by Jason Ross
Cameron crawled past his rifle in the brush. A bullet had sliced through the aluminum breach. It looked like someone had taken a welding torch to the upper receiver. That rifle was finished.
He grabbed Julie’s rifle, hanging from a dead branch, and scrambled deeper into cover. He left her body in the blackbrush, her blank face still working through the confusion of a world catapulted into the absurd.
I don’t understand. What did you say? You cheated on me with a polygamist chick?
Cameron retreated fifty feet from the clearing before climbing to his feet and running. Bullets sluiced through the thicket, burning holes in the underbrush and knocking chunks off the cottonwood bark. Ruth appeared ahead on his path, gathering her rifle and backpack. She grabbed the two buckets she’d dropped earlier.
“No, no, no. They’re coming. More than a dozen. Leave the food,” he shouted.
She did as she was told and ran behind him in a crouch, her huge, polygamist dress swirling around her feet.
They waded the Virgin River and struck out directly for the Grafton homestead. The pock-pock-pock of gunfire across the highway slowed, then stopped. The ambush had paused for the moment, probably regrouping before pursuing them into the thicket. Cameron had no doubt they would follow their trail. Why prepare an ambush if not to pursue and take back all they’d traded?
Cameron waved Ruth forward.
“Where’s Julie?” Ruth heaved for breath.
“She’s dead.” He shook his head. “They’ll follow us for sure. We need to get back to Isaiah.”
As they ran through the trees and broke into the open pasture around the cabin, Julie’s voice echoed in his head.
What did you say?
They’d been together fifteen years, and now they’d never be together again. All those long years keeping house, raising kids, arguing about bills. A lump of lead, a chip of skull and it was gone.
Their life together was over. Compulsive, reckless sex had ended it—or had it been a bullet that ended it? His mind reeled. It had happened so fast. But he knew this for sure: her death was on him, as sure as if he’d pulled the trigger himself. He’d pulled it with his dick and a thoughtless treachery. Julie had deserved better. Depressed or not, she’d deserved better than Cameron Stewart.
Even with her surging skirts, Ruth pulled ahead of him across the pasture around the homestead. Isaiah stood on the porch, holding himself up with one of the posts. The children gathered beside him, terrified by the sound of gunfire. Cameron poured on the speed. He needed to get to Isaiah. Isaiah would know what to do.
“They’re coming!” Cameron bellowed as he ran. “Right behind us.”
Isaiah shouted something to the children and they rushed inside. Ruth fell behind Cameron’s exhausted sprint. Cameron needed Isaiah—needed to know what to do next.
“How many?” Isaiah asked as Cameron closed the distance.
“Fifteen, I think,” Cameron heaved as he took the steps two-at-a-time. “More than we can fight. Julie’s dead.” He bent over and struggled for breath.
Pain wrestled on Isaiah’s face. His leg must’ve been on fire.
“Get the kids in the truck and get out of here,” Isaiah said. He choked on the pain, swallowed and said again, with resolve, “You take Ruth and the children. I’ll make a stand.”
“That’s stupid. We all get in the truck and go,” Cameron argued.
Isaiah shook his head emphatically as he battled personal tides of agony.
The boys and Leah rushed out of the cabin carrying buckets of food. The little ones had bedding in their arms. They ran to the truck, threw everything in the truck bed and ran back inside for more.
Isaiah spoke with unaccustomed authority. “I’ll make a show of defense. The Rockville militia needs to think we’re pinned down, or they’ll cut you off on Wire Valley Road. If they have radios, they’ll call back to town. They’ll ambush you as you go past. They’re after our guns and the food. The only way out of here is to go past the back side of Rockville. It’s the only escape route over the butte. Cameron, you need to go now and let me do my part. Get Ruth and the kids out. Save my family.”
“That’s stupid,” Cameron repeated, but he knew Isaiah was right. They were on the opposite side of the river, and the only road out of Grafton doubled back past Rockville. If the militia knew they fled with the supplies, they’d ambush them and shoot them to pieces. The truck could probably blow past, right now, but only because Rockville thought they had them cornered. The jig was up.
