Blood of the Faithful (23 page)

Not that he could get away. There was no escaping Blister Creek, unless it was alone, and he’d never leave his family or force them to abandon their homes, their brothers and sisters in the church.

But that didn’t mean Jacob had to pretend to lead while they lurched ever further down a path he could not follow. When Eliza returned, he decided, he would tell the church that they’d have to find another to lead them. From now on, he would be Blister Creek’s doctor, not its prophet. It was a calling he’d never asked for, deserved, or fulfilled.

He was imagining how this would happen, thinking of the relief he would feel when the weight of responsibility lifted from his shoulders, when a gunshot boomed from up the road. It sounded like a shotgun. A split second later, another shotgun blast, followed by a pistol barking off shots.

And then almost immediately after, several different weapons, all going off at the same time.

“Miriam!” David said.

And before Jacob could stop him, his brother had leaped to his feet and snatched up the sniper rifle on its tripod and was running up the road toward the squatter camp. Jacob grabbed the second rifle and ran after him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

As soon as Miriam realized the other shooter would get the first shot, she dropped and rolled, even as she lifted her weapon. With no time to aim properly, she flipped to full auto and let off a spray of gunfire in the general direction of the shooter.

The other weapon fired. Something punched into her shoulder. Miriam was on her knees, firing again on semiauto before she realized she’d been hit and her left arm and shoulder no longer seemed to be working. There was no pain.

The other shooter scrambled back from the road and dropped to her belly. Miriam held the gun up with one arm while her other hung limp. It still didn’t hurt, but a strange numbness was spreading out from the wound. Some deeper, more analytic part of her brain said she was in that brief window, like when you smash your thumb with a hammer, when everything is numb. In another instant there would be raging pain.

The distance between the two shooters wasn’t great, perhaps a hundred yards to where the other shooter was down and trying to bring her gun to bear. It would have been an easy kill had Miriam been able to steady the weapon with her injured arm, even with the target presenting such a low profile. But holding the weapon with one arm, knowing she had only one chance, Miriam needed either luck or a divine hand.

Father in heaven, guide my shot.

She fixed the other woman in the scope. The enemy was trying to get a bead on her in the opposite direction. Miriam’s finger squeezed. The gun kicked against her shoulder and she lost her aim. She had no visual confirmation that she’d killed her enemy.

The pain from the gunshot finally hit. It was like a clawed hand reaching into her shoulder, shredding muscle and tendon, crunching bones in its fist. She gasped and stifled a scream.

Only pure adrenaline got her to her feet with the rifle in hand. She turned and ran back toward the van, forced to trust that her shot had done its work. If she’d missed, a second gunshot would slam into her from behind and she would go down, dead. She reached the van safely.

When Miriam came around the vehicle, she found two more armed men, their eyes darting this way and that at the bodies on the ground, searching in the blackness for the one lurking there to kill them. Miriam still held the assault rifle in her good hand, and shot them both from point-blank range. Then she dropped the heavier, more unwieldy assault rifle and drew her Beretta, which she could more effectively wield with one hand. She sank to the ground with her back against the front tire and popped out the magazine. Gripping the pistol between her knees, she reloaded it with one hand and put away the partially used magazine.

Every movement made her wince. She felt lightheaded. A quick and excruciating probe at the wound showed that it had gone straight through. High velocity, apparently; different ammo would have torn her up worse. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t in trouble. In the short term she was bleeding fairly heavily, and together with the pain she’d have a hard time fighting off her enemies. In the long term there was a hell of a lot of damage in there. Jacob could save her life if she could get to him in time, but he didn’t have the tools in his clinic to do a modern job of fixing her up properly after such a serious wound to bone, muscle, and tendon. She might permanently lose function in that arm and shoulder. That was an awful thought. But first, she had to extract herself from the dire situation at hand.

Gunfire started up again from the south. It blew out windows and tires on the van, and bullets struck the ground all around her. She struggled to a squatting position, and came around the back side of the van where she had more shelter. To her relief, she spotted the woman with the night vision lying motionless in the road where Miriam had dropped her. But that was only a reprieve; several figures were hurrying south along the road toward the body. She had to stop them before they recovered the goggles.

It was too far for a good shot with the pistol, and when she fired a few shots, she only managed to drive them off the road without hitting any of them. Several of the shooters kept blasting away at the van while half a dozen others continued north toward the downed shooter. More people came running from the direction of the camp.

