Destroying Angel

by Michael Wallace

  Laura sputtered, “You’re going to believe that, that monster?”

  “Did you?” She turned on Maude. “Well, did you? Did you lie down with each other? Is that why you’ve been coming in late at night, because you’ve been meeting each other secretly?”

  “What in the blazes does that matter now?” I said. “Soon as that man gets his belly full, he’s going to start thinking about his threat.”

  “We’ll lock our doors,” Laura said. “If he tries to force himself, we have the right to defend ourselves. Every right. Federal marshal or no.”

  “He took our rifles,” I said. “Hid them heaven knows where.”

  “A knife, then.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” Annabelle said. “He hits people. He threatened to shoot my son for moving his boots. And he sleeps with his pistol in hand. What’s he going to do if we try to take his life? People will die, that’s what. Women and children.”

  “Then what?” I asked. “Wait for him to have his way with us, one by one? It won’t end with Sister Laura. Once he gets a taste of it, he won’t stop. He’ll keep thinking about all these helpless women. Mormons and polygamists. We’re animals to him. When he’s done with us he’ll start in on the girls. Annabelle, how old is your daughter? Twelve, thirteen? Has she started her courses yet?”

  Annabelle looked stricken at this. “She’s a child. He wouldn’t—”

  “You want to take that chance?”

  “Our husbands. They’ll come.”

  “Not soon enough,” I said. “It might be weeks. Months.”

  “We could ask for help,” Annabelle said. “That’s what we’ll do.”

  “What kind of help?” I asked, roused to suspicion by something in her voice. “Wait, no. No!”

  “What is she talking about?” Maude asked.

  “We’ll pray for help,” Annabelle said. “The Lord will send His servant. The angel.”

  “That is no angel,” I said. “And no servant of the Lord. I would sooner be violated by a drunk gentile than call on an evil spirit for help.”

  Fortunately, Laura and Maude looked equally horrified by the idea, and Annabelle took one look at their faces and let it drop. “Very well. You’re in charge here, as you keep reminding us. How do you propose we get rid of this man? Or are you only capable of silencing my ideas without offering one of your own?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do have a plan,” I said. “Do any of you have more whiskey?”

  “More whiskey?” Laura asked. “Are you mad?”

  “Anyone?”

  After more prodding, Laura admitted that she had an unopened bottle in her medical supplies. “My father was a doctor in Leeds and always kept it stocked in case the ether didn’t take.”

  “You have ether too?” I asked, hopeful.

  “No, you can’t carry ether for long. It evaporates or leaks out.”

  “Never mind. The whiskey will be enough. Run for it, quickly, before he comes out of his tent. I want it in his hands now, before supper, when his stomach is empty.”

  Laura hurried off, and Annabelle turned to me with a frown. “He won’t get suspicious when you produce a full bottle even as he’s already drunk?”

  “It will be a peace offering. Our gift if he promises to leave us alone and wait peaceably for our husbands. And I have a whole crate of the stuff, if he only behaves. He can have as much as he wants.”

  “Until he discovers your lie,” she said, “and then he’ll fly into a rage. Who knows what he’ll do then?”

  “He won’t discover my lie,” I said. “He’ll drink the whiskey, on top of what he’s already downed. And then he will fall into a stupor. I plan to wait until he’s fully asleep.”

  “And then what?” Maude asked.

  “And then I kill him.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It was afternoon when Taylor Junior climbed the steel rungs to the surface. The heavy steel door hung open, and dry, hot air seeped in from the desert. He blinked at the harsh light.

  No unseasonable weather today, no rain or chill air from Canada. Instead the sun wallowed overhead, blazing hot and relentless. There was no breeze or cloud to cut its fiery glare. A single contrail bisected the sky, a distinct white line in the east that turned into puffs of cotton against the blue miles and miles to the west. Below, the dead plain—bones and skulls and desiccated hides—lay for hundreds of yards.

