Blood of the Faithful (13 page)

It took a moment to remember that Chambers had torn it out of his shoulder, then dropped it when he drew his gun. She searched the ground around him, finding it only when she rolled him onto his back. It had been beneath him. She picked up the knife.

“What have you done?” a voice asked behind her.

She whirled to see Jacob turning on his flashlight and shoving his night vision goggles to his forehead. He dropped to his knees and fumbled with the buttons on Chambers’s shirt.

Miriam turned back to the rope. “He shot first.”

“There’s a knife wound here!”

Miriam grabbed the rope and sawed. A few quick strokes and she severed it. Something clanked on the rocks above.

She sprang away. “Get back!”

They both retreated as the barrel came tumbling out of the darkness, spitting rocks. It slammed into the sand. There was nobody in it, only rocks. Someone had apparently been filling it to add ballast for a return trip down, but nobody had climbed in yet. Ah, well. She’d wrecked their system all the same.

“Dammit, Miriam. What are you doing? What’s going on here?”

“You wanted them coming down on us in the darkness? For that matter, turn off that light. They’re only a few hundred feet above us. Now that I cut the rope, they’ll know it’s not Chambers down here.”

Jacob obeyed, then put on his goggles and stared down at the body.

“Aren’t you going to try to save him?” she asked. “Pull bullets out of the wicked and all that crap you do?”

“Like the time you got shot through the lungs and I kept you from drowning in your own blood? Is that the kind of crap you’re talking about? Anyway, he’s dead. You put a 9-millimeter slug right through his heart.”

“It was his choice. Like I said, he shot first.”

“I saw the knife wound, remember? So I think you came up and tried to kill him first.”

She’d already concocted a story about how she’d tried to take Chambers prisoner with the knife, but she didn’t have a chance to tell it. A rifle fired from above them. As they scrambled for cover, a handgun snapped more shots. For the next few minutes they crouched behind a rock while gunfire blasted down from the cliffs. At least four different weapons were firing, as far as she could tell. Possibly five.

Miriam and Jacob had only partial cover, but the gunfire wasn’t aimed. Only one shot even came close, ricocheting off one of the fins of Witch’s Warts at their rear and then whizzing past her ear.

By the time the enemy stopped firing, Miriam had changed her mind and decided to tell Jacob the entire truth. While they remained crouched, she confessed everything she’d done and everything that had gone through her mind as she’d done it.

“There was no rush,” he said when she’d finished. “We could have stayed in the shadows tonight, maybe even studied them for two or three more days. Then, when we were ready, waited here and arrested them when they arrived.”

“Who was that second guy? Why did he go up top if he was only going to return later tonight?”

“What did he look like?”

“He had a beard.” She shrugged. “I didn’t see much else.”

“Man with a beard. That’s really useful.” Jacob sounded disgusted.

“Could be Whit McQueen. He’s military—maybe he knew Chambers from back when. Or they made some sort of pact. I tried to find out, but Chambers wouldn’t tell me. All I know for sure was that he was an enemy. That’s why I didn’t want him to get away.”

“That’s exactly what happened, thanks to you. He got away. I’ll say it again—there was no rush.”

“Don’t be blind. The end is here.”

“Sure, of course.” His voice oozed sarcasm, and this made her angry.

“We need a leader. Word gets out that the prophet has gone soft and what do you think happens?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

Miriam stopped, suddenly made wary by the sharp tone of his voice. He suspected something. Jacob was a smart man, and his mind was working things over.

“Well?” he pressed.

“Never mind, forget it.”

“You’re holding something back. What?”

“Nothing,” she lied. “I’m worried is all. You saw the meeting tonight, you know people are worked up.”

They came out from behind the rock. Miriam searched Chambers’s body. She found keys to the ATV in his front jeans pocket. The only other interesting thing she found was a nearly empty pack of stale-smelling cigarettes. That was a risk. Nobody in Blister Creek smoked, so the cigarettes must have come from outside the valley. If he’d been caught with them, if he’d even smelled of cigarette smoke, people would have turned suspicious and hostile.

