Eliza turned back to Charity. “Did you hear about Fernie?”
“I heard something. There was an accident. Is she okay? The kids?”
“The kids are fine. The baby, too. I don’t know if you know, but Fernie is nine months pregnant.”
“I heard.”
“Unfortunately, Fernie—” Eliza’s voice caught. Charity looked up, alarm spreading across her face, and Eliza reminded herself that Charity and Fernie had lived together for years as sister wives under Elder Kimball’s roof. “Fernie has a spinal injury. She’s paralyzed.”
Charity drew in her breath. “Oh no.”
Eliza glanced out the window to see that Fayer and Krantz were having an animated discussion with Fayer gesticulating and Krantz throwing up his hands. Eliza took hold of Charity’s arm. “What’s going on, Sister? What were you doing hitchhiking all by yourself?”
“Some of the men are leading the women and children deeper into the wilderness. They say there’s another camp, a second sanctuary. We were traveling at night, and it was easy enough to drop behind. I waited until morning, and then I…” Her voice trailed off and she shrugged.
“But you don’t have a pack,” Eliza said. “You were in the mountains. There’s still frost up there this time of year.”
“I was cold.”
“And what about food? And you didn’t even have a water bottle.”
“I’m used to fasting. That wasn’t so bad.”
Eliza handed back the water bottle, then stretched into the front seat to grab one of Fayer’s granola bars from the glove compartment. Charity took another long drink, then opened the granola bar. “Thank you.”
Eliza watched Charity eat with new appreciation for the woman’s bedraggled state. But she was a descendant of the women who had come into the Utah desert in wagons and on foot to found Blister Creek in the face of heat, cold, rattlesnakes, and a hostile band of Paiutes. There had been no men in that first expedition. Women like Charity Kimball had clawed an existence out of nothing.
“You said some of the men,” Eliza said. “Not all of them?”
“The men had a fight,” she said. “They were agitated over what had happened in Blister Creek. My husband and Brother Stanley were defending Taylor Junior from Aaron Young and some of the others who claimed that Taylor Junior was a fallen prophet. Aaron wanted to anoint himself the new prophet, I suppose. He threatened Brother Stanley, then shot him in the shoulder. And then Taylor Junior came back, and he and Aaron and Eric Froud killed Stanley. They all followed Taylor Junior after that.”
“Wait, did you say killed Brother Stanley? I thought he was defending Taylor Junior.”
“I don’t understand what happened,” Charity said. “It was horrible. But they were all together after that. My husband, Eric, Aaron, and Taylor Junior stayed behind. The other men were supposed to take the rest of us to the second refuge. I had to get away. Tell someone. Whatever they used to kill Brother Stanley—” And here a shadow crossed over her face.
“What do you mean, ‘whatever they used’?”
“I don’t know. Poison or something. I couldn’t see, but they dumped it on his head. He screamed—it was awful. I think it was a test, a practice run. They think Blister Creek is full of apostates and has to be cleansed.”
“Are you sure?” Eliza asked in a sharp voice.
“It’s a guess. Nobody tells me anything, I’m just a woman. But I can read my husband—he was never good at hiding things. It scared me enough I needed to warn Abraham.” She looked out the window toward Fayer and Krantz. “You won’t tell them, right?”
“I have to, Charity, you know that. Now tell me more about how you got out of the mountains so quickly.”
As Charity spoke, Eliza worried about the volatile situation developing in the wilderness. Taylor Junior and three of his followers waiting in their hideout while Abraham, Stephen Paul, Jacob, David, and Miriam came in the other side. When Charity finished, Eliza got out to share the new information with the two agents.
“There’s a chance we could get in there in time to stop it,” Eliza told them. “Charity found a quicker way out. She swiped Taylor Junior’s pickup truck and took it halfway down until she couldn’t get around a tree someone dragged across the road. She hiked the rest of the way out.”
“Can we trust her, that’s the question,” Fayer said.
Krantz said, “We could take her in and interrogate her, see if we can get some straight answers.”
“We don’t have time for that,” Eliza said. “We have to get up there before those two groups start shooting at each other.”
