“You are not leaving,” Eliza said. “Not until you swear to give up your evil, stupid plan.”
Smoot picked up his plate, as if he meant to eat somewhere in peace, maybe his workshop in the garage or locked in his bedroom. Instead he flung it toward the wall. It spun like a Frisbee, flinging off potatoes and gravy, and smashed into the wall below a framed print of Joseph Smith. It fell in pieces to the floor.
Wives sat with looks of horror, mortification, or fear. Children stared from the other room, but none entered or spoke.
Eliza rose and tugged at Lillian’s sleeve until she rose, too.
“Someone bring my sister’s wheelchair, please,” Eliza said.
Elder Smoot looked at his wives. “Do we have a guest room prepared? These women will be staying the night.”
Eliza kept her voice calm. “We are not staying the night. We are leaving this minute.”
“No, I am afraid I can’t allow that. Murial, Donna Lyn, the guest rooms.”
The two women hurried from the room.
Eliza rose to her feet with her pulse pounding in her head. She nodded to her companions. “Sisters, it’s time to go.”
Where was Fernie’s wheelchair? One of the Smoot kids had hauled it off. But where?
Elder Smoot blocked the doorway. “You’re guests. Only for tonight. You can leave first thing in the morning.” He sounded more certain with every passing sentence. “And if you think about forcing your way out, I’ve got four teenage boys, and my wives will do what I tell them.” He gave Lillian a hard look. “They know where their loyalties lie.”
“Elder Smoot,” Eliza said. “Think about this carefully.”
“I have, believe me.”
The pounding of her pulse had reached a roar. It was like the violence that had swept through her when she’d crushed a man’s skull and suddenly everything in the room looked like a weapon—the steak knives, the candlesticks, even the plates. Her eyes swept to the carving knife on the serving platter, with bits of dripping meat still clinging to the serrated edge where they had been violently torn from a hunk of flesh.
Fernie grabbed her wrist, and Eliza blinked and looked down to see her sister staring up at her, wide-eyed and alarmed.
“I’ll stay,” Fernie said. “I don’t want to, but I don’t have much choice without my wheelchair.”
“Fernie, no,” Eliza said.
“See?” Smoot said quickly. “That’s reasonable. Sit down and eat, ladies. I’m leaving—I won’t be bothering you again unless you try something stupid.”
“But I’ve got four children at home,” Fernie said.
“So? Abraham’s wives still live there. His teenage daughters. They can look after your kids for one night.”
“Jake is still breastfeeding at night,” Fernie insisted. “He can’t fall asleep without nursing, and he nurses first thing in the morning, too. I don’t want my milk to dry up.”
Smoot looked uncomfortable. “I already told you, I can’t let you leave.”
“Then send someone to my home,” Fernie said. “You have to anyway, or people will come looking for us. Tell my son Daniel to bring the baby here. And a diaper bag.”
“Not Daniel. Your daughter, yes. Son, no.”
Fernie shook her head. “Daniel has medicine he takes every evening.”
“What kind of medicine?”
“Elder Smoot,” she said firmly, but without anger. “That is his mother’s business and his father’s, not yours.”
Even though Fernie was taking a stand, Eliza was suspicious that she was giving in too easily. She was planning something and using her reputation for being a peacemaker as cover. But what?
When Smoot still looked uncertain, Fernie added, “I’m going to stay, but I have to ask you this. When this is all over, do you want to look reasonable, or do you want to look like a tyrant?”
Elder Johnson cleared his throat from the other end of the table. “It’s not an unreasonable request.”
Elder Smoot nodded, apparently ready to prove himself flexible now that he’d bullied the women into compliance. He turned and gave instructions to one of his daughters.
“Reasonable,” he said when he’d sent her off. “Now keep quiet, all of you, and don’t cause trouble. If you do, I swear before God I will make you suffer, and the consequences be damned.”
