His fervor restored, Joseph resolved to return to the wilderness, this time with his son. P.K. was already a fine shot, a junior watchman. The circuit rider had traveled in an armored truck, declaiming over loudspeakers, but Joseph now understood that glass and metal separated him from the souls he meant to save; he bought two horses and taught P.K. to ride.
“Wait,” I said. “You rode horses? Out here?”
P.K. shrugged. “They’re fast.”
“You’re fucking with me now.”
“No, sir.”
I glanced aside at Xin. She focused on the road, negotiating the sharp, mountainside S-curves of Cherokee North. We had to drive at a crawl, but P.K. said we weren’t far from the last place he’d seen Joseph.
“How do you survive something like those bears?”
He smiled tightly. “I got lucky last night. But the dead stand aside for my father. He preaches as he rides.”
They stand aside, I thought. Of course.
“What happened next?” said Xin. “He taught you?”
P.K. seemed reluctant. “That’s all there is to tell. He taught me to ride, and we rode. We visited churches often enough to keep food in our stomachs, but his heart was never much in ministering to the living. We spent more and more time in the wild, released thousands of souls to the Lord. Father’s done his best to teach me the tongue of Heaven, but I lack…” He trailed off, stared out the window. “The Revelation,” he finished quietly.
The tires whined as the road wound back around on itself, almost a three-hundred-sixty degree turn. I gritted my teeth, tried not to see the sheer drop to my left or the rock face to my right. P.K. leaned forward, pointed at a graffiti symbol on the rock. “I recognize—”
Something hit the side of the truck. Hard, on the right side.
We screeched toward the side of the road, mangled the guard-rail. “The hell—” Xin shouted. I swung behind P.K.’s seat, pulled on the safety straps and curled into a ball. There was another deep, metal-rending crash, and another, and then the world rolled and blurred. A rank, cloudy explosion as the airbags deployed and then gravity fell out from underneath me, snapped back in brief, vicious cracks against my knees and elbows. I covered my head the best I could, but suddenly it felt hot, and then everything was heavy and dark.
Metal ground against metal, keening.
“Wake,” shouted Xin, “the fuck up.”
Two gunshots. I took a breath like a knife to the chest, opened my eyes. The cab was pillowy and white. Almost heavenly, except for the bent metal and bloodstains. There was a sour stench, piss mixed with sulfur. My feed burned. I moved my fingers, feet, blinked blood out of my eyes. Felt like maybe I’d bruised a rib, but I could sit up, breathe. Limbs intact. Head was wet, but it was a shallow gash.
Xin stood over me, covered in white powder from the airbags. A pleasant, middle-aged phantom with a Desert Eagle. There was a wide hole in the back of the rig. Jeans and soda and high heels, all strewn around like Christmas in the Asheville Mall, not that I’d ever had the yuan or self-loathing to step in there. Three dead men in faded orange jumpsuits peered inside the truck, eager in the instant before Xin shot them down.
“You good?” she asked.
“Golden. P.K.?”
“Up top.” She gestured toward the roof with her head. “Looks like they hit us with rocks.”
I unbuckled the safety straps, stood up shakily. Almost fell, but steadied myself against the driver’s seat.
“Kid have a gun?” I asked, fumbling for my holster.
“He’s got the rifle.”
“So why isn’t he shooting?”
Xin bit her lip. I flicked off the safety on my Colt, and we pressed our way to the back, kicking aside boxes of designer boots, finally stepping outside. It looked like Xin had killed the last of the orange-suited dead: there was nothing but breeze and the glare of afternoon light. The truck was caught between two large trees; we hadn’t rolled all the way to the bottom, maybe hadn’t rolled that far at all, which meant we were still on a sharp slope.
Also, P.K. wasn’t up top.
I ripped the handset from my belt. Prayed it wasn’t broken.
“Where the hell are you?” I hissed.
There was a long silence. I wondered what Coroner would do if I lost the boy. Lost the money. ”Down the hill a bit,” P.K. answered at last, his voice crackling on the handset. “To the east. You can probably still see me.”
And there he was, through the trees: A dot.
“I already sent the SOS,” Xin said, leaning into my handset. “Company’s coming. Maybe thirty minutes. We just got to wait here.”
P.K. said, “My old man’s close. I can find him in half an hour.”
“Wait here for the rescue,” Xin said. “We’ll all go out and look for him.”
He gave a sad little laugh. “The company’s not going to send out a search party. You know that. All they care about is their cargo and whatever they can salvage from the truck. My father’s less than meaningless to anyone but me.”
Well, I wanted to say, he is dead. Instead, I started down the hill.
“Slow down,” I said. “I’m coming with you.”
“What?” said Xin.
I took my thumb off the handset.
“Kid can’t die,” I said, wondering how much honesty I could afford.
“You mean you need the money.”
I held on to a low tree limb with my free hand. Moved ahead, grabbed hold of another tree, all the while trying not to slip on leaves or trip on roots.
“Jesus, Ez.” Xin was flushed, agitated. She took a step forward, not following me so much as making sure I could hear her. “We all need the money. But it’s no goddamned good if you’re dead.”
“Not true. Boy owes me a pile if I die.”
“Yeah? What if you both get eaten?”
“That’ll be complicated. May have to hire an accountant.”
“I save your life and you’re going to leave me alone. All those times we rode together, you’re going to leave me alone.”
I forced myself to keep walking, to fix my eyes on the kid. “You know guilt don’t work on me, Xin. Lock yourself in the crawlspace. Pour a few shots, drink to our health, and don’t let the rescue team leave without us.” I stepped over another corpse in an orange jumpsuit, pale and gaunt and forest-scratched, its face little more than a skull beneath skin. These were the desperate dead, the old and ravenous. The fatter, younger, brighter ones favored the night, when the sun wouldn’t rot muscle from their bones.
“Ez,” said Xin. “The boy’s lying.”
I stopped.
“I don’t know what’s truth and what’s lies,” she said. “But I seen him before. Back home, at the New French. Playing cards and throwing back shots.” She lowered her voice, spoke in a high-speed hiss. “That no-ma’am-I-don’t-drink business was horseshit, and I reckon he’s been in Asheville a lot longer than a night. I don’t know what his game is here, but I don’t feel like dying for a lie today. Just stay back. If the kid gets himself killed, well, we lose a little money. We’ll have another job tomorrow.”
Was she telling the truth? Or just trying to keep me from getting myself killed? As long as Coroner was knocking on my door, it didn’t really matter.
“Tomorrow’s too late,” I said.
She shook her head and stepped back. She said, “You stupid asshole.”
I worked my way down.
P.K. waited in a hollow where the ground flattened out. There was a creek nearby, invisible but mumbling. He forced a smile, cradled the M-16. His clothes were sweat-soaked, weighted down with ammunition. The air smelled smogless and new. Like God had just invented it and still thought it was good.