The Gates of Babylon

by Michael Wallace

  “You’re a reasonable man, Mr. Malloy. I’ve let you confiscate grain that we produced by our own sweat and labor. I’ve let you commandeer our chapel for your headquarters. I’ve told people not to harass you, to deal with you and your men in a civil manner. Do you think everyone in town feels the way I do?”

  “Are you threatening me, Christianson?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I am. Arrest me, and reap the whirlwind.” He turned. “It’s your choice.”

  They walked back in silence. Faces looked at the two men expectantly as they returned to the roadblock. Sunlight glinted off the windshield of the army truck, and the edge of the loosened tarp flapped in the breeze.

  “Clear the road,” Malloy said to his men. “You heard me. Move that truck to the shoulder.”

  Jacob glanced in the rearview mirror as he pulled in behind Krantz’s truck, heading south out of the valley. Chip Malloy stood next to the truck with his satellite phone at his ear.

  They drove in silence for a few miles then pulled to a stop. Krantz pulled up next to them in the flatbed and slowed to a halt. He looked over with a questioning shrug.

  “What’s going on?” David said.

  Jacob turned to the backseat. “Miriam, out.”

  “What?”

  Jacob jumped down from the driver’s side, opened the back door, and gestured at Miriam. “Come on, you heard me. You can walk home.”

  “Jacob…”

  “You know damn well why. You almost started a war. I saw what you were doing. I saw you had your pistol, when I told you to leave it behind.”

  “It was a contingency.”

  “Like hell it was. Out!”

  She climbed down, looking shaken. David came out after her, frowning, looking torn between defending his wife and deferring to his older brother.

  “Don’t send me back,” she said. “Please.”

  “Say you shot those men. How does that turn out? Three go down. Malloy doesn’t draw. Do you execute him on the spot?”

  Krantz got out of his truck. Officer Trost came around from the other side of the pickup. They stared.

  “Of course not. What do you think I am?” She looked back and forth between David and Krantz. “I wouldn’t do that. Tell him.”

  “So he doesn’t draw and so you don’t kill him, just the others. And Malloy calls headquarters,” Jacob said. “They send in trucks and helicopters. Arrest our leaders and ship the rest off to refugee camps.” He nodded. “That’s one possibility. Or maybe you don’t get them all, and one of those guys with a full auto rifle sprays us with bullets before he goes down. Or maybe you get your way and Malloy draws. You kill him, too. Do we go back and massacre the rest of the troops in town? How does that turn out any better?”

  “I wasn’t going to do that.”

  “No? That’s where it was heading.” He pointed up the road. “Go.”

  “Jacob, can we talk about this, first?” David said.

  “No discussion.”

  Krantz cleared his throat. “It was hasty. Stupid, even. Miriam and I lock horns sometimes—you know that. We did even back in the FBI days. But, Jacob, things could get ugly down there. You really want her to stay behind?”

  “What I want is people who use their tongues first and their trigger fingers last. I want people who don’t look at every conflict like a life-and-death struggle with the forces of Satan. So yeah, I’m willing to send her back to keep that from happening.”

  “Why are you flipping out?” she said. “I wasn’t going to pull any crap, I was being careful.”

  “Come on, Miriam. Can I even believe you anymore?”

  Some of the belligerence faded from her eyes. “Okay, I know it looks bad, but… look, I’m sorry.”

  “Are you?”

  “I didn’t stop and—it was pure instinct. I just… it won’t happen again.”

  Jacob stood, thinking. Now that he’d given voice to it, his anger began to dissolve. And worse, the sound of his ringing voice in his ears, the commanding tone—he sounded like his father. Proud, not afraid to humiliate those who stepped out of line.

  “Please,” she said, her tone pleading. “I need to go. I need to do this.”

  “I’m angry,” he said at last. “Furious. And I need some space to think. Ride with Krantz.”

  “Thank you, Jacob. I’ll do that.”

