Exit Kingdom

by Alden Bell

  Then he clambers down the face of the hill, sliding much of the way on the dirty ice, controlling his fall by grappling onto the tree branches and dragging the truncheon behind as a kind of brake. He slides to the base of the hill behind one of the wide, flat buildings where piles of chopped wood are stacked against the cinderblock wall.

  Before he can think what to do next, one of the foot soldiers speeds around the corner and comes to a halt three feet from where Moses stands. The soldier, little more than a boy, aims his gun instinctively at Moses’ head – but there is fear and trepidation in the boy’s eyes, and he does not pull the trigger immediately.

  I ain’t with them, Moses says.

  I’m shooting you, the boy says, his voice trembling, as though a declaration of violence were the same thing as a bullet.

  You ain’t got to, Moses says. I ain’t one of them. I’m here for my two charges is all. My brother and a red- head lady. After I got em, you can burn this place to the ground with my good wishes. You seen em?

  The boy’s hand shakes, the pistol remains fixed on Moses’ forehead.

  Hey, Moses says. You hearin me? Let go that trigger. Come on now.

  Something in the boy’s face twitches. He is paralysed. He could fire or not fire at any moment. Moses does not like his fate to be at the hazard of nervous chance.

  Goddamnit, Moses says.

  Then he raises his own pistol with practised speed and fires two shots at the boy that make charred holes in his chest and cause him to convulse as if suffocating on air that is no longer breathable. The boy’s hand, in extremis, squeezes and fires too, but Moses drops in the same motion and lets the bullet fly over his head.

  Then the soldier boy collapses face down on the ground. Wisps of his hair are stirred lightly by the wind.

  It didn’t have to go this way, Moses says to the corpse.

  There is arbitrary death by nature, which Moses recognizes is everyone’s equally shared hazard. And then there is arbitrary death by the foolishness of man. And this is something Moses cannot stomach.

  He checks the magazine of his pistol, and he hefts the massive bladed instrument in his opposite hand – and then Moses Todd leaps out from behind the building and into the fray. And that’s when he begins to fight.

  *

  The icy earth melts with the steam of warfare, the hot spilled blood mingling with the snowy mud in rivulets of dirty pink like the stain of old wedding roses. The ground is slippery with gory melt as Moses moves forward through the battle, swinging the cudgel this way and that, firing his pistol with the other hand. He sends the cudgel in a wide arc to his left, knocking a slug’s head clean off its shoulders, while with his right hand he fires twice at a bandit wielding a sword – the first bullet thunking into his chest and the second piercing his neck, sending a plume of blood splashing to the ground. He swings the cudgel back around and catches a ragged rifle-carrying woman in the stomach. When he pulls the weapon free, most of her guts, tangled in its blades, follow. The next time he swings it upwards, it catches a massive, thick-headed slug under the chin, and a rain of shattered teeth go tip-tapping to the puddled ground.

  Moses does his best to avoid the uniformed men, for he knows them to be soldier instruments of a wider order and that they would not kill him if they knew who he was. But he also knows that to them he looks like one of the bandits, one of Fletcher’s men – and it is a circumstance of war that you cannot stop to palaver about the whys and wherefores of things. So when the soldiers do threaten, he kills them too. And, he supposes, this is as right as anything – because it is just as likely that, on any given day, he would be on one side as another. He is a soldier and a reprobate, a lawman and a transgressor. So it makes no difference, at any moment in time, who dies by whose hand – as long as there is some line, capricious and invisible though it may be, for the combatants to reach across.

  Death is everywhere. His ears are deafened by gunfire and screaming voices.Women and children, too – for the bandits have raised their kind to be warriors. Women with throwing knives that lodge deep and true, children with sharpened teeth that have been taught to climb your body and rip out your throat as though they were feral animals. Moses slashes his way through them, digging his heels into the muck for leverage against the ugly onslaught. Everywhere is the music of slaughter, shrill swords fifing their way clean through the air, the deep baritones of surprised death cries, the airy percussives of bodies falling to the ground and giving up their final appalled breaths. And who is the conductor? And who waves the baton? And who stitches together these crescendos of grotesque majesty?

