Destroying Angel (29 page)

And I thought,
May she find peace on the other side. And may the Lord forgive me for causing her death.

When I looked away, I saw a new figure standing in the shadows to my left. The person was on the edge of my vision, and when I turned my head, I caught a glimpse of a man, his eyes glinting, his smile cunning. And then the swinging lamps shifted the shadows and he was gone. But I knew.

This was the doing of the evil spirit.

A sound broke Jacob from his stupor. It was only the barest creak, perhaps nothing more than a branch pushed by the wind until it scraped against sandstone. He froze, still holding the diary at an angle to the moonlight. His arm was cramped, and the muscles in his shoulder complained. How long had he held himself in that position, buried in Grandma Cowley’s words?

Damn you. You fell asleep.

Not literally asleep, but in a mental slumber that was as good as sleep, caught up in the story and the horror of Maude Kimball’s murder.

Between Frederick van Slooten, the savage killing of Maude Kimball for the crime of seeking relief from her crippling loneliness in the arms of another woman, and the insanity that had taken hold of the Kimball line since the beginning, he found the settlement of Blister Creek a terrifying, awful thing. It was no wonder that five generations later they still struggled with violence and insanity. There was no angel, unless by angel you meant a metaphor for religion-induced hysteria used to justify violence.

Except that Grandma Cowley saw the dark angel too. Was she insane too? Or was she simply caught up in the terror, already thinking of the evil spirit, and so she imagined she saw something?

But you saw it too. You fought it. You wrestled with it in Witch’s Warts behind the temple.

Jacob had started to relax again, when he heard more noise, and this time he knew it wasn’t a branch in the wind. It was more like a boot scraping on stone and the crunching sound of his tumbleweed snare breaking apart.

Jacob slipped the diary into his pocket and lifted the Beretta from his lap, slowly, quietly. He rose to his feet, emerging from
the crevice between the two halves of the broken boulder and flattening himself with his back to the stone. His pounding heart and creaking knees sounded loud enough to hear from the other side of the valley. He edged around the boulder with gun outstretched until he faced the rift at the base of the cliff where he’d set his warning snare.

The pile of tumbleweeds lay scattered. A figure had gained the valley floor and now slipped across the moonlit gap between the last of the fallen boulders and the first fins of Witch’s Warts, almost out of sight already. He seemed intent on his path and moved swiftly but quietly.

If Jacob had awakened from his stupor moments earlier, he could have shot the man dead before he reached the other side. But by the time Jacob recovered, the other man had disappeared into the labyrinth. Taylor Junior didn’t appear to have spotted him though. If the man was armed, he didn’t have his gun drawn.

Jacob gave pursuit.

“It has to be along here somewhere.” Lillian’s voice sounded hollow through her mask.

The ground rumbled ominously. Eliza sniffed the air in her mask for the poisonous vapors, the noxious, bitter odor that had filled her nose and mouth during the earlier earthquake. She smelled rubber with a faint scent of something that reminded her of a coconut husk. It had smelled stronger when she first put on the mask, but over time the rubber smell dominated.

“We’ve been searching this blasted ledge for the last half hour,” Miriam said.

“It hasn’t been that long,” Krantz said. Still, impatience sounded in his own voice. “Lillian, where the hell is it?”

“I told you,” the young woman said in a frustrated tone. “He came out right here, below where we’re standing.”

They had discovered the missile openings easily enough. The entire site apparently had been an underground silo for a trio of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Above the ridge were three circular cement plugs, forty feet across, that could open when the rockets were fueled and in launch mode. No entrance there. Eliza imagined they were hardened against a nuclear blast. The main entrance was just as hopeless. It sat in the side of the rocky ledge and looked like the massive metal door of a bank safe, only wide enough for a delivery truck to drive through, had it been open. A driveway of broken cement—the same tan color as the surrounding earth—stretched from the entrance before disappearing less than twenty feet away. Humvee tracks led away across the desert.

