Eliza tried not to worry about drones, but it was terrifying to have them circling overhead and know that a young man at some distant air force base was watching her on his computer monitor, hand on a joystick and finger on a button with the ability to leave her a smoking hole in the pavement.
There was plenty to distract her, and she did her best to keep her mind as occupied as her body. But at the end of another sixteen-hour day, no matter how exhausted, her mind would race the instant she climbed into bed. She pictured Steve giving elephant rides to the children and remembered watching him help an old man repair his fence, with his huge shoulder muscles rippling beneath his shirt.
And Eliza imagined herself in Steve’s arms, pictured him undressing her on their wedding day. His fingers running through her hair, or his mouth on her breasts.
The heartache overwhelmed her and sometimes, when she was sure Lillian was asleep in the next bed, Eliza buried her face in her pillow and gave in to the sobs.
Two weeks had passed since the canceled wedding. No word from Steve. Then three weeks, four. Thanksgiving, followed by Christmas and a feast with caroling through the valley by candlelight. A foot of snow fell that night, and more the following day, until the only way through town was on an ancient sled hauled out of Delmar Young’s shed and hitched to a team of horses.
The temple reopened, repaired and rededicated, on January 12, when the mercury dropped below zero. A haze hung over the valley from hundreds of Franklin stoves and wood boilers, and Jacob implemented rationing to preserve firewood until spring. In the evenings of the coldest nights, he gathered the entire Christianson household in the front room around the stove and read from a children’s Bible, Hans Christian Andersen, or the Chronicles of Narnia.
One night in early February, when the adults had finished bundling the children for the night, and most of the grown-ups had gone to bed, Eliza wrapped herself in a blanket and sat in the darkness next to the still-hot stove, its embers crackling. She closed her eyes and turned over different ways to escape the valley. Make her way to California and find Steve. She could do it. She would do it. If she could get past the drones.
The key was to avoid the roads. Make her profile look like a deer. Or better yet, an elk. What if she got a horse, put some fake antlers on its head, and laid herself flat against its neck, covered by a blanket. Left at night. Would that fool them, or were their cameras too sophisticated for such a trick?
Light came through her eyelids, and she opened them. Jacob sat in his chair, a lantern turned up slightly on the end table, his fingers turning the pages on one of Grandma Cowley’s journals. He said something under his breath and Eliza realized he hadn’t spotted her sitting motionless and wrapped in her blanket next to the stove.
For a long moment she watched her brother and thought how much he looked like Father had when the older Christianson was reading. When he was caught up in a book and forgot anybody was looking. The difference was that when Father put down the book, he had taken on a stern, arrogant air. Jacob was humble and kind.
But now he carried a burden that aged him beyond a man in his thirties, with troubles on his shoulders and in his mind. And then, most surprisingly of all, Jacob closed his eyes and his lips moved.
Surely he wasn’t praying. She had a hard time imagining him doing that in privacy. Read the scriptures, meditate even, but pray?
It felt wrong to watch him when he thought he was alone, and Eliza cleared her throat. Jacob started and looked up. He turned up the light.
“Oh, Liz. Sorry, I didn’t see you there. I…” His voice trailed off. “Are you okay?”
“Why don’t they bring Steve back?” she asked. “He was in the FBI—if he helped Fayer, couldn’t they make a deal with the army? One FBI flight into Blister Creek in a helicopter—they could tell the drones not to shoot, right?”
Jacob looked like he was going to say something, then stopped.
“Don’t do this to me,” she said. “Tell me what you really think.”
He still hesitated. When he spoke, his voice was low and uncertain. “I think it’s worse out there than we imagine, that’s what. It’s falling apart. The government is fighting with itself—California is tearing itself to pieces. I don’t think the FBI could bring him back if they wanted to. And maybe he can’t get out of L.A.”
Eliza lifted her hand to her mouth and bit down on her thumb.
“Don’t lose hope, Liz. Please.”
“If I had Fernie’s faith could I bring him back?”
“He’ll be okay. He’s strong like Miriam, but less headstrong. And maybe he’s not quite as smart as you,” Jacob added, a smile at his lips, “but he’s no fool. I’ll bet that even now he’s on the other side of those mountains, maneuvering to get over but taking his time so he doesn’t get shot.”
Eliza didn’t say anything in response to these words of false comfort. Jacob’s smile faded.
“Have a little faith,” he said.
“Listen to you.”
He gave a tired smile.
