The Wicked (The Righteous)

by Michael Wallace

  “There’s a third model, of course,” Abraham said. “Your assault on Zarahemla.”

  “You’re a smart man, Mr. Christianson. You saw right where I was going. Yes, the third model is Waco, Short Creek, Ruby Ridge, Zarahemla. The cult leader that defies authorities to come in and attack. The faithful have God on their side. The authorities have firearms and military tactics. And of course, you know which side always wins. Including at Zarahemla.”

  “Let’s be clear,” Abraham said. “You won—or thought you won—in Zarahemla only because the Lord didn’t intervene in the way His saints expected. But make no mistake that the events furthered His purpose. We don’t always understand that purpose.”

  “Fine, I understand why you feel that way. From my perspective, I look across the desert southwest and I see a much larger conspiracy brewing. Most of the people haven’t vocalized their feelings, and they don’t always connect it to Brigham Young’s original defiance of the federal government.”

  “You’ve been reading your Mormon history.”

  “I have and I know that when the Mormons first moved into the Salt Lake Valley it was part of Mexico. After the war with the Mexicans, the federal government moved in to take control and Brigham Young threatened to burn Salt Lake to the ground and fight a civil war against the government. He backed down, of course. Brigham Young surrendered political authority and his successors eventually disavowed polygamy. But I look around and I see tens of thousands of fundamentalist Mormons who never bowed their heads. They are growing in numbers and strength. And I wonder if there won’t come a time when your birthrate pushes that number into the hundreds of thousands, maybe millions.”

  “Sounds like paranoia to me.”

  “How many children do you have, Abraham Christianson? I count thirty-six, but I’m sure I’m missing two or three.”

  More than two or three, actually. Between here and Canada, grown and still living at home, Abraham boasted forty-five children, maybe forty-six, depending on whether Katherine had given birth yet or not. Probably not. Katie’s pregnancies invariably went past term.

  Krantz nodded. “You see my point. I give the Christiansons, the Cowleys, the Griggs, the Johnsons, the Phipps, the Kimballs, and the Birds about five generations and you’ll have enough people out here to cause some serious trouble.”

  “You and I will be long gone by then,” Abraham said. “And I’m guessing the Second Coming will arrive before then, anyway.”

  Agent Krantz stood up. “Maybe, maybe not. Just make sure you don’t do anything to speed it along. Thank you, sir, for your cooperation.”

  #

  After that exchange, and the worry that other agents might be staking out Blister Creek, Abraham decided to meet the woman in Beaver, at the cattle auction. He took two of his sons with twenty steers in trucks. While the boys were in the auction, he stepped out of the tent and its suffocating smell of cattle and manure and walked through town. Heat shimmered off the pavement and he stayed in the shade of the cottonwood trees that lined the street. He stopped at the old county courthouse, a handsome brick building with a clock tower, built in more optimistic times. Beaver had been declining for more than a century now. Not coincidentally, he thought, since the time Salt Lake had abandoned plural marriage.

  It filled him with sadness to think about what might have been. If not for a few faithful, the Principle would have been lost. Maybe the day would come when the righteous would fill these old towns again—Beaver, Manti, Price, Richfield, Delta, Ticaboo—and fulfill the original vision of Brigham Young.

  He was sitting on the steps when she found him. She didn’t stand out, thankfully. She’d traded her BMW for a Taurus, and wore a skirt and a long-sleeved shirt. A little higher collar, more conservative hair and she could have passed for a member of the church. Maybe it was the clothes, but he thought he saw a hint of the same nostalgia he was feeling in her expression.

  “Do you ever feel regret for the path you’ve taken?” he asked as she took a seat next to him.

  “Of course. Doesn’t everyone?”

  “I don’t know, maybe. Usually, no. What other path would I take?”

  “It wouldn’t hurt you to be a little more self-reflective, Abraham Christianson.”

  “Self reflection leads to crises of faith, to letting go of the Iron Rod. I can’t afford that kind of lapse. My people can’t afford it.”

