Exit Kingdom

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    She ain’t so holy.
    What doyou mean?
    It occurs to Moses that his brother has never seen the other side of the Vestal Amata. He was tending his leg when she shot the man who injured him. He was waiting in the car when she nearly
bashed Fletcher’s brain in.
    She can take care of herself, Moses says. You haven’t seen it. She’s got a little bit of killer in her. Who knows what else.
    That girl?
    You didn’t see.

    So she ain’t immune to them? That was just a trick? I knew it.
    No, it ain’t a trick. I don’t know what it is. Maybe she’s holy in some ways and unholy in others. Or maybe holiness wears a new aspect these days. I don’t know. But all
I know is that she ain’t no damsel in distress.
    Abraham is quiet for a moment. Then he says:
    If she ain’t no holy girl, does that mean I can bangher when we find her?
    He chuckles in the dark, and Moses replies with simple silence.
    Sometimes Moses feels he is more at home among the wandering dead – for while he does not share their appetites, he can understand them. Now he finds himself in the company of reprobate
brothers and unholy Vestals. The dead may refuse to rest, but it’s the world of the living that’s gone asunder.
    No, but serious now, Abraham says again in the dark. If she ain’t a holy girl like we thought before, what are we huntin her for? We ain’t getting paid, and we ain’t on a
mission for God – so then what?
    She’s still a lost girl – holy or not.
    But it seems like she don’t want to be found.
    Moses says nothing for a moment. Then he turns over on his side and blinks his eyes. The dark isthe same no matter whether his eyes are open or closed.
    I don’t got the answers for everything, he says. Sometimes you do things just cause they need to be done by someone and there ain’t nobody else around. Is that answer enough for
you?
    Abraham shifts again in his bed, grunting.
    Sure, he says. Me, I’m easy. Free and easy. Abraham Todd is like a delicate autumn leaf, brother. Hegoes where the wind blows.
    *
    The next day they find her in a little town called Fountain Hills at the edge of a vast scrub desert. They follow the tides of the dead, who are stirred up, presumably, not by
the Vestal herself but by whoever took her. There is a park in the middle of the town, and that’s where the bandits have set up camp. There are not many of them – maybe ten– just
enough to travel light but protected. Their cars are parked in a huddle, the bandits are guarding the camp from the slow but steady onslaught of the dead while at the same time they hoot and holler
at the redheaded girl dancing naked in the centre of the camp.
    The exchange is a quick one. The bandits see the Todd brothers approach and attack. It is no matter to them who the Toddsare or what they want: this group of travellers moves from place to
place exercising their desires with a violence inherited from the very land over which they travel. They are scarred and ugly and brutal in their actions. They speak the language of death with
accents muddy and coarse.
    But the Todds have travelled the same ragged roads, and violence is a language that flows from theirtongues as well. There are a couple with rifles, and Abraham dispatches those quickly,
cutting off their range. The others scrabble to melee – but they are all distracted, caught unaware in their leisure.
    Moses uses Albert Wilson Jacks’s horrible blade for the first time. It is grotesquely heavy, and once put in motion it seems to swing through arcs of destruction all of its own accord.Moses finds himself merely trying to finesse the direction of centrifugal rage in the weapon. It rips and tears and leaves slews of rooster-tail blood behind its swing. Moses flails it across one
bandit’s middle and sees the man’s guts spill out of the multiple gashes opened up in his abdomen. There is no grace in the weapon, no art. Brought down on another bandit’s head,
the skull simply popslike a frail coconut, the mess of grey brain splashing every which way and the cudgel digging itself well down through the man’s throat and lodging between his shoulder
blades. Moses has to let the body fall and put his foot against it to pry the weapon out again. Graceless and resolute, the thing moves through flesh without recourse or order or reason or
precision. It is the opposite of surgery– it is senseless and animal.
    Many of the bandits dead and the others fled, Moses Todd wipes his face on the sleeve