Destroying Angel (22 page)

He sent Diego running toward the chapel to tell a search party the two had been found, and then turned to Jacob. “Fernie is in the kitchen.”

Jacob looked around—at the women giving soup or hot chocolate to the searchers, at Stephen Paul’s wife Sister Carol with
a clipboard and a walkie-talkie—and then turned back to his brother. “You organized all this?”

David gave him a strange look. “It’s a search party, not the Olympics. Your wife is in a panic—I wouldn’t make her wait.”

Jacob and Daniel went inside. Fernie sat in her wheelchair in the kitchen with the phone in her lap and the receiver at her ear. Relief washed over her face when she saw them. “Thank heavens,” she said into the phone. “They’re back.”

Daniel ran into Fernie’s arms, where he broke down and sobbed. She kissed his forehead and, even though she looked terrified, sounded calm as she said, “It’s okay. Daddy got you, you’ll be okay, I promise.”

“Mommy, there was a man.”

“Shh. It’s okay now. Jacob, what on earth—wait, hold on.” She lifted the phone. “Give me a second. I’ll tell him.”

“Tell me what?” Jacob asked. “Here, let me talk to them.” He reached for the phone. “You can call off the search, but thank you.”

“Heard about your son,” came the grim voice of Stephen Paul from the other end. “Glad you found him, but this isn’t about the boy. There’s other news. Fernie can fill you in. I’ve got calls to make. Stay by the phone. I’ll call back in five minutes.”

Jacob hung up, confused, and turned to Fernie. “What’s that about?”

She still held Daniel tight against her chest. “Multiple things.”

“You mean the earthquake? Is someone hurt? Did someone’s house collapse?”

“I have no idea. I hope not.” She shook her head. “It’s not that. Steve Krantz called on his satellite phone. Maybe ten minutes after the earthquake.”

“Ten minutes?” He recalculated. “How long were we gone?”

“Two hours.”

“Are you sure?”

She glanced at his father’s grandfather clock, marking its regular, unhurried time. It was almost midnight. “One hour and fifty-two minutes.”

Five minutes into Witch’s Warts. Five minutes to chase Daniel up the sandstone fin and make his bad jump—presumably when the earthquake hit. His unconscious nightmare might have lasted another five minutes, but then Daniel was standing over him. And now Fernie said two hours, and while he couldn’t remember the time when he noticed Daniel was missing, around ten sounded right.

“Jacob, are you okay? What happened out there? Where were you?”

Now he understood David’s confused expression. Jacob assumed that David had organized a search, together with multiple points throughout Blister Creek, women with clipboards and hot chocolate and soup, in ten or fifteen minutes. But if two hours had passed…

“I don’t know.” He looked down at Fernie in her chair, her expression worried. “I’m okay. We’ll talk about it later. But what did Krantz want?”

“Steve, Eliza, and Miriam found Taylor Junior’s camp—or close enough to it. Four men drove off in a Humvee, loaded with guns and ammunition. Krantz and the girls think they’re on their way to Blister Creek. He couldn’t get anyone at the FBI to help. Krantz and the rest are coming back, but he doesn’t think they’ll arrive in time. We’re on our own.”

It was a lot to absorb. Jacob’s hand went to the matted blood and sand at his scalp. It ached and he still felt dazed, his thoughts moving as slowly as the brass pendulum bob on the grandfather clock.

A year since the last attack. He’d known another was coming, unless the FBI arrested Taylor Junior first. And they hadn’t. But now that it was upon them, he found he wasn’t ready.

“Jacob?”

He shook his head to clear it. “How long have we got?”

“Hard to say. I talked to Eliza, and she said maybe two hours by Humvee to get to the ranch road—they’ll be there by now—plus another hour, hour and a half, to the highway. Then a couple more hours, maybe three or four, depending on whether they risk a drive through town or take back roads.”

“So we have a little while.” Jacob considered. “But only four men? Only one Humvee?”

“Four that we know about,” she said. “And four is enough. That’s all they had last time. Taylor Junior was with them.”

