Blood of the Faithful (8 page)

“What the hell was that about?” Chambers said. “Why would they attack?”

“The same reason we’d attack a Humvee rolling through Blister Creek,” Jacob said.

“That’s different,” David said. “The government tried to steal our food. You’d think the gentiles would see a military truck and hope it was help.”

“So the government has tried to steal
everyone’s
food,” Jacob said.

Eliza grabbed Steve and pulled him a few feet away. They spoke in whispers.

Jacob glanced at them, curious, but Miriam was pacing about, looking agitated, and then she came up to him. “I’ll bet the military came through already. Probably those blasted irregulars. You either fight back or they loot and sack your town like they did in Colorado City. Like they tried to do to us. That’s why those people saw a military vehicle and freaked out.”

“Do we fight our way through or go home?” David asked.

Jacob shook his head. “I don’t want to fight.”

“Too late for that,” his brother said.

“I doubt we killed anyone,” Jacob said. “They were hunkered down behind those berms, and we only fired back for a few seconds.”

He desperately wanted to make peaceful overtures to the survivors in Richfield. Barring that, to get through and find someone less hostile farther north. On the one hand, he was elated to discover that there was still a town organized enough to defend itself against invaders. On the other hand, he hadn’t been invading. He’d been turning around to reassess. Yet they’d still tried to kill him.

Or had they? If that grenade had hit, it would have blown a hole in the side of the Humvee. Chances were they’d be dead. But why had they missed? Poor marksmanship? Or had it been a warning shot?

“So what, we go back home?” David asked.

“I say we drive across those fields and flank their defenses,” Miriam said. “They can’t stop us. We have a heavy machine gun. They don’t.”

“You don’t know that,” David said. “Besides, those RPGs are more than enough.”

“Dammit,” Chambers said. “Why’d they have to shoot? I was almost out of here.”

“I say we try again,” Miriam persisted.

“Couple of hours ago you thought this was a waste of time,” Jacob said.

“Now we’ve got a chance to get rid of this jerk,” she said, hooking her thumb at Chambers. “Look at him. He doesn’t want to spend one more minute with us.”

“It’s too risky,” David said. “Too many of us have families. And the prophet. Plus, he’s our doctor. It doesn’t do any good to get medical supplies if there’s no doctor left to administer it.”

“This was never just about medical supplies,” Miriam said. “Was it, Jacob?”

Jacob twisted one hand around the barrel of his assault rifle, wanting to groan. So close to making contact. If only they hadn’t come under fire.

“We can’t risk it,” Jacob said. “We’ll go home.”

Miriam dropped her argument. “That’s the leadership I mean. Come on, everyone back in.”

Eliza turned from her conversation with Steve. “The Methuselah tank could get through that barrier. Knock it down, then we’d have enough horsepower to push those buses out of the way.”

From anyone else, Jacob would have dismissed the suggestion. He’d already decided it wasn’t worth a battle, wasn’t worth more killing. Maybe in another year Richfield wouldn’t be hostile and they could try again.

“You think I should swap vehicles and make another attempt?” he asked.

“I don’t think
you
should, no. But Steve and I will go.” She glanced at Chambers. “And him. One of us can drive. One can operate the machine gun, and one can feed the ammo. The tank will soak up plenty of abuse. Probably even survive a hit from an RPG.”

Eliza wasn’t talking about an actual tank, but the converted armored car they’d used to flee Las Vegas. Some crazy old prepper had welded on extra armor and gun ports and crammed it with supplies to ride out the collapse. The vehicle was stronger than the Humvee but guzzled precious fuel, so it was rarely started up. Thanks to the preparations of Jacob’s father, the church had begun the crisis with hundreds of thousands of gallons of diesel fuel stored in the valley, but three years later, they had barely half their starting supplies. There was still plenty for an important mission like this, but he’d hate to burn so much unless he was sure.

“Jacob?” she asked.

“I’m thinking about it.”

“We don’t have any kids yet,” she said. “It’s just the two of us, plus Chambers. If we get trapped outside the valley for a while, it will be fine.”

“It’s not the getting trapped part that I worry about.”