“Cameron, there’s no time to debate. I’ll tie them up here. Take Ruth and the kids, and everything we have, and go. Run toward Saint George. It’s your best chance. You are this family’s best chance.” Isaiah put a hand on his ruined leg. “You are their father now. Her husband. Promise me.”
Ruth overheard, sobbed in agony, but worked feverishly inside the house, nonetheless.
“Promise me,” Isaiah asked him again. “Be her husband. Their father.”
“I will.” Cameron looked into the eyes of the man he’d once planned to kill. “I promise.”
“Brothers in Christ,” Isaiah said, and held out his hand to Cameron. “Husbands unto the Lord.”
Cameron took the hand and pulled himself into Isaiah’s chest. He hugged him hard. He would’ve liked to crack a joke, but the sob trapped in his throat wouldn’t allow it.
Isaiah pushed him back upright. “Go, before they see you drive away. Go now.”
Cameron ran inside, grabbed the heavy pack with the survival supplies, and sprinted for the truck.
Cameron, Ruth and the five children pulled over in the truck after they flew past Rockville and reached the top of the butte. They stood where they could see into two valleys—the Virgin River and Colorado City, both. Cameron got out and leaned against the truck, and watched through binoculars as their homestead was overrun by riflemen. The crackle of gunfire reached two miles, delayed and echoey.
Rockville men fell in the pasture. They fell surrounding the cabin. They fell on the porch as they kicked in the door of the cabin.
Isaiah made a good showing for himself—a man’s man, when it counted. He exacted a steep price from the Rockville thieves for their trespass.
Cameron turned the binoculars on the town of Rockville. The truck had made it past before the assholes could block the road. The militia was probably just now realizing that Isaiah had been alone in the cabin—that the clan had fled with the guns and supplies.
Still, Cameron knew they were the furthest thing from safe. They’d slipped the noose of Rockville only to throw themselves onto the mercy of the angry, red desert. There was only one dirt road and it’d take them back toward Colorado City—the polygamist enclave where Cameron had killed over a dozen men to free his family.
Isaiah once told him that this dirt road emptied onto Highway 59, north of Colorado City. Hopefully, it was far enough north to avoid a confrontation with the colony. The last time Cameron drove through Colorado City, they’d shot him in the throat.
It was early afternoon. Colorado City—the polygamist town—was a gridwork of homes painted across the red sands. Parts of the town belched black smoke. Tanks—actual army battle tanks—stood in a mile-long column through the center of town.
A shiver ran up Cameron’s spine. He hated that town, and all the polygamists of Colorado City. In his book, they deserved to be crushed by the Army. But his hate paused mid-flush, and he checked himself: one of their favored sons had just given his life to save Cameron and his boys.
Perhaps the United States Army had come up against the roadblock outside of town—the same one that’d put a bullet through Cameron’s throat. Maybe the Army had smashed it flat and set fire to the town. Maybe the the polygamists had reaped what they had sowed; unforgiving, mechanized death. Yet he couldn’t celebrate the destruction of his enemies—not with Isaiah dead and his wife standing beside him against the truck, between their children and death. He could only bear witness.
“I
don’t think that’s the American Army,” Ruth muttered, perhaps reading his mind.
She watched with the same, shared binoculars, but she saw with different eyes. She probably didn’t see a cult. She probably saw her home and her religion in flames.
“Look.” She pointed. “The soldiers aren’t wearing uniforms. They’re regular guys. Maybe...Mexicans?”
Cameron didn’t know if Mexico had tanks, but she was right about the uniforms. The men milling around the column of parked tanks weren’t wearing camouflage. He couldn’t tell what nationality they were, just that they weren’t behaving like American army. If they weren’t the government, who the hell were they? If they were the Mexican Army, wouldn’t they be wearing Mexican uniforms?
It didn’t matter if they were U.S., Mexican or Martian, Cameron would avoid them at all costs. He’d avoid everyone. Their clan were now refugees, with barely enough food to make it to spring. The food and guns made them strong, but it also made them a target; a neon sign saying “Look at Me. I’m not Starving. I have stuff.”
