Destroying Angel (14 page)

“What is happening here?” he said. “Did this man take you for his own? When Aaron Young failed to return, did you press yourself into Elmo’s arms? Did he make you his concubine?”

She thrust her jaw forward. “No.”

He looked back to Elmo, whose face showed hope but also something else. Confusion, Taylor Junior thought. Lillian’s defiance surprised him as well.

“She told us to do it,” Elmo said.

“We waited for months,” Lillian said. “And you didn’t come. Two men went out. The first didn’t come back. The second—that
was Phillip Cobb. I knew that either the enemy was killing our men when they left or our men were surrendering. I told Levi—”

“Wait, a
woman
made this decision?” He lifted the gun from Elmo’s forehead and pointed it at Lillian. He would have shot her too, out of sheer outrage, when Levi Cobb entered from the far side of the room. Levi stared, gaping.

“They said you were in charge,” Taylor Junior said. “Only now I find a woman giving orders.”

Levi sputtered. “She’s not in charge.” He shot Elmo a look and then glared at Lillian. “I’m in command here.”

“Who gave the order to abandon the guard post inside the front doors?”

“We were wasting energy fighting each other. And there weren’t enough men left. I told Lillian to keep the women under control and…” His voice trailed off, as if he’d realized, too late, what he was admitting.

Two other women arrived, then a young boy, and finally Jason Johnson entered the room. He too was eating, though he had the good sense to set his sandwich on the nearest table and swallow whatever was in his mouth. He stood rigid and silent while he surveyed the scene.

“How many men are left?” Taylor Junior asked.

“This is all,” Levi said. “Me, Jason, Elmo. Elmo’s father, but he’s old and weak and going senile. And now you. Where are the others?”

“Dead. Murdered by the Christiansons.”

Looking around the room at this pitiful remnant, Taylor Junior felt suddenly tired. Weeks hiding in the pit, buried in his own filth, and fighting off visions of the angel. Roasting in the day,
shivering at night. And then a fall spent hiking across the desert at night until his feet felt like bloody stumps. A winter freezing in Aaron Young’s abandoned trailer, where the cold weather seemed never-ending, even when the calendar rolled into April and then May. Sneaking in and out of Blister Creek to prepare for the final assault on the town. And finally, driven by the angel into one last, desperate sprint across the desert, hunted by black helicopters. And for what?

So few left. Brother Stanley dead. Eric burned up with the chemical warhead. Aaron shot and killed by the Christiansons. Taylor Junior’s father in prison. Phillip Cobb rotting in the pond. And three other men missing. Had they slipped away while fleeing Dark Canyon? God would punish them for that.

“We made a few mistakes,” Levi said. “But we’re here. We’re waiting for you to tell us what the Lord wants us to do.”

Yes, so tired. Why not turn around and walk out? Let these worms be led by their women. What was it to him? Except that the moment he abandoned his followers, the angel would appear, grinning. He would torment Taylor Junior as he had in the pit, in the abandoned trailer, beneath the dead cow. He would close his hands around Taylor Junior’s throat.

I have to obey. There’s no other choice. It’s too late to walk away.

He needed sharp, well-honed tools, but all he had were these three: Levi, Elmo, and Jason. They couldn’t rule their own women and children, so how could they possibly attack Blister Creek?

Unless…What if he didn’t use them to attack the town? What if he used them for other purposes? Could he do it alone? He had the means to infiltrate and, once he arrived, supplies cached to finish the task.

“Brother Taylor?” Levi said.

Taylor Junior emerged from his thoughts. He turned to his wife, who flinched under his gaze. “Is everyone here?”

“Most.” Mary Ellen looked around the room. “A few still missing—Sister Havah, Sister Sariah. Maybe a couple of children.”

“Bring them here. Drag them in by their hair if you have to. I want every woman and child in the lounge in five minutes.”

She rushed from the room to obey.

Taylor Junior turned to the men. “Show me the armory.”

