“Which is?”
The man straightened and opened the flap of his coat to reveal the worn black cover of a Bible tucked halfway into an inner pocket. “Preacher Jack.”
Tom’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You’re Preacher Jack?”
“Yes sir, I am, in both flesh and spirit. You have heard of me, then?”
“We know some of the same people,” murmured Tom. “J-Dog, Solomon Jones, Dr. Skillz. Lot of people in my trade pass through Wawona.”
A light suddenly seemed to ignite in Preacher Jack’s blue eyes, and it seemed to Benny as if the man went pale. The preacher looked at Tom, giving him a thorough up-and-down appraisal, and then turned to look at Benny, Lilah, and Nix. Each time his eyes shifted to another person, Benny thought he could see that strange light flicker in the old man’s eyes. All of this happened in the space of a few seconds, but the whole temperature of the day seemed to change. The only thing that stayed the same was the preacher’s wriggling smile.
“Well, well, well. What a blessed day, sir, and if you ever put that meat skewer down I’d like to shake your hand, because I do believe I know who you are. Yes, sir. Tough-looking man, early thirties with black hair and black eyes. Japanese sword and Japanese face to go with it. I would bet my last ration dollar that you are none other than Tom Imura. Tom the Swordsman. Tom of the Woods. Fast Tommy. Tom the Killer.”
Tom slowly lowered his sword. “I don’t use nicknames,” he said softly.
“No, not like most folks,” said Preacher Jack, pushing a strand of white hair from his face. “After First Night, most of the folks who live out here were more than happy to shed their family names the way a serpent will shed its skin. Gave them a chance to stop being who they were. Gave them a chance to be reborn as different people. Sometimes much better people. Sometimes not, but you’d know all about that, Brother Tom.”
Tom merely grunted as he resheathed his sword. Everyone else seemed to let out a breath at the same time, and Benny lowered his bokken. Not that he could have done much. It still amazed and baffled him how this grizzled old man could be as lightning fast as Tom. And besides that, why was a preacher able to handle a knife like a professional fighter?
“Most of those nicknames,” Tom said, “were hung on me by people who don’t really know me.”
Benny caught the careful way his brother was speaking. Tom may have put his sword away, but he was still on guard.
“I’ll call you whatever name pleases you, brother,” said Preacher Jack, holding out his hand. “I’ve heard so many interesting and fabulous things about you that I would like to shake you by the hand, yes sir I would.”
Tom ignored the hand and used his chin to point to the dead man. “You know anything about this?”
Preacher Jack looked at his own hand as if surprised to find it hanging out there in the air. He gave a rueful shrug and used that hand to adjust his broad-brimmed hat. The preacher walked slowly past Benny and looked down at the corpse. Nix and Lilah stood on the other side of him, giving him guarded glares. Chong had his hands dug into his pockets and was staring at the dirt between his shoes.
“The Children have been at him?” said Preacher Jack.
“Children?” Nix blurted. “We didn’t—”
“No,” Benny said, “he means the Children of Lazarus. Zoms.”
Preacher Jack winced as if Benny had squirted him with lemon juice.
“Ooooh … you’re right and you’re wrong, young sir. Right, in that it was the Children of Lazarus who did for this poor man; but wrong in that ‘zom’ is an ugly word that decent folk won’t use.”
“It’s just short for zombie,” said Benny.
“I know what it’s short for, little brother,” said Preacher Jack, “but no part of that word should be bandied about. The word comes from Nzambi, the name of a West African snake god. Do you say that you speak that word to worship a pagan animal spirit? Or do you use it as a twist on sombra, the Louisiana Creole word for ghost? Because that would be like acknowledging the power of the devil himself here on earth.”
Benny was confused. Preacher Jack’s voice was as charming as an ice cream seller, but his eyes were as cold as winter frost.
“I—,” Benny began, but Nix cut him off.
“My mother taught me that words only mean what we want them to mean, mister.” Her voice was cold and precise.
