Hell's Fortress

by Michael Wallace

  “It’s not like we’re having much luck scavenging the desert,” Eliza said.

  “We have the extra horses,” Grover said. He hooked his thumb back at the two animals Miriam had taken from Joe Kemp.

  “You’re not sick of horse meat?”

  “Makes me want to puke,” he said. “And I’m still having nightmares about killing it. But horse meat sounds a lot better than stumbling into that artillery bombardment.”

  Eliza turned it over. She’d thought to trade the horses in Las Vegas. The military could surely put them to use, if nobody else was willing to pay. That was assuming the army didn’t simply seize them. But what if the three of them avoided the city entirely and made for the salt pans of the Nevada desert? Could they find enough water to survive while they salted and smoked horse meat? Maybe the meat of one horse would take them to California, and they could trade Kemp’s other horse there, or butcher it if they ran out of food again.

  Before she could decide, a thumping roar sounded to their rear. A military helicopter swooped behind them, long and black. It followed the highway, passed overhead, then doubled back to hover some two hundred feet overhead. The horses reared and snorted at the noise and gusting currents of the rotor wash. After several seconds, the helicopter turned and continued south. It soon disappeared.

  They didn’t know what it meant, but nobody wanted to stick around and find out. So they dug their heels into their tired horses and took them off the road. Before they’d made it a mile across the flat desert plain, two Humvees cut from the highway to give pursuit.

  Eliza had pulled ahead. Now she slowed down until her companions caught up. “What do we do?”

  “I’ve got an idea,” Miriam said. “Get down from the horses. Leave your guns.” When they were down, Miriam drew her hunting knife and handed it to Eliza. She stretched out her braid. “Quick, cut it off.”

  Eliza took Miriam’s braid in her left hand and the knife in her right. She hesitated. Miriam had been growing her hair for the past several years, ever since she’d joined the Zarahemla cult as part of an FBI infiltration gone wrong. Even as other women in the community had been modernizing their look, shedding prairie dresses, trimming their hair, and even wearing a touch of lipstick in some cases, Miriam had kept her hair growing like a female Samson. Her hair now stretched halfway down her back, a braid as thick and healthy as the faith that sustained it.

  The Humvees kept racing toward them, now a half mile distant and closing quickly. Sunlight reflected off the two windshields and made it impossible to pick out details. But Eliza imagined mounted machine guns up top and men with assault rifles inside.

  “Do it!” Miriam cried.

  Eliza pulled the braid taut and sawed at the hair. The blade was sharp and hairs separated cleanly along the cut. Moments later the braid hung fat and heavy in her hand. Miriam snatched her braid and threw it away. She shoved the knife into the saddlebags. Then she plunged her fingers into her remaining clump of hair and vibrated them rapidly. She was left with a messy mop a few inches long.

  Before Eliza had a chance to ask what Miriam was thinking, the Humvees pulled to a stop. Two soldiers jumped out of the lead vehicle, armed with M16s. Eliza and Grover raised their arms. Miriam lifted her hands somewhat more slowly. One of her hands held a badge.

  “Haley Kite, FBI,” she said.

  Eliza tried not to gape. Miriam had never once claimed that name, had even refused to respond when Steve and other FBI agents called her that. She had become Sister Miriam Christianson, first wife of the prophet’s brother David. She rarely spoke of her previous life, and seemed to despise everything she had once been. But not only did she still have her FBI badge, she had been carrying it with her all along. How strange was that?

  Another soldier stepped out. He was an older man with a weather-lined face and stubble that hadn’t seen a razor in several days. He wore a sergeant’s chevrons on the shoulder of his combat uniform. His left arm was in a sling and his uniform was dirty. All these men were filthy.

  “Agent Haley Kite,” Miriam said to the newcomer, waving her badge again. “You’re U.S. Army, right?”

  The question was unnecessary. It said “U.S. Army” on the breast of his, and the other men’s, uniforms.

  “That’s right.” The man’s voice was cool and wary. “I’m Sergeant Ludlow. What are you doing out here?”

