Blood of the Faithful (19 page)

“Does that mean you’re having second thoughts?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Still seems risky.”

“You sent Eliza to Salt Lake. What about that?”

“She’s a free spirit too,” Jacob pointed out. “Anyway, Eliza didn’t go alone. Steve went with her. I’d send someone else with Miriam—you, maybe, or Lillian—but I think she’ll be safer infiltrating on her own.” He hesitated. “So you
don’t
have misgivings? None at all?”

David shrugged.

“You’re not worried she’s going to get killed?” Jacob pressed.

“Look, can we talk about something else besides whether or not my wife is going to die?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“It’s like you’re
trying
to wind me up or something. Get me freaked out.”

“I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”

David grunted.

After that awkward exchange, the brothers spent the next hour in silence, studying the cliffs or simmering in their own thoughts. After a while, David radioed Blister Creek again.

Miriam came on the line, and Jacob finally received his confirmation that she hadn’t, in fact, slipped up to the reservoir to have a go at the squatters.

When David was done with the call, he set down the receiver and cleared his throat. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you. I’m sorry.”

“No problem. I know how I must have sounded.”

Another uncomfortable pause, then David said, “Hey, do you remember that time we were camping in the desert and fed those foxes?”

“The time you screamed your head off?”

“It was your fault with all that ghost stuff.”

They’d been out with Grandpa Griggs in Goblin Valley. Three brothers: Jacob, Enoch, and David. Jacob was the olde
st, David the youngest. Grandpa was asleep. Jacob had been telling ghost stories to the younger boys, getting them worked up with a tale of a grizzled prospector whose body was found in the desert, dried to a mummy, his eyeballs and nose eaten by vultures. They said his ghost still wandered these parts.

Suddenly, David squealed in terror. Jacob looked up to see glowing eyes at the edge of the firelight. Enoch saw it too, gasped, and scrambled back toward the tent.

Jacob smiled at the memory. “Poor guy was just hungry. He and his dozen brothers and sisters.”

“Whose brilliant idea was it to feed them hot dog buns, anyway? Was that Enoch’s?”

“No, it was mine,” Jacob admitted.

“That’s right. And when we ran out of buns, you made me sneak into Grandpa’s camper to get a bag of potato chips. We had six or seven foxes by then, all wanting to be fed.”

“Then Enoch started putting potato chips on Grandpa’s chest,” Jacob said.

David laughed. “Remember Grandpa’s expression when he sat up to find a fox staring him in the face?”

After running through the fox story, Jacob and David talked about other camping trips, the adventures and misadventures of life in the valley. Lizards caught, arrowheads discovered. The time David almost drowned in the reservoir, or when they went sneaking out the back door with an entire box of ice cream sandwiches, only by the time they found a safe place to eat them, the ice cream was already melting into a sticky goo. Kids weren’t very supervised back then, and they’d had their run of the entire valley. Of course, that meant mishaps. Broken bones two miles from home, or stupid stuff they did, like climbing crumbling rock at the cliffs or wandering deep into Witch’s Warts.

“Yeah, I’m worried about Miriam,” David said at last. “I’m worried as hell. I’m worried every time she puts herself in danger. I know she seems hard and determined, but she’s the one who has kept me sane in all of this. Every time I get depressed or lose faith, she lifts me up.”

“She’s a good woman.”

“I love her so much. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost her.”

“You won’t lose her.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Stephen Paul stirred, cleared his throat, and the brothers fell silent. He got up, stretched and yawned, and came over to take the final chair next to the gun slits.

“All clear?” he asked.

“All clear,” Jacob confirmed. He glanced at the angle of the sun in the sky. “Looks like it’s about six, six thirty.”

About half an hour later, the rumble of a truck caught their ears from the direction of the valley. A few minutes later, Miriam pulled up.

She’d grubbed up her appearance. Her hair was greasy, her face covered in grime that seemed to rub right into her pores. She wore a filthy, oversized denim jacket torn at the elbows, and men’s jeans with frayed cuffs rolled up above her scuffed boots. A man’s belt had been cinched to hold up the jeans, but it only made her look thin and starved. Which was exactly the look she was going for, Jacob realized.