Jacob walked down the road at rifle point. Alfred Christianson kept his distance, first ten feet, then twenty, and lengthening to fifty feet over the next hour as the two men continued to walk down the flat, open road that led west from Colorado City. A line of electrical towers stood at intervals next to the road, their silhouettes like sentinels against the darkening sky.
At first Jacob thought his cousin was taunting him by stretching the distance. Go ahead, make a run for it. I can’t catch you.
It was tempting, but Jacob imagined breaking into a sprint across the open, sagebrush-strewn desert for fifty or a hundred yards, and then a rifle shot would echo across the desert while he went down like a deer with a bullet through the lungs.
The sun sank in front of them, and the light dimmed, and still Alfred kept his distance, even as nightfall and the thick, black clouds left them walking in near darkness.
Keep walking. Your death is down this road.
Chilling words, but with nightfall, Jacob’s chances for escape increased. If only he hadn’t left the others behind, surrounded by armed men, he might have made a run for it.
Finally, when it had grown almost too dark to see, he stopped in the middle of the road and refused to continue.
Alfred drew short about ten feet away. He spoke in a low voice. “Keep going.”
“No.”
“But we’re almost there.”
“Almost to my death? No, thank you. Let me go, Alfred.”
“I can’t.”
“If you’re going to murder me, this is the place,” Jacob said. He chose his next words carefully. “But if you do, my blood will cry up from the earth until I have justice.”
“Please. Keep walking.”
There was something in his voice very different from the manic confidence two miles back. Alfred no longer sounded like a deranged prophet. He sounded scared.
Jacob hesitated, afraid to confront his unhinged cousin, then turned and walked back.
“What are you doing?”
“We’re going to walk together,” Jacob said. “Whatever you want to show me, we can look at together.”
He drew up next to Alfred’s side and the two stood in silence. The wind moaned across the plain like a child crying out in its sleep.
Alfred was a tall man—at least two inches taller than Jacob, who was over six feet—and strongly built, with broad shoulders, a firm mouth, and a full beard. But his face, obscured by shadows, looked terrified.
“Why are you doing this?” Jacob asked.
“I’m falling, Jacob. I’m in a nightmare, and I’ve stumbled off the cliff and I keep tumbling end over end, knowing I’m asleep and knowing I’ll wake up any moment—I have to. But I never do.”
“What happened back in town? Where is everybody?”
“The army evacuated the people to the refugee camps. Some of us hid until they were gone.”
“But why the fires, the dead horse? The armed men?”
“That’s what I need to show you.”
“On the road.”
“That’s right,” Alfred said. “We’re almost there, and then you’ll see.”
“Almost where?”
“The Valley of the Shadow of Death.”
Jacob reached out a hand. Alfred looked back with a frown, but didn’t resist when Jacob closed his hand on the man’s rifle and took it gently away. Jacob flipped the safety and slung the rifle strap over his shoulder, then walked at Alfred’s side down the road.
They continued for another five minutes or so and then Alfred stopped. A bridge carried the highway over a narrow ravine. Jacob couldn’t see the bottom, but he imagined it was one o
f these desert gulches, carrying seasonal floodwaters, reduced now to a trickle, maybe twenty or thirty feet below.
“Now you see,” Alfred said.
“I don’t understand. Is the bridge damaged?”
Alfred pointed across the ravine. “Look at the tower on the other side.”
The electrical towers that had been following the road out of town broke their chain at the washed-out bridge, but the one on the far side still stood, now leaning precariously over the gulch. The electrical wires themselves had snapped off, but two objects swung from ropes that dangled from each arm. In the dying light, they looked like swaying mattresses. But Jacob knew, with a sick feeling in his gut, that he was looking at something far more sinister.
“Who are they, Alfred?” he asked quietly.
“My wives.” Alfred’s voice choked. “It’s my fault. I sent them out. I promised they would be safe if they crossed the gulch. And I told them that when they found you—”
“Me?”