To his relief, the armory was in good condition. Boxes of grenades. Well-oiled assault rifles in chests. A pair of .50-caliber M2 heavy machine guns and stacks of metal boxes, each box carrying a hundred rounds of ammo. A rack on one wall held a dozen M16 assault rifles, clean and ready to use. He’d feared that Lillian would have ordered them dumped outside, maybe even sunk in the pond. Instead it was all here, this room stuffed with enough to stock a small army. If only he
had
an army.

“See?” Levi said. “We kept ready.”

“You cleaned your weapons, you stacked your ammo cans. And then you sat back and ate.” In sudden disgust, Taylor Junior pinched the bulging flesh around one of Levi’s nipples. “Look at you, you’ve grown boobs. I’ve never seen anything more pathetic in my life.”

He drew back with a shudder, then fixed Jason and Elmo with the same hard look. “Every one of you is fat. Even your women
and children. I left you with three years of food for fifty people. How much have you devoured already?”

“We haven’t touched the wheat,” Levi said. “Or the oats or the rice. And we have most of the milk.”

“Of course. You tucked into the dried fruit, vegetables, and dried meat. You ate the sugar, the refined flour. Am I right? The canned goods. All the easy stuff. All the food that will make life bearable while we wait for the world to destroy itself. Well, why not? You let a woman order you around, I bet she made the call. Started whining about balanced nutrition for children and all that.”

The men looked at the ground.

“Only an idiot would turn over control of the church to a woman.” None of them said a word, and he continued. “A woman chooses comfort over necessity. And once she gains a little authority over a man, she will abuse it. Look at the world. Women in power everywhere. They refuse their duty, they don’t marry or have children. Tattoos and piercings. Artificial breasts. And their men are emasculated, like a neutered dog that doesn’t remember how to lift his own leg but squats and pisses like a bitch.”

“Please forgive us,” Elmo said.

“I should kill you all, but I have no choice. You’re the clay God gave me to shape. I only hope you toughen in the fire. I don’t know.” He sighed and rubbed his hand against the perforated jacket assembly of one of the M2s. “Is the Humvee still on the equipment elevator? Is the battery clean? The engine still runs? Good. Mount this gun. Load the vehicle with as much weaponry and ammo as it will carry.”

“We’re going to Blister Creek?” Levi asked.

“Yes.”

“But isn’t the government still looking for us? On the news they said—”

“The government? The whole rotten barn is about to collapse around their ears. By winter starving hordes will ravish the countryside like a plague of locusts. The people with guns will be too busy keeping the survivors in line to worry about our struggle with the apostates.”

“Are you sure? All because of a volcano?”

“There will be more volcanoes.” He remembered the bubbling pond and Phillip Cobb floating facedown and naked. “The Lord’s wrath will pour out upon the land.”

“But what about Blister Creek?” Levi persisted. “They’ve got guns too. There are so many of them, and only four of us. Wouldn’t it be safer to stay here and defend our own sanctuary?”

“You really are cowards, aren’t you? But yes, you’re right, in a way. The Lord means us to have more help.” He thought for a moment. “How old is my brother now?”

“Thirteen,” Levi said, his tone skeptical.

“Good. Teach him how to use a weapon. Use the empty silo for a shooting range. The sound won’t carry to the surface. And train the older Johnson boys too. Any other boy who will be twelve by September. That’s when I’ll be back.”

“Where are you going?” Levi asked.

“The very belly of the beast. Las Vegas.”

“What? Why?”

“Then Bakersfield. Wendover, Salt Lake, St. George. To gather more Lost Boys. There are a dozen more men I know about. Maybe more. By now they’ll see the collapse and know they have to choose sides before the Lord spews them from His
mouth. They’ll join us, and we’ll have enough strength to take Blister Creek and hold it.”

They looked more confident at this, but the words felt wrong as they came out of his mouth. If the angel had meant for him to begin another slow mustering of forces, would it have driven him back to the bunkers? No, the thing had something more immediate and deadly in mind.

I don’t care
, he told himself.
I’m not going back to Blister Creek on a suicide mission.

“Still,” Taylor Junior added after a moment of hesitation, as if he’d merely been considering the logistics, “there is one remaining problem. Lillian Young.”