“I don’t think it was McQueen,” Jacob said when she’d finished searching the body and they’d returned to the safety of the rocks. “I mean, it could have been, but that’s not the most likely scenario.”

“Do you think we have a traitor?”

“Doesn’t have to be a traitor, only someone who thinks he knows better. He comes up with some scheme that seems perfectly logical and then goes about in secret to execute it. Know what I mean?”

Miriam looked away, uncomfortable. She cleared her throat. “Who?”

“I don’t know yet. But I’ll find out by morning.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Elder Smoot stared out from the north bunker, looking down and across the valley toward Blister Creek. He struggled to maintain his focus. His son Grover lay in a sleeping bag, snoring softly, getting some rest before his father woke him for his turn as spotter. That left Smoot alone with his thoughts.

Only a few hours had passed since Ezekiel had dragged him into Witch’s Warts, and Smoot’s mind had been in turmoil ever since. His son’s plans were almost too horrific to contemplate.

The Lord commanded me to find Jacob Christianson and cut off his head.

If Jacob was a fallen prophet, and Ezekiel had been lifted to take his place, then it was the righteous thing to do. After all, the Sword of Laban had been used
for such a purpose before. It was an ancient relic from The Book of Mormon, wielded by the hand of Nephi to behead Laban and allow the faithful to recover holy scriptures and then escape Jerusalem for the Promised Land in the Americas.

But if Jacob had
not
fallen into apostasy, if he was still favored by God, what then? Not only would Ezekiel’s plan fail—the Lord would never permit it—but Smoot’s own complicity would damn his soul to Outer Darkness. One could not turn against the Lord’s Anointed and survive.

But Ezekiel had the sword. He had the breastplate. How to explain that?

The alarm sounded and startled Grover from his sleep. Smoot told the boy to settle down, then turned on the spotlights and looked uphill. A mule deer stood frozen in the switchback above them, its huge ears turned toward the bunker. A large doe. After a few seconds it regained its senses and bounded back up the road and out of sight. Smoot turned off the lights.

David Christianson had rigged an ingenious electronic system to assist in guarding the highway. Using a solar panel for recharging, an array of car batteries, and two old home-security systems, he’d crisscrossed the road in several places with invisible infrared beams as motion sensors. When activated, a bell would ring inside the bunker. Smoot could then illuminate the road with two spotlights.

It was a good system, but in the past year it had delivered nothing but false alarms. Mostly larger animals like mule deer or coyote triggered the sensors, but occasionally even a skunk with an upraised tail could do the same. These days, the alarm didn’t even raise Smoot’s heart rate. Grover didn’t seem to wake completely, and was soon snoring again.

Smoot’s thoughts had returned to Ezekiel’s strange and frightening pronouncement when a light caught his eye from down in the valley. He looked through the slit running along the valley side of the concrete bunker. It was one of several narrow gun ports that enabled 360-degree fire from the .50-caliber machine gun. On this side it presented a wide, sweeping view of the valley from a vantage point roughly halfway up the cliffs, where the bunker snugged into a crook beside the snaking highway.

There was only a sliver of moon, and the valley had been resting in a pool of inky blackness beneath a glittering bowl of stars. The single light stood out.

Some miscreant, he thought at first, disobeying the brownout regulations. Then another porch light turned on, then the lights of a third house. He took out his binoculars. They were full size, 10x50 power, and strong enough to pinpoint the rough location within town if you could hold them steady. The lights were on at or near the Christianson compound. More lights. Entire households, rousing themselves. Then, to his surprise, he spotted lights from a vehicle.

The vehicle cut east through town, moving at a steady clip. Another vehicle started up, this one making for the highway. Soon, it was driving north, toward the bunker.

Smoot nudged Grover with his toe. “Hey, wake up.”

“Huh?” Grover climbed groggily out of his sleeping bag. “My turn already?”

“There’s something wrong.”

Grover sat upright. He sounded instantly alert. “What is it?”

The boy came over to the gun slit. Smoot handed him a second pair of binoculars.

