Hell's Fortress

by Michael Wallace

  “When you come, bring fifty pounds of dried peas and a hundred pounds of flour. Two gallons of cooking oil and twenty pounds of powdered milk. That should do it.”

  The line fell silent.

  “Miriam?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Did you get all that?”

  “If you leave the granary open, the mice multiply.”

  “They’re not vermin, they’re human beings.”

  “Not much difference these days. You do this and the news will spread to every unprepared fool west of the Rockies. Free food. Free housing. Free medical care. Come and get it.”

  “They’re not staying. I’m treating them at the clinic and sending them on their way.”

  “And the food?”

  “They’re starving and we’re going to feed them while they’re here.”

  She muttered something that came out as garbled static. Elder Smoot stood to one side, scowling. He’d been openly listening to the entire conversation. Hard to say if the scowl was agreement with Miriam’s opinion, or disapproval that she was talking back. Both, most likely.

  Jacob waited until Miriam fell silent.

  “Are you done?” he asked her.

  “You’re the prophet. If that’s what the Lord commands, I’ll do it.”

  There was a question at the end of that. Does He? Does the Lord command?

  “Good. See you soon.”

  Jacob cut the radio, then looked down the road through the binoculars. The refugees were turning around, a slow, sad procession moving south on the highway toward the rocky hill. Even Kemp, their leader, slumped in his jacket and scarf like a prisoner of war shuffling from one end of camp to the other, just to get a bowl of soup. They looked helpless.

  They’re not. They’re the survivors.

  Seven, almost eight months of isolation. This was not the time to let down one’s guard.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Eliza Christianson entered the dining room and was stunned to see four thin, filthy children at the table. Strangers. The children devoured slabs of fresh bread slathered in butter, stopping only long enough to let out a series of dry, barking coughs. While they ate, Fernie wheeled herself around the table to scrub their faces with a washcloth. One of Eliza’s youngest sisters followed with a bowl of steaming water, already cloudy with dirt. The girl wore a prairie dress, tight braids in her cornsilk hair, and a pinched look of disgust at having to attend to the dirty children.

  Eliza could only stare.

  Fernie wrung out the washcloth and looked up from her work. “We have visitors.”

  “Yes, I see. What? How?”

  “They came up the highway from the south. Whole caravan of refugees.”

  “But the quarantine . . .”

  “Maybe it’s over.”

  “I was just up in the Ghost Cliffs. There’s a drone circling over the reservoir right this minute.”

  “I don’t know, Liz. I can’t explain it.”

  “Where’s Jacob?”

  “In the clinic. But you can’t—”

  Eliza didn’t wait to hear what Fernie had to say. Her heart was pounding. Eight months of isolation. Finally, the roads had cleared of snow and she could search for a way out of this valley. This prison. She had to find a way.

  Jacob’s clinic was in the second garage, where their father used to work on his tractors. Jacob had scrubbed it, sterilized it, and divided it into an examination room and a surgery. Boxes of medical supplies lined the walls, anything and everything he’d gotten his hands on during the first year of the crisis. Refrigerators held medications and vaccines. Two years into the crisis, some of them had reached the end of their useful life.

  The electricity flowing from the reservoir and the windmills powered this room first, before any other building in the valley. Not so much as a porch light flickered on until Jacob had his power. All the surgery lights were blazing now, and Jacob stood in his scrubs, removing his mask and gloves. Sister Lillian, David’s younger wife, stood by his side. She was similarly dressed.

  They stood over the prone body of an unconscious woman in a hospital bed. She looked to be in her sixties. Gray, haggard. A sheet covered her lower body, and the upper half was naked, bandaged around the waist, with the orange stain of Betadine coloring the skin. An endotracheal tube threaded down her throat to force air to her lungs.

  Jacob looked up and noticed Eliza. “You heard the news?” he asked.

  “No. What happened? Who are they?”

  “Gentiles,” Lillian said. She collected syringes, tubes, bloody gauze, and surgical tools in a plastic tray. Every possible item would be sterilized and reused. “They came from Babylon.”

  “Las Vegas?”

  “It’s a regular war zone out there,” Jacob said. He pulled the sheet to cover the woman’s torso, then glanced at the ventilator behind the bed and shook his head. When Lillian made to leave, he told her, “Make sure those children don’t see the blood. This might be someone’s grandma.”

  The young woman carried the tray of equipment into the house. Eliza stayed near the door, knowing that in her filthy state, her brother wouldn’t want her anywhere near the patient.

  “How did they get into the valley? Is the quarantine broken?”

  “I don’t know. What did you see in the cliffs?”

  “A drone. Only one, but it definitely spotted me. It buzzed overhead for ten minutes or so before disappearing to the east. I thought about pushing up the road, but I didn’t like my chances.”

  “Good. I’d rather not see my favorite sister reduced to a crater in the pavement.”

  He said it lightly, but she knew he didn’t like her probing the boundaries of the military-enforced quarantine. He kept urging patience, and faith that Steve knew how to keep himself alive out there. If he’d kept contact with the FBI, then surely he was safely holed up somewhere, waiting for the crisis to ease.

