A Killing in Zion

by Andrew Hunt

  The force of the push made me yelp in terror. I hit the ground and rolled, and the earth went sideways, and I went over the edge, sliding down a pebbly slope. Claudia screamed. I would’ve plunged into the blackness had it not been for a patch of hardy desert scrub that I grabbed with my right hand and a protruding rock embedded in the sandstone that I clutched with my left. Flat on my stomach, on a slope steeper than the roof of my house, I clung for dear life. With my eyes surface-level, headlights and blurs of human shapes appeared in my line of vision. Yet gravity pulled mightily at me.

  My heart thumped like one of those machine guns. Shoe soles crunched gravel nearby. I sensed a presence. Digging my fingernails deeper into the rock, squeezing the scrub near the roots, I raised my head.

  Ferron Steed arched forward, blocking the stars. He aimed the revolver in his left hand and cocked the hammer.

  Three gunshots went off, but they came from a distance. Steed jerked with each crack and then stiffened. Wide-eyed, he lowered his firearm. His jaw quivered. “I … someone … shot…”

  He tipped over, chest striking the embankment, and plummeted like a log in a chute, face-first, off into the void. I cringed at the sound of his wailing. I never heard him hit bottom. I shifted my sights back to the surface.

  What happened next was a blur. The bodyguards began firing their Tommy guns into the night to try and shoot the ambusher. Eldon bolted for cover, and though I couldn’t see where he went beyond the glare of headlamps, I imagined he must have been wheeling his father to safety. Movement occurred all around. Roscoe dove at a distracted Dorland Kunz. The two men rolled on the ground, struggling for Kunz’s pistol. It dropped out of his hand. Myron snatched the gun and took off running.

  Closer to me, Devlin Kunz, ever the obedient follower, pushed Claudia in the small of her back. She tripped, fell onto the embankment, and slid past me. I let go of the scrub and flung my right hand down to grab her wrist. I stopped her from falling, but her weight almost took me with her.

  “Oh God!” she screamed. “Please don’t let go!”

  “I won’t!” I shouted. “It’s not our turn today!”

  There we were, two people dangling on the precipice. I can’t speak for her, but I was offering a silent prayer to God that I’d be reunited with my family in this life.

  “I’m not ready to die!” she cried.

  I tightened my hold on her wrist. I was so focused on clutching that rock and hanging on to Claudia that I missed the clashes on level ground above us. The steady bursts of gunfire told me that chaos reigned. I adjusted upward to survey the situation as best I could, all the while gripping both Claudia and that protruding rock.

  It dawned on the Thompson-toting guards that everything had unraveled. They returned, cradling their machine guns. Myron had taken cover off to the side of Rulon’s limousine and squeezed off a round. A bullet struck Duke’s knee. He fell, blasting his machine gun into the sky, hollering in agony. Roscoe and Dorland were on each other, rolling around, fighting over what appeared to be a knife in Dorland’s hand. The bearded man aimed his Thompson at them, but he couldn’t get off a shot because he might hit Kunz.

  Nearer to the chasm, seemingly out of nowhere, Jared rushed Devlin Kunz, plowing into him. The men collapsed, wrestling for the gun. A shot startled me. Jared groaned and his resistance melted. Devlin pushed him off and staggered victoriously to his feet.

  I felt Claudia slipping. Our mingling sweat made it harder to get a firm grip. I turned away from the violence up above and concentrated on pulling her and me to safety.

  A heel came down hard on my hand that held the rock. Pain shot through my fingers, down my arm, reverberating through my body. I shrieked and almost let go of Claudia. Devlin appeared, kneeling over the edge, raising his boot to stomp again.

  Deafening bursts filled the air. Machine gunfire came steady. A car engine roared with acceleration. Gears ground between bullets crackling. Devlin Kunz turned in time to get the wind knocked out of him by the grill of Steed’s Model A. Devlin was briefly airborne before falling into the abyss. “Oh God,” he cried. In the blink of an eye, Devlin Kunz no longer existed. The auto skidded to a halt, its front tires perilously close to the embankment, its engine hissing steam.