  David started to suggest that he go over to the flatbed, too, but Miriam cut him off, said she didn’t want any more distractions. Moments later, they were pulling out again, with Jacob, David, and Officer Trost in one truck, and Miriam and Krantz in the other.

  Soon, they left the valley to climb into the Grand Staircase and the aspen and pine vales in the mountains, where the air was chill and thin. They saw no other cars, and the handful of cabins and ranch houses looked abandoned.

  Trost was sitting up front and he turned the knob through the AM dial until he found a news station out of Salt Lake with a thin, crackly signal. It gave a steady drumbeat of bad news. Famine already spreading in India and Pakistan. The Straits of Hormuz still closed in spite of a massive Anglo-American fleet trying to restore the flow of oil. Planting time in the southern hemisphere, where the best hopes lay for a rebound in the global food stocks, but a crippling drought had gripped Australia, while Argentina and South Africa were drowning in monsoon-like rain. There was still time, though, to turn things around. And as for the rebellion in the Midwest and the California crisis, the announcer said…

  “Can we turn it off?” Jacob asked.

  Trost turned it off without comment.

  “Thank you. Maybe later.”

  If it had been David, Jacob would have asked earlier; he was more hesitant with the police officer. But the chatter was more of the same and it was distracting him from practical concerns. Such as what to do if they ran into FLDS on those rural roads going around St. George. The polygamist sect might send scouts along the road from Colorado City, on the Utah/Arizona border. That was trouble he could do without.

  Even more worrying was the phone call Chip Malloy made as they pulled away. What was that about? A call for backup? Telling someone in Las Vegas to arrest the Mormon fundamentalists when they arrived?

  Whatever it was, Jacob doubted they’d seen the last trouble from the Department of Agriculture.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Stone-faced soldiers manned sandbag bunkers. They stared at the governor’s black Suburban with its civilian plates as it passed the armed checkpoints, climbing the hillside into the base. Farther in, on grassy lawns in front of the barracks, young men in fatigues and gray army T-shirts did push-ups, while older men in tan uniforms yelled at them to move faster.

  “All without a draft,” Jim mused as they edged past. “Six million men in uniform and not one draft number pulled.”

  Parley turned the wheel to pull off the main road and toward General Lacroix’s headquarters. “Who needs conscription when you can promise three square meals a day?”

  “These dumb kids should be in college, not shipping off to fight jihadis.”

  “If I were them, I’d be more worried about the Midwest than the Middle East.” Parley gave Jim a sharp look. “I hope you know what you’re doing. Lacroix is itching to screw us over.”

  “Don’t worry,” Jim said. “We’ve got something he needs.”

  They stopped to let a half dozen armored personnel carriers rumble past, and then an olive green Buick Regal with a black star painted on the side cut them off. At last they pulled in front of headquarters and parked the car beyond the cement blast barriers. Six weeks ago the base had been the honor dorms at the university. Now it looked like a fortified embassy in some hostile country, with a double row of Jersey barriers inside the larger barriers, and machine gun nests all over the place.

  Parley parked the Suburban between two staff cars and the two men climbed out. A brisk wind blew off the Wasatch Mountains that loomed behind the base, and Jim buttoned his jacket. General Lacroix stood at the front door of t
he two-story brick building in front of them. He was a tall, thin man with a needle nose and blotchy skin on his face.

  The general spotted them and made his way down the walk in long strides. Lacroix was well over six feet and looked down at the McKay brothers before settling on Jim and giving a curt nod. “Governor.”

  Jim held out his hand and took the long, bony fingers offered reluctantly by the general. “This is my brother, Parley McKay, attorney general.”

  Lacroix shook Parley’s hand, too, but his expression stayed lean and hungry. “You’re not a general up here, remember that. Attorney or otherwise.” He turned that look to Jim and said, “And you’re not the governor.”

  “I thought this was a friendly meeting,” Jim said, taken aback.

  “Let’s cut to the chase. Damn incompetent administration you’re running here. It disgusts me. I always hear about Mormon efficiency and I get to Salt Lake to find the streets a mess, garbage collection nonexistent, the electrical grid a joke, and the police harassing my men whenever they set foot off base.”