“She’s defiant.” Levi said.

“Yes. No doubt she’s scheming with the others right now. Once you give a woman a taste of power, she never lets go. Have any of you touched her?”

They shook their heads. “I tried,” Levi said. “When we heard Aaron was dead, I told her she needed to marry one of us, but she refused.”

“You tried,” Taylor Junior said. He forced down his temper. “Very well. I’ll do it myself. Come with me. Gather them all. I don’t like to do it this way, but I’ll do it in front of the others. Make it clear to everyone.”

“She’ll fight back,” Elmo said. “That’s the sort of woman she’s become.”

“I don’t require her consent. Levi, you’ll marry us. The instant you finish, the three of you will get her clothes off and hold her down. And then she will submit, or if she keeps struggling I will—no, not me,” he said, and looked at Levi. This was how he had
strengthened Aaron. “No, I won’t do it. If she resists,
you
will shoot her.”

The men looked shaken. They’d fallen under the woman’s spell this past year. Taylor Junior had expected to find the sanctuary in a state of revolt, but he’d never expected to find a woman in charge.

“Too hard for you? Should I do it myself and bring back real men to take your wives and your kingdoms?”

“We’ll do it,” Levi said. “If it is the will of the Lord.”

“It is. Now quickly, before she poisons the other women.”

The men left the ammo dump. It lay on the far side of the compound so an accidental explosion and fire wouldn’t suck the air out of the complex and suffocate them. They clanked across the metal catwalk that led around the empty silo, then down the hall toward the lounge.

Taylor Junior checked his gun. An excitement stirred in his bowels. He pictured Lillian Young—make that Lillian
Kimball
—on the ground with her lips quivering. Those pretty eyes would widen in terror as she offered a feeble protest, then close when he took her as she gasped with very different emotions. He would subjugate her pride.

And then he thought about Eliza Christianson. Weren’t the two women cousins through the Griggs line? They may as well have been sisters. Eliza was young, fresh-faced like Lillian. Never married, though, probably a virgin, unless she’d spread her legs for some gentile in Salt Lake.

Eliza, that bitch. She’d lurked in her father’s arrogant shadow and now considered herself invulnerable as she stood behind her brother’s shoulder, jeering at the true believers.

In his mind Lillian had become Eliza, and when he threw open the door he was trembling with excitement. His groin was rock-hard and painful. A year since he’d taken a woman. It would be quick. He’d take her again later in private, and that time make it last.

The children all sat at tables in the back of the lounge, eating again. Always eating. The women stood in tight clumps together near the television, which they’d sensibly shut off. The black screen stared down at them like an eye that was all pupil. The women whispered in nervous tones.

“Lillian Young,” he said. “Show yourself.”

The women parted, guilt on every face. No one met his gaze. “Where is she? Where’s she hiding?” He stood with his hands on his hips, making sure they could see the gun. “I’m losing my patience.”

Mary Ellen stepped forward, shaking. “She ran away.”

He crossed the space between them in three steps and looked down at her from a few inches away. “I told you to have everyone waiting.”

“I did. I mean, I tried. As soon as you left, Lillian ran to her room. When I went after her, she wasn’t there. Sister Blythe said she climbed the ladder.”

“Climbed the ladder?” His alarm spread.

Levi cleared his throat. “That’s what they call it when you leave.”

“She ran away,” Mary Ellen said. “She warned us she’d do it, she told us if things didn’t change…” Her voice trailed away, and then, when nobody else filled the silence, she cleared her throat. “She left for Blister Creek.”

Grandma Cowley’s second diary sat like a brick against Jacob’s chest, tucked into a pocket on the inside of his jacket. With the Ghost Cliffs looming to his left, Witch’s Warts straight ahead, and a boulder-speckled, sagebrush-strewn plain between them, suddenly thirteen long, calcified decades dissolved and he felt as though he’d fallen through the years and into the nineteenth century. Like riding into a monochrome photograph made life-size and real. Diego and Daniel rode on the horse behind his, but Jacob heard nothing but the clomp of hooves on wet sand.