Destroying Angel

by Michael Wallace

  “Well?” he demanded.

  “Nobody is in charge, not really,” Lillian said.

  “I gave the signal. Three short knocks, three long. You knew it was me. Someone made the decision not to open up when I knocked, and I want to know who.”

  “Phillip Cobb—” she began.

  “Phillip Cobb is dead.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, that he never came back.”

  “I know that, you idiot.”

  “Did you bring my husband?”

  “Brother Aaron died a martyr in the service of the Lord. You can see him on the other side of the veil.”

  “Oh. How did he die?”

  “Jacob Christianson murdered him in cold blood.”

  “Did he?” She sounded neither upset nor particularly outraged at the news.

  Taylor Junior took a closer look, amazed at the defiance in her tone. Her cheeks weren’t the only thing that had had filled out since last summer—her body was pudgier around the waist, her breasts so large and full they looked almost obscene. The thought of Lillian Young down in this warm, safe place, fattening herself on their stores while he starved in a filthy pit in Witch’s Warts, filled him with rage.

  He might have let it go if she’d stopped there, but she added, “Didn’t you attack them first? So if Brother Jacob shot Aaron, wouldn’t it have been in self-defense?”

  He took out his gun and pistol-whipped her across the face. She went down without a cry. She stayed down for several seconds and then climbed unsteadily to her feet, wiping at her watering eyes. A gash had opened on her cheek, and blood oozed to the surface.

  Taylor Junior glared at the other women, who cringed. “Good. Now I’m going to repeat my question. If you don’t answer, I will shoot one of you and then ask again. Who is in charge?”

  “Levi Cobb,” Lillian said at once.

  “Thank you. That wasn’t so hard.” He put away his gun. “Why did Phillip leave the sanctuary?”

  “Levi sent him to look for you.” Lillian’s answer was perfectly correct, delivered promptly, but again, that note of defiance. “He has been gone for weeks.”

  “He didn’t make it far. His body is rotting in a pond half a mile from here.” He picked up the canteen where it had fallen when he crashed through the metal grating. He unscrewed the lid and let the pond water drain onto the carpet. “That’s all that’s left of Phillip Cobb.”

  Perhaps Phillip had been on his way back from searching and stopped to fill his canteen one last time when the toxic gases bubbled up and overwhelmed him, although Taylor Junior supposed it didn’t really matter. The man was dead, and Taylor Junior didn’t think much of the remaining men.

  “Let’s find Levi,” he said. “I want to hear his explanation as to why the three of you are alone, watching television, when I gave clear instructions—”

  “He said it was okay,” one of the other women said. It was the woman he’d caught in her undergarments, and Lillian now helped her button her dress at the neck. “He said we could have our own space down here, that it didn’t matter what we did, so long as—”

  “Shut your ugly mouth before I lose my temper.”

  She stopped, gaping. He looked at her closely for the first time and was surprised to recognize his own wife—his ugly second wife, Mary Ellen. Buckteeth and big, manly hands. She gave him a feeble, hopeful smile, like a puppy that has piddled on the carpet and knows it deserves a beating.

  “So the men don’t know you’re watching television. Then that’s another problem. Take me to Brother Levi. I have questions to put to him.”

  Mary Ellen and Lillian led him down the hall from the lounge, while the third woman trailed behind. They reached the first silo and edged around the catwalk that encircled the empty chamber where the military had once stored a nuclear missile. Faded orange and yellow tubing lay discarded at the bottom, some thirty feet below, looking like the intestines of a giant beast.

  The entire base had three such silos, and tunnels that snaked here and there like tubing in a child’s hamster cage. Abandoned years earlier, the electrical systems still worked with a little diesel for the generators. The counters and appliances in the communal kitchen were lime green, and the walls were painted a pale white that looked sickly beneath the fluorescent bulbs.

  The facility had housing for dozens, and Taylor Junior suspected that it had been more than a secret nuclear facility, that the government had maintained a fully contained command-and-control structure. When the Cold War came to an end, some sharp-eyed accountant apparently decided it was better to seal and abandon the facility than to haul the outdated equipment out of the desert.

