“You got a better idea?” she said.
“If it were that easy,” Jacob said, “Alfred would have done it already. He’s armed too, and he knows the terrain a lot better than we do.”
“They’re mostly women and children,” Miriam said. “And they’re probably almost out of fuel. Assuming they’ve got enough running vehicles anyway.”
She looked like she was about to say something else, but footsteps sounded on the stairs. Alfred came down and sat on the rug next to them.
“What do you need us to do, Brother Jacob?” Alfred asked.
“Look, who exactly is in charge here?” Krantz asked.
“What do you mean?”
“What do you think he means?” Miriam said with an edge in her voice. “You’ve been ordering us around and now you act like Jacob is running the show.”
“We’ll obey Brother Jacob,” Alfred said. “I sent my brother Miles to tell the others that—”
“So long as Jacob agrees to get you out of this sorry hole, right?” she interrupted.
“Well, yes,” Alfred said, as if this was self-evident.
“We’re already helping someone,” Miriam said. She hooked her thumb at Trost. “We’re helping this guy get his daughter out of Vegas.”
Eyes turned expectantly to Jacob, but he didn’t speak right away.
“This isn’t one person,” Alfred said. “We’ve got women, children. And we’re not gentiles, either,” he added with a glance at Trost, although with the man’s jacket buttoned up and his weathered skin and southern Utah accent, it was unclear how he’d guessed that Trost was an outsider.
“My brother is a good man,” David said. “He wants to help. I’m sure he will help. But not now. Now we have to look after ourselves and our own.”
Alfred didn’t look at David but addressed Jacob instead. “Brother, I’m desperate.”
Miriam looked disgusted. “Really? We’d have never guessed.”
“And this is the answer to my prayers,” Alfred said. “I begged the Lord to send help, and here you are. Armed. Trucks with fuel. My brother overheard these ones talking. A police officer. Two former FBI agents. Are you telling me that’s a coincidence? If it is, it’s the most amazing luck ever.”
“Amazing luck for you,” Jacob said. “But I’m sure you can see how it looks like piss-poor timing from my end.” When Alfred didn’t respond, he added, “How many are there anyway?”
“I don’t know for certain. Well over twenty men. The real problem is that we’re armed with deer rifles and the enemy carries assault rifles and machine guns.”
“Lovely,” Miriam muttered.
“But led by a prophet of God,” Alfred continued, his gaze sharpening on Jacob, “even the legions of hell shall scatter before us.”
Jacob looked at his companions in turn: David, Officer Trost, Krantz, and finally Miriam, who was studying him with that hard edge on her face again. The look she’d worn when she pushed the button that blew Mo Strafford sky-high on a fireball of stolen diesel. Or when she’d almost gone after Chip Malloy’s USDA agents at the roadblock outside Blister Creek. What had gotten into her?
“Make the call,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I can see what you’re thinking. I’ll do it. Give me the word and I’ll make it happen.”
Miriam was Jacob’s loaded weapon, safety off, aimed forward at all times. All he had to do was apply the slightest pressure on the trigger and she’d go off.
David’s expression darkened, and he leaned toward his wife. “Miriam, no. I can’t let you do it.”
“You’re not making the call,” she said.
“Think about our son. And the baby.”
“I’m barely even showing—it won’t slow me down.”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it,” David said. “Jacob, tell her.”
Krantz cleared his throat. “I’ll go with her. We’ll take the sniper rifle. Together, we’ll get the job done.”
“And you’ll do what, exactly?” Jacob asked, afraid he wasn’t going to like the answer.
“Clear those bastards from the road,” Miriam said. “If this guy can point us to the bridge,” she added, hooking her finger at Alfred, “I’ll keep it open long enough to get everyone to the other side.”
“For how long?” Alfred said. “We have no fuel, and only two horses.”
Once again the others turned to Jacob.
“What if we go back up the canyon and through the dunes instead?” he said.
“I’m not turning back now,” Trost said. “My daughter is in Las Vegas, and that’s where I’m going, if I have to do it alone.”