“Well, look at that,” Grover said. “That’s never a good sign, is it?”

It was a stretch to say that Grover’s personality had changed after his adventures in Las Vegas last year. Grover had always been a sensitive, feminine boy, and sadly, Smoot thought he would stay that way. Grover preferred the piano to riding, would rather read a novel than go target shooting. He still liked to read plays aloud with his teenage sisters. Well, at least Smoot didn’t think anymore that the boy was a homosexual. That was something. The pathetic way he’d mooned after Eliza Christianson was evidence enough.

Grover’s desires had been hopeless from the start. Eliza was in her midtwenties and had been engaged to Steve Krantz, the former gentile. Grover was nineteen and weak and scrawny next to Krantz. Yet that hadn’t kept the boy from moping about the house for a week after Eliza got married.

But since then, Grover had at least grown a spine. He asserted himself around his brothers, rode through the valley with David Christianson to learn electrical and mechanical skills. Heck, that was plenty useful. And Smoot was no longer worried that if the squatters attacked, Grover would curl into a ball and whimper until it was over.

More houselights came on throughout the town. A streetlight blinked on.

“They’re going to cause a blackout,” Grover said. “This time of night, we choke flow through the smaller turbine.”

Sure enough, the lights began to flicker. The fools.

But just when Smoot thought Grover would be proven correct, people in town began to respond to the flickering. Soon, more lights were turning off than turning on. Still, a wave of lights was moving through town as one house aft
er another woke. Multiple flashlights and lanterns added to the movement, bobbing along as they traveled through town. And now he counted six different vehicles, all burning precious fuel as they radiated out from downtown.

Smoot turned on the radio, risking some of their own precious electricity, this stored in batteries. He checked to be sure the radio was tuned to the correct frequency. Almost at once, he heard a woman’s voice.

“Hello? Blister Creek? Come in, please.” The frequency was strangely filled with static, given that town was only a few miles away.

When the woman cut out, Smoot responded. “This is Smoot at the north bunker. What’s going on down there?”

“Hello? It’s Eliza Christianson.”

“Sister Eliza? Are you back already? When did that happen?”

He held the radio receiver in one hand and was still staring through the binoculars, which he held with the other. His first thought was that Eliza’s return explained the chaos below, some alarming news she’d brought from the road. But why hadn’t she descended from the reservoir and passed his checkpoint?

“I can hear someone, but there’s too much static,” she said. “Listen, I’m in Salt Lake. We made it safely. I’ve been trying to reach you.”

This got his attention. She’d made it all the way to the state capital. The thought was so surprising—Smoot hadn’t even believed Salt Lake was still standing, let alone that
Eliza and Steve would reach it safely and then get to a radio—that he momentarily forgot about the turmoil on the valley floor.

She must have a more powerful radio than his. This one was seventy-
five watts, enough to transmit across a hundred miles, maybe a little farther. But Salt Lake was a good two hundred and fifty miles away as the crow flies.

Eliza started to say something about a war and fire, but then her voice faded away. He waited impatiently for her to come back.

As if he didn’t have enough to worry about, the buzzer sounded. Another damn animal had tripped the motion sensors outside. Grover lowered his binoculars and moved to flip the switch and turn on the spotlights.

Smoot waved his hand at Grover. “Never mind, it’s just another coyote. Keep watch on the valley.” Then, into the radio. “Hello? Can you hear me?”

“Elder Smoot, is that you? I can hear you now.”

“Who is in charge up there? Is it still Governor McKay? If I were you, I’d—”

“Hello?” she said. “Are you still there? I lost you again.”

The bunker door swung open and a figure appeared from the darkness. Smoot dropped both the binoculars and the radio receiver. He dove for the firearms in the gun rack on the side wall next to the filing cabinet.

As he did, he recognized his blunder. That last warning had been no animal. It had been an intruder from the reservoir. Even after a hundred false alarms, he should have turned on the lights and checked it out. But with the movement in the valley and Eliza’s unexpected presence on the radio, he’d been distracted from his duties. What a foolish, careless mistake.