  “It’s a good thing your son doesn’t feel that way,” she said. “He’d be beyond dangerous. A man with that intelligence, who inspires that much love from people, with a singular purpose to control the world around him. A very good thing Jacob is not like you in that way.”

  “What you just described is exactly what I hope he’ll become.”

  “What, a monster?”

  He bit back his reply. “We’d better stop this line of conversation. It isn’t fruitful.”

  “Well, what should we talk about? You don’t want to discuss how the Utah Jazz bombed out of the playoffs again? Or who is going to win between BYU and the U this year? Gas prices are going through the roof again. What about the alligator that guy was keeping in his bathtub in St. George? Crazy, huh?”

  He wasn’t going to let her goad him again. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  “So, no chit chat. Yes, it worked. We dangled your daughter like bait and drew our prey.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Only two people left the trailer encampment after Eliza arrived. One was a young man who returned with three others. I believe that all of them burned to death in the tire fire.”

  “And the other person?” Abraham asked.

  “A young woman. She left with the young man, they met the other three, and then she split off. I thought her the most likely suspect. Here is her picture.”

  She reached into her purse and removed a color printout of a young woman entering a grocery store in what he supposed was Las Vegas. Yes, there were slot machines visible through the window. He recognized her face.

  “This girl is my first cousin, once removed,” Abraham said. “I can’t remember the last time I saw her. I thought her family had joined the TLC. One of the girls went over to the Kingston Clan.”

  “Looks like you were wrong.”

  “I suppose so,” he agreed with some reluctance. “And then what happened?”

  “I stayed with the girl.”

  “And you were sure at this point?” he asked.

  “Reasonably sure, but I took precautions, just in case. I’d hired people in Las Vegas. One man kept an eye on the compound—he was the one who called in the fire once it was clear what was happening. Another associate followed the others. They never left each others’ presence before returning to the trailers. I kept after the girl.” She returned to her purse and pulled out a second picture. “The girl met this man. I believe they are married.”

  Abraham Christianson looked at the picture and his blood turned cold. It was as if an evil spirit had come out of the purse with the picture and lingered in the air between them. He didn’t need a spiritual sign, but the sun took just that moment to duck behind a cloud and a shadow fell over the courthouse.

  The man’s hair was longer, the beard trimmed away until he was as clean-skinned as Jacob or David. But the eyes were the same.

  “And you know where he lives?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” she said, “but I can find him.”

  Abraham folded the two sheets of paper and tucked them into his back pocket. He had to get back. On the off chance that the FBI had followed him to Beaver to see if he were really planning to go to the cattle auction, he didn’t want them searching for him. They might learn how he’d lied to them and that was one more problem than he needed at the moment.

  “So what now?” she asked.

  “We don’t have any other choice. Either we find him and destroy him, or we wait for him to come to us. And then we’re in trouble.” He rose to his feet. “We’ll talk soon. If anything comes up, you know how to find me.”
He walked away without looking back to see if she’d returned to her car or waited on the courthouse steps, watching him.

  But a block away, he couldn’t resist pulling the second picture out one more time to look into the face of evil. The man was getting into his car, turning slightly, as if sensing the presence of a camera and looking up to fix the person behind the camera in his memory. Those eyes, that look that every man in his family had. Only he no longer stood in the shadow of others, he had become the one who controlled the rest of them.

  Taylor Kimball, Junior. And now Abraham wondered. Was he looking into the eyes of the anti-Christ?

  -end-

  Following: Author Bio, Excerpt from The Red Rooster.

