneath them. But it holds, and they continue up. When Abraham gets to the top, he reaches a hand for his brother and helps him the rest of the way.

Then they see the man himself. He is dressed like a harlequin in an outfit of patches sewn together from a hundred different items of clothing. It is a wonder to behold because of its
purposeless grandeur. There are clothes everywhere – the world full of clothes to be had whole and for free to anyone who wants to claim them. There is no need to construct new ones –
sewing a science for times of luxury that are long past. But here, on this man, is an outfit of loving craftsmanship – a bricolage of textiles in a spectrum of colours. He wears a hat, too,
stitched together
in the same way – a triangular cap with a brim that comes to a point in front and makes him look like a degraded Robin Hood.