  Myron appeared above me, taking shelter on the driver’s side of the car as the Tommys blazed. Bullets pierced the passenger side, flattening tires, blowing up glass like crystal fireworks. Jared crawled to Myron during the maelstrom. Footsteps rapidly approached on the other side of the car. The bearded man popped up, probably standing on the passenger-side running board. He lifted his Thompson and a muzzle flash lit the area. Bullets tore up the ground, ripping a straight-line trench over to Claudia. She began convulsing as bloody holes exploded all over her body. Her wrist shook in my grip. Her body went limp.

  “No!” Jared shouted.

  He leaped over the hood of the Model A and tackled the bearded assailant. A scuffle erupted outside of my line of vision. The engine of the stopped car continued to blow steam as I worked up the nerve to look down. Claudia was dead. I would have gone down with her if I didn’t let go of her to use my right hand to help me to the surface. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. I released her. She disappeared into the earth. At least she was not alive to see it happen.

  “Give me your hand!”

  Myron was lying on his chest, reaching as far as he could. Our hands met and squeezed. I used my legs, my feet, and my free hand to try to climb up the steep embankment. With Myron pulling me, I could feel myself moving toward level ground. I grabbed ahold of the tangled scrub with my free left hand and threw my entire body into climbing. A moment later, I made it up to the surface and rolled on the ground to get away from the slope.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Been better,” I said. “You?”

  “I got hit in the shoulder,” he said, pointing to a tear in his suit coat and shirt. “It hurts, but I’ll live.”

  Myron slumped against the front tire to catch his breath. “Steed and Devlin Kunz are down,” he said. “Eldon and Rulon took off. One of the bodyguards, the clean-shaven fellow, got shot in the leg and he’s hiding. There’s a fight between Dorland and Roscoe. And Jared is on the other side of this car with the other one.”

  “Do you have a gun?” I asked.

  “Front seat,” he said.

  I opened the front driver’s-side door, crawled across a bed of shattered glass on the seat, and fished a black .45 pistol out from under all of the shards. The passenger-side window had already been shot out. Gripping the gun, I popped over the edge like a jack-in-the-box, right as the bearded man was standing above Jared, raising his Thompson. He turned to me with a horrified expression. I squeezed off two rounds. They passed through his long beard. He dropped the Thompson on the ground and fell to one side. Streams of blood ran down his shirt. The spark of life vanished from his eyes.

  He was the first man I’d ever shot and killed, and I didn’t even know his name. The significance of that was not lost on me, but I had no time to dwell on it. Instead, I offered a fleeting silent prayer that he would be my last victim.

  Pistol in hand, I opened the passenger-side door and cut myself in several places traversing the glass to get out of the car. Sprawled on the ground, Jared had a wound on his waist that he held tightly, and his face appeared pale.

  I dropped to my knees to examine the hole at his waistline. I found an exit wound on the other side as well, and the bleeding was slow.

  “Today’s your lucky day,” I said. “A few inches over could’ve been fatal.”

  He began to cry. I didn’t have to ask why. Claudia was family to him. Nothing could bring her back.

  I left him alone and crept to the rear of the Model A. On the mesa-top clearing, Dorland Kunz and Roscoe were still locked in a fight over a long-blade knife. Kunz gained the advantage and plunged the knife downward. Roscoe blocked it and the blade punctured the palm of his hand. His yell could have curdled blood. I sprinted to them, grippi
ng that .45. A few yards away, I raised the gun and pulled the trigger. CLICK! I tried again. CLICK! Out of bullets.

  Kunz looked back over his shoulder at me. Brimming with rage, he withdrew the knife from Roscoe’s hand and charged at me. I swung the gun at his face but failed to connect. He slammed into me, pinning me down. I could not breathe or move under his weight. He raised the bloody knife into the light of the bus headlamps. Three gunshots rang out. He convulsed with each one. He fell to the ground, as limp and lifeless as a sack of potatoes. The moon glowed in his watery eyes.

  Nelpha stood behind him. She lowered my .38. Her cheeks puffed and she blew out air.

  A second later, Duke limped out from between the bus and the limousine, leveling his Thompson submachine gun. I pulled Nelpha by the arm to the ground and used my body to cover hers. The booming of automatic gunfire rolled around the top of the mesa.