They needed a place to hide, to sit out the winter. That meant getting down off the butte before the column of tanks moved north and cut off their escape. He had no idea what they’d find north of Colorado City on Highway 59, but it couldn’t be worse than the Rockville militia or a column of plundering tanks.
* * *
What’s behind Door Number Three, Bob?
Throw it open, Cam, and find out! It could be a brand new car, a washer/dryer or a roadblock bristling with cannon. Try your luck! Spin the big wheel!
* * *
“We need to go,” Cameron said.
“Yes.” Ruth climbed back in the cab of the truck. The children were piled on top of each other in the back seat. Ruth pulled Cameron’s youngest son onto her lap. Cameron wondered if the passenger side airbag had been disabled. It could be dangerous in a wreck.
He looked one more time at the smoldering town through their binoculars.
Tanks. Airbags. Starvation. Crucifixion. Marauders. The many faces of rollicking death. He’d lost his wife and his friend so far today. Who else would die before nightfall? One of the children? All of the children?
The pickup truck’s gas gauge was almost on empty. Saint George wasn’t far—maybe thirty miles as the crow flew—but he’d have to take detours to avoid the armed patrols of the town of Hurricane, and then he’d need to figure out how to get through the roadblocks keeping people out of Saint George.
“Run for Saint George,” Isaiah had said. Isaiah had believed running was better than hiding in the desert, but Cameron didn’t know why. They’d been hiding in the desert for months, and it hadn’t ended well. Maybe Isolation meant vulnerability. Hiding was great until someone found you, which they inevitably would. Scavengers picked across the land like locusts. The only real safety was a town, civilization, if any still existed.
Run for Saint George. Isaiah had implored him. He’d promised to do it.
Highway 59 would take them back through Hurricane, which Cameron thought might be as dangerous as Rockville. He’d find a dirt road around the town, then loop west toward the big city of Saint George. There, he hoped to slip in and take up residence without raising a fuss. They didn’t need anything from the city—just a buffer zone of watchful humans to blunt the predations of marauders and militias. The clan had enough food for the rest of the winter, but they needed protection from predators. They needed a community to watch their back. A bigger clan.
The truck rolled down the dirt road on the south side of the butte, following an old two-track that had probably been used by polygamist kids to escape out from under the watchful eyes of their priesthood.
Cameron would gladly submit to a few priests at this point, if it meant being surrounded by a community. He’d run fresh out of individualism. After living in a bolt-hole, under the starry skies, away from the comforting lights of town, he no longer took good neighbors for granted. The Grafton bug-out location had chewed every ounce of fat off his body, taken his wife’s life and killed his friend. At this point, he’d trade his dad’s sterling, American individualism—“neither a borrower nor a lender be”—for a half-decent Neighborhood Watch.
The truck reached the highway at sunset. The tanks still hadn’t rolled out of Colorado City. Cameron stomped on the spongy accelerator and put distance between the clan and the armored column. Hopefully, by this time tomorrow, they’d be tucked away in an abandoned house in Saint George, no longer refugees. Having no place to hide, no home base, left them vulnerable to threats from every point of the compass. He longed to have his back against a community, with allies surrounding him, facing threats head-on instead of over his shoulder. Being a refugee felt like a three-hundred and sixty degree ring of death.
They drove fifty miles on blacktop, through the coming night, and descended toward Hurricane. The dark closed in on all sides and the gas gauge ceased its bobbing and stuck firm to the red post. Ruth drifted to sleep in the dark of the cab, as did the children. Looming death had dried up any lifeforce energy in the cab of the truck. They slept while Cameron drove, and communed with ghosts.
As the half moon hovered overhead and flickered between the banks of clouds, ghastly figures glowed in the bed of the truck. Cameron watched them in the rearview mirror. If he didn’t look straight at them, they appeared in the edges of the gloom of the taillights. His dead wife, Julie, sat on the driver’s side, perched on the wheel well, leaning back against the sidewall. Her arms reached wide, relaxed and wind-blown. Her golden hair whipped in the slipstream, clean and intact. She luxuriated in it, grinned and laughed like the girl he’d met at a party, fifteen years before. Across from her, the big, easygoing polygamist sat on a pallet, younger-faced than Cameron had ever seen him. Isaiah pontificated to Julie about some factoid—the stolid young man, religious and sure. Hardworking and fair.