“Maybe Jacob will come to his senses,” Fayer said. “He’s got to see what a dumb idea this is. He’s a reasonable guy.”
“Whose wife will never walk again,” Krantz said. “I’m with Eliza. Let’s stop this thing. I don’t like the old lady any more than you do, but there’s no way she’d have known we’d be driving along this road. No way it’s a trap.”
They got back into the car.
“Please don’t kill him,” Charity said.
“Kill who?” Fayer asked.
“Don’t kill my husband. I know what he did and I know what they’re planning, but please—”
“Whoa, there,” Fayer said. “We’re not going to kill anyone. Get that through your head.”
She spoke with her typical demanding tone, and Charity shrank farther back into the seat.
Agent Krantz started to pull back onto the road, and Charity said, “No, go the other way. The way you were coming.”
He obeyed, and the two FBI agents had the good sense to remain quiet. Eliza put her hand on Charity’s arm, meaning to comfort her. The woman was hot and dry. At Eliza’s insistence, she drank some more water.
“You joined them in Dark Canyon, didn’t you?” Eliza asked. “After Jacob forced you to tell us how to find them, you went to warn Taylor Junior we were looking for him.”
“It wasn’t like that,” she protested. “They let my husband out of prison. I’d been waiting so long—you can’t understand what that was like. We wanted to go back to Blister Creek, but your father shook the dust off his feet and cast Taylor out. We had no choice.”
Father. He’d enforced his rule, punished Kimball for his defiance. Eliza wasn’t surprised, but she was disappointed. Couldn’t he have forgiven Charity, at least?
“There’s always a choice, Sister Charity. And you changed your mind, didn’t you? Why else are you hitchhiking on the highway?”
“I had to get out—I had to leave. Wait, pull in here.”
“What? That’s not a road,” Krantz said.
“It’s covered by tumbleweed. Try it, you’ll see.”
He and Fayer jumped out to clear the pile of tumbleweeds from what was, in fact, an old road, partially overgrown with brush and weeds. When they got back in, Krantz started up a rutted dirt road—more like a trail, really. The car inched along, jarring and scraping. They needed something with higher clearance. Sagebrush gave way to dry pines as they climbed into the hills.
“I don’t understand how this could happen,” Charity said to Eliza. “We’re all saints. Why are we fighting each other? Why aren’t we gathering under one prophet to lead us through the Last Days?”
Fayer said without turning, “Maybe you’re following false prophets. Have you ever thought about that?”
Agent Fayer was mainstream LDS, and Eliza wanted to head off that conversation before Charity called her an apostate again and the two women derailed the urgent business at hand with a religious argument. She opened her mouth to deflect Charity’s answer, but Krantz beat her to it.
“Never mind that,” he said. “We’re trying to intercept Jacob and Abraham before they start a civil war. Where is the camp from here?”
“Keep going,” Charity said. “We’ve got a long way yet.”
He kept driving for another fifteen or twenty minutes before he stopped the car and grunted. Brush grew right in the middle of the road, and
one of the ruts looked deep enough to swallow their tires halfway up the wheel wells.
“You can’t stop here,” Charity said. “Keep following the road until you see the fallen tree.”
“This isn’t a road,” Krantz said. “This is two ruts and some wishful thinking.”
“I parked Taylor Junior’s truck farther in,” she said. “Maybe a mile. If we park here we could go the rest of the way on foot.”
“Going to be hell backing out of here,” Krantz said with a glance in the side and rearview mirrors. “All right, let’s go.”
They grabbed their backpacks and followed Charity on foot. Eliza soon saw that they’d been right to leave the car. A four-wheel drive might have made it up the rock-strewn trail that narrowed as it hugged the hillside in a series of ever-steeper switchbacks, but in the Crown Victoria, they would have shortly found themselves either high centered on one of the rocks or revving the engine to get out of a rut and with a fifty-foot drop if they slipped.
