Hope and Undead Elvis - By Ian Thomas Healy Page 0,36

truck would spray fuel onto whatever the walker held, and then the person would ignite it at a torch burning on the fire engine. Then they would walk off to the wall of fire, seeking something not yet burned to set ablaze.

Sometimes, they would themselves catch fire, and nobody ran to help them; they laid down and died.

"God, what's wrong with all those people?" Hope chewed on her knuckles. "It's like they're all sleepwalking."

"Maybe they are. That fella up on the fire truck's talkin' nonstop, Li'l lady. Maybe he's got them under some kind of sway."

"Whatever he's telling them is bad. It's evil."

"You've got a gun. Do you want to stop him?"

"I've only got three bullets, Elvis. What am I going to do, fight my way through to him? These crazy bastards are burning people at the stake. Do you think they'd even let me get close enough to him to take a shot?"

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

Hope glared at the man with the megaphone as he waved his arms, exhorting his followers to cleanse the world with flame. "He deserves to die."

"Does he? In his mind, he's doing the right thing."

Hope rounded on Undead Elvis. "Are you defending him?"

Undead Elvis smiled and shrugged. "Just sayin' the world isn't black and white, Li'l lady."

"No. No, it isn't. It's gray." Hope picked up a handful of ashes, still warm. "And they're making it this way." She let the ashes scatter on the hot, smoky breeze from the wall of flames. "Maybe there's no absolute good or evil, but I can't see anything good about what they're doing, and I'm no saint. Do you get what I mean?"

"I do, Li'l lady. So what are you going to do about it?"

Hope sighed. "Nothing. I hate saying that, because I want to do something. Look at them. Those poor assholes are laying down and burning to death, and nobody cares, Elvis! That guy is up there egging them on and working them until they drop just so he can feel like he's doing God's will. I don't pretend to know what that is. I still don't think I even believe there is a God. But if there is…" Her jaw tightened. "He wouldn't approve."

"But you're going to do nothing?"

"What can I do? I don't want to die burned at a stake. And can I deny the world this baby I'm carrying? What if Gabe was right and this little peanut is going to somehow repair the world? I can't risk that." She rubbed her belly, still taut from her years on the pole.

"For what it's worth, I think you're doing the right thing, Li'l lady."

"I just hope I can live with that decision."

Chapter Fifteen

Hope and the Forest

The Righteous Flame's fire truck set off its siren and the horn blared over and over. People left the fire line and returned to congregate around it. Many collapsed, perhaps from hunger or exhaustion. All of them sat to give their attention to the man with the megaphone.

The engines on both trucks were stopped so he could deliver a rambling, angry sermon to his flock. Hope could see many of them nodding their heads in agreement with his words. Or perhaps they were that far removed from their reality.

Working at their leader's exhortations and using shovels from the back of the fire truck, several workers dug a shallow pit. Unburnt wood was piled inside it and set ablaze. The workers produced a large pot, so big that Hope thought it looked like a witch's cauldron. They filled the pot halfway with water from the fire truck's tanks and set it atop the fire pit. People were starting to perk up and Hope's tummy rumbled at the notion of soup or stew. She wondered if they had a deer or something which had burned in the forest.

The leader pointed to a man, and without hesitating, the people fell on him like a pack of wolves. Hope jammed her fists into her mouth to keep from screaming. The man below had no such compunctions, and his gibbering, dying cry was the purest form of agony and terror Hope had ever heard.

Pieces of him were put into the pot, and later, the survivors fed.

After the sun had fully set and the leader showed no signs of slowing down his rhetoric, Hope decided the time had come to take action despite her own growing sleepiness. Death by burning or death by angry mob or something even worse awaited her if she stayed