Miriam fell back behind the van. Once they got those goggles, she’d be in trouble. Either a new sniper would wait for Miriam to present herself while the others provided cover, or the goggles would enable them to pinpoint her location and encircle her. They’d figure out first thing that she was alone and injured.

She cast her glance upward, where the .50-caliber machine gun waited, protected behind the sandbags. If they weren’t fools and had loaded the correct belt of ammo into the gun—and McQueen was former military, so she guessed he’d done it properly—the belt would contain tracer bullets to guide the fire. Get up there and she could sweep across the road, mowing them down where they stood.

But when she struggled to a standing position, she found she couldn’t lift her left arm above her waist. There was no way it would support any weight. And she simply wasn’t strong enough to climb to the roof without the full strength of that shoulder.

Miriam waited until a lull in the firing, then edged around the van. Her only hope now was to make a run for it, cradling her injured arm, snatch the goggles from the dead sniper before anyone else reached them, then flee down the road toward the safety of David and Jacob. But as soon as she poked her head around the vehicle, a fresh hail of bullets rattled against the van. She ducked back to safety.

A frustrated groan escaped her mouth. This was grim. Very grim.

Then, from the south, came more gunfire, blasting north along the road. It wasn’t aiming at her.

Jacob raced to keep up with his brother, who flew down the road with little apparent concern for gravel or potholes that might trip him up and break his ankle. Gunfire flashed from the north and northwest, all targeting a dark shape off the shoulder of the road. From this distance, it was impossible to see if it was a rock or an overturned cart, but it must be serving as shelter for Miriam.

David pulled up short. “Change weapons!” He grabbed for Jacob’s semiautomatic rifle and handed back the .308 with the night vision scope. “Take them out.”

“What are you doing?” Jacob asked.

“I’m going after her.”

That would be a terrible risk, with David running right into the teeth of that gunfire, while Jacob sniped from a distance. David might be caught in the crossfire. But Jacob couldn’t protest. If it had been Fernie out there, nothing would have stopped him from going after her.

Jacob flattened himself on the ground and set the gun on its tripod. The pavement was still warm from the stored heat of the sun, and as it seeped into him he felt his pulse slowing, his emotions easing. It was the same steady, clear headed calmness that swept over him when he gloved up for surgery, looked down at a gaping wound, his mind picking out a severed vein or cataloging internal organs: liver, kidney, gallbladder, pancreas.

Only this time he was picking out figures on the highway, armed with rifles and handguns, some shooting toward the object to his right, which turned out to be a van. There was a chance that the scope had been hit or jostled during David’s run, so Jacob took aim first at the chest of the nearest figure, which presented the largest possible target.

Jacob fired. The gun thumped. The figure fell.

Slowly, keeping calm, he unlocked the bolt to open the breech and eject the spent cartridge as he chambered another round. He picked out another figure, this one a woman standing in the middle of the road, emptying her pistol at the van. He dropped her too. The rest of the people on the road scrambled for cover.

He turned his scope toward the van. There he spotted Miriam, crouched behind the front tire of the van, a pistol in one hand, her goggles on. She glanced toward him, no doubt wondering if he were friend or foe, then turned and fired back toward camp.

She didn’t steady her pistol with both hands, firing instead with only her right. Her left arm hung limp and wounded. A gunshot to either the upper arm or shoulder. For a moment Jacob’s thoughts turned to the difficulty they’d have getting her down to the bunker and the Humvee, and from there to the clinic. There Jacob faced another surgery without the benefit of X-rays, only a primitive groping at the wound to see what injuries he could diagnose by eye. But first he had to get her out of there.

The fiercest gunfire was now coming from closer to the camp. These attackers also had a better angle at the back of the van. This was the biggest threat to take out Miriam, but he’d have to fire over and through both Miriam and David. As Jacob was trying to pick out one of the distant figures, his brother passed as a blurry figure across his scope.

“Dammit, get out of there.”

Frustrated, unable to take the risk, he aimed the gun back to the highway. The men and women on the road were moving again. He hit two more, but one of them seemed to be only clipped. The man dropped to the ground with the others and continued on his belly. The scope must be out of alignment, a flaw that manifested itself only now that he was shooting at more distant targets. If he could figure exactly
how
it was out of alignment, he could adjust his shots accordingly.

He paused to load more rounds into the weapon. Then he picked out the lead, crawling figure and aimed first high, then low. Both shots missed, but he saw where the low shot had hit the pavement, which was an important clue. The next time he aimed high and slightly to the left. Bull’s-eye.

