Exit Kingdom

car. The Vestal follows a little behind.
    Everythingtaken care of? Abraham asks from the back seat.
    Everything’s fine, Moses says.
    Good, Abraham says. Cause someone better fish me the whiskey out of the back. The next time we stop you’re gonna have to dig a bullet out of my leg.
    *
    The Vestal is convinced that Fletcher is still after her, and Moses has suspicions in the same direction. So to disguise their trail, they drivewest along the highway for two
hours, then double back ten minutes and take the road north.
    They move slowly, she says, Fletcher and his people – because there are so many of them. But they’ve got an Indian with them. A Zuni. He’s a good tracker.
    What do you recommend? Moses asks.
    I don’t recommend, says the girl. I’m just supplying information.
    The road north is a small two-laneblack-top crumbled to dust in some places, piled high with the shells of abandoned cars in others. They frequently have to slow to a crawl and navigate the
sandy verge of the road, being wary about getting stuck since Abraham is useless to help at the moment. Moses looks intermittently in the rearview mirror, and so far he has seen no sign of
Fletcher’s caravan. The one advantage of the slowroad is that it will be even slower for Fletcher and his large, heavy vans.
    Soon they see signs for what seems to be a cluster of large towns: Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa. The slug population, too, grows denser as they approach the city centre.
    Do we go around it or through it? Abraham asks.
    It’s up to you, brother. What do you feel like?
    The sun is getting low on the horizon.The day has been a long one. They have been driving non-stop. Abraham has been drinking from a bottle of whiskey for hours, readying himself for the
surgery he will have to undergo. He is sleepy and sputtering.
    Hell, he says. Let’s stay in the big city for the night.
    So they follow the road into the city, which is uninhabited by the living and dark as pitch when the sun falls. It ispossible that the entire state is off the grid, all the survivors having
moved on years ago to other, safer areas. Phoenix is a place gone to rust and ruin – massive buildings collapsed on themselves, weeds growing up through the cracked pavement, everything
etched to a pale, colourless grey by the sandstorms that whip around the corners of buildings season by season.
    The firebird cityrises again only in the dead who wander its streets. It is a mystery what they are feeding on, these shambling slugs, for there are no signs of life. It is only when they
arrive in the city’s downtown that Moses sees the soot and ash everywhere settled like new snow, the black char on the sides of many structures – and he realizes something. This place
is not among the cities abandoned a decadeago or longer. No, this place is newly dead. There were people here not long before.
    The gutters are stained with dried blood, and he knows what that means.
    He knows from experience how to age blood – how, upon leaving the body and splashing on a brick wall, for example, blood will go from red to brown to black to grey, how it will flake off,
eventually, in the desert heat, or how itwill rehydrate and run in the rain, how it will eventually disappear altogether, leaving only a stain like the dirt of the earth – and how, long
after that, even the stain itself will evaporate, because the elixirs of human life are unstable – because human life itself wants to merge again with the elemental world it was born out of
and is kept separate only by the puny will of individual fancies.

    This blood, the blood in the gutters downtown, is less than a year old. This place is among the recently fallen, and there is a grim sombreness in the air.
    But it explains why there are so many slugs, and why they are so active.
    There were survivors here, Moses says. Till not so long ago.
    How can you tell? the girl says.
    I can tell.
    Could there be some left?
    Moses shrugs.

    There could be, he says. We’ll keep an eye out.
    Is it too dangerous? she says. Should we go back?
    Moses shrugs again.
    Everywhere’s dangerous. Just different kinds is all. Abraham and me, we’ve been through most varietals. Six of one, half-dozen of the other.
    They drive until Moses finds what he’s looking for: a hospital. But the place is blasted through, burned down to its emptymetal skeleton, unsalvageable. So he looks for the next best
thing, a drugstore, but those too seem to have been