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I’ll get you to help.
    But Peabody coughs a spray of blood over Moses’ face, shakes his head and pushes Moses away. There are reddish-brownsmears all over his bald pate, the thin strands of long white hair
plastered to his skull with drying blood.
    I’m dead, Peabody says. It’s about time, right?
    The doctor’s body seizes up with some internal organic fluttering, as of his organs all retching moribund against their own expiration. Then Peabody calms as Moses watches him, his
breathing going slack and the grip on his chestwound loosening. He can see the man’s slowing heartbeat in the weak surges of blood coming between his fingers.
    It’s about time for all of us, old man, says Moses.
    But by that point, he is fairly certain that Peabody is already dead.

Nine
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    Moses does not delay. He takes a small knife from his pocket and drives it up underneath the doctor’s jaw and into his brain. There is no time to give him greater service
than this. Then he goes quickly to the car, but before he gets in something occursto him. He walks around to the front where the body of the brigand is lying dead, his brain still intact. He does
not want to put an end to this man who would messenger his brother to death. Instead he wants to hurt, to maim. So he raises his leg high and brings his heavy boot down onto the corpse’s
face. There is a brittle wet crunch as the jaw bone shatters and dislocates from the skull. WhenMoses raises his foot again, there is an awful gaping smile on the dead man’s face. But the
brain is unharmed. He will come back – he will be unable to eat.
    Have a nice death, you bastard, says Moses Todd to the corpse.
    Then he climbs into the car and backs it up. There is no time to finesse his way around the blockade before him, no time to search for another car on the road beyond.He will ram his way
through, and it will either work or it won’t. The impact will either destroy the car or it won’t. But he is large with rage, he feels his brute, animal self in the very heat that rises
from his skin. He will not be stopped.
    He backs up far enough to get the speed he needs, locks the safety belt over his heaving torso, then accelerates quickly towards the blockade thatconsists of two burned-out cars positioned
diagonally across the road. He draws his own car as far to the left as possible, two wheels onto the shoulder of the road.
    When the collision comes, it comes hard and expected. He clips the back end of one of the cars and it spins, letting him past but also roostering his own car into a screeching spin that sends
him out of control and off theroad on the opposite side. The spinning car collides sidelong into the trunk of a tree – glass shatters and the passenger door crumples inward with an aching
twist of metal.
    When everything is still once more, Moses releases his grip on the wheel and checks himself for broken bones. There is blood all over his face and hands, but he does not know who it belongs to.
Some of it could behis – but the ownership of blood is a sucker’s guess in such a sanguine world. It does not hurt much to move his arms and legs, and he figures that is enough to keep
going forward.
    The engine is still running, which is a good sign – and even though one of the headlights has been smashed to nothing along with the whole right front of the car, the vehicle still
functions well enough to scrapeitself away from the tree trunk and huff its way back to the road.
    Moses drives. He looks forward, grim and inexhaustible, and the night unfolds before him. He looks for tail lights in the distance but there is only black – no sign of the car that stole
his brother away from him.
    No matter. He will find where they took him. He will find Fletcher and his band of thieves. And then therewill be a surfeit of death – and Moses does not much care whose.
    *
    He drives through the evening. He does not know where else to go, so he continues to the citadel in Colorado Springs where he left the Vestal. It is still hours before dawn when
he arrives. But the place looks different. The front gate looks like it has been driven through with a large truck. There is a wholebattalion of soldiers there who all point their guns at him when
he arrives.
    What happened? he says, climbing out of the car.
    They shine a spotlight in his eyes.
    State your