“Why me?” Chambers asked.

“You don’t want to leave?” Jacob asked, surprised.

“Not really.”

“But you were just griping about losing the chance to get away from us,” Jacob said. “We’re a bunch of religious crazies and survivalist fanatics.”

“Yeah, well. Don’t care much for getting killed either.” Chambers shrugged. “I’ve had a chance to reconsider.”

Miriam snorted. “Whatever.”

“We won’t get killed,” Eliza said. “Whatever is up there, it can’t be any worse than what we faced last year in Las Vegas.”

“It was the will of the Lord that we survived Vegas,” Miriam said. “I’m not so sure about this.”

“Either way,” Chambers said, “I’m not going through another firefight if I can help it. I’ve seen enough of that to last a lifetime. I’m going back with the rest of you.”

“Does that mean you’ll stop complaining?” Miriam asked. “How about that? You had your chance, you turned back. So now you can shut up.”

“We still want to go,” Eliza said. “With or without Chambers.”

“I don’t know,” Jacob said. He turned to Steve. “You’re on board with this?”

“It was my idea in the first place,” he said. “I don’t want to abandon Blister Creek, of course I don’t. But I need to know if there’s anything out there. I think you understand that, Jacob.”

“I do.”

“Who knows what we’ll find? A government, maybe. I still believe in this country. If people don’t stand up and start pulling it together again, it’ll die.”

It was a little late for that. A year ago brush wars had inflamed half the continent. It wouldn’t be any better on the outside now. There sure wouldn’t be a Federal government with any sort of authority.

But that didn’t mean there was nothing left to rebuild. It might start with something as simple as driving to Provo or Salt Lake and establishing contact. Jacob had already been turning this over in his head for months. He wanted to make that trip himself.

“We’ve taken chances before,” Eliza said. “They always turned out well.”

Jacob met her gaze. “Except when they haven’t. Then people die.”

“Trust me, please. Trust in—”

“In the Lord?” he asked.

“In my
judgment.
I want you to trust in my judgment, Jacob.”

A few hours later, and back in the valley, Eliza gave Jacob a hug before she climbed into the Methuselah tank. “Don’t worry, I’ll be careful.”

Jacob tried to keep the concern from his voice. “I trust you and I trust Steve. It’s everything else that worries me.”

“This beast got us out of Las Vegas. It will do fine.” She patted the side of the armored car, which sat at the curb in front of the Christianson house, fetched from the garage out back. It sat as squat and ugly as a horny toad.

“See if you can find a way around Richfield. They’ll be jumpy after exchanging fire with us earlier.”

“We’ll try. No promises.”

Jacob handed her his list of medical supplies. “You know the drill. Don’t put yourself in unnecessary danger, but if you can find it, this is stuff I need.”

“Got it.”

Steve was already behind the wheel after having loaded supplies into the truck: food, water, ammunition, blankets, white sheets to wave when necessary. An hour had passed since their return to the valley and the others from the earlier expedition had only just dispersed toward their respective homes, including Chambers, that coward. It was still only midafternoon. That was the surprising part.

In the short time since morning, they’d traveled almost two hundred miles in the Humvee, a round trip to Richfield and back that would have taken several days on horse. And now Eliza and Steve meant to drive all the way around (or through) Richfield before dark. Possibly all the way to Provo by nightfall, if they could manage it. People used to cross such distances with hardly a thought. Now it felt like sending someone across the ocean in a sailboat; you were never sure you’d see them again.

Steve turned the key in the ignition. The engine rumbled to life. He opened the door rather than peering through the tiny slit of bulletproof glass.

“Ready, Liz?”

“One sec.” She turned back to Jacob. “Go to scripture study tomorrow night.”

“What, the big one at the chapel?”

“Yes, that one. You’ve been skipping the Tuesday meetings—you don’t know what’s going on. I was keeping watch on it, but . . . well, I really think you should go. You
need
to go.”

Jacob was still wondering what that was about when she climbed into the truck and they drove off. He stared after the vehicle as it rounded the corner and headed for the cliffs. Gradually, the rumbling engine faded in the distance.

