They drove down the service road and into the park, where the smuggler parked his van. Two men were unloading Jim’s panel truck of the pilfered ammunition. They carried it by hand into the bumper car pavilion, where the cars lay scattered across the floor, their antennae touching the roof, as if waiting for riders and a flick of a switch to send them careening across the floor. In addition to the goods delivered by the governor, there were already dozens of boxes and crates lying in haphazard piles. Some were long, almost like coffins, and marked with numbers and letters Jim didn’t understand.
What were they? Rockets? Anti-tank guns?
“General Lacroix would love to see this,” Jim said. “What are you doing, building a private army or something?”
“Don’t worry, it will be out of here tonight.”
Parley leaned over the railing that guided the waiting line through a course. He stared at the boxes with a thoughtful expression then turned back around. “You didn’t answer my brother’s question.”
“But I did. I’m building something, but it won’t bother you, because I’ll stay out of your way and you’ll stay out of mine.” He nodded, as if that settled things. “It’s going to take these guys a while. Come on.”
They walked through the deserted amusement park, past the log flume, the haunted house, and the kiddie rides, toward the coasters. Here and there Jim spotted trucks parked beneath awnings or poking out between buildings, and covered with camouflage netting, as if to conceal them from aerial surveillance.
They walked by the Wild Mouse, a ride that had stood on this very spot in various incarnations since Jim and Parley were boys. They’d buy a season pass, bring dates when they could find them, or hit on the girls working summer jobs at the rides or concessions when they couldn’t. Later, after Jim’s mission, he’d brought his girlfriend—soon to become his wife—on their second or third date. Held her hand for the first time while waiting in line for the Wild Mouse. Made out with her two hours later in the ball pit at the fun house.
The doors hung open on the maintenance shed and the governor saw crates of assault rifles and more cans of ammunition.
“So you are building a private army,” Parley said. “And you want us to know it.”
“I’m not greedy. I’ll draw a line across the state. North of I-70 is Utah. South of I-70 is—how would I put it?—hinterland.”
“Oh, so give you half the state,” Jim said.
“A third,” Alacrán corrected.
“Which is still twenty-five thousand square miles.”
“Of desert,” the man said. “A few small towns, mostly evacuated. It’s on its way to becoming a no-man’s land anyway. I’m encouraging the process. We’re squeezing what’s left. Those who resist.”
To what purpose? Jim wondered.
Alacrán was placing his bet, that’s what, and it wasn’t on men like the general getting a handle on the crisis. He was gambling on a total collapse throughout the desert Southwest. Take a third of Utah, a slice of Nevada, Arizona—maybe even parts of Colorado and New Mexico. Pretty soon you were talking a big chunk of real estate.
“You’ve got some pretty toys,” Jim said. “But the general could launch a couple of tomahawks and smash you to a pulp.”
“The general has a civil war to fight,” Alacrán said. “He won’t bother with bandits. Not until it’s too late.”
Parley snorted and shook his head. “You’re a fool, Alacrán.”
“And the McKay brothers aren’t planning the exact same thing?”
“I’m the elected governor of this state,” Jim said. “If the federal government collapses, I have every right to—”
“So you don’t want my help transporting Blister Creek’s grain to Salt Lake? Fine, that’s easier for me.”
“The food is ours,” Jim said. “That’s the deal. You renege on that, and it’s all off. Is that understood?”
“Don’t worry. You’ll get your grain.”
“And that’s another thing,” Jim said. “We’ll get rid of this USDA agent, and we’ll make sure the general doesn’t interfere with the food shipments. But you’ve still got to take out Jacob Christianson and his buddies. How are you going to do that?”
Alacrán looked less sure of himself. He fingered the gauzy bandages still wrapping his hands. “I’m working on that. One cult at a time. Blister Creek is the toughest nut to crack. But their time will come.”
“Will it?” Jim said. “We’ll see.”
He thought about his own experience, staring down the barrel of his cousin Abraham Christianson’s gun. Blister Creek had derailed a presidential campaign two summers ago, and the Christianson clan had only grown stronger in that time, coming out on top of a bloody struggle within the church leadership, so far as Jim could piece together from the news.
“Did you know Jacob Christianson left for Las Vegas?” Jim added. “He’s going to come back with a whole bunch of shiny new toys, and then what?” He nodded at the boxes of weapons. “Stuff like yours, plus he’s got plenty of fanatics to squeeze the triggers. Can you match that?”
Alacrán looked momentarily troubled, but then a smile crept up at the corners of his mouth. “Did you say Las Vegas? When did this happen?”
Jim turned to his brother and raised his eyebrows in an implied question. Parley was the source of the information, thanks to some contact in Blister Creek.
“He only left this morning,” Parley said, “and he was avoiding the freeway, because of… bandits.” He gave Alacrán a sharp look at this last bit.
“So he’s still on the road,” Alacrán said.
Parley shrugged. “I guess. Probably get home late tonight, or maybe in the morning. Why do you ask?”
“Those back roads aren’t particularly safe these days, either.”
“You would know,” Jim said.