  They met other startled women and children in the hallways. Whatever they were doing when they caught their first glimpse, each of them stopped to stare. Most looked terrified. Taylor Junior wondered if his sunburn and gaunt appearance made him look like a creature risen from the grave among all of these freshly scrubbed, overfed people. He ordered them to follow. One girl tried to run, but he grabbed her by the hair and dragged her along with the others.

  They passed a room filled with massive, ancient computers. Soldiers or technicians had taped comic strips to the server-room door, together with a Polaroid of a Vietnamese potbellied pig wearing glasses, labeled “Colonel Parkin.” Next to it was a faded sign printed with a dot-matrix printer: “IBM Mainframe for Sale—Was $195,000, Now FIFTY BUCKS!!!”

  The first man he found was Elmo Griggs, who sprawled on a couch in the lounge, eating dried apples directly from a twenty-five-pound canister that squatted on the floor next to his head. A boxy old TV rested on a metal stand on the far side of the room, images flickering, the sound an annoying buzz. Elmo didn’t immediately look over from his show, and the sight of his indolence and gluttony made Taylor Junior’s eyes bug out.

  “Elmo Griggs!”

  Elmo sent a fistful of dried apples flying as he shot up from the couch. He knocked over the canister, which in turn tipped over a can of tomato juice. It bled onto the white carpet, but nobody moved to pick it up.

  “Brother Taylor,” he said, his voice stammering. “You came. You’re alive. I didn’t know.” His eyes darted around the group, now grown to more than a dozen.

  “Why didn’t you answer when I banged?”

  “You banged? I never heard anything.”

  “Who was at the door waiting?”

  “They said we shouldn’t run the elevator. It wastes electricity.”

  “They said? What do you mean, they said? Who is they? And there’s a ladder to the surface, and a guard room with a telephone to call down for instructions when the sentinels hear something, and…why weren’t you there?” His pulse pounded in his ears.

  Elmo tried to back away and fell onto the couch. Taylor Junior stepped forward. He took out his gun and pressed it against the man’s forehead. A woman gasped at his rear. Elmo turned pale and squeezed his eyes shut.

  “Elmo Griggs. In the name of Jesus Christ—”

  “No,” Elmo whispered.

  Taylor Junior’s finger tightened on the trigger. “Thou slothful servant. Thou—”

  “Don’t kill him!” one of the women said.

  He turned, surprised, to see Lillian standing in front of the others. She wore a confident expression out of place among all these terrified people. Why? Because her husband was dead? Had that turned her defiant in the face of the Lord’s anointed?

  “What is happening here?” he said. “Did this man take you for his own? When Aaron Young failed to return, did you press yourself into Elmo’s arms? Did he make you his concubine?”

  She thrust her jaw forward. “No.”

  He looked back to Elmo, whose face showed hope but also something else. Confusion, Taylor Junior thought. Lillian’s defiance surprised him as well.

  “She told us to do it,” Elmo said.

  “We waited for months,” Lillian said. “And you didn’t come. Two men went out. The first didn’t come back. The second—that
was Phillip Cobb. I knew that either the enemy was killing our men when they left or our men were surrendering. I told Levi—”

  “Wait, a woman made this decision?” He lifted the gun from Elmo’s forehead and pointed it at Lillian. He would have shot her too, out of sheer outrage, when Levi Cobb entered from the far side of the room. Levi stared, gaping.

  “They said you were in charge,” Taylor Junior said. “Only now I find a woman giving orders.”

  Levi sputtered. “She’s not in charge.” He shot Elmo a look and then glared at Lillian. “I’m in command here.”

  “Who gave the order to abandon the guard post inside the front doors?”

  “We were wasting energy fighting each other. And there weren’t enough men left. I told Lillian to keep the women under control and…” His voice trailed off, as if he’d realized, too late, what he was admitting.

  Two other women arrived, then a young boy, and finally Jason Johnson entered the room. He too was eating, though he had the good sense to set his sandwich on the nearest table and swallow whatever was in his mouth. He stood rigid and silent while he surveyed the scene.

  “How many men are left?” Taylor Junior asked.