After that, he strained against the rustling breeze for a long time, wondering if he’d be able to hear gunfire all the way from the cliffs if the wind blew just right. McQueen had better keep that gate open or there would be hell to pay.

Jacob heard nothing. Eventually, he turned back toward the house, ready to make a dent in his endless list of chores and responsibilities.

CHAPTER NINE

Miriam left the house at dusk, when gold and red still burnished the western horizon, and there was still enough light to ride by. But it was no easy task to slip away without being spotted. Their smaller house was next to the main Christianson compound, and the two families shared stables.

So she sent David next door to keep Jacob occupied, while Lillian kept watch along the back of the house, ready to warn her if someone came around from the front. Neither of them questioned Miriam’s destination or her motives for keeping her departure a secret. But she could tell they were bursting with curiosity.

As Miriam rode out, heading north through the fields before turning onto the street, she met Lillian still keeping watch. A look flickered across the younger woman’s face, an unstated desire to ride with Miriam and share in her secret. Miriam acknowledged it with a nod. Inside, she felt a flood of affection for her sister wife. Lillian was a good woman, intelligent, hardworking, and loyal.

They had a third woman in the family now. Clarissa Smoot’s husband had died in the fight at the reservoir last year and had chosen to join herself and her children to the David Christianson family. She was good-hearted, if sometimes moody, but Miriam figured that most of that was mourning for her first husband and her former sister wives, now scattered among several church families.

Maybe Miriam would feel closer to Clarissa in time, but the new sister wife had a different personality, more feminine, more interested in house and kitchen and childrearing than the other two wives. Nothing wrong with that. It took different types to form a healthy family. But Miriam didn’t have much patience for all that female homemaking stuff.

Miriam got off the pavement and onto dirt ranch roads as soon as she could. It was trickier riding here, and the horse moved so slowly and cautiously in the gathering gloom that she thought briefly about dismounting and going the rest of the way to the Smoot ranch on foot. She owned a pair of night vision goggles, but hadn’t powered them up in several weeks, and when she’d checked at the house, had been alarmed to discover that the batteries would no longer hold a charge. Three years ago she’d have tossed the old batteries without a second thought. Now, she had no way to replace them.

Instead, she carried an LED penlight that could be shaken in her hand to recharge. Thanks to some forward thinking, these were common in Blister Creek. The only problem was the poor quality of light. Upon hand charging, hers would cast a thin, rapidly fading beam. As weak as it was, she didn’t dare use the flashlight while she was in the open, out of fear that someone would spot her.

It took a good hour or more to hook around to the Smoot ranch from the northeast. She bypassed the house and barns, then came onto the hundred acres or so of grazing land that abutted Smoot’s fields. Here she tied her horse to a rock behind a sagebrush-covered knoll, then checked her pistol in its holster and slung her rifle over her shoulder. She used the moonlight to find her way to the fenced-in silos, turning on the penlight only when clouds swept in front of the moon.

Once she was sure there was nobody about and the silos couldn’t be seen from the Smoot house, she shook the penlight until it had a good charge. Then she walked carefully around the fenced enclosure, looking at footprints.

Boot prints came and went from the dry wash. She presumed these belonged to Stephen Paul and Jacob, who had come through yesterday to inspect the silos. These were visible only where the dirt was soft and sandy, not on the slickrock that penetrated the surface here and there. Unfortunately, they’d walked around so much that she was having a hard time picking out individual prints, or spotting any older prints that might have indicated a third party at the scene. She made her way to the gate. It was chained with a padlock.

A sound behind her caught her ear, something like the scrape of a boot on stone. Then a hiss of a man’s breath as she started to move, dropping the flashlight and lifting the rifle in one movement. She groped for the bolt.

Even as she did so, she heard a telltale metallic snick. The sound of a hammer being drawn on a revolver. She had no chance. Someone had come up behind her and already had her in his sights. If she turned, he’d kill her. With that realization, she hesitated, and that hesitation was doubly deadly.

“Don’t do it!” a man’s voice ordered. He sounded about twenty feet away. “Put down the gun and lift your hands.”

She almost gasped with relief as she recognized the voice. “Jacob, it’s me. Miriam.”