“Some washed out in the floods and never got repaired. Others are far from the watchful eye of law enforcement. If you know what I mean.”
For some reason this last bit irritated Jim more than anything. No use pretending any longer that the foundation wasn’t wobbling, but it was one thing to prepare for eventualities. It was another to be the guy hacking gleefully at the struts.
What if the McKay brothers bowed out now? Could Jim talk to the adjutant general of the Utah National Guard and launch an expedition to clear out the bandits? Or was Alacrán too strong already? Then what about Lacroix? The general could take care of this jerk in about five minutes, but what then? A military campaign in southern Utah would lead inevitably to martial law throughout the state.
Parley looked more calculating, as if pleased by the development. He turned to Alacrán. “You think we can take care of this mess before Christianson gets back?”
“No,” Alacrán said. “I can make sure he doesn’t come back.”
This sat in the air for a long moment. The last pieces moved into position in Jim’s mind.
It was a struggle between several parties, and the two weakest pieces would soon be swept off the board. Chip Malloy and the Department of Agriculture gone. Jacob Christianson dead and his church under military control. That left three players: the state government, the bandits, and the US military.
The military was the nastiest player in the game, but this was a skirmish and they were fighting a war across a battlefield that stretched from the Middle East to the Midwest. Nobody present could challenge General Lacroix, but they wouldn’t have to. He would soon pull out to fight bigger, more dangerous enemies.
“We understand now,” Jim said. He turned to his brother. “Don’t we?”
“Very clear,” Parley said. “North is ours. South, yours.”
“And I-70 is our neutral zone,” Alacrán said with a nod. “Where we trade. As allies, because there’s no point in making more enemies.”
For now, Jim thought. For now.
“There’s the business with the grain,” Jim said. “I’m warning you—if you try to screw me on that…”
“It�
�s yours,” Alacrán said. “Already too many people down there—I’m not planning to feed them. A few more hungry refugees fleeing north would suit me just fine.”
Jim wasn’t sure he believed it. Food, fuel, and guns—the basis of power in the new Southwest.
“Good,” Parley said. “But we still have resources in the south, in Cedar City and Beaver. County sheriffs and ranchers and highway patrol headquarters. I’d hate for this little arrangement to get off on the wrong foot before we can relocate them north.”
“Understood,” Alacrán said.
Jim looked around, at the stacked boxes, the weapons, the ammunition. “And all this is cleared out tonight, you say?”
“Every last gun and bullet.”
The men shook hands, and then they returned to the panel truck, now unloaded. Jim took back his keys, and moments later the McKay brothers were pulling out of the amusement park and crossing the empty parking lot toward the main road.
“What do you think?” Parley said. “You were his missionary companion—is he telling the truth?”
“Alacrán means what he says. At least at the moment he says it.” Jim considered the next few months. It would get ugly this winter. “We have to hold on until spring, and then the worst will be behind us.”
“You mean the war? Or the weather?”
“The war for sure,” Jim said. “We’ve got more oil than they have food, so who is going to give up first? And when we win, the army will come back and clean this country up. And then summer will come, and normal weather. And normal crops. Five years from now—well, let’s say ten—it will be like none of this ever happened.”
“That’s some serious optimism there.”
“That’s my job. Keep our people fed and off the streets. Make sure the center holds until the crisis passes.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Parley asked.
“You tell me.”
“You already know what I think. If it doesn’t, then our job is to make sure that when the Dark Ages come, we’re the lords in the castle, and not the serfs in the fields.”
“Sometimes I think you’re hoping for a collapse.”
“Sometimes I am,” Parley agreed. “It will be interesting. Not too many people live through a massive historical upheaval.”
“If it’s the end of the world,” Jim said, “most of them won’t.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“I am going to confront Elder Smoot,” Eliza told Fernie as she pulled the lever and sent hot water pouring into the bathtub.
Fernie gasped at the heat of the water spilling around her ankles and bare legs. With propane in short supply, Jacob and David had rigged an ingenious plumbing system to pipe hot water from the wood boiler to the two houses, but there was a small flaw in the system that made it hard to adjust the temperature here on the lowest floor of the main house.
Eliza lifted Fernie’s feet out of the water. Her legs were straight and smooth from the physical therapy, but the muscles had atrophied since the car accident fifteen months ago, especially on the weaker right leg. If Fernie was dismayed over the loss of her once beautiful figure—attractive even after giving birth to four children—she never voiced a complaint.
“No, put them down,” Fernie said. “I like a little burning. Reminds me I’m not completely numb down there.”
When Eliza obeyed, Fernie bent in the bath chair and scooped hot water, which she let run down her breasts and belly.
“Confront?” Fernie said. “That’s a serious word.”
Eliza looked for a better word, but couldn’t think of one. “Elder Smoot isn’t the sort who listens to women. And I’ll have to go to his house to get an audience. It will be a confrontation.”
“That place is a den of lions. You must have a good reason.”
“Not going to talk me out of it?” Eliza said. “Or tell me to wait until Jacob gets back?”
“That crossed my mind. But I guessed you weren’t sharing this to get a rise out of me.”