  “This is all,” Levi said. “Me, Jason, Elmo. Elmo’s father, but he’s old and weak and going senile. And now you. Where are the others?”

  “Dead. Murdered by the Christiansons.”

  Looking around the room at this pitiful remnant, Taylor Junior felt suddenly tired. Weeks hiding in the pit, buried in his own filth, and fighting off visions of the angel. Roasting in the day, shivering at night. And then a fall spent hiking across the desert at night until his feet felt like bloody stumps. A winter freezing in Aaron Young’s abandoned trailer, where the cold weather seemed never-ending, even when the calendar rolled into April and then May. Sneaking in and out of Blister Creek to prepare for the final assault on the town. And finally, driven by the angel into one last, desperate sprint across the desert, hunted by black helicopters. And for what?

  So few left. Brother Stanley dead. Eric burned up with the chemical warhead. Aaron shot and killed by the Christiansons. Taylor Junior’s father in prison. Phillip Cobb rotting in the pond. And three other men missing. Had they slipped away while fleeing Dark Canyon? God would punish them for that.

  “We made a few mistakes,” Levi said. “But we’re here. We’re waiting for you to tell us what the Lord wants us to do.”

  Yes, so tired. Why not turn around and walk out? Let these worms be led by their women. What was it to him? Except that the moment he abandoned his followers, the angel would appear, grinning. He would torment Taylor Junior as he had in the pit, in the abandoned trailer, beneath the dead cow. He would close his hands around Taylor Junior’s throat.

  I have to obey. There’s no other choice. It’s too late to walk away.

  He needed sharp, well-honed tools, but all he had were these three: Levi, Elmo, and Jason. They couldn’t rule their own women and children, so how could they possibly attack Blister Creek?

  Unless…What if he didn’t use them to attack the town? What if he used them for other purposes? Could he do it alone? He had the means to infiltrate and, once he arrived, supplies cached to finish the task.

  “Brother Taylor?” Levi said.

  Taylor Junior emerged from his thoughts. He turned to his wife, who flinched under his gaze. “Is everyone here?”

  “Most.” Mary Ellen looked around the room. “A few still missing—Sister Havah, Sister Sariah. Maybe a couple of children.”

  “Bring them here. Drag them in by their hair if you have to. I want every woman and child in the lounge in five minutes.”

  She rushed from the room to obey.

  Taylor Junior turned to the men. “Show me the armory.”

  To his relief, the armory was in good condition. Boxes of grenades. Well-oiled assault rifles in chests. A pair of .50-caliber M2 heavy machine guns and stacks of metal boxes, each box carrying a hundred rounds of ammo. A rack on one wall held a dozen M16 assault rifles, clean and ready to use. He’d feared that Lillian would have ordered them dumped outside, maybe even sunk in the pond. Instead it was all here, this room stuffed with enough to stock a small army. If only he had an army.

  “See?” Levi said. “We kept ready.”

  “You cleaned your weapons, you stacked your ammo cans. And then you sat back and ate.” In sudden disgust, Taylor Junior pinched the bulging flesh around one of Levi’s nipples. “Look at you, you’ve grown boobs. I’ve never seen anything more pathetic in my life.”

  He drew back with a shudder, then fixed Jason and Elmo with the same hard look. “Every one of you is fat. Even your women and children. I left you with three years of food for fifty people. How much have you devoured already?”

  “We haven’t touched the wheat,” Levi said. “Or the oats or the rice. And we have most of the milk.”

  “Of course. You tucked into the dried fruit, vegetables, and dried meat. You ate the sugar, the refined flour. Am I right? The canned goods. All the easy stuff. All the food that will make life bearable while we wait for the world to destroy itself. Well, why not? You let a woman order you around, I bet she made the call. Started whining about balanced nutrition for children and all that.”

  The men looked at the ground.

  “Only an idiot would turn over control of the church to a woman.” None of them said a word, and he continued. “A woman chooses comfort over necessity. And once she gains a little authority over a man, she will abuse it. Look at the world. Women in power everywhere. They refuse their duty, they don’t marry or have children. Tattoos and piercings. Artificial breasts. And their men are emasculated, like a neutered dog that doesn’t remember how to lift his own leg but squats and pisses like a bitch.”