  About the Author:

  Michael Wallace has trekked across the Sahara on a camel, ridden an elephant through a tiger preserve in Southeast Asia, eaten fried guinea pig, and been licked on the head by a skunk. In a previous stage of life he programmed nuclear war simulations, smuggled refugees out of a war zone, and milked cobras for their venom. He speaks Spanish and French and grew up in a religious community in the desert. His suspense/thrillers include The Devil's Deep, State of Siege, Implant, and The Righteous, and he is also the author of collections of travel stories and fantasy books for children. His work has appeared in print more than a hundred times, and he has sold work to markets such as The Atlantic and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

  The Red Rooster

  by Michael Wallace

  Prologue:

  June 2, 1940

  Among the throngs fleeing the port at Dunkirk was a young woman from Spain, seventeen years old, who wanted to return to the front lines. She had passage across the Channel, papers paid for with a man’s life and a small fortune in twenty franc notes, and a cousin waiting in London. She kicked off her shoes, gathered her dress and prepared to jump overboard.

  The captain of the overburdened boat grabbed her arm with a bandaged hand. His eyes were wild. “Stupid girl, you’ll die, you’ll never make it.”

  Gabriela barely heard him, could only think about her father and it made her angry and afraid.

  You lied. You said you were coming back and you never meant it.

  Instead, he’d left her on this shot-up listing fishing boat, lashed to the side of the British gunboat and crowded with children, embassy staff, and soldiers. He meant to face the Germans without her.

  “What’s wrong with you, aren’t you listening?” the captain said. “Fine, die for all I care, I won’t stay a minute longer.”

  Gabriela braced herself and jumped.

  The water was cold. She went under and into silence. Gone were the shouting, cursing soldiers, the rumble of artillery and the high-pitched whine of brawling fighter planes, the British destroyers hurling shells across the water and into the city.

  She came up in a wreckage of splintered oars, broken barrels, shoes, army jackets, papers, flailing people with or without life jackets. The water tasted bitter, oily. An explosion, a spout of water. Anti-aircraft fire sliced the sky against two screaming dive-bombers. She paddled toward the beach, and the hundreds of British and French soldiers wading into the water.

  A soldier pulled her onto the the beach, asking questions in English, what sounded like a variation of what the fishing boat captain had been screaming.

  “No, I’m going back, I need to find my father. Let go!”

  More English, two soldiers now, trying to calm her, take her back into the water and toward the ramshackle flotilla evacuating the beaches. Gabriela struggled and kicked and finally they let her go. She ran barefoot across the sand, back toward town. Burning half-tracks littered the beach, together with overturned trucks, an aircraft fuselage, rifles tossed in piles by fleeing soldiers. The ground shuddered, threw her down. She picked herself up.

  Her father had lied, he’d stuck his head in the noose to save her. He’d sacrificed himself, and for what? Did he think she’d take it?

  Chapter One:

  September 18, 1942

  The Italian waggled his finger in Gabriela’s face. “Eleven francs. No more.”

  She extended the jade brooch until she held it under his nose. “Please, look closer.” Gabriela fought to keep from sounding desperate, a difficult task two years into her nightmare. “The dragonfly wings are so delicate, and look at the detail. How about thirteen, it’s just two more francs.”

  He shook his head without looking down. “Eleven.”

  “There are other stalls, you know.”

  Sure, and you’ve tried them all, haven’t you?

  A hundred other stalls, and ten thousand people in worn shoes and threadbare socks, empty stomachs, some with hungry children, all trying to offload their last, precious possessions.

  Gabriela owed her landlords thirty, had sold almost everything she owned, and was down to selling half her ration cards so she could buy food with the other half. What good would eleven francs do? Thirteen, for that matter?

  “Eleven. Take it or not.”

  She pulled back her hand. “My father gave this brooch to my mother. She’s dead. I can’t possibly sell it for eleven francs.”

  “Listen girl, nobody cares.” The voice belonged to a woman queued behind her, holding silk scarves. Behind her, a man with a pair of silver candlesticks who looked suspiciously like a Jew. In the marché aux puces, nobody much bothered with that.

  She’d seen all types in the flea markets of Paris. Hadn’t she been here a hundred times to sell her father’s things? His boots, belts, greatcoat, books of Spanish poetry, leather journals, his watch, even paintings of mother; all brought a few precious centimes or francs. Two weeks ago she’d sold the trunk itself, brought from Spain.