They searched the cement cylinders for an entrance, cutting back and forth with their flashlights and looking like giant insects behind their masks, with long snouts, mandible-like hoses, and huge, glossy eyes that reflected the light.

Miriam pressed Lillian as they looked, but the young woman insisted she knew where the silos were relative to the lounge. She sketched it out in the dirt, with the shaft to the surface on one side, the three silos in a row, and finally the lounge and living quarters, bisected by a main corridor for getting from one side of the facility to the other. She took Eliza’s wrist and turned her flashlight to the ledge, which ran roughly east to west as far as they could see in the dark. “The main passageway follows that ledge exactly.” She led them past the last cement plug. “And this has to be right above the lounge where Taylor Junior dropped through the roof. I’m sure of it.”

Miriam checked her pressure gauge with a grunt. “That’s all great, but we’re wasting oxygen.”

They climbed down from the ledge and walked its length, inspecting every inch, even hacking sagebrush roots with Miriam’s KA-BAR knife and kicking gravel out of the way.

The ground rumbled again. Everyone stopped, and then the ground fell silent. Every moment that passed the gas bubble would be creeping over the ground, sinking into the underground compound. Soon it would be too late. Maybe people were dying already.

Eliza forced herself to be calm. “Steve, how far are we from the entrance?”

He glanced at the GPS. “A hundred and fifty feet.”

“And we’ve got to be fifty feet beyond the last silo by now. You measured that distance?” Eliza asked Lillian.

“I told you that already.” Lillian’s voice quivered with frustration. “It has to be right here.”

Eliza took her arm. “Okay, but maybe the shaft bent north or south before it dropped into the room. Maybe the army figured there was a problem with the air circulation, so they built a bigger opening and piped in air from as far away from the pond as possible.”

“If you’re right,” Miriam said, “then we’re looking in the wrong place.”

Eliza turned it over in her head, trying to think like Jacob. “Not south, toward the pond, or north, through the ridge. If the base runs east to west, I’m guessing this way.”

They followed her east along the ledge. Five minutes later they found it, a full fifty yards beyond the last room of the base, according to Lillian.

A metal grating sat on the ground, together with several metal bolts, each as thick as Eliza’s thumb, scattered in the dirt. It had
been removed from a hole in the hillside, and they shone their lights inside to reveal a culvert-like metal pipe extending deep into the hillside before dropping vertically. Eliza’s mouth went dry at the thought of maneuvering through that tight, dark space and then squirming her way
down
the pipe a hundred feet without falling to her death.

Krantz took one look inside and then stepped back. “Oh, crap.”

“I know how you are about heights,” Eliza said, “but we don’t have any choice.” She put her hand on his arm. “Taylor Junior did it. If that jerk can manage, so can you.”

“It’s not that. I could handle the drop. I wouldn’t like it, but I’d manage. But look at the size of that thing. And look at my shoulders.”

“It must get wider farther in,” Lillian said. “At least, it was wider where it dropped into the room. Maybe there’s a second ventilation shaft that connects with the main pipe.”

“Doesn’t matter how big it is on the other side if he can’t squeeze through the opening,” Eliza said as she checked her pistol in its holster and double-checked her spare clip. She turned to Krantz. “Steve, I think—”

“Don’t say it. I can’t let you do that.”

“I’m going to say it, and you know it’s the only choice. You stay here with Lillian. Take the ATVs to higher ground, wherever the air is fresh, so you don’t use any more oxygen. Watch the main entrance. If anyone tries to escape, you’ll be ready to help. Or stop them from doing some awful thing, if it comes to that.”

“I need to go down too,” Lillian said. “I can talk them into surrendering peacefully. They trust me.”

“You can handle the tunnel?” Eliza asked.

“I can handle it,” Lillian said. She squared her shoulders and lifted her mask, as if to show the determination on her face. “Let’s go.”