  I looked up in time to see Jared outflanking Duke, approaching from the rear, matching his firepower with the other Thompson. A loud volley sent Duke into a freakish marionette dance as bullets riddled his back. A second later, he was dead at Jared’s feet, his gun still smoking. I eased off Nelpha and she stood up and helped me to my feet. I went over to Roscoe, who propped himself up in a sitting position and held a strip of shirt in his hand to absorb the blood.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “I’ll survive. But if you hadn’t show up, he’d a turned me into a pin cushion.”

  “You hang in there, we’ll get you to a doctor,” I said.

  “Boss,” said Jared.

  He was holding on to the Tommy gun with one hand, aiming it down at the ground.

  “I think I know where Eldon and Rulon went,” he said. “I’ll show you the way.”

  Thirty-five

  I followed Jared into the darkness, beyond the light from the headlamps, a ways farther down the mesa. I’d retrieved my .38 from Nelpha and I carried it in my right hand. Jared switched on a flashlight to help us find our way through that uneven terrain. We followed the chasm’s edge until I caught sight of a pair of figures in the dark up ahead. As we drew closer, I picked up the pace, stumbling or losing my balance a few times in rocky spots. We closed in on the shapes of two men, one with a hat on and seated in a familiar wheelchair, the other standing over him with his back to us. As we got within fifty feet, Jared aimed his flashlight. Eldon peered over his shoulder into the glow, eyes wide with fear, mouth no longer smiling. He turned around and bent over his father’s wheelchair, wrapping his arms around the old man. He lurched upward, putting all of his strength into lifting Rulon to his feet. Now twenty feet away, I raised my .38.

  “Freeze, Eldon!” I shouted, taking aim at his back. “Put him down!”

  “This is between my father and me!” he cried. “It always has been!”

  “Let go of me,” said Rulon in a throaty growl.

  I said, “Do as he says, Eldon. There’s been far too much bloodshed here!”

  “I’m not going to let you do this to anyone else!” yelled Eldon.

  “You haven’t the gumption to throw me in there,” said Rulon.

  “I should’ve done this long ago,” said Eldon.

  “What are you doing? You’re hurting me!” yelled Rulon.

  “Stop right now, Eldon,” I said.

  Eldon gasped, maneuvering for a better position. He scooped Rulon by his armpits, raising him to his feet. With his son still using both arms to prop him up, Rulon struggled to stay standing on both feet.

  “You’re a vile old man,” said Eldon. “This madness ends tonight.”

  “It’s over, Eldon,” I said, advancing toward him. “Let a judge and jury decide his fate. Testify against him in court. You’ve got the power to put him behind bars, maybe even in front of a firing squad.”

  “Get away from me, Oveson!” yelled Eldon, with another backward glance. “This has nothing to do with you!”

  “Let’s go somewhere and talk,” I said, moving a few more steps. “That’s all I ask. We’ll work it all out.”

  “I said get away!”

  Eldon dropped his father in the wheelchair and abruptly faced me. He reached his hand inside in his coat and withdrew a revolver. I opened fire. Two shots echoed across the desert. Eldon’s gun slipped out of his grip and he stumbled backward, grabbing his father, launching him out of the wheelchair and down atop himself.

  I hurried over to the two men. First I pocketed Eldon’s handgun by glow of the flashlight, then I holstered my own firearm, reached down, and hooked my hand around Rulon’s arm.

  “Here, let me help you up.”

  “Stay away from him,” gasped Eldon.

  Rulon was lighter than I expected. As I lifted him into his wheelchair, his large black hat fell off. He was strangely silent. Had he been shot? Was he still conscious?

  I said to Jared, “Give me that, please.”

  Jared passed me the flashlight. I shined it on Rulon. When I saw his face, every goose bump on me stood at attention. I tried never to use the Lord’s name in vain, but this one time I let an involuntary “Oh God” slip out.

  Rulon’s face was frozen in a permanent leer, his lips mostly gone. The gleaming whiteness of his teeth contrasted sharply with his leathery brown skin, which was flaking off in areas. His nose had turned black and pug-like, pressed in against his face. His thick eyelids were open, but housed no eyeballs to speak of. The skin on his long forehead was lighter than the rest of his face, more yellowish, and he still had a head of unruly dark, wavy hair. His ears had deteriorated into shriveled prunes.