“Don’t you see? It didn’t matter if they were women. They hung them anyway. Those heartless… they—” Alfred stopped as his voice broke. He swallowed hard. “The mothers of my children. Who would do such a thing? As God is my witness, those women were innocent. I’m the guilty one. It was me, I—” He stopped again, tried to speak, but was unable to continue.
Jacob stared at his cousin, convinced the man was out of his mind with grief. But what about the motorcyclist in the dunes, and the man in the camper? And why did Alfred lead him out here on foot? None of this made sense.
Whatever it was, Jacob didn’t feel safe. He grabbed his cousin’s arm and pulled him away from the grisly scene. The man backed away, his eyes fixed on those dark shapes swinging and twisting in the wind.
“Alfred,” Jacob said in a sharp voice. “Turn around. Now.”
The man turned with a visible shudder. As he lurched away, he hunched his shoulders and swayed. He let out a single sob.
Jacob kept going for several minutes before he stopped Alfred. His cousin seemed a little stronger.
“Listen to me,” Jacob said. “We have got to get across that bridge. Are you telling me someone will kill us if we try?”
“Nobody can cross. If you had kept going, they would have killed you.”
“Who would try to kill us? Alfred?”
“I saved your life. You see?”
“But I still have to get over.”
“And now you have to save me in return. And the others. And our families.”
“I don’t have time for this. Will you speak clearly?”
Alfred gave him a bewildered look. “How am I not being clear? We’re trapped. We don’t know how to get out. I prayed to the Lord for deliverance and he sent you.”
“This is nuts.”
“You are the One Mighty and Strong.”
“No, I am not.”
“Exactly. You say you’re not. Other people say you are. The One Mighty and Strong will never make the claim for himself.”
“Guess what? I am also not a flying monkey. Is that good enough proof that I really am?”
“Don’t toy with me, Jacob! I’m standing over the pit of hell. They killed my wives.” His voice climbed an octave and he pointed back toward town. “My children are back there. I have to get them out.”
There was such anguish in Alfred’s voice and on his face that Jacob clawed back his own frustrations and fears. He rested a calming hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Okay, keep your voice down.”
Alfred took a deep breath. “We’re the ones who stayed behind when they evacuated Colorado City. We hid. I thought we’d wait it out. And then the bandits closed us in. A man rode through in a truck with a bullhorn—he said we’d be killed if we went into the dunes, or if we crossed the bridge. And he meant it! You have to help us. Please, I’m begging you.”
“How many of you are there?”
“Fifty-seven.”
Jacob let out his breath. “And you want help getting to the refugee camp?”
“No, we want to go to the final sanctuary. We want to join you in Blister Creek.”
As the two men picked their way back into town, figures ducked behind bushes, and a signal passed between roofs by a blinking flashlight. Once Jacob caught a glimpse of light glinting off a rifle barrel. Toward the center, Alfred had tipped over trucks and cars to block off side streets, stacked furniture and torn down fences to make barricades. To keep out infiltrators, he explained.
He whistled as they approached one of these barriers, and a flashlight blinked on their faces and then off again.
“This is our fortress,” Alfred said as they made their way around and past a lone gunman. “If they make it this deep, we’re dead.”
“Have they attacked you in town?”
“Not yet. But it’s only a matter of time. They have assault rifles, machine guns.”
“What are they, a rogue National Guard unit?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve never seen a uniform. Maybe they’re gunrunners. Smugglers. A few of them passed through… before. That’s when I knew things were bad, when you could call the sheriff about smugglers and they wouldn’t send anyone to patrol the road.”
“When did you lose phone service?”
“Cell, about six weeks ago. Landlines earlier. They cut Internet, phone, and electricity when they evacuated at the beginning of September.”