Still, the figures kept moving north, not toward the van, but up the road. Why? What were they so desperate to reach in that direction? There was no cover. They were only keeping themselves in reach of his sniper rifle, a danger they wouldn’t be able to see by the thin light of the moon.

Five of the survivors turned their guns in his direction and started shooting wildly. A bullet smacked the pavement nearby. He shot one of them, then hazarded a look at two of the squatters now bent over a body on the ground.

The dead person wasn’t somebody Jacob had shot. Miriam must have taken the shooter down. Perhaps the person was only wounded and crying for help. Like David, the enemy was desperate to rescue one of their own.

That was the sort of storytelling that crippled his will and made it hard to finish the ugly business he’d started. So Jacob hesitated. Then, as they flipped over what looked to be a dead woman, he saw that he’d been wrong. One of them pulled off a pair of goggles from her head and put them on. That’s what it was.

They had his night vision, which he’d foolishly left on the seat of his truck before Ezekiel stole it. There was no sign of his truck, but here were the goggles, ready to peer through the darkness and get a clear shot at the shooter tormenting them from the road.

He took aim and fired.

But the man was moving, others crossing in front of him. The shot either missed or hit someone else. The man grabbed a gun with a scope and took aim from one knee. But Jacob now had more time to aim. Bullets still blasted wildly in his general direction, but he ignored them, concentrating only on the man with the goggles. The man was still moving his weapon, trying to find the enemy. Jacob would get the first shot.

Then two big, blurry figures staggered in front of his scope, one supporting the other. They were David and Miriam, stumbling down the highway toward him. Jacob no longer had a clear angle.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Miriam’s hopes leaped when she realized that the shooter south on the highway was not targeting her, but her enemies.

They’d come for her. David and Jacob, hearing the shooting, had come running from their hiding place. Twenty minutes ago, after taking care of the apostate, she would have scoffed at the thought that she’d need any sort of help. Now, crouching frightened and helpless behind the van, with a throbbing, crippling wound in her left shoulder, she almost wept with relief to know they’d come.

The rifle snapped regularly, but with little urgency. Perfect. Steady shots, carefully taken. Given a few minutes, the rifle with its night vision scope would devastate the forces arrayed against her.

The main threat was the increasing gunfire from the direction of the camp, which came at her from the rear and behind the van where she hid. The shooters wouldn’t be able to see her as long as she kept still, and they weren’t particularly close, but there was enough gunfire roughly aimed in her direction that it was only a matter of time before someone caught her with a lucky shot.

Miriam glanced back down the road, silently willing her rescuer to target the camp so she could get clear. A man staggered off the highway, a few hundred yards distant and running toward her. He carried a rifle. She recognized him by his gait.

“David,” she whispered, both relieved and yet terrified for him at the same time.

She came around the front of the van with the Beretta held in her outstretched right hand. Most of the gunfire from the opposite side of the road was directed at the shooter—Jacob, she now understood—but at least one person seemed to have spotted the figure running in the darkness. He aimed a pistol at David.

Before he could fire, Miriam took aim and fired. It was a long shot for a pistol held in one hand—a good seventy-five yards—but her bullet found its mark. The enemy fell.

David stumbled out of the darkness calling her name.

“Over here!”

He found her and grabbed her in a fierce embrace that made her cry out in pain.

“You’re hurt,” he said.

“Not as bad as the other guy, believe me.” She gritted her teeth at a fresh wave of pain. “I got Ezekiel too.”

“I don’t care about that. Let’s get out of here.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Hands and knees,” he said. “We’ll crawl along the shore while Jacob holds them down with the rifle.”

“No hands and knees. I can’t do it. In fact,” she said, though it grated her to admit it, “I’m fading fast. I can’t go running either, not for long. We’ll have to get up to the highway where it’s flat.”

“There are shooters up there.”

“God will protect us. And Jacob will too.”

“Give me the goggles.”

He put them on and cursed as he took stock of the forces arrayed against them. For Miriam, the darkness was almost a relief.

“We’re okay,” David said, though he didn’t sound like he believed it. “Everything will be fine. I’ll swing around the front, take out as many as I can, and hope Jacob does the rest. You get up to the highway and move as fast as you can. We’ll protect you.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Not a very good plan, but she couldn’t see any better option. And every second they waited only increased the number and organization of the forces arrayed against them. Time to place their trust in the hands of the Lord.

He kissed her forehead. “I love you, Miriam.”

“I love you too. Now go!”