  She didn’t have to wonder what Steve would have done if the situation were reversed. When she was helping him unpack after moving to the valley, she’d come across a medal and a commendation letter from his service in Afghanistan.

  She had turned it over in her hand. “What is this?”

  Steve had swept it back into the box with an embarrassed shrug. He took the letter before she could read it. “Ah, it’s nothing.”

  “Can’t be nothing if they gave you a medal.”

  “They gave me lots of medals. Most of them were for showing up.”

  “Yes, but you keep that one separate. That was a Silver Star, wasn’t it? That’s for heroism, right? What happened?”

  “A platoon of Afghan soldiers got pinned down by the Taliban in the Spin Gar Range. We dropped in and pulled their chestnuts out of the fire. Really, it’s nothing.” He stopped, shook his head. “No, I shouldn’t have said that. Claiming it was nothing doesn’t honor the guys who didn’t make it. Me, I was just there, doing my job. And a little luckier than Koster and Hogan.”

  Steve fell silent, and Eliza regretted pushing. There was a reason he didn’t like to talk about his time with the Army Rangers, and it generally had to do with his buddies who hadn’t returned.

  Steve cleared his throat and she caught him taking a surreptitious glance at the letter before he closed the box and then stared at a spot on the wall. “We got those Afghanis out, though. Can’t say it was worth losing two buddies, but I’m glad we completed the mission.”

  She put a hand on his arm. “It was good of you to help those men, even if they weren’t Americans.”

  “You never leave anyone behind. You just don’t.”

  Now Eliza remembered those words and the way Steve’s jaw had set like a block of granite when he spoke them. No, he wouldn’t have abandoned Eliza to the outside world.

  “Where are the rest of the refugees?” Eliza asked Jacob, who
was still staring at the sick woman with a troubled expression.

  “Camped south of the Moroni checkpoint. Joe Kemp—he’s their leader and some sort of ex-military guy, I think—said they’d fled Las Vegas with several dozen refugees after the Californians attacked the city. Half of them died getting here.”

  “You’re not letting them in, are you?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Good.” She felt guilty as she said it, but they all knew. Their own existence balanced on the tip of a sharp and very deadly sword.

  “But I couldn’t turn them away either. Miriam brought some food. She’s not happy about that.”

  “No, she wouldn’t be.”

  “Those kids you saw inside have giardia—not cholera, thank goodness. I gave them an anti-parasitic. I’m running low, and couldn’t spare it. But what could I do?”

  Eliza looked at the unconscious woman. She was pale, even though Jacob must have given her blood. He had recorded the blood type of everyone in Blister Creek. One word from their prophet and every last person in town would roll up their sleeves, gentile recipient or no.

  “What happened to her?” she asked.

  “Shotgun blast from a distance. Moderate penetration of the obliques and rectus abdominis.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad. Why is she unconscious?”

  “Because sepsis has invaded her kidneys and is disrupting her metabolic functions. It’s Kemp’s mother—he introduced an infection trying to fish out the pellets.”

  “That was dumb,” she said.

  “It sounds that way to us, but I can see why he did it. Anyway, she’s the reason Kemp was in Las Vegas in the first place. Probably deserted his unit to find her—that’s my guess, anyway. Bandits attacked them last Wednesday. The attackers killed two refugees, and injured this woman.”

  “And Kemp brought her here . . . why? How did he know about the clinic?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the bandits told them. Alacrán is out there, still carrying a grudge. Could be he’s spreading the news.”

  “Good for her that you were willing to help.”

  Jacob looked troubled. “Maybe it’s a mistake. A bad precedent. The quarantine has helped us as much as hurt us. If it’s lifting—”

  “But I saw a drone.”

  “In the north. These people came from the south.”

  Again, that surge of hope, as Eliza’s heart turned over in her chest. “Is that possible?”

  “Let’s assume they’re running flights out of two bases. One is at the Green River camp. The other is Las Vegas. They’ve got a thousand square miles to patrol—it makes sense they’d divide it up. Only now the civil war has engulfed Vegas.”

  “I don’t understand why they care about Las Vegas. Is it strategic?”

  “Nellis is one of the biggest Air Force bases in the country. It’s the staging ground for federal offensives into Southern California. If California can push the federal troops out then maybe they’ve got a chance of breaking free.” He gave a cheerless smile. “That way they can starve to death independently.”

  California was always on her mind these days, and she’d given a fair bit of thought to Las Vegas, as well. It was the only real city between southern Utah and Los Angeles.

  “And lucky for us too,” Jacob continued. “The last thing on their mind in Las Vegas is some desert cult.”

  “So why doesn’t the Green River military base pick up the slack?” she asked. “Or abandon their own patrols and go help Las Vegas?”

  “Maybe Green River is going to send trucks to steal our grain and all they care is that we don’t smuggle it out and sell it. Maybe those idiots in Salt Lake are controlling the flights. Who knows what’s happening out there? War is chaos.”

  “If the quarantine is breaking, this is my chance. I’ll go to California before things get worse. If I head west, I can cross the mountains.”

  “Hold on.”