Jacob grunted. “Miriam!”

Miriam turned around, but she couldn’t see him. She picked up the light, its beam flickering through the dust kicked up by her shoes. He had to be close, but where?

“Come over here,” he said. “You’re too exposed.”

“I can’t see you.” Her heart was still pounding.

“Down here, in the wash.”

Ah, of course. She found a place where livestock had cut a path down so they could drink when the spring runoff filled the wash. There he was, about ten feet farther down the sandy bottom, where he could peer over the edge toward the silo.

“Now turn off the light before someone sees us.”

They were out of view of the Smoot house, so she doubted the light was a risk, but she obeyed anyway. Jacob was a few inches taller than her and so she kicked her foot into the embankment until she’d formed a little place to stand on and get up to his height. She looked over the top of the wash back at the silos, but couldn’t see much from this distance with the poor light of the sliver moon.

“How did you know I was here?” he asked in a low voice.

“I heard you, your boots scuffing together or hitting a stone.”

“You’ve got good ears.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Still, I got the drop on you for once,” he said, a measure of satisfaction in his voice.

His tone was friendly, and she didn’t take it as an insult. Still, she couldn’t help defending herself.

“Only because you were watching for me,” she said. “Why aren’t you back at the house? I thought you were talking to David.”

“He came over to the house to chat about solar panels. My son had saddled up my horse and—” Jacob paused, chuckled. “Oh, I see. You sent David over to distract me so you could sneak out without me seeing you. Only I was trying to get rid of
him
so I could come here myself.”

“How did you get rid of him?”

“I didn’t, not really. David went on for about twenty minutes. But I rode straight here. You must have gone the long way, based on where you came out.”

“Weren’t you worried Smoot would spot you?” she asked.

“I had an excuse if I ran into anyone. A bit of minor Quorum business to discuss with Elder Smoot. I didn’t, so I came straight back here.”

“Clever.” She wished she’d come up with her own ready pretext so she could have gotten here first.

“So why are you here?” he asked.

“Checking things out,” she said vaguely. “Like you.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Jacob’s voice hardened into suspicion. “How did you know to come here, specifically? Who told you?”

There was no use pretending she didn’t know what he was talking about. The only reason to come to these silos was if she already knew about the missing grain. Still, she couldn’t exactly blurt out what had happened at last night’s secret meeting at Sister Rebecca’s cabin.

“Someone told me,” she said. “Steve and Eliza are gone, so that left me to investigate.”

“Who told you?”

“You know, the usual gossipers.”

“I don’t believe you. Was it Stephen Paul?”

“No, someone else,” she lied. “I only found out last night.”

“I only found out last night too,” Jacob said. “And Stephen Paul was the only one with me. I haven’t told anyone. So unless you knew already . . . you’re not mixed up in this, are you?”

“No!”

“Shh. Keep your voice down.”

“I’m not, and I didn’t know already.”

“Miriam, tell me the truth.”

“I’m absolutely not mixed up in this. Stealing our food and giving it to the squatters? How could you even think such a thing?”

“I wouldn’t think it, but you claim Stephen Paul didn’t tell you. Yet somehow you knew already.”

Miriam was struggling to think of a better lie that would appease him without implicating herself further. The problem was, Jacob knew her too well after all these years. The first time she’d met him, way back when she’d infiltrated the Zarahemla sect, she’d tried to deny that she was an FBI agent. He’d seen through that as well.

Miriam dropped her voice to a whisper. “I told you this morning that I trust you. Now I need you to trust me. God chose you to be His prophet. He chose me to be His destroying angel.”

“Don’t use that phrase. I don’t like it.”

“Fine, then His enforcer. I protect this church and this valley. I protect you, Jacob.”

“So you’re here to what?” he pressed. “Enforce? What does that even mean?”

“I was going to use the penlight and walk around, see if I could figure out who is stealing from the silos. I have my suspicions, but I need to be sure. What are you doing?”

“Waiting for the thief to steal food. He should be here soon.”

Miriam stiffened. “What makes you think it will happen tonight?”