  “Please forgive us,” Elmo said.

  “I should kill you all, but I have no choice. You’re the clay God gave me to shape. I only hope you toughen in the fire. I don’t know.” He sighed and rubbed his hand against the perforated jacket assembly of one of the M2s. “Is the Humvee still on the equipment elevator? Is the battery clean? The engine still runs? Good. Mount this gun. Load the vehicle with as much weaponry and ammo as it will carry.”

  “We’re going to Blister Creek?” Levi asked.

  “Yes.”

  “But isn’t the government still looking for us? On the news they said—”

  “The government? The whole rotten barn is about to collapse around their ears. By winter starving hordes will ravish the countryside like a plague of locusts. The people with guns will be too busy keeping the survivors in line to worry about our struggle with the apostates.”

  “Are you sure? All because of a volcano?”

  “There will be more volcanoes.” He remembered the bubbling pond and Phillip Cobb floating facedown and naked. “The Lord’s wrath will pour out upon the land.”

  “But what about Blister Creek?” Levi persisted. “They’ve got guns too. There are so many of them, and only four of us. Wouldn’t it be safer to stay here and defend our own sanctuary?”

  “You really are cowards, aren’t you? But yes, you’re right, in a way. The Lord means us to have more help.” He thought for a moment. “How old is my brother now?”

  “Thirteen,” Levi said, his tone skeptical.

  “Good. Teach him how to use a weapon. Use the empty silo for a shooting range. The sound won’t carry to the surface. And train the older Johnson boys too. Any other boy who will be twelve by September. That’s when I’ll be back.”

  “Where are you going?” Levi asked.

  “The very belly of the beast. Las Vegas.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Then Bakersfield. Wendover, Salt Lake, St. George. To gather more Lost Boys. There are a dozen more men I know about. Maybe more. By now they’ll see the collapse and know they have to choose sides before the Lord spews them from His mouth. They’ll join us, and we’ll have enough strength to take Blister Creek and hold it.”

  They
looked more confident at this, but the words felt wrong as they came out of his mouth. If the angel had meant for him to begin another slow mustering of forces, would it have driven him back to the bunkers? No, the thing had something more immediate and deadly in mind.

  I don’t care, he told himself. I’m not going back to Blister Creek on a suicide mission.

  “Still,” Taylor Junior added after a moment of hesitation, as if he’d merely been considering the logistics, “there is one remaining problem. Lillian Young.”

  “She’s defiant.” Levi said.

  “Yes. No doubt she’s scheming with the others right now. Once you give a woman a taste of power, she never lets go. Have any of you touched her?”

  They shook their heads. “I tried,” Levi said. “When we heard Aaron was dead, I told her she needed to marry one of us, but she refused.”

  “You tried,” Taylor Junior said. He forced down his temper. “Very well. I’ll do it myself. Come with me. Gather them all. I don’t like to do it this way, but I’ll do it in front of the others. Make it clear to everyone.”

  “She’ll fight back,” Elmo said. “That’s the sort of woman she’s become.”

  “I don’t require her consent. Levi, you’ll marry us. The instant you finish, the three of you will get her clothes off and hold her down. And then she will submit, or if she keeps struggling I will—no, not me,” he said, and looked at Levi. This was how he had strengthened Aaron. “No, I won’t do it. If she resists, you will shoot her.”

  The men looked shaken. They’d fallen under the woman’s spell this past year. Taylor Junior had expected to find the sanctuary in a state of revolt, but he’d never expected to find a woman in charge.

  “Too hard for you? Should I do it myself and bring back real men to take your wives and your kingdoms?”

  “We’ll do it,” Levi said. “If it is the will of the Lord.”

  “It is. Now quickly, before she poisons the other women.”

  The men left the ammo dump. It lay on the far side of the compound so an accidental explosion and fire wouldn’t suck the air out of the complex and suffocate them. They clanked across the metal catwalk that led around the empty silo, then down the hall toward the lounge.