Hell's Fortress (9 page)

“Then you’d better go back to Blister Creek and get something useful.”

“If we could do that, we wouldn’t need your help in the first place,” Miriam said.

Trost had been edging forward during this conversation and now stood close enough to Gibson to lay a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Help me out here. It was me who got you that job in the first place. Don’t you at least want to see the tools?”

“Tell you what,” Gibson said. “Come down to the house and I’ll feed you the same supper I was going to give to these fools. Two hardboiled eggs and a bowl of oatmeal.”

“How generous,” Miriam said.

Eliza gave her a look and she closed her mouth.

“You have any idea what that’s worth these days?” Gibson said.

“We’ll take it,” Trost said. “What about the tools?”

“We’ll check them out in the morning. If they’re any good, I’ll give you enough food to see you back over the mountains where you belong. You want to come this way again, you’d better be prepared to pay your way.”

By the time the prisoners had finished burying the bodies, the sun was sinking over the western desert behind a rim of red and purple fire. The distant mountain ranges were almost glowing. It was the most brilliant (and weird) sunset Eliza had seen yet.

The prisoners trudged down the highway, chains clanking together, while Gibson followed with his rifle slung over one shoulder. The four companions from Blister Creek brought up the rear.

It was still late afternoon in Los Angeles, four hundred and fifty miles across the desert. Somewhere out there, Steve was waiting. Eliza had no intention of returning to Blister Creek until she found him.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Minutes after finishing their miserly dinner of oatmeal and hardboiled eggs, Miriam rose from the table and said she wanted to go back and hide their tools better. They hadn’t planned to leave them overnight and she said she was worried about bandits.

Eliza was suspicious of the overly casual tone in her sister-in-law’s voice. “Alone? It’s dark up there. Can you even find the way?”

“I’ll be fine. Look, if thieves find our truck, they’ll find our tools. We lose those and this jerk won’t give us so much as a dog biscuit.”

Gibson lived in a mansion on the bench overlooking Cedar City. A pair of Ferraris sat in the front yard like the world’s most expensive lawn ornaments. They certainly weren’t going anywhere. The interior of the house was posh, with cathedral ceilings and a kitchen dripping in marble. Eliza didn’t think Trost’s eyebrows could rise any higher to see how his former deputy had set himself up. Then the servants appeared.

But even though Gibson seemed to think of himself as some sort of overlord of the struggling town, when the last daylight faded, he did not have any lights to turn on. They ate on the deck, beneath the moonlight. Cedar City lay dark as a ghost town below them.

And when Gibson joined them for dinner, the only concession to his status was a package of stale cookies that he snacked on when they’d finished the eggs and oatmeal. He didn’t offer to share.

“Stay here,” Eliza told Miriam. “Maybe later we’ll all go out together.”

“I’m going,” Miriam said. “You can come with me or hang out here, it doesn’t matter.”

“I’m serious. We need to stick together. Look, will you take Grover, at least?”

“What good is he going to do?”

Grover rose to his feet. “I’ll keep you safe.”

“What, because you think I need a man?”

“Two is safer than one,” Eliza said. She wasn’t worried about Miriam’s safety so much as the woman’s intentions. “Take him. Please.”

“Fine. Come on, Grover.”

“Don’t go mucking around,” Gibson said. “You get tempted to help yourself to anyone’s property, you think long and hard about those men on the chain gang this afternoon.”

Miriam fixed him with a hard look. “Weren’t you one of the deputies who came with Trost to investigate Blister Creek a couple of years ago after the chemical weapons attack?”

Gibson stammered. “Well, yes.”

“You saw what we did, and you still want to pick a fight?”

Gibson fell quiet until Miriam and Grover were gone, picking their way around the wraparound deck instead of going back through the house. “Damn it, Trost. What kind of game are you playing here?”

“No game,” Trost said.

Eliza leaned across the table. “We’re not enemies, Mr. Gibson.”

“Doesn’t mean we’re friends either.”

“As far as I know, Blister Creek and Cedar City are the only towns left standing in southern Utah. Why can’t we help each other out?”

“So you’re planning to share your food?” Gibson asked. “That’s right, I know what you’re sitting on. Word is spreading fast. Soon everyone will know.”

“We don’t have to share food to help each other,” she said. “We can keep the mountain passes open. Spread information. Guard the roads north and south against bandits. When things quiet down, we can trade.”

“I don’t think so. I see what you’re trying to do.”

Trost snorted. “And what’s that? You think we want to take over or something?”

“Why not? Everyone else does.”

What a paranoid fool, Eliza thought. Anyone could take Cedar City at any time. It was right on the freeway, exposed to the desert on three sides. But why would they want to? All it meant was more mouths to feed. More desert wilderness to fight over. The town had little food and poor prospects of growing their own.

