Blood of the Faithful

by Michael Wallace

  What was even more worrying was what the elevator might be used for besides transporting food: people. Send twenty men down from the squatter camp, one at a time, and they could do serious damage to the church’s food supplies. Maybe they already had. Or worse, send a small army down one night, maybe forty or fifty men, then have them fan out across the valley, murdering people in their sleep.

  Miriam clenched her jaw. This would end. Now.

  There was no guarantee that the second man would return. But there was no saying he wouldn’t either. Quietly take care of Chambers here, then she could wait for the second man to either come back, or not. If he did, she’d kill him too.

  She was barely thinking of Jacob as she returned her pistol to its holster and slid her KA-BAR knife from its sheath. No time to argue with him about this. Time to act.

  Miriam rose from behind the rock. Chambers was still staring up, almost turned completely away from her, but not quite. He was taller than her and stronger, ex-FBI, around thirty years old. Miriam was confident, but not stupid. There was no guarantee that if she grappled with him she’d come out on top, knife or no. No, it had to be a quick thrust, the knife plunging into his back before he had a chance to respond.

  She closed to fifteen feet, then ten, then five. Then he was in reach. She sprang at him.

  Chambers must have felt something, heard something, sensed her somehow. He whirled as she came at him.

  Miriam was already stabbing down with the heavy military knife as he flinched out of the way with a shout of alarm. The knife hit and hit hard. But not into his back. Instead, it thrust into his upper shoulder, the blade meeting resistance on bone as it slid in. But when he twisted away with a cry of pain, the knife wrenched out of Miriam’s hand. Chambers swung blindly with his other arm. His forearm whooshed past, almost catching her on the side of the head with a lucky blow.

  By the time Miriam regained her balance, Chambers had the knife out of his shoulder. His left arm hung limp. His right swung and slashed at the darkness with the knife.

  She got back until she was well out of his reach, then stopped and watched him without moving. Inside, she was furious with herself for failing at the job. He’d moved too quickly.

  Chambers dropped the knife and drew his pistol. “Kite, you bitch. I know that’s you.”

  “My name is Miriam.”

  He snapped off a shot into the darkness in the direction of her voice. But she’d expected it and had ducked the instant she spoke. The shot would have gone wild anyway, she thought. Her own gun was in hand, and now that he’d fired at her, there was no longer a question of keeping silent. But she wanted to know. She returned to the protection of the rock where she’d crouched watching the two men.

  Chambers stood panting, staring hard into the darkness, looking this way and that.

  “You must have dropped your flashlight,” she said. “Too bad.”

  He fired again in her direction. It didn’t hit the rock, let alone threaten her in any way.

  Miriam chuckled. “You’re a terrible shot. And I have night vision. I can kill you any time I like.”

  “So do it, bitch.”

  “Who is the other man? I’ll let you live if you tell me.”

  “Liar.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Go to hell.”

  Miriam was getting tired of this. And she wanted him down before the people up top decided to send someone back down in the barrel. So she lifted the gun and took careful aim with her pistol. Right at his chest.

  “Last chance,” she said.

  He lifted his gun in her direction. This time he steadied his aim, and it looked more like a plausible shot in the direction of her voice. She didn’t wait to test his aim. Her finger squeezed the trigger. The gun barked in her hand. Chambers fell.

  The shot was good. She didn’t need to go over to know the result. If he was still alive, it was only temporary.

  Miriam now had two worries. The first was that the second man would come down in the barrel looking for her. The squatters could probably fit two men in the barrel once the food was unloaded. If they had flashlights, they might even get off a couple of good shots before she brought them down.

  The second worry was Jacob. He’d have heard the gunfire too, and would be hurrying in her direction. Whatever she did, she needed to act before he arrived and ordered her to stand down so he could argue about what she’d done.