  Taylor Junior knew how to suck the moisture from a prickly-pear cactus. He knew how to glean food from the barren sand- and rock-strewn waste—bend the branches of a piñon pine to steal the turquoise-colored eggs from a jay’s nest, cook a rattlesnake over a fire, or bite the fleshy abdomen from a Mormon cricket while tossing aside the chitinous, inedible wings and head. After so many years, the bitter flavor and the squirmy, still-living animal barely bothered him. He’d eat a lizard raw if he could catch one, sluggish and sunbathing in the chill morning air. He knew how to crawl beneath an overhang to survive the baking midday sun of August and how to drive a mountain lion from its den to take shelter on a subzero January night when the wind knifed off the plateau.

  And Taylor Junior knew how to track an animal across the desert. This time the animal was Sister Lillian Young. She had a head start of almost an hour by the time he left the bunker in pursuit. He had the knowledge of the terrain, the stamina, and the ruthless determination to track her down like a wounded beast to be shot and butchered.

  He walked in circles over the hardpan in front of the door and looked for a print. His first guess was south, down the slope toward the pool where Phillip Cobb’s naked body lay rotting. Go downhill, she’d think, make better time.

  But she would find nothing if she went south, not for miles and miles. Taylor Junior had approached the sanctuary from that direction for precisely that reason. But Lillian wouldn’t know that, wouldn’t know that she could travel by foot for days only to find herself at the edge of a canyon overlooking a desolate stretch of the Colorado River.

  He suffered a twinge of frustration when he couldn’t find prints heading south. Smart girl. Instead of running in the fastest direction, she’d given her route some thought. North, then, toward the highway. Fifteen miles over the desert along the broken military road, and another dozen miles east along a ranch road, and she’d come out onto the highway. If she had water, she’d make it by morning. But he found no tracks in that direction either.

  He grew more and more confused as he searched in a widening circle around the door, looking for prints. The only ones he located came from his own feet, when he’d banged on the door a few days earlier.

  “Damn you,” he muttered. It was a curse at himself, not at Lillian. He had to think clearly. What would Eliza Christianson do in Lillian’s position? Something clever, no doubt.

  This cleared his thoughts, and he found Lillian’s tracks a few minutes later. Instead of running, she’d swung herself to the ledge above the door, and then picked her way along the sandstone for twenty or thirty feet where her feet wouldn’t leave marks. Only then did she cross a stretch of hardpan—he found her tracks there, faint but legible—before turning west. She made no effort to conceal her prints at this point and picked up her pace to a near run as she followed a wash—the sand at the bottom still damp—as it snaked west.

  Taylor Junior allowed himself a smile as he hoisted his backpack and set off down the wash. So she didn’t have a map. If she had, she’d know that west led nowhere. Forty miles to the Dirty Devil River, and to get there she’d have to cross a pair of stubby ranges and the dry, broken plains between them.

  He’d catch her easily. And then she would pay.

  Lillian kept up a terrific pace for the first hour or so. Taylor Junior measured the footprints when they crossed a stretch of sand—roughly four feet between each print, which meant she moved at a jog. He didn’t run but kept going at a walk. She would be stretching the distance now, probably two miles distant, maybe three. No matter.

  Around five in the afternoon he
could see that her pace had slowed. The trail continued along the floor of the wash. It passed beneath a crumbling overhang of packed dirt, partially eroded by the recent heavy rains. Clumps of yellow-flowered snakeweed lined the top of the wash, their roots exposed by the flooding. A few feet later, a juniper tree leaned over the wash. A few inches higher and the stream would have torn it free and sent it along with the torrent of muddy water and debris. Lillian’s prints smudged the ground. He studied the tree and let his hand trail along the spot where a pair of branches had been cut from the leading branch, each about as thick as his little finger.

  She has a weapon.

  A hunting knife, from the look of the cut. Yes, but why reveal that by cutting off branches where he could see them?

  Because she didn’t expect pursuit, that’s why. She had something in her pack, maybe a can of Vienna sausages that she planned to roast over a fire when she made her camp, and she’d cut a pair of roasting sticks. She must be exhausted. It was early yet, but clearly she was already thinking about stopping for the evening. His pulse quickened.

