Exit Kingdom

call to her if he believed she would be held by his voice. Instead, he finds himself running, bursting into the trees, crashing through them in pursuit of the ghostly shape of the
girl. The branches whip and slash at his face, and he can feel the blood trickling on his skin. Or it could be tears, it makesno difference – the salt and aluminium we shed as a result of
our stinging contact with the world.
    I’m sorry! he calls into the shadows. I’m sorry. I should of believed you. I should of. Faith and love, they ain’t the same thing. Are they? Are they the same thing? I’m
sorry. Come back now. You can come back!
    He runs until his body collapses beneath him, his breath gone. He falls tohis hands and knees, truly ursine now, a beast of the wilderness huffing and panting his way through the night. His
lungs are scorching, and he scoops up a handful of snow and swallows it to cool his insides. When his gasping breath slows, he looks around him. There is no sign of the naked girl anywhere.
    She is a beguiling ghost.
    She has ever been.

Twelve
    A Map » Three Conversations about One Thing » A Return » A Confession » Another Vision »
How Things Endure
    Three days later, Abraham’s fever has broken and he is up and walking around the compound, whistling lewdly at female passers-by.
    Stow it, Abe, Moses says. Let’s try to get out of here without rilin the citizenry. I seen em riled – it ain’t pretty.
    Wait, Abrahamsays. We can’t go yet. What about my yewess bee?
    Moses has forgotten about it. He finds Whitfield, and the two brothers are led to a room with two banks of computers against opposite walls, facing each other like parallel rows of
guardians.
    One of the operators is reminded about the yewess bee.
    Oh yeah, he says. It’s around here somewhere. It was easy – but there’s nothing on itreally. I was going to tell somebody, but – here it is.
    The operator is a young man wearing a t-shirt. He is a poor arbiter of grand mysteries such as this, Moses thinks.
    The operator plugs Abraham’s talisman into a port in one of the computers and then brings up something on screen that Moses recognizes as the shape of the United States. There are red dots
all over it, as though theentire country has succumbed to some kind of pox.
    It’s a map, Moses says.
    A map! Abraham repeats.
    Of what? Moses asks.
    A treasure map, I bet, says Abraham.
    Actually, says the operator, it’s a corporate map. It shows all the locations all over the country of a particular business. I guess it was a franchise. There are, like, twelve hundred of
them.
    What business? Mosesasks.
    National Waffle or something like that? Hold on, here it is – it was something called the International House of Pancakes.
    The pastor, who is the only other one present, besides Moses, old enough to remember such predominant American wonders, laughs. It is a sad laugh, full of empty spaces that used to be filled
with something. Moses laughs much the same laugh, and together, unspoken,the two men try to make of the moment something less dire.
    What? Abraham asks for the two chuckling men. What is it?
    It’s your treasure map, all right, his brother replies.
    What some mysteries reveal are truths so mundane they blast wide our own ludicrous vanities.
    *
    They say farewell to the pastor and leave the citadel behind them. For his service against the raiders,Moses is given a good car with two extra jugs of gasoline packed in the
trunk. He is also given some rifles, some ammunition. The citadel’s stores are vast – they can afford such things.
    They drive, first north a little ways, then south again. They are directionless as far as Abraham is concerned, though wherever he goes Moses is looking for the girl he turned his back on.
    Once, Abrahamdiscovers Moses clutching the wooden cross pendant while he drives – but he does not recognize it as the one the Vestal wore around her neck.
    You got religious all the sudden? he asks.
    It’s a symbol, Moses replies. What it signifies ain’t simple.
    Who said it was simple?
    Abraham has his own symbol – the yewess bee. He believes it to be more than just a map of a national chain ofrestaurants, but instead an elaborate code disguised as a restaurant map. He
believes that if they travel to each of the locations, they will piece together some megalithic conspiracy. So every time they pass one of the pancake houses with its blue roof, Moses points it out
and Abraham notates it with a pencil in