  “Thank God,” Miriam said. “I thought for a minute you were those goddamn rebels. Figured we were done for.”

  Grover started, perhaps shocked at her profane words. Eliza shot him a look. Miriam was good. She stood with her hands on her hips, sizing up the men as if she expected to be shortly giving them orders.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Ludlow said.

  “Unfortunately, I can’t tell you. But my companions are informants from the Green River camp. Where is the line of control?”

  “The what?”

  “Do you hold Vegas?”

  “Most of it. The Californians are still lodged in the northern suburbs and they’re shelling the hell out of the Strip. That’s them you hear, not us.” As if to punctuate his words, the ground shook with a boom that rose above the background rumble.

  “Take me to HQ,” Miriam said. “I need to phone Washington. Where’s your base?”

  Ludlow didn’t answer. He stared back at Miriam, eyed Eliza and Grover, then gestured with his good hand. “Come here. Tell me what you think of this.”

  He led the three of them to the rear of the Humvee. One of the soldiers threw open the back doors. Joe Kemp lay inside, dead. His eyes stared blankly skyward and his face hung slack. He wore a makeshift brace on his right leg, made of sticks and blood-soaked strips of cloth. A bloody wound on his thigh. No shirt.

  “We found him in the middle of the road about twenty miles back,” Ludlow said. “He died of blood loss.”

  “We’ve passed several people over the past few days,” Miriam said, “but we’ve kept to ourselves. Although we did hear gunshots last night. Might have been that.”

  “We dug a nine-millimeter bullet out of his leg. How about I check it against your firearms?”

  “You’ve got a working ballistics lab around here?” Miriam said. “I’d love to see that.”

  “Don’t give me that crap, Agent Kite. You shot him, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, I shot him. Then I let him go. Told him not to follow.” She cast a pitiless look at Kemp’s body. “Seems he didn’t listen.”

  Ludlow yelled for someone named Yancy. One of the young guys going through their saddlebags came over and handed the sergeant a pair of dog tags.

  Ludlow read the tags. “Corporal Joe Kemp. First Infantry Division. You killed an American soldier.”

  “Former soldier,” Miriam said. “Anyway, the First ID is deployed in the Middle East.”

  “Not anymore they aren’t.” He cocked his head. “I’m surprised an FBI agent doesn’t know that. Or maybe you’ve been out in the desert for too long.”

  Miriam shrugged. “The world has gone crazy. My news isn’t always fresh.”

  Even to Eliza’s ears the explanation sounded weak. Her story was faltering.

  “She’s telling the truth about Kemp,” Eliza said. “We had a run-in with him in Utah about a week ago and he came after us. He’s not with the army, he’s either a deserter or retired, and we think he’s taken up with bandits.”

  “And who the hell are you?” Ludlow asked. Then he looked at Grover. “And this kid. How old are you, boy?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “Draft dodger, huh?”

  “What? No!”

  “Yeah, right. If you’re eighteen, you should be serving somewhere.”

  “Hey, Sarge, look at this,” one of the men called from near the horses. He held up the braid Eliza had sawed from Miriam’s hair.

  “What the hell?�
� Ludlow said, eyeing Miriam’s short, messy hair. “Nah, forget it, that’s above my pay grade.” He handed Kemp’s dog tags to Yancy. “Cuff these three. We’ll take them back to Alpha for interrogation. Moreno, do something with those horses. The colonel will want those too.”

  Rough hands grabbed Eliza, Miriam, and Grover. Ludlow made for the front of the Humvee.

  “Let go of me,” Miriam said. “I’m on FBI business. I need to get to California.”

  Ludlow turned. “Yeah? What for?”

  “I’ve been sent to exfiltrate some agents who are trapped in L.A. These two are desert types who were helping me cross Nevada. But if you can fly or drive me across we can let them go back to their ranch.”

  “FBI agents? In California?” Ludlow shook his head. “Not anymore. They’re either dead or they’ve turned traitor.”