  And, too, the battle is manifold – because the chaos is too thick for the combatants to end things right, to make sure the dead stay down, and so the slaughtered everywhere on the field of battle begin to rise again – and Moses finds himself killing again those he already killed once before. Death begets death, and it is no wonder that the world is overrun so. They rise slowly amidst the pandemonium, overlooked because of their calm in the middle of such frenzy. A corpse lying face down in a puddle of bloody snow melt will twitch first in the arms, a shiver will run through the torso and all the way down to the legs. Then an arm will straighten itself, find a handhold on the ground and gently leverage itself with fresh muscle to hoist the rest of the body face up. And there it might lie for minutes at a time, opening its eyes anew to the sunlight and the noisome activity going on around it. The orbs of its eyes roll lazily to and fro until, at last, it inches itself upwards, first on its hands and knees, and then rising to full height, standing tall in sudden mockery of life itself.

  And so the valley quickly fills with the mangy slubberdegullions of death. They reach out pathetically for those alert bodies moving by them with the speed of survival – but when their hands grasp nothing, they drop again to the ground to feed hyena-like on the stillwarm corpses of the newly dead. And if a man, along his way to other death than this, should happen to put a bullet through the slug’s brain as it eats its first meal, then in a travesty of sacred stygian rites that call for dim ferrymen to cross slow between the shores of life and death, these creatures will have died twice in the space of an hour.

  Now Moses confronts one of Fletcher’s surgical abominations, a slug dressed up like a sasquatch, its body patched all over with the scalps of other slugs sewn on its skin – a motley of hair, some long, some short, some blond, some brunette, some curly, some straight, much of the hair crusted hard by ooze and blood. Moses dispatches the thing quickly, one bullet to the brain, because it is a sign too distressing to look upon – humanity inverted somehow.

  For a moment, Moses Todd, having killed everything around him that moves, finds himself in a wide radius of stillness. The other combatants occupy themselves at a distance, and he breathes deep the stench of wasted biology that hangs cloudy in the air. He stands, a droll on an empty stage, waiting for a response from the darkened seats – laughter or applause, it makes no difference – raising his brutal weapon to examine it against the spotlight of the sun. The bladed cudgel is tangled with gore. Like a nightmare Christmas tree, its welded limbs are ornamented with human viscera, tinselled with hair and stringy offal, flaps of torn flesh that hang from the tips, sticky bile that is already beginning to crust over in the metal interstices. It is a thing that does not soften to the human condition. People explode against the weapon, undeniable. It is a force, like the abstraction of American industry itself, a machine whose gears care not what they grind.

  Moses whips the weapon down and flings off some of the loose numbles that splash onto the watery ground. Then he takes a moment to reload his pistol while scanning the structures around him.

  There is a series of low metal buildings, indistinguishable from one another. He walks to the first one and kicks in the door, aiming his pistol through the doorframe and waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim light inside.

  The place is mostly empty. There are the skeletons of massive refining machinery, long ago frozen and ruste
d into position. Atop and around this dead machinery there are strewn blankets and slop buckets and filthy mattresses. In the corner he finds three women huddled against the corrugated metal wall. They are not fighters. They are nothing but mice caught by their tails and starving to death.

  You with them? Moses asks.

  They respond in a language that Moses does not recognize. Their voices quaver, and their eyes are fixed on the dripping weapon he carries in his hand.

  He lowers the cudgel.

  You best get, Moses says. Ain’t nothing to gain by stayin. Here, I’ll show you.

  But they won’t move until Moses has put down both the cudgel and the pistol. Then they follow him to the door, and he points them in the direction of the hillside where he came into the camp.

  Go there, he says. Climb. Don’t come back. Everybody’s dead here. You understand? Dead.

  He finds his own voice not angry or sympathetic but simply flat with the ugly ungentleness of truth.