“Don’t kid yourself,” Miriam said. “You’d never make it.”
“I’m not sure it’s safer going back anyway,” Krantz said. “A million places to snipe at us from the rocks and dunes. Plenty of spots up that canyon to block the road, too. But the way forward is flat. We can make a run for it.”
“Assuming we can get over that bridge,” Jacob said.
“There is that,” Krantz agreed.
Jacob thought about their diesel, lashed together in five-gallon gas cans and hidden beneath the tarp on the flatbed. Could they spare a couple of cans? Fifty-seven people. The pickup could hold six or eight in the bed, the flatbed twice that many, clinging to ropes. And the Winnebago that blocked the street had enough fuel to turn over and roll back and forth—gassed up, it could hold the rest, crammed shoulder to shoulder until they escaped Colorado City. Then a straight shot across the desert to Las Vegas. He could either leave the refugees there or figure out some other way to get them back to Blister Creek.
Miriam must have seen the decision crossing his face, because she shrugged off the blanket and rose to her feet without waiting for the answer. She nodded at Krantz.
“Hold on,” Jacob said. “ ‘Clear those bastards from the road’ is a goal, not a plan. You can’t snipe them all.” He looked to Krantz. “Can you?”
Krantz shrugged. “Something has to flush them out.”
“Exactly,” Miriam said.
“And how are you going to do that?” Jacob asked.
She unzipped her jacket and removed the Beretta from its shoulder holster. She checked the clip and knocked it back in place with a definitive snap. Her eyes met Jacob’s.
“There,” she said. “Is that answer enough for you?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“There are advantages to being a cripple,” Fernie told Eliza, who studied her with undisguised skepticism as the two women waited on the Smoot porch, beneath the glow of a porch light and floodlights that cast the house and surrounding yard in a harsh, bright light in defiance of electrical rationing. “Nobody takes you seriously.”
Fernie had turned over the plan several times in her mind and was sure she could evade the Smoots. Her real opponent was her own sister, stubborn as Jacob and likely to set off on her own if Fernie couldn’t convince her. And if they were right, if Smoot meant to sell the grain tonight, they didn’t have time to sit here arguing.
“I take you seriously,” Eliza said. “But let’s be serious. What are you going to do, tear off down the street in your chair with a baby on your lap?”
“I’m not going to tear off anywhere.” Fernie forced a calm into her voice that she didn’t feel. This was an intellectual argument, not spiritual, which put her on unequal footing with Eliza. “They’re not watching me, they’re watching you.”
The two women were ostensibly waiting for Fernie’s son Daniel to come over from the Christianson house, carrying his meds, the baby, and a diaper bag. One of Elder Smoot’s teenage sons watched them from the house, staring through the window. Sister Lillian had followed her mother upstairs to prepare a room for the women to spend the night.
“This is ridiculous,” Eliza said. “I’m outside, I’ll walk away. What can they do?”
“Chase you down.”
“So I’ll run instead of walk,” Eliza said. �
�It’s dark, I’ll hide in the shadows.”
“And go where? They’ll cut you off in the truck before you get home, and send someone else to the chapel to make sure you don’t go looking for Mr. Malloy.”
“You’re in a wheelchair.”
Fernie looked up at her and smiled. “Thank you for the reminder.”
“I don’t mean it like that, you know that. But I can cut through lots. You’ll have to stick to the sidewalks and streets. Remember all the cows? The roads are filthy.”
“I’ll manage.”
“But I could go faster.”
“Until you’re caught.” Fernie put a hand on Eliza’s wrist. “Elder Smoot isn’t going to move thirty-five hundred tons of grain just like that,” Fernie said. “A grain truck carries what? Thirty, forty tons? That’s a hundred truckloads. Where is he even getting the fuel?”
Fernie wished she felt as confident as she sounded. But she knew there would be eyes on Eliza at all times, while Fernie was an afterthought in Smoot’s prisoner-taking.