  I looked down at Eldon. Still lying on the ground, he gripped wounds on his stomach and rib cage. His breathing had grown labored and crackly. “You weren’t supposed to see him.”

  “How long has he been this way?” I asked.

  “I found Perry Tindal’s book on the desiccation methods of the Maori people most helpful,” said Eldon, gasping for breath. “I also read a lot about how the British preserved the body of Jeremy Bentham.…” His body rocked as he coughed up blood. When he caught his breath, he said, “The father of modern utilitarianism. His remains are perfectly preserved and on display at University College in London. Or so I’ve read.”

  “Rulon’s a mummy?” I asked, in shock. “Since when?”

  “I was waiting for him,” said Eldon. “I used a shovel.”

  “You killed him?” I asked.

  “He made promises to me,” said Eldon bitterly. “I was his favorite son, you see. He told me so, over and over. The compound would go to me when he died, he told me. He had sons who were older than I was, but he banished them, in favor of me. I was to be his successor. You see, he loved my mother more than any of his other wives, and he always said I had a good head for business. Everything changed when I told him I fell in love with a girl I met at a dance. But when Rulon met her, he vowed to make her his eighth wife. He cited a revelation. Claimed God told him this was to be. Heavenly Father sent down word to banish me because my heart was evil. That’s what Rulon said, anyhow. He commanded me to leave and never return. I tricked him into thinking I was going away. But I never left. I hid in the barn and…”

  His words trailed off.

  “That’s when you hit him with the shovel,” said Jared.

  “Over and over and over. I had to use these special pins that I ordered out of a medical catalog to reconstruct his head. I think I did a good job, under the circumstances. Don’t you?”

  “I’m not following this at all,” I said. His explanation astounded me. “How could you possibly fool all of those people—the wives, the apostles, the children—into thinking that Rulon was alive?”

  “After I killed him, I invented a tale of him being attacked by an unknown assailant, probably a rival,” said Eldon. “I got away with it because nobody knew that he banished me right before I killed him. All they knew was that I was his trusted son. Nobody ever questioned my role as his main caretaker. I told people the incident left my father horribly deformed and
in need of a wheelchair to get around.”

  Eldon rolled over and moved into crawling position. I stood back, aiming the flashlight in front of him to show him the way. On his hands and knees, Eldon moved slowly over to the wheelchair. He scaled the apparatus, grabbing on to the armrests to help him up, and he moved in close to his mummified father, placing his head on the dead man’s chest.

  “You did everything in the dark,” he said, stroking the dead man’s dusty coat. “That’s how you consummated your marriages. That’s how you conducted business with the prophet and the apostles. That’s how you ruled over an empire and put fear in the hearts of men and women. The shadows gave you power. I only provided the voice.” He coughed again, and blood coated his lips and dripped down his chin. He now spoke in a near-whisper. “People fear most what they don’t know. That’s why they’re afraid of the dark. Their imaginations run wild, and they fill the empty places with dread.”

  “Tell me one thing,” said Jared. “Why did you help those boys steal your own money? Did you really want to collect the insurance on it? I mean, you’ve got more money than most people can imagine. What more could you possibly want?”

  Eldon shook his head. “How can you be so naive? It wasn’t about insurance money. Father was the next in line to be the prophet. I knew he terrified Uncle Grand. I arranged with those four boys to carry out the robbery. I sent Nelpha up to Salt Lake City to murder the prophet. We had a deal, she and I. I even gave her the gun she used. In exchange for shooting him, she’d sign a confession to the police saying she murdered Grand to protect her one true love. No judge would throw the book at an innocent child bride who was defending herself. At most, she’d probably spend a few months in the reformatory. I promised her that once she was out, I’d…” Eldon erupted in another coughing fit.

  Jared finished his sentence: “You promised her you’d leave her and Boyd Johnston alone after that. Then Rulon—really you—would become the next prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Saints, meaning you’d preside over one of the richest empires in the western states. I’m sure you’d wipe out any potential foes—real or imagined—in your church while you were at it.”