“Oh, that’s a nice sentiment, but it’s a crooked mile from the truth. Reality is that words are full of power. The good clean power of the Lord and dark, twisted magic.”
“Everybody uses the word ‘zom,’” said Benny, though he knew that wasn’t true. Brother David never used it and didn’t like to hear it, and Benny had no problem editing himself around the monk … but now he felt like yelling “Zom-zomzom!” at the top of his lungs.
Preacher Jack’s dark eyes twinkled. “The word is offensive to many, and to the—”
Tom cut him off. “No offense is intended. We can’t speak for anyone else, but if offense is taken from what my brother and his friends say, then that burden is on the listener.”
“Is it indeed?” Preacher Jack’s smile never wavered. “That’s a no harm, no foul way of seeing things, Brother Tom, and I respect it. However, it is in the nature of free will that we can agree to disagree.”
Tom ignored that, and instead said, “Do you know anything about what happened to this man?”
The preacher knelt beside the dead man. He made some indistinct humming sounds for a moment, then cocked an eye up at Tom. “What in particular do you want to know, Brother Tom? The man has received the ministrations of the Children of Lazarus and has gone to his maker. He’s been quieted courtesy of the white-haired young miss’s knife. I’m not sure there’s more of this story to tell.”
“Lilah didn’t quiet him,” blurted Nix. “He never reanimated.”
Preacher Jack swiveled his head like a praying mantis to look at her. “Now is that a fact, girlie-girl?”
“Don’t call me that,” Nix snapped.
“Oh, I am sorry. Is that phrase offensive to you?”
Oh boy, thought Benny. He wanted to brain this guy with his bokken.
Before Nix could serve up an acid reply, Tom said, “When we found this man, it was clear he’d been dead for at least a day, and he did not reanimate. I’m asking if you know anything about that.”
“No, Brother Tom,” said Preacher Jack as he stood, “I can’t say as I do.”
“Any idea who fed him to the dead?”
Benny noted that Tom used “dead” instead of “zoms.”
“That is also a mystery to me,” said Preacher Jack. “Why on earth would anyone do such a thing?”
“Any idea who he was?” Tom asked. “I hear you’re living out at Wawona. Did he come through there?”“I never laid eyes on this poor sinner before.”
Tom almost smiled. “Sinner? If you haven’t seen him before, then how do you know he was a sinner?”
“We’re all sinners, Brother Tom. Each and every living, breathing resident of this purgatory. Even humble men of the cloth such as my own self. Sinners all. Only the Children of Lazarus are pure of heart and immaculate of soul.”
“How’s that work?” asked Benny skeptically. “They eat people.”
“They are the meek raised up from death to inherit this new Garden of Eden.” He opened his arms wide to include the green and overgrown expanse of the Rot and Ruin. “They have been reborn in the blood of the old world, washed clean of their sins, and they now walk in the light of redemption. It is only us, the dwindling few, who cling to old ways of sin and heresy and godlessness.”
“Um …,” Benny began, but realized that he was no candidate for a religious debate.
Lilah stepped forward. Her eyes looked a bit jumpy, and Benny realized that she was probably unnerved by having her weapon taken away from her so easily. The only other person who had defeated her was Charlie Pink-eye. “You are saying that we are all sinners? That we deserve whatever happens to us?”
“It’s not what I am saying, little miss; it’s what the Good Book says.”
“Being eaten by zoms is in the Bible?” Nix asked, giving him a frank stare; and Benny liked that she leaned on the word “zoms.”
“Not in words that crude.” He patted the book inside his coat. “But yes … the fate of all mankind is laid out in chapter and verse.”
“Where?” demanded Lilah. “Where does it say that in the Bible?”
Something shifted in the preacher’s eyes. Benny thought it was like a snake looking out through the eyeholes of a mask.
“It’s in there for those who read the scriptures,” the preacher answered quietly. “But I bet that you’ve never taken the time to—”
“You’d lose that bet, mister.”
