Hope and Undead Elvis (12 page)

"God," whispered Hope. "This was a forest. And it's gone. Why?"

"Fire burns when there's nobody to fight it, Li'l lady."

Ashes, as far as Hope could see.

She pulled The Way forward into the scene of charred destruction. Great spinning clouds of ash swirled up from the tires. Stifling heat swirled through the car, and Hope had to hold the collar of her schoolgirl blouse up over her nose so she could breathe without choking. The Way's temperature gauge climbed closer to the redline every few hundred feet. "We're going to overheat," said Hope. "I bet the radiator is full of this stuff."

"Maybe there's some water ahead," said Undead Elvis.

"There should be if this was a forest."

Hope looked out at the blackened and charred tree trunks, many of which were nothing more than lattices of ash. As she watched one near the road collapsed in a puff of gray and black flakes from the car's wake. The sheer volume of destruction made her sad. Tears mixed with the ashes on her cheeks and created muddy black tracks on her face. Every time she wiped snot from her nose, it came away as thick black slime. "God, this stuff is horrible. And I'm breathing it. I'm pregnant now. You're not supposed to smoke when you're pregnant."

"You were smoking when I first met you," said Undead Elvis.

"That's different. Maybe I wasn't pregnant then. Besides, that was clean smoke."

"I see."

"Well, clean-ish, anyway." She glanced over at him. His jumpsuit was still pearly white and his skin, though blue, was unsullied by ash. "Hey, how come I'm a mess and you still look clean?"

"I'm the King, Li'l lady. Uh-huh."

Hope snorted, blowing out more black snot against the steering wheel. After a couple more minutes, she knew she'd have to shut off The Way. The temperature gauge was past the red line and the engine noise had grown strained. As she reached for the keys, she spotted a break in the land off to the right. "Hey, is that water down there?"

"Looks like it, Li'l lady."

"Time for a break." Hope killed the engine. She hoped the radiator wouldn't blow up anyway. Steam leaked around the edges of the hood.

They trudged through ash that was ankle-deep at times until they both stood at the stream's edge. A sluggish trickle of water meandered along the bed. Ash floated on its surface, but because it moved, Hope didn't think the water itself was choked with the stuff. The idea of drinking or even bathing with it was unappealing, but it would be good enough to cool down The Way's engine and wash some of the ash out of the radiator.

"Come on, Elvis. We've got work to do. Open that hood. It's too hot for me."

Hope rummaged through the few treasures Asher had left her and found a battered saucepan. It would serve well enough as a water vessel. She trudged back and forth between stream and car, each time bearing a panful of muddy water that spat and hissed like an angry kitten each time she poured it over The Way's radiator. Her legs and feet became covered with mud mixed from ash, water, and sweat. Soon, the radiator cooled enough that, although steam still rose from it, water no longer boiled off its surface. Tired from her repeated exertions, Hope turned over the cleaning of the radiator to Undead Elvis and sat down to eat some leftover lamb and one of the last apples.

The food tasted of smoke and felt gritty with ash in her mouth. She chewed and swallowed like an automaton. She remembered when eating had been a joy. Now it was a chore, and an unpleasant one at that.

She finished the piece of meat and debated what to do with the bone. Were they going to have to resort to using them as tools? Had humanity's remains fallen that far? She didn't know, but decided not to take any chances. She saved the apple seeds in a foil pouch. Maybe they would still be viable and she could plant them in Graceland or someplace along the way.

As Undead Elvis hunched down in front of The Way, brushing ash from the radiator with a small unburnt twig, Hope gathered up handfuls of sand and ash and polished the lamb bone until no gristle or moisture remained on it. She slipped it under the seat, just in case she thought of a need for it later. Saving seeds and bones. What would be next, living in a cave and putting up mysterious paintings on the walls for future generations to decipher?
We were here once. These things had meaning to us
.

She stood and looked around through the gray air and noticed a couple pillars of smoke she hadn't seen before. "Hey, something's still burning over there."

Undead Elvis straightened and looked where she pointed. "So there is, Li'l lady."

"Maybe we should go check it out."

"Uh-huh." He brushed ash away from his hands. It fell as if unwilling to cling to a dead man's hands.

Hope made sure the pistol's comforting weight still rode in the waistband of her short plaid skirt. She wished she had a change of clothes. And as long as she was wishing for what she might never have, she added a clean bed and a bathtub in a hotel with room service to the list. She took a last swallow of clean water, knowing she'd have to refill the bottle from the ash-filled stream, and then set out.

Hope and Undead Elvis kept their pace measured as they hiked up and down rolling hills covered with still-warm soot. Some plants still looked like they were unharmed but for a thin coating of ash, but when Hope touched one, it crumbled like a shattered lattice.

At the crest of a hill, they saw what caused the smoke columns. Hope had entertained the notion that perhaps they were related to God somehow. She recalled hearing that God liked to appear to people as a pillar of smoke or a burning bush or something. Not that she believed any such thing. But seeing the tableau before her convinced her even more that there was no God, for what God would have allowed people to be bound to crosses and then burned?

The land had been cleared of flammable materials around two metal crosses that might have been power line trestles at one point. Fuel had been piled around the bases of the crosses and set alight, burning the poor souls who'd been chained to them. The words
SINNERS WILL PERISH
had been spelled out against the sandy dirt in fist-sized rocks.

Hope bowed her head. It seemed the breaking of the world had brought out the worst in some people, and she feared for herself and her baby.