David sprang to his feet and ran around the front of the van at a crouch, the goggles on his head and the rifle in hand. Then he disappeared into shadows, nothing but a moving black shape ahead of her. She stumbled after him, blind and helpless. This is what the enemy felt. It was terrifying.

Flashes lit up the road, the camp, the shoulders of the highway. No way to tell friend from foe or even do more than pick out the general direction of any one party. The blindness grew more debilitating with every step. Her hearing struggled to fill the void. Bullets pinged against the van behind her like ball-peen hammers against a sheet of metal. Shouts came from the direction of camp, but the enemy on the highway was eerily quiet.

Miriam was almost to the road when gunfire sounded from a shooter a few yards ahead of her. She stifled a flinch, knowing it was only David, picking out the biggest threats, one by one.

“Miriam,” he said. “Go!”

But she was still struggling to find her footing on the slope up to the shoulder of the road. The pavement must be close, she knew, but she hadn’t reached it. And her head was swimming, the wound in her shoulder aching with a pain that felt like icy cold and the stab of a red-hot poker in turns. She reached the highway and stumbled. Regained her feet.

The gunfire sounded hollow now, like she was at the bottom of a well. She staggered forward. David took hold of her good arm and hauled her along.

“No,” she tried to say. “Keep firing.”

But the words came out in a slur.

“Faster,” he urged. “You can do it.”

He was carrying most of her weight now, having draped her good arm over his shoulder. She’d dropped her pistol at some point, but didn’t remember it falling from her fingers.

Hold on,
she told herself.
Keep moving. You can’t stop now.

Miriam’s worries dropped away: her role as protector of the valley, her love for David and his love for her. At that moment, she could think only of her children. They needed their mother. Diego, Abigail. One adopted, one the child of her own womb. She loved them both fiercely, equally. They needed her in different ways, but they both needed her. And she needed them.

That consuming need propelled her, forced her legs to keep churning. Gunfire sounded all around, but no bullet hit them. They were protected from above. Ahead, she could see a figure lying flat on the pavement. He was shouting at them. Something about moving off the highway so he could get a shot. Who was that? David? No, her husband was holding her up and dragging her along. It must be Jacob. They were drawing closer. Another few steps and they’d reach Jacob and safety.

I’m going to make it. I’m going to live.

Then a tremendous blow slammed into her back and she fell.

When Miriam and David blocked his view, Jacob scrambled to move himself and the gun so he’d have a different line of sight through the scope. He shifted several feet to the left, and flattened on the pavement to take fresh aim.

He dropped three enemies in quick succession, but none of them was the person with the goggles. Where was he?

Jacob glanced away from the scope to check on the progress of David and Miriam. His brother had Miriam’s arm draped over his shoulder. Her other arm hung limp and her head drooped. Her feet staggered along. The two of them weaved across the road like a pair of drunks, no more than fifty yards away.

“David, move!” he shouted. “I need a clear shot.”

He looked in the scope again. Two men stood firing assault rifles haphazardly down the highway. Another had dropped to one knee and took more careful aim. A glint of reflected light from this one. The goggles.

Jacob squeezed the trigger. At that exact moment, a flare of light came from the muzzle of the other man’s gun. David and Miriam fell in a jumble on the pavement.

From his rear came the growl of a diesel engine, the crunch of tires. It was a vehicle closing rapidly from the direction of the cliffs. No lights. Ahead, David shouted in fear or pain. More people closed in on the road ahead of Jacob. He didn’t dare let up, not even to look back at the vehicle that rolled to a stop behind him.

He fired three more times. Then, to his relief, the door slammed shut behind him and a gun fired on full auto, shooting over Jacob and down the highway. It was Stephen Paul. The gunfire was as random as the enemy’s, but it scattered the squatters from the highway in a way that the sniping had not. Jacob dropped two more people, including one who tried to recover the night vision goggles. By now he must have killed seven or eight people, but still they were boiling out of the camp by the dozen.

“Give me the rifle,” Stephen Paul said. “Go get them.”

Jacob left the other man with the sniper rifle and ran forward at a crouch to get to David and Miriam. His brother had extricated himself and was on his feet trying to lift Miriam, who lay sprawled in the road. Jacob grabbed her legs and the two brothers hauled her back. Stephen Paul continued to fire the .308.

“Get her into the truck,” Jacob said to David when they were behind the rifle.