Miriam carried in a cooler from the back of the truck. “Fernie packed us a nice picnic dinner. Ham sandwiches, potato salad.” She raised her eyebrow. “No ice cream sandwiches, though, melting or otherwise.”

David started. “How did you know about that?”

Miriam set the cooler on the floor and walked over to the radio and picked up the receiver, then thumbed the switch twice to get it to pop up. “The switch sticks on this thing.”

“So you heard our entire conversation?” David asked.

She nodded, then bent and kissed him. “I love you too. And you can stop worrying. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Miriam had one final argument with Jacob before they left the bunker. He wanted her to go up unarmed, which she thought was ridiculous. Jacob’s thinking was that if she were caught, the squatters would be less likely to harm her if she weren’t carrying a weapon.

In the first place, she had no intention of getting caught. In the second, she might need to use the weapons preemptively. That was something he would not understand, and she had no intention of explaining.

Miriam opened her denim jacket to show him the pistol. “You’d have to look right up under my arm to see it. Nobody is going to get that close.”

“What about your knife?” Jacob asked.

“What about it?”

“We can see it bulging under your jacket,” David pointed out. “Every time you move, there’s a hard object visible on your back.”

“That’s only because it’s not dark yet. Once it’s dark, it will be as good as invisible. Anyway, I don’t hear either of you complaining about the night vision goggles. That looks just as bad if I’m caught.” She had them tucked under her arm.

“But you need those,” Jacob said. “You don’t need the weapons.”

The three of them stood in the road while Stephen Paul remained in the bunker manning the machine gun. The dying light of the sun had cast pale yellow beams across the valley floor and streaks across the face of the Ghost Cliffs. The sun was now descending in a ball of fire behind the western mountains. Ten more minutes and it would be dark enough to move without worrying about watchers in the cliffs.

Miriam would just as soon have set off alone from the bunkers, but Jacob and David insisted on accompanying her up to the reservoir and waiting for her there. The two brothers unloaded rifles with scopes from the Humvee.

She joined them around the back of the vehicle and grabbed two more magazines for her Beretta. She put one in each front pocket of her jeans. Then, to be sure, grabbed another and stuffed it into the left pocket of her denim jacket.

“Guys, stop worrying,” she said when she saw Jacob and David watching anxiously. “I’ve done this sort of thing before. I’m confident.”

“Confident?” David said. “Or overconfident?”

“Don’t try to psyche me out, it won’t work.”

“We’re not doing that,” Jacob said. “We just need to be sure.”

Miriam glanced up at the sky. Still too much light. Five minutes, maybe, then they could go. “There is one thing you could do for me,” she admitted. “I could use a priesthood blessing before we set out.”

“Good idea,” David said, nodding.

“Jacob, could you?” Miriam asked.

“Of course.”

She had expected an argument. But maybe Jacob saw the psychological benefit of sending her in with a blessing, or maybe cracks were forming in his armor of doubt. She could only hope.

They did it right there, with Miriam standing in her filthy clothes in the middle of the road. Jacob and David put their hands on her hair, which she’d rubbed with dirt and bacon grease to simulate a woman who hadn’t bathed in weeks, like the filthy squatters from the reservoir.

After opening the blessing, Jacob got right to the meat of the matter. It wasn’t exactly what she’d been hoping. She’d wished in her heart that he would call on divine strength to flow through her veins, that she would have the power to lift her hand and smite their enemies. What Jacob gave her was something different.

“Sister Miriam, thy life has value beyond measure. The wisdom of thy counsel to thy brothers and sisters in the gospel, the love thou hast for thy husband and children. Their love for you in return. And to all of the community, thou art a shield and a protector.”

She didn’t miss the implication. A shield. Not a sword. Defensive, only.

Except Jacob spoke with such power and confidence that she was reminded of his prophetic calling. If she disobeyed him, would she be going against Jacob? Or against the Lord?

“Insofar as thou art faithful and true, thou shalt be protected from harm. No bullet shall pierce thy breast, no hand touch thee in wrath. Being faithful in all things, thou shalt return to thy people without a hair harmed on thy head. These blessings and exhortations I close in the name of the Holy Redeemer of Israel, even Jesus Christ, amen.”