  “Harassing?” Jim said. “Like when your soldiers smashed up the bar downtown because the bartender cut them off? And you rushed in with MPs to whisk the offenders to safety?”

  “Those soldiers have been dealt with. And anyway, the police incited that incident and you know it. My boys are putting their lives on the line for our country—how about the police give some thought to keeping the streets safe at night?”

  Jim met the man’s stare. What did these idiots expect? Trade with California cut off. Food rationed to laughable levels, and up fivefold on the black market. Unemployment 30 percent, with half of everyone left working for the government. At least Utah was still on its feet, still under civilian rule.

  Or maybe that was Lacroix’s point. Push and criticize, and set off some kind of incident, and give the military an excuse. Eleven states under military control already. Utah could make it an even dozen.

  Jim was about to give the general the middle finger and walk back to the car when he caught Parley’s scowl.

  He sighed. “General, I’m not here to argue. You’ve got problems, I’ve got problems.”

  “Except your problems are my problems.”

  “That’s why my brother and I came to talk. We’ve all got the same thorn in our side, and I thought we could work out a truce while we pluck it out.”

  Lacroix crossed his arms. “Go on.”

  “I’m talking about the rapidly expanding power base of a certain troublesome federal agency. Did you know they’re about to seize the best agricultural land in the state?”

  “That’s right,” Parley added. “And you know that untidy little base in Blister Creek?”

  “The polygs?” the general asked.

  Parley nodded. “That’s the one. It’s a blueprint for USDA operations going forward. They’re planning bases like it in Castle Dale, Monticello, Beaver, Salina, and Delta. Half the state will be under the armed protection, as they put it, of the Department of Agriculture.”

  “What do they think they are, the National Guard?” Jim said indignantly, as if he were hearing this news for the first time. “Or the army?”

  The general looked between Jim and his brother, face unreadable. “And you want me to do something about it?”

  “We’ll all be sorry if you don’t.”

  A gust of wind blew down from the mountains and Jim shivered. They were above forty-five hundred feet here on the bench overlooking the Salt Lake Valley, where the military had commandeered the dorms of the University of Utah for their new recruitment and training base. It hadn’t escaped anyone in Utah that this was also the site of the old Fort Douglas, built in the nineteenth century to keep the rebellious Mormons of the same valley under the watchful eye of the federal government.

  Normally, the looming mountains of the Wasatch Front had turned a drab wheat color by early October, with perhaps a dusting of snow in the highest elevations. This summer there had been so much rain that the foothills remained a spring-like green, and the early snowline at seven thousand feet was a stark contrast between white and green, the line so straight across the mountains all the way down the valley that it might have been delineated by a giant ruler.

  “Well?” Jim said, when he couldn’t stand the waiting. “Wouldn’t you say that news is worthy of a few minutes of your time?”

  Lacroix stepped into the governor’s personal space and held Jim’s gaze. The man had wide pores and thin lips. Razor burn reddened his neck, as if shaving the stubble hadn’t been enough, and he’d tried to cut out his whiskers down to the roots.

  Jim couldn’t take it anymore and took a step backward. He reached out a hand to grab his brother and tell him to forget it and return to the car, but the general held up his hand.

  “Okay,” the man said. “You’ve got my attention. Follow me.”

  The general led them on foot through the barracks. Men snapped to attention and delivered crisp salutes as he passed. The general responded with a touch of irritation. The two politicians followed him through the gates, off base, and into the parking lot below Red Butte Gardens that stretched along the foothills above the university.

  Jim was surprised to see the gates to the gardens open and officers coming and going. “I thought the U canceled fall semester,” he said. “Wouldn’t Red Butte be closed?”

  “Closed to the public,” Lacroix said. “But I enjoy my walks, and so I’ve put weeding and pruning on the list of disciplinary measures for the enlisted men.”

