“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.
“You ain’t a tourist,” I said.
He shrugged a shoulder, then turned away and raised his rifle toward the trees. Skipped over a rocky outcrop and made toward the sound of the creek. “I told you. I’ve spent every day outside for as long as I can remember. We should keep our mouths shut.”
Ordinarily I’d have welcomed the caution. There was a certain flavor of tourist who hooted his glee every time he pulled a trigger, or almost pulled a trigger, or thought about pulling triggers. But silence seemed ridiculous now, and I didn’t appreciate the boy hushing me. “We’re the only game in town, kid. Every corpse for miles around already knows we’re here.”
He gave another half-shrug.
The creek was low enough that we didn’t bother walking on stones. Tadpoles flitted around our boots. On the other side, we started moving uphill again. The leaves here were shot through with streaks of red, as if we’d stumbled our way deep into autumn.
“You’re a hell of a good son,” I said. “Boy your age usually wants to strangle his daddy.”
He looked back. “Did you strangle yours?”
“Never knew him. But I wanted to.” I paused. “Strangle him, I mean.”
He chewed that over a while. “Where did you grow up?”
“Richmond.”
“Never heard of it.”
“That’s because it ain’t there anymore.”
The flutter of birds overhead. You could depend on birds. They died and stayed dead. Twigs snapped underfoot. The climb sharpened.
“I have to be honest with you,” he said.
“Okay.”
“Sometimes, I think I’m not a good enough person.”
“I know I’m not.”
“I mean to speak the tongue. The angels’ language.”
“Are you an angel?”
“No.”
“There you go.”
P. K. pursed his lips, looked like he wanted to say something. Instead, he pointed up. I followed the line of his finger to the purpling sky ahead and the silhouette of an old fire tower. When clients wanted to hunt, I took them to towers like that. Tall, ancient, sturdy. Dead folks are slow climbers.
“That’s where he’ll be,” said the boy. “I should warn you—”
I raised my hand to cut him off. Listened.
“Do you hear that?” I whispered.
The strongest argument against talking when you’re outside is that your voice masks important warnings. Like the sound of feet against dirt, running.
We sprinted up the hill. P. K. scanned the woods ahead, his rifle following his eyes, and I glanced back over my shoulder. My lungs felt like someone had balled them up, pissed on them, and stapled them into my ribcage, but I pushed on, legs dragging underneath me. My feed was hot with its broadcast of I am alive, I am still alive, I will pay my debts, and a tendril of shame shot through the middle of my fear, because this was the only reason anyone cared that I was alive, to earn and owe money. We made it halfway to the tower before I saw our pursuers, and realized I’d been wrong about the sound.
It wasn’t just feet against the dirt.
There were also paws.
The wolves were ragged, skeletal things, ribs half-exposed beneath gray and white fur. They wove like steel needles through the trees. A man and a woman trailed the wolves, wearing tattered green uniforms. I fired at the closest animal. Missed.