Chapter Thirteen

Hope and Mercy

Hope's stomach clenched and she doubled over, teeth gritted and arms wrapped around her middle. "No," she hissed. "Don't you dare!" With food as scarce as it had been in the broken world, she wasn't going to let herself throw up if she could avoid it. She concentrated on her guts until they quieted down. Undead Elvis stroked her hair until she straightened up and could look down at the two burnt victims in the valley below.

"Are you all right, Li'l lady?"

"No, I'm not. I'm horrified, Elvis. What a terrible thing to do to someone. I guess I was hoping everyone we might meet here in the end of the world would be decent people, but to do something like this…" She shuddered. "That's just evil."

Undead Elvis said nothing, but his bowed head spoke volumes about his feelings.

Hope wondered how a dead man could even have feelings, but then, he was a reanimated corpse, so she presumed anything was possible. She steeled herself for what she knew they had to do. "Come on, Elvis. We shouldn't leave them like that."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. They died because somebody wanted to send a message. Nobody needs to see it after us."

"You're a good person, Hope."

Hope shrugged. "I guess this kind of puts it in perspective. I never really thought of myself as a very good person. Certainly more a sinner than a saint. But I could never even imagine doing something like that. That's true evil, and it terrifies me that people are still around who would do it." She took Undead Elvis's cool hand in her grimy one and they descended the slope together. An idea occurred to her. "Hey, do you think those black bird men things could have done this?"

"I don't know, Li'l lady."

"I think they're like demons or something. They don't belong in this world."

"Like me."

"Well, no. It's not that you don't belong here. You're just… misplaced. You belong in Graceland, Elvis."

"That I do, Li'l lady."

Hope grew somber as they approached the dead victims. The sweet burnt smell of their flesh was making it difficult for her to keep from vomiting in spite of her efforts to the contrary. "Do you think you'll die when we get there?"

"I'm already dead," said Undead Elvis.

The wood piled beneath the victims still smoldered, which had created the columns of smoke Hope had seen from the road. The people—she couldn't tell if they were men or women--had died in agony as their skin and hair blackened and burned away. One had thrown his or her head back as if to scream "Why?" at the heavens above. The other's head was bowed, perhaps in a final prayer. They looked so much like the lamb's heart which Asher had burned in his grill that Hope swore off all meat ever again. On the heels of that thought, she wondered if food would be so scarce that survivors would have to resort to cannibalism. And then, unbidden, she wondered how they might taste.

"Stop it," she said aloud. "That's horrible."

"What's the matter, Li'l lady?"

"Nothing. Bad thoughts."

"Thoughts aren't bad. They're just thoughts. It's what you do with them that defines good and bad."

"Actions over thoughts?"

"Yep."

"I'd like to think we're doing a good thing by taking these bodies down." Hope reached out a hand. Residual heat washed across it, but she didn't think the chains holding the victims to the crosses would be too hot to handle. She walked around the crosses and saw that the chains had been cinched down to cruel tightness using ratchet binders like truck drivers used. The poor victims must have already been suffering in agony well before the fires were lit beneath them. She walked back around to the front of the crosses once more. She wanted to look upon the people who'd died on them, to fix the image in her mind forever that there were still people in the world evil enough to do such things, because this was what her baby would grow up to stop.

One victim's eyes opened.

Hope staggered back in horror, tripped on a stone, and plopped down amid the ashes. The victim took a deep shuddering breath as if in preparation for a scream. Bits of charred flesh flaked off ribs as they expanded, showing for the first time lumps of charcoal that might have been breasts. Hope didn't want to look closer, but now that she realized the victim was a woman, she couldn't help but see the swell of hips, the slender waist. She'd had a beautiful body before she'd been burned. A dancer's body, like Hope's. The woman's eyes were nothing but charred, empty sockets. Hope winced in anticipation of the agonized scream, but no shriek came.

"Please…" The woman's voice was only a hoarse whisper, and smoke escaped her mouth when she spoke. "Please… kill me."

"God…" Hope wanted to say more, but she felt paralyzed.

The woman shifted a little at the sound of Hope's voice. Soot fell from her charred skin like snow. "I can hear you. I thought you might be an animal at first. Or maybe I'm dreaming. Are you real?"

Hope found her voice. "Yes."

"I'm Mercy." She coughed. Black chunks hit the ashes below her. Hope cringed. "Nice to meet you."

"Hope. I'm Hope. God, are you in a lot of pain?"

"No," croaked Mercy. "I can't feel anything at all."

"Who did this to you?"

"The Righteous Flame."

"Who is that?"

Mercy gasped and more black slime trickled from her mouth. "Please. Please kill me. I can't… I don't want to remember. My eyes are burned up and I can't cry."

With a fluttering of wings, two of the familiar dark birds settled onto the top of Mercy's cross and regarded Hope with their baleful eyes.

"Those fucking birds again," she whispered. "Why are they following us?"

"I wish I could see them," said Mercy. "I miss birds."

"Not these birds. They're evil. Like demons or something." Hope thought about trying to take a shot at them, but she only had four bullets left and one was already earmarked for Mercy.

"Like the Righteous Flame." Mercy shifted a little in her bonds. Charred flesh crumbled away from her.

"Who is that?"

"They."

"Who are they?" Hope shivered at the thought of people who would do things like this. Had they burned up the forest?

"They're bad people, Li'l lady." Undead Elvis's voice was hushed as he held a hand down to Hope.

"How do you know?"

He bent his head forward, eyes still hidden behind his sunglasses. "Good people wouldn't do this."

Hope reached back for the Shepherds' pistol. It fit in her hand like it had been made for her. She raised it toward Mercy. "I can't. I'm not a killer."

"Hope…" Undead Elvis startled her by using her name. "Look at her. She's dead already. You need to set her soul free."