A slender figure made his way out of the darkness into the light and Fernie caught her breath as she turned the chair to watch. Her son Daniel was eleven but seemed much younger and smaller in the shadows that encroached on every side. With the medication prescribed by his father, the boy’s night terrors had eased—he was no longer sleepwalking under command of an evil spirit. But when Fernie saw him outside at night, she couldn’t stop thinking about the dark figure stalking him in his sleep.
Not an angel. Daniel is bipolar. Jacob knows how to treat it.
Daniel carried a diaper bag slung over one shoulder and was pushing his baby brother in the stroller. Jake was squirming against the straps and fussing, and when they reached the stairs, he caught sight of his mother and reached out his arms.
“Mama!”
“Come here, you,” she said.
Daniel unstrapped the boy’s stroller and Jake squirmed down and scrambled up the stairs, using hands and feet. He climbed onto Fernie’s lap and she planted a kiss on his chubby cheek, which was cold from the night air. He was fourteen months old and must have eaten dinner back at the house, but he reached for her blouse as if he wanted to comfort nurse. Fernie turned him around on her lap away from her breast.
Eliza carried up the stroller and diaper bag and fished out Daniel’s pill bottle. The handful of pills at the bottom rattled against the side as Fernie opened it and tapped one into her hand.
“Need any water?”
Daniel shook his head and popped it into his mouth.
Fernie glanced inside before closing the cap. Three left. Three small white pills and then… she put it out of her mind for the moment and tucked the bottle back in the diaper bag. She set the bag down and Eliza discreetly pushed it against the house with her foot to get it out of the way.
Eliza glanced at the window, and the boy studying them. “You’re sure about this?”
“Go inside and talk to that kid. Tell him about, I don’t know, your sister Clara, see if he thinks she’s pretty.”
“Fernie, I—”
“No time to argue. Go.”
Eliza opened her mouth as if to mount one last argument, then shut it and entered the house without another word. When she was gone, Fernie counted slowly in her head without looking in the window. When she reached ten, she handed the reluctant toddler back to his older brother and told Daniel to follow her as she wheeled along the wraparound deck. It bent around the side of the house, where it fell into darkness.
“Where we going?” Jake asked in a loud voice from his brother’s arms.
“Shh. Quiet now, boys.”
They reached the back steps, which led from the porch to a path into the Smoot vegetable gardens, hidden now by night.
Fernie lifted her feet off the footplates, grabbed the railing at the top of the stairs, and hoisted herself to a standing position. She pushed the wheelchair out of the way. Her good leg bore some of her weight, but only for a split second, and then she fell painfully on her backside. She swung her legs over the edge, and her feet thudded onto the second step.
“Put Jake down,” she told Daniel as she squeezed to one side of the stairs. “Get the wheelchair past me and down to the ground.”
The chair banged alarmingly as Daniel took it down. Jake followed his brother.
“Mom, it’s not good,” Daniel whispered from the darkness below her.
“What do you mean?”
“The first two stairs are okay, but they took out the bottom step. It’s stone blocks, and there’s a pile of boards. I think they’re working on the deck.”
Her heart sank. Stairs was one thing, but a couple of wobbly stone blocks? How could she manage that?
“Mama?” Jake said.
Fernie kept her voice calm. “Be patient boys. I’m coming down.”
“But how are you—?” Daniel asked.
“Shh.”
For most of her life, she had come up and down stairs without a thought. But these few seemed as forbidding as the Ghost Cliffs. And stone blocks at the bottom? It was as if some adversary had eyed her weakness and smiled in cruel delight as he put these obstacles in her way.
They’re just stairs. Wood, stone, it doesn’t matter.
Her arms strained as she scooted to the edge and lowered herself on her backside to the next step. She slipped the last couple of inches, grabbing at the railing as she fell. The second one went better, and then she bent and her fingers traced the rough surface of two cinderblocks standing next to each other. She bent and gave the makeshift stair a tentative shake. It was wobbly, but she thought it would hold her weight if she could move directly from there to the ground before it collapsed beneath her.
One more. You can do this.
Fernie wrapped her fingers around the top cinderblock. She leaned a bit of weight into it, stabilized the stones, and eased off the last wooden stair. The moment her full weight passed from the stair to the cinderblocks, they began to rock like a building in an earthquake.
