She knows him. And apparently she knows him as a friend, because her features flood with an unmistakable emotion.
Hope.
Abram feels the balloon of black blood pulsing in his brain, screaming for release.
“What’s the problem?” Abbot says.
Abram shakes his head and steps back, swallowing hard. “Nothing.” He swallows again; there’s a dry lump that he can’t seem to get it down. “Thought her collar was loose.”
He keeps his eyes on the ground as the woman disappears into the church’s trailer. Under his breath, inaudibly, he murmurs, “What is your job?”
When the exchange is complete and the doors are latched, the pastor turns without a word and heads back toward his Land Rover, but Abbot grabs his arm as he brushes past.
“Hey, Bark.”
Bark shakes him off with a sharp jerk and glares at him.
“I was raised Catholic,” Abbot says in a low, man-to-man tone. “I know the drill about the ‘sanctity of life,’ but come on. We’ve given you, what, six hundred by now? What the hell are you doing with all this rotten meat?”
“When we hit rock bottom,” Bark says, “when we’re utterly lost and broken, that’s when God can use us.”
Abbot rolls his neck and groans. “Don’t you people ever drop the act? Do you recite the gospels while you’re fucking your wife?”
Bark is already turning away but Abbot keeps pushing.
“I’m done humoring your bullshit! Turn around and start talking like a human being or this our last trade!”
Bark stops. He turns around and looks Abbot in the eye. “You want me to talk like a human being?” He cocks his head, sounding genuinely intrigued. “You mean you want me stop telling the truth? You want me to soften it and modernize it so everyone can be comfortable?” An unsettling smile is creeping into the rigid mask of his face. “You want me to say I don’t really believe any of this, that I’m just playing a role for money or power because that’s something you could comprehend, right? Is that about right?”
The mask has melted into a toothy grin. He takes a step toward Abbot and Abram is surprised to see Abbot step back.
“But see, I do believe it.” His voice is a fervent whisper. “All of it. And I don’t just believe it, I do it. Because a real man does what he believes. A real man doesn’t make excuses for the truth or sand off its sharp edges. A real man takes the truth and”—he makes a double fist and strikes his chest—“shoves it into his heart. And dies on it.”
Abbot watches him with a flat glare. Bark takes another step closer.
“I am not a human being.” He gestures down at his body with a grimace of revulsion. “I’m not this.” He extends his disgust to the surrounding forest. “I don’t live here.” He thumps a hand to his chest. “I’m spirit. I live with God. And he’s coming to take me home.”
He stares Abbot in the face for a moment, then abruptly steps back, tossing out his palms in an easy shrug. “No act, boss man. Just faith.” His smile is relaxed. “And faith doesn’t bargain.”
He hops in his SUV and slams the door. It lurches into the woods with a spray of gravel, and the trailer truck follows it.
Abbot’s face is a granite slab as he watches the vehicles disappear. “Roberts,” he grunts. “You got any scouting experience?”
Abram swallows again and this time it goes down, his autonomic reflexes finally regaining control. “Some,” he says. “I served on the Goldman and Citi acquisition teams.”
“Get a few guys and head into town. Snoop around. Go to church.”
“Yes sir. Anything specific I’m looking for?”
Abbot lights a cigarette. He breathes out a cloud and stares through it into the trees as the headlights fade from view. “These people have been waiting a long time for Armageddon, and I’m sensing some impatience. I want to know what they’re up to.”
As Abbot is speaking, Abram’s desperate brain lapses into a flicker of microsleep. His daughter is wandering off into the forest but he doesn’t run after her, he is occupied with some important task that requires his attention, he just needs another minute, just a few more seconds to finish and then—
“Yes sir,” he says, blinking hard.
Despite the agony in his head, he is fairly sure he said it without hesitation, the way Jim Roberts would say it. Jim Roberts would follow orders. Jim Roberts would do his job and get his pay and go home to his family, just like the man in the RV who is now sporting a beige jacket and studying the company handbook while his wife and children stare out the windows in mute horror.
Abram emerges from the forest and begins his trek across the plain. There are other men with him, but we are not interested in them. Their stories are dull and small, but Abram has ties to more lives than he knows. Many of them, like Jim Roberts, are snarling at him from the depths of the Lower, and these he hears clearly. But other voices come from above, and these he ignores, even though they are louder, stronger, and far more beautiful. Even though—or because—they are voices of love.
You are not this man, one of them whispers. You are not this mask. When you find her, will you be able to take it off?
The grass is silver in the moonlight and it clings to his feet, whispering warnings as it rustles in the wind. He kicks it and stomps it down, keeping his eyes straight ahead, locked on the lightless outline of the town on the hill.
In the back of a filthy horse trailer, a Dead woman shivers. The sensation of cold surprises her, as have so many others in these last few days. The sensation of longing. Regret. Hope and fear. She presses her face to the window slits and her eyes scan the night, darting from shadow to shadow.
Where is she?
The inside of her head, so cold and silent for so many years, is filling with a trickle of warmth. A single thought repeats like a steady drip:
Where is my daughter?
She keeps searching as the men load her out of the trailer. As they drag her into a dim, echoing warehouse. As they prod her into a cage. She searches the faces around her, the stern grimaces of the Living, the slack confusion of the Dead, but she finds nothing resembling what she sees in her daughter’s face. She finds nothing at all like love.
Where is my daughter?
It is thus far a simple thought, lacking much context. Most of what she remembers comes to her second-hand, from the stories her daughter told her. Her daughter’s name. Her own name. Vignettes of their shared history. But she believes these stories, and she is slowly making them real. Each word wipes a little soot from the scorched photo of her life, and to her great surprise, she wants to see more.
She wants to see who she is, even if it’s an ugly portrait. Even if it’s despair and surrender and betrayal. She wants another chance, even if it’s brief. Her chest clenches with this longing as the cool night air passes through it, caressing her desiccated heart.
“Ju…lie,” she whispers, a feeble breath lost in the groans around her. “Help me.”
WE
NORA GREENE LISTENS to the band play a song about dying. Or surrendering. Or accepting fate. She’s not sure what most of the songs mean; the lyrics dance circles in her head, just out of reach. But they do rhyme, and their melody is sweet, like songs from the old days.