  She kept a few meager possessions, her favorite of which was his meerschaum pipe, amber from years of smoking. It still held the aroma of tobacco and she couldn’t smell it without imagining him in his chair. When she came in and saw him smoking, she could almost see the cloud of thoughts rising above his head with the pipe smoke. He would urge her to sit down, pull out a small wooden box of imported Belgian chocolates, and then pontificate: rubber plantations in Ceylon, the proper ratio of shellfish to sausage in a mixed paella, or the development of the steam engine. It didn’t matter the subject, he was so energetic that she would sit and listen, eating chocolates while he gesticulated with his pipe and his latest book.

  Selling the pipe would be like selling those memories.

  The stall owner’s scowl hardened. “Eleven. Either make a deal or get the hell out of my line. I’m busy.”

  “All right, then, eleven.” She made to hand over the brooch to the stall owner, already fumbling in his pocket for the bills, when a young woman took her wrist.

  “Eleven francs, are you crazy?” the woman asked.

  The speaker was close to Gabriela’s own age. She had a fresh, carefree air and looked glamorous in her green dress with dainty straps over the shoulders. Nylons, a whiff of perfume, red lipstick, long eyelashes.

  “That’s all I can get,” Gabriela said. “I’ve tried, God help me.”

  “Don’t let this man rob you. I’ll pay you twenty, how about that?” The other girl opened her purse. She pulled out some mixed bills that included reichsmarks and francs. “Twenty. Do we have a deal?”

  “Hey, what are you doing?” the Italian demanded. “That’s mine, I bought it already.” He shoved his money at Gabriela and grabbed for the brooch.

  She jerked it back. “This woman says twenty. Will you give me more?”

  “Dammit, we had an agreement.” He turned his anger to the young woman. “You, who do you think you are?”

  The young woman laughed and gave a brushing off motion. She took Gabriela’s arm and led her a few paces from the crowd. Her heels clicked smartly on the pavement.

  Gabriela worried the stall owner would pursue them, but he was already haggling with the owner of the scarves, while the queue of sellers patiently waited their turn. Meanwhile the crowd swirled around
them. Children, begging. Young, shiftless men. An old war veteran in his cloak, toothless and smelling of whiskey and sour sweat.

  “I can’t believe he thought you’d take eleven. May as well steal it. Your brooch is worth at least twice what I offered, you know that.”

  “Maybe before the war.”

  The young woman held out the money. “If you want to ask around for more, I understand. Otherwise, I’m delighted to pay twenty. It’s a beautiful brooch.”

  “No, no, I’ll take it.”

  Gabriela took the twenty francs and handed over the brooch before the girl could change her mind. She tucked the money into her bra, glanced around to make sure she hadn’t attracted the attention of pickpockets. Her gaze caught the uniformed Germans who idled in the shade at the edge of the street. The Eiffel Tower lifted behind them, topped by a swastika flag that flapped back and forth in a lazy salute. One man smoked a cigarette, while the other polished his rifle butt with a handkerchief.

  She was always searching for one German in particular, the man who knew about Papá. These two were just ordinary soldiers.

  “It’s beautiful,” the girl said. “I feel so guilty. I should have paid you more.”

  “Thank you anyway, you were generous,” Gabriela said, using the formal address in French.

  “Oh, don’t give me that vous nonsense. It’s so formal and stuffy, and I’m not that old. How old are you?”

  “Almost twenty.”

  Am I? My god, has it been two years already?

  “See, I knew it. We’re the same age. My name is Christine.”

  “I’m Gabriela. Gaby, I mean.”

  “Well, Gaby, I took advantage of you, I admit it.” She held up the brooch, admired it, then slipped it into her purse. Gabriela felt a pang of loss. Her mother’s brooch, and now it was gone. At least she’d sold it for more than she’d dreamed just a few minutes earlier.

  “Are you from Paris?” Christine asked.

  “No,” she admitted.