“Can I ask,” she began tentatively, “if it’s not too personal I mean. Can I ask what you were praying about?”
“Probably just babbling to myself. I don’t know if anyone is listening up there. Maybe not. Or maybe yes, but the decision is already made and there’s nothing I can do or say to change it.”
“You didn’t answer the question. Never mind,” she added when he opened his mouth to say something else. “None of my business—I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No, it’s fine.” Jacob hesitated. “I was asking the Lord to choose someone else.”
“What?”
“Just in case I really am the prophet and this really is the end. I can’t do this. I don’t know what to do, how to keep us alive. I have no idea. And if God has the answers, He’s not sharing them.”
“Fernie believes in you. David, Miriam, Lillian, Rebecca. Your children.” Eliza nodded. “So do I, Jacob. I believe in you, too, whether it’s the end or not.”
“I know you do. That terrifies me.”
“I need to make a choice,” she said. “I need to start believing, maybe not like Miriam or Fernie, but at least a little bit. If I don’t—” She had to stop and clear the lump from her throat before she could continue. “If I don’t, then I’ll have to admit it. I’ll have to accept Steve isn’t coming back.”
“No,” he said. “I won’t let you give up hope.”
When she didn’t respond, he sat next to her by the stove. He put his arm around her shoulders.
Eliza lost it. A sob rose deep within her breast and came out in an awful, gasping honk. As Jacob embraced her more fully, she bawled, no longer caring about appearing weak, about hiding her emotions. There was only this deep, aching pain, and now it needed to come out. She cried until the tears ran dry then wiped her nose on her sleeve when it wouldn’t stop running. She sniffled and coughed a few times and then fell silent.
“Oh, Jacob,” she said at last. “I’m so lonely.”
Jacob kissed the top of her head. “Your time will come, Liz. If there’s any justice in this universe, any at all, you’ll be happy. You deserve it more than anyone.”
“I don’t need much. My family, my people. Safety and warmth and food. And Steve—I need him to be alive. I need him to come home.”
“He will. Trust me, he will.”
If only Eliza could believe that.
Blister Creek had no television, no Internet, no phone, no mail. As good a chance as getting a delivery from Sears & Roebuck by stagecoach these days as from Amazon.com. But nobody could cut out the radio waves, and so people listened to faint AM stations and learned about the chaos enveloping the outside world.
Millions dead already in Africa and India. China had blockaded Japan and was coercing the Australians to sell them wheat on favorable terms. If the Americans hadn’t been overwhelmed by conflict at home and wars over Suez and the Persian Gulf, they might have been more vigorous in their defense of their allie
s, but there was little actual fighting so they stayed uninvolved.
The main hope was that the weather seemed to be calming down as the effects of the volcano dissipated. Meteorologists were predicting another unusually cold, wet summer across North America, but not quite as bad as the previous summer. The Canadian prairies and the upper Midwest would see their crops wiped out again, but there were hopes for much of the rest of the North American harvest. A bit of luck, some sanity in the world, and it was possible the crisis would pass by the following autumn.
And then in March the Sulawesi volcano’s second magma pool blew out. Three hundred cubic miles of rock and ash spewed skyward, the equivalent of three hundred times the size of the Mount St. Helens eruption, and half again more than the entire previous year’s eruption. Three million people died on Sulawesi alone from volcanic bombs and suffocating ash clouds. Tsunamis from the eruption and the earthquakes that shivered around the Pacific Rim killed hundreds of thousands around the Indian Ocean, and on the Pacific wiped out seaside communities from Chile to British Columbia.
The people in Blister Creek listened to this news with every emotion from terror to sorrow to excitement. The end of the world was upon them. The coming of the Great and Dreadful Day had arrived.
And only God knew who would survive and who would perish.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my agent, Katherine Boyle, and my team at Thomas & Mercer: Jacque, Rory, Danielle, Terry, Andrew, and David. Thanks to Ethan Carr for accompanying me on a road trip through the desert to visit some of the old haunts of my childhood in preparation for writing this book.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Garten, 2011
Michael Wallace was born in California and raised in a small religious community in Utah, eventually heading east to live in Rhode Island and Vermont. An experienced world traveler, he has trekked through the Andes, ventured into the Sahara on a camel, and traveled through Thailand by elephant. In addition to working as a literary agent and innkeeper, he previously worked as a software engineer for a Department of Defense contractor, programming simulators for nuclear submarines. He is the author of more than a dozen novels.
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