“Amen.”

“Amen,” David added in a husky voice. His eyes were damp. “You heard him. Not a hair harmed on your head. I’m holding you to it.”

She hugged him, then eyed the sky again. “It’s time.”

The crowd surrounded Ezekiel, jeering, spitting, and cursing him. He lurched in terror from one brutal shove to the next. The mood was tense, coiled. They wanted blood, and they wanted his. Their anger was bewildering, though he’d heard it building for hours.

All day McQueen had kept him with his hands and feet bound, sitting with his back against the tires of the pickup truck. The camp itself was in an uproar. As the day passed and his tongue thickened with thirst, the sun beat relentlessly on his face, and the mood grew more and more ugly. People would come to stand behind the single guard, pointing and shouting at him.

They seemed to be blaming him for Chambers’s death. That was ridiculous. Ezekiel had been up top when it happened. Chambers wasn’t one of the squatters anyway, just a rogue FBI agent who’d struck up a friendship of convenience with their leader. Ezekiel knew their food supply was cut off, and these people were already thin and hungry, but surely they weren’t living so hand-to-mouth that a single missed meal or two would send them into a rage.

What kind of crazy fanatics were they?

When late afternoon had arrived, McQueen and three armed companions came up to where Ezekiel sat at the tire of Jacob’s truck, eyed him with a look of disgust, and ordered him to his feet. He struggled to stand after so many hours in a cramped position, his hands and feet still bound. One of the armed men grabbed the rope around his wrists and dragged him up. A young woman with short, hacked-off hair slapped Ezekiel across the face when he voiced a protest.

McQueen ordered the rope untied from his ankles, but left his hands bound behind his back. Then they’d driven him to the center of camp, where the crowd had gathered. McQueen pushed him into the center, and the crowd had begun to shove at him. He stumbled back and forth, exhausted and frightened, even as the fury of the mob grew.

“Please,” he begged. “What did I do?”

A teenage boy slugged him in the stomach and he doubled over, gasping. An old woman jerked his head by the hair while another woman spit in his face. More blows rained down on his head and shoulders. A well-placed kick to the thigh knocked his feet out from under him and he collapsed. They yanked him back to his feet. More blows followed.

This was how they meant him to die, he realized with terror. Each and every one of them taking revenge for all the indignities suffered over the past few years: the war, the famine, the wretched treatment at the military-run refugee camp, the evacuation of the camp, and the desperate struggle across the desert. More had died in the crossing. More still from starvation and disease at the reservoir. Exposure in winter, violence as the desperate turned on the desperate. They must have thought that if they could only reach Blister Creek, with its food and safety, they would survive.

Except Blister Creek had turned them away, even tried to wipe out their camp instead of sharing food like good neighbors. Then, when Chambers offered a lifeline, the polygamists of the valley had cut that off too. There was no way to get at the valley, but here was Ezekiel, bound and helpless. He knew all of this instinctively, yet it felt so unfair.

A blow smashed into his temple and he fell facedown in the dirt. This time they left him down. He was helpless to protect himself as the mob closed in to finish him off. Kick him to death.

McQueen barked an order for silence. The shouting and cursing from the crowd diminished, then died altogether as he roared his orders again. McQueen and several others pushed back the mob.

“Don’t kill me,” Ezekiel begged as they hauled him to his feet. “Please, I’ll do whatever you want.”

McQueen slapped him across the face. “Shut up.”

Ezekiel hung his head. He was shaking and wouldn’t be able to stand if they weren’t holding him up.

“The rest of you, go,” McQueen told the mob. “We’ll deal with this one later. For now, you know what to do.”

Just as McQueen and his armed companions had marched Ezekiel into the camp, now they marched him back to the truck again. He regained some of his strength as he walked.

“They’d have killed you,” McQueen said. “Don’t forget that.”

He pushed Ezekiel into a sitting position with his back against the rear driver’s side tire. McQueen stood above him, his hands on his hips, looking down with a scowl.

“Do you have water?” Ezekiel asked.