But even so, the bunker door was locked. Or should have been. He couldn’t imagine that he’d left it unlocked. Even as this thought crossed his mind he saw that the man bursting in from the darkness held something in his hand. A key? A gun? It was too dark to see.

Grover reached the weapons first. He snatched a shotgun from the rack, pumped it once, and started to turn.

“Don’t shoot! It’s me!”

Smoot flipped the switch and turned on a small, twenty-lumen CFL bulb that dangled from a wire overhead. His son Ezekiel stood in the doorway, panting and wheezing for breath. Sweat drenched his shirt and trickled down his forehead to bead in his beard.

“What the devil?” Smoot said, stunned. His mind was reeling. “Ezekiel, what are you doing?”

“I almost shot him,” Grover said, his voice shaking. He lowered the shotgun. “I almost killed my own brother.”

Smoot took the gun from Grover’s hands, disarmed it, and replaced it on the rack. “Grover is right. Why didn’t you call out?”

Ezekiel shook his head. He was still gasping, trying to catch his breath. He came over and picked up one of the pairs of dropped binoculars, then turned off the light and plunged them back into darkness.

As the older of his two sons stared down at the valley through the binoculars, Smoot remembered the radio. He picked up the receiver.

“Hello? Sister Eliza?”

There was nothing on the other end. Damn.

Ezekiel turned. “You were talking to Jacob’s sister?”

“She called from Salt Lake.”

“What is going on?” Grover asked his brother. “Why are you here? And why are you out of breath?”

“Because I was running, obviously.”

“All the way from the valley?” Grover scoffed. “Wait, you weren’t, were you? Not from the valley. You came down from the cliffs. That’s what triggered the alarm, not an animal.”

Ezekiel ignored his brother’s questions. “How much did she hear? Did you drop the radio before you said my name?”

“I think so,” Smoot said. It was all a blur. “Anyway, Grover is right, isn’t he? You were up above, weren’t you? Please don’t tell me you were talking to the squatters.”

Ezekiel was at the gun slit, looking through the binoculars again. He let out his breath. “Someone is coming.”

Smoot looked out. Two pairs of headlights were racing north from the center of town. In reality, they probably weren’t going that fast, but compared with the long, slow ride on horse that Smoot and his son Grover had taken, they seemed to be flying. Another six or seven minutes and they’d be at the bunker.

“Were you?” Smoot asked.

“What?”

“Were you talking to the squatters?”

“We’ll argue about that later, not with Grover in the room.”

“Anything you can say, you can say in front of me,” the younger brother said.

The other two men ignored Grover as the two vehicles below stopped on the road. One swung west, toward Yellow Flats. The other continued north up the highway, toward the bunker.

“They don’t know,” Ezekiel said, relief in his voice. “They’re checking everywhere, not just here.”

“That doesn’t help when everywhere includes us,” Smoot said. “Whatever you were doing earlier, I take it you don’t want it known.”

“Listen to me,” Ezekiel said. “You need to do exactly as I say. Otherwise there will be trouble.”

“Father, no,” Grover protested. “I don’t care what he wants, don’t agree to it. He’s mixed up in something terrible.”

“Stay out of this,” Smoot said.

“But Father—”

“Quiet!”

Smoot hesitated. He could turn back now. Refuse to participate in whatever lie or scheme that Ezekiel had concocted. Grab the shotgun and force his son to sit in the corner until the truck arrived, then tell them everything. That Ezekiel had come running down from the reservoir. That Ezekiel was planning to kill Jacob while Eliza and Steve were out of town.

But Smoot had already taken too many steps down this path, starting with the meeting at Yellow Flats, and then going with Ezekiel to Witch’s Warts to look at the sword and breastplate.

And Ezekiel was his son. His
oldest
son, now that Bill was dead. Smoot couldn’t betray him on mere suspicion.

“Father,” Ezekiel said, his voice growing desperate.

Smoot made his decision. He pointed his finger at Grover. “You. Out of the bunker. Go!”