While Stephen Paul sniped, they got Miriam into the back of the Humvee. A bullet pinged off the metal near Jacob’s head. He barely heard it; his mind was churning as his fingers probed the wounds in the darkness.

“We got her in!” David shouted at Stephen Paul, his voice tight and frightened. “Let’s go!”

Stephen Paul grabbed the weapon and jumped to his feet as David climbed in with Jacob and Miriam and pulled the door shut. The Humvee swung around the highway, backed up to make the turn, then raced down the highway. Bullets dinged off the vehicle.

“Give me light,” Jacob said.

The light came on, and he blinked, blinded after so long in the darkness. While he waited for his eyes to adjust, his fingers worked to unbutton Miriam’s shirt. His eyes finally adjusted at the same moment he got the shirt peeled back from her torso. Beside him, David gasped.

There were two wounds. The first had struck her from the front, and made a mess of her left shoulder—damage to the scapula near the glenohumeral joint. The second had entered from behind, passed all the way through, and left a gaping exit wound that had torn through her right breast. As the bullet passed through her chest cavity, it had dissipated energy along the wound track, sending a shock wave through her body. Already, her blood covered Jacob’s hands and pooled onto the carpeted truck bed.

Miriam’s eyes were open, flickering. Bloody spume bubbled through her lips.

A sob escaped from David’s mouth. He reached for her.

“Stay back,” Jacob snapped.

He rolled Miriam onto her side to look at the entry wound. He followed its trajectory from the small hole through the serratus posterior muscle left of the scapula, to where it emerged from her breast. He pictured the lungs, drowning in blood. His heart sank.

And she’d already lost blood from that first hit. They were twenty minutes from his clinic, so poorly outfitted these days that he doubted he’d be able to stabilize a wound like this if it had happened in his front yard.

“Do something!” David pleaded.

Jacob chewed his lip. He took a deep breath, getting ready to tell David the awful news. Then Stephen Paul pulled to a stop. He jumped out of the truck. They must be at the bunker, and he had run in to man the machine gun in case the enemy came for an attack.

“Go,” Jacob told his brother. “Drive the truck. Get me to the clinic.”

David jumped from the back. An instant later, they were careening down the switchbacks to the valley floor.

“How is she?” David cried.

“Shut up and drive.”

Jacob pressed against the larger exit wound with the heel of his right hand. With his other hand, he felt for her pulse. Already, he couldn’t detect a radial pulse, but putting his fingers to her throat detected a feeble carotid pulse. That meant her blood pressure was already below sixty and falling.

There was nothing he could do but stare at Miriam as the moments of her death approached minute by minute. Even though they were flying down the highway at top speed, it seemed to take forever before David screeched around a corner and Jacob knew they’d reached the center of town. Moments later, the vehicle jerked to a stop. David raced around and threw open the doors.

Jacob stared at Miriam. Her eyes were glassy and the blood bubbles had stopped moving at her lips.

“Let’s go,” David said. “Get her inside. For God’s sake, don’t just sit there.”

Miriam was limp. No further pulse could be detected. Jacob released the pressure on her chest. Blood oozed slowly from the exit wound, but there wasn’t enough pressure left to force it out.

“What are you doing?” David cried.

Jacob looked up at his brother, throat tight. “David.”

“Please, you saved her before.” His voice was pleading, sobbing. “Remember? She was shot through the lung. And you pulled her out of it. You saved her!”

“It wasn’t like this.”

“You have to try!”

“I’m sorry. She’s already gone.”

“She can’t be. She didn’t even—” He swallowed hard. “—didn’t even say goodbye. I can’t—no.”

David was shaking. Outside, a dog was barking, and doors opened and closed. Voices.

“Use the priesthood,” David urged. “You’re the prophet. You can close her wounds, bring her back. Have faith!” He’d taken Miriam’s hand and squeezed it while staring at her with bugging eyes. “Jacob!”

“I’m so sorry.” Jacob felt numb, like he was dreaming. This couldn’t be happening.

“Give her a blessing,” David begged. “Please.”

“Yes, okay. Help me get her onto the lawn.”

They carried her out of the back of the Humvee. Women came from the Christianson houses. One was Lillian, who let out a cry when she saw Miriam and came running. Lillian’s sister-in-law, Jessie Lyn, grabbed the young woman and held her tight. David stumbled at the curb and fell, but two women grabbed his arm and held him up, while another caught Miriam before she hit the ground. Together, the men and women eased Miriam onto the grass. David threw himself on top of her, weeping, kissing her forehead and mouth, his tears dripping on her face.