“You know, I don’t really have anywhere else to go.”
Lead took the last piece of jerky from his plastic bag. He set the bag on the street and watched the wind take it away.
“You think we’re going to die here?” Lead asked.
“I’d say there’s a pretty good chance of it.” Terence said.
Terence’s lips drew tight and colorless. “I guess here’s as good a place to end as any.”
Lead chewed his jerky. The salt stung the malnutrition blossoms in his mouth. The wind slid the grocery bag down the street; winged seeds took to the air again and floated past the ex-Preachers.
“If you could choose, where would you die?” Lead asked.
“That’s easy,” Terence said. “The day the tsunamis hit San Diego, when I lost my wife and son. I wish I had taken the day off from work. I’d wake up first and watch them rise. I would surprise them with breakfast at the Park Café, near the zoo. Christine loved their banana and brown sugar pancakes, which she would have ordered and shared with Johnny. I would have ordered eggs over medium with wheat toast and coffee with cream and sugar. We’d eat breakfast together and walk home. The café was only a block away, but it was a lush, grassy part of town. It’d be raining, so Christine and I would be holding each other while we walked under my umbrella. Johnny liked the rain, so he’d be splashing puddles in his blue galoshes, and we’d have to towel him off when we got back to the apartment. Christine and I would get settled in, turn on the television, and share a glass of shiraz. You know, I haven’t found a single intact bottle of shiraz in all my journeys since the Storms. We’d share a glass and we wouldn’t talk. We’d just hold each other and watch Johnny play on the carpet, and let the television talk to itself. Sometime near noon, we’d all go to my king sized bed and lay down for a nap. I’d fall asleep holding Christine and Johnny and the three of us would drift into the oblivion together. We would never wake, or if we did, it’d be together in the hereafter.”
Terence took a deep breath and slowly let it out.
“I should have gone with them and skipped all this fucking nonsense.”
Terence rose to his feet and yelled to the north.
“Did you hear that!? This is all fucking nonsense! The Church, the Zona, the Preachers and goodmen, sins and laws, it’s all fucking nonsense!”
Terence sat back down in the street. He shoved his pistol back into the knapsack and rubbed his sleeve across his nose. He looked self-consciously at Lead.
“Sorry,” Terence said.
“Where would you die if you had the choice?”
Lead was thoughtful for long minutes. His mind drifted in the formation of his narrative.
“I think I would have died with my mom in the fugee camp. Not how she died. She died burning with plague and seeing men and shapes that were not there. I would have liked to have died with her, but with me having the pneumonia. A healer in Flagstaff once told me dying of pneumonia is like slipping into a pool of warm water. That sounds alright, as far as dying goes.
Maybe I should have died in Vegas. I’ve seen things that I wish I’d never seen on the road, crucifixion, butchery, men feeding on men. The fugee camp was a horror show too, but I had never been part of anything as ugly as Vegas. Everything changed with Vegas. If I’d been closer to downtown, the nukes would have dusted me. I imagine that’s a relatively quick and painless way to go.”
“I like my answer better.” Terence said with a smile.
“Yeah, I like your answer better,” Lead said.
Terence scavenged the trees for dry wood and tinder. He dug a fire pit between slabs of asphalt.
“Do you think they’ll come tonight?” Lead asked.
“I don’t know. They’ll come at us at night; I just don’t know which night.” Terence dumped his twigs in the pit and went to collect more.
Eliphaz observed the ex-Preachers with his field glasses. He handed the glasses to his assistant.
“They know about us. The wood Indians must have tipped them off,” Eliphaz said. “I suppose there’ll be little surprise in our confrontation.”
The assistant placed the field glasses back in their case. He knew better than to speak to Eliphaz.
Time shifted in its constant worldly crawl. The sun drifted behind the trees and blessed the earth with color and receded to darkness, leaving the ex-Preacher’s campfire to take up the burden of providing light. Terence and Lead sat in front of the fire and waited. The moon had yet to make its appearance and the darkness outside of their fire was absolute. The ex-Preachers sat in silence, listening for the inevitable.
Lead woke to the sound of gravel popping underfoot; he suddenly realized he’d been asleep. Exhaustion and the stillness of night and the hypnotic hum of locusts had turned his body against his will. He had drifted off and now the camp fire was burning low. Danger was present.
Lead scanned the darkness for the source of the noise. He saw Terence slumped over onto the street, the firelight reflected off the tarp wrapped about his body. Terence breathed the shallow breath of sleep. Lead heard another pop from the darkness. He reached into his jacket pocket and gripped the handle of his knife.
A chunk of asphalt whistled in flight and struck Lead above the eye; he yelled as a camouflaged soldier leapt out of the darkness and tackled Lead to the ground.
Terence threw off his tarp, grabbed the soldier by his collar, and yanked him off of Lead. The soldier whirled around, pulling the cord of his Van Cleef. Terence caught his wrist and pressed the barrels of his gun against the young man’s nose.
“Let that Cleef hang, Crusader,” Terence said.
The young Crusader dropped his cord.
“Raise your hands and turn around,” Terence commanded.
Terence spun the soldier and pressed his gun against the back of his head. Clapping sounded from the darkness.
“Congratulations,” Elipaz said from cover. “My assistant assumed Lead would have put up the better fight. He doesn’t understand, when attacking two marks you must spend more time assessing the situation. Lead, though younger, was obviously asleep until a minute ago Terence, though older, was obviously faking sleep and waiting to ambush us. The older man was craftier, and thus should have been taken first.”
Eliphaz strode into the edge of light. He was dressed simply in a flak vest and camouflage pants. Both hands gripped a Browning Hi-Power. Terence turned his hostage to face the Crusader.
“I’m willing to barter if you are, Crusader.” Terence said from behind the assistant.
“I do not want to shoot your man, but I will.”
The Eliphaz pointed his gun at Lead, who was on the ground clutching the gash over his eyes, blinded by blood.
“I don’t want to kill your man either, old Preacher,” Eliphaz said. There was joy in his voice, Eliphaz relished confrontation.
“We’re at a stand-off. One man gets to shooting and none us of will live,” Terence said. “You turn back, everyone here lives.”
“You assume too much, old Preacher,” Eliphaz replied. “I see things differently. I’m holding a Browning loaded with armor piercing shells. You’re holding an Engholm four-pipe. Assuming your gun is not a toy replica, they haven’t made one of those since the eighteen hundreds. You might shoot my assistant in the head, or you might blow up your hand, or you might misfire. Even if you’ve taken care of that gun, and it was in firing condition, I’d be shocked if it was even loaded.”
Eliphaz took one hand off of his pistol and reached into his backpack. He pulled out a blanket and threw it on the ground. He then pulled a bundle of yellow nylon rope and tossed it next to the blanket.