The gunfire sounded hollow now, like she was at the bottom of a well. She staggered forward. David took hold of her good arm and hauled her along.
“No,” she tried to say. “Keep firing.”
But the words came out in a slur.
“Faster,” he urged. “You can do it.”
He was carrying most of her weight now, having draped her good arm over his shoulder. She’d dropped her pistol at some point, but didn’t remember it falling from her fingers.
Hold on, she told herself. Keep moving. You can’t stop now.
Miriam’s worries dropped away: her role as protector of the valley, her love for David and his love for her. At that moment, she could think only of her children. They needed their mother. Diego, Abigail. One adopted, one the child of her own womb. She loved them both fiercely, equally. They needed her in different ways, but they both needed her. And she needed them.
That consuming need propelled her, forced her legs to keep churning. Gunfire sounded all around, but no bullet hit them. They were protected from above. Ahead, she could see a figure lying flat on the pavement. He was shouting at them. Something about moving off the highway so he could get a shot. Who was that? David? No, her husband was holding her up and dragging her along. It must be Jacob. They were drawing closer. Another few steps and they’d reach Jacob and safety.
I’m going to make it. I’m going to live.
Then a tremendous blow slammed into her back and she fell.
When Miriam and David blocked his view, Jacob scrambled to move himself and the gun so he’d have a different line of sight through the scope. He shifted several feet to the left, and flattened on the pavement to take fresh aim.
He dropped three enemies in quick succession, but none of them was the person with the goggles. Where was he?
Jacob glanced away from the scope to check on the progress of David and Miriam. His brother had Miriam’s arm draped over his shoulder. Her other arm hung limp and her head drooped. Her feet staggered along. The two of them weaved across the road like a pair of drunks, no more than fifty yards away.
“David, move!” he shouted. “I need a clear shot.”
He looked in the scope again. Two men stood firing assault rifles haphazardly down the highway. Another had dropped to one knee and took more careful aim. A glint of reflected light from this one. The goggles.
Jacob squeezed the trigger. At that exact moment, a flare of light came from the muzzle of the other man’s gun. David and Miriam fell in a jumble on the pavement.
From his rear came the growl of a diesel engine, the crunch of tires. It was a vehicle closing rapidly from the direction of the cliffs. No lights. Ahead, David shouted in fear or pain. More people closed in on the road ahead of Jacob. He didn’t dare let up, not even to look back at the vehicle that rolled to a stop behind him.
He fired three more times. Then, to his relief, the door slammed shut behind him and a gun fired on full auto, shooting over Jacob and down the highway. It was Stephen Paul. The gunfire was as random as the enemy’s, but it scattered the squatters from the highway in a way that the sniping had not. Jacob dropped two more people, including one who tried to recover the night vision goggles. By now he must have killed seven or eight people, but still they were boiling out of the camp by the dozen.
“Give me the rifle,” Stephen Paul said. “Go get them.”
Jacob left the other man with the sniper rifle and ran forward at a crouch to get to David and Miriam. His brother had extricated himself and was on his feet trying to lift Miriam, who lay sprawled in the road. Jacob grabbed her legs and the two brothers hauled her back. Stephen Paul continued to fire the .308.
“Get her into the truck,” Jacob said to David when they were behind the rifle.
While Stephen Paul sniped, they got Miriam into the back of the Humvee. A bullet pinged off the metal near Jacob’s head. He barely heard it; his mind was churning as his fingers probed the wounds in the darkness.
“We got her in!” David shouted at Stephen Paul, his voice tight and frightened. “Let’s go!”
Stephen Paul grabbed the weapon and jumped to his feet as David climbed in with Jacob and Miriam and pulled the door shut. The Humvee swung around the highway, backed up to make the turn, then raced down the highway. Bullets dinged off the vehicle.
“Give me light,” Jacob said.
The light came on, and he blinked, blinded after so long in the darkness. While he waited for his eyes to adjust, his fingers worked to unbutton Miriam’s shirt. His eyes finally adjusted at the same moment he got the shirt peeled back from her torso. Beside him, David gasped.
There were two wounds. The first had struck her from the front, and made a mess of her left shoulder—damage to the scapula near the glenohumeral joint. The second had entered from behind, passed all the way through, and left a gaping exit wound that had torn through her right breast. As the bullet passed through her chest cavity, it had dissipated energy along the wound track, sending a shock wave through her body. Already, her blood covered Jacob’s hands and pooled onto the carpeted truck bed.
Miriam’s eyes were open, flickering. Bloody spume bubbled through her lips.
A sob escaped from David’s mouth. He reached for her.
“Stay back,” Jacob snapped.
He rolled Miriam onto her side to look at the entry wound. He followed its trajectory from the small hole through the serratus posterior muscle left of the scapula, to where it emerged from her breast. He pictured the lungs, drowning in blood. His heart sank.
And she’d already lost blood from that first hit. They were twenty minutes from his clinic, so poorly outfitted these days that he doubted he’d be able to stabilize a wound like this if it had happened in his front yard.
“Do something!” David pleaded.