  Inside the gardens, Lacroix continued until they reached the rose garden, its bushes trimmed of dead flowers and dormant, and then gestured at a stone bench for the other two men to take a seat. It was an obvious tactic. Lacroix meant to stand above them while they fidgeted on the bench, looking up like children to an adult.

  Jim waved off the offer. “Too much sitting. I’d rather stand.”

  “You’ve got your audience, Governor, so spit it out. I have fifteen hundred recruits going out by rail this afternoon and I don’t have time to shoot the shit.”

  “It’s about the USDA,” Jim said. “And an agent named Chip Malloy.”

  Parley explained more fully. Malloy only had a dozen men, but he was positioned in the only town of any size left untouched on the Colorado Plateau. It had escaped the ravages of the weather catastrophe, avoided evacuation like the other big polygamist town, Colorado City, and was sitting on a hoard of food. From there, Malloy was planning his expansion. Anti-military factions in Congress were encouraging a separate power base that would soon threaten both the state government and General Lacroix’s own installations at Green River and Salt Lake.

  But with the governor’s help, General Lacroix could clear out the USDA operation before it metastasized.

  “And what about these polygamists?” Lacroix said. “They’re always cruising for another showdown. We blaze into town, some of those guys will reach for their rifles. How many shootouts have they started already? Three?”

  “You don’t think the army can handle them?” Parley said.

  “My troops can handle anything. With a lot of spent ordnance. And a heap of dead bodies.”

  Jim broke his silence. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  “But if it does, southern Utah goes up in flames. You’d have to be an idiot not to see that.”

  Of course it would. Maybe the north, too. The whole blasted state was ready for the Last Days, mainstream LDS and fundy-types alike. Had been for decades. Jim and Parley themselves had hiked along the fault line in the foothills as boys, scheming about how they would take to the hills with deer rifles if the Soviet Union ever invaded, Red Dawn–style. That is, if Christ himself didn’t come down first with the smiting.

  “Or maybe that’s your plan all along,” Lacroix said, fixing Jim with a stare. “Start a little something. Maybe stir up trouble in the Mormon parts of Idaho, too.”

  “I’m an American patriot,” Jim said. “That’s the last thing
I want. What I do want is to keep this state from blowing up, and right now, having Chip Malloy’s private army riling people up is worse than offending a few fundamentalist cults. Everyone knows the polygamists are nuts, anyway.”

  “It won’t come to that,” Parley said. “The head of the cult, Jacob Christianson, left town this morning. The police force left, too. They’re on their way to Las Vegas to collect a bunch of survivalist crap. Some of the other church elders are leaving as well, driving cattle to sell at the Green River depot.”

  “And how do you know all this?” Lacroix asked. “It’s not like the polygs keep a blog or anything.”

  Yes, how? Jim didn’t think Parley was bluffing about the intel. But how did he know? Alacrán? Some contact in Blister Creek itself? There was that damn secret police stuff again.

  “Insider information,” Parley said, “passed helpfully my way. I’ve got to protect my sources. The important thing is, the organized resistance is gone.”

  “I don’t care so much about the polygamists,” Lacroix said. “I’ll pave a road with their bones, if I have to. That’s not the problem.”

  Pave a road with bones? What was wrong with people these days? Six months into this crisis and people were already talking blood and war and apocalypse like it was the Black Death or something. And even if it was, even if the twenty-first century would be known for famine and death on a massive scale, was civilization so weak that men would descend into feudal barbarism at the first opportunity?

  Unless this was God’s plan all along. Part of the great sorting of the saints from the sinners in preparation for the Second Coming. No. He could wonder, he could tremble and pray. But as governor, he had a role to play until that was all made plain.

  “I’m confused,” Jim said. “If slaughtering hundreds of polygamists is no big deal, what is?”

  “I don’t want to face down Malloy,” Lacroix answered. “Watch that pigheaded tyrant stand at the head of his strutting little army and try to make something of it. I could take care of him easily enough, but soldiers killing Feds—that has a way of blowing up in your face.”