Exit Kingdom

light-weight kiosks. Anything that will stumble them up and make them easier to deal with one at a time. As he does this, Abraham continues to cry derision
upwards to the man on the balcony.
    We’re gonna get you,you asshole. Billy, Fred, Simon, Lee, Gary, Paul, Albert, Roger, Carl, Michael.
    You already said Michael, the man above says through squealing laughter.
    Prick.
    Abraham grapples with one slug that’s got behind him somehow. The dead man is dressed in grey overalls with his name embroidered on them. He has a stringy beard and milky eyes – and
when Abraham turns, the slug’s mouth isalready open and ready to bite. Abraham takes aim with the shotgun and pulls the trigger, but he has miscounted the shells and realizes he’s out.
Stumbling back against a metal counter, he reaches behind him to a canister filled with plastic utensils, grabs a handful of plastic knives and shoves them into the dead man’s open maw. Then
he uses the palm of his other hand to ram the knives in deep,where they lodge with thick wetness in the back of the slug’s throat.
    Unable to bite down, the slug claws at Abraham with his useless cold hands, and Abraham pushes him backwards, sending him tumbling along the floor.
    On the other side of the food court, Moses has taken an iron adze from his satchel and backed himself against the metal gate. There are four slugs shambling towards him.He looks in their eyes.
Humans made animal. He, too, has been animal on the earth. He feels no hatred towards these things, nor pity neither. They – the slugs and Moses himself – are objects in contention for
space. That is all. And which object ultimately holds sway, he knows, is more a matter of nature’s hazard and caprice than the will of any bearded Overseer with a mission for humankind.

    Still and all, there’s got to be an order. There’s got to be.
    All right, he says. All right.
    He rushes forwards, raises the adze and, putting all his weight behind the swing, buries the curved blade of the instrument in the skull of one of the slugs. It is a woman, and her head hinges
apart as though made to do so. Then Moses wrenches the adze out of her head and, in the same motion,swings it across the face of the next slug, whose jaw shatters. Fragments of teeth and bone fall
to the cold tile floor like a smattering of summer hail. Another woman already has her teeth on Moses’ forearm, but he wears a leather jacket for just such a reason, and she has trouble
gaining purchase. Instead, she leaves a long smear of rancid drool on his sleeve. He pushes her back and cleavesthe side of her skull with the adze. Instantly, the life goes out of her, and she
collapses to the ground.
    Where does it go? Moses wonders. All that motion, all that force. It must be released, invisible, into the world. If you could only catch it – then we would be as a civilization again
instead of lost, lonely children wandering a wreckage of man.
    He takes care of the other twoslugs, first an old man with spectacles and then the one without teeth.
    There is no grace in his motions, he knows. No elegance. It is not a dance. It is a labour, a hewing of wood, a digging of stone. He is a labourer, has always been. His hands have no delicacy.
They are rough from use, prone to clumsiness, but also forceful. There are sniper hands and shotgun hands, and his are shotgunhands. If you give them an approximate mark, they are bound to do big
and unsubtle damage.
    Across the way, he sees his brother Abraham rising from a pile of inanimate corpses. They have survived again – and it is no victory.
    There is one remaining slug, a man in overalls, stumbling to and fro, choking on a fistful of plastic knives jammed into the back of his throat. As Moses watches,Abraham moves slowly, as though
exhausted, to where the last slug stands. With a thoughtfully tilted head, Abraham considers the dead man for an extended space of seconds, pushing aside the slug’s grasping fingers. Then he
seems to glance around him, searching for a tool to finish the job.
    Moses steps over the pile of slugs before him and walks to where his brother is. He reaches out andoffers Abraham the adze. His brother takes it, looks wearily once more at the slug with the
mouthful of plastic, and then uses the adze to get shut of the business.
    Then the world comes back, the sound of their own deafening heartbeats fading into the background. And above them they hear the cackle of the man.
    Couple of