  They go, and he watches them until they are safely into the trees. Then he picks up the pistol and cudgel again and moves on.

  He scans the row of buildings again. The doors are all closed neatly, but none of them with very heavy locks. Then he spots a metal shed attached like a lean-to to one of the buildings. The door to the shed is held shut with a thick chain and a padlock. He moves quickly to the shed, which is on the perimeter of the valley against the base of the hills that cup the gasworks.

  There is no one around – the brunt of the battle has moved to the mouth of the valley. He uses the blunt handle of the cudgel to pound on the metal door of the shed.

  Abe! he calls out. You in there? Vestal?

  For a moment he hears nothing, so deafened is he by the cacophonous violence around him. But then he hears it – a small, weak voice climbing to panic.

  Moses? Is it you?

  The voice belongs to the Vestal Amata. Holy woman. Tricksy thief. Fair beauty of the wild plain.

  *

  The chain and lock are too heavy to break, so Moses jams one of the blades of the cudgel down behind the hasp and yanks it free of the door. The lock and chain fall useless to the ground. The door swings wide, and there’s the Vestal – dressed like a nymph of the woods. The fabric stretches and shimmers absurdly, and bright diaphanous ribbons hang off her everywhere. She has a glittering tiara in her hair, and her face is painted with glitter also.

  The sight so completely baffles Moses that he cannot speak for a moment.

  What— he says.

  It’s my costume, she says. It’s what Fletcher makes me wear. Oh, Mose – I didn’t know if you would come.

  Then she leaps on him, her arms around his neck, her eyes squinting against the light outside the dingy shed. Then, from around the other side of the structure, a figure comes running and stops short when he sees Moses and the Vestal. It’s one of Fletcher’s men – Moses recognizes him. The man raises a shotgun, but before he can pull the trigger Moses has flung the Vestal away from him and fired a hail of bullets, some of which plant themselves into the man’s sternum.

  Come on, he says to the Vestal. We gotta get out of sight.

  Instead of going back into the shed, where there is no light, Moses takes the Vestal by the arm and leads her around to the low empty building in which he found the three women refugees. He pulls her inside and shuts the door behind them.

  What’re we doing? she says. Let’s just get out.

  Where’s Abe? Moses says. They took him.

  Something occurs in the Vestal’s eyes – a realization, perhaps, that Moses has larger plans than simply her rescue.

  But we got to go, she says. We got to go now.

  He shakes his head.

  My brother, he says. Do you know where they got him or do you not?

  Then she approaches him, getting close, patting his bloody chest lightly with her hands as though trying to soothe a wild child.

  Moses, she says. Mose, listen to me. Are you listenin good? Abe’s okay. Your brother, he’s okay. But we got to go now. They’re planning—

  But Abe—

  He’s safe, I’m tellin you. But you got to take me out of here, Mose. I heard em talking, the soldiers. They’re planting explosives. They’re gonna bring hell down. Nothing left. The whole gasworks, the whole valley. Nothing left.

  Safe where? he says.

  Moses—

  My brother, he says. Safe where?

  You don’t believe me, she says. You think—

  You left. I told you to stay. I told you I was coming back. You left.

  Moses, Moses.

  You went back to Fletcher.

  It ain’t like that. No, not back to him. He found me.

  You left.

  Moses. Moses, I’m dying. There’s somethin in me like a poison. I’m already part dead. That’s what they told me, the doctors. That’s why the slugs don’t touch me. I’m dyin from the inside out, Mose.

  So’s everybody – part dead.

  She recoils from him, her face curling into a fierce snarl.

  You ain’t a man, she says.

  Likely I ain’t.

  She spits at his feet and rushes towards the door and flings it open. Outside, the sounds of warfare continue. Someone lets loose a ripping scream. She pauses.

  You best run straight for the trees, Moses says to her back, or they’ll get you sure.

  She hesitates a second longer, closes the door and turns back towards Moses.

  Take me, Moses. Take me out of here. Please.

  Abraham, he replies flatly. I ain’t leavin without him.