McQueen nodded at the short-haired woman who had slapped Ezekiel earlier. She trotted back to camp and came up with a faded green soda bottle half filled with cloudy water. Ezekiel glugged it down.

“Any food? I’m so hungry I can barely stand. Even a bite or two, anything.”

McQueen let out a barking laugh. “If you’d said that in the camp, they’d have killed you. Look at you, so fat and lazy. It makes me sick.”

Ezekiel didn’t have an ounce of fat on him—too much physical labor these days for that. But compared with the hungry, lean figures he’d seen in the camp, he must look that way to them.

“That’s why you’re angry, isn’t it?” he asked. “Because there’s no supper tonight.”

“There’s never enough to go around. Someone always goes hungry. We don’t have a single meal saved up—how could we? But tonight there will be nothing.”

“Give me time,” Ezekiel said. “I’ll find a way back into the valley. And when I do—”

“Don’t insult me, you polygamist freak. I know what you want. Chambers told me everything.”

Ezekiel blinked. “What?”

“It’s a power struggle, that’s it. You think I don’t know? You killed the head of the cult, didn’t you? That’s what all the blood on your hands is. Now you want to hide until it’s safe to go back and take over.”

Ezekiel started to protest. But that would be stupid. He was in enough danger as it was. They despised him already. What if they knew the blood was from his own brother? That his allies had turned against him? That Jacob Christianson was still alive and vigilant down below?

“And when you claim your place as head of the cult, what then?” McQueen asked.

“It’s not a cult. It is the church of God.”

“I know what you’ll do,” McQueen said, as if he hadn’t been listening. “You think I don’t? I’m a survivor—I’m nobody’s fool. Chambers would have kept feeding us, but you? You’d cut us off in a heartbeat. That’s right, as soon as you’re head of the cult, you’ll let us starve.”

It was hard to argue with his logic. Certainly, Ezekiel had no intention of keeping these locusts feasting on their grain. It was only Jacob’s weakness that had allowed it in the first place.

“I brought you a machine gun,” Ezekiel said. “And ammunition.”

McQueen smiled. “Yes, you did. And I’ll put it to good use, don’t you worry.”

“Doesn’t that count for something?”

“Yeah, it will keep you alive. That, and your knowledge of the valley. You can show us around when we get there.”

Ezekiel licked his lips. “You’re going down?”

“You cut off our food. You’ve left us no choice.”

“Why are you here?” Ezekiel said. “We never said we’d help you. We can barely take care of ourselves. Why didn’t you go somewhere else?”

“There is no somewhere else, you idiot. Now sit there and be good. We’ll have work for you later.” He nodded at one of the men, who was armed with a shotgun. “Keep an eye on the polygamist.”

The short-haired woman looked up at the sky. “It’s almost dark. What if he makes a run for it?”

“Tie up his feet again,” McQueen said. When that was done, he nodded. “Now stick him in the truck. If he opens the door, blow his brains out.”

A few minutes later Ezekiel found himself bound and shoved into the truck cabin. The sun was vanishing behind the western mountains. Another twenty minutes and it would be dark. He was thirsty again and his stomach growled uncomfortably. Outside, the guard with the shotgun leaned against the side of the truck and looked down at the commotion still roiling through the camp.

Ezekiel took advantage of the man’s distraction to inspect the truck cab. They’d taken Jacob’s night vision goggles from the passenger seat, but a glance revealed a glint of blood-stained metal below the seat. They’d neglected to search the truck. The machete was still down there, the cursed blade that had killed his brother.

So McQueen meant to attack Blister Creek tonight. By then Jacob would have the bunker manned again. And he’d replace the gun with either the one from the Humvee if he was still in a defensive posture, or a gun taken from one of the other bunkers, if he meant to use the vehicle for his own assault. There would be a battle.

Several people came trudging up from the camp a few minutes later carrying a variety of plastic jugs and containers. Someone had a hose and a funnel. While the man with the shotgun watched, they siphoned the gas out of the truck. As each container was filled, its owner trudged off, but not back to camp. Rather, up to the highway, then south in the direction of Blister Creek, following the road as it stretched along the reservoir.