  “Do you die, Lillian? Do I kill you? Or do I drag you back and make you my wife?”

  He redoubled his march. Finish it this evening, and he could turn around and make it halfway back before the light failed.

  Taylor Junior’s pace outstripped Lillian’s now. He hurried along at a near trot, tired but not exhausted. The wash narrowed and became shallower as he continued, and now his shoulders rose above the edge. He looked up from the tracks every few minutes to see if he could spot Lillian, head bobbing above the desert as she struggled to keep going. Exhausted now, wondering if she could safely quit for the evening. But sure of herself that she’d fooled him with that initial business. Hours now, and she hadn’t tried to hide her tracks.

  The wash narrowed and deepened briefly as it passed between two outcrops that jutted from the ground like a giant’s stony fingers, pointing toward the heavens. He turned sideways to squirm through.

  The sand gave beneath his step and a searing pain shot through his foot. Something snapped. He cried out and fell on his backside with a curse. A broken branch emerged from the sand where it had been concealed. The broken tip lay buried in his heel.

  He groaned in pain and worked at his bootlaces with trembling fingers. He eased off the boot, then worked his fingers through the bloody hole in his sock and grasped the broken-off branch tip. He twisted it in an attempt to pull it loose. Another searing pain shot up his foot and he screamed, then bit his lip, hard, to silence himself.

  It took several seconds to work up his nerve a second time. This time he gritted his teeth against the pain, gripped the splinter tightly with his fingers, now slick with blood, and yanked. He screamed again.

  When he recovered, he looked at the bloody, sandy shard in the palm of his hand. It was about an inch long, and half of it had penetrated his foot. Lillian had sharpened it, perhaps pocketing the bark and wood slivers so he wouldn’t see them, and then stopped and spent valuable minutes burying it in the ground at a spot where the trail narrowed and he would have to step. He was lucky some of his weight was against a wall of the dry wash or it would have gone deeper into his foot.

  He let the blood flow for a minute. Then he rinsed it with water from his canteen, cut one of the vinyl straps from his backpack where it fell beneath the buckle, and bound the wound. The puncture throbbed against the strap, but he could put weight on it. He replaced his bloody sock, eased his foot into the boot, laced up, and rose to his feet.

  “You think this is it?” he said aloud. “I survived a rattlesnake bite—this is nothing. And when I catch you, I’ll show you what real pain is like.”

  He tried to picture Lillian’s face, but while he could remember her white-blonde hair, all he could see was Eliza Christianson’s smug expression as she taunted him outside the chapel the day he attacked Blister Creek.

  I killed your brothers and I’ll kill you too, she’d mocked.

  “Nobody can kill me. I’m the Lord’s anointed.”

  He took a step, and then another, grimacing in pain. After a few minutes it grew easier, but he still moved at half the pace he’d kept before stepping on Lillian’s booby trap.

  Worse still, as he continued, he thought about that second branch hacked from the bush. A second trap. Maybe she’d cut two and tossed the less suitable branch from the wash a few minutes later. But he thought not. He thought she would set another trap—maybe the same kind, maybe not.

  The sun was in his eyes now as it began its slow descent into the west. A wind picked up from the west. Across the top of the ravine it blew a fine dust, which caked his nose and mouth and coated his eyelashes and beard. The ravine moaned, a sound that modulated up and down in tone as the wind gained or lost strength.

  He wouldn’t catch her before nightfall, and that left him with a choice: Continue in the dark, or make camp and go on at first light.

  “Go back,” a voice said.

  He whirled and saw the angel standing behind him in the wash. He held the bloody thorn Taylor Junior had pulled from his foot and thrown away in disgust.

  “She’s tiring,” Taylor Junior said. “She has to stop soon.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Look at her pace. It’s slowing down hour by hour.”

  “Unless it’s another trap. Unless she has more strength than you think and she keeps hiking half the night. And then you’ll be in the desert, an untreated wound in your foot. It might get infected, and then what?”

