Hope and Undead Elvis (13 page)

Hope wiped her eyes and nodded. Since Mercy couldn't cry, Hope would cry for her. "Who was your companion, Mercy?"

"Her name was J-Justice. We were… traveling together."

"I understand." Hope stepped over to stand beside the burned woman. "I'm going to set you free now."

"Thank you. I… I love you." Mercy choked out the words. Despite her profession to not feel any pain, Hope could tell the woman was in agony. She raised the pistol up and placed it underneath Mercy's chin. Before she gave herself any more time to think it over, she pulled the trigger.

Mercy's skull and the tissue within it muffled the gun's report, but the black birds squawked and flew away nevertheless. The woman slumped forward, her life extinguished at last.

The pistol dropped from Hope's nerveless fingers. It made a small puff of ash where it hit the ground.

Hope collapsed, sobbing. "It's me, isn't it?"

"What is?" Undead Elvis knelt beside her and touched her cheek with an intimate tenderness.

"All these people, they're all dying because of me. The Shepherds, Gabe, Asher, and now Mercy and Justice."

"Justice was already dead when you got here." Undead Elvis stroked her face as if he could caress away her tears.

"And I killed Mercy myself. Oh God, Elvis, I never believed. I never believed in God or Jesus or any of that crap and look at me. Look at me now." She raised her eyes and saw her reflection in his sunglasses. Her face was streaked black like the horrible monstrosity that she felt she'd become. "I'm the Angel of Death. Everywhere I go, I bring death to those who look upon me. The world has ended, and I'm left behind to mop up the remainder."

"You don't believe that, do you?"

"
I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds
." Hope's voice was bitter. "Everyone, everything around me dies. Even you, Elvis. You're a goddamn walking dead man. What am I doing? What did I do wrong?"

She jumped up and ran to the top of a hill. Ash clouded in her wake like the eddies behind a boat. She raised her fists and screamed at the sky. "Why me? What did I do? Did I offend you, somehow? Is this some kind of lesson? I'm sorry. God, I'm sorry for everything I ever did wrong. I'm sorry for never going to church, and for cussing, and for being a fucking stripper. I'm sorry for my mistakes, and I'm sorry for never believing." She fell to her knees, gasping for breath. Her throat stung from the smoky air and her lungs ached. She'd have killed for a cigarette.

Of course she would; she was the Angel of Death. Such a callous, simple turn of phrase, and yet now it meant something new that it never had for her before. It struck her as funny, and her gasps turned into odd, braying laughter. It was a joke, all a joke that someone was playing on her.

Well, she knew how to deal with that.

Still laughing, she ran back down the hill, past Undead Elvis, and picked up the Shepherds' pistol. The barrel was still warm from killing Mercy. That pun set her off into fresh peals of amusement. She raised the gun underneath her own chin, looked up, and shouted, "Is this what you want? Is this what you want me to do? Because I will. I'll fucking do it. I'll blow my brains out right here and you can find someone else to do your goddamn dirty work and bear your goddamn baby!"

Undead Elvis said, "Please, don't."

Chapter Fourteen

Hope and the Righteous Flame

"Please don't pull that trigger, Li'l lady," said Undead Elvis. He stood well away from Hope.

"Why not?" she asked in a tone full of bitterness and anger. "What's one more body among the ashes? This—" She motioned with her free hand out at the burned and ruined landscape. "This fire may as well have burned up the whole world. Why bother saving it when everyone is dead?"

"Not everyone is dead. You're not."

"I should be, don't you see? It's not right that I lived when everyone else didn't. I don't even know if this is real. I might be dreaming. Maybe I pull this trigger, I wake up."

Undead Elvis took a step toward her.

"Don't! I swear to God I'll do it and leave you all alone here. You stay the fuck away from me, Elvis!"

Undead Elvis hesitated, and then took off his sunglasses for the first time since Hope had first met him. His eyes were as black and shiny as vinyl records, and yet they were beautiful enough to make Hope's breath catch in her throat. "I don't know a lot of things, Li'l lady. I'm just a simple southern boy. But I do know you belong here, and for you to kill yourself would be a great sin."

"I don't believe in that stuff."

"You don't have to. We can't be told what to believe. We gotta arrive at those conclusions on our own or else they're false and shallow."

"What do you believe, Elvis? If I pull this trigger, does my soul go to hell? Or are we already in hell and this is my punishment for a lifetime of sin?"

"If you kill yourself, your life ends, and for you, the world as well. Perhaps it does for everyone else too. Perhaps not." He raised his hands in a gesture of conciliation. "All I know is that I'm awful fond of you, and I'd miss you terrible if you died."

His words stung her with their honesty. As bad as she felt, she'd feel worse if she died knowing she'd hurt this strange, undead music icon that had somehow found his way into her life. She imagined what it would be like to pull that trigger anyway, to feel that misshapen lump of lead tear through her brain in the instant before the shock killed her. She wondered if it would hurt. Would her soul, if there was such a thing, leave her body with only a memory of pain to take with it?

So much pain, everywhere in the world, and it felt like all of it had centered upon her. If only she could find some respite, some place where the pain would fear to tread. She remembered back in high school, when they'd all had to read
Hamlet
. Most of the story she'd long since forgotten, but she still remembered his soliloquy. He had also desired to kill himself, but the fear of a disquieted soul had stayed his hand.

Hope didn't believe in souls any more than she believed in God or anything else. But she was afraid to die, afraid to pull that trigger.

Afraid it wouldn't end.

She lowered the Shepherds' pistol. "All right, for now."

"It makes me happy to hear that, Li'l lady."

