Exit Kingdom

brown liquid everywhere. Where it falls on the snow, the steam rises in sudden wisps. The doctor holds up his arms before his face,
defending himself from the assault that is coming his way across the clearing.
    Moses keeps the gun trained on the man’s head and advances onto the bowing porch. He grabs Peabody,gets an arm around his neck and presses the barrel of the gun against his temple. Then
he spins and puts his back against the logs of the cabin and, having taken his hostage, waits for the assault of Fletcher’s men.
    But that’s when the door of the cabin opens and Abraham emerges, squinting his sleepy eyes against the morning sun.
    Abraham spots his brother and yawns, scratching his ass.

    Hey, brother, he says. What’re you doin with the doc? You want some coffee? We found some grinds under the floor.
    *
    When Moses and the Vestal tied him to a tree they thought Fletcher’s men couldn’t fail to notice. But, instead, when Fletcher bolted in pursuit, they did not bother
to count heads or look around even. Or perhaps they simply took the doctor’s life for forfeit,given up to the wilderness or the wildness of man. Peabody called out, but none could hear him
over the revving of the engines and the cries of the caravaners to move.
    Abraham found him later, coming down out of hiding in the woods when he heard the sound of motors die away in the distance. It had been unnecessary to hide – Fletcher was not interested in
what might remain at the cabinonce the Vestal was no longer there. He heard the doctor’s cries from down by the road. Peabody was calling crazy by then, quite sure he would freeze to death
in a few hours, kissed on the lips and tied to a tree by a holy woman, abandoned without regard by his own travelling companions. No one, he was sure, would come for him. The guttural noise from
his throat was a keening of grief and despair,hopeless, tuned to the pitches of nature and birdsong – a moribund bleating skyward.
    Which is how Abraham found him.
    I told him I’d kill him if he tried anything, Abraham says. And you know what the man did? The man laughed. I knew he was okay then. He’d gone past loyalties.
    I brung you these, Moses says, giving Abraham the antibiotics. For your leg.
    Look, Abraham says and showsMoses the wound in his thigh. It isn’t healed, but the swelling seems to have abated, and it is less burning red at the edges.
    It’s gettin better, Moses says.
    The doc made a poultice, Abraham says. Out of twigs and pine needles and garbage like that. It helps.
    It just calms the wound, Peabody says and nods to the pills. Nothing compared to what a real antibiotic like that will do.

    Moses turns to Peabody.
    I apologize, he says. For the gun. For tyin you to a tree. We thought . . . Thank you greatly for helpin my brother.
    Peabody shrugs it off.
    It was a symbiotic relationship, he says. Fletcher kept me safe, I took care of his people. But he wasn’t a good man.
    But you didn’t have to save Abraham’s leg. That was a righteous thing for you to do. If things’dgone a shade different, we might of killed you.
    Again Peabody shrugs. He runs a hand across his balding pate. Wisps of grey hair fall down nearly to his shoulders. He must be ten or even twenty years older than Moses. Here is a man who lived
a good solid chunk of life before the dead started coming back and everything changed. Here is a man with memories – a man who still holds faith thatthings might change back, because he can
hardly help but remember vividly the world before. Perhaps he even believes he could reconstruct it out of the recollections and blueprints he carries in his own aging mind.
    So he shrugs, and this is what he says:
    Saving or killing. I’ve been a doctor so long – and the world gone topsy-turvy the way it is – it’s sometimes hard to tell which iscalled for. You have to do some of
both if you would be a man in this world. And which end of the act you’re on is the luck of the moment. So no hard feelings.
    The three men drink weak coffee made from water heated over the fire. Abraham takes two of the pills, and Peabody looks at his wound.
    How’s it look, doc? Abraham asks.
    It’s holding, Peabody says. But the jury’s still out.If there were facilities, we could do more about it.
    I found a place, Moses says to Peabody. It has what you need. It’s a good place. We’ll drop you there.
    Peabody looks first at one brother and then other. He nods and resumes his inspection