The phone rang. It was Stephen Paul again, who spent a few minutes dancing around the same information he’d already shared with Fernie and then got down to business. Jacob found Fernie and Daniel distracting, so he stepped across the kitchen toward the dining room. His feet crunched on broken plates shaken from the cupboards by the quake.

“Wish we had heavy weapons ourselves,” Stephen Paul said.

“You mean illegal weapons.”

“When someone comes after you with machine guns, you don’t worry about what’s legal, you want a fair fight. You want your hands on the same hardware. Going to call the FBI?”

“Krantz already did. They’re not coming.” Jacob didn’t quite understand this, but he didn’t have time to call and find out why, not now.

“Want me to try the sheriff? Highway Patrol?”

“We should try,” Jacob said. “But we’d better not count on any help. Who have you raised so far from the quorum?”

“Almost everyone. Still missing Elder Simpkins and Elder Smoot, but I’ll get them. Told the men to take positions. Is that right?”

“Yes, perfect. Meet me at the reservoir in one hour. I’ll grab David.” He told Stephen Paul his plan for the women and children. “Your wife is here already. I’ll send Carol with guns and have her hole up in the church. I want everyone east of Main Street in the chapel with her, and everyone west at my house under Fernie. Spread the word.”

“You sure that’s safe, collecting everyone in a couple of places? Doesn’t it concentrate the target?”

“Yes, but they’re also defensible buildings, with thick walls, and centrally located on main roads for easy reinforcement.”

After hanging up, Jacob made his way into the front room to find his wife with Daniel and a few of Jacob’s younger half siblings, who began to come back into the house. He sent everyone but Fernie and Daniel outside again. “I need to check the foundation to make sure it’s safe from the earthquake,” he told them. He waited until the others had cleared out of the house, and then said to Fernie, “That’s an excuse. I don’t want everyone riled up. This will be easier without panic and gossip.”

“Are you okay?” she asked. “You look pale. What’s wrong with your head?”

He lowered his hand from where he’d been fingering the goose egg again. “I hit my head in Witch’s Warts, but I’m all right. Listen, I’m meeting Stephen Paul at the Ghost Cliffs, and I’m taking Daniel with me. David and Diego too. Daniel, can you be brave?”

His son nodded and made as if to come with him.

Fernie’s hand tightened on Daniel’s arm. “Jacob, what are you doing?”

“Every shoulder to the wheel,” he said. “Every man with a gun.”

“He’s not a man.”

“He’s old enough. This is the time when boys become men.”

This was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth. He was thinking about the insanity settling into Daniel’s head. Out of his mind at night and, with that incident in the shower, suffering during the day as well. Fernie was in a wheelchair. Who would stop Daniel if he simply walked out the front door and returned to Witch’s Warts?

He gave her a look and hoped she understood without making him say it. “Fernie, you’re in charge of everyone living west of Main Street. I want them in the house—anyone younger than twelve in the basement, and everyone else armed with guns. I’ll leave you with enough guns to defend yourself. The women—some of the girls too—know how to shoot. If the enemy breaks through, fight to the death.”

Fernie looked pale. “That sounds like something the Kimballs would say.”

“Last time they came for the women and children. Think about those people under Taylor Junior’s thumb. What do you
think it’s like for them? And their children. Imagine our children being raised by Taylor Junior. Whatever you do, don’t put down your guns.” He pulled Daniel with him as he turned to go.

“Be careful,” Fernie said. “And you know how I feel about revenge.” She hesitated. “But nobody will cry for Taylor Junior when he dies.”

Another curt nod, and then he set off. Outside, he filled David in on the plan, and the two men took their sons and went to raid the gun safe while Fernie organized the Christianson household for its defense. Jacob, David, and the boys filled the back of a pickup truck.

David heaved a box of rifle shells into the truck bed. “Welcome to Blister Creek, you son of a bitch,” he said in a low voice. “I pray to God that one of these things has your name on it.”

They loaded Daniel and Diego into the backseat of the extended cab, and David climbed behind the wheel.