  “So what should I do?” Taylor Junior let a sneer rise in his voice. “Limp back, tell them a girl beat me? And when Lillian reaches the road and gets help? When she tells them exactly where we’re hiding? I can’t let her do that. Any fool would see I have to hunt her down. Any idiot knows.”

  He didn’t see the angel move. One moment he stood twenty feet away, the next he was on Taylor Junior, driving him to the ground. One hand closed on Taylor Junior’s throat. The other shoved the thorn at his eye. Taylor Junior froze, unable to move or pull away or even shut his eye. The bloody thorn approached until it blurred, too close to see clearly. It rested, the barest, slightest pressure on the surface of his eyeball.

  “In it goes,” the angel said. “One fraction of a millimeter at a time. First the pain, then a drop of blood, and then your eyeball explodes.”

  No, Taylor Junior tried to say, but he couldn’t form the word. Fear turned his muscles to stone. Only his hammering heart and his gasping lungs kept moving.

  “You have eyes, but you see not,” the angel said. “Ears, but you hear not.”

  He pulled away and still Taylor lay rigid, muscles taut and quivering with exhaustion. His eye uninjured.

  “You chased her into the desert,” the angel said. “That way lies desolation. If she survives, if she finds water and doesn’t become disoriented and lost, it will take two days, maybe three, to reach the highway. You have plenty of time. Return to the sanctuary, gather your people.”

  So, what? We run again? Where do we go?

  “No,” the angel said. “The time for running is past. And there is no time to gather more soldiers. You have to move now. Gather the other men and fly to Blister Creek. You are few, but you are well armed.”

  It’s a suicide mission.

  “Perhaps. The hour is short, the world hurtles to its destruction. Blister Creek must fall before the coming of the Great and Dreadful Day of the Lord. It cannot wait. Either attack our enemies tonight or I shall spew thee from my mouth and find a more worthy servant. And if you die in the service of your god, so be it. You will receive your just reward in the world to come.”

  Thou sayest.

  And then, as if in reward for his obedience, a plan came into Taylor Junior’s mind. He thought about the Humvee with the mounted machine gun, the assault rifles. He imagined the vigilance of Blister Creek and the men who would rise up in fury to meet Taylor Junior in battle, led by Jacob Christianson himself. And what about that motorcycle he ha
d stashed in the Ghost Cliffs? Was it still there, wrapped in tarps and hidden with brush?

  At last Taylor Junior gained control of his muscles. “Is that it? Is that how it will be done?”

  Nothing answered but the low moan of the wind down the ravine. He looked around, but the angel was gone. Groaning, he climbed to his feet, turned, and limped back the way he’d come.

  The angel had spoken. He would obey.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Frederick van Slooten took the whiskey bottle without a word, uncorked it, and sniffed its contents while I explained. We made a mistake when he came, I said. We should have cooperated instead of resisting. If he took this as a peace offering, we could start over, and maybe both sides could live in harmony.

  He took a sip, swished the whiskey around in his mouth, and swallowed. “Yep, that’s it,” he said, words slurred from his earlier drinking. His scar glowed white against the flush on his face. “Why is a gaggle of Mormon women crating whiskey into the desert?”

  “It’s medicinal,” I said, and then I added a lie. “My husband is a doctor and sent me with all his supplies. There is an entire crate of whiskey. If we can only get along…” I let my voice trail off.

  His eyes widened. “A whole crate, you say?” He took another pull, this one deeper.

  I suppressed my excitement and nodded gravely. “You shouldn’t drink too much at once, Mr. van Slooten. Eat your supper first. You’ll feel better.”

  Another swig. “I can hold my liquor. You ladies fetch my supper now.”

  He retreated toward his tent, stopped in front of the entrance, turned around, and took another pull as he stared at us. I shot hard glances at Laura, Maude, and Annabelle, and they made themselves busy. Van Slooten ducked inside and pulled the canvas flap closed behind him.

  “What shall we do now?” Laura asked.

  “Get him his supper,” I said. “Look busy, but don’t rush. I want as much of that going down on an empty stomach as possible. A full quart of spirits already. No man can put away that much and stay on his feet.”