They reached the fallen tree about forty-five minutes later. Eliza helped Krantz and Fayer drag the tree to the side of the road. The truck wasn’t the new Ford F-150 with the extended cab, but a beat-up Toyota, pounded over dirt roads and baked in the desert sun since sometime in the previous century. Charity said the truck had a fickle transmission and she should do the driving.
“Assuming she doesn’t drive us over the cliff,” Fayer muttered as the woman went around to the driver’s side.
There was room for only two in the cab, and Fayer climbed in front with Charity Kimball. Eliza climbed over the tailgate and sat in the truck bed. Krantz waited until Charity had the truck turned around before joining Eliza in the back. The truck sagged under his weight.
“You’re a big guy, Steve,” Eliza said.
“Useful in college, when I threw the hammer. Not so much when you’re driving along the edge of a cliff in a truck with suspect brakes. I could lose a few pounds, that wouldn’t kill me.”
She looked him over. “You’re solid, not fat.”
“Nice of you to say. Sadly, it takes about three hours a week at the gym to maintain this svelte figure. A few days missed, a few donuts downed, and I’ll be fat, believe me.”
“No doubt the bad guys take one look at you and start crying for their mommas.”
“Or make a run for it, and then I’m in trouble. Good thing I’ve got Fayer to run them down.”
“Well, you look good to me.” She put a hand playfully on his arm and felt a flutter in her stomach. His arm was as thick and solid as a small tree trunk. “I’ll bet you’ve had lots of girlfriends, Steve. Plenty of women like tall, strong men. Makes them feel protected.”
He turned with a curious expression, and she thought she’d misread his signs—plowing her neighbor’s field, as her father might say—but then she saw that his face was flushed. He said, “You don’t seem like the sort who needs protecting.”
She took her hand away and raised an eyebrow. “Who said anything about protecting me? A guy puts the move, I bash in his skull. Anyway, you’re big enough that we’re having a hard time clearing these rocks. You might have to get out and push.”
“Ouch.” Nevertheless, he looked happy, and even delighted when she rested her hand on top of his. He turned his hand over so that her hand rested on top of his palm.
Eliza laughed. She turned her head so the wind would catch her hair and blow it away from her face, then enjoyed the sunlight and the feel of her hand—suddenly so small—in his. For a moment she forgot their grim purpose.
And then the road grew worse, if that were possible. They rocked and bumped, and a couple of times she didn’t think they’d pull out of a rut. Krantz did, in fact, get out of the truck to give it more clearance. Finally, the road flattened out as they climbed to the top of the ridge. The truck kicked up a cloud of dust that trailed down the hill behind them.
At last, Charity stopped the truck. She leaned out the window. “This is the end. We’ll have to go the rest of the way on foot.”
Eliza was glad to get out. A queasy feeling had settled into her stomach. Much longer and she’d have had to get out of the bouncing vehicle before she got motion sickness. She cleared the dust from her mouth with a swallow of water from her canteen.
They’d climbed farther, faster, than she could have thought possible. As they adjusted the straps on their packs, Agent Fayer checked her gun and ammunition. Krantz shielded his eyes with his hand and followed the ridges as they cut into the heart of the wilderness area.
It certainly looked like a more direct path. Faster, no doubt, than Jacob and her father’s ad hoc route. But the others had a ten-hour head start. It might be too much to make up.
* * *
“Don’t open the shells or you will die,” Taylor Junior said. “Don’t drop a shell or you will die. If you pull the pin on a triggering grenade, you will kill us all.”
The other three watched him, rapt. He couldn’t rush this. They had been terrified for hours now, and having their souls in turmoil suited his purpose. But only if he didn’t push too far.
Taylor Junior had led the men to his secret sanctuary late the previous night, feeling their way by touch through the narrow walls of the slot canyon, then picking their way foot-by-foot up the box canyon with no more than the light of a crescent moon and a clear sky of stars. The last hundred yards, up what Taylor Junior had come to think of as the Hidden Staircase, was harrowing, and the other men repeatedly lost their nerve. He coaxed, bullied, and threatened until they regained their courage. At last they made their way into his inner sanctuary. Once inside, he risked lighting the Coleman lantern.
The men looked around, marveling. “How did you find this place?” his father asked.
