Exit Kingdom

handful of frozen dirt from the verge to clean the blade with.
    Poor thing, says the Vestal again.
    You want to say something over him? Moses asks.
    Vestals must have blessings, she says. Don’t you think?
    But neither of the Todd brothers responds, and after a while of standing shivering over the dead man, they all return to the car.
    *
    They drive. They snow abates, having left a thin dusting over everything. Moses looks behind them in the rearview mirror and sees the twoparallel tracks of his tyres marking
their progress over the whited earth.
    There’s a town called Dolores, but there’s not much in it – just a few blocks of houses north and south of the main drag, which is called Railroad Avenue. But it must be on the
edge of some active grid, because they see the lights miles before they reach it. It’s the first electricity they’ve seen in weeks, travellingthe deserts of the south-west as they
have, and their minds get filled with visions.
    But what the town of Dolores is is an outpost at the base of a mountain range – a last stop of civilization before the rangy wild. And it is an outlaw’s town, a bawd’s town.
The Todd brothers have seen many assemblages such as this – pirates congregated at a pit stop for travellers. They provide safetyand services for a fair exchange of goods – and they
steal what they want above and beyond that fair exchange.
    It is night when they arrive, and snowing again – the streetlamps illuminating the flakes in smoky circles as they fall. They drive slowly, stared at by men whose gesture of welcome is
that they hold their rifles casually at their sides. But in the middle of town they arrive ata large inn with twin gabled roofs, and a woman comes out to greet them.
    Welcome to the Historic Rio Grande Southern Hotel, she says.
    She is thick around the bosom and waist, and her flesh is pushed and pulled every which way by a bustier that cinches her middle, and squeezes her breasts up into a shelf of flesh. Her face is
rouged, and her tinted hair piled in a gaudy stack on top ofher head.
    She smiles invitingly to the Todd brothers as they climb out of the car, and the smile diminishes when the Vestal Amata emerges after them.
    We’ve got three churches in town, the madam says and folds her arms across her chest. They’re not in the best condition, but they’re still full of relics. Families like to stay
there sometimes when they pass through.
    In the windowsof the gabled house behind her, there appear faces of girls all lipstick and powder. Their eyes dash back and forth, curious about the newcomers.
    No, ma’am, Abraham says and limps forward on his wounded leg. I reckon this is the place for us, Vestal or no Vestal.
    The smile reappears on the madam’s face.
    Then come on in, she says. Homestyle comfort right here in little Dolores.
    The town is grey and low, spread out in the small valley between the foothills of a mountain range to the north-east. Like most survivor towns, the outlying structures are run-down or fully
collapsed, and all the residents have huddled into a few maintained buildings in the centre of town. Across the street from the Rio Grande Southern is a long ranch-style building like a train
depot, with araised porch that circles it entirely. At one end is a sign for what probably used to be a barbecue restaurant. The words Flying Pig are painted across it, and it looks like someone
in town has restored the sign to its original colourful state. Except, dangling from the overhang of the place, there’s a skeleton of a swine to which some scallywag has wired white wooden
wings. And such is the playfulnessof the town called Dolores – muddied with grim horror.
    The sky overhead is slate grey and shallow with ugly clouds. Likewise, the street is pocked with dirty puddles of icy snow, the painted median lines long weathered away, the verge of the tarmac
crumbled with use and age. It is a place to make you feel crushed, squeezed to suffocation between a low sky and a flat earth, as though lifehere continues narrowly, in a thin margin between earth
and atmosphere. The residents stoop in towns such as this for fear of striking their heads on fallen skies.
    The three travellers are escorted into the Rio Grande Southern by the madam. Abraham stays in the lobby of the place with the Vestal Amata and a small host of women wearing all variety of
nightclothes, while Moses follows themadam into a back room to make arrangements.
    Watch her,