She had to get Gibson off this aggressive stance. “You can share information, though. That’s free, right?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“We lost our last AM station in the spring,” she said. “Did India and Pakistan ever go to war?”

“You didn’t hear?”

“No,” Trost said. “What happened? It didn’t go nuclear, did it?”

“That’s
all
it was. Between the famine and the fuel shortages they didn’t have the ability to fight a ground campaign. Pakistan tried a sneak attack. India wasn’t fooled. For two weeks they went back and forth nuking each other’s cities.”

“Sweet heavens,” Eliza said.

“Pakistan hit the Indians with about three dozen bombs before they ran out,” Gibson continued. “India kept up the war for another two weeks before exhausting themselves. India landed about a hundred nukes. Nobody knows the exact number—news is scarce these days from that part of the world.”

The horror of it made Eliza’s head swim, her stomach clench. “How many died?”

“Maybe thirty million in India. It’s too big and Pakistan’s arsenal was too small to finish the job. But they’ll get their revenge. India is starving. Thirty million is just a start.”

Her mouth was dry. “And Pakistan? How many died?”

“All of them.”

“There were two hundred million people in Pakistan,” Trost said. His voice was flat and heavy. “Surely not all.”

“Close enough. Have you seen the sunsets? Volcanic ash and fallout. Bet we’re getting a nice dosage of radiation all the way over here.”

“What about Japan and China?” Eliza asked. “Are they still fighting?”

“Yeah, but the Chinese haven’t gone nuclear. Guess they know it would blow back in their faces. They tried to land a huge army in Kyushu. The navy didn’t make it across. A million men bobbing around in the Sea of Japan. The Chinese government is admitting to a hundred million dead from the famine. It’s probably worse than that. You heard about Europe?” Gibson added.

“You mean the revolution in Britain?” Eliza said.

“Germany and Italy now too. Spain is one big refugee camp. By the time they started turning away the Moroccans it was too late. In fact, about the only country still defending its borders over there is France. Nobody knows what is happening in Russia.”

“We heard some of that,” Eliza said. “The evangelical radio station out of Denver claimed that whoever ended up with the Russian nuclear arsenal was going to blow up the Middle East and bring about the Second Coming.”

“Not much left to blow up,” Gibson said. “In March, the Israelis launched nuclear artillery shells against the Sinai camps. Couple of million Egyptians were trying to storm the country. It was a massacre. By that time there wasn’t an Egyptian government left to protest.”

“We heard about that,” Trost said. “We still had radio then.”

“Point is, most of those countries are simply gone. More or less starved to death or descended into anarchy.”

“It can’t keep getting worse,” Eliza said. “Sooner or later the weather will clear and people will come to their senses.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Gibson said. “I’ll bet a billion people have died already. By the end of the year it will be another billion. Maybe more. For all we know, another nuclear war is going off right this minute. We lost radio contact ourselves about two weeks ago.”

“Maybe it really is the end of the world,” Trost said. “Maybe only the coming of the Lord will save us.”

Eliza didn’t want to dwell on that. That thinking pervaded Blister Creek; it was the belief that drove Miriam. The elect, in their desert sanctuary. Waiting for the end, when the wicked would burn like chaff. Jacob urged caution. Prepare for the worst, but don’t try to bring it on. She admired how he could maintain his faith in humanity and his doubt in doomsday prophesy against so much evidence. She struggled to do the same.

They fell into silence. Crickets chirped from the darkness around them. Down the hillside, horse hooves clomped on pavement. A gunshot sounded from a few blocks away, up by the foothills to their rear. Eliza hoped it was a hunter in a blind. Not someone shooting at looters—say, at Miriam and Grover. Gibson didn’t react. Apparently gunfire was too common to remark on.

The moon rose above the mountains behind the house. It was a deep, ruddy color, full and huge.

“And the moon became as blood,” Trost said.

Words from the scripture came to Eliza’s lips before she could hold them back. “For the great day of His wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?”

“Enough of that,” Gibson said. “You’re creeping me out.”

Eliza shook herself. “Never mind the problems on the other side of the world,” she said. “What about between here and California?”

He snorted. “Apart from being a war zone? Oh, it’s fine. Bandits, starving mobs. Gangs of rapists, murderers, thieves. Preppers living in doomsteads in the middle of the desert who will shoot you and eat you. Major outbreaks of TB, typhoid, and cholera across the West. Medical care and sanitation are like the blasted Middle Ages. The only ones prospering are the goddamn coyotes and vultures.”

“If you don’t have news for the past two weeks,” Trost said, “maybe the fighting is winding down.”