“I wish I were.” Eliza hesitated. “I think Smoot is in contact with smugglers and he’s going to make some deal while Jacob is gone.”
Fernie turned with concern in her eyes. Steam billowed around her face and her cheeks were flushed and beaded with perspiration and condensed steam. “And you think that… why?”
“To start, I was suspicious that he’d accept me as leader until Jacob came back. Seemed a little too easy.”
“Jacob told him to, that’s why. Elder Smoot has covenanted before God and angels to sustain the prophet—he wouldn’t go against that.”
“You’re sure?” Eliza said. “I’m not. Oh, I bet he meant it when he said it, but with a million caveats. Pretty sure one of them was not to bend a knee to an unmarried girl.”
“Have a little more faith. Even if he grumbles, it doesn’t mean he’ll fight you. He still has to deal with Jacob and David when they get back. And Stephen Paul and the other elders when they return from the cattle drive. And your fiancé,” she added with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “His forearms are bigger than Smoot’s thighs. Imagine worrying if Steve Krantz was going to lay a hand on you.”
“I wouldn’t mind having Steve’s hands on me right about now,” Eliza said.
“Eliza!” Fernie gave her a mock look of shock and horror. “Try to keep your thoughts pure, for heaven’s sake. It’s only three more weeks.”
“Eighteen days, not that I’m counting.”
Seemed like forever with Steve out of town, possibly facing danger, a thought that twisted Eliza’s insides into a pretzel.
Earlier that summer, after Steve’s reluctant baptism at the reservoir, they’d gone around the temple that night, ostensibly to check the security cameras, but really to be alone. Once he got her into the darkness around back, he pushed her against the wall of the temple and kissed her, truly kissed her for the first time.
He was so strong that she should have felt pinned, constrained, and perhaps a bit terrified. It was the exact thing that mothers, older sisters, and purse-lipped widows warned you about. A man would get you alone, kiss you, and then, when you tried to pull away, he would throw you down, overcome by lust, and ravish your virtue.
But she found his strength and passion so arousing that she would have been helpless to resist. Her breasts ached for his touch; her skin felt like electricity coursed through it every time his mouth or hands shifted a fraction of an inch.
After a few minutes, he pulled away, panting. She let out a little groan.
“You do want to wait,” he managed. “Right?”
“Yes, yes, of course.” She couldn’t catch her breath. “I mean no, but… yes, we have to.”
He reached down and took her hand with what seemed a great force of will. “Then let’s walk back into town.”
“Do we have to?”
“I don’t know about you, but I have to, or I’m going to do something I regret.”
Remembering that first kiss behind the temple took her to another make-out session in the barn, then back to the hottest one of all, in that freezing cold hotel room with the sniper rifles. She could relive that memory a million times.
“You’re so flushed,” Fernie said, studying Eliza. “It’s almost like you’re the one in the hot bath, not me.”
“A lot of steam in here.”
“Yeah, I’d say,” Fernie said. “And half of it is boiling off you, I swear.”
“Sorry. I’ll be better after the wedding.”
“Do you need any sort of advice?”
“What kind of advice?” Eliza asked.
Fernie looked pained. “You know, wedding night stuff.”
“I did some digging around online before we lost the Internet,” Eliza said with a smile at her sister’s discomfort. “And I’ve got a good imagination.”
“I’m not a prude. I know I seem that way sometimes, but… well, if you have any questions.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Eliza turned off the water, whi
ch diminished to a trickle, and then a slowing series of fat droplets that plopped into the water. The hot water came to Fernie’s navel, rising and falling with the gentle slosh across the tub. Eliza handed Fernie a bar of soap and a sponge.
“You think they’ll be okay, right?” Eliza asked.
“I hope so—I believe so. But I’m not so confident I’m not praying for all I’m worth.” Fernie soaped up her arms. “And I’ve got enough to worry about without Elder Smoot pulling something while my husband is out of town.”
“I was waiting for you to get back to that.”
“I needed to let it sink in. Defiance is a pretty serious charge.”
“I’m not talking about open defiance,” Eliza said. “I’m talking about taking advantage of Jacob’s absence to do something that would put the community in jeopardy. That’s why I need to confront him.”
“Is the spirit prompting this? Or did someone give you a warning?”
“More the second than the first.”
Eliza explained about her conversation with Sister Lillian, and Smoot’s contact with the smugglers fed the growing suspicion that Smoot was planning to steal back their food supplies and sell them while Jacob was away.
“He doesn’t know what happened when we tried to sell the diesel,” she added. “And how quickly things can go wrong. How do we know Smoot hasn’t contacted the same jerks who robbed us last time?”
“You could warn him.”
“Jacob doesn’t want it getting out. That’s why I haven’t told the council what happened and why he hasn’t told his quorum.”
“About the fuel? Or that it failed?”
“Either, I think.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Fernie said. “Even if Smoot knows what he’s doing, we’ve got other reasons to stop this. Picking a fight with Chip Malloy and the USDA, for one. That would be dumb. For another, it’s not Smoot’s food to sell.”
“Exactly. We might need it to stay alive.”
The Gates of Babylon Page 12