  Eliza’s mouth turned dry. “What do you mean?”

  “We were the last battalion to abandon California. We were tasked with extracting the last U.S. government officials from the state—Department of Agriculture, IRS, ATF. I saw what happened to the FBI. Some traitor ratted them out. Most of them faced the firing squad.”

  Ludlow gave Miriam another look. “Now we have an agent in the desert, killing U.S. Army personnel, who doesn’t seem to know this. Maybe this is our traitor. Come on, you slackers. Move it!”

  Soldiers cuffed their hands behind their backs with plastic zip-ties and shoved the three of them into the back of the Humvee next to Kemp’s dead body. A hot, suffocating closeness settled in when the men shut the door. Moments later, the vehicles rattled across the desert.

  “Don’t worry,” Miriam said in a low voice. “Steve is still alive. The Lord protects His people.”

  Eliza’s throat was so tight she could barely get the words out. “How can you be sure?”

  Miriam nodded at Kemp. “That’s my evidence. All those who raise a hand against us shall perish.”

  Which was not the same thing as saying that nothing could happen to Blister Creek and its people. Eliza closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to stare at the dead body, but when she did, all she could see was Steve, together with Agent Fayer and all the rest of them, lined up against a wall, while a firing squad took aim.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  For the past week they’d been pushing their horses, covering up to thirty miles a day. Eliza didn’t have her maps, but she figured they’d still been a couple of days north of the city. But zipping along in the Humvees, they crossed the distance in what seemed like a snap of the fingers. This must be what it had felt like for the settlers of the West when the first train service came through. Instead of struggling for weeks in wagons or on horseback, a train crossed the plains and deserts at breathtaking speed.

  After about an hour they stopped at a checkpoint, where military police threw open the doors on the back of the Humvee. Eliza squinted against the light until her eyes adjusted.

  Sandbag bunkers lined the roads and a pair of tanks sat buried to their turrets. A pair of helicopters thumped overhead. A huge tent with a red cross sat on the east side of the highway, with sloppy rows of smaller tents partially sheltered between a pair of dusty hills. To the west lay a series of trenches and berms with burned beams and twisted metal. Craters marked an earlier battle. This had been the front lines at one point.

  More soldiers came in for a closer look. They were filthy and ragged, their uniforms in poor repair and hanging loose on underfed frames. Some of them wore dazed expressions, while others looked hard and dangerous.

  An argument broke out between Ludlow, who wanted to foist off his prisoners, and the MPs, who didn’t want to take responsibility. One of the MPs poked at Ludlow’s injured arm, suggesting that the sling was a fake injury, to shirk combat duty. Ludlow refused to be baited. Instead, he dug in his heels, and the argument continued until someone fetched a major, who ordered the sergeant and his men to carry the prisoners and Kemp’s body into Las Vegas. There was another argument about fuel when Ludlow said they didn’t have enough to reach the city. Here, the major relented.

  While the trucks stopped at a fuel dump a mile or so down the road, Ludlow let the three of them out to stretch their legs while men brought over fuel hoses from a tanker truck. Eliza walked to the edge of the camouflage netting that concealed the dump from the air. Looking south, she got her first glimpse of Las Vegas, now only eight or ten miles distant.

  The city sat on a dry plain with a cluster of skyscrapers and towering casino hotels at the core, surrounded by huge swaths of strip malls and subdivisions that metastasized into the desert. One of the tallest buildings was a jagged, twisting mass, while two surrounding towers trickled smoke into the air. Another looked like a frame of steel beams, as if the exterior had simply melted away. A large fire burned across several blocks on the west side of the city. It sent smoke billowing thousands of feet into the air to join the thick blanket smothering the city, where clouds and smoke and haze all joined together.

  The west side may have been burning, but the east was taking the brunt of the attack at the moment. A dozen pillars of smoke hung suspended like frozen tornadoes, some thick and angry, others already melting away. The ground shook and a fresh column of smoke billowed skyward. There were no airplanes visible overhead, no tanks or artillery that she could see, but some unseen army was hammering the city.

