Dust & Decay(105)

Preacher Jack stood over them. “Oh, how strange the world must be to you young people. Strange, and wondrous and full of mysteries,” he murmured. Weird shadows swirled in his pale eyes. “I know what questions must be screaming inside your heads right at this very moment, indeed I do.”

Benny spat blood out of his mouth. “You don’t know anything about us.”

“Actually, my young buck, I know more about you than you know about me … and that’s going to be so unfortunate for you.”

“Tom will kill you,” said Nix with real heat.

“Oh … I pray he tries.”

Digger and Heap chuckled.

Nix wiped blood from her eyes. “Tom’s going to find us and—”

“Of course he’s going to find you, girl. Lord oh Lord but we’ve made it easy for him to find you. To find me.” Preacher Jack stepped closer and squatted down so that he was nearly eye to eye with Benny and Nix. “Mmm … didn’t expect that answer, did you? Tell me … what is it you think is going to happen? Do you think you’re going to be rescued by the big bad Fast Tommy? Tom the Swordsman, Tom of the Woods … Tom the Killer? Is that what you think?”

“Why are you doing this?” pleaded Nix. “Why can’t you people just leave us alone? All we want to do is leave this place.”

“Leave? And go where?”

Nix pointed east. “Far away from you and all this stuff. We don’t want any part of it.”

“You want to go east?” Something moved behind Preacher Jack’s eyes, and for a moment he almost looked afraid. Then his eyes hardened. “Oh, my foolish little sinners, you don’t want to go east. There’s nothing out there for you.”

“Yes there is,” Nix said. “There’s—” She stopped, cutting off her own words.

“What were you going to say? That there’s a plane? A big, shiny jet plane?” Preacher Jack shook his head. “I might be doing you a kindness to keep you from that path. Only thing you’d find east of here is horror and heartache.”

“As opposed to the good times and bunnies we have here,” said Benny. However, despite his snarky comment, Preacher Jack’s words—and that look that had passed behind his eyes—opened an ugly door of doubt deep in Benny’s soul. Had Nix caught it too?

“Why?” Nix demanded again. “Why are you doing this?”

Preacher Jack drove the tip of Benny’s bokken into the soft ground and leaned on it, laying one cheek against the polished hardwood. “Now that’s a wonderful question, little girl. Why indeed? Why did I come out of ‘retirement’? Until December of last year I was content to tend to my flock. I was at work in the fields of the Lord, seeing to the Children of Lazarus.”

“Zoms,” breathed Benny, wanting the word to wipe the smile off Preacher Jack’s mouth.

“Ah yes, the tactic of provoking your enemy. Did Tom teach you that? Or is it your own natural sinfulness that leads you to insult a servant of God? No … don’t answer, boy, because if I hear that word come out of your mouth, I’ll cut off your tongue and nail it to your forehead. Don’t think I’m joking, little Benjamin, ’cause it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve stilled the offending tongue of a sinner. Ain’t that right, boys?”

“Amen to that, padre,” they said.

Benny, wisely, said nothing.

Preacher Jack nodded approval. “When word came to me that Tom Imura had murdered Charlie Matthias and Marion Hammer, well … I knew that the Lord was calling me to do other work.”

“Tom didn’t murder anyone!” declared Nix. “Charlie Pink-eye was the murderer! He killed my mother!”

“Shhh, little girl. I believe you’d find it hard to speak lies with your lips sewn shut.”

Nix spat at him. Benny tensed, ready to throw himself between Nix and Preacher Jack’s retaliation, but the preacher merely laughed and wiped the spittle from the lapels of his dusty black coat. He shook his head, and his smile dimmed a little.

“Oh, child of the dust … you are just stacking up sins in the storehouse of the Lord,” he said softly. “You speak ill of Charlie, but he was a good man. Trusted by his men, good to his family, and a role model for everyone in these troubled, troubled times. Stupid and sinful people can’t see past their own inadequacies to understand the difficult choices a man like Charlie has to make in order to protect what’s his.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “To know that the man who murdered him still walks this earth is like a splinter in my mind. Tom Imura is an evil man. He’s been hounding the Matthias family for years, making spurious claims, interfering with authorized trade, and now he’s a bloody-handed murderer.”