“One second,” Jacob said. Then he ran back to the house, past the crying, anxious children. He found Fernie in the living room and bent to kiss her. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have run off like that.”

“‘Whatever you do, don’t put down your guns’?” she said. “Those were your last words?”

“They’re not last words. We’ll see each other soon. You’ll see—everything will be all right, and we’ll be rid of Taylor Junior forever.” Another kiss. “I love you. Stay safe.”

“You too.”

Jacob ran up to his bedroom to find Grandma Cowley’s diary, which was sitting on the nightstand where he’d tossed it after noticing that Daniel was missing. His brother honked his horn from the street below.

Jacob hesitated, then grabbed the diary and tucked it into his back pocket before running back downstairs to climb into the truck. David drove while Jacob called Krantz.

Jacob had seen plenty of floods in Blister Creek, but he couldn’t remember seeing the reservoir in the Ghost Cliffs this full before. It submerged the grassy bowl where people picnicked in the summer to escape the heat of the valley floor. The place where he’d planned to set up sniper positions was also flooded, with water lapping at the base of the cottonwood trees that shaded the road on the west side of the reservoir.

David pointed out a place where the road passed between a pair of trees on one side and the reservoir on the other. Jacob pulled across the road to block it, then killed the engines and lights. They pulled on hats and gloves and unloaded the back of the truck. Jacob didn’t give the boys rifles yet.

Stephen Paul showed up a few minutes later, coming up the switchbacks from the valley floor, and Jacob blinked his flashlight to warn him about the roadblock. The man parked his own truck behind David’s. He’d packed the back with rifles and handguns, boxes of ammunition and flares, and assorted tools from shovels to axes.

“You never know,” he said when Jacob and David came over to look. “You want to take up position behind the trucks?”

“We need better cover,” Jacob said. He’d spent a few minutes on the phone with Krantz, who told him about the poison gases vented out of the pond and asked for Jacob’s medical opinion
before sharing a few thoughts about how best to fight against Taylor Junior’s military gear. “That .50-caliber machine gun will cut right through our trucks. We need something more solid, like a rock ledge or a dirt berm. Let’s hike up the road and see what we can find.”

Stephen Paul eyed the two boys and then clapped them on the shoulder in turn. “I’m always happy to have righteous young men at my side.”

The “young men” in question were a pair of ten-year-old boys, but never mind. Daniel and Diego puffed their chests and nodded wisely. No doubt child soldiers had been doing the same thing for thousands of years when called on to defend their homes. And for thousands of years had died in pain and confusion as older, stronger men with hatred in their souls cut them down without mercy.

“Boys, unload the blankets and sleeping bags. It’s going to be a long, cold night.”

“They should be home with their mothers,” David said after they moved out of earshot. “Not out here in the line of fire.”

“No kidding,” Stephen Paul muttered. “This is ugly business. I don’t like it one bit.”

There would be a lot of boys in the line of fire before the night was out. The thought that he might have to explain to some mother—perhaps, heaven forbid, Fernie or Miriam—why her son had been killed in a gunfight made Jacob sick to his stomach.

The three men and the two boys trudged up the road another forty or fifty yards until Jacob found a good place to set up the ambush. Here the road drew close to a rocky hill, and the Civilian Conservation Corps had blasted away the stone when it built the
first paved road between Panguitch and Blister Creek in the 1930s. Over the decades, boulders the size of small cars had shivered from the vertical cut, and they made great cover along the side of the road.

David tossed down sleeping bags for the boys in a sheltered place behind the largest boulder. “We’ve got a couple of hours, most likely,” Jacob told them. “Better get some rest, boys.”

Daniel and Diego looked exhausted but frowned suspiciously at this, as if worried he meant them to sleep through some great adventure. If only that were true.

Stephen Paul said, “Don’t worry, boys, my sister and her cousin are hiding on the road ahead of us. We’ll get a warning before the bad guys show up. You won’t miss anything, I promise.” He crossed the road with his flashlight to scout things out on the other side.