Destroying Angel

by Michael Wallace

  Either way, it occurred to him that the federal government was setting up to do for the nation exactly what California was trying to do on the state level. Like that guy who’d come sniffing around Blister Creek last week. What was his name? Chip Malloy. Seemed harmless enough, although there was that strange thing with the armed guard. They were planning to nationalize the whole agricultural economy, that much was clear. Protect Americans, let the rest of the world starve.

  “Our cult investigation is done,” she continued. “Finished. And that’s only the start. Counterfeiting is gone, drug interdiction is gone. They’re even reassigning the counterterrorism guys. Better hope some crazy from the Middle East doesn’t drive across the border with a truck full of fertilizer, because nobody is looking.”

  He was quiet through this last part. All of it might be true—and it also occurred to him that if there were a crisis, maybe they’d forgive last year’s screwup and invite him back—but it didn’t change the fact that Taylor Junior was lurking out here, plotting another horrific attack. In fact, it made it worse. Even in the middle of an attack, there’d be less than even odds he could get anyone from the FBI to show up.

  “We’ve waited a year,” he said. “I don’t want to sit on my hands until Taylor Junior crawls out of his hole, but if you think maybe another week or two—if you think it will blow over and you can bring resources—we can keep watch and wait.”

  “Get out of your bubble, Krantz. This volcano thing isn’t going away, not anytime soon. It’s already thrown thirty times as much crap into the atmosphere as the entire Krakatoa eruption. It’s the biggest eruption in seventy thousand years, and it’s not done yet. Some volcano guy at the University of Hawaii says another big blast is building in the caldera. Think about how much the climate is screwed up already. Now double that and make it last for three years. That’s the best-case scenario.”

  Krantz didn’t know anything about volcanoes, climate, or agriculture, but he understood the political ramifications. The world was about to tear itself apart. And when that happened, who could be bothered with infighting in a small polygamist cult in the middle of the desert?

  “You still there?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” They were both quiet for several seconds. “I guess there’s nothing more to say.”

  “No. I’m really sorry.” Another silence. “Take care of yourself out there, Krantz.”

  “Yeah. Thanks. You too.”

  He hung up and rubbed his thumb along the edge of the phone for a long moment before he went back to share the bad news with Miriam and Eliza.

  “The way I see it, we have two choices,” Miriam said when he finished. “Go back and wait—and I don’t care how many checkpoints we set, the camera doesn’t lie. Taylor Junior can infiltrate at will.”

  “And the other option?” Krantz asked.

  “We go in, guns blazing. The three of us, plus every man in Blister Creek. And women too. Carol Young. Delilah Johnson. That woman at Yellow Flats—Rebecca. She’s no friend of Taylor Junior either. We raise thirty, forty people who know how to use firearms and aren’t afraid to use them.”

  “It’d be a massacre,” Eliza said. “Any way you look at it. Imagine we fight our way down and then they detonate more chemical warheads. Kill themselves and take us with them.”

  “You got a better suggestion?” she asked.

  “We can’t do this alone—it’s a job for the professionals. A SWAT team. Don’t you think, Steve?”

  “We don’t have a SWAT team,” he said. His mind turned over the possibilities. None of them seemed promising.

  “Lights off!” Miriam said.

  They flipped off the flashlights. Krantz heard the rumble of a vehicle, and then a pair of dim lights flashed in the darkness a few dozen yards away. He grabbed the women and pulled them to the ground.

  The truck crunched across the ground, coming toward them. Fortunately, it wasn’t using its beams, only the parking lights. But if it continued on its present course, it would run directly over them.

  “Krantz!” Miriam hissed.

  She struggled to get her arm free, and he realized he’d been pinning her in place. She fumbled for her gun, and he saw what she meant to do: wait until it was on top of them, then come up shooting. Eliza was struggling too, and she had her gun out before he could stop her.

  The moonlight caught the vehicle in silhouette. It was a Humvee with a machine gun in back, mounted on a rotating turret. A man sat at the gun, protected by a gun shield of plate metal. Another man sat by his side, holding an assault rifle.