Eliza looked at Miriam, trying to read any hesitation behind the woman’s mask, but if her sister-in-law harbored lingering suspicions about Lillian, she didn’t voice them. And there was something in Miriam’s posture that was uncharacteristically timid.

“Let’s get you fresh tanks,” Krantz said. He returned from the ATVs a moment later with the duffel bag full of pressure tanks. They spent a minute swapping out canisters for each of the three women, and then he stepped out of the way as the women approached the hole in the ledge.

Eliza sent Lillian in first, followed by herself, with Miriam bringing up the rear. They crawled into the shaft on their hands and knees, with Lillian reaching the first bend just as Miriam entered behind them. Krantz was still at the mouth of the tunnel, with his light shining over their shoulders. Lillian squirmed around so she could enter the vertical part of the shaft feetfirst.

“Eliza, wait,” Miriam said, her voice sharp and urgent.

“What is it?”

Miriam pushed against Eliza and spoke in a low voice, meant only for her ears. “I don’t feel so hot. I think I might be sick.”

“Is it your mask?” Eliza asked. “Go back, have Krantz check your air. You can catch up.” Meanwhile, Lillian positioned herself in the vertical shaft and began to edge down the pipe.

“No, it’s not that.”

It occurred to Eliza that Miriam had been acting strangely for the last few hours. She seemed exhausted all afternoon, and then
queasy at all the dead animals. And she was willing to let others take the lead, whereas she usually wanted to be in charge. Was she afraid? Had the surreal landscape spooked her?

“It’s okay,” Eliza said. “I’m scared too.”

“I’m not scared.” Miriam’s voice held its familiar edge on this last part, but she hesitated again before speaking. “The thing is…well, I’m pregnant. There. That’s it.”

Eliza drew in her breath. “Are you sure? Since when?”

“Almost three months. I’ve known since Memorial Day. And I get morning sickness now, except it doesn’t always come in the morning. I think I’m going to throw up. It’s the smell and the bad air.”

“I’d say congratulations,” Eliza said, “but it might have been helpful to know this before we left Blister Creek, don’t you think?”

“I thought I could handle it. I’m sorry, I really am.”

“And that’s what the argument with David was about, wasn’t it?”

“He said it wasn’t safe for me or for the baby. What does he expect me to do, cower with the old women and children? I don’t want to be like Fernie.”

“Miriam.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean it like that, but if that happened to me, I’d rather die. Being strong is who I am, it’s how I answer people like Krantz and Fayer, prove to them I belong in Blister Creek. It’s different for you—you were born in the church. You don’t have to explain why you’d give up the outside world to be ordered around because you’re a woman.”

“Miriam, we don’t have time for this.”

Lillian had continued to move down the shaft, slowly but relentlessly making her way toward the bottom. Eliza continued
to the end and turned herself around, as Lillian had, to lower herself feetfirst.

“Don’t tell Krantz, please.”

“I won’t tell,” she said, “but you have to decide. And hurry. I need you—you’re a better shot, and you’re trained for this kind of thing.”

“What if I throw up?”

“Then you throw up.”

“But I’ll be above you, and it will go all over the place.”

“A little barf is the least of my worries,” Eliza said. “Throw up if you have to, but don’t fall. That’s all that matters.”

“You all right in there?” Krantz called. The light flashed over their shoulders.

“We’re good,” Eliza said.

But she was more shaken than she let on. She’d never seen Miriam like this. Lowered into the hole, Eliza was facing Miriam now, her feet against the side of the tunnel, wedging herself into the vertical pipe so she wouldn’t fall. Miriam stared back, her face a silhouette against Krantz’s flashlight at the mouth of the tunnel. Her breath huffed, amplified by the mouthpiece.

She reached out a hand and grabbed Miriam’s arm. “There’s nobody else I’d rather have by my side to face the Kimballs. Now let’s get down there and finish it.”

“Eliza…”