Jacob chewed his lip. He took a deep breath, getting ready to tell David the awful news. Then Stephen Paul pulled to a stop. He jumped out of the truck. They must be at the bunker, and he had run in to man the machine gun in case the enemy came for an attack.
“Go,” Jacob told his brother. “Drive the truck. Get me to the clinic.”
David jumped from the back. An instant later, they were careening down the switchbacks to the valley floor.
“How is she?” David cried.
“Shut up and drive.”
Jacob pressed against the larger exit wound with the heel of his right hand. With his other hand, he felt for her pulse. Already, he couldn’t detect a radial pulse, but putting his fingers to her throat detected a feeble carotid pulse. That meant her blood pressure was already below sixty and falling.
There was nothing he could do but stare at Miriam as the moments of her death approached minute by minute. Even though they were flying down the highway at top speed, it seemed to take forever before David screeched around a corner and Jacob knew they’d reached the center of town. Moments later, the vehicle jerked to a stop. David raced around and threw open the doors.
Jacob stared at Miriam. Her eyes were glassy and the blood bubbles had stopped moving at her lips.
“Let’s go,” David said. “Get her inside. For God’s sake, don’t just sit there.”
Miriam was limp. No further pulse could be detected. Jacob released the pressure on her chest. Blood oozed slowly from the exit wound, but there wasn’t enough pressure left to force it out.
“What are you doing?” David cried.
Jacob looked up at his brother, throat tight. “David.”
“Please, you saved her before.” His voice was pleading, sobbing. “Remember? She was shot through the lung. And you pulled her out of it. You saved her!”
“It wasn’t like this.”
“You have to try!”
“I’m sorry. She’s already gone.”
“She can’t be. She didn’t even—” He swallowed hard. “—didn’t
even say goodbye. I can’t—no.”
David was shaking. Outside, a dog was barking, and doors opened and closed. Voices.
“Use the priesthood,” David urged. “You’re the prophet. You can close her wounds, bring her back. Have faith!” He’d taken Miriam’s hand and squeezed it while staring at her with bugging eyes. “Jacob!”
“I’m so sorry.” Jacob felt numb, like he was dreaming. This couldn’t be happening.
“Give her a blessing,” David begged. “Please.”
“Yes, okay. Help me get her onto the lawn.”
They carried her out of the back of the Humvee. Women came from the Christianson houses. One was Lillian, who let out a cry when she saw Miriam and came running. Lillian’s sister-in-law, Jessie Lyn, grabbed the young woman and held her tight. David stumbled at the curb and fell, but two women grabbed his arm and held him up, while another caught Miriam before she hit the ground. Together, the men and women eased Miriam onto the grass. David threw himself on top of her, weeping, kissing her forehead and mouth, his tears dripping on her face.
Jacob was tempted. For just a moment, knowing there was nothing he could do to bring her back, he thought about trying, anyway. Call her spirit back to its body. Command her to live. But no, that would be wrong. Plus there was the damage to all of these people when they saw their prophet try to raise a body from the dead and fail.
He was only a man. He had no magic that flowed through his hands. He had no power over life and death except for those tools given to him by his medical training. And that training was helpless at a time like this.
Jacob placed his hands on Miriam’s forehead. It was still damp with her sweat, still warm from her body heat. Twenty minutes ago she’d been a living, breathing person. A woman filled with passions and prejudices. A mother, a wife, a protector of her people. She had saved lives and taken them. Always, Jacob knew, she had acted according to the dictates of her own conscience, even when they were flawed.
The words of a blessing came to Jacob’s mind. He didn’t try to shape them or spin them to his own purposes, but spoke the words as he felt inspired. His voice came out strong and confident, filled with power. Maybe, just maybe, he spoke from a divine source.
“Miriam Christianson, in the name of Jesus Christ, and by the power of the Holy Melchizedek Priesthood, I lay my hands upon thy head to give thee a final blessing as thou preparest to meet thy savior.”
A collective sob rippled through the gathering crowd.
“And when thou shall look upon the face of the Lord, He will take thee into His arms and say unto thee: Well done, thou good and faithful servant . . .”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Eliza and Steve hadn’t known what to expect when they set off for Salt Lake in the converted armored car they called the Methuselah tank. Panguitch had been deserted, and they knew there was some sort of armed camp at Richfield, because it had stopped the larger group in the Humvee earlier in the day. How fiercely would the survivors in that town resist their passage?
After some discussion, they decided to cut over to I-15 when they reached I-70, which was the rural east-west freeway in Central Utah, passing through Green River on its way to Colorado. Heading north on I-15 would be a dangerous way to approach Provo and Salt Lake, since the freeway was the main artery through Utah. If there were any bandits, rogue army units, or hostile state forces, they would be here. But approaching Richfield a second time also seemed risky.
Foolishly, they didn’t have a road map in all their supplies. Eliza hadn’t thought to check for one, maybe because she thought she knew the roads of Southern and Central Utah well enough by memory. But it occurred to her that it would be a good idea to have a map in case they reached I-15 to find it unsafe and needed to look for an alternate route.