  “Stay down!” Krantz said.

  Miriam grunted her frustration but stopped struggling. Eliza lay still.

  At the last moment, when he thought they’d have to jump up and shoot whether they liked it or not, the Humvee veered to one side. It crept by a few feet to their right, tires crunching stones and crushing dry animal bones.

  A light flicked on in the cab. Krantz couldn’t help himself and lifted his head. There were two more men inside. The passenger studied a map that he was unfolding beneath the overhead light. The driver leaned over the wheel to peer into the darkness. Krantz felt a shock of recognition. Beside him, Eliza drew in her breath. She’d seen it too.

  The Humvee picked up speed. It hit a sandy patch, revved, and then pulled up a rise onto rock and hardpan again. Moments later it disappeared into the night and the engine faded in the distance.

  “What was that about?” Miriam asked, sounding peeved. “We had the element of surprise.”

  “Did you see the guns?”

  “So what? We’re armed too. We had the jump on them.”

  “Come on, Miriam. We’ve got three nine-millimeter handguns. No time to set up the sniper rifle. And even if we could shoot through the door or get behind that gun shield, all it takes is one guy and he mows us down.”

  “Did you see the driver?” Eliza asked. She sounded shaken.

  “What about him?” Miriam said.

  “It was our guy,” Krantz said. “The bastard himself.”

  “You mean Taylor Junior?” Miriam said. “We should have tried. The window was open—I could have jumped up and fired through the window before they ever saw me.”

  “And the others would have shot you.”

  “Would have been worth it,” Miriam said.

  “Would David agree?” Eliza asked. “And Diego?”

  Miriam fell silent.

  “Never mind, it’s over,” Krantz said. “We didn’t have enough time to think it through. But now I want to know where they’re going, armed like that.”

  “They’re not running down to Walmart to pick up tampons and toilet paper,” Miriam said.

  “No, I think not.”

  “But now we can follow the tracks the way they came,” Eliza said. “And find our way inside while they’re gone.”

  “I’m all for that,” Miriam said.

  “Here’s what worries me—” Krantz started.

  The ground lifted beneath his feet. Eliza grabbed his arm, but he lost his balance and took her down with him. Miriam somehow kept her feet, and she turned on her flashlight, which cut crazy loops like a child’s sparkler.

  Too late, he thought. They blew themselves to hell.

  The ground kept shaking, and his mind reeled. Only four escapees. The rest dying underground.

  He was so fixed on this idea that it took a moment to realize there was no sound. They should have heard an explosion as a concussion of air blew out the doors of the hidden base. But there was nothing except a dull rumble that he felt in his bones more than heard.

  An earthquake.

  He’d lived through half a dozen in California, including the big Northridge earthquake when he was a boy growing up in Orange County. At almost the instant he made this realization, the earthquake was over.

  “Was that what I think it was?” Miriam asked as they climbed to their feet.

  The ground trembled slightly, and he braced himself for another major
shock, but none came.

  “They used to do earthquake drills when I was a girl,” Eliza said. “Duck and cover. Nobody said anything about lying face-to-face with a rotten cow.”

  “That’s not a dead cow I’m smelling,” Miriam said.

  Krantz smelled it too—a sharp, acrid scent that cut through the low-level putrefaction of the animal corpses. He groped until he found his flashlight, then broke the darkness with the beam. Eliza turned on her light too, and all three of them cut across the landscape, searching.

  “Run!” Eliza suddenly cried. She grabbed Krantz’s arm and heaved him into motion. Miriam sprinted into the lead.

  They stumbled and staggered across the desert for several minutes. His head suddenly swam, and he felt dizzy, off balance, as if the ground were still rolling beneath his feet. He tried to stop, but Eliza and Miriam took his arms and forced him to keep moving. Finally he could go no more, and no amount of coaxing could get him moving. He dropped the duffel bag, bent over, and put his hands on his knees. For a moment he thought he’d pass out, and then the nausea began to fade.

  “That was close,” Eliza said. “But I think we’re okay now. Look, no more bones.”