Cameron knew they weren’t really there. His mind was making its allowances for the injustices of the day. He’d played his guilt-stained part in the play, and the other protagonists had suffered for it. They’d been taken up to heaven, now away from this world of terror and pain. Julie was no longer depressed and Isaiah was free of pain, but for a moment, they tarried in Cameron’s truck bed.
The ghost of Isaiah looked straight at him in the rearview mirror and pointed a thick finger. He grinned, as if to say, “I see the same thing you saw when we first met: the back of the head of a weirdo, his polygamist wife and bundle of kids, in a pickup truck in the southern desert, running for their lives.”
The ghost said something to Julie in the whistling wind. It sounded like “Look! Cam and I traded places. Ain’t God a darn joker?” The ghost raised his eyebrows and poked his finger ahead, into the night. “Lookout, brother,” the ghost mouthed.
Cameron stood up on the brakes and the truck howled to a sliding stop. Ruth and the children jolted awake with screams and cries. Red bonfires burned on both sides of the highway, a mile down the road: the Hurricane road block. The town, once a sparkling pool of electric light, barely twinkled beyond in a dark valley, with a few campfires and a hundred wispy candles.
Cameron made a three-point turn and drove back the way they’d come. His terrified family settled with each new thump-thump-thump of the reflective bumps in the road. Cam found the dirt road Isaiah had described to get around the roadblock. If it was the right one, it’d circle the town and drop them at Sheep Bridge, at the edge of the tiny town of La Verkin. Hopefully, La Verkin hadn’t militarized like Hurricane and Rockville.
Every move, for refugees, was fraught with risk. They just had to survive the night, Cameron urged himself and his ghosts. Just this one night.
They crossed the small, concrete bridge and rolled through the town of La Verkin. It’d been rendered black, toothless and burned out. Charred posts and soot-plastered chimneys were all that remained of the farming hamlet. Some past evil had chosen the town for immolation. Cameron rolled through the graveyard and toward the interstate.
<
br /> They would attempt entry, that night, into Saint George. It was a plan crafted by Isaiah, many weeks before—a plan barely remembered. Cameron had never seen the mountains at the back of Saint George. He’d only ever motored past the city, flying along the interstate toward Salt Lake City to visit his sister.
Isaiah had cavorted around the little city of Saint George as a teenager, no doubt hoping to glimpse the lives of “normal” high schoolers. He’d known the roads, lanes and dirt tracks in and around the once-neon boulevard. The way he’d described it, Saint George sounded like a throwback to the nineteen fifties, straight out of Happy Days. Now, that same boulevard would be chained-up pizza joints and dusty milkshake shops. It’d be a sad, rusting monument to the heyday of middle America. The boulevard would be surrounded by thousands of brick bungalows, and most of them would be occupied by frightened, resolute Mormons, each with their food storage and maybe a few boxes of hunting rifle cartridges. To Cameron, it sounded like paradise. The lawns would be overgrown, but streets would be safe—at least until that column of tanks came to town.
Saint George was only a dozen miles away, now. But they couldn’t approach directly on the interstate. They’d have to circle around. Without a doubt, the city blockaded the main approaches. Cameron would have to probe to find a way under the watchful eyes of the community guard.
The truck drove slowly through another smoldering town. The winter mists rolled off the snowy plains of the valley and curled into cloud banks along the dark ramparts of red rock. The chill night air flattened the clouds to earth and splashed them against the buttes and gravelly escarpments. Cameron flicked the switches on the dash, but the aging truck had no fog lights. The engine missed a beat as they passed through a cut in the hills and descended toward the junction with the interstate. The engined sputtered, coughed then resumed its growling when they hit flat land. They weren’t going to make it to Saint George in the truck and they were too far to walk, at least not carrying their food.