That was several weeks ago. Alfred and fifty-six other men, women, and children had been holed up without services, without so much as running water, based on the man’s body odor. Was this Blister Creek’s future? How long could modern people, softened by generations of plentiful food and warm homes, survive collapse and anarchy? About four weeks, from the looks of it.
They turned down a street blocked by a Winnebago with faded green trim, which unexpectedly fired up its engine and pulled into a driveway to open the street. When they passed, it rolled back to close the road again. Two intact houses sat shoulder to shoulder on the left side of the street, while burned-out cars, stacks of tires, broken furniture, and uprooted telephone poles blocked the other end of the street like a people’s barricade in some communist revolution. Two figures huddled behind the barricade with blankets pulled around their shoulders.
Jacob was surprised to see his trucks parked to the side of one of the two houses. No sign of his four companions.
Flashlights blinked in a window and deadbolts turned on the door when Jacob and Alfred came up the sidewalk onto the porch. A man appeared in the foyer and led them down darkened hallways to a staircase that descended into an unfinished basement, lit at the bottom by a pair of hissing kerosene lamps. Cots and sleeping bags packed the far end, while closer to the stairs, a couple of dozen women and children ate dinner from tin cans and snipped open vacuum bags of food storage.
Jacob’s companions sat in a glum semicircle on one side of the room, eating dried apples and what looked like venison jerky, washed down with water from dusty plastic cups. They gave weary sighs and shakes of the head when Alfred led Jacob over before tramping back up the stairs.
“These people are saying they need our help,” Krantz said. “Is that true, or are we prisoners of another doomsday cult?”
“Because if we are,” David said, “I’d just as soon get to the chanting and human sacrifice part of the evening—get it over with.”
Neither man kept his voice down and the women and children a few feet away stared. Officer Trost looked deeply troubled, even as he ate, and Miriam chewed on her venison with all the pleasure of a woman gnawing on fiberglass insulation. She didn’t make eye contact with the other women in the basement.
“Not prisoners,” Jacob said.
“I’m relieved,” David said, sounding anything but.
“How can we be sure they’re telling the truth?” Miriam asked.
Jacob told them about the swinging bodies of Alfred’s wives. The man had sent the women out to get help from Blister Creek with the idea of seeking refuge
in the valley. As Jacob explained, the expressions darkened on his companions’ faces.
“Who are these people?” David said. “Smugglers? That doesn’t sound likely.”
“I wonder if it’s our friend Alacrán again,” Jacob said.
“Could be,” Trost said. “He’s running guns to Mexico for the civil war, has probably passed this way many times.”
“What does he want here?”
“A base, maybe,” Krantz said. “Colorado City is even more isolated than Blister Creek. You could set yourself up like the damn Taliban.”
“How do you mean?”
“Like when I was in Afghanistan. They got these villages, and when we came looking, they’d hole up in the mountains until we got tired and left them alone. Desert, mountains, isolation—and complete indifference from the government.”
“Then why don’t they let Alfred and the rest of them leave? These people have guns. They’re desperate. Why take the risk?”
Trost and Krantz shook their heads, and David gave a bewildered shrug. Miriam looked more thoughtful.
“You’re thinking something,” Jacob told her. “Do you have an idea?”
“Me?” she said, looking up with surprise. “No, I’m wondering what it’s got to do with us, and why we don’t get the hell out.”
“I’m not sure we can.”
“Of course we can. It’s an empty desert. And flat too, at least in some directions. These guys can’t guard everywhere at once.”
“What about the trucks?” Jacob said.
“These smugglers aren’t dumb,” Miriam said. “They’re not going to waste fuel chasing us across the desert for the hell of it. We’ll use up some of our gas cans, make sure the trucks are filled up, then go. I’m ready as soon as you guys are.”
“Right across the bridge?”
“We’ll shoot at anything that blocks our path. Ten seconds and we’re through.”
“All they need is one gun,” Krantz said. “One strategically placed machine gun. That’s all it would take to cut us in two.”
The Gates of Babylon Page 15