  Krantz’s head pounded. He straightened and looked at Eliza with new appreciation, aware that her quick thinking had saved their lives. From what, he wasn’t quite sure.

  “The pond was bubbling and fizzing,” Eliza said. “Did you see that? Like someone tossed in the world’s biggest block of dry ice. And suddenly I thought about the dead animals. Guess I should have gone for the rebreather, but all I could think about was getting out of there.”

  “You think it was the earthquake?” Krantz asked. “Stirring up a big gas bubble or something?”

  “Maybe,” Eliza said. “We’re close to the mantle around here. They’re even building a geothermal plant north of here in the San Rafael Swell.”

  “I read once about a lake in Africa that kills entire villages,” Miriam said. “Gas forms at the bottom and comes up all at once.”

  Eliza nodded. “Must be like that. I bet that’s what killed all those animals—and that man too.”

  “For a minute there, all I could think about was the chemical attack last year,” Krantz said. “And that maybe Taylor Junior buried something nasty out here that came up.”

  “I never thought about that,” Eliza said. “But no, I bet it’s been going on a long time, and that’s why the base was abandoned.”

  “Either way, I’m glad we’ve got the breathing gear,” Krantz said. He still had the duffel bag, but he had dropped his flashlight. Eliza had lost hers too, but Miriam still carried her Maglite. “Think this has something to do with the volcano?” he asked.

  “How is that even possible?” Eliza asked. “Indonesia is on the other side of the world.”

  “The signs of the times,” Miriam said. “The prophecies of Isaiah. ‘Thou shalt be visited of the Lord of hosts with thunder, and with earthquake, and great noise, with storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire.’”

  “The earth does plenty of funky things that we don’t have to blame on the apocalypse,” Eliza said.

  “You sound like Jacob.”

  “I’m only saying we shouldn’t assume. Volcanoes blow up—maybe not like this, not every day. But it happens. Most of those dead animals have been there for years, maybe decades. Gas is coming out of the earth again, but you can tell it’s not the first time.”

  “Still.”

  Krantz grew impatient. “Argue theology later. We’ve got to figure out what to do about Taylor Junior. Do we look for his base or not?”

  “That was a big earthquake,” Eliza said in a grim voice. “It might have settled the issue for us.”

  He hadn’t thought of that, but she was right. The gases might be pouring into the hideout even now. Still, an underground military facility, hardened against blasts, might be untouched by a quake. Too many variables to consider.

  “Whatever we do,” Miriam said, “let’s do it. I can’t stand this sitting around, talking. Remember last time, dinking around in Dark Canyon while Taylor Junior attacked? We saw them drive off. Let’s not have a repeat of the slaughter in Blister Creek.”

  “It won’t be a sneak attack this time,” Krantz said. He fished around in his backpack until he found what he was looking for and held it out for them to see. “Because we have a working phone.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Jacob ran from the bedroom to catch his son. Fernie awoke and called after him in alarm, but he didn’t stop to answer. He took the stairs two at a time. It was black downstairs, but he knew the house by touch and didn’t bother flipping on the light. He threw himself across the front room and was out the door in an instant.

  Outside, he stopped and scanned the darkness that lay beyond the porch light. He half expected to see Daniel pacing up and down the sidewalk at the edge of the walk. Sleepwalking, nothing more. Jacob had done it himself as a boy, been caught strolling through the kitchen at night or out the back door.

  But the sidewalk was empty and the night silent, except for the chirp of crickets beneath the porch and the bark of a dog that carried through the thin air from near the center of town, several blocks away. The moaning wind, which had blown with infernal regularity all spring and into summer, lay dormant now.

  “Daniel! Where are you?” No answer. “Daniel!”

  Jacob froze with indecision. Go back inside and organize a search? Wake his brother David first, and then go after Daniel? Or try to get the boy before he found himself in trouble?

  Witch’s Warts.

  It came into his mind as if planted there by someone else. In a sense it had been. Grandma Cowley—Henrietta Rebecca Cowley, he reminded himself—had sent him a message across time. The evil spirit came from the sandstone labyrinth.