  Still holding the gun and looking through the goggles, Miriam made her way cautiously to Chambers’s prone body. His gun lay in the sand a few inches from his outstretched hand. She kicked it away, then picked it up and flipped the safety before tucking it into her pants. After casting a final glance at Chambers, she returned her own pistol to its holster.

  She reached the rock that had descended from the cliffs and touched at the rope. It was taut. There was some weight on the other end. But the stone wasn’t rising yet either. She made a quick decision and reached for her knife, only to find her sheath empty.

  It took a moment to remember that Chambers had torn it out of his shoulder, then dropped it when he drew his gun. She searched the ground around him, finding it only when she rolled him onto his back. It had been beneath him. She picked up the knife.

  “What have you done?” a voice asked behind her.

  She whirled to see Jacob turning on his flashlight and shoving his night vision goggles to his forehead. He dropped to his knees and fumbled with the buttons on Chambers’s shirt.

  Miriam turned back to the rope. “He shot first.”

  “There’s a knife wound here!”

  Miriam grabbed the rope and sawed. A few quick strokes and she severed it. Something clanked on the rocks above.

  She sprang away. “Get back!”

  They both retreated as the barrel came tumbling out of the darkness, spitting rocks. It slammed into the sand. There was nobody in it, only rocks. Someone had apparently been filling it to add ballast for a return trip down, but nobody had climbed in yet. Ah, well. She’d wrecked their system all the same.

  “Dammit, Miriam. What are you doing? What’s going on here?”

  “You wanted them coming down on us in the darkness? For that matter, turn off that light. They’re only a few hundred feet above us. Now that I cut the rope, they’ll know it’s not Chambers down here.”

  Jacob obeyed, then put on his goggles and stared down at the body.

  “Aren’t you going to try to save him?” she asked. “Pull bullets out of the wicked and all that crap you do?”

  “Like the time you got shot through the lungs and I kept you from drowning in your own blood? Is that the kind of crap you’re talking about? Anyway, he’s dead. You put a 9-millimeter slug right through his heart.”

  “It was his choice. Like I said, he shot first.”

  “I saw the knife wound, remember? So I think you came up and tried to kill him first.”

  She’d already concocted a story about how she’d tried to take Chambers prisoner with the knife, but she didn’t have a chance to tell it. A rifle fired from above them. As they scrambled for cover, a handgun snapped more shots. For the next few minutes they crouched behind a rock while gunfire blasted down from the cliffs. At least four different weapons were firing, as far as she could tell. Possibly five.

  Miriam and Jacob had only partial cover, but the gunfire wasn’t aimed. Only one shot even came close, ricocheting off one of the fins of Witch’s Warts at their rear and then whizzing past her ear.

  By the time the enemy stopped firing, Miriam had changed her mind and decided to tell Jacob the entire truth. While they remained crouched, she confessed everything she’d done and everything that had gone through her mind as she’d done it.

  “There was no rush,” he said when she’d finished. “We could have stayed in the shadows tonight, maybe even studied them for two or three mo
re days. Then, when we were ready, waited here and arrested them when they arrived.”

  “Who was that second guy? Why did he go up top if he was only going to return later tonight?”

  “What did he look like?”

  “He had a beard.” She shrugged. “I didn’t see much else.”

  “Man with a beard. That’s really useful.” Jacob sounded disgusted.

  “Could be Whit McQueen. He’s military—maybe he knew Chambers from back when. Or they made some sort of pact. I tried to find out, but Chambers wouldn’t tell me. All I know for sure was that he was an enemy. That’s why I didn’t want him to get away.”

  “That’s exactly what happened, thanks to you. He got away. I’ll say it again—there was no rush.”

  “Don’t be blind. The end is here.”

  “Sure, of course.” His voice oozed sarcasm, and this made her angry.

  “We need a leader. Word gets out that the prophet has gone soft and what do you think happens?”

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  Miriam stopped, suddenly made wary by the sharp tone of his voice. He suspected something. Jacob was a smart man, and his mind was working things over.