  Eliza’s mind was spinning again. “What do you think, day or night? Night. Has to be. I know it’s slower, but I’ve got to assume the drones aren’t out there with their infrared, because if they are—”

  Jacob came over and put a hand on her arm. “Eliza, listen to me.”

  “You’re not going to talk me out of this.” She tried to pull free. His grip wasn’t hard, but it was firm. Like when she was a girl, and Father would scoop her up.

  “You’ll never make it alone, not with the war, the bandits. Hundreds of miles of lawless desert.”

  “Then send me with help.”

  “How can I justify that? We can’t spare anyone, you know that.”

  Eliza stopped struggling. “Steve is out there. And I’m going to find him. Nothing you can say will stop me. And if I have to go alone, without your help, I’ll do it.”

  He hesitated, and in that moment she knew she had him. “You’re determined?” he said at last.

  “I’ll crawl to L.A. on my hands and knees if that’s what it takes.”

  Jacob let out a long sigh. “Okay, I have an idea. This could be your chance.”

  It took her a second to figure out what he was talking about. “The caravan.”

  “I’m forcing them out of the valley, back the way they came. You’ll go with them.”

  “Have you asked them yet?”

  “It’s not a question of asking. They’re starving. I’ll bribe them with food. The kind of offer that will make Elder Smoot sputter and rage.” He smiled. “And make Miriam’s eyes bulge in disbelief that I’d be so generous.”

  She struggled with mixed emotions of hope and dread. It was really happening. “What do you know about these people?”

  “Nothing. They might be bandits, for all I know. Most likely not. They’re probably simple refugees. But they’re the survivors—never forget that. That makes them dangerous. You don’t have to do it, you know that.”

  “I’m going,” she said quickly. “But I’m scared, of course I am. Out there alone, trying to survive.”

  “You’d better survive. But forget the alone part. That will never happen.”

  “Fernie won’t let you come with me, and I—” She hesitated. “I can’t ask that either. Not even for Steve.”

  “I know she won’t. And I can’t leave Blister Creek anyway. Never again until this is over. I have to hold this together. But I’ll send two volunteers to accompany you across the desert. The best I can spare.”

  “Volunteers? How did you manage that?”

  He smiled. “I haven’t yet. But I’ll ask, and they’ll say yes. All I need is sufficient justification—I’m still working on that part.”

  “Who are they?”

  “First, Stephen Paul Young. He’s smart, loyal, and as reliable as anyone in this valley. If, heaven forbid, something happens to him, his wife Carol is strong enough to hold his family together.”

  “That’s good. I trust him. Who is the other person?”

  “Sister Lillian.”

  Eliza felt a tickle of misgiving at this. “She’s so young.”

  “Only two years younger than you. And she’s strong too—Lillian survived the Kimball cult. Then she’s had to manage as Miriam’s junior wife.” He smiled. “That’s almost worse.”

  “I’d rather have Miriam than Lillian. I could use someone ruthless. But I suppose that’s too much to ask.”

  “Miriam has a four-month-old baby, and she’s too important to Blister Creek anyway.” He shook his head. “The best I can manage is Lillian. She may not be a former FBI agent, but she has trained under one.”

  “So have I,” Eliza said. “Under two agents, if you count Steve. Believe me, that doesn’t mean much.”

  “Miriam trusts Lillian. And if she does, we should too.”

  When Eliza thought about it, she couldn’t argue with Jacob’s plan. Ruling out Miriam and Jacob, wh
at better companions could she imagine? The only other men in the valley as tough as Stephen Paul were also patriarchal jerks; she wouldn’t travel with one of those. And among the women, maybe Sister Rebecca could match Lillian. Maybe not.

  “When do I leave?” Eliza asked.

  Jacob looked back to the unconscious woman in the bed. “As soon as I’m done with Helen Kemp. By tomorrow, most likely.”

  “So soon? She’ll be ready to move?”

  A shadow passed over his face.

  Eliza put a hand on his shoulder, thinking he was frowning about her leaving the valley. “I have to do this. Steve’s alive, I know he is. If there’s anything good in this world, if God cares about me at all, then he has to be. Don’t you think?”

  “I can’t answer that, Liz. The truth is, I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.”

  “I don’t believe that. You saved those kids. And what about Helen Kemp? She’d have died from an infection if not for you.” A smile crossed her lips. “Okay, so maybe God had a hand. And modern medical science. Antibiotics and all of that.”

  “I didn’t give her any.”

  “What?”

  His voice was flat. “She is suffering from multiple organ failure. I could have pumped her full of a broad-spectrum antibiotic, and her odds might have jumped from two percent to ten percent. She’s an older woman from outside the community. I couldn’t do it. Not with so many other uses for those antibiotics.”

  “So you . . . ?”

  “Stopped the bleeding. Gave her morphine to make her comfortable.” He looked down at his hands. Eliza had seen them give shots, perform surgery, milk cows, and administer priesthood blessings. When he looked up, Jacob’s face seemed to have aged ten years. “I suspect she will die during the night.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Jacob drew Kemp around the side of the house. The Christianson children—Jacob’s own, plus his youngest siblings, still living at home with their mothers—crowded the porch to stare at the stranger. Eliza walked behind. A deep frown had furrowed her face all morning.