She looks at him straight, her eyes narrowed, as if she would consider this. As if her word of honour were a puzzle box she is trying to open behind her back.
Decide, Moses says.
Fine, she says quickly. Fine. Agreed.
Moses then turns to his brother.
The two that come in, he says. You and me’ll take em. No noise. Let the Vestal be the bait.
When the door opens, there is first one man – wrapped up in leather and carrying an Uzi swaying in an arc before him, as though he would pepper the room with rounds if given a reason. But as soon as he sees the small figure on the bed, he lunges and holds the Vestal down with brutal and gleeful force. He swings the automatic weapon around to his side on a long leather strap.
Found you, ain’t we? he says. Brucie, get in here!
Then the other man, a twin of the first, comes into the room, smiling and carrying two pistols.
Where’s your boyfriends at? says the one named Brucie. He chortles. They use you up and leave you behind? I guess that’s what you get when—
But that’s when he spots Moses, emerging from behind the door like a bearded leviathan, a monstrous bladed weapon raised above his head.
Brucie opens his mouth to say something, but before he can utter a sound or raise his hands in defence, the weapon comes down and shatters his skull, exploding his head and sending thick spumes of bone, blood, gristle and brain in a multifoliate bloom across the floor and walls.
The other, splashed with the wastage of what used to slosh around in his compatriot’s brainpan, shuffles back quickly on the bed, reaching for the Uzi – but Abraham rises from a pile of dusty blankets behind him, reaches around the man’s neck and buries a knife in his throat up by the ear. An arterial surge of blood erupts from the wound, but the man still struggles – so Abraham draws the knife deep and true around the underside of his jawline. The man’s head falls backwards against Abraham, cut off near to entirety, his neck now opening up in a huge thickly pumping cicatrix. Abraham lets the body drop to the floor and then drives his blade through the man’s eye socket to prevent him rising again.
It is done. The three wipe their eyes clean of blood. The Vestal picks a bit of gristle off her cheek. She does not flinch. Moses waits for her to flinch, but she does not flinch. A hard woman, that one. A woman raised in the midst of gore, chaos.
What about the other one? the Vestal asks. The woman outside.
Moses takes a sighted rifle from the corner and hands it to his brother.
Abraham’s got the eye, he says.
Abraham takes the rifle and goes to the window, putting the barrel between the curtains right up to the glass pane.
You got one shot, Moses says to his brother, or she’ll bring the whole cavalry up here. Can you do it?
I reckon I’ve done plenty of headshots from this distance.
Here, Moses says. He takes a pillow from the bed and wraps it around the muzzle of the gun to hush the report.
Can you still sight it? he asks.
Sho, his brother answers.
One shot, Moses says.
One shot, Abraham says.
They wait while Abraham sights it. Moses looks out the window through a narrow gap in the curtains. He can see the woman’s figure there in the snow, holding the bow with an arrow nocked loose in it, looking towards the cabin and shifting nervously. Every few moments she lets her gaze go back down the hills behind her towards the main road where the rest of her company sits in wait. Moses watches her, and her breath comes in clouds from between her lips.
Hold up, Moses says to his brother.
What now? says Abraham.
Moses turns to the Vestal.
You know that woman? he asks.
The Vestal nods.
She’s a sport archer. Can land an arrow between a slug’s eyes at a hundred yards.
She would kill us?
The Vestal nods.
Or have us killed, she says. She ain’t a bad person. But she’s a soldier, and she’s got loyalties like the rest of us. Hers are to Fletcher. He protects her.
Moses sighs and nods.
Okay? Abraham asks.
Okay, Moses says.
Once again he looks through the window. Abraham takes a number of seconds to steady himself. Then there’s a muffled report, a quick crack at the windowpane, and outside in the snow Moses sees the figure of the woman drop the bow and slump down quietly in the serene drifts.
They wait for a few minutes, listening. But there is no rush of aid coming up through the trees – no panicked response. The people below have not heard, and silence catches in the branches of the trees like some vast spider’s web.
Moses leaves the other two to wash the gore from their faces with melted snow. He goes a long way around through the trees to where he can see the main road in the distance, the extended line of parked vehicles that is Fletcher’s caravan. Then he returns to the cabin.
We’re stuck, Abraham says. Ain’t we? We ain’t trekking through the woods, and we ain’t got a car.