“An angel showed it to me in a vision. The Lord kept it hidden from the eyes of men for a thousand years. Since the days of the Lamanites.”
He hadn’t shown them the crate, not at first. It sat in one corner, covered by a blanket. Instead, he opened a duffel bag and removed three black aprons, which he tied around their waists. The aprons matched his own. “The symbol of your new powers and priesthoods,” he said. He sat the men on the floor, placed his hands on their heads, and ordained them as his counselors: his father as first counselor, Aaron as his second counselor, and Eric the third counselor.
When he was done, he stood them up and formed a prayer circle. “Oh Lord, hear the words of my mouth. We are empty vessels—fill us with thy Spirit. Give us strength to smite our enemies, yea, even unto death and eternal damnation. Behold, thy servants, Elder Taylor Kimball, who has humbled himself before thee, thy servant Aaron Young…”
He continued to pray, to make promises to the men, to ask the Lord for blessings, to call upon the angel that the Lord had sent to guide them. When the others could no longer stand from exhaustion, he gave them blankets and let them sleep. They woke by midmorning, broke bread together, and then Taylor Junior ventured a look down at the box canyon. He saw nothing.
But his enemies had arrived. He could feel their presence around him, just like he could feel the angel, or feel the box in the corner like a deadly beast, slumbering. He could detect his enemies not with his physical senses, but with his spiritual eyes. The apostates watched, they plotted their attack. If he showed himself, they’d try to kill him.
Now was the time. His enemies had abandoned their defenses, and his own men were spiritually and physically prepared. Taylor Junior threw the blanket off the crate and lifted the lid. The others watched, frowns deepening from concern into fear.
He lifted the first shell out of the crate. It was painted green, a bullet shape about the length of his forearm and weighing eight or ten pounds. He’d duct-taped a grenade to its surface. He handed the first shell to Aaron Young. The man shuddered, took it like he was handling a rattlesnake.
“Each one of these is death. Your death, a dozen men, a thousand. It depends on who is nearby. The first will die quickly. The rest, more painfully, lingering.”
&nbs
p; Aaron turned it over in his hands. “What is it? High explosive?”
“No. The explosive is only the means of delivery.” Taylor Junior handed shells to his father and to Eric Froud. “These are chemical artillery shells. We don’t have field guns, of course, so I’ve taped on grenades to act as detonators. You pull the pin, the grenade sets off the explosives in the shell, which disperses the gas. A cloud will rise from the shell and kill anything in its path.”
“Shouldn’t we have gas masks?” Elder Kimball asked. “And couldn’t we get big garbage sacks to hold them in, like you had last night? In case one of them opens.”
“It wouldn’t work. Not for long. This is Lewisite.”
“Lewis-what?” Kimball asked, licking his lips and leaning his head back from the shell in his hands.
“Lewisite,” Taylor Junior said. “It’s an organoarsenic chemical weapon, developed at the end of World War I. A blister agent. It will penetrate clothing, rubber, and I believe plastic. It will burn out your corneas, raise blisters on your skin. You’ll die a horrible death.”
Aaron and Eric listened with lips pressed tight, as if afraid the things would suddenly explode and that keeping their mouths shut would keep them safe if they did. Pointless. If one of the shells exploded, there were enough conventional explosives inside to turn the four of them into a cloud of vaporized blood and bone.
“What’s that smell?” Aaron asked. “It’s like my mother’s flower garden.”
“Geraniums,” Taylor Junior said. “The dew of death. That’s the Lewisite you’re smelling. The shells are old and leaking.”
Aaron thrust out his hands. “Take it! Take it!”
“Calm down. It’s not dangerous like that. And I’ve rubbed the surface with bleach, to neutralize the effect as much as possible. If you feel burning on your skin, put it down at once. If the smell of flowers becomes overwhelming, you need to get away in a hurry. Put down the backpack and take off all your clothes. Although, if either of those things happens, it’s probably too late anyway.”
“I don’t like this,” Eric said. His voice was high and pinched. “Can we put them back now?”
The Blessed and the Damned (Righteous Series #4) Page 18