“You know the routine. I present the question to both of you, blanket or rope? I’ll see you to Purgatory or I’ll see you to your grave.”
“It doesn’t have to…” Terence started when Eliphaz fired his gun at the assistant.
Two rounds tore completely through the young man and pierced Terence’s stomach and chest. The assistant yelped in confusion and collapsed on the road. Lead jumped to his feet at the sound of pistol fire. He pulled the knife out of his jacket and lunged for Eliphaz. The Crusader twisted into a fighter’s stance. Lead drove his knife into Eliphaz’s forearm. The Crusader hissed and clubbed Lead in the face with his pistol. Lead fell to all fours. Eliphaz clubbed Lead again. He collapsed in a heap.
Before blacking out, Lead looked into Terence’s yellow-blue eyes. They showed the embers of the dying campfire. Terence’s breath was short and labored, his lips streaked red. His hands clutched wounds that bled out into the dirt and sand and road. Eliphaz put his knee on Lead’s back and pulled his arms behind him; rough nylon rope wrapped around Lead’s hands and wrists.
“Like I said, old man. You assumed too much.”
Eliphaz pulled Lead’s knots tight. Terence struggled to breath. Blood roared in his ears like waves against rocks. Terence closed his eyes and saw things that were not there, or perhaps had always been. On the Highway Nineteen, outside of New Pueblo, Terence Wood took his last breath.
“You shot me!” the assistant screamed in panic. His hands gripped his wounds, his fatigues showed dark and wet with blood.
“Boo hoo,” Eliphaz said sarcastically. “Maybe if you’d done a better job, I wouldn’t have had to shoot you!”
Eliphaz gagged Lead with rope.
“Say a prayer for healing and another for forgiveness. If God can find it in his heart to forgive a shitty Crusader, maybe you won’t have to die of blood loss.”
Eliphaz finished tying Lead and struck him again with his pistol. It was unnecessary. Lead was already unconscious.
X. Lead is held captive by Eliphaz, as mentioned in the beginning
Lead woke tied across a horse. The sand and brush bobbed up and down in his vision. His head was numb and swollen. It felt misshapen. His wrists burned from rubbing the ropes which held his hands and feet across the horse’s belly. Lead look up to see Eliphaz’s boots.
“Bon Jour,” Eliphaz said.
He tugged the reigns of Lead’s horse.
“Welcome back to the world. You are Leonard Marchez, age twenty-six, five foot nine inches, brown hair, brown eyes, medium build, and discernable scars on the left hand, right hip, left pectoral, right forearm, and chin. You are otherwise known as Lead, which is short for Lead Group Two, number 2305, your identifying number and unit.”
Eliphaz squinted at sun. He took a long swallow from a canteen and spat onto the sand.
“You are the only survivor of Lead Group Two or any other Lead Groups. This earned you the distinction of salvation upon your return to the Zona, despite your lack of confirmed kills and claim to any at the Battle to Purge Las Vegas. You were taken to Flagstaff Parish and given the post of Regular Guard, an honor for a boy out of the fugee camps. You served with distinction, discharging your firearm on three occasions to keep the peace, though again, no confirmed kills. Seven years of service as a Regular Guard, you were promoted twice, first to Veteran Corporal, then to Preacher, still without a kill. Do you know why they made you a Preacher?”
Lead remained silent. His head pounded. Eliphaz raised his boot and kicked Lead between his shoulder blades. Lead’s mouth opened in muted pain.
“Answer my question, Goodman. Do you know why the Church made you a Preacher?”
Lead tried to bunch his shoulder against the pain, but his wrists were bound too far and straight. He could not move.
“No!” Lead spat out between gritted teeth.
Eliphaz laughed. “Good! I don’t know either. You were a glorified security guard, sent to the Lord’s trusted work. You were inexplicably promoted to Preacher and assigned to track a mark, Erin Briggs of William’s Town. You turned the mark into a goodman in three days, the dead kind of goodman. My report said you put five rounds in his chest.”
Eliphaz held five fingers to Lead’s face.
“Five rounds, all over the torso. You shot the man in his shoulder, stomach, hip, and chest. You know what that makes you, Leonard?”
Lead remained silent. Eliphaz kicked Lead in the shoulder, heat and pain blossomed in Lead’s back.
“I don’t know,” Lead said through gritted teeth.
“I do. I know what that makes you,” Eliphaz said. “That makes you a nervous killer, an amateur. I guarantee that was the first man you killed. Five wild shots, spread out like you were shaking your gun and shooting with your eyes closed.”
Lead twisted his head towards the sun. Past Eliphaz, the assistant lay slumped over another horse. Dried blood covered the assistant’s hands. A third Crusader led the injured man’s horse.
“Despite your nervous predilections, you made a passable Preacher. In three years you converted thirty-seven marks, twenty-five by the rope, twelve by the blanket. A decent record of service, I’ve seen better and I’ve certainly seen worse. Things changed with mark thirty-seven, Aaron Century. Tell me, Leonard, what was different with that one?” Eliphaz asked.
Lead turned his head back to Eliphaz.
“I’m not sure…”
Eliphaz kicked Lead’s shoulder; Lead’s body was a nation of pain.
“Think harder!” Eliphaz yelled.
Lead bit his lip. Speckles flashed in his vision. He struggled to stay conscious.
“We fought,” Lead said.
“You’re right,” Eliphaz said. “You fought Goodman Century, receiving the aforementioned scars on your left hand, hip, left pectoral. During your fight with Goodman Century you came pretty close to having a steak knife put through your heart.”
Eliphaz held up his left forearm. His knife wound was wrapped in a stained linen bandage.
“You were stabbed, kind of like this, but in your hip and over your heart.”
Eliphaz kicked Lead at mid spine. Lead wheezed. The boot drove the air from his body.
“And then what? Church sends you to apprehend the mark Terence Wood, and you…?”
“Don’t,” Lead wheezed.
The bobbing desert floor was disorienting. His tongue was thick and swollen with thirst.
“Correct. You don’t apprehend. You let your mark go free before the eyes of the Radioman Smith of Kingman. Smith alerts the Church, I come to apprehend and find what?” Eliphaz asked.
“I don’t know,” Lead said.
“Wrong. You know what I find. I find sin. I find your sin and iniquity and incompetence. I find Preachers who disobey that which they have sworn themselves to, and I cannot accept that.”
Eliphaz kicked Lead in the ear.
Lead woke to the assistant’s moans. He turned his head and watched the young man clutch the reigns of his horse with hands still caked in blood. The assistant’s lips were bluish. Lead turned his head the other way and watched Eliphaz guide his horse around an overturned van.
“Look who’s up and squirmy,” Eliphaz said.
“Why did you kill Terence?” Lead asked. “He hadn’t submitted to the blanket.”
“You were there, little Preacher. He threatened my man.”
Eliphaz gestured to the assistant, slumped over in his horse.
“He put a gun to his head. That’s about as dangerous as things can get before someone’s life is snuffed.”
Eliphaz’s voice took on a tone of mock solemnity.
“It’s unfortunate that Terence was so entrenched in sin and wrongheadedness. He really was too good for all that.”