Exit Kingdom

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 theVestal.
    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 theytake 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 beyondthe 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 theirthroats, 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 slugspose 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, theslug 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’llmake 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 Mosesrealizes, 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 hecan do without releasing the slug.
    He is still