She tucked the pistol away. The simple act of letting go of the gun helped her to calm her raging emotions. She would have to redirect them into something positive. "Come on then. I promised myself I wouldn't leave them like this. Help me get them down and dug under before I chicken out."

Hope was glad to have Undead Elvis's tireless help. He forced open the binders holding Mercy and Justice to the crosses and then caught the bodies as Hope loosened the chains. After a few minutes, the bodies lay side by side on the barren, ashy ground between the crosses. Overcoming her revulsion, Hope took Mercy's charred fingers and intertwined them with Justice's.

"Are you sure you want to do that?" Undead Elvis brushed ashes away from his pearly jumpsuit.

"Yes," said Hope. "Maybe they were lovers, or friends, or just traveling the same way. But they suffered together and I want anyone who finds this ten thousand years from now to know that someone treated them with respect."

They used the stones which had spelled out
SINNERS WILL PERISH
to cover the bodies in a simple cairn. Hope took the chains which had bound the victims and shaped them into an M and J, draped across the pile of stones.

She addressed the grave. "That's the best memorial I can do for you. I wish I could do more. I won't forget you, Mercy. I wish I'd known you, Justice, but I'm sure you're both in a better place now." She turned to Undead Elvis. "Sun's going to go down soon. We'd better get back to the car before someone finds it and decides it would be better if they burned it up."

"You think whoever did this will come back?"

"No," said Hope. "Once they've burned something down, there's no reason to."

"You know we'll have to deal with them eventually, Li'l lady."

"I know, and that's bothering me." Hope brushed her hair out of her face. In the indeterminate time they'd been on the road, it had gone from blonde to a dingy brownish gray color, and seemed only a night or two away from turning into dreadlocks. "If we stay safely behind whoever's setting travelers on fire, we're only going to find more ashes and more dead. No food, no clean water, no hope."

"So we pass them."

"That's probably going to be a lot harder than it sounds. To cause this kind of devastation, I bet there are quite a few of them." Hope gazed across the smoky landscape. "Normal fires aren't this thorough. I saw a few in Nevada. They jump around. They leave things untouched. Whoever is doing this is in love with fire."

"Mercy said they were called the Righteous Flame."

"Yeah, that sounds like someone with a real hard-on for burning." They crossed the last hill and saw The Way, untouched where Hope had parked it, much to her relief. "So if we do manage to get past them, they'll still be behind us, and what if they ever catch up?"

"What if they do?"

"You're doing it again, Elvis."

"Sorry, Li'l lady."

Hope climbed in behind the driver's seat and sat, staring off toward the smoky horizon. "We have to stop them. For good. But we can't stop them. We've only got three bullets and a car between us. And you, but only because you can't be killed."

"You're an asset as well."

Hope shook her head. "I'm no fighter. I'm actually scared shitless."

"I think you're very brave."

Hope looked at him. "No, I'm not, Elvis. You know why I didn't pull that trigger just now and eat a bullet? Because I was afraid. I'm afraid of dying. I'm afraid of the pain of death. And I'm afraid that with the way things are all screwed up in the world, that pain won't go away afterward. What if there's an afterlife? You think I want to spend it remembering I killed myself?"

Undead Elvis shrugged. "You're much braver and stronger than you realize, Li'l lady."

"You should see things from my point of view. You might think differently. I'm thinking we have to try to get past these Righteous Flame people. Maybe we can find help ahead on the road. Or if not, at least warn people that they're coming. Keep anyone else from being burned alive."

"Sounds like a good plan to me. Uh-huh."

"Let's see what we're up against. I guess if worst comes to worst, we turn around and run. Maybe we can clear that bridge a second time if we have to."

"Maybe."

"You don't sound convinced."

"I'm not."

"Well, I'm not either."

Hope let out the clutch and The Way rolled on down the road through the smoky air. One thing about the smoke, she reflected as she drove. It made for a gorgeous sunset. Brilliant oranges and reds filled the sky as the Sun dropped low behind them. But then the oranges became sulfurous yellow and the reds darkened to brown and she remembered that no matter what, it was still ugly.

She resisted the temptation to turn on the headlights as the sky blackened. A hazy half moon rose and gave her just enough light to see the road before her. The unsettling orange glow along the northern horizon spoke of a great wall of flame somewhere ahead.

Despite hours of driving, Hope didn't feel tired. Perhaps the idea of doing something instead of letting things happen to her had lit a fire beneath her ass. Bad metaphor, she thought, as she spotted a distant flicker of actual flame ahead. She slowed way down, not wanting to run into the middle of a group unprepared.

A few minutes later, she spotted a pair of vehicles ahead on the road and stopped The Way. "Come on," she said. "I want to get a closer look at these so-called Righteous Flame people."

The two trucks crawled forward at a walking speed, surrounded by pedestrians. First was, of all things, a fire truck with its lights sparkling red and blue counterpoint to the glare of the firewall. A single man stood on top of the engine on a makeshift platform and shouted at the walkers through a megaphone. Hope couldn't hear his words with any clarity, but from the way his cadences rose and fell, she suspected he was preaching.

A steady stream of exhausted-looking people trudged to the second vehicle, a ten-wheeled fuel truck. Each walker bore a tree branch or other flammable item. A crew on the truck would spray fuel onto whatever the walker held, and then the person would ignite it at a torch burning on the fire engine. Then they would walk off to the wall of fire, seeking something not yet burned to set ablaze.

Sometimes, they would themselves catch fire, and nobody ran to help them; they laid down and died.

"God, what's wrong with all those people?" Hope chewed on her knuckles. "It's like they're all sleepwalking."

"Maybe they are. That fella up on the fire truck's talkin' nonstop, Li'l lady. Maybe he's got them under some kind of sway."

"Whatever he's telling them is bad. It's evil."