  The men finished fueling the Humvees, and Eliza returned. Ludlow stared at her, as if trying to puzzle who and what she was.

  “I should have shot you when I had the chance.” His tone made it hard to tell if he was being sardonic or if he really meant it. “My arm is infected again, and I was supposed to go to the field hospital. Now I’m stuck hauling your sorry butts into the city.”

  “Could you please remove the body?” Eliza asked.

  Ludlow fixed her with a stare. “You killed him. You can deal with it.”

  “We could tie him to the roof,” Miriam said. She’d been talking to Grover in a low voice, but now made her way over.

  “If you’re scared of dead bodies, you’d better get over it. Wait until we get into the city. Then you’ll see plenty.”

  He went around front to talk to his men, who were trying to get a radio report about the state of the highway before they set out. Eliza’s shoulders ached with her hands twisted behind her back and cuffed. She turned her wrists to get better blood flow.

  “It’s not a question of being scared,” she said when Ludlow returned. “The body is starting to smell, and it might be carrying disease. It’s not just us at risk, but anyone else who comes into contact with it.” When Ludlow didn’t say anything, she pressed. “I heard there’s a TB epidemic in Las Vegas, and we know that Joe Kemp passed through there not too long ago. TB can pass from the dead to the living.”

  “What, are you a nurse or something?”

  “My brother is a doctor. He’s taught me a few things to help around the community, given the situation with the hospitals.” Eliza stopped, worried she’d said too much.

  “I doubt he’s got TB,” Ludlow said. “He looks clean to me.”

  “There’s no way to know that.”

  “The TB is mostly gone anyway. We saw some over the winter, but these days cholera is the killer. Meningitis too. Even the flu is more deadly.”

  “Famine weakens people’s immune systems,” she said.

  “So they say. The city hasn’t seen aid supplies in months. There aren’t many civvies left. Few thousand, maybe.”

  “So why do you keep fighting? If there’s nobody left, why not pull out?”

  “What kind of question is that? We’re fighting to stop the rebellion. Who are you people, anyway?”

  “My name is Eliza. This is Grover. You already met Agent Kite.”

  She understood what he was getting at. Don’t you care who wins the war? But she wasn’t prepared to answer that question. What
she wanted was for the war to end. For peace to return. Every moment it continued, it pushed civilization further over the edge of the cliff.

  A little frown had passed over Ludlow’s face when she spoke her name. She could see the wheels turning. A generic prisoner had become someone with a name. With a history. Maybe even a future.

  “Look,” he said. “We’re heading out and the road isn’t safe.” He grabbed a passing soldier by the arm. “Toss some Kevlar in the back for these three.” Turning back to the three prisoners, he said, “I’ll have someone cut the cuffs, but if you try anything funny, it’s a bullet to the head. We’re entering the war zone and I can’t screw around.”

  “Why don’t you let us go instead?” Miriam said.

  He gave her a hard look. “Sure, that’s just what I was planning.”

  “As soon as we get out of camp,” Miriam continued, “pull over and let us out. We’ll disappear. Nobody will know.”

  “What we told you is true,” Eliza said. “We need to rescue some FBI agents in Los Angeles. We have reason to believe they’re alive.”

  “You’d never make it. Anyway, these agents—assuming they exist—are dead or have been taken prisoner. Trying would be pointless.”

  “Would it hurt to let us try?” Eliza asked. “Besides, that way you wouldn’t have to go all the way into the city. It would be safer for you and your men.”

  “That wouldn’t work. Sooner or later it would come out what I did, and then it would be my head on the block.”

  “Why, because Agent Kite shot that man who was trying to kill us?”

  “It’s not just Corporal Kemp. The major wants me to turn over the kid.”

  “Me?” Grover said.

  “Yeah, you. Either you’re a deserter or a draft dodger. If you’re a deserter, you’ll get the firing squad.”

  “I’m not, I swear.”