  I told you, she says.

  You said some words all right – but I ain’t sure what exactly you told me.

  She comes back over and stands before him, looking up at him as though he were sitting in the very top of a tree – as though he were so high above everything that you had to squint up your eyes to see him against the shining heavens. It’s all a show. She puts it on. He knows now.

  I told you he’s safe, says the Vestal. He’s gone. They let him go.

  Let him—

  He was – he was headed back to you. But his leg, it was in bad shape. He wasn’t movin so good. They didn’t give him a car or nothing. Listen, I saw an empty garage about two miles up the road when we were comin in. He’s probably there – probably he holed up for the night.

  Let him go? Why? Why would Fletcher let him—

  Moses, please. Please let’s go – the whole place is comin down. We’re gonna die, Moses. I don’t want to – not here.

  Why? he says, his voice booming down on her now.

  She shrinks back. In her eyes there is a searching, but he does not know for what. She does not wish to say what she says – but her reluctance could mean anything or nothing.

  Cause of me, is what she says.

  Cause of you how?

  She just looks up at him now with an expression that could be hatred or shame or simply goneness.

  I acquired his release, she says. I purchased it. From Fletcher.

  He looks at her. There are sounds outside the thinwalled structure, clambering echoes of moribund hordes, foolish humanity balking against its own beginnings and its own ends. Half dead. That’s the phrase that throbs in Moses’ brain. Half dead, half dead, half dead. He says nothing to the holy woman in front of him.

  It ain’t nothing, Moses, she says. It’s cheap currency. It ain’t a thing of meaning.

  No, Moses says.

  He shakes his head. He feels the handle of the cudgel in his hand, and it feels right and true and hefty and thick with the logic of order and reason and purpose and all the concrete yeses and nos that could end all the ambiguous sentences on all the pages of the world’s manuscript.

  No, he says. It ain’t true. You’re a prevaricator is what you are. You already shown it. You ain’t to be believed.

  It’s true, Moses. I’m tellin it to you true. He’s – he’s in that garage. I’d bet my whole real self on it.

 
Your whole real self, he says with disdain.

  I’m done with misdirection, Moses. I swear it. I got nothing. Nothing at all.

  You just want taken out of here. You would say anything. You would thieve my aid with your deception.

  No, Moses, no. It ain’t that.

  Then what? Then give me to understand why you would of purchased his life, his freedom. The life of a transgressor. A reprobate who for two decades has been only my obligation to keep and defend – and that only cause I’m his blooden kin. A transgressor. The world seeks to correct him and it’s only my duty to exempt him from his rightly course – succeed or fail as I might. And succeed I have, over and over. Except I will fail. One day. A man, he can’t hold on for ever – his fingers loosen. And who are you to intervene on this transgressor’s behalf?

  But it wasn’t for him, Mose. Don’t you see how it wasn’t for him?

  Then what? For the cheapness of the price? The ease of credit granted you by your sorry lot in life?

  No, not that either.

  Now he says nothing, because he can tell what she will say next. There is a look in the eyes that precedes some words – as though the foundation for language is laid with look. You roll it out with the eye and then you utter it with the tongue. He is already recoiling from it. The calamity of a lie so big it devastates decency itself. For in lies such as these there is the unbearable possibility of truth.

  She gazes up at him. So small. Her pale skin. Her chopped red hair. Her eyes gone wet.

  It was for you, Moses, she says. For you.

  *

  Impossible, says Moses Todd. You got to know what it is – to hear such a thing and crave for it so to be true but also know at the same time that it ain’t. The more wished for some words are, the more unlikely they are to carry truth when finally uttered. Language is criminal that way. As though your wishin for something is the very thing that makes it impossible. We should none of us ever wish on anything – shootin stars or dandelions or eyelashes or pennies in wells. I say no more wishing. That’s my covenant and my directive. Life comes. It comes willy-nilly. It’s best to open your eyes to it and cease the buildin of lofty castles in your head – or you could blind yourself with earnest prayers.