  “Well?” he pressed.

  “Never mind, forget it.”

  “You’re holding something back. What?”

  “Nothing,” she lied. “I’m worried is all. You saw the meeting tonight, you know people are worked up.”

  They came out from behind the rock. Miriam searched Chambers’s body. She found keys to the ATV in his front jeans pocket. The only other interesting thing she found was a nearly empty pack of stale-smelling cigarettes. That was a risk. Nobody in Blister Creek smoked, so the cigarettes must have come from outside the valley. If he’d been caught with them, if he’d even smelled of cigarette smoke, people would have turned suspicious and hostile.

  “I don’t think it was McQueen,” Jacob said when she’d finished searching the body and they’d returned to the safety of the rocks. “I mean, it could have been, but that’s not the most likely scenario.”

  “Do you think we have a traitor?”

  “Doesn’t have to be a traitor, only someone who thinks he knows better. He comes up with some scheme that seems perfectly logical and then goes about in secret to execute it. Know what I mean?”

  Miriam looked away, uncomfortable. She cleared her throat. “Who?”

  “I don’t know yet. But I’ll find out by morning.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Elder Smoot stared out from the north bunker, looking down and across the valley toward Blister Creek. He struggled to maintain his focus. His son Grover lay in a sleeping bag, snoring softly, getting some rest before his father woke him for his turn as spotter. That left Smoot alone with his thoughts.

  Only a few hours had passed since Ezekiel had dragged him into Witch’s Warts, and Smoot’s mind had been in turmoil ever since. His son’s plans were almost too horrific to contemplate.

  The Lord commanded me to find Jacob Christianson and cut off his head.

  If Jacob was a fallen prophet, and Ezekiel had been lifted to take his place, then it was the righteous thing to do. After all, the Sword of Laban had been used for such a purpose before. It was an ancient relic from The Book of Mormon, wielded by the hand of Nephi to behead Laban and allow the faithful to recover holy scriptures and then escape Jerusalem for the Promised Land in the Americas.

  But if Jacob had not fallen into apostasy, if he was still favored by God, what then? Not only would Ezekiel’s plan fail—the Lord would never permit it—but Smoot’s own complicity would damn his soul to Outer Darkness. One could not turn against the Lord’s Anointed and survive.

  But Ezekiel had the sword. He had the breastplate. How to explain that?

  The alarm sounded and startled Grover from his sleep. Smoot told the boy to settle down, then turned on the spotlights and looked uphill. A mule deer stood frozen in the switchback above them, its huge ears turned toward the bunker. A large doe. After a few seconds it regained its senses and bounded back up the road and out of sight. Smoot turned off the lights.

  David Christianson had rigged an ingenious electronic system to assist in guarding the highway. Using a solar panel for recharging, an array of car batteries, and two old home-security systems, he’d crisscrossed the road in several places with invisible infrared beams as motion sensors. When activated, a bell would ring inside the bunker. Smoot could then illuminate the road with two spotlights.

  It was a good system, but in the past year it had delivered nothing but false alarms. Mostly larger animals like mule deer or coyote triggered the sensors, but occasionally even a skunk with an upraised tail could do the same. These days, the alarm didn’t even raise Smoot’s heart rate. Grover didn’t seem to wake completely, and was soon snoring again.

  Smoot’s thoughts had returned to Ezekiel’s strange and frightening pronouncement when a light caught his eye from down in the valley. He looked through the slit running along the valley side of the concrete bunker. It was one of several narrow gun ports that enabled 360-degree fire from the .50-caliber machine gun. On this side it presented a wide, sweeping view of the valley from a vantage point roughly halfway up the cliffs, where the bunker snugged into a crook beside the snaking highway.

  There was only a sliver of moon, and the valley had been resting in a pool of inky blackness beneath a glittering bowl of stars. The single light stood out.