  The shadows of Witch’s Warts loomed only a few hundred feet away. Across the street and beyond the temple, it stretched for miles, from the Ghost Cliffs and into the heart of the Blister Creek Valley. In the moonlit shadows it looked like the back of an immense, knob-covered beast rising from the depths of the earth.

  He raised his voice. “Daniel!”

  Toward Main Street, the barking dog lifted its voice in answer, followed by another dog, and then another, each one more distant. Their howls matched his own desperation.

  Already he’d wasted valuable seconds. He went on foot, hurrying toward Witch’s Warts.

  Stubby, fresh-mown grass around the temple gave way to cool sand beneath his bare feet. The moonlight entered the stone labyrinth at angles. One stretch glowed with a phantom luminescence, the next was so black where the fins came together that he groped through blindly. Something gnarled and dead grabbed at his hand, and he jerked back with a cry, but it was only the branch of a juniper tree.

  He called Daniel’s name as he went. To his left he heard a scrape, like toenails on sandstone. He whirled his head and saw a figure crawling spiderlike up a hump of sandstone. He cried out again, but the figure didn’t turn. Jacob stumbled and ran toward the sandstone hump. He hit his toe, which flared with pain, but he only staggered and didn’t stop.

  The hump rose steeply from the ground. The sandstone was warm beneath his hands with heat it had retained from the day. As a child he had scrambled up these rocks with all the caution of a lizard, wearing out the seat of his jeans as he half crawled, half slid to the bottom again. But now he felt shaky and afraid as he climbed. Most of the handholds felt strong, but then he’d grab a knob of rock only to have it crumble beneath his fingers and leave him flailing. At last he got up to where it flattened across the top. He picked his way forward as quickly as he dared, wary of hidden sinkholes that could twist his ankle or send him pitching over the edge.

  Jacob reached the end of the stone without finding Daniel. It was a steep drop to the ground from this side. He turned around, confused, certain he hadn’t missed anything and equally certain there was no other way down.

  “Daddy!” a child cried.r />
  And there was Daniel, atop the fin opposite his own. He must have jumped the gap. The empty space between the two stone monoliths was not wide, no more than a few feet across at the narrowest point, but it was deep and black. Jacob and his brothers had regularly jumped such distances as boys, but it now looked like a yawning pit. In his agitated state, in the dark, he was terrified he’d slip and fall thirty, forty feet to the ground.

  “Stay there,” Jacob said. “Sit down. Do not move, not one inch. I’m going down and I’ll—”

  Daniel screamed. He flailed his arms and fell back into the shadows. For a moment it seemed a man was there, pulling him, throwing him about, and then the boy entered the moonlight again, and it seemed like nothing more than a fit. He staggered near the edge.

  “Daniel!”

  Jacob backed up to get a running start. His toe throbbed from where he’d stubbed it, and scratches stung his hands and feet. He trembled and felt suddenly weak. It was only a few feet, so narrow that if you were on the ground you’d have to turn sideways to get through. And Daniel had cleared it. He was a child torn by some night terror, so surely Jacob could manage.

  Do it!

  He ran for the gap. At the last moment he jumped for the fin on the other side.

  The darkness yawned and gaped. The fins were the jaws of the beast, and the black gap its mouth. And when he jumped, the gap opened, the distance between the two stones widening. For every foot he cleared through the air, the gap opened two.

  He flailed at the air, and then his hands caught the rock on the other side. His fingers sought to dig into the stone. He swung an arm up and got a hand higher. His toes too dug at the rock, fighting to get any sort of leverage. His muscles strained as he pulled himself up.

  A hand grabbed his wrist. “No, Daniel!” he gasped. “Let me do it!” But when he raised his eyes, it wasn’t the boy that he saw.

  It was a man leering down at him.

  Gideon Kimball—Taylor Junior’s cruel older brother. The man who had butchered Jacob’s brother Enoch in the celestial room of the temple, torn out his intestines, and then kidnapped Eliza and fled into Witch’s Warts.