“Or, who knows, maybe it’s rubble by now. As far as I’m concerned, they can keep killing each other.”

“Why?” Eliza asked. “Don’t you want the war to end?”

“What do you think is going to happen when the battle of Las Vegas is over?” Gibson asked. “Federal troops will come right up I-15. They’ll move into Cedar City.”

“What makes you say that?” Eliza asked.

“Think about it. Either they lose Vegas to the rebels and will need a new forward operating base, or they’ll have won and will move to secure their supply lines for another push into California. Either way, I-15 is the major artery through Las Vegas, and Cedar City is the only surviving freeway town in southern Utah. Where else would they go?”

She had to admit it made a certain amount of sense. “All the more reason not to want an enemy at your back too.”

“Help us out,” Trost said. “Don’t make us return to Blister Creek and tell them you’re hostile.”

“So now you’re threatening me.”

Trost sighed. “Listen, Gibson. We’re not asking much. Horses. Food. A rifle for each of us and a couple of hundred rounds. I
know
you have plenty of guns and ammo.”

“Yeah, and food and horses. I don’t think so. The deal is, you give me your tools and I buy them at a fair price. If you’re telling the truth about what you’ve got, that should get you home.”

“What if we promise to pay you when we get back?” Eliza asked. “Give us two weeks and we’ll deliver, I promise.”

“The promises of fundy kooks aren’t worth much these days, if they ever were.” Gibson peered down from the deck. “Where’s that friend of yours? Shouldn’t take her so long.”

“Here I am,” Miriam called from the darkness below.

Gibson sprang to his feet. “What are you doing down there?”

“Looking for a way up. It’s too dark.”

Her figure moved through the shadows near the support posts that held up the deck where it hung over the hillside. Moments later she found the stairs and came up. Her hands were dirty and the braid in her hair was falling apart. A scratch marked one cheek.

“It really is dark out there. The road turned and I fell into the scrub oak. Look at my clothes.” She let out a bitter laugh. “I found the truck easily enough, but not the tools.”

“Someone stole them?” Trost asked.

“Nah, I was just turned around in the dark. I found them eventually.”

Eliza’s suspicions grew. Miriam was a great actress—it was that acting ability that had brought her into the polygamist communities in the first place, when she infiltrated the Zarahemla cult a few years earlier—but Eliza knew her sister-in-law’s moods too well by now. Miriam had been up to something.

“Where’s the other one?” Gibson asked. “The kid?”

“I left Grover up there to guard the tools. We really need a light if we’re going to hide them any better. You’ve got to have a flashlight or a kerosene lantern or something.”

“Not for you to use, no. Where is he?”

“I’m not telling you that. Not until we’ve worked out a trade.”

“Damn you.” Gibson wheeled on Trost. “Get that kid down here or I’ll throw you in irons. You’ll be on grave-digging duty tomorrow, so help me.”

“I’m not in charge.” Trost nodded at Eliza. “She is.”

Eliza sighed. “We’ll go get Grover. Come on. You too, Officer Trost.”

Gibson grabbed Trost’s arm. “No. He stays here. Sanchez, get out here.”

Trost jerked free. “Get your hands off me.”

Sanchez came onto the deck. He held a pistol.

“Hold on,” Eliza said when she saw the gun. “Everyone calm down. It’s fine. We’ll get Grover. Trost can stay here. Miriam, you
can
find the truck this time, right?”

“Pretty sure, yeah.”

“Okay. The rest of you sit down. Let’s not make this a big deal. Miriam and I will be back in a few minutes.”

Moments later, the two women were out in the street, picking their way through the darkness, between the blackened mansions overlooking the city. Two men stood on the sidewalk in front of the house, watching them.

“Us again!” Miriam called. “We’ll be back in a few minutes.” When they reached the end of the street, Miriam said, “Careful with those two. Gibson’s thugs. Armed with shotguns.”

“Please tell me you didn’t do something stupid.”

“By stupid, you mean did I figure out how to bust out of this dumb town?”

“Miriam, no.”

“God gave me a brain and free will. The FBI gave me training.” She let out a little groan. “My boobs are killing me.”

“What?”

“They’re like concrete and they’re leaking like crazy. How long does it take for your milk supply to dry up?”

“I have no idea.”

“Can’t be much longer. The sooner the better. You know, sometimes it sucks to be a woman.”

Miriam said all of this matter-of-factly, as if leaving her baby was no big deal. But Eliza had seen her with the child, tenderly stroking Abigail’s head as she nursed, while David beamed down at them both. Miriam was no heartless killing machine; it must have been tearing her up inside to be eighty miles away with no hope of returning anytime soon.

“Stop changing the subject,” Eliza said. “What are you up to? And where’s Grover?”

“We’re almost there. Hurry.”