  Some miscreant, he thought at first, disobeying the brownout regulations. Then another porch light turned on, then the lights of a third house. He took out his binoculars. They were full size, 10x50 power, and strong enough to pinpoint the rough location within town if you could hold them steady. The lights were on at or near the Christianson compound. More lights. Entire households, rousing themselves. Then, to his surprise, he spotted lights from a vehicle.

  The vehicle cut east through town, moving at a steady clip. Another vehicle started up, this one making for the highway. Soon, it was driving north, toward the bunker.

  Smoot nudged Grover with his toe. “Hey, wake up.”

  “Huh?” Grover climbed groggily out of his sleeping bag. “My turn already?”

  “There’s something wrong.”

  Grover sat upright. He sounded instantly alert. “What is it?”

  The boy came over to the gun slit. Smoot handed him a second pair of binoculars.

  “Well, look at that,” Grover said. “That’s never a good sign, is it?”

  It was a stretch to say that Grover’s personality had changed after his adventures in Las Vegas last year. Grover had always been a sensitive, feminine boy, and sadly, Smoot thought he would stay that way. Grover preferred the piano to riding, would rather read a novel than go target shooting. He still liked to read plays aloud with his teenage sisters. Well, at least Smoot didn’t think anymore that the boy was a homosexual. That was something. The pathetic way he’d mooned after Eliza Christianson was evidence enough.

  Grover’s desires had been hopeless from the start. Eliza was in her midtwenties and had been engaged to Steve Krantz, the former gentile. Grover was nineteen and weak and scrawny next to Krantz. Yet that hadn’t kept the boy from moping about the house for a week after Eliza got married.

  But since then, Grover had at least grown a spine. He asserted himself around his brothers, rode through the valley with David Christianson to learn electrical and mechanical skills. Heck, that was plenty useful. And Smoot was no longer worried that if the squatters attacked, Grover would curl into a ball and whimper until it was over.

  More houselights came on throughout the town. A streetlight blinked on.

  “They’re going to cause a blackout,” Grover said. “This time of night, we choke flow through the smaller turbine.”

  Sure enough, the lights began to flicker. The fools.

  But just when Sm
oot thought Grover would be proven correct, people in town began to respond to the flickering. Soon, more lights were turning off than turning on. Still, a wave of lights was moving through town as one house after another woke. Multiple flashlights and lanterns added to the movement, bobbing along as they traveled through town. And now he counted six different vehicles, all burning precious fuel as they radiated out from downtown.

  Smoot turned on the radio, risking some of their own precious electricity, this stored in batteries. He checked to be sure the radio was tuned to the correct frequency. Almost at once, he heard a woman’s voice.

  “Hello? Blister Creek? Come in, please.” The frequency was strangely filled with static, given that town was only a few miles away.

  When the woman cut out, Smoot responded. “This is Smoot at the north bunker. What’s going on down there?”

  “Hello? It’s Eliza Christianson.”

  “Sister Eliza? Are you back already? When did that happen?”

  He held the radio receiver in one hand and was still staring through the binoculars, which he held with the other. His first thought was that Eliza’s return explained the chaos below, some alarming news she’d brought from the road. But why hadn’t she descended from the reservoir and passed his checkpoint?

  “I can hear someone, but there’s too much static,” she said. “Listen, I’m in Salt Lake. We made it safely. I’ve been trying to reach you.”

  This got his attention. She’d made it all the way to the state capital. The thought was so surprising—Smoot hadn’t even believed Salt Lake was still standing, let alone that Eliza and Steve would reach it safely and then get to a radio—that he momentarily forgot about the turmoil on the valley floor.

  She must have a more powerful radio than his. This one was seventy-five watts, enough to transmit across a hundred miles, maybe a little farther. But Salt Lake was a good two hundred and fifty miles away as the crow flies.

  Eliza started to say something about a war and fire, but then her voice faded away. He waited impatiently for her to come back.