Exit Kingdom

See, she says and points. The road’s right there. They’ll see you from it. They won’t leave without you.

He’s the doctor Fletcher keeps with him, the Vestal says to Moses as they make their way back to the car. Peabody’s his name. He cured me of the clap once. He’s an okay guy.

Hush up, Moses says. Let’s just get ourselves out of here.

Moses climbs into the driver’s seat, and the Vestal gets in the other side.

You ready? Moses says.

I’m ready.

Moses glances once more into the woods at the man called Peabody who at some time in the past cured the Vestal of her gonorrhoea and is now tied to a tree with mild staring eyes. Then he starts the engine, puts the car in gear and accelerates as quickly as he can without letting the tyres spin on the ice.

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.