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They do not knohich way to drive even, and Mosesconcentric squares in the car – a series of right turns, each one a block further than the previous But the dead accumulate, drawn by the sound of the car – and their density h

We’re collecting quite a crowd here, Mose, says Abraha so thick that their clawing hands on the car sound like driving rain, their nails ripping away on the paintedoff in sheets that stick and will harden in the sun if they are left untended, fleshy tattoos of the dead past plastered on the decaying machines of a promised future that will now never arrive

Moses leans forward to gaze out the windshield with grim seriousness

It seems impossible that they will ever find her The world is wide, and she, blessed or cursed as it may be with freedoo anywhere in it

Hours pass and the sun starts a descent on the far side of its meridian She is an invisible, and she could be anywhere, and the world is wide, and Moses is near to giving up when he sees so in the road

There, he says

What? says his brother

Moses stops the car but doesn’t get out There are too h the windshield to a broken jar on the side of athat leads to the freeway ahead

She’s been took, Moses says

Took by who? Slugs?

No Not slugs Took by other people Maybe Fletcher, maybe others

What’re you talkin about?

That olive jar She was feastin froht

How do you know it’s the same one?

It’s recently busted There’s juice still in it

Okay So why does that o bustin jars just for the jollies of it Plus, she knoe’re after her, and she wouldn’t of left any clues behind on purpose No, she’s been took

If it’s Fletcher, that’s bad news for her

Mostly likely it’s bad news for her any which way No kind soul givin soe of a jar of olives A conflict took place here

So they know they are headed in the right direction anyhow, and they drive with an eye on the horizon, looking to find son of the Vestal

They drive slow, and soon the city is behind theht up on the brahost herself, like a disregarded bedsheet left over from a child’s Halloween costume: the Vestal’s white robes

At least we know they went this way, says Abrahah, wincing

When night falls, they stop, afraid to miss the clues of the Vestal’s path, and barricade themselves in a dusty second-floor roo steps They can do it, eventually, but it costs them time and fuss – and by the tiotten what brought theht Moses lies awake listening to his brother turn fitfully in the bed next to his The rooht and so is straightup blind dark He has grown accusto the deadlands of the country – but it was not always like that When he was a child, there was light everywhere It seeped in under doors and through blinds Nothing was ever entirely dark You had daylight, and then you had diloor that produced its own bioluht how dead a place it could be

Abraha? Moses asks

Guy must of shot me with a poison bullet, says Abrahaain silence permeates the dark, and Moses feels what it must be like to be buried alive Then he listens harder, and he can hear the dead outside, bristling along against each other like a nest of rodents

Then Abrahaain