They’ve got cars, Moses says. There’s one at the back, away from the others. One man at the wheel, sleeping. We go through the woods, come up from behind. Quick, before anyone knows.
They’ll see, says Abraham. They’ll give chase.
Let em, Moses says. They track good, but they’re slow. We’ll outrun them.
Abraham nods. He massages his stiffening leg with snow.
But he can’t hardly walk, the Vestal says and points to Abraham. How’s he going to tromp through the woods and make a dash for a car?
I ain’t, says Abraham, looking at his brother. I’m stayin here.
What? says the Vestal. They’ll kill you.
Naw. They’ll be too busy huntin you two. I’ll go up in the trees a ways and hide out a couple hours till they’re well gone. Moses’ll drop you where you’re going. Then he’ll come back here for me. Ain’t that right, brother?
Moses says nothing for a moment. His eyes meet Abraham’s, and something passes between them.
Can you conjure a better plan? he asks Abraham finally.
I surely can’t, says Abraham, grinning a little.
It’ll be a few days, Moses says. Can you last it?
I can last it. You for certain you can find this place again to come get me?
Moses shrugs.
If I don’t, he says, there’s someone in the pond out back could use some company.
Moses smiles and chuckles a little, and Abraham laughs with him.
You ain’t much of a brother, Abraham says. Are you?
Ain’t neither of us anything to make a daddy proud.
Abraham squints up at the sky, as if in remembrance of something profound.
It don’t matter, he says. Our pap is long gone. Likely he was the first slug that ever was. The one that started this whole thing. Just one stubborn prick refusin to stay dead. Don’t that have a ring of truth to it?
Moses smiles and nods down at his feet.
It does, he says. It surely does.
For a while again they are quiet, kind of kicking their feet in the snow and looking everywhere in the world except at each other.
Hey, Moses says at last. Do me a favour.
What’s that? says Abraham.
They won’t come for you. But if they do – if they do come for you, then kill em good, okay?
You got it, Abraham says, a smile spreading across his face like that of a child who has garnered the approval of a difficult parent. I’ll kill em real good. I’ll make tobacco pipes out of their bones and be smoking em when you get back.
The man at the wheel of the small car is still sleeping when Moses returns to it with the Vestal Amata. The caravan sits idle along the road. Towards the front of the line, many of Fletcher’s people have got out of the vehicles and are tromping playfully through the snow. One woman with a bandana around her head is making a snowman and decorating it with the eyeballs and nose and scalp cut from a slug. Fletcher himself is there, too, standing atop the truck at the very front of the line, his wide sombrero perched on his head and a bottle of wine in his hand. He drinks and laughs at the antics below him and then drinks again. Every now and then he glances up towards the cabin. He wonders, perhaps, why it is taking his three soldiers so long to return. But he is reluctant, no doubt, to go up there himself after he was taken hostage last time.
Moses and the Vestal climb down through the trees to the road twenty yards behind the end of the caravan. They creep up behind the small car with the sleeping man. Moses is about to make his attack when the Vestal stops him.
Let me do it, she whispers. We don’t want to raise the alarm just yet, and I’m willin to bet my touch is just a wee bit more delicate than yours.
Moses nods.
Try not to kill him, Moses says, if you don’t have to.
She shakes her head and smiles at him.
You and your notions, she says. It’s like you’re livin in a different time. And not even the one we lost but a different one altogether.
He’s sleeping is all I’m sayin.
I hear you. Give me your belt.
He gives it to her, and she tears a strip of fabric from the hem of her skirt.
Moses watches her as she creeps up behind the car on the driver’s side until she’s at the window, which is rolled down. She reaches in and touches the side of the sleeping man’s face, caressing his cheek lightly with her fingers. In her other hand, Moses can see she has the belt and the wad of fabric.
The man wakes suddenly to see the redhead’s smiling face hovering before him.
It’s you, he says.
It’s me, she says and kisses him.
He must wonder if he is still asleep, or if he has fallen into death and heaven by the back route of somnolence. He is old, his hair thin, grey and wispy. This man is no fighter. He closes his eyes again and relents to her kiss, which is deep and long and, Moses notices with disdain, undeniably professional. It is longer than it needs to be. The man is subdued – he is acquiescent, and still she continues to kiss him, one hand gripping the back of his head as though it is still possible to draw him closer, as though she would consume him, as though her appetites are the same as those of the dead.
Moses sees the other hand reach up with the wad of fabric.