Exit Kingdom

looted clean a long time since. Yes, this place was a thriving bastion for a long while.
    No luck, Moses says to his brother. We may have to do it on pure nerve.
    We done it before, Abraham says, taking another gulp of whiskey. I got lots of nerve left, I reckon.
    So theyfind a place that looks shut up tight, a hotel, and they climb up on a dumpster and bust through a second-storey window and hoist themselves in. Then they kick the dumpster away so that
they won’t be followed.
    Inside, the building is deserted. They sit Abraham down in the big dusty lobby, on a green upholstered couch with a filigreed back, and then Moses and the girl light candles to searchthe dark
back rooms.
    In the abandoned bar, they find two whole bottles of Jameson’s.
    It’s Abraham’s lucky day, Moses says. He can drink himself straight into anaesthesia.
    You think they have any canned food? the Vestal asks. All I’ve been eating is beans and garden fruit for weeks. That’s probably the kitchen back there.
    And she pushes through a swinging door into the next room.

    Be careful, Moses calls out after her. Don’t get et.
    He peruses the bar some more, but many of the bottles are gone or smashed. There’s a register with a drawer full of money – bills that he remembers people coveting in his long-ago
childhood – but now they are the last thing the survivors are interested in lugging around. They make good kindling, but that’s about it.
    When he pushesthrough the swinging doors into the kitchen, he spots the Vestal on one end, leaning deep into a cupboard and sifting through its contents. On the other end of the kitchen, on his
hands and knees, is a slug. It’s an ancient man, hairless and dressed in an apron. His skin is grey and shrivelled and flaking as though he were made of papier mâché, a crawling
stuffed mannequin, a mocking imitationof humanity.
    The first thing Moses notices when he steps into the kitchen is that the slug is not making his way hungrily towards the Vestal. It seems he has climbed to his hands and feet with only a vague
interest in the sudden movement around him. He stares after her as Moses has seen some slugs stare at night-time stars or at television screens that have not yet burned out or even ateach other
– simple, animal curiosity.
    So it is no trick. The girl is somehow, impossibly, outrageously, beyond their appetite.
    And it is just her, because when the slug sees Moses, he immediately begins a jaw-clamping crawl towards him, reaching out his grey bony fingers with the little strength he has left in his
desiccated muscles. The thing would consume Moses if it could, wouldeat him right up. And yet it has no interest in the redhead wearing the white robes.
    Moses takes an iron skillet from a hook hanging above him and bashes in the slug’s skull. The head caves in easily, the slug collapses on his stomach, and whatever small amount of blood
there is slowly oozes out of its ears and nose.
    Startled, the girl emerges from the cabinet.
    What was that?
    Slug, Moses says, pointing.
    Oh, I didn’t see it.
    You should be more careful.
    I’ll be all right, she says and shrugs. Look what I found.
    She holds out a jar of olives in oil.
    When was the last time you had an olive? she asks.
    I don’t care for olives, he says.
    Look at you! she says. Some high and mighty mister with tastes! Well, some of us can’t afford to have picky palates.

    She tries to pry the lid off the jar, but it’s on tight. She holds the jar between her knees and leans over, getting her whole back into the project, but the lid won’t budge. Then
she knocks the lid against an aluminium tabletop, and all the discarded utensils on the table shudder and rattle like bones. But when she tries again, there’s still no movement.
    Moses watches the entire processuntil she looks up at him, holding the big jar in front of her like an infant baby.
    Will you open it for me? she asks. Please?
    Come on, Moses says. Let’s go get that bullet out of my brother.
    *
    Abraham drinks until he can no longer keep his head from lolling around on the loose hinge of his neck. Then they lay him out on a bed in one of the guest rooms on the first
floor,and Moses removes his pants.
    Do you wish me to avert my gaze? says the Vestal Amata, but Moses can tell it is said in jest. She has rested the big jar of olives, still unopened, on the night stand.
    Moses puts towels under his brother’s legs and uses a steak knife from the kitchen and a