“There’s a lot of missing food. Do you know how hard it is to ship it out of here? Unless you’ve got trucks, and I don’t see how that could happen.”

“Or mule-drawn wagons,” she said.

“That would be even more difficult. Wagons couldn’t cross the desert from here, they’d have to backtrack to the road. We’re talking dozens of shipments. Slow and noisy. Someone would have spotted them by now.”

“Then how does the thief manage it?”

“It’s like eating an elephant,” Jacob said. “One bite at time. In this case, one bite each and every night, or near enough. That’s what it would take. I was going to wait to see who, if anyone, showed up.”

“You must have suspicions.”

“Everything points to Elder Smoot. This is his land, and the Smoots usually man the bunkers at the switchbacks up to the cliffs, since they’re the biggest family on the north end of town. It’s a shorter ride for them. That means they’d have the easiest job smuggling the food out of the valley.” Jacob hesitated. “But it seems too simple, too obvious. And too risky for him.”

“Someone would check these silos sooner or later,” she agreed, “and then he’d have to answer. It would be a terrible chance to take.”

“Besides, Smoot is hostile to the squatters,” Jacob said. “He’d rather burn the food than see it fall into their hands.”

“Got to agree with him there.”

“Then who do you think it is?”

“Chambers,” Miriam said without hesitation.

“Because he’s a gentile?”

“Because he hates us, Jacob. He hates everything we stand for. And he resents that we’re still alive and kicking and the rest of the world has gone straight to hell.”

“He needs a better motive than that.”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s his ticket out of the valley.”

“He had his chance this afternoon,” Jacob said, “and he refused to go north with Steve and Eliza.”

“Maybe because he wanted to keep stealing our food.”

“Again, for what purpose?”

“Remember how Chambers was yawning this morning? How he drifted off to sleep in the truck? When’s the last time you saw him out and about during the middle of the day?”

“Yesterday, patrolling with Steve, in fact.” Jacob shrugged. “But no, I don’t see him out and about much. That doesn’t prove anything, only that he’s lazy and disgruntled.”

Miriam was growing exasperated with Jacob. Was he blind to the way the world worked? Chambers was stealing from them because he hated the church. And he was jealous.

“Fine, since you’re so smart, who is stealing the food?” she asked. “If it’s not Smoot and it’s not Chambers, then who?”

“I don’t know.”

They fell silent. It was a clear, still night, growing colder as the thin desert air bled off the daytime heat. But the sand at their feet was still hot from the baking it had taken during the day. A coyote yipped to the east, answered moments later by another yipping, this one more distant. The coyote population had exploded in the surrounding deserts over the past three years, and it was a running battle to keep them from devouring entire flocks of sheep. A few more years and the wolves too, would return, and then things would get interesting.

An hour passed and Miriam was getting tired from standing up. She was about to suggest taking turns watching while the other person sat, when her ears caught the sound of a high-pitched mechanical whine from the desert side. Like a two-stroke motorcycle engine. She hadn’t heard that sound in a long time.

The engine was gradually growing closer, but cut out when it was still a half mile distant. Far enough from the Smoot compound, she thought, that the distance and the hillock would keep the sound from the house. Whoever it was must be walking the final distance.

Something occurred to Miriam. She tugged on Jacob’s arm so she could whisper in his ear.

“The padlock,” she said. “You cut the chain yesterday, so you must have replaced the lock. His key won’t work, and he’ll know we’re on to him.”

Jacob whispered back. “I took the padlock to the shop and drilled out the tumblers. Any key will open it. Then I popped it and put it on a new chain. He’ll never know.”

Good thinking. She settled down to wait.

About fifteen minutes passed before the sound of bouncing tires and a rattling of wood on wood caught her ear. A shadow approached the silos, pulling another shadowy object. There was enough moonlight from the crescent overhead that she was fairly sure it was a man, but not enough light to pick out his features. And what was he pulling?

He rattled the chain link as he felt for the gate. Then came the unmistakable sound of a rechargeable flashlight magnet shaking up and down in its solenoid. He turned on the light so he could fit the key into the lock. It was only on for a second, but that was enough. The light reflected off his face and his immediate surroundings.

And then she knew.