Everyone turned. It was Chong who had spoken up. He had retrieved Lilah’s spear from the bushes and handed it to her. She accepted it without glancing at him.
Preacher Jack gave Chong an up-and-down evaluation with his eyes and dismissed him with a twitch of his smiling mouth. “I doubt that, son. From what I heard, this young lady’s been living hard and wild in these mountains, far from any church or congregation.”
“How does that matter? Does a sheepdog stop being a sheepdog if there’s no herd or shepherd?” Chong gave his dry lips a nervous lick. “Don’t raise theological questions unless you’re prepared to debate them.”
Preacher Jack’s smile still did not dim. “Well, well, well … what have you stumbled upon, Jack? A Sunday School class trip all the way out here in the Rot and Ruin?”
“Hardly that,” said Tom quietly.
“Then what?”
Chong, Lilah, Nix, and Benny all started to speak, but Tom snapped his fingers, a sound as sharp and urgent as a pistol shot. He gave a hand gesture, a palms-down press as if he was patting the air. It was one of the warrior hand signals he had taught them over the last seven months. Be silent but be ready.
“We’re out here on personal business,” said Tom mildly. “Family business. We don’t discuss that business with strangers.”
“Is that what we are, Brother Tom?” asked Preacher Jack with a hint of reproach in his voice. “Are we strangers?”
Tom said, “If we’d met in town or at Wawona, or in the sanctuary of one of the way stations, then I suppose I’d feel comfortable enough to swap stories. That’s not the case. I find a man tortured and fed to the dead. That’s suspicious. Then you step out of nowhere.”
“I—”
Tom stopped him with a raised hand. “Let me finish. I offer no hostility and mean no disrespect, but I am not in a position to trust a stranger.” He nodded toward Benny and the others. “Manners are going to have to take a backseat to common sense and safety.”
“So I see.”
“I’m going to ask one more time … do you know anything about who this man is, why he was killed, or why he didn’t reanimate?”
Preacher Jack hooked his thumbs into his belt, and Benny noted that this put the heel of his right hand on the pommel of his knife. Having seen how fast the man could draw that knife, Benny had no illusions that the gesture was accidental. He carefully tightened his grip on the bokken.
“I don’t believe that I have any of the answers you seek,” murmured the man in the dusty coat.
“Then I think we’re done here.”
“Done with me or done with this poor sinner?”
“With both.” Tom took a small step back.
Preacher Jack nodded. “Perhaps we’ll meet again under more pleasant circumstances, Brother Tom.”
“That would be nice, sir, but unlikely. You see, we’re heading east.”
For the first time Preacher Jack’s smile flickered. “What? You’re leaving these mountains? When will you be coming back?”
“I don’t expect that we will.”
That wiped the smile completely from the preacher’s face. He looked disappointed and even a little bit angry at this news, and Benny watched Tom as his brother watched the change in Preacher Jack’s expression.
“Something wrong?” asked Tom, his own face and voice neutral.
The smile returned, tentatively at first and then with all its twitchy vibrancy. “Wrong? Why, no, except that it would surely have been a blessing to sit down, break bread, and try this whole meeting again in a more civilized way. I fear we got ourselves off on the wrong foot here. Knives and hard words and all.”
Now Tom smiled, and it looked genuine, at least to Benny.
“Yeah.” Tom laughed. “I guess this wasn’t the most genial encounter.” He shrugged. “On the other hand, it could have been worse.”
“Yes,” said Preacher Jack with a glitter in his eyes, “it surely could have.”
They stood there, eight feet apart with a dead man lying on the ground between them, and Benny had the impression that there were all sorts of conversations going on at the same time. Words that were not being spoken but that were mutually understood. Except to Benny and, from the look on her face, Nix as well.
Preacher Jack bowed to Nix and Lilah. “If by word or deed I have done anything to offend you fine ladies,” he said, removing his hat and bowing low once more, “then I am truly sorry and most humbly beg forgiveness. The Ruin is not a charm school, and in hard times we often forget who we are and where we came from.”