So when they reached the deserted town of Panguitch, they stopped to search for a map. They found one amidst the looted contents of the old M&D Food Town. The shelves had been emptied of the last can of dog food and the final roll of toilet paper, but the book rack by the checkout was untouched. Nobody wanted to read the latest Harlequin Romance or James Patterson thriller in the apocalypse, it seemed. And neither had anyone taken the Utah road maps.
There was some trouble getting from the I-70 junction to I-15, where the road had washed out at one of the mountain passes, but Jacob had wisely sent them with a chainsaw in case they encountered fallen trees. They used it instead to cut saplings at the mountain pass, which they laid across the gap so they could get over.
By the time they reached the other side of the washout it was almost dark, and they decided this was a good place to spend the night. They drove higher into the mountains, where they found a ranch exit that led to a dirt road. It proved a good place to hide off the freeway.
The night was cold that high in the mountains, but they slept in the sheets and blankets they’d brought from home, cuddled in each other’s arms. Soon they fell to kissing and undressing each other. Lying in Steve’s arms felt like making love at the end of the world, but when they’d finished, Eliza felt happy and content.
They came down from the mountains the next morning and finally reached I-15. The juncture of the two freeways was a flat, grassy plain, empty between mountain ranges on either side. The interchange itself was littered with the burned husks of semitrucks and motor homes, but continuing north, I-15 itself was deserted.
They’d come onto the freeway between the towns of Beaver and Fillmore. The latter town was abandoned, a picked-over corpse, much like Panguitch had been, so they continued past it without stopping on their way toward Nephi, another hour to the north. Nephi lay on the southern outskirts of Utah’s main population center, and had been almost an exurb of the Provo area, which centered on the Mormon temples and Brigham Young University.
Eliza was sure they would encounter people again once they reached Nephi. Maybe even a functioning government. Yet as they approached, nobody emerged to challenge them. The houses on the outskirts of town had either been burned or bombed. Many lay in rubble; others were blackened shells.
The freeway hooked around the bench at the foot of towering Mount Nebo, with Nephi’s downtown area lower and to the left. Eliza got her first good look and caught her breath. The town was gone, its trees cut or burned, the houses themselves reduced to their foundations. The hotels, restaurants, and shops, leveled. A handful of old buildings downtown stood with one or two brick walls still upright, but they only accentuated the appalling devastation.
Steve was driving and slowed the vehicle as they passed by the town. “Oh, my God.”
Eliza glanced up at the charred foothills. The juniper and scrub oak had burned up the mountainside, and perhaps north over the pass and into Utah County as well. But it hadn’t been a recent fire, because the grass was fresh and green from the spring rains.
“Could have been a forest fire,” she said. “Lots of grass to burn because of all the rain we had. Probably late last summer when things dried out. Lightning started it, maybe. Or maybe someone’s unattended campfire. It got going, and there was nobody left in town to fight it.”
“Maybe.” He didn’t sound convinced. “More likely the fire started in town and spread in the opposite direction.”
They rumbled up the freeway. It climbed the lowest shoulder of Mount Nebo, then brought them down into Utah County, with the snow-topped peak of Mount Timpanogos on the far end, thirty-five or forty miles distant.
It had been a few years since Eliza had entered the main population center along the Wasatch Front. At that time, the Salt Lake and Utah Valleys had seemed so lush compared with the desert around Blister Creek. Mile after mile of subdivisions, with their green lawns and wide, leafy trees. And so many cars; between Provo and Salt Lake, there were half a dozen lanes in each direction, and each one had been packed with cars driving at what seemed to her breakneck speeds. People weaving in and out of traffic, always in suc
h a hurry. It was frightening.
The other thing that had tormented her was the pollution. Sometimes, when there wasn’t enough wind to push the smog up and over the mountains, a haze would suffocate the valley floors. During her first winter in Salt Lake, a temperature inversion had cut visibility to a few miles and made her lungs burn. People complained, but they didn’t stop driving their cars.
No smog now. It was clear from horizon to horizon. And as they approached the southernmost towns of Santaquin and Payson, she saw that the lawns were dead, the trees cut down. Sagebrush and tumbleweeds had begun to reclaim those few farms and orchards that had not yet been bulldozed for strip malls and subdivisions before the collapse.
A giant McDonald’s sign still rose next to the freeway at Payson, but the restaurant itself and all the surrounding buildings were gone, as if they’d been wiped from the earth. Instead, nothing but weedy lots.
After Payson, Spanish Fork, then Springville both seemed to have suffered the same fate.
“Where is everyone?” Steve asked.
“Gone.”
“Gone, as in they left? Or gone, dead?”
“Thousands of people lived in these towns. They can’t have all died.”
And yet, by the time the freeway bisected Provo, she’d begun to wonder. The entire west side of the city, between the freeway and Utah Lake, was rubble. Houses had burned to their foundation, warehouses lay gutted. To the right, a row of vacant, windowless houses stared down at the freeway from the ridge.
They came around the bend into Provo’s sister city of Orem to see signs for Utah Valley University, but the school itself seemed to have been the site of a battle. Alongside the gutted husks of buildings lay burned-out tanks and other armored vehicles. More wrecked military vehicles clogged the off-ramp and the road up the hill.
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