Daniel grabbed her as she fell, but she sprawled into the dirt, the cinderblocks slamming into her ribs. A groan escaped.
Jake started to cry.
Still lying on her side, Fernie groped with her free hand until she found her younger son and clutched his arm. “No, shh. Mama’s okay.”
Fernie got herself off the cinderblock and refused to give in to the tears of pain that sprang to her eyes. She found the chair, flipped the brake, and tried to lift herself up. She got halfway up, and then her arms, tired from the effort of lowering herself down the stairs, wobbled and collapsed beneath her. She tried again, this time with Daniel grabbing her by the armpits and grunting to get her up. It wasn’t enough. After a full minute of struggle, she sat back in the dirt and took in deep breaths. Her triceps and forearms trembled with exhaustion.
“Are you okay?” Daniel whispered. Jake made worried-sounding whimpers from her other side.
She would never do this alone.
Her eyes closed.
Heavenly Father, she prayed silently. My burden is heavy, but I don’t complain, because I know when the time comes, thou shalt lift me up. I need thee now. Lend me thy strength.
A feeling of calm flooded through her and the pain in her ribs eased.
Fernie opened her eyes, fixed on the shadow of the wheelchair, and found her solution at once. She scooted on her backside until she sat next to the tumbled-over cinderblocks. She flipped them wide-side down and heaved one on top of the other and then straightened them. Carefully, she lifted herself until she got into a sitting position on top of the two blocks.
“Push the wheelchair over here,” she whispered. “Now fix the brake and put your foot behind the wheel. Don’t let it slide.”
She grabbed the armrests. Starting from a position over a foot off the ground, and with several seconds of rest, she got herself up, twisted, and slumped into the chair. Jake squirmed up and onto her lap and she unbuttoned her blouse to let him nurse to keep him quiet until the
y got away from the house.
“This way,” she told Daniel. “Keep to the darkness.”
She knew what Jacob would have said. That moment of meditation when she closed her eyes had calmed her mind. Panic gone, the solution was easy to find. But Fernie knew the truth.
And so she did not forget to say another prayer as her oldest son wheeled her through the darkness toward the sidewalk beyond the Smoot house. It was a prayer of gratitude.
Two blocks from the Smoot household, near the Davidson compound, Fernie grabbed the wheels to stop Daniel pushing when she heard the sound of hooves on pavement.
A horse and rider trotted by on the opposite side of the street. When he passed into the illuminated patch in front of the Davidson’s porch light, she caught a glimpse of a man leaning forward purposefully in the saddle, gloved hands clutching the reins. A rifle jutted from a holster on his saddle.
Jake had detached from his nursing at the sound of clomping hooves and craned to watch. Fernie prepared to slap a hand over his mouth if he made a sound.
Fortunately, the toddler stayed quiet, and neither did the rider look their way.
When he was gone, Fernie told Daniel, “We’ll have to cross the street again. Don’t worry about cowpies.”
“Okay.”
“Turn left at the end of the block. Keep going until you see the chapel and then come around the back of the parking lot. If you see anyone else, stop moving and stay quiet until I say so.”
But they didn’t see or hear anyone else as they passed one darkened house and yard after another. Heavy, cold raindrops plopped against her skin. The air smelled of wet manure and that thick dampness that hinted at heavier rain to come. Maybe even snow if the temperature kept dropping. Now that Jake’s cold cheeks had warmed up, she was grateful to share his body heat.
They stopped after crossing the worst of the mess left by the cattle drive and cleaned shoes and wheels on the grass in front of one of the darkened houses. They rounded the block and approached the chapel.
Fernie was surprised to see all the lights on and people moving through the chapel parking lot. Armed men in uniform were climbing into the back of a pair of green army-style trucks with the USDA logo on the side, while others watched the street. A pair of thirty-ton grain trucks lined up in the street, guarded by two more soldiers. Chip Malloy himself stood in